Through personal reminiscences, the author chronicles his involvement with the Speech Communication Association and the Central States Speech Association beginning with his attendance at the twentieth annual convention of the National Association of Teachers of Speech in 1933. The author concludes with a recollection and summation of five problems he had identified in a keynote address to the Central States convention in 1978: the lack of attention that the discipline is paying to language; the need to promote freedom of speech as well as ethical communicative behavior; the necessity for constant review of what is being done in the discipline; the need to maintain concern for contemporary communication and criticism; and the urgency for strong commitment in the discipline to the cause of freedom of speech. (HOD)