Guy Rocha - Excerpt 1 Transcript
(Reno, Nevada; August 15, 2001)

VC: Okay. What did you work on together?

GR: Okay. When she was at UNR's Women's Studies Program, she - she began looking at project activity. She wanted - She wanted to do things with - with historical records and archives as it pertained to women, and she was also looking for money. Jean was always trying to find ways to support the kinds of activities that she felt were important in getting, you know, the women's voice out, and she came to me not only as the State Archivist but as what's called the Coordinator of the State Historical Records Advisory Board, and that is an extension of the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, which is a part of the National Archives and Records Administration, and they give money away for the proper projects, and it's federal dollars, and she proposed a project that would result in a catalog, if you will, of privately-held manuscripts and archives of Nevada women and women's organizations. I have a copy of that here which I'll share with you. But she got a fairly large grant. This is not a large grant-making body, they don't have a lot of money, but she received a grant for $54,168.00 in 1995, and of course we helped her write that grant proposal and shepherd it through. That brought us - probably brought us together. (Phone rings.) Excuse me, some more calls. I think I took care of that. That will go down in history (laughing). And the point is, she had - she had become the interim director in '91, and it wasn't too long thereafter she began talking about wanting to do something and finding ways to do it with the dollars. I'm trying to remember, something over at Morrill Hall, she approached me, I'm trying to remember, it was some kind of celebratory activity, she says, "I've got to talk to you, I've got some ideas, and I know you sit on the State Historical Records Advisory Board and we need to get together," and when she said she was going to do something she was a, you know, she was a take-action person, so we explained to her what could be done, et cetera, and then we worked with her in writing the grant proposal, and we felt in her getting this that this was, you know, this was a major grant for this grant-making body, and then working with the University of Nevada, and I believe Susan Searcy was party to this, who now works for us as one of our archivists. They saw the grant project to its conclusion, and this was really an important step for Jean, you know, from formulating her idea to actually coming up with a tangible work product, and then building on that effort as she began to work at UNLV and her activity with the Nevada Women's History Project. So I'd like to think, you know, in our working together I was able to give her the means by supporting this - obviously other members of our board did - and working with the people in Washington, D.C. to really be a springboard to all the other things, you know, she had in mind, and she just began, you know, looking at just myriad projects, and of course I would be invited to a number of the - I'm trying to remember the name of the group, there were a number of women's groups, and she was honored at these groups, and I was asked to say things about her good work. (GRocha1) She was - From what I could tell, she was the first person who really said, you know, in terms of pursuing something for women, "We need collections, we need to acquire information regarding who are they, identify the universe of these women in Nevada, and then what can we find to document what they did, elevate their profile, and then hear their voices, both contemporary and historical,"(GRocha1) and she'd call me all the time because she says, you know, "You're the archivist and I'm relying on you to help me with the records." So we had - Beginning, let's say, shortly after 1991, we began to work fairly closely off and on, sometimes very, very closely, and I got to know Jean as a person. I began to understand who she was, what had happened in her life, and why she was making the choices that she made, and then I would discuss with her my take on women's issues and my activity, going back to San Diego State and taking classes in women's studies programs in 1975 when it was embryonic, and how I had seen the development of women's studies, and had suggested to her that we were ready for something called gender studies, and that we needed to look more at interpersonal relationships and the dynamics between men and women to better understand why we have kind of the roles that people find their lives sometimes circumscribed by. So we went from - she went from a person I knew as a political figure to a public administrator and a fellow colleague. Then we began getting involved through her efforts and project activity, and then I would say we became - we became friends. Not necessarily close friends, but friends where we could have open and honest discussions about why it was important to pursue women's issues in Nevada.