Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum
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Nordic American Voices Nordic Heritage Museum Interview of Lisa Hill-Festa March 28, 2015 Seattle, Washington Interviewers: Mari-Ann Kind Jackson; Sarah Peterson Mari-Ann Kind Jackson: [0:09] This is an oral history interview for Nordic American Voices at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle. We are interviewing today Lisa Hill-Festa, the former Curator of Collections here at the museum. We are at the museum, Lisa, so this is very nice to have you come back here. It is March 28, 2015. Interviewing is Mari-Ann Kind Jackson and Sarah Peterson. Welcome, Lisa. It’s wonderful to have you here. Lisa Hill-Festa: [0:43] Thank you. It’s like being home again. [Laughter] Mari-Ann: [0:44] Yes. I can well imagine. Would you start by stating your full name, your date of birth, and where you were born, and then share with us what you would like about your life, and specifically about your life at the museum. Lisa: [0:59] Okay. Sounds good. I am Lisa Margo Hill-Festa. I was born on August 16, 1952, or as I tell my students or my former students, 19 [mumbles]. Laughter. But 1952, in Pensacola, Florida. I guess I can start by saying I was a Navy brat. My father was a Naval Commander, and I just want to say a couple words about him. He is no longer with us. He passed away at ninety-three, about three years ago. [1:45] But he had quite a few accomplishments while he was in the Navy. One of which, he commanded the first dirigible, or airship, or blimp, across the Atlantic Ocean. I know this is about me, but I wanted to bring him in, just to honor him. He made his career the Navy, so therefore, I was in the Navy, too [laughter] as a dependent, so we moved quite a bit. [2:20] Let me pull my little cheat-sheet out here. So, I was born in Pensacola, Florida, because Dad was stationed there, of course, at that time, with his family. My mom, Nancy Grant Hill, and my older sister, who is seven years older than I am- Andrea Joan Hill, now Swanson- we then went with Dad to Pensacola, where I was born. [2:54] I lived in Pensacola for a year, and then we went… Dad was stationed somewhere. I’m not sure where. And we did not go with him, so we went back to Marblehead, Massachusetts, where my family on my mom’s side, the Grants, are from. We lived there for about three months while Dad was stationed wherever it was that we couldn’t go. [3:26] Marblehead also is very near and dear to my heart. Moving around so much as a child, it is hard to really say that you have a place to call home. And I also very much envied a lot of the people here that I worked with, especially the volunteers, the first generations who came from Sweden, Nordic American Voices Page 1 of 29 Norway, Finland etcetera, because they could call that home. [4:03] And you know, I’ve never really had a home. So making a long story long, getting back to it- Marblehead, Massachusetts- I call that home, because that’s where my relatives on my mom’s side are from. I’m very close to a lot of my cousins who still live in Massachusetts, and then a branch that moved up to Maine. And that’s where we would go. Not every summer, but a lot of summers when I was a kid. [4:30] We’d go back home, in a sense, to my mom’s home, but it was my home too. A very familiar place, and a very fun place. My very favorite beach in all the world is there, called Devereux Beach. I’m really disheartened about the fact that you have to pay to use that beach now. We never had to when we were kids. We just walked from Grandmother’s house- Grammy, we would call her, and we just walked down the road apiece, and just lived on the beach and lived in the water the whole time. [5:08] So then according to my mother, I celebrated my first birthday in Marblehead, Massachusetts. That’s kind of fun. So then Dad was transferred to Coronado, California. So we moved to California. Of course, I was really young. I don’t remember it at all. Mom said we arrived in early December of 1953. So being born in 1952, I was still pretty young. [5:41] Then from there, we moved to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, in 1954. We were there for about two years. And this was where my younger sister was born, Carrie Leigh Hill. But of course, I was so young, I don’t remember North Carolina, either. But at least I can say I lived there. [6:09] Then we moved… Dad was stationed again. We moved back to California, to Castro Valley, California. This is where now I start remembering things more. I went to kindergarten in Castro Valley there. I remember Dad was able to get movies from just some perks, being part of the Navy. It was the old movie reels. [6:40] And he got King Kong. I can remember this vividly. The original King Kong. And it scared the bejeebers out of me so much, that I swore King Kong, this huge, huge gorilla, lived in our basement. So I would not go in our basement. I was like, “King Kong is down there. No. I’m not going.” My mother was like, “No, King Kong is not down there.” [Laughter] [7:09] Another really vivid memory I have is of our neighbors across the street, and they had kittens. My dad didn’t like cats. We always had dogs. We had German Shepherds at the time, Kip and Thor. I loved cats. I adored cats. And so I remember playing with the kittens across the street. One time my mom was watching me, and I guess I snuck across the street, and put two kittens under my arms and came back home, and my mom goes, “Lisa Hill, you take those kittens back.” [Laughter] I also remember there was a donkey that lived down the street that I used to go visit. I remember kindergarten. So those were really my first strong recollections of things. [7:59] So from Castro Valley, California… We lived there from 1956 to 1958. We moved to Naha, Okinawa. That was in 1958, and we lived there for about eighteen months. For me, that was a really, really amazing, amazing experience. That was one of the great things about being a Navy brat- being able to move different places and experience so many different things. Here was experiencing a whole different country, a whole different culture. Nordic American Voices Page 2 of 29 [8:47] I have great memories from there, some of them… Part of the perks of being a Naval Commander… spoiled my mom. We had gardeners; we had two Okinawan live-in maids, and cooks. She had a tailor. You would have thought we were really, really rich, you know, but it was just part of the perks of being there. So, my younger sister Carrie and I did learn some Japanese, some Okinawan, but we really don’t remember that much anymore. There are some things I do, and some of the songs I remember, that the maids used to sing to us. [9:36] When the Okinawan women do their chores, they kind of squat. I really can’t show it. They just squat on their… Not on their knees, but squat down, and just kind of do things. I still do that. I mean, it’s just something I learned to do, just kind of squat, and work like an Okinawan. Just a lot of… Some quick memories- the Captain lived next door to us. Of course, the Captain was the Captain, and got a lot more benefits. But he had a fish pond with koi, and stuff. [10:21] We had a little Japanese French poodle named [Japanese words 10:25]-Sake, which means “Rear Admiral Sake,” the drink, in Okinawan or Japanese. Every time Sake and my little sister were gone… She would just open the door and wander away, even with my mom and two maids there. She was quite something. It was always, “Okay, Lisa, will you go to the Captain’s pond and see if they’re there?” Sure enough, Sake would be swimming in the pond, and Carrie would be playing, or lots of times her shoes would be missing. “Lisa, will you go to the pond and see if her shoes are there?” [Laughter] [11:02] One day, too, she disappeared. We lived pretty much across the street from the Naha Naval Air Station. One day we got a knock on the door, and a young airman was at the door with my little sister in tow, going, “Lady, is this your kid?” She was walking along the airstrip. It was like, “Oh, my gosh.” So, she was quite something. [11:34] One of the things that I vividly remember, too, was every time we went out, the maids would say, “Watch out for the habus.” Habus are poisonous snakes there. There were a lot of kind of tropical, subtropical-type woods that we loved to play in. But they were concerned.