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(This interview was conducted over a conference phone call. As a result, the sound quality differs from the other interviews.) Lord Discusses Boyd Coffie (Play Audio) Lord: Probably the most influential person on my-I was very involved with athletics. I was the manager for all of the basketball, baseball, and soccer teams. And I got to know Boyd Coffie at the time when I was a freshman he was the basketball coach and he was also the baseball coach and Boyd became the most meaningful person in my-I had lost my dad at the age of fifteen. And Boyd had become a great mentor for me throughout my days at Rollins. Then when I cam back and worked at Rollins in the eighties, Boyd was a close friend and he and he and I often-‘cause one of the things he was into was fitness and taking care of yourself. Boyd probably saved my life because he got me into a fitness regime and caused me to lose a lot of weight and his whole philosophy about life was something I carried on throughout my life.
Ritter: Now, Mr. Lord, Thad had been telling us that there was (door closes) something-something different that happened with the furniture delivery for the library. Can you tell us that story? (Play Audio)
Lord: Yeah, a very interesting-of course-at the time I was working as the business manager and one of my responsibilities was for purchasing. So, I was responsible and when the truck backed in for all the furniture for the Olin library and they opened up the back door and I looked in and it was all the wood end panels, the tables, the chairs. The wood was the wrong finish color. Uh they had painted it-of course my first thought was I had made a mistake. Because when you order furniture there’s kinds of codes and numbers you put in for paint finishes and so the sweat began pouring off my brow-‘cause you know-here’s two hundred or three hundred thousand dollars of furniture right close to the dedication it’s all the wrong color. And I went back to my office and checked and found that no, it was the company’s error. And then of course we negotiated with the company to get a discount and did get the problem corrected. But I think as you heard, from Thad’s comments getting the library finished and for the centennial and really in his presidency of capital projects was such a focal point so much effort had been put into it, so much excitement had been generated and then to get two to three weeks before you’re going to dedicate the building with a big ceremony, and find out all the furniture is the wrong color was a very scary one.
Lord Discusses the Need for Athletic Facilities (Play Audio)
Lord: Probably one of my more active things that I got involved with with The Sandspur-at the time I was there, the Enyart-Alumni Field House did not exist. Rollins had no indoor facilities for athletics, they used to actually go down to practice at-what I think now is-Winter Park Junior High School, which is down near Harper Shepherd. Harper Shepherd was the only locker rooms, our games were played at community colleges, so we had no home organization or gym kind of thing. And I became very active-and got The Sandspur very active-in editorializing the need for Rollins to build a gym and field house facility which they did do while I was there and once they did it, it proved to be a great um-helping to turn around the athletic program-especially for basketball at the time-and really giving us an on campus place were students could come to games and rally around it.
Lord Discusses Director's Dinners (Play Audio)
Lord: Director’s dinners were a great chance for me to visit with students about food service, about residence halls-One of the issues that I remember at the time was Rollins didn’t used to have-again times have changed-telephones in student rooms. The telephones when I got there were all in the hallways and if they wanted to try to call a student they would ring the phone and everybody in the hallway-But one of the things that was really important to students that came out of the director’s dinners was, We would really like to have phones in our rooms. And again, in the period when I was there in the eighties, we were able to put phones in the student rooms because you would make commissions and fees off of long distance. It basically re-paid for the telephone system. So, we were able to generate enough revenue to pay for it.
Lord Discusses the Housing Review Board (Play Audio)
Lord: So, one of the areas that I got involved with when I was there setting up what was called the housing review board. And that housing review board figured out which of the Greek groups got houses and which other groups didn’t. And some of the controversial decisions that I guess I’m somewhat along with Dr. Seymour is, if a Greek organization was not properly living up to the standards of the housing review board they could lose their house. So, one of the groups that lost their house while we were there was the KAs.-Many others were put under a great deal because-again-I think one of the things that Dr. Seymour-‘cause his background was in student life-was trying to change the way its student life and begin to get a little more of a serious academic atmosphere and some of the behavior of the Greek groups he felt was on-was not good for the school. So, it’s interesting now, when I go to alumni functions and things (laughs) people will talk to me and say, Oh, you’re the one that threw our fraternity off campus.
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