Oral History: Wendell G. Pleis — May 21st, 2021

Summary:

Wendell G. Pleis was interviewed by Andree Duggan on May 21, 2021. Mr. Pleis was born in Fairbury, Nebraska, in 1929. He served for three years with the U.S. Air Force in Europe, starting his education and training in electronics during that time. He then continued his studies in this field when he returned to his home state to attend college and graduate school. Mr. Pleis came to Lafayette to teach electronics at the high school level in 1964. He and his wife soon settled into a home in Campolindo (electronics, math, and metal shop), Del Valle (electronics, and math, plus he started the process of creating an FM radio station), and at Acalanes (electronics and math, plus after Del Valle closed, he brought the dream of an FM radio station to fruition at Acalanes). He also coached football, golf, baseball, and other sports at these schools.

Oral History:

Andree Duggan: I am Andre Duggan of the Lafayette Historical Society Oral History Project talking with Wendell Pleis on May 21st, 2021. What is your full name and the spelling?
Wendell Pleis: Okay, Wendell G. Pleis, the spelling, W-E-N-D-E-L-L G. P-L-E-I-S.

AD: And do you have a nickname?
WP: I got several. I’m not sure. In the service, when I was in the Air Force, I got the name of John, and that’s another story, and then when I was growing up in my hometown, I was Butch.

AD: When and where were you born?
WP: Born in Fairbury, Nebraska, 1929, December 13.

AD: And how long have you lived in Lafayette?
WP: Since 1964- well, actually 1966. We moved to California in 1964.

AD: Okay, great. How old were you when you came here? Do you recall?
WP: I was 34 when I came to California, I was 34.

AD: And in Lafayette, where did you live when you first moved here, and where do you live now, if you could provide the street address?
WP: So we lived in Lafayette Valley Estates since ’66.

AD: Is there a street address?
WP: What?

AD: They’re asking if there’s a street address.
WP: Yeah, it’s 3353 Betty Lane.

AD: All right. Do you have brothers or sisters?
WP: I have… well, right now, I only have one sister that’s still alive that lives in Montana. I had six siblings, I had two bothers and four sisters. As I say, I have only have one sister left that’s still living. I was the youngest in the family of seven.

AD: What was that like, growing up in Nebraska?
WP: That was quite an experience because in the 30’s during the Depression, and we, of course, like all the other people, lived on a farm, for most of us, that kind of is history was living on a farm, and it was really… everybody was doing their very best to survive the things that took place, that was about the same time as the big dust storms in Oklahoma and Texas, and we got part of that because we lived in the western part of… I shouldn’t say “western”, it was more eastern and southern part of Nebraska where we got part of that dust storm, so that was a miserable thing, and also, for some reason, the grasshoppers were also a big threat to our crops, and then also lack of rain which is happening in California now, so it’s hard to maintain survival back in the 30’s because in 1929, before I was born, that was the stock market crash and start of the Depression, and so it was kind of an interesting lifestyle at that time, and luckily, living on a farm, you could raise your own crops and have your own chickens and whatever deal, so most of the farmers did a pretty good job of surviving that way, and also going to a one room school at that time… yeah, you know, everybody who went to one of those schools on the farm, and of course that was an educational thing, or… took place in history at that time.

AD: Tell us about your transition to the service. Was that during World War II?
WP: The Air Force, you mean? Yeah, that was the Korean War that everybody during that period of time in history, you gotta have those wars, no matter what, so that came along just as I finished junior college, I went to junior college in my hometown, nobody really had the money to go off someplace, you had to live at home and hopefully you get an education. At that time, everybody survived by, I guess you could call it, whatever they can do, and so the Draft Board was always on your neck, as soon as you’d turn twenty or twenty-one, whatever it is, and so it’s either being drafted or join the Army or the Navy or whatever it is, Air Force, so I chose to join the Air Force sometime after junior college, and that was good because you couldn’t join at that time because everybody was joining the Air Force and they put a restriction that you needed to have two years of college to join and I was lucky enough to have that, and so I was able to get into the Air Force, and then also the good thing was the G.I. Bill, which you could finish college after you got out, so that was a very good thing for most of us, and most of us could not go to college in that time of period, even though… I know our valedictorian of the class couldn’t go, so he joined the Air Force too because he didn’t have the money to support himself for room and board, so that was a period of time where… what took place, your life was controlled by circumstances, like most of the time, even though we didn’t think about it that way, but my service career was that I got lucky enough to… had enough mathematics to get into electronics and I was sent to electronics school in the service, not only in the States but I did get to Germany and get schooling in high-frequency devices and microwave systems, so my education was really in the field of electronics started back in the service, and that was kind of the lucky thing, and so I spent three years in Europe with a photocon squadron that, in France and in Germany, and of course had all the pleasures of… all the advantages of being in Europe instead of Korea, and getting shot at, I guess, but that was a very lucky part on my part, or I should say the Air Force’s part that I got there, but you know all the details of how I got there is another story, but nonetheless that’s the way I ended up and benefitted from not only the education in the up-and-coming electronics but also in the ability to learn and enjoy the European system of things after the war so this was in… I got to Germany and it was 1952, January of 1952, and that was in Wiesbaden, Germany for a while, so that was very beneficial to be able to tour that part of the country, and also station in France near…

AD: Wonderful!
WP: Yeah, it was a lucky thing on my part, not my part but for me, I put it that way, lucky that that lucked out to do that.

AD: Okay now, what do you remember about… why did you choose to move to Lafayette, let’s say fast forward, and feel free to fill in any blanks in terms of what happened between that time in Europe and when you arrived in Lafayette and what brought you here.
WP: Well, after I got out of the service, the same day that I got discharged, I registered for a class at the University of Nebraska to finish my college because I had the G.I. Bill and I wanted to, of course, teach, be a teacher when I was out of high school, that would have been in ’48, I investigated being a teacher at that time, and my main interest was to teach kids trades, like the electronics, of course, which was up and coming in the fifties, as we all know, not many people were to realize that, but it was right in my face all the time that what was coming up in the future which we know now, but I realized that would be an up-and-coming thing for kids to do and need to know, so I took quite a few engineering courses but I also had all this background in electronics, so one night I was taking mechanical engineering, and also drafting, and then I did my graduate work along that line too, at Colorado, Northeastern Colorado, I did my master’s degree there because I was teaching in the panhandle of Nebraska at the time and it was only 150 miles to the college, so I spent four summers, every summer at the university to complete my master’s degree in the mechanical world, I guess you could call it, which is still a very important part of life…

AD: Yes.
WP: …and I wanted to teach that part of the world, because I benefitted a great deal from that, and I wanted to share that with the kids. That’s coming up, which I think probably benefitted a lot of kids, and by the way, getting feedback from that, I have had that experience, of getting a few feedbacks of what the kids did accomplish when I went to the 50th high school reunion with some of the kids I taught, and that was a real fun thing to do.

AD: Wow, so did you come to get your teaching certificate and come to Lafayette to teach?
WP: Okay, here’s… I got my teaching credential in Nebraska, taught seven years in the panhandle of Nebraska in a town called Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and that was my first seven years of teaching, out of the University of Nebraska. I also coached junior college football, helped coach, I was a line coach for junior college football in that particular town, because I had played football in college as well as in the Air Force, I played four years of football in the Air Force as a pastime for fun, at the time it was very interesting to do just that, and another activity that you take part in to get the most out of life, you know, the more you do, the more, I guess you say, you get out of life, as far as I’m concerned, and so I was able to help out with their football program at the junior college level, and then when I came out here, I also coached football at Campolindo for about five years before I went to Del Valle and coached football there and baseball, and also Acalanes I coached football there for three years, and also coached golf for the last few years before I retired at Acalanes, but I came out here because the chase factor of working in a school where… I started an electronics program at Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and when I tried to expand, the principal and I disagreed on the importance of electronics, he felt that it wasn’t going anyplace, and I disagreed and I knew that California was very aggressive in regards to electronics, which I knew, and that was about the time transistors popped up and everything was changing in a big way, not to mention what came later, but it’s a very interesting thing that it was hard to adapt to what could happen in the field of electronics, which we all know the progress, but at that time, I knew that I was more or less at a standstill, and so I was lucky enough that I had an in here in California because I had a brother-in-law who was teaching out here and he mentioned that Campolindo had an opening for teachers, so when I flew out to interview I knew probably that this was the best place to be.

AD: Now at that time, was Campolindo serving both Lafayette and Moraga?
WP: At that time it would have been in ‘64, and they were serving mostly over here in Burton Valley, and they were serving probably part of Moraga, mostly Moraga. Miramonte was taking care of Orinda at that time, more or less, and so they had only opened about two years before I got here, if I remember right, right in there, the school was copied after Del Valle, because they had to expand. They were even trying to expand another high school that was in Orinda, it would be on the north side of the freeway, they bought land to have another high school, but they realized the population of the kids dropped a little bit and so consequently they abandoned the idea to build that other high school, and then they finally ended up closing Del Valle because the population again in young people dropped, and that’s where I was at the time because my kids were playing sports, my three sons were playing sports, and I didn’t want to coach against them, so that’s why I transferred from Campolindo to Del Valle, because that’s where they changed the borders from our area to go to Del Valle.

AD: Very good. Let me just interrupt you here for one minute so that we can find out the name of your wife and your children.
WP: Okay. My wife is Gloria, that’s the first name, of course, and my sons, I had three sons, one was Mitchell, and Matthew, and then Mark, he had to get those ends all straightened out, so anyway, it was Mitchell, Matthew and Mark, and they were good athletes and Mitchell went to Stanford and played football for Bill Walsh, and Matthew went to Cal, played football for… I forget the coach, White, I think, and then Mark went to Washington State and played football for Washington State.

AD: So they grew up in Lafayette, your family?
WP: They grew up in, yeah, in Lafayette, and as I say in the same house we’re living in right now.

AD: Do they still live in the area?
WP: No, Matthew, well, first of all, Mitch lives in Sacramento and Matthew lives in Washington State, and then the young son lives down in Danville.

AD: Okay, nice. Do you have any grandchildren?
WP: I have ten grandchildren, the oldest one’s 36 and he was a Navy pilot in the Navy and was awarded quite a few awards, he was awarded Outstanding Fighter Pilot in 2014 and also awarded the Most Combat Missions Over Afghanistan and Syria…

AD: Congratulations, you should be proud.
WP: Hmm?

AD: You must be proud of him.
WP: Very proud, he graduated from the Naval Academy in ’07.

AD: And do you have any great-grandchildren?
WP: Yes, right now we have seven and one on the way. We only have one great-granddaughter, and the rest of them are boys, but anyway, yeah, we have seven and one on the way, which…

AD: …Will be eight. Did you and your wife meet here in Lafayette?
WP: No, no, she’s a hometown girl. That’s a story in itself. It was kind of a funny situation when I left Europe, we were supposed to get back by Christmas, it would have been Christmas of ’54, but it turned out I got a serious injury in football, I had a chipped bone in my back and I had to wear a cast so I couldn’t make it, I got back to New Jersey to get the cast off and so I couldn’t make it back by Christmas, but they had scheduled me to be discharged in Lincoln, Nebraska where the University of Nebraska was, and when I ended up there, I got my cast off and everything, and I had done some things before that, but I registered for class the day I get discharged, in, like, that would have been ’55, January, and I went home and I did a lot of things in Lincoln, getting things set up, housing and so on and so forth, but I got home at nine o’clock and I got a phone call from a friend who was having a housewarming out at the country and wanted to come out and I kept arguing with him, I got too many things to do, so finally I said, okay, okay, I’ll come out, so I came out and there was my future wife sitting on the floor which I knew from a little girl that I saw across the street from one of my friends, and I said yeah, I remember you, and then nine months later we got married, so I brag about my efficiency, not only did I get a discharge, registered for class, get the housing, meet my wife, all in one day. You can’t get more efficient than that.

AD: I love it. All right, now we can flash forward again to Lafayette, now you became a teacher in electronics of some type you’re gonna tell me but you also did all the coaching, so how did that go, and how long were you a teacher?
WP: Okay, well it started, as I say, in Campolindo, I started a program there in electronics and I also taught metal shop for kids if they wanted that because I did have that engineering experience, so I did do that, and then I taught mathematics too because I also had to have math, and so I taught math, electronics, metal shop, and then as I say, I transferred over and… Del Valle because the kids, I didn’t want to coach against them, and the thing was that they had an electronics program and so I took over the electronics program and taught mathematics and electronics and coached football as well as baseball but what took place then was I set up the deal, now the radio station really started, which started at Del Valle. I had one student who was… well, more than one, I guess you could say, and I used to teach ham operating too for the kids during lunch hour, they’d come in and I’d teach them Morse code and also the importance of knowing a little bit about electronics so it was kind of a man-made factor that radio was very important at that time, and everybody wanted a radio station. Clayton Valley had one at that time and I used to talk to the guy out there, and so we did have a couple of kids that were really involved in that, wanted a radio station and anyway, so it evolved at that point, and then we had almost everything set up by the FCC to have a radio station at Del Valle but we did all the paperwork and all the… it was a lot of work and a couple of kids really did do a good job , and I just had the rules and regulations, what we had to do, and they did a lot of it, paperwork in a sense of what government requires for that, and then what happened was they closed Del Valle, and that messed everything up because the location is very important in regards to the radiation of radio stations, so that was out the window, and then of course as I said I ended up at Acalanes and then one of the kids came over from that and he kept saying we needed to do it so then we had to redo that and there was a lot of conversations with the FCC on the phone and paperwork and all that stuff to get back on track if we really wanted to, also we had to change towers and everything else from Del Valle to put on top of the buildings so we could have an antenna that would radiate our station, so that had to be done also.

AD: I have a question. You have at Acalanes, the way it’s situated, you have that big hill in front of Acalanes, was that a problem in terms of the tower and getting…
WP: Yeah, we had to do a lot of paperwork in terms of getting people to move that over, and by the way the district was very good about that, they had the maintenance people do that. It was not an easy job, but no means to get that, we also had a ham station, I have to admit, we contacted South America, Japan and all that, which was part of the tower thing too, because we had that too, not only a radio station at Acalanes but we also had the ham station for a while, we had two kids who already were hams, I wish I could remember their names, I can’t help you on that one, but they came up and really worked the ham station and did a good job, and so it was good for the kids to do that, be part of that.

AD: Tell me about that radio station and was it a talk radio, what was your vision for what that would be and how long did it last?
WP: Well, it was music, mostly music, and their kind of music, I mean at that time, and also it did have… the teachers used the radio station sometimes to have a student out of their class come up at our radio station and then in their class they’d have a radio and that student would read what they wrote over the air, now the parents could listen to it too, of course. We did get on cable and if parents wanted to we could hook them up with cable, radio with cable, and get their radio station too.

AD: Was that in the early 80’s or so?
WP: Yeah, that was in the 80’s.

AD: Interesting. So remind me again when… so, Acalanes, when did you switch over to Acalanes? Do you remember the year, and…
WP: When Del Valle closed in, that would have been ’78, I went to Acalanes and transferred over there to teach mathematics. My first year was just teaching math, but the principal at that time wanted to get an electronics class, they never had one, so they asked me to create an electronics class, which I did, and I don’t now the year it would be, probably around ’81 we created this electronics class for Acalanes, they never had one before. The electronics class took the place of a craft class that was there and the guy retired, the room was idle, I guess it was vacant, that was an ideal situation and that’s why they wanted it, but that’s how I got involved at Acalanes teaching electronics, and of course the radio station just evolved from the fact that we had students at Del Valle that were still involved in that. The boy’s name was Mark Jeffries who was really a driver in that area because he was at Acalanes so he was a big game player on that, but yeah, it just evolved, it was a lot of technical things that had to be done, of course all of the paperwork that was involved by the FCC and so on, so it took a little time, but there’s a lot of stories with kids and what they did do, I have one student who went to St. Mary’s, a girl, who got to be the manager of the radio station over here at St. Mary’s College and then she ended up in San Francisco being the manager in one of the radio stations at San Francisco, KOIT, I think the name was.

AD: Nice.
WP: So they did do something in broadcasting, some of the kids, in electronics of course, a lot of the kids got involved with electronics in some way, that was in the club, the radio club.

AD: Do you recall how long the radio club and the radio station lasted and were you involved the whole time?
WP: Yeah, it started, really, as I say, in 1981 really on the air, let me see if I have any dates on that, I don’t know if I had any dates, but it was right at that time, I would say that’s pretty close, and then it lasted until ’93, I retired, and then I think they had one more year but then whoever was trying to manage it probably couldn’t take care of it, so it stopped broadcasting probably right at ’94.

AD: Yes, and do you recall how far your signal went in Lafayette?
WP: Now, that’s a very interesting thing because cable, it went all the way to Berkeley and back and get in every place and anybody that was connected to it could get it, the on-air thing was patchy, we were working on trying to expand that by getting our antenna higher up on hills, now there’s a hill up there, I’m trying to think… it’s called Dottie Hill, I don’t know if that’s familiar with you, if you went east of Acalanes High School, there’s a hill, as you go on the freeway from Lafayette to Walnut Creek, there’s a big overpass that you go under, and they always had advertisements of some sort up there, but up to the left of that is a real tall hill. I investigated getting a tower up on that hill so that we could cover more area, but the way it worked, because Acalanes was down in a valley, it would just cover up through the valley of Lafayette down to, let’s say, well Rossmoor got it, for example, Rossmoor would get the signal and so the radiation was very patchy because it was down in the valley, and so we were working on trying to get… microwave our system up to the Dottie Hill, we called it, and I talked to the guy, she lived up there on that hill, and she had a lot of towers up there, that’s part of her income, I guess it was, because it would have cost us $50 to have one of our antennas up there on top of that hill.

AD: Now, you were saying “Dottie Hill”, was Dottie the one who had the…?
WP: Yeah, that was her name, that’s an interesting story too. Dottie was… her husband was a sailor and she was also in the earthquake, the ’06 one in San Francisco, anyway she was in that and she told the story of her moving to Berkeley to watch the fires in San Francisco, which is very interesting, and her husband was a sailor for the Boer War, I don’t know if you know much about the Boer War, but that was the situation where England was fighting down in South Africa, fighting the Boer with the Dutch people, they were actually the Dutch people who settled Africa before that, so the British was having a war with them, so her husband was a sailor who would take the English people down to the Boer War, now there’s a good story about Churchill being a reporter during the Boer War, I know this really might be off the subject here but…

AD: I think we are, I have to ask you some more Lafayette questions.
WP: …but all of that is very interesting, when you meet people, you never know what you’re gonna get, and probably in the same way, when you talk to me, you never know what you’re gonna get.

AD: Let’s get back to your memories of Lafayette when you first arrived. What was it like here and how has it changed, and what are your thoughts on that?
WP: Well, I tell you what, it was a cute little town, I loved it, that’s why… we did rent a house when we first moved out kind of by Pleasant Hill and we were only there about two years before we bought a house here, and the other thing is schools, our kids were growing up and so we knew that they had good schools in this area so that’s why we bought in Lafayette Valley Estates. The other thing, the price was right at the time for us, teacher, you know you gotta watch that budget, and so anyway, it was a great place, we thought, and as far as we were concerned, that’s why we’re not moving, we love it, at that time, we knew… and it’s really grown, like the Park Hotel, that was a lumber yard one time, and all the stores that came up since we moved in. Of course, they did a lot of building apartment houses in Lafayette, lot of apartment houses since then, it was of course… the expansion is amazing, as far as I’m concerned, and I was about to say that Lafayette set the rule of the heights of the building, I don’t know if that’s changed or not, but it used to be so many stores which made it a little town, the main street, it represented kind of a small town atmosphere there.

AD: And it still has that feel. What are some of your favorite things to do in the area?
WP: I do a lot of woodworking and golf, but my woodworking is a great hobby of mine. I make furniture for the grandkids, whatever they want in that regards, I make a lot of little things that they want, like desks or nightstands or tables or anything they would like to have, and I did a lot of cabinet-making for my kids when they bought a house and they remodeled the kitchen or I made railings for my son in Washington, they built the house and I built the railing for all their stairs and stuff like that. I took them up there and put them in, installed things, made secret doors and all that stuff, it’s just fun, a fun thing, hobby, that’s all it is, a fun hobby to do, for me, I’ve always liked woodworking, it’s limited in terms of what you can do, you couldn’t get as original or creative as you want to in woodworking, now with the tremendous amount of choices of wood now, you can make… the latest project, I made a chess table for my granddaughter who just got married last summer and they just picked it up not too long ago, came down and got it, that was just one thing, that was the latest thing I did for them.

AD: That’s great. What is the secret to your vim and vigor and youthful outlook?
WP: I have no idea. I think genetics have a lot to do with what people do, I’m a big believer of that, and of course experience, observation of what people do and don’t do, the dumb things that they do do and don’t do, I guess you’d say observation, what works and what doesn’t work, it’s just too bad that we all can’t learn enough to not make the same mistake twice, but I think it just… I feel I probably was born with that and I go with it, what works for me and family and knowing responsibility about life, very important to know your role in your whole community and your family, your role, we all play a role, as you well know, and also before you make a decision, get all the facts you can possibly get before you make a decision of any kind, what is true and what is not true, and that’s the most difficult thing of life is to decipher what is a truth of that, so I think all of that is… you work at it, you work at it daily.

AD: I could see why you are a good coach and a good husband, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, I think you’re a very wise person and you’re brought a lot of positive things to the people around you in the area.
WP: Well, as I say, I know there’s that Dr. Phil on television I’ve caught a couple times and there was two things I got from him, and one thing was “What were you thinking?” and the other thing, “Is it working?” So I think those are two things, if you really put it together may be simple, as you can possibly put it, that works sometimes to say “is it really working”, and if it isn’t then you’d better do something about it.

AD: Yeah, I like that a lot. Well, I think we are up to time here, I also don’t want to overstay my welcome, I know it’s tiring, talking so long, but I so appreciate… is there anything you’d like to say before we end this session today?
WP: Well, not really, I‘m just saying that we have a great life, Gloria and I really enjoy life in Lafayette and we hopefully made the best of it as we go through the rest of our life, enjoying it, and I think the most important thing at this time is how you adapt to aging factor and changing and the virus and all that what you can do, so I think the bottom line is, I guess you could say, you stay on course what you believe is the best way to run your life, and once it works, and, sure, there’s adapting, it works for us, and that’s about it.

AD: Yeah, that’s wonderful. Well thank you, and if you have any photos, you’ve been a great help in supporting this project, and if you have any photos or memorabilia that you would like the Lafayette Historical Society to review or copy, pleased let us know. We’re more than happy to… we have our archives and the space at the library, so just keep that in mind, and you can contact us and let us know.
WP: Yeah, I think Nancy Flood still works for you guys down there, so yeah, if we have something like that, if we had something we could add to it… I think Mike who did the history on the radio station probably has a lot of photos, I think it copied a lot of things, so that would be one thing that he did.

AD: And if you had a family photo of yourself, that would be nice to go along with this interview or a photo of you and your wife…
WP: We have a great big… on our sixtieth wedding anniversary we have a portrait of our whole family, I don’t know if that would be…

AD: That would be wonderful, yes.
WP: We could probably give that to Nancy. It’s in a big frame, I don’t know how you could work that, but nevertheless…

AD: You could take a photo of the photo.
WP: Yeah, maybe you could do that. But anyway, maybe we could work that out. I’ll talk to Gloria about that, let’s see if you think that could be part of this.

AD: I do, I think that would be very nice to have. I appreciate the time, and we will be in touch when we have this finished and it will go into the Oral History Project on the Lafayette Historical Society website.
WP: Okay, I was wondering where that would go, but we’ll see what happens.

AD: Thank you. Bye-bye.
WP: Bye-bye.