DB14005 DPACASS028 July 2, 1989

R: Hi, Jennifer. How are you?

I: Pretty good, how are you?

R: I‟m Lois Nyland Schrier, and I‟m 62 years of age, and I‟ve lived in this area all my life. I was born in Grand Haven to A. J. Nyland and Grace Arkema.

I: Did they live in this area?

R: They were both born in Chicago, and no, my mother was born in Chicago and came with her parents at age 1 from Chicago. That was John and Sena Arkema, and then my Father‟s father was born in Chicago, and then my Father was born in Holland, Michigan, and then as an infant, he came to Grand Haven with him. [sneeze] God bless you!

I: What did your Mother‟s parents do?

R: My Grandpa Arkema was an electrician for the city of Grand Haven at one time, and his parents were like merchants. They used to go to Chicago frequently and buy things, and then he had brothers that one worked in the Post Office and one had a printing company like Franklin Press was his and Uncle Garrett worked at the Post Office. Then my Grandma was from the Hallman side, that was my mother‟s, and she had a couple bachelor brothers, and she also had a twin sister that was a Mrs. Neitring, and then she had another sister, she had quite a few, I don‟t know all of them, but I have a lot of cousins around here, and then, my Father‟s father came to Grand Haven from Holland, but he originally had come from the Netherlands, and he, my Grandfather and his brothers and his Father, established Eagle Ottawa Tannery. And he came here, my Grandpa met the owner of that tannery when he was serving jury duty, and then this man asked him if he wanted to buy that, and so, in Leo Lillie‟s history of Grand Haven, there‟s some reference to that. Then my Dad‟s Father had been a Mayor of Grand Haven. I don‟t know just when, but I don‟t think he lasted too long. I think he had kind of a temper. I think he fired the city manager, but my Dad was the oldest of eight children, and Grandpa Nyland left this area to work in Rockford, Illinois and St. Paul, Minnesota and managed Tanneries after he left Grand Haven. Then I have one Aunt living in St. Paul, Minnesota that‟s my Dad‟s youngest, and she must be about 83 now. I also have a cousin in Grand Haven. It‟s my second cousin, who is Esther Dean Nyland, and her Father and my Grandfather were brothers, so I don‟t know whether you know her or not, but she‟s a long term teacher and has done a lot with the Historical Society here.

I: Can you tell me a little bit more about the tannery that your Grandfather established? Do you know was it difficult to get off the ground or…?

R: Well, I often wondered. They had a capitalization of $100,000, and I wonder where

1 they got that at that age. I mean in that time, that must have been a lot of money then, but then my Father had worked there also, and then, when they left the area, they went to Rockford, Illinois and Buchanan, Michigan, and then they went to St. Paul, but my mother became very homesick, and she had never been away from her sisters, and she was the oldest of eight children, and so they moved back here from Minnesota, and then my Dad did other work. He ended up working at Bastain Blessing as a buffer and polisher. However, during World War II, there was a process called Slicker Buffing of a specific kind of leather, that the tannery came and borrowed him from Bastain Blessing to do this particular kind of work. As he got older, he still liked to take hides from cows, and squirrels, and when I was a little girl, he always showed us the process of how to tan these hides and how to work the neatsfoot oil in them, and we had cowskin rugs just for fun, but he was a very interesting person. He always liked to, very well read, my Father, one of the things that his niece said, “I never went to the library but Uncle Art wasn‟t there.” His Father‟s name was Aaron John, and my Dad‟s name was Aaron John Junior. However, they called him Art because they didn‟t want to call him Junior, but he was always in the library, even as an adult, and we all like to read, and I have a brother, and I have a sister. My sister is Mrs. Ray Fisher, I don‟t know whether you, and Ray, my brother-in-law, was with Muskegon Chronicle, and has retired from there. My sister was an organist at First Reformed Church as was my mother. My sister, also worked for an attorney, Louie Osterhouse, who, I was five years old when they had the bank robbery of the People‟s Bank.

I: Are you serious?

R: Yeah. Did you ever know there was a bank robbery?

I: No, I didn‟t.

R: Well, it was really funny because my sister was calling my mother up to tell her that the bank was robbed, in the process of being robbed, and so I was a very independent little kid, and I was so worried about my sister, I walked downtown, and came up to the bank building which was above the Old State Bank, and she‟s still on the phone talking to my mother, and she says, “What are doing you here?” and I said, “I came to see if you were okay.” In the meantime, she was telling about Leo Lillie running around with a sawed off shotgun, and everybody in town was real excited, and there were bullets fired and everything else.

I: Really?

R: Yeah.

I: Where were the robbers?

R: Well, they left the area, and then the attorney that she worked for defended this one man, and so it was kind of a continuing saga…

2 I: Ah.

R: It was kind of interesting.

I: Did the bank get the money back?

R: I don‟t know. There is some history on that, I know that. I‟m trying to think what that guys name was. It escapes me right now, but…

I: They probably have it on file…

R: Oh, I‟m sure. But I remember that when I was five. It was funny. I also remember one time we made a movie in Grand Haven, and we all went down to the depot, and I think I was part of the crowd in that. That was John VanSchelven and a bunch of the people from the Chamber of Commerce that made this movie, and I think they still have that. I remember the pageant, too. We had a pageant at the Centennial Celebration, and…

I: What kind of pageant?

R: Oh, everybody in the community, you know, it was kind of depicting the establishment of Grand Haven, and the mailman, what was his name, LaPres, I can‟t think of what his name is, I remember who played the part, but that was a long time ago. It was fun. I was a crazy little kid because I knew, see my parents were older when I was born. My brother is nine years older than I am, and my sister‟s 15 years older than I am, and so by then my parents were tired out of kids so they didn‟t know where I was, and I was all over Grand Haven…

I: Oh my gosh.

R: And always knew enough to come home at noon and say, “Is there anything you need from the store?”

I: You were living in Grand Haven?

R: Mm eh. We lived down on the corner of Fifth and Jackson. We bought people by the name of Rhonda‟s house. Mr. Rhonda was deaf, and he lived there with his daughter, Rena, in the house that we bought later. I was born in the house at 509 Jackson Street, and I was telling my kids that, and they said, “Weren‟t you born in a hospital?” I said, “No, I was born right there in that house.” every time I go by that, see. [Inaudible question from Interviewer] Well the doctor came and delivered me, and then, you know, yeah, Dr. DeWitt came, and delivered you, and then my folks rented from Isaac Poel, and he also had a, he was deaf, but he was a very interesting man. He made a lot of toys for his children. They were all homemade toys, and then Sunday when the grandchildren came, we all went over there and played on the porch with all those nice toys. In fact, he has a lot of ancestors left in our community, but they were very nice people, and he showed me how, he was always growing things, and he showed me how peanuts grew,

3 and he would teach you all these little things. Then we rented from them for a number of years, and then this Mr. Rhonda and his maiden daughter that lived there on the corner, Mr. Rhonda was deaf, and the depot was just a block away. My brother was a paper boy, and he came home as white as a ghost because Mr. Rhonda walked right into the train. He didn‟t hear it and he was killed, and he saw him do this, and so, of course, Mr. Rhonda died, and then we saw this house was for sale, and we bought the house on the corner. It had a boardwalk around it and a little picket fence, and it‟s still there, and in the early deed of the thing, I think it was Rix Robison property…

I: Oh, wow!

R: And you look back on the title of the property, so, actually, the historic part of Grand Haven is in that area, near the river.

I: Yeah. Torn down a lot.

R: Mm eh. And we used to skate on the river, and I was always so dizzy that I couldn‟t look down on the trestle going over to skate. Somebody would have to take each one of my hands so that I could get over there safely, and then after I got there I could skate, but they‟d have to help me back „cause I didn‟t dare look down.

I: What‟s a trestle?

R: A trestle? It‟s still there. It‟s over by the river, and you know, it‟s over the water, until you get to that swing bridge, that old railroad bridge.

I: I see.

R: So, that was kind of fun.

I: I‟m gonna turn this off. What did you do for entertainment when you were little?

R: Oh, went to Fett‟s Grocery Store. We‟d all go down and ask for bones for our dog when we didn‟t have anything else to do, and then we‟d ask for the ends of coal meat, the butts, just for something to do, but we were kept pretty busy as kids because well, as soon as I was able to, you always fixed the vegetables for dinner, and you shelled peas, and you dusted and you did all kinds of things and you were busy. My Dad always had a nice garden. I used to like to go and eat tomatoes and eat a lot of fresh vegetables, and the mailman always used to remark that I was always sitting on the curb with a salt shaker and five tomatoes, [laughter], and he said that I must be the healthiest kid in town. That was Dick Keift. He was older man, and had been our mailman for years and years and years. That was when you got mail right to the house, twice a day even.

I: Really?

4 R: Yeah. Yeah. And mail service was better then than it is now. Really. Probably didn‟t cost as much either.

I: Probably.

R: Oh, and we had amateur shows, too. Leonard Doyle (?), I think he played the accordion, he was killed in WWII, and Bob McGravy, and Bob Sieberg and then we‟d all charge admission to go to the amateur show.

I: And you‟d tell your parents to go, right?

R: Oh, no, they didn‟t have any time for that. It was just kids, and we‟d have a lot of fun, and we‟d get together on the street corners at night and get a bonfire going…

I: On the street corners?

R: Yeah. And then, we‟d go, somebody‟d go home and get potatoes, and you‟d have to sneak „em out of the house „cause your parents didn‟t have a lot of potatoes, so they‟d always send somebody to get some potatoes, and then we‟d put „em in the fire, and eat „em with salt.

I: Mm.

R: Bake „em. A lot of fun, and we played kick the can and Ennie Eye Over, and…

I: What‟s Ennie Eye Over?

R: Well, you‟d have a house that was fairly low that you could throw a ball over and catch it and run around the house and tag somebody.

I: Oh!

R: Ennie Eye Over. And it‟s really funny, those games like Tap On The Icebox, and Red Light, Green Light, when I went to, I went back to school when I was 50, I went to the University of Michigan for Pediatric Nurse Practitioning, and studying Child Development that games are something that follow children worldwide through generation, like London Bridges Falling Down, generations just keep repeating this, and Ring A Round the Rosie, Ashes, Ashes, We All Fall Down, those are very, very old, old children‟s games.

I: What was Tap the Icebox?

R: Oh, well, you went up to a tree and blindfolded your eyes, and somebody went up and tapped you and then everybody hid and then you had to find somebody…

I: Okay.

5 R: That‟s Tap On the Icebox.

I: Okay.

R: And then I teach my grandchildren, Red Light, and Green Light, you know, giant steps, baby steps, and they think that‟s neat!

I: Yeah.

R: And then Stone School. Did you ever play Stone School?

I: Uh eh.

R: Well, you see, somebody has a stone in their hand and holds it behind them and then you have to guess which hand it is…

I: Okay.

R: And then you move up and down a step, see. Very, doesn‟t cost too much to play this stuff.

I: No, that‟s nice.

R: No, but kids really, in fact I play it with my grandchildren, and they think it‟s neat „cause nobody ever thinks of those games anymore.

I: Yeah, [inaudible], they get „em a baseball glove and football…

R: Or a Nintendo.

I: Right.

R: Or Atari or one of those things. We always have that kind of stuff, but one summer I let my grandchildren take chalk and they drew the whole neighborhood out on one of the squares out there. They drew all the houses. They spent a whole day drawing where everybody lived, you know, and the whole thing, and then they were so upset because it rained. Never occurred to them that it would go away, but they sure had fun.

I: What school did you go to?

R: I went to Central School, and I went to Central School from, well see, that went up to Junior High, and from Junior High I went to High School, and then Central School burned. Oh, it was on my son‟s 10th birthday, and it was July 27th, I can‟t remember, must be 25 years ago, and I was taking care of Mrs. Paul Johnson. I was one of the nurses that take care of her for a long, long time, who‟s house was just across the street. She lived on 526 Clinton, and I felt so bad to see my school burn, you know…

6 I: Ooh.

R: It was really a very sad day.

I: Depressing.

R: Mm eh. But you see, many of those kids that you go to school with, and the population was not as transient, you know. If you got a new kid in the school, that was a big thing, you know. Today, people move, and they come and they go all the time, but years ago, that wasn‟t true. You might get one kid a whole year. In fact, every once in a while I think, “I wonder what ever happened to Dora Guest” who came to our, I think it was fourth grade, and I never heard of her again. Maybe the next year she was gone, but there were kids that you made friends with when you were in the elementary. And I remember my first grade teachers and my second grade and my third grade and my fourth grade, I have a wonderful memory, and Mrs. Baker was one of my favorite teachers. She was my sixth grade teacher, and one day, I never knew she had a twin sister until many years later. I was in the store downtown, and I looked at her and I thought, “My goodness, that‟s Mrs. Baker,” and I said, “Aren‟t you Mrs. Baker?” And she said, “No, I‟m her twin sister,” and I never knew she had a twin sister.

I: Oh, my gosh!

R: But she was the mother of Doug Baker from Baker Lumber Company.

I: Okay.

R: But she taught sixth grade, and she was really a wonderful teacher. She just made things so clear to you, and I guess the thing that I always remembered about her was how she always made everyone important. There was something good about every student in your room. You didn‟t notice the class distinction or whether the kid was a poor kid or not. You didn‟t see that. You saw him for what he could do, and it was really a…

I: She related that to all the kids there, the way they felt about each other?

R: Mm eh, and see, we came through first grade right straight through Junior High and those were the same kids, in fact, I‟m having a class reunion this year, 45 years out of high school, and many of those kids are still the same grade school kids that I graduated with high school.

I: Mm.

R: So you got to know them quite well.

I: Yeah, you‟d have to.

7 R: And Don Mason, I don‟t know, somehow you give kids nicknames and we always called him Mino Mason, and he sat behind me in school, and he always gave a birthday party for his dog.

I: Oh.

R: And things that you remember, you know, that, so I thought that was neat so when we got our dog, Angus, who was a little Caren Terrier, Kim and the neighborhood kids, we‟d always invite the neighborhood kids to Angus‟s birthday party.

I: Oh.

R: Which was June 16, and we have some really neat pictures of Rob Osborn and Gail Corgin, and Kim.

I: Yeah.

R: And then they‟d organize a whole mess of games, and then we‟d buy a chocolate cake and a dog, and then we‟d put sparklers on his cake, and so we‟d have a lot of fun, but, so the dog always had a birthday party because Mino Mason, the dog had a birthday, I thought that was neat. I thought that was a good idea.

I: You gonna tell Mino Mason if you see him again?

R: Yeah. He knows. In fact, Mr. McLaughlin, who was principal of our school, of Ferry School, and retired from there, he came to teach in Junior High as his first year, and I always tell him about what, he told us about his houndog, Blue. He said, “Can you remember that?” I said, “You know, it‟s just unbelievable what you remember, that teachers don‟t realize what an impression they make on children.” And I see him now, he‟s older than I am, of course, and is retired, and I tell him about his dog. He said that was his first year in teaching, and of course, Frank Meyer, who worked for Gerald Ford, was also teaching about that time.

I: Oh, wow!

R: And so I had him in Junior High, too, and he was such a nice man. He got married. He came here single and married Ann Rhonda.

I: Okay.

R: So it was a neat time, and of course, then as we progressed through, I had a cousin, whose name was John Griffin, and he was four years older than I, and he and I were always very close. We lived across the street from each other, and when this past year people were talking about what were you doing or what did you recall on Pearl Harbor, well, my cousin called me up, and said, “Do you realize, we are at war?” And I was in, let‟s see, he was a senior, and I was just going into high school, and what a difference

8 that made in our whole lives, and my brother, who was in the National Guard, was with the 126th Infantry, Company F, was on maneuvers down in New Orleans.

I: Was he older?

R: Yeah, he was older, and he was activated and went overseas, and he was gone three and a half years, all the time I was going through high school.

I: Wow.

R: And see, there was no such thing as R & R, where they were flying people in and out, and that was a real traumatic time for a lot of people because communication wasn‟t like it is today. We didn‟t hear from him one time for six months. I literally watched my mother and father age, you know, they were so worried. Well, about 80% of Company F were killed in World War II, and he thought that he would never come back home, and he thought it was terrible if someone got a letter after you were dead, so he just decided not to write.

I: Yeah.

R: Well, that was a terrible thing to do, but he did come home, he and another man by the name of George Eekis (?) came home, they were one of the first to be sent back, but, he‟s retired and living in Florida now. He is gonna be 72 this year.

I: So you really missed out on a relationship through your high school years?

R: Right, right. Well, when he came back, I was in nursing, and I was grown up, more or less, and he thought, he was still bossing me around, he had a very difficult time because we had all changed.

I: Changed.

R: Mm eh.

I: And he probably changed, but not in the cycle of growing up in the family because he had been away for three years.

R: Mm eh, mm eh, right, so, and see, I went into nursing, World War II, there was still a shortage of nurses, and so they offered the cadet nursing program, the government did, and then, if you went in, and they paid for your education, you were to go in the army, so I also have an army identification number. However, the war was over when I finished nursing, and I did not have to go into the service, but there were whole classes that did, into the army, so…

I: You just missed that one.

9 R: Yeah, I missed that one.

I: I‟ll bet you were too disappointed.

R: Well, it would have been fun. It would have been an opportunity, but we were obligated then to work in the civilian hospitals, so I did come back home, and I did get married, and I worked at North Ottawa for a number of years in between my children, and having kiddies.

I: So you were in high school during the war then?

R: Mm eh.

I: What did you do for fun?

R: Worked. We were working. There were a lot of kids during high school, see the labor force, see all these men were gone in the service, the labor force was gone, and they offered employment at Camfield Manufacturing for high school kids, you could go to school half the time, and go to work right at 2:00 o‟clock or 1:00 o‟clock in the afternoon, and they had a training program at night for tool and dye makers for students, and actually, that was really like a voc-ed type thing, and there wasn‟t much fooling around. Everybody was busy. I did not work in a factory, however, I did go back to school to pick up chemistry and my second year of language so I could get in to nursing. So I worked in the Dean of girls office in the morning, and then I worked at Jim Oakes‟s Insurance Office in the afternoon, 1 – 6, and then I worked every other night in Voss‟s Drug Store…

I: Mm.

R: So I had worked in the drug store during my high school time, but that last year, I worked three jobs there, so I was busy. It was fun, though, and I did okay.

I: How was your family economically at that point?

R: Well, you know, the depression came in 1931 when I was very small, and that was a terrible time for everyone. I remember my father being out of work for a long, long time. He also worked for the WPA, for which we were very grateful. We could only make the interest on house payment, and I learned about interest and principal very quickly, so don‟t underestimate children. We did not have a car, so you went to the city hall, and you paid your light bill, and you paid your water bill, and you paid, and I‟d always say to my mother, “Well, what does gross mean, and what does net mean?” So I knew the difference between paying your bills on time, and not because it cost you more if you didn‟t pay „em on time, and my mother rarely, she didn‟t go to the grocery store. We all went to the grocery store. My mother stayed home and managed the house, and in fact, it wasn‟t until I was in nursing that my mother went to the grocery store. The kids always went to the grocery store.

10 I: Mm. She trusted you with…

R: Well, I‟ll tell you. My mother was a smart lady. She told us specifically what to get. You learned how to shop, and she, you learned, if you didn‟t bring home what you were supposed to, you brought it back, and my brother shopped, my sister shopped, and I shopped, and my sister and I both worked at the grocery store, at Fett‟s Grocery on Sixth Street. In fact, I worked there and did rationing. When they needed somebody to count sugar points and all these…

I: Wow!

R: Canned goods, and all this stuff, and that was like food stamps today. They had an account with the bank, and then I would have to count all those points and categorize „em so they could bank some with the bank, and of course, sugar had points, meats had points, and all this stuff. It was a pain, but it was an experience. In fact, my high school annual, I think, is lined out in rationing cards. It was a take off of that.

I: Oh, wow!

R: Yeah, but then, and there were “Lucky Strike Green goes to war.” That‟s when Lucky Strikes became a white package because they couldn‟t afford the dye or something.

I: Oh.

R: It was a united effort. It was a lot of patriotism, not like the Vietnam War, which was an unpopular, and people, you see, are beginning to question more.

I: Yeah.

R: We were more accepting of what was, [I: Inaudible] Yeah, yeah, where today‟s youth is not going to do that.

I: I think with television, radio…

R: Mm eh, the media and their questioning…

I: Some kids just question blindly just so they can rebel [trails off, can‟t hear].

R: Mm eh, mm eh, mm eh, but there‟s a lot of smart kids, too. I was really impressed with the students that, when I was in school at the University of Michigan, I was impressed with the students there. There were very serious students, and we don‟t underestimate them at all.

I: That‟s good.

R: Yeah, yeah. I think kids are smart.

11 I: When you took your nurse training…

R: Mm eh.

I: Through the army, what was that like?

R: Well, we were cadet nurses, and see, Butterworth participated for a while, I went through St. Mary‟s in Grand Rapids, and then, we were given a stipend for the first, I think we got $15 a month, plus our education, but they never heard of a 40 hour week. It was 40 hours plus going to school. You worked, and see, that‟s, well, you staffed their hospital, and so we went through a probationary period, and then we went into nursing, and then we had to work long hours because there wasn‟t any help there, and we‟d work like 7 – 11 in the morning, and go back to 7 – 11 at night. And then, I took psychiatric training in White Plains, New York as part of my training, and that was in 1946 or „7 I think, and that was the first time I ever hit a 40 hour week, including my school time.

I: Oh.

R: Otherwise, it was always, you worked 40 hours, plus you went to school, so…

I: That must have been…

R: It was a wonderful training. It was a wonderful training. We, they don‟t make nurses like us anymore because we were trained to assist in operations, almost like an intern. We scrubbed in on all the surgeries; we had to have so many scrubs, minor scrubs, so many major scrubs. We held retractors. We sewed up. We were taught to give ether anesthetics. We were taught how to rig blood, not so nicely today, but when you, we had the old tubing, not disposable, you had rubber tubing. You had to give blood transfusions with saline first, then the blood, and then the saline, you know, things like that, and in fact, when I was in Ann Arbor, I happened to choose to go to the ear, nose and throat clinic one day, and the doctor was in difficulty, and he said, “Get a nurse.” And I said, “What do you want?” And, “Hand me this and hand me that”, and I immediately just, you know. He looked at me and he said, “They don‟t make nurses like you anymore.” But I knew what he wanted, but see, and they don‟t do that training anymore.

I: Things have become so specific.

R: Well, more technical, but I‟m not too sure we‟re ready for those, but they have more, they have a four year program. My youngest daughter is an R. N. with a bachelors, and now she‟s like a nurse manager, of the Ear, Nose and Throat Clinic at the Cleveland University Hospital, but she has never really scrubbed in on an operation. I said, “You mean, all this money I‟ve spent on you, and you have not done this?” “No, you observe it,” then if you want to go into a surgical program, you specialize in that,” But see, we had all of that.

I: Yeah.

12 R: Then, of course, I worked, I did a variety of things. I worked at the Health Department, and then, my last field of employment was chemical dependency.

I: Wow!

R: And so I‟ve worked at the beginning at Mercy Glenn, and I retired from there a year ago, two years ago, and I liked that very, very, very much.

I: So you‟re very, very well rounded in nursing?

R: Right, right, I feel so. You know, it gives you an altogether different view of people when the more you learn the more you, it‟s more comprehensive. You look at the whole person, what‟s going on. A person can come into the hospital, and they say 55% of the people who come into a hospital either with accidents or surgery or have some form of chemical dependency.

I: Mm.

R: Now, you figure that out. That‟s pretty scary, isn‟t it?

I: Yes, that is.

R: And if you don‟t have doctor that knows what he‟s looking at, you can have an alcoholic on the table, and you can have a full blown liver, and he‟s come to you for something entirely different…

I: Yeah.

R: Unless you are looking at what those blood studies are, and what‟s happening with him.

I: You have to be really paying attention.

R: Mm eh, mm eh.

I: That‟s scary because my family‟s so big, and I think, “Gee, what‟s 50% of my family, gonna end up like that?”

R: Mm eh, mm eh. Oh, you don‟t know. It‟s easy to happen. It‟s easy to happen, and if you don‟t have physicians that are well aware of what can really happen, you can have a very simple thing, like a woman, like the lady across the street has been going to a doctor, and she‟s at mid-life crisis, and the first thing they want to do is start giving you tranquilizers.

I: You‟re kidding!

13 R: And I said to her, “You don‟t want to do that. I can give you something. What‟s going on in your life?” Well, you get a lot of anxiety. We all do. The stresses around us are immense, and if you don‟t know how to handle your stress, or know yourself, you can get into chemical dependency very easily. And I think, tranquilize, probably one of the worst things to get off of.”

I: Yeah, medical people are…

R: Mm eh, they‟re handing them out. Legalized drug abuse is great, or better than illegal, and people say, “Well, the doctor gave this to me.”

I: Yeah.

R: “So it‟s okay.”

I: It seems morally sound.

R: Mm eh. Sure, “Well my doctor said this,” you know, and if you don‟t realize what can happen to you, you can be in to it real easy, and people see no danger. I said to her, “Well, you can get the same effect with three Bufferin.” And she said, “Can you?” I said, “Well try it,” you know. “There are things that you can do yourself without going to the doctor for medication, and if you can keep away from medication,” I said, “Keep yourself well.” And she said, “Well, yeah.” So she was listening to me the other day. I said, “Well, our whole lifestyle, in the „60s,” (I have children that are going to be 40 this year.) In the „60s, everything had a pill, and that was the height of the drug involvement.” When these kids got into all this stuff, they thought there was an answer for everything. In fact, many kids who were involved in music, they would have, go in to the district festivals, their parents‟d go to the doctor and get „em a tranquilizer so that they‟d perform well at the district in their solo festivals.

I: Oh, my gosh!

R: Yeah! In fact, my daughter said to me, “I get so nervous.” I said, “Well, that‟s something that you have to overcome.” But you see, there‟s a whole generation there that does not have coping skills, and those are the ones that are the heavy alcoholics and the whole business. Scary, scary.

I: I never thought of it that way.

R: Right. I‟ve lived longer than you.

I: Yeah.

R: And I‟ve seen „em, and it‟s really funny „cause when I would work out at the Glen, I worked out in the area, and I saw a lot of school kids, and then I‟d see some of these

14 same kids come in for treatment. They were always happy to see me, you know, but it‟s really sad. It‟s really sad. It always made me feel very bad.

I: Yeah. I had a neighbor boy, where all the neighborhood kids ran around together, and he used to run into a lot of trouble like that, and it‟s just…

R: And it‟s because he doesn‟t like himself. It‟s a lack of self esteem, and of course, they‟re also finding that people genetically are disposed to alcoholism, as well, it‟s a chemical thing, just like diabetes, or TB, it runs in families. It really does, and we have a hard time convincing people that it isn‟t their behavior.

I: Yeah.

R: It is a disease, and it‟s too bad. People accept alcohol more than they do anything else because it‟s so socially available, and everybody thinks they need it at a party, and there‟s always that one chance that someone can get hooked on it real easy.

I: Mm eh.

R: So.

I: When you were doing your nursing and working more than 40 hours a week, plus school, how did you handle that? Did you just work and sleep and eat basically?

R: That‟s about it. We didn‟t do too much. We didn‟t do too much. We really didn‟t. We were busy.

I: You didn‟t have time for much.

R: No, and…

I: How long did that last?

R: Three years.

I: Three years?

R: Mm eh. And of course, Sisters of Mercy were very, you had to be in at 9:00 o‟clock at night, and only twice a month, could you stay out „til 12:00. And I don‟t think they‟d get anybody to do that today. We were scared to death. If you were one minute late, you were on restriction.

I: Wow!

15 R: It was very, and that was the nun came into the room, you were on your feet. It was, “Yes, Sister, no, Sister,” and I‟ll tell you, and I‟m not catholic, so you can imagine what a culture shock this was.

I: I bet.

R: I was scared to death.

I: I bet.

R: I was scared to death.

I: Boy!

R: But I always really feel it doesn‟t hurt anyone to have that discipline, and you can take it when you‟re younger, and it‟s a valuable lesson. It‟s a valuable lesson. See, I‟d solve everything by sending all the 16-year-olds in service for a year, and then pull „em back into high school.

I: Yeah.

R: It wouldn‟t hurt at all. It would give them something to do, and they‟d really grow up, and see, you could teach Universal Military Training. You could teach them their economics and their government at the same time, and you‟d have a whole different ball game.

I: Yeah, really.

R: Mm eh. That‟s my solution to that.

I: It sounds that it could be valuable.

R: Well, you know, in the Netherlands, they‟re all required to give one year to Universal Military Training.

I: [Inaudible] That‟s usually only for the men.

R: Mm eh, mm eh, well, there‟s a lot of valuable things for girls, too. Girls go in the service, and they get a lot of skills, you know, that you can‟t, if a child is not able to go on to college, they really have to have a skill of some kind.

I: Yeah, true.

R: Mm eh, and I believe that each child should be educated up to their potential, women as well, because women have to make a living, too.

16 I: Yeah, you can‟t…

R: Don‟t depend on any man.

I: Right.

R: So my daughters are very well educated.

I: That‟s good.

R: One is a professor at North Texas State University, and another one is going into Veterinary School this fall.

I: Wow!

R: Yeah. [I: Inaudible]. She‟s smart enough, though. I think she‟ll do it. Well, what else do you want to know about the dark ages?

I: I can‟t read your writing on the medicine.

R: Let‟s see. Oh, my husband‟s mother was Dorothy Dowlyn, and she, her father was a half brother to Elizabeth Hofma, who was Dr. Hofma…

I: Okay.

R: That‟s another part where, see my husband‟s mother was born up in the Pines, up near St. LaZare Retreat House, and then I read the Hofma Trust in this Pruim was her father, and then, so his family has been here a long time, and then of course, the Schriers came from Lily, Michigan, and they have been here in Spring Lake all their life. They lived over in Dutch Town, and the family home is still there, but where the high school is was where the barn is. We have a picture of Grandpa Schrier going from the house to the barn, and that‟s where the high school, that was their family farm, and there were a lot of people that lived in Dutch Town, which is Prospect on down, and Visser Street, in that area, the Braaks, and Hindals, they were all early people.

I: Were there stores in the area that came into certain, the Dutch and…?

R: I don‟t think so. I have, I think Braak‟s Bakery was over here early, but I have a picture of Ray‟s Great Grandma Dowlyn, and she was Ida Stuck, and Ida Stuck was a daughter of Chauncey Stuck, who was the clinker boat builder in Spring Lake.

I: Oh.

R: And Chauncey had four wives, so I don‟t know where she came in on, which wife this was, but she was only a young girl about 13 or 14, and her picture is Ida Stuck and it was taken on Main Street in Spring Lake, and so Savidge was Main at that time, and so

17 they‟ve been around here a long time, too, and Ray‟s father and Gary Bowlins used to cut ice for Verplanks on Spring Lake, and we‟ve got some pictures of the saws and stuff like that they‟d cut this ice and store it for use in the summer.

I: Did you get to watch them, or was that before…

R: That was long before my time. I wasn‟t around then. I was in the cabbage patch. In fact my mother and father had a family picture, and I could never figure out why I wasn‟t on that picture. It always hurt my feelings so terrible. I‟d see my sister, and my brother, but why wasn‟t I on that picture? Well, dumb me, my mother was pregnant with me.

I: Oh!

R: They always said, “Well, you were in the cabbage patch,” and then when I looked at my mother‟s eyes, you could see that she was pregnant. That was funny. It never occurred to me.

I: How did her eyes look?

R: Well, she looked kind of sallow. Usually, when you‟re just pregnant, you‟re throwing up, and you don‟t feel too well, and I think of that so often, but I was always upset „cause I wasn‟t on that picture. That‟s funny. I was, but I wasn‟t, and so, let‟s see, have you read that Hofma Trust? That‟s an interesting pamphlet that‟s been put out, too, and that tells about Elizabeth Hofma and Dr. Hofma, who left a park and money and this sort of thing for this area. They were very progressive people for their time.

I: Were they?

R: And she as a lady physician was just, you know, that was unbelievable then.

I: Wow!

R: So my husband‟s mother was Dorothy Dowlyn, and then she had a brother, Will, and there were Maudie, and Ermine, and Sadie, and they lived up at this Pines place, and he was like a caretaker on the lake, and Uncle Will had a sailboat, and he took a lot of pictures of early Spring Lake. They‟re really, the fish and the paths and things like that, it was really kind of pretty, so, and Grandpa Schrier, our grandpa, well, it would be great grandpa, was a carpenter, and he has built houses in Spring Lake. There are some that are still standing that he built, and then I have some bills yet from Christman for the lumber that I was gonna give to Clare for the library. They‟re putting artifacts together for Spring Lake history, but…

I: How did he build the houses? Did he have to draw up the floor plan?

R: I guess so. I think so. I don‟t know. Most of them have the narrow lathe, you know, for the siding, and Ernie Trotter, the Trotters lived next door to my husband‟s parents, and

18 the Trotters all lived to be, well, Mrs. Trotter was 104, I think when she died, and she died in 1948, and then there was Ernie that died at 91, and now Clinton is a nephew. He still lives next door there. You might know Clinton.

I: I‟ve seen his name in our files.

R: Yeah. Well, the Trotters were, and George was living there and Chester, and they were all elderly people, and they have a long life, and the Trotters came here from Canada, but they were also, Ernie had built houses in Spring Lake. And my husband is a plumber, and a couple times, he worked on a house, and I said, “I‟d like to see that house,” so I would go there, and the funny part of it is, the closets, there were never any closets in these houses. [I: Inaudible] Well, and then you‟d open the door, and there was about like 12 inches and six hooks, that was the closet.

I: Oh, wow!

R: See, because they didn‟t have any clothes. They didn‟t have the clothes that we have today. They‟d probably have work clothes, and maybe Sunday clothes, and that was it. Yeah, you‟d be surprised. I never really looked at any of the houses that Grandpa has built, but I always wondered about the closets. Elaine Bolthouse, I think, lives in one of the houses that he built over on, I think that‟s Prospect and River.

I: You were talking about fishing? Before, you kind of mentioned it, someone went fishing up north or in the Pines?

R: Oh yeah. They‟d fish, you know, at Spring Lake, that was a…

I: Your brother?

R: My brother had a fish tug one time. When he came back from the service, he and Claude VerDuin had fish tug, and they would fish for white fish out on Lake Michigan. Of course, then I was probably just out of high school, and if Claude was sleeping, then I would go with him, and then we‟d lay nets, and then I‟d steer while he‟d throw nets out on Lake Michigan, and we got caught in some really bad storm. Now when I think of it, I would be scared to death, but I was too young to know any better then, and then he got out of that. My brother did a lot of things. He worked with Story and Clark, he worked with Seal Power, he worked at AP Parts, and he retired from Seal Power in Muskegon, but fishing at that time, fishing in this area was wonderful, and the white fish, you‟d go down, they had across the river, by the music fountain, they always had fish shanties there, and then they had some on this side of the river, too. And, I still have a painting of the Johanna. That‟s the O‟Beck‟s, used to have a fish tug, too that they sailed, and of course, the Fishers, my brother-in-law is a Fisher. And they were all fisherman, and you‟d go down to the end of Washington Street, and you could buy fresh fish.

I: Did they have a market?

19 R: You know, you‟d buy „em just from the man, what they caught. Of course, now, it‟s not even safe to eat. You have to eat Canadian fish, go to the fish market, but most of the people, and then Dornbos, we lived about two blocks from Dornbos Fish Market, and we used to go there and get oysters and smoked chubs and…

I: Mm.

R: I knew Hio and Gerrit, and Old Jake, and that was quite an experience, and we‟d buy our ice for our refrigerator. See, you didn‟t get refrigeration until World War II either. People had ice boxes, and then, you couldn‟t buy refrigerators until after, you know, they were hard to get, and then when my brother came home from service that was one of the first things he did was to buy my mother a refrigerator. That was wonderful because you didn‟t have to hurry home and empty the pan out of the refrigerator. Then, I think we moved our refrigerator, so we had a hole in the floor. The water could go out, but if you didn‟t get home, you had a terrible mess. See, you kids don‟t know that, and you think hot water comes out of faucets. We never had hot water when I was growing up. We always had to heat it, or you had a stove in your kitchen that you burned coal and that you heated your water at night, and somehow, we all stayed clean. We didn‟t throw our clothes in the washing quite as quickly, but, and your mother would start the water Sunday night in a big copper boiler, and she slice up a bar of Fels Naptha Soap in there, and that‟s what she would fill her washing machine if she was lucky to have one.

I: Mm.

R: Life was hard.

I: Yeah. No wonder, you had a lot of chores to do.

R: Oh, yeah, everybody did. Your brother hurried home from school. He‟d have to get the coal in before he went to school, and then he‟d have to hurry home after school to empty the ashes so that you could restoke the coal. And then, oh, I remember when I was a little kid, how fascinated I was with coal, the names of coal, was always like Hiawatha, or Pocahontas, it was Indian names, and Pocahontas was the very best you could get, and there were hard coal, and there were soft coal. You didn‟t want too much soft coal because it burnt too quickly and you got too much soot. Your house got really dirty, so you‟d want to get the hard coal that would last longer, and I remember getting coal from Henry Neitring and Albert Neitring, I think they had coal, and you‟d always get from, and you‟d say, “I don‟t want too much slack in it.” That was no good. That just didn‟t burn. That was just slag. I think of that so often because I think children today, there‟s a big education gap. You see, we came through all these steps where you went form coal to oil to gas, where kids today don‟t know that you heat with anything but gas. They think you get hot water out of a faucet.

I: Yeah.

R: Where we never had, if you didn‟t have a hot water heater, you heated your water.

20

I: It will just get worse, too…

R: Mm eh, right.

I: From Gas to nuclear energy.

R: Uh eh. You see, there‟s a big thing, and when people don‟t have these things, you can see the panic that can occur. They don‟t know how to preserve, like keeping cold food cold, hot foot hot, and so, what you do to survive without disease, and keeping things not clean, it‟s basic, really, and not contaminating your food and your water, and so they ought to teach kids survival skills, really, because people don‟t know that. [I: Inaudible]. Well, all you have to think of is when your electricity goes out, and if it‟s out for longer than a day, you‟re in trouble, you‟re in big trouble because your freezer‟s gonna shut down, you‟re not gonna have any hot water, you‟re not gonna have any phone, you‟re not going to have any lights, and how many people think of kerosene lights? I always have a kerosene light. There‟s one there, and there‟s one in the other room. In fact, we had this power pole that caught on fire in Spring Lake here, and I had my grandchildren here one night, and I‟ll tell you, they started crying when the lights went off.

I: Aw.

R: They were scared to death, and so I started lighting the lights where you have a candle. I always have a candle downstairs. There‟s one in, I know where they are, but not many people think, or how to sterilize water. If your water is spoiled, what would you do?

I: Boil it for six minutes.

R: If you have electricity. If you don‟t, you‟d add chlorine to it, wouldn‟t you?

I: If you can find chlorine.

R: Yeah, but you have bleach in the house.

I: Yeah.

R: See, and of course, those are some of the things that you have to think about how you can manage.

I: Mm.

R: It‟s scary.

I: Yeah. I wouldn‟t know how much bleach to put in.

21 R: Well, usually it‟s about a teaspoon to a quart, you know, those are things that you learn as you get into things.

I: Can you drink that and not die?

R: Yeah, I think so. I think you could. Well, and I remember one time, my husband had generators, our neighbor has a generator across the street in case his electricity goes out that he can switch to a generator, and we had one over at our plumbing shop, and then there was one time during World War II, I suppose in the event that you would ever be bombed, you see, that the State Police came and made a list of all the people who had, we had pumps for water and that sort of thing, emergency type things, that‟s civil defense, see, and so every once in a while, you‟ll see a mock run at the hospital for a civil defense. They have a mock disaster, and those are preparing people in case of…

I: The real thing.

R: Uh eh, uh eh, and so that they have to be able to know what‟s happening. In fact, when I worked in hospitals, if you‟d have lights go out, you‟d have to know, you know, where you would switch over to power or if you were doing surgery or something like that, you gotta have it, and of course, with tornados, we have all this crazy weather, you have to know what to do with the people.

I: Yeah.

R: You know, you have to have an emergency situation, so there‟s lots of things to think about, but to me, see, I‟ve come up through all this other stuff with the ice and the refrigerator and all these things that to me it‟s not a generation gap as much as it is an education gap where children don‟t know the basics of even like, I don‟t how much home ec they teach anymore.

I: I never took it.

R: No, so do you know how to bake a cake?

I: I learned to cook on my own.

R: From scratch.

I: Yeah, just because I was motivated where I‟m the only gourmet in our family, but sewing, that‟s something…

R: Mm eh, mm eh, but see to me, that‟s what I said to somebody yesterday, I said, “Everybody needs basics. They need basic sewing, basic cooking, basic car mechanics, basic shop,”

I: Yeah.

22 R: Cause no matter how smart you get, or how wealthy you are, you still have to keep yourself clean and in good shape, and a few things that you have to know. In fact I was saying, “The dumb things always took general business,”…

I: Uh eh.

R: “And the smart kids always took Algebra „cause they were gonna go on to college,” but how many people with their higher education know how to figure percentage of interest.

I: Right.

R: They have the money, they can‟t balance their checkbook. They can‟t do this, and so you really need a general rounded education. That‟s what you need. Common sense, what to do if. We were talking about critical thinking. A kid across the street works at Arby‟s, and they were interviewing her, every month they take tests at Arby‟s, “What would you do if you were robbed?” “What would you do if you had a grease fire?” “What would you do if” and she said, “I was the only one that knew what to do. I said, “Good for you.” You know, but see, that‟s what is needed in schools, is critical thinking.

I: I think too much of our education is memorization. You don‟t know how to think.

R: You have to be able to put it together.

I: Yeah.

R: To know what‟s good for you, so what else have you got there?

I: Okay, I have women‟s roles.

R: Women‟s roles?

I: Mm eh.

R: Oh, I like women‟s roles.

I: That sounds good to me, too.

R: Well, my Great Aunt Liz was one of the first women on the Grand Haven School Board, and my mother was very progressive. She sang in the choir, she played the organ. She was one of the first people that went to PTA, and so I guess I had a good role model. She was Superintendent of the Sunday School, and at a time when women weren‟t doing those things, and she only had a fifth grade education. My mother, well, everybody went to work, and so she worked for Dr. Hofma before she got married, and she did housework. You were ten years old, and you started doing housework.

23 I: Mm eh.

R: And then she married, I think, she was probably, was she 18, my dad 21, something like that, yeah, she didn‟t even know where babies came from, I don‟t think. She said, “When I think of how ignorant I was…” and that‟s true, „cause when I went in nursing, she said, “You know more about your body than I knew my whole life,” and that was very true, but see, my sister took music lessons, I took music lessons, and then my mother learned right along with us, and she played the piano, and she used to sing with us. She had a beautiful voice, sang in the church choir, and I remember that she always used to play the “Sidewalks of New York” and the “Rocky Road to Dublin”, we all would sing.

I: What would that be, like family night or…?

R: No, just when she got her work done, she‟d sit down and play, and we liked that. We always had a lot of music in our family, and she liked to go to the movies, which probably, she was Dutch Reform. The Christian Reform thought that was wicked, but my mother would haul me off to these Shirley Temple movies, and Jeanette McDonald and Nelson Eddy. I‟d get to go to the movies. She liked those singing movies. That was fun, which was unusual at that time, but she was always very progressive, and wanted us to learn, and my dad wanted us all to have education, and her folks were more, they felt that children should work, see?

I: Did you feel the inequality between women and men in jobs?

R: Oh, yeah. I think, men, especially Dutch people, think men are very, well, in this county, the male, the Dutch male thinks he‟s King Tut. You don‟t…

I: Did you think that when you were young?

R: No, I didn‟t feel any less value as a person, no. Of course, I was born late in my parents‟ life, and they thought I was wonderful because I drove a car at 14 and anything I did, they thought I was just really terrific! Every kid should have parents like that, but my brother, see, was in service, and he bought this car, so the car had to come home, and he said, “Come on, Kid, you gotta learn to drive this car.” My mother and father didn‟t know how to drive, so I learned to drive the car in one easy lesson. I mean, you went out to North Shore, and it was a stick shift, and you learned how to shift in a ‟36 Ford, and then you learned how to go in reverse, and then you came over the bridge, and you drove around the oval, and you went and applied for a permit, and that was the extent of my driver ed, and then you went for a ride with Chief DeWitt, and that was it, and so I‟ve been driving ever since. But, when I think of that, „cause I was just a little bit of a kid, I wasn‟t very big. I don‟t think I even weighed 100 lbs., and driving this car, I can imagine what the neighbors, I‟m sure, I was going to hell in a hand basket, but I had a car all through high school. See, I had my brother‟s car, and when I hear high school counselors say, “Oh, don‟t get your kid a car,” and I listen, and I think, “Well, yeah, except it makes a difference of what you use a car for.” Well, I was so busy working that I didn‟t really have time to get into trouble.

24 I: Yeah.

R: You know, and I was doing all these jobs and picking my dad up from work because he was getting older, and he was getting very tired, and he was doing a very hard job, and so my mother would say, “Don‟t let him walk home from work. You go pick him up,” so we‟d go get my dad, so I had definite obligations, but so I always see kids as being fairly responsible.

I: Yeah, well, they can be.

R: Sure, they can. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I: How did you feel when the „60s came and all the Civil Rights Movement and did you have any interaction yourself in that?

R: Well, not really, but my daughter did. She was up at college about that time when the Blacks took over a dormitory, and the housemother left, or the lady that was supposed to be in charge left, and the State Police were in the lot, and they were all told to stay in their rooms. They were barricaded in their rooms, and that was up at Central, and then they set fire to a dorm, and I told her to get out of there and take as many kids as she could home with her.

I: Oh!

R: I said, “You get out of there.” It was scary, but then they got a new President at Central, and those students were disruptive were not there the next semester. They were gone. He just did not put up with this stuff, and I had another friend whose daughter was there, and she was up visiting, and she said, that they were all told not to react, otherwise it could have been worse than what it was, and she said, “Honest, Loi, some of them dumped their trays, they spit at you at the table,” and she said, “You just kept your cool,” and her daughter was up there at the same time, and she happened to be up there that weekend, and my daughter called, and I said, “Just get out of there, and you come home and bring as many students as you want to. That‟s no place to be.”

I: Yeah.

R: But, you know, to me, I never had any problem, as far as I was concerned, minorities or Blacks, you judge people for what they are.

I: Yeah.

R: I know that in Spring Lake, we had an exchange concert one time with Muskegon Heights, and we were to take a student home, one or two for dinner, and I signed up, and they said, “Did it make any difference?” and I said, “No.” And of course, we got a Black student, but what appalled me, was that they had to feed over half at the gym, that Spring Lake people refused to have them.

25 I: Oh, you‟re kidding.

R: No, I‟m not kidding. I was just amazed that there were that many people with that much prejudice, and that was not too long ago.

I: That‟s such a slight, and it‟s so obvious, so terribly conservative.

R: Mm eh. But you see it‟s snobby in Spring Lake. We‟re exclusive.

I: Do you think that‟s changed?

R: Yes and no. They like their exclusiveness, but you see, there‟re a lot of people that have gone away and gone to other places and come back. They know it‟s a good place to raise kids, but we do know that there‟s a world out there. I‟ve worked with a lot of Black people, a lot of good Black people. I‟ve worked with migrants, to know that they want the same thing for their children that you want for yours, and people are people the world over, it doesn‟t make any difference. It‟s how they think, and until you get to the bottom line, and you see, what people are for what they are, hey, in nursing, we all bleed the same.

I: Yeah.

R: People have hurts, and it doesn‟t make any difference. I‟ve never had any problem with it. I‟ve always worked with Black people and good people.

I: Mm.

R: And my husband worked in the plumbing trades, and I remember Jan started school, he was working on a housing project in Muskegon, and he was saying how the mothers were getting their little kids going off to school the same day that I was getting mine, you know, and how happy they were, and I said, “Sure. Families are the same the world over.” You don‟t find anything too unique. Although, I don‟t know, I like Spring Lake. It‟s a good place to live. I don‟t think the people are particularly friendly here. It‟s very difficult for people to make friends, and if you aren‟t born here, and you know people, it‟s hard for them. It‟s hard for kids.

I: Has it always been this conservative?

R: Oh, yeah.

I: What do you think about Grand Haven?

R: I think Grand Haven‟s a little better because it‟s a bigger area. It‟s not as provincial where you know everyone. See, our boys went to high school there, and we had a problem here in Spring Lake, and they had a wonderful experience there. It was good for them to go there. I had to do something. We had a problem that I could not even explain

26 to anybody here, so I paid tuition for them to go, and one was in Junior High, one was in high school, and I will say that one got elected to the student council, which he never would have got anywhere here. Over there, they were treated so nice, and the counselors were really great to them. It was an altogether different ball game, and for whatever it was worth, it was worth that much, to make them feel that they were of value.

I: Right.

R: Mm eh, so…

I: A lot of what happens in those years can change someone‟s whole life.

R: Mm eh, right, right, so it was worth it. They did not finish high school, either one of them, but they‟re very successful people in their own right, right now. One is working at Auto Dye in Grand Rapids as a machine builder, and the other one is at Roll Form Design and working in the Tool and Dye capacity.

I: Yeah.

R: So what constitutes a success?

I: Right. I don‟t think money.

R: Not really, no.

I: When did you start to notice any difference in the way women were respected or haven‟t you yet?

R: Oh, yeah. I think it‟s still a struggle. It depends on where you‟re at. I think that women have to work harder to gain respect. I know I worked as, I did Medicaid for the County Health Department, and I did it for six years, and I did gain the respect of most of the doctors, but it was very difficult. You know, you just had to keep at it until that when you called, you wanted to talk to them, you had something valid to say. For a while there, there was one that really gave me a hassle. He‟s no longer practicing, but boy! You really had to play the games.

I: Mm.

R: You do! And you know what, there will never be such a thing as equal rights because there‟s always another woman that‟ll sell you down the line. Women do not hang together, and the only way you‟re going to do it is through sheer hard work, and gaining your own respect yourself, and you just have to keep on keeping on. There‟s a little gal across the street, niece of Mr. and Mrs. Osborn, I met her at graduation party, and I knew her when she was little, and she‟s a stockbroker.

I: Wow!

27 R: And I said to her, “Good for you!” And she has a woman supervisor, and she graduated from Grand Valley and is doing just terrifically well, but it all depends on what women want, you know.

I: Yeah, she probably had to fight tooth and nail.

R: Yeah, She is doing just really great, and I think that while years ago, I was on the bargaining committee for the nurses for Ottawa County for the Michigan Nurse Association, and I sat there with one of those dumb commission, those commissioners, and he said, “What are you working for? You got a wedding ring.” I said, “That has nothing to with what I‟m talking about. I want to be paid for what‟s in my head.” But that was their mentality. You were to rely on someone else to take care of you. I said, “That has nothing to do with it whatsoever.” And this man happens to be a big industrialist in Ottawa County, and he, oh, he said he thought you should get rid of school teachers every six years because when they got old, they didn‟t know anything, and he was on the school board of one of the schools down in the south end of the county. And I said, “Well, I beg to differ with you.” “Why,” he said, “Those new young teachers are so much smarter than those old ones.” I said, “But can your grandchildren read?” But his mentality was so, you know, “Oh,” he says, “They cut and they paste.” I said, “Anybody can teach „em how to do that, but can they read?” I said, “You can do, there‟s instructors, and then there are teachers.” But what a dumb man. But see some of those people, and if they have money, you don‟t get anyplace with those people. You don‟t get any place, and so you can pick your marbles up and just forget it, but women, you have to work hard. I think women work twice as hard to gain respect and to gain what they have than any man.

I: I‟ll agree with that.

R: They do, they do. Any job you do, the woman has to work twice as hard. I‟ve always known that women could do anything men could do, ever since I was a little kid.

I: Good for you!

R: I knew that when I was little because what was it? I used to send away for that Rolston stuff, and this one boy said, “You can‟t play with that cowboy stuff. You‟re not a straight shooter.” And I said, “Well, I could, too.” And I thought, “Well, what gave you the right?” And somehow I always knew that women were smarter than men, and behind every successful man, you look at his wife. You take a look at Barbara Bush.

I: Yeah. Did you find that other kids think you were funny or…?

R: I always got along better with boys than I did women because I was a threat to women, see? See, if you‟re smart, and if you know how to do things, they don‟t like you.

I: Yeah.

28 R: They don‟t like you, and they‟re very, you will find some that are smart enough that will hang with you, but very few. That‟s the trouble with women. They aren‟t ever going to get any place unless they hang together, and that‟s not too likely to happen. It hasn‟t happened, and Gloria Steinham‟s still talking about it.

I: Yeah.

R: Uh eh. But I‟ve had very independent women in our family, like Esther Dean, that‟s been a professional and a teacher and is a single woman. She‟s 90 years old, and still has got her faculties with her, and I have another friend that worked in the probate office who‟s 80 something, and has made her own living and is very bright, and I‟ve had aunts that worked as buyers and this sort of thing so I know that women can hold responsible jobs and do a competent job. In fact, I wouldn‟t trade anything because I like a family, too, and I don‟t think that women, you have to decide what‟s important in your life, and I think to be loved and to give love is the most important, „cause in the sum and substance of it all, if nobody cares about you, it isn‟t worth a toot.

I: Well, if you care about yourself. [Inaudibloe]

R: Sure, but someone must care for you.

I: Yeah. I guess so. I think respecting yourself is probably…Do you feel you‟ve instilled this in your grandchildren?

R: My daughters? I hope so.

I: How about your sons?

R: Oh, yeah, they know. They know not to get Mother mad. They‟re pretty good kids. They‟re all nice children. I said they all have different facets, and they‟re good people, and that‟s the most important thing, is that they‟re a decent human being. All my children have been very compassionate to others, almost to the point sometimes of being ridiculous, getting themselves down the tubes, you know, but then, if you‟ve taught them that, they have to learn and make their way, but I wouldn‟t have „em any other way. They all like each other. They get along well as brothers and sisters, and that makes me happy because I was always very lonely as a child. Because my brother and sister were so much older, I had older parents, so I never really had anybody around. I was doing my own thing, see, and so I always thought, “Boy, if I had four kids, that‟d be really neat,” so that‟s what I got, and I always said if they didn‟t get along, I‟d die and come back and haunt „em, and they said, “You probably would, too.” But, they do get along well, and they always have such a good time together, and so we‟re really blessed with that so that‟s important. It doesn‟t matter how smart they are or how much money they have. It‟s the kind of person that they are, and that‟s the most important. I think if people have a sense of values, that they‟re genuinely good people, it doesn‟t matter where your station in life is. People don‟t see that, and they struggle so hard. They struggle so hard to be

29 somebody, and they think it‟s all in materialistic things, and that‟s the nice little girl. She‟s a good kid. You know, she really is. She‟s had a struggle growing up.

I: But…

R: We all do, yeah. I always laugh at her „cause now her hair is starting to come out, but she did this, that hair business for this guy that she was a model for him, see, and this year she did it again, and I said, “Can‟t he find anybody else to do that?” But she saw nothing, she did it because he wanted to enter her in this competition, see?

I: Ah. I didn‟t even know any of that.

R: Oh, yeah.

I: How did she do?

R: They did very well, but she‟s not going to do it again. Now she‟s gonna let her hair grow out, but see, her hair is not red.

I: When did he do this?

R: Well, he did it this year and then last year.

I: What time of year? …I was gone for a while.

R: In the Spring.

I: Oh, I missed it then.

R: Where were you?

I: Australia.

R: Oh, were you? How wonderful!

I: Yeah. I was studying rain forest ecology.

R: Oh great. [I: Inaudible] Isn‟t that great? My brother was in Australia.

I: Was he?

R: And I‟ve often thought that would be such a wonderful place to go.

I: Oh, it is.

R: Because the beaches are so wonderful, like here.

30 I: It‟s terribly relaxing.

R: Is it?

I: It‟s great! The people are just terrific! When you get in the bigger cities, it‟s kind of like over, but in the smaller towns, people are just extremely friendly, and it is a different culture.

R: Oh, sure.

I: When I first found out that I would probably go to Australia, to where the rain forest study is, I was kind of bummed because they would speak the same language, big deal right?

R: Mm eh.

I: But it was, they were very different. It seems I didn‟t have a culture shock when I went over there. When I got back to America, I had one. [laughter]

R: I‟ll bet.

I: Yeah, when I got back to America, I was so surprised at how rude the people were here.

R: Yeah.

I: At just how tactless and just terribly, in Australia, if somebody‟s prejudice, no matter how stupid they are, they still had the tact to kind of smooth things over and to stay away from that subject or whatever. In America, if somebody‟s prejudice…

R: Oh, they‟re rude.

I: They say, “You‟re a black kid, get out of here.” Or whatever…

R: Nigger.

I: Yeah. You‟re a girl, and you know, whatever, but they‟re also more chauvinistic. It weighs against each other, they‟re chauvinistic, but kind of old double standard, but they value women more, you might say.

R: Well, that‟s I read one time. Oh, it was an editorial in the Saturday Evening Post, and it was a number of years ago, and it was how women are thought of in the world, in Switzerland, women were revered most.

I: Really?

31 R: And then they said nowhere, and they said, that the American woman, the men treat them so badly, and then when they, and the women are so stupid they go out to work for the man‟s toys, and then when you go out to a restaurant, and the children misbehave, the man yells at the wife because the kids are misbehaving.

I: Right.

R: And not thinking that he has any part in this whole thing, and women are so dumb to do this, that I keep thinking, “How true that is.”

I: Yeah, it is. Over there, they respect motherhood, and when it comes to money and giving them equal credit for brains. But over here, it‟s that way both ways. People don‟t respect their mother or they don‟t give them credit for brains at all either.

R: No. I think that there‟s a general lack of respect that seems to be pervasive. I find it in my grandchildren, not the ones in Grand Rapids, but Jason is ten, and he‟s getting really mouthy, and I just absolutely have a fit. And then, of course, then they go complain to their mother about me, and I said, “I don‟t care what you say, I am the grand mother, and you have to listen to me.” And he looks at me. They‟re all a little bit scared of me.

I: Are they?

R: And that‟s okay.

I: See, that‟s the stage my brother‟s going through, too. He‟s ten, also.

R: Just lippy.

I: Oh, yeah.

R: And I‟ll say, “That is enough.” But see, we never took that from our children. Our children did not talk back to us.

I: That can be good and bad.

R: Well, you have to. They can talk back to you in a manner that you can have a discussion.

I: Yeah.

R: But you don‟t this, “So?”

I: Yeah.

R: So what? But, I think that generally kids really, of course, maybe that‟s a ten year old stage.

32 I: Mm eh.

R: That could be.

I: I think it‟s part of it. I know I was always called “Sassy,” and I had a wicked mouth, and I got more [inaudible] when I felt that justice wasn‟t being done, and my parents weren‟t explaining things right.

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