EILEEN LINGHAM WALKER. Born 1941.

Transcript of OH 1314

This interview was recorded on Nov. 17 and 24, 2001, for the Voices of Black Women of Boulder County Oral History Project, directed by University of Colorado at Boulder Professor Polly McLean. The interviewer is Anthony Harper. The interview was transcribed by Sandy Adler.

NOTES: Interviewer’s questions and comments appear in parentheses. Added material appears in parentheses.

ABSTRACT: Eileen Lingham Walker, whose family on her father’s side has lived in Boulder since the 1890s, talks about the family’s history here, including the founding of the Second Baptist Church by her grandparents, her experience of growing up as one of a small number of African American students in Boulder during the 1940s and 1950s, the role of religion in her life, and her close-knit family and neighborhood. She also talks about her career in medical technology and the missionary and ministry work with which she is involved.

[A].

00:00 (OK, go head and state your full name.)

Eileen Lingham Walker.

(So Lingham, is that your—?)

Maiden name.

(That’s your maiden name? And Walker. OK. Have you ever gone by any other names? If so, what are they?)

Not really. They call me Leenie sometimes. I think I got that more from my Navy days.

(Navy days! I hope I brought enough tape! [laughs] So tell me what you remember most about your childhood.)

That could be a leading question. What do I remember most about my childhood? It was good. Boulder was a smaller town then. It was pretty good. My older brother and older sister and I and then my younger brother following me, we all went to school at Whittier. We lived on 24th and Mapleton in a two-story house. We lived right on a corner. There was a dirt road between us and our neighbors across the street. We spent a lot of time in that street area playing baseball.

One of the neat things was, my dad found out that my sister and I liked to ice skate. Actually, we got some ice skates for Christmas, and a neighbor, when it snowed this one time, there was like a big kind of pool of ice or water, it was water at one time and it froze up at night, and we tried to ice skate out there, and my dad saw that. We had a flat back yard, a big back yard. He shoveled it, put the snow to the side, filled it with water and made an ice skating rink. Well, when the

neighbors found out that we had that, then we had all the neighbors to our house using the skating rink. That was kind of a neat time. We learned how to ice skate then.

Having all the neighbors, we had neighbors of all kinds, Hispanic, Caucasian. There weren’t too many blacks. There weren’t hardly any blacks. In fact, my sister going through school and my older brother and myself and my younger brother were probably the only ones in our class, though there were other black people in Boulder. I think they went to Lincoln. We were the only ones at Whittier. Probably the only ones at Casey Junior High. And then when we went to Boulder High, there were very few of us there. So we were probably the only ones.

(While you were growing up, were you aware of the low percentage of blacks in your area?)

I think we probably did, but we kind of made—like, we met with, because our church was mainly a black church, so we met with others. Yeah, I’m pretty sure we knew there weren’t very many, didn’t notice very many in Boulder. We were fairly well integrated. Whoever was in the neighborhood, they were our friends. So it wasn’t a big deal.

(So seeing very few blacks in that area, how would you describe your relationship with your siblings?)

It was pretty good. My older brother always seemed a lot older. We didn’t play around a lot with him. My sister was a year-and-a-half older than I was, so we played a lot during our growing-up years.

(So you pretty much integrated with kids your age as opposed to—?)

Yeah.

04:54 (Did you have any brothers and sisters? Of course you did. What are their names, and tell me a little bit about each of them.)

My older brother, his name, we call him Reggie, but it’s Reginald Irving Lingham. He’s the oldest in the family. Seemed like he was a lot older, but he wasn’t, he’s probably about five years older than me. I think he’s about five years older than me. He did some sports in Boulder and then as soon as he graduated from high school went into the Navy, got to travel around the world. We have a lot of relatives in California, in the San Francisco area, so after he got out of the Navy, he ended up staying out there. He’s still out there, in California. They really like that area. He did some sports, yeah, football, I’m not sure he did basketball. I know he did football. He’s still a sports person.

Janice Lingham Osborne is about a year and a half older than I am. She took piano. All of us took an instrument. Both my brothers play the horn. I play the piano a little bit, cello in junior high and high school, a little bit of piano. My sister played piano all the way through and was a music major in college. What else can I say about my sister? She’s a pretty good sister. She lives in Aurora now. She’s probably more a historical person than I am, but we both like history.

I don’t know, pertinent information. When we went down to Denver to visit friends, like with my mother, she would stick up for me being a younger sister, fight for me. She went into such things in high school as the speech club. She liked to speak. And still does. She ended up, after going through high school she went to Adams State College. She didn’t get her degree from Adams

State but ended up getting her degree from Colorado Women’s College after the kids and everything. And married Garland Osborne. I don’t know exactly what all you need.

(So you have an older brother and an older sister?)

And then I have a younger brother.

(Tell us a little about him.)

Kendall. Let’s see, Janice is in Aurora. Kendall is in Longmont. He came up after us and he went through the same schools, Whittier, Casey, Boulder High. After Boulder High he went to college. He went to CSU, got a degree in art, and then went back east, got married, returned back here. That’s one of his art pictures up there. He studied art a lot. And the pictures were so good up at CSU that they confiscated a lot of them. They really liked his work. They’re still up there, some of his artwork. But he’s living and working in Longmont right now, not doing his artwork, but doing other kinds of stuff.

(What kind of influence did your parents have on you and your siblings growing up?)

They were always—my mother was around more, but she always encouraged us to be honest, to get along with people, to love people, forgive people. She was a giving person, a very giving person. So we kind of all grew up with that, to treat everybody the way you like to be treated. She was very influential with us in that area.

Then my dad was more like a discipline person. He disciplined kids in the family. He went through CU. He went through the same schools that we did. In fact, he was born in Boulder and his family came to Boulder in the 1890s. His mother and father, his father was out here. I think he had a connection with the railroad, Frank Lingham. His mother, Lulu Lingham, already had a sister, an older sister, and her husband and family living in Boulder in the 1890s. One of their kids got—I think it was one of their kids got sick. Somebody in the family got sick, and they sent back to Kentucky to send another family member to help out, a teenager, and that’s how my grandmother came out to Colorado. She came out here and she met Frank Lingham and they got married in the 1890s and they built the house on 2001—it’s now Mesa Drive, but it used to be North Street. It’s a brick house. Still there.

10:46 (Is that the house you grew up in?)

No. But they were there. Actually, my dad built a house next door to it when we were in junior high. We lived on Goss Street for a while and then we moved to Mapleton and then we moved to Mesa Drive, which is next to my grandmother’s house, when we were growing up. Actually, when we were real little, my dad—the lot was big enough that my dad built a rock house, a smaller house in the back yard, because there was plenty of room.

He was the one who encouraged us in our studies, was on us to keep up with our math and music and our reading and stuff like that. He was a real big pusher, trying to get us through college. And he took a lot of photographs. He was into that. He was into music. He was the one who on Sunday afternoons, he’d take my sister and I to organ concerts in Macky Auditorium. He took us when Marion Anderson came to town, he took us up there. He’s the one that got us into classical music, because that was part of his background.

He was active in sports, and if you look at old pictures from the teens and twenties and thirties, you see a lot of pictures of my dad. He’d be the only one—I don’t know what the other black people did in Boulder. I don’t have any idea. I don’t know why they’re not in any of the pictures. But my dad’s in a whole lot of them. He was in all kinds of sports, track and field and basketball and football. I even saw a new picture of him, Mrs. Nilon had a picture of him that we had never seen before. He was in a lot of those things.

And he played the violin. So we always heard that around the house. He really got us into classical music. My sister kind of followed that, and I did, too. We all like classical music. At least Janice and I. The boys do, my brothers do, too, to some extent. We always came up with involvement, even with our kids, we had them interested, follow-through with the generation into the classical music, taking piano and ballet or some kind of musical instrument.

(You said your mother was influential in the sense that she raised you to not discriminate.)

Right.

(Can you think of any specific examples where you implemented those values that your mother instilled in you?)

Well, it was kind of like an everyday thing. She encouraged us, since there weren’t very many black people around, you know, our friends were going to be white or Hispanic. We never thought anything of it, I don’t think. I mean, we really didn’t take note, and I think I did less than my older sister, because she kind of defending me in a lot of cases. I would kind of shrug it off if somebody would call me a name. I wouldn’t take it to heart or anything, because maybe they don’t know any better. We can’t help that. My sister, I know she talks about sometimes at school that teachers discouraged her from taking certain classes. “You’re not going to go to college, so you don’t need to take this type class.” I was never under that, though I struggled in some of my classes when I found out what direction I wanted to go, like medicine. When I found out what direction I wanted to go, I just kind of followed that and took the courses I needed to, made good grades in those classes so I could go to college. So that was kind of that. Does that explain it any?

(Yes.)

We didn’t really have any—like our neighbors and the kids we went to school with, my mom would just kind of take them in, whoever they were.

15:31 (Describe for me the financial upbringing you were raised in.)

Well, I don’t think we had a whole lot of money. My dad worked in construction. He did hod carrying and other kind of construction work, did some odd jobs to make ends meet. My mom always worked doing something, housekeeping, ironing, cooking, a lot of domestic type jobs. When we were in junior high she got some office cleaning jobs to bring extra money into the household. We were kind of on the same par as other people in the neighborhood, as I remember. We didn’t have a whole lot of money, but it seems like the things we needed, like when we got into high school, our instruments, things we needed for the pep club, our parents worked extra to get it.

(Can you make any connection between your mother’s workload and yours, what she did for a living and what you currently do for a living?)

Her workload, like hours spent or something like that? She was always a working person, so when there was something to be done, she’d be doing it. If people needed help, if somebody in the church was sick, she would be over there helping them. She was that kind of giving person. So when it came time to work, she used to take us to work with her when she was doing cleaning jobs. She would be doing that.

(Her domestic duties, can you make a connection between that and the career path that you chose?)

Well, I’m a professional, so what? I’m not understanding what you want.

(A connection in the sense that you saw what your mother did, and it drove you to do what you’re doing now? Or is there any—)

Like doing better? Yeah, moving up, oh, yeah. Back then, you didn’t have a whole lot of choices as far as what kind of jobs were open. I guess that was more the distinction between the different races. I don’t know, our family was doing that. Like our grandmother was doing ironing, washing and ironing, that kind of thing. It just kind of followed through operations like that, cooking and cleaning and domestic type jobs. I think both our parents always told us you can do whatever you want to do, if you have the desire to work at it. They encouraged us in education.

(Any specific recollections of your grandparents, memories, influences?)

Let’s see, my grandmother seemed kind of hard to me, maybe because I was younger. She’d want us to keep up with things around the house, keep up with our stuff, be obedient, be seen and not heard type of thing. She always—we used to go to her house for lunch. She’d always have something good for lunch. She’d bake gingerbread, that was one of my favorites. My grandfather, I kind of remember him just a little bit. He was tall and skinny. My grandmother looked like an Indian, kind of. He was tall and thin, smoked a pipe. Played the fiddle.

20:22 (What I’ve observed when I did research on you is that you come from a strong religious background. Was that always a part of your life?)

Yes.

(And since it was, how did that impact holidays and the seasons and different celebrations like weddings?)

As far as I know, as early as I can remember, my parents were always involved with something in the church. My mother served as superintendent and my dad as a deacon for many years. The founders of Second Baptist Church, the church I go to now, were my grandparents and also my aunt and uncle, who lived about a block from where we lived on Mesa Drive. So they were four of the seven founders of Second Baptist Church.

On Sunday we’d be going to church. A lot of times we’d meet people and invite them to church or pick them up for Sunday School. My sister and I would pick them up and we’d walk to

Sunday School and spend time in church. After church on Sunday we’d go visit people, different people from the church. That was kind of a normal thing that I remember from childhood.

Then of course our holidays, we spent with family. Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners were always a good time to get together and spend like that. We didn’t have a whole lot of relatives from out of town. My mother had some relatives, they would come out once in a while. And my dad had some relatives that would come out on special occasions.

(How do you think the community looked at you as one of the very few black families in the area?)

[chuckles] I don’t know. You know, I’m just thinking about the neighborhood where we grew up. They usually pretty much accepted us, the Lingham kids. They used to call my sister and I twins. They thought we were twins in our earlier years because we’re so close-looking size-wise. They pretty much accepted us in the community. My dad always—he knew a lot of people, and then in my junior high years and high school years, he had an upholstery store. I used to go down there and work part-time and help out a little bit. But he was a perfectionist, so if you wanted to do the upholstery, every line would have to match up, things like that. They pretty much accepted him because his work was really good and he always had high standards. You could see that in his work. As a family I think we were pretty well accepted.

(Do you think your family lived up to an expectation of being an example of what black families were like, and if so, how would you say so? Being one of the very few black families, do you feel that your family had the responsibility of giving a good example of what African Americans were like, especially in Boulder County?)

Yeah, because we always lived by the Christian standards and we were always giving and willing to help others. Just as a family, I don’t know necessarily black, but as a family we were that type of family. We worked together and worked to help our neighbors.

[break in recording]

24:53 My dad was into sports. We always got—

(He was involved in sports at CU, right?)

Well, I don’t know if he was at CU. He attended CU. He didn’t graduate from CU, but he attended CU. We have pictures of him in the orchestra where he played for I don’t know how many years. There’s several pictures of him in the orchestra. We were always in sports. We were always doing something, whether playing baseball—that’s where I really learned my baseball skills [laughs], in between one block and the other on the dirt road. Baseball and basketball and ice skating. I took up skiing in high school, which I still do. I’ll still do ice skating probably a couple of times a year. Any kind of sport that was available to me at that time. Going through junior high and high school, I tried it and did well at it. I was always more the athletic one, more than my sister was. I did everything. Field hockey was one of my favorites. I did fencing in college, basketball, volleyball, tennis. [laughs] The whole gamut.

(I would imagine that being involved in these extracurricular activities, you had a chance to travel around Colorado a lot. If so, what was traveling like, from going to Boulder as opposed to

Denver as opposed to anywhere else? What was traveling like? What were your experiences like?)

As a kid, the big adventure would be to get on the train and go down to Denver and visit one of Mom’s friends. Then when my dad got into trucking, we’d get in the truck and go down to Denver. It was a special occasion on a Saturday. There used to be a Johnson’s Corner where we’d stop and get these ice cream cones. I still have to figure out where it is on one of our trips. Usually going down to Denver, it would be a big occasion if we could ride with him and go down in the truck. Another thing was getting in the train and traveling. My mom had a friend down there. Like spend the weekend, go up on the train and come back. We’d be in the ghetto down in Denver, and they’d be beating up on us, and we weren’t used to a whole lot of black people. But anyhow, we’d go out there and try to make friends. And then that’s when my sister defended me, when they’d try to poke fights with us. That was a big adventure.

Since my dad was a fisherman, our summer vacations were usually spent in the mountains. He’d fix a shell over the back of the truck and we’d go camping for the weekend or the week or whatever. We’d be at the lake laying around, he’d be fishing, my mom would be reading or sewing. That was our summer vacation. That was all the summer vacations I remember until I was in high school, almost finished high school, when we took a trip to Chicago. My mother had a sister in Chicago, and we took a train up there to visit the big city.

That’s the kind of vacations we had. After that I started traveling, because I was out of high school. I went to California, saw some of the relatives out there. My brother, since he was in the Navy, got to travel all around the world, and I thought I’d follow suit. So after I graduated from high school, then I went to school in—actually I went to California that next summer and then went to school at Western State in Gunnison. That was my getaway, to get away from Boulder, I was up in Gunnison. I really felt isolated up there. I didn’t have transportation, so I couldn’t come back home. There were three of us black students up there, female students at Western State.

(All the black students were female?)

Yeah. There was only three. Another freshman, and myself, and this one lady was a senior. She did graduate from there. I went there one year and it was enough. It was good because I was taking premed courses, and I got my good foundation as far as chemistry and math and the hard- core courses, the basics for premed. It was good because it was a concentrated time. I really got to focus on my studies for that year. But it was co-o-old in wintertime. A lot of snow. I skied quite a bit that year but spent a lot of time studying. That was about enough. I said, “One year’s enough, let me see about the Navy.” [laughs] See if I could travel like my brother. So I went in the Navy after that and spent three years in the Navy, boot camp in Maryland. I was stationed at the US Naval Hospital in San Diego, California. Spent three years there and got really good experience in the medical field, working—.

30:21 [Tape runs out suddenly. End of side A.]

[B].

00:00 I spent three years at the US Naval Hospital in San Diego, California, and got good experience in working in the emergency room, and clinics, and different wards. After I got out of

the Navy, I spent another six months, got my LPN license in California, worked, and ended up leaving California, came back to Colorado, got married, then went to DC. My husband was stationed there in the Navy. We spent two-and-a-half or three years there and came back to California—I mean, came back to Colorado. I had my two kids, my daughter Carnita and my son Carlos, and then started going back to school part-time, finished up, got my bachelor’s degree in medical technology from the University of Colorado. Then, let’s see—[laughs]

(You don’t have to—just wherever you take yourself.)

Then I ended up going to Denver, and I’ve lived there for about seven years. I worked at Rose Hospital, University Hospital—

[break in recording]

In the end, after working several years, I went back to school and got my Master’s degree in public administration from CU.

[break in recording]

(Did your parents do anything in particular to instill you with the knowledge of your heritage?)

[pause] Like where we came from kind of thing?

(Especially the whole African American part of it.)

They mainly just told us about relatives. I don’t know if it was so much from my parents. It was more probably from my grandmother and my aunt, my mother’s sister, Aunt Grace. They talked about relatives and where they were from and where they—you know, where they’re from type thing. And my mother would tell about her folks, where they were from. My mother was from Wichita, Kansas. Her parents died when she was pretty young, so the younger siblings in the family were kind of farmed out to other people who would take them in. That’s how my mother ended up coming out here to Colorado. She had a sister _____. Once she ended up coming out here, she met my father. She talked about her siblings. Her brothers and sisters, her parents were involved in the church. Her father directed a choir and could play any instrument. They were always involved, because she sang in the choir.

[break in recording]

My mother always was an encouraging force and encouraged us to do whatever _____. Really the love on the inside of us, the love of Jesus on the inside of us, would always overcome whatever prejudice—I don’t remember anything as far as—

[break in recording]

04:44 I’m thinking about the few little things that did happen. There was a play going on at Whittier where they were trying to do Show Boat. I remember when Mom went to the PTA or school board or whoever she had to talk to and tell them they had to change some of their words, that some of the stuff that was going on in some of those plays—there was always kind of some prejudice type thing. In other words, in the South you get it right in your face. But in Boulder you didn’t get it right in your face. It may have been—I heard about my brother being called

names several times, or maybe even my older sister. I don’t know if I didn’t recognize it or maybe I’m the type of person who would just ignore that kind of thing, because I don’t want it to have an effect on me. So I don’t know—you know what I’m saying? It was there, and we knew it was there, and there were some things we had to fight against. But it seemed like we were able to do what we needed to do in Boulder.

(Do you think, for instance, your granddaughter experiences any of that hidden racism in Boulder?)

Well, I imagine there’s still some people out there. But she’s involved with—I mean, within her group of friends, they seem to not care. And she has—I don’t know whether they ___ to bind a group of kids together that are of all different races. If there is some there, she doesn’t _____.

[break in recording]

(Growing up with a strong Christian background, how did your family handle boys? What was your first date like and so forth?)

It was kind of “anti.” [laughs] Now there’s an area. Since I was the only one that was black, we didn’t really have any boyfriends, like until we associated with some of the people from Denver, where there’s more black people. I wasn’t really focused on boys at that time. My thing was school, and I did my sports and I did my music. I didn’t go to the prom. I wasn’t involved in any of that. I was on the pep club. I did activities like that.

(Did that affect you at all, not being able to attend social functions like proms?)

I don’t know if I thought about it at that time. I don’t even remember. I mean, it may have been a passing thought. It wasn’t a big thing, in my mind, anyhow.

(Your option to date white males, was that taboo or a personal decision? Was it a decision that was made for you by the white males at school?)

I don’t know, probably a little bit of both. Because some of my friends happen to be the white males. They just happened to be friends. We never dated. We may have gone to sporting events together.

(Was there just no interest or—?)

I mean, we were friends, but it wasn’t into the dating thing at all.

(What kept that from being a possibility?)

I don’t know. I’ve never asked. [laughs] I don’t really know. I didn’t pursue it. I wasn’t worried about it. I knew that God would send me someone eventually. I don’t know—I just never, I mean—never opened up, I guess. I don’t think the males were open to that. And I wasn’t really interested in a white male. So it was a mutual thing.

[break in recording]

I mean, it wasn’t really a big thing. We had a group of friends that we associated with. What I was starting to say, some of the friends that I still have today are some of the friends that I started out with in kindergarten. We went all the way through school and we’re still friends. They’re white—Caucasian—Hispanics. It’s a group of friends.

10:37 (When you did begin interacting with other blacks in Denver, can you describe that scene? When you’d come down to social functions, maybe in Denver, or network with other blacks your age in Denver, what were some of the encounters like?)

None! [laughs] Like, my sister and I when we went down to my mother’s friend’s house, I don’t know, we got in a fight. I don’t know what the deal was, other than she defended me. We really didn’t do too much in high school. There was people in church and stuff like that that we associated with, but we really didn’t have anything serious.

[break in recording]

(How would you describe your social life as a whole?)

It was good. If you don’t _____ associating with guys, it was fine. We had a group of friends and we did things together. We’d go to different places together. We always had family. We always had a group of people that we hung out with, we shared dinners, stayed overnight at slumber parties. It was our little group. The social thing, and then we had the thing in church, associating with people there. As our parents went to people’s houses, we’d go to people’s houses and play with their kids and do things with their kids. We had activities after church. _____.

[break in recording]

(I think it’s a flow-over from what we were taught by especially my mother: to treat people alike, like you’d like to be treated. So there’s always been that expectation, to expect the best of every person, regardless of their race. Even now, sometimes I would be talking to someone that I met and somebody will say, “What race were they?” and I have to think about it. I don’t really look at the color line.

[break in recording]

There’s always occasions.

(Can you think of and of those occasions?)

When I think of the color line? Probably on the job I started to get an overview of what people are doing and what kind of games they play in the racism here, the discrimination.

(Are there any specific examples you can give me?)

I don’t know if—I think about how people are promoted and who’s promoted where. When I look in the area of where I work, I’m looking at who’s at the top. Are there any blacks at the top? Since I have a degree, then they put you in a task, but what about administration, how come that hasn’t opened up? I mean, you can go so far just because your degree is going to carry you so far, but then I also look at the people under me who are people of color that haven’t got degrees. You see more of us at the bottom than you do at the top. You see that in the hospital and in the

lab, in particular, where I work. Of the 150 people, there are now two people of color who are medical technologists who have a bachelor’s degree and then probably a good ten people under that who don’t have—some of them may have degrees, but they’re still at the lower ranks.

15:31 (Can you describe for me what a medical technologist does?)

A medical technologist is a person who has their bachelor’s degree in medical technology and works in a lab or similar type area. We work with different types of blood, body fluid, analyzing, doing certain chemistries, microscopic work, dealing with blood and body fluids, analyzing what’s wrong with a person, being an aid to doctors and nurses in the area of treatment and diagnosis of certain diseases.

(What’s been most interesting thing that you’ve encountered while doing your duties?)

Probably just finding the things that go on in patients. Say a person presents himself to the emergency room and they have the main kind of things—flu-like symptoms, and then you find out this patient has leukemia, just by analyzing their blood, making a slide and looking at it under the microscope. It’s kind of fun to find new cases like that. The University Hospital _____.

A lot of the new stuff that’s coming out kind of interests me. I worked in particular in the safety area that’s boning up for bioterrorism, that sort of thing; trying to keep people safe. Not only bioterrorism, but keep them safe in the lab and everything they do when you’re messing with other people’s blood who may have AIDS or hepatitis, or something like that. You want to make sure everybody’s safe that’s in the lab. That’s another part of the area that interests me.

(Is there any connection between what you do and how—how does what you do affect the African American community?)

Well, probably anybody that goes to a doctor or nurse or goes into the hospital, regardless of their race, what I’m doing may help save their lives. They can find out what’s wrong with them through the tests that we do, the diagnosis. My thing is probably volunteer for the 9-Health Fair and Colorado Sickle Cell Association to encourage minorities to go to their doctor and get the test done, get medical treatment. Don’t wait until the very end. If you are in the last stages, you _____.

I also work with—I’m on the board of directors of Arapahoe Community College. We right now have a program where it’s like a stepping program where we can get people right out of high school, get them through the ACC program to get a certificate, work in the lab, and by building on that, they can keep going and get their bachelor’s degree in medical technology. So it’s like steps that they can take to work their way up. They’re encouraged to do that. And now they can do it online, too.

(So you encourage black students to be involved in programs like that as well as encourage African Americans in general to go to the doctor and get checked up for certain ailments that plague the black community, such as AIDS and whatnot?)

Sickle cell.

(Sickle cell. Can you speak upon any of that at all?)

Sure. First of all, I wanted to say something—whenever I have the opportunity, whenever we have tours of the hospital, I try to encourage—like twice I year I think Grove Junior High brings students to University Hospital. I try to always be available for the tours and everything to encourage black students and minority students about medicine and that there are great rewards in it. The field’s open. There’s always jobs available in the lab and other medical careers. There’s jobs available all the time for anybody who wanted to go into that. And then I go to some of the junior high and high schools, particularly in the Denver area, to talk to students about medical careers.

20:41 (How would you address the glass ceiling aspect of your career to these students that you speak to?)

The glass ceiling? How high can you go? Well, if you think about it, getting people through college, getting them through high school, then getting them through college, the medical career has all kinds of possibilities in it. It’s pretty open once people go that direction. And I think as many shortages as there are, that there’s all kinds of possibilities available. So I’d just encourage them to go for it.

[break in recording]

I met my husband when I was at US Naval Hospital in San Diego. He proposed, and then he got stationed in D.C. So after I spent that time in California, I spent six months in California, we came here and got married in a church, close to Estes Park, a little valley church up there, and then he got called to D.C. That was quite the culture shock. A lot of black people versus hardly any black people. It was a ___ experience. I got to work at ___ Hospital down there.

(So the culture shock that you’re referring to, what made you—what put you in shock?)

It was a lot different than what I was used to, even in the Navy. San Diego didn’t have that many black people in it. And D.C. had a lot of black people in it.

(How was it different, besides them just being black, how was their culture, their customs different from what you experienced?)

Well, probably the night life had a lot to do with it. People were busy day and night. That was a big thing, just dealing with people. The things you see in a big city like Washington D.C. and the way people live. Being just a couple of blocks off of the White House and then going into a ghetto area, seeing how people live.

(What about the ghetto was so shocking?)

A lot of it was just like a trashy city once you get off the main street. You can see the trash and the rats, people hanging out on the street.

(So how was that different from Boulder?)

Oh, you don’t see that! [laughs] You don’t see any of that.

(How do you think your life would have changed if you grew up in an environment like that as opposed to growing up in Boulder?)

I probably would have liked city life. [laughs] A lot better than I do. I probably would have enjoyed the same things as other people do in the big city. I’m not big on night life or bars or anything like that, so it never did catch, as far as that goes. I think a lot of it’s that simplistic aspect that makes you go in a different direction.

25:38 (If you don’t mind my asking, what was your family situation like, with your husband, raising your children, as compared to what you experienced growing up?)

How is it different?

(Yeah.)

I don’t know. My parents were really more family-oriented. My ex-husband wasn’t real family- oriented. He wasn’t real keen on spending a lot of time with the kids or taking time out with the kids. So that was kind of hard. He was kind of doing his thing versus when I was growing up, my dad was always there, available. He was busy on jobs sometimes, but he always spent time with us. That’s why we appreciate the books and the music.

(How long were you married?)

Oh, goodness, about eight years.

(Did you pretty much raise your children as a single parent?)

Yes.

(What was that like?)

It was work. [chuckles] You do the best you can, try to raise them, expose them to different activities and sports. When we went on vacation, there’d be Carlos and one of his buddies and Carnita and one of her friends or a cousin. We’d _____ so they could associate with the kids in the earlier years.

[break in recording]

28:11 (Describe going to the University of Colorado and what that experience was summed up like.)

It was college. And the classes were big. I remember big biology classes, chemistry classes, a lot of people. But by then –

(The teachers? Oh, go ahead.)

The teachers were usually OK. I don’t know if that’s—by the time I ended up going to the University of Colorado, I’d had my one year at Western State. And all that time I was in the Navy in D.C., I was always taking classes. San Diego Junior College I was taking classes, the University of Maryland, near D.C. I was taking classes, so I was upper sophomore, maybe a junior—

(Can you put some dates to that so I can get a time frame?)

Let’s see, I was in the Navy, 1961 to 1964 and took some courses probably right around the end of that, 1964, ’65. Then I went to D.C. ’65 to ’67, took some courses at the University of Maryland. Then I came back here, had Carlos in ’68, Carnita in ’69. [chuckles] I started taking some courses right after that. I finished up in ’71.

(And UCD was after.)

UCD was not until—let’s see, I started taking some courses—I graduated—.

30:10 [Tape runs out; end of side B.]

[C].

00:00 (Okay; starting with UCD—)

Okay. I went to UCD, graduated in ’87, so I started in ’82, and ended up, got my Master’s. My Master’s thesis was on the under-representation of minorities in health professions.

(What triggered that?)

[laughs] What I saw out there in the field! [laughs]

(How has that changed since you wrote your thesis?)

Not a whole lot. There’s still too few minorities in those professions.

(What do you think holds back minorities?)

Just knowledge. The word needs to get out. People need to come in and experience—when people experience it or have some experience of it, then they’re more willing to go into it, and they’ve always had to stay back from it, not willing to venture out, try something new.

(Was there any specific teacher that you can remember that was influential on where you are now?)

In medicine, or before that time?

(Either one.)

At Boulder High I had a really good chemistry teacher, Mr. Patton [?]; he was encouraging. And there was Mr. _____, who was an anthropology teacher. And Mrs. _____, who was a history teacher _____ helped me as far as things I like to do. Those were teachers at Boulder High School.

(What got you through school? How did you support yourself in school?)

Partly the GI Bill. When I ended up going to Western State that first year out of high school, my sister was already going to Adams State. That was kind of hard on the family, because we didn’t have a whole lot of money, so to have two kids in college is hard. Once I went through the Navy, then I used the GI Bill. Then my ex—well, my husband at that time, did some odd jobs and worked for the Boulder Fire Department.

(Currently what are your hobbies? I know they were athletics growing up and playing instruments. Currently, what are your hobbies?)

_____. [laughs] Actually, I enjoy probably all sports now. I still do skiing, not as much as I used to. Still do skiing, I like to do that. I like to travel. I’ve always enjoyed traveling all over. I’ve been on mission trips to China, Taiwan, over there in Asia.

(What’s a mission trip?)

A mission trip is where you go over and go with the evangelists who go and minister to people and tell them about the saving grace of Jesus Christ. Bring the word, spread it into China. That was part of the mission trip _____.

(How recently was this?)

That was ’88. It’s about ten years. I’d like to go back. [laughs] I still like traveling. I like traveling around the United States and foreign travel too. I like to see _____. And I try ____.

And then I’m enjoying my granddaughter. _____. I take pictures. That’s part of my thing.

One of the things I have done the last four years is, I work with other ministries. I’m an ordained minister. _____ minister. I work with prophetic intercessors internationally. Our focus is to pray for the nation, the President, things like that. And I also work with evangelist _____ and her ministry, Women of War. We travel different places around the country and minister. Pastor _____, who has leadership conferences every year. And then of course my church, Second Baptist in Boulder. I work with the women’s ministry, coordinate the women’s events, I also work in other parts of the prayer ministry. I’m pretty involved with that. Those things keep me pretty busy right there. [laughs]

05:55 (Do you think your mother had the same opportunities to be as involved as you are within the church?)

She was involved in her own way, because I know she worked in the mission thing they had going on in her time. She was a superintendent in Sunday school and a teacher in Sunday school. I think she was pretty involved. She just wasn’t involved with the traveling stuff.

(How typical was it for a female to be an ordained minister back then?)

I don’t think it was. I don’t even know. Back then, in the ‘40s and ‘50s. I know there were some, but I’m not sure they were ordained. There were evangelists.

(To what degree do you think your status of being African American and female has impacted your life? You can use other people’s lives in comparison: to what degree has being an African

American female impacted your life as opposed to white females as opposed to other black females, you as a specific individual?)

[pause] I don’t know quite what you’re after.

(Okay. Being an African American female, that puts you in two minority categories. With being a minority comes adversity. To what extent did you experience that adversity?)

[pause] In the church, were we talking about?

[In life.]

In life. Well, I think it—you have people who are anti anyhow, they may be anti-black or anti- female. So there’s always that barrier that as a female you want to overcome. You want to get over that situation so that you’re—I don’t want to say a “winner,” but that you’re not held back by that. So what I do in the church hopefully influences and encourages other women to step out. As a black, on the job, I hope that I’m an encouragement to many of the people who are in lower ranks, that they know there’s hope that they can be up there, too, that they can make it too. I try to encourage my co-workers to stay in school, to finish up and get their degree.

(I came across another set of questions. There was a question that was very interesting. I was wondering how you would answer this. In looking back on being married, what advice would you give to a granddaughter on her wedding day?)

[pause] Well, [laughs] be sure you marry who God gives you, not somebody else. I would encourage her that you want to be all that God has called you to be so that you can be a wife for your husband and a mother for your children. Just be true, be faithful, communicate. [chuckles]

[break in recording]

10:47 (Has Boulder changed since growing up?)

It’s big! It has grown a lot. It used to be a nice small town. But now there’s just a lot of people, a lot of action. There’s such an underculture of stuff that’s going on, stuff that’s going on in the Boulder mall, the drugs, just a lot of stuff going on. People going off the deep end about ecology and so forth. You know a lot of the culture, _____. Not nice and so-called innocent. I think before, there was that freedom to walk the streets at night. You can, and Boulder is probably safer than a lot of other places. It’s just not as free.

I remember we as kids, we’d walk across town at night, or go swimming at the locally swimming pool at night. Finish swimming, go by the A&W Root Beer and get some popcorn, ice cream, French fries, and just walk home. There was that freedom that we had, going wherever we wanted to go. And now it’s kind of fouled up. You don’t know who and where and what. You could leave your doors open, that kind of thing. People used to share more, talk more. Even the neighbors, if you were doing something wrong, your neighbors would get on your case, talk to your parents. I’m not talking about just blacks, but our neighbors.

(Looking back on your life as of this moment, what accomplishments are you most proud of?)

[pause] I probably like the things that happened with the family. My relationship with God as my heavenly Father has to do with my father being a loving father. That stands out. Having good parents. My mother was always giving, to her dying days was always just a lovely person. Of course I liked what happened in my time in the service. It was precious. My degrees, precious. Probably most of all right now my ministry. How God has blessed and opened up doors for me to minister _____. My fellowship with God. That’d be the highlight.

(A tie into Psalm 91, because I’ve read over it a few times. My pastor wanted me to memorize it, but—.)

You working on it? [laughs]

(Yeah, I’m still working on it.)

That’s good.

14:49 (So can you explain it to me and how it’s applicable to your life?)

When we think about our heavenly Father, when we think about God, and how he’s a God of mercy, then he has made provision for his children for their protection. And when we think about September 11th and what happened there and the terror that has come forth since then, then we must know in our hearts that our dependence is on him. It talks about our relationship with him. So Psalms 91, when you think about verse 1, it says, “He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” And it talks about that as we have our fellowship, our relationship with God the Father, He has us in His hands, in His protection. He watches over us and protects us. And He’s able to do that.

Verse 2 says, “He is our refuge and our fortress, our God. In Him will I trust.” So as we put our trust in Him, we know that He’s protecting us, and even though the government may do a lot of things to protect us, and people wherever may do things to protect us, unless we have our faith and our trust in Him, then the enemy could sneak in. But as we have our trust in God, then He can protect us through all situations. And we see that as an example of what happened to the people that knew God and God brought them out of the World Trade Center, that God saved those people. Somehow they were late to work. Somehow they missed their train or the subway. Somehow they had to leave the building and do this or that. And we hear of many incidents in the Christian world of how God brings people out. And that’s why we must have our faith in God.

So Psalm 91 just relates back to us. It finishes up: “He that has sent his love upon us, I will protect him. I will take care of him.” Psalm 91 is just what we need to have in our heart, knowing, not just memorizing, but knowing that God is protecting us. No one else. Nobody in the physical that we can see can protect us as well as God can. _____.

(How has your faith in God protected you?)

Just having trust in Him. You just have faith and He’ll take care of us. I know from His word He’s said He’d never leave us, never forsake us. I’ve always had that in my heart, knowing that He was always there. When I was in the Navy, all the places I went, over in China, I knew that He was always with me. He protects me. He said He’d never leave me. It’s good stuff. [laughs]

[break in recording]

(Many years ago Shirley Chisholm said that for her, it was worse being female than being black. Would you agree with that, and if so, why?)

[pause] I wouldn’t even put it that way.

(How would you put it?)

Well, because God created us, He created us and made us whatever we are, He made us black, he made us female, He did it for a certain purpose. When we realize that purpose, then we don’t have to run from either one of them.

(Would you say society is less accepting of you as a female or less accepting of you as an African American?)

[pause] Probably—

[break in recording]

[pause] _____. [laughter]

(Okay.)

[break in recording]

Probably the civil rights movement kind of opened doors, put it out in the open, I think. After Martin Luther King _____ things that were going on.

20:17 (Can you remember the atmosphere, what was going on in your life while those events took place?)

Yeah. For JFK I was in the service and heard that. You know, it kind of made everything kind of muted, like a damper was put on, like a loss of freedom. And then for Martin Luther King, I was pregnant, and I lived in Boulder. I went to visit—I think I visited my mother during that time. I went over to her house or was going over to her house when I heard the news about Martin Luther King. We knew he was doing some really good works, so that kind of put a lid on what was going on as far as advancing our race. In Boulder County, in ’68, I was probably coming out of Washington D.C. I don’t know if there was any big changes, but we knew that something very wrong was done.

(What was the black student body doing with regards to the civil rights movement when you were at CU?)

Black students? I don’t know. I wasn’t involved with the black students when I first _____ CU _____.

(Why weren’t you involved with the black students?)

Taking care of too much grade stuff. [laughs] Taking courses when I could. I just didn’t get into that. It seems like I was on campus, and I had a part-time job and then going back too keep _____ at that time, so I wasn’t involved on campus at all. I knew some stuff was going on, but I did my thing, basically.

[break in recording]

I didn’t even remember that there was any kind of get-together of black students at that time, anyhow. I didn’t find out about that.

(Okay. So we’re pretty much done with the—)

[break in recording]

In the earlier years, grade school, high school.

(Like trends, how people wear their hair?)

Well, _____went through the hippie stage, that was the late fifties, sixties. _____ The trends were probably the fifties styles, the fifties, basically: can-can skirts, hair-dos, cars. It was pretty small, Boulder was, as far as the downtown section. Woolworth’s had a problem, I kind of remember something about Woolworth’s. They were acting funny toward black folks. I don’t remember all of it though. I don’t remember what was going on. It may have been something my mother said, “Don’t go in there,” or something like that. I remember ___. Pretty much it was just small town nice, pretty nice. People pretty friendly. There were a couple black restaurants that I got to work at when I was a kid, just helping out with—

(What were those?)

I think it was Ray’s Café and Arnold—I can’t think where it is. There were a couple spots where mostly the black people lived, and they had a place where black students at CU could live.

[break in recording]

She had a bigger house. That was all close around the church community, too.

(How far away was that from where you stayed?)

We lived about six blocks or so. I remember going to—we used to—you know, when we went to town, there were places, bakers, to go and get donuts. So that part was really nice. When we had money we shopped. We didn’t have a whole lot of money to buy store-bought clothes. My mom was a seamstress and made our clothes. So I probably wouldn’t have had any store-bought clothes until later years, or I got hand-me-downs from somebody.

Something else about Boulder?

(I’m trying to get a clearer picture of what Boulder was like back then.)

[break in recording]

Well, that didn’t happen to me, and I never had any people call me in and say, “You can’t go to college, you shouldn’t take this course, because you’re not going to college anyhow.” They never said that to me.

(Is there any difference between the way you carry yourself and the way your sister carries herself or the way she looks or the way you look?)

Probably. [laughs]

(Have those differences do you think played any kind of a role in how her experience was?)

Well, they may have. She was probably the more outspoken person. I was kind of laid-back and quiet. It might’ve been the older brother and sister got the brunt of it, and I just rode in on the coattails.

(They broke the way for you. Final questions, so I don’t keep you up all evening. If you could title your life story, what would you title it and why?)

Title my life story.

(You don’t have to answer it now. If you can’t think of anything now, you can get back to me.)

[laughs] I might have to. If I could title my life story—I don’t know.

29:01 [End of side C.]

[D].

[This last section of the interview was recorded on November 24, 2001, as a follow-up to the original interview in order to fill in some additional information.]

00:00 (So your Navy days. What rank did you achieve?)

Just a hospital corpsman.

(So there’s no specific rank attached to that?)

It’s just one level.

(Your specific duties were?)

I got to work probably in all areas of the hospital emergency room, clinics, in particular isolation wards, like they had syphilis wards, hepatitis wards, infectious mono. They had whole wards full of them at US Naval Hospital in San Diego. I got to work in the hospital area that they had there, a large hospital.

(Working in those wards, what did you actually do?)

Well, they were pretty liberal as far as—you know, when you’re in the Navy, somebody to give shots and start IVs and take care of patients, that kind of stuff. I got to work on the medicine and

the surgery wards, with patients who had cancer, some who had leukemia. Some of them had different kind of surgeries, too.

(What was the most interesting work that you did?)

I think the isolation wards was the most interesting, trying to keep everything sterile. Like the people that had hepatitis, to keep those things, to keep people from spreading the disease, keep them safe. The emergency room was interesting because we got to work on a lot of patients. Some of them needed stitches. People who were dying. We got to do emergency care.

(So the patients, where did they come from?)

I worked on both the wards that had servicemen and women and also the ones that had dependents. It was kind of spread out. They gave me a pretty broad working area, I guess. I got out of the service and got my LPN license and was working in the state of California for a little while, stayed in California for a little while, working and going to school, before I came back to Colorado and got married, moved to D.C.

(How has working for the Navy impacted your life?)

Well, just the service experience was good. It gave me a broad range of experience. It gave me the option of figuring out which direction I wanted to go. Did I want to follow it up and go into nursing? Or did I not want that much nursing care or patient care? I chose to go into the lab area and become a medical technologist.

I started working towards school. I followed up some of the premed courses I had when I went to Western State. Did I tell you about that? When I got out of high school I went to Western State College, went there a year because premed courses—I knew I wanted to do something in medicine, but didn’t know how much. I ended up staying there a year, taking some heavy-duty premed courses, chemistry and biology, math and stuff. Since that was a financial burden on my parents, and my older daughter [sic; older sister] was also in college, I chose to go into the Navy. So that’s how I ended up in the Navy. Actually, I wanted to travel, too. This was one of my desires, was to travel. My older brother was in the Navy, and he got to go to Japan and Hawaii.

(So it was your older sister, actually, that was in college.)

Right, she was going to Adams State, in Alamosa. So I went to Western State in Gunnison, did my year there, and then went into the service the following year and spent my time in the service, did those things. Stayed in California, got my LPN license, moved out to D.C. and got married. My husband, he was also in the service, stationed in D.C. We lived there for a couple years and then came back to Colorado. We both started going to school. He went immediately and I had the two kids and started going part-time. I did finish and got my degree in medical technology in 1971. So it took about ten years.

(How old were you at the time?)

When I finished?

(Yeah, when you went back to school?)

27.

(How old are you now? Do you mind me asking?)

60.

(OK. Because I couldn’t figure it out.)

Born May 30, 1941. Just for the record.

05:01 (Thank you. How does this tie into religion, your work in—)

How has the Navy helped me? One is pointing me in the direction I really wanted to go in the medicine area, which was having some patient contact, but not totally with the patient, but being able to work in a medical career that allows me to do some patient care, which is my concern, but also to work independently in the lab, finding answers to help doctors to diagnose patients. Also, being in the Navy allows you to work under the GI Bill, which allowed me to finish my education with that financial help.

(How does religion tie into all this?)

All that was religious because there was always—the way my parents brought us up was, we were always working in the church. As kids, we’d help other kids or bring other kids to church with us, show them the way to start doing things in the church. All through my life, it was a standard I lived by. When I was in the service, I lived by what my mother taught me. Don’t be promiscuous. Always have God in my heart.

So when I was in the service, when Billy Graham came to San Diego, I rededicated my life at that time. I was about 20, 21. So it was kind of a follow-through, knowing that God was always with me. There was that desire from many years ago, probably when I was a kid, that I want to travel and do some mission work. That’s how I ended up in China. It was that desire, and it’s still there, to do more travel, to do mission work. God has always been with me, and that direction has been the thrust of my traveling, the mission work, and also what I do now as a minister, trying to build up the body of Christ, trying to—one of my goals is to mature—people who are already born again, to let them mature as Christians and to see what God has for them. Does that answer it?

(Yeah. Okay, and your experience in China, can you describe that?)

We hit not just mainland China, but we first started off in Taiwan. We landed in the middle of the night, and a friend of mine that I met on the plane who lived here in Lafayette said, “Come on, let’s go check out the town.” So we started walking in the middle of the night and felt the liberty and freedom of being over in Taiwan and walking in the middle of the night, just seeing what was going on. The people that had storefront stores were laying out their food, their fish, early in the morning. Seeing all the action that was going on but feeling perfectly safe. It was a lot different from here in the United States when you travel at night.

We had crusades. When we started out that first day, we handed out leaflets and information telling people on the street or anyplace we went that there was going to be a crusade that night. Then when a crusade started, we were able to work with the evangelist _____. She ministered in

Chinese and English and then opened it up, and we could go and pray for people. Once we started praying for people, people started lining up, because they wanted to be prayed for. We got to see some people healed. A lot of people were born again. It’s like a flood once you ask people to be born again. We got to see that flood of people. We did that in Thailand also. We had a meeting in a big hotel.

When we went into mainland China, we flew into Hong Kong and spent some time there and then took the train into mainland China. From there, we stayed at, I think it was called Hotel China. It was really nice, but the thing that was really neat was that I had told God that I really wanted to see what that _____ church was about. So we took—they loaded us up one afternoon in buses. I got on one of the small buses. They had big buses and small buses. When we got out in the countryside, on dirt roads, where there was dust, the KGB [?], they blocked the bigger buses, but the little buses got to go through. We went way back in the countryside. They had fixed it up, because they knew we were coming, the Chinese Christians. They had dirt on the road. And when they heard that the Christians were coming to do a ministry, some men came and dug the dirt out of the road and allowed the little buses to go through. We went way off into the countryside. We went to their house church, which was like a cement building with open windows in it. They had an upper room. Of course we smuggled in Bibles to the people there.

10:39 When they found out we were there, a lot of people came from the countryside, and we got to minister to them, at least for a period of time. We _____ had to minister what we had. We had _____ in our purses, and we showed them pictures of our families, stuff like that, and tried to talk to them, because we didn’t know the language. Tried to talk to them and prayed for them. We did that for a while until the KGB came around again and _____ and black pants type of thing, and people kind of started shying away from us. _____. After that they took us back. We passed over our Bibles before the KGB got there. We went back to our hotel and then went back to Hong Kong the next day.

(What was the exact situation of the KGB being there?)

They were supposed to be putting a damper on it. They didn’t allow the big buses to go through. They were watching everything that was going on.

(What were they fearful of, the KGB?)

They didn’t want us to bring in Bibles, for one thing. They didn’t want us to be too friendly with the Chinese people.

(How come?)

Because they wanted to keep everybody in tabs, not to have too much liberty and stuff.

(Do you know where that stems from?)

That’s just the Communists. They were around at that time, putting a damper on everything.

(I was afraid to go ahead and say “Communists,” but –)

Yeah, yeah.

[break in recording]

That’s my nephew, Kendall.

[break in recording]

(conversation off topic with someone else)

(Oh, yeah, your parents. How should I—?)

My mother, her full name—her maiden name Mary Parks and when she got married she married Neome Lingham. My dad was Irving Victor Lingham. He was born in Boulder. His parents came out to Boulder around the 1890s and lived there and were doing whatever their business was, some domestic stuff. I know my grandmother took in washing. Then my aunt, who just passed last year, was born in 1902 and my dad was born in 1907.

My grandparents were founders of Second Baptist Church. My aunt and uncle who lived a block off Mesa Drive in Boulder, not too far from my grandparents, was Annie Horn—I forget his first name, but the last name was Horn. They were—I think they were the original people there. My grandmother came out later when they had problems with _____ my grandmother to come out.

(And that’s how your parents met, in Boulder here?)

Uh-huh. My parents lived in Boulder. My mother came out in the late ‘20s or ‘30s. Her sister was taking some courses at CU because she was a teacher. Since my mother was an orphan, because her parents died when they were young, she came out to be with her older sister. She’s the teacher.

[break in recording]

15:15 We were, kind of, but I was more sheltered than my older sister. She was the oldest, so she kid of got the brunt of it. I was just the little sister going along with it. And I know my brother was—he got names called, they threw rocks at him, that kind of stuff. My mother told my older brother [chuckles], “If anybody wants to fight with you, don’t be running home. You take care of yourself. You fight. Defend yourself. And don’t be running home.” So from that point on he took care of himself. He kind of set the course, I guess, because he was the oldest one, in the schools. My sister got some of the stuff, because they didn’t want her to take courses that lead to college. But then when I came, they had kind of paved the way, so when I figured out that I wanted to go to college, and I had a direction, I wanted to have a medical career, I just kind of went at it. Had some good teachers at Boulder High, and I just followed it through.

And we were aware there was subtle stuff going on. But all our friends—I mean, we didn’t have any choice for friends. They had to be white or Hispanic. Because we were the only kids, you know, wherever. We lived on Goss Street for a little bit, maybe a year or two, right before kindergarten. And then we moved to a house on 24th and Mapleton, and all our neighbors were white or Hispanic, so those were our friends. And those are some of the same friends I have today. We didn’t know—the people that were our friends, were our friends. I think since my dad played in an orchestra and made us take instruments, I played cello and my sister played violin and piano, they kind of hung with some of the people who played in the orchestra, and they weren’t the people that were prejudiced. They were people who had money.

(Did you find that the people that were better off were the ones that were the more open-minded in the community, the more accepting in the community?)

They were pretty open, yeah. They were more accepting, because we were kind of—we associated with them a lot and with people in our neighborhood, and the people in our neighborhood were great. There was a little mean woman who lived down the street, but she was mean to everybody. [laughs] She claimed that we killed her chickens. [laughs] Doesn’t everybody have somebody in the neighborhood who’s just bad news?

(Crazy.)

“Don’t step in my yard” and all this kind of stuff. [laughs]

(What was the name of the act that your father took you and your sister to see at the Macky Auditorium?)

Oh, Marian Anderson.

(OK, because I couldn’t hear it on the tape. I rewound it a whole bunch of times and I couldn’t— )

Yeah, she came to Boulder.

(And who is she?)

She’s a black opera singer.

[discussion about spelling of the name]

M-a-r-i-o-n, I think. [Correct spelling: Marian] It was a treat. And he was into taking us to Sunday afternoon concerts after church we would go up to Macky for organ concerts. For a long time I didn’t like organ music, but I got over that. [laughs] Because he was always taking us there. He liked the classical music, and we were all raised on it, so we liked it too.

(Why do you think your dad enforced the arts onto you and your siblings so much?)

Because he was in it. His dad played the fiddle and he played violin all the way through school.

(Do you feel that your father engaging in these type of activities helped you in the situation that you were in being basically sheltered from a lot of the discrimination and racism that was prevalent in Boulder? Do you think that him being involved in the culture—?)

Yeah, I think that was a boost. Because you really associated with the people who had money, the people who were in the classics. It kind of opened doors.

(Would you say it proved your father to the community?)

Well, since they grew up there in Boulder, I think he was always kind of out there. He was recognized when he was in grade school and high school as an athlete. The violin was a follow- through, not only at church, but he had a band and they played at certain occasions.

20:36 (Most youth today aren’t engaged in many extracurricular activities. Why do you think that is the case nowadays that a lot of kids aren’t involved in the arts and sports? Either it’s just football or _____. They’re not as well rounded.)

I don’t know why, but we’ve had, from my mother’s side of the family and my dad’s side, we’ve had people in the arts. My mother’s parents were musicians and choir directors in church, and then my dad was always involved in the church. He used to play the violin around the house and also in church. I mean, we heard it. I just think that—our family—and we’ve had artists. That’s my brother’s artwork right there. We’ve always had artists in our family from the get-go. My dad was an artist, my aunt. We could go down the lists, there have always been artists in my family. That’s how God has blessed us as a family.

(Do you think that was also a way—was a tactic that your father used to keep you guys out of negative activity that may have been available to you in the community?)

Well, I don’t remember any negative activities. Our families worked together in the neighborhood, and I remember from the grade school to junior high, when we lived on 24th and Mapleton, that my dad always kind of had things available for us. We played as a group. We played baseball in the street. We lived on a corner. The neighbors would come over. He made a skating rink and we always had neighbors over. So there wasn’t a whole lot of negative activity. The worst was, when I was in high school, people smoking and drinking. But I never got involved in that. My parents were anti-smoking and anti-drinking, so we always followed their lead. My mother was always the one who set a good example. They set a good example for us. We stayed away from the negative. I don’t think we ever got into trouble. None of us four kids got into trouble. We did what our parents expected of us. Does that help?

(Definitely.)

[break in recording]

23:07 Reggie plays the horn, and Kendall, the younger brother, he plays the horn when they are both in school, in band. I don’t know if they _____. Janice played the violin. I played the cello through junior high and high school. And then, when your parents play it around the house, then you’re used to hearing the classical music, so you’ve got it. Anyhow, there’s ______, there’s my daughter, there’s my son. [leafs through picture album] I don’t know how old you want to go. A lot of our family—when Aunt Grace died a few years ago, she had a lot of pictures that we had never seen as a family. This is one of the pictures.

(I thought that this kind of activity, the photographs and stuff like that, was not available to blacks, really, that kind of technology back then wasn’t really available.)

Yeah, but apparently it was, because we’ve got a whole lot of pictures.

(That’s why I’m amazed to see these pictures.)

And it may have been just the way our family was associated in the community. We were part of the community in Boulder. I don’t know if my dad took pictures. I’m not clear on how we got so many pictures. But there’s some kind of metal picture stuff that we found in Aunt Grace’s stuff.

(And your father attended CU for a while?)

Mm-hmm.

(And he played athletics? What sports did he play?)

See, I don’t know if he played athletics in college. I don’t have any pictures. But I have plenty of them from high school and Whittier Elementary. If you want orchestra pictures, I have some of those too. Here’s my great-grandmother out in Kansas, one of those sod houses.

(Yeah, if I could get orchestra pictures, that would be good. They talk a lot about that in the article.)

OK, that one, then these two.

25:44 [End of side D. End of interview.]