University of Wisconsin-Madison Archives
Oral History Project
Interview #1253
Bodi, James (Jim). (1937--.)
Undergraduate, Mechanical Engineering.
At UW: 1955-1961
1st Interview: August 14, 2012
Interviewer: Elaine Ayers
Transcribed by: Elaine Ayers
Length: 55 minutes
2nd Interview: September 13, 2012
Interviewer: Elaine Ayers
Transcribed by: Elaine Ayers
Length: 54 minutes
Start of Interview 1
00:00:00
EA: My name is Elaine Ayers, I’m a staff member at the Oral History Program at UW-Madison,
and today I’m interviewing Jim Bodi by telephone. It’s August 14th, 2012, and Jim, for the
record, can you spell your last name?
JB: B-O-D-I.
EA: Thank you. And can I get your date of birth, please?
JB: 1-16-37.
EA: 1-16-37. And what years were you at UW?
JB: Uh, I went there in ’55, and graduated in ’61. Yeah, ’61.
EA: Okay.
JB: [Inaudible] Okay, hold on—I feel comfortable saying this to you, because it’s all I know. If I
lose this one, I’ll really be in trouble.
James Bodi, #1253
EA: Why don’t you tell me a little bit about UW first, before we start getting into some specifics
about the Primate Lab. Is that okay?
JB: Sure.
00:00:57
EA: Okay, how did you end up at UW? Can you talk a little bit about the path you took to get
here?
JB: Um, I will tell you that in detail.
EA: Okay.
JB: I’ll talk in paraphrases. I grew up in Toledo, Ohio. And uh, I went to high school there, and
was encouraged to go into mechanical engineering by teachers and organizations at the high
school I was at. And uh, then I won a Navy ROTC scholarship—I don’t know if you’re familiar
with that—
EA: Was that because you were a high-performing student, is that why you won it?
JB: Yeah, in fact, I did test for Annapolis and did not make it. But the Navy ROTC sent me to—I
could pick from fifty-two colleges—land grant colleges—and, uh, my drawing teacher said, “I
wouldn’t send a pig to Purdue,” so I just went to Wisconsin because he said so. And uh, I’m glad
I did. Anyway, I landed on the campus here, and I had to go to—I had to find part-time jobs
because I didn’t really have any money. Turns out, I didn’t need any money, really, with the
part-time jobs and eventually the Primate Lab. And uh, and meal jobs. You can get by on meal
jobs, a room, books, and fifty bucks a month. But that’s under a couple thousand dollars.
00:02:56
EA: Do you remember how much you were paying for rent?
JB: Twenty-five dollars for a room.
EA: And where were you living?
JB: Huh?
EA: Do you remember where you were living?
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JB: 240 Langdon Street. 240. And it was a fraternity house, which I joined.
EA: Do you remember what fraternity that was?
JB: Phi Kappa. The building was torn down and rebuilt, uh, using burnable materials and things,
wonder why it didn’t burn down. I would be sleeping on that second floor, and my sheets could
be hanging out the window, and my then-girlfriend, now-wife, walked down Langdon Street to
class and she could tell if I was up or not. So she and her friends said, “that place is going to burn
down,” now, I guess it didn’t. Uh, okay. You got questions?
00:04:05
EA: Yeah, so you knew immediately coming here that you wanted to go into engineering, is that
right?
JB: That’s right.
EA: And do you remember any classes or teachers that sort of stand out in your memory?
JB: Well, yes. During the course of the four to six years, but in the first year—for me, the first
year was whole repeat of college. I mean high school. Because what was general chemistry here
was already taken it—you know so [Inaudible]. Turns out I should’ve. But anyway, uh, favorite
professors—besides Harry Harlow, let’s see. You know, I had kind of a funny passage through
school, because I was moving through the years while the courses were getting more
sophisticated. Somewhat of a strain, but I graduated. If I had to pick one favorite teacher, it
would be Archie R. Shamble.
EA: Shamble?
JB: Yeah. Shamble. “Vehicle Testing” was the course, and I was pretty much inundated with
Navy courses, too. And then uh, going down the Navy route, we had to go on a cruise the next
year—’56—and that was great. Fifty-two days at sea. Went to Spain, Ireland, England, and
Cuba. Stopped at each port, toured the area.
EA: And you said that that was through the university?
JB: That was through the U.S. Navy.
00:05:59
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: Okay. So you actually were in the U.S. Navy then?
JB: Yeah, Reserves. Yeah.
EA: And what years were you in the Reserves?
JB: Well, it was a five year program, but I was there uh, after three years, I decided this wasn’t
for me. And back then, if you just bought a wedding ring, you could get kicked out. Well, I
didn’t buy a wedding ring, but I just said, “I’m dropping out of school.”
EA: Why did you decide it wasn’t for you?
JB: Getting married, or getting a ring, or what? Oh, the—
EA: Yeah, the Navy.
JB: Oh, they were willing to give me fifty dollars a month for books. I guess they gave
scholarships elsewhere, but I did not apply.
EA: So you joined the Navy Reserves mostly for the money?
JB: Sure. [Laughs] That sounds crass. Yeah.
00:07:07
EA: Okay. Were you involved in any other university organizations, committees, clubs?
JB: No, I pretty much time split between the fraternity and studying and going out on dates. All
that rigorous stuff. I don’t know if you know where 240 Langdon is.
EA: Yeah, I do have a general impression of where that is. So you said that you met your wife
while you were going here?
JB: Yeah.
EA: Can you tell me a little bit about how you met her, and maybe what dating was like while
you were here?
JB: Sure, that’s the most fun. I got a blind date with this girl, Judy.
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: [Laughs] It was a blind date?
JB: Yeah, and I could hear in the background, “Oh, it’s Jim!” So we went out, went out together,
and finally we got “pinned,” and uh, in those days in this order you got pinned, engaged,
married, had a baby. Now you can do all those things in any kind of order. And people do. So,
that was [Inaudible]. And uh, anyway, the fraternities there were time-takers, and the sororities, I
suppose, so you know, it did take up a lot of my time.
EA: And was your wife in a sorority?
JB: Yeah, Chi Omega. And she was in physical therapy. Her degree is in physical therapy. Can
you hear okay now?
EA: Yup, I can hear you just fine. So, I see from this outline that you sent that a standard glass of
beer cost 10 cents on State Street? Can you talk a little more about social life, and maybe going
out?
JB: Well, if you belonged to a fraternity, you went to the parties every Saturday night. And
sororities had uh, I forget what you call them. Speaking tours, or speaking parties, something like
that. And we had winter and spring proms, all those things. Things really swung around the
Greek party thing. And after you were pledged and became a regular, you know, higher part of
the fraternity—and I wouldn’t say it’s the best thing in the world to do, because it’s always timeconsuming. What else have I got in the beginning of my write-up here—
00:10:20
EA: Why don’t we go back and talk about your family history a little bit. Can you tell me what
your parents did and maybe where they were from?
JB: Yeah. My mother was from New Jersey—Camden, New Jersey—and was a housewife. And
my father was a union leader—union auto workers. And he was responsible for selling the union
to the workers and then having them join and pay dues. A lot of labor-oriented things, and uh, I
would help him handbill and stuff like that.
EA: And where did you grow up?
JB: I was born in Cleveland. And uh, moved to Toledo when I was in first grade, and lived there
through high school, and stayed there till I graduated in ’55.
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: And your parents encouraged you to come to UW?
JB: Well, they just said, “you’re going to go to college.” They didn’t care where. My dad said I
should be a machinist, because they make more money. Now, I turned him down on that offer.
[Laughs] You know, at the end, my student loan was $700. And, you know, this is the one thing I
wonder about so much, go all the way through school, have a small debt, and , so college was
$2,000 a year. In-state tuition was $200 a semester--$90 per semester. Can you imagine that?
EA: No, I can’t. [Laughs]
JB: And uh, we would go home, in my case to Toledo, and others, to Chicago. Get on a train, and
take the train out of the LaSalle [?] Street station and go east, [Inaudible] Chicago Northwestern,
or Milwaukee Road, and we’d go out of Chicago and the train would stop at Lake Geneva. So we
all jumped off the train and went to the liquor store, and got back on the train and had a beer
party. That was kind of fun. And the rich kids, they went on one of the twelve north-central
airlines, airplanes—they only had twelve planes. And that’s where the rich kids went.
00:13:13
EA: So you said that you were paying for school using student loans, and just sort of working
odd jobs. Your parents didn’t help you out with that?
JB: Oh, for a time there I was getting twenty-five dollars a month from them. I don’t know how
this all happened, tuition suddenly went to $40,000. And beer, I heard—a glass of beer was $5, I
think.
EA: At least.
JB: That seems impossible to me. But I’d cook at the [Inaudible], then went down to the pub
tavern, bought two of us a beer, and I remember clearly they were 10 cents a glass.
EA: Ten cents a glass.
JB: Yeah.
EA: Did you go to the Memorial Union?
JB: I did, you know, for eating or whatever. Bowling. I wasn’t real membership-oriented—you
asked that question before, and I didn’t feel that, well I guess I wasn’t that kind of a joiner. I had
to work too much.
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EA: Can you tell me a little bit about the jobs that you worked before you got to the Primate
Lab?
JB: Yes. Meal jobs were kind of a natural. At sororities, dorms, even the fraternity house I
belonged to. Oh, and I went to—I had a meal job at Grounds Café, you know where that is?
EA: No, I don’t.
JB: Uh, you know where Rocky Rococo’s is on Gilman?
EA: Uh, yes.
JB: Okay. That was a restaurant. A lot of restaurants were home-cooking. And uh, I worked
evenings, I guess I’d get two meals for that. And then I stayed in Madison during the summer
once—well, the first summer, of course, I went on the Navy cruise—and then I stayed in
Madison. Summers I drove cab, and uh, I always worked. Can’t think of where else. But the
Primate Lab, I think I was there two or three years, must have been.
EA: Do you remember what years those were?
JB: What?
EA: Do you remember what years those were?
JB: Oh, yeah. Got there in ’55, graduated from high school in ’55. So [Inaudible] six years. The
summers were pretty much filled in with Navy ROTC, and then I worked at certain meal jobs,
restaurants—this place called the Toddle [?] House on State Street, upper campus, and I worked
there. Oh, this is kind of funny, this is real funny—when I worked at the Primate Lab, I worked
the lunch hour at Peggy Ann’s Café, just right up the street there, on Regent. I think it’s called
the Blue Indigo? I would run over there at noon, and I would just work the half hour. These
people from Quality Laundry across the street, they would go there for lunch, and I would call
the orders in from you know, way in the front of the restaurant—I would yell their orders in. And
uh, I don’t even think we had menus. And then I’d go back. Then, the uh, the one I liked real
well was the Madison Radio Shop. I’d just walk right down to Regent Street, cross the street—I
mean, not across the street, across the street was the restaurant—you’d turn left at the end of, it’s
not Charter, but it’s along the Primate Lab. And uh, I’d hop in there and do their meal job and
go. Then—I’m trying to think of how this worked—they hired a guy at the Primate Lab called
Mobray [?]. He was a [Inaudible] and he was going to bring changes to the Primate Lab.
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EA: Okay. Sorry, can you spell his last name for me?
JB: I’m guessing, but M-O-B-R-A-Y.
EA: Okay.
JB: We called him the Mobrator. And he walked into the Radio Shop and he saw me there and
said, “oh, what are doing here?” I said, “I work here.” –“you get back to the Primate Lab!” He
said. [Laughs] And—I’ll just ramble on here a little bit—yesterday, I did go to the Primate Lab.
EA: Okay, I was going to ask you if you had any impressions about how it had changed.
JB: Yeah, it has changed. And I’m glad, really glad I went. The guy, there—Chris, or something
like that—and a woman, who by the way, was working on a history project, too.
EA: Yeah, they are doing some work over there.
JB: Well, she took my card and told me to expect her to call me.
EA: [Laughs] You’re in high demand, I guess.
JB: Yeah, I guess. [Inaudible]
00:19:25
EA:
So,
do
you
have
impressions
of
how
it’s
changed?
JB: Of what?
EA: Of how the lab has changed since you were working there?
JB: Yeah. My shop is gone. I worked—and the people over there don’t even know what those
rooms were for—Art Schmidt, and his race cars, and his sports cars, they were all fans of that.
After work every day we’d go to the Harmony House and drink beer. And we’d go to a Chinese
restaurant around the square behind the Summit House and drink some more. Then we’d go to
races and all that stuff. Um, so, the Radio Shop I really did enjoy. Because again, this mechanical
thing is the only thing I would be interested in. Before we get done, I’ve got to tell you about a
couple projects I worked on. Would that be interesting—it can wait—
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EA: Before we get into your exact work at the Primate Lab, do you have anything else to say
about your schooling here, were you a good student?
JB: Was I what?
EA: Were you a good student?
JB: Um, I think pretty good for having to work twenty hours a week. Good and well-behaved.
But I got through it.
00:21:00
EA: Okay, let’s move on to how you got started at the Primate Lab.
JB: Okay. Well I only got the job, I don’t know how. I think—oh, Fred Sponholz, does that name
mean anything to you?
EA: Yeah, I think he was the project supervisor at the lab.
JB: He was the photographer. Yeah, he’s the one that encouraged me to come over there.
EA: How did you know him?
JB: Fraternity. Yeah, he was a member of the same fraternity.
EA: Do you remember how old you were when you started working there?
JB: Well, I would have been, um, eighteen, twenty years old. Go fifty years back.
EA: Right. So why don’t you tell me exactly what you were doing at the Primate Lab.
JB: Well, I’m glad I’m doing this project because I understand more now of what I did. Um, I
forgot your question now.
EA: Can you just tell me what you were working on at the Primate Lab?
JB: Yeah. The Primate Lab has monkeys in it. Researching love. And they have terryclothcovered mothers and wire-covered monkeys. And all I thought they were doing was seeing
whether they could come to like the wire mothers if they gave them milk. Well, I guess they
did—they’d go over and they’d get milk, and come right back to their cloth-covered mother. And
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I really did think that’s all they were concerned about, is could the monkey love that cloth
mother. Just because of the food, or vice versa. I didn’t really know, but what they were after—
because those things were just like mass-produced—and I [Inaudible].
00:24:03
EA: So you said that you weren’t completely aware of what the experiments were trying to do at
the time?
JB: Um, no. Not really.
EA: Who were you communicating with, who was sort of giving you orders of what to work on?
JB: Art Schmidt, my boss.
EA: Schmidt, you said? Can you spell that last name?
JB: S-C-H-M-I-D-T.
EA: Okay. And who—do you remember who designed the, I think they were called the surrogate
mothers? Were you in charge of designing those, or were you just building them?
JB: Well, the wire and the cloth ones were simply mass-produced. They were just made by a guy
named Chess, I think. And uh, he also made the cages. Which, the cages are different now. I
didn’t go see the cages yesterday, I didn’t care if I did. And the cages were welded steel, so the
monkey in there. And uh, turned the white noise on. We all thought they were crazy—the
monkeys. I don’t know if you’re aware or not, they’d throw things at kids. Scream at them, I
don’t know. They had a—we’re getting into equipment, do you want to go that way?
00:25:41
EA: Yeah, let’s talk about what exactly you were doing with the equipment.
JB: Okay. If somebody wanted to do some testing and get results, on a wire versus cloth versus
the little baby bottle—probably just run that through their department and set it up, probably. But
those who had some special need, had a more exotic, automated and all that stuff, monkey, they
would go to Art and talk to him about it, and Art was pretty smart. And I would build it. I would
go into the lab somewhere and begin to test. And so the researchers provided the means, have no
doubt about that. Don’t know what else it would be but the researchers, I guess, would look at it.
They were doing a lot of brain work. They’re doing a lot now, but not as invasive. And I had to
10
James Bodi, #1253
go yesterday to see if there was a monkey still strapped in a chair in the lobby of the primate lab,
which was on the west end of the building. Uh, they put that monkey in a chair, and they taped
two copper rods, stick them in the monkey’s ears, so he couldn’t move, and they’d do surgery—
which they still do—they’d do surgery right in the hallway, I guess.
EA: You actually saw that happening?
JB: Yeah, I did, I guess I did. I saw the surgery, and then they’d prop him up in a chair and leave
him there for a week. And they were collecting brain waves with electrical probes. Now,
somehow they go into the brain not quite as invasively. And people kind of laughed at the
monkey, and the animal rights people were livid—in fact I think they were at the time.
EA: Yeah, I was going to ask you if there was any controversy over animal testing, if you were
aware of that at the time.
JB: There was, and why don’t I just describe to you—I wasn’t necessarily in the room with them,
I was in my shop. In the shop, we’ll get to what I built in the shop, I have three examples which I
think would be interesting. But the shop [Inaudible] two buildings on the south side of the big
building, and Art had more of the technical shop, where we actually built mothers that would do
things that the monkeys may or may not like. And I would build something that used microswitches and platforms and relays, and things like that that would make the thing operate.
Perhaps when the monkey sat on it, it would shake him off. So, I cited three ideas.
00:29:29
EA: So you said that you were aware of some sort of animal rights controversies over the
primate experiments, do you remember whether that was coming out in the press, or if it was just
something that was being talked about at the time?
JB: What do you mean?
EA: You said that animal rights activists were livid about the brain surgery conducted on
primates? Do you remember whether that was being publicized in the press, or if people were
just sort of talking about it on campus, can you explain a little bit more about what you meant by
that?
JB: I have no idea. I mean, I heard it through the grapevine from people in the lab. Our contact
was simply with the researcher, and as far as going to make contact with Harlow—I just wasn’t
on his plane at all. He was off doing something besides drinking.
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EA: So it sounds like he was pretty distant and you really didn’t work with him closely at all.
JB: Yeah. Truth is, that’s the way it was.
EA: Did other people at the lab talk about him?
JB: Well, I was probably on too low a level to do that with. They would today.
00:30:53
EA: Well you mentioned that they were doing “love experiments,” and I’ve read a lot about
these sort of terms that Harlow used, like “love,” and, you know, “isolation, social isolation,”
were these terms that were being thrown around, or is that something that you’ve just learned
about later?
JB: They were research tests that were developed in their class work, I suppose, and that worked
at higher degrees. They would develop, put in place, hire somebody to record the data, clean the
cages, and it would just go like that. Um, there wasn’t anything in the newspaper that I knew of.
I didn’t read every paper, but they talked about it somewhat. There weren’t any shootings or
anything.
EA: Did you work with other students or grad students in the lab, do you remember any more
people that you communicated with?
JB: Well those names I gave you. It’s like two generations back. That’s something like sixty
years ago.
EA: Now, under, in this outline that you sent me, you put under “testing equipment” light cues
for the Smithsonian. What do you mean by that?
JB: Oh, that was a reminder for me, of course. I didn’t want to forget it. There’s something else, I
just lost track of it. Um, we had researchers that were working on rejection by the mother. So to
be rejecting mother I built the cloth monkeys, here, and when I built that, I’d take one and I’d put
rods inside [Inaudible] a brass rod. I’d mount those inside the monkey so the rods could come
out. So when the baby monkey would be sitting up there nursing, and uh, I’d build a timer out of
film meter, and I cut holes in the timer so on a random basis, the micro-switch would drop into
the hole and the thing would—the prongs would come out, and in some cases the baby would be
violently shaken, just scaring the monkey off. And there were differences in that, between wire
and cloth. We’d put these things in all different places and see what we’d record. And uh, that
was kind of interesting. Then, oh yeah, in this latest write-up I didn’t put what I did after I left
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James Bodi, #1253
school. So that was the prongs. And then there was one where I had a motor on the bottom , and
it would drop into the holes on the tape randomly—it would shake. We called that the “shaking
mother.” So anyway, the poor thing would be up there nursing, and then every once in a while it
would start shaking like crazy. Let’s see. My favorite one, however, was a monkey—a cloth
monkey mother—with, I think there were six, plastic diameter rods mounted in that area, and the
lights would go on. A red light might mean “turn off the green, and the yellow, and the blue,” or
whatever. When a monkey got—I don’t know if it was six or three, actually—if he would be
commanded to do “one, two, three,” he’d learn that. And he’d pull out one, two, three and light
the lights and a food pellet would drop out, and he’d get a food pellet. [Inaudible]
00:36:02
But I went to Washington and went to the Air and Space Museum, went in there, and I’m
walking along the hallway, and there’s that monkey. Same one! Hanging by a post. I thought,
“Oh my God, I built that!” but it wasn’t, it was much more sophisticated than mine. It probably
cost a million dollars, and mine probably cost a hundred. But it was so eerie to suddenly see this
thing up there, my gosh, you know, you built that? Built the model. And then [Inaudible] the
monkeys trained on, I think they trained on mine. Then they went up in rocket ships. Well, this is
a kind of a thing where [Inaudible] to prepare him for rocket flight. And so the first flight of an
animal was a dog in Russia, can’t remember the name. And then the ones with the—the first one
had no help—had the light mother before he went on the space ship. So, it was a rocket flight of
low level, below the atmosphere, below the gravity pull. And that was—I was thrilled.
00:37:39
EA: Do you happen to know where the funding came from to build the surrogate mothers and the
other funding for the lab?
JB: Well you know, just yesterday I walked by an office and somebody said that had to fill out a
grant. I suppose that’s—yeah, it did, you know. I remember being on a budget in our lab. We had
so many switches, so many lights, so many relays, and we had to use all of it so they wouldn’t be
left in the budget for next year. And so we did. Stocked it away. Art’s dead, I can talk about it.
Does that answer your question?
EA: Yeah, but you weren’t aware of any specific grants you were getting at the time?
JB: No. I knew there were some. But I didn’t know where the money came from. Well, I was
paid by the state. [Inaudible] I probably wouldn’t even know where the money came from. Harry
must have got a lot of it from his tours, his speaking, biographies. Because he wasn’t there much.
Oh, and one thing I built for Harry was an ashtray. He smoked a lot.
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00:39:22
EA: [Laughs] You built him a personal ashtray?
JB: Yeah. I what? I didn’t hear what you said.
EA: You built him his own personal ashtray?
JB: Oh, yeah. Yeah I did. And I was wondering about that, years later. And I thought, “I’m going
to go find that.” So I went down to the office down there, and in the little storage room, which is
just behind Harlow’s office—it’s like a warehouse—and someone took the ashtray off the shelf,
looked at it and gave it to me. I looked at it, and sure enough, I had forgotten what it looked like
even. There were two little ashtrays, and a monkey in the middle. The whole thing was about
seven inches high. And so I went there yesterday, and I said, “I’ve got three things I want to see,
and if I see them, I’ll know a lot. One is, where’s the ashtray? What’s my shop look like? And is
there a monkey in the lobby?” And Helen, the secretary, she took the ashtray. I learned that
yesterday. So I never got to see that. The shop itself is very disappointing. I don’t know who’s
building the stuff, there’s just junk in there. Like a warehouse. Shelves, monitors, just everything
was in there. And I don’t know where they get the cages, but Chess’ shop is not there either.
EA: Yeah, I’m guessing it’s produced off-site now.
JB: Produced how?
EA: Off-site.
JB: Oh, yeah. Could be. Maybe it’s in the building next door. Uh, somebody had better ask me
what I do now.
EA: Yeah, I was going to ask you if you were working on any other engineering projects while
you were working at the lab. Or if that pretty much took up all of your time.
JB: Yeah. That took it up.
EA: And you were still in school while you were working there?
JB: I was—it was between semesters that I worked there.
00:42:14
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: So why don’t you tell me a little bit about what happened after you left the lab and after you
graduated.
JB: Well, I graduated in mechanical engineering and was engaged, got married, and next was the
baby. Uh, I went to work, however, for Oscar Mayer Foods as an industrial engineer, came away
from there as supervising industrial engineer. And I made $510 a month at Oscar’s, and I was
one of the higher paid engineers. And I worked there for eight years, I was area industrial
engineer over floor engineers. And we did all the industrial engineering in the factory. And I left
there after the eight years and went to Graber Company in Middleton, with them. You know
where they are?
EA: Yeah.
JB: Okay. And I was chief industrial engineer at Graber, and I left there in seven years. They
were in shock, people weren’t fired and let go like they are now. So I went to Graber, lived there
for seven years, and pretty much ran the engineering show. And after that, I worked for thirtyfive years as a consultant all over the country. That paid more than $400, $500 a month. And I
would do also work for lawyers as an expert witness. So, you know, I got away from that
position kind of work and in the office there were four of us, at my company. We did mostly
statement processing. Mail, charge card statements, things like that. We sell conveyer systems,
equipment and so on, and pretty much modernized mail industry. Like Ben Franklin. [Laughs]
Then, I retired. [Inaudible] Pretty soon, professors come along, and I’d be glad to work for them
for free. Which I did. And I don’t know if you care, but I do work for Ben Venavega [?].
EA: What kind of work do you do for him?
JB: He uh, he’s designing and building rat cages and mouse cages. And Ben’s a big aspect of the
consulting work, in the legal part, the lawyers.
EA: Now, does the consulting work, did you have to travel a lot for that?
JB: Um, not too much. Lawyers don’t travel. Now, the consulting work, I was basically a quality
engineer. And the job [Inaudible] collect the money, be there. So I didn’t do a lot of traveling.
00:46:24
EA: And how many children do you have now?
JB: Three. Yeah, they’re in good shape.
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: What do they do and what are their names?
JB: Lynn, Lynn Bodi, has a law firm. She’s an owner at a law firm in town here. That firm is
Adoptions of Wisconsin, and [Inaudible] to more legal work, trial work, and at the adoption site
she does that work. Then I have a daughter who’s a jeweler. She does appraisals, sells jewelry.
EA: What’s her name?
JB: Lisa. Lisa Bodi. And she’s done real good. And I have a son, Paul, who works in video
production. He does a lot of camping work, advertising. I mean, you’ve seen his stuff on TV
without knowing it. A lot of that. He displays all the equipment that have on the job site—
generators, cranes, flights, all that stuff. And uh, he’s doing real well. So all the kids own their
own business. They take after their dad.
00:48:10
EA: Now just going back a little bit, I have a couple questions that I had wanted to ask earlier.
Were you involved in the war efforts, during World War II? Do you have any memories of that?
JB: How old do you think I am? [Laughs] I was born in ’37, the war started in ’41. I was four
years old.
EA: Do you have any memories of your parents being involved, though?
JB: Sure. Yeah. My dad came home from Europe in ’41, I believe. [Counts years] So he was
[Inaudible] years old. Why are we talking about this? [Laughs] Anyway, it was very interesting. I
remember rationing and all that stuff.
EA: Oh, you do?
JB: Sure. And then the next war was the Korean War. Next war was the Vietnam War. The war
where some of the fighting was done our soil, with one math researcher who was killed, blown
up, in Sterling Hall.
EA: Yeah, I was going to ask about that.
JB: I heard it at night, that’s all I know about it. I could hear it on the west side.
00:49:39
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: Do you remember the student protests during the ‘60s and ‘70s?
JB: The what?
EA: The student protests on campus?
JB: Yeah. Yes, it’s kind of a funny joke. [Inaudible] out there with a camera, zoomed in on
somebody, and it looked like a mob. That same day I had gotten off someplace and we went to
the University Bookstore, walked out past St. Paul’s, and there were like six, seven, eight people,
and they made it look like a big crowd. But yeah, there were a lot of protests. But I don’t know,
we didn’t—I didn’t—participate. I must’ve skipped the war. Yeah, I did. Yeah—oh, yeah, I
know what happened. I was going to get married. My wife and I went down to the draft court in
Toledo, Lucas County, went in the draft court and you know, we wanted to get married, what do
we do? And uh, the woman at the draft court said, “we don’t hire engineers or school teachers,
and last year,” I mean, “draft engineers or school teachers, and last month we didn’t draft
anybody.” Unfairly, Madison was drafting a lot of people. And I didn’t have any part of that
because I was in the right county.
EA: That’s really interesting.
JB: Yeah. You’ve got a lot of questions.
EA: So do you have anything else that you wanted to get on record? I think we’ve pretty much
covered all of my questions.
JB: Yes, I missed the consulting business. And I got it now. And I missed—on that sheet you’ve
got there I missed the actual research on training devices. It seems like there was more than
three. I’m sure there were more than three jobs. Uh, yeah. I don’t know, can I email you if I think
of something?
EA: Yeah, definitely. So if you don’t have anything else that you want on record, we can wrap
up here if that’s okay with you. Would you like a copy of this interview? I can mail you a copy
of the recording as well as a transcript and an index?
JB: That’d be very nice.
EA: Okay, I can do that.
JB: Yeah. What are you going to do, splice it and tape it and all that?
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: Yeah, we’ll put it on the computer and I’ll transcribe it from there, and after that we create
an index, which is basically a summary that the public can look at to get a summary of what we
talked about today.
JB: Well, this is really going to be online?
EA: Well, you’ll have the record of it online, but people have to come into the archives to
actually hear the interview.
JB: Oh, they don’t take the tape home—you don’t get it on the internet.
EA: No, we’re not doing that yet.
JB: Okay.
EA: But we’ll have your name online, and a record of, sort of a summary of what we talked
about, so that people get an idea of what they’re looking for, if they want to come in and listen to
the interview.
JB: If they want to come in and do what?
EA: If they want to come in and listen to the interview. So, they can see what we talked about
online. And I can send you a link to where it’s going to be online, too, so you can get an idea of
what that looks like.
JB: Oh, that’s great.
EA: Okay.
JB: And I won’t be embarrassed?
EA: [Laughs] I don’t think so. I think we got a lot of really good information.
JB: I’m glad to hear that.
EA: So if you think of anything else, why don’t you go ahead and email me, and I’ll also email
you if I want some clarification on anything once I listen to this again and go through it.
JB: That would be great. I’ll do that.
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: Great. Well thanks so much, Jim. This was really great.
JM: Okay, thanks Elaine.
00:54:18
End of Interview 1.
Start of Interview 2.
00:00:01
EA: Okay, this is Elaine Ayers from the Oral History Program at UW-Madison. I’m talking to
Jim Bodi on September 13th, 2012 in the University Archives. So Jim, the first question I had
regards the primate library, again, these are things that you’ve sent me since our last interview.
So you mentioned that people talked a lot about the behavior of the primates, can you talk a little
bit more about that?
JB: Well, first of all, they penned up in an enclosed place and they can’t see anybody else, so
that’s pretty lonely. And some of them were there for a very long time. Again, lonely. And then
they actually go crazy, sometimes, because they just, it’s not a real good environment.
EA: The isolation?
JB: Yeah.
EA: You also said that there may have been some discussion of whether the primates knew the
difference between adult humans and children?
JB: I’m certain of that. Probably dogs do, too. But you know. But they were pretty loud and
boisterous when a grown-up comes into their cages, at least fifty years ago they were anyway.
And uh, that’s right.
00:01:28
EA: Let’s see. And can you talk a little bit more about the shaking mother monkey that you
created?
JB: Yeah, I was really surprised. At one point you asked for the “iron maiden.” And I didn’t
know what that was. I thought it was a singing group. And then I realized, as I looked at it
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James Bodi, #1253
further, I realized that I had built one of the monkeys for the iron maiden. And I can describe in
some detail how it worked. But I was surprised to find out that that meant a lot to somebody,
because from where I was out in the shop, I just kind of made these things and sent them out
there, and I’d never see them again. So anyway.
EA: Yeah, if you could give a little bit more detail on how it was actually created, that would be
great.
JB: Yeah. Well the original surrogate mother started off as a hardwire—a rabbit cloth tube, or a
monkey with a rabbit cloth tube with a terrycloth towel, and Harry discovered that the terrycloth
towel was the very best. And uh, so, the particular one I was working on, I built it so that there
were prongs made of uh, welding rods, and attached them inside of the body and the one I made
was the prongs that stick out through the terrycloth. And then there she was, all sweet and
wonderful, and the little baby comes over and climbs on her because they love that terrycloth.
And then what I did was I built a [movie-film liter?] that would wrap around and around and
around inside, and there were holes in the liter so the micro switch dropped in, and then all heck
broke loose. The monkey just got wild because as soon as that happened, the prongs came out
like this, and the monkey like this—can’t see this too well on a radio, but—so this monkey that I
made classifies as an iron maiden one, after I read it later. And the prongs and the shaking, and
they did not like that.
00:04:20
EA: Okay, that’s great. Let’s see, would you like to talk about anything else about the Primate
Lab?
JB: Well, I went through it on purpose a few weeks ago. And I was anxious to go in, I’ve been
in there one time before, I wanted to see if my ashtray was there that I made for Harry. It was,
then. It wasn’t now, because Helen took it. Uh, and I was kind of disappointed. The building
looked more clinical than it did when we just had a bunch of college kids running around. We
didn’t have any time clocks or anything like that, so we were kind of really free to roam and do
what we had to do.
EA: And now you need identification to get in, and everything.
JB: Yeah. There’s a man that graduated from the army, got out of the army, Mobray was his
name—Colonel Mobray—and he was going to bring order to this chaos. People were going to
have to come to work on time, and of course the people thought “well, we are, we’re here, and
we’re here early,” maybe. Well, then we had to put in time clocks. In fact, I thought, I don’t
know, “this place is not getting better.” So I went down the street to Madison Radio Shop and
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James Bodi, #1253
got a job fixing radios. Mobray came down to that place, said, “what are you doing here?” I said,
“well, I work here.” “Well no, you know, you work for me!” “Well, okay.” Then I went back and
when I got my next paycheck, I got a $200 raise. And in those days, it was like $1,000. And I
couldn’t figure out why that was. Well, it turned out that in the biennium budget, there was no
slot to put me in, for my particular skill set. So uh, they had to create a new job called Laboratory
Specialist. And I got that, and got $200, and my job didn’t change.
00:06:47
EA: Do you remember what the actual Primate Lab looked like when you were working there?
Because now it has that whole compound with different buildings. Was it just one building when
you were there?
JB: Well, you know where the two sheds, tin sheds are? Alongside, there’s two of them. The first
one, Jess Harris worked in there. He built wire mothers. And the second one, Art Schmidt and I
worked in there, and we did more of the electrical stuff, micro switches and relays. We made
more electromechanical devices. And that’s like saying it’s not computer, computer-driven. And
so those two buildings are still there. And the one building, where I worked, let me think—was
pretty nice, pretty nice tools, and so on. But when we went back down there a few weeks ago, it
was a warehouse. Just junk, just thrown in there. And I don’t know if they have any testing
equipment, I don’t know where they put it. And the guy that was leading me through the tour, I
said, “say, you know there’s a bathroom down there?” “No.” Down at the end of the hall, there’s
a door you opened up, there was a bathroom, and everyone knew where it was, because that’s
what it was used for. Actually it was a surprise to the people working that there was such a thing
there. Why am I making such a big deal about a bathroom? But it was odd, because when I
worked there, it was all very open, and airy, and all that.
00:08:39
EA: Well you said that some of the monkeys were being operated on in the middle of the
hallways, right?
JB: Yeah. [Laughs] Right in the lobby. The entrance was on this end—which is West, I guess—
and uh, the monkey was sitting up in this big chair just locked in place with those two rods in his
ears, and people just walked by and laughed and so on. But there were animal rights people that
didn’t like it.
EA: Yeah. But did those animal rights people ever come and tour the facilities, or was it, did
they only know about it from other people?
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JB: I think that it was just hearsay.
EA: Well, and there’s still a fair amount of animal rights activists that oppose the Primate Center
even today.
JB: Yeah, I’ve read about that. But you know, what Harry’s thesis was, what he wanted to do, he
was interested in studying “love.” And so, he needed to do testing with something. And he
looked around for what animals would work for him, rats, mice, monkeys. Well monkeys would,
because they live longer. And so that’s why they put them in such a special place.
EA: Do you have an opinion on his experiments? You don’t have to give one if you don’t want
to.
JB: Well I didn’t really know what any of it was about. I didn’t know about this love theory. And
you know, that’s when Harry started going in the direction of uh, away from love and toward
“meanness” and the iron maidens kind of thing. That prong thing I made was an iron maiden
concept, and, yeah, I guess that’s about it. I guess you started off asking if it differed from the
cloth monkeys, and the answer is yeah. The cloth was for “love” and all that, but they still had to
test it. And maybe they tested a baby who just was with his mother or in the room with the cloth
mother, love and the cloth mother. So his relationship with the, the baby monkey’s relationship
was very necessary, because they were the ones who were getting the results from the “love” or
“lack of love.” This thing I built, I built a lot of things, but that one just rattled and shook and
made noise. Maybe it’s still here.
00:11:42
EA: I have no idea where it might be. Did you know anything about the social isolation
experiments? I’m guessing those didn’t have as much equipment that you would have been
involved in, but some of his more controversial work were his experiments where he separated
baby monkeys from all the other animals for a long time?
JB: For a long time. Yeah, I knew about that.
EA: At the time, or later?
JB: Uh, I don’t know. Yeah. Maybe it was later, it was fifty years ago.
00:12:18
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: [Laughs] Okay, we can move on to some of your other experiences at UW. Before you came
here, you mentioned that as a teenager you thought you would make a career out of working at a
gas station. Can you tell me a little about that?
JB: Well, I started working in the gas station at age fourteen, and that’s of course how I learned
to drive. Without a license. Uh, I forget what I made. At Pepper’s Garage it was forty cents an
hour. Everybody that knew me thought “you’re a—you can fix cars, you’ll go into engineering.”
And that’s the way it did work out, so fulfilling prophesy.
EA: But going to university instead of staying at a garage.
JB: But what?
EA: But you went to a university instead of staying at a garage, I guess.
JB: Oh yeah. My dad wanted to see me become a tool and [?] maker. Because they made so
much more money. But I’m glad I chose the path I took.
EA: And you said that your teachers in high school encouraged you to go into mechanical
engineering, it that...?
JB: Yeah. And especially Wisconsin.
EA: Because you had to chose a land grant school to go to, is that right?
JB: Yeah. To get the Navy ROTC scholarship. Well, for them, they weren’t going to give me any
money unless I went. And then that brought on my look at the history of land grant colleges.
00:13:58
EA: Well, you brought up the Navy, and I was wondering if you could talk a little bit more about
the summer of ’56, when you went on the Navy ship cruise? I was wondering who else was on
the cruise, what you did on the cruise, and maybe what you did when you docked in the different
ports?
JB: Oh no! [Laughs]
EA: As much as you can remember at least.
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James Bodi, #1253
JB: Every summer there was a cruise. And the first summer I went on it, it was a cruise of
Albany. Well, we went out with the whole flotilla, and we practiced gunnery and shooting
things, planes—small planes—would come in and attack us, we’d shoot it down. Anyway, then
we’d get into a port, first one we got into was Valencia, Spain. It was real interesting. I didn’t
speak Spanish, but from there we found our way to a beach—El Soler—in Spain. To get there,
someone had to teach us a little Spanish. The words were, uh, for beach—“la playa del Soler.”
What, you know Spanish?
EA: A little bit.
JB: Well anyway, they couldn’t understand me. The Spanish people. So, we lived on the ship.
Well a bunch of girls came down to the dock, and they were prancing around down there trying
to find out something, and we couldn’t figure it out. Finally, one of the men did, and it was that
they wanted to know where the dance hall was. Was it in here, the dance hall, inside the ship?
And anyway, so we worked on the ship just like Navy Sealers. And we had regular jobs, and
then during general quarters or when we would shoot at somebody, I was the first mount on the
three inch gunner. I put big three inch shells into the breach, and then I went up there and
“bang,” it flopped off. And the next level up for us were the eight inch guns. And we’d go in,
because it was so loud, and Wisconsin was the only [Inaudible]. Sixteen inch guns. Now those
ones you had to stay in. You could actually see that shell, the sixteen inch shell, you could see it
going over your head. Just making noise like that, it was quite stunning. I remember pulling into
port, and we’d go to parties and dances and special things that Spanish people had for us. Then
we cruised on up to Dublin, Ireland. And from there, took a flight to London, and that was real
good. So I saw both Ireland and London on one stop. And I’ll never, you know, have that
experience again probably. We wound on down to Cuba. You’ve heard of Guantanamo Bay?
Gitmo, we called it. We had to stay in the Navy, it was part of the U.S., I guess, Guantanamo.
And there was a fence up the hill, and there was a hole in the fence, and people that lived down
in Gitmo would come down through the fence, go to the johns on the Naval station. So we had a
lot of fun with the people, too. It didn’t seem like too many—56, 52 days? I think it was 56.
EA: I think you said 52, and it happened in 1956.
JB: Yeah. Okay. We’ll go with that. Nobody will call me a liar.
00:18:16
EA: Did you ever think that that was what you were going to end up doing, staying in the Navy?
JB: Well, I would’ve, but I dropped out of school for a year. And if you do that, they kick you
out, and send you down to Great Lakes. They make it sound like it’s a real big deal, well, guys
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James Bodi, #1253
were buying wedding rings and everything else to wear, and that way they would not be allowed
back. They would kick you out of the program. They’d say, “well, it’s good you paid for three
years, we’ll go for the fourth ourselves.” I didn’t deliberately do it that way, I did have to get out
of school, just because I had to work. And, anyway, that was—oh yeah, the next—there was
another cruise, and that was at [Mullercreek?] Virginia. We trained with marines. Then we flew
in helicopters and all that. We invaded Virginia with our LCDP, which I drove, like that. Then
we went on down to Corpus Christie, Texas, that was a lot more fun. That was at the Corpus
Christie Naval Air Station. And from there we flew to Valencia—no—flew to um, flew from, I
can’t remember the name of the base. But anyway, we went to another, a city in Spain and got
thoroughly lost in Valencia. But we learned to fly a plane, that was the thing. That was neat. So
we flew in a T33 jet trainer, and we each took turns, and by those standards it was a jet fighter
plane. But it would be pretty old-fashioned by now. And from there we flew in a Martin-Marlin
Bomber. There were twelve [Inaudible] on the plane, and we each took a turn flying it. What we
had to do was come down and drop our bomb on a submarine. Well, it was two cans in the water,
300 feet apart, and that was the submarine. So the pilot said, well I was in the left-hand seat, said
“You go down about 300 feet, and then go with that bomb, and drop the bomb,” which was just a
dud. But before that, I realized, “I’m going to go below 300 feet,” or 300 feet above the Gulf of
Mexico, and so I just rolled her over—the wheel over—so that the plane would go in that
direction. The pilot said, “My God, I’ve got a wife and kids at home!” I thought really, well I
thought he’d fix anything. Well anyway, we came back and, I don’t know what what else we did.
We did Corpus Christie. It was actually fun, I mean, when you go through something like that,
you only think of the good things. I mean like, back on the Albany, we were just, it was dirty,
filthy, and sweaty and everything, but now when you look back you say, “Boy, that was really
neat.”
EA: Yeah. And there wouldn’t be any women on those cruises, were there?
JB: [Laughs] No. There is now, but yeah. No, I don’t think so.
00:22:19
EA: Okay. The next event I think is worth discussing that you emailed me is the death of your
friend, Charlie Moore, during a boxing match?
JB: Yeah. Well, we had boxing at the university. And he was hit in the head enough times that
he, well, he got knocked out, and he died.
EA: Do you remember when that was?
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James Bodi, #1253
JB: Well it would be—I came here in ’55—’58, ’57? Yeah, that was sad. I knew the guy pretty
well. And it’s no surprise that boxing got dropped from the program. You don’t see it anymore,
at all universities.
EA: So was that a pretty big scandal on the university campus at the time?
JB: Well I don’t know, we just took it like it was, I guess. Probably went to the hospital and died.
00:23:22
EA: That is really sad. Okay, you also sent me a list of what you consider to be the milestone
changes at UW during your years, do you want to go through those? I also wrote them down, if
you—
JB: Yeah. Well, just to fill up the paper, I thought about what struck me as we roll through this
many years. And so I just started at the beginning, and put down—
EA: Yeah, first you have Harlow’s research using surrogate mothers.
JB: Yeah, that was a [Inaudible] I mean, it happened, and was very good. Oh yeah, I don’t know
if you even know this, but the football stadium is ten feet lower than it used to be. The seats are
shaped at an angle. If you dropped it ten feet, you’ll eliminate the track. And so that was kind of
a pivotal thing, they didn’t do that every year. I mean, all of these were kind of just thrown out
there for you to see. Um, this really strikes me—that tuition increased from $90 an hour to
whatever it is. What is it, around $10,000?
EA: Uh, well I know that I’m paying about $13,000 a year to go here.
JB: That’s incredible.
EA: For in-state tuition.
JB: In-state? Wow. I was right. A year? [Inaudible] Well that’s just nuts. And if I, uh, I lived part
of the time in a fraternity house. And I paid $25 a month for the rent. And I always had meal
jobs. So actually, if the Navy gives you $50 a month, I paid $25, yeah, so I got my books paid
for, which were only about $35.
00:25:39
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EA: And you were supporting yourself in college, right? After the Navy ROTC scholarship ran
out.
JB: Yeah.
EA: Through meal jobs mostly?
JB: Meal jobs, drove cab, worked at the Primate Lab. Pretty good pay.
EA: Do you remember what you were getting paid there? Approximately.
JB: No, I remember when I—let’s see. One time, I got my paycheck at the Primate Lab, that’s
what it was, and there was $200 more than I normally got. And so I went to my boss, and I said,
“What’s going on?” Well, did I tell you this already?
EA: A little bit, yeah.
JB: Oh, well I’ll start over again. [Laughs] So anyway, that helped, that increase in pay at the
Primate Lab helped a lot. Because the pay scale for any student work was about $1.25 an hour.
That was it. But you know, we didn’t come driving into town with a big trailer behind us, either,
like the kids do now, full of stereo equipment. Even my kids did that. Buy cars.
EA: Well, rent has gone up quite a bit, too.
JB: Yeah.
00:27:05
EA: You mentioned, I forget what it was called, but there was a café sort of across from the
Primate Lab, that’s now Indie Coffee? Did you work there?
JB: Yeah, but it was Patty Ann’s Café. That was a neat job, because at noon, Quality Laundry,
which is now a bicycle shop, all the women in there ran over to Patty Ann’s, I ran down to Patty
Ann’s, we didn’t have a menu or anything. I would call orders in the whole length of the
restaurant. Like, “Swedish meatballs, child’s portion.” We’d just yell down there, “Child’s
Swedish meatballs,” or something like that. And those women in there, they got their food, half
an hour—boom, they were out. Place was dead. That’s gone through several name changes.
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EA: Well, I can tell you that it’s pretty much the same at Indie Coffee now. Everybody from the
Primate Lab goes there right about noon, and stays there for about 20-30 minutes, and runs back
to work. Including myself. [Laughs]
JB: You eat there, too, then?
EA: Yup.
JB: Well, back when they had home-style cooking they would brag about it with signs up there.
So Bob [?] made meals, meatballs, roast beef, you know, things like that.
EA: Yeah, now it’s mostly sandwiches and soups, and kind of fast stuff like that.
JB: I would’ve rather had a hamburger. When the football season was on, we put out a different
menu, you know, for 50% more, higher than it was during the football season. But then directly
across the street was the Radio Shop. That building is still there. And that’s the Radio Shop that
where I worked for Ken Clark, who’s dead now.
00:29:08
EA: The next thing on your list after tuition was the student population growing so much.
JB: Yeah. I really thought that it was a lot, to go from 17,000 to 42,000 or whatever it is now.
And I don’t know if that’s because of grad school or what.
EA: Well the undergrad class is, you know, now it’s about 10,000 students in each undergraduate
class.
JB: Okay.
EA: Let’s see. You also talked about the money spent on the construction of new bridges?
JB: Of bridges? Of anything, not just bridges. Did I—alright, oh, that’s on the list. Never mind.
Where is it?
EA: It may have been on one of the older lists that you sent me.
JB: Is this the one of the university spending a million dollars every Monday? That’s kind of
figuratively speaking. Uh, that was a lot of money, and a million dollars is a lot of money, and
doing it once a week was just, that’s why there are so many buildings.
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EA: Right. Uh, and then you also mentioned that enrollment no longer required that you knew
how to swim? Did you have to take a swimming test when you enrolled here?
JB: Yeah. That’s right. No, maybe boys didn’t. Yeah, let’s say they did. You had to know how to
swim.
EA: [Laughs] I’ve never heard that before.
JB: You never heard? I make a statement about girls, women, ladies, about phy. ed. also. The
last—second to last—item.
EA: Were you required to take phy. ed. classes when you went here?
JB: Oh yeah.
EA: Did you get to choose which ones?
JB: Yeah. If you didn’t know how to swim, you had to take swimming.
EA: Okay. Did they give you a swimming test or something, is that how they--?
JB: You had to swim the length and back or something, that was the test. Um, but about the
women—that was, we’d go through a physical exam at the armory, and the women were
examined by medical students. And they were—they had nothing above the waist. And my wife
can tell you that. She had to go through that. Gross.
EA: And they had to take phy. ed. classes? What, do you know if there were—was it different
sports, or how did that work?
JB: For guys it was, I don’t know what it was for the women. But I took bowling, badminton—
bowling and badminton and tumbling maybe? Maybe that’s all it was, bowling and badminton. I
think it was a quarter, so I think I took two years. Oh boy, what a memory.
EA: [Laughs] I’m happy that that isn’t a requirement anymore.
JB: Which one?
EA: Any phy. ed.
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JB: Okay. The physical or the--?
EA: Any of it. I didn’t have to take any phy. ed. classes here. I’m pretty happy about it.
JB: Because you had them someplace else?
EA: No, it’s just not a requirement. I’m not very sporty.
JB: Well, that’s smart. Golf, that’s the one I took. So if I can name three of them, bowling, golf,
and...
EA: Badminton, you said.
JB: Yeah, and there must have been a fourth which I can’t remember. I could’ve looked at my
transcript before I came. I could’ve given you my transcript!
EA: We could’ve checked your grades.
JB: [Laughs] Yeah, no thank you. I’ve got to throw that away.
00:33:39
EA: Is there anything else you want to add about your undergrad here before we move on to after
you graduated?
JB: Um, I liked what we were doing in undergrad school. And the coursework in mechanical
engineering was tailored around a lot of cookbook courses. And as I took six years, and as we
moved through the process, I was starting to catch up with calculus, and differential equations,
and things like that I wouldn’t have had to do if I had gone four years. But you couldn’t go four
years for the same reason you can’t now—you can’t schedule very well. So, I liked it because the
formulas were, oh say, for a pipe-full of water, there would be so many cubic feet times
diameter, divided by 144, something like that. But, as time went on, I started getting into courses
that would require differential equations and blah blah blah. It was harder. But I made it.
EA: And you got pretty good grades?
JB: I wouldn’t say that, but I passed. [Laughs] Oh, that’s a point I should’ve put down. Back
then, let’s see—how does it go—a B is equivalent to a C. If you get a C—B—if you get a C,
well, you must know the answer to that. You’re graded higher now. So if I was a C student then,
I would probably be a B student. One is because the TA’s want to do well also, and the way they
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do well is to get better grades out of the undergrads. And so, I didn’t care, but it’s reflected on
my grades going forward. But it didn’t matter, because I got through anyway. And uh, there’s
someplace I stayed that—the chain of events that went through, before you got married and had
the baby, that’s exactly the way it happened. As opposed to the way it was when I was an
undergrad. Pretty rigid coursework. And the other thing is, we didn’t have a lot of foreign
students. Or many at all. And so we could understand their English better. And then, you know,
they’d teach them English. A lot of people complain about it, so I don’t feel biased or prejudiced.
It’s just the way it was, back then. I think we solicit students from other countries because
they’re so willing.
00:37:10
EA: Do you remember if you were required to take English classes, or classes that were outside
of your major?
JB: Sure. Yes.
EA: Did you have a good time with those other other classes, or--?
JB: A good time, you said?
EA: Yeah, did you do okay in them, did you like your English class, or whatever else you had to
take?
JB: I loved it. History of the West, that was my favorite.
EA: Do you remember who that was taught by? It’s remembering back kind of far.
JB: No. Not a one of them. I remember the social—well, that’s right, I dropped out of
engineering and went to undergrad—went up the hill courses, you probably do too, don’t you?
EA: I don’t know what that is.
JB: Bascom Hill.
EA: Oh, okay.
JB: So, I took a semester’s worth of hill courses—Psych. 1, then I don’t know, they’re all
numbered different now. Psych. 1, Soc. 1, I think English literature might have been one of
those. I took, I can’t remember all the courses. I should’ve looked at the transcript. [Inaudible]
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00:38:31
EA: Okay, do you want to move on to after you graduated?
JB: Sure. I can remember most of that!
EA: So, would you explain a little bit more about your engineering company?
JB: Yeah. I worked at Oscar Meyer for eight years, and then I became a supervising industrial
engineer over for “IE’s.” And we would go out in the plant and do things to make things better,
and safer—
EA: Kind of quality control, things like that?
JB: Well, quality control, standards—labor standards—and I was there for eight years, then I
decided to move on to Graber Company in Middleton. I was there seven years. And I decided to
quit. So I bought a Laundromat, this is straight North—South of here. On Orchard. And I also
bought a couple of apartment buildings. I had gotten some money and was able to parlay into the
consulting job. And so I hired, over a few years I hired three engineers. We traveled all over the
country, sometimes Canada, and we did facility planning projects, a lot of statement processing,
mail, we modernized the mailing systems in large companies. I can’t remember all of this, I
should’ve brought a list. But yeah, large companies like IBM and Xerox and [Inaudible] Family
Insurance, which was a small one for us. And we had a methodical way of figuring out, when
we’d go in there, I’d go with the engineer, we’d all go in there, I’d go back and write it up, and I
don’t go back till it’s time to present it. And they had to travel back and forth. Right now, when
people look for cheaper fares because, for whatever reason, they can get them—we didn’t care.
We’d go to a meeting in St. Louis or Dallas, from here, go to the meeting at 10 or 11:00, have
the meeting, and come home that same day. Not too many people can say they travel back and
forth in one day. It was nice when we’d find someone who would lease a plane, because they
weren’t very expensive. They still aren’t. And like three or four people will pay the cost of a
plane, a small plane, and there you don’t have to go to other airports. You could go from here to
Missouri, and do your work, and come back in a couple hours. A lot of people don’t know that,
and they don’t do it as a result. So, let’s see. Okay, and we’ll stay with that. The consulting
engineering. I would say we were the only ones in the whole country that had the breadth of
knowledge that we had in the document processing aspect. And that’s what it was called.
Document processing. We did other engineering things, but the highest percentage would be
document processing.
00:42:37
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James Bodi, #1253
EA: Yeah, and then you also said that you were an expert witness?
JB: Yeah, that’s fun. Yeah, if a lawyer—if a guy gets sued, let me think. Well, I’ll just name one
that’s nearby here, there’s a roundhouse on the corner of Regent and Washington. It was a
roundhouse, I think it’s gone, now it’s a great big patch of gravel. Well, this guy fell off it. There
wasn’t any railings. Hurt his back. I mean, they were all like that—get hit by a forklift truck,
loading docks, [Inaudible] falling on you. So these things happen, and of course the plaintiff
sues—brings a suit against the company, and that company’s lawyer goes out and hires a lawyer.
Well, it got to be kind of bad, because these storefront lawyers would go in and settle a case for
$90,000, the guy would get his fee of a third—the lawyer—that’s 60, and he’d take the third, and
you’d have to pay for the other side’s experts. And by that time, the plaintiff got not very much.
But I enjoyed it, because I was charging a lot of money. You know, it was good pay, I mentioned
$200 an hour—that’s pretty nice. But something happened in this industry of plaintiff lawyers.
They started losing. Now, what happened is the company started to persevere and move forward,
and fight the case, bring in very expensive experts—including me, sometimes—only to lose it
because of all that. So the lawyer lost. And they spent all that money, on me and everyone else—
I mean, I’d go to Dallas, take two days to do my job, [Inaudible] make $32,000 for that, at $200.
So, but that’s good. But retired engineers try to move toward that kind of work, expert work.
00:45:29
EA: Now, you also mentioned that real estate was a growing business in the 1980s, and you just
said that you bought a Laundromat and a couple other buildings. Uh, do you want to talk a little
more about that, and maybe where the buildings were?
JB: Well, things have really changed since then—the early ‘80s, because things were cheaper for
one thing, and inflation was high enough that it would increase the price of properties, so you
could get an apartment building that cost $100,000—let’s say you had to put a down payment of
$10,000. So you had the $10,000 down payment, which gets you to buy a building, carry a loan
against the $90,000 and in year’s time, inflation—the price index was going up anywhere from
10% to 19%, compared to what it is now, 0 practically. Well, if you bought a building for
$100,000, you put $10,000 down, that’ll increase in value because of inflation, to...
EA: [Laughs] Sometimes the lights go off when nobody’s moving around. There we go.
JB: Uh, you could buy another $100,000 building, because now you’ve got another down
payment. People could just grow their holdings like crazy. Then that kind of fell apart, by that
time I had sold everything.
EA: So you were buying the buildings and reselling them?
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James Bodi, #1253
JB: I have, yeah. And it’s kind of sad about that business of [Inaudible] because they’d break
their heads to clean the apartment, I’d have to clean it, and they wouldn’t get their security
deposit back. Too bad. Some landlords took the attitude of well, if it’s clean enough for them,
it’ll be clean enough for them. The Laundromat was kind of neat—do you know the Laundromat,
by the way? Let’s see, you’re on Wilson Street aren’t you? I remember that from the letterhead.
Um, well, let’s see, if you walk straight that way on Orchard Street to Mound Street, it’s on the
corner of Orchard and Mound. Anyway, a Laundromat in those days—a 75 washer
Laundromat—cost 35 dollars an hour, around $3,000 for the dryers and everything. That was an
incredible amount of money. Was it $3,000 a machine, with the plumbing and everything? Yeah,
I guess it was. Okay. So uh, there’s a guy that owned the building, he owned a grocery store.
And he ran that, and I leased the Laundromat from him, the space. And Ray came up and said—
he was a Laundromat owner—he said, “Well, my rent’s going to be up pretty soon, why don’t
you just make up a lease and I’ll sign it.” And I said, “Ray, I’ve got to tell you something. I’m
going to run the Laundromat.” And, “Well you are?” he said. Well, I could’ve just walked out
and bought new machines, but I went to his tavern on Williamson Street and went in there and
Ray Cook was on one side of the bar, I was on the other side, and I said, “Okay Ray, give me a
piece of paper and write down a number.” This is really the way to deal. “Write down a
number.” So I wrote $5,000—no, how did I do that? It doesn’t make much difference. I put
down $7,500. Rolled it over like that. In this case, he put down $10,000. Now I was 5, he was 10,
we said, “Okay, let’s meet in the middle.” So we had this Laundromat for really cheap. Oh, then
this Laundromat on Park Street closed, and they auctioned off all the stuff. So I had new dryers.
Some of those washers were 1960—that would be way back, fifteen years. So anyway, I owned a
Laundromat, and it was really a money maker. Probably because I didn’t spend any money
buying it. And then I owned apartment buildings that were [Inaudible].
EA: Do you remember where those were?
JB: On Russett Road, on Meadow Wood, on Allied Drive. Oh, that was rough. It was a rough
area, and it’s getting rougher. So yeah, Allied Drive was just a mix of people. But anyway, there
were some students there actually, that took a bus into town. That was it, and I got rid of them as
soon as I could, because I was getting tired of it. I’d rather do consulting than—which I did.
That’s what I did. So I owned those few buildings and the Laundromat, got rid of them, and went
into consulting.
00:52:17
EA: Well, that is pretty much all of the questions that I had written up for today. Is there
anything else that you want to get on the record?
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James Bodi, #1253
JB: No.
EA: I guess one question that we sometimes ask people is whether you have noticed any change
in students today versus when you were a student. That one is a little hard to judge, I guess, but...
JB: Well, not real hard, my kids both went to university. That wasn’t that long ago. Um, but I
can’t think of anything. [Laughs] Well, student behavior, I guess you’d have to say that,
including the stadium—football games—we never did anything like that. Throw stuff around,
call each other names, all these things. I have a raspy voice for some reason, is that affecting this
program?
EA: I think it’ll be fine. It’s better to have it be a little bit quiet, because we can raise it up on the
computer, rather than having it be too loud.
JB: So what’s the chance that you’ll want more?
EA: Sorry, what?
JB: What’s the chance you’re going to want me back?
EA: If you think of more things that you want to add, you’re welcome to send them along.
JB: Email them to you?
EA: Yeah, that’s fine.
JB: That’s all I know about anything. [Laughs]
EA: [Laughs] Your entire life history.
JB: Yeah.
EA: I’m going to stop recording.
00:53:46
End of Interview 2.
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