The Community, Connections & Commerce Podcast, presented by OUE & St. Clairsville Chamber - Community and Connections Season 2 Episode 2 with Dr. Richard Greenlee

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

Welcome back to another episode of community and connections. I'm Drake Watson with Jason Garsick, and we are joined on today's episode by Dr. Richard Greenlee of Ohio University Eastern. Dr. Greenlee, it's great to have you with us this morning, and we're excited to talk to you. Well, I'm glad to be here this morning. Interestingly, I was thinking as I parked my car and started to walk towards here, my father grew up on Wheeling Island, so I walked across the bridge and came back over on Erie Street. And in this very building, my great-grandfather ran the pool hall. Did he?

Oh, wow. And supposedly, I actually have a box of three ivory. which they don't do anymore, that you can actually see the hole drilled in them to carve them out. And they've shrunken over the years and they're in a wood box and in the bottom of the box it says Capitol Music Hall, Wheeling, West Virginia. Wow. That's pretty cool. That's cool. And my grandfather, he would close the pool hall, or my great-grandfather, my grandmother would said he would close the pool hall when it was done at night. He would play pool for money all night long. And she said During depression, they never went hungry.

Oh. So he must have been pretty good. Yeah. Yes. And he always dressed, even I remember him as a wee little young child at Thanksgiving. He would dress with a three-piece suit. So he had this look of a sophisticated billiard player. That's pretty cool.

Well, speaking of pretty good, I think we're a minute and a half in and we didn't even have to ask you a question. You got right into it. That's great to have stories like that. Well, actually, I was going to bring my banjo today because I wanted to be able to brag that I played at the Capitol Music Hall. But yesterday, I was emceeing the parade at the Chautauqua at Epworth Park. And between the police cars and the fire engines, which were all running their sirens, I was yelling pretty loud so people could hear the names of the floats and the people that went by. So today I'm a little bit hoarse. in that process.

Oh, that's okay. That's okay. Yeah, the banjo would have been would have been a nice touch. Bring the accordion in with it. Yeah, we could have really jam in the house could have brought over. We wouldn't have started a whole new band concept. Yeah, that was really.

I don't know if the people of the High Valley were ready for us. Well, outside of playing the banjo, you're currently interim dean at the Eastern Branch of Ohio University. Talk to it, and this I believe is your second step. as the interim, is that correct? Well, I wasn't the interim. Well, I guess I was way back, I think, I don't know anymore, 2008 or 9. I was the interim dean for one year, and then I was the dean, appointed the dean, and did that for another four and a half years. I was also the interim dean at the Zanesville campus for two years, and then I'm back now as the interim

dean here for this year. Wow. So how did you come to the role of you know, how was your name considered for dean or interim dean going from a professor, I'd imagine, to that role? What was that process like? And what do you think made your name attractive for that role? Well, I had to interview, of course, with lots of other folks who were interested in the role, probably that I had been the previous dean and had that experience for five and a half years of actually being the dean of the campus. And I know the community. And so I think, you know, I'd like to have the opportunity to go back. and talk about growing up here because I think it all feeds into what I do now and where I'm

wrapping up my career. So a song I would have sang first for you if I was capable and it would have been pretty hoarse. I wrote it a long time ago and it was called Picking Walnuts and it had nothing to do with actually picking walnuts. It was my mother's sense of humor. I grew up living in a house with no running water, an outhouse, and two coal stoves for heat. And in my bedroom, really all there was in the upstairs floor was an old iron bed and a dresser and probably enough clothes to put in that top drawer. So we went through a very difficult time, and my mother had a wonderful sense of humor. She was a great storyteller.

She had a great sense of humor. She was wonderful about making light of what was very stressful and in some ways terrible time. I mean, we were quite poor, to put it bluntly, I guess. And so on Sunday, she would say, we're going picking walnuts. And that meant we loaded up in the car and we would go on down to the strip pits where the trucks had come around a big bend and they would be overloaded. the coal would fall off the top right around this one corner. And that's what we would use. We didn't have the money to buy the coal.

So we would then pick up the lumps of coal that had fallen off the trucks, put it into a car, and then we would bring that home to fire those coal stoves for that week. And so I always remember that, and she always made light of a bad situation and made you feel not so bad about it. Yeah. She was a very, she just died in January. She was 90 years old. She was a very strong.

woman who hung in there with six kids living day to day, I mean, many times, very little to eat in a very cold home that I don't know how to say it. I wouldn't want to live that way ever again. That's what I would say. And I appreciate her ability to her strength during that period of time. You know, I learned like a couple principles, you know, you make do, you make it last and you do without. And both her and my father were that way. How often do you find yourself going back to that way of thinking, I guess just making light of a, you're finding the positives within a poor situation. How often do you kind of use that way of thinking in your everyday life with your role now as interim dean and just in life in general? Is that something that

you think about a lot? Well, yeah, I don't think you ever forget living that way. Yeah. And, but I do think it gives me a perspective that whatever we think so bad right now is not that bad. Sure. And it's not as bad as that was. And I still think that, you know, you can come out just fine out of that. But that doesn't mean it's easy. And that doesn't mean you're going to have ups and downs in that process. So when I graduated from high school, I had absolutely no idea what I was going to do next. None. I think I lived in a little imaginary world sometimes that, oh, I could go to college. But, you know, I didn't believe I was smart enough. I knew I didn't have any money to go to college. And as everybody else started talking about what their plans were, I had none. And sometimes I

would make up stories. Well, maybe I'll go to college. But in reality, I knew probably that wasn't going to happen. And it didn't. So at 18, I joined the Army. I remember going down to Belair, Ohio, and I can still remember the sergeant's name who took me in, Sergeant Hickey, and they put me through a battery of test. And when I came out, you know, I said, what can I be? And he says, well, he had all these things. And for some reason, he brought up a social work psychology specialist. And I said, well, what do they do? Because I had no idea what they did.

And he says, well, they help people. And I thought, well, that sounds all right. right okay I'll do that and he says if you sign up for three years rather than two then you're guaranteed one year where you're assigned and I said okay well where can I go and he says you can go to Fort So Oklahoma or you can go to Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington DC and all I could think of was John Wayne movies this was the extent of the depth of my thinking I said I said Fort So Oklahoma I'm thinking horses I'm thinking this is going to be like the Wild West John Wayne movies I watched.

And he says to me, you don't want to go to Fort Salt, Oklahoma. I said, why not? He says, there's nothing to do there. I said, oh, well, where should I go? He says, you should go to Walter Reed in Washington, D.C. I was so afraid to go into Washington. I wasn't even sure, actually, if Washington, D.C. was the Washington out west or the Washington to east.

I didn't know that geography to understand that. And off went a journey. I mean, I rode on planes and trains and had to get cabs and bought some, like, a little camera. It was like one of the first things I had really bought that was special, that I had money to buy that. You know, I went to basic training, and I was with a unit that was predominantly African-American. I had never really known anybody who was African-American personally, and now I'm in a unit for the next 12 weeks with people. who grew up in a very different way from in inner cities versus me in a very rural area in that process.

And I had wonderful people along the way who helped me. When I got into social work, I had people who mentored me, who took me under their wing. And even though there's something in the military not really supposed to frattenize with officers, they invited me to their, and I was enlisted, obviously, a brand new E1 at a basic training and they invited me to their homes for Christmas knowing that I didn't have anywhere to go necessarily and bought presents for me

and made me feel part of their families when I was away from home and I still to this day have a great respect for them and what they did. Well, that ties into the connections aspect that we talk about all the time, making those connections. And obviously, you know, you weren't that bad

so they were still able to, to invite you over for whatever it may have been. And I think that's something that's really interesting to hear about how you were able to make that connection and have a place to go, as you said. Well, I had no self-confidence whatsoever. And in fact, it was an officer that I worked for who encouraged me to start going to school.

And the Army had a relationship with the University of Maryland and you could go at night after work and the Army would pay for it. And I remember when he first offered it up, I said, oh, I'm too busy. I don't have time to go. And the reason I was telling them is I thought I would fail. I didn't think I was good enough to go to college. And so I was just making up excuses left and right while I couldn't do it. And he says to me, well, you're going to start going to school and you're going to take a class.

I said, well, I don't even know how to sign up. And in those days, of course, you had to go literally figuratively sign up. And so he walked me through that whole process, showed me how you buy books, showed me how to get ready for the classes, helped me with some of the classes along the way in the beginning. And I remember taking an English class and my writing skills weren't very good. But you got to rewrite papers and he would help me rewrite them, you know, and then I would go back in and I would keep brushing them up. And in the end, I ended up getting a B.

And I thought, whoa, this is major success in this process. And I got done with that. And I thought, in fact, I didn't even tell my family I went to college because this way, if I flunk out, they'll never know. That was my plan. So, but then after I get done with this one course, he says, you're going to take another class. I said, I'm too busy.

He says, no, you're going to. You're going to take a speech class. So I took this speech class. And I can't tell you how much I sweat over that class because the speech was coming. day you had to get up in front of 35 people and you had to pick a topic which I had worked on and worked on. In fact, I decided I would talk about co-workers' pneumoconiosis, black lung disease. It's not definitive for sure, but there's a good chance that we never had like an

autopsy or anything that my father probably, at least partially responsible for his death at 59. He was a coal miner. And so I practiced that thing and I practiced it and they said, don't, you You've got to look at the people. Don't hold on to the podium like it's going to fly away. You know, don't stare at your notes and don't go too fast. I did all those things. I did them all. I got done, and I had a coal figure, a coal miner made out of coal that I put up on the podium.

And when I got done, the professor says to me, she says, what does Crick mean? And I said, that's where you get water from. And then she says, she says to me, well, what does Warsh mean? And I said, well, you can, that's, you get cleaned up, you know. And then she says to me, what does Yens mean? And this has been like a defining word of my life. Yeah. You know, at that point, I didn't realize that everybody didn't say that.

Yeah. Because here, Western Pennsylvania, the Panhandle, West Virginia, people say Yen's a lot. And so, but when she said that, I said it, well, it means all of you people. people and everybody started laughing, but at that time, because my self-esteem is so little, I'm humiliated. I can feel my face turning red, and I walked out of there with no intention of ever going back to college. If it hadn't been for my boss who says, how school going, and he kept persisting and said, when it got done, he said, you need to go back to school. You're not quitting. And I probably wouldn't be here talking to you today. And all the things

that have happened since wouldn't have. You know, and along the way, in the Army, the best thing I ever did is I married my wife and she was another great supporter of all my hairbrain schemes of how I was going to make it in the world and went with it and supported me all the time no matter what and I wondered I probably still never asked her today why would you marry somebody like me at that time I had no college degree no money and no prospects of a future and she'll probably listen to us sometime maybe she'll tell me or I don't know if I want to know. But we just celebrated 50 years.

Oh, congratulations. So I would say that that worked out pretty good in the end overall. But she's been a lifelong partner and supporter. And in many ways, she was my role model beginning because she already had a bachelor's degree in nursing and became a army social worker or a nurse officer. Wow. Wow. Amazing. So you continue your college at University of Maryland.

What did you end up studying? What did you get your degree in? time, it was criminology and law enforcement. And then when I decided to get an MSW, because I worked with emotionally disturbed children for a year or so, after I got out of the Army, I was a social work psychologist in the Army. So that's kind of fit that I would do that also. It was in the same ballpark. And at that time, they didn't have bachelor's degrees in social work. So when I got out then and I worked with emotionally disturbed kids, I was advised by my old Army boss that you should go get an MSW. So then I went to the University of Pittsburgh, and that's where I got my

MSW. And later after that, I actually worked at, I worked at Cambridge, the state hospital, and I did that for about a year. I worked with the Industrial Commission, and then I went back in the Air Force as a clinical social work officer and was a captain. I think, and I ran drug and alcohol treatment programs there primarily and did on-call emergency room mental health crisis calls, that kind of thing. So that was a, you know, all those things, I sometimes tell people, I feel like I was Forrest Gump. I didn't become a millionaire, but everything lined up and I didn't know what I was doing except I knew to work hard. My father only had a seventh grade education. He went to the Madison School over here on Wheeling Island.

And, you know, he couldn't be a role model for me to go to college. I'm a first-generation college student, but what he taught me was hard work. I watched him every day, every day go to work. I watched him go to work when he was sick as could be. He never, because he needed to work to bring home money. He went in that coal mine, and I don't know, he was in mid-30s. I can remember the first day he came back. He worked hard all day, and when he came home, he couldn't get out of business.

bed and we got him up out of bed and put him in the car. He said, get me there and I'll go to work. So he started a later years to work that kind of job. But he always worked hard labor jobs. And, you know, he was proud of what he did. And I learned about being proud of what you do and doing it right and working hard. And he was very intelligent, even though he only had a formal seventh grade education. He could fix anything. He always fixed his own cars. We couldn't afford to him to somebody to be fixed. We went to junkyards. We found, you know, we found parts and he put him in, and he was a master of many trades. And I had a lot of respect for him. Unfortunately, none of that mechanical aptitude passed on to his son. I got to pay people to do all that

kind of work. So how did that journey, I think we left off in the Air Force, if we fast forward a little bit. What led you to Ohio University? Well, I went to the doctoral program at Ohio State where I got my Ph.D. in social work. And when I got done there, a lot of folks, they were going around interviewing multiple places because that's kind of what you did after you got a PhD to see your best offer. I didn't interview anywhere but Ohio University. I only wanted to be there. I had no idea that they would hire me. And so I went there and interviewed. I had to not finished my, I had not even really started hardly my dissertation. I had done the first two years where you do these, you do all the coursework, comprehensive exams, and then it was time

to, you have this year, well, some people take years to write their dissertation. So, but I went to Athens, interviewed for the job. They hired me without the dissertation completed. But in that year, I was a full-time professor and I worked, I shut my door at five o'clock and I would work till late on that dissertation every night. And a year later, I graduated with my Ph.D. And I have now been at Ohio University for 35 years. Wow. This is my 36th year, is the interim dean.

So whenever you first started, did you start at Athens, or were you at a regional campus? I started at Athens when I took that job out of Ohio State. And while I was there, I was a faculty member for a long, 17 years or so. I was the chair of the social work department at one time, and I also was an associate provost of Appalachian Access and Outreach that I did and played a role in mentoring the Appalachian scholars students that we had created that program for at that time at Ohio University. So you said you're from this area, correct? Yes, I was just looking up some genealogy stuff the other day.

My mother's people were from Switzerland, and so they said, settled into Switzerland of Ohio, Monroe County. And in fact, I just looked at some of their, where they're buried, the cemeteries in Switzerland township of Ohio, which is kind of ironic. They didn't go very far in terms of name. Yeah, sure. And then my dad's folks, they came here in the early 1800s to Belmont County. Okay. And they originally were from Scotland. And they have been here since the revolution. So for a long time, in this valley, you name it, pretty much every town. up and down that I have a family that lived in these towns down to Wetzel County and up here obviously all around Wheeling in the process and on the Belmont County side, St. Clairsville,

Clarington. And when I cross over the Monroe County line, if I come up seven, I always say, these are my people. Yeah. Yeah. I was just in Monroe County the other day. It's beautiful down there. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And they lived way up on a Pew Ridge, up on a ridge. And you can see out forever there. And I remember when I first became Dean the first time, and I was standing downstairs and there was a mother talking to the folks at student services. And I'll never forget that the woman started using yens. And I hadn't heard that in a while. And I just thought again, these are my people. This is where I'm supposed to be. You know, this is my place. So I was always just, this is, these are my roots all the way.

That's where I belong. I had a speech class my first semester, my freshman year, and I can't remember in what way we talked about it. But we did talk about yins and crick and things like that. I think more of a highlight of just different dialects, so to speak. So you're at Athens, and then what was the journey like getting from there in that role to back here in the valley and working at the eastern campus? Well, at the time, the dean who was here was stepping down. And the provost, who I worked for us, an associate provost, she said to me, we need somebody to go up and be an interim dean up at the eastern campus. And she said, and I know you're, she knew my story. And she knew I was from here. And I said, she said, would you be interested in doing that? And she had talked to some folks up here and off I went. And, and, uh,

And my wife actually stayed in Athens that year because it was not sure I would be appointed the dean. So we weren't going to move and sell our house. But later on, as it turned out, I was appointed the full-time dean for the rest of that. And when we moved back. So we live in St. Clairsville. Okay. I went to Union Local High School. That's where I went.

And, you know, again, I think in life it's kind of like my whole Forest Gump theory. think I was supposed to come here. I was supposed to be the dean here. And then I've enjoyed very much in between when I stepped down as dean being a, we have something we call early retirement where you teach a third of your teaching load. And I've enjoyed keeping active with that. And now back for a full-time interim dean for this year. That's awesome. And Dr. Greenlee, we first met during your time as dean out at the Eastern campus. That's right, Jason. You're giving up how old you are too. Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. But how does this compare when you were being for those almost four years, you said, how is your time now in the role that

you're in? How are they different? How do they compare or what goals do you have in that? Well, I think things have changed because we've switched to an administrative model of one Ohio, which more, it centralizes things more than in the past. So I'm just learning that. I've only been back in this for another, you know, month and a half or so. So I have a lot to learn, but I don't have my own, it used to be the budget sat with the campus. And now most of that comes out of a regional higher education budget. And so I've got to learn the intricacies of that. So that makes it a bit different where a lot of things that used to be my decision to do. But now the role is more of community

outreach, which is we always did that. But now it's more. more focused on that across the line. So I got something I want to share. So here's, I want to make sure I get time to do this. So I can't sing, but I brought a little recording of a song I wrote for OUE. Can I play that? Sure. Here, let's go for it.

All right. So I know there's one mess up in the recording, but I only did it on his phone, so it's not folks out there. It's not a professional recording. Anyway. When you do it, hold it up, hold it up like this. everybody can hear it it's called um we're small but we're mighty we are small but we're mighty we are small but we're mighty The Ohio Valley, we started at high school in Martin's Ferry. We are Ohio University, the first go to college and earned a degree.

Overcoming all his fears and uncertainties, she came from a high school, a challenge she did seek. She rode a van for many hours and we ours, we are the we are small, but we're mighty, they call so you be. For 60 years we served the Ohio Valley. We started in high school in Martin's Ferry. We are Ohio University. She sat in that park, a lot, paralyzed my fear. Summined up the courage and fought back those tears. She climbed up those many steps and entered Shannon Hall.

In time she had confidence to conquer, conquer it all. We are small, but we're mighty. We grow a sunny week. For 60 years, we served the Ohio Valley. We started at high school in Martin's Ferry. We are Ohio University. The first time through he had fun, but left with no degree. Now he was more serious, he had a family.

A veteran returned to school She fought a war of arms Her goal was too happy with hers Nope With all the skull We are small but more fighting That comes so you read For 60 years we served the Ohio Valley

We started at the high school in Barton we started at that school in Barton's every day we are Ohio University a single parent mother her husband had died she'd never been to college but now she must provide a coal miner lost the job when the man shut down they both came to Oh, U.E.N. Hope is perfect. Wow, that's good stuff. Wow.

So that's what Ohio University Eastern does. So let me be clear about that. You know, all those stories, those are students and the struggles they had and the obstacles they had to overcome. Yeah. And this campus out here, people don't realize we're putting $4 million into that campus right now.

four million dollars the whole two second floor third floor we already did the first floor they're all torn up we're putting in complete new you know hVAC systems new tiles on the front we're putting in a new wellness center within the the building there sometimes people wonder what's going on in there there's a lot going on right yeah no doubt right now and the bottom line is all those people we gave them hope and an opportunity to turn their lives around sure things were going bad for them just like it was for me i was just about to say yeah That's what higher education did for me. And people sometimes don't realize the quality of the instruction out there. You know, our faculty have PhDs from the major universities in the United States. You're talking University of Tennessee, North Carolina, Ohio State. I mean, from the largest Oregon, Kansas. I mean, we have the same qualifications, PhDs from major universities that any other place has in this wonderful little gem that sits on that hill in St. Clairsville, code Ohio University Eastern.

you can get it for the cost, you know, a very reasonable price, and it's right here in your own backyards. And to me, we've served this. I wrote that song for the 60th anniversary. We're like 68 now, I think. So that's how many years ago I wrote that song. But it's the same reasons why people come there. I think that song and then the monologue after, I don't know who we got to talk to, maybe we've got to get Donnell. That's got to be the ad. That's got to be the pitch for OUE. You summed it up perfectly in that in that six minute or so span. And I think playing an instrument is kind of a spectrum like I play an instrument, but you know, I'm on one side of the spectrum. You are playing the heck out of

that banjo. That's a great job. I mean, I couldn't imagine picking all that and yeah, great stuff. Well, and we're glad you could talk to us this morning. You provide a lot of great insight. So one last question I guess I will have is you find that in your goal and vision, I would assume, is for OUE to be for students and kids of this valley what the University of Maryland was for you when you were in the military? Absolutely. I think I had no idea what I was getting into. And like I said before, I had no sense of a, I had no self-confidence. And over time, as I got each one of those diplomas, I became more confident in who I was. I developed better skills, obviously, knowledge, writing, speaking, all those things were improved immensely

because of professors who helped me do that. But at a high university Eastern, you can get all that kind of stuff and you don't need to travel a long ways away and you don't need to spend a fortune to do it. That's right. You can stay home and you can work a job there and you can come out with very little debt, if any, debt whatsoever going to college, which is a very rare thing to happen today. That's true. And we have a lot of scholarship opportunities to help those folks who like me, if I'd have known about these things when I didn't even know what went on at Ohio University Eastern, you know, I think it was called Belmont at that time. I had no idea what went on over there because I didn't know anybody who went to college. But now I know and I would like people to know

that this is right here. If you don't know what you're doing, you don't know where you're going to go next and you want to start exploring, what can I be? You know, come to Ohio University Eastern. We've got wonderful staff. I've been able to listen to them to the last out, you know, the last month that I've been there. They're very knowledgeable. They're very dedicated. They really want to see people excel. That's why we exist. Yeah. And they say you don't have to go far to go far, I think is what you guys like to say. Absolutely. Yep. Well, Dr. Greenlee, we certainly appreciate your time for everybody here. Jason Garsick, myself. Thank everybody for listening and have a great day. Thank you.