Description:
Jean Latham talks about being one of the first policewomen in Oklahoma City.
Transcript:
Interviewer: Buddy Johnson
Interviewee: Jean Latham
Interview Date: 9/27/2007
Interview Location: Belle Isle LibraryBuddy Johnson: Today is September 27, 2007. We’re at the Belle Isle Library in Oklahoma City, and as part of the Oklahoma Voices, today we’re talking to Jean Latham. My name is Buddy Johnson and I’m a librarian at the Downtown Library. Jean, can you tell us when and where you were born?
Jean Latham: In Tulsa, Oklahoma on February 10, 1928.
BJ: Okay. Who were your parents?
JL: Gosper Lafayette and Leona Maria Dutter. D-U-T-T-E-R.
BJ: That’s Gosper Lafayette. Is that a French name? I haven’t heard Gosper before.
JL: [laughs] Well, he was one of eleven children so I guess my grandpa just ran out of names.
BJ: He ran out of names. Okay. Do you know how your parents came to Oklahoma, or were they the first people in your family to come to Oklahoma?
JL: No, they were already here. My father was born in Moody, Missouri and when he was three years old, he had twin brothers that were born on his birthday. Nine years later – sorry, nine days later – his mother passed away. My grandfather loaded all the children up and came across the river to Hollis, Oklahoma. That’s where one of my grandmothers is buried.
BJ: That’s way in the far southeast corner of Oklahoma, right?
JL: Yes.
(Transcriber’s Note: Hollis is actually in the far southwest corner of Oklahoma in Harmon County, near the Oklahoma-Texas state line.
BJ: Was there any family members already there, your grandmother? Why did he decide to come to Hollis? Do you know that?
JL: I don’t really know. The thing was that he traveled by wagon and brought her body and the children to that area, and it might have been someplace that she had wanted to be.
BJ: Did he live in Hollis, or did he just bury her there?
JL: He lived there. He resided there for a little while.
BJ: What was your mom’s name, again?
JL: My mom’s name was Leona Maria.
BJ: What was her maiden name? Do you remember?
JL: Fowler.
BJ: Fowler. Okay. Where did she grow up?
JL: I think around Sallisaw, Oklahoma.
BJ: You’re really covering every corner of the state.
JL: A little bit.
BJ: How did a boy from Hollis meet up with a girl from Sallisaw?
JL: I think it was – she attended with her stepsister... they went to kind of a barn dance or something like that, and my dad, who was nine years older than she was already there. I guess she caught his eye.
BJ: That was in Sallisaw? So he had made his way out there at some point?
JL: Yeah.
BJ: Do you remember them ever talking about their courtship or anything?
JL: No. I don’t recall anything about that. Well, they’d tell us funny stories about things that happened to them. They didn’t have much to start out with. It was very, very hard for them. I know when they moved to Tulsa where I was born, my dad was working for the bus company in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
BJ: Was he a driver?
JL: He was a bus driver for a while. His first love, I guess, was a farmer. He always loved being a farmer.
BJ: He grew up on a farm?
JL: No, he didn’t. That was his –
BJ: He just wanted to. That’s interesting. You usually don’t find city people who long to be farmers. That’s interesting.
JL: He was raised on a farm. My grandfather was full blood Cherokee Indian.
BJ: His father was?
JL: His father was, and his mother was also Cherokee Indian. My grandfather – it’s in the archives out at the Historical Society. They used to have big logbooks for people to sign and my grandfather petitioned to have – that’s when they opened the Indian rolls. He petitioned to have his children and himself put on the rolls. I think he was already on there, but he petitioned for his children and he was declined because he didn’t have $50 to give the Indian agent. It’s marked in the book out there.
BJ: Is that proof enough, though?
JL: Oh yeah.
BJ: Did you know your grandparents?
JL: I knew my grandfather.
BJ: Yeah, your father’s mother died when he was young. You knew the grandfather?
JL: Yes. He was quite a rounder. He’d been married 13 times. He believed that if he went with a lady, it was necessary to marry her to keep from tainting her character.
BJ: Well that sounds like a lot of paperwork. What about your mom’s – the Fowler grandparents? Did you know them?
JL: My mother was an only child. Her dad was a violin maker and a cabinet maker. Her mother passed away when she was 15 years old, so it wasn’t very long after that that he married another lady that had children. My mother was kind of alone after that.
BJ: That’s interesting. A violin maker. Were you ever able to see his shop or anything?
JL: No. I know when we started to move from Sallisaw, she had a truck that she packed a violin he’d made. When they started to leave, she had to leave the truck because they didn’t have road enough on those old wagons or cars to take it at that time. She was going to come back for it, so she called my grandfather and asked him if he’d pick it up. He went by the person that was holding it, and he said, she owed him storage, so he just went ahead and went through the truck and sold her stuff.
BJ: That’s terrible. You don’t really even have any of his work?
JL: No, and I played the violin too.
BJ: Oh, that’s especially sad. I was going to ask you if your family was musical or if he just made the instruments.
JL: He just made the instruments and my part was what I’d taken in school. That was the instrument I chose.
BJ: What other places did you live besides Tulsa? Did you stay there very long?
JL: No. We moved from there to Woodward, Oklahoma and my dad worked on a ranch there. I had really, really long hair, down past my waist, and I backed up to a fence while I was watching my dad, and I got ants all in my hair. My mother had a time keeping my fever down... those big red ants.
BJ: Really? You were allergic to the fire ants or whatever they’re called?
JL: Mm-hmm.
BJ: Gosh. They were just in the post of the fence or something?
JL: Yeah. I was laying up against the fence and they crawled into my hair.
BJ: Oh my gosh. Yeah, I think we now have covered every corner of the state since Woodward is up in the northwest corner. That’s really interesting. My family is from up there. We’re up in Seiling.
JL: Really? Well, from there, we went to – my grandfather moved to Panama, Oklahoma, which is close to Fort Smith.
BJ: Back sort of towards Sallisaw then. That’s in that neighborhood.
JL: He had three satin shirts, one green, one purple, and one red. When he’d come to visit us in Oklahoma City, he’d start whistling, and shaving and combing his hair and he’d put one of his shirts on. He’d put the garter around his arm up to the elbow where they pulled them up when they were too long. He wore a garter around his upper arm. He’d say, “Well son, I’ll see you. The ladies are waiting.” He’d go down and visit. He was like 90 years old when he passed away.
BJ: Wow. I was going to say I think that garter thing is like a 19th century thing. He probably kept that same style.
JL: Yeah. The fact that – that was the Indian in him, picking out red and green satin shirts. Anything to stand out.
BJ: Showy. Did you enjoy your grandfather? As a person, was he pretty nice?
JL: Yeah, he was a lot of fun.
BJ: What were your parents like?
JL: My mother is very diminutive person. She was very, very small. She’s French and Spanish and she sure had a temper when she wanted to have one. My dad was a very tall man and he’d just give in to her because she was so petite. I guess if he hadn’t, he’d have been sorry.
BJ: Did you have brothers and sisters?
JL: Yes. I have a brother that was born in 1930, and he’s since passed away. He was a remarkable person, very prominent in the business world. When he grew up, he spent many years in the service, in the Navy. He was assigned to a submarine that was a project the government had going. In fact, they wouldn’t release him from the Navy for about two or three years because it was a secret project. When he went to school, he went to OU and he became an industrial engineer. He was very successful in that.
BJ: Did he stay around Oklahoma after school?
JL: In Oklahoma City, yeah.
BJ: So it was just the two of you growing up?
JL: No. I have a sister that was born in ’33. Her profession was a nurse.
BJ: What were their names?
JL: My brother’s name was Carlos Ray and my sister’s name is Eloma Marguerite.
BJ: It sounds like your mom kept the Spanish names, except for you. You got a French name.
JL: No. Well, the first name’s Berniece. That was a good friend of hers. I never did care for it.
BJ: I don’t like my real name either. When did you move to Oklahoma City?
JL: I think it was just a little while after my brother was born.
BJ: You were still pretty young then, if he was born in 1930. Where did you live when you moved here? Do you remember what part of the city?
JL: Yeah. My memories are like on Southwest 28th and Oklahoma. There was big rain that came through and it flooded. It washed our house down in Lightning Creek, and my dad carried us all up the hill and we stayed with some people who were way up. I thought it was so unusual and I was just amazed. They had buckets, striped buckets, blue and white or blue and silver, and they had grape jelly in them. We used them for sand buckets when they were empty, but they don’t make that kind of jelly anymore.
BJ: I’ve never seen that. Was it from an orchard or something, or is that just how they –
JL: No. That was just how they made the jelly. It was commercial, I guess.
BJ: Cool. That’s kind of on the east-west line of the city, right? Where you were talking about – it’s sort of the east side of Capitol Hill.
JL: Robinson and 29th Street. Somewhere in there.
BJ: What was the neighborhood like? What kind of people lived there?
JL: They were all poor like we were. We moved further up on 27th Street, and that’s where my sister was born, on Southwest 27th. Then we moved further up on the street, and that’s where I started school. I started school at Lee. My little old mother, she’d have to walk me to school every day. We didn’t have that many cars coming up and down the street, but I always had to stand and wait until she came and got me.
BJ: Was it a pretty long walk? Do you remember?
JL: Probably about four blocks, but it was long for me.
BJ: Did you go to Lee for all of your elementary?
JL: No. We moved around quite a bit because my dad worked in the oil field.
BJ: That area you were talking about first – that was different than – there was a place that a lot of oil field workers were called Gander Flats. Was that the same place? Do you know where that was? Wasn’t that over in that neighborhood, that area?
JL: What was it?
BJ: Gander Flats. There was supposedly a place where a lot of oil workers were over on the south side.
JL: It may have been. There was a lot of little houses and they called them lease houses because that’s where the oil field workers – I guess the oil company provided them with those little houses.
BJ: That’s probably it. I’ve never seen it on a map or anything. I’ve just heard people talk about it, so I was curious. You grew up mainly along that southwest – kind of all along Commerce and –
JL: [indistinct sound]
BJ: Well, let’s hear it. You moved around a lot, it sounds like.
JL: I did move a lot. I’ve attended Shidler School, Wheeler School, Heronville, Mark Twain –
BJ: Wow. You’ve hit nearly every school on that side.
JL: Yeah. Roosevelt. After I got out of Roosevelt, I went to Mount Saint Mary’s then. I graduated from Saint Joseph’s.
BJ: Was your family Catholic?
JL: Yeah.
BJ: Saint Joseph’s – was that the school that was up on like Northwest 5th or somewhere along in there?
JL: Yes.
BJ: I didn’t know that was high school.
JL: It was before that street ever became –
BJ: Okay. Well, I knew they had a school, but I didn’t know it went that far up. I always just assumed that it was a parochial school with younger kids.
JL: It went all the way to 12th grade.
BJ: Wow. I didn’t know that. What was it like to go there? How many kids were there? This would be before McGuinness, so that was probably *the* Catholic school. Mount Saint Mary’s would be the other.
JL: My sister attended McGuiness the first year it was opened, which would have been in ’51 or something like that.
BJ: What was Saint Joseph’s like? I never have talked to anybody who’d gone there.
JL: It was a big, but not great big, two-story red brick building. They had a small play yard. They were more into making sure you studied more than you got to go play. Sister checked us every day to make sure our fingernails didn’t have polish on them and we didn’t have lipstick. That was an everyday routine.
BJ: This was co-ed? Were there boys and girls?
JL: Yes.
BJ: Okay. Were the classes co-ed also?
JL: Yes, but they weren’t at Mount Saint Mary’s. That was an all-girls school at the time.
BJ: Were you allowed to date in school?
JL: No. In fact, I had already graduated and I was working at the telephone company before I was allowed to go out on a date.
BJ: Pretty protective, huh?
JL: Yes.
BJ: When you were in high school, what kind of things did you want to do with your life? Did you have goals or plans or anything?
JL: No. They were pretty strict on us. I don’t think we got to have that many thoughts on our own. We were too busy studying.
BJ: It was nose to the grindstone.
JL: Yeah.
BJ: When you got out of school, you said you worked at the phone company. Was that where you first started working when you got out?
JL: Yes.
BJ: Is that at the building on 3rd and Broadway?
JL: I think it’s a little bit higher than that, isn’t it?
BJ: Well, you know, it used to be next to the library off of McGee.
JL: That’s the one.
BJ: What did you do there?
JL: I was a long-distance operator.
BJ: Is this like we have seen in the movies and things with the person with the headset and the plug-in –
JL: Yes. The first headset I had was the one that fit right on your chest and then you had to really talk into the mouthpiece that came up. Then we went to a little more modern type that came around your head.
BJ: How busy were the long-distance lines then?
JL: My girlfriend that started work with me, we had a thing going to see how many calls we could take and we were always racing to have our boards filled up with calls.
BJ: You were able to stay pretty busy. Did it ever overwhelm you? Whenever I see it on TV or the movies, it seems like it’s just so confusing.
JL: For instance, one of the things we had to learn is when people call in from a pay phone. We had to learn to hear the ring what kind of coin they were putting in. You had to be able to tell what kind of coin was dropped in the box.
BJ: I always wondered that. So each kind of coin had its own sound?
JL: Yeah, it did.
BJ: Oh, okay. I remember when you put money in pay phones it made a sound, but I didn’t know that there were different sounds. You got used to hearing that, and then you could tell whether they’d paid enough?
JL: Yeah.
BJ: It’s all computerized now.
JL: Yeah. We had – whenever you first take the call from anybody, we had a ticket that we had to fill out. We slid it under a clock, and you timed it right then, and you set it at a place on your board. When your call was over, then you put that ticket under there and timed it. That’s how they could tell how many minutes you’d talked.
BJ: So if you called from home, you would just be billed according to those cards or something?
JL: Yeah.
BJ: I guess it was pretty expensive to call long-distance back then.
JL: It was a long-distance call, for instance if you called Edmond. It was a long-distance call. If you called – I’m trying to think. They were called tributaries. They may not be as far away as what you’re thinking right now, but they were considered a long-distance call.
BJ: Considering Shawnee is free now, that’s interesting. Do you remember any exotic calls that you got? Did you get calls from all over the world?
JL: Yes. There were some times we were assigned to – they had different boards, but they were assigned overseas calls. They would really have to have the money to call on those. You had to time them, plus you’d have to listen to see if they put the right money in.
BJ: If they tried to put fake money or a plug or something?
JL: Yeah. We got them.
BJ: That’s pretty interesting. I’d never heard of that. How long did you work there?
JL: [thinking] I worked there about five years until I was married and my daughter was born, and then I went back for a little while but she required too much care.
BJ: Who is your husband? Do you want to tell us how you met? Actually, let me ask you this first. Since you were, for a little while, you were a single girl in Oklahoma City and all that, what kind of things did you do in the evenings? Did you still live at home?
JL: Yeah, I still lived at home. Downtown was really, really a busy place. They had places we could go dance. One of our hangouts was Katz Drug Store. Everybody liked to go there because they had the music box on the table and you could put a nickel in.
BJ: You could dance there too?
JL: Well, not at Katz but they had different places up and down the street. It was close to the Criterion Theater. We all went to the show a lot. Of course, it didn’t cost very much to go.
BJ: Did you have a favorite particular favorite place to show or just whatever was showing?
JL: Mostly the one that cost the most was the Criterion Theater. Then they had on Robinson around the drugstore, they had on the east side of the street the State Theater. On the west side of the street they had Liberty Theater. Right down on Grand, the next street south of Main, to the west they had the Warner Theater and then back to the east they had the Rialto. I don’t remember, but they had one called the Majestic Theater too. Then of course, down on Reno – we didn’t go down there – they had what they called the Iziz. That’s where they had the live dances and stuff on the stage.
BJ: Vaudeville-type thing.
JL: My grandpa took my brother and I there and the girls came out and danced on the stage. Then they cut the lights and they had iridescent panties on and they had hands on the bottom.
BJ: Was this like a burlesque show?
JL: Yeah.
BJ: And he took you to that?
JL: Yes. My mother was not a happy person over that.
BJ: I bet. That’s pretty funny though. I forgot - I should have asked you earlier. How did the Depression affect your family?
JL: Quite a bit. At one time, we lived in a garage and it had a dirt floor, but my mother always kept everything really clean. She found and old rug and she put that down on the floor. It was a two-spaced garage. Where she cooked the meals, she had a wood stove and she’d cook in there.
BJ: This was still in Oklahoma City?
JL: Yes.
BJ: Wow. Were your parents able to work? They usually said if you could keep a job you could get by.
JL: Yeah, but if my dad was working, when he wasn’t working in the oil fields or anything like that, he mowed yards. He could buy a whole week’s amount of groceries on $5. We ate a lot of staple food, like rice and beans and potatoes and stuff like that.
BJ: What about during the war? Do you remember much? Was there anything that sticks out in your mind about the wartime?
JL: Besides the coupons, we raised chickens and ducks and we sold eggs.
BJ: Did the ducks lay eggs too? Were there people that ate duck eggs around?
JL: Yeah.
BJ: You can’t find that today.
JL: Plus, of course we had a garden. By that time, my dad was working for a cab company, Yellow Cab Company.
BJ: Dad found better times.
JL: Yeah, he did.
BJ: What was your husband’s name? You mentioned that you’d gotten married.
JL: William Louis Latham Junior.
BJ: When was your daughter born? Er, when were you married? I should ask you that. I’m getting ahead of myself.
JL: I was married January 6, 1949. My daughter was born in late September of ’49.
BJ: So you were about 21.
JL: He was a retired firefighter. He had been a survivor of Iwo Jima. He’d been in the Marine Corps.
BJ: That’s what I wondered, what he did for a living.
JL: He was a firefighter, and his father was on the fire department. He was on the fire department. My son is a third-generator firefighter.
BJ: That’s neat. Where did you all live when you got married?
JL: Believe it or not, and it’s mentioned in today’s paper, 1809 North Jordan.
BJ: That’s on the northeast side, south of the Capitol. No, Jordan is a little further east. I’m sorry. Go ahead.
JL: I would have to walk – I forgot how far I would have to walk to catch the bus to go to work. From there, we moved back southwest.
BJ: Your daughter was born in late ’49?
JL: Yes.
BJ: You stayed home with her, you said. You’d gone back to the phone company for a while and then you came back?
JL: I was working at the phone company when I took maternity leave, and I went back for a little while, but they wanted me to work nights and I couldn’t do that with her.
BJ: When did you become part of Oklahoma City history and become a policewoman?
JL: On August 22, 1955. I wore badge number one. I was one of the first six.
BJ: That’s really cool. Do you know why there weren’t women police officers before? I understand society’s unenlightened view, but was that the only reason?
JL: Well, they didn’t really want us. Chief was definitely against it and he issued a verbal order to any male officer that would speak to us would receive days off. That went on for about two years.
BJ: What was this chief’s name?
JL: Bergman.
BJ: If he was against it, how is it that you came – was he pressured by another –
JL: City Hall.
BJ: City Hall. They just told him to do it?
JL: “It’s going to be that way.” Bill Gill was the city manager then.
BJ: I know there were times when Oklahoma City didn’t have a council. They just had a manager. Do you remember – was it debated or anything? If you didn’t know you were going to be one, you probably don’t remember.
JL: Not this Ron Norick, but the first Norick.
BJ: Oh, Jim Norick. He was the mayor then. So they just said, “We want this and that’s the way it’s going to be.”
JL: Yes. They were being pressured by the government, that they wanted more women in law.
BJ: That’s why I was curious, because this was fifteen or twenty years before women’s movements and things like that.
JL: They didn’t hire any more women for police officers until 1972.
BJ: Let me ask. How did you find out – after Bill Gill says they were going to hire women and you have to do it, how did you learn about that?
JL: They put it in the paper that they were going to take applications. I told my husband I was going to apply for that, and he said, “They’ll never hire you and I won’t help you.” I said, “I don’t need your help. I can go down there and do that myself,” and I did. I don’t think he was really very happy about that.
BJ: That was one of my questions, was how did he feel about that? Was your daughter ready for school? She’d be about six or seven? You said ’55, right?
JL: Yeah. She was born in ’49.
BJ: Yeah, so she was almost six or so. He wasn’t really happy about it. You went down there. Do you know about how many people applied?
JL: They picked six out of [pause] over 400 applications.
BJ: So there were a lot of women that thought like you did.
JL: Yeah. They came from all walks. One of them was a church secretary. I was trying to remember some of the rest of them, but I don’t. It’s been a long time.
BJ: Do you know what would account for that many people – we weren’t in bad economic times or anything. Do you think they just wanted to be one of the first, or do you think women really wanted to be in police work?
JL: It might have been. It’s like when I was growing up and we’d play cowboys and Indians or something like that. My half-brother, who’s older than I am by quite a bit – I said I wanted to be sheriff. He said, “Women are not sheriffs.” I heard that all my life, about no. I just determined that’s what I wanted to do.
BJ: Do you think your attitude was pretty common among women?
JL: It might have been.
BJ: You usually don’t think of the ‘50s as a time when women were standing up like that. You usually think of June Cleaver.
JL: They had policewomen in Tulsa, Oklahoma that were in before we were. Of course, they had a large amount out along the California coast. They already had that going.
BJ: In the bigger cities. You said there were six hired. Do you remember when you went in that morning to apply? How did the interview go? What was that like?
JL: It was fine. I think for me they were pretty polite because my husband was a firefighter. Whether he wanted to or not, I think his part played a big part in it.
BJ: Was it the chief there or did they have a personnel department or something?
JL: They had personnel people.
BJ: So it went along just like any other job interview?
JL: Yeah. We were fingerprinted and they did a background check on all of us to see if we were outlaws.
BJ: How long did you have to wait until you found out that you’d been hired?
JL: I think it might have been about three or four weeks. It took them that long to do that.
BJ: Did you kind of give up?
JL: Yeah, I just didn’t think about it anymore because they didn’t mention it anymore in the paper or talk about it. I just waited.
BJ: Did they call you or send a letter?
JL: They sent a letter.
BJ: Do you still have that?
JL: Yes.
BJ: I bet you do. I’d like to see that someday if you’re ever Downtown.
JL: Okay, I’ll bring it. I got lots of letters over the period of time I was there.
BJ: You got your letter, and then what did you –
JL: We had to report to the Downtown Library, up there on the third floor in one of the little conference rooms. That was where our class was held.
BJ: For training?
JL: Yes.
BJ: When you got that letter and you husband came home from work that day, what was that evening like?
JL: [laughs] He just said, “I can’t believe you’re going to do that.”
BJ: But he didn’t really try to stop you?
JL: No. It wouldn’t have been the right thing to do.
BJ: Do you think you have some of your mom you?
JL: Yeah, I think that was the problem. [laughs]
BJ: He knew better. You said there were six of you hired. Just quickly, who were the other five? Do you remember?
JL: Myself, and then there was Jean Lynn, whose husband later became a sheriff’s deputy. His father owned a grocery store [clears throat] on Southwest 25th and Independence, I think it was. Mildred Jones. She was a very, very, very small person and she had been a waitress at Beverley’s. Ida Mae Miller, or “Tiny Miller,” as they called her. She had been a church secretary. Iona Chapman [pause] – I don’t remember where she worked. Lois Moore had worked in the retail business.
BJ: Were they all married too?
JL: Yes, except Iona. She had been married and she was already divorced.
BJ: What was your first salary? Do you remember? Mainly what I want to know is how did your salary compare to the men? But you can tell me how much it was, too.
JL: Okay. We got $170 a month, but our uniform was furnished. The men were making around $245 a month at that time.
BJ: $75 was quite a bit more in those days. That’s almost half, what you were making.
JL: We didn’t get home with that much because they always had stuff that they were taking out.
BJ: I’m sure I can guess, but how did that make you feel? Was that ever really made known, that you were making less than they were?
JL: Oh, yeah. I think everybody knew it. At those times, women didn’t protest anything. You were supposed to feel lucky that you had a job. You didn’t get to voice opinions about that.
BJ: You went to the Downtown Library for your training. Did you train there the whole time of your training?
JL: Yes.
BJ: Was there a reason that they did it at the library? Did they not want you around the men or something?
JL: That was it. The training room for the police department is on the fifth floor of the police department. That was for the males.
BJ: They just thought it was some kind of fraternity or something and they didn’t want –
JL: Yeah. They didn’t want us around any more than they had to.
BJ: Tell me where the police station was, then, because I don’t remember.
JL: It’s right there on Shartel.
BJ: Oh, just in the neighborhood of where the new jail and all that is?
JL: The new jail was built after we went to work there. It was a parking lot then. The one that faces Shartel was the main jail, and the jail for the men was on the third floor. The coffee shop was on the fifth floor, and on the sixth floor was the women’s jail. On the fourth floor was the Bureau of Records.
BJ: That’s all in that same place where it is now? Okay. How long did your training last?
JL: I think we were there six weeks.
BJ: What were you training for?
JL: Well, we had to do – we had to know city geography. We had to know where all the streets were and how to get there. We had to know all the ordinances. We had to know federal law. Things like that.
BJ: Did your dad’s being cab driver help you with the geography?
JL: Well, it sure did! I used to ride with him. [muffled announcement in the background]
BJ: So you used to ride around with your dad?
JL: Yes.
BJ: Cool.
JL: I took my little baby and we’d ride around with him.
BJ: Your duty was traffic, then? It was all Downtown?
JL: Yes. We wrote tickets and directed traffic Downtown.
BJ: What was your uniform like?
JL: We had really long skirts. They had to be about mid-calf, above the ankles. It was a skirt and a white shirt that showed above our jacket. Then we had a hat that looked like the WAVES. In fact, I had a drunk try and approach me one time. He thought I was a WAVE. I told him as we were going to the jail, “No, I don’t belong to the Navy.”
BJ: I was wondering – well, I guess if Tulsa and some of the other places had to have uniforms, that’s what I was wondering. Where did they get their inspiration or whatever for that?
JL: It was a take from the service, somewhat. Their uniforms were kind of an ugly green or something. I don’t know what you’d call it.
BJ: Yeah, just that Army green. Yours were kind of a blue. Were the men’s uniforms dark blue? What were they wearing then? They weren’t wearing the gray they wear now.
JL: No. They were wearing the dark blue, and then the hat had a white crown on it. It was a bill cap.
BJ: Your first day after training, did you get your badge after training, I guess?
JL: Captain Popgun laid them on the desk and put them upside down, and he had us come up. He said whoever got number one, that’s going to be a real – [pause]. I’m trying to think of the right word.
BJ: Historic moment?
JL: Historic moment, yeah.
BJ: That’s actually – I will give him credit. That’s probably the best way to do it, to not show favoritism or whatever. Luck of the draw.
JL: Yeah, he turned them upside down and I was the last one up there to draw.
BJ: Really? That’s really neat. Were you issued an oath or anything like that?
JL: Yeah, we had to take the oath and we had to sign some type of oath too.
BJ: I think then you had to sign a loyalty oath, like a Communism thing, that you would uphold the United States or something. Your first day, you’re out. You’re it because there no experienced officer to go with you.
JL: Well, everybody was waiting for us Downtown. They wanted to see what kind of birds we were.
BJ: You’re talking about reporters and people like that?
JL: Well, they kind of followed us around a couple of times.
BJ: But no one had done this already. Joe Poe told us they would put you in a scout car with another officer for a few weeks, but you didn’t have anyone to –
JL: No, we had to walk. We had to walk the beat. We walked as partners. We walked a four square-block. We walked that block, then turned and go back up. It was four square, plus the alleys. We would write tickets in alleys, and we had to impound cars, so we got a list every day that went out about people that had excessive amounts of tickets. We could impound those.
BJ: What was your attitude? Did you kind of go out with a chip on your shoulder, like you were going to show them what a woman could do?
JL: [laughing] No. I thought it was just fun.
BJ: I think it would be kind of fun, myself.
JL: That’s the way we looked at it. We were just going to have fun.
BJ: Do you remember what your quadrant was when you first started?
JL: Yeah. I was down on Grand Avenue then, and I walked from [clears throat] east of Broadway on Grand all the way down to Walker, and then I went south one block and turned.
BJ: You got Reno, then. I bet you found some interesting people on your walk through there. You weren’t supposed to enforce. You were just traffic and parking, right? What did you do –
JL: No. They wrote an article about that too. I made more arrests in 1956 I think it was than anybody had. They even put an article out in the California paper about it. I received a letter from them wanting to know if I wanted to transfer out there.
BJ: Cool. You could find plenty of people on Reno to take care of back in those days, I bet.
JL: One approached me one time, mouthing off and mouthing off. I was walking with my partner and he kept following us and kept on, so I told my partner, “You go call a car.” I told him to come over there and I handcuffed him to the meter and told him, “I’m not going to take that from you.” He was drunk.
BJ: What kind of things did ordinary citizens up in the northern streets – what was their reaction?
JL: It was fine. We had trouble with Andy Anderson. He’s the one that went owned Anderson’s Sporting Goods. He drew a little cartoon of us and had it put in the paper. His cartoon was us being black widows and we were writing tickets.
BJ: Devouring the – yeah. What did other women think about – I mean, after the first week or so, did it just kind of die down?
JL: Yeah, except a lot of the wives were unhappy. They would walk up to you and say, “How could you do this? You’re talking a job away from a man that could be supporting his family.” I said, “I’m supporting mine, too.”
BJ: That’s – yeah. It’s kind of an amazing viewpoint. When you finished your shifts and things, were you going back to the police station, the regular police station?
JL: Yeah. We always had to go back in and turn our tickets in for the day.
BJ: How long did the ban on speaking to you go?
JL: Two years.
BJ: Two years? Wow. I’m sorry to cut you off.
JL: That’s okay. We had to make our reports after we got back in, and then we were sent on special assignments. One time, we were assigned to be an escort for the governor at that time. They just wanted us for show at something he was appearing at. They had us do that. Then they started using us to relieve vacations for the people who were working there at the stations, like switchboard operator and people in the Bureau of Records, and the secretaries that were working different divisions. They’d call us in to work their vacations.
BJ: But they didn’t call men to come in and do those?
JL: No.
BJ: So that kind of attitude persisted quite a while?
JL: A long time.
BJ: How long did you do – was it called “parking enforcement?” Traffic? I didn’t know what division it was called.
JL: Traffic division.
BJ: How long did you stay in traffic division?
JL: I stayed there about six years, I think. They had a matron that had retired and they asked me if I wanted it and I said only if I could keep my commission, so they transferred me into that. But all the time I was taking any of the tests that they put out for promotion, and I always made it in the top five with my grades. Where it took the male officers maybe two years to earn a promotion, it took me seventeen.
BJ: Seventeen years to get a promotion? I don’t even – were you ever tempted to file a lawsuit or something?
JL: No. That was unheard of at that time.
BJ: That was a sure way to get ostracized in the police department. Wow. Were there times when you just felt like, “To heck with it. I’m going to take that California job?”
JL: Well, at one time in later years, my daughter became the first policewoman in Broken Arrow. At that time, we were the only mother and daughter that were policewomen.
BJ: In America?
JL: Yea.
BJ: Wow. Neat. Did you have other children?
JL: Yeah, I had a son. He was a third-generation firefighter.
BJ: Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry. Sometimes I can’t connect – you told me and I got lost in there. How did they – did they think it was no big deal that their mom was a policewoman? How did they look at it growing up?
JL: Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because I was divorced in there, and I was raising them by myself, I always felt like that I missed out on a lot of things because I had to work. They never had complained. That was what they knew they had to be.
BJ: I don’t want to get too personal or anything, but was your marriage affected by the job, do you think?
JL: I think whenever we started having our difficulties, I decided that I wanted to be out in the work force, whether it had been that or not. I decided I needed to be working. The things I wanted – and the fire department wasn’t very good then either.
BJ: You took the job as matron in the jail. Was it county, then, or city?
JL: City.
BJ: Okay. How many matrons were there?
JL: One for each shift, so there were three.
BJ: Okay. This is the sixth floor women’s jail, right?
JL: Yeah.
BJ: What were your duties there?
JL: I worked the night shift, from 11:00 at night to 7:00 in the morning. I had to search all the female prisoners who came in. I had to book them in, and I had to keep a list. I’d make a list of who was still there and send it down to the kitchen so they’d know how many to feed the next morning. I also would have to be in the room if the detectives were questioning them. I got to be there too. I guess I was a witness on a lot of stuff.
BJ: Yeah. I would assume there’s the usual assortment of drunks or prostitutes and things. What kind of people did you –
JL: The prostitutes, when we first started picking them up, they couldn’t bond out. They’d have to stay five days because they’d have to go through the clinic to be checked out by the jail doctor to make sure they didn’t have any diseases.
BJ: Was it just a large holding area for them or were they in individual cells?
JL: They were in cells.
BJ: I’ve never seen that up there so I was curious. Again, getting it from movies you see the big open room.
JL: Yeah, it’s not quite that way. It’s metal bunks and they had an old mattress-cotton thing like that that fit the bunk, and they’d have to haul it out every morning and put it up. For the day, they’d just be sitting on the steel bunk.
BJ: Wow. Man. I realize women are just as capable of crime as a man, but were you finding they were doing the same things? Were there murderers and things like that in there? Did they get sent to county or something?
JL: Oh yeah. They would stay there until they got filed on to be sent to county, but they’d stay with us. That might be two or three days before they’d transfer them over.
BJ: You did that for about ten years, did you say? I was just adding the seven.
JL: Yeah.
BJ: You finally got your promotion, then?
JL: In 1974.
BJ: Okay. ’74.
JL: I was the first woman to ever be promoted.
BJ: You said they didn’t hire any more until ’72. How many of you were left by that time in ’72?
JL: Two of us.
BJ: Two of you stuck with it. Okay. Which was the other one that stayed?
JL: Tiny Miller.
BJ: Okay. Did she stay in traffic?
JL: No. She was in patrol.
BJ: What was your promotion? What did you get promoted to?
JL: Detective.
BJ: Detective. What division did you –
JL: First they assigned me to juvenile, and then when they put me on nights, I was on just anything they wanted to send me to. It could be a murder. It could be just anything.
BJ: I wanted to ask – when you were a matron, do you remember any major cases that came in while you were there?
JL: No. These women, a lot of them turned themselves in because they were being beaten. They’d get picked up for that. We were just a safe place for a while.
BJ: Oh, okay. I see. This was before we had shelters and things like that. They had to go to jail just to be safe. When you became a detective, you worked juvenile. Were those like child abuse investigations and things like that?
JL: Yes, and I was also the only female that was assigned to rape cases. I worked all the rapes. I could go off my shift and they’d have a rape and call me, and I’d have to come right back in to work it.
BJ: How did you deal with having to be the one person to deal with that all the time? How did you make space in your mind for that?
JL: I made a habit of when I got off, I was off. I’m trying to think of things other than that. The child abuse cases, sometimes that stayed with me for a long time.
BJ: I don’t think I could take it. I really don’t.
JL: I had one case where the mother had gone out for the evening, and the dad or boyfriend was taking care of the little girl. She started crying and it was aggravating to him because he was drinking, so he’d tell her stop. She’d just keep crying because she wanted her mother, so he took her up without her diaper, put her legs over the heater, and burned all the inside of her legs and her privates. I nearly beat him to death before I sent him to jail. It was just different things like that where you had to face that kind of people.
BJ: After you left juvenile, you did just anything that came along in the night shift, which is probably a lot considering the night?
JL: Yeah, general assignments.
BJ: Did you have any high-profile cases in that, or just any that were remarkable to you?
JL: The Sirloin Stockade was one.
BJ: You were on shift for that one? Wow. Is there anything you want to –
JL: We had a law then that we couldn’t treat juveniles unless their parents gave an okay, so the little girl and the little boy that were shot, they were still alive. We took them to the hospital, but they couldn’t reach their parents because they’d gone out of town on vacation. I petitioned Judge Hunter and I said this can’t be. We can’t do that. They died. They couldn’t do anything for them.
BJ: I just can’t imagine that, in an emergency situation you couldn’t – wow.
JL: That was one of my things with Judge Hunter and I’m freezing.
BJ: I’m sorry. I didn’t know it was going to be so chilly. I’ll wrap it up. When did you retire?
JL: I retired in 1983.
BJ: So you had –
Both: 28 years.
BJ: Wow. Looking back, what do you feel about your career? What are you most proud of?
JL: Well, you know, everybody says, “Would you do it again?” I say, “You bet.” It was a great ride.
BJ: What would you offer to future generations or future women or whatever for words of wisdom? How to live your life, the secrets to success or anything like that.
JL: I don’t know because each woman is a different person.
BJ: What do you think were the secrets to your success? What made you stick with it?
JL: Determination, more than anything. The more they tried to put me down, the more determined I was that I wasn’t going to have it.
BJ: We’ll go ahead and wrap up, but I wanted to know if there’s anything that I didn’t cover that you wanted to share with us, or that I may not have known to ask you or anything like that?
JL: From there, of course, I came to work for the library as security. I really enjoyed that. I made a lot of friends. I was there for the bombing. I worked part of that, too.
BJ: Were you at the library, then, on that day?
JL: I was just coming into town to go there, and I had to park at the police station and walk from there over to the library. I was just coming up Robinson to go on in, and they started running down the street telling us to go back, that there was another bomb in there. We went back for a while. [door slams]
BJ: Were you with Lee Brauner, the head of the library, were you around when he made the decision to close and all that kind of thing?
JL: Oh yeah. We had our meetings out here because the library was in shambles down there.
BJ: Okay. Well, anything else that you want to tell us about?
JL: [pause] If they ask me if I’d do it again, I sure would go the same route.
BJ: We’re glad you did. We’re proud of you.
JL: Thank you.
BJ: Thank you. Thanks very much for putting up with the cold and all that. Thanks for coming down.
End of interview.