Working with TRIO with Carol Davis

Back in about 1971 I moved back here from Fort Yeates I had gone to Berlin and I had gone to work there I lived there for six years and I moved home Lynne was in a training program with the economic development administration you went to Omaha Nebraska we had four children and I just found it too difficult to be a standing rock soy I came home I was working for the Bureau of Indian Affairs at that time when I got home I was unemployed of course I didn’t have a job there were seventeen of us living at my mother’s my brother had come home unemployed to with his family the phone rang and the rear-vision Affairs called me wanted to know if I would come back the Standing Rock they had a different job for me and they wanted me to apply and I said no my mother got really upset seventeen of us living in this house she said him and you turned down the job didn’t we can’t afford to feed all of you okay then I got another phone call and this one was from Harry Kohler and I had worked with him he was superintendent of schools at Solon High School and he heard I was at Turtle Mountain and he in the meantime had gone to work at Mary college which is not a University of Mary there was a job open there the director of Talent Search the trio programs for Department of Ed and he wanted to know if I would be interested in the Director position my mother’s voice was ringing in my ear and I said I will do this on condition that I can stay on the reservation turtlemom reservation he said come to Bismarck and let’s talk about it so I jumped in my car and off I went to Bismarck and he said it is a State Director position what it was is they had a counselor position for each reservation and if I was a director I could stay at Turtle Mountain because it was the largest reservation we had the biggest population and I could travel from here just as easy as from Bismarck and so I took the position I became the state talent search director together with the Director of Student Services who was Fred Baker and he was my immediate boss we hired counselors on each of the reservations and I want to remember that at Standing Rock it was might have been Glen Eagle at Fort Berthold was Phyllis Howard Turtle Mountain was Sherman Bernal and at Spirit Lake it was Grady Cavanaugh and our first task was to go out and this was summer know go out and find every graduate from the high schools and contact those students and what talent search was designed to do was to find low-income students and help them further their education or even find jobs apprenticeships and whatever and and it was exciting we thought it was just a beautiful idea so we went off and I’ll give you a little side story we went off and everybody found their graduates we started to we started to UM look for funding to get them to school and so forth two stories here the B EOG program came out about that time which is now Pell Grant and it had a parent contribution section there and so we were exploring what does the parent contribution mean does this mean that parents are going to automatically have to give a certain amount of money for tuition and whatever and none of us Fred Baker was called had a college degree but he was the only one I was a trained secretary I had associate’s degree in secretarial science way back in the day and the rest of them we were all just sort of reservation counselors so to speak with a lot of heart but not a lot of background and so I told everybody you send me those get the beo Jie applications done and send them to me and I said until I can negotiate what this is we’re not going to send them anywhere so in the meantime our Boston Denver calls me up and he said I know this isn’t true and I said what reason they told me that you have to be EOG applications and you’re not mailing them out I said it’s true I said what does the what does the parent contribution mean and what is that going to mean for our families does that mean our students are not going to be able to go to school unless parents start making loans or selling their land or doing whatever to go to school I said what does it mean he said I’m not really sure it’s a new program I’ll check it out so I called him on my desk where there was the stack was getting higher and so they called a meeting in Bismarck and again and my boss from Denver and the trio programs was apartment bed and our boss was in Denver so he stands up and he says I know this is not true he repeats it again but I understand that the Talent Search program is not sending out there be EOG applications but they’re complete and they’re sitting on somebody’s desk as I raised my hand and I said they’re on my desk what does it mean what this parent contribution mean and he said well what it means is parents are going to be expected to do a certain amount of funding for the students and at that time it was so new nobody really knew so we sat down and we hashed it out and I sent all the BOJ applications out then we got into a struggle over a memo of understanding who funds first the bureau or the Department of Ed for beö G and we felt that the BOJ program should fund first and then and nobody would interpret it so I wrote a memo to all the ficial aid officers in North Dakota and I said that down according to what I’m hearing from Department of Education that the EOG is the first source and BIA is second my boss in Denver calls me up but gives me heck for that again I said well I said you told me that it was it was up to the local area and I said that’s how we want it so I said you didn’t give me you didn’t tell me it wasn’t that way so I did for that year I got to interpret the memo of understanding between the Department of Ed and Bev Indian Affairs but later they hashed that out too