COOPER SCHOOL ORAL HISTORY PROJECT EDITED DRAFT Debra Yerg Miles Audiotape [This is an interview with Debra Yerg Miles on July 10, 2006. The interviewer is Philippa Nye. The transcriber is Philippa Nye.] PN: We usually start with the question that people can t remember, which is, can you remember your first day of school? DM: Actually I do. PN: Do you really? DM: Well, yeah. I was very very shy, and terrified to go to school. So I remember my mother bringing me down to Mrs. [Merle] Madden s class. I remember the teacher and everything. She wasn t the most patient person, either. So my Mom tried to leave me there and I was crying and crying, so she took me home. She thought the next day she d try. Finally she took me down to the principal after about the fourth day! And left me with the principal and just went home and I was just. So I do remember that first few days of school. After that I was fine, but it was just the trauma. And it s still with me. PN: Did you spend the day in the principal s office? DM: No, he just waited until she got out of the school, I think. And then I saw my Dad go by in his truck going to work, so that got me going again, but finally I settled down. You d never know now that I was that shy, but PN: I guess being a realtor you have to be pretty outgoing! DM: You do. PN: That s funny. And was that kindergarten? DM: Yes, kindergarten. PN: And were you born in this neighborhood? DM: Yes, actually my mother was born in the house that we grew up in, and she my grandmother lived there with us. I wasn t born in that house but my self and my three sisters all 1
live in the house. The same house.. my cousins lived next door. With There were five of them. And then their cousins lived up the street. Vivian McLean. PN: You re related to her? DM: Not by blood, but I always call her Aunt Vivian. I still do. And they grew up up the street. And my other grandparents were in the next block. So it was family. We were just a very tight knit family. So we spent a lot of time playing outside with cousins and stuff like that. PN: So how far back do you go? Your mother was born here. Did your grandmother grow up here too? DM: No, she was from the Midwest. She actually came over in a covered wagon, I think when, I don t know how old she was, I think in her twenties. I m sorry I didn t listen to her stories better. PN: Don t you wish now! DM: My mother knows all the stories; that s why I told my mother we were doing this but My grandmother had all of her five children at home. So they were all born in the house. And when I was sixteen my Dad tore the house down to the foundation and rebuilt it. So it s a newer house now. But I still remember the old house. And my sisters and I shared a room. But we were a very close knit family. My childhood memories are playing with my cousins and other kids on the block. PN: And where exactly was the house? DM: It is on 19 th, the end of 19 th, so it s overlooking the city. On the dead end there. PN: So you were north of Charlestown. DM: Yeah, just north. PN: What was the address? DM: 3711 19 th Ave SW. PN: Its been fun to go back to the County records and we ve found a lot of old pictures of the people s houses that we ve interviewed. DM: Oh, I bet! I just... I have really good memories of my childhood. The whole neighborhood playing Kick the Can. Games like that that we used to.i used to be outside all the time. Of course there wasn t the traffic there is now. And roller skating down all the way from the end of the block all the way down and going round the corner and looking for cars. PN: Oh, you mean all the way down Andover, and you d hit Delridge 2
DM: Well, no, not Delridge. PN: That would be a long way down. DM: No, Charlestown. I didn t go that far. I wasn t that brave. And then there was horses. My other cousins lived by South Seattle Community College. She had a horse, and she d bring her horse down and we d take turns riding the horse. PN: Oh, nice. So what were the other family names of your relatives? DM: My cousins next door were Calhouns. That was my mother s maiden name. And then McLeans. And my grandparents were Yerg. That s my maiden name. Then I had some other great aunts and stuff that lived when we were growing up also in other houses around us, and they passed away when I was about ten. But I still remember one aunt would give us sugar cubes. That was our one treat, you know. PN: What s your heritage, ethnically. DM: German, from my dad s side. And German from my mom s, and Scottish, and Swedish. PN: And what were the people around you? Was there one predominant group, or a mix? DM: It was a mix. I don t ever remember when I was a kid anyway, paying attention to who s what, you know? But yeah everybody was pretty mixed. PN: Older generations said the top of the hill was pretty Scandinavian, but it had probably diversified quite a bit. DM: Uh, huh. PN: What did your mom do? Was she a homemaker all your life? DM: Uh huh. She worked at Fisher s Flour Mill, probably in her very early twenties; then she worked at Sears for a year or something. Then she married my dad and then she was a homemaker. And my grandmother, her mother lived with us; of course it was her house we were living in. And my uncle lived there also, my mom s brother. And so, like I said, there was family everywhere. You couldn t get away with anything. PN: So were you all crammed into the house? Sounds like there were a lot of people. DM: Yeah. I shared a room with my two sisters. Then my other sister slept in another bedroom with my grandmother. And then my uncle had another room and my parents were upstairs. Like when I was sick my grandma would usually take care of me because she was kind of like a second mom. It was crowded. It only had one bathroom, four girls. And we only had central heat. There was only one grate where the heat would come up. So I remember in the morning 3
standing there in my nightgown trying to get warm. Because there was no heat in the kitchen or anywhere else in the house except that one place. And we had a dressing room, a place where all us girls dressed before school. So it was pretty I don t want to say rustic but I guess it was a little bit. We had running water and all, plumbing, but now talking about it it was like it didn t bother me at that time. Once I got warm I was fine. PN: What year were you born? DM: 1950 PN: And was it coal heat you had in the house? DM: No, it was oil. I don t remember I guess it must have been an oil furnace. Now my mom has gas. She still lives there. Yup. She s not going anywhere. PN: What about your dad, what did he do? DM: He worked for Bethlehem Steel. And then he started his own company, WesSteel Company, it was a steel fabrication shop down in South Park. Did really well. Then he sold it to my sister s husband, my sister and her husband, I should say. So he to this day has the shop and has gone into partnership with a couple of other people and it s doing really well. So that s kind of neat to see it carry on after my Dad. My dad passed away in 1995. PN: When he worked for Bethlehem was he a management person or DM: No, he was with the steel. I remember him coming home and always having burns or cuts. He got hurt a lot in there. It was a pretty rough place to work back then, I think. He didn t like it much at all. Then he had a greeting card business for a while, which was the total opposite of working with steel! But he didn t stay in that for too long, then he started his own company. PN: Do you know what exactly he did at the mill? DM: No I really don t. I just remember him getting hurt a lot. PN: Um, how did you get to school everyday? Did you walk down the hill? DM: Usually. Actually it seemed like my mom would drive us sometimes when the weather was nasty and stuff, but otherwise we would walk to school together. And I d even walk home for lunch. I remember in first grade I remember walking home for lunch, and, I shouldn t really date myself here, but watching Wanda Wanda ; you probably know it.. PN: No, I don t know! DM: It was a local show. But eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and tomato soup. But I walked home by myself just so I could watch that show and have my peanut butter and jelly 4
sandwich and tomato soup. But we I mean it was fun walking to school with everybody and walking home. You always had company, with all of us. PN: What was the neighborhood around your house and around the school like then? DM: Well around my house of course it was mostly family. Certainly, we played with other kids in the neighborhood. It was kind of mellow. There s always, when you are a kid, there was always somebody, I m not going to mention names, but one family that their dad was a drunk and if we d go there for Halloween he d always scream at us and stuff. You know, you have memories of that. But for the most part everybody was mellow and laid back. And nobody bothered anybody. Everybody seemed to get along well. PN: Did it seem safe? DM: Oh, very. The only thing I ever remember was that I m trying to remember how old I was, maybe ten or something, and there was talk that someone had flashed they didn t call it back then, flashing but And that s the only time I remember anything happened. And no one saw it, I don t know where the story came from, I don t even know if it was true. But I do remember that, that the kids were talking about it. But I always felt extremely safe, never any fear of at all. PN: What about down around the school? What did it look like then? Do you remember stores? What has changed? DM: Oh boy, I have to regroup here There was a Safeway store, down under the bridge. PN: On Spokane. DM: Yeah. I think there was a grocery store. We used to always now it isn t politically correct, but then we called them the Chinese stores. I think there was one down there and one there and one down on West Marginal Way. They were all owned by the same family, the Quans. PN: Yeah, they owned that one until recently (indicates toward Hudson St.). DM: Yeah, isn t that amazing? But around here, of course there were no buildings over there (points to Delridge playfield). We would just go over the overpass and play in the park and stuff. I don t know. I don t remember any other stores or buildings, it was mostly just houses and woods and stuff. PN: So the Quans had that one, and others? DM: I m not sure if I remember that right, that there was one down this way from the Safeway store, maybe not. PN: On the corner of Andover Street? 5
DM: Yeah. But maybe not. But there was one on West Marginal Way. Over by Frasers Boiler Service, do you know where that is? And over on Harbor Island there was one, there used to be one. I don t recall if they owned that one. But when you drive over Harbor Island on the Viaduct there, it was right down in there PN: I didn t know they had other stores. DM: And the whole family were always working there. I can t remember the kids names. PN: Did they go to school with you? DM: Yeah. But they worked a lot. It s funny, you can cut it out if you want to, but there were no African Americans here. There was one family, two actually, there was Dorothy, and she lived down here down this street in a house, and there were the Houston kids, and they lived down on West Marginal Way, and they lived in a maybe two room house with ten kids. PN: Wow. DM: And my mom, she felt sorry for them, so if she drove us to school, she d go pick Deborah up, she was my age, she was in my class, and Peggy up, she was in my sister s class, and they had a couple of brothers who were around the same age so we d go pick them all up and take them to school. PN: It doesn t sound like it was really on your way. DM: No. My mom, she was a very thoughtful and very kind person and she and they were always so polite and neat and you d never know they lived in that little house all crammed in there. In fact, Deborah still calls me once in a while. She lives in California. And... you ought to talk to her, my goodness. PN: Sure, if you want to give me a phone number or email DM: Yeah, because she remembers a lot more than I do. I m just going, I don t remember that. Of course everybody remembers things differently. But this was the best part of her life was living down there and going to school here. She was devastated when her mother moved them away. PN: So she went directly from here to California? DM: No, she where did she say she moved to? Like the Central District, or something. Just not in West Seattle. I m sure they got a bigger house, which was a good thing. But she is, to this day just devastated by it. She just loved this school. So she d be a good one to talk to. I ll get her phone number for you. PN: What did her parents do? 6
DM: Her mother? I don t know, I don t want to say. I kind of think her mom cleaned houses and her dad was a worker but I don t recall what he did. PN: Interesting. What about other racial diversity. Do you remember generally what the makeup of your class would have been? DM: Just white, Caucasian. Those were the only two black families that I actually remember. PN: And not too many Asians? DM: No. The Quans were the only ones I remember. PN: So you started at Cooper in 1954, 1955? DM: It would have kindergarten, so 1955. Then I went to Boren after that, which was another experience PN: Oh, yeah? So you went it was K through 5, when you went? DM: K through 6. PN: So Boren was just seventh, eighth. DM: and ninth. PN: Then you went to West Seattle. DM: Yes. PN: OK, then why don t we talk about Cooper. What were the were there any issues of the day for the school or the neighborhood, when you were there? Do you remember any major events that affected you, or that people talked about a lot? DM: No, I guess what I remember back then for myself, and I don t know if you want this in the interview or not but my family s belief was they didn t believe in medical doctors, they were naturopaths. So I wasn t allowed to my sisters and I and I don t know if it traumatized them, but it kind of did me, was that I wasn t allowed to get shots. You know, vaccines. And so...i got, not harassed, but talked about from the nurse that was here. She didn t really approve. They thought we were Christian Scientists. Which we weren t, but that was the perception. And so The teacher I had in fourth grade she brought it up to me too. So what I started to do was, I would, when everybody lined up to go get vaccines, and I was left, and another girl, LeAnn, who was a good friend of mine anyway, and she would say to Well I m not going because I go to my doctor to get mine. So that s what I started telling the kid. So still to this day it sticks with me that I was looked down upon not by the other kids necessarily, but some of the teachers and the 7
nurse, for sure, because we didn t go to medical doctors. And I never got any vaccines actually, my whole life. PN: Was it a religious thing? DM: No, they just were My mom s grandfather was a medical doctor. But back then he didn t use very strong medicine. We used homeopathic medicine. So did my cousins. I m not sure if they go their vaccines or not. PN: Was it Grace Ahrens? DM: Yeah. PN: She was here forever. DM: Yeah. I still remember that she didn t like me. This one time I, I think it was only like in first grade, I came down to the nurse because I said I didn t feel good. And she said Oh, you re fine, go back to your class. And I did and threw up when I got there. In front of the whole class. And I was so embarrassed. She thought I was lying, I guess. So I showed her. Yes, it was Mrs. Ahrens. PN: That s too bad. DM: That just my perception. You know, when you re a kid. And I was pretty, probably overly sensitive to things too. But I didn t like to stand out and it seemed like that made me stand out, so that made me different. Pretty normal for a kid. PN: Did you stay with the same kids through school? DM: Through junior high. Then I went to West Seattle and they went to Sealth. So I got in with a different group in West Seattle, so no, I didn t PN: But during the time you were in elementary school it was pretty consistent. DM: Yup. PN: But did you have best friends? DM: Well, LeeAnn Seeger was one of my best friends. PN: I think I met her. DM: Did you? She s a doctor now PN: Down in California. 8
DM: Her mother was always very active in the school doing things. Monica Krantz, was another best friend. Those two are the ones I remember most. Deborah Houston was a friend. But those two were the main people. PN: Can you remember anything about what you learned. Specific things you liked learning. Particular things they really, that were important values that they were trying to teach you DM: from the teachers? PN: Yes. Any particular subjects that stick out for you? DM: No, I liked gym class (laughs). I was always outside. I was not a tomboy, but I was always very active, I still am, it is just my personality. I remember gym class very well. I liked we used to draw a lot, although I don t seem to have a talent for it. But my dad was very artistic and my older sister, and I think that made me try a little more, but PN: Did you have a specific art class? DM: No, you just did everything in one class. And my two daughters, I want to mention that, my two daughters went here too. Anyway, no, you did everything in the same class. Let s see Miss [Norma] Greathouse, she was my fifth grade teacher, and Mr. [Jerry] Keeling, no Miss [Pauline] Hicklin, she was my sixth grade teacher, I think. Yeah, I still have memories of the teachers and in fact my mother just found my report cards and gave them to me a few weeks ago. So I was looking at those and they brought back some memories. But, no, I don t remember fights, at all, like happens now. It was all very innocent. That might be kind of clichéd, but it was a lot more innocent time. Everyone rode their bikes and played outside. You could hardly wait for recess and to go to gym class and all that. There were never any fights on the playground. PN: Did they still segregate you by sex, and have separate playgrounds for boys and girls? DM: Yeah, they did. Let me think about that for a minute. Yes, I believe they did. But it seemed like there was an area where we could mingle or something but I can t remember where it was. It seemed like the boys had that side (south side) and the girls had part of this side (north side) but then the boys could go to the other side too, they had more room than we did. PN: (Laughs) It s not fair! DM: I think they did keep us segregated though. Not in the classroom but on the playground. PN: What did you play? DM: Oh, jump rope, Double Dutch, we still had that, and Tether Ball. Those are the two things I remember playing the most. PN: And what about after school? What did you do after school to entertain yourself? 9
DM: Well, my mom was there, and my grandma, and all my cousins so I y know. Like my mom was into gardening, so each one of us girls had a garden we were in charge of and stuff. You know, my parents made the attempt of this is your turn to do the dishes, but that didn t stick. So I don t know, we didn t have a lot of chores to do or anything. So I just remember going home and playing outside. PN: So you stayed in the area around your house. DM: Very much so. Monica lived on 16 th, I mean 18 th, and then LeeAnn lived on 16 th at the curve when you come around from the college in a big house up there, and we had, oh yeah, I forgot about that. We had the See Krantz Yerg Detective Agency. This is really bringing back a lot of memories. I don t know what we did, I think we told people we d investigate things for them, but we never got any jobs. So yeah, other than going to see Ann Rogge, she was a friend later in sixth grade, she lived on 16 th too, but other than that I didn t go off the hill too much. PN: Did you participate in any organized groups? DM: They didn t really [have] a lot of organized sports. In junior high I did play softball. And I got into volleyball a little bit. But in grade school I don t remember that they really had we played badminton or made our own sports. PN: The community center didn t offer anything? DM: We did square dancing. Me and Monica and LeeAnn did. They were a lot more active. They were in Girl Scouts. And that s why I wanted to do it. PN: Was it Girl Scouts? DM: Probably Brownies. PN: Someone had said that the Salvation Army had a group called Sunshine Girls or something different. DM: I don t know about that. I wasn t a part of it. PN: Where was there to play? DM: Oh gosh. We used to play over the hill. In front of my mom s house we used to have trails going down cause the bridge wasn t there, it was just the lower bridge. There was the Quan s store, we would walk down there. And so we would go up and down the hill and play down the hill. Over east of us, the Helyens lived there, they ve lived there for years that was where my aunt, great aunt used to live until she passed away then they bought that house, and we used to play over their hill and there were stairs down to West Marginal. We used to go all over and there was never any fear of anything, anyone in the woods or we never had any problems. 10
PN: Your parents never told you to stay in a certain area. DM: No. PN: Did you ever play at Longfellow Creek? DM: No. PN: You just stayed there on the hill. DM. Yup. It was wonderful in a way but it was a little bit stifling. My personality was more exploring and wanting to do different things and I couldn t, which is probably why I rebelled. PN: Were there any rivalries with other schools? DM: No. Until I got to West Seattle. PN: With Sealth? DM: Yeah. That was so silly. There were a lot of fights at Boren. PN: Really? DM: Yeah. Oh geez. PN: How was Boren different from Cooper? DM: It was a rough school. They bussed a lot of people in there. So it was very um it was mostly African American. Asian, too, but mostly African American. And they bussed them all in and there were a lot of fights. Daily. PN: So there was no one bussed to Cooper. Why was Boren different? DM: That was the first year of bussing. PN: So it was bussing specifically for integration. 11
DM: Yes. They came down from High Point, and they bussed from oh, maybe by Cleveland or Beacon Hill, maybe the Central District. I don t remember. But I just remember being harassed and it was a rough school. Especially after this. A rude awakening to real life, I guess. PN: Did you feel like you were in the minority as a white person? DM: Not necessarily a minority, but it seemed like it was half and half. But it was just a roughness that I wasn t used to. A girl that was my age told me that her big sister who was in ninth grade was going to beat me up if I didn t give her my lunch money, and I knew her older sister and she did beat people up all the time. So I gave her my lunch money for about a week. Then I thought this is ridiculous so then I stood up to her and she backed off. But, oh yeah, you d be standing in line to get lunch and there were certain girls too who were tougher than the rest so they d cut in line and someone would say something to them and then a fight would break out. It was pretty stressful. But not here at all, there was nothing like that here. PN: Did you walk down to Boren, or were you bussed down to Boren? DM: No, they wouldn t bus us because we weren t far enough away. So my mother would just drive us. PN: Oh, she would just drive you. So, the majority of schools, I wonder if people were generally being bussed around. DM: I think they were just trying it out. I think it was the first school to do it. PN: Oh, it was the first school to do it? I ll have to go look that up. DM: Yes. I might be mistaken but I think it was. That was the first year it opened and the first time they tried that. PN: What about when you got to West Seattle? Was there any stigma about coming from Delridge, coming from this side? DM: There was. There was.if you lived on the other side of 35 th. That s why a lot of times I didn t tell people where I lived. Because I didn t want to get I don t know what they would have done, maybe nothing, but there was a stigma to it. I think it is certainly better now, but there are still some people who feel that way, if you re on the other side of 35 th. PN: What would they say? DM: You know, I don t know that people. People would talk about it, not necessarily directly to me, but that was the feeling in the school that it was kids from the other side of the tracks. So I wasn t about I mean maybe everyone knew, but I wasn t going around telling everybody where I lived. I guess I wanted to fit in or something. But there was definitely something about living on this side. 12
PN: When you were here did you feel like when you were going to Cooper there was a range of people s economic situation or did you feel that everyone was pretty similar? DM: Everybody was pretty similar. I felt very comfortable and I think my family, other than the medical business, was pretty well respected in the neighborhood anyway. I never felt like I was ostracized or anything from where I was, but in West Seattle, I did. PN: Did you feel poor? Do you think your family thought of themselves as poor? DM: No, I think, more middle class. My dad certainly did better later on. When I was at West Seattle, they had remodeled the house and it was a nice big house with a view. But it was still on the other side of the tracks. When I went to the fundraiser [for Cooper], I was so impressed that people were finally paying attention to this area. I was so happy. So I donated. I thought, hey, if they re doing it, and I grew up in the neighborhood and went to this school, I was certainly willing to help. PN: So did you actually move out of the neighborhood at some point? DM: You know I moved up to West Seattle and I then I moved to Federal Way. I had two daughters. Then I got divorced. My dad bought a house up the street from Vivian [McLean s], on 20 th, so I would have a decent place to live with the girls. I was going to school, college. I lived there for probably two years. And then I got myself together enough to buy my own house, on 21 st, so the girls could still go to Cooper. Then they would go to my mom s after school PN: so that you could work. DM: Yes. I probably lived there 14 or 15 years. Then I moved to Port Orchard, lived over there for a while and now I just moved back. PN: Are you on the right side of the tracks now? DM: Yes. My one sister lives on 17 th, and my other sister lives up the street from my mother, and they ask, Why don t you buy a house up here? And I said, I don t think so. I don t live that far West Beach, the condominiums over by the ferry dock. I can t believe how good the old neighborhood looks, all the new homes, all the remodeling that s been done, the prices. It s like a cool place to live now. PN: When you moved to West Seattle, is that when you got married? DM: We just rented a duplex, then we bought a house in Federal Way. PN: Was it someone you knew from high school? DM: He was like four years older than me. I met him after high school. He went to West Seattle High School. He s from that side of the tracks. 13
(discussion of interview process) PN: If you got into trouble, what happened? Did you ever get into trouble? DM: The only time I ever remember getting in trouble was Mrs. [Pauline] Hicklin; she was my fifth grade teacher. Carol was kind of a friend of mine but not really. She sat next to me; she was a foster child of Mrs. Hicklin s. Carol used to always copy my papers. We got busted for it, but Mrs. Hicklin didn t blame her; she blamed me because she thought I was cheating. I was still pretty shy at that point and I certainly never would cheat, and I didn t ever lie, so it really was pretty upsetting to me. I don t remember her doing anything to me, just embarrassing me in front of everyone, calling me a liar and Carol just sitting there, not saying anything. That was the only time. I never got sent down to the principal. I was too quiet and studious for that. Now high school--that was a different story. PN: What about other kids when they were bad? What happened to them? Did the teachers still use corporal punishment? DM: No. I never remember anybody getting hit. I don t really remember anybody getting in too much trouble, maybe getting sent down to the principal and who knows what he did. It was a nice group of kids. They were very respectful of the teachers. I think back then there was respect, I don t know if I want to call it fear, but respect for authority. It was totally different back then. It was nice; it was a pleasant atmosphere to learn in. PN: Who was your favorite teacher? DM: Mrs. [Beulah] Penney, my third-grade teacher. I really liked her. PN: What did you like about her? DM: She was just mellow and never got mad at anybody. She could be stern; I don t remember her being stern even. I just remember her being kind of mellow and a good teacher. I think she was kind of soft-spoken. PN: Did they have to teach every subject? DM: They taught everything. PN: What do you remember besides the three R s music, home ec? DM: No, we didn t do home ec. That was in junior high when we started going to different classes. [interruption for machinery]. We didn t have home ec. The gym class was separate. We had a different teacher for that. Otherwise, it was the same teacher for everything. Music. I don t remember having any music until junior high. Maybe I just don t remember. PN: Do you remember any celebrations, what they did for holidays? 14
DM: All of the traditional kind of stuff. We all went out for Christmas. We used to go caroling up in the neighborhood not the school the neighborhood kids, Aunt Vivian or Aunt Marian, Vivian s sister, would organize that. I just remember singing Christmas carols in class, and we d have an assembly. We d always do art work for any holidays. PN: Which ones do you remember being the big ones other than Christmas Halloween? DM: Yeah, Halloween was a big one. Easter didn t seem to be, I guess we did art work for Easter. I don t think I even knew until I was an adult what Easter was. If you don t [have any religious background], you don t know stuff like that. I guess Christmas and probably Halloween were the two big ones. PN: Do you remember ways that parents got involved? Were there particular events that parents did with the kids or came to school for? DM: They came to school for--i m getting a little bit mixed up between my girls and what happened to me-- PN: They used to do a mother-daughter tea way back in the early days. DM: No, nothing like that. Mother probably wouldn t have gone. I remember the PTA, Leanne s mother was the president for ever, it seemed like. She had older daughters, too. PN: What did the PTA do? Raise money? DM: I just remember seeing the names or hearing the names. I don t remember having fundraisers or bake sales. It seems like we must have, we had a carnival in the drinking fountain room; we used to call it, probably across the hall there. Like if it was raining out, we couldn t go outside, we used to be able to play in the drinking fountain room. PN: The entrance to it is from the playfield? We call it the art room. What do you remember about lunchtime? Did you always go home? DM: No, when I got probably in third grade, I d bring my lunch and eat with the kids in the cafeteria. I remember maybe once buying my lunch. In junior high I did, not in grade school. I d buy milk, but I d always bring my lunch. PN: It seems everyone brought lunch; you kind of wonder who ate it? DM: Well, Leanne. She was always a step above. She had a big house and she always got vaccines at her doctor and bought lunch. PN: Do you remember Thelma Dewitty? DM: No. 15
(discussion of when she taught there) DM: Miss [Cora] Gerken. I remember her. Did you ever hear of her name? She was the special ed teacher. PN: Tell me about that. What were the kids like? Were there a lot of them? DM: They really segregated them. Seemed like there was about ten. They really kept them away from everybody. PN: Even at recess? DM: They didn t play with us or anything. The only thing I remember being around one of the gals, and she came out on the playfield, and I don t remember them ever playing with us. Maybe it was in the hall. I saw her have an epileptic fit. I was so scared, I yelled. The nurse came and made sure she wasn t swallowing her tongue. Other than that I don t ever remember the kids being with us. They never played with us. PN: Were most of them physically disabled? DM: Mostly, maybe a couple emotionally, but they didn t get violent or anything.. PN: They didn t believe in mainstreaming yet. DM: No. She was scary [Miss Gerken]. PN: I think somebody else said that. DM: She used to scare me, she d come out and she was just real stern-looking. She was very protective of her kids. The whole thing was so mysterious. We couldn t be around the kids. Boy if you did anything, she d yell at you, if you were walking too fast She was a scary woman. PN: What was on the playground? It wasn t just underneath the shed that you played, right, you actually went out on an open area? DM: Yes. I just remember Tetherballs. PN: Did you remember portable classrooms? DM: Yes, two. The school was getting crowded. They put a little bit of a damper on the playground, made it less room for us. We didn t have a lot of playground equipment. I just remember taking the big balls and playing dodgeball. There were swings. We used to have to always wear dresses, couldn t wear pants, even at West Seattle H.S. I wore culottes and got sent home. I didn t like to swing cause if there were any boys walking through to go outside, they would make fun of you. Back then, you kind of made your own games, used your imagination. 16
PN: Do you remember if the teachers could be married? DM: I think they were. (Discussion of when that changed, generation of spinster teachers before World War II.) DM: I know Mrs. Hicklin was, Mrs. [Norma] Greathouse, my fourth grade, pretty sure she was, too. PN: Were you aware of kids of their own? DM: No. Just Carol. I don t think Miss Gerken was married. Times have changed. Thank goodness. It wasn t that long ago. PN: How do you think it was different for your kids going here than it was for you? DM: I think it was still pretty mellow for them. They did well, never had any problems. They really enjoyed school. I was more involved, they were in Brownies, that kind of stuff. I was at the school quite a bit. I didn t get on the PTA, but I used to help out a lot in the classroom. They never had any problems. It was very safe. They used to walk to school and to Mom s afterwards. There were more Asians and African-Americans, more of a little bit of everything. It was still a real mellow place. PN: What years did they go? DM: Dene was born in 69, so she started in 74, Jennifer was two years later, in 76. (discussion of needing narrators from 1970 s and of her mother who does not want to be interviewed for the project, suggestion of coming in with grand-daughters) PN: How did you feel like the neighborhood changed between the time you were first here and then came back with your daughters? DM: More people, they had more portables out there. I remember walking into the school and thinking, it still smells the same. It was a nice feeling for me. I liked them going here. It was a good feeling. Sometimes I thought I m doing it to them, having that stigma of being on this side of the tracks. I liked them going to Cooper; it was a nice school, it was close to home. They liked it. They got along. I don t remember fights or anything like that. PN: Was it just as tight a community for them as for you? DM: No, not really. It was different. There was more rentals, more transients. PN: Not the same kids the whole way through like it was for you? 17
DM: A few of them. I think it was different. They used to spend a lot of time with the neighborhood kids, always playing outside. I was pretty strict with my kids. I only let them watch an hour of tv every day. They used to complain. I d tell them, find something to do outside. Ride your bike or do something. They had horses, which didn t stay at my place but stayed down the road. It was pretty laid back, more than in West Seattle with traffic. PN: Where was the horse pasture? DM: The horses were kept in the 6000 block of 21 st. I think they still have the property. The people didn t want to keep the horses anymore, so we moved them to the top of Boeing Hill. That s gone now, but there used to be stables back there. Dene got rid of her horse that used to bite. Midnight, the other horse, we kept him at the stables. We used to let Jennifer go over there with a couple of friends. They brought the horse back to our house. [more discussion of bringing daughters in for interviews] PN: Did you feel like patriotism was a big thing? DM: Very. Yeah, we used to salute the flag every morning and say the Pledge of Allegiance. Very much. There was a flag in every room and some kind of ceremony, maybe when we had our assemblies; they used to walk the flag in, a kind of color guard. It was very patriotic. PN: And do you remember anything related to the Cold War? DM: Like getting under our desks? We used to have to do that. My mom was on 19 th and there used to be a siren over on 20 th at the end of the hill, and it used to off every Wednesday at 12 o clock. It was so loud; I hated that thing. That and getting under the desks. PN: Did that scare you? DM: No. I wasn t scared at all. The siren I didn t like because it was so close to our house and so loud. Sometimes I would forget what time it was and be outside, and oh... I don t know that it really registered with me what exactly it was. PN: You were kind of young. Do you remember hearing the steel mill, whistles for the shifts? DM: To this day, I love hearing trains; it makes me think when I was a kid because there were just small trains at Bethlehem, also trains down at Fishers. I remember how they slammed together and made a lot of noise. I could hear Bethlehem. I still hear that sound or just a train going by. There was a lot of noise, but it didn t bother me. PN: It was sort of a background noise. Is there anything about what you ended up doing with your life that you feel like started here, that living here influenced you? DM: I think that it was a nice way to grow up, and I think it gave me a lot of stability and morals and the way I live my life now, and I ve depended on the family with my two daughters, being a 18
single parent, the family of my sisters and my cousins and my parents. So even though it was kind of confining to me, I still took my girls into that environment, and it wasn t as confining to them. It makes a difference with kids when you have an extended family. It was a unique upbringing, with a family around; it doesn t happen that much anymore. PN: What did your extended family do? Did a lot of them work at steel mill? DM: My uncle next door worked at the shipyards; he died from lung disease. That was bad. Aunt Marion, his wife, was a teacher like Vivian; I think they just taught part-time. I remember Aunt Vivian s husband going to work with his lunchbox, but I don t remember what he did. He didn t talk very much. I don t know what he did. Everybody was blue collar, like my dad. I m sorry that my dad couldn t have seen me get into real estate, but I think he would have been very proud. He was very independent and started his own business. He didn t like working for anybody. I think he would have thought it was neat that I am self-employed. PN: What did you do before real estate? DM: Worked at Airborne Express, Seattle Times, Seafirst Bank, mostly in accounting. I love selling real-estate, very interesting, you meet a lot of interesting people. I think my upbringing has given me a lot of things to help me with that, too. PN: What one word sums up your experiences growing up here? DM: (Laughs.) Oh boy. I guess in a way it was idyllic although it was a little overpowering at times. You felt very protected and very safe, very safe environment to grow up in. Had fun all the time. Very stressless. There was no stress at all. DM: Thank you. (Discussion, mainly comments from PN, of stereotype of the 50 s as idyllic, different from 30 s and 40 s war year babies; they were more hardscrabble. A lot of kids said they felt safe, a tight community incredibly consistent through the interviews. People felt so much like it was really tight-knit. It doesn t have that identity now. Trying to build neighborhood cohesiveness again.) PN: I don t know if there are a lot of the old neighbors left. DM: In West Seattle in general, more than other neighborhoods there are. Like Queen Anne, when you re here, you re here for life. (Discussion of PN growing up in Connecticut, living close to office, paperwork, email transcript) END OF INTERVIEW 19
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