Narrator name: Karla Jacobsen Squier

Interviewer name: Anne Dobberteen, Heurich House Museum

Project: Home/Brewed! Oral History Project by the Heurich House Museum

Support from the DC Oral History Collaborative

Interview date: July 31, 2020

Remote interview, Washington, D.C., and Sunset Beach, North Carolina

Interview length: 3:21:04

Karla Jacobsen Squier Oral History Interview

Summary:

Discusses Karla's childhood in Washington, D.C. during World War II, her early life and career in fashion, her later career in Republican politics in New Jersey, her current life and COVID, her Christian faith, and memories of the Jacobsen and Heurich families. Places mentioned include: Petworth; Dupont Circle; downtown; Tenleytown/Cleveland Park; New Jersey; New York; Europe; North Carolina.

Narrator Biography:

Karla Jacobsen Squier was born in Washington, D.C. in 1931 to Charles J. Jacobsen and Norvelle H. Newton. Her parents divorced when she was a child and her father served in the Army Air Corps during World War II and was frequently stationed out of the city. Her grandfather on her father’s side, Christian F. Jacobsen, was the president of the Metropolitan National Bank in Dupont Circle, and she remembered visiting him there as a child. Her great, great grandmother was Elizabeth Heurich Jacobsen, Christian Heurich’s sister who immigrated to Baltimore and encouraged Christian to join her there. Karla grew up in the Petworth neighborhood during the Depression and World War II, but left the city in 1945 with her mother to move to San Francisco, then back to the Washington area, and finally to New Jersey to finish high school. Karla then attended college and worked in New York City in the fashion industry for a few years before moving back to New Jersey. She married Donald O. Squier and the two had two children, Christian and Dawn, but they divorced and Karla became a single mother. She took her children back to see family in Washington, D.C., often and eventually became involved in New Jersey State politics for the Republican Party – working on campaigns for Governor Thomas Kean, Sr., and eventually leading the New Jersey State Board of Elections. Karla retired from politics in 2002 and moved to North Carolina, where she remains active in local politics and serves the community by working at a foodbank.

The Chr. Heurich Brewing Co. was a major brewery in Washington, D.C. from the late nineteenth- through mid-twentieth centuries. It likely had the largest DC non-governmental workforce during its peak in its Foggy Bottom location. The brewery closed in 1956. Its founder, Christian Heurich (1842- 1945) was a German immigrant, brewer, landowner, and philanthropist who found success in the United States. He built the Dupont Circle mansion at 1307 New Hampshire Ave, NW, between 1892-4, and raised his three surviving children there. The mansion is operated today as the Heurich House Museum.

Narrator: Karla Jacobsen Squier, descendant of Elizabeth Heurich Jacobsen Project: HOME/BREWED, Heurich House Museum Date of Interview: July 31, 2020 Interviewer: Anne Dobberteen

Anne Dobberteen (00:00:00): This is Anne Dobberteen, I'm with the Heurich House Museum, and I am remote interviewing Karla Jacobsen Squier. Today is Friday, January-- Friday, July 31st. And I'm in Washington, DC and Karla is in North Carolina. And Karla is related to Christian Heurich through the Jacobsen side of the family. And I hope I get it right this time, Karla, Elisabeth Jacobsen was your great-great-grandmother and was Christian's sister, right? Karla Jacobsen Squier (00:00:36): Correct. AD (00:00:39): Okay. KS (00:00:39): That's it. AD (00:00:40): Perfect. Well, let's, let's kind of jump right in with you and I'd like to talk about some of your, your memories growing up and then we'll get into some more memories about the family and, and so forth. So can you tell us when and where you were born? KS (00:01:01): Yeah, I was born in Washington, DC, July 21st, 1931 in Women's Hospital at 26th and Pennsylvania Avenue. It's no longer there. It's a housing development now. AD (00:01:17): Yup. Down by Foggy Bottom near GW. KS (00:01:22): Correct. AD (00:01:24): Great. And where did, can you talk about some of your childhood experiences growing up in Washington during the Depression and World War II? KS (00:01:36): Well... We, my mother [Norvelle H. Newton] and father [Charles J. Jacobsen] -- we lived on Quincy Street, 811 Quincy Street in Washington. That would just be in the Petworth section of Washington DC, in an apartment. And it was... It had an elevator, I can remember that. And it had a lot of steps in the front. It's probably still there. And there were a lot of kids and we used to play go out. My mother would sit on the steps of the apartment and we would play right on the the... Right on the, right on the property in front of the apartment. I had a bike and I had a wagon and we dragged all that up and down the stairs all the time. And it was, it was a fun place. I... There was my next door neighbor, there was a couple that lived there, had one daughter, Sonya Bryan. And I lost track with her until coming back to Washington and going to Roosevelt High School and lo and behold, we were in the same class for one semester at Roosevelt High School in Washington. So you never knew who you're going to run into. AD (00:03:08): Did you stay in touch after high school? KS (00:03:11): No that semester my mother... We moved again and she remarried and we moved to Freeport, Long Island. So my last year, my senior year in high school, I graduated from high school, Freeport High School, Long Island, New York. AD (00:03:38): Okay. And you-- KS (00:03:38): We just kept moving every, every year. I was, I went to four high schools. So my mother worked for the government, and after the second World War, she-- my dad went off to, he joined the Army Air Corps and they did get a divorce and we just, you know, moved from place to place. And I went to four high schools before I ever graduated. And the only time I settled down was when I got married and then I got divorced. Now I am settled in North Carolina and I will never leave here. [narrator And interviewer chuckle] AD (00:04:19): All right. Can you-- KS (00:04:20): No, I'm not going to pack up and leave again. [interviewer chuckles] AD (00:04:24): Yeah. Moving is, is tough. It must have, must have been you know, a lot for you as a high schooler. Can you talk about where you, the different places where you moved around with your mom? KS (00:04:38): Well, after the second World War, my mother worked for the government and she was offered a job in California, in San Francisco, with public... With PSE and G. So we moved to San Francisco and I went to high-- Commerce High School my sophomore year. And she was not well received because she was an outsider that came into California and "How dare she get a good job?" So she left that job. AD (00:05:14): What kind of work was it that she did for the government? KS (00:05:18): She was... She ended up as-- She was in the go... In the in the second World War she was the secretary to the head of one of the commissions. Back in the second World War, companies donated hi-- their high tech people. And they were a dollar a year people. They got paid by their own company, but the government paid them a dollar a year. And she worked for the War Production Board in Washington. AD (00:05:59): Oh, okay. New Speaker (00:05:59): And she was secretary to the, the high person in the War Production Board. AD (00:06:06): Wow. That sounds like a, like a difficult job during that time. I'm sure she was pretty busy. KS (00:06:12): Yeah. Well, she worked, she worked for, she worked for the electric company in Washington for a while, until she got the job in the government. AD (00:06:21): Okay. KS (00:06:21): And then we went to California and that didn't work out. So we came back from California and there was no housing in Washington because it was right after the war. And my uncle was stationed at-- her brother was stationed at the Pentagon. So we moved in with my uncle, my aunt, and three kids in Arlington, Virginia. And I went to... My first part of my junior year I went to Washington and Lee High School in Arlington, Virginia. Then we got an apartment on Hawaii Avenue in Washington. She went back to work for the government, by the way. AD (00:07:12): Okay. Do you know what she was doing for the government? KS (00:07:12): And there were... This was after the war and they were all those agencies that were shoving down things, and that's where she got a job. And we we lived on Hawaii Avenue. That's when I went to Roosevelt High School for the second half of my junior year. Then she announces... My mother, good old mother. She announces she's going to get married again. And she's going to marry her boss from the War Assets Administration. AD (00:07:52): Oh. KS (00:07:52): Who she knew for years and years. So she got married. I said, "Couldn't, couldn't you just wait a year? And maybe I could stay at one high school." "No, we're going to get married. And we're moving to Long Island, New York." So I said, "Okay." So we moved to Freeport, Long Island. And we-- I graduated from Freeport High School in New York and we lived there a year and then they bought a house in New Jersey and we moved there and I went to McDowell School of Fashion Design in New York. That's right, right after I graduated from high school. And I got my, my degree from there and I went to work for wholesale houses in New York city, a couple of them. And I did that for awhile. And I didn't, I just didn't like going from New Jersey to New York all the time. So I said, you know, and I asked my mother. I said, "Can I go back to school?" And she said, "Well, who's going to pay for it?" And I said, "I don't know, but I would like to go back to school." So her father had passed, my granddad who was a fireman in Washington, had passed away. And she said, okay. She said... So I went back to school in New York and got my degree in retailing. It was a part of, it was a laboratory, laboratory institute of merchandising, but it was sort of overseen by NYU School of Retailing. But I only had to go for 12 months and I got a, I got my degree and I went to work in Newark, New Jersey, as an assistant buyer in a,n Hahne and Company in Newark, which was a big, huge retail store in New Jersey. And that was that, you know. AD (00:09:59): What kind of work would you do as a buyer? What, what was the day in a life? KS (00:10:04): Well, the day was like, you went to work with your, with-- I was the assistant buyer in the hosiery department and you went to work and everybody, you knew everybody was there. And you were notified by the fourth floor, which, where all the merchandise came in, that you have merchandise had come in and you had to check that in. And then you had to... In that department, it was a lot of, of counts because you didn't have a lot of room, but you knew that you had to have a box of three or a box of six of pairs of stockings that when they came in from all of the businesses around-- Prudential, the telephone company and somebody was on their lunch hour and they wanted a box of size nine short in nude and a certain brand, you had to have that box ready. So it was, it was a big rush in the morning to make sure that your stock was up and that your sock was down on the floor. So that when all of that-- it was is... We were busy all the time, but lunch hour Monday through Friday was always very few of the employees got to take a lunch hour at, from 11:00 to 2:00, they took 10:30 to 11:00, or, you know, 2:00 to 3:00 or 15 minutes here, and 10 minutes there, because you had to have the salespeople. I mean, sometimes there were 15 people lined up at the counter wanting to buy a box of hosiery. AD (00:12:03): Yeah. Cause it's like women on their lunch break, like secretaries and so forth. KS (00:12:07): And they were on their lunch break. AD (00:12:09): Yeah. KS (00:12:09): And they had to get back to work. So it was... Other departments, it was okay. But I was there for six or seven years. And I also decided-- A lot of the, a lot of the assistant buyers, they all decided we were all young and we all, you know, were making a living and living- everybody was living at home. Nobody was married. And we all decided, you know, maybe we should all start thinking about taking a trip to Europe or something. So I started saving up my-- I came in every day for a couple of years. I didn't take vacation. I didn't take any time off. And I ended up by saving up about three months worth of time. And I was lucky enough while working there to take those three months off and go to Europe and travel through Europe with a friend of mine. And it was a wonderful experience, you know? AD (00:13:12): That's wonderful. How, like, what was your most memorable moment or, or thing that happened in Europe? KS (00:13:21): Narrator pauses to think] I think Easter Sunday in, in Rome, we saw the Pope. We were in, we were there and we had-- Connie and I had-- [narrator chuckles] this is terrible. We had met a cab driver and we said to him, "You know, Rome, you know, we- we're here for four or five days. What can we do?" He got us that morning, Easter morning, he took us in some back door of, of where of the where the Pope was going to speak from the window. And he took us in some back door and we-- and when he came down and he was sitting in Vatican Square, we were about 10 feet from him. All we had was a row of nuns in front of us. AD (00:14:19): Wow! KS (00:14:22): And I couldn't believe it, you know, we didn't believe him. He said, you know, he was doing like, "Well, for $10, I can do this. And for $5, I can do that." And we just stuck with him, you know? AD (00:14:37): Sounds like it paid off. KS (00:14:37): Yeah. And, and when we left, we said, "Well, where are you going to be?" And he said, you know, "Go to so and so corner, blah blah." So we said, okay. So it was chilly that day. And we were getting ready to cross the street and along comes a man, a boy, on his father's moped and he hit Connie when she stepped off the corner. AD (00:15:06): Oh my! KS (00:15:06): And cops came and he was, the kid was arrested and he was going to get in trouble and everything. Connie was fine. The only thing that was wrong was that she had fallen into some water and she had to throw her coat away. But I mean, we just had, you know, the little dopey things like that happen. AD (00:15:27): After you'd seen the Pope! KS (00:15:27): And... Yeah, she went home at... When two months ended, and I stayed an extra month by myself. And... I went back to Germany. I did some things there. And then I took a boat ride on the Rhine, but this was-- there was a company in New York City called Ask Mr. Foster five days, $5 a day travel in Europe. And we, we said $5 a day traveling in Europe from that vacation place. AD (00:16:11): That is a good deal. That is a good deal. KS (00:16:15): That was years ago. $5 a day. AD (00:16:15): Oh my gosh. I can't even fathom that. KS (00:16:19): I mean, you know, we didn't, we didn't stay in junky places. He, they put us in really nice... They weren't big hotels, but they were very comfortable rooming houses with about 10, 10 rooms. And we also, when we went to Italy-- A friend of mine that was an assistant buyer at Hahne and Company had married an Italian guy and Gwen had moved to to Florence. So she said, "Oh, well, when you're coming to Europe", she said, "Come stay with us for a week in Florence." So we went and we, we had a wonderful time. I mean, we stayed in, in their home. It wasn't, you know, it was, it was an Italian home. And they had a store downstairs and they were very nice to us. And we just, you know, we just went from thing to thing. And if, if we had to change it, you could call Mr. Foster's office in Europe and, and they would change your direction. But it was, it was, it was quite a three-- And I found that two, three years ago, my son Christian was up in the bonus room and he found this box of slides and it's both sides or slides of the trip to Europe. And one of these days, I said, "Well, maybe I'll get them copied." No. I'm not going to get them copied. You know, you get them copied. So we have a box of slides from a three, three month trip to Europe. AD (00:18:03): Oh my gosh. That's wonderful. KS (00:18:03): It was a really great, I mean, we just... Back, back then you were free to do what you wanted to do. You know, it was... You were safe. I wouldn't, I wouldn't send my granddaughters there today. I wouldn't, you know, I'd send them with a gun, maybe, or... But I just... It was just, you know, times have changed. I was lucky. AD (00:18:30): You were lucky to get to do that. It must've... Like World War II hadn't ended that long before you must have gone. Did you, like, what do you remember about, I don't know, vestiges of the war that you probably saw? KS (00:18:48): Well, when, you know, when I came back, it was, and this is really funny. When I came back, I went over on the New Amsterdam and I, I didn't, I went over on, on on cruise ships. I went over on the New Amsterdam and came back on the Olde Frog. And I got in like on a, an afternoon. And I said, well, I'll take a shower. Here's my luggage. I'll go to work tomorrow. And thank goodness I did, because they had decided that too many of the employees of Hahne and Company were taking too much time off. And if I had not come back that next day, I would have been fired. AD (00:19:37): Good thing you didn't have too much, well, you wouldn't have had jet lag because you were on a boat. Yeah. Good thing. KS (00:19:44): Right? Exactly. AD (00:19:44): Good thing. That's funny. KS (00:19:46): But I had, I had accrued all this time. I, you know, I said to the to the vice president, I said to him, "Dick, I have this time accrued." He said, "I know, Karla." But he said "Too many people at Hahne and Company could, could, you know, have a problem and blah, blah, blah, blah." So he said, "It's a good thing. You came back. Cause if you didn't..." And then when I got back, they had given my job, that they didn't think I was going to get back, they presumed I was going to get fired, and they had given my job away. AD (00:20:21): Oh geez. KS (00:20:21): So I said, "Okay, what am I going to do? I'm still an employee." So I worked as a floor, floor section manager, which I could do with my eyes shut. And I did that for about a week. And all of a sudden, one of the buyers came up to me, a buyer in the stationary department. And she said to me, "Could you come up to my office on your lunch hour?" And I thought, "Oh, I'm in trouble." So I went up, she said "I'd like to offer you a job in, in the stationary department." So I said, "Oh, okay." So it was probably August, July or August. And she said "What I'm gonna do is I'm going to assign you to the Christmas department." And I said, "Christmas?" She said, "Oh yeah. You'll have to start figuring out what we have, what we, what we need, what the branch stores need." And she said, "We've got to start making a plan for all the buying for the Christmas section." I said, "Oh, okay." So I worked on the floor during the lunch hours, and I worked up in her office and one day one of the employees came in and said "Are you going to study?" And I said, "Well, what do you mean?" And she said, "Are you going to study?" She had been just as a sales person working on the Christmas buying, and she was afraid she was going to lose her job. I said, "Oh, don't worry about it." You know, it's.. "You're Not going to lose your job." I said, "I would never do that to anybody." Which I wouldn't. And then all of a sudden, the Altman and Company decided to build a branch store in Short Hills, New Jersey, which was the next town over from where we were living in Summit. So I said, "Let me go interview with them and see what they have." And they offered me the deal of a lifetime. And I said to them, do I, she, the, the interviewer said I was interviewed by somebody else, one of the higher up. And he said, "You've got the job." And I said, "Do me a favor? Don't tell anybody, because I don't want Hahne and Company to get mad." So I went down and about a week later, I resigned from Hahne and Company and went with Altman in Short Hills. AD (00:23:03): Nice! KS (00:23:03): And it was much better. I could get on a bus and get there in 10 minutes. AD (00:23:07): And that's a lot better. And a good position, too. KS (00:23:09): Yeah. Then walking to the train station and getting on a train and walking through a very dangerous section of Newark, you know, from the train station. So it was a little bit better, you know. AD (00:23:26): That's a good deal. KS (00:23:26): It was. AD (00:23:26): Cool. KS (00:23:26): But yeah. AD (00:23:30): Well, let's, let's take it back to... KS (00:23:32): Back to Washington. AD (00:23:32): To DC, yeah. So you, you grew up in the Petworth area and you have talked about high school a little bit, but can you take me back to, you know, your earlier childhood, like elementary school, middle school? What was your life in Washington like then? KS (00:23:59): Yeah. Well, my mother and father decided-- I, I guess they were having problems all over and my father wanted a divorce and my mother didn't want a divorce. And he, [narrator sighs] he moved to Reno, I think. Daddy did. I, there's a newspaper article around here about it. Because if you lived in Reno for six weeks, you could get a divorce out there. AD (00:24:35): Yeah. KS (00:24:35): And my mother made a big stink in the newspaper about the president of the bank's son is, is you know, I, I was-- has deserted his family and his child and everything. But Daddy, he-- Oh, I know she wanted him arrested for leaving. AD (00:24:55): Oh my gosh. KS (00:24:57): My mother. Oh, my mother was a real, strange person. She was very diff-- my mother was very, very... [narrator pauses] Domineering and ran everything. I mean, she... I don't know where she got it from, but she, she did. And she just was trouble all over the place. So they did get a divorce. AD (00:25:29): That must have been hard for you. KS (00:25:32): Yeah. I just sort of, you know, went with the flow. AD (00:25:35): Yeah. KS (00:25:36): It was, it was easier that way. Daddy did join the Army Air Corps and... AD (00:25:43): Was this after they divorced? KS (00:25:46): It was the second World War, anyway, you know. In the beginning of the second World War. AD (00:25:52): Had he been in the service prior to the war starting? KS (00:25:56): No, no. AD (00:25:58): What had he done before then? KS (00:26:01): He was in the building business. He worked for George Baker in Washington building. And then he was building-- Daddy built stuff all over. He built... He built a mall down in Virginia. He, he was very, you know, very good at building anything. He even, even after when, when he died and you, we had to clean out the house in Bethesda he still had all his working tools and his, his saw mill. He had a whole room full of jars of all kinds of nails. Very-- My father was very precise and particular. And all the, all the nails were in- if they were this long, they were in the jars, if they were this long they were in a jar. Screws, you know, and nuts and bolts. And it was when, when he did die and I went down he had this-- He was living with his third wife that he had married and she said to me, "Karla, you know, can you come down and help me?" So I just got in my car, went to Washington and, and took time off from my job and went to Washington and helped. And we advertise, I said, "We've got to advertise in all the newspapers." And we did sell his entire workshop to one person, which was, I was very happy that happened. AD (00:27:43): Mhmm. Trying to keep it all together. Yeah. KS (00:27:45): They got the, we didn't... It wasn't a, buy six bottles of screws and nails. And this, this guy came in and he bought the sanding machine and the saw and everything. The electric saw. And with that, I just gave him the whole rest of everything. I said, "If you buy this, you have to take everything in this room." [interviewer chuckles] AD (00:28:09): I bet he said, "Okay, twist my arm." KS (00:28:12): Yep. And that was a good deal. AD (00:28:13): Sure. KS (00:28:14): But you know. AD (00:28:17): How did your father learn to do all that woodworking? Was that, had that always been a hobby? KS (00:28:24): Oh yeah. I have tables. My son has, has cabinets that my dad made. I have boxes that he made. He was very, very, very good at that. He, he actually, after, after high school, he went to a college for, to be an electrician in Washington. And he was just always good with his hands, you know. AD (00:28:57): That sounds like, kind of an interesting career choice for the president of a bank's son. KS (00:29:05): Yeah. AD (00:29:05): Do you think that, you know, your, your grandfather supported this kind of career path? KS (00:29:11): Oh my granddad, if you knew my granddad- My granddad, he was, he was... How else should I say that granddad was? He was a, he was your friend. Nothing was ever wrong. He always wanted things to be right. And he, he guided you that way. And you know, when, even when I was a kid and then my dad had gone off to war and I was in, in grammar school and junior high and high school, whenever I lived in the District, I always was free to go to the Bank and we'd sit and talk for an hour. You know... AD (00:29:59): This is the Metropolitan Bank, right? KS (00:30:02): Yeah. That's the National Metropolitan Bank. And great-grandfather would, would come down. And so I had my great-grandfather and my grandfather there, and we'd just sit in the office- which was right in the front door off of 15th street. And no matter what was happening in the bank, we'd sit there and have a hour, hour and a half conversation, you know? AD (00:30:27): Lovely. What would you guys talk about? KS (00:30:29): I mean, it was a way... Since I was, I was connected, but I was disconnected because I left so many times, you know. AD (00:30:42): Yeah. KS (00:30:42): But I do have those days when, and anytime I got, when I lived in the District, any time I had a report card, I had to bring it down to the bank and my grandfather had to go over it. You know, he had to know what was going on. AD (00:30:58): Were you a good student? KS (00:31:00): I was, no, not really, no. Mediocre. I didn't care. You know, I went to school. I always got to the next grade, got to the next grade. It's-- well, like when we lived in Freeport, Long Island, there's two kind of degrees you get from high school. You can get, you can graduate where you can get what you call a Regents cir-- degree. They're both the same. It's just that the Regents degree says that you pass the New York regions tests. So I only went to Freeport High School for one year. I was in New York one year. And this accumulated from all of your, all your whole 12 years in New York. So I had a, [narrator chuckles] I had a chemistry teacher and he said, "Well, the Regents are so and so, Karla." And I said, "Well, I'm not going to take 'em." He said, "What do you mean? You're not going to take 'em? I have never had a student that has not taken the Regents exam." I said, "Well, how can I take them when I've only been here one year?" [interviewer chuckles] He said, "Well, that's alright. You know enough to take it." And I said, "No, not gonna take it." So I, I got, I graduated, I got a degree for-- A high school degree, but I didn't get a Regents degree. AD (00:32:30): Well, that would have been hard growing up in so many different places, you know, different curriculums. KS (00:32:35): Yeah. I mean, I didn't know, I didn't know what was going to be on that exam. And I certainly wasn't going to study for it because, you know, who cared about chemistry and science? I took it because it was an open class. You know. AD (00:32:52): Uh-Huh. Do you wish you could-- KS (00:32:52): We had, we had trouble in that high school, too. I mean, it was... It's... The drug scene started about then. And there was a group from the the, the sports part of, of the high school that there was a man a kid who had-- his grandmother lived in Freeport, but he lived in Harlem and he didn't tell them that he came in on the train every day and he brought drugs in, and our high school was one of the first ones to get shut down. We were locked in and the cops were there. I mean, it was, it was really something. And you couldn't walk in the halls anymore. The doors were locked. AD (00:33:53): Oh gosh. KS (00:33:53): We were practically, we, we almost didn't have a graduation because of it. Because he had gotten all of the cheerleaders and some of the kids, some of the guys on the, on the football team, he had gotten them hooked on drugs. AD (00:34:10): Wow. That seems so early. KS (00:34:13): Yeah. We had the cops in the high school. I mean, it was, it was, it was, it was an eye opener. I'll tell ya. AD (00:34:19): So when you say the kid was from Harlem, was he an African American kid? That's a historically black area. KS (00:34:26): Yeah. No, there-- Freeport high school was just a normal group of people. It was, it was, I mean, there were, there were some really neat kids in that high school, but... AD (00:34:43): Was the high school segregated though, I guess is what I'm asking. Was it a white high school? KS (00:34:48): It was, yeah. It was practically an all white high school. AD (00:34:51): Practically, but not totally. Interesting. KS (00:34:54): Yeah. But that taught me a lesson. I had-- and it was funny. When I was in San Francisco, it w- there was at Commerce High School there was a drug store where some of the kids would go after and have a Coke and then go home. And a lot of them-- now I was what, 14 years old? They would smoke and everything. And I tried cigarettes there and I didn't like it. And that's when cigarettes were like 13 and 15 cents a pack. AD (00:35:33): Wow. KS (00:35:34): So they could, they could afford them. And I never smoked another cigarette after I left San Francisco. I thought it was disgusting. So I learned a lot on the way, you know, maybe, maybe four high schools is-- moving around and everything, but. AD (00:35:53): That's a lot. KS (00:35:53): I was, I was glad, you know, and before all this started, it was sort of a, like a normal life. And then it was abnormal, you know. AD (00:36:07): I mean, you probably thought as a little kid growing up in Washington that, you know, you'd, you'd go straight through high school here in DC, and you'd be with the same group of people for those 12 years. KS (00:36:20): Well. And, and, and back then the school districts were huge. I mean, there were people that went to Roosevelt High School that lived all the way, you know, all the way across town, because the district was so big. They didn't have that many high schools, you know. AD (00:36:38): And it would have still been segregated at that point. So it's like a white and an African American, like separate school systems, essentially. Right? KS (00:36:48): When I went to Roosevelt, I was living on New Hampshire Avenue in the Petworth section. I lived two blocks below where Georgia Avenue and New Hampshire Avenue cross. AD (00:37:03): Oh. Okay, wow. KS (00:37:03): Up there in Petworth. AD (00:37:06): Yeah. KS (00:37:06): And it was just, there were no kids around. I don't know where the kids ever came from. There were no kids on my street, you know? So you just went to school and came home and did your homework and did what you were supposed to do, you know. It... But you were also free. I mean, I could, I could walk to the Giant. I can remember my mother would leave me a list to go over to Georgia Avenue, which was just a block away, and go to the Giant Food Store and get things. She had a list, and she left money and she left the-- we had during the second World War, we had war rationing books and she' leave those. And I go over and buy what was on the list and bring it home. Or she'd send me to Woolworth's, which was over a block away from the Giant. I mean, it was a neighborhood, but it wasn't... They were all single family houses. You know what I mean? AD (00:38:16): Mhmm. Yeah. KS (00:38:16): It was a nice neighborhood. AD (00:38:16): This is when you and your mom lived together and shared the building with the doctor's office right on New Hampshire Avenue. KS (00:38:23): Yeah. When we lived up over the doctor's office. Which was a beautiful home, I hope it's still there. It was really, was a really big place. AD (00:38:31): Yeah. Can you repeat the address for this recording? KS (00:38:35): 3600 New Hampshire Avenue. AD (00:38:38): Yeah. I actually Google searched it. And it looks like the building is still there. It's probably been chopped up into a lot more apartments or condos, but yeah, it looks like the big, nice building is still there. KS (00:38:51): But I mean, it, it, it was was Dr. Bergstein's mother's home. And then when we moved, when my mother and I moved in, we had a bedroom and a kitchen and a bathroom upstairs, and Mrs. Bergstein, the mother, was still alive. She didn't last very long. And then we took over the whole second floor. And then he had the first floor as the office. And then he had Ali May, Ali May Morris. She was from West Virginia. She was a, like a nurse and a housekeeper and everything all put together. And it was a, oh what did they call them? It was, it was a basement, but it wasn't underground basement. AD (00:39:42): Like an English basement? KS (00:39:44): Like an English basement. Yeah. AD (00:39:47): And she lived down there? KS (00:39:47): And they had, you know, she had the same amount of room that we had on the second floor and she lived down there and I can remember, I used to say to her, I used to yell down the stairs, "Is everybody all right? I have the garbage." Because I'd have to take the garbage from the second floor through the, through the office when he wasn't there, because you had to put it out for the garbage man, you know. But it was a beautiful home. I mean, it was, and it was on a corner and the bus was right on the corner. So, you know, like when I used to go downtown to see my granddad, I could just walk out my front door and walk, stand on the corner and wait for the bus to go downtown. It was very convenient and it was-- you could take that bus to anywhere. And that's how I used to go over to my great-grandfather's house on, on Albemarle Street. I would just go to the corner and a bus would cross town, bus would come. I knew what the schedule was and I'd just wait for it and get on. And it would take me over to Connecticut Avenue, and then I changed buses and, you know, just, it was... Washington in my growing up days was the safest place on the earth to live. I had no fear of anything. No fear. AD (00:41:15): Why do you think that was? KS (00:41:19): Because nothing, nothing ever happened in Washington. Nothing ever happened. It was... Everybody was happy, I mean, the bus drivers, they were delightful. You know, it, it, it just seemed as though... I never ever remember being fearful, living in Washington, DC growing up. I was like in and out as a, as a, you know. I lived in, I lived out, I lived in, I lived out, but you could walk anywhere. You could go anywhere, you know. It was... And then people started getting different. If, if, if it was when I was growing up, if the world, if the world was like, or the United States was like, when I was growing up, it would just, it would be a fabulous place to live. I don't fear anything down here. Cause I don't live in the country, but I don't live... I don't live near a big city, except if you call Myrtle Beach a big city, but it's not a big city. It's just a, it's just a bunch of stores and a beach and people shopping. And when Walmart and those stores came in, life changed. AD (00:42:49): Where you are now? KS (00:42:51): Yeah. Yeah. AD (00:42:53): What do you think changed Washington from what you remember as a girl to maybe last time you were here, what you saw and experienced? KS (00:43:02): I think what really changed Washington was the growth. In other words, it started moving out towards the suburbs and you know, it, it... [narrator Pauses to think] When I moved down here and my Aunt Sue, who was married to my dad's brother wanted to sell her house. And I went up to Washington for five, six weeks at a time trying to clean her house out so she could sell it and move into an apartment. That was at the time when that man was shooting people from the car. You remember that? AD (00:43:56): Yeah, in Bethesda. Yeah. I think you told me about that. KS (00:43:58): Yeah. I was up there at that point and it was a little scary. You know. AD (00:44:03): Sure, yeah. KS (00:44:03): I had never been around-- but that could've, he could've been anywhere. He could have been in my County. So it wasn't, it wasn't, it wasn't particularly headed at Washington or the area. It was just because that was where he was. If he was somewhere else, he'd be doing it in Chicago or he'd be doing it in White Plains, New York. AD (00:44:31): Yeah. So... KS (00:44:31): It's just where he was when he got mad and he wanted to kill people. AD (00:44:39): That's scary stuff. KS (00:44:39): It just, it just really. Even today, I mean, I-- My son was here for a couple of days. He had to go back to Charlotte and I said to him, "You know, I would be more comfortable if I had a metal storm door on the front of the house." He said, "Oh, Mom. Just don't answer the door." But I'm not gonna pay attention to him. I'm going to talk to somebody and I'm gonna get a metal storm door, so when I open it, there's something between me and the person on my front porch, you know? AD (00:45:19): It makes you feel more safe. KS (00:45:19): And I said to him, I said, "Chris." I said, "If I die in a couple of years, the girls will be with, might live here or you might move here or something, and you'll be safer." So I'm not even going to talk to him, I'm just going to do it. And he, I think he knows I'm going to do it. AD (00:45:36): [Interviewer Chuckles] Well there you go. Well, that reminds me a little bit of a story you've told me before about World War II in Washington and the air raids... The air raid drills and the blackout curtains. Can you tell that story? KS (00:45:51): Yeah. During the second World War all the houses in Washington when, when it got dark, you had to, you couldn't have your lights on. So there were air raid wardens in every, every part of Washington DC. And they would walk up and down the streets every night and what we, what we did in order to have lights on at night... We had to buy long black curtains and hang them over the curtain rods. As-- you know, these old homes in Washington, they had big windows. They were huge. AD (00:46:34): Mhmm. Oh yeah. KS (00:46:34): And we had these long black drape forms on curtain rods hanging from the, from the top of the window. And you couldn't- you had to make sure that they were tucked to the wall and they were, you know, sort of... As the air raid warden would go up and down the street, if he saw a peek of light, he would stand in front of your house and yell at you through a megaphone telling you there's light coming from your window. AD (00:47:05): Public shaming. KS (00:47:05): It was, it was, it was a little scary, you know. But the air raid ward-- I don't know whether, I think the air raid wardens were volunteers. AD (00:47:14): I think that's right. So was it scary to have these guys walking around yelling at you? KS (00:47:19): Oh yeah. Oh yeah. Because-- AD (00:47:19): Or was it scary thinking that you could be bombed? KS (00:47:23): Well, first of all, you ran over and you turned the light off where, you know. And then you had to start checking to see where, what part of the curtain wasn't covering the window. But we had these long and we only did one. We did the living room, we didn't do the whole house. So you had to sort of feel your way through the house if you had to go to the bathroom and then when you went to bed. But my mother only did the living room and let's see, we had one, two, three, four... Six big windows in this-- It was a beautiful living room. I mean, it had two couches and chairs and it, because originally it was a bedroom, you know. And it was but that was where you, you brought your... You quickly got your dinner, dinner cooked and you closed the door to the kitchen so that the light didn't go through the windows in the kitchen to the outside. But it was We only got yelled at a couple of times and we found out where it was and my mother fixed whatever she had to fix. I think she put like some kind of tape on the, on the wall. AD (00:48:42): Oh. KS (00:48:42): Cause the walls, the walls were... They, they were plaster, plaster of paris walls. They weren't, they didn't have wallpaper or anything. It was an old fashion kind of stucco walls that were there. AD (00:49:03): Okay. New Speaker (00:49:03): And so you could put a tape on it. So, you know, we lasted through that. And I can remember even in, in grammar school where they came in, my fingerprints are on, on file with the FBI because they came in and they fingerprinted all of us. Everybody in the school. AD (00:49:24): Why did they do that? KS (00:49:27): I guess if, if it got bombed, they could find us, you know. If, if we got hurt or something. But I remember getting fingerprinted, and I remember having to take the chairs out into the hallway and they showed us how to put the chair in front of us if, if there was an air raid... We had air raid drills all the time. And... It was... I mean, everybody just did it. And you know what? You weren't afraid because you didn't know what you were doing. AD (00:50:02): You didn't know how real it could get. KS (00:50:05): No, I think if I was a teenager or, or higher, I would say, "Hey, wait a minute." You know. "What The heck is going on here?" But you were a kid. You did what you were told to do back then. AD (00:50:16): You were young enough for it to seem normal. KS (00:50:19): They don't have that much today. Kids do what they want. [narrator And interviewer chuckle] AD (00:50:23): I want to also talk, while we're on World War II experiences,can you talk about the rations and some of the things that you would have to buy with your ration books and maybe how you and your mom made things last a little longer? KS (00:50:40): Oh yeah. You had-- everybody had rationing books. If you had a car, you got a gas rationing. My mother had rationing books and I had them. You had them for shoes. You could only buy shoes twice a year. And what she would do eventuallywhen my foot matched hers, she would take her, her summer shoes or white shoes and paint them brown. And I'd wear them back to school in the fall to save a rationing. Cause you only got two pair a year. AD (00:51:18): How did you feel wearing like painted secondhand shoes like that? Did it bother you? KS (00:51:24): Oh, no. I think mainly I just sort of did what I was told to do, you know? AD (00:51:30): Sure. KS (00:51:30): You just went along with the flow. And the food you would, you would take the rationing book, like if she said go and buy a half a pound of ground beef for dinner or go and buy margarine or, oh no margarine... Did you ever do margarine with the, with the little yellow thing in the package? AD (00:51:55): I, I haven't done that. Can you tell me more about it? KS (00:52:00): Yeah. Well, if you didn't, if you couldn't buy it, if you didn't have rationing things for, for butter, you could get margarine and it came in a cellophane bag and it was white and in it, it had a little capsule that was yellow and you would make it-- You would keep it in the refrigerator until you wanted to make it into-- color it. We colored the margarine. You-- cause it wasn't legal back then. So you would break this little cute little thing in the bag and you would sit there for hours, whooshing it around in the bag with the color until you got the color through the whole thing. AD (00:52:48): So it would look like butter? KS (00:52:48): And then it would look like butter, right. But it took hours to take this little capsule. And you just, you just sat there. I mean, first of all, you had to get it to the right temperature so that you could start messing it around. It was like playing with play dough. AD (00:53:09): Yeah. But not as creative, just... [interviewer And narrator chuckle] KS (00:53:12): But not... But you couldn't do anything. Then you had to put the package back in the refrigerator to get it hard again, in order to put it on, on your, on your vegetables or your toast or whatever. AD (00:53:26): Did the yellow packet make it taste any different or just color? KS (00:53:30): No, it was just, it was, it was, it was... You might as well have eaten the white margarine. AD (00:53:36): Yeah. KS (00:53:36): All it was is coloring because it was against the law-- The butter, I don't know the butter company had something going on that they couldn't, they couldn't sell it. Cause it would look like butter and it wasn't real butter, you know? AD (00:53:52): Yeah. KS (00:53:52): So you had, you had to color your own margarine. AD (00:53:58): [Interviewer Sighs] That, that sounds like a great way to keep busy kids occupied for a long time. Maybe it was just the parents wanting you guys to kind of be calm and occupied for a few hours. KS (00:54:09): Well, it was... I mean there were lots of things you could buy in the grocery store that, that didn't have rationing tickets. But... It's... I used to, I loved raisin bread and you could buy plenty of raisin of bread. And I would just have raisin bread with, with margarine on it because we had run out of... I don't know whether it was a, a pound or a half, a pound of butter a month? There were a lot of things that you could only buy once a month. And then if you bought bacon or you had any meat that had any grease, you would save the grease and take it back to the butcher at the butcher store at the Giant, and he would weigh it. And you would get little, little... Once you took one of those squares, the stamp out of the book, you got little tokens back. If it didn't add up to how many points were on that stamp. AD (00:55:21): So it was like change kind of for your stamp. KS (00:55:24): Yeah. They... They had different color, little, little pieces of paper. Well, they were heavier than paper like cardboard. And you would take the grease back to the grocery store and he would give you little, little, little things that you could spend at another time for your meat. AD (00:55:48): Oh, okay. Cool. KS (00:55:48): But they, you know, it was... It was, it was different. It was you... Every everything was... It was, it was just sorta normal. W-- I was, I was never scared. That was the thing, you know. AD (00:56:05): Yeah, yeah. KS (00:56:05): Was just, was just part of life. You did what you were told to do. AD (00:56:10): And you had a lot of extended family in Washington as kind of a support network, too. And you'd visit some of them, right? KS (00:56:18): Oh yeah. Oh, I went-- and I go by myself cause my mother was working. I would just call and, you know, I wanted to go to my great-grandfather's or I wanted to go here or... I'd never called to go to the bank. Cause I knew my granddad would always be there. So I would just, I would just get on a bus and go downtown and walk over to the bank and, and... You know. Then I would window shop coming back up F Street or something. And also during, during that time my Uncle John [John Sippel Jacobsen] he had, he had a flower shop on, on F Street in the Willard hotel. And I would go down there and sit and talk to him. You know, I was, when I had time or vacation from school, I just went around and saw people, you know? AD (00:57:14): Yeah. And you would, you worked at the flower shop sometimes too, right? KS (00:57:19): Oh yeah. I would take orders on holidays when he got real, real busy. I would go down and I would just answer the phone cause they were too busy to even answer the phone. And it was interesting that-- I mean, the interesting thing is my Uncle John, my dad's brother, he was, he was the greatest person that ever lived on the face of the earth. My Uncle John would do anything for anybody, anytime, anywhere. And he married and had two boys and he went off to war. He joined the Navy and when he was in, he never left the United States. He was on a ship, I think in Brooklyn. And he was... He... Every once in a while he would fall down and the Navy accused him of being drunk. And my uncle John didn't drink. So they finally found out that after testing and everything that he had developed multiple sclerosis. And so he was discharged and came back to Washington and he... He wasn't... My Aunt Virginia. And this is really funny. My mother and my mother who married my father and my uncle John's wife, Virginia [Virginia Koons], who he married when they got out of high school and, and college moved next door to each other on First Street in Washington. AD (00:59:07): Which quadrant? KS (00:59:11): My, my mother and my uncle and Aunt Virginia lived next door to each other. AD (00:59:17): Like in Southeast or Southwest or Northeast or? KS (00:59:22): Southwest. AD (00:59:25): Okay, thanks. KS (00:59:25): You go to the-- It's probably all built up and the houses are probably gone by now, but we, my granddad, he was my, on my mother's side. He was a fireman. And he had the next, the last house on the street, paved street that it was a dirt street. And it went down to Buzzard's Point. I used to walk down there all the time. And once the seaplanes come in, it's probably probably all built up by now. AD (00:59:56): Would they just land right in the Potomac? KS (01:00:00): Yeah, they, it, at Buzzard's Point, yeah. That was down at the end of First Street, Southwest was Buzzard's Point. And you could see Annapolis [Anacostia] across the river. AD (01:00:12): Mmm. Sure. KS (01:00:12): It's really nice. AD (01:00:13): That's really cool. KS (01:00:15): And, and... But anyway, Virginia, when uncle John came home, Virginia said to him "I'm not going to be married to a cripple." And she divorced him and took the two boys and we hadn't seen them for years. She took them and hid them. AD (01:00:33): Geeze. That's hard. KS (01:00:33): And she divorced my uncle John, and he eventually got remarried to a wonderful, wonderful lady and, and had my cousin, Mary Jean, who I adore. And... But he was...The government built him a handicap house. He went to the VA every day for a shot, but he never got over the, the multiple sclerosis. I mean, he had, he had... From his waist to his knees and ankles he had these braces that he had to wear and he had two canes that he had to wear, and yet they, they gave him a car. They have-- He got a car with all the gear shifts and everything. He didn't have to use his feet. He drove the car from, from the, from the gearshift. AD (01:01:26): Oh! KS (01:01:29): He rigged it up. The, the, the government rigged this car up because he w-- after he came back, he went back in the florist business and he had a florist shop up on Connecticut Avenue extended for awhile. AD (01:01:44): Okay. So he had one down in the Willard and then one up on Connecticut at the same time, or? KS (01:01:51): No. Later, the one he... When he went into service. He came home... He, after he came home from the service, he had the one in downtown. AD (01:02:02): Uh-Huh. KS (01:02:02): Had gone. AD (01:02:04): Okay. So he wasn't at the downtown one anymore. He was up on Connecticut after the war. KS (01:02:08): He was up on Connecticut Avenue, yeah. AD (01:02:12): Okay, okay. KS (01:02:12): And... But he just, you know, went about his business, doing whatever he wanted and... Happy go lucky, but lost track of the boys. And my son, Christian, found John's wife on the internet somehow. And they talked for a while and he said, "Do you want, does your husband want to know his stepsister? My, his cousin, Mary Jean, his sister Mary Jean?" And she said, no. She said, "If, if that ever happens, I'll get back to you." Chris has the whole story, cause it was all him that did it. AD (01:03:05): Yeah. KS (01:03:05): And a year later, they called and said yes. That he was ready to find out what was going on. And today my cousin, Mary Jean, and her stepbrother, John-- he lives in Memphis, Tennessee, from what I remember. They, they communicate all the time. The older son, Christian, lived in Annapolis and he never did want to get involved with us. And he, he did pass away. But it was funny, you know, he passed away and his wife is going through his things. And I don't understand why he didn't know that he was-- He, he didn't investigate the name Jacobsen because when he passed away his wife found two of my baby pictures in his stack of stuff. AD (01:04:04): Huh. KS (01:04:04): And on the back of those baby pictures was Karla Jacobsen. AD (01:04:12): Why do you think he had those? That's odd. KS (01:04:14): I don't know. AD (01:04:17): Huh. KS (01:04:17): I don't know. But all those years he had those two pictures with my name on it and he never bothered. He did get sick and Mary Jean offered to go down and visit. He said, no, he didn't want to get involved. And just before he died, he admitted that he was sorry that he never did something to, to find his real family. But his mother and my mother were two of a kind, you know. I have, no, I have no great love, as you know, for my mother. [narrator chuckles] And Virginia was... Virginia was the same way. AD (01:04:58): Yeah. Well then let's talk a little bit more about your father. He's the Jacobsen side, which I'd also like to hear a little bit more about. But can you tell me what you know about your father's experiences growing up in Washington and interactions with Christian and Amelia Heurich? KS (01:05:18): Well, my dad was the oldest of three kids. It was my dad, Charles my, my aunt, Mary Jean-- She passed away. And my uncle, John. And they... I think my grandmother, my dad being the oldest, and I think where he had a lot of connection with the Heurich House. When he was first born and started going to kindergarten and first grade, they lived on N Street in Washington, which was near the Heurich House. AD (01:05:57): Yeah. KS (01:05:57): And his mother and father both worked. So after school, Daddy would say he had to go over to Uncle Chris's house and do his homework until his mother came to get him after work. I mean, he'd walk over there. And he said, I said, "Well, where'd you do your homework?" He said, "In the beer cellar." [interviewer chuckles] He would do it-- And they would bring him hot chocolate and he would stay there, Daddy would stay there until his mother came and picked him up after work. So I said, "Well, did they let you...?" He said, "No." He said, "I could do anything I wanted." But he said, "I had to do my homework." And he said that was probably the best place to do it. Cause people were upstairs, you know, doing things. And there was always people around and he said "it was just a nice place. I knew I was safe because it was my family." And he said "I enjoyed doing that." AD (01:07:03): Sure. KS (01:07:03): And then I guess when he got out of grammar school, my-- this is a funny one. My grandfather decided to buy a house, but he didn't tell my grandmother. So he goes and buys a house on 16th Street extended. And he comes and he said, he said... Daddy said he remembered this like it was yesterday. He said, he said, "Dad came home. And he said, 'You know, we're going to go up and look at this house.'" And he said, "My mother wasn't too pleased." So she said, "Oh, okay." So they can walk and look at this house. And he said, "How do you like it?" And she said, "Well, it's a busy street. I don't, I don't know whether..." You know, so he said, "Well, I bought this house for you." AD (01:07:55): Awww. KS (01:07:58): She said, "I'm not living in this house." She said, "You can just sell this house and buy another house." So [narrator chuckles] he had to sell the house. He had never asked her. AD (01:08:10): Well, that's a lesson. [Interviewer laughs] Ask before you buy. KS (01:08:15): So he sold the house and she said, "The next time you buy a house," she said, "it has to be where I want to be." And that's when he bought a house on-- and she agreed to this one on Decatur Street and it's still there. And that's where they all lived. But he thought he was doing a big thing by buying her a house. AD (01:08:33): Yeah. Oh my gosh. If somebody bought me a house in DC, I'd be thrilled! [interviewer And narrator chuckle] KS (01:08:39): But she didn't want to live on 16th Street, you know. AD (01:08:41): Just because it was too busy, you think? New Speaker (01:08:41): Too busy for her, yeah. So she wanted to live on a quiet little street. So she, they bought the house on Decatur Street. [narrator laughs] I said to my dad, "I can't believe that." I said, "I guess if somebody bought me a house, I would say, 'Oh, okay.'" And then think about it, saying, well, maybe I don't like the kitchen because I wanted a white one and this is a brown one or something like that. But she didn't want it cause it was on the wrong street. AD (01:09:11): Oh wow. So, so then your dad grew up in the Decatur house? KS (01:09:16): Yeah. All three of the kids grew up in the Decatur house. Yeah. [narrator laughs] I thought that was so funny, you know, but... AD (01:09:26): And where did he-- do you know where your dad went to school? KS (01:09:30): Yeah, he went to, I've got some of those electrical... He went, after he graduated high school-- I don't know which high school he went to. AD (01:09:40): Okay. But it was in DC? KS (01:09:42): I know he went to electrical school in, I think it was in Maryland. But then after that, and he worked for... [narrator Pauses to think] The lum-- The building lumberyard he worked for was down off of Seventh Street. AD (01:10:06): Right, right. KS (01:10:06): If, if you went down just before it-- Georgia Avenue, it was Seventh Street because Georgia Avenue only went to Florida Avenue and then it changed to Seventh Street. I don't know whether you know that or not. AD (01:10:25): Oh yeah, uh-huh. I've heard that. KS (01:10:25): It stops, it stops at Florida Avenue. Right there-- That's where the baseball stadium was. AD (01:10:34): Which baseball stadium? KS (01:10:38): The... Washington, whatever. AD (01:10:44): The Senators? New Speaker (01:10:44): Yeah. Baseball stadium was right there on Georgia Avenue. AD (01:10:47): Oh my gosh. I did not know that, actually. I always thought that it was kind of where it is now. KS (01:10:52): No, no, no, no. AD (01:10:55): Oh my gosh. I just learned something. KS (01:10:57): As a matter of fact, it was still there when my uncle John came back from the Navy because I would go and meet him. And he had some kind of pass where he drove right up where the ticket boxes were and parked his car. My great-grandfather had something to do with those baseball people. [indistinguishable] AD (01:11:29): Like maybe financing it through the bank? KS (01:11:32): I don't know. I don't know. But my uncle John had all the privileges of-- He could have been the King of... And I would meet him and we'd get in the car and we would go to the baseball games when he first got back from the Navy, when he was, when he had the multiple sclerosis. AD (01:11:51): That must have been so much fun for you. KS (01:11:54): And he had his own seats, you know. They were good seats and he-- we'd watch the baseball game. Then we'd get back and then I'd go back home and he'd go back home. AD (01:12:06): That sounds fun. KS (01:12:06): But he was allowed to park in... I can remember he would pull up and the boxes were off to the, off to the right. And he'd pull up on the lefthand side and get out of his car and walk right on into the stadium. So it had-- my grandfather or my great-grandfather had, had to have something to do with that baseball team. AD (01:12:35): Maybe he was like a part owner of it? KS (01:12:38): Don't know. Don't know. But they wouldn't let my uncle John do that because he was [just a random] somebody, you know? AD (01:12:46): Yeah. There was a reason. Well, I know that the Jacobsen family had kind of a lot of businesses in DC at one time. The Arlington Bottling Company was... KS (01:12:58): They had the Arlington Bottle Company, they had... The laundry. AD (01:13:06): And what was that called? KS (01:13:06): Oh, I knew you'd asked me... AD (01:13:14): Was it like Sterling or something? KS (01:13:14): They had a big laundry. AD (01:13:15): Was it like the Sterling or like a S name? KS (01:13:19): Sterling! Sterling Laundry. AD (01:13:21): Okay. KS (01:13:21): And, and great-grandfather... Great-Grandfather had had mo-- Charles Peter Jacobsen. My great- grandfather, Elisabeth's son had most of these businesses in downtown Washington. He also was very, very philanthropic to the German, old people's German homes in Washington. He was on every, he was on all those boards. Did it, have you looked through any? My son told me this weekend that he had copied a lot of stuff and sent it to the Heurich House. Have you looked through any of those papers? AD (01:14:11): I'm sure that our collections manager Allison has. I haven't. My role there normally when COVID isn't happening is as a tour guide. So I haven't actually spent a lot of time in the archives myself. Is there something that I should mention to Allison? KS (01:14:27): No, but I... You can sort of-- a lot of the death notices supposedly are in those papers. AD (01:14:39): Okay. KS (01:14:39): You can sort of see the chain, the chain that keeps on going. Mentioning all the things that they were, were part of. And they were, the Jacobsens were very big on supporting all of the German things that were in town, you know. AD (01:15:06): Yeah, yeah. KS (01:15:06): And my great-grandfather [Charles P. Jacobsen] In particular, and my grandfather [Christian F. Jacobsen] were on the boards of all these. And, and they were very giving to all these. And also my great- grandfather, even, even though he was from Baltimore and everything and moved to Washington, he still had a lot of contacts in Baltimore. He never lost them. AD (01:15:31): And this is Elisabeth's husband? KS (01:15:34): That's Elisabeth's son. AD (01:15:37): Son. Okay. When did he move to Washington? Do you know? KS (01:15:41): Oh, no, I don't. AD (01:15:43): Okay. Or like why he might have moved? KS (01:15:45): I was born in '31 and everybody was already there. AD (01:15:50): Okay. [interviewer chuckles] I just wondered if that maybe they talked to you about it. KS (01:15:53): And my dad was born in 1909, no, 19-7 [her father was born in 1908 according to Ancestry.com record]. My mother was born in nine [1911 according to Ancestry.com], So, and in Oh 7 they were all there. AD (01:16:04): Okay. So then they've been there for a while. Do you think they...? KS (01:16:06): You know, I, yeah. I, I think going back to... Well, my great-grandfather was probably like... Let's see. My grandfather was born in Washington, so. But my great-grandfather was born in Baltimore. AD (01:16:25): Okay. So he came to DC. KS (01:16:29): And he came to Washington. AD (01:16:31): Like probably because Elisabeth's brother Christian was established here? KS (01:16:37): Yeah. AD (01:16:37): Like, would that have been a draw for them? KS (01:16:40): Well, and, and then... There's a-- Is that book that that professor in Virginia that wrote about Christian Heurich. Have you read that book? AD (01:16:55): Yeah, I've read most of it. KS (01:16:58): That's a. That's interesting. AD (01:17:01): It's a good... It's a lot of information. KS (01:17:01): Now he was sort of-- When he came from Germany, he was sort of in and out of everybody's life for a while. AD (01:17:08): When you say he, do you mean Christian? KS (01:17:11): I'm talking about Christian Heurich himself. AD (01:17:14): Okay. Yes. Go on. KS (01:17:17): He tried everything. And I think, I just think that back then... Today, I don't think that what the people that preceded me did, I don't think they could do it today. AD (01:17:37): Really? Why? KS (01:17:37): [Narrator Pauses] I, I think that... I mean today, today. With, with, with what's going on in the world today. I don't think, I don't think people think that way anymore. AD (01:17:57): Like in terms of the American dream? KS (01:18:00): In terms of, "Gee! I have a dream. I'm going to start this business. I'm going to build this business. And I'm going to make sure that all these people have nice jobs." I think that that's... I think the time of people who, who have innovative ideas, they can't go past a certain point because it's just not there. There's, there's so many rules and regulations and... Like the, like the county I live in. They could bring industry to this county, but they can't get out of their own way. AD (01:18:45): So it's too much red tape? KS (01:18:45): Because the realtors, the realtors own my county. And if you don't grease their palm, you don't get anywhere. Everybody's got a deal going. AD (01:19:00): There must've been some of that going on in DC when Christian and... KS (01:19:06): Well back then, probably. But you had a little more latitude because there were so few. AD (01:19:13): Yeah. KS (01:19:13): If you look at today, you-- the competition is so humongous today. But back then the competition was, was not there. It wasn't all there. AD (01:19:30): There was more space. KS (01:19:30): Because it was growing. AD (01:19:32): Yeah, it was growing. KS (01:19:33): And everybody was, everybody was looking for their, their place in, in society, in business. And I mean, we had Peoples Drug stores. Th-- That was wonderful. I don't know whether they have them anymore. AD (01:19:48): No, they don't. They probably got acquired by a bigger chain. KS (01:19:54): Yeah. But the thing of it is, there was a Peoples Drug store with a soda fountain in every section of town. AD (01:20:01): Were those kind of social hubs? KS (01:20:04): I mean, they had a soda fountain. You, if you went to 15th and G Street, there was a People's drugstore on the corner. You could go to the soda fountain and get a drink, or get a hamburger or get a dish of ice cream. If you went to my, my area, the corner of Georgia Avenue and New Hampshire, there was a Peoples Drug store with a soda fountain. If I went down to my, my mother's father's down in Southwest, on, on Georgia, on seventh street, there was a Peoples Drug store that you could go get-- And after church, I used to go there to church when I was a little girl and you could go get orange, a glass of orange juice. But every Peoples Drug store had a soda fountain. AD (01:21:04): That sounds like it would've been a nice spot to go and take a break and see friends. KS (01:21:09): They were very, they were always open and they were always... It was more than a drugstore. It was a drugstore because you could get an aspirin and people [indistinguishable]... I don't know why. I never, I never took a prescription drug until, till I got married. You know, I took an asprin. I don't, I don't take drugs. I have two drugs that I take. I have a high blood pressure drug, and I'm gonna talk to the doctor about that. I don't know why I have it. And I have a cancer drug that I'm on a 10 year program for stage four cancer. And I'm almost up with that next June. It'll be 10 years. Why am I taking it? You know, those are the only drugs I take. AD (01:21:56): You're lucky. That's wonderful. KS (01:21:56): Don't take [indistinguishable] I, you know, I don't get sick. I don't do nothing. AD (01:22:02): Well, there you go. Well, I wanna, I want to bring it back a little bit to Washington again. And actually out to Maryland to the Heurich's farm. You've shared a memory of going out to the farm with me before. I wonder if you could talk about that again? KS (01:22:22): Well, I didn't know I was going anywhere and, AD (01:22:27): And you were a little kid, right? Like elementary, elementary school? KS (01:22:30): Yeah. I was what? Five, six years old. And... Somehow I was home for the day. My mother said to me, "Don't go to school, stay home." So I did. And my great-grandmother arrived at the house and I said, "W- what what's going on?" She said, "Well, we're going to a big party out in Maryland at a farm. And here's-- I have a dress for you." And, you know, she got me all dressed and everything. And we got in the car, we went out to the farm. And I hadn't seen my dad for a couple of months, and my dad was there. My great-grandfather, my grandfather [were there]. Christian [Heurich] was was his birthday, was Christian Heurich's birthday. And they had this great, big, huge, all day affair. It was a, was a wonderful tribute to him. And... AD (01:23:32): Cause he was like 94. Right? KS (01:23:35): I think it was, yeah. I think that's what it was. They had, and Daddy said, "You want to go swimming?" And I said, "I can't go swimming." He said, "No, no. They have bathing suits for everybody." They had bathing suits for everybody. AD (01:23:50): Oh fun! KS (01:23:50): They had-- Oh, I mean, it was, it was unbelievable. I said, "No, I don't want to go ba-- I don't want to go swimming." And so we just, you know, it was just... AD (01:24:00): Why not? Why didn't you? KS (01:24:03): Yeah. Well, then I'd have to get out and dry my hair and get dressed again. Here I was all by myself and my dad and I sort of you know, stuck around. And he had said to to Lena, he said "I'll take Karla home." So she said, "Okay." But I didn't-- I mean, everybody was there. The world was there. AD (01:24:28): So the Heurichs, the Jacobsens... KS (01:24:28): You know, it was a wonderful day. And they had food all day and food all night. I mean, it was, it was... I was tired when I got home. I just went home and I just fell into my bed. I was so tired. I didn't get up for a day or so, but it was a wonderful day and a wonderful, just a wonderful-- Being with all these people, and, and everybody was happy. Everybody was happy. And it was, it was... I guess I was the youngest one there, too. At that point. AD (01:25:06): Yeah. I've seen the picture of you there. You're a little squirt. KS (01:25:10): Yeah. Yeah. That's... I have, I have one too. Christian-- That's the other thing, you know. [narrator pauses] Chris, when Chris was here this weekend, he took all my stuff from the Jacobsen family and put it in his bedroom so I can go in there and look at stuff, but he said, he'll handle it from now on. I said, "Okay." AD (01:25:35): Oh, okay. KS (01:25:35): I didn't know he had what he had, you know. That's-- I don't know what you have. I don't know what I have because lately I just been throwing it in the box and letting it go. AD (01:25:48): Should I ask Alison to reach out to Chris about, about all of those things? I think she was going to call you. KS (01:25:54): Yeah. I, he claims he had, he had given her everything he had. I don't know whether he has everything I have. AD (01:26:05): Okay. So... KS (01:26:08): I mean, if she's got what she thinks she has... Like... AD (01:26:15): Well, cause last, well, last time you said that-- KS (01:26:17): I don't think, I don't think Christian-- I don't think they have Karl Jorss' death certificate. Karl Jorss is my... My great-grandfather had four kids. He had my grandfather by his first wife and she died. And then he married Lena and they had three kids and they had Charles, Eugene and Adalinda. And Adalinda Jacobsen was th- the one that married Karl Jorss. And he was the one that put all the iron work up at the Heurich House, his family. And my cousin, Karl just passed away a year ago. He lived in Gaithersburg, Maryland. And I talked to him all the time and his wife is the one that wants to know where her husband fits into the Heurich thing. And I said, "They're doing something at the Heurich House. Maybe when it's all over, they will be able to tell you where your husband--" And what it was was her, her husband's mother was a Jacobsen and her father was Charles Peter Jacobsen. So it was the son of Elisabeth and Hermann. AD (01:28:02): Yeah. Yeah. KS (01:28:04): I worked it back and I-- She asked me this a year ago when Karl died and I said, I would figure it out. Now that you have peaked by my interest, I am going to write it down for her so she sees where Karl fits into the Heurich, you know, her husband. AD (01:28:28): Yeah. And she can ask the-- She can write to us and ask, too. I know that we, we keep family trees and so forth, so we would be able to help her as well if she wants. Yeah. KS (01:28:41): She lives, she lives in Gaithersburg, Maryland. AD (01:28:46): Okay. KS (01:28:46): And there's a big senior housing development out there in Gaithersburg. And that's where Perry lives. She has three boys, but she was just asking me. I-- It's time that I wrote to her. AD (01:29:03): Yeah. KS (01:29:03): You have, yeah, I will do that within the next couple of days so that... Because she asked me the question and, you know, I don't know. I got caught up in everything else and life just hasn't been the same. But she, her, her mother-in-law was a Jacobsen. That's how she's hooked into us. AD (01:29:30): Yeah. Yeah. Well, I want to kind of switch gears from the Jacobsen side a little bit and see what you remember about the Heurich part of your family, specifically. I know you were little when you went out to that farm birthday party. What do you remember maybe beyond that of Christian and Amelia Heurich? What were your impressions of them? KS (01:29:57): Well, basically when, in the second world war, the only time I had contact with them was when Daddy would come home and he would have visitation and, you know, we would go around to different places. And we used to go-- he used to take me down to the Heurich House and it was very... How should I say? It was very prim and proper. [narrator And interviewer chuckle] AD (01:30:28): Very Victorian? KS (01:30:30): Very prim and proper. And, but he-- Daddy kept up with everybody that he could when he got back, you know. My mother did nothing and it was only what I would do in keeping up with, with my granddad, my great-granddad. And I would even go over to my great-grandad. I'd get on three buses and go over Albemarle Street. I would just call up and ask if I could come visit. And you know, they'd say yes. So I go get on the bus and go visit and spend-- I'd leave in the morning cause I had to go clear across town and uptown, you know, and I would just go visit. But I was always invited to you know, Easter, Christmas, whenever great-grandfather had. And you know, the Heurichs were always-- but we sat at the table and I guess I'm the last one my age. AD (01:31:37): Mhmm. KS (01:31:39): And I was always, I was always at the end of the table and Karl, till the day he died, used to kid me and he'd say, "Well, you were the youngest." And he said, "We didn't have room for you." And I would, I'd say to my dad, "You know, that's just not fair, Daddy." He said, "Well, you got to sit down there." You know? And I'd say, "Oh, all right." But having... Great-Grandfather was the one who kept the glue together with the Jacobsen part. We would be invited to the Heurich's when they'd have like open house. AD (01:32:17): Like for Christmas? New Speaker (01:32:17): Which you just, you just didn't walk in. I could do, I could, I could walk into my great-grandfather's house. AD (01:32:25): Okay. But the Heurich's, like that was a special occasion. KS (01:32:29): Well, all the things at the Heurich House were all... You got to, you got an invitation to come. Open now, you know, this and that. And he did Christmas and he did all sorts of things. I used to love to go and, but most of them... I don't think I ever... In my memory, I don't think I ever sat down for a meal. Everything was stand up-- AD (01:33:03): At the Heurich House? KS (01:33:03): Yeah. And carry it around with you. You know what I mean? AD (01:33:09): Yeah. So like big gatherings? KS (01:33:09): You had hors d'oeuvres and you had, the food was all over the place. You could have anything you wanted. But it was more-- And there were chairs in the, in the dining room. I can remember they would set up chairs around the outside of the, of the room where you could go in and, and get something to eat and sit down in a chair in the dining room. But at great-grandfather's, it was it was a family dinner for 50. He had 50 people for dinner. AD (01:33:44): That's huge. KS (01:33:46): I mean, everybody got invited. Even, even, even his friends from, from Baltimore. There was a couple, they owned a restaurant called Miller's Restaurant in Baltimore. And my great-grandfather was always very good friends with him. The Millers were, were invited to every family dinner that ever happened. And there were just people from, I mean, I saw-- Being the youngest, you know, I didn't know who some of these people were and they'd say, "Oh, Karla, how are you?" And I'd say, "Fine". And I'd say to somebody, "Who's that?" You know. Have no idea who those people are. But granddad, like I said, the table would be set up for 50 people on the sun porch and he'd sit at the head of the table and Lena would sit beside him, and then you sat according to age, right on down... AD (01:34:46): Right on down to you. [interviewer chuckles] KS (01:34:48): And I was the last one. And I said, you know what, like I said to Mary Jean, "You don't know what it was like to be the little one." And Karl would laugh and he'd say, "Okay, move on down, Karla, you can't sit here." And, and his cousins, Charles, Lois and Betty, and they'd say, "Leave her alone." You know. "She Can sit where she wants." "No, she can't. Great-Grandfather said we're sitting according to age, and she's the youngest." So. [Interviewer Laughs] It was just, you know, it's, it's fun to remember. AD (01:35:23): Yeah. KS (01:35:23): But it was, you know what, they were carefree days. AD (01:35:27): Yeah. It sounds like that was a, a carefree, safe, fun time in your life. KS (01:35:32): And in Washington as a little kid, six, seven, eight, nine years old, 10 years old, I had no fear of anything. I don't think today I would, you know... I've been to Washington when, when my kids were growing up and I go, I got divorced, I used to take my kids to Washington every three months to see all the, the buildings. The Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument. My kids saw everything. We went every three months for years because I could stay at my dad's and drive downtown. AD (01:36:15): Yeah. KS (01:36:16): We could do this tour, the Smithsonian. We could go here, we could go there. We went to the [Air and] Space Museum, you know? AD (01:36:27): Mhmm. KS (01:36:27): So I did that for years-- I don't think I would be... I don't think I could... I don't think I could do that today. AD (01:36:35): Why not? KS (01:36:37): Well, first of all, the parking. AD (01:36:40): [Interviewer Laughs] Yeah, yeah. Metro is good for those things. KS (01:36:45): Yeah. It was a park. I used to always find a place on the mall to park, but you can't park on the [National] Mall today. AD (01:36:52): Good luck. KS (01:36:53): Yeah. Good luck. Over, over at the Lincoln Memorial, I could park two blocks away. I could find a place and there was no limit. I bet there's an hour limit on all the parking, you know? AD (01:37:12): Yeah. Parking is a nightmare. KS (01:37:15): They have, they have wound it up to where, if you go to Washington, you have to take a tour bus and stay the certain hotel or motel. And it's-- you just, you can't drive around. AD (01:37:33): Yeah. Driving around is hard. A lot of people do Metro and kind of go around the city on their own that way, I think. But talking about the Lincoln Memorial that, that's not too far from where the Christian Heurich Brewery was. KS (01:37:47): Right. AD (01:37:47): Did you ever, did you ever go down to the brewery when it was open when you were a kid? KS (01:37:52): Not when it was open, no. It had closed. AD (01:37:55): Why do you think you didn't go over there when, when it was open? Because it didn't close till the '50s. KS (01:38:01): Well... It's it's... I think first of all, because we didn't have a car. AD (01:38:12): Mhmm. It was a long ways. KS (01:38:12): We took buses everywhere. My mother didn't have a car until I got out of my sophomore year in high school. We didn't have a car. AD (01:38:22): So you didn't have a car to get down there. KS (01:38:24): We didn't have a car to go anywhere. You, you took train, you took a street car or you took a bus. The street car could take you right down Georgia Avenue and Seventh Street. And you could go to Kann's. Now down, you could go to Woodward & Lothrop. You could go to all the, all the stores and you'd get back on the streetcar and go back home. AD (01:38:49): What was the difference in experience of like the streetcar versus the bus? Anything stick out? KS (01:39:01): No, it's just that you had to make sure while you were crossing the street car tracks that a street car wasn't coming the other way, you know, you had to really be careful if you crossed in the middle of the street. AD (01:39:14): Okay. So more from a pedestrian point of view they were different. Not from a passenger... KS (01:39:19): I was, I was lucky that the streetcar on Georgia Avenue-- I used that as much as I did the bus, because it got me closer to things. AD (01:39:32): Okay. KS (01:39:32): If you wanted to go-- As a matter of fact, I took the street car and a bus when I went to Roosevelt High School, because I couldn't walk. It was probably a couple of miles. So you had to take the bus to the street car, the street car, up to the high school and then walk to the high school. AD (01:39:58): That sounds like quite a commute. KS (01:39:58): Oh yeah. It wasn't... Going to school in Washington was not an easy task. AD (01:40:08): No. [interviewer chuckles] KS (01:40:08): And there were-- you didn't have school buses. You didn't have anything. You got there on your own. And if you missed the streetcar and it was raining, you got wet. Or if you were waiting at Georgia and New Hampshire for the bus to go to Iowa Avenue, you didn't have anywhere to stand. You stood next to a store where the bus came around the corner and you hoped that the street car got there in time to make the bus. You knew, you knew the schedule. AD (01:40:40): Sounds like more of an adult commute for a little kid. KS (01:40:44): Yeah. But this is the way... This is the way Washington was set up. AD (01:40:51): Yeah. KS (01:40:53): I can imagine when my mom and dad went to [McKinley]Tech[nical] High School, how the heck they got there, you know. He lived way up on Decatur Street and had to come across town. And she lived way down First Street and had to go over. AD (01:41:10): Maybe they had a lot of time to talk on, on a bus or a shared street car or something. KS (01:41:14): Yeah. You spent a lot of time on transportation. But then it wasn't, it wasn't expensive. It was like a nickel or dime. AD (01:41:25): Yeah. That's a lot different than today. KS (01:41:25): If I had to go downtown, there was a, on Georgia Avenue, there was a shoe repair guy and he had a bus pass. He had a street... Transportation. So if I had to go downtown, I'd say, I'd go in. I'd say, "Can I borrow your pass? Cause I have to go down to Landsberg and do something for my mother." And I 'd just get his pass and ride the street car and bring his pass back. He didn't care. AD (01:41:57): That's great! KS (01:41:57): You bought it, you bought a weekly pass. And it cost him so much money. And he, he would let me borrow it from him. AD (01:42:05): That's so sweet. KS (01:42:05): Yeah, it was very nice. AD (01:42:08): A real neighborhood sense of community. KS (01:42:10): I-- yes. I lived in a neighborhood where everybody in Woolworth's knew me. Everybody in this store knew me. It was a, it was a nice neighborhood. AD (01:42:23): Yeah. It sounds like it. It sounds like it. KS (01:42:25): Yeah. I don't know what it's like today. I guess I probably wouldn't even... And then they, don't-- what they have buses instead of the street cars. But the bus-- AD (01:42:35): There's a metro stop up there now, actually. KS (01:42:38): Well, the bus ran on New Hampshire Avenue and the street car ran on Georgia Avenue. Just a block away. Was weird. AD (01:42:47): Yeah. But I mean, if there's a lot of commuters up there it's probably good to have options, I would imagine. People going downtown to work. KS (01:42:56): Yeah. Cause you can't, you can't drive downtown. AD (01:43:01): So. KS (01:43:01): You know, that's, that's funny. I don't have any desire to go back to Washington. I hope, I hope when I die that my son takes my girls just for a trip, you know? And-- cause he's been there. He's, he's seen everything. But whether the girls will get there or not, I don't know. AD (01:43:27): Do you still consider yourself a Washingtonian even though you haven't lived here for so long? KS (01:43:32): Oh yeah. Yeah. And they don't believe me. Nobody believes anybody was ever born in Washington. AD (01:43:40): Is that what being a Washingtonian means to you? Or what do you think it means to you? KS (01:43:45): What it means to me is, is it was, it was my, my family, my security. I love the, I love the town. AD (01:43:55): Yeah. KS (01:43:55): The town will always be my home. AD (01:44:02): Yeah. KS (01:44:02): It's, you know. No matter where I've lived or where I've been, or anything, Washington will always be my home. AD (01:44:11): It's home. Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense. Well, I know you said-- go ahead. KS (01:44:16): And I'm very proud to say it, you know? Cause I don't think, you know, you look at people and they say, "Where were you born?" I'll say, "Oh, I was born in Washington, DC." Well nobody's ever born in Washington, DC. AD (01:44:29): Yeah. They think you mean the suburbs? KS (01:44:31): Yeah. Yeah. "No. I was born on Pennsylvania Avenue." AD (01:44:37): Right downtown. KS (01:44:37): 1931. A long time ago, but it it's... And I could take it to-- I have... When my dad died, I found a huge map of Washington and I had it framed and I have it in my hallway. AD (01:44:55): Oh fun! KS (01:44:55): And I can tell you all the streets, I can tell you everything. It goes back to... I think it was the map, went back to the '40s. AD (01:45:04): Oh yeah. So that's your Washington. KS (01:45:05): Big, huge map. AD (01:45:05): That's so cool. KS (01:45:09): Oh, I took-- When he died, I took everything. I, I didn't let my stepmother take anything. I just boxed everything up, and my son was up there with his truck and I said to him, "Here, take all this home, take this, take this, take this." AD (01:45:24): Yeah. KS (01:45:24): I have all the pieces my dad made. I have, you know. Oh no, my dad was, he was a super, he was a super person. Even though the first, maybe 30, 30, well, the beginning of my life was okay. But after... Let's see, when my kids were born, I got-- I would say when I got my divorce or, or my ex husband took off my dad and I became very close and I had a wonderful 40 years with my dad. AD (01:46:06): That's wonderful. KS (01:46:08): I mean, he, I'd take the kids down there, you know, every two or three months, even after they got out of high school and college, I would go down at least every other month and, and just, you know, be with him [her father] and take him places. And even when I moved down here, you know, he had to see the plans and he had to do this and that. I left New Jersey and the truck had left and I stayed with, Thea had gone. I don't know where she was. She was a strange lady. AD (01:46:46): His third wife? KS (01:46:46): She and my dad never did... They. His third wife. They never did their income tax together. So she was off getting her income tax done somewhere. And I stayed with Daddy for a week and we just had a wonderful time that week before I moved down here. AD (01:47:08): What did you guys do? KS (01:47:11): We just... We went to restaurants. We went... He wanted to see this. He wanted to see that, you know. We would drive around. I wasn't down here too long when they called me and said that my dad had, had... Was not well, that I should come up, and I did go up. And he... Then I came back down here and then I went back up there and I just stayed until he passed away. And then we couldn't bury him because I think it was like a three month wait in, in Arlington. So I had to come back down here and then I went up and helped her sell all the stuff in the house. That was when I said to my son, when we went up for the funeral, I said, "I've got certain things I want you to take. Don't even ask any questions. I know they're Daddy's. I know he made them." So I took all the things he had made. All the woodwork, you know. AD (01:48:14): It must be nice for you to have. And for Chris to have today. KS (01:48:16): Yeah, yeah, yeah. She didn't care. She was going to get rid of it anyway. AD (01:48:20): Well then definitely. Definitely. KS (01:48:23): And... Well, she was she-- and I said to her, "Thea [Theodale Weser Jacobsen], Daddy said, now what you have to do is get one of your kids and go back to Indiana where you were from and find out where you're going to live. Cause you can't afford to live here." And she did. She left. Right after he passed away. Cause we knew we had... He passed away in May and he wasn't buried until July. So we knew we had-- because they had to hold the body. Well, he was, he had ashes. Because you had to get a number at Arlington to have to have a funeral. AD (01:49:05): Yeah. It's a whole thing. My boyfriend actually is in the Navy and plays the trumpet at funerals at the cemetery. So yeah, I know what a little procedure and long wait, those can be. KS (01:49:16): Yeah. And I wanted a military service. AD (01:49:20): Oh yeah. KS (01:49:20): I mean, we had, we had the caisson, we had, you know, the riderless horse. We had the whole, I wanted the whole nine yards. AD (01:49:30): Absolutely. KS (01:49:30): Because that's what, that's what he wanted. And that day planes were flying over and I said, "I wonder what they are." And they said, "Oh Bush is here." There's somebody, I guess some kind of ceremony was going on somewhere else. AD (01:49:52): In the cemetery? KS (01:49:52): But my father, my father was in a niche because he had, we... And I have half his ashes here. Half over there and half are here. AD (01:50:05): So nice. KS (01:50:05): They had a brand new part and he, he's in a niche somewhere. I couldn't find it today. And I'm never going back to Washington. I'm too old. AD (01:50:16): Yeah, Arlington is a big place. Well, that's lovely. I'm glad that he got that, that funeral. Why do you think he wanted to serve in the Air Corps? Why do you think he chose that? KS (01:50:29): Well, I think probably because it was available, you know. AD (01:50:35): Was he a pilot? KS (01:50:37): No, no. He was a... He, he originally went to Texas and was head of maintenance on, in the, in the, in, on the planes. AD (01:50:55): Oh so it was a mechanical kind of thing. KS (01:50:55): He was stationed in Texas a couple of times. He, he, he eventually retired and a year later, when the Vietnam War came, he got a letter from the president saying "Welcome back to the service." [interviewer chuckles] Oh yeah. So he went back in. AD (01:51:14): Oh wow. To Vietnam. KS (01:51:16): And he was stationed in [narrator pauses to think] Iceland. And he was, he was the head of the MPs in Iceland, in Reykjavik, Iceland. AD (01:51:28): What does MP mean? KS (01:51:28): Military police. AD (01:51:34): Oh, that's an interesting gig. KS (01:51:37): And what it was was all the planes that flew over the hump stopped in Iceland to refuel. And they had a big problem with the guys getting off the plane that were coming home for leave and then going back to the war, they would go into town and they would all get drunk. And my dad was responsible for getting them all back on the base and putting them in jail or whatever. AD (01:52:16): Oh boy. It's like herding cats. KS (01:52:16): Trying to keep peace with the Iceland people. AD (01:52:18): Oh no. What did he think of that posting? KS (01:52:22): He was, he was. Well, it was a you know, he was told this is what he's going to do. And that's what people did back then. They did what they were told to do. So he was there for a couple of years. He'd meet the plane, he'd tell the guys what they were supposed to do and here and there, and they didn't care. They were going to go do whatever they want to do. AD (01:52:45): Yeah. They're on leave. KS (01:52:47): Evidently Reykjavik, Iceland was not the place to go. [narrator And interviewer chuckle] AD (01:52:53): Oh my gosh. Well, it sounds like your, your dad was, you know, a committed servicemen and quite an American patriot. But I want to talk a little bit about your German heritage as well. Did you know, do you think much about your German heritage these days or did you grow up either, you know, your father, grandfather, great-grandfather with any kind of German traditions? KS (01:53:19): No. I, I think... I personally am glad I'm a German because I think it has given me the inner push to do the things that I had to do or wanted to do or needed to do. I think... I, I think it gave me... I think Germans are very determined. I, and, and I'm, I'm known for that, you know. Don't mess with me. Don't get around me. I think it's my German coming out in me. AD (01:54:04): Do you think it was how you were raised or just some kind of inherent quality? KS (01:54:09): Oh, I think it's inherent. I think I was born that way. Because I, I'm not one to give up. You know? AD (01:54:20): Yeah. What-- did you experience any like German traditions or was any German spoken by any of your older members in your family? KS (01:54:28): No. It was, it was never, never in your face, but you always knew that, that you were German. And, and I think, like I look back at things like... When my, my ex husband, he-- I went to a Republican meeting one night and came home and there was a babysitter with the kids. And I said, "Well, where's Mr. Squier?" And they said, "Oh, well, they- he, he needed to go somewhere. And he told us to come over till you home and he paid us." I said, "Oh, okay." So we go upstairs and on the bed, there's a note saying that he was leaving. He had left. AD (01:55:12): Oh my gosh. KS (01:55:12): And I called a friend of mine. And I said to her "Harriet, Don just left me. And he-- I don't know where he is." "What do you mean he left?" I said, "I guess he he's gone. He doesn't want to live here anymore." So she said to me, "Do me a favor." And I said, "What's that?" And she said, "Check your bank account in the morning when you get up." I said, "Oh, okay." So I checked my bank account and sure enough, she was right. He [Donald Squier] had cleaned out the bank account and taken it. New Speaker (01:55:41): Oh my gosh. KS (01:55:44): I called him at work. I called him at work. And I said to him, "I see you cleaned out the bank account." He says, "Who told you?" And I said, "I called the bank." And I said, "Let me tell you something. If you don't put that money back in that bank account within an hour, I am calling the police and I am reporting you to your boss and you will lose your job." He worked for the bus company of New Jersey. He was a claims adjuster. And I said, "I will call your boss and tell him what you have done to your two children." So he said, "Well, I'm not go--." I said, "Well, you don't have a back end." I said, "I've already called the president of the bank." And I said, "He told me, he would tell me when the money arrived and opened the account again." And I said, "If you don't do it, you will be sorry, because I will destroy you." AD (01:56:42): Wow. KS (01:56:42): And I think that's what my German came to the, to the top. I finally took over and did something that I didn't know I had the guts to do. AD (01:56:56): Yeah. You think that, that those guts came from your, maybe your German heritage? KS (01:57:01): I think that was, yeah. And from then on, you know, I've been able to to do what I want. I've had a couple of knocks in the head. I sold-- I bought-- We've, we've. I had to pay him for half the house, which Christian didn't know. And Chris said, "What do you mean you had to pay?" I said, "When we got divorced, I kept the house. I had to pay him for half of it." Not when he left, but three years later, when the divorce came through. AD (01:57:37): Geeze. KS (01:57:37): I said, "I had to go to the bank and borrow $88,000 to pay your father off." He said, "That's what that is." And I said, "What are you talking about?" Do you know when his father died-- And Chris was the only, is his only living relative. And he found a bank account with $88,000. Do you know Don put that in a bank account and left it there all those years? I couldn't believe it. AD (01:58:09): Wow. After you went through all that as a single mom now struggling. Wow. KS (01:58:16): Oh, I, I was, I was just, I kept falling and I kept falling into great things. I have met great people. I volunteered all over the place. I met more people than I-- I just kept myself busy and kept my kids going. And I had to maintain the house. I finally, I had all the windows replaced and he lived in the next town and somebody said, "Don wants to know what you're doing to the house." I said, "Tell him, it's not his anymore. I bought it." I had an extension put on it. I had, you know, I fixed it up. The kids had their own room. I asked him if he would help me pay for them to go to college. He said no. I said, "Okay, screw you." We went and got loans for both Chris [Christian Squier] and Dawn [Dawn Jacobsen]. They both went to college. They both graduated. So I just, I just went on and did what I thought I had to do. You know. AD (01:59:20): What did you do for work during those years? Can you tell me just a brief snapshot? KS (01:59:28): Well, yeah, I worked, I was lucky, very, very lucky. I had worked for B. Altman and Company, and that sort of petered out and I was floor manager there, but I really didn't want to do that. I had gotten involved-- because it was the thing everybody did back then, I got involved with the Republican party and I, I-- The right people at the right time. I always had a job. I had a job in the legislature when I was working that I could, could, could do. I had-- One of my best friends was an assembly woman. She eventually ended up by being the secretary of state of the state of New Jersey. So I, I had a huge, huge bunch of friends and I, I just got folded to the next pot. You know what I mean? AD (02:00:31): Mhmm. Using your network. KS (02:00:31): I never, I didn't, I didn't... I didn't plan it that way, but when, you know, when one door closes, another door opens. You just take the opportunity. AD (02:00:47): Sure. KS (02:00:47): One of my first, one of my first jobs was working for a local Congressman in town. And I had to gather... He-- back then, and this, this goes way back in the '50s. When he had a mailing to do, you didn't, you didn't run it through a machine or anything. You sat and you hand addressed envelopes. And George Wallhauser Senior-- I had the job of the envelopes were delivered to my house. Everybody that would take a box would get $5. They'd get a penny, an envelope to address it, back in those days. That's how I started out. You know, you addressed two boxes of envelopes, you got $10. AD (02:01:39): Your hand must have been sore. KS (02:01:41): Yeah. But I had a lot of friends and I'd say, "Do me a favor. You wanna, you wanna earn $5 this week?" "Yeah." Because you know, back then $5 was a lot of money. AD (02:01:54): Yeah. It could go pretty far. KS (02:01:56): You know, gas, gas was 21 cents a gallon. AD (02:02:00): And this is like in the '60s, right? KS (02:02:03): Yeah. Yeah. So... And when Don left, he took the car. And my next door neighbor she was a school teacher. She was the high school athletic director and school teacher. And her sister was a teacher on Long Island and Harriet had passed away, and Harriet's car was sitting in their, in their garage. So she said to me, "Karla, I see Don took the car." And I said, "Yeah." She said, "Well, here's the keys to Harriet's car. You can drive it. You can use it, just put it back in my driveway. Don't put it in your driveway." So I said, "Oh, okay." So I drove that. And I had told my dad. He said, "Well, ask her if I can buy it." So he bought the car from her for a hundred dollars and I used that little car. AD (02:03:01): That's lovely. KS (02:03:01): And he [Karla's ex-husband] was so mad that I had gotten a car. He's trying to find out where I got the car and people wouldn't tell him. Because see, he still lived in town. AD (02:03:13): Your ex-husband, yeah. KS (02:03:13): And the kidshe... They used to go over to his mother's house and-- the weekends, he had them. And he would take them and leave them with his mother and father. And then he would go out partying with his friends. And the kids went to court and told them, you know, "Well, daddy's never there." That's when my daughter, she had a, a real... She, she, she didn't say too much and she wasn't happy. And one night I got a phone call, like three o'clock in the morning and it's Dawn on the phone. I said, "Honey, where are you?" And she said, "I packed up, I want you to come and get me right now." So I said, "Oh, where are you?" "I'm going to be on the front steps, come and get--" So I went and got her, brought her home, then I called. He answered the phone. I said, "Your daughter is home. She was sitting on the front steps of your house. She said, she's not going back there. So you better straighten yourself out." And it got so that she, I don't know, she had a... She even changed her name legally when she became 21 to Jacobsen. AD (02:04:27): Yeah. KS (02:04:27): She, she, she called me and she said, "Mom, I want to go to court and want to change my name." And I said, "Okay, you're 21. Change your name." "Well, no, you have to help me." And I said, "Well, let me talk to a couple of judges, I'll see what to do." And I had a friend, Carol Farron, she was a superior court judge. And I said to Carol, "What do you do?" And she said-- I said, "What lawyer do I get?" And she said, "You don't need a lawyer. She said, "I'll write down everything. And don't say, I told you." And what we had to do was publish it in a certain couple of newspapers. And Dawn came up from, she was working, living and working in Philadelphia at the time. And she came up on the train that morning. And I met her at the station, brought her up to the courthouse. She went to court and she was Dawn Marie Jacobsen till the day she died. AD (02:05:22): She changed it back to your name. KS (02:05:25): She took my, my maiden name. Yeah. AD (02:05:28): Did you ever think about going back to just being Karla Jacobsen? KS (02:05:33): No. Because so much was... At that point so much was, was, you know, my name was on everything. AD (02:05:44): You had your career in politics as Squier. KS (02:05:46): And that was what I was known as in the, in the state. You know. AD (02:05:50): And you, you worked with Governor Kean around then, right? KS (02:05:54): Yes. I worked, he appointed me. I worked for him for eight years and then I kept-- In New Jersey it's, it's weird. The party of the governor the eight years he was there it's okay. But then the next year it was a Democrat. So I didn't lose my job, I went down a notch. I went from the head of the department to the deputy of the department. And that was, that was... You know, I got paid, I got my salary. I went to work. I did what I wanted to do. He did what he wanted to do. And finally I had been there... Well, I retired at 22 and a half years. I needed another two and a half years to get to 25, but there was just so much fancy work going on and I could see things going on in the department that I went to Trenton and retired early. I didn't even tell him. AD (02:07:06): You didn't want to be a part of it. KS (02:07:08): I didn't even want to be a part of it. No. Uh-uh. AD (02:07:10): Yeah. It felt like something illegal was happening. KS (02:07:13): And then he did get indicted and pled guilty to nine counts of voter fraud. So. AD (02:07:19): What was this person's name? New Speaker (02:07:22): Carmine Cassiano. AD (02:07:23): Okay. So that was the last guy you worked for before you retired? Well, it sounds like you got out just in time. Good call. KS (02:07:30): I got out, yeah. And I knew something going on, but I couldn't figure it out until the newspaper articles started. I was down here. I moved. I retired and I had so much time on the book, they had to pay me till June. So I got out of there. I moved down here in February of 2002, and he was indicted and pled guilty a year and a half later. But I had a friend at the newspaper and I called him and I said, "Ted, do me a favor." He said, "What do you want?" I said, "Just pull up Carmine's name. And can you send me every article that was in the Star Ledger?" And he did. I have a whole dossier on it. Now I know-- I could rig an election today, and you might not know it. Isn't that terrible? AD (02:08:30): That's pretty scary. I wonder how many people like you are out there who could, who could do that? KS (02:08:35): I could do it, and you wouldn't have a clue. AD (02:08:38): I'm sure you could. I'm sure you could. KS (02:08:41): In the state of North Carolina, and this is another thing that bothers me. If you die and do not die in the County where you live, your name is left on the voter rolls for five years. AD (02:09:04): What? How does that, how does that happen? That doesn't make any sense. KS (02:09:08): Well, because I live close to South Carolina. If I pass away, if I get sick and go to a hospital in Little River or Myrtle Beach, those-- if I pass away in South Carolina, those records are not reported to the state of North Carolina. And my name will stay on the rolls for five years. Now, you say, "Well, how do you get the five years?" Okay. You have a federal general election coming up in November. Somebody goes in and says, "Oh, wait a minute. There's her name and she died down there, but she's-- we can vote her, her ballot." So you go in and you vote my ballot. And they accept it. That keeps me on. The next time is just-- every other year is a local election. And about, only about half the people vote. So the next year, nobody votes. The next primary, they forget about my name and you don't vote. If you don't vote in two federal general elections, they then start trying to trace you. Well by then your family's probably moved. The mail comes back. You don't get taken off the rolls until the fifth year when they don't hear from you. AD (02:10:44): That is just, that's crazy. That's crazy to me. KS (02:10:47): Yeah. You know what I do for the Republican party down here? I get the Wilmington paper and I get the local paper. In fact, yesterday, there are two more people. I checked the death notices in both of those newspapers every, every time. I cut them out, I tape them to pieces of paper and give them to a person who goes into the computer to make sure that they're still there. Then he goes to the death certificate person of that County, where the guy died, buys a death certificate and presents it to the County where they have to take it off. That's what we do in this County. AD (02:11:35): Wow. Well, that's, that's good that you stay on top of it. KS (02:11:38): Don't tell me that-- Don't tell me this isn't a weird situation. And it's not just in my-- I have a hundred counties in North Carolina. AD (02:11:49): Wow. Keeps you busy. Keeps you busy. KS (02:11:51): A hundred counties. In New Jersey, in New Jersey we only had 21 counties. AD (02:11:57): Sure. Jersey's small. KS (02:12:00): But, in New Jersey... What they used to do is everybody had to file a death certificate in Trenton, which is the Capitol. The end of every month I got a list of everybody who had died that had an address in my County and we took them off the rolls. They were taken off right away. Once a month. AD (02:12:25): That sounds like a better system. KS (02:12:25): Down here it's five years. AD (02:12:29): Well, I'm curious about how you became politicized in Republican politics. Did you grow up in a strong Republican household? How did you come to that party? KS (02:12:42): Well, when I... When I moved to Summit, New Jersey with my mother, after all of her whatever's going on and I was working and at Hahne and Company in Newark there were the... There were quite a few people in their early twenties who weren't married and it just, you, you would... A candidate would come to town and you'd go to a meeting. And all of a sudden you were a group of people who thought alike and it was more, it was social to begin with, to be very honest. Because you met a lot of people that you'd never meet. And it from social to be-- Then you'd get asked to, like, I got asked by Congressman Wallhauser to do the letter thing. You get asked to do this and you'd get asked to do that. And it just, it, it sort of grew like topsy. AD (02:13:49): Yeah. That makes sense. KS (02:13:49): And then in New Jersey, there is a Republican and Democrat that-- it's broken up into districts. And if you wanted to be a district leader and go to a meeting once a month and, and hear what's going on in the County and in the state you got on this... You got elected to this committee and it just, it sort of grew. And then you met more people, then you'd met more things and you got to do more things. And it just... AD (02:14:26): It just kind of grew. Yeah. KS (02:14:29): It's, it's out there if you wanted it in those days. AD (02:14:37): Sure. Were your parents and grandparents-- Go ahead. KS (02:14:37): Today it's a different story. And I was very comfortable because my dad, my, my... My dad's family, they were a hundred percent Republican. You didn't want to talk about Democrats in their house, particularly my dad. Oh, he didn't want to hear anything. AD (02:14:55): So you grew up, that's interesting. You grew up during the Depression and World War II, when FDR is this Democrat. Do you remember like political discussions that your dad would have about the, about that situation? KS (02:15:09): It was, it was never mentioned. Isn't that something? AD (02:15:13): But you knew that they were staunch Republican? They didn't talk-- KS (02:15:15): But I knew that they were staunch Republicans. AD (02:15:16): Okay. KS (02:15:16): There was never conversations. There was never any discussion. You just, you just sort of walked over it and went to the next step. And I, I really... I've, I've been blessed with life, totally blessed with life. And today I could pick up the phone and, and call the governor I worked with, you know. I can call, I can call a lot of people. His son is now running for Congress. AD (02:15:49): Yeah, yeah. The younger Kean. KS (02:15:52): The younger one. And... AD (02:15:57): Yeah, you've had, you've had quite a career. You mentioned, you've said the word you said the word blessed, and I know that your faith is very important to you, too. Can you talk a little bit about how you started going to church as a kid? KS (02:16:14): Well, first of all, my dad was Catholic and my mother was Baptist and I didn't didn't... I was baptized in the Baptist church. My dad married outside, he married outside of the Catholic church. All three times. He never did marry in the Catholic church. Don't understand why, cause he was an alter boy at Saint Matthew's Cathedral in Washington. His mother was Catholic. AD (02:16:43): Okay. KS (02:16:43): My grandfather was not. AD (02:16:45): Was your grandfather Lutheran, perhaps? KS (02:16:48): I don't think he... Religion was never part of anything. AD (02:16:54): Okay. KS (02:16:54): They didn't talk about it, but my mother would take me. We, when we moved to New Hampshire Avenue, we would get on a streetcar and go all the way down Southwest to First Baptist Church, because that's where her father was still a deacon. AD (02:17:12): Oh, okay. KS (02:17:12): So that was so... Basically I was Baptist. So- Southern Baptist for a long time. And when he pa-- when my granddad passed away, I even went to church - Petworth Baptist Church. And at 12 years old, my mother never knew it, I got myself baptized in the church. I went to classes and I got baptized all by myself. AD (02:17:42): Why do you think you didn't tell her about it, obviously? Why do you think you... [indistinguishable] KS (02:17:47): Well, she never went to church with me. I was the one that went to church every Sunday and went to Sunday school every Sunday. AD (02:17:56): Did you have a lot of friends there? KS (02:17:59): Yeah. I even had, there were even members of her extended family that were members of that church, but I just, you know, I just found the church and went to it. You know, she didn't. I don't know why, but it's, it's always been, I don't know. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's a protection. Somehow. AD (02:18:27): Yeah. KS (02:18:27): And I, I don't, I don't feel bad about not going to a church today because as I grew older, a church to me is a building to get out of the rain. I don't feel that I'm any worse a Christian today for not going to church with this virus that I was-- I'm still the same Christian that I was when I went to, when I went to a building and the church is only a building, you know. I don't, and I, I, and I've had this discussion with ministers and everything. You don't need to tell me that I'm not a good Christian because I don't go in a building to worship the Lord. I don't, I don't worship like other people. I walk around talking to him, you know. AD (02:19:34): Mhmm. KS (02:19:34): If I have something on my mind and if I'm walking from here to there, or from driving in the car, I'll just have a conversation. It's it's... And it's gotten me through. So it's it's for me. Might not be for you. But it's for me. AD (02:19:52): That's important. That's important. KS (02:19:55): And I know, and, and we have an uproar in the church I go to now, when I married Don Squier, I married in the Presbyterian Church. I joined that church and I've been a Presbyterian, you know, since 1958. But do I, do I agree with everything? No. I think that parts of the Presbyterian Church are very narrow minded and, and racist to a, to a degree. AD (02:20:33): Really? KS (02:20:33): Well, there's two kinds of Presbyterian churches. Presbyterian Church USA, and Presbyterian... An offshoot of it is another kind and, and my church left Presbyterian Church USA because they didn't want ministers to be gay in Presbyterian Church USA. And I do go to that church. I don't participate in everything. The minister is retiring in September, which is the best thing that could have ever happened because he's only out-- Here we have a church of about 200 people and he's making $100,000 a year in all of his parts. You know, his salary, his medical, his insurance, close to two, close to $100,000 a year. With 200 people. So I'm glad he's leaving. I don't get along with him at all. You know. AD (02:21:46): It doesn't sound like it. KS (02:21:46): But I don't know because they're open and the virus-- and I watched church on TV on Sunday morning. I don't have to go to Church church. AD (02:21:55): Yeah. I mean, the virus has changed so much for so many people. KS (02:22:01): Yeah. I mean, I've got a life to live, you know? AD (02:22:04): Right. KS (02:22:07): My granddaughter is still very sick. They, she did spend two days in the hospital. AD (02:22:13): I'm sorry to hear that. KS (02:22:15): Her pancreas is, is diseased now. And she's got a stint put back in her for the gallbladder. New Speaker (02:22:25): Oh, so it's your granddaughter, Sophie? KS (02:22:27): My granddaughter Sophie, yeah. AD (02:22:30): That's so hard. KS (02:22:32): And here she is going into her senior year of high school. AD (02:22:37): Oh, that's so much. Just with the virus. And then with those, all those other health concerns, I feel so, so sad for her. KS (02:22:45): Well they've got to get the gallstones out, they've got to get the pancreas-- They said they could take half of the pancreas if it's diseased. So she's in for a long haul. AD (02:23:00): She sure is. KS (02:23:00): But, you see, that's where-- I don't sit down and pray. I just walk around talking to God, you know. "God, What'd you do this for?" You know, "Why can't you help her? She can't help her." I talk to myself. And, you know, it's my way of dealing with it. AD (02:23:18): Sure. Well, that, that makes sense. That makes sense. Yeah. I'm sorry to hear that she's going through that. That must, that must be hard. KS (02:23:29): Two days in the hospital and now she's home. So I don't know. Chris, you know, they're divorced. They do live in the same town. It's, it's, it's... What could, what could they go through a kid that's 17 years old, you know? AD (02:23:48): Yeah. That sounds very different from your life at 17. KS (02:23:52): Yeah. Oh, a hundred percent. She, what is she worrying? Is she not worrying? Does she know everything? You know. I think all these things, you know, why are you doing this to her? Is she strong enough to take it? Maybe it's for a reason. Maybe he's strong enough to take it. Why did it happen? I don't know. Things happen for a reason and it's not for me to try to figure out anymore. I just have to live day by day. AD (02:24:27): Yeah. Yeah. Well, Karla, we've been on the phone for a while and I do want to I want to bring it back a little bit to DC and the brewery for a minute. I don't want to keep you on too long. KS (02:24:40): Oh, no. AD (02:24:40): But I wanted to-- you said you didn't go to the brewery when it was open. Did you have any perception of it, even though you didn't go there when you were growing up? KS (02:24:52): Oh, no, I knew it was there. And at that point, you know, it was... Being in and out of Washington so many times, you know, I was like a yoyo. I'd come, I'd go back. AD (02:25:05): Yeah. It wasn't really on your radar. New Speaker (02:25:08): You know. [indistinguishable] Very early. And... It was mostly the family rather than, than a thing, you know what I mean? AD (02:25:18): Yeah. It wasn't a brewery. It was the Heurich cousins. KS (02:25:21): I was just happy to be part of people that, that wanted to see me or cared about me. AD (02:25:29): So it's the family connection. KS (02:25:31): That's why I was always going here and going there. Because I had been taken away from it so many times that once I got my foot back in Washington... That's, that's where I wanted to be. AD (02:25:49): With people. Yeah. W-- what did you think when the brewer-- When you learned the brewery was closing? KS (02:25:55): Well, there's, I always thought, you know, there's a time when you come, and a time when you go. If it's time to go... And, and Christian Heurich was getting older and, you know, [other brewers'] technology was growing. It's like anything. It's like... Let me... Say you had a souvenir store in a, in a, in a community where you were reliant on the people who came for vacation. Well, if people don't come for vacation anymore, then your souvenir store goes out of business. It's no longer needed. But I can remember time after time, my dad drank nothing but Heurich Beer. And I would go over with him to the Navy, over to Bethesda Naval hospital [National Naval Medical Center]. And they had a liquor store there and they ordered Heurich beer for my dad. [interviewer chuckles] Oh yeah. We go home with cases of it. He knew what he wanted, he had his order in. And even though they didn't have a lot of it at the Navy, they ordered whatever he needed. And he had his Heurich Beer. He was true to Heurich Beer till the day he died. AD (02:27:24): Did he, do you remember which kind of beer was it like the Senate beer or? KS (02:27:30): Senate. Yes, it was Senate. AD (02:27:32): He drank Senate. Would he have like a glass a night kind of thing? KS (02:27:36): Oh, no. He had more than that. [narrator And interviewer chuckle] He'd have two or three cans of beer. AD (02:27:44): Okay. KS (02:27:44): Oh, no. There were always beer cans around. AD (02:27:48): Did you-- KS (02:27:48): And we were always going over to the Navy and they knew when, when we pulled up and the back of the station wagon and they, they, they just put it in and he'd go in and pay the bill. AD (02:28:01): A good little system worked out. KS (02:28:01): But it was like a standing order at the, at the Navy base. AD (02:28:07): He probably got it cheaper there, too. KS (02:28:09): Oh, he did. I'm sure he did. AD (02:28:11): Buying in bulk. KS (02:28:12): I mean, he drank, he drank that up to the day he died. Like, what did I say to him? When I was up there, he got so sick. And I said to him, well, you know, "You want some apple sauce? You want this? You want that?" He said no. He said, "I think there's a beer in the refrigerator." Okay. You want a beer? Here he is on his deathbed and he wants a beer. AD (02:28:37): I mean, he's a creature of habit, right? KS (02:28:40): Creature of habit. He did it all his life. He wasn't going to stop. AD (02:28:48): [Narrator And interviewer overlap] Do you know if-- Go ahead. KS (02:28:48): He was not going to stop. AD (02:28:50): Yeah. Did he drink when Gary Heurich started brewing brewing beer in the '80s and '90s, did he enjoy any of those kind of revivals? KS (02:29:00): Oh yeah. He, he drank them. AD (02:29:04): Did he... Did he know Gary very well? KS (02:29:10): You... This is a funny thing to say. My son, after my dad died, he tried so many times to reach Gary's person and his wife would always answer the phone at the office, and Gary was always busy. Cause Christian, my, my Christian was very interested in the Heurichs. AD (02:29:39): Oh, yeah. I know. KS (02:29:39): I mean, he's, he's got, he would, he would go online and buy from somebody who had a collection of Heurich stuff. And he buys stuff. AD (02:29:52): I know, yeah. KS (02:29:52): He's got a bunch of stuff. I said, "Well, what are you going to do with it?" "It's hanging on my wall." You know, he's got a couple of platters, he's got a couple of this and a couple of that. AD (02:30:06): He's proud of his heritage. New Speaker (02:30:06): But he was always buying stuff from the Heurichs. Anything that was Christian Heurich he would try to buy. AD (02:30:14): How did you feel when he got so into that? Did you, were you happy? KS (02:30:19): I thought it was fine because you know, it was, it was-- The German is in him, too. It travels through. He was named for his great-grandfather, you know? His middle name was, he was... I, I named him Christian, even before anybody knew that I named him Christian, but I had to use his, one of his father's relatives. So his middle name is, is Winteringham, which is a, an English name from his father's, from his father's side, but. Oh, no, Christian is... He's he's he's got it. He I mean, and he works for a beer company, you know? AD (02:31:05): Yeah. He's kind of come full circle almost. KS (02:31:08): Yeah. He works for beer and he worked for Budweiser for a long time, too. AD (02:31:15): Yeah, yeah. KS (02:31:16): He said, "It's not the place to work." I said "Why?" He said, "No, Mom, you don't want to work for Budweiser." I said, "Oh, okay. I'm not going to work for Budweiser." But... No, he he's he, he said to me, he said, that's why he took all my stuff and put it in his room. He said, "Mom, I have most of this stuff. I think I've given most of it to the Heurich House already." I said, "Oh, okay. I don't know whether you did or you didn't. I don't know whether I have stuff you don't have." I don't know. AD (02:31:53): Yeah. We love that he's done that. KS (02:31:57): The last couple of years I've just, I haven't put it where it's supposed to be. I've just thrown it in the book-- in the box, you know. I should really go in his bedroom and put it out on the bed and put it in some kind of chronological order. So that... He'll do it someday, but I'll do it. AD (02:32:19): Yeah. KS (02:32:19): You know. He's got more, he's got Sophie on his mind and, and... AD (02:32:25): Of course. KS (02:32:26): It's He's on vacation this week. I don't know. They came for a couple of days and it was so hot we couldn't even go to the beach and it's-- Life is on a day to day basis. AD (02:32:40): It sure is. KS (02:32:40): And I can't even tell you. Tomorrow I would love to go to the grocery store in the morning, I don't even know if I'll do that. So. AD (02:32:49): Yeah. KS (02:32:50): It's Sunday. I know I'll go to church and, and help count the money. I won't see anybody. I won't go to church cause there's too many people, but I am on I'm on the finance committee. So I will go do the banking for them, you know? AD (02:33:06): Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's great. I want to bring it back to DC a little bit. So when you learned the brewery was closing you kind of felt that it was, it was time and that was the natural order of things. How did you feel about what was built in the place of the brewery, on that land by the Potomac? KS (02:33:34): Well, you see, that was, that was the family's decision to donate that land, you know, and-- which was fine. And the Kennedy Center is a wonderful institution and what's underneath of it, the, the, the, the brewery... The, the, the history is still there, even though the building isn't. AD (02:34:02): Like, what do you mean by that? KS (02:34:05): In other words, the property is still there. The brewery was on it. It is still part of-- You can't take away the history that the brewery was there. AD (02:34:17): Right. KS (02:34:17): I mean, I've got tons of pictures of the brewery and tons of things about the brewery that was there. It's, it's an honor to have the Kennedy Center built on that property, but it's still the history of the Heurichs is there and can't be taken away. AD (02:34:42): Why do you think it's important that people learn about that history of the Heurichs and their brewery? KS (02:34:49): Well, because I was born and raised in Washington and I'm-- Washington will always be my home and that part of the history, the quarter or the whatever part of the, my, of my life, it has meaning that I'm... Part of me and part of my family will always be there. AD (02:35:24): Beyond-- KS (02:35:24): You can't take it away. It's there. AD (02:35:26): What do you think that the legacy of that brewery has been for the city? I know it's important for your familybut what about kind of more generally? KS (02:35:38): I don't think... In today's society, there might be 4% who care. AD (02:35:53): About the brewery? KS (02:35:55): About the brewery. About, about anything in, in, in the days gone by. There are many wonderful things that happened in Washington, but today's society-- whether you're young, whether you're old, whether you're rich, whether you're poor, you are just trying to maintain your life. And those things, if they're on a, if you're going to Washington on a tour, those things will be pointed out, but they're not monumental in your life. Those things are memories for family and people who were part of it, but not... Today's-- the people like the people that moved down here, they could care two hoots about anything that's going on. We got some problems. All they want to do is be invited to cocktails at five and play golf with somebody tomorrow. That is what their life is. That's what life has turned into. AD (02:37:13): But you think back, back the Heurich's time, and when your, you know, your grandparents were alive, things were different. Values were different, maybe? KS (02:37:23): Oh, 400%. I am so lucky that I live-- that I was born in 1931, because I lived in an era where me-- 99% of the things that went on meant something. Things don't mean anything to these people today. Like I have a friend here. We are as opposite as night and day. She is a teacher. She is self-made. She was a pianist. She can't play anymore because she's got arthritis. She hates Donald Trump. We've never talked politics or anything, but we get along and we get along because both of us just pull ourselves back and we are for helping each other. And we check on how many people got the virus. How many people have died. Yesterday 17 more people have the virus. And two more people died in my County. They won't tell us where they are. So we went, Sue and I went to church yesterday morning and did a mailing for the secretary. Just the two of us, we were six, six feet apart. We did... We have a, a booklet that goes out every month called Shorelines. And it tells everybody in the church what's going on. Well, we do that mailing for her every month. And she said to me, "After we do it, you think we should take a chance and go in to a restaurant?" And I said, no. I said, "Sue, with all these visitors down here, you don't know what kind of germs are there." AD (02:39:13): Yeah. KS (02:39:13): Yeah. She's the one that didn't want to go to the restaurant, and all of a sudden she wants to go to one. So we go out in the parking lot and I said, "Do you want to go? Or don't you?" And she looked up and she said, "Oh, there's a black cloud up there. It's going to rain. No, I don't think we should go." I said, "Okay." I knew we weren't going. She wants, she wants to go and get her shrimp platter at this one restaurant. And I would love to go, too. But I'm not going to go because I don't know who sat in the chair or did they get the table cleaned off or the bottles or the ketchup, or who touched it? Who touched the dish? You know. AD (02:39:57): Just the simplest things. KS (02:39:58): I want to live. I don't want to die yet. AD (02:40:03): Yeah. KS (02:40:03): And I don't have any intentions of it. So she goes home and I called her and I said, "Well, it didn't rain over here." She, "Well, it rained. I thought it was gonna rain over here." And I said, "Oh, I'm just kidding you." She said, "I know." But we keep track of how many people have the virus, how many people died and I'm just not willing to give up my life. AD (02:40:28): Yeah. It's important to be careful. And I think we'd all like to go back to what used to be normal, you know, going to a restaurant. It's just... Things have changed. KS (02:40:36): Oh, they'll never, we will never, ever, ever see another normal. There is no normal. AD (02:40:46): Yeah. Yeah. I, I think that's right. I think that's right. So before, before we go, I want to ask you specifically, if you ever heard maybe any stories about some of the Jacobsen family businesses. Maybe that you weren't alive for, right. But like, did anyone ever talk to you about the Arlington Bottle Company or the laundry or the hotel or the Ford dealership that you'd like to share? KS (02:41:18): So all I know was that my great-grandfather had the first Ford dealership. He knew Mr. Ford in Washington. I know that my uncle Gene, my great uncle [Eugene R. Jacobsen]. And Gene, Gene always had medical problems. He, he... He had something to do with the laundry and my uncle, Charlie, my great uncle, had something to do with the laundry. See when great-grandfather lived on Albemarle Street, there were three generations that lived in that house. My great-grandmother, my great- grandfather, their son, Charles, his wife, Gertrude, and their three kids lived on the third floor. Charles Betty and Lois. AD (02:42:24): Packed house. KS (02:42:24): Huh? AD (02:42:25): That's a packed house. KS (02:42:27): But it was a, it's a huge house. AD (02:42:29): Okay. That's true. KS (02:42:32): You can go there if you-- It's a, it's an embassy now. Somebody's embassy bought it, I heard. I don't know. The... Some middle, middle European agen-- embassy bought it. Oh no, it's huge. AD (02:42:52): So they had room for all these family members. KS (02:42:56): What, honey? AD (02:42:56): So they had a lot of room for all these family members. KS (02:42:59): Yeah. But... So they all lived in the house and Eugene, who was sick. He had married and had kids and his wife Sue, I think left him. So great-grandmother took him back in the house and he lived as you walked in the front door, straight ahead was a wall with a big couch and everybody just threw their coats down. And then there was a stairway off to the left and it went up to the landing and then it went up to another landing. And at the top of the second landing, there was... It would be like a, a little library room and uncle Gene, he slept there. So that, so that great-grandmother could keep her eye on him. I don't know what his medical problem was. I know he had one. I know that he lived there and... I, I don't, I never knew too much about it. Because then you walked up another couple of stairs and great- grandmother's room was this huge-- These were big rooms. I mean like ball rooms. Her bedroom was there and she had a bath and she had a like a terrace out one door, which was over, over the pool. They had a card, card room downstairs on the first floor. And she had a deck out over that room. It's the biggest house you ever saw in your life. And then great-grandfather, you walk to the right. And then he had a big bedroom. And then the next bedroom was Char- was Charles and Gertrude's and they had a bathroom out in the hall. Great-Grandfather had a bathroom in his room. And then you went up another flight of stairs, and there were three bedrooms up there where the great-grandchildren lived. And that was Charles, Betty and Lois. And they all lived there. They had a housekeeper, you know. AD (02:45:24): Do you remember the housekeeper? KS (02:45:27): Little Pearl. Yeah. Oh yeah. Pearl was, she was part of the family, but she, she ran that house, you know. AD (02:45:36): Was she, do you remember if she was African American? KS (02:45:40): She was always there. Sh-- she, I-- From what I remember she did not live on the premises, but she, she, she... That house was, she-- It was like, she owned it. She knew every crook and you know, every little corner. When I, when I, when I go over by myself, like on a Sunday afternoon and... She'd be there, and my aunt Gertrude. I'd go over and visit my great-grandfather and great-grandmother and my aunt Gertrude. And she'd make me, you know, she said, "Now it's gonna get dark, Karla, so you gotta have some- something to eat before you go." And she'd make me some kind of sandwich and a glass of milk before I left. AD (02:46:26): Cute. KS (02:46:26): And I'd go over to Connecticut Avenue, get back on the bus and go home. But I was okay with that. I wouldn't do that today. AD (02:46:34): It sounds like you're a very independent little girl. KS (02:46:38): Well, yeah, but I wanted to, you know what? I think those, those people were nice to me. They were my, they were my family. And even though my mother didn't care, you know, I wanted to... This is what I wanted to do. And I would just say, "Well, I'm going to go..." I would call and I'd say to my aunt Gertrude, "Can I come over and visit?" "Oh yeah, come over anytime you want today." I'd go over and Pearl would have, you know, there would be snacks and everything. They had a huge kitchen, too. I mean, that kitchen was huge. AD (02:47:18): Fun! KS (02:47:18): I can see that-- I can see why that house can be an embassy. And I think that's an interesting thing too, that my great-grandfather's house is now an embassy of a country. AD (02:47:31): That's really cool. Not many people can say that. KS (02:47:35): No, no, they can't. And I can say, I know where all the rooms are and I know where they used to play, play poker. And I know where-- We never, we never ate in the dining room. I don't know why they had a dining room. AD (02:47:52): You were always out on that sun porch? KS (02:47:54): Every meal was out on this big, huge porch that was the complete length of the back of the house. It was huge. AD (02:48:04): That sounds lovely. That sounds lovely. So your, your great-grandfather was, so he, he was a banker as well, right? So that's... KS (02:48:14): Yeah, he was the Chairman of the Board of Metropolitan. AD (02:48:19): Okay. And what-- Had he been involved in the bottling company at all? Or had he always kind of been a banker? KS (02:48:26): Well, I think he was, I think he was the one... He owned the laundry and he owned the bottling company. AD (02:48:35): Okay. KS (02:48:35): And he owned the first Ford dealership in Washington. AD (02:48:42): Okay, so he owned all of those. KS (02:48:42): I think he was the one that got into places and he was on the board of those two German homes in Washington, too. AD (02:48:52): So he was really a mover and a shaker. He was financing things. KS (02:48:56): If you read his will, he left money to the German homes in his will. He was very-- AD (02:49:02): And Christian Heurich did that, too. He was involved in that, right? KS (02:49:07): Yes. Yeah. Yeah. My grandfather. Oh yeah. AD (02:49:12): Did, did you ever hear any stories about the bottling company from him? KS (02:49:17): No. Just that it was there, nor the laundry. I knew they had them, you know, they weren't, I didn't need them. So. AD (02:49:24): It wasn't important. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That makes sense. KS (02:49:29): But I knew it was part of whatever was going on and, you know, back then, whatever was going on was... Today I think it would be a different story. It would be, you know, what am I gonna do? What am I going to be? When am I going to go? That type of thing today. Back then they were just my family. I didn't care what they did. AD (02:49:59): And there was no like expectations. KS (02:50:01): I didn't really, I don't think I ever realized who they were or what they were doing. To be honest with you. AD (02:50:10): You didn't realize like, "Wow, I'm part of a pretty important Washington family." KS (02:50:16): Yeah. Yeah. And, and it just goes to show you that book that that professor wrote-- I got, I have a copy of it. I think it's, I think you've got them in the Heurich House. Chris has one. AD (02:50:31): I have one, too, yeah. KS (02:50:31): He got one from the Heurich House. I bought, I got mine from the professor, because I couldn't find it online. So I wrote to him. AD (02:50:42): Go straight to the source. That's nice. KS (02:50:42): So I got it from him. AD (02:50:46): That's lovely. KS (02:50:46): Yeah. I just think that... That was... This might seem funny. That was life, and they dealt with what life dealt them. AD (02:51:01): Mhmm. KS (02:51:01): Today, "This is my life. And I deal with life, with what life is dealing me." AD (02:51:08): Sure, sure. KS (02:51:12): I'm trying to stay alive from the virus and not get it. AD (02:51:16): Yep. KS (02:51:16): Because I know that if I got it, my son would go ballistic and I don't want him to have any more pressure than he's got right now. AD (02:51:27): Yeah. KS (02:51:28): I still like, I, I... And, and it was interesting. Working with, with the nonprofit that I do and the board that I'm on. AD (02:51:39): Then that's the food bank, right? KS (02:51:42): Yeah. Well, it's a food bank plus everything else. We do housing. We do medical. We do anything. We go from one thing... And now I know that in August, the third week in August, I've got to work that whole week because we're going to do the same thing all over again. AD (02:52:03): That's wonderful that you do that. KS (02:52:05): Yeah. Because somebody made a mistake in the letter that was sent out from, from, from the food stamp people. And... They had the wrong dates in there and they said that there's going to be one in August. So now we've got to do it again. AD (02:52:21): Can you describe like what a day is like for you when you work there for this recording? I know you've talked to me about it before, but take me through your day there. KS (02:52:30): [Narrator Clears throat] Well, what it is is we have the... Federal food banks have distribution places all over the world. And this is all food that's not let-- that's leftover, not consumed. They don't buy it. They just get it. And we get a list of what's there. And we say, "Alright, we want 40 cases of this. So many cases of that." We know approximately how many people we need to feed. And we know-- Like this last five days that we worked, we fed 950 individuals. And of that 381 were households. So it meant that the household had more than one person in it. Some have two, some have four, some have six. We have households come with eight people in it. AD (02:53:34): And so-- KS (02:53:34): And these, these people are people that are below the poverty line that this food goes to. It's free of charge, but they have to come and get it. And we are now going to do it again in August for five days. They just come, they drive up, they show us their letter through the window. We write their name and address, and how many people are in the family on a list. They go up, their car is loaded with how much food. And it's, it's like... They don't ever get out of their car. They have to wear their mask. And they get food for the month. Now we'll do the same thing again in August. AD (02:54:24): That's-- That must be such a lifeline for those people, especially right now. KS (02:54:29): Yeah. Well, I mean, you've got at least close to 400 households that are being fed. AD (02:54:39): Yeah. That's wonderful. KS (02:54:39): And, you know, like... One of the ladies who volunteers is a recipient. She is-- And she called me the other day. She said, "Oh, you should see." And she said, "I brought my food home. You should see the nice things." She said, "I got a half a frozen turkey breast." She said, "I got frozen this and frozen that." You do get some frozen foods, so you've got to have a freezer or go home and cook it real quick. AD (02:55:10): Yeah. KS (02:55:10): But she said, "I got fresh vegetables." She said, "I got--" And have you ever heard of the word gleaning? AD (02:55:22): Yeah. KS (02:55:22): Gleaning is when a large grocery store gives-- Glean, glean-- We glean from all the large grocery stores in the County. AD (02:55:37): So it's like, you take what they don't want or their seconds, or, yeah. KS (02:55:42): Right. They give us the minute-- If it's day old bread, we get it. We give it away that day. So it's still fresh. AD (02:55:51): Yeah. And it cuts down on food waste. KS (02:55:55): Yeah. And it, it-- There's no waste whatsoever. AD (02:56:00): That's great. KS (02:56:00): Anything that has a... A day old date on it they give us. And we pick up from-- There's two or three food, food banks that they service. So Monday through Friday, we might get everything from Walmart on Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. And we have a volunteer who takes one of our big padlocked trucks over to the back door-- It's already ready. They pack it in our truck. He brings it right to where, our facility. It's unpacked and put away right away. And it's it's if, if it's day old bread, what we do-- Because a lot of people come by for bread and maybe vegetables. And we have metal racks that we put them in, and we put plastic bags out there and they can come and take whatever they need. AD (02:57:02): That's wonderful. KS (02:57:02): Supposedly, supposedly they only supposed to use two plastic bags, but I see people going off with more than that. And I said, you know what? If they took it, they might need it. Maybe they're giving it to their next door neighbor. You can't, can't argue over it. AD (02:57:18): No, no. That's, that's a wonderful thing that you're involved in. I love that. KS (02:57:22): I mean, they get, they get cakes, they get pies, they-- Anything from the bakery. You should see the, the French bread that they get. I mean, they just get tons of stuff. AD (02:57:36): That's great. KS (02:57:36): They get bagels, they get, you know-- And any fresh vegetables. Now we go, when we get the vegetables, we go through them and we might have to throw away 5% of it, but it's all cleaned up and put on racks and you can take your plastic bag and you can take some carrots, you can take some string beans. You can take this, you can take that. And all of that, you don't even have to ask us for it. You just can come. And if it's there, you just take it. We have the racks right out in front of our food pantry. We're in a... It's, it's, it's a shopping center and we have one, two, three, four... We have six of the units that we rent from this man. And he gave us a good deal because we have a 10 year lease. AD (02:58:34): That's great. KS (02:58:34): And, you know, it'll be past my time. I mean, I'll know I, before we ever use that lease. But we use every inch of that space. Every inch of it. We used to have a thrift store. It wasn't doing that well, we gave everything away. And now it's a food pantry. AD (02:58:56): It's such an important, an important service that you all provide. KS (02:59:00): Keeps me out of trouble. [narrator And interviewer laugh] AD (02:59:03): I don't know. I don't know if I believe that. [interviewer laughs] KS (02:59:09): Oh like I'll start something sometime, you know. [narrator chuckles] AD (02:59:11): Yeah. Why not? Why not? One more question about your memories of kind of growing up, and then I have one final question after that, but I wonder if you have any memories of Christian or Amelia Heurich that we haven't talked about, about them as people that you want to share? KS (02:59:35): No, not really. Because most of the time in growing up, it was when my dad, you know, would take-- My dad was... He was the Heurich House inside, out and backwards. AD (02:59:49): Yeah. Because he spent so much time there as a kid. KS (02:59:52): Now, Christian is, is taken over that way, but... It was, you know, he would call me and say, "Hey, you know, I'm going down to the Heurich House." A lot of the times that we went, it was when it was open house for the family and it was somebody's birthday, or somebody was doing this. It, it... You just, you just didn't drop in. You know what I mean? AD (03:00:21): And when you were at those gatherings, what did you do? Did you have cousins who you would talk to? KS (03:00:27): Yeah. Yeah. I mean the whole, they would invite everybody that was related. So everybody was there. And you could go in, you know, like when you come in the front door and that room off to the right, you'd see people sitting in there talking. You'd see people, people back in this solarium talking. It was a way that I think that he kept in contact with the whole family because once an invitation was, you know, issued it wasn't two or three people. Was everybody. AD (03:01:11): It was a big thing. KS (03:01:11): But it was, it was, it was a big thing, but it was it was a family thing. AD (03:01:17): Were you close to any of your cousins? KS (03:01:22): The only time... [narrator pauses] No, I was, I was probably the youngest one that was there most of the time. AD (03:01:43): And so you probably just kind of hung out with your dad, I would imagine. KS (03:01:47): Yeah. Or, or you you'd go look at things and you know, you could walk around, nobody minded. You could walk into any of the rooms. I never went, I never went upstairs. AD (03:01:59): Always the first floor. KS (03:02:01): It just always, everything was always on the first floor. AD (03:02:04): What was like the most memorable part of that house for you? KS (03:02:09): But it's... I just think in awe of... [narrator pauses] That it was as... To me it was always like a museum. [narrator And interviewer chuckle] That's a terrible thing to say, but I mean, everything was so precise, you know. AD (03:02:36): You didn't feel like you could touch stuff. KS (03:02:38): No. And I'd look up at the ceiling. I'd say, "Well, how did that get up there?" You know. AD (03:02:43): The ones with the paintings on it? KS (03:02:46): Right. But, but yet you felt comfortable because it was your family. You know what I mean? It didn't bother me. And I can remember going there... I think my dad had died. I don't even know why I was there. AD (03:03:09): This is recent? KS (03:03:09): I was, I was I was taking pictures and somebody said, "Well, you can't do that." And I said, "What do you mean I can't do that?" "You can't take pictures of anything in here." And I said, "Oh, okay. Why?" "Well, this is a museum." It had turned into the, the fi-- the second, the first museum at the time. And I couldn't take pictures of it. I said, "Well, I don't know why I can't." And they said, "Well, you know, this is, this is the family." And I said, "Well, you know, but I think I'm part of the family." They didn't know it. They said, "Well, you still can't take pictures." And I just-- When, when the lady went out, I just continued taking pictures. I have no idea what I took pictures of, or why I was taking pictures. I think it was in, I think I was in the dining room. AD (03:04:09): Uh-Huh. With all the pretty woodwork. KS (03:04:09): And that back wall intrigued me. I wanted pictures of that. And, and Gary also had a, had a function that I, that I, I was invited to. My dad and Theo, and I went. And I didn't know, half the people. I mean, I-- They were relatives. I don't know who he invited or what was going on, but he was, he was prominent. And I remember him sitting down next to me and, and he he said, you know, "I'm Gary Heurich." And I said, "Well, I'm Karla Jacobsen Squier." And he said, "Oh, you must be a relative." And I said, "Yeah, and I know who you are." It was when he was trying to run the brewery, the the Heurich Beer. AD (03:05:03): Yeah. KS (03:05:03): And wasn't doing too well. AD (03:05:05): Yeah. Still a little too early for the, all the craft brew and local stuff that blew up a little later. KS (03:05:13): Yeah. That didn't work out. AD (03:05:14): Was he sort of a charismatic guy? KS (03:05:14): And then he and his friend, all of a sudden just disappeared from the face of the earth. He, he... He seemed-- That time I met him, he just seemed disconnected for some reason. AD (03:05:38): How so? KS (03:05:38): Not sure. I couldn't understand-- Here he was sitting-- I can remember I was sitting in a chair and he came and sat on my left and he introduced himself. I did not recognize him cause I hadn't been around for years, you know? And I think it was his function. AD (03:06:00): Maybe like a fundraiser or something? KS (03:06:03): And my dad want it to go. So, so, but it was a... It was when it was the museum, before they, before they gave it to the District. AD (03:06:17): Wait, so it was when the, I think it was probably one of the Historical Society was there before-- KS (03:06:23): Probably. AD (03:06:23): The current his-- the current Heurich House Museum that exists that I'm a part of. KS (03:06:28): Yeah. And then they gave it to the DC historical society. AD (03:06:34): Well, that happened a lot earlier that happened like in the '50s after Amelia died. KS (03:06:39): Oh it did? AD (03:06:39): Yeah. And so the Historical Society used it as their headquarters for many years. And then I think in like, '06-- KS (03:06:48): Then they gave it back. AD (03:06:48): No, they didn't give it. They sold-- They put it up for sale and Gary and Jan Evans bought it. KS (03:06:54): Bought it. Bought it back. AD (03:06:54): And yeah. And so that is how the current iteration of the Heurich House Museum started. KS (03:07:03): Do they have many people that come? AD (03:07:05): We did before COVID. [narrator chuckles] Yeah, I'd give tours. And we would have a lot of people on the tours and there's a lot of really fun events that we used to have. We used to have Oktoberfests, we have a Christmas market with local businesses and artisans. They've recreated the Senate beer recipe and an apple cider recipe. And they sell that. It's a really, it's a cool spot. So, yeah. I love working there. KS (03:07:37): Oh, yeah. It is. I think... I had gotten-- Chris or I had gotten something and I called Mary Jean and I said, "You know, Mary Jean, you should, you should go down there." I said, and Tim flew down from, from Vermont and went with her to this, to one of the functions. And she, she said she really enjoyed it. Cause of course she's that much younger than I am. AD (03:08:02): Yeah. I think she talked to Allison when she was there. KS (03:08:02): I mean, when she was eight years old, when her dad died, you know. AD (03:08:12): John. KS (03:08:12): And her mother, yeah. And her mother just sort of held it all together for a long time. But... And then of course our other cousin, Tim, well, Mike passed away. There were-- My, my aunt, Jean Jacobson, my dad's sister had an adopted son, Mike, and then had a son, Tim. Well Mike passed away, Oh, probably 10 or 12 years ago. And Tim lives in Vermont. He was a teacher and he retired and he inherited property from his dad, at a little lake. And he and his partner live out there. AD (03:09:03): Okay. That sounds nice. KS (03:09:06): So that's-- Mary Jean has more-- In fact, they went through here. Mary Jean, her husband and Tim, they came, they went through here about a year ago. They had met in Florida and they were going back to Maryland and they stopped here. And I talked to Mary Jean every once in awhile. Tim sort of is evasive, he's in his own little world. AD (03:09:30): I see. Yeah. We wrote to Mary Jean. She actually called me, I think you must've told her about the interview. And so she, she actually, she called me and I wrote her a note back and we're going to try to email-- to interview her in the future for a future project. KS (03:09:49): Oh, she, she, she, she is. She's terrific. She was a radio commentator and she worked for National Geographic. AD (03:09:57): Yeah. Yeah. We'd, we'd love to talk to her when we, when we have another funded project. But... KS (03:10:02): Yeah. She's always been in-- She's always been in the loop in Washington. She went to school, went to college in West Virginia and stayed away and then came back and never, never left. You know. AD (03:10:18): Yeah, yeah. KS (03:10:18): She-- What, what, what she can tell on her dad's side, because even though she was only eight years old, they were very, very close and she went everywhere with her dad. She went all over, even, even with multiple sclerosis, but yeah. AD (03:10:41): Yeah. Well I have one wrap up question that I ask everybody for this project, and that is, what do you think the American dream kind of meant to your family through the years? And what does it mean to you? KS (03:11:02): Well, I think to the family, I think the word family is, is the word. They were a family. They were always together. There was always family things, you know. It if it wasn't every week, it was every month or every two months. There was always... When-- And they all got together and they, they were all part of-- Which is a great big family. And everybody knew everybody. And you might not see them for two weeks or three weeks or hear from them for a month. But when you got together and 99% of the Jacobsen part was at great-grandfather's house on Albemarle street. They loved to entertain. And when they had entertaining, everybody got invited and it was just, you just, you practically came and spent the day. AD (03:12:11): Yeah. That sounds like fun. KS (03:12:14): Yeah. And then Christmas, Easter any of the holidays were fun. But my, my part, personally, is the times when I was free to get on a bus and go down and have my grandfather and my great-grandfather all to myself. Those were the times I liked. When it was me. I didn't need any permission to go. I didn't need it. All I needed was a token to get on a bus as a token to get back on the bus. AD (03:12:47): So it sounds like, you know, a lot of people talk about the American dream, they talk about an immigrant coming to the States with a dream and then being successful and working hard. But it, it sounds to me like what you associate that American dream with is being able to be with family and freedom to move around and be independent. KS (03:13:11): Yeah. I don't think I really knew growing up what all the business was, all the, all the parts to the, to the picture were, and it didn't matter. Cause these were, this was my family and they wanted me. You know? AD (03:13:32): So the businesses were not important? KS (03:13:32): They allowed me to be, they allowed me to come and they, they welcomed-- I was never not welcomed in either, in any of the places. A lot of times, 90% of the times I'd go by myself, you know. Just me, a little kid going around Washington. AD (03:13:52): That's so cute. I love that image. KS (03:13:52): But I don't think, I don't think it would happen today. AD (03:13:58): What wouldn't? You going around or the way that your family lived? KS (03:14:03): I don't, I don't think I'd be comfortable with my granddaughters being carefree. I was carefree. I wasn't afraid of anything, right? Cause there was nothing to be afraid of. AD (03:14:19): Yeah. That's, that's wonderful that you felt that way. That's really special. KS (03:14:23): And my family, my family, no matter who, what, when, where, why I was always welcomed, you know. I could call up and say "Can I come tomorrow?" Or they call me and say, "Karla, we're having this. We're having that. Be here." I, you know, and my mother didn't get invited and I got invited. So I went by myself. AD (03:14:49): Yeah. I love that vision of you as a little kid, riding the bus around. Cause you want to spend time with your family. That's adorable. KS (03:14:54): Oh it didn't bother me. I knew how to get on a bus and I do have to change buses. I knew where it was going. I knew I could go across Park Road and go over and get on another bus and go up Connecticut Avenue. I, you know, I knew all the bus stops. AD (03:15:12): Yeah. That's great. KS (03:15:12): And I don't think today... I would be nervous if I had a 10 or 12 year old kid getting on buses and going around. First of all, I don't think there's any more buses. AD (03:15:25): No, there's lots of buses. Plenty of buses. I mean there's-- KS (03:15:30): Oh you have lots of busses? AD (03:15:30): Yeah. There's, there's still Metro that is also really good, but to get some places like to get across town from Petworth to Albermarle you would have to take a bus. KS (03:15:45): Oh, okay. AD (03:15:45): Yeah. There's no Metro line that does that. Unless, you know, you want to go all the way around. KS (03:15:53): I see what you mean. AD (03:15:53): But yeah, like there's-- Buses are still really important, actually. KS (03:15:59): But you see, those streetcars were, were just as important to me. AD (03:16:03): Yeah. I love the idea of streetcars. We have one that's been put back in on H street, but it doesn't-- In my opinion do much that the bus doesn't already do cause they still have a bus on that route. So, I don't know. I think the street cars that you had were great. KS (03:16:19): Well that street car on Georgia Avenue went all the way from the district line to... Where did it turn around? To... It stopped and turned around at the... Oh, what's that? The, the war building down there at the end, by the pier? AD (03:16:45): I'm... KS (03:16:46): Go down Seventh Street all the way past the pier down by the river. What's the, what's the government building? Is it... Not the war Memorial building? There's a government complex. AD (03:16:59): Well the Navy Yard is down there. KS (03:16:59): The Navy Yard. AD (03:17:01): Yeah. KS (03:17:01): The street car went all the way from Maryland-- The district line and Maryland all the way to the Navy Yard. AD (03:17:10): Oh my goodness. KS (03:17:10): You could get on the street car and ride all that way. AD (03:17:13): That's a long ride, I bet. KS (03:17:15): Yeah, it was. I lived on those street cars. AD (03:17:19): What would you do? Would you just sit and watch? Did you bring a book or a magazine? KS (03:17:24): Yeah, no. You just look out the window and see what was going on, you know. When I'd go to my grandfather's down on First Street, I'd get on the street car right, right by my house. A block from my house. And go all the way down to First Street-- To that, that building, then I'd get off there and I'd walk all the way over to First Street, and then all the way down First Street to his house. It was about a mile. That was my mother's part of the family. AD (03:17:56): That sounds, that sounds like quite a journey. How long did that take you? KS (03:18:02): I don't know, but I did it, you know. [interviewer chuckles] AD (03:18:05): Oh, that's great. I love that. KS (03:18:08): But that was it. That's all you had. Like I told you, my dad had a car, but my mother didn't have a car till I graduated, until I got out of my sophomore year at high school. AD (03:18:21): Where did you learn to drive? KS (03:18:24): 27? I didn't need one. AD (03:18:27): You were 27 when you learned to drive? So you were in New Jersey by that point. KS (03:18:32): Right. Cause I was always near transportation. AD (03:18:36): Yeah. That's funny. Well, Karla, this has been wonderful. Thank you again so much for talking to me. Do you have anything to add before I stop recording? KS (03:18:48): No, I'm just, I'm just very comfortable in my own skin and I'm very glad that I have the genes from people that had the fortitude. I don't think I'd be what I am today. If I didn't have my ancestors being so forceful. I mean, it's, it's definitely ingrained in me. AD (03:19:13): You say forceful, do you have an example of an ancestor being forceful? KS (03:19:19): Very opinionated, very "I'm having it my way." "I don't think it's right." I, I always have an opinion on everything, you know. AD (03:19:30): Okay. Okay. KS (03:19:33): And here's an example. When I went to church yesterday, the church secretary says, "did you get the latest letter?" And I said, "No." And I don't get my mail except every couple of days, cause I'm not going out. So she said-- I said, "What's it say?" And it said, well, now they're taking up a collection where, for the minister and I didn't say anything. So I get outside. And I said to my friend, Sue, "He's making close to $100,000. He's not a good minister. I'm glad he's retiring and I'm not sending any money into him. He's got enough." And she says, "Okay." AD (03:20:14): So that's an example of kind of just being opinionated, and you feel like you got that from your family? KS (03:20:19): Yeah. I mean, I really had to bite my tongue to write a note that they're going to put in this book about, "Oh, how wonderful you were." I wrote it very carefully. And I said, "I just wish you and your wife a blessed life ahead. Enjoy your grandchildren and stay well." You know, I, I, I can't be phony. [narrator And interviewer chuckle] That's terrible. I can't be phony. AD (03:20:50): That's also, you know, that's also wonderful. That's important. You are who you are. Well, I'm gonna, I'm gonna stop recording. Thank you again. We'll stay on the line. That's it.