4 10 182 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/ea24b429155af41d444a44919d85e657.pdf ab3045bf6d40ed747bf10654c0b06d48 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 A name given to the resource 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 A name given to the resource Knowles, Cheryl (Cheryl Dinning). Interview transcript, May 16, 2013. Description An account of the resource Transcript of interview of Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning), Petty Officer First Class, United States Navy. In her interview, Knowles discusses her enlistment, basic and advanced training, and four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Knowles also discusses life in the Navy, including shipboard life, as well as what it was like serving in the Navy as a lesbian during the Don't Act, Don't Tell era, and how it forced her to lead a double life and impacted her ability to be her genuine self and to grieve the loss of her daughter. This interview was conducted as part of the War At Home and Abroad (WAHA) project, now called the CSUSM Veterans Voices project. WAHA was conducted by the California State University San Marcos History Department in collaboration with the CSUSM Student Veterans Center (now the Epstein Family Veterans Center) from 2012-2013. The project aimed to document, preserve, and make accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. Portions of this interview were edited, including the removal of the interviewer from the recording. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning) Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Anthony Mino California State University San Marcos. History Department Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-16 Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001-2021 Gay military personnel--United States Great Lakes Naval Training Center (Great Lakes, Ill.) Iraq War, 2003-2011 LGBTQ+ life United States. Navy United States. Navy -- Recruiting, enlistment, etc. Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Afghanistan Dubai Iraq San Diego (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived War At Home and Abroad oral histories Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. <a href="https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/">https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/</a> Relation A related resource <a href="https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/4/resources/55">CSUSM Veterans Voices oral histories</a> (external link) Type The nature or genre of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context KnowlesCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16_transcript Community history CSUSM Veterans Voices LGBTQIA+ experience Veteran experience Women's experience 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 A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Cheryl Dinning OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Knowles, Cheryl (Cheryl Dinning). Interview May 16, 2013 WAHA-01 00:00:00 HIST-01 CSUSM Veterans Voices oral histories CSUSM This interview was conducted as part of the War At Home and Abroad (WAHA) project, now called the CSUSM Veterans Voices project. WAHA was conducted by the California State University San Marcos History Department in collaboration with the CSUSM Student Veterans Center (now the Epstein Family Veterans Center) from 2012-2013. The project aimed to document, preserve, and make accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. csusm United States. Navy ; Iraq War, 2003-2011 ; Gay military personnel--United States ; Afghan War, 2001-2021 ; LGBTQ+ life Cheryl Dinning video DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.mp4 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/404f80c9a30af3ea36457e736a0d34f2.mp4 Other video English 0 Knowles’ background and enlistment with the U.S. Navy Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning) discusses her place of birth and why and how she ended up enlisting in the United States Navy. Whittier, California ; enlistment ; U.S. Navy ; 9/11 terrorist attack ; Great Lakes, Illinois 0 138 Basic Training Knowles describes her experience during Basic Training, including her impressions, role within her unit, and what she learned. U.S. Navy Basic Training 0 255 Experience during Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell Knowles recounts her experience during A School, where she met a girl and started a relationship, and was eventually outed. Knowles describes her process to discharge, her secret romantic life, and how she escaped discharge, including her marriage to a sailor for the sake of appearances. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ; machinist training ; sham marriages ; discrimination ; A School 0 605 First tour of duty Knowles speaks to her first tour of duty, “shore duty” in San Diego repairing survival equipment sent out to ships. She also discusses being a woman and being in the closet in the Navy. shore duty ; San Diego, California ; woman and gay experience in the Navy 0 703 First onboard duty and first deployment Knowles recounts her first ship-side duty as a machinist on the USS Ronald Reagan, beginning 2005, and her first deployment in 2006, where Knowles deployed to Operation Iraqi Freedom. She speaks to the places she stopped on the way to deployment and “the sailor’s life.” Knowles goes into detail about life aboard the USS Ronald Reagan including her work duties, the food, the informal ship economy, and the “political game” of the military, and how she worked within it as a gay woman. Knowles also recounts the specifics of her deployment, and the best parts of being overseas. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; Operation Iraqi Freedom ; machinist ; locksmithing ; ship life ; Subway [sandwiches] ; McDonald’s ; sexism ; shipboard politics ; Damage Control Central ; Dubai ; Ramadan 0 1340 Second deployment Knowles recalls her second deployment, which started six months after returning from her first, when President Obama started the Afghanistan troop surge. Knowles recounts their ship launching bombing runs over Afghanistan, prayer services for pilots onboard the USS Ronald Reagan, and her misgivings about those services. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; Afghanistan war ; bombing runs ; shipboard prayer and religion 0 1446 Third deployment Knowles describes her third deployment aboard the USS Ronald Reagan, back to Afghanistan to “drop warheads on foreheads,” and her increasing disillusionment with the ongoing wars she was being deployed to. Knowles also speaks to her brief periods back home, and how her short time at home impacted her. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; Afghanistan war ; bombing runs ; disillusionment ; binge drinking 0 1559 Fourth deployment and release Knowles briefly delves into her fourth deployment and finally, in July 2009, her release from ship life, where she returned to advanced machining school. USS Ronald Reagan ; deployment ; advanced machining school 0 1607 Shoreside life and loss Knowles recounts her partner’s fertility treatments and the birth of her two daughters, describing in detail the medical emergency and passing of one of her newborns. Knowles discusses the difficulty of therapy and leave time for her in the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell era, and how that policy impacted her grieving process. Knowles also recounts her use of Navy Fertility Services a year later, and the ways in which she benefitted from her time in the Navy, as well as the ways in which she views the hypocrisy of “The Sailor’s Creed” in how the U.S. Navy treats gays, women, and minorities. U.S. Navy Fertility Services ; Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell ; pregnancy ; infant mortality ; The Sailor’s Creed 0 1978 Separation from Navy Knowles briefly touches on her separation from the Navy and her joining of the U.S. Navy Reserves. separation ; U.S. Navy Reserves 0 2023 Interview conclusion, communication Knowles concludes her interview by talking about how the Navy facilitated communication with family and friends while she was deployed, as well as social media use in the Navy. communication ; email ; U.S. Postal Service ; Facebook ; calling cards 0 Interview with Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning), Petty Officer First Class, United States Navy. In her interview, Dinning discusses her enlistment, basic and advanced training, and four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Knowles also discusses life in the Navy, including shipboard life, as well as what it was like serving in the Navy as a lesbian during the Don't Act, Don't Tell era, an how if forced her to lead a double life and impacted her ability to be her genuine self and to grieve the loss of her daughter. &#13 ; &#13 ; This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, facilitated by the California State University San Marcos History Department, from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:04.144 --> 00:00:05.365 &lt ; Silence&gt ; . 00:00:05.365 --> 00:01:02.155 My name is Cheryl Knowles. I was born in Whittier, California, a suburb of Los Angeles. I joined the Navy in April of 2002. I served during operation Iraqi and Enduring Freedom as an E-6. I come from a large extended family of military, mostly Army. I have uncles that are, uh, colonels and generals in the Army, uh, stationed on the East Coast. My grandfather, who I was closest to, was in the Air Force during the Vietnam War, and he pretty much inspired me to want to join the military, listening to his war stories and the time in the service. I decided pretty much when I was a kid that I wanted to join the military. I remember watching war movies and school, movies about boarding school and military schools. And I was always fascinated with that life. And I just knew, I knew in high school that I was going to join. 00:01:02.155 --> 00:02:18.094 I tried to do the college thing after high school and get a real job in the civilian world, live out on my own, uh, before I joined the military. And it wasn't until after 9/11, uh, which reaffirmed my assumptions that that's where I belonged. Six months after the 9/11 attack, I found myself in a Marine recruiting office. Um, they sent me on my way though, saying that I had too many tattoos. My next stop was the Army recruiting office. And, I probably could have joined the army, but I was looking to pretty much ship out the next day, and their process was taking a little bit longer. And on my way back to my car, just walking past the Navy recruiter, which I had no intentions of going in and talking to them, um, a couple sailors pulled me inside and said, Hey, you know, what are you doing here? Are you interested in the Navy? I'm like, yeah, but you know, I got tattoos, and, you know. And they're like, come with us, we'll get you in. So I did the testing, the physical process, and I was shipped off to Great Lakes, Illinois two weeks later for bootcamp. 00:02:18.094 --> 00:03:21.000 Navy Basic Training was great. I had a great time. It was basically summer camp gone wrong, you know, coming from trying to live on my own as a young teenager, young adult, and working in the civilian world struggling to get by. I now had people walking me to medical, making me get my teeth clean, walking me to breakfast, lunch and dinner. And, you know, I got eight hours of sleep at night, and pretty much everything was done for us. You basically just had to keep your mouth shut and your head down, and that's how it went. Um, I made a lot of friends in basic training. I was kind of like the, the unit clown. I had a sense of humor about everything just because I was a little bit older than the other recruits. So, I was a little more boisterous than the others. And, you know I got in a little bit of trouble here and there, but it was mostly "drop and gimme twenty" or "gimme some pushups and sit-ups." But, you know, I was all about that. So, I had a great time with it. 00:03:21.000 --> 00:04:15.205 Basic training was interesting in the sense that this was the first time I was in a large group of people from basically all walks of life, people from all over the country. We had people from different countries, different religious views, political views, crazy people, weird people, funny people. So it was, um, it was a learning, it was a learning experience, trying to get used to working together as a team with people that think differently than you. But it was a good time! And I learned a lot about people, and I learned a lot about different parts of the country and how diverse we are. But, you know, we came together and we worked as a team, and we all survived via nine weeks of basic training together. 00:04:15.205 --> 00:10:05.000 Upon finishing basic training, I was sent right across the street with my A School. I was going to a machinist training school that was about eleven weeks long. There I met, um, I met a girl, and this was during the Don't Ask, Don't Tell era. And we were in the same school together. We hung out a lot. We ended up dating. We tried to keep it, you know, on the DL just because we were scared of the Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy. And we had heard horror stories about people being outed and kicked out of the military. Um, word got out that we were dating or people thought we were dating, and they reported us to the higher-ups. So one day we both showed up to school, and we were escorted out of school by military police, and we were placed in separate interrogating rooms where we were both asked questions about our sexuality and our relationships to each other. We really didn't have any idea what was going on. It caught us off guard. Um, we didn't admit to anything. We were, you know, basically scared out of our minds because we both wanted to make twenty-year careers out of the Navy. And here they were starting the process to discharge us for homosexual conduct. We were taken out of our training school, and we were placed on a legal hold status where we weren't allowed to continue trading. And they were basically processing us out of the military without any evidence or confessions or anything, just based off of a statement that a roommate I had had made. During that time, we were still allowed to go off base and hang out and stuff, and we did, you know, we weren't doing anything wrong. We would go to Chicago and hang out. We had a hotel that we would go and stay at on the weekends, and the hotel owner would check us in under a male and female name that wasn't our own names, just to kind of cover us, you know, we were staying in the gay area of Chicago. So it was kind of--it was kind of cool and kind of sneaky where we would check in as Mr. and Mrs. something other than what our name was. But basically we were, we were hiding. We were trying to be ourselves, but, you know--in a different, I don't know, identity I guess. Um, one night we were at a club, a gay club in Chicago, and we were just hanging out, having a couple drinks, and in walks one of our chiefs, You can imagine the surprise on her face, you know, we're in a gay bar and here comes one of our superiors walks in. I don't know how she found us, but she basically wanted to tell us that she was gonna go to bat for us, we were gonna be okay, and that we both needed to find a male and, uh, get married. I had met another gay, uh, sailor. His name was Chris. And we were pretty good friends, and we all hung out together. So in my attempt to find a "husband," I pretty much told him the scenario is, "Hey, I need to get married and portray myself as a heterosexual female, and I need a husband, you know? Are you down for it?" And, you know, he thought about it, and it ended up benefiting us both because we would get paid the rate of a married a couple for housing and stuff like that. So, we went to a courthouse in Chicago. We exchanged vows and had an awkward peck on the cheek, and voila, we were married. My girlfriend at the time, Tara, she also got married. She married a friend of a service member who was an immigrant of Poland. And, he needed citizenship. She needed a husband, so she can look like a heterosexual female to stay in the Navy, and so they got married. So here we are, both E-1s, um, scared out of our mind thinking we're gonna get kicked out of the Navy and having to get married to a male. It was just, it was weird. It was awkward, it felt wrong. I had to tell my family about it. It was just--the whole situation was unpleasant. It was scary. Um, I felt like we were targeted and discriminated against, and that's just part of Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the military during that time. After the charges got dropped against us for homosexual conduct, we were both free and clear to finish tech school. And, um, that's what we did for the rest of our time in Chicago. You know, we laid low, made plans to get stationed with our respective "husbands," and just tried to stay out of trouble. I got stationed in San Diego. It was my first duty tour. I joined the Navy to get out of California and to explore the world. So you can imagine my surprise when I saw orders that I was going back to Southern California. I wasn't too happy about it, but it turned out to be a good experience. 00:10:05.000 --> 00:11:43.315 My first tour was on shore duty in San Diego. I was repairing survival equipment that was sent out to the ships, like life rafts and survival food kits and stuff like that. I was the only female working there, and there was probably about twelve males. And the first thing that I got asked when I checked in, uh, had nothing to do with my training, my abilities, my goals. They wanted to know if I was married, and once I told 'em I was married, they wanted to know where he was for how long and it was just like this weird, invasive personal interrogation into my life. But, you know, it just--it just set the tone for the rest of my military career and I know it's a very male dominated profession. And as a female, you have to work twice as hard to prove yourself. And that's what I did the whole time I worked there was I worked, uh, I tried to keep my personal life, my personal life. I had to lie about what I was doing on the weekends and who I was doing it with. Um, you know, and then it was--it was hard. It's hard to live like that and work in an environment where you can't talk about who you went to dinner with the night before, or--or what you're gonna do that weekend. You just, you have to make things up and make it vanilla and cookie cutter and non-interesting. So they stopped asking questions. 00:11:43.315 --> 00:13:11.845 I worked there for two years, and then I got transferred to my first ship, which was the USS Ronald Reagan. I felt comfortable taking orders there because my girlfriend from A School who became my best friend--uh, the dating thing didn't really work out with us. But, she was stationed there. And her supervisor, or my supervisor too, was also gay. So I felt comfortable taking orders there. I was excited and looking forward to it. And I checked on board in February of 2005. We spent a lot of time out to sea that year. In preparation for the ship's first deployment. We deployed for the first time in January of 2006. And, uh, we were heading over to the Operation Iraqi Freedom. On the way there, we stopped in a few countries ; Australia, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, um--and I think Japan. But we would stop in these countries for three or four days at a time, and we'd get off the ship, go blow some steam out in town, do a lot of drinking. The guys would all go get hookers and--it's the sailor life, I guess. 00:13:11.845 --> 00:14:21.000 My job aboard the ship was a machinist. So I worked down in the machine shop with about twelve other machinists. And we were also connected with the welders who also did the plumbing. So we were involved with the ship's sanitation system as well. And there was a lot of times where I was knee deep in a bathroom that's overflowed with, uh, with poop and pee, trying to stop it from flooding the rest of the ship. I was also the ship's only locksmith. I went to a security institute in Kentucky and got trained on basic locksmithing and safes and vaults. So, on an aircraft carrier there's typically three to four thousand safes. So I kept pretty busy. I was also the only locksmith for our battle group, which included about six other ships as well. So whenever something would break on another ship I would helicopter off my ship and spend the night on another boat for a night or two until it took me to, uh, however long it took me to do the repair. 00:14:21.000 --> 00:17:31.000 Ship life is interesting. Um, we lived in a small confined space with about sixty females. Our racks were stacked three high. The middle rack is the ideal place to, you know, to sleep. So eventually I got a middle rack. We had a small locker, and our mattress lifted up, which exposed more storage space. There wasn't much room for storage, so you pretty much took what you could, the basics. Underwear, socks, and t-shirts. A few pairs of civilian clothes, and the rest was room for your uniforms and toiletries. We had two showers for sixty females. Three toilets and two sinks. You would imagine that it would be super crowded in the mornings, but with the way shifts work out the sea, we have a night shift, the day shift, um, people that sleep a little bit later because they had watched throughout the night or whatnot. So, mornings were a little bit crowded, but it wasn't ridiculous as you would think it would be with sixty females trying to, you know, line up for two showers. The food was good starting out on deployment. The farther away from the United States, you get, the more food you get imported from different places. So once we got to the Middle East, the milk, uh, changed color and texture. The lettuce, by the time it would reach us was brown. Vegetables weren't really good. Lunch meat was--colorful, but, um, ship life is about networking. So if you know somebody who works in the galley or works in the chiefs' mess or where the officers eat and you can do something for them, then you're gonna get taken care of food-wise. I ran the laser engraving shop that--you know, I can make signed, engraved coffee cups or pretty much anything. So, pretty--everybody wanted to send home gifts to their family. So I did a lot of engraving of personal items in return for real food and cooked food and cookies and snacks and stuff like that. I got my laundry done, so I rarely had to wait in line to use the washers and dryers, which is mass chaos on a ship. Um, I also--I did some work for the post office, you know, on the side. And when they would fly on mail, the postal guys on shore would go and pick up pizzas or Subway and throw 'em in the mailbox--mail bags. And even though it took a few hours or eight hours to reach the ship, by the time he got those cold McDonald's hamburgers or pizza, they were the best, best things you've ever had. 00:17:31.000 --> 00:19:34.000 Um, being a worker in engineering, I had to prove myself as a female. Like I said, you had to work twice as hard to prove that you could do the job of a male, and it was common for girls or females to, you know, not want to do their job, and they'd get placed in more like an admin type of a setting and less engineering, less hands-on. And that's just what some, you know, females prefer. But I wanted to be out there with the guys getting my hands dirty and stuff, so that's what I did. And it took a while but I gained the respect of the guys that I worked with, and they pretty much--they just start thinking of you as one of the guys. My sexuality was never an issue while I was on that ship. I worked with some of the coolest guys you'd ever meet. They treated me fairly. We made gay jokes or whatever, and, you know, it was cool. I was just like one of the guys. The military is kind of a game. It's a political game. It's all about who you know, good ole' boys club, and doing what you got to do to--to get ahead. Promotions and evaluations aren't based fairly, It's based on who likes you and its popularity contest. On my ship, I learned to play the game, and I did it well, and I got good evals. Sometimes you have to keep your mouth shut and let things slide, like, you know, I put up with some sexual harassment and--and stuff like that, and physical assaults. But, I just felt at the time that this is the way it is, and me complaining about something that's going on would just come back negatively on myself. And so, you just learn to let things go and kind of just join in, I guess. 00:19:34.000 --> 00:20:45.935 Being deployed to the Iraq area of operation, um, it was really hot out there. The food that we got on board, it wasn't good. We spent long hours working, because the air conditioning would stop working or we'd have problems making water. So, uh, we were pulling like eighteen-hour days. On top of that we would have watches in the middle of the night where we would sit down in Damage Control Central. We were basically the 9-1-1 / 4-1-1 dispatcher for the entire ship. Um, we had four hour watches while we were out to sea, and they rotated throughout the day. So if you ended up working from seven in the morning until ten at night, and then you had to be on watch from midnight to four am and you're only gonna get about two hours sleep before you had to get up and start working again. And that was just the way it was. You know, we just, we lived on Red Bull and taking Xenadrine and, you know, little sleep. 00:20:45.935 --> 00:22:20.000 Some of the best parts of deploying overseas were visiting different countries on the way to our area of operation and on the way home. Um, checking out the different cultures in Asia was a lot of fun. And I learned a lot about bargaining and drinking and met some really nice people. Um, a lot of, uh, a lot of shadiness goes on behind the scenes with people trying to solicit themselves sexually or trying to sell us drugs and aftermarket, fake watches and stuff like that. But, um, there was a lot of people that got in trouble, you know, no doubt. But, every time we would pull into a port, they would brief us on what to look out for, different customs and courtesies in the country, what to do, what not to do. Like, we pulled into Dubai and it was the end of Ramadan, so, they basically told us that we weren't allowed to drink until Ramadan was over. And that people, you know, they would stop throughout the day and pray and stuff, and just to stand by, let them pray and then continue on what we're doing, not to keep talking and yelling or taking pictures and stuff like that. Basically just telling us how to act. 00:22:20.000 --> 00:24:06.555 Six months after returning from our first deployment, President Obama started the surge to Afghanistan. And, we were the first aircraft carrier to be sent over there. So, just as we were unpacking from a deployment, we were throwing our stuff back in our sea bag and getting ready to head out again. This one, uh, we didn't have as many port visits just because we were in a quick hurry to get over where we needed to be. And, once we got there, we basically launched planes that drop bombs over Afghanistan and return. And it was pretty cool because they would record it and they would play it on the ship's TVs. And we'd get to watch like bombs drop, and you can see the explosions and stuff like that. What I found interesting was, every night before we go to sleep, the chaplain comes on the ship's intercom and does an evening prayer. I'm not religious at all. And I was actually, you know, I got kind of tired of having to listen to evening prayers every night because I felt like they were kind of forcing prayer and religion in the military. But I don't know. Anyways, they would--they would pray and, um, they would pray for the safety of our pilots as we're dropping bombs that are killing essentially civilians and people. And they were just, I don't know, using Christianity to justify war, I guess. And I mean, I'm not an expert on the Bible, but I'm--you know, isn't God and religion against war? And here we are, interpreting the Bible to justify what we're doing over there. 00:24:06.555 --> 00:25:25.000 Our surge deployment lasted about four months, and then we were headed back to San Diego or, you know, home port. And then, um, we deployed again the next year back to Afghanistan, where we sat off the coast for six months, doing the same thing. Flying jets, uh, "dropping warheads on foreheads." And by this time, this was my third deployment in three years. I was over it. I'm like, why are we here? What are we doing? You know, when we first deployed to Iraq, I was like, why? What are we here? What are we doing? If we're here because of 9/11 and the bad guys are in Afghanistan, why are we looking for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq? But anyways, you just don't question anything. I guess you just do your job like a good soldier or sailor. But by my third deployment, I was--you know I was tired. Tired. I didn't believe in the mission anymore. I wanted to go home, I missed my family. I had missed funerals and weddings, and my nephew was born. I was just tired of it, and I was like, what is this for? Why am I doing all this? 00:25:25.000 --> 00:25:59.184 Time in port turns into drink fests because you didn't know when you were going to be deployed or sent out to sea again. And our schedule was so busy. We'd come back from a six-month deployment, and we'd be home for, you know, two weeks, then we'd be back out to sea doing exercises again for another month. So being home was like a--we treated it like a port visit, so it was just like nonstop partying and drinking, and, you know, it was just, it was just, it was bad. &lt ; laugh&gt ; . 00:25:59.184 --> 00:26:47.955 By the time my fourth deployment came around, I was just about to transfer to a new duty station, but I still left and did half the deployment with my ship and my crew. Um, and I was way over it by then. I'm like, I don't want to do anything. So I, I just pretty much chilled and hung out and talked with everybody and didn't really take much seriously. And then in July of 2009, I was finally, you know, released from ship life. And I was sent back to the States to go to advanced machining school before I went to my next command. And I was pretty excited because I was gonna be off the ship for two years, and I could sustain some sort of normalcy in my life. 00:26:47.955 --> 00:30:38.914 During this time on shore duty, my partner and I--we had been together since right before my second deployment in 2007. So this is 2009 now. And we were in our thirties, so, you know, we're discussing kids and stuff, and we, uh, we started using fertility treatments through the military, in order to get pregnant. And while I was on shore duty, my partner Nicole, she got pregnant with twins, and I was able to be there for all of the doctor's appointments. Although I had to lie and say I had medical appointments to go to, and I was very fortunate that nobody ever questioned me where I was going or why I was leaving early. I was basically allowed to--I was in charge of the, uh, the machine shop, so I pretty much did what I wanted to do. The work still got done though, but I prioritized my personal life a little bit above what was going on at work. The twins were born prematurely in February of 2009. And, one of 'em quickly deteriorated and had to be transferred to a children's hospital. This got a little complicated with work because, I wasn't able to talk about, you know, the fact that I was about to be a parent. The fact that I had a partner, or the fact that I had an infant that was really, really sick. So the next day after they were born, I had to go back to work, and I had to leave Nicole in the hospital with one baby, and the other one was at (Rady) Children's Hospital. I got a phone call while I was work saying that I needed to get to the hospital, right away at Children's Hospital. And I had to drive over to UCSD to get Nicole discharged as soon as she could. She'd had a C-section. She could barely walk, but I kind of threw her in the car. And we got over to Children's Hospital, and we were able to hold our daughter before she, she died. Uh, she had a heart defect that caused other problems, and she didn't make it. I was still in uniform that day, just because I had come from work, and I knew that there was no way that I could go back to work that day or the next day. I just didn't know what to do. So, I got ahold of the Command Master Chief. I was pretty sure that she was gay, even though she was a Command Master Chief. So she's playing the political game of, um, hiding it, I guess. Anyways she wanted--she made me lie and say that it was my sister and my sister's baby that died. And, um, I mean, I was able to go on emergency leave or whatever, but I wasn't allowed the same, I don't know, grievance, um, bereavement leave of somebody else who had a close family member die, or the counseling and the support really, from the command. Usually if there was a death or a problem of command, we'd all pull together and raise money and send flowers or anything just for, you know, for everybody, for anything. But, you know, this tragic situation I was going through had to be a secret and a lie. 00:30:38.914 --> 00:31:40.204 A year later. I used Navy Fertility Services to, um--and I got pregnant this time. We already had our daughter, Avery, who was about one years old, and I got pregnant with our second child, Luca, through the Navy. And, I was discharged off of active duty before she was actually born. But, you know, if there's anything about the Navy that I could say good is they take care of, they take care of you. The fertility center never questioned. Um, you know, where's your husband? Why are you infertile? They gave me the medicines, did the procedures, and never asked questions. So, you know, because of the Navy, I've got two beautiful girls. I was able to buy a house. I'm able to use my post-9/11 GI Bill. I'm studying at Cal State San Marcos, about to transfer to UMass Boston. I mean, I just, I wouldn't be where I'm at today if it wasn't for the Navy. 00:31:40.204 --> 00:32:58.000 With that said, I did endure a bunch of bullshit along the way. You know, being a gay service member during Don't Ask, Don't Tell. The last line of (The) Sailor's Creed is, "I'm committed to excellence and the fair treatment of all." And we say The Sailor's Creed every single morning, and we say it before award ceremonies, we say it when we go through promotion boards, and I'm like, who wrote this thing? And fair treatment of all of, of all? Of all, except for gays, except for women, except for minorities, you know, fair treatment of all. It's a bunch of crap. I guess I do hold a lot of resentment, because I was out there defending, uh, defending freedoms that I myself couldn't even take for granted. Like I couldn't even say that I was in a relationship with somebody. I couldn't get spousal marriage privileges to who I really wanted to be married to. Instead, I had to marry a guy who I didn't even really like anymore. But, I was getting extra benefits for that. You know, the system's definitely flawed. 00:32:58.000 --> 00:33:43.516 I separated in February, 2012. The military started downsizing. So I finished my reenlistment and I was denied my request to reenlist. So I joined the Navy Reserves, and that's what I'm doing now. Um, I don't like it. I don't want to do it anymore. Um, I'm kind of, I feel like I've finished what I needed to do with the military. I'm just, I'm just ready to move on and do something else. And I am proud of what I did and all I accomplished and what The Navy has done for me. But I think it's time to go. 00:33:43.516 --> 00:35:37.516 Just to answer some of the, uh, the stuff that that's on this outline. As far as communication with family and friends, communication was pretty good. We had email most of the time, unless we had some, some tragic event or we were in harm's way or something, they would shut down email. And the internet, we weren't allowed to use it. But that never lasted longer than a day. So email, we had letters through the postal service, which mail took forever. So basically email. And then towards the end of my last deployment, they started allowing Facebook. They quickly turned it away. I mean turned it off, since people started posting our deployment schedule. But for a while we did have Facebook. We did have internet and the mail. So that's how we did communicating. We also had, uh, sailor phones. It was a dollar a minute, and you would buy a calling card and you can use that. Or if you knew somebody that worked in the communications department, you could use the ship's line. And, there were different codes. To open a line, you can just call out. So, I was able to call my family a lot, and I was constantly on email, so communication was never too big of an issue. Email was basically the reason I got up in the morning. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> In copyright video Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the university. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. In assuming full responsibility for use of the material, the researcher also understands that the materials they examine may contain Social Security numbers, other personal identifiers, and/or sensitive material on potentially living and identifiable individuals (e.g., medical, evaluative, or personally invasive information). The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.xml DinningCheryl_WAHA_2013-05-16.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/4/resources/55 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 A name given to the resource Knowles, Cheryl (Cheryl Dinning). Interview May 16, 2013 Description An account of the resource Interview with Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning), Petty Officer First Class, United States Navy. In her interview, Dinning discusses her enlistment, basic and advanced training, and four deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan. Knowles also discusses life in the Navy, including shipboard life, as well as what it was like serving in the Navy as a lesbian during the Don't Act, Don't Tell era, an how if forced her to lead a double life and impacted her ability to be her genuine self and to grieve the loss of her daughter. This interview was conducted as part of the CSUSM Veterans Voices project, facilitated by the California State University San Marcos History Department, from 2012-2013. Veterans Voices (originally called War at Home and Abroad) documents, preserves, and makes accessible the experiences of CSUSM's student veterans. This interview was conducted with a "self-interviewing" protocol, a process drawn from a technique known as Digital Storytelling, which invites the narrator to self-author the interview, telling their story from their perspective, in their own words, and in their own manner. Narrators were provided a list of topics and interview guidelines emphasizing that they could use all, some, or none of the topics as they fashioned their stories about military service and related experiences, thus allowing each narrator to decide what they deemed to be historically important. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context WAHA-01 Subject The topic of the resource Afghan War, 2001-2021 Gay military personnel -- United States Iraq War, 2003-2011 LGBTQ+ life United States. Navy Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2013-05-16 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cheryl Knowles (Cheryl Dinning) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In copyright</a> CSUSM Veterans Voices LGBTQIA+ experience Veteran experience Women's experience 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 A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Alexa Clausen Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Daniel Flores Rios OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-05-09.xml Interview Keyword This filed adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record. Times-Advocate newspaper;North County Times newspaper;North County, San Diego;Wild Animal Park;San Diego Zoo Safari Park;Photography;Black and white negatives;color negatives;dark room;color theory;color separation;digital camera;digital cameras;Rollieflex;Yashica;Nikon;Photoshop;Chromega;Rancho Bernardo, CA;Penasquitos, CA;Fallbrook, CA;San Diego, CA;Escondido, CA;Wildfire;Advertising;marketing OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 6.0 Rios, Dan. Interview May 9th, 2017 SC003-03 00:39:31 SC003 Dan Rios papers CSUSM csusm Escondido (Calif.) ; Fallbrook (Calif.) ; Penasquitos (Calif.) ; Rancho Bernardo (San Diego, Calif.) ; Photojournalists ; Digital cameras ; Photographic chemicals ; Mexican Americans Times-Advocate newspaper ; North County Times newspaper ; North County, San Diego ; Wild Animal Park ; San Diego Zoo Safari Park ; Photography ; Black and white negatives ; color negatives ; dark room ; color theory ; color separation ; digital camera ; digital cameras ; Rollieflex ; Yashica ; Nikon ; Photoshop ; Chromega ; Rancho Bernardo, CA ; Penasquitos, CA ; Fallbrook, CA ; San Diego, CA ; Escondido, CA ; Wildfire ; Advertising ; marketing Daniel Flores Rios Alexa Clausen .wav RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-05-09.wav 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/1c3ee8d55ddb0829d191f2f592e8217e.wav Other audio English Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. This interview recounts Rios's career working for the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times.&#13 ; &#13 ; As the Chief Photographer, Rios was instrumental in transitioning the North County Times from publishing images in black and white, to publishing in color. He recounts how photographers were initially required to buy and maintain their own equipment and how he was able to create a deal with the newspaper to compensate photographers fairly for their equipment. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION BEGIN 00:00:03.000 --> 00:01:11.000 Ok, good morning, we are now recording. Uh, this is Alexa Clausen with Dan Rios on our third session interviewing regarding his career, the Times Advocate and North County Times. It’s May 9th, 2017, and, uh, just by way of introduction, today we are going to focus a little bit more on the technical aspects that Dan had encountered and worked with. Based on what he said that during his interview as a young man as a photographer, he was hired because he had a specialty and knowledge of color. And he had brought his portfolio, and the bosses said “Yeah, we’re moving in this direction and you’re the guy. So, maybe from that starting point in the status of the color for this newspaper and where they were going and your involvement, if we could start there? 00:01:11.000 --> 00:04:32.000 Yeah, ok. Yeah, uh, I was hired, May of 1968 and that was one of the questions asked me was whether I knew how to do color and I had specialized in color my last year, semester, in college. And I shared my portfolio and the day after that I was hired. Uh, I started working the dark room as their first full-time photographer. They had had a part time photographer, and they had a reporter/photographer named Mary Jane Morgan who would take pictures, process the film, and print things on what was called a Photo-rite machine. It was basically a large Polaroid. The paper had the emulsion built in. You exposed the paper, feed it through this machine and it would come out in print. Umm, it was never fixed or finished. It was just air dried as an instant print, and it would be used for the reproduction. They had gone off-set, and they would, the uh, production department, would screen it- what was called 'screening' these pictures. And read them in the paper. Well, I started and uh, thought this was not the, the right way to go, so I installed regular processing chemicals and paper. But we did use the Photo-rite machine to proof everything, make contact prints instantly so the reporters and advertising could select the photos, and I would print them. Uh, during this time, uh, Keith Seals was the production manager and asked me if I knew how to do color separations. And I had, uh, played with this in college and I told him I would do research, and I’d get back to him, and I did. And I came up with this process of using color film with color filters, with the enlarger, and using panchromatic paper-it, which is, uh, registered all colors of the spectrum. As opposed to orthochromatic paper which only registers, uh, blue light. Red light doesn't register, hence the red light in the dark room. You can work in the dark room without damaging the papers cause, it would not be sensitive to red light. Well, panchromatic paper is sensitive to all colors of the spectrum. So, I would have to work in total darkness. And I would expose, and I played around with this, and I would expose these different papers. Four papers. The black, the cyan, the yellow and the magenta- in different sheets of paper and process them and come with different images using the enlarger and different filters. Colored filters. And then giving them four sets of prints. And, I had to use this home-made device to register. I would punch the papers and then I would align them with the punches on the, on the surface of the enlarger. Um, I would hand these papers over to black and white prints to the production department. They would screen them all, uh, because they were all different. 00:04:32.000 --> 00:04:33.000 Yeah 00:04:33.000 --> 00:04:42.000 Using the filters and come up with the separations. Uh, prior to that, we would send color transparencies to Monrovia. The newspaper in Monrovia, 00:04:42.000 --> 00:04:43.000 Ok 00:04:43.000 --> 00:05:12.000 And they would separate there at 133 lines per inch. But they would take two-three weeks to come back. So, we had to plan there was no instant color in the paper. We had to plan for Christmas, Easter, 4th of July, stuff like that. Very sporadic. I remember Keith Seals telling me once that his dream was to be able produce, reproduce half column color mug shots every day in the paper. 00:05:12.000 --> 00:05:13.000 Wow. 00:05:13.000 --> 00:05:16.000 Eventually, we got to the point where we did that. 00:05:16.000 --> 00:05:43.000 Well, we did this color separation system of mine, uh, for a year, year and a half. And maybe even longer. Uh, we got better equipment in the, uh, in the production department to scan my, uh, my separations. And I remember when the Wild Animal Park cause I was taking pictures there from groundbreaking to ribbon cutting. 00:05:43.000 --> 00:05:44.000 Oh, sure! 00:05:44.000 --> 00:06:46.000 And, in fact I had shot the color, the cover in 4” x 5” color transparency. And we did send that out to be scanned and separated. But we had a collection of all these color negatives. And when grand opening of Wild Animal Park, I spent maybe 30 hours straight in the dark room separating each negative from Friday afternoon till Sunday about noon. Came home a couple times, had supper, took a shower and went back. At the end of my session there on Sunday afternoon I couldn't feel the floor. I was hallucinating. I had been in the dark so long, working so many hours. So, Monday when the crew came in, they started separating. And that was a special section that we put out for the Wild Animal Park. 00:06:46.000 --> 00:06:50.000 Now, how, uh, was the color technology going forward elsewhere? 00:06:50.000 --> 00:06:51.000 Yes, uh, yes. 00:06:51.000 --> 00:06:58.000 And, and were you able to merge your color separation system with what was coming forward? 00:06:58.000 --> 00:07:18.000 No, no. Eventually the company did research and there was a man in Escondido who would do color separations for us, for color slides, color positives. And we quit my separation, thank God. Cause it was, it was a, ah. 00:07:18.000 --> 00:07:19.000 It was too labor intensive. 00:07:19.000 --> 00:07:20.000 Yeah, it really, really was. 00:07:20.000 --> 00:07:22.000 Plus, you’re exposed to all that, the chemicals. 00:07:22.000 --> 00:07:33.000 Yeah, the chemicals never bothered me, they were harmless, unless you drank them, I suppose. But eventually they bought a machine to do color separation in the Production Department. 00:07:33.000 --> 00:07:36.000 When do you think this was? What year? 00:07:36.000 --> 00:08:10.000 Hmm, mid-70's, late 70's. Yeah. Um, but when I started there, um, I brought my own equipment in and I had 4” x 5” cameras, and 2” and a quarter cameras, and 35 mm cameras, and strobe lights, and light stands, and lighting equipment. Uh, when I got there, I think the paper had three Rolleiflex cameras that, uh, everybody used. Um, they were continuously being broken. Man handled and uh... 00:08:10.000 --> 00:08:11.000 Yep, that’s the problem… 00:08:11.000 --> 00:08:46.000 So, I went to Ron Kinney, and I said to him. Oh, to back up. Eloise Perkins was going on vacation, and she wanted her own camera. So, I did a little research and found out that there was a Japanese company Yashica that was making a twin lens reflex camera for about 70 dollars, 78 dollars I think, I got her one. Whereas the Rolleis were costing 500 to 700 dollars apiece. This is 1968, 70, 71. I don't know how much it would be in today's dollars. But it would be massively expensive. 00:08:46.000 --> 00:08:50.000 Oh, it would be $10,000… 00:08:50.000 --> 00:09:03.000 Yeah, so she started using her own camera and bringing the film in. And my god, I couldn't believe the negatives were as sharp or sharper than the Rolleiflexes, from a 70-dollar camera. 00:09:03.000 --> 00:09:06.000 But you continued to use your own equipment? 00:09:06.000 --> 00:09:42.000 Yes, right. And I was using their Rolleiflex. Till I got one for myself and, uh, I bought some new strobe lights because the one they had was not adequate. But finding out how sharp, just, just a fine piece of camera the Yashica was, I went to Ron Kinney and I asked him: We are spending all this money repairing these three Rolleiflexs that we have, why don't we just buy a Rollei… a Yashica for each of the reporters as their own camera? 00:09:42.000 --> 00:09:43.000 Right, the cost of… 00:09:43.000 --> 00:10:32.000 The repair bills went down to nothing because they would take care of their own cameras. And we supplied the film, the processing, the printing all they did was take... And some reporters refused to take pictures. If they, if they were forced to, I remember one columnist, overexposed the film so badly that you could see the sun through them. Because he did not want to take pictures, this was his way of rebelling. He says, “I'm not a photographer, I'm a writer, I'm a columnist.” And, then the company would make the reporters take their own pictures when they went on assignment if I wasn't available. But this one reporter, absolutely refused. And he came from San Diego. I think he started in the (19)20's or (19)30's- the San Diego Sun or the Union, the Tribune. 00:10:32.000 --> 00:10:36.000 AC: So he was of the school that you send a photographer with the person. 00:10:36.000 --> 00:11:09.000 Yeah, right, yeah. He was not going to mix the professions. The other reporters, they didn't care. Some reporters were pretty good. Bill Kane was pretty good, Eloise was good at taking pictures of monuments, and Kenny Russell was pretty good. There were some reporters that were pretty good photographers. Mary Jane Morgan was pretty good. But when I got them each their own camera the repair bills went down to nothing. And then we had the three Rollies, the two Rollies stayed in the shop for emergencies, back-ups. 00:11:09.000 --> 00:11:16.000 Now, at any point with the color, now they would take black and white or would they take rolls of… how did that work? 00:11:16.000 --> 00:11:19.000 No. No color, it was all black and white. All 2 and a quarter inch negatives. All black and white. 00:11:19.000 --> 00:11:30.000 Ok, ok, ok. But were you and some of the other photographers the only ones who were allowed to, uh… was there ever color film introduced? 00:11:30.000 --> 00:11:34.000 Oh yeah! We had color film when I first started. 00:11:34.000 --> 00:11:38.000 Right, right. But when… who was allowed to go use color. If there was a special project. 00:11:38.000 --> 00:11:39.000 Just me. 00:11:39.000 --> 00:11:50.000 Because it was expensive. So, if they knew there was a special edition, then you’d take the color? 00:11:50.000 --> 00:12:47.000 Yes, right. Uh, eventually after we hired the dark room technician, Lowell Thorp and then we hired Jim Baird, super photographer. Personality, eh. Then the regime had changed, it was changing at the time. So, we started shooting, eh, we shot, Jim Baird shot strictly 35 mm. And, the film had improved considerably at that point and our chemicals, cause we had experimented with different chemicals to get the finer grain and the negatives sharper images. I eventually went to 35mm also. And, uh, but we also, we shot the color at the 2 and a quarter inch because it was better for reproduction. By then we had our own reproduction and color separation system in the production department. 00:12:47.000 --> 00:12:50.000 What years were you migrating to the 35 mm? 00:12:50.000 --> 00:12:54.000 I think it was the mid… mid (19)70s. Mid (19)70s yeah 00:12:54.000 --> 00:12:58.000 And then what about the percentage of color being added to the paper? 00:12:58.000 --> 00:13:07.000 Oh, it was, it was 5% at the most. It was just special sections, special assignments, uh, special events in town… that we would plan. 00:13:07.000 --> 00:13:12.000 And then when did all that start changing? 00:13:12.000 --> 00:13:54.000 Probably the mid to late (19)70s and the beginning of the (19)80s. Because as I had said, Keith Seals dream was to run half column color mug shots. That, to him, seemed like a total waste of effort and time, but that was one of his dreams. And eventually we did that in the (19)80s, mid-(19)80s, type thing. And then we got pretty prolific. And then the, uh, the Ocean Blade, the Blade-Tribune started running color. And their color was better than ours. The reproduction bolder, brighter. And by then the San Diego Union started running color also. 00:13:54.000 --> 00:13:57.000 So, they had better equipment, or they had better processing? 00:13:57.000 --> 00:14:38.000 Uh, better processing. So, Keith Seals would attend these conventions and come back with new techniques and new machinery. He would bring back a representative from different organizations for better processors and better color separation machines and stuff. So eventually we improved considerably. But then we started adding more photographers and eventually, uh, we started shooting primarily color negative film because then we could run that in black and white and color. We had an option. 00:14:38.000 --> 00:14:40.000 When do you think that was? 00:14:40.000 --> 00:14:48.000 I think the mid-(19)80s, late (19)80s. AC: [00:14:43}Ok, so you used the color film, but if you wanted it to be black and white… 00:14:48.000 --> 00:15:53.000 Yeah, the scanning could convert it to black and white. Uh, then we started shooting…we had been shooting color negative and then eventually we turned to color positive slides. And we did that for quite a number of years. Up until the 90's, I think. And then I believe that’s, and I’m not sure, but one… that’s about the mid-(19)90s, the late (19)90s we went to digital, and it was all color. It was a combination of a Nikon camera, an AP got some manufacturer [to] come up with these digital backs. And I think the memory cards were about 250 megabytes. And you couldn’t erase selectively, you had to erase the last image, then you had to reboot. Each photographer was given two cards. So, we had to be very careful what we took pictures of, we couldn't just machine gun because you were very limited. 00:15:53.000 --> 00:15:58.000 Right! Your memory was limited, oh that must have been frustrating. 00:15:58.000 --> 00:16:12.000 It really was! And we would have to come in, and this is what I was trying to learn. And I really didn't want to learn computers. I had no knowledge of computers. I didn’t want to learn computers. I just wanted to finish my career with film. 00:16:12.000 --> 00:16:15.000 In those days, to my memory, it wasn't as easy as it is now. 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.000 Oh god no. 00:16:17.000 --> 00:16:21.000 To do the downloading and all...This was not… Just… 00:16:21.000 --> 00:16:28.000 For someone who knew computers, it was probably… I had to write out a list of steps, I think there were twenty steps 00:16:28.000 --> 00:16:29.000 That’s the way it was. 00:16:29.000 --> 00:17:13.000 From, from putting the card in the reader, to finding, and I had no idea the folders, and files and clouds and… Oh my God, it was so frustrating. I would go in my shift, from 9:00 AM to 2:30 PM – 3 o clock or 7 to 2:30- 3 o clock. Depending on when I took lunch breaks… But I would go in at 5 o'clock in the morning just to play with the computer. And one of the young kids in the computer department gave me a piece of advice, he said, “whatever you do, you’ll never break the machine. Just shut it down, turn it off and restart it. You're back to square one.' It was such a relief in my mind because I was so nervous, touching buttons, pressing anything. 00:17:13.000 --> 00:17:31.000 To my memory, when it was new to me that if you got stuck in loop, to back out was murder. So did they have a day, that all of a sudden, they’re like, “OK, all of your old cameras that took traditional film, you're done. Starting Monday, we're all going to digital?” 00:17:31.000 --> 00:18:35.000 Yes, and at that point, um, when there were six or seven photographers in the pool, we were told that we would have to buy our own equipment. And I went to the owners at that point, I think it was Tom Nolan, I think, and I said, ‘This is unjust,’ because the reporters had computers. And I said, “The computers, they’re not buying their computers, why do we have to buy equipment?” So, we rather, got a compromise, where they would rent our equipment, we would buy the equipment, and they would rent it. They would insure it, and they would repair it, but we would have to buy our own equipment. And it worked out pretty well. Because I would buy gray market, which is not officially imported by the franchise, and they were cheaper. But if the company is gonna pay for the repairs, what did I care if the company, err, manufacturers would not stand behind... You'd have to ship it back to Japan to... 00:18:35.000 --> 00:18:37.000 So, what were you using? Did you stay with Yash… 00:18:37.000 --> 00:18:40.000 Nikon. 00:18:40.000 --> 00:18:43.000 Because you had mentioned the Yashica camera. 00:18:43.000 --> 00:19:46.000 Yeah, and uh, eventually, uh, the reporters had the Yashicas. And, then we had the 2 and a quarter Rollies and they were pretty limited. I had a Coma 6 which was a single lens 2 and a quarter. It wasn't as good as the cameras I wanted, it wasn't as sharp as I needed. So, I went to the Production Manager and asked if I can come up with a proposal to buy, I think, four sets of Hasselblad cameras which are 2 and a quarter, single lens reflex. And, he said, 'yea, let me talk to the powers to be and write up a proposal.' And I did. I think I had four sets of them. The camera, a couple bodies, three lenses, filters, other little do-dads that went with it. So, he presented it to the Company, and they agreed. I think they probably spent $20,000. dollars. 00:19:46.000 --> 00:19:48.000 And they were all for digital? 00:19:48.000 --> 00:19:50.000 No, no no. These are still film. 00:19:50.000 --> 00:19:52.000 This is your Nikon with film? When you went to Nikon. 00:19:52.000 --> 00:20:25.000 These are the Hasselbald, yeah. Hasselblad. I wanted to go to Hasselbald to have the interchangeable lenses. The wide angle, the telephotos that type of thing. And we stayed with those and then when we went to 35mm. That's when we had to buy our own equipment. There was one photographer, John Nelson[RS1], I remember who must have had 5,000 dollars’ worth of equipment stolen from him, from his car. [He] came in, no equipment, no job. 00:20:25.000 --> 00:20:28.000 Sounds like an inside job. Someone knew to follow him. 00:20:28.000 --> 00:20:48.000 Yes, somebody just robbed his car and stole everything. Someone just took it out of his car. So, we all loaned him spare pieces until he had the money to buy his own, type of thing. And really, he wasn't insured at the time. So, he struggled. Because of that equipment, no job. 00:20:48.000 --> 00:20:54.000 Now when they moved to using digital cameras, they stayed with Nikon? 00:20:54.000 --> 00:21:45.000 Yes. It was a monster of a camera. It was a Nikon camera with Nikon lenses and stuff. But it had a huge back. It looked almost as big as a 4 x 5 camera. And that’s the one they had. I think it had 250 megabytes of memory in each card. We got two cards each. I believe each camera, each setup cost $20,000. And this is the mid-90's, late 90's. I remember one photographer was taking picture by a pool and he fell in the pool with the camera. David, uh, David… I forget his name. And it ruined the camera. The camera was worthless after that. 00:21:45.000 --> 00:21:53.000 Well, ya. But they didn't send you for training. They didn’t say to you like “There’s a conference for photographers and journalists.”? 00:21:53.000 --> 00:22:10.000 No. Gave us the cameras. I don't even remember if a representative came in and told us how to run those. I think we learned by ourselves. I don't remember any training at all. At all. We were doing the digital and the 35 and learning. There’s a period of learning. 00:22:10.000 --> 00:22:13.000 Migrating over. 00:22:13.000 --> 00:22:35.000 Yea and I hated it. But I knew it was the future. So, I would come in two hours extra and play because we had the Photoshop. We had the earlier version of Photoshop, and I'd play around with that trying to learn the buttons. And, uh, I've got it in my computer now. But I never have learned the whole system. It's so massive. I just learned enough to... 00:22:35.000 --> 00:22:42.000 Well, every time I see one of those adult education classes they’ve got, you know, an Intro to Photoshop blah, blah, blah, blah. 00:22:42.000 --> 00:22:44.000 And it’s just so massive… 00:22:44.000 --> 00:22:46.000 Yeah, yeah. It’s its own specialty. 00:22:46.000 --> 00:22:50.000 Yeah. You can get a Ph.D. just learning what it has in it. 00:22:50.000 --> 00:22:56.000 So, there was really, seemingly, no concern to bring you along immediately into this. 00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:09.000 No, it was gradual. Gradual from 35mm color. At that point we were shooting color negatives again because they could be transformed to black and white and color. 00:23:09.000 --> 00:23:14.000 So, who was the last person standing who had their old traditional camera? 00:23:14.000 --> 00:23:50.000 Oh, I know, uh… oh god… what is his name? A photographer who used to cuss. Because there's no latitude in the digital, there was no latitude. There were no grays. There was darks, colors, or no color. And, God, he would get so frustrated. I would feel so sorry for him because he would try to manipulate the images the way we did in the dark room. There just was no latitude. No latitude in the digital. And it was just so frustrating. 00:23:50.000 --> 00:23:53.000 Yeah. You are right. When you start to Photoshop that stuff, it is time consuming. 00:23:53.000 --> 00:25:10.000 Oh, God, yeah. You could spend hours. And if they were… I could go in the dark room and print 25-30 color 8x10's in an hour. And manipulate them, and burn them, and dodge them, and color correct them. And, we had this automatic color processing machine. At one point during the mid-80's they remodeled the dark room, and they put five color enlargers. Each of the photographers wanted their own enlarger, and it was a Leitz, a very expensive 35mm enlarger. I said no, I want a 4 x 5 enlarger. I want a Chromega, and a color analyzer, and digital timer. And I got it and put it in the back of the dark room and that was my enlarger. And nobody fooled with my enlarger. I had it zeroed in where I could print 25-30, 8x10 color prints in an hour. It was just bang, bang, bang. I would read them, analyze them, expose them, put them in the processor, and go do another one, go do another one, another one in an hour. 00:25:10.000 --> 00:25:11.000 You were like a little copier machine. 00:25:11.000 --> 00:25:22.000 Oh yeah! And by the end of the hour, I had 25-30 color prints. Beautifully printed, stabilized, dried, color corrected. 00:25:22.000 --> 00:25:33.000 Now these are when they planned, they had… this is in the time they were planning… when the color… which weekend magazine or whatever would have color? 00:25:33.000 --> 00:25:42.000 Yeah, right. Well, no, actually we were doing this in the dark room, we were doing color every day. We were running color every day. Everybody was shooting color. Everybody was printing color. 00:25:42.000 --> 00:25:46.000 So, when do you think they did everyday color? By the 90's? 00:25:46.000 --> 00:25:50.000 Oh yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. 00:25:50.000 --> 00:25:53.000 I was just thinking of when we came to Escondido. 00:25:53.000 --> 00:25:55.000 It was all color. 00:25:55.000 --> 00:25:59.000 You know, I’d be three. But it seems like there was a lot of… 00:25:59.000 --> 00:26:03.000 Right, yeah. I think if we ran black and white, it was unusual. Mostly the AP stuff. 00:26:03.000 --> 00:26:06.000 But it was new to a lot of people. 00:26:06.000 --> 00:26:07.000 Oh, yeah! 00:26:07.000 --> 00:26:11.000 It was kind of exciting that your newspaper had color. 00:26:11.000 --> 00:26:30.000 Oh yea. And it was offset. Then at that point they started using recycled paper. Which was gray dull, and the color didn't pop anymore. Prior to that we were using virgin stock. And it was pure white paper, and the color just shot out, it just shouted at you. 00:26:30.000 --> 00:27:01.000 Now when you were assigned just black and white or color. I was going to ask you, when you’d be assigned. You know how the paper had a Rancho Bernardo edition, and it had a…you know, for sections of town. And, then those would be divided up according to, uh, who… which photos and who got the photos and who went where. Was it all done out of Escondido for these various editions? 00:27:01.000 --> 00:27:03.000 Yes. 00:27:03.000 --> 00:27:15.000 So, if someone was going to cover Penasquitos or Rancho Bernardo then that… the photographer would be assigned there by assignment or that was kind of their territory? 00:27:15.000 --> 00:27:46.000 Uh, there were reporters assigned to Rancho Bernardo, Penasquitos, the coast, Fallbrook, San Diego. And they would make their own assignments. They would hand it in to the uh… Because we had a drawer, where the reporter would just put in their assignments. And, then we would just select the assignments which photographer would go where and do what. And that was all shot in color, at that point, color negative. 00:27:46.000 --> 00:27:52.000 But it wasn’t necessarily on your part that you knew who, what assignment was going to come up, right? 00:27:52.000 --> 00:27:57.000 No, no, no. Every day we would go to this drawer and all the assignments were in there. 00:27:57.000 --> 00:28:03.000 Because for a few years, you got a lot more work from an Eloise [Perkins]. But as the paper went forward, and things changed and got bigger there was a whole different… 00:28:03.000 --> 00:29:01.000 Oh yeah, we had more and more photographers and we split the pot among the five or six photographers. Each photographer had two assignments, three assignments a day. Whereas when I started, I would be doing seven, eight, nine assignments a day and processing. At this point, we had purchased…because we were doing color positive, color negatives also, but mostly color negatives and we had a machine, had an automatic color processing machine. Prior to that Lowell Thorp had commissioned a manufacturer to give us a hot water tank and we would process all our film manually [by] color temperature by running hot water through this tank and keeping the temperature at, I think, it was 100 degrees and we would agitate manually each tank as it went through the process. 00:29:01.000 --> 00:29:07.000 Oh, I mean… today that would be considered like you’re using stone tablets. DR: [Shows his wrist with scars] 00:29:07.000 --> 00:29:08.000 You got burned? 00:29:08.000 --> 00:30:27.000 No. Carpel tunnel. I developed carpel tunnel by doing that. Because we had these tanks that were holding reels of film in it. And, we would have to do this [twisting motion with wrist] for about a half hour processing - and then wash them and dry them and then proof them. And, uh, eventually when we got Lowell Thorp, he would do all this as the technician, dark room technician. And, uh, he would then print. But some of us would go in there and do our own printing. And this was before we got the new dark room, and Lowell had retired by that point. So, each photographer was in charge of doing his own color processing, film processing and his own color printing. Since I had been doing it forever, I was in charge of teaching the other photographers the color balance, and what it needed. Some prints were too yellow, too cyan, too magenta. I'd tell them what they needed to correct the color. It's what's called color balance. And so, I was basically… and a lot of photographers had knowledge, they could figure it out for themselves most of the time. 00:30:27.000 --> 00:30:31.000 And it probably seems archaic now. These old systems? 00:30:31.000 --> 00:32:27.000 Oh God yeah. You see photographers now with their digital cameras. They’ll take a picture and look at the image. Take a picture look at the image. Then you took hundreds and hundreds of shots. And through your experience and past knowledge you knew what was gonna work and what wasn't going to work. So, you went to the dark room. I remember once, and this was taboo. I bought a Nikon camera with an automatic exposure. You just put it on automatic and just shoot your life away. You didn't worry about f-stops, or shutter speeds or anything else. You just click, click, click. It's digital cameras now. And I remember there was a big fire north of Escondido. And, uh, I think there were three or four photographers covering it. And we all came back, and we’re all dirty, and smoky, and smelly. I had even gotten a brush of the fire retardant, which is gooey and thick, orange all over. And this other fellow, Ernie Cowens, taking pictures for television and I saw the plane coming dropping a load and Ernie was facing away from it. And I said, “hey Ernie a load of fire retardant is coming in, you had better hide your camera.” He turned around to see what I had said, and it just covered his camera. His film camera, his movie camera. He had to rush down to San Diego to get it cleaned and fixed. It just landed—and it was heavy, heavy stuff. Anyway, we all came back, and we processed the film, and we were shooting color transparencies then. And I had shot maybe 10 rolls, 12 rolls of film. And each of my frames, the exposure was right-on. Dead-on exposure with the automatic. And I selected some frames that I liked and left it. 00:32:27.000 --> 00:32:31.000 Well, that was a new era, it marked a new era. 00:32:31.000 --> 00:32:38.000 Yeah, yeah, the automatic. But that was taboo. See? You weren't supposed to do that, you were supposed to be a professional. You were supposed to take a reading. 00:32:38.000 --> 00:32:40.000 As the fire retardant is coming at you! 00:32:40.000 --> 00:34:35.000 Yeah, yeah exactly. Take a reading and adjust your camera and shoot. That was the professional way to do it. Me, I said, “I want to try this automatic thing.” And the camera was so dead on. The ten rolls of film, I bet the exposure was incorrect maybe in 5 or 10, 15 exposures. And I selected the prints that I wanted and by this point my shift was over. It was 5, 6 o clock and my shift had ended at 2:30. So I came home, took a shower and cleaned clothes and had dinner. The next morning the paper ran, and a bunch of my photographs were on it. A big spread, a color spread. But my boss, Will Corbin asked me into his office, he had all my slides on his desk. 'What did you do that the 'other ones didn't. He had all my strips of transparencies on his desk. He said 'Why are your exposures correct, and the other ones have blotching, over exposed, under exposed, missing…' And I told him. I said, “That shot was automatic, instead of manual.” He said, 'I have to talk to the other photographers, they are wasting a lot of film.' I don't know whether he did or not or if they took his advice or not but, uh. And I shot automatic from there on. I would just… I mean, why… I mean I would set the f-stop, or I would set the shutter speed and then the camera would compensate by... If I needed a huge depth of field, I would knock it down to F - 22 to F-16, if I wanted it to stop motion, I would set it at 4,000 per second. And the let the diaphragm take over. So, you didn't lose total control of the camera. And if I would shoot manual, I would shoot manual. 00:34:35.000 --> 00:34:39.000 And good god, you know, you’re at a wildfire in a Santa Ana. 00:34:39.000 --> 00:35:00.000 Right. You're not fiddling around with f-stops and shutter speed. But I see the photographers now, the professionals. They’ll take a picture and look at the image on the back of the camera. And I just kind of…. They have no idea what photography is. 00:35:00.000 --> 00:35:17.000 Now we are at 35 minutes and that's generally where my transcribing load stops. But did you have anything else on the color? Now we can always add this in on the other tapes. 00:35:17.000 --> 00:38:21.000 No, the other thing, because I retired in 2000, at one point I kind of got burned out. I had been taking picture for, sheesh… 40 years. And my curiosity run out. My mojo had run out and I think my photography showed it. I was kind of burned out. And I think it was one of the bosses, Rich Peterson came to me and says, “You know, I’ve got…” Rich Peterson was approached by the advertising department. Because we were never allowed to take pictures for advertising. If editorial took pictures, advertising could never use them. If we took pictures of mug shots of politicians, and the politician liked the photo, they couldn't be used in their advertising. So, advertising apparently went to Rich Peterson and says, 'We want to hire one of your photographers to work for the advertising department, primarily - solely. And the photographs belong to us. So Rich Peterson had asked me if I would be interested in that. And at that time, they were changing the regime there and they were trying to mess with my schedule. My schedule had always been 7 to 2 -3 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm an early person. I wake up early, I work early, I function early. Later in the day, I'm wiped out. So, he asked me if I was interested in taking over the position as advertising photographer. He said, 'go talk to the advertising manager', and I did. I found out what the requirements were. They had reps and they would talk to the advertisers, and they would request photography. They would bring me…assign it to me. I worked my own hours. Whatever I wanted. I would call them and set my time. It was a cushy job. And it was a Monday through Friday, sometime Saturdays. I set my own hours. It wasn't what I had started out to do, but I finished my last two or three years doing that. And when I got sick in July of 2000, when I quit. That's what I was doing. And my last day at work, because I still had my equipment there in the dark room/studio/photo office. I went in 5:00 o'clock in the morning, picked up all my equipment and everything I owned, put it in a big box and hauled it out. I wrote a message to all the photographers of the North County Times, 'thank you for your help and friendship, good-bye, Dan Rios.' And I hung it on the door. Never went back to the building. Ever, to this day. 00:38:21.000 --> 00:38:22.000 They didn't throw a party? 00:38:22.000 --> 00:38:23.000 They wanted to. 00:38:23.000 --> 00:38:24.000 You wouldn't let them. 00:38:24.000 --> 00:39:28.000 No. At that point there were so many people that I didn't know. So many new people in the management. So many people I had been friendly with, and a lot of the people that I had grown with over the years, had retired and left. So, there really was nobody. So, the personnel director, Peggy Chapman, called me and said, 'we are going to give you a party’ I said, 'no I don't want a party.' I felt hypocritical. She said, 'what can we do for you?' I said, 'you can buy me a lap top computer.' Because at that point I had gotten into computers. My stepson had bought me one, and we had bought another one and I thought a laptop might be nice. So, they send me $300 to buy me a laptop computer. This was the 2000s, but then computers then, laptops were 8-900 dollars. But it helped. I bought some other stuff, I didn't buy the laptop. I didn’t buy they laptop till way later. 00:39:28.000 --> 00:39:29.000 Shall we stop here? 00:39:29.000 --> 00:39:31.000 Yeah, sure. NOTE TRANSCRIPTION END ]]> https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en audio Property rights reside with the university. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-05-09.xml RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-05-09.xml https://archivessearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/8 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 A name given to the resource Rios, Dan. Interview May 9th, 2017 Description An account of the resource Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. As the Chief Photographer, Rios was instrumental in transitioning the North County Times from publishing images in black and white, to publishing in color. This interview recounts Rios's career working for the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times. Rios also recounts how photographers were initially required to buy and maintain their own equipment and how he was able to create a deal with the newspaper to compensate photographers fairly for their equipment. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC003-03 Subject The topic of the resource Digital cameras Escondido Times-Advocate (Escondido, Calif.) Mexican Americans Photographic chemicals Photojournalists Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-05-09 Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dan Rios Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alexa Clausen Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Escondido (Calif.) Fallbrook (Calif.) Rancho Penasquitos (Calif.) Rancho Bernardo (San Diego, Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource in copyright Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived SC003: The Dan Rios papers Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Community history Latine experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/5e54912f2da95810e3bef5c341d6234e.pdf f19c0b3193310ab2e1ac5e49d6563335 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 A name given to the resource 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 A name given to the resource Rios, Dan. Interview transcript, May 9th, 2017. Description An account of the resource Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. As the Chief Photographer, Rios was instrumental in transitioning the North County Times from publishing images in black and white, to publishing in color. This interview recounts Rios's career working for the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times. Rios also recounts how photographers were initially required to buy and maintain their own equipment and how he was able to create a deal with the newspaper to compensate photographers fairly for their equipment. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Dan Rios Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alexa Clausen Robert Sheehan Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-05-09 Subject The topic of the resource Digital cameras Escondido Times-Advocate (Escondido, Calif.) Mexican Americans Photographic chemicals Photojournalists Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Escondido (Calif.) Fallbrook (Calif.) Rancho Penasquitos (Calif.) Rancho Bernardo (San Diego, Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived SC003: The Dan Rios papers Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource in copyright Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos Type The nature or genre of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC003-03 Community history Latine experience 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 A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Alexa Clausen Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Daniel Flores Rios OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-03-30.xml Interview Keyword This filed adds keywords to the Omeka Oral History item type. Keywords are included in the OHMS XML, this field in Omeka will allow for full data migration between OHMS XML and the Omeka Record. This field does not impact the OHMS / Omeka integration and is optional if you do not need to map the "keywords" field in the OHMS XML to the corresponding Omeka record. Hanford, CA;Central Valley, CA;farm workers;high school drop out to work as landscape;Ocean Beach, CA;La Jolla, CA;Lucy Berk, librarian Escondido Times-Advocate newspaper;Mexican immigrant parents;Jennie Rios labored although an amputee;Mexican Revolution about 1915-16;Mesa Community College;Mid-way Adult Education;Kodalith film;San Diego City College photography degree;William (Bill) Dendle, photography department;Bob Boyd, photography instructor, San Diego City college;Reed, Miller and Murphy Advertising;Times-Advocate newspaper. OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Rios, Dan. Interview March 30th, 2017 SC003-01 00:29:54 SC003 Dan Rios papers CSUSM csusm Agricultural laborers -- California ; Hanford (Calif.) ; Ocean Beach (San Diego, Calif.) ; La Jolla (San Diego, Calif.) ; Escondido (Calif.) ; Mesa Community College (San Diego, Calif.) ; Mexican Americans ; Photojournalists Hanford, CA ; Central Valley, CA ; farm workers ; high school drop out to work as landscape ; Ocean Beach, CA ; La Jolla, CA ; Lucy Berk, librarian Escondido Times-Advocate newspaper ; Mexican immigrant parents ; Jennie Rios labored although an amputee ; Mexican Revolution about 1915-16 ; Mesa Community College ; Mid-way Adult Education ; Kodalith film ; San Diego City College photography degree ; William (Bill) Dendle, photography department ; Bob Boyd, photography instructor, San Diego City college ; Reed, Miller and Murphy Advertising ; Times-Advocate newspaper. Daniel Flores Rios Alexa Clausen .wav RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-03-30_access.wav 1:|14(13)|26(4)|61(14)|105(9)|117(5)|146(4)|176(12)|222(10)|254(7)|305(16)|329(11)|361(13)|394(2)|421(4)|438(8)|465(8)|490(5)|512(7)|528(8)|548(14)|593(2)|612(6)|633(18)|659(11)|694(9)|707(5)|754(16)|766(4)|799(7)|828(6) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/6530a2ec4e46f4d8911ae22577aa5093.wav Other audio English Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. This interview recounts Rios's childhood and early adulthood, and his personal and educational journey towards becoming a news photographer.&#13 ; &#13 ; As a child and teen laborer Rios, due to extreme heat, convinced his field worker family to leave the Central Valley and join his aunts in San Diego. They moved in 1953. As a 14 year old teen high school drop-out, Rios started his own gardening and landscaping business in La Jolla, California. A client convinced Rios to attend night school to get his high school degree. Rios then pursued a civil engineering degree at community college, eventually dropping the pursuit of engineering when he finds his passion for photography. Rios acquired a degree in commercial and portrait photography at San Diego Community college where he met his mentors. After graduation he sought work as a photographer and landed an interview in Escondido for the regional newspaper, the Escondido Times-Advocate. Dan Rios: My name is Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939. Alexa Clausen: We have put together some questions. Tell us a little about your childhood, you had told us about leaving the Fresno area. DR: I was born in the Central Valley. My family were all field workers. They picked all sorts of fruits, cotton, stuff like that. The weather was miserable . The winters were freezing cold, the summers were blistering hot, and I never liked the place. So I convinced my mother and father we should move out of there. And in 1953, we moved to San Diego. Settled in Ocean Beach for a little while. Eventually we bought property in Mission Valley, had a house built. Worked with a company in La Jolla doing landscaping, gardening at the age of 14. I quit school in the middle of 8th grade. Never went back there to finish junior high or never even went to high school. I worked in La Jolla for two years for a gardening and landscaping company. AC: Now when you said they came to San Diego, you had other family here? DR: Yes, I had two aunts that lived here. That brought us here. Also had a sister who moved here prior to our moving here. We rented place on the beach, Ocean Beach right on the beach. It's called The Ocean Village, we had a little cabin there. At that point it was my father, my mother, my sister, two brothers and myself. I believe a sister too. The other two sisters had already married and moved out. AC: What did they come to do? What did mom and dad come to do? DR: (laughs) Well they came because I bugged the-- AC: Said get me out of this-- (unintelligible, Clausen and Rios talking over each other) DR: I just hated Hanford. AC: Oh I’m sorry-- DR: I dreaded--I mean we were poor, we weren't dissident, we owned our home , our own car. But it was not a good life, it was a miserable life. And I told my mother once, I said, “I know we are going to be poor the rest of our lives, why do we have to be poor and miserable too.” (laughs) I just hounded her and convinced her that we had to move out of town. And we did in 1953. AC: Right, but they knew there would be work in San Diego? DR: Yes, my brother-in-law had gotten a job with landscaping company in La Jolla and he was pretty sure that both my father and I-- AC: There was room to have you join them. DR: Yes. Right. Yes. AC: Now you know, you’re were still very young here when you’re doing the landscaping. DR: Yes, I was fourteen years old. AC: That’s sure a long cry from getting to be a, you know, quite an well-established photographer, and Lucy (Berk, a local historian who met Dan when she worked as the librarian for Times Advocate) told me also an artist, a photographer as an artist-- DR: Yes. AC: So, let's fast forward your career a little bit here. So here you are, a kid, landscaping and thinking to yourself, well what? I want to buy a camera? What do I have to do? DR: (laughs). Oh, no, no, no. I took to gardening and landscaping like a termite to wood. I loved it. I read a lot of books on it. I was very good, I was excellent at it. I had a natural sense of design, I learned thousands of plant names and fertilizers and insecticides. At the age of 16—at the age of 14, I was working three days a week at the La Jolla Art Center. Three days a week. Three full days a week. And I figured after two years of doing that, that I could take over the contract and work only three days a week making as much money as I was working five days a week. So I talked to Dr. Malone who was the director, and asked him if I could take over the job at 16 years old. And he did not laugh me away as most people would have done. He talked to the Board and they agreed. So I worked three 8-hour days, and then the other two days of the week I worked other jobs. Eventually, I worked six days a week, and I was getting a lot of contracts, a lot of work at 16, 17 years old. So then I called my father to come and help me and my business and got him away from the landscaping company. We did that for about 15 years. AC: Did you have a business name? DR: Dan Rios Complete Garden Service and Landscaping. Had no license, no insurance. (laughs) AC: But you know that was not a big deal then. DR: No it wasn’t. AC: It was simply not a big deal. Most people didn't care, and-- DR: No. Nobody questioned me. I was never stopped by the city, by the police, or anybody. But I was 16 years old, did not have a driver's license. AC: Now that was bad, that was a problem. (laughs) DR: So I went to buy a '55 Chevrolet pickup, I had the financing and everything, but I had no driver's license. So the salesman ordered me to go to National City (California), get a driver's license. AC: Down to the DMV. DR: Yes and got it. I made really, really good money. I remember. between my father and I, say in 1957 - 58 (we were) making $20,000 a year. And I researched and I found out at the time high school teachers were making $5000 a year. AC: Oh yeah you could probably buy a little home for eighteen or seventeen thousand at the time. DR: We bought a piece of land in Mission Valley for $4000. Paid that off and then we had a house built. It was a 2,000 square foot house for $10,000. The payments were $72 a month. I told my mother, “You know in ten years that’s going to be nothing. That’s going to be a drop in the bucket.” AC: And it was true. DR: Yes. Oh yeah. She died living there. She died in 1980. We built the house in '58. AC: So did she work? Did she end up-- DR: No, no, she was--not any more. She did in Hanford. She had an amputated leg and even with that she went out in the fields and pick grapes and picked cotton. And did all kinds of field work. AC: Give me your mother's name. DR: Jennie. Jennie Rios. AC: And father's name? DR: Theodore. AC: Theodore. OK. And were they from that Northern California area? DR: No, no, no. They immigrated separately to the United States during the Mexican Revolution about 1915-16. AC: I’ll be darned. DR: I think my mother was six years old. I think my father was nine years old. AC: Yeah. They came as children. DR: They crossed at El Paso. And they worked themselves--my father worked as a water-boy on the railroad tracks coming to California. My mother's father worked for a construction company building a pipeline. I haven't really researched that. She said the pipe was as big as a diameter that a man sitting on a horse could ride into the pipe. It was that huge. Eventually, the contract ended in Hemet (California). But they came through the San Jacinto Mountains. She remembered the Indians there singing and chanting. AC: There’s a number of Reservations or one or two big ones there. DR: Yes, Saboba. AC: So well we are making our way to your camera, right? So we’ve got you owning your own company, you have your father involved in your business, and you’ve got a house. DR: And a brand-new car. AC: And you are working for the La Jolla Art-- DR: Center. AC: As one of your clients. DR: Then I expanded and I had clients. I was working seven days a week, 12 hours a day. No vacations, no holidays. But it was a lot of fun, there was a lot of money coming in. And for an uneducated kid-- AC: That becomes important. DR: Yes. AC: You could finally enjoy things-- DR: In fact I'll tell you how uneducated I was: I never understood English, I never understood Math. History and other stuff like that, I could understand. When I would do a contract—an estimate, I would do all round numbers, all whole numbers. AC: Okay. DR: At one point I could not subtract 1.99 from 2.00. I had no idea (Clausen and Rios talking over each other) how to move the figures-- AC: Well, you know you were a kid that needed to get money and wanted to leave poverty. DR: Yeah, it was field work and I hated the field work. It was miserable. So even when I had my little business going, I decided--I knew a year in advance what I would be doing. I had so many contracts lined up that it became boring. The work just became boring. So I decided in 1962 to go back to night school and get my high school education. Which I did. I did in three years. I went five nights a week plus Saturdays plus TV shows--TV classes. I think I needed 32 credits to graduate, and I think I graduated with 48 credits. The counselor urged me to be class president, I did not have time for that. So then she bothered me so much, eventually I acquiesced to be Salutatorian for the high school class. AC: Oh nice. DR: When I started, I was in the 30-35% percentile. When I graduated, I was 98 percentile. It just came so easy to me. AC: And boy, you sure did the right thing to get more education. DR: More? Some education. I never had it-- AC: Well, you missed out on your childhood in a way. DR: I never had a childhood. I never had a teenage life. When we were at home working, picking, we would never start school in September. It was November. Middle of November we started. And then holidays--then Thanksgiving came, you were off two weeks, then two or three weeks, Christmas came. And we’d (not) come back until the middle of January. And then we would leave school in May. I never started school and I never ended school. AC: I had gone to the Latino Film Festival—I go every year with my friend. I can’t sit through too many movies but we saw one (film) that was a--that followed some children and their education, still today, and how the parents do yank them out of school and they’ll go to El Centro or wherever and the kids are constantly in flux. They still—happens to them, they—and then, the teachers have to try and test them and place them and it still goes on. DR: Well that was me, that was our family. We had to survive, we had to put food on the table, clothes on our backs. AC: Yeah, yeah. DR: We owned our own home, we owned our own car. There was no bills there. AC: Well that was, that was more than a lot. DR: That’s a whole lot of story, because this house we’re living in now is part of my mother's wedding present. I can go into that if you want to later on. But I never wanted—and when I had my own little business, big family gatherings at the house, we had a nice house in San Diego. A lot of family gatherings and stuff like that. But I was bored with my job 'cause I would get up 5 o’clock in the morning. Six o’clock I was out the door and I wouldn’t get back until five or six o’clock. When I started Adult School, high school, I would get home at 5 o’clock, 5:30, take a shower, have a little snack, and go to school between 6 and 9. And then get home and study until 1-2 o’clock in the morning. I would do that for-- AC: Well see you had the desire, the drive-- DR: Yeah. Five, seven days. And then eventually I stopped working Saturday, used to go to Saturday school. So I graduated and then went to college and I was going to study Civil Engineering. Because it seemed to suit me. I was good in Math, I was good in Science, I was good in Chemistry. AC: Did you start at community college? DR: Yeah. Mesa College. AC: Good school. DR: Yeah. I was there a year and a half, and I took—I was taking pretty heavy classes. I went to take an easy class, a Health Ed. class. Taught by a short, stout, female teacher. No term paper, no mid-term, no quizzes, attendance is good, class participation. The only absolute requirement, concrete--you had to have a hobby at the age of 65 and over. She said, “None of my students going out working 30-40 years, retiring and become the wife or your spouse's pain in the ass,” running the house because she has been for 30-40 years. Chauffer, bookkeeper, cook, shopper, maintenance, raising the kids. She said, “My students will not be a burden to their spouses." AC: (laughs) That is so great. DR: (laughs) You will need a hobby. And I had to prove it. And it does not include rock climbing because at 60-70 years old you’re not going to be doing any rock climbing. So in San Diego, at this here store on University where I went to, they had their camera counter right there where you walked in the front door. I’d often stopped and marveled at all these devices. I had heard about 35-millimeter (cameras), had no idea what it was. I had seen this camera with all these numbers on it. And different colored numbers. I often wondered what it all meant. Because growing up in Hanford we had no money for either film or camera or anything else, there were just no--no extras. So I decided to take a adult (continuing education) class at Mid-way Adult High School in photography. I took it for one semester. Now in college I was carrying a 3.54 average. I got involved in photography, it just overwhelmed me. I could not get enough of it. I just started buying second-hand equipment. AC: I don't know if that Adult School is still there. It was there for years. DR: Probably not. At the time I was going out with a woman who I later married. She was taking an art class and I was taking photography on Wednesdays. I got so involved with photography I started buying used equipment, new equipment when I could afford it. I would buy 100-foot rolls of film and shoot that film in one week. I was just drawn into it. AC: Wow. DR: I was just mesmerized. I couldn't get enough of it, it was like an addict. And so I built a dark room in my mother's garage. At that point I had gotten married. Built the dark room in my mother's garage, I would go in at 4-5 o’clock in the morning, process film. Start printing and proofing and looking at my clock, I would have to be at school at 9 o'clock for a class, 10 o’clock at class-- AC: I tell young people and my son, go ahead and plan and take your classes but you don’t know what’s going to come your way. Like don’t get so, you know worry, worry, where’s the job, where’s my job going to be. I said “Stop!” It may come to you and I can’t wait to tell him about--’cause I see him tomorrow, but don’t wear yourself down with worry, you don’t know the twist and turns in your life. Look at that! DR: Well, my mother had a saying that most students go to college to study to be a potato and they come out a yam. (both laugh) So my grades plummeted. I would not go to school. I would try to bone up for a test. I would not show up for class. That last semester just was a disaster. Ended up getting I think a D average. 2.0 or 1.5, 2.0 average. Then I switched college, I decided, I told my wife "I think I want to do--” One of the people, while I switched colleges to study commercial photography, and I had the fortunate-- AC: You think? DR: I had the pleasure of two teachers, and I talk about it all the time. Civil Engineering is what I really wanted to do but this photography just, as I said, I was just addicted to it. So I enrolled in this college and had Mr. Bill Dendle’s class in photography at City College and Jack Stevens who also taught the upper grades. And I was so fortunate to have Mr. Dendle as a teacher. And he would just--like an addict, just feeding me my poison with the knowledge. Oh god, he was fantastic. My first semester there, I won the Sweepstakes Award and about 30% of the ribbons because we had a photo contest among the students. And the first day of class, about 35-40 people in the class, Mr. Dendle said, “I don't care ; sit on the floor, sit wherever you want. By the end of this week there's gonna be half of you and by the of the month just going to be half of (that). At the year there will be maybe five or seven of you left.” And there were only ten of us left that started. AC: Yeah. Yeah. So he knew you had to have the passion to survive. DR: He was, he was--He had a shelf, it must have been twenty feet long by eight feet high full of photo books. And I would go ask him a question, if I had a problem or had a question, he said, “You know that it is a very good question. It's in the books here, why don't you find out. Look for it and find out the answers.” AC: Interesting. DR: And he would do that to me a lot. AC: So he knew that if you would find it for yourself, it would have more value. DR: Oh yeah. AC: And to remembering and keeping-- DR: And, one day about noon, I’d finished my work in the darkroom and he came out and says, “Are you busy right now?” I said no. At this point I was twenty-nine, no twenty-six. I always felt old in class. Kids were 17-18-19 years old. AC: Yeah. Returning students feel-- DR: I'm twenty-three, twenty-four, I’m feeling ancient. So I never mingled with students, fellow students. So he came out to lunch and says, “What are you doing?” I say, “I just finished my dark room work.” He says, “Grab a camera and load it Kodalith film and go take a picture of the quad.” I’d never heard of Kodalith film, it's a graphics arts film. Normal speed of film is 100, 400. This was 6 and I had no idea what it was. So I went and got a 4 x 5 camera, loaded it. Thought I was going to take it--I got a light meter, took it to the quad and took a light reading. It was like a five-second exposure, wide-open on the camera. So I had to go back to get a tripod, went and took the picture, five-second exposures. Back in and processed the film. And I showed it to him and says “What do you want me to do with this?” He said, “Nothing, throw it away.” I said “Well what was that all about?” He said, “Some day when you're a professional, you will be called upon to do different assignments. You better be prepared for anything that comes up.” AC: Wow. DR: We had what's called the photographers bible. It was a book, maybe 5 x 7, by maybe three inches thick with every film, every chemical, every processing imaginable. And that became my bible. I would study that thing left and right. Another thing, one year for Christmas vacation he asked me, “What are you doing for vacation?” Said not a whole lot. He says, “I want you--look up this doctor at a biology lab during Christmas vacation. Want you to shoot color slide, color negative, black and white and infrared film. Go to the doctor with it and ask him what he wants. So Christmas vacation I went, found him and he was doing an autopsy on a cadaver with about four or five students. And I had a cold that day. And they are tearing up this body apart-- AC: Oh dear god. DR: They’re just carving into him and I am taking pictures all over. And I asked the doctor, “What do you want pictures of?” He said “Dendle said you would just come over, I’ve got no use for you.” (laughs) So I shot all those four types of film. So anyway I learned the man had apparently been an alcoholic. They took out his kidneys and his liver, (unclear) cirrhosis. Little five-foot girl riding her fingers along the tendon from her toes up to his hip and I couldn’t smell anything I had a cold that day. But I found out that your hair grows after you’re dead, because the cadaver's bald and it had quarter-inch fuzz on him. And he mentioned that to the students. Which I didn’t notice. His hair keeps on growing. AC: And you had that-- DR: And the fingernails-- AC: On the photo. Lucky you! DR: Yeah right. So after Christmas break I took it all to Dendle, all the proof sheets and all the negatives and everything. “Here's the—what do you want me to do with them?” He said, “Throw them away, I don't want ‘em! I don’t even want to see them.” But that was another lesson in that you’re going to be called upon to do—you don't know what you will be called upon to do. And his advice to me was curiosity. Never lose your curiosity. It will take you through-- AC: You think about journalism and for newspapers, yeah I mean you could-- DR: But I didn't study for newspapers. AC: No, no, I know-- DR: I studied for commercial photography. AC: But he had instincts that you—he didn’t know where you ended up. AC: So he wanted to give you like the worst-case scenario. DR: Right. yeah he wanted to prepare me for whatever came. So he came to me second semester, I think. He said, “How would you like a job working in a photo studio? They don't pay much, a dollar and half an hour. But you work any hours you want. Yopu work weekends, nights, whatever. You get the use of all the cameras, all their equipment, all their paper, everything.” Which was at the time photography was the second most expensive class in college. The first expensive class was welding. So I took that job for a photographer named Bob Boyd, who was another teacher, another instructor. The man was a phenomenal photographer. He worked for Reed, Miller and Murphy Advertising Agency. So I did all his processing, all his pictures. I sent out the color stuff to the labs, but everything else I did. I printed all my stuff, I shot all my assignments in the studio. And like I said, I had just got married. Second--the third semester, Mr. Dendle came up to me and says “How would you like a job on a cruise ship?“ I said, “What are you talking about?” He says, “The Director of the Seven Seas College—Seven Seas University? College. They are touring East China, Japan, Vietnam, going down to Australia and up to North Africa for nine months. No pay. Room and Board, but you can take any class you want. Any you're gonna be the ship's photographer. You can take pictures of whatever anyone wants, of anything. You can take classes of anything you want.” AC: Now at this time you had closed down your landscaping (business) or were you still-- DR: No. AC: Did you turn it over to your dad? DR: I had. I gave up most of the contracts. I saved some for my dad to work three--four days a week, three days a week at the most. He was getting ready to retire on Social Security. AC: But for your own income? DR: I worked weekends and in the photo lab. AC: So you are still doing both. DR: Yes. So I had just gotten married and I didn't think it was good to leave my new wife. AC: For nine months. DR: And my stepson. He was five years old. For nine months and with no income. No money coming in. So I didn't do that. But my last year, Bob Boyd who used to do filming, used to do commercials in San Diego, plus professional photography, commercial, helped him out a lot--asked me to go up to Hayward, California with him for a week. Now this is toward the end of the semester. To do a job up there, film developer for a week. So I talked to Mr. Dendle, and he said, “Yeah go ahead, no problem. Your year is completed, get out of here.” So I did. And I completed my classes there and I started looking for work. I had my brochure. I had my—what they call a—my book. They had a name for it. With some of my best photography. AC: Like a portfolio? DR: A brag. Called it a brag book. AC: Oh okay. DR: And I had it, put photos back-to-back in a binder – drill holes and put a All of my best photography was in there. My good photos were back to back in a binder—drill holes and put a spiral backing on it. I went all over town looking for work. Commercial studios, portrait studios, advertising agencies, all over town. And they all said the same thing. Your stuff is really, really good, but you don't have any experience. Go out and get a job for a year and come back. So it was at this time that one of the salesman for a commercial photography sales came in. I asked him if he knew of anyone who wanted a photographer, I says I’m looking for a job. He said, “As a matter of fact, I came from Escondido and they are looking for a photographer in the Escondido newspaper.” AC: Perfect. DR: They got a newspaper in Escondido? (laughs) I had no idea, 'cause I was just San Diego. Had the San Diego Union, Evening Tribune. So on Sunday, we drove up here and got a newspaper from the stand. And they (San Diego Union) had gone letter press and they (Escondido Times-Advocate) were still using virgin paper. No recycled stuff. And It was bright white. And the type was just--and the printing was just amazing. I couldn’t believe it. And the photography! The pictures looked like they were actual photographs. AC: You could cut them out and-- DR: And I was used to the letter press in San Diego and I couldn’t believe they had the offset press over here. Said, “oh my god!” And the town was little, I think the town (Escondido) was maybe only twenty-thousand at the time, 20-25,000. AC: You know this is a great place to stop, are we good to stop? DR: Oh yeah, sure. Sure, yeah. AC: Wonderful. I’m gonna hit stop. https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en audio Property rights reside with the university. Copyrights are retained by the university. &#13 ; &#13 ; Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. &#13 ; &#13 ; Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-03-30.xml RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-03-30.xml https://archivessearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/8 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 A name given to the resource Rios, Dan. Interview March 30th, 2017. Description An account of the resource Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. This interview recounts Rios's childhood and early adulthood, and his personal and educational journey towards becoming a news photographer. As a child and teen laborer Rios, due to extreme heat, convinced his field worker family to leave the Central Valley and join his aunts in San Diego. They moved in 1953. As a 14 year old teen high school drop-out, Rios started his own gardening and landscaping business in La Jolla, California. A client convinced Rios to attend night school to get his high school degree. Rios then pursued a civil engineering degree at community college, eventually dropping the pursuit of engineering when he finds his passion for photography. Rios acquired a degree in commercial and portrait photography at San Diego Community college where he met his mentors. After graduation he sought work as a photographer and landed an interview in Escondido for the regional newspaper, the Escondido Times-Advocate. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC003-01 Subject The topic of the resource Agricultural laborers -- California Mesa Community College (San Diego, Calif.) Mexican Americans Photojournalists Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-30 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daniel Flores Rios Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alexa Clausen Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Escondido (Calif.) Hanford (Calif.) La Jolla (San Diego, Calif.) Ocean Beach (San Diego, Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos Community history Latine experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/07b8770dd2114cfaa740faf8656f5574.pdf f26b5b996684fd469ca62ab036f3d5e9 PDF Text Text Dan Rios Interview I -- March 30th, 2017 Escondido California Chief photographer, Times Advocate (1968 - 1994); North County Times (19952001) Interviewer: Alexa Clausen Dan Rios: My name is Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939. Alexa Clausen: We have put together some questions. Tell us a little about your childhood, you had told us about leaving the Fresno area. DR: I was born in the Central Valley. My family were all field workers. They picked all sorts of fruits, cotton, stuff like that. The weather was miserable. The winters were freezing cold, the summers were blistering hot, and I never liked the place. So I convinced my mother and father we should move out of there. And in 1953, we moved to San Diego. Settled in Ocean Beach for a little while. Eventually we bought property in Mission Valley, had a house built. Worked with a company in La Jolla doing landscaping, gardening at the age of 14. I quit school in the middle of 8th grade. Never went back there to finish junior high or never even went to high school. I worked in La Jolla for two years for a gardening and landscaping company. AC: Now when said you—said they came to San Diego, you had other family here? DR: Yes, I had two aunts that lived here. That brought us here. Also had a sister who moved here prior to our moving here. We rented place on the beach, Ocean Beach right on the beach. It's called The Ocean Village, we had a little cabin there. At that point it was my father, my mother, my sister, two brothers and myself. I believe a sister too. The other two sisters had already married and moved out. AC: What did they come to do? What did mom and dad come to do? DR: (laughs) Well they came because I bugged the-AC: Said get me out of this-- (unintelligible, Clausen and Rios talking over each other) DR: I just hated Hanford. AC: Oh I’m sorry-DR: I dreaded--I mean we were poor, we weren't dissident, we owned a car. But it was not a good life, it was a miserable life. And I told my mother once, I said, “I know we are going to be poor the rest of our lives, why do we have to be poor Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 1 �and miserable too.” (laughs) I just hounded her and convinced her that we had to move out of town. And we did in 1953. AC: Right, but they knew there would be work in San Diego? DR: Yes, my brother-in-law had gotten a job with landscaping company in La Jolla and he was pretty sure that both my father and I-AC: There was room to have you join them. DR: Yes. RIght. Yes. AC: Now you know, you’re were still very young here when you’re doing the landscaping. DR: Yes, I was fourteen years old. AC: That’s sure a long cry from getting to be a, you know, quite an wellestablished photographer, and Lucy (Berk, a local historian who met Dan when she worked as the librarian for Times Advocate) told me also an artist, a photographer as an artist-DR: Yes. AC: So, let's fast forward your career a little here. So here you are, a kid, landscaping and thinking to yourself, well what? I want to buy a camera? What do I have to do? DR: (laughs). Oh, no, no, no. I took to gardening and landscaping like a termite to wood. I loved it. I read a lot of books on it. I was very good, I was excellent at it. I had a natural sense of design, I learned thousands of plant names and fertilizers and insecticides. At the age of 16—at the age of 14, I was working three days a week at the La Jolla Art Center. Three days a week. Three full days a week. And I figured after two years of doing that, that I could take over the contract and work only three days a week making as much money as I was working five days a week. So I talked to Dr. Malone who was the director, and asked him if I could take over the job at 16 years old. And he did not laugh me away as most people would have done. He talked to the Board and they agreed. So I worked three 8hour days, and then the other two days of the week I worked other jobs. Eventually, I worked six days a week, and I was getting a lot of contracts, a lot of work at 16, 17 years old. So then I called my father to come and help me and my business and got him away from the landscaping company. We did that for about 15 years. AC: Did you have a business name? DR: Dan Rios Complete Garden Service and Landscaping. Had no license, no insurance. (laughs) Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 2 �AC: But you know that was not a big deal then. DR: No it wasn’t. AC: It was simply not a big deal. Most people didn't care, and-DR: No. Nobody questioned me. I was never stopped by the city, by the police, or anybody. But I was 16 years old, did not have a driver's license. AC: Now that was bad, that was a problem. (laughs) DR: So I went to buy a '55 Chevrolet pickup, I had the financing and everything, but I had no driver's license. So the salesman ordered me to go to National City (California), get a driver's license. AC: Down to the DMV. DR: Yes and got it. I made really, really good money. I remember. between my father and I, say in 1957 - 58 (we were) making $20,000 a year. And I researched and I found out at the time high school teachers were making $5000 a year. AC: Oh yeah you could probably buy a little home for eighteen or seventeen thousand at the time. DR: We bought a piece of land in Mission Valley for $4000. Paid that off and then we had a house built. It was a 2,000 square foot house for $10,000. The payments were $72 a month. I told my mother, “You know in ten years that’s going to be nothing. That’s going to be a drop in the bucket.” AC: And it was true. DR: Yes. Oh yeah. She died living there. She died in 1980. We built the house in '58. AC: So did she work? Did she end up-DR: No, no, she was--not any more. She did in Hanford. She had an amputated leg and even with that she went out in the fields and pick grapes and picked cotton. And did all kinds of field work. AC: Give me your mother's name. DR: Jennie. Jennie Rios. AC: And father's name? Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 3 �DR: Theodore. AC: Theodore. OK. And were they from that Northern California area? DR: No, no, no. They immigrated separately to the United States during the Mexican Revolution about 1915-16. AC: I’ll be darned. DR: I think my mother was six years old. I think my father was nine years old. AC: Yeah. They came as children. DR: They crossed at El Paso. And they worked themselves--my father worked as a water-boy on the railroad tracks coming to California. My mother's father worked for a construction company building a pipeline. I haven't really researched that. She said the pipe was as big as a diameter that a man sitting on a horse could ride into the pipe. It was that huge. Eventually, the contract ended in Hemet (California). But they came through the San Jacinto Mountains. She remembered the Indians there singing and chanting. AC: There’s a number of Reservations or one or two big ones there. DR: Yes, Saboba. AC: So well we are making our way to your camera, right? So we’ve got you owning your own company, you have your father involved in your business, and you’ve got a house. DR: And a brand-new car. AC: And you are working for the La Jolla Art-DR: Center. AC: As one of your clients. DR: Then I expanded and I had clients. I was working seven days a week, 12 hours a day. No vacations, no holidays. But it was a lot of fun, there was a lot of money coming in. And for an uneducated kid-AC: That becomes important. DR: Yes. AC: You could finally enjoy things-- Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 4 �DR: In fact I'll tell you how uneducated I was: I never understood English, I never understood Math. History and other stuff like that, I could understand. When I would do a contract—an estimate, I would do all round numbers, all whole numbers. AC: Okay. DR: At one point I could not subtract 1.99 from 2.00. I had no idea (Clausen and Rios talking over each other) how to move the figures-AC: Well, you know you were a kid that needed to get money and wanted to leave poverty. DR: Yeah, it was field work and I hated the field work. It was miserable. So even when I had my little business going, I decided--I knew a year in advance what I would be doing. I had so many contracts lined up that it became boring. The work just became boring. So I decided in 1962 to go back to night school and get my high school education. Which I did. I did in three years. I went five nights a week plus Saturdays plus TV shows--TV classes. I think I needed 32 credits to graduate, and I think I graduated with 48 credits. The counselor urged me to be class president, I did not have time for that. So then she bothered me so much, eventually I acquiesced to be Salutatorian for the high school class. AC: Oh nice. DR: When I started, I was in the 30-35% percentile. When I graduated, I was 98 percentile. It just came so easy to me. AC: And boy, you sure did the right thing to get more education. DR: More? Some education. I never had it-AC: Well, you missed out on your childhood in a way. DR: I never had a childhood. I never had a teenage life. When we were at home working, picking, we would never start school in September. It was November. Middle of November we started. And then holidays--then Thanksgiving came, you were off two weeks, then two or three weeks, Christmas came. And we’d (not) come back until the middle of January. And then we would leave school in May. I never started school and I never ended school. AC: I had gone to the Latino Film Festival—I go every year with my friend. I can’t sit through too many movies but we saw one (film) that was a--that followed some children and their education, still today, and how the parents do yank them out of school and they’ll go to El Centro or wherever and the kids are constantly in flux. They still—happens to them, they—and then, the teachers have to try and test them and place them and it still goes on. Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 5 �DR: Well that was me, that was our family. We had to survive, we had to put food on the table, clothes on our backs. AC: Yeah, yeah. DR: We owned our own home, we owned our own car. There was no bills there. AC: Well that was, that was more than a lot. DR: That’s a whole lot of story, because this house we’re living in now is part of my mother's wedding present. I can go into that if you want to later on. But I never wanted—and when I had my own little business, big family gatherings at the house, we had a nice house in San Diego. A lot of family gatherings and stuff like that. But I was bored with my job 'cause I would get up 5 o’clock in the morning. Six o’clock I was out the door and I wouldn’t get back until five or six o’clock. When I started Adult School, high school, I would get home at 5 o’clock, 5:30, take a shower, have a little snack, and go to school between 6 and 9. And then get home and study until 1-2 o’clock in the morning. I would do that for-AC: Well see you had the desire, the drive-DR: Yeah. Five, seven days. And then eventually I stopped working Saturday, used to go to Saturday school. So I graduated and then went to college and I was going to study Civil Engineering. Because it seemed to suit me. I was good in Math, I was good in Science, I was good in Chemistry. AC: Did you start at community college? DR: Yeah. Mesa College. AC: Good school. DR: Yeah. I was there a year and a half, and I took—I was taking pretty heavy classes. I went to take an easy class, a Health Ed. class. Taught by a short, stout, female teacher. No term paper, no mid-term, no quizzes, attendance is good, class participation. The only absolute requirement, concrete--you had to have a hobby at the age of 65 and over. She said, “None of my students going out working 30-40 years, retiring and become the wife or your spouse's pain in the ass,” running the house because she has been for 30-40 years. Chauffer, bookkeeper, cook, shopper, maintenance, raising the kids. She said, “My students will not be a burden to their spouses." AC: (laughs) That is so great. DR: (laughs) You will need a hobby. And I had to prove it. And it does not include rock climbing because at 60-70 years old you’re not going to be doing any rock climbing. Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 6 �So in San Diego, at this here store on University where I went to, they had their camera counter right there where you walked in the front door. I’d often stopped and marveled at all these devices. I had heard about 35-millimeter (cameras), had no idea what it was. I had seen this camera with all these numbers on it. And different colored numbers. I often wondered what it all meant. Because growing up in Hanford we had no money for either film or camera or anything else, there were just no--no extras. So I decided to take a adult (continuing education) class at Mid-way Adult High School in photography. I took it for one semester. Now in college I was carrying a 3.54 average. I got involved in photography, it just overwhelmed me. I could not get enough of it. I just started buying second-hand equipment. AC: I don't know if that Adult School is still there. It was there for years. DR: Probably not. At the time I was going out with a woman who I later married. She was taking an art class and I was taking photography on Wednesdays. I got so involved with photography I started buying used equipment, new equipment when I could afford it. I would buy 100-foot rolls of film and shoot that film in one week. I was just drawn into it. AC: Wow. DR: I was just mesmerized. I couldn't get enough of it, it was like an addict. And so I built a dark room in my mother's garage. At that point I had gotten married. Built the dark room in my mother's garage, I would go in at 4-5 o’clock in the morning, process film. Start printing and proofing and looking at my clock, I would have to be at school at 9 o'clock for a class, 10 o’clock at class-AC: I tell young people and my son, go ahead and plan and take your classes but you don’t know what’s going to come your way. Like don’t get so, you know worry, worry, where’s the job, where’s my job going to be. I said “Stop!” It may come to you and I can’t wait to tell him about--’cause I see him tomorrow, but don’t wear yourself down with worry, you don’t know the twist and turns in your life. Look at that! DR: Well, my mother had a saying that most students go to college to study to be a potato and they come out a yam. (both laugh) So my grades plummeted. I would not go to school. I would try to bone up for a test. I would not show up for class. That last semester just was a disaster. Ended up getting I think a D average. 2.0 or 1.5, 2.0 average. Then I switched college, I decided, I told my wife "I think I want to do--” One of the people, while I switched colleges to study commercial photography, and I had the fortunate-AC: You think? Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 7 �DR: I had the pleasure of two teachers, and I talk about it all the time. Civil Engineering is what I really wanted to do but this photography just, as I said, I was just addicted to it. So I enrolled in this college and had Mr. Bill Dendle’s class in photography at City College and Jack Stevens who also taught the upper grades. And I was so fortunate to have Mr. Dendle as a teacher. And he would just--like an addict, just feeding me like poison with the knowledge. Oh god, he was fantastic. My first semester there, I won the Sweepstakes Award and about 30% of the ribbons because we had a photo contest among the students. And the first day of class, about 35-40 people in the class, Mr. Dendle said, “I don't care; sit on the floor, sit wherever you want. By the end of this week there's gonna be half of you and by the of the month just going to be half of (that). At the year there will be maybe five or seven of you left.” And there were only ten of us left that started. AC: Yeah. Yeah. So he knew you had to have the passion to survive. DR: He was, he was--He had a shelf, it must have been twenty feet long by eight feet high full of photo books. And I would go ask him a question, if I had a problem or had a question, he said, “You know that it is a very good question. It's in the books here, why don't you find out. Look for it and find out the answers.” AC: Interesting. DR: And he would do that to me a lot. AC: So he knew that if you would find it for yourself, it would have more value. DR: Oh yeah. AC: And to remembering and keeping-DR: And, one day about noon, I’d finished my work in the darkroom and he came out and says, “Are you busy right now?” I said no. At this point I was twentynine, no twenty-six. I always felt old in class. Kids were 17-18-19 years old. AC: Yeah. Returning students feel-DR: I'm twenty-three, twenty-four, I’m feeling ancient. So I never mingled with students, fellow students. So he came out to lunch and says, “What are you doing?” I say, “I just finished my dark room work.” He says, “Grab a camera and load it Kodalith film and go take a picture of the quad.” I’d never heard of Kodalith film, it's a graphics arts film. Normal speed of film is 100, 400. This was 6 and I had no idea what it was. So I went and got a 4 x 5 camera, loaded it. Thought I was going to take it--I got Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 8 �a light meter, took it to the quad and took a light reading. It was like a five-second exposure, wide-open on the camera. So I had to go back to get a tripod, went and took the picture, five-second exposures. Back in and processed the film. And I showed it to him and says “What do you want me to do with this?” He said, “Nothing, throw it away.” I said “Well what was that all about?” He said, “Some day when you're a professional, you will be called upon to do different assignments. You better be prepared for anything that comes up.” AC: Wow. DR: We had what's called the photographers bible. It was a book, maybe 5 x 7, by maybe three inches thick with every film, every chemical, every processing imaginable. And that became my bible. I would study that thing left and right. Another thing, one year for Christmas vacation he asked me, “What are you doing for vacation?” Said not a whole lot. He says, “I want you--look up this doctor at a biology lab during Christmas vacation. Want you to shoot color slide, color negative, black and white and infrared film. Go to the doctor with it and ask him what he wants. So Christmas vacation I went, found him and he was doing an autopsy on a cadaver with about four or five students. And I had a cold that day. And they are tearing up this body apart-AC: Oh dear god. DR: They’re just carving into him and I am taking pictures all over. And I asked the doctor, “What do you want pictures of?” He said “Dendle said you would just come over, I’ve got no use for you.” (laughs) So I shot all those four types of film. So anyway I learned the man had apparently been an alcoholic. They took out his kidneys and his liver, (unclear) cirrhosis. Little five-foot girl riding her fingers along the tendon from her toes up to his hip and I couldn’t smell anything I had a cold that day. But I found out that your hair grows after you’re dead, because the cadaver's bald and it had quarter-inch fuzz on him. And he mentioned that to the students. Which I didn’t notice. His hair keeps on growing. AC: And you had that-DR: And the fingernails-AC: On the photo. Lucky you! DR: Yeah right. So after Christmas break I took it all to Dendle, all the proof sheets and all the negatives and everything. “Here's the—what do you want me to do with them?” He said, “Throw them away, I don't want ‘em! I don’t even want to see them.” But that was another lesson in that you’re going to be called Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 9 �upon to do—you don't know what you will be called upon to do. And his advice to me was curiosity. Never lose your curiosity. It will take you through-AC: You think about journalism and for newspapers, yeah I mean you could-DR: But I didn't study for newspapers. AC: No, no, I know-DR: I studied for commercial photography. AC: But he had instincts that you—he didn’t know where you ended up. AC: So he wanted to give you like the worst-case scenario. DR: Right. yeah he wanted to prepare me for whatever came. So he came to me second semester, I think. He said, “How would you like a job working in a photo studio? They don't pay much, a dollar and half an hour. But you work any hours you want. Yopu work weekends, nights, whatever. You get the use of all the cameras, all their equipment, all their paper, everything.” Which was at the time photography was the second most expensive class in college. The first expensive class was welding. So I took that job for a photographer named Bob Boyd, who was another teacher, another instructor. The man was a phenomenal photographer. He worked for Reed, Miller and Murphy Advertising Agency. So I did all his processing, all his pictures. I sent out the color stuff to the labs, but everything else I did. I printed all my stuff, I shot all my assignments in the studio. And like I said, I had just got married. Second--the third semester, Mr. Dendle came up to me and says “How would you like a job on a cruise ship?“ I said, “What are you talking about?” He says, “The Director of the Seven Seas College—Seven Seas University? College. They are touring East China, Japan, Vietnam, going down to Australia and up to North Africa for nine months. No pay. Room and Board, but you can take any class you want. Any you're gonna be the ship's photographer. You can take pictures of whatever anyone wants, of anything. You can take classes of anything you want.” AC: Now at this time you had closed down your landscaping (business) or were you still-DR: No. AC: Did you turn it over to your dad? DR: I had. I gave up most of the contracts. I saved some for my dad to work three--four days a week, three days a week at the most. He was getting ready to retire on Social Security. AC: But for your own income? Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 10 �DR: I worked weekends and in the photo lab. AC: So you are still doing both. DR: Yes. So I had just gotten married and I didn't think it was good to leave my new wife. AC: For nine months. DR: And my stepson. He was five years old. For nine months and with no income. No money coming in. So I didn't do that. But my last year, Bob Boyd who used to do filming, used to do commercials in San Diego, plus professional photography, commercial, helped him out a lot--asked me to go up to Hayward, California with him for a week. Now this is toward the end of the semester. To do a job up there, film developer for a week. So I talked to Mr. Dendle, and he said, “Yeah go ahead, no problem. Your year is completed, get out of here.” So I did. And I completed my classes there and I started looking for work. I had my brochure. I had my—what they call a—my book. They had a name for it. With some of my best photography. AC: Like a portfolio? DR: A brag. Called it a brag book. AC: Oh okay. DR: And I had it, put photos back-to-back in a binder – drill holes and put a All of my best photography was in there. My good photos were back to back in a binder—drill holes and put a spiral backing on it. I went all over town looking for work. Commercial studios, portrait studios, advertising agencies, all over town. And they all said the same thing. Your stuff is really, really good, but you don't have any experience. Go out and get a job for a year and come back. So it was at this time that one of the salesman for a commercial photography sales came in. I asked him if he knew of anyone who wanted a photographer, I says I’m looking for a job. He said, “As a matter of fact, I came from Escondido and they are looking for a photographer in the Escondido newspaper.” AC: Perfect. DR: They got a newspaper in Escondido? (laughs) I had no idea, 'cause I was just San Diego. Had the San Diego Union, Evening Tribune. So on Sunday, we drove up here and got a newspaper from the stand. And they (San Diego Union) had gone letter press and they (Escondido Times-Advocate) were still using virgin paper. No recycled stuff. And It was bright white. And the type was just-and the printing was just amazing. I couldn’t believe it. And the photography! The pictures looked like they were actual photographs. Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 11 �AC: You could cut them out and-DR: And I was used to the letter press in San Diego and I couldn’t believe they had the offset press over here. Said, “oh my god!” And the town was little, I think the town (Escondido) was maybe only twenty-thousand at the time, 20-25,000. AC: You know this is a great place to stop, are we good to stop? DR: Oh yeah, sure. Sure, yeah. AC: Wonderful. I’m gonna hit stop. END Interview 03 - 30 -2017 Transcribed by Alexa Clausen 12 � 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 A name given to the resource 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 A name given to the resource Rios, Dan. Interview transcript, March 30, 2017. Description An account of the resource Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. This interview recounts Rios's childhood and early adulthood, and his personal and educational journey towards becoming a news photographer. As a child and teen laborer Rios, due to extreme heat, convinced his field worker family to leave the Central Valley and join his aunts in San Diego. They moved in 1953. As a 14 year old teen high school drop-out, Rios started his own gardening and landscaping business in La Jolla, California. A client convinced Rios to attend night school to get his high school degree. Rios then pursued a civil engineering degree at community college, eventually dropping the pursuit of engineering when he finds his passion for photography. Rios acquired a degree in commercial and portrait photography at San Diego Community college where he met his mentors. After graduation he sought work as a photographer and landed an interview in Escondido for the regional newspaper, the Escondido Times-Advocate. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daniel Flores Rios Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alexa Clausen Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-03-30 Subject The topic of the resource Agricultural laborers -- California Mesa Community College (San Diego, Calif.) Mexican Americans Photojournalists Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Escondido (Calif.) Hanford (Calif.) La Jolla (San Diego, Calif.) Ocean Beach (San Diego, Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-03-30_transcript Community history Latine experience 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 A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Alexa Clausen Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Daniel Flores Rios OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-04-15_access.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Rios, Dan. Interview, April 15, 2017. SC003-02 00:00:00 SC003 Dan Rios papers CSUSM csusm Chicago Tribune (Firm) ; Escondido Times-Advocate (Escondido (Calif.)) ; Photojournalists ; Escondido (Calif.) Daniel Flores Rios Alexa Clausen 1.0:|11(18)|26(13)|48(5)|63(16)|82(2)|105(14)|120(13)|136(9)|153(11)|178(6)|192(14)|208(16)|222(12)|240(3)|264(6)|286(14)|304(5)|322(3)|335(19)|353(8)|372(11)|388(16)|414(8)|435(13)|457(5)|490(9)|509(16)|522(5)|537(13)|549(15)|565(12)|594(11)|609(18)|631(11)|644(14)|656(4) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/da6f191d23f549388e74dc4e65755822.wav Other audio Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. &#13 ; &#13 ; In this second interview conducted by Alexa Clausen, Dan Rios discusses starting work for the Escondido Times-Advocate and the beginning of his career at newspaper which was then owned by the Applebee and Carlton families. Rios discusses his work days, the paper's staffing, and his enjoyment in working for the Times-Advocate and in living in Escondido. Rios also discusses the selling of the newspaper to the Chicago Tribune Company and the changes that wrought with new editors, staff layoffs, and a much more difficult working environment. Alexa Clausen: This is April 15th, 2017. Session two with Dan Rios regarding his career as Chief Photographer with the (Escondido) Daily Times-Advocate. Now, Dan, we left off (last interview) having you hear about a job in Escondido, not really sure that you’d been to Escondido many times and going to a newsstand and literally picking up the paper. And then you were telling me how impressed you that the paper being so crisp and vivid. And that’s where we left you off. You literally went to a newspaper stand and grabbed a paper. So tell me your steps to getting hired. Dan Rios: Yeah. Well, I saw the paper and I was really amazed at how good it looked. So I was working for Mr. Boyd in Hillcrest, and on Monday I asked him if I could take the morning off to come and apply for the job. And I did. I drove down here. I met with Curt Babcock, who was the City Editor. He introduced me to George Cordry, assistant City Editor, and Ron Kenny, the Managing Editor. They interviewed me, they saw my portfolio, they saw my brag book and one question they kept repeating was, Did I know how to do color? Since I specialized in color the last year at school (Mesa College), I showed them my color brochure, that I had processed all the film, I had processed all the pictures and they seemed to be pleased with that. That was the end of that interview. Later that day they called and said I was hired and for me to come in the following Monday. AC: Could you give me a date on that? DR: That was the week that—that was 1968. I believe it was May, when Robert Kennedy was killed. AC: Oh my gosh. DR: I started working the week Robert Kennedy died. AC: He was assassinated in Los Angeles. DR: Yes. Yes, by Sirhan Sirhan. They asked me if I can come in on Monday and my shift would be from 7:00 o'clock in the morning until whenever. (chuckles) Whenever I was done. The only problem is I had an appointment with the DMV because I had gotten so many driving tickets. I had an appointment with them on that Monday, so I had asked them if I can postpone it for one day. They agreed. I didn't tell them why. The deal he gave me a one-year probationary period. One more ticket and my license was suspended. So, on Tuesday, the following week, I started. AC: Now let me ask you, were you replacing someone who had retired, or this was a new position for them? DR: They had only hired a part-time photographer. AC: They had a part-time uh-huh. DR: And he had left three, four or five months before me coming here. They had a reporter by the name of Mary Jane Morgan who seemed to know the photography, seemed to know the processing, and she was doing some processing plus her reporting duties. She would process the film for the editorial staff. Because every reporter took their own pictures basically. There were pool cameras. And they went assignment, they took their own pictures, they brought the film in. Mary Jane would process it. In Advertising also they had a pool camera and they would do the same. So when I showed up on Tuesday, there was a stack of rolls of film for me to process. And get busy and organize the dark room and see what the supplies were—chemicals and paper and equipment. I got busy organizing it and started right in. I don't think I got my first assignment until about a week later. And I started--my first assignment--I remember my first assignment was at the Escondido Village Mall at the Walker Scot Pavilion there. Mrs. Purer, Edith Purer I think her name was. I think there’s a road by your-- AC: Yes. DR: (unintelligible) Purer Road. Named after her family. And it was an art exhibit, art contest. So that was my first photograph. Of that. Subsequently I started doing a lot of dark room work in the morning and then shooting the afternoon assignments in the afternoon. I would shoot anything from mug shots to sports events, to society, to accidents, to trials. Everything except professional sports. I was never really much interested in professional sports. AC: And you'd have to what? You’d have to cover the (San Diego) Chargers? DR: No. AC: Where would they send you fort professional—they didn’t do much of that? DR: No. No. They relied on AP and UPI photos. AC: They bought them. Yeah. DR: Yeah, subscribed to those services and-- AC: Had you moved to Escondido? Were you commuting? DR: No, I was commuting. I was getting up at five o' clock in the morning, had a little breakfast, get ready, get dressed. Get out at six and drive a two-lane road to Escondido. I would arrive at work, seven o'clock, work until I was done. Sometimes at work I would have a three, four hour lay-over because my shift would end, but a sporting event would come in. Or a society event would come in later in the day, in the evening. And I would have to stay for that. AC: Were you hourly or salary? DR: I was hourly. A very, very meager salary actually. Well that was one of the conditions that I accepted at work. I talked to my bosses and I said, “You know, you guys aren't paying me a lot of money, I need to earn more money. Am I going to be permitted to use the dark room for my own purposes, for moonlighting?” They said, Yes, no problem, whatever you want. The darkroom is yours after hours. AC: It's the plight of every artistic person. You know? The job and the labor of love. DR: I was fortunate. I got along with everybody, everybody was fantastic. It was just a great boss--Kirk Babcock, the city editor. He could understand my photography. He knew what I was going after and he would compliment me on that. So, it got to the point that it was all over town. And then one of my assignments, we had something called "The North County." (Times-Advocate North County magazine) Which was a Sunday supplement. A magazine type thing. Tabloid type thing. And I was in charge of providing the photography for the cover. Every week, besides my other assignments. There were days when I would scramble all over town trying to find something. It was mostly artsy-fartsy stuff on the cover. Whatever I wanted. They never censored me. They never told me what they wanted. AC: Wow! DR: But it got to a point where I got to know the town. And I would drive a thousand, fifteen-hundred miles a month all over town, and all over the North County, and some assignments in San Diego--not too many. And I would shoot what they called "grab art." Whenever I saw something interesting, I’d take a picture of it. And eventually we had so many of those we couldn't even run them in the paper. And I suggested once that we run a special photo page. No theme, nothing. Just to use the pictures, and on Sunday it was a whole picture. And I came up with the name of "focal reflections." And they were just people, places, events, scenery. Just artsy stuff that I shot that we couldn't use in the paper. And we got a lot, a lot of comments on that. AC: When they were sending you on assignment, were you filling in between what the reporters were doing, or they were there own stories? So were you backing up an assignment of a journalist? DR: Well, most of the time I would go out with a journalist. He would ask questions, I would take pictures. Or if he had gone out and did the story, then they would assign me to go ahead and cover the story (unintelligible). A perfect example of that is--did I ever tell you about Rancho Guajome? AC: No. DR: Eloise Perkins, a historical writer grabbed a hold of me with both fists around my neck (laughs). And she would send me on assignments that she had problems with. And one day I was sitting around--there was two events she sent me on. One, I was sitting around. She said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m waiting for an assignment later this afternoon.” (She) says there is this adobe, an abandoned adobe in Vista. Would you go take pictures of it? She gave me the address and I found it. I walked all over the place taking pictures of it. It was collapsing, the floors were rotted, the walls were crumbling. AC: This was before the County bought it and restored it. DR: Yeah. It was just abandoned, I thought. I walked around. I must have spent an hour, hour and half. I went around the back, on the north end of it, there was a trailer there. This man walks out with a shotgun and asked me what the hell was I doing there? I showed him my credentials. I told him what I was doing. He told me he didn't care. He said, If I didn't get my rear end out of there in a hurry that he would start shooting. AC: Oh my god. Thank you, Eloise. DR: So, I got back to Eloise and Eloise just cracked up laughing. She said, “Did that nut threaten you?” I said, “Yeah!” She says, “He chased me away so many times I can't get through the-- AC: So she sends you. DR: And those negatives are in the files. Two and a quarter-inch negatives of all that stuff. AC: You know, you did have—after we shut off the tape, a kind of a get to know Eloise, so I’ll type that up and we can add onto the-- DR: Yeah. She did another one, another Eloise trick she did on me, was at Carrillo Ranch before it became anything. The old lady, Delpy I think her name was, was there. At that point I had a little fame going there at the (newspaper). That I could get along with old ladies. Old ladies and I had a rapport. They would offer me coffee, they would offer me tea, drinks—sodas, whatever. So, Eloise again played a trick on me. She says, Go see Mrs. Delpy at Carrillo Ranch. Take some pictures. So I got there, knocked on the door. She ushered me in, sat me down, offered me coffee, cookies. Told her what I wanted, what I do. She opened up these (photo) albums. with her mother, her stepmother, her stepfather, her family, (Leo) Carrillo, the gatherings, the movie stars. And I started taking copy, photographs of it. And I was there maybe two--two and a half hours talking with her. And eventually I went outside. The stables still were—still had the tack from the early days just rotting away in the stables. So, I again I showed up with Eloise and she’s laughing, said “How did you do with the old lady.” I says, “Great. You know, coffee, tea, cookies, conversation, she was fantastic.” She says, “Oh my god I can't believe it.” So I got a little history there with old ladies. I can handle old ladies, and I got along with them. I got along with everyone. I loved Escondido. The people were just fantastic. I never saw any prejudice on my part. I never experienced it. We had two Hispanic employees in the editorial room. Me and Joe Heredia, who had been there before I was. He subsequently--he had a heart attack and died on the job. AC: Oh my. DR: But--never any problem. I was getting to know people and at that point I had a pretty good memory. I could recognize faces and names. I got to know the city councilmen, most of the Fire Department. And they would call me when things were happening. I got to know the councilmen personally, the mayors, the city attorneys, and had a really good rapport. I loved the city. I loved the population. I loved the society people. They were so gracious. I remember once, they showed me—there was a—can't think of the charity—was a meeting. It was I think in the Fall or toward the Winter. And I showed up. I would pick on one person in a group and semi, lightly make fun of them. To loosen up the room. I wasn't mean, I wasn't vicious. AC: Just teasing. DR: Yeah, just teasing a little bit. So I got to this meeting there early and they were about to have lunch, and they invited me to have lunch. And I said sure. So I had a few snacks here and there and a cup of juice and sat down in front. They got done. And they sat them down and I picked on this one woman. And she was laughing, everyone was laughing. Just to loosen the group up. Then I went to get my IDs, left to right, front to back. And I get back one, the middle one. And her name—by the way the name of the owners (of the Times-Advocate) were Carlton and Applebee. Mrs. Applebee. AC: Now, Lucy (Berk) said—not Applegate? DR: No. Applebee. AC: Like the restaurant. Oh. DR: Applebee. So I got to the middle of the row and this woman. I asked her about her name. To give me her name. Oh god, I can’t remember her first name. An Applebee. And I dropped my pen and my pad of paper and looked at her says, “(and) that’s Mrs. Carlton?” She says, “Mm-hmm.” (Rios and Clausen laugh) AC: Oh they were the owners' wives. DR: Yeah, and I'm jiving with her, I’m teasing her, and I said, Oh god, that's the end of my job. Never brought it up. We became fast friends after that. AC: And this sounds like a style that worked for you to have people relax so you don't have those (stiff) photos. DR: Oh no no, I wouldn’t permit that. Wouldn’t permit hands in front of their bodies either, hiding their crotch. They had to hug people, put their hands in their hands, put hands on their backs. Couldn’t stand these people, just their hands just hanging down. AC: Now you did kind of refer to someone--was it Mr. Babcock--someone said that they liked your style, they knew what you were doing. DR: Yeah, Curt AC: Would you just expand on that a little bit? I'm assuming it’s like a methodology or an artistic approach. DR: Yes. I try to present a viewpoint. Semi-hidden, maybe not so hidden, but I always tried to present a viewpoint. Either through the angle or the lighting. A lot of the time I would take my own lighting. In fact somebody commented--they wrote me a letter that they liked my photography. It reminded them of the earlier photographers in the Midwest. They use to do that. Take multiple lights and set up a little lighting (unintelligible) they were portable. And that was my own device that I thought about. And Curt came up—in fact I was there about six months, and he came up to me, and slapped my back, he says, “How is my serendipity photographer.” No, no, no. Not serendipity. It was “ubiquitous.” “How is my ubiquitous photographer.” I had no idea what that meant. AC: You ran to the dictionary? DR: (laughs) Oh yes. AC: What did he mean? DR: That I was all over town, like a plague. AC: Oh! But it was a compliment. DR: Oh yes. Yes. I was covering everything. My photographs, I had four, five, six photographs in the paper daily. I was doing all the sports, society, the mug shots, and the features, and the artistics, and the grab art. As I said, I would work in the darkroom until noon, and the afternoon it was mine to do what I wanted to. I would do the assignments, do my own, do whatever. The following morning, I would come in to process all the film, do all the proof sheets. Start printing pictures for the advertising, and the editorial, and my own stuff. AC: Had they thought of getting you extra help? DR: They did. About a year later. AC: So, about 1970? DR: Uh-huh, about the middle of 1970. Well people would constantly apply. They would send their resume in. They would send their portfolios, a portion of them. At that point the paper was too small--the salaries were cheap to put it mildly. But I loved the place, and after a year I was planning to go back to San Diego, but I said there was no way I’m going back to San Diego. AC: Oh, you wanted to stay here. DR: Yes, I wanted to stay here. I loved the place, I tolerated the heat. So when they were wanting to hire, I saw this portfolio. Since as a youth, I was never involved in sports, never played sports. Not in school, not extra(curricular), never played sports and I wasn’t that familiar with them. I played softball in grade school, but you know that’s nothing. And then I saw the portfolio of this photographer, Jim Baird and it blew me away. The man was just a phenomenal photographer. And I went to Ron Kenny, I says “I want to hire this guy.” Because he loved sports. Which is something I didn't do and I didn't like! I said he could take that weight off my shoulders. And he could do it with an artistic flair that I could never do. And about that point the Padres had started playing at Petco Park—was called Jack Murphy, or San Diego stadium. AC: Yeah, the old Qualcomm-- DR: Yes. And he would assign himself games because he loved it so much. And I was happier than he was for him to do it. And he did that. And eventually he wanted to do a lot of his own darkroom work and printings that was just fine. But it got to the point where I was doing too much darkroom, not enough photography. So, I went to Ron Kenny again, and I asked him if I can hire a lab tech. Then I could do all-day shooting. Between Baird and myself, we would do the assignments. Then the darkroom technician was Lowell Thorp. He was an older man. He was in his fifties I think at the time. So, he interviewed and he said he wanted no part of photography. He had done that at his previous job and he just wanted darkroom work. And the man was super meticulous. He would come in at five o'clock in the morning. And do all the film, all the proofs. People would hand in their proof sheets with their marked photographs and their crop, and he would supply them. He would hand them out, he would keep the inventory. AC: When do you think this was, what year? Because you said you-- (unintelligible) DR: Jim Baird. Yeah. Jim Baird. Maybe a year later. AC: So ‘71 maybe. DR: And he retired there (at the Times-Advocate), he worked I think fifteen years, retired there. At the end of the year he would produce the summary of all film, all the paper, all the chemicals, everything that was used in the darkroom. The guy was just meticulous, he just loved that place. AC: It was a little bit like his lab? Like his-- DR: Oh it was his domain. Oh my god. If you worked there, he allowed you to work there, but you had better have it clean when you left. I remember when one time there was a reporter, I don't want to name his name, he works for the San Diego Union now. He liked to take his own pictures, and he was on the City Beat. He would get off the City Council Beat at ten-eleven o'clock at night, come in and process the film, print it, go home. Probably one-two o'clock in the morning, go home, come back maybe ten o'clock the following day. Well Lowell got in one day when this reporter had made a mess. He called him at 5 o'clock in the morning to get his butt in there, clean the place up because nothing was going to be done that day until he got there and cleaned his mess up. And he just sat until this reporter showed up. And he did clean the mess up and Lowell started working again. AC: How funny. DR: But he was picky, he was meticulous. He didn't care who worked there. Just clean your mess up. AC: It sounds like in a matter of three years, they hired you and then three-four years made an entire grouping of an entire photographic system from nothing. From having part-time photographers. So North County (San Diego) started a little boom at about the same time. DR: Oh yeah. It was flourishing. It was flourishing. AC: So that reflected in their demand for the newspaper. DR: Yeah. I don’t remember what year it was, early in the in the 70's. We won an award for the best layout in a newspaper regardless of size. And we were winning awards left and right. Editorial awards. I was never very competitive. I was never much into (photography) contests, after school. Didn’t interest me. I don’t know if I mentioned Edith Purer and her--I did join those a couple years. Printed some 16 x 20 prints, won first place, second place, third place in those events. After a couple years I stopped participating in that. AC: So that was your own artistic photography? DR: Yes. AC: What was your specialty, what did you like in your own work? DR: Just sceneries, evening shots, sunsets. AC: Color? DR: Yes, yes. Well no, not all color, some black and white. Would you like some water, I’m sorry-- AC: No, thank you. DR: If I could take you to the computer, I’ve got a screen saver-- AC: Okay. DR: --with some of my pictures. Thank you, Terry (for water). Some of my pictures that I like, that are put on there. On the—but mostly travel. When I was in school, in fact when I was in school, Mr. Dendle, my teacher asked me if I wanted to work for a traveling company, shooting landscapes for post cards, for different cities. That's all I would do is travel across the country photographing cities. AC: I’ll be darned. That’s how they did those, yeah-- DR: Scenery, and cities and whatever-- AC: Landmarks, museums, yeah. DR: Yeah. Send it to the company and they would ship it out to the cities in those stands that they had, those rotating stands. I said, no I wasn't interested in that. AC: Yeah, I like postcards. I don’t have a huge amount but I love it. I love it. DR: And I said, no, I didn’t. But I like scenery, sunsets and that kind of stuff. Nature. AC: I think—maybe people know this if you’re artistic but you have a job, finding time to have a life and your art is difficult. You know, writers do this, and other artists. That balancing the job, the family, and all that. So, had you moved to Escondido yet? DR: No. Was it? Well, yes, by that point. Because I--In getting up at five o'clock in the morning and driving to Escondido to be here at seven o'clock, and then working all day and driving back home--I was living in Hillcrest, and I would start dozing off. Two or three times I dozed off and woke up, so, this was not good. Because I was putting in eight, nine, ten hours a day. I’d have a split shift and work late at night and-- AC: Did they start constructing I-15 yet? DR: No. I've got pictures of Rancho Bernardo with the cows in the pastures where West Bernardo is now. AC: Yeah. With cattle (unintelligible). DR: Yeah. Got pictures of those. AC: So, did they promote you, technically, were you-- DR: No (Rios laughs), I was always Chief Photographer. It was just assumed I was Chief Photographer. There was no ceremony, there was nothing. When my cards came by, it was “Chief Photographer Dan Rios.” AC: Right. So they were too busy publishing a paper to get all these formalities. (Rios laughs) DR: Yeah. Oh yeah. AC: So once it (the Times-Advocate) grew to have a full shop, meaning, you're on assignments, you’re out of the darkroom, you have a tech guy, you have an assistant doing sports. Was-- DR: No he was full time. AC: A full timer. DR: Full time, yeah. AC: So, was-- DR: But he loved sports, specialized in sports which was good for me. AC: Was that the largest the staff ever got? DR: No. AC: Okay, so you’re still growing. DR: It continued to grow. After that we had some stringers. There was a man by the name of Mike Franklin who worked in the production department, who decided he wanted to be a photographer and bought a whole lot of equipment. And came in here and just picked our brains. He wanted to know so much while he was working and then on his days off, we’re talking about he would come back in the dark room and he would chat with Jim and myself about photography, lenses, cameras, film, processing, all kinds of stuff. He never had formal training, but his enthusiasm was just so overwhelming. Eventually, he was hired part time and then full time. And he was a great compliment. He was very good, very artistic. Hard working. AC: What was his name? DR: Mike Franklin. Hispanic. He was a hard, hard, hard worker. AC: Is this still 1970's? DR: Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah. AC: Yeah, okay, so they—the paper’s expanding. DR: Right. Yeah. I will tell you how much it was expanding. Mr. Applebee had us all--everybody in the place--gather in the production department and he told us that he was going to give us a gift. He was starting a profit-sharing plan. Way back when. And he told us, early 70s? Maybe ‘72, ‘73? He told us then that by the time we all retired, if we stayed with the paper long enough, that we would have a lump sum of maybe $100,000 in our retirement fund. AC: And who knew the decline of the paper, huh? DR: Yeah. Soon after, because I think he sold the paper in ‘76, the profit sharing stopped. But those funds were kept up by the Chicago Tribune who bought the paper, and they invested in Chicago Union stock which did diddly forever. But even today I'm still receiving benefits from that retirement fund. A good portion of my retirement fund is Mr. Applebee. AC: Well good for him. It was the right thing to do. They couldn’t keep up a fancy salary, and you were working-- DR: It was never fancy. But I made enough money on moonlighting—you were saying about the spouses—I would work all day and then take assignments. One of the editors would find jobs for you. A lot of jobs. But I would get a lot of jobs, people calling, do you do this? Sure, sure, sure, sure. And I would be working until twelve, one o'clock at night. AC: So when Applebee sells in the 70's, and you are now working for Chicago Tribune, did you sense a difference? Was there any-- DR: Oh it was an earthquake of a change of a difference! They brought in a new publisher who brought in a new city managing editor, who got rid of 50% of the people in the place. At that point, ‘76 I think it was—myself, Jim, Mike, him, him, him—had six photographers on the staff when the paper sold. AC: And he let go half of them? DR: No. They started leaving by themselves. Jim Baird went to the Union, (San Diego Union Tribune), Mike Franklin went to the Union eventually, Sean Haffy later on who also went to the Union. Mike—not Mike Nelson, there was a Nelson character, also went to the Union. Some of them went to the L.A. Times after that. Another Hispanic, Manuel—Manuel something or other, forget his last name, was working there. AC: How did they backfill those jobs? Or was it back to you working crazy hours? DR: No, at that point the new regime that came in started laying off people left and right. And I was not--l had been a golden haired boy with Ron Kenney, and the old staff, and the Applebees. When the new staff came in, I was walking on quicksand because they were laying off so many people. I mean, they laid off half the staff for no reason! We had a city (editor) who was just an ass. Want me to name his name? AC: Sure. Well, its up to you. DR: Eh. A total ass. He would scream at people, verbally insulting people to their face because of their writing. He never did that to me. But I never trusted him, I never liked him. So about a year after the Chicago Tribune bought the paper, I was called up to the office to the publisher, John Armstrong. He told me I was no longer needed as the Chief Photographer. I could remain on the staff, same salary, same benefits, same hours. And no excuse. AC: So what was his point? DR: They would just fire people. Left and right. I think they wanted to get their own group. AC: Shake up everyone? DR: And before the city editor—oh, Tom Nolen, was the city editor’s name. He started the firing people after, I mean he was the one who would scream and yelling at people. And he would intimidate them, they would leave on their own. AC: Did these people come from another area? DR: All from the East Coast. AC: They were? DR: All from the East Coast. Chicago would just send them all down. In fact, all the comptrollers, all the business people. AC: So they wanted to move their own people here. DR: Oh yeah. They just moved their whole-- AC: And get everyone that wanted out of Chicago to come here and have a job. Oh my. DR: And about that time—because working for the Applebees was a dream, it was a (dream) job come true. When Curt Babcock left—he went to the Albuquerque paper, George Cordry took it (Babcock’s position). And I used to tell my wife, if I ever have a dream job and a dream boss, it would be George Cordry, would be my boss. And a year later, he became my boss. And he was just a fantastic boss. AC: So things settle down? DR: Well, yeah, Ron Kenny—George Cordry was let go. All the City Editors were let go, they put their own staff in. Ron Kenney who had been Managing Editor, became Assistant Publisher and they gave him an office next to John Armstrong. Second floor, with absolutely nothing to do. No assignments, no writing, nothing. The gave an office, a desk, a phone, a typewriter. He said he read the San Diego Union from page to everything, the LA Times every day. Then he would go to lunch. Come back and sit around with nothing to do. Eventually-- AC: So was that their way of letting go people without having benefits? I mean-- DR: Well, I don't know what their deal was. When Applebee-- AC: Not giving them unemployment? They didn’t want to give them unemployment? DR: I don’t know what the deal was. AC: Or the contract or something? The contract-- DR: Maybe it was in the contract with Applebee. But what Applebee did when he sold the paper, I believe he sold it for $15 million dollars. He gave all the managers something like $100,000 each. AC: Bonus? DR: Yeah. And every employee—paid them $100 for every year they worked for the paper. Handed everybody checks before he left. And I don't know whether Ron Kenney, who was Assistant Publisher, what kind of deal he had, but he had his money and eventually he quit and moved to Pennsylvania, bought a little store, and I think he started a little store, hotel or motel. Eventually he came back and went to work for the San Diego Union as editorial writer. A good writer. Ron Kenny’s a good writer. AC: You know, I’m thinking, and you tell me, if this is this a good place to stop, because you know the transcription on 35 minutes—you know I’m going to be doing (unintelligible). But do you—is a good stop the Chicago Tribune years? DR: Sure. They were not fun. Not fun. In fact let me tell you a little story. When they moved in, after a year or so, one of my favorite reporters, Bob MacDonald, a columnist had retired and we would get coffee almost every morning. And I told him about my problems with the Chicago Tribune and with John Armstrong. How I was walking on eggshells. I didn't want to lose my job, my security. I loved the town. I didn't want to move anywhere. At that point I had family here, I had roots here, I didn’t want to go anywhere. So I talked to MacDonald about my problems and he said, “Do you like the job, do you like your work?” “Yeah, but they’re not giving me a whole lot of assignments.” Maybe one or two a day, where I was taking five, six, seven assignments. I was busy—you know, “ubiquitous Rios.” He said, “Tell you what, take their check, cash it, spend it, live it up. Don't worry about that. If they want to fire you, eventually they will. If they don't, they too will get fired some day.” And they did. Tom Nolen got canned. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-04-15_access.xml RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-04-15_access.xml https://archivesearch.csusm.edu/repositories/3/resources/8 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 A name given to the resource Rios, Dan. Interview, April 15, 2017. Description An account of the resource Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. In this second interview conducted by Alexa Clausen, Dan Rios discusses starting work for the Escondido Times-Advocate and the beginning of his career at newspaper which was then owned by the Applebee and Carlton families. Rios discusses his work days, the paper's staffing, and his enjoyment in working for the Times-Advocate and in living in Escondido. Rios also discusses the selling of the newspaper to the Chicago Tribune Company and the changes that wrought with new editors, staff layoffs, and a much more difficult working environment. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC003-02 Subject The topic of the resource Chicago Tribune (Firm) Escondido Times-Advocate (Escondido, Calif.) Photojournalists Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-15 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daniel Flores Rios Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alexa Clausen Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Escondido (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos Community history Latine experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/5b54bf618e85a48ceaf7e13292022191.pdf 58abe16222e0b72af886c11325ebca9f PDF Text Text North County's 'Ubiquitous Photographer' Dan Rios Interview 2 with Alexa Clausen April 15, 2017, Escondido California Rios was Chief Photographer, Escondido Times-Advocate (1968 - 1994); North County Times (1995-2001) Alexa Clausen: This is April 15th, 2017. Session two with Dan Rios regarding his career as Chief Photographer with the (Escondido) Daily Times-Advocate. Now, Dan, we left off (last interview) having you hear about a job in Escondido, not really sure that you’d been to Escondido many times and going to a newsstand and literally picking up the paper. And then you were telling me how impressed you that the paper being so crisp and vivid. And that’s where we left you off. You literally went to a newspaper stand and grabbed a paper. So tell me your steps to getting hired. Dan Rios: Yeah. Well, I saw the paper and I was really amazed at how good it looked. So I was working for Mr. Boyd in Hillcrest, and on Monday I asked him if I could take the morning off to come and apply for the job. And I did. I drove down here. I met with Curt Babcock, who was the City Editor. He introduced me to George Cordry, assistant City Editor, and Ron Kenny, the Managing Editor. They interviewed me, they saw my portfolio, they saw my brag book and one question they kept repeating was, Did I know how to do color? Since I specialized in color the last year at school (Mesa College), I showed them my color brochure, that I had processed all the film, I had processed all the pictures and they seemed to be pleased with that. That was the end of that interview. Later that day they called and said I was hired and for me to come in the following Monday. AC: Could you give me a date on that? DR: That was the week that—that was 1968. I believe it was May, when Robert Kennedy was killed. AC: Oh my gosh. DR: I started working the week Robert Kennedy died. AC: He was assassinated in Los Angeles. DR: Yes. Yes, by Sirhan Sirhan. They asked me if I can come in on Monday and my shift would be from 7:00 o'clock in the morning until whenever. (chuckles) Whenever I was done. The only problem is I had an appointment with the DMV because I had gotten so many driving tickets. I had an appointment with them on that Monday, so I had asked them if I can postpone it for one day. They agreed. I didn't tell them why. The deal he gave me a one-year probationary period. One more ticket and my license was suspended. So, on Tuesday, the following week, I started. 1 �AC: Now let me ask you, were you replacing someone who had retired, or this was a new position for them? DR: They had only hired a part-time photographer. AC: They had a part-DR: And he had left three, four or five months before me coming here. They had a reporter by the name of Mary Jane Morgan who seemed to know the photography, seemed to know the processing, and she was doing some processing plus her reporting duties. She would process the film for the editorial staff. Because every reporter took their own pictures basically. There were pool cameras. And they went assignment, they took their own pictures, they brought the film in. Mary Jane would process it. In Advertising also they had a pool camera and they would do the same. So when I showed up on Tuesday, there was a stack of rolls of film for me to process. And get busy and organize the dark room and see what the supplies were—chemicals and paper and equipment. I got busy organizing it and started right in. I don't think I got my first assignment until about a week later. And I started--my first assignment--I remember my first assignment was at the Escondido Village Mall at the Walker Scot Pavilion there. Mrs. Purer, Edith Purer I think her name was. I think there’s a road by your-AC: Yes. DR: (unintelligible) Purer Road. Named after her family. And it was an art exhibit, art contest. So that was my first photograph. Of that. Subsequently I started doing a lot of dark room work in the morning and then shooting the afternoon assignments in the afternoon. I would shoot anything from mug shots to sports events, to society, to accidents, to trials. Everything except professional sports. I was never really much interested in professional sports. AC: And you'd have to what? You’d have to cover the (San Diego) Chargers? DR: No. AC: Where would they send you fort professional—they didn’t do much of that? DR: No. No. They relied on AP and UPI photos. AC: They bought them. Yeah. DR: Yeah, subscribed to those services and-AC: Had you moved to Escondido? Were you commuting? DR: No, I was commuting. I was getting up at five o' clock in the morning, had a little breakfast, get ready, get dressed. Get out at six and drive a two-lane road to Escondido. I 2 �would arrive at work, seven o'clock, work until I was done. Sometimes at work I would have a three, four hour lay-over because my shift would end, but a sporting event would come in. Or a society event would come in later in the day, in the evening. And I would have to stay for that. AC: Were you hourly or salary? DR: I was hourly. A very, very meager salary actually. Well that was one of the conditions that I accepted at work. I talked to my bosses and I said, “You know, you guys aren't paying me a lot of money, I need to earn more money. Am I going to be permitted to use the dark room for my own purposes, for moonlighting?” They said, Yes, no problem, whatever you want. The darkroom is yours after hours. AC: It's the plight of every artistic person. You know? The job and the labor of love. DR: I was fortunate. I got along with everybody, everybody was fantastic. It was just a great boss--Kirk Babcock, the city editor. He could understand my photography. He knew what I was going after and he would compliment me on that. So, it got to the point that it was all over town. And then one of my assignments, we had something called "The North County." (Times-Advocate North County magazine) Which was a Sunday supplement. A magazine type thing. Tabloid type thing. And I was in charge of providing the photography for the cover. Every week, besides my other assignments. There were days when I would scramble all over town trying to find something. It was mostly artsyfartsy stuff on the cover. Whatever I wanted. They never censored me. They never told me what they wanted. AC: Wow! DR: But it got to a point where I got to know the town. And I would drive a thousand, fifteen-hundred miles a month all over town, and all over the North County, and some assignments in San Diego--not too many. And I would shoot what they called "grab art." Whenever I saw something interesting, I’d take a picture of it. And eventually we had so many of those we couldn't even run them in the paper. And I suggested once that we run a special photo page. No theme, nothing. Just to use the pictures, and on Sunday it was a whole picture. And I came up with the name of "focal reflections." And they were just people, places, events, scenery. Just artsy stuff that I shot that we couldn't use in the paper. And we got a lot, a lot of comments on that. AC: When they were sending you on assignment, were you filling in between what the reporters were doing, or they were there own stories? So were you backing up an assignment of a journalist? DR: Well, most of the time I would go out with a journalist. He would ask questions, I would take pictures. Or if he had gone out and did the story, then they would assign me to go ahead and cover the story (unintelligible). A perfect example of that is--did I ever tell you about Rancho Guajome? AC: No. 3 �DR: Eloise Perkins, a historical writer grabbed a hold of me with both fists around my neck (laughs). And she would send me on assignments that she had problems with. And one day I was sitting around--there was two events she sent me on. One, I was sitting around. She said, “What are you doing?” I said, “I’m waiting for an assignment later this afternoon.” (She) says there is this adobe, an abandoned adobe in Vista. Would you go take pictures of it? She gave me the address and I found it. I walked all over the place taking pictures of it. It was collapsing, the floors were rotted, the walls were crumbling. AC: This was before the County bought it and restored it. DR: Yeah. It was just abandoned, I thought. I walked around. I must have spent an hour, hour and half. I went around the back, on the north end of it, there was a trailer there. This man walks out with a shotgun and asked me what the hell was I doing there? I showed him my credentials. I told him what I was doing. He told me he didn't care. He said, If I didn't get my rear end out of there in a hurry that he would start shooting. AC: Oh my god. Thank you, Eloise. DR: So, I got back to Eloise and Eloise just cracked up laughing. She said, “Did that nut threaten you?” I said, “Yeah!” She says, “He chased me away so many times I can't get through the-AC: So she sends you. DR: And those negatives are in the files. Two and a quarter-inch negatives of all that stuff. AC: You know, you did have—after we shut off the tape, a kind of a get to know Eloise, so I’ll type that up and we can add onto the-DR: Yeah. She did another one, another Eloise trick she did on me, was at Carrillo Ranch before it became anything. The old lady, Delpy I think her name was, was there. At that point I had a little fame going there at the (newspaper). That I could get along with old ladies. Old ladies and I had a rapport. They would offer me coffee, they would offer me tea, drinks—sodas, whatever. So, Eloise again played a trick on me. She says, Go see Mrs. Delpy at Carrillo Ranch. Take some pictures. So I got there, knocked on the door. She ushered me in, sat me down, offered me coffee, cookies. Told her what I wanted, what I do. She opened up these (photo) albums. with her mother, her stepmother, her stepfather, her family, (Leo) Carrillo, the gatherings, the movie stars. And I started taking copy, photographs of it. And I was there maybe two--two and a half hours talking with her. And eventually I went outside. The stables still were—still had the tack from the early days just rotting away in the stables. So, I again I showed up with Eloise and she’s laughing, said “How did you do with the old lady.” I says, “Great. You know, coffee, tea, cookies, conversation, she was fantastic.” She says, “Oh my god I can't believe it.” So I got a little history there with 4 �old ladies. I can handle old ladies, and I got along with them. I got along with everyone. I loved Escondido. The people were just fantastic. I never saw any prejudice on my part. I never experienced it. We had two Hispanic employees in the editorial room. Me and Joe Heredia, who had been there before I was. He subsequently--he had a heart attack and died on the job. AC: Oh my. DR: But--never any problem. I was getting to know people and at that point I had a pretty good memory. I could recognize faces and names. I got to know the city councilmen, most of the Fire Department. And they would call me when things were happening. I got to know the councilmen personally, the mayors, the city attorneys, and had a really good rapport. I loved the city. I loved the population. I loved the society people. They were so gracious. I remember once, they showed me—there was a—can't think of the charity—was a meeting. It was I think in the Fall or toward the Winter. And I showed up. I would pick on one person in a group and semi, lightly make fun of them. To loosen up the room. I wasn't mean, I wasn't vicious. AC: Just teasing. DR: Yeah, just teasing a little bit. So I got to this meeting there early and they were about to have lunch, and they invited me to have lunch. And I said sure. So I had a few snacks here and there and a cup of juice and sat down in front. They got done. And they sat them down and I picked on this one woman. And she was laughing, everyone was laughing. Just to loosen the group up. Then I went to get my IDs, left to right, front to back. And I get back one, the middle one. And her name—by the way the name of the owners (of the Times-Advocate) were Carlton and Applebee. Mrs. Applebee. AC: Now, Lucy (Berk) said—not Applegate? DR: No. Applebee. AC: Like the restaurant. Oh. DR: Applebee. So I got to the middle of the row and this woman. I asked her about her name. To give me her name. Oh god, I can’t remember her first name. An Applebee. And I dropped my pen and my pad of paper and looked at her says, “(and) that’s Mrs. Carlton?” She says, “Mm-hmm.” (Rios and Clausen laugh) AC: Oh they were the owners' wives. DR: Yeah, and I'm jiving with her, I’m teasing her, and I said, Oh god, that's the end of my job. Never brought it up. We became fast friends after that. AC: And this sounds like a style that worked for you to have people relax so you don't have those (stiff) photos. 5 �DR: Oh no no, I wouldn’t permit that. Wouldn’t permit hands in front of their bodies either, hiding their crotch. They had to hug people, put their hands in their hands, put hands on their backs. Couldn’t stand these people, just their hands just hanging down. AC: Now you did kind of refer to someone--was it Mr. Babcock--someone said that they liked your style, they knew what you were doing. DR: Yeah, Curt AC: Would you just expand on that a little bit? I'm assuming it’s like a methodology or an artistic approach. DR: Yes. I try to present a viewpoint. Semi-hidden, maybe not so hidden, but I always tried to present a viewpoint. Either through the angle or the lighting. A lot of the time I would take my own lighting. In fact somebody commented--they wrote me a letter that they liked my photography. It reminded them of the earlier photographers in the Midwest. They use to do that. Take multiple lights and set up a little lighting (unintelligible) they were portable. And that was my own device that I thought about. And Curt came up—in fact I was there about six months, and he came up to me, and slapped my back, he says, “How is my serendipity photographer.” No, no, no. Not serendipity. It was “ubiquitous.” “How is my ubiquitous photographer.” I had no idea what that meant. AC: You ran to the dictionary? DR: (laughs) Oh yes. AC: What did he mean? DR: That I was all over town, like a plague. AC: Oh! But it was a compliment. DR: Oh yeah. Yes, yes. I was covering everything. My photographs, I had four, five, six photographs in the paper daily. I was doing all the sports, society, the mug shots, and the features, and the artistics, and the grab art. As I said, I would work in the darkroom until noon, and the afternoon it was mine to do what I wanted to. I would do the assignments, do my own, do whatever. The following morning, I would come in to process all the film, do all the proof sheets. Start printing pictures for the advertising, and the editorial, and my own stuff. AC: Had they thought of getting you extra help? DR: They did. About a year later. AC: So, about 1970? 6 �DR: Uh-huh, about the middle of 1970. Well people would constantly apply. They would send their resume in. They would send their portfolios, a portion of them. At that point the paper was too small--the salaries were cheap to put it mildly. But I loved the place, and after a year I was planning to go back to San Diego, but I said there was no way I’m going back to San Diego. AC: Oh, you wanted to stay here. DR: Yes, I wanted to stay here. I loved the place, I tolerated the heat. So when they were wanting to hire, I saw this portfolio. Since as a youth, I was never involved in sports, never played sports. Not in school, not extra(curricular), never played sports and I wasn’t that familiar with them. I played softball in grade school, but you know that’s nothing. And then I saw the portfolio of this photographer, Jim Baird and it blew me away. The man was just a phenomenal photographer. And I went to Ron Kenny, I says “I want to hire this guy.” Because he loved sports. Which is something I didn't do and I didn't like! I said he could take that weight off my shoulders. And he could do it with an artistic flair that I could never do. And about that point the Padres had started playing at Petco Park—was called Jack Murphy, or San Diego stadium. AC: Yeah, the old Qualcomm-DR: Yes. And he would assign himself games because he loved it so much. And I was happier than he was for him to do it. And he did that. And eventually he wanted to do a lot of his own darkroom work and printings that was just fine. But it got to the point where I was doing too much darkroom, not enough photography. So, I went to Ron Kenny again, and I asked him if I can hire a lab tech. Then I could do all-day shooting. Between Baird and myself, we would do the assignments. Then the darkroom technician was Lowell Thorp. He was an older man. He was in his fifties I think at the time. So, he interviewed and he said he wanted no part of photography. He had done that at his previous job and he just wanted darkroom work. And the man was super meticulous. He would come in at five o'clock in the morning. And do all the film, all the proofs. People would hand in their proof sheets with their marked photographs and their crop, and he would supply them. He would hand them out, he would keep the inventory. AC: When do you think this was, what year? Because you said you-- (unintelligible) DR: Jim Baird. Yeah. Jim Baird. Maybe a year later. AC: So ‘71 maybe. DR: And he retired there (at the Times-Advocate), he worked I think fifteen years, retired there. At the end of the year he would produce the summary of all film, all the paper, all 7 �the chemicals, everything that was used in the darkroom. The guy was just meticulous, he just loved that place. AC: It was a little bit like his lab? Like his-DR: Oh it was his domain. Oh my god. If you worked there, he allowed you to work there, but you had better have it clean when you left. I remember when one time there was a reporter, I don't want to name his name, he works for the San Diego Union now. He liked to take his own pictures, and he was on the City Beat. He would get off the City Council Beat at ten-eleven o'clock at night, come in and process the film, print it, go home. Probably one-two o'clock in the morning, go home, come back maybe ten o'clock the following day. Well Lowell got in one day when this reporter had made a mess. He called him at 5 o'clock in the morning to get his butt in there, clean the place up because nothing was going to be done that day until he got there and cleaned his mess up. And he just sat until this reporter showed up. And he did clean the mess up and Lowell started working again. AC: How funny. DR: But he was picky, he was meticulous. He didn't care who worked there. Just clean your mess up. AC: It sounds like in a matter of three years, they hired you and then three-four years made an entire grouping of an entire photographic system from nothing. From having part-time photographers. So North County (San Diego) started a little boom at about the same time. DR: Oh yeah. It was flourishing. It was flourishing. AC: So that reflected in their demand for the newspaper. DR: Yeah. I don’t remember what year it was, early in the in the 70's. We won an award for the best layout in a newspaper regardless of size. And we were winning awards left and right. Editorial awards. I was never very competitive. I was never much into (photography) contests, after school. Didn’t interest me. I don’t know if I mentioned Edith Purer and her--I did join those a couple years. Printed some 16 x 20 prints, won first place, second place, third place in those events. After a couple years I stopped participating in that. AC: So that was your own artistic photography? DR: Yes. AC: What was your specialty, what did you like in your own work? DR: Just sceneries, evening shots, sunsets. AC: Color? 8 �DR: Yes, yes. Well no, not all color, some black and white. Would you like some water, I’m sorry-AC: No, thank you. DR: If I could take you to the computer, I’ve got a screen saver-AC: Okay. DR: --with some of my pictures. Thank you, Terry (for water). Some of my pictures that I like, that are put on there. On the—but mostly travel. When I was in school, in fact when I was in school, Mr. Dendle, my teacher asked me if I wanted to work for a traveling company, shooting landscapes for post cards, for different cities. That's all I would do is travel across the country photographing cities. AC: I’ll be darned. That’s how they did those, yeah-DR: Scenery, and cities and whatever-AC: Landmarks, museums, yeah. DR: Yeah. Send it to the company and they would ship it out to the cities in those stands that they had, those rotating stands. I said, no I wasn't interested in that. AC: Yeah, I like postcards. I don’t have a huge amount but I love it. I love it. DR: And I said, no, I didn’t. But I like scenery, sunsets and that kind of stuff. Nature. AC: I think—maybe people know this if you’re artistic but you have a job, finding time to have a life and your art is difficult. You know, writers do this, and other artists. That balancing the job, the family, and all that. So, had you moved to Escondido yet? DR: No. Was it? Well, yes, by that point. Because I--In getting up at five o'clock in the morning and driving to Escondido to be here at seven o'clock, and then working all day and driving back home--I was living in Hillcrest, and I would start dozing off. Two or three times I dozed off and woke up, so, this was not good. Because I was putting in eight, nine, ten hours a day. I’d have a split shift and work late at night and-AC: Did they start constructing I-15 yet? DR: No. I've got pictures of Rancho Bernardo with the cows in the pastures where West Bernardo is now. AC: Yeah. With cattle (unintelligible). DR: Yeah. Got pictures of those. 9 �AC: So, did they promote you, technically, were you-DR: No (Rios laughs), I was always Chief Photographer. It was just assumed I was Chief Photographer. There was no ceremony, there was nothing. When my cards came by, it was “Chief Photographer Dan Rios.” AC: Right. So they were too busy publishing a paper to get all these formalities. (Rios laughs) DR: Yeah. Oh yeah. AC: So once it (the Times-Advocate) grew to have a full shop, meaning, you're on assignments, you’re out of the darkroom, you have a tech guy, you have an assistant doing sports. Was-DR: No he was full time. AC: A full timer. DR: Full time, yeah. AC: So, was-DR: But he loved sports, specialized in sports which was good for me. AC: Was that the largest the staff ever got? DR: No. AC: Okay, so you’re still growing. DR: It continued to grow. After that we had some stringers. There was a man by the name of Mike Franklin who worked in the production department, who decided he wanted to be a photographer and bought a whole lot of equipment. And came in here and just picked our brains. He wanted to know so much while he was working and then on his days off, we’re talking about he would come back in the dark room and he would chat with Jim and myself about photography, lenses, cameras, film, processing, all kinds of stuff. He never had formal training, but his enthusiasm was just so overwhelming. Eventually, he was hired part time and then full time. And he was a great compliment. He was very good, very artistic. Hard working. AC: What was his name? DR: Mike Franklin. Hispanic. He was a hard, hard, hard worker. AC: Is this still 1970's? DR: Yes. Uh-huh. Yeah. 10 �AC: Yeah, okay, so they—the paper’s expanding. DR: Right. Yeah. I will tell you how much it was expanding. Mr. Applebee had us all-everybody in the place--gather in the production department and he told us that he was going to give us a gift. He was starting a profit-sharing plan. Way back when. And he told us, early 70s? Maybe ‘72, ‘73? He told us then that by the time we all retired, if we stayed with the paper long enough, that we would have a lump sum of maybe $100,000 in our retirement fund. AC: And who knew the decline of the paper, huh? DR: Yeah. Soon after, because I think he sold the paper in ‘76, the profit sharing stopped. But those funds were kept up by the Chicago Tribune who bought the paper, and they invested in Chicago Union stock which did diddly forever. But even today I'm still receiving benefits from that retirement fund. A good portion of my retirement fund is Mr. Applebee. AC: Well good for him. It was the right thing to do. They couldn’t keep up a fancy salary, and you were working-DR: It was never fancy. But I made enough money on moonlighting—you were saying about the spouses—I would work all day and then take assignments. One of the editors would find jobs for you. A lot of jobs. But I would get a lot of jobs, people calling, do you do this? Sure, sure, sure, sure. And I would be working until twelve, one o'clock at night. AC: So when Applebee sells in the 70's, and you are now working for Chicago Tribune, did you sense a difference? Was there any-DR: Oh it was an earthquake of a change of a difference! They brought in a new publisher who brought in a new city managing editor, who got rid of 50% of the people in the place. At that point, ‘76 I think it was—myself, Jim, Mike, him, him, him—had six photographers on the staff when the paper sold. AC: And he let go half of them? DR: No. They started leaving by themselves. Jim Baird went to the Union, (San Diego Union Tribune), Mike Franklin went to the Union eventually, Sean Haffy later on who also went to the Union. Mike—not Mike Nelson, there was a Nelson character, also went to the Union. Some of them went to the L.A. Times after that. Another Hispanic, Manuel—Manuel something or other, forget his last name, was working there. AC: How did they backfill those jobs? Or was it back to you working crazy hours? DR: No, at that point the new regime that came in started laying off people left and right. And I was not--l had been a golden haired boy with Ron Kenney, and the old staff, and 11 �the Applebees. When the new staff came in, I was walking on quicksand because they were laying off so many people. I mean, they laid off half the staff for no reason! We had a city (editor) who was just an ass. Want me to name his name? AC: Sure. Well, its up to you. DR: Eh. A total ass. He would scream at people, verbally insulting people to their face because of their writing. He never did that to me. But I never trusted him, I never liked him. So about a year after the Chicago Tribune bought the paper, I was called up to the office to the publisher, John Armstrong. He told me I was no longer needed as the Chief Photographer. I could remain on the staff, same salary, same benefits, same hours. And no excuse. AC: So what was his point? DR: They would just fire people. Left and right. I think they wanted to get their own group. AC: Shake up everyone? DR: And before the city editor—oh, Tom Nolen, was the city editor’s name. He started the firing people after, I mean he was the one who would scream and yelling at people. And he would intimidate them, they would leave on their own. AC: Did these people come from another area? DR: All from the East Coast. AC: They were? DR: All from the East Coast. Chicago would just send them all down. In fact, all the comptrollers, all the business people. AC: So they wanted to move their own people here. DR: Oh yeah. They just moved their whole-AC: And get everyone that wanted out of Chicago to come here and have a job. Oh my. DR: And about that time—because working for the Applebees was a dream, it was a (dream) job come true. When Curt Babcock left—he went to the Albuquerque paper, George Cordry took it (Babcock’s position). And I used to tell my wife, if I ever have a dream job and a dream boss, it would be George Cordry, would be my boss. And a year later, he became my boss. And he was just a fantastic boss. AC: So things settle down? 12 �DR: Well, yeah, Ron Kenny—George Cordry was let go. All the City Editors were let go, they put their own staff in. Ron Kenney who had been Managing Editor, became Assistant Publisher and they gave him an office next to John Armstrong. Second floor, with absolutely nothing to do. No assignments, no writing, nothing. The gave an office, a desk, a phone, a typewriter. He said he read the San Diego Union from page to everything, the LA Times every day. Then he would go to lunch. Come back and sit around with nothing to do. Eventually-AC: So was that their way of letting go people without having benefits? I mean-DR: Well, I don't know what their deal was. When Applebee-AC: Not giving them unemployment? They didn’t want to give them unemployment? DR: I don’t know what the deal was. AC: Or the contract or something? The contract-DR: Maybe it was in the contract with Applebee. But what Applebee did when he sold the paper, I believe he sold it for $15 million dollars. He gave all the managers something like $100,000 each. AC: Bonus? DR: Yeah. And every employee—paid them $100 for every year they worked for the paper. Handed everybody checks before he left. And I don't know whether Ron Kenney, who was Assistant Publisher, what kind of deal he had, but he had his money and eventually he quit and moved to Pennsylvania, bought a little store, and I think he started a little store, hotel or motel. Eventually he came back and went to work for the San Diego Union as editorial writer. A good writer. Ron Kenny’s a good writer. AC: You know, I’m thinking, and you tell me, if this is this a good place to stop, because you know the transcription on 35 minutes—you know I’m going to be doing (unintelligible). But do you—is a good stop the Chicago Tribune years? DR: Sure. They were not fun. Not fun. In fact let me tell you a little story. When they moved in, after a year or so, one of my favorite reporters, Bob MacDonald, a columnist had retired and we would get coffee almost every morning. And I told him about my problems with the Chicago Tribune and with John Armstrong. How I was walking on eggshells. I didn't want to lose my job, my security. I loved the town. I didn't want to move anywhere. At that point I had family here, I had roots here, I didn’t want to go anywhere. So I talked to MacDonald about my problems and he said, “Do you like the job, do you like your work?” “Yeah, but they’re not giving me a whole lot of assignments.” Maybe one or two a day, where I was taking five, six, seven assignments. I was busy—you know, “ubiquitous Rios.” He said, “Tell you what, take their check, cash it, spend it, live it up. Don't worry about that. If they want to fire you, eventually they will. If they don't, they too will get fired some day.” And they did. Tom Nolen got canned. 13 �END SESSION 2 14 � 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 A name given to the resource 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 A name given to the resource Rios, Dan. Interview transcript, April 15, 2017. Description An account of the resource Daniel Flores Rios, born in Hanford, California. April 10th, 1939 to Theodore and Jennie Rios, was the Chief Photographer at the Escondido Times-Advocate and North County Times newspapers. In this second interview conducted by Alexa Clausen, Dan Rios discusses starting work for the Escondido Times-Advocate and the beginning of his career at newspaper which was then owned by the Applebee and Carlton families. Rios discusses his work days, the paper's staffing, and his enjoyment in working for the Times-Advocate and in living in Escondido. Rios also discusses the selling of the newspaper to the Chicago Tribune Company and the changes that wrought with new editors, staff layoffs, and a much more difficult working environment. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daniel Flores Rios Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Alexa Clausen Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2017-04-15 Subject The topic of the resource Chicago Tribune (Firm) Escondido Times-Advocate (Escondido, Calif.) Photojournalists Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Escondido (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <a href="https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en" target="_blank" rel="noopener">In copyright</a> Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. California State University San Marcos Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RiosDan_ClausenAlexa_2017-04-15_transcript Community history Latine experience 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 A name given to the resource Oral Histories Description An account of the resource 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. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource <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 A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview Michael De Maria Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed Daniela Carreon OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer) https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=CarreonDaniela_DeMariaMichael_2023-04-06.xml OHMS Object Text This field contains the OHMS Index and / or Transcript and is what makes the contents of the OHMS object searchable in Omeka 5.4 Carreon, Daniela. Interview April 6th, 2023. SC027-40 00:46:15 SC027 California State University San Marcos University Library Special Collections oral history collection CSUSM This oral history was made possible in collaboration with the Cross-Cultural Center and with generous funding from the Instructionally Related Activities fund. csusm California State University San Marcos. Cross-Cultural Center ; California State University San Marcos. Kamalayan Alliance ; California State University San Marcos. Ethnic Studies ; California State University San Marcos. Events and Conference Services ; Civil rights ; Encinitas (Calif.) ; Escondido (Calif.) ; Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán ; Student movements ; Psychic trauma Daniela Carreon Michael De Maria CarreonDaniela_DeMariaMichael_2023-04-06.mp4 1:|16(2)|30(3)|38(15)|55(2)|67(12)|87(5)|106(2)|116(9)|141(4)|157(13)|168(9)|192(8)|202(13)|225(3)|254(2)|265(12)|275(9)|285(8)|302(2)|320(2)|332(16)|348(4)|358(8)|367(6)|377(7)|393(12)|405(10)|415(9)|424(7)|435(8)|457(10)|468(15)|482(6)|509(7)|521(16)|530(14)|547(2)|557(3)|570(11)|583(5)|596(8)|616(2)|628(14)|654(5)|666(17)|680(10)|694(5) 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/7a398a04e0a57b5ef9c910c7403f33fc.mp4 Other video English 0 Carreon's Background Michael De Maria introduces Daniela Carreon to speak about her experiences with the Cross-Cultural Center at CSUSM. To begin, Carreon speaks to her background growing up Escondido and going to school in Encinitas. She explains the differing demographics and what it was like as a Latina attending a predominately affluent and White school. 0 227 Pathway to CSUSM From her earlier educational experience, Daniela explains her reasoning for attending CSUSM. She explains not wanting to attend another PWI (Predominantly White Institution), such as Sonoma State. Instead, Carreon chose to attend the ethnically and economically diverse CSUSM. Regarding personal growth, Carreon considered this one of her best decisions. 0 384 Becoming Involved with the Cross-Cultural Center Through a first-year general education course, Carreon first became aware of the CCC. For a class assignment, she interviewed former CCC director Floyd Lai. Through Carreon's work with MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán), Carreon began mentoring incoming freshman, and later applied to become the center's social media manager. 0 494 Earlier CCC Development Carreon recalls the CCC when she first began her involvement, when programs such as Critical Cougars and the Activist Lab were not yet implemented. As social media manager, Carreon's role focused on outreach and promotion of educational imagery ; an education that came from political unlearning, which Carreon speaks about later on. 0 570 Relationship Between the CCC and Other Student Organizations Through her role as a social media manager at the CCC, and her work with MEChA, Carreon remembers the solidarity between student organizations. From simply sharing the space together, to actively supporting the Kamalyan Alliance (Filipino student organization) and their initiatives. 0 681 Student and Professional Staff Carreon remembers her relationship with CSUSM employees, including Floyd Lai and Shannon Nolan. Carreon recounts assisting with program development, and recalls helping student programmers the most, particularly with event set-up and overall organization. As a previous programmer herself, Carreon was able to mentor several incoming programmers at the CCC. 0 809 Programs at the CCC Carreon recalls the different programs that the Cross-Culutral Center has offered. From her first two Social Justice Summits, to the Activist Lab, Daniela was engaged with several forms of activism and advocacy at CSUSM. Within these programs, she recalls the politically engaging conversations which considered such topics as anti-Blackness, white supremacy, and what abolitionism truly looks like. Overall, the CCC provided Carreon the ability to engage with other student activists. 0 1133 Favorite Memories and Political Unlearning Carreon recalls some of her favorite memories during her work at the Cross-Cultural Center. In particular, Carreon enjoyed getting one her friends memorialized with artwork at the CCC. Additionally, De Maria revisits the idea of political unlearning and what that meant for Carreon. Carreon recalls that the CCC provided the space to engage with conversations about gentrification, colonialism, and the intersectionality of feminism. 0 1510 Carreon's Studies at CSUSM Considering the amount of interests she had, Carreon had a hard time finding a major. She initially chose sociology for its adaptability. However once Ethnic Studies was approved as a major at CSUSM, Daniela realized this avenue best fit her intended future work. The experience of taking courses for the major was difficult, yet Carreon was glad to have declared Ethnic Studies as a major. 0 1826 CCC Impacts and Role with Other Organizations De Maria asks Carreon about the overall impacts of the CCC upon her life. Regarding cultural identity, Carreon considers her time at the CCC to have enabled her unapologetic attitude. Additionally, the Carreon considers the CCC's role with other student centers/organizations on campus. 0 2053 Underrepresented Communities at CSUSM Carreon considers currently underrepresented communities at CSUSM, including Indigenous American Indians as well as Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) students who rely upon the CCC. Carreon discusses how CSUSM underestimated the extent to which students would engage with identity-based centers. 0 2171 Carreon's Career Ambitions As a doctoral student, Carreon defines her work and her future ambitions. This includes her research upon the impacts of trauma, specifically among Latinas. Through this work, she considers the idea of embracing joy even through traumatic moments. She hopes to continue this profound work and because of her experience at CSUSM, she would choose to apply in the future. Additionally, De Maria inquires about the challenges of utilizing quantitative data while maintaining humanistic qualities in research.&#13 ; 0 2617 Wrapping Up with Important Lessons Carreon discusses her biggest takeaways from her experience working with the Cross-Cultural Center. Carreon also realized her ability to disengage from potentially harmful conversations. Daniela expresses gratitude to the CCC for reinforcing the ability to walk away from difficult conversations. 0 Daniela Carreon is alumna of California State University San Marcos, where she worked with the Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) and other student organizations such as MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Xicanx de Aztlan). In this interview, Daniela discusses her involvement with the CCC, campus changes, and her current work &amp ; goals as a sociology PhD student. De Maria: Alright. My name is Michael De Maria. I am a graduate research assistant at Kellogg Library at CSU (California State University) San Marcos. And today I'm interviewing Daniela Carreon about her involvement with the Cross-Cultural Center as a student staff member and a student on campus at CSU San Marcos. So, Daniela first off, I just wanted you to tell me a little bit about your upbringing, your background. I wanted you to tell me about your community that you were brought up in and a little bit about your childhood. Carreon: Okay. So, I grew up in Escondido, which is a very heavily populated Latino, Latinx community and an immigrant community. And so, sorry (laughs). So, yeah. But I went to school in Encinitas, and so Encinitas is probably about a thirty-minute drive, adjacent city. It's probably, yeah so it's a definitely more affluent and White community. And so, growing up in two cities, right, because I went to school in Encinitas but I was, my home life was in Escondido, I was often brought into like two different worlds. And not really knowing how to navigate either. And so yeah (laughs). De Maria: Perfect. And what would you describe those two worlds as in terms of characterization? Carreon: So, as far as characterization. Sorry (laughs). So, both worlds were definitely very different. As far as growing up in Escondido, I would characterize it as more low income, more people of color, more sense of community. And I'm thinking of community as far as like Latino-based, you know, community places. Specifically like, grocery stores or churches or just like where there's a higher population of Latinos. Whereas in Encinitas it was whiteness all throughout. There were pockets of like Latino people, but very, very small. And so I would characterize going to school in Encinitas as a lot more--I had to really integrate myself into the education system. I always had to behave. I also had to just, it almost felt like I was--I was often the only student of color, the only Latina Chicana Mexican woman, or a little girl in the class. And so, I think I felt the need to present myself to be the model for my community. So that is a lot of pressure for someone (laughs). And I felt the pressure through like my interactions with students, or even with my teachers, and like higher expectations from teachers who were Mexican. So yeah. De Maria: Got it. That is definitely really profound to deal with at a young age, for sure. So regarding your experience in those different communities, what led you to CSUSM (California State University San Marcos)? Carreon: What led me to CSUSM? Actually (I) did not wanna go to Cal State San Marcos (laughs). I also got into Sonoma State and I really wanted to, you know, leave. Because I felt like, okay, I've grown up in this vicinity. And actually my high school was very much--they never took us to Cal State San Marcos. I was an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination, college-readiness program) student for, from seventh grade to twelfth grade. They never took us to Cal State San Marcos. I had never even seen the campus until me and my mom drove by it when we, when I like accepted. But before that, I had never been on campus until like, I had to go for summer courses. So yeah, I did not wanna go to Cal State. I felt like it was going to be like high school because I'm going to class and I'm going home. So it was definitely like, how do I differentiate my experience from being just from high school? And so I was going to commit to Sonoma State, and I was trying to figure out my financial aid situation. And, you know I was gonna have to take out a student loan my first semester. (minor background noise) And I remember talking to the financial aid person and I just told her like, what is the population? I'm sorry if you can hear that (background noise). It was just like (laughs). De Maria: Totally fine. You're all good. Carreon: Yeah, so I remember asking her a question like, “What are the demographics of the students?” And during that time, I mean yeah the--you know we didn't have like TikTok, or Instagram wasn't as popularized. Snapchat was there, but not really. So there wasn't a lot of like social media digging that I could do based on the population for the students. I kind of just had to base it from what the website would say. And she told me, “You know a lot of the students here (at Sonoma State) are White, affluent, their, some of their parents own a lot of the wine countries.” And I was like, I don't really wanna be surrounded by whiteness or affluent, you know, people anymore. So, I decided to commit to San Marcos and it ended up being one of the best decisions I made. Not only financially, but I think just in personal growth, so. De Maria: Got it. And once you got to CSUSM, how did you become aware of and involved with the Cross-Cultural Center? Carreon: Yeah. So, in GEL (General Education for first-year students) like I don't remember what it stands for (laughs) but it's one of the introductory courses. I was an EOP (Education Opportunity Program) student as well, so I think that helped. But in the EOP class we had to, one of our assignments through GEL it was EOP (and) GEL together. We had to like, find a campus resource center or whatever and interview someone who worked there. So, I had emailed Floyd (Lai ; Director of the Cross-Cultural Center, 2011-2023) and he doesn't remember, but I did interview him like my first semester. And I think that was like my first integration to the Cross-Cultural Center. And also, I was also involved in MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Xicanx de Aztlan). So I think that was also one of the ways that I was able to be involved. And Floyd had reached out, I think to our MEChA co-chairs and for the peer mentoring program for summer 2015, to be a mentor to incoming freshmen. So, I did that. And then through that Lloyd, I think SLL, which was Student Life and Leadership which is now SLIC (Student Leadership &amp ; Involvement Center). And C3 or Cross-Cultural Center, like were together (laughs). So, they were hiring for the fall 2015 semester. So, I applied as social media slash administration. So yeah, (laughs). De Maria: Awesome. And could you describe what the Cross-Cultural Center was like when you first started engaging with it and working for (inaudible interruption). Carreon: Yeah so, oh wait, when I first started to, like, what was it-- De Maria: Like when you first started to engage and work for the org? Carreon: Yeah. When I first started to engage for the Cross-Cultural Center it was definitely I think more, we didn't have like specific programs as far as like there was no Critical Cougars or Defining Diaspora or Activist Lab (programs and spaces within the Cross-Cultural Center). I think it was more so our general interests. And I wasn't a programming person, so I didn't--I wasn't really involved in that. My role was just like social media and administration. And so, what I did through social media was kind of just posting things that fell along the mission of the Cross-Cultural Center and more like educational based images. And I think that was also just my own--I did it because I was also in this like political learning and unlearning through myself. So I think I used the Cross-Cultural Center as an outlet and also to educate others. De Maria: Yeah, for sure. And you've mentioned your involvement in MEChA already so, I wanted to just ask you what the relationships were like between on-campus organizations at that time. Especially the Cross-Cultural Center's relationship to other student advocacy groups like MEChA or the Black Student Union. Carreon: Yeah, yeah. We did work, I think with also KA, Kamalyan Alliance (Filipino &amp ; Filipino-American student organization). I think a lot of it was supporting them in their own initiatives of like what they wanted to do for campus. So whether it was, like our high school conference, I remember Floyd would let us use the Cross-Cultural Center to like put all of our things (inside) before like campus events. Afterwards, this was probably like two or three years afterwards, campus events (Events and Conference Services) let us use like their stuff, or how to lock up our things. And like printing, I think also like just like some funding if possible. And also just being kind of like an advocate for when or how we would've planned things. I think during that time Floyd was like the Multicultural (Programs) Students, like Rep(resentative). So I think there was a good sense of like alliance or community I think now has switched over, or at least it's switched over I think later on (laughs). To like, I think someone in SLL. So, yeah. De Maria: I see. Very cool. And student staff have often been mentioned as sort of like a catalyst behind the Cross-Cultural Center's general success. So I just wanted to know what your relationship was like between you and your superiors? Carreon: Student staff, or do you mean like pro staff (professional non-student employees) Or-- De Maria: Or both. Excuse me. Carreon: Oh, my relationship with pro staff I think was good (laughs). They made, I think I interacted the most with like Floyd and whoever was in that office next to him. So whether it was the graduate assistant, or later it was (professor) Shannon Nolan who, I don't remember her exact position. But she worked a lot with TLC, Tukwut Leadership Circle (CSUSM engagement program). And then, you know, we would cross over with like SLL professionals, but it was rare to have one-on-one meetings with them. I think when I was more so a graduate assistant, I worked more closely with the director of the Latino (Latin /X) Center and the Black Student Center, and the Pride Center, I think that was more aligned (laughs). And, you know, working together looked like being on committees together, program development, also working with their graduate assistants. And then working at least with like student staff was always a relatively good experience. I think we always try to help each other out in whatever avenue. I think it was, I think programmers always need the most amount of help (laughs) especially with like setting up, taking down, like publicizing, practicing you know their PowerPoint (presentation program) or asking how they should outline it. So, I was a programmer for two years, so, afterwards a lot of incoming or newer programmers would come to me to see what I would do, or how I would structure things. So I think just more so looking for advice or validation. De Maria: Very cool. And one thing you've touched on multiple times is obviously the importance of those programs as a way that (the) Cross-Cultural Center really got out to students and kind of affected people's lives. Regarding those programs, did you have any involvement with the Cross-Cultural Summit as well as Café La Paz? Those are two programs which seem to have been coming up quite frequently in my previous interviews, so I— (Carreon interrupts ; two speakers) Carreon: Yeah you said, you said Social Justice Summit (diversity and activism event at CSUSM)? De Maria: Yes. Carreon: Yes. Social Justice Summit. I went to, to the Social Justice Summit when I was a freshman. So, that was also I guess my introduction to Floyd (laughs). So that was like fall 2014. And then I think I was a facilitator fall 2016, and either 2019 or 2018. So I was a facilitator for like two different periods. I'd never experienced Café La Paz (laugh). De Maria: Okay. Got it. Cool. And what were some instances of activism that you observed from the Cross-Cultural Center during the time that you were there? And I know that you were, you know serving positions as both an undergraduate and a graduate assistant as well. Carreon: Mm-hmm. De Maria: But yeah, if you could just take me through some initiatives that you guys launched or maybe some moments of activism you felt were pretty memorable. Carreon: Mm-Hmm. Trying to think. So moments of activism. Well, I mean the Activist Lab was really a kickstart to our, us being intentional of like having activist programs. And I think that came from the rise of like the Black Lives Matter movement and just what was going on politically. Also with like DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Trump being (in) administration and like more and more people being involved or wanting to be involved in community. So, I know we had like a Know Your Rights (political advocacy presentation) session and I know we had different like avenues of how to be an activist, cause it doesn't always have to be like out in the streets. I think some of the other initiatives of activism, or at least like intentional activism that I would say, is during the covid pandemic there was, we couldn't do Social Justice Summit. And so it was like, when was this fall twenty, fall 2020? Yeah. ‘Cause I graduated Spring 2021. So, I remember during the fall semester I really wanted to do something called Social Justice Scholars (CSUSM undergraduate social justice program). So (laughs), it was, for me it was more of an intentional group of like eight to ten students. And we were going to have conversations that kind of delved in a little deeper. Like, topics like what does it mean to defund the police? What does abolition, abolition look like? What is an abolitionist framework? Conversation circling like transphobia and anti-Blackness. And for me I think those conversations gave, or that specific--like Social Justice Scholars, which I think still continues to today, provides students who want to be, who wanna just know more in a safe and brave environment. I never had, I didn't have--well I only did it for a semester (laughs) until I graduated. But I think it allows or gives students a space, and there was nothing else on campus on it during that time. And I think also the conversations that I wanted to talk about are very political in nature (laughs), just like any other program that I put on, a lot of them were very political. So, I think the Cross-Cultural Center steering that was very one political in nature, but also just very quote unquote ahead of its’ times because were-- conversations circling like, what does it mean to defund the police and what does abolition mean? And talking about anti-Blackness as global and white supremacy are things that sometimes are hidden or want to be hidden within academia, or/and especially student affairs (laughs). So, I think those are some of the things. But as far as other avenues of activism, would be just inviting more speakers who have an activist framework. And I think paying speakers obviously as well is within itself doing activist work. De Maria: Absolutely. And those programs sound absolutely incredible (laughs). So very cool that you were involved with those and got to experience them and see firsthand what kind of impact they had. And from there I just wanted to ask you what your favorite memory from the Cross-Cultural Center was? Carreon: Mmmm. My favorite memory? I have a couple. Do I have to choose one? De Maria: You could talk about it, you could talk about a couple. I don't mind. Carreon: Oh, okay (laughs). I think one of the favorite, one of my favorite, I had always told Floyd, we need more we need more like art (laughs) in the space. So I think definitely the mural that's now in the center. It took about almost, it took a long time to do (laughs), but it took about like maybe six months, a semester to really you know, paint everything, have it installed. So I think that was one of the favorite memories. And also having like my friends be a part of it. My friend is actually the one that's like hugging himself, (laughs) and he was never really involved in campus until he met me, so it's kind of funny to see now he's memorialized on the wall forever (laughs). I think one of my also favorite parts was doing Social Justice Scholars. I think it was also my last semester. I was writing my thesis. I think it was very like cathartic healing. Every two weeks we would meet with students and, you know I'm really glad that they were able to connect with us, and also collaborating with the Latino (Latin /X) Center and the Gender Equity Center or the Women and Gender Equity Center. And like Alicia and Laura, because they also like worked, worked on workshops. And what else is my favorite memories? I think like the day-to-day stuff of hanging out with some of my student staff. Those were probably some of my say, good memories. Yeah. (laughs) De Maria: Very fun. And I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned earlier in the, in the interview regarding you kind of mentioned a political unlearning process that you were undertaking during the time that you were at the Cross-cultural Center and that the organization kind of helped you process your way through that. And basically find a sense of enlightenment about it. So I just wanted to ask about that once again, since you have mentioned putting on like political programs and kind of making politics sort of like a focal point of the conversation about social justice. But if you felt comfortable, I'd love to hear a little bit more about what that political unlearning process was like and specifically how the Cross-Cultural Center kind of helped you become aware of it and embark on that journey. Carreon: Yeah. I think my political process of unlearning started with the murder of Mike Brown. So, it was 2014 and I was an incoming freshman. And so, a lot of it was social media at that time, ‘cause I didn't work at the Cross-Cultural Center. So, it was like Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr where I was really in this unlearning phase. And even then I've become a lot more radical in my beliefs. But back then I was eighteen (laughs). So and I was, you know, I was learning. And so it was an adjustment. I think what the Cross-Cultural Center gave me was an outlet to have conversations with people. And I think it's funny because now I'm in my pro--my PhD program in sociology. And I remember always telling Floyd like, “I don't know if I wanna be a professor or if I wanna work like with youth.” Because I was also a middle school AVID tutor during some time I was working at the center. And I think my desire to have critical conversations and help people or advocate for people, listen to people differing opinions of topics is what makes me want to be a sociology professor. And some of my programs, they were all political. I don't think they had to do with like, well they had to do with politics, but it didn't center on politics or policy. I think the first program that I ever did was what it means to be American. But I'm also like, it's been so long (laughs). But I had programs having to do unpacking, like Beyonce's Lemonade album or talking about Kendrick Lamar's album at that time and collaborating with the Black Student Center. I also had programs about gentrification and colonialism, and topics on racism and classism. I also had like the “in” in feminism, like what is like intersection, the intersectionality in feminism. Cause feminism is very, could be very White. So collaborating with like Pride (Center), and I remember I collaborated with the sociology professor at that time as well. So I think my unlearning through the center was topics that I just wanted to talk about (laughs) cause I had my own vested interest in them, but also, who else could I collaborate with? I think that was where the Cross-Cultural Center possibly got more view or more like, “Oh, they're collaborating with other people and like inviting professors and faculty to join us in conversations.” And/or other student organizations and student centers. So. De Maria: For sure. That's awesome. And next I wanted to shift a little bit and actually talk about your studies at CSUSM. I know that you're one of the first graduates of the Ethnic Studies program, so I was interested in hearing more about kind of like the early days of that program and ultimately, you know, how that influenced your current career track and what you're interested in studying. Carreon: Yeah. So I remember it was my EOP, name was Kyle, I think he's at Palomar (College in San Marcos, CA) now. Kyle Owens. Yeah. He, I didn't know what I wanted to do (laughs). I had so many vested interests. I remember I came in as a psych(ology) major and then I changed to poli sci (political science) ‘cause I really was in this unlearning process and I'm like, “I wanna work for the government and change things.” And quickly did I learn, no, I'm just kidding. (laughs). But yeah, quickly did I learn. And then I switched it again and then I was just kind of everywhere. And I remember Kyle Owens told me about like social sciences and how I can have like three degrees in one. And I was like, oh, okay. So my primary focus was sociology. And then my secondary fields are political science and psych. So I had to take a wide variety of classes. And I also decided to minor in Spanish ‘cause I passed the AP exam in high school and I was like, “Oh, I only, I only need four classes. Okay, cool.” And I think I just, I remember I took Dr. (Michelle) Holling communication 485, like Latino Chicano Representation in TV. And that really sparked my interest in wanting to go to grad school. And having her be part of my life and mentorship during that period, that was 2018, fall 2018. And she had told us like, that ethnic studies had been approved through the CSU Chancellor's Office, but it's gonna take a year for it to like, you know, be in place. And during that time I was supposed to graduate. I think it was, I was supposed to, oh no, that was fall 2017 when I took her class. And I was supposed to graduate fall 2018, but I just didn't feel, or spring 2018, and I didn't feel ready to graduate in four years. So that's when I picked up my minor in Spanish. And then I had met with her, and she gave me different courses that would qualify me to be like, that were going to be part of the courses for Ethnic Studies. So, I just started taking extra courses to fulfill the major that still hadn't existed (laughs). So I was taking like five classes. I took a class at Palomar because I had to take Ethnic Studies 101 and SOC (Sociology) 101 already had qualified or, you know fulfilled my other requirements. So it couldn't fulfill this one. So I had to go to Palomar and take Multicultural 101 (laughs) Multicultural Studies 101. And then I took, when did I graduate? Spring 2019. I took seven classes, and a grad course including that one. Just, just for fun (laughs). But really just to fulfill the, the major requirements. And I remember there was a period of time where once the major had been approved December 2018, I was told that I couldn't do it (laughs). Because I had reached, I couldn't declare the major because they said that I had passed the 120 credits or something like that. And I remember talking to Dr. Holling and other people in CHABSS (College of Humanities, Arts, Behavioral &amp ; Social Sciences) was like, and I told them, “Well, I've been taking these classes because it fulfills the major” (laughs). So like, why can't--so they did some, some work in the backend and I was able to declare it I think within like two weeks. And then I graduated in the spring semester. So I wish I was--the only ethnic studies course I did take at Cal State San Marcos, like through the Ethnic Studies major was Ethnic Studies 301. So I had already taken Ethnic Studies 101 as Multicultural Studies at Palomar, so I didn't have to take it again. But I wasn't able to take theory or I think at that time they had like three or four other integral, integral classes that students would take. But Dr. Holling was able to just sign off. So. De Maria: I see. So my next set of questions are going to be more about the impact of the Cross-Cultural Center on your life. So a little bit more abstract. But yeah, I just wanted to know how the Cross-Cultural Center ultimately helped you develop and express your cultural identity in the long run? Carreon: Hmm. Express my cultural identity in the long run, you mentioned? Like- De Maria: Yeah. Carreon: I feel like for me, I've never been like super loud about my culture. I just kind of exist (laughs). I think the culture more so is being like outspoken and being, and like asking questions and asking critical questions and sometimes making people feel uncomfortable with my questions or my beliefs or ideas. So I think that's the legacy of like what the Cross-Cultural Center has provided me. And I've, I've gotten better. I remember Floyd always told me I'm not who I was before (laughs). And I think that's the culture that I still lead with, of just like being unapologetically myself. De Maria: Okay, I see. And regarding the Cross-Cultural Center as it is today, what role do you see it playing as it coexists with the expansion of other identity-specific student advocacy orgs? So, like as other organizations expand, I guess like what do you hope to see out of those relationships? What role do you see the Cross-Cultural Center playing in those expansions? Carreon: Mm-Hmm. For me, I think the Cross-Cultural Center has tried to fill in the gaps of CSU’s, CSUSM’s like limitation in student centers. So specifically for like Asian Pacific Islander students, we have like the Defining Diaspora (CSUSM student workshops) and specific programs. But say like, you know, if the--if Cal State San Marcos approves for an Asian Pacific Islander Center, I think the role of the Cross-Cultural Center would shift obviously. But I feel like we have, we, or they have worked hard enough to make themselves a distinction between all the other centers, specifically with like Critical Cougars, the Activist Lab and Academe and Me. So, as of, I mean I haven't been at Cal State for two years. De Maria: Right. Yeah. Carreon: So, I don’t know what the other student centers are doing. But I think that the Cross-Cultural Center, because it's not specifically identity-based, can mold itself to different things. And it's both a, a challenge and an opportunity (laughs) because it's like, what are, what can, what else can we do or how can we do it? But it gives us the space to do it. So. De Maria: Got it. Carreon: I dunno if that answered your question, (laughs). De Maria: No, no it did (laughs). And regarding the CCC (Cross-Cultural Center) and its interaction with the student community, what communities on this, on CSUSM’s campus, do you feel are currently underrepresented? Carreon: I mean, indigenous students, I think they’re still less than 1% of CSUSMs, like total student population. I know that the California Indian Cultural Sovereignty Center, and the American Indian major and I think minor, correct me if I'm wrong, you know they're there. But from my understanding, it's they have and the, oh my gosh, AISA, American Indian Student Alliance. I don't know how like, if they're still present. But that was always a factor of how can we bring in conversations, or how can we connect with more indigenous scholars and students. And obviously the population of Black students is still probably, what, three percent? And also like what is Black faculty or administrators, what is the percentage of that? It’s probably lower. And I mean, I know that the DREAMer Resource Office (programs and services for undocumented students) is still on campus. I'm not sure if they're in the same location. I worked at the DREAMer Resource office for about a year and a half, and it was a--it was small (laughs). So, I think, you know, bigger spaces, I don't think Cal State San Marcos really anticipated for how much student centers, or the need for student centers. But yeah. De Maria: Yeah, absolutely. And next I wanted to talk about a little bit about your current career. So I know that you're currently pursuing a doctorate, and have some aspirations to go into education yourself. But did you wanna also talk about kind of what you hope to achieve in the social justice space with your platform and kind of what some of those aspirations are? Carreon: Yeah. So my career goal (laughs), I guess is, yeah, per- like finish my PhD. I do want to go back to the CSU system. I would love to go back to Southern California. If, you know, Cal State San Marcos is hiring at the time, I will be applying. Or even San Diego State or any other like, you know, nearby college. My research interests right now center among understanding and examining the experiences of Latina women undergoing cancer treatment. And I am really interested in this process of emotions and looking at like joy and grief. And I'm looking and I'm wanting to look at identity adjustments, then identity disruption, and identity development through the process of, of cancer. And then the component of familial and community care, and possibly death and dying. But I'm still working through like the nuances of my project. And so, what I hope to accomplish at least with that--and I don't know what my unit of analysis will be like, whether it's going to be like the cancer patient or if it's going to be more so like the family. But something that I've always wanted to do, and this, it's similar to my work that I did for my master's thesis. cause for my master's thesis, I looked at like the mothering experiences of single immigrant Latina mothers, and like their relationship with their children. And so I'm really into this aspect of like emotions and processing and trauma. I think my next, once I graduate and if I have a book contract, I think my book would really center on emotions and care and like healing from intergenerational trauma or death. So I think that's my component to social justice, especially tapping into this concept of joy. I think sometimes in movements, and this is what I've learned through my unlearning process through like Twitter, is that joy needs to be a constant presence in our lives. In constant oppression and marginalization and racism and homophobia and classism, we still have and will need space to practice joy. And joy doesn't always have to be like this grand thing. And that's kind of what I'm hoping to look at in my project with women undergoing cancer. It's like, did I wake up with no pain? Am I able to, you know, eat my favorite meal? Am I able to enjoy time with my family? I think I'm, I'm thinking of joy as more little things. And I think that's also what social justice movements are now more embracing. Specifically I know like the, the concept of Black joy and reading of articles of within people who are trans, and what does trans joy look like? So I think that's kind of possibly what the conversation will transition into, especially when we have been healing through so much. And I say “we” as like marginalized and minoritized communities, especially during the COVID Pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and all these other things that are going on. And it's like, how do we still, how do we still practice joy? And I think maybe, you know, social media played a tool, especially like TikTok and people dancing on TikTok while there was a COVID pan- like while there was a pandemic and thousands of people were dying, and we still found moments to kind of laugh. So. De Maria: Super, super profound and incredible work it sounds like. I want to know what your biggest challenges are in terms of applying sort of like an academic quantifiable study to certain intense and qualitative topics like joy, death, love, and human experience. Carreon: Your question was, sorry, how do I-- De Maria: How, how do you kind of apply a quantitative study to concepts like that and what are your biggest challenges of doing that? Carreon: Yeah. A quantitative study. Well currently I'm in a survey methods course (laughs). So, I am actually developing a survey to, it's a pre-interview survey just to get like demographic, demographics of my population and using it as a pilot study for my dissertation. But I do wanna ask questions obviously about emotions. And it's really hard, because I am a trained qualitative researcher. So one, I'm not a quant(itative) person. But it's also hard to quantify emotions. I feel like quant, quantitative research often strips the humanity and people's experiences, and just kind of diminishes them just to numbers (laughs). So it's sometimes hard to translate--or translate that I guess. But I know that numbers are important (laughs), right? It's how we get funding. It's how to make it palatable to larger audiences. And so, I'm still trying to figure that out (laughs). De Maria: Awesome. And I was just curious because obviously the role of data and statistics also plays a huge part in social justice itself and trying to understand, you know, quantifiably where injustices are taking place, or how those injustices are manifesting themselves. So, to me it felt like a very one-to-one comparison of using a quantitative study to quantify those emotions that you mentioned in those cancer patients. As well as how some researchers, you know, have to basically fit statistical models to qualitative issues in, you know, underserved communities and things like that. So, just wanted to explore that a little bit ‘cause it was super fascinating. But taking things back to the topic at hand and to kind of wrap up our interview, I just wanted to know what the most important lesson you've taken from your experience with the Cross-Cultural Center was, and kind of how it impacted you. Carreon: You said my most important, sorry? De Maria: Lesson. Carreon: My most important lesson? De Maria: That you've taken. Carreon: Probably to pause before I speak (laughs). And to listen. Oftentimes I have learned that people who have very differing conservative you know, or even like radical opinions just kind of wanna be heard (laughs). Sometimes I am not the person to listen, but I can redirect them to someone who wants to listen. But I think my role within, obviously when I was a student, I mean a student worker there, I would listen. I think, you know, my role now as just someone who would be visiting the center, I could walk away (laughs). But, and even then I can still walk away as, as like now, but also wanting to pursue, you know, a teaching career. It's going, I'm going to get a wide variety of students with different opinions of, of coming to understand sociology. And so, definitely listening and pausing before I speak. I think a tool that I kind of took from Floyd, he would always ask me, “How did you come to that solution?” Or, “What made you think of that? And avoiding the question of, “Why?” And just trying to better understand people. So. De Maria: Awesome. Well, I wanted to thank you for taking some time out today for this interview. I think this is gonna be a great resource for anyone for trying to learn more about the Cross-Cultural Center through the lens of someone who is actually there. So again, this information was indispensable, and I'm really excited to see where your career takes you. And you know, hopefully what you'll be doing for CSUSM in the future to kind of expand the center and hopefully take up even more responsibility for the school. Carreon: Yeah (laughs). De Maria: Awesome. Thanks, Daniela. Carreon: All right. Thank you. 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. &#13 ; &#13 ; This resource is licensed for noncommercial educational use using CC NC-BY 4.0. 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The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. 0 https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=CarreonDaniela_DeMariaMichael_2023-04-06.xml CarreonDaniela_DeMariaMichael_2023-04-06.xml 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 A name given to the resource Carreon, Daniela. Interview April 6th, 2023. Description An account of the resource Daniela Carreon is alumna of California State University San Marcos, where she worked with the Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) and other student organizations such as MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Xicanx de Aztlan). In this interview, Daniela discusses her involvement with the CCC, campus changes, and her current work & goals as a sociology PhD student. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context SC027-40 Subject The topic of the resource California State University San Marcos. Cross-Cultural Center California State University San Marcos. Kamalayan Alliance California State University San Marcos. Ethnic Studies California State University San Marcos. Events and Conference Services Civil rights Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán Student movements Psychic trauma Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-04-06 Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource video Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daniela Carreon Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Michael De Maria Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Encinitas (Calif.) Escondido (Calif.) San Marcos (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Daniela Carreon Cross-Cultural Center oral history project CSUSM history Latine experience Women's experience https://archivesoralhistories.csusm.edu/files/original/9da90704cc77e7e9c03910465dfda649.pdf 67d8cd755ed34dd9dac9c25137231b72 PDF Text Text DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 De Maria: Alright. My name is Michael De Maria. I am a graduate research assistant at Kellogg Library at CSU (California State University) San Marcos. And today I'm interviewing Daniela Carreon about her involvement with the Cross-Cultural Center as a student staff member and a student on campus at CSU San Marcos. So, Daniela first off, I just wanted you to tell me a little bit about your upbringing, your background. I wanted you to tell me about your community that you were brought-up in and a little bit about your childhood. Carreon: Okay. So, I grew up in Escondido, which is a very heavily populated Latino, Latinx community and an immigrant community. And so, sorry (laughs). So, yeah. But I went to school in Encinitas, and so Encinitas is probably about a thirty-minute drive, adjacent city. It's probably, yeah so it's a definitely more affluent and White community. And so, growing up in two cities, right, because I went to school in Encinitas but I was, my home life was in Escondido, I was often brought into like two different worlds. And not really knowing how to navigate either. And so yeah (laughs). De Maria: Perfect. And what would you describe those two worlds as in terms of characterization? Carreon: So, as far as characterization. Sorry (laughs). So, both worlds were definitely very different. As far as growing up in Escondido, I would characterize it as more low income, more people of color, more sense of community. And I'm thinking of community as far as like Latino-based, you know, community places. Specifically like, grocery stores or churches or just like where there's a higher population of Latinos. Whereas in Encinitas it was whiteness all throughout. There were pockets of like Latino people, but very, very small. And so I would characterize going to school in Encinitas as a lot more--I had to really integrate myself into the education system. I always had to behave. I also had to just, it almost felt like I was--I was often the only student of color, the only Latina Chicana Mexican woman, or a little girl in the class. And so, I think I felt the need to present myself to be the model for my community. So that is a lot of pressure for someone (laughs). And I felt the pressure through like my interactions with students, or even with my teachers, and like higher expectations from teachers who were Mexican. So yeah. De Maria: Got it. That is definitely really profound to deal with at a young age, for sure. So regarding your experience in those different communities, what led you to CSUSM (California State University San Marcos)? Carreon: What led me to CSUSM? Actually (I) did not wanna go to Cal State San Marcos (laughs). I also got into Sonoma State and I really wanted to, you know, leave. Because I felt like, okay, I've grown up in this vicinity. And actually my high school was very much--they never took us to Cal State San Marcos. I was an AVID (Advancement Via Individual Determination, college-readiness program) student for, from seventh grade to twelfth grade. They never took us to Cal State San Marcos. I had never even seen the campus until me and my mom drove by it when we, when I like accepted. But before that, I had never been on campus until like, I had to go for summer courses. So yeah, I did not wanna go to Cal State. I felt like it was going to be like high school because I'm going to class and I'm going home. So it was definitely like, how do I differentiate my experience from being just from high school? And so I was going to commit to Sonoma State, and I was trying to figure out my financial aid situation. And, you know I was gonna have to take out a student loan my first semester. (minor background noise) And I remember talking to the financial aid person and I just told her like, what is the population? I'm sorry if you can hear that (background noise). It was just like (laughs). De Maria: Totally fine. You're all good. Transcribed by Aaron Williams 1 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 Carreon: Yeah, so I remember asking her a question like, “What are the demographics of the students?” And during that time, I mean yeah the--you know we didn't have like TikTok, or Instagram wasn't as popularized. Snapchat was there, but not really. So there wasn't a lot of like social media digging that I could do based on the population for the students. I kind of just had to base it from what the website would say. And she told me, “You know a lot of the students here (at Sonoma State) are White, affluent, their, some of their parents own a lot of the wine countries.” And I was like, I don't really wanna be surrounded by whiteness or affluent, you know, people anymore. So, I decided to commit to San Marcos and it ended up being one of the best decisions I made. Not only financially, but I think just in personal growth, so. De Maria: Got it. And once you got to CSUSM, how did you become aware of and involved with the Cross-Cultural Center? Carreon: Yeah. So, in GEL (General Education for first-year students) like I don't remember what it stands for (laughs) but it's one of the introductory courses. I was an EOP (Education Opportunity Program) student as well, so I think that helped. But in the EOP class we had to, one of our assignments through GEL it was EOP (and) GEL together. We had to like, find a campus resource center or whatever and interview someone who worked there. So, I had emailed Floyd (Lai; Director of the Cross-Cultural Center, 2011-2023) and he doesn't remember, but I did interview him like my first semester. And I think that was like my first integration to the Cross-Cultural Center. And also, I was also involved in MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Xicanx de Aztlan). So I think that was also one of the ways that I was able to be involved. And Floyd had reached out, I think to our MEChA co-chairs and for the peer mentoring program for summer 2015, to be a mentor to incoming freshmen. So, I did that. And then through that Lloyd, I think SLL, which was Student Life and Leadership which is now SLIC (Student Leadership & Involvement Center). And C3 or Cross-Cultural Center, like were together (laughs). So, they were hiring for the fall 2015 semester. So, I applied as social media slash administration. So yeah, (laughs). De Maria: Awesome. And could you describe what the Cross-Cultural Center was like when you first started engaging with it and working for (inaudible interruption). Carreon: Yeah so, oh wait, when I first started to, like, what was it-De Maria: Like when you first started to engage and work for the org? Carreon: Yeah. When I first started to engage for the Cross-Cultural Center it was definitely I think more, we didn't have like specific programs as far as like there was no Critical Cougars or Defining Diaspora or Activist Lab (programs and spaces within the Cross-Cultural Center). I think it was more so our general interests. And I wasn't a programming person, so I didn't--I wasn't really involved in that. My role was just like social media and administration. And so, what I did through social media was kind of just posting things that fell along the mission of the Cross-Cultural Center and more like educational based images. And I think that was also just my own--I did it because I was also in this like political learning and unlearning through myself. So I think I used the Cross-Cultural Center as an outlet and also to educate others. De Maria: Yeah, for sure. And you've mentioned your involvement in MEChA already so, I wanted to just ask you what the relationships were like between on-campus organizations at that time. Especially the Transcribed by Aaron Williams 2 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 Cross-Cultural Center's relationship to other student advocacy groups like MEChA or the Black Student Union. Carreon: Yeah, yeah. We did work, I think with also KA, Kamalyan Alliance (Filipino & Filipino-American student organization). I think a lot of it was supporting them in their own initiatives of like what they wanted to do for campus. So whether it was, like our high school conference, I remember Floyd would let us use the Cross-Cultural Center to like put all of our things (inside) before like campus events. Afterwards, this was probably like two or three years afterwards, campus events (Events and Conference Services) let us use like their stuff, or how to lock up our things. And like printing, I think also like just like some funding if possible. And also just being kind of like an advocate for when or how we would've planned things. I think during that time Floyd was like the Multicultural (Programs) Students, like Rep(resentative). So I think there was a good sense of like alliance or community I think now has switched over, or at least it's switched over I think later on (laughs). To like, I think someone in SLL. So, yeah. De Maria: I see. Very cool. And student staff have often been mentioned as sort of like a catalyst behind the Cross-Cultural Center's general success. So I just wanted to know what your relationship was like between you and your superiors? Carreon: Student staff, or do you mean like pro staff (professional non-student employees) OrDe Maria: Or both. Excuse me. Carreon: Oh, my relationship with pro staff I think was good (laughs). They made, I think I interacted the most with like Floyd and whoever was in that office next to him. So whether it was the graduate assistant, or later it was (professor) Shannon Nolan who, I don't remember her exact position. But she worked a lot with TLC, Tukwut Leadership Circle (CSUSM engagement program). And then, you know, we would cross over with like SLL professionals, but it was rare to have one-on-one meetings with them. I think when I was more so a graduate assistant, I worked more closely with the director of the Latino (Latin@/X) Center and the Black Student Center, and the Pride Center, I think that was more aligned (laughs). And, you know, working together looked like being on committees together, program development, also working with their graduate assistants. And then working at least with like student staff was always a relatively good experience. I think we always try to help each other out in whatever avenue. I think it was, I think programmers always need the most amount of help (laughs) especially with like setting up, taking down, like publicizing, practicing you know their PowerPoint (presentation program) or asking how they should outline it. So, I was a programmer for two years, so, afterwards a lot of incoming or newer programmers would come to me to see what I would do, or how I would structure things. So I think just more so looking for advice or validation. De Maria: Very cool. And one thing you've touched on multiple times is obviously the importance of those programs as a way that (the) Cross-Cultural Center really got out to students and kind of affected people's lives. Regarding those programs, did you have any involvement with the Cross-Cultural Summit as well as Café La Paz? Those are two programs which seem to have been coming up quite frequently in my previous interviews, so I—(Carreon interrupts; two speakers) Carreon: Yeah you said, you said Social Justice Summit (diversity and activism event at CSUSM)? Transcribed by Aaron Williams 3 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 De Maria: Yes. Carreon: Yes. Social Justice Summit. I went to, to the Social Justice Summit when I was a freshman. So, that was also I guess my introduction to Floyd (laughs). So that was like fall 2014. And then I think I was a facilitator fall 2016, and either 2019 or 2018. So I was a facilitator for like two different periods. I'd never experienced Café La Paz (laugh). De Maria: Okay. Got it. Cool. And what were some instances of activism that you observed from the Cross-Cultural Center during the time that you were there? And I know that you were, you know serving positions as both an undergraduate and a graduate assistant as well. Carreon: Mm-hmm. De Maria: But yeah, if you could just take me through some initiatives that you guys launched or maybe some moments of activism you felt were pretty memorable. Carreon: Mm-Hmm. Trying to think. So moments of activism. Well, I mean the Activist Lab was really a kickstart to our, us being intentional of like having activist programs. And I think that came from the rise of like the Black Lives Matter movement and just what was going on politically. Also with like DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), Trump being (in) administration and like more and more people being involved or wanting to be involved in community. So, I know we had like a Know Your Rights (political advocacy presentation) session and I know we had different like avenues of how to be an activist, cause it doesn't always have to be like out in the streets. I think some of the other initiatives of activism, or at least like intentional activism that I would say, is during the covid pandemic there was, we couldn't do Social Justice Summit. And so it was like, when was this fall twenty, fall 2020? Yeah. ‘Cause I graduated Spring 2021. So, I remember during the fall semester I really wanted to do something called Social Justice Scholars (CSUSM undergraduate social justice program). So (laughs), it was, for me it was more of an intentional group of like eight to ten students. And we were going to have conversations that kind of delved in a little deeper. Like, topics like what does it mean to defund the police? What does abolition, abolition look like? What is an abolitionist framework? Conversation circling like transphobia and anti-Blackness. And for me I think those conversations gave, or that specific--like Social Justice Scholars, which I think still continues to today, provides students who want to be, who wanna just know more in a safe and brave environment. I never had, I didn't have--well I only did it for a semester (laughs) until I graduated. But I think it allows or gives students a space, and there was nothing else on campus on it during that time. And I think also the conversations that I wanted to talk about are very political in nature (laughs), just like any other program that I put on, a lot of them were very political. So, I think the Cross-Cultural Center steering that was very one political in nature, but also just very quote unquote ahead of its’ times because were-- conversations circling like, what does it mean to defund the police and what does abolition mean? And talking about anti-Blackness as global and white supremacy are things that sometimes are hidden or want to be hidden within academia, or/and especially student affairs (laughs). So, I think those are some of the things. But as far as other avenues of activism, would be just inviting more speakers who have an activist framework. And I think paying speakers obviously as well is within itself doing activist work. Transcribed by Aaron Williams 4 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 De Maria: Absolutely. And those programs sound absolutely incredible (laughs). So very cool that you were involved with those and got to experience them and see firsthand what kind of impact they had. And from there I just wanted to ask you what your favorite memory from the Cross-Cultural Center was? Carreon: Mmmm. My favorite memory? I have a couple. Do I have to choose one? De Maria: You could talk about it, you could talk about a couple. I don't mind. Carreon: Oh, okay (laughs). I think one of the favorite, one of my favorite, I had always told Floyd, we need more we need more like art (laughs) in the space. So I think definitely the mural that's now in the center. It took about almost, it took a long time to do (laughs), but it took about like maybe six months, a semester to really you know, paint everything, have it installed. So I think that was one of the favorite memories. And also having like my friends be a part of it. My friend is actually the one that's like hugging himself, (laughs) and he was never really involved in campus until he met me, so it's kind of funny to see now he's memorialized on the wall forever (laughs). I think one of my also favorite parts was doing Social Justice Scholars. I think it was also my last semester. I was writing my thesis. I think it was very like cathartic healing. Every two weeks we would meet with students and, you know I'm really glad that they were able to connect with us, and also collaborating with the Latino (Latin@/X) Center and the Gender Equity Center or the Women and Gender Equity Center. And like Alicia and Laura, because they also like worked, worked on workshops. And what else is my favorite memories? I think like the day-to-day stuff of hanging out with some of my student staff. Those were probably some of my say, good memories. Yeah, (laughs) De Maria: Very fun. And I wanted to go back to something that you mentioned earlier in the, in the interview regarding you kind of mentioned a political unlearning process that you were undertaking during the time that you were at the Cross-cultural Center and that the organization kind of helped you process your way through that. And basically find a sense of enlightenment about it. So I just wanted to ask about that once again, since you have mentioned putting on like political programs and kind of making politics sort of like a focal point of the conversation about social justice. But if you felt comfortable, I'd love to hear a little bit more about what that political unlearning process was like and specifically how the Cross-Cultural Center kind of helped you become aware of it and embark on that journey. Carreon: Yeah. I think my political process of unlearning started with the murder of Mike Brown. So, it was 2014 and I was an incoming freshman. And so, a lot of it was social media at that time, ‘cause I didn't work at the Cross-Cultural Center. So, it was like Twitter and Instagram and Tumblr where I was really in this unlearning phase. And even then I've become a lot more radical in my beliefs. But back then I was eighteen (laughs). So and I was, you know, I was learning. And so it was an adjustment. I think what the Cross-Cultural Center gave me was an outlet to have conversations with people. And I think it's funny because now I'm in my pro--my PhD program in sociology. And I remember always telling Floyd like, “I don't know if I wanna be a professor or if I wanna work like with youth.” Because I was also a middle school AVID tutor during some time I was working at the center. And I think my desire to have critical conversations and help people or advocate for people, listen to people differing opinions of topics is what makes me want to be a sociology professor. And some of my programs, they were all political. I don't think they had to do with like, well they had to do with politics, but it didn't center on politics or policy. I think the first program that I ever did was what it means to be American. But I'm also like, it's been so long (laughs). But I had programs having to do unpacking, like Beyonce's Lemonade Transcribed by Aaron Williams 5 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 album or talking about Kendrick Lamar's album at that time and collaborating with the Black Student Center. I also had programs about gentrification and colonialism, and topics on racism and classism. I also had like the “in” in feminism, like what is like intersection, the intersectionality in feminism. Cause feminism is very, could be very White. So collaborating with like Pride (Center), and I remember I collaborated with the sociology professor at that time as well. So I think my unlearning through the center was topics that I just wanted to talk about (laughs) cause I had my own vested interest in them, but also, who else could I collaborate with? I think that was where the Cross-Cultural Center possibly got more view or more like, “Oh, they're collaborating with other people and like inviting professors and faculty to join us in conversations.” And/or other student organizations and student centers. So. De Maria: For sure. That's awesome. And next I wanted to shift a little bit and actually talk about your studies at CSUSM. I know that you're one of the first graduates of the Ethnic Studies program, so I was interested in hearing more about kind of like the early days of that program and ultimately, you know, how that influenced your current career track and what you're interested in studying. Carreon: Yeah. So I remember it was my EOP, name was Kyle, I think he's at Palomar (College in San Marcos, CA) now. Kyle Owens. Yeah. He, I didn't know what I wanted to do (laughs). I had so many vested interests. I remember I came in as a psych(ology) major and then I changed to poli sci (political science) ‘cause I really was in this unlearning process and I'm like, “I wanna work for the government and change things.” And quickly did I learn, no, I'm just kidding. (laughs). But yeah, quickly did I learn. And then I switched it again and then I was just kind of everywhere. And I remember Kyle Owens told me about like social sciences and how I can have like three degrees in one. And I was like, oh, okay. So my primary focus was sociology. And then my secondary fields are political science and psych. So I had to take a wide variety of classes. And I also decided to minor in Spanish ‘cause I passed the AP exam in high school and I was like, “Oh, I only, I only need four classes. Okay, cool.” And I think I just, I remember I took Dr. (Michelle) Holling communication 485, like Latino Chicano Representation in TV. And that really sparked my interest in wanting to go to grad school. And having her be part of my life and mentorship during that period, that was 2018, fall 2018. And she had told us like, that ethnic studies had been approved through the CSU Chancellor's Office, but it's gonna take a year for it to like, you know, be in place. And during that time I was supposed to graduate. I think it was, I was supposed to, oh no, that was fall 2017 when I took her class. And I was supposed to graduate fall 2018, but I just didn't feel, or spring 2018, and I didn't feel ready to graduate in four years. So that's when I picked up my minor in Spanish. And then I had met with her, and she gave me different courses that would qualify me to be like, that were going to be part of the courses for Ethnic Studies. So, I just started taking extra courses to fulfill the major that still hadn't existed (laughs). So I was taking like five classes. I took a class at Palomar because I had to take Ethnic Studies 101 and SOC (Sociology) 101 already had qualified or, you know fulfilled my other requirements. So it couldn't fulfill this one. So I had to go to Palomar and take Multicultural 101 (laughs) Multicultural Studies 101. And then I took, when did I graduate? Spring 2019. I took seven classes, and a grad course including that one. Just, just for fun (laughs). But really just to fulfill the, the major requirements. And I remember there was a period of time where once the major had been approved December 2018, I was told that I couldn't do it (laughs). Because I had reached, I couldn't declare the major because they said that I had passed the 120 credits or something like that. And I remember talking to Dr. Holling and other people in CHABSS (College of Humanities, Arts, Behavioral & Social Sciences) was like, and I told them, “Well, I've been taking these classes because it fulfills the major” (laughs). So like, why can't--so they did some, some work in the backend and I was able to declare it I think within like two weeks. And then I graduated in the spring semester. So I wish I was--the only ethnic studies course I did take at Cal State San Marcos, like through the Ethnic Studies Transcribed by Aaron Williams 6 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 major was Ethnic Studies 301. So I had already taken Ethnic Studies 101 as Multicultural Studies at Palomar, so I didn't have to take it again. But I wasn't able to take theory or I think at that time they had like three or four other integral, integral classes that students would take. But Dr. Holling was able to just sign off. So. De Maria: I see. So my next set of questions are going to be more about the impact of the Cross-Cultural Center on your life. So a little bit more abstract. But yeah, I just wanted to know how the Cross-Cultural Center ultimately helped you develop and express your cultural identity in the long run? Carreon: Hmm. Express my cultural identity in the long run, you mentioned? LikeDe Maria: Yeah. Carreon: I feel like for me, I've never been like super loud about my culture. I just kind of exist (laughs). I think the culture more so is being like outspoken and being, and like asking questions and asking critical questions and sometimes making people feel uncomfortable with my questions or my beliefs or ideas. So I think that's the legacy of like what the Cross-Cultural Center has provided me. And I've, I've gotten better. I remember Floyd always told me I'm not who I was before (laughs). And I think that's the culture that I still lead with, of just like being unapologetically myself. De Maria: Okay, I see. And regarding the Cross-Cultural Center as it is today, what role do you see it playing as it coexists with the expansion of other identity-specific student advocacy orgs? So, like as other organizations expand, I guess like what do you hope to see out of those relationships? What role do you see the Cross-Cultural Center playing in those expansions? Carreon: Mm-Hmm. For me, I think the Cross-Cultural Center has tried to fill in the gaps of CSU’s, CSUSM’s like limitation in student centers. So specifically for like Asian Pacific Islander students, we have like the Defining Diaspora (CSUSM student workshops) and specific programs. But say like, you know, if the--if Cal State San Marcos approves for an Asian Pacific Islander Center, I think the role of the CrossCultural Center would shift obviously. But I feel like we have, we, or they have worked hard enough to make themselves a distinction between all the other centers, specifically with like Critical Cougars, the Activist Lab and Academe and Me. So, as of, I mean I haven't been at Cal State for two years. De Maria: Right. Yeah. Carreon: So, I don’t know what the other student centers are doing. But I think that the Cross-Cultural Center, because it's not specifically identity-based, can mold itself to different things. And it's both a, a challenge and an opportunity (laughs) because it's like, what are, what can, what else can we do or how can we do it? But it gives us the space to do it. So. De Maria: Got it. Carreon: I dunno if that answered your question, (laughs). De Maria: No, no it did (laughs). And regarding the CCC (Cross-Cultural Center) and its interaction with the student community, what communities on this, on CSUSM’s campus, do you feel are currently underrepresented? Transcribed by Aaron Williams 7 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 Carreon: I mean, indigenous students, I think they’re still less than 1% of CSUSMs, like total student population. I know that the California Indian Cultural Sovereignty Center, and the American Indian major and I think minor, correct me if I'm wrong, you know they're there. But from my understanding, it's they have and the, oh my gosh, AISA, American Indian Student Alliance. I don't know how like, if they're still present. But that was always a factor of how can we bring in conversations, or how can we connect with more indigenous scholars and students. And obviously the population of Black students is still probably, what, three percent? And also like what is Black faculty or administrators, what is the percentage of that? It’s probably lower. And I mean, I know that the DREAMer Resource Office (programs and services for undocumented students) is still on campus. I'm not sure if they're in the same location. I worked at the DREAMer Resource office for about a year and a half, and it was a--it was small (laughs). So, I think, you know, bigger spaces, I don't think Cal State San Marcos really anticipated for how much student centers, or the need for student centers. But yeah. De Maria: Yeah, absolutely. And next I wanted to talk about a little bit about your current career. So I know that you're currently pursuing a doctorate, and have some aspirations to go into education yourself. But did you wanna also talk about kind of what you hope to achieve in the social justice space with your platform and kind of what some of those aspirations are? Carreon: Yeah. So my career goal (laughs), I guess is, yeah, per- like finish my PhD. I do want to go back to the CSU system. I would love to go back to Southern California. If, you know, Cal State San Marcos is hiring at the time, I will be applying. Or even San Diego State or any other like, you know, nearby college. My research interests right now center among understanding and examining the experiences of Latina women undergoing cancer treatment. And I am really interested in this process of emotions and looking at like joy and grief. And I'm looking and I'm wanting to look at identity adjustments, then identity disruption, and identity development through the process of, of cancer. And then the component of familial and community care, and possibly death and dying. But I'm still working through like the nuances of my project. And so, what I hope to accomplish at least with that--and I don't know what my unit of analysis will be like, whether it's going to be like the cancer patient or if it's going to be more so like the family. But something that I've always wanted to do, and this, it's similar to my work that I did for my master's thesis. cause for my master's thesis, I looked at like the mothering experiences of single immigrant Latina mothers, and like their relationship with their children. And so I'm really into this aspect of like emotions and processing and trauma. I think my next, once I graduate and if I have a book contract, I think my book would really center on emotions and care and like healing from intergenerational trauma or death. So I think that's my component to social justice, especially tapping into this concept of joy. I think sometimes in movements, and this is what I've learned through my unlearning process through like Twitter, is that joy needs to be a constant presence in our lives. In constant oppression and marginalization and racism and homophobia and classism, we still have and will need space to practice joy. And joy doesn't always have to be like this grand thing. And that's kind of what I'm hoping to look at in my project with women undergoing cancer. It's like, did I wake up with no pain? Am I able to, you know, eat my favorite meal? Am I able to enjoy time with my family? I think I'm, I'm thinking of joy as more little things. And I think that's also what social justice movements are now more embracing. Specifically I know like the, the concept of Black joy and reading of articles of within people who are trans, and what does trans joy look like? So I think that's kind of possibly what the conversation will transition into, especially when we have been healing through so much. And I say “we” as like Transcribed by Aaron Williams 8 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 marginalized and minoritized communities, especially during the COVID Pandemic, the Black Lives Matter movement, and all these other things that are going on. And it's like, how do we still, how do we still practice joy? And I think maybe, you know, social media played a tool, especially like TikTok and people dancing on TikTok while there was a COVID pan- like while there was a pandemic and thousands of people were dying, and we still found moments to kind of laugh. So. De Maria: Super, super profound and incredible work it sounds like. I want to know what your biggest challenges are in terms of applying sort of like an academic quantifiable study to certain intense and qualitative topics like joy, death, love, and human experience. Carreon: Your question was, sorry, how do I-De Maria: How, how do you kind of apply a quantitative study to concepts like that and what are your biggest challenges of doing that? Carreon: Yeah. A quantitative study. Well currently I'm in a survey methods course (laughs). So, I am actually developing a survey to, it's a pre-interview survey just to get like demographic, demographics of my population and using it as a pilot study for my dissertation. But I do wanna ask questions obviously about emotions. And it's really hard, because I am a trained qualitative researcher. So one, I'm not a quant(itative) person. But it's also hard to quantify emotions. I feel like quant, quantitative research often strips the humanity and people's experiences, and just kind of diminishes them just to numbers (laughs). So it's sometimes hard to translate--or translate that I guess. But I know that numbers are important (laughs), right? It's how we get funding. It's how to make it palatable to larger audiences. And so, I'm still trying to figure that out (laughs). De Maria: Awesome. And I was just curious because obviously the role of data and statistics also plays a huge part in social justice itself and trying to understand, you know, quantifiably where injustices are taking place, or how those injustices are manifesting themselves. So, to me it felt like a very one-to-one comparison of using a quantitative study to quantify those emotions that you mentioned in those cancer patients. As well as how some researchers, you know, have to basically fit statistical models to qualitative issues in, you know, underserved communities and things like that. So, just wanted to explore that a little bit ‘cause it was super fascinating. But taking things back to the topic at hand and to kind of wrap up our interview, I just wanted to know what the most important lesson you've taken from your experience with the Cross-Cultural Center was, and kind of how it impacted you. Carreon: You said my most important, sorry? De Maria: Lesson. Carreon: My most important lesson? De Maria: That you've taken. Carreon: Probably to, pause before I speak (laughs). And to listen. Oftentimes I have learned that people who have very differing conservative you know, or even like radical opinions just kind of wanna be heard (laughs). Sometimes I am not the person to listen, but I can redirect them to someone who wants to listen. But I think my role within, obviously when I was a student, I mean a student worker there, I would Transcribed by Aaron Williams 9 2023-11-28 �DANIELA CARREON TRANSCRIPT, INTERVIEW 2023-04-06 listen. I think, you know, my role now as just someone who would be visiting the center, I could walk away (laughs). But, and even then I can still walk away as, as like now, but also wanting to pursue, you know, a teaching career. It's going, I'm going to get a wide variety of students with different opinions of, of coming to understand sociology. And so, definitely listening and pausing before I speak. I think a tool that I kind of took from Floyd, he would always ask me, “How did you come to that solution?” Or, “What made you think of that? And avoiding the question of, “Why?” And just trying to better understand people. So. De Maria: Awesome. Well, I wanted to thank you for taking some time out today for this interview. I think this is gonna be a great resource for anyone for trying to learn more about the Cross-Cultural Center through the lens of someone who is actually there. So again, this information was indispensable, and I'm really excited to see where your career takes you. And you know, hopefully what you'll be doing for CSUSM in the future to kind of expand the center and hopefully take up even more responsibility for the school. Carreon: Yeah (laughs). De Maria: Awesome. Thanks, Daniela. Carreon: All right. Thank you. Transcribed by Aaron Williams 10 2023-11-28 � 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 A name given to the resource 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 A name given to the resource Carreon, Daniela. Interview transcript, April 6, 2023. Description An account of the resource Daniela Carreon is alumna of California State University San Marcos, where she worked with the Cross-Cultural Center (CCC) and other student organizations such as MEChA (Movimiento Estudiantil Xicanx de Aztlan). In this interview, Daniela discusses her involvement with the CCC, campus changes, and her current work & goals as a sociology PhD student. This interview was conducted in collaboration with the Cross-Cultural Center at CSUSM and generously funded by the Instructionally Related Activities Fund. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Daniela Carreon Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Michael De Maria Aaron Williams Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-04-06 Subject The topic of the resource California State University San Marcos. Cross-Cultural Center California State University San Marcos. Kamalayan Alliance California State University San Marcos. Ethnic Studies California State University San Marcos. Events and Conference Services Civil rights Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán Student movements Psychic trauma Coverage The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant Encinitas (Calif.) Escondido (Calif.) San Marcos (Calif.) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available California State University San Marcos University Library Language A language of the resource English Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource https://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en Rights Holder A person or organization owning or managing rights over the resource. Daniela Carreon License A legal document giving official permission to do something with the resource. 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@csusm.edu if you need reproductions made. Please see the related “Preferred Citation note” for language on citing materials from this collection. Permission to examine Library materials is not authorization to publish or to reproduce the examined material in whole, or in part. Persons wishing to quote, publish, perform, reproduce, or otherwise make use of an item in the Library’s collections must assume all responsibility for identifying and satisfying any claimants of the copyright holder. The researcher assumes full responsibility for use of the material and agrees to hold harmless the University Library, and California State University, against all claims, demands, costs, and expenses incurred by copyright infringement or any other legal or regulatory cause of action arising from the use of the Library's materials. In assuming full responsibility for use of the material, the researcher also understands that the materials they examine may contain Social Security numbers, other personal identifiers, and/or sensitive material on potentially living and identifiable individuals (e.g., medical, evaluative, or personally invasive information). The researcher agrees not to record, reproduce, or disclose any Social Security number or other information of a highly personal nature that may be found. Type The nature or genre of the resource text Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CarreonDaniela_DeMariaMichael_2023-04-06_transcript Cross-Cultural Center oral history project CSUSM history Latine experience Women's experience