Paul L. A. Reneau and Murray Pierce

[00:01] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Good afternoon. My name is Paul Reneau I am 61 years old. Today's date is Wednesday, June 15, 2022. I am in Missoula, Montana. Name of my interview partner is Murray Pierce, and he is my colleague and friend.

[00:22] MURRAY PIERCE: Good afternoon. My name is Murray Pierce. I'm 66 years old. Today's date is Wednesday, June 15, 2022. We are in Missoula, Montana. The name of my interview partner is Paul Reneau Paul is my colleague and my friend. So, Paul, I don't think I've talked to you about this, but the reason I invited you here specifically was I think that you more so than a lot of other folks that are in this town. I should start out by explaining that Missoula, Montana, demographically is pretty much 99.9% white. It's a university town, and a lot of the folks that are here, people of color, are people that have attended the university. In particular, black people, are athletes. Not everyone, mind you, but a lot of us have been athletes. So both Paul and I were athletes at the University of Montana. And I thought that that brought a particular perspective to someone who's been here for quite some time, that had enjoyed some of the accolades that athletics brings along, then also has chosen to work here in town. That's the reason why I brought Paul along with me and start out, Paul, by asking, what year did you arrive here?

[01:33] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: I arrived in Missoula, Montana in 1979, just before the fall semester. I was turning 19.

[01:46] MURRAY PIERCE: All right, all right. I came in 74. So a few years before you. And we were fairly close. Paul's got a great, kind spirit, and I think that that's what attracted me as a friend of Paul. Paul's just a genuinely good human being. So can you tell me why you chose? Um.

[02:05] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Well, I grew up a part of my life in Belize, Central America. And then the other part of my life, I moved to south central LA then and so I moved to central, south central LA around the time gangs were really getting going. So the Crips was running the place.

[02:26] MURRAY PIERCE: What year was that?

[02:27] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: That was like 72, 73. And the crips. The crips were all over the place. The bloods didn't even exist. And we had a lot of other gangs that were around there. So one of the things was I chose to go to school outside of the LA city. And while I was at Monroe High School, which is out in the San Fernando Valley, I ended up getting a football scholarship to come to Montana.

[02:53] MURRAY PIERCE: Cool.

[02:54] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Yeah.

[02:55] MURRAY PIERCE: My journey was somewhat similar, but then a little bit different too. My dad's the one that told me I was going to Montana. I played football in high school in Cincinnati, Ohio, and had a number of different offers to play other places. But back in those days, people listened to their parents, you know, so it's kind of an anomaly now, but people listened to what they said and what they wanted. So there was no question where I was going. I'd gotten recruited to Ohio state and some other places that I thought more fondly of attending. But my father wanted me to come to Montana to kind of get away from city life and to see something different. We were raised on a farm, at least he was raised on a farm in Alabama. We still have that property, actually. But still the rural life was, was attractive to him. And I can honestly say for me it really wasn't. Which leads me into my next question. What were the reactions of your family and friends when you told them you were coming to?

[03:47] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Um, well, for the most part, the whole reaction was great. My family always knew that I was a little different in the sense of I wanted to be independent. I wanted to move away from the craziness of the city. And they were pretty, pretty excited when I told them that I got a scholarship to go to Montana. First thing they said though was, where is Montana? Because I'm belizean and they all Belize. And it's like, we know la, right? We know Vegas, those type of places. One of the most interesting reaction is my mom at the time was married to a, to a man who, when I told him that I got a scholarship to play football at Montana, he goes, no, you didn't. I actually ended up having to show him my letter that indicated that he come from a time period that man was in charge. And if you're in charge, you know, everybody else listens to you and bow down to you. And he was never my stepdad. He was my mom's husband. Sure. And so those were some of the reactions.

[05:14] MURRAY PIERCE: Yeah, it was kind of similar for me too, to some degree too. A lot of my friends who had chosen other schools, a number of black centered schools, actually, a lot of HBCUs as well as the d one schools. It was pretty, pretty interesting. But there were eleven of us that came out from Cincinnati my year. There were eleven of us. They recruited eleven of us and the only one that stayed and graduated. So my dad was right in some respects that I didn't know. Can you remember your first day here?

[05:45] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Yeah, I actually, I remember getting off the airplane and I remember getting picked up at the airport by one of my then teammates, Guy Bingham. And we get outside the airport, and, of course, when Guy walked into the airport and I looked at him, he was 6364, just a big dude. He was an offensive lineman, a center. And we were walking to the vehicle, and then all of a sudden I look at the vehicle and it was like a little, tiny little Toyota truck. And I'm going, we're going, that's your vehicle. But I remember just looking around from the airport and just kind of going, wow. Because when I came on my visiting, my official visit, there was snow, and it was just beautiful. Just like, wow. I fell in love, and I still do that just about every day out at the track when I'm coaching. So, yeah, it's a beautiful place.

[07:00] MURRAY PIERCE: I was on my official visit here. I came and sliding the family stone were supposed to be here. I don't know if anybody in the audience remembers, but he had come to Cincinnati twice and had come out on stage and dropped the mic and said, I'm too out of it in so many words to play. So see you later. People went nuts. Twice. Went to see him twice, and it happened twice. Came here and I told my friends that, oh, slide the family, they're laughing, like, right, whatever. He played three encores here.

[07:32] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Wow.

[07:32] MURRAY PIERCE: I was blown away, man. I'm not saying that sly brought me here, but he had some level of influence on me. So were you adequately prepared academically for, um.

[07:46] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: You know, I thought I was. I actually performed better in high school than I did in college. I'm not sure. I'm not sure if it was just the whole piece about being away and, you know, high school is so different in the sense of. Of something happens and your mom get called, your dad, your parents get called. There's no accountability by the adults. Even though there is, it's in a different way. And so I wasn't quite prepared for that looseness in how academic structure worked. And I graduated, I got my degree, but I struggled in some ways. But, you know, I was pretty determined to get my degree, first one in my family, to get a degree, to go to college in the US and play any kind of sports in a major college in the us. So, yeah, that was different.

[08:58] MURRAY PIERCE: Yeah. Paul was an Olympic athlete. One of the other stories, many stories there. And I won't tell the story about you and Carl Lewis because I think I've worn that out to some degree. So people just have to wonder about what happened there. What year was it?

[09:15] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: It was 1984.

[09:16] MURRAY PIERCE: So go back to 1984. Olympic trials in LA. Is that right?

[09:20] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Olympic trials. Actually, no, it was actually the first day of the actual LA Olympics, August 3, in front of 102,000 people.

[09:31] MURRAY PIERCE: Okay, so I'm gonna go ahead and tell the story. Paul had in his office. Paul worked with kids, as I did, for quite some time here, too. Paul had in his office a picture of him and Carl Lewis. And I came in his office one day, I said, what's that picture? He goes, I happened to be in the Olympics, and I was running in the same heat that Carl Lewis was. And I looked at him and he said, the gun went off. And all I could think was, man, those are nice shoes. I'll never forget that. I told myself I wouldn't tell that story.

[10:00] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Tell that story. Yeah, Murray Murray is telling that story about me being in the Olympics. It's like, what, so seventies?

[10:10] MURRAY PIERCE: What was the political climate like at the time?

[10:12] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: In the seventies? Yeah, here or here in anarchy here. You know, I think we were under, like, Ronald Reagan, I think Washington at the time, Jimmy Carter. I came just as I think Nixon was out of office. And, you know, it didn't seem to me like there were a lot of political unrest here. There were a lot of stuff happening in LA because of the president at the time. And, you know, I hear this term reaganomics, and, you know, those are some of the things that I remember from back in those times. I don't. I was never. So. I was a. I was a permanent resident and I couldn't vote. So those weren't a lot of things that I paid much attention to. And so. But I don't remember a whole lot of, you know, unrest in the way of how the government structure was going at the time here.

[11:32] MURRAY PIERCE: For me, I got here in 74, and it was on the tail end of a lot of things that had happened with. We had a black student union here. For people that don't know, the University of Montana black Student union is one of the. I think it's the third such organization in the country. Go figure. Missoula, Montana. But there were some pretty strong activists that were here at the time, and they demanded that their needs be brought to the table as well. And they did an incredible job about it. In fact, the other interview I did was with Dee Daniels. Dee was one of the folks that started the black student union. But things were. We were on the tail of some of those things from the sixties, and they were still hotbed issues that were still going around. There were still a lot of. I think racism was different at that time because, you know, maybe it wasn't so different. It was, it was there and it was prevalent in terms of people just blurting things out. Now it's my sense that it's kind of gone underground to some degree and it's less visible, but still as pernicious as it always has been. But I thank those folks that came before me that kind of laid the ground for that. Hopefully for you a little bit afterwards too, that has gone through some of those struggles that perhaps that you didn't, those fights that you didn't have to fight there. And speaking of struggles, what are some of the struggles you had on campus?

[12:56] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: I think one of the biggest struggles I had on campus was realizing that snow is cold and walking from aver hall over to the food zoo to go to breakfast at the crack of dawn, you know, being a football player. And those were some of the, you know, pieces that, you know. To tell you the truth, Murray, from the time I came here that I think it's just my character, that I like people. So when I'm interacting with people, there's not a whole lot of like anger or malicious, you know, thought process. I look at you for who you are and I ask you a question and I have a conversation because that's just how I was. I found a family here that kind of adopted me. I met the daughter on the bus coming from Butte and I just, we got to talking and I met her mom when I got off the bus and they actually took me under their wing and to today we're still family. So I didn't really have a whole lot of issue. I'm glad I had the black student union because, oh, I know one of the issues I did have was I used to wear cornrows and there weren't anybody here at that time, you know, to braid my hair and the cornrow. And so I ended up started cutting it and that was probably the biggest cultural piece that I felt that it was like, wow. Because I always had braids in. It's just a piece that. So then the crazy hair came.

[14:48] MURRAY PIERCE: We're sitting here with Paul's hair. It's kind of a green and blonde and I don't know what else to say.

[14:57] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Yeah, it's fall.

[14:58] MURRAY PIERCE: It's falls recognizable through that in many different quarters in the city.

[15:06] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: That's cool.

[15:06] MURRAY PIERCE: It's a cool cut, though.

[15:07] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Thank you.

[15:08] MURRAY PIERCE: It's a cool cut. Yeah. For me, I guess I struggled initially pretty hard missing my family. I grew up in a family. There were eleven kids and this huge extended family with cousins and nieces and nephews and all this stuff. And I was here just in practically. Practically because of my dad. My dad was always preaching academics, you know, always, you know, there was no way that you would. His phrase was, don't bring any c's across my threshold. Couldn't do that. Couldn't do that. And there was times when he made that well known to us all. I felt that I was always here because of him. And you're right. I think that I struggled somewhat, too, coming into an academic situation where I didn't have that push behind me initially. And I faltered. I'll tell you what, man. Faltered is probably a nice word for it. I kind of went, Buck wow. For a little while there, I didn't have that level of supervision anymore. But pretty soon, I even contend now that no matter how far you stray, you always come back to your base to some degree. And I was able to do that. And then the academics came back into play for me, and I was able to graduate and do the things that I needed to do. And there was that expectation, you know, without any sense of gratification, to be quite frank with you, from my family, I graduated magna cum laude, national honors, all that good stuff, right? It was like, that's what you're supposed to do. Don't look to me for any congratulations. It's just the way it is. So, coming back to that, that sense of stuff was. Was really. That sense of grounding was good for me, too. So, speaking that we spoke a little bit about the struggles, what about support structures? What support structures did you find on campus? You talked about this a little bit. You talked about the. I think the bullish family is what you're talking about. The bullish family and how they helped to support you. What did that mean to you? Can you expand on that a little bit?

[16:55] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Well, they immediately became family. I mean, they were. It wasn't like. It wasn't like I had to get to know them, and I did have to get to know them, but they took care of. They were already in the business of doing that. So there were a lot of the football players, athletes that were here that the Bollish family had kind of adopted. And so I was just another one of those people that, you know, that they. That they took in. And for me, I probably. There's one other guy that's here in Montana that's probably still around. His name is Scott Morton. You probably know Scott. And, you know Scott was one of Arliss boys. Doug Betters was one of Arlis's boys. You know, some of those guys. And so when I got in, I just. It was like, wow, this is like the other piece, I think that was interesting for me is I miss my family, but I was always used to being away from my family. You know, when I went to high school, I played high school sports out in the valley, and I was bused. I chose to get bused out to the valley because of the gangs and all those things. And so I was always away from my folks. And then when I got the weekend came, when I was in the football season or track season, I'd end up staying out in the valley with some of my friends, and then they would bring me home on Sunday night, and then we'd start it all over again next week. So I didn't have that sense of. But it was great to have that family because there were meals and there were a lot of things that they did together that I was a part of. And so speaking about political things, Arlis was a stark Republican. And so I used to work at the young Republicans booth they had at the fair. My buddies used to walk up, what are you. What are you doing? And I'm like, this is my family, right? I'm not politically affiliated with this, but I'm just helping them out, right? So I think that support was always there, and that support's still there because I see Jan, the daughter, often enough.

[19:28] MURRAY PIERCE: For me. The family piece for me was more with BSU, with the black student union here it was. And again, I didn't even recognize that when I was going through it to some degree, didn't understand the level, the gravity of the support that was offered to there. But we would congregate together, we'd cook together, we'd have dances together. We'd do all sorts of things. We had a burgeoning political organization that we would ask for different things on campus. And that to me was that sense of family. And then the camaraderie shift that I developed with some of the football players, Greg Anderson in particular, Cleve, some other guys that were there that we still, you know, Greg has passed on, but Cleve and I still talk pretty much every single day. So that long lasting sense of, I guess, more community than even family, I think that's what an organization like the black student union brings to campuses, not just here, but across the country, that sense of community, because where are you going to go get your hair cut in some places, like Missoula, Montana, at that time, where you're going to go to eat something that you're familiar with eating. So you do that within the context of, in a lot of cases, with people that you know, and you become family to some degree. Yeah, I guess we kind of answered the black student union question. Tell me one of the most positive experiences you had on campus.

[20:50] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Well, I'm not sure I can tell you any bad experiences that I've had on campus that. That's interesting. I've never been asked that question. I always had. Yeah, I'm, you know, Doctor Ulysses Doss. I mean, there was always connection. There was always connection to the. To the. To the black student union.

[21:18] MURRAY PIERCE: Let me back up a second. The question about the positive experience.

[21:22] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Yes. Yeah. Positive experience. Yeah.

[21:25] MURRAY PIERCE: What's one of the most positive?

[21:28] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: I think the most positive was being a part of the black student union. And I do believe that with the family, the bullishes that I had, if I didn't have the black student union, I'm not sure how things would have. Would have ended up. I'm not sure if I would have stayed around the whole time. But like you said, the camaraderie that we had, you know, all the ball players, you know, they were from all over the place, and, you know, like you said, we had dances together, we had picnics together, we had, you know, conversations together like only a bunch of brothers can have. And, you know, those things, to me, were very important in connection culture. And so that, to me, that was probably the most significant campus experience positive.

[22:22] MURRAY PIERCE: That I had for me. I remember one professor that I had, I was a political science, economics, and history major, and I started taking philosophy classes, and one professor in philosophy, Tom Huff, was. Really took an interest in me, in what I was doing, and I thought I could write. Before I started taking philosophy classes, I quickly learned that I didn't know anything about writing. And he took me under his wing, and pretty soon I became one of his tas a couple years later in his classes. So he was really instrumental in my progress academically on campus, and that was really something that was significant for me, just in terms of later things in my life as I've gone on to write grants and write other things, that that discipline gave me to some degree. Any regrets attending here?

[23:15] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Wow. No. You know, I think that's a question that I get in general, not just about here, but if you had anything to change about your life, what would that be? And I always look at things and I'm going, why would I want to change any of these things? Is who I am today is. That's a part of it. Right. It's a part of it. And I love Missoula, Montana. I love the outdoors. I love the beauty of the place. And even though I played football, I ended up giving up my football scholarship my junior year because I just lost interest in it. And it wasn't. I didn't grow up playing football. You know, I played it in high school, and I ended up taking a partial track scholarship. And I lived at Arlis and John's house. I worked in their store. I ran errands for her. There were just pieces that there was just kind of this discontinuity of whatever it was. So I have no regrets. I met my wife here, you know, in college. We started dating in 1984, and we will be married 34 years this year. And so, you know, one of my. My youngest son was born here. Yeah, no regrets. Cool.

[24:44] MURRAY PIERCE: So do you draw on any lessons you learned here on a regular basis today?

[24:52] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Yeah, you know, I think the biggest lesson that I. That I probably took from being in Montana is I think it's about who I am and not. I was able to be who I was, right. There wasn't anybody that was telling me any different, or I didn't have any of the experiences where I was, at least not overtly, that there was some racial peace going on. I don't think I ever really experienced that. And so when I interact with people in Montana, that being myself and being that genuine person, I can take away some of those things. Even though things are in my head about what goes on, I can still be who I am, but I can still interact with people without any. Just a lot of good people that I've met along the way here.

[26:04] MURRAY PIERCE: So we talked a lot about how this community and, um, impacted you. What impact do you think that you had on the community and on the campus?

[26:15] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: You know, I believe that just being here, being a part of the football program at the time, the people that were here, there was always this small population of African Americans that were a part of the teams. And I think, in a sense, the athletic community benefited from the diversity that we brought to the campus and to the Adam center and to the sports program. I do believe I came back here, and I worked here for 25 years in the school system, working with youth. And at only one point I can remember having someone of african descent. So, you know, working. Working with people in general and working with struggling youth and families were probably one of the biggest contribution working in the schools.

[27:25] MURRAY PIERCE: Deal. Lastly, what advice do you have for young students of color in general attending? Um.

[27:35] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Well, first of all, I think the biggest piece is probably, you have to have an open mind. You can't just assume that everyone is against you. Everyone is. There are a lot of young folks these days that see things almost like they're drinking the kool aid of the negative. And I know there's negative here, but I think give people a chance. Give people a chance. One of my experience, actually, one of my negative experience was one day I was walking down on Higgins. This was when I was first here, and some woman was walking the opposite direction and she clinched her purse and, you know, it was like, what was that about? Right? But it wasn't like I was going to turn around and go, woman, what? You know, I wasn't going to get after her for something that she doesn't know. And so I think in reciprocating, I think we just got to make sure that we're open to getting to know people before we make judgments about who they are and how they behave. And I think Missoula has been a community for me that has allowed me to do that.

[29:05] MURRAY PIERCE: I think you speak to something that a lot of young people here go through and struggle with, in particular when they first get here and trying to understand the level of microaggressions that are out there. Micro and macro aggressions, I guess, both, you know, the hardest thing to do is to not know what those things are from a conceptual standpoint. You can feel them, but. But once you learn and you educate yourself, that's the most important thing for me, I think, is that what I attempt to do on campus, to some degree, is to educate administration staff and students about the importance of understanding who we are as a people. Making sure that those things are there, making sure that those struggles that we. That we had to endure, that our ancestors endured to provide a place for us today are real. They're still real. They're palatable. You can taste those things. They're tactile. You can touch them to some degree, making sure that they get the full extent of that knowledge, that those things are out there. So that, for me, is the biggest part of what I'd like to think of in terms of leaving as a legacy for students here is just making sure that all students really understand that, but in particular, students of color.

[30:13] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Yeah.

[30:15] MURRAY PIERCE: Thank you.

[30:16] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Yes.

[30:16] MURRAY PIERCE: Appreciate you as always, man.

[30:18] PAUL L. A. RENEAU: Thank you. Appreciate you. And thank you for choosing me to, you know, to interview. That was good, man. Appreciate you. Thanks.