I arrived in Tallahassee with my bride (Kay) of 3 1/2 months in January, 1958, ready to begin graduate study in FSU's Department of Psychology. I held a stipend from Alabama's Division of Mental Health, the state's first for a doctoral student in clinical psychology. (Planning for the stipend had evolved so rapidly that there was not yet available an application form for psychology. The social worker form was modified to suit our purposes). Arrangements for entering the doctoral program had likewise taken place quickly.

     In the Fall of 1957, as the stipend for clinical psychology students was being proposed by officials in Alabama' s Division of Mental Health, FSU' s Department of Psychology was the only one with which contact had been made by an Alabama official about accepting into its program students with Alabama stipends. This being the case and my wishing to matriculate Spring term, 1958, 1 -- along with a friend who later entered the program under the same conditions -- drove to Tallahassee from Auburn, Alabama hoping to have a conference with an official in the Department of Psychology. We were received by Dr. Hugh Waskom, the chair, who following discussion agreed to admit me in January and my friend in June, contingent upon his receipt of official documents supporting the information we had provided him. I had agreed to take the GRE during the Spring of my enrollment.

     Orders of business for Kay and me upon arriving in Tallahassee in January, 1958, were to contact the department, to visit the University's Personnel Office, and to find housing and furniture. The Personnel Office was in the basement of the building housing psychology at that time, thus Kay went there while 1 went to the department. She experienced a wind-fall in personnel. The secretary knew of an apartment for rent in a duplex next to hers, knew a student who was graduating and wanting to sell furniture, and of course knew about job openings on campus. What a bonanza!

     I began Spring term, took the GRE when it was offered on campus later in the semester, and completed the departmental preliminary exams in May. The title of the exams fit their purpose for they were preliminary to admission into the doctoral program. They consisted of 420 multiple choice items covering six areas of psychology and three essay questions. An oral exam carried-out by a committee of three departmental faculty followed for those who had passed the writtens. A secondary gain for those having previously completed graduate courses in psychology and having done very well in those domains on prelims was exemption from certain departmentally required courses.

     During that initial term I became acquainted with the faculty, a matter made more important because the doctoral committee was typically selected by the student. Many of those individuals would have profound effects on my professional life. This was a period when many psychologists were working diligently to aid a rapidly developing psychology in becoming more scientifically respectful while expanding via applied orientations. With only a handful of exceptions the several dozen students enrolled in the graduate clinical program at FSU during my matriculation served clinical clerkships with the VA during the summer.

     Clinical psychology was booming with many of its adherents not being especially interested in psychology's gaining more scientific respectability. It was an exciting period to be a budding psychologist, especially one of the clinical persuasion, and to be involved with a faculty that encompassed representatives of the various perspectives. Most of even the applied oriented faculty, though, believed strongly in all students being grounded in general psychology. That set of experiences persuaded my entire professional outlook significantly, influencing my applied and academic activities and perspectives. The tone was set for my being a psychologist.

     I was able in three years, with Kay's constant support and assistance, to complete course work, meet language requirements, construct equipment and collect data fundamental to my dissertation. In the course of those data collections during Summer, 1960, a memorable event, one that dramatically affected the department, another graduate student and me, occurred.

     Subjects for my dissertation research were 90 Wistar strain rats, their number being so many that it was necessary to stagger their entry into the study by a few days. (There were too few hours in the day to collect data on all at one time.) About 6:00 one morning, after 1 had arrived home at 3 :00 a.m., having completed data collection on subject number 50, a neighbor phoned to tell Kay that a radio newscaster had just stated that the FSU psychology building was afire. Kay declares that 1 had arisen and leaned against the wall as she repeated the information, slowly sliding down the wall into a pool ala Tom in the Tom and Jerry cartoons. We quickly dressed and went to campus. I spoke with the fire chief who, noting the fire to be under control, agreed to accompany me into the building to check on my subjects that were housed on the fourth floor where the fire started and my data that were in a wooden desk on the third floor. Much of the four-story building' s roof was burned away.

     We found the animal colony room to be drenched and smoky. All the surviving several hundred animals had black noses and coats. Several, including one of my subjects, had expired. Without such interruption, I would have completed data collection in six days, but I knew upon visiting the colony that I would have to start over with the 40 uncompleted subjects. My data were in good shape. The wooden desk was floating around the experimental room, the data sheets dry in a drawer. I was dramatically reminded of the need to retain copies of important information in multiple locations. My graduate student colleague who was also most directly affected by the fire was able to salvage at least one page from the five signed copies of his dissertation that were in a desk drawer in his fourth floor lab.

     Some framing work for its support and the loan of a big top tent by Ringling Brothers provided a new roof for the Psychology building. (After the trauma subsided members of the department caught a great deal of good natured grief from others on campus who thought it only appropriate that psychologists have a circus tent for a cover.) A major c1ean-up of the building, the ordering of new subjects of appropriate strain, sex and age and approximately three more months allowed completion of data collection. I had hoped to complete data analysis prior to departing in January for an internship assignment, however, those analyses had to await arrival at the University of Tennessee Medical School. What a set of events!

     My experiences in the Department of Psychology at FSU were professionally and personally very rewarding. 1 was associated with a demanding and able faculty with diverse knowledge and perspective many of whom have been directly in indirectly influential on the field over several decades. I was a colleague of several dozens of wonderful students, a number of whom have made their own marks on the field. We had our ups and downs within the department; generally the ups prevailed. We had numerous prominent psychologists come to campus for special presentations, most of whom added to the luster of the experience, a few of whom exhibited frailties even professionals can manifest. We began the FSU chapter of Psi Chi, Richard Husband serving as installation officer. Some of us may even have left some things of value with the department; most of us surely took things of value with us.

     I am glad that the officials in the Division of Mental Health in Alabama had only spoken with officials at FSU about accepting stipend students in psychology at the time of my readiness for enrollment. I cannot imagine having had more significant educational, training and personal experiences than the ones I had in the Department of Psychology at FSU from January,1958, to January,1962, the time at which the Ph.D. degree was granted me. As I have written this accounting, especially the one about the blaze nearly 44 years after its occurrence, 1 have felt tinges of anxiety, however, 1 am delighted to have been there.

Dr. William H. Moon, submitted April, 2004