By Dr. J.D. Rottweiler
I am proud to serve as the 11th president of Cochise College. Each of us, serving in this position, has been faced with the challenges and opportunities of the time. However, the first two Cochise College presidents shared in the opportunities and challenges typically reserved for one individual. One broke ground; the other opened the doors.
Arizona’s first university opened nearly 80 years prior to Cochise College, so it’s no surprise that college founders turned to the public universities for expertise in everything from site selection to personnel.
A team of educators and consultants from Arizona State University studied Cochise County and in 1961 published a report on the feasibility of establishing a community college here. Representatives of the University of Arizona provided guidance in the search for a president, suggesting interview questions on everything from managing construction projects to curriculum.
In a letter to early college board member Dr. George Spikes, the president of Arizona State College-Flagstaff outlined what he saw as the pros and cons of three options in hiring a president: enticing a current college president with an attractive salary, and potentially putting the individual out of line with other institutions; taking an “experienced man who had struggled through the years in developing a program at another institution and as a result had made some enemies,” and who might be pleased with a new environment; or seeking an “inexperienced young man who has his future before him” and who is also an unknown quantity.
Numerous individuals expressed interest in the position of president, and the board ultimately selected Dr. Thaddeus C. Johnston, who doesn’t appear to have fit neatly into any of the above categories.
At the time of his hiring, Johnston, 43, was associate professor of educational administration at the University of Arizona. He’d served as coordinator for the Arizona Association of Secondary School Principals and department chair of secondary education at Omaha University in Nebraska. He had also served as a public school teacher, principal and superintendent in Kansas and Oklahoma.
In a 1962 letter to the board, Johnston expressed that he’d had limited experience with junior colleges, though he’d studied them. Besides the fact that he was familiar with higher education through his work at the university, his relevant experience included creating a new school district from 33 elementary districts that called upon him to handle many of the administrative tasks a new college required. Getting the doors open on time sat atop the priority list, but other priorities like hiring and curriculum development didn’t exactly pale in comparison.
Dr. Johnston’s hiring as the first president of yet-to-be-established Cochise College was announced in January 1963. He presided at the September 1963 groundbreaking ceremony, and construction proceeded accordingly. Unfortunately, he never got the chance to see the fruits of his labor. In January 1964, Dr. Johnston and two others – Donald Ensign, superintendent of Sierra Vista schools, and Clayton A. Smith, a pilot and publisher of the Tombstone Epitaph – died when their plane crashed in inclement weather in the Whetstone Mountains. They were scheduled to fly to Luke Air Force Base to board a military plane that would take them to an education conference at the United States Air Force Academy. According to historical documents, Smith’s death was marked by Tombstone’s largest funeral, and the Cochise College board quickly set about searching for a new president to dedicate the next eight months to getting the college open by Sept. 21, 1964.
Enter Dr. Bill Harwood of California and the many early faculty and staff from nearby and across the nation who are most often credited with giving Cochise College a solid start.
Now you know, “the rest of the story.”
J.D. Rottweiler is president of Cochise College. Contact him at jdr@cochise.edu.