Description:
Virginia Ferguson talks about her life growing up in an orphanage in Pryor, Oklahoma.
Transcript:
Transcript of “Ginger Virgina Ferguson 10-04-07.wav”
Interviewee: Virginia Ferguson
Interviewer: Radine Suzanne Ferguson
Transcribed June 5-8th, 2020.
Radine:
I’m Radine Suzanne Ferguson and today I’m interviewing my mother, Virginia Ferguson. So if you would tell me a little bit about where our setting is today. Let me preface that with saying we’ll be talking about your experience growing up in an orphanage in Oklahoma. I want to talk a little bit about orphanage life. It’s something that I think makes you very special and I know it’s a big part of your lifetime experience that shaped your life. And it’s always been interesting to me. I’ve never gotten a full story at one sitting. It’s especially interesting to me now that I have a daughter who spent her first year-and-a-half of life in an orphanage. So if you’ll tell us Ginger, where we are--what location in our story—and introduce yourself, then we’ll get started.
Virginia:
Where we are?
R:
In the state of Oklahoma.
V:
In the state of Oklahoma. To back up, my name is Virginia Ione Coon, Ferguson. I was born in Clearwater, California on April 7th, 1941 to Helen Wanda Childress and Claude Garvin Coon. My grandmother delivered me at home and for months I didn’t have a name. They didn’t know what to call me; they called me “Baby Girl.” My father came home from work one day, and he asked if they’d named me yet. He said: “Hell, just name her after that street out there.” They lived on Virginia St. My grandmother said, “Okay she’s going to be named after me, because I’m the one that delivered her.” My grandmother’s name was Minnie Ione. So that’s the way I got my name. When I was approximately, thinking around three, I can remember an extremely long hot sweaty trip. And that must be the trip from California to Oklahoma, when we moved back to Oklahoma. I have two older siblings. My brother is the oldest. His name is Winford. And then my older sister Patsy. I have two younger sisters that were born in California. Claudine is just younger than myself, and then Merlene. So we were all packed into that little car and there was no air conditioning. I’m thinking that that’s why I remember that awful trip.
My mother and father did not get along too well. They fussed and fought, and it was a lot of abuse. We’d moved to the little town of Bradley Oklahoma, where my paternal grandmother lived, and we bought a house right close to hers. In fact, we had a trail. It was on three acres and her house was a-ways from it, but we had a trail worn out between our house and her house. And I was always Grandma’s little girl. [laughs] I can remember her standing on that front porch and when she’d want me she go [in her grandmother’s voice] "Yoo hoo, Giiiingerrrr!" And so I would run up in Grandma’s and spend the day with my grandmother. But somewhere in there when Mother and Daddy would fight, we lived in this small-town area, we children would scream so loud that someone in town had contacted the authorities at the courthouse with childcare and complained.
R:
Complained about the noise.
V:
Yes. And the fact that they felt it wasn’t good I guess. In this day and time, you have to understand, that we would probably never have been taken away from our parents. But at that time, they were both declared bad parents and we were actually placed in what at the time was called Whitaker State Home. How that home actually started was W.T. Whitaker started it in Indian Territory because there were so many orphans. He and his wife had their own children but they took in orphans. He was the postmaster in Pryor, Oklahoma. The home grew and grew, they had a little more than they could handle, I guess. It went from Whitaker—it was actually called Whitaker Orphanage—and then it was Whitaker State Orphanage and when we went there it was called Whitaker State Home. I’m not sure exactly when that home disbanded, probably in the early seventies. I just can’t remember for sure. I was around the age of nine when I went there; I was in the third grade.
R:
How would you describe yourself as a third grader?
V:
Average. Is that what you mean?
R:
Your temperament?
V:
My temperament? I would say that I was always a happy child. I was easy to get along with, not rowdy or anything like that. I leaned towards being independent. I can remember playing with the other siblings, when we would play paper dolls. Back then you didn’t have--or at least we didn’t have a lot of toys. But we had like the JCPenney’s catalogs or Wards and that’s where we would cut our paper dolls out from. On occasions we might get a paper doll book from the store and it would be of different movie stars that were popular at the time. But even then you would take those paper dolls, and you would cut their clothes out of the catalogs. My siblings, especially the younger one, would want to cut out paper dolls with me but I was very particular. I would cut out the little holes in the arms in everything. I was just really particular about the way they were cut out, where the other children I mean, they just chopped them all up and everything [laughs]. I can remember being very independent and very self-driven and all. Even before we went to the orphanage, I would do things. Like I actually--the parents would go to Chickasha on occasion to do the shopping because there wasn’t much in Bradley. I can remember while they were gone and I was at Grandma’s house I decided I’d make myself a dress, because I had watched her make so many of our dresses and stuff. She made just about all of our clothes. And I liked that bedspread and I decided I was going to make myself a dress out of it [R laughs]. So I proceeded to take that bed spread off the bed, and I cut myself out a dress. I had a dress made by the time they got back [laughs]. And for the sleeve, instead of having the set -in sleeve I cut out a little scallop that fell down on my arm here. Anyway when they got back I had cut up the bedspread. My parents wanted to give me a whipping, especially Grandma, and my grandfather stepped in. He said, “You’re not going to spank her. Someday she’s going to be a good seamstress” [laughs]
R:
That’s true. And you were.
V:
So anyway, I got out of that spanking.
R:
What was it like for that nine-year-old girl to find out she was going to the orphanage? [There’s a sound like a door opening here]
V:
Oh, horrified.
R:
How did you find out?
V:
We were told to show up at the courthouse on a certain date. I can’t remember exactly when that was. They all of us together, all the children and my paternal—no, maternal--grandfather went with us. So we were all that courthouse in the judge’s chambers. The state decided that they were both unfit and that they were taking us away and that we would be placed in Whitaker home in Pryor, Oklahoma. I guess they’d never heard much screaming until I did that. We were all screaming because they started grabbing us to put us in the car [pause]. My grandfather tried to interfere. They used the Billy Club on him [Transcriber’s note: This sounds like a difficult recollection for the speaker; her voice is breaking and she may be starting to cry].
R:
I never knew that.
V:
So another long trip. But we finally got to Pryor, Oklahoma.
R:
That was a very long trip. Probably like a three-hour, four-hour, car ride.
V:
Pretty long trip. Well it could have been back then. Three-and-a-half hours at least. So the first place they took us was the office there. And then from the office they had someone take us to the hospital, they had their own hospital on campus. When you first go they make you take a bath and they delice you just in case, not that you had lice, but just in case. Then they checked you for other child abuses and so forth, You stayed in the hospital for probably three or four days then you were assigned a cottage according—at that time you were assigned according to the grade that you were in. So then we were taken to our cottage. The cottage there were at least usually twenty, twenty-five children. School was in at the time. So Pat and I were in the same cottage. When they got us to the cottage, the other children were in school. The matron of the cottage told us just go there and she showed us a room. She said, “This is the playroom and you can play with anything in here.” So we proceeded to take the dolls off of the shelf—they had a lot of shelves. We didn’t know, see, that each child had an assigned place on that shelf and that was their toys. And she had told us that we could play with anything in there. So we mixed up all the dolls and the dresses and everything; we had a good time [they both laugh]. And then the other children came home from school, and you talk about mad. They were so mad.
The campus had like twelve cottages. The boys and girls were separated. It also had a nursery where they kept babies and children not of school age. Then they had a dining hall. So instead of eating at the cottages you would eat at the dining hall. Well a typical day was when the alarm went off at five-o-clock in the morning, you got up; you made your bed immediately; you got dressed; and everyone was assigned a chore. If they didn’t have anything for you to do, then you sat out in a little hallway and they assigned an older girl to teach you how to embroider or crochet or some kind of handwork or something. And then when it was time for breakfast, everybody lined up and we walked over to the lunchroom was what we called it, or dining hall. Of course, I was only nine, but girls older than us were there. They had chores also outside of the cottage. You could have a chore like cleaning the hallway, that would be like sweeping it and then buffing it--running a buffer on it—every day. Then after that you might be assigned like--after breakfast you would have an assignment like working in the dining hall itself, clearing the tables and starting to prepare food for the next meal. Or you might report to the laundry.
R:
This was all before school started?
V:
Yes, yes it was before school started. When it was time to go to school, you went to school. They also had little jobs on the campus you might do after school. So it kind of depended, whether you had a job before school or after school. Like, in the laundry I remember, it seems like we might have reported there—some of them went before school I went—this is went I was a couple of years later—I would go after school and I would iron. I would iron for the entire campus. [faint coughing in the background] If you were really good at ironing, then you got to iron the matron’s clothes or Mr. McCarty’s clothes. He was the superintendent of the home. I got to iron his clothes and so did my little sister when she got older, Merlene.
This is all kind of mished up as I tell it to you because we were there two or three years. And this was during my first part of it. I was good at sewing, and I was assigned to what they called the “sewing room.” I would go after school and I would just make little dresses. They had bolts and bolts of material, just like a fabric store, and they made just about all their clothes. We got a new dress at the beginning of school, Easter, and Christmas. The younger girls, they would come over and I actually got to choose the dress and fabric and everything.
R:
That sounds like fun.
V:
Well it was to me. I was a lot of fun. I was again, just as particular as I was with the paper dolls, so I got a reputation. They called me “rip and ruffle" because I liked to put ruffles on the little girls and everything had to be just exactly right or I’d rip it out and do it again. So I was "rip and ruffle" [both share a laugh].
R:
That’s cute.
V:
Let me see. I worked in a dining room. [They accidentally talk over each other for a moment before V continues]. Anyway, the boys—see it was almost like self-sufficient. It was a farm-type situation. And the boys would work on the farm. They’d raise their own chicken, their own beef, their own garden, canned green beans and corn. We had a cannery that we ran during the summertime.
R:
Did you learn to do that too?
V: Yes
R:
To work in the garden and can?
V:
The girls did not work in the garden, just the boys. But whenever the gathered the green beans they would bring them round all the girls’ cottages, and we would have to snap green beans. Then they’d come back and pick them up and take them to the cannery and some of us would work at the cannery, putting them up.
R:
Was school on campus as well or did you go off campus for school?
V:
Elementary was on the campus. Rose cottage was for the high school girls, nine through twelve. So you would go to the cottages, you were promoted according to where you were.
R:
Do you have special memories of classmates?
V:
Some. In fact one of my good friends at the home—my father—Let me back up and tell you that when you ask me that—when he and Grandma, his mother, we had been there three years or so, they asked the judge if they could bring us out. They were given permission and we were allowed to live with them. My mother had gone to live with her father in Sulphur. That was like in September ’53, ’54. It might have been later than that, come to think about it, probably ‘bout ’55. I don’t know. I’m not even going to name years because I’m not very good at that. We went home like in September and we were doing really well together. We were going to school and doing real well. And then March, Friday 13th, 1953 it was a tornado that hit Bradley and it killed my grandmother.
R:
Tell me about that. If I remember correctly you were there and you saw that happen.
V:
I stayed with my grandmother just about all the time. All the others stayed at the house with Daddy. We were in school that day. It was kind of a muggy-like day and we had a class day at the park in Chickasha. So we’d been at the park that day instead of at school playing. The little park in Chickasha had animals and stuff in it too. I don’t know what kind of outing it was but we’d go to that. We came back to school. School was let out. When I went home, you have to go by Grandma’s house, Grandma was setting out strawberry plants. I told Grandma I wanted to stay at home with Daddy tonight and cook dinner. She said, “Okay, go tell him.” So I went down to the house and told Daddy that I wanted to stay at home tonight and fix dinner. So he told Merlene to go spend the night with Grandma. He was out at the barn milking. I hadn’t been at home very long and Daddy came running into the house and he said, “Everybody get on the floor. There’s a tornado.” Well we all got on the floor except for Winford. And Winford was looking out the kitchen window and saw the tornado take Grandma’s house. And Daddy was telling him, “Son, get on the floor.” He said, “There goes Grandma’s house.” [pause] It had hit her house so Daddy, when Winford said that, Daddy ran out the front door and started running along that trail up to Grandma’s house. And we were, of course, just running right after him. And it just had this big old cloud that day so it was real muddy. So we get up to her house and a person there close by had a cellar and he told us to go over there to that cellar "while I look for Maude and Merlene." So we went to look for them and he found Merlene first and brought her to this cellar. First he asked the neighbor’s house next to her if he could bring Merlene in and lay her on their floor, because I mean, their roof was gone. I guess the old man didn’t understand or something. He said, "No just take her to the cellar.” So daddy took her to the cellar. In the meantime the ambulance had been called from Lindsay, but they had a difficult time getting there because of all the wires—high line wires—down and so forth. Eventually daddy found his mother. Both them had been cut the same way. Grandma they said was already dead, but Merlene was unconscious for four or five days in the hospital in Lindsay.
R:
How had they been cut?
V:
From the forehead back to the center of the head and laid open. They said that it was probably sheet metal roofing. They were probably cuddled together. Merlene says that she kind of remembers—see Grandma had a cellar right next to the house—she kind of remembers them trying to get to the cellar. So after that Merlene went home with Mother in Sulfur and Mother took care of her. Then eventually we all come back to Bradley to live with Daddy, but Daddy still had a pretty bad temper, which was the big problem in the first place. [thud] Not that he ever did anything to us as far as beating or anything, but his words, he was scary. You know you never knew what to expect. I can remember once I had a friend at home visiting and we were going to go to a ball game. Daddy didn’t like the way something was cooked. He threw it and just barely missed the girl [laughs]. So it was crazy things like that. While Daddy was gone to work, he worked in the oil fields on the graveyard shift, while he was gone to work we all got seated down in the living room and decided that we wanted to go back the home, that we didn’t want to live under those conditions. When daddy came in from work the next morning we were all sitting in the living room and said, "we voted and we want to go back to the Whitaker State Home.” Well let me get cleaned up, and I’ll go over to Chickasha and talk to the judge. So that’s what he did and he came back--
R:
How did that strike him?
V:
You know, he never said really, but in a way maybe he was even relieved because he had four young daughters and then my brother. He certainly wouldn’t see Mother as a fit guardian and well, he knew that she couldn’t take care of us. She just would not be able to. But my brother didn’t want to go back to the home, so he stayed home with my father and we went back to the state home. We were happy to be back, really. We were kind of used to it.
R:
How long had you been gone?
V:
From September to March, not that long really. See I’m thinking we might have had the year in between that. Let me think. I think we had a year and something in between that. September, another school year, and then March of the next year. Anyway…yeah.
R:
So, you were just becoming a teenager, probably.
V:
I was just becoming a teenager, yes. Anyway we were glad to be back at the home, and life resumed. We had our jobs and we had a swimming pool on campus--
R:
Is that what you were wanting to get back to? Or what was it when you sat down, took the vote, and decided you wanted to go back to home. What did you envision getting back to?
V:
Getting back to…We were so young there that that was normal to us, you know. And each one—I don’t know how explain it really, except I looked out for myself. I made my friends. And like I said, when I was younger I was always mature for my age and I got along with people and I got along really well with the matrons as a rule. We had a lot of activities and stuff at the home. My father was a workaholic, as you know as we worked at the home but we also had activities that we enjoyed.
R:
It’s very structured it sounds like.
V:
Very structured. So we were there for a year or so. My youngest sister Merlene, she was with a group of girls who—they liked the home, they’ll tell you that they liked the home. But there were mischievous, and they would run away. And the guards would have to go out. Really, we didn’t even think of them as guards really. They looked out for us and stuff. But there was children there that didn’t like it and so forth and you can imagine. Anyway, Merlene and her friends would run away and they’d have to go get ‘em, bring ‘em back and all. So about the third time, McCarty called Daddy and said, ‘Come get your kids. We don’t have to put up with this. They’re not placed up here; the state willingly let them come back.’ He told Daddy what was happening. He said, "come get your kids." I was working in the sewing room at the time and I told my instructor, Ms. Day, “I don’t wanna go home.”
She said, “Well, I betcha Mr. McCarty would let you stay if you just go tell him that.”
“But I don’t want to leave my siblings either, y’know?” So we all went back home. So Daddy finished raising us for like the ninth grade through high school for myself.
R:
So how long were you there the second time?
V:
Just a year or two.
R:
Okay. Was everyone--
V:
Things actually went better when we went back home. We had matured more by then. We just kind of did like we were at the home. Y’ know like I said earlier, Daddy always raised his own cattle. We had our own beef, like we did at the home. There were a lot of similarities because my father was very…he did everything himself. He was a hard worker. He grew up the old way too and he knew how to do all that. He had huge gardens [thud] and raised our own cattle, pigs, chickens, and everything, took care of all the butchery, and all. It was all kind of similar to me. I guess that’s why it always worked really well for me, because it was similar to home anyway. And that’s why I still like gardening and sewing and everything that you see me do, because that was just always an integral part of me. That’s what I enjoyed doing and still do.
R:
Yes, that explains a lot. That’s neat to know. Were the siblings pretty upset with Merlene, or were you ready to go home? [thud]
V:
Y’know I can’t speak for them really. Because, like I say, being brought up like that and being in the home you were kind of on your own. Part of us were separated. The first time we were there, Pat and I were in the same cottage. Claudine was in a cottage; Merlene was in a cottage. And then as we aged, then Merlene and Claudine were in the same cottage. And then at one time Claudine and I were in the same cottage. And then Pat went to Rose [Transcriber’s note: Almost certainly referring to Rose Cottage], because she was starting high school. So that left Claudine and I were in the same cottage, and Merlene was in a cottage by herself.
R:
How many girls were typically in a cottage?
V:
Around twenty. Twenty? Between twenty and twenty-five. The first time we were there they all the old—Mr. Whitaker, where the office his is was his old home place. That’s what they called the office and they turned the living room into the visiting room and all. Over the years, as they needed I guess, they had built these brick cottages. They were two-story. You slept upstairs and the downstairs would have like a study hall and a living room. They’d been there quite a few years and while we were gone, that first time, they started building new cottages. So when we went back, there were new cottages. In the old ones we had like a dormitory. But in the new ones we had separate rooms. There were two girls for each room and there was a bathroom in between the rooms. That was pretty neat, you know. If you didn’t get along with the girl, you’d talk to the matron about it and she’d try to get it worked out so you would have someone that you could get along with. I remember one of my favorite roommates. Whenever she first came, she hadn’t told anyone that she had epileptic seizures [laugh]. I got up one morning and we were getting ready to go to the dining hall for breakfast, you know, and I looked over there and here Bernice was having an epileptic seizure. I said, “Help, I don’t know what to do!” [she laughs while mimics a call for help]. And she had not told anyone about this [a cellphone hums nearby]. So anyway, they found out about that and helped her with her seizures and so forth. Before I left that cottage, that particular matron, she was a retired schoolteacher, and she and I clicked really well. She had a room at the end of that cottage that had never been lived in. She asked me if I would like to move down to that room and have my own room. The other girls were a little bit upset about it, but yeah [laughs].
R:
You wanted that space to yourself.
V:
I did. So I had a room of my own till we left the next time. She would come down and tap on my door real light and she’d say, “Do you want to come play crosswords?” And sure. Scrabble that’s what it was, Scrabble. So I’d play Scrabble with her and different games like that, teacher’s pet [laughs].
R:
[Hums in agreement] Definitely.
V:
The first matron that we had the first time that we went, when I was nine, Ms. Keisley, she was not a good person. She shouldn’t have been there. She had her pets and stuff. Ms. Longley, the one that gave me my own room. See, she might have been ugly to-- I’m sure she was because that’s just life--but I don’t remember her ever being unfair about anything. Where Ms. Keisley, I can definitely say that she had her pets. Yeah she had her—I had my bad moments with her [laugh].
R:
Was there a person that influenced your life or that made a positive impact that you carry with you today, be it a classmate or matron?
V:
Definitely, my scout leader Mrs. Morgan. She of course lived off campus and decided to have a scout troop and had girls from the home and I was one of the few that got selected to be a girl scout. She was big influence. We also had [There is a pause here while a cellphone rings in the background] a piano teacher there in town. He would come on campus and give piano lessons. He was also our-- we had church on campus. The different churches in town would take turns; the ministers would come out and speak to us on Sundays. What I was going to say was that Mr. McCullough, he eventually also taught in our school systems. So he was would teach music in our school system, singing and all. He had a big influence on my appreciation for music and plays and so forth.
R:
Really?
V:
Yes, he was wonderful.
R:
Is there anyone you leaned on when you felt sad?
V:
No such thing.
R:
Anyone who encouraged you?
V:
No such thing.
R:
Explain?
V:
I’ve never been one to lean on anybody in times of trouble. I figured it out for myself. I can’t remember ever going to a matron and saying that something bothered me. I mean, I learned early in life from everything that I’d gone through that you work through things, that everybody has hard times. Life is not always happy; you have your sad times too. And that’s still just a fact of life. I don’t. That’s why with counselling, [thud] you know, it’s okay. I can truly understand like my—I had siblings that could certainly—the probably think that I could probably use some counselling too [both laugh]. We all see things so differently, honey. Like, even the things that happened before the home and everything, we can sit in a group say: "Do you remember when ‘this,’ Daddy threw that corn cob and missed my friend and everything, do you remember that [laughs]?" We all remember things differently. That why, to me, when we get together and we discuss things growing up and somebody remembers it a different way. That’s why whenever you and your sister talk about things, and I think, "Huh?” Then I remember, you know, all four of us would be there and all four of us had a different experience.
R:
Well, what was important to you about living in the orphanage? And what lessons do you still carry with you? How did it change your life?
V:
That’s difficult to say since I didn’t have a normal life growing up. The one thing I always wanted was normalcy to my life. I didn’t date a whole lot growing up, but the one thing that I looked for in a partner was that I wanted someone that had a normal family life, that I thought had a normal family life. Then when I did get married, that was the greatest joy, the fact that my husband came from a family that grew up together. [thud] Then I found out that normal families have problems too [laughs]. So here we are today. It’s, you know, what I find out as far as they say well what is that old saying about [pause]. Anyway, every family has things they go through, [thud] that they have to work through and everything. So, there is no such thing to me as a family that has everything together. You always have to work through things. Nothing just works out.
R:
Is there a funniest story that you remember anytime growing up?
V:
Probably, but I can’t just sit here and recall I instantly. But I do remember something that comes to mind where we were at the home the first time. We always had big Christmas tree. The cottages each had a Christmas tree, but then we also had what we called a big Christmas tree which would be in the gymnasium. And the VFWs would get together and we would write “Dear Santa Claus” letters. That’s where I got the “Dear Santa Claus’ letter thing. You were allowed to put a first choice and a second choice and they would try to fulfill that. They didn’t always, but you got a gift and that was the main thing. Under the tree at our first cottage, this was probably our second Christmas that we were there, there was two beautiful dolls. Every girl in the cottage was thinking, ‘gee, wonder who that belongs to?’ And then Christmas morning came. Pat and I were in the same cottage. Ms. Keisley waited until everyone had opened their gifts and everything. Those two dolls were still sitting there. She told Dorothy. Dorothy helped her a whole lot. She was one of the older girls. She said, “See what those tags say underneath the sleeve on the doll’s dress.” So Dorothy picked up the dolls and looked at the tags and said, “This says Patsy.” So she handed the doll to Patsy and looked at the other one. “And this one says Virgina.” Everybody was just so jealous [laugh], because those dolls were just absolutely beautiful. What had happened was Daddy had given Aunt Merle the money to go shopping for all of us Christmas gifts. And that was what she’d picked out.
R:
She did a good thing.
V:
That was one of my best Christmases
R:
That’s neat. The perfect gift.
V:
But we got out of the home. Daddy did a good job finishing raising us. He was extremely strict. He did not allow us to date. But remember, he worked the night shift, the graveyard shift. But we did not run around, we knew better. It was a small town and we knew that it would get back to Daddy if we ran around. So we didn’t do that. But I can remember that, when I was quite young back there, whenever Daddy and Grandma took us out of the home and I wouldn’t like something, and I’d think, “Well it’s okay I’ll just do what they want me to do and when I finish school I’m getting the hell out of there [laughs]”
R:
Take care of yourself.
V:
I wasn’t one to cuss, but that time I really do remember thinking that “I was going to get the hell out of there when I finish school.” And I did. And I came to Oklahoma City. Actually I went to Chickasha to work first. And a friend that lived in Oklahoma City kept wanting me to come up to the city and put my application in. And she took me around to several places and I ended up going to work at the Daily Oklahoman. [pause] Our time is up.
R;
That was the beginning of the next chapter.
V:
But that same person, once I moved to Oklahoma City, she did a lot of private patient care. Because I know that you’re interested in this is why going to continue, then I’ll finish. But she was taking care of this young woman. She’s probably in her later thirties, but she had had an operation, the young woman had. She asked me if I would take care of Francis for like, over the weekend. She said, “I have everything taken care of. You can just reheat the dinner and everything.” Well Francis and I became really good friends. Francis is the one that introduced me to your Daddy. She was actually going to introduce me to a dentist, but then your daddy called [both laugh]. (He) said, “Well Francis, you told me you had somebody that you were going to introduce me to.” She had really dark black eyes and her eyes just danced around. She said, “Well yeah, matter of fact I do have someone. I’ll tell you what,” she said. “I’ll have you both over for a drink tomorrow.” So that’s what happened. He picked me up at my apartment and took me over to Francis’s and that’s where I met your daddy.
R:
Okay, well, our closing question I’d like to ask you is what best memory do you have of your mother and your father? It can be separate or together.
V:
Well, the best memory I have of my father is the fact that—I don’t know exactly what you're searching for. If it’s an outing or something we had some good outings and stuff, but as a person my father’s word was gold. He always taught us that we were only as good as our word. That if we said we’d do something he said, “You do it.” If you’re big enough to do, be big enough to own up to it.
R:
Neat.
V:
And my mother, the best memories that I have with her is when we were quite young. I feel like I’ve been screaming all through this, talking too loud. The best memories I have with her were as very young children in the kitchen making fudge. She’d let us all stand on a chair, and we’d watch the fudge come to a boil. And she’d say, “See if you can count the bubbles,” so we’d all be up there trying to count the bubbles. I can remember that. She was always very good to give us treats. You know, like when we would go to the store, we were all allowed to get one treat which most of us would choose an RC Cola simply because it was the largest one there. Got more for your money.
R:
Well, that’s neat [clears throat]. Well, I just want to say I have very much enjoyed it, and I thank you so much for agreeing to share a little bit of your life with me today. I want to tell you [voice breaking] that I love you so much.
V:
You too.
R:
I have enjoyed getting to know more about you as an adult.
V:
I love you too, sweetheart.