Ben Lewis Interview - 2/06/2002

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Earl was a great person. I loved him and appreciated him. I’m just sad that I didn’t have more work with him. He worked directly with Ernest Wilkinson and I worked directly with Ernest Wilkinson but Ernest didn’t bring the two of us together very often.

Could you tell us a little bit about what your job was?

My job at the university was everything except the academic. In other words, I had the responsibility for the expansion of the university in terms of all of its physical facilities. I bought several hundred pieces of property when I came to the university. I was put in charge of the food operation a couple of days after I landed here because I had been with the Marriott corporation in Washington D.C. which is a food operation. But I was not a food man. I was the budget director there. So mine was in the area of finance mostly. So I had the food, I had the physical facilities, I had the purchase of all the properties that the university needed to have to expand the university, I was in charge of the master planning of the university of the development of the buildings and the facilities, and then all the business operations, the financial side of the picture.

What years were you there?

I was there from 1952-1979.

When was Wilkinson there?

He started in 1951. He and I had known each other in Washington D.C.

I believe our grandfather started in 1957.

Yes he came from Colorado. I remember the time that he came. I had not been acquainted with him at all. But he came and was put in charge of the academic side of the picture dealing with the professors and the hiring and firing. When I say hiring and firing, we didn’t have a lot of firing. The hiring and dealing with the faculty and that was not my job. But we had all different kinds of business. We were in the housing business. I had responsibility for the development of the housing. When I first came here all of the housing buildings were war surplus buildings. So we had the problem of getting rid of them and getting permanent buildings. That was part of my responsibility. I worked very closely with Ernest Wilkinson. When he’d go to the Board of Trustees meeting I would often go with him but in those meetings I don’t ever recall that Earl Crockett went to any of the ones I attended because we were always talking about money and how do we get approval for this building or that building. We talked about budget matters. We’d have either the responsibility for putting together the budgets for the university, which would have involved the academic but that came from the academic to our operations as a kind of summary. I didn’t have responsibility for putting that together.

What about in 1964 when Wilkinson was gone, did you have more to do with Earl then?

I had more except that he was more of a caretaker. He didn’t promote a lot of things while Ernest Wilkinson was gone. He wasn’t promoting anything. I was spending a lot of time in Salt Lake at the Church Office Building getting approval on things but not on any new construction.

What do you think would have happened had he won that position?

Had he won that position I think they would have gotten a new president. I don’t think they would have had Earl Crockett as the new president. I need to be careful how I say this but Earl Crockett was not one that was a dynamic pusher on his assignment. He was very competent, very capable. But he was not the kind of a person that would promote new deals or go to the Board of Trustees to promote something. That was what Ernest Wilkinson spent his time doing, fighting for something. My impression was that the Board of Trustees would have probably gotten someone that was more dynamic in terms of the development of the university. That doesn’t take anything away from Earl Crockett because he was a fine, good, substantial brother. But he was kind of a quiet administrator, if I can say it that way.

Are there other contrasts you can think of between the two of them?

They were different. They were quite different. There was another vice president too and that was Harvey Taylor. He was there at the same time Earl Crockett was. Harvey Taylor might have been selected as the president. I don’t know. We were not looking for any new presidents. There were certain members of the board who did not what Ernest Wilkinson to come back. And they were not happy about his coming back but he had had a commitment by the First Presidency that if he didn’t make it he would be brought back as the president of the university. That I know because I sat in on the meeting where that decision was made.

Why did some people not want him to come back?

Let me preface that with this kind of a statement. I have always felt that every president of this university are selected because the Lord wanted them to be there. I always felt that Ernest Wilkinson was selected because he came at a time when he was needed to build a great university. He had commitments from the First Presidency that if he came, they would support him. Now some of the brethren thought that he was going to bankrupt the church. He was not always in the favor of certain individuals on the Board of Trustees. But he was always in the favor of the First Presidency. I say that based on my personal experience in the meetings I attended. But Ernest Wilkinson was a dynamic pusher. He expected others to work as long and as hard as he did. There weren’t very many people who were willing to do that. That was particularly true of most of the academic people. He didn’t always sit well with them because he expected them to spend their time at the university rather than doing a lot of other things which the academic people had a way of doing. I’m generalizing now because it differs with individuals. I’ll give you a kind of illustration. There were certain of the professors that wanted money for their programs and they would ask for money from President Wilkinson. But too many times they wouldn’t spend time putting together a justification. Frequently I remember hearing Ernest Wilkinson saying, “They don’t understand that just asking for money isn’t going to get them money. They’ve got to justify it.” And when he’d go back on some of these people to say, “Look, you’ve got to make a case for what you want” some of them didn’t have the ability to do it so they didn’t always get what they wanted. So certain of the faculty were not always sympathetic to Ernest Wilkinson. Now I think they were sympathetic to Earl Crockett. He got along well with the faculty members.

Why do you think that was?

I don’t think he was pressing them like Ernest Wilkinson did. Ernest was not the kind of a person to spend a lot of time just talking. He was a man of action. There was a quite a difference in the way the two of them approached problems. Now I don’t say that one was better than the other. I just say they were quite different.

Do you know the background behind which Earl was hired? Was it Wilkinson’s idea to hire him?

I think Earl was recommended to Ernest and I think he’s the one that made the decision about it.

Do you have any fond memories of him? I know your wife was saying how punctual he was, how he always wanted meetings to start on time and she was talking about that as an impression of him. Were there any impressions that you had of Earl or of certain characteristics he had?

He and Harvey Taylor and Ernest Wilkinson met together quite often and I was not in those meetings. Harvey Taylor was given the responsibility by President Wilkinson to deal with Hawaii and eventually Ricks College. I was in very few meetings with Earl Crockett. That may sound strange but my dealings with Ernest Wilkinson were on the side of developing the facilities.

From your limited experience with him can you describe what you think he was like?

Well he was a man of character. He was a man of integrity. I had a great appreciation for his ability to deal with his area and take care of his responsibilities. I don’t think he liked any kind of conflict. I think he avoided conflict. I don’t think he wanted any conflict with any of the faculty or any of the deans.

Do you have any stories you can think of that illustrate that?

No, it’s more of an impression. In the later years of my assignment at the university I had a much closer contact with the administrative affairs of the university but that was after Earl was gone. I was a the Stake President of the same stake that Earl was a member of. Earl did not hold any major church positions.

He was on a high council on a BYU campus ward.

I think that’s true. My contact with BYU was that they were always taking our men. I went through the early beginnings of that. I suggested there be a discussion of who was to be taken before they just came in a took them. We had one ward up there where we had thirteen bishops. One bishop of the ward and twelve that were on BYU. That was a problem. I served for sixteen years as a stake president during my time at the university. Once the men got on BYU campus I lost track of them from a church standpoint.

Were your offices close together?

They were on the same floor of the same wing. His was down at the end of the hall and I was right next to the President’s. We had occasion to see each other. It was always a very pleasant relationship. I have nothing but highest regard for Earl Crockett. We just didn’t have much contact with our respective assignments. We never had any kind of conflict. He was not after my job and I wasn’t after his.

Were there any controversial things during the 50's and 60's that Earl might have been involved with?

One of the most controversial things was with the blacks. You see at that time the blacks didn’t hold the priesthood. We had conflicts that were with other university and with the black people?

Was it an issue with them being accepted at the university?

It was mostly in the field of athletics. The black folks didn’t want to play BYU because BYU was white. Back in those days there were certain members of the Board of Trustees that were not sympathetic to recruiting blacks to Brigham Young University because of the stand of the church with respect to the priesthood. I say that because that wasn’t true with all of the members of the Board of Trustees but I’m aware it was true with a couple or three who held very responsible positions in the church and who were brought up on the idea that the Lord didn’t want it that way. That was a major conflict. The Vietnam War was another area of conflict. The students were rising up against everyone and everything.

I imagine things were a bit calmer at BYU than at other universities.

Yes but there were enough students that had associations with other universities that they thought they should be uprising too. That became a major conflict at the university. That was one that Ernest Wilkinson had to deal with because he wasn’t going to compromise very much. You would either shape up or ship out. He was a great soul but he had a lot of people that were not in favor of him. The reason I got along well with Ernest Wilkinson is he and I had an understanding. I had a great respect for him. I knew what he wanted to achieve for the university. I didn’t always agree with the way he went about getting it but then that was his way of doing it. It was my job to support him. I didn’t have any trouble supporting him. So he and I got along, I think, quite well. When it was time for his funeral his family invited me to be one of the speakers at his funeral. That wasn’t true of any of the others. I only say that to indicate we had a good working relationship.

Thank you for your help.

I appreciate your coming by. I think it’s just great that you’re putting together a 100 anniversary book. I wish someone would do that for me.