Ester Wilfong Jr

ESTER WILFONG JR.

I am starting how I happened to end up in La Grande. I was born in the state of Arkansas, but we moved away and we were sort of wanderers somewhat. Wanderers to the extent that my father was a logger and payment to loggers was much better in Arizona, so we went there and stayed a short while. Then we went to Wallowa, Oregon and my father got a job there working for the Bowman-Hicks Lumber Company, and he did that for a goodly number of years. But while dad was there, Wallowa was a small town, so we moved--my mother and I--to La Grande. So he would come home on the weekends, however. And that’s what a number of people did, particularly the black workers who were out there. While in La Grande we participated--we being myself and the small number of black children who were there--and there weren’t that many, nor were there many African-Americans period in La Grande, but that’s the way it was back in 1935-36-37, which is a goodly number of years ago. But things seemed to go well.

In looking at Wallowa, that’s where most of the minority folks who were in the area lived. It was because of the work that they were doing as being hired to work in that area. So dad was out in the woods felling trees and would come home on the weekends to be with the family. I got to the town of Promise, that I remember, early while we were there. Being a child, you don’t look at things as adults do. You don’t see as much as adults do, so you would pass over some things. But I did remember myself and my parents and Joe Patterson, Jr. and his wife, Helen. We went up to Promise to some function, and while there, there was a dance going on. We just sat and watched the people dancing--a different kind of dancing that what Joe and Helen had done--but they did get up and do a little number or two, but it all went well. Then that’s my biggest thing-- I remember except going up there once again when Bob Baggett, who was African-American and lived there, and he was sort of overseer--somewhat of part of the area--I am not sure, but anyway we went up there to visit with him and his wife, Lillian. And that’s the only thing I remember of Promise. And I think that Gwen is going to dwell more on Promise--she hopes to-- in putting this together.

La Grande was a small town somewhere around 9,000 to 10,000 people. I think it’s somewhere around 12,000 to 14,000 now. So, it’s gained some--it’s grown some. The main industry in the area was farming, lumbering, and that’s what most folks did. While in La Grande I attended the elementary school and went on to high school there. I enjoyed the activities that were there. By meaning activities, there were a very small number of us in the high school. Us being minorities-- I was always in La Grande the only African-American in my class.

GT: So tell me something about Maxville.

EW: Maxville--I hardly remember at all. Promise was further away than Maxville if I remember correctly. I didn’t go up there that often because Dad would always come to La Grande when they lived in Maxville. And they also lived in other little places around there-- Whiskey Creek, that was where some of the loggers stayed, and it was within that area where they did most of their work. They didn’t work in the mill, but they worked out in the woods. I was the only one who worked in the mill at any time. They wanted the trees cut down, so that’s what they hired them to do and that’s what they did. Maxville and Promise were just two small places out there. Once again, the populations of them I don’t know. Living in La Grande, we didn’t get to those places that much. Somebody else will have to tell you about what there was in those towns, because I only saw them as a child anyway. As I said, that was a long time ago.

GT: So what did you do out of high school and college? Tell me about that.

EW: Out of high school, I worked for one thing in the pea fields out of Milton-Freewater and Athena--in that area. I wasn’t out in the field-- I worked in the cannery. I wasn’t about to go out in that hot sun in that field. I did for a short while in La Grande, and the worst job I ever had was working where they cut the hay up and blew it into this container. That stuff would come out of there and get into your clothes and cut you and all kinds of things. That was another job I decided I am not going to do that one for the rest of my life. I did a number of different things. I met a number of people who came all the way from Morningside, I believe it is, Iowa where there is a college there in which the people at the college had something to do with the Milton- Freewater mill and the Athena mill, and so a number of their students would come out in the summer to work, which was a good experience for them as well.

One of the things I remembered when I started talking about when war was declared in 1941, the La Grande Observer came out with a special edition to have that distributed. But they wouldn’t hire me just to take out the special edition. They didn’t hire any minorities at all. But although-- see, we got along fine in this town. There weren’t that many opportunities for minorities and I am not sure how many opportunities there were really for the majority. Most of the kids who finished up school there--high school and college--went on some other place to work unless they worked for their parents who had a business going. Some of them didn’t necessarily want to do that either. But it was nice to get away and come back--always said La Grande is a nice place to grow up, but I would not want to live there for the rest of my life, and it’s fun to go back and visit. We should have a reunion within another year and a half, and I will go down to that one for my high school. I went to the college homecoming, which celebrated, I think, it was 64 years of Eastern Oregon or something to that effect. And that was fun to see people I hadn’t seen in years. The school there has grown considerably from what it was when we were there.

I was talking earlier about the contests of the loggers in Baker, and seeing that dad and his partner, Jessie Langford, won the prize up there for $100, and I was talking about how these loggers--the tough jobs they had to do out there. I decided logging was not for me. One of the things they did to help themselves for that saw to slide through the wood, they would pour on-- this may be a southern term, I am not sure--but what they called coal oil. Here we call coal oil kerosene--it’s the same thing. So this would help it slide through and not get stuck in the pitch, and you couldn’t blame the guy back there on that other end of sloughing off or loafing. Fellows prided themselves on their work. Some of them would work well together, some of them didn’t, but most of them got along fine.

Their biggest complaint was about the scale--the scaler--the man who scaled, told you how much lumber you had cut in a log--they measure that. They sometimes they would cheat you just a little bit. I didn’t know if they were or not, but they very well could have been, because in those days--things that happen--women are making less money than men in their jobs--so minorities were making less money because of the jobs. Sometimes, people didn’t want them to do that well. But in that sawmill, the most important person there was the sawyer who kept things humming along. The faster he worked, the more lumber they turned out, so that was the important person. The rest of the folks there--they had good jobs--I mean the jobs they did were important--but that was the most important person.

While there in school, college and high school, I sang in the choir and those kinds of things. In fact, I sang at our college graduation as part of the program. I still do a little bit of singing--not as much--church choirs and those kinds of things. My experiences in La Grande, as I said earlier, were pleasant experiences, although people were prejudiced against minorities, not all people. Not all people never are, but there are some people who stand out in your mind who were especially--that you remember as friends. Jim Torrance was born in La Grande and not too many minorities at that time were born in La Grande, who live there. Families of Fred Samuels and there was a Marsh brother there also whose name I cannot think of right now, who lived in La Grande. Amos Marsh’s brother. And the person who was known by all the people in La Grande was Fred Warrior (sp?). Fred had a peg leg and did odd jobs around the city, and everybody knew Peg and his dog, Penny, was the name. When Peg died, his dog Penny they buried with Peg, because the dog was lost without him. They did everything and went everywhere together. There was another Frank, whose last name I can’t remember right now, but he had a small store, cafe-type, there in La Grande. It flourished for a while, but then it went down also.

GT: So can you remember and maybe just begin with the question of the adjustments that had to be made coming from the south to the northwest?

EW: As a child, your parents teach you certain things--the things that you don’t do--that you don’t argue with the white people. You know your place so to speak, and you live longer if you know your place, which is something that I think the younger generation now did not understand about their parents-- is why didn’t you rebel against certain things. Well, what do you rebel against if you know you are going to be shot down, and literally shot down, in what you do. The adjustments you make are the adjustments that tell you this is what you need to do to stay alive-- to get along with people. Not that there were threats, but if you got too far out of line some things could happen. You might get hurt. Something like that could happen, and people don’t talk about those things, but sometimes if people are too far out, somebody may grab them and you will get a whipping going along or a beating, and nobody knows who is doing those or nobody will talk about who is doing those. There may have been one or two in La Grande, but I am not sure of that. But, the adjustments that were made by the minorities there were that you did what you were supposed to do and keep your mouth closed and not step out of line, and you would get along fairly well. That basically is what is happening now. But some of the people don’t follow that line. So, they in turn wind up without jobs and in the case of rebelling, not a smart thing to do if you want to stay alive to see your grandchildren, if you have any.

GT: I want to go back to your--what you did out of college as far as you talked about some of the other accomplished African-Americans that came out of there. There was prejudice back when you were growing up, and then there was something that occurred in your life when you moved here and you were established. You joined the--was it the Washington Club? EW: The things that happened to me specifically have happened to most minorities who were early arrivals out here. As I mentioned before, I was hired and fired and rehired, all within 24 hours my first job teaching in Silverdale. Moving from Silverdale--which was a mountain out of a molehill--and an excellent experience there teaching in Silverdale. My first year there I had the high school principal’s son in my room, the school superintendent’s son in my room, one of the school board member’s sons in my room, and some of the store owners of the community. So, I was in a fish bowl so to speak, but I never thought about it that way. But, I did have a successful experience. I came to Tacoma and had a successful experience here. I became president of the Washington Education Association and our building in downtown Seattle was located right next to the College Club. And the College Club did not have any African-American members, so West Allman (sp?) who became later Mayor of Seattle, and Wally Johnson, who was an employee of the Washington Education Association, proposed me for membership into the College Club. This was in 1968. I was accepted as a member into the College Club, the first African-American to join.

I have been a member of the College Club ever since. In fact, this dome here--the Huskies - the Washington Huskies--I have had football season tickets for the Huskies for 37 years--that was all through the College Club, because you could hardly get a seat before that unless you did go through some organization. So, I got mine through the College Club and still go to the games and am looking forward to this season, which should be a very good one.

GT: What would you want people to know about those firsts? Your dad came to that area (eastern Oregon) in what year?

EW: 1936. What you had were some people who were coming out there who were brought by their friends mainly who had come from the south, and somebody brought them out there to work. And these were mainly hard working people. And this was a chance to make the money here you couldn’t make in the south and try to better yourself in terms of your family, what you would do for them and with them. There were some funny things, but offhand I can’t think of anything right now. I used to laugh--my mother was a hairdresser and so the ladies would come by the house there and they would all sit around and talk while she was pressing hair, and then they would be talking about the other ladies. Ha. They stopped doing the talking about the other ladies, because my dad happened to have been there and he would go back and tell the other ladies. Ha. Ha. So they didn’t talk about them. To me as a child, I wasn’t about to talk or let anything out. I didn’t know what would happen to me.

GT: Did you date at all back then, or what was it like there if there was somebody that you liked?

EW: Oh, there was no dating. This was way back then. If it was dating, it was on the side, that nobody knew about, and the after hours kinds of thing that you have to sneak around to do because those were the white girls--there weren’t that many African-American girls there. Most of them were younger than I, so there wasn’t any dating to speak of. There were things that happened, but they weren’t the things that came out in the open. And that might be one of the reasons why that we got along because we were not dating the white girls. I would go to the dances and dance, but Bob and Jim--they were ahead of me both, and they didn’t go to the dances. Once we got to college, I went to the dances there and I did some dating in college, but not in high school because these were the girls who had to live in that town where they weren’t willing to run the risk of social ostracism by their parents or that their parents would be socially ostracized.

GT: So are there any other events, logging event or anything having to do with the industry, especially in the beginning, that helped you to really know that you wanted a different way of life--something that--so talk about your dad living, because he lived in Maxville and then came home on weekends, is that right? So let’s start off by you saying that piece and then talk a little bit about . . .

EW: The men who worked in the woods in Wallowa, a number of them lived in Maxville. Some of the families lived there in Wallowa, and dad had wanted us to live in La Grande where he thought there was a better schooling there that I could receive. So, he would come home on the weekends. That’s the time that I would see my father more. I didn’t see him during the week except in the wintertime when it was too cold to go out into the woods. So the experiences that we had were not so much dad and son. He loved to hunt, but I didn’t go hunting with him that much because he didn’t get a chance to hunt that much himself. I did go out a few times, but shooting a deer might be fine for him but I didn’t want to kill a deer. I have always said if you gave those deer a rifle and they could shoot back, there wouldn’t be as many hunters out there. But that’s factitious. No, I was really not a hunter, although I could shoot a rifle fairly well.