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The Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic has affected every aspect of life, locally and globally. The dilemma of
closing the schools, colleges, and universities has interrupted teaching and student’s success. Classes
have shifted to online learning, leading to changes in students’ schedules, lifestyles, and health. At this
time, I have received numerous e-mails from my academic advisors, teachers, and the counseling center.
As this is a particularly challenging time across our world, it is normal to experience stress, anxiety, and
fear. The staff at Grand Valley State University has still been able to remain connected with their
students. More specifically, even in the midst of uncertain times, GVSU offers enormous support and
management tools to help students finish the rest of the semester.
I have an apartment near the Grand Valley campus; although, I decided to come home for a couple of
weeks. I did not get to have the proper goodbye to some of my close friends and it all felt so surreal. I
should have had two months left of my sophomore year, instead I had to pick up everything and leave.
Everything feels like it is changing so fast and I have no control. I can only control how I spend my time
and having a positive outlook. I quickly packed my bags, not knowing what to bring home or how long I
would be gone. I have been home for about a month now and I am still filled with uncertainty on when I
will go back to my apartment.
I am unable to do things that I would normally do, like visiting my grandma. Also, my cousin had to
do have their baby gender reveal over a Zoom meeting. I am unable to do all the fun things that I had
planned for the summer. Instead of my usual schedule, I spend most of my time catching up on
schoolwork and going for walks with my parents. My older sister lives in Arizona, and my parents
thought it would be safer if she stayed there. We facetime her almost every day and try to play fun
family games over the phone. I have been trying to keep myself entertained, for example, I have been
reading books and want to learn how to sew. On another note, my parents had me when they were older,
they are now 63 and 73 years old. This makes me nervous because older adults are at a higher risk of
developing the virus. Also, my dad’s elective surgery has been postponed and he experiences daily pain.
�We try to limit going to the grocery store and out in public as much as we can; but when we need too,
we wear gloves and masks. One day, my dad went to three stores and could not find toilet paper. This
time of uncertainty and fear has people doing crazy things.
It is hard for everyone at this time; however, we have to think that every single person is in the same
situation. That should bring us comfort that we are not alone. Even though this is a scary and terrible
time, we should always be looking at the bright side. People are using their creativity much more to
think of fun things to keep them busy, and one of the most important is we are connecting and bonding
with our family much more then what we would have if this pandemic would not have happened. To
keep our spirits high, it is important to think in a positive light and try and cheer ourselves up rather than
looking at the bad in this whole situation.
�
Dublin Core
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Title
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COVID-19 Journals
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled.
The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
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Title
A name given to the resource
The Pandemic
Description
An account of the resource
Journal of an anonymous GVSU student's experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
Anonymous
Date
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2020-04-27
Source
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University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Subject
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COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives.
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COVID-19_2020-04-27_ANON_028
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application/pdf
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Text
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eng
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1
Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23
Miss Estelle Wolf
Interviewed on August 6, 1974
Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com
Tape #38 (1:18:01)
Biographical Information
Miss Estelle Wolf was born in Evart, Osceola County, Michigan on 17 July 1886, the daughter
of David Wolf and Amelia Rosenfield. Estelle died on 18 September of 1988 in Manhattan, New
York City. Her obituary was published in the New York Times on 21 September 1988. She was
well known in New York City.
David Wolf, the son of Jacob and Clara (Newberg) Wolf was born on 4 April 1856 in
Ogdensburg, St. Lawrence County, New York. He was married to Amelia Rosenfield in Rock
Island, Illinois on 14 October 1885. David died on 17 July 1929 at Blodgett Hospital in East
Grand Rapids, Michigan. Amelia died at the age of 101 on 13 January 1965 in Blodgett Hospital.
The Wolf family plot is in Oak Hill Cemetery in Grand Rapids.
The Wolf family lived at 333 (227) South Union Street in Grand Rapids in 1898. The aunt and
uncle mentioned are no doubt Morris A. and Ida (Wolf) Heyman who lived with their family at
317 (213) South Union Street.
___________
Interviewer: This Oral History Project Interview is being conducted on Tuesday August 6, 1974.
The interview is taking place in the home of Miss Estelle Wolf. We will pick up now from this
point, Miss Wolf, however you wish to begin.
Miss Wolf: I‟m Estelle Wolf; I was born in Evart, Michigan and came to Grand Rapids with my
parents and brother when I was seven years old. My father was one of the pioneer lumbermen, in
Evart, and we moved to Grand Rapids when he became involved in selling lumber to the
furniture factories here.
I think I was in first grade when we came here. I always liked to go to school. I don‟t remember
too much about that first grade, but I remember very well where we lived on Union Street near
my aunt and uncle, Mr. & Mrs. Heyman. It was a block that had lots of children and so I had lots
of playmates. We played outdoors a good deal in our big back yards, and I enjoyed all the
children around there.
Interviewer: Do happen to remember the names of them?
Miss Wolf: Oh, yes, I remember all the names.
�2
Interviewer: Maybe you can tell us who some of them were.
Miss Wolf: Of course, there were my cousins, the [Morris A.] Heyman children; and next door
were the [Warren B.] Stimsons, who were a big family that we had very friendly relations with:
the [John K. V.] Agnew children; and farther up the street was the [Everett M.] Radcliffes, and
the [George G.] Clays. We were all very friendly. I remember George Clay helped me learn to
ride the bicycle. My recollection is that my father won a bicycle, a child‟s bicycle, in a lottery of
some kind, and I was the first child on the block to have a bicycle. That was a great event. And
down on the corner, the other way down on Wealthy, was the [Charles E.] Mercer family. They
had quite a few children too, I don‟t remember exactly how many anymore. I went to Henry
Street School, and it seems to me that I was always friendly with children and had lots of
playmates.
One incident that stands out in my mind that I think is interesting is at the school, in those days
the water for the children was in a bucket and we drank out of the dipper, and we stood in line
for our turn at the dipper. Henry Street School had the only black children in the city I believe.
The black people all lived around in that neighborhood. I don‟t remember any one special, but as
we stood in line one day for our drinks, a little black girl took a drink out of the dipper, then the
next child in line refused to drink. Morris Stimson got out of his place, and came over and took a
drink, and then the line went on. That evidently made a great impression on me because my
mother says that I came home and told her about it, and that then I said, “Morris Stimson was a
hero.”
Interviewer: Oh, that‟s nice. Do you remember any of the teachers you had at school?
Miss Wolf: Yes, vaguely. There was Miss [Edith K.] Boynton, I remember her at Henry Street
School. I think she was the kindergarten or the first grade, maybe. Also, there was a Miss
[Estelle] Hazeltine. I think she was from the family that Lee Hutchins knows Hazeltine of
Hazeltine and Perkins. Those are the two names I do remember.
Interviewer: Did you have any favorite subjects in school?
Miss Wolf: I don‟t think so. In those days I just liked school, and I do remember… my name
began with “W”, and I always sat at the back of the room. That bothered me. In class after class I
sat in the back of the class. So one day I said to the teacher, “Couldn‟t you seat us by our first
names?” And she did. And I sat up front after that. This year at Christmas time, a friend of mine
wrote her Christmas cards by an alphabetical list of her friends. So, this year she began at the
end, so I got a Christmas card this year, and so I was reminded of this event, this school incident.
Interviewer: Do you remember much about the way the houses looked in your neighborhood at
that time?
�3
Miss Wolf: Yes, because they look almost the same now. I remember the house we moved in on
Union Street, was not in very good condition. It had been occupied by a prominent family here,
who didn‟t take very good care of it. That annoyed my father very much to think that this family
didn‟t take better care of the house. So, when we rented it we remarked about that.
Interviewer: That was when you came here from Evart?
Miss Wolf: Yes, in 1893, the year of the World‟s Fair in Chicago.
Interviewer: By the way, did you go to the World‟s Fair?
Miss Wolf: My parents went.
Interviewer: Do you have any particular memories of the lumber activity that your father
engaged in?
Miss Wolf: No, except we talked a good deal about Evart when we first came here. The people
he knew there often came down and came to dinner with us, or to lunch, and he kept in very
close contact. He had helped establish an industry there called the American Logging Tool
Company, and he was the director as long as he lived. It was a very profitable factory that
employed quite a few of the people in there, and he kept in contact with them. We had a
telephone that was quite unusual too, I guess, and my father used to call up sometimes to talk
with Mr. Rose or Mr. Postel. The operator would say, “Well they‟re not at home, but we know
where they are!”
Interviewer: Your father was in business here?
Miss Wolf: Yes, he became quite a well known businessman, Director of the Grand Rapids Trust
Company, and I think got along very well with business community.
Interviewer: Did he continue his lumber connections after he went into the Trust Company?
Miss Wolf: Oh, yes, that wasn‟t full time. He always sold lumber to the factories here, not the
lumber that they made their furniture of, but crating materials, and that sort of thing. He was very
active in the Republican Party and often said that he knew somebody in every county in
Michigan, and was sent around by the National Committee at election time.
Interviewer: Did he run for office?
Miss Wolf: No never, no, no. I didn‟t really know much about the politics; we didn‟t talk about
local politics then, in my recollection.
Interviewer: Were there other children at home?
Miss Wolf: Just my brother, who‟s four years younger than I am.
�4
Interviewer: You mentioned also an aunt and uncle.
Miss Wolf: Yes, my uncle, Mr. Heyman, had a horse, and a carriage of sorts. That was a great
pleasure to all of us. The children were taken on picnics and on rides: I remember that we went
up over John Ball Park and saw the Halley‟s Comet [1910]. Of course I was probably much older
then. We did all kinds of nice things because they used to include me very often.
Then, I had an aunt [Esther (Wolf)] who had no children, Mrs. Abe M. Amberg. She and I were
very good friends. She was quite an intellectual type of person. She was semi-invalid, but she
used to do certain things, and every spring she took me to North Park and taught me the
wildflowers. We didn‟t take too much interest in the birds, as I remember. There was some
interest in the birds, and later on I became a bird watcher, which I still am. But that was, I think,
a great factor in my life, going out there, because I‟m very interested in conservation now.
I do remember, when I was in high school was the time that the Audubon Society had the
campaign to save the egrets. Their plumage at breeding season was taken out to decorate the
women‟s hats and I think that probably the first campaign the Audubon Society had for the
preservation of wildlife. I was very interested in that. I don‟t know who interested me; maybe it
was a school project. I never wore any feathers on my hat after that.
Interviewer: Do you remember how you went out to North Park?
Miss Wolf: Oh, on the streetcar. Yes, nobody had any automobiles, and riding the streetcar was
very nice, too. That‟s what we did on hot summer nights. We‟d get on the streetcar, in the
summer they had open cars with long benches, and we‟d ride around the city and cool off that
way.
Interviewer: Did you go out as far as the Ramona amusement park?
Miss Wolf: Oh, that wasn‟t any distance, then, I don‟t think. We used to go to Reed‟s Lake to
skate in the winter and I don‟t remember about the summer, not when I was that small. Yes, yes,
I do. There was something out there, there was a merry-go-round, there was a carousel, and I
always got sick on the carousel. So, when the neighbors took all the children, I would say, “I‟m
not going on it.” Once in a while they would persuade me to go, to try it. I remember once I
jumped off when it was going, and somebody caught me, because I was getting sick.
Interviewer: And you went out there frequently during the summer, would you say?
Miss Wolf: Oh, I don‟t think so. No, I think that was quite an event to do that. We went every
place on the streetcars.
Interviewer: Did your family keep horses, did they have horses?
Miss Wolf: No, just my uncle; and that was very unusual, I think, and a great pleasure for the
family, because they were generous about taking us. In the summer some of the family, not my
�5
immediate family went out to Lamont, to a boarding house out there. I guess we used to drive out
there, for the evening or daytime, to have a picnic. But I think I never stayed out there and I
don‟t think my parents did either. My father didn‟t like to do that sort of thing.
Interviewer: Was there a fairly good-sized Jewish community in Grand Rapids?
Miss Wolf: Oh, no very small. There were almost no Jewish children in school. I wasn‟t at all
conscious of any discrimination or anything. We did go to the services at the Synagogue, not
regularly as I remember, on the holidays we went. But, my family was not religious. The Wolf
family, some of them were, more or less. But my mother was not. She always said her father,
who was born in Germany, started to have training as a rabbi, but he didn‟t believe in it and he
discontinued, so her family never had any religious training, I believe. She was from Rock
Island, Illinois.
Interviewer: Now that was your mother‟s family?
Miss Wolf: Yes.
Interviewer: Do you remember any of the people in Rock Island?
Miss Wolf: Oh, in Rock Island? Oh, yes: we went there. My mother was one of nine children, I
think that grew up. It was very, very exciting to go to Rock Island. My grandfather was a wellto-do citizen of Rock Island, and there were other family members. She had a brother and a
nephew there. So there were a lot of relatives. And my uncles were always very indulgent with
me and bought me things, took me on excursions and played cards with me; it was very, very
pleasant to go there. A big house with all these people; I don‟t know how anyone ever could
have kept house with nine children. That‟s something I can‟t imagine.
We used to visit occasionally; I don‟t know that we went every year. My mother had a lot of
cousins; they were a very pleasant family, very interesting, many of them, and became quite
prominent citizens in various places. My one uncle lived in Des Moines, and afterwards became
a well-known merchant there. One uncle went to Chicago. So, we had a lot of family around.
My mother‟s one brother was very, very short and very overweight. He lived in Chicago. He was
very jolly; we loved being with him; he always had good stories to tell and was so good natured
and a generous person. There was an actor named George Sidney, who later became a very wellknow director. He played in Chicago in a play called, Welcome Stranger. He looked so much
like my uncle that when my uncle walked along the street in Chicago when Mr. Sidney was
playing there, the people would say to him, “Welcome Stranger.”
Well, a few years after that he and his daughter went to Los Angeles on a trip, and they went to
some kind of party where there were a lot of the movie people. His daughter saw Mr. Sidney, so
she went over and spoke to him and asked him if he would come over and meet her father, for
whom he was often taken. Now, you remember, he was very short, and very fat, and not very
�6
good looking. Mr. Sidney came over, and the daughter introduced them. There was a slight
pause, and my uncle said, “It‟s alright, Mr. Sidney, I feel just as badly as you do.”
In the winter in Grand Rapids, I always loved the snowstorms. I still like them in New York
when there‟s a snowstorm that ties up the city, and the traffic is a mess, and the streets get so
dirty and sloppy. You know, I used to say, “I just love this!” People think I‟m kind of nutty to
like a snowstorm. We used to get awfully cold; I‟d come back and cry because my feet were so
cold. We‟d lie down on the banks and make angels in the snow, and have lots of fun with the
snow. I always did like that.
Interviewer: Were there winter sports?
Miss Wolf: Oh, I was never very athletic; I could never hit a golf ball, or a tennis ball, although I
used to try.
Interviewer: Did you go skating in the wintertime?
Miss Wolf: Yes, we went out to Reed‟s Lake, on the streetcar. I wasn‟t a very good skater
either, but I‟d go with all the crowd. I had friends always, and went with the crowds, as I
remember. Then another thing I remember very well was when I graduated from high school, I
had a very lovely dress that we‟d taken and got a lot of pains to have made. And there was a
small pox epidemic in Grand Rapids, a very serious one, and no meetings of any kind, no
assemblages were allowed. No church, no meetings, and no graduation exercises. So I never was
in the graduation exercise from high school. Our diplomas were mailed to us, I guess. All the
descriptions of our dresses were written up in the paper, but nobody saw us in our graduation
dresses, at graduation. I guess we wore them later. I think I, in fact, I took mine to college with
me.
Interviewer: And where was that, that you went to college?
Miss Wolf: I went to Simmons, in Boston, for two years, which I enjoyed very much. I don‟t
know how Simmons was chosen. Well, yes, in a way I do. Anyway I didn‟t have anything to do
about choosing it.
There were a number of girls from Grand Rapids at Simmons, which was quite unusual because
it was a new college, and not only a new college, but a new type of college, where it was a
combination of academic and occupational things. I remember going down for the first time with
the girls from here on a train. That was a great event. In those days it was lots of fun traveling on
the train and having the sleeper, and going into the diner and it was very enjoyable.
I loved Boston, and I made friends, my two best friends. One was from Providence, Rhode Island
and the other one from Dubuque, Iowa. The three of us were very good friends, and I‟m still very
friendly with the girl from Dubuque. The other one, the Providence girl has passed away. But I
used to go to Providence very often for weekends with her. She belonged to a neighborhood
�7
crowd that took me in as a wild Indian from the west, and I was quite a curiosity. They were
surprised at my enthusiasm for the stone walls, the clam chowder, and the things I‟d never had. I
kept those friendships up for many, many years. That was a great event in my life.
Interviewer: Did you concentrate in any particular subject at Simmons?
Miss Wolf: Yes, I was in the household economic department, and specialized in sewing and
cooking. But I also took academic subjects and I remember my French teacher, and my German
teacher. I took great interest in going to the symphony, to plays, and to the theatre. I became
quite friendly with the, oh yes, and English I took. The English teacher and I became very good
friends and I used to go to the symphony with her. She was a very good teacher, who interested
me in poetry and things I had never known before. One or two of the Providence people are still
living, I still hear from them occasionally.
Then I remember when automobiles first appeared on the scene. The first automobile that I ever
rode in was owned by neighbors of ours, across the street from us on Terrace Avenue lived a Mr.
and Mrs. Hayes. They were a very friendly, nice couple that had no children. They had what we
called, a one lunger Cadillac, with a rear entrance. That was the first automobile, I believe, that I
ever rode in.
Then one summer, Mr. and Mrs. Hayes went away for some weeks, and said we could use their
car. Well, of course, none of us knew how to drive a car. So we engaged Fred Pantlind, for
twenty five cents an hour, to drive for us, and he‟d drive us around town. And that was just great.
Then one thing, I have thought about, trying to think of things we did, was on hot summer nights
we used to stand down at the corner of Union and Wealthy (this is going back some years now
from what I was just talking about) and gather pinching bugs. When people passed by, we‟d put
pinching bugs on them, which I‟m sure they didn‟t enjoy. But, we had lots of fun.
Interviewer: Did you say not many people had automobiles in that particular time?
Miss Wolf: No, no nobody had automobiles. That was well, I wouldn‟t know the date. We had
our first automobile in nineteen hundred and six, I believe. My father had an insurance policy
come due, and he liked always to have new things, the things that were in vogue, and he bought a
Model K Winton, with that money. Now, there were quite a few Model K Wintons in town: I
don‟t remember now who owned them. But we knew the automobiles in those days by the sound
of their engine. We could tell when a Winton was coming down the street, and who owned it.
Seems to me that Dr. [Perry] Schurtz had one, I‟ve forgotten who else. But there were four or
five.
Interviewer: And you knew them all?
Miss Wolf: We knew them all. In those days there were no fenders on the cars, there were no
electric lights, they had acetylene tanks, and also changing the tire was an all-day job. In the
�8
night, sometimes you heard pounding and pounding they had to pound because tires got frozen
on to the rims, and it was a terrific job to take them off. And the shift was not just like it is now.
That‟s the only car that we had that I never drove. I drove all the others. And I liked to ride, and I
still like to ride. I would beg my brother who did drive the car, to take me for a ride. He‟d drive
me around the block and then he‟d say, “Now, are you satisfied?”
Interviewer: The automobile sounded, at that time, like they were lots of fun and there weren‟t so
many of them, and that you knew all of them.
Miss Wolf: I had an uncle who had great influence in my life. He was a widower, Uncle Gus
[Gustav A. Wolf], a lawyer who was well known here. And he was a person of many interests,
especially intellectual interests, who used to talk to me a good deal about all kinds of things. It
was really an education to have him interested in you. He used to be at the house quite a good
deal because he did live alone, well, later lived alone. He lived with his sister until she passed
away.
Interviewer: Can you tell us something more about Uncle Gus? Do you remember anything
particularly about him, in addition to what you‟ve already said?
Miss Wolf: I ought to remember… He liked to travel. I remember once I went on a trip with him
to New Orleans, and Chattanooga, and he knew all the history and we did all the sightseeing in
those places. It was very interesting to go with somebody who had an interest in all that history.
He was also very interested in the Jewish religion, and in the synagogue. Later, much later, he
got his two brothers to join with him and they put a Tiffany window in the synagogue in memory
of their parents. Now, the synagogue was sold, and the window was not removed because Uncle
Gus died before it was taken out. And this very day, it is being taken out and taken to the new
building.
Interviewer: Have you been instrumental in making that move?
Miss Wolf: Yes, I‟ve tried for several years to do it and finally one of my cousins, who was
interested as I was in it, kind of urged me on and I found a way to get it moved. I hope it is not
broken and that it gets safely moved and placed in the new building. It‟s now very valuable, the
Tiffany windows are not made anymore, and this is a big window and a very beautiful one.
Interviewer: Can you describe it a bit, for us?
Miss Wolf: Well, it‟s Ruth receiving sheaves of barley from somebody.
Interviewer: It‟s a very large window?
Miss Wolf: Yes, it‟s a large window to have to replace. We have to put another window in place
of it. Of course, it can‟t be left without a window.
Interviewer: Do you remember when that window was given to the Temple or the original one?
�9
Miss Wolf: It‟s in the; there is a book that was published when the new Temple was built out on
Fulton Street, and the date in that is nineteen twenty-six. So I guess that was when it was put in.
That was very unusual to have a Tiffany window, in this part of the country, to have anyone
know about them. But Uncle Gus kept track of things like that, and was interested.
Interviewer: Now, your uncle had a law practice here, you say?
Miss Wolf: Yes, he was a successful lawyer. He went to Michigan, University of Michigan Law
School, and I guess was one of the early graduates. I did know, but I‟ve forgotten the date he
graduated. His name is in the history that Mr. Baxter wrote of Grand Rapids.
Interviewer: His full name was….?
Miss Wolf: Gustav A., Gustav A. Wolf
Interviewer: Gustav A. Wolf.
Miss Wolf: He was born in Ogdensburg, New York. All the three Wolf boys were born in
Ogdensburg, and the three girls, Mrs. [Ida] Heyman, Mrs. [Esther] Amberg, and Mrs. [Bertha]
Levi, were born in Ionia.
Interviewer: The family lived in Ionia then for a while?
Miss Wolf: Yes.
Interviewer: Do you remember what type of law practice your uncle had?
Miss Wolf: Well. I think it was general. General is all, as far as I know.
Interviewer: And, he was not in politics either?
Miss Wolf: He was a member of the library board, and enjoyed that work very much. I don‟t
know that he ever ran for office. I don„t think any of the Wolfs did.
Interviewer: They were primarily either in professions or in business?
Miss Wolf: And interested in welfare things, and civic organizations, all of them. My mother was
active at Butterworth Hospital Guild, and there is a guild named after her. She was one of the
founders of the Housekeepers Guild of Butterworth, and was afterwards on the women‟s board. I
guess the Housekeepers Guild is named after her, the Amelia R. Wolf Guild.
Interviewer: What were some of the other activities of a welfare nature or even general social
activities?
Miss Wolf: I think my brother once managed a drive for the Red Cross, and my aunt, Mrs.
Heyman, was active in the blind association. I think she was active at Butterworth and Blodgett
�10
Hospital and so was I. I was one of the founders of the Mary Free Bed Guild, which is still in
existence. We had a very exciting time when we founded that, with Rosamond Rouse, and
Isabelle Boise, and we put on a series of lectures, and concerts, a number of years and brought
out all the big people. It was really a terrific undertaking for us. As I remember that first year, the
artists cost five thousand dollars. Of course, one artist would cost that now probably… But that
was something terrific for us to raise five thousand dollars. We sold tickets, had the concerts at
Power‟s Theatre, and they were very successful, and it was lots of fun, and we entertained the
singers, the performers, the dancers, and the musicians, and it was very exciting. I was the
treasurer, and the artists, wanted to be paid in cash the minute the concert was over. So, I had to
go and get the money from the bank, the day of the concert. That made my mother very nervous,
to have five thousand dollars in cash in the house. She could hardly wait till the concert was over
and I got rid of that money.
Interviewer: Do you remember much about the Power‟s Theatre, at that time?
Miss Wolf: Yes. In those days, all the good shows went on the road. We went to the theatre very
often and saw very good plays. Then I remember, I think the first movie I ever saw was at the
Power‟s Theatre was the… that fight, that famous fight, [Bob] Fitzsimons and, who was the
other? And my father evidently was one of the backers of that, and we sat in a box and saw that
fight. That was also a great event.
Interviewer: Did they have what we would call legitimate theatre only, at the Powers?
Miss Wolf: That was before any movies were existence. And you saw your friends when you
went to the theatre. It was always very exciting, I thought. I liked the theatre, and all the good
shows came here.
Interviewer: That‟s what I understand. Others have said that so many of the good shows and the
good actors and actresses…
Miss Wolf: We saw everything; that was you didn‟t have to go to New York to see the theatre in
those days. Now, there isn‟t anything good in New York. It‟s very disappointing to go to the
theatre now. I don‟t know why, but the good plays are being written, and the successful runs are
all revivals of old things that I saw years ago, that I don‟t care to see again: I have my
recollections of them.
Interviewer: But you still go to the theatre?
Miss Wolf: Not very often anymore, I‟ve only been two or three times lately, in the last year, or
couple of years. I remember we used to have all the children‟s illnesses in those days. There
were signs then that were then put on the house, the green sign of measles, and then you were
quarantined. And we‟d play. I liked to play dolls and sew for them. So then on the doll‟s house
we would put a little green sign that said “measles”.
�11
Interviewer: You mentioned that there was a smallpox epidemic when you graduated from high
school. Did that touch any of the members of your family?
Miss Wolf: No, but we knew Dr. DeLano, who was the Health officer then, and he used to tell us
about it. He showed us pictures of people who were afflicted, and they were very unpleasant
pictures I remember. He was a very, very nice person. Afterwards, I kept up my association with
his daughters for many years, and they became teachers. Agnes especially was a very interesting
person. She lived in Washington, and I used to go down to visit her. She died in Paris a few years
ago. She was a real authority about art and literature. She was a very interesting person, and I
enjoyed my friendship with her very much.
Interviewer: Do you remember having measles, mumps and all of that?
Miss Wolf: Vaguely, yes, I had measles and mumps, I‟m sure. I guess I don‟t know what else
you had. I didn‟t have diphtheria or scarlet fever. Then another thing that was always interesting
was going to the dentist, for some reason or another, I liked to go there; you got a free can of
toothpaste; that was fun.
Interviewer: It‟s somewhat unusual not to be frightened of going to the dentist.
Miss Wolf: I guess that‟s true. Well, I probably never had anything very frightening done to me,
or anything that hurt. I don‟t remember much about a doctor. Oh, I guess I was always very
healthy.
Interviewer: Good. And the family apparently was too?
Miss Wolf: Yes, and I don‟t remember my mother really ever being sick, or my father much,
until the very end.
Interviewer: When did your parents die?
Miss Wolf: My mother lived to be almost one hundred and two, just lacked a few months. She
died in nineteen sixty-five, I think. My father died in nineteen twenty nine, just when the stock
market crash was about to take place. That was very disturbing to him because he realized
something very serious was happening. That of course, was a terrible thing for us, and I suppose
for everybody else. All of our holdings became practically worthless.
Interviewer: Was there an important change in your family life at about that time?
Miss Wolf: Yes, my brother was ill, and was away in a hospital. I had moved to New York, not
just when he died, but soon afterwards, and my mother was in this big house. Then she rented
some rooms to teachers, some interesting persons, and she made quite an interesting life for
herself and got a little income from the house, and wasn‟t too lonesome with all of us gone. That
was quite a change, of course. Finally, things, I don‟t know, got straightened out; I don‟t know
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how it all happened, because at one time we practically had nothing. But we did have timber land
that was sold afterwards, and I guess that helped us.
Interviewer: Were you living in New York by that time?
Miss Wolf: I went to New York, to a school of photography, not intending to stay. I had no idea
of staying, but I stayed, and I‟m still there.
Interviewer: You‟re still there. Could you tell us a little about what you have done in New
York?
Miss Wolf: Well, I think I‟ve had an interesting time in New York. I made friends at the schools,
some of my friends from the fraternity[?] school I still see, and gradually got acquainted.
During the war, I had quite a lot of work taking pictures of babies, and men who were going in to
the service. Then I always liked cats. I got so I took quite a lot of pictures of people‟s pets. But
after the war it all kind of petered out. Now I don‟t take any pictures at all, and I don‟t have any
paid job.
I‟m a volunteer for the Friends of Central Park, which I consider to be a great privilege to work
with the people I do. We try to interest people in the preservation of parks, and in parks in
general. Of course now, the people are interested in anti-pollution, and conservation, and we get
a great response. We have bicycle trips and tours, and walking tours through the city, not just
through Central Park, but other parks, and in fact into some of the towns in New Jersey that have
interesting architectural buildings. Also, I‟ve gradually gotten very interested in politics. Oh, I
guess I‟ll have to go back and say I worked for WPA. That was when I, gee, I don‟t know, what
year was the WPA? I can‟t think what year that was.
Interviewer: In the thirties.
Miss Wolf: Catherine Murray was the head of the women‟s division of the WPA, in Michigan,
a very close friend of mine. Through her, I got a job with the Michigan WPA. And I lived in
Detroit for a couple of years taking pictures, and I guess in that way I got interested in politics.
Those were the days of Roosevelt, when politics were very exciting, and lots of new things being
tried. Then in New York there was a big movement to reform the Democratic Party and get rid of
the old bosses. I was quite active in one of those clubs, and got to know the young people who
were running for office. I have still kept up my interest, and in recent years, the borough
presidents have organized what are called community boards. I‟ve been on Community Board
Eight, which is one of the good boards in the city for a long, long time. I think I‟ve been on
longer than anybody else. The borough president keeps reappointing me. In that way, while we
don‟t have any great authority, I know what‟s going on in the community, and take part in the
discussions. I‟m on some of the committees: the park committee, the landmark committee. I
enjoy those contacts, and enjoy hearing what‟s going on in the city, and we‟re always fighting
�13
for what we believe in. Also, through the Friends of Central Park I have testified sometimes for
the city planning commission, or the landmarks commission, and that‟s been a great education
for me. I never thought I could get up before the Board of Estimate and talk, but I have done it.
Interviewer: Good. So, you‟ve enjoyed your time in New York.
Miss Wolf: Very much, yes, I know lots of people there now. I think I know more people in New
York than I do in Grand Rapids now, and see I‟ve lived there a long, long time.
Interviewer: Now you mentioned boroughs, which borough do you live?
Miss Wolf: I live in Manhattan. There are five boroughs, and every borough has a president. The
presidents, and the mayor, and the controller, and the president of the city council, form what is
called the Board of Estimate. And then, besides that, there‟s the city council. The Board of
Estimate decides on all the appropriations.
Interviewer: And that‟s the one you‟ve appeared before.
Miss Wolf: Yes.
Interviewer: Now, are there other things about Grand Rapids that stand out, or that you wanted to
mention? Do you come back…?
Miss Wolf: I come back every year, at least once a year, I always have. I used to come back
twice a year, I used to drive, but I don‟t have a car now, so I fly. And there‟s no train anymore.
Interviewer: Well, there are very few.
Miss Wolf: There are very few. Maybe I ought to have taken them. Of course there was a time
when I worked at the Women‟s City Club. I helped found the City Club, and I was one of the
charter members of the City Club. Now they‟ve just had their fiftieth anniversary. I can‟t believe
it was fifty years ago that we met, as I recall, in a room in the Morton Hotel, and started to talk
about forming the City Club. Then they rented the house next to Park Congregational Church.
That was the first club house. Then, for some reason, which I don‟t exactly recall, the woman
who was running it left; and they were wondering who they could get to take her place. I
remember that meeting very well. The Board of Directors and Catherine Murray said, “What
about Estelle Wolf?” So, I got the job. She got me two jobs; with the WPA, and with the
Women‟s City Club. I think I was fairly successful. We moved then up to the present location.
We raised a lot of money, and it was very remarkable how that grew, I think, and there were
trials and tribulations trying to please sixteen hundred women. But I enjoyed it.
One of the things I remember very well, was well… I considered myself a person with no
affectations, but I didn‟t like the way the people said tomato, tomato all the different ways. So I
decided I was going to say tomato. It was a great effort on my part to always say tomato, because
the people around here didn‟t say it. But I heard people around Boston say tomato, and I thought
�14
that was very nice. When I used to order the groceries or the provisions over the telephone, for
the Women‟s City Club, for the dining room, the man from whom I ordered them always
repeated after me. I would say,” I want a bushel of potatoes.” He would say” A bushel of
potatoes.” ”One crate of lettuce.” “A crate of lettuce.” “I want a bag of cucumbers.” “A bag of
cucumbers.” And “I want three boxes of tomatoes,” and he would say “Yes.”
Interviewer: That‟s charming. Who were some of the other original founders of the club? You
mentioned a meeting that took place….?
Miss Wolf: Oh, my, Mrs. Born was the first president, I think. This has all been in the paper
recently because of their celebration of their fiftieth anniversary. Mrs. Hendricks was a president,
and Mrs. Waters. Grace VanHolten (VanHouten?) was a wonderful treasurer for many years, and
Edith Dykema I seem to remember. (I think) she was very active: it was a very nice group of
people.
Interviewer: And what, as you think back, to what purpose, and or what was the principle thing
that the club was going to do?
Miss Wolf: Well, they never seemed to take the interest in the civic affairs, that, for instance, the
Women‟s City Club in New York does. They‟re very active in what goes on in the city and take
a stand, and have studies for different projects that are being considered. But here it seemed to be
more social, meeting for luncheon, and they did have always a certain number of lectures, but in
more of a cultural nature, I think. Mrs. McKnight, Mrs. William McKnight contributed greatly to
the club in those early days, because she knew the theatrical people who came here. I remember
she brought Katherine Cornell to the club and all the prominent people who came. She did it with
a great flair, it was very interesting and very nice to meet these people and have them come talk
to us.
Interviewer: Your membership grew rapidly?
Miss Wolf: Yes, and they have a big waiting list now, I believe. I was there four years, as a
secretary.
(Background Voice: Tell them about Mrs. Shanahan. I thought that was quite amusing.)
Miss Wolf: Oh, well, the Shanahan family, of course, I always think lent a lot of interest to the
community. They had a lot of style, humor and chic. One of the first days the club was open for
lunch, I saw people come in to the dining room. Then for some reason I went into the kitchen,
and one of the waitresses came out to the kitchen very excited. She said “There is a lady
smoking!” I said “Yes, I‟m sure that‟s Mrs. Shanahan.” So she was one of the first women in
Grand Rapids to smoke, maybe. Although I remember, this is a very, very long time ago, when
Teddy Roosevelt came to Grand Rapids and brought his daughter Alice. She created a furor in
Grand Rapids because she smoked.
�15
Interviewer: Oh, my. Do you remember anything else about that visit?
Miss Wolf: No, I didn‟t go to those meetings. I did not ever join the Republican Party, even
though my father had. It amused my father very much that I voted for [Robert M.] La Follette, I
remember. But I went to Chicago and went to the School of Civics and Philanthropy, which of
course was very liberal and I guess they influenced me to be interested in the more liberal
politics.
That was a very, very wonderful experience, too, because I went to the school in its heyday when
the prominent people were interested in social work, Sophonisba Breckenridge, Edith Abbott,
and Graham Taylor, all very remarkable pioneers.
Interviewer: Do you remember anything about Miss Breckenridge?
Miss Wolf: Well, I just remember her as my teacher.
Interviewer: As one of your teachers?
Miss Wolf: Yes.
Interviewer: Well, one of the young men in my department is writing a biography of her.
Miss Wolf: Of her?
Interviewer: Yes.
Miss Wolf: Isn‟t that interesting?
Interviewer: So I may tell him that he should talk to you?
Miss Wolf: Yes, because she was a very good teacher. They were all very nice to me, I
remember, and she gave me special things to do. Sometimes there was a study, that somebody
could do, and I remember I did one or two of those. I think maybe I even got paid for them. I
don‟t know. Edith Abbott of course, was a very prominent person. Her sister, Grace Abbott, was
the first director of the Children‟s Bureau, in Washington, when it was very new: or maybe she
was the second, and maybe Julia Lathrop was the first. Then there was a teacher named Victor
Yarroughs, who taught economics. I enjoyed his classes very much. I was instrumental in getting
him to come over to Grand Rapids once, to give a lecture.
Interviewer: Do you remember any other recollections of your time at the school?
Miss Wolf: Oh yes. That was a very wonderful experience for me. I had an apartment and a
roommate, and I was very interested in what I was doing there then.
Interviewer: Was it very well received at that time?
�16
Miss Wolf: Social Work?
Interviewer: Yes.
Miss Wolf: Oh, yes, yes I thought so, anyway. When I lived here afterwards for some years, I
became interested in the Jewish Welfare Society. Let‟s see, I went there one year and then there
was the First World War, and my brother went in the service. So I came to Grand Rapids, and
worked for the Family Service. Then the war ended, or I guess it didn‟t end, but I went back then
after a lapse of one year, and finished my courses there, and graduated, so to speak. I stayed in
Chicago and worked for the Red Cross, in the Veteran‟s Hospital for several years. Then
Catherine Murray, who I mentioned several times, she said to me one day, “Let‟s go to Europe”.
So I resigned my job, and we went to Europe. Then I went twice more, and had wonderful trips,
which I enjoyed. I haven‟t been to Europe since nineteen twenty seven. Everybody says it‟s very
changed, with high rise buildings and lots of traffic, and I wouldn‟t enjoy it as much as I did. I
had three wonderful trips to Europe. We stayed a long time in those days, because we didn‟t fly.
The life on the ship was always part of the trip, it was fun; you met interesting people and even
though I got seasick I always went again.
Interviewer: Do you remember any of the ships you crossed the Atlantic on?
Miss Wolf: Well, I was trying to think of those the other day. The first ones we went on were the
Red Star Line. I think it was an English line, the Kroonland, and I went on Holland-America
once. Those last ships I don‟t seem to remember.
Interviewer: What was life like on shipboard at that time?
Miss Wolf: When I was well, it was very interesting, especially if you sat at a table with some
interesting people. It was fun just sitting out on the deck, enjoying the ocean and the people. I
don‟t think we did much drinking in those days. But you got acquainted with quite interesting
people, as I recall. Some of whom I corresponded with for some years. I enjoyed the food. It was
always interesting, good, different than you had at home. Especially the manners the people that
were on the English ships. People were polite, and different from what you were used to at home.
Interviewer: Where did you visit in Europe? On the continent, in England.
Miss Wolf: Well, I did quite extensive traveling. The first time, Catherine and I went with a
group, which we found we didn‟t really need. We were capable of traveling by ourselves. The
last time I went to Yugoslavia and Egypt, and always to Paris, which I liked and got to know
quite well, even though unfortunately, I didn‟t speak very much French. I liked Paris, I think
better than London. There are lots of people who like London better. I went to Switzerland, but I
always liked France very much. I think I liked the food, and I liked the people. But I also liked
Italy. I liked the Italians; I liked their animation and their friendliness. The site-seeing of course,
in Italy is just marvelous. There‟s so much to see, and I didn‟t know much of that history.
�17
I went one time when (I guess that was the first time we went) there was a young woman on
board, who was going to Germany for the State Department. Then we saw her in Berlin, and I
always kept in touch with her. She eventually ended up in Athens; so that last trip that I made, I
went to Athens. She made my stay there... I went to Greece, and she made my stay there very
interesting. She introduced me to people, and we hired a car and went on some trips. She came to
New York once or twice, and I saw her. Within the last few years, one day, in connection with
the Friends of Central Park, I got a request for a map of Central Park, from Andrew Antoniadis.
That was my friend‟s son. He‟s gone back to Athens and is in business with his father who is an
architect. His father, the husband of my friend, was one of the architects for the United Nations,
because they employed people from all different countries.
Interviewer: Good. Now, all of these trips you made were before nineteen twenty-seven, did you
say?
Miss Wolf: The last one was in nineteen twenty-seven. That was when I went to Egypt, which I
enjoyed very, very much. That was before the days of knowing too much about that trip up the
Nile. I went as far as Luxor: I should have gone farther. I didn‟t know whether there were those
trips then, and seeing those monuments that have since been destroyed or removed.
I like the sight-seeing in Egypt; it interested me very, very much. Through an organization that I
belong to, I got in touch with an English guide, a woman who had an encampment out at Geza
[Gaza?]. I stayed out there with her, and she was very helpful in helping me go sight-seeing and
telling me what to see and she took me around some, and to some of the restaurants. I remember
that she went with me because I was alone there, and it wasn‟t too pleasant then for a woman to
be alone in Egypt.
Interviewer: Did you make two trips with Catherine Murray?
Miss Wolf: Yes, I went twice with Catherine Murray, and once alone. The last time alone was
quite extensive. I met some friends and went down the Yugoslav coast, with these people. We
were on a ship that stopped at all the places. We started at Trieste, and it was soon after the war,
and there were live sheep on the ship. They were reparations from Germany to some of those
countries. So, that was a very interesting trip.
I remember you never knew who, (after you stopped at a port, then you got back on) your
companions were. I remember these young women, I was with; they stayed in Albania. So I get
back on the ship alone, and I wondered who in the world would be on that boat with me, who I
could be able to talk to. We sat down for dinner, and I didn‟t say anything for awhile, because I
didn‟t know if they spoke English. Then a young man began to talk. He was an Albanian, but he
was a graduate of Harvard. So we got along fine.
Interviewer: I‟ll bet! Did he like clam chowder as well as you?
�18
Miss Wolf: Well, I hope so.
Interviewer: I imagine it would be both difficult and unusual for a young woman to be traveling
by herself at that time, in Egypt.
Miss Wolf: Well, I got kind of frightened by a woman. I went from Athens, or Piraeus, or
whatever the port was, to Egypt with. This was all very new and strange to me. I bought a ticket,
of course, for the ship. When I got on, the Purser said to me, “I noticed that your ticket is from
Cook & Company and you‟re in a state room with a Nubian woman and some children.” He said
“I‟ve taken the privilege of changing you.” I didn‟t know what a Nubian woman was. But I got
into this cabin with an English woman, whose husband was in King Farouk‟s entourage. She
wasn‟t allowed to travel with him. They had gone to England, so she had to travel alone. Well,
she didn‟t like Egypt, and she scared the daylights out of me, about what to do and what not to
do, so unnecessarily. There wasn‟t any danger around me at all. So, I was a little apprehensive
about it. But also, when you were alone, an Egyptian guide wasn‟t necessarily an interesting
companion, so that I would like to talk to other people.
Interviewer: Are there any other things that you want to mention now? Any other things that
have come to mind about your connections with Grand Rapids?
Miss Wolf: Oh, I loved high school. I went from Henry Street, I went to Central Grammar in the
seventh and eighth grades, and made friends there that were not just from my own little
community, or neighborhood. Then I went to Central High School. I loved going to school, and I
loved going to high school. I wasn‟t ever a very good student, but I liked going. Then I became
a member of a Sorority, which was very undemocratic of me. But we were a very nice
association. I didn‟t think anything about this sorority. I didn‟t know much about it, I guess. But
I went home for lunch one day, or went home after school, I guess it was, one day and my
mother said, “Hazel Amberg and Carrie Ward have been here to see you.” I couldn‟t imagine
what these older, very exciting women came to see me about. But they came again, and invited
me to join the sorority and that was a very nice experience for me, even though it was
undemocratic. I got to know this circle of girls well. We did things together and had meetings.
I remember most of my teachers in school, Miss [Agnes] Ginn, the French teacher, and Miss
Stout (I‟ve forgotten what she taught.), Mrs. Heeve, and Mr. Bacon, maybe that was Central
Grammar…… We had dances and danced a lot. We had a building that had been a stable that
we made into a recreation room. We called it the Annex, and it was in the back of our house. We
had a phonograph, what we called a phonograph in those days, and a dance floor. We had lots of
dances. There was a very nice neighborhood there too, a very congenial neighborhood. We used
to have picnics there, and it was even once a hospital. When one of my aunts was ill, she didn‟t
want to go home, and she didn‟t want to stay in the hospital. So they fixed that [the Annex] up
for a hospital. It was a very convenient building to have. My father had some railroad friends,
and I guess they played cards. They used to bring a cook up from the Pullman, and roast pig. I
�19
remember they would have great feasts there. The men loved to come up there to that room and
play cards and have dinner.
Interviewer: That was the house…
Miss Wolf: That was the Annex that was on Terrace Avenue; later Prospect Street or Prospect
Avenue, I believe.
Interviewer: How long have you lived in this house?
Miss Wolf: As I recall, my father bought this house in nineteen twenty seven, when I was in
Europe. He remodeled it quite extensively. We had sold the house on Prospect and lived in a
small apartment on Sheldon Avenue for two or three years, until this house was finished. I think
we moved in here in nineteen twenty-eight. My father like this house very much. He enjoyed
living here. He wanted to live near enough so we could walk downtown. Those were the days
when people were first beginning to move out on the outskirts. But he didn‟t want to do that.
Interviewer: Now, as I‟ve asked others this question, I thought maybe you now would like to
respond to it. Your life in New York is very different. But, of course, today it‟s very much like
life in most large cities. Outside of the location of your life today, things are very different than
they were, say, when you were living on Terrace Avenue. The whole quality of life seems to be
very different. I wonder if you have thought what was responsible, what, more than anything
else, is responsible for the change in the life that we live. I know you mentioned the excitement
of being a child when the first automobile came through, and you talked about the advent of
movies, and things of that sort. Do you see any of these things as having much influence? You
mentioned the Depression; do you see any of these things, or anything else, as being important as
a thing that has changed the way we all live?
Miss Wolf: Well, that‟s a very interesting question. I don‟t know; I‟d have to give it a lot of
thought. I think it‟s just a gradual evolution, from day to day as things change, and as life has
changed for most people. All the things we use every day. Sometimes you know, you think you
don‟t like some of the new things. I don‟t like women wearing pants, for instance. But, on the
other hand there are some things that you do like: Plastic bags and shopping bags; what did we
do without those? And the automobile, so that‟s all just a gradual thing.
Then I think of my early childhood. I think the Wolf family, perhaps my father not quite as much
as my aunts and Uncle Gus, were very interested in what went on in the world. I remember
sitting around in my grandmother‟s house and hearing my aunts and uncles discuss a popular
book, Trilby. I remember that they were very excited about it. They were an intellectual group of
people, and their friends were interested in the intellectual things too, more so than my parents.
So, I was kind of drawn to sitting around and listening to that. I think, then as I grew older, that
those were the kind of people I associated with.
�20
My mother had a sister who lived in St. Paul, who also had no children. I used to be with her
quite a good deal. She was very active in the suffrage movement, and in helping to form the
Minneapolis Symphony, and was a prominent person there. So that all those things interested
me. I presume that, that continued through my life, so that I kept on in my own way. I‟m a joiner,
and in New York, there are many opportunities to join, and politics became more exciting than in
the old days. The population increased, and activities increased, and the life changed. I think the
automobile had a great deal to do with the changing of our lives. Looking at the size of the city,
New York is a great center for so many things, and the things interested me in some way.
Interviewer: How do like to live in New York now, as compared to when you first arrived.
Miss Wolf: Well, New York is not as attractive as it used to be. Everybody says that. There was
a time when I said, “I hope I feel the glamour of New York every time I step out on the street.”
Well now, when you step out on the street you see the litter, the graffiti, and the people whose
clothes I don‟t like. I think the people are as unattractive as the city.
I don‟t like the new buildings. I think it‟s very sad to see them tearing down some very
handsome buildings that cannot be replaced. There is a great fight to keep the landmarks, but it is
fight, because of course money is involved and the taxes are high on the old buildings. But
there‟s great, great interest in the old things; the good old things. There is a continuous fight to
save them, and continual fighting against the Metropolitan Museum for their taking the Park land
and adding wings that have no relation to the old architecture. People are very disturbed about
these things, and so, you‟re glad to see that there is so much interest. There is more and more
interest, I think; more interest in nature, and preserving the wildlife, the species that are
endangered. You see that all the time, everyday in the Times. The New York Times is very good
at alerting the people to what is going on in the way of conservation of nature, and the buildings,
the landmarks. I think they‟re influential in that.
Interviewer: You‟ve been working especially with the landmarks, is that right?
Miss Wolf: Well, I‟ve done a little – not very much – some. But I‟ve been more interested in the
parks.
Interviewer: In the Park itself?
Miss Wolf: I‟ve got to know quite a lot about the parks. I work with very interesting people, who
have spent a great deal of time studying these things, and informing themselves. I‟m very
privileged I think, to work with them.
Interviewer: And you still enjoy New York, really?
Miss Wolf: Oh, I still enjoy New York.
Interviewer: All things considered?
�21
Miss Wolf: I don‟t get around quite as well as I did fifty years ago, but I get around.
Interviewer: Thank you very much!
INDEX
A
Abbott, Edith · 16
Abbott, Grace · 16
Agnew family (John K. V.) · 2
Amberg, Hazel · 19
Amberg, Mrs. (Abe M.) · 4
Amberg, Mrs. (Esther) · 9
Amelia R. Wolf Guild · 10
American Logging Tool Company · 3
Antoniadis, Andrew · 18
Audubon Society · 4
F
First World War · 16
Friends of Central Park · 12, 13, 18
G
Ginn, Miss (Agnes) · 19
Grand Rapids Trust Company · 3
H
B
Bacon, Mr. · 19
Boise, Isabelle · 10
Born, Mrs. · 14
Boynton, Miss (Edith K.) · 2
Breckenridge, Miss · 16
Breckenridge, Sophonisba · 15
Butterworth Hospital Guild · 10
C
Central Grammar · 19
Central High School · 19
Clay family (George G.) · 2
Clay, George · 2
Cornell, Katherine · 15
D
DeLano, Agnes · 11
DeLano, Dr. · 11
Depression · 20
Dykema, Edith · 14
Hayes, Mr. and Mrs. · 7
Hazeltine and Perkins · 2
Hazeltine, Miss (Estelle) · 2
Heeve, Mrs. · 19
Hendricks, Mrs. · 14
Henry Street School · 2, 19
Heyman family (Morris A.) · 2
Heyman, Morris A. · 1
Heyman, Mr. & Mrs. · 1
Heyman, Mr. (Morris A.) · 4
Heyman, Mrs. (Ida) · 9, 10
Hutchins, Lee · 2
J
Jewish Welfare Society · 16
John Ball Park · 4
L
La Follette, (Robert M.) · 15
Lathrop, Julia · 16
Levi, Mrs. (Bertha) · 9
�22
M
Mary Free Bed Guild · 10
McKnight, Mrs. William · 15
Mercer family (Charles E.) · 2
Morton Hotel · 14
Murray, Catherine · 13, 14, 17, 18
N
Newberg, Clara · 1
P
Pantlind, Fred · 7
Park Congregational Church · 14
Power’s Theatre · 10
R
Radcliffe family (Everett M.) · 2
Ramona Park · 4
Reed’s Lake · 4, 6
Roosevelt, Alice · 15
Roosevelt, Teddy · 15
Rosenfield, Amelia · 1
Rouse, Rosamond · 10
S
Schurtz, Dr. (Perry) · 8
Shanahan family · 15
Shanahan, Mrs. · 15
Sidney, George · 5
Sidney, Mr. · 6
Stimson family (Warren B.) · 2
Stimson, Morris · 2
Stout, Miss · 19
T
Taylor, Graham · 16
V
VanHolten, Grace · 14
W
Ward, Carrie · 19
Waters, Mrs. · 14
Wolf family · 5, 20
Wolf, David · 1
Wolf, Gustav A. · 8, 9
Wolf, Ida · 1
Wolf, Jacob · 1
Wolf, Uncle Gus · 8, 9, 20
Women’s City Club · 14, 15
Y
Yarroughs, Victor · 16
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/45f4d42cb954f3ad7af2ef1e97a2c89d.mp3
f668f5c265894abf1bc7563ad8dcdbe7
Dublin Core
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Grand Rapids Oral Histories
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Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
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Description
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Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
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Various
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
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RHC-23
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1971 - 1977
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RHC-23_38Wolfe
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Wolf, Estelle
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Wolf, Estelle
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Estelle Wolf was born July 21, 1886. Miss Wolf spent two years at Simmons College in Boston, Massachusetts. She was one of the founders of the Mary Free Bed Guild in Grand Rapids. She taught school and photography in New York, and was active in politics in a Democratic club in New York during the Roosevelt era. She was a volunteer for the Friends of Central Park in New York, and worked for the WPA in Detroit. Miss Wolf died September 1, 1988.
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
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Michigan--History
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Grand Rapids (Mich.)
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Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Women
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eng
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Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
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1974
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4ab31ef1152394ddb36fd36e42d76503.pdf
503d85b7914624e0c5f9f69bab65e73f
PDF Text
Text
1
Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23
Miss Elizabeth Welter Wilson
Interviewed on June 5, 1975
Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com
Tape # 51 (1:19:27)
Biographical Information
Elizabeth Welter Wilson was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 4 April 1921. She is the
daughter of Henry Dunning Wilson and Marie Ethel Welter who were married in Grand Rapids
on 12 June 1920. Elizabeth currently (2010) resides in Manhattan.
Henry D. Wilson was born 4 May 1892 in Grand Rapids, the son of Charles Moseman Wilson
and Jane Wadsworth Dunning. Henry died on 16 June 1948 in Grand Rapids. Marie E. Welter
was born 19 August 1890 in Grand Rapids, the daughter of Ferdinand Welter and Elizabeth
Ewing Muir. She died on 23 November 1980 in Grand Rapids. Family members are buried in
Oak Hill Cemetery, Grand Rapids.
___________
Interviewer: I am testing at this point. I am Lee Hutchins and I am going to interview, shortly my
second cousin Elizabeth Welter Wilson, who has become a rather well known actress in her own
right and has been in the theatre world ever since graduating high school. I am going to stop and
see if we are….
This recording is being made at the home of her brother Charles Wilson, a new home built within
the last few years on the Thornapple River, not far from the village of Caledonia, somewhere in
the Alaska area. This is the first time I have ever been out here and it is a lovely day and it is the
afternoon of June the fifth, a Thursday. We have had a delightful lunch prepared by Charles‟s
wife, Sally. We have toured the house, met the dog, and saw the swimming pool. And are now
on a lower level, I guess you would call it the family room, Elizabeth is still upstairs getting
ready. We will start in just a minute.
Before she arrives, I would like to explain that we were both brought up in the same
neighborhood on North Lafayette in Grand Rapids. She is about three years older than I. The
children of the respective families, my sister and myself and her brother and younger sister, we
were all close as children and saw a great deal of each other. Both of us were brought up in
Victorian mansions that our grandfathers had, each purchased in the late nineteen twenties.
Elizabeth‟s family moved out of their house in about nineteen forty-four or five, I would guess,
and my family has stayed on, still at the same address, one-eleven Lafayette north east.
Elizabeth‟s old home was turned into first, it was turned into a radio station WGRD and is now
the office or I guess you would call the headquarters of the architectural firm of Steenwyk and
Thrall in Grand Rapids.
�2
Yesterday afternoon at my mother‟s house in Grand Rapids, Elizabeth was interviewed by the
editor of Accent (Grand Rapids), Jim Mencarelli. He obviously had insights into Elizabeth‟s
profession which I don‟t possess because I am not particularly a theatre buff; but he did conduct
an interview and the results will appear in the July issue of Accent (Grand Rapids). I am going to
talk about or ask Elizabeth to talk about some of the topics he talked about yesterday afternoon.
Probably the same questions but probably not in the same way and I may add or subtract as we
go along.
Interviewer: And now Elizabeth has arrived on stage as it were, and put this about out to here
which is the right distance and start by asking some questions, the same that he asked in your
interview of yesterday. And we will start by asking you where you were born and where and
approximately when?
Elizabeth: I was born in Grand Rapids approximately, I am going to tell the truth, Lee, how
about that? That will be a first.
Interviewer: Why not.
Elizabeth: Nineteen twenty-one in Blodgett Memorial Hospital on April fourth; and there you
are.
Interviewer: What are your first memories of going to school? Where did you go for primary
school, for instance?
Elizabeth: My first memories of school are not really of grade school or primary school. My
grandmother, Mrs. Charles Wilson, I think she was responsible for this, she knew a fascinating
lady that was teaching French; it was prekindergarten school and I think our mutual cousin Mrs.
Seymour Wilson, had something to do with this prekindergarten school. At any rate, when I was
three and four I went to this prekindergarten school. Lee, I actually started grade school in
Detroit, Michigan, I think I am right about this, now wait a minute, we moved to Detroit, yes I
believe that‟s true. It‟s strange that I should be unsure of… But I think it was the kindergarten
and first grade was in Detroit, we moved to Detroit in the late - middle thirties, no that‟s not
right.
Interviewer: You moved back from Detroit.
Elizabeth: I don‟t know where I started school, but I know I spent most of my primary years at
the Fountain Street School.
Interviewer: In Grand Rapids.
Elizabeth: In Grand Rapids, and after that, we will have to clear that up, I am not completely
sure. I know I went to school in Detroit for at least two years, and I‟ve always been under the
impression that I started school there; somehow we will have to figure that one out. I went thru
�3
the sixth grade at Fountain Street School and instead of going directly to Central Junior High
school I went to Marywood Academy for three years and entered Central High School in the
tenth grade. I finished, I graduated in nineteen forty from Central High School. So that‟s plenty
of information.
Interviewer: One of the questions that he brought up early in the interview yesterday, which I
thought quite interesting, was your appearing, attending summer school at the Westminster
Presbyterian Church in Grand Rapids. Anyway, it was not a part of your regular schooling.
Elizabeth: Yes…
Interviewer: You took part in a pageant. I wish you would repeat that again.
Elizabeth: One summer when we were living at thirty-five North Lafayette Avenue, we attended
the Sunday school summer school at the Presbyterian Church. We were members of Park
Congregational Church, but our grandmother belonged to the Presbyterian Church. I was eight
years old; I remember how old I was. At the end of the six weeks the minister came and said we
are going to do a pageant and the tallest person in the room will play the American flag. For
whatever reason but they had decided that was what it was. I always was very self-conscious
about my height. I am almost five feet, ten inches tall now and was almost five ten when I was
twelve years old. I don‟t know how tall I was at eight, but I was very, very tall and while I was
growing up very self conscious about it. But any rate, he said you, Elizabeth Wilson will play the
American flag, and that was that. Well, we rehearsed the program and we did it and first of all, I
had to recite the Declaration of Independence, dressed as the flag if you can imagine. And when
it was over, I got it all mixed up, all backwards, I was so humiliated. Somehow, when I went out
by the church, a young girl, woman came up to me and said, “You were very good.” And it
flashed across my head that must have been the first time that anybody ever paid me a
compliment, really. I don‟t know why she did because I can‟t imagine. But I thought at any rate
that is kind of nice.
Interviewer: That was the beginning…
Elizabeth: That was the beginning, Lee; the start of it, then.
Interviewer: That was the start of it, in a real sense.
Elizabeth: It kind of stuck in my head, well what a strange experience it was, it hadn‟t been a
particularly happy experience, I‟d forgotten the lines, I hadn‟t been very happy about being
chosen as the tallest person to play the American flag, but there was if you will, there was
something psychological about the way she said it and my reaction. Well, the warm waves of
praise. I just lapped them up.
Interviewer: Alright, let‟s pause for just a second.
�4
Elizabeth: Alright.
Interviewer: So, after your initial performance at the Presbyterian Church, you obviously took
another step or two along the way, what was your next experience in the theatre in this area,
Elizabeth?
Elizabeth: Well, Lee, there were a number of people when I was nine and ten years old, who had
a very, very strong influence on my life. Your mother for one, Mrs. Lee Wilson Hutchins for
one, my cousin Helen, and I will get into that in a minute, but I would like to tell what she meant
to me and how she effected my wanting to be an actress. But when I was nine and ten years old, I
was very involved in Park Church and there were quite an extraordinary woman named Mary
Einecke she was married to our musical director Harold Einecke. She had been an actress…
Interviewer: That is spelled E-i-n-e-c-k-e
Elizabeth: I am not sure.
Interviewer: Well, that‟s close enough. Yes.
Elizabeth: She had been an actress, she was Russian. She married Harold Einecke and he was a
very fine musician at Park Church and they had a very fine reputation there and built the choirs
and I was very much a part of the choirs. I expect that experience, too. I started about when I was
nine or ten; I was in the Girl‟s Choir, then I was in the Chapel Choir when I was in my teens. I
was in the Park Church choirs for about ten years, and Harold and Mary Einecke were very
theatrical. She was a darling woman and because she had been a professional actress she meant a
great deal to me. There was also another woman in the church who was named Elsie Stroop who
was secretarial minister who was very encouraging, even at ten and eleven years old I‟d begin to
evident the fact of wanting to be an actress, I don‟t know. Then I went to Marywood Academy
as I said earlier, and there was a woman there a Miss Buck, who was the drama teacher. But, I
must tell the Joseph Jefferson story, Lee because I think it is so interesting. Years ago, a hundred
years ago perhaps, there was a famous American actor named Joseph Jefferson and his great
claim to fame was playing Rip Van Winkle and his understudy was on tour one night stands, or
one day stand as it was. And here we were twelve and thirteen years old and we did a couple of
scenes from the Washington Irving book, I don‟t know who wrote the play Rip Van Winkle and
then Joseph Jefferson‟s understudy played the old man Rip Van Winkle and I was asked to be,
not really asked to be just part of his little family in this Washington Irving play with Joseph
Jefferson‟s understudy. This is just a part of history that tickles me. I don‟t know, I‟m sure he
goes way, way back maybe even to Booth‟s time. Edwin Booth and John Wilkes [Booth] go, go
way back. Well, that‟s sort of a touch with history. Then when I left Marywood Academy, I went
to Central, and there was a very strong-willed woman named Dorothy Sonke, a very remarkable
lady and she was most encouraging.
Interviewer: Sonke is spelled S-O-N-K-E, I believe.
�5
Elizabeth: Yes, I do believe. Dorothy Sonke right from the beginning, I don‟t know how it
happened but when I entered Central in the tenth grade, I had a great long soliloquy, by that time
I skipped two teachers that I studied with in Grand Rapids that I had, Camilla Boon and Myrtle
Koon Cherryman who had incredibly strong influences on me. They were both interesting
women, and I do want to talk about them. Myrtle Koon Cherryman was a legend in Grand
Rapids and a remarkable lady and I had been studying with them and I took that much more
seriously than my own school work, Lee. You remember I use to have to come to you to get
French lessons for me. I was so much more interested in my dramatic lessons and I studied every
week with Camilla Boon or Mrs. Cherryman. I used to have readings every week and I use to
memorize these darn things, each week. And that is how I learned to memorize from doing these
each week. Now, I can memorize things very quickly, and I use to write these things down and
memorize these things, at any rate, I came to Central. And so I know this long soliloquy and she
was so impressed, Lee. She was so impressed because this new person coming to Central knew
this long thing. I don‟t even know what it was. She took me in front of the graduating class and
had me give this long speech and they were most impressed. Of course, I was terribly pleased
and from then on I got the lead in the senior play, I‟ve forgotten now what I did in the junior
play, but I directed. I was the only student in Central that was ever asked to direct, it was called
an Acting Project, a great Vaudeville show. That is what it was called, The Vaudeville Show, I
directed that. By the time I left Central and started going into the summer stock theatre, I felt that
I had done quite a lot.
Interviewer: What was the senior class play?
Elizabeth: Pride and Prejudice.
Interviewer: And who were some of the other actors?
Elizabeth: David Idema played my father. Let‟s see David Ware, I believe, I‟m not sure about
my brother. Alex Dillingham played opposite me, my best friend in the senior class was Evelyn
Klein, she was in it; she played my mother. Betty Williams was in it, she lived here for a long
time, oh gracious, let‟s see.
Interviewer: Well, that‟s a good number of people.
Elizabeth: Yes, we played for three performances. Of course, Pride and Prejudice is such a
lovely story. I remember, my grandmother Mrs. Charles (Angeline) Wilson, came to see one of
the performances. She was, you know she was one of the most critical people in our lives. She
had a great deal of musical experience; she lived and studied in Europe. The most serious critic
in my young life. When Nana Angeline said to me, we called her Nana, in her strict way, “You
were good.” that was, well ….
Interviewer: That was a high complement.
�6
Elizabeth: Indeed, indeed!
Interviewer: Go on, what was the next step?
Elizabeth: Well the next step, I started to get involved with the Civic Theatre in Grand Rapids in
nineteen thirty-nine and forty, and Bertram Yarborough again, a remarkable man with
professional experience. He asked me, rather invited me to go to his theatre on Nantucket,
Massachusetts to be an apprentice; that was in nineteen forty. I had graduated Central in nineteen
forty, and Lee, that meant so much to me. Now, Lee we had to pay, you just didn‟t, because for
some reason in those days there were lots of summer theatres. Of course, all the summer theatres
had apprentices that were nothing but workhorses. I certainly expected to act, but lots of them
never did. Some summer theatres were notoriously corrupt, they would have dozens and dozens
of apprentices, and they would pay two and three hundred dollars for the summer and never got
to do anything but carry scenery and work like dogs. But I went to Nantucket, and the whole
family made the trip because it was the second year of the New York World‟s Fair. So my father,
Henry Wilson and my mother and my brother, Charles and my sister Mary and I got in our car
and we drove. We stopped in Williamsburg, and New York, then they took me to Nantucket. I
spent the summer in Nantucket.
And after the summer in Nantucket, well after the summer I got to play three parts in the plays
and it was a very good company. And they were all outstanding people. I can‟t tell you the
names of the plays that I was in, but one of the great thrills was meeting Katherine Cornell, who
was my idol. As I was growing up, I read her book, I [Always] Wanted to be an Actress. She was
my idol, and she lived on Martha‟s Vineyard and she was a great friend of the two men who
were the producers of this theatre. And she came over one day and Lawrence Olivier and Vivian
Lee were playing in New York at that time, Romeo and Juliet and they paid a visit to the island. I
didn‟t meet them, but I remember seeing them from a distance on the lawn, thinking oh my
goodness! But that was a very important summer. Then, I came back to Grand Rapids and went
to Junior College. And then the war. I remember one of the things about Nantucket, it isn‟t a
very theatrical thing, but the submarines were encircling the island then I didn‟t know if they
were American or German, but I remember sitting in the restaurant on Nantucket and you could
hear those great depth charges; the submarines during World War Two that close and you could
hear these big thunking things exploding in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Nantucket Island.
It was very frightening to say the least.
Interviewer: Then eventually you got involved with Gerald Hanchett and his sister Elizabeth in
their… what would you call that? How would you describe that?
Elizabeth: Well, then I came back and went to Junior College. And then the next summer of
forty-one, there was a summer theatre in upper New York, [not] New York Michigan, I think
Lee it was...
Interviewer: Was it Onekama or Portage?
�7
Elizabeth: Oh, dear….There was a woman who was very… Elvira Baker, who was with the
Civic Theatre, and Robert Cunningham, Bob Cunningham who was head of the drama
department at Junior College; they were all involved. And Amy Lewis, remember her? Amy
Lewis was one of the leading lights in the Civic Theatre, and she was a charming actress, a
charming woman. In this little theatre, up along the coast, Lee. The Onekama area, whatever the
name. Anyway, we spent the summer there and then I came back and went to Junior College
again and it was at that point I got involved in this theatre, now then there were two people in
Grand Rapids; the Hanchett family H-A-N-C-H-E-T-T, Elizabeth and Gerald Hanchett, they
were brother and sister and they had been very involved in the theatre in New York, and they had
produced revues. Just a minute Lee, I think we have to turn it off….
Interviewer: Sorry for the interruption, Elizabeth was called to the long distance telephone.
Interviewer: We were just talking about the Hanchetts and the Playhouse, or whatever you want
to call it, the Art Center which they ran in the old Hanchett house down on College Avenue. I‟d
like to add a little footnote to the story at this point. That house which is still standing is the
house that is immediately south of the Voigt house at one-fifteen College southeast. It is a
notable structure, actually the Hanchetts didn‟t build it, but they moved in around the turn of the
century. And Mr. Hanchett, the father of Gerald and Elizabeth was the president of the Grand
Rapids Street Railway Company, and at one point they were very, very well to do, if not rich
people. These children were that were contemporaries of my parents, they were very gifted and
unusual people. Now, Elizabeth you go ahead:
Elizabeth: Well, they were. They produced a play and some revues with Shirley Booth a very
talented actress; they produced some revues that she was in called Sunday Nights at Nine.
Elizabeth Hanchett and Gerald Hanchett played a great part in my life; they were very kind to
me. I went into their school on College Avenue; I was an apprentice in a way. I worked part
time. I was going to Junior College in nineteen forty-three, no that‟s not right, I think it was
nineteen forty-two, yes. Because it was the subsequent summer that I went to the Barter Theatre.
At any rate, I taught school. I went around and taught; I wasn‟t qualified at all but I taught
children speech and readings and elocution. They had made arrangements in the various grade
schools all over Grand Rapids, to pay for my tuition at this Art School on College Avenue, I did
this. There was a man who taught, named Alex Evoie who taught in this school. And this school
was in this house that Lee just described. There was a beautiful big room in this house and in the
back there was this huge room that we used as our theatre room. The class wasn‟t large, twenty
or thirty students, but they managed to get very good faculty. They had a dance instructor and a
speech instructor. What they were trying to do was have a theatre school in Grand Rapids, and it
was called the Arts Center, the Theatre Arts Center. And that is what they were trying to do.
There just wasn‟t enough need for it in Grand Rapids and it didn‟t work out. At any rate, it was
through Elizabeth and Gerald Hanchett that I met Alex E-v-o-i-e, and it was thru him that I heard
about the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia. And in nineteen forty-two, my life really started.
That‟s really true. Because in nineteen forty-two, I went down there, and again it was as an
�8
apprentice, my father had to pay; because the war was going on hot and heavy then in nineteen
forty-two. They wanted boys; there were no men around of course. The boys didn‟t have to pay
but the girls always had to pay to be an apprentice. I think it was something like forty-five
dollars a week; that was a lot of money. That was room and board, but even so it was a lot of
money. I don‟t know where we got it, because we certainly did not have very much. I went down
there and started out. Now I wasn‟t sure, that I really was on the right track, because up to that
point I hadn‟t made any real progress. No one had really praised me that seriously and I was
always very nervous about it. I remember when we did the play at Central, I was terribly
unhappy about one performance and was uneasy about it. Robert Porterfield, who ran the Barter
Theatre, it was called the Barter Theatre because during the Depression when people didn‟t have
money, they brought foodstuffs to this famous theatre, brought food to the box office instead of
cash. Eleanor Roosevelt, Mrs. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was very largely responsible for
getting this theatre on the map. It was on the cover of Life magazine, it was a very famous
theatre because of this clever gimmick of people bringing foodstuffs to the box office. When I
got there, they weren‟t doing this so much anymore. Robert Porterfield, who was a wonderful
man, a unique man and a great help to me, he use to say that the actors ate the box office, which
is what we did and we had some really splendid meals. Lots of vegetables, I might add. But
anyway, I went down there and in that company, Lee, in nineteen forty-two were some
remarkable talents, Patricia Neal, right fresh from Knoxville, hadn‟t even graduated from high
school. And a wonderful actress name Margaret Phillips, who isn‟t too well known now but I
think she was a genius and she made a great career in the forties on Broadway. She went on, but
she was too sensitive. Anyway, there were lots and lots of people in that group. And in that
summer, I had to either make it or not, I remember the point of being given some good parts and
I just said to myself, alright Lizzie you‟re either going to do it or you are not. By golly and I am
not bragging, but by the end of the summer I had not only established myself, and I say this
openly but as the best actress in that group I had gotten a scholarship to the Neighborhood
Playhouse in New York, which was really something to get. I really felt like a changed person. I
don‟t know what happened to me, Lee, but I just won over my fears and just had decided, it was
purely emotional. I found a way of working and I remember coming back to Grand Rapids that
fall and I knew I just was different now. Then I went to New York in the fall of nineteen fortytwo and went to the Neighborhood Playhouse. And of course, that is another whole story,
because there it is exciting. There for the first time little Lizzie Wilson from Grand Rapids,
Michigan met the greatest acting teacher in America, Sanford Meisner who taught the
Stanislavski method, and is acknowledged by any one that knows anything at all and Martha
Graham who was America‟s greatest dancer. And those are the two people that I studied with for
two years, so you can imagine.
Interviewer: I would like to backtrack for a moment because you mentioned my mother much
earlier in this interview and it was recalled to me that my mother took you and me to Detroit.
Would you like to continue and if able will you date the year for me? Will you tell about our
experience there?
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Elizabeth: Well, Lee lived a block and a half from my house.
Interviewer: Less than that.
Elizabeth: A short block. We really grew up together, his sister and my brother and sister. And I
spent a great deal of time in their home, for some reason I don‟t know why his mother liked me,
and she used to go to Detroit which was quite an occasion. In about nineteen thirty-seven, I think
Lee it was nineteen thirty-seven, the three of us would drive, I think it was a convertible too, we
would drive to Detroit and go to the theatre. And the first play I ever saw in my life was Walter
Huston in Knickerbocker Holiday.
Interviewer: You mean legitimate.
Elizabeth: The first legitimate play, first live actors.
Interviewer: What was the name of the play?
Elizabeth: Knickerbocker Holiday!
Interviewer: Oh yes, Knickerbocker Holiday.
Elizabeth: And Lee‟s mother would travel to New York, and that was such a thing. And the New
York Times was always in your home and it was also in my grandmother‟s home. That made an
incredible impression on me, I used to read the theatre section; I used to devour what was
happening in New York. New York was the place.
Interviewer: I guess, it still is.
Elizabeth: Well, that‟s not quite true, it‟s changed.
Interviewer: You started to talk about the Neighborhood Playhouse.
Elizabeth: Well, I was fortunate to go to the Neighborhood Playhouse for two years. I can‟t even
begin to tell you what an experience that was. But it was very important to me to know those
people and those two years of study in New York, and meeting people was so interesting and
exciting and stimulated me so, gave me such confidence. Both Martha Graham and Sandy
Meisner were very complimentary and helped me and worked very hard with me. And the point
is they were also very, very hard on me too. But Sandy said to me you are good and you are
going to have to be disciplined. He worked very hard and was very serious, and so Martha also
worked very hard, and it wasn‟t easy, wasn‟t easy at all.
Interviewer: Forgive another slight digression, I couldn‟t help but think, Betty Ford, Gerald
Ford‟s wife, was also a pupil of Martha Graham, did you ever know Betty in Grand Rapids?
Elizabeth: No, I never knew the Fords.
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Interviewer: She was dancing, but I didn‟t know if your paths had ever crossed.
Elizabeth: No, we never did, which was strange.
Interviewer: But you both studied under Martha Graham. I‟m going to shut it off for a second.
Interviewer: Before we continue with your career, onward and upward through the ages, I
thought we could talk a few minutes about you coming from Grand Rapids, which isn‟t a big city
and is belittled from time to time, even though we have managed to produce a President of the
United States. When you arrived in New York City from Grand Rapids, did you feel you were
coming from a very provincial background?
Elizabeth: No, Lee, I don‟t know why but let me put it this way, I don‟t know why but I always
wanted to live in New York. I never wanted to go to California. I never wanted to be a movie
actress. There is an irony in that because I have made more movies and done more movies than
I‟ve done plays, and I„ve spent more time in California. I was never interested in the movies, I
always wanted to be on the stage, and I had this thing and I don‟t know where it came from,
about living in New York, and being in the east. Now, I„ve always loved small towns, and when
I left Grand Rapids, I think there was a period when I thought it was pretty hokey, and hicky,
pretty small town and I in my twenties and thirties when I would come home, I would sort of
look down my nose, at certain thing around town. Or if I was with people, they would say it must
be so wonderful in New York. There is certainly a lot to be said for living in a large city. The
point is I couldn‟t have had a career here, and I couldn‟t have done what I have done, if I had
stayed here. But it is totally different here, but I always had a great feeling for the town. Now, if I
had that feeling because, I had a very happy childhood, let‟s face it and I had so many people
here that I loved so much and I had a big family and lots and lots of relatives so I had such a
warm spot in my heart for this place, Michigan, you see. Oh sure, I think, when you are growing
up and you go away to school, I bet you felt it too when you went away to Harvard. First you
think oh well, that little town, but it looks better and better to me now. With the population
explosion, I am anxious to come back to a few free acres.
Interviewer: Do you think it is more interesting place when you do come back, as you have more
recently? You have been coming back more frequently, I wonder if you have noticed significant
change?
Elizabeth: I can‟t tell, because I don‟t see that many people, Lee. When I come here, I have a
fairly superficial look at the town. If I lived here and sort of got into the swim and was part of the
community, then I could make a fair appraisal of that. When I came here the last year a great
deal, because my mother had been ill, you are practically the only the person outside of the
family that I see. Most of my friends have moved away. But I think, I have changed and I think I
appreciate your family and my family and just what the place is like more. I am not prejudiced
about small town living, because I live outside of New York.
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Interviewer: Okay, I think it about time to turn the cartridge over.
SIDE TWO of Tape #51
Interviewer: Elizabeth has stepped out of the room for just a moment and I thought I would fill
in with a few remarks of my own. I have lived most of my life in Grand Rapids except for the
three years at the Ashville School near Ashville, North Carolina. It was the tenth, eleventh and
twelfth grades. It was the school that my father had attended. I graduated in nineteen forty-two,
he graduated in nineteen fourteen and while I was at the school he was elected as a trustee of the
school and he was always interested in the school and talked a great deal about it and I listened
as a small boy. And he had no strong feeling about where I was going to college. He went to the
University of Wisconsin, where I think he got a good education. He didn‟t have the feeling about
Wisconsin that he had about Asheville. So when I was about to graduate from Asheville school, I
hadn‟t made up my mind where I wanted to go to college. One group of friends were interested
in going to the University of Michigan, they were mostly Grand Rapids boys that I had known,
Dick Steketee, Monroe Tolliver, and Steve Bryant. I think, I am missing somebody but that is
pretty much it. And then I had some other friends who were going to Harvard, Jack Darryl,
Robert Sposum from Cleveland. A friend that had dropped out of Asheville, but has since
become a very good friend, Matt Clark. He didn‟t finish at Asheville but he joined us at Harvard
and there was another very close friend David Ketcham who came from Cohasset,
Massachusetts. I finally decided I wanted to go with them, I thought was closer with them and
had many more interests in common than I had with my Grand Rapids friends. Then I had the
advantages of an accelerated, or perhaps the disadvantages of an accelerated college experience,
because I went all year round for three years and graduated in nineteen forty-five but as a
member of the class of nineteen forty-six. I worked after that starting around the first of January
or the second I suppose, of January of nineteen forty-six until October nineteen fifty when I
journeyed to California where I stayed for four and half years. I won‟t go into all that now,
because this is not an interview about me, but I lived in the city of San Francisco most of those
years that I lived out there in California. Of course, I got another point of view about Grand
Rapids, frankly I was always very torn when I lived out there because I loved San Francisco but I
also knew where my roots were and for family reasons, I returned to Grand Rapids and have
lived here, with the exception of two years on the eastern side of the state in the village of
Clarkston, ever since. Now my cousin has returned, and we will continue. Elizabeth, where were
we?
Elizabeth: Let‟s see. Well, Lee, I think we‟d come to the end of the Neighborhood Playhouse,
those two years at the Neighborhood Playhouse, we were going over things so fast, Lee. I could
talk about those two years, for a long time. I should also say, between those years at the
Playhouse I went to a stock company in Cape May, New Jersey, that was a very important
summer, I went as an apprentice. I didn‟t have to pay that summer but in the middle of the
summer, the leading woman had to go back to New York. And the manager of the theatre said I
would like you to be the leading woman. It sounds a little fancier than it was, the actual fact was
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the producer was a well, a penny pincher, rather than paying transportation for anybody to come
back from New York to Cape May, New Jersey, he just turned around and pointed at me, that‟s
what really happened and said you will be the leading woman. And that was how I became the
leading woman. But, what it meant was that I became a member of actors union, equity. Well
now, if you aren‟t an actor you can‟t know how important that is. You can‟t be a professional
actor, if you are not a member of the union, and you can‟t be a member of the union if you are
not a professional actor. That was quite something in the middle of my school year, my two
years to my path to become a professional actor. What it meant was, we had to find a hundred
dollars, because that‟s what it cost to join the union, heaven knows what it cost now. My father
sent me a hundred dollars, that was something, and I became a member of the Professional
Actors‟ Union, Actors‟ Equity in nineteen forty-three. See how long I have been an actress, a
professional actress? Anyway, that summer I had three jobs, I was in the apprentice company, a
member of the professional company, and I continued acting in both of those companies.
Because in those days, the wages were so low, I was also waiting on table. I had a job as a
waitress; I‟ve had so many part time jobs that I have had more than anyone I ever heard of.
Anyway, I had the job of waitress, so I would work in the morning, breakfast and lunch as a
waitress and then go to the theatre in the afternoon and evening. And somehow I was never tired,
I don‟t quite know. Anyway, but now I have graduated from the Neighborhood Playhouse in
nineteen forty-four, and that was quite an occasion because Helen Hayes who everybody has
heard of, was a member of the Board of Directors for the playhouse and she saw me in our final
play. I had the lead in the final play called A Murder in the Nunnery. Murder in a Nunnery, She
wrote a letter which to this day I remember. It was to whom it may concern, but it was written to
a number of producers, “I would like to introduce Elizabeth Wilson, who I think is an
exceptionally talented actress and I think someday we will all be very proud to have helped her.”
I memorized it, as you can imagine. That was a great boon, Lee, because I took that letter to
producers. People again, who aren‟t actors have no idea, now looking back I don‟t know how I
did it. There are thousands and thousands of people that come to New York every year wanting
to be actors. How I ever did it I don‟t know, but I couldn‟t do it now. But I had a lot of nerve,
and so I would call producers and call agents and say I have a letter from Miss Hayes, from
Helen Hayes and that was unusual; and they would say, ”Oh, we‟d like to see you.” So I got into
their offices and got to meet people because of Miss Hayes. And she wanted me to tour with her
that summer. I remember when I came back in the summer of nineteen forty-four; again the war
was much present on our minds. And Miss Hayes wanted me to go on a play that she was touring
called Harriet, but I was too tall to play her daughter, because she is only five feet tall and so I
didn‟t get to go because I wouldn‟t have been believable, because I was almost a foot taller. So I
went back to New York that fall and had a very hard time and didn‟t get anything that whole fall,
and I guess that I had some pretty rough times, I babysat, I worked in an insurance office and I
had all sorts of odd jobs. And so in the spring of forty-five, I got my first real job, and the war
was still on and it was with the USO. And that was my first honest to goodness job.
Interviewer: Let‟s pause for just a moment.
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Elizabeth: Alright.
Interviewer: And now we‟re in the USO as it were.
Elizabeth: Well, it‟s strange you know, I assume, well, all sorts of people will listen to this tape.
In nineteen forty-five, the whole attitude towards the Second World War was a good deal
different, than it has been toward recent wars. There was something really splendid, hard to
believe, but true about entertaining the troops, which is indeed what I was doing. It sounds so
corny and strange even as I say it. It was a funny little play called What a Life about, it was
Henry Aldrich, it had been a popular radio program and the play was a big success on Broadway,
What a Life and there were many companies of it. The USO was quite an important adjunct of
the Armed Services of the Special Services Branch, that‟s what we were. Our group was going to
the South Pacific; we didn‟t know where we were going that was great security. We traveled on a
troop ship from San Francisco; it took us one month to get to New Guinea because we had to
crisscross back and forth across the Pacific because of the Japanese submarines. We were
without an escort; we weren‟t in a convoy, so it took us a whole month to get to New Guinea.
Anyway, we played to the Army and Navy and the Air Force in New Guinea and all thorough
the Philippine Islands, and of course, the war ended as we were leaving the coast of America. VE-Day came in, was it, April of nineteen forty-five, or something like that, and we were four or
five days out of San Francisco when V-E Day came, and that was something. And we were in the
Philippine Islands when V-J-Day occurred. So when our little troupe again after playing through
the Philippine Islands we went up to Japan and continued to play. I could talk about that year; we
played under the most extraordinary circumstances. We played for a dozen men and we played
for fourteen thousand men. Sometimes we played in great outdoor theatres, the Seabees, the
branch of the Army that, I guess, built the bridges. They built these really magnificent theatres in
the middle of the jungles, the men would sometimes sit in bleachers, but sometimes they would
hang out of trees. And the play was perfectly innocuous, and so they enjoyed it. They had stars
who, personalities, but I think our play was, well I know they enjoyed it. And then I came home,
and came directly to Grand Rapids, and that was in nineteen forty-six; I came back to Grand
Rapids and did a play for the Civic Theatre, Bert Yarborough was still the director of the Civic
Theatre. In the spring of nineteen forty-six I did My Sister Ilene with Buddy Dillingham, playing
well, I was Ruth and she was Ilene, and that was a big success. Then I went back to New York
and couldn‟t get a job, it was very hard. Couldn‟t get a job and my friend Robert Porterfield at
the Barter Theatre, I remember I auditioned for the director. Which is the reason why I always,
well, he has been dead for about three years, Robert Porterfield; I loved him so much because
he‟d hired a number of directors for the summer of forty-six. And I auditioned for him and no,
there was no room; the season was full, there was nothing to do. So, I went back to the little
place I was living in New York, and I was very depressed, and it happened a lot. And the phone
rang, and it was Robert Porterfield saying that well, it‟s perfectly true we don‟t have any place
for you, and all the jobs are filled, but come anyway. Well, I did and I somehow made a space
for myself and before I knew it, I was playing the lead. By that time, the director‟s changed their
�14
minds and said no, I think you can play that part. By the end of the season, I was the leading
woman and I went on tour. And it was the Barter Theatre the first State Theatre of Virginia.
Robert Porterfield had gotten money from the state capital in Richmond and we had to play all
the cities of Virginia. Well, practically all the cities of Virginia, except little itty bitty ones, we
played all over high schools, gymnasiums all over the state. Then we toured outside the state of
Virginia; many actors, Gregory Peck, Ernest Borgnine, Pat Neal, Hume Cronyn, and you name it
and most of them were in that theatre and most of them I knew an worked with. It was a
wonderful place, the two places that stand out in my career are the Neighborhood Playhouse and
the Barter Theatre, because I went back to that place for many years and learned how to become
an actress in front of an audience, which let‟s face it, it‟s the only way you are going to learn.
And between nineteen forty-six and nineteen fifty-three I did a lot of other things. I state it that
way, Lee because it was in nineteen fifty-three I got my first Broadway job. It was almost ten
years from the day I graduated, I did work out in summer stock, I toured with Veronica Lake one
summer, and with Edward Everett Horton, and I always managed to get a job in the summertime.
And because of Robert Porterfield I learned and grew, I dare say, got big parts, and played with
his theatre, toured all over the country, one night stands. But it wasn‟t until nineteen fifty-three,
Helen Hayes, again because of the letter she wrote. Josh, Joshua Logan who had directed South
Pacific, Mr. Roberts and probably the most famous director on Broadway at the time, was going
to direct the play called Picnic by William Inge. And I went to an audition and I dressed the part,
I heard the woman was a kind of dowdy school teacher. School teachers won‟t like that
description, but she was a Kansas City teacher and taught feminine hygiene and she was a pretty
strange character, at any rate, I dressed the part and went back several times and finally, I think
the second or third reading, this doesn‟t happen very often and this was produced by the theatre
guild. And we can go back and back about them; they produced all of the Eugene O‟Neil plays.
And they were all out there, all of the theatre guild under the lights, and Josh Logan and
everyone; they told me I had the part. I remember rushing home to my apartment which I then
shared with my sister Mary, and bursting into tears, I couldn‟t believe it, after all these years.
Because that was my dream. I think, Lee I could have died right then. That is what I wanted to be
in a Broadway play. I thought my goodness, that was some day.
Interviewer: And you remember going to San Francisco?
Elizabeth: Very well.
Interviewer: Because I was there.
Elizabeth: Of course, you were there. We had a wonderful time.
Interviewer: I think that is one of the last times I ever saw you on the stage.
Elizabeth: Yes, I remember that very well. We were living on Nob Hill. You had a wonderful
apartment.
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Interviewer: Eleven-thirty Sacramento Street.
Elizabeth: What Lee is talking about now is the national tour of Picnic. Picnic became a huge
success on Broadway; we played at the Music Box Theatre on West Forty-Fifth Street for two
years. Ralph Meeker, Kim Stanley, Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward was an understudy, that‟s
when they met, Janice Rule, Eileen Heckart, Arthur O‟Connell. It was an extraordinary cast. And
Kim Stanley was probably the greatest living, well she is. Everybody acknowledges she isn‟t
working now because again.
Interviewer: She is what?
Elizabeth: American Actress. I think that is safe to say. No one will debate me. However, she
was the younger sister. She played the younger sister, but we‟re talking about the national tour.
After we played Broadway, Josh Logan asked me to play the mother in the national tour and that
was quite a thrill. So I moved from the small part of Christine Schoenwalder, Christine
Schoenwalder probably had eleven lines, if she had two. The teachers had quite a lot of scenes
and then I went on the national tour. The when the national tour was over, Josh Logan asked me
to be in the movie, so Picnic was my first movie. And I was flown to California and there were
only some of the original cast, three of us from the original Broadway cast. That was Kim
Novak, played in the movie and William Holden, and the three school teachers were Rosalind
Russell and Rita Shaw and myself; we were from the original cast. So that was my first film, as
you can imagine that was pretty exciting. We filmed it in Kansas, and took all summer, and then
in the middle of summer, I was told, I had done a television show in New York, called Patterns
by Rod Sterling, since has become famous. He‟s done Twilight Zones, famous writer and so
forth. He‟d been a great success, and so I was asked to be in the movie version of Patterns. So
that summer after I finished the movie of Picnic, the second movie with Van Heflin and Everett
Stone, Ed Begley in Patterns which we filmed in New York. And oh, gracious, Lee, where do
you want to go, now we are getting into the sort of nitty gritty, this was the fifties and I suppose
the main plays I did then were things like Tunnel of Love, Desk Set, and did the movie versions,
the movie version of Tunnel of Love with Doris Day, let‟s see, I am, not really skipping. I am just
trying to think. In the early sixties, a very important thing, I got to be in a play called Big Fish,
Little Fish. And, Mike Nichols saw me in that and that was a great turning point in my life
because from then on practically everything he did, since then I have done six things for him, the
mother in the Graduate opposite Dustin Hoffman playing my son. I played in Catch 22, and The
Day of the Dolphin and then in New York I was in Plaza Suite and the revival of Little Foxes.
And the most recent play in New York with Mike Nichols was Uncle Vanya which was a great
success with George C. Scott, and Julie Christi and Nicole Williamson, the great English actor,
and Lillian Gish, and Katherine Nesbitt.
Interviewer: As I recall you got wonderful reviews.
Elizabeth: Yes, wonderful reviews, a great success.
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Interviewer: Was that two summers ago?
Elizabeth: Exactly two summers ago we were doing.
Interviewer: You‟ve skipped a lot of …
Elizabeth: Yes, we‟ve done a big skip, but I‟m getting a little tired and I‟m sure you‟re ….well,
can‟t we just? Well, you ask me some.
Interviewer: What about, why don‟t you talk a little about Eastside/Westside. Explain that.
Elizabeth: Eastside/Westside was a television series that we did ten years ago, on CBS with
George C. Scott and Cicely Tyson and myself, and…
Interviewer: That was quite a success as I recall.
Elizabeth: Yes, it was a good series, a bit before its time, I think.
Interviewer: Yes, since then you have gotten to know Mr. Scott and one of his ex-wives Miss
Dewhurst, quite well.
Elizabeth: Yes, Colleen Dewhurst. Well, I worked with George so many times. George and I did
Uncle Vanya and Colleen and I did a play in New York, Colleen Dewhurst, who is really a
superb actress, we did a play at Lincoln Center, a Brecht play called The Good Woman of
Szechwan.
Interviewer: How do you spell that?
Elizabeth: Lord, I don‟t know how to spell Szechwan, it‟s The Good Woman of Szechwan.
Interviewer: Is that a town or place?
Elizabeth: Well, it‟s Chinese.
Interviewer: I see, a Chinese word.
Elizabeth: It‟s, you know we all know Szechwan cooking.
Interviewer: Yes.
Elizabeth: Is that Northern China, or I‟m not sure?
Interviewer: I‟m not very good at Chinese.
Elizabeth: I am a good student.
Interviewer: I take it you still see a great deal of Colleen Dewhurst?
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Elizabeth: Yes, she is one of my closest friends.
Interviewer: Who are some of your other close friends in New York? In the theatre world?
Elizabeth: Dustin Hoffman is a good friend; we have worked together a lot. We did an off
Broadway play before we did The Graduate; we did a play called EH? Then we were in a movie
together that nobody ever heard of called The Tiger Makes Out in which Dusty had a tiny part
and I had a tiny part. Eli Wallach and Anne Jackson were in that. Then we did The Graduate.
Dustin and I are good friends. Maureen Stapleton and I since Plaza Suite have become very close
friends, she is a lovely woman. George Scott, of course, George Grizzard is a friend of mine, I
am trying to think. The people in the movies, Paul and Joann Newman are friends, Gene
Hackman is an old friend; we worked together in television in the old days. Peter Falk, I studied,
when I returned in the fall from Sandy Meisner, after the play, I went back for a refresher course
about ten years later and that is when I met Peter, he is a friend, did television with him. Oh,
gracious Lee.
Interviewer: Why don‟t we just move up to the present and tell us, me about your forthcoming
TV series. How it came about.
Elizabeth: Well, I am about to embark on something that is rather exciting, I suppose, I hope. I
suppose how it came about, because these things are complicated. I have been going back and
forth from California a great deal, because there is a less and less activity in New York City and
fewer plays are being performed. Most of us that are still professional actors have to work and in
television and movies, which indeed I have been doing the last few years. The Prisoner of
Second Avenue and so forth. And the last two years I have been doing lots of television. I dare
say, have done about fifteen, All in the Family, Maude, and specials, Easter Specials and
Christmas Specials and thing like that. About two years ago I was in California doing what they
call a pilot, each season the television networks do shows which they show to the network and
the networks decide if a show is worthy of being made into a television series. And they make
hundreds of them, and the first year, I made something called We’ll Get By and it finally got on
the air, but it got on the air with an entirely different family which often happens. Then the
second year, I did another one, again for CBS called Another April, which didn‟t quite make it.
But as a result of seeing Barnard Hughes and myself in Another April, CBS decided they would
make a third pilot film, this one was called Doc and it‟s about a husband and wife in MidManhattan today, contemporary story, a comedy written and produced by the people who do the
Mary Tyler Moore shows. Low and behold about a month ago and they said that CBS had
bought the pilot and we were going to start making the television series, starting July tenth
nineteen seventy-five. And Lee, I just couldn‟t believe it, the odds. I tell you, they make
hundreds of these things every year. The reason is they test them, show them around for
whatever reason, and they‟ve chosen to do this. And let‟s hope it turns out and we start making
thirteen and if they like it the network will pick it up and do thirteen more. So there you are.
That‟s what my next...
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Interviewer: How soon will you know if they like it or not?
Elizabeth: I think about midway through the thirteen, Lee. I think the middle of August we
should know.
Interviewer: I see.
Elizabeth: It will go on the air anyway; they‟ll put sixteen, not sixteen, six on. The television
season starts the middle of September and…
Interviewer: Do you what time?
Elizabeth: Yes, Matter of fact they told us. It precedes the Mary Tyler Moore Show at eightthirty.
Interviewer: Saturday night?
Elizabeth: Saturday night and there is, and what they have told us, but that can change, but at
the moment that‟s what they‟re saying. So in the meantime, I am having a lovely time in Grand
Rapids. It is very beautiful here and I really…..It is really nice to be an actress, you work really
hard but you get lot‟s more free time than most people. Your work is very concentrated, work
hard for three or four weeks or three or four months on a project and then you have two or three
weeks off, which is wonderful, I like that.
Interviewer: Sure. Relieves the monotony.
Elizabeth: I like being an actress, I do. I am very lucky, very lucky indeed.
Interviewer: Let‟s pause for just a moment.
Interviewer: Elizabeth, you‟ve said to me that being an actor can be very nerve-racking. Will
you like to enlarge on that, and talk about that? Enlarge on it.
Elizabeth: Sure, the psychology, the need for somebody or desire for somebody to perform
hasn‟t been fully explored, and I think most actors had better not think too much about it. You
know exhibitionism or something is not a very attractive trait, but I think when it becomes an art
form. You are truly portraying a character in a play that‟s worth portraying. But it‟s a very nerveracking business, Lee. I think I try, lately try not to let it bother me, as much as it use to, as it
sometimes does. But, it is nerve-racking because there you are, out in front of if not a hundred, or
several thousand, you are in front of a television camera. And you are totally exposed, and it‟s
the only reason you know, you can survive it all because again, this complicated mechanism that
takes over when you are actually acting, because when you are acting, you are not yourself, you
are not yourself, you are playing another person. And any psychologist or psychiatrist will tell
you, I often say if I wouldn‟t have been an actress, I would have been put away. I don‟t suppose
that is literally true, but I do enjoy fantasizing, I have a big imagination. When I was a little girl,
�19
I would pretend to be in another situation. We all do that when we are growing up, but the only
difference is that actors continue doing it. That is why most grown-up people think being an
actor is kind of you know, silly. Well, I suppose in a way it is. It could be a little degrading for
some men find to be an actor is to be you know, having to wear makeup. And I know a lot of
men that find it degrading, or could be considered degrading. I feel, I am enjoying it more and
more, and to get back to your original question, about it being nerve-racking. I find that I am
enjoying it more and not allowing it to put me through the agony, but I am telling you it can.
Opening night on Broadway, you see, when everything is at stake, now that is just excruciating.
There are not very many times in most people‟s lives when they are that frightened. I mean,
actors or anybody that has to get up and perform knows what I am talking about, but it is just
terrifying. Because as somebody once said jokingly before an opening night on Broadway, don‟t
worry it‟s just your career at stake. Because it is just that kind of thing, as I said to you, I believe
the other day. It is a very unnatural thing for just the two of us, perfectly charming room and this
beautiful June day looking out at the trees, we are performing in a way. Now my heart isn‟t
pounding the way it does before I have to step on stage, or before we started the pilot for Doc,
which is the last work I have done, my heart was pounding, Lee and I was pacing back and forth
and so was Barnard Hughes and we were doing that because so much was at stake. I mean, I
don‟t know what was in Barney‟s head, but we were thinking if we really are good this day on
this show, this will be become a television series, just think what that will mean to our families,
and to our lives. There is just so much at stake every time you step out. It is hard being an actor
because you get rejected. People say I could never be an actor because you get rejected all the
time. Well, you do; you are constantly, being put up against other people, the competition is so
keen. You know just recently, I have been considered for a part, I may as well say, in a new film
All the President’s Men. Now Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman want me to play this part,
Kay Graham. Whether I get this I don‟t know. Each day in the paper there is a report. One day it
says I am going to be playing, the next day it says Lauren Bacall will be playing. Today it says
Pat Neal and Lauren Bacall, but who knows, but I‟ll be rejected, probably maybe not, but I have
to take it. But I always figure each time I take a rejection, it is like a little niche somewhere in
my sensitivity kind of does a zero. When I go back to New York, perhaps I‟ll have to go audition
for some things. It doesn‟t matter where you are in the theatre, you can be a great and important
star, and you still get turned down. And most people in their lives, when they reach a certain
position don‟t get turned down for things as often as actors do, it‟s a very…
Interviewer: You, sort of, have to start all over again.
Elizabeth: You begin, I am starting all over again with this television series and the critics can
either make or break me. It is rough, really rough.
Interviewer: I understand, I don‟t think they can break you.
Elizabeth: If it was a real disaster, they can make it hard for me to get another job.
�20
Interviewer: I trust that doesn‟t happen and I am not going to worry about it, I want to regress a
little for a moment because the reason for doing some of these tapes is to talk about people from
Grand Rapids and this area and get their impressions.
I was interested in, as we drove to the little town of Ionia, which is a small town some thirty
miles east of Grand Rapids, it just so happens some of our grandparents, came from Ionia, were
brought up there in the nineteenth century to Grand Rapids as in the case of your grandfather
Wilson, he came some time during the eighteen eighties and my grandfather Hutchins who was
his brother in law came in eighteen ninety-eight and have been here ever since. In a real sense we
have never had much of family in Ionia, except when we were rather young, we had one or two
relatives, most, all of them are now in the graveyard. The reason for our going was that there was
a house tour that day, and it had been written up in the Detroit paper, and one of my hobbies is
Victorian architecture. And I realized, because I do get back to Ionia from time to time and, there
would be some interesting houses to see and that you in particular might be interested to see. It
just so happened, that it was a very successful experience, but just let me say I thought when we
left that we might be home in three or four hours. As I recall we left at nine-thirty in the morning
and rolled into our driveway at quarter after four. I had the feeling that you were enjoying it
but…
Elizabeth: Wouldn‟t you like to know why?
Interviewer: Yes.
Elizabeth: Architecture is interesting to someone who is romantic. I am a romantic, I‟m
interested in the past and I am interested in the future too. I am interested in all that, it seems to
have a great effect, Lee, on what I do. When I did the Chekov play Uncle Vanya for example I
was very much effected by that period, that was eighteen ninety. I know for example when we
went into the Voigt House, it is that same period, I am so fascinated because by then I knew
exactly, Tony Walton who is a superb set designer, one of his great movies is the Orient Express,
Murder on the Orient Express. He did the costume and set designs our production of Uncle
Vanya, and they were absolutely authentic and divine. The Voigt house meant a great deal to me
just as the houses in Ionia did. I sort of transplant myself into that situation, into that time and I
can just imagine, imagine living in Ionia in those houses that we visited and I particularly like
visiting your friend and having lunch, you know, with Mrs. Osley.
Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Osley.
Elizabeth: Mrs. Osley and having lunch with her. She was just so interesting, Lee. People ask
me, “Do you study characters, do you watch people? Are you always on the alert for somebody
you might play?” I don‟t do that; I don‟t see how anybody could. I just happily live from
moment to moment, but I probably store it up in my head. But there was something so romantic,
so very romantic, so dramatic that she was leaving that house after all these years and we were
probably her last visitors.
�21
Interviewer: That‟s right we probably were.
Elizabeth: I just don‟t know, it‟s a different type of thing. To go to a town like Ionia, in a way it
is very relaxing, but it also is very interesting, to see those authentic….
Interviewer: Did you, the fact that you knew that your family had come from Ionia was that a
factor in your enjoyment of that day or was that a secondary factor?
Elizabeth: No, I think that is one of the reasons why that whole thing means so much, meant so
much.
Interviewer: I was interested because, at one point, just before we went to the Presbyterian
Church, before or after, you wanted to see the site where our great grandmother and great
grandfather had lived. The house was torn down a few years ago and now there was nothing
except a gravel parking lot. I couldn‟t help but notice you went to the center of the parking lot,
and stood there and looked around and yet you weren‟t looking at anything interesting, it is just a
parking lot, yet you seemed to want to walk into the area and stay there a few moments perhaps.
That seemed to mean something to you.
Elizabeth: You are very observant, Lee, you are extremely observant, I wanted to be there, I
wanted to have a sense of, my grandfather, whom I never knew Charles Wilson was born there
and I just wanted to have a sense of him, a sense of the spirit of the man. I don‟t know, I just felt
moved by the fact that my great grandfather and great grandmother and uncles and my
grandfather lived on that spot. And goodness only knows what must have happened in that
house, and there it was, and I felt it….
Interviewer: Except no house.
Elizabeth: No house, but a vacant lot, I felt a very spiritual thing, when I stood there. It‟s true.
Interviewer: Let‟s hope we can go back again, someday and go on another house tour. Hope your
visits to Western Michigan are frequent. And continue to commute between Hollywood and New
York. Because I do think you should keep your apartment there. I don‟t think living in Southern
California will ever suit you, but that is just my opinion, as I said. This has been delightful and
the hour is growing nigh to close. And leave this to prosperity to ponder.
Elizabeth: Alright, thank you, Lee.
Interviewer: Thank you, Elizabeth.
�22
INDEX
A
Aldrich, Henry · 14
B
Bacall, Lauren · 21
Baker, Elvira · 7
Barter Theatre · 8, 9, 15
Begley, Ed · 17
Blodgett Memorial Hospital · 2
Boon, Camilla · 5
Booth, Edwin · 5
Booth, Shirley · 8
Borgnine, Ernest · 15
Bryant, Steve · 12
Buck, Miss · 4
C
Central High School · 3
Central Junior High school · 3
Cherryman, Myrtle Koon · 5
Christi, Julie · 17
Clark, Matt · 12
Cornell, Katherine · 6
Cronyn, Hume · 15
Cunningham, Robert · 7
Einecke, Mary · 4
Evoie, Alex · 8
F
Falk, Peter · 18
Ford, Betty · 10
Fountain Street School · 2, 3
G
Gish, Lillian · 17
Graham, Martha · 9, 10, 11
Grand Rapids Street Railway Company · 8
Grizzard, George · 18
H
Hackman, Gene · 18
Hanchett family · 7, 8
Hanchett, Elizabeth · 7, 8
Hanchett, Gerald · 7, 8
Hayes, Helen · 13, 15
Heckart, Janice · 16
Heflin, Van · 17
Hoffman, Dustin · 17, 18, 21
Holden, William · 16
Horton, Edward Everett · 15
Hughes, Barnard · 19, 21
Hutchins, Mrs. Lee Wilson · 4
D
Darryl, Jack · 12
Day, Doris · 17
Depression · 9
Dewhurst, Colleen · 18
Dillingham, Alex · 6
Dillingham, Buddy · 14
Dunning, Jane Wadsworth · 1
E
Einecke, Harold · 4
I
Idema, David · 6
Inge, William · 15
Irving, Washington · 5
J
Jackson, Anne · 18
Jefferson, Joseph · 4, 5
�23
K
R
Ketcham, David · 12
Klein, Evelyn · 6
Redford, Robert · 21
Roosevelt, Eleanor · 9
Rule, Janice · 16
Russell, Rosalind · 16
L
Lake, Veronica · 15
Lee, Vivian · 7
Lewis, Amy · 7
Logan, Joshua · 15, 16
M
Marywood Academy · 3, 4, 5
Meeker, Ralph · 16
Meisner, Sandy · 10, 19
Meisner, Sanford · 9
Mencarelli, Jim · 2
Muir, Elizabeth Ewing · 1
N
Neal, Patricia · 9, 15, 21
Neighborhood Playhouse · 9, 10, 12, 15
Nesbitt, Katherine · 17
Newman, Joann · 18
Newman, Paul · 16, 18
Nichols, Mike · 17
Novak, Kim · 16
O
O‟Connell, Arthur · 16
O‟Neil, Eugene · 15
Olivier, Lawrence · 7
Osley, Mrs. · 22
P
Park Congregational Church · 3, 4
Peck, Gregory · 15
Phillips, Margaret · 9
Porterfield, Robert · 9, 15
S
Scott, George C. · 17, 18
Shaw, Rita · 16
Sonke, Dorothy · 5
Sposum, Robert · 12
Stanley, Kim · 16
Stapleton, Maureen · 18
Steenwyk and Thrall · 2
Steketee, Dick · 12
Sterling, Rod · 17
Stone, Everett · 17
T
Tolliver, Monroe · 12
Tyson, Cicely · 17
V
Voigt House · 22
W
Wallach, Eli · 18
Walton, Tony · 22
Ware, David · 6
Welter, Ferdinand · 1
Welter, Marie Ethel · 1
Westminster Presbyterian Church · 3, 4
Williams, Betty · 6
Williamson, Nicole · 17
Wilson, Charles · 1, 6, 23
Wilson, Charles Moseman · 1
Wilson, Elizabeth Welter · 1
Wilson, Henry · 6
Wilson, Henry Dunning · 1
Wilson, Mary · 6
Wilson, Mrs. Charles · 2
Wilson, Mrs. Charles (Angeline) · 6
�24
Wilson, Mrs. Seymour · 2
Woodward, Joanne · 16
World War Two · 7, 14
Y
Yarborough, Bertram · 6, 14
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/831da3c2271303ad1c188b393b59021b.mp3
30c92c171935cd349e77388053ffe167
Dublin Core
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Title
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Grand Rapids Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
Oral histories (document genre)
Description
An account of the resource
Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
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Various
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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eng
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RHC-23
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1971 - 1977
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RHC-23_51Wilson
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Wilson, Elizabeth
Creator
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Wilson, Elizabeth
Description
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Elizabeth Welter Wilson was born in Grand Rapids on April 4, 1921. Miss Wilson attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York. She was acquainted with well-known stage personalities, among them Helen Hayes and Shirley Booth. Miss Wilson co-starred on the TV series.
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan--History
Local histories
Memoirs
Oral histories (document genre)
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Personal narratives
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Women
Language
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Text
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Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
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1975
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/449c9cb62ea1d65ab952ae6203820037.pdf
aa1e6caf9fb4989866090f10ded2bdf3
PDF Text
Text
1
Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23
Mr. John Widdicombe
Interviewed on January 5, 1975
Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com
Tape #45 (40:42)
Biographical Information
John S. Widdicombe was born about 1907 in Grand Rapids. His death occurred in Keene, New
Hampshire in late May 1989. A memorial service was held in Grand Rapids on 1 June 1989.
John was the son of Harry Theodore Widdicombe and Gertrude Emily Sherwood. Harry was
born 3 August 1876 in Grand Rapids and died 29 March 1957 at Blodgett Hospital. He was the
son of John Widdicombe and Mary Frances Stocking. Harry married Gertrude Emily Sherwood
on 14 March 1906 in Grand Rapids. Gertrude was born about 1882 and was the daughter of
Alfred Harry Sherwood and Emily A. Jeffries (or Jeffrey). Gertrude passed away 20 May 1975
in Grand Rapids. Both Gertrude and John S. Widdicombe are buried at Oak Hill Cemetery.
____________
Interviewer: This is a recording of an interview with Mr. John Widdicombe, who is visiting his
native city from New York where he presently lives part of the year. This is recorded at my
home, the Hutchins residence at one-eleven Lafayette north-east, in the afternoon of Sunday,
January the fifth, nineteen seventy-five. Now I’m going to ask Mr. Widdicombe to talk about his
family, which has played an important part in the history of this city, for I believe well over a
hundred years.
John: Well my great-grandfather George with three sons, his brother, and his brother’s wife and
they came, it was about eighteen forty-four, and they settled first in Syracuse, New York. And
just why one brother came to Grand Rapids and the other stayed in Syracuse, I don’t know. After
they had settled in Syracuse my grandfather, the youngest of the four sons was born there. The
other three were born in England. William, the eldest, Harry, George (I’m not sure if that’s the
right order of Harry and George) and John. All four boys served in the Civil War, and George
died shortly after, of some, not a wound, but some disablement that he suffered during the war.
My great-grandfather, the original George was a cabinet-maker from Exeter in England. Almost
as soon as they got here they began to work in furniture and there were many permutations,
George Widdicombe, and Son, and Widdicombe Brothers, and Widdicombe and Richard, the
Grand Rapids Mantel Company, this is over the course of many years. And finally they started
the Widdicombe Furniture Company that died recently. The elder brother, William was
�2
apparently rather bossy and my grandfather the youngest got tired of the relationship; sold his
stock in the Widdicombe Furniture Company and started the John Widdicombe Company.
Interviewer:
About what year was that?
John: I’m not sure, I can find out. I supposed it must have been in the eighties somewhere in the
eighties. And of course in nineteen twelve, I think it was eleven or twelve he dropped dead over
his desk, and at that time was starting work, starting to build what would have been if he finished
it, the largest furniture company in the world. But of course when he died all the plans went by
the board.
William Widdicombe married Esther Hewitt, and Harry Widdicombe married a sister who was
known as Auntie Rye, what her real name was I don’t know. And William had six children, only
one of whom had any offspring, Abbott, who married Leona Wurzburg. And they had four
children, two girls and two boys. He died of pneumonia, when Abbott his son, the youngest son
was unborn. Harry Widdicombe, not my father, but his uncle after whom he was named, married
Auntie Rye Hewitt and his son was Ralph the furniture designer. My grandfather married Mary
Stocking and her father was Billius Stocking, who was one of the real pioneers. He came here I
think in eighteen thirty-four or five and took a quarter, took up a homestead I think you call it on
the West side, a quarter section. And built his, originally I think it was a log cabin. And later of
course the New England clapboard house that was still there when I was a boy.
Stocking had at least three children, Theodore who died in his twenties, and was quite an artist,
or somewhat of an artist, and another daughter Alida who was a spinster, and who died at an
advanced age I can’t remember how old she was, never having married. And she of course, lived
on the West side and she must have had two acres. She had her own house, she had a tenant
farmer house, and she had a corn field and potato patch and a cow and so on, and in the twenties
the early twenties the city wanted this ideal property for a whole school complex and they got it
by condemning the property, it was several years of fight to keep it but in the end they lost.
Interviewer: Do you know anything about Billius Stocking apart from your relationship to him
or what did he do?
John: He was extremely pious that I do know. Terribly pious, he was, my grandfather had four
children, one who died as they did in those day died young, I don’t know what name it had,
Mary, Alida, and Harry my father, Harry Theodore. Named for his uncle, the Theodore Stocking
that died young. . And Mary Widdicombe went to Paris in the nineties where she ran a pensione
(hotel) along with Mrs. Thayer, who she’d known as her teacher of French in school somewhere,
she went where a lots of Grand Rapids people went, where Mrs. Douglas went.
�3
Interviewer:
When she went over to Paris in the nineties how old would she have been?
John: In her early twenties.
Interviewer:
In her early twenties? What about eighteen seventy perhaps?
John: Something, not before that, it must have been before that because she was at least
mother’s age.
Interviewer:
When was your father born, what year?
John: Eighteen seventy-five I think.
Interviewer:
He was the youngest?
John: He was the youngest.
Interviewer:
She was born perhaps…
John: Eighteen eighty. So it must have been before that, it must have before it must have been
in the eighties or nineties maybe she was a bit older than I said. Anyhow they went to Paris to
perfect their French, and had the idea of starting a pensione for Americans, immediately,
Americans from Grand Rapids well they were their first guest. And eventually lots of other
people, and she married a Mr. Lee, Mr. James Lee and they were divorced and she went to
London and bought the Dysart Hotel which covers a whole block, if it’s still there. And in a
course of her years in London one of the people who lived in there was Geraldine Farrar, when
she was in London she always stayed at the Dysart. And in those days she married John Joass,
and I found something interesting, I’ve seen the name Joass once, another time in Scotland and I
know that J-O-A-S is a Norwegian name.
Interviewer:
So there’s a possibility that…
John: They came across, they were originally Norwegians. He didn’t like his wife running a
hotel so she had to give up the Dysart and she lived in England until they separated, not
divorced, and she came back here to live and died in nineteen forty-two. Alida married someone
called Crane, I’ve forgotten his first name, and that was a very short lived marriage, and
subsequently married Douglas Ray. And my father married Gertrude Sherwood, whose father
has invented that process of translating fine grain mahogany on pine. And his company was the
Grand Rapids Panel Company. My parents had two children, myself the eldest, and my sister
�4
Emily, who married David Schmidt. I found an interesting thing; do you remember the Jacksons,
here who was Jackson at St. Marks?
Interviewer:
St. Marks. I never knew them but yes I remember them.
John: There was Nancy Jackson, that was a member of that family, I think Nancy’s younger
sister who is wife of the rector of Grace Church in New York and she’d been looking through the
files and said I found a Widdicombe who is married in Grace Church, and I discovered that was
when she married Crane, it was Alida.
Interviewer: Why don’t we go back to your grandfather, John Widdicombe, and tell me a little
bit about what you were saying about the house, which stood in, on the site of the present John
Widdicombe Furniture Company.
John: No, not on the site but in the El and open space that is still open.
Interviewer:
What time do you suppose that house was built?
John: I don’t know. It must have been there, I think it was certainly there in the eighties, and I
suppose perhaps he lived there, because of course, the Widdicombe Furniture Company was
across the tracks. And he chose that spot to build his own factory. So that when the guess that he
was perhaps already living there. Then as he prospered he came across the river as everybody did
finally, who lived on the West side, and bought what had been the Wood house, which is the
second house from College on the north side of Fulton Street, going west. I think that would
have been after eighteen ninety-three, and this was the time when father and his sisters, my aunt
were growing up, I mean getting to their teens and so on. Because they entertained a good deal of
their friends; I’ve heard people speak of remembering them at that house.
Then he suffered in financial reverse in the panic of nineteen seven, and one of the things he did
was sell the house to Mr. Hodenpyl, and they moved back to the little house beside the factory.
And when grandfather was prosperous again, Mr. Hodenpyl very nicely, offered to sell it back to
him for exactly what he paid for it, but my grandfather apparently said I don’t need it anymore
because my children are all gone, they’re all married and there was no need to have a big house,
it was just he and his wife, my grandmother. So they continued for the next few years because in
nineteen-twelve he dropped dead. And then grandmother moved on, over on this side, I think
she, well that house going up College north on College, the first house on the left.
Interviewer:
Yes, beyond the Sherman house, what we call the Sherman house.
�5
John: Well it’s not beyond the Sherman house, because the Sherman house is on Fulton street,
and it’s an empty lot, then it’s the first house that way.
Interviewer:
It’s the Victorian house.
John: Yes, it was turned into half, split up into two house, two halves, and grandmother lived in
first there.
Interviewer:
Didn’t Mrs. Ray live there, your aunt?
John: No, she lived in the middle of the block, the house that her father built for her, bought the
lot and built it for her in the middle of the block, that again a New England clapboard, a little
house I don’t know how to describe it, it’s fifty-three North College. All that pops into my mind
from these many many years ago; it’s been a long time since I’ve addressed a letter to fifty-three
North College, but that’s where it was. And she lived there with Douglas Ray, it was a wedding
present. And eventually grandmother went to live with Alida, in that house and live there until
she died. It must have been in the late twenties or early thirties.
My mother’s family lived on the West side, on Turner Street. Again when they prospered they
moved over to this side and grandfather [Alfred H. Sherwood] bought the house on the big white
rather handsome house, where Eberhard’s grocery is on the corner of State Street and Madison,
across from the Stuyvesant.
Interviewer:
I think it’s no longer Eberhard’s.
John: Well it a big thing, and it was next door to Dr. Smith.
Interviewer:
Richard Smith?
John: Richard Smith, Dick Smith yes, and of course across the street lived the Wonderlys, that
one where the Stuyvesant lived or was it the next to it.
Interviewer:
I think it was the one next to it.
John: It was the Blodgett house.
Interviewer:
The Blodgett house was on the corner and the next one was the Wonderly house.
John: The Wonderly house right. This isn’t much for your record; that was where I was born,
where the grocery store is now. I was born in that house.
�6
Interviewer:
In that house? That was your…
John: That was my mother’s mother and father you see and apparently she came home to have
the baby or…
Interviewer:
It was your grandfather and grandmother Sherwood?
John: Yes. That’s where I was born. I think Emily was born in a hospital, I think.
Interviewer:
Tell us a little bit about your grandfather Sherwood, if you will John.
John: He was Alfred Harry Sherwood, and his, I long thought he was born in Canada of a
Canadian family. I now know that his father was born in Canada, my great-grandfather whom I
never knew who came to Michigan and settled somewhere near Grand Rapids, not in Grand
Rapids, that’s something I must ask mother where it was. And he sent his son back to
Peterborough to go to college. And there he met my grandmother, Emily Jefferies, who had
come from England with her sister; her father being a merchant seaman, out of Southampton. A
merchant seaman is a man who owns his ship and sails it. They went to Australia for grain or
whatever.
And my grandfather Sherwood came back to Grand Rapids to teach school. But he was a
budding inventor; he invented several things, one or two things he gave away to others. I think
one of the funny things he invented was embalming fluid. I don’t know how he happened to get
on that, but he gave it to a friend who had started a funeral home or something. Anyhow,
grandfather invented, he started the Grand Rapids Panel Company, which provided the
machinery and the technique for applying fine grain taken off beautiful pieces of mahogany or
whatever they wanted, on to cheap wood, pine and so on. And eventually that was adapted to put
graining on metal dashboards in automobiles when that was fashionable to have metal
dashboards that looked like wood. He was very successful, he had one of the first automobiles in
Grand Rapids and they had a boat on the lake, well they had a cottage at, they didn’t build it they
bought a cottage from a man from Chicago at Macatawa Park, that my uncle said was designed
by a man from Chicago called Wright. Now my uncle knew nothing about architecture, so he
couldn’t have, he didn’t even know of whom he was talking, just a man called Wright from
Chicago. Well you can look at it, pictures of it and see it looks as though it might have been one
of Wright’s first ventures.
Interviewer:
Is the house still standing?
�7
John: It still stands, the bungalow at Macatawa Park on the grove walk up there is very
handsome.
Interviewer:
It is considered a Frank Lloyd Wright?
John: I have talked to people who are authority on Wright and they won’t pick it because that’s
all I can do is just say an uncle of mine who knew nothing of architecture produced the name
Wright. You know he could have any, he just remembers that when his father bought the cottage
it was said to have been by a man called Wright, from Chicago. He died in nineteen eleven, of
cancer, when he was quite a young man, he was in his fifties.
Interviewer:
This was your grandfather Sherwood?
John: Sherwood, grandfather Sherwood.
Interviewer:
Then your uncle carried on the business.
John: And uncle Wallace, my mother’s brother carried on the business, but didn’t have his
father’s capacity so it wasn’t terribly successful, and eventually went out of existence. The same
sort of thing happened to my father when my grandfather died, dropped dead of a heart attack.
Father was a lumberman up in the north. He has several lumber camps, and obviously his father
must have given him the money to buy the timberland, but anyhow he was running these logging
camps, walking around on snow shoes in winter and loving it. And he was up there when his
father dropped dead.
Interviewer:
camps?
Excuse me but what about you know, the approximate location of these lumber
John: It was partly in the northern peninsula, the eastern end of the northern peninsula, but it
was also, it must have been up in the area north east of Petoskey, in the northern end of the
southern peninsula. Because he was there, in a logging camp when this happened and his best
friend at the time was George Shelby. And Mr. [William] Shelby was president of the railroad.
So they fixed up a caboose and a locomotive, and sent it with George Shelby on it from Grand
Rapids up to Petoskey or where ever it was, and off on this logging road into the woods to get
my father.
Interviewer:
Don’t you mean Mr. William Shelby, was president of the railroad?
John: Yes, I said his father.
�8
Interviewer:
Yes I see he was…
John: George’s father. And it was rather funny, there wasn’t any telegraph no way of getting
news to my father that his father had dropped dead. Well everyone persuaded him to give up the
lumber business, and to become head of the John Widdicombe Company, as the only son. But he
again didn’t have all his father’s talents, and you know one has to keep adding ideas to a
company to make it remain successful. I think my father had the idea that whatever his father had
done was best, so it just went on being the same. And then the furniture business sagged in the
twenties as you know, and the John Widdicombe Company faltered. And due to family feeling,
father was removed from the presidency and went back to the lumber business. And various
people took over, but the company must have had the will to live because it is still going.
Interviewer: That’s right. I just wanted to say I think it would be interesting if you talked about
your early recollections as a child and some of your childhood experiences, for your early
educational experiences, things of that sort.
John: I went to Miss Eastman’s school, it was a Kindergarten first, that’s the first school I
remember. And then I was tutored for…
Interviewer:
Where was Miss Eastman’s school?
John: Somewhere, I think it was one, what is that street that comes out by Rason and Dows?
Interviewer:
Jefferson?
John: No, it doesn’t go through Jefferson, goes into Rason and Dows, it’s the street next to it.
Interviewer:
Oh, LaGrave?
John: No, that’s down. Up the hill. Runs from the church that is next to the Masonic Temple.
Interviewer:
That’s Lafayette.
John: No, that’s above Masonic Temple
Interviewer: I’ve run out of streets.
�9
John: Anyway, it was down there. And then I was tutored by Mrs. Field, so you want me to
repeat the business about Jack Covode? She had four [students]; she divided her day, and nine to
eleven, eleven to one, two to four and four to six.
Interviewer:
And where did she live John?
John: She lived on Portsmouth Terrace. And she had a sister called Mrs. Herrick, who also did
some tutoring, but was not nearly as good as Mrs. Field. Mrs. Field was really remarkable, ask
Alexia Byrne, we owe her tremendous. She was marvelous about English. Well anyway, Jack
Covode, Alexia Byrne, myself and Wilder Stevens at one point were the four that took those four
hours, from four to six, five days a week.
Then I went, my aunt Mary Joass, who came to this country at least once a year, if not twice to
see her mother and her relatives and her friends. And one time in nineteen twenty-one, she
suggested that I go back with her to England, because she was not only my aunt, but my
godmother, and go to school, which I did for a year, almost two years. And then for various
reasons I came back here and went to Central High School. From there when I graduated I went
to the University of Virginia. When I finished there I went to New York and taught for two and a
half years in Grace Church Choir School which was a resident school for boys who sang in the
choir. They got it free for singing. And then I, that, the Depression was on and the church began
to feel the pinch, and they turned the boarding school into a day school and cut the salaries in
half.
At that point my aunt Mary was coming through New York and said would you like to go to
Oxford and I said that would be fine. So she gave me the wherewithal to take another degree at
Oxford. From there I came back. Well, in London I worked on a newspaper for a while, the
Sunday Referee, a sort of semi-scandal newspaper, as you know the English love those Sunday
News of the World, the Sunday Referee.
And then I met, had already known Lily Morris who was the wife of Ira Morris one of the minor
meatpackers of Chicago and she had, she was a very extraordinary woman, when he was in
Vienna not as Ambassador but in the Embassy, she got terribly interested in Maria Theresa. And
she studied for two years in Vienna and she went as an undergraduate to Oxford in her sixties
and finally finished this flight on Maria Theresa. And she was in the middle of shaping it up, you
know editing and indexing and so on, and I came back to America to work with her and finish
this book. But she was one of these women who needed only about four hours of sleep, and had a
metabolism that left you gasping. So I, when the book was finished she wanted me to go on and
do other things for her, but I said no I just couldn’t, it was just too taxing. She wanted to stay out
all night and start work at eight o’clock in the morning and I just couldn’t manage it.
�10
So I went to Virginia and by an accident, an accidental meeting a coincidence (which I won’t
bother to go into) I got a job on the Virginia Writers Project at the WPA, as assistant state
supervisor and spend five years writing a big Guidebook to Virginia and lots of other books, the
book on Charlottesville on the University of Virginia which I did almost entirely. And a picture
book on Virginia, which I did entirely. And from there I went into the war and went to Europe
with the One Hundred Fourth Division, as a staff sergeant and a combat infantry division. And
when the war was over, I for some months, I was idle not knowing what I wanted to do, and
eventually got into U.N.R.R.A [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] and
went to Poland as a special assistant to the chief of the under mission, a Canadian,”Bud”
[Charles Alfred] Drury, a very nice guy, and had a absolutely fascinating time.
And when that came to an end in June nineteen forty-seven, the still great unfinished business
was the refugees, still in camps in Germany which we were responsible for. And we had handled
the Polish; more than half of the refugees were Polish. And we handled the operation at the
Polish end, and we had not authority but we had to deal with the trains that came in, which were
not Polish We had many, many problems. And the man who had been in charge of that had to
leave and go to England, and I had been his substitute, so that when U.N.R.R.A. came to an end,
I was handling the refugee problems. And there were still nearly a million refugees in camps, so
it was suggested that we open an office in Warsaw, much opposed by the Russians, because they
didn’t want U.N.R.R.A. to come in, IRO the refugee organization to come into existence. But it
did and the Poles accepted me as the chief of the mission to Warsaw refugee organization. I
spent four years, three years more in Poland handling all that.
Interviewer: Why don’t you talk a little bit about some of your friend that you got to know
when you were in high school? You just mentioned to me that you lived in what is now known
as the Morris manor, the house that is on the corner of Morris and Cherry Street, which was your
father’s home at the time.
John: Well I had known before I went to school in England, while I was being tutored during
that period, I had known rather few. Should I name those few?
Interviewer:
Yes.
John: Wilder Stevens, Lewis Reynolds, Ruth Denison, Cornelia Rood, well then when I came
back from England and went to Central High School, I came to know people whom I, well came
to know better as friends, people that I vaguely knew before because most of them, their parents
were friends of my parents. Ed Dean, Jack Steketee, Sam and Bob Correll, Bob Oatman, Dew
[DuBarry] Campau who’s Mrs. Serell Hillman now, Emily Wurzburg, …oh that nice girl who
died…
�11
Interviewer:
____________
John: No she was a bit too young. They lived across from Cornelia Rood. Oh dear, Kitty, her
mother was Kitty. She was Kitty Seymour related to Mrs. Palmer, who was a Seymour. You
know the Palmers?
Interviewer:
Yes I know who they are.
John: Lanard, Mary Larnard, and the first Mrs., oh my memory is so bad, the man in the
brokerage house down here, used to be in the Michigan Trust building. Bonnie Newcombe, who
married who was a great big chap who was a broker, his sons went into it too. Cy[Cyrus]
Newcombe, no Cy Newcombe was her brother, well never mind. And Barbara Vandenberg, and
Catherine Handley, oh and Mary McClave and later I knew Bud quite well, but of course he in
those years two or three years makes a lot of difference, and Mary was a bit younger than I and
Bud was three or four or five years younger.
Interviewer:
Who were your parent’s closest friends during this period?
John: My mother’s closest friend was Agnes Caufield, and Louise Long, and Emma Homiller
and the usually the Duffys, another great friend of my mothers who died was Mrs. Shephard.
Perhaps you never heard of Ned Shephard?
Interviewer:
Oh yes, I have.
John: And Mrs. Ned Shephard and I can’t remember what her name was, she was a great friend
of my mother’s but she died of pneumonia. And the other one was Lorraine McClave, not
Lorraine McClave, Lorraine Bissell, who was Irving’s first wife. And the Pantlinds, Catherine’s
mother and father, what was his… Fred, Fred and… Mr. and Mrs. Fred Pantlind. And the other
Bissells, Olive Bissell, Mrs. M.R. Bissell, and oh dear it’s so far and so long ago.
Interviewer:
Of course she must have known Anna McKnight.
John: Oh yes yes, all the Caufields. Anna McKnight, Marie who never married, Agnes who
never married, Mrs. Hart, there were five of them, oh yes Chisolm’s mother.
Interviewer:
Mrs. Lichtenberger?
John: Mrs. Lichtenberger and of course John [Caulfield] who … now we don’t need to go into
the Peck business… John who married Clara Peck and they moved out to California.
�12
Interviewer:
When the depression came along I believe that your mother…
John: Well my father having left the furniture business and gone into lumbering again was not
nearly as prosperous as he had been and eventually my mother made an arrangement with a shop
in Chicago, Blooms Bow a very nice arrangement because she had a shop in her own house, got
a ten percent commission on everything she sold, and since she knew everybody in Grand Rapids
and had great taste in clothing, she was very successful. And that went on for about fifteen years.
Interviewer:
That was the house on Fulton?
John: No, a very wonderful scheme, she was first in strangely enough that house around the
corner where I said my grandmother first lived, that Victorian house on College. And then she
was walking down the street one day and ran into Camilla Shanahan, whose mother was very ill
or had just died and she said, “we’re going to sell the house”, the Shanahan house, which was
built by a Howard. Mrs. O’Brian’s brother, no I believe it was built by Mrs. O’Brian’s father.
Interviewer:
It could be yes.
John: Either brother or father, I don’t know which generation. And then the Shanahans had
bought it when they came with the Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company. And mother asked her how
much they wanted, and she said, “well the real estate people were asking ten thousand.” Well
mother immediately got on the telephone, she is quite clever sometimes, with Mr. Bloom in
Chicago, and said, “what would you think of applying the same (cause he paid her rent) amount
to amortizing a mortgage?” and he said, “fine, go ahead.” So, she bought it straight from Camilla
and Florence, with no commission, so it was nine thousand five hundred dollars. And all that was
paid, of course at the time, by Mr. Bloom. And when mother left it nine years ago, she sold it for
forty thousand.
Interviewer:
It was a big house, the beautiful house.
John: It was a lovely house, but the rooms were so arranged that it would have been very hard
to turn it into apartments. They were big square rooms, well there’s no point in going into that
here, and the plumbing was lead, it would have to be all redone, and the wiring would probably
have to be all done, so mother sold it to that Institute.
Interviewer:
Davenport?
John: Davenport. Well that’s about all I can do on that.
�13
Interviewer: John I’ve noticed that you spell your name w-i-d-d-i-c-o-m-b-e, as your father
did. Now the other Widdicombes have omitted the final e, what is the reason for that?
John: I can tell you, I used to think that my great-grandfather had dropped the e, but mother
tells me that William Widdicombe, who was the eldest son, dropped the e and persuaded his
brothers to do so, and so the companies got started without the e. But it was dropped, and I know
it was dropped now because I possess some letters written by the brother who stayed in
Syracuse, rather the wife of the brother who stayed in Syracuse to her sister-in-law my greatgrandmother here worrying about her four nephews who were in the Civil War. So there’s quite
a spate of letters. And she always signed them herself with an e.
Interviewer:
Well that explains that.
John: But of course you can’t change the company. When the family had become more
prosperous and were traveling to Europe, when they got to England they discovered that it
always had the e. And so they put it back. And I have looked, I looked recently in my birth
certificate and it’s spelled with an e.
Interviewer:
I see.
John: So it was accepted with an e by that time and I was baptized that way, or rather, you
know, registered.
Interviewer:
Tell us about your families religious affiliations over the years.
John: Well I think that I, I think the Stockings were very pious and I think they were
Presbyterian, but I can’t be sure. And if so that was the church I was baptized in. But my
immediate family, father and mother were never particularly religious. My sister and I never
went to Sunday school, a very Christian family if you like, a high sense of Christian ethic but my
aunts were Episcopalians, and particularly Aunt Alida Ray went every Sunday to St. Mark’s. But
I think that long ago the way we were brought up, my sister and I were rather disapproved of,
because there wasn’t this emphasis on church-going. I think probably on the part of both my
father and my mother a revulsion against Stocking’s piety, you see what I mean?
Interviewer:
Yes I understand.
John: I don’t belong to any church. When I go to a church it’s for architectural reasons mainly.
Interviewer: Now let’s talk a little bit about the Sherwood family who were related to you,
they’re your first cousins, your generation which is still around in Grand Rapids.
�14
John: Yes, all but one. My mother had a little sister who again as happened in those days, died
young. But the other two grew up were my mother, and her brother Wallace, William Wallace
Sherwood, who married Virginia Vevia. They had four children, Mary, Ann, Wallace, and
David. Mary married, (of this is going to be hard for you) she was married three times, and
consequently is no longer a Catholic, some boy who was the one from Holland?
Interviewer:
I can’t remember.
John: Well anyway now she is married to Grindell McKee. Ann married Carl Schmidt, who
was a brother of my sister’s husband David Schmidt, so those two are sisters-in-law and first
cousins. Wallace married someone whose last name I don’t remember, and they have three
children, Catherine, Virginia, and William (I think it is the other way around, Catherine, William
and Virginia). Catherine just married Douglas Cramer, just a few months ago. David, the fourth
child, never married and has lived for many years in California.
Interviewer:
Now why don’t you tell us about your nephew, your sister’s son?
John: Oh yes, my sister has one son, William Widdicombe Sherwood Schmidt, which is rather
a mouthful, who is about twenty-seven now, lives in Ann Arbor, went to the University of
Michigan, and is now what do you call that, not a teaching assistant, he’s doing some teaching
there while he’s finishing his work on a degree. And he married, I just said give my love to…
to… it’s my age of course.
Interviewer:
Is it pertinent?
John: No.
Interviewer:
He’s married you know that.
John: He’s married and has no children.
Interviewer: I was interested to note he is a member of Kent County Council for Historic
Preservation and which saved the Voigt House which we toured together earlier this afternoon.
John: This is I think though, he never mentioned it to me, but you’ve told me and one or two
other things make me think he has quite an interest in old Grand Rapids and genealogical and
family past history and so on. But he’s never mentioned it to me. But there are certain things that
make me think he’s, privately from me, he does have these feelings. I think that’s about all,
unless you can think of something else.
�15
Interviewer: No, I just want to thank you very much. It’s been a delightful hour or so chatting
with you. I hope you’ll be back in the not too distant future and by that time we can remember
some things, you can remember some things you forgot to mention and we’ll have another
session perhaps not quite so lengthy and put those thoughts and memories on tape.
John: Well thank you very much. This is a new experience for me and as I’ve said it’s
extraordinary to hear you played back when you’re not used to it.
Interviewer:
John.
That never sounds like you, especially the first two or three times. Well thank you
INDEX
A
D
Auntie Rye (Eunice M. Hewitt) · 2
Davenport Institute · 14
Dean, Ed · 11
Denison, Ruth · 11
Douglas, Mrs. · 3
Drury, Charles Alfred "Bud" · 11
Dysart Hotel · 3, 4
B
Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company · 13
Bissell, Lorraine · 12
Bissell, Mrs. M.R. · 12
Bissell, Olive · 12
Blodgett house · 6
Bloom, Mr. · 13
Blooms Bow · 13
Byrne, Alexia · 9
C
Campau, Dew [DuBarry] · 11
Caufield family · 12
Caufield, Agnes · 12
Caulfield, Agnes · 12
Caulfield, John · 13
Caulfield, Marie · 12
Central High School · 10, 11
Correll, Sam and Bob · 11
Covode, Jack · 9
Cramer, Douglas · 15
F
Field, Mrs. · 9
Field, Mrs. · 9
G
George Widdicombe and Son Company · 1
Grace Church · 4
Grace Church Choir School · 10
Grand Rapids Mantel Company · 2
Grand Rapids Panel Company · 4, 7
Great Depression · 10
H
Handley, Catherine · 12
Hart, Mrs. Esther (Caulfield) · 13
Herrick, Mrs. · 9
Hewitt, Esther · 2
�16
Hillman, Mrs. Serell · 11
Hodenpyl, Mr. · 5
Homiller, Emma · 12
Oxford University · 10
J
Pantlind, Mr. and Mrs. Fred · 12
Peck, Clara · 13
Petoskey · 8
Jackson, Nancy · 4
Jefferies, Emily · 7
Joass, John · 4
Joass, Mary · 10
John Widdicombe Company · 2, 8
John Widdicombe Furniture Company · 4
P
R
Kent County Council for Historic Preservation · 16
Rason and Dows · 9
Ray, Alida (Widdicombe) · 15
Ray, Douglas · 4, 5
Ray, Mrs. Alida · 5
Reynolds, Lewis · 11
Rood, Cornelia · 11, 12
L
S
Larnard, Mary · 12
Lee, Mr. James · 3
Long, Louise · 12
Schmidt, Carl · 15
Schmidt, Catherine · 15
Schmidt, David · 15
Schmidt, Virginia · 15
Schmidt, William · 15
Schmidt, William Widdicombe Sherwood · 15
Seymour, Kitty · 12
Shanahan, Camilla · 13
Shanahan, Florence · 13
Shanahan family · 13
Shelby, George · 8
Shelby, Mr. William · 8
Shephard, Mrs. Ned · 12
Shephard, Ned · 12
Sherman house · 5
Sherwood family · 15
Sherwood, Alfred H. · 6, 7
Sherwood, Ann · 15
Sherwood, David · 15
Sherwood, Gertrude · 4
Sherwood, Mary · 15
Sherwood, Wallace · 8, 15
Sherwood, William Wallace · 15
Smith, Dr. Richard · 6
St. Mark’s Episcopal Church · 15
St. Mark's Episcopal Church · 4
Steketee, Jack · 11
Stevens, Wilder · 11
Stocking family · 14
K
M
Macatawa Park · 7
Maria Theresa · 10
Masonic Temple · 9
McClave, Bud · 12
McClave, Mary · 12
McKnight, Anna (Caulfield) · 12
Michigan Trust building · 12
Miss Eastman’s school · 9
Morris manor · 11
Morris, Ira · 10
Morris, Lily · 10
N
Newcombe, Bonnie · 12
Newcombe, Cy · 12
O
Oatman, Bob · 11
�17
Stocking, Alida · 2
Stocking, Billius · 2, 3
Stocking, Mary · 2
Stocking, Theodore · 2, 3
Stuyvesant Apartments · 6
Syracuse, New York · 1
T
Thayer, Mrs. · 3
U
U.N.R.R.A (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation
Administration) · 10, 11
University of Virginia · 10
V
Vandenberg, Barbara · 12
Vevia, Virginia · 15
Voigt House · 16
W
Widdicombe and Richard · 2
Widdicombe Brothers · 2
Widdicombe family · 14
Widdicombe Furniture Company · 4
Widdicombe Furniture Company · 2
Widdicombe, Abbott · 2
Widdicombe, Alida · 4
Widdicombe, Emily · 4
Widdicombe, George · 1
Widdicombe, Harry · 1, 2
Widdicombe, Harry Theodore · 3
Widdicombe, John · 4
Widdicombe, Mary · 3
Widdicombe, Mr. John · 1
Widdicombe, Ralph · 2
Widdicombe, William · 1, 2, 14
Wonderly house · 6
Wright, Frank Lloyd · 7
Wurzburg, Emily · 11
Wurzburg, Leona · 2
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/941c200dfd603ead13f2ba1970ac2445.mp3
8231dbed4bb65bcd49e300316161502b
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
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Grand Rapids Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
Oral histories (document genre)
Description
An account of the resource
Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
Creator
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Various
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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application/pdf; audio/mp3
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eng
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RHC-23
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1971 - 1977
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Dublin Core
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RHC-23_45Widdicombe
Title
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Widdicombe, John
Creator
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Widdicombe, John
Description
An account of the resource
John Widdicombe was born in Grand Rapids. His great-grandfather came to New York from England, before moving to Grand Rapids. Mr. Widdicombe's grandfather Alfred H. Sherwood started the Grand Rapids Panel Company, invented embalming fluid, and had a cottage in Macatawa Park rumored to have been designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. Mr. Widdicombe's father was a lumberman in the north. Mr. Widdicombe attended the University of Virginia. He then moved to New York where he taught at the Grace Church Choir School.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan--History
Local histories
Memoirs
Oral histories (document genre)
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Personal narratives
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Language
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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Text
Sound
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application/pdf
audio/mp3
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Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
Date
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1975
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/678291c7b699fc81fda5a8b114937cc1.pdf
65e851c87d0ed04cafcd008eb32a0de6
PDF Text
Text
1
Grand Valley State University Special Collection
Kent County Oral History Project RHC-23
Mrs. George Whinery (Katherine M. Pantlind)
Interviewed on September 16, 1971
Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com
Tape 12 (23:50)
Biographical Information:
Mrs. Whinery was Katherine M. Pantlind, born 28 January 1910 in Kent County, daughter of
Frederick Z. Pantlind and Hilda W. Hummer. Katherine was married in 1931 to George A.
Whinery, Sr. She died 29 December 1998 and is buried in the Pantlind family plot at Oak Hill
Cemetery.
George A. Whinery was born 11 January 1902 in Grand Rapids, the son of Joseph B. and Fannie
Whinery. He died 9 July 1992 in Grand Rapids at the age of 90.
Katherine‟s father, Frederick Zachary Pantlind was born 26 July 1886 in Grand Rapids, the son
of J. Boyd and Jessie L. (Aldrich) Pantlind. He married Hilda W. Hummer in 1906. Frederick
died 15 November 1929 in Grand Rapids. Hilda, born 22 January 1886 in Holland, Michigan, the
daughter of George P. and Margaret (Plugger) Hummer. After Frederick‟s death, Hilda married
as her second husband, Mr. A. Chester Benson about 1932 and she died 31 July 1964.
___________
Interviewer: Mrs. Whinery, you‟re involved in the Shakespeariana Club and as I understand it,
that club has had a long history in Grand Rapids. Could you tell me something about the history
of the club, the background?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, it was founded way back in April twenty third, eighteen eighty-seven, by a
group of ladies interested in the study of Shakespeare, and it was founded by Loraine Pratt
Immen and it has been meeting ever since eighteen eighty-seven, yes. Two, twice a month, the
second and fourth Wednesdays, and we‟d study two books a year, a history in the fall, and a
comedy in the spring. For quite a few years, a group of us have gone up to the Shakespeare
Festival in Stratford, Ontario every summer to see the Shakespeare plays, which is most
enjoyable. Turn it off Bob; I‟m nervous as a wet hen.
Interviewer: Ok, perhaps….
Mrs. Whinery: A paper is written at each meeting by our members and at the Grand Rapids
Public Library on the second floor, outside of the Michigan Room, there is a very handsome
carved Shakespearean chest which was given in memory of one of our members. In that the
papers are put, the good papers, the well-written papers; and that is our Shakespeare corner.
There is a carved wooden hanging, piece above it where Shakespeariana momentums, have been
put and that is the Shakespeare corner at the library.
�2
Interviewer: The club‟s been in existence since eighteen eighty-seven. Why was the club formed,
do you think?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, because women are interested in Shakespeare. He‟s been with us for over
four hundred years and he grows.
Interviewer: Are clubs like this being formed today though?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, there is a Shakespeare group connected with the Ladies Literary Club, that
is think is still in existence, it isn‟t as old as Shakespeariana, but they have the same purpose, I‟m
sure.
Interviewer: Well, the thing I‟m getting at is that I saw, this kind of society bluebook that was
put out for Grand Rapids. I don‟t know if you‟ve ever seen one, but it was put out around the
turn of the century sometime, or maybe even in the eighteen nineties. It listed in there, clubs and
organizations and I think, Miss [Josephine] Bender told me there were like seven or eight still in
existence, that there was a list of about twenty; and it seems during that period of time, in the
history of Grand Rapids, up to some unknown date, people organized clubs, they got involved in
clubs. And it was a real tool of keeping people together, interacting.
Mrs. Whinery: Well, this is the day of wheels and I think everyone‟s busy going places, instead
of staying home and studying and reading and learning, I really do, I think everyone‟s on the go.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. Whinery: And we used to do so much more in our homes, we had, these are after we read
and study and have our papers we have tea; that makes for a very nice social hour. But I just
don‟t think, I think people play bridge today and as I say, go
Interviewer: Has, in this club in particular, has the membership been increasing or decreasing?
Mrs. Whinery: It stays the just about the same, you have to be invited to be a member, you have
to be interested in Shakespeare and willing to write a paper every other year, we have about forty
members and we keep it that size if it got any larger we couldn„t meet in the homes.
Interviewer: Yes. Where did you grow up as a child?
Mrs. Whinery: Oh, in Grand Rapids
Interviewer: Where abouts in Grand Rapids?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, down on Lafayette as a child; I lived on the corner of Lafayette and
Wealthy and then I lived on Washington Street for a good many years, and then I lived with my
grandmother on College.
Interviewer: Yes, what was the, what was it like living down there?
�3
Mrs. Whinery: Oh, it was great, that Washington Avenue gang, there were, by actual count, fifty
some within that block and we had such good times. A lot of them are still my dearest friends,
the ones I grew up with. That‟s what‟s nice about living in a city the size of Grand Rapids,
because you keep your old friends; they‟re your best friends.
Interviewer: Yes, was there a good deal of interaction not only among the children but among
the adults, the parents?
Mrs. Whinery: Oh, yes, they all were friends and went together, and had their dinner parties.
Everyone had their swings and their playgrounds in the backyard, they didn‟t have the school
playgrounds that we have today and we had, I know Mary Lockwood had a great big playhouse
that her father, who‟s in the lumber business had built for her in the backyard and we just had the
best times together.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. Whinery: Sliding down Mrs. Waters‟ hill and sliding down Washington Street and we had a
pony and a pony cart, and the Peck girls had a pony and a pony cart and we all lived on
Washington Street.
Interviewer: Where did everybody keep their ponies, their animals?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, Grandpa had a farm, a gentleman farm, there were Dudley Waters and Ben
Hanchett and John Martin and my grandfather, J. Boyd Pantlind all had gentlemen farms; show
farms.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. Whinery: And, we used to have a great time out there.
Interviewer: Where was your grandfather‟s farm?
Mrs. Whinery: It‟s now, grandmother, after grandfather died, grandmother sold it to the city and
its now Woodlawn Cemetery on Kalamazoo. He had three or four hundred acres on both sides of
Kalamazoo Avenue and the Catholic cemetery is on one side and the Protestant cemetery is on
the other.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. Whinery: They just tore the little white house where the caretaker, the manager of the farm
lived, and for a long time that was the cemetery office, but they tore it down a few years ago and
built a modern brick building on the east side of Kalamazoo now for the offices.
Interviewer: Your grandfather, did he run the Morton House or the Pantlind Hotel?
�4
Mrs. Whinery: Both, he had the Morton first and then he bought the old Sweets Hotel, which he
renamed the Pantlind Hotel and then that was torn down and he built the Pantlind Hotel.
Interviewer: Yes. When was that? When was the Pantlind built?
Mrs. Whinery: About nineteen seventeen, I would say, but I couldn‟t be too sure.
Interviewer: Yes, I heard that your grandfather, what kind of guy was he?
Mrs. Whinery: Oh, he was jolliest, kindest, most fun person in the world; he was not very tall,
kind of round, immaculate dresser, and he was Scotch and he had a marvelous sense of humor.
He could tell a story in every dialect and he just was naturally funny. And everybody loved him,
he was known throughout the country.
Interviewer: I heard that when the Powers‟ Theatre was going, and they used to bring a lot of the
shows to Grand Rapids and so on that your grandfather was one of the ones chiefly responsible
for it, only because the actors loved to come and stay at the Pantlind .
Mrs. Whinery: I think they probably did. Grandmother had the greatest collection of signed
autographed pictures of all the old actors and actresses, musicians and famous people that came
and stayed with grandfather at the hotel and she gave that collection to the Civic Theatre, but it
has long since disappeared.
Interviewer: It has disappeared?
Mrs. Whinery: …..any idea of where it is.
Interviewer: No?
Mrs. Whinery: Today, the Civic Theatre has made so many moves.
Interviewer: Where was the Civic Theatre originally? How long has the Civic Theatre been in
existence?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, I can remember it when it was in an old building over on, over on of
course, it‟s back on the West side now, but this was near the river, it had an old pot bellied
stove. You should ask Josephine Bender about this because she‟s the authority on the Civic
Theatre. I‟m hoping that before too long it will have a fitting permanent home.
Interviewer: Is that the one they‟re talking about on the river?
Mrs. Whinery: Yes, I hope so.
Interviewer: Yes.
�5
Mrs. Whinery: Going to take lots of money that‟s always the difficulty, but, I hope it will come,
it should come.
Interviewer: Was your family members of Kent Country Club?
Mrs. Whinery: Yes and that‟s one of the stories that Katherine Lockwood wanted to tell you
because she was a little girl on her white pony Rose when she and Grandfather Pantlind and, I‟ve
forgotten what, it was Mr. Lowe or Mr. Blodgett and two or three other men were looking for a
new location for Kent Country Club; and they all rode all out in the north end where country,
where Kent is now located, looking at that area for a country club. And that‟s one of the stories
she wanted to tell you.
Interviewer: I never knew that Kent originally was located right down on the corner…
Mrs. Whinery: Right here, my house is sitting on the one of the, oh what…
Interviewer: Greens?
Mrs. Whinery: Greens, yes a creek ran right through here and this was....
Interviewer: Yes
Mrs. Whinery: But Grandfather was one of the founders of Kent at least where it is now, I don‟t
know how far back that goes either.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. Whinery: But a long, long time…
Interviewer: Are you a member of the Ladies Literary Club?
Mrs. Whinery: No, Bob, I‟ve never been.
Interviewer: How about the Women‟s City Club?
Mrs. Whinery: Yes, I‟m a member of the Women‟s City Club.
Interviewer: How long has that been around?
Mrs. Whinery: Been on the board, well. (Turn it off!)
Interviewer: Ok. Could you tell me the story you were just telling me where your family‟s
homestead was?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, my great, great grandfather William B. Ledyard lived in a charming white
house that was torn down, on the corner of Cherry and Union. In fact, his property ran from
College to Union along Cherry, and half a block back. That house was torn down to build the
�6
Oakwood Manor Apartments. Their daughter Euphrasia Ledyard married Moses. B. Aldrich, an
early mayor in Grand Rapids. They gave them their side yard, which was on the corner of Cherry
and College to build a home; they built a large brick residence with a large brick barn. People
thought they were crazy to build a townhouse in the country, as they said at that time, and from
the cupola on the top you could see Grand River and all of the valley. Their daughter, Jessie
Aldrich married James Boyd Pantlind. They were my grandparents and they were given the side
yard to build their home on. I lived with my Grandmother for a good many years, and maintained
the home after her death. My children were the sixth generation to live on that one piece of
property, which belonged to my great, great grandfather William B. Ledyard.
Interviewer: Where, now you have a piece of property, and the family begins there and as the
children grow and marry, they build houses on the property until finally you have six generations
of family living on the same plot of ground. Why do you think, I mean, what has happened? In
some of the interviews that I‟ve had people talk about family and how closely knit their families
were. Now why isn‟t that, why isn‟t it that way today? Do you think? What‟s changed? What
happened?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, I lay it all to wheels again, I think everybody is on the go; they don‟t want
to stay home. Every kid wants to get their hands on the wheel of a car and take off; and I don‟t
know, I loved my grandmother and had had great respect and admiration for her. I was close to
my father and my mother and I just don‟t know why it is, although my children are satisfactory.
They, I hope love and respect me.
Interviewer: Yes.
Mrs. Whinery: I‟ve never had any trouble with my children; they‟ve given me nothing but joy
and happiness. We haven‟t had that problem, Bob.
Interviewer: You‟re very lucky that…
Mrs. Whinery: I know I‟m lucky.
Interviewer: That‟s, that‟s I know I‟ve asked this question of everybody, what it was that they
think changed, ended that era?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, I think it‟s too much permissiveness, I‟ve, I‟ve, my mother was strict with
us…. I think you get out of your children just what you expect from them, and what you put into
them.
Interviewer: Yes, was the, do you think that when you were a child growing up, do you think
there was a society, a definite society in Grand Rapids?
Mrs. Whinery: Oh yes, there was, certainly there was a society.
Interviewer: What was it based on, do you think? Entrance into that society?
�7
Mrs. Whinery: Well…..
Interviewer: And is it different from than the day?
Mrs. Whinery: Oh, there isn‟t any society today.
Interviewer: Why not?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, it‟s just wanting to bring everybody down to the same level, I suppose.
Don‟t get me started on this subject because I feel very strongly about it. I don‟t think things are
improving at all. When I was a little girl we were satisfied with so little, we played with our
animals and our pets, and I used to catch pollywogs, and frogs and snakes and I‟ve, I just, we
didn‟t have to be entertained every single minute. Seems to me my grandchildren are glued
before the boob tube all the time, or they want to be taken to the pool to swim or they want to go
to see a movie, or they want this, or they want that; I don‟t remember that we required
entertaining every single minute. I used to read all the time. I don‟t think children read the way
we used to. I gave my Little Colonel storybooks, which I loved as a child to my granddaughter
the other day and I don‟t think she‟s looked at them.
Interviewer: Yes. What was society based on in those days, entrance into society? Was it just
money?
Mrs. Whinery: No. I think it was the same interests, the same educational background, your
neighborhood you lived in; I wasn‟t conscious of one person having more money than the other.
They used to do a lot of calling on one another and people had ballrooms on their third floor.
Grandmother had a ballroom and they used to have their parties up there and it, I just think
everyone had more fun and in a more wholesome way then they have today. They didn‟t feel
they had to have their cocktail parties and…
Interviewer: Was there liquor served at their parties?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, of course I grew up in the prohibition era, and we didn‟t serve liquor at our
house; and I know the Whinerys didn‟t.
Interviewer: Yes. If you had to set a date or a particular event as perhaps being a thing that began
the demise of that era, and that style of living, what would it be?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, I think it‟s been since the Depression.
Interviewer: Did the Depression affect your family?
Mrs. Whinery: Well, I can remember doing with very little when George and I were first
married. We were married in nineteen thirty-one and I had a very small budget to get along on.
We had one car and we kept it a good long time. I can remember going along and looking down
and being able to see right through the floorboard at the road underneath. And you know, I think
�8
maybe it was all for the best. I think young people today, things are too easy, it never occurred to
George and me with four children that we could get a divorce and that he could afford to get
married again and keep another family. We were married, we had responsibilities and we had to
get along. And now it‟s just so easy…if you don‟t feel like getting along, go ahead, get a divorce.
Interviewer: There wasn‟t very much divorce?
Mrs. Whinery: No. And now when my children, my son Fredrick, of course he‟s an M.D. and
those are people that he associates and knows, he looked me right in the face last spring and said
“Mom, I don‟t know any happy marriages” and I looked right back at him and I was horrified
and I said “Fred, that makes me so damn mad. Your dad and I have been so happy and you go.”
He said “I don‟t mean you, Mom” and he said “I was talking about my friends” And when
Marney [MacAdam] says to me "Mother, I don‟t know any happy marriages, all my friends are
having affairs or are unhappy”. I can‟t understand it. I don‟t like this age.
Interviewer: Well, I think that‟s good, it‟s a good place to stop.
INDEX
Ledyard, William B. (Great-Great-Grandfather) · 6
B
Bender, Josephine · 2, 4
P
Civic Theatre · 4
Pantlind Hotel · 4
Pantlind, Hilda W. Hummer (Mother) · 6, 7
Pantlind, James Boyd (Grandfather) · 3, 4
Pantlind, Jessie Louise Aldrich (Grandmother) · 2, 3, 6
I
S
Immen, Loraine Pratt · 1
Shakespeariana Club · 1
K
T
Kent Country Club · 5
The Depression · 8
L
W
Ladies Literary Club · 2, 5
Women‟s City Club · 5
C
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ce3e950f14725ee3425b2ed741f92f43.mp3
f543ad30e141383bfd31b91478350d11
Dublin Core
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Title
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Grand Rapids Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
Oral histories (document genre)
Description
An account of the resource
Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
Creator
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Various
Source
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<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
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application/pdf; audio/mp3
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eng
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RHC-23
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1971 - 1977
Sound
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RHC-23_12Whinery
Title
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Whinery, Katherine
Creator
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Whinery, Katherine
Description
An account of the resource
Katherine Pantlind was the granddaughter of J. Boyd Pantlind, founder of the Pantlind Hotel. She married George Whinery in 1931. She is a prominent member of the Kent County G.O.P. Mrs. Whinery died December 29, 1998.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan--History
Local histories
Memoirs
Oral histories (document genre)
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Personal narratives
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Women
Language
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eng
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
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Text
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Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
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1971
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https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/9d3c7939b6def03df441098b36e2b3e0.pdf
a7bc6821fdcc009e64780c4f480836cf
PDF Text
Text
Native American Oral Histories
Gi-gikinomaage-min Project
Interview: James Wagner "Wag" Wheeler
Interviewer: Belinda Bardwell and Levi Rickert
Date: April 23, 2015
[ [Lin]
This is an interview with Wag Wheeler on April twenty-third at one forty
downtown Grand Rapids in the--
[Levi]
Riverview Center Office Building.
[Lin]
I'm Belinda Bardwell and this is Levi Rickert. This is an interview. Oral history
interview. Oral record of the urban Native experience of the Grand Valley State
University Gi-gikinomaage-min Defend Our History Project, Unlock Our Spirit
Project.
[Whispers: Put that thing on.]
[Lin]
Can we have you introduce yourself and spell your name?
[Wag]
James Wagner Wheeler. Wag Wheeler for short. W-A-G The last name is W-HE-E-L-E-R.
[Lin]
[INAUDIBLE] Can you tell me a little about where you were born?
[Wag]
I was born in [INAUDIBLE] Oklahoma in nineteen thirty-five.
[Lin]
Oklahoma?
[Wag]
Mhm.
[Lin]
So, when did you come, or move, or trans-locate to Grand Rapids?
[Wag]
I came here nineteen seventy-two. I had a fellowship at the University of
Michigan. To work on a master's degree in Public Administration. That was
sponsored by the National Association of Public Administrators. Their minority
division. And I got a scholarship to come finish my master's degree at the
University of Michigan.
[Lin]
Okay. Are you affiliated with a tribe?
[Wag]
I am Cherokee from Oklahoma. Eastern Cherokee.
[Lin]
Okay. How would you describe yourself concerning your ethnicity or your
identity?
�[Wag]
[Wag]
I like to say I'm Native American. I was not brought up as Native American. I was
born during the time when they used Black, White, or Other. And we were always
Other on our birth certificates, and licences, and all that kind of thing.
So, I'd always identified as white with Native American blood. Until I realized how
twisted that was, as opposed to being Native American blood. Or Native
American with white blood.
[Lin]
So describe your connection with the Grand Rapids area.
[Wag]
When I was at the University of Michigan [Ahem, excuse me] in nineteen
seventy-two there was a student over there from Grand Rapids her name was
Chet [INAUDIBLE]. I was working at the university while I was going to school in
an office called the Opportunity Office. And the purpose of that was to help
Native Americans and other minority students make the transition from high
school to college. Particularly, the kids that came from rural areas. I went to work
there with the help of a guy that I worked with in Oklahoma, by the name of Tony
Genia from Charlevoix. While I was there I met Chet Eagleman, he came into the
office I think to talk about some financial aid or something, I don't remember
exactly. I had known Chet, I had knew about him, because there is a college in
Oklahoma called Bacone, it's basically an Indian College in Muskogee,
Oklahoma. I had been up there playing ball and refereeing and all that. I had met
him in the crowd or something. I just remembered the name. So, Chet came into
the office and we got to be pretty good friends. And he told me that they had this
agency over here, Grand Rapids Inter-tribal Council. That had been established I
think in nineteen seventy-one or seventy-two. They had a director of the agency
with the name of [Short interruption] Eddie White Pigeon. But he was leaving,
and Chet asked if I was interested in maybe coming to work after I was got
through with my program. The program that I was in was a two-year program.
[background noise] So, I told him yes, that I would consider it. I was in the
process of getting a divorce from my wife in Oklahoma. When we talked further, I
told Chet, I would like to apply for the position. I just wanna finish school and I
would give him one or two years, but I wanted to do some traveling and some
research on the Cherokee people. So, when I finished school I came over and
was interviewed for the executive directors position. They assigned me, or
appointed me. I think that was in seventy-five somewhere around May or June. I
can't remember exactly what the date was. So, I became quite familiar with
Michigan and Grand Rapids. At that time, they had-- there was quite a
controversy going on throughout the country with Native and non-Native people.
Particularly white people there was a take over a place in South Dakota called
Wounded Knee, South Dakota. There were several people from Grand Rapids
that were in that movement. Which was initiated by the American Indian
Movement. I got real familiar with that and got caught up in that type of situation.
At the time there used to be a bar on Bridge Street called Cat's Paw and it was a
�Native American bar, basically.
[Wag]
I was here probably about a month or so and there was a bunch of Native people
in the bar, got into a fight, and the police were called in and there was a whole lot
of clubbing and slapping around and that type of thing. I think they arrested four
people that they were charging with disturbing the peace. I don't remember what
the charges were, but it was something to do with disturbing the peace and drunk
and disorderly, and all kinds of things. That was my first encounter with the
Grand Rapids Police and the city basically. From there I just got very familiar with
it. Hired some people to help us put some programs together and start building
the agency. At that point in time the agency had a grant from Office of Native
American Programs and the grant was for forty thousand dollars, and it was to
build an Indian center and to hire some staff. Develop some programs, national
programs, state programs, and county programs. That type of thing.
[Lin]
You mentioned you wanted to do some research on your Cherokee heritage,
were you able to do that?
[Wag]
No.
[Lin]
No?
[Wag]
No. I still haveta'. I met people that were familiar with the Cherokee movement.
My people were in Tennessee, Georgia, and Kentucky. Actually my ancestors
are the ones that had gone to Jackson, President Jackson, to try to stop the
removal of our people from the southeastern part of the country and into
Oklahoma. They met with President Jackson, he denied that they could stay in
Georgia, the Cherokee people, and the other tribes that were there. They signed
the treaty back then, as well as today, I think they had the Cherokee blood ball.
Which meant that if you did something that crippled or hurt the rest of the people
you signed your own death sentence. Out of five of my ancestors, when they
went back to Oklahoma there were four of them that were killed for signing that
treaty. Consequently they did move our people. So my people, my ancestors, left
that part of the country and moved down to Arkansas and Oklahoma basically
before the Trail of Tears and the rest of the people came on through the Trail of
Tears, basically.
[Lin]
So you graduated from Michigan.
[Wag]
Uh-huh.
[Lin]
What was your experience like there being Native? Or--
�[Wag]
[Wag]
It was--[Laughter] Well, [Clears Throat] When I was there, there was four of us.
Twenty Juniors--no. Paul Johnson who was an ex-football player there.
Paul was a Chippewa from Saginaw, and Tony Genia who was an Ottawa from
Charlevoix. Jim Ken Cannon was there and his brother John. They were from
North Port, that area. Together, the five or six of us--I think there was--George,
uh, Charles Pamp, Moose Pamp was over there. While he wasn't going to
school, he was working there in the school helping with us. So, we petitioned the
university to develop a Native American Indian Student Association. So, we
founded the Native American Student Association. There was a guy that worked
for the university by the name of George Goodman. Goodman. Goodman.
George was the mayor of Ypsilanti. African American, a wonderful, wonderful
person. He was over the opportunity to program that I worked for. So he was one
person that really helped push through the Native American Association that we
had established. We'd set up a library and developed some Native American
programs with some professors that were over there. One professor was a guy
from Oklahoma by the name of McCormick, Charles. Well, Edward McCormick.
Another one was a fella by the name of Felt. Professor Felt. I don't remember
what his first name was. But he was quite well known throughout the university
world for developing social--I think some social programs with the university and
things of that nature. So he was very supportive of us gettin' in there and it
became quite successful, we helped a lot of students. We had a lot of students
[Levi]
What was the time frame. The early nineteen seventies?
[Wag]
I was there from seventy-two to seventy-five. So that was probably seventythree.
[Levi]
Kay
[Wag]
The first year I was there. Because Tony Genia [Clears throat] in the two-year
program he had already been there a year, and he was already there when we
did all that. So, he left after I graduated the first year. So, it would have had to
been seventy-three.
[Levi]
We've had some Genia's here in Grand Rapids Hunter Genia, who you know.
[Wag]
Yeah.
[Levi]
Tony's his uncle? He talk about that connection?
[Wag]
Tony is relativity young. But I don't think they're real close realities.
[Levi]
Okay.
�[Wag]
[Levi]
I never really could find out from Hunter's mother.
Doris [INAUDIBLE]
[Wag]
I never really did figure out how they were related to him. But interestingly Tony
Genia from Charlevoix. Tony Genia from here.
[Levi]
Mm hm.
[Wag]
But then the program developed and I left over there, and I think it's still going.
[INAUDIBLE]
[Lin]
So, you grew up in Oklahoma?
[Wag]
I grew up in Oklahoma.
[Lin]
Went to high school there?
[Wag]
Yes.
[Lin]
Anything striking from your high school memories?
[Wag]
Yeah, I couldn't speak our language in high school. Couldn't speak our language
in school at all. Which it didn't bother me too much, because we didn't speak it at
home. I never learned the language. My parents were brought up in it's better not
to show. [INAUDIBLE] To try to assimilate into the majority of society. Had uncles
that went to mission school. My mother's brothers went to mission school. My
dad was an only child. My mother was one of fifteen. So, I had my uncles and
aunts to play with quite a bit. We always celebrated different types of, we didn't
call it the ghost supper back then, but it was always around the time of
Thanksgiving. 'Cause that's a harvest time as you know. With my mother's big
family. We celebrated it with her family more so than just by ourselves. I have
three sisters and a brother. Brother and sister are old and two sisters younger.
[Levi]
So separate from Thanksgiving there was a dinner celebration. Similar to what
you see in Michigan. We call them ghost suppers.
[Wag]
Yeah, yeah. It was similar to them. I can't remember what they're called. I don't
remember. But it was all right there, about the same time.
[Levi]
It was honoring the harvest and honoring the ancestors?
[Wag]
Yes. The spirits that are on their final trip. That type of thing, final passage.
�[Lin]
[Clears throat] Did you have friends or other people in your high school or
growing up that were Native?
[Wag]
Oh yeah. Yeah. And what I meant to say is, I've seen kids get slapped for
speaking to each other in the language. And screamed at: "You can't say that.
You can't say those dirty words. That dirty language." Or whatever they called it,
you know. What bothered me, I had real good friends that'd get slapped. Back
then you couldn't do anything. Today, you'd get fired. But back then you just took
it and that was it.
[Lin]
So this was a public school?
[Wag]
Yes.
[Levi]
Now, speak to the difference, Wag, where you grew up in Oklahoma. Now, I
understand they don't have reservations, per se, they have tribal lands. Is that
correct?
[Wag]
Mhm.
[Levi]
And where you grew up, was it more of a rural area? Or urban?
[Wag]
It was more of a rural. The city I grew up in was the county seat of Sequoyah
County.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Wag]
It's right below Adair county, which is heavily populated by natives, and Cherokee
County, which is where the center of the Cherokee nation was. It is the
furthermost county, Cherokee County, in Oklahoma. It's right bordered by the
Arkansas river to the south. Across the river is Choctaw County, and to the
northeast or northwest is Creek County, and the southwest is Choc--
[Levi]
Chickasaw, isn't it?
[Wag]
Chickasaw
[Levi]
Chickasaw.
[Wag]
Creeks and Shawnees and all that throughout that whole--You know, you've
been there before--And, we were governed by the laws of the state, you know
here it's the U.S. Marshals. But back there the land--We call it the reservation,
well the reservation is made up of about twelve or thirteen counties.
The county government takes care of the county and the city government take
[Wag]
�care of the cities. The state government, you know, were under the auspices of
all those laws. Whereas opposed here the people have some of their own judges
and own law enforcement and backing of the U.S. Marshals and that type of
thing.
[Levi]
What Indian country are you--Cherokee, okay.
[Wag]
Yep.
[Levi]
You know, tribal police and…
[Wag]
Well, we didn't have any tribal police. They have the now.
[Levi]
They do now. Yes.
[Wag]
They do have them now. But that came after--
[Levi]
Well, that's interesting.
[Wag]
They came after I left.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Lin]
So your experience in public high school in Oklahoma, and then your college
experience in Michigan--
[Wag]
Well,I went to college in Oklahoma also.
[Lin]
Was there a difference in shifting from the public school atmosphere to the
college there to the University of Michigan.
[Wag]
From the college there to the University of Michigan that's quite a difference. Ann
Arbor is a very, very conservative community. Very conservative. The university
is very, very liberal. So, you can imagine what that created in that community.
Where I grew up it was somewhat conservative. Not a lot of liberal activity there.
We have a democratic party. [Laughs] But, I don't know if it was in charge of my
time in school. But, it was very different. I have to tell you a story. When I [clears
throat] started enrolling at the University of Michigan, now I'm from Oklahoma,
I'm close to forty years old, thirty seven years old at that time. My concern, our
concern back there with Marijuana, or as we called it local weed, our concern
was our cows eating it because they would eat the local weed and they'd walk
into fences and into trees. [Chuckles from group]
So, my grandfather's like: "Go out there into the pasture and cut up all that local
weed. Get rid of that local weed. Pile it over there and burn it. That was my
[Wag]
�experience with it. Gay people were people that were really happy. Okay? So, if
you said that someone was really gay, that means they are really laughing and
responsive, or something like that. Enrolling at the University of Michigan, we're
in line and there's probably two thousand kids ahead of me. Every five or ten
steps there would be people passing out brochures. Women's Liberation
Movement, the African-Americans, the Society for Democratic Society brochures,
Gay Society. I'm taking all these brochures--[Levi Laughing] reading these
brochures and I get to the point on the gay where it talks about homosexuality.
Now, I'm from Oklahoma. Nobody at Michigan [INAUDIBLE] sent me a line. First
thing I do is I put those things in my coat. So nobody can see me reading 'em,
because I am so embarrassed-- [INAUDIBLE] [Laughter from Levi and Wag]
Peak at it every so often. But, that was my experience when I came up here.
Four letter words in class, the 'F' word was common from our professors.
Absolutely common [Phone vibrating in background] that was something I was
never used to. It was quite an experience for an old guy from conservative
Oklahoma. [Laughter] The University of Michigan [INAUDIBLE] It was quite an
experience. There was quite a bit of adjusting I had to do. [INAUDIBLE] It was a
good time, I enjoyed it.
[Lin]
So, you started the Native American Student Association?
[Wag]
Association.
[Lin]
So what type of activities did you do or create while you were there? Because
you created NASA, correct?
[Wag]
Yes.
[Lin]
So what are some of the first things you did?
[Wag]
The first thing we did, we brought in books. They gave us a room over there to
set up a library of Native American books. There were very few there. There was
a lot of new writers. Vine Deloria, comes to mind, had written several books.
Other people had written quite a few books. We brought them in because a lot of
kids that were there, Native kids, wanted to do some papers on Native
Americans. So there wasn't a whole lot of research there, if there was it was very
twisted. That's one of the first things, we brought in some speakers. We brought
in Angela Davis. I don't know if you know who that is. Angela Davis was a activist
from California that was very supportive of the liberation army. The Black
Panthers she was very supportive of the Black Panthers, and all of that. So, it
was very controversial.
We had a lot of kids showed up for her talk. But we brought in quite a few
speakers. We brought in Vine Deloria, Angela Davis, I think there are two-three
other people that we brought in from around the country. I can't think of it now,
[Wag]
�who they were. That's what we'd do, we'd bring in speakers and started a pow
wow over there. They had had the pow wow a year before, that was university
sponsored. So, I helped work on the pow wow that year along with Paul Johnson
and Moose Pamp, and some other people. Tony Genia, and Jim Kin Cannon and
his brother John. Several people, some from Grand Rapids. I think that there
were some [INAUDIBLE] from Mt. Pleasant. I can't remember all the rest of them,
but we had quite a few students.
[Lin]
Did you think that it was gonna last?
[Wag]
Yeah we did. Yeah we did. I thought that most of the world was Haitians, you
know that were developed back then that were gonna last. But I think with the
development of the casinos, I think the federal government and county
government, and all that used that to say that you got your own money.
[INAUDIBLE] We all make so much from the casinos. [Laughter]
[Lin]
So does it make you feel good that that's still…
[Wag]
It does…
[Lin]
[INAUDIBLE]
[Wag]
I had a girl come over here from university one time. I used to collect Native
American baskets. Quill boxes--and [INAUDIBLE] baskets. And, I picked up a
hamper from a guy that was probably a twenty-six inch, twenty-seven inch
hamper. That was close to a hundred years old. I know the person that bought it
paid fifteen dollars for it because it had the price in the lid. It came Petoskey, and
the girl came over and her last name was [pause] was...I can't pronounce it...I
was gonna say McDonald, but that wasn't...Maldonado ...
[Lin]
[INAUDIBLE]
[Wag]
I can't remember.There are some Maldonado's from down and around here I
think. She came over, found out that I had these baskets. And, she came over to
buy it, because they were just starting the casino, I think. Just building a casino in
Petoskey. [Clears throat] And, they were having an exhibit up there with some of
the artwork. She came over and I asked her about it, what they were going to do
with it, and all that. She said that they were trying to get some of the older
artwork and put it there. So instead of selling it to her, I gave her four or five
baskets that came from up there.
They really appreciated it because they hadn't had any money back then. As far
as I know, it's still in their museum. Unless, she took it and sold it someplace.
[Laughter] Put it in her house, I don't know. I don't know why I'm jokin' 'bout that. I
think she was a law student.
[Wag]
�[Lin]
Allie.
[Levi]
Mhm.
[Wag]
What's her name?
[Lin]
Allie Maldonado.
[Wag]
Yes, that's who it was.
[Lin]
She's our current judge. Chief Judge.
[Wag]
In Petoskey?
[Levi]
For Little Traverse.
[Lin]
For Little Traverse.
[Levi]
Bay Bands.
[Wag]
No kidding.
[Levi]
What year would that have been back when the casino would have started? Was
it ninety...?
[Wag]
It just started when she was a senior.
[Levi]
[INAUDIBLE] Ninety-seven that they started in Petoskey.
[Lin]
The first one? Probably.
[Levi]
Yeah, right around there. I think. The bowling alley. [Laughter]
[Lin]
Yeah, the bowling alley.
[Wag]
Yeah. Yeah she--I remember she came in and said I am from the Native
American Student Association--University of Michigan. She said: "Do you know
what that is?" I said, "I know very well what that is."
I told her that I was once there and helped founded it. She was surprised at that
because she did't know that, and I told her the story that [clears throat] Where I
lived...I lived in Solane, in a trailer park. On a state road that goes into Ann Arbor
from Solane that I used to go into the university everyday. And there's a small
airport out there that had some airplanes, you know the planes had the letters N-
[Wag]
�A-S-A. So…
[Levi]
[Laughter]
[Lin]
[Laughter]
[Wag]
So, we'd get those two and take them out there. And say: "You need to come up
here, we have rolling planes." [Laughter]
[Levi]
[Laughter] That's funny.
[Wag]
[Laughter] And kids really believed that until we got there. We can fly anywhere
you want to go. We have our own airplanes here. [Laughter]
[Levi]
That's good Indian humor. [Laughter]
[Lin]
[Clears throat] So, after you finished with an NPA, you went to the Inter-tribal
Council of Grand Rapids.
[Wag]
Yes.
[Lin]
You got that forty-thousand dollar grant.
[Wag]
Well, they had that. It was in existence when I came.
[Lin]
Oh. So what were some of the programs or specific things you did in the
community.
[Wag]
They just had some, really, advocacy programs. It wasn't anything that they
actually had [Laughter] Oh, man. [Laughter] They were trying to develop some
programs. At that point in time there was an agency here in town called The Owl-Indian Outreach. It was a substance abuse program, three or four blocks...a
couple of blocks...from our agency. So, they had that for the community. Then
there was a young man who worked for the agency by the name of Fred Chivis. I
think Fred Jr. and he was like an employee...Employment Specialist. So, he
would help people find jobs in the community. That's basically all they had--If I
remember right.
[Wag]
What I do remember is, I was here just about probably two months and the wife
of one of my board members kept coming in the office and screaming at
employees that I had, and they were mostly volunteers. So, I went to her
husband and I said: "You need to keep her out of there. And if you don't, I will.
'Cause I'm not gonna have people come in and scream at my employees." His
response was: "She talks too much." and I said: "Well, she can't do it here." So,
�he didn't do anything. And the next couple days she was back in there. And I
said: "You will leave, and you will not come back until you call and make an
appointment to come back in here, or I will physically remove you." So, she left
and starting that night for about three months, I got phone calls starting about
midnight, every night. Absolutely, every night. The calls would come starting
about midnight, and would last until four and five o'clock in the morning.
[Levi]
Wow.
[Wag]
And when I answered the phone there was always the same tape or record or
whatever it was. There used to be a song about the B.I.A, and the corruption of
the B.I.A, and it referred to the people working for the B.I.A. And the song was
directed at me, how corrupt I was, and all of that. 'Course I couldn't do anything
about it, and I didn't know who it was. Well, after about three months--Well,
during that time… After about another month, when all that started. I'm looking at
all the books, and everything. And I knew they had a forty-thousand dollar grant.
They're paying their director ten-thousand dollars. They're paying their assistant
director I think...like eight-thousand dollars. They had some other expenses that
amounted to about fifteen to twenty thousand dollars. I don't remember now what
they were. And, they hadn't paid their income taxes. They'd had their withholding
taxes. So, I start asking around about, you know: "What are you doing with your
withholding taxes?" They didn't even know what I was talking about. So, I ended
up calling--I have an accounting background, I got that in Oklahoma before I
came to Michigan. So, I call Cincinnati, and I said: "I'm with Grand Rapids Intertribal Council, and we haven't been sending you our payments for the withholding
taxes." And they said: "We don't know who you are." And I said: "It's an agency,
we've got some employees, we've been withholding money (taxes) and not
sending it to you." She said: "I don't have any record of that. What it your 501 C-3
number?" Or, your business number. And, I said: "I don't know, I haven't seen it
signed here." So, she looked a little bit farther and said: "You're not even a legal
organization, you don't even have your 501 c-3." So, I say: "Okay, what do I have
to do?" and she talked to be a little bit, and they had been trying to get that, the
agency had been trying to get their 501 c-3. What they did when they put in the
application, they had a 501 capital 'c' 3. And she said the 'c' has to be a small
letter. And I said: "That's it?" And she said: "Yes." So, I said: "Okay." So, I filled
out the application and sent it back in, and probably about a week or ten days
she called and she said we got the application.
You're now legal. And, do you have any idea how much you owe the federal
government? And I said: "No, I don't. I'm trying to figure that out." Ended up
being they owed the feds about six thousand dollars. [Silence] [Chuckles] I told
her, I said: "We don't have the money to pay, ya. You're gonna have to give me
some time to do that." Well they were very gracious about it, and all that. So, I
was dealing with that. I was dealing with the board president's--not board
president--one of the board member's wives. Her family, his family they were
[Wag]
�taking shots at me every way you can take a shot at somebody. I finally found out
that one of the persons that was calling my apartment. So, I drove by his house.
He was standing in the door way. I got out of the car and started up there and
then he disappeared. I had a pretty bad reputation as a street fighter. That
followed me from Oklahoma. I knocked on the door several time. Went back, and
got back in the car. Came to the office and called the house. And, I don't know
who answered. I said: "I wanna talk to blah, blah, blah [clears throat] So, he
came on the phone and I said: "I know you're the one who is calling. I'm gonna
tell you right now, if I get one more call, one call, I don't care what time of day it
is, I don't care if it's a man, woman, child, I don't care. I am kicking your ass. Big
time, every time I see you. And that ended all the calls.[Chuckle] So then, I just
had the family to fight. [Laughter] And you can't imagine the stories that were in
the paper.
[Lin]
About the Inter-tribal Council? Or about you?
[Wag]
About me. About the Council. About how much money I was making.
[INAUDIBLE] Think they pay me, I think they payed me twelve thousand dollars
that year.
[Levi]
Hmph.
[Lin]
Hmph.
[Levi]
Let's talk about you running the Indian--The Grand Rapids Inter-tribal Council.
Talk about the climate. With the shift, like in nineteen seventy-eight came the
American Indian Freedom--
[Wag]
[INAUDIBLE]
[Levi]
--Act. President Carter signed it. All of a sudden Indians could celebrate, practice
their ceremonial practices. Talk about what happened. Like with the drumming or
anything else that happened.
[Wag]
Well, we were trying to bring in drums, and trying to bring in some cultural
programs. Okay?
And if we brought a drum into the Inter-tribal I had people on my board, and
people in the community that would not--How you doin'
[Wag]
[Unknown Person]
How ya doin' stranger? [Wag] I've been good. That would come into the
agency. They wouldn't come into the agency if we had drum in there, if we had
feathers. They would not come in.
[Levi]
And these were?
�[Wag]
Native people.
[Levi]
Local American Indian, Native people.
[Wag]
Yes.
[Levi]
Who maybe because of their Christian belief system
[Wag]
Yes.
[Levi]
Would not…
[Wag]
Yes.
[Levi]
Even walk through the doors of Grand Rapids Inter-tribal…
[Wag]
Yes.
[Levi]
Because you wanted to bring the drum and the feathers.
[Wag]
And it wasn't just me. There were other people that wanted that. That's why we
were trying to do it.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Wag]
We had people in school. The drop out rate in public school was like seventy-five
percent, at that point in time--and probably still is... No, they wouldn't come in.
They wouldn't come in and I took all kinds of pot shots about it, you know.
Heathen. I was, which I probably am. [Laughter]
[Levi]
Practicing pagan religions, or whatever the set.
[Wag]
Yeah, practicing pagan religions. [Laughter]
[Levi]
So how long would you say that those sentiments continued?
[Wag]
Still do.
[Levi]
They still do.
[Unknown Person]
[Levi]
In fact, can I add something to that?
[Laughter] Why not.
�[Unknown Voice]
They're probably even stronger today than they were then.
[Levi]
Wow.
[Wag]
Yeah, they are.
[Unknown Voice]
Yeah they really are.
[Wag]
In many cases they are. Very strong today. Tell ya' a story about my--I met a girl
up here by the name of Linda Keyway. Well, at that time she was married, and I
had gone through a divorce. Linda Dixon was her name. We decided to get
married. I wanted to have a traditional Native American wedding as I could. I got
a hold of Eddie Banai, who is a holy man in Minnesota.
[Levi]
Mhm.
[Wag]
And Eddie started the Red School House there, along with some other people.
[Levi]
He's the author of the Mishomis book, Eddie Banai?
[Wag]
He is the author of the Mishomis book.
[Levi]
Correct, okay.
[Wag]
I ask Eddie if he would administer the vows for us. I got a brother and three
sisters. They've all been away from home, at different places in their lives.
Growing up and their jobs and things of that nature. My parents had always gone
to see them. I had been in Michigan for two years. My parents had never been up
here. So, I called them and told them I was getting married. Which my mother
was dead set against. She was against divorce. [Phone chiming in the
background] And I said: "I would really like for you to be here. You and my dad."
They're both Native people. Nobody is more Native than my dad. When they got
here, after about two or three months, when we got ready to get married.
The first thing my mother said to me when she got out of the car was: "What is
this Indian stuff you're doing?" [Crying]--Excuse me just a minute. [Clears throat]
That really hurts.
[Wag]
[Levi]
Wow. Church as soon as they married. Church after they married raised all us
kids in the Methodist church and she
[Wag]
[Clears throat] And I said to her: "Will you be here? But if you're not, I'm gonna do
this. And I'm okay with it if you're not. If you don't want to see me again. I'm okay
with that. But, I'd really love for you to be here." They did come and they enjoyed
�it. But I think she had a problem with it for a long time. She was brought up as a
Presbyterian which is just about as close to reform church as you can get. My
dad was brought up as a Methodist. She changed to the Methodist Church after
they married. Raised all of us kids in the Methodist Church. I heard all of the
hellfire and brimstone crap that all the rest of the people did. Had a real problem
with my parents not owning me. My dad was very supportive of me, and she
became very supportive of me. But that was a real trying time. Because not only
was I fighting people from this community, but I was fighting Grand Rapids Public
Schools, the county, the state, the feds, everybody. Because they didn't want
Indians to make any headway. They still don't. It got nasty, I mean it got really,
really nasty. And very, very trying on me. Because I didn't have much of support
anywhere. My second wife became an alcoholic, and we divorced. She got to kill
herself.
[Levi]
Damn.
[Wag]
But...
[Levi]
But the fights that you were having with… Let's just talk a little about with the
Grand Rapids Public Schools, or the county, the city. Were they fights for money,
funding for the Inter-tribal council. Were they fights… I know even today, and
we're in twenty fifteen, that this interview is taking place. But, sometimes we have
to fight for our very existence. 'Cause we are such a small number. When
compared to the total population. Talk about some of those fights.
[Wag]
Well, one of the biggest ones was with[clears throat] the public schools. It
became very apparent to me that our kids were dropping out of school. Falling
out, quitting, just forever. It became apparent that kids would go through school
until about seventh or eighth grade. And that's where they started. We found out
that in the seventh or eighth grade is when the kids were in, I think, their phys.
ed. classes. Where competition became very, very tough. And, these kids
seemed to have trouble with that competition.
[Levi]
The Native kids?
[Wag]
The Native kids. So they would just drop out of school. They would just quit
going. There's a building here in town, Lexington, where we ended up being
there. At the time I was here we operated out of West Side Apostle Church which
is at the corner of Straight and Bridge Street. But, there was a Native American
program at Lexington where they had some classes over there. I know that we
checked on them. I had a guy that I had hired, it was, I called it my Education
Director. He had a PhD. in Education. We found out that the two years prior to us
trying to help, or work with the schools they had enrolled twenty-two students the
first year not a kid earned a credit. They had enrolled fifteen kids the year that I'm
�talkin' about, and at that time nobody was earning any credits. So, I went to the
school, talked to the director of the education program. I said: "What do we need
to do? I've got people that can recruit students. Can we get some teachers?"
They said: "You recruit the students, we'll provide the teachers for ya'." Then I
said: "Okay". So, at the start of school [clears throat] I kept calling 'em 'bout two
or three days before school star--classes started, and said: "When are you gonna
get our teachers over here?"
[Levi]
So, no teachers?
[Wag]
No teachers. No teachers.
[Levi]
Wow.
[Wag]
And, we had a hundred and thirty-seven applications. Now, every one of those
applications amounted to, at that time, I think about, fourteen hundred dollars.
Monies at the public schools were good. We still didn't have any teachers. So, I
was sitting there and I got...something happened...I got really upset. So, I got the
applications and--I'm gonna use some curse words in here--I'm gonna use words
that I used with them.
[Lin]
Go ahead.
[Levi]
We've got good editors. [Laughter]
[Unknown person]
I'm sure it's something you never heard before, right? [Laughter]
[Wag]
So, I took those applications up there and I walked into, at the time, the
administration building was on the fifth floor. I walked into the fifth floor, this
young little white girl, receptionist was sitting there at the desk. And I said: "I
wanna see Phil Runkle(?)"
[Levi]
He was the superintendent of the schools.
[Wag]
He was the superintendent of the schools.
[Unknown person]
Yeah.
[Levi]
Yes.
[Wag]
And, she said: "He's in a meeting." I said: "I don't care where he is. I wanna see
him, and I wanna see 'im right now." And she said: "Well, I can't disturb 'im--" And
I said: "Let me tell you something honey-- [INAUDIBLE] put 'em down there.
�[Levi]
[Laughter]
[Wag]
Let me tell you something honey, if I don't see Phil Runkle(?) in two minutes, I'm
gonna tear this whole goddamn place up. Everything, I'm gonna break all the
windows, I'm gonna wreck this place. She got up--
[Unknown person]
And went and got Phil Runkle(?) [Laughter]
[Wag]
She went and got Jim--What was it...Farmer. Jim came out there. Well, he's the
one I'd been working with. Jim walked in, and he said [INAUDIBLE]-- I said: "You
son of a bitch. You stay away from me, or I'll knock your fucking head right off.
[Levi]
Wow.
[Wag]
Pardon the language. So, he backed off and I said: "I wanna see Phil Runkle(?)
or I'm gonna start." So, he called back, or one of them called back and Phil
Runkle(?)came out there and said: "Wag, what's going on?" I said: "You sons of
bitches have lied to me. I have a hundred and thirty-seven applications for kids,
that they'll be showing up in about two days. And, if I don't have some teachers
there Phil I'm--" and six other people came out with him. I said: "I'm gonna come
up here and throw your goddamn ass right out that fifth floor window. And there
is not a fucking swinging dick in here that can even slow me down." [Laughter]
"Gimme some teachers, right now, gimme some teachers! How many we need.
How many teachers we need over there."
[Unknown Person]
Just like that. Just like that...
[Wag]
Next day, I had five teachers over there.
[Levi]
Wow. What-What year would that have been, Wag?
[Wag]
Seventy-five.
[Levi]
Nineteen seventy-five?
[Wag]
Yup.
[Levi]
Okay. [Laughter] Good Ol' Phil nominated me for the Outstanding [Laughter] OOutstanding Statewide whatever it was--
[Unknown Person]
[Levi]
Do you blame him? [Laughter]
I'm joking. Wag, just for the record though, was there--were there--among those
five teachers were there any Native teachers in that group?
�[Wag]
My wife. [Laughter]
[Levi]
Your wife? Wow. That's it?
[Wag]
Yeah. Linda. They didn't have any teachers there. Well, they did have some.
[Levi]
Well, they had Janette Sinclair.
[Wag]
They had Janette Sinclair. But she was working for the regular education.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Wag]
Native education program. Janette was on the board, but she wasn't one of the
teachers there.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Wag]
They had my present wife. [INAUDIBLE]
[Levi]
Okay.
[Wag]
At least that's where I met her.
[Lin]
And who is your present wife?
[Wag]
Pardon?
[Lin]
Who is your present wife?
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
Is that her real name?
Her name was--Her name was…
[Unknown Person]
[INAUDIBLE]
[Levi]
Sammy Wheeler
[Wag]
Sandy Whiteman.
[Levi]
Whiteman?
[Wag]
And I took some crap over that.
�[Levi]
From the Indians?
[Wag]
Yes.
[Unknown Person]
Because of her name.
[Wag]
Name. Yes. [Laughter]
[Wag]
I had people workin' in Inter-tribal that if white people came in there, they
wouldn't speak to them.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
[INAUDIBLE]
They wouldn't even wait on them. Tony, he was one of them. [Laughter] Tony!
Tony! Was one of them. She wouldn't even wait on them.
[Unknown Person] You know, what's funny about that. They resented that and they didn't
resent the white man's religion. [Laughter]
[Wag]
So, it went on and on. We did some good, we probably graduated better than
four hundred and somethin' students. So, over the course of the time I was there,
a lot of them went to college. Had some good people work for Inter-tribal. Your
mother [Laughs] Your mother was one that was good. She worked on our Indian
Child Welfare Department. Who made a lot of change at the state level. Through
her efforts and her bossin' Jonah Rayfields (?) office. A lot of changes.
[Lin]
Hm.
[Levi]
Talk about the connection that the Grand Rapids Inter-tribal Council may have
had with the American Indian Movement. A.I.M
[Wag]
Um, not much. I worked in Oklahoma with a group call Oklahoman's for Indian
Opportunity. It was started by...
[Levi]
Ladonna Harris.
[Wag]
Ladonna Harris, and a good friend of hers. Iola Hayden(?) O.I.O and the
American Indian Movement was really cross ways. I mean they just didn't like
one another. 'Course there wasn't a whole lotta people left of the American
Indian Movement back then. [Laughter] So, I was a little bit cautious, because I
had got involved with them, not totally involved with them. But when I was in the
University of Michigan, we had a lot of students that went to--
�[Levi]
[INAUDIBLE]
[Wag]
Washington.
[Levi]
Washington D.C. for the take over.
[Wag]
For the take over. The B.I.A. office is over there. We had a lot of students that
went. I didn't go. I didn't go, I had three young kids, and a wife in Oklahoma--er,
an ex-wife in Oklahoma. And, I thought: "I can't get in jail." [Chuckles]
[Levi]
So, that was November of nineteen seventy-two that that took place.
[Wag]
Yeah.
[Levi]
Yeah.
[Wag]
Well, it was right after that too.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Wag]
Cause that's when they really got in there and took over everything. We had
Wounded Knee, South Dakota. We have people from here that flew out to South
Dakota to deliver supplies. We had people that--
[Levi]
Now, was that Native or Non-Native.
[Wag]
There was no Native that did the flying.
[Levi]
That did the flying.
[Wag]
But there was Native that helped--
[Unknown Person]
There were some non-Natives that came out too.
[Levi]
But, what type of supplies did they send?
[Wag]
I think there was food, not any ammunition, I don't think. No ammunition. But, I
think it was food.
[Levi]
Food, blankets, clothing--
[Wag]
Yeah things like that.
[Unknown Person]
Water.
�[Wag]
And water, yeah.
[Levi]
Would you say that the Grand Rapids Inter-tribal Council was kind of a convener
that they collected these items, these supplies?
[Wag]
Uh, we didn't have--
[Levi]
Or was it separate from the Grand Rapids Inter-tribal Council?
[Wag]
It was separate from that, but I think the Odawa(?)Outreach did, they had a
building down on Turner street.
[Levi]
Kay.
[Wag]
Right behind where Sullivan's Carpets was...If you remember there was an old--
[Levi]
Red building.
[Wag]
And I think that they collected them, and the guy that flew them out there was
probably helpin' coordinate that. That happened to be Jennet's husband, Percy
Sinclair. That flew out there. But, it was very controversial. I was just talking
about the F.B.I and all that commin' in earlier. You know, they came in ta the
office. Wanted to know, because our phones were tapped. I had a red file when
they finally decided to release all that stuff. I think that was from the University of
Michigan, because any organized Native group, the members are gonna have
red files.
That's really just how it is. But it was--There was a lot of non-Native people that
supported. Just like there was a lot of non-Natives that supported the AfricanAmerican movement.
[Wag]
[Levi]
Exactly.
[Wag]
If you remember. Wouldn't have happened if they hadn't been.
[Lin]
Mmhm.
[Unknown Person]
That's so important to remember that, not all white people are bad.
[Wag]
Right, right.
[Levi]
What would you say the, if you were to sum up, the Grand Rapids Inter-tribal
Council's leadership? What did it provide to the Indian community? As you recall,
after all these years? You haven't served there for what? Nineteen years as
�[Wag]
executive director. But, what would you say was the calling-card for Grand
Rapids Inter-tribal Council?
I think it was just the place for people to come to. I really, really do. Whether they
were involved in the programs or not. Or, just as a social gathering place.
[Unknown Person]
It's kinda like a fallout shelter. [Laughter]
[Wag]
It ended up being like that.
[Levi]
But it provided a means of cohesiveness for the community?
[Wag]
It did.
[Levi]
Kept the community together?
[Wag]
Yeah, it did.
[Levi]
I don't wanna put words in your mouth. But I just wanna--
[Wag]
It did. I had people, that after I left there and went up north, and it finally closed
down, people ya' know that told me--that they said: "You know, after you left, we
never went back to Inter-tribal." And of course you knew there was a while there
before you took over. You couldn't-- and a lot of those people went back to living
on Reservations. Or, back to their real home, and didn't come in. But, I think the
main thing was that we had--and we had some programs that we had.
[Wag]
We had substance abuse programs, we mental health programs, we had the job
training program.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
And food assistance program.
Yes, food assistance, and senior meals.
[Unknown Person]
Right.
[Wag]
So there was an awful lot of things that's goin' on there that the people of the
community came in and organized while they were there at that point in time.
[Levi]
What-One of the things we are trying to do with this project is really to get a
sense of what it was like to be Native during that time in the city--the urban
setting. Whether they were here through relocation programs--
[Wag]
A lot of them were.
�[Levi]
and driven to the city for education. Or, employment opportunities. Give us a
sense of what the climate was like back then.
[Wag]
Well--While the people wanted to help the attitude was, we wanna make you like
us.
[Levi]
Of the non-Natives.
[Wag]
Yeah, yeah. We wanna make you like-like your "Everest" Doug DeVos.
[Levi]
Mhm.
[Wag]
And, he implied something to that effect. we wanna help you become--
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
Like us.
Like a good dark complected Christians, ya know? Been there, did that!
[Laughter] Didn't work! I said something to him, that I probably shouldn't 'av said.
I don't even know what I said now. But it was something to the effect of: "We
don't live like you. We don't wanna be like white people. We have people thatthat are against the Christian church-- Against Christianity and all its forms.
People that suffer because of that. I myself was a Christian when I came up here.
I'm not anymore. But--
[Unknown Person]
By the way, Doug told me about you telling him that.
[Wag]
Uh huh. Well we never-[Unknown Person]
But, I also told him. I said: "Do you have any idea what they went through
under the banner of Christianity.
[Wag]
[Laughter]
[Unknown Person]
I said: "Just go up to a place like Mount Pleasant, and look at the
orphanage. And ask some of the Indians what they did to 'em."
[Wag]
Yeah.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
Yeah.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
How they forced them to speak another language.
Yeah.
How they stole them from their parents.
�[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
Absolutely. Well, they cut their hair. I mean, you know.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
Cut their hair, made 'em speak different language.
Put 'em all in the same uniform. Yeah.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
Dennis Banks was a good example of that.
Yeah.
You couldn't speak your language. And all that kinda thing.
[Unknown Person]
They also abused so many of those kids.
[Wag]
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. One--One of the attitudes, I think Levi, that we went into
here--I remember we had some money from the city--the--
[Levi]
The CD-- The Community Block Grant Money.
[Wag]
Block Grant Money, yeah. Been a long time.
[Levi]
Community Block Grant--CDBG. Yes.
[Wag]
Yeah, Block Grand money.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
[Laughter]
I had--Do you remember Howard Greenstra(?)
[Unknown Person]
Yeah. Yeah.
[Levi]
The city manager. Yes.
[Wag]
Well, no city manager--
[Levi]
No--I'm sorry he was a city commissioner.
[Unknown Person]
Right.
[Wag]
He was the city commissioner.
[Levi]
Greenstra, that's right.
�[Wag]
But, he was the chair of the city board.
[Unknown Person]
Right.
[Levi]
Yes.
[Wag]
Said to me, in a meeting, Howard said a lot of things to me.
[Levi]
[Laughter]
[Wag]
I said a few things to Howard. Uh, said to me [INAUDIBLE] at a commission
meeting, committee meeting; "Why have we given you guys money for four
years? How long do you think it's going to take to really help 'ya?
[Levi]
Are you serious?
[Wag]
I am. And I said: "Well, let's see. It took ya four-hundred years to [INAUDIBLE]
[Unknown Person]
[Laughter] [Wag] Maybe we should think in terms of four hundred years?
[Unknown Person]
Yeah, how'd ya like that?
[Levi]
I'm sure, by the time that I got there, I think it was only fifteen thousand dollars a
year. Maybe at your time your time, you probably started at about five or six.
[Wag]
Ten.
[Levi]
Ten.
[Wag]
Ten-thousand.
[Levi]
Oh, so just wait till the...that's kind of a little off. But--I want to say it. That they
expect us to give us two fishes and five loaves of bread.
[Wag]
We're dividers.
[Levi]
Go. Go--Go feed the multitude. Expect us to go solve all the problems, and I will
tell people this all the time. I'm not Jesus Christ. I cannot perform miracles with
this little sum of money you have given us. It's just not gonna happen.
[Wag]
No. no.
[Levi]
I do that on purpose to throw their own scripture back to their face so they get the
�point.
[Wag]
Well, let me tell you somethin' about Howard again, that's really, really
interesting, I think. At that time the museum had twenty-nine--the remains of
twenty-nine Native people that came out of the mounds.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Lin]
Grand Rapids Public Museum?
[Wag]
Yes, Grand Rapids Public Museum. There was a real fight going on throughout
the country, about getting the remains back and out of museums. The guy that
dug those mounds up, was a guy by the name of Richard Flanders. Who was an
anthropology professor at Grand Valley. And--bitter enemies. Bitter enemies. We
finally became friends right before he died. [Laughter] I don't know what that
meant. I mean acquaintances.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
How did you accomplish that? [Laughter]
I noticed something [INAUDIBLE]
[Unknown Person]
That was my next point.
[Wag]
But the fight was really going on, and we couldn't even get them to move. I mean
they didn't want to give anything back. Those were scientific remains--they were
studying the science to it-- Find out how you people ate, what you ate, and how
you--ask us! We'll tell you what we ate. A lot of people can tell you what we ate
back then! [Laughter] I mean it was just kind of a joke in these commission
meetings. But they finally-- and this was introduced by Howard, bless his heart.
But they finally said, we are going to return the remains that we can deem as
historical. And we are gonna to keep the remains that we deem as pre-historic.
Keep the pre-historic so that we can study them scientifically. But, those that we
can deem to be historic, return to the community. You know what date they
pass? Fourteen ninety-two. That's a resolution that the city commissioner of
Grand Rapids approved. Fourteen ninety-two. So, if anybody wants to know
when pre-historic time ended--it's fourteen ninety-two. And then he asked me,
when I said: "Hell, Howard. Nobody here but Indians till fourteen ninety-two.
[Levi]
[Laughter]
[Wag]
And then he said: "How can you have-- [INAUDIBLE] Minister of a Christian
Reform church--how can you as people make the association or connection with
people that lived two thousand years ago?
�[Unknown Person]
[Laughter] What was his answer?
[Wag]
You're a Christian minister, and you want me to answer that? Come on. That
ended the conversation.
[Levi]
The basis of Christianity is two thousand years ago. When Jesus walked the
earth. I get your point.
[Wag]
I mean that's the--
[Levi]
That's incredible.
[Wag]
It was incredible.
[Levi]
So, his question was--Just so we get this right-- How could you connect back two
thousand years? What connection you had?
[Wag]
Yeah.
[Levi]
But yet, as a Christian minister, he couldn't see it?
[Wag]
No.
[Levi]
Okay.
[Unknown Person]
[Wag]
In fact, you can go way beyond.
Absolutely.
[Unknown Person]
Way beyond--[INAUDIBLE]
[Levi]
I think the Norton Mound remains, pre-date when Jesus walked the earth fromfrom what I've learned from history.
[Wag]
Well, there's some in UP, there's not supposed to be any up there but there are. I
had a girl that worked for me that found them up there.
[Levi]
To your recollection why do they call them the Hopewell Mounds?
[Wag]
I think there was a tribe, I don't know, I think there was a tribe that they called
Hopewell people. I don't even know what that associates with, I don't have any
idea. It might have been a name that--
[Unknown Person]
Norton.
�[Levi]
I heard he was a farmer out in Ohio. That-That I guess they have mounds there.
[Wag]
Oh, yeah they do.
[Levi]
They associated the two, they connected them. They said: "Oh, they have to be
Hopewell people." Though really it's named after the--
[Unknown Person]
[Levi]
Farms.
[Unknown Person]
[Levi]
Do you know the name of the mounds--
--downtown where the museum is?
Yeah
[Unknown Person]
That whole area was going to be a parking lot. And Randy Brown and I
were on the board, and I told him. I said: "If you don't make those Indian mounds-turn em' Wag Wheeler over them. [Laughter]
[Wag]
Wha-what?
[Unknown Person]
Really! They were gonna make that a parking lot.
[Wag]
I hadn't heard that!
[Wag]
I'm sorry can I get--[INAUDIBLE] As you know...
[Levi]
No, no. This is great stuff! Our Christia-excuse me--Our questions are strictly a
guide. But given the fact that you've run the Grand Rapids Inter-tribal council,
you're going to be a little different in that you know things at a different level than
some of the other people we're gonna interview.
[Lin]
Can I take a break real quick?
[Levi]
Yes, yes.
[Lin]
Can I use your computer and have it plugged into the wall? So, I can plug it into
here?
[Levi]
Yes.
[Lin]
This sat here so long that the battery is dead.
�[Levi]
Let me go get my electrical cord. [Sneezing] That's no problem.
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/15daeb4a8d0a27ce0234ba3dddbf1c7c.mp3
5251e4f3d7897ce5c40a86e5dc4ca97b
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Gi-gikinomaage-min Interviews
Creator
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Grand Valley State University. Native American Advisory Council
Grand Valley State University. Kustche Office of Local History
Description
An account of the resource
Interviews with members of Grand Rapids' urban Native American population collected as part of the Gi-gikinomaage-min Project: Defend Our History, Unlock Your Spirit.
Translated from Anishinaabemowin, the original language of this area, Gi-gikinomaage-min means "We are all teachers." This is the name our project team choose to convey to the Native American community that through our stories and experiences, we are all teachers to someone. As we share those stories, we are allowing for our next generations to experience the past.
Grand Rapids’ Native American community grew dramatically in the last half of the 20th century as a result of a little-known federal program that still impacts American Indian lives today. Called the Urban Relocation Program, it created one of the largest mass movements of Indians in American history. The full scope of this massive social experiment and its impact on multiple generations of Native Americans remains largely undocumented and unexplored.
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2015/2016
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Gi-gikinomaage-min Project
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In Copyright
Subject
The topic of the resource
Indians of North America
Indians of North America--Michigan
Indians of North America--Education
Potawatomi Indians
Bode'wadmi
Ojibwa Indians
Anishinaabe
Navajo Indians
Dine'e
Cherokee Indians
Tsagali
Aniyunwiya
Archaeology
Mound-builders
Hopewellian culture
Indian arts--North America
Personal narrativse
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
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Grand Valley State University. Special Collections & University Archives
Identifier
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DC-10
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audio/mp3
video/mp4
application/pdf
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Text
Language
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eng
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
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DC-10_Wheeler_Wagner_0615
Creator
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Wheeler, James Wagner "Wag"
Date
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2015-04-23
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Wag Wheeler interview (audio and transcript)
Description
An account of the resource
James Wagner "Wag" Wheeler was born in eastern Oklahoma to Cherokee parents in 1935. In his life in Salisaw, Oklahoma, Wheeler worked as an accountant and administrator until becoming the Executive Director of Oklahoma Indian Opportunity. After the organization lost its funding, he moved to Michigan to pursue a masters degree in public administration from the University of Michigan. There, he co-founded the Native American Student Association of UM, and was recruited to be the Executive Director of the Grand Rapids Inter-Tribal Counter and became a major contributor to local Native American social services for 18 years. He served as the CEO of Grand Traverse Band of the Ottawa and Chippewa Indians for two years. In this interview, he discusses his life and experiences as a community leader trying to reinvigorate Native cultural traditions in Grand Rapids community.
Contributor
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Bardwell, Belinda (Interviewer)
Rickert, Levi (Interviewer)
Subject
The topic of the resource
Cherokee Indians
Tsagali
Aniyunwiya
Personal narratives
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Indians of North America
Indians of North America--Michigan
Source
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Gi-gikinomaage-min Project
Publisher
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Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
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<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
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audio/mp3
application/pdf
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eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/15abbd4d3fefea41971b4319f9405269.pdf
36aba87e85f174a2ac3a6a8dbe98bbf9
PDF Text
Text
1
Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23
Mrs. David Warner
Interviewed on September 30, 1971
Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com
Tapes #22, 23 (56:32)
Biographical Information
Mary Jeanette Shelly, the daughter of James R. Shelly and Mary Isabel Hayes was born
in Grand Rapids in March 1888. Jeanette died in Grand Rapids on 7 December 1974. She
married David A. Warner on 26 November 1908 in Marine City, St. Clair County,
Michigan. David A. Warner was born 7 October 1883 in New York, the son of David S.
Warner and Louisa Jumph. David died in Grand Rapids on 24 September 1966.
_____________
Interviewer: Were you born in Grand Rapids, Mrs. Warner?
Mrs. Warner: yes.
Interviewer: What was your family‟s name?
Mrs. Warner: Shelly, S-H-E-L-L-Y. That‟s an English name or an Irish name, of
course, and my father was in the furniture business. That was Berkey and Gay and the
Luce Furniture Company. And my mother-neither one of my parents were born here. My
father was born in Rochester, New York, and my mother was born in Detroit. And they
both moved through the years as younger people to Grand Rapids and then we lived here
always.
Interviewer: Where did you live?
Mrs. Warner: Well, we lived on Paris Avenue which was a residential street then, if you
know where it is. Between Logan and Wealthy was a residential area. That‟s where I
grew up as a child. But my father died when he was quite a young man, forty-two I
remember, of pneumonia. It was one of those things that happened to people. And my
mother carried on. I had a brother who died. Jim died I guess about five or ten years,
eight or nine years ago and I have a sister living in New York… a much younger sister
and that‟s the only family I have.
Interviewer: What was the… go ahead.
Mrs. Warner: I was married very young. Mr. Warner was at the University of Michigan
and he came to Grand Rapids. He had a connection, you see-like the young lawyers dowith one of the lawyers in Grand Rapids who‟s long since dead, and that‟s the way he
established in Grand Rapids.
�2
Interviewer: Was he from Grand Rapids?
Mrs. Warner: No, he was born in Rochester, New York.
Interviewer: Oh, your husband was?
Mrs. Warner: Yes, they were both…it was funny that they, not that they know each other
but they were both came from Rochester.
Interviewer: What was the… what was it like on Paris Avenue when you were growing
up as a child?
Mrs. Warner: Well, it was a very nice, happy neighborhood with children- families with
children-and one thing that I think of funny things in connection with it. It was one of the
first streets to be paved with a hard surface. And on a summer evening -it was when
bicycles became so popular- and that block, two or three blocks from Wealthy down to
Logan with people would come with their bicycles, men and women, not children, and
some of them tandems on bicycles and ride up and down and up and down on that
because it was a hard surface. And my ambition, I remember, as a child was to have a
bicycle, and at last I achieved the age, reached the age when my father thought I should
have a bicycle. We had, I think sometimes that children…we had simpler lives and I
think it was, in a way, happier. I was reading this afternoon about a book about Fourth of
July-the celebration of Fourth of July. Why, that was a great thing. You probably don‟t
remember when you celebrated the Fourth of July. Oh, you planned, had for weeks and
collected what you could in the way of funds to buy the firecrackers and things and then
someone in the neighborhood on the block or so, some father would do an evening
display of fireworks. But (we) used to get up at three or four o‟clock in the morning and
go and rouse each other and get out there and shoot firecrackers. Now that was
considered very gay. We loved it. Things like that that were so simple.
Interviewer: Were there city-wide celebrations too, were there big things where…?
Mrs. Warner: Oh, there was always a…usually a speaker or someone gave an oration in
the park and a parade sometimes. I don‟t remember much about… I don‟t think I was
ever taken to a Fourth of July Parade or anything of that kind. We were quite far, in a
way, quite far out from downtown. We were… the streetcars ran on Wealthy, ran from
Wealthy Street-line ran from out here which was Ramona, an amusement park was
located on this land that‟s here on the lake. And the street railway company owned the
amusement park. And the Wealthy street cars ran from here out to North Park. Do you
know where North Park is?
Interviewer: Yeah.
Mrs. Warner: Yes. Well, that was one line that ran. That was called the Wealthy-Taylor
Line.
�3
Interviewer: It would go from out here at Ramona downtown and then go north?
Mrs. Warner Yes, then go out…what we called lower Monroe was called Canal Street at
that time.
Interviewer: Why was it called Canal Street?
Mrs. Warner: Well, because of the canal along there. Then there was a canal adjacent
to the river. And it ran along there then it turned and went up. I can‟t remember where it
turned and went up and then it went out what was Taylor Avenue out to North Park and
turned around out there. And we used to go streetcar riding. That was a great thing for
an evening, a summer evening. You always got in the front seat, if you could, and you
went the whole trip. Came round trip, it cost five cents. Life was really quite simple and
pleasant.
Interviewer: Were the families pretty close in the neighborhood?
Mrs. Warner: Oh yes, they were, oh, a good neighborly feeling more, some more than
others, some were closer than others. A doctor lived across the street from us and I was
friendly with, quite friendly with their children his children and with the family. And
there was a Colonel [Loomis K.] Bishop lived on the corner [now 457 Paris] and he was a
Civil War veteran and he‟d been made the postman officer, post master here in Grand
Rapids as an award for you know-there was-the political assignments of that kind often
were given to military men. And Colonel and Annie Bishop, they were very nice to
children.
Interviewer: Did they have any children of their own?
Mrs. Warner: No, they were older; they were quite a little older. They were awfully nice
about cookies and things like that.
Interviewer: Did you go to school in Grand Rapids then?
Mrs. Warner: Yes, at that time my family, well, they were all Catholic. We were
Catholics and, as a matter of fact, we were the only Catholics on that… in that immediate
neighborhood. Not that it made any difference except for the fact that I went to Saint
Andrew‟s School, Catholic School, which was way down on Sheldon Avenue where the
Cathedral is if you know where the Saint Andrew‟s Cathedral is. And I went there and
the other children went to what was called Lafayette School, which was there, well it‟s
Vandenberg now I think, and we went down together. We walked together but I had to
continue on much further. And do you know that we went, we walked and we came
home to lunch and we went back and walked again and we never thought anything about
it in winter, any kind of weather.
Interviewer: It‟s a little different than today, huh?
�4
Mrs. Warner: Every child has to be taken in a car or else on a bus. That‟s a controversy
that‟s going on.
Interviewer: What, were there, you say you were the only Catholic family on Paris
Avenue?
Mrs. Warner: Yes.
Interviewer: Were there portions of the city where Catholics seemed to congregate or…?
Mrs. Warner: No. No.
Interviewer: Dispersed all over then, huh?
Mrs. Warner: Yeah, um hum. This was never much of a Catholic city; really…I mean
population wise. Quite a few Catholics-those that went to Saint Andrew‟s-went to
school and who were acquaintances of ours…they were never close friends because they
didn‟t live in the same neighborhood. A good many of them were…there were quite a
few families down along Sheldon, oh around in that neighborhood where the cathedral
was. But as far as we were concerned it was no particular point made of it one way or the
other. Others went to different churches.
Interviewer: There are quite a few Negroes living down in that area now. Were there
very many Negroes in Grand Rapids at that time?
Mrs. Warner: No, very few…very few.
Interviewer: Do you remember any particularly?
Mrs. Warner: No, none other than those that we knew as waiters. If you went to the
hotel or went to a club or places of that kind, usually the help was colored. And you
knew them and knew them by name and were friendly with them, but there was no large
concentration of colored that I remember.
Interviewer: What clubs, did your family belong to any clubs?
Mrs. Warner: No, there were not very many clubs. There was the one club that was here
on the lake called the O-Wash-Ta-Nong Club which was very nice…oh, it was just a
social club where there were dinners and often times parties, dancing parties and all, and
it went out over the water. It was a lovely place. It burned eventually. But the only
clubs that the Kent Country Club started, oh, I don‟t know how many years ago-how old
the Kent Country Club is but at the time that it was first organized by a group of men
who became interested in golf, it was in what is now… do you know where the Bissell
House is?
�5
Interviewer: um hum.
Mrs. Warner: …on the corner of Plymouth and Wealthy? That was the club house-Kent
Country Club House. And where the hospital is, all that rolling land over there was the
golf course.
Interviewer: When was that moved, do you know?
Mrs. Warner: About fifty years ago. I think it‟s all of that, maybe more. It went out to
where it‟s located now.
Interviewer: Did you go to high school in town?
Mrs. Warner: Yes, by that time I went to the regular high school-not a denominational.
The high school that‟s… there was just one high school. It was the one that‟s on
Fountain Street now.
Interviewer: Was there much interaction between… let‟s say children in your
neighborhood where you lived and children that lived up on-oh…Mr. Judd referred to it
as a Quality Hill, that „s what West-Siders used to refer to.
Mrs. Warner: Yes, no I didn‟t know those young people.
Interviewer: Did you go to college?
Mrs. Warner: No, I went, I went to art school in Washington, the Corcoran Art School at
one point, and then I met Mr. Warner when he came to Grand Rapids and we were
married quite… I was quite young when I was married. You‟d think-we‟d think it‟s
young now, I didn‟t think it was young then. I thought, well, I sometimes realize now…
if I know now as much as I thought I knew then-I‟d really be awfully well informed. I
had all the answers.
Interviewer: How old were you?
Mrs. Warner: Nineteen. I, a good deal like the young people have now… and I was the
person for causes. Violent enthusiasms about causes of various kinds…movements of
one sort or another.
Interviewer: What kind did you get involved in?
Mrs. Warner: Well, I got involved in club life and then I became involved in the suffrage
movement. And that was a very active movement at the time. You see, it had been for
many years back to Susan An…. Susan B. Anthony was an agitator for votes for womenequal suffrage-but it had never been too actively promoted at least to my knowledge.
And all of a sudden during the First World War, women took very…a much more active
part in a thing, affairs out of their home. For instance the Red Cross, you see, which was
�6
very active. You wouldn‟t have any idea of the difference when one has seen the wars
like the First World War and the Second World War and the feeling there was about it,
and then to see this disaffection that there is about the Vietnam War. It‟s amazing. We
were really patriotic… patriots in those times and, as I say, women worked hard and were
given responsibility during the war and then that stirred up this idea that if they could do
that, then they should vote. And the movement became very active, very much of an
issue. And we kept… we organized here in Grand Rapids. There was a group of us who
were so involved in it that we organized very thoroughly for a real city-wide campaign on
the way that the war effort had been done by block chairmen and you‟d have a… you‟d
locate a woman in a certain area, small area who believed in it and you‟d engage her in
activities with her neighbors and her friends and her people that she met with petitions,
signing petitions. And we also opened an office downtown and in… we were given some
space in a store along Division Avenue and we worked every day at it. And we
organized the whole thing in a very business-like way. The result being that we
collected… of course, there were those that were just as violently against it, and used to
engage in real heated arguments over it. And the result was that we collected on these
petitions hundreds of names. And, at that time, there were two newspapers in Grand
Rapids, there was the morning Grand Rapids Herald. And the editor of the Herald was
sympathetic to us and he gave us in one issue a full page space … a spread in the middle
of two full pages to print those names that we had in little fine print all those were as a
piece of publicity that we organized.
Interviewer: What was the… what was the ultimate objective, to get the vote?
Mrs. Warner: To get the vote. You see, the amendment had passed the Congress and it
was a matter, as it always is, of the majority of the states ratifying to make it a law-the
law of the land. And we were agitating to have the Michigan Legislature ratify it. We
besieged our representatives. We didn‟t know enough, we never… I thought about it
since I spoke with you. I thought something about it and I got to thinking about it anyway
with this matter of the vote for eighteen year olds. It had kind of brought the old effort
back to my mind. It never occurred to us to march on Lansing like they do now. We
never…we never organized any marches that I …
Interviewer: Were they mostly just door to door …
Mrs. Warner: Yes.
Interviewer: …canvassing and talking and…
Mrs. Warner: Yes, that sort of person to person. We had a funny thing happen to me in
connection with it that might be amusing to you. We always took the… the county fair
was much more of an affair than it is now. People, large crowds went to it and it was
always in the fall quite an event out at the… what the fairgrounds out at North Park and
we always took a booth to put up our, you know, our display of literature and hand out
our literature and all. And we manned that booth with-women went down and took their
turns being in the booth for… of the day. Any my turn came up to go out early in the
�7
morning and be there most of the day, I can remember. And the night before, I fell
against the door of our automobile and cut my eye-quite a little cut right in here, close to
my eye. It had to have several stitches. Well, it gave me a perfectly beautiful black eye
if you‟ve ever seen one. But nothing daunted, I went out to man the booth… was that…
did that attract attention. The rebel remarks, the jokes that it called for. I think it
probably brought more people, more people stopped at our booth than would have
otherwise. To see the suffragette with a black eye-that was something.
Interviewer: Were men sympathetic to a …
Mrs. Warner: Oh yes, many men were.
Interviewer: Was there opposition to the women‟s vote, also?
Mrs. Warner: Oh, was there opposition? It was fierce opposition. The people were just
as violently against as they were for. Oh, it was, it was quite a hot issue. But the result
was of, I suppose, our effort not only in Grand Rapids but all over the state. Detroit was
a very active group and other places all over the state and the result was that our
legislature was the first one to ratify months before the ratification was finished by the
legislatures.
Interviewer: Michigan was the first state to ratify the amendment, huh?
Mrs. Warner: That was in nineteen twenty.
Interviewer: Where, where did the opposition to the women‟s vote… did it seem to come
from any…?
Mrs. Warner: Oh, it was just prejudice-women belonged in the home. Women should
stay where they belonged, they didn‟t…
Interviewer: How did the majority of the women feel?
Mrs. Warner: Oh, many very intelligent women were against it. They didn‟t feel that
they, it was…it was, it was the whole thing-for and against-was a prejudice type of
thing… emotional kind of prejudice, nothing much… very… at least the arguments
against it were thoroughly emotional because there was really no valid reason why
women shouldn‟t vote as well as men. But there was very strong feeling.
Interviewer: Well, there still seems to be a lot of strong feeling against women being
treated as equals isn‟t there?
Mrs. Warner: Well, this lib business… movement that I think… I don‟t know, it seems to
me that some of their objectives are rather extreme. But as far as equal pay for equal
work, I think that is only fair and I think it ought to be promoted and agitated until it
comes about. Now of course, when you know they go, for instance, all this matter about
�8
putting a woman on the Supreme Bench… well, I don‟t doubt at all that there are plenty
of women who have been… had legal experience and been on Federal Benches and know
the law and the Constitution quite as well as some of these candidates that have been put
up in the past to my knowledge. Pretty weak, and it‟ll be very interesting, very
interesting to see what the President‟s appointments are and how it‟s received in the
Congress. And I doubt very much that he‟ll put up the name of a woman.
Interviewer: You don‟t think he will?
Mrs. Warner: I really don‟t think so, no.
Interviewer: Mrs. Nixon is supposedly agitating in the backrooms of the White House
for it. That‟s what the report says.
Mrs. Warner: Well, I‟ve heard that, too, but I don‟t know. And what do you think the
Congress would do with it?
Interviewer: Oh, I think if the woman was qualified that the Congress would approve her
unless they could dig up some scandals like they did with a….
Mrs Warner: Caswell.
Interviewer: [G. Harrold] Carswell, yeah.
Mrs. Warner: Well, they were not competent men to be on the Supreme Bench. I have
very strong feelings about those things, I guess, because of my husband‟s legal opinions.
I think it should be the very cream of the brains, legal brains of the country in that
position and I think that there‟s been a lot of really bad publicity about the Supreme
Bench in the past few years. Everything, as a matter fact, is picked to pieces and taken
apart these days. Nothing is very sacred, is it?
Interviewer: No, it doesn‟t seem to be. Was it different when you were growing up?
Were there things that were held sacred?
Mrs. Warner: It seems to me there were, yes.
Interviewer: What are some of the things that …
Mrs. Warner: Of course, out of getting the franchise grew the… right away the League
of Women Voters Organization which has become a real political factor.
Interviewer: Were you active in the development of that there in town?
Mrs. Warner: Yes, um hum, I was one of the first presidents of the local chapter. Also
the organizing of the Women‟s City Club. Women got active at that time and took a
hand with things coming out of the effort-war effort. They liked it. They liked working,
�9
strangely enough, and according…against all reports, women liked to work together.
They worked together well. I‟ve never had any quarrels with anyone I worked with in
any of the organizations and I‟ve been in many of them-many organizations, clubs and
groups. There‟s always some that are not as pleasant as others but I don‟t think there‟s
any more quarrels among women than there is among men. Men don‟t always get along
too well that I„ve noticed. They‟re not always peace-keeping people. Don‟t you think
we‟ve talked long enough on this now?
Interviewer: Yeah, there are a couple of other questions I want to ask you but I‟m going
to turn this tape over. It‟s about run out.
Interviewer: You were just saying, you were just talking to me about the Grand Rapids
Foundation and the fact that you‟ve been involved in that.
Mrs. Warner: Yes, yes.
Interviewer: Can you tell me a little about how it was started and, well, what it‟s…what
the purpose of it was in the beginning and so on.
Mrs. Warner: Yes, the Metz Estate was left to be used to found a foundation with the…
income from which was to be spent in the community for charitable purposes. (Oh dear,
there‟s the telephone.) And Mr. Hutchins knew a man in Cincinnati, I think it was, who
had instigated a similar… started a similar foundation and he became interested in it and
organized. The foundation was based on this one, the Quest and it had its directors
appointed by the two federal judges, by the clearing house, by the Old Kent, and the
National- the Grand Rapids National Bank, and by the Association of Commerce and one
other. There were eight directors and it was all voluntary, I mean you were appointed.
You were asked to serve…and served as long as you wanted to or as long as, well… there
were such people as well names that you wouldn‟t even know now. Julius Amberg, who
was David Amberg‟s father, a very prominent lawyer here and several furniture men-men
that were connected with the business world and the appointments had to be accepted and
gradually we got a little more money and it took hold and people became…got to know a
little bit about it and we were left-the foundation was left- more and more money until
our income could be spent more diversified. And we were always looking for a
pioneering of projects. Not any continuous support except through the federated
agencies, those that were in that. And then a certain portion of it was always devoted to
scholarships. So that‟s the way the money was spent. Well, we were suddenly left the
Wylie Estate which was about six million dollars.
Interviewer: Now who was…who was the Wylie?
Mrs. Warner: That was Curt, Curtis Wylie. The Wylie family was a very prominent
family in Grand Rapids and Curtis was the son. I think Mr. Wylie‟s money came from
lumber. As so much of the money… early days in Grand Rapids, the Blodgetts-and
those, that money-that type of money-came from lumbering. And Mr. Wylie left a large
estate. Well, Curtis Wylie was very well named. He was a very "wily" investor. He
�10
was… he had a portfolio that was simply amazing. And he left it all to the Grand Rapids
Foundation.
Interviewer: Didn‟t he have any family?
Mrs. Warner: No, he was never married. He had a sister and she is still living. And, I
believe she plans to leave her portion-her estate-to the foundation and then other… we
had many smaller bequeaths until we had quite a list of …they were always, they could
be designated if you wanted the income spent. There was much, many were desig…
number of designations for instance, at that time for crippled children because there was
no state program for crippled children at that time. Since then it‟s… that is one difficulty
about designating because the need becomes obsolete and then the money spent is tied up
and we had quite a lot of money like that. And at last we went to…they went to court
and got an order releasing quite a little of the income of those designated estates that
had… where the need was gone. So the result is that the income that the bank handles,
the trust company handles the estate the… principal and we, the foundation, simply
spends the income and it‟s now two or three hundred thousand dollars a year, you know,
that are spent in the community.
Interviewer: Who was the Metz family that left the original request to establish the
foundation?
Mrs. Warner: I don‟t know much about the Metz family. The Metz Building, do you
know that there‟s a Metz Building?
Interviewer: It‟s being torn down now.
Mrs. Warner: Yes. Well, they were… I don‟t… I can‟t tell you very much about them. I
don‟t really know.
Interviewer: Were there … now this Wylie, this Curtis Wylie left his fortune to the
Grand Rapids Foundation. Has that been somewhat of a rare phenomenon in this town
(for) people of great wealth leaving their substantial sums to the community for
community betterment?
Mrs. Warner: Yes, it‟s not… It‟s rather rare.
Interviewer: Why is that, do you think?
Mrs. Warner: I don‟t know. Now, for instance, I‟m surprised that there are a number of
people of wealth interested in the art museum and yet I‟ve yet to know of a person who‟s
left any substantial amount of money to it. They‟ll leave small sums or they will buy
pictures or something of that kind, make gifts of that sort but they don‟t…I think it‟s
strange I don‟t know why that is. I‟ve no idea. And, as a matter of fact, I don‟t know any
longer where the money is. It‟s not people that I know and probably not people that you
know that have… businessmen and people, names that wouldn‟t mean anything to me.
�11
I‟m always interested in the organization of the Community Fund because at one time, as
a matter of fact, I was the chairman of it once.
Interviewer: of the…
Mrs. Warner: believe it or not.
Interviewer: Were you the first woman ever appointed to that?
Mrs. Warner: Yes, and the only woman I guess that‟s ever been. And the people that
worked for it, the captains and the whole line up of the people that worked for it aren‟t
names that mean one thing to me anymore. Grand Rapids is quite a diversified city.
Interviewer: Was it always that way?
Mrs. Warner: No, it was furniture, furniture, furniture was where the money was; where
the… that was the big industry and for years it was. Of course there‟s a group of people
in Grand Rapids-the Dutch, the Hollanders-that‟s quite a large proportion of this
community, as you probably know. [Of] Holland extraction-and the churches of-are
many, many Lutheran and Christian Reformed and those churches and those people are
all very thrifty and many of them are rich people. And many of them are public spirited,
for instance, the Hekmans are and I could name others that are very public spirited and
take their part-do their part. But, I really don‟t know why that is.
Interviewer: You mentioned now before a little earlier about the wars. What kind of an
effect did the First World War have on Grand Rapids?
Mrs. Warner: Well, what do you… what do you mean effect?
Interviewer: Well, was the city any different after the war than it was before or was it
pretty much the same.
Mrs Warner: No, it was pretty much the same. I don‟t think the First World War made
as much change probably as the Second did. But the First World War, there was great
feeling about it. There was terrible feeling against Germans. It was really very, very bad.
Anything German, any name German… people they named-they changed names and they
didn‟t play music-German music. And they were awfully prejudiced about the Germans
and then, of course, when it came to the Second World War they were even more so.
Because of the cruelty of… we‟ve never had in Grand Rapids a very large Jewish
population but those who then… there were some quite prominent Jews in Grand Rapids
at one time...
[END OF SIDE 1]
Mrs. Warner: …businessmen, business people, and the feeling was very strong, of
course among them. And, there was always all the drives, all the bond sales and all that
�12
sort of thing, always went over very well. People, people, were really quite… the old
fashioned patriotism which seems to have, well, we haven‟t anything… had anything to
be patriotic about as far as I‟m concerned.
Interviewer: You mentioned that you were one of the organizers of the Women‟s City
Club.
Mrs. Warner: Yes.
Interviewer: When was that club formed and why was it formed?
Mrs. Warner: Well, it was formed by the Altrusa [Institute] group. That‟s a professional
women‟s sort of a fraternity. And they thought that we ought to have a cultural and
social club in Grand Rapids where women could get together and have programsworthwhile programs and all. And so a group of us took on the idea and organized…
went and asked people if they thought they‟d like to belong to such an organization and
we got quite an enthusiastic response. And at that time what is now the building on the
corner of Monroe and Ionia that is the Morton Hotel and the branch of the Kent Bank was
built-a new building. There were some old buildings there and that was torn down and
this present building and the Morton House was very thriving… the hotels in Grand
Rapids were always thriving because the furniture business brought so many buyers here
and the exhibit that took place twice a year, July and January exhibit of furniture always
brought lots of people. So hotel business was good and the Morton House was quite a
busy place and in this new building-very splendid it was, we thought- they gave us, this
group of women that were forming this social club… they gave us the use of the
mezzanine for our club room in order to bring women into the hotel and they had a
special lunch that was called the Women‟s City Club Lunch, special priced lunch and all.
And we used that mezzanine to organize and then people joined just for the initiation fee
and dues. The initiation fee was fifteen dollars and the dues were ten dollars a year.
That‟s what we started on and we accumulated a goodly membership. Then we moved to
a house that was next to the Park Congregational Church, the old Godfrey House which is
now… there‟s a parking lot there. And we took that house and we opened… had a dining
room where we had lunch and ran a regular social club with current events classes and
that sort of thing. And that became too small for us so then two women who-Mrs.
Dudley Waters, the first Mrs. Dudley Waters-who was a magnificent woman and a great
worker and organizer and Mrs. Noyes Avery and a group of us began searching for a
home, a permanent home. And we put out a sixty thousand dollar bond issue. And the
Old Kent Bank took the bonds, they paid six percent and the bonds went very well. It
was sold in no time. And with that capital we bought the present property that the City
Club owns now, if you know where it is on Lafayette and Fulton. We bought that house
and remodeled it into a club house.
Interviewer: Isn‟t that rather unusual for a women‟s organization to float a bond issue?
Mrs. Warner: Yes, quite unusual. Never heard of anything like that.
�13
Mrs. Warner: Never heard of anything like that?
Interviewer: No.
Mrs. Warner: Well, the bonds were sold very promptly. And I remember very well, I was
president of the Women‟s City Club. I was there, unfortunately, during the time during
the depression. And we scraped bottom to get our bond issue. Some of our bonds came
due and it never occurred to us that we didn‟t have to take them out. And we went down,
our treasurer went down to the bank with the funds to take out the bonds and they looked
at her, and they said: “Why you‟re the first person that‟s come in here with any such idea
as that in a long time.” Well, we said that we had to do it, that was what we contracted
for and the people that had the bonds, didn‟t want to give them up at all because six
percent was pretty good. But we retired all our bonds as they came due, burned the
mortgage.
Interviewer: When was the club founded, when was it organized?
Mrs. Warner: The club is now forty-five years old, you can figure that.
Interviewer: Nineteen twenty-six, then?
Mrs. Warner: Yeah.
Interviewer: Well, was Ladies Literary Club a…?
Mrs. Warner: Oh, that was an organization that had been going for a long time. That and
the Saint Cecelia Musical Club were the two clubs that club women belonged to. That
was before the war. That had been, I don‟t know how old the Ladies Literary Club is.
And I don‟t know when that building was, when they built that building either. I
belonged to it at one time but I was never very active in it because I was much more
active in the Women‟s City Club.
Interviewer: How were the two organizations different?
Mrs. Warner: Well, we had, we maintained a dining room. The Literary Club is just an
organization that meets once a week and listens to a speaker.
Interviewer: Oh, I see.
Mrs. Warner: But we have many activities in the Women‟s City Club. We have many
classes of various activities. And always on Thursday a speaker, and then there‟s the
Book Club and there‟s the French group and there‟s the Economic, people that are
women that are interested in that, there‟s a leader for that, and the Bridge Club, bridge
lessons. We‟ve always, we have quite a… and then there‟s the dining room with lunch
every day and dinner. And dinner on Thursday night and special occasions and we‟ve
always been in the black. In fact we have to…we‟re a tax-free organization because of
�14
our cultural and educational activities, and we‟re not profit making. Our dining room-we
always budget the dining room which is our one paying activity. We always budgeted a
deficit for that, deliberately, in making up the year‟s budget. And every…. every
committee has its allotted amount to spend and they spend it and they stay in it. And then
every once in a while, we accumulate. Seidman & Seidman tells us that we‟ve
accumulated too much backlog to stay… if we don‟t look out we‟ll have the tax
collectors after us. So then we do some big project, some big expensive thing. Two
years, two years ago, we bought parking. It is always a problem as it is for anything of
that sort and our parking was entirely inadequate and people complained bitterly about it
and we bought over adjacent to us, across the street from us on Lafayette, we bought two
old houses and took them down and laid out a big parking lot there that we have a gate to
it. You have to have a slug to go in-I mean a slug to come out. You can go in but you
can‟t get out without a slug. And that was an expenditure of some... oh that cost well
over a hundred thousand dollars, that project. But we had… we had to backlog for it.
Another time, we did a complete new kitchen on our house. It was… we‟ve always been
very thrifty.
Interviewer: Well, I think we‟ve covered about everything.
Mrs. Warner: Well, I think we‟ve covered a good many different angles of various
things. I don‟t know that it was interesting at all to anyone but…
Interviewer: Oh, I‟ve always wondered about the Ladies… the Women‟s City Club you
know. Never, never, never been in the place.
Mrs. Warner: No…
Interviewer: Because I‟m a man I, it‟s always kind of a mysterious place.
Mrs. Warner: Oh well, men are always welcome there. There we have lots of men there
on…for Thursday night dinner and we often have what we…travelogues on Thursday
nights. Members who have been on nice trips, give their, you know, show their slides
and talk.
Interviewer: Oh yeah.
�15
INDEX
A
L
Amberg, David · 9
Amberg, Julius · 9
Anthony, Susan B. · 5
Avery, Mrs. Noyes · 12
Ladies Literary Club · 13
Lafayette School · 3
Luce Furniture Company · 1
B
M
Berkey and Gay · 1
Bishop, Annie · 3
Bishop, Colonel Loomis K. Bishop · 3
Metz Building · 10
Metz Estate · 9
Morton Hotel · 12
Morton House · 12
C
N
Carswell, [G. Harrold] · 8
Corcoran Art School · 5
Nixon, Mrs. [Richard] · 8
F
O
First World War · 11
Old Kent Bank · 12
O-Wash-Ta-Nong Club · 4
G
P
Godfrey House · 12
Grand Rapids Foundation · 9, 10
Grand Rapids National Bank · 9
Park Congregational Church · 12
S
H
Hekman · 11
Saint Andrew’s Cathedral · 3
Saint Andrew’s School · 3
Saint Cecelia Musical Club · 13
K
W
Kent Country Club · 4
Waters, Mrs. Dudley · 12
Women’s City Club · 8, 12, 13, 14
Women's City Club · 12
Wylie Estate · 9
Wylie, Curtis · 9, 10
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e97c38db0fee360342746d6f149dff0a.mp3
cada579bd3688b014cb89f4293077fb6
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Grand Rapids Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
Oral histories (document genre)
Description
An account of the resource
Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Various
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf; audio/mp3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text; Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-23
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1971 - 1977
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-23_22-23Warner
Title
A name given to the resource
Warner, Mary
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Warner, Mary
Description
An account of the resource
Mary Shelly was born in Grand Rapids in 1888. She married David Warner in 1908. She became involved in the women's suffrage movement, was a leader in the Woman's City Club and a member of the Washtenaw Club and the Kent Country Club. She was also involved with various Grand Rapids foundations. She died on December 7, 1974.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan--History
Local histories
Memoirs
Oral histories (document genre)
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Personal narratives
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
audio/mp3
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
1971
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1ec8338fceace97497a75ecfb1b2e7f4.pdf
35b869d61b7ced594c4f9d35cc9ac3e2
PDF Text
Text
Megan Wallace
4/25/2020
COVID-19 Journal
My Experience In the Pandemic
When this COVID pandemic first became relevant to me in late February and early
March, I did not think much of it. I realized that it was affecting thousands of people in other
countries than the United States. Being at school, I did not watch the news in my apartment or
anything. The only news I would see regarding the coronavirus was on Twitter. As more days
went by in March, there were more cases found and more people dying. Especially knowing that
there were cases in our country, I was more aware of how serious this virus was becoming.
Towards the end of March when we got the email about transitioning to online classes, My
roommates and I started to pack some of our things to go back to our permanent residency. I
stayed for a few more days after the email got sent to us so I could have time to pack some of my
clothes and other essential things I needed to bring back home. My roommates and I are living in
the same apartment we were in this school year next school year also, so I did not have to move
every single thing out. I stayed long enough to eat the rest of my food that would go bad and
packed the rest of my bags to go home.
The semester was more than half way through by the time I came back home for online
classes, so I was basically starting to study for finals coming up and I was nervous for how they
were going to be since they were not going to be in person. I had a course this semester that was
a hybrid, so I only planned to meet with that class in person for a couple exams and the rest of
the class was taught online. That was the only class relatively similar to what the rest of my
classes were going to be like until finals. Being at school and attending each of my classes on
�campus everyday meant I had a set schedule. Knowing I was just going to be on my laptop all
day for every class at home made me lose motivation to get things done early like I would at
school. Even my sleeping and eating habits were off. I still had reminders set in my phone each
day to get notes done and finish homework assignments but, I was more likely to just ignore
them because I knew I was just stuck home and I would tell myself “I’ll do it tomorrow”. One
class I did not enjoy online was my anatomy lab. That is normally a class I look forward to
because it is a hands on course and it helps me understand the material better that I am learning
in lecture. Having it be online was just not the same I did not get the best experience I could
have. None of my courses were the best experience when everything was online, it just makes
school less intriguing to me. And I really enjoy school, especially when everything I am learning
is beneficial to my future career.
Coming back home wasn’t bad because I love hanging out with my family and dog but
after a few weeks, it gets hectic in my house. My three younger siblings can be loud and
obnoxious and there is never a time when it is completely silent in my house. As you can
imagine, I got annoyed quickly especially when I was trying to do my school stuff and I could
not concentrate half the time. And with a pandemic going on and social distancing in place, I
could not exactly leave my house. Over time, I was able to cope and get my assignments done.
My dad has been working from home since the stay at home order was in place, but my brother
and mom were still going to work because they are part of the essential workers. My mom is a
labor and delivery nurse, so she is in a hospital more than three times a week and my brother
works at Ace Hardware. With them being out around other people, but wearing masks, they do
not know who they could be around who might have the virus or if they might have the virus and
not be showing symptoms. It is scary to think that they could end up getting the virus and bring it
�back into our home without even knowing they might have it. We have been washing our hands
and keeping good hygiene while being at home. If we do need to leave our house for groceries or
other necessities, my mom and sister had sewed a bunch of masks for us to wear for protection.
It is very important to try and take things like this seriously in our lives. Events like this
will go down in history because of the enormous impact it has made throughout the whole world.
People need to make sure they try and listen to the orders of social distancing and staying home
because if they decide to go around with friends, not washing their hands as often as they should,
and or not wearing a mask to protect themselves and others, the curve will never flatten. Life will
never be the same again because of this virus and most people know that. But everyone should
do their part to try and get life back to normal or close to it. No one wants to live like this and see
loved ones and others mourn from the losses of those who lived near and dear to them.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 Journals
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled.
The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
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COVID-19_2020-04-25_WallaceMegan
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Wallace, Megan
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-04-25
Title
A name given to the resource
My Experience In The Pandemic
Description
An account of the resource
Journal from GVSU student Megan Wallace during the COVID-19 pandemic. Describes "What I have experienced at home and after leaving school."
Subject
The topic of the resource
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b20a9ac8c910dcd0cdcf9fc907ef1059.pdf
86439b88499f21a3d184b09b5d2ae6ee
PDF Text
Text
Faith Vulcano
04/25/2020
COVID-19 Journaling
The COVID-19 pandemic took almost everyone by surprise, especially those attending
colleges. It had spread rapidly from country to country making its way to the United States.
Right during Spring Break is when it made its appearance heavily in the U.S. and considering
most students were away on vacation, it was the easiest way for it to be spread. Once colleges
started switching to online and forcing those who lived on campus to go home, people began to
take it a bit more seriously. I was one of the more fortunate ones, I had a lease off campus
which meant I could stay in Allendale. I lived on the East side, which is where a majority of the
COVID cases were and going back there would have given me a higher chance of contracting
the disease. I was able to still do my online classes in the safety of my home.
At the beginning of switching to online classes, everything was a bit rocky, professors
didn’t exactly know how to handle it, especially labs that were never meant to go online. It took
some time for everyone to get somewhat used to the new layout of how everything would work
and eventually it became easier. The online downside I saw online was my drive to actually do
the work. Most of the professors would not have homework or other assignments to do and
would make most of the exams open book open notes, which means I did not study as hard as I
would have in class. Many of the professors made extensions on things if you asked for it
because it is difficult for some students to switch completely online, some need that person-toperson contact to understand the material. I know some people who dropped their grade
drastically because of online classes.
Once the colleges closed, a good majority of people went home. At my apartment, it’s
just my roommate and I because we’re both health care workers, so we couldn’t exactly go
home when we were needed more than ever. Life has been hectic it seems like, everywhere
you go people look like they’ve just seen a ghost. They’ve taken all the toilet paper, gloves,
masks, any type of sanitary or disinfectant. It’s making it hard for those of us in the medical field
to have the supplies that we actually need to stay safe. At my work, we have to reuse our masks
until they’re practically falling apart because there is just not enough for us to use. It’s unnerving
to know that this disease is wiping out all age groups and that my generation is still not taking
this as seriously as they should. I still see people in larger groups hanging out outside or
drinking inside.
The Coronavirus pandemic is scary for a majority of people, but I do think we’re taking it
a little too far in this lockdown. I’ve already heard of so many adolescents committing suicide
because they’re stuck without socialization that many of them need to live. Grocery stores have
started taking supplies and putting them in the back for the elderly to use, since everyone else is
taking them as soon they’re placed out. I have a good feeling that this will blow over once
summer hits, but I also feel that COVID-19 is something we’re going to have to deal with every
year just like the flu and common cold. Hopefully we have a vaccine by next winter, because
that would help settle everyone's nerves.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 Journals
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled.
The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
COVID-19_2020-04-26_VulcanoFaith
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vulcano, Faith
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-04-26
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 Journal
Description
An account of the resource
Journal from GVSU student Faith Vulcano during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subject
The topic of the resource
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1960b9f91441cfe4168a59ab45e08a39.pdf
c66eded7fb281d407779de9628210891
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Kent County Oral History collection, RHC-23
Gerritt VandenBosch
Tape # (7:54)
Interviewer: When did you come over to this country?
VandenBosch: We came in on, we arrived in New York on Memorial Day, 1920, in… New York
and from there we went to Inwood, Iowa, where a second cousin of my father lived, and we
stayed there for a few weeks until we found a place to live.
Interviewer: Did you have a problem finding a place?
VandenBosch: Not at that time because they arranged it, but it was right near their home in the
country on a farm.
Interviewer: Oh, this is of course what we have studied and we hear just the opposite. Did your
father have any problems with jobs? Did you just primarily farm?
VandenBosch: No it, this was after the war, after World War One and we were living in a time of
inflation then as we are right now, it was a period very similar, and he did have a problem
finding work because he had not farmed in the Netherlands. But he worked by the day, in
Inwood, in that area. He did some construction work, helped some farmers, anything he could
get a hold of at the time.
Interviewer: Did the, were the people that lived around you Dutch also? I mean, was like a
community?
VandenBosch: Most of them were, yes. Yes, it was a smaller Dutch community.
Interviewer: Let me see…did you feel discriminated at all because you were an
immigrant?..maybe at that age…
VandenBosch: Not there at first, remember I was only eight-years-old.
Interviewer: That’s true.
VandenBosch: And so I really don’t recall, but I don’t think that was true anyway. I don’t think
there was discrimination as we see it in many areas since that time, other races.
Interviewer: Was your family mobile, I mean was there the ability to move around the country?
Of course, like you say it was a time of inflation.
VandenBosch: You mean as far as transportation was concerned, or…?
Interviewer: Right, and well did you move like from city to city, like in years…?
�VandenBosch: Yes, but not as often. The rate of people moving I think today, is something like
the every five years, the average isn’t it? At that time I don’t think it was anywhere near that,
probably once in every ten or twelve years. But we moved to Inwood and lived there for a very
short time and then we moved to Steam Minnesota, and we lived there for a very short time and
we moved Sault Center, Iowa. And that was, all these communities were not too far apart, but we
lived in Sault Center Iowa for only a very short time and my father died. See we arrived in 1920,
and in January of 1922 my father died, and he didn’t like this country. He would’ve moved back
for anything in the world.
Interviewer: Why? Do you know?
VandenBosch: Well I think for one reason was that he couldn’t find the kind of work that he was
accustomed to in the Netherlands. And it was a time of inflation, prices were skyrocketing. They
had just a little money when they came and everything was used up on just the necessary things
to start a home, and so he couldn’t find the work, I think this was mostly it. And he had
intentions of going to Chicago, finding something to do and earning enough money to go back,
but he died.
Interviewer: How, who took care of you?
VandenBosch: Well my mother was left alone of course with five of us, I was the oldest and the
neighbors were very good, they understood he was thirty-six-years-old when he died, see. So
they were sympathetic and helpful. But at the same time it was a real struggle for her. And we, I
remember that we got assistance from the county, as a widow’s pension, she got a widow’s
pension. Which was a very small pension, but it helped.
Interviewer: Well sure. How, boy in your case, how did the Depression affect you? I mean, what
really…?
VandenBosch: Well the Depression of course came a little later for us, and the height of the
Depression was just prior to the Roosevelt administration in 1932, it was when Hoover was
president and yes it affected everyone there, the farmers as well. Then I recall that when
Roosevelt was elected, the farm program at that time was that all the farmers because the price of
the meat and pork and everything was so low that all the farmers should kill all the little pigs that
they raised. And many people, there were conservative areas there, a conservative Dutch
community, and many people didn’t go along with that, and so they didn’t all participate in that
program because they couldn’t see killing these little pigs. But they did. After this became a
policy I remember that the farmer that I happened to be with, decided the following year not to
raise any pigs, that’s how he cooperated with it.
Interviewer: Boy, this is really interesting. Tell me about your experiences with World War II.
Did you serve…?
�VandenBosch: I was too young to really know what world, what? World War II? Oh, that’s
different.
Interviewer: You probably were…
VandenBosch: Well yes, I was married and we had a family then. And I was classified 3A,
because of my family and because I had worked in the defense plan. I was working at the
Winters and Crampton Company at that time, as a Precision Inspector in Grandville, Michigan.
Later on this became known as the Jervis (?) Corporation, but I worked as an inspector there.
Interviewer: Are you a member of the Dutch Immigrant Society?
VandenBosch: No I am not.
Interviewer: Oh, I just wondered. I was just curious.
Man: He was. He didn’t pay his dues.
VandenBosch: I was. I slipped, I slipped, I didn’t pay my dues and I was expelled.
Man: Yep…(muffled laugh)
Interviewer: I’m sorry I didn’t mean to…I was just…I was..
VandenBosch: No, we were just having a little fun here.
Interviewer: Do you make any trips back to the Netherlands?
VandenBosch: I never have, no I’ve never gone back, I hope sometime to get back.
Interviewer: What are your feelings about America today, as opposed, I mean do you feel any
differently as opposed to Depression times, I mean as far as any more loyalty to the Netherlands
then than you do now, or just because you’ve been, were so young and raised here, do you feel,
you don’t feel any different?
VandenBosch: Well I think that, as your parents trained you of course, you never lose that, well
that feeling for your place of birth, no matter where that is or how long you’ve departed from it,
it’s always been your place of birth and you have a certain loyalty to that. But being only eightyears-old, or seven when I arrived here you don’t have the same feeling as, for example, an older
person who has gone through all the political programs and knows more about the country than I
do.
Interviewer: Do you find any, this will kind of wind us up now I think, do you find any problems
now at all with any discrimination? Of course, nobody really knows that you’re, I mean, do you
think the Dutch right now, like for instance the members of the society, do they find any
problems?
�VandenBosch: I, I doubt it.
Interviewer: I mean accepting…
VandenBosch:I think there is a real acceptance on the part of the people of this area to the Dutch.
I think this would be true of other nationalities as well. I think there is a very good understanding
amongst the people here in that respect.
Interviewer: Very good. Thank you very much.
VandenBosch: You are welcome.
D
Depression, the · 2, 3
Dutch Immigrant Society · 3
W
Winters and Crampton Company · 3
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/64a9d667c17d048346729ff669aeedce.mp3
cb090309654996c7d6d1244abef0da02
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Grand Rapids Oral Histories
Subject
The topic of the resource
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Local histories
Memoirs
Michigan--History
Oral histories (document genre)
Description
An account of the resource
Taped and transcribed interviews conducted in the early 1970s primarily of the children and grandchildren of many of the founders of Grand Rapids, Michigan; many of whom were residents of the Heritage Hill neighborhood. Interviews were collected to develop a significant collection of oral resources that would supplement other primary and secondary local history materials. Initially funded as a private project, Grand Valley State College (now University) assumed responsibility for continuing the project until 1977.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Various
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/452">Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf; audio/mp3
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text; Sound
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-23
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1971 - 1977
Sound
A resource primarily intended to be heard. Examples include a music playback file format, an audio compact disc, and recorded speech or sounds.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-23_VandenBosch
Title
A name given to the resource
VandenBosch, Gerritt
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
VandenBosch, Gerritt
Description
An account of the resource
Gerritt VandenBosch arrived in New York on Memorial Day, 1920. From there he moved to Inwood, Iowa. He discusses being a Dutch immigrant during the Depression.
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Michigan--History
Local histories
Memoirs
Oral histories (document genre)
Grand Rapids (Mich.)
Personal narratives
Heritage Hill (Grand Rapids, Mich.)
Grand Valley State University
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Sound
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
audio/mp3
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
Grand Rapids oral history collection (RHC-23)
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cff294a853b69bddaf3b2d49d4409914.pdf
42474b66a177d60c755f47bf8bbed748
PDF Text
Text
Trevor Vance
04/26/2020
COVID-19 Journaling
As a student at Grand Valley State University I remember getting an email in the afternoon the
Thursday we got back from Spring Break. It said that the school will be temporarily closing and
that we should all go home. I was at the gym and everyone there was shocked. No one thought
that it would have come to that, but I am thankful it did. I think the university to the necessary
steps to keep everyone safe. I lived in an apartment with friends and we all started packing the
next day to had home. It was a wild experience. It almost felt like I was dreaming. I was taking a
sociology class at the time and the first day of class we discussed COVID-19 and none of us
thought it would have got this big. We tracked it everyday until we eventually got sent home. I
was able to pack up all my belongings and bring them home, but I did not have much down at
my apartment. I did it by myself and headed back up north to my parents’ house.
Before we got sent home, I had all A’s in my classes and I still currently have all A’s after
several weeks of turning online. All my professors did a great job transitioning to online and still
giving us the material, we needed to succeed. My professors sent out little motivational and
“Stay safe” emails every now and then. They also checked up on us and make sure we had
everything we needed to succeed so that was amazing. It was nice knowing that they had our
backs if we needed anything. I believe that both the professors and myself handles the situation
very well.
The one thing I did not like about being sent home is that I didn’t have a gym. The gym is a huge
part of my life and being without it for so long has mentally and physically worn me down. I
personally believe that gyms should be able to stay open because for a lot of people that is their
safe haven. In order to be myself I need workout and I haven’t been able to do that. That has
been the hardest part about the whole situation in my opinion.
My daily life consists of doing online work, working around the house, getting stuff ready for my
graduate school application, and other little things. There is not much to do because you
technically aren’t supposed to leave the house unless you need something. My family has been
very supportive, and we are getting through this situation together. We play board games, do
stuff outside, watch movies together, etc. One thing that I love is that we eat dinner around the
table again. We haven’t done this in over a decade so it is nice to have this back again.
I do not have a job off of campus so I can not speak on that matter.
Getting everyday items like groceries and household items is a wild experience. Everyone avoids
everyone and wears masks and gloves and you could see real concern in their eyes. There has not
been shortages of supplies from where I am from (northern Michigan). People just stay to
themselves and get in and out of the store. You don’t see any friendly conversations going on.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 Journals
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries
Description
An account of the resource
This collection of journals and personal narratives was solicited from the GVSU community by archivists of the University Libraries during the events of the 2020 COVID-19 global pandemic. During this unprecedented crisis the university closed suddenly, following federal and state guidelines of social distancing to reduce the spread of the novel coronavirus. The university closed its campuses on March 12, 2020, and quickly moved students out of campus housing. Faculty swiftly transitioned to fully-online teaching for the remainder of the Winter 2020 semester, and all campus events, including commencement, were cancelled.
The purpose of the COVID-19 Journaling Project was to document the individual and personal experiences of GVSU’s students, staff, faculty, and the wider community during this time of international crisis. Some project participants were university student employees who were compensated for their journaling. Other participants were granted stipends or extra credit for submitting entries to the archives. Still others participated without any compensation or credit. The University Archives remains grateful to all who submitted journals, for helping us to understand the impact of this crisis on our community.
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
Subject
The topic of the resource
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Text
A resource consisting primarily of words for reading. Examples include books, letters, dissertations, poems, newspapers, articles, archives of mailing lists. Note that facsimiles or images of texts are still of the genre Text.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
COVID-19_2020-04-26_VanceTrevor
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vance, Trevor
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2020-04-26
Title
A name given to the resource
COVID-19 Journal
Description
An account of the resource
Journal of GVSU student Trevor Vance's experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Subject
The topic of the resource
COVID-19 pandemic, 2019-2020
Epidemics
Grand Valley State University
College students
Personal narratives
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
University Archives. COVID-19 Journaling Project
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University University Libraries. Special Collections and University Archives.
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/145fb00f99760eee21652c558afaea9a.pdf
a685440e19ad71a0518ef87b24bf10db
PDF Text
Text
Young Lords
In Lincoln Park
Interviewee: Rebecca “Buffy” Vance
Interviewers: José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez
Location: Grand Valley State University Special Collections
Date: 4/20/2012
Biography and Description
Rebecca “Buffy” Vance was friends with “Stony,” who was a white southerner and one of the main
Young Lords from the Wieland branch of the group before they became human rights activists for
Latinos and the poor. Stony was about 17-years-old then and lived across from Wieland on North
Avenue. His sisters became members of the auxiliary group, the Young Lordettes. Wieland culture was
completely different from the culture at Halsted and Dickens and Burling and Armitage where the other
main group of Young Lords hung out. The difference was that on Wieland and North Avenue, they did
not have to share space with the other Puerto Rican Clubs of Lincoln Park. Pockets of Puerto Ricans left
behind from the destruction wrought by urban renewal in the Puerto Rican barrio of La Clark were still
around then. Wieland Street was one of the streets that still survived. Masao Yamasaki, a man of
Japanese descent, became friends with Stony and other Young lords and tried to help them with
counseling and guidance. Mr. Yamasaki did this through the YMCA, where Young Lords would go for
swimming and basketball. He owned a factory and started providing a few of them, including Stony, with
jobs. And Stony remained in his packaging company for years, becoming a supervisor for the company.
Ms. Vance was never in the Young Lords but grew up in Lincoln Park and attended Alcott Elementary at
2625 North Orchard. Alcott School then had an after school program that would supervise the youth at
night to keep them out of trouble and off the streets. A few of the Young Lords attended Alcott and
�spread the word about the program. They would have to walk 8 to 10 blocks to attend but it did help
some of them as they participated in sports, arts and crafts, and other activities. There were also the
social dances, where youth danced to tunes such as “Wipe-out,” “Twine Time,” “Monkey Time,” and
“Louie Louie.” Today Ms. Vance today works at the University of Illinois Circle Campus as Assistant to
Communications and Development and Alumni Relations. Prior to joining the College of Law, she
worked as a development Secretary for Will AM-FM-TV. Ms. Vance has also worked at Amdocs Inc. and
in benefit planning.
�
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6c6e9d7f290f4672e8eb4132feb3895b.mp4
415dcc2beccd119eb3f262d68b8299db
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Young Lords in Lincoln Park Collection
Subject
The topic of the resource
Young Lords (Organization)
Puerto Ricans--United States
Civil Rights--United States--History
Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.)
Personal narratives
Social justice
Community activists--Illinois--Chicago
Description
An account of the resource
Collection of oral history interviews and digitized materials documenting the history of the Young Lords Organization in Lincoln Park, Chicago. Interviews were conducted by Young Lords' founder, José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, and documents were digitized from Mr. Jiménez' archives.
The Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection grows out of the ongoing struggle for fair housing, self-determination, and human rights that was launched by Mr. José “Cha-Cha” Jiménez, founder of the Young Lords Movement. This project is dedicated to documenting the history of the displacement of Puerto Ricans, Mejicanos, other Latinos, and the poor from Lincoln Park, as well as the history of the Young Lords nationwide.
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Jiménez, José, 1948-
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park collection (RHC-65)</a>
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2017-04-25
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Language
A language of the resource
eng
spa
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-65
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
2012-2017
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Título
Spanish language Title entry
Rebecca “Buffy” Vance vídeo entrevista y biografía
Sujetos
Spanish language Subject terms
Young Lords (Organización)
Puertorriqueños--Estados Unidos
Derechos civiles--Estados Unidos--Historia
Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.)
Narrativas personales
Justicia social
Activistas comunitarios--Illinois--Chicago
Source
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/491">Young Lords in Lincoln Park (RHC-65)</a>
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-65_Vance_Rebecca
Title
A name given to the resource
Rebecca “Buffy” Vance inerview and biography
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Vance, Rebecca
Description
An account of the resource
Rebecca “Buffy” Vance was friends with “Stony,” who was a white southerner and one of the main Young Lords from the Wieland branch of the group before they became human rights activists for Latinos and the poor. Stony was about 17-years-old then and lived across from Wieland on North Avenue. His sisters became members of the auxiliary group, the Young Lordettes. Wieland culture was completely different from the culture at Halsted and Dickens and Burling and Armitage where the other main group of Young Lords hung out. The difference was that on Wieland and North Avenue, they did not have to share space with the other Puerto Rican Clubs of Lincoln Park. Pockets of Puerto Ricans left behind from the destruction wrought by urban renewal in the Puerto Rican barrio of La Clark were still around then. Wieland Street was one of the streets that still survived. Masao Yamasaki, a man of Japanese descent, became friends with Stony and other Young lords and tried to help them with counseling and guidance. Mr. Yamasaki did this through the YMCA, where Young Lords would go for swimming and basketball. He owned a factory and started providing a few of them, including Stony, with jobs. And Stony remained in his packaging company for years, becoming a supervisor for the company. Ms. Vance was never in the Young Lords but grew up in Lincoln Park and attended Alcott Elementary at 2625 North Orchard. Alcott School then had an after school program that would supervise the youth at night to keep them out of trouble and off the streets. A few of the Young Lords attended Alcott and spread the word about the program. They would have to walk 8 to 10 blocks to attend but it did help some of them as they participated in sports, arts and crafts, and other activities. There were also the social dances, where youth danced to tunes such as “Wipe-out,” “Twine Time,” “Monkey Time,” and “Louie Louie.” Today Ms. Vance today works at the University of Illinois Circle Campus as Assistant to Communications and Development and Alumni Relations. Prior to joining the College of Law, she worked as a development Secretary for Will AM-FM-TV. Ms. Vance has also worked at Amdocs Inc. and in benefit planning.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Jiménez, José, 1948-
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Young Lords (Organization)
Puerto Ricans--United States
Civil Rights--United States--History
Lincoln Park (Chicago, Ill.)
Personal narratives
Social justice
Community activists--Illinois--Chicago
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
video/mp4
application/pdf
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2012-04-20