Transcript: NIKE Missile Site Campus
Description: Mr. C.O. Williams recalls his first impressions of the college at the NIKE Missile Site Campus.
Mr. C.O. Williams:
The very thought of going to a NIKE site, which is an instrument of destruction, is inimical to the idea of it being the site of a college, that was the first thing I thought about. I went down that long road to find it, not knowing whether I was going to or not, and then to find this little collection of low buildings, no other space around it. I had to look hard to find the library. It kind of staggered the imagination that this was the College. It was without question, a most unusual setting.
But then I got to talking with people, that's the real heart of a college, the people. The thing that is so obvious here now in terms of working community relationships, person to person relationships you see on this campus, had its beginnings there. I saw the beginnings of it there.
Edited from the original interview on September 13, 1979. Original interview available as part of the Southern Maryland Studies Center Oral History Collection.