Description:
G.E. Finley III talks about growing up in Oklahoma City.
Transcript:
Interviewee: G.E. Finley III
Interviewer: Unknown female
Interview Location: Oklahoma City, G.E. Finley III’s grandfather’s home
Interview Date: 10/8/2007
Transcribed: Thursday, June 11, 2020
Transcriber’s Note: There seems to be another person in the room, possibly elderly, and possibly Finley’s grandfather.
File Name: G.E. Finley III 10-8-07
Female Speaker: Good afternoon Mr. Finley. How are you doing?
G.E. Finley: I’m alright. How about you?
FS: I’m good. I have really appreciated the assistance you’ve given us with coordinating an interview with your grandfather, Dr. Finley, and I’m so honored that you would allow us to interview you as well so that we can keep this link in the community alive and get different perspectives on your family. Your family has been a prominent family in Oklahoma City. Tell us your name.
GEF: My name is Gravelly E. Finley the Third.
FS: And your birth date?
GEF: March 4, 1978
FS: And where we are?
GEF: We are in Oklahoma City.
FS: We’re at the home of your granddaddy. Where were you born?
GEF: In Oklahoma City at Presbyterian (Transcriber’s note: this is now OU Medical Center).
FS: Where did you grow up?
GEF: Right here in Oklahoma City.
FS: What was it like?
GEF: It was interesting, I guess. I didn’t know anything else so it was home.
FS: Who were your parents?
GEF: My mother’s name was Pamela Finley and my father was Gravelly Finley the Second, or Junior.
FS: What were your parents like?
GEF: My mom was mom and dad. My dad wasn’t around for the first half of my life. So she was mom and dad. She did more than double duty. To say double duty probably wouldn’t express it enough. She made sure I did, and thought, and acted on what I believed.
FS: She instilled those principles in you.
GEF: Sure.
FS: Since you were mainly raised by your mother, she was teaching you strong principles about your own beliefs. Did she try to instill anything else in you that you think is really important to the way you ultimately became?
GEF: Oh, sure. One of the things that I think about a lot that sticks with me is she always told me no matter what you do, whether you are a garbage man or a surgeon or anything in between, you be the best at it. No matter what it is, if that’s what you want to do, you do it to the best of your ability. Whether it is popular or accepted or anything of the sort, just do the best you can at it. Believe in what you’re doing.
FS: And she instilled that as one of the principles?
GEF: Oh yeah.
FS: You said that she raised you by herself for a period of time. Did you still get to know your father?
GEF: A little bit. I got to know my father more after my mother passed. She died was I was 14.
FS: I’m sorry to hear that.
GEF: Well, you know, it was just time. I always feel like she was finished with her job with me so it was time to move on. She put the principles in me that I was able to instill in then myself, which is more important than someone else doing it because they will not always be here.
FS: That’s true.
GEF: Then after my mother died, my father and I started spending more time together. I moved in with my grandparents here at the house.
FS: So you began to live with them?
GEF: Yes.
FS: Okay. Where did you go to school?
GEF: I went to John Marshall High School and left there in ’96 and then went to the Air Force. I was gone for about a year until I messed up my knee.
FS: What happened to your knee?
GEF: It was just something I was born with. My kneecaps don’t sit exactly straight, and they didn’t catch it before I left. When I got through basic training, the shoes they gave all of us were the cheapest that they could get away with and didn’t have the support that I needed. It was issue that showed up later. They sent me home, which was for the best. Shortly after that, my grandmother died so everything works out the way it’s supposed to.
FS: So you were able to get here and spend time with your grandmother.
GEF: Oh, sure, sure, yeah.
FS: That’s great. Did you have any brothers?
GEF: No, none by birth. No brothers by birth. My best friend Alex that I’ve been running with for the last 20 years is as close to a brother as I’ll ever have. His mother is like my second mother. So no, none my birth.
FS: That’s just like an adopted brother.
GEF: We adopted each other.
FS: You guys are family.
GEF: That’s right.
FS: What about sisters? Do you have any sisters?
GEF: No, I was an only child.
FS: Okay. What do you remember about your grandparents?
GEF: Well, you just interviewed my grandfather, so I remember a lot of those stories and learning, like he said, to be patient but still persistent. That’s what I remember, and will always remember, from him. My grandmother, I always remember music. That was her passion and it got passed on to me. [laughs] I remember she would sit at the piano and she would call me in there and she would try to show me chords and cord structures and progression and this, that, and the other. I wouldn’t sit still. I wouldn’t do it. I wouldn’t. I just couldn’t. I’d rather be out playing, whatever kids do. When she would leave the piano, I would go in there and I ended up teaching myself. She would always come back in and say, “Why wouldn’t you do that when I was here?” I had to be the first piano student to be taught piano away from the piano with her. I wouldn’t sit down. I wouldn’t sit still. But we would talk about it and I would go and apply it and then come back. She realized that worked for me. So that’s a lot of what I remember about my grandmother. She knew what worked for people in their own way instead of forcing it the traditional way.
FS: That was your style. You processed her theory and then played in private.
GEF: Right.
FS: Excellent concept. Go ahead. What else can you remember about that music?
GEF: I remember looking at sheet music, which I hate to do. I would always would rather memorize it so that way it was internal. She would always ask me, “What are you supposed to be feeling here in this passage?” She’d ask, “What are you supposed to be feeling and what are you feeling?” Sometimes they’re different, and that’s how you can have three or four musicians play the same piece of music and have three drastically different interpretations. This is why music and art exist, because if we were to do it – if everybody did it the same way every time, there’d be no need for all of us to have our chance. It would just be whoever did it first and that was it. So, she would always ask me how I felt about it, and I always remember making that attachment to it.
FS: That’s good. Do you have a nickname?
GEF: [laughs] “Geff.” (Transcriber’s note: pronounced “Jeff”) Yes. [laughs]
FS: How’d you get it? [laughs] You’re laughing pretty hard. We need to know this. How’d you get this nickname, Jeff?
GEF: [laughs] Before I was born, my mother and father had a bet, or a deal I guess, not necessarily a bet, that if I was boy he would get to name me. If I was a girl, she would. Since I was a guy, I was named Gravelly, Gravelly Eugene Finley, but my mom was not a fan of that name. Not a fan at all. So after I don’t know how long it was, she decided she just couldn’t take it anymore so she took my initials, which are G-E-F, and she added and extra F to the end so that it would look somewhat normal on paper. [FS laughs] That’s how “Geff” was created.
FS: That’s how she created your nickname.
GEF: Right. That’s right.
FS: What would you describe as a perfect day when you were young? What was a perfect day for you?
GEF: I guess I’d get up, watch cartoons – how young are we talking before I commit to this?
FS: As young as you can go. You can go at that early age because that’s where you went. You can go there and then you can come back and say today.
GEF: Another perfect day, right?
FS: Yeah.
GEF: Well, not too much different. I guess I’d wake up with my mother there and watch cartoons and get ready to go bowling, which was usually on Saturday mornings with Alex. We’d bowl and then we were always at one or the other’s houses so as long as we were together it didn’t matter which house. We’d probably play Super Mario Brothers or whatever Nintendo had to offer at the time. We’d go to sleep and wake up the next morning and do it all over again.
FS: What kind of student would you say you were?
GEF: Bored, definitely. I was the model student of, “Geff knows this stuff but he doesn’t apply himself.”
FS: That’s what your teacher said.
GEF: I wanted to learn, but there was just something about the system I couldn’t get ahold of and didn’t agree with. I didn’t agree that if you were smarter on paper that you would get better treatment from educators or you would get better opportunities. I knew plenty of people that had 95, 98, 99 percent on their papers but it’s because they cheated. But they were still given these privileges. I just couldn’t understand how they couldn’t make that separation between on-paper intelligence and real-world intelligence, and I’ve never been the type that I needed to wear the sashes or the red robes or have my name in the programs for having a certain GPA. I would actually ask them to take my name off of that stuff because I always wanted people to look at me and to perceive me for who I am [someone coughs in the background] – perceive who I am in person, not before you meet me on paper. I was always there to learn and not for grades, if that makes sense.
FS: Yes it does. How did that go over with the teachers?
GEF: It frustrated them, I’m sure. At every school I’ve ever been to, there’s always been a teacher of mine or an administrator that has known my family. I’ve had watchful eyes on me my whole academic career. [both laugh]
FS: We’re sorry to break out laughing like that in your interview but we just have to be real in this interview because that’s what – you’re [coughing in the background] tell it like it is and that’s good.
GEF: [laughs] So it frustrated them because they knew I knew what I was talking about. I just didn’t care if other people knew it, I guess. I don’t know if that’s exactly it or if that makes sense but…
FS: Yeah. Yes, it makes sense. Do you feel like when you were in school that in spite of that boredom, that you found a teacher that connected with you somehow?
GEF: Oh, sure.
FS: Let’s talk about some of those teachers, by name, that actually made a connection. Who were they and how did they connect?
GEF: It was sophomore year. His name was Mr. Harding, and he was my algebra teacher, a subject which I hate, for the record. [FS laughs] He realized – well, let me step back and tell you why. When my mother died when I was 14, I found a magic shop when I was in Florida with my father, and I started to do magic. I realized that it was a constructive outlet for me, and it was something that had always fascinated me. A magician can do things that normal people can’t. That’s fascinating, so that was the starting point of my career as a magician. I was more interested in Mr. Harding’s classroom in doing magic than I was algebraic formula. It was more entertaining so who wouldn’t? He realized that and he knew that [unknown person coughs] I wasn’t all that interested in algebra and the direction I was headed in my life, I probably wasn’t going to be using it. He told me, “Geff, I really enjoy your magic and I’ve enjoyed our time, but you have to turn in your homework. You have to participate in my class, so this is what we’re going to do. If you want to be allowed to do magic here, this is how it will work. For every assignment you turn it, you will be required to show me a magic trick to go with it. If you don’t turn in your assignment, you can’t do magic here. It’s not welcome.” So I started turning in my assignments and doing – I didn’t like it but was the price that came with what I wanted to do. You have a price to pay with everything and that was it. But yeah. Mr. Harding –
FS: He made a deal.
GEF: Oh yeah he did.
FS: That’s good. He reached you. Is there another teacher?
GEF: [long pause] It was a science teacher and his name as Commander Alman. He was an old commander from the Army back in World War II. Science was a subject that I did like, unlike Algebra. He showed us a different view of the world and why the world works. We had a neat understanding about the way we saw things. It was sort of an artistic look at science, which is kind of bringing those two things, since he knew I was an artist. He knew that I viewed the world from an artist’s standpoint as opposed to a mathematical standpoint. He just showed the art that naturally exists and how to look at things that are hard facts from another point of view.
FS: What would you say your best memory of your childhood is?
GEF: Wow, I have a lot.
FS: You can share as many as you want.
GEF: I remember being in Quail Springs Mall and I had saved up my allowance just for whatever, and they were having this woodcraft exhibit of different things that artists and engineers would make out of wood. Some were just for viewing but others were for purchase. I remember this sign that was advertising rubber band guns. These guns would hold seven or eight rubber bands or however many it was. They were advertising them as you can finally shoot rubber bands at people and it’s safe because it wasn’t supposed to shoot them very fast. I was fascinated because they would teach us to point rubber bands at people and shoot it. So I bought two of these rubber band guns, and I remember my mother and I completely disassembling the living room and turning couches up on end and hanging sheets and stuff. That was our fort. That was our war zone. I remember we turned the lights down and we had flashlights, and my mother and I ran around the furniture in the living room shooting these safe rubber band guns at each other. At the time I was like, “I’ve got the coolest Mom in the world.” Then I think back, as I’ve gotten older, and understand – I don’t have kids – but I understand the role of a parent more. I’ll understand more once I have children, but especially these days don’t do stuff like that. It’s too wild or it’s too unconventional. People become too afraid to make a mess. The good thing about messes is all you have to do is clean it up and it’s gone. We made a mess and there were rubber bands that were all over the place and I was picking up rubber bands for days after that. [FS laughs] That was the deal. She was like, “We do this and you have to pick those rubber bands up.” I just remember disassembling the living room.
FS: And you got to do that with your mom.
GEF: With my mom, yeah. Absolutely.
FS: That sounds like there was some freedom.
GEF: Oh, yeah.
FS: Is there another memory? That’s really unique.
GEF: Cans of silly string with Alex, and saving up our allowance for however long to buy a $3 can of string and wasting it all within three minutes. We just didn’t care. You make a mess, you clean it up.
FS: When you were with Alex and you were doing things like the kinds you did with him, were you and Alex involved with other friends as well? You all were just brothers, hanging buddies, pretty much.
GEF: Oh, sure. We each had our own group of friends.
FS: Separately as well?
GEF: Sure, but we would transfer into each other’s worlds.
FS: Overlap.
GEF: Yeah.
FS: Are you married?
GEF: I am.
FS: Could you tell us the name of your wife?
GEF: My wife’s name is Christie Finley.
FS: I talked to her in this process briefly.
GEF: That’s right.
FS: Could you tell us how you met her and would you like to share that?
GEF: [laughs] Sure. Christie and I met in the eighth grade at Eisenhower Middle School. I had the biggest crush in the world on Christie. It was Valentine’s Day and we had these things called vale-grams. You could pay $1 or however much it was and you could send it to anybody you liked with a little note, and it came with a little heart shaped sucker and a rose and all that. So I got my nerve up. I was like, “I’m just going to do it” so I sent one to her and expressed all of my affection. You know, as much as you can express it being 13 years old. This is how I felt for her. I thought she was just it, forever it. So I sent it to her and I walked over to her locker after school and was hoping and wondering what she was thinking. I got the, “I think of you more as a friend” speech. It broke my heart, of course. It broke my heart, but I accepted it and said that’s okay. I’ll wait. Needless to say, the rest of eighth grade year we didn’t really speak. [FS laughs] Ninth grade – no, I guess we didn’t really in ninth grade either. Then tenth grade came around and we had a class together and we kind of talked, sort of. By the end of tenth grade we started hanging out, and then more in the eleventh grade. Then we started dating and then one thing led to another and here we are eleven years later.
FS: You’ve been married eleven years. That’s a long time.
GEF: Yeah, it didn’t start out so well but just patience and persistence see. [FS laughs] That theme comes back.
FS: Listen to that lesson he grabbed. Look how he applied that. That’s exactly right. You put that to work when it mattered.
GEF: That’s right.
FS: Is she going to have a party? Is that her party you’re planning? Let’s talk about the party you guys are planning.
GEF: Sure. She just turned 30 on the third of October, so just a couple of days ago. I guess a couple of months back, she said I’m going to throw myself a party for my 30th birthday. So we are. She set the plan and –
Unknown elderly-sounding man speaking: Turn the tables over.
GEF: She’s just making a small one but (unintelligible). For the last month or so, we’ve been buying decorations. It’s in a couple of days so it’s really time to start getting to it. She said she was going to do it and she is.
FS: That’s really great. Can you think of the worst memory that you have when you were growing up?
GEF: I think the easy answer would be when my mother died. That’s the one that comes to mind, but I’m not sure because to me it was not as devastating as people think it would be that haven’t experienced it.
FS: Why don’t you talk about that?
GEF: I was raised a Christian at my grandmother’s church, Trinity Presbyterian, so I’ve always lived my life of faith. When my mother got sick, I knew it was for a reason. These things happen for a reason. When she died, I remember - I remember when she got sick and I remember the nights she was in the hospital. Saturday, Sunday, and Monday, so she was in the hospital for three nights. I remember that being worse than her actually passing, just being afraid and not being able to do anything. Just having to sit back and watch and wait. To me, that was far worse. I remember my mother suffered from migraines a lot, and I remember the first thing I thought when my dad told me she died. The first thing I thought was, “Well, at least she won’t have any more headaches.” I was okay with that. I knew it was going to change my life, of course, and that in a lot of ways I knew I was going to have to grow up overnight and at a very early age. [coughing in the background] But I wasn’t ever scared about what was going to happen to me because I knew I had a home. It’s not life-shattering. I mean, it can be, but another lesson that my mom always taught me was that we have a choice. In that situation, I had the choice to either stop living or to keep going. If she had been alive, and because Alex’s mother was around like my other mother, neither one would accept me stopping what I was doing and living my life. It wasn’t a hard choice to make. It wasn’t difficult at all because [someone in the background clears throat] –
FS: To go on.
GEF: Not at all because I knew that’s what they would have demanded from me and expected and because they did, I expected it from myself. So, I guess that’s the easy answer, but I think it was the waiting, to see what – because she was unconscious. She was in a coma, so it was no real goodbye. It was just kind of over. It was just kind of it. But that taught me not to take people or things for granted, so there was a lesson.
FS: That’s a very important lesson.
GEF: Sure. There’s a lesson in everything. We just have to be smart enough and take the time to find it.
FS: That was a very good lesson. Do you want to have children? I understood you didn’t have any with Christie at this time.
GEF: No, not yet.
FS: But you do want children?
GEF: Absolutely. I can’t wait.
FS: What are your dreams for your children?
GEF: [laughs]
FS: He wants this family to continue. You get after it. What are your dreams for your kids?
GEF: I want them to be who they are because they have to be who they are, not because they have to fulfill someone else’s expectations, even mine. As hard as that can be for people to watch other people not be what they want them to be, I want them to be happy with who they are first and wherever that leads them. In my mother’s lesson, in whatever they do, I want them to be the best at it.
FS: That’s good.
GEF: Even if I don’t agree with the path they’re taking, I want them to be taking it because that is what they have to do. That’s the path that they feel that their life is on. That’s the choice they’ve made. That’s what I want more than anything for them, is the confidence to be yourself even when your parents don’t approve of what you do or the path that you’ve taken. And, of course, to get better grades than I did. Mine weren’t horrible but they have to want it.
FS: [laughs] You can work with them on that.
GEF: We’ll talk about that when it comes. [both laugh]
FS: [laughs] You know that you need to have a good talk with them about that. That’s good that you know. That’s excellent.
GEF: Yes. First-hand experience.
FS: Let’s talk about your line of work and how you arrived at that path.
GEF: Okay, there are two sides of it. I’ll explain.
FS: You can approach it any way you want.
GEF: The first one is working with my grandfather and trying to do what he needs done because with him being 99, he can’t do everything anymore. He can’t do what I can at 29.
FS: That’s caregiving.
GEF: That’s the first item and that takes up [coughing in the background] a lot of time and energy, but it needs to be done. That’ll be one of the talks I have with my children, to take care of me when I’m 99, and I hope that they’ll want to. That’s the one side that has to be done, that needs to be done. The other side of stuff that wants to be done, I am a photographer and an actor. That’s my side of it. I just helped a friend of mine open a portrait studio, I guess about a year ago, and that was exciting actually having in it something that was just mine. Nobody else’s. No help from anyone, no asking permission. Being able to do it and then doing it, so that’s good. Then the acting side of it allows me to go and have fun. I was talking with actors the other day about what they really like about it. I can’t place any one thing that I like about it, but I know that when I don’t do it, I want to go back because there’s a part missing. To be able to do it is a privilege, but it’s to the point now, and I’m thankful that I can do it and be paid for it. It really is the best of both worlds because I would have done it for free and have done it for free for years. It’s to the point now you can actually do it and pay the bills. That’s what I do.
FS: How long have you been involved professionally as a photographer and actor?
GEF: Photography, ten years or so now. Ten years early next year. I looked up and I realized this has always something that’s been there so it’s time to start putting it to use. I always think about pictures that I would want to take or see something and it’d be really nice. I’d look at people and figure out how to capture their personalities. For a long time I thought it was going to go unused because I always were around people that were very good sculptors or painters or that could draw phenomenal pictures, but I was not given that talent. I can’t draw to save my life. It was frustrating because I had all these things that I could see, but I couldn’t get it out. Then I was messing around with my mother’s camera or whatever and I realized I could get my view of the world cornered in this way. Then I started to work at a photo lab because I wanted to be around it. I think it’s important to be around that kind of stuff if you love it. I had all of the free developing and film that I could do, so it was school. It was education, and I didn’t have to pay for it. That’s where that started. Acting – doing plays, I guess I started that in 2001 or 2002. That’s when I really started doing shows, but that was another thing that it wasn’t really new for me. I have always performed in some aspect or another throughout my life and just didn’t realize it.
FS: It sounds like it. [laughs]
GEF: I see people now that I haven’t seen, and I tell them that I’m an actor or that I’m doing plays. Their number one response that I get is, “Well it’s about time” or, “What took you so long?” or “We’ve been waiting for you to figure this out.” But I had to on my own time.
FS: I think you interview very well because you’ve been at it for awhile. [laughter from all] You have been at it in every single –
GEF: (unintelligible) do it without getting in trouble. You have to channel it.
FS: We have about five to ten minutes and it has been a delight for me, interviewing you and your grandfather. I would like to ask you what is the most important lesson you think you’ve learned from your grandfather, and then I want to give you the freedom in your own way to end your interview with any message or any important aspect of your life that I might not have covered. I’d like to see you do that. Two things I’d like to leave you with, just expressing your way.
GEF: Like I said earlier, what I learned from Papa was – and these were his closing words – be patient but be persistent. If they tell you no and it’s for a reason like his that is superficial as the color of your skin, then wait until they don’t see that anymore. You keep persisting and you be there until it doesn’t matter anymore. That’s what I’ve learned from him. It’s gotten me where I am now. I’ve come a long way and I’m young, so I know I’ve got a long way to go. I do. I can’t wait to teach my children that. He’s seen a lot of monstrous things and has seen the monstrous nature of people in this country and has turned it into something positive.
FS: He has.
GEF: We cannot forget it happened. We can’t pretend that it didn’t happen because people should know, but it’s up to us to forgive that or not. It’s up to us as to whether we are going to still live in that time or if we’re going to live in a better place. I always believe that the past happened, yes, but the past only comes with us if we bring it. If we choose to leave that hatred and that anger in the past and move on, then we’ll get to the point to where our civil rights leader wanted us to be. I don’t think we can carry all of that stuff with us and still want to stand next to he that had a dream. You’ve got to either learn from it and let it go and move on, or not. We have to, though, if we’re going to get past it we have to do that. We have to get past it. You have to take negative situations and learn the lesson from it and pass that lesson on and then move on. Patience and persistence, always. Always.
FS: That is a profound conclusion, the concept of forgiveness and perspective to all of the difficult and horrific things that your grandfather had experienced. As he ended his interview, he indicated the importance of us not losing ground and I think that you can do that with the lesson that he shared and the lesson you’re sharing. This is going to require that you be alert but you’re showing an alternative in your interview. One of the things you share with us was the way you actually were able to do that. We thank you very much. The Oklahoma Voices Centennial Project is better off because of these interviews and because of what we’ve learned in terms of some things that we can do to progress in a peaceful manner. Thank you.
GEF: Thank you.
End of interview.