Description:
Carole Hardeman talks about her life.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Good morning, Dr. Hardeman. It’s a pleasure to be here with you. First thing I’d like to talk to you about is growing up. When and where were you born?
Carole Hardeman: I was born in Muskogee, Oklahoma.
Interviewer: And where did you grow up?
Carole: I grew up in Oklahoma City. My parents moved from many small towns in Oklahoma: Colbert, Kingfisher, etc., but when I was five years old, my father decided he wanted his girls to grow up as city girls and nor rural girls, so we moved to Oklahoma City.
Interviewer: What did you think about Oklahoma City?
Carole: What did I think about it then?
Interviewer: Yes, yes.
Carole: I didn’t know much to compare it to, but I knew that the street that I lived on was a much bigger and longer street than the roads that we had lived on in Colbert, Oklahoma.
Interviewer: Who are your parents?
Carole: My parents were Ira D. Hall and Ruby Hibler Hall.
Interviewer: What was it like being a daughter of Ira and Ruby Hall?
Carole: Well at the time, I did not know it was anything special because you don’t know when you are inside your own home that every home isn’t run just like your own home, but one of those things that I remember from a very young age is that on Sunday afternoons, my father would have the children sit under the dining room table. He sat at the table and he would talk to us, he would give us spelling bees. Well, not bees, he would just ask us to spell words and he would say that the average person misspells this word. He would have us do arithmetic without paper and pencil because he said, “Smart people don’t need a paper and pencil to do math”. I think this is probably one reason to this day I am pretty good at math and definitely a good speller.
Interviewer: How is your relationship, your personal relationship, with your parents?
Carole: My father had been an orphan by the age of 14 so he had to really fend for himself most of his life. He had very wonderful things for us, but so far as touchy-feely, I wouldn’t say he was a really warm person. My mother grew up in a large family and she was warm in a sense, but she was also authoritative and they both believed that children should do what their elders told them to do, that you must be very, very polite. You must speak well, but I don’t remember a lot of hugging and kissing for my parents. Therefore, I find it very uncomfortable to hug and kiss my daughter. I love her dearly, but hugging and kissing and showing lots of emotion was not a part of my growing up.
Interviewer: Now your parents were very well known throughout the state of Oklahoma and country. What legacy did they leave for your family to continue today?
Carole: One legacy that I really work hard to continue is of a multi-racial society where blacks and whites can relate to each other in a seamless manner. My parents always had, there was a family, T. Burns Westman, who became a supervisor at Oklahoma City schools. He had daughters because there were three of us and several years later, three more, but on Sundays we would go to the Westman’s home and then they would come to our home and we became very friendly with them. I think that my parents wanted me to understand that although we had some very horrible things to happen to us because of racial discrimination in Oklahoma, that we cannot judge white people by what had happened to us with the racial discrimination policy in my neighborhood, where we got put out of our home that our parents owned, those homes, the home and the one next door, that they always tried to put us in situations where we could see the world in a very positive light. I really appreciate that because I had never felt strange in working with whites. I also have determined that I would never become an honorary white. When I work in organizations with whites, I feel that if I don’t promote some of the particular issues that are important to African-Americans, I shouldn’t be there. One of the legacies that my mother left me, I want to read this card. It’s a greeting card that she gave me and it really gets to me every time. I kept the card, but it says, “Daughter, to see you as a mother fills me with so much love and pride.” Inside, she wrote, “Dearest Carole, with pride because you are such a good mother and with love because it makes me remember the wonder and joy in my heart when I was raising you. Thinking of you as a mother today and as the wonderful daughter you have always been, I realize once again how very special you are and how much you will always mean to me. Happy birthday. Love, Mother.” She gave me this after her health had failed and I had moved back from Memphis to be here with her and she was, in her own way you know, I always said she didn’t do a lot of hugging and kissing, but she was so dear and loved us so much and I think that because of the love she showed me, it made me see that I must give the same kind of love and sacrifice to my own daughter. Lots of times, when I have to do things for my daughter that sometimes are financially troubling, I think about this card and about how my mother said, “You don’t have anything more important to you than family and nothing should ever come before your daughter and your family.” So I think that this is one of the things that my mother meant to me. My father, also I remember as I said, he wasn’t outwardly affectionate, but even after I moved back here and grown and married, I worked for the University of Oklahoma and did a lot of traveling. Lots of those flights, you know, in Oklahoma you have to leave really early if you aren’t going to lose the whole day. Regardless of what time it was or what the weather was like, it could be snowing and ice on the ground, my father would always give me a ride to the airport and when I got back, my father was there to pick me up. So he was the patriarch of the family and, you know, when I was a little girl and we had to go somewhere, he took us on a car. So when I was grown and married, if I had to go somewhere, he still took me in a car. Those were some of the things that I really remembered about them. I think you asked me what it was like growing up with them?
Interviewer: Yes.
Carole: Okay, having a large family, there are a lot of things that they did for us that I don’t know if everyone did for everyone. My mother was a speech pathologist and she wanted us to speak with great articulation. This didn’t make you very popular at school because kids said, “You talk too proper” or “You try to talk white”. So what my mother did in the summer time, she had the speech lesson so she invited all the neighborhood children to come. We sat here on the dining room table and she taught us poetry. Now the reason she did this was not because she wanted the neighborhood children to speak well, but she wanted her own children to speak well and that was the best way to do it, to have us thinking we were part of a great class, so every day we had these poems. We had to say these poems, etc. I also remember that sometimes at dinner, if someone is speaking as she called “speaking flat,” because I could go from the way she wanted me to talk to the vernacular that was popular at school. I could go there, just you know, in a second and sometimes when my sisters and brothers and I would be talking at the dinner table and we would start talking flat, she would knock on the table and it just meant, “Talk right.”
Interviewer: Well, your mother was a great influence on my children because she invited them to the assisted living center many days and she talked with them. Currently, my daughter is actually majoring in speech. She wants to be a speech pathologist.
Carole: Jillian?
Interviewer: Because of your mother.
Carole: Jillian or Jennifer?
Interviewer: Jillian.
Carole: Oh, how wonderful!
Interviewer: And Jennifer is majoring in special education.
Carole: And she is at Texas University?
Interviewer: Jillian is, at North Texas.
Carole: Jennifer is at Bennett College.
Interviewer: So your mother has been a great influence for many, many years throughout the state. Not only with her immediate family, but all her families.
Carole: And did you know that when my mother was in the assisted living center up until eight weeks before her death, she worked with one of my Langston University students? A very bright young woman who had discovered she was dyslexic, but she didn’t know it all through high school. She thought that she was not bright and she was quite bright. She spoke very well in class, she could write good papers if she really concentrated, but I told my mother about it and she started going to the assisted living center so that my mother could help her with her speech and help her with her self-esteem. I found that that was so unselfish to do this because by that time, I think my mother knew that her days on this earth were limited, but she was still always giving.
Interviewer: She was always giving until the very end.
Carole: Always giving.
Interviewer: Well, when you were reading your poem, it brought tears to your eyes so let’s talk about your daughter.
Carole: Okay, I have a daughter named Paula Suzette Hardeman. Paula is now in California; she has always been a patient person and she has always wanted to go somewhere else to make her mark in the world. She went first to Washington DC and we had two very special friends there, well three. One who was my mother’s good friend, our past legislator Watts, J. C. Watts.
Interviewer: J. C. Watts.
Carole: And J. C. Watts helped my daughter with her first job there in Washington and it was really kind of funny, I guess. He always went to people who were his cohorts and his supporters from the Republican party. He called his wonderful firm and told me he had a young constituent who is coming to Washington and needed a job in marketing. They interviewed her by phone and had a resume and they told the center right over, “We like her.” When she got there, they discovered she was African-American, so that worked for a while, but the woman finally told her, “You and I both know that I didn’t know you were black. So the sooner we can end this, the better.” Well, from there on, we also had another different Harold Ford Jr. and Paula had worked for him and his campaigns in Memphis. They became very good friends because they were close to the same age. Harold was very instrumental in helping her find her next job. Alsey Hastings, who was my classmate at Fisk, who is also a legislator, he was very, very nice. When she left Washington, she came back here then, she went to Florida to see her fortune in life, fame and fortune. She stayed there for a while and came back here. Now she’s in Los Angeles, where she was born, and she just started working for a radio station in public relations. When she first got to California, she worked for the mayor of San Diego in public relations. Of course, I was just overjoyed and soon San Diego went broke. The first person, some of the first people to go were people in public relations and marketing. They were in much to marketing when you are about to lay off 500 people from the city coffers. But my daughter Paula is very artistic. She loves to work as a volunteer with arts organizations. She was here in Oklahoma City. She was on the associate board of the philharmonic and she worked with the Metropolitan Art Museum. In Memphis, she worked always with art and children so she’s very dear to me. Speaking of the philharmonic, her mother, her grandma, was the Board of Directors of the Philharmonic when they were the Oklahoma City Symphony and now her mother, me, I am on the board of the Philharmonic. I hope that one day, Paula will come back here and continue her volunteer work with the Philharmonic.
Interviewer: How has being a parent changed you?
Carole: Well, I think that the first thing is that it made me unselfish. You simply can’t be a mother and be selfish, unless you are very, very rich, which I’m not. So it has changed me certainly, putting someone else before me because when I was single, I was single for a long time. It was just me and selfish cars, sports cars, traveling, a whole lot of clothes and shoes and things like that. But being a mother, it really makes you look at someone else’s life and I say to myself now, “Whatever I was going to become in this world, I already am.” So from here on, it’s virtually living for my daughter and trying to help her become successful. That’s really what I do and there really is a tremendous sacrifice a lot. For example, wherever my daughter is, I go there for Christmas, but there were some traditions that I held very dear. For Christmas time, one thing I always went to a Christmas Eve service with your parents, John and Mary Pattman, at the catholic church. I’m not Catholic, but I love the catholic church Christmas services. They were so quiet, so sacred, so beautiful, and then I love family, so being with John and Mary, that meant a lot. Now of course, being on the board of ambassador’s choir, part of my ritual was going to their Christmas Eve concert, but being a parent, I knew she couldn’t get off work to come here for the last three or four Christmases, I’ve gone to where she was. So that’s a huge sacrifice for me to give up, a lifelong ritual. But you just give up lots of things for children and I know you do that too because you have twin daughters, Jillian and Jennifer, whom I love so much. I would like to turn the tables and ask you how has being a parent changed you.
Interviewer: Well, you just have a great love for your children and my daughters are so special to me because they were born five months premature. One weighted 1 pound, 12 ounces and the other weighted 2 pounds, 6 ounces.
Carole: I remember.
Interviewer: And so they’re 21. Now when you do things for your children, it’s just so special. You just want them to grow up and be Christians, caring individuals, and so you try to instill certain values into your children. So that’s what’s important to me, just to be a good mother and to make sure that they also will be good mothers, because you want the best for your grandchildren.
Carole: Yes.
Interviewer: So you have to pray a lot, so tell me now your religious beliefs, your spiritual beliefs, because I’m sure that had a lot to do with raising Paula.
Carole: Yes, I grew up in Tabernacle Baptist Church and my mother’s father was a minister, a pastor, and my father’s father was also a preacher. So I went to Tabernacle three times a week on Sundays, Sunday school church, and BYPU at six on Wednesday's junior choir practice. By the way, I was the director of the junior choir as are all of my brothers and sisters. Everyone of us were at one time or another, we were the director of the junior choir. My parents saw that there was nothing more important than being in church, so I brought Paula up the same way. We went to church every Sunday and she went to Sunday school, etc. As an adult, we changed churches for personal reasons, we went to another church. Paula was baptized in that church, but that value has stayed with her wherever she goes, she does try to find a church. As opposed to me, I go to a traditional church and I go to St. John’s Baptist Church and Paula goes to churches that are more nontraditional, but again, multi-racial society. She goes to churches that are multi-racial, almost everything she does is multi-racial, but she is religious and one of the things that I am so happy that have stayed with Paula is being kind. She’s kind to animals, Paula will pick up stray animals, put them in her car, and drive around and try to find the owner, which I think I wouldn’t do that for anything in the world. But she does, she loves dogs.
Interviewer: So what I’m understanding, what I know to be true, is that family is important to us. Our faith is very important to us and I also know that education is extremely important to our family. So just tell me a little bit about your siblings. Do you know where you all went to school, higher education, and professionally, what you all are doing now?
Carole: Okay, I’ll start with my sister, Jessalyn, I have three sisters, two of them are dead and one just died a year ago. But my baby sister, Jessalyn, went to Fisk University, all four of us went to Fisk University, and Jessalyn now works for the state in Seattle, Washington. I have a sister, Iris, who is deceased, who was the first African-American administrator in the state department of guidance and counseling. After graduating from Fisk, she got her master’s degree at Central State University. My sister Jan who just died a year ago, after going to Fisk she went to the University of Oklahoma. She took some courses in designing at Central State. She was really a good dress designer, a tailor, she called herself. She became a consultant doing workshops with business and management and so forth in diversity and cultural relations. Then, it comes to my brother Ira. Ira was a graduate of Northeast High School. When he graduated, his score on the SAT was 99 percentile in English and Math, so he got scholarship offers to Harvard and MIT and Stanford. He took Stanford and at Stanford he became president of his senior class. He also, when he graduated, he was elected to the board of trustees at Stanford. He got his degree in electrical engineering. He went on and got his MBA at Stanford. From there, he went to several financial institutions, eventually becoming treasurer of IBM USA. Then, treasurer of Texico and president of a company called Uniondale Financial. He is now on boards of American Express, Publishers Clearing House, and three other companies. SO, what he does now, it’s just he’s a board member. My brother John went to Howard University and got a degree in economics. He went to Harvard business school and got an MBA there. He’s now an entrepreneur in Miami, Florida. Ira has two children, John has three children, and Jessalyn has one daughter, so their children are also college graduates and my daughter is a college graduate. Education, I guess, was a huge legacy in our family. It wasn’t a matter of do you want to go to college? Which college do you want to go to? Which college do you qualify for? Education was big and I think that it was almost miraculous that my parents were able to educate six children because my father was an orphan by the age of 14. Yet, he got his bachelor’s at Langston and his master’s at OU. My mother got her bachelor’s at Langston. They met and married at Langston and she got her masters at OU and the story of her master’s at OU is amazing. You asked me about my siblings, but my mother got in the English department at OU. Of course, she was told that, “No, we don’t have blacks getting master’s in English. Here, you go over to the education department.” She said, “No, I’m getting my master’s in English.” It took her many years but she chose to do her thesis on Langston Hughes. Of course, it took her several years because they said at least he was not worthy of doing a dissertation on so I have this book that I brought here. It’s called Selective Poems of Langston Hughes. I would like to read this poem.
Interviewer: Please do.
Carole: Okay, it’s a poem that I use, I do a lot of consulting. I didn’t tell you what I do.
Interviewer: We’ll get to that later.
Carole: But I do a lot of consulting and I usually end my workshops with music and poetry. This is one called “My People”. “Since tonight is beautiful, so the faces of my people. The stars are beautiful, so the eyes of my people. Beautiful also is the sun. Beautiful also are the souls of my people.” And that’s Langston Hughes and I think that’s so aptly describes my mother.
Interviewer: Well, both of your parents were trailblazers in the state. Tell us what did you do for a living?
Carole: I work at Langston University. I was associate graduating and tenured professor. That involves helping graduate students to deal with research and that’s one of the things that we do in our graduate education program at Langston, teach our students how to do research from the ground up because we encourage them to go into doctorates. We are the only institution in the state that has a degree in Urban Education. One of the other things I do at Langston is we have a partnership with the University of Indiana or Indiana U. By the way, my cousin, our cousin, your cousin and my cousin, Adam Herbert Jr. Is the first black president of Indiana U. When he was here last year to speak for the Ruby and Ira Hall lecture series, he offered a partnership for Langston University with Indiana. I am working diligently on that partnership and I have four students already selected who will go there hopefully and get their doctorate but they certainly will do some joint research at Indiana with graduate students there in urban education. I will do some joint research with faculty of Indiana then my students and I will do some workshops on urban education. We call it Effective Pedagogy for Urban Learners. We will do that with an urban school district in Gary, Indiana. I am so excited about my graduate students and what they do, I was just with a group of them this past Saturday night. As I think I mentioned earlier, I’m on the board of the philharmonic and we had tickets for eight students to go to each of the eight classic concerts so it’s always fun to see them outside of the classroom situation. To go places with them, we did that Saturday night.
Interviewer: Fantastic. Now you taught me piano.
Carole: Yes, I did.
Interviewer: And so let’s talk about your musical career because some people may not know about that.
Carole: Okay.
Interviewer: And your experiences.
Carole: Okay, before I tell you about the Viking singers, I’m going to talk about my experiences in Los Angeles that I have never discussed with anyone but before that, speaking of you as an adult, who took piano lessons, there was a young man who is my neighbor who is now a football coach at the University of Oklahoma. His parents wanted him to take piano lessons, so he came over to the house and his name has skipped me, but he is a defensive coordinator at OU. He came to the house once for his lessons and then he came back the next week and he had practice. I said, “Well, you don’t even know your lessons.” I said, “Let me see your hands position.” At that time, I was Ms. Hardeman, not Dr. Hardeman. He said, “Ms. Hardeman I came to tell you I’m not going to be able to take piano anymore.” I said, “Why not?” He said, “My little league football league meets on Tuesday evenings.” I said, “Little league football?” I said, “You would give up piano lessons for a little league football?” And of course, now this young man makes about three times my salary, three or four times, and my salary. I called him one day to remind him about that and we had the biggest laugh about it, but you know, piano just wasn’t for everyone, but I certainly hated to lose my little student. This all started when I was in Los Angeles after I finished at Fisk University. I went to Los Angeles to live. I guess that’s where my daughter got her adventuresome spirit. I wanted to cast my lot in Los Angeles. So I knew I wanted to be a music teacher. Now, I became a third-grade teacher in Los Angeles, but I also was a music teacher so I went from room to room with all these little, movable mobile instruments. I would go from room to room and teach music, but in the summer time, I wasn’t working and I had heard that there was an Ebony Theater. So they needed singers, I went to the Ebony theater. The person over was Nick Stewart, now Nick Stewart played the role of Lightning in “Amos and Andy,” where he was a buffoon. But Nick Stewart was very talented. He wrote musical plays here at music and etc. So they needed some altos for this play, that they were working on hoping that the play would get bought. That’s the way they do things, they would put together to play and a cast and they would hope the producer would pick it up. So the two altos were Mickey Grand and me. Now, Mickey Grant went on to do “Don’t Bother Me, I Can’t Cope” on Broadway. She also was in a soap for many years, but she and I were the altos, and of course, the people who played the lead didn’t talk to us, who were just in the chorus. It was so funny because I would see her in restaurants after the little theater, after they were doing other things. I would work with them from June until September. September, it didn’t matter what they were doing. I was back at my job as a full-time music teacher or third-grade teacher in Los Angeles city schools, but I would see her in restaurants and we would laugh about how we would be ignored because we weren’t leads. Some of the other people in there were Freeman, I can’t think of his first name, but he went on to become a movie star. His last name is Freeman.
Interviewer: Morgan Freeman?
Carole: Not Morgan Freeman. I can’t think of his name, it might come to me later, but I’ve seen him in several movies. Lena Horan’s son would come by, he wasn’t one of the actors, but he would come by. Lots of the Hollywood people would come by and the girl who went on to get a role in Star Trek, Nichelle Nicolette, something like that. They would come by to see all these actors and steal them, they would just get them and they would replace them. Mickey and I would look at each other and say, “I wonder if they would replace anyone with us?” But Mickey Grant became good stuff, but years later about seven years ago, I received an award from the National Lines of School Educators from the W.E.B. du Bois award. In that same night, this girl went on and got famous in Star Trek. She got an award for outstanding theater arts, so I went over to her table. We hadn’t seen each other. Now, my daughter is 40 years old and this is long before my daughter was born, so you could think of all the years that has gone by. So I went over there. She said, “You know what? I knew I knew you from somewhere.” I said, “I know exactly where I knew you from.” Because I think after Star Trek, she was hired by NASA to be Goodwill Ambassador for Air Space, but she’s still beautiful and Nick Stewart had me in between plays because if you put on a play that was in a musical, he would get me to do other things. So I was a tutor for his son, and his wife’s name was Edna. It was Ebony showcase and it was Nick and Edna Stewart’s play, but I met through them lots of people who were sort of big time at the time. I also started singing with the backup group for a guy who was getting a show together for Las Vegas. They didn’t hire me for that because I wouldn’t smile. At the time, I didn’t understand why you were supposed to stand up there and grin, nothing funny was going on. He said, “You have to smile when you sing.” I said, “Well, what’s to smile for anyway?” They told me to go home and they got someone else. I had some wonderful experiences in theater and I was doing all that because I knew that one day, I wanted to have groups in public schools to do theater, to do music. That was just wonderful. I was just doing it for the experience. I never really wanted to be a star, not really, but it was lots of fun every summer to go there. By the way, we weren’t paid or anything. You’re paid if you were one of the stars but if you were just like Mickey Grant and Carole, I was Carole Hall at the time, you just had to be there and rub shoulders with theater royalty.
Interviewer: It was fun and enjoyable.
Carole: It was fun and enjoyable and I think that all of the things, to add to those things that make you feel good. I remember in later life; I remember one girl who was one of the dancers. She left there to go and dance with Pearl Bailey’s troop and I saw her later on, about a year later, and I said, “How did that work out?” Because she went to Chicago to work with Pearl Bailey’s troop. She said, “It didn’t work out well at all,” and I said, “Why? What happened?” And she said, “Because when Pearl Bailey paid us, she signed my check Pearl Bailey and that wasn’t her legal name, so the check, I couldn’t even cash the check.” I said, “I’m not even trying to put Pearl Bailey down but these are just some of the things that I can help other people with” because when I got to Northeast High School, I organized a group called Viking Singers. They were just absolutely fabulous.
Interviewer: They traveled across the country.
Carole: They are fabulous.
Interviewer: Did you not go to the Bahamas?
Carole: We went to the Bahamas at the invitation of the minister of tourism. We toured there for a week. It was just absolutely an amazing experience. I had one girl who was a Viking Singer let me know that she had hopes of going to Las Vegas to be a showgirl. She did go, so I was able to share some of the experiences. For example, the dancer who worked for Pearl Bailey but she didn’t know Pearl Bailey wasn’t really going to pay them because she signed the check with Pearl Bailey and that wasn’t her legal name, it just tells some of the pitfalls of when you do go professional and what can happen to you.
Interviewer: You’ve continued your love for the arts by participating on different works, such as the ambassadors.
Carole: Yes.
Interviewer: Can you tell us about, you all went on a trip to the ambassador to Mexico.
Carole: To Mexico, yes that was quite a trip. Your parents went on that trip also. Your father was a physician’s associate so they went as the medical team for the trip. I think Frank and Jackie Wilson, one of the Viking Singers, when we went to the Bahamas, they were our medical team. Your father was a medical person when we went to Mexico but I’m always going out of the country by some group.
Interviewer: Well, tell us about the boards you participated in.
Carole: Okay, I participated with the Ambassadors as an honorary member, and with the Philharmonic. I’m very active with the Philharmonic and I absolutely love it. My first love in this world, with all of my organizations I have to say, is those that involve music. Even with the links I do with the arts, but with the Philharmonic, it is so rewarding. I also serve on the Research and Convening Committee for United Way. I have been on the board for cerebral palsy, the local and state board. I was on the YMCA Metropolitan Board, I don’t think they call it Board of Directors. They call it something else and I think that’s well... there’s Smart Start, but now it’s children learning to read before the age of six. That organization really had someone in the forefront that left us suddenly, that was John Rex. I worked with United Way and the Smart Start, but he was such a stalwart about children and learning. I learned a lot from working with him about what you can do in the civil way by volunteering in community for helping that that are under service. That’s the children.
Interviewer: If you can do anything now, what would you do and why?
Carole: If I could do anything now, it would be starting a school for little kids whose mothers know not. It would be starting a school for kids probably ages two through four, for kids of teenage mothers, etc. Proving to the world that these kids could be brilliant and talented and well behaved and all of those things. When I was in Memphis, I worked with a group from the Hausen Development across the street from the school. We called them the flowers of the Warren Gardens and they did such wonderful things. We got funding from the Memphis Arts Council as well as other groups that just grew and grew. We ended up having a Suzuki violin class and they had a recital and so forth. Little kids who didn’t even know what a violin was had a recital. I would have a Suzuki violin for kids. I would have all of the things for these little children that kids who are middle-class and upper-class financially, that they had because I really, in my heart, believe it is not just nature, it is nurture. I think that children can be nurtured to be excellent and to be very smart, so I would start my own school for little children.
Interviewer: When you meet God, what do you want to say to Him?
Carole: Oh my goodness, I haven’t thought about that because I think I’m going to live forever.
Interviewer: Do you plan on retiring?
Carole: No.
Interviewer: Okay, how do you feel about retiring?
Carole: Well, you know I live alone and most of the things that I do involve my brain. I just feel that if I were to retire, I would stop giving and I don’t plan to stop giving. I don’t plan to stop growing and I am very jealous about what happens to my students. How dare someone come there and take my place with my students, so I am not willing that up. Unless someone says, “Okay, it’s time for you to stop.” I don’t think that’s going to happen because your brain. That’s one thing about being in education, you never stop being able to share and to help students share with them lets you know. I consider myself to be, I know this probably sounds egotistical, but I consider myself to be very bright and a master teacher.
Interviewer: It sounds like your mother.
Carole: Except she would never say that about herself.
Interviewer: Well, what I was thinking about when you said you would never retire, because once again, I would like to go back to the assisted living center, she established the Grandparents Academy.
Carole: Oh yes. She did.
Interviewer: So she has continued. She worked her entire life.
Carole: Yes.
Interviewer: And that’s why I say that.
Carole: And one thing I would like to say about my mother and my father, they were really highly thought of and highly respected in the community. You know, my mother was the first black on the Board of Higher Regents in the state of Oklahoma. She was one of the most effective ones too. When I got my doctorate degree at OU, my mother was the one who put and signed my diploma as president of the Regents. She also put the hood on my head, but my mother was just as nice to her family and her children as she was to the public. She was never two different faces. She was just so absolutely wonderful. I got letters from people after she died, saying how it must’ve been wonderful to grow up in the home of Ruby Hall. I remember something Bruce Fisher said. He said everyone said so many wonderful things about my mother, Ada Lois Sipuel Fisher, and I tend to forget that my father was also professional and very important and very good in his own right. So I say that I talk about my mother more than my father just because he died much earlier than my mother, but they were so kind and free hearted and loving to their children. My father, I think, doted on his grandchildren.
Interviewer: And not just their children but-
Carole: All children.
Interviewer: They were just very gracious and kind hearted and they were very giving.
Carole: Very giving. My father gave more tuition to Langston students who needed a little loan or needed a little this and he would just give it to them. He wasn’t a rich man at all. So if I can just be half the person, just leave half of the legacy to my own daughter or to the community that my parents did, I would feel that I have been worthy of saying something to God. “Thank you for letting me live this life and thank you for if I had been responsible for anyone that I came in contact with becoming successful in life.” Well, I would want to thank God for that because my parents, certainly I think, were responsible for doing a lot for people.
Interviewer: While we talked about our family, our faith, our educational backgrounds, our professions, and our legacies, is there anything else that you would like to talk about?
Carole: Well, I think, not to end this on a sour note, but there is one thing that I think I wish I could have more influence in Oklahoma City on helping to bring back change. I think that people of other races here in Oklahoma City are very nice people and I don’t think that there is an aversion to black people, but I don’t think they think enough about diversity. You and I sat together at the recent yearly meeting of the Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce and there must’ve been 20 people on the stage and not one African-American. Things like that really hurt. I have seen the city go through many changes. When I was in high school, I went to summer camps with the Y teens, twice I went. It was out on this lake and it was wonderful. I was the only black girl there and we did some other things that I said, “Now, if all these white girls who were there, each one of us, was kind of chosen from their own Y teen group, why didn’t something stick with them?” There was only one black there. They are grown now and many of them are in high positions in Oklahoma City I imagine, but I wish that they would feel the way you and I felt that day: “Where are the blacks?” I think that you should always wonder, and this is to white American and white Oklahomans when you are there and don’t have any blacks there, and it’s supposed to be something for the community, you should feel that there is a void if there are no blacks. I said earlier in this interview, when I was growing up, my parents wanted us to understand that there were good people of all races. They made sure that we had friends who were white and I think that in Oklahoma, we have got to do more to make people feel something’s wrong with this picture. When you sit at a symphony and look at the players and you don’t see any blacks, there you have got to say “What’s wrong with this picture?” When you look at the audience and you count the blacks that are there with one hand, you have to say “What’s wrong with this picture?” That’s one reason why I work so hard to get these tickets for graduate students and I hope that when they get out of college, they would get season tickets to the symphony and hope their friends. We have a discovery series where we have 20 little dancers from the links who can go to these discovery series. Well, we wanted this to balloon and grow and so forth, so I think that this is my one thing that I wish I could get across. I don’t preach race when I go to these meetings, but you hope by your presence that they will say, “Well, we need more people like Carole.” There are some Hispanics that work with us and so forth, but I think we just need more diversity in Oklahoma City. Then, it would be a perfect city.
Interviewer: This has truly been a privilege and an honor from the bottom of my heart to sit here and to just listen to you reflect your life journey. It has just been fabulous, Carole. I just appreciate you allowing me the opportunity to talk with you today.
Carole: Well Tara, you know you’re like my sister, my friend, my daughter, because your mother was my best friend so you were like my everything. I know sometimes I boss you around, but I have enjoyed this so much and I really appreciate the questions that you asked. You are very patient and I know that I probably rambled a little bit but thank you so much.
Interviewer: It was wonderful, really. Thank you, and I’m sure that the state of Oklahoma and the world will appreciate the time that we’ve spent together.
Carole: Thank you.