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Biography

Education has been a cornerstone in Dr. Hill’s life. His mother, born in 1909, graduated from high school in Mississippi. Education was stressed as a way out of the projects, and athletics as a way to pay for the education. He set goals and met them successfully-college, Olympic winning track athlete despite a year off due to an injury, graduate school and a doctorate. He moved from assistant athletic director at Tulane University and the University of Oklahoma, to the Dean of Students at the University of Florida. For over ten years he has been the Vice President of Student Affairs at Iowa State University. Desire, hard work, dedication, and commitment sum up Dr. Hill’s personal philosophy as well as his life.

Transcript

Devin Dutilly: Hello and welcome, We’re here with Dr. Thomas Hill, Vice President of Student Affairs, Iowa State University. He also an Olympic medalist from the ’72 Olympics. We’re here to interview him on his oral history on his perspective on things in Iowa and how he influenced Iowa and Iowa State University. So could you tell us a little bit about where you grew up and some of your conditions in your youth.

Dr. Hill: Okay. I was born and raised in New Orleans. Went through 1st through the 12th grade in public school system in New Orleans. Grew up in what they formally called the Magnolia Projects and it was then renamed the CJP Housing Development. 1 of 5 sons raised by a single mother and …

Devin Dutilly: So, having grown up in those conditions is there anything that kind of kept you going from your youth onwards to get an education or continue on in athletics?

Dr. Hill: Well, I think education was stressed now that I’m thinking… education was stressed. My mom was a native of Natches, Mississippi, born in 1909 and she was a high school graduate which was pretty decent back at that time for an African-American female coming from the state of Mississippi. She was a high school graduate and she valued education and she instilled that into all of us, into her 5 sons and so we knew education was really valuable. The athletics came into play as I liked participating but it clearly became obvious that athletics could be one way of funding my education and I pretty much understood that early on but the ultimate goal was to get a good education.

Devin Dutilly: So you had a family with five brothers, or four brothers you grew up around athletics, did you guys participate a lot?

Dr. Hill: All the time, all the time. We were involved in a little bit of everything. I participated in just about everything: Baseball, track, football. I didn’t compete in football formally but when I said I participated in everything, it was the kind of neighborhood where there was always something goin on. We had games goin on all the time and I lived in what they called the 6th
Street Court. Then there was LaSalle Street Court, ____ Street Court, Washington Street Court and what we used to do, we had competitions against each other and so there was always something going on.

Devin Dutilly: I imagine you had fun. So, did that help you become a star athlete then?

Dr. Hill: There’s no question. There were excellent athletes in the neighborhood and there was a park within a block from my house and so we spent an awful lot of time in that park. But things were, you know, things were very active on my side.

Devin Dutilly: So you keep, continue to keep in contact with people from your youth?

Dr. Hill: Absolutely. We’re lifelong friends, the people that I grew up with, the people I competed against and with, we still to this day keep in touch.

Devin Dutilly: And so what are some of the lessons you feel you’ve learned, that you took from your youth probably into your undergraduate and through your undergraduate times?

Dr. Hill: Well, the fact that education was important, that was very clear and that was reinforced all along the way, in the school system, at home, by relatives, by friends, you know, in the neighborhood. Education was really stressed and one of the goals was to get out of the projects. That was a clear goal and so that was a driving force. But the other thing was, there was this strong desire to be a success and they didn’t… they would describe it as being somebody, there never really put the limits or defined success too young too clearly but you knew there was something that wasn’t really there in the project, I mean you had to rise above everything. I don’t mean that in a negative way, because even though I aspired to get a good education and to pursue a better life, always have a connection with the projects, always, even to this day. They’re tearing Magnolia down now, and Katrina didn’t help any, but even now when I go back to the city, I go back to the projects and kind of see people, people I know, it’s been a long time but there’s still a few folk around there. I know.

Devin Dutilly: So the people you visit, is there anybody that you remember being like especially encouraging or that you looked up to in those conditions or that really encouraged you throughout the time, maybe they were, they were who your role models were?

Dr. Hill: Well clearly, my mom, she was the number one cheerleader, but then there was a Sunday School teacher, gentleman named J. Z. Williams, James Z. Williams. He was very, very influential. We all looked up to him and it’s kind of interesting, I doubt if he is five feet tall and I doubt if he weighs a hundred pounds. I mean he is, he’s a very… now, as an older person, I look at him and he is a very small man in stature, but really large, he is small physically but large in stature. He… he was really very stern with us. He helped us to understand what it was like to be a man, a man of achievement, a man with goals, a man with dignity and respect and those kinds of things and it’s kind of funny because when we were growing up, he looked like a large man. He looked really huge and I think it was more his presence, his voice and he had a strong voice and strong not just in volume, but in what he said and his conviction and those kinds of things, and so he was very influential.

Devin Dutilly: So, was he one of the individuals that helped you into your career in running or advised with your ___?

Dr. Hill: Not so much, he was clearly one of the people any time I came home, would be one of the first to want to congratulate me and he would send me articles while I was in college of me, of my accomplishments, so he always kept up with it, but he was one of the people that would, that would encourage, but he didn’t specifically encourage athletics, he encouraged achievement just period. It was more impressive for him that I was going to college. That was even more impressive than the running but then there were other people, you know coaches, Reynald Alexander comes to mind, Harold Malone, Bud Huntley, I mean those were people who really helped develop my athletic skills.

Devin Dutilly: So, while you were running, in academics, in seeing academics, what were your goals as an undergraduates to achieve academically?

Dr. Hill: Well, academically clearly getting a degree was the ultimate goal. I mean that, what I’m saying was the number 1 goal. Then in pursuit of that degree you do the very best that you could in the classroom and that was a goal to be as good a student as possible you could be. And those were the things that you focused on, that I focused on.

Devin Dutilly: What inspired you to go to graduate school or do graduate work?

Dr. Hill: Well, again, you always want to achieve and the successes that I had on the athletic field and the classroom and vice versa, they kind of built on each other. I experienced that if you’re successful in one phase of your life or one portion of your life, or one part of your life, you really try to duplicate the success in other parts of your life and that’s pretty much what I did. There was a clear correlation with my performance athletically and my performance in the classroom, and vise versa. It was really interesting how that happened, but the better I performed in the classroom, the better I would perform on the track; the better I performed on the track, the better I performed in a classroom. It’s almost like success breeds success and I was taught early on by a number of people not to limit your success in a particular area, that the things that you do in one area of your life to be successful, typically those things get practiced in other areas of your life, can also breed success. For example, you get a great athlete and they will shoot free throws until their hand hurts or bleeds, or whatever. Well, you take the same attitude with learning the points literature, the meaning of literature, you don’t come across the first word and drop it, you just keep trying, you stay at it, and those skills and approaches that you develop athletically, you can use also in the classroom.

Devin Dutilly: On that same note, you mentioned earlier like some of your successes that you came to, were there any particular moments that you came as an undergrad like finishing a year or finishing a course that you felt truly proud of yourself and what you accomplished?

Dr. Hill: There are some milestones along the way. I think there was one particular semester and I want to say, I want to say I got straight As, now I have to look back and talk about it, but if it wasn’t straight As it was very close and it corresponded… I think it was kind of interesting, it occurred at a time when I was injured and I couldn’t run … and I suspect what I did was channel all of the activities, all of the energy, you know all the tensions to the books, but at the same time I remember this, I was rehabbing an injured knee and so I had… instead of being able to run, I was in the weight room and rehabbing that and focusing on my studies and so this was about my junior year and I remember… it was kind of like getting in the zone, if you will, and it was really good, because I guess before I got injured, I tied the world’s record and you know… that really corresponded with me doing very well in the classroom, so things, and now I do remember , I think it was my junior year.

Devin Dutilly: So, on a similar note, through these successes were there any thing, or any moments that you, or particular experiences that were hurdles or barriers to success where you felt kind of drawn down or it kind of overcame your confidences?

Dr. Hill: Well, athletically, my junior year, following my junior year, I was injured. I had just a banner junior year. I was national champ and world record holder, made U. S. team. I mean there were a lot of things happening, right after that great season, I was injured in an indoor track meet down in Natchitoches, Louisiana, __ track meet, I was hit going over I think it was the second hurdle by a hurdle next to me. He hit me, knocked me off balance and when he did that it happened at a time when my foot was planted on the track and he knocked me off balance. Well, I fell over but my foot stayed in the track causes it was planted, and so it tore up my knee. Well, I … this was in 1970, the Olympic Games was in 72. I missed all of the 71 season. So I was the number 1 ranked hurdler in the world in 1970 was out all together in 71 and had to come back the following year to make an attempt to make the Olympic team and I wasn’t even ranked that year, the year before, so it was like starting from scratch. And I distinctly remember, after having tied the world record, my first race back after recovering from the injury was 15:02 which was really, really slow, I mean extremely slow and so that was the challenge. I had to work my way through that and it was more a psychological issue than it was anything else.

Devin Dutilly: So… as you’re talking about running and I notice you are very passionate about it. Is there one or two things that you feel that you take in your daily life? That you just, every morning when you wake up and you’re just thankful that this experience happened, or something you learned from running that you take to your daily life, that you actually, that you pass off to others or that you have in your office here?

Dr. Hill: Well, the thing you, the thing I kind of tap into is the desire to be the best and what it takes to be the best. Clearly, it takes hard work, dedication, and commitment. And so those are the things that drive me on a daily basis be it…being the best vice president, being, whatever it is, you really want to be your very best and so that’s one of the real things that drives me to become the best and the willingness to do what it takes to become the best.

Devin Dutilly: What do you guess, the success of your returns…Obviously it’s important, you’ve gotten to the Olympics, you’ve done these things, __ what about someone who’s an undergraduate student who …they’re not at the PhD level, they’re at this intermediate level how would you suggest or what would you recommend to them, your thoughts?

Dr. Hill: Well, I would say, set goals. Decide what it is that you want to do, set your goal and go for it. I remember watching the 68 Olympic games in my residence hall and at that time the fastest time was 14:2. They were running in the low 13s: 13:3, 13:2, and realistically I shouldn’t have been thinking about being in the Olympic games say four years later. But I did and that was a goal and it was kind of interesting because if you run 14:2 and you tell somebody that you’re goal is to be in the Olympic games, they look at you like you’ve lost your mind. So what I wound up doing was having these conversations with myself in my head, because I didn’t have time to deal with the critics and didn’t want to be bothered with that, I didn’t have time for that and had to be focused and so I didn’t want to have the hangers, as they would say today, trying to tell me, ah, you gonna run 14 and 2 you have no business even thinking about that. I didn’t want to be involved in that but I kept it in my head and that was my goal. And fortunately enough, I was able to get there and make it happen.

Devin Dutilly: So you would you talk about some of the mentors you’ve had, I guess to help you along as a youth, … are you starting to be a mentor to students now, or how __?

Dr. Hill: Any student, any young person that I can have a positive influence on, that’s part of the obligation, that’s part of the obligation of having an opportunity to experience success. Anybody that experiences success, the obligation that they have is it to help others to be successful and absolutely, I will mentor, help, work with, assist, any student at all if possible to be successful.

Devin Dutilly: So when you mentioned your goals, when did you start seeing yourself at Iowa State University, or seeing your goal of being in the position you have right now as Vice President of student Affairs?

Dr. Hill: Well, I was in the athletic arena at one time. I was the assistant athletic director at two institutions at Tulane University and University of Oklahoma. I had the desire to move up in the administrative lanes and in athletics at the time, the next move for me would be an athletic director. Well, there weren’t many African-American athletic directors at Division One institutions, there are not many now. This is twenty, twenty-five years later probably. Well, I looked around and I thought that I wanted to move up the administrative ladder and my chances of being an athletic director weren’t extremely good but my chances, I looked around, my chances for being the Vice President for Student Affairs, which is what I started out pursuing were a lot better in my eyes. So what I did was I decided to make the switch from athletics to student affairs and pursue that avenue. I wanted to be the vice president. I was the Dean of Students and the next step would be to be a vice president. I was the Dean of Students at the University of Florida, I began to look around and I was nominated to this position at Iowa State and once I came here and interviewed, realized it was a great opportunity and so I decided to pursue it and was lucky and fortunate enough to be selected as the vice president. Been here for the last 10 years.

Devin Dutilly: So, with those goals, was there one thing that you wanted to do as soon as you got to that position, or was there one thing that you wanted to change or add to the system that you felt was important?

Dr. Hill: Well there’s no one single thing. I believe that my goal was to make it the best, make the Student Affairs, the Division of Student Affairs at Iowa State the best Division of Student Affairs in the country. That was the goal.

Devin Dutilly: So, during that ___ job here at Iowa State, how do you turn on students becoming involved whether it’s youth or especially at the university since that’s where you…?

Dr. Hill: Well, really trying to get them to identify what it is they’re interested in and make it clear that find it, find something that you could be passionate about and go after it. The key is to find what really turns you on, if you will, what really gets you excited, as some of my friends would say, what gets your motor running? Once you do that, then I think it’s kind of, get out of the way, because young people will typically take it and run especially if they get really excited about something. So that’s … for me that’s the key.

Devin Dutilly: You have given some advice, you mentioned, but are there any last words that you’d give to junior high students, high school students, or even college students as they, about life, how to handle things, situations, frustrations?

Dr. Hill: First of all, you’re gonna have clear, things are not always going to go your way, so get ready for it, be ready for the bumps. Set goals and set high goals, I think that’s important. Set goals that are important to you, not just those who are around you because so often you get individuals who try to please other people and I think that’s a problem. I think you can get into some real difficulty that way. Find something you can really be passionate about and go after it. Be willing to make the sacrifices and work hard in order to achieve the goals. I think that’s… I don’t think it’s very complicated. I think it’s very simple, my friend, but it can be difficult. It’s simple but I think it can be difficult.

Devin Dutilly: I thank you very much, sir

Dr. Hill: You’re welcome.

Devin Dutilly: I appreciate your time very much.