Interview with Russell W. Fridley Interviewed by Lucile M. Kane and Rhoda R. Gilman Minnesota Historical Society Interviewed on February 23, March 31, and April 6 and 17, 1987 at the Minnesota Historical Society Saint Paul, Minnesota Russell W. Fridley - RF Lucile M. Kane - LK Project Rhoda R. Gilman - RG RG: The first thing on our outline is the Iowa boyhood and youth. I guess you grew up in Oelwein, Iowa? History RF: No. I was born in Oelwein. RG: Oh. So you grew up in-- Oral Society RF: Well, we moved around. I grew up for about three years in a little town near Oelwein named Sumner, Bremer County, Iowa. And then we moved to Des Moines. My father was a wholesale grocer, and he tried two or three businesses.Society So my first eight years are somewhat nomadic. About three years in Sumner. Then we moved to an even smaller town named Westgate. This is all within forty miles of Oelwein. Then we moved toHistorical Des Moines. Then back to Sumner. And then when I was eight years old, we moved to Des Moines. So from the age of eight on, until I went to college about ten years later, Des Moines was really my home. RG: What could you say aboutHistorical the general ethnic background of your family? RF: Well, the ethnic backgroundMinnesota is kind of mixed. Fridley is a German-Swiss name on my father's side, but he also had a Scandinavian mother. My paternal grandmother, Celia Sylvester, she was part Swedish and part Norwegian. So that legitimatized me when we came to Minnesota. [Chuckles] One-eighth Scandinavian. On my mother's side--she was Irish, Welsh and German. Minnesota RG: That makes you the result of a melting pot. RF: It really does. RG: I take it that ethnicity wasn't a big factor in your -- RF: No. I don't think it was a hot topic of conversation. My mother had some interest in it, but I wouldn't say it was a keen interest. And I don't think it's ever been a keen interest of mine. Obviously the nature of my job with the Society, you have to be somewhat informed. But the 1 patriarch on the Fridley side, Dan Fridley, we know is a miller who came over from Switzerland about 1840. And I've looked into a couple of Fridley genealogies, but we can't get back beyond him. So probably the genealogical research is over in Switzerland on that side. LK: Nice trip sometime. RF: Yes. RG: And you were the middle child? RF: No, I was the youngest. RG: The youngest of three. Project RF: Yes. I have a brother who is eleven years older and a sister who is eight years older, so I was the baby. As far as the religious orientation of the family, again that's somewhat mixed. My mother was a Methodist, though after we moved to Des Moines she joined the Presbyterian Church, which I joined as I came along and was active in it for a fairly briefHistory time. I don't think my father was ever much of a churchman. LK: What was your brother's name? Oral Society RF: My brother's name--and he's still living--Robert, and my sister's name is June. LK: And your sister's married name is? Society Historical RF: June Flowers. LK: Oh, that's a lovely name. RG: Do you have any particularHistorical things you'd like to say about your schooling--high school, elementary school? Was it pretty much general small town, and then high school in Des Moines I think? Minnesota RF: Yes. Oh, I recall in Sumner where I started school at the age of five--we didn't have kindergarten then--that I had some difficulty with school--reading, arithmetic--across the board. And I don'tMinnesota think my early years there were in any way distinguished. But I do remember we had a wonderful second grade teacher, Mrs. Bauman, who used to take us out on field trips, and I think I probably remember those field trips much more than the classroom work. She lived on a farm, and there was a stream running through the farm, and she'd take us out on picnics and wading. But I think it was very much small town, and as you look back you tend to romanticize those. But I remember those experiences with pleasure. After I came to Des Moines--I would have been in the fourth grade--and I had had a very serious bout with scarlet fever, which you recall was fairly popular as a disease then. And that had left me with a heart condition of a fast heart, and it took me about six months to work out of that. And I had fallen behind in school the first semester in the fourth grade. So I remember the fourth grade with some trauma as a very difficult year. But then as 2 I went into the fifth grade, I began to enjoy school. And I think my popular subjects were first of all, mathematics. I don't think they taught much in the way of history or social studies, at least that I remember. But I think I identify the courses I liked with the teachers I liked. RG: Were you much of a reader as a child? RF: I think I gradually became a reader. I was not an early reader, but I think by the time I was in sixth grade I'd become a reader. My Scandinavian grandmother, whom I often spent summers with, with her and my step-grandfather--a fellow named John Bumgardener--Celia Sylvester was her maiden name--she used to read to me. And I attribute a lot of interest in history to her, because she was interested in, well, the immigrant experience--what we'd call today. She was a second generation American, and she had a love of American history, literature, poetry. She'd been a school teacher. I think if I have to pinpoint anyone who gave me an impulse toProject read, she'd be the one. I think my mother was a very strong influence more in the sense of conversation. It was a strongly Republican family--conservative politically -- except for my mother, who was an ardent New Dealer. And she traced that back to her father, who was a well-to-do farmer in the Oelwein area. And he lost two large farms during the Depression, and she always blamed that on Herbert Hoover and his administration. But she was the best informed of Historythe family -- kept up with current events. So she enlivened the dinner table conversation a great deal. RG: I can imagine, if there was that much disagreement.Oral Society RF: And to this day my sister and brother remain very strong Republicans, so we carry on the division. [Chuckles] Society LK: Interesting family gatherings. Historical RG: That sort of leads to one thing I had been wondering about. Do you feel that growing up in small town Iowa during the height of the Depression of the thirties, that this in any way had an impact on you? Historical RF: Oh I think so. I think it gave me a feeling of fondness for the small town and the rural areas. I remember many very pleasantMinnesota times with my grandmother and step-grandfather. I'd spend summers there. RG: Did they live on a farm? Minnesota RF: Kind of a small farm, I'd say -- an acreage on the edge of town. But they had a couple cows and chickens and a couple horses, and they grew a lot of crops -- I'd say kind of subsistence farming. And I spent a lot of time with them outdoors and in the fields. I don't think I enjoyed it as much then as I do now looking back on it, but I think it did give me a feeling for what seemed to me was a very solid kind of community, even though I'm sure they were having a difficult time making ends meet at that time, as most people were in that area of Iowa. RG: But they were getting by. 3 RF: Oh yes. RG: There wasn't a lot of enormous trauma that you witnessed? RF: No, no. My grandmother's daughter, Aunt Florence, and her husband, Dale Russell, they lived in Iowa quite awhile, but then they moved to Bemidji, or to Black Duck. And by the time I had moved to Des Moines, they had moved to Black Duck--that's about 1936. So the first part of Minnesota I became acquainted with was that Black Duck-Bemidji area, because I think I spent four summers in Black Duck with them, and one summer we camped out--1936--a very lively year politically in Minnesota, but I was totally unaware of it. So it was, I think, a fairly close-knit family, but kind of an extended family, in a way. RG: As you became a high school student in Des Moines-- recalling my own Projectadolescence in that period when the teenager was becoming a recognized entity in American society--do you have any particular recollections of that--your fondness for movies or-- RF: Yes, my brother went into the movie business. He acquired a chain of theaters in Iowa. But back then he went to work for another uncle, Uncle Bob Bernard, Historyin northwestern Iowa, and they operated what they called the circuit.