Pub. 2 2021-2022 Issue 1

19 Salt Lake, and in the course of it, they went to Temple Square. He wanted to go in the Temple, and he told him he couldn’t go in there. He had a little hard time understanding that, but he went in the Tabernacle. He was just taken with that building, and when he left that building, he went up in the roof structure; when he left that building, he said, “This is one of the finest pieces of architecture in this country and perhaps the world.” After you graduated, where did you go next? I graduated in 1954. The Korean War was on. I went immediately into the army. I fully expected to get sent to Korea, and instead, they sent me to Ft Lewis, Washington. (After his stint) I did go into Seattle and talk to a few firms, and I had some offers, but my wife said, “I can’t take this rain.” I could get a higher architectural starting salary in Idaho Falls than in Salt Lake, but I always intended to come to Salt Lake. I worked in Idaho Falls for a few years, and then I came to Salt Lake. When I came to Salt Lake, I had three offers – one of them was from Ashton, Evans and Brazier. Fred Montmorency and Dave Hayes were there, so I decided to go to work for them. Ray Ashton was retired, and Ray Evans was very ill with cancer. He had me take him around to the site observation visits; I got to know him quite well. Most of the people in the office were scared to death of him because he could be very abrasive. He expected to be respected. They didn’t call him Ray; they called him Mr. Evans. So, when he got worse, I kind of took over his jobs. I’d been working for him for a few months and he had a period of three weeks where he hadn’t been in the office. So, he came in, and he was going over the projects, and he said, “Oh, that’s not the way I wanted it done.” Stupid me, I said, “Mr. Evans, I learned a lot in architecture school, but I didn’t learn to read your mind.” You could have heard a pin drop. I thought I was done. That cemented him to me; it was just the kind of thing he liked. He did a lot for me, and I have the greatest respect for Ray Evans. You were a second-generation firm? We were second generation. I was there for about six years and became an associate, and when Bud Brasier passed away, we reorganized the firm and made it Montmorency Hayes and Talbot. Is there a part of the practice you specialized in? Because Ray Evans had so many schools going, I did more school work. I worked for eight or 10 districts in the area. And I enjoyed school work. I did other things too. I did the IRS Center in Ogden and the Library at Ricks College. I learned the technique of school design and that it is constantly changing. I belonged to the Council of Facility Planners. What works this five-year period doesn’t work the next five-year period. I enjoyed working with educators. Most of them. Some educators thought they were architects; that  — continued on page 20 was another matter. I had Directors of New Construction that I learned a lot from. What would you say about the changes, the evolution of architecture? School design is totally different now from when I was working. Totally different. Of course, everything is different. Materials are different; codes are different. I am an old geezer. Obviously, the method of construction has changed through the years. When I was doing schools, it was all masonry. That’s all anybody wanted. Laying up one brick at a time is not very practical now. There is a lot of difference between doing an elementary school and a junior or senior high school. That’s why you will see elementary schools that are fifty or sixty years old that are still being used because the building still works. But in secondary schools, that just isn’t true, the buildings just don’t work anymore because the technology has changed so much. What do you think of architecture now? Architecture has improved dramatically. I think the schools today are much more handsome than they were when I was designing. I attended a lot of school board meetings in my day, and I remember a meeting in a district where one of the new buildings had just opened, and one of the taxpayers complained about the cost of that building. The school board showed him that it was comparable to other buildings of that type. The taxpayer said, “It looks too good, and we don’t want that anymore.” Tell us about your partnership, you, Fred Montmorency and Dave Hayes. I am not a great designer, and I know my shortcomings. That is why I wanted to get into a partnership. I know that design is not my strength, but I know how to put a building together, and I enjoy doing the observation to make sure the building is built properly. I did a lot of the specifications. I was a member of the Construction Specification Institute. When MasterSpec was just new, I was on the MasterSpec Review Board. I realized that there were others in our firm that did a better job of making a building look beautiful, so I would defer. Dave Hayes had a gift for design. He loved to do it, and he worked with me on a lot of projects. Dave was very quiet; he was very dedicated; he wanted no part of the business. I handled most of the business aspects, which I enjoyed doing. I tried to keep us profitable. Fred Montmorency was a promoter. He brought in a lot of work. He was good with people; he had friends in high places. And you need that in an organization. If you didn’t like Fred something was wrong with you. Oh, I had disagreements with Fred, but everybody liked Fred. He was on a lot of boards around town; he was a member of the Alta Club. . We got along pretty well.