Jeff McBride Oral History Interview

Oral history interview by Mary Heers with Jeff McBride. Topics include: Being a post WWII baby; Growing up and attending school in Hyrum, Utah; His father's employment at a nearby Mill and construction of their family home over time; His father starting the first museum in Hyrum in an old LDS (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints) chapel; Attending Utah State University and completing a degree in sociology and psychology; Repeatedly missing the draft for the Vietnam War and never serving in the military; Employment with the Utah State Industrial reform school; Getting a graduate degree from the University of Utah and working for a detention facility in Salt Lake; Enjoying working with youth and helping them change their lives; Running programs for youth at the Salt Lake Juvenile Court, Utah Boys Ranch, and Salt Lake Valley Mental Health and an eventual return to the Utah State Industrial Reform School [Youth Development Center (YDC)]; Assisting with a de-institutionalization initiative and restorative justice model at the YDC; An experience when a former detainee returned years later to reminisce; Retirement and staying active in clinical social work and marriage and family therapy through LDS Family Services; Employment history of his youth and college years; Seeing potential in everyone; Good experiences with the use of Hippotherapy and owning horses of his own.

Mr. Jeff McBride got his degrees in sociology and psychology, and began working with state juvenile corrections in various capacities. He continued his work in sociology, working with corrections in both private and public capacities. Throughout his entire career, he also provided private therapy to individuals. His formal career was from 1967, and he retired in 2004. Since retirement, he has worked with LDS Family Services, providing therapy through this organization. He runs through all the other jobs he held, before going to school and starting his career. He also mentions his passion and love for horses, dogs and history, specifically of his community.

The Way We Worked: Utah Works Oral History TRANSCRIPTION COVER SHEET Interviewee(s): Others present: Jeff McBride Place of interview: Date of interview: Hyrum, Utah April 11, 2017 Interviewer(s): Recordist: Photographer: Mary Heers Recording equipment: Transcription equipment: NCH Express Scribe Transcription Software with Power Player foot pedal. Transcribed by/date: Susan Gross; 23 September 2024 Transcript proofed by/date: Brief description of interview: Mr. Jeff McBride got his degrees in sociology and psychology, and began working with state juvenile corrections in various capacities. He continued his work in sociology, working with corrections in both private and public capacities. Throughout his entire career, he also provided private therapy to individuals. His formal career was from 1967, and he retired in 2004. Since retirement, he has worked with LDS Family Services, providing therapy through this organization. He runs through all the other jobs he held, before going to school and starting his career. He also mentions his passion and love for horses, dogs and history, specifically of his community. References: MH: JM: ??: Mary Heers Jeff McBride Unknown Voice NOTE: Interjections during pauses, transitions in dialogue (such as “umm”), and false starts and stops in conversations are not included in transcribed. All additions to transcript noted with brackets. TRANSCRIPTION [00:01] JM: Real school, and then came back there and became the superintendent of that, while it was being closed down. So, there’s a lot of history there if you want to know about crime. MH: Well, you know, I think with the audience wants to hear is interesting stories. JM: Oh, okay. MH: Examples – anything that you remember that is, you know, something that would be fun to share, or useful to share. So, the whole world is our canvas. So, I’m interested in the gravedigging. I am very interested in – THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 1 JM: [Laughs] MH: The museum work. JM: Yeah, those are the local things that I – Well, are we on the air, or are we – MH: No. JM: Talking, no? So – MH: Okay, we’re ready – let’s just go ahead and set some levels. Really, anything you think is important for people to hear is certainly up for grabs. ??: Yeah; and let me just kind of – JM: Okay. ??: Toy with this for a second; is that okay like that? JM: You’re the one that determines that. MH: Yeah. ??: That sounds really good right now, so – JM: Okay, so – MH: Yes, sometimes it looks like a – JM: Just about this volume, you want me to – MH: Softball incoming [laughs]. JM: Played softball too. MH: Yeah. Well, there you go. JM: Yeah. MH: Anything you want. JM: I didn’t make a career out of it, that’s for sure. ??: Okay. MH: Well, yeah. ??: I’m going to start the recording now. JM: Okay. ??: And then, we’ll have you introduce yourself. Start with your name, okay? JM: Okay. ??: Go ahead. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 2 JM: Yeah, so I’m Jeff McBride, born right before the atomic bomb was blasted, in 1945; I was born in July (late July). And so, you know, I don’t know whether that qualifies me as a post-war baby or not, because I was born during the war. I grew up in – There’s somebody there at the door, looking for you. Do you want to put me on hold? MH: Yeah; let’s put it on hold. [Door opening/shutting] [02:15] Oh, that might be – JM: The one that’s supposed to be here at 5:30, or something? MH: The one that’s late – should we just keep – I think we should just keep going. Is that William McBride? ??: No; he’s here for the board meeting. MH: Oh. ??: [Laughs] MH: Well – ??: [Inaudible] MH: [Laughs] JM: Okay. ??: Okay, continue. MH: Okay, to continue – after being born in ’45? JM: Yeah, I was born and I grew up in Hyrum, Utah. When I was born, our family lived in what, at the time, was a basement house. And so, you built the home as you were able to afford it. And so, it started out as a basement, where I lived with my three older sisters, and my parents in (essentially) four rooms. And it was like that for two years. And then my father then built the top on the house, which was a big deal to have a house that was above ground then. And so, I have a few memories of the house being built, but not a lot. I remember them, somewhere on the inside of the walls there, is how tall I was when I was two years old. So, I remember that; and I remember a little bit. My dad worked a variety of jobs, but most notably he worked for the Morning Mill Company, which was located seven or eight miles from Hyrum. He worked there for 29 years, and then it closed down. And most memorable was the times he didn’t have a vehicle, so he rode his horse; for five years he rode that six days a week (this was pre-union times). And so, he has a wonderful story, but unfortunately passed away in ’94. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 3 He also started the first museum in Hyrum, which was located in what is the old LDS chapel, in Hyrum (the first ward building), that was purchased by the city, and he started a museum there. And so, I helped him with that. [04:29] We have a lot of history. All my ancestors are from Hyrum. All four of my grandparents were born in Hyrum. And I have two great-grandfathers that were mayors of Hyrum. So, my roots ran deep here, and I attended schools here, locally. I graduated from Utah State University in 1967. Right at the time – we were right in middle of the Vietnam War; I thought that’s where I was going next. So, I didn’t pay much attention as to what I was going to do. And for some reason, the draft didn’t catch me. And I ended up working in the Teton National Park. And I started out as a pot washer, ended up as a bartender. And so, it was progress in my book (at least, it was better money). The more people drank, the more highly they’d tip. MH: [Laughs] JM: And so, I came back with the expectation (again) of being drafted, and it never happened. And then the lottery came out a bit later, and I drew a high number – I was number 314. And so, that was the sequence that you were of that birth year, 314 would be the one when you were drafted. So, I didn’t serve. I had a lot of friends that served (I lost some friends) in the war. My first job was at – professionally, I graduated with a degree in sociology and psychology from Utah State. And just applied with the state of Utah; and accepted a job at the Utah State Industrial School, which was a reform school that began as Utah was made a territory, back in the 1880s. And it had been continuously there. At the time I came there, it was a 360-bed facility for juvenile delinquents from all over the state, and they had a contract with the Bureau of Indian Affairs to take Indians from, you know, throughout the west, and as far away as Alaska that would come there and spend time. [06:45] It was called the State Industrial School because it started (primarily) with farming; but they were there to learn a trade, and to be incarcerated and protect the community (so to speak). I worked there for two years. And then went (at the encouragement of some of the staff there, and some of the professors who were supervising interns there) to go to graduate school and get a graduate degree, which I did. I went to the University of Utah then. And during the time I was at the University of Utah, I worked for a detention facility in Salt Lake. So, I worked graveyard times. And then everyone that was arrested came in, and I would interview them, determine if they could stay there, or if we could provide some alternative for them, for certain kind of offenses. That gave me a great experience working with youth. And I loved the idea of working with people and trying to help them change their lives. After I graduated, I was hired by the juvenile court in Salt Lake, and we started what was called a neighborhood probation program, where we rented homes around the Salt Lake Valley. And then we would have kids come there, where we would do community service, we did a variety of THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 4 counselling, we would do tutoring to help them with their educational programming – which was usually deficit. You know, I remember we ran a summer school in the garage of this old house. And that was a good two years of my life. I went from there, and went to work for a private agency. And we were operating under a federal grant to have alternatives to secure confinement in correctional facilities. And so, we started a program there; we were also providing services for the Utah Boys Ranch. And I worked there for two years. [08:50] And then the grant money ran out, and I went to work for the Salt Lake Valley mental health, where I ran a day treatment program, again, for adolescents. And they would attend school for a half day, and then come to this day treatment program for a half day. And we provided a variety of activities and counseling: taking them to nursing homes, where you could have some multigenerational experiences. So, they would, you know, just interact with the residents of the nursing homes. And some great experiences there, you know; these young people who are having struggles, you know, could identify with them. And did that for six years. Then a friend of mine called me one day and said, “Did you want to go back to your old stomping grounds?” And he had – the State Industrial School was renamed the Youth Development Center (at that time). And they were in the midst of a federal lawsuit, which you know, had to do with the treatment of kids in the facility: the conditions of confinement, and a variety of things there that the state had come into an agreement with the plaintiffs. And there was a federal court order with a consent decree that the state had to comply with all of these elements of that decree. And so, I loved the idea of going back there. And it was different because a lot of the staff that were there at the time – there was a mixture of people that worked there. Some of them were pretty abusive – they came from military backgrounds. And so, kids would march from one building to the other. It was a big campus: a 45-acre campus. And then a farm that consisted of over 600 acres. [10:55] And so, there was a farming function that had really declined over the years, as they focused more on just education there. And some kind of radical treatment ideas. They had a hopper with ping pong balls in it, and you would draw a ball. And even though you were there for a serious offense, you may get a quick release. Or you may have to spend time in confinement, which meant that you were essentially in a room by yourself, in isolation. So, these are the things they were being sued over. So, as a result of that, I was involved with what was called the de-institutionalization initiative, that was under this federal lawsuit. So, as a result, we agreed (during that process) to close down that facility. So, the facility where I started my career, I became the last superintendent of that facility. And so, when I said it was 370 beds when I started there – and I was just handed a list of 70 kids that I was their case worker. I was then transferred to parole, and worked in parole for a while; and then went back to graduate school. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 5 When I came back there, there were about 150 kids there; and they’d begun a process of developing community-based alternatives to incarceration. And so, we were developing contracts with private organizations to start innovative kinds of programs – either individual or group home kinds of settings that would focus on treatment and fair protection of the community. So, they had to, you know, work with that. As a result, Massachusetts and Utah were, in the early 1980s, the leaders in the nation for deinstitutionalization. So, there was a lot of people that would come; we were asked to go visit other states. [12:56] The result of our efforts then, by 1983, we opened two facilities (two 30-bed facilities). So, we pared down the population from 150, down to 60 kids that were incarcerated, and the rest of them were placed in the community. And you know, we traveled all over the United States gathering what were the most effective ways to manage and treat these youth. We focused a lot on what was called the restorative justice model, which was called the balanced approach. And so, we focused heavily on treatment and helping kids learn basic skills. We then had a responsibility to protect the community. And the third tier of that was to make restitution for the damage that you’ve done. And so, as a result, you know, we had work crews that would go out and remove graffiti. They would have to take victim awareness kind of training, so they became more aware of, and develop some level of empathy for the ones that they had harmed. You know, if victims allowed, we would allow communication between them, but it was always based on permission from the victims. Because you don’t want to re-victimize people, especially if there’s a violent crime involved. That effort took up the bulk of my career. So, I started again as the director of the Youth Development Center (at that time); it was closed on December 18th, 1983. [14:50] And one of the most memorable experiences I had – as I was sitting in my office – we had a big campus, and this was an old building that was built in the 1880s. And I was sitting there in my office, it was just approaching Christmas time, and so there were still probably 70 kids in the facility (this was probably in 1982). And I noticed a vehicle driving around. And then we had – there was a security force that would drive around. And they stopped the vehicle. And I went out to see who it was – it was kind of late in the afternoon. And there was a young man there. And he looked at me, and I looked at him. And he looked vaguely familiar. And he was someone that I had worked with, what would have been about 15 years before, who had been incarcerated my first go-around, in 1967-8. And he had since moved forward in his life, and he had joined the military. And he said, “This is all I knew.” He was there from the age of eight years old, on and off until he was 18. So, you know, he’d be released for two or three months, and then brought back to the facility. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 6 So, it was – for me, it was a very healing kind of thing to hear from him. This was his home, and that was all he knew, you know. His parents were older, they had long time since passed away. And so, we talked; we kind of reconnected with some of the events and everything. And he had been in the military, served in Germany. He was married. I asked if he had any children, he said, “No, I have a cat.” He said, “I would never – with my history, I could never bring children into the world, because I know that, you know, with my background, the chances of them having a bad life was increased.” So, that – you know, that career that I had started in 1967, and then I retired in 2004. And at that point in time, I was still – all along the way, I was doing private therapy – just you know, working with families and individuals in a variety of, you know, just individual settings, on a private basis. [17:08] And I went to work for one of these private providers for a few months, but looking at it from a different way, I didn’t enjoy that too much. But I then had an opportunity to go to work for a church (LDS church) sponsored organization, which was LDS Family Services where I could – they set up all your appointments, and then you can see people on a regular basis. They collect all the money from insurance, and everything. And so, I’ve done that for the last, you know, 14 years, something like that. So, I keep active in doing clinical social work and marriage and family therapy. So, that’s a summary of the bulk of my history. Now, some of the early years, I had other jobs that are very interesting. I mentioned I started out as a dishwasher, and ended up as a bartender – where you learn a lot about behavior from people. And I was a wine steward, and you know, just had some really interesting experiences. So, how does a Mormon boy end up as a bartender, and then end up working for LDS Family Services all these years? So, a lot of my years were not spent on just one side of the bar, okay? My early years – the first paying job that I had was a circus came through town (through the town of Hyrum), and they had an elephant. And the elephant left a lot of remains, a lot of dung. And a man was being hired by the city to haul all of that away. So, there was a great, big pile of this; and he hired a few of us. And he gave us 35 cents an hour to load his trailer. And then we would go and unload his trailer. And it took us about four hours. And you know, I was probably about ten years old. And that was my first paying job. [19:04] A lot of job working for local farmers, you know, hauling hay, doing different farm work, milking cows – both by hand, and by some of the early milk machines. And then I was involved in a slightly delinquent act when I was 17. And I was supposed to go to juvenile court, but somehow, they took me to the Justice of the Peace here, in Hyrum. And I was given a $50 fine and 30 days in jail. And the jail time was suspended if I would pay the fine in a reasonable amount of time. If I couldn’t afford to pay the fine, then I could work it off with the city. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 7 So, I was on the city work crew. And the other two that were arrested with me, they both paid their fines, and could afford it. I didn’t have enough money to pay my fines. So, I went to work for the city. And I was 17 years old, and at the end of my five days (which I was getting $10 a day) – that was the $50 – they offered me a job for the rest of the summer. And so, I worked two summers then, for the city of Hyrum. And I had a variety of responsibilities there. I ran a mower, where we mowed the streets, which was the first time that the sides of the roads had been mowed in Hyrum. I worked with the electrician. I worked with the city water department. And I worked at the cemetery. And so, some experiences there were squaring up the grave with the – the backhoe operator would dig a grave, then you’d have to square it up. And sometimes, we would run into unmarked graves. And so, you had some spooky experiences there. [21:05] We also put in a water system. And so, we had to move three-inch aluminum pipe at night. And so, you’d go up there alone, and you’d have some spooky experiences. Nothing really ever happened, but you know, you couldn’t see to the end of your pipe; and sometimes carrying those big pipes, you’d bump a headstone, and you’d swear that someone was there speaking to you. So, I had that experience: working for the city gave me a variety of jobs that I did there. Then I went to work in construction for the state. I worked for the state road department (then); it’s now the Department of Transportation. And I did everything from flagging, to driving a roller, to driving a truck, and a variety of jobs there. I see all of these as really valuable experiences because, you know, I enjoyed every one of these jobs. The Elite Hall – I had a job at the Elite Hall. And my job at the Elite Hall was to be there to supervise kids from – at that time, each of the three LDS wards would come one night a week. And beginning with 14 to 16 year old’s, from six to seven; and then from seven to eight, the ones that were a little bit older; and then the adults could come in from 8:30 to 10. And so, I was able to play basketball and volleyball three nights a week, and just play games with these kids. And you know, there’d be, you know, 50 to 100 kids in there some nights. And just a great experience. So, that’s where I think I learned, you know, how to work with and enjoy working with young people. You know, I was a college student at that time, so it was great. [23:03] The first year that I was there, the heating system in the Elite Hall was a coal-operated furnace. So, I would have to come in early to stoke up the furnace, and shovel coal in, and get it all heated up, you know, an hour or so before they came. And then by the next year that I did it, they had got into the modern era, and had natural gas, and changed it over. So, I had a lot of wonderful experiences there. I also had to clean up after dances. And so, that was a mess, you know? To clean the cigarette butts off the floor, and out of the urinals, and everything; was not my favorite thing to do on a Saturday morning. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 8 Also, for seven years I worked on the local garbage truck. And so, every Saturday morning, we would get up and drive a dump truck around town, and load (by hand) all of the garbage cans in Hyrum. So, that was another work experience I had. And so, I bounced around a little bit. Going back and forth – as continuity, is there things I need to add or subtract, or may have more questions about? I don’t know. MH: Well, I was very moved by the experience of the former inmate who returned – JM: Oh, yeah. MH: Driving around? And I wanted to ask you – what was the return rate with kids being released and then coming back to the facility? JM: In the early years, kids were incarcerated in that facility for things as minor as truancy from school, running away from home, all the way to those that had been convicted of more serious capital kind of offenses – with kids there that had killed other kids, or killed adults (in some circumstances). And so, there was a cross-section there. They usually – the average length to stay there was nine months. So, if you came there in the summer, you would stay there a whole school year. And then if you were there for one of those minor things – [25:13] By the time we restructured everything, we had what started as a – because all of the release decisions were made by the superintendent. So, I’d sign off on everybody that was released, and do it with an interview. We developed a parole board (just an internal parole board) that had representatives, eventually, from the community. And then that was put in state statute, probably about ’83, in that same years that we did all of the reorganization of the system. And so, now it is a parole authority that makes those kinds of decisions. The average length of stay then, you know, is probably close to the same. The recidivism rate ran right around 40%. However, those things are really misleading, because – and they were committed and custody given to the state until age 21. And so, when they’re 18, then, they come under the jurisdiction of the adult or district courts. And so, you really – if they’re 18 and they commit an offense or a crime, then they go in the adult system, and you kind of lose track of those. And once you turn 18, you have your lifetime to reoffend or not. And so, statistics really can be misleading. You can quote them – if you wanted to look really good, you can, you know, claim that everything’s over when you’re 18, when you know that it’s not, in terms of their life. This young man that I mentioned, that I talked to, that had been there – I had four kids there at the same time whose measured IQ was above 140. And I worked with them all, they were all friends with one another, and they tended to commit crimes together. This young man, who was now an older man – he was born in 1950, so there’s only five years’ difference between my age and theirs. So, you know, you can get an idea of my age, relative to – [27:17] THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 9 Three of them died, probably within five or ten years after they were 18. He is the only one that is still living. And you know, I don’t have a lot of contact with him at this point (at all). But he was making a career out of the military, and I’m pretty certain that he’s done okay. The others went on and were involved in major crimes. A lot of drug abuse; one of them died of a drug overdose (that I was aware of) later. So, there’s a lot of tragic stories. You know, we had both males and females there; they were not all males. You know, I worked with – when I was working in the parole office in Salt Lake, you know, we worked a lot in the inner city there. A lot of the girls were involved in prostitution. And you know, some of the young men that we’d worked with had become pimps. That was my one and only experience of having a gun pulled on me; and I was not shot at. And he decided to not shoot us. But we saw him with some younger girls, and we chased him in a vehicle. And he pulled over at a service station, and he got out and pulled a gun on us. We decided at that point it was probably not time to, you know, to become real brave and get shot. And so, he since – oh, about two years later he shot his father in a grocery store and killed him. And so, I know he was capable of shooting the gun. And he probably liked me more than he did his father, so I didn’t get shot. But so, you know, a lot of violent people; but you know, I’ve never felt threatened, you know? I lived in a rural part of Ogden. And you know, back in the ‘80s, there was a time when mailboxes became popular from a movie that – you know, and so people would ride by with a baseball bat, they would knock over mailboxes. [29:28] And went out one morning, I noticed that, you know, all the houses around me, which were, you know, spread out a ways – had their mailboxes knocked off, except mine. And so, there was – [Laughter] They had gone by – they knew where I lived, but they decided they wouldn’t victimize me. So, there were some advantages. They were never caught, but I had suspicions at the time, but they could never prove who it was, and all. But you know, nobody is completely bad. And it’s hard to understand, and all. And that’s why I think I’ve stayed with working with people, because I see potential in everyone, and a desire to change, and a desire to do things right. And so, that’s what my career is continuing to be. And I’ll do it until someone else says I’m done, you know? Or people stop coming and seeing me. But you know, I met with four different people today, and felt like it was worthwhile; and I’ll keep doing it as long as I can. Oh, I love horses, too; and I use horses in therapy – that’s another piece of my life. So, horses are social animals, and you can do a lot with just doing work with people around horses, you know? It’s a lot of non-verbal things; but horses can sense all sorts of non-verbal cues that you give them: they can pick up tension, they can pick up comfort. You know, they’ll calm people down, once they get finished with the fear. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 10 And I’ve had some wonderful experiences working with horses in a treatment setting. And I enjoy that; so, I’m all about animals. They’re smarter than people and sometimes much more accepting. [31:25] MH: Going on with the horses – your clients ride them? Or just hang out? JM: I worked with an organization: Equine Assisted and Learning Association; and most of the work is done on the ground. And so, just you know, you set up different activities, and different challenges – very similar in perspective with a ropes course, or something like that, except you have a live animal there that you’re working with. And so, you know, you may get a group of people to have a horse just simply go over a jump, and they can’t talk to one another. They can plan for a minute; and with some of them, they have to hold hands, they can’t touch that horse or bribe the horse. And then you have them – give them 20 minutes to see if they can accomplish it. So, they learn a lot about how to work with one another. And then the horse is very sensitive to what’s going on, too. And then I’ve had a group that just couldn’t make it happen. And it happened to be the staff of a correctional facility. And they finished, and we were kind of processing what happened, and turned around and the horse jumped over the jump without them there at all. And as we processed that, they began to understand that, you know, sometimes people make changes without you being part of it. But maybe you did something along the way, and maybe you don’t always see what you’ve accomplished. So, there’s lots of metaphorical kinds of things that you can do in working with people and teaching people how to do things. MH: Well, the group that could not get the horse to jump – was it because they couldn’t get along? Or what caused them to fail? [33:30] JM: Well, I don’t know that they failed. You know, you can even learn if the horse doesn’t do what it’s supposed to do. But they learned a lot about one another. And you know, just the summary that I gave, sometimes you know – they were working with people, trying to force kids to change all the time, that’s what their profession was. And yet, if the jumping over was success, the horse was able to do it without them prodding them. And I don’t know – did the horse do that because he knew that’s what he was supposed to do? And you know, it was just an interesting thing. You know, the group also – I just had them line up, and they had another activity that they were involved in; and that was just to keep the horse from going over to another area. And the horse would walk along and look, and he could pick up the person who happened to be a football player from Utah State, who had graduated and come to work for us. So, he was from inner city Los Angeles, he’d never been around horses before, and that horse went right towards him. And so, he stepped back and broke the line, and the horse went through. Because it could sense the fear in him, that he knew that was a weak place. Well, he didn’t like the idea of being weak, and so he stayed for probably an hour and a half after, and he was riding the horse at the end of the time that we spent together. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 11 And so, he learned a lot about himself, you know – that sometimes the bravado that we put forward is not really – because horses can sense really what’s going on behind the scenes. MH: Do you own these horses? JM: Yeah; I have horses. That’s part of my passion, also: horses and dogs. MH: How many horses and how many dogs? JM: Three and one dog. One dog is enough right now; so, he keeps me active. [35:29] MH: Well, I wanted to get back to the people who worked in the facility, who were marching the kids around with the ping pong balls. Did they – were you able to correct these practices? JM: I never worked there during that time; that was the time that I was – but that was one of the things that they were sued over. And it was based on, you know, the idea that these kids were then diagnosed as, you know, having all sorts of personality disorders. And so, they had an undeveloped super ego: they did not have a conscience. And so, this would raise their anxiety, if they didn’t know which ball they were going to get. There was one in probably 150 balls; so, the chances of getting it were – and I don’t think anybody ever drew that one. But the other things they got were relative, you know, either punishments or rewards. That was only one of the things. One of the things that they were also sued over was moving kids from a less-restrictive area, to a more restricted area without any due process. And so, there was no hearing process. So, if somebody got in a fight, they’d go to lock up for three to five days, or something, and they would be locked in a room with, you know, only coming out maybe an hour a day: just by themselves, into an isolation room – which has no effect on behavior. People just don’t learn that way. You know, you learn to resent authority more. MH: Yeah. Well, we’re going to run out of tape. JM: Okay, well – MH: Is there anything else you’d like me to know? JM: Oh, I don’t know. That’s enough. I love the museum, I love history – that’s a whole other part of my life. I know the history of this community as well as anyone, I’m sure. And the time I spend here is very valuable to me also. So, it was a contract that we had with the city to start the museum; we built all of the display areas, and started the museum. And so, it looks like it’s prospered since then; so, I’m happy. [37:39] And I think this, you know, “How We Work” is a wonderful initiative to capture that. I know that back in the ‘30s, the Civil Conservation Corps – they interviewed them, and they’re in the archives over at Utah State University: interviews with men that came out west, primarily from the south, and worked as part of a government program, in the post-Depression era. THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 12 So, what people do for work is a big part of our lives, you know? We think of third places – you know, home, and then work is the second place; and then third places are all of the other things that many people never have. So, but a lot of our identity is based on what we do, and our career, and all that. MH: Wonderful. JM: Alright. MH: Well, thank you so much for coming in. JM: Oh, thank you. MH: Great, fascinating. ??: Wonderful. [End recording – 38:36] THE WAY WE WORKED: UTAH WORKS: JEFF MCBRIDE 13