21 Gene Haycock liked my experience with off-form concrete (there's not a lot of lumber in Australia). He had just received the commission to design the USU football stadium, and they wanted to do that in off-form concrete. He asked me, “Have you ever done anything with off-form concrete?” “Matter of fact, my last job in Sydney was doing a beautiful office building for the Reader's Digest Association.” He hired me on the spot. What did it take to get licensed in the U.S.? Were you licensed in Australia? I was. Well, I approached somebody on the licensing board about the process, and he said, “I would like you to hold off for a while.” And I said, “Why?” And he said, “We are working on a reciprocity agreement between the AIA and the RAIA (Royal Australian Institute of Architects). I would like to use you as a test for this process.” I think I was the fifth Australian architect licensed in the United States. I didn't have to take any tests. I just got reciprocity. So, you're working on the USU Football Stadium. Are you thinking, “Now I'm an American,” or “I’m going back to Australia?” The plan was to work here and get professional experience for about five years. I had no intention of staying, but one thing led to another in terms of work experience. My only serious attempt to leave was in 1970 when things were bad in Utah. I thought, “I ought to look around.” Caudill Rowlett Scott [CRS] in Houston, Texas, was a firm of about 350 people specializing in architecture for education. I wrote them a letter. They invited me to come for an interview. I met Bill Caudill, probably the premier architect in the United States, and he interviewed me. He said, “I see that you’re from Utah. Are you a Mormon?” I said, “Uh, yes, sir. Is that going to be an impediment?” He said, “Not at all. We’ve got some Mormons working here, and they’re good employees, but let me tell you something. I can hire any architect I want in the United States. I can get the best and brightest students from any college, but some aren't worth a damn.” Then he went into a litany of all the human problems that people have, “I've got some guys who can't hold their liquor, play around with other guys’ wives,” he went on and on and on – all the human failings – he said, “Let me tell you something, son. I'm looking for good guys who know their stuff. In that order.” And that's been my mantra for years. You might be a great architect, but if you're not a good human being, you are not going to fit in here. That was a lesson learned as a young architect. Did you go to work for them? No. They really didn't offer me a job either. I did meet a young architect, Michael Henderson, who was working for CRS in their hospital design division. He had worked for Schaub Haycock in 1961 when he was a student at USU. He went to Rice [University] and got a degree in architecture and was hired by Bill Caudill. He and I decided we would try to make a health care design firm work on Utah. How did the firm evolve from a small family-owned firm to a multi-office concern? We were doing K-12 design in Utah and Idaho. I talked to Gene Haycock and said, “When you send me out to meet a school board, the first thing they ask me is ‘Where's Haycock?’ What we need is a company that doesn't have a personal name in it, so that people don't ask me where the boss is.” So we became Design West in 1971, and in 1973 when Michael Henderson returned to Logan, we formed Design West Health Facilities. One of Michael Henderson's associates became the healthcare design leader at HKS Architects in Dallas. When we got our first hospital, they sent us two employees for three months to help us produce that hospital. We had a relationship with them that lasted for at least 30 years. Gene Haycock, like other older architects, couldn't stand the change and the legalities. We never had contracts when I started. In fact, when I presented a contract to the superintendent of the Cache County School District for the first time, he said, “Tony, if I have to sign that, we will never do business again.” All business was done on a handshake. Gene couldn't stand the litigation, the whole “having to have insurance.” In 1976, he accepted the job to be the District Architect for the Cache Valley School District and retired from Design West. So, we reorganized. My partner, Richard Clyde, led the firm toward energy conservation design in the 1970s, which he applied to K-12 design. That led the firm into a twenty-five-year period of innovation through the western states. At one point, we had seven offices located in Utah, Idaho, California, and Washington. We won multiple state and national awards for energy conservation and energy innovation in public architecture. Many of our healthcare clients were hiring design-build companies. So, we made the business decision to form our own design-build company that did hospitals until 1985, when we lost three partners in a plane crash. One of the guys who died was the president of that company. The three partners we lost in that plane crash were Michael Henderson, Joe Oyler, President of PM-CM, and Richard Clyde, who was our number one education facility designer, and my best friend. That was tragic. We say in this company that we are survivors. Our founder, K.C. Schaub, was a survivor. I’ve traced all the ups and downs; even in the 1890s, there were downturns. He survived. There’s been lots of ups and downs, but 1985 was really hard, followed by 1987, which was another downer in the economy. In 1985, on the day after we lost our partners, Ron Skaggs, the president of HKS, flew up to Logan, put his arm around me and said, “Don’t make any fast moves. The entire resources of HKS are behind you,” and that was a wonderful professional thing. And what did you learn through that process? To keep going. I spent about two years after that in a funk; just, I couldn't see any point in the struggle. I was just going through the motions, but I was the president of the company. Then one day I had been trying to get an appointment with a — continued on page 22
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