Hoffman: What were you anticipating before the storm when you knew it was coming? What were the first things that went through your mind since we really haven’t had that experience here at the university?

Foote: I’d never seen a hurricane before, I really didn’t know what to anticipate, I read about it and knew they were terrible events of nature. The closest I have come is a typhoon when I was stationed in Okinawa about 40 years ago. As I recall the winds were about 70 miles per hour which is a lot of wind, but that is less than half the speed of the winds that hit this campus on the 23rd.

Hoffman: To what extent had you and your colleagues prepares for this storm?

Foote: A lot. We prepared a great deal. You may or may not know that we have emergency hurricane procedures that have been in effect since way before my time and once a year at least we get the emergency committee together and go through the procedure and define for ourselves who needs to do what and that includes security, boarding up windows and preparing for the possibility of people being stranded here, do we have enough water, do we have enough food, advice to staff members, advice to students, and we’ve never had a hurricane in my time, but we have had some hurricane scares in my time.

Hoffman: And did you feel we were set to go before the storm came or as set to go as we could be?

Foote: I have been impressed with the procedures as I have seen them and I know we have a terrific team of people out there leading this university. I was as comfortable as I could be under the circumstances. But that wasn’t all that comfortable because as the hours wore on it was clear that this was a very, very serious storm, and you can never know how closely the preparations will match the facts and it was the facts that we didn’t know.

Hoffman: Where were you during the storm? 1 think your memoirs say you were at home. . .

Foote: My wife and I were in our house, we were not supposed to be because that was an evacuation zone, but we decided to stay, in part because that’s our house, that’s where we lived and we also decided that it was as safe as any place, because it’s up on a small ridge because the storm surge could not come up as high as the living space of the house and also because it’s a big old brick house and it did in fact survive the storm very well. So we were in the house. We didn’t sleep very much. We wandered around the house the downstairs hallway was the only place where we could be away from the potential of exploding glass.

Hoffman: As the storm was going on . . .what went through your head. . . how did you prioritize the university, family etc. .certainly it was quite an undertaking to begin unraveling the mess.

Foote: Well, for the first 2 or 3 hours my wife and I were trying to understand what was happening to the house and potentially to us, you were here you know what I mean, the horrible sound of the wind and trees crashing against the house, crashing in general it was a very frightening experience, so that’s what we did until dawn, then the winds began to subside, 1 was pleased to see we were still alive and that the house was still standing, then increasingly I began to think about the university and how I could get there, pretty basic needs...

Hoffman: You were picked up by university police?

Foote: Yeah I was going to actually bicycle in because I figured that would be the easiest way to get through the trees to carry it around and so forth . . .then I decided that if the police could come for me we would have radio contact and I could begin talking with the Medical School the Marine Science School, the south campus and begin understanding what immediate security needs there were, so I called to see if somebody could come get me, so the chief of police and Alan Fish came to get me sometime midmorning and we went to campus . .

Hoffman: Umm. . . As I was thinking, you might have felt some sort of paternal instincts toward the university and the university family, if you did what were they?

Foote: You have got to put my answer in the context of my being president here for 12 years. This is a wonderful allconsuming job, it doesn’t take long for it to become much more than a job, it becomes a cause, a personal life is inextricably intertwined with the university especially the students, the more people you know the more history you know yourself and the more intense and personal it becomes. So, I don’t know if paternalistic is the right word but I think of us as a family, it’s a big complicated place but not so big that we can’t get to know many of ourselves, and care about each other and I think it’s one of the aspects of the university that make it a great treasure.

Hoffman: Do you think that’s what helped us survive it?

Foote: Well, I think it’s one of the things, people worked very hard but they obviously cared about each other. You did, the RA’s did, the police officers did, people helped every body, strangers helped strangers, we took people in off the street. It was at least as wonderful as it was terrible.

Hoffman: What were some of your most frequent feeling that first week after the storm? You would walk around the campus, pass through the buildings, see the devastation and the the cleaning up, how did it feel? We were all looking up to you for all the answers?

Foote: Thank you . . .that’s very interesting because the leadership of this university is very much a team effort. I’m the only president you’ve got but I depend enormously on the officers and administrators of the university who performed without exception, magnificently. So, what you try to do in a job like this is first of all, stay level headed. Think carefully , to keep emotion out of it, to try to understand what the priorities are, what can wait a little while, what needs to be done, how you communicate, the first few days I spent thinking how we could resume functioning again . . .we had a real crisis on our hands. . .as you know, you were here and you lived it more fully because you were out there on the front lines. . . with the students, but then increasingly how could we make emergency decisions but then get school open again, should we close down, should we send them home, should we pay, was two weeks enough, was 1.5 enough could we possibly do it in a week and a half, what would be necessary to clean up, how were to clean up 800 exploded windows before the heavy rains came which they did in a day and a half... and so there was a lot...so a major part of what I did was not so much what needed to be done but what was an effective means so that decisions could be made in a timely and effective way. I did not make many of the decisions, but I do consider myself important for helping people make those decisions in a timely way.

Hoffman: What was the finest form of aid, the most surprising help we received during that time, when people were still wandering around dazed trying to put things together?

Foote: I wouldn’t say that there was any one it was more a kaleidoscope of actions, memories of extraordinary service. I can give you a few examples that impressed me tremendously. I guess at about . . .10 o’clock Sunday morning. . .the telephone rang and it was an official from a foundation saying “we decided to send you 50, 000 dollars, for the hurricane”. It was a nice telephone call. I said thank you very much, this was a foundation that had given us some money before they didn’t ask they just did it. Umm I was tremendously impressed with the cleanup effort. That didn’t just happen. That was a huge undertaking by the people in the building and grounds office of the university. To get those woodsmen here, to get them organized, to get them working so quickly was a monumental undertaking, I spent a part of everyday with the police. Security was a major issue. You remember how it was. . .no light it was dark the barriers were down, you saw and heard stories of lawlessness, three was some crime that happened during that time, I would keep track of the state of security from dawn to late at night I would talk with them, certainly the job that was done in the residential colleges and apartments was great. You all the students, the masters, the student affairs staff, you all did a tremendous job and I think it was great. You probably . . .did you get over to the phone bank at the alumni office?

Hoffman: I did not but I was helping to write the newsletter for them.

Foote: I asked Roy Nirscel who is VicePresident for University Advancement to organize a phone bank which they did, we got alumni and students to do two things: first we tried to phone every single member of the university family to find out how they were doing, and secondly to get volunteers not just for the university but to coordinate efforts for the greater Miami area… So we had the fooddistribution center over here at the cafeteria which we put together through Roy’s efforts, in a short period of time we had an inventory of all of our people, and those who we couldn’t telephone we found using alternative ways, search parties out to find them. I finally sent the police out in search parties to find the last handful for whom we had no information.

Hoffman: Has the hurricane changed your daily life, it probably did during the first few weeks, but now, your daily mode?

Foote: OH! Well you are probably in a better position to answer that than I. I think that we are backing to operating normally. But, this semester continues to be one of considerable stress and tension, there is perhaps a heightened sense of angst, people are happy not to have exams, but I haven’t heard anybody out there complain about that but the consequence of not having exams is that there is a little more pressure during the year, you probably feel it. My life, my job is pretty much back to normal, which is never normal…

Hoffman: A lot of the masters in the residential colleges, the resident assistants and people who deal with students say that this year’s entering class is lot more serious, discipline is down, emotional issues have come to the surface, perhaps that’s because the storm was there first experience in what might be termed the start of “adult life”. 1 don’t know if you have noticed it but maybe you could . . .

Foote: I have not seen them as much as people who work with them on a day to day basis, I think you put it well, your a lot closer to 17, 18 years old than I am but I remember that first semester is not an easy transition under the best of circumstances. Half of our students are from far away and add on top of a crisis and you have the making of an unusual and sobering few months.

Hoffman: Speaking of transitions, how do you think the storm has affected the university’s path?

Foote: I think we are going to be a better not a worse institution because of the storm, thank god we escaped catastrophic damage, damage was about 13 million dollars out of pocket. That’s a lot of money but most of it should be insured, and the rest should be covered by FEMA funds. I haven’t seen any FEMA money yet but institutionally, we were damaged but not terribly damaged. On the plus side we went through an experience that made us better people, the freshman class. . .was bonded . . .you had your own little private boot camp, and anybody who has been in the service will tell you that boot camp is a bonding experience.)

Hoffman: In what ways do you see the university has been pivotal in helping the community, helping itself, are there things that could have been handled better?

Foote: I’m sure there were. You can always do better. But thinking back over the various efforts it’s hard to say where we could have done better. The Medical School, and the Nursing School from the earliest days have been down there on the front line in the most devastated areas of the hurricane, and have been treating now 1000’s of people, I went down there in a helicopter and it was wonderful what they were doing, very moving. Every one of the professional schools, even music now that I think about it has been involved helping the community. Plus we’ve had a huge volunteer effort coordinated by Carrie Edmondson, we had 700 students helping last weekend (Hurricanes Help the Hometown), out into the community, that continues to be exciting. The volunteer efforts formed a nucleus, many members of the university are involved with We Will Rebuild, I’ m involved, so the work the physical time and planning of the south county is remarkable, The socalled Charrettes. Have you heard about it? Charrettes is a movement of planning where architects work with people to make an intensive debate about what is needed. Elizabeth Zyberk and her husband are worldfamous for this, literally world famous, I’m not kidding, their development, Seaside, in North Florida is what they designed. We’re doing this in conjunction with Florida International University. It’s brought institutions together . . .

Hoffman: Do you think our community and the extended community will be more people oriented? Do you think they’ll build more peoplecentered community?

Foote: I think the rebuilding effort is going to be a long and very difficult road. This community suffered something like 25 billion dollars of damage . . .that’s a terrible blow. South Dade will never be the same. And it will be a long time before its rebuilt! The process of the rebuilding effort has been important in terms of redefining leadership in this community. No community can rise above the quality of it’s own leadership. This is a young, fractured, still developing community, leadership is one of the key issues in Miami. How does the private sector organize itself to identify the key issues of the time . . .we haven’t done that very well, we really haven’t . . . One of the good things is that leaders have come together, people have emerged as leaders. How that plays out is too soon to tell, but there’s been a lot of good.

Hoffman: And how do you think your future will play out now, having jumped yet another hurdle here and successfully as well, do you see yourself moving on to new things government . . . there’s different forms of leadership that you may now be set to go for . . .

Foote: Well, I love this university. And whenever I leave it will be a very difficult prospect because I’ve invested a lot of my life here. . .and whatever little I’ve been able to do for the university has been repaid in full and multiplied many times, 12 years is a long time for a college president, it’s more than twice the national average, so when you get to this particular stage, it would be very unnatural not to think about moving on, but I’m very happy here, the article in the Herald about my joining Clinton was basically speculative and guesswork. But I would have to say and I’ve said in the past few days that if the President were to call and I thought I could help this country in any significant ways, I’m not saying I’d automatically do it, I’d have to seriously consider it, the odds against this happening are very large, there’s an awful lot of people in the wings, an awful lot of democrats who have been waiting in the wings for 12 years . . . I don’t think about it much, but I think I will be around at this university in the foreseeable future, and happily so.

Hoffman: We seem to move along very nicely with you. . .

Foote: We’ve made a lot of progress haven’t we? When did you come?. . .[Extraneous Discussion. . . ]

Foote: I guess I’d finish with thoughts about the university as a family. I have been terribly proud to be a member of this family since I came here, it’s a wonderful university, a fascinating institution, I think we couldn’t have fared better than we did with the hurricane, and whatever else I’ll do I’ll never forget those days. I can’t say it was a highlight of my life, it was a low light , in Hemingway’s immortal phrase, “so many people display grace under pressure” that it was a real privilege to work with you.