Tom Eagar's own near-non-tenure (1977 letter)

I don't know if I should show you this — well, sure. I found out a year ago when Bill Wood at the Oregon Graduate Center retired, he had saved this letter from 1977 that he had gotten — actually the president of Oregon Graduate Center had gotten it from the associate dean of engineering. You have to understand, I was hired in July of 1976. This is May of '77, ten months later. [Tom reads from the letter:] "On a different matter, I promised for some time I'd provide some help to you in the welding area. I'm enclosing the resume of Tom Eager" — misspelled — "Tom got his doctorate here, '75, and went to work at Homer Research Lab, Bethlehem Steel. His work there was on welding joining. He returned to the Institute last fall, and although very good, will probably not make our tenure threshold." I had six months to prove myself before they threw me out. Why did they throw me out? Because I didn't agree to be the grunt or the serf for any of these powerful professors. I basically said I was going to do it on my own, and so they decided I wasn't smart enough to work within the system.