1 24 42 https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3b861a2c1d9aec50c02c08fdbfa8379e.pdf 4b747c8c0a824e81890f1d0b7b2dbf4d PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Miss Mildred Schulz Interviewed in Fall 1974 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #53 (30:19) Biographical Information Mildred Schulz was born in Sturgis, St. Joseph County, Michigan on 15 November 1890. She died in Grand Rapids on 6 January 1985 at the age of 94 and is buried in Greenwood Cemetery, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Miss Schulz never married. She was the daughter of William J. Schulz and Mary L. Peters. William Schulz was born in Germany in May 1860 and immigrated to the USA in 1864 according to census records. He was a wood carver. Mary Peters was born Aug 1860 in Germany and immigrated to the USA in 1871 according to census records. William and Mary were married in Chicago, Illinois on 1 June 1889. Mildred had a sister named Marie who was born in Illinois in September, 1894. The family name is spelled consistently as SCHULZ in the city directory, census, birth and marriage records that were located. The name is found spelled SCHULTZ in Mildred‟s obituary. ___________ Mildred: …and not a word, you had been there said that I had been there either one or one and a half years and I thought you said that he started when it was in nineteen…..let‟s see nineteen sixteen, I think he said. Near as he could remember he couldn‟t just remember either and the other girl that worked there was a bookkeeper and I didn‟t know her too well, but she worked downstairs and I know about two and a half to three years ago, my sister died, she lived with me here and he, this girl sent a bouquet of flowers and I thanked her for it and everything, but since that time I cannot find out where she is. Interviewer: Was this before the first World War that you started to work for them or after the first World War? Mildred: It was after. Interviewer: Mildred: After. Sometime in the twenties, maybe? I don‟t know, yes, I imagine so. Interviewer: But Mr. Voigt was still alive? �2 Mildred: Yes, all three of them. All three of them were still alive. Interviewer: And Papa was a big fat man? Mildred: The Papa was what? Interviewer: That he was a pretty big man. Mildred: Yes. You mean their father? Interviewer: Yes, their father. Was he alive when you started to work there? Mildred: Oh, no, I never saw him. Interviewer: Oh, you never saw him? Mildred: No. The brothers were the boss then. Interviewer: I see. Who was the boss? Was it Carl that was the boss? Mildred: No, Frank. He was the boss. That is, he was the older one, I don‟t know whether he was the boss or not but. The rest of them wouldn‟t have it that he was boss when I‟m around, I guess. Interviewer: worked? I was wondering, how many hours a week, do you remember how long you Mildred: How many hours? Interviewer: Mildred: Did you work Saturday, you worked Saturdays? No, we never worked on Saturdays. Interviewer: Never worked on Saturdays? Mildred: I think, once in a while on Saturday morning that we would come down you know and I believe it‟s every third or fourth Saturday morning. And finally I said the man I work for I said what‟s the use of coming down here on Saturday? I said you don‟t come down here until twelve o‟clock. I said and that means I got to sit around all afternoon, you know just waiting for your two or three letters. He said “well that‟s silly” he says I, he was kind of German, he talked kind of German he said “that„s silly,” he said, “well, we won‟t come down anymore on Saturday.” Interviewer: Oh, that was kind of nice for you, gave you a day off, extra day off. Mildred: Yes, and we quit at five o‟clock and as far as … �3 Interviewer: What time did you go to work in the morning? Mildred: Well, he said we could come anytime we wanted to; didn‟t make any difference to them. As long as I had my, get my work finished, you know. And Carl was real nice too. I did quite a lot of work for him. Interviewer: Did you? Mildred: He had more letters than anyone else. Interviewer: Yes, was that because he did more like sales work for the…? Mildred: Yes, you see Frank Voigt, I don‟t know, he never got around in time. I don‟t know he slept too late or …what was the matter with him. But the younger Voigt, he was there on time. I never took his work very much, some way or other. Interviewer: Well, do you, were you conscience of their dividing up the responsibility like one say was in charge of production and one in charge of sales. Or was it more or less formal than that? Mildred: No, it was kinds all the same, you know. Course they all had different jobs. The older man that I worked for he just had a few letters a day and they were mostly personal. And the middle one would handle most of the letters and things. Then I had charge of the all the bookings of the flour. Like we sent flour to Australia and every place like that. Interviewer: Oh, did you? Mildred: Quite a few places and they would book maybe fifty cars or a hundred cars of flour on certain date and then they would order it out. You know just as they needed it. They had the various sizes. There were eighths and halves and all the different grades of flour. Interviewer: I see. Mildred: That was kind of a… Interviewer: An eighth or half would be eighth of a car load or half a car load? Mildred: No, there would be in eighths that would be like a eight pound sack or in it would be half sacks you know and eight sacks like that. Interviewer: I see. Mildred: Crescent was our main grade of flour. Interviewer: Was the difference between Crescent Star a difference in quality? I mean one was better flour than the other? �4 Mildred: No, the Crescent was a general flour used by almost all housewives and then their Columbian flour was a spring wheat flour that was just that was just for bread. Suppose to just for bread although you could make bread out of Crescent too. But it was more springy like, you know, it was nice flour. The cake flour was that was what they called Royal Cake Flour that was handled by all the fancy restaurants here in town. Interviewer: Mildred: The pastry cooks. It was a beautiful flour. Interviewer: Yes, that was really finely milled bleached flour, I suspect. Mildred: Yes, You know they would never, would put their cake flour in the little cartons like you see it now days, you know and I used to say to them you know you‟d sell a lot more cake flour I said if you put it in those fancy little cartons, you know. No, we don‟t want to do that. They would never take advice from anyone. But see then the other people got all the flour orders here in town – the cake flour orders - and they didn‟t. He says funny we don‟t sell more cake flour. I said well I told you why. But he wouldn‟t take it that way. Interviewer: Oh, that‟s funny. And they sold it as far away as Australia? Mildred: Yes, Australia and I think it was Australia, foreign countries. They had several where they would book maybe a hundred carloads of flour or something like that and then order it out you know. They‟d try to book it, we had a little book where we translated how many barrels and how many tons that they would book, you know. It was an interesting place to work and I don‟t know why I stayed so long. Everybody said why don‟t you get out and get more money someplace else maybe. I said, well I can walk back and forth from there. You know where the mills were? Interviewer: Yes, down along the river, down here, weren‟t they? Mildred: One was there and the other was the river at Pearl Street. Interviewer: Yes, and that really you were within easy walking distance of your job. Mildred: Yes, I was, you know, I could come home at noon and I don‟t know I kind of liked it there, you know. Interviewer: Did that really pay less than other places in town? Mildred: They did at that time. I thought. Of course nobody got what they get now, I guess Interviewer: No, course I hope the prices aren‟t what they get now either. My goodness. �5 Mildred: Well, it was a very nice place to work as far as that goes. That was the only thing I never thought they paid quite as much as they should have and I know when I went to work for the lawyer I‟d get quite a bit more money just to start and I didn‟t know a thing about law. Interviewer: Do you remember how much they paid you when you quit? At the time you quit. How much were you making? Mildred: Well, what? Interviewer: The time you quit working then how much were you making a week? How much money did they pay you a week? I don‟t even know what wage scales were like then you know? Mildred: Well, I don‟t remember it was pretty close to I think, it was pretty close to fifty dollars. Maybe it was fifty, I don‟t know, I can‟t remember exactly how much it was. But I know I got more at the lawyer‟s offices, but I didn‟t like it there. You know I didn‟t, after you learn law, did you know much about law? Interviewer: Not a great deal. Mildred: After you learn law, why then it is very easy. Interviewer: Yes, oh, we are working fine (referring to the tape recorder). Mildred: The same thing all the time. Interviewer: Probably monotonous, after you‟ve been in the mills. Mildred: I imagine it would be, I was there five years and that was enough for me. I didn‟t like the people I worked for too well. Interviewer: That makes a difference. If the Voigt‟s were easy going, easy people to get along with, was that true of all three brothers? That they were pretty easy to get along with? Mildred: Yes Interviewer: Or didn‟t you have much contact? Mildred: Not among themselves, they fought like the dickens among themselves, just like brothers do now days, you know, little kids as well as older ones. I don‟t know, they were always nice to us. I like it, I think when I quit, well they all quit because they went out of business, you see. Interviewer: Yes, that was in the fifties sometime, was it? Mildred: I don‟t remember the years they went out of business. Interviewer: Yes. �6 Mildred: They didn‟t like it because the men all went on strike, two different strikes. And they weren‟t going to. I know, Ralph went out and said, if you fellows get cold out there, come on down in the basement here, it will be warmer for you. Interviewer: This is when they were on strike? Mildred: This is when they were on strike, you know. Interviewer: It was nice in those days, people knew you by name, when you worked for somebody. Mildred: You‟re always nice to the men, too. But, see they didn‟t get enough money, either. Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: That was the reason they went on strike you know. Interviewer: Is, was the milling business, did they have somehow have a way for storing that wheat up and stretching the milling season, or was it pretty seasonal business? Were you rushed at some times of the year and no business at other? Mildred: Sometimes in the year when they had new crops came on, why they have a spurt in the business, but they did a real good business. Ralph says the reason we didn‟t lose any money in our mill, that was the oldest one, I mean the younger one. I called on him when he was sick, the reason we didn‟t have any great losses they way the firms do now a days and go out of business is because we had it up here. Interviewer: Bright boy. Mildred: Yes. Interviewer: Well, they didn‟t have labor unions to contend with and didn‟t have a lot of other things I guess. They moved. They lived over on the West side, here for a long time. Mildred: One time, on Mt. Vernon…. Interviewer: And then they moved over. Mildred: It must have been a long time, before I went to work there. Interviewer: I am sure it was. Mildred: I can remember after that it was purchased by, let‟s see who was that, who did buy that now? A home for people you came to town here that didn‟t have any work, you know. Interviewer: Oh, Yes. �7 Mildred: Until they could get work, they could stay there, you know. Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: What do they call that place? It is… they have a place now on College. Interviewer: Is it Evangeline Booth? Mildred: No, Interviewer: No, I don‟t know what it is. Mildred: It is real nice. I know a girl who lived there, she was trying to get a job and she finally landed a job at the Voigt Milling Company. Then, they‟re supposed to get out and find a place to live, you see. Interviewer: How many of you worked in the office there? Mildred: There were three of us up at the, that worked upstairs and I think there were eight who worked downstairs. Interviewer: Yes, you did secretary work but you also did booking, order booking. Mildred: Yes, Interviewer: It was probably a little more fun to have more variety. Mildred: Yes, Interviewer: Mr. Radke, that one that mentioned that is still living, was he in the office with there you? A bookkeeper or something? Mildred: He wasn‟t a bookkeeper. He did drive a truck for a long time. I don‟t know what he did towards the last. He guess he acted like a salesman, too. Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: They wanted him to stay at the Voigt house; he and his wife stay there while after all until they got the thing settled where they were going to go and what they were going to do. But he said I don‟t want to be tied down there. Interviewer: You went to see Ralph when he was sick? Just a few years ago? Mildred: Yes, in the hospital and then he fell and broke his, I don‟t know his leg or just injured it, I guess. And we went to the hospital to see him, my sister and I. And then we went to his home several times to see him. �8 Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: And he said he appreciated it so much. Interviewer: Have you been in the house, since they have made a museum out of it? Mildred: What‟s that? Interviewer: Have you been over in the house since they made a museum out of it? Mildred: No, a friend of mine that wanted me to go there with her. They advertise in the paper to come look at the house, and I said I have been in that house so many different times, why should I pay money to go see it. Interviewer: Yes, was he in the downstairs bedroom, when you went over, was he using the downstairs bedroom? Mildred: I don‟t know if it was a downstairs bedroom or something they made into a bedroom. Interviewer: Actually it was bedroom because there is a bathroom right beside it. Mildred: Is that right? Interviewer: It was Mr. and Mrs. Voigt‟s bedroom, at one time. And then the kids were all upstairs. Mildred: Is the third floor still there? Interviewer: The third floor is, was a ballroom, I guess. Now, it is just full of storage. They have an awful lot of stuff stored up there. Mildred: Oh. I imagine so. Interviewer: Because… Mildred: Because the last time I went there, no it was another time that I went there, and he had all kinds of fancy little vases you know, awful pretty things and so I said, “What are you going to do with all these vases?” I thought maybe he would give me one seeing how I worked for him for so many years. He said, “Nobody is going to get anything around here until after I‟m gone.” Interviewer: He was pretty generous to leave that house to the city. Mildred: He didn‟t know what to do with it, you see. He was the last one, he had a niece that wanted, but she had a home of her own, too. But he was always so crazy about her. The first time I met her I couldn‟t see her for dust, I don‟t know. She was kind of rough and tall. Interviewer: Was that Mrs. Perkins‟ daughter? �9 Mildred: Yes, Mrs. Perkins‟ daughter. Mrs. Perkins was so nice. The sisters were real nice. Did you know Mrs. Hake? Interviewer: I‟ve never known any of them because I have just been in town for three or four years. I Mrs. Perkins and Mrs. Hake were both very nice people, weren‟t they? Mildred: Yes, Dr. Hake use to be my father‟s doctor. Interviewer: Oh, did he? Mildred: He was a very good doctor, but he was kind of rough talking too, you know? But he got the people cured, I guess. Interviewer: Well, that‟s the main thing, I guess. Miss Emma Voigt, the one who always stayed at home, didn‟t marry. We hear less about her, than we do about the others. Mildred: She was real nice. Interviewer: Oh, was she? You probably remember her? Mildred: I never knew her too well, but she would come down to the mill once in a while. She would come in and shake hands with us, she was friendly. Interviewer: Yes, one of the people who came through, used, came through on one of the days we had the house open, worked at the house one time. And she was telling us that….. Mildred: What was her name? Dort something Interviewer: Mrs. Dorr, and I don‟t know what her first name was. Mildred: What was her name? Interviewer: Dorr, I think it was. Mildred: Oh, I remember she was there when Carl was sick. I guess with the last sickness he had, she took care of him. Interviewer: Oh, he was married at one time too, wasn‟t he? I heard from someone that she was a very pretty woman. She must have died? Mildred: You mean Carl‟s wife? I never met her or anything. But I know he always called himself a bachelor. Interviewer: Oh, Mildred: So, I said to the people at work, “hasn‟t he ever been married?” They said, “oh yes, he is no bachelor.” He wanted me to think, he was a bachelor. �10 Interviewer: A gay blade! Mildred: He married, I understand some woman that lived in Chicago and she had a job in one of the big stores there, Marshall Fields, or some big store. She worked there. Interviewer: Oh. Mildred: They said. I don‟t know, I never met her. He went to Chicago at different times. They were a peculiar family in regards to a car; nobody could have any car, only the Voigt car. Interviewer: Just one? Mildred: And whenever they went any place they had to go together. Interviewer: Oh, my, that‟s not very modern. Mildred: I couldn‟t understand it. Interviewer: You mean each one of those brothers, didn‟t have a car of his own? Mildred: No. Interviewer: Just the Voigt car? Mildred: Just the Voigt car. Interviewer: That must have led to a lot of fights, I would think. Mildred: I think so too. They seemed perfectly happy over it. Interviewer: Did they have a chauffeur, or did they drive it themselves? Mildred: Ralph drove it. Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: Ralph always drove it. Interviewer: Was it a big car? They go for a pretty big drive? Mildred: The older brother never went with them on these trips, as far as I know. Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: He would fight with them all the time, I guess. Well, we had a lot of fun in that place though, awful lot of fun. Interviewer: Oh, that‟s good. I think that matters almost as much as being paid. You know you can stand to be paid a little less if you are having a good time when you work. You found that �11 out when you went to work for the lawyers, I guess, didn‟t you. There is more to life than money. Mildred: Oh, dear, I don‟t know. The older of the lawyer fellows was very brilliant. He was one of these big fat fellows that we always called him “five-five”. I don‟t know people came and called from all over for his advice. Interviewer: Yes, Mildred: So. I guess he must have been very brilliant. And the middle one, I went to court one day for a trial. In the court, he keeled over, and had a stroke or something. I think it was a stroke. They took him to the hospital and he only lived a few days. Just before that, he had called me up. I was on a jury case. He called me up and said this girl was going on a vacation. That was after I had quit you see. Would I take over and come and work for him? I said sure I would be glad to. I worked for him mostly anyway there. Then somebody said he keeled over in court, you know, I couldn‟t imagine. Interviewer: That‟s really bad. Mildred: His wife always said she had a hard time trying to calming him down, he always got excited about every case he had, you know. Interviewer: Probably had high blood pressure, nobody knew it in those days. Mildred: I am have too, mine‟s two hundred and ten. Interviewer: Oh, really? Mildred: The time before I last went to the doctor and the last time I went to the doctor, it was down about thirty-five degrees. Interviewer: You‟ve improved. You‟re not ever going to let it that high… Mildred: I don‟t know why it would be so high; here I am all by myself… Interviewer: You don‟t feel like you get excited that much, huh? Say, one story you could probably check out for us is somebody told us, you know we are always picking up rumors. You know when we go to check them out, not all of them turn out to be true. One of the things we had told to us was when you worked in the office down there, they were very stingy about electric lights and you had to cluster the desks together, so you could all work off one light bulb. Was that true? Mildred: I didn‟t understand just what you said, about the windows? �12 Interviewer: No, the light bulbs, that they didn‟t use, that somebody told us you had to put the desks together so you could all use the same light bulb in the office, that they didn‟t want to have two or three lights burning, that‟s not true. Mildred: We ran the thing, we were in an office by ourselves, and they had their offices, we had our toilet, and they had their toilet. But they were always using ours. I don‟t know why, but…. Interviewer: Maybe they like it better. Did the brothers have a private office of their own or did they share an office? Mildred: Ralph‟s office was downstairs, that‟s the younger one; he had just a desk downstairs. And the other two had the other two rooms upstairs. Interviewer: So they each had an office and he didn‟t rate an office by himself? Mildred: It didn‟t have anything to do with the lights; we ran the thing to suit ourselves. Interviewer: Oh, you did. Mildred: And the heat and everything, we ran by ourselves. Interviewer: They didn‟t tell you, you couldn‟t have enough heat. Mildred: No. Interviewer: You know these rumors get started, one of the rumors that we had heard… Mildred: How did you happen to get my name? Interviewer: Now, I‟ll have to look. Mildred: I know there is a place here in town that handles all the stuff from the homes like that. Interviewer: Hmmm. Now, I don‟t know how we got your name. I, all the women who worked down there put down on cards the names of anybody they had heard that was connected with the family or the business and I‟m suppose to check them out and sometimes I don‟t even know how the name came. Now there‟s a Mrs. Balser, who worked for the Voigts. Here is Radke Mildred: Radke. Interviewer: Radke. On the west side, lives at Tamarack, it says here. Mildred: He did live there for awhile. Interviewer: He‟s on Ninth Street. �13 Mildred: His wife died and he got married again and I imagine he bought this house on Ninth because I called him up the other night. Interviewer: He‟s mentioned and I haven‟t been to see him yet, and there is another one here Mr. Ralph Zacharias. Mildred: Mr.who? Interviewer: Ralph Zacharias. Mildred: No, I never knew him. Interviewer: It says he worked for the Voigt Mills eight eighty-one Sixty-first Street, southeast. That would be way southeast. Well, you know sometimes I‟ve checked out a couple of these names and it turns out they haven‟t been, they haven‟t known the Voigt‟s Mildred: They may have worked in the mill, you know storing and packing of flour. Interviewer: Yes, and that flour was really well known, wasn‟t it as far as all over the Midwest. Mildred: It was very good flour and they had a very good business, they always did have. I don‟t know what happened; they didn‟t want to give the fellows any more money. They wanted to hang on to their money. Interviewer: It was hard because they felt like their father had built up the business. Mildred: Yes. It used to be the Voigt Herpolsheimer Company. Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: Of course, I didn‟t know that. Interviewer: That was before your time, then. Mildred: Yes, that was the old man, their father. Interviewer: Did they ever speak of him very much? Mildred: Once in a great while. No, I never heard. I never did hear them talk about him. I asked Ralph one time, How come you never got married, I said to Ralph you know and he said “My goodness, I have too much to take care of here. How can I take care of all that? I couldn‟t keep a house and do that too.” I said “your father did” and I think he had seven or eight or nine children. “He was married and had all those kids.” And he said “times were different then.” Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: I know he went with a woman a long time. �14 Interviewer: Didn‟t get married? Mildred: Didn‟t get married. As far as I know anyway. Interviewer: The sisters never did come to the business, except occasionally. Mildred: They had an interest in the buildings I guess when they first bought those two mills; then the sisters had part of it. I know when they sold the mills, the sister Emma got a certain portion of it. Interviewer: Yes. Mildred: Mrs…..The other one, what is her name now, the younger one? Interviewer: Mrs. Perkins. Mildred: Perkins, Mrs. Perkins, she was gone then but her daughter and son got the mother‟s share. Interviewer: Her son was Voigt Perkins, right? Mildred: Right, Voigt Perkins. Interviewer: Then her daughter married a man named DuBay [Dubee], and they have got one son. Mildred: None of them liked [Arend V.] Dubee. I don‟t know why, he used to work at Michigan Trust Co. and I used to know a girl that worked there and she didn‟t like him either. She said he never did anything to me. Interviewer: Their son, Charles Dubee has just been in the hospital with a heart attack for. He is such a young man, too, just in his forties. He‟s had a very severe coronary…. Mildred: I saw him at Ralph‟s funeral, I think. He was there. I thought he was Voigt Perkins because he looked so much like him. Interviewer: Yes. Did they all run to be heavy people? Mildred: Were they what? Interviewer: Were they all pretty heavy people? Mildred: No, just the older fellow, Frank .He was the only one that was heavy, the rest of them were just medium. Interviewer: Yes. �15 Mildred: Well, Ralph inclined to be that way a little bit too. Interviewer: Not spectacularly, this young Dubee guy is really heavy. Mildred: Nice looking man, like my sister said when we went there the first time and she said look he‟s still stylish looking. He was an old man then but you couldn‟t help but realize that he was like he was kind of almost nobility, you might say. Interviewer: That‟s good to know. Mildred: He wanted everybody to think that he was a little better than the rest of them. I don‟t know why, I just had that opinion. Carl never paid any attention and Frank didn‟t either. Interviewer: Neither of them went east to school. Now Ralph went east to college, didn‟t he? He went to Yale. The other brothers didn‟t, did they? Mildred: I don‟t know whether the older one ever went, but the second one, no, he couldn‟t even get through school he said his dad had to take him out of school and put him in Howe University. Interviewer: Oh, I see. Mildred: Someplace in Ohio I guess. So they said they had to do that with him. I said how come Ralph went to Yale, because I didn‟t he was quite as brilliant as the rest of them. Well, He said my father put him through Yale. I said well that‟s it then, it‟s the money isn‟t it? And Ralph heard me say that but he said it no wasn‟t the money he would not have that way. Carl said to Ralph you know she is right don‟t you. Interviewer: You talk to me like you had a pretty free life there? Mildred: We did, we had a nice… Interviewer: Well, that‟s good, are you alone here? Do you live alone now? Mildred: My sister died two and a half years ago. Interviewer: This is pretty good that you are able to stay on and take care of the house, be here by yourself. Mildred: Everybody says I‟m real brave, but my sister‟s bedroom was there and I can‟t even clean in there, I go all to pieces. Interviewer: Yes, well it is hard when you lived with someone for awhile. Mildred: I had her right in my arms. I was lifting her from her chair. I was going to put her in bed. I had right a hold of her. She just grunted three times and fell over and then I couldn‟t hang on to her. I tried to call a neighbor that was around over there mowing the lawn. He was gone I �16 couldn‟t get him. I finally got my sister‟s sister-in-law and her husband; they just got in the house. They got here within ten or fifteen minutes. She was gone. I knew she was gone then. I thought so anyway. Interviewer: Yes, oh, dear. How long have you been retired? Mildred: Let‟s see, about ten years, I guess. I retired when I was sixty-eight, you see. Interviewer: Hmmm. Sort of nice these days, nowadays they make you retire. Mildred: … about twelve years Mildred: Well, I have a woman staying upstairs. She works at American Laundry, and her husband died just before she came here. She didn‟t want to stay in the house anymore where she lived. She wanted to stay on this side of the river. I don‟t know why she lived here, because her place of work is on the other side of the river. I couldn‟t understand it, you know. INDEX B P Balser, Mrs. · 13 Perkins Family · 9, 14, 15 D R Dubee Family · 14, 15 Radke, Mr. · 7 H V Hake Family · 9 Voigt Family · 1, 3, 5, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 15 Voigt Milling Company · 7 Voigt, Ralph · 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b90928beade4c1cf2ee13d5d0aa4d404.mp3 f406e3a71f01d19205ee98cfa3e65381 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_53Schulz Title A name given to the resource Schulz, Mildred Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Schulz, Mildred Description An account of the resource Mildred Schulz was born in 1890. She worked for Voigt Milling Company as a secretary and bookkeeper for Frank Voigt. She died on January 6, 1985 at the age of 94. 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 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bce7a773d89015269d1fec51a9b34f6c.pdf 169058ef9eec272619643f944aeda675 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mr. and Mrs. George (Helen) Jackoboice Interviewed November 5, 1974 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010-bryant@wellswooster.com Tape # 52 (1:33:37) Biographical Information George Adolphe Jackoboice was born 17 June 1908, the son of Edward J. Jackoboice and Helen Matilda Hake. George was married to Helen Gast about 1937. George passed away 12 January 1987 in Grand Rapids and is buried at Mt. Calvary Cemetery. He was chairman of Monarch Hydraulics, Inc. Besides three sons and their families, George was survived by his wife, Helen. Helen Gast was born 7 August 1910 in Grand Rapids and was the daughter of Peter B. Gast and Emily Alt. Helen died 31 December 2008 in Grand Rapids at the age of 98 years. Helen‟s father, Peter Gast was born in Westphalia, Michigan in 1874, the son of Bernard and Teressa (Platte) Gast. Helen‟s mother, Emily Alt was born in Grand Rapids about 1875, the daughter of Nicholas Alt. The parents were married in Grand Rapids on 29 June 1899. ____________ Interviewer: But you were related to Mrs. Hake‟s family? George: Yes. Is it your grand, your mother or was… Interviewer: George: My? Interviewer: How‟s that? George: Clara Voigt Hake, and I differentiate because I also had a Clara Jackoboice, who was an aunt. But Clara Voigt was married to my mother‟s brother. Interviewer: Yes. George: Interviewer: Doctor William F. Hake. Yes. George: That‟s the background, and but as families we had been well acquainted of course for several generations. Not… Interviewer: George: And you‟re an old Grand Rapids family too, right? Yes, we are. �2 Interviewer: Is it your daughter-in-law, Barbara Jackoboice, who teaches French? Both George and Helen: Yes. Helen: That‟s Tom‟s wife. I have a friend who‟s taking French lessons from her. Interviewer: Helen: Oh, really. Interviewer: Yes, it‟s Peggy Strong and she‟s doing a Smith‟s Club tour of France this year and she‟s brushing up on conversational French… Helen: Oh, I see. Interviewer: …with Barbara, yes. George: Barbara‟s very proficient. Helen: Oh, she‟s lovely, very lovely. George: She graduated from Stanford but spent a year in Paris at the Sorbonne. Interviewer: So she speaks French like French people. Oh, yes fluently. She lived with a French family when she was… George: Interviewer: Well, that‟s nice. You‟re younger than any of the Hake brothers though, aren‟t you or the Voigt brothers? George: Helen: Oh, yes. They were really friends of the family. George: My family. My mother and my father. Interviewer: George: I was going to say that you, that they would be. Oh, another generation, oh yes. Interviewer: Another generation removed from you. You remember any of them though? The Hakes, Voigts? Interviewer: George: Yes, did you know them well? Knew them all. Interviewer: Yes. Yes, because we‟d gotten in some interesting things. I had a talk last week to a gal who‟s a secretary in the Voigt mills, you know? �3 Helen: Yes. She worked for Frank mostly. And… Interviewer: That‟s a long time ago. George: Interviewer: George: Yes. Oh, this is right after the First World War Yes. Cause he has been dead for years. Interviewer: Helen: Who was that? Interviewer: Helen: Yes. Her name was Mildred Schulz and … Did you know her, George? George: No, but Mary Orth, worked over there for years and years. Unfortunately, now Mary Orth, if she were alive would tell you an awful lot. Helen: She‟s gone. Interviewer: Yes, she‟s well, this Miss Schulz said she couldn‟t remember but one person that she thought worked in the offices over there that might still be alive, besides herself. And she‟s just a pretty old lady. Her memory wasn‟t good on dates when things had happen. She was in think well up in her eighties. And it was funny cause the week before I talked to a Mrs. McLachlan who was the daughter of the man, who built the house. A man named Jungbaecker, John Jungbaecker. And I think he built for the Hake family. George: Hotel. Interviewer: George: Interviewer: Yes. I think he also built, I‟m guessing, but I think, he also built the old Charlevoix Oh, did he? Where the Olds Manor is now, my family once owned. Oh, I didn‟t know that. George: Well, originally it was known as the Rasch House way back in early history. Frances Rasch is my grandmother. And then the Rasch House was replaced by a hotel called the Clarendon. And then the Clarendon had a name change and was called the Charlevoix. Because a man by the name of Bedford, who had the island house in Charlevoix, had a second operation in Grand Rapids and that was the Charlevoix Hotel. We did not operate the hotel. We owned the building and the land and leased it to Bedford. Bedford incidentally was one of the two men who killed, murdered King Strang. Remember the story of…? �4 Interviewer: Yes, Bedford was …. George: Interviewer: George: Helen: Yes, I remember very well. We always said he was so dapper in his youth. He was. Interviewer: Are you also a native of Grand Rapids? Yes, my maiden name was Gast. So Peter was my father. Interviewer: George: Helen: One of the better known murder cases around here. You remember old Bedford? George: Helen: Oh yes, I remember reading that, in the old papers. Oh, yes. A well known family. Gast Motor Sales. My mother was an Alt. Interviewer: Well, that‟s interesting. You both have such deep roots. George: Well, yes, you see this is all interwoven traditionally and historically with originally the west side. Of course… Interviewer: George: there. Now was your family a west side family originally? Originally except my mother. She was born on the hill up on Ransom & Crescent Interviewer: Oh, yes, right on top of it. George: You see her maiden name was H-A- K-E; which is the maiden name or which is the name of her brother who married Clara Voigt. The, I‟m almost tempted… Interviewer: George: That parking lot occupies the site now. Interviewer: George: Helen: Ransom & Crescent would be where the hospital was. Yes. It‟s a… I have, excuse me. [George leaves to retrieve some items] This must be interesting work for you. Interviewer: It‟s fun for me. I came here about four years ago and part, I was then in the process of trying to get my master‟s degree which I‟ve since given up on because I was working �5 out of an Ohio university. I was too far along and couldn‟t transfer enough credits. But in the course of doing some work. I did a lot of research into early Michigan history. I got just fascinated with Grand Rapids so I consequently took a course at Michigan history and wrote a paper on Grand Rapids „cause I think it‟s so fascinating. Helen: Well, how wonderful. Well, it‟s just fascinating. Interviewer: Helen: Oh, I‟d love to read it. Interviewer: Well, the interesting part of it was trying to explain how Grand Rapids came to be here, because it didn‟t really have all the natural advantages of some of the other cities. And yet it got to be the second biggest city in the state. And I worked on the, trying to explain why. [George returns into the room] George: This was a program on the occasion of my grandfather and grandmother‟s Fiftieth wedding anniversary. Interviewer: George: Oh, and this would be William Hake? And this is the picture when they were married. Interviewer: Yes, isn‟t that nice? And then as you turn the pages you‟ll, that‟s when they were on their Fiftieth George: Isn‟t that beautiful? They were two fine looking people. Interviewer: George: Yes, they were. Interviewer: Helen: Is she in the portrait over the mantel? Yes. Interviewer: I thought, but, that was taken at a younger age than this but she‟s a very handsome woman. Oh, this tells the family history then. George: Yes, pretty much till that time. Interviewer: And he also was German background. George: Oh, yes. Interviewer: I wasn‟t sure what the name Hake was. �6 George: He came from a little town called Dunschede, which is northwest of Cologne [Germany]. Interviewer: George: Have you been back there? Oh, yes. Interviewer: Chased down your family? George: Yes, we go to Europe quite often. Then, she was born in Altensteig in the Black Forest, Germany, which is near Freiburg. Interviewer: Helen: You mentioned the home is shown somewhere there too, a picture. Such a pretty old home. Interviewer: Helen: She had, they had fifteen children. Interviewer: George: Which one was your mother? My mother was Matilda, Helen Matilda. Interviewer: George: Matilda. She was one of the younger children. Yes, she was Interviewer: George: She was quite a bit younger than Doctor Hake, wasn‟t she? Yes, but they were very close. Interviewer: George: Helen: Oh, how many children there were? Yes, oh, isn‟t this neat? Course everything. You must tell about his love for the, not having any children of their own… George: Doctor Hake graduated, I believe from the University of Michigan (I‟ll have to check that). And they never had a family of their own. That is the Doctor and Clara, but he was, he offered his services free, as long as he lived, to St. John‟s Home to the villa, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd which is now Villa Maria. The Sisters of the Poor. And he did all the… Interviewer: …did all their medical for free - for the children. Interviewer: Gee, that was remarkable. �7 George: He did all that as long as he lived. He was a quite charitable man. I think that probably folly for me to presume, but I would believe that he was disappointed he didn‟t have a family. Interviewer: Yes, cause in those days people had pretty large families. Yes and the Voigts were large family too originally. Interviewer: That‟s right. Well, you now once in a while when we‟re working around the Voigt house we pick up the, pick up a story that somehow the family, the mother and father didn‟t approve of the children getting married. And we have heard yes and no on that, from different people. Do you have any knowledge of how they felt about that? George: other. Interviewer: George: I know that, I believe Frank whom you mentioned never married and I forget the Carl was married there for awhile, wasn‟t he? Well, you never knew much about that was always kind of a… Interviewer: That‟s an interesting thing, because I met this little old ninety-one-year old that remembers his wife as being very beautiful. George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: And Ralph never married. No, I know that. That isn‟t to say they probably on occasion didn‟t have an affair, but I don‟t know. But they never officialized it. No, no no. Interviewer: Never settled down and had a family. That‟s interesting. This house that your, that shows here, now where was this house? George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: That‟s where the parking lot of the Butterworth Hospital. This is Ransom and Crescent? Yes, that‟s where it is now. There‟s nothing left. There‟s nothing left of it. And that‟s a beautiful house. Yes, it was a large, large grounds there. It must kill you to see what happens to some of the beautiful old houses. Yes, �8 Helen: It really does. Interviewer: It‟s a nice thing to have that. George: The others, of course, the doctor and Clara went to Europe, I don‟t know on how many different visits, but I know that, see he was Catholic, she was not. Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: Yes, she was an Episcopalian. She was buried in St. Mark‟s church, absolutely. She also had very friendly relationships with the Catholic Church. Oh, yes. That‟s right. „Because she was widowed I understand and did a lot of things for them. Yes, she was a, you obviously never knew her. No, no. Of course, Helen I think was her favorite in-laws. Helen: She was very, very nice to me. I remember the time that my engagement was going to be announced and my sister had a formal tea for me. So I invited, of course, the aunts that were living and I didn‟t know her but she did come to the tea. And I always remember she sent me just a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a corsage. She wanted to wear that day because… Interviewer: Wasn‟t that sweet? Helen: I thought that it was very sweet. And so on every, we were married on the seventeenth of June and so on every seventeenth of June, every anniversary, I had a phone call at eight o‟clock in the morning saying, “Hello.” She had a very deep voice, she‟d say, “Do you know who this is? This is your Aunt Clara wishing you a happy anniversary.” Well, I thought it was very sweet. I always have very nice memories of her because she was so nice to me. And on various occasions we would be at a restaurant, maybe at the Pen Club or at the Schnitzlebank and a drink would be set before us. Now maybe we didn‟t see her with her brothers in the corner and it would be compliments of the Voigts. Interviewer: Wasn‟t that nice? Helen: So that‟s my little story as an in-law. Interviewer: Oh, that‟s a really nice one. George: You see the, we‟ve been in the machinery business in Grand Rapids for a hundred and eighteen years. �9 Interviewer: What firm are you? George: Monarch Road Machinery Company. Originally it was, or prior to the Monarch Road Machinery it was known as the West Side Iron Works. And before that it was know under my grandfather‟s name, Joseph Jackoboice. Well. The building…. Interviewer: George: He was French, originally No, he was not. Interviewer: He‟s not? Interviewer: I was just guessing. George: Well, that‟s an interesting story. I won‟t be too long at it, but actually first of all my grandmother Hake came from Altensteig, my grandmother Rasch came from Breisgau and my grandfather came from Westphalia. But my grandfather Jackoboice came from a border city which was then Duchy of Warsaw and but was adjacent as a border city to the kingdom of Prussia. Actually, officially he was no, he was born according to unconfirmed reports it‟s hard to get any verification because the records have been in such disarray, some of them were bombed out in World War Two. He was actually born in Poland. Interviewer: Was he born in the Corridor, the Polish Corridor? George: No, no it was further south. It was in that area well, Bohemia was in there and so on. Like many of the old families in town here, the Rasches or the Herpolsheimers for example, came from what generally is known as Bohemia and so on. And he came to this country alone. He came when there were less than seven thousand people of his nationality in this country. Interviewer: George: What year was that? Eighteen fifty-two. Interviewer: Yes, he was an early arrival. George: He came with an education and he came with money. And he never spoke of his past. He never corresponded. He was a very, very successful man but he lived, he had good health until he died. Never looked back. Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: Did he drop, did he drop his accent and come, make an effort to learn English. Oh, he spoke English beautifully. He never spoke in his native language? I don‟t know. „Cause he was born before I. �10 Helen: He spoke in German; we never knew it, until about a few years ago. George: My father and my Aunt Clara Jackoboice, now that‟s Clara the other Clara, spoke beautiful German. They wrote the old German script. But why this man came here alone he obviously didn‟t come over because of any military problem because he was past that age, he as I say came with an education, because he came with money. Interviewer: Maybe investment. George: Well, at the time, at the time that people came in eighteen fifty-two, in the eighteen fifties, in general, they came for political reasons, not for economic reasons. Interviewer: George: That would be before Bismarck, wouldn‟t it? Yes, it was after Metternich. Interviewer: That‟s right, just after Metternich. George: The Congress of Vienna. He was born in eighteen twenty-four. But it‟s kind of a mystery as to why; he was the first, absolutely the first of his nationality to be in Grand Rapids one of the very first to be in the United States. Well, anyway that‟s a long and different story. But… Interviewer: George: And he came and set up immediately than as a… In business, yes. He was very, very successful and the business continues now. Interviewer: Under the same family. George: Same family. But the building you see on this started with the Voigts, the building you see on the west side of the river which is red and white is called the old German Schoolhouse, was his factory. It wasn‟t his first, it was his fourth. Helen: When that‟s all lit up at night. George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: George: Interviewer: Yes. Oh, yes. You see it from the Civic Auditorium. And that was your family‟s original or fourth one? It still is. We still own it. You still own it. We illuminate it at night and …. Did you keep it as a historic…? �11 George: Yes, it‟s on the roster of the city‟s historic buildings, officially, declared by the city commissioner about a year ago. And, but right across the street were the two old Star Mills which were also owned by the Voigts. Now the mills that… Interviewer: Was the Crescent Mill very far from the Star Mill? George: It was three blocks away, three blocks north of the Star Mills. I mean the Crescent Mills were at Pearl Street and the Star Mills were near Bridge Street. The Star Mills were kind of a secondary manufacturing... Interviewer: George: The Crescent Mill was the big operation. Yes, yes. Interviewer: And that was a rolling mill for, first row, I mean they took up rolling mill rather than grindstone. George: Well, I don‟t know, possibly they had. But they were of course originally you know they were partners with Herpolsheimers, the store, you‟ve heard that, of course. Do you know Bill Hardy in town here? Interviewer: No, I don‟t. George: Well, Bill was a Herpolsheimer. Interviewer: Is that why they have the Hardy-Herpolsheimer‟s Store at Kalamazoo? George: Yes, well I guess part of the reason. Interviewer: That‟s part of the reason? George: But, the Voigts of course with my father well his company always did all the millwright work, in the mills. So there was a strong business relation between the Voigts and ourselves, as well as family relationship. Interviewer: Now you made machine too machinery. George: Oh, yes. We were manufacturers, yes but we also used to do they used to build steam engines and things saw-mill machinery log-mill machinery. Band saws, rip saws. Now we‟re entirely power hydraulic controls and systems. Actually we don‟t make any road machinery. It‟s all sophisticated devices for operating other components on other people‟s products and so on. Interviewer: Someone starts a machine you have things in there that keep it going. �12 George: Yes, for example this is farfetched but in Disneyland in Florida for example, I bet you we must have twenty-five to fifty of our controls, that help control the automation. And they‟re all hidden you never see them. Interviewer: So you‟re actually in the systems controls business now rather than the fabrication of metals. George: Yes, we (???) it‟s all very much involved in some oil hydraulics or in a segment of it. So, but anyway, because of that „across the street‟ connection and „three blocks away‟ connection, why the Voigts of the Voigt people were in our place all the time. Back in those days of course more things were done by horse and buggy and on foot that now as and it was very informal. And the Leitelts, I don‟t know if you‟ve ever heard that name? Interviewer: No, I haven‟t. George: But Adolph Leitelt and my father were very close friends. Well, years once upon a year, there was a, my father and his company had always done most of the major maintenance. Well in spite of this close family tie and also the relationship with the Leitelts, that was Adolph Leitelt„s iron works which was across the river. And the Voigt senior told my father, my dad tells this story, he says Ed, I want you to know take care of this boiler problem so he had his crew over there Monday morning. But prior to the arrival of my father‟s people Leitelt‟s people were there. And there was quite a who does, who does this job? And they were all close friends, you know. Interviewer: Competitive. George: So my dad just withdrew but they, the mills and their people always had a friendly habit, anytime they wanted a little job done, they‟d come to my father‟s place and so he‟d say oh go ahead and use the machinery and forget it. Well, after this happened they came over and he said, “Fellows, I‟m sorry but why don‟t you go to Leitelts to have that.” Well, that brought out the Voigts in their hiding and the thing came out in the open. And Dad said, “Listen, Voigt senior told me explicitly to take care of this, and I did. But when I arrived, Adolf Leitelt‟s crew were there.” So and then they went on to explain Voigt senior well, he said, “Ed, I‟m awfully sorry but I told you this in full sincerity and my sons not knowing what I had done called Adolph Leitelt.” He said, “So it‟s the tempest of the teapot.” It was all straightened out they laughed about it, you know. But… Interviewer: Did any of the social relations in among the families, was the fact that you were all Germans and German in background a strong factor in the fact that you all got along so well. George: I think so. Interviewer: They tended to have feelings about it. �13 George: They thought quite a bit alike. Clara Voigt, and I have to be historically honest, could be well, a little bit dramatic and little bit volatile at times you know. And maybe you sense that. Interviewer: She was sort of, the people I‟ve known that talked to that remembered her at all, remember her [as] a certain grand dame. George: Yes, she was. Interviewer: A grand old lady. Helen: She wore the wide black-belted band with the big diamond, or she had a lot of big diamonds that she wore. She was a small lady, I mean a short lady and she always was all dressed up. George: She, I know every, my Grandfather Hake lived to be ninety-four and he was a very, very active, alert vital man right up to the day he died, he was only sick a week, died of pneumonia and that was it. But until his ninety-third year he‟d swim in Lake Michigan and I don‟t mean paddle around to his knees, he‟d really swim. And he would always a very tall, very erect man. And he would always walk down to St. Mary‟s Church although he also belonged to St. Andrews Cathedral, and he was, he retired after all these children. He retired in his sixties and lived in a grand manner until he died. But in this process of living, I would say for his time the good life he would have his children come up there practically every week. There were always one of the sons or daughters up there visiting. And he loved company. He would never associate with old people he says that makes me old; he wanted to be with young people. And so practically every Sunday night during the winter months there‟s be some family up there and invariably they‟d play cards. He loved to play Hearts or Poker. And when they were playing, why it was always the Voigts here and the Hakes here and they‟re all gunning for each other. They really had a rather… Interviewer: Now, we have some kind of information. And now I can‟t remember who gave it to us, that when they played cards they played cards in a special room upstairs, in the Voigt house. They didn‟t play downstairs, in the house, that they used an upstairs back room and that they used to listen to the radio and play cards. George: That must have been later in years. Interviewer: In later years, yes. And we kind of got the feeling that old Mr. Hake err, or old Mr. Voigt ran that family with rather a strong….. George: He did. From what I‟d always heard. I never knew the father, I did know Ralph and Carl, quite well, and of course my Aunt. Interviewer: Well even Ralph and Carl were enough older than you were. �14 George: Oh, yes. Interviewer: Be in the next generation. George: To get back, you see years ago when their offices were down on Pearl Street, the big mill. But they always had the old, the remnants of the old horse barn. And so they would park their car there and Ralph generally would walk. You could always tell when Ralph and Carl weren‟t getting along even though they lived in the same house, if they rode together to the parking place three blocks up they were friends. But if Ralph, who generally always drove walked back alone, they probably had some misunderstanding. Now that doesn‟t mean they were ever mad for very long. Interviewer: No, but natural family things. George: Yeah, that‟s right. Interviewer: Well, I always heard they only ever owned one car. George: I‟ve never known them to own two. Interviewer: Yes, even though the two were grown businessmen, they operated out of one car. George: Well, typical of that, you know Carl until he died wore button shoes. Interviewer: Oh, no. George: Oh, sure. He always wore button shoes. Interviewer: A real modern. Helen: He‟d always say if we met him, remember the day we were leaving on a trip day before we were in the bank and we met him and he said uh, “Now when you get home, come over to my museum.” Interviewer: He called the house a museum? George: Yes. Interviewer: I also heard that, what precipitated their decision to go out, you know to decide not to operate the mill anymore was when they ran into union trouble. Was that true? George: Well, that was, I think part of it, but they also ran into tremendous competition from General Mills, Pillsbury and people like that. Helen: Who would they have left it to? Interviewer: Well, that‟s the… �15 Helen: They had nobody. Interviewer: They had no children at that point, yes. Make more money selling out really. Helen: I should think so. George: Yes, well of course also the codes for manufacturing and production sanitation became more stringent in later years, than they had when they were riding high. And so they, I think and I think they had more money than they could spend and the glamour had worn off. Now on this money there, my father used to tell me that he would talk to Voigt senior, as a father, Ralph, Carl, and the rest of them and he said Carl senior was very penurious and he had Dad said, “Carl what are you going to do when your sons inherit all your money?” And he says, “They‟ll spend it?” He said, “Ed, I really don‟t care.” He said, “I had my fun saving it if they have their fun spending it, that‟s up to them.” Interviewer: What a neat philosophy. George: I remember he telling this to my father. Interviewer: Well, you know when you go through the house now, you realize that they were very saving people. George: Oh, yes. Interviewer: „Because they kept the things that are there in the house are just beautifully kept. You know the dresses, they‟ve got so many dresses upstairs, that are you see the pictures of old Mr. and Mrs. Voigt and the dress will be upstairs; really in beautiful condition. Was the ballroom, there was a ballroom upstairs wasn‟t there? George: Yes, on the top floor. Interviewer: Now then, I noticed that you had the lovely invitation. Did they used to have formal parties like that at the Voigt House? George: That was my…. Interviewer: Helen: No, I meant there were parties like that at the Voigt House? I think so because… George: My mother uses to speak that way. She used to go there quite often. Helen: I think so, because your aunt used to talk about those little gold chairs. George: Yes. The musical chair there that… �16 Helen: That, then she had that one musical chair. I didn‟t know much about that, but she used to tell your sisters about it. A chair they bought I believe in Switzerland. One you sat on it, it played a tune. In those days it was just something, a music box under the chair. But I never saw that. But she did make a lovely present to me of two pictures. One day she called me over for and I had tea with her and when I left… Interviewer: This was Aunt Clara? Helen: Aunt Clara. She said I want you to have something. And she gave me lovely, I think they were pastels of Grandmother and Grandfather Hake that had been made, and she told me (in) France. George: Could well have been. They… Helen: George: Helen: George: Beautifully framed, I still have them. She really adored the doctor. She always called him Doc. My Doctor. My Doctor, yes. Interviewer: All the reports we have was that they were very, very congenial couple. George: Yes, they were. Interviewer: And well, I guess she may have been dramatic but people liked her, didn‟t they? Helen: She, well, she was a very open… you knew where she stood. Interviewer: The daughter of the builder of the Voigt house said that he also built their house, which is on Madison? Was on Madison, or where was their house? Helen: George: Washington. Well, they…. Interviewer: Doctor and Mrs. Hake George: I think she had, I think they had a guarantee five, maybe even seven houses. Interviewer: Well, this one must have been within about a decade of when he built the Voigt house. This Mr. Jungbaecker built a house for her and she wanted her money‟s worth. She‟d come back to him and back to him with her plans and say now, are you ready to give me a good price? On her plans, you know. So I guess none of them were fools about money. George: No, they weren‟t. Well, they actually, the doctor died, and I know because I was there just a day or so before he died, he died and they lived on Washington Street. �17 Interviewer: On Washington Street? George: Helen: Just about a block west. Just around the corner. George: It‟s I think, it„s the second house from the corner, had a circular porch. Its glory days were when they lived there, as was true of that whole area. Helen: It‟s almost next to the old Percy (?) home wasn‟t it? George: Somewhere in through there. Helen: (?) On the Corner. I think next to (?) Interviewer: Where they, so they all lived close together. George: Very close. Of course, they all had it seems to me that I was told maybe she said that to us when they because some of them never married but oh, Voigt senior, provided in his will that if they lived in the within the house their expenses would be paid by the estate. Interviewer: Oh, they did. I‟ve got to turn this [tape] over. I don‟t want it to run out. [END OF SIDE ONE TAPE #52] Interviewer: Before he went out of business with Mr. Herpolsheimer, Mr. Voigt bought a lot of midi skirts and midi blouses; you know a whole lot of them. And she said she always wore those skirts and midi blouses in the morning, you know, when she was around the home, running the house. And then would dress up in the afternoon. And she said to the maids one day she said there were some of these midi blouses upstairs that had never been worn, she said I‟ll have to wear one every day till I die because they‟d never wear out. And I thought, oh dear I‟m sure they had enough money she could have just given them to the Salvation Army. But people didn‟t function quite that way, in the old days, I guess. Helen: Remember, I knew one cute kind of a cute little incident, about Aunt Clara. We were having dinner one evening, one at the Schnitzlebank, and [she] was there with her brothers. She had been quite sick and it about was her first time out. And so, when I saw her I, we both went over to speak to her. And I said to her, “Well how are you Aunt Clara?” She said, “Well of course, I guess I‟m alright.” She said, “I‟ll tell you Helen, I‟m going to have kraut tonight if it kills me.” Interviewer: Well. I‟m surprised at the people that at the memories of the people who had worked for them are very, very pleasant memories. They have very, they apparently were very friendly down-to-earth people in that and they are remembered by their help as being not, you couldn‟t just do anything I mean they demanded good work, but if you worked well you got along very, very well. And the gal I talked to last week who was a secretary who worked for �18 Frank and Carl and Ralph, said she was permitted to say anything you know She said when they, she booked orders, she apparently booked the orders that would come in from Australia and all those other places, you know. And she said, “Well I used to tell them you ought to get out on the road and talk to more people and sell more things here in the United States, we wouldn‟t have to ship it so far.” But he never took my advice, she said. And I thought it was interesting, not because of that but because apparently it was a very free office, you know that it wasn‟t run on a very formal basis. And she said that they were on a very first name basis. Not that she called them Mr. Hake, or Mr. Voigt, but they called her by her first name. George: I think, I don‟t think anything would have pleased Ralph more than if they had taken the old mills and preserved them. And of course, Ralph almost thought it would make a great, he told me once, he thought it‟d be great for like an atmosphere restaurant. And of course, that never came to be. And also there was a time, about ten years ago, when there was an effort to establish hotel there on that land. And Ralph was laughing he said, “George you know they think that‟s great news.” He said, “Fred Pantlind, Fred Z. Pantlind talked about that to me thirty years ago.” He said, “So there‟s nothing very new.” But if every, if people would have always prefaced their requests by saying, “Ralph we‟d like your house or we‟d like your mill and we want to call it the Voigt Grand Rapids Mill or the Voigt and Jones Mill.” If you identify the Voigts and Ralph, I think, loved that identification and he deserved it, really the family did. I think very honestly that if an effort had been made during Ralph‟s life time not when, not the last few years, when he was ill, but if they would‟ve said Ralph we‟d like to have your family residence we‟d like to have it recognized what can you do to see that it goes to the city for historic purposes? I think Ralph would‟ve done everything possible to see that realized. I am on the museum commission. Interviewer: Now, that is eventually who is going to control it? George: Well, actually it‟s on formally and I suppose legally it‟s under the control of the City of Grand, under the ownership of the City of Grand Rapids. But it‟s really under the jurisdiction of the museum. Then that in turn is subrogated, believe to the Historical Preservation Commission. Interviewer: Well, those gals were really... George: Helen: George: Helen: Oh, they deserve the glory. Just dedicated their lives, to that house. They‟ve done a great job. I think they really deserve a lot of credit. Interviewer: Oh, yes. And you know they‟ve that‟s a labor of love when they go down there. George: Well, I was on the finance committee. �19 Helen: I‟ve had luncheons there and they‟re fantastic. Interviewer: Yes, they do a beautiful job. Really do. George: I was on the finance committee with Frank Frankfurter, David and John Hunting and myself, to have that house transferred legally to the status it now enjoys. And the Grand Rapids Foundation of course contributed substantially. I think Dave Hunting senior did an awful lot to realize the ownership change. Interviewer: I know him just a little, he‟s a dear person. George: He is. He‟s tremendously alert. John, young John, you know is his son. He‟s building right over here. Interviewer: Helen: George: Helen: George: Is that where Marilyn, the new house is going to be right over here. That‟s where, yes. With the doctor though. It will be lovely. Looks just great. He‟s a very vital person for his age. Interviewer: I should say so. George: You know, I don‟t know if you‟d heard the incident or the story of the time that the Doctor and his wife were crossing Lake Michigan to attend the wedding of one of my uncles that is Theodore Hake. Interviewer: No, no I haven‟t heard it. George: Over in Milwaukee. Well, actually my grandfather already was in Milwaukee for two weddings. They were a week apart and the family and friends they were all invited of course. So actually my mother was going, but my brother came down with measles or something like that and so at the last minute she deferred going. But many of the Hakes went and also the Doctor and his wife Clara. And they were on a ship called the Naomi, which caught fire in midlake. And it was quite a disaster. It‟s been written up in many of the journals, in fact I understand that there is a free-lance writer in Grand Rapids now who has been working on the story of that. But as the story was told to me by my uncle, the fire was pretty much discovered, at least they learned about it early in the evening, when they because they were all as usual playing cards in the salon. And as they were dealing the cards… Helen: Excuse me, it wasn‟t early in the evening, it was late at night George: Late at night, yes. Well it all depends on how the Hakes would interpret “early in the evening” and “late at night,” course they never knew tomorrow, half the time. �20 Interviewer: They were not early, not early to bed people. Helen: They were all playing cards. George: They were all playing cards and somebody said, “I smell smoke.” And with that they pretty soon obviously the ship was a total disaster. And the Doctor Hake was I believe the only doctor on board and he administered to many of the people, some of whom died. And there are pictures of that ship and... Interviewer: Were they able to get to port without sinking. George: Yes, they took the lifeboats out. Oh, yes, Very much so. And they show, we have pictures somewhere where they towed the charred hull into Grand [Haven]….There‟s really nothing left of the upper structure. And my, I know the doctor‟s wife she was a little bit hysterical so the story goes and so she left her stateroom and was waiting to be rescued and she was in her corset and carrying an umbrella. Helen: You know when they wore corset covers? Interviewer: Oh, yes. With a corset cover and an umbrella. Was prepared for all emergencies wasn‟t she? Boy, that‟s a fantastic story; I‟ll bet that went the rounds. Wow. Oh, dear. George: Well that there were just pages of publicity on it. Interviewer: Was this like about the time of the World Wars or earlier than that? George: Oh no, no this was way back. Interviewer: Before the First World War? George: Interviewer: George: It‟d be it‟d be I would say about nineteen seven or eight seven or eight? Oh, yes about seventy years ago Interviewer: Oh yes, that‟s a long time. George: There‟s another friend there that I believe figured in the Voigt family background as a friend. That‟s the old Kusterer family. Of course there were a lot of these old German families you know, and they all clung together. Some of these families I have well a familiarity with because my grandfather Hake among other things was agent for the Hamburg-American Line. And at the time he was the oldest agent and there are in this group both in years and in years of service. And a suspicion is always been suggested that he did that because he liked to go to Europe and whenever he went he would divide his children into two groups. He‟d take first the one six and then the other six. �21 Interviewer: Oh, isn‟t that wonderful. George: And I presume he figured it was more economical that way anyhow. But in the process he was instrumental in arranging the passage of most of these old German families in Grand Rapids. And their home was really quite a congregating place for these Germans. You know originally you speak of the west side, right across from where we used to live which is all long gone but the expressway, right directly across the street, one of the Voigts lived. And the other one lived right around the corner on Court Street. Interviewer: Yes, that‟s what I understood from the very old lady that I talked to. She could remember going to, she could remember going to Union School with Carl Voigt. And then she remembered Ralph and she remembered when Ralph went away to school. He went to Andover, I think and then to Yale. And she could remember that he went away to school but she had gone to Union School with Carl. George: Well, years ago they had many wagons you know, dray wagons and they had beautiful horses. And just on what was then known as Shawmut Avenue, now Lake Michigan Drive, they had a pasture that was not very large but they‟d it was all fenced in. And the horses were finished many of the horse were stabled there. The others were stabled down across from our old building. And I used to go up there and watch these draft horses. They‟d run toward the fence and you‟d think they were going right through. But they were friendly, gentle souls. They had excellent care. Interviewer: Beautiful horses? George: Oh, yes. They were. Interviewer: They probably took just as good care of the horses as they did everything else. George: Yes, that‟s right Interviewer: I can never get over the woodwork in that house because it„s so beautifully kept. You know the house really (is) in remarkably great condition. I think that‟s the... Helen: George: Didn‟t they say about the carriage house too, George? Yes, Helen: Harnesses and everything. George: They had harnesses in there and they just… Helen: Everything was so lovely. George: Yes, they‟re just waiting for somebody for some horse to appear and the harness would be all ready for them. And they had I believe an old, I didn‟t see this but I was told by a �22 fellow at the time who worked for Cadillac and he used to collect old cars, and he said they had a beautiful electric I think, wasn‟t it electric? Helen: That‟s what they said. Interviewer: They had an electric car? They were handsome things. George: Yeah and that was I think sold to somebody up north. Interviewer: Were they great travelers? Were the Doctor and Mrs. Hake great travelers? George: Oh yes, they‟d gone to Europe, oh half a dozen times. Interviewer: It seemed to me if you look around the bedroom upstairs that there are obviously things that came from… Helen: She told me that she had seen, I think three different Popes. And that she always asked the Pope to bless his hands, because he was a doctor. Interviewer: Oh, isn‟t that lovely? Helen: She told me that. George: Well, he had, the doctor incidentally occupied a home which had been my grandfather‟s home, his father‟s home, on the site that is now occupied by Grand Rapids Press. And this home was originally built by Martin Sweet who in turn after he sold this house to my grandfather, bought the house or built the house rather which is now the Women‟s City Club. Interviewer: Oh, yes. Was this the Sweet that had Sweet‟s hotel? George: Yes. And Martin Sweet and my grandfather - that whole clique they were… Helen: They had the sweetest little house going up the hill there. Just darling. Interviewer: It makes me sick to think of how pretty this city must have been at one time. George: Yes, it really was. Interviewer: Really was beautiful. George: So many of the better things have been unfortunately torn down. Interviewer: Well, the, you know… Helen: The City Hall… Interviewer: Oh well, it‟s really brutal to think that such a beautiful building could have gone. Helen: George was on television one night trying to save it. �23 Interviewer: Hall? George: Oh yes, and who was it, Posey Benton who was it chained herself to the City Oh, Mary Stiles. Interviewer: Mary Stiles, yes. I heard about that when I first moved here. Helen: We were in Europe and at the Nordic Hotel was it, Oslo? No, it was Vienna, one of those. Well, anyway we walked in, we walked out of our room in the morning walked downstairs to the desk and a man held up the paper and he says, “Isn‟t this your home town?” And there she was, on the ball, you know. Interviewer: Do you remember the family well enough to know if they were interested in music or if they were interested in, if you read old Grand Rapids history there was always such an active interest in music in this community-the St. Cecilia Society, the Ladies Literary Club and well, the Women‟s City Club. Were any of the family, the Voigt family that you know of, interested in music or in any other…? George: I really don‟t know. I don‟t know. The only, I would venture though that the Voigts might have some interest in music through my Aunt Augusta Rasch-Hake, who was quite a pianist. And she studied in Vienna under Lesterchensky who was probably the foremost teacher of piano in the last two hundred years. And she used to play for example in concert with Percy Granger. Interviewer: Oh my, she was really good. She died only about two years ago. She was in her nineties. But she had a tremendous talent for music. And that‟s why she, her father sent her to Vienna for further study. But probably because of family association the Voigts and I‟m only surmising this because I would venture that they had themselves a pretty good interest in music. Interviewer: There was the room off the drawing room, now they call the Music Room but I don‟t know if it was called the Music Room then. But they have several you know they have several instruments around. Helen: How about the music? Did you find any old music? Interviewer: I think there is some there, but I‟ve never really gone through it. It‟s, I‟ve really been more interested in digging into the library to what books they had. Thought it was interesting to find out what books people kept around in those days. George: Have you ever talked to any of the other members of the Voigt family? The surviving… Interviewer: No. As a matter of fact, I was going to talk to Charles Dubee and then he‟s been in the hospital and I guess he‟s out in recovery right now but, he‟s he had a heart attack. �24 Helen: Oh, did he? Interviewer: Yes, and the word down at our church, is he‟s a member of our church, and word down around our church was that it was a pretty severe heart attack. So and I don‟t…. Helen: He was awfully heavy. Interviewer: Well, I‟ve only been doing this for about the last month or so and really he‟s had his heart attack and I really didn‟t think that it was even tactful, to go and talk. But he‟s one person that I know that I plan to talk to. The Pantlinds lived across the street from the Voigts. George: Yes, I believe that way back… Interviewer: And isn‟t that Mrs. Whinery? Isn‟t Kate Whinery a Pantlind? Helen: That would be Kay Whinery or Dosey. George: Then there‟s Hilda. Interviewer: I talked to Mrs. Hanchett over the phone but she said she didn‟t, she‟d been away from town so much that there was nothing she could add, to the story. George: You know Hilda Pantlind? Interviewer: No, I don‟t. George: Well, she‟s married to Charlie Armstrong. They live in Arizona I believe most of the time now, don‟t they? Helen: She comes in the summer but her sister‟s here. Cause I saw her at the beauty shop. Interviewer: Now who‟s her sister? Helen: George: Helen: Dosey Pantlind and isn‟t that Dosey? I don‟t know I only knew Hilda. Who were we talking about Hilda and her sister, Mrs. Whinery I‟m sorry. Interviewer: Kate Whinery Helen: George: Yes, I‟m thinking of Fred Pantlind‟s, no. I‟m thinking of Boyd Pantlind‟s wife I talked with Boyd today. Interviewer: Well. I just, I guess one day I was at Susan Lowe Guild and Kate Whinery belongs to Susan Lowe Guild and she mentioned that she lived across. I‟d come from the Voigt House, �25 that day, and she said that they lived across the street. But she‟d never been in the house very much. Were you ever in the house very much? George: Oh, yes. Helen: You were in. George: Not often but … Interviewer: Just the normal course of events. George: Yes, I tell you who might be able to give you some information too, is Bruce Gilmore. You see Bruce Gilmore occupied the Idema house which he I believe owned. That‟s where the Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance is. Interviewer: Oh, that‟s right next door, isn‟t it? George: Yes, yes. Now what association Bruce would have had with say Ralph or Carl, I don‟t know except they were neighbors. Now Gene Gilmore works, Bruce is pretty much retired. He‟s, his brother was with him in the Bahamas here a few ago. And Bruce, I think will be back as soon as the weather warms up a bit. And he might be able to give you some information too. Interviewer: You‟re still active in business, aren‟t you? George: Oh, yes very much so. Interviewer: Yes, so you can‟t get away in the winter like everybody else. George: Helen: Oh, I can get away any time I want to. He‟s president. Interviewer: Well that doesn‟t mean you can take off as easily. It‟s usually if you‟re the president you have to stay and… George: No, I can say that because our three sons are in the business and also my nephew and they do a tremendous job. Interviewer: Oh, so you‟re a little freer then. George: Oh, yes. Interviewer: You don‟t (feel) you‟re chained. Well, I know that Mrs. Jackoboice, you‟ve done a lot of traveling. Helen: We do, but we‟re not very Florida fans or anything like that. We just returned from Mexico, we were down there for about three weeks. But… �26 Interviewer: That‟s nice. Helen: Yes. George: We were supposed to have gone last September. We went on a southern trip through Europe including Eastern Europe, Soviet Union, Hungary and so on. And, but my wife here had a little scare which fortunately… Interviewer: A heart thing? Helen: No, I just had a sudden flare and it was really something. I‟m a very, very well person and I just felt funny pain and I just thought well I‟ll go and have it checked you know. And, my word, they put me right in the hospital, had x-rays and what have you. And they thought I had something just terrible. And so I…. Interviewer: Oh, that‟s awful. Helen: Yes, it turned out to be nothing. Interviewer: Oh, that‟s good. George: Meanwhile … Interviewer: But meanwhile you cancelled your trip. Helen: By the time, yes, he said no way could you go on that trip, because it was something with the digestive system. Interviewer: Well, my sister-in-law has been into Russia twice and she said the only thing about Russia, is you don‟t want to be sick in Russia. Helen: That‟s where… Interviewer: Be healthy if you get around it. She loved it though. She said it‟s worth going just to through the Hermitage. Helen: My husband has been there several times. Interviewer: Have you? George: Helen: Oh, yes. Been all through Eastern Europe. I don‟t want to get sick in India either. Interviewer: I think there are a lot of places you prefer not to…. Helen: There‟s a lot of places I don‟t want to be there sick. �27 Interviewer: But on the other hand you can‟t stop going just on that chance. Helen: Course not. Interviewer: Right, right. George: There‟s I guess they were gradually are restoring or recollecting or collecting some of the furnishings and so on, of the Voigt place. „Course the attic; it was just loaded with… Helen: Yeah, they‟re gradually doing, well, I think what they‟ve tried to do is reconstruct what it probably looked, might have looked like early on. Not in its later days. George: I wouldn‟t think that there‟s too many basic changes, do you, from the old days? Helen: No, I remember when whenever I‟d go there though she‟d invite me over for tea, we always went directly to her room. Interviewer: You did? Helen: Clara never sat downstairs. Interviewer: Did you ever know Miss Emma Hake, err Voigt? Helen: Yes, I just knew her. And she‟d probably be there, but you knew, you could hear her moving around something. But if Aunt Clara had a guest she went to her room. And we sat there and it was a very pleasant room upstairs, you know which one she had? Interviewer: Yes. Helen: And she‟d always say, oh come up here and then she‟d always point out “my Doctor”. She had his picture all over the room and we had tea and we‟d visit. Interviewer: One of the fascinating things that you know about being down there is that the desk, the letters in the, stuffed in the cubbyhole of her desk are her letters. They‟re the letters and they‟re you know, it‟s as if she‟d left the room because you know the letters that are there she left a letter to Bishop Whittemore and a letter to a Catholic Bishop about something that she was corresponding with him about. You knew it‟s just as if she walked out of the room and were coming back. Except that the date had stopped you know, several years ago. So that‟s really it comes as close that houses come to living history, as almost any place you walk into. George: That‟s right. George: I don‟t think you‟d ever find a house... Interviewer: No, because everything you have the feeling the family just stepped out. And it‟s like the turn of the century. And there they are you know, just stop action. And they‟re very few �28 things they‟ve got Ralph‟s picture that LeClaire did in the downstairs hall. But most of the rest of the stuff you can go through the house and it looks very old. Helen: Wouldn‟t that make a fantastic movie? Interviewer: No, it‟s really a remarkable thing. The other thing I don‟t pick up about the Voigts is that they were very, very involved, now the time when your grandfather arrived here, well, back in the eighteen fifties if you look down the roster of the people who were mayors and officers in town they were always the prominent businessmen in town. And the politics didn‟t get separated from the business until, say after, oh well after you all, I think after that you got into a different kind of person being in politics. From, but early on it was liable to be prominent businessmen in town who were married and so forth. But the Voigt‟s name doesn‟t come up ever being involved in politics at all. George: No, not that I can recall. My grandfather was city treasurer for a period of years. And he always, he was credited generally with having established the bookkeeping system which until recent years was still the nucleus of the city systems. Interviewer: That‟s interesting. George: But that was Hake, you see, William Hake. And, but he was, he was quite active in city affairs and his brother John even more so. Interviewer: But you never pick up the name Voigt? George: No, not….. Interviewer: No, I‟ve seen the name Hake but I‟ve never seen the name Voigt. George: The Voigts were very keen business people. They tell a story and then there‟s (nothing) irregular about it, it‟s just typical I think of their time, and their generation. That they would buy wheat and of course, in those years there never was any governmental control on or anything on it. Well… Interviewer: They were real gamblers? George: Yes, well if you buy wheat on say futures, why if it went down, well, boys the mill bought that. If it went up, that was the Voigts. Interviewer: That was the Voigts. They still say you know that they say the commodities market is a great place for the real gamblers of the world. Rest of us… George: I think you know, you speak of the house I think, they guarded that house very well. I mean, I don‟t think the house was ever at any time abused by anybody in the family. It was always sentimentally regarded and well maintained. �29 Interviewer: Yes. Oh my goodness, yes. You just have to look behind doors you know and the polish the obvious gleam on all the woodwork had to come from loving rubbing you know. And diligent rubbing on some and apparently I think the woman who was their housekeeper is still alive. George: Yes, I think she is. Interviewer: And there‟s another person I have on my list to go talk to because it hasn‟t been loaded down with gunk. No or anything. It‟s just really cleaned and polished and such beautiful I don‟t think any of us these days think much about oak you know as being this great wood. But in that lower bedroom where Ralph was at the end of his life well that looks to me to be cherry wood. In there, its beautiful close grained woodwork and probably as pretty as wood as there is in the house. It‟s really nice. You know your room reminds me of the houses down around Charleston. Helen: Oh, really. Interviewer: This isn‟t Cyprus, is it? George: This is walnut, solid walnut. Interviewer: Helen: It‟s just beautiful wood. Thank you, thank you. Interviewer: Just lovely. Helen: We think so, we just love it. George is very “booky” and he always wanted a lovely library. So, we built it. Interviewer: Oh, it‟s really nice. But I love the color of the wood. George: This, this walnut is about that thick all the way through. I shudder, if you could even get, even get it now. Remember Warren Rindge? Interviewer: No, I don‟t. George: Well, Warren was one of the last traditional you see he was educated in Europe and Warren wouldn‟t touch anything modern. But things like this he loved. And he always said this was the finest library he had ever built. Interviewer: Oh well proportioned to the room is beautifully proportioned. Helen: We think so too. Interviewer: And the paneling is so lovely. �30 Helen: Now that‟ll be….. Interviewer: Oh, the little dentalling around the edges that goes up to the top. George: rooms. They were about, they were full time they were about eight months on these two Interviewer: I didn‟t know that there was a company that made all that finished mill work that went into the Voigt house. And that this Mrs., this Mrs. McLachlan that I talked to was the daughter of Jungbaecker (and) that it was her father was the head of this company. I still can‟t, the name has slipped my mind, they did finish mill work and they turned out those handsome you know the stair runs that are so pretty down there. I thought, I wondered about that and….. Helen: You know so much about architecture you must have… Interviewer: Not really, very much at all. But I was interested in that because she was telling me she worked as a bookkeeper in this place and she said that at the time they had built this house that the foreman of the room upstairs made eighteen dollars a week and they stepped down to nine dollars a week for the man that ran the elevator. This was for a sixty hour work week. And they worked ten and a half hours every day except Saturday. Ten hours and ten minutes every day and then on Saturday they could go home at five o‟clock, instead of six. George: Helen: That‟s what my father said their work schedule was two years ago. Really? Interviewer: Is that fantastic! George: Well, all the [way] up until the war years we always worked Saturdays. Interviewer: Oh sure, I remember that. George: My father always said that they‟d start at six and they‟d quit at six except Saturday they‟d quit at five. Interviewer: Isn‟t that fantastic? George: Helen: George: Helen: And the only day they had off was Sunday. They didn‟t complain, they didn‟t have strikes and things, did they? No. They do now. Interviewer: Gosh, it‟s hard to think about that. And I said, “Well didn‟t you mind the long hours?” And she said, “No, everybody worked. Even the bosses.” �31 Helen: That‟s the truth. Interviewer: You know if everyone‟s working it‟s all the same thing. I‟ve got to switch cartridges while we still want before we get interrupted, if you don‟t mind. [END OF TYPEWRITTEN TRANSCRIPT. But the interviewer and the Jackoboices continue talking as they view pictures and mementos. In the file, there is now a paper copy of all of the following transcript which matches the CD recordings.] George: This is a picture of the Voigt house here. Interviewer: This is the Detroit Free Press, oh, yes. George: Yes, Helen: Have you ever been there when they model some of the dresses? Have you seen Barbara in that one? I understand she is absolutely gorgeous. Interviewer: Yes, she is. You must have a very slim figure to fit into the dresses. Helen: Barbara said someone called me one day and they said that she should have her portrait done in that dress; someone that knew her very well. Interviewer: Yes, she really should. Helen: Someone told David you should go down with a camera and take her picture in the dress. Have you seen it? I would love to see it... Interviewer: Yes, and it is just wonderful. George: This is… Interviewer: Oh yes, now, I didn‟t know she was a business woman here. George: Oh, I think that.... Interviewer: Oh, it was, that‟s just because she was just in the family business. George: Not to my memory, was she ever active in the business. Interviewer: According to the gal in the office, it was the three brothers that came down to the office, the girls never came down. Neither your Aunt Clara nor Miss Emma ever came down. George: I never saw them there. I don‟t remember ever seeing them. Interviewer: Hmmm. �32 George: This is just a partial and I am looking for more, there has got to be another page of the Naomi… Interviewer: You don‟t have a date on this? Yes, yes you do, May twenty-second nineteen seven. That‟s right, you were correct about that. Helen: Is that the white book? George: Yes, Interviewer: Many thrilling accounts of the catastrophe are told. George: There might be some other pages in there too. Interviewer: They were going to attend the wedding of Louis F. Hake. George: Yes. Interviewer: And Miss Mary Buerger of Milwaukee. Yes. I would like to read that before I go. I don‟t want to read… George: I think I have a more complete. This is an item on my uncle, the Doctor. Interviewer: Did his elementary studies at the parochial school and public schools. His parents sent him to Notre Dame University where he spent three (days) years. After leaving this institution, decided his choice on the advice of his friends to take up the biological course. He entered the famous Ann Arbor University where he graduated in eighteen eighty-two. Received the degree of MD, youngest member among five hundred students. Obtained a situation in the pharmacy department of the wholesale retail drug concern of Thum Brothers. George: Here is another thing… Interviewer: A man used to live downstairs from us when first moved here, we had an apartment his family were the Hazeltine Perkins, you know Carl Montgelas. George: I know Carl… Interviewer: Yes, that‟s interesting. Cecelia Hake, isn‟t that a pretty one, this a beautiful, did you compile this book? George: That was my mother did that, most of it‟s in her handwriting. Interviewer: That‟s beautiful. George: So, it‟s… �33 Interviewer: Here is Doctor. Hake‟s death, practicing physician, specialist in children‟s diseases in Grand Rapids since eighteen eighty-two died Saturday morning at three fifty-seven Washington Street SE. Helen: That‟s what I thought. Interviewer: That‟s a good thing to know. He was only fifty-seven when he died. Helen: George: Oh, was he? Yes. Interviewer: Yes, had traveled and had the distinction of having met three popes, that‟s what you told me. Helen: That‟s what I had said. Interviewer: The last, the Thirteenth Pope Benedict, he was a graduate of both University of Michigan and Notre Dame and studied abroad. He was eleven years, a major in the state troops and for thirty years attendant physician at St. John‟s Orphan Asylum. This was work he did voluntarily and was married to Miss Clara Voigt on September twelfth, eighteen eighty-nine. Surviving are his widow, his father who is ninety-one years old and resides at two forty-six Ransom. Three sisters and Mrs. Helen Jackoboice. That would be your mother. George: Yes, my mother. Interviewer: And eight brothers, wow. Protestant, Jew and Catholic alike attended the funeral services for Doctor. Hake Tuesday last week at the Cathedral. Some praying for the repose of the soul of the departed, others testifying at least by their presence that the late doctor, by the best of his ability struggled and accomplished much for the betterment of his fellow citizens, and the greater glory of the common good. George: He predeceased his father. Interviewer: Yes, now this UBA Home and Hospital United Benevolent was the fore runner, that‟s Blodgett, isn‟t it? George: You know, I could be wrong, I associated that with Butterworth. Interviewer: I think, Butterworth is St. Mark‟s. It was St. Mark‟s before it was Butterworth. George: Could be. Interviewer: Yeah, this I think you‟ll find is the forerunner, and here is a picture of the Voigt Mill and a picture of it. George: I imagine there is a lot of those. �34 Interviewer: Mary Hake and Arthur Gore. And here, there is a dinner menu on here, too. Did you ever look at those meals we could never eat them now a days? Helen: Isn‟t that …. Interviewer: Fantastic. Home of Mary Hake Gore George: That was... Interviewer: George: Oh, your mother did a beautiful job, didn‟t she? That Gore was a sad story, there is enough things in that Hake tribe to …. Interviewer: Well, I think in a big family like that there were some, some tragedies as well as some… George: And yes there really were. Interviewer: You can‟t ever have a big family like that without some sadness as well as ….She has each of her children here and she has, isn‟t this neat. Helen: I just love to, you know how you go looking for something and looking in a drawer and you spend the whole afternoon reading? You know? Interviewer: Oh, yes. Helen: Just looking at pictures. Interviewer: Here it says one eighty-four Ransom, a breakfast immediately afterwards, oh a wedding breakfast. George: Here is one on the McGraws; it is years and years ago in the paper…. Interviewer: “Judy Jots it Down” must have been going on a long time. There must have been a lot of Judy's. Mr. Francis B McGraw of the firm of Duran & McGraw and Amelia L. daughter of ex-alderman William Hake in St. Andrews Church Thursday, full dress affair was conducted on a magnificent scale. Finest velvet covers being laid from the carriages into the church. The bride was superbly dressed in white satin with wreath and veil. The groom wore the conventional full dress suit of black with a diamond crescent on a white neck scarf, my goodness, how times have changed. Because this story appeared in the eighteen seventy-six in the old Grand Rapids Daily Eagle, One of solid gold nuggets we ran across when looking over a scrapbook that was loaned to us by Lewis F. Hake. George: This was another menu for another daughter. Interviewer: The wedding of Mary Hake, and this was the one you said was such a sad story… about Arthur Gore. Mock Turtle Soup, California Salmon, Red sealed Bordeaux, Sweetbread �35 patties, Snipe on toast. First time I‟ve really known what snipe really was, they use to kid us about snipe, Saddle of antelope larded with Sauce Picante, Roast Turkey, Spring chicken, French peas, tipped asparagus, Spareribs, Roman punch, Chicken Salad, Potato Salad, Shrimp salad. Helen: Watched their calories. Interviewer: Raspberry ice cream, Strawberry, Charlotte Russe, then Champagne, Pyramids of Macaroons kisses, French torte, Fresh fruit and French coffee. That‟s a magnificent meal, isn‟t it? George: I think that is the only picture existing. I have blown this up from a very small tintype. This is the house where Doctor Hake practiced medicine in, after my grandfather who still owned the property and moved into the big house. This is Hake right here in the picture. This one is the same one you see up there. Interviewer: Oh, yes, now that is your grandfather? George: Yes. Interviewer: Isn‟t that nice. George: These were painted by Gregori, who painted all the murals at Notre Dame University. Interviewer: Of course, he did a fine job, now where is this house? George: This is the house, long torn down; it stood on the present site of the Grand Rapids Press. Interviewer: Oh, I see. George: In the back there was an orchard, there was also a well. And it always has been stated, that the well there which predated the use of the water that was there by the Arctic Spring Water Co, if you remember that name. And originally by Kusterer of the brewery who had the old Furniture City Brewery. And Kusterer and my grandfather were very close personal friends. Kusterer went down on the Alpena, if you remember that story. Well, after my grandfather‟s family grew, he moved on the hill and kept this property until later it was sold after his death. But Doctor Hake practiced medicine out back and the house was entirely different. The walls in that, Interviewer: It is made from limestone out of the river. George: That‟s right Charles Belknap lead a drive to keep the thing, he failed. Interviewer: What a shame, what a treasure that would have been. George: Yes. �36 Interviewer: Your grandfather lived here? George: That was his first house, actually when he first came to the city, he didn‟t live there because he wasn‟t married he was just a kid he came from Germany. He had his first job with John Clancy who had the first wholesale grocery in Grand Rapids and my grandfather learned the Indian dialect and worked there. He got married at St. Michael‟s church in Chicago. Interviewer: When your grandfather first came, they were still making payments to the Indian every fall. George: Yes, he came about eighteen forty-seven – eighteen fifty or so. Interviewer: They were still making payments to the Indians every October and November until eighteen fifty-eight or so. Helen: This is built over the old spring. George: That‟s the old brewery. Interviewer: “The past crumbles easily”…Fox Deluxe Brewery on Michigan Street, now was this torn down for the expressway? They lost the depots and everything. Now this is Christopher Kusterer a German brewer who went into partnership with John Pannell, Grand Rapids. They started a large brewery on Michigan Street. A large pure cool gushing spring. George: That‟s the spring. My grandfather was in many different, lumbering, a lumber mill. Interviewer: These old people turned their hands to a lot of things in the course of getting established, didn‟t they? George: Here is an item when Doctor Hake came back from Europe one time. Interviewer: Nineteen fourteen, oh, they were in the war zone in Europe. In view of the present events in Europe the great Peace Palace at The Hague is a huge joke. On his arrival from a trip to Europe, accompanied by Mrs. Hake we went direct to Hamburg, Germany from Amsterdam after a visit to The Hague and only a day or two after we visited the famous monument to the peace of the world. Leading powers of the countries were clutching at each other throats. They were there when war was declared, weren‟t they, in August nineteen fourteen? You see that would be at the time. Were clutching each others‟ throats, and practically all of Europe were seething in the heat of the impending conflict. We were impressed with the beautiful urns of wonderful design, emblematic of peace, the contributions of the Czar of Russia and the German Kaiser. The beautiful tribute of Japan and we‟re told a prominent place had been reserved for a tribute from the United States. Doctor Hake could not refrain from emphasizing the inconsistency of the situation and emphatically remarked that the present the wonderful Peace Palace, erected by Carnegie is a travesty on the sentiment of peace among nations. I believe the war now in progress will set civilization back a half a century. Boy, how right he was. �37 George: Yes. There is a little story about when he returned I believe from this trip, there was a little dinner party and many of the people of the city of some prominence were in attendance and I believe the Voigts were there too and even though my Uncle obviously was German as were the Voigts. The thing got a little controversial and they had quite a splash in the paper about the sentiments expressed by Doctor Hake that apparently weren‟t considered .the thing to say with war so imminent. And he was criticized for it, rather strongly, but he didn‟t retract, I don‟t think. .. Interviewer: Was there any feeling in your family, any reaction against German people expressed? Or you had been here so long by that time… George: Oh, no we had no relatives over there. Interviewer: One of the things that comes through as you look over the history of Grand Rapids is that the German people have disappeared into the population. Whereas the Dutch have retained this Dutchness. Helen: Yes, that‟s right. Interviewer: But the German people have just joined the Yankees. George: I think it is rather fitting and I think a tribute to these people. Both my grandfathers are memorialized in the Grand Rapids Museum. Interviewer: In the public museum downtown? George: Yes. In the Ethnic groups. Interviewer: That‟s something to be proud of. George: Yes, incidentally on this one picture here, this was not at the Voigt house anymore. Interviewer: No, that is not there at all. George: That was originally an egg house. Interviewer: That room doesn‟t look anything like that now, that room looks quite different, this looks more like a drawing room but this one has been turned into a music room. Maybe not the way it looked. A lot of the furniture went to various relatives. George: Yes, that„s my understanding, when you come in there is that model mannequin with the bridal dress on. Well that‟s Doctor Hake‟s wife. Interviewer: George: Is that her wedding dress, that‟s the one that Barbara modeled, isn‟t it? Oh, is it? I don‟t know. �38 Interviewer: I think that‟s the one, because it is a beautiful wedding dress. George: Not to distract you from that, but here are some cablegrams, telegrams and so on at the time of that Naomi disaster. Interviewer: Oh, yes. Isn‟t that neat, all those barred by the sad misfortune on the lake stretch hands across and join in hardy congratulations. Everybody safe and doing well; may this gloom not cloud your joy; may the sunshine of the day be the sunshine of your life. Who is M. Richard? Louis Hake & bride. George: He was, I don‟t know, some relative, but this Albert Hake is… This all ties in because of the … Interviewer: Naomi disaster. I‟d like to really take the time and really read through this, if you wouldn‟t mind me coming back. I would love to come back and sit and read sometime. George: Oh, sure, glad to have you. Interviewer: There is no use reading into the tape recorder. George: No, I know. Interviewer: And I think your mother did a beautiful job in putting this all together. George: I have a lot of this stuff that is just… Interviewer: Now, here you are, Mr. and Mrs. William Hake requesting the honor of your presence of their daughter Helen Matilda to Edward J. Jackoboice, June twelfth, one thousand nine-hundred and six, nine o‟clock. St. Mary‟s Church. Now where is St. Mary‟s Church? George: That‟s on the West side where Father Bingham is pastor now. That is, that is one of the really sleeper churches of the dioceses. You see, that is the second oldest parish in the dioceses of Grand Rapids. Interviewer: That is before St. Andrews? George: No, St. Andrews is first. Interviewer: And St. Mary‟s was second? George: Now, St Mary‟s Church was not the second Gothic church, it was the first church in the Gothic style. St. Mary‟s is an older parish, but St James has an older existing structure, But that St Mary‟s church was in a Gothic style. It is a gorgeous church inside. Interviewer: I‟ll make a point to go over to St. Mary‟s. I‟ll make a point to go over and look. Now, this is your grandfather? William Hake. �39 George: Yes. Interviewer: Isn‟t that something? George: Now that‟s McGraw. Interviewer: Did your grandmother outlive your grandfather? George: No, she died when she was about seventy-eight. Yes. Interviewer: Boy, he was how old when he died? George: ninety-three. Interviewer: Wow, ninety-three. That‟s fantastic George: There were a lot of write-ups about him. He was a very, very colorful man and a dominate personality. These are some of the things that happened at the Hake house. There‟s picture over there of the Naomi over there. Interviewer: Burns, Wednesday morning, Grand Rapids Michigan. One of the heroes of the Naomi disaster - William Hanrahan. Thrilling tales. Grand Rapids people aboard were saved, but lose their clothes and their valuables. Bet they lost some wedding presents too, didn‟t they? George: Yes. Interviewer: Oh, my, that was a big thing, worse than the cyclone. They did lose some lives, though? George: Oh, yes. Obviously mostly crewmen there, that burned to death Interviewer: No, isn‟t that something. Now here it is, soloist…. George: Now is that my sisters? Interviewer: Ruth Jackoboice, is that your sister? George: Yes, I use to have twin sisters Helen and Ruth, and they played the French Harps. Interviewer: I talked to one of your sisters; here it is Miss Gast - that is you! George: Interviewer: George: Yes. I talked with her, and she‟s very much involved in the money raising thing... She… �40 Interviewer: … for the diocese, isn‟t she? She said she would just as soon I talk to you. She would get back to me later. She apparently has put a lot of time and a lot of work…. George: Yes, she has… Interviewer: She was very kind. George: She is in Florida now; she will be back sometime this week. Interviewer: Were the regarded in town as an eccentric family in town? George: No, let‟s see. I guess a qualified yes. Interviewer: What made people in town feel like that about them? Clannishness mainly? George: Obviously, they were very family oriented. They had strong convictions on thrift and economy which really is no fault. Interviewer: That‟s really a virtue, but they were pretty well known for …. George: I know they used to have a decorator years ago and he was highly regarded an as a friend, very fine and very expensive decorator, but say he painted the outside, they had these big beams. Well Mrs. Voigt, she just get a fish pole after he‟d left and would put white gauze on the end a fish pole and she‟d reach up there to make sure he painted it all. If it was wet, it was all right, otherwise he‟d missed and she‟d want to know about it. Interviewer: I heard another tale like that. This old gal whose father built the Voigt house, did a lot of work for her father before that. She used to take the bills around and present the bills, and she‟d go to the mill office with the bills and she said he‟d always say, “Oh, John. How did John get at this figure? This is too high, this is too high.” And her father said, “Now he‟ll say this to you. He‟ll say John‟s just robbing me blind.” And he said, “Well you just stay there and you don‟t say anything. And then he‟ll pay you.” And she said it was just like that. You‟d go in and he‟d say “Oh John is jus robbing me. This should be, no this price is too high.” Then she waited a while and wouldn‟t say anything and then he‟d pay her. And she said every time she went to collect there was always this little act they went thru. George: You know, there was one controversy, not so many years ago I would say prior to Ralph‟s death, when the mills were sold to the City of Grand Rapids and the city I think was wise in acquiring the land, because we are now one of the few cities in the country, who own both sides of the river in the downtown area with rare exceptions. I think that is a great thing they are striving to do but the Voigts were highly criticized for that because according to the reports they got anything from five hundred and eight thousand to five hundred and say fifty thousand dollars for it. But what most people entirely forget is that the Voigts owned the riparian rights and by riparian natural waterways laws and so on, the city never could have acquired that unless the Voigts had surrendered those rights, which meant later they could make a parking lot and �41 eventually a planned plaza on the west side. See these canals fed the water wheels for the Voigt mills. And also, something and I am almost positive I am correct because I had it confirmed by one of the leaders of at least one of the hospitals. George Welsh, and I always regarded George Welsh, I disagree violently on many things. Did you know him at all? Interviewer: I never knew him, but I wish I had, he was quite a colorful character? George: Yes, he was and naming the auditorium was a well deserved honor for him. But when they say they paid five hundred and some-odd thousand dollars for these old mills. And the city did. But they not only got the mills and the land on which they stood, they also got the land to make a parking lot out of that land. But most importantly the Voigts have never been given credit for it to my knowledge; they gave a hundred eighty thousand dollars to St. Mary‟s Hospital and a hundred eighty thousand to Butterworth Hospital. And there is three hundred sixty thousand dollars and everybody said they were getting top dollar but no one comes forth and says they also gave it back. George: I had a friend and maybe this is analogous, but his family, and they lived in Grand Rapids, are just notorious and they were just plain stingy. And yet I seen this fellow would turn right around and argue with the newspaper boy whether it should be two cents or three cents. And on one occasion he turned right around and he gave me season tickets to a most coveted football season. He said, Ah, here you take them.” I said I would pay he said, “No, I don‟t want anything.” And I think the Voigts in some ways were like that. Interviewer: They wanted the value for their money. George: Yes. Interviewer: Of course one of the things we forget, and I think it is true here, is the genius of Grand Rapids has been the businessmen. Extremely capable businessmen. And I was sort of interested in meeting you because one thing about my study of Grand Rapids, it is a natural course of events in America now. But one of the things I think made Grand Rapids strong was home-owned business. You know, that the people that own the businesses live here. George: Yes, Interviewer: And there were so many businesses, were home owned businesses right here that were strong and diversified. And of course, that‟s passing on. George: You take with us now, we‟re. There are no outside owners it is all family. Interviewer: But you are becoming more and more rare here in town. George: Yes, that‟s right. But as I say we have been in business continuously as a family in the machinery business in Grand Rapid without interruption for a hundred and eighteen years. �42 Interviewer: That‟s a record. George: Very frankly, we enjoy it tremendously; we have an awful lot of fun. We sell throughout the United States and about twenty-five foreign countries. You‟ve got a really good booming… Interviewer: George: But we work at it, and we enjoy working at it. Interviewer: And you have three sons in the business? George: Three sons in the business, all three sons are in the business. Interviewer: I thought maybe when Mrs. Jackoboice said that one of them was writing about Wordsworth; maybe you had a college professor in the family. George: I think it started out that way, I think he likes that as an avocation but I think he likes business better. He might not agree with me, but he is down there all the time. Take my wife. Her people have always been in business, both of my grand fathers were in business and my father was. Business talk has always been dinner table conversation as a lot of these old family names in town. You know the Herpolsheimers, Wurzburgs and the Voigts. You weren‟t overly impressed because their names came up so often. Interviewer: And they were your neighbors and you saw them every day. George: Just like, here we were flying to Europe a few years ago and actually the man was Don Maxwell who was the editorial chairman of the Chicago Tribune and we were flying together he and his wife and Helen and myself we were visiting, half-way across the ocean and he rather facetiously at the end said well George you know you have been name dropping a little bit. I said Mr. Maxwell I disagree, it just so happens that because these people made some mark on the world and they are well known figures, doesn‟t mean your name dropping or I am. Actually, I know these people, I know them very well and they are personal friends of mine. I don‟t believe I am doing any more than giving them their modest merit. INDEX B G Bedford, Mr. · 4 D Dubee, Charles · 24 Gast Family · 1, 4, 40 Gilmore Family · 25 Gore, Arthur · 34, 35 �43 H P Hake Family · 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 9, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20, 22, 23, 27, 28, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39 Hanchett, Mrs. · 24 Herpolsheimer Family · 9, 11, 43 Hunting Family · 19 Pantlind Family · 18, 24, 25 J Jackoboice Family · 1, 2, 9, 10, 33, 39, 40, 42 Jungbaecker, John · 3, 16, 30 K Kusterer Family · 20, 36 L R Rasch Family · 3, 9, 23 Rindge, Warren · 30 S Schulz, Mildred · 3 St. Cecilia Music Society · 23 St. Mark‟s Episcopal Church · 8 St. Mary‟s Church · 13, 39, 41 Stiles, Mary · 23 Sweet, Martin · 22 U Ladies Literary Club · 23 Leitelt Family · 12 University of Michigan · 6, 33 M V McGraw Family · 35, 39 McLachlan, Mrs. · 3, 30 Monarch Road Machinery Company · 9 Voigt Family · 2, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 18, 21, 23, 24, 28, 29, 37, 41, 42, 43 Voigt, Clara · 1, 4, 13, 33 O W Orth, Mary · 3 Whinery, Mrs. · 24, 25 Women‟s City Club · 22, 23 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/97bc849e31349448be62db2c84842671.mp3 6414af789bf64b461989218c2cf11560 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_52Jackaboice Title A name given to the resource Jackoboice, George and Helen Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jackoboice, George Jackoboice, Helen Description An account of the resource Helen Gast was born August 7, 1910 in Grand Rapids. She married George Jackoboice in 1937. They had three sons. Mrs. Jackoboice died on December 31, 2008. 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 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/dd694b27a46f5c26312c278ea5e7dea5.pdf bc1380b77b47f9561489b13d78e87926 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mr. George Jackoboice Interviewed November 5, 1974 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010-bryant@wellswooster.com Tape # 43 (1:16:37) Biographical Information George Adolphe Jackoboice was born 17 June 1908, the son of Edward J. Jackoboice and Helen Matilda Hake. George was married to Helen Gast, the daughter of Peter B. Gast and Emily Alt. George passed away 10 January 1987 in Grand Rapids and is buried at Mt. Calvary Cemetery. He was the chairman of Monarch Hydraulics, Inc. Besides three sons and their families, George was survived by his wife, Helen, who died 31 December 2008, aged 98 years. George‟s father, Edward Jackoboice was born in Grand Rapids on 16 June 1864, the son of Joseph Jackoboice and Frances Rasch. Edward died 8 May 1935 in Grand Rapids. George‟s mother, Helen Matilda Hake was born in Grand Rapids circa 1873 and died 23 May 1952 at St Mary‟s Hospital in Grand Rapids. The parents were married on 12 June 1906 in Grand Rapids. The Jackoboice family is buried in Mt. Calvary Cemetery on Grand Rapids‟ west side. ____________ Interviewer: Now, I think we‟re getting somewhere because the dial is, is really working here, I just didn‟t have this thing, this is tricky, it doesn‟t plug in quite right…Back it up and play it back. I‟ll play it back and then we‟ll see if I, if that‟s what it was. I think it is. This is an interview with Mr. George Jackoboice in his residence at two thirty-one Park Hills Drive. It‟s raining out. Mr. Jackoboice, is an old time resident, although by far the youngest we interviewed so far in this series. He‟s a member of an old, German family, some of whom lived on the west side of the river in the early days. He is currently the, are you the principal owner George of the, you‟re the president of the Monarch Road… Mr. Jackoboice: Machinery. Interviewer: Machinery Company. And I‟m going to let Mr. Jackoboice, I‟m going to ask him to talk, about his earliest memories about his family, about his grandparents or any of the other relatives that he remembers vividly and, tell us about, growing up in Grand Rapids. Mr. Jackoboice: Thank you, it‟s a real pleasure to be interviewed by you this rainy election evening. You asked about my present place in Grand Rapids community as you have so well and correctly stated, I am and have been president of the Monarch Road Machinery Company for forty-three years, which means only that I haven‟t had a promotion in a long time. We are probably perhaps the oldest machinery business in this part of the state, having been in �2 continuous operation in the machinery business since 1856 or, as of now, for one hundred and eighteen years. We represent the fourth and the beginning of the fifth generation, both in the business and in Grand Rapids. Interviewer has asked if I can recall some of the more significant things connected with my boyhood and youth in Grand Rapids. I actually, believe I could ramble on for several hours, perhaps several days, under the right set of circumstances where one thought, would lead to another. I was born and raised on the west side of Grand Rapids, approximately on the corner of Mount Vernon Avenue and Allen Street. This area has since been taken over by the expressway, however when I was a young man, growing up, this was one of the more significant and I might add, more beautiful neighborhoods in, on at least the west side of the river. I can recall many of the more famous families who were the nucleus of Grand Rapids society of that generation. To continue my, all of my grandparents were in Grand Rapids prior to eighteen fifty-three. Now this is no great tribute to me, I happened to be born into this, into these families. My grandfather William F. Hake was perhaps the earliest German or one of the early Germans at least to come into this area. He came from a town in Westphalia, Germany, sometimes remembered and called Westphallen by the older German residents. He came from a town, a village called Dunschede, D-U-N-S-C-H-E-D-E, which is near Attendorn which is in turn is northeast of Cologne, Germany. He came over here as an orphan boy, when he was somewhere between seventeen and eighteen years of age. His first position was in Detroit and he became a very close friend of the founder, I believe, of one of the early Detroit newspapers. I cannot recall whether it was the Detroit Free Press or the Detroit News. But he was a printer‟s devil and then later on he decided to go to Grand Rapids, Michigan and he walked the distance according to his diary. He lived in Lansing, Michigan for a very short time and he once laughingly said, but with some measure of regret, that he had an option on the land, there now stands the State Capital. He paid forty dollars for this option, which he later surrendered. He then moved to Grand Rapids and became involved with a man by the name of John Hanchett, who was a pioneer harness maker. The employment with this gentleman continued for a very brief time. After which he became involved with John Clancy who, history will recall, founded the first wholesale grocery in the Grand Rapids, or Western Michigan area. My grandfather married a lady, a very beautiful lady, I might add, by the name of Anna Maria Schettler, who was a native of Württemberg, province of Württemberg, Germany. Interviewer: Spell her last name for me. Mr. Jackoboice: Her name was S-C-H-E-T-T-L-E-R and her first names were Anna Maria. She came first to Chicago with her parents and I might add also, that her home city was Altensteig, which is in the Black Forest of Germany, not too far from Freiburg. I visited these places so I know where of I speak. She lived on a hill, and the significance that in her later married days, she �3 also lived on a hill, occupying a beautiful home which is now the site of the parking lot for Butterworth Hospital. It is on the southeast corner of Ransom and Crescent Street. She came, to get back however, she came from Chicago, and my grandfather and grandmother were married at St. Michael‟s Church in Chicago and it was said that one of the original Marshall Field family were in the wedding party. They came to Grand Rapids where my grandfather, because of his integrity and his thrift and his energy, was determined to be a success and I might add that he was. I can epitomize his career in this very brief statement that he came here as an orphan boy knowing practically nobody and when he died at 94 years of age, the City Hall flag was at half mast for three days. He was engaged during his lifetime in furniture manufacturing, lumbering, the wholesaling of liquor, he also had a wheelbarrow company and he was at one time treasurer of the city of Grand Rapids and placed into execution the bookkeeping system that was used until about oh, thirty, thirty-five years ago. Interviewer: When did he arrive here in Grand Rapids, George, when did your grandparents come after they were married? Mr. Jackoboice: My grandfather Hake arrived in Grand Rapids I would have to guess slightly but I‟m correct within three or four years, about 1850, I believe the correct date is 1847. Interviewer: Do you remember him? Mr. Jackoboice: Oh very, very vividly. He lived as I say, until he was ninety-four years of age. He was a very active man and right up until a week before he died he was, quite a stroller about town with his high silk hat and his gold cane. He was very meticulously dressed and a very popular and quite an interesting personality. He was known to have bet significant sums on whether it would, the temperature for example would drop to “X” degrees on a hot day or, if some candidate or other would win an election. He was nicknamed at times “Bet a Million Gates” in tribute to one of the more significant legendary characters of his generation. According to the stories that my mother and uncles told me, on two occasions he bet 15,000 dollars which was then a very high sum, on the outcome of presidential elections. Both times, fortunately he won. They had fifteen children, twelve of who lived to maturity, and the last one died only about two years ago. The last uncle was Louis F. Hake. His children were involved in their time with, merchandising, with coal, with insurance, with music, with medicine and practically all the facets of the business life of Grand Rapids. They were a very interesting family and they married into some rather well-known and well-established families. Currently one of the better known members in the local historical group is Dr. William F. Hake who was married to Clara Voigt, who was the lady, if you have gone thru the Voigt House, stands at the left as you enter and she is dressed in a bridal outfit as, at the entrance as I say of the parlor of their home. Interviewer: Excuse me; this is your Grandfather Hake? Mr. Jackoboice: This was his son. �4 Interviewer: No, I mean the man you started to talk about. Mr. Jackoboice: That‟s correct. Interviewer: Was your great grandfather; let‟s start over; who was the man who came here in the eighteen forties or fifties?Mr. Jackoboice: William F. Hake was my grandfather who came here in the early, prior to eighteen fifty. His son was also William F. Hake but he was a doctor. Interviewer: And he is the one who married… Mr. Jackoboice: He is the one who married the Voigt. To continue with my grandfather, William F. Hake, who should not be confused with his son who was also William Hake but who was a doctor and the doctor was the gentleman who was married to Clara Voigt. Continuing, however as I indicated with my doctor, with my grandfather William F. Hake, he was an inveterate athlete of sorts and until he was 93 years he swam every summer in Lake Michigan and by that I don‟t mean that he waded out up to his knees, he would go well over his height and swim for probably a quarter a mile along the shore line and up until the year before he died, this was his regular practice. He also would walk up and down Michigan Street hill because that led to and from his home; he had many friends along the route there including Mr. Kusterer of the Brewery. Kusterer was of an old Grand Rapids brewing family and was one of the persons who went down with the steamer Alpena as it was crossing from, I believe Grand Haven to Milwaukee, it was only by the most strange, strangest circumstances that William F. Hake did not make that trip, and that is of course another and very lengthy story. To continue with some of his children, and I cannot give, even a capsule history of all of the twelve surviving children because that would take far too many hours. But, Dr. William F. Hake was a very prominent physician and surgeon in Grand Rapids. They had no children and in each case they loved to travel. So they made frequent trips to Europe and at a time when travel was not as simple as in these days of jet transportation. He, among other things, donated all of his medical services to such charitable organizations as the Sisters of the Poor, the Sisters of the Good Shepherd which at that time had an institution which operated a laundry, and also took care of girls, who in the minds of many were delinquents; and also of Saint John‟s Home. His, in his medical career he amassed a reasonable amount of money and, of course his wife, Clara survived him and she became again, a resident of the old family home, the Voigt House on College Avenue. And the College Avenue home, of course has been so well recorded and documented that it probably should not be again mentioned her. My mother… Interviewer: Excuse me, when did Dr. Hake die? Mr. Jackoboice: Dr. Hake died of pernicious anemia about nineteen twenty-two, that‟s within, within a year or two either away. Interviewer: Did his wife live into the fifties, I think…. �5 Mr. Jackoboice; Yes, I would think well past the fifties. I often would have luncheon with her. She was very frankly, very, very fond of my wife, who was, whose maiden name was Helen Gast. And whenever we would meet down at any of the restaurants of the city, why they would always, she would always send a little remembrance over to my wife in the form of a friendly drink or equal. Interviewer: I just asked George about where Dr. Hake was buried because I had never found him on the Voigt lot. Now, you tell your story George. Mr. Jackoboice: Dr. Hake was buried at Mount Calvary Cemetery on the west side which is right off Leonard Street. Dr. Hake, it should be mentioned, was Catholic. His wife, Clara Hake was not. But at that time in history, there was a rule in the Catholic Church that non-Catholics could not be buried in a Catholic cemetery, so there was a little problem there which later was resolved in this way. Some time, some years after Dr. Hake had died, she, he was removed at her request, to a plot in Oakhill Cemetery, which is on the southeast side of the city, and it is, it was there that she later was buried. There was a huge granite cross placed on his grave by his widow at Mount Cavalry and ironically it was done by an outside stone mason and one of the uprights unfortunately was just a little bit off kilter. Now that has no real significance except perhaps one shouldn‟t patronize, especially in things like that, their own native trades‟ people. Interviewer: You were to talk about some other members of that generation of Hakes, besides Dr. Hake? Mr. Jackoboice: Yes…, there‟s one interesting story, if you don‟t mind, I‟ll go back to my grandmother‟s generation. Interviewer: Not at all. Mr. Jackoboice: My grandmother was, who was named, whose name was Anna Maria Schettler had a sister who was named Louisa. Now Louisa was a very, very beautiful girl. If you‟ve ever seen a picture of Southern Belle, which is a rather famous portrait, she was a very, she bore a very close resemblance to that person. Now, I never knew Louisa but Louisa lived in Chicago. She was first married to a man, I believe by the name of Miller. They had no children and Miller was very, very successful as a rathskeller operator in Chicago and this was certainly before the days of the Chicago fire, which really doesn‟t mean a thing except that it goes way back in early Chicago history. Louisa, as I indicated, was a very beautiful woman she had very, very many friends, she was very vivacious and vital and, suddenly Miller died and left her with a than considerable amount of money. Louisa then married a man somewhat older than she and he was a bona fide German count and, the story goes that, he was, he had the title of Count Von Dreisen, but he didn‟t necessarily have the money that, should accompany his title. Well, they lived in glory and traveled with the finest society in Chicago and my grandfather went off and chided her for being so reckless with her money and she said, “Well, Bill (my grandfather‟s name), I would only say this: That I would like to abide by your wishes Bill but I have nobody to leave this �6 money to except my sister, your wife and I have no need for saving it because it‟s more money than I could ever spend. Later on Count Von Dreisen died and Louisa found herself impoverished. She lived in a very modest apartment overlooking the boulevards on once she had ridden in glory with fine horses and furs and the best that Chicago could offer. And it was ironic that this lady who turned down any inheritance from her father, in favor of her sister had to ask, or had to call upon her brother-in-law to pay for her funeral. Interviewer: Now, was there other members of that Hake, of your mother‟s generation who were particularly interesting Mr. Jackoboice: My mother, of course, was Helen Matilda Hake; she was one of the three daughters of William F. Hake and Anna Maria Schettler, who lived to maturity. She went to Saint Mary‟s Academy, at Notre Dame, Indiana and she, often mentioned that Helen Studebaker, among others was one of her classmates. Helen Studebaker was, of course, was part of the old carriage family later to make the Studebaker automobile. She was married to my father Joseph Jackoboice, Edward, I‟m sorry, Edward Joseph Jackoboice and they had and I am the son of that union along with my brother Edward and four sisters. I will tell about them a little bit later. But my mother was a tremendously interesting person, she seemed to always had her suitcase packed and would be ready to travel at a moment‟s notice. She would, I‟m, sure drop any wifely chores to show her children a very good time, either by taking a walk to the park or engaging in games or anything of that nature. She was fun loving, she played the piano, she spoke fluent German and reasonably, fine French, she lived to be seventy-nine years of age and certainly, life never was the same again after she died. She was, as I say a tremendous person. And I‟m sure that sentiment is accurate also by my brother Edward and my sisters Frances, Rita, Helen and Ruth. And Helen and Ruth were twins. Helen died at twenty-seven; Ruth is the surviving twin, Rita the youngest died at seven years of age. Interviewer: Why don‟t you tell, tell us about the Jackoboice family, when they came to Grand Rapids, and what they first did, and anything you can think of interest in, along that line, George. Mr. Jackoboice: Thank you. The grandparents on my father‟s side were Frances Rasch; that was spelled R-A-S-C-H. She came from the Kingdom of Prussia, which is now, of course a part of Germany. My grandfather, Joseph Jackoboice, came from a border city in what was then known as the Duchy of Warsaw. And as the Kingdom of Poland and of course, it was a land that had suffered politically and economically because of its tri-partitions, by in turn, the concurrently I should say by the Austrians, the Prussians and the Russians. Joseph Jackoboice, according to the unconfirmed records, was born in Kalisz, which was a city in Poland which is 1800 years old, and was formally on the Amber route from the Orient to Eastern Europe and of course, eventually into Western Europe and he came. Interviewer: When was he born, approximately, George? �7 Mr. Jackoboice: My grandfather Joseph Jackoboice was born March sixteenth, eighteen twentyfour. He came to the United States, no later than eighteen fifty-two when he was twenty-eight years old. He came at a time, when migration from that part of the world was for political reasons, not economic. He came to this country with an education and he came with money. Almost immediately upon arrival here he established himself in business. And that explains why, when I said at the beginning of this interview that I represent the descendents of a family who had been involved in the machinery business in Grand Rapids continuously for one hundred and eighteen years. Interviewer: One question I have about the name Jackoboice, was that name spelled differently in the early days, is it a German name, or was it a Polish name or was a family of mixed origins? Mr. Jackoboice: I would believe, that the name was Anglicized or corrupted. The original spelling according to the best information we have was J-A-K-U-B-O-W-I-C-Z, which would by its ending be more Russian than probably Polish. He himself, almost immediately upon his arrival in Michigan, changed his name to Jackoboice. It is significant, however that in either version there are ten letters. So that in essence the name was Anglicized from probably phonetic reasons. But it was not shortened. Why he did this, nobody seems to know. I personally have spent a considerable amount of money in several trips to the old country to determine why he left. Although he was a very, very successful man in business and although he had the health, and the finances and the time to travel, he never did so. He always remained in Grand Rapids, Michigan and frankly there is very little that can be found, showing correspondence between this country and his native land. There are no letters, there is no documentation, why he came, nobody knows. He rarely ever spoke of it. And it‟s kind of a fascinating and very intriguing mystery. Interviewer: Then he had no brothers or sisters who came here, is that correct? Mr. Jackoboice: He came alone. He came alone and, when he came and I mentioned earlier that he was about, he came, he was born in 1824 and he came here in 1852. So he would have been approximately twenty-eight years of age. And at twenty-eight he obviously was beyond the age of military service so he did not come for military reasons. As I say again, it‟s a fascinating mystery, I don„t know except that, the name in its original spelling is a very well name, a very well known name in Poland. Whether he spoke languages other than Poland, Polish or English or German, I do not know but I believe he spoke all three, if not a fourth. His wife Frances Rasch, as I indicated came from the Kingdom of Prussia, from the town, from the town of Breslau. Her entire family came to Grand Rapids, into Kent County and many of them pioneered and homesteaded in the fruit and apple and peach orchards in the Conklin, Sparta and Wright areas. They still have these extensive orchards there. Another branch of her family went to Florence, Alabama and founded a village there by the name of St. Florian. And there‟s an old house there which was built by her brother which, in its time was a sort of miniature Gone-with- �8 the-Wind mansion. I don‟t know whatever happened to it, but it was when I last saw it twenty five years ago, it was then even very decrepit so it‟s probably fallen into decay by this time. Interviewer: Well, you spoke of your, the Hake family as being Roman Catholic, I‟m going to assume, that the Jackoboices were too and also I believe they had something to do with the beginning of Saint Mary‟s Parish on the West Side, is that correct? Mr. Jackoboice: That is, correct; both William F. Hake, Joseph Jackoboice and his wife, Frances Rasch Jackoboice were charter members of Saint Mary‟s Church. Mrs. William F. Hake was however, a charter member of the Lutheran Church on Michigan Street Hill. My grandfather, Jackoboice lived on the site, which is now occupied by the convent of Saint Mary‟s Church. Saint Mary‟s Church, incidentally is the ethnic, Catholic German church. It is the second oldest parish in the dioceses of Grand Rapids and it was, the church you see now, of course, followed the original church and the present church is pure Gothic and one must really go in there to see how beautiful it is, in the stained glass windows and the arrays of sacred vessels and vestments and so on but, are over there in the repository. You ever been in there? Interviewer: No, why don‟t you talk about your father and what, where he was born and where he went to school and things of that sort. Mr. Jackoboice: My father was one of the two surviving children of Joseph Jackoboice and Frances Rasch. The other children died either as infants or as young people in their late teens or early twenties. They had all met in one case, in the case of my Uncle George, for whom I am named, it was quite a blow to my father because he was only, it was his only living brother and he drowned off Manhattan Beach, as it was then known at Reed‟s Lake. My father told how he looked for him on this sultry August afternoon, and after everybody had given up searching for him, he continued and found his body in the early morning hours. He never got over the tragedy of his brother‟s drowning and only reluctantly ever would he go towards Reed‟s Lake. He however continued, his brother George by the way, was, I believe nineteen years old when this tragedy occurred. He was an excellent swimmer but apparently he was a victim of cramps and nobody saw him in time and they found his high wheeled bicycle out by the side of a tree. My father continued in the business established by his father. And that business was originally known as the Joseph Jackoboice Company and then later on, was renamed the Westside Ironworks and the extent of their manufacture, the scope of it included band saws, rip saws, cut off saws, fine woodworking machinery. I‟m a little bit ahead of myself, but prior to the manufacture of machinery, my grandfather manufactured sawmill and logging machinery, lumber recording instruments, steam engines and he also made a specialty of fire escapes which were installed on most of the early buildings of Grand Rapids and some of the ornamental iron still survives on some of the older buildings. Later on… Interviewer: Can you tell us, tell me where one could see examples of that ornamental ironwork? �9 Mr. Jackoboice: I‟m guessing a little bit on this, but I believe some of the railings, might appear and I‟d have to confirm this, on the, for example, the Ledyard Building along the side there, I believe. They also well on the late, and lamented and fire destroyed Cody Hotel, I know they had fire escapes and I used to kid my father about that because, it was quite a tragic situation and, but fire escapes wouldn‟t have helped anybody in that holocaust. But anyway….. Interviewer: The Cody or do you mean the other hotel across….. Mr. Jackoboice: I‟m sorry I meant the Livingston Hotel. The Cody was across the street and that was, I‟m so used to that because telling about that because the Cody Hotel was originally owned and operated by a relative of Buffalo Bill Cody. Later on, we continued in the manufacture of woodworking machinery; then later on became involved with the manufacturing of road machinery and road maintainers, and devices for the maintenance of highways and this occurred when the highway program of the United States was in its early days. And, quite often I would drive throughout the country with my father, visiting these various road commissions, many of them were not even known as road commissions because they had a sub-contract arrangements with farmers of a given township or county. And negotiations would be made on an individual basis. My father, I think, liked to travel around and be paid for it and he enjoyed it very much and of course this, as his chauffeur and son and companion why we had a great time together. Later on, after my father chose to retire, my brother and I assumed control of the business and is now known as the Monarch Road Machinery Company with a factory and offices on Michigan Street. We also own the building on the west side, one block south of Bridge Street which is known as the Old German English School Association Building, better known as the German School House. Many people like to believe that was the first building where we operated as a family but actually it was the fourth. The first building was on a site which is approximately where the Civic Auditorium is now. The second, was at an area now owned, now covered by the Olds Manor, historically however that was known as German Corners or Rasch or the Rasch House and that hotel was owned by my father and mother and an aunt. Interviewer: Which corner was that? Mr. Jackoboice: That was on the Northwest corner of Monroe and Bridge Street or Michigan. It is where the Olds Manor is now And they later on, they moved from there to a site on the west side of Grand River, approximately where the new Civic Theatre is scheduled to be built, approximately where the old inter-urban bridge terminates. The later on the German English School Society building was acquired by my grandfather and he converted to a factory. Interviewer: I think we‟re coming to the end of the, this side of the tape or fairly close to it so I think we‟ll turn the tape over at this point. Part Two of an interview with Mr. George Jackoboice. �10 Mr. Jackoboice: To continue, the business as I‟ve indicated previously has been variously known under different company names but has always been in full control and operation by the Jackoboice family. And during the business history, we as I have suggested before made sawmill machinery, logging machinery, then precision woodworking machinery, heavy road machinery and now we are concentrated in hydraulic power control systems and as such we sell these devices for the automatic control of things both in materials, handling, feeling, field, agricultural, automotive, the ready-mix industry and a great variety of applications, throughout the United States and Canada and probably 20 foreign countries. It is, I‟m sure a tribute to my grandfather and my father who, respectively founded the business and I‟m sure that we‟re all very grateful that because of their perseverance and industry that we survived as a tribute to the American concept of free enterprise. It is also I‟m sure worthy of a proud note, that both of my grandfathers William F. Hake and Joseph Jackoboice are memorialized in the permanent exhibits at the Grand Rapids Public Museum. And in each case they were leaders and pioneers of their respective, national origins, the one from Germany and the other Joseph Jackoboice who I‟m sure was the first by at least ten years, to be in Grand Rapids and he was certainly the pioneer of his nationality. I can only add that…. Interviewer: I wanted to ask you, what in, where in the public Museum would one go to find these memorials, memorializations of your grandparents? Mr. Jackoboice: They are in each case, on the second floor of the east building along the south wall, where they have the Heritage Hall. And there as you walk down this one hallway you‟ll run directly into the Germany exhibit and there‟s a picture there of William F. Hake and also of the old German English School House that I mentioned earlier which the Jackoboices owned and still own and immediately adjacent is the recognition of Joseph Jackoboice and the exhibit, which tells about the Polish ethnic background of the city. Interviewer: Go ahead. Mr. Jackoboice: You mentioned earlier, about some of the neighborhood interests, that I was privileged to enjoy on the west side. And of course when one goes by there now they will, they will notice that it is strictly commercial, industrial. And in no sense, does it reflect what it once upon a time was. For example, many of the old, of the older, and I would like to believe influential pioneers of Grand Rapids lived in that neighborhood. For example, directly across the street from my old boyhood home lived, the Voigts at that time, next door was T.W. Strahan. Interviewer: Excuse me, exactly where was your boyhood home, George Mr. Jackoboice: This home was at the corner of Mount Vernon and Allen Street; this was on the southeast corner. But it is entirely obliterated now because the expressway, in its construction was placed directly over the whole area within where I used to live. Directly … Interviewer: Go ahead. You mentioned the Voigts lived on one side and the Strahans. �11 Mr. Jackoboice: Strahans. Interviewer: How do you spell that? Mr. Jackoboice: S-T-R-A-H-A-N. Interviewer: Tell us about, go on with the…. Mr. Jackoboice: T.W. Strahan was a very well known man of his generation, as was his son I believe Tom. I don‟t really know what T.W. stood for but, I believe that was his father. Among other things they had a clothing store in the city which was a very popular place way back around the turn of the century, immediately adjacent was the old Bertsch Hall which was owned the Bertsch family and they, it was a huge three story house and on the third floor there was a ballroom. And of course this house was, in its glory days, was a tremendous place later on it became very decadent and I believe was since destroyed. Interviewer: Is that the Barclay Ayres and Bertsch family or….? Mr. Jackoboice: No. I don‟t believe it‟s that family. Interviewer: I see. Is Mr. Jackoboice: I don‟t know exactly the original… Interviewer: Is it spelled B-E-R-T-S-C-H? Mr. Jackoboice: I think so, I believe so. And then there was a gentleman by the name of Mordyke who lived, also nearby. Mordyke used to tell me that he once, was offered a partnership with Steketee of the department store, but he thought it was too much of a risk and rejected it. Much, I think, to his regret. Immediately next door to us was Anton Hirth who was a stone cutter and who was responsible for much of the stone work on the older buildings of Grand Rapids. And this particularly interesting to me because my grandfather Hake, provided the bond which was necessary for Mr. Hirth to get his first big contract, which was, I believe, on the old original Central High School, later to become Junior College on the corner of Lyon Street and.. Interviewer: And Ransom or Barclay? Mr. Jackoboice: Barclay, I believe, and Lyon. It is partly, it has been pretty much torn down the last few years and only the gymnasium of a much later vintage survives. In the area also, was Kutsche of the hardware store. And Kutsche, until he became an old man, was still very, very active in the business. It was later taken over by the firm of Brander and they‟re down on Leonard Street now. There was also Powers who built, the Powers Theatre, now the Mid-Town, but for many, many years housed the leading legitimate theatrical events of the city. He also owned the Powers and Walker Casket Company. And also in their area were the Knapes, of the Knape and Vogt Manufacturing Company, the family home was there. Liebermann of the �12 Liebermann and Gitlen Metal Company lived very modestly although he was certainly a very wealthy man in his time, lived also nearby. There was, Gill whose son Corrington Gill later became assistant Secretary of Commerce of the United States. There was a Drueke who is well known in the city now as the manufacturer of chess men. Also, Wurzburgs, of the department store lived, just a block away and I think that the, some of the problems of identifying the Wurzburg families and I emphasize the plurality is that according to my information Mr. Wurzburg was married three times. Each wife in turn died, but by each wife he had five children. And I think one of the, incidentally, our city commissioner, Abe Drasin, also lived around the corner and I was, I think, very much intrigued by the ethnic mix of the neighborhood at that time because many of the people have attained some measure of importance and significance in the community in later years, I grew up with and I think that would be true in other neighborhoods also, but I think that is especially significant to me. I think one of the most fascinating, and I‟m sure one of the most controversial figures I‟ve ever known, lived directly across the street and that was Edward N. Barnard sometimes know as Bernard, but we always knew him as Ed Barnard. Ed became, he was perhaps one of the youngest men ever to graduate from the University of Michigan Law school, graduating, I think when he was nineteen years of age, he became prosecuting attorney and there were a few problems involved with his tenure of office because it seemed that the electorate weren‟t too happy because he was away from his office more than he was present. Later on, Ed went to Detroit, Michigan and down there he attained considerable political prominence, both as a lawyer and also as a confidant and ally of Frank McKay. And I believe that between that Frank McKay with Ed Barnard ran the state of Michigan politically for twenty five years. Now I didn‟t know Ed legally, I knew him as a neighbor and I knew him socially. And I knew many of the nice things about Ed Barnard and those things I can never forget. For example, one day when my mother was sitting on the front porch of her house, Ed Barnard arrived and his house, which was staffed by a housekeeper, was in pretty bad decay so far as painting was concerned. So my mother said: “Ed, why don‟t you paint that house?” And Ed Barnard replied: “Well, Helen (my mother), why should I, I‟m never here?” And she said: “Because I sit here and have to look at it.” And he said: “I never thought of it that way, Helen.” That was Friday afternoon. Monday morning there were five painters there. But that‟s the way Ed Barnard was. When he died, according to the story, he left five Cadillacs, he had an estate in Detroit, complete with bridle paths and boat wells, yet he did not live there, he lived at a very modest apartment in the, I believe the Fort Shelby Hotel and took most of his meals over the slab of a soda fountain. And he had a chauffeur by the name of Henry, to whom he promised many things but, I think Henry never got much more than his thirty five dollars a week. And yet, Ed would be tremendously generous with other people. He, when he died, left several deposit boxes, and in these boxes for the most part was nothing but money. Bills to the amount of several million dollars, I think, the figure was around three. He also left one box that was solid with emeralds, diamonds, and significant pieces of expensive jewelry. The irony of the thing is that even though Ed Barnard was a lawyer, for many years a criminal lawyer, a practice which his father very much frowned against, because his father Bertram was sent here from Boston and he �13 was a very strict and ardent believer in the Bible and frankly supported missionaries around the world, Bertram, his father told me personally, that he was aghast at Ed‟s practice and told him unless he became involved in a more legitimate type of operation that, he would have to limit his visits, and Ed for all his failings, if you choose to call them that, adored his father. And Ed went to corporation law. And he would often ask me to visit him in Detroit. But Ed was really an egomaniac. He would use a person as a display for himself and you can refer to the rather interesting articles that appeared upon his death. And I think they‟ll attest pretty much to this flamboyance and theatrical qualities; the irony of it is also that, Ed Barnhard died without a will. And most of that money that he had acquired, I believe was for one reason or another contested by the Internal Revenue Service. How much of it went to the family, I really don‟t know. Interviewer: Did he have a family of his own? Mr. Jackoboice: Ed Barnhard was married very briefly to a lady by the name of Estelle Skinner. The Skinners were a very, very fine and well regarded family in the city. I believe they were married for a year for I am guessing, but perhaps a year and they were divorced. From this union they had one child. Why were they divorced, I don‟t know but, whenever Ed Barnard would return to Grand Rapids, he would always, literally have a date with his divorced wife and, you would think they were on their honeymoon. They were ardently, appeared to be ardently in love and yet, I guess they couldn‟t live together. She owned, I believe the Manufacturers building downtown, is that it… Interviewer: Which building is that….? Mr. Jackoboice: That‟s where Junior College had its offices down. It was a display, it was a Interviewer: You mean in that, farther down… Mr. Jackoboice: Yes, across from Klingmans, in that area. Interviewer: Yes, I know where it is…. Mr. Jackoboice: Yes, and that was owned by the Skinner family and Ed Barnard later on, through his wife who had died, and by the way, Ed couldn‟t have been more gracious, more beneficent to anybody than he was to his wife. She had a malignancy, I think a bone malignancy, bone cancer and he hired the best specialist in the country and provided her with every need. Ed was also marvelous to his mother. And his mother by the way was a brother, sister I should say of Frank Knox who was later Secretary of the Navy of the United States and I believe Vice President. And whenever, Ed was in town, Frank quite often would visit him. And so we did have some rather significant nationally known neighbors even back, forty some years ago. Ed always regarded us as a friend and I liked him tremendously. He was eccentric, he was a maverick, he was exciting, and I tell you, there was never a dull day when Ed was home visiting with his father and his mother and sisters. �14 Interviewer: Let‟s go back to you a little bit, where did you first go to school? And tell us about your school life. Mr. Jackoboice: I personally, attended Saint Mary‟s Parochial School, which is a Catholic school and all the morning classes in those years were in German until the beginning of World War One, when it was not considered patriotic to continue the use of the German language, as I mentioned earlier, my father and mother both spoke fluent German: I spoke reasonably good German until I was seven or eight years old. I continued on at Saint Mary‟s and then I went to Catholic Central High School. I played football there. I later went to Davenport Institute then known as the Davenport-McLaughlin Institute, a business school for a year, then I went on to the University of Notre Dame where I graduated in nineteen thirty one, in the department of journalism. And it‟s perhaps you wonder how I could reconcile journalism and the machinery business. Well, one is an avocation, the business I grew up in ever since I was a lad, I would spend much of my free time down at the factory either making toys and boats on the band saws and sometimes cutting my fingers in the process, but I did continue and graduated in journalism and upon my graduation from Notre Dame in nineteen thirty one, I entered the business in, I‟d been active there ever since. My three sons are also in the business as is my brother and his son James. Interviewer: I‟d like to go back again ad ask you about that period of life when you were at Saint Mary‟s and perhaps at Catholic Central also. Did you have what, what was your social life like in those days? Or when you were little did you, were your friends confined to your immediate neighborhood or did you, when you went to Catholic Central did you meet an entirely different, new group of people, just give me some thoughts on that if you will. Mr. Jackoboice: Thank you, when I was at, when I was growing up, I was very fortunate to have had, to have through my parents and my family connections, an acquaintanceship with a great many of the older residents of the city, the older families. And frankly, these names that I, of which I speak, there are many, many more which have so far been unmentioned, because of the time limitations…were frankly dinner table conversation. And because of that, with my father and mother who were very knowledgeable on many things, we enjoyed a great family life, and we travelled a great deal and that continued all through my youth. Later on of course when I was in high school, pretty much the same pattern of life prevailed except that then I was in my teens. Later on when I attended the University of Notre Dame, I became, I suppose more nationally minded because of the national character of the school. Most of the students there were from areas other than the Midwest, I don‟t say all of them, but a great many of them were from all over the United States plus many foreign lands. It‟s also perhaps of some interest in connection with Notre Dame that my grandfather, William F. Hake and my grandmother Mrs. Hake traveled extensively to Europe and is believed that on one of these trips they met Father Edward Sorin, who was the founder of the University of Notre Dame. And because my grandfather then had nine sons, he enjoyed this connection very much and all nine sons went to Notre Dame University and for many years it was perhaps the largest single family, to have attended Notre �15 Dame. Gregori the famous Italian artist who painted the murals, in the main building and in the church and also in the Golden Dome also painted life-size portraits of my grandfather and grandmother. These portraits now are in our home. The original organ at the old Sacred Heart Church at Notre Dame was bought by my grandfather and presented to Saint Mary‟s Church in Grand Rapids, where it remained until it was replaced, oh probably thirty years ago. It was a tremendous instrument and I don‟t think that the organists ever were equal to its wide range of pipes and possibilities. But that relationship of Notre Dame University and its principals prevailed for many years. When my grandfather and grandmother would be at the University they would share a suite in the administration building down there as a special guest of the president and the staff of the University. When my grandfather died, a delegation came from the University to pay tribute to him, at his funeral. Interviewer: I‟d like to go on a little further. Now your family, up to a certain point, pretty much lived on the West Side but you‟re not, you haven‟t lived there for a long time and when did people begin to move out of that area, members of your family, that is? Mr. Jackoboice: We continued to live on the West Side, I did until my marriage on June 17th 1936 to Helen Gast, who was the daughter of Peter and Emily Gast, were I‟m sure, a well known family in business and society in the city. We lived for a very brief period of time, after our marriage on the west side near John Ball Park. Later we moved on Auburn Avenue and then for the last, approximately twenty five years, we‟ve lived here at Park Hills Drive, in a suburb known as Cascadia, which is immediately, which is in Grand Rapids Township and directly across from East Grand Rapids. But we‟re living in a pastoral area which is a very fine neighborhood and one, where my three sons were raised and fortunately two of the three are now, also our neighbors and each case living only two blocks away. My oldest son lives in Spring Lake. And then of course, he enjoys it very much down there too. Interviewer: I‟m rather interested in your house; it‟s a very beautiful home. I don‟t believe you built it, is that correct? Mr. Jackoboice: This house is one of the oldest in this particular residential area. It was built, I would believe, in the middle nineteen twenties. I understand that the man who began it, at that period of time, had extravagant ideas and somehow, was not able to finance it adequately so he left it uncompleted and sold it to a man by the name of Alex Sergeant. Alex, with his wife and his son Snover(?) and daughter Phyllis, lived here until we acquired it and we have added to it quite significantly, we‟ve added where we‟re sitting now, a library in walnut, which is a very beautiful room and I say that not so much in tribute to me but, in a tribute to Warren Rindge who, was probably one of the finest of the traditional architects that this city has ever known. Warren was educated abroad among other things and is, and to attest to his ability he was also on the State Historical Commission and his particular emphasis was on historic doings of Mackinac Island. You‟ll see his name mentioned up there and he often attended the meetings at the island, at the Grand Hotel. Warren died about a year ago and his wife died, just very recently. But he �16 was a tremendous architect for this type of traditional building and it certainly, every time I told him in his lifetime and I remind myself afterwards, that its one of the more significant things that, I think he‟s done. Interviewer: Now, I know you have a large family and, have many cousins in addition to your immediate family but, and I‟m sure that your family and your business take a good deal of your time but [do] you have other social interests or clubs that you belong to that you enjoy in Grand Rapids? Mr. Jackoboice: Yes, I belong to the Peninsular Club where I‟ve been a member many years. I belong to Cascade Hills Country Club, I also belong to the Sierra Club and I have been a member of Hidden Valley at Gaylord for many, many years. I think I have a little sand in my shoes because I love to travel much to my wife‟s dismay at times because she said she can go to Vienna probably easier than she can to Toronto. But, over the years, beginning in nineteen thirty, I traveled to Europe and in the trip of nineteen thirty and again in nineteen thirty-four; I traveled by bicycle throughout Western Europe and in some of the areas what are now back of the Iron Curtain. But I knew those, I knew the area then, when it was an independent, they were independent countries like Yugoslavia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Austria, and Poland. I did not get into Russia although I tried because at that time the United States did not recognize the Soviet Union. Even though we had the co-operation of the State Department, we were a little bit reluctant to go because of the hazardous, political situation. But nevertheless we did, with a friend travel by bicycle throughout Western Europe. Then again in nineteen thirty-four, I made a similar trip alone, taking in many of the areas that I missed the first time. Subsequently I have been around the world, traveling throughout the Orient into Malaysia, Indonesia, India, up in Afghanistan, Iran, throughout the Mediterranean countries, all of Western Europe, quite a few times. And I enjoy it immensely and like to read and reminisce about these areas because I think that when you have memories and have an interest in foreign lands, you have an interest in people and you recognize their good qualities of all these races and nationalities. And I think it‟s a tremendous advantage, in both in your business and your way of looking at life. You get a really a philosophy of life rather than psychology of living. And I think there‟s a big difference in that term. Interviewer: I‟d like to go back and cover an area that I should have covered, should have asked you about a little bit earlier. Grand Rapids was one of those cities during the depression that was fairly hard hit, especially the furniture industry. Was your business badly affected at that time? Mr. Jackoboice: Yes, certainly it was affected and I might add that I learned more basic lessons in economics than I ever did in all the economics, or business courses that I ever pursued at the university. You learned many things that were not taught in books and it‟s been most helpful in my business career ever since. We of course, Grand Rapids was severely disturbed at that time by the economic problems of its day, but in the overall, I don‟t think I ever had more fun, on a more modest budget, and I think that was true of any of our contemporaries, and I‟m speaking of �17 course, of the interviewer also. We were, everybody was pretty much in the same financial plight, so I think people then would boast how little they earned a week rather than how much. Business-wise, we did at the time a considerable business with governmental agencies and of course, they were, their obligations were either deferred or denied completely and so it was a long time before the businesses in general became solvent and life became to assume a little different hue. I‟m not going to say that one way is more pleasant than the other. I think each has its place in our lives and I‟m sure that we‟re all, we all who have lived through the depression and we‟re better for it. Do you agree with that? Interviewer: Well. I don‟t remember it as vividly as you do, but I think I do, I do have that rather, some rather vivid memories and I think, some of my younger friends would behave a little differently if they had known what I knew in those days. One other, and we‟re sort of running out of time at this point, and I‟d like to ask a question, sort of a general question which I‟ve phrased in different ways when I‟ve talked to other people. And the question is this: What do you think is the most significant change in the city or in the country or in the world that you can recognize in your lifetime? Is that too difficult a question? Mr. Jackoboice: Well, with reverence, probably is so broad it‟s flat, and I think anybody who could answer that completely could copyright the formula and retire for a life on the income. But, I think that somehow, people are, I think, that the pride of accomplishment and the pride of doing a good job, no matter how humble it is, is quite lost in today‟s society. And there‟s too much of the attitude of „what‟s in it for me?‟ Which up to a point, I suppose reasonable to expect where economics have a very viable part of our lives, however I think life would be much more pleasant and enjoyable and the economic gains would follow if people were more dedicated to their lives and to their work, they would, in spite of themselves profit by it. Interviewer: I‟ve got another question, I haven‟t asked this one but, I think you are young enough to look towards the future, some of the other people I‟ve interviewed have really been very close to the end of their lives. I wonder what you think about the future of Grand Rapids. Mr. Jackoboice: Well, I think, the future of Grand Rapids is tremendous. I‟m a little bit awed by your preface about this item of age. You can be either in the old age of your youth or in the youth of your old age. I think, I prefer to be in my youth of old age Philosophically you can say well there‟s, if you can say the glass is half empty that‟s bad, if you say it‟s half full, that‟s great. Well, I believe it‟s half full. Grand Rapids for the future, I would personally love to see a revitalization, resurgence of the downtown area of Grand Rapids. I have longed been the champion of that. And I think it‟s too bad that the thing has been permitted to deteriorate. Now, I know that economics, over which many have had no control have entered into this problem, but that the same people who probably permitted it to happen, should also be instrumental in its revival. And I think, that it‟s some of these things really are quite basic and I think, the pursuit of these, better things is, such as have long been planned should be finalized and I really don‟t think that there is too much difficulty once, and I think this is an important thing, once you make a �18 start. It‟s just like when people, when a man on an autumn afternoon rakes the leaves, pretty soon a dozen other people are doing the same thing because they‟re more or less inspired by his example. Maybe in some measure that‟s what could happen to our city. Interviewer: Well, thank you Mr. Jackoboice, George, for this very interesting interview. This will go into the archives of the Grand Valley, Grand Valley State Colleges, and who knows, perhaps somebody will be listening to our voices a hundred years hence or perhaps, later even than that. Well, but we‟ll never; we won‟t live long enough to know, I think we‟ll conclude it now. INDEX B Barclay Ayres Family · 12 Barnard, Ed · 13, 14 Bertsch Family · 11, 12 Bertsch Hall · 11 C Hidden Valley at Gaylord · 17 Hirth, Anton · 12 J Jackoboice, Edward Joseph (Father) · 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15 Jackoboice, Helen Gast (Wife) · 1, 5, 16 Jackoboice, Helen Matilda Hake (Mother) · 3, 4, 6, 10, 13, 15 Jackoboice, Joseph (Grandfather) · 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Jackoboice, Uncle George · 8 Cascade Hills Country Club · 17 Catholic Central High School · 15 Clancy, John · 2 Cody Hotel · 9 K D Klingmans · 14 Knape and Vogt Manufacturing Company · 12 Knox, Frank · 14 Kusterer, Mr. · 4 Kutsche, Mr. · 12 Davenport Institute · 15 Detroit Free Press · 2 Drasin, Abe · 13 G Gill, Corrington · 12 Grand Rapids Public Museum · 10 H Hake, Clara · 5 Hake, Dr. William F. · 3, 4 Hake, Louis F. · 3 Hake, William F. (Grandfather) · 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 10, 12, 16 Hanchett, John · 2 L Liebermann and Gitlen Metal Company · 12 Livingston Hotel · 9 M Machinery Company · 1, 10 Marshall Field Family · 2 McKay, Frank · 13 Miller, Louisa Schletter · 5, 6 Miller, Mr. · 5 Mordyke, Mr. · 12 �19 P Peninsular Club · 17 Powers and Walker Casket Company · 12 R Rasch, Frances (Grandmother) · 7, 8 Reed‟s Lake · 8 Rindge, Warren · 17 S Saint Mary‟s Parochial School · 15 Schettler, Anna-Maria (Grandmother) · 2, 5, 16 Sergeant, Alex · 17 Sierra Club · 17 Skinner Family · 14 Skinner, Estelle · 14 Sorin, Father Edward · 16 Steketee's · 12 Strahan, T.W. · 11 Studebaker, Helen · 6 U University of Notre Dame · 6, 15, 16 V Voigt, Clara · 3, 4 Von Dreisen, Count · 6 W Wurzburg, Mr. · 13 Wurzburg‟s · 12 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d03981b367b88f09d26c9d27366abcb6.mp3 a872d47800d66102aaa050b78c392d1f 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_43Jackaboice Title A name given to the resource Jackoboice, George Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Jackoboice, George Description An account of the resource George Jackoboice was born in 1908. He graduated from the University of Notre Dame in 1931. He was a member of the Peninsular club and the Cascade Hills Country Club. He co-owned the family business, Monarch Road Machinery Co. He died on January 10, 1987. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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. 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) Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/128a73014e7dc2064f78d7b188077d64.pdf 80aa0821e5cf63474bb4cc5f4cd6cac1 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 M.R. Bissell Interviewed on Sept. 16, 1971 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #9 and 10: (43:22) Biographical Information Melville R. Bissell, Jr. was born in Grand Rapids on 7 April 1882. He was married on 29 April 1907 to Olive E. Bulkeley in Grand Rapids. Olive was the daughter of William F. Bulkeley and Abby A. Marks natives of New York. She died on 6 August 1964 at the Bissell home at 350 Plymouth SE. Melville died on 20 December 1972 in Grand Rapids and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Melville and Olive had three daughters, Barbara, Anne and Eleanor. His father, Melville R. Bissell, Sr. was born 25 September 1843 in Hartwick, Otsego County, New York and died 15 March 1889 in Grand Rapids. He married Anna Sutherland on 29 November 1865 in De Pere, Wisconsin where Anna’s parents had moved to from Nova Scotia. Anna was born 2 December 1846 in River John, Pictou County, Nova Scotia, the daughter of William and Eleanor Sutherland. She passed away on 8 November 1934 at her home at 112 College Avenue SE, Grand Rapids. Besides Melville R., Jr., the Bissell’s were parents to Dorothy A., Harvey S., Irving J. and a daughter, Lillie May who died at the age of seven years. ___________ Interviewer: Mr. Bissell, where did your family live in Grand Rapids? Bissell: Originally they lived down on Sheldon Street, eighty-five Sheldon. That was the Bissell home at that time. I was about, oh, seven years of age at that time, but I can remember it. Interviewer: Where is eighty-five Sheldon, approximately; is the house still standing? Bissell: The house is still standing. I can't tell you exactly where the streets are 'cause I don't remember. Well I'll tell you, it is pretty near where, you know where the hotel is now, the hotel on, the corner on one of those streets? I'd say it’s in the next block above the Woman's City Club. Interviewer: Oh, I see. Bissell: That's where it was. We lived there until I was about seven years of age. It was in eighty-nine or eighty-seven my father bought the house up on College Avenue; and it was fixed up and we lived [in it] from then on. My father had caught cold and died of pneumonia at that time, so he never lived up on College Avenue; he always lived on Sheldon Street. Interviewer: Was your father born in Grand Rapids? �2 Bissell: No; no he moved here. He moved here from Kalamazoo - mother and father and grandfather moved up here. And the old house that they lived in was here for a good many years; and now, of course, it’s got a building on it, [?across from?] St. Mark's Church. You know where St. Mark's Church is? Well, it’s on that corner there; that was the old house that I remember my grandmother and grandfather lived there; and we used to go there and see them. Before that, that house was where the Post Office was. They moved that house out from the Post Office site to build the Post Office down there - the old Post Office. You know where that is. The house was originally built there. Interviewer: How did your family get into the carpet sweeper business? Bissell: Well, that's very simple; my father was in the business of china - had a china shop. When they opened up the stuff there was a great deal of, you know, rubbish along with the china, from the unpacking and all like that. He wanted to clean it up and he tried to get a box and a brush that would do it. And that's the way he got started. It really started as a bare floor proposition, but it didn't work so well on the bare floor as it did on the carpet. So, he started making carpet sweepers. He kept right on and my mother worked right along with him and they worked it out together. Interviewer: When your father died, did your mother take over the business? Bissell: Yes, she was always a business woman. Even in a lot of years when I was a young boy growing up, she was interested in her children but she didn't want to take care of them. She had someone take care of us and she did the business, she ran the sweeper company. Interviewer: How long did she run that business? Bissell: She ran it until I came along and took over. Interviewer: When was that, sir? Bissell: Oh, let's see; when did I start? I don't remember - a long time ago. Interviewer: How old are you now? Bissell: I'm nearly ninety. Interviewer: When you lived on College Avenue, what was it like growing up there as a child? Bissell: Well, it was fine. There was just a few houses, people had barns and had horses in them and coachmen and everything for the horses. Automobiles; I can remember when automobiles first came in. I knew every person that had an automobile at that time, and the make of car he had. When you'd hear a car coming, you'd run out to the street to see it go by. Interviewer: Do you remember the first car you ever saw? �3 Bissell: Well, I think it was Charlie Judd’s; I think that was called the U.S. Long Distance or something like that. I can't remember exactly the name of it. Interviewer: Was it quite a thrill? Bissell: Oh, I'll tell you, cars were scarce, there weren't very many of them. There weren't probably more than three or four cars in Grand Rapids. People tried to make them, you know. They'd take a light carriage and try to put a motor in it, connect it up; that wasn't very satisfactory, though. They had to start and build them up from the beginning to really run. Interviewer: Were there any people manufacturing cars here then? Bissell: Well, Austin was the only car man that was making cars here. They were shipping them in from Detroit and so forth. But, Austin was the only one making them, the Austin, and that was a very good car and it was a large car. We had one and my wife's family had one and they were good cars. But of course it had the Planetary System; they didn't have a gear shift. You know what a Planetary System is? Well, it's a set of gears down under the foot boards of the car that run there; and they throw a lever on, that is sort of like a brake, and they run through that. Interviewer: Why did they call it the Planetary System? Bissell: I don't know. That was the way they did it at that time; that's the only kind of cars that were running at all, didn't have gear systems. Of course, the cars were [had] two sitting in front and then you went around in the back and got in through a door that was about that wide, just big enough to get through, and sat in there and sort of on an angle like this or like that. This was the door here, and they shut this, and then they had another little door that dropped down so you could sit on the door. You could take five people. Interviewer: What was the reaction of horses to the first cars? Bissell: Well, they didn't like them; they didn't like them, I shouldn't say that. They were scared of them, of course they made quite a noise and they were scared of them. The regulations were that if you were in a car coming, you had to slow down for horses; if they shied or showed any scaredness, you had to stop. And, in fact, once in a while you had to get out and lead the horse past the car. Interviewer: What was it like living on College Avenue in those days? I mean, what was the style of living like? Bissell: Well, it was very quiet in there. When we bought this house we even lived in it at that time the house was being fixed up. The house had been there for a long time. It was built, I think, by Foster of Foster and Stevens. [In the 1868 city directory, Wilder D. Foster’s residence was listed as 7 College-av. It was also described as located on the east side of College-av. between Fulton and Rose – Rose being Cherry street at that time.] Originally we lived there in his house. It was built in two sections, the first section had the back that was mostly wood and the next section was a brick section. Mother, when I was a boy about eight or nine years old, �4 ripped off the back and built a section of brick in there for the house. We had one tub, bath tub, that was downstairs and in a little room off the hall and this was where we took our baths and had some kind of a heater in there, run by gas and that would heat up the water for you. We took our Saturday night baths there. Interviewer: Were there many children in the neighborhood when you were growing up? Bissell: Oh yes, quite a lot of them. Fred Pantlind, Ralph Voigt -Ralph Voigt lived directly across the street from us. I knew Ralph Voigt very well. There was a boy who lived in that small brick house right next to or three houses over from the Voigt's. I can't think of his name now, but I used to play with him all the time. And later on when Fred Pantlind was born, they came over and had a house right next to ours. Interviewer: Did the families interact as well as the children? Did the families have activities together? Bissell: Oh yes, my mother was a widow and so she always had somebody with her. She had her sister a great deal with her, her niece and people that lived there with her so as to be with her because she didn't want to live alone. Of course, they did some bossing of the children because we were pretty young at that time. Interviewer: Did your mother attend parties that were given within society? Bissell: Oh, yes, she would go to some of the parties that were given. Of course Kent Country Club was in this house. This is the old club house. Kent Country Club was organized here originally, it was a boat club, and a tennis club, and everything, and finally got into a golf club. I think golf is [an] all the way around game here you know, when I was a boy. Interviewer: Was it a very good course? Bissell: Well, not good in the way the clubs are now, but it was all right. Interviewer: Was golf a relatively new game at that time? Bissell: Very. I'll tell you how golf started here. Mr. Blodgett or somebody went abroad, and saw golf, and bought a set of clubs and brought them back here. Everybody that played golf used that set of clubs. Then of course they had to make more of them and everybody had their own sets. Interviewer: You were just talking about Wealthy Street. Bissell: Wealthy was originally right straight through into Reed's Lake, I mean Fisk Lake. Of course, there wasn't any way for us but to go back that way and go along that [?] road. You know where Mrs. Avery lives out there on Plymouth? [Corner of Plymouth and Lake Drive] Well, that was the toll gate for this district. That was a toll road and that was the road that went out to our farm and to Reed's Lake. And then the [Mr.] Hanchett came along and wanted to get �5 out to Reed's Lake with his cars - streetcars - and so they had to curve around here to get to around the lake. Interviewer: So, instead of Wealthy Street ending up at Fisk Lake, they changed the road so it ended up at Reed's Lake? Bissell: Yes. Of course first it was a dummy line. Then they got the streetcars running out there. Then you’ve got Ramona and all in there. Interviewer: Did you buy this house? Bissell Yes. Interviewer: How long have you lived here? Bissell: About forty years. Interviewer: When you bought this house, was this all developed out here like this? Bissell: It is exactly how it was, and the way this house was. I imagine I'd made some improvements on it. I built that window there. It went right from the post there and right across on the other side of house, I built a porch over there, of course, but as far as the grounds is concerned and the house itself, why it is exactly as it was before. It's a three story house and it was the Kent Country Club. They used to play golf here and they played golf all around here. All these places around here, they played golf on. Interviewer: When you bought this house, did you buy it as a residence, or did you buy it as a farm? Bissell: No, I bought it as a residence. Mr. Hanchett owned it. And he used it as a home and it was originally brick. It was plastered and I think Hanchett took that off and fixed it up. Interviewer: Did Hanchett have his own private streetcar to take him downtown to work in the morning? Bissell: He had a private car that was run on the street here. He used it as, not as just going downtown, but he used it to have parties on. He'd pick you up downtown and take you out to Reed's Lake and they would have a party; and it was an open car and he had a driver and it was run by electricity. The open cars were very nice; I've been on it. He went downtown, down Monroe Street and right down a few times to Ottawa Beach. When they did that, they put one of the drivers on that ran the electrical cars down there, 'cause they knew the route and they wouldn't run too fast and control it. Interviewer: You mentioned that up there at the corner of Plymouth and Lake Drive where Mrs. Avery lives there was a toll road there? �6 Bissell: There was a toll gate there. Interviewer: Where did the toll road go? Bissell: [The road] went right out that street there, you know where the ___ that section of the [?] houses right out that way; that’s where our farm was. That’s where they used to go out, drive out to the farm, out that street. Interviewer: Where was your farm located, Mr. Bissell? Bissell: Right out the street there. Interviewer: Plymouth? Bissell: No, not Plymouth, but . . . Interviewer: Lake Drive? Bissell: ... Lake Drive. It ran right out there on, about three or four miles. Of course, we had to pay toll when we went out on the line. Interviewer: How much was the toll? Bissell: Well, I'll tell you. My father made arrangements with the toll gate; he paid them so much a year and all the Bissell’s who had cottages and could come out there and so there was no toll. I paid no toll. When I was a young boy, I had some fellows I knew and I would take them out in the carriage out to the farm. I'd say: 'Now we're going past the toll gate, now get down there and we'll run it; and they would. I'd whip the horse up a bit and get across fast and run through the toll gate. As long as we could make it, it was all right. There [was] [apparently referring to a map] the hospital property, this property and [?] across the street on both sides. Originally, they cut down this bank over here for Wealthy and they run [sic] it right into the lake. Of course we couldn't have the streetcars go through the lake so they had to curve around right up here [pointing on a map?]. Ben Hanchett was really behind getting that curve in there, because he was running the street railway. Interviewer: When Mr. Hanchett moved out of this house, did he move off of College Avenue? Bissell: He didn't live down there then. He didn't live here until long after that. Interviewer: Long after he'd....[?] Bissell: He didn't live on College Avenue for a long, long time. That was a few years. He had his horses here, and there was a barn there. He had two or three horses and used to ride downtown, and that was the only way to get downtown, at that time, was to ride down in a carriage. When the streetcar was put in, like that, why lots of people would go down on the streetcar. �7 Interviewer: When you were growing up on College Avenue, what did the young people do for entertainment? Bissell: Oh, I don't know, they used to have shows of different kinds. They put on shows down at the opera house. Interviewer: Were there many dances and things like that? Bissell: Oh yes, we had dances and especially at Christmas time when the schools were all out and we were all home. My mother used to have dances for me and my friends and some of the other people did too. We generally had them in the St. Cecilia or the old Armory which is across from the depot. Interviewer: The old railroad station? Bissell: The old railroad station; the depot there. Interviewer: Where did you go away to school? Bissell: I went to the Gunnery first, and that was in Washington, Connecticut. I was there two or three years, and then after that I went to a small school in (Suffern, New York for a few years. And then, later on, I went to Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York. I didn't graduate from there. Interviewer: You didn't graduate from there? Bissell: No, I just quit; I was there two years. Interviewer: And then you came back to Grand Rapids? Bissell: That's in Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Oh! What was the name of the school? Bissell: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Interviewer: What kind of a school was it? Bissell: That was in Troy, New York. It was a technical school and engineering school. They taught engineering and, believe me, you had to have some mathematics to stay in that place. I never had so much mathematics till I got into that. Interviewer: Are you a member of any clubs here in town? �8 Bissell: Oh, several clubs. The Kent Country Club, of course, was started long before I was a member of it, but my mother was a member of it and I had the privilege of using it in her name until I got out of college, and then I became a member of the country club. Interviewer: When did the University Club come into being? Bissell: Oh, quite a long time ago, but not very long ago as far as years are concerned. Interviewer: What about the Peninsular Club? Bissell: The Peninsular Club was going when I got out of high school and that had been going for a long time. I'm number one man down at the Peninsular Club. Interviewer: Now? Bissell: Now. That means that I have lived a great many years, longest of anybody in the club and that I got a membership. I became a member in, I think, about ought-six[1906]. I've continued that membership the longest of anybody in it, so I'm number one man; and my brother was number two man. He died and then Heber Curtis, I think, came in there number three. I don't know what the numbers are now. It makes no difference as far as [?] are concerned, it's just an interesting thing being number one man at the country club or any club. Interviewer: I heard a story about your mother - when she died - her last words. What were her last words? Bissell: I don't know. Interviewer: Someone told me her last words were, “I am glad.” Someone said those were her last words. Bissell: No, I don't know. Now that might have been so, I don't know. Interviewer: When you were running the factory, were the furniture companies going full steam then? Bissell: They were going full steam then. They have let down since then; and there are some manufacturing companies that used to be here. There used to be a lot of them. Huge and small ones, but . ? . Royal and. Berkey and Gay, a . . and, oh, dozens of them. They've all gone. Interviewer: Did many of those men who ran those big manufacturing plants live around you in your neighborhood? Bissell: Oh, they lived all over town. See, then, by that time we had streetcars all over town and they'd go back and forth to the business on the streetcar. Interviewer: Before the streetcars what did they have? �9 Bissell: Oh, they had carriages; and some men, I know one man, he was a lawyer in town, he liked horses and he used to ride horseback down from his house. Of course, then you had horses right in your barn, you see, and he used to ride downtown horseback and then put his horse in the stable down there and then ride back again. Interviewer: Was that a very common practice for men? Bissell: No, no. But he did that for years because he liked horses and he wanted to ride so he did it that way. Interviewer: What was downtown like in those days? Bissell: It was like all the other small towns around here. Monroe Street was the big shopping street and all the stores were down there and the grocery stores and meat markets and a few shops and all the things were down there. A little later on, at the corner down here why they got a few stores in there. Interviewer: Down on Wealthy and Lake Drive? Bissell: Down Wealthy, yeah, and a few on Reed’s Lake. When I was a boy, the city ended at Eastern Avenue. That was the end of the city. It was just country after that and then they kept gradually going out further and further and further and so they got out to Wealthy and whatever that street is down there. Interviewer: Where did you spend your summers? Bissell: I spent my summers right here; and I'd go down to Ottawa Beach for awhile and I used to know pretty near everybody there. I was next door to Charlie Judd's, who was a man with the company. He lived there and had a cottage there; and he had a boat - that was a launch - on Black Lake there. We used to go down there. It was great coming in there in a launch, 'course it was old-fashioned . . . (?)launch which was different from any other different kinds. They weren't very fast but they were quite powerful. We used to ride all over Black Lake there with it. Interviewer: Were steamers coming in there from Chicago? Bissell: Yes, particularly they came in there every Friday night and go back Sunday night. People would come over on that from Chicago and stay here over the weekend and go back Sunday night. Yes, there was a line of steamers going then. Some of them would stop at some of these other places on the way down and pick up a load of fruit or something like that, and carry it over to Chicago. But there was one landing in there pretty near every night. Interviewer: Were there always dams in the Grand River? Can you remember the Grand River ever being without dams? �10 Bissell: No, I think there were quite a number of them. They did a lot of work on it and they tried to running their steamboats up and down carrying freight and all that, and passengers, but they didn't. There wasn't enough to. They were always running ashore, and it wasn't very deep and it wasn't very good. Interviewer: What was the most memorable experience from the time you were growing up? What's the thing you remember most? Bissell: Oh I don't know. I lived here all my life, I was born here and I lived here until I was grown up - in the town. I went to school in the East, and I came back to Grand Rapids and took a job in the company. Besides that I went out in the plant and learned how to make carpet sweepers and do those things and learned all about it and I worked up from the bottom until I finally became president. Interviewer: Do you think there are any differences between the way men conducted their business in those days compared to the way they conduct their businesses today? Bissell: Oh yes, there's a lot of difference. Everything is a lot more technical now. Of course the telephone and telegraph came in, we had them when I was a boy but not as strong as they are now, they weren't as big. They didn't use it as much then. Some men do a big business on the telephone now, on the cable - Western Union. Things are entirely different, everything's more technical. Interviewer: What do you think was the more preferable age to live in, the age when you were a young man or the age today? Bissell: Well, it depends on what you want. Now it's probably very mild compared to what it was then because everything then... [?] For instance, Mr. Hanchett lived out in this house here, ran the street railway and we had the streetcars to go on. I lived on College Avenue before I was married, why I used to walk down Monroe Street, the whole length. I walked down from my house on Washington Street, down to Monroe Street and back - sometimes twice a day, in the morning and the afternoon. Of course they had Power's Theatre and they had shows down there; and companies came in and stayed here and put on a different show every week. There was Reed's Lake with all the amusements in it and it was, well you could hardly get on a streetcar. They would have two or three cars would wait up there, about time the theatre was getting out in the evening, and take the people into town. That was the only way they had getting out there. Of course when the automobile came in, why they could go by a car. Interviewer: Was that when the streetcar started to dissolve, when the automobile came in? Bissell: Well, it didn't progress like it had before, because people had cars. It made a big difference then because if they wanted to go to the lake, why they would go out in their car, and a lot of them did. There weren't as many cars, of course, and the streetcars were crowded coming in at night after the show. People wanted to get home. It'd probably take four or five car loads to take them and get them out of there. It would be jammed full. It was pretty bad sometimes when it rained and then at that time, why there was open cars. They took the closed �11 cars off in the summertime and put on open cars. Those were run across like that [gesture?] and there was a row of people here and have a row in here and another row in here. It was one of our amusements in those days to take a streetcar ride in the evening, in a hot evening, to cool off. We'd go out to North Park and then perhaps stay a little while there, and get a soda water or something like that and get on and come into Grand Rapids again. Interviewer: Was the Grand River used at all in those days for entertainment or for boating events? Bissell: Not very much, not very much. The Grand River wasn't very deep, you know. They had some little boats and there were a few quicker, motor boats. Motors weren't very plentiful in those days. They were noisy and dirty. Interviewer: I think that is good enough, don't you? Bissell: That's about all I can tell you. Interviewer: Okay. INDEX A H Avery, Mrs. · 5, 6 Hanchett, Mr. · 5, 6, 10 B J Bissell, Anna Sutherland (Mother) · 2, 4, 7, 8 Bissell, Melville R. Sr. (Father) · 1, 2, 6 Black Lake · 9 Blodgett, Mr. · 4 Judd, Charlie · 3, 9 C Curtis, Heber · 8 F Fisk Lake · 5 Foster and Stevens Company · 3 G Grand River · 10, 11 K Kent Country Club · 4, 5, 8 O Ottawa Beach · 6, 9 P Pantlind, Fred · 4 Peninsular Club · 8 �12 R V Reed's Lake · 5, 9, 10 Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute · 7 Voigt, Ralph · 4 S W Woman's City Club · 1 St. Mark's Church · 2 U University Club · 8 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/aa3ac7df7c42608ff7abc5a2f88a111a.mp3 b09e66ac6d8b7a88b524e0593d1cce00 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_9-10Bissell Title A name given to the resource Bissell, M.R. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Bissell, M.R. Description An account of the resource M.R. Bissell was born on April 7, 1882 in Grand Rapids. His father (M.R. Sr.) invented the Bissell Carpet Sweeper. The Bissell Carpet Sweeper Company was established in 1883. When Mr. Bissell's father died prematurely, his mother took his place running the business. M. R. Bissell, Jr. attended Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York for two years but did not graduate. He returned to Grand Rapids to run the business, and became a member of the Kent Country Club, the Peninsular Club, and the University Club. He died December 20, 1972. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c3f2d6de6e0228304703e3a56816b4a3.pdf 63d8cd6af7b13791af21949f96b77216 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mrs. Richard Meade Interviewed on September 15, 1971 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #7, 8 (1:15:27) Biographical Information Mary Alice Martin was born 27 April 1897 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She died on 20 August 1982 in East Grand Rapids. Her parents were John B. Martin, born January 1867 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, and Althea Winchester, born March 1867 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. John and Althea were married in Grand Rapids on 11 October 1894. John was the son of Joseph H. Martin and Mary Alice Lantsberry, both born in England. Althea was the daughter of Samuel Alexander Winchester and Rebecca Bailey, both from New Hampshire. Mary Alice Martin married Henry C. Robinson about 1926. As her second husband she married Richard Hardaway Meade on 30 November 1946. Richard was the son of Richard Hardaway Meade, Jr. and Eleanor Prior “Nellie” Atkins and he was born 10 May 1897 in Richmond, Henrico County, Virginia. Richard died 5 February 1993 in Grand Rapids. Mary Alice Martin Meade died 20 August 1982 at her home in East Grand Rapids. A finding aid for the Bartholomew Plan mentioned in this interview can be seen at http://www.grpl.org/wiki/images/c/cd/115.pdf ___________ Interviewer: Mrs. Meade, you just mentioned that your grandfather came here in eighteen fiftytwo. Where did he come from and why did he come to this area? Mrs. Meade: My grandfather Martin came here in eighteen fifty-two. He originally came from England and he came from Southampton, as far as we know. He and another family came over and then went to Elyria, Ohio. We don‟t know exactly why he came to Grand Rapids from Elyria, but he did come and there are many stories about his coming. Apparently he had a horse and a wagon and he went to Chicago and before they came over, the horse fell overboard and my grandfather jumped in after him and pulled him by his tail and got him back on the ship, but anyway, they finally arrived in Grand Rapids. Originally I think he went in to the grocery store business because in old pictures I have seen of Grabs Corners, you could see there was a sign Joseph H. Martin. I think he started out probably as a grocer and then little by little he became interested in real estate and he also had a brother named Uncle Thomas. And he and his brother were very much interested in the Plank Road that went to Kalamazoo. At one point, as you �2 probably know, they thought the railroad was coming to Grand Rapids and then afterwards they decided it was going to Kalamazoo so many people in Grand Rapids sold their land because they thought it was never going to develop. And they developed this road to Kalamazoo where they‟d take, I suppose loads and things to ship and my grandfather helped with the regular freight line I think. And then eventually, the railroad came to Grand Rapids so that road was no longer important. But it was important at that time and then he went into the real estate business and then he became a banker. He was on the first board of, I think you call it the Old National Bank at that time when Harvey Hollister was the president. I can go back that far. Harvey Hollister and my grandfather were great friends and even took a trip abroad and I have some of their letters and diaries from that trip. So he lived here and he married a Mary Alice Lantsberry. The Lantsberry family came over from England with the Martin family then they went to Elyria and the Lantsberry family also came to Grand Rapids. And he married one of the daughters and I‟m not sure but I think his brother married one of the other daughters. But anyway, I am named after my, I am named Mary Alice Martin because of my grandmother‟s name became Mary Alice Martin, she was a Lantsberry. Their graves are out here in the little old cemetery on Fulton Street and my great grandfather is also buried there, Peter Martin and his wife and that‟s where most of the old families are buried over there you‟ll see all of the graves. My grandfather on mother‟s side was Samuel Winchester. And his family, the Winchester family came to this country much earlier way back in the sixteen hundreds. They came to Boston and that family is a very large family, you find the name Winchester throughout the country. Winchester Arms is part of that family, Winchester, Massachusetts was named after one of the Winchesters; and I have the history of that whole family. But my particular branch came, my grandfather‟s father I think was a minister and he went from Boston then to Ashburnham, Massachusetts then to Keene, New Hampshire and they lived up there for some time. They were farming families and they must have been interested in furniture making and my grandfather‟s -this is particularly interesting to Grand Rapids - my grandfather‟s sister Mary married old C.C. Comstock who is very much involved in the history of Grand Rapids. He also came from Keene, New Hampshire or that area and they came out here. She had tuberculosis and for some reason they felt that going west, would help her. So they did come west and they finally ended in Grand Rapids and I should be able to tell you the number of children, but they had two or three children. One was Mrs. [Mary Ella Comstock] Konkle and I‟m sure Fran Russell could tell you all this because she died finally and then Comstock married again and he married Fran Russell‟s grandmother and his mother and Mrs. Boltwood were the children from that marriage so in a way Fran and I are related. Interviewer: Mr. Russell is one of the people we are going to be interviewing. Mrs. Meade: Oh, you must interview him because he has wonderful diaries, written by old C.C. Comstock and the old building, there‟s still a little old office building one that they show when they take people on that tour from museum. That little office building is still down there. Interviewer: Is that supposedly the oldest building still standing in the city? �3 Mrs. Meade: No, not the law office. No, but this is another building. It‟s on lower Monroe, but kind of quite a ways out. The day I went on this tour they pointed that out and I never knew that myself. C.C. Comstock had a lot to do with it. My grandfather Winchester and his brothers started, I think the first furniture factories here but they didn‟t do very well with it and his brother-in-law Comstock had to buy them out and that furniture factory I think originally, or eventually became the factory that‟s called Nelson-Matter which was a famous well known factory in the earlier days. I may be a little mixed up on these facts but this is the way I remember it. Interviewer: When did the Winchester branch of the family come to Grand Rapids? Mrs. Meade: Well, I can‟t really tell you, I ought to be able to but I can‟t really tell you but I think it was after my grandfather Martin came here. Interviewer: Did they come because they were interested in furniture? Mrs. Meade: Well, no they didn‟t, I think partly, but they also came because C.C. Comstock‟s wife Mary was a sister and she wrote back and said this is a fine place to come and would be a good place for making furniture and so forth and that‟s why I think they were interested in coming. I think it was a little bit later and I can find that fact out for you I think if I search back in some of these. Interviewer: Your grandfather Martin, they had some children and your father was who? Mrs. Meade: My father was John B. Martin and they had, I ought to be able to tell you, they had about five children and three little boys, three of their children and one little girl died at a very early age, all of them buried over here in the cemetery. My father and my aunt Martha lived and my Aunt Martha married a clergyman and her name was Mrs. Thorton B. Penfield and she went to live in the East and always lived there and there are great many children. I mean, she had 3 children there was quite a large family from her family and my father and my mother. My father married a Winchester, my mother‟s name was Althea Winchester and there were four of us, three boys and myself. Interviewer: What did your father do, John B. Martin? Mrs. Meade: He went into business with my grandfather. My grandfather worked so hard as young man and as he grew up, also he lost his wife at a very early age and he didn‟t marry again for quite a long time and when my father came back from being away at school, he was sent east to Andover. I‟m mixing this all up, I‟m afraid, but anyway my father because he had no mother they were both sent away to school and my father to Andover and the he was to go to Yale. In the meantime, he went to school in Brooklyn and he met, well his best friend was a boy named Irving Bush. His father was Irving Bush, who built the Bush Terminals in Brooklyn and if you have lived down there and know New York at all, they were the big place where they brought �4 freight in and everything. His father had overworked and they told him he had to take a year off and not do anything. So he built a yacht and the yacht was called the Coronet. I‟ve grown up on these stories. He told his boy of his that he could invite one of his friends to go with him on this trip and they would be gone a year and they were going around the world. My father was invited at the age of eighteen and he asked his father, my grandfather, Joseph Martin, said you may go take this trip or you can go to college but you have to choose one or the other. So naturally he took the trip around the world. I have all the diaries of that trip and it was the most amazing trip. It was the first private yacht that ever as far as anybody knows that had gone around the world. He went around in great fashion. A hundred and twenty foot yacht, a crew of I don‟t know how many. My father had the most marvelous time in the world and we were all brought up on the stories of this trip. Especially about China and Japan and the Far East, that was what interested him the most and many of the things you see in this room, he brought back. The bronzes and things, my father at the age eighteen brought those things back. He had enough sensitivity, I don‟t think he knew a thing about them, but he did buy and bring back these lovely things and we grew up on this trip, so I‟ll show you why this ties in eventually. When he got back, he couldn‟t go to college because he wasn‟t supposed to but my grandfather was almost worn out and so he had to give up business and in the meantime he married again a lovely person, the only one I ever knew as my grandmother, her name was Rose Brooks and he married her. So he was in and out of the business, more or less retired and father just took over. It was, how do I say it, mortgages and loans and things like that. For instance, if somebody came and many, many people like the Dutch and the Italians, people like that who came and needed a little money that has nothing to do with the bank and borrow money you know that had no collateral or anything, they‟d come to father or my grandfather and they would loan them enough to get started. Mr. Russo got started that way, that Italian. A great many of the people that I have met since have said to me “Oh, your grandfather, your father were the ones that helped us.” He loaned them enough to get started and eventually they got into different kinds of business and particularly banking. My father, you know was Vice President of the bank changed names so no longer the old Grand Rapids Savings and it became Peoples Bank, but my grandfather was on the board of the Old National which is now Old Kent Bank and my son Oliver is now in the Union Bank so we‟re all mixed up in banks. Well, I probably have not told you what you wanted to know, branching off here. Interviewer: No. That‟s good I like to find out background about how families arrived in Grand Rapids. Where did you grow up as a child? Mrs. Meade: I grew up, I was born in Grand Rapids; I was born right on Madison Avenue, fivefifteen Madison Avenue. And I grew (up) in that house on Madison. We were all born there and we all grew up there. We loved it, it was a wonderful house. It‟s in the Heritage Hill area and it was a house that was built by I think his name was Stockwell and I think he was related to the Belknaps. I think he was either a son-in-law or something, but he married a Belknap and built that house. And after two or three years he sold it or wanted to sell it and my grandfather bought �5 it for my mother and father and gave it to them, for a wedding present. My mother nearly died, if you could go see it, it‟s a huge house with the ceilings ten and-twelve feet. To just even curtain one window, was expensive to let alone all this. Anyway this was a gift, so they lived there and little by little they furnished it and my grandfather and grandmother would come back part of the year and live with them. They had a room, we had one big living room and then another room and a bath that was my grandfather‟s and grandmother‟s. We all grew up [with] one bathroom upstairs, plenty of bedrooms, but one bathroom. I can see it now, it was all lined with tin and eventually it was very, very sophisticated because we got one of these things called geyser and we got gas finally and you know you could light it then it heated it. You‟re too young to remember this it would [heat] the water and then it was nice hot baths. The house had lots of fireplaces; oh it was a beautiful house to grow up in. We had lovely times and gatherings. Interviewer: What was the neighborhood like? Mrs. Meade: Oh, the neighborhood was a lovely neighborhood; all my friends lived up and down the whole Madison Avenue. We all went to school at Lafayette school down there. Now it has been rebuilt, but that was the school, dandy school. Interviewer: You went to the public schools then? Mrs. Meade: Oh yes, we all went to the public school. There was a private school here, but I don‟t know, I was never sent to it. Some of my friends were, but I thought we had a wonderful education, there were marvelous teachers. Then from there we went up to what we called Central Grammar and that was up, I suppose it was like the Junior High school but it was one year we had in this school and it is no longer there, but it was right back where the old high school is now. Not Central but the other one over there on Ransom or something. I don‟t know what they call it now, a big old building up there and that was the high school and we went to a school right back of that called Central, Central Grammar. From there I went to the new high school which was Central up on Fountain and I don‟t know what other high school [was] but formerly it was that other high school. I‟ll tell you something we used to do. Where we lived, there was a little bit of pavement, in front of our house and from then on there was nothing but dirt roads and we had a great big barn which is now burned down. I haven‟t been down to look at but it‟s burned down. We always had horses, my father was a great horseman; he loved horses. He always had a saddle horse and we always had ponies. Across from us on Madison Avenue, at that point, there was nothing between Madison Avenue and College Avenue, it was all open territory. There was no Morris Avenue at all. We had a big field there that we kept our cow in and our pony and our horse. You won‟t believe this but we did. And my father was very interested in farming till the day he died we had a farm. And every summer the entire Martin family would get into a carriage before we had cars, or eventually when we had cars, and we had our first farm out near Plainfield. If you go out the new Beltline, it was called Peach Ridge or Peach something, but it was where Mr. [O. W.] Braman‟s farm and our farm was [Section 35, Plainfield Township]. We had peaches and fruit and everything else. We built a cottage, a house out there and it is still �6 standing there. We would have these Dutch families come over to work on the farm and my father brought over any number of these families and the children would work, you see for their father. Father never paid them but any way they‟d work on these farms until eventually they got enough money so they could buy the farm. One of these farmers bought that farm from my father. Then we bought another farm which we still own a little bit of land out here near Ada, the Alta Dale farm, which is now called the Holiday farm. Interviewer: Is that the one that is now owned by the Crawfords? Mrs. Meade: Yes, that was our farm; it only had two ownerships before my father got it. One belonged to Rix Robinson; he owned all that land from where our farm began all the way to Ada. Then Philo Fuller, who was one of the former mayors of Grand Rapids, owned it for many years and then my father bought it. It was four or five hundred acres. It went all along the river, very rich bottom land. We had a dairy farm and then we had a grain farm. It was not a fruit farm; the other farm was a fruit farm. I grew up on the farm at Peach Ridge, but that isn‟t quite it, out there [It was called the High Lands (1907)]. When I was about ten we bought this other farm and we all went out there to live. The first year we all lived in tents, we camped on top of this hill we still own. We still own this place. The war came along although they had plans to build a house and you couldn‟t build in those days. They wanted everybody to have War Gardens. You are too young to remember this, but we all thought this was a fine idea to be patriotic. We hired a farmer and I got all these girls, I was in Vassar at that point and I got all these girls from college to come out and some of them from here, ten or twelve of us and we all lived in a big tent out there. Father and Mother put up just a little tiny place where they could sleep and we could have a kitchen and dining room where we could all eat. We had a War Garden and we had a great fun along with the war I guess. Eventually they added on to that and eventually I built a house out there. Father‟s finally burned down many years later and my house is still standing but is slightly going to pieces I think. We still own that hill top. Interviewer: Do you still use that cottage you have out there? Mrs. Meade: I don‟t. My brother Joe, do you know my brother Joe? Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Meade: Well, he‟s a great naturalist and he‟s always loved country and knows everything about birds and everything else, so he used it as a sanctuary. He has the Audubon Society out and everybody goes out and we go out of course and picnic and things like that. We have a place down by the lake now so that I haven‟t used that cottage. Interviewer: Yes, I grew up right in back of your brother. Mrs. Meade: You did? Interviewer: I used to be over there all the time; we used to be down….. �7 Mrs. Meade: You mean on Cambridge? Interviewer: On Plymouth. Mrs. Meade: He has trouble with his eyes and he hasn‟t been able to do much. It‟s been pitiful because he has such interest in things like that. Interviewer: He‟s a great photographer. Mrs. Meade: He is a great photographer and he has more hobbies and could do more things with his hands; nobody in the else in the family could do anything but he can. He‟s marvelous with children but he has used that a lot. And we still own the hilltop which is by far the nicest part. When we got it, there wasn‟t a thing on it. There had been marvelous trees and marvelous forest there and someone that I talked to one time, remembered when it was forested then they cut it all off so when we got it there were no trees on top. Father had this old Mr. (?) well, he was the first landscape man, hmm; this shows I‟m getting old here. Anyway, we imported, he imported everything. In those days you couldn‟t buy all these shrubs and things in this country so he imported something like twenty thousand shrubs and trees for that place. There are all sort of unusual things on that twenty acres that we had where houses were. They used to come up from Lansing and all over. He was very interested in different kind of conifers and we have a lot of them. The birch trees in there are European Birch and the most beautiful trees. Our birch don‟t last the way these do. Mr. [Mathias] Alten, the painter used to come out and paint those Birch trees. You go in there sometime it‟s really beautiful. Interviewer: I will, I know where that is. Mrs. Meade: I‟m afraid we haven‟t kept it up lately because we haven‟t been able to get anybody to do anything. Interviewer: Did many of the families in your neighborhood and in the Hill District have farms in the country like that? Summer retreats? [Audio gets bad here 26:00] Mrs. Meade: Well, I don‟t know many, I can think of for instance the Wilcox family. This place right over here was the Wilcox farm. Where, do you know which was Mrs. Wilcox‟s house? The original house is one that what‟s his name lives in, you know, the man who owns that motel. Interviewer: You mean the large house that sits in off the road right near the quad where they have the swimming pool? I know the house is for sale but I don‟t know who bought it. He owns a motel? Mrs. Meade: He owned that townhouse thing. He and someone else have an interest in that. I don‟t know why I can‟t think of his name. That‟s the original Wilcox house, farm house they‟ve done a lot to it but it was a farm house and this area was farm land. My family was always �8 interested and I don‟t know why particularly because I don‟t think they came from farming families in England but they were just interested. [For] my father it was a great hobby. Up to the day he died, he was getting up to ride his horse at the age of eighty-nine when he died, he had a stroke. So he was always interested in farming. Interviewer: That sounds like George Welsh. He was riding till he was eighty-five. Mrs. Meade: I knew George; he didn‟t die, did he? Interviewer: No, I said up until he was eighty-five. Mrs. Meade: Oh, I knew George, so did my father. He put me on the Planning Commission in Grand Rapids at one point. If this wasn‟t a tape recording, I‟d tell you the rest of the story. I always had a great deal of admiration for him as well as not approving for some of the things. I think that he was very, never made a nickel out politics. I think he was very honest in that respect and I think he saw what was happening to Grand Rapids and when he went to Boston, he saw the problem of parking that they were having in Boston. He came back to Grand Rapids and he immediately began to push for people having parking lots and buying up areas that weren‟t being used and making parking possible. He was certainly the one that decided that we had to have planning in Grand Rapids and my father had been chairman of the Planning Commission for many years and they had done in the beginning a good job when they had some money. Little by little, they [had] practically no money. He saw the importance of planning and that Ken Welsh became the chairman of it and asked me to be on and some others. We got a good planning commission and he backed us right to the hilt on everything we did. I have very high feelings towards him. He did some things I didn‟t think were right too and I told him that but anyway by in large. Interviewer: Did anybody plan Heritage Hill out? Mrs. Meade: I have the earliest plans here. All of that area was studied; I don‟t think as it developed, how it was developed, that it was planned… I know the first plans were nineteen eight, probably. There was a plan before the Bartholomew plan. And I have that plan. Then there was the Bartholomew Plan which was about [nineteen] twenty-seven. Then when we took in (it?) about nineteen forty-three I think it was, that plan was rolled up in the attic in the city hall. On the other hand, I think if it had been effective in some ways and it was good planning for the period. Interviewer: Was this the plan for the Heritage Hill area? Mrs. Meade: Well, no. Interviewer: Or was this a plan for the city? �9 Mrs. Meade: This was a plan for the city, it wasn‟t just Heritage Hill. Heritage Hill was probably part of it but it wasn‟t. I think they probably have those plans at the library. I don‟t think Heritage Hill was planned as such it just grew up to a certain point. Then there was a great deal of interest of planning in the early days when they saw the way Philadelphia was developing and New York and so forth. I can remember my father got very interested in the fact that we should do something here. They brought in the planners and but the trouble was then no one realized that planning was and everyday process and that couldn‟t just have someone do a plan and then go off. It has to be brought into operation. [32:40 the Audio clears up] Interviewer: Why does Heritage Hill have such a diversity of architectural style? Mrs. Meade: I‟m very interested in domestic architecture because I do think it reveals the history of a city and when it developed and I think for instance if you will notice southern Michigan and Northern Ohio, you find a great many houses that are similar to the houses you find in the east, the early American houses. The reason for that is I think that after the war many of those men were given land out in this area and many of them wanted to build the same type of houses that they were very familiar with and I think that is one reason for many of those early American houses and for Greek Revival there. Up here we were a little bit later in developing, from eighteen thirty-seven on and where as you get a few Greek Revival houses, now the Greek Revival period was from about eighteen twenty till about eighteen fifty. You get such as the Dix House for instance and there are other houses here that were purely Greek Revival. Then Grand Rapids was a little bit later and we went into the Victorian Era and we went into, the house I grew up in was a Victorian house, late Victorian. Which I think called the Gothic Period. It was really covered with little gargoyles and scrolls they developed the scroll saw you that did all this fancy work and our whole house was filled with that sort decoration and it‟s not certainly not the best period of architecture, little cupolas and those things. You found the Gothic Revival; you‟ll see quite a few of those houses here. You also saw quite a few houses built out of river stone for instance that little house next to the Art Gallery is built out of river stone. We had some other lovely houses like that but many of them have been taken down. I think Grand Rapids to me is interesting, because of the variety of architecture. It wasn‟t just one period but it was drawn from all these various periods. Most of it not really the best period, I don‟t think. Interviewer: Was there competition perhaps between people of means in the Hill District in the Heritage Hill area in the design of their houses? I walk down the street and like you say the diversity of styles, they will be a house here of one particular style and right next door is a house just as large but it‟s a completely different style. Do you have any idea of why that [happened] from your knowledge? Mrs. Meade: No, I don‟t think I‟m old enough to have that knowledge. Most of those houses were built when I grew up. For instance, I can remember going to all those houses, where all �10 these friends of mine lived, [and] practically all of them had a ballroom in their attic, all those houses. You‟ll find the old Wilcox house that was given to the YWCA, has a lovely ballroom. My aunt, Mrs. Walter Winchester‟s house, wasn‟t a very big house down on Madison, they had a ballroom. The Waters‟ house, which is now made into apartments, that had a beautiful ballroom. And our parties as we were little children, we were quite young, they had parties at their houses. We always walked to these things and we‟d dance up in these ballrooms. The Russell house, I don‟t know about the Boltwood‟s, but the Russell is still standing, they had a beautiful ballroom. That‟s where we used to have some of the best parties; there were never anything at school. We had to go to somebody‟s house but everybody, so many people had ballrooms you see that that‟s where we would, and they were big houses. I don‟t think there was any thought of competing with somebody else. I think in those days, things were so much less expensive and there was plenty of help, plenty of help. Even though they were paid only three dollars a week, that was good pay you know. Our house which was a big house, we always had two people; I mean usually a cook and a maid. That was much less than most people had. I mean everybody lived that way, the hired girl you know. Interviewer: What nationality were these hired people? Mrs. Meade: Well, mostly Dutch and mostly they‟d come in from the farms and their family would want the girl to have a job in town and would learn about housekeeping and so forth and they‟d come in and you‟d train them. They wouldn‟t know anything usually when came to most of us I mean some of them got very sophisticated help, but most of us didn‟t. Even when I was first married, I had girl after girl that would come from up north or some little town and they‟d come and you‟d teach them how do everything. To this day, I have any number of these girls living right here in Grand Rapids and every so often they come and now they are now married. And they come and bring their children. I‟ve even had one or two of daughters work for me since then. It was a wonderful relationship, you did all sorts of things for them, but they weren‟t, I wouldn‟t say they were meant to be part of the family, they cooked and wait on the table and do that sort of thing but that‟s all gone now, there‟s nothing to that anymore. I don‟t think that was a bad thing because they all learned and they went on to their own little houses and did things nicely and brought up their children nicely. I‟m just proud of the ones I had. Interviewer: Then it was a socializing process as much as it was a working? Mrs. Meade: Yes I think so. There was no thought of being inferior or anything like that. The same thing I think, my husband comes from Richmond, Virginia. There‟s nothing more “south” then that and he grew up with a mammy that looked after all of them. These families just worshipped these mammies. They took care of them till they died and his mammy couldn‟t read or write, he used to teach her, try to teach her to read and write. There was a wonderful relationship between these people and of course now it‟s all gone. �11 Interviewer: Were there quite a few parties when you were young? Was there more partying than there is today? Mrs. Meade: Many. I don‟t know that there were more parties but I would say that we had a great many parties. At Christmas time, if we were away at school or college and came back and before that, each family gave a little party. They were usually quite early in the evening, and of course we never had anything to drink or smoke or anything like that. I mean they were nice parties and we thought they were absolutely marvelous but we certainly didn‟t know anything about what they are doing today. I‟m sure today they think they, well they ask what you did. It sounds absolutely silly when you tell them. We all thought we had a marvelous time. Interviewer: What did you do at your parties? Mrs. Meade: We mostly danced, I think. Interviewer: Were they pretty formal affairs? Mrs. Meade: Some were quite formal; yes some of them got to be quite formal, in those days. Of course there was a great deal of wealth here in Grand Rapids and there were all these families who I, our family never belong to the country club but I knew a few people who did and once in a while somebody would give a party out there and then it was very formal and we all got dressed up and went. Always chaperoned, in fact all the older people would come out and watch us, dance and everything else. We didn‟t like that very much. Anyway, it was fun. To begin with before that we didn‟t have any cars but after we had cars. For instance we used to have these ponies and one of the things we did that was most fun, we had a sleigh and we had a long, long bob sled and we would all pile on that bob sled . Somebody would drive the ponies and we‟d pull this thing along behind. Eight or ten people or more than that could get on it you see. We‟d go all over town with that or else we‟d take it out and we‟d slide down Washington Street. You know Washington Street was the best one to slide on that there was; you didn‟t run into something at the bottom. We‟d zip down that thing and all around the corner where the museum is now. That‟s where we used to slide. We did that kind of thing. I can‟t remember anyone skiing but we tobogganed and we slid and we skated. We skated out here all the time. I can remember Don Baxter, who you remember Howard Baxter, of Baxter Laundry. Don was his brother and he invented things. He invented something that had a propeller out in front just like an airplane you know and a little box and we‟d sit in this thing behind and this thing would go across Reed‟s Lake. It was terribly fast and we‟d all take turns riding on that. They had those ice sails and we all did that. We did lots of things out of doors. Interviewer: Getting back to those parties, those dances, someone mentioned to me that in one of those houses they had a kind of floating dance floor, it bounced, it moved when you danced on it. Did you ever? Mrs. Meade: No, I don‟t remember that, which house was it? �12 Interviewer: I can‟t remember. There‟s a name for that kind of dance floor. Mrs. Meade: I‟ve been on them in New York, where they whirled, they moved slowly around but I‟ve never been on one…. Interviewer: It was built so there would be a flex to the dance floor. Mrs. Meade: That might be, but I don‟t recognize that, I don‟t remember that. Interviewer: Were the families in your neighborhood when you were growing up quite close? Was there a lot of interaction between the families? Mrs. Meade: Yes, I just knew everybody up and down street. Interviewer: Did your parents? Mrs. Meade: We all did, right where I lived for instance, we knew the May family, and across the street lived the Wallin family, the Van Wallin family. Do you know who Franklin Wallin is? Well, his family was quite a prominent family and his grandfather was. There‟s a Wallin church and so forth. They lived there and my aunt and uncle, Walter Winchester lived near us; the Tietsorts, the Dean family lived on that street. Well, just that whole area. Senator [William Alden] Smith lived up about a block from us. I don‟t think, but the place we thought was the most elegant was Lafayette Street where the Fullers lived there and Mr. O‟Brien who was our Ambassador to Japan and the Holt family. In that area right around there, I would say probably, our most distinguished families or the most socially prominent families that lived there, Lafayette up to Fountain right along there. It‟s all ruined now, more or less. You know that one house, [with] that Jewish thing built out in front of it. I don‟t know, I haven‟t been along there to notice but that was where they lived. Interviewer: Who lived in that house, that the synagogue is built on to? Mrs. Meade: Well, I don‟t know. There was the Fuller family, ones the Fullers and ones the O‟Briens. It‟s the one or the other I can‟t remember which one. I think it was the O‟Brien House. The Holts were a very distinguished family and well the Booths lived out there. They came a little bit later but they were there. Jo Bender would know all that because she was more that group you see. I mean I was a little bit younger, I was scared to death of them but she knew them. They were the kind that looked you up and down you know and you never felt you were properly dressed. They used to come out to country club and watch us dance. The Waters family and the Hollisters and the White family were another very fine interesting family. You should really sometime talk to Rugee White. He‟s caustic, but anyway his family, I mean there‟s Stewart Edward White, who was the writer and there‟s Gilbert who was the artist and there was Rod who was the violinist and they all did things, except Rugee. �13 Interviewer: There‟s a funny story about him. He was at a party one night and a woman came up to him and said, “Oh, you‟re one of the White family” and mentioned his brothers and she said, “But you, what do you do?” And he looked up and said, “Oh, I freckle.” Mrs. Meade: That would be just about what he„d say something like. But, on the other hand, he was probably the best fisherman and hunter in Michigan. I mean he knew more about it, he‟s never written anything, he could of, but he really knew everything, he was very good at that. Interviewer: You mentioned you were scared to death of this older group, why was that? Mrs. Meade: Well, only because people, I don‟t know why I always felt they were of the ultimate socially and I didn‟t probably think, you know there is a certain age where you are terribly shy and you don‟t feel you have any poise and you don‟t feel as though you probably are dressed as you should be if you went to the party or something. Girls I know especially go through a period like that. It makes me laugh as I look back on it but anyway, I can always remember the first time I was invited to the Holt‟s house for lunch and I was so impressed that I got asked. Interviewer: You didn‟t make any blunders, did you? Mrs. Meade: I hope not, but I was afraid I‟d might you know. Well, of course there was the Blodgett family, and the Lowe family; the Blodgetts and the Lowes were the ultimate of the whole thing, they were the wealthiest of all. But they couldn‟t have been nicer families, just wonderful families. They were very nice to all of us, and were the Blodgett family, Katherine Blodgett who is now Katherine Hadley was just my age and she‟s one of my closest friends now, but I didn‟t know her as a little girl. She went to high school along with the rest of us and so I got to know her very well. The Lowe family, there was no one exactly, Jimmie was a little bit younger than I was and others were a little bit older but I knew them all. Mrs. Lowe was a very gracious lovely hostess and so was Mrs. Blodgett. They lived beautifully and we used to always love it, if we were invited there. Interviewer: Was status a very important thing then? Mrs. Meade: As compared to now or what, I don‟t know? Interviewer: Yes, as compared to now? Mrs. Meade: Well, I don‟t know how to answer that. I suppose it was. I was quite aware as I grew up of the people who were in society so to speak. We had a society. It was a real society then, there‟s no society anymore Interviewer: How does that period of time differ from this period of time? When you say there is no society today, what do you mean exactly? �14 Mrs. Meade: I don‟t know every family that I think that was socially prominent was socially prominent for some real reason. I mean the father was a distinguished person that had done something important. It wasn‟t necessarily money. Well, you take the Campau family. I knew them very well. Did you know DuBarry or any of that family? I mean they weren‟t a family of wealth at all, but they were an old, old Grand Rapids family who helped found the city; we all knew that you see. The Butterfield family, all of our families helped start this town and we all had little part in it one way or another, some maybe more than others. Now you take for instance some of the Jewish families that I grew up with here, the Wolf family and the Amberg family and the Mays and the Housemans. We couldn‟t have had nicer Jewish people any place than these families that I grew up with. Budge Hyman, Art Wolf, and Elizabeth Wolf and these people were our close friends and they were part of our little group just as close as could be. In the long run, most of them did marry into the Jewish, but I can remember wondering why in the world people talk about, feel as they did, about the Jews when I never know anybody but the nicest most generous cultured people. We were lucky to have and some of those families are still here. Interviewer: The ethnic groups, for example, Jews and Dutch, I would imagine that Dutch at that time were mostly immigrants, is that correct? Mrs. Meade: Well, no, because for instance the Steketee family certainly I wouldn‟t call them immigrants. I grew up with all of them, knew them very well. I would of, yes I grew up with them. I don‟t think, they maybe were as socially prominent as the Holt family or something like but they were wonderful families. We all knew them well. The Keelers, they weren‟t Dutch were they? There were a great many Dutch families of course that came to this area who were the farming families but then there were some of the others that came too. Interviewer: In other words there was a lot of social interaction between all groups because you were a member of a particular ethnic group, you didn‟t stay in your own group at all? There was mixing? Mrs. Meade: No, I would say maybe the Polish. For instance, we got quite a big Polish group that live on the West side, and we may have some little groups like that because they have Polish Clubs I know and so forth. I don‟t remember knowing any Polish people that I think of. I don‟t know why I didn‟t but I didn‟t. Interviewer: Was there a great division between the west side and the east side? Mrs. Meade: I, perhaps, think so because I grew up on this side for instance we owned a house over on Mt. Vernon Street and [one day] somebody said to me, "What are you doing?" I said “Oh, I am having a wonderful time. I‟m redoing or painting this house that we owned. It must have belonged to some family, wealthy family; it‟s a beautiful house and its lovely old carved stairway.” I was going on in great length and she said, “Where is it?” I said, “It was on a street you never heard of. It‟s called Mt. Vernon Street.” She said, “Let me tell you that I lived on Mt. �15 Vernon St. and all the people you know lived over there. Siegel Judd lived there; then all of the Stewart family lived there.” And then she went on everybody I knew had lived on the west side right in that area. Scribner, Mt. Vernon and all along there see and I didn‟t know that. I think they all moved eventually to this side but many, many of our well known families started right there on the west side. Interviewer: How would you define society today? Today you said that today there is no society, why do you feel that way? Mrs. Meade: I don‟t know if I should have said that. Interviewer: You said the thing that distinguished your society was that your position or entrance into society did not necessarily depend on wealth, but on achievement Mrs. Meade: I think, I just think that the families that we knew, nearly all were families that were a real part of this town. Going all the way back from the Campaus on up to John Ball. Now for instance, John Ball was one of our wonderful people in the early days. I have a marvelous book about him. His children, his family were still living here. I knew some of them, Miss Ball one of them worked down at the library for years and years and years. Another sister married a man named Hopkins. I knew them because I think because they were a part of Grand Rapids. Yet, the people I knew, the very small group compared to whole side of the city. Interviewer: That society that was in existence when you were young, that isn‟t in existence any longer, what can you attribute to the demise of that? Mrs. Meade: Well, a lot of it, I mean should we talk about gracious living and so forth. That takes time, leisure and money. Many of those families did have a great deal of money and they did have the time to travel and they lived nicely because they had servants and so forth. I can remember this time; I don‟t live that way anymore. Oliver says I would like to have the children come in occasionally to see gracious living and all we do is have four candlesticks on the table, and I get it, see. I don‟t call that gracious living. But we did live through a period where you didn‟t talk about, you didn‟t think about, that‟s the way you lived, everybody lived that way, practically. Interviewer: What caused it to end? Mrs. Meade: I don‟t know because they talk about the affluent society, I must say a lot of people have plenty of money. First of all I think one thing that causes a lack of gracious living, is the lack of help. Now nobody wishes to do this sort of work; nobody wishes to come in your house and act as a servant, no matter how nicely you treat them. You can get a young student to come and work so many hours a day or I can get my grand-daughter to come and help me or you know that kind of thing. You can‟t get that kind of thing. If you want to give a lovely dinner, we all of us had silver and the things you could do it with, you can‟t get anybody to come and do it for �16 you. You can‟t do it yourself so you don‟t do it at all. So what you do is have a cocktail party or you have somebody in Sunday night. I have just as much fun Sunday night maybe more, have a casserole dish and everybody sit around the fire and eat on their laps and that kind of thing. Maybe it‟s better; maybe everybody has a better time. I can‟t but I don‟t think when I watch these kids, all of them have to have something, they have to have the television turned on or the radio or all of these things. They don‟t know what to do if they haven‟t got something like that it seems to me. We made up things to do. Interviewer: What about the closeness of these various families that had a long history of achievement in the city, why aren‟t those families still interacting as they did when you were growing up? Mrs. Meade: Many of those families are right here now. The Hutchins family was one of the families that I knew well. They were a bunch of as you know his father was very community minded and his grandfather and his father and that whole family. All those families that lived along there; the Keelers, the [Victor M.] Tuthills, all of them I think have gone on. For instance, Marguerite Inslee who was a Tuthill, she‟s been very interested in the Art Gallery, very generous in music and so forth and all of them have taken jobs on boards of the hospital or Community Chest or you know. I think all of us were brought up to feel if we happen to have a little more than someone else, that you had a responsibility to the community. It made a difference as to what you went into. I mean I happen to be interested in planning and that type of thing. My brother John was interested in politics, my sister-in-law Helen had interests in all sorts of things; everything there was to be. I think all those families had gone on taking their part in the community. Interviewer: Do you think the splitting up of the neighborhood, for example it sounds as if the families were located in a relatively close distance of each other spread of the suburbs and so had an effect on this? Mrs. Meade: I guess an effect on their interest in the city and then what they wanted to do. Interviewer: What about in terms of social interaction just with each other? Mrs. Meade: I know that I‟ve carried on with all the same friends that I‟ve had. I belong to something that a reading club that we started forty, fifty years ago. The same people are there are in it, some have died you know. I think we had very close associations then and I think it is always carried on. I don‟t know that now there‟s the closeness that there was when we grew up. We didn‟t have all the things; we couldn‟t go off and do all the thing that people… these high school kids now think they have to go abroad. Even in high school the tour, my grandchildren have already done that. Why, I never went abroad till I was way out of college. There are so many things that kind seems to shatter closeness now. I think it‟s hard for families to keep close, harder than it was, it seems to me. �17 Interviewer: Why do you think it is? Mrs. Meade: Well, I think it‟s just, maybe restlessness; everybody has it, maybe we all have it, maybe I have it now. We used to be satisfied and happy with things that were simpler. We didn‟t know about these other things; we didn‟t listen to the Today Show every day and know what was going on in the world. I don‟t know; I‟ve always been a person with a lot of adventure. I‟ve had an interesting life because I‟ve had that maybe more so than my friends but that‟s why I lived in China and did different things. We‟ve always liked it but I should ask you some questions, I‟m afraid I‟m giving a terribly bad impression. When I‟m talking about society, you know there are so many misconceptions about the word society. Interviewer: Why don‟t I stop this tape and I‟ll start another. I‟d like to hear what these misconceptions. I don‟t want you to feel like you gave a misconception on this tape. Mrs. Meade: I don‟t know if I did or not. Is this being done just for Heritage Hill? Interviewer: Yes, just for Heritage Hill. Mrs. Meade: You‟re trying to get a picture of just that area there? Interviewer: I think that the farm for example, Alta Dale that you had, what people did in the summer time, where they went is important too, because it gives a picture of the style of living? That‟s what we are trying to get. Mrs. Meade: Well, it wasn‟t so stylish to go live on a farm as it was to go to Ottawa Beach. I always longed to have a cottage at Ottawa Beach but the Martin family never had one. Anyway our friends used to love to come to the farm, but I don‟t think by and large most people did that in the summer. They were much more apt to go to Ottawa Beach. Only one or two friends of mine that I ever remember ever took a trip abroad were sort of set apart if you were, to be able to do that you know because people just didn‟t do that in those days. My mother, when my mother became engaged to my father, my grandfather took her abroad for six months with his daughter. This was before father and mother were married and she had the grand tour and I have her diary about that. That was just a beautiful trip. Imagine going for six months. When people went abroad they stayed that long. My mother‟s family didn‟t have very much: my mother taught school and she would never have had a trip abroad ever, you see, and I think my grandfather wanted her to, you know have all the background possible probably, so he gave her this trip, which of course she just loved. Interviewer: You were mentioning while we were changing tapes about the difference in parties today. You didn‟t have liquor at your parties? �18 Mrs. Meade: I can‟t ever remember anybody having liquor. The first time I remember anyone having anything to drink at anything, even a house party at Ann Arbor. I can remember the boy who had something to drink was taken away, nervously taken out. We were none of us supposed to realize he had anything to drink but he was drunk, I guess. But, we never in the early days ever had anything like that. Interviewer: What about...? Mrs. Meade: I think I‟m trying to think all the way through high school, I can‟t remember; now maybe they did and I didn‟t know it, because I was pretty innocent. But anyway I don‟t remember them. We certainly never had stunts pulled or anything of that kind, of course I remember lots of it since, but not…. Interviewer: What about your parents parties, did they? Mrs. Meade: Well, my parents never had it. I think there were families that did, but my family were very anti, any kind of drinking, so we never had anything in our house, we never had anything to drink. But I „m sure probably people like the O‟Briens and Holts, people like that, they‟d lived abroad a good deal and everything I‟m sure they must have had. I don‟t know if they would have cocktails but I‟m sure they‟d have a wine probably, with dinners. But I was too young to ever go to anything like that, and I don‟t think that, I know my parents didn‟t, but I think there were probably some that did. Interviewer: The parties that were held for the adults, and your parents and so on, the parties that they attended, can you ever remember them going to a cocktail party? Mrs. Meade: I don‟t think they, they didn‟t have things that was such a thing called a cocktail party until within the last number of years. You‟d maybe have a cocktail, I had, the first time I was confronted with cocktails I remember, was when I was twenty-two or three years old. And we went to China, the whole family and we went to the Embassy in Peking and we went to various, we were invited to various places and we were served cocktails, which I took, whether my family liked it or not. But anyway, but what I thought when in Rome do as the Romans… But my father never enjoyed drinking anything, we tried to teach him but we couldn‟t. No, no, it was something, I think probably their friends, maybe some of their friends did but most of them did not drink, and we just weren‟t confronted with it and finally when we were we just had to figure it out, whether we would or we wouldn‟t, I guess. Interviewer: Besides parties that were held at people‟s houses and skating and so on and Reed‟s Lake in the wintertime, or traveling across the ice on a propelled bike, what kind of entertainment did people pursue? Mrs. Meade: You mean did we go to the movies or something like that? Interviewer: Were there movies? �19 Mrs Meade: Well, when I was very little I was not allowed to go, but the first thing was called a vaudette, they cost five cents. You were not supposed, I was never supposed to go in one, but I did. And it was just one of these flickery things you know, somebody playing the piano and… Interviewer: When was that? Mrs. Meade: Oh, I can‟t, I don‟t know how old I was then, and I know just where it was right on Monroe Avenue, but I can‟t, I don‟t know how old I was. Interviewer: What was downtown like in those days? Mrs. Meade: Well, I can‟t say Monroe was like it is now, but that was the main part of the shopping area, was right down what‟s now the mall. And of course we had streetcars; that was the nice part, we could if we didn‟t have a car to drive down, which we didn‟t mostly, we‟d go out and get on the streetcar at corner of Madison and Wealthy and ride downtown and get off and shop and then you‟d get back on. We had mailboxes on the streetcar that was another thing that was wonderful, you could mail your letters there, stop a car there if you wanted to put „em there, a letter. We often rode down on the streetcar and then they took those off and then the era of the bus came. But I loved the streetcar era. Another one of the families that was quite prominent was the Hanchett family. They were the ones, of course, that owned the street railway company. That‟s somebody you ought to talk to is Brownie Hanchett, if you want back history, she‟s very good. Interviewer: I‟ll remember that. When did they do away with the streetcar? Mrs. Meade: Well, I should remember, you know you can‟t remember dates when they did things like that, I can‟t remember when that happened. Interviewer: Was it in the twenties? Mrs. Meade: I wouldn‟t, I‟d hate to tell you. I don‟t really know, they just disappear and then you realize they‟re gone. Interviewer: Did the First World War have an effect on society, the way people lived, and the way people thought? Mrs. Meade: Well, it certainly did while the war was going on, very much so. I mean because so many of the boys that we knew were in it, you see. I mean well, all the Cassard boys and Randy Rogers, and George Hollister and all the sons and my brother and all the people my age were all in that war, and a number of them that were killed, of course. So that we were all working in the Red Cross and doings things like that. No it wasn‟t very gay, we did do that, we did have that War Garden, that one summer. Interviewer: What was it like after the war? Do you remember any kind of a change that you might have noticed in the tempo of living, and so on? �20 Mrs. Meade: That would be twenty… Well, I tell you, I think after the war it was gayer in a different kind of way, the kind of a keyed-up gayness. You hear, they talk about the twenties now and I try to think back and there was a period there when everybody was kind of, you know, terribly keyed up. And I forgot when, I‟m trying to think about when Prohibition came in. I guess that was later, but this was when all the dances, you know, the Charleston and all those different things came; and jazz and we all wore the short skirts and that kind of thing. We hadn‟t realized we were lively through an era, but I guess we were. I don‟t, I think the tempo of life has changed, but maybe that, maybe that‟s when the, that may be when all the big parties that, the really formal parties and things, that may be when they really did stop. I think it was then probably. Interviewer: This is off, away from parties, but what church was your family affiliated with? Mrs. Meade: Park Congregational. My grandfather went there; my father went there, until he was the oldest member of the church. We all went there, sat along in a line…. I guess in those days everybody had a pew, all the families, different families had pews. I can just see us now, the Keeney family sat back of us, and then we sat there and then the Irwin family and everybody, and then afterwards they gave that up too, but in those days that was what you paid for your pew, see. Interviewer: Was the church, was that important at all to, was that an important input factor in the community? Mrs. Meade: I think the church, especially in the era when my mother and father grew up, that was the social center of the town. I think from reading her diaries and letters and things like that, where people went to meet each other and the young people‟s meeting and that kind of thing, which in my era was not as important. I mean we went to church, but our whole social life didn‟t depend upon what was going on at the church. But my mother and father, that was where it was. Now it may not have been with all the families, but my families were very strong Congregationalists and my father was the head of the Sunday school, and I don‟t know, Mother was the head of the United Workers. I always feel guilty now because I‟m not any of those things. In fact, most of the family well, we‟ve had, great changes, around. My brother John became a, went to Fountain Street Church and he was a great worker in that, and my brother Joe doesn‟t go at all, and I‟m the only one that stayed in the Congregational Church. And yet they had such a battle down the old Park Church that I had to move out here to the Mayflower Church. Oh, heavens I, now listen you‟d better take that out… Interviewer: Well, that won‟t be that important. I think that, I think we covered about everything I wanted to cover. One last question though, and you don‟t have to answer this if you don‟t want to, but how old are you? Mrs. Meade: I am seventy-four. I wish I weren‟t, but I am…. �21 INDEX A F Alta Dale farm · 7, 19 Alten, Mr. [Mathias] · 8 Amberg family · 16 Art Gallery · 10, 18 Audubon Society · 7 First World War · 22 Fountain Street Church · 23 Fuller family · 14 Fuller, Philo · 7 B G Bailey, Rebecca · 1 Ball, John · 17 Bartholomew plan · 9 Baxter Laundry · 13 Baxter, Don · 13 Baxter, Howard · 13 Bender, Jo · 14 Blodgett family · 15 Blodgett, Katherine · 15 Blodgett, Mrs. · 15 Boltwood, Mrs. · 3 Booth family · 14 Braman‟s farm · 6 Brooks, Rose · 5 Bush, Irving · 4 Butterfield family · 16 Gilbert, artist · 14 Gilbert, Rod · 14 Grand Rapids Savings bank · 5 H Hanchett, Brownie · 21 Heritage Hill · 5, 9, 10, 11, 19 Holiday farm · 7 Hollister family · 14 Hollister, George · 22 Hollister, Harvey · 2 Holt family · 14, 16 Holt‟s house · 15 Houseman familiy · 16 Hutchins family · 18 Hyman, Budge · 16 C Campau family · 17 Campau, DuBarry · 15 Cassard boys · 22 Central Grammar school · 6 Community Chest · 18 Comstock, C.C. · 2, 3 Crawford family · 7 I Inslee, Marguerite · 18 Irwin family · 22 J Judd, Siegel · 17 D Dean family · 14 Dix House · 10 K Keeler family · 16, 18 Keeney family · 22 Konkle, Mrs. · 3 �22 L Lafayette school · 6 Lantsberry family · 2 Lantsberry, Mary Alice · 1, 2 Lowe family · 15 M Martin, grandfather · 1, 3 Martin, John B. · 1, 4 Martin, Joseph H. · 1, 2 Martin, Mary Alice · 1, 2 Martin, Peter · 2 Martin, Uncle Thomas · 2 May family · 13, 16 Mayflower Congregational church · 23 Meade, Richard Hardaway · 1 N Nelson-Matter Furniture Company · 3 O O‟Brien family · 14, 20 O‟Brien house · 14 O‟Brien, Mr. · 14 Old Kent Bank · 5 Old National Bank · 2, 5 P Park Congregational church · 23 Park Congregational church · 22 Penfield, Mrs. Thorton B. · 4 Peoples Bank · 5 Plank Road · 2 Prior, Eleanor · 1 Prohibition · 22 R Reed‟s Lake · 13, 21 Robinson, Henry C. · 1 Robinson, Rix · 7 Rogers, Randy · 22 Russell house · 11 Russell, Fran · 3 Russo, Mr. · 5 S Smith, Senator [William Alden] · 14 Steketee family · 16 Stewart family · 17 T Tietsort family · 14 Tuthill family [Victor] · 18 U Union Bank · 5 W Wallin church · 13 Wallin family · 13 Wallin, Franklin · 13 War Garden · 7, 22 Waters family · 14 Waters‟ house · 11 Welsh, George · 9 Welsh, Ken · 9 White family · 14 White, Rugee · 14 White, Stewart Edward · 14 Wilcox family · 8 Winchester family · 2, 3 Winchester, Althea · 1, 4 Winchester, grandfather · 3 Winchester, Samuel · 2 Winchester, Samuel Alexander · 1 Winchester, Walter · 11, 13 Wolf family · 16 Wolf, Art · 16 Wolf, Elizabeth · 16 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a8ea3040c939b34b8cec954c312c451e.mp3 99df13c02b98b1a3889c4998f4ac63be 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_7-8Meade Title A name given to the resource Meade, Mary Alice Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Meade, Mary Alice Description An account of the resource Mary Alice Martin was born in Grand Rapids in 1897. She returned home from Vassar College during WWI to farm. 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/95a6b0ff5ed76327d1fc2690609cd12e.pdf ca634a646d8c202078698b21d4a3c4b0 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History Collection RHC-23 Mrs. C. L. Lockwood Interviewed on September 14, 1971 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tapes #5 & #6 (41:37) Biographical Information: Katherine Maria Pantlind was born 25 December 1888 in Grand Rapids. She was the daughter of James Boyd Pantlind and Jessie Louise Aldrich. Katherine married Closson L. Lockwood 10 November 1909 in Grand Rapids. She died 16 March 1976. Closson L. Lockwood was born 22 January 1879 in Grand Rapids. He was the son of Closson L. Lockwood, Sr. and Frances E. Wycoff. He died 10 December 1944. Closson and Katherine Lockwood are both buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. James Boyd Pantlind was born 20 January 1851 in Norwalk, Huron County, Ohio, the son of Ralph Nevius Pantlind and Catherine McGorgon. He came to Grand Rapids with his uncle, Arunius Voorhees Pantlind in 1874. J. Boyd Pantlind married Jessie Louise Aldrich on 14 April 1880 in Grand Rapids. He died 25 December 1925 in Grand Rapids. Jessie Louise Aldrich was born 1 January 1858 in Grand Rapids, the daughter of Moses Vail Aldrich and Euphrasia Jones Ledyard. Jessie died 15 August 1936 in Grand Rapids. Both Jessie and J. Boyd Pantlind are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. ___________ Interviewer: This interview with Mrs. C. L. Lockwood was recorded September the fourteenth, nineteen seventy-one. Now, why don’t you say a couple of words or something, to see if it’s recording? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh, I see. What do you want me to say, it’s a nice day? Interviewer: Something like that. Mrs. Lockwood: It’s a beautiful day. Interviewer: That’s fine. Mrs. Lockwood: What about what I like and enjoy? Interviewer: Good, that’s fine. Maybe, the question that I’d like to start with is, do you remember a Moses Aldrich? Mrs. Lockwood: Moses Aldrich was my grandfather. �2 Interviewer: Do you remember him? Mrs. Lockwood: No, he died before I was born. Interviewer: Oh. Mrs. Lockwood: He died when my mother was married. He’s been dead many, many years. Interviewer: Oh. Mrs. Lockwood: No, I never knew him. And my grandfather, my great-grandfather was still alive, William B. Ledyard, when I was born, but I don’t remember him. Interviewer: Now, Ledyards and Aldriches did they come here? Mrs. Lockwood: They came from Plymouth, Michigan Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Lockwood: My grandmother was a Ledyard, she was Euphrasia Ledyard, and she married Moses V. Aldrich. Moses Vail Aldrich. Interviewer: And he was the mayor of Grand Rapids? Mrs. Lockwood: Mayor of Grand Rapids many, many years ago. I’m awfully sorry, I don’t remember him, I forgot to get his picture when I was there. Interviewer: When were you born, if I may ask? Mrs. Lockwood: I was born in eighteen eighty-eight. Interviewer: Eighteen eighty-eight? Mrs. Lockwood: I’m eighty-three years old. Back in way, way back in the history of Grand Rapids. Interviewer: What was it like where did you grow up as a child? Mrs. Lockwood: I grew up on College Avenue, one thirty-four College Avenue. It’s now part of the Hillmount [Apartments]. Interviewer: Oh, yes Mrs. Lockwood: One thirty-four is on the south side of the street. �3 Interviewer: What was it like in those days? Mrs. Lockwood: Well, the way early days? Interviewer: Yes Mrs. Lockwood: Well, the early days I had the goats, and I use to drive the goats back and forth, up and down the street, I even drove them downtown. My Father ran the Morton Hotel. I’d tie the goats to a telegraph pole and I’d go in and get a nickel and I’d go in and get a soda at the Church & [Wick?] Drug Store and then I’d come out and drive the goats home. I was only about fifth grade. But there were no streetcars. There were streetcars, but there were no automobiles. And of course, I avoided the streetcars. Interviewer: Why was that? I didn’t like the streetcars and my goats didn’t like them either. And they were very, very stubborn, my goats. They’d go out and sit right down, in the harnesses and wouldn’t move at all. I’d get the old buckboard and I’d drive up and down the street. Interviewer: How many goats did you have pulling your cart? Mrs. Lockwood: I had three at one time, but only two on the cart. When, I was a child, I wanted to ride everything; I rode everything in the neighborhood. I rode all the horses and things that were in the stable. And my father said I was too heavy for one goat so I came around the house riding two goats; one leg over one, and one over the other. He said I don’t know what I’ve done. But I was very, very well behaved when I was riding them. And I was a funny child. I’ve done everything. Interviewer: Were there many houses around your family’s home? Mrs. Lockwood: There were houses; the Bissells lived next door to us, Mrs. M.R. Bissell and Lewis Withey lived beyond … then the Waters. Mary Waters and I were great friends. And we went riding on the streets there. Interviewer: Was there a gazebo on the Waters’ property, do you remember? Mrs. Lockwood: What was that? Interviewer: It’s like, it’s kind of an outdoor building that people spend time in the summertime. Mrs. Lockwood: There was a summer house up on the hill, behind Mr. Waters’ house. I didn’t know what a gazebo was. Interviewer: I never knew either until I saw a movie called The Gazebo and they explained it. �4 Mrs. Lockwood: I’ve never known anything like that for it. A gazebo, I’ll remember that. Interviewer: Were the families very close? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh very, we went back and forth, very friendly with the Bissell boy, we were great friends. And I’d stay there for dinner till I got dessert there, then I’d go home for dessert. I’d stay anyplace where dessert was good because I enjoyed it so much. Interviewer: Do you still like dessert? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh, I still love dessert. And Irving Bissell and I were great friends. We’d ride goats together. We’d ride everywhere. He had a white goat. Interviewer: What color were your goats? Mrs. Lockwood: My goats were brown and white, and black and white. Interviewer: What did families do, for example it seems as if families that today in the neighborhoods are not as closely knit as they were in those days, I mean the families, from what I understand the living was like in those days, the families today don’t have as much interaction. Mrs. Lockwood: We had a great deal of very good, very friendly with our neighbors. I think the automobile is the reason for that, don’t you? Interviewer: The automobile? Mrs. Lockwood: You see we all took street cars, everywhere. We’d meet on the streetcars and we were very friendly with everyone in our neighborhood. Grandmother Aldrich lived on the corner of Cherry and College, Grandmother Aldrich, then my father, and then Mrs. M.R. Bissell, then Mr. Withey, then Mrs. Waters. And Mr. and Mrs. Barnhart lived across the street where Mrs. Edith Putnam lived and then, afterwards Mr. Barnhart bought that house. We knew them all. And the Voigt family lived across the street and the Byrnes family lived across the street from us. Gordon Dudley lived where Mrs. Waer is now living. Then Charles Fox was in the Castle and the Fox family had dogs. I was over there a great deal with Mrs. Fox because she got me to come feed the dogs and help her with the dogs, give them baths and things. Which I enjoyed very much. Interviewer: Why do you think the auto, what effects do you think the automobile had in the neighborhood? Mrs. Lockwood: I think it’s taken the people away from home a great deal, don’t you? It’s a very independent life now. I don’t begin to know my neighbors, the way I used to. When we sat on the front porch, people came and dropped in, people don’t drop in anymore. �5 Interviewer: porch… Were there many people that, in the evening when you’d be sitting on your Mrs. Lockwood: Sitting on the front porch and other people would see you and they’d come across the street and call on you. Stay for half and hour or something like, that. And there’s none of that anymore. People don’t call anymore; don’t you think that’s true? Interviewer: I don’t know because I’ve never lived in an age without the automobile. Mrs. Lockwood: That’s true. Well of course, I was about sixteen when the automobile was invented, the real automobile which means ones that you could buy. And my father had an Olds. The first car, it was an Olds and a very good car. I learned to drive when I was about sixteen. Interviewer: What year was it when your father bought a car? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh I couldn’t tell you. Interviewer: Well, now if you were sixteen… it must have been eighteen ninety-eight? You were born in eighteen eighty-two? Mrs. Lockwood: Eighteen eighty-eight. Interviewer: That would be nineteen four. Mrs. Lockwood: Nineteen four. That sounds right. Interviewer: Was that one of the first automobiles in Grand Rapids? Mrs. Lockwood: Let’s see, I don’t think father had the first automobile. He was, he was not very interested in them at first, but he grew very fond of his automobile. The first car he had was an Olds. Interviewer: Were there any people, friends or acquaintances of your family that refused to buy automobiles? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh no! Everybody bought automobiles. It caught right on everybody enjoyed it. And my father never learned to drive, there was a chauffeur. And then when we grew older, my brother and I drove it all the time. I liked to drive it very much. It had acetylene lights and I would light the lights. It had no starter on the car. You had to have a handle and what do you say? Interviewer: Crank it? �6 Mrs. Lockwood: Crank it. I’d crank it about an hour. Ira Batchhelder and I used to crank his automobile, when I was a child. I had a very happy childhood. Interviewer: What was downtown like when, did you say your father owned the Morton House? Mrs. Lockwood: Owned the Morton House. And afterwards we rented the Pantlind. He never owned the Pantlind, but he owned the Morton House. Interviewer: What was your father’s name? Mrs. Lockwood: Pantlind, J. Boyd Pantlind. James Boyd Pantlind. He was in… he was brought here with A. V. Pantlind [his uncle Arundius Voorhees Pantlind] and was the original partner here in Grand Rapids. They ran the Morton House. They brought Father here as a little boy, about fourteen years old. And he ran the Morton until he died. Of course he was running the Pantlind also. Interviewer: What was the Morton House like in those days? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh very, very attractive really. There was a mezzanine floor where we would sit and watch everything going on there all the time. It was very attractive hotel with the lovely pictures, lots of carpets and many conventions in came there. There was a very attractive grill at the back that was connected with the bar, I suppose that’s what appealed to men, but we used to go there as children and have our supper. It was very well done, very. I guess that’s all I’m talking about is myself. Don’t you want me to say something that I know about Grand Rapids? Interviewer: Alright, tell me something that you know about Grand Rapids. Mrs. Lockwood: I mean something you’d like to know about Grand Rapids? Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Lockwood: Well, I know that the statue from Lookout Park is now over here on the intersection of Cherry and State street. That statue used to be at Lookout Park. When I was a little child we used to go up there. Do you know where Lookout Park is? Interviewer: I think so. Mrs. Lockwood: Okay. Interviewer: Why’d they move the statue? Mrs. Lockwood: I have no idea. But I knew it very well, I discovered afterwards when here, in our Park and there was a large fountain where the horses would drink because there were only horses, no automobiles. Everybody had horses, my mother drove a horse �7 and my father liked to drive. I rode horse-back, had ponies and things like that, (the Bissell boy did too) and no cars, it was a very different life, a very simple life compared with now. I think the automobile has, changed the entire community, don’t you? Interviewer: Well Mrs. Lockwood: You don’t remember when there were not cars? Interviewer: No, I don’t. Mrs. Lockwood: The automobiles, the movies and the television, I think that changed the world very, very, much. Interviewer: What did, how did family groups spend their time in those days when there weren’t movies, automobiles and televisions? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh we had enormous family parties. There were thirty-five in our family for Christmas dinner. We had Christmas dinner on the third floor at father’s house he’d dress up as a chef with a cap and apron and everything. He’d carve the turkey up there. We had beautiful parties up there. I had a… when I was married we had a supper up there. It was just as attractive as it could be. That’s the way people lived. They all had third floors. They all had dancing parties. They had a billiards table up there where you could play the afternoon and evening but that was a very close family life when I was young. We were very close to our parents. And we were very close to your neighbors. Interviewer: Were during the year, other than the holiday season, were there, would, families give parties and invite friends in? Mrs. Lockwood: Yes, We have them almost every Sunday, [] we went to some member of the family. Interviewer: I see Mrs. Lockwood: I had many relatives here. Mrs. J. H. Wonderly is my aunt, and, Mrs. Richard Smith was my cousin, the doctor’s wife and my Aunt Kate Blake who was Mrs. John Blake, he’s been dead for many, many years was here too and then I went there to school, she had a house.. it’s the old Dix house on Cherry Street. You know where the Dix house? [Horace P. Dix] Interviewer: No Mrs. Lockwood: That’s right across from that Oakwood Manor; it’s that house with the pillars in the front. [540 Cherry St] Interviewer: Oh, that Greek Revival. �8 Mrs. Lockwood: Yes. Interviewer: You went to school there? Mrs. Lockwood: I went to school there. Went to school on the first floor at the back of the house. Interviewer: What kind of school was it? Mrs. Lockwood: A private school. I don’t think it was as good as the public school but we all went there. The whole neighborhood went there. And we enjoyed it very much. Interviewer: Why did your parents send you to the private school? Mrs. Lockwood: It was right here, we were closer to home. And we all went to Mr. Powell’s School up on College Avenue. Then I went in high school, finally, which I enjoyed very, very much. I highly approve of the public school. I think they’re much better for youngsters. Interviewer: Than private schools? Mrs. Lockwood: Than private schools. I think you rub elbows with everybody, you learn to adjust yourself to the world. I think it’s very wise to send a child to public school. Interviewer: What was the public school you attended? Mrs. Lockwood: I went up there to Central High School. Central was on Ransom Street then. I don’t know it’s there now. It’s no longer there. Interviewer: Not on Ransom Street now. Mrs. Lockwood: No, it was called Central High School when I was young. And I went to into grade school then I went right into high school. Interviewer: What kind of, was it basically the same education in the private schools that they had in the public schools? Mrs. Lockwood: Well, I thought much harder then, when I was young, very much harder than now. That isn’t, that’s not true at all. I was a very, very poor student. Isaac Keeler sat right in front of me. I’d never been through arithmetic if it hadn’t been for Isaac Keeler. He helped me with my work all the time. Interviewer: He was a good student? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh he was a wonderful student, wonderful student and I was a very poor student. I was very conscientious. I tried very hard but I was a poor student. �9 Interviewer: Did you go to college after high school? Mrs. Lockwood: No, I went to Dana Hall which is in Wellesley, Massachusetts. It’s a very good school for the wealthy. I didn’t go on to college. Interviewer: Did many of your neighbors, did the children that you grew up with, did they go to college? Mrs. Lockwood: Very few went on to college when I was young. Interviewer: What did they do after they got through with high school? Mrs. Lockwood: They came home and made their debuts and usually married very, very young. I was just twenty when I was married. I was very happily married and I had a perfectly beautiful time but I, I think I was much too young, at twenty years old to marry. Don’t you think that’s very young? Interviewer: I think it depends on the individual. Mrs. Lockwood: I think so too. Well, I had a very happy married life; I had a very devoted, very sweet husband. I wish I could talk of something besides myself. Interviewer: Oh I think that, personal recollections, something you were involved in yourself, and that you saw and experienced are the best recollections. Mrs. Lockwood: Well, I have very happy recollections. My father said, he couldn’t arrange my life for me, adjust my life for me, but he could give me a happy childhood. That was his ambition, and he certainly did. He gave me a perfectly wonderful childhood. Interviewer: That’s a fine memory. Mrs. Lockwood: Um hum, it’s a wonderful memory to have of a person. Of course Grand Rapids was dirt streets and it was very, very different from now. And I could only go from Fountain to Cherry on my pony and with my goats. I wasn’t allowed to go farther than that. Interviewer: Why was that? Mrs. Lockwood: Because I was so little, I was only five years old. Interviewer: Oh. Mrs. Lockwood: When I got older I rode everywhere. And father had a farm when we were older and we used to ride, I used to ride out there almost every day, had a tennis �10 court out there, It’s now the cemetery. It’s the Catholic and Protestant Cemetery it’s called… out on Kalamazoo Avenue. Interviewer: Yes Mrs. Lockwood: You must know that cemetery. Interviewer: Which one? Mrs. Lockwood: Woodlawn. Woodlawn. Interviewer: That was out in the country then? Mrs. Lockwood: It was way in the country. It was miles away. It’s not very far now by automobile but it took a pony a long time to get out there. Interviewer: where the country begins in terms of where you lived on College Avenue? What was considered out in the country? Mrs. Lockwood: Well, you were getting in the country really… you’d go out Kalamazoo Avenue and I would say that at Burton Avenue you were in the country. Interviewer: How about southeast what’s now East Grand Rapids and so on? Was that…? Mrs. Lockwood: East Grand Rapids wasn’t there at all and that was very much in the country, when I was young. Interviewer: Did you ever go out to Reed’s Lake? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh, I went there all the time. And they had the Ramona out there you know when I was a child. And we’d skate out there in the winter and the Ramona in the summer, vaudeville every night. We’d go out in the streetcar and there’d be streetcars that would bring you home. The last streetcar we always had to catch. It was delightful. We’d roller-skate out there in the summer time, ice-skate in the winter. And Mr. Rose was a son of Mr. Rose Senior. I don’t know what the name was, it was Todd Rose’s father, was in charge of the swimming when I was a little girl. I enjoyed it very much. I was more than a little girl; I must have been fifteen or sixteen years old. Interviewer: What was your most memorable experience as not only, what was your memorable experience as a young person not only as a child but, let’s say as a teenager and so on? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh, let me see. I think that would be very hard for me to decide, I had so many memorable experiences. I have no idea. Maybe too many to tell. �11 Interviewer: Well, can you try and tell me a couple? Mrs. Lockwood: Well, one experience I remember very well, Margie Stanton was a friend of mine and we met Teddy Roosevelt, and she told him that she had a raccoon named Teddy. That tickled me almost to death. As a child, that pleased me so. Interviewer: Where did you happen to meet Teddy Roosevelt? Mrs. Lockwood: He was here in Grand Rapids. We met him down at the hotel. Interviewer: At the Morton House? Mrs. Lockwood: At the Morton. Interviewer: What did he come to Grand Rapids for? Mrs. Lockwood: [To] speak. Must be for running for election. I went to see but I was too small to remember. Interviewer: What did he say when the girl told him that her raccoon…. Mrs. Lockwood: Oh, he said, “I’m delighted, I’m just delighted.” He smiled all over and she was so pleased she could hardly stand it. And she said, “I have a cute raccoon and named him Teddy for you.” He was very pleased by it. And very amused by it. Interviewer: Did many politicians come to Grand Rapids, to campaign or one thing or another in those days? Mrs. Lockwood: Well, President Taft came here and Theodore Roosevelt was here. No I don’t remember any others. Oh, Bryan was here, too. Interviewer: William Jennings Bryan? Mrs. Lockwood: William Jennings Bryan. I’m a Republican so I didn’t hear William Jennings Bryan, but I saw him. He was down in the square. Let’s see if any, anything else exciting happened. I don’t believe so, in the way of political life. Alice Roosevelt Longworth was staying here with her husband years ago. And Mrs. Hanchett and her husband took them on the Honolulu [I] remember, the only one I remember. It was his streetcar and they took him out to the Cattery. And they wanted to get Mrs. Longworthy a cat but she didn’t want it. Interviewer: What was it, what’s the Cattery? Mrs. Lockwood: It was on the corner of Carlton and Lake Drive. I can’t tell you the name of the woman, she raised cats. She had hundreds of cats in that house. And she raised �12 them. She wanted to give Mrs. Longworth a cat but Mrs. Longworth couldn’t take care of a cat. Interviewer: (Hanchett) he owned the street car line. Mrs. Lockwood: That’s right and afterwards he was across from my father and mother on College Avenue, and they occupied that house. I was very fond of Mr. and Mrs. Hanchett. Mr. Hanchett was very fond of horses too. Interviewer: Did they, did they ever have races with their horses? Mrs. Lockwood: They used to race down on Jefferson Avenue, every Sunday afternoon. Ride fast horses in the cutter. I used to go there often and they raced their horses, up and down the street. And they had races out here at the fairgrounds out here in the south end. I never went out there. Interviewer: What….excuse me. Mrs. Lockwood: I used to go to the fairgrounds out here. Interviewer: Yes, where are the, where were the fairgrounds? Mrs. Lockwood: The fairgrounds were out… let’s see where that is now? It’s well, it’s out where the, what is there out there now? It was out by Mill Creek out that way. Interviewer: By Middle Creek? Mrs. Lockwood: No, Mill, Mill Creek it was called. Mill Creek. Interviewer: I don’t know where that is. Mrs. Lockwood: It’s in the north side of the city. It’s beyond North Park, across the river from North Park. Interviewer: Oh, I see. Mrs. Lockwood: You know where the Soldier’s home is? Interviewer: Yes Mrs. Lockwood: It was right out that bridge. Right out that road. Interviewer: In these horse races, there down on Jefferson Avenue, would they race like a jockey race or would they (?) �13 Mrs. Lockwood: Oh no, they, just in their cutters. They had cutters. And the men would have fast horses and just race Sunday afternoons. Interviewer: Did your father ever race? Mrs. Lockwood: No, he never raced. He wasn’t fond of anything like that. So I never raced either. I’d like to, but my pony wasn’t fast enough and they were very good looking horses they were racing. I used to drive, ride down there and watch them. When the circus would come to town we’d all go to the circus and had wonderful times like that. Interviewer: Did many people go down to Jefferson Avenue to watch the horse races? Mrs. Lockwood: Yes, they did. Had big crowds there on Sunday afternoon applauding for who had the fastest horse great crowds there, on Sunday afternoon. On pleasant winter days in the cutters, we’d all go bobsledding. We’d take the bobs and the wintertime and ride with the milkman. When he was delivering milk we rode with him. Interviewer: What, what’s a bob? Is that the sled? Mrs. Lockwood: Yes. Bob, that’s the sled. Interviewer: You’d hold on the back of his open cart then? Mrs. Lockwood: Back of his cart, open cart and he had a bobsled on it and he’d drive he had some youngsters on the back of it all the time. And that was a lot fun. It’s very different now. You couldn’t do that now. You couldn’t have a bob sled in Grand Rapids. You’d be killed getting off and getting on. There’s nothing else you’d like to ask me? Interviewer: Yes, there are a lot of things. I’m just thinking and just trying to picture that who would any of the men in your neighborhood or in this area around here race cutters? Mrs. Lockwood: No, I don’t think so. Interviewer: Who were the men that raced the cutters? Mrs. Lockwood: I don’t know the men at all. I’ve no idea. But anybody that had a fast horse, trotting horses and pacing horses, they were all in the race, on Sunday afternoons. And I’d go down on my pony just to watch them go by, but I didn’t know the men. Interviewer: When did you get married? Mrs. Lockwood: In nineteen nine, nineteen-0-nine - that’s a long time ago. Interviewer: Did you spend your married life in this house here? �14 Mrs. Lockwood: No, I’ve been here fifty six years; I was married and first lived on Washington Street. It’s where those double houses are on Washington Street. It was four0-seven Washington. It was right next to George Thompsons. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Lockwood: Just north of him, we were there for about a three years and then father bought this house when had some (?) builder built it. (?) He was very amusing person, a very attractive person. But Grand Rapids in those days was a beautiful city, the streets were lovely and the trees were so beautiful on College Avenue. Of course, there was no East Grand Rapids at all. As far as we ever went was Reed’s Lake. We never went any farther east than Reed’s Lake on the streetcar. Interviewer: Did people do much traveling in those days? Mrs. Lockwood: Yes, my grandmother went to California every winter. She had a house in California and a great many people went there. Mrs. Murphy went there every winter. Interviewer: In California? Mrs. Lockwood: In California. And people didn’t go abroad the way they do now, but they went to California. I think California was a very good favorite place in the winter and of course Father knew it too. But they were very, very fond of California. Interviewer: That certainly sounds different. Mrs. Lockwood: It was a different world. Yes, of course there was no, there was no push then there was no, nothing to make you rush. Everybody went to church and they drove to church and drove home from church, the hitching posts for the horses, was a very relaxing age. We’ve come to a very, I can’t quite describe what I mean but it’s, I think there’s such a push we’ve got for everything now. Don’t you have that feeling? Interviewer: Yes, I have that feeling. Mrs. Lockwood: Yes Interviewer: What do you think that ended that age that way of living? Mrs. Lockwood: The automobile. Interviewer: Do you think it was just the introduction of the automobile? �15 Mrs. Lockwood: I think it was the cars. Then everybody could get away so quickly you know. I don’t think it was very good to the young people. Interviewer: Well, if people had such lovely times in the neighborhoods and with their friends and their families, when the automobile was introduced why did they hurry away? Mrs. Lockwood: Well, they finally got out in the country by themselves I guess. I just don’t know. Interviewer: Yes Mrs. Lockwood: But I do think the automobile has done a great deal, had changed people’s lives. Don’t you feel that way? Interviewer: Yes, I think it has sure had a terrific effect on American life. Mrs. Lockwood: And we used to have neighborhood parties, I mean children’s parties. You don’t have anything like that now for children. You’d go to someone’s house and spend the evening and play tap in and tap out, post office and have the best time, they don’t do that anymore. Interviewer: The Aldrich family came from New York is that right? Mrs. Lockwood: No, it was Plymouth, Michigan. Interviewer: Plymouth Michigan? Mrs. Lockwood: Yes, Interviewer: Where did they come from before Plymouth, Michigan? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh, I think you’ve asked me something I can’t answer. Interviewer: Well that’s not that important. Mrs. Lockwood: Yes, they came from different places. I think originally from New York State, from Rochester, New York, but I’m not sure of that. I know they, they were born in Plymouth, Michigan. Interviewer: After, after the Second, or the First World War you’ve been living in this house for fifty-six years, what was the difference in, in the way people lived in society in let’s say the twenties, after the First World War between then and the beginning of the Depression? That span of time compared to the nineteen hundreds to nineteen-fifteen, for example. Mrs. Lockwood: I think people lived at home very much more before the war. �16 Interviewer: Yes Mrs. Lockwood: That and I think the country clubs. Interviewer: Were you and your husband members of the country club? Mrs. Lockwood: Yes, he was very fond of golf and but there was, I think there was, much more family life when we were young. Interviewer: Yes, what effect did the Depression have on the Hill District? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh it was very bad, nobody had any clothes any clothes that were new and pretty and then nobody could have new because it was (?).And of course everybody felt the depression very, very keenly. Interviewer: Did it affect you and your husband? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh yes, he was in the lumber business and it affected him very much. We had to curtail everything but everybody else was curtailed, too. Interviewer: So almost everybody was suffering together? Mrs. Lockwood: Everybody was suffering together. There were no comparisons at all. And I remember Mr. Benjamin Robinson bought a new car and we were all simply appalled that he could afford to buy a new car. He bought a new Packard car and we all wanted to ride in it because it was brand new. And we were so impressed that he bought a new car, of course he had no children. We had children, bringing them up and going off the school and all sorts of things, it was a very hard time. Interviewer: Are your children, still living in Grand Rapids? Mrs. Lockwood: No, my daughter lives, she’s been living in Chicago, now she lives just outside the Castle, Castle Park just below Holland. And my other daughter lives in Parkton, Pennsylvania. I have four grand-children and three great-grandchildren. Interviewer: Three great grand-children? Mrs. Lockwood: I’m very, very fortunate. I have a great grand-child almost thirteen years old. She’s a young lady. Interviewer: That’s amazing. Mrs. Lockwood: Yes Interviewer: You spent your summers down at Ottawa Beach? �17 Mrs. Lockwood: Yes, always. Interviewer: summer? Did you, when you were a child, did your family go anywhere for the Mrs. Lockwood: Every summer. Father ran the hotel down there and [we] went to the hotel for our meals and we had a very, very happy summer. Mother had a good time. She just had to look after us, but no meals to look after. Interviewer: How did you get down to Holland and Ottawa Beach? Mrs. Lockwood: We drove down and for a long time took the train. This train would leave at five-thirty in the afternoon and then we’d come up at eight-thirty in the morning and then do all sorts of things. Interurban across the Lake from Ottawa Beach, stop in Macatawa. We’d come up in the morning and spend the day and we’d go down at night and have a beautiful time. But we hardly wait to get back to the beach. Interviewer: What happened to that hotel? Mrs. Lockwood: It was burned. Interviewer: Was your father still, managing it when it burned? Mrs. Lockwood: No, father was dead and my brother had taken over. It burned in the spring. I don’t think they ever knew what happened to the hotel. It was completely burned. There was no one on the property at all. Interviewer: Was it in the winter when it burned? Mrs. Lockwood: In the springtime. Interviewer: Oh. Mrs. Lockwood: Burned to the ground. It was a lovely hotel, with great big porches and you could walk up on the porches and have dances very night. Everybody came from all the cottages and went to dances and it was a very happy life. They don’t live that way anymore. There’s a motel, nothing like the Ottawa Beach Hotel or Macatawa Hotel anymore. And I like Point West very much, but I had a gay life down there, at Ottawa Beach Hotel. Interviewer: Where did the guests that stayed at the hotel come from? Mrs. Lockwood: Oh, from all different places. There was a great many people from Chicago, a great many people from Cincinnati, and a great many people came from St. �18 Louis. They would spend the entire summer there. A many people from Grand Rapids went down there and stayed. Interviewer: They would spend the entire summer right at the hotel? Mrs. Lockwood: In the summer, two or three weeks. And the season was only about six weeks. We’d open in the latter part of June and close around Labor Day but no business after August. July was a big month down there. Very, very gay and very nice people came there in the summer… came summer after summer. Interviewer: What did people, do in the winter time for their fun, summertime they’d go down to the Ottawa Beach hotel but in the winter time what would they do for… Mrs. Lockwood: I think they froze. .In the winter time, I don’t know. I had a very happy time. We tobogganed or had bobsleds on Washington Street. They’d shut that street off entirely. Nobody could get across it. We’d roll from the hill down to the, what street is it? Interviewer: Lafayette? Mrs. Lockwood: Not Lafayette. Interviewer: State Street? Jefferson? Mrs. Lockwood: Jefferson. We’d go right down to Jefferson. Arthur Vandenberg use to ride the bobsleds_________ and down we’d go. And then we’d have to come up the hill pulling the bobsleds. That wasn’t so much fun. But the going down was great fun. Interviewer: Where did Arthur Vandenberg live? Did he live near-by? Mrs. Lockwood: Just down Washington Street, about the fifth house down, just below Prospect. Interviewer: You grew up with him? Mrs. Lockwood: We grew up there. And he was very good with the youngsters. And of course, when I grew older he was just my age but when I was a child he was about five years older. And he’d help us with our bobsleds and he was very kind to all of us. Mr. Senator Vandenberg and my husband were great friends. But, in the winter time there were, there was no Gay Avenue here at all. This has been added since I was a girl. It was on Mr. Gay’s property. And they cut the street through and then of course, the property was sold off. But this was all closed off and we start right from the head of the street and at Madison to the corner anyway. And they, they’d close off Lafayette and Prospect; we’d go right to the bottom of the hill on these big bobsleds. Interviewer: use it? Who would use the hill, mainly children or would the adults sometimes �19 Mrs. Lockwood: Oh no, no adults. Interviewer: They just did it for the children? Mrs. Lockwood: Just for the youngsters. And we’d slide all day long. Now what my father and mother did in the winter I just don’t know. I think probably they were bored to death. Of course they had horses and they drove in the winter time and when the cars came in they drove, drive an automobile in the ruts and a car would come towards you or they’d have to back up the car to let you through. Interviewer: Who, who had to back up? Mrs. Lockwood: One of the cars would have to back up. Interviewer: Oh, yes. Mrs. Lockwood: Because you’d be in a rut driving in the middle of the street. The streets weren’t cleaned at all in those days. You just took them as they were. Interviewer: Before the car came in did they, how did they travel in the winter time, with horses? Did they have sleighs? Mrs. Lockwood: In sleighs. Yes, they all had sleighs. Father and Mother had a sleigh. And I had a sleigh for my ponies. But they were no trouble because horses went all over the street but in the winter you’d get in a rut and then someone would be in a rut. I was on Madison Avenue one day and a car came towards me and he very kindly backed up to Fulton Avenue, and let me out because I was right in the rut I couldn’t get out. Interviewer: What would happen when a horse drawn sleigh would meet a car? Who would have to move? Mrs. Lockwood: The horses would be terrified. My ponies would stand up. They were just terrified of the automobiles. I’d think they were going to run away but they never did. It wasn’t very long before the automobiles were very popular. Is this all recorded? Interviewer: I hope so. Well, I think that’s all, I think we’ve covered quite a bit. Can you think of anything that, if you were doing the interview you’d ask about? Mrs. Lockwood: I can’t think of anything interesting, anything that would interest you. Interviewer: Well, try me out. Mrs. Lockwood: I had a very happy time, very good time. No, I don’t believe there’s anything else. �20 Interviewer: OK. Fine. Let’s see if we……… INDEX A O Aldrich, Euphrasia Ledyard (Grandmother) · 2, 15 Aldrich, Moses (Grandfather) · 2 Ottawa Beach · 17, 18, 19 B Barnhart, Mr. and Mrs. · 4 Batchhelder, Ira · 6 Bissell Family · 3 Blake, Kate (Aunt) · 8 Bryan, William Jennings · 12 C Central High School · 8, 9 F P Pantlind, James Boyd (Father) · 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19 Pantlind, Jessie Louise Aldrich (Mother) · 2, 7, 12, 19 R Ramona Park · 11 Reed’s Lake · 11, 14 Robinson, Benjamin · 17 Roosevelt, President Theodore (Teddy) · 11, 12 Rose Family · 11 S Fox Family · 4, 5 Smith, Mrs. Richard · 8 Stanton, Margie · 11 H Hanchett, Mrs. · 12 T K Taft, President · 12 The Cattery · 12 Thompson Family · 14 Keeler, Isaac · 9 V L Ledyard, William B. (Great-Grandfather) · 2 Longworth, Mrs. · 12 M Morton House · 6, 11 Vandenberg, Arthur · 19 W Waters Family · 3, 4 Wonderly, Mrs. J.H. (Aunt) · 8 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6e567dc0399a707c4465d92e23029b6c.mp3 71df701fb205d20b9365bc1c773dd162 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_5-6Lockwood Title A name given to the resource Lockwood, Katherine Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lockwood, Katherine Description An account of the resource Katherine Pantlind was born on December 25, 1888 in Grand Rapids. Her father owned and operated the Pantlind Hotel. She married Closson Lockwood in 1909 and met Teddy Roosevelt. She died on March 16, 1976. 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 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/fb56c5bd09a68e280bf460b0097f516b.pdf 1998319d88a3709b35213b5ed1dff526 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mr. Lowell Blomstrom Interviewed on 4 August 1977 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010- bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #56 (1:06:10) Biographical Information Mr. Lowell Blomstrom was born on 22 March 1893 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was the son of Carl Herman Blomstrom and Anna A. Berglund. Mr. Blomstrom died on 4 July 1979 in East Grand Rapids, Michigan. He married Signe M. (surname not found) about 1922. Mrs. Blomstrom was born in 1890 in Michigan and died in Grand Rapids on 21 February 1959. Both Lowell and Signe were buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Grand Rapids. Carl H. Blomstrom was born in April 1867 in Lisbon, Ottawa County, Michigan. He was the son of Carl G. Blomstrom and Elizabeth ―Elles‖ Carlson. Carl died in 1923. He married Anna A. Berglund on 17 September 1890 in Muskegon, Michigan. Anna was born in December 1865 in Sweden and died in 1923. Both Carl and Anna were buried in Greenwood Cemetery in Grand Rapids. ___________ Interviewer: Lowell Blomstrom, 559 Lakeside Dr., S.E. Grand Rapids, Michigan; on the 4th day of August, 1977. Mr. Blomstrom and his father have been pioneers in the automobile industry for perhaps close to seventy-five years. I‘ve asked Mr. Blomstrom to tell us a little bit about his background and why don‘t you just start talking and tell me about your, where you were born and how long, you did say you born in Grand Rapids? Is that correct? Mr. Blomstrom: Oh yeah, yeah. Interviewer: May I ask you what year? Mr. Blomstrom: Ninety-three, eighteen ninety-three. Interviewer: How long did you stay here? Mr. Blomstrom: We moved to Marquette in eighteen ninety-seven, just about the time the Spanish-American War started. And, oh did you have that on? Interviewer: That‘s alright. �2 Mr. Blomstrom: And father built his second automobile there. His first was built in Grand Rapids. I have no record of that; I have pictures of course of the one in Marquette. That was started in eighteen ninety-eight and finished in nineteen hundred. And then in nineteen one we moved to Detroit where he started the Blomstrom Motor Company. To build the Queen car. And... Interviewer: May I, let me go back to Marquette for just a minute. What was the car called that he built in Marquette? Mr. Blomstrom: There was no name assigned to it. Interviewer: No name assigned to it? Mr. Blomstrom: No it was just the one car. Interviewer: How many, how many were built? Mr. Blomstrom: Just the one. Interviewer: Just one Mr. Blomstrom: Like that yeah. Interviewer: And then you went to Detroit in nineteen one? Mr. Blomstrom: Went to Detroit in nineteen one and he got backing from some millionaires in Marquette. They financed it and, and they built about almost 2 thousand Queens one cylinder first, just a few, a handful of them the first year. Then he went to a two cylinder post flat engine, you know what we call a pancake engine. And then he made a four cylinder in nineteen six and prices were of course quite high for those days, the four cylinder was twenty-two fifty ($2,250), the car like the similar to the one in Grand Rapids Museum was twelve hundred dollars. And the first original one like that one up there on that picture that was seven hundred and fifty dollars, pardon me, seven hundred, fifty dollars. And he had trouble with his partners and he left in nineteen six and started the Blomstrom Thirty, it was called. Thirty was horsepower based on the formula they had at those days, the old SAE formula which we don‘t use today. England still uses it. And they built the Blomstrom car; that was the runabout, they made a touring car. And that was quite a car for its day. And I have one of those. Interviewer: What year was that? Mr. Blomstrom: That was nineteen two when the company was formed, but the first year they made small boats, fifteen and a half foot long, selling for a hundred dollars. It was an inboard three-quarter horse motor. And they sold thousands of those. Then he started the car in nineteen three, one cylinder, in nineteen four he switched to two cylinders, course he made those right through to six. The company continued on after he left but in two years it was gone. �3 Interviewer: How many cylinders does the car have that we have in the public museum? Mr. Blomstrom: Two cylinders, Interviewer: That‘s two cylinders Mr. Blomstrom: Two cylinders yeah. Interviewer: And you say what was that built? Mr. Blomstrom: nineteen four. Interviewer: nineteen four. Mr. Blomstrom: Yes and the car continued on until nineteen eight. He left in nineteen six and then the Detroit Deluxe was put in there and backers from Marquette got the people that designed the Willis Overland, Willis hadn‘t bought into it was Overland, in Grand Rapids or in Toledo. And that was beautiful car and eight thousand dollar car then which was tremendous, most beautiful car you ever saw. But they didn‘t last long. And company was sold and that‘s where the Studebaker comes in to build a car, one of their earliest cars not the earliest but one of the earliest. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Blomstrom: You know South Bend? Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Blomstrom: They‘re the wagon people. Interviewer: But your father did continue in the motor car business? Mr. Blomstrom: Well then he, he built a Rex, a small car, I don‘t see it here on these pictures; it was a front drive car, small, they were called, what did they call them? They didn‘t call them compact cars, that was something later that Romney, Mr. Mason, who was the head of, later on, American Motors. Why, I don‘t recall just exactly what they called them, cycle cars, they called them cycle, they were real small. Well that lasted a while. Then he went to Camden, New Jersey, Grenloch just outside of Camden and built this Frontmobile. See that car here? That was a front drive car. And in my opinion they‘re all going to go to it within the next ten years, every last car will be a front drive, in my opinion. And then of course the war came on and they were rationed. Everybody was rationed. General Motors, Ford and everybody. And of course you had to base on the number of cars made in nineteen thirteen; see the war started in fourteen in Europe; it started in sixteen for us. And the big company got zero material based there was no car built in thirteen see, Frontmobile. And so he went to work and he made two-wheel or two front drive and four wheel drive trucks for the government for the ordinance till their money ran out. They had a �4 beautiful building on the Horseshoe Pike going from Philadelphia-Camden to Atlantic City. Still there, the building and they, the money ran out so that faded out of the picture. Then he quit making cars and he didn‘t live very long; he died quite young, fifty-six. And his name was Carl Herman Blomstrom; in Swedish Carl of course is Charles in this country he was known as Charlie or CHB, CH they called him in the... Interviewer: When was he in Adrian? You mentioned before we began… Mr. Blomstrom: Well Adrian the Lion Car was built from nineteen eight to nineteen eleven when fire destroyed the building. Interviewer: That was in Adrian? Mr. Blomstrom: That was in Adrian. Interviewer: The Lion car? Mr. Blomstrom: yeah it was named after the Old Lion Fence Company. They were bought out they moved to Philadelphia or where they were near the source of steel wire see. They were all wire fences you know. And so the company that was [Fred] Postal and [Austin Elbert] Morey who had a big cigar plant in Florida and they owned the Griswold Hotel in Detroit. Father knew them real well. And they were directors and quite a few Adrian people were in on it, directors. So they wanted him to design a car and come out there and build it. It was a beautiful car, there is only one in existence in a museum out near Rushmore you know where the, in the mountain out there in where is it the Dakotas? Somewhere? The only one in existence. Interviewer: Yeah I know what you mean. Mr. Blomstrom: Near Rushmore-Rapid City, South Dakota I believe it is. Interviewer: South Dakota. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah I think so. I‘ve never been out there but I understand they have the only one in existence. And I‘ve located 7 Queen cars of that 2 cylinder variety less similar to the one in Grand Rapids museum and I‘ve got one of them of course. That‘s I found that down near Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, in a farm yard. It‘d been out there for 50 years and the chickens were roosting on it when I saw it at night, just at dusk you know. A fellow told me about it and I inquired. I got it. It was fully restored; it was in the antique tours a couple years. My cousin, who restored it, drove it in there. Interviewer: I see. What, where do you keep it? Mr. Blomstrom: Where did I keep it? Interviewer: Where do you keep it? �5 Mr. Blomstrom: Oh it‘s in the museum. Interviewer: Oh that‘s the one in the museum? Mr. Blomstrom: Yes, that‘s the red one in the museum. He restored it, did a beautiful job. He won prizes at Ford, Dearborn, Milwaukee and Fremont had their centennial you know. Interviewer: How many Queen cars were built? Mr. Blomstrom: Close to two thousand, around two thousand. That‘s pretty good for those days. Course Olds was the big producer you know. That was before Ford really got going, you know. Olds was the big producer up until nineteen six, seven when Ford come out with the forerunner of the Model-T. Interviewer: Now the Queens were all built in Detroit, it that correct? Mr. Blomstrom: Oh yes, yeah all from Detroit; yeah, on the west side. At the foot of Clark Avenue right by the river. Because he leased the old Clark Dry Dock for his boats you know. Right across the street; that there was the river. Interviewer: What did he do after he went out of the car business? Mr. Blomstrom: Well he and I designed a steering gear reversible, irreversible steering gear for Ford Model-T‘s and we sold thousands of them. I had the patents and I signed to the company. And I still have one in the basement in my store room down there. And you know the Ford was throw it out of your hand, they‘d tip over on you the Model-T‘s. I‘ve seen them tip over. You couldn‘t have no control, no resistance see? It was too direct. And we made, we sold thousands of them; had a company make them for us. And we had a lock on it and it would tilt up you know so it would get in and out easy. Then it had a Yale lock on it so you lock your steering you couldn‘t steer, it someone broke in. Well they were all open cars in those days. Pretty near all open cars, very few closed cars. Well I don‘t know what else Interviewer: What did people do for protection, who rode around in those early cars didn‘t have any tops? Mr. Blomstrom: Well, we‘d stop of course, uh we have umbrellas still we got to a place where we could under a tree or something which was a foolish thing to do probably in a thunderstorm. But we had umbrellas with we had raincoats of course, dusters you know like Cravanet or what do you call it, brown duster. Had gauntlet gloves you know went way up the elbows. But we‘d stop at a farmhouse and go in. Usually our coil which was on the dash got wet so it had we‘d take it in the stove and borrow their oven and light it up to dry it out cause it couldn‘t run without the coil. So we‘d go in and we had a lot of punctures. We usually drove up to the Sparta where my grandfather lived on the farm he was a blacksmith and it would take us two days, better part of two days you know we only made six miles an hour. We‘d stop at Lansing or one of the �6 Williamston out here overnight you know. Come in the next not the full day but. Take us pretty near two days. They made father made it once one day. He left at four o‘clock in the morning and got to Grand Rapids at three in the afternoon. The roads were, there were no roads you know, no paved roads. The first pavement in Michigan as I recall, outside of cities, was the four miles from Howell this way. It was a tavern there called the Four Mile House. That was the first pavement between Detroit and Grand Rapids. That‘s Howell, Michigan coming this way four miles; and all the rest were muddy when it rained of course they were all terrible. No they, we had a lot of fun in those days, although we ran into a lot of troubles. Mostly tire troubles, sometimes the tires would go twenty-five miles, sometimes three hundred, no more. Interviewer: No more than that? Mr. Blomstrom: No they‘d blow out. They were clincher tires you know, hooked in not straight side like yours and mine today. They were, were clincher tires and they would get rim cuts you know. And then they‘d get cut on the ruts on the road when they dry you know it‘s just like emery rubbing on the tires. They‘d blow out most of the time. We had punctures of course. We carried our own patching, rubber patching stuff; what we call cement patch, gasoline patch you know. We cleaned them with gasoline; cut it off with the shears, a piece out of its sheet you know rubber? Then paste it on. Interviewer: By what year were highways as we know them today, becoming more a part of the landscape? Mr. Blomstrom: Well it‘s hard; I‘d have records of it of course. The first piece of pavement in the world is claimed, was put in front of Heinz, he was a road commissioner in Wayne County, near Detroit, which includes Detroit. He had a farm outside, near Dearborn there, and he put a mile of concrete pavement in front of his house, the farm house, that was the first piece of concrete road as I understand it in the United States and probably the world. Interviewer: When was this? Mr. Blomstrom: About nineteen…well I don‘t know exactly. That was in I would say about nineteen ten around in there. Then the city of Detroit ordered two one mile between Six and Seven Mile Road on Woodward Avenue. And that was ten feet wide. And they had tollgates then you know; the farmers had to pay a toll. We had to pay a toll there was one at Six Mile, there was one at Eight Mile, Nine Mile, one at Birmingham, what‘s Birmingham now; and then one out by Pontiac and towards Orchard Lake. So that first mile road that was put between Six and Seven Mile on Woodward, Palmer Park if you‘re familiar, starts at Six, and this went to Seven. It was 10 feet wide, if you met a farmer with a load of hay coming in or something you had to get off. Two couldn‘t pass on ten feet. So the next year they made it twelve, and the next year after that fourteen, then you could just about pass. It was a progression of two feet per several years. And that was the first mile pavement in the World as far as I know. And then of course it started to come in, there wasn‘t any, I don‘t, I would say close to the first World War before there was �7 any amount of mileage and paved roads. Course we had what I call macadam roads you know, that‘s gravel you know. And it was all just like some of the country roads today you know, they‘re dirt roads. There was no pavement to speak. Just that four mile from Howell this way was the first pavement other that the cities. Leaving Detroit, when we first started coming up to Sparta, was a plank road. And finally that got so bad that they tore it all up. That would be on Grand River Avenue going out to Farmington. (Doorbell rings) Pardon me. Interviewer: There now we can resume. Mr. Blomstrom: Well I guess we completed the roads about, didn‘t we as far as you‘re interested. Interviewer: Yes. Let me ask you a question. When did you become associated with your father? Mr. Blomstrom: Well I was never actually in any of the plants that he was interested in. I associated with him in the helping designing. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Blomstrom: And even when I was quite young I got out some patents you know in that way and I helped in his figuring. Cause he, he went to grade school up here by the Marmrelund [Lutheran] Church you know where it is? [Kent City] Interviewer: I know where it is, yes. Mr. Blomstrom: Well, my grandparents were charter members there in eighteen sixty-five. They met in homes you know, first. That was the first building that they had, the wooden one, it‘s a brick building now, was built in seventy-two I believe. Interviewer: Do you remember a family up there by the name of Bloomer? Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah I know where they were; the Bloomer Hill which was a real hill to climb. We used to go up and father would drive and my brother and I would each have a stick of wood and we‘d block the wheels. Could only go a little at a time. Interviewer: That‘s my Mother‘s family. Mr. Blomstrom: Is that right? You know the old Bloomer Hill? Course it‘s cut down now. Interviewer: Yeah, I don‘t really know it. Mr. Blomstrom: Well it was a steep hill, a terribly steep hill; they took off the top and filled in the bottom down there where Kline, not Kline, what‘s his name? I know them, the family; I know most of the family. Interviewer: Klenk? �8 Mr. Blomstrom: Klenk yeah. They‘re down in the hollow, by the Bloomer Hill. Interviewer: I see. Well my grandfather and my grandfather‘s brother kept the farm until his death in nineteen twenty-three. His name was Abel Bloomer. Mr. Blomstrom: Well I don‘t know any of them. I just know the association with the Bloomer Hill. Interviewer: Do you remember the hamlet of Lisbon? Mr. Blomstrom: Well my father was born there Interviewer: He really was? Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah on the other side, he was born in Ottawa County you know that‘s the dividing line. That‘s Ottawa Kent. And he was born there, they didn‘t have any records but he was because my grandfather had a blacksmith‘s shop there. It was called the BlomstromGrumback. John Grumback who was the head of the printing company at one time, he was his first cousin you know. His Grumback‘s father and my grandfather Blomstrom were partners there. They made wagons and did steel work, forging you know. Interviewer: How many people lived in Lisbon in those days? Mr. Blomstrom: Well I have a book on it that published in 1879. It was the biggest town around there except Grand Rapids, of course. It was bigger than Sparta, [which] was called Nashville you know originally. Interviewer: No I never knew that. Mr. Blomstrom: Well the creek is the creek going through there over to the Rogue River you know. And the Rogue of course runs into the Grand here near Belmont. And so this was called Nashville. He [J. E. Nash] was the first settler there. I have pictures of his home. Interviewer: Were you born in Grand Rapids? Mr. Blomstrom: On the west side. Near that St. Adelbert Church, a block away, in that Polish settlement. That‘s quite Polish. It was the old church. This is a new one. This was built in nineteen eight. The other one faced south, this one faces west on Davis I think is the cross street. Near McReynolds, I don‘t know. Yeah the house I was born in was the corner of Davis and McReynolds and Third Street. You see the freeway goes through there now; it took all of the south side of Third Street there. The house I was born in is still standing over there, on the corner. Interviewer: Oh really? Mr. Blomstrom: And they moved it around the corner and built a bigger house on the corner. �9 Interviewer: What‘s the address? Mr. Blomstrom: I don‘t know. Interviewer: You don‘t know. Mr. Blomstrom: It‘s still there. I drove by there a couple of years ago and I saw the house Interviewer: Did you get up into the northern part of the county quite a lot to see your grandfather? Mr. Blomstrom: Oh yeah we used to go up there every year from nineteen three on, every year we‘d go up there. Father would leave a car for us, he‘d take a tester along so he‘d drive back see? And he‘d leave a car for my brother and I, we drove it, it was the only car; people would come from hundreds of miles to see the car you know. Up at grandfather‘s they had heard of the car you know, it was quite a rarity. You didn‘t see cars; well there were only eighty-two cars in the state of Michigan, when I started driving, in the whole state. Interviewer: when was that? Mr. Blomstrom: Nineteen three, yeah, there was only eighty-two... Interviewer: You were about ten years old when you started to drive. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah , yeah I was ten. I‘ve been driving ever since, never been without a car. Interviewer: What did you, what were your business associations later on? Mr. Blomstrom: Well, of course I helped father but I didn‘t work for the companies. I got some of the patents. He only had eighth grade, he took an ICS; you know International Correspondence Schools? At Scranton, Pennsylvania? He took drafting, I have some of his drawings; they‘re beautiful drawings. He took correspondence courses in engineering; he‘s got a diploma, which I have, in mechanical engineering of the ICS schools. And he was a prolific inventor you know what I mean? One of these fellows who comes to work every morning and has a new idea; never stops to make a nickel you know. And, well Henry Ford is the same thing. I don‘t give him credit for the Ford motor at all. I give it to Jim Couzens and he ran the office you know, the money, the Senator you know later on. Interviewer: What sort of schooling did you have? Mr. Blomstrom: High school Interviewer: Where was that? Mr. Blomstrom: Western High in Detroit. There were only three high schools in Detroit. Eastern, Western, and Central. Western burnt down there‘s over thirty now, I know a few years ago there �10 was twenty-six, probably thirty now. There was only three, Eastern, Western, and Central. The Western burnt down twenty some years ago; there‘s a big new building there, much bigger of course. The building that I was in was built around nineteen hundred. I was there from nineteen six to nineteen ten, when I graduated. And I was going to MIT in Boston. And the principal got me free entrance without an examination because I was fairly good in mathematics- high school mathematics and college algebra too. And that‘s really what‘s helped me in most of my jobs. Interviewer: Did you go on to MIT? Mr. Blomstrom: No I had what they called some kidney ailment and they said I wouldn‘t live. One time the doctor said a week and here I am almost 85 years old, but all the doctors are gone. And well they didn‘t know. I grew up like a weed you know. I was six foot five only weighed a hundred and forty pounds. You know just a hardly a shadow. And I played tennis, of course those days we were, everybody called us sissies you know playing ping-pong out on the grass you know. And when the city wouldn‘t give us a, had any courts, public courts those days, they gave us a space in Clark‘s park. We had a roll it and stripe it on a clay court. They gave us a space for clay on the green court. And so it was, we were the forerunners. My partner and I who later became treasurer of Detroit Edison Company, he died 3 years ago, we were partners. We played doubles so much you know in those days. I played up by the net because I was tall and could reach a lot of them, stop them from going back. I couldn‘t run, he could run, he was fast like old Borg in Sweden now you know. And this other fellow what‘s his name? I don‘t know. And I couldn‘t run. So we played doubles quite a lot. He had his house full of cups. He was champion of the west side and also head of the Detroit Edison Tennis Club for years and years. He was good. I wasn‘t. I was better at playing baseball. I used to play baseball. Not professionally but, and I don‘t know how it was I was so thin but I had a swing, a long swing. Boy that ball would go. Interviewer: Were those grass courts in those days? Mr. Blomstrom: Well we had one grass and one clay court. The city put down the clay. I guess you‘d call it clay, it was white roll. But they put up the posts. We had to furnish the net and stripe it. We used to have our own machine for striping. And we had to furnish the nets and keep it up. They gave us a spot in the park. There‘s hundreds and thousands of them in Detroit now public you know. The only ones that were public were a couple at Belle Isle and two at Waterworks Park. We used to go there and play; I‘d drive a bunch of kids over there. But now there‘re thousands of them. Well you‘re asking me a lot of questions about myself. I thought this was about my father. Interviewer: Well I‘m interested in both of you. I wanted to go on to you back to you for a moment. You became associated with some businesses. Mr. Blomstrom: Well the first thing I did was after I was six years after I left high school and they said don‘t go to college, I was going to MIT as I said, principal got me in there. Ordinarily �11 they, those days, you had to take an examination; he got me in, without an examination. And for six years I did nothing. I‘d walk. I‘d walk downtown and back twice every day. That was ten miles. Finally I got so I could walk ten to fifteen miles a days. I was thin but apparently I grew too fast and I was six foot five and weighed a hundred and forty pounds. Occasionally when I‘d take the car, I had a car father gave me. But I didn‘t do anything there for six years. Then I got a job in a small company as a timekeeper. We had those calculagraph clocks you know you punch a card in out on the job. And I got to running all the machines there when they were idle I‘d see the machine idle I‘d go and run it. I had that privilege, I knew the owners, and because I‘d learned how to run practically every machine that father had you know. He had quite a machine shop there. And you can see some of the pictures here I think, I don‘t know there might be some here. Interviewer: Yes there are, I see some. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah there‘s lots. I have lots more besides what‘s on the wall here. In the den, and I could run anything-gear cutter, building machine or lathe or any machine because after school I‘d go down there and see an idle machine and I‘d go run it. And I got so I could run and I could figure of course. The average workman, a toolmaker, or anybody working in the shop didn‘t know mathematics. They got through grade school and had to go to work. It was a necessity they had to. They didn‘t go to, very few people went to high school. They went up to the eighth grade like my father did. And of course he had the ICS course but he was an inventor. Prolific inventor I call him. Henry Ford was the same thing. But I spent an hour with Henry Ford a year before he died. It was on his problem of bearings out there. Of course I was with the Bearing Company then -FederalMogul. It was Federal Bearing and Bushing originally, they merged with Muzzy Lyon Company to form Federal-Mogul, which is in existence today. It‘s a big company. A very big company. Interviewer: How long were you with them? Mr. Blomstrom: Thirty-seven years. I went in as Chief Tool Engineer, Tool Designer, whatever you want to call it. And then I got to be Chief Engineer including the machinery, designing, tool fixtures and jigs and everything like that. And also the product engineering I had both. Now it‘s split up it‘s so big. And then I got to be Chief Engineer and then I, the last ten years, I was consulting to the president on manufacturing and engineering. Consulting engineer. Interviewer: Did you live in Detroit during all this period? Mr. Blomstrom: I lived in Detroit forty years from nineteen one to nineteen forty-one. We put up a plant in Greenville which is still there and that‘s where we put metals on the moving strip, while it‘s moving. And those were my babies. I engineered those. It took a lot of aspirin but I got them working. And there‘s nine of them now; five in Greenville and four in St. Johns. And they‘re a hundred and eighty feet long. Couldn‘t powder or babbitt on moving steel, freeze the �12 babbitt of course the copper lead it goes thru ovens. It‘s a hundred and eighty feet long from a coil of steel to a fine metal ready for the press room, form it into bearings. It‘s a very fine process. We make our own powder. That is we I said I‘m not with them now but I mean…Federal-Mogul makes their own powder. And St. Johns and we atomized molten metal you know, make it molten metal make powder out of it. Interviewer: Did you retire after you worked for Federal-Mogul you said you were willing— Mr. Blomstrom: Well, when I was sixty-five they don‘t want you anymore like General Motors, they kick you out. That‘s the customary retirement; they‘re talking about changing it now to sixty-eight or something else. Interviewer: Did you come back to Grand Rapids at that time or? Mr. Blomstrom: I came back here in fifty-five. I bought a house on Maryland. I sold that when my wife passed away. She‘s been gone—we have no children—she‘s been gone nineteen years now. And I leased this when it wasn‘t even half finished through this building. There were no walls, just a framework. And they were working on the brickwork outside. I‘ve been here, one of the first here, eight years now I‘ve been, eight or nine I guess. No, I had a house over on Maryland near, between Michigan and Fulton. Interviewer: Yes. Tell me more about your father, tell me more about his later years. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah, I was going to tell you, you asked me about what I was doing. Well then, I worked for this little shop and got around to be the inspector there. They made tool work and some production work. And then I went with Paige Motor Car Company it was called—it wasn‘t called the Graham-Paige then, the Graham brothers hadn‘t bought it then—it was called PaigeDetroit [Motor Car Company]. It was near where we lived on the West Side. I went in there, and I‘d never take a drawing lesson in my life, but I told them I was an expert gauge designer. They wanted a gauge designer. So I got to be their chief gauge designer. I think I was about twenty-six years old or something like that. And I got along fine. From there I went to—well I was still with Paige when they built that big plant out on Warren near the Lincoln Motor Plant which is now Detroit Edison shops you know, that big building on Livernois and Warren. And, Paige was a mile further out. I don‘t know what it is now, probably Chrysler Plant or something. Well I got to be assistant tool engineer there. We had thirty-eight in the department. I was first chief checker then I got to be assistant to the Master Mechanic. He‘s the headman of tool engineering today, Master Mechanic. I got to be assistant Master Mechanic. Interviewer: Excuse me interrupting, about when was this? Mr. Blomstrom: Well it was around the war, just after the war, the First World War Interviewer: First World War �13 Mr. Blomstrom: Well I‘m getting a little ahead of my story. In the First World War I went from Paige to Lincoln Motor Car Company. They hadn‘t made a car yet, they were making their first one. You know they made the Liberty engine, the airplane engine. They made the biggest quantity around six thousand of ‗em. And Ford made some, Marmon made some, Cadillac made some, Hinkley made some. But Lincoln Motor made the bulk, there were six thousand about. Probably all the rest were about four thousand. Not a one got across to Europe you know, they were all on the coast when the war ended. Interviewer: I see Mr. Blomstrom: And honest, you could buy up for a song you know. A twelve-cylinder. ----Six separate cylinders, each one bolted. They were made of steel. And I was chief gauge inspector there under the head of all inspection. I wasn‘t the chief in the department, I was chief gauge inspector. So I got a lot of—And then from there I went to Paige. The war stopped you know in November, eighteen wasn‘t it? I believe we were only in two years. The war had been on since fourteen of course. And then I went with Paige. So it was after the war that I was there as an assistant tool engineer for… during the Depression of twenty-one there were thirty-eight of us in the department and during the Depression there was only three of us, the boss, myself, and the clerk. It was a sharp drop-off just like a cliff you know. But it started coming back, in eighteen months it was normal. But everybody was laid off except a few key people you know. But Lincoln wanted to keep me. Mr. [ Henry M.] Leland whose, was, started as one of the founders of the Cadillac Motor Car Company, he left to start the Lincoln. They were building the car in the —secret room. He gave me permission to go in there. I had a key. They were building the first car during the war there. I saw the first Lincoln. And while it was being built, as a matter-offact, I was one of the privileged to go in there. And when the war ended there you know there was a false, on Thursday you know there was a false alarm, but we didn‘t know it was a false alarm, that the war was ended. The following Monday it was the real thing! And Mr. Leland, I said, I‘m leaving, I‘m leaving, there‘s nothing here to do. We just played checkers and chess you know with thirty-six of us in that whole plant including the office. We‘d come in ten o‘clock and go out to lunch and then we‘d come back, play some more checkers or chess and go home at three o‘clock. We did that from November to March, so I got tired of playing checkers and chess. So I told him. ―No‖ he says, ―we got a good job for you. We‘re going to build a car in August, by August.‖ I said, ―Mr. Leland you can‘t tool up. It‘s going to take you a year and a half to two years to tool up.‖ Machinery wasn‘t good for that you know, what they had for the airplane engine. So, well I was right of course, he couldn‘t start in August, this was March see. So I left. He begged me to come back. In the meantime you know, Ford took it over. He had a little trouble with Wilfred Leland‘s son, Henry Leland‘s son. Leland was very nice to me; he begged me to come back. I says no, I‘m not coming back. And then Ford got hold of me—records I suppose there, and he kept pestering me for two or three years to .... He had me all signed up to be at Highland Park then you know, in the head of their gauge department. In the meantime of course, during the war there, the Bureau of Standards wanted me in Washington, which would �14 have been good experience. But my mother was ill, my father had passed away you know. So I didn‘t go. Well, they said, we‘ll send you to Franklin Arsenal in, near Philadelphia. I says no, I can‘t leave Mother. Well he said, we‘ll get you closer, Rock Island Arsenal where you‘re in the Mississippi. I said no. So they passed it up. But Ford kept writing me for years, I never went out there. Interviewer: What did you do after..? Mr. Blomstrom: Well, then I went with the Bearing Company. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Blomstrom: I been there, I was there until I retired. That was Federal Bearing and Bushing. They merged in, that was twenty-one. In twenty-four they merged with Muzzy-Lyons to form Federal-Mogul. Federal was the trade name of the Federal Bronze and Mogul was the Babbitt of Muzzy-Lyons. So they took their two trademarks and formed a corporation, Federal-Mogul. Interviewer: In what year did your father die? Mr. Blomstrom: Twenty-three. Mother died, he died in early spring and Mother died in the fall. Interviewer: I see. Had he been active up to the end? Mr. Blomstrom: Yes, yes, he was active. He was always figuring out something new you know. Interviewer: Well, do you have some other memories about the cars that your father-there‘s one picture there you said was shown in New York? Mr. Blomstrom: Well that‘s these two here. That picture‘s taken at the show; that‘s the chassis and the touring car. This is the runabout. I had one of these. Front drive car. Course they‘re quite new. There‘ve been front cars made before; old [J. Walter] Christie made a front drive racer, the fastest car in the world those days until Barney Oldfield came around with a Blitzen Benz. Interviewer: What year were those cars made? Mr. Blomstrom: Those cars? Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Blomstrom: Well I think that‘s in nineteen seventeen when it‘s in the show. We started that—well I didn‘t go down there; I was home. I wasn‘t doing anything for six years. I would say it was around sixteen or seventeen. Interviewer: Was that show in New York in the armory? Mr. Blomstrom: I think it was what they called a National Armory, isn‘t it, something like that? �15 Interviewer: Well I‘ve heard they used to have shows there. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah, that‘s right, I think so. I‘m not that certain about it, but I would think so. They had a couple places there they showed ‗em. I wasn‘t down there, Father of course was there. He‘d show the Queen car he started in Chicago at the old auditorium. He‘d stay at the Congress Hotel. The owner of the Congress Hotel and the auditorium there was this one millionaire [in] Marquette that financed the Queen. Of course we‘d go over to Chicago we‘d have free hotel rooms and dinners and everything was free. Interviewer: What was his name? Mr. Blomstrom: Well that was the Kaufman family. They were very wealthy. Interviewer: Did they live in Marquette? Mr. Blomstrom: Some of them did. Of course one of the family, the one that financed Father, was the oldest one. They married wealthy. They were smart, they married wealthy people. Louie Kaufman, one of the brothers, was in New York. He was head of the second largest bank in the United States. What was the—what is the second largest bank? I don‘t know if it is today. Interviewer: I can‘t answer your question. Mr. Blomstrom: Well, City Bank is one of them now I guess. But he was head of, he was interested in the General Motors too. He made a lot of money besides, Louie. I met him, I met him years ago. There were several brothers, four that I knew. And they all ended up pretty wealthy you know. Interviewer: Yeah. Mr. Blomstrom: They made a lot of money in copper you know. And married a lot of… Well, I could write a book if I‘d been around to it years ago. The editor of the Detroit Free Press, he‘s not living now, needless to say, Mr. Blomstrom, he says, you ought to write a book he says, you know more about the automobile business that anybody I‘ve ever talked to. Well I grew up with it and I have a good memory you know, and through Father‘s associations. Interviewer: Clearly. Mr. Blomstrom: And I met a lot of the people later on when I was with the Bearing Company. Did I say I met Mr. Ford, spent an hour with him, I got along fine with him. But he gets along fine with outsiders, but he‘s tough on the people who work for him. Very tough. He‘s a one man show you know. Edsel of course was my age exactly. If he‘d been living he‘d be close to eightyfive now. He was very small; he‘d only come to my shoulder you know. Ford was quite tall; he bent over in the last few years. But I got along fine with Henry Ford Interviewer: Did you know Edsel Ford too? �16 Mr. Blomstrom: No, I never met him personally. I saw him lots of times. And I‘ve seen the sons, his three sons, of course, lots of times when they were kids with knee pants. They‘d walk down Washington Boulevard and there‘d be a guard in front and back you know. When they went to school they‘d have to have guards you know, their school Yale or wherever they went. There was Henry the second, and Benson, and William…Clay, see. They were all their middle names. Well Clay was. You see, Mrs. Edsel Ford was a niece of J.L. Hudson the store man you know Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Blomstrom: And she was a Clay, her name was Clay, so that‘s where they get the Clay. William Clay, and of course the younger son married one of the Firestone. You know old Henry is their grandfather. [Harvey] Firestone and [John] Burroughs you know, the botanist or whatever he was, and [Warren G.] Harding and they went camping. I have a picture here somewhere. That‘s the first station wagon I ever saw. Ford made one just for that trip you know. They‘d go camping, six or seven of them you know. Ford would always pay the expense. And Edson, Edison, Thomas Edison, was one of that group. Interviewer: You said Burroughs, but don‘t you mean Burbank? Mr. Blomstrom: No no, I mean Burroughs. Interviewer: Oh Burroughs. Mr. Blomstrom: Burbank was the— Interviewer: You know what you‘re talking about. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah. He was an elderly man, quite short. I have his picture here with Ford. And Harding was president, then they invited him. Thomas Edison. Ford would do that every year. And he got very close to Firestone. I think that‘s the reason why Edsel‘s youngest boy married a Firestone. He owns a football team don‘t he? The Lions? Interviewer: Yes, I believe so. Mr. Blomstrom: That‘s the youngest. Then there was girl in the family too, Josephine I think‘s her name. I don‘t know exactly. I think so. She married a Ford so she didn‘t have to change her name. Interviewer: Another Ford family as I recall. Mr. Blomstrom: It‘s the Ford-Alkali, Michigan Alkali, or Wyandotte Chemicals now. They were very wealthy people. That‘s the Ford of Libbey-Owens-Ford family Toledo, the plate glass people. Interviewer: I see. �17 Mr. Blomstrom: It‘s not the Ford automobile people. No connection. No connection. And that Ford building in Detroit‘s the same way. That‘s not the Ford automobile man, that‘s the FordAlkali, I call ‗em Alkali because it was the Michigan Alkali in Wyandotte you know. Now it‘s Wyandotte Chemicals. They make products for making glass, they supplied the elements. There‘s a famous Ford family in Toledo, Pittsburgh plate glass and Libbey-Owens-Ford family. That‘s a different family entirely. See Father made the cars before Ford. Well of course he made that one. He made one here in Grand Rapids in ninety-two, but I‘ve never checked with the newspapers if it‘s in there. He was working with the Perkins Machine shop on Front Street. They just tore that building down, of course they‘ve been gone for years, when they made the freeway through there. Front Street is jogged there somewheres. Then he went to Marquette in ninetyseven. Well he was quite a smart duck considering he didn‘t have any education. He had both feet on the ground like Kettering, ―Boss‖ Kettering, Charles Kettering. He was a great fellow; I used to go and visit him. He had both feet on the ground. They‘re so interested in developing new things that they never stop to make any money. That is a beautiful drawing isn‘t it? I don‘t know what I‘m going to do with that. Interviewer: It says, The Lion Forty Power Plant. Mr. Blomstrom: Well, that was the old SAE rating. England still uses that rating. What you do, you square the bore, if it‘s a five inch cylinder you square it, that‘s five times five is twenty-five, multiply by the number of cylinders four, that‘d be a hundred, divided by two and a half, that‘s where you get forty see. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Blomstrom: Get it? Interviewer: I get it. Mr. Blomstrom: Well they still use that in England, we don‘t, we use the brake horsepower. Test it on a brake dynamometer. Actual horsepower of course, they take off the water pump and the generator. Actually, the horsepower‘s not what they say it is because they take off some things that take horsepower, your water pump and your generator and that stuff. But it‘s brake horsepower, actually torque. Testing torque. That‘s what brake horsepower is, testing torque. Foot pounds. Well the horsepower is 33,000 foot pounds. Interviewer: I keep thinking of things about that car in the museum. I went to see it; I think it was yesterday afternoon, because it‘s locked up in a room there. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah, they had it on display two years in a glass – in the entrance to that looking at the stars stuff. It was beautiful there. But they, they got this room, and it‘s all cluttered up. It‘s typical of nineteen hundred. It‘s an old blacksmith shop or something. Interviewer: How fast would that car go? �18 Mr. Blomstrom: Thirty-five miles an hour. Interviewer: Oh really? Mr. Blomstrom: That‘s about all it would do. Interviewer: Well that‘s pretty fast. Mr. Blomstrom: We had motor, we had bicycle police, traffic cops in Detroit, on Belle Isle. They couldn‘t catch me. They couldn‘t pedal. What they‘d do, they‘d cross the Island and catch me on the other side. That‘s the way they‘d put their bicycles; they‘d get another cop, and they‘d put their bicycles on the ground, and I‘d have to go out on the grass, which is not permitted. They‘d take me over to the station, there‘s a station on Belle Isle. Been there ever since I can remember. And get another policeman and they‘d cross the Island midway, and I‘d go way around the tip of the island. And they‘d catch me on the other side of the island. They had their bicycles on the road, the roads weren‘t very wide. And of course in order to go by them I‘d have to go out on the grass, and of course they stood about each side there. So then they‘d take me over to the police station on Belle Island, been one there ever since—still there as far as I know. Of course then I would tell Dad. He says forget it, which I did. He knew all the judges I guess. They used to come down and borrow the boats on Friday, go up to the flats. I knew every judge because they‘d come down there on a Friday afternoon after court and get one of those boats and go up to the flats. A whole bunch of judges. Interviewer: Where were the flats located? Mr. Blomstrom: That‘s the beginning of the St. Clair River. It‘s at the north end of Lake St. Clair. You went through St. Clair River. The flats is the first part. It‘s swampy and islands, so dozens of islands there. There‘s that big Indian island there, the Walpole. It‘s across from that park where the boat used to go up to ___ park. That‘s below Algonac, see. Algonac is where Gar [Garfield] Wood is. We built the propellers for Gar Wood‘s, all his speed boats. He had the world‘s record until now; we‘ve gone way beyond it. This fellow out in Lake Washington in Seattle has gone, what is it, over two hundred miles an hour I guess. Of course they‘re really not boats anymore, they‘re practically out of the water, they‘re hydroplanes! They have steps in them. But we built them for Gar Wood and well, he had the world‘s record, a hundred and twenty-six miles. We built all the propellers and most of the --- tugboats we built the propellers. We sold that to Michigan Wheel; I say we, it‘s Federal-Mogul. Michigan Wheel still makes a Federal equipoise propeller, which we had a patent on. Most of the --- tugboats used to buy them from us, I don‘t know if they‘re buying them from Michigan now. Michigan‘s right here in town. Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Blomstrom: Its part of a, I don‘t know if some corporation has bought them out. Interviewer: Yeah. It used to be that Mr. Evenson was president of it. Charles. �19 Mr. Blomstrom: I don‘t know. I met a lot of them when they were considering about, something about a machine they were building for to machine the propellers, the production. Course they use it for making patterns, I know. But they were going to make a machine to do the production, which according to me is not according to ―Hoyle‖. It‘s not necessary. You know the pitch, the pitch is the one turn is a pitch, like a thread. The ones we made for Gar Wood were only seventeen inches in diameter but was twenty inch pitch. They had two of them, one going this way and one going opposite so his boat wouldn‘t tip over, see. Like the English[man]… Kaye Don tipped over. I watched him, I saw his boat tip right over. He got in the wave of a Gar Wood boat that was leaving, and his propeller come out of the water, there was no resistance. And the torque of that just took his boat, which was very light, and tipped it right over and he went in the drink. I saw it. I was only five hundred feet away from it when it happened. Well Gar Wood was smart, he put two propellers on, going in the opposite direction, so you didn‘t get that chance of tipping over if the wheels went out of the water. He was smart, smart old duck. He died, didn‘t he, a little while ago? I think so. Interviewer: I don‘t know. Mr. Blomstrom: He was very old. I knew him, met him. Course they had the Gar Wood... they made that dump truck, hydraulic dump truck. We made a lot of parts for them. I knew all the brothers. There was a bunch of brothers! There were about pretty near as many of them as the Fisher brothers. They were seven I guess. I knew a couple of them, Ed the youngest. Interviewer: I think you ought to write that book. Mr. Blomstrom: Well, a lot of people have said that. I think Mr. Frankfurter said it too, and some of the other people. I did write a book on bearings for the company. Millions of those were sent out. It‘s a very small book. It‘s been in most of the libraries now around the country. Some people wanted a thousand. The Ordinance Department, where is that, Fort Benning in Georgia where they had the Ordinance? Well a major came up from there one day, I didn‘t know he was coming, and the office wanted to see Mr. Blomstrom. The girl says, there‘s a major from Fort Benning here. He wanted a thousand of those little books. They were just small, about Reader‘s Digest, you could just stick it in your pocket. It was run serially in an automobile magazine for eight months. So we give him a thousand, it didn‘t cost much. They‘re in most of the universities, they wrote, they sent. Course now they put out a hardcover, but this was just soft cover. But it was about probably the first small bearing book on servicing, you know taking care of bearings, automobile engine bearings, not ball or roller bearings. So that‘s the only writing. It‘s difficult for me to write, but I suppose I should. It‘s too late now, I guess. Interviewer: You could always dictate it. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah, I bought a machine, I have a machine. I bought it for that purpose. I haven‘t used it but once I guess, twice, but not for that purpose. I bought a machine, nothing as �20 elaborate as your machine here. It‘s just a simple…has about the same kind of a microphone I guess. Micro—what do you call it? Interviewer: No, it‘s a microphone, yes. Mr. Blomstrom: Yes, I have that. Some of them have it built right into the case. I see some of the new ones advertised. Yeah, I have one. Interviewer: How do you keep busy these days? Mr. Blomstrom: Well I‘m rummaging see, getting stuff here. I‘m going to dispose of a lot of books and things. I don‘t know what I‘m going to do with all these pictures; of course Mr. Frankfurter would like them. I don‘t if he ever saw this; I don‘t think I had that at the museum. These others I had at the museum for a couple years, until they moved the Queen car where it is now. Interviewer: I see. You said your cousin restored that car? Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah, I think a second or third cousin. Interviewer: Who‘s he? Mr. Blomstrom: His name is Bloomstrom, they put too many o‘s in it. He lives in Sparta, Michigan. He works here in Grand Rapids. He works in the furniture business - woodwork. He‘s a young fellow, compared to me of course, he‘s about half my age. But he‘s restored a lot of cars, for himself and for others. He does a beautiful job. Interviewer: But you were the one who actually found it? Mr. Blomstrom: Oh yes. Well, one of our people at the—we have a, Federal-Mogul had a plant at Lancaster, that‘s the Amish town you know. Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Blomstrom: He says there‘s a Queen car over here. And this fellow had an old car, one very rare car. Everybody down there has an old car. Every town has people who recondition old cars... a Lancaster and Valley Forge and around Pennsylvania. So he says there‘s a Queen car over here. Well, I says, can you find out when it‘s convenient to see it? Yeah. I‘d been looking for one; I‘d located seven you know, which is pretty good for being that old. They run from—there‘s this nineteen six four cylinder in Detroit, he won‘t sell it to me. He has the largest collection of old cars in the world. The magazines say he has six hundred, he told me he has a thousand. I believe it because they‘re in sheds. If you put up in a straight line or in a U they‘d be eight hundred feet long and he‘s got five deep standing on the ends. So he says bring down a suit, you know get a suit, a coverall suit. So I stopped at Sears Roebuck in Highland Park there and bought one. The only time I ever used it, I gave it to a customer. And he says I‘ve got one of your �21 father‘s cars. I says what is it? He says it‘s a four cylinder nineteen six Queen. Looked like a Packard you know. There‘s a four cylinder up there and to the left, at the top, see it looks like a Packard. Now maybe, I don‘t know who swiped who, but, they were swiping designs those days as they are today. And everybody you‘d show that car too would say that‘s a Packard, and it was a Queen, four cylinder. Well anyway. I got off the track. Interviewer: Well, you were going to go look at these cars. Mr. Blomstrom: Yeah, well, I bought that and on the way over there, he says, Mr.—we call him Barney Pullerd, P-U-L-L-E-R-D, I guess he‘s still living. He has the largest collection of old cars in the world. The last time he called me up here, two years ago, about seven, eight years ago he says when you gonna write that story about your father for me? Cause he wants it you know. Well, I says, I haven‘t got around to it. He says, I‘m gonna put up a building now, he says, and I‘m going to show all my cars in a museum and charge like all the others are doing, Florida and out west. I don‘t know if he‘s done it, I haven‘t talked to him for seven, eight years. He has, the oldest car is a German eighteen ninety-seven, and all his cars are real old, I mean none of this new stuff, twenty, thirty years, they‘re all old. From eighteen ninety-seven, I would say, to nineteen twenty probably. He has almost every car imaginable. He‘s still looking for a Lion car. I haven‘t told him I located one in this museum out by Rushmore. He‘s probably found out. He‘s advertised in every…he says, that was the finest car your father built, he says, that would outrun any car even a Stutz in those days. Interviewer: How many Lions were built? Mr. Blomstrom: Well I don‘t know exactly. I would say it‘s between a thousand and fifteen hundred. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Blomstrom: You see, the Queen cars there were only ten a week made. It was all hand work practically. He bought the bodies and a lot of the other axels. The axels were made by WestonMott in Flint, you know that‘s Mott, you heard-Interviewer: Yes, sure. Mr. Blomstrom: Mott. The General Motors had more stock than anybody else outside of the Dupont family. I met him; I saved the life of his financial secretary twice by giving him blood you know. I had a hemolytic strep and it took me three years to come back on that. I lost seventy pounds, I was in Harper Hospital. I gave blood side-by-side in bed to this fellow twice and saved him. They looked all the records of the hospitals over Michigan and I was the only one who could save this boy‘s life. You got to give him blood serum within twelve months when you fought it off. They found my name and they got me to give him some blood and in a week he was on his way to Arizona, and riding horseback in two weeks. The next year he got pneumonia �22 and I gave him some more blood cause the same thing happened. I met Charlie Mott there, he was tall as I was, six foot five. I thought he‘d give me a million bucks, but he never did. Well, the Queen car had Weston-Mott axels front and rear; they were made in Flint. They moved from Elmira, New York, I believe it is, somewheres in New York State, to Flint. That‘s how he got there. And of course, General Motors bought the plant and he got stock, and he never sold his share, he kept it, so now it‘s being sold. Well he was getting there at one time an awful lot, several million dollars in dividends every year when it used to be two dollars or something. Yeah, he had more stock I think than any individual, but the Dupont family probably had more as a family. Interviewer: Did you like Mott personally? Mr. Blomstrom: I only met him as his secretary, financial secretary. I seen him lots of times, but I never met him. I used to go up to Chevrolet and Buick, of course we made bearings, some of them, for them. Not so much Buick, but one time we made forty percent of the Chevrolet until they make their own now I guess down in Dayton Ohio, Moraine Products. I knew two of the Chevrolet brothers, you know there were three: Gaston, Arthur, and Louie. The last time I talked to Louie, he was assembling front drives on those twelve cars that Edsel ordered for Harry Miller for the Indianapolis track. He wanted me to design the bearings for him, I did, which I did, they were special. See they go up to seventy-two hundred rpm, those four cylinder Millers. Harry Miller came to my office and he had Preston Tucker with him. He introduced me to him. Of course the big thing, they say he designed the Tucker car. He didn‘t design that any more than I did. He was an expediter that‘s all he was, he was no engineer, Tucker. I knew him quite well. And I got to meet Harry Miller. We made bearings…There was five cars that were got down to the Indianapolis track, but they had other front end troubles, steering gear trouble, none of them finished the Ford cars. The old man didn‘t know about it I guess. They assembled them in a building down on, West Lafayette there, about a mile from town. I was down there quite often. Preston Tucker was a handsome fellow. He died quite young, in the forties wasn‘t it? Low forties? Interviewer: I think so. Mr. Blomstrom: I talked to him over there in Chicago. They showed the car there in that big building that Dodge ran during the war making engines. He was quite a talker. They raised a lot of money but a lot of people lost a lot of money too. They sold a lot of stock. Anybody who wanted to handle the car, dealer had to put down four thousand dollars I believe, something like that. Don‘t quote me too much on that. What are you going to do with this? Interviewer: This will go to the, well I‘m sure the museum wants a copy of it, and a copy will go to the Grand Valley State Colleges. Mr. Blomstrom: Are they interested in this? �23 Interviewer: They have an oral history department. Mr. Blomstrom: I see. Interviewer: So, you‘ll be talking for the next few hundred years. Mr. Blomstrom: The Swedes in Detroit, what they call the Detroit Council, Swedish Council Incorporated, I know fifty percent of them, of course I could have been a charter member if I‘d a stayed in Detroit. They just wrote a book last year as a project for the centennial, or was it bicentennial isn‘t it? I have a copy here. They have quite a write-up about my father in there, and they mention me too, and my father-in-law, he‘s right on the first page. He was one of the founders of the Mamrelund church up here. Interviewer: What‘s the name of the book? Mr. Blomstrom: They Made a Difference. Interviewer: They Made a Difference. Who published it, do you know? Mr. Blomstrom: Aaronson, but I buy it through the friend of mine who‘s the secretary of the Detroit Swedish Council, Signe Carlstrom I know her. Interviewer: I presume that the local library would have a copy. Mr. Blomstrom: I don‘t know. I bought several of the books to give to my nephews and nieces. Of course what I was going to tell you was that it was a special project because of the king‘s visit here. He was here last summer. Interviwer: Yeah. Mr. Blomstrom: Karl Gustof. Every Swedish king has got Karl Gustof in their name. That was my grandfather‘s name, Karl Gustof Blomstrom. So they gave him several books, so my name and my father‘s name and a lot of my relatives are in that palace in Stockholm. Well, they just happened to put my name in, they got my father‘s write-up. In fact, this fellow that retired just last year, the vice-chairman of General Motors Oscar Lundeen wrote it with – Jones, who was the head of the big advertising agency there in Bloomfield Village, Bloomfield Center. Jones. I don‘t know him, of course I know Oscar Lundeen real well. I‘ve known him since he was that high; I knew his parents. I knew the three boys. One of them designed that Union Trust Building downtown, Earl Lundeen. Interviewer: Which building is that? Mr. Blomstrom: The Union Bank and Trust. Interviewer: Union Bank. The new building? �24 Mr. Blomstrom: Well yeah, it‘s quite new. I don‘t know about the little building alongside, that‘s named after the chairman isn‘t it? Frye Building. Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Blomstrom: But that‘s designed by Earl Lundeen. He and another fellow have a corporation in New York City. That‘s Oscar‘s brother. There was three boys; I knew them all. There was Edward, the youngest, Earl, and Oscar. Interviewer: They were all in Detroit I take it? Mr. Blomstrom: Oh yeah. Their father was the superintendent of the Detroit Screw Works and then he went later, when he retired he went into real estate. But the boys have all done good. Three boys. Well Oscar of course is a millionaire. He wrote this, and they start off with my father, see, way back when designing the Queen car and building it. Interviewer: Well we‘ve talked for about an hour I think, and I think maybe it‘s about time for me to go home. Mr. Blomstrom: Well if you want some more, just feel free to call up and come out. Interviewer: I‘ll tell you, I‘ll play it back and see if I can-Mr. Blomstrom: I think it‘s too much of myself and not my father. Interviewer: Maybe I can find that book and then read about your father and then come back and ask you some more questions. Mr. Blomstrom: Well it‘s just a page or two in there about him. It‘s on the first page. Of course, they asked me last year to write about my father, but I was very miserable, I‘d been in the hospital and I didn‘t write. They don‘t need to write to me about it anyway, all they got to do is go the library, which they must have done because they got stuff there that I sent to the library, word for word! Interviewer: Thank you very, very much. I appreciate this. It‘s been a very interesting hour. Mr. Blomstrom: Well I bore people to death talking automobiles. Interviewer: No, not at all. Mr. Blomstrom: I wish I was a good writer, I could write a book. I knew most of the early people. The only one I didn‘t know was R.E. Olds, Ransom E. Olds. I know the history of the company and all that. You see, he made the first car in Michigan, R.E. Olds, Ransom E. Olds. That‘s his initials, R.E. O. for the REO you know. Interviewer: Yes. �25 Mr. Blomstrom: He quit the business you know. He was going to have cattle up north here. He bought a ranch up here, or it‘s called a ranch. But his cronies in Lansing got him back to start the REO. Of course it sold out long ago; the family isn‘t in it anymore. General Motors, of course— no it‘s not, it was White, they were independent weren‘t they? There‘s White Motors and then Diamond T Motors, and then now I guess it‘s gone. It was a good car, a big heavy car like the old Pierce Arrow and the Locomobile. They were built like a locomobile, locomotive, heavy you know, big heavy cars. Interviewer: Ok. A G American Motors · 3 General Motors · 3, 12, 16, 22, 24, 26 Grumback, John · 8 B Belle Isle · 11, 19 Blomstrom Motor Company · 2 Blomstrom Thirty · 2 Blomstrom, Carl G. (Grandfather) · 6, 8, 9, 24 Blomstrom, Carl Herman (Father) · 1, 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15, 22, 24, 25 Bloomer Hill · 7, 8 K Kaufman Family · 16 Kettering, Charles · 18 L Detroit Swedish Council · 24 Dupont Family · 22, 23 Leland, Henry M. · 14 Libbey-Owens-Ford Family · 17, 18 Lincoln Motor Car Company · 13, 14 Lion car · 4, 18, 22 Lundeen Family · 24, 25 E M Edison, Thomas · 10, 13, 17 Miller, Harry · 23 Mott, Charlie · 22, 23 D F Federal-Mogul Company · 12, 15, 19, 21 Ford Motor Company · 3, 5, 10, 13, 14, 17, 18, 23 Ford, Edsel · 16, 17, 23 Ford, Henry · 10, 11 Frontmobile · 3 O Old Lion Fence Company · 4 P Paige Motor Car Company · 13 Pullerd, Barney · 22 �26 Q T Queen car · 2, 4, 5, 15, 21, 22, 23, 25 Tucker, Preston · 23 R W Rex (car) · 3 Weston-Mott · 22, 23 Wood, Garfield · 19, 20 Wyandotte Chemicals · 17 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5974db0100116cc68e025d1077512441.mp3 c8bc4c4fcba754dc9dc84b7d455f4032 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_56Blomstrom Title A name given to the resource Blomstrom, Lowell Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Blomstrom, Lowell Description An account of the resource Lowell Blomstrom was born on March 22, 1893 in Grand Rapids. His father was an inventor and pioneer in the automobile industry. In 1904 Carl Blomstrom introduced the Queen Automobile produced in Detroit by the Blomstrom Motor Company. Lowell Blomstrom also worked in the automobile industry. He died in 1979. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1977 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/cce4fd468b90d1cc20ebe196f5384581.pdf 7458ebb0199cafd172e0d47ca039207e PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collection, RHC-23 Mrs. Ford McLachlan Interviewed in 1974 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010-bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #54 (1:02:34) Biographical Information Mrs. McLachlan was born Veronica Elizabeth Josephine Jungbaecker on 1 August 1883 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The family name is pronounced ―Youngbaker.‖ She was the daughter of John Jungbaecker and Johanna Frances Keister. The parents were married in the Netherlands about 1872. John Jungbaecker died 20 November 1923 in Grand Rapids, Michigan at the age of 77. Johanna died in Grand Rapids 5 May 1936 in Grand Rapids at the age of 87. Both of Mrs. McLachlan’s parents were buried in Mt. Calvary Cemetery. Veronica was married 20 February 1920 in Grand Rapids to Ford H. McLachlan. Ford was born in Grand Rapids in August 1887, the son of John Norman and Harriett E. (Hooker) McLachlan who were married in Grand Rapids on 27 April 1882. John McLachlan was born in Canada April 1860 and died in Grand Rapids on 11 September 1944 at the age of 84. Harriet was born in Michigan in 1859 and died in Grand Rapids on 24 April 1943. John and Harriet were buried in Fulton Street Cemetery in Grand Rapids. Ford McLachlan died in Grand Rapids on 14 January 1943. Veronica died in Grand Rapids on 21 December 1988. Both were buried in Mt. Calvary Cemetery. ___________ Interviewer: You said you and your sisters would go there [Crescent Mill] collecting. Mrs. McLachlan: Well, when Dad used to do work for them before he built that house, you see… Interviewer: I see. Mrs. McLachlan: And the Voigt family lived on the West Side. Interviewer: I see, before they built the Voigt House they lived over on the West Side. Mrs. McLachlan: Near the mill you see. The mill was on the corner. [She is talking to another person here] Interviewer: And he worked for them. Before the building, what kind of work did he do before building? Always building or just carpentry? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, when he was a young man and after he left school he took up carpentry work. When he was eighteen, he went into the army, of course, that was compulsory over in �2 Germany. When he was through with the army, he emigrated into Holland. His father had preceded him, because his farther was living in Middleburg. Dad was working in Vlissingen? on a big railway station, depots they call them here. And that’s where he met my mother was in Holland. Interviewer: Yes, And when did they come to this country? Mrs. McLachlan: In eighteen seventy-three. Interviewer: Yes, Mrs. McLachlan: They settled in Grand Haven, and my older sister Mary was born there. Then after a year or so there, Dad said there were no prospects here so I am going to move on to the bigger city. Of course, he heard Grand Rapids was a bigger city than Grand Haven. Interviewer: Did he come to this part of the country mainly because of his wife’s Holland connection? How did they happen to come to Michigan? Mrs. McLachlan: I will tell you what, when my mother was ten years old, of course her father died, and she had a little brother seven. They had gone into another city to collect some money; you know how they did that years ago - they didn’t mail it. You had to go and collect it. Some little inheritance, maybe it was—I never knew. They contracted, there was an epidemic in the city, and they both contracted this disease and they came home and they both died. Interviewer: Oh, my. Mrs. McLachlan: Her mother meanwhile had met a Hollander from Grand Haven, who was traveling over there. He was a widower, a Mr. Ball, and he wanted to marry my grandmother, so she said alright and so she came to this country and she left my mother there alone with the grandparents. Interviewer: Oh, I see, so she had a natural want to come over here. Mrs. McLachlan: When she came here, she hadn’t seen her mother in fifteen years. Interviewer: Then, your father came up to Grand Rapids because there was more work here. Mrs. McLachlan: He thought there would be. He was working on boat down there; you know finishing up the cabins and that. Interviewer: So he was a skilled finish carpenter. Mrs. McLachlan: Oh yes, of course that was German legendary know how. Even Ralph Voigt said that in his letter, in his article in the ―Wonderland‖. When they came to Grand Rapids the population was only sixteen thousand five-hundred here in eighteen seventy-four. I read that in the paper a year or so ago, so I kept track of all that. �3 Interviewer: Not a big city, but it seemed like a big city for this part of the country then. Mrs. McLachlan: And there were Indians here on the island in the Grand River and Campau, if you read the story of Campau. Interviewer: They used to get paid off every year. They paid off the Indians every year. Your father then became a builder as soon as he got here. Mrs. McLachlan: Now right away, he worked as a carpenter, and I think when I was born in eighteen eighty-three, he just started his business. Interviewer: My, are you ninety-one years old? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I will be ninety-two in a few months. Interviewer: You’re remarkable. Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t know. Interviewer: You don’t know, I’ve seen some people ten or fifteen years younger that didn’t look as good. Mrs. McLachlan: That’s a good age too in the seventies, of course, I think that is young, because I was active in my seventies and eighties. Just my eyesight now that has… I can read the finest print; I could until just a few weeks ago but now I am using (?), but sometimes I am better off not using it. Interviewer: What did your father do when he (?) Mrs. McLachlan: Well, he was a carpenter for about ten years after he came here. See the language barrier was what held him up. He learned the English language. Then he told my mother I am going into business and she said, ―I will tell you something.‖ (Dad was awfully quiet) ―Dad if you are going into business, you are going to have to start talking.‖ She said he never stopped after that. Interviewer: Did you speak English at home? Mrs. McLachlan: Always, I still don’t see how they learned to read and write. I just don’t know. Interviewer: As far as you’re concerned, when you were growing up you spoke English at home. Mrs. McLachlan: I never remember them speaking German except when some of their German friends came over. Interviewer: And they didn’t teach you German either? Mrs. McLachlan: No, we went to a German school. �4 Interviewer: You did? Mrs. McLachlan: We went to German Parochial School. And they kept up these old languages, like the Polish school taught Polish, they wanted their children... Well some of them they had to because they couldn’t communicate with their children unless they knew how to talk Polish or German or something. My folks they started to learn right away. Anyway my father was the progressive one in our family. Interviewer: Because he went into business for himself. When he went into business for himself, did he go into it as a builder? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, a contractor and builder. Well, you saw, this is one of the last billheads and it is all yellow with age. The first decade of this century, Interviewer: That’s right, it would be nineteen ten and on up. Mrs. McLachlan: And he retired in nineteen eleven. Oh, quite a while ago, Mrs. [Barbara] Roelofs, when I talked with her which was three or four years ago, or three, anyway it was before Ralph Voigt died, because I went over to the Voigt House because he invited me over there… Interviewer: Oh, did he? Mrs. McLachlan: …after that article came out in the ―Wonderland‖. What he said to the reporter from the Press was, he said, ―They don’t build houses like this anymore. This was built by artists.‖ Well, I just couldn’t resist the next day, I called him up and told him who I was and said I am the last member of this family, of my father’s. I told him that and I couldn’t help but call him up. He said, ―I want you to come over and see this house. If anybody’s entitled to see it you are.‖ We had pictures, Ralph’s father had given my dad two pictures, oh they were about this size; one was of the outside of the house and one of the beautiful stairway. And my mother had them framed in little gold frames. And they hung in our dining room there was a sort of a niche toward the living room where my father’s safe was. And she had hung them over the safe. And I can remember looking at those pictures a hundred times. When they sold the old house and built the new one, I don’t know what became of all these old pictures. I didn’t help my mother move and I never knew what became of them. Unless they were put in a dresser in the attic at the new house, but I never went up there. Interviewer: Was the stairway special and did your father do that himself? Mrs. McLachlan: No, he didn’t work at all, he never worked at the trade after he went into his business. Interviewer: I see, just a contractor, then? �5 Mrs. McLachlan: He had some of the finest carpenters, craftsmen I would call them. One of them was Ralph Lypse, he was good on stairways and mantelpieces and stuff like that. Interviewer: And he carved them himself, that man carved the round… Mrs. McLachlan: No they didn’t do any carving. That was all done in the factories by expert carvers. Our factory that got out this work. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: I was too young to tell who got out all this interior finish. The Ocker and Ford Company were the ones that did it. And my father was the president of that company for twenty years. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. McLachlan: He started that company, he and Mr. Clark bought the land, built the factory and had the stocked subscribed for. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. McLachlan: That was in the early eighties, before eighteen eighty-six because he went to Germany in eighty-six, when my sister Anna was born. Anyway. Interviewer: What was the name of the company again? Ocker and Ford. Mrs. McLachlan: On Fourth Street, and the Voigts lived right there in our corner of Mount Vernon, You know where Front Street is, all these people had their homes right along near the factories where they worked because they had no transportation. Interviewer: You had better be there. Mrs. McLachlan: You had horses and buggies and the streetcar, that was all; and my dad bought his first horse and buggy at that time and then, of course as the family grew so does the vehicle. We had a two-seated cutter and a double-seated phaetons with the fringe on top. And then he had two single buggies. We always had two horses as long as I can remember until the day he retired and then he had a horse yet. Even after he had bought his cars, we had two cars later on and he learned to drive he still had a horse. He was getting older, sixty five you know and he was coming around the corner of Monroe and Bridge Street and he was going to cross the bridge and he put his foot on the accelerator to get around the corner and a policeman stopped him and said you are going too fast. But I wanted to get around the corner, the policeman told him you have to slow down when you go around the corner,. Interviewer: ...instead speeding up? �6 Mrs. McLachlan: He was the funniest guy, full of life you know, wonderful sense of humor. This lady wanted me to make up a list of the different homes that he built in the [thirties?]. These are old, I wrote these, this has been revised, there are a lot of things I didn’t think of until later. That was my first copy; then I wrote this one over. Did I tell you he built the house that Jack built out at Reed’s Lake? Interviewer: No, I didn’t know that. Mrs. McLachlan: That was sold, that was William Jack that owned the American Boxboard Company. Interviewer: Yes, yes. Mrs. McLachlan: He had a awfully hard time getting started because he had no capital, he went to the Goodspeeds, John. And he didn’t want any part of it. See, he didn’t know who to go to, of course the Goodspeeds were in the real estate business and they made all kinds of money. And later on in thirty-six when I worked for Harrison Goodspeed, just temporarily you know, to catch up on some of the work. Mr. Perkins, who was a state bank examiner, was John Goodspeed’s bookkeeper. He worked half days, that’s the way they were hired, but I was on full time. And then Harrison, when I worked for him, I found out from their statements that Harrison had threehundred thousand dollars in that company and his father had five-hundred thousand dollars. You see, they kept putting in money after it got going. They practically owned the thing. Interviewer: Oh, for heaven’s sake. Mrs. McLachlan: Of course the Jacks were quite well to do. I knew William Jack because, I’d forgotten that my dad had built that house, that was when he was semi-retired and my brother was taking care of it and his foremen. Mr. Jack came up to see me when I was working in the Metz Building for Mr. Dykhouse lumber. He said to me, ―Are you Miss Jungbaecker? And I said, ―Yes, I am.‖ He said, ―I’m Mr. Jack and I wanted to tell you that your brother wasn’t taking care of his work out to the house.‖ ―Well‖, I said, ―the foremen are there, and Dad has good foremen.‖ You see, Dad just financing the thing, he wasn’t really wasn’t active anymore and wasn’t inspecting anymore. ―Well,‖ I said, ―I will go home tonight and tell my father.‖ But they finished the job and …it’s a very beautiful home. I guess I was never in it. Interviewer: Were you ever in Dr. Hake’s house? Mrs. McLachlan: No, but that was sold to Judge Raymond Starr, Interviewer: Raymond Starr, you said, yes! Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t know who bought it when he retired and was in the nursing home, he was at Olds Manor. Then his wife Minnie was out to Pilgrim Manor, not Pilgrim Manor the other one the Porter Hills and she died. And I don’t know if this Judge Raymond Starr was, he was the �7 last one. That’s right. Then there was the Wenzel Cuckerski home. Then there was the Bernhard May home, the brother of Meyer May of the May Company downtown. Bernhard was from New York, married a New York girl, he came back here to Grand Rapids with his wife and he wanted to build a home so they got a hold of my dad and they built that house, and I’ve never seen it. But his wife didn’t like it here so she wanted to move back to New York. Interviewer: So they went back to New York, and sold the house. Mrs. McLachlan: Sold the house to a Mr. Godfrey. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: He went through there and said, ―Who was the contractor and builder?‖ He said, ―Mr. Jungbaecker.‖ ―I want to get in touch with him because he knew his business and I want to remodel a few things and change a few things.‖ Interviewer: Now, were those houses built after the Voigt House? Mrs. McLachlan: I know the Voigt [house] was because she was a Voigt girl you know? Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Hake was Clara Voigt. Mrs. McLachlan: And she was Ralph’s sister. And the Meyer [Bernhard?] May house? I was quite young, because I remember him coming home to mother and saying what is a French toilet? Interviewer: Oh, oh. Mrs. McLachlan: She said how would I know if you don’t. She said the plumbers and fitters will know what it is. Interviewer: They wanted a French toilet, huh? Mrs. McLachlan: I never knew what that was at my age and my father didn’t know, and I got down to Cuba in nineteen twenty-eight, I was in the Imperial hotel, three of us women and I went to the bathroom and my gosh I must have pushed the wrong button or something and I got all wet. Interviewer: Oh, you had a bidet! Mrs. McLachlan: So I found out what that was. I told them I got all wet and they said well that is a French toilet. Well, my father never knew… Interviewer: Were you in the Voigt House when it was being built? Were you around, then? �8 Mrs. McLachlan: Ralph told me, he was going to Union High School when I was going to St. Mary’s on the west side same street a couple of blocks away. And I use to see him as a kid, he was a year older than I was. He told me that after school he went over there every night, every afternoon after school and would talk to my father. All he could remember was that his name was John. He said he had the plans up in the attic and he could find out. I said I can tell you what his name was, and it is a hard one to remember and I spelled it out for him and he said yep, that’s it. I said I suppose Ocker and Ford did the interior work and I said yes, my father was the president over there and turned all the work over to them and I said yes he would. There was something else here, the Bernhard May house. The C. A. Lindner home too, he was the manager of Ocker and Ford Company when I worked there. I worked there, that was my first job. My father put me in his office when I was sixteen years old. I worked there until I was about twentyfour and then they went into receivership. Mr. Dykhouse was one of the vice-presidents and so was Mr. Robert Sherwood. Mr. Dykhouse and Dad and Mr. Sherwood were the receivers. Then later on I went to work for Mr. Dykhouse when I was thirty years old. I have a long history of my own life. The Maurice Shanahan home on Plainfield Avenue; I don’t know what Dad did up there but I can remember him saying he was out in the yard and talking with Mr. Shanahan, planning what they were going to do. But what he did there, I don’t remember. That’s the big home, the Creston Mortuary bought this home way up on the hill and it was too hard getting up there, so they built the mortuary down below. Why they kept the home for, I don’t know. But Maurice Shanahan was with the Bissell Company. He was president of the Bissell Company for years. We had a lot of good people, built the Evangeline Home. Interviewer: I saw that, wasn’t that the predecessor to the Booth Memorial Hospital. Mrs. McLachlan: That’s a lovely old building, the architecture was so much nicer than the buildings are today. Take the buildings downtown they look like cracker boxes to me. Take the old City Hall, that was architecture. Take the Voigt home, they call that a Queen Anne but I can’t associate that with Queen Anne; I didn’t know they had homes built like that. Interviewer: They can’t seem to be able to afford to do is any of that really elegant decorative work on buildings nowadays. It looks very plain and functional. Mrs. McLachlan: They used to do a lot more of something they call ????, not cheesecake, but another name for it Interviewer: I know, that jigsaw work, well it will come to me in the course Mrs. McLachlan: Decoration on the… Interviewer: Gingerbread. �9 Mrs. McLachlan: Gingerbread and that’s right and that porch is so beautiful, that they had a flooring of wood on that porch, and wondered how they could keep wood from, course they used cypress for outdoors. Interviewer: Is that what they used in that? Mrs. McLachlan: Because that takes care water and stuff. Interviewer: Do you remember how much it cost to build the Voigt House? Mrs. McLachlan: No, I don’t. Interviewer: I suppose at that time … Mrs. McLachlan: It was a recession, in 1895 there was a terrific recession on. Interviewer: That is interesting. Mrs. McLachlan: Of course during that time, I can remember my mother saying… I was going to have a white dress for my first communion, and Mary my older sister was going to make it for me. You know we all made our own clothes in those days. There were no ready-made garments. Interviewer: That’s right. Mrs. McLachlan: And Mary was to make this white dress, and Mother said all your going to have is a plain white dress. I said that’s alright who cares, I didn’t care about clothes. So I went downtown a couple of days after that, with a girlfriend of mine from school. I went into the Boston Store and saw this collaret with embroidery and a little lace and it would fit right over the top of the dress and it was quite pretty. I said how much is that, she said that’s two dollars. And I came home and told my mother about it, and I had never asked for anything. And I said to her, Mother I saw a little collaret downtown that I thought it would look nice on this….I said that’s alright it’s too much money and she said how much was it? And I said it was two dollars. She stood and looked at me for the longest time, and then said you a are going to have that collaret, I will give that money to you tomorrow and you go down and get that collaret. Interviewer: When you went downtown in those days, you lived on the West side and you went across Bridge Street? Mrs. McLachlan: And then to the school and then across Bridge Street, turn north on Turner just one block, really a block and a half and walk downtown over the Bridge Street Bridge and then walk back home to the west side. Interviewer: Did you know any other of the other Voigts, except Ralph. Mrs. McLachlan: No, I knew Carl and Frank, and the oldest one was Frank and he was married to a Miss Seyferth. �10 Interviewer: Seyferth. Mrs. McLachlan: Beautiful blonde woman, I used to see her so much on the west side they lived on the west side too. And I even mentioned that to Carl, to Ralph, I remember your brother Frank and his wife the blonde woman and he said wasn’t she beautiful and I said, I’ll say she was! Interviewer: He was considerably older than Ralph, though Frank was, he was the oldest. Mrs. McLachlan: You see there were three girls too in that family. Interviewer: The girls were all in the middle and Frank and Carl and then the girls and then Ralph. Ralph was the youngest. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, he was, he told me that. Interviewer: And he never married. Mrs. McLachlan: No, Carl did, then his wife died. When they got married the father said this is it. You can never come back home. Interviewer: Oh, really. Mrs. McLachlan: He meant, if anything happened to them. Interviewer: They would have to live away from home. Mrs. McLachlan: And then (?) lost her husband. Interviewer: But Clara did you go back home, after Dr. Hake died. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, she did. Interviewer: Was that before her folks died? Mrs. McLachlan: No, her father was dead. She came to our house and he (her dad, not Voigt father). He was semi-retired but he would figure the jobs and that. She came over to the house and said I want you to figure a plan I want to build a house. And dad said alright I’ll figure it for you. And she came back and said oh, that’s way too high. Well, her father was the same way. Dad said well if you want good work, that’s what I have to have, that much money. So she said I’m going to forget about it. So the next year she came back again with another plan. And Dad said didn’t you get anybody to build that house, yet? She said nope, I am not going to have anybody else build it. I want you to figure this one. Interviewer: So Mr. Voigt was close with his money too? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, well of course, I wouldn’t say they were tight. He was just that type that would say, oh. Gosh when we would go and collect some small bill, when Dad did some work �11 for him on the old home on the west side. Dad would warn us, ―Don’t say one word. Now he’s going to say what’s the matter with this John, he is trying to rob me.‖ Just sit still and he will pay it. So, I went there a couple of times and presented the bill. He’d look at it and frown and say, ―My goodness that man is trying to rob me.‖ I would sit there and look at him and not say a word and finally he’d say, ―Okay go downstairs and get the money.‖ Interviewer: The office was downstairs in the old house on the west side? Mrs. McLachlan: No, the Crescent Mill. Interviewer: Oh I see you went to the mill to collect. Mrs. McLachlan: His office was upstairs in the mill. The bookkeeper and the other office help were downstairs. Interviewer: Oh, I see. Mrs. McLachlan: That was before Ralph was in charge. Ralph went to colleges in the East, he went to Andover and either Harvard or Yale. He told me that he had two Masters, he had two degrees, anyway. Interviewer: And he came back and was actively engaged in the mill. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes. Interviewer: Was Carl also in the Milling business with his father? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes. Interviewer: Now his wife, did his wife die? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, very nice looking woman too, I remember her. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: I use to see her in the mill, I knew people in the office there. Miss Annette Klanderman worked there a long time, she was lame. And a Miss Diver. I didn’t know her as well as I knew her sister but I knew who she was. They were good looking girls. Interviewer: Somebody told us Mr. Voigt didn’t like to spend money on electric light either. Mrs. McLachlan: Didn’t he? Interviewer: No, he used to tell them hang a bare bulb in the office and put all three desks around that light bulb because they only could have one bulb for three people. Maybe that was just a story. �12 Mrs. McLachlan: (?) he was quite frugal like all the Germans are. Interviewer: He wanted value for his money’s worth, obviously. Mrs. McLachlan: …He came over with the Herpolsheimers. He started in the Herpolsheimer building. I was in that store. Interviewer: I see you put a note on this saying your father put the first escalator in Herpolsheimer’s. Mrs. McLachlan: That was in the first Herpolsheimer building. You see the old HerpolsheimerError! Bookmark not defined. when he was with Voigt, was up there further near where the ? drug store was later on, right in the middle of that next block between Ionia and Ottawa. And I used to go in there and shop and they still have that name up on the building if you go down East Fulton Street you can see it up there Herpolsheimer, Voigt-Herpolsheimer. Interviewer: It is still up there? I would like to see that. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes. My nephew told me that. I’ve seen that name up there too a good many times, but never gave it a thought. If I had known this was going to happen, I would have saved those pictures that Mr. Voigt gave me. Interviewer: Too bad you didn’t save the pictures of the interior of the house. Mrs. McLachlan: Well it was just the stairway. Interviewer: That is such a beautiful stairway. Mrs. McLachlan: I can remember my dad coming home, I was twelve and my dad would come home telling my mother, he used to talk about things once in a while and we kids would hear it. He said, ―Mother, you know what the people are doing, they are laying the flooring in the Voigt House. You know they have to walk around in their stocking feet. There might be nails and cleats on the bottoms of their shoes. And that wood didn’t dare to be scratched.‖ It had this parquet flooring, just the border around in the foyer. That was imported. Interviewer: It was? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, it was. Interviewer: Where did they get that from, Germany then? Mrs. McLachlan: I imagine so. They came from Bavaria. He told me that. Interviewer: But the rest of the wood, the regular oak for the flooring came from this country. And you said cypress for the outside. �13 Mrs. McLachlan: Well, that’s what they used to use for porches, because it holds water and won’t break down. I would think in that length of time that they would have to put on new flooring on that porch. It wouldn’t last that long. Interviewer: Maybe, I don’t know. We’ll ask about that. It may be that’s the original flooring. That building is so sound, it really doesn’t deteriorate. Mrs. McLachlan: That’s the way things were built, years go. Interviewer: Yes, Mrs. McLachlan: Everybody built their homes that way. And in their basement they have walnut beams. Interviewer: The interior of the house has beautiful woodwork in it. And it is beautifully kept up. Mrs. McLachlan: Is it oak? Interviewer: Well, what interested me was in the drawing room, the library and the hall it is oak. In the downstairs bedroom it looks to me like cherry, It is beautiful, beautiful wood, polished. Mrs. McLachlan: What color is it? Interviewer: The cherry in the bedroom is the regular red cherry color, beautiful and very close grained like cherry, and it is the deep rich red. Mrs. McLachlan: Cherry is wonderful. Interviewer: And it is so close grained that you know it is not mahogany, No mahogany is a wider grain. Looks to me like cherry wood and it looks so pretty how could they left it out of…..You know they have oak in the Music Room and … Mrs. McLachlan: Oak was a big thing in those days. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: Especially quarter-sawed oak. Interviewer: Quarter-sawed oak. Mrs. McLachlan: We had it in our home, too. Interviewer: Do you know anything about that stenciling around the top in the library? Who did that? Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t even remember that. �14 Interviewer: Well, there is some kind of stencil pattern up around the edge of the library. Mrs. McLachlan: Didn’t they say one time, that one of the girls did that? Interviewer: They did say the family did some in either the dining room or library. Mrs. McLachlan: Oh, they have some in the dining room too. Interviewer: There is some painted work up around the top of the dining room. Then there is some wall paper, no, not paper, this looks like fabric on the walls. Mrs. McLachlan: It is fabric, it is tapestry. Interviewer: Yes, tapestry, there is furring strips behind it. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, they need that to hold it. But they’ve got the damask in the living room. The walls are all covered in damask. The second living room was the music room. Interviewer: Yes, Mrs. McLachlan: And that had a piano in it -- an upright. The thing I missed in the home like that would be a beautiful grandfather clock. Instead they have this big giant mirror, this huge thing. On the other landing there were some plants, artificial plants of some kind. Interviewer: There is a grandfather’s clock, but it is down in the hall. Mrs. McLachlan: Where is it? Interviewer: Now, is that the one you remember seeing? Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t remember seeing a grandfather’s clock Interviewer: There is one in the hall. Mrs. McLachlan: See, there were so many things we saw that I probably forgot. Interviewer: I think if you go with more than one or two people I think it is hard to see everything. Mrs. McLachlan: Well, there was just my niece and I. Interviewer: Just you and your niece? Mrs. McLachlan: Oh yes, we didn’t go on [a tour], it wasn’t open then yet… Interviewer: You went before it was even open. Mrs. McLachlan: He was still alive. �15 Interviewer: Oh, I see. Mrs. McLachlan: He was sick. [END OF SECTION ONE] [SECTION TWO] Mrs. McLachlan: You will revise that? Interviewer: No, it’s alright; I’ll just take off the part that had to do with the Voigt House off the tape, if that’s alright. Mrs. McLachlan: Is it off now? Interviewer: It’s on. Mrs. McLachlan: It is? Interviewer: It won’t bother you, I hope. What we’ll just take the stuff to do with the Voigt House off the tape. Sometimes if you just sit and talk, you learn more about. When did you go with your niece to the house? Mrs. McLachlan: Well, when I called him (Mr. Voigt), this was in the paper earlier about nineteen seventy, in the Wonderland. And he wanted me to come over. Well, I have been having trouble with my eyes and it hadn’t been operated on yet, I didn’t think about it until later and I thought my nephew would go with me, Arthur, who died in January. He wanted to see it and all that, but he, I couldn’t pin him down to an appointment. So in the fall, I said to my niece, not Mrs. Buist, will you take me over to the Voigt House? And she said, I sure will. I called up and this housekeeper answered and she said just a minute, I’ll call the nurse. I thought, gee a nurse, and so she called the nurse, and she said ―Mr. Voigt has been in the hospital and he’s had had a heart attack. He’s home now but I am here taking care of him.‖ I said ―Well, I’ll just have to forget about it.‖ She said, ―No, no don’t say that‖ she said, ―I’ll talk to him about it and you call me back Monday morning.‖ This was on a Saturday morning when I called him. So I said alright. So I called her about eleven o’clock and she said, ―Mr. Voigt said you should come in about two o’clock and I will take you through.‖ Between two and four, anyway. So we went over there, she took us through and showed us a lot of things, I was intrigued with the dining room quite a bit, and also that brass bed and that huge dresser in that one bedroom. Interviewer: Isn’t that pretty? Mrs. McLachlan: I didn’t even notice what kind of spread he had on there. I was so intrigued with the bed and the dresser; I didn’t know what else was in the room at all. Interviewer: Was he in the downstairs bedroom at that time? �16 Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, he was, but I didn’t see him. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: And so she took us through Dr. and Mrs. Hake’s room, and she called attention to this beautiful secretary that the doctor had, and then we went down through the dining room and the other rooms. I don’t remember what I was going to say. Yes, and another thing was in the library, but I must have missed it, but I was always crazy about these big world globes, you know. I always thought when I grew up I wanted one of those and a big dictionary, an unabridged dictionary. I couldn’t remember seeing one there. I didn’t remember too much what was in that room except the fireplace and this housekeeper was watching TV (television) and we didn’t stand there long, but there was a beautiful bookcase there. Interviewer: Yes, full of old books. Mrs. McLachlan: There was another bookcase in another room somewhere that was filled with books too. Interviewer: After Mr. Voigt died, some of the furniture that was in there when you saw it was taken by relatives, but all the old furniture was upstairs in the attic so they brought that down. The furniture that is in there now, is the old furniture that was in the house when Mr. and Mrs. Voigt were alive. Mrs. McLachlan: They had a lot of Louis the Fifteenth, is it? Interviewer: Yeah and they had some of the horsehair sofas, that sort of thing. And then some beautiful imported stuff, I guess. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, they had two imported chairs they were carved, little straight back chairs, you know. Interviewer: That stuff went to the relatives. Mrs. McLachlan: Those were very valuable I thought; and there was a music box underneath a seat of one. And this nurse, she played it Interviewer: She did? Mrs. McLachlan: After she took us, I thought the house looked kind of cluttered, there was so much furniture in those two little rooms, it looked to me like they shoved lots of stuff in there, with…. Interviewer: Without taking anything else out. �17 Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, and without getting it arranged in a proper way. Well, that was my impression anyway. But those two chairs intrigued me, and there was a beautiful big rocker that was carved, a high backed rocker. Interviewer: Is that the one with corn ears on top; that has the ears of corn on the top? Mrs. McLachlan: I don’t remember that. Interviewer: There is a beautiful high back rocker that has corn… Mrs. McLachlan: Is that still there? Interviewer: Yes, that’s still there. Mrs. McLachlan: I was intrigued with those cotton curtains at the windows, with the wide lace. Interviewer: Beautiful lace all…. Mrs. McLachlan: How could they wash those and keep them from… Interviewer: I think probably they were washed by hand. Mrs. McLachlan: Must have been. Interviewer: The story we have is that there were two sets of curtains for each window. Mrs. McLachlan: I thought it was two sets of shades? Interviewer: Well now, the story to us was that there two sets of curtains to each window. So when one was taken down to be washed they put the other set up. This meant that there wasn’t as much wear on each set… Mrs. McLachlan: No, probably not. Interviewer: This meant that they were in good condition. Mrs. McLachlan: Cotton, they must have been wonderful cotton. Interviewer: I don’t know because I can’t tell cotton or linen in a case like that, but I think most were cotton. A lot of that was handmade lace you know, the old Battenberg lace on some of those beautiful curtains. Mrs. McLachlan: They had a lot of beautiful things in there but today the people today don’t appreciate those things. But, I lived in that period and I know they were an affluent society, when you had lace curtains at your windows you were considered affluent. Interviewer: Yes…You father must have been pretty affluent, wasn’t he himself…? �18 Mrs. McLachlan: Pretty what? Interviewer: You father must have been a pretty affluent himself, if he was a good builder. Mrs. McLachlan: At one time, yes. He had quite a bit of money. Interviewer: Yes, because… Mrs. McLachlan: But you see there was no Social Security in those days, no nothing; and they had to save their money and he had at all in real estate. It seemed to me that everything he sold, he had quite a bit of real estate and a cottage down at Spring Lake which we loved. Interviewer: How did you get out to the cottage? Mrs. McLachlan: Not the Greyhound, but the interurban. Interviewer: It was a railway then or a bus? Mrs. McLachlan: No, it was a big bus, just like the Greyhounds, but bigger I think. They went on this electric rail. I think the tracks were electric. Interviewer: It was like electric a railway, I know there was an interurban between here and Spring Lake. Mrs. McLachlan: This was to Spring Lake and Muskegon. Interviewer: Now when did your father pass on? Mrs. McLachlan: In twenty, no, nineteen twenty-three. Interviewer: So he retired in nineteen eleven. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes. Interviewer: And lived about twelve years after that. Was your mother alive all those years? Mrs. McLachlan: Oh, yes she died when she was eighty-eight, almost eighty-eight. Interviewer: Oh, she stayed on. Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I came from pretty good stock … Interviewer: How many children in the family? You mentioned a couple. Mrs. McLachlan: Nine, three of them died before I was born, they all died in one week, diphtheria. Interviewer: That’s when they had those terrible… �19 Mrs. McLachlan: My little sister and the two next oldest sisters, so my mother raised three, six of us I mean. Interviewer: Do you know how many men worked on that house when your father was building it? Any idea? Mrs. McLachlan: Well, at that time, he had about thirty six men, but he had other jobs, too, you know. Interviewer: Not all of them were working on the Voigt House? Mrs. McLachlan: I imagine about twelve, or maybe more? I wouldn’t know. He had two good foremen the Dengler Brothers, Fred and John Dengler, his first foremen, when he first went into business. He had others when they they started to retire. Interviewer: The brick, for the outside of the building. Do you know where that came from? Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I… Interviewer: Some of that tile work is really beautiful. Mrs. McLachlan: Tile work? Interviewer: Well, that sort of decorative tile work. Mrs. McLachlan: Is there some tile work? Ceramics is it? Interviewer: Well, it looks to be… Mrs. McLachlan: More shiny than ceramic? Interviewer: Well. It looks to be the same color as the brick; there is some circular decorative piece, I think, that is in the top of one… Mrs. McLachlan: That is the mason work, then. Interviewer: Yes. You don’t know how much a mason made in those days, do you? Mrs. McLachlan: How much what? Interviewer: What they paid a mason a day, a brick layer? Mrs. McLachlan: I wouldn’t know what a bricklayer made. I wouldn’t know what my father’s men made, but when I worked at Ocker and Fords, I know what those men made. They did all this interior finish. The foreman on the three floors each made thirty cents an hour. Interviewer: That was a great rate, wasn’t it? �20 Mrs. McLachlan: Eighteen dollars a week, for sixty hours work. I made up the payroll, so I remember. Of course, my dad later on… Interviewer: You remember that. That was for a foreman, not just one of the men? Mrs. McLachlan: Then the next scale down, would be sixteen fifty. And Charlie VanderVelde, that started this Grand Rapids Camera Club, was one of the fine craftsmen, up on the third floor, under Ralph Fosget, he made sixteen fifty a week. The next scale down was fifteen and the next was thirteen fifty and then there was twelve and there was a ten fifty. And my uncle ran the freight elevator and he was getting nine dollars a week. Interviewer: How much of a family did he have? Mrs. McLachlan: Well, there was Jenny, Anna, and Francis and of course John, by that time. John was still going to school, I think. There were six children, there were seven children, the older ones were working you see. Interviewer: My goodness, that’s not much to bring up a whole family. How long did it take to build a house in those days? How long from the time they started to dig until they finished it? Mrs. McLachlan: I can imagine this house took a couple of years, wouldn’t you say so? Interviewer: I have no idea how long it would take, I am just curious if you were aware of how long it would take to do a job like that? Mrs. McLachlan: The mason work, the whole front of the building is beautiful. Interviewer: Oh yes, it is a very handsome building, and there is a lot of hand work in it. Mrs. McLachlan: Would they call that an estate, if it is just on a big lot? Interviewer: I doubt it, just a big house, maybe a townhouse. Mrs. McLachlan: It might be a mansion; they’ve got a carriage house and all that. Miss Lindner had a ten acre estate out on Reed’s Lake. The house wasn’t anything like the Voigt House, and she had spent thirty-thousand dollars to build on this big living room, on the one room but it included the furniture that she bought, carpets and drapes. It was my first job to check on it, I was with her for ten years. That house was a more livable home than the Voigt home. What I mean by that is, it had more of a woman’s touch, of course she lived there alone. Interviewer: Did Mr. Voigt make most of the decisions about what was to go into the house? Mrs. McLachlan: You mean the old man? Interviewer: Did he get to decide or did Mother get to say what she wanted? �21 Mrs. McLachlan: I wouldn’t know that, but I imagine he had a lot of ideas. You know this house was copied from a chateau in France. Interviewer: Yes, I heard. Mrs. McLachlan: Not exactly but parts of it, I think it is more Victorian than it is Queen Anne, don’t you think so? Interviewer: I am not very up on architecture. Mrs. McLachlan: I think so, but I am not either. As long as I have been with my father, and even with all that and even in the lumber business so many years, I still don’t know that. I did know a lot more about furniture because I was in the furniture business, too. I worked for Robert Irwin Furniture Company for ten years. Interviewer: Did you really? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, Interviewer: Did you know Mr. Irwin? Mrs. McLachlan: Heavens yes, he would come over to my desk and talk to me. Interviewer: He was a remarkable man. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, he was, he was in his eighties when he sold out there, you see. Sold the factory; they sold the one on Fulton Street first. They still had the Royal on Bond Avenue where he started. He started as a bookkeeper and so did Mr. Dykhouse. And they went into the lumber business later on. Mr. Dykhouse worked for the Ball-Barnard-Putnam groceries, delivering groceries. I was with him eight years. Interviewer: You were a bookkeeper? Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I was secretary, too, and also went into accounting. Interviewer: Did you learn to use a typewriter or did you write everything by hand? Mrs. McLachlan: No, I used a typewriter, I was sixteen years old I used a typewriter. But we didn’t have any carbon copies. Interviewer: What would you do, did you have to make two copies? Mrs. McLachlan: No, we had a machine, well, it was a funny thing. It was a big machine with a wheel on it. First of all it was a tissue paper book. And we put this, we had a tank with water in it and a wringer. And we would wring out this, it was made of, what’s this stuff. Heavy stuff, but pliable and you would put it thru the wringer. And we would put this wet thing in this tissue �22 paper book and put this tissue paper over this wet, a kind of like cardboard, I’d call it and then letter on top of that this way, you know upside down. And then we’d put another wet pad on top of that and put another sheet of tissue paper, and I would have four or five letters, and then you put them into this, all I can think of is this compress. You put it in there and then turn this wheel and then press down. Sometimes it would smear and you would have to do the letter over again. Interviewer: Oh, dear. Mrs. McLachlan: Shortly after that there was a girl at the city hall, she was an Irish girl, Miss O’Connor or something like that. I think that was the first thing, she used to make perfect copies, you know. But, she had carbon paper then and she used to make perfect copies. Interviewer: And that was a great thing. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes. And then I learned about carbon paper, it just came out. I was about seventeen or eighteen, probably. Interviewer: That would have been the turn of the century, wouldn’t it? The late eighteen hundreds. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I was seventeen years old at the turn of the century. I remember all the factory whistles and church bells all ringing. Interviewer: It was big excitement. Mrs. McLachlan: It was just terrible. Interviewer: Now, you’re about to live to see the bi-centennial of the United States. Mrs. McLachlan: I hope I live that long. Interviewer: Sure, you will, you’re in good health. Mrs. McLachlan: Well, all but my eyesight. I had my eye operated on then, after, I went there before yes. Interviewer: I see here, you have something about Mrs. Charles Roelofs residence. Mrs. McLachlan: No I haven’t she was very, very gracious on the phone, and she was to send some lady over here with a tape recorder. And she never came. Interviewer: Oh, I know who Mrs. [Barbara] Roelofs is, she is the Heritage Hill lady. She is the one that was the head of the Heritage Hill. Mrs. McLachlan: Mrs. Roelofs? Yes, didn’t you know her father? �23 Interviewer: No, I don’t know her, I’ve always worked just at the Voigt House, and I’ve never been an official. The name was familiar to me and I was just…. Mrs. McLachlan: She is Dr. Roelofs’ wife and then there is Dr. Pilling’s wife. Interviewer: I have met Dr. Pilling’s wife, I’ve worked with her. Mrs. McLachlan: I’ve saw her in the picture in the paper in the foyer of the Voigt home. Interviewer: This one home that you mention is later known as the Edmund Wurzburg home, and sold to the Franciscan Fathers, that is on Lake Drive, isn’t it? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, my father built that picture gallery for Mrs. Clark, Melvin Clark’s wife. Is that the name? Interviewer: Yes, Melvin Clark…. Mrs. McLachlan: I met him too when I was over at one office. He came in there and that was before my father built that, yes. He said, ―You know what, Margaret my daughter,‖ (she was his daughter Mrs. Edmund Wurzburg) ―wants me to buy her a car.‖ Interviewer: Oh, Mrs. McLachlan: I said, ―Well, why don’t you?‖ He said, ―You mean that?‖ I said, ‖Yes, why don’t you buy her a car?‖ I was in my twenties then. He said, ―I guess I will.‖ Interviewer: Oh, dear. Mrs. McLachlan: Another one was the old Claredon Hotel, where Olds Manor is today? My father built that. Interviewer: He built that? Mrs. McLachlan: The Claredon and then it was razed and Rowe brothers who owned the Valley City Milling Company right next door, right across the canal. Or was there a canal? Not on the east side, there wasn’t. They bought that and built the Rowe Hotel, because at that time there were these furniture men were all coming to town and .. Interviewer: Oh, for the exhibitions, yes. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, exhibitions they had to have more hotels. So they built the Rowe Hotel and later on it was changed to the Olds Manor for the elderly and it was taken over by Fountain Street Baptist Church first, and then I don’t know who is running that now. But they didn’t have too much luck with it, Fountain Street Church. Interviewer: No, they tried to run it as an old people’s home, didn’t they? �24 Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, Interviewer: It’s a commercial thing now, isn’t it? Mrs. McLachlan: I guess, my brother in law was there for awhile, so was Judge Raymond Starr. Interviewer: Is there a North Star Hotel, too? Mrs. McLachlan: Over in Comstock Park, that wasn’t much of a hotel but for a small place like Comstock Park, it was. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: And Mr. Teele, Joseph Teele ran it. I knew that family, the whole family, they had the Watson House before they went out there. They owned the Watson House was on the corner of Bridge Street and Lexington. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: And that old building, I don’t know if it is still there or not. I don’t get over to the West side at all. Interviewer: To get back and forth over there now…. Mrs. McLachlan: I have a niece over living in my sister’s house and she stayed right there, bought it when my brother-in-law died, she and her husband bought it and she lives there all alone now in that big house. And I haven’t been in that house in ten years, and she is right in the city. We talk to each other over the phone. Interviewer: well, it is probably just as hard for her to get back and forth as it is for you. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, she has a busy life, and doesn’t drive anymore. She’s seventy-five now. I was raised over on the West side. Interviewer: Now, were you, you mentioned you went to St. Mary’s when Ralph was going to Union High School. Did he go to Union High before he went off to Andover then? Mrs. McLachlan: Oh yes, Union High, they call it Union High, it was a high school at one time, if there was elementary classes there I don’t know that. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: They called it Union High. Interviewer: I remember reading about it. �25 Mrs. McLachlan: It was located on Turner Street. So was St. Mary’s School. My father built St. Mary’s School, the Convent and the Rectory. Then he built the Palmer and Buchanan Street Schools for the Board of Education. But those have all been replaced, not St. Mary’s. Interviewer: But the public schools have been. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, the man next door went to the original Palmer Street School. Interviewer: The Palmer Street School and the Buchanan Street School. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I got that on my list. I guess, I gave you the one that has Charles Greenway’s name on it. No, this is the one I want you to have. You want to take this? Interviewer: I would love to, if you don’t mind parting with it? Mrs. McLachlan: No, I don’t need it for anything. I got these other two copies, which is that one? The little one? Interviewer: That is the little one, you’d better keep that. Mrs. McLachlan: I added more to it, that’s why. Interviewer: Yes, there is a lot more. Mrs. McLachlan: Do you want to take it along? Interviewer: I am afraid, do you have several copies there? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, I have several. Interviewer: I would like to have that. Mrs. McLachlan: That name is so hard to remember. It is pronounced Youngbaker (Jungbaecker)? You know the Knape and Vogt Company? Well, the German name was Knapee. From that original John Knape that got up that firm, that started that firm, his wife Dina was in the same Whist Club that my mother was. Interviewer: Oh, really. Mrs. McLachlan: We knew all these people. Interviewer: It was nice because Grand Rapids was smaller then. Mrs. McLachlan: Of course it was, I went around collecting, too and I met so many businessmen, lumbermen like Orin Ward. Orin A. Ward’s daughter married this Harrison Goodspeed. And this old man Ward was one of the nicest men you could ever meet; he was so nice to me and I was just a youngster in my teens then. Then there was old man [Frank] Chickering was in the lumber �26 business. He was in the Tower Building right across from the Pantlind Hotel where the Woolworths are today; and I used to go up to see him. I don’t know whether I collected, it must have been that; or whether they bought things from our firm or what. This Mr. Chickering was so nice. Interviewer: Is that when you were with Ocker & Ford? Mrs. McLachlan: That was my first office job, that’s where I learned all the office procedures. Interviewer: All that you needed to know. Mrs. McLachlan: Mr. Moore, was the bookkeeper, he came up from Widdicombe’s, and came over there and was our bookkeeper. Mr. Lindner(?) was the manager, then there were a lot of stockholders, Mr. [Clark H.] Gleason the lawyer. Old man Thayer, George W. Thayer was mayor of Grand Rapids at one time. The old house on Ottawa Street that was his; that should have been preserved. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: It was a one-story kind of stone house. Interviewer: Oh, it’s always a shame to see those beautiful old places go, isn’t it? Mrs. McLachlan: There is one on Front Street, too, it was all made of cobblestone or something. Interviewer: Yes, yes. Mrs. McLachlan: Then there was Mr. Sherwood, Robert Sherwood, was a nephew of the Mr. Thayer, and he was one of the biggest fruit growers in Michigan. He had this big farm in Watervliet. Interviewer: Yes, Mrs. McLachlan: He was vice-president of this firm. But that was before I went with them. Interviewer: I see, your father was an officer of Ocker and Ford at one time? Mrs. McLachlan: President Interviewer: President of it. Mrs. McLachlan: Twenty years. Interviewer: Twenty years, that is a long time. Was he doing building and being president at the same time? Both companies at the same time? �27 Mrs. McLachlan: But you see he wasn’t active in that business, he just took his business over there. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. McLachlan: That’s why he started this business because he was affiliated with his contracting business. Interviewer: It was to get all the finished carpentry done and finish all the millwork. Mrs. McLachlan: But the factories got out all the mantels and stuff, and like that. Interviewer: Was that mostly hand done or was it done on lathe? Mrs. McLachlan: No, most ,well some of it might have been done on lathes, but they did a lot of handwork. Interviewer: A lot of handwork, hand rubbed and polished? Mrs. McLachlan: This great big band saw, and [Alexander] Barbey was this little fellow, and I’d go up there, and run up and down those stairs two or three times a day, you know a couple of flights. I would go up there for some reason and Barbey would say, ―Want me to make you a little chair, cut you out a little wooden chair?‖ He would put a little chunk of wood on that band saw and in a few minutes, there would be a little chair. I wish I had saved all these things. Interviewer: Oh, yes. When they put the parquet floor in, was that put in on the spot, when they built the parquet floor, do you know? In the Voigt House? Mrs. McLachlan: Did they what? Interviewer: Did they fit the pieces as they laid it or was it already cut? Mrs. McLachlan: I would think it came in a certain design. Interviewer: I don’t know, I was just curious? Do you know anything about that? Mrs. McLachlan: They used to call the first floor of the Power’s Theatre the ―parquet circle‖. I often wondered why. Interviewer: Maybe the floors? I don’t know either. I think it is nice we are preserving the Voigt House, I think. It is certainly an example. Mrs. McLachlan: There were other houses that were beautiful, too here in town. Interviewer: Or prettier houses, but this is so complete though. Mrs. McLachlan: You take that McInerney home... �28 Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: …and some of the others, the one that always like so much was on the corner of Union and Cherry. It was a man by the name of Friant, a lumberman that built that. That was always my favorite and right across the street was the Metz home – of the Metz Building. And there was another one that Mr. Lemmon once lived in. It was her home, she was Mrs. Cramer and then he married her after his wife died. Leavenworth was the head of the G R & I Railway and that was right next to, on the corner is the Jonkhoff Funeral Home. Before that was Mr. Straight, he was the manager of the Majestic Theatre anyway, whatever his name was; he built that house. And right next door to this was the Cramer home and that was one of my pet ones. Just the kind of house I would have liked, you know. And later on it was sold to the St. Andrew’s Cathedral, to the parish I mean. Interviewer: Yes, is that where the bishop lives now? Mrs. McLachlan: Yes Bishop Kelly lived there. Interviewer: That’s a beautiful house. Mrs. McLachlan: Yes, it is. Interviewer: Actually the Voigt House may not be the prettiest house in town, but it is beautifully preserved and everything is in it. Mrs. McLachlan: Well, they kept it like it was in those days. Interviewer: Yes and when you go into it now and you can see what it looked like in nineteen five, you know. Mrs. McLachlan: Eighteen ninety-five. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: And they never even remodeled the bathrooms, and the old-fashioned tubs, and the marble-topped lavatories. That’s what we had too, the marble topped lavatories too. Interviewer: The downstairs bathroom has what looks like to me to be like a sitz bath in it. Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I didn’t see that. Interviewer: No, must have been off the bedroom … Mrs. McLachlan: Off the bedroom. Interviewer: Off the bedroom where he was, and you wouldn’t have seen that. Mrs. McLachlan: I didn’t see the kitchen or the ballroom. �29 Interviewer: Now the ballroom is not open to the public, that’s way upstairs, right. Mrs. McLachlan: Well, I don’t blame them. Interviewer: Well, I think the trouble is there is so much stored up there, you know, they found dresses from way back. Mrs. McLachlan: They kept everything. Interviewer: It’s nice because you can see a picture of Mrs. Voigt; well we have the dress she is wearing. You know, down there they will have a model will wear the dress she is wearing in the picture. Oh, their beautiful. Mrs. McLachlan: Are they that well preserved, they probably have closets up there. Interviewer: Oh, beautiful wardrobes to keep them. Mrs. McLachlan: Miss Lindner had them too. Interviewer: Gorgeous handwork. Mrs. McLachlan: The dressmakers did a lot of that, they were proud of their trade. Interviewer: Did you make your first communion dress? You had to have a sewing machine for that, didn’t you? You didn’t have to make it all by hand? Mrs. McLachlan: My sister Mary made it. I was only twelve. She was nine years older. Interviewer: She made it for you. Mrs. McLachlan: She made this plain white dress. I had my picture taken. I got to thinking about that collaret one night, oh two or three years ago, and wondered if it shows on the picture and it does. I paid two dollars for it. Interviewer: I would hope it shows. Two dollar collaret, well that’s a lot of money. When you think the men worked the whole week for eighteen dollars, then a two dollar collaret is pretty much. Mrs. McLachlan: And a foreman, and when he hired this one young man, the Heller Brothers, of Youngstown, Ohio used to throw a lot of work to us and Mr. Lindner would go down there and he met this young man just come back from Europe, educated in Europe and he’d speak four different languages. And he hired him to come up and do the drafting. Lay out the work and everything; we had a drafting room in back of the office, all in one building. He paid him fifteen dollars a week. Interviewer: Oh, my. �30 Mrs. McLachlan: With that kind of education, he was very well educated, and I kind of liked him too, he would come over to the house. It was natural for him to take me out because he didn’t know anybody else, you know. Very handsome looking, I have a picture of him in the drafting room, he took mine and I took his. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: There were the men in the upper floor were interested in photography, so they had the two top floors. The original Grand Rapids Camera Club. Later on I was in that too. Interviewer: For goodness sakes. Mrs. McLachlan: Later on I was on the board of directors. Interviewer: So you used to take a lot of pictures yourself. Mrs. McLachlan: I have just oodles of them, they’re seventy years old, just snap shot after snap shot. I bought a camera when I was about eighteen or nineteen years old. And then, when we bought the cottage, most of pictures were from down there. Interviewer: That’s the trouble, when you are at home you forget to take pictures of everything around you, don’t you, as it was. Mrs. McLachlan: I had pictures of my new house, my bedroom and I had a brass bed there. I don’t know what happened; I think I tore that up. Pictures of the inside upstairs and lot of them of downstairs, pictures of the rooms downstairs but Arthur said don’t you give those pictures away. Of course, he’s in some of them, he was young boy then. Interviewer: They are very precious then and they sure are. Mrs. McLachlan: Some of the old bathing suits I had. Interviewer: Now, how long, did everybody work sixty hours a week then? They worked six days a week, right, ten hours a day? Mrs. McLachlan: Ten hour and ten minutes a day, so they could get out at five o’clock on Saturday afternoons. And they just looked forward to that extra hour. Of course, they put it in during the week, but they looked forward to getting off a little early. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. McLachlan: I was the same. I got there at quarter to seven in the morning. Interviewer: Oh my goodness, �31 Mrs. McLachlan: I gave out the clock tickets, we had a watchman’s clock, and my husband’s uncle ran that watchman’s clock. He had an office in… the not the Pantlind but the Sweet’s Hotel in the basement. The stairs were on the outside, and the offices were the coal office down there… INDEX A F American Boxboard Company · 6 B Ball-Barnard-Putnam Wholesale Grocery Company · 22 Barbey, Alexander · 28 Bissell Company · 8 Booth Memorial Hospital · 9 Boston Store · 10 Buchanan Street School · 26 Buist, Mrs. · 16 C Chickering, Frank · 27 City Hall · 9 Claredon Hotel · 24 Clark, Mr. · 5 Clark, Mrs. Melvin · 24 Cramer, Mrs. · 29 Crescent Mill · 1, 11 Creston Mortuary · 8 D Dengler Brothers (Fred and John) · 20 Diver, Miss · 12 Dykhouse, Mr. · 6, 8, 22 Fosget, Ralph · 20 Fountain Street Baptist Church · 24 Friant (home) · 29 G G R & I Railway · 29 German Parochial School · 4 Gleason, Mr. Clark H. · 27 Goodspeed family · 6 Goodspeed, Harrison · 6, 27 Goodspeed, John · 6 Grand Rapids Camera Club · 20, 31 Greenway, Charles · 26 H Hake, Dr. · 7, 11 Hake, Dr. and Mrs. · 16 Herpolsheimer family · 12 Herpolsheimer store · 12 Hooker, Harriett E. · 1 I Irwin, Mr. Robert · 22 J E Evangeline Home · 8 Jack, Mr. (William) · 6 Jack, William · 6 Jonkhoff Funeral Home · 29 Jungbaecker, Anna · 5 Jungbaecker, John · 1 Jungbaecker, Mary · 2, 9, 31 �32 Jungbaecker, Veronica Elizabeth Josephine · 1 K Keister, Johanna Frances · 1 Kelly, Bishop · 29 Klanderman, Miss Annette · 12 Knape and Vogt Company · 26 Knape, John · 26 L Leavenworth, Mr. · 29 Lemmon, Mr. · 29 Lindner, C. A. · 8 Lindner, Miss · 21, 30 Lindner, Mr. · 27, 31 Lypse, Ralph · 5 M Majestic Theatre · 29 May Company · 7 May, Bernhard · 7, 8 May, Meyer · 7 McInerney (home) · 29 McLachlan, Ford H. · 1 McLachlan, John Norman · 1 Metz (home) · 29 Metz Building · 6, 29 Perkins, Mr. · 6 Pilling, Dr. (wife) · 24 Power’s Theatre · 29 R Reed’s Lake · 6, 21 Robert Irwin Furniture Company · 22 Roelofs, Dr. · 24 Roelofs, Mrs. [Barbara] · 4, 23 Roelofs, Mrs. Charles · 23 Rowe Hotel · 24 Royal Furniture Company · 22 S Shanahan, Maurice · 8 Sherwood, Robert · 8, 27 St. Andrew’s Cathedral · 29 St. Mary’s School · 25, 26 Starr, Judge Raymond · 7, 25 Starr, Minnie · 7 Straight, Mr. (home) · 29 Sweet’s Hotel · 32 T Teele, Joseph · 25 Thayer, George W. · 27 Tower Building · 27 N U North Star Hotel (Comstock Park) · 25 Union High School · 8, 25 O V O’Connor, Miss · 23 Ocker and Ford Company · 5, 8, 20, 27, 28 Olds Manor · 7, 24 Valley City Milling Company · 24 VanderVelde, Charlie · 20 Voigt family · 5, 10 Voigt House · 1, 4, 7, 8, 9, 13, 15, 16, 19, 21, 23, 28, 29 Voigt, Carl · 10, 12 Voigt, Clara · 7, 11 Voigt, Frank · 10 Voigt, Mr. and Mrs. C. A. · 17 Voigt, Mr. C. A. · 11, 12, 21 P Palmer Street School · 26 Pantlind Hotel · 27 �33 Voigt, Mrs. · 30 Voigt, Ralph · 3, 4, 8, 10, 12, 16, 17, 25 Voigt-Herpolsheimer store · 13 W Ward, Orin A. · 27 Watson House · 25 Woolworths · 27 Wurzburg, Edmund (home) · 24 Wurzburg, Margaret (Clark) · 24 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/906c598f489cd2ee0e412016141fc2b0.mp3 93b67ddc1a8125ef218596d49900e890 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_54McLachlan Title A name given to the resource McLachlan, Veronica Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource McLachlan, Veronica Description An account of the resource Veronica Jungbaecker was born on August 1, 1883 in Grand Rapids. Her father, John Jungbaecker, was the building contractor for the Voigt House. She married Ford McLachlan in 1920. She worked at the Robert Irwin Furniture Company as a secretary/bookkeeper. Mrs. McLachlan died on December 21, 1988. 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 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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? �9 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. �10 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. �11 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 �12 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. �13 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. �15 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. �16 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? �17 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... �18 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 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_51Wilson Title A name given to the resource Wilson, Elizabeth Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wilson, Elizabeth Description An account of the resource 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. 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 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/36e1106395c5d5c93de33d39275282ba.pdf 84bb7dc1bf45614d6e1ea8e116f0803d PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mr. Donald G. Denison. Interviewed on May 15, 1975 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape # 50 (51:21) Biographical Information Donald G. Denison was born 22 April 1891 in Grand Rapids and died 21 Aug 1983. He was the son of Arthur C. Denison and Susan L. Goodrich. He married Adeline Smith in 1917. Arthur Carter Denison, son of Julius Coe Denison and Cornelia Carter was born 11 November 1861 in Paris Township, Kent County. He died 24 May 1942 in Cleveland, Ohio and was buried in the Oak Hill Cemetery in Grand Rapids. Susan L. Goodrich, daughter of Hiram and Cornelia Goodrich, was born on 17 June 1864 in Grand Rapids and died on 5 May 1896 at the age of 31 and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Arthur and Susan were married 7 September 1886 in Grand Rapids. On 24 May 1898 Arthur married as his second wife, Julia B. Barlow, the daughter of Heman G. and J. Ruth (Hall) Barlow. Julia was born in November 1875 in Grand Rapids. She passed away on 6 July 1956 in Grand Rapids and was buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. ___________ Interviewer: This is the interview being conducted at the residence of Mr. Donald Denison, 31 South Prospect, on May fifteenth, nineteen seventy-five. I thought we’d start the interview by talking about the death of Mr. Denison’s grandfather which occurred on June twenty-fifth, eighteen seventy-seven. I’ll let you take it on from there, Mr. Denison. Donald: Alright, I’ll begin on how he got there. He came out here, I think in the early fifties, perhaps, and he bought two farms…one to the north of Grand Rapids and one to the south of Grand Rapids. And he farmed both of these places for several years. Somewhere along the way he…. he came into knowledge of this house at the corner of Ransom and Lyon. Interviewer: At the northwest corner, right? Donald: Yes. Interviewer: Which had been left high and dry in the air, by the cutting down of Ransom Street and Lyon Street, and I suppose he bought it for a comparative bargain because of that reason. Interviewer: Do you know who built the house? �2 Donald: No, but, somewhere around here is a clipping that tells all about it, I can perhaps find it before we get through. Interviewer: Yes, and your…I think you mentioned that your father had helped build a retaining wall there. Donald: Grandfather bought the place at a bargain I assume and built the retaining wall of the stone from the Grand River. Interviewer: OK. Donald: And my father, remembered vaguely, thinking he was helping his father with the stonework. He was probably a small boy of four or five… Interviewer: Yes. Donald: or so. Interviewer: Your father was born in eighteen sixty-one. Donald: Born in sixty-one, so this would’ve been in, in… Interviewer: Well, in the middle… Donald: Either that or in the late sixties sometime, yes. Interviewer: Well, I remember the house quite well because it was, well, it was sort of quaint, noted house... Donald: Yes. Interviewer: …and was built of Grand River Limestone, I believe. How long did your family live on in that house? Donald: They lived here only until he died, wait a minute, longer than that. He died in seventyseven. Interviewer: Right. Donald: And, they lived there at least, they possessed the house until I would think the early eighties. Interviewer: Ok. Donald: I know, there’s some diaries of my father’s who can make some kind a sale? And at that time, I think he was in Ann Arbor, as a law student. �3 Interviewer: Yes. Donald: So they had it for some years. Interviewer: Let me shut it off for a second…About or what year did your father-grandfather come to Grand Rapids? Donald: In the early fifties Interviewer: In the early fifties? Where was he born? Donald: He was born at, are we on the air now?’ Interviewer: Yes, he was born in.... Donald: Born in Durham, New York. Interviewer: Durham, New York. Donald: Which was in the Catskills. Interviewer: I see. Donald: And that family, his father’s name was John. That family came from Durham, New York to…. Interviewer: To Durham? Donald: To Eastern New York. Interviewer: Oh, I see. Donald: And settled… Interviewer: Well… Donald: I, trying to think… Interviewer: Well, was it an old colonial family? Donald: They came from…Yes; they came a generation or two before that from Connecticut. The first Denison was discovered in Connecticut in sixteen forty. Interviewer: Did he arrive there about that time? Donald: He was discovered there but…. Interviewer: I see. �4 Donald: How he got there or when, nobody knows. Interviewer: Your grandfather’s name was Julius, right? Donald: My grandfather’s name was Julius. Interviewer: He didn’t live for a great many years; I think he died when he was about fifty-four. Maybe you can describe the account of his death? Donald: Yes, there was a dispute to which he ended up-ended up before the alderman or the board of supervisors, whoever was in control of the city and county of that time, as to allowing or not allowing cattle to graze in the streets, besides the streets. Now whether that grandfather’s interest was pro or con, I don’t know. Interviewer: I think it was pro; at least it seemed that he wanted cows to be allowed in there. Donald: Should or should not cows be allowed? Interviewer: Yes. Donald: And he appeared before the council, to speak on the subject. But whether he was pro or con, I never knew. Interviewer: Well, I think the clipping is that I saw yesterday indicates that he was pro. Donald: Alright, at any rate, in the middle of his little speech or talk that he was making, I think he was standing before the council, he fell to the ground and promptly died. And whether he’d had any previous troubles or, with heart or otherwise I don’t know but I don’t think so, I never heard of any. Interviewer: Was he active in farming? Donald: Oh, yes. Interviewer: But he lived downtown? Donald: By this time, he lived in this house on the corner, what we’re talking about, and farmed the two farms by horse and buggy. Interviewer: Yes, I see but he actually lived right in the house in the heart of the city. Donald: Operated these two farms. Interviewer: One on the north end of town. Donald: One was across…I have a hard trouble remembering the names. �5 Interviewer: Well, some of the street names have changed, but I think it was almost up to the Kent Country Club, right around there. Donald: Right across Knapp Street from the present Kent Country Club was one farm. The other was out Paris, which is now grown up and city. Interviewer: Yes. And who was your grandmother? Donald: Grandmother was Cornelia Carter. Interviewer: Where did she come from? Donald: Who also came from rural western New York. Interviewer: Yes. Donald: They were married before they came out here. Interviewer: Did she outlive your grandfather for some years? Donald: Yes, indeed, she lived until nineteen seventeen. Interviewer: I have a note here, right. You must have pretty vivid memories of her? Donald: Of course, I was married by that time, and she lived long enough to know Adeline, my wife. We were married in nineteen seventeen. Interviewer: Yes. Donald: She was eighty-seven, I think. Interviewer: So, she lived a long time after her husband died. I believe your family moved at some point to a house also on Lyon Street, it was three twenty-nine; I drove by the house yesterday. It is still there, it has been covered unfortunately with aluminum siding, but you must remember that house. Were you born in that house? Donald: I was born in that house, and lived there until I went to college. Interviewer: Where did you go to college? Donald: University of Michigan. Interviewer: Right. Donald: I graduated in nineteen thirteen. �6 Interviewer: Your father [Arthur C.] was of course, a noted jurist and also went to University of Michigan, I believe and took his law degree there. And then came back to practice in Grand Rapids. Who were some of his earliest law partners and associates? Donald: He was a junior partner, protégée’ of Edward Taggert. Edward Taggert was the uncle of Johnson Taggert who was for many years the city attorney here. Interviewer: Who was Moses Taggert? Donald: Moses Taggert was Edward Taggert’s brother. Interviewer: I see... Donald: And … Interviewer: He practiced law though with other men and I believe two great uncles of mine, Hugh and Charles Wilson. Donald: Alright, the firm original was just plain Taggert with father as a helper then, when he came in it was Taggert and Denison, then your great uncle Charles joined them and for many years and in my youth, it was Taggert, Denison and Wilson. Interviewer: Yes, where did they have their offices? Donald: They had their offices in the Michigan Trust building, where I could get a haircut for a quarter, and tell the haircut operator that my father would pay it when he came along the next day. Interviewer: I see. I took the liberty of bringing some notes with me, but your father received an appointment as federal judge directly from President Taft, is that correct? Donald: Yes, he was appointed as successor to Judge Wanty, in nineteen nine, perhaps and before very long, a matter of only few short years he was appointed to the Cincinnati Court, where he continued until his seventieth birthday. Which was… Interviewer: Well, it was in nineteen thirty-one, yes. Donald: That sounds right. Interviewer: He was born on the tenth of November. And there was an interesting…. Donald: Now… Interviewer: Excuse me, go ahead. Donald: At that time he resigned from the court, which is quite different for retiring. A retiring judge as I understand it, is serving to call and still a member of the judiciary. �7 Interviewer: Yes. Donald: A resignee is through and free to go and practice law. Interviewer: Why did he resign? Donald: I presume to make some money. He would have never grown rich in the judicial business and he had a notion of resigning and coming back to Grand Rapids acting in an advisory capacity of someone here. He discussed the subject with Mr. Keeney. Interviewer: But that didn’t materialize. Donald: About that time Mr. Baker of Cleveland, the ex-Secretary of War…. Interviewer: Milton D. Baker. Donald: Milton D. Baker suggested to father that perhaps it would be a good idea for him to come down and join him as counsel, which appealed to him. And he did so; practiced law there for some ten years, which were very successful and happy years for him in association with Baker both socially and in the business. Interviewer: Did you know Mr. Baker yourself? Donald: I got to know him quite well and became a great admirer of him. Interviewer: He was quite an interesting personality, I believe, but I don’t know much about him. Donald: Well, I remember one thing about him. I was in his library in his house in Cleveland, and the library was lined to the ceiling with books and in the frieze around the top was a set of books in red leather and it made a complete frieze around the library. I asked him, “What are they?” And he said one thing you got for being Secretary of War; that was when you left they backed up a truck to your house and gave you the complete record of all the official documents of the Civil War. That was a tradition and there they were. That reminded me to ask him a question or two that puzzled me about Civil War times and he said well, let’s see. And he got a ladder, brought it out, climbed up on the ladder and looked at the books and got one down and studied it and answered my question. Interviewer: So you learned something? Donald: I learned something. Interviewer: And Mr. Baker died before your father did, as I recall, but your father stayed on in the firm. Donald: Father was here visiting when he got a telephone call, that Mr. Baker had died. It was a blow, of course. �8 Interviewer: About when did your family move into this house? Donald: nineteen sixteen. Interviewer: Yes. Who built this house? Donald: Mr. Sligh Interviewer: Mr. Charles Sligh? Donald: Mr. Charles Sligh built the house in eighteen ninety-one. Interviewer: I see. Did he live here until the time of the sale? Donald: He owned it until that time. Interviewer: Yes. Donald: The house was rented for a short time. I am trying to think of the name of the family. The girl in the family married Paul Hollister. Interviewer: Yes, I can’t tell you. Donald: They rented this house for a very short time. Interviewer: Yes. Donald: Otherwise it never had occupants except Slighs and Denisons. Interviewer: Now when your father went to Cleveland in nineteen thirty or thirty-one or thirtytwo, did you stay on in this house? Donald: We moved into this house. Interviewer: I see. Donald: It had stood vacant for a time; then we moved into it. Interviewer: And you are still here. Let’s see, let’s go back a minute, you were born in the house over on Lyon Street, three twenty-nine? Donald: And that’s right Interviewer: Do you remember much about that neighborhood? Donald: Well, I grew up there, so I remember a lot of course. The Idemas were our close neighbors; they directly across the street. Interviewer: Yes. And who were some of the other neighbors? �9 Donald: The Henry Idemas, also Fred Idemas. Fred Idema was Henry Idema’s brother and they lived right next to each other across the street. The Treadways lived next door to the Idemas and the Whitmans built a house right next to us and sold it quite shortly to Frank Dykema. Interviewer: Was he the druggist? Donald: Dykemas, no (Pat was?) Interviewer: Did the Barlows live nearby? Donald: Barlows lived next door. They were my step-grandparents. We boys, there were three of us and we really had two homes. It was humorously said that we would go into the two kitchens to see which house was serving up the dinner that we liked we would settle down in that house. Interviewer: How old were you when your mother died? Donald: Five years old. I remember her, vaguely remember a few fleeting pictures of her. Interviewer: Your father remarried and married Julie Barlow. Donald: And they were our next door neighbors, Julia Barlow, that’s right. Interviewer: So you have pretty vivid memories of the Barlow family. Who are the Barlows; I mean who were Mr. and Mrs. Barlow? Donald: Heman Barlow was in the wholesale grocery business with Mr. Judson in what later turned out to be the Judson Grocery Company. The Barlows were originally New England family that turned into U.E. Loyalists and went to Canada and then re-immigrated here in 1860, I think. How they got to Grand Rapids from Canada I do not know, but they came here when Grandfather Barlow was ten years old Interviewer: He was born in eighteen fifty, at one point he was a bookbinder, I understand. Donald: It was his brother. Interviewer: His brother, I see. Donald: Yes, although it was known as Barlow Brothers. Series of bound volumes are still around here, falling apart most of them. Interviewer: Where did you go to school? Donald: I went to Fountain Street School to begin with, which was where Central High School is now. �10 Interviewer: I see. That’s why they call Fountain School, Fountain School, I suppose. They built Fountain School around the corner on College. Interviewer: Yes, it is still. Donald: They continue to call it Fountain Street School. Then by the time we got to sixth grade we went to Central Grammar School, which comprised of seventh and eighth grades, yes. Interviewer: Where was that located? Donald: That was on the same grounds as the High School. The High School fronted on Ransom. And the Central Grammar School which had been the earlier High School, I think, it fronted on either Lyon or it fronted on Bostwick. So there were two buildings on that little campus, as it were; the High School and the Central Grammar School. Earlier there had been the old Stone school on that same location that my father and mother had both gone to. Interviewer: And that was on Bostwick or on Ransom? Donald: I think it occupied the grounds between them. Interviewer: I see. Did you go to Central High School after Central Grammar School? Donald: Then I went to Grand Rapids High School. Interviewer: Where was that? Donald: That was right there, that was the building that was just torn down in the last year. Interviewer: Oh, yes. Donald: It was not called Central because it was the only high school except the one on the west side and that only went thru the eleventh grade. And in nineteen eleven the present Central High School was built and assumed that name of Central High School. It was a continuation of the old Grand Rapids High School, same faculty, same records. Interviewer: You graduated from old Grand Rapids High School? Donald: There was no such thing as Central High School then. Interviewer: What year did you graduate? Donald: Nineteen eight Interviewer: Nineteen eight and you went directly there to Michigan. Donald: No, I worked for a year in the furniture factory, in the Macey Furniture Factory, Macey Furniture Company, made sectional bookcases. �11 Interviewer: I remember that because I think my grandfather was the director of it or something. Donald: Might well have been. It was headed by Otto Warneke. Interviewer: Hmmm. Donald: And it was quite a prosperous concern. Interviewer: Where was it located? Donald: On South Division, the building is still there, pretty well out South Division. Interviewer: I wonder who is in the building now. Donald: I think it is a storage building for somebody. Interviewer: Steelcase or one… Donald: Not Steelcase, who is…? Interviewer: Your knowledge of South Division is as bad as mine. Donald: I used to get up and ride the streetcar down there and get there at seven o’clock. I remember that. And we worked ten hours a day plus an extra ten minutes. The extra ten minutes were a credit that applied on Saturday so we could get away at noon on Saturday. Interviewer: I see. Donald: And still have our sixty hours for the week. Pay was a dollar an hour. Interviewer: Was that pretty good pay? Donald: It was pretty good for me. Interviewer: Then you went to the University of Michigan from there. Donald: After a year of that, I decided I better get an education and then went to the University of Michigan. Interviewer: What was your class there? Donald: Class of nineteen thirteen. Interviewer: Nineteen thirteen and you were married in nineteen seventeen you said. Donald: Nineteen seventeen. Interviewer: Was Mrs. Denison, your first wife from Grand Rapids? �12 Donald: No indeed. She was from Hinsdale, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. Interviewer: I see. Donald: She had connections at White Lake where we had a summer cottage. Interviewer: What was her maiden name? Donald: Adeline Smith. Interviewer: Adeline Smith. Now let me just take a look at these notes I made. After college what did you do? Donald: I got a job at the Ford Motor Company of Canada, in Walkerville right across from Detroit and was there until practically, until the war. Interviewer: Perhaps, I should have asked what did you major in at Michigan. Donald: Literature, Science and the Arts, so called. Interviewer: Did that? Donald: They had no majors at that time, probably history. Interviewer: I see. Donald: I took a lot of history; there were no formal majors at that time. Interviewer: The first job you took after college graduation was not in any way related to what you studied at U of M? Donald: That’s right. Interviewer: And how long were you with Ford? Donald: Three years. Interviewer: Then you went into the service? Donald: Then I went into the service. Interviewer: Tell me about what you did, what rank you achieved and where you were and so forth. Donald: Well I went to first do is Training Camp at Fort Sheridan, received a commission as First Lieutenant. Interviewer: Then you went abroad? �13 Donald: I never went abroad, Fort Sill Oklahoma the Artillery School, stayed there two years, till the war was finished. Interviewer: Then you returned to Grand Rapids? Donald: In the meantime I was married. I was married just before going to Fort Sheridan. The work down there was training, and firing practice on the firing ranges. I there got a captains commission to the Ninth Artillery and we fired a lot of ammunition at no enemies. No, I didn’t come back to Grand Rapids I came back to Detroit and got a job there with the National City Company of New York, which was a (?) of the National City Bank of New York, selling bonds. And there in and out of Municipal Bonds business for quite a few years. Interviewer: Did you live in Detroit all those years? Donald: I lived in Grosse Isle, just outside of Detroit twelve, thirteen years. Our children were either born there or nearby, grew up there. Down the road from us a half- mile lived the Johnson family, and Mrs. Johnson is upstairs here now. Interviewer: So you met your second wife while you were living… Donald: Oh, yes we were old friends; families were friends and neighbors for a dozen years. Interviewer: And you were in and out of the bond business for a number of years? Donald: I was in it… Interviewer: How long did you stay in that business? Donald: I stayed in that until the Second World War. Interviewer: When did you return to Grand Rapids? Donald: I returned to Grand Rapids in nineteen thirty-three, at the time of the bank failure. Interviewer: Yes. Was that a pretty hard time for you? Donald: That was a rather difficult time, yes. Interviewer: As it was for a good many. Donald: The job had shortly vanished. I was with the Guardian Company in Detroit which was part of one of the banking groups that went down the precipice. [Union Guardian Trust Company of Detroit] Interviewer: Was that? Donald: So I had no job for some time and no money, yes it was a difficult time. �14 Interviewer: Was that Guardian Company in Detroit associated with the one in Cleveland? Donald: No. Interviewer: (?) Seems to me there was a group there… Donald: At that time, having no job, I organized a company of my own, consisting of mostly myself. And ventured into the municipal bond business for myself and was there for several years and got along not too badly Then we moved back here. Interviewer: Then you were in business downtown. Where were you located? Donald: The Michigan Trust Building. Interviewer: So your children received their education in Grand Rapids about that period? Donald: Yes, Interviewer: One of the things I know about you, because I have been there and known other people that have summered there, for a great many years you have been going to White Lake, north of Muskegon Donald: My father had a cottage there and we have been going…. Interviewer: How long have you been going? When did your father first go there? Donald: Went there in eighteen ninety-two. I was a year old when we went there. Interviewer: Is that the cottage you had until recent years? Donald: That is the cottage we had until recent years. Interviewer: Were there already other people that had gone up there from Grand Rapids? Donald: The Butterfields and the Taggerts Interviewer: Did they go up before your father? Donald: They both had gone up before that time, so. Interviewer: Yes. Donald: By the time, I went up there I remember three Grand Rapids lawyers living right in a row, Mr. Wilson became the fourth. Interviewer: Mr. Hugh Wilson? Donald: No, Mr. Charles Wilson. �15 Interviewer: Charles Wilson? Donald: So at that time then that made four Grand Rapids lawyers in a row. Interviewer: How did you spend your time up there at White Lake? Donald: Digging in the garden and sailing. Interviewer: And I think, you maintained your interest in sailing at least until recent years. Donald: Yes, until recently. Interviewer: Did the families commute back and forth, I mean did your father have to come back to Grand Rapids or did he go up there and spend long periods of time? How did it work out? Donald: All those lawyers commuted weekends. Interviewer: Did they drive? Donald: No, drive what? Interviewer: Not automobiles. Not in the early nineties. Donald: Didn’t drive automobiles. Interviewer: Took trains I suppose. Donald: The Butterfields had horses, and they use to transport their horses up there, or bring them up there. The fathers would commute weekends by train to Whitehall and then boat down the lake. Interviewer: Yes. Donald: And they would arrive either Friday night or Saturday night and leave very early Monday morning and get back here the middle of the morning some time. Interviewer: About what time of year would you open up your cottage up there? Donald: When school closed. Interviewer: I see. Donald: Which was late in June. Interviewer: And you must have known a lot of people up there over the years. �16 Donald: There was a boarding house nearby called Partridges and many, many Grand Rapids people use to go up there. Grand Rapids people that had cottages up there were, the Butterfields, the Taggerts, the Wilsons, ourselves, the McNabbs, the Forbes’. Interviewer: Quite a settlement. Donald: Oh, yes. Interviewer: and you don’t go to White Lake anymore, but you go nearby I understand. Donald: Well, we go there, if I had a good strong arm, I could throw a stone into each lake. Interviewer: There is a ridge between them. Donald: Yes, there is a ridge in between. Interviewer: I know that your family had some connection with the Congregational Church, at one point with Park Church. Is that a family tradition that your family was Congregationalists going way back, or…? Donald: Yes, the grandparents, Denisons, were early members of that church. My family were; the Barlows were very active in it. Interviewer: I will just shut this off for a moment. END of Side One Interviewer: We will start again on this side and this time we’re going to talk about a letter you received from a young man the other day and your reply. It involves football at the University of Michigan. Why don’t you read parts of the letter you like to? This is your reply, I take it. Donald: It is too long for this business, isn’t it? Interviewer: No, it’s not too long. You can read as much or as little as you wish. Why don’t you read, maybe you should start with his inquiry. You received this letter the other day you said. Donald: Received this letter from a young man in Ann Arbor. He said for the past two years I have been very interested in the history of football here at the U of M and someday I hope to write a book. I was wondering if you can recall about your football days here. I believe you were a reserve halfback in nineteen ten, eleven and twelve weighing one hundred and one and five feet eleven tall. What were your teammates such as Benny Bender, Colin Quinn, Stan Wells, (?) Conklin and others. Do any games or instance standout? What kind of coach was Yost? It might interest you to know that as of nineteen seventy-two the alumni association numbers over one hundred surviving members of your nineteen thirteen class. Interviewer: Now, this is your reply. �17 Donald: This is my reply: Dear Bob, Your letter was like a bombshell, imagine anyone knowing or caring about the activities of a third string football player of sixty years ago. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Well, you deserve a good answer and I will try to give you something. What kind of coach was Yost? He was a good one. He loved football and he taught us personally. He didn’t sit in his office, if he had one, and direct his assistants. In fact, he only had one or two and didn’t let them do much. And every practice scrimmage he was in the middle, correcting and exhorting. He could whack a slowpoke on the back with a full swing and it was no love pat. At this time, he was perhaps thirty-five years old, strong, lean and tough. To demonstrate the use of hands on defense, he would grab one by the shoulder and toss them aside like a leaf. He liked to demonstrate the way to catch the ball. He would put his left hand with palm inward in front of his chest and say in his slightly southern drawl this hand says it can’t bound on back, you know. And place his right hand palm up waist high and say this hand says it can’t fall thru, you know. He was a Civil War buff and loved to compare war and football tactics. As for General Lee holding the line, Jackson ran the end. He was ahead of his time about vitamins. When the squad came into the training table, each place was set with a large salad and you ate that before you got anything else. He didn’t like to lose anymore than Woody Hayes. In the last game nineteen five, after five years of straight wins, Chicago took it two to nothing. Five years later, Yost was still maintaining that the officials made a ghastly mistake and that it really was a touchback and not a safety. Another famous game before my time which was in Chicago was billed as a battle of ages between the two supermen, Heston of Michigan Eckersall of Chicago. Eckersall ran faster but Heston ran harder and Michigan twenty-two- Chicago twelve. At age thirteen, I went my parents by special train from Grand Rapids. My memory of the actual game is a little vague, but a song of the Michigan rooters perhaps ten-thousand strong so tickled me that I have never forgotten it. It ran “Eckersall, Eckersall, when you are running with the ball, you could take an awful fall, Ecky Ecky Break your necky, Eckersall.” Later in college I could sing that song, nobody else knew it. Another game I remember well was a practice one, between the varsity and the reserves better know as a scrubbish. I was backing up the line for the scrubbish and having great success in sifting thru and tackling the varsity backs before they got started. My teammates all patted me on the back and told me how good I was, and I thought so too, but Yost didn’t seem to notice. A few days later I was having a beer with my good friend Tom Vogel, who was a regular and very good varsity lineman and while discussing this incident, he asked me did Yost say anything to you? I said no. Tom said, didn’t you know that I was letting you through. I thought you could do with a little recognition. He fooled me but he didn’t fool Yost. Does that sound like anything?… Interviewer: Yes, it sounds interesting. Was this, was George Thompson at Michigan at that time? What was his class? Donald: Yes, nineteen twelve. �18 Interviewer: Only a year apart. Donald: Yes. Interviewer: Do you remember any of his football exploits? I guess he was considered one of Michigan’s greats in those days. Donald: I remember how hard he hit when you tried to tackle him. Interviewer: Yes. Donald: He was tough, didn’t try to tackle him many times. We used to play these semi games…. Interviewer: We lost a little bit of the other side of the tape. And I want to go back to the story of going to the Kent Country Club again. Just as if we hadn’t heard it before, will you try to repeat it for me? Donald: Alright. The other day I was asked how long I had been going to the Kent Country Club and I recalled an early incident. In high school time perhaps nineteen six a high school fraternity party was at Kent Country Club and I told my parents I had asked a girl. It was the first time I had taken a girl anywhere to go to this party and I would have to have a cab because that is what everyone else is having. It didn’t mean a taxicab like today, it meant a horse drawn vehicle. My parents weren’t enthused about that. They said when they went to the same club as they frequently did, they went by streetcar and they opinioned that I could go by streetcar. Julius Amberg, a classmate, came to the rescue. His father had horses, and Julius and his girl and I and my girl went in style in a closed carriage with a coachman driving. Interviewer: Ordinarily you took the streetcar. Donald: Ordinarily everyone took the streetcar. Interviewer: Where did you board the streetcar and what…? Donald: We boarded the streetcar on Lyon Street in front of our house, rode on it down to the foot of Lyon at Monroe, Canal then. Took the Plainfield line out to Carrier Street and there transferred to a little one-horse line that went from Carrier Street out the remaining few blocks Kent. Interviewer: Was that… Donald: That car shuttled back and forth. Interviewer: Was it an electrical line? Donald: No, it was. Sure it was trolley cars, overhead trolley. �19 Interviewer: Yes, that went right to Kent Country Club? Donald: It shuttled between Plainfield and Kent Country Club, Plainfield Avenue just beyond Leonard. Interviewer: And you are still going out to the Kent Country Club, but not by streetcar anymore. I take it you spend a little time there when you’re in Grand Rapids. Donald: I go most every day and hit some practice balls if nothing else. I’m still hoping to improve my swing. Interviewer: You may! Donald: I may! Interviewer: Is there some tournament coming up in the near future? I thought I heard your wife speak that you are getting ready for some big event. Donald: I have a friend in Detroit that is an excellent golfer and he would like to come over here and play in a … I’ve forgotten what they call it; visitor’s tournament of some kind. That’s not the actual…. Interviewer: I see. Donald: That’s not the actual… Interviewer: Sure, I know what you mean, but I don’t know the name either. I’m not a golfer …. Donald: I’m practicing up so I don’t disgrace him too badly. Interviewer: That’s good, now you have lived on in this neighborhood Lyon Street in this house a great deal of your life. I am interested in getting you thinking about the changes that have occurred and you mentioned that you thought there was quite a little continuity as far as this particular part of the city if concerned. Donald: As far as this block and street, all of the houses have stayed the same. Most of them have been divided into a varying number of apartments. Interviewer: Who lived on either side of you? Donald: My early recollection, names leave me…. Interviewer: That’s not too important now. Just name some other families that lived in this block…. Donald: Alright, the Sears family lived in this building, the two Sears brothers and one across the street in what was later the Stewart house. �20 Interviewer: Steketees must have lived…. Donald: Steketees lived on the corner. Interviewer: I seem to recall Charlie Campbell lived… Donald: Charlie Campbell lived in the Steketee house after it was made into the apartments much later. Interviewer: Didn’t they live in the little house? Donald: The Campbells lived in three houses around here, the old Steketee house, the little house, and in an apartment down the street. I think they lived in the Steketee house when Charlie died. Interviewer: I think that is true. Has the neighborhood changed a great deal, do you think? Donald: Well, it’s held surprisingly well, so I suppose it changes because it is all apartments. Donald: The houses are externally unchanged. Interviewer: Go back to that house on Lyon Street where you were born. About when was that house built? Donald: I can almost plot it probably there, because I think that it was new when my father and mother were married and moved in to it, and that was Eighty-six, that’s about when it was built. Mr. Henry Idema built it on the vacant lot across the street. He lived on the other side of the street for speculation or investment perhaps, and sold it to my father when it was new. Interviewer: Well, it is still standing. Donald: It is still standing and with the Idema house across the street, it is one of most respectable ones there. Interviewer: And you had two brothers you mentioned. Donald: A younger brother and an older brother. Interviewer: And who was the older brother? Donald: That was John, some four years older than I, went to Chicago and spent his life in a bank there. Younger brother Arthur disappeared from a ship at sea. Interviewer: Really. Donald: At about thirty years of age. �21 Interviewer: I hate to ask this question, but what year were you born? Donald: Eighteen ninety-one. Interviewer: I could have reconstructed that, I guess. Donald: You could figure that one out? Interviewer: You’re in your middle eighties at this point. Donald: Middle aged, let’s say. Interviewer: Middle-aged. Donald: That’s better. Very lucky physically, as well as I ever was. Interviewer: That’s great. I think this has been a delightful interview, I might say that for the benefit for whoever listens to this someday. I came completely unprepared and discovered I didn’t have the little adapter to go on the plug, so Mr. Denison had the bright idea of just driving up the street and picking one up, which we did and we finally got the thing going. I must say, I didn’t even know we had a little electrical store a few blocks away that would have such an item, so with that I’ll turn it off and you can get ready to go to the Kent Country Club if that’s where you are going next. INDEX A Amberg, Julius · 19 B Denison, Arthur Carter (Father) · 2, 3, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 15, 16, 19, 21 Denison, Cornelia Carter (Grandmother) · 5 Denison, Julius Coe (Grandfather) · 1, 3, 4, 5, 11 Dykema Family · 9 F Baker, Milton D. · 7, 8 Barlow Family · 9, 10, 17 Butterfield Family · 15, 16 Ford Motor Company · 12 Fountain Street School · 10 C G Campbell Family · 21 Central Grammar School · 10 Congregational Church · 17 Grand Rapids High School · 11 D Idema Family · 9 Denison, Adeline Smith (1st Wife) · 1, 5, 12 I �22 J T Johnson Family · 6, 14 Taggert, Edward · 6 Taggert, Moses · 6 Thompson, George · 18 K Kent Country Club · 5, 19, 20, 22 U M Union Guardian Trust Company of Detroit · 14 University of Michigan · 6, 12, 17 Macey Furniture Factory · 11 N National City Company of New York · 13 S Sears Family · 20 Sligh, Charles · 8 Steketee Family · 20 W Wanty, Judge · 6 Warneke, Otto · 11 White Lake · 12, 15, 16 Whitman Family · 9 Wilson, Charles (Great-Uncle) · 6, 15 Y Yost, Bob · 17, 18 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/978ab47bd2d42adf7a9c785273e8a700.mp3 d370388d6f30ad9249010349122827b6 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_50Denison Title A name given to the resource Denison, Donald Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Denison, Donald Description An account of the resource Donald Denison was born in Grand Rapids, graduated from the University of Michigan ca. 1913, and served in WWI. His father was a judge who was appointed by President Taft in 1911 to the U.S. District Court of Appeals. Mr. Denison's father resigned as a judge in 1931 to enter private practice with the firm of Newton Baker, President Wilson's Secretary of War. Mr. Denison sold bonds through National City and his own company. He died August 21, 1983. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4ff324ff20bdecd158c6524e9e6dd6cd.pdf de88fc3eefc4d3aa6de2a21f05fde250 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mr. Charles MacLear Kindel Interviewed on March 13, 1975 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #49 (52:27) Biographical Information Charles MacLear Kindel, known as “Chuck” was born in Denver City, Colorado on 29 March 1899, the son of Charles J. Kindel and Jessie M. MacLear. He died in Grand Rapids on 10 September 1982. It was on 8 November 1924 that he married Katrina C. van Asmus probably in Illinois. The father, Charles Joseph Kindel was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on 13 June 1872. He was the son of Gabriel Kindl and Marianna Herkommer. Charles J. married Jessie Matilda MacLear on 8 June 1898 in Denver City. Jessie, born in St. Catherine’s, Ontario on 27 August 1876, was the daughter of Thomas MacLear and Mary E. Reynolds. The father, Charles died in Grand Rapids on 28 July 1962, and Jessie died on 19 July 1956 in East Grand Rapids. ___________ Interviewer: I’m at the residence of Mr. Charles Kindel, 1900 San Lu Rae; it’s Thursday, March 13th, 1975. Mr. Kindel, recently in the local newspaper I read that you had gone to Washington and that many years ago you were President Ford’s Scoutmaster, and you started to tell me about coming here and that you’d been in scouting before. Kindel: We came to Grand Rapids in nineteen thirteen from Wilmette, Illinois and I was a scout over there when I became twelve. And when we came to Grand Rapids I was a First Class Scout. Scouting was just starting in Grand Rapids, and I joined Troop One at Sigsbee School and worked at the boys scout camps in the summer time and I became the first Eagle Scout in Grand Rapids. Then after I returned from England, where I was production manager in an English furniture factory I got married, and had a boy on the way and I felt that I should return some of the service that adults had given me. As you know an adult gives a lot of service to the scout movement. So I became the Scoutmaster at Troop Fifteen which was at the Trinity Methodist Church on Lake Drive. And Jerry Ford, who was called Junior Ford at the time, joined the troop, and naturally he seemed to have the ability to make friends and was of course, very athletic, [and] very well liked. Interviewer: What year was that? Kindel: That was in the year of nineteen twenty-five. I had the troop for one year, and then they made me commissioner of the district of scouting which comprised of eight troops which I kind of oversaw with the help of the troop committees and the various troops. And as you can imagine �2 a troop is only as good as its scout master, and a good troop committee gets a good Scoutmaster. So my brother then took the troop over for a year. Jerry became an Eagle Scout in nineteen twenty-seven, and luckily he was appointed by Governor Green to be one of the Eagle Scouts to act as a color guard at Mackinac Island. Interviewer: How old was he about then? Kindel: And he must have been fifteen or sixteen. Then when the Boy Scout national headquarters looked up Jerry Ford’s records they found that I was his first Scoutmaster and they felt that for the annual meeting of scouting in Washington where they were holding a oratorical contest from boys all over the United States, which was sponsored by the Reader’s Digest, they had semifinals in Washington the night before I got there, and there were just the two boys left in each category that the C Scouts the Boy Scouts and the Explorer Scouts. Well then, I was flattered because I was introduced as the President’s Scoutmaster by everybody in Washington that I met connected with the Boy Scout movement. The next day I was told to meet the head that was handling the expedition to the White House to be at the front door of the hotel at eleven o’clock. And as we boarded the bus; the boys were all in the bus, about twelve - fourteen Eagle Scouts the man who was handling this as I entered the bus he said to the boys, “This was the President’s Scoutmaster.” Well they gave me a big hand as you can imagine, some of these scouts came to me and said “I just want to shake the hand of the Presidents Scoutmaster,” which I got a kick out of naturally. Then we went to the White House. Interviewer: When was this exactly? Kindel: That was on Tuesday the twenty-fifth, of February. Interviewer: February. Kindel: And, we went to the White House and were ushered into the Teddy Roosevelt room in which I’d never been in. It had a big picture of Teddy Roosevelt and his Charger, the Rough Rider. It was a lovely conference room with lovely furniture of course. Then we went in to see the President and the minute I walked in, because I headed the procession more or less, Jerry spoke right up and said, “Well there’s Chuck Kindel,” and we shook hands. The boys were welltrained, cause they went up to the president and said, “Mr. President, it’s nice to see you, my name is so and so from Houston, Texas” or wherever they came from. Jerry was just himself, he, no pomp and ceremony. We presented him with the collage, which was a painting that was done by an artist in New Jersey, depicting some of the activities that Jerry took part in as a scout. And then as we, he of course was very nice and responded and remembered some of the boys that were in the troop with him, as a matter of fact he mentioned two of the boys, Engle B and Engle A were twins, who were both admirals in the Coast Guard. �3 Interviewer: What were the last names? Kindel: Engle, E-N-G-L-E. I lost track of those boys, but they tell that Engle, one of the Engles is head of the Coast Guard now and the other one’s retired. Interviewer: I wonder if they’re any relation to Engle Whinery. Kindel: No relation to Engle Whinery that I could find. I tried to find out more about the family, the Engles. I did talk to several of the boys that were in the troop with us. Most of them had done pretty well, Jerry reminded me of these different boys and I was amazed that he remembered their names, because I was thinking back at some of the boys who were in my troop early, and I don’t remember many of those names, that’s so long ago; you want to remember this was fifty years ago. Interviewer: Can you remember some of the people some of the boys that were in Jerry’s troop? Kindel: Oh yes, there was Richard Cassidy; his father had a drugstore on Lake Drive and Robinson Road. And then there was Ed Perch who was a tool maker. Well I looked up quite a few of Wiersmas; there were three Wiersma brothers that were in the troop the same time. And of course a Behler, Gerald Behler, he was the chairman of the troop committee, the BehlerYoung company, and his boy was in the troop, too. He’s out in Colorado now I found out. Some of the boys are scattered around the United States. But, Jerry seemed to remember that really amazed me to see that he would remember so much of it. He talked about it to the other boys, who were there how we handled scouting in those days. And of course, the troop committee is the most important part. The church has done a wonderful job in getting good troop committees. It’s the men’s club activities for the Trinity Church and Roger Chaffee who was the Astronaut that died in the accident at the in the missile, was an Eagle Scout from the same troop. At the conclusion of the presentation, we all filed out. I happened to be at the tail end of it, because I had been the first one in. As we were going out, Jerry said, “Chuck wait just a minute, stay here will you,” so we were alone in the oval room together and he asked about our family, because he’s a friend of Ted and Nancy’s out in Vail, and I told him how much Ted’s kids appreciated the gold brackets that he gave them for Christmas. Then he pulled out of his pocket a pen with the Presidential seal on it and he said, “I’d like to have you give this to Katrina.” And then out of another pocket he brought out another box, and in it was a pair of cuff links with the Presidential seal on it for me, which of course I’ll appreciate. Then we said goodbye, we got back into the bus, went back to the big luncheon that was being held at this oratorical contest. And although I don’t like publicity, and being the front, I was a presented as being the President’s Scoutmaster which of course, pleased me but it was quite a crowd there. I had a lot of people come up to me and ask me if I would just shake their hand because I was the President’s Scoutmaster. Interviewer: Let’s go back to the beginning of your life, and ask some questions about where you were born, and sort of vital statistics, of that sort if I could. And then why don’t you take this up �4 to as far as you’re coming to Grand Rapids, and tell us about your father and the first furniture business he had here. Go back and start from the beginning. Kindel: I was born in Denver Colorado, because my father had a bedding and upholstery business in Denver. But in, he took the attitude that Denver would never be anything but a health resort. And so he decided when the World’s Fair was in, to be in 1904 in St. Louis, he sold his business and moved to St. Louis because he felt that the incoming people to see the World’s Fair would be good for the bedding and upholstery business. So while he was in St. Louis he invented the sofa bed, which incidentally all the sofa beds made today are on his original patents which he held, but of course they run out many years ago. We stayed in St. Louis, then that business grew, the sofa bed business and we went to New York, and he established a factory in New York City. We stayed in New York about two years. Then we went up and built a plant in Toronto, Canada for the Canadian Trade; which incidentally, was the most profitable of all of them from the dollars and cents stand point. Then we moved to Chicago, because he had to build another factory in Chicago for the Middle-West trade. Interviewer: What year would that have been? Kindel: That was in nineteen hundred and ten. Then the business was expanding so fast, and they were putting wood ends or arms on the sofa beds at that time, and he came to Grand Rapids because of the woodworkers in Grand Rapids. As you know Grand Rapids then was probably the best known for the woodworkers than any place in the country. He had many offers to go to other cities, but Grand Rapids seemed to be the most desirable from the woodworkers standpoint. But yet the city of Grand Rapids at that time didn’t want him to come to Grand Rapids. They were trying to keep industry out of Grand Rapids it seemed. And he bought the lot on, between Division and Jefferson on Garden Street. And the city did not cooperate in any way with him; as a matter of fact, there were three streets projected in the plot, they even charged my father for that land when the street were closed up cause they dead ended into railroad tracks. Then he had to have a water main come up from Division Street for high pressure sprinkler protection, and they did not do that, he had to pay for that. Interviewer: Why didn’t they want him to come, what was the reason? Kindel: Well, there was quite a clique in the woodworking games at that time, there were a great many furniture factories of course. And they, back there as I understand it they just didn’t want any industry to come into Grand Rapids because they were jealous of the establishment that they had made. As you know, in nineteen eleven they had a rather severe woodworker’s strike which was difficult to break, and they were afraid that industry coming in here. My father came in spite of that; and in nineteen hundred and fifteen, because Kroehler, the noted upholsterer, was building a sofa bed and infringing on my father’s patents. And although Peter Kroehler was friend of my father’s because my father had been president of the Upholsterers Association, and he told, as he said, told us he said to Pete Kroehler. One day he said, “Pete you and I are going to �5 go to the mat because you know that you’re infringing my patents and as soon as I get straightened around we’re going to take and have a suit.” And Pete Kroehler said, “No we’re not going to have a suit Charlie, I’ll buy you out.” And my father said, “Pete you can’t afford to buy me out,” and Pete Kroehler said, “Well, you name a price.” My father named a price and that was the final sale. So my father sold out and retired at the age of forty-two. And for ten years he agreed to stay out of the bed business. Interviewer: Was he in any other form of furniture business? Kindel: No, he couldn’t go into any furniture business for ten years. Interviewer: When did he resume? Kindel: Then in nine years and nine months the Foote-Reynolds company was available because… Interviewer: When was that? Kindel: In nineteen hundred and twenty four. On January tenth, nineteen twenty-four, Seal Reynolds, who was running the Foote-Reynolds plant died. Mrs. Reynolds was trying to carry on with the business, but she had enormous losses. And when I came back from England then I was to go to work for Kroehler in California, but Mrs. Reynolds wanted to sell the plant. My father [brought in] fact both my brother and myself in the business. Then we bought the original plant that he’d had built here in nineteen thirteen. Interviewer: Did that Foote-Reynolds business have any direct relationship with Mr. Stuart Foote? Kindel: Yes. Stuart Foote of course was a brother in law; and Clare Dexter was a brother-in-law. And Clare Dexter and Foote and Reynolds they bought this factory, and they made four poster beds. Interviewer: But they were also in the business? Besides Mr. Reynolds. Kindel: Well, they financially they were. Stuart Foote you know had the Imperial Furniture Company and then he backed his son Vernon Foote in what they called the Stuart Furniture Company, which is now the Oliver Machinery Company plant on the west side. Interviewer: What was Mr. Dexter’s business? Kindel: He was the President of the Grand Rapids Chair Company, and that was the original Foote family business, the Grand Rapids Chair Company. Then Stuart Foote broke away from that and built the Imperial Furniture Company, to make tables. And of course, it was much more successful than the Grand Rapids Chair Company. �6 Interviewer: Now let’s go back, to where your father started up here in about nineteen twentyfour. What kind of furniture did he manufacture? Kindel: Well we went on making the four poster beds for some time and then we made a convertible day bed. But before, I must go back here Lee, my father’s contract with Kroehler was that he would stay out of business for ten years, and we bought this plant in nine years and nine months. My father called Pete Kroehler and told him what he was doing and that he wouldn’t buy the plant for us if he would violate that agreement. Pete Kroehler said, “Go ahead Charlie, buy it,” that’s the way it worked. And we went on and made day beds that would convert from a day bed to a double day bed. And then in nineteen twenty-nine, we started to make our own case goods, that is the dressers, the chests to go with our four poster beds, and then we expanded into making just bedroom suites. Interviewer: Now the term case goods is, of course, a well known furniture term, but for people who don’t know anything about furniture, can you give us an approximate, a good idea of what that term means? Kindel: Case goods means, a piece of furniture with drawers in it. Interviewer: I see. Kindel: Sometimes we take with liquor cases. Interviewer: Was that included, the bed set, the complete bedroom suite? Kindel: The complete bedroom suite, with night stands, a chiffoniers, chests, dressers, and even the long cheval mirrors. Well then about nineteen fifty, we went into making… we added to our line and made dining room furniture; and we made mahogany exclusively, till about nineteen fifty-five when we felt that the mahogany craze was to be substituted by using lighter furniture like, so we in to make cherry. So we made cherry exclusively up until nineteen sixty-six when we sold the business to the Ball brothers of Muncie, Indiana. Of course, my father died in sixtythree and he was never really active in the management of the business. He always told us, my brother and I, “make your mistakes while I’m living, don’t make them after I’m gone.” Which was, he let us have all the rope we wanted; it was a great association. Interviewer: He lived to a rather advanced age. Kindel: He was ninety-one. Interviewer: Where was he born? Kindel: He was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, of German parentage. Interviewer: You mean Kindel is a German name. �7 Kindel: It’s a German name, unusual spelling because the immigration officer made the mistake when he came into this country at Ellis Island; he spelled the name Kindel, where the original German was Kindl. That’s the same name, so there are very few Kindel’s in this country, that you’d run across. Interviewer: Well now, Mr. Kindel I’m not quite old enough to remember the Depression too well but I am certainly aware of the, that the Kindel Furniture Company continued to manufacture furniture at least during most of that period, and right up until its sale and even thereafter, and apparently was very well established firm and didn’t seem to encounter all the troubles that some of our, many of our furniture companies did and certainly didn’t go out of business as some of them did. To what do you attribute this success of Kindel Furniture Company? Kindel: Well, we were a profitable business and when the Depression came along, luckily we were always trained to take and put anything away that you possibly can. So we started in the Depression with a pretty well capitalized business, because we had been always told that more businesses fail for lack of capital than anything else, and so we did everything to preserve our capital. And another thing, we were told never to let a bill go by, always get the discount, which we did. And so when the depression came along we really modernized; we replaced a great deal of our machinery. Of course I was the factory man, and my brother was the sales end of the business. And we practically replaced a great deal of the machinery for higher speed ball-bearing equipment, and we took business just to keep going. Luckily we had enough capital that we could afford to do it. I don’t think any furniture factory worked more consistently, as we did, we never worked less than four days a week, and we never had a lay-off. So, that we kept pretty good industrial relations with our help. And we were never unionized, because our boys claimed they were getting benefits that the union shops weren’t even getting; so that we had very good industrial relations, as a matter of fact. I just had a girl call me last night that worked for us for twenty-five years; she’s up in, living in a small town in the north up near Cadillac. She just called me to see how I was. And she say, “You know Chuck, we never had a layoff in all the twenty-five years I worked for you, and you were probably the best boss a guy could have.” Well it made me feel good, naturally. We still have an association with…, I see a great many of our men who worked for us for so many years. Interviewer: How many people did your company employ? Kindel: Well during the war, when we were building aircrafts we got up to three hundred and sixty employees, but I’ll say we averaged around two hundred employees as a rule. Interviewer: Now when I was here interviewing Mrs. Kindel two or three weeks ago, time goes so fast, you started that week to talk a little bit about your role during World War Two, and some of the things you did at time. Why don’t you talk about those things right now? �8 Kindel: Well when World War Two came along; it appeared that there would be very little for the furniture companies to do, because it was so different than any other war, material that was being purchased. We came on the idea that we could build parts for aircraft made of wood. I was president of the local Grand Rapids Furniture Manufacturer’s Association at the time, and we called a meeting of the members of the association and we formed a corporation of fifteen of the leading furniture factories. We all put in ten thousand dollars apiece, and with that capital we went scrounging around for business. And luckily when I was at the University of Michigan, in engineering school, I had taken a couple of courses in Aeronautics because it was a hobby with me. That more or less gave me enough nerve to think I knew something about aircraft. As you know [with] an aircrafts you’re fighting weight all the time. And I went out to Fairchild [Aviation Corporation] in Hagerstown, Maryland, and also to Cessna Aircraft and Beech Aircraft in Wichita. Cessna Aircraft got an order for a thousand gliders. That was the CG-4A glider that would carry fifteen men and a howitzer or a jeep. It was a big job and I got an order for a thousand sets of wings. And we came back and started to go through all the blueprints, and you can imagine what it meant to go through a bunch of blueprints in the lot for various factories and the different parts to make. Some of the smaller plants, they made small parts. The Widdicomb Furniture Company, they made the spars, the front spar, which is a rather big chunk of wood. And then the Kindel plant made the rear spars. Then we made the ribs, which were all laminated with plywood and spruce. They, different parts were sent to different assembly plants and then the final assembly was at the Imperial Furniture Company, where these big wings, which were twenty-five… over all the width of the airplane, the width was eighty-five feet. But the longest wing section was twenty-five feet and then there was a shorter one which was about sixteen or seventeen feet long that went on to make the wings of this glider. We ended up making forty-five hundred sets of wings for the glider and we made them for eight of the prime contractors who were building these gliders. And Gibson [Manufacturing] of Greenville [Michigan] was one of these companies, Timm Aircraft of California, the Robertson Aircraft Company in St. Louis, General Aircraft down in the east part of Massachusetts, the Babcock Airplane Company down in Florida, we made their wings for them, and shipped them out of here in great big boxes. The Nicholson-Cox Lumber Company was a member of the firm; they built the… all they did was build boxes to hold these wings. And they were assembled and finished at the Imperial Furniture Company and then boxed there. Then we also had the order for the Stinson L-5 Liaison plane, which we made about four thousand of those, sets of wings for that. And we made every piece of the wood that went in the airplane, that was the emponze(?) of the tail services, even the map cases. We made map cases for the B-29’s; we made parts for the navy. [We] Even made ships wheels, steering wheels. We made numerous parts for other aircraft companies, like ribs, we made the spars for the Taylor Aircraft Company as well as Piper Aircraft. Anything with wood we were specialists in and we did an outstanding job, because our woodworkers were so good here. Then after, when the war ended we had to liquidate it and at that time we were in pretty good cash position, we discussed whether or not we should take and build a dimension plant, that would bring the lumber in and dry it, and cut into small pieces for the different factories, but �9 because we had a bunch of rugged individualists it seemed as though that wasn’t practical because they took the attitude well, you’ll do it for this but you won’t do it for me, and so that never matured so we liquidated it. Interviewer: How many manufacturers were involved in this operation? Kindel: Fifteen factories. Interviewer: There were fifteen factories. Because there were fifteen who put up ten thousand and they all stayed in it? Kindel: Fifteen factories, even little Willie May Burke Company was one of them. Interviewer: I see. Kindel: Bower Furniture Company, William-Kimp Furniture Company, there was both Widdicombes, Mueller Furniture Company, Valley City Desk Company, and of course Kindel had a part in it too. And I was in charge of all production for the plant because that’s the part I like in the furniture business. Interviewer: I was interested in your using the term rugged individualists, describe some of these people some these men in the firm industry at that time, now you had an association with the furniture industry in Grand Rapids for fifty years or there abouts. Who are some of the men you remember best over that period of years who were you might call them giants in this industry in Grand Rapids? Kindel: Well we didn’t have any real giants; Robert W. Irwin probably was one of the most rugged individuals of the lot, and Stuart Foote, of the Imperial Furniture Company and Clare Dexter of the Grand Rapids Chair Company. They were the rugged individualists I would say that wanted to go their own way, and were jealous of anything anybody else did. Interviewer: Now we all know that much of the furniture industry has left Grand Rapids, the companies have either gone out of business or they’ve moved out east, what do you think is the chief reason we have lost so much of total industry to other places? Kindel: Well Lee, I, liken the furniture business to the woolen industry of New England, and the weaver’s in New England, as you know they moved south because of the cheap labor. Grand Rapids I think lost a great deal of their business because the labor rates in the south were so much less, as a matter of fact over the years we used to make surveys and the furniture trades wages were probably forty percent less than the Grand Rapids wages. Grand Rapids of course is noted for its quality and I think that the only survival of the business in Grand Rapids would be only in quality furniture; because we, with our skilled help we can make quality, down in the south they can make quantity. But they just don’t put the quality in that made up here. So people �10 buy Grand Rapids furniture in the most part they are getting their money’s worth, for that’ll be the antique’s of the future. Interviewer: That’s a good way to sum it up. I thought we’d go back and talk about some of the early years when you first came to Grand Rapids; you just mentioned that you built your first car in nineteen twelve. Kindel: Well it was a one cylinder on a car with a twenty-four inch wheel tread and a seventytwo inch wheel base. I remember it so distinctly and my father bought me a second hand motorcycle engine for fifteen dollars and we built that into a car and I learned an awful lot building that car, and I still got the drawing on it. Because my father wouldn’t buy the engine until I made an inked in drawing, and he taught me very early to make a drawing before you start any project. And we moved to Grand Rapids and I still run into people who say they remember the car that I used to drive around here. A little one cylinder putter, but I had a lot of fun doing that I’ve always been a car nut over since. I’ve had all kinds of them and only wish I had some of the old ones now because they’d be classics. But I worked in the machine room, in the tool room as working on milling machines, and shapers and blades between summers because I just loved that kind of stuff. I graduated from Central High school, went on to engineering school in Ann Arbor, and took some automotive courses as well as aviation courses, because it’s my hobby; and then I learned to fly in nineteen hundred and twenty-seven. As a matter of fact I was the first one up to Lindbergh’s plane when he came in here on his tour of May nineteen twenty-seven, because I just a well I’ll admit I’m a screwball. I learned to fly and of course I had a plane, a nice little Stinson plane that I flew for about six years. They say you have to be a little bit crazy. My Father used to say, “It helps.” Interviewer: Where did your family live when you were younger? Kindel: Well we lived at twelve twenty-five Lake Drive which is now the Jonkhoff Funeral Home. Interviewer: That was quite a ways out. Kindel: Yes it was a long way to Central High School, but it didn’t bother me because being a car nut I had a car all the time, a model-T Ford, all the time I was in high school. I remember your mother in school whenever the piano had to be played she was it. Interviewer: Go back to that house the Jonkhoff Funeral Home. Your father built that? Kindel: No, that was built by Orin Starr, Starr was the name and he was as I understand it he was the one who built the Majestic theatre. Interviewer: How do you spell his last name? Kindel: I think it was Starr, if I remember right. �11 Interviewer: It was pronounced stair? Kindel: Stair, and then when we all went away to school my father and mother thought the house was too much of a care and they built this house at seven thirty Plymouth; it was the second house on the block. Interviewer: Who lives there today? Kindel: I don’t know that’s house, my father sold it after my mother’s death to the manager of the Detroit Ball-Bearing Company and then his father who was the organizer to the Detroit Ball, then his father dies and he moved to Detroit, and it was sold to somebody with the telephone company and I’m not sure of their last names either. My father used to say his house isn’t the best; it’s next to the best house, when he talked to Mr. Fitzgerald, who built the house on Plymouth and San Lu Rae. Interviewer: I remember when that house was built, because when the Fitzgeralds lived in the house where we live and they rented it from the Perkins for I don’t know how many months, I remember we moved in November of nineteen twenty-eight, and so by that time Mr. and Mrs. Fitzgerald must have finished that house. Kindel: Yes, Owen Ames Kimball built that house and they moved from my father’s house over to the Fitzgerald house. Owen Ames Kimball built also the Blodgett house. That was previous to my father’s house. Interviewer: I sort of recall my father bringing me out here as just a little boy to see that house under construction, so it must have been something to behold. Kindel: Well, it was beautifully constructed, it’s a beautiful home. So my father used to say I don’t have the best house, I live next to the best house. Interviewer: Where did you and Mrs. Kindel live when you were first married? Kindel: Well when we were first married we married in nineteen twenty-four, and we lived at three thirty-three Briarwood, which was called the brides street at that time, because Chuck Sligh built a house across from me, one of the Keeneys lived there, next door to us, and Clifford Nelson was down the block, and Chucky and Don Steketee also lived on that block. We had a very nice house, and we lived there until nineteen twenty-eight, when we moved over on Cambridge, at four thirty-one Cambridge. We lived there twenty-two years, and then we built this house in nineteen forty-eight. Interviewer: This is a beautiful house. Did you design this house? Kindel: I hate to say I designed it, I laid out the floor plans we wanted, and Ralph Demmon who did this type of architecture we felt the best, we looked over the different architects work. We felt he did this type of house best. I would have liked to have had it all stone but Ralph Demmon �12 talked us out that, he said it was too expensive, and those types of masons are gone. So we only had the front of the house in this Pennsylvania stone. We always like the Pennsylvania type of houses when we’d drive though Pennsylvania and said that’s what we want. And we laid out the house really what we wanted having Ralph Demmon do the real architecture work, because I do know a lot of drafting I’m no architect. Interviewer: Did you previously plan the woodwork? Kindel: Well a lot of this woodwork was made in our plant; all of the woodwork really was done in our plant, like the pine paneling that we have all of the casing moldings, they’re all special. Interviewer: Is there a good deal of Kindel furniture in this house? Kindel: Everything that we could get in that Kindel made is here. Although we have quite a bit of Baker and the rest of the furniture is really Baker. I’ve always said this in my estimation, maybe I’m wrong but Hollis Baker probably was the greatest furniture man in our first half century. He was a real connoisseur. Interviewer: He knew a great deal about furniture and I think he could sell it too. Kindel: Oh, he was a marvelous salesman. But he could take he was discriminating, he knew what was nice. For instance, that octagon table there, you know there’s one out at the club like that and there’s a table over there which House Beautiful said was one of the real classics, that little table right there. Interviewer: That’s a beautiful table. He was a very interesting man; he’s one of the most interesting people I ever knew. Kindel: Well he, we enjoyed him very much and as you know the Huntings, the Bakers and Kindels all bought the Exhibitors Building. Interviewer: That’s right. Why don’t you tell us about that, I’d forgotten that? Kindel: As you know that was the original Fine Arts Building built by Gus Hendricks. And during the war, he had financial troubles, and the city took it over. Then during the war the weather school took that building over for training meteorologists. And the building was in pretty bad disrepair in nineteen forty-five or six, and we got together and bought it from the city, the three of us. And we reconditioned it and we put a hundred and ten thousand dollars in before anybody moved in to it. [End of Side 1] Interviewer: We’re talking about the, what we call the Fine Arts Building across from the Civic Auditorium, and you’ve come to the point where you’d purchased it, and what year was that? �13 Kindel: The latter part of nineteen forty-five we bought the building from the city, because it reverted to them for taxes. And we had Ken Welch do a great deal of the architectural changes that we made in the building and of course, because of its being in despair there was a great deal of plastering to be done, and remodeling the building. And luckily, we were all in the furniture business, we had three spaces rented immediately, because Dave Hunting moved the Steelcase line into the Exhibitor’s Building, and Baker Furniture Company took the second floor, and Kindel Furniture took half of the third floor, and Widdicombe took the back half of the third floor. We brought in come outside exhibitors and it was a success from the start. The furniture market faded out, and Baker Furniture used it as a show room so did John Widdicomb Company, and several other furniture people that used it more as a place where a decorator could take his customers or clients as they call them, and to select furniture. Knapp and Tubbs took over part of the building and then we rented a half of a floor to Aves Advertising Company, another half to the Court of Appeals, which was awaiting the building of the State Building. And of course we had to put in a lot of air conditioning. And we went along very well until Hollis Baker sold the Baker Furniture Company – [I’m] talking about Hollis junior. He decided that some of his wealth should be put in to real estate, and he bought the Kindels and Huntings out. So it’s now wholly owned by Hollis Baker. Interviewer: I want to go back into Grand Rapids furniture history for a minute because I’m sure you could shed some light on some of the famous names of furniture. I’m not talking about individuals as much as I am about companies at this point. Of course one of the names that constantly comes up when you’re talking to people about furniture is Berkey and Gay. Now that company I believe is no longer in existence, but you must remember when it was. And could you tell us about the company and what sort of happened to it? Kindel: Well that’s an interesting saga of course. When I came out of the university my first job in the furniture business, because my father had retired, was at Berkey and Gay Furniture Company, and as you know they had five plants. And if I remember they had about twenty-four hundred employees. It was a big company, of course Bill Gay had died, and the plant was taken over by the three Wallace brothers. They were all salesman, none of them were mechanics. Interviewer: So that was Oliver Wallace and Edward Wallace…? Kindel: No, that was, in the same family, but Ed Wallace and Oliver Wallace were still in school It’s a generation back. And these Wallace brothers were typically fine furniture salesman, but knew nothing of manufacturing. And they got into financial troubles in the early thirties and then the business was auctioned, most of the equipment was auctioned off, and then Frank McKay, he got interested in it and started it up again. That didn’t succeed, and there was another auction. And me being a factory man, I went to all the auctions and did buy some equipment, but I’ve always thought an auction to me was like going to the circus. I loved it. Of course the Luce Furniture Company was very successful before the Depression. That was run by Martin Dregge, and Hamp Holt. Hamp Holt was a good manufacturer. Dregge was a good salesman. They �14 absorbed the Furniture Shops, which had previously been the John D. Raab Chair Company. And they were quite successful and they also took the Michigan Chair Company which was a successful upholstery company. Interviewer: Who owned that company? Kindel: That was owned by Luce Furniture Company, and I’ve forgotten the name of the man that owned the Michigan Chair Company at the time. Then of course, the Sligh Furniture Company, they employed about eight hundred employees at one time. Interviewer: Really? That many? Kindel: They were a good size operation, and very famous of course for their bedroom furniture. I don’t think they made dining room furniture, but they were a big outfit. Interviewer: Eventually Mr. Chuck Sligh went to Holland and went into business will Bill Lowry, but what happened to the Sligh Furniture Company? Kindel: The Sligh Furniture Company was being run by Norman McClave, and somehow or other he and Chuck didn’t get along too well. Chuck Sligh went down to Holland with Bill Lowry, who is a one of the top production men and an engineer, and they started the Sligh Furniture Company in Holland. Guess they called it the Sligh-Lowry Company, and they’ve been very successful. Chuck Sligh of course is a fine salesman, and I admire him very much. Interviewer: As I recall it they made some really beautiful desks? Kindel: No, they weren’t beautiful desks. I don’t agree with you on that, they were production desks. Interviewer: Production desks. Kindel: And not the kind you’d see in the White House. Interviewer: Did you see any Grand Rapids Furniture in the White House? Kindel: I don’t know, there are some beautiful breakfronts down there, but I think most of those pieces are antiques. Interviewer: I guess they have the Sousaski[?] rugs? Kindel: Well I didn’t notice the rugs; I was looking more at the furniture, because your furniture is in your blood. Interviewer: Resuming our discussion of present furniture factories that are in existence in Grand Rapids, we started to mention a few of them and I suggested you talk about some of those. �15 Kindel: Well we still have the John Widdicomb Company, and they make very fine furniture. The Master-Craft Furniture make occasional pieces. Interviewer: And they’re the company still owned by the family? Kindel: And that’s still owned by the family. The John Widdicomb Company is owned by Hickory Furniture Company, Hickory, North Carolina. The Johnson Furniture Company who are famous for making quality furniture is owned by Holiday Inns now. The Hekman Furniture Company, which started in about nineteen twenty-three or four is owned by Beatrice Foods. The Imperial Furniture Company is owned by Chicago Musical Instruments Company. The Kindel Furniture Company is owned by Ball Brothers of Muncie, Indiana that make mason jars, part of their conglomerate. I understand Colonial Clock Company from Zeeland who have a plant in the old Berkey and Gay, Plant One has been sold recently to somebody else and I don’t know who bought it. That’s been sold but, there are very few family businesses left and the only one that I can think of that really amount to very much is Mastercraft and Ralph Morse Furniture Company is owned by Jim Alexander, and he also owns Fine-Arts Furniture, which makes very nice occasional pieces. Interviewer: These companies are relatively small I would assume. Kindel: Well, there are no big plants, no big companies in Grand Rapids left now, I don’t think there’s any plant that employs more than three hundred people. Interviewer: What would that be? Kindel: That might be Imperial Furniture Company who are making organ cases and jukebox cases, and some television cabinets. I guess the next or second one would be John Widdicombe; they probably employ two hundred and twenty-five or so. I don’t know how many Kindel has now, but KindelError! Bookmark not defined., we bought the Valley City Furniture Company plant at auction for our chair operation and that is still being operated by the Ball Brothers as Kindel Plant Number Two. They make dining room chairs and also they are making a line of occasional tables which are very nice. Then they rented a part of the Allen Calculator Company and that is their upholstery division. They’re making upholstered furniture. Interviewer: Well let’s leave the topic of furniture for a minute and, you mentioned a while back when we were talking with the machine off that you had collected barometers and stored some of them and put them in good working order. How did you happen to get interested in that? Kindel: Well barometers have been a hobby of mine for the last 25 years. I bought the first one in Canada, in Toronto at an antique shop; it wasn’t working and I made it work. And then I picked up a couple more and on a trip in nineteen forty-nine to England, I brought ten of them back in the trunk of my car, and the customs officer said to me, “What are you going to do with all that junk?” Well that’s part of my hobby and I fixed them all up, restored them and made them work; �16 then I’ve had some shipped in from England since. And everybody in town thinks if their barometer’s not working they can call Chuck Kindel. I had a call one day from a woman friend of ours here, I didn’t know her but I knew him and she said she bought a barometer in Chicago and the porter had tipped it over on the train coming back and broke the mercury tube and she said if my husband knows how much I paid for that and then broke the tube he’d shoot me. So I immediately fixed her barometer for her that same day, and when he came back from his fishing trip he saw the barometer and never knew that it had been busted. Then Marshall-Fields when they would sell an antique barometer in this territory they would expect me to service it for them. I got a call one a day from the head of Marshall-Fields antique department, and said that they had a customer that had bought a barometer and wouldn’t pay for it because he said it wasn’t working. And they gave me the name and so on my way home from work that night I stopped and it happened to be Bennett Ainsworth’s wife Emily who I had been in school with, Emily Hine, and I said I’m from Marshall Fields, she said, “Chuck Kindel what are you doing working for Marshal Fields?” Well I said, “I service the barometers.” I took it and fixed it for them. Interviewer: Did they ever pay you for this service? Kindel: No it was part of the courtesy when you do business with Marshall-Fields, you do those things. Interviewer: You were doing business with Marshall-Fields? Kindel: Yes, Marshall-Fields were very good customers of ours. Interviewer: How much volume did you business do? Kindel: I believe at the time about four million, four and a half million dollars a year. Interviewer: That’s respectable. Kindel: Yes, if you can make it profitable. Interviewer: Well I think that this has been a delightful afternoon and I have enjoyed talking to you. Kindel: Why don’t we have a drink? Interviewer: That sounds like a good idea why don’t we shut her off. �17 INDEX A Ainsworth, Bennett · 18 Ainsworth, Emily · 18 Allen Calculator Company · 17 Aves Advertising Company · 14 Fitzgerald, Mrs. · 12 Foote, Stuart · 6, 10 Foote, Vernon · 6 Foote-Reynolds Company · 5, 6 Ford, Jerry · 1, 2, 3 Ford, President · 1 Frank McKay · 15 Furniture Manufacturer’s Association · 8 Furniture Shops · 15 B Baker Furniture Company · 14 Baker, Hollis · 13, 14 Ball Brothers · 16, 17 Behler, Gerald · 3 Behler-Young company · 3 Berkey and Gay Furniture Company · 14, 16 Blodgett house · 12 Bower Furniture Company · 10 C Cassidy, Richard · 3 Central High School · 11 Chaffee, Roger · 3 Chicago Musical Instruments Company · 16 Civic Auditorium · 14 D Demmon, Ralph · 13 Depression · 7, 15 Detroit Ball-Bearing Company · 12 Dexter, Clare · 6 Dregge, Martin · 15 G Gay, Bill · 15 Gibson Manufacturing · 9 Grand Rapids Chair Company · 6, 10 H Hekman Furniture Company · 16 Hendricks, Gus · 13 Herkommer, Marianna · 1 Hickory Furniture Company · 16 Holt, Hamp · 15 Hunting, Dave · 14 I Imperial Furniture Company · 6, 9, 10, 16, 17 Irwin, Robert W. · 10 J John D. Raab Chair Company · 15 John Widdicomb Company · 14, 16 Jonkhoff Funeral Home · 11 E Engle brothers · 3 Exhibitors Building · 13, 14 F Fine Arts Building · 13, 14 Fitzgerald, Mr. · 12 K Kindel Furniture Company · 7, 9, 10, 14, 16 Kindel, Charles J. · 1 Kindel, Charles M. · 1 Kindl, Gabriel · 1 Knapp and Tubbs · 14 Kroehler, Peter · 5, 6 �18 L Lowry, Bill · 15, 16 Luce Furniture Company · 15 Reynolds, Mrs. · 5 Reynolds, Seal · 5 Roosevelt, Teddy · 2 S M MacLear, Jessie M. · 1 MacLear, Thomas · 1 Marshall-Fields · 17, 18 Master-Craft Furniture · 16 McClave, Norman · 15 Michigan Chair Company · 15 Mueller Furniture Company · 10 Sligh Furniture Company · 15, 16 Sligh, Chuck · 12, 15, 16 Sligh-Lowry Company · 16 Starr, Orin · 11 Steketee, Chuck and Don · 12 Stuart Furniture Company · 6 T N Trinity Methodist Church · 1, 3 Nelson, Clifford · 12 Nicholson-Cox Lumber Company · 9 V O Valley City Desk Company · 10 Valley City Furniture Company · 17 van Asmus, Katrina C. · 1 Oliver Machinery Company · 6 Owen Ames Kimball · 12 P Perch, Ed · 3 R Reynolds, Mary E. · 1 Reynolds, Mr. · 6 W Wallace, Edward · 15 Wallace, Oliver · 15 Welch, Ken · 14 Widdicomb Furniture Company · 9 Wiersma brothers · 3 William-Kimp Furniture Company · 10 Willie May Burke Company · 10 World War Two · 8 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/413757ff7cc64b85bb815e3535674eed.mp3 a84d6c1084d1aef3ff4e72a4ade2de03 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_49Kindel Title A name given to the resource Kindel, Charles MacLear Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kindel, Charles MacLear Description An account of the resource Charles Kindel was born in Colorado in 1899. His father was in the furniture business. He married Katrina C. van Asmus in 1924 and eventually took her place as trustee of the Starr Commonwealth. He was President Ford's boy scout leader in the 1920s. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a513f0e0a21751c37e8c719d5ae082d3.pdf 4ce6a2ec41c82e5d996448f3eacdbf0f PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mrs. Charles Kindel Interviewed on February 10, 1975 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010- bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #48 (54:23) Biographical Information Mrs. Kindel was born Katrina Cup van Asmus on 13 August 1904 in Evanston, Illinois. She was the daughter of Edward Cup van Asmus and Helen Hurlbut Long. Katrina married Charles MacLear Kindel on 8 November 1924. Mrs. Kindel died in Grand Rapids on 1 April 1987. Mr. Kindel died in Grand Rapids on 10 September 1982. Edward Cup van Asmus and Helen Hurlbut Long were married in Grand Rapids on 16 September 1897. Edward was born 10 January 1871 in Grand Rapids, the son of Henry David Cup van Asmus and Marie Elizabeth Vanderfield. Edward died on 20 June 1941. Helen H. Long was born on 25 August 1872 in Grand Rapids, the daughter of George H. Long and Catherine Sheller. Helen died on 7 November 1951. For the Kindel family, see Mr. Charles Kindel’s Oral History transcription. ___________ Interviewer: Mrs. Kindel before we started I was able to take a quick look from a book called Illinois Lives which contains a biographical sketch of yourself and other natives of Illinois. I must say I was surprised that you were not born in Grand Rapids. Although before that you told me that your grandfather came here back in the middle of the nineteenth century. Why don’t you go back to that period and tell us about your grandfather if you can remember much about him or tell us about what brought him to this company and a little of that history. I can hold this for you or whatever you want. Mrs. Kindel: Both my grandfathers came here from other places the Dutch grandfather came here at the time, after the Civil War and married and settled down in Grand Rapids. And my other grandfather came from Pennsylvania. Lewistown Pennsylvania. He was in the lumber business in Michigan and he married here and lived here and had ten children here. And they lived here until adulthood; some of them went elsewhere. Some of them remained here. I don’t know too much about the two grandfathers. The one in the lumber business was very successful and the Dutch grandfather founded the Board of Trade. He was the first secretary of the Board of Trade and he was a very cultured man well educated and understood fine paintings and prints and horticulture all the lovely things. Interviewer: What was his name Mrs. Kindel? �2 Mrs. Kindel: His name was van Asmus. HDC Henry David Cup van Asmus. Interviewer: And the other grandfathers name? Mrs. Kindel: The other one was George B. Long. L O N G and they lived on Sheldon. Sheldon then was a lovely street with beautiful trees, and Victorian homes. Now it’s a CIO Headquarters. Interviewer: Is the house still standing? Mrs. Kindel: No the house came down when CIO went up. Interviewer: I guess that was quite a nice street the Caufields lived down there and many of the old people. Mrs. Kindel: Burnses and the Caufields, and the Sinclairs, Doctor Sinclair, and the Longs. Interviewer: You must be related to the Duffys then? Mrs. Kindel: Yes. Mrs. Duffy was one of the sisters, my mother’s sisters; and Mrs. Homiller and Mrs. McPherson. They were all sisters. Interviewer: That’s right. I used to here the Caulfield sisters talked about. Of course they lived down the street. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. They were a great family. Lots of fun. The Woodcocks lived on the corner across from the Caufields. There were two Woodcock boys. And then the Sinclairs; that was Jean Sinclair who became Mrs. Curtis Interviewer: Doctor Sinclair brought my mother into the world. Mrs. Kindel: Probably. Interviewer: I don’t remember it but I remember my mother talking about it. Mrs. Kindel: That’s interesting. Well then kitty-corner across was the Burnses you know. Interviewer: Tom Burns. Mrs. Kindel: Yes. I couldn’t think of his first name. Interviewer: I think that was his name. Mrs. Kindel: yeah. Interviewer: Well however were you born in Evanston? Mrs. Kindel: I was born in Evanston, Illinois and moved away from there when I was two years old, and lived in a number of different places. I was raised in New York really, about fourteen �3 years in New York City. And I lived in Denver, I lived in Kansas City, Missouri, moved around, until I was married I never lived in Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Did you come here for visits? Mrs. Kindel: Came here to visit with aunts and grandparents and so forth. That’s when I met my husband. Interviewer: What went on when you came for visits? Mrs. Kindel: Oh boy. I just loved it because I lived in New York where we didn’t have a nice little social life and I thought it was great to come here where there were parties every morning noon and night and tea dances. Boy we put on Christmas seasons that would shame this generation, we had a good time and I loved it very much. I loved the young people. Well I just sort of feel like I belong to Grand Rapids, after all, my mother was born here and raised here and my father was too. But they never lived here after they were married. Interviewer: What did your father do? Mrs. Kindel: He was an investment broker. Interviewer: And he moved from place to place? Mrs. Kindel: Yes. Except, well New York was the longest place we stayed in one place. I went to Horace Mann School in New York which as I look back on it is a perfectly marvelous school. And then I went to Dana Hall in Wellesley and I never went to college. Got boy-crazy about then. Interviewer: Was Dana Hall a Junior College or was it a finishing school? Mrs. Kindel: No it was a finishing school. Interviewer: I think it’s a junior college now but I’m not… Mrs. Kindel: Pine Manor is. Interviewer: Oh it’s Pine Manor. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah, Pine Manor. Interviewer: Well now you were married in what year were you married? Mrs. Kindel: Twenty-four. Interviewer: Twenty-four, and you had met Mr. Kindel before, on one of your visits to Grand Rapids? �4 Mrs. Kindel: Yes. Yes but he asked me to marry him the first date we ever had. Interviewer: Oh really. Mrs. Kindel: And we were married six weeks from the next day. So that was a whirlwind courtship. Interviewer: I’d say so. And Mr. Kindel has always been in the furniture business I believe. Mrs. Kindel: Yes. He graduated from Michigan and worked for Berkey and Gay; and then his father bought back this plant that he had built originally and Chuck became production manager and remained there until he sold it. Interviewer: Now that’s a very famous name in Grand Rapids furniture. Mrs. Kindel: For quality it is. Interviewer: Quality, bedroom furniture particularly? Mrs. Kindel: Yes they started with just they call it case goods and then they branched out. They made dining room furniture; they don’t make any upholstered pieces. Just dining room and bedroom tables, and occasional tables. Father Kindel invented the folding davenport bed that you’re familiar with. The Kroehler bed. All those patents of his were his. He sold them to Kroehler. Interviewer: Well that’s interesting to know. I think that someone once told me that Mr. F. Stuart Foote invented the coffee table. Mrs. Kindel: Did he? Interviewer: He just cut off the legs of a table of sorts. Mrs. Kindel: Well that was easy. Interviewer: When you came here when you were married and started to live here, how long did it take you before you got interested in the organization in which I and many other people associate you, mainly the Kent County Humane Society? Mrs. Kindel: Well, my mother and I have been interested in New York in humane society work. As a girl twelve years old with a pigtail down my back I used to solicit money for different humane societies at the Madison Square Garden entrance to the arena when they’d have the horse shows on. I’d had a table out there with some of mother’s friends chaperoning and I started doing that. Then I, after I was married, it wasn’t very long when I heard such distressing stories, there was no society functioning in Grand Rapids. There was a society the Kent County Humane Society but it wasn’t doing anything. So I always had a lot of nerve I guess. Mr. Talmadge, a very delightful old gentleman, Bill Talmadge, was the president. I went down and called and �5 made an appointment and went to see him and I told him what I thought in no uncertain terms that they should have a functioning humane society and so forth. So we talked it over and he said you know I’ve just been waiting for you. He said we need young blood; we need somebody to do something. Well so we decided that we would reorganize and he would name half of a board of directors and I would name half. Very informally done. This is the way we started, restarted, the Kent County Humane Society which is one of the oldest in the country. I think it was started way back in the sixties or seventies, I forget now. But it’s a very old one. Anyways we started off and such wonderfully fine men and women helped us. We had Chief O’Malley on the board for a number of years. He was a great police chief and a wonderfully fine person. We umm what’s his name, Mr. McPherson an attorney in town, of great ability, a great horseman. And Mrs. G. A. Hendricks was a club woman who knew how to run publicity and do things… I learned so much from the men and women who came on that board. It was a great group of them. Interviewer: Well what year was this? Mrs. Kindel: Well, I think it was in the late twenties, it was about nineteen thirty I think. Interviewer: About nineteen thirty? Mrs. Kindel: Um Hum Interviewer: But they’d actually been in existence for sixty or seventy years. Mrs. Kindel: Yes. Interviewer: Doesn’t look like they’ve done very much. Mrs. Kindel. They had a small amount of money. The Michigan Trust kept it intact and they paying the legal aid office four hundred dollars a year, I think that’s all they realized on this little investment, they gave that to the Legal Aid Office to answer the telephone which was listed Humane Society. Well that was perfectly ridiculous to pay them four hundred a year for half a dozen calls, you know. So we severed that arrangement and started on our own. We did pretty well through the years; we never had a shelter but we wanted one and needed it badly so George Welsh was city manager and Ad Carroll was chief of Police and both of them were friends. So I went to them with my tale of woe and they were then using for the pound a lean-to down on the public market. It was just an awful shack. Cold and hot, with summer, cold in the winter and so forth and they ended by giving me supervision of it. The city commission voted that me as supervisor of the pound, at a dollar a year I was a “dollar a year man”, and we met I don’t recall just how long we continued that way, but as long as we did. And then W.P.A. labor came in and they arranged to use that labor and build a pound and they let me plan it. And when Mr. Kammeraad [Peter Kammeraad] was city manager and he’s very kind, he let me come down to city hall and we really built what was a nice animal shelter. It was modern and up-to-date in every way. And I had three men that were working for me and two cars. That was my equipment. �6 I had to do all the buying through the purchasing agent of the city. And be responsible for all that went on and we, we had a rabies epidemic during that time and I had to put an unlisted phone in, the public became so irate over certain things and they’d take it out on me. I had a strenuous time with that pound, but it provided us with a humane shelter. And a number of years went by and unfortunately I had osteoarthritis, with severe headaches I just couldn’t continue. So I asked on my board who would take over that appointment if I could get the City Commission to name one of them as supervisor so we could still keep hold of that. Nobody would take that responsibility, nobody would do the work. So I had to bow out and just let it go as it went. Well fortunately it had some ups and downs and troubles but right now it’s going very nicely and they had a drive, raised two-hundred thousand dollars and built a lovely modern shelter with every convenience and everything they need. And they seem to be functioning, raising money well and I’m awfully pleased and happy about them. Interviewer: Has this been a private agency? Mrs. Kindel: They always Interviewer: But you did your purchasing you said through the city. Mrs. Kindel: Well that’s when I managed the pound, when the pound was my shelter. Interviewer: Where was that located? Mrs. Kindel: Down across the river where, down where the big public market is. Do you know where I mean? Interviewer: Well, I’m not sure. Mrs. Kindel: Gee I can’t think. Grandville Avenue. That, down that way. Interviewer: Where is the new facility? Mrs. Kindel: The new one is, is out, my memory. It’s west… Interviewer: On the other side of the river? Mrs. Kindel: Oh yes. It will come to me I think. Interviewer: Maybe I should know. I can’t think offhand. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah we both should know. It’s on the, I’ll put it in when I get it. Interviewer: Well you can always look it up. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. I can look it up in the phone book, right here. Interviewer: Ok. I’ll just switch it off. �7 Mrs. Kindel: Northwest. Interviewer: What was that address again? Mrs. Kindel: Eighteen ninety Bristol Northwest. Kent County Humane Society. Interviewer: And how much of a staff do they have today, I presume they have a director. Mrs. Kindel: They had a women manager, a Mrs. Pullen. I don’t know what their staff consists of, I’m ashamed to say. I haven’t been out there lately, in the last year. I don’t know. They have several… Well it takes, I think they have two cars; they’ve had two cars, two drivers and then shelter people to keep that place clean and feed the animals. And put them to sleep when their time is done and so forth. It takes quite a few. Interviewer: How large a membership? Mrs. Kindel: It takes money; I don’t know what they’re doing now. I’m not at all involved in it. I send them a check. I’ve done so many years of it I just keep out. Interviewer: Pretty close to forty years, I would say. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. Interviewer: That’s quite a record. Mrs. Kindel: Well I didn’t even stop there you know. Then I got the bright idea that it would be nice to have a state federation of Humane Societies. So about a year or two after I got this one, I sent out letters to every society in the state that I could find and asked them to come here to a meeting at the YMCA; and we incorporated that day the Michigan Federation of Humane Societies. And it had quite a history. We did a lot of different things. We put wayside zoos under a law to regulate them. We had a member of the state police. Captain Scavarda was appointed by the police to serve on our state board. And he was just of great value. He came to every meeting I think and brought us always a report of how many humane cases the state police handled during the interim. And of course that was terrific coverage. We just went to town on it. We had trouble with Mackinaw Island. They don’t have any… they have a lot of horses up there, you know, and they never had a veterinarian on the island. And these horses were overworked and underfed and everything. We had an awful time for many years. I went to governors about it and I tried to get on a Island Commission to fight Murphy, asked him if he’d appoint me on it and a newspaperman from up north somewhere told him not to do it. They didn’t want a nosy woman on the Park Commission so I didn’t get on it. But there were problems all over the state that had to be taken care of. In nineteen thirty-four, that was drought year. I don’t know whether this is going to shut me up. Interviewer: No, no. this is exactly what we want. I’m sure. �8 Mrs. Kindel: In nineteen thirty-four was a drought year and Michigan was declared a secondary drought area which meant that reduced rates on shipping of animals but no additional feed was shipped into here. And we had starving animals and farmers were just crazy. I was swamped with phone calls and letters and help, help. So what to do, I didn’t know how to get enough money to handle it. So I wrote Eleanor Roosevelt and she moved like chain lightening. She gave my communication to, what was the man who was head of welfare? For her? Well I’ll have to think of that again. Gave him this and he wired me and said no farm animal need starve. And he released immediately three-hundred thousand dollars in federal Relief money in the state of Michigan to buy feed for the cattle which was just a god send. That was the, I received national recognition for that little job which was very satisfying and all due to Eleanor Roosevelt. Well anyway the Michigan Federation went along through the years and next month they’re having a meeting, I’ve just received a notice and I felt so happy when I saw it because it’s so well thought out and planned. They’re functioning as I would like to have them do and it makes me feel happy about it. So that was that. Then I got the bright idea, our national association was sort of monkeying along and not doing a great deal and a man from the east whom I knew well in the work, and I were both disgruntled about it. So we called a meeting in Chicago of seven states, the seven states surrounding us here. And we organized what we called the Midwest Humane Conference. And these states, we had an annual meeting and then we had directors’ meetings in between. But they took they furnished fresh ideas and programming and, and helped to the struggling societies through the seven states. And that also is still going. They’re having their annual meeting in May this year. So those are my babies. I served as their president for the first years. So that’s what I did. What else have I done? Then I got interested in Starr Commonwealth through Mr. Floyd Starr, who was just a saint of course, he was a marvelous person. And I served twenty-odd years on his board and as a few years as vice-president of the school. Interviewer: Why don’t you tell about that because I’m sure that there will be people in future years who will be interested to know and may not be familiar with it. So why don’t you talk about the Starr Commonwealth a little bit. Mrs. Kindel: Well, Mr. Starr as a young boy got the idea that he wanted to take care of boys. And he had a farm with quite a bit of acreage. He named the little house Gladsome Cottage, and he had a handful of boys to start with. They were [came] through the courts, some come through their parents, and some through agencies, but they’re boys with problems. And he has had a phenomenal success. At one time, it was a ninety point two [percent], I think, success; those boys never repeated or went into further crime. He loves these boys and he has an understanding, a natural psychology, of handling them so that he brings them into real manhood. We have ministers and writers and teachers and all sorts of professions among them. And the school is just, it would do credit to any private school. The campus is simply beautiful, and the buildings are lovely. He never builds a building unless he has the money right in his hands to do it. Interviewer: And where is this located? Mrs. Kindel: Albion, Michigan. �9 Interviewer: In Albion, yeah. Is it out in the country? Mrs. Kindel: Yes. I don’t know what the total acreage is. It used to be twenty-five hundred acres. He’s bought up farms when they would be in the distressed sales, you know. He’s built these cottages, he calls them, but they’re really brick, English-type houses and he has a house pair, a father and mother, house parents, in each cottage. And the school system is, has to be, of course, meet the state qualifications and requires a very high type of teacher, which makes it very costly too. We have to have better teachers than the public schools would have. And the same thing now is true with Social Service. We didn’t used to have to conform to that, but we do now; he has quite a Social Service department. And it has beautiful gymnasium and beautiful auditoriums. And friends of his in Detroit built his home, which is a beautiful home that he used to live in for life on the campus. And he believes in prayer and the efficacy of prayer for everything. And these boys have been taught to pray when they needed anything, even when there was just a handful of them. They needed a school building, and he had women he employed that would go around into the different towns and solicit money for schools, or for the school. And this one, who came into Grand Rapids, went to see Mrs. Emily Jewell Clark one day and tell her about what was going on and what progress had been made and what they needed. And they needed a school building. And Mrs. Clark said, “Well have you got the plans for it? What did you want, how did you want it?” “Well,” she said, “there are plans down at school.” And Mrs. Clark said, “Well you get them and come back.” So this lady went and got the plans and came back to her with them, and laid them out, and Mrs. Clark studied it and she said, “I’ll build that building for Starr.” So, in those days many, many years ago it was about five hundred thousand dollars, now I suppose it would be a million. It was a beautiful building. But the interesting thing is that Mr. Starr had this little group of boys pray for the school building. They needed it. He said, “We need that now, and we’ll pray and ask God to give that to us.” And that’s what they do. The people who gave him his home, the man was very ill in Florida one winter and they phoned back to the school and they said, “Floyd, get your praying group together.” And he had those boys, he organized them so they prayed all day and all night, right around the clock, he had this group going. And this man recovered. And he was so pleased of course, the family was so happy, that they gave him his lovely home. Well the place is full of stories like that. Interviewer: Sure. Mrs. Kindel: It’s just an inspiration to be with him. Norman Peale dedicated the chapel, which is a lovely one, and when he was talking to the boys he said, “You know there’s a term that I don’t use lightly in talking, but,” he said, “I must here.” He said, “Uncle Floyd Starr is Christ-like.” And that’s really what he is. He is a very spiritually-minded man. He’s ninety-one years old and just as sharp as he can be. He wants to run everything, which is a little bit difficult right now, at that age you know, so we try to keep him busy off-campus, send him on trips and so forth. But he’s a remarkable person. And it’s enriched my life so. Mrs. Ruth Rhoda, Ruth Bryan Rhoda, was a trustee for several years and became a dear friend of mine. I enjoyed her so much. And Jesse Stuart, the contemporary writer, is another friendship I have made through there. All interesting people; very worthwhile. Interviewer: You spoke of the, Mrs. Clark’s gift of the, of one of the first large buildings I take it. About when do you suppose that was made? Back in the twenties? Or before that? Mrs. Kindel: It was before I knew them, any of them down there. So I imagine it was the twenties. Wasn’t that a lovely thing to do? �10 Interviewer: Yes. You know she did quite a lot for the Art Museum, when it was called the Art Gallery. Of course, many people still do call it that. And very often I see a painting which was given by her, or in memory of her. There must be a great many of them, especially American paintings of the early twentieth century, late nineteenth century. Mrs. Kindel: What was Mary Perkins’s maiden name? Interviewer: Wilcox. Mrs. Kindel: Wilcox. Mrs. Wilcox gave Wilcox Cottage to the school, and that’s sort of an interesting story. Her son Raymond, the landscape man, was a member of a firm in Detroit. Mr. Starr never hesitates to ask for anything and he usually gets it, and he went to this landscape outfit and told them he’d like to have this property landscape planned. And they assigned him to young Mr. Raymond, who I guess was a young man then. And so, he drew these plans up. And he took them home to his mother’s one time. And he said, “You know Mother,” and he showed these to her and told her the story and everything, “There’s something you could do.” “Well what could I do?” “Well,” he said, “you see where this spot is right here?” He said, “You could build them Wilcox Cottage.” And she did. It’s a lovely home there, still functioning. But he did a lot; the landscaping is just beautiful, the whole place. Interviewer: Well I guess he was a very noted—or is, a very noted landscape architect, he’s still living. Mrs. Kindel: Well Mr. Starr just walks in and says, he went in to a gentlemen, I don’t know his name and I don’t know him, Mr. Kindel does, but Floyd knew about him, and he, one afternoon, was in his town, so he went to the door and introduced himself as Mr. Starr. And he said, “I wonder if I could take the opportunity of telling you about my boys.” Cold turkey this is, no appointments or anything, so in he goes and sits down and tells this gentlemen all about the boys and about the school and everything. [He] goes out with a check for seventy-five thousand dollars in his hands, clutched firm. A building. I used to sit at a board meeting, Frank Dean, do you know Frank Dean from Albion? He’s an architect. Interviewer: No, I don’t know him. Mrs. Kindel: He built Evelyn Avery’s house, he was that architect. Well, he’s lots of fun. He used to sit next to me at board meetings. He’d say, “Now wait a minute, he’s going to open that middle drawer and there’s going to be a check in there for a hundred thousand.” Well, truly, everything comes to this man. He’s something really remarkable. Michigan—I don’t know they know or appreciate him. He’s very different. Interviewer: I think he’s probably one of the best known citizens in the state, and has been for a great many years. Mrs. Kindel: He’s a darling. Interviewer: Are you still on that board? �11 Mrs. Kindel: No. Teddy served on it, and Chuck served on it, and I served on it. We’re all off of it now. But we’d go down there quite frequently. We’re very fond of him. And he comes up here; when things get going and he doesn’t like it and he can’t understand some modern ideas, he comes up here and cries on our shoulder. [To dog] Joey! Interviewer: [to dog] Sit down. Mrs. Kindel: It’s an inspiration to have known him and to be associated with him. We think it’s a real privilege. Interviewer: How many boys do they have at Starr Commonwealth? Mrs. Kindel: An average of a hundred and seventy-five. Interviewer: So it’s not really terribly big. Mrs. Kindel: No. Interviewer: But it gives them a chance to work closely with each boy. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah, they have to have them in smaller groups I imagine. They have some tall stories; they have murders, they have thievery, rape, arson, you name it, book’s thrown at them and everything. But they sure handle it. I’ve walked with Mr. Starr around campus, and the worst he’ll ever say about a boy is, “He’s a pill.” He’ll put his arm around a boy and say, “Katrina, now he’s just a pill.” Never anything worse than that. But he just expresses such love, it’s remarkable. Interviewer: Just taking a look at our tape here. I think, oh yes, we have quite a long—a few minutes left on this side. I don’t want to keep you all day. In the, I’ve known of course that you, at one point, had quite a large collection of Lincoln books and letters and papers of all sizes, types. How did your interest, where did you interest in Abraham Lincoln develop? Mrs. Kindel: Abraham Lincoln? Well that’s World War II. My son was going to be inducted, and I thought I’d take him over to Chicago, we’d go see, Oklahoma was the big musical show you know, we’d go over and get cheered up a little, because I was blue as blue could be. So, over we went and I had read somewhere an advertisement for the Abraham Lincoln Bookshop. And I’d always enjoyed reading things about Mr. Lincoln, I didn’t know very much, but, we decided we’d look this shop up. So we went down in the Loop in an office building, way up on some high floor were these three little rooms, about ten by ten all of them, no bigger, and the young man who owned this bookshop, Ralph Newman, the enthusiast of all enthusiasts and a brilliant intellect, wonderfully interesting person, greeted us. Well, we just had about an hour; it was perfectly wonderful listening to him. And he said to me, “Why don’t you collect Lincolniana?” “Oh,” I said, “I don’t know enough to do a thing like that.” I said, “I’m not a college woman,” I said, “I haven’t been educated that way, and I don’t know that I’d know anything about it. I couldn’t collect a thing like that.” “Well,” he said, “there’s nothing to that.” He said, “I’ll make a checklist for you and as we get each item we’ll check against it and,” he said, “I’ll help you.” Well, that sounded reasonable. So I said Ok, I’d start. And I think I bought two or three books. And then I bought a little memo, Lincoln wrote many of them, similar ones. This one says on it, “I suppose there be a charge against this man, but if there is none, let him be discharged.” Signed A. Lincoln and dated sixty-three I think. So we bought that. And that was our �12 introduction to Lincoln. And Ted went off to the wars and I continued with the Lincoln collection. Well when it grew to be about seven hundred volumes and I loved it, I enjoyed reading it and enjoyed handling it, but of course, a collection like that has to go under the Fine Arts Policy and has to be catalogued in duplicate. There were mechanical things about taking care of it that got me as my hands got worse with arthritis and I foresaw that it was beyond me, it was getting beyond me. So I sent out the word to a few places that I wanted to dispose of it. Well a librarian came from Iowa Wesleyan and one from Central Michigan, and Calvin, that’s three that came here, all wanted it. And then I talked with my son. I didn’t think he was interested to take care of it. I said, “Teddy. What about it now, seriously? Think of this. Do you want it? You have to take the responsibility of taking care of it. It isn’t just like other books that sell for a couple of dollars here and there.” Trying to impress upon him. Well he said, “Mother, I always thought it would be mine.” And he said, “Just because it’s yours, I’d want it.” Well that settled it. I said alright. So by-golly I wrapped up each little volume and we shipped them out to Ted. And he has them in Vail, Colorado. And the joke on him is that people know he has it; so, right now he was telling me on the phone last week that he has three speaking engagements on Mr. Lincoln as his birthday approaches on the twelfth. So he has to go and speak in the schools now; this, I don’t think he’s too crazy about but it’s part of being the owner of that library. So that’s where the Lincoln Library is. And then I, Mr. Newman suggested, he said, “Why don’t you collect books by the women? About and by the women of the Civil War.” Which I am doing. And I don’t know, I haven’t counted them. I think there’s about two, three hundred there. And it’s very interesting reading. They’re smart girls, those women were. And I have a number of letters; I’ve got several letters of Mrs. Lincoln’s, I have a letter of Mrs. Jefferson Davis, and I have Mrs. Lee, and Mrs. Freemont, General Freemont’s wife. What other ones do I have? Well I have several letters of those women, I’d like more. So that’s what my collection business is now. But I’m always buying books, my book bills are something. I love poetry. That first section is all poetry. Interviewer: This is a very beautiful room. What are the dimensions of it? Mrs. Kindel: It’s forty-five…is it forty-five or thirty-five? Oh Lord. Honestly, my memory dearie. I couldn’t tell you. Interviewer: Well, it’s at least thirty-five, maybe a little longer than that I’d say. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. It’s twenty, the bay window from there over here is twenty, I know that. That’s twenty. And this is less. Interviewer: It breaks into nice individual units. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. Well we built it this way, because in our other home, we had what was a sunroom, it was that vintage of a house, and we made it into a little library. And everybody always sat in the little room; no one ever sat in the living room. So we thought when we built this we would put the books and put everything in here, and this is it. We sit here for all occasions. Interviewer: I think you could almost take the visitor around the room and tell a story about literally scores of items in the room. Mrs. Kindel: There are some interesting things— �13 Interviewer: Because I’m looking behind me at the moment and here’s a case full of Chinese figures and other—here, I think your telephone is ringing. Mrs. Kindel: Well Chuck can answer it. Interviewer: Oh I see. Anyway, you have all kinds of objets d’art and statuaries and little statuettes and teapots and— Mrs. Kindel: Copenhagen ware in there. That gentleman that’s up in the top shelf, that odd looking bit, is from the bay of the Gold Coast; Bay of Bimini is it? He’s carved of ivory. Interviewer: Oh up there, I see. Mrs. Kindel: Yes, in the center. Interviewer: What’s that, a gigantic Toby jug? Mrs. Kindel: Toby jug. No, he’s a regular size. He looks big sitting up there I guess. He’s a regular one. Some of my nice pieces in there, the piece of carved jade on the top shelf. I had a friend in school in New York whose father was a German comedian at the Metropolitan Opera House for many years, and at the end of the war they went, returned to Germany. And at the end of World War II her husband had been killed by the Russians. She’d had a child, and her father was gone and so forth, and she could reclaim her citizenship. She’d been born in this country, on one of their trips over here and if she had American money to get out of Germany she could come over here and get her citizenship back. So Chuck arranged it all and we brought her back. And that stone head is off a full-size figure, she brought me that. All her nicest things she could salvage. Her family were the Hagenbeck family, I mean she married into the Hagenbeck family in Germany, the great animal people for the zoos and the museums and the circuses and all that stuff. And they sold all these beautiful things explorers brought from all over the world. So she gave me some of my nicest pieces, they came from Hamburg. Interviewer: Let me turn the tape over a moment. We’re recording again, I hope we are. I’m pretty sure we must be. I’m not going to bother to check it again, I just…Yes, yes, we must be, because the little needle is moving up and down. So we were talking about some of the things in your room and I wanted to come back to your collection of Lincolniana. Did you ever exhibit it? Mrs. Kindel: Oh I had an awful experience. The museum, our museum downtown, wanted an exhibit one time. So they sent somebody out to go through my material and see what they would like and so forth. My letters are of a material, I forget the name of it, it protects them, you can read them and handle them without touching the letter, you know what I mean? They’re all protected like that. So I loaned her these. My dear, they took them all out of those protecting envelopes they were in and put a thumbtack through that handbill, that’s an original old handbill. They had thumbtacks up in the top of that one, and they had these letters just lying in the window with nothing. I’d never loan again. Interviewer: I don’t blame you. Mrs. Kindel: After that, I thought—you’d think that museum would know better, wouldn’t you? �14 Interviewer: Maybe they do now. Let’s hope. Mrs. Kindel: Let us hope. Interviewer: I’m interested in that handbill; it says Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Is that the first night, or just one of the earliest? Mrs. Kindel: Eighteen sixty-four. Interviewer: Eighteen sixty-four. Mrs. Kindel: March tenth. Interviewer: I think it was made into a play before that probably, I think. Mrs. Kindel: I have a first edition of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Interviewer: Of course, that came out long before the Civil War, or several years before the Civil War didn’t it? Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. Do you know about books, you know they ruined, well not the value completely, but they detracted from the value by binding these. Interviewer: Was it originally a two volume set? Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. Here’s what the cover was. Interviewer: The original cover, yeah. Mrs. Kindel: There’s the end piece. And there’s the other. Interviewer: They preserve it, but they do, it does lessen the value. Mrs. Kindel: That took just half the value away. Interviewer: Let’s see what year. What year do you—? Mrs. Kindel: Eighteen fifty-two. Interviewer: Alright, I thought it was about that period. Mrs. Kindel: It’s a lovely binding. Interviewer: Yes it is. See, it was bound in Boston, well it says Boston eighteen fifty-two, but that’s the year of the publication not the binding. Very handsome indeed. Well, there must be some other— We talked a little about Oriental art, and things you’d like to, if you were to start all over again collecting. �15 Mrs. Kindel: Well that’s a George Inness painting over the mantel, which is one of our treasures. Father Kindel gave it to me. When I came into the family I kept raving about it so, he said, “When I go, you have that.” Interviewer: That was Mr. Kindel Senior? It’s a lovely painting. Mrs. Kindel: Yes, it is a beauty. Interviewer: Would you say that much of the furniture in this room is original antique or some of it reproduction? Mrs. Kindel: No, it’s all reproduction. Interviewer: Is it mostly Grand Rapids? Mrs. Kindel: Except that wine cooler over that. Yes, it’s all Grand Rapids. Interviewer: That speaks well for our, the quality of our design in Grand Rapids. Mrs. Kindel: Oh yes; we’ve got Chinese tables over there. ---two Chinese. Interviewer: What, who did that painting of the ship? Mrs. Kindel: That’s a museum piece, that’s Clays. He’s a Belgian artist. C-L-A-Y-S. And that has an interesting story. When I was little girl it was in the apartment of friends of ours and I always loved it. I evidently did an awful lot of talking about everything, because when I got married they sent it to us for a wedding gift. And I do love it, I think it’s a real beauty. And we have down there the picture of the three Kindel men: C.M., Ted, and his little son now. Interviewer: How long has Ted been out in Vail? Mrs. Kindel: Eleven years I think it is. Yes, I’m quite sure of it, eleven or twelve. Interviewer: Wonderful place. Mrs. Kindel: He’s quite the pillar of the post out there. He’s so busy, my gracious, he’s on the Board of Education and he’s an Associate, [the] Board of Associates control Vail, they’re the governing body, and he’s on that. When the president was out here this winter, Christmastime you know, he was so busy, he said, “I’m ready to fall on my face,” he said, “I don’t know how the president takes it.” They had a party every night and skied every day. And then the Cabinet came out at some point to see Jerry. And Ted said, “Gee, I got so I knew some by first name.” It was so interesting you hear little tidbits of conversation about things that you read about. It was, they’d had Jerry and the family for several Christmases now. They started it back when Jerry rented Ted’s house one Christmas holiday and ever since then they have them for Christmas Eve dinner. They had thirty this Christmas; they had to have six Secret Servicemen with them. And before the president and his party came in, a group of eight men came to the door, Teddy didn’t know who they were, unannounced, they’re called a Bomb Squad. And they came in the house, they went through every bureau drawer, every clothes closet, every cupboard, everything before the president was allowed to enter. And I said, “Was that �16 just your house that they did that too?” “No,” he said. All week, or two weeks, every place he went into, that Bomb Squad went ahead of him. Interviewer: That’s interesting, I never heard of that. Mrs. Kindel: I’d never heard of that. Interviewer: I knew that the Secret Service was very much in evidence whenever he appears in Grand Rapids or wherever it is, but I never knew about the Bomb Squad. Mrs. Kindel: I never did either. That amazed me. Well they had the Secret Service for dinner too, and they had friends of the Fords from Utah with five children, and of course Nancy and Ted have five children, so that was ten children at the dinner party. But they had a good time anyway. We called out there and talked to Jerry. And I said, “Good evening, Mr. President” and then I laughed and I said, “Jerry, I can’t call you Mr. President.” And he said, “Well Katrina, you don’t need to. You call me Jerry.” But he is a nice person, I mean regardless of how you think of him as a president, and I have some reservations, he’s a very fine man, he’s a nice, good man. Thank God after what we had. Interviewer: We went through quite a lot. Mrs. Kindel: So they had real fun. Nancy got herself on the Today program. I was watching it kind of idly one morning and I thought, that voice sounds so familiar, and I looked and here was Nancy with Jerry Ford in the main street at Vail, well she was throwing her arms up around his neck because he’s so tall and big, she was hugging and kissing him, and she says, “Welcome Mr. President!” Interviewer: We should explain that Nancy is your daughter-in-law. Mrs. Kindel: Oh yes, Nancy my daughter-in-law. Interviewer: It’s interesting; many of us, many, many people of course in Grand Rapids have known Jerry, rather informally, for a good many years and now it’s quite different. Mrs. Kindel: I know, now we feel like we have a personal share of him. Interviewer: Yes, of course. Mrs. Kindel: Well he is a nice, good guy. And Betty is. Betty and Nancy have become good friends. Interviewer: I want to just shut it off for a second; I want to take another look at your book here. We’ve just been talking about President Ford and of course this is a very highly Republican area, at least we have always thought that it is. And in looking through this book, this book of biographies in which you appear, I notice that you apparently are identified as a Democrat. And I’m curious to know how you, was your family a Democratic family or were you? Mrs. Kindel: Yes, my father was always a Democrat, however I worked for Jerry Ford Senior one year. He put me in charge of the three wards out here in East Grand Rapids, told me get the vote out. And I did it for the Republicans and also served as a toast mistress for their dinner and if he didn’t have the nerve at the dinner to tell this story about me. When I was getting the poll list copied, I had �17 volunteers of course go out to East Grand Rapids, and I said now, the names that have R after them, those are the ones we want you to copy. So we come to find out that R meant Removed and D meant deceased. And Jerry Ford Senior told this before this big dinner about me, I was so embarrassed I almost died. My Republican, I worked hard, I did a good job for them, but I am a Democrat. Interviewer: Well of course we have a Democrat as a congressman now which is a new twist after so many years of a Republican. Mrs. Kindel: Well I tell you, Dorothy MacAllister got me terribly interested in going in the Democratic fold. I admire her so tremendously and enjoyed being with her, oh what a brilliant woman she is. And that’s how I got going at it actively. I was chairman of the Radio, Radio State Chairman for Radio. That Democratic party was organized like nobody’s business. And the women had all these different…Piggy Bank, and the Radio, and different things and they had State Chairman and then they had County Chairman. And you were give money from the central treasury to carry on your work with and everything, it was just fabulous the way they operated. So I was part of that. Interviewer: Well, what do you think about our city? Mrs. Kindel: I love Grand Rapids. Interviewer: You like Grand Rapids. Mrs. Kindel: I’ve always loved it. Interviewer: I wasn’t trying to get that kind of a response necessarily. Mrs. Kindel: Well I do. I think it’s a nice place to live, I always have. I think the climate’s miserable, but— Interviewer: Especially today. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah well, the summer’s are hot and humid and all that, but no, I think it’s…I lived in so much bigger cities as a girl and all, and I envied people who lived here. I was glad to come here to live. I think it’s a great place to live for families. Still, when they grow older they’re kind of bored, it isn’t a very stimulating town is it? Interviewer: Well I think it’s more stimulating now than it was ten years ago, with the development of the new colleges, especially Grand Valley— Mrs. Kindel: I guess so. Interviewer: and I think there are more things going on. I had it—oh, one thing I wanted to bring out, I noticed in this book again that you are a member of the Marble Collegiate Church in New York City, of which Dr. Norman Vincent Peale is the minister. How did you happen to join that church? And when did you happen to join it? My two questions. Mrs. Kindel: I don’t really know. Mr. Kindel and I were both raised in the Christian Science Sunday School and Church, and we got pretty far away from it, practicing it, although it’s a philosophy that I �18 think stays with us pretty much, and we’re happy to have it, but I wanted to belong to a church, and I didn’t want to belong to the Christian Science church. Norman Peale had become a friend, we’ve had him here as a houseguest, he’s been in this house several times and Ruth, his wife, too. And I like his philosophy and his positive thinking, and so I joined it. And I’ve never been sorry. And he’s so painstaking; when I was ill this fall I had such a beautiful letter from him that he and Ruth were praying daily for my complete recovery. This isn’t just perfunctory with him, he’s, he really… Interviewer: He’s a real genuine person. Mrs. Kindel: Yes, he knows what he’s saying and why. He’s a remarkable person. My, what he, what good he does, those sermons broadcast and that beautiful church it’s so mellow with age you know, it’s over a hundred years old. Have you been in it? Interviewer: It’s way down on Fifth Avenue. I know where it is, I’ve never been inside it. Mrs. Kindel: You should, it’s an experience. Twenty-ninth street and Fifth. It’s a beautiful old church. Interviewer: It’s a lovely church. Mrs. Kindel: It’s the oldest Protestant church in this country. It’s quite a record. Interviewer: I didn’t realize that. You mean the parish goes back farther than any other. Dutch church, I presume, originally. Mrs. Kindel: Oldest Protestant church in the country. Interviewer: Well unless there is some other topic you think we— Mrs. Kindel: Well my grandparents, my Dutch grandparents, were the second couple, the first couple, married in the Dutch Reformed Church in Grand Rapids. In eighteen sixty-seven. Interviewer: Where was the church located? Mrs. Kindel: I don’t know. It’s the, well the big church up on College, that’s the outgrowth. Interviewer: Of course, it was down originally; when I was much younger it was on the corner of Fountain and Barclay. And that church burned. And then they moved to the corner of College and Fulton Streets. So I remembered that church, but whether, I’m sure it wasn’t originally there. I think it came, it was in some other location. Mrs. Kindel: Of course you know the Marble Collegiate is Dutch Reformed? Interviewer: Yes, I know that. Well, you’ve stuck with your Dutch ancestry you see. Mrs. Kindel: Yeah. The Dutch will show up. �19 Interviewer: Well, this has been very pleasant. And I think, as I say, unless you have something else to add? Mrs. Kindel: No dearie. Heavens, you’ve got me talking a blue streak. Interviewer: Well that’s pretty good. That’s fine. Thank you very, very much, and I’m sure that a hundred years from now, somebody will be interested to hear this, I hope. Mrs. Kindel: Why yes, maybe they will. They’ll say, humane society? Well now what was that? Interviewer: They may still use that word, let’s hope. Mrs. Kindel: The millennium will not come too soon. Interviewer: No, I can agree with you there. Mrs. Kindel: No. A H Avery, Evelyn · 11 B Hagenbeck Family · 14 Hendricks, Mrs. G.A. · 5 Homiller, Mrs. (Aunt) · 2 Berkey and Gay · 4 Burns Family · 2 I C Carroll, Ad · 6 Caulfield Family · 2 Clark, Emily Jewell · 9, 10 D Dana Hall (school) · 3 Dean, Frank · 11 Duffy Family · 2 F Foote, F. Stuart · 4 Ford, Betty · 17 Ford, President Gerald R. (Jerry) · 16, 17 Illinois Lives · 1 K Kammeraad, Peter · 6 Kent County Humane Society · 5, 7 Kindel, Charles MacLear (Husband) · 1, 4, 11, 19 Kindel, Nancy (Daughter-in-law) · 17 Kindel, Ted (Son) · 12, 13, 16, 17 L Lincoln, Abraham · 12, 13 M MacAllister, Dorothy · 18 McPherson, Mrs. (Aunt) · 2 �20 Michigan Federation of Humane Societies · 8 Midwest Humane Conference · 8 T Talmadge, Bill · 5 N Newman, Ralph · 12, 13 U Uncle Tom’s Cabin · 14, 15 P Peale, Dr. Norman Vincent · 10, 18, 19 Pullen, Mrs. · 7 R Rhoda, Ruth Bryan · 10 Roosevelt, Eleanor · 8 S Starr Commonwealth · 9, 11 Starr, Floyd · 9, 10, 11, 12 Stuart, Jesse · 4, 10 V van Asmus, Edward Cup (Father) · 3, 17 van Asmus, Helen Hurlbut Long (Mother) · 2, 3, 5 van Asmus, Henry David Cup (Grandfather) · 1 W Welsh, George · 6 Wilcox, Mrs. · 10 Wilcox, Raymond · 10 Women of the Civil War collection · 13 Woodcock Family · 2 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7debdc962f2b5a9a9ea486d6aa6c2dcd.mp3 62a2338b9d2568fbdb0413c8bf12a3ed 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_48Kindel Title A name given to the resource Kindel, Katrina Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Kindel, Katrina Description An account of the resource Katrina Cup van Asmus was born in 1904. She married Charles Kindel in 1924. She was heavily involved with the local and national Humane Society and was instrumental in forming the Michigan Federation of Humane Societies. Mrs. Kindel managed construction of the WPA project to build an animal pound on Grandville Avenue in the early 1930s. She served as a trustee and vice president of the Starr Commonwealth, a nationally-known training school and home for disadvantaged boys near Albion, MI. Mrs. Kindel collected rare books and had a large collection of Lincolnia. She died in 1987. 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 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b971084849adb5742dcf53da72f90baf.pdf a0e30cddef0ad61227a2aebea666ee66 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mrs. Lemuel Serrell Hillman (Dorothy Woodruff) Interviewed on January 29, 1975 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #47 (1:06:24) Biographical Information Mrs. Hillman was born Dorothy Woodruff in Auburn, N.Y., 13 January 1887, the daughter of Caroline Porter Beardsley and John Herman Woodruff. She married Lemuel Serrell Hillman on 3 July 1917 in Auburn. She died 13 May 1979 at Porter Hills Presbyterian Village in Grand Rapids. Lemuel Serrell Hillman was born 28 August 1886 at Mt. Vernon, Oneida County, New York. He was the son of William Hillman and Emma Louise Bill. Lemuel was killed 21 February 1930 when an automobile struck him and Mrs. Hillman while they were walking along East Fulton Street in Grand Rapids. The Hillmans had two daughters, Caroline and Hermione, and two sons, Serrell and Douglas. The Hillman‟s home was 330 East Fulton Street from 1919 to 1943. ___________ Interviewer: This is the afternoon of January 29, 1975 I am at Porter Hills Presbyterian Village. I am calling on Mrs. Lemuel Serrell Hillman, who although not a native of Grand Rapids has spent much of her life here, and reared her children here. Mrs. Hillman has recently returned to live in Grand Rapids, and her memory goes back a good many years. Mrs. Hillman, I believe you were born in and brought up near Auburn (New York). Dorothy: Auburn New York, which is a small city, of about thirty-six thousand people. It was a very highly sophisticated and rather wealthy community of old families who really, many of them lived in the grand manner. We always sort of thought of Auburn as sort of, not unlike Long Island, social life. I belong to a very large family, and after I graduated from college and had lived abroad for a year, came home and one of my dearest friends had married Monroe Hubbard, who had been in the high school with us and was a very brilliant young man. And he had gone to Colgate College where he had a very distinguished career, very extremely popular, attractive young man, too. And through him, I met my future husband. I came out to Grand Rapids to visit Betty Gates Hubbard, who had married Monroe Hubbard by this time, and with my dear friend Rosamond Underwood, we were going to (going to) take a great adventure and come west to Grand Rapids to visit Betty, and see what life was like in a place, which we could hardly imagine. Interviewer: Was that before the First World War? �2 Dorothy: Oh no, this was in, yes, of course, it was before the First World War. That must have been in nineteen sixteen, no, January nineteen seventeen that we came out here. Interviewer: Your class was oh-eight at Smith, was it not? Dorothy: No, it was nineteen nine. Interviewer: I‟m sorry, I‟m off a year. Dorothy: Anyway, we came out here to visit and they were very attractive, and they had made great many friends here. Well, we were absolutely stunned by Grand Rapids, we‟d thought, you know, I don‟t know it was my family thought there‟d be an Indian behind every tree. And that it was a very primitive kind of place, and I‟d had a cousin who‟d been out here once and she said, “You know they have wooden sidewalks”. We were prepared for almost anything except what we found. Well, we fell in love with Grand Rapids. These young friends of ours had an apartment upstairs in a house on Paris Avenue. And they‟d made a great many friends, and so they, everybody was what I considered at that time true Western hospitality, entertained us royally all the time. We met a great many people, went to a lot of parties, and had a wonderful time. Now, two rather elderly people, at least I thought they were elderly at that time I‟m sure they weren‟t, Mr. and Mrs. [Frederick] Tinkham, lived across the street [315 Paris] from Betty and Monroe on Paris Avenue, and they‟d become very much interested in them. So they gave a party for us. And we went there, we went Sunday night for supper, and Monroe of course, Monroe was very anxious to have us meet his college roommate whom he had induced to come out to Grand Rapids. And Lem was in a brokerage house working at that time. Oh, what is the name of it? It was in the Old Trust Company. Do you remember what it was? Interviewer: Not offhand. Dorothy: Well, the Grand Rapids, well, I guess it was the Grand Rapids Trust Company or something. Interviewer: Was it in the old Grand Rapids Trust Company? Dorothy: No, it was the regular Grand Rapids Trust Company, now is that what it is, oh no it just blew up. Interviewer: That was the Michigan National Bank. Dorothy: No, well I forget what the name of it was, anyway. Interviewer: You don‟t know which building? Dorothy: Well, it was on Ottawa, and it was in one of the big buildings there. Interviewer: Was it in the Michigan Trust Building? �3 Dorothy: Yes, I guess so, but it probably wasn‟t the Michigan Trust. I think it was the Grand Rapids Trust. Who was the man who owned the Morton Hotel and all that? Interviewer: Mr. Brewer, I think. Dorothy: Yes, well it wasn‟t Mr. Brewer, maybe Mr. Brewer was the president, he might have been, well anyway, so that night, that was when I met Lem Hillman, and we had a delightful evening and I saw a good deal of him, while we were there. Interviewer: Where did Mr. Hillman come from? Dorothy: Well, he came from New York, from outside New York, and he had gone to Prep School in Hamilton, New York, where Colgate University is. Went there for two years, and then he went four years to college, and he really has a spectacular career. He was not very tall and somewhat slight, but extremely muscular, and beautifully coordinated, he was a natural athletic, he did everything well. And he was a superb tennis player, and he was manager of the baseball team, and so on, and also he was captain of the basketball team, although now we think of basketball players as being over six feet, he was so fast on his feet and such a sure shot that he was really a spectacular player. Well, anyway, aside from all that, he was a very, fine student, and graduated Phi Beta Kappa from college. And he‟d gone into the insurance business, [correction] rubber business with his father and in Philadelphia, but his mother died very suddenly and he was so unhappy. He needed a complete change so he, that‟s why he came out and joined Monroe. Well, he didn‟t stay in that brokerage firm very long, and he didn‟t like it. And he went to work with Howe, Snow, Corrigan and Bertles where Monroe was and became a partner in the brokerage house. Well, anyway we were not married until, let me see, June, nineteen seventeen, because I went out to Colorado, the wilds of Colorado to teach school with Rosamond, and we stayed there nearly a year. So then when we came, the war had started, the First World War, when we came home and so Lem enlisted and we were married that June. And Rosamond had become engaged to a young man she met out in Colorado and he, they wouldn‟t enlist him because he was a head of a coalmine out there and they thought he was needed there. But anyway, she was married on the thirtieth of June and I was married on the third of July, and we were in each other‟s wedding, I was her maid of honor and she was my matron of honor, and all our friends came from far and wide. We had a house full of all our old college friends, everybody came. Interviewer: This would be back in Auburn? Dorothy: …in Auburn, this was very gay affair, sort of a last of the old days of that sort. Well, so then we, Lem went right into service and we went, during the war, we lived around in various places. He was never given any, he joined the Navy and he was never given active service much to his disgust, but we lived in Newport, and in Woods Hole, and back to Newport, I think, then finally we came out to Grand Rapids to live in March of nineteen nineteen. And by that time my eldest child had been born, my son named for his father Lemuel Serrell Hillman Jr. And we �4 stayed with Miss Daniels for a while until we could find a place to live. Well, both of us having come from the east, and liking old houses, there was almost nothing to buy, nothing to rent. This was just after the war, there hadn‟t been any building at all; we couldn‟t find a thing. We finally bought an old tumbled down house on the corner of Prospect and Fulton. Well, we were young and not knowing much about it, we spent far too much money fixing up that house, but it really was lovely when it was done, and we lived there for a good many years. Well, by that time…. Interviewer: Let me back up for a minute? Dorothy: I was starting to tell you what I thought about Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Well, I want you to talk about a little about Miss Daniels, because…. Dorothy: Oh, I will tell you about… Interviewer: Could you work that in …. Dorothy: Well, I am going to tell you about Miss Daniels,, my knowledge of early Grand Rapids was gained from Miss Daniels, oh I wish she were here and could tell you the stories she used to tell me. She was born in about eighteen seventy eight, I think, She was a very brilliant woman who graduated from Vassar College. And her father had been superintendent of schools here for many years. Well, of course in those days school teachers were, well, I don‟t think he was paid much, I don‟t believe he earned as much as twenty-five hundred dollars a year probably not, but anyway, he had bought land on Fulton Street and I don‟t know if there was a house on that land when they bought it, probably not, but anyway he largely built that house himself. He had carpenters, whether he had a contractor I don‟t know. But he did a great deal of the building himself and it really a large and lovely house. And especially, they added to it and fixed it up through the years. Well, Miss Daniels had one brother who was older than she. And he didn‟t, when I came to Grand Rapids he had just come back to Grand Rapids to live, he was separated from his wife. And his wife and their children were living out in California, and he came to live with his sister. He was a very extremely, shy, retiring man with a magnificent brain, but it was so sad, he was so shy, he could hardly talk in public at all. And, I think very few people realized what a brilliant man he was. But she certainly was, had a marvelous brain. Well, she told that when she was born in that house that he had built, she said when she was a child one of her chief interests were standing in the front window just before noon, when the train from New York had come into Grand Rapids, and was bringing another load of Dutch immigrants. She said she was absolutely fascinated to watch them. The women went clumping up the street by the house, in their wooden sandals and their pretty white caps with the silver buttons over their ears; and then, the men with their strange looking pantaloons and odd clothes. Well, she was fascinated. Well, that evidently went on for a good many years as the furniture industry expanded in Grand Rapids and needed more and more skilled workman, they imported them from Holland. So that‟s why we became known as such a “Dutch City”, we certainly, we couldn‟t have done better, they have been marvelous citizens, I consider. Of course, the Anglo-Saxons have always had a superior �5 complex, I think, but nevertheless, we, Grand Rapids, has every reason to be proud of these Dutch people to be sure. We think, many of us that they are narrow minded in their religious ideas, but they were very devout people; and that certainly makes wonderful citizens. They owned their own houses very quickly, they kept them up beautifully; they had gardens, flowers. And although even long after I was trying to raise money for various projects, it was awfully difficult to get a nickel out of the Dutch people, because they tithed everything they had, they were very devout church people. And by giving ten percent of their income to the church, you couldn‟t unless they were very rich and many of them became very rich, you couldn‟t expect them to do very much. But I deeply resent any slurs on Grand Rapids as a Dutch community. They do have a great many Dutch people here, Dutch descent, and we‟re very proud of them and we‟re lucky to have them I think. Well, anyway I‟d like to tell you why we bought this old house on Fulton Street. I think a lot of people thought we were crazy, that we should have gone farther out in a newer residential section, but we didn‟t like any of the houses. I tell you we were very conservative, because we both come from regions of old houses, early American types of houses; and that‟s what we wanted, and what we had built as best as we could with the material we started with. But Fulton Street was a beautiful street. It was very wide, of course, much wider than it is now …. and both sides were lined with magnificent elms. Oh, they were gorgeous and they were old and you know when you walked up to Fulton Street from where we lived, from say Lafayette was a steep hill and on an icy day in the winter, and I have to tell you that more than once I had to get down and go up on my hands and knees. One reason was because the roots of these big elms went over into the sidewalks and buckled the sidewalks. Anyway it was a risk to life and limb in bad weather but, oh, it was beautiful. The houses were set back and they were well kept and they were charming. Now there were some old houses across from us, but kitty corner from us on Prospect was the so called mansion built by the founder of the Blodgett fortune here, old Mr. D.A. Blodgett, well I must say we thought it was pretty ugly. It was very Victorian of the period, large stone building, rather ornate, certainly we didn‟t think it was beautiful, but never the less, it was a very substantial and handsome house of its period. Then up next the street, was the, what was the White that built that house? Interviewer: T. Stewart White. Dorothy: Yes, T. Stewart White had built a handsome house. Now that was not of the Victorian type that was fussy, that we disliked so much, this was really a beautiful house. It was decidedly English, was a copy of, in fact, some special house, as I understand, in England that they had seen. Very handsome house, and then on beyond set way back with long wide lawns down to the sidewalks in front was a house that… oh, dear what was Edith Hall‟s mother‟s name? Do you remember? �6 Interviewer: Chase. Dorothy: What? Interviewer: Mrs. Chase. Dorothy: Mr. and Mrs. Chase lived there and next to them, Mr. and Mrs. Shanahan lived. So we knew all these people and they were all proud of their houses and they looked very well., But up the, down below us toward the business section, then next door to us was Mr. Hughart‟s house which was a lovely old house, one of the oldest houses in Grand Rapids, and very handsome and then on beyond that was the large stone house which is now the Women‟s City Club. And next to that, of course, was the present Art Gallery which was a handsome colonial house with columns in that period. So you can see it was a very, substantial, handsome neighborhood and really lovely too with those beautiful trees. Well, the amazing thing to me when I came here to live. I had already seen Grand Rapids and I knew what a lovely city it was, but what I did not know was that it was such a highly cultivated city. It offered such a rich intellectual fare. And I just hope that some of these modern critics about Jerry Ford‟s Grand Rapids could really know what I am talking about. For instance, I lived in France for a year and was very much interested of course, in French, well there was a very active Alliance Françoise here at that period and Mrs. Hughes who had lived in France a large part of her life, taught French and was very active in that. She lived with a cousin Mrs…. Who was that that lived with Mrs. Hughes? Well, I have forgotten her name, but, they had a perfectly beautiful house on up Fulton Street, on beyond where I left off describing the houses, what? Interviewer: Was it Mrs. Swift? Dorothy: Yes, Mrs. Swift, why Lee, you are wonderful. Mrs. Swift and Mrs. Hughes and they lived in a very grand and formal way, I want to tell you. They had a butler and several maids, to be entertained there was really a very sophisticated, elegant experience. Then next to them were Mr. and Mrs. Hollister. Mr. Hollister was president of the Old Kent Bank, a very charming attractive man. Mrs. Hollister I can only describe as a dynamo. I was devoted to her, and she was a remarkable woman with great intelligence, but she was also very determined, very sure she was right and a good many people were not wildly enthusiastic about her, to put it mildly, although they felt indebted to her. We were all indebted to her, she was, had quite a little money, she came from an old family in Massachusetts, let me see, just below Northampton. What is the name of that town? Well, her father was the original maker of thread in this country. She really must have inherited a fortune and also, she was a very accomplished musician. Well, she was very generous and she often subsidized speakers to come here for various things. There was also an extremely active Woman‟s University Club, and they had a large membership. They had plays and lectures and oh, it was a very active club which gave great stimulus to Grand Rapids entertainment and interest. Mr. and Mrs. Hollister had lost a son in the [First] World War in France, so their devotion to France was very great. And Mrs. Hollister was much interested in �7 providing speakers for the Alliance and boosting it and always entertaining them whenever they needed a house, at her house. She always was very generous with her house about everything, very hospitable….remarkable woman. And we had another remarkable woman in Grand Rapids at that period, and that was Mrs. John W. Blodgett. She was a fellow member of the same class as Mrs. Hollister at Vassar. Mrs. Blodgett came before she was married to visit Mrs. Hollister, who was a bride at that time, and that is where she met Mr. Blodgett, so then she came to Grand Rapids to live. She too, was an intellectual. And very much was interested in doing everything she could to foster not only, the intellectual life of Grand Rapids, but the social work life. The family had founded a children‟s home here, the D.A. Blodgett Home for Children. They were very much interested in that and my husband had been treasurer of that home for years and I was put right on the board as members too. We were very much interested in that. Well, Mrs. Blodgett was interested in all worthwhile things. And of course, they had also given Blodgett Hospital in memory of Mr. D.A. Blodgett. So there was a great deal of interest here, by prominent people in elevating the intellectual and cultural life of Grand Rapids. You know, it was jokingly often called the Boston of the Midwest. I hated it that Grand Rapids was called the middle west, the middle west was such a dreadful term in Auburn where I came from, it was sort of the embodiment of hayseed, and Grand Rapids was such a contrast to that, I just had a fit if anybody called it the middle west, of course, it really isn‟t. We definitely aren‟t eastern either even if we are on Eastern Time. Well, anyway that was the Grand Rapids that I knew. And my husband was very active in everything worthwhile in Grand Rapids. And a great leader in every kind of endeavor, social work, church work, intellectual, everything that was going on to better the town and you know it was expected. In a way, it was everybody at that period who had had a good education who had the advantage of going to college was expected to offer a tribute to that education by giving back in service. And they certainly did in those days, and they made Grand Rapids the city that it became. Of course the furniture industry grew like mad and prospered, Grand Rapids became a very rich city and during this period my husband left Howe, Snow, Corrigan and Bertles and went to the Old Kent Bank where he headed their bond department and later became the vice president and their head of investment department. Well, I guess that‟s about enough, Lee? Interviewer: I would like to talk a little more going into the depression perhaps a little bit and talk about your children. Dorothy: About what? Interviewer: Your children, that would be quite interesting, and what happened to you after your husband‟s death; and the Depression and your work with the Red Cross. I think that would be of interest. Dorothy: Of course, this is personal history. We had four children, two sons and two daughters and my husband was killed in an accident, he was run over by an automobile. One night we were, we had had a perfectly terrible winter with very, very deep snow almost impossible to get �8 through the streets in a car and we had a terrible winter very cold. This was late in February, we‟d suddenly had the first sun bright sunny and the snow was thawing. We were going out way Fulton Street as it was then for dinner with Dr. and Mrs. Hodgen. And I said let‟s walk. So we did walk, and that of course was a tragic mistake because we were walking on a country road and on the right side of the road and everything, and we were run into and run down by a drunken man driving, recklessly. My husband pushed me and I landed out in the field. I jumped up unhurt, but he was killed. It was a most awful terrible thing and I, really Grand Rapids as a city was really broken hearted at his loss, because he had the kind of personality that everybody loved. Well, it was necessary in order to save my reason and try to earn a little money to do a little something. Well, I went into the Red Cross, which I must say I didn‟t know anything about either at that time but I was the Executive Director of the Red Cross. Interviewer: About what year would that have been, Mrs. Hillman? Dorothy: That was, well let‟s see Lem died in nineteen thirty, and oh about nineteen thirty-four I guess. My youngest child, my daughter was only three years old, at the time of my husband‟s death; it‟s always been grief to me that she couldn‟t remember him. But the children went to the Fountain Street School, which is an excellent school, such good teachers. And then on to Central High School which certainly there were any number of very remarkable fine teachers. Miss Daniels was the assistant principal, all through these years. Just think how able she was but being a woman she could never be principal. Well, that was one of the sad things of that period. But anyway Serrell went to Deerfield Academy after two years in the high school. I felt that he needed to be under the influence and teaching of men; they would give him something that we could not give him here or at home. I think we probably made a mistake. He was the only person I ever heard of that wasn‟t happy at Deerfield. He didn‟t like it; he didn‟t like anything about it. He was supposed to stay for two years. Well, I went to see him in the middle of the winter, talked to Mr. Boyden who was such a distinguished educator. I said Mr. Boyden, Serrell isn‟t happy here and he wants to finish in one year. Mr. Boyden said we have never had anybody do that, and I said will you let him try it and see if he can do it? And then I said I don‟t know where he should go to college? Of course he is living in the memory of his father whom he adored and he feels he ought to go to Colgate. But I cannot believe that the Colgate is the place for him, at that period the Colgate was dedicated to sports and if there was anyone that was not a sport, it was Serrell. He was the exact opposite of his father in that way. Well, it was a disaster because anyway. So I said to Mr. Boyden what shall I do, where should I send Serrell? Oh, he said, “I think you should send him to Colgate.”Well, that was very poor advice; I never really forgave him for that. Then Serrell only stayed six months at Colgate, he simply hated it. And I went to see him there and he said, “I am coming home.” And I said “You‟re coming home? What are you going to do?” No this was at Deerfield, no that was right. No, he got into Colgate from Deerfield and he said he was coming home. I said, “You wanted to go to Harvard how are you going to get into Harvard? You‟ll lose all your credits.” “No,” he said, “I am going to tutor, I am going back to the high school.” Well, I said, “If you know what you are doing and that‟s what you want.” �9 Well he did finish the two years in one, much to Mr. Boyden‟s astonishment, he got into Colgate and that was another disaster, so then he went to Harvard. He was accepted at Harvard, oh, I will never forget that suspense. He use to run down to the corner, usually in his bathrobe and slippers and couldn‟t wait for the postman. And the postman was so excited waiting for that letter from Cambridge. It was very funny, he would see Serrell running down the street, he would call out to him, no, it hasn‟t come, so he would have to come back and wait for another day. Well, it finally did come. And Caroline and Hermione, my daughter usually called Hermi both graduated from the high school. They were both very good students and they both went on to Smith, much to my delight. Douglas was very blithe about his studies and wasn‟t very interested. And I must say, I didn‟t think he was doing well at all. And I thought he needed to get away from home. He needed discipline I thought, so I sent him to Exeter. Well, he liked it well enough but he didn‟t do well, particularly and I decided that was not a success. I didn‟t know what to do about that so when I went up in June to bring him home, I said, “Now Douglas what are you going to do next year?” He said, “Well I am not going back to Exeter.” I knew very well they probably wouldn‟t take him. “Well, what are you going to do?” And he said, “Oh, I am going back to the high school.” “How, why you have lost a whole year, how are you going to do that? I don‟t know how many credits you will get.” “Oh, I‟m going to tutor.” I said, “Will you be able to catch up to your class?” He said, “Why certainly.” To my amazement he did. He tutored, he caught up with his class, and his class graduated well. His class got high honors at the University of Michigan where they all went, „because they were so well prepared. So then, he went on, went on to university and graduated from there in about a year and a half. The second war came, the Second World War. So he enlisted right away in the Air Corps and he was a pilot, he was just under twenty-one in the period, I guess he wasn‟t twenty-one yet. Well later on he became a pilot of a big B-24 and saw a lot of action. His plane was even shot down in Bulgaria. They were bombing Went(?)Polesti where they had the oil fields to bomb and they were hit and so his plane was quite badly damaged. So Douglas gave the order if anybody wanted to get out, they better do it right away quickly. Well, they all jumped but Douglas and they all got out there and in the meantime the Air Corps had sent a couple of planes to his aid. And they boxed around this injured plane and he was able to get it back to Bari on the Mediterranean coast still going. And so when he got over the airfield there, and when he looked down the whole place was alive with people and ambulances and all kinds of things, so he turned the plane out to sea and jumped. And we he got out he was very, very light and when he got out he didn‟t go down the way he should have. He went to the right and to the left and he thought he was never going to go down. And to his perfect horror he saw his plane had turned around and was coming right at him, he thought he was going to be cut right in two by the plane. Well he couldn‟t steer this chute he was on, but it missed him fortunately, and eventually he got down completely unharmed. And you know, I would like to tell you kind of an interesting story in connection with that. At the last year of the war I left the Red Cross here because I thought I had nothing new to offer. I was very tired I suppose. We were an enormous organization by that time and I felt they needed new ideas and literally I didn‟t have any, so I decided to go down to Washington and work there for awhile with �10 the national organization. The national organization gave me a job and I had a little apartment in Alexandria. And one Sunday morning a knock came to my apartment door and here were two strange young men. They said are you Mrs. Hillman? And I said, yes. Are you Doug Hillman‟s mother? Yes, I am, they said we were members of his crew and we were shot down over Romania and we heard you were here and we thought we would like to come and see you. Well, you can imagine how delighted I was and we became great friends and I saw a great deal of them after that, but they told me this story. They parachuted down and landed in a wheat field and that looked just dandy to them and everything was just fine and they rose up and they found themselves surrounded by a group of soldiers all pointing their guns right at them. They were about to be shot but they finally were able to talk them out of it. I don‟t know how they did it or what language they spoke but they were taken prisoners instead and they had to stay there for the duration of the war. And they said they would have literally starved to death if it hadn‟t been for the Red Cross boxes. You can imagine how thankful I was about that. Well, anyway that‟s the end of that story. Interviewer: Now we are recording… Dorothy: Now ask me what else… Interviewer: Oh, I was going to ask you a question because…About once a year or so and it happened just a week or two again, I am asked to research old houses for the Annual Heritage House Tour and about two years ago your house which is now Van Clair‟s was put on the tour. And they asked me to find out all I could about it. I had a very difficult time, I was able to trace it back to a very early era, at least around the turn of the century, but I wasn‟t able to go much further than that. It is very hard sometimes for people to get everything out of the safety deposit box; you know the original abstract and so forth. And I hate to bother people, so I went as far as I could. I sort of came up to a blank wall and just had to fill in. I did know certain people that lived in your house, for instance Mrs. Curtis, I know lived there. Dorothy: You know, I never knew any farther back then she could tell me. I don‟t think we ever had any abstract, I don‟t remember seeing one. Interviewer: I‟m convinced the house is quite old. Dorothy: Oh, it was a very old house, there isn‟t any doubt about that and one very well built, and we certainly got into a lot of trouble, terrible expense remaking it. We would have spent far less money if we had started from scratch, but we didn‟t know enough to know that. I don‟t know anything more about it. Interviewer: Well, someday we will have to find somebody to, someday we will find someone who knows; we always do. Dorothy: I don‟t know how you think you will? �11 Interviewer: It is funny how things turn up all the time. Dorothy: Well, I hope you can, that‟ll be very nice. Interviewer: I wanted to ask you about your friends, the friends you had with Mr. Hillman, and friends you knew after he died because I think I know who some of them were and I would like you to comment on some of the people that you saw. I am talking not talking about the old people but, about the younger people of your generation. Dorothy: I can‟t do that, I couldn‟t possibly do that, I‟m sorry but you will have to ask other people what they thought about Lem, he was so unusual. Interviewer: I meant for you to talk about yourself. Dorothy: No, I can‟t do it. I couldn‟t possibly do that. Interviewer: We‟re flexible... Would you like to carry on about your children after the war? Dorothy: I don‟t know why you would be particularly interested in that but I would be glad to do that. Caroline graduated from Smith College and she went out to work on a ranch in New Mexico, and was a tutor to a boy and girl twins, the children of a very rich rancher out not far from Santa Fe. He had a perfectly tremendous ranch, one of the biggest in the country. That was a very interesting experience. She did that for one year, and then she went and taught in a girl‟s boarding school, which was outside of Santa Fe. Then when the war came, why she wanted to go, too. So she went abroad with the Red Cross, she went to Washington and went through the induction period there and stayed overseas for about three years and had a very interesting experience. Then she came home, and of course there wasn‟t any opportunity for her in Grand Rapids at that period. There wasn‟t any opening for a girl really unless perhaps she wanted to teach, but she didn‟t. So she…let‟s see at that period…I guess she was thinking about what she could do. At that time, Serrell was in the Life and Time bureau in Chicago and she went over to Chicago to see him and met George Eccle, whom she later married. He was a very brilliant young man who was the New York Times representative in Chicago and he worked in a little office in the Tribune building with another man, and you know that at the end of three years he died of lung cancer. It was a very sad, tragic thing; I thought it was because they both smoked in this tiny little office. Both those men smoked those cigarettes all day long. Anyway he died of lung cancer and it was a terrible thing. And so then Caroline went to New York. She had been living in Chicago but there was nothing for her there and she went to New York, and there eventually went to work for Time magazine. She was there awhile; then she went to a new magazine which had been recently started and which was American Heritage. She became, I don‟t know, I always thought she was general cook and bottle washer there, she did everything, every kind of editorial work, all kinds of things for them. And eventually some years later, oh four or five years later, she married her present husband Ralph Backlund, who was one of the editors of Horizon. After they were married awhile, he was offered a position in the State �12 Department and they moved to Washington. And he was the assistant in the Cultural Affairs Department of the State Department. Well then anyway, when the new President came in, the head of the department didn‟t like what was going on, didn‟t like what was expected of them and the department and he retired. And the President appointed an Italian as head of the bureau, who had no experience whatsoever, then Ralph left too. And then he went to the Smithsonian, where he is now one of the editors of the Smithsonian Magazine. Caroline in the meantime had taken a librarian‟s degree. One of the things she had done for Horizon was to set up a picture library, which made quite a reputation and she realized she had to know more. So she went at night and took a night course up at Columbia and got her degree in Library Science. So when they moved to Washington she got a job with the National Gallery of Art, where she is the Assistant Director. Hermi, in the meantime graduated from Smith, came home to be with me. She lived with me for about a year and she worked down at the art gallery. I must see that she didn‟t stay there looking after me. I persuaded her to go to New York and see if she could find anything interesting, stimulating, really get a job worthy of her abilities. Well, she got a job on the Gallery of Modern Art, but in the meantime she had seen Dan Wickenden, one of Serrell‟s friends that had come to Grand Rapids during the war. I forgot to tell you, that Serrell was not accepted by the draft because he had asthma and this friend of his, Dan Wickenden who had a pen friendship all through Serrell‟s Harvard career. Dan had written a novel, he was older than Serrell. He graduated from Amherst, and had written a successful novel which Serrell had admired very much, so he wrote to Dan and they became great friends through their correspondence. Dan was turned down by the draft too, because of I forgot, some minor reason. He was very unhappy about that. In the meantime Serrell had been married to DuBarry Campau; she was a reporter on the Press as Serrell was at that period. So they were married and they had been married only a few weeks and the Press told DuBarry they had to have her resignation because they had a regulation not to hire married women. Doesn‟t that sound archaic? Interviewer: Yes Dorothy: Anyway she was one of the stars of that paper, she started a wonderful “Judy Jots it Down” column, which was a very witty columnist and reporter. And so they had to do something about that because this was all they had, they had no money whatsoever. So Serrell wrote around and got a job with the Louisville Courier. And so they left and went down to Louisville. After a few weeks I heard from them from New York. I said, “Well what are you doing in New York?” He said, “We couldn‟t stand it down there, we didn‟t like the south, we just hated it. So we came to New York to look for a job.” I said, “How did you get there?” I knew they really had no money. “Oh,” Serrell said, “we sold our bicycles.” They got themselves to New York, and picked up whatever jobs they could do until they finally both landed newspaper jobs and have been in that position ever since. Interviewer: But Hermi and Dan? �13 Dorothy: Well, anyway Dan came and Serrell said we have to leave Grand Rapids so why don‟t you come and I suppose the press will give you our composite jobs. So he came and sure enough, the Press was glad to have him. So he found a room in the old, what was that old, it‟s torn down lately, the old columned house on Washington Street. Next to where Kate Sears used to live. Interviewer: Oh, the Wanty house. Dorothy: No, no. Interviewer: They put columns on it later, that‟s why I say…. Dorothy: Well, anyway in the old house with columns. He had most of his meals at our house. Hermi was only fifteen at that stage and she surely lost her heart to Dan and never looked at another soul. So finally, suddenly he realized she was his sun, moon and stars, they were married very quickly because I wanted them to be married, while George was very ill at that time, Caroline‟s husband. And I wanted them to be married, while it was possible. So they had a very quiet little wedding and were married. And Dan was writing novels at that period and they went to Westport, Connecticut to live. After they had three children, Dan decided he needed a regulation job to keep a family going. So he has been an editor in New York ever since. He is with Harcourt Brace and has been for many years as a literary editor. Interviewer: And Douglas stayed home. Dorothy: And Douglas while he was in the service, no while he was studying for his exams and so forth to be a pilot met Sally Jones. Everybody always laughs and say did you make that up? No, he didn‟t make that up. That apparently was love at first sight, so they became engaged and the minute the war was over, why Douglas rushed out to California to marry Sally. And they came back, and he went to the University of Michigan to finish his education and of course they gave him credit for his years in the service. He graduated the University and went on to the Law School. Then he came to Grand Rapids to practice law, where he now is. And that is the saga of my four children. Interviewer: I think that is very interesting, and now I want to go back to your childhood in Auburn. Were both of your parents natives of Auburn? Dorothy: Oh, yes, you could hardly believe, Auburn would seem archaic now. I have made a lot of tapes of my early life there because it is so different from life today. I knew my children and grandchildren would never believe anything about it, written, spoken a good bit into tapes about that early history. Oh, it was one of the most beautiful cities in those days. It too had very wide streets and arching elms that really practically met over the street and many beautiful houses and as I told you, there was a great deal of money there. A lot of it had been inherited and there were some very profitable manufacturing concerns there. And it was a lovely small city. Oh, dear it doesn‟t look like that now at all, the trees; the elms all got the elm‟s disease. The way they did �14 across New York State. New York State is devastated, you can drive along these country roads and they are lined with dead trees. The farmers won‟t pay to have them taken down or can‟t. Why it is the most ghastly thing. You know, when Auburn was denuded of its trees, the houses in my youth that I thought were so beautiful, most of them were of the wrong period and large and handsome, but not beautiful, most of them. Now those generations, those two generations have gone, the young people have left town, most of them. Those old houses have turned into rooming houses, some of them torn down, not the same place at all. But I do want to tell you that my father started a factory in Auburn, when he went there. Let me see, they were married in eighteen….well, about the late seventies [1870‟s] and he started making composition buttons. Well then that went into typewriter keys from one thing to another and then finally into plastics. We celebrated our hundredth anniversary last year, it was eighteen seventy-three when he went into that business and my nephew is now the president of the Auburn Plastics Company, which is the descendant of his great-grandfather‟s concern, which is quite interesting because it is one thing that has survived in Auburn. We had many big plants there. We had the Osborn family who were really. William H. Seward came from Auburn, a most distinguished citizen. The old mansion where he and his wife lived and brought up their family had been owned by his wife‟s father and it was built in eighteen twenty-five as a gorgeous house of that period. It is open to the public now, and if you are ever near there you must go and see it; and it‟s exactly how it was when Lincoln‟s Secretary of State lived there and there are many interesting mementos of his trips to Europe when he was given personal gifts by heads of state. I remember going into that house when I was a child, by the front door was a perfectly enormous carved bear about four feet high with sticking claws out to hang umbrellas on or something. This thing towered over me and I was absolutely terrified of that thing all during my childhood. My grandfather and grandmother Woodruff lived next door and we were in and out of that house a great deal. And in the garden which is still much the way it was, is an old fashioned summer house, and Secretary Seward was sitting in that summer house when he received the news that he was defeated for the Presidency. And it had been won by an utterly unknown greenhorn from the far west called Abraham Lincoln. Interviewer: and Dorothy: laughter…. Dorothy: Well…. Interviewer: You mentioned the Osborn family? Wasn‟t there a member of…? Dorothy: Thomas Osborn became a great leader and expert in prison reform. His father had started out a little manufacturing business of farming implements. Well, they were very prosperous but along came the International Harvester finally and bought them out for several million dollars. So the Osborn family has always been rich; they were rich before and they are very well to do now. And Mr. Osborn sons bought the Auburn Daily Advertiser as it was in those days. Thomas Osborn great grandson is now President of the Auburn Citizen and it is a very excellent paper for that whole community. �15 Interviewer: It seems to me like one of those Osborns married into the S.F.D. Morse family of California. Dorothy: Yes, he did and they‟re now are divorced. Interviewer: I think I knew Dick Osborn. Dorothy: Yes, he did. I had heard that when I was there last year that they had been divorced. All that generation, I guessed, are divorced. I might tell you a little incident about my family, might interest you. Auburn was started in about eighteen eighteen, I guess. And they had a little sawmill there; a little river that ran through the village. It had been an Indian Village and there was an Indian tribe right near there. A Scotsman by the name of John Muir came to Auburn and prospered. He built a perfectly beautiful stone house, a lovely house. Well, when the Muir family died, may be not, my great-grandfather John Porter bought the house. He was a lawyer at that time; he was a member of the law firm from New York, that tried, where they had that famous trial, where Seward made his name, that Negro trial. Well anyway, my great grandfather bought that house. My grandmother and mother Beardsley were born in that house. My grandmother used to tell me very interesting stories about it. The basement had one of those enormous fireplaces of those days, eight feet wide or ten feet, big enough for a tree. Of course the whole place was surrounded with trees. You could go out and get trees and logs any place. So they always kept a fire going in the basement, and they welcomed the Indians. They kept their side door open all night in case the Indians wanted to come in. They always had an enormous pot of coffee hanging over the fire and they kept the fire going. And they would come in and sleep on the floor in their blankets and drink coffee. My grandmother said as a child she used to look out the window and see Indians shuffling by the house and going down the street wrapped in their blankets. And then anyway, after my great grandfather‟s death and his wife‟s death, the John Porters, the house was sold to a Mister John Rice. Later on my oldest brother Carlton married Mary Rice and they were married in the drawing room of that beautiful, beautiful old house, where my grandparents had been married and where my grandmother and my mother had been born, was a very interesting thing. An interlocking of the two families and later on my brother and his wife and children went over to the big house to live and they added on and fixed it up, and it was a beautiful house and still is. One of the Osborn boys, one of the descendants lives there now. He married a girl from Boston and they have six children, I guess they loved that big house. That was quite interesting. By and large, Auburn like every other place in the country is very, very different, these days. There were a great, for instance, a great many Victorians in Auburn. Now a small city of thirty-six thousand you wouldn‟t expect elegance like that quite number like the coachman, the man on the box and livery, a highly sophisticated elegant society. You can see why they thought I was coming out to be thrown to the Indians. Interviewer: Well, you‟ve survived and it has been a delightful afternoon. I appreciate your giving us your time. �16 Dorothy: I had no intention of making any personal remarks, about my family or anything. I am a little upset about that… Interviewer: Well, I think you have a remarkable and interesting family and that your children, immediate family have been born and brought up in Grand Rapids. They have had interesting careers in all instances. Dorothy: Well, they all love Grand Rapids. We all love it, and I‟m so happy to come back here now to live at Porter Hills, it is a wonderful place and I am lucky to be back here. Interviewer: We look forward to many more years of enjoyment. Dorothy: I don‟t know how many more….Anyway, I am very happy here. I have a good many old friends and I love it. Happy to be back in Auburn, I mean in Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Grand Rapids, you mean. We will turn it off. INDEX A Alliance Françoise · 6 American Red Cross · 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 Art Gallery · 6 Auburn Citizen · 14 Auburn Daily Advertiser · 14 Auburn Plastics Company · 14 B Backlund, Ralph · 11 Blodgett Hospital · 7 Blodgett, Mr. · 7 Blodgett, Mr. D.A. · 5 Blodgett, Mrs. John W. · 7 Boyden, Mr. · 8, 9 Brewer, Mr. · 3 D D.A. Blodgett Home · 7 Daniels, Miss · 4, 8 Deerfield Academy · 8 E Eccle, George · 11 Exeter · 9 F Ford, Jerry · 6 Fountain Street School · 8 G C Grand Rapids Trust Company · 2 Central High School · 8 Chase, Mr. and Mrs. · 6 Colgate · 1, 3, 8, 9 H Hall, Edith · 5 Harcourt Brace · 13 Harvard · 8, 12 �17 Hillman, Caroline · 9, 11, 12, 13 Hillman, Douglas · 9, 13 Hillman, Hermi · 9, 12, 13 Hillman, Hermione · 9 Hillman, Lem · 2, 3, 8, 11 Hillman, Serrell · 3, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 Hodgen, Dr. and Mrs. · 8 Hollister, Mr. and Mrs. · 6 Hollister, Mrs. · 6, 7 Howe, Snow, Corrigan and Bertles · 3, 7 Hubbard, Betty & Monroe · 2 Hubbard, Betty Gates · 1 Hubbard, Monroe · 1 Hughes, Mrs. · 6 J Jones, Sally · 13 L Lincoln, Abraham · 14 M Michigan Trust Building · 2 Morse, S.F.D. · 15 Muir, John · 15 P Porter, John · 15 R Rice, John · 15 Rice, Mary · 15 S Seward, Secretary · 14 Seward, William H. · 14 Shanahan, Mr. and Mrs. · 6 Smith College · 11 Swift, Mrs. · 6 T Tinkham, Mr. and Mrs. Frederick · 2 U Underwood, Rosamond · 1, 3 University of Michigan · 9, 13 V N Vassar College · 4 New York Times · 11 W O Old Kent Bank · 6, 7 Osborn family · 14 Osborn, Dick · 15 White, T. Stewart · 5 Wickenden, Dan · 12 Woman‟s University Club · 6 Women‟s City Club · 6 Woodruff · 14 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1519fc7ec75c626f0b76cf4a523a9b46.mp3 524caec1e54c03977ed8bb7067a12556 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_47Hillman Title A name given to the resource Hillman, Dorothy Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hillman, Dorothy Description An account of the resource Dorothy Woodruff was born in Auburn, New York on January 13, 1887. She graduated from Smith College in 1909. In 1916 she and fellow Smith alumna Rosamund Underwood traveled to Colorado to teach at the Elkhead School. She married in 1917, and came to Grand Rapids in 1918. In 1936 she became the Executive Secretary of the American Red Cross in Grand Rapids and she served the Red Cross in Washington, D.C. during WWII. The Hillmans had two daughters, Caroline and Hermione, and two sons, Serrell and Douglas. Dorothy died on May 13, 1979. 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 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/d80dba05d1a485f553694b36c2ab69a8.pdf da7dd9cb98f645e645040777501c0f1b PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mr. George Shelby Interviewed on January 16, 1975 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #46 (1:25:23) Biographical Information George Cass Shelby was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 5 December 1878, the son of William Read Shelby and Mary Kennedy Cass. In 1903 George was married to Ann Miller about 1903. George died 31 August 1975 in Blodgett Hospital in East Grand Rapids at the age of 96. Ann Miller was born in November 1882 in Grand Rapids. She was the daughter of John Miller and Martha Nicholson. Ann died 26 April 1941 in Grand Rapids and both George and Ann are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. The father, William Read Shelby was born 4 December 1842 in Lincoln County, Kentucky and died at his home at 65 Lafayette NE 14 November 1930. The mother of George was Mary Kennedy Cass, born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on 22 March 1847. She married William Shelby on 16 June 1869 in St. Stephen’s Church, Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Mary died in Grand Rapids on 3 May 1936. _____________ Interviewer: This recording is being made the afternoon of Friday or no, excuse me, it’s Thursday, Thursday, January the sixteen, nineteen seventy-five, at the residence of Mr. George Shelby, a house at two nineteen Youell, spelled Y-O-U-E-L-L, Street, Southeast, in Grand Rapids, Michigan. A, Mr. Shelby is, how old are you Mr. Shelby? Mr. Shelby: Ninety-six. Interviewer: You’re ninety-six years old. Mr. Shelby: December fifth. Interviewer: You’ve just passed your ninety-sixth birthday. Mr. Shelby: December the fifth. Interviewer: December the fifth? Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Interviewer: I see. You were born in Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: Yes. �2 Interviewer: I see. Do you remember, what were you, do you have any very early memories of, you know, what did you… Mr. Shelby: About Nursery you mean? Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Shelby: I think I went to Miss Reed’s Kindergarten. I remember that very well. It was up on the, on the north, Lafayette and Lyon Street, just beyond Lyon Street. I attended that. And also, a little place down there where that triangle where State and Portland… Interviewer: I know where. Mr. Shelby: Good. Interviewer: State and a… Mr. Shelby: Miss Reed’s. Interviewer: And Washington, maybe? Mr. Shelby: Yes, Washington. I attended kindergarten there. I mean, yes I was a pupil. Interviewer: Was Miss Reed at both locations? Mr. Shelby: No, I don’t remember the name of the kindergarten down there on State Street. Interviewer: I see. I want to turn it off and just make sure we’re recording right. Tell us about your experience at Miss Reed’s. Mr. Shelby: Well we were largely engaged in, making, recording maps of some sort, it was papery---weaving, making it into mats and designs of one kind or another. We thought were very good, very pretty. Interviewer: Like a mat of some sort? Mr. Shelby: We were commended for our stability. Interviewer: About how old were you then? Mr. Shelby: Oh I probably was, I don’t know whether I was three or four or five. Interviewer: Somewhere in there? Mr. Shelby: In infancy; I was surely an infant. Interviewer: Do you remember any other of the children that went there with you? �3 Mr. Shelby: Well I think Guy Widdicombe. Interviewer: Guy Widdicombe. Mr. Shelby: At State Street location. Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Shelby: I think he was sent there too. Interviewer: That’s John Widdicombe’s father. Mr. Shelby: John, that’s right. Interviewer: Do you remember any other children in that— Mr. Shelby: No, I don’t. No, I don’t remember any other children. Interviewer: I see. How many children do you suppose were in the school? Mr. Shelby: Oh I think seven or eight. Interviewer: Where did you go after that? Mr. Shelby: Oh, I think Fountain Street School. Interviewer: Where was that located Mr. Shelby? Mr. Shelby: On Fountain Street and, Prospect is it? Interviewer: Uh huh. Mr. Shelby: Fountain Street School. Interviewer: They moved it later on as I recall. Mr. Shelby: Yes. Fountain Street School I attended. Interviewer: How long were you there? Mr. Shelby: Oh, then I moved over to Lyon Street where they, where the school is there, don’t you know? Interviewer: Oh yes, Central Grammar School. Is that what you call it? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, Grammar School. It’s right by where the doctor used to live, right across the corner from a, very prominent doctor lived there. What is his name? Interviewer: Dr. Campbell? No, no. �4 Mr. Shelby: No. Campbell was… Interviewer: This man lived across from the school? Mr. Shelby: Yes. He’s, his house is still there. He was one of our prominent surgeons at the time. Interviewer: Dr. Shephard. Mr. Shelby: No, it wasn’t Shephard. (A lady speaks in background) Mr. Shelby: Shephard lived, Shephard lived down, Shephard lived down on, Jefferson. Don’t you know where that restaurant is? The Dunham House was right next to the Shephards. Interviewer: The Holly house, oh yes, I see. We don’t, can’t remember the name of that doctor. Mr. Shelby: Famous doctor, a prominent surgeon in Grand Rapids at that time. He was right at the corner of Lyon and, Barclay, is it? His house is there now. Woman: Well, Dr. Smith, Dr. Smith’s father, Dr. Richard Smith… Mr. Shelby: No, I can’t think of his name. Interviewer: Maybe, maybe it’ll come back. Mr. Shelby: One of the, one of the most prominent physicians or surgeons in the city. Woman: I thought a, Dr. Richard Smith, haven’t you mentioned his brother? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Woman: Dr. Richard Smith? Mr. Shelby: No, no none of that element, that’s all later. Woman: No? Interviewer: Yes, oh yes. Were you living on Fountain Street or Lafayette at that time? Mr. Shelby: On Lafayette. Interviewer: On Lafayette. Mr. Shelby: We’ve sold that house, quite a number of people bought it, the man with the Alabasking company lived there for a while. I can’t remember his name. The Alabasking Company? Interviewer: Yes, I remember, yes. �5 Mr. Shelby: And then there was a club there of bachelors, and Fox was one of them, the Fox brothers, Charles Fox? Interviewer: Yes, on Crofton. Mr. Shelby: On Crofton. And then one or two others. One tall man, named Cook, he was about seven feet high. I know I used to watch him, you’d measure his height with a lamppost. What was his name now? Berguin. Interviewer: Berguin? Mr. Shelby: Berguin. He was seven feet two. And as he passed the lamppost his head was even with that. Berguin. Interviewer: About what year would that have been? Before the turn of the century? Mr. Shelby: It would, let’s see, eighteen eighty, eighteen ninety. It would be about seventy-eight, eighty. It was in the eighties. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: Eighteen eighty, around that neighborhood. Interviewer: What year do you think you moved to sixty-five Lafayette, Northeast? Mr. Shelby: I can’t remember exactly. Woman: How big were you? Mr. Shelby: In eighty eighteen (?). I was born in that house on Fountain Street. Interviewer: I see, you really were. Mr. Shelby: That was, Mrs. Booth asked me, do you remember that, this bedroom? She said. I said, Hardly Mrs. Booth, this is where I was born. That was also the Saint’s Rest Club, they called it. Interviewer: They called it the Saint’s Rest Club. I think I remember hearing about that. Mr. Shelby: That was, those were those bachelors. Interviewer: But they weren’t saints. Mr. Shelby: Yeah? Interviewer: Did they have a staff that took care of them? Mr. Shelby: I, they had a cook and maids, that’s all. Then later… �6 Woman: How old were you? Mr. Shelby:..they built the castle. Interviewer: The Foxes, the Foxes? Mr. Shelby: How old was I at that time? Woman: When you moved around the corner? Woman: Were you in school? Mr. Shelby: Oh I don’t know precisely. Mr. Shelby: Maybe seven or eight. I don’t remember elementary school precisely. I don’t remember exactly when Father, when we moved to Lafayette Avenue. And my aunt, see that property was bought by my grandfather for my father and mother. Interviewer: Your grandfather, grandfather Cass? Mr. Shelby: Yes, Grandfather Cass, George W. Cass, of New York. He at that time was a railroad president for the Pennsylvania from Pittsburg you see. And he bought the corner house and, for his son-in-law, Mr. Whalen, Henry D. Whalen. My Aunt Augustin, they lived there, on the corner house. That’s the one that --- is living in now. Then that was subsequently oh three, many people owned it other than that, the Rosenthal family moved in from Rochester. The clothing people. The tower clothing company, you know? Where the big clock is? Interviewer: Oh yes, yes, Rosenthal. Mr. Shelby: They lived there for quite a while, the Rosenthals. Interviewer: Tower Clock building is the building where Woolworths is now. Mr. Shelby: Where Woolworths is, yeah. That was one of the most prominent buildings in town. Interviewer: Let me just go on to another subject for the moment. I know that you went to St. Paul’s School in Concord, New Hampshire, that’s correct? Mr. Shelby: That is right. I had two brothers ahead of me, my brother Cass, the oldest, and then my brother Walter. Interviewer: They both went to St. Paul’s? Mr. Shelby: To St. Paul’s. Interviewer: What, how old were you when you went to St. Paul’s? �7 Mr. Shelby: I think I was about eleven or somewhere around there. Interviewer: Really, that young? So you must have stayed there quite a long time. Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, I was young. Because I won a race there, there’s the cup. Interviewer: Is there a date on that cup? Mr. Shelby: That was about… Woman: He said he was a very lonesome little boy. Mr. Shelby: Cross-Country cup. Woman: He’s been back many times at his reunions and all. Interviewer: Yes, I know. Let me see if I can read it. It’s a pretty cup. Woman: It is. Mr. Shelby: Eighteen ninety-four, is it? St. Paul’s School. Interviewer: Well then you would have been about sixteen at that time? Woman: That was just before he went to --Mr. Shelby: Can you read that? Interviewer: I’ll try, let’s see. Woman: He went when he was about eleven. Mr. Shelby: That was a common, like at Oxford and Cambridge and English schools, there were copies of, the rector was a great admirer of England you know and English schools, so St. Paul’s was modeled after them. Interviewer: It says Easter, eighteen ninety-four here. And then it says, lower school. Mr. Shelby: The lower school was for the boys, only twelve and thirteen years old, it’s a, yeah. Interviewer: Well then it says, aaron hollenzs/hounds (?) Mr. Shelby: Yeah, that’s a typical English custom in school. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: Cross Country running. Interviewer: Do you remember the name of the headmaster? �8 Mr. Shelby: Aaron Hollenzs/Hounds you mean? Interviewer: No, the headmaster of Saint Paul’s. Mr. Shelby: Dr. Coit. Interviewer: Dr. Coit. Mr. Shelby: Henry Coit. Interviewer: Henry Coit. Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Interviewer: Was he there for quite a long time? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, he lived there and died there. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: About seventy-five. He had two brothers, Dr. Milner Coit who was a doctor, and one other one that was a clergyman too. It was very much of a church school, Episcopal Church school, modeled after English schools you know. Interviewer: What was your class at Yale? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: What was your class at Yale? Mr. Shelby: Nineteen hundred. Interviewer: Nineteen hundred. Mr. Shelby: It was when I graduated. Interviewer: Uh-huh. Mr. Shelby: eighteen ninety-six to nineteen hundred. Interviewer: So you went four years? Mr. Shelby: Yes, four years. Interviewer: Did you like Yale? Mr. Shelby: Did I like it? Interviewer: Yes. �9 Mr. Shelby: Yes, but I had a good time towards the last. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: I was, not too brilliant. I was just an ordinary pupil, don’t you know? Interviewer: Did you go back to your most recent reunion or? Woman: Yes. Mr. Shelby: I have been, yes. I have been, I guess maybe, how many years ago was it? Woman: Nineteen seventy. Mr. Shelby: Huh? Woman: You’ve been to every one for the last five years. Interviewer: Nineteen seventy. Woman: For about the last twenty years now. And quite a few before that. Interviewer: That would have been your seventieth reunion, right? Mr. Shelby: There’s no point in going back now because there’s nobody living but myself and Harry Wells, and he’s so lame he can’t navigate. Woman: Last time they sat Interviewer: Of course. Mr. Shelby: I think there’s about forty boys in my class, the class of nineteen hundred. Interviewer: Nineteen hundred. Mr. Shelby: Started in at that number, I think about thirty graduated I would think. Interviewer: Did you stay most of the time in New Haven or did you go to New York on weekends or what did you? Mr. Shelby: Oh, occasionally. They frowned on that sort of thing. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: They rather discouraged your leaving New Haven. I mean, other things being equal. You weren’t a prisoner, but the less you done ---, the more they were pleased. Woman: It’s different now I think. �10 Interviewer: I just wanted to ask you, going back to earlier days in Grand Rapids, I believe you’re a member of Saint Mark’s, correct? Mr. Shelby: Yes. Interviewer: Were you baptized in that church? Mr. Shelby: Yes. Interviewer: In those days did families have their own pews? Mr. Shelby: Yes. Pew 93. Interviewer: Pew 93. Mr. Shelby: Yes. Still have it. Interviewer: Did you have to pay an annual rental in those days? Mr. Shelby: Yes. Interviewer: Do you know what it was? Mr. Shelby: No, I don’t. My father took care of that. Interviewer: Well I remember it was customary in those days… Mr. Shelby: He was a vestrament (?) they called him. --Interviewer: Wasn’t he senior warden also? Mr. Shelby: Yes, senior warden, yes. Interviewer: Well now to go back again to your, to Grand Rapids, what did you, when you were a young person, what did you do for a social life in Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: We went to barn dances and dances, dancing school. Gage and Benedick’s Dancing School. Interviewer: Gage and Benedick’s.Yeah, where was that? Mr. Shelby: Miss Gage and Miss Benedick. -----and they were giving the hell to these arm wrists (?), they call them arm wrists the local cooks those arm wrists Interviewer: Yes. �11 Mr. Shelby: I think there’s one right, one was located about – opposite of Michigan on Ionia Street, where Michigan National Bank is right across the street or where Central Bank is, I think there’s an armory there. And later on, the St. Cecilia. Interviewer: Later on St. Cecilia. We’re going to talk about winter sports, what did you do in the winter? Mr. Shelby: Skating largely; sliding down Fountain Street. Woman: And Michigan. Mr. Shelby: That hill was black with sleds. We got so angry with the hacks, they’d get in the way you know, they were not supposed to be, a whole bunch of hacks lined up at the Morton House, outside the Morton House. Interviewer: Would they start right up at Lafayette? Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Interviewer: And how far down would they go? Mr. Shelby: To Division Street. Interviewer: All the way to Division? Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Depended upon the condition of the slide, of the board. There’d by thirty people. Ed Earl had a bob, bobs you know, thirty-foot bobs. Interviewer: That’s Mr. Edward Earl? Mr. Shelby: Edward Earl, the corner of Fountain and Lafayette. It was Ed, Ed, the youngest one, not Fred, not the father. He had a thirty foot bob ----. Thirty boys and girls. It was a pretty swift… Interviewer: I’ll bet it was. Mr. Shelby: We’d, it was so slippery, that they had to put sand on the, down where the Union Bank is, the foot of the street, so you wouldn’t turn into Monroe. That was some slide. Interviewer: Was there sliding on that hill too? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes. The dam, the reservoir, dangerous you know. Sure. Interviewer: Were there other hills? �12 Mr. Shelby: New Year’s Day the city had Mid Street, the streets were blocked off, and the hill was given to sliding. Interviewer: You’re talking about what we now call Michigan Street? Mr. Shelby: Yes. Interviewer: Where did you start? At the top or? Mr. Shelby: Right on, well about, I’d think Barclay about, seems I remember. Interviewer: Barclay, yeah. And how far down did they go? Mr. Shelby: They’d go down to where the hotel is. Interviewer: All the way to Monroe. Mr. Shelby: They’d put sand out to stop them. Those went down at a terrible pace; thirty people on those bobs you know. I wouldn’t say a mile a minute but, you know, seemed like it. They say forty miles an hour or something like that. Interviewer: I wouldn’t be surprised. Where did you do your skating? Mr. Shelby: At Reed’s Lake. Interviewer: Reed’s Lake. Was there a place out there where you could warm up? Mr. Shelby: Yes, there was. I’ve forgotten the name of the man that ran it. Yeah. It’s right where the Lakeside Club was later built. Interviewer: Let’s see now. Going back to social life again, were there any clubs for younger people, for younger men? Mr. Shelby: Saints Rest, you see I’m trying to think of… Woman: Something on the River that you spoke of--Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, Boat and Canoe Club; I belonged to that up at North Park. Interviewer: Do you remember some of the other people who were active in that? Mr. Shelby: No, I don’t. I don’t remember. It was quite a big club. It was located right before you get on the bridge, crossing the river, that was the headquarters. Interviewer: Would that be Ann Street perhaps today? Mr. Shelby: Huh? �13 Interviewer: That would be Ann Street today? Mr. Shelby: Possibly, I don’t remember. I wouldn’t want to say definitely. It’s right as you start across onto the bridge to cross the river. Interviewer: I know that in the old days the most common form of transportation was, well, street cars. Mr. Shelby: Well, but the dummies… Interviewer: But now that brings up a question: What was the dummy line or the dummy? Mr. Shelby: It was a, some sort of an engine, that pulled a so open car, where you sat, seats across seats you know. Interviewer: Was it a stream engine? Mr. Shelby: I think so yes. Interviewer: In other words, did the streetcar stop at a certain place and then you got into another kind of a vehicle? Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Same way at Reed’s Lake. Interviewer: Where did you change to get on the dummy there? Mr. Shelby: Right there on Eastern Avenue where that funeral parlor is. You corralled, it was fenced in there. That’s as far as the streetcar went, send you down on the dummy. Then you went down, straight down the street and then turned and went, headed for Reed’s Lake. Was about a twenty or thirty minute ride on the dummy to get to the lake. Interviewer: Was that quite a summer resort place too in those days? Mr. Shelby: Well, not exactly no. No. Interviewer: Did they have boats on the lake? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, they had amusements, yeah boats. They had, well Manhattan Beach they had boats across the lake. There were two boats and they were always fighting one another, bumping into one another, having battles. Woman: Big boats? Interviewer: Were they large boats? Mr. Shelby: Well, one was big, broad, broad one you know…Bud used to work on one of them. �14 Woman: What were those boats? The Watson? Interviewer: One of the last ones was the Ramona that I remember. And then there was one called the Hazel A and one called the Major Watson I think it was called. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, Major Watson. That Dago that owned, one day was having a battle you know, they wanted to run into, ram the Major Watson. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: He was a smaller, trim little boat. I’ve forgotten the name of the owner, the Italian, but his dock was –that way – Interviewer: Now your father came here with the, to be, to run the Grand Rapids and Indiana Railroad, is that correct? Mr. Shelby: That’s right. Interviewer: And your grandfather Cass was president of the… Mr. Shelby: Fort Wayne, Cincinnati-Fort Wayne, Chicago-Cincinnati, yes, the Pennsylvania from Pittsburgh to Chicago. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne, and Chicago I think was the title. Interviewer: Were there other members of the family in that railroad? Mr. Shelby: No, no. Interviewer: I see. Tell me about your uncle, Mr. Henry D. Whalen Jr. Who, What did he do? Mr. Shelby: I don’t know, other than Grandfather bought that house on Fountain and Lafayette for Mr. Whalen and my Aunt Augusta. Henry D. Whalen is. And Michigan Iron Works is what he was head of, and my grandfather put him into it. It was a medium-size organization. And he was head of the Michigan Iron Works; he was the son-in-law of George W. Cass, as my father was. Woman: Did he go to Westpoint, your father? Did Henry Whalen, he went to Westpoint? Mr. Shelby: Did what? Interviewer: Did he go to Westpoint? Woman: Westpoint? The school? Henry Whalen? �15 Mr. Shelby: Oh, I don’t remember. Woman: I was wondering if he was in the army. Mr. Shelby: Very possibly he did. My grandfather went to Westpoint for sure. George W. Cass did. Woman: -and someone else did. Mr. Shelby: He was a mathematician. I missed out on the mathematics, I’ve had to contend with all my life. Interviewer: Do you remember your grandfather Cass? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes. Interviewer: Did he come to Grand Rapids or did you go to see him? Mr. Shelby: Occasionally. Interviewer: Did you go to visit him? Mr. Shelby: Yes, I remember him very well. He lived at 52 West Fifty-Seventh Street. Interviewer: 52 West Fifty-Seventh Street. Woman: In New York. Mr. Shelby: He was quite severe to me. Interviewer: Now, didn’t they have a home in S--- Pennsylvania? Mr. Shelby: Yes, that’s, yes he did. Interviewer: He had two homes then? Mr. Shelby: He had two homes, first in Allegheny and then in S---. C--- they called the name of it. Had ___, which is a suburb of Pittsburg. There is quite a noted author person who came and lived there. I can’t remember her name now. She bought it. Interviewer: I can’t remember Women: Mary Reynold Reinhart? Interviewere: Mary Reynold Reinhart perhaps? Mr. Shelby: Oh yeah. She bought it. �16 Interviewer: Now, did he have the house in New York at the same that he had the house in S_ikcley (?) Mr. Shelby: I’m pretty sure, I don’t remember about that one, no. Interviewer: But you knew the address. Mr. Shelby: Well 52 West 57th Woman: That’s where you used to go and visit. Mr. Shelby: Right across the street was the sonspace (?). Tall, long stone apartment which was called an apartment building, it was rather unusual because they weren’t many of them in New York at that time. Interviewer: What was the name of it again, please? Mr. Shelby: The sauncee I guess. I don’t know how to spell it. It was an apartment building. Interviewer: How little would you have been when you weren’t to go see your grandfather? Mr. Shelby: Oh, well I think it would be fourteen or something like that. Interviewer: I see, well, now… Mr. Shelby: Now we sent down by our grandfather’s casket, we’ll get a little culture, we were considered a little build raw and wild having gone from Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Well you were going to St. Paul’s and Yale, but that was… Mr. Shelby: Later on… Interviewer: right, that’s right. Mr. Shelby: Preceding that I was groomed to walk down 5th avenue and to look like I belonged. Interviewer: I see. Mr .Shelby: I still had what I was considered a little wild compared with my cousin Kenny Wallen. I was a little more aggressive. He was quieter and a little bit bored. He didn’t have the help as I did or the buoyancy. And I suppose Sunday is full with very impressive the procession on 5th avenue, of people going to churches and the various churches, the various clubs you know. Interviewer: Where did your grandfather go to church? Mr. Shelby: Christ church. In fact he was a vestament (?). What do you call them? Interviewer: Yes, vestament. �17 Mr. Shelby: Yeah you know he was, he bought a beard of course, I remember that. He could be very quiet and very severe, and make you feel like a, you know, a shrimp. I was taken out there to try to get a little bit of the western blood out of me, don’t you know. In New York you have to baby yourself. You walk very sedately; hold your grandfather’s hand. Interviewer: Did you know your grandmother too? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, she was invalid most of her life, but I knew her. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: Had nurses all the time and probably rubbings and you know…she was more or less in a state of invalidism. Interviewer: I see. Your grandfather lived to an advanced age? Mr. Shelby: Did he what? Interviewer: Did he live to an advanced age? Mr. Shelby: I think it was in the high 70’s I would say. Interviewer: High 70’s. I see. Mr. Shelby: Like 78 or some such… nothing like my father, my father lived to be 90, 89 really. Interviewer: 89. Mr. Shelby: My mother (life was)? Interviewer: Where was your mother’s, excuse me, where did your father’s family come from? Mr. Shelby: Kentucky. Danville, Kentucky. Interviewer: What about Shelbyville? Where does that figure? Mr. Shelby: Oh I think they just used them as names. They they they just liked the name Shelby. I don’t think it was… Interviewer: I see, so they are really from Danville, Kentucky. Mr. Shelby: Danville, yeah. Isaac Shelby was the youngest in Kentucky and he lived, I think in Danville Kentucky. Anyway, I’d have to…I’d been to that, to see the places over. Interviewer: Do you have any relatives left down there that you know or know anything about? Mr. Shelby: I don’t think so, no. �18 Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: No. Interviewer: Well now when, after you got out of Yale, did you come right back to Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: I went to Europe. Interviewer: Oh, you went to Europe. Well tell us about that. Mr. Shelby: Well we went out of Minneapolis. There was a boat that carried cattle. Took 15 days to cross and we were limited to about 15 or 15 or 20 people, 15 I would say, nice people. Interviewer: Did you go… Mr. Shelby: I mean I Interviewer: Did you go with your family? Mr. Shelby: No, just Harry Whittaker and myself and these people. There were some relatives of Yale families aboard this camp. She quite a stunning girl, I remember, she was a decent quarter camp she was very famous at Yale. Woman: I remember hearing about Walter Camp. Interviewer: Walter Camp, a big figure at Yale. Woman: A famous athlete, but I don’t know what sport. Was he football player, or what was he father? Mr. Shelby: Uh, I forget, yeah I think so. She was out there, and her mother. We had the whole ship the cattle were below you. You didn’t even know they were there. I mean there was, there wasn’t any contact with them. Interviewer: 15 days. Mr. Shelby: Yeah… Interviewer: Where did you… Mr. Shelby: Minneapolis Interviewer: Where did you land when you got there? Mr. Shelby: We landed in London. Interviewer: In London. �19 Mr. Shelby: In London. Then we had to take a tram up to London. Interviewer: Did you go, well maybe you landed in South Hampton? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, South Hampton. I think so, yeah. Right at the foot of the Themes River. Interviewer: Well, maybe you did land closer to London. Mr. Shelby: Once every 15 miles a trip up the tram was, they called it up to the town you know. And we walked right up to the Fogger (?) Square, I remember the hotel very well. North Umberland (?) Avenue. A very short street. There was a clubhouse across the street from them but it was a 7 story clubhouse I used to see club men go up in an out of that and that time I was there. So I went in there and I was, and at that time Harry’s sister, Mary and some woman from Kalamazoo had apartments up on one of the avenues. One of those fashionable streets, you know, up near the Arch de Triumph. Interviewer: Now wait, I lack, we got from London to Paris pretty quickly. How long did you stay in London? Mr. Shelby: Oh well I think we were there maybe 10 days or so before we went to Paris. Woman: They climbed up to the top of St. Paul’s and they… Interviewer: Now you, you went, you climbed up to the top of St. Paul’s? St. Paul’s cathedral? Mr. Shelby: Yes, yes we did. Both of us, that’s about 500 steps. Woman: Father, who was the man who took you around the dock? Where the… Mr. Shelby: Oh, oh that was later on when I was aboard a, I was on board one of these double decker buses you know, and a man sat down next to me and said ―You are an American aren’t you?‖ and I said, yes I am. Well he says ―I am William Louis‖, or what did I say? What did I say? Well he said ―I’m Good’s manager for London’s southwest royalty, perhaps you would like to see the London dock.‖ Yeah, then I said, yeah I certainly would. So he gave me a pass to go to the London dock. Which I did and everything under the sun that England brings by boat is stored there. Elephant tusks and rhinoceros horns, and hides and everything under the sun that comes from all over the world where England has got a count in it, there’s a store there on bond. You see and it’s drawn by order you know, the London dock can be very very expensive. Interviewer: Was this there, on the first trip you took? Mr. Shelby: Yes, this is then. Interviewer: You saw this on your first trip? �20 Mr. Shelby: Yes it is. There I was sitting on top of a bus when this man recognized me. I said, how’d you know? He said ―Well you are worried about both of you‖ he says, I saw that, a boater (?). Interviewer: Well then you went to Paris. Mr. Shelby: William Wilkins. Yeah, and then I went to Paris. And mother had a house there, and mother and my sister Violet had an apartment there too. But I spent my time in Paris roaming about the city like anyone would you know. Interviewer: You said that your sister Mary had a, no excuse me, Mr. Whittaker’s sister.. Mr. Shelby: Violet. My sister Violet. Interviewer: Your sister, but also Mr. Whittaker’s sister had uh... Mr. Shelby: Well she and a Mrs. from Kalamazoo, I can’t remember the women’s name had this apartment up near the Arch de Triumph right in the very center of Paris. Interviewer: And your mother and your sister also had a… Mr. Shelby: We were living on the West bank (?) Interviewer: Your mother and sister, were they there at the same time you were? Mr. Shelby: Uh, no later. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Woman: They were there when father was there though. They came over there. Interviewer: Did you Mr. Shelby: We were there in Paris for maybe a week or 10 days. We were booked for Howmagmiow (???) a fashion play down in Austria. And so Harry and I went to that and it was, and we had to go through Germany down into where the fashion play was. We saw that and it was all day long in the… Interviewer: Does that mean, would you have traveled all the way by train? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Munich. Not which I would recommend that name I remember. Interviewer: And after the fashion play where did you go? Mr. Shelby: Then we came back to Paris and… �21 Interviewer: And you returned to this country from France? Mr. Shelby: Yes, I came back with my mother and sister. Woman: You went to Holland. Mr. Shelby: No, Holland is where we landed. Interviewer: I see. Woman: Ok yeah. Mr. Shelby: On our trip out from here, when we came from this side. Woman: So maybe from England. Mr. Shelby: That was very customary, the fashion play was believe it or not, wasn’t an annual thing as I remember but it’s still going on I guess. Interviewer: Well now when you got back from Europe, what did you do? Did you go to work right away, or…? Mr. Shelby: We would work in Papa’s office in the treasury department. Interviewer: And how long did you stay there? Mr. Shelby: Umm, quite a good many years. Interviewer: Where was his office? Mr. Shelby: In the GR and I building, the railroad office on Ionia street. Interviewer: the _LAD plant? Interviewer: Was that the building that was torn down about 10 years ago? Mr. Shelby: Yeah yeah. Interviewer: I remember it. Mr. Shelby: I worked in that on the books you know, oh agents agents were___ I would take them down to the bank you know. All the money that would come in from the ticket sales all along the line, from Richmond down to Mackinac. Woman: Then you went up to Al Gold Mine(?) and built the railroad. Mr. Shelby: What? Woman: When did you go up to Al Gold Mine(?) ? �22 Mr. Shelby: Oh that was later on. Woman: Oh. Mr. Shelby: Yeah later on. Woman: That must have been hard. Mr. Shelby: Later on the Al Gold (?) had sent the railway it was formed by the Canadian people from the Pennsylvania railroad thought that we might have some connection with it so they suggested my father they, so they said send a representative up to see how the railroad was getting on, and I was the boy that went there. And I was landed in the Sault and I took a boat, I took a boat from the Sault to this point where Montreal was it Montreal river empties in to Lake Superior. From there I was dumped all into the steamer, and the steamer into about 6 feet of water. Like a dungeon. I am like soaking wet you know, I made that trip with an Indian and a squall and they were down somewhere further further in the steamer and then I had to walk from there to where the camp was, about 12 miles inland. Interviewer: What year, what year would that have been Mr. Shelby? Mr. Shelby: Let’s see… Interviewer: Near the 1900’s we know that… Mr. Shelby: Maybe 19-6 or so, something like that. After I had been to the GR. So that Mr. Mckray was the president of the Pennsylvania Railroad at that time suggests to my father that someone will be up there looking after their interests, and I was the boy that was sent. Interviewer: How long did you stay? Mr. Shelby: Oh, I stayed until December. Interviewer: Was there a settlement up there, or a little town? Mr. Shelby: No, just the railway, just building the railway. Interviewer: Just the…I see, I see. Mr. Shelby: Laying the track. Interviewer: I see, actually building the railway Mr. Shelby: Right away, yeah Interviewer: mmhmm �23 Mr. Shelby: But it was quite picturesque spot right next to the Montreal River. They’ve since dammed it, to the lake there. But there was a waterfall right, we camped at a waterfall, we looked down the little waterfall. This you know, the Canadian engineer and his helper and I was timekeeper. I walked everyday about 10 or 15 miles to take the time of then on the job you know. Interviewer: Would this have been north of Lake Superior? Mr. Shelby: Yes on the north side of Lake Superior. Interviewer: mmhmm, mmhmm. Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Woman: There is a railroad there now an excursion. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, there is a complete railway now, it goes about 300 miles on the s---? Interviewer: Is that that new that excursion that goes from Sault Ste Marie? Mr. Shelby: Out over __ Hudson Bay. Interviewer: Quite popular now. Women: Quite mountainous. Mr. Shelby: Yeah we took we took last year a train there you know it was delightful. There’s a there’s a stone there’s …I think I picked up that stone at the canyon it’s over there that round, get it. Yeah that round stone. Well… Interviewer: Well we’ll turn it off… Mr. Shelby: It’s because I picked that up and bought a stone. Interviewer: That’s a very beautiful stone. Mr. Shelby: Isn’t it? I’m crazy about stones. It was from the ___ canyon. Interviewer: Does that weigh about 10 lbs? Does that weight about 10 lbs. Mr. Shelby: Yeah I’d say about that. They tell a story. That waterfalls and the cascades at that canyon. In fact I have got descriptive literature and pamphlets up here. Interviewer: Well now, were you married at this time? Mr. Shelby: I think so. Woman: Yeah if it was 19… �24 Mr. Shelby: No, no I wasn’t. Interviewer: Do you remember was it… Mr. Shelby: No, I wasn’t married. Interviewer: Do you remember the year you were married? Mr. Shelby: No, I wasn’t married at that time. I was single. Interviewer: I see. Were you married in Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: No, I’m not…I can’t remember… Woman: Was it Indianapolis? Mr. Shelby: …no I’m trying to… Woman: Anyway they went to visit that nice place down in Carolina. Interviewer: Well there are quite a few places. Woman: Ashville, Ashville. I don’t think they got married down there, I think it was someplace in Indiana. Interviewer: Where did you live after you were married Mr. Shelby? Mr. Shelby: Hmm, I was trying to think about it. Woman: Barkley, Barkley Street. Mr. Shelby: Oh yeah, on Barkley Street. That’s right. Interviewer: Whereabouts? Do you remember the number? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, well it was an apartment building. Did, did…a red brick apartment building. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: It was just a going down Fountain Street you could look glance up Barkley Street you could see the building from there. I wouldn’t know the number; it was a two story building. Woman: You have to take Clark to get there. Interviewer: Yeah, I think I know the building, right. Mr. Shelby: It’s still there. Interviewer: Mmhmm, yeah. �25 Mr. Shelby: You can see it if you walk up Fountain Street, you can see it. Interviewer: Yup. Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Interviewer: That was your first home? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, that’s right, that’s right. Interviewer: Well now, I understand you went to California. When did you go to California? Mr. Shelby: I’m not exactly, I’ve forgotten now. Woman: It must have been 1910. Interviewer: Was it about 1910? Mr. Shelby: I’ve forgotten exactly. Interviewer: Well… Mr. Shelby: I had gotten interested through the Santé Fe people in the establishment of a colony to grow fruits, you know? Interviewer: Mmhmm. Mr. Shelby: And they were retired to it later on. Then my money bought the tract. Out in Reedley California. Interviewer: Where was it in California? Mr. Shelby: Reedley. Interviewer: Where is that? Mr. Shelby: Well it’s right in the central valley, central to the San Joaquin Valley. Interviewer: How do you, how do you spell Reedley? Mr. Shelby: R-double E-D-L-E-Y. Interviewer: uh huh. Mr. Shelby: Reedley California. It was outside of that of a small town. Where the where the I named the tract after after my wife Annadelle Colony. And it was through, it was by the foot of Mt. Campbell was this tract of land, right at the foot of the high Sierras. Interviewer: mmhmm. �26 Mr. Shelby: The high Sierras began in the San Joaquin Valley right west of our land. You would look up at the high Sierras. Had a wonderful view of the mountains, the high Sierras. Interviewer: You raised oranges? Mr. Shelby: Yes, that’s what the idea, yeah, then… Interviewer: And how long were you there doing that? Mr. Shelby: Oh, say I was maybe 10 or 15 years I would say. Woman: 1922? Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: And those, Bill was born there, and Cameron. Woman: 1922? Mr. Shelby: But I was in charge, in charge of the development though you know this used to be Santé Fe employees when they retired would move out to their place to their rows and develop it. It was tracts you know, the colony was. Each owner. Interviewer: How much was it when you started? Mr. Shelby: I had 20 acres, and one or two men had 40 acres. Interviewer: Oh really? Mr. Shelby: But they. Interviewer: I’m going to turn the tape over. Interviewer: Now this is side 2 of the interview recorded with Mr. George Shelby on Thursday, January 16, 1975. Ok, you were talking about the grove, and you mentioned that you also grew figs out there. Mr. Shelby: Yes, 5 acres of figs, and 15 of oranges. Interviewer: Was there some sort of a central building, where people gathered? Mr. Shelby: No, no not... Interviewer: I see, your individual homes? Mr. Shelby: Individual homes. Interviewer: Mmhmm. �27 Mr. Shelby: There were 2 or 3 others that were small, we were cottages. I don’t think, that was our little house. Interviewer: I see it, yeah. Mr. Shelby: This was Mount Campbell. You can’t you can’t see the top of it. Woman: Many trees though. Mr. Shelby: That’s about a thousand feet high, and this is all level ground. And on this side there was another mountain, Mount Chomininee and there’s about, you go through the gap you’ve got the Fresno about 25 miles away that way. Interviewer: Hmm Mr. Shelby: And that’s Bill, Interviewer: That’s Bill. Mr. Shelby: and that’s Eleanor, and there’s County, the horse. Interviewer: Yeah. Mr. Shelby: And that was, that was that little house I put up and I think it was cost about 800 dollars. Interviewer: Really? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, put it up in about 2 days. I mean, the carpenters did it. Of course after that we enlarged it. We added a porch. Interviewer: Here’s another picture Mr. Shelby, Eleanor got. Mr. Shelby: Mmhmm, yeah. Yeah, that’s Bill, Eleanor and a little pool I built. Well, of course this after the first year and we kept embellishing it, all the time. Looks quite a finished place. Interviewer: How many people were there? Mr. Shelby: Nobody else at that time up until the time we left, except the hired men in the other 20’s and 40’s. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: They were there in the small houses you know. We were the only people who had a fairly sized place and kept enlarging it. Interviewer: In what year do you think you returned to Grand Rapids? �28 Mr. Shelby: Gosh, let me see. Interviewer: Sometimes during the 1920’s I would… Mr. Shelby: I think so. Woman: I think about ’22? Interviewer: Your daughter says… Mr. Shelby: My father and mother came out and visited me several times, but I find this sold out you know, can’t return to Grand Rapids and return to the railroads. Interviewer: How long were you with the railroads, again? Mr. Shelby: Oh let’s see, I can’t remember the dates. Well I remember we got them, I got to representing firms for insurance stock in Chicago. Billy Baker got me into that. I wasn’t doing anything for awhile. Interviewer: Who was Billy Baker? Mr. Shelby: Well he was just a Grand Rapids boy. Billy Baker, his brother was quite prominent. I don’t, they were in the brokers business. He got me interested, I represented, what did I do? The fire insurance you know that sort of stuff. Interviewer: Mmhmm. Mr.Shelby: Then I got into the investment business. Interviewer: Let’s go back to the your association with Mr. Baker, where did you have an office then? Mr.Shelby: In the Michigan Trust building. Interviewer: In the Michigan Trust building. Mr. Shelby: In the Michigan Trust building. Interviewer: Then you got into the brokerage business, or? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, I got into the, I can’t think of his name he was very prominent, he represented the LeeAgents (?) and Company, they were the top people in the United States in that in the brokerage business you know. Interviewer: LeeAgents and Company. �29 Mr. Shelby: They were nationwide. I mean, in the eastern part of the state. They, what killed them was the suicide of Iber Kreuger in Paris this was east liberty, between liberty and so Lee Havenson was ruined, and I’m trying to think of the man who got me interested in Lee Havenson. His son is also the trustee. What is his name? Tall, Arthur? What is his name? Funny I can’t think of it. Well anyway he he was a representative of Lee Havenson and he invited me to join them as a join representative of the Lee Havenson company. We were in the Michigan Trust building up on the 9th floor I think. And after this happened, when this man committed suicide, Lee Havenson finally went into bankruptcy I guess as a result of that, his suicide. Then a Mr. Mcmhoffan invited me to join their firm and I was there ever since. John Mcmhoffan invited me. Interviewer: Yes, John Mcmhoffan. Mr. Shelby: Mumbling. Interviewer: When did Sam Greenwalt join that firm? Mr. Shelby: When did what? Interviewer: When did Sam Greenwalt join the firm? Mr. Shelby: Well I guess they were original firm this, I don’t know that he joined it. He was he was the trader they called him, managed it. And John was the was the president he was vice president, Sam Greenwalt was vice president. Interviewer: Mmhmm. Mr. Shelby: I don’t know how many years they had been established when I joined them, but quite a few years, maybe 10 years. I think you could get some confirmation to that from Ms. Romence would know that. Maude Romence would know. Interviewer: Maude Romence? Mr. Shelby: Yeah Interviewer: R-O-M-A-N-C-E? Mr. Shelby: She would know all about it, she was secretary. Huh? Interviewer: How do you spell her name? Mr. Shelby: R-O-M-E-N-C-E Interviewer: E-N-C-E, oh. Mr. Shelby: She was secretary of the, Ray Brinn was the cashier, I remember him being small, short and dumpy. I can’t remember his association but he took care of the books. But anyway, I �30 was Mr. Mcmhoffan invited me into the firm and put on Greenwall’s told me which had been going maybe some 10 years maybe, I couldn’t tell you exactly when. Interviewer: Yeah. Mr. Shelby: …and I’ve been with him ever since. Interviewer: Where are they now Mr. Shelby? Mr. Shelby: Well Mr. Mcmhoffan, Interviewer: No, I mean where is the firm? Mr. Shelby: Oh it’s it’s, well it’s in the Michigan Trust building. In the old kindle. Interviewer: In the old kindle. Yeah. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, but it isn’t a firm anymore. We’ve off and died and sold us in. Suddenly it keeled over and…you know. Interviewer: I remember. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, very dramatically. And that’s the end of Sam Greenwalt and John. John got out of it and went south. John Jr. Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Shelby: John Jr. So there is no one left there except Jim Short, who was a salesman, as I was, and started the railroads and other things, transportation largely. And of course I sold them into, I thought it was good, you know consumer’s power they chose it. But I specialized in the railroad and I still have them. And they are the best investment on the market today because they don’t have any packaging (?) laws. Because they, they got oil. Santé Fe, Southern Pacific, and Union Pacific, all very prosperous I have 3 of them. Interviewer: Would you advise me to buy those today? Mr. Shelby: I certainly would. You couldn’t buy anything better. I just bought 10 more shares of Union Pacific. That’s about 70 years old of uninterrupted dividends. Interviewer: That’s pretty good. Mr. Shelby: Ha, can’t beat it. Interviewer: Who were some of the other tenants in that Michigan Trust building, when you worked there? �31 Mr. Shelby: Well there was that insurance office on the corner building. What was, who were they? Woman: Grenol Roll? Interviewer: Grenol Rol? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Who? Woman: Grenol Rowl? Mr. Shelby: Grenol Roll? Woman: Uh-huh. Mr. Shelby: I think they were. Well there were lawyers in there, quite a well Meryl Lynch was in there for awhile on the 6th floor. Until they moved over to that building next to the Prince Club, you know. It was full of lawyers and uh, let’s see, who else? Well there was the University Club, at the top. Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Shelby: Isn’t that the, Arthur Whitworth. That is the man who got me into the Lee Havenson Company. Arthur Whitworth. Interviewer: J. Arthur Whitworth. Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Interviewer: I remember I don’t remember him, but I remember the name Mr. Shelby: He wore a beard. Interviewer: Yes. Yes I think I do remember him. Mr. Shelby: That’s right; his son was made the vice president of the Michigan trust, very smart man. Well, no now it comes back clearly. I, Lewis Dewes was a small medium sized insurance company that Billy Baker got me connected with in Chicago. And I don’t know if… Interviewer: What was the name of that firm sir? Lewis… Mr. Shelby: Yeah… Interviewer: How do you spell it? Mr. Shelby: Lewis, Lewis. L-E-W-I-S. Interviewer: Yes. �32 Mr. Shelby: D-E-W-E-S, Lewis Dewes, they were an insurance business. And Billy Baker got me into going into that. I represented them for awhile in the insurance, selling insurance stock. And I had an office in the Michigan Trust on the 9th floor at the end of the building right next to the where Phil Fuller and other people were interested in the lumber business I and then I later on whatyama I just mentioned his name invited me in to leave. Interviewer: Whitworth Mr. Shelby: And I was with them until I was in South Bend stopping to see a friend there when I got the news in the elevator that Lee Havenson, that Koogerage had shot himself I mean. And then that came, and then after that it was a piece of chaos, gradually until the rest of them, they just simply knocked it all out. It was too big of a scandal worldwide you know. I think mother mother was in Europe at the time on some other trip. I’m not sure now. Interviewer: I called on your nephew Bud Kunuclip the other evening. Mr. Shelby: Oh yeah, Buddy. Interviewer: And he was, uh telling me that your father was had a nickname Dandy. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, that was just a pet name. Yeah. Woman: We all called him that. Mr. Shelby: He was just a marvelous man. My, wonderful father. There is a good picture of him. Interviewer: Yeah, I’ve seen, I saw the picture when I came in. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, he was a wonderful man. Interviewer: Were your parents quite active in society, or? Mr. Shelby: Yes, we… Interviewer: Or entertained the field? Mr. Shelby: We had a good many, we had a good many entertainments at Lafayette Avenue. And… Interviewer: What sorts of entertainments? Mr. Shelby: Well, uh reception was one kind of them, the connection with the art gallery, we we donated quite a number of things to the art gallery when my father died, which they have now. Some very handsome tables and things, mirrors. Interviewer: It was a big, big house. �33 Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, 12 foot high ceilings. Mrs. Young, Mrs. Sam Young bought those mirrors that were in the par, in the parlor. Those 12 foot mirrors, they came I think from New York, New York City, my Grandfather’s house in New York. Interviewer: Were these parties that your mother and father these receptions, were they very large affairs? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, yeah. Interviewer: How many people? Mr. Shelby: Oh 50,60, or 70. Interviewer: Mmhmm. And were they catered? Mr. Shelby: huh? Interviewer: Were they catered? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, they uh, what’s the name of the caterer? Woman: I remember, Jen Door? Interviewer: Dr. Jenoff? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, it had to be. Interviewer: Yeah. Mr. Shelby: Oh we had quite a lot of receptions. That was a big house. The library was 30 feet long and the dining room was 40. Interviewer: Ooh. Mr. Shelby: I mean the crossway. Interviewer: Yeah. Woman: I remember a couple…president. Mr. Shelby: 12 foot 12 foot ceilings that I love. Just think, I had to get rid of them and I got 6,000 dollars and they are asking 80,000 for it now. 80,000 is full like a rabbits worn it makes me sick… Interviewer: Who… �34 Mr. Shelby: …that a man would go buy it. Interviewer: ..were your neighbors on Lafayette Street? Mr. Shelby: The McNights. Interviewer: Yes, who? Mr. Shelby: Like Anna McNight. Interviewer: I remember her of course, but… Mr. Shelby: Well quite a number, what was the name of that big clergyman we had? Can’t think of it. His name was… Woman: Was it Campbell Fayer? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Woman: I’ve heard you speak of Campbell Fayer. Interviewer: Campbell Fayer? Mr. Shelby: No, he was he was back in the when I was a boy he gave me Baltimore. No, I…McKormick! Interviewer: Where did Mr. McKormick live? Mr. Shelby: He lived on Lafayette. Interviewer: I didn’t know that. Mr. Shelby: Yes, I think the church owned that building on South Lafayette. Interviewer: Oh, South Lafayette. Mr. Shelby: Quite a good size. Interviewer: Oh yes, I know I know where it is. Mr. Shelby: I think that is an Episcopal residence. Interviewer: Yeah, who who were some of the other people who lived on Lafayette, closer to you? Across the street for instance. Mr. Shelby: Next to us was the Gilberts. Interviewer: The Gilberts next door. �35 Mr. Shelby: The gas company. Beautiful home. Interviewer: And the Hazeltines? Mr. Shelby: The Hazeltines lived right on John street, right right through they’re joining our backyard. Interviewer: And you remember Dr. Hazeltine? Mr. Shelby: Oh, very well. Interviewer: Can you tell us a little bit about him? Mr. Shelby: He was a big old muffin top, I remember that. You know, size things you, he was a very closed mouth very severe type man. Dignified, you know. Stately, I’d say kind of a stately type. Interviewer: Was he tall? Mr. Shelby: No. Interviewer: He’s not tall… Mr. Shelby: Medium, we’ll say maybe 5 feet 9 or 10. Interviewer: Mmhmm. Mr. Shelby: No, he wasn’t a big man. He wasn’t big like my father. My father was, my father was 6 feet. No he wasn’t, he was medium height. Mrs. Hazeltine was a great beauty, very very lovely woman, beautiful too. He built that wall up that stone wall and then there was another house right at the foot where the elderly people Newman I think there name was. They lived there for years, a little wooden house. Interviewer: Would that be on Barkley? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, the foot of Barkley Street and John Street. Small,white house. Interviewer: You remember you spoke of Phil Fuller. Now he lived across… Mr. Shelby: Well, Phil Fuller lived across the street from us in a good size house on this way and the whole hold men came and galloped on the corner. Several families there, then the T.J. O’Brien house. Interviewer: Yeah, on the other side of the corner. �36 Mr. Shelby: Yeah on that side. Then the alley, and then the corner was John Lawrence, the lawyer. The house was still there with a bay window. I know of several people that have occupied that corner house on the, during the past 40 years. Woman: The family who was in the women’s city club they were doing so well? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Woman: The family? Mr. Shelby: No, the women’s city club belongs, who was that? Interviewer: Wasn’t it the Sweet family? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, yes. Woman: You would play in the attic with that peep hole? Mr. Shelby: Yeah, the peep hole. We used to play up in that. I did I used to play up there, you know build with building blocks and Mitchell was his nephew or grandson. He used to play up on that tower. Interviewer: Was his name Mitchell Sweet? Mr. Shelby: No, Mitchell was his grandson of the owner of it. Interviewer: Now, you must have known Thomas O’Brien well. Mr. Shelby: Oh, didn’t know anyone else better. He was the general counsel of the GR and I. Interviewer: Oh yeah. Mr. Shelby: Thomas C. O’Brien. And Catherine married a very old some old Englishman who lived inside the Orient for awhile. And Howard was and Howard and my brother Walter were great friends. Walter, Howard O’Brien and my brother Walter just my brother ahead of me, they were great friends. Interviewer: Didn’t Catherine marry… Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: Didn’t Catherine marry Sir Henry Kilton? I think that was his name. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, she married very well to a very prominent person. She was a lovely woman, Catherine. Interviewer: Can you tell me something about the Hope family. �37 Mr. Shelby: Well Hope wasn’t very popular with anybody. He was a very exclusive type of a person that thought a great deal of himself and I don’t recall him being particularly prominent or notable. He came from Kentucky, he was from Kentucky. He was a bit exclusive in his friendships and his manner of living and he was pretty well conceived by bushes over there. Otherwise I don’t think he was very well liked, he was kind of pompous and we thought he was not, well not worth all the agilation. Interviewer: But he was president of the country club for many years. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, yes. But he wasn’t a stockholder as we were. Interviewer: He wasn’t? Mr. Shelby: The O’Brien family and ourselves were the only stockholders. Interviewer: Oh really? Mr. Shelby: I didn’t get a penny for it, not a penny. And it was awfully extravagant and he drove it into debt, you know. Interviewer: What about Mrs. Hope? Was she…? Mr. Shelby: Mrs. Hope was very lovely but she had a lot of children and then Moosey was the name of one. I don’t know but they seemed to have a lot of 5 or 6 children there. But they lived by themselves and they weren’t friendly, not unfriendly, but they were just exclusive. They weren’t mixers. Interviewer: Well he was president for over 30 years at that club. You wonder how a man could be a president for so long. Mr. Shelby: Yeah I know. Well he had a good many dinners out there that I know. I don’t know I just have a feeling, just a little feeling I think between Mr. O’Brien and my father against Mr. Hope. What it was I don’t know. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: But socially why he was quite acceptable but exclusive. J.C. Hope. Interviewer: You mentioned the Earl family earlier. Mr. Shelby: The what? Interviewer: The Earl family. Mr. Shelby: Oh yeah. Interviewer: Tell me about the Earls. �38 Mr. Shelby: Well the, well I only got to know the Edward Earl who was and Fred was my brother Walter’s age. And Fred Earl had a big bob, about 30 feet long that we used to slide down hill on. And Mr. Earl was a quite type of man, a lawyer and they had proctor duty on their front porch in the summer time you could see them sitting there you know. Interviewer: That was Fountain and Lafayette? Mr. Shelby: Fountain and Lafayette yeah. Interviewer: Where the Davenport men’s dorm is? Mr. Shelby: Yeah Interviewer: Yeah I think it is now. Mr. Shelby: I I don’t know who is responsible for selling that. Interviewer: I don’t know either. Mr. Shelby: I said, I’m sorry that that residence is gone myself. Interviewer: It is a beautiful home. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, it’s spacious too you know. You know they had a stable in the rear of their lot. Interviewer: I called on Mrs. Knappen, Clara Knappen. Do you remember the Knappens? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, they lived right in the middle of the block. A Crosby home I think. Interviewer: Yes, mmhmm. Mr. Shelby: Yes, Mrs. Knappen, very well. Interviewer: Her husband was an attorney I believe. Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: Her husband was an attorney. Mr. Shelby: Yes, that’s right. Oh yes, I remember them. Stuart Knappen, wasn’t it? Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Shelby: Jim Crosby lived in that too and Raymond he was a weird boy. He used to walk in a very mincey way. I can see him now, I think people made funny of him of sort of a feminine, because he would walk… �39 Interviewer: Don’t trip over there. (muffled laughter) Mr. Shelby: He wasn’t a real man you know; he was a Yale man too. Woman: Well you knew Ralph Bolton. Was that his name? He was a Yale man. Interviewer: Yeah we, what about Ralph Bolton? Did you know Ralph? Mr. Shelby: Well Ralph was the kind of a boy odd man that was trying to make him, make him refine him a bit. He was simply a good German, son of a German successful merchandiser. He was sent to Yale. He was kind of an odd man. I didn’t think he belonged to anything, any particular mark. He was just simply was sent there, that was all. He wouldn’t be the type that anybody would take up with, that he would be very chummy with, you know? He wasn’t attractive enough, I would say. He came in to see me quite a number of times just to do it. But I don’t know, he was just Ralph boy that was all. I don’t, I kind of amused the people that make so much of that house architecturally I don’t think there is anything outstanding in it. It’s just a very sizeable, a good size American architectural home you know. I don’t think it has any merits architecturally. I wouldn’t say that it has, but they made it into a museum now didn’t they? Interviewer: Yes, yes. Mr. Shelby: Yeah well, let them do it then if that gives them any pleasure. Women: I think it’s a good idea. Mr. Shelby: I don’t know how they characterize it, as a typical Eng-, American home. Well built, well designed, but I don’t know that it has any charm to it. I never felt like it had. I think the house that if you watchyamacallit, go around the corner, oh what’s his name? Interviewer: Edward Low? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: Edward Low? Mr. Shelby: Not Edward. Some, it was right at the corner, at the very head of the street, it was the best looking house. Interviewer: Now which house was that? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: Which house are we talking about? Mr. Shelby: Well on the corner of, is that College Avenue? �40 Woman: College and Washington? Mr. Shelby: Washington Street? Interviewer: Yes… Mr. Shelby: Yeah, right at the corner there. Is that, they had a fire there once. Their horses were burned up. Interviewer: Now which house? Is this the house that Henry Idema lived at later? Woman: Yeah. Mr. Shelby: Possibly. Interviewer: Yeah. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, I guess so. Interviewer: If you go up the street it’s on the right. Mr. Shelby: It did, yes. Interviewer: Yellow brick? Mr. Shelby: Yes. Interviewer: I see. Mr. Shelby: Right on the corner. Interviewer: That house I think was built by Edward, by Edward Low. Mr. Shelby: Yes, that’s right. Than who was at the top of the hill, the big tall house? Woman: The Waters? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Woman: The Water’s house? Mr. Shelby: No, not the Waters. Woman: The Thistle house? Mr. Shelby: Thistle was it? Yeah. Edward(?) Thistle? Interviewer: Yeah. �41 Woman: That was a pretty house. Mr. Shelby: Yeah. Interviewer: Well, what do you think? Is it, what do you think is going to become of us with the economy going the way it is? Mr. Shelby: You mean the present state of the United States? Interviewer: Do you think we will ever pull out of it? Mr. Shelby: God, I don’t like making any predictions. Huh, as the President said last night we are in mull of a hess didn’t he? Something to the effect of that? Interviewer: I would say so, yes. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, I don’t know where it all commends to, and I don’t know how we are going to stop it. We have ample occasions all over the globe for one thing. I think we should stop underwriting events and I think we ought to, bring us into, closer into ourselves and stop spreading around the world. As big as we are, as rich we are, and as successful as we are, we are not big enough for that task. I think we’ve over, over we’ve overreached the mark. With our associations and we have taken on too big of a load. Interviewer: Now that you have lived in Grand Rapids 96 years what, do you think you chose a good place to be born? Mr. Shelby: Was it a good place to be born? Interviewer: Do you think you chose a good place to be born? Mr. Shelby: Well a very comfortable place, but I wouldn’t, not too inspiring. It hasn’t any features that would give me any thrill. Not any geographical features, like San Francisco, or well even like Chicago on the lake front. It’s just a very comfortable pleasant little town that’s all. Very Dutchy, too Dutchy to suit me…don’t say that though. That, Interviewer: It’s alright. Mr. Shelby: They won’t like it. I uh… Interviewer: Well you must have known Arthur Vanderburg. Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: You must have known Arthur Vanderburg. Mr. Shelby: Oh yes. �42 Interviewer: He was Dutch. Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: Became very important. Mr. Shelby: He was, yes a little bit too much conceited I think. He was the top of a gang of men; probably tell them how to do the work. You know? That sort of thing. That was his, I think that was a characteristic of him, don’t you think, you know? He was, it was just an ordinary, it was well, I don’t know what streak of man that would be. If I saw a gang of men, uh 15 or 20 men doing a job on a hole, it wouldn’t be the last thing in the world that I would try and stop and tell them how to do to do the job better than they’re doing it. But that would be, he was a politician. He would draw attention to himself. I think that type of man, isn’t, is not very deep. He was too spectacular, and showy. Let me show you how to do that thing. That type, don’t you know? No don’t do it that way, is that the way to do it? He was that type of person. The ordinary conservative person wouldn’t just wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t expose himself maybe to ridicule. They wouldn’t wouldn’t mix up with such a situation. They wouldn’t and that’s a perfectly natural thing. If there’s a gang of men that are cleaning up out of there, leave them alone. They are doing the job alright. There’s no reason why I should give them any directions how to do that. I’m not a politician I’m not after the attention. So I wouldn’t be the person to stop and tell them how to do the job. I wouldn’t, it would be the last thing in the world that I would do. I think he was, I think he was probably the type of man that wore external, that would keep themselves prominent and then the in what’s going on in the role play. But there were such demonstrations of his ability to direct others on how to do things. I don’t know how you would estimate him. Interviewer: Now you had a rather important political figure in your own family. Mr. Shelby: Yes. Interviewer: A long time ago, I believe it was your great-grandfather Cass’ brother. A Louis Cass? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes. Well I can’t tell you much about him except I know that he was, and must have been an extremely capable man, for his time. For the first place I think he had considerable ownership of land in Detroit. That I am not sure of, don’t you know. But he was a man that had outstanding qualities of his make up or he wouldn’t have reached the prominent stage that he did. Interviewer: Did your family ever talk about him, or your father or grandfather speak of him, or? Mr. Shelby: I don’t remember, recall any specific discussion about him. No, I don’t think so. Interviewer: I think he was the first territorial governor. Mr. Shelby: Huh? �43 Interviewer: He was the first territorial governor. Mr. Shelby: Well I think that they just accept him and know that he was capable and the proper man to be in that situation. He had the qualities of leadership. But I don’t recall that we indulged in any praise of him or anything of that nature, or did any boasting about our relationship. Woman: That he was an explorer, he liked exploring. Interviewer: Well he came to Grand Rapids when he was quite elderly; I was reading about him the other day. He came here in 1855 and there was a big turnout, a big crowd. And that reminds me, when we were sitting here before I turned on the equipment. Tell me, tell us again about the torchlight parade that used to figure in the political life. Mr. Shelby: Oh, well it was a very noisy spectacular demonstrations that paraded through the streets of the resident centrally the calling out of the candidates to their front porch to announce what they stood for. And to advocate that they elect elect them. There was the crowd that gradually approved of their presence and made a big fuss about them when they came out and addressed the crowd. Then they came out and addressed the crowd and they told them what a good Republican he was or what a good Democrat he was and how they ought to surely choose them don’t you know. Interviewer: Would this be a big crowd of people? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, maybe 3 or 4 hundred. Yeah. Interviewer: And where did they stop? Who did they stop to see? Mr. Shelby: Oh they would stop as soon as they got out of breath. Interviewer: No I mean what houses did they stop at? Mr. Shelby: Oh, I remember them more particularly the Fountain Street. That Fuel was very prominent for years at that time. Interviewer: Mr.Martin, Mr. Edwin F. Fuel Mr. Shelby: Fuel, yeah. And from there they came to our house and then they went down to the congressman’s house. They would carry banners over their shoulders and torch lights. Interviewer: Do you think the Congressman’s name was Ford? Mr. Shelby: Ford, Ford, M. Ace. Ford. Ford, Ford, M. Ace. Ford. Yeah, that’s right. Woman: Was Ford a good politician? Mr. Shelby: Right down about where the Michinmckormicks? �44 Interviewer: I see right in there. Mr. Shelby: He was the congressman. Well they felt pretty keenly about it and they Doanlab Doanlab, Charles B. Doanlab. That was another one, I have forgotten what position he was after or what he was. But there was a big interest in politics then. The town was smaller, you know. They didn’t spread from Fairview to way up out 34th street it was very compact you know. Hall Street was our and you were out in the country, when you got to Hall Street. It was miles, it was miles away! That’s where the first circus came. You know, before they had their parade. And Sweet Street was I don’t remember there being more to Grand Rapids at that time. Then you were getting into toward North Park. That would be where the DMN Depot would’ve been don’t you know. Interviewer: Well we have covered quite a few topics, is there something you would like to add? Mr. Shelby: Well you mean as for the p- I think it I have resented the outlying shopping centers. Interviewer: You don’t like those. Mr. Shelby: I think they ruin Grand Rapids, from downtown. I, I don’t think downtown is the sand stool so cold is sunken just 2 blocks, just 2 or 3 blocks. It will never come back. And these other things are vast sums of money have been invested by realtors 8 or 10, 15 miles out and they what do they call those things? Woman: Plazas, the Plazas. Interviewer: The malls, and plazas Woman: Yeah. Mr. Shelby: Malls, you know, and well definitely they are robbing downtown. Interviewer: Oh yeah. Mr. Shelby: A tremendous purchasing power, besides the time and effort to get there. I think it’s, I just don’t like it to tell you the to be perfectly plain truth, I don’t like it. I’d rather have it like it was. Interviewer: Grand Rapids had good stores when you when you were younger? Mr. Shelby: Yes. And I still, we had the new dish light___ none of the ones we still got. Yes, we had a good tailor store, a good tailoring shop, yes. Interviewer: Did you buy ready made clothes or tailored clothes in those days? Mr. Shelby: Oh I did both, depending on my finances. �45 Interviewer: Who was your tailor when your finances were in good shape? Mr. Shelby: Oh, who was it? Why, he’s still there, in his name is still in that store… Woman: Lloyd? Interviewer: Lloyd? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer/Woman: Lloyd? Mr. Shelby: Who? Woman: Ll-Lloyd. Lloyd. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, Lloyd. Yeah, he was my tailor. Interviewer: Oh yes. Woman: …he never worried much about clothes in fact. Mr. Shelby: I know my father had clothing made by Berkley R. Merlan in New York City. He was. Interviewer: Berkely R. Merlan. Mr. Shelby: Yeah, he, he was, at that time 100 dollars was some money. And Father had thse 100 dollar suits built just for him. He had the money and the, a place to appear well groomed. So he had these Me- Merlan suits built for him. So this has happened to Grand Rapids, we’ve got 2 shopping centers Plainfield Avenue was a section and I think that they take too much time and effort, too much money away from the town. I don’t approve of them, so there you go. That’s just my own feelings. Interviewer: Ok. Alright. Woman: He misses the train too, and a closer train station. Mr. Shelby: What? I don’t think there is any very attractive, I think its lonesome and unattractive place that they have artificially set up those costly places, and they keep telling you to go out and get something that you can’t get downtown. Interviewer: You got any plans for the future? Mr. Shelby: Hmm? Interviewer: Do you have any plans for the future? �46 Mr. Shelby: No, I don’t know how I could have much future, to the point of years. This time, my plans are to enjoy continuance of the things that I’m fond of: travel, and good books, and enjoyable people. Interviewer: And your I suppose. Mr. Shelby: My what? Interviewer: Your work, right? Mr. Shelby: Well, yes. I am invested in financial work and I like it. I think I know something about it and I think I know a doable way and what to take. But I don’t I am not aggressive enough to purge purge a program on you. Interviewer: Well I think we’ll end…right now. Mr. Shelby: I think that I I was if I have a sufficient contact and experiences with the leading railways, the leading banks, the leading institutions to be able to recommend investments that are safe and sound and of quality and of a high grade. Stick to that and leave the rest alone. I know nothing about speculative wealth, speculation, I’m not a type that would to take any chances, I’m too cautious. I am too much grounded in safety. Interviewer: Well I want to thank you Mr. Shelby for…. Mr. Shelby: I don’t know if I could tell anybody what to do, how they could change, alter or change their lives I think that it depends entirely by their means, the situation, what they are after. What their interested in is what they should do. I’m interested in quite a lot of things, that probably others would not be interested in. That would be in good books, and good companionship, and good quality of life. Of the finer things of life I enjoy, if I had any advice for anybody else. Interviewer: Ok, well we’ll we’ll stop at this point. INDEX B Baker, Billy · 29, 32 Berguin, Mr. · 5 Bolton, Ralph · 40 Central Grammar School · 3 Coit, Dr. Henry · 8 D Dewes, Lewis · 32 Doanlab, Charles B. · 45 C Cass, George W. (Grandfather) · 1, 6, 7, 14, 15 Cass, Louis · 43 �47 E O Earl, Edward · 11, 39 O’Brien Family · 36, 37, 38 F R Ford, Gerald R. (President) · 45 Fountain Street School · 3 Fox, Charles · 5 Fuller, Phil · 32, 36 Reed’s Lake · 12, 13 Reedley, California · 26 Romence, Maude · 30 Rosenthal Family · 6 G S Gage and Benedick’s Dancing School · 11 Gilbert Family · 35 Gold, Al · 22 Greenwalt, Sam · 30, 31 Saint’s Rest Club · 5 Shelby, Bill (Son) · 27, 28 Shelby, Mary Kennedy Cass (Mother) · 1, 6, 17, 18, 20, 21, 28, 33, 34 Shelby, Violet (Sister) · 20 Shelby, William Read (Father) · 1, 3, 4, 6, 10, 11, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 28, 33, 34, 36, 38, 44, 46 Short, Jim · 31 St. Paul’s School · 7, 16, 19 Sweet Family · 37, 45 H Havenson, Lee · 29, 32, 33 Hazeltine Family · 36 Hope Family · 37, 38 K V Vanderburg · 43 Knappen Family · 39 Kreuger, Iber · 29 M Major Watson (boat) · 14 McKormick, Mr. · 35 Mcmhoffan, John · 29, 30 McNight, Anna · 35 Michigan Iron Works · 15 Miss Reed’s Kindergarten · 2 Mount Chomininee · 27 W Westpoint · 15 Whalen, Henry D. · 6, 14, 15 Whittaker, Harry · 18, 20 Whitworth, Arthur · 32 Widdicombe Family · 3 Y Yale University · 8, 9, 16, 18, 40 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/e0bab304adc7229ca740bfa5fa377400.mp3 6f417cde375feb3deb9b3cd819c74b66 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_46Shelby Title A name given to the resource Shelby, George (2 of 2) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Shelby, George Description An account of the resource George Cass Shelby was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on December 5, 1878. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives 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 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_45Widdicombe Title A name given to the resource Widdicombe, John Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource 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. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1975 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/4ef0a905ea534573d5cdb66ef520c62c.pdf 1a530d32e0bfc90a215cd576ec84ae2a PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mary Baloyan Interviewed on November 13, 1974 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #44 (1:10:47) Biographical Information Mary Baloyan was born 13 October 1899 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. She was the daughter of Martin (Mardiros) A. Baloyan and Nouvart Kurkjian who were married in 1897. Martin was born in Palu, Armenia (now Turkey) in 1868 and died 6 January 1931 in Grand Rapids at his home at 639 Cherry Street SE. Mrs. Nouvart Baloyan was born 3 December 1877 in Palu, Armenia (now Turkey). She survived her husband and died 7 March 1971 at Blodgett Hospital. Mary Baloyan died at Pilgrim Manor in Grand Rapids 21 January 1984 at the age of 84. The Baloyan family plot is in Greenwood Cemetery. ___________ Interviewer: This recording is made on November 13, 1974 at Pilgrim Manor on East Leonard, in the apartment of Miss Baloyan who is a lifelong resident of Grand Rapids. I’m now going to ask Miss Baloyan to tell about her family, her background and her early years as she recalls them in Grand Rapids. Miss Baloyan: Thank you. I am very proud to be able to talk on this subject because I’m so proud of the accomplishments of my parents and other relatives. My parents came to this country in 1897 from what was referred to as Old Armenia. I have seen their passport and it interested me at the time that they could leave the country but could never return. When some years later I took a trip abroad, my relatives were divided on the subject of whether I should revisit that part of the world or not. Since some thought it might be dangerous. My father always used to say, there must be great wealth and resources buried in the mountains of that area since so many Armenians buried their wealth rather than let the enemy Turks take it. My parents had to leave everything they possessed where they had come from, and these days it’s ironic that so many people ask for a hand out or easy access to a living where as I know from firsthand experience that my parents and family had to start with nothing, worked hard and availed themselves to the opportunities of this country. In time, they had three children. My brother was the first Armenian born in Grand Rapids, I was the first Armenian girl born in Grand Rapids and all three of us including, Alfred, my older brother. Alexi, my younger sister who eventually went into interior decorating, and I a middle child. All of us were given outstanding educations and special types of instruction such as in music, dancing, theatre training, interior decoration and my parents too took an active participation in so much of the civic life. �2 Interviewer: I just want to interrupt you a moment and ask, why did your parents happen to choose Grand Rapids? Was there any particular reason? Miss Baloyan: Yes, indeed. My grandfather, who had come to New York in 1890, which is my maternal grandfather, was a steel cabinet maker and as he attempted to work in his craft in New York, he was told he should be in Grand Rapids where the furniture industry was flourishing, and specifically, should be with John Widdicombe. He became the first Grand Rapids settler when he had promised Mr. Widdicombe that if he went into his employ he would never leave him. Widdicombe began taking an interest in him and a very old-fashioned and charming kind of loyalty came about because it was, in time when Grandfather wanted to bring his wife and grown up children to this city to join him, it included my maternal grandmother, my parents, newly married the year before, and a couple of the aunts and an uncle who came to be known locally as Armen Kurkjian. They came to Grand Rapids, Mr. Widdicombe had been instrumental in finding a home for Steven’s family to come too and it was in that home that my brother and I were later born. In time…. Interviewer: Where was that, Miss Baloyan? Miss Baloyan: Where? Interviewer: Where was that? Miss Baloyan: On Fifth Street, on the west side at that time, not too far from Grandfather’s place of employment, at that time. And so we three children grew up, on the west side, until I graduated from the University of Michigan, some years later. Interviewer: Could we back up just for a moment, I’d like you to describe your relationship to Mr. Armen Kurkjian whom I, whom I knew and rather well, because of my family’s early association with Fountain Street Church. Miss Baloyan: Yes, Uncle Armen had come to this country as a boy of 14. Interviewer: He was your mother’s brother? Miss Baloyan: He was my mother’s brother. He brought certain old-fashioned principles to this country with him. Such as the belief that young people shouldn’t smoke and other principles that he sometimes got laughed at. But he used to retain a very lofty kind of set of principles. Eventually as various members of the family joined local organizations, he got quite a good education partly through their encouragement of those who became interested in him. He met at the University of Michigan, eventually, a man named Melvin Baldwin, who became his college room-mate. They became very good friends. My uncle was in civil engineering and some years later, came to Grand Rapids. It must have been mechanical engineering, because he went into Oliver Machinery Company in which Mr. Melvin Baldwin’s family and the Tuthills had been very active. My uncle was, for many years, their sales manager and at one time, opened an office �3 in Saint Louis, Missouri for them. He eventually met, married the woman who left Grand Rapids as his secretary, whose maiden name was Elvestra Wurzburg and who became known as my uncle Sid did for her philanthropic work in the city. Both of them interested in both Fountain Street Church and crippled children’s work, Rotary Rehabilitation work. In the mean time my father opened an Oriental restaurant on East Fulton Street and an art goods shop, a block east of there also on East Fulton. They were quite, recognized as quality shops and in the summer-time when his children had vacation from school, he came to open summer-time resort branches in such places as Grand Haven or Muskegon, had even gone as far away as Cleveland, Ohio, Kalamazoo and Benton Harbor. However his primary interest was rugs and related art objects. My mother took a great interest in music, interpreting for less fortunate Armenians and in education her children. She herself joined the Lady’s Literary Club, eventually Women’s City Club and other broadening influences. She took a very active interest in church work. In this particular branch of the family attended Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church where I have been a member now fifty eight years. It has made a great many fine friendships for us among other values. For instance, through the work of my family, my sister and brother also went into related fields. Through the work of my family, we came to meet people in the various arts, so then we began taking an active interest. Eventually, I was encouraged to go into Civic Theatre work where I went on a board, worked in that area for twenty years, and became vice-president. Through our music lessons we became interested in concerts and help local concert campaigns. Also I became interested, after many years later, after mother’s death, in establishing some music scholarships on a college level for Interlochen in memory of my mother. There are also a memoriam of this at St. Mark’s church in her memory because while she was choir mother there, it was the consuming interest that meant a great deal to her. The other arts were not neglected. We had an interest in all of them. I eventually went to the University of Michigan after starting at junior college, became interested in English, along with several other hobbies such at the theatre, continuing as a hobby. After I had attained my master, masters in English at the University of Michigan I started teaching school six months in Zeeland. Interviewer: When was this, Miss Baloyan? Miss Baloyan: The beginning of my career was in 1923. As a matter of fact, when, the following year I came back, I came to Grand Rapids to start a career in teaching. It was the beginning of 42 ½ years in Grand Rapids in teaching—most of it at Ottawa Hills High School. The last thirteen years at Junior College, so that I taught English 43 years, 15 of those years also dramatics. Because I went for six years of education to the fine arts department of Yale University, where I was privileged to attend the famous Yale Workshop under George Pierce Baker, who used to be at Harvard but moved over to Yale when an enterprising philanthropist named Harkness built a good building, good theatre for Yale. So the work was transferred over there. I came back to Grand Rapids, established a laboratory theatre in Ottawa Hill High School which for fifteen years functioned under the name of mine. We sent out from that theatre people into many artistic areas. Some of them now professional and it’s a source of great happiness to me that many of the �4 people who participated and worked so hard, remember it and comment on it with joy to this day. Interviewer: Who were some of these people, could you tell who some of them are? Miss Baloyan: Yes, Jack Thompson, for instance, is on a college staff in New York, he appeared two or three years ago as the author of an article in the Harper’s magazine in which he attempted to recall his yesterdays in Grand Rapids, as his title was. “It was my privilege to have him name me in that article as his favorite teacher”. So, then Lloyd Matoon, he went into the commercial end of TV work, specializing for a while in the Chrysler ads. Out west, the man who is lighting the Lawrence Welk show did the lighting for me, in the laboratory theatre. His name is Wallace Stanard. His name is still seen on TV in connection with being technical manager for the Lawrence Welk program. There were others who went out west and there a some whose names I don’t just recall now, but many have commented. Several of the presidents of the local Women’s City Club have been former members of that group. Shall I name some of them? Interviewer: Yes. Miss Baloyan: Mrs. Birch, Mrs. Whittier, and Mrs. the present President, Mrs. Smiley I could be forgiven, I hope for some delight in their continuing to enjoy memories of those days because I believe so deeply that the extras in education such as contact with creativity, helped to give lasting joy in the memories of people who’ve experienced the creativity. Our work has included writing and designing of costumes, coloring of materials, making of patterns, make, designing scenery, making scenery, planning and & operating the lighting, and so many other areas. Ann Kleiner went to Yale after a number of years. She had been a student of mine in the laboratory theatre and she is now in Detroit doing creative lighting for Detroit businesses. Interviewer: Is that Bob Kleiner’s sister? Miss Baloyan: Yes, it is. When she comes to Grand Rapids, she contacts me sometimes. I take great delight in the fact that the students who had with me in dramatics, had invented the nickname “Chief” for me because they said my own name was a little long to say back-stage. Well, some amusing results followed, for instance the Kleiners were so use to calling me Chief at home, that their aunt Mrs. Seidman, now many years later, when she sees me downtown, says “Hello Chief,” and I love hearing say it. I am very proud of the viewpoint that my parents brought to this country from a place where there was so much tyranny. Their attitude was, that there are opportunities here, let us avail ourselves of some of the opportunities and let us help ourselves. I’m afraid I’m a little impatient with those who sit around and wait for help if they can help themselves because I’ve seen examples of members of my family including other cousins and uncles and aunts, members of my family, get through hard work and enjoy it and become contributors, not just absorbers, in society. One of the things for which I’m very grateful is that, though my family came from a land with so much tyranny, they welcomed the opportunity of freedom here. One evidence of it is that various branches of the family attended different �5 churches and became active contributors in different churches. Yet they didn’t sit in judgment on one another because it wasn’t the same as the old Armenian Orthodox Apostolic Church. I’ve always been very happy in the Episcopal Church. My uncle and aunt, the Kurchins, were always extremely happy in the Fountain Street Church. And this is just part of the freedom that they displayed all the way through. Some of them have been very funny. For instance, there was once a man who traveled all the way from California to this town because he’d heard there were unmarried Armenian girls in this town. He was a complete stranger, but he had once come here, during the Near East Relief War. He had come here to lecture and had seen some of us participating in programs and, decided, this was a good family to be attached to. So years later he came back, in order to try to make a match, went to my parents, and tried to persuade them to allow him to begin courting one of us, and to his amazement, instead of arranging a match, my father told him that they never interfered with the choices and decisions we made. So I’m proud that my family had acquired so much of the principles of this country. I’m grateful for them and, if sometimes, I fancy that some of the teaching I have done has been of some value, I cannot fail to give great credit to the family of character and intelligence that gave me a good start in life. Other subjects I should have touched on, perhaps, you would like to know, I moved from the West side to the Heritage Hill area. Interviewer: I’d like to ask you, I like to ask you some questions about how long did you live on the West Side and did you, go to school over there and if so, where? That’s the sort of thing, I’d like to go into now. Miss Baloyan: I attended Union High School as did my brother and sister both. I was given many fine opportunities there. Worked on the literary periodicals there, I graduated from Union High School in 1918. I started attending Junior College two years, where I made some of my life-long friendships, from other areas in the city and where I came to be a great believer in Junior College for giving a good foundation of an education. Then I went on to the University of Michigan for two years to get my BA, first. The year I was graduated from the University of Michigan, 1922. Our family who then had some stores on East Fulton for some time, decided to moved to the East side and selected a spacious place on Cherry Street, because it was not far from the downtown area. We found it a good central location to radiate from and as I taught in many different localities in the city, starting downtown at North Division two years, the Harrison Park Junior High on the Northwest, five years then in the Southeast at Ottawa Hills twenty-one years and interrupting the act for education and then eventually going downtown again to Junior College for thirteen years. And I radiated to the various schools and to the various Civic organizations, I had become interested in. Eventually I went on a board of directors and not only of the Civic Theatre and Community Concerts and Urban League, but I also did volunteer work. And my sister went into dancing and interior decorating. My brother stayed for awhile in my father’s business and eventually he opened a retail store of his own for rugs but later he started a rug servicing place on the side of the building. Mother joined an organization both for American and Armenian and both my parents tried to be good citizen in both, I feel that one of the �6 advantages of my background has been that I have been expected to be both a good American and a good Armenian and I have come to believe that this is for me at least, a better idea even, than the melting pot idea because I have seen that as various ethnic groups retain their customs and identity the various groups contribute a great deal of richness to American life. I have enjoyed living in the near downtown area. There are many advantages. There used to be even more. The streets are kept very clean in the winter because it’s a passageway through downtown. Those residences now considered old and large, used to be one-family residences and one knew one’s neighbors and there were many prime families and it was very…. Interviewer: Who were some, who were some of your neighbors…. Miss Baloyan: Well, across the street used to be some branches of the Alby family and next to them the Edwin Kleins who became active in a different kind of church, where he helped to spread the Giddeon Bible around. Next to them was a family whose name now escapes me but they lived in the brick house a very long time. Just west of us there used to be the Blanchards, there are many other old families whose names I would have to look up again to recall but, we all knew one another and it was a personal commitment to one another that I think was fine. It had another advantage that as people traveled towards downtown for business or religious purposes or other purposes, they had to pass houses such as ours and they often stopped and became acquainted and to this day they come and on the yards that are kept up well and the yards that aren’t. And I feel that I’ve been very many places in my life. I have never felt that the fact that I was from an immigrant family had handicapped me in the slightest respect because people of breeding and education apply these qualities to their outlooks and to the way they live. I’ve encountered people, we have been able to share ideas and laughter and an interest in causes. We have even found controversial subjects such as sometimes, politics and I have not felt any barriers to camaraderie and in fact, people of quality are actually interested in the different aspects of your life and background. Such as mine is full of unique customs and traditions. On New Year’s Eve, when my grandparents were living, they used to collect the entire clan, cousins, uncles, aunts, the children, into the living room which ran into the dining room. We’d all get down on our knees and our grandfather would lead us in prayer, for the coming year. We learned a great many customs that were unique to us. And I remember one time when I was in grade school, another custom that puzzled me for awhile, but I’m amused by now, because I was short of stature, I was to lead a wand drill in a program for relatives. Besides that the very charming teacher was dating my uncle at that time and I always wondered which was the reason that I was chosen. But I was to lead and my grandmother decides to come to the program. I was a little bit shocked when she kissed the hand of the principal, the teacher, and any other dignitaries around because since I had been exposed to a few of the customs and teachings in school I had decided very ardently that it was unsanitary for grandmother to kiss the hands of other people. As some years passed and I reflected what a sweet and loving grandmother I’d had, it seemed to me it was sweet and humble of her to do it because it was her way of paying respects and gratitude for what had been done for her members of her family. So though part of my bringing up has been �7 different, a considerable of it has been the same. I was fortunate enough to win a half scholarship in piano with Otto [(?) Molly], who started the symphony before the current Grand Rapids Symphony. He was a magnificent teacher and quite an interesting man, I used to take my piano lessons in the very room that is now the drawing room for the Women’s City Club. It was then his studio. Sometimes has as many as three grand pianos in it, usually Steinways. And he was tall, very strong man and sometimes, especially when I first transferred from an organ teacher to a piano teacher he felt I was still playing the organ on the piano and he put his knee under the piano board, would raise his knees and the board would leave my hands and would push my hands up and, he did many other interesting eccentric things that have to make him picturesque and that created great affection for him. He used to draw designs on music to show you either the way he wanted your wrist movement to go or the way he didn’t want your arm to go. He used to have other musicians come in from Chicago, where he had come from, to make records with him and if I’d had a good lesson because he knew I was enchanted by these informal sessions he used to reward me by allowing me to sit in the room on a stool quietly while he and a violinist and a cellist made beautiful, musical records. He had a hobby of photography that caused him to give the results of his picture making sometimes to students. Usually however, you knew if you’d had a good lesson because he wouldn’t say anything. If you didn’t have a good lesson he would point it out. Oh, I have been grateful not only to special teachers such as that, but, for instance to the Calle Travis Studio where I studied there from, with Harriet Blood, to study dancing and then years later after I had trained in dramatics I taught ballet and pantomime to some of Miss Travis’ senior students. It included such people as Marsha Travis, the Goodspeed girls, and so many other lovely girls whose names, I would have to look up but, some of the lovely young matrons of Grand Rapids. But teaching ballet, ballet pantomime in Miss Travis’ studio was a great privilege, since I always thought she had an outstanding ballet studio. I have covered several of the arts but our interests and activities were even more extensive than anything I have mentioned. So whatever else you would like to know I’d be happy to go into. Interviewer: Well, I can’t help but realize that, I run into you fairly often in the art museum. Have you ever had any special role in, in the life of the museum? Miss Baloyan: Only in the respect that, when a former director Otto Bach was here his wife Ciel (?) Cile Bach used to write skits sometimes which, I sometimes helped to perform for them. I remember too that a Dr. Rosenswag and I were together on an interview program one time. I can’t claim to have helped them in any other respect, except that we have always been interested in our family in helping in minor ways and just now I have presented them with some of my father’s fine ancient porcelain vases of Chinese make. Some of them are from the Chung Ling period, several centuries old. They have been appraised, it’s very valuable, has been accessed by the appraisers as extremely gorgeous and they will be at the museum in memory of my father. I have also promised to send them and, very soon, at the beginning of a new year, and send them and the public museum also, some silk rugs, since silk rugs are not very common here. The one that will go to the Art Museum is a silk Kashan(?) prayer rug of, some beauty and rarity. I can’t �8 say I’ve done a great deal for them, but I have enjoyed such contacts as I’ve had. And believe it is one of local institutions that should be helped. I have also felt that way about the Saint Cecilia Music Society of which I’m also a member and I wouldn’t know where to draw the line except to say all the educational and cultural, the artistic organizations in town receive our interest and support often. Interviewer: You want to stop for just a minute? I think we’ll turn the tape over at this time and proceed on side two. Interviewer: We stopped our interview for a moment and talked about a few other matters and Miss Baloyan has recalled that there are some other people she would like to talk about and I’m going to hand the microphone to her now and let her continue. Miss Baloyan: When my father’s store was on East Fulton the Grand Rapids Press and the Herald, the morning paper, were both within a block of distance from his store with the result that as we dropped into the store the members of the family became acquainted with some of the main writers in Grand Rapids including reporters, columnists, critics and even the editor of the Press, Mr. Booth and Mr. Frank Sparks from the Herald. They became of such interest to us that they actually influenced us in various ways and we were very fond of them. At one time since I had become so much interested in books, my mother used to make sure that when we were children we were always surrounded by educational material. Miss May Quigley, the children’s librarian used to tell me that every Saturday afternoon Mother used to walk to the library and say I would like a book of poems for my Mary and the result was I always had books around me and it became a lifetime interest so that gradually I became interested in writing. But I had so many other interests too. So I went to see Mr. Booth, the editor of the Press to interview him on what he thought of journalism as a possible career for a young lady who was attending the University of Michigan. And he said to me and he knew us well by then. He said I would like to encourage you to go into it but he said at this time you would have to limit yourself to obituaries and social notes and he said if you would find that sufficiently interesting then it would be well to go into journalism. When I think now of the changes in opportunities for women journalists I recall that with great respect for his honesty in that period of time. However, as I became interested in other area such as theatre, I attended various summer theatres, one in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine and one in the north of this state with one of the directors from Civic Theatre here. And since I had finished training at the Yale University Theatre, the Yale workshop department and since they didn’t allow us to specialize, it was a broad thorough training, and at that time as I wondered how I could use it, Miss Mary Remington, the well beloved drama critic of the Grand Rapids Press, said to me, if you decide to apply as the director of the Civic Theatre, we will back you. But by that time I was interested in teaching because I felt I could combine many of my interests in the teaching area. But to this day I have retained a deep interest in the work of our local columnists and critics. Don’t find them all equally good. For instance, Miss Margarete Kerns was a name I came to know well, and I hope that some of the newer people coming will match the contributions that were made by Mary Remington, Margarete Kerns, and others. I have also �9 come to respect the work of Jerry Elliot who writes with a distinctive style. And I think that some of these people who we have taken for granted have, made much more expanded contributions than we’ve realized. For instance, one of the special interests of the Cyprus situation to me last year was the fact that former Junior college student of mine, for I came to teach in Junior College eventually, was a boy who later became cultural attaché with the American Embassy in Cyprus. I wasn’t sure whether he had been returned to this country or not during the recent troubles and I knew that after his work at Junior College he had worked for a while with Mr. Elliot, Jerry Elliot and others at the Grand Rapids Press. I started to investigate and learned fortunately in May he had been returned to this country and there was a story within recent months of the fact that his wife and child had followed him. So you see reporters and columnists have not only done an interesting job for us but have trained some future journalist and government workers, who have contributed to our daily lives. I think some of fail to realize what a great town Grand Rapids actually is. Several times in the opportunities that I’ve had I have had tempting openings in other areas of this country but contrary to Mr. Butts, opinion of the area, I have loved Grand Rapids and I made the decision to come back here and to stay here and I’ve never regretted it. I know there are many others. Grand Rapids not too large, not to small and it’s had all the opportunities that the larger centers offer and it’s a good thing that some of us do prefer coming back to our town and bringing with us, experiences we have picked up elsewhere so that through our travels, we can bring a little of Maine, a little of Connecticut, a little bit of northern Michigan and so many other areas, back to Grand Rapids. I don’t think it’s an accident that Grand Rapids is foremost in some of the contemporary art projects of recent years and has shown leadership in other progressive areas I think it’s because, there is an interest here in good things. I don’t even think that the furniture industry has completely left us, for its influence on modern life can be shown in our continuing preference for quality in daily life. And I’m so happy to have known some of the people who have worked in connection with the arts in Grand Rapids and with furniture in Grand Rapids and with business in Grand Rapids. You asked, Mr. Hutchins, about my uncle Armen Kurchin one of the smart things he helped to do happened when the depression was felt so deeply here and some of the furniture factories were wondering what the future of the city would be. Well, the Chamber of Commerce and my uncle actively participating, used their skills for helping to bring in new metal industries and other new interests that have continues here and have helped to keep our commerce, successful as much as anywhere else in any period. Interviewer: You mentioned having written Secretary Butts in regard to his rather unfortunate remarks about Grand Rapids, if you would just like to comment on that. Miss Baloyan: I was indignant as I’m sure so were others, so I wrote Mr. Butts, that although I know Mr. Butts that you must have been at least half joking in your reference to Grand Rapids, when you suggested that, take away a furniture factory or two and the town could blow into Canada, I said there is a suggestion there that we are provincial. I said far from being provincial, this is a highly cosmopolitan town in many ways. Where else can you find in a middle-sized �10 town six colleges, an art museum that is sought out by neighboring communities, a public museum that goes in, that brings in many ethnic groups and it goes into other communities with its activities, this is a town of several hundred churches, this is a town which was smart enough when the furniture industry began suffering, weakening, smart enough to bring in other industries so that it could succeed if not always in the same way, then in new ways. This is indeed a cosmopolitan town with all the opportunities that one could find in the larger communities and so we’re not in the least provincial and I’m sure that although our new president may have compassion for workers in agriculture he is well acquainted with other aspects of Grand Rapids life too and so Mr. Butts in our community we like the authentic. Interviewer: Speaking of the president, do you know Mr. Ford or Mrs. Ford? Miss Baloyan: I know both, President and Mrs. Ford. In fact, at one time President Ford, as a choir boy sang in the Saint Mark’s Church Choir. His parents, his mother and his step-father, the Jerry Ford Seniors were extremely, highly respected both in our church and the community and they were wonderful people. In the later years I came to know Betty too as a dancer. In fact, in one of our local dramatic programs, she danced for us very beautifully, very gracefully. They are very fine people although one may differ with a particular political decision and practice, anybody who knows Jerry or Betty cannot doubt their integrity and good intentions. I will say they are very religious people, sincerely religious. I think we are fortunate that there are people of character who will try to help us out at a time character seems like a lost quality in this country, I don’t really believe that. I want to emphasize it just seems that way. Interviewer: Let’s turn it off a minute, Miss Baloyan, when you… I’d like to ask you, how you first became interested in the Urban League because that’s in, you were one of the first members, I believe? Miss Baloyan: I had been doing some work in dramatics when an old school-mate Marsha Marshall(?) who was in the Urban League work asked if I’d be interested in trying some dramatics with the minority group and whites working together. It sounded like an interesting project so I did one year of class work, in dramatics for both blacks and whites together. We met in the basement of the St. Philip’s Church which is called the Under-Croft and then at the end of the year, we gave a program at the local YMCA, where we were given an auditorium type of room with a platform and my students from classes at Ottawa Hills supplied the scenery and did the back-stage work and we gave a bi-racial dramatic program. Then at the end of that year, I was asked if I’d like to go on a board. I went on a board for three years at a time when Dr. Claytor was president at the end of that time I had a kind of collapse, at school and had to go to the hospital so I thought for reasons of health I should not consider returning to the board so I served one year of volunteer work in dramatics and three years on the board. And the Urban League work was most fascinating. One of the great benefits was that I got to know Paul and Ethel Philips real well and they are to this day among my very good friends and I’m still very much interested in the welfare of that project. This is just one of several of the civic groups that I �11 got interested in. The community Concerts Organization showed great promise for awhile because although there were New York agencies helping us, advising us and booking for us, the actual campaign work was done locally and we were able to bring international artists at a very low cost because many citizens helped to sell season memberships. You became a member by buying this season ticket. This work could have gone on indefinitely if the local group had not changed from the original plans, it fell through. I think probably the civic organization I worked for the longest was the Civic Theatre Group. Interviewer: When did you start to work for the Civic Theatre, were you, was it formed, when you were originally associated with it? Miss Baloyan: I joined in the year that Maud Feely was the director. She was a professional actress here with a professional troupe. Interviewer: In what year was that again? Miss Baloyan: Doing it from memory I would say roughly 1924. I was in the second play that was given called the Doctor, directed by Feely. For a time… Interviewer: How do you spell her last name? Miss Baloyan: F-double e-l-y. For a time it satisfied me to do character acting and when especially when Paul Stevenson came and the movement changed from the St. Cecilia building over on the west side in Old Germania Hall it was so colorful and the director was so talented that it became an enchanting and rewarding activity to act for him. In the meantime, he advised me, to go into some aspect of the theatre, possibly directing and I came to realize that directing would satisfy me most of all because although we the American public glorify the actors actually the director is one of those getting the greatest satisfaction because he has to be so creative that he can pull all the different arts together, that are involved in one unified production and approach and so because of Mr. Stevenson’s suggestion that I go on with work at Yale University, I did so and continued my interest in Civic Theatre when I returned as doing it as a hobby. I was on their board a long number of years and worked with them twenty years so with the work at several of the local buildings including the Ladies Literary Club, St. Cecelia, Germania Hall, before they began hiring public buildings when some of us gave our greatest devotion to it. The early days were colorful and interesting….. Interviewer: Who were some of the people in the early days that you remember? Miss Baloyan: Well, of course, the one that many Grand Rapids citizens would remember would be Mrs. Myrtle Coon Sherman. When her son who was a professional actor died, she decided to have a Saturday night salon, a weekly salon meeting in her apartment. And so she invited as a kind of memorial to him a group of local people which included Millicent Mackaway now Millicent Hubbard, Nacib Demusse, the former city manager of Battle Creek, Camilia Boone, �12 who married Nacib Demusse, Paul Stevenson, me and several other people who used to meet in her apartment weekly. We would meet professional people that came through the town briefly. We had a literary, artistic, theatrical interest and this group was part of the bowl work of Civic Theatre. Not the only ones but part of the bowl work and well, among some of the main people in later years, Mr. Phil Buchen was on one of the boards. Mr. A…I believe Harold Hartger was on the board, of course Allen G. Miller was an active member, it’s I’m afraid trying to go back without notes or doing and research leaves a great many gaps of important names, But these are some of the people. Interviewer: You must have known Louise Hirst? Miss Baloyan: Of course Louise Hirst, was a good friend of mine, and and a very active member, so was Mrs. Steketee and a…. Interviewer: Which Mrs. Steketee? Miss Baloyan: John Steketee’s mother. Interviewer: Oh, yes, yes. Miss Baloyan: And well, there were such well known names in Grand Rapids, such devoted, loyal people that’s it’s a shame that right now I don’t recall all the names too readily but, they worked hard in those early years. Interviewer: I like to ask a question, I know you’re a long, long time member of St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, are you, in any particular church group or guild in that, in that church? Miss Baloyan: I’m delighted you asked me this question because in the three years since my mother’s death, in the years that I’ve been alone, the opportunities at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church have meant survival for us. I am in some of the adult classes and they are taught by various members of the clergy. I am also in a Tuesday night discussion group, which takes up interesting, topics. I am also a member of Cathedral League, it was my mother’s guild and as I started taking her in later years, I was asked to join and did. Mrs. Harry B. Wagner is the present president of it. I have been extremely active in the classes conducted by the Reverend Mr. George Howell and the presently Mr. James (?) and presently the evening, Tuesday evening, group is being conducted by Mr. Peter Winter. So all three of our clergy are participating in a very fine learning opportunity for adults as the enrollment of the young people began dwindling. The so called task force planning, the educational program for the church created an enlarged program for adults and it has been extremely well received so that there are at least seventy-five adults enrolled in the Sunday morning classes now and I participate regularly, and feel that I have learned a great deal and one of the incidental bonuses is the delightful fellowship with church members. At one time when we were younger we knew the people in a young people’s group real well, but then as years followed we didn’t always have the opportunities to come to �13 know our fellow churchmen, intimately. These adult classes have provided fellowship together with what I consider a very beneficial part of our church program, the Sunday morning coffee following the church service which is an opportunity for visiting with one’s friends and I will say I have come to know dozens of church members well as individuals and they have come to be so important in my life. They’re so kind and considerate and thoughtful. And it’s such a joy to meet them out, say on a symphony night or other nights. One feels that one has acquired a second family. The church program has come to function very well. A part of it that I hadn’t expected to enjoy so much but do enjoy is the opportunity to serve on the community involvement committee I was asked to visit some of the agencies to which our church has contributed and I have interviewed their directors, written up reports of their answers and of the activities of these social agencies and we have started a file on some of the agencies that our church is interested in. We are going to make our next project the effort to get more individuals involved in active volunteering for some of the organizations that we feel are worthy. And this opportunity has been so interesting, so satisfying, as one gets so tremendously interested and then one reads in the paper that this or that group had to give up because they couldn’t continue financially. It became a personal disaster because one has become so much convinced of the worthiness of that project. Interviewer: Can you think of a particular one that has suffered, gone out of existence? Miss Baloyan: Well, the Baxter Community has, hadn’t releases and news stories saying that they’re having problems. I have heard a recent story that there may be funds coming to their rescue. But as a former teacher I am especially distressed because part of their programs consisted of the effort to educate all people of all races who live in a particular under privileged community, who wish to go to that center. The Baxter Community Center, offers education in so many areas and including some of the basic education work that may be found in quite a number of other centers also but it does not limit itself to that. I think that’s one of the most notable ones that has suffered for lack of funds. Interviewer: All right, I think we’ve covered quite a multitude of subjects, I’d like to ask you a question now, you just moved in the last few days I believe, Up to this new facility, the Pilgrim Manor, you lived, I believe, up to your move in the, your old family home on Cherry Street, is that correct? Miss Baloyan: Yes. We lived in that home fifty-two years. Interviewer: What was the address? Miss Baloyan: Six-thirty-nine Cherry Street. And I have now been at Pilgrim Manor two weeks and it has solved a number of problems for me. One certainly can no longer be alone and if one wishes to leave the group and other people one has one’s room and numerous places he can escape to lovely courts, with beautiful views and classroom, the activities don’t completely, fill one’s interest, some of us are allowed to drive, I continue to drive my car so that I can still seek �14 other areas where other interests of mine are but, this is a very friendly place to be with numerous opportunities, it is a concept that I was lucky enough to have in existence in my time. I shudder to think what people used to have to do in their retirement years a few years back. What a blessing that now, there are retirement homes often started by churches and sometimes built partly with federal funds, but what a blessing this particular retirement home has a hundred and fifty eight residents. There is a bus that is able sometimes to drive us to shopping centers or to other areas of the interest, if there are as many as nine persons interested. It’s easily available to downtown. There’s considerable freedom one is urged to continue attending their church of his choice, is urged to continue seeing his own physician and yet there is a good health center here too. It’s of course requiring some adjustments from a home that I have known for fifty-two years but, although many happy years were spent in that home, the time comes when one looks forward to the time when he may want and need more help, Thank God there is such a thing as a retirement home concept. And Pilgrim Manor is a very friendly one. Interviewer: I think that’s perhaps a good place to close our interview. I’m delighted to have had this opportunity to learn about many of your activities and interests over the years. You certainly had a fascinating life, and you’re one of the best beloved people in our community. I’ve heard that from many, many people. So, it’s now, I believe ten after three and, I hope maybe someday we can have another chat. INDEX A C Alby Family · 6 B Bach Family · 8 Baldwin, Melvin · 3 Baloyan, Alexi (Sister) · 1 Baloyan, Alfred (Brother) · 1 Baloyan, Martin (Mardiros) A. (Father) · 1, 3, 5, 6, 8, 11 Baloyan, Nouvart Kurkjian (Mother) · 2, 3, 9, 11, 13 Baxter Community Center · 14 Birch, Mrs. · 4 Blanchard Family · 6 Blood, Harriet · 8 Boone, Camilia · 13 Booth, Mr. · 9 Buchen, Phil · 13 Butts, Secretary · 10, 11 Cathedral League · 13 Civic Theatre · 3, 6, 9, 12, 13 Claytor, Dr. · 11 Coon Sherman, Myrtle · 12 D Demusse, Nacib · 13 E Elliot, Jerry · 9 F Feely, Maud · 12 Ford, President and Mrs. · 11 Fountain Street Church · 2, 3, 5 �15 H R Hirst, Louise · 13 Howell, Reverend George · 13 Hubbard, Millicent · 13 Remington, Mary · 9 Rosenswag, Dr. · 8 K Kerns, Margarete · 9 Klein Family · 6 Kleiner Family · 5 Kleiner, Ann · 4 Kurchin Family · 5, 10 Kurchin, Armen (Uncle) · 2, 3, 5, 7, 10 Kurkjian, Armen (Uncle) · 2 Kurkjian, Grandfather · 2, 7 Kurkjian, Grandmother · 2, 7 L Lady’s Literary Club · 3 Lawrence Welk Show · 4 M S Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church · 3, 11 Seidman, Mrs. · 5 Smiley, Mrs. · 4 Sparks, Frank · 9 St. Cecilia's Music Society · 8, 12 Stanard, Wallace · 4 Steketee, Mrs. · 13 Stevenson, Paul · 12, 13 T Thompson, Jack · 4 Travis, Marsha · 8 U Matoon, Lloyd · 4 Union High School · 5 University of Michigan · 2, 6, 9 Urban League · 6, 11 O W Oliver Machinery Company · 3 Ottawa Hills High School · 4 Wagner, Mrs. Harry B. · 13 Whittier, Mrs. · 4 Widdicombe, John · 2 Winter, Peter · 13 Women’s City Club · 3, 4, 7 Wurzburg, Elvestra · 3 P Philips, Paul and Ethel · 11 Pilgrim Manor · 1, 14, 15 Q Quigley, May · 9 Y Yale University · 4, 9, 12 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3dd900e17fcd265d94690c4b044354af.mp3 b03ddd1898ce3aed565de7606de81310 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_44Baloyan Title A name given to the resource Baloyan, Mary Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Baloyan, Mary Description An account of the resource Mary Baloyan's parents came from Armenia in 1897. She was the first Armenian girl born October 13, 1899 in Grand Rapids. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1922. She later was a teacher at Ottawa Hills High School, JRCC, and in Zeeland for about forty-three years total. She was involved with the Urban League, Community Concerts Organization, and Baxter Community Center. She was Vice-President of the Civic Theatre, and established music scholarships to the Interlochen Arts Academy. Mary Baloyan died on January 21, 1984. 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 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/3b7081e6309993e6a0c3393468ee2f02.pdf 449f10165c59d9cb1e309aee80c6dd9c PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mrs. Stuart Knappen Interviewed on October 23, 1974 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #42 (1:10:47) Biographical Information Mrs. Stuart Knappen was born Claire L. Vesey in Memphis, Tennessee on 27 October 1880. She was the daughter of Marcellus Lauderdale Vesey and Kate Shropshire. Claire was first married to George H. Walker in Boston, Massachusetts on 12 August 1905. Evidently either George died or they divorced and Claire married as her second husband Stuart Knappen on 12 January 1916 in Chicago, Illinois. Mrs. Knappen died at the age of 102 years in Grand Rapids on 4 November 1982 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Stuart Edwin Knappen was born in Hastings, Michigan on 30 August 1877, the son of Loyal Edwin Knappen and Amelia Isabel Kenyon. Stuart was first married to Edna B. Pilcher about 1901 and they had a son Alvin and two daughters, Polly and Jane. Edna died at the Knappen home at 330 Washington Street on 3 February 1913 and is buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. Stuart married Claire and they resided at 322 Fountain Street. Stuart died at his home 14 April 1938 and is also buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. ___________ Interviewer: I‟m recording this interview at the residence of Mrs. Stuart Knappen. Her residence is located in the old Albert Stickley house which is located at Sixty Prospect, North-east. It was built before the turn of the century by Albert Stickley, one of the famous furniture men of his day and was occupied by the Stickley family into the nineteen twenties. At some point a, either in the nineteen thirties or nineteen forties this house was converted into apartments. Mrs. Knappen‟s apartment is on the second floor and is a very lovely apartment and you can see the traces of the old, this beautiful framework, on the, on the walls in this room. Was this a, perhaps a bedroom? Knappen: No, it, it was Mrs. Stickley‟s living room. And a, back there was… Interviewer: It was an upstairs sitting room or living room. Knappen: Yes. Interviewer: Well we‟ll start, we‟ll start by a, I should let the listener know that Mrs. Knappen is perhaps the oldest person we‟ve ever interviewed, or almost at least, and she will be celebrating her ninety-fourth birthday the day after tomorrow. This is the twenty-third of October so she‟ll be ninety-four on the twenty-seventh. Alright. �2 Knappen: Sunday. Interviewer: It‟ll be Sunday, I see alright now, Mrs. Knappen, why don‟t you start out by telling us where you were born, what was your maiden name, and tell us about your family background. Knappen: Well, I was born in eighteen eighty in Memphis, Tennessee. And my father was Judge M. L. Vesey. V like Victor. V-E-S-E-Y. And he was judge of the Chancery Court, in Memphis. Interviewer: Had, had the Vesey family lived in Memphis for a long time? Knappen: The Vesey family originally came from England and they were in New York, he was a minister at the church right at the head of Wall Street where he‟s buried now. Interviewer: That was the first Vesey. Knappen: Yes, the first Vesey. Interviewer: Isn‟t that Trinity Church, I think? Knappen: Trinity Church. And he‟s buried in the yard there. Interviewer: And your family eventually moved south then? Knappen: They eventually moved south. My father, before the war you know, he moved to Memphis and he lived there with his first wife who was killed during that war, you know what war. Interviewer: The Civil War. Yeah. Knappen: Civil War and a, she died then and he married my mother who was twenty or thirty years younger than he was, and a… Interviewer: Where was she from? Knappen: From England. She was English. And her grandfather was the Lord-Mayor of London. Interviewer: And what was your mother‟s maiden name? Knappen: Shropshire. Interviewer: Shropshire? Knappen: S-H-R-O-P-S-H-I-R-E. And her father owned a line of Steam-boats and we were next door neighbors to Robert E. Lee, you know. Interviewer: I see, when they lived in Virginia, I take it. �3 Knappen: Yes, Robert E. Lee lived in Memphis. Interviewer: Oh I, I didn‟t know that. Knappen: Yes, he lived next door to where our house is backed up together. Interviewer: I always assumed he lived in Virginia, for most of his life, but, I‟m obviously incorrect. Knappen: No, Robert E. Lee lived right there in Memphis. And he had a daughter Royene(?) Lee and another one Ora Lee(?) and the steamboats were named for those girls, as well as the boys. And a… Interviewer: Did you have brothers and sisters? Knappen: There were four of us. Two boys and two girls. Interviewer: And these were all by your father‟s second marriage. Knappen: Second marriage. And my youngest brother, I have a picture of him right here, he was very successful. And he was in the Piano business like what‟s his name, ya, you know.. Interviewer: I can‟t think myself. Piano business in Grand Rapids. Knappen: Yes. Well, down there on Monroe it was… Interviewer: You mean it was a retail piano business. Knappen: Yeah. He sold Steinways and all kinds of musical instruments. Interviewer: Would that be like Old Grinnell Brothers downtown or,… Knappen: Same thing, that‟s what I was trying to think of. Interviewer: I see. Knappen: That kind of business. And he died a couple of years ago at Christmas. He fell, in the bath, slipped in the bathroom tub and died. Interviewer: Were you the youngest? Knappen: I was the youngest girl. There was my brother Walter, then my sister May D. M-A-Y capital D. And then I came along and then John. And Walter was the sweetest, kindest, best person in the world. But he never could make a go of anything. He, and a, can you shut that off a minute, I want to… �4 Interviewer: Sure. Knappen: Well, I went to, I never went to public schools. I went to Miss Conway‟s Institute in Memphis and then I went to a Southern college, private college in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Girls didn‟t, Southern girls didn‟t go East to school in my day. They went to some local college, like right in Kentucky, few miles from Memphis, you know, and my brothers went to military school, Colburn and so forth and my sister went the same as I did. Interviewer: I see. I‟ve always heard that Memphis was quite a social place, especially many years ago. Do you have any special memories about that? Knappen: Yes, I got, I was elected the most beautiful girl in Tennessee! Interviewer: Well… Knappen: By popular subscription but you know, the prize was to lead the Cotillion at the boy‟s social club. Interviewer: I see. Knappen: …was “the” club of Memphis. And a, just very funny these were two girls that, a, Helen Whiteside of Nashville, and, I mean of Chattanooga, and I, we ran neck and neck up „til the last week or so. But I won… Interviewer: How did they select the beauty queen in those days? Knappen: By subscribing to the newspaper. Interviewer: I see. Knappen: With a subscription to the paper you‟d get so many votes. Interviewer: I see. Knappen: And in the Nashville, a, Chattanooga paper against the Memphis paper. Interviewer: I see. Knappen: And I, these sound so silly, my family felt they were disgraced when I tried on this silver slipper at the downtown shoe store, the one that fit three, size three, and I had little feet. And I went in and tried it on and won it. And the family was, when it came out in the paper that I‟d won the Cinderella slipper, they felt they were disgraced. It was so funny you know and what difference did it make? We young girls thought it was so funny but our families didn‟t this so. And, well let‟s see, I can‟t think of anything very exciting. �5 Interviewer: Well I take it you have a very pleasant a… Knappen: Oh yeah... Interviewer: …time in those days. Knappen: I certainly did. I had more attention than any girl you ever heard of up there in your life. Interviewer: Have you ever been back, I mean in recent years? Knappen: Oh, I‟ve gone back and when I married Stuart I was engaged to seven men. Interviewer: My heavens. Knappen: Ya, and I had, the boys down south used to give you a lot of jewelry and I had thirteen rings. Interviewer: My heavens. Knappen: I had the most gorgeous pink pearl and I had all kinds of marquis and emerald cuts and everything you ever heard of. And I had so much jewelry that it was, I didn‟t hold it very dear. I remember giving a girl a sapphire diamond ring to make a blouse for me in a hurry. Interviewer: I see. Did you have to return the jewelry that the boys had given you? Knappen: No. Interviewer: It wasn‟t considered necessary. Knappen: Well I got mad at one lad and threw all is jewelry in the wastebasket but he wouldn‟t take it out. And, but oh, oh I don‟t know, we just all girls had fun(?). And the main thing we used to do was to get a crowd together on our bicycles and ride out to the little town nearby where they had a beautiful dance hall. And well, and we had Cotillions and all kinds of things going constantly, but the most fun was when it snowed once. And we didn‟t have any sleds., One of the boys got a bath tub and he fixed seats across it and we slid in that, two and four and three couples… Interviewer: I see. Knappen: …two and three and four couples in the bathtub, sliding down the hills. And streetcars in my day you know would stop at your front door and they‟d get to know you and you would say stop at my house I want to get off or it‟s stop at my grandfather‟s and you don‟t have to tell ‟em who your grandfather is, they know, by then. Interviewer: How big a town was Memphis in those days? �6 Knappen: Oh it was, we thought it was an awfully big city. And it had a lot of skyscrapers and the one club that my father belonged to was up, way up on a building into the top floor of this building and it had a bar that turned and it would gradually turn all the time and sometimes you‟d see the Mississippi River and sometimes you‟d, you wouldn‟t see it, you know. And we thought that was… Interviewer: That must have been a first. I was out in San Francisco over a week ago and I was in an entire restaurant that revolved on the top of a hotel. Knappen: Well it, it was a club. Interviewer: About, would that be about the turn of the century? Or.. Knappen: No, this was when I was in my twenties. Interviewer: Well, a little after then… Knappen: Well that was, yes, yes. Interviewer: Yeah. Knappen: It wasn‟t too long afterwards. Interviewer: Was Memphis a pretty prosperous town in those days? Knappen: Yes. And when, I remember when my father reached ninety, he lived to be ninetynine, and when he was ninety all the courts in Tennessee convened and they had a Judge Vesey day. And so when they presented him with a gold handled cane and umbrella. And he accepted the umbrella but he told them they ought to give the cane to an old man. And he was ninety on that day. Interviewer: About what year was that? Knappen: Well I don‟t know, he‟s been dead, he was so much older than my mother. Interviewer: Yes, yes. Knappen: I don‟t know. I tell ya, I don‟t know what year it was. But it was after I married Stuart. Interviewer: Oh really? Well that would take it back to maybe… Knappen: I married him in nineteen sixteen and I know that Dad, he must have been … well, about forty years ago. �7 Interviewer: Um huh. So let‟s take that and see if my arithmetic‟s any good. Oh well, I‟m not really that good, he must have been born perhaps right about eighteen thirty or there about. Knappen: Well he was, he went to the Civil war. Interviewer: Yes. thirty years or eighteen forty or somewhere in there any ways. Knappen: Yes. Interviewer: Well, now did you do any traveling as a young person? I mean outside of the South? Knappen: Yes, I went to Europe. Interviewer: Uh huh. Knappen: Just once. Interviewer: Just once? Knappen: Uh huh. Before it was many times after I met Stuart, we traveled a lot. Interviewer: How did you happen to meet Mr. Knappen? Knappen: I came up here to visit Ethel Campau. Interviewer: I see. Was she from, where, how did you happen to know her? Knappen: Well her mother and my mother were sisters. Interviewer: I see, I see. Knappen: And she invited me up here to visit her and we went to Mrs. Waters‟ for a party and Stuart was there. Interviewer: Now who was Ethel Campau‟s husband? Knappen: Denny Campau. Interviewer: Denny Campau. Dennis I presume. Knappen: Yes. Denny Campau and his father, his grandfather was the Campau that came up the river and discovered Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Well he‟s probably a great uncle because I don‟t think Louis Campau had and direct descendents. �8 Knappen: Well… Interviewer: But he had brothers who did. Knappen: Well they must have been his brother‟s. Interviewer: Would he, would he have been an uncle or cousin or Tony Campau Knappen: They were brothers. Interviewer: They were brothers. I see. Well now I can figure that out. Knappen: Yeah. Interviewer: A, so you came up here in about what year to visit a, Ethel? Knappen: I came up here, now you know I never paid any attention to dates. Interviewer: Well. Knappen: Well, a, well it was two years before I married him, still. Interviewer: Did you meet Mr. Knappen when you made your first trip up here, or..? Knappen: Yes, when I came here on a visit. Interviewer: I see. Knappen: A, as I said at that party at Miss Waters and I came back over here several times and by then I was living in Chicago. I had an apartment that was owned by Welch‟s Grape Juice people and it was an awfully nice. It had a velvet swing in the living room that looked out over the lake. And Stuart, I would sit out, Stuart, it was so romantic with that swing you know. And it was fine but then, the night before we were to be married, I changed my mind, and told him I wouldn‟t marry him. And his mother and father and sister Florence, had all arrived in Chicago. And I said I wouldn‟t marry him and Stuart took the night train over to Chicago and talked me back into it. And I remember saying “Oh I can‟t get married now.” And Ethel Campau said “Well you have to because, I‟ve got to live in that town.” Interviewer: Were you married in Chicago? Knappen: Yes, married and I‟ve got a picture of the church. But I didn‟t tell my family that I was getting married. My father came flying up there and took me home, wouldn‟t let me be married and he said I‟d better wait and think it over. And I did, for twenty-four hours. And I don‟t think his mother and father ever knew that I had changed my mind. �9 Interviewer: I see. Well now then you came right back to Grand Rapids after you were married or did you go on a honeymoon at that point? Knappen: …(?) Stuart never forgave me, I don‟t think I had the honeymoon I took him down South to the school where my son, but oh I… Interviewer: Mrs. Knappen, when you moved to Grand Rapids in nineteen sixteen, after your marriage and honeymoon, where did you first live? Knappen: Fountain Street. Interviewer: The house that I know? Knappen: Yes. Interviewer: Between Lafayette and Prospect. Knappen: And now I just came around the corner here. Interviewer: You really haven‟t strayed very far. Knappen: No, I haven‟t. And well that place looks so awful now, on Fountain that I make a point never to go near it, where I have to see it. You know, we kept it up so beautifully inside and out and the outside never was anything special, but only it was neat and well cared for. And we had a beautiful flower garden and fountain and things like that formal rose garden. I belonged to the garden club here, and I was selected to go to New York to World‟s Fair and do a flower arrangement. Which I did, and I got a prize. Interviewer: Was that nineteen thirty-nine I can‟t remember for sure myself. Knappen: I don‟t know, as I tell you, I don‟t know but I went there and did an arrangement all white and Elna Cornelius followed me there the day after I did it and she thought it was very beautiful and it was. If I do say it is, you know. But it was. Interviewer: Can you tell me, do you know who built that house? Knappen: On Fountain? Interviewer: Yes Knappen: The Crosby‟s I think, Jim Crosby. Interviewer: Well, do you mean Mr. and Mrs. James Crosby, Senior? Knappen: Yes �10 Interviewer: I see. So that house must have been built before the turn of the century? Knappen: Oh I think it was. And the Clements lived right across the street from us. That brick house. Interviewer: The Uhl house? Knappen: Yes. Interviewer: Who were the neighbors that you were closest to up in this part of town? Knappen: Well, all of them. Everybody around here knew everybody else. The Dickenson‟s next door, your family, the Judson‟s next doors to them and the Stevens, and then these two square blocks we knew everybody in every house. They were… knew them well. And then the second house… Who lived in the second house on Lafayette catty-corner across from you? Interviewer: The second house? Knappen: The first house was… Interviewer: Campbells? You mean catty-corner from us? Knappen: Yes Interviewer: Well, that was the Wylie house originally. Well not originally but it was for many years. Knappen: The Wylie house. Then next door to the Wylie‟s was… Interviewer: Well, your house? On Fountain… Knappen: Yeah, on Fountain, but I mean on Lafayette. Interviewer: Didn‟t Curtis Wylie build a house right next to the old Wylie house? That Percy Owens eventually lived in? Knappen: Yeah. Interviewer: That‟s the house you are thinking of? Knappen: No the one next to that. Interviewer: Then that was the Holt‟s? John C. Holt‟s Knappen: Yes, the Holts and then the Fullers and the O‟Briens across the street, the Stevens and that funny old man, Mr. Shelby. I‟ll never forget one time in a movie he sat down next to me and �11 he didn‟t know who I was and he started patting my knee, and I reached over and caught hold of him and I said “Hello Mr. Shelby.” And he straightened up and he stopped patting my knees then about that time Interviewer: Did you have any trouble getting used to Grand Rapids? Knappen: Yes, I visited and knew about everybody but then I felt Stuart was trying to freeze me to death the first night I spent in Grand Rapids. It was January you know, and when he opened this great big double window and the snowflakes flew in on me I thought, „What on earth is this man doing to me?‟ It was so cold. And down South we didn‟t have any snow and we didn‟t have any really cold weather. We had one snow, the one I told you about with the bath tub. But I thought the weather up here was just awful. I thought, „How would anyone in their right mind live in this climate?‟ But you know I got so I liked everything about it, especially the fishing. Stuart and I, the first time we took a trip, I thought we‟d be going to Europe and I went down, got all the literature and I found out we were going to fish - fishing. That was funny and it‟s the truth. We rode through the country side, every time we‟d pass a bridge with a little water under it we got out and made camp and fished. Oh I thought it was so terrible. But you know we finally built our own camp and I used to go in the stream twice a day. Interviewer: Where was it? Knappen: It was in Middle Branch as you turned off of Kennedy‟s Corners going up to the Indian Club before you get to Baldwin. We had big iron gates up there. You go in and you have a little drive up to our camp. And we had a deluxe camp, with two men, one white and one black, and a Negro woman cook and when we had guests she‟d meet them at the door with a little tin cup and it‟d say: „Would you give me a donation for the church?‟ And the church donations went into her pocket. We had to give her fits about asking our guests for money before they got their suitcases. Interviewer: You say it was Little Branch River? Knappen: Yes Middle Branch. It‟s a part of the Pere Marquette. We built right on the river where you could look upstream and downstream. The whole front of the place was glass and the whole back. And our living room up there was forty feet and we had heat and had a bar in the basement. Stuart bought a bar from a firm that was going out of business soon. And he even got the brass rail and the spittoons that went into it; and he and his fisherman friends used to have a lot of fun down there. Interviewer: Judging from your description of it so far I take it, it was rather a large [cabin] and did you very often have house guests? Knappen: Oh yes, we could sleep twenty people and we had an upstairs which we never used. From the front it was a one story camp but from the river side it was three stories. The basement you see it was built on a slant. And the bar was in that basement. And then we had this great big living room then, it was paneled with solid wormy chestnut, whatever that was. And we had four bedrooms and three baths on the main floor and in the basement we had that… Isaac was the �12 white man that we had and he would have ice, his refrigerator turned on and ice made every weekend ready for us. And we had a garage for our guests and our own cars. It really was a lovely, lovely place and the pictures, you‟d think it was a hotel in New York but if you got very close you‟d find it wasn‟t at all. Interviewer: How many years did you have it? Knappen: Well we must have had it ten years. Interviewer: Until the late twenties or into the thirties? Knappen: Yes, well Stuart died in thirty-eight and the last time we were there was thirty-seven. I never went back afterwards. Interviewer: Did you have neighbors that you knew nearby? Knappen: Oh, Ed Johnson‟s. They‟re right across the stream around the bend so you couldn‟t see them. But Stuart had a little bridge built there and Ed and Stuart had a telephone line that went nowhere except to each other. And they had a lot of fun; they‟d ring the thing and then say New York‟s calling Mr. Johnson, or Mr. Knappen. And we used to all meet at that bridge in the afternoon to go swimming. And once, Jack McCray was a guest up there when a little garden snake jumped off the bank and into the stream and he shrieked! You‟d thought it was a woman and a mouse. He was so frightened. You know he‟s still living. Interviewer: Somewhere in British Colombia or out in that part of the world isn‟t it? Knappen: Yeah, I‟ve been writing to him for thirty years because he was so nice to Stuart and Jane. He was a funny little fellow. But all these lovely, big men, friends of ours have died and that little tiny thing is still going. Everybody feels so sorry for me because I have to write him. I started it, now I‟ve been writing him for thirty years. Every time I get a lette rout I think now maybe he‟s died, but he hasn‟t. He‟s going strong. Interviewer: Well I know that he came from a family with legal background. His father was Judge Loyal E. Knappen and there may have been other lawyers in the family that I don‟t know about. Knappen: His father was Judge Loyal E. Knappen, was a Court of Appeals and I know he went to Cincinnati twice a month, I mean for two weeks out of each month and when Judge Dennison died Stuart was offered that Court of Appeals position but he couldn‟t afford to take it you know. It only paid something like twelve thousand dollars in those days and we had an expensive family you know. Three girls all in school at one time for instance. And then when Father Knappen died they offered it to Stuart again although they had increased the salary he still couldn‟t take it. But another thing, he didn‟t want to be away from home two weeks out [of every month, we had to go fishing together. He couldn‟t go away for two weeks out of every month in the summer. But he was a president of the Michigan Bar at the time he died. And of course he was president of the Grand Rapids Bar first. And he represented all the, most of the railroads �13 and big concerns like Simmons Hardware and oh I don‟t know. At the time he died I got him these memorials I guess you‟d call them. And some of them were suede, done in suede and some in just paper-back. They‟re very nice. Interviewer: Who were some of his law partners? Knappen: It was Knappen, Uhl, Bryant, and Snow and Upham. And when Stuart died Mr. Snow died shortly afterwards and then it, the firm was Uhl, Bryant and Upham, and somebody else now. Upham and young Bryant Dick Bryant,I don‟t know many others. Interviewer: Were some of these men close friends of Mr. Knappen, in addition to being his partners? Knappen: Oh yes, Marshall Uhl and I guess they all were. Do you remember Snap Bryant? Interviewer: Oh well, I never knew him but I knew his brother and his brother‟s son and one of them I went to boarding school with, so I used to hear about my friend Steve Bryant‟s uncle Snap. But I never, I don‟t remember ever meeting him. I used to hear a lot of stories about him. Knappen: Oh yeah, well this one time Stuart was so mad at him, he was in some other state and he wanted to charge some gasoline to himself and they wouldn‟t charge it to him and he said he was gonna have him put out of business. And the gasoline people called Stuart up and they were quite provoked and Stuart had to explain to them that he had no authority. Oh, I want to tell you something funny though. You know this chauffer of ours, Shakespeare? Well he, they were Negroes of course and he had a brother Beethoven and another one Mathelius. So now Beethoven worked at the Pantlind and he gambled and won some money but he couldn‟t get off his job to collect so he had Shakespeare to go collect it for him. And while he was collecting, the place was raided and so they were arrested. And when they came up for trial, the judge asked their names and when Shakespeare gave his name, Shakespeare and Beethoven, the judge said, “Now you little smarties, I‟ll make an example out of you two young men.” And Stuart had to go over to court and tell that they were their real names. The judge thought that they were just being little smart aleks. I thought it was awfully funny. I was kind of wishing that Shakespeare‟d get arrested, really arrested and stay in because he was so proud of that name and I asked him how did they, the boys get those names? Mathelius and Beethoven and Roosevelt and he said well his old Uncle lived with the family, he didn‟t work and he just sat around and named the children when they came. I thought it was kind of cute. Interviewer: What do you know about the Sam Young family? Seems to me they were quite an interesting family in this neighborhood. Knappen: Yes. They lived across the street from us. And Lola, did you ever know Lola? Interviewer: Yes, I remember Mrs. Young. Knappen: Well she was a character. And old Sam Young couldn‟t talk without spitting you know. He sprayed you every time. They were nice enough. �14 Interviewer: Well I always liked Elvira. Knappen: Oh Elvira, I still like Elvira. She has this little retarded child and at first they wouldn‟t put her anywhere but they have now. She‟s grown up. They‟ve put her in an institution. Alice and John Doban(?) were kind of funny, weren‟t they? Lola wore such peculiar clothes and we all like Lola but we could never laugh at her because she would wear these funny, very fancy shoes and we were all wearing high heels in those days and she was wearing flats, you know. Interviewer: Did both Mrs. and Mr. Young come from the South originally? Knappen: Yes, they came from… I don‟t know where. Interviewer: I think it was North Carolina wasn‟t it? Knappen: I think it was one of the Carolina‟s. Interviewer: Seems to me they had quite a staff over there. Knappen: Yes. Well we had Betsy and Shakespeare and do you remember the Negro man down at the Union Depot in those days? Everybody knew him. That nice old Negro man? Interviewer: I‟m not sure I can, I know which one you‟re talking about. Knappen: Yes, well we had his daughter for the second, her name was Bea, she said it was Beatriz. We just called her Bea. She was the second maid, upstairs maid. And we had three regular servants and Grace Brown came two or three days a week to clean and do laundry. Oh, and I want to tell you what a smart woman I was. I never counted the laundry in and out you know, I paid no attention. And before we got, Betsy that maid we had for twenty odd years, this woman we had was having her whole family and her boyfriend‟s laundry done on my time. You know, Stuart‟s shirts went to the laundry and so did her boyfriend‟s. And once on her day out, the laundry came in and that‟s how I discovered it. Down South you can walk out your kitchen any time and find a couple of colored people sitting there. They just come for a meal, they think it‟s their right, you know. And no questions asked. A cook down there that my mother had, used to play the numbers, and every time I‟d go down to Memphis she‟d get me to play the numbers with her. Do you know what that is? I didn‟t know, I‟d never heard of it before. Interviewer: Do you hear from Mrs. Butterfield from time to time? Knappen: Yes, she lives in some little town, Waverly, Tennessee. And yes she sent me a glass of jelly, the other day and said that I liked it so much. I never heard of it before, but she had me mixed up with a couple of other people. But I didn‟t tell her that. She, I think, oh her mother has died? Interviewer: Yes, she died last summer. There‟s some talk that she might come back to Grand Rapids. �15 Knappen: I know it and I hope she does. Somebody said that she was coming back. Interviewer: It‟s quite interesting that over the years, that especially years ago there were quite a few people came up here from the South or married people from the South. Doctor Van was from the south and Dr. William Wilson down the street. And seems there was quite a group of people here at one point. Knappen: I remember we gave a party for the Wilson‟s when they were first married. And she said at the table that night, she met him when they were in the service. And she said when I was introduced him said “I didn‟t know that he was “the” Mr. “the” Dr. Wilson.” Then Jack McCray said: “What did you mean „the‟ Dr. Wilson?” I could have killed him. Because you know as far as we knew he wasn‟t “the” Dr. Wilson, but a very nice man. I used to go across the street and play bridge with them this last, a year ago. I was going to say before he died, well naturally. Interviewer: Did you know that Elizabeth Stuart Minor and her husband have moved, bought Mrs. McCleod‟s house across the street? Knappen: Yes, they‟re going to have a meeting there on Monday, and my daughter Betty told me about it. They‟ve done quite a bit to that house. You saw the building going on? Interviewer: Well, my sister when she was here about three weeks ago, we went over to see her, and because she and Helen are very close friends. She was naturally interested that Elizabeth had come back to the neighborhood where she got started. Now you, when you did your entertaining, did you do most of it at home or did you go out to other clubs? Knappen: Here you mean or down south? Interviewer: No, in Grand Rapids. Knappen: Oh we did at home, we entertained for the (?) at the country club mostly but there are tea dances and things like that, but no, we used to have as many as seventy people at the house. And we used to have these saw horses with the planks on them put up and tablecloths or and one time I remember we were having this party for around seventy people and the first course was oysters „down the hatch.‟ But we served so many drinks before hand, they forgot to serve the oysters. So the next morning the back porch was just covered with oysters „down the hatch‟ and that was funny. Interviewer: Who were some of the other people that you knew well in those days. Knappen: Up here? INTERVIEWER: Well not necessarily in this neighborhood but around the city here. Knappen: Well I think we knew just about everybody. I can‟t think of anybody we didn‟t know, our age people. The Stevens‟, the Lockwood‟s, the Everett‟s and the Guyhouses(?), nobody �16 wanted to sit by her and I‟d always put her next to Stuart and Stuart would get so he‟d go to the dining room and look around to see where he was. And he‟d change his place and put Guyhouse next to me. We had a lot of fun over that. Interviewer: You must have known the Booth family pretty well. Knappen: The Booth‟s, oh yes and let me see, and trying to think, Dee, Ella?, that family? Interviewer: The Hazeltine girls? Knappen: Yes, the Hazeltine girls. And of course everybody in this neighborhood, we called it Knob Hill in those days. We all knew each other so well, in every house. There wasn‟t a house that we didn‟t know, the Dickinson‟s, and then well we didn‟t know Mr. and Mrs. Stickley so well but Florence we did. And then the Cur and the Hudson‟s and the Curtis‟, different ones, and the Butterfield‟s lived next door here. And the minister Dean Higgins. And the Blodgett‟s used to live in that corner house. Interviewer: Was that Delos Blodgett‟s or the Jack, or the John Blodgett‟s? Knappen: The John Blodgett‟s lived there in that kind of funny stone house. And then were you old enough to go to the party they had out at the new home when the boy was, his bride, the party was given for his bride? Interviewer: That was the first marriage? No I wasn‟t, I wasn‟t old enough but I remember hearing about it later, in later years but I didn‟t go to it. Knappen: I didn‟t know whether you were old enough or not. Interviewer: No there‟s about at least twenty years difference in our ages so. Knappen: Yes, but that was quite a party. I remember a party that Mr. Jack gave out on the lake you know. And he had the whole front yard, every bush and tree had blooms and the lawn, had little tables on the lawn. Interviewer: That‟s Reed‟s Lake? Knappen: Yes, that home on that was such a pretty looking party you know. Interviewer: Not quite apart from your social life and I know there was a great deal of it in this neighborhood in those days, I am old enough to remember… Knappen: Yes. Interviewer: …Did you have some other special interests in Grand Rapids? �17 Knappen: I belonged to the Women‟s… well what‟s now Porter Hills? What was the name of it before? Interviewer: Oh you mean Isabella Home I think. Knappen: Yes, I belonged and Stuart used to die laughing at me because I‟d take those old women and have their hair done and all, and they loved it you know. And I also furnished entertainment for them on Sundays. And I‟d get all my friends that could do anything, sing, play the piano, to go out and entertain the ladies. And I‟d buy them shoes, instead of buying them nice, sensible shoes, I‟d get them pretty fancy shoes. And then I belonged to the Butterworth Hospital‟s Women‟s Board. I got Jack McCray to furnish the Infants Department at the hospital for me, and I got somebody else to give me a big soup kitchen for the hospital. I got all kinds of things. Mrs. Bender was the president, at the time I was on the board. We used to have a lot of fun because I‟d get so much stuff donated. Interviewer: Yes, so you remember some of the other people besides Mrs. [Charles] Bender that worked with you? Knappen: Oh yes. Well Mrs. Blodgett you know. Interviewer: You mean Mrs. Lowe? Knappen: Oh yes Mrs. [Edward] Lowe of course, not Mrs. Blodgett. I don‟t know, did she ever, Mrs. Blodgett never did any kind of work like that, never heard of it. Interviewer: Well she, I think she must have taken an interest in the Blodgett Hospital, I suppose. I don‟t know. Knappen: I don‟t know either. But Mrs. [Edward] Lowe did an awful lot. And I liked Mrs. Lowe, I thought she was a lot of fun. Interviewer: Did you go by her house quite often? Knappen: Oh yes, a great deal go out there. She used to have a lot of Sunday night parties. Interviewer: What did you do during prohibition for liquor? Knappen: Oh boy, what did we do? Well, Bill Wurzburg and a Henry Heel and Stuart and Foster Stevens were all making gin. And I drove an ambulance for the Motor Corps during the war and I‟d hear the people talking and I‟d tell on them to Stuart and the men that they were making gin and what happened to them, the police got them. I was making it up and kidding him and they took me seriously and they poured out all the hard earned gin that they and bought and made and they thought that I mean it. Bill had it all at his house and he, I never told him, they‟d have killed me. How would I know, they should have known I was joking. �18 Interviewer: Was that all you could drink was a home-made or bathtub gin whatever it was called? Knappen: Oh yes but you know father Knappen had a wonderful wine cellar and he poured it all out you know. And Stuart and Stuart‟s brother begged him to let them have it. No he said it was against the law. Just like the cook that caught the little mouse in the kitchen one hot summer day. And she had it, caught it in a trap and she, so she said to mother Knappen, “What‟ll I do with it?” And she said just take it and throw it, bury it in the back yard. Father Knappen said no, you can‟t do that, that‟s against the law to bury animals on the premises. And that hot day he wouldn‟t consider anything. But he went to the basement and built a fire in the furnace to burn up this little mouse. We always thought that was funny. He was a stickler for the law. Interviewer: Was Judge Loyal Knappen born in Grand Rapids or did he come here? Knappen: No, he and Mother Knappen both were born in Hastings. Interviewer: Raised here. And Mr. Knappen, your husband was born in Hastings then? Knappen: Yes, he was born there and he said that one cold winter day. Father Knappen‟s office in those days was upstairs over some place, and they had a stairway with an iron banister and Stuart stuck his tongue on the iron rail and it stuck to it one cold winter day and he couldn‟t get his tongue loose. And he pulled it away, took all the skin off his tongue. Interviewer: Mrs. Knappen, we traditionally think of people from the South as high-brow democrats, could I presume on your friendship to answer my question as to how you vote? Knappen: Well I‟d like to tell you something. My brother John the younger one, worked harder than anybody you ever heard of for the democrats of course and they used to say you couldn‟t get a job in Memphis unless John said so. And the last time Roosevelt ran, you know, was elected of course, my mother called me up on the phone and said, “John got Roosevelt elected again.” She thought it was all her boy‟s doing. Interviewer: Oh, the Knappen‟s were probably Republicans, were they not? Knappen: Oh yes, I just said go with Nixon and I still am mad because they treated him so badly. And I was so glad that he was pardoned. Interviewer: How do you like Mr. [Gerald] Ford? Knappen: I like him But they tell me I like everybody. But how do you like him? I won‟t tell. Interviewer: I tell this to posterity, I like him very much. Knappen: Well so do I. Interviewer: I happen to agree with him on a lot of things… �19 Knappen: I agree with him on everything. Interviewer: …but I think he‟s handled his new office very well and I think he‟s having an awful rough time right now. But I‟ve had occasion to be with him and rather closely know him over a period of years from time to time. And I know he‟s a man of great integrity and complete honesty. Knappen: I don‟t think anybody can doubt that. Interviewer: And I think he‟s much more able then we gave him credit for. I didn‟t come here to talk, you‟re supposed to do the talking. Knappen: No, no, no.But I just was so glad when he pardoned Nixon, and I don‟t care those other men were just jealous. I put it down, I really do, think they persecuted him. What I‟d like to know is why they didn‟t do something to that Edward Kennedy when he drowned that young girl. Interviewer: Well, many people will ask that question for a long time and I‟m sure that if he ever does run for president it would be a… Knappen: Well he better not. I said I was going to have them get out pamphlets and mail them to every state in the Union, because I think he was such a coward. Interviewer: Now the other question that sometimes people think people shouldn‟t discuss and I‟ll just throw it out, I gather you have an association here with the Episcopal Church? Do you remember Saint Mark‟s? And do you know the new rector there. Father Howell? You haven‟t met the new rector? Knappen: Yes, I have. When Laura Blackman died he performed the ceremony and you know now that I have difficulty in walking those steps. Interviewer: Those steps are hard to get up. Knappen: Going up is easier for me than going down, that‟s my excuse. Interviewer: Was your family an Episcopalian family in the South? Knappen: Oh yes, always. And my brother John, the one that remains. He was in the little boy choir as a singer for the time he was a little fellow. And he had a magnificent baritone voice. And he played the piano so beautifully. When he was a little boy, little tiny boy in his nightshirt he used to get out of bed and go sit at the piano and play. Interviewer: What are you going to do on your birthday? �20 Knappen: Well, now let me see. If I‟m lucky I‟ll be doing nothing. If they drag me out, Betty Knappen has gone to Oregon and she came down here, she just left yesterday. Interviewer: Who is Betty? Knappen: Betty Oakland. Betty Knappen married to Paul. Well she came yesterday and brought me a cake that I was to have for my birthday when she said if you have somebody drop in. I have never told anybody when my birthday is because I don‟t want them dropping in making work for me. And not long ago Betty and Cynthia, my grandchild, came here to see me one day and they couldn‟t get in. They knocked on the door and the telephoned and no answer and they thought I was dead. And Cynthia got to crying and she went out in the back and looked in the window, said, She hasn‟t even been to bed, she‟s probably just lying there.” I was out to the county club playing bridge. And they got the police up to break down the door but he wouldn‟t break down the door he went around the back and looked in the window and said that, the fact that everything is neat and clean doesn‟t look like she‟s dead. And he could see from the bathroom in through probably course he couldn‟t see over that but they got a ladder and put up in front and discovered I wasn‟t there. [Recording ends] Interviewer: Do you play in one of those bridge marathons? Knappen: Yes I‟m playing in that again this year. Betty Rango(?) and I won the place three years. Interviewer: Who‟s your partner now? Knappen: G.B. Vanberg(?), she‟s a good player but she plays her cards beautifully but I don‟t think, who am I to just talk about G.B., she‟s supposed to be one of the best. But I don‟t think she always bids so beautifully. Interviewer: Did you play bridge a lot when your husband was living? Knappen: Oh yes, well let me show you something. Can you open that drawer? Interviewer: Yes, here‟s a picture and I don‟t have a date on it, but it‟s a picture from the Grand Rapids Press. A yellow clipping and it shows four people playing bridge. Knappen: They are the Alexander‟s. Interviewer: Now were they from Grand Rapids? Knappen: Yes. Interviewer: I don‟t remember them. �21 Knappen: Well we didn‟t know then either. It started out with the city tournament. And there was, oh I‟ve forgotten how many couples. Interviewer: I‟m going to guess this was taken about nineteen thirty or maybe thirty-one or there abouts because the name Dykhuizen appears as the photographer and I think he was in the photography business along with a Mr. LeClear, and I don‟t think that‟s LeClear either, at about that time. Knappen: This was at the University Club, the last night of it and I just found that stuck in a book. And I used to have all kinds of bridge books, but now I don‟t look in them anymore. Well I‟ve been playing bridge for seventy years, I ought to know a little something about it. But, it changes a lot you know. But I gland through the latest book once in a while to make sure I‟m up on things, that‟s all. Interviewer: Well I think it‟s past the hour of five and I think I‟d better go home. But I must say it‟s been delightful. Knappen: Well it‟s been fun. Interviewer: I‟d sort of like to come back and start over again. Knappen: You just do that. Interviewer: Well, maybe one day we will get together again. Maybe I‟ll think of some other questions to ask you but I want to thank you very, very much for your hospitality and for telling me… Knappen: Oh my goodness, I never offered you a drink. Interviewer: Well, I don‟t think I‟ve got time. I‟ll take a look at the clock and if there is a little time I‟ll take one in a hurry, how‟s that? Knappen: Well, yes you do that. What would you drink? I usually drink scotch. I‟ve got some. Interviewer: And I‟ll close on… Knappen: … but you know what. I don‟t have any ice. Interviewer: That‟s alright, I‟ll be English. Knappen: Oh well, you be English. �22 INDEX B K Bender, Josephine · 18 Blodgett Family · 17, 18 Booth Family · 16 Bryant Family · 13 Bryant, Mr. · 1 Butterfield, Mrs. · 15, 17 Kennedy, Edward (Ted) · 11, 20 Knappen, Judge Loyal E. (Father-in-law) · 13 Knappen, Stuart (Husband) · 1, 5, 7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 C Lee, Robert E. · 3 Lockwood Family · 16 Lowe, Mrs. Edward · 18 Campau Family · 7, 8 Campau, Ethel · 9 Clements Family · 10 Crosby, Mr. and Mrs. James · 10 D Dennison, Judge · 13 E Everett Family · 16 F Ford, President Gerald R. · 19 G L M McCray, Jack · 12, 15, 17 Miss Conway‟s Institute · 4 O Oakland, Betty Knappen · 16, 20, 21 R Reed‟s Lake · 17 S Guyhouse Family · 16 Saint Mark‟s Episcopal Church · 20 Shelby, Mr. · 11 Snow, Mr. · 13 H U Hazeltine Family · 16 Holt Family · 11 Uhl, Marshall · 13 University Club · 22 Upham, Mr. · 13 J V Johnson, Ed · 12 Vesey, Judge Marcellus Lauderdale (Father) · 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 13, 18 Vesey, Kate Shropshire (Mother) · 2, 6, 7, 15, 18, 19 �23 W Y Waters, Mrs. · 7, 8 Wilson, Dr. · 15 Young Family · 14 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2e22ed5052d7dfbcc953fc194c8bc7be.mp3 3da14399df38905c3e507d3428271566 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_42Knappen Title A name given to the resource Knappen, Claire Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Knappen, Claire Description An account of the resource Claire Vesey was born in 1880 in Memphis, Tennessee. She married Stuart Knappen in 1916. Stuart was part of a law firm in Grand Rapids and president of the Michigan Bar Association. Mrs. Knappen was a member of the Flower Garden Club and was on the Butterworth Hospital Women's Board. She died in 1982. 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 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/75b7238857724d60ab0643af37325a8d.pdf 37c0115e6350f6dc2293113de2d007ea PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mrs. Earle Clements Interviewed on October 21, 1974 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape # 41 (46:06) Biographical Information Mrs. Clements was born Nellie Dorothy Calder in Chicago, Illinois on 12 August 1893. She was the daughter of Robert Gillon Calder and Emma C. Bluthardt. Her father, Robert Calder was born 16 October 1858 in Bathgate, Scotland and died 29 January 1946 in Grand Rapids. He was buried in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago. Her mother, Emma Bluthardt was born 27 December 1863 in St. Louis, Missouri and died in 26 December 1929 in Grand Rapids. Robert and Emma were married on 24 November 1886 in Chicago. At the time of Robert Calder's burial, the remains of Emma and daughter Marjorie Calder were removed from Graceland Mausoleum in Grand Rapids and re-interred in Graceland Cemetery in Chicago, Illinois. Nellie Calder was married in Grand Rapids on 2 May 1914 to Earle Arthur Clements, the son of Eilert Alfred Clements and Julia Jenssen. Earle was born in Niles, Michigan on 19 June 1891 and died on 18 January 1972. His father, Eilert Clements was born about July 1864 in Norway and died on 12 May 1934 in Grand Rapids. His mother Julia whom Eilert married in Chicago 7 September 1889 was born about July 1870 in Trondheim, Norway and died in Grand Rapids 20 November 1942. __________ Interviewer: Residence of Mrs. Earle Clements at twenty-five oh-six Normandy Drive, Grand Rapids, Michigan. Mrs. Clements had kindly consented to be interviewed and I‟m going to start by asking her a few questions about where she was born and her parents and her grandparents. Mrs. Clements: Well I was born in Chicago, Illinois on August twelfth eighteen ninety-three and moved to Grand Rapids when I was eleven years old. My parents, my father was born in Bathgate, Scotland, not far from Edinburgh and mother was born in St. Louis, Missouri. Her parents, they had come from Germany. Interviewer: I don‟t think we really need to hand this back and forth, actually we can just… I‟ll just hold it and watch the dial here. Now when did you come to Grand Rapids Mrs. Clements? Mrs. Clements: In nineteen, in nineteen four. Interviewer: I see and what was your father‟s, line of work? �2 Mrs. Clements: Well he was he was with the old Nelson-Matter Furniture Company and Michigan Chair Company. Stayed with them until they went out of business, and then he went to Johnson-Handley for a good many years - great many years. Interviewer: Had he worked in Chicago for the Nelson-Matter Company? Mrs. Clements: Yes, and in those days he commuted when there were no, there were no, furniture markets in Grand Rapids at the time and so whenever he would have a customer from the West Coast why, he would bring him to Grand Rapids to see the show rooms and finally, I think they decided that it would be better if he lived right here and so we moved over in nineteen four which was quite a, father was accustomed to Grand Rapids and had been a member, a nonresident member of Kent County Club and all and so he, he felt that he fitted in. But Mother had a, quite a time adjusting because Chicago was so far advanced over Grand Rapids in those days that it was pretty difficult. And I was thinking this morning when I was expecting Lee, I remembered when we took, we rented the house on Cherry Street between College and Paris Avenue and lived there for… until after I was married; and I remembered so well that Marshall Fields did all the decorating, the rugs and the draperies and the wall papers and all for Mother in Chicago because there was nothing available here that she had, that she could find out about anyway. And a, I remember when we‟d go back to visit we‟d come home on the train laden with English muffins and cream puffs and all the things we couldn‟t get in Grand Rapids to bring back for treats. It was, of course there were very little ready to wear clothing made in those days. Most everything was made in the homes or by dress makers and it was it was a very different life. When you went back to Chicago, everything was available and it took Grand Rapids quite a few years to catch up. Today I think our markets are as good as almost anyone. Interviewer: Is the house still standing that…? Mrs. Clements: No, they tore that down within the last ten years. The house was an old, old one. Dr. Lilly, I think, had built it originally and I think it was a fifty years old when we moved into it. And it deteriorated badly after we left and it was made into kind of a, well, it wasn‟t a rooming house, but kind of flats. They, I know that my bedroom and bathroom were one apartment and they divided the whole place up in that way; and it was deteriorating so badly that in spite of the nostalgia, I was glad to see it torn down. I hated to, to have it go to pieces in front of us. And that‟s where the doctors buildings are built today. [516 (430) Cherry Street] Interviewer: I see Mrs. Clements: It‟s that whole block between Paris and College. Interviewer: Paris, Paris and College. You probably knew my great Aunt, Mrs. Charles Wilson. Mrs. Clements: Next door, yes. Interviewer: Right around the corner on College. �3 Mrs. Clements: And you had a father down the block on College. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Clements: And College Avenue was a wonderful, wonderful neighborhood in those days. So many, many of our friends who are still friends, lived in that block and the block toward, toward Fountain, or toward Fulton I mean. Interviewer: When, when did your family decide to move? In what, what year do you remember? Mrs. Clements: I came to move here? Interviewer: No I mean you moved out of that house. Mrs. Clements: Out of that house? Yes, I was married in nineteen fourteen and I think they moved out about twenty-one. [In 1922, the Robert G. Calders lived at 122 Union SE] Interviewer: I see. Did you have any brothers or sisters? Mrs. Clements: I had a sister. Interviewer: I see. Was she younger or older? Mrs. Clements: Younger, younger. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: And it was interesting in those days. When you speak of a younger sister I always think because there was nothing from, from the corner of College Avenue, College Avenue was built up just Morris Avenue was just being opened up; and the, the Frank Deans had the only house on Morris Avenue, in the middle of the block there was nothing else. And there was a little path, it wasn‟t wider than two feet, worn, foot-path that we used to go to school, to Wealthy Avenue School from our house. And we‟d cut across, straight across from the corner of College and Cherry through Morris and over to the corner of Madison and Wealthy. Right through there were, there weren‟t woods but there were undergrowth. Interviewer: Was there a school on that corner? Mrs. Clements: Where, where Vanderbilt [Vandenberg] school is today, was old Wealthy Avenue Street School. Interviewer: Vanderbilt? [Vandenberg], not… Mrs. Clements: On Mad… on Lafayette and Wealthy. Interviewer: Lafayette and Wealthy. I see. �4 Mrs. Clements: Yeah and that was the old Wealthy Avenue school. I have some pictures of that in my scrap-book of the old school. Interviewer: Do you remember some of your classmates of…? Mrs. Clements: Oh yes, there were; all that College Avenue crowd. Interviewer: I see. Who were you‟re special friends? Mrs. Clements: Well, Mary Murray and Olive Maddox and, you should have given me a little warning. Interviewer: That‟s alright. Mrs. Clements: A, Ali, what was her name, Snow? You know... Interviewer: I think I do know, is that, Mills or… Mrs. Clements: Yes. Interviewer: Didn‟t they call her Nifty Mills? Mrs. Clements: Nifty Mills. Interviewer: She was a sort of a relative of mine. Mrs. Clements: Oh was she? Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Clements: She was a good friend and a, Mary Fisher and there were, there were a great many awfully nice people that were there. Interviewer: Can you remember your teacher at all? Mrs. Clements: Yes, Miss Keck particularly. Interviewer: Miss Keck? Mrs. Clements: And she was the principal. Interviewer: Is that K-E-C-K, K-E-C-K? Miss Clements: K-E-C-K and, that was interesting because I had gone to a little private school in Chicago, and had never been in a public school and Mother was very doubtful about this and the school was not up to our standards of today. The toilet room for instance, was a big room with a board with holes in it and that we all sat in and no heat down there. I can remember it very vividly. But Miss Keck, we moved in September and, school had started a few days before and �5 so when Mother took us to school, Miss Keck took [me] up under her wing and took us to our teachers and got us started. And she was wonderful to us there and helped us adjust to a new environment and years later when I was President of the Women‟s City Club I followed her; she had been president before me and then I came and that was quite a jump from a principal and a little girl to two ex-presidents together. Interviewer: Really. Did you go, did you as many of your age group, did you go on to Central High School? Miss Clements: No, I went to Miss Moffat‟s School. Interviewer: Miss Moffat‟s School? Mrs. Clements: In a private, in a private school. Interviewer: Now where was that located? Mrs. Clements: Well on Jefferson, down near Wealthy. Interviewer: Um hum. Mrs. Clements: And I went from, from Wealthy Avenue Street, to Central Grammar which was where Junior College was, is. Interviewer: Yeah Mrs. Clements: And finished the seventh and eighth grades there and then instead of going to Central High School, I went to Miss Moffat‟s for four years. Interviewer: For four years? Mrs. Clements: Then went east to School. Interviewer: Where did you go after, after you left Miss Moffat‟s? Mrs. Clements: I went to Spence in New York City. Interviewer: I see, how long were you there? Mrs. Clements: Just a year. Interviewer: Now that would bring you up to just about what year? Mrs. Clements: Nineteen thirteen Interviewer: Nineteen thirteen? And you said you were married in nineteen fourteen, I believe. Mrs. Clements: Um Hum. �6 Interviewer: How did you meet Mr. Clements or… Mrs. Clements: I met him on a sleigh ride, originally, and, and then I didn‟t see him for a year or so afterwards and then we were pulled together again and we were married in nineteen fourteen. Interviewer: And what was he doing at that point? Mrs. Clements: Well he was in, in, he was with the Globe Knitting Works; his fatherwas the head of that. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: And, he was with that for a great many years and, and was superintendant until he left and he left, left later on to establish a knitting department down in Tennessee for a big concern. Interviewer: Was the Globe Knitting Works or Globe Knitting Company, I‟m not sure of the correct name. Mrs. Clements: Works. Interviewer: Works, was that a family owned business? Mrs. Clements: Mr. Clements, and Mr. Liesveld, that was Herman Liesveld; and I suppose there were others have had some stock in it but those two had the… Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: …controlling interest. And they, they, they were, that went on until after Mr. Clements‟ death and then Roy Clements became president of it and then it was sold, oh in the forties I guess or fifties I‟m not sure. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: To some eastern concern and they liquidated it. Which was too bad because today even people come up to me and say, “Oh Mrs. Clements, I remember your husband so well. I worked at the Globe for so long and then there was no place for us.” And there wasn‟t, Because all those people who had been trained they had hundreds of employees, maybe five hundred and, they had been trained along that line and there was nothing around here in any little town or anywhere else that they could get employment, you know? And a lot of them were older that couldn‟t start to learn a new trade and it was rather disastrous. Interviewer: Yes, I can see. Do you suppose it was the Depression, or was it just they… Mrs. Clements: Well I think the Depression, I know that Mr. Clements, when he first left, he had planned to go into the hosiery business in Belding and it with the financing through the �7 Depression it was, the banks closed and there were, it just stopped everything, and so that fell through. And then later on he went to Tennessee, just as a temper…, temporary thing, I mean, we never really expected to just stay there the rest of our lives but it was fine opportunity to do something. Interviewer: Now, were, were your, was your husband, were your husband‟s parents natives of Grand Rapids or did…? Mrs. Clements: No, they both came from Norway. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: They came from Norway and they met in Chicago. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: Which was interesting. Interviewer: And when did they come to Grand Rapids? Mrs. Clements: They, my husband was born in Niles and they were there first and I think I‟m sure that Roy Clements was born in Grand Rapids, so that would have been about ninety-three, eighty-three, ninety-three, ninety-three. Interviewer: Ninety-three. Mrs. Clements: Yes. Interviewer: Was that when Mr. Roy Clements was born? Mrs. Clements: Um hum. Interviewer: I see, and then they came up to Grand Rapids somewhere just prior to that then? Mrs. Clements: Um hum. And they lived over on the west side, and I think they were driven out of the west side by the Big Flood [1904]. Interviewer: Oh yes. Mrs. Clements: And then they moved over to this side. Interviewer: Where did they live when they came to this side of the river? Mrs. Clements: Well they lived on College Avenue when I first knew them. Interviewer: I see. �8 Mrs. Clements: Down near Franklin and then they moved into the, the big house on Fountain Street, just two doors from you, you know the, the, what was the name of the people that lived at the corner across from you? Interviewer: Well, Mrs. McKnight and… Mrs. Clements: No, the other way, going up Fountain Street. Interviewer: Well, the, in the old days of course, Curtis Wiley‟s parents lived there for a while. Mrs. Clements: No, I mean the little house, the one story house. She was, she married Ted Booth. Interviewer: Oh the Earles, oh yes. Mrs. Clements: The Earles house then… Interviewer: Which is gone. Mrs. Clements: And then the Clements‟. Yes the Clements‟ house was gone too. Interviewer: I see. I thought the [Edwin F.] Uhl House was right there, Mrs. Clements: Well it was the Uhl house. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: Was the Uhl House. Interviewer: They moved into what had been the Uhl House. Mrs. Clements: What had been the Uhl house and they lived there for oh, until the family was all gone, then they took the smaller place. Interviewer: I see. Where did your husband go to College? Mrs. Clements: He went to Howe Military School. Interviewer: He to Howe Military School? And what is your education with Mr. Grover Good? I know there‟s some tie in there. Mrs. Clements: He was, he was married to Mr. Clements‟s sister. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: For a while, before… Interviewer: He, he was also in, in the knitting works was he not? �9 Mrs. Clements: Well he was brought here when he married Nora. Interviewer: Wasn‟t he the head master of Howe or, I knew he had some a… Mrs. Clements: Uh huh. Interviewer: He was, yeah. Mrs. Clements: But I don‟t know if you want all of this. Interviewer: Well we don‟t have to know all about everything. Let‟s just stop for a moment. I‟d thought I‟d like to ask you a little about the social life of the period when you were married and what, what, what did people, young married people do in those days? Mrs. Clements: Awful lot of dancing, awful lot of dancing, and we had a very good theatre. The, the New York plays came on, you know, Powers theatre was, was wonderful. We went a great deal, and there was a great deal of entertaining and very formal entertaining, very lovely entertaining. I was thinking the other say in connection with the Voigt house. I remember a big reception there, and today it would be fun to go back and see how they, how they‟re doing what they did in those days, but it was so very formal, and very, very lovely. Beautifully done. Interviewer: Who were some of the other people who entertained in a rather elaborate fashion? Mrs. Clements: Well, the, Robert Irwins and the Booths and, and oh I don‟t know, a lot of Mother‟s friends that did a great deal of entertaining, and very formal. Mother used to, had such, wore such beautiful clothes and, I wish I had them. I wish I had saved them for a museum today some of them. But, she would have a brougham brought around maybe once, or every other week or something like that and then go very formally calling all afternoon you know and, and on people who had entertained her and so forth and who had been kind to her moving to Grand Rapids and all. And it was very formal, with beautiful hats and all the ermine scarves the, all the lovely things that they wore. I, it, when I see my grandchild today I, I wonder what my mother would say. Interviewer: Did they have the dressmakers, is that where the clothes came from? Is…? Mrs. Clements: Yes, well, I remember was a wonderful tailor here, a man‟s tailor who also did women‟s clothes, and he made Mother some beautiful things. And the, the suits, I remember, a light blue broadcloth suit that went to the floor, long, afternoon suit you know and very formal, very dressy and very impractical. But you see there were no automobiles at all, and we‟d walk from, had to walk to school, where I went to Central Grammar, we not only walked up and back we came home at lunch. Interviewer: I see. �10 Mrs. Clements: And today when I can hardly wobble around well, why I think back at those walks and wonder how I ever did it. But they, the street-car of course ran up Cherry Street and then if you wanted to go downtown you were fine but to go visit anybody who lived over beyond Fulton or up on Fountain, there was no way of getting there. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: And we used to go out to Fran Russell‟s house for his ball-room for parties and we would take the bus and then we would have to transfer and take the old, little old Carrier street-car to get up to the country club, get up that way. Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Clements: You know, to his house and all. Interviewer: Yes. Uh huh. That was pretty much out in the country in those days. Mrs. Clements: Oh, very far. We‟d carry our dancing slippers in a bag, you know, go in boots. I got boots, lace shoes I guess. Interviewer: Oh, I think the entertaining, in that family went on, right up through Janet‟s, teens or at least almost into her teens. Mrs. Clements: Oh, Mrs. Russell was wonderful. She was always open-housed. It was just wonderful. No matter what you wanted to go you could always go there. And we had many a good time. Interviewer: You spoke of dancing, were, was this usually in people‟s homes, like at the Russells for instance, or..? Mrs. Clements: Well, a great deal, but then they had, we had a lot of dances; there were a lot of, of charity dances and all. Interviewer: Where did they take place? Mrs. Clements: Well, now for instance one, I remember so well a woman‟s board entertainment that they had up in the, in the Press building. And then the first, when the Press building was first built there was a big dance, a big floor up on the top floor. And we had a wonderful party up there. With living models and, all the prettiest girls in town modeling, you know. And then they, then there was a dance floor on top of the Regent Theatre which is gone now. And we had, and I remember that the Junior League had a big dance up there. And there were, the Saint Cecilia of course was always available. Interviewer: Were you ever in any of Miss Calla Travis‟ classes? Mrs. Clements: Oh, yes, yes. I and my daughter and my granddaughter. �11 Interviewer: In what way was your life affected by the First World War? Mrs. Clements: Well, we‟ve been watching those pictures, the World at War, which of course is the Second World War but, of course we didn‟t have radio, we didn‟t have television. We had newspapers and extra-papers that were out about every hour of the day, you know, the boys yelling the news. Interviewer: Uh hum. Mrs. Clements: And, but we didn‟t visualize it the way we do today. I mean, you have Vietnam right in your dining room while you‟re having dinner every night and I don‟t know that, we read about it, of course. I was married in four in fourteen and my first baby was born in fifteen and the other one in seventeen so I was awfully busy with babies; and I wasn‟t as active. My mother and mother-in-law were both very active in Red-Cross work. But I didn‟t, couldn‟t „cause I had a handicapped child that I had to stay home with, and I don‟t think, I don‟t think it sank in, I was too young, and I, when I look back at it, I think maybe that‟s what‟s the matter with the young people today. I doesn‟t really, they don‟t really understand what‟s happening. We‟ve watched those pictures the last few Sunday‟s and we never visualized the war as it really was. It was so, so much worse. Interviewer: I think there was a great deal of a rather fervent patriotism. Mrs. Clements: Oh yes and, and, everybody was for it and everybody was together and singing all the patriotic songs you know and all. And there was a great deal of, oh and when the war was over the excitement was just terrific. Everybody swarmed downtown and so excited, and today we all take it with such apathy, we‟ve seen it all before. And it was that First World War but of course we had such high hopes it was going to end wars but when the Second World War came it disillusioned us so and was so much more dreadful. It‟s been hard to have much hope for the world since then. Interviewer: I want to go back and ask you to recollect a little bit about early automobiles. And Michigan of course is the Automobile state, or at least it still is to a very large extent, and you mentioned that you didn‟t have automobiles when you were small and didn‟t, weren‟t all, not around and you relied largely on street-cars for any long distances. Mrs. Clements: When I was in Chicago as a little girl, I can remember just before I left Chicago, riding in my first automobile. And that was kind of what they called the buckboard; just two seats with the board over the transmission up to the back. Interviewer: Uh huh. Mrs. Clements: And the, when I went back, maybe three years later, I probably don‟t think I was in Chicago again for three years, that interval, why, there were a great many automobiles in Chicago; and electric automobiles that some of my friends had. But in Grand Rapids there were �12 very few. The Welshes had a car and the Mac, MacCardners had a car and a few people. And very often they would take us for a ride on a Sunday or they would take us to the Country Club or there was something like that. But there were very few cars in Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Do you remember when you first, when they first began to become more prevalent, about what time would you say that, can you date it, when, when cars began to be fairly common? Mrs. Clements: Well, after the war. Interviewer: After the war? The nicest there was to be. Mrs. Clements: After the war. And I know my husband took an old Franklin and we modeled it into a Roadster and we thought it was just the ultra thing. And today even when you see a picture of it, it was awfully funny. Interviewer: Was that your first car? Mrs. Clements: That was our first car, personally. But of course his family had had cars. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: My father never had a car, he never learned to drive. Interviewer: Uh huh. Mrs. Clements: But the Clements had them almost from the beginning. But I drove for a great many years and then was having difficulty with neuralgia and I stopped. And I haven‟t driven for a quite a few years. So I‟m dependant on my daughter now. Interviewer: Surely. We, we‟ve mentioned, or you have mentioned on one of two occasions, in the course of this interview, Kent County Club. Can you tell us a little bit about what it was like in those days? Mrs. Clements: Very much like it is today. Just as lovely. It‟s never, it‟s never let go of that first feeling that you had there. It was just the nicest place there was to be. And of course the new building is, I think, ultimately, the ultimate. It‟s just perfect. But it was a lovely place and in those days we used it more for family groups, I think then they do [now]. Of course the prices weren‟t so high. But I mean, Fourth of July, New Year‟s Day, Easter, all the different holidays, we always were there for dinner, with the whole family. Interviewer: Uh hum. Surely Mrs. Clements: And fire-crackers on the Fourth of July. We sat on the veranda and watched and they had them down at the last hole there. And I have always loved it. �13 Interviewer: Well, it‟s quite an institution, goes back, I think into the nineties. I guess you probably know it was out originally where Mr. Bissell‟s house… Mrs. Clements: Well Mr. Bissell‟s house was the club house and where we built our house on the corner of Plymouth and Lake Drive was the first tee. Interviewer: I see, what‟s the, what‟s the address on Plymouth? Mrs. Clements: Five fifty-one. Interviewer: Five fifty-one? Mrs. Clements: Where Cath and Widwordy. [Cath and Woodrick?] Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: We built that house in about twenty-two , twenty-two I think it was. Interviewer: Where had you lived when you were first married? Mrs. Clements: First in an apartment on Paris Avenue. And then on Byron Street we bought a little new house after the war that was very modern, we thought, and we lived there for quite a few years and then moved, then built the house on Plymouth Road until we went to Tennessee. Interviewer: That‟s quite a beautiful house. Mrs. Clements: Well it was. It was wonderful for the family. It‟d be much too big today. But it was perfect in its day. Interviewer: I believe that one of the things that you could call an accomplishment or distinction at least, is that you were the first president of the Junior League, is that not true? And would you tell us how, about some of the other people who were associated with you in that, and whence it came? Mrs. Clements: Well, there was, there was an old guild called the Butterfly Guild of Butterworth Hospital and we took care of maternity cases and we sewed for the nurse, nursery and made curtains for the rooms and things like that. And one day one of the, one of my friends said, “Nellie, why don‟t you apply for membership in the Junior League?” And she told me a little bit about it and then Chuck Palmer‟s wife, Laura Palmer was here one day and she was a member of the Junior League of Atlanta and I invited her to my house on Plymouth Road when we‟re having a meeting to tell us about it. And the girls were all quite inspired and we all thought well, it‟d be a good idea. Well, a couple, maybe a month or so later I happened to be on the train going to New York with my husband and I thought this would be a good chance for me to go and see about that. So, without any authorization, I just went in, made an appointment and the AJLA was just being originated and the New York League of course was a going concern but the AJLA was �14 just, that‟s the Association for the Junior League of America. They had a roll-top desk, and old oak roll-top desk in one corner of the New York Junior League‟s Office and that office was upstairs in the, what do you call, not the Chauffer but the horse driver, where the horses, in the carriage shop. Interviewer: Coachman. Mrs. Clements: The coachman‟s quarters. Up in, in can old carriage house over, oh I think it must have been in the thirties over maybe past Madison Avenue and down in the thirties over there. I don‟t remember just exactly where it was. Anyway, I made, made an appointment and went over there. And they gave me all kinds of papers and a skeleton constitution to work on and so forth and I brought it back to Grand Rapids and we got to work. And Jo Bender and Dorothy Wilcox and I drew up the articles of the constitution and so forth. And within a year, we were admitted to the League, to the AJLA. Well in those days you, the retirement age of forty, which still exists, we had quite a time, because so many of our members didn‟t want to admit to being forty. And we had one family of three daughters who had the most remarkable mother because they all were within nine months of each other on the records. Well anyway that was all straightened out and then we were allowed to transfer some of our members who had been members in Grand Rapids to the leagues where they were then. Well we had a little difficulty with one of those. One league didn‟t want a certain girl. We had quite a time. But all those things were, they were details, but interesting. And then we worked out the, we divided the League into teams and we used the hour system, that they had to do a certain number of hours and all that. I don‟t believe that they‟d be able to put those rules into effect today. Nobody‟d pay any attention. But in those days everybody took them very seriously. And we were doing this maternity work at Butterworth of trying to encourage mothers to have their babies in the hospital. Today we‟re reversing the thing and wanting them in their rooms with their family around and all that. Well, in those days, there were very few admittances in the maternity department. And they, the doctors were urging it because it made it so much easier for them to do it at the hospital than at home. And we started that, we had a fund for the maternity fund and when we went into the Junior League we had to break our connections with Butterworth, which broke Mrs. Lowe‟s heart. I didn‟t think she was ever going to talk to me again, but she did. And we severed the relations and we turned over the money to Butterworth, it‟s now the Butterfly Guild Fund of the Junior League, or something like that anyway, at Butterworth. Then we went into taking care of part-pay patients. People who didn‟t feel they could afford to go to the hospital. And when they were referred by the physician as worthy and needing, we wools send a committee to investigate and refer back to our committee for affirmation and we took care of a great many mothers. Well that went on until medi…, until Social Security came in. (That isn‟t right). Interviewer: Well it went on for some time? Mrs. Clements: Yes. And when it was taken over you see, so that it wasn‟t necessary anymore, and now the guild is in such diverse agencies, they‟re doing, they‟re just overwhelming. I can‟t, I �15 read their reports and I just can‟t believe all the things that they‟re doing. They‟re doing a simply magnificent job. Interviewer: What year was the League founded actually, in Grand Rapids? Mrs. Clements: In twenty-four. Interviewer: And how long were you president? Mrs. Clements: Well I was president of the Butterfly Guild for two years and then two years of the Junior League so four, really four years there. Interviewer: Who succeeded you as president? Mrs. Clements: Florence Steele… Interviewer: Mrs. Steele? Mrs. Clements: …and then Jo Bender. Interviewer: Uh huh. Mrs. Clements: And we three were the ones who signed the articles of incorporation. Interviewer: You also spoke of, of having been a past president of the Women‟s City Club. Which I believe has just celebrated its Fiftieth Anniversary. When were you president of that, Mrs. Clements? Mrs. Clements: In thirty, nineteen thirty-one to thirty-three, thirty-one to thirty-three. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: I don‟t know if it was thirty Interviewer: Well that‟s close enough. Mrs. Clements: Thirty to thirty-two I guess it was. Interviewer: Was [it] in the present building at that, by that time? Mrs. Clements: Yes, yes they just moved in shortly before. Interviewer: Where were they before that? Mrs. Clements: Down in that little building on, across from Rood‟s on that little side street, Park Avenue. It‟s been torn down, it was an old building, I think… Interviewer: Is that the Godfrey house? �16 Mrs. Clements: Yes, yes. The old Godfrey house. Interviewer: Yeah. Mrs. Clements: Next to the Godfrey house, yes. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: And that, it owned by Dr. Barth and he leased it to us and they built a big dining room there to make facilities there available and they stayed there for two or three years and that‟s when Estelle Wolf was a manager down there. And then they bought the property which is the old Sweet house, first mayor of Grand Rapids. And Mrs. Waters and Mrs. Noyes Avery were the two who remodeled that and planned it all and gave a great deal for, toward it. And Mrs. Bowen was the first president of the Women‟s City Club and then Mrs. Hen, Mrs. Russ Hendricks and Miss Keck and then Mrs. Dudley Waters and then I; and then Mrs. Warner and Mrs. Avery. So you have all those original people. Interviewer: Yeah. Mrs. Clements: Although I wasn‟t in on the start of it because I was so involved with the Junior League in those days that I didn‟t think I was ever going to need it. But within a year of joining why I was Activities chairman and then vice-president and then president. They kept me going. But of course my, well I wouldn‟t say my, I think the Junior League is my first love causes I really have been so proud of that achievement; but the thing that, the place that I have really worked the longest is Butterworth Hospital. And that, I started when I first, when I was about twelve years old when I first came to Grand Rapids. Mrs. Millard Palmer was our neighbor, just two doors down Paris Avenue. And she started a little group of Golden Rule Girls. And we set out to earn a child‟s wheelchair which they didn‟t have in the hospital and it was to cost twentyfive dollars. And we worked, we made molasses candy, and we made pot-holders and we worked our little heads off to earn that twenty-five dollars. And while we were, just before we got to our peak, my Aunt from St. Louis came on. She was so intrigued with it and she said, “Well if you girls earn the twenty-five dollars I‟ll give you another twenty-five dollars so you can buy two wheelchairs.” So that started that, and from then on Mrs. Palmer was, Mrs. Palmer was on the board of Butterworth and she, I think, was instrumental in asking, getting me to go on that board; and I went, I have been on the board now fifty-two years. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: I‟m an honorary member now and I don‟t go very often but I‟m still just as interested. Interviewer: When you were, when you first as a, as a child, when you were twelve years old, what was Butterworth Hospital called and where was it located? �17 Mrs. Clements: It was where the nurse‟s home is today. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: And there were three little cottages that ran down through the park there, little wooden frame houses. And one was for medical care, I think and one was the obstetrical care and I‟ve forgotten what the third one was. But they had, we had all those mothers and babies in that little wooden frame house. And in those days if you got out of bed before two weeks you were going to die you know, you weren‟t allowed out of bed. And it was upstairs and the delivery room was downstairs and they carried you down those little rickety steps to the delivery room and back up. And the babies were left downstairs in cribs, a long row of cribs attached to each other. And many a night I lay awake thinking what would happen if they had a fire in that place. And it was great relief when that was discontinued. Interviewer: Was it called Butterworth Hospital then? Mrs. Clements: Um Hum. Interviewer: I think it was originally St. Mark‟s Hospital. Mrs. Clements: Well that was before Interviewer: An outgrowth. Mrs. Clements: Yes, that was, that was down on Jefferson, I think, or Sheldon. Interviewer: Well, I‟m not sure. Mrs. Clements: It started down there. And, but then when it was there where the Nurses‟ home is today then Mr. Lowe gave the property where it is today, and with the stipulation that the city match the funds, and he would give a million dollars if they matched it. I think that a million dollars is right. And they raised that money and built the original hospital. And it was built with those two wings going out this way to the west and the straight building and then there were supposed to be two more wings out here. Well, after it was working, I think it was Dr. Rags…, during Dr. [L. V.] Ragsdale‟s time when they decided they had to build an addition. And they found that that was so impractical that nursing stations couldn‟t see these four ends you see, they couldn‟t control it and it meant nursing stations at both ends. And so then they built it with that long extension out to the west to facilitate the nursing end of it. I have always said it looks kind of like a boiler factory because it‟s got so many partitions and things. And it was a beautiful building when it started. Interviewer: I want to stop for a second and make sure that we‟re recording; I think we are but I just want to be on the safe side. Well, we were, are still recording apparently. Did you have any other interests besides the hospital, the Junior League, the Women‟s City Club? Any other club interests or philanthropic interests? �18 Mrs. Clements? Well I was a member of the Junior Diet Kitchen Guild of Butterworth for a good many years and in those years we started the theatre trains. And those were very successful and were lots of fun. A great many people enjoyed them. But that guild had been disbanded because everybody was too old to work anymore. Interviewer: I see. I know that you attend Grace Church, here in Grand Rapids. Have you always been a member of Grace Church? Mrs. Clements: No not until about nineteen fifty-six. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: My parents were not members and there was a little division of ideas there and I waited until they were gone, and then I joined. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: I‟d always gone to Grace Church for Sunday school and for when I wanted to go to church but I wasn‟t a very regular member but today I get a great deal out of it. Interviewer: Well… let‟s stop for a minute. I‟d like to ask you some questions about the people that you and Mr. Clements knew the best over the years. Can you give me and idea of some of the, of the families, couples, individuals that you got to know very well? Mrs. Clements: Well the, the Bill Steeles I guess would top the list of my favorites. And the Harvey Clays, and the Fosterhouses(?), Paul and Megan, Interviewer: Yes. Mrs. Clements: And the, you want couples, don‟t you? Interviewer: Not necessarily, no. Mrs. Clements: Well, Jo Bender of course has always been such a good friend and Jeannette Warner and Esther Booth and then the Admiral Brouwers, and the Walter Palmers and oh, there‟s so many of them. Interviewer: I heard that Nancy‟s moved back to Grand Rapids. Mrs. Clements: Right here in the building, in the next building. Interviewer: Yeah. You should have gone on that trip, last week to Ann Arbor to... Mrs. Clements: I didn‟t think I was quite up to it. I‟m better sitting still. Interviewer: I see. �19 Mrs. Clements: Nellie [her daughter] said that was a lovely occasion and she enjoyed it thoroughly. I was sorry not to have gone. Interviewer: Yes, it was very well done. I want to ask you a little bit about downtown Grand Rapids, when you were young. Do you remember any particular stores where you like to shop? Mrs. Clements: Well Spring‟s, what was it? Interviewer: Friedman-Spring‟s? Mrs. Clements: Friedman-Spring‟s was the nicest shop in those days and they really, they really did a thing. Of course Foster Stevens was a forerunner of Rood‟s, they were a wonderful shop. And then there were lovely dress-shops when they came in, the gown shop and the, that one up on the corner of Fulton and LaGrave. Miss… Interviewer: I can‟t tell you. Mrs. Clements: Oh, there were some really very, very nice shops, after clothes became well made and available. Interviewer: So you didn‟t really have to shop in Chicago anymore? Mrs. Clements: No, you, no. I think today that you can do almost as well here, right here as you can, you get into New York or Chicago, and you don‟t see a thing you haven‟t seen here nowadays. Perhaps more quantity but I don‟t think on the normal run of things that you do any better away from here. Interviewer: Where do you do your grocery shopping today? Mrs. Clements: Same old place that we‟ve been doing it for sixty years, the Daane and Witters. Interviewer: I sort of guessed that but, I didn‟t really know. Mrs. Clements: Well, I don‟t know what I‟d do without them, because they deliver even way out here today and I wouldn‟t be able to carry all those groceries. They and American Laundry still comes out and the stores deliver so it‟s wonderful but I don‟t know what I‟d do without DaaneWitters. And then another store that I used to love so was Herkner‟s. Those men are all gone, that‟s all changed. Interviewer: What were some of Mr. Clements‟ interests besides the Globe Knitting Works? Mrs. Clements: Just fishing. Interviewer: Just fishing? �20 Mrs. Clements: Just fishing; that took all his thoughts. He had a place up on the little Manistee River on, near Peacock there, between Peacock and Baldwin. He loved that I think better than he did me. Interviewer: I remember the triangle club that… Mrs. Clements: yeah. Interviewer: …that always had a party around Christmas time and it came to the point where the men brought their sons or sons-in-law. And I remember your husband being there and he was one of the organizers and one of the stirrer uppers. Mrs. Clements: Yes, oh and they had such fun when they were young. Those parties were great. Interviewer: Yup. Mrs. Clements: Well, he loved it because the boys did come in and take over at the end; but they had good times. Interviewer: Yeah, have you done much traveling in your life? Mrs. Clements: Very little cause I‟ve been, I‟ve had my Bobby to be around. Interviewer: Yeah, yeah Mrs. Clements: But we did have our first trip to Europe last year, Nellie and I went on the Women‟s City Club tour for just nine days and went to England and to London and to Edinburough, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. Interviewer: You, you had some relatives that came from Scotland? Mrs. Clements: I had, we still had one cousin left up in Scotland and we went to see her in Edinborough. Interviewer: I see. Mrs. Clements: And as I say we picked the coldest day in a hundred and two years. I never want to be so cold again. Interviewer: Do you play bridge? Mrs. Clements: I love it. Interviewer: You‟re a good bridge player I take it. Mrs. Clements: I don‟t play much anymore but I just really truly love to play. �21 Interviewer: We always have one question that we ask, I say we ask, you‟re the first person I‟ve interviewed but the previous people who have done the interviewing seem to have one question they like to ask and that is, what is the greatest change that you‟ve noticed since you were a small? What, what has changed the most in life? Is there one, one particular thing that has changed a great deal or, or what, what has…? Mrs. Clements: I suppose the morals. Interviewer: The morals? Mrs. Clements: What we were taught to believe and to do and to act on, don‟t see those things don‟t seem to matter much anymore. And I don‟t know whether it‟s for the, for better or worse. Interviewer: Why do you think it‟s occurred? Mrs. Clements: I don‟t know. It‟s a whole generation that has changed, because as I look back my grandmother, my mother, myself, my daughter, we all went along pretty much in the same pattern. Maybe improving on each other… Interviewer: Now I asked you before do you think that this project of, of interviewing older people who have lived in Grand Rapids most of their lives or all of their lives is something of value? Mrs. Clements: Oh I do because even if the children don‟t appreciate it today they will as they grow older and they‟ll look, they‟ll know that, while we probably have made up our mistakes, we have tried. Interviewer: Well I think that will conclude our interview. INDEX A Association for the Junior League of America · 14 Avery, Mrs. Noyes · 16 B Bender, Josephine · 14, 15, 18 Bissell, Mr. · 13 Booth Family · 9 Bowen, Mrs. · 16 Butterfly Guild · 13, 14, 15 Butterworth Hospital · 13, 16, 17 C Calder, Emma C. Bluthardt (Mother) · 1, 9, 11, 21 Calder, Robert Gillon (Father) · 1, 2, 12 Central Grammar School · 5, 9 Clements, Earle Arthur (Husband) · 6, 8, 18, 19 Clements, Nellie (Daughter) · 1, 10, 12, 13, 19, 20 Clements, Roy · 6, 7 D Daane-Witters · 19 �22 F Fisher, Mary · 4 Friedman-Spring’s · 19 G Globe Knitting Works · 6, 19 Golden Rule Girls · 16 Grace Church · 18 Michigan Chair Company · 2 Mills, Nifty · 4 Miss Moffat’s School · 5 Murray, Mary · 4 N Nelson-Matter Furniture Company · 2 P H Palmer, Mrs. Millard · 16 Harvey Clay Family · 18 Howe Military School · 8 R J Ragsdale, Dr. L.V. · 17 Robert Irwins Family · 9 Russell, Fran · 10 Johnson-Handley · 2 Junior Diet Kitchen Guild of Butterworth · 18 Junior League · 10, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17 S K Keck, Miss · 4, 5, 16 Kent County Club · 2, 12 L Liesveld, Herman · 6 M Maddox, Olive · 4 Spence School · 5 Steele, Florence · 15 W Warner, Jeanette · 16, 18 Waters, Mrs. · 16 Wealthy Avenue Street School · 3 Wilcox, Dorothy · 14 Wolf, Estelle · 16 Women’s City Club · 5, 15, 16, 17, 20 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/46f7fd0da6c30151863c533c07d1289e.mp3 ec9fc828c8438e406bd553db2c7bf666 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_41Clements Title A name given to the resource Clements, Nellie Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Clements, Nellie Description An account of the resource Nellie Calder was born in Chicago on August 12, 1893. She married Earle Clements in 1914. She organized the Junior League with Josephine Bender and was at one time the president of the Women's City Club. Mrs. Clements traveled to Europe with the Women's City Club. She also worked with maternity cases at Butterworth Hospital. 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 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c36bc9d4dae37038745de4db936fa09f.pdf 1fcb001ef20473faf77c6c0716062d05 PDF Text Text 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 �12 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 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_38Wolfe Title A name given to the resource Wolf, Estelle Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Wolf, Estelle Description An account of the resource 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. 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 1974 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c56fed701a4e518244923acf859564e1.pdf 19d8274fc7783db246a8a40d493b07c6 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Herbert Hefferan Interviewed on November 10, 1971 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape #37 (55:16) Biographical Information Herbert Hefferan was born 16 January 1875 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the son of Edward and Ellen (Laughlin) Hefferan. Edward was born in Michigan about 1842 and died in Grand Rapids on 1 January 1900 at the Kent County Jail. Ellen died 22 May 1903 at the family home on Quimby Street in Grand Rapids. Both Edward and Ellen are buried in St. Andrews Cemetery. Herbert died March 1972 at Blodgett Hospital and is buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. ___________ Interviewer: Alright. I suppose… Herbert: You will want to know my age first wouldn‟t you?. Interviewer: Yes, go ahead, how old are you? Herbert: I‟m ninety-six and a half. Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: I am the oldest man here. Interviewer: Were your born in Grand Rapids? Herbert: Yes, I was born on Monroe Avenue, two blocks north of the Pantlind Hotel, it was Canal Street then, only across the road, across the road from… it was called Canal Street. Interviewer: Were (there) homes down there? Herbert: No, there were buildings. Same buildings were up until they tore them all down. It was the Crisp(?) Block, I was in the Crisp(?) Block. Now I am thinking about that, that took place, we lived on the third floor, a tenant that lived on the second floor, a store on the first floor and in the basement where my father ran a saloon. Interviewer: Hmmm. Herbert: My father had, a man had a fight with a woman and he killed another man but not in my father‟s saloon, up on the street. And the man run across the road and ran upstairs to the hallway to the top of the third floor and hid behind a chimney. Well, they put my father who was six foot �2 one and a half weighed one hundred ninety-five pounds, they put him watching down the stairs. But he didn‟t have no gun, and this fellow on the roof had a gun, so my father wouldn‟t stay any longer, so he beat it. And ever afterwards, we would jolly him about it. We used to buy ten cents worth of peanuts and Mother, I, Father and all would go down and sit in this hallway and we‟d all kid him about running away. And here is the funny part of it, twenty-five years later I come down in an electric car and Joe Smith, do you remember Joe Smith?, [He] and [Dad] were [the] only two detectives and Joe Smith was standing in front of this same hallway when I got off this electric car. I lived up on the north end on Quimby Street came down on the car and I got off there and here was Joe Smith and he had a gun out and putting cartridges into it. I said, ”What‟s the matter Joe, what happened?” Well you know Lapman that runs the tramp boarding house, a tramp robbed him last night and killed him He is up on this roof and you are just the right man, that I want. I want you to stay down here at the foot of the stairs, and (this is twenty five years later), and watch it. I said alright Joe, but make sure to bring him down. When he went away, I ran over to the store, the Heyman Furniture Company, it was two hundred feet away and our night watchman had a gun. He carried it at night and he left it in my drawer, in my desk. So I run over and got this gun, and I got back there Joe had came down from the top of the roof, and he had the guy and had manacles on him. Interviewer: I just wanted to make sure it was being picked up (apparently the tape recorder). Herbert: I‟ll have to give you another; I was always mixed up in murders. In Los Angeles, did you ever see a man kill another? Interviewer: No. I‟ve seen a man get shot, but the man didn‟t die. Herbert: But he didn‟t die? Interviewer: No Herbert: I saw two and they both died. I was going down the street in Los Angeles with Mr. and Mrs. Stonehouse, we had an apartment together down there. We were going down Sixth St., down past Jack Dempsey‟s place and we were just going to cross the road and there was a policeman in the middle of the square, he rode this way and this way, and he was in a box. This is what they would do in the old days, they would turn this way, and they wanted you to stop and let the others go. This man ran out of a restaurant and he ran right towards this policeman, and we had just got within about ten [to] fifteen feet of him, when another man came out and begins to holler, “Stop thief, stop thief!” The fellow that was supposed to be the thief ran right towards the policeman. Now the policeman didn‟t have no jury, or asked him if he done it, or tried to arrest him or anything, he just picked up his gun and took aim and shot him right through the temple, dropped dead right in front of us. I was from here to that... Interviewer: The policeman shot him? �3 Herbert: Shot him dead. Interviewer: He shot him? Didn‟t even know if he was guilty or not? Herbert: Didn‟t know anything about him, never seen him before, took shot him right through the temple, killed him deader than a door mat. Aunt Mattie, I‟ll show you my Aunt Mattie, and I got Uncle Albert. This is my family in here. You come right up here. There is my Aunt Mattie when she was twenty-seven years old; she was eighty-five when she died. This is my sister in the center here, she died two years ago. Right back, my Aunt Mattie owned them vinegar quarts back there. They were all a hundred years old, every one; we bought them brand new and gave them to her. Then she gave them to my sister in here. Interviewer: I knew your sister. Herbert: Did you? Interviewer: Sure, Mrs. Thrall, that‟s her right there. Herbert: No, that‟s Mrs. Beaton. Interviewer: This is Mrs. Thrall. Herbert: That‟s Mrs. Thrall, that‟s my sister in the center, you see. That‟s Dr. Beaton‟s wife there, and that‟s Dr. Beaton‟s child. Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: This is Mrs. Thrall‟s daughter. Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: Now, we had the Indians, you know where the orphan asylum is? Well, you go up to College Avenue and go down the hill to the creek, you know? Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: Down there, that was been a woods. Now, the government had set up a place for the Indians at Ada along the river bank. They gave them tents and gave them food, but they didn‟t have any wood to burn. So they had to come down here and gather wood. Right there at that creek on College Avenue, it goes up one hill; there are two different hills there. You know how it is there? Interviewer: Right at Leonard, College and Leonard? Herbert: Right down from Leonard, College Avenue, you go down there .Well, they didn‟t have no wagon to draw it. What do you suppose they done? �4 Interviewer: I don‟t know? Herbert: They went to work and cut down two trees, the roots of the trees they cut off around like that and the narrow parts acted as fills(?) for the horse, and they put the horse inside the fills there and they had a box on top of these two trees and instead of the wheels turning around they just dragged on ground from the roots of the trees, two roots on each side and they could lead the horse. Well, they filled the box with wood and drawn it out to Ada, where they had their place. Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: Comical and really quite a thing to see what did with the knowledge that they used to get that. And some nights and then afterwards, they would sell… it will come to me in a minute, a common thing. I am beginning to forget a lot of this stuff. My age is going against me. Anyhow they took all that stuff and drew it out there. And then in the middle of the winter, they…in January, you know how there is a January thaw, well, they came back after more. It was warmer weather and all the snow would go and that is why they called it Indian Summer. They would draw the wood out. They had it on the other side of the river. Along the river bank was where they had their reservation. Interviewer: Now, that‟s not there anymore, is it? Herbert: No, but it was until up to ten or fifteen years ago, there were some signs of it; a sign up there told where it was. Interviewer: Yes. Where did you grow up as a child, on Monroe Avenue? Herbert: No, we lived on College Avenue, see we lived up on North College Avenue, where we had five acres of land. And black bears, wild black bears, used to come out and eat our strawberries. Interviewer: Where abouts was that on College Avenue? Herbert: The house is still standing. Interviewer: Where is that? Herbert: You know where Spencer Avenue is? Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: Quimby Street, right between them two, on the east side of the street. The house is still standing. Pages lived there last I knew. Interviewer: That was quite a ways out in the country then, huh? �5 Herbert: Well, no it ain‟t so very far from where they were down to Plainfield Avenue, about a half a mile or so. Interviewer: At the time your father built the house? Herbert: He had a log house, and in the winter time my father used to build a cellar like outdoors, he dug a trench outdoors and lined it with straw and then put cabbage, potatoes and stuff like that into the cellar. And then he covered it over with dirt, straw then dirt over it. He left an opening where he could reach in, on this side and pull out cabbage or this side he could pull out potatoes. Then when we butchered, butchered your hog, we had this neighbor, we knew him real well. I forgot his name now, knew it real well when we butchered the hog we would give them half the hog. Then when they butchered one, they gave us half of it. We put half of it down in salt pork for us, and the other half of it we used for fresh meat. I had quite an experience. In the olden times the horse thief was caught stealing horses, they took him out and hung him. Hi Doty was the greatest horse thief of my time; he lived across the road from us on Spencer Avenue. And they came to me one day, when I was about twelve years old and they said they were going downtown to do some shopping, they had two sons and they took one son with them and they‟d be back at five o‟clock. And I didn‟t know he was a horse thief, our folks didn‟t know he was a horse thief, but he had about twenty horses in the pasture up about half a mile from where we were standing then. Hi Doty, and Bill Doty and the son who worked with him, Jay Doty worked with the mother and didn‟t steal or anything and the other two did. Well, two men came along and wanted to see Doty. And I told them he would be back at five o‟clock. So they said, “Do they have any horses? We want to buy some horses. We want to buy some horses.” I said, “Sure come on I‟ll show you.” And I took them down, and we went to this field and I left them there and they were writing down stuff. I didn‟t know what they were doing. Five o‟clock they drove in, Hi Doty drove into the yard, I ran down to tell him there were men there and they wanted to buy some horses. Men stepped out from behind there with revolvers and took him and sent him to jail. They got life. It was written up in the Grand Rapids Herald. Did you ever hear of the Grand Rapids Herald? Interviewer: Sure. The Grand Rapids Herald? Herbert: Two or three times in was written up. Two or three write ups, must be in the library by now, didn‟t mention my name. Interviewer: Oh. He got life imprisonment for that? Herbert: He got life in prison for that. Both he and his son, they were the ones that stole those horses, instead of hanging them, he got life in prison. Interviewer: What kind of name is that, Doty? Is that Irish name? �6 Herbert: No, I think he was a Yankee, an out and out Yankee. The Press, the Grand Rapids Herald had a number of write ups about him. Jay Doty, the famous horse thief. Herbert: I, I went to work I went downtown to work in eighteen ninety-five, near as I can remember. I went to work across from the Michigan Trust Company. You know where the Michigan Trust Company is? Interviewer: Yes Herbert: The corner of Ottawa there, a carpet store Smith and Sanford, where the Michigan Trust Company is now was an apple orchard. I saw them cut the trees down and build the (Michigan) Trust Company. I saw them build the old City Hall, that they‟re tearing down and I saw them build the old Court House. Took them five years to build the Court House, they didn‟t have enough money. The last argument was they had to put a cupola on it, like a church on top and they didn‟t have enough money. It cost four hundred dollars. They were fighting it as much as they could, and finally decided to do it. And the ones opposing it said, now I kind of forget…., let‟s see the ones opposing it said it would be a home for the doves. And they argued it over and anyhow they got the four hundred dollars and built the cupola and that night the doves move in. Interviewer: Now the City Hall was built in the eighteen eighties, wasn‟t it? Herbert: Yes. Interviewer: Were you working downtown then, how old were you when you went to work? Herbert: I must have been about fourteen years old… Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: …when I went downtown to work. Interviewer: You used to go down as a child. Herbert: Now here is where I have the advantage over everybody that wrote any books was, that the city limits first extended to Wealthy Avenue and to Sweet Street and then they kept extending it, see, and anybody living down on Wealthy Avenue didn‟t know what was happening at Sweet Street, cause there was no way to go unless you had a horse and wagon to travel. But us kids went everywhere you see, we went down to the south end and went to the north end. And we went on the river when the ice, iceskating on the ice up to Plainfield and back. Use to build, used to get lumber, wood out of the yards from the factories, the logging companies, see they were cutting up pine. Pine was ten dollars a thousand, that‟s what white pine was. And I went to work in the grocery store Lafoyes for a dollar a week and they give me my meals. I had to be there at six o‟clock in the morning and had to stay until nine o‟clock at night. And I had to come down Sunday and take the horse out to give him a drink to the well, water for him, and curry him all, clean out the stable and everything for him for a dollar a week. I worked until nine o‟clock �7 during the week and twelve o‟clock on Saturday nights. Then I went downtown to work, and I worked in this carpet store across where I was talking about, that was there near College Avenue and North Avenue and Spencer. Then I got in to fracas ….that pretty near cost me my life. Mr. Heyman was head man, Mr. [A. Amos] Raven was the general manager, a man named Rankins worked in the, was manager of the carpet department. I worked in the carpet department under Rankins. They caught Rankins out, I just am mentioning this, but they let him go. They gave me the job of manager of the carpet department. I got up to fifteen dollars a week and after that, Mr. Raven was the general manager and he and I were very friendly but this Rankins and he were not very friendly, they were fighting all the time. When he fired Rankins, why he put me in place of him in the carpet department at fifteen dollars a week. I worked a couple of years that way, when Mr. Raven was taken sick and whenever he went out to dinner or he went away anywhere, he called me downstairs to take charge. So when, I was appointed general manager and received quite a larger sum. There was a Hollander, he was the oldest one there and as a salesman he drew eleven dollars a week. And when they made me manager he quit working, he was so mad because they didn‟t make him, they used to make the oldest person in the institution a head instead of the best man they thought for it. When they made me general manager, why he quit his job and went and bought a dry goods store. He and I were always friends but he was sore at, he didn‟t get the job, you see. Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: I came on one day, Mr. Heyman was headman I was next, Bill Decator was next and he had a credit man he was next to okay sales. You‟d come in and buy two hundred fifty dollars worth of stuff and paid fifty dollars down, so much a week; he could okay the sale, if everything else was satisfactory. One day he okay‟d a sale that was five hundred and fifty dollars and one hundred and fifty dollars down and he took fifty dollars down and delivered the goods without the… I wasn‟t there that day, and he delivered the goods without the other hundred dollars. And he did it with only fifty dollars down. Well, doubt, he‟d have permission had I been there, but he took it upon himself. Anyhow the people didn‟t pay it and he delivered the goods. Then it was up against me to take over from there and sent over after the goods. And in come three men and three women, they were tough looking guys. One of them was a big guy. And I didn‟t know at that time, but do you remember Dillinger that was shot down by the FBI in Chicago? Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: Well, this guy was Dillinger‟s right hand man, robbing banks and one thing and another. He came in to see why I sent over after the goods and I told him. [He said,] “Well, I‟ll have that money tomorrow.” And I said, “That won‟t do, you promised it today and we want it today.” He said, “How the hell you going to get it?” I said, “We‟ll have to send over after the goods.” He said, “You‟re going after the goods?” And I said, “I don‟t know, I might. I‟m not sure what I would do.” And he said, “That will be the last trip you ever take.” He said, “I don‟t like the looks of your mug.” And I said, “I don‟t like yours either.” He says, “What are you �8 going to do?” I said, “I told you just what I was going to do and I‟m going to do it.” He pulled a gun out and stuck it in my chest and said, “I will blow your god damn guts out.” The girl cashier sitting on a high stool toppled off, [and] the colored man and colored woman run in the back room and I was there alone. I pulled the drawer open where the night watchman‟s revolver was and I let him see it. He said, “Pull out your gat, pull out your gat, we‟ll take ten paces here. I‟ll kill you deader than a door mat. I should have let you have it in the guts anyhow.” The others came all running down then and they grabbed a hold of „im and pulled him away and they went up and pretty soon he came down and said, “Buddy I‟ve been drinking.” And he said, “I‟m sorry and I want to apologize.” And I said, “That‟s all right, we all get that way.” He said, “Well if I hadn‟t been drinking I wouldn‟t have done it.” We shook hands and I went up with him. He said he would come in and pay it the next day. The next morning when the Grand Rapids Press came out, there was a robbery of the bank only one block from where we delivered the goods. So I knew right away who done it. So I went up and told Ab Carroll or who I told, but Frank O‟Malley, I forget now which one it was I told about it. But he said, “Okay we‟ll take over from here Hefferan.” Waited all day, didn‟t hear nothing from him, so it must have been the wrong people that I gave him the tip on. So I took three rigs and six men and sent them over to the place at night, about seven o‟clock, it was dark. And I told two of them to go up to the house and the rest to stop a block away from the house and two of them to go up to the house, and tell them they were there to make legal demand for the goods. If they didn‟t give it to them, we put it so we could re(?) them, see? Is it alright? Interviewer: Yes, go ahead. [END OF SIDE 1 31:10] Interviewer: Five men came out of the bushes? Herbert: Yes, they‟re five men and they had guns, and put them in their backs and stood them up against the wall. They asked them, you know, who they were and what they wanted. And they told him. They said, “Did Hefferan send you over here?” They said yes. “Well, come on, get away from here, these are our men they‟re detectives.” Interviewer: They were policemen, huh? Herbert: I didn‟t think, I gave him the right tip, see? They were hiding in the bushes around there waiting for these fellows to come back. The man that got the money, the one that was going to kill me, he took the money and went out of town. They got our men away and at twelve o‟clock they came home, these two brothers and three women, and they arrested them. And those two got life. Interviewer: Did they ever catch the other man? �9 Herbert: Well, I don‟t know what happened, let‟s see, he was the one that was going to shoot me is the one that shot the sheriff down in Indiana, released Dillinger and another fellow from the prison; this fellow that was going to shoot me. Interviewer: Hmmmm…. Herbert: So afterwards, he got into a mix-up and he went over to Wisconsin and there was a summer resort closed up but the help was still there, see? He and five others came over and took possession of it and the FBI heard about it and they worked a man in. Sent him in delivering some stuff in there and they kept him in there. They killed this FBI man, but before they did, the FBI man killed him, this fellow that was going to kill me. Interviewer: So, were they quite a few guns around in those days? Sounds like everybody was packing a pistol. Herbert: Yes, everybody had a gun. I‟ll tell you what we had more of anything then was, when the Civil War was over, then men brought back their old muskets, and in those days, they loaded them with powder and shot and a cap. And these soldiers, now for instance there was a mother that sent five sons, one of them got killed, and another had his legs taken off. The way they shot off his legs was they put a chain with a cannon ball on each end and put it in the cannon and they shot it and it went around and around and took the legs right off of one of the men. They were the Pages, the Page people. Page Street was named after them up on the north end. Afterwards he had a job down to Washington, as a door tender. He had wooden legs. He could take a pail of water and go up to a fence and go right over without spilling a drop. He used to do that as a feat. Interviewer: What was downtown like when you were working down there? Herbert: Well, they were all, I knew Grandpa Steketee, Grandpa Herpolsheimer. I knew Henry Spring, did you ever hear of Henry Spring? He was a great lady‟s man. He ran one store, and he was always dolled up and had a bouquet on every day and was a great lady‟s man. Henry, erFriedman, I knew all of them in my younger days. Interviewer: Were there people living above those stores downtown? Herbert: Live in what? Interviewer: Were people living in those buildings along down town those buildings? Herbert: Yes, they lived upstairs. if it were three story building with a three-story store they didn‟t do it, of course, but they lived up above over the stores. Mom and Dad nearly owned one at one time, had all the arrangements made and then backed out. Let‟s see, what can I tell you, else? Well, I‟ll tell you, when I was working in the grocery store I had to wash the windows and trim the windows on West Leonard Street between Scribner and Front, on the south side of the �10 street. I had a bunch of bananas I had to take down, and it was only about „that much‟ bananas, but it had a long stalk, you know how it curls out like that? Interviewer: Yes. Herbert: Well. I went to take it off and you had a rope from the ceiling and you put a knot here and you put a loop thru the bananas, hang them under that knot, you see. I went to take them off of there. While I was taking it off I shook out one of these spiders - tarantula. Interviewer: Tarantula, yes. Herbert: I shook him out and my arm was bare up to my elbow and lit on my arm and before I could knock him off he bit me. That was nine-thirty in the morning and by twelve at night, they told me they would let me know at twelve o‟clock if I would live or die. I spent quite an evening, and I went up there and the poison went this way, it was this hand right here, the fingers all swelled up. If it would have went towards the artery the other way, it would have gone to my heart and killed me. But it went this way and it saved me. The next morning they lanced me right there and black pus came out, just from that time in the morning at nine-thirty morning to the next morning at ten o‟clock, awful pain. Then I had a dog and there were a lot of rattlesnakes and it was nothing for us, we used to kill four to five rattlesnakes a day on College Avenue from Spencer Avenue up to Carrier Street there, Leonard Street. It was all stone in there, big stones, big as that bed you know, on the surface. Hot sun would heat up the stones, the snakes would come out on a cold day and lay on those stones. We used to go down and kill them, it was nothing to kill five or six of them. So one day, I was standing there and a rattlesnake struck at me. And my dog jumped between me and the rattlesnake. I had knee pants on and he jumped between me and the rattlesnake and the rattlesnake hit him right on the lip. One place, you could just [barely] see it. You know how they work; they got a sharp prong that they dive right into you and they squirt this poison into that, following in with that prong. What gets me is I never could understand how the damn snake can carry poison in his own head and not poison himself. Can you? Interviewer: I don‟t know, must have a sac that it is stored in. Herbert: Herbert: Must be something that prevents it from going to any dangerous part, but they have it in their head. My dog died that night, the next day we killed ten rattlesnakes. You can tell about the conditions of the country at that time. Lots of Blue Racers, and lots of Garter snakes. By the time I was going to St. Alphonsus. I am the oldest member of St. Andrews Church, and the oldest member of St. Alphonsus and the oldest member of St Thomas Church living today. One day I went to school and I took a Garter snake in my pocket and let him out in school, the sister grabbed up the Garter snake, she knew how to handle it, threw him out of doors and she said, “What will you think of next, anyway, what will you do anyhow?” She started to laugh, “The idea of bringing that snake, now what did you expect to accomplish by that? I said, “He got away from me.”No, you put him on the floor…” �11 You want anything out of town? Interviewer: Pardon, no, I kind of like to stay centering around Grand Rapids, if we can. Herbert: Around Grand Rapids? Do you want me to tell you about the stage coach robbery? Interviewer: Was that here in Grand Rapids? Herbert: No, it was in Yellowstone Park. Interviewer: Who robbed the stage? Herbert: Two soldiers. Interviewer: Huh! Herbert: Two American soldiers, quite interesting? Interviewer: Yeah? Tell me the story. (both laughing) Herbert: Well see, we travelled there. About a dozen coaches, one after the other, one following every so often then we would get to some place where there was something to see, why we would stay two hours for dinner. We would have our dinner and then we would go out and see the different springs, you know, Old Faithful and all of them. Well we were coming down, we came down a long stretch and we were seventh in a row, and we were held up. They came down this way and then they turned this way - north. Well some of them had been robbed before, and we were the next one up, we were here, and the others went. The first ones got down to the soldier‟s camp and they brought five soldiers back with them, armed and these fellows saw them coming and they dove into the Yellowstone River and started to swim across. And these five soldiers come up and got down on their knees and took aim them and shot all around them but didn‟t hit anybody. Those guys had waterproofed guns and when they got to the other side they begin to shoot back. We had to get out of the coaches and climb under the coaches to, for protection. Well, after we were all through with that, we started north, and made that turn north. When we got up a ways, there was a place where you could buy bread. And when you go on farther and there was a place where the black bears would come down. And they‟d come up to the stagecoach, and you‟d break off bread and feed it to them, see. Well, we got up that far when I was driving the horses; I was driving the horses for them then. A fellow taught me on the way up. I was driving the horses, we got up and here was a black bear and three little cubs ahead of them, two black bears and had three little cubs. A man ran out there and grabbed a hold of one of these cubs. The driver said give me those lines Hefferan, and get a club and another man and drive that bear off or he will kill that man just as sure as the world. I run down and got a fellow and got two clubs and by hollering see, scared him more than anything else. Anyhow before we could get to him, this bear got to him, he was holding the cub, his face was all exposed like that and she took the whole side of his face off. We were yelling and waving the clubs, we scared her �12 off. We picked him up and carried him back. I got him, I held him in the stagecoach, bleeding terribly and we went up to the hotel and brought him into the doctor and that‟s the last I ever seen him. Left at eight o‟clock in the morning, I don‟t ever know how he ever came out. Interviewer: Hmm. When was that, when did you make that trip out there? Herbert: I don‟t know. I have pictures of all of it. Another thing I went to see, I was down in El Paso. Have you been there? Interviewer: No. Herbert: The Rio Grande River runs around El Paso and the south side is Juarez, and the north side where El Paso is all up high on banks and their down below. Well, I had a friend that lived down there and wanted me to call on her when I came down. Well, I was on my way to California. I went and stayed at their place and then her husband sold goods to the… what is the fellow say of fighting the great war? Interviewer: Pancho Villa? Herbert: Yeah, Pancho Villa. They expected that night that he would cross over the river, well, he had to fight and he drove the Mexican government soldiers across the river. And the Americans put up a place a mile square, in two days, had cottages and everything for the soldiers that were driven across from the other side. It was given out that they were going to come across and attack the soldiers in this place where they built for them; the Americans had built for them. My friend said to me now, you are staying at the hote, said you have been staying in your hotel at night and up here during the day, but now you must come up here and stay at night also. We got to have all the men we can get because they are coming across to attack, and it will be a day and a half yet before the American soldiers can get in from their encampment. I said, alright, so I went up in the middle of the night, and I heard a commotion outside. They‟d asked me if I could use a gun, I said sure I can use a gun. There was a commotion outside so I got up and dressed the rest of the way, I wasn‟t all undressed. Then I went outside and there was soldier, a sergeant and five men and he had a Gatling gun, that‟s what they used to use years ago, you know? Interviewer: Yes, Herbert: In place of a cannon. I asked him, how about it, I‟ve got a gun inside but I don‟t know if you can use me or not? The man said no, we won‟t need you. I have five men here now, and every block down on the street I have a Gatling gun. We‟re up high and they„re down below, if they start anything we have it checked out like a checker board. Mine is number five all I got to do is fire in number five and in five minutes we will have Juarez wiped off the map. But they didn‟t, nothing happened. So the next day, nobody was allowed to go over to Juarez on account of, when you went over there they, if you were a stranger they grabbed you and took your clothes �13 all off, leave your underwear on and rob you of the money you had. So Mr. Heath, that was the man I was staying with at his house, he sold for a wholesale grocery. He had a big order from him, they had to get it [and] so he wanted to know if I wanted to go across with him. I said “Sure I‟ll go with you.” And he said, “I‟ll take care of you, alright.” We got going over there and going along on the street and they would stop us, he would say something in Spanish and they would leave us alone right away. We went up to this house, and Villa had his headquarters in the opera house and nobody that I knew of had seen Villa, everybody wanted to see Villa. He went into the courthouse, but I couldn‟t go in there with him, I had to stay outside. There were two Mexicans guarding, you know Mexicans are short, like Japanese but heavier; all their clothes didn‟t fit them in those days. There were two fellows with general‟s suits on and hats. Their suits didn‟t fit them, twice to big for them. And they had gone there and so, when he went in they began to talk to me, trying to ask me something. But I couldn‟t answer them because I didn‟t know what they said. They were so disgusted. And then Villa drove up, and I was as close to Villa as you are [to me]. Interviewer: Hmmm? Herbert: Everybody wanted to see Villa, and I was there looking right at him, waiting for him to come out. When he came out I told him those two guys there with the general suits on asking me, were trying to get something out of me and I don‟t know what they wanted. He said something in Spanish to them and he said they wanted a cigarette. So I gave them each a pack of cigarettes, I was smoking then. I don‟t smoke now. They bowed and bowed. And then when I left, he didn‟t attack, you know; he didn‟t attack across there. When I left he attacked a town just a mile and half below there and he killed a lot of Americans on the train. When I went on the train ahead of it, I took the train ahead of it and was alright and came back home. Interviewer: Yeah….. INDEX A H Albert, Uncle · 3 B Beaton Family · 3 D Decator, Bill · 7 Dillinger, John · 8, 9 Doty Family · 5, 6 Herpolsheimer, Grandpa · 9 Heyman Furniture Company · 2 Heyman, Mr. · 2, 7 M Mattie, Aunt · 3 Michigan Trust Company · 6 �14 P Pantlind Hotel · 1 R Rankins, Mr. · 7 Raven, A. Amos · 7 St. Alphonsus Church · 11 Steketee, Grandpa · 9 Stonehouse, Mr. and Mrs. · 2 T Thrall, Mrs. · 3 V S Smith, Joe · 2 Villa, Pancho · 12, 13 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f5b1dc91a9515f4be79c621c16e3376b.mp3 6d4ba3b295654fa4e89cf173b95042a8 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_37Hefferan Title A name given to the resource Hefferan, Herbert Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hefferan, Herbert Description An account of the resource Herbert Hefferan was born on January 16, 1875 in Grand Rapids. He knew Grandpa Stekete and the Herpolsheimers. He worked at Smith & Sanford. He traveled to California and had experiences involving Pancho Villa and John Dillinger's gang. He died in 1972. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/a5cf2e9133281c0c91e0d8436e84e654.pdf 8e9ebcafff6f84f679ca743ac4d8b9a7 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 C. C. Travis Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Interviewed on November 12, 1971 Tape #36 (29:32) Biographical Information Charles Clinton Travis was born 5 February 1891 in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He was the son of James M. Travis and Marcia E. Dunton. James was born in Virginia about October, 1845 and died in Grand Rapids in November, 1925. Marcia was born in Wisconsin about 4 February 1854, the daughter of William Dunton and Diana R. Wright. C. C. Travis was married to Rosell Thomasma in Grand Rapids on 5 June 1924. He died 21 November 1977 in Grand Rapids. His wife Rose was born about 1898 in Michigan and died 2 November 1972. C. C. and Rose are both buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. __________ Interviewer: This interview with C.C. Travis was recorded November twelfth, nineteen seventyone. C. C. Travis: Here, just a minute, may, let me, I wrote some of this down. Charles Clinton Travis, nobody knows me as Clinton. Everyone knows me as C.C. Charles… Known as C.C. Travis, born February fifth eighteen ninety-one. Home was the corner of Ottawa and Michigan. We had an artesian well in the basement overflowed down, so down Michigan or, that was an open stream Michigan right down to the river. Imagine what that was at that time. Then… Interviewer: It was actually open stream that flowed right down the hill? C. C. Travis: Yes, that was before the, then they had cobblestone and then they finally put a rail up there cobblestone, so the horses could have a footing to get up the hill, you see. Michigan was a steep hill. And with cobblestone, then finally put the horse carts on the, tracks in there, by then there was, they had the tracks which made better wheeling for the horses. Interviewer: What, what did they do with the, if that stream was flowing openly down the hill, what did they eventually do with that, where did that stream go? C. C. Travis: I don’t know, I don’t know. Our, I never actually saw an open stream down Michigan except in a hard rain or anything like that. But there was a drainage from our well, from the basement there that, that evidently did have a little trickle down, down probably the curb of the street or something like that there. Because they had to cobblestone. Ottawa’s was a cedar block pavement and the hill was a cobblestone pavement so the horses could get a better footing. And they had trouble when a flood came in there, the darn cedar blocks floated out, �2 floated out on top of Ottawa Street. They had to do a lot of extra paving there. Because that, didn’t work, that was too slippery, for the hill. But the cobblestone, that was a kind of noisy as hell, you can imagine, every once in a while the horses get tired or they run away, not a runaway, but a loose wagon would come down, clackety, clackety and on, down Michigan, and now that’s a long thing. The darn things would sometimes run right through to the river. And there was, then on the cobblestone, road it’s, the stones are only about that big, see? Interviewer: Yes. C. C. Travis: So that a…. Interviewer: Well, that flood you were talking about did that, the Grand River used to flood pretty frequently? C. C. Travis: Oh yes, periodically. Interviewer: And the water would come up as far up on the hill as….. C. C. Travis : No, it wouldn’t come up our, as far as we are but, dad had artisan springs, Dad had water in the basement of his store, on Canal Street and, I’ve seen several floods of Canal Street there which was Monroe Avenue, lower Monroe. But it never came up much farther than that. Interviewer: I see, what kind of a store was it, that your father operated? C. C. Travis: Well, dad came and, you would call it an antique shop but was a second hand store. He bought and sold everything, anything. And he had quite a reputation; he had three stores, three floors and a basement. You can imagine that, I think there probably more families here in, ‘cause they have some of their fine mahogany and antiques in Dad’s store many years ago. Blodgetts, and I don’t want to mention any names, but the, people that liked real antique furniture in, he had a little Dutchman there in the store that knew all the immigrants that came in. The first thing they wanted to do is get Golden Oak furniture and so they’d trade their mahogany and their walnut and their fine antiques, there wasn’t, there weren’t. Dad didn’t feel that he was doing them any justice with it but they got exactly what they wanted. They wanted Golden Oak. Interviewer: What is Golden Oak exactly? C. C. Travis: Golden Oak is just exactly what it is. It’s oak, oak furniture with a finish like this. [Knocking on table] And that was… Interviewer: Yes, I’ve seen a lot of this… C. C. Travis: …and carved, the, it was, a lot of it was very beautifully carved, because they had a lot of hand carvers, machine carving wasn’t known then. And everything was hand carved and it was really beautifully decorated and beautifully carved, but oak was, they weren’t importing a lot of mahogany, they did some. But that was called the Golden Oak Age and everybody had �3 beautiful golden oak. And the people that came over, a lot of the people brought their furniture, fine mahogany and walnut furniture from abroad and would, would want to trade it in for golden oak. And so Dad had three stores, a basement and bought a circus one time, he gave all the animals, alligators and bears and everything to the Soldier’s Home. And, but the furniture was beautiful furniture. Interviewer: What, what did the Soldier’s Home do with, do with the animals? C. C. Travis: Oh, they had a cage out there, they caged, that was our Sunday, that was when they had, finally had streetcars out there and we’d go out and see the bears and the raccoons and some of the animals that Dad had contributed to the Soldier’s Home. And it’s, he had trained bear down in the basement of the store. Interviewer: A trained bear? C. C. Travis: well, maybe a tame bear. And he gave it to the Soldier’s Home finally. Interviewer: Well, where did he keep the bear down in the basement for? C. C. Travis: It was for curiosity. Interviewer: Bring people into the store? C. C. Travis: The bear was a good friend of his. Tame bear. They’re funny, you know. A tame bear is, is really quite something, I guess. I used to go down and play with him. Interviewer: I’ve never seen one before. C. C. Travis: Well, they’d have a good collar on them, don’t you know and, but it was, it was so tame that, when you go out to Soldier’s Home why the bear seemed to know Dad I mean, he would come and pet him, and so I, as I say it was, it was a pretty well named, Everything on Earth. That was the, that was his slogan and my sister made a very nice, I wish I had one of the letterheads, a letterhead, ‘Everything on Earth Jim Travis'. And he’d buy a tent, you could buy, well is a, as your city grows, at that time when you stop to think of it, pre-Civil War and after Civil War, we had quite an influx of, of, very wealthy people come to Michigan. Your lumber industries and all that brought a lot of wealth to it. And, they brought some of their fine furniture out here, too. And they wanted to trade it, why or they got stuck with something, why dad would buy anything. And he would trade. Interviewer: Where, where did you, grow up as a child? Where was your family home located? C. C. Travis: Michigan and Ottawa. Interviewer: Did your father build that house there or was it, had…. C. C. Travis: No, his aunt was, one of his relatives built it. �4 Interviewer: When did they finally tear that, were there other houses in that area, too? C. C. Travis: Yes, all, right in the back was a, I think it was a relative of Dad’s. And then there was a shoemaker that was on Ottawa Street. It was next to us there. Then Dad, after the Civil War, and this, all of this after the Civil War, he started the store on, at that time Canal Street. And, he’d buy anything and sell it; he did a tremendous business in tools. Gee, some of the people would bring, over they’d have tools and stuff like that once in a while need money, they’d sell their tools and furniture and as I say he probably sold more antiques to the houses in Grand Rapids here, the Blodgetts and early families. Interviewer: This, when did the house on Michigan and Ottawa come down? C. C. Travis: When the brewery… Interviewer: When was that? C. C. Travis: Brewery took it over. Oh, was quite a few years ago. Interviewer: That… was that, what eventually became Fox Deluxe Brewery? C. C. Travis: Yes, yes that was the original brewery. That was Grand Rapids, I think it was Grand Rapids Brewery but we were right next door and Dad’s very good friends, friends of the gang. And, but it’s, they were, the brewery was formed there due to the spring. Due to the fine water they had. Brewery depends on good water. Interviewer: Yes. C. C. Travis: And, so that, and then we had, we had an actual artesian well in the, in the basement, got pretty wet there sometimes, too. But that was part of the thing, his, his relative, Aunt somebody, I can’t remember the name, but, built the house on, on, at that time it was Ottawa and Bridge and then Bridge was changed to Michigan. Interviewer: You have some brothers, or some sisters that you, did you have some brothers, too? C. C. Travis: I didn’t have any brothers, no, but I had, three sisters. Now, Calla, the older one, her, her dancing school started when she was in high school and lived on, Michigan and Ottawa. And she had taken dancing lessons and she was the only one that knew the, knew the range of, of social dancing and acting dancing and she had quite a school there. Original Travis School of Dancing was on Michigan and Ottawa. And then she had it, came to, out here on, I think the next one was on Madison and then a school here and she went to, she had a, she had a, school in, out in Lansing and Kalamazoo, Muskegon and sometimes she went to Detroit. Interviewer: So she, she had like a regular chain of dancing schools? �5 C. C. Travis: Yes. Very successful, Calla Travis, whenever think of Calla Travis, why they think of her dancing. Interviewer: Yes, was that a pretty important activity for the young people in those days… C. C. Travis: Yes. Interviewer…social dancing? C. C. Travis : Yes, it was and more people learned the, learned the social graces, she was quite, very exact and there wasn’t any fooling or anything like that and the parents well we are glad to have, you have our kids for a couple of hours and, and really teach them something we can’t teach them. Which are manners, I mean the dancing is, well she took over the Saint Cecelia, she kept the Saint Cecelia here busy pretty near five days a week. And she had the school there Saturday, two or three times. And then she took over the, all, whatever her, her studio was where the art institute is now. Interviewer: Was it in that… C. C. Travis: A little old stone building…[Truman H. Lyon house at 220 E. Fulton] Interviewer: Oh, the one next door. C. C. Travis: Well, she had, that was the original stone buildings there. And she has that as her studio for years. And which was a very interesting place. Interviewer: Well, that little stone building down there, that, would that where, have been close to all the residential areas of the city? I mean… C. C. Travis: Oh yes, there were residential, there was residences all, that, that was quite a resident area. Interviewer: Down along Jefferson and … C. C. Travis: Jefferson and Fountain Street, some of those very fine old homes along Fountain and Fulton. That was a very good area. We came out, well then, then it went, then it went south and we had one house, I don’t remember that, down here but, we bought here a few years ago. And these houses out here are built like the rock of Gibraltar, The, the timber that you see up in the attic here is, two-by-fours are really two-by-fours. It’s quite amazing the stuff that they built them with. Interviewer: Who built this house? C. C. Travis: I think the, I think the early people, [Martin] Dregges built it; lumberman must have built because the, the stuff in the attic there is beautiful pine. And… �6 Interviewer: You have it divided into apartments now. C. C. Travis: We have six apartments here. You can see the height of the ceiling; you don’t build a house like this anymore. Interviewer: How high is that ceiling? C. C. Travis: Well, I think it’s a good twelve, I think it’s a good twelve feet; twelve or thirteen feet. It had, it has a fireplace in the basement, has a fireplace on the second floor and next door apartment here on the other side. And we have six apartments here now. Interviewer: Was it divided into apartments when you bought the house. C. C. Travis: Yes, we did some of it but, the Dregges, the Dregges, owned it for awhile, the lumberman. And, but they didn’t build it, I’ve got a, I got some of the story out; I’m going to get it because it was built quite a long time ago and, beautifully built. Interviewer: Yes, what, where did you go to school when you were growing up? Did your family, how long was it that you lived down there on Michigan and Ottawa? C. C. Travis: I was, I went to kindergarten at Michigan and Ottawa and through, I didn’t go through the first, then we moved, on out, let’s see where did we move? Well, we moved out here and I don’t think I was there, then I went to Madison school for a while, yes, we had, we had, yes we did, we had, we bought the Dregges place. Did you know the Dregges in the lumber business? And it wasn’t, it wasn’t this house I don’t think, but the whole house was finished in beautiful sycamore and oak, from Michigan woods. And, I went to, I went to kindergarten at the Madison, or LaGrave Street School over there, had kindergarten, I went to kindergarten there and I think I had the first grade at Madison. And what else? Interviewer: Where did you go to high school, up to…? C. C. Travis: Central. Interviewer: Central? C. C. Travis: Central High, yes. Interviewer: Did you go to college after high school? C. C. Travis: What? Interviewer: Went right into business? C. C. Travis: No, no, I went, I was very fortunate. I had early experience in furniture designing. I worked, I was very interested in furniture, and I had, I got a job as an apprentice in designing with Arthur Teal who was one of the fine designers when he, he designed Stickley and several of �7 the other big factories here. And, I must have about five or six or seven years of furniture design and making rods and doing copies. I never actually had a furniture account of my own, but I worked with, with artists like Art Teal, who was a wonderful man. We had the Stickley account. And I worked with another one where we Berkey, some of Berkey and Gays work. And… Interviewer: What did you, after you finished your apprenticeship? C. C. Travis: Well, I was, I then went into, studied architecture and I had an apprenticeship with Pierre Lindhout in an architect, and then through that, we had quite a few houses to work out and I got interested in interior work and, I worked with Arthur Teal who was a furniture designer and a decorator. And, well I had my experience in decorating through him. Interviewer: This company that you mentioned before Applegate-Travis. C. C. Travis : Well Travis-Applegate Company then, I left, I left there and, had a opportunity through our experience with many of the furniture companies and I was offered a job of purchasing agent and I went from there to, I was head purchasing agent for Robert Irwin Company. Which is one of the fine ones, because I had experience in lumber and veneers and stuff that made good furniture. And I was purchasing agent there for about five years, at Robert Irwin Company. Interviewer: Well, then you spent a… C. C. Travis: Robert Irwin Company had, had Grand Rapids Furniture Company, the Robert Irwin Company, the Royal Furniture Company and the Macey Company, and there was a time there when I was a lumber and veneer buyer for all of them. And that was a good million dollar business, I mean we had quite a little responsibility to keep those plants in tune with their different specifications of lumber and veneer and plywood and, and so I had a very wonderful training in that. And then when an opportunity came to go out and think about doing your own business, George Applegate, who was with one of the other companies, and I hooked up together and formed the Travis-Applegate Company. Interviewer: What kind of business was that? C. C. Travis: Paneling, lumber, plywood and veneer. Interviewer: Well, then you spent, you spent all of your working life in or involved with the furniture business. C. C. Travis: That’s right…. Interviewer: What, can you tell me a little about how big the furniture business was at one time? And how important it was to the community? �8 C. C. Travis: Oh, it was very important, I mean, our companies were with, well one of our big companies of course, when I left the Robert Irwin Company and Phoenix [Furniture], I was on very good terms with Mr. Irwin and the gang there because I was purchasing agent there. I’d had experience as purchasing agent and that’s one, that’s really is a training because you have to meet a lot of people, you have to know your materials, and my specialty was lumber and veneer. So that I was well equipped as a salesman for that product. And we had some very good accounts. Interviewer: What was it that, well, kind of ended the furniture business here in the city, I mean it’s still producing furniture but, it’s certainly not the furniture capital of the world, anymore. C. C. Travis: Well, I think it was the inroad of the southern plants mechanizing, Grand Rapids, I think was, I don’t want to be quoted in that, but I think Grand Rapids was a little slow in taking up complete mechanization, in machinery. Although that’s a machine made piece right…is against the, the craftsmanship that Grand Rapids had become known for. We had some very wonderful carvers here, one of these, I’m I remember over a Robert Irwin Company when I was purchasing there, there they had a tremendous staff of very wonderful carvers. And some of the fine, Royal, Royal was the top line at that time. Royal Furniture Company was of Mr. Irwin. And you got to hand it to him, he has the, he had the, well I bought, he had the Royal, was the top, and the Phoenix, The Grand Rapids Furniture Company and Macey Company all fell in line of the with the Irwin, of the Irwin factories. Interviewer: Well, did they, I’m just conjecturing here but, if I mean Grand Rapids for some reason which I’ve never been able to determine, did attract a large number of Dutch people and a lot of these people that would come over and were craftsmen… C. C. Travis: That’s right. Interviewer: …would work in the furniture companies. C. C. Travis: That’s right Interviewer: Now were they a… C. C. Travis: They were good woodworkers and carvers. Interviewer: Where, what, what kind of wages, would they have made in those days? C. C. Travis : I don’t have too much idea, I don’t think it was too much I don’t, I don’t think that, I think they were paid a good, a good scale because they, they made a good living and they brought their family, they certainly had large families. And, not only that but their large families and, and they made darn good citizens. They didn’t have to go out and knock somebody over the head to get an income or bring them down they were, they were honest workers and they, I think, I don’t think they, I don’t think the scale of a woodworker was equal to some of the scales of that �9 later developed in the automotive field. I think the woodworking was, but it was, it was a pretty good scale and, and good craftsmanship, they were paid, the carvers in Grand Rapids were paid, very well for the, for their artistry. Interviewer: Did the automobile business have any effect on the furniture industry? C. C. Travis: Oh, yes, had a lot. I think, it raised the price of labor and, it was, can’t you can’t, can’t blame certain period, where there’s quite an exodus of talent from Grand Rapids into the automobile, because they had to have, they had, for a design of a new automobile. That thing would be blocked up with wood. And the carvers and the craftsmanship of a rod maker and a pattern maker was , was way up that was one, that was the highest, one of the highest scales, paid scales in the furniture, in the woodworking industry. Why sometimes the pattern maker who could, who could carve and shape the, because an automobile doesn’t have very many square corners in it you know. Interviewer: Yes. C. C. Travis: And that whole car is made first out of wood, with a pattern. So the pattern makers of, who, of the skill of the pattern makers in the furniture industry were taken up, very rapidly in the automotive. Interviewer: Yes, Someone, I think it was Mr. Siegel Judd, the attorney was telling me that, he felt that the automobile business also had an effect on the insurance, or on the furniture industry, in that they, paid, a higher wage than was offered in the furniture factories, and it attracted a lot of the young men that would have nor, in days before the automobile would have followed their father’s footsteps, learned the trade and, taken up the same trade as their father but they were drawn away from that, into the automobile business by the five dollars a day wage. C. C. Travis: That’s right, I think that’s true. On the other hand, you can say that, that influence wouldn’t be too bad on the success of any community to have a means of, of establishing a higher rate. I thought, I never, I never accused anybody of paying anybody too much. I think the, the furniture industry was something that had to meet that competition. Because a rod maker and a pattern maker in furniture is maybe they didn’t get the money that a pattern man made in the automotive but just due to that demand for that, stuff they, they had to pay them. Interviewer: Yes, C. C. Travis: And that’s, that was pretty, that was pretty steep competition because you can’t tell, you can’t furniture outside, well, for piano, piano work was probably the top piece of wood furniture in the whole field because that, that bent work in the, work on a piano there is really something. And a man who could get a job in a, in a piano factory was, felt himself pretty lucky. On the other hand, the fine furniture of the old Royal Furniture Company and, and some of these fancy carvers were very well paid. They were really artists. But it was a demand, just like any �10 business. The, the demand and the scarcity of labor or the fullness of labor was, set the pace. But the furniture man, the furniture management, I don’t think the furniture management ever saw, or ever took the initial step to make furniture a high paying industry in labor. Interviewer: Yes. C. C. Travis: In any, in any work it’s a supply and demand that worked it, but, some of the fine carvers and the fine artists in the furniture today were doing very well. And that was a trade that was very desirable. Interviewer: Why do you think that, a furniture industry here in Grand Rapids was slower to mechanize then southern factories? C. C. Travis: I don’t know; I don’t know the answer to that. I think it was, personally, I think it was, a man that has a factory and is going along with hand-made stuff, a lathe or a carver, they have, they have all, you’ve got automatic carving now that weren’t heard of outside of pattern. The pattern maker was the top man in the factory. You could make that pattern, make a machine to duplicate that carve or turning was an automated thing. Very, very little hand turning, so that the man that made the pattern did a good job and the man that just pushed a button and pushed it out, why, that was a second rate job. You know it, it’s a demand and, just like anything else, the demand for talent, or the demand for anything else, when there’s a scarcity of good talent why somebody’s going to come in there and a do a little more on it. Don’t you think so? I mean that’s, that’s my experience with the thing. And you’ve seen it in the furniture industry. Interviewer: Yes. INDEX A J Applegate, George · 7, 8 Judd, Siegel · 9 B L Blodgett Family · 2, 4 Lindhout, Pierre · 7 C M Central High School · 6, 7 Macey Company · 7, 8 D Dregges Family · 6 �11 R Soldier’s Home · 3 Robert Irwin Company · 7, 8 Royal Furniture Company · 7, 8, 10 T S Travis, Calla (Sister) · 4, 5 Travis, James M. (Father) · 2, 3, 4 Travis-Applegate Company · 7, 8 Saint Cecelia Music Society · 5 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/bad21758a619c08edb12edf45e27ae34.mp3 74cf11e2e2f0816696517dafbddbdad4 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_36Travis Title A name given to the resource Travis, C.C. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Travis, C.C. Description An account of the resource Mr. Travis was born on February 5, 1891. His father owned an antique and furniture store on Canal Street (now Monroe). Mr. Travis went to Central High School, but did not attend college. He was later a purchasing agent for Applegate Furniture Company. Mr. Travis died on November 22, 1977. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/715b8df24c4015422ac94ed6a17edba0.pdf 1262444b551bc9ac4117f8debdd2b219 PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC- 23 Mr. David Hunting Interviewed November 12, 1971 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tape # 35 (1:00:00) Biographical Information David Dyer Hunting was born in Grand Rapids 26 August 1892. He was the son of Edgar W. Hunting and Grace Emma Dyer. David died in Grand Rapids on 19 April 1992 and was buried in Woodlawn Cemetery. David Hunting married Mary V. Ives in Ann Arbor, Michigan on 25 May 1925. Mr. Hunting was one of the founders of Metal Office Furniture Company which is now Steelcase, Inc. Edgar, David’s father was born about August 1862 in Grand Haven, Michigan. Grace Dyer was born about May 1869 in Missouri. They were married in 1891. ___________ Interviewer: Were you born in Grand Rapids Mr. Hunting? Mr. Hunting: I was born in Grand Rapids on College Avenue between Wealthy and Cherry in eighteen ninety-two. At that time, there were no houses between College Avenue and Madison and there was a diagonal walk or path that ran across the two lots and across Morris Avenue to the corner of Madison which we used to go to and from the Wealthy Avenue School at Lafayette Street. Interviewer: That school, that school’s still there, isn’t it? Mr. Hunting: The school is still there. It’s been remodeled somewhat but, that was a school that served the entire area, that I grew up and played in. Interviewer: Were there, were there other houses in this block that you lived in? Mr. Hunting: At that time there was a Tetium house on the corner of Cherry and College and the Shaw house on College Avenue and between the Shaw house and Wealthy Street there was only one other house which was later occupied by the D.C. Scribner family. On the east side of College Avenue, there were several houses. The street was pretty well built up from Cherry Street down to the middle of the block. There was the Wilson house, the Gilbert house, the Maddox house, the Twing house, the Hunting house, the Waddell house and the Murray house. Those were all practically along in succession. And then further down were some other houses. When I was growing up, and was going to school there were forty-one children on that block. Interviewer: Did, did all the children know each other, play with each other? �2 Mr. Hunting: Oh, we played together constantly. Other Man: Tell them about the black girl you grew up with. Mr. Hunting: About what? Other Man: The black girl that you grew up with, that little black girl, the only one who could recite the poetry as well as you could. Mr. Hunting: Yeah. Interviewer: What’s her name? Mr. Hunting: Theola Ford. At that time, Paris Avenue was pretty well built up too and the Wilcox family moved from their farm out on Lake Drive into the city for the winter and took a house on College Avenue directly behind the Murray house. The other families lived along on Paris that we grew up with were the Palmer family, the Wilcox family, the Shank family, the Seymour family, and we all played together. Also the Spencer and Baker families were there. One of the things I most remember was building a cave in a vacant lot opposite us. As a boy we had a big table over there which served as a headquarters for a group of boys with a long tunnel exit to a clump of trees so we could escape if we were trapped in the cave. That was the type of activity that we seemed to have. And I remember at the time of the Spanish American War we were greatly discussing, among ourselves, what we would do if we were in Cuba or if Cubans invaded Grand Rapids, Michigan. Interviewer: What was this, that John mentioned to us, young black girl, Theola Ford. Mr. Hunting: Oh, going through school, at Wealthy Street, Miss Blanchard taught the first grade and Miss Martine the second grade, Miss Cole the fourth grade, and there at that time was only one black girl in school and she was the daughter of Joe Ford, the passenger agent, assistant porter down there. Theola Ford, and she was probably the brightest girl in the class. I remember one of our second grade requirements was to learn Hiawatha and she could recite the entire poem of Hiawatha verbatim. We always had a terrific competition between Theola Ford and myself, eee who could remember the longest portions. Interviewer: What ever happened to her? Mr. Hunting: I don’t know, I don’t know. She moved out of town. I don’t know. She went all the way through grammar school and then to high school with distinguished marks. Interviewer: Were there, were there very many black people in the city at that time? Mr. Hunting: Very few. But the ones that were there we all knew, and were very friendly with. Weren’t very many. �3 Interviewer: Did they, did they have a neighborhood of their own? Mr. Hunting: There wasn’t any particular neighborhood. It was mostly down on Sheldon between Wealthy and Franklin, and perhaps a very few across Division street but very few. Interviewer: What did you remember the first time you ever saw an automobile? Mr. Hunting: Yes, the first, about the first one, I had much familiarity with was when the Russell family, who lived out at Comstock Park bought a Ford and that was when I was in grade school. And I used to ride in that car with Fran Russell a good deal. Then the Keeler family bought a Lozier with chain drive and Mr. Will Gay bought a White Steamer, which rode up and down College Avenue and the Austin family started to develop a car called the Austin, which was an assembled car with coachwork mostly supplied locally but a very well regarded car. Always in white with brown trim. And for quite a while the Austins were a recognized automobile made in Grand Rapids. Interviewer: Where was that factory located? Mr. Hunting: That was on Division Street, between Cherry Street and Oakes, I believe. Right in that area somewhere. It no longer stands. I completed the eighth grade in Wealthy Street School and went into the old Central High School on the corner of Ransom and Lyon. We went at morning and afternoon to that school walking from College Avenue to Lyon Street and Ransom, four times a day. And then playing football we would leave the school in the afternoon and go to the old YMCA building, change in our football clothes, walk across Pearl Street Bridge to a vacant lot where there is a freight boarding station now, along Fulton and Front Street, practice there till six o’clock, walk back to the Y, take a shower, walk home up State Street hill to College Avenue. Interviewer: It’s a little different than today, isn’t it? Mr. Hunting: I imagine, I imagine we got more exercise walking than most people do today playing football. Interviewer: Were sports very important at that time in school? Mr. Hunting: Yes, we had a good sport activity. We had, our big game was with Muskegon. We played Benton Harbor, Kalamazoo, and in basketball we had a very good team and played in the YMCA gymnasium, and had a long season of basketball. Interviewer: What, what was this neighborhood that you grew up in? Was this a neighborhood of well-to-do families? Mr. Hunting: Well, I wouldn’t say they were well-to-do, but that were comfortably well-off. There were no very wealthy families there as I regarded at the time at least we weren’t conscious �4 of any, any distinction of that kind in that entire neighborhood. But up, we did feel that up on the Lafayette hillside area the more wealthy families had their home like the Hazletine's and the Holt’s and the Hollister's and the Lowe's and the Blodgett’s. Interviewer: So they, they lived all up on the, in the, what’s a really the hill district up on Fountain and Lafayette and that area? Mr. Hunting: That’s right. Interviewer: Did, did the children in your neighborhood, the forty-one children in your neighborhood associate with the children in the Hill district? Mr. Hunting: Oh yes. Interviewer: So there wasn’t any discrimination of… Mr. Hunting: No, feeling any way. The Bundy family, the White family all had children, we played tennis a lot together and saw each other quite a little bit. Interviewer: Were there very many parties when you were growing up? Mr. Hunting: There were a lot of parties and they were quite formal parties and Mrs. Bissell always gave a dance in the evening during Christmas vacation for all the young people. That was one of the big events we looked forward to at Christmas time. Interviewer: Then that was a formal affair? Mr. Hunting: That was formal, and usually in the St. Cecelia ballroom. Interviewer: Some of the people that I’ve interviewed have said that there was no liquor or very little liquor served at parties, really evidence of… Mr. Hunting: I, I never saw any alcohol served at any party till, well after I was out of college. Interviewer: So did, did the kids you grew up with drink at all? Mr. Hunting: Not at all. Not at all, and it wasn’t till after I got out of College that I saw any beer drinking in Grand Rapids. Interviewer: That’s curious. What, what did the young people do for entertainment outside of the parties? Mr. Hunting: They would organize small dances. We had a one group of dances which we called P A Y E group. Pay as you enter where we’d donate enough money to buy a little music, piano player and a violin perhaps and dance in somebody’s ballroom, usually in the Huntley Russell �5 house. We had picnics, we had treasure hunts, we had a great deal of social activity in skating. Skating and tobogganing was very popular. This was before skiing became a recognized activity. Interviewer: The Russell Family now, Huntley Russell where did they live? Mr. Hunting: They loved out at Comstock Park but a Francis Russell and Lucius Boltwood who lived there both came to the Wealthy Avenue School. And they would eat their lunch at one of their relatives on Madison or Morris. Interviewer: I see, the time, in other, no liquor well, no liquor at all I guess, How does that time compare, the time you were growing up compare to the time, for example, that your own children were growing up? Mr. Hunting: Well I think we had much simpler tastes and much less was done for us than was done for my children. I remember you could get an ice-cream soda for a nickel and when I first ate a banana split, it was fifteen cents, and that was quite an event to do that. When the summer time we had the Ramona Theatre, vaudeville. And that was an entertainment to do for an evening to go there and do some of the, some of the activities, in door skating rink, or roller coaster, features like that that were around the Ramona Theatre. Interviewer: What, what do you think that the time that you were growing up, was a slower paced way of living than today? Mr. Hunting: Oh it was much slower because you walked everywhere. When we first had our fraternity party at the new Kent Country Club out north of here at its present location, we would rent a street car to bring everyone home from the party and a great question was whether the car should run up Cherry Street or run up Wealthy in order to come to the nearest, to the homes of the people that went to the party. And at that time I remember we were, Sandy [Sanford] Wilcox, and I were taking two girls, the girl’s mother objected to her riding out in a Wilcox carriage. She thought she should go in the streetcar with everybody else. The girls always would carry their slippers in a bag and wear their regular shoes and overshoes till they got to the party. Interviewer: Well, I remember I was, I think it was Mrs. Avery that I was talking to, she was talking about, like dating customs, holding hands for example was considered, according to Mrs. Avery, was not the thing to do at all. Mr. Hunting: If you were able to hold a girl’s hand walking home why you thought you’d made quite a little progress. And certainly you didn’t want to be seen doing it. Interviewer: Yeah, what, what do you think that changed the way of living from that period of time to today. What, what was the big change? And when did it change? Mr. Hunting: I can’t tell because I haven’t been in a teaching business or any business where I saw the gradual change develop. It’s a complete change in, standards, conventions, and I see it �6 reflected in other ways that, there’s reluctance for people—unless they have to, to dress properly to sit down and eat, eat in the manner in which I was accustomed to eat, slowly and, everyone sit at the table until everyone was finished. It now has almost become a counter-grab and people do not like to take the time to go through a full meal in company with other people. I don’t, I can’t see where the complete change in young people’s relationships occurred. There seems to be a great desire now to show people their affection for each other and to act in a manner that normally they would feel, I mean that in older times they would feel should be reserved for privacy. I don’t know whether that really means a desire to be seen with people in affectionate poses, or in a boastful manner, or because they really can’t wait till they are alone. What do you think? Interviewer: I don’t know, it’s hard for me to, to talk about something like that because I never grew up in an, in an age where holding a girl’s hand was making quite a bit of progress. Yes, it’s very interesting that, that the way the society was then when you were growing up compared to the way it is today. It sounds like they had many differences. Mr. Hunting: Well it is, there’s, there’s a great difference. I… parents had much firmer control over their children; they knew what they were doing because the children were with them more. They couldn’t get out of sight. They couldn’t get in a car and disappear for the day and couldn’t be reached anymore. Now, you can’t tell where you children are because the mobility is so great that they can either go on their own or with somebody, and once gone they’re gone. And the activity no longer is centered in the house, like ours was. Interviewer: A question that I haven’t asked anybody yet, yet… I suppose it didn’t come along until a little later was, about the airplanes. When did, when was, do you remember the first airplane you ever saw? Mr. Hunting: Yeah, the first airplane was brought here by fellow named Bill Turpin, it was a graduated Phi Delta Theta in Ann Arbor and he would give exhibitions at the fair of flying an airplane and he just would go from fair to fair, to fly an airplane. That was before the First World War. In the First World War airplanes became rather common but it was six or eight years prior to the First World War, airplanes were infrequently seen and the only places they could fly from would be at a county fair or on a race track. Interviewer: Did you go out for the First World War? Mr. Hunting: I was in the First World War; I was in Europe for about eighteen months. I was first Lieutenant of infantry and I trained at Fort Sheridan, Camp Custer and spent the rest of the time in Europe. Interviewer: Was there quite a bit of patriotism? �7 Mr. Hunting: Oh yes, everyone, everyone volunteered practically, and the officers training camps were completely subject to volunteer enrollment. And I don’t just remember when the Brass started that. I was in the first officers training camp and felt very fortunate to be selected and I was very, had a, had a very high morale in the companies that I was with all the time. The attitude was terrific. Interviewer: After the war, what were, what were the twenties like, where they as wild as, they make it out to be? Mr. Hunting: They was a breakdown and there was, drinking became more common and they, they brought in dances that were not as dignified or as well recognized as the ones we were used to, but the participation was limited to few people and they were, were examples that were referred to, Fitzgerald group and, some of those and I would say that it was not generally through the society that I was involved with. Interviewer: Let’s see, I just have a couple more questions. How old were you when you got married? Mr. Hunting: Thirty three. Interviewer: Now was that common in those days for men, to, to wait until they were a little older to get married? Mr. Hunting: Well my brother was married when he was twenty one. Interviewer: Oh… Mr. Hunting: Best answer I can give you to that. And I know of the many that were married in their very early twenties. Interviewer: I see so that there was no, no set standard on that? Mr. Hunting: No, I think it shifted around a great deal. Interviewer: Ok good. We were just talking about schools, tell me a little about what the schools were like when you were going to school compared to the way they are now-- at least what we read. Mr. Hunting: Well the, in the grade school, particularly and also though high school, the teacher had complete control of the pupils. The discipline was excellent and it was imposed completely. You stood in line as you left properly, walked out properly, you came in to the school and into the class and you studied quietly. There were some occasional pranks played. I remember one time bringing in a lung-tester which my uncle made and which was filled with flour. When you blew into it the hand dial, hand on the dial which was supposed to go around didn’t but a lot of flour come up all over your face. And Miss Banister, the teacher, saw it on my desk and says �8 what was, and I said a lung tester. She said, bring it to my desk and you may have it after school, which I did. Well during the writing lesson I heard the damnest yell, Miss Banister stood up covered with flour. She kept me after school because I had no right to bring such a thing like that in the school. But the discipline was excellent and the teachers were uniformly older than the teachers are today. And teaching was their profession which was quite honored and quite respected and they, we did not have PTA groups then but the teacher would occasionally write a letter for someone to take home and have the mother answer or come to see her at a certain time. Interviewer: So then the big difference, the two big differences, one the respect for the teachers and two, the discipline within the school. Mr. Hunting: The students, I never saw a student show disrespect for a teacher or attempt to talk back to her or refuse to do what she told him to. And a teacher would occasionally send a pupil out into the hall to sit through a session if he’d been whispering or doing things that were wrong. Interviewer: Well is there anything else that… Mr. Hunting: OK, glad to talk to you. INDEX Ford, Theola · 2 A Avery, Mrs. · 6 G Gay, Will · 3 B Baker Family · 2 Banister, Miss · 8 Bissell, Mrs. · 4 Blanchard, Miss · 2 Blodgett Family · 4 Boltwood, Lucius · 5 Bundy Family · 4 H Hazletine Family · 4 Hollister Family · 4 Holt Family · 4 Huntley Russell Family · 5 K C Central High School · 3 Cole, Miss · 2 Keeler Family · 3 Kent Country Club · 5 L F Lowe Family · 4 First World War · 7 Ford, Joe · 2 �9 M Martine, Miss · 2 P Palmer Family · 2 R Ramona Theatre · 5 Russell Family · 3, 5 Russell, Fran · 3 S Scribner Family · 1 Seymour Family · 2 Shank Family · 2 Spanish American War · 2 Spencer Family · 2 T Turpin, Bill · 7 W Wealthy School · 5 Wealthy Street School · 3 White Family · 3, 4 Wilcox Family · 2, 5 Wilcox, Sanford · 5 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/91fb24701c0fec0d09c68dfd0f2721c3.mp3 d757e587e9b67ad33009042a01c9ce99 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_35Hunting Title A name given to the resource Hunting, David Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Hunting, David Description An account of the resource David Hunting was born in 1892. He was a lieutenant during WWI. He married Mary Ives in 1925. Mr. Hunting worked in the office furniture manufacturing business and was founder of the Dyer-Ives Foundation (now Steelcase). He died on April 19, 1992. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/50d68415c30a8b24a6603493eb883684.pdf d43d5e882eb8d73cd837cfaf35e6b56f PDF Text Text 1 Grand Valley State University Special Collections Kent County Oral History collections, RHC-23 Mr. George Shelby Interviewed on September 14, 1971 Edited and indexed by Don Bryant, 2010 – bryant@wellswooster.com Tapes #3, 4 Biographical Information George Cass Shelby was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 5 December 1878, the son of William Read Shelby and Mary Kennedy Cass. In 1903 George was married to Ann Miller about 1903. George died 31 August 1975 in Blodgett Hospital in East Grand Rapids at the age of 96. Ann Miller was born in November 1882 in Grand Rapids. She was the daughter of John Miller and Martha Nicholson. Ann died 26 April 1941 in Grand Rapids and both George and Ann are buried in Oak Hill Cemetery. The father, William Read Shelby was born 4 December 1842 in Lincoln County, Kentucky and died at his home at 65 Lafayette NE 14 November 1930. The mother of George was Mary Kennedy Cass, born in Brownsville, Pennsylvania on 22 March 1847. She married William Shelby on 16 June 1869 in St. Stephen’s Church, Sewickley, Pennsylvania. Mary died in Grand Rapids on 3 May 1936. _____________ Interviewer: How long have you lived in Grand Rapids, Mr. Shelby? Mr. Shelby: Well, with the exception of about twenty years in California, I was near Fresno where I had an orange grove with oranges, figs and so forth. I had money saved up and there was an enterprise in Santa Fe for officers preparing for the retirement days, don’t you know. I had the several thousand dollars on hand and I bought the land, and there was a colony [Annandale?], that was named after my wife, and so I moved to California in about, between nineteen….I can’t remember the exact date either, I lived out there about twenty-five years, and left there about nineteen forty, came back to Grand Rapids and sold the ranch, and put my wife in a sanitarium, because the nurses were so kind. Twenty years before she might have died, in nineteen forty. Interviewer: So before nineteen… you were in California for about twenty-five years, so that means you left Grand Rapids somewhere around nineteen fifteen. Mr. Shelby: Well, a little later, nineteen twenty-four I think I left then, so the period would be from about nineteen five to nineteen twenty-four. I was trying to develop this orange grove, Allendale colony. Interviewer: Were you born in Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: Yes, yes, I was born on Fountain Street, the house up on the hill, you know. �2 Interviewer: What’s the address of that house, do you know? Is that house still standing? Mr. Shelby: Yes, oh yes it is. Last occupied by Mrs. Booth. Elizabeth Booth. Because it had many owners in the meantime after we sold it and we moved along to Lafayette—sixty-five North Lafayette. Interviewer: Was your father William Shelby? Mr. Shelby: William R. Shelby, yeah. Interviewer: He was involved in railroads, wasn’t he? Mr. Shelby: He was the vice-president-treasurer of the Grand Rapids-Indiana Railroad Interviewer: What was the Grand Rapids-Indiana railroad ? Mr. Shelby: It was part of the Michigan Lines of the Pennsylvania Railroad, extending from Richmond, Indiana to Mackinac Island, about six hundred miles. Interviewer: Did your father, how did your father happen to come to Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: Well, he moved from Kentucky up to Pittsburgh and then married my mother in Sewickley, Pennsylvania. My grandfather George W. Cass, who was vice president of the lines west of Pittsburg, sent him out here to be the head of the G.R. and I Railway, that’s Grand Rapids-Indiana. And as a boy I was sent out to St. Paul’s which I just went out to this reunion, my seventy-fifth reunion, and I was leading the procession there. Interviewer: Are you the only one left from that class? Mr. Shelby: No, there are two others, but they are incapacitated. Interviewer: That’s quite a photo. Mr. Shelby: Well, here’s a little bit better one. This came the other day, yes. Interviewer: Oh, yes, class from ninety-six—eighteen ninety-six. Grand Rapids go away to school? Did many young men in Mr. Shelby: No, it was rather unusual. Let’s see there, well, there were three or four other Grand Rapids boys sent to that school: Fred Gorham and Edward Boise, Dr. Boise’s son, he attended it, too, St. Paul’s in Concord, New Hampshire. It’s a very famous Episcopal school, a hundred and fifteen years old this year. Interviewer: Did your family build what is known as the Booth house? �3 Mr. Shelby: Yes, my grandfather bought those three lots; one on Fountain, and one on the corner of Lafayette and Fountain and next to it, the three of them. We moved from that one on Fountain Street to Lafayette see. Interviewer: Was that your Grandfather Cass? Mr. Shelby: Yes, my Grandfather George W. Cass, yes. Interviewer: Was he any relation to Lewis Cass? Mr. Shelby: Yes, cousin, I think. Interviewer: What was it like growing up in Grand Rapids, when you grew up here? Mr. Shelby: Well, it was, it was really interesting in politics in those days. The cities used to have those torch-light processions that formed, you know, people turned their coats inside out and marched under a banner, you know, screaming out the candidates’ names, and they used to circulate around the neighborhood leading this torch-light procession yelling out ”Uhl, Uhl, Uhl, E.F. Uhl [Edward F. Uhl]; Shelby, Shelby, W.R. Shelby:” And we youngsters all marched in those processions; the banner and then the torch-light processions were quite characteristic of politics in those days. Interviewer: Where would the processions take place? Mr. Shelby: Well, in the residential districts. The candidates, like Mr. Ford, there was a fellow named [Melborne] Ford at that time, was the candidate for Congress I guess or something of that sort. There was quite a high feeling amongst the Democrats. We were Democrats in those days, whatever they stood for. Interviewer: There weren’t many of those around, were there? Mr.Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: There weren’t very many of those around here, were there, Democrats? Mr. Shelby: Yes, they was pretty active here. And in the winter time, of course, Fountain Street was a great street for sliding. Every night in the winter why, it was black with people just sliding down the hill. Bobs [bobsleds] thirty feet long, you know, and single sleds was riding right along right in front of us. Naturally I was amongst all the other youths that enjoyed that pleasure. The only trouble was we were, was for the hacks [cabs] that we used to get in our way a little. Interviewer: Wouldn’t [they] close the hill off for traffic then? Mr. Shelby: Yes, and on holidays especially. On Christmas and New Years, Bridge Street was the steepest street, that was closed off, policed. The city was young, you know, compared to what it is now, and very compact. I think the city, you might say, as far as residents were �4 concerned, ended about Union Avenue, Union Street, you know. Beyond that began the scattered homes and so on -- the country. Grand Rapids at that time was about sixty thousand people, and you were really outside of the town then after six or seven blocks going east from Lafayette, you began to get into country, don’t you know. Interviewer: What was out there? Mr. Shelby: Oh, just occasional farms, and residences, things of that sort, brickworks. The brickyard used to be quite a notable setting out there around Bridge Street and Fountain Street. That was one of the big brick yards of the city. Interviewer: Were there many brickyards in the city at that time? Mr. Shelby: Oh, just two or three. Interviewer: That brickyard was out on Fountain Street, beyond Union. Mr. Shelby: Well, Bridge Street. Interviewer: Now, that would be on the west side of town then? Mr. Shelby: No, it would be east side of town. Interviewer: The only Bridge Street that I know in town is the one on west side, was there another one? Mr. Shelby: Well, there’s East Bridge and West Bridge, of course, the river divides the thing. Interviewer: Then that would be where Michigan Street is today? Mr. Shelby: Yes, that’s right, that’s right. Interviewer: What were the neighborhoods like at that time in terms of social relationships? Mr. Shelby: Well, there was pretty much the center, the finest part of the town I’d call it that, the Hill District. Interviewer: Did the families have a lot of interactions together? Mr. Shelby: Oh, to a certain degree, they were members of the same club, like the President’s Club, you know or one thing, the Kent Country Club, and we were owners of that, stock in that, you know, that was the, you know where it is now, the Kent Country Club. It was a private club, membership club. We had interest in stock, interest in it at that time, don’t you know, used to entertain out there a good deal. Interviewer: That’s where most of the socializing went on then? �5 Mr. Shelby: Well, a large, largely although there was frequently amongst St. Mark’s church was a center of many occasions at our home. my father was a vestryman in St. Mark’s church, during those many years and quite a few occasions were held in our home, don’t you know gatherings two or three hundred people. Interviewer: Two or three hundred? Mr. Shelby: Oh, yes, Jandorf used to do all the catering in town, you know. Interviewer: What was the name of the company? Mr. Shelby: Jandorf, he was a caterer, you know, provided the food. He took and moved into a home with his staff and prepared all the food for the groups. Interviewer: Using your kitchen then? Mr. Shelby: Oh, yes. Interviewer: How long would he stay? Mr.Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: How long would he stay? Mr. Shelby: How long what? Interviewer:How long would Jandorf stay? He moved into the home? Mr. Shelby: Well, his location on Monroe Street, but he would just move in for those occasions, and provide all the food for the house he took over, don’t you know. It would be too much for a hired cook and others. Interviewer: How many people would he have on hand for an occasion like that? Mr. Shelby: Well, he had maybe ten or twelve people, cooks and waitresses for the meals, and then they help with everything else. Interviewer: Was there any dancing at those affairs? Mr. Shelby: Not particularly, I don’t know, no there wasn’t any dancing. Interviewer: Not at the church affairs? Mr. Shelby: No, it wasn’t frowned upon, but there wasn’t any occasion for it, mostly chattering and visiting. Interviewer: What affect did the automobile have on society, when the automobile came out? �6 Mr. Shelby: Very pronounced, very pronounced, I think it scattered people for one thing. They began to have homes and places other than, you know, cottages to go to, homes at the lake, resorts. It had a very pronounced affect. Not everybody owned cars, you know. Interviewer: Do you remember when you saw your first car? Mr. Shelby: Well, it started during that period and, say nineteen fifteen, twenty, around that, and then it kept growing in numbers when people bought cars, you know. It had a very pronounced effect in every way. People circulated a lot more than they did by streetcar. That’s all they had was streetcars then, in those days. They ended it pretty much ended at the, well going north, ended at Sweet Street and then took a dummy from that point and, you go out on the streetcar to Sweet Street and then the dummy carried you to North Park where the street railway had a building, you know, resort for dancing and parties, and everything else. It was the same way at Reed’s Lake. You took— on Eastern Avenue, you went to this corral and got aboard the dummy, and you went two miles out to Reed’s Lake. That time they had a lot of the pavilions you know and entertainment, picnics, very simple compared with the way it is now. Beer gardens also, which they frowned upon. Interviewer: Why? Mr. Shelby: Well, personally I never liked beer, I liked wine. But anyways we suppose to be, it was supposed to be looked as a scandal, to be seen over in that beer garden. Interviewer: The one at Ramona Park? Mr.Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: The one at Ramona Park? Mr. Shelby: Yes, that was quite a big one in those days. The more sportier elements in the town patronized that. But that was a swamp, the entertainment was largely professional at Reed’s Lake, don’t you know the troupes were brought in and entertainers. So, if you had the time and the leisure, the desire, well you went to Reed’s Lake. It played a very important part in the life of the town, and for leisure moments, you know. Interviewer: The people that lived up on Lafayette and Fountain and that area around where your family lived were they mostly professional men? Mr. Shelby: Well, they were largely heads of businesses. There was Mr. Perkins, Gaius Perkins, the head of the School Furniture Company, they called it at that time. He was living on the corner of Fountain and Lafayette and then they were all prominent people, prominent in the city, lawyers, and doctors and railroad officials. It was fairly compact you might say. So we might say that it set it apart from the balance of the city. That was the fine homes were built within that area. Interviewer: Do you remember the construction of your home on Fountain Street? �7 Mr. Shelby: Well, just dimly, but I remember playing around it, yes. Interviewer: built better? How about the home, perhaps you could remember the home on Lafayette you Mr. Shelby: The what? Interviewer: The home on Lafayette. Mr. Shelby: Sixty-five Lafayette? Interviewer: Could you tell me a little about, how were homes constructed in those days? Mr. Shelby: Well, bricklayers were the great builders of homes in those days. Large, all brick homes, they’re very spacious and space, space was some families were fairly large with five or six children, don’t you know, and they wanted big homes, which they had. Lafayette Avenue is three stories and an attic, which children used to play on that, fourteen feet high, the attic you know, until it was finished off and then we’d made it into entertainment for dancing, you know, and you give parties. Of course at that time there were about two professional dancing schools, which we children were sent to, you know, Gage and Benedict, as I remember the names. I learned to dance at those places, along with the other bluebloods. Interviewer: What kind of dancing was there? Mr. Shelby: Waltz and waltzes and round dancing, do-si-do and you know, those figures I would think in color. When you, Mr. Gage and Mrs. Benedict were the two teachers, one was a little runt and the other was a tall woman and they wore costumes. And that, I think Saturday as a rule was the weekend was the occasion for going to the dancing school, you know. Interviewer: Saturday afternoon? Mr. Shelby: Yes, Saturday afternoon. Interviewer: Did most of the children of the prominent people living in the area go to the school? Mr. Shelby: That’s right. That’s right. Interviewer: Was the business, you’ve been involved in the business community all your life, is the business of that time, the pace of business and the…. Mr. Shelby: Well, furniture, furniture and railroads I think were the key main activities, so we had a half dozen of these very large factories making furniture, you know. Nelson-Matter was very famous throughout the country for fine furniture, and Century and Phoenix and half a dozen of them. School Furniture, the one I mentioned, you know Mr. Perkins is head of that. So that was one of the things that kept Grand Rapids growing at that time, the name Furniture City. We �8 had the skilled designers here, through those years, you know, and then we had the annual exhibitions, those people come later on from all over the United States and that was once a year. We were very much on the map. Interviewer: Have you seen any differences in the way businesses operated in that period compared to today? Mr. Shelby: Well, there’s more or less corporations now, the giant corporations. As a rule though they pretty much, there was the single city in making the furniture, and nothing but furniture. So we didn’t have very many metal plants here, I remember that, the metal business, there wasn’t much of that. Mostly furniture, wooden furniture, and we slaughtered all the timber from here to Mackinac over the years, you know. We wanted a freight with larger furniture. Heavy wood, you know. Grand Rapids was the furniture capitol of the United States at that time and later on, of course, Chicago took the wind out of our sails and built the buildings over there and then people instead of coming here, they went to Chicago. Interviewer: Do you think that one of the reasons for the furniture industry here was the accessibility of lumber? Mr. Shelby: The scarcity of lumber, well it gradually gave out. Interviewer: I mean, one of the reasons why the furniture industry developed here; was it because of the availability of lumber? Mr. Shelby: That would be the main reason, and then we had a large population of Dutch here that worked in the factories, you know mainly Dutch at those times; and they were skilled men and they were, that was their activity. We had almost, we had national fame, as well as you might say abroad, as the Furniture Capitol; the design and execution, production. Interviewer: Who were some of the lumber men? Mr. Shelby: Well, Gay was one, Widdicombe, John Widdicombe and Nelson-Matter they called them. They were very prominent, and later on other men came into Grand Rapids that weren’t necessarily Grand Rapids people, don’t you know. But it was the main industry for the town for many, many years. Interviewer: Did they ever bring logs down to the Grand River? Mr. Shelby: Oh, yes, there were log jams there at Leonard Street, and Bridge Street, that’s where a number of them. Baxter’s [history] will show that. Interviewer: Do you remember seeing any of them? Mr. Shelby: Yes, I do; they were very visible. Interviewer: What was it like? �9 Mr. Shelby: The river was just jammed with logs, and they spilled over the dams, you know. And, it was almost an annual affair, in the Grand River. Interviewer: Where would they take the logs out? Mr. Shelby: Well, up there where the Rowe Hotel is, there’d be, you know where that is. There was a big dam there, you know. You could see it from the top of our house, the whole river in front and everywhere, you know. West side was often under water, good share of the west side of the city. Interviewer: It was quite frequent then? Mr. Shelby: Oh yes, I mean once a year, in the springtime. Interviewer: What could you see from the top of your house? How much of the city could you see? Mr. Shelby: Well, you couldn’t see too much to the east, but you could pretty well to the (wood pile?), I used to try and sneak and see Lake Michigan, but it wasn’t high enough, you know, you could look ten or fifteen miles. Oh yes. Interviewer: Do you think that a project like this is important; do you think it is valuable to go around and interview people that can remember those past days? Mr. Shelby: Well, I think that is a very interesting page in the history of the growth of the city, what causes it, what prevents it and where it reaches its summit, and then it sort of stagnates or goes downhill, you might say. Other types of this business come in like the metal, we didn’t have many metal industries as I remember, they decided to change over from wood to metal was gradual and persistent, and so we do have metal industries here of sizable proportion which we didn’t have in those days. Interviewer: Did many of the lumber barons and so on live in the Hill District? Mr. Shelby: Many of them? Most of them yes, yes, there was well along Fulton street and a where Mr. Blodgett lived on Cherry Street, yes, Cherry Street, Cherry and Madison, you know, and Widdicombe’s lived all along up on Fountain Street, just two blocks above us, you know. Interviewer: How did the lumber people, the lumber men, how did they manage to build their businesses? Mr. Shelby: Well, I’d say the distribution of the furniture you mean? Interviewer: No, how did they manage to get started and get concessions, for example, on land, for cutting timber? Mr. Shelby: I don’t remember other than, I couldn’t exactly describe how those started, except that the lumber was here, and building skill was here, the designers were here, and the money �10 was here, and so it became, it was a growth over the years, you know. It was the predominating industry of the city Interviewer: Why did the Grand Rapids-Indiana Railroad come into being? Why would they have tracks extending from Richmond, Indiana, to the top of Michigan? Mr. Shelby: Well, that was because there was business to be carried, The Pennsylvania Railroad felt it thought that there were opportunities to develop and get bigger, incentive in itself, but they were here because it was a natural location for them, nature furnished that, and so they centered here, don’t you see, and until later on, of course, and then part of their tonnage was agriculture, as a farm produced different crops, lumber was the principle commodity for many years, heavy commodity, don’t you know. I think the railroad has pretty well dominated the city for many years, with furniture, what they carried. Interviewer: Then your father must have been quite an important man? Mr. Shelby: He was.-About the head of everything you could think of. He took a great interest in the development of the city, he was a member of the board of Public Works, and he used to ride around in a hack, asking questions you know, seeing how things were going, that was a month or twice a month, that would occur don’t you know in the summer’s duration. Undoubtedly, his activities were important to the city in that time. He was a director of the Old National Bank, the old hostel, well, I guess we were the biggest customer there at the bank, the National Bank, became the [Old] Kent later on. I have a very good copy of the paper of my father’s and mother’s, and so on and so forth, grandfather, up to the house. Haven’t got it here, but I don’t know whether that would be interesting or not, Grant Schultz takes care of it. Interviewer: I’d like to see it sometime. Mr. Shelby: Yes, well, it’s right there. Interviewer: Did you go away to college? Did you go away to school, to college? Mr. Shelby: Yes, I went to St. Paul’s School, it’s Prep School in Yale. Interviewer: Did some of the other families send their young men off to school? Mr. Shelby: Yes, they did. Interviewer: Where did they go to college? Mr. Shelby: Well, some to Ann Arbor. I had one brother that went to Ann Arbor, one brother’s at Lehigh, because he was an engineer, and I went to Yale, I was of no particular bent, myself, just classics and languages and general education, you know. Interviewer: Did you return to Grand Rapids after college? Mr. Shelby: I came back here, yes, �11 Interviewer: What business did you go into then? Mr. Shelby: In the railroad. I worked in the treasury department. I was made assistant treasurer, assistant to the treasurer or whatever you want to call it. I found the work in subsequent years a little tedious and I got interested in California. I had the money, and I needed the break. [Side 2] Interviewer: What was this investment house in town? That you worked for, was that located, did it have an office here in Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: The what? Interviewer: That investment house? Mr. Shelby: Oh, no, they was national in Boston, New York, Chicago, those are the most prominent things… Interviewer: Well, where were you located with that company? Mr. Shelby: Here. Interviewer: In Grand Rapids? Mr. Shelby: Right. Interviewer: What happened to the company? Mr. Shelby: Well, I told you, Ivar Kreuger ruined the company by match-scandals… Interviewer: Could you tell me a little about that? What happened, and how it happened? Mr. Shelby: Well, it’s something, he committed suicide. He dealt on the New York-Chicago when this happened, there was panic in Chicago. I happened to go there that very night and there was panic throughout the exchanges when that occurred. Interviewer: What year was that? Mr. Shelby: It was in, I can’t be accurate about that, now. I’d have to look it up. Interviewer: Was panic the… Mr. Shelby: It was the stock exchange. It was, you know Ivar Kreuger. We’ve got plenty of sources that have written into that. Interviewer: What did, did that have an effect on Grand Rapids? �12 Mr. Shelby: Well, not exactly, no, I wouldn’t say that, although it did have an affect all over the United States, in the financial world. Quite a great affect. He was known as the Swedish match king. Interviewer: I’ve heard of him. Mr. Shelby: No, you don’t hear of them now, you know. I think ,as a matter of fact, I think one of his activities was making these, what do you call them, these university out east, you know, varsity-like these big football places and baseball places, you know. Interviewer: What do you mean stadiums? Mr. Shelby: Stadiums, yes. He was a brilliant, brilliant man in his day. That disaster ended him. It shattered a lot of people at that time. I was selling insurance stocks; someone came to me and thought I was a good material to sell insurance stocks, which I did. And then later when the Henry Higginson for Mr. Whitmer, was a prominent man in those days. You know I was associated with him and represented Henry Higginson. I made sales and often I would score in New York and so forth. Interviewer: What are some of the more memorable experiences of your youth in Grand Rapids? What are some of the things you remember most clearly? Mr. Shelby: Well, going to the circus was one of the things as a child, and the kind of got the city grew must have had one occasion when the city determined to pave Canal Street. Which was then nothing but dirt, you know. So Canal Street was paved, as a single operation, brand new to the city, don’t you know, and the whole town turned out at that time and went down and danced on Monroe Street, along Canal Street, they called it. Interviewer: What was it paved with? Mr. Shelby: Huh? Interviewer: What was it paved with? Mr. Shelby: Pavement, you know, concrete. That was the first time that it ever had happened to the city? We had wooden sidewalks, you know on Monroe Street, wooden sidewalks. Concrete was just coming in, so they were gradually replaced. You know, right ahead on Monroe Street there was wooden sidewalks and one place I remember in particular the dairy there the milk was spilled over the sidewalks and the sun would make it stink, you know. Pretty loud smelling, so that, as the years went on that was the place for concrete. Interviewer: Why was the circus memorable? Mr. Shelby: Well, that was the chief public entertainment. Barnum & Bailey, and the half of a dozen of those, some local, but Barnum & Bailey was the big organization and that was that. We �13 also made a big deal over the Fourth of July that, we saved up our money and bought firecrackers and bombs, and pretty well turned the town upside down on the Fourth of July. Interviewer: How would the circus come to town in those days? Mr. Shelby: Well, they had their own wagons, the railroads transported them; they had them these big lots. There were several lots devoted to holding the circus, and of course in the morning what they would do is have a parade through the downtown section. Interviewer: Was that quite a big event? Mr. Shelby: Was for us; that was enormous. Interviewer: Circus Wagons… Mr. Shelby: Sounds rather primitive now to you, I guess, but it was for me entertainment then, for youngsters, you know, otherwise we made our own fun. Walking on stilts - I used to have stilts, with blocks that high, you know. The gang would go over on Saturday afternoon [and maybe along the D and M tracks,] go out and kill frogs; that was a big pursuit is frog legs. You see, it was all very simple. Interviewer: That sounds different to me, different age… Mr. Shelby: Sure. Interviewer: Do you think there was any one particular event that kind of ended that age? Mr. Shelby: No, it was gradual. I think one, I think later on the success of the movies they had a pronounced effect on people’s habits and thoughts and interests. Interviewer: How so? Mr. Shelby: Well, it was a new idea, don’t you know, in entertainment. Then theatres begun to be built, and people formed the habit of going to see these clever actors. The theatre was, the Powers’ Theatre of course was the fore runner of that and most prominent actors would come to Grand Rapids during the season and this is, we were all interested in that— good plays. That would be a cultural thing, I presume, you could call it that, entertainment. And then later on the movies, of course, was the enormous influence on people’s habits, because they were perfected and more enjoyable. Interviewer: Was opening night at the Powers’ Theatre, when a new act would come to town a big event? The opening night? Mr. Shelby: Well, I imagine yes, the actors did have an unusual prominence in those days in the entertainment field. It just wasn’t very much other than as a competitor, don’t you know? There was people interested in plays and their presentation and their skill and ability and entertainment �14 ability of the actors was very succeeding and greatness to be up there and play: All of us, if there was any interest at all. Interviewer: Did any actors come and visit you at your house? Mr. Shelby: No, no, we never had any. No, I wasn’t that intimate with them, but we were exceedingly interested in their playing and their ability. Interviewer: That’s a little different from today; almost everything in that way in entertainment is the movies? Mr. Shelby: Yes, it is vastly different. It was more of course, it was the only people in the upper brackets would sustain the theatre in those days, compared with today. It used to cost money to go to the theatre, don’t you know? And Powers’ Opera House was the very center, and they had a second-grade Redmond’s Grand Opera House on the corner of Monroe, and they were cheaper things, you know, these opera companies, they called themselves, just singing and acting, and that was during the summer, that was quite a feature of the city. And we had a very low-down place as you were, you weren’t supposed to look at… Interviewer: Where was that? Mr. Shelby: Smith’s, that was a block off of Monroe…you weren’t even supposed to glance that way. That was a, you know… Interviewer: Did you ever go there? Mr. Shelby: No. Interviewer: You never did? Mr. Shelby: No, I didn’t have the occasion to be ruined; never more than looked at it, I guess. Moving shipees they called them then. Of course the morals of the town then were pretty open, they were, oh, whole districts of houses you know, there was a, oh, lower part of the town now along the river, you know. Interviewer: Is that right? Mr. Shelby: Oh, yes, houses, public houses of prostitution. Interviewer: Were they tolerated by the police? Mr. Shelby: Oh, yes, there were a number of them, you know, yup, that’s where they got rid of their excess energy. Interviewer: That’s interesting. �15 Mr. Shelby: It was unmentionable part of the town, don’t you know? The characteristic of all the countries at that time. Interviewer: You know, you never read that in history books? Mr. Shelby: No, you…. Interviewer: Baxter never mentioned it. Mr. Shelby: No, no I guess that’s one of the things they ignore. As refinement came about that was put to one side. Interviewer: How do you mean refinement? Mr. Shelby: Well. I mean refinement in place, in the public; rough and ready stuff was all out; people became more cultured, more choosy. They weren’t necessarily aristocrats, but they were supposed to be a cut above the common herd. Interviewer: What caused that, what would cause the change in…? Mr. Shelby: Attitude of the public? Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Shelby: Oh, I don’t know, just a gradual interest in better things of life, more enduring things, less animalism, more intellectual pleasures, so on and so forth. Things that wouldn’t interest you anymore because they were too rough and ready, and too crude. It was the growth of refinement, which was common in America. It was changing; things that were once very popular gradually lose their force. Other things were adopted, people generally had broader life. They began to circulate more and form more interest in sports, you might say, tennis, and golf later. I remember the whole growth of golf, when it first came here I remember Yale, a very famous Scotsman came over and we watched his performance and then on why the growth of golf kept growing and growing. I never took it up, I don’t care for it myself, I liked tennis. But it did, it became a sport that was adopted from Scotland, wasn’t it? But baseball of course was and it still is the chief passion of American sport’s world. Baseball, football. Interviewer: Was there any tennis clubs here in town where you could play? Mr. Shelby: Yes, quite a number of them. Interviewer: Were there? Mr. Shelby: There was a Cardinal Mark with a basketball. Interviewer: Where was some of those Clubs located? �16 Mr. Shelby: Well, let’s see there, up there around the Hollister family had several courts up there they allowed you to used by those who played tennis and elsewhere, like the Kent Country Club offered them. Other Clubs…. Interviewer: Where did the Hollisters live? Mr. Shelby: Where did the Hollisters live? Interviewer: Yes. Mr. Shelby: Up on, between Fountain and Fulton, they were very prominent people here. Head of the bank, head of the Old National Bank, and leaders in Grand Rapids, the Hollister family. Interviewer: Well, I think that’s enough. If I think of anything else I’ll come down and talk to you again alright? Mr. Shelby: Alright [PAUSES THEN CONTINUES] Mr. Shelby: But I was born in the Booth house on Fountain Street, that’s where I was born, well, that was my grandpa that bought these three lots and then my father built the one on Lafayette and Mr. Wallen, my uncle built the one on Fountain and Lafayette. The Booth house it was later occupied by a number of different people over the years, five or six, would you believe. In fact it was the Saints Rest Club that one time when bachelors, five or six prominent men lived there in the house on Fountain Street, many years after we sold it. It had a ballroom, you know, a beautiful ballroom upstairs, it’s just as substantial as the day it was built. Interviewer: That’s the house on Lafayette? Mr. Shelby: All of them Interviewer: All three. Mr. Shelby: The same characteristics. Interviewer: Why did you sell the homes? Mr. Shelby: Why did I sell them? I had to settle the estate. Unfortunately, there was no price for real estate at that time. I only got five thousand dollars and I was asking seventy thousand for it. Interviewer: When was it that you had settled the estate? Mr. Shelby: Oh, gosh, I don’t know, I’d have to look it up. Interviewer: One of those houses has three apartments out of your one bedroom? You got it partitioned into three different rooms? �17 Mr. Shelby: No, it was one room, my bedroom. Interviewer: And what’s it like today? Mr. Shelby: What? Interviewer: What’s it like today? They partitioned your bedroom? Mr. Shelby: Yes Interviewer: They made three rooms out of your one room. Mr. Shelby: That’s right, well three pretty big rooms though. Well, for instance, from the end of the dining room to the end of the library was about eighty feet, down on the first floor cause the dining room was about thirty-five feet long, the library, the living room was equal with that, then the hall there in front was very big, that; then the maid’s room off of that, the dining room. A big house; big. Mr. Shelby: Where did you want to put this stuff? Interviewer: Well, what we’re thinking of… [END OF TAPE] INDEX B G Barnum & Bailey · 12 Benedict, Mrs. · 7 Blodgett, Mr. · 9 Boise, Dr. · 2 Boise, Edward · 2 Booth · 2 Booth, Mrs. · 2 Gage and Benedict · 7 Gage, Mr. · 7 Gay, Mr. · 8 Gorham, Fred · 2 Grand Rapids-Indiana Railroad · 2, 10 H C Hollister family · 16 Cass, George W. · 2, 3 Cass, Lewis · 3 Century Furniture Company · 7 J Jandorf · 5 F Ford, Melborne · 3 K Kent Country Club · 4, 16 �18 Kreuger, Ivar · 11 N Redmond’s Grand Opera House · 14 Rowe Hotel · 9 S Nelson-Matter · 7, 8 Old Kent Bank · 10 Old National Bank · 10, 16 Saints Rest Club · 16 School Furniture Company · 6, 7 Schultz, Grant · 10 Shelby, W.R. · 3 Shelby, William R. · 2 St. Mark’s church · 5 P U Pennsylvania Railroad · 2, 10 Perkins, Gaius · 6 Perkins, Mr. · 7 Phoenix Furniture Company · 7 Powers’ Opera House · 14 Powers’ Theatre · 13 President’s Club · 4 Uhl, Edward F. · 3 O R Ramona Park · 6 W Wallen, Mr. · 16 Whitmer, Mr. · 12 Widdicombe family · 9 Widdicombe, John · 8 � https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/ff6713a3f6b8a6e44bb3fe13f1fd634c.mp3 27dd93a856f48df8c36d29ea00efebca 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_3-4Shelby Title A name given to the resource Shelby, George (1 of 2) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Shelby, George Description An account of the resource George Cass Shelby was born in Grand Rapids, Michigan on December 5, 1878. 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) Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 1971 Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Lemmen Library and Archives