Description:
Carol McReynolds talks with her sisters Judy and Doris about growing up in Ohio, and working with the Friends of the Library in Oklahoma City.
Transcript:
Dana Morrow: My name is Dana Morrow and I work for the Metropolitan Library System and I am here to interview Carol McReynolds, who’s a long-time friend of the library and we will ask her about that later on. But she’s here with her sisters and I’m just going to ask them to each give me their name and where they were born and the day they were born.
Doris Fosnot Zeiser: My name is Doris Fosnot Zeiser. I was born May 28, 1931 in Cincinnati, Ohio and I was born at home at my grandmother’s. My mother and father lived with my mother’s parents at the time.
Carol Fosnot McReynolds: My name is Carol Fosnot McReynolds and I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio on December 1, 1937 in Good Samaritan Hospital.
Judy Fosnot Aarons: And my name is Judy Fosnot Aarons and I was born on October 7, 1940 also at Good Samaritan Hospital, where I had all my kids too.
Dana Morrow: And one of you tell me the names of your parents, and if you could remember where they were born and the date of their birth.
Doris Zeiser: Thelma Shultz Fosnot. She was born in Cincinatti, Ohio. And now wait. Daddy was born August 4, 1912, yes. Okay and my father was George Fosnot, born in Lafayette, Indiana in 1908.
Dana Morrow: And you both, you all three knew your grandparents also. Did you know your grandparents on both sides of the family?
Doris Zeiser: Yes
Dana Morrow: And what were their names?
Carol McReynolds: Abby and John Shultz were my mother’s parents and Clara and Walter Fosnot were my dad’s parents. And grandma and grandpa Shultz were from Cincinatti, Ohio and grandma and grandpa Fosnot were from Lafayette, Indiana. Is that right?
Dana Morrow: And have you gone back far enough to know when your family first came to America?
Doris Zeiser: I think it was back-
Carol McReynolds: Yeah, at least three generations were born here.
Doris Zeiser: And my mother’s mother’s maiden name was Creep, and daddy’s mother’s maiden name was Retoreth.
Dana Morrow: Interesting. Now, you said you knew your grandparents. Tell me how your lives interacted with theirs as young children.
Doris Zeiser: Well I was the first born and born at my grandmother’s and I was the first grandchild. I lived with them until I was five years old and went to kindergarten, so I was probably pretty spoiled. I had two uncles and a great uncle and an aunt also living in the same house.
Dana Morrow: Oh my goodness.
Judy Aarons: Which wasn’t really big enough for all those people
Doris Zeiser: It was a very tiny house. I don’t know how we all managed there, but a lot of people did back in those days.
Dana Morrow: Absolutely, yes.
Judy Aarons: But the other thing was Grandma Fosnot, what about her?
Doris Zeiser: Oh grandma and grandpa got mad because I was baptized Catholic and they didn’t see me until I was five years old. So I said if I had any cute days, they were gone before they met me, before they saw me.
Dana Morrow: *laughs* Well feelings were strong about religion, and still are sometimes. But you finally got to know them?
Doris Zeiser: Mmhm, yes.
Judy Aarons: And that was really weird, on your birthday.
Doris Zeiser: What about?
Carol McReynolds: Did they come in on your birthday?
Judy Aarons: Yeah they sent you a package.
Doris Zeiser: I don’t remember ever really getting anything from them. So I met them, and they lived in a big apartment complex and my grandfather was the maintenance man. They had a furnace that was from here to back there and they lived in the basement next to the furnace room. And that’s the first recollection I ever had of them, going to their house. And I would hang out in the furnace room with them and he would shove a coal into that furnace, which was quite neat.
Carol McReynolds: I don’t remember grandpa Fosnot until they lived in the house on Norsel. And I remember sitting on the front steps of that house and Dory says I was spoiled. *Laughs*
Judy Aarons: She looks like grandma Fosnot, she was the apple of her eye until Bobby came along.
Carol McReynolds: And Bobby was the next born after Judy.
Judy Aarons: And then.. The brother.
Carol McReynolds: When we see pictures of our dad, it looks exactly like our brother. But unfortunately we didn’t see those pictures until-
Doris Zeiser: Grandma had a lot of pictures and when she died, we got those pictures we’ve never seen. And it had names on the back of them. It was sort of, disturbing. Disturbing that we had those pictures that we-
Carol McReynolds: And that Bobby looked exactly like our dad and we didn’t even know it. And daddy died before grandma, his mother.
Dana Morrow: Is that right? Now tell me what kind of- how did your grandparents make their money back then?
Doris Zeiser: Well grandpa was an engineer on the railroad. He drove the John Whitcomb Riley train from Cincinatti to, I don’t know, was it Indianapolis or Chicago?
Judy Aarons: I think it went to Chicago.
Doris Zeiser: And grandpa Shultz worked for the city transit company.
Carol McReynolds: Grandpa Shultz had to quit school when he was in the second grade because his dad died. And he was the oldest boy, and he had to go work in the second grade. He told great stories about he didn’t have any long pants so his mother laid him down on his dad’s pants and cut around. But they were so tight *laughs* he could barely squeeze in, and he had to wear his-
Carol, Doris, Judy: His mother’s shoes.
Carol McReynolds: … and everything.
Doris Zeiser: He made fifty cents. They worked on a cooper shop. And he was so happy to bring fifty cents home to his mother.
Carol McReynolds: But later in life, he was in charge of- he worked for the Cincinatti Street Railway and he worked at the Car Barn and counted all the money. So it was somewhere along the line he learned something, I don’t know.
Doris Zeiser: Grandpa was- they use to and I can remember this happening several times. They had a machine that would count the money, they would put all the money in. And they would write it down how much it was, and grandpa would be tested against the machine and nine times out of ten he would win.
Judy Aarons: He was fast, and accurate.
Doris Zeiser: And you know, no education to speak of.
Dana, Carol: Formal education
Dana Morrow: Yes, you said cooper. Now for those who might be listening that don’t know what a cooper is, what is it?
Judy Aarons: Barrel making. Cincinatti was a big beer town, German, and there were lots of different breweries. They used barrels for that, I guess.
Doris Zeiser: Those days, you know, kids used those for hoops. But when he went to get the job they told him that he had long pants and that he had over shoes. So that’s where his pants from his father and his mother’s shoes came from.
Judy Aarons: Back in those days the boys didn’t wear pants until they were, out of school I guess?
Doris Zeiser: I don’t know, maybe sixteen or somewhat?
Carol McReynolds: Did they wear shoes either?
Judy Aarons: *laughs* well, maybe not
Doris Zeiser: In the summertime probably not run barefoot.
Carol McReynolds: But he was such a wonderful man, small very small. He looked a lot like Jimmy Durante and he had the finest sense of humor.
Judy Aarons: … and he always wore a hat.
Carol McReynolds: In the summertime it was his straw hat.
Doris Zeiser: Straw katie, had to go get his straw katie.
Carol McReynolds: And in the wintertime it was his felt hat?
Judy Aarons: and a bowtie.
Carol McReynolds: Oh yes, so cute. He was so cute.
Doris Zeiser: And he always started his own stories: “Many many years ago when I was a young lad...”
Judy Aarons: He used to come and stay at our house when these two were already gone and I was in college teaching at the time.. And stay on the weekend because he could go to church from our house. He lived with another daughter of his and her husband and it wasn’t convenient to get to church for him. So he would come on the weekends and I got to hear a lot of things. Our grandma died when I was 10, 1950, so he would go to work, when did he die 1962, so he would go to work for 12 years. And he had a girlfriend at the time Hiddy, Hiddy Pool. And remember he would say he was going to take her to a Jesse Jimmy movie and stop at Ates and Steak and have a hot tamale.
Doris, Carol, Dana: *Laughing*
Judy Aarons: We would always teased him about what time he was getting home. Do you remember about his big proclamation?
Dana Morrow: A what?
Carol McReynolds: He wrote up a big proclamation-
Doris Zeiser: I, John Shultz..
Judy Aarons: All this kind of language at the time. These kids shouldn’t be bugging me about what time I get to bed, basically. And it was in all this flowery, didn’t he have neat handwriting?
Doris Zeiser: Yeah
Judy Aarons: Real scrolly..
Carol McReynolds: That old fashioned...
Judy Aarons: The Palmer method I think is what the schools taught. But he was only in second grade so he barely learned how to write in script, cursive. His writing was really, really pretty.
Carol McReynolds: I have a copy of that proclamation, don’t you?
Doris Zeiser: No
Judy Aarons: I had one, now I don’t know where I do still or not
Carol McReynolds: I do somewhere, somewhere I have it.
Judy Aarons: We’ll have to get some copies
Dana Morrow: And so, he died at the age of what?
Judy Aarons: He was 72, and our grandma died in 1950 and she was 59.
Dana Morrow: Really? Were the grandmas stay at home moms?
Judy Aarons: Yes
Carol McReynolds: My mother’s parents and my dad’s mother, by that time his father had died, they both lived in apartments and they needed a place to stay. So our dad bought a big old house with a first floor apartment and then a second and third floor apartment. Grandma Fosnot lived on the first floor and Grandma and Grandpa Shultz and our aunt and two uncles lived on the second and third floor.
Dana Morrow: How wonderful.
Carol McReynolds: Although we didn’t have any money, and I’m sure we couldn’t afford that. But somehow he managed to find a place and provided a place.
Judy Aarons: Well he used the equity in our house for them and their rent paid the mortgage on that. Now he did all the painting and lawn tailing-
Carol McReynolds: Yeah, he painted a three-story tall frame house one summer all by himself on a scaffold.
Carol and Doris: He was a hard worker.
Dana Morrow: Let’s talk about your mom and dad for a bit. How were they when they got married, how did they meet? Do you know that story?
Carol McReynolds: At a party.
Doris Zeiser: Yes, as I recall my mother’s son, he was a big buzz web. They called him Web and he was going to come to this party. There was some girl that everybody was in love with and they said oh, whenever he meets whatever her name was he’s going to fall right head over heels in love with her and of course mother saw him and I guess thought he was pretty handsome. He saw mother and, you know, he went with mother instead of the other girl.
Carol McReynolds: And she was 16 and he was 21
Judy Aarons: Was that her sixteenth birthday party that he came to?
Doris Zeiser: It was somebody else’s house as I remember it, but you know your memory doesn’t always remember things as they were.
Carol McReynolds: Yeah, Daddy loved to dance and with later years, when they went to dances, a lot of their friends had already lost their husbands and so daddy would go with half a dozen women and dance with all of them. They all said “Here comes Web and his harem!”
Dana, Judy, Doris: *Laughs*
Dana Morrow: So that’s where you got it?
Carol McReynolds: Our mother liked to dance too
Judy Aarons: Yeah, they were both dancers.
Carol McReynolds: That’s what we did, and when people would come over, we would roll the kitchen table back over and dance and sing.
Judy Aarons: Put on shows, we did all kinds of
Carol McReynolds: And had polio festivals, remember?
Judy Aarons: Oh yeah, that was...
Carol McReynolds: In our backyard, and that was funny.
Judy Aarons: We were into fundraising.
Carol McReynolds: Right.
Dana Morrow: Is that right? My goodness. Now so they got married and how long before you came along?
Doris Zeiser: One year.
Dana Morrow: One year?
Doris Zeiser: Well, not even a year.
Dana Morrow: *laughs*
Doris Zeiser: They were married in August and I was born the next May and then we lived with Grandma until I was five and then we moved. When I went to kindergarten at a public school and daddy got a job as a barber, that’s why we moved and it was just one year that we lived there and then we moved back to well, Price Hill, which is where my grandparents lived.
Carol McReynolds: Yeah mother never lived anywhere.. Not just the same town, the same area!
Judy Aarons: Well, she lived in Clifton for a while for a year.
Carol McReynolds: One year, and the rest of her life she lived in Price Hill.
Dana Morrow: So she pretty much graduated high school in there.
Judy Aarons: She went to high school until she finished sophomore year.
Doris Zeiser: She was 16 then she went to work at the dime store.
Carol McReynolds: Yeah.
Doris Zeiser: and sun store.
Dana Morrow: Yeah, everybody had to work back then.
Doris Zeiser: It was depression.
Judy Aarons: It was tough times.
Carol McReynolds: We didn’t have a lot of money, but we didn’t know. We didn’t know we were poor. Everybody else was poor.
Dana: So describe what Cincinnati was like growing up, I mean what were the streets like? What kind of games did you play?
Doris Zeiser: Oh my gosh, I used to go down, grandmother lived on what we called it a dead end street and now it’s fancified and it’s called a cul-de-sac. We lived around my grandmother for most of the time and then we would go down there and play. We could play out in the street all day and maybe there would be three or four cars the whole day that would come back there. We played all kinds of games: Red Rover, jump rope...
Carol McReynolds: Hide-and-go-seek
Doris: ...Jacks, Go-She-be-Go, Kick-the-Can
Judy Aaron: Mother-May-I? Yes.
Carol McReynolds: We used to sit on the porch at nighttime. That was before television and that’s what you did on the evening- sat on the porch. We played like-
Judy Aaron: It was too hot to be on there.
Doris Zeiser: and no air-conditioning, yeah
Carol McReynolds: And what was it?
Doris Zeiser: Blind Man’s bluff
Carol: Yeah, and I went to Treasure Island.
Judy Aaron: Go-She-Be-Go
Carol McReynolds: Memory games and things like that. We had a fun-
Doris Zeiser: Oh I had a wonderful childhood.
Carol McReynolds: We had a happy childhood.
Doris Zeiser: A wonderful childhood.
Dana Morrow: And you said you put on shows and we talked about that.
Judy Aaron: Well we had a carnival and boots for the polio festival thing. We did that three yars in a row.
Doris Zeiser: So I wasn’t home, I was already married. My husband was in the service and I was gone so mother sent me some pictures.
Carol McReynolds: Yeah, we danced. Judy and I took dance lessons so we danced, tap danced.
Judy Aarons: So in the midst of this festival, we had three people’s houses, we used the backyard from three neighbors. Our backyard had, you might call it a patio, but we didn’t know it was a patio.
Carol McReynolds: Like an apron of cement.
Judy Aarons: Cement right behind the house and then a walk, a cement walk. We lined up chairs-
Carol McReynolds: Which was like an aisle.
Judy Aarons: It wasn’t a curtain.
Carol McReynolds: It came out the door.
Judy Aarons: Yeah we had a little curtain kind of thing by- was the great barber still there?
Carol: Yeah.
Judy: The great barber was there and then the people who were waiting to come on stage-
Carol: -to perform.
Judy: And we did, Cookie and I did that black face thing. My kids look at this picture and they think who or what is this because I’m right in the middle of the picture.
Carol: With all your big, shiny face!
Judy: And all those kids that took part in this festival, our picture was in the paper and we have a picture from that.
Carol: Gosh that one time we raised over $1000.
Judy: I think it was like $300 the first year and maybe $800 and then it was over $1000, I’m thinking $1,200, something like that. But the neighbors were real good at giving things and polio was a big issue back then so what years was this? Mary Lou was in on that too so-
Doris: Well Alfred was in the service. He went in at ‘52 and came out in ‘54 so it was in that time because it was that time for those.
Judy: Well I know we had three. It was three years in a row and this is Kennedy? Helen Kennedy and all the boots were in her backyard and all the games and things like that were in Gersner’s backyard.
Carol: Show was in our backyard.
Judy: Yes the entertainment was in our backyard and that was lots of fun too.
Carol: *laughs* Yeah. Do you know whose idea it was?
Doris: Maybe mother’s.
Carol: Mother was always participating. I remember when we would play outside, which we did, I mean you got up in the morning, you got dressed and went outside and played all day outside.
Judy: Do you remember all the blankets and stuff? Bring blankets?
Carol: And make camps
Judy: And make tent kind of things and Grandma or somebody gave us that old Victrola with a bunch of records and hid that in there and we had just hauled all the stuff outside and played all day long with this. We look like a bunch of gypsies.
Carol: But mother played paper dolls and jump rope.
Doris: Turn the jump rope when I was a kid.
Carol: And sew doll clothes
Doris, Carol: Paper doll clothes.
Judy: She did all the sewing by hand. I remember when she made a dress for Mary Lou out of fabric that was left from one of your prom dresses that had little flowers.
Carol: Blue
Judy: Blue flowers on it, and she did this all by hand and I don’t think she never-
Carol: Ever had a pattern
Judy: And it was a little sundress but my big memory of her was- *starts tearing up*
Dana: Talk about-
Judy: The rocking chair
Carol: Oh, she rocker our sister. Mary Lou was the baby of the family and at night time she would take Mary Lou upstairs in the rocker and the bedroom was at the top of the steps coming up and we would sit on the steps and listen to her rock.
Judy: She sat in a rocking chair.
Carol: And she sang songs.
Doris: Remember that sad song?
Judy: *laughs*
Carol: Pick up my play things mother!
Doris: Scattered all about the floor, we’d be crying.
Carol: And be like “Sing it again!”
Judy: “Sing that song!”
Dana, Doris, Judy, Carol: *laughs*
Carol: And she was a fantastic mother.
Dana: Is that right?
Doris: She’d sing all day long while she was-
Judy: That’s where I learned all the words to songs doing dishes. Doing dishes you just sing all the way you were doing them.
Carol: And who was it, Marian or somebody, said if you played 1000 songs, Thelma would know 999 of them.
Doris: Yeah, and the words to them.
Carol: Yeah, that’s what she meant, the words to 999 of them.
Judy: Grandma Shultz taught piano lessons. She was a really good piano player.
Carol: I never heard her play the piano.
Judy: I didn’t either, but I think she got arthritis is why she quit doing the lessons. I said I couldn’t figure it out because she taught piano lessons and that’s one thing I regret that I have never learned how to play piano. Why didn’t Grandma teach us to play the piano is because she said Caroline and me and I guess Mary Lou, I don’t know, were not old enough.
Carol: She had dance lessons.
Judy: She had dance lessons and paid for our dance lessons and it didn’t make sense why didn’t-
Carol: -Didn’t you teach us how to play piano.
Judy: But that’s where she learned all the words to the songs and standing around the piano, singing, watching, and reading the words from there, I guess.
Doris: And I think that when we had parties, that’s the one thing we would do is sing. Now our other grandmother was quite the opposite. She was a farm woman and a hard worker.
Carol: From the prairie, lived on the prairie.
Doris: And not a complainer, I tell you that woman worked.
Carol: Tough. I hope I look like her.
Doris: She was one tough cookie. Stoic, I think that is what you would call her, stoic.
Carol: I hope I am as tough as her.
Judy: She wasn’t warm and fuzzy.
Carol: Yeah, well like Grandma Shultz and mother.
Judy: Do you remember doing Grandma Shultz’s hair, she let us torture her. I can’t imagine, you know, combing her hair and-
Carol: -Putting in bobby pins.
Judy: -and curlers in. We just about tortured the poor woman and I was only 10 when she died. So I remember her sitting in a chair and we’d be behind the chair combing and she was very patient. I couldn’t imagine Grandma Fosnot letting us touch her hair, she went on-
Carol: She had a little bun and pulled her hair back tight and had a little bun at the back of her neck. I guess I did see her hair down-
Judy: When we were on vacation. I remember how fun that was- sitting and watching her get ready for bed.
Carol: -Grease her toes.
Judy: And she put something else on there and she had those long-john things with the split at the back. She had the funniest underwear. Then she took her hair down and it was very long but it was thin. She put it on rollers to sleep at night so the next morning when she combs, she made it go this, one hand covered-
Doris: Comb-over, and then she wore a hairnet.
Carol: And those little hats she’d wear all the time with all the bells.
Judy: Her hat pin, and she was more bowlegged as she walked along.
Carol: That’s where I got it from.
Judy: The older she got, she kept getting shorter. I think it was because her legs were worn out. On our wedding pictures, that picture of her, her dress was kind of long below her knees, and she would always wear those red cross shoes with the great big heels.
Carol: Laces.
Judy: It is weird, those kinds of shoes. My kids wore those kind of heels.
Doris: Stockings.
Carol: But she was tough. Our brother went to Notre Dame and when he graduated, she marched all over that campus.
Judy: In the cold, and when we went up there to visit, she went along with us on our first family vacation in the stage coach. In a woody station wagon to visit you.
Doris: It was down to visit North Carolina when my husband was at Cherry Point and we rented this cabin and that was so crude, but it was on the beach.
Carol: Minason beach.
Doris: Minason beach, and on the little stoop was an icebox and my brother, I can remember, he said, “Look at this neat refrigerator, all you do is put ice in it and it keeps everything cold!”
Judy: You didn’t even have to plug it in!
Carol: *laughs* And a pump to get the water.
Doris: It was crude, but we had a good time.
Carol: It was the one and only time I ever saw Daddy in a bathing suit.
Judy: And his feet got all sunburnt, but the roof went up like so in the partitions for the rooms-
Carol: Or partial.
Judy: -Only went up so far.
Carol: -It didn’t come down to the floor and it didn’t go up to the ceiling.
Judy: The doorways just had a curtain on a string.
Carol: But it was a wonderful vacation.
Doris: We had a great time.
Carol: We were just talking this morning about how they had a juke box sitting there on the beach, but it wasn’t covered over with a little cover. All the songs they played into this day, Judy said one and I said “P.S. I Love You” and anytime I hear that song- Minason Beach. It takes you back there.
Judy: What was the Patti Page one, “Old Cape Cod.” *singing* If you’re fond of sand dunes and salty air-” anyways.
Doris: My husband would come because he had been at the base every day and he came over on this little ferry. It was a real treat for us to because we lived very frugally when he was in the service. Then of course to get to see your parents because I didn’t get to see them very often.
Carol: Dori loved lilacs when they were in California and mother had a beautiful lilac tree in the side yard. Daddy cut it down all the time and it would come back in.
Judy: Well you almost had to, or else they would-
Doris: Yeah, she sent me lilacs.
Carol: I sent Dori lilacs and they were wrapped up in a wet paper towel.
Doris: They were in good condition too when they got there.
Dana: Amazing.
Judy: And the smell. It was the side window of the living room, there was a sidewalk going to the back porch and then steps going down because our house was at this level and when the yard went down where we used to do all the sled riding, every kid in the neighborhood was in because it was an extra lot next to our house. Anyways, when you smelled lilacs coming in, it takes you right back to there.
Carol: Yeah, I wonder if that’s still there.
Judy: The lilac?
Carol: One time when we went back, the house was for sale and they said, “Oh Joel, let’s buy that house!” Well, the neighborhood is not quite the same anymore.
Judy: It was a little drug haven, what would we do with it?
Doris: You know, when the government took over, there was a sign on the window and I stopped because I would go by every once in a while. When we were married, I lived up the street from my mother and then we bought our first house where we were right around the corner from them. So every once in a while I would go back at our old house and I saw this FAJ sign on the window when I got out, but I couldn’t see anything with the paper on the window. I came in and I said, “Oh I want to go see that,” and my husband said, “Don’t do it!”
Judy: You wouldn’t want to go there.
Doris: Because Daddy had it fixed up so nice.
Carol: Yeah he worked on it. It was old, 50 or 60 years old, when we moved.
Dana: Wow.
Carol: And when we lived there, they lived there.
Judy: That was when I was five until, when did you sent that, ‘71? After mommy got married.
Carol: Yeah, after daddy died at ‘69.
Doris: A few years, probably a couple years after that and for a while. But she was getting afraid, she had a section of the couch and she moved it across the front door. This is not good, do you know if you had a fire there-
Judy: Well, she was lonesome too.
Carol: When daddy died, mother didn’t know how to drive. She didn’t know how to write a check.
Judy: She had never written a check. Her name was not on the checking account at all.
Carol: Daddy did all that.
Dana: How old was she when he died?
Doris: Daddy was 62 and she was- his birthday would have been in December and he died that Sunday before Thanksgiving.
Judy: She was only 56.
Dana: Do you know, did she learn those things?
Doris: Let me tell you.
Judy: That’s a story.
Doris: She took lessons. I always said, “I think thought ‘If I don’t pay a certain, I’m going to get this woman again and once is enough with her, I’m asking her’”. So the first day she got the car, and the second day she had the car, I went over and we have the station wagon that was like a tank. She put that thing in gear and we went flying backwards. She hit my car which didn’t even put a scratch on it and the trunk of her car was like an accordion. I flew up and hit my head and had a great big hickey on my head. So I think the day before that she was going to go down and visit Grandma in the hospital and she went to turn the corner.
Judy: To make a right turn.
Doris: To make a right turn and she ended up in these people’s front yard.
Carol: Every time she got in the car.
Judy: The way I remember that, she made too wide of a turn so she’s in the wrong lane, over-corrected, and got up in these people’s house.
Doris: Well, her friend lived-
Judy: -Right down the street.
Doris: So she had him bring her home and then the next day, I said, “Well don’t drive again. You’re not getting in the car. Don’t be afraid, I’ll be with you.” Sheesh! Backwards, we went 50 miles an hour. Well, that was that and she would not drive anymore. So she sat there and sat there unless she would buy it for some reason and my brother came home and stayed with her until he got married in a few months. I said, “Bobby, take her out and give her a refresher course, she’s losing money on that car every day just sitting there.” So he goes, he came back and said, “Do the world a favor and keep that woman off the road, well I was shot at in ‘Nam and wasn’t that scared”. That was the end of her driving lessons, her driving. She gave the car to Bobby as a wedding present.
Judy: She used her driver’s license for identification purposes. Only he said the car was driving her, she wasn’t any more in control of that car, but she had no idea how fast she was going or slow. She almost hit a pedestrian crossing the street as she was trying to make a turn and he had her crying because he yelled at her “Stop!”
Doris: But mother, when she was riding with me, she would always make comments to other drivers and her most famous one was, “Drive it or milk it!” I mean, she would go “boo boo boo” and this one day she was driving and yelling “Drive it or milk it” to this guy and then we came to the traffic light and he was right next to me and he’s looking over like at me and her. Oh my goodness.
Carol: But think about it though, she lived how long after that after daddy died and lived.
Judy: -And made it
Carol: Didn’t have a lot of money coming in every month.
Judy: She didn’t hate to learn how to balance her checkbook.
Carol: No Judy, did you see the way she saved money? She got a pension check and she got her Social Security check and the one time we finally convinced her to pay that direct deposit, she couldn’t hit both of the direct deposit because she needed cash. I said, “Mother you can always go to the bank and write a check for cash. You can go to Kroger’s and get money. You know you can always get cash.” And she couldn’t understand that, never did end up working for her that she could ever do that, but her checkbook, she brought it down to zero.
Carol: -At the end of every month.
Judy: She gave herself a zero balance. Her checks came in, the one direct deposit went into her checking account. She paid for things whatever she needed to pay and whatever was left at the end of the month was just wiped out and went back to zero. That way-
Dana: Every few months though, she had a little bit of money.
Judy: That way, she could come to Oklahoma and buy a plane ticket.
Doris: She never knew how much was in there, and I said, “Mother you know a checking account is easy. I’ll help you, it has right on the back every step you have to do to balance.” So for about, I don’t know, three months maybe, we worked it all out, you know, and I said “Now you do it by yourself and if you have a problem let me know.” So I am probably like six months later and I said to my husband, “She never did say anything, I guess everything’s okay.” So I said “Mother, how was it, are you able to balance your checking account?” and she said “Oh I don’t do that, I just start over at zero” and I said “You can’t do that!” Alfred’s like “Leave her alone, she’s always going to have money left.” But she didn’t know how much is in there.
Judy: Well Mary, her sister, worked at a bank and she said “Thelma, you cannot trust the bank to not make mistakes.” And that’s how, when you balance your checkbook, she never did. I don’t think she ever did
Doris: She didn’t.
Judy: -Balance a checkbook, but she survived and did a good job.
Dana: Yes she did. So in what year did she die?
Judy: 1986.
Dana: 1986, and she was how old?
Judy: She was 73.
Dana: 73 years old.
Judy: She always thought she was going to die at the same age as her mother died and it was really hard times for her when she was 59 because she though the same thing was going to happen to her. Her mother died of a heart attack and it was very quick.
Doris: Cerebral hemorrhage.
Judy: Was that what it was?
Doris: Cerebral hemorrhage.
Dana: Let’s go back and talk about when you were married and how many children you had. We’ll go around and ask each of you.
Doris: I was married in 1950 and my first child was born in 1957, which I tried to have a child for that long. I went to a specialist to try to get pregnant and when I started, they started coming pretty quickly. I had four in five years, the older are boys and the younger two are girls, and I have ten grandchildren.
Carol: Oh my goodness. I got married in 1955, but that lasted way too long. It should’ve ended a long time before that.
Judy: You would’ve never met Joe or been here in front of us.
Carol: And I have four children. Two girls and two boys and mine’s girl, boy, girl, boy, and 12 grandchildren and four great-grandchildren. The newest one was born the 27th of February.
Dana: How about you Doris?
Judy: Okay, I’m Judy. We’re going to test you on this *laughs*. I got married in 1965 and we had our first child that was born in 1969. I also had trouble staying pregnant. I had some misses and finally had Hank and then Matt a year and a half later and then Emily two years later and then Ben a year and a half later and then Julie a year and a half later and then four years later we had Liz. So we had six children, three boys and three girls. Now we have nine, legally is only eight, grandchildren, but we have one that’s a grandchild so we have nine.
Carol: We counted it up this morning and Eric’s getting married, that’s my oldest grandson, on the 13th of April. He’s marrying a girl that has a little boy so that will make 90 people.
Doris: In just our brothers and our sisters.
Carol: Our brothers and sisters and kids and grandkids.
Judy: Mother taught me that the neatest thing was there’s never more than a two-year span when she started having grandchildren. There is never more than that to your span because my fifth baby was born the same day as her first grandchild, so she was a great grandma and a grandma again on the very same day. So there were always babies.
Carol: And the best grandma you could imagine.
Dana: And she didn’t get to go to Oklahoma?
Judy: A lot she would come and stay a whole month until her checks came and she had to come home to get the check out of the mailbox.
Dana: Carol, tell me how you got married. You were still in Ohio, is that correct?
Carol: At the time.
Dana: You graduated from high school and then what?
Carol: 1955, and got married and then lived there. I don’t remember when it was we moved away from there.
Doris: Well Greg was born.
Judy: No Kim.
Carol: Kim was born in Cincinnati, Greg was born in California, and Sydney and Doug were born in Cincinnati. Then Doug was in the second grade when we moved away from Cincinnati and lived in Avon, Ohio and Bowie, Morrowand and came out here and then met Joseph.
Judy: That was a while later.
Dana: But you came out here with your husband right? At the time.
Judy: He worked for the FAA.
Dana: I see, that’s how you really got here. Did your kids come with you, were any of your kids still in school?
Carol: Kim was a senior in high school when we moved here and Doug was in grade school. Greg was in high school too so he was in middle school. Now Joe and I, we married in April, we will be married 22 years.
Dana: My goodness. So how many years have you been in Oklahoma?
Carol: 35.
Dana: 35. Tell me, when you got started with Friends, how long have you been with the Friends organization?
Carol: Gosh, I was on the board in the 80’s. A friend of mine, Carol Furrow, was the one that got me on the board and it was funny because the first meeting I went to was an annual meeting and it was the year that they put out that cookbook in 1985.
Dana: I remember that, Carol.
Carol: Carol Furrow was in charge of the annual meeting, which was really neat. They had all the recipes from the cookbook as the food at the annual meeting. Then they moved to Kansas and I was on the board and I did not know anyone. I went to some meetings and they said “We need people to do this”. I was like “I would help,” but I never followed through with it until about six months later. I thought, “I don’t want to just come to a meeting,” you know, I want to do something. So the next meeting I went to it and I got three jobs and here I am.
Dana: Do you know what they were doing at the time, what were Friends doing?
Carol: They were selling that cookbook, that was a big project. It was over five years that they got back together and then sold the cookbook. Do you know where they do the book sale?
Judy: Did they have the book sale?
Carol: Yes.
Doris: They sold them at the book sale.
Dana: So they started the book sale before you came into the scene, that’s been going on a long time.
Carol: Oh yeah, that’s 28 years. This is our 28th book sale so they had to have some but then I was just a volunteer at the sale to begin with.
Dana: Now when you first started as a volunteer at the sale, where was it held?
Carol: It was held at the fairgrounds.
Dana: Still at the fairgrounds, same place?
Carol: All in one side though. Both collector’s choice in general on the one side and then a few years later, we moved to both sides.
Dana: What was it about the Friends that made you want to do something?
Carol: I don’t want to just be part of an organization and just go to the meetings. I want to be right in on everything. In the library, you know, that was a good project to work on and once I got involved in the book sale, history.
Dana: Yeah.
Carol: And making all that money and being able to give it back to the library and see that neat things we can do for the library and everything.
Judy: A true book lover.
Doris: I worked for the Friends too in Cincinnati.
Dana: Is that right? That is excellent.
Doris: Yes, when my daughter had her sixth baby, she needed help and I had something to do every day. I said, “Something has to give,” so I gave up the Friends and now my granddaughter is six years old. I haven’t gone back yet and they have moved to another sort site since I’ve been there so I hope I get back one day.
Dana: Right, do they do the same kind of things?
Doris: They do, they have a big sale downtown on the fountain and then they have a warehouse sale. They also have a private kind of sale at the library at the courtyard in the back. Then we do sales at the various libraries.
Dana: A lot of Friends groups do that.
Doris: I don’t know how much they raised, but when they were raising like $125,000 we were raising almost the same amount but-
Dana: All year round.
Doris: And maybe 12 sales.
Dana: Yeah.
Judy: I had a big sale on Fountain Square outside.
Doris: In tents.
Judy: Book sales outside in the rain in May or June.
Doris: In the rain, yes.
Judy: It’s going to rain.
Doris: First weekend in June, it was always the first.
Dana: We know we didn’t touch on this, but what was the weather like in Cincinnati when you guys were growing up? What’s it like in Ohio, do you get feet of snow?
Carol: Not really.
Judy: Remember one time, when I was maybe in fifth grade something like that, we had more than 6 inches of snow. That was big snow in Cincinnati because it’s so hilly.
Doris: 4 inches of snow in Cincinnati and the city is closed down.
Judy: Oh my god, 14 flakes and Kroger’s gets-
Carol: It’s like Rome, its built on seven hills.
Dana: Really?
Judy: The rest of us, there’s a lot of Ohio that’s all flat, but the Cincinnati part, that southern-
Doris: River Valley
Dana: Yes.
Judy: It’s all hilly, and if there’s any snow at all, people drive like absolute idiots. It’s like all the cartoons are about white death. Everybody, if they predict snow, everybody is out getting milk and bread and toilet paper.
Doris: You would think they were going to starve for a day.
Judy: But as far as I remember, snow was enough to sled ride down the hill next to our house. But that was one time and I think they even closed the school. That was the only time I remember.
Dana: Yeah.
Doris: Because we walked to school, you did too.
Carol: We did too. We even came home from lunch and walked back.
Doris: We didn’t have a cafeteria so we had to come home for lunch.
Carol: We went to catholic school, but it was about three blocks away, 3 or 4 blocks.
Doris: Uphill both ways, no shoes though.
Dana: Well, we are just about to wrap this up so I want to ask you what did you learn from life. If you wanted to tell your kids and grandkids something you’ve learned from life, is there anything?
Carol: You can always count on your family.
Dana: That’s good.
Doris: Roll with the punches.
Dana: Roll with the punches, yeah that’s good.
Judy: Do to others as you would have them do to you.
Dana: Yes, that’s great.
Carol: We like our mother, if somebody said “You’re just like your mother” we would say thank you. Do you know how much trouble we had with one of our sons and somebody told him, “Ben, you are just like your dad” and he said, this is in the last four years I guess, “Is that so bad?”
Doris: Yeah, I said “Your father would never grow up” and they said “good”
Carol: Our dad was good too.
Doris: Oh, that was wonderful.
Carol: You see, we had four girls and one boy and of course Bobby is like the hero and he was a jet fighter pilot.
Doris: Do you know he went to Notre Dame on a full scholarship.
Carol: The smartest person I know. Funny and cute and all those things, but where was my point, so daddy would have those picnics, credit union picnics. Drag all of us, the four girls, “These are my girls,” sticking his chest out and so proud, but he was very proud. He was a good father. Sturdy, responsible.
Doris: Hard worker.
Carol: Taking care of his mother.
Judy: And he could Charleston.
Carol: Yeah.
Judy: That was my dance to do with him.
Carol: Dori said he worked as a barber, which he did earlier, and always he worked in the machine shop. Then five days, on the sixth day, he worked at the barbershop and took his vacation from his full-time job so the barber could go on vacation. He worked his vacation, keeping the barbershop open, and he worked and worked.
Judy: And once he was on Ford’s, he was working seven days a week a lot of the time. We hardly saw him because he was working on the afternoon shift.
Carol: And he was so smart, do you know he wanted to be a doctor and couldn’t pay his own way through school. And of course, no student loans and he wanted to be a surgeon.
Dana: Now this is your dad?
Carol: Yeah. Did he graduate from Purdue?
Judy: College? No.
Doris: He didn’t graduate, he went two years to Purdue but he got sick. He was working three jobs and going to school and he got sick and wasn’t able to continue and that was when everything, the whole depression business, and they moved to Cincinatti at the time.
Carol: Because my son is a surgeon, I always think “Daddy didn’t get to fulfill his dream but Doug did.”
Doris: And my husband, when we got married, he would always tease because we just had nerve getting married. We didn’t have any money. I shudder now and I think, “we did what?” I had a bank account at $56 and my daddy gave free haircuts and he goes “I was going to marry this other girl, but I got free haircuts from your father and you have that bank account.”
Carol: Daddy gave everybody and all the boys, all the guys-
Judy: Any men in the family.
Carol: And they got like, Charlie his brother, brought people.
Judy: Hangers on.
Carol: And we got them all gathered up.
Judy: For a while, he had about six hospital people that he was doing.
Carol: Yes, go to the hospital and he was doing an amazing amount of freebie stuff and he was real, acted in his credit union and-
Doris: Hard worker and then he always took my brother when he would take a vacation for the barber at the barbershop, it was him. My brother would come up so he could sit at the barber chair because at home it was just a stool.
Judy: I still cut my kid’s hair.
Carol: When I was in high school I took four years of high school math and daddy worked shifted work, he was never there in the evening and if I couldn’t get a problem, I would prop my paper and book up on the table and leave a note for daddy and say, “Daddy can you help me with this problem?” There is not one time ever that he said “I don’t know how”.
Judy: When you’re beyond me.
Carol: The most obnoxious teenager thing I would say “Oh my gosh, how do you know how to do all that stuff, how smart are you?”
Dana: It takes us a while to see that kind of thing. Is there anything else you all would like to add to this?
Judy: We love books.
Carol: Yeah, and libraries. We were talking about that and said I don’t remember having books other than, there was a set of red books that for Daddy’s. One of those had nursery rhymes in it, which we used and read from that, but we didn’t have our own books. We went to the library.
Doris: In fact, I went to the library so much that one time I made for mother’s day, I guess, it was a tablecloth that has cross stitching and I would go to my grandma’s, my grandma Fosnot, who lived by the library and I would work on that table cloth and of course I would always get some books but mother never knew I would be gone so long. I spent so much time in the library it wasn’t unusual.
Carol: And Miss Bishop was our librarian with braids across the top of her head in the Carnegie type library, is it still there?
Doris: Still working.
Carol: And it is the library?
Judy: Yes, the building is still there and it’s still being used as a library. Miss Bishop let Bobby take out books when he was little for his age, but he took out book on electricity and all kinds of reference kind of books, not the ones that weren’t circulating that would normally be adult books to take out. She let him, special privilege, to take those books out and he read all that stuff like he’s an expert on almost every subject.
Carol: And we would say “Who can stump Bobby?”
Doris: And if he just says, “Oh I don’t know a whole lot about that”
Judy: “A ha!”
Doris: That’s one for us.
Carol: He can talk for an hour when he doesn’t know much about it.
Doris: I always, remember the librarians had a pencil and instead of an eraser at the end of the pencil, they had the date?
Carol: The stamp.
Doris: And I thought what that was the coolest. I always wanted to have one of those pencils with the stamp thing on it.
Judy: And the only time I remember Sunny to the book-
Carol: Our dog.
Judy: Our chewed the book that somebody left and we had to take that back and pay for it.
Carol: We were always paying fines, always had overdue books because we had so many.
Judy: Our mother read specially Laura Ingalls Wilder, if you had a Laura Ingalls Wilder book, she read it again.
Carol: Every time she came to visit our house, I still have all the Laura Ingalls Wilder books. She read them all.
Dana: Well thank you so very much, it was an honor to be able to sit at this table with you all.
Judy: You just really had to pull it out of us, didn’t you?
Carol: I said to Judy earlier, those three will be in there forever.
Dana: Poor Joe, I’ve never been so forceful with him, see that’s my rule I don’t stay in here if it’s a family and if there is an interview. It’s just Michael or the other sound guy that are in here, I don’t stay in.
Doris: Oh you don’t? Well it makes it nicer when you’re here.
Dana: Well it’s the first time that I’ve interviewed today.
Judy: Really?
Doris: Well you did a great job.
Carol: Our husbands say nothing, they had a four hour long distance phone call because when we get on the phone, we talk and talk. Then they get off the phone and say-
Dana: You know what I wanted to ask you about but I forgot? The Books for Babies.
Carol: Oh yeah!
Dana: Carol and I have a real there with the Books for Babies, when did you first picked up as a-
Carol: When I was on the board.
Dana: She spotted at the National Friends Books for Babies project and talked our Friends into doing it and brought it here to Oklahoma City right in the 80’s. I remember when you did it, I remember you being really excited about it well you all did it for years. Well about 2001, I got, it was called Success by Six group, which is a whole bunch of community groups collaborating to make sure kids are ready to learn by the time they get to school. I said the very same words to John Rex, who is one of our businessmen and a real champion for children, I said the first meeting we went to, well we’re going around introducing ourselves and I said “Well my name is Dana Morrow and I work for the library system and I don’t want to meet, I want to do something.” By the time it got around to John, they were going like “I think we found a chairmen” because that’s what happens.
Carol: Open mouth, get jobs.
Dana: But Irwin Mason, who believed in Carol’s other friend at the library who really believed in Books for Babies and worked hard to spread it around, happened to get on our team or early literacy team. I was just overwhelmed, I didn’t know what in the world you were going to do, you know, where the city is this large. How are you going to pick a few things to make a difference? Well fortunately, there were some programs out there that needed to be highlighted and Books for Babies was one of them but the trouble with Books for Babies in my estimation was it was just in a sack.
Carol: Little sack.
Dana: With a whole bunch of reading material. If you’re trying to get mothers who don’t really know about reading to kids to get to read to the kids.
Judy: Who have never been read to.
Dana: That’s right, you have to do something to catch their eye, so with the blessing of Friends and money, we redesigned the packet.