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GP: Today is Wednesday, June 28th, 2023. GP: My name is Grace Park, and I am interviewing Mr. GP: Philip Patrick Sun on behalf of the Houston Asian American Archive at Rice GP: University. So, I'll be asking you a few questions regarding your

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GP: early life. So the first question is: when and where were you born? PPS: I was born in the Philippines, in Manila, in an PPS: area called Mandaluyong. PPS: At Our Lady of Lourdes Hospital.

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GP: I see. How would you describe your childhood and your adolescent years in the GP: various Asian and Caribbean countries that you grew up in? PPS: That's a very interesting question. PPS: I had—I think,

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PPS: a very interesting life because it PPS: was the only life I knew. PPS: I mean, I had nothing to compare it with. PPS: And until we do, you don't make a lot of judgments about

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PPS: that. Sorry about my allergies. PPS: And anyway, we—well, I–I'm the youngest PPS: of four. So, my siblings had already PPS: reached teenage years, and

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PPS: as a result, my parents were also extremely busy and—so PPS: I had a sort of a packaged lifestyle. PPS: I–I think I was extremely calm PPS: and, you could say, obedient, but I'm not sure

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PPS: that's the right term because I did things which PPS: nobody said I wasn't supposed to. PPS: But the logic stream was there that, y-you know, "Sure, PPS: why don't you do it?" So, most of

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PPS: first six years were in Bangkok and Thailand , PPS: and I went to the international school. PPS: And—so there are little glimpses of myself now in PPS: retrospect that I

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PPS: recall: I didn't know how to swim, but we had a khlong in the back. PPS: Khlong is like a pond or a–a little lake. PPS: And I fell in. PPS: And I–I didn't know that you're not supposed to do that, but as I

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PPS: opened my eyes, I saw animals and fish and whatnot. PPS: And I was able to—there were steps, so I climbed out. PPS: But so, you learn about these things by going ahead and doing them PPS: . And...

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PPS: there were two classes in kindergarten PPS: , one next to the other. PPS: And I noticed that every day—and given a certain hour we would PPS: be going for water.

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We'd go to a water fountain. All—every little boy and girl would get up and march to the water fountain. And it was not a long walk, but it was a considerable walk. And–and the next classroom had their own water fountain, in the

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room. And so, I guess one day I decided, "Well, why should we walk that far when it's right next door?" So, I delayed a little bit in getting up, and I got up and went along and the teacher was in the front. And I just went into the next room, got my water, and went back.

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Nobody said you couldn't. So, I did. And they–they didn't know what to do about this, so they transferred me to the other classroom.

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It was easier than arguing about it. And from Bangkok, we went to Taipei. And I went to a local school, Tsai Hsing Xiao Xue—

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it's Tsai Hsing Little School. And it turns out when I found out about it, in later years, looking at it wasn't so small. At any rate, this was in the years when

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they had pedicabs. And they were called sanlunche. It's a—have a guy who pedals along and you sit in the back. And one day, I decided to ask him—and I'm probably

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6 or 7—"I would like to drive this thing." And he thought it was hilarious. But in those days, also, we were still under martial law. So, there would be military convoys and there'd be things happening in the streets.

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But I–I drove the thing down to school and was seen by teachers, who were aghast and eventually sent a message to m y parents, who were aghast also. And—but I didn't know that that's something that you just don't do because it looked

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like a great thing to do. And I did it. So, I guess, in—all in all, from there, I spent a couple of years in the US and learned

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many things American. Everything from baseball to swimming and riding a horse. And...I lived up the–the Leave It to Beaver life and

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the first days of television. So, it was–it was quite interesting. Now, I went to high school for a year or so there and then went back to Taiwan.

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And...there were a lot of sports where you need skills. It was easier just to run. That didn't seem to have as many skills involved and I really enjoyed it.

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So I took running up and as the years went on, I felt better and better about it. And by the time we went to Jamaica, the weather is wonderful for your muscle development and I ran a lot.

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So when I came back to Rice, I was on the track team for a short time, but everybody was huge. And I was in Navy ROTC, and I was in the band, and I was in architecture.

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So I learned how to stay up all night. Cause that—you look at the Archi building, that's what you'll see. So, yeah, I–I–I feel as if I had a very lucky time.

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I-I wouldn't say that I felt that way while it was going on because as you move, you lose your friends. And you don't know if you're ever going to see them again.

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You can correspond—keep in mind, in those days, it was not instantaneous. There were these little blue sheets of paper called Aerogrammes. And you write on them and you fold them up, and then you seal them and they get sent off. And...

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you don't know the difference, though it was very interesting to have a few weeks to a month before you got an exchange. So, I would say that living in the Caribbean was probably the highlight because it was different, and it was a place

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where I didn't get a sense that there was—Jamaica is predominantly black : 98% of the population of the state. But 2% of the population were Chinese, and each

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group had—each ethnic group seemed to have dominated some area of business. Agriculture was predominantly African or black. Chinese owned a lot of businesses.

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The Lebanese had the hardware stores and—but it was extremely, not only integrated, it was assimilated. And it's very different.

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And there was a deep sense of respect which—during a–a summer, I somehow bought a ticket for myself. I—this was not a family decision.

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And I went to Miami, and I bought a ticket fo r $99 for 99 days, travel the US, Canada, and northern Mexico. So, I got on a bus and I

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went to California, where I had two of my sisters and met people along the way, worked here and there. And that's—one of the questionnaires was: where did you first work? Well, that summer, I worked a lot of places.

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I worked on a flower farm, I worked in a post office, I worked on—in a rodeo. I—so there was a lot of—i t was a different age where there weren't as many rules

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about working. I joined a union. Somewhere in my boxes, I may still have the card. It was at a cannery.

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And...and I went to the World's Fair in Montreal. So, this was—and I—everything was successful.

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I even bought a motorcycle and had it shipped back to Jamaica , which was—the first ride was very scary because there—it has a motor and—but the last thing that happened was in Miami, at the

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airport, going back to Jamaica. Now I had been gone... nearly four months by myself. I ended up in Houston at one point, and—but it was long

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before Rice. And at this point in time, nothing had gone wrong. I opened a locker, put one bag in, turned around, and somebody had taken my camera.

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And I had—not only the camera, but film and memories that I had collected. And the room was full and nobody would say they saw anything. And that was—yeah.

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And my parents gave me the camera, so I felt worse about that than anything else. The-they—I felt worse because it's a betrayal of trust.

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And so many parents give you something of value, you know. And they never really agreed to this whole trip. Just sort of, "What are you doing this summer?" "Well, you know, I'm going to the United States and I got this ticket." And–and,

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"What kind of ticket?" "It's—well, it's–it's a bus ticket." And–and—so, anyhow, I felt terrible about it. Once I arrived in Kingston, they didn't care, they were just glad I was

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back. So—but it was a lesson t hat I had never felt that way prior to that, because here it was, everybody was there . And I had grown into a trusted state, which was,

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at the time, Jamaica. And here is a room full of people who obviously saw exactly what happened and nobody would say anything. So, you know, this is kind of a new revelation

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about your community, your humanity, and anyway, that–that was—so that brings me up to Jamaica. And I went to a school called Priory School.

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It's no longer in existence. Just a f-few years ago, it was closed down, I think. It may have reopened, but I'm not sure. And, basically, it was K through 12 but it was English system.

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So there were little buildings for little kids and then there was a house. And in the house we would have A-level and S-S-level kids, and there was no air conditioning. There were big windows, and you could either sit at a desk, or you could sit in the

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window, and people would lecture to you. And there were all these subjects. What was remarkable, though, was the subjects were not subjects. They were the typical science, literature, and so forth.

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But you were expected to answer and you were expected to have justification for your answers and your—if you wrote an essay, you were expected to read it. Lesson again: your essays sound really bad when you have to read

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them out loud, until you get the sense that you better read it while you're writing it to make sure it's what you want to have said. So that was—everything was done in books, rather than

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questionnaires. And I–I think I learned more from that than I would have otherwise. And I would—we had—had Mr. Theobalds. He was a—he–he was black and

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he had this white hair that looked like it was a cloud on his head, but he was halfway bald and he was a math professor. I remember distinctly, one day I was late and he said—scribbling on the blackboard, and he turns around and says,

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"I heard you coming in, Mr. Sun. So, where have you been? Sipping scotch? Having a good day?" And he—and then, you know, chuckling

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underneath this big belly. But you know something? Those were the years when people cared. And this was another different kind of expression.

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And so...caring. There was a person who had a clubfoot, Stephen. And every day when we had our activities hour—or in the afternoon, it's always at the end of the day, we'd

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go play soccer or something else. Excuse me. Hope you can edit out some of those. PPS: Anyhow, when we're organizing a PPS: team, they would always ask him if he wanted to–to

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PPS: join. Stephen Hodges. PPS: And he could not run, less really properly walk. PPS: And he would always gracefully decline. PPS: And I thought that was a remarkable thing to do all the

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PPS: time. And so, these PPS: were, again, very good PPS: memories. I still keep in contact with some of those people. PPS: In fact, I have a friend who was in my apartment

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PPS: building in San Francisco when we lived there for a short time, and his name is PPS: David Cherny. And we are—we–we used to call each other our—the oldest friends, PPS: but th-tha-that has chronological connotations of PPS: age. So it's our longest friends.

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PPS: And so, we continue to PPS: correspond. I've PPS: also seen my friends in—from Priory, PPS: very few of them, but either online or visited one friend in

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PPS: England who went on—he's a brilliant scientist PPS: . And I–I don't know what anybody else thought I was going to do because I was PPS: really in the sciences until I went to Rice and found out I knew very PPS: little. At least I didn't know it the way I thought I knew it.

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PPS: And—and anyway, but PPS: that's—I took my PPS: A-levels, took my O-levels, and went to, for a short PPS: time, University of the West Indies, to fill a gap.

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PPS: Not that I needed to, I'm not really sure why, PPS: but it was pre-med. PPS: And then I came to Rice to go to architectural PPS: school. So

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PPS: ... you can ask me questions about anything along the way. GP: Okay [laughs]. Yeah, thank you so much for the overview of all the different countries GP: you've been to. I had one more question related to your early life. GP: So, what were your parents' occupations and what are some of the values and

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GP: lessons that your parents instilled in you? PPS: I PPS: will start with my mother. PPS: She would always fill out the form and say she was a homemaker or housewife.

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PPS: She was always very proud to be a partner and PPS: she was born in Alviso, California, population–population PPS: 500. PPS: It's at the bottom of the San Francisco Bay, it's now part of San

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PPS: Jose. PPS: And my grandfather, her father, PPS: was a canner. He had four canneries. PPS: But, you know, in those days it was—we were still under the

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PPS: Exclusion Act in 19—1882 Exclusion Act. PPS: So Chinese were not able to own a lot of things. PPS: But he had this operation that was enormous. PPS: In fact, it was competing with number two, the

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PPS: cannery in–in the entire country. PPS: So they canned all sorts of things. PPS: They were in Alviso, Isleton PPS: , two other towns.

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PPS: And, at any rate, he died at a very young age at 41, h PPS: aving created this very large enterprise and had over PPS: 6000 people working for it, during the Depression. PPS: So when he hired somebody—and he didn't just hire Chinese.

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PPS: Remember, in those days, Chinese were the Asians. PPS: There–there were not a lot of others in the area, but he hired Portuguese, PPS: other immigrants. PPS: And so—and he provided housing and meals.

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PPS: And so, it was quite an enterprise. PPS: And when my gran—he died young, my grandmother took care of the kids. PPS: My grandmother passed away, I was the only one in the area. PPS: I went to the funeral, it was packed.

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PPS: Actually, my grandfather, the storyline is there was 25,000 people at his PPS: funeral. He was a PPS: Schriner, he was—he had become an American, and they PPS: dressed like Americans.

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They–they smoke cigars and had these—all of these, like, Western cowboy outfits with bow ties and neckties and—and–at any way, at the funeral

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, my grandfather's funeral or another funeral like it, my mother is driving an enormous car. My father sees her in this procession and says, "I need to meet her,"

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to a friend. And the friend says, "Oh, she'll never give you ano-another look. You know, she's–she's the daughter of this guy and

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he's died, but she's way above your level." And so, that was not something that dissuaded him. And—so, it's in his book that he wrote, that he found a way to go someplace to meet her.

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And he was from China. He grew up at a time when—it was before the overthrow of the Manchu dynasty. So he's the same age as the last Emperor Puyi,

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born in 1908. And when he tells me his story, and I read about those times, it matches so closely.

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And it's amazing, he grew up at a time where things became very unstable. And when you went to college, you protested . And there were s

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ituations where they would go someplace and the Brits would put up a line of guards, Indian Sikhs, and they would fire on the students. And he had just turned away to pick up something when the guy behind him got shot.

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Well, obviously, everybody ran. And so these are the memories that I think—if you—it's carried in Chinese culture a lot. And it's not spoken to.

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It's about how other countries took over and created colonies within China, and it is remembered.

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And as–as time goes on, I–I–I think it will continue to be part of history. And anyway, he went to one of the first Western-style university, Tsinghua , in Beijing. And he graduated

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there, and he had a job in the salt gazelle. Salt is a currency of the world. It's critically important, and if you work in the salt mine

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gazelle, it's a guarantee of the future. Every few years, you get an increase every, you know—and then he thought this was boring, so he joined the Foreign Service at the extreme lowest level as the vice-consul.

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And he was posted then to San Francisco. That's how he met my mother, by being in San Francisco . And—so, for the rest of my life, I know he did these things and he would always tell me, you know, "Just go the

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straight and narrow, get a good job, don't do anything." And I was thinking, "But you did this." And so, I never questioned him about it, but it seemed like he took an alternate route.

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And then there's all sorts of little stories about that. He stayed at the YMCA and—and in those days, he worked as the consulate. He was always—they were always impeccably dressed.

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And the–the–the consul general spoke Japanese impeccably. So, there was a ship, and this is when China and Japan were at war. The ship docked in San Francisco Bay.

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They got word that the crew is Chinese. The officers are Japanese. And so they sent a message to the officers that they needed to report someplace.

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They got on board ship, talked to the crew, and mutinied and took the ship for China, which was the first battle won—first naval battle won for China against Japan in San Francisco Harbor. And what was happening at the time was, the US was selling steel to

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Japan and the steel was being used as part of the armaments to fight China. And—so these are , you know, the extreme interesting times he...I read about these, instead of—if you sent your socks to the laundry

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, they cost $0.25 to have them washed, and instead of doing that, you either wash them yourself or you turn them inside out and wear them again. Or you could buy a pair for $0.10. So things, you know, it's a very interesting world.

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But he thoroughly enjoyed the thought of Americanization. And when he was first—he was going to go to Cal—Berkeley, but they questioned his ability

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to speak English. And—so, instead he went to Stanford. It's a much longer drive, but—so he graduated after Tsinghua and went to Stanford for his master's and became an avid football fan

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and did all the other things. And was asked at one point to go represent the Republic of China at a conference in New Orleans. So he and another consul were going to take a train.

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The other guy convinced him. "No, no, no." His name was Patrick Pichi Sun. "Hey, Pat, let's not do this. We can buy a car.

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We can drive there and we come back. We'll have a car." So, they bought a car. They didn't get as far as LA, it broke. So then he took a train.

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And from station to station, when you got new p eople on board that were running the trains, and they'd come and check your ticket.

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He was told either he was black or he was white, and he couldn't sit in this car. So some people define Asians as black and some people for colored, and some people define them as white,

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which led to a lot of confusion when you went to a water fountain. Because one was named one and one was named the other, and you would have to look around to see if you were at the right one. So—and he remembers when he was in Houston, there was a vice

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consul office on Richmond. In fact, if you go it's on the north side of Richmond between Montrose and Southwest Freeway , the little house.

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And on the— underneath the roof line, there's a little emblem that's all faded out. That was the vice-consulate of the Republic of China in Houston. And, you know, these were memories that he had

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that I rather cherished. So he was in the Foreign Service. He stayed in the Foreign Service going from lowest post and becoming an ambassador and serving in

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Thailand, Philippines, Jamaica, Trinidad, Tobago, Barbados, and being at the UN. So, yeah. But they both passed away fairly—in–in today's

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age, they were fairly middle-aged, not old. But they had lived through a lot: a revolution, a couple of wars and many changes in life. GP: I see. Now moving on to a bit of your immigration

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GP: experience, could you tell us when you settled to—settled in the GP: United States and how and when that happened? GP: And if you felt any sort of cultural shocks when you first came to the States? GP: It would be great if you could talk about that.

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PPS: Not so much cultural shock, it's i-interesting. PPS: I think it's mostly interesting because if all PPS: of us look back at our–our lives, there's always a constant of change PPS: and you're constantly learning things.

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PPS: And it's better to–to look PPS: at life as a river that's going through its various PPS: manifestations, and all these things will happen. PPS: I think the biggest change is when you go through the

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PPS: levels of age, and I don't think the decades are what's important. PPS: To me, it's the eight. PPS: When you go—when you're eight, suddenly, after you're eight, PPS: life changes a little bit.

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PPS: And when you're 18, life changes again. PPS: When you're 28, it changes again, so forth. PPS: So, I was first in the US when I was PPS: about six—seven.

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PPS: And—in San Francisco. PPS: Then I experienced San Mateo, which was, at the time, a suburb. PPS: Windows left open, doors never locked. PPS: It was—and the weather is terrific.

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PPS: It's–it's–it's wonderful. PPS: San Francisco at the time was awfully nice, too. PPS: I remember running up and down the hills PPS: , jumping on the cable cars.

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PPS: And y-you're not supposed to do that, but the conductors PPS: ended up knowing you so well and they just yell at you, "Hang on, I'm going to turn!" PPS: or "Hang on, I'm going to brake!" And they just tell you that. PPS: And then there was the market, Tom's Market .

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PPS: I would be given $0.25 for milk, and I—instead I'd turn it in and PPS: buy a hamburger. And I went to a little school called Commodore Stockton. Turns out there's a Dr.

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Daniel Louie in Houston, also went to the same school a couple of years before me. Remarkable little things in time. And difference between city life and suburban life is we're—you play

00:33:50.210 - 00:34:11.480

football, in city life you don't, you play handball against a wall, and so there's–there's things that change . And I guess there's one thing that—not actually shocked,

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but—more lessons to be learned as you go through life. And when you're Chinese, there are going to be some people who make fun of you because you are different.

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But when you come from a world where you're not different , then you take it more in stride. And I think that's why some Asian families—i t's not protecting your kids, but it's giving them a home

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base where they don't actually have to f ear not fitting in, even though you don't fit in. You do always have that feeling that you're not exactly the same. But,

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somewhere else, everybody who's here won't be the same. So, in context, we are all different in some respect or another.

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And I enjoy Houston because it's not only diverse, there's a lot of assimilation here. And I–I–I have a high level of–of–of pride in being associated with that.

00:35:33.140 - 00:35:45.740

There—it's the different groups that you can belong to and you don't have to—by the way, did you get the copy of the pictures of the event? The CPC?

00:35:45.940 - 00:35:58.790

[GP: Yes, I did.] Oh, okay. Okay. You can see there's a lot of different people there. And there's–there's these different generations of Chinese and Asians who came to Houston.

00:36:00.080 - 00:36:15.280

First, it's the first immigrant group-groups that ran restaurants and laundries and grocery stores, and they lived behind the grocery store, and they're the baseline.

00:36:15.280 - 00:36:34.140

Years later came students who were beginning to grow up here. And they came from Hong Kong, came from Taiwan, and then later, another cluster of groups started to come from China.

00:36:34.350 - 00:36:52.620

So over these decades, Chinese professional club was a place where they could mingle and meet, and the diaspora could see others and adapt more easily. And that's continuing to happen.

00:36:53.130 - 00:37:09.590

So an-an-anyway, n-now, I guess you could say— obviously there were points in time where you get called names and you wonder about that and—but not necessarily shock, so to speak.

00:37:09.590 - 00:37:24.700

And Rice is a very different place. It's so small that you begin to know a lot of people. And when I was there, it was all of 1600 students, which is, in US standards, like a normal

00:37:25.450 - 00:37:39.890

high school. And my architectural group was maybe 40. So. GP: Yeah, Rice is definitely very small.

00:37:40.730 - 00:37:58.440

GP: But moving on to more about your education experience, GP: could you describe a little more about your experience at Rice in terms of GP: academics, socially or culturally? PPS: There was no social life.

00:37:59.420 - 00:38:14.220

PPS: Zip. It was all academics, at least PPS: for most of us that were there. PPS: Remember, at that time, most of the–most of the PPS: students—just before this

00:38:16.970 - 00:38:30.260

PPS: 2 or 3 years before I arrived, a very good friend—the PPS: Merrimans, Bill Merriman and Susan Merriman. PPS: She was the last class that was entirely free. PPS: If you got admitted to Rice, you got everything paid for.

00:38:31.980 - 00:38:50.000

PPS: And admittedly, when I arrived, I had a tuition PPS: grant and in order to supplement things, I went in Navy PPS: ROTC. I worked at the art center, which was not the art center yet, but I worked PPS: for Dominic DeMenil, the art patron.

00:38:50.330 - 00:39:09.560

PPS: I drove the art bus that took people out to the art center and back, so PPS: I'd leave class about five minutes early, run to the bus, start the bus, and do PPS: the circuit around—excuse me, the main quadrangle, PPS: drop everybody off and come–and come back about five minutes late.

00:39:09.560 - 00:39:23.810

PPS: Which is okay, I didn't have Mr. PPS: Theobalds there asking me what I've been doing. PPS: And–and all day long—I made more PPS: money then than I did for absolutely years because

00:39:26.000 - 00:39:44.470

PPS: it was real money at the time. PPS: Gas was anywhere from $0.19 to $0.29 a gallon. PPS: And anyway, academics were something I thought I PPS: was doing quite well in.

00:39:44.480 - 00:39:55.680

PPS: I flew past a lot of things. PPS: Knew calculus really well, until I ran into one book by Michael Spivak. PPS: It was a calculus book. It was in Math 100.

00:39:55.680 - 00:40:12.790

And all of us in architecture—well, I wouldn't say all, Fred and me and a few others had no clue what they were talking about because this is not anything we were used to. So we opted out, went into Math 101,

00:40:12.790 - 00:40:27.550

which were for business majors who were mostly athletes. So, we learned how to read Egyptian hieroglyphics and how they would add. Well, it was pretty interesting.

00:40:27.550 - 00:40:46.780

And it—but, I thought—not Rice, but this period of my life was incredibly important because this is the last time I'm going to have formal education.

00:40:47.860 - 00:41:02.000

And even though I wasn't paying for it, I was paying for it. So I tried to take everything I could, 132 credits. I stayed up all the time. Weiss had a library downstairs.

00:41:02.100 - 00:41:16.700

I would pile books next to my stuff and just plow through them. Whether I retained anything, I'm not sure. And... during sophomore year, I had to start dropping

00:41:17.210 - 00:41:32.140

everything. No more track. No more band. I–I had been buying and selling cars as well.

00:41:33.420 - 00:41:50.520

So, I'd not do that as much, even though that kept going on, I had over ten cars. And you–you parked out

00:41:51.300 - 00:42:09.630

near the stadium until you were a senior so you could park closer in. So it was a little trek to get out there all the time. But, the sense of independence was really one of the enormous things about being in the United States.

00:42:10.430 - 00:42:26.770

Get in my car, I can drive to California. And I did that. And it broke down. I still did that. And when I broke down between Ozona and Sonora, I was in a Mercedes

00:42:27.520 - 00:42:43.410

230. It's an odd-looking car, it has little fins. It's not one of the classics. Didn't have a classic motor. A bible student, Scott Perry, was with me.

00:42:43.650 - 00:42:57.570

And so, the car burned up. We weren't watching the thermometer, we could have stopped it. We had a radiator leak. Radiator cap had a problem.

00:42:58.380 - 00:43:17.160

So what do we do? I waited and then this pickup truck came. There was pickup trucks all over the place in west Texas. And it drove me into a little town. And we went into another little town and I–I re-recall that while I'm sitting there

00:43:17.160 - 00:43:34.870

in his pickup truck, windows are open, it's the winter. Weather's not that bad. The bottle of whiskey is rolling between us, and he's asking if I wanted a swig. And I said, "No, that's okay, thanks." And I finally got to

00:43:34.870 - 00:43:50.820

a gas station dealership and they got a tow truck to come out and get it. In the meantime, Scott asked me, "What are we going to do?" I said, "We polish the car." "Why?" "Well, because it

00:43:50.820 - 00:44:02.020

doesn't look good right now." So, got it there. It's Sunday, so everything's closed. So we had to sleep in the car.

00:44:02.290 - 00:44:24.600

Thank heavens, in those days, American cars had no reclining seats and Mercedes did. So, I traded to get this car. Although I–I thought it was really neat , the fact that it broke down was not neat. And because it was all nice and shiny, perfectly clean, I asked them

00:44:24.600 - 00:44:42.330

if they would trade, and I traded it: 1965 Mercedes. I got a 1963 Coupe de Ville White. And—so I left there in the huge car, continuing on my way to California.

00:44:43.780 - 00:45:01.250

So, my Rice years were sprinkled with experiences, and I can't point to extreme academics, although VanDever was my history teacher,

00:45:02.240 - 00:45:18.330

and he was enormously interesting and entertaining. Learning about the Civil War from him was a real treasure years later.

00:45:18.330 - 00:45:34.000

Living in Atlanta, you learn that there was no Civil War, there was no war between the States. It was a war of Northern aggression. So, there is a baseline of history that changes

00:45:34.750 - 00:45:52.690

based on where you are in the culture. So I–I—and, you know, doing these projects in architecture took an enormous amount of time , and you learn that nothing is ever done. So you keep working on it.

00:45:52.690 - 00:46:07.490

And we have one professor, Gary Long, who taught me a new lesson, and that was—he said, "Midnight. That's it." So he would come in, pick up all our drawings, and we couldn't keep working on it because he didn't want us to be asleep when

00:46:07.670 - 00:46:24.740

we presented the next day. And my projects inevitably ended up being community-oriented: health centers, other buildings like that.

00:46:25.040 - 00:46:41.740

And that's what gravitated me toward hospital work and public health. It just seemed to be more challenging at the time. So, I

00:46:42.580 - 00:46:58.310

think—what Rice also offered me was my fifth year. There was an interim year and I was a preceptor—I'm sorry, I'm preceptee—my preceptor was—how old was the preceptor?

00:46:58.310 - 00:47:16.100

He was—anyhow...George Grenfell-Baines in England . So I spent a year over there, in a company called Building Design Partnership, BDP, which eventually became the largest firm in England and dominated the European market.

00:47:16.100 - 00:47:32.860

But I was there as the lowest person in this chain of people. But I belonged to the chair, which is George Grenfell-Baines. Later he became Sir George. And another person,

00:47:34.060 - 00:47:44.710

Nick Bell, was there— no, Nick Terry. And—Nick and Dorothy Terry. And he was the lowest person along with me.

00:47:44.710 - 00:47:58.420

We became fast friends. And years later, I went back to England. I went back to BDP, looked him up. He was the Chairman of the Board.

00:47:59.840 - 00:48:15.120

And he delighted in walking me around. Introduced me as—we were the two lowest people on the totem pole, and I was now a consultant coming from the US and there he was.

00:48:15.570 - 00:48:35.620

Unfortunately, he's passed away and it's kind of sad. But Rice gave me these opportunities, and Rice gave me attitudes of not feeling as if I had to... accept for who I

00:48:35.620 - 00:48:48.280

was. So, when you go from fourth year to fifth year, you have to interview for it. You have to put together your portfolio. Some people did dramatic things.

00:48:48.970 - 00:49:05.290

Some people had gorgeous-looking things. Mine was fairly standard, but I also, at the time, instead of—there's no print houses, so I had to take pictures and go to the art center and print them myself, the pictures of things.

00:49:05.290 - 00:49:26.150

And it was architectural projects, art and anything else you're writing or something you'd present. My interview was on a weekend, upstairs, Anderson Hall. Fine. There were some professors who, quite frankly,

00:49:26.990 - 00:49:44.320

I don't think took a shining to me because they would think I was not fit for service. And so I–I had to try to avoid them. And I had two professors there with me questioning

00:49:45.700 - 00:50:01.720

me. And I hear this noise in the hallway. It's sort of like “ga-da-da-da-da. Ga-da-da-da-da. Ga-da-da-da-da. Dun dun. Ga-da-da-da-da.”

00:50:01.720 - 00:50:18.200

Okay. It gets closer and closer. The dean at the time was Anderson Todd, and he was the disciple of Mies(?). And he has a big, thick mustache, smokes a big cigar, and

00:50:18.200 - 00:50:39.030

has a very dominant kind of look to him. He drags his ladder, which must have been a 12-foot ladder because ceiling heights are extremely high. And he–he comes in to change a light bulb. And so we try to avoid him in this–in this little

00:50:40.710 - 00:50:53.040

conference room. PPS: They dragged this thing in, climbs on the table, climbs up the ladder PPS: and...he looks down PPS: as if the Lord is looking down at you.

00:50:53.920 - 00:51:09.290

PPS: And he says, "Look. PPS: Don't worry. PPS: Don't get nervous. PPS: If these"—talking about me, with these two professors in there—"If these guys were

00:51:09.290 - 00:51:28.220

PPS: any good, they wouldn't be teaching." PPS: So this is the disciples of Mies. PPS: And I saw him for years and years, just on occasion. PPS: And I also remember one time he juried our drawings,

00:51:29.090 - 00:51:42.890

PPS: and it wasn't my drawing, it was one—there's styles in architecture where you PPS: kind of let the line go past where they intersect, and it's kind of neat. PPS: It's fashionable. PPS: And he would come and he said, "What is the matter with you?

00:51:42.920 - 00:51:56.690

PPS: Don't you know where to stop the line? PPS: It stops where the other one starts. PPS: And did you draw this with matches?" You know, he's a PPS: precisionist, and Mies is the one who is quoted as saying,

00:51:56.720 - 00:52:11.820

PPS: "Form follows function." And so that—this is a PPS: precision in the art of architecture, the technology of PPS: architecture. So, I PPS: think I benefited a lot.

00:52:12.650 - 00:52:28.990

PPS: Just, i-if nothing else, your academic years, your PPS: college, puts you in a certain state of—mental PPS: state that helps you understand PPS: yourself a bit.

00:52:30.520 - 00:52:45.020

PPS: Yeah. Maybe it takes a longer time to understand what you're supposed to PPS: understand, but that's part of the case. GP: Right. Thank you so much for sharing. GP: The next question is: how did you first become interested in the field of

00:52:45.020 - 00:53:01.120

GP: architecture and specifically, concentrating on healthcare GP: within architecture? PPS: You know, when I mentioned PPS: early on that I was the last

00:53:01.120 - 00:53:20.030

PPS: child, a lot of people say, "Well, you were pampered." Well, not PPS: actually, because at this point in PPS: time...I PPS: was born on the same day, actually, in–in some accounts, that

00:53:20.540 - 00:53:35.530

PPS: the communists took over China. PPS: And we were in the Philippines where I was born and PPS: quickly went to Bangkok. PPS: Thailand was the next coun-country that the communists were looking at,

00:53:35.530 - 00:53:51.550

PPS: but they were very, very clever. PPS: And, you know, I–I don't–I don't even think that PPS: a lot of people know that when World War II broke out, Thailand PPS: sided with the Axis countries.

00:53:52.970 - 00:54:05.970

PPS: They did not side with the Allies. PPS: And so they declared war on the US and England. PPS: And... England was apparently upset about this PPS: whole thing.

00:54:05.970 - 00:54:23.490

PPS: And when they—when—it was when Franklin Roosevelt PPS: was told, you know, Thailand has sided with the PPS: Japanese, his comment was, "Hm, cute." That was PPS: it. Now

00:54:26.660 - 00:54:43.960

PPS: ... the Thais... PPS: never got into the war, exceptionally. PPS: But, the Japanese used their currency throughout the war. PPS: So at the end of the war when the Japanese lost, the

00:54:43.960 - 00:55:01.010

PPS: Thais showed up with all these receipts and said, "By the way, PPS: here's all the money you used. PPS: We would like it back." And it–it– PPS: it's an interesting story about that period.

00:55:01.010 - 00:55:17.070

So that period in the early 50s—one, the king had—at the time, had gone to Switzerland, the king of Thailand.

00:55:17.400 - 00:55:34.470

The monarchy had been sort of overthrown. And— so lots of things were happening, new king was coming in. My father's in charge of the legation. He's in charge of going to ECAFE, which is A-ASEAN today.

00:55:35.490 - 00:55:54.440

And so there wasn't a whole lot of time for me, that's why I fell in the lake. And so, in all of those years, you grow up somewhat independently. Fast forward to 1968, February.

00:55:55.640 - 00:56:13.130

Father walks in my room and says, "Where are you going to college?" And I thought he would have had an idea. And I thought "Stanford," his–his comment was, "No, we've been there. It's almost as—whatever I've done, you don't need to do again." And this was

00:56:13.550 - 00:56:35.670

in–in—over my life, I seem to recall these comments. Okay. So, I quickly run down to the American embassy and knowing what we kept in our embassy, the Republic of

00:56:35.670 - 00:56:48.880

China's embassy, information about the country and so forth. I wanted to know everything I could about universities in the United States. Of course, I've heard of some of them. And they had pamphlets and brochures and—you know.

00:56:48.880 - 00:57:04.790

So I took them all back. And I got 3 or 4 of my friends to come to the office, the school office, upstairs in the house with the big windows that were left open, on the weekend. And we typed up 27 applications.

00:57:09.150 - 00:57:17.660

Only two of them did I have to pay for. I'd ask my parents for money. Stanford: $12. USC: $20.

00:57:17.930 - 00:57:34.030

And so, my friends would say, "Okay," you know, we'd start–start, I would answer the questions, they would ask me a question, I'd answer the question. And so, 27 applications went out. And so, I waited, but I was very late in the game.

00:57:34.330 - 00:57:48.200

You know how February is not the best time. Usually it's a couple months before that. When they asked me "What–what degree program?",

00:57:48.680 - 00:58:04.670

I quickly get the brochure and look at it and see which one they were famous for. And, you know, that's—you ought to go there and do—you know, if you're–if you're going to a restaurant, you look up their menu and you, you know, don't order Mexican food in a Chinese restaurant.

00:58:04.670 - 00:58:15.670

It's not the thing to do. Okay. Neal Paxson, classmate of mine at Priory School.

00:58:16.720 - 00:58:30.730

And kee—keep in mind when I graduated, there were maybe four people graduated. This is the size of our group. There were maybe nine. There's a picture of the head boy and I was one of this

00:58:30.740 - 00:58:44.770

group. At any rate, he–he had an extra packet from Rice. He had applied to UVA, Tulane, and Rice. That was it. He had a mindset about where he was going to go.

00:58:46.120 - 00:59:02.880

I took one of the applications, stapled it, put it in an envelope, and sent it. That was the end of it. My father found it interesting because I gave him the list and he thought—didn't say much to me. I applied to typical Ivy Leagues, state schools.

00:59:04.440 - 00:59:20.750

Kansas State had the biggest catalog you could find. They had taught everything. First place I...got accepted was Arizona State. No, University of Arizona.

00:59:20.780 - 00:59:33.560

Arizona State came later. I was delighted. I was ready to go. If anybody would accept me, I was happy. And then as things went on, I got a...

00:59:33.560 - 00:59:49.310

letter from Rice. It says: "We're—we have—we're sorry to inform you we do not have an–an alumni in Jamaica. So we cannot arrange for your interview." Okay.

00:59:52.720 - 01:00:06.040

Very disappointing. Oh. "In which case we are waiving the interview. And moving you to the next stage." Okay. So, nothing to worry about.

01:00:06.070 - 01:00:21.270

Nothing lost, nothing gained. Hmm. My father finds out that his good friend is the Consul General in Houston. And two of his Con—the Consul General's son, one is in college at Rice, the

01:00:21.270 - 01:00:33.790

other one intends to go there. And then another Consul General's daughter had gone to Rice. "Rice is Harvard of the South." It's very small.

01:00:34.430 - 01:00:44.060

It's good to be small. You want to protect your kids. You don't want them involved in stuff. I can live on campus.

01:00:46.450 - 01:00:55.570

All of a sudden, I get this letter, and I don't know where—it could be somewhere in a box, someplace. It looks like a diploma. It's on really special paper.

01:00:55.570 - 01:01:05.510

It's engraved. And it says I've been admitted. And I thought, well, that's it. We just keep this, I don't even need to go.

01:01:05.540 - 01:01:18.900

This is great. Now architecture was a—yeah, you know, I knew math. I knew chemistry, I knew physics.

01:01:18.900 - 01:01:34.120

I knew all these things. This was different. This was between art and architec—and–and science and I thought, "If I'm going to learn something, let's learn something different."

01:01:35.150 - 01:01:49.070

That was how I got there. I did not know that also, architecture allowed some of the lower SAT scores. I—and—I...but

01:01:55.720 - 01:02:10.780

it also brought in a lot of eclectic people, which was very interesting. So, that's how I got into archi-architecture. But at Rice, I found—I–I am very honest about this.

01:02:11.500 - 01:02:27.900

I–I don't think I knew anybody I would consider not intelligent. There were some that were not achieving, but it wasn't that they weren't—not intelligent.

01:02:27.930 - 01:02:47.840

One of them was terrible in standard requirement courses but then excelled at Russian and something else . And his guitar skills are incredible. Of course, I just saw him at the 50th reunion.

01:02:48.560 - 01:03:04.540

Could draw cartoons incredibly, these Superman, whatnot, cartoons. Became famous for them later. Others had a better head on their shoulders than you would find because they would direct

01:03:04.540 - 01:03:21.950

themselves in a certain direction. Classmate and good friend John Benzon had a career path. He was going to go through this path, take right courses, and then go into a big eight accounting firm with an X number of

01:03:21.950 - 01:03:30.140

years to become partner. And he did exactly that. Terribly successful. A lot of the athletes became doctors.

01:03:30.700 - 01:03:44.700

And I was amazed. I mean, where's that connection? But—so, I have a lot of respect for the people that were there.

01:03:44.700 - 01:04:00.280

But I got into architecture because it was something I had no clue what it was. Although, I—having lived in different places, I certainly appreciated the variations in design and environment.

01:04:04.350 - 01:04:23.400

GP: I see. So, the next question is: you have over three GP: decades of experience in the architectural field, and specifically, of health care GP: programs. So how would you describe your involvement in this field over the GP: years? And what are your main responsibilities and the daily interactions

01:04:23.400 - 01:04:32.510

GP: you have, being involved in this field? PPS: Nearly five decades. PPS: I went to my 50th reunion. PPS: How do you like that? Hm.

01:04:35.600 - 01:04:46.810

PPS: That's a... PPS: terribly good, provocative question. PPS: How did I get into what I'm PPS: doing?

01:04:46.810 - 01:05:00.470

PPS: I had always been PPS: interested in PPS: the organizational aspects of PPS: anything I did.

01:05:01.300 - 01:05:14.470

PPS: So I went to work. PPS: Thi—this is how I got into—I went to work for a PPS: little firm called Ford and Heash, and there may have been 5 PPS: or 6 people there.

01:05:16.490 - 01:05:28.640

PPS: Vincent Ford and Ted Heash. PPS: And one of them was politically inclined. PPS: The other one was typical architect, manage this and PPS: that. And

01:05:29.090 - 01:05:47.180

PPS: I–I...I PPS: first went to another firm and worked there a little while, and you'll see their name all PPS: over the buildings at Rice. PPS: But they,

01:05:47.180 - 01:06:04.560

PPS: for some reason—I—they didn't have space for—they PPS: didn't—I had hair down, about your length. PPS: Yeah. A bit more curly. PPS: Because I would brush it a hundred times a night, I was told, you know, with a

01:06:04.560 - 01:06:23.650

PPS: boar bristle. At any rate, PPS: Ford and Heath, one of the—Sam Alexander had a wife PPS: named Linda. PPS: She worked at a company called CRS.

01:06:23.650 - 01:06:40.270

PPS: Caudill Rowlett Scott. PPS: And PPS: it was my belief that one of my friends went and worked there, and it was kind of PPS: dur—during the summer.

01:06:40.270 - 01:06:49.760

PPS: I called over there to find Roger. PPS: Roger Call. Nobody could find him. PPS: So they said, "Would you like to talk to H.R. PPS: ?" And I talked to Roger—I mean,

01:06:54.090 - 01:07:11.380

PPS: Sam's wife. And... PPS: she said, "You know, I heard that name. PPS: I don't know." And CRS was a— already a—well, PPS: if not the biggest operating architectural companies in Houston, I don't know who would

01:07:11.380 - 01:07:24.030

PPS: have been. And...so, I said, "Oh, I know Sam." This is her husband, so I asked her what she did.

01:07:24.940 - 01:07:39.970

She's in HR. I said, "Oh, so you, you know, you're the one who hires people?" And she says, "No, I just—I know what openings there are and I do all these things." I said, "Well, what openings are there?" "No openings in design, but

01:07:40.120 - 01:07:58.390

we have an area called programming planning." I said, "Well, what's that?" She says, "Well, you know, there's—before you start a project, you need to figure out what you're going to do." And I thought, "Well, that's very interesting. I had a class like that in school and one of my professors was Bob Douglas."

01:07:58.390 - 01:08:12.240

And she said, "Oh yeah, they know Bob Douglas here. Would you like to be interviewed for this opening?" I thought, "Well, I'm working by the hour over here, and I've been doing residential housing, like everybody else can do it.

01:08:12.240 - 01:08:29.290

Sure." So, I went over there. And it's a very interesting environment because there were no offices. It was all open office with partitions that were made by Herman Miller. There were conference rooms in the middle of the floor and they had glass

01:08:29.290 - 01:08:45.200

sides—two, front and back with glass. The other two sides were rough-sawn cedar, so you could pin things on the wall without damaging the wood, you know, in all sorts. So I–I was put in one of these little rooms.

01:08:46.040 - 01:08:59.930

I sat in their lobby, and when I sat in the lobby, I thought, "This is the biggest lobby I've ever been in." And it was very big. And... keep in mind, I grew up in a–in an embassy.

01:08:59.930 - 01:09:17.420

So this was a pretty big lobby, and it had a big skylight and the building had parking on top and you went down into the building. This was Bill Caudill's design. And eventually, you find out that for different reasons, that was a good

01:09:17.420 - 01:09:34.710

idea. And the ceilings were natural concrete, the double T's, you know, like underneath the freeway. The cars parking on top shaded the building, reducing solar impact tremendously.

01:09:35.070 - 01:09:44.850

Pretty clever. Not sure that was the intent. It was just part of the design. The floor was all windows all the way around. We were in the bayou.

01:09:45.440 - 01:09:57.570

And it was green. And you look out the window, you see turtles and whatnot. Raccoons. The building's gone. Everything's gone, but it was an incredible environment.

01:09:59.560 - 01:10:12.340

I'm sitting in the room, and people come up and start interviewing me. They ask me questions. I think, "Interview, right?" 15 minutes, 30 max. "Going to ask you a few questions.

01:10:12.340 - 01:10:30.520

Where did you go to school? Blah, blah, blah." 4 or 5 hours later, I'm still there. They're questioning me about process sequence, what do I do, and I meet Willy Peña, who

01:10:30.520 - 01:10:44.080

is the–the father of programming. He wrote a book. It's behind me. It's called Problem Seeking and I think—eventually helped with the second edition.

01:10:44.500 - 01:10:56.460

But, I get hired. I get a letter. Not exactly like the Rice letter, but it's on its own format.

01:10:56.700 - 01:11:12.390

It's not a 8.5 by 11. They decided that all their letters and memos would be half-size. So you'd only fold them once, not twice, to get them in an envelope. Just always thinking about process again and—

01:11:14.910 - 01:11:30.350

okay. The salary was not as good as most of my contemporaries, but, I got my own open office.

01:11:31.290 - 01:11:49.780

And I was doing something that I had seen and I thought was very interesting. So I delve into it. And for three years, I was a little kid.

01:11:51.220 - 01:12:04.990

And remember, I had long hair. I had a pouch on my belt that I had bought in Morocco during—after the English years and I had—I wore sandals.

01:12:08.740 - 01:12:20.340

We had a project in Saint Joe, Missouri. And Willy Peña is going to be the lead programmer. He's the vice president. Alex Brailas is going to—he's the vice president, he's going to be the project

01:12:20.340 - 01:12:35.160

manager. And then he brought me along. Okay. As my graduation present, my father gave me $200 and he said, "Go buy a suit.

01:12:35.380 - 01:12:51.270

You need one." I thought, " I probably do." And if I had gone home to Asia, I would have a suit made, right? In fact, I did have a suit, but it was my Navy uniform. I did have it made, but it didn't really—wouldn't wear that.

01:12:53.000 - 01:13:10.630

I got to the airport, I had gotten a haircut, put on a suit and shoes. They didn't recognize me. Willie Peña and Alex—I said, "It is me." I—and they go, "Where's your pouch?" "I have a wallet."

01:13:14.890 - 01:13:35.090

We get to Saint Joe, Missouri. And we're there to help plan a town center and do the architecture. We go to this motel called the Pony Express Inn, because Saint Joe, Missouri, is the

01:13:35.090 - 01:13:53.180

starting point of the Pony Express. And there's other things it's famous for: barbed wire, big chief pads. I went and saw the—in the basement of the house at the paper magnet, and

01:13:53.180 - 01:14:13.050

I almost couldn't find the bathroom because it's behind the door in my room. And that's where the stockyards are. And the most incredible prime ribs you could eat. But Willie says—and–and okay, I'm at the office,

01:14:13.620 - 01:14:29.570

I'm getting us ready for the trip. And what we do is we use this programming process which puts five conditions up on the wall. Goals, facts, concepts, needs, and the problem statement.

01:14:29.720 - 01:14:49.900

And these were done on cards. I have my own reasons for explaining this. I–I had known Willie until he passed at—right at 100 years old. Not

01:14:49.900 - 01:15:04.900

only did I—was enthralled by this. I was–I was a vessel for it. I transmitted it. So, we got to the mayor's

01:15:04.930 - 01:15:20.710

office at 9:00, and he let us in at 10, brought us into a meeting with some council members, and he said, "Here are the architects. As usual, they're late." Mayor Bennett. I'll remember that.

01:15:22.070 - 01:15:30.580

Lesson in life. There are people like this who will do things like this. We were outside. All the time.

01:15:31.000 - 01:15:40.890

We were not late. Nobody said anything. You know, I'm 26—no, I'm 23 years old, okay. So I'm not going to say anything.

01:15:40.890 - 01:15:51.610

And I'm in my new suit. How do you like that? And I have shoes on. Hm. [laughs] We go back. Our assignment is to interview

01:15:53.740 - 01:16:08.090

all the major buildings, the police station, the jail, the library, the performing arts hall, and we're going to build a town center. It's a big deal, on two blocks.

01:16:09.070 - 01:16:21.970

So I have to talk to everybody about whether our program is correct. "Here's our kit of parts. You need this many offices. How many stacks do you have?" And so, I had to learn very quickly from the time I got

01:16:21.970 - 01:16:30.880

the assignment in about a week later. How do you size a library? H-how do—what—how do you do that? How do you size a locker room?

01:16:31.030 - 01:16:46.430

How do you size offices? And I had to draw a little diagrams of each one. And so that's what I did, getting ready for this meeting. Morning of the meeting, Willie says, "I'm not going." Whoa.

01:16:46.670 - 01:17:00.420

What does that mean? [gestures to book on bookshelf] I'll show you the book, though, I'll get you a copy. Anyhow. Maybe a used copy, it's hard to find. And

01:17:00.420 - 01:17:17.590

anyway... his knee had been squeaking. He lost his leg during the war. Many years later, the French gave him the–the Legion of Honor

01:17:17.590 - 01:17:31.570

Award. He's gotten a Jefferson Award. But that day, his knee is squeaking, he stayed up all night. He said, "I'm no good, Philip, you go." And Alex takes all this in stride.

01:17:31.570 - 01:17:44.440

He's the project manager and I was thinking to myself years later, "How did they do that? They don't—they didn't even recognize me at the airport." So—b ut that was CRS.

01:17:44.470 - 01:18:01.600

That was my vision, also, of Houston, that everybody has that chance. So, I went in there and put everything on the wall, started interviewing each department head, asked them if this was right or wrong,

01:18:01.600 - 01:18:13.100

crossed out things. I gave him a card. "If you think this is wrong, let me have the information up there. And goals, facts, concepts, needs, facts. Your population base is that, drive this.

01:18:13.100 - 01:18:28.030

Concepts. How would you implement a goal? And what are the operating concepts you have?" I need to draw it very quickly, put it on the wall. And because you ask people their opinion rather than showing them a design, t hey

01:18:29.290 - 01:18:47.620

become part of the process and you build trust. And that trust extends over to the fact that when you do design something, it is something that they already know inherently what's going to be in the design and they can see it.

01:18:47.920 - 01:19:07.080

So...CRS was so good in those days that—storyline goes, if you go interview for projects, you should be doing well if you get 1 in 20, like 5%.

01:19:07.080 - 01:19:25.080

So you push a lot of documents out the door proposing for projects and so forth—CRS was getting one out of three, all over the country. So we had offices in Chicago and New York, in LA, in Lebanon, in Hong Kong.

01:19:25.690 - 01:19:40.620

And Bill Caudill–Caudill Rowlett Scott had his own airplane, so he'd fly all over Texas and pick up school projects. And there was a lot of visionary work regarding schools.

01:19:41.610 - 01:19:58.440

Open schools, other concepts for schools. So, health care, we were just getting into health care. And I had done these projects in school. And I found them very interesting, and I got snatched to go into health care.

01:19:58.760 - 01:20:09.210

And Charlie Estes was the head of the program at the time. David Thorman was in it and some other people. Charlie Estes has passed. Willie has passed.

01:20:10.340 - 01:20:28.180

Anyhow. Excuse me. My job was to measure all the rooms in this hospital, Sparks Regional Hospital in Arkansas, and make a table of

01:20:28.180 - 01:20:45.070

them. And remember, in those days we don't have computers, the table gets typed. A whole science into typing how you can type. You have to set up the typewriter, type a line, and then retype it. I have to put zip-a-tone on it, which is gray material separating out every other

01:20:45.070 - 01:21:03.850

line. At any rate, I had to measure all these rooms and Charlie came over to check, to see if I had done it correctly. I had no idea how he was going to check, because hundreds of rooms. And he flips through them and I—before I put it

01:21:03.940 - 01:21:19.090

all on the table, I marked them on the plan. He just flips through and then he says, "God, that's great. Okay, you're on the job." And I went over and I said, "Charlie, how do you know I did anything right?"

01:21:20.560 - 01:21:32.970

He said, "Well, on every floor there's a stairway and they're all the same. And you got the same number on every floor. And on every floor there's an elevator bank. You got the same number on every elevator bank.

01:21:33.720 - 01:21:49.780

And on the same floor, there's an elev—a chase for the electrical conduits and a mechanical shop. And you did the same thing. So either you're really clever to go back and fix all of them. Or you just measured it consistently the same way all the way through." And I

01:21:49.780 - 01:22:05.950

thought, "Hm. Okay. Yeah." [laughs] So, I get into the healthcare side of this organization, which is the most complex facility you can enter into.

01:22:07.160 - 01:22:17.570

If you do health, there are so many components. If you do retail, there's even less. The shop sets up themselves. You do a commercial, it's basically an open floor plan.

01:22:17.600 - 01:22:33.770

Every office group does their own thing. In the hospital, you have a number of departments, each one is different. As an old friend used to tell me: it's still—it's the whole enchilada. You've got housing and beds, you have imaging, radiology rooms, you have

01:22:33.770 - 01:22:51.250

a kitchen, you have dietary, you have laundry, you have sub-sterile operating rooms, physical therapy. There's five zones in a hospital. So, what I learned in life is from a friend,

01:22:52.690 - 01:23:10.630

Rick Bechtold, my classmate, went to the—when I went to England, he went to the National Bureau of Standards in Washington, D.C. for his preceptorship. And I said I came—when we all came back, sitting around asking each other, "What did

01:23:10.630 - 01:23:25.100

you learn?" And he said, "You can only remember five things." I said, "Really?" He said, "Yeah. We did all these tests. People can only remember five things." And I thought,

01:23:26.910 - 01:23:38.710

"Within any category, if I asked you to name fruits, you'd come up with five. Then you'd struggle after that and–and something else."

01:23:43.130 - 01:23:55.560

So we came up with five colors to organize a hospital. And then I discovered, well, look at that: goals, facts, concepts, needs, and problem statement. That's only five. Easy for people to remember.

01:23:55.580 - 01:24:13.920

Easy for you to categorize. Inpatient area: all the beds, anything associated with them, ICUs. Blue. Red: diagnostic and treatment, surgery, radiology, all things that happen to you, laboratory.

01:24:13.920 - 01:24:31.510

Orange: all the ambulatory clinics, emergency room . Yellow: administrative and public, all the offices, and so forth. Green: all the service departments. For some reason—and later you stick pharmacy in

01:24:31.810 - 01:24:46.210

that department. But if you know how to do this, life is so easy. So as life goes on, I'm doing that for three years. And one of my

01:24:46.210 - 01:25:03.810

seniors, a guy named David Schooler, gets a call. And literally, I'm in this conference room and I step out, but I know this call is more private.

01:25:04.140 - 01:25:22.380

He gets invited to go over to the Baylor College of Medicine as the director of planning. And so he goes over there. Several months later, he comes up with a plan for the Harris County Hospital District. And they don't have a planner at the Hospital District.

01:25:22.830 - 01:25:39.480

And I'm kind of a not-so-noisy, fairly obedient guy who's, you know, knows how to measure things, right? And has been sent out on the road. If you look at my resume, I had 20-30 projects

01:25:39.960 - 01:25:58.770

already under my belt, and everybody at those places knew me. And I'm this kid in this one suit and shoes. And so, anyhow, he calls me up, sends me somebody to talk to me about joining the Hospital District,

01:25:58.950 - 01:26:14.610

which is in lots of trouble. Harris County Hospital District was in a deficit, had two old hospitals, clinics were in bad shape because he had drawn up a five-year plan, $27.5 million.

01:26:14.610 - 01:26:29.150

And he needs somebody not at Baylor, but hospitals to help implement this. Okay. Sounded interesting to me. I had to go interview with the president, the chief

01:26:29.150 - 01:26:46.510

administrator. I ended up over there and I thought I was being invited to lunch. I–I like lunch. Because it was at noon, and I walk in and Dick Durbin, the chief administrator, says, "I don't eat." Yeah.

01:26:47.190 - 01:27:02.010

Okay. And... he says he didn't like architects. Okay. And so, he questions me, we talk about a few things,

01:27:02.100 - 01:27:19.200

I get hired. And I get assigned to a room with another person, Alicia Reyes, who's currently on the hospital district board right now. After a 40-year career, she's there and we still talk.

01:27:19.470 - 01:27:37.790

So, there were years where we didn't talk much. And anyway, I show up, nobody tells me July the 4th is a holiday. So, anyhow, I can remember the day I started. And then I–I'm given this desk and this pile of paper, literally.

01:27:39.570 - 01:27:51.290

I started reading through all these things. And, you know, if you're doing programming and planning, you read stuff that you have no clue what it is until you get it. So I'm figuring out that I'm going to get it one day.

01:27:51.310 - 01:28:01.880

Then I find out that file was not for me. It was hers. It was not mine. So, that's how I started.

01:28:01.880 - 01:28:16.750

And I stayed there almost 14 years. At 26 years old, director of planning for the second-biggest public health system in the country. And I end up

01:28:16.750 - 01:28:34.730

reporting directly to the chief administrator. There's only seven vice presidents, now there are over 100. And I believed in what I was doing. So, I took this 27 half-million-dollar project, and

01:28:34.730 - 01:28:49.030

I started meeting with people about it and found out that this was David's plan, not everybody else's plan. And although it made a lot of sense, it hadn't gone through the rigor of putting everything on the wall and asking the questions: is this what we need?

01:28:49.060 - 01:29:03.630

Is this volume correct? And I started to do that and–and I had all these cards. And I couldn't buy anything, and you had to get board approval for everything because they had lost so much

01:29:03.630 - 01:29:18.970

money. And there was—Aaron Mintz was one of the big voices, he was a—head of pediatrics, but he dominated the room whenever he talked. He didn't like me.

01:29:20.260 - 01:29:36.970

Ev-everything, I'd say, he'd degrade. And–and somebody whispered at me and said, "Did you go to Rice?" I said, "Yeah, I went to Rice." "He went to Rice. He loves people who went to Rice." So I thought about this and said,

01:29:36.970 - 01:29:49.460

"Well–" I set up a meeting with him privately in his office. Now we're a public hospital system, we have no glamorous anything. So office, little office. And so I wore my ring.

01:29:51.090 - 01:30:10.170

Wore my ring, where is my ring? Wore my ring, and every time I had a chance, I'd sit like this. Put it on–on my knee. And finally he looked at me and said, "You go to Rice?" I said, "Yes."

01:30:10.910 - 01:30:23.750

Everything changed. I was okay. At that point, I was okay. And I say it was a classmate of his son, Steve Mintz, who's a doctor

01:30:23.750 - 01:30:38.680

now. Anyhow, so. .. life goes on. We build the—now I'm directing projects. I'm—but I know I have

01:30:38.680 - 01:30:49.420

no–I have no power. I learned a big lesson through paper clips. I have to order paper clips. It has to be approved.

01:30:49.540 - 01:31:02.120

So, if I have to order paper clips, I'm not going to get in trouble by ordering a building. [laughs] I'm going to go make up a process if there isn't a process to make sure everybody approves it.

01:31:04.310 - 01:31:22.300

So we build necessary buildings as a initial effort. And when I was at CRS, I read contracts. And actually, when I was at Rice, I took a dual program at one point with U of H

01:31:22.380 - 01:31:38.310

Law School and took another dual program with UT School of Public Health. So I, you know, there's—Rice gave me these opportunities. So, I wrote up the process that Bell Helicopter

01:31:39.090 - 01:31:57.330

used for selecting firms into the hospital district, okay? Reorganized it all and set up a very rigorous system. I didn't

01:31:57.330 - 01:32:10.090

make a lot of friends. Because architecture is a business where people—you hire your friends, you hire people you know.

01:32:11.290 - 01:32:28.990

I was hiring people on the basis of success, holding the budget, limiting changes, and so forth. And–and I—at the

01:32:28.990 - 01:32:48.990

time, my boss, Dick Durbin, felt architects were all crooks. So, I–I didn't have to prove him wrong, I just have to make things successful. So, I wrote contracts in a way that

01:32:50.360 - 01:33:01.180

you have to have the program that identifies everything you want. You have to cost it out. You have to make sure that's it before you draw it. And when you draw it, everybody has to agree.

01:33:02.020 - 01:33:20.130

And from a point in time where there were a lot of changes and confusion, we had no more changes, we had no budget bust for my entire period. We built Ben Taub and LBJ and a complete clinic system

01:33:20.160 - 01:33:43.180

of 20-some clinics and I had no budget bust at all . And so, that was my big entry into health care. And from there, my father came

01:33:43.420 - 01:33:56.580

to live with us after my mother passed away. And so, he had a stroke. I had gone through this enormous period of one

01:33:57.070 - 01:34:18.150

activity and not calling it stress because I–I—d oing things as straight as you can and being deadly honest about it. Ended up having friends when I didn't have people who respected what I was doing, and I had a board

01:34:18.150 - 01:34:33.140

that began to respect what I did. But admittedly, I was a little bit strange. Like going into the next classroom, I was—still, even though I'm a vice president and director of planning, I was an underling.

01:34:33.150 - 01:34:47.620

I invited my board out to dinner. Now, n-not a lot of people do that sort of thing, but I did, and I learned from them. I learned the classic language of–of

01:34:47.620 - 01:35:00.620

boards, people who meet because they're important, and go to dinner with them. First thing they do is tell a joke to break the ice. So everybody needs to bring a joke with them.

01:35:06.080 - 01:35:19.820

One time, my wife worked for this firm. My cousin worked at the firm as well. It broke off and became another firm of architects.

01:35:23.940 - 01:35:43.350

And Eddie, my cousin, I asked him, "Any new people there? Any–any girls?" He said, "None that you'd be interested in." And—so one day he brought her along and we got along, and yet the firm he was working with

01:35:43.380 - 01:35:56.850

had a problem. They had a person on the firm that really didn't meet—attend to the contract or the standards or anything. I would call them up sometimes, he was supposed to be at a meeting, and–and,

01:35:56.880 - 01:36:08.880

"What are you doing?" "Oh, I'm at work." I could hear the bowling pins crashing in the background. He was out bowling and obviously had been having a good time drinking as well. We had to fire them.

01:36:09.900 - 01:36:28.890

Okay. So, Jim Falick—Falick Kline's the company, was my friend. And I still respect them tremendously, but it's a big dishonor

01:36:29.460 - 01:36:41.760

to get terminated. So we didn't terminate, we just said "We're changing horses at this phase." And he gave me a card. We used to call them CRS cards.

01:36:41.770 - 01:36:55.910

They had rounded corners, and you'd write notes on them, you keep them and you hand them to people once in a while. He wrote me a card that said, "Thank you, Philip, for all your help and getting us out of a sticky situation." Okay.

01:36:59.960 - 01:37:15.540

"So, thank you very much." He went to one of my board members and gave her a card. And she looked at the card, she chuckles a little bit, brings it over to me, And says, "I saw Jim gave you a card.

01:37:15.550 - 01:37:35.620

He gave me one, too." And on the card it says, "You have to get rid of Philip." Same meeting. So you learn from those lessons and you move on.

01:37:38.100 - 01:37:51.590

We built the Ben Taub, we built the clinic system. All these things happen while I'm–my father has a stroke. He passes away. I get an opportunity to go to New York.

01:37:52.940 - 01:38:06.910

All my colleagues, board members, others say, "Nobody gets a chance to go to Rockefeller. You have to be invited. You have to go." Well, here again, it's like going into architecture.

01:38:06.910 - 01:38:21.820

I didn't know the place, didn't know what was going on. But, it's the first research medical institute in the country. And... they have 55 laboratories, 100 students. It's called a university, has a little hospital on site.

01:38:22.910 - 01:38:35.490

"What would I do there?" "Well, they have a project that's been on the books for seven years, been on the drawing boards. They can't seem to get it built. And they want somebody who's done projects over $100 million, and your

01:38:35.490 - 01:38:54.780

name came up." And I said, "Okay." So—and–and they gave me a decent salary. So, we went to New York. And that was another point of change. And so, went to New

01:38:54.780 - 01:39:12.510

York, never lived there, completely different scene than Houston. Tried to live a Houston life in New York, which was very challenging. They don't have a Costco. What is there? It's called B and J Warehouse. I tried to buy everything at that

01:39:12.510 - 01:39:29.490

scale and it was—we–we–we brought a–a van up with us, and most people didn't have a car. We had a van. And—but it didn't work out because

01:39:30.400 - 01:39:46.440

my in-laws would come and visit, and they're very old—much older. They were in their—close to their late 80s. They would wander around—my father-in-law especially.

01:39:46.440 - 01:40:03.620

And would have some cash in his pocket, and we were very afraid of him getting lost or getting mugged or something in the city. And then there was a change in leadership, Josh Lederberg was kind

01:40:03.620 - 01:40:22.190

of—his term had come up and David Baltimore came in. And then there was some other issues administratively. So I got an offer to go to Cleveland to lead the re—building of a baseball stadium and a–and a basketball arena,

01:40:22.910 - 01:40:37.450

which was again, a huge project. And, well, you would have thought other than this, but why would they hire a little Chinese guy to do this? But I went there.

01:40:37.900 - 01:40:50.470

I—they asked, "How would you do this?" And I laid out goals, facts, concepts, needs and problem statement. "And this is what I would do. You got three major components. We need to do this." And he said, "Can you do it by the fall?" I said, "yes."

01:40:50.470 - 01:41:07.970

So, there–there was a new law coming into effect where you could not use certain kinds of bonds or–or you couldn't use arbitrage—not arbitrage, a new kind of bond after a certain date.

01:41:07.970 - 01:41:22.860

So I had to get it under contract by then, and we did that. But other aspects of that didn't work out. So, we ended up coming back to Houston.

01:41:22.860 - 01:41:38.520

I've always maintained either a suitcase or a house in Houston, all this time. And I think that's–that's why we keep coming back, because the

01:41:38.520 - 01:41:53.770

people here. GP: Yeah, thank you so much. GP: I believe we have covered everything that I've prepared. GP: So thank you so much for participating in the interview.

01:41:53.770 - 01:42:05.740

GP: And our other interns will be transcribing your transcript and soon GP: uploading them on our website. GP: So, we will keep you updated on all those steps. GP: And yeah, thank you so much.

01:42:05.830 - 01:42:20.530

GP: Did you have any questions or comments before we end the GP: interview? PPS: No, I think this is a great project. PPS: And I'm talking to the Chinese professional club about creating a

01:42:20.530 - 01:42:38.110

PPS: legacy project because it's not only the students that we give scholarships to, but PPS: who are the members, and what did they do, and how did PPS: they change the face of Houston and [GP: Mhm .] through their contributions? PPS: [GP: Mhm.] Again, you know, having moved from city

01:42:38.440 - 01:42:52.870

PPS: to city, you don't have—most of my sisters have PPS: lived in one place. PPS: So they have a very strong relationship with a very PPS: dense population group of friends.

01:42:53.730 - 01:43:11.360

PPS: We don't have that kind of PPS: density. But I've got people here and there. PPS: So, you know, having built the first buildings over FDR Drive in New York, having PPS: done the stadiums in Cleveland, having gone to Western Washington

01:43:11.360 - 01:43:30.710

PPS: University and set up a master plan there, and having gone to San PPS: Francisco, back to San Francisco, back to Chinatown, back to the little PPS: back of the school, Commodore Stockton, I built Chinese PPS: hospital in San Francisco, which was behind my

01:43:30.860 - 01:43:48.920

PPS: grandmother's house. PPS: Leaves me with a feeling that there are a lot of things PPS: we–we can break out of our shell and do whatever we PPS: want. And Rice was one of the places that gave me that stepping stone

01:43:49.810 - 01:43:50.380

PPS: to do that.