Round 2

The next round of my interviews will be Saturday!

Alane

Alane is, yet again, another adorable resident. I always find her playing solitaire in the dining room, and she's always willing to chat with you.

Alane is a bit camera-shy, so no pictures, sorry!

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I have always been quite a lover of dogs. I’ve had all different kinds of dogs all throughout my life. My parents had dogs, but they didn’t raise them. I’m the oldest of three kids, and we always had dogs of some kind. When I was little, the dogs I had then wouldn’t have been recognized as any special breed. But when I got older and had a little money, I bought a dog and a pedigree that I paid quite a bit of money for, and I had him for a while. When I came up here, I had to give my dog aways because they told me I couldn’t keep them in my room. That dog was a Welsh Corgi. Most people don’t know what they are, but that type of dog came originally from England and Wales. I’ve had Cocker Spaniels, mixed breed dogs; now I don’t have any dogs. I went to dog shows all the time when I got older. I never entered any of my dogs, but most people would let you pet their dog as you went by. Each dog had a special area of its own.

My family and I lived in Pennsylvania; I’m not from around here, but I’ve lived in a good many different places. I’ve lived in Los Angeles, San Francisco. When I got married, I honeymooned in New York. When I had a chance to do some traveling, I wanted to go through the South. I’ve never lived there, but I was very curious about their area. One of the places I really liked and would’ve liked to have stayed was California. I enjoyed the area and everything about it. I was able to see San Francisco and San Diego and cross over and see a little bit of Mexico and Canada. I’ve had the chance to see a good bit of this country.

My husband had his own business and rarely traveled, but I like to see new sights and travel. The only thing I really remember from my childhood was moving so much. I didn’t like it so much at the time, I liked staying in one place. My father had his own business, the company he represented wanted him to start new branches in different parts of this country, so we moved a lot, and that gave me the chance to see a lot of this country.

My son wanted me to live up in Michigan so he could see me more easily. Before Michigan, I lived in Pittsburgh, and it was too inconvenient for him to travel and come see me. As I said, I had a family, a younger brother and sister.

The part of my life I liked the best was being able to travel. One of the places I really enjoyed, but I’d never want to live there, was New York City. It was one of the most cosmopolitan places I’ve ever been. (laughing) Unfortunately, I was there over winter time, but I’ve really enjoyed all the traveling I’ve done.

Rex

Rex is a really sweet man who I always see working on a puzzle every time I come in. He is deaf, but has always been very kind. I had the chance to talk with his daughter, who visits him frequently.

(Photos to come)

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NOTE: This interview was done with his daughter.

He was born in Leslie, Michigan. His father owned a bakery store, but his father died when he was two of pneumonia, so his mother raised him and his brother. She remarried when he was in junior high or high school. He put himself through Therry (?) College. He married his best friend from elementary school, my mom.

He was drafted into the war. My mother’s father owned a farm and he couldn’t do the farming, so the last thing my father did before he was drafted was to plow all the fields, which was a hard thing to do. My mom, after I was born, drove me all the way down to see him. My brother was born in Miami. My father was on the USS Malone; he did SONAR, so he was out tracking submarines, and that’s how he lost his hearing. He probably was predisposed to it, but the constant pinging of the SONAR for four years caused him to lose his hearing at a very early age. We moved back to Leslie, and my father helped out at the farm, then he became a guard at Jackson prison. He was on the inside when there was a riot at the Jackson prison. We didn’t know if he was one of the hostages or not, and he was not, but I remember going to the outside of the prison and seeing the tanks lined up around the perimeter. He was inside for four days.

                                      The USS Dalone. (from modelshipsworld.blogspot.com)

                                      The inside of the Jackson State Prison circa 1981. (from

                                      www.mnddc.com)

Through it all, though, he’s maintained a really positive attitude. He loves dogs and horses, and at one time, he and my mother had a trotting horse. When he was stationed in Miami, they bought and raised a Greyhound. He and I did some dog training and obedience trials with Airedale Terriers. Then he went on to work in real estate, and soon after, he retired. He loved to fish, and they had a cottage on North Lake. He played golf and was very active, but dogs have always been his top interest. When he and my mom retired, they got a standard Schnauzer and then a second dog, a male. We had ten puppies from those two dogs. The scruffiest dog of all the puppies didn’t sell, and they kept her, and she went on to the Westminster Dog Show. That was a highlight of his life.

                                             Not Rex's, but another Standard Schnauzer.

                                             (from http://standardschnauzersvirginia.blogspot.com/)

He’s a great father and husband and grandfather. He has six great-granddaughters, all girls. He’s always looked on the good side of things and has always found something to take pleasure in, no matter how bad it was. He really doesn’t complain. He’s also very observant, although he might not understand everything that’s going on around him.

Rita

I've known Rita since I began volunteering at Wynwood several years ago, so it made sense that she was the first resident that I interviewed. She always has a witty remark and a big smile anytime I stop by.

This is her story. Enjoy!

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My dad didn’t believe in raising kids in the city, so every summer, as soon as school was out, over to Canada we went. We went to the family farm first and then my uncle had a stroke, so we were able to move out of the family farm and lived in my aunt and uncle’s house, which was in a town called Ayton. We didn’t realize what a good time we had our whole lives. It was grand, we had a lot of friends. After we proved to my father that we could swim, we would go down to the dam and swim, which was deep water. We would go down the road, over the field, to this creek that ran off the dam. It would kill our feet because it was so rocky, you had to swim. He would come down every two weeks and we’d go down to the creek and show him that we knew how to swim, then he’d come with us to the dam and we’d prove to him that we could swim in deep water. I went there every summer until I was 15 or 16. (laughing) I think it was our mother and father’s way of birth control, because my mother had had 8 pregnancies and 6 live ones. That’s a terrible thing to say.

Anyhow, we had a wonderful summer, a wonderful life with my dad and mother. My mother wasn’t very loving; my father was. I don’t think my mother knew how babies came. She was raised in Toronto at a women’s college. She went to 13^th grade. The way they took baths, they left their nightgowns on and washed underneath. I don’t think she knew how babies came, or she’d have never married my father.

We lived the rest of the year in Detroit, 139 Belmont. On the same street as the cathedral is on. We lived between Woodward and John R.

I went to work for Mr. Sanders. Mr. Sanders wrote to the priest at my church asking if there were any honest girls who could work for him. I was an honest girl, so I went to work for him as a candy/bakery girl for about 2 years. The only thing we had in the box was the one pound of fudge, which was $1.15 plus tax. I’d have to figure out how much it would be. I seldom worked the bakery, because they said the other girls weren’t smart enough to figure out how much the fudge was by the pound. They were glad to have me because they could switch me around. So I worked there for a while. 

     Then my girlfriend and her brother worked for Dittrich Furs, and Mr. Dittrich wanted a secretary, and Doug (her brother) asked me if I could take shorthand, and I said “Yes I can, Doug,” and he asked if I wanted to work for Mr. Dittrich for 50 cents an hour. I was making 35 cents an hour as a candy/bakery girl, which was good pay at that time. So we would go to Mr. Alfred’s house: there were three brothers and we always called them ‘mister’ and he would drive us down to the store. Mr. Alfred had a telephone booth in the store, and nobody could use Mr. Alfred’s; (laughing) I swear he was taking bets. I worked the telephone, they had a 4 line telephone, and I did that for a while. My first job in the store was to vacuum the floor; I think they were doing it just as a precaution just to see what I would do. So for 50 cents an hour, I would vacuum the store. I worked there for a little while, not too long, because it was too degrading. What was nice about it, though, was in the wintertime we could wear the fur coats out that were in layaway that people never picked up.

And then I went to work — I was forever changing jobs — for an insurance company in the Guardian building. My friend Jeannie, she worked there for a while, and she lived around the corner from me. She was home for lunch, and her mother asked her to get a loaf of bread at Joe’s, at the market that was a couple blocks from her. So she went to the market, and this car came up and pinned her against this telephone pole and killed her. It was a big shock, since none of us had any experience with death before this. Anyhow, I told them (the insurance company) I was going to a funeral of the girl who worked with me, and they told me that I had better be back by 3:00. I came back at 3:00, and I wrote out “I cannot work for a company that has these kinds of policies.” I left a note on the table and the key to the locker room, and left. After that, I didn’t work for a while. My mother said, “What’re you going to do, lie around all summer?” I said, “That might be a good idea, but I can’t go back there.”

Then I went up to Chrysler’s and I was involved in workman’s compensation. When I went to Chrysler, I wrote down the insurance company I had worked for in workman’s compensation. Well, you’d think I was the Queen of Sheba. They leaped on me because I had experience in workman’s compensation. So I got seated in this office, with my hat on, and my gloves. Anyhow, Mr. Hotchkiss was supposed to interview me, but he was tied up in a legal case and couldn’t get away, so he had Mr. Norman interview me. Mr. Norman told me that I sounded like a good girl to work there, even though I told him that I didn’t have much experience in workman’s compensation, I just knew how to fill out the forms. “Well, that’s all we need,” Mr. Norman said. Mr. Norman wasn’t Mr. Hotchkiss’ favorite man. Mr. Hotchkiss had me go into the office the next day and talked to me.

It was a very quiet office. (laughing) Nobody talked but me! It was a good job, I liked it very much. Then Hotchkiss decided that he was going to put all the girls into the factories they were working with, and mine was Dodge Main. So I went to Dodge Main, which was very good. Well, I wasn’t very good at keeping quiet, as you know. So there I was, taking histories. Guys would come in that had hernias, that didn’t know they had hernias. Anyhow, I worked there until I got married.

Dodge Main Plant, 1955. (from allpar.com)

I met my husband at a Catholic dance. Marianne, my girlfriend, said she had met a really nice guy there the week before who was really good-looking. This guy had called her and said that they were going to go to this dance, so they dragged my husband out of bed to come with them. I thought “Oh good, a dancer!” — he can’t dance a step. So the three guys came, and I’d given my locker key to one of the guys from Catholic Central, and I went up to him and said, “I want my key back because Mary’s friend brought a couple guys with him.” Well, this Catholic Central guy was going to take me out to Bill’s Hideout in Royal Oak, which was the place. We went over instead to Marianne’s house and looked in her refrigerator, and she didn’t have anything. Her family didn’t keep much food, I don’t think they could afford it, to tell you the truth. Her father had died and left her penniless. I told them that I knew where there was food — over at my house — and Lou (my husband) said that he would come with me. I said, “Well, don’t you open your mouth because if my mother and father hear you, that’ll be the end of that.” My mother and father didn’t expect me home anyways since I was going to sleep over at Mariannes’ house. Lou told me, he saw the typewriter on the dining room table and the ten foot refrigerator filled with food, and he said, “This is the girl for me!” So that’s how I met my husband — and he doesn’t dance!

My girlfriend was going to give us dance lessons, she was an Arthur Murray instructor before she moved to Michigan, but my husband wouldn’t go. I said to him, “Well, I’m just going to find my own dance partner then.” He was fine with that, because all the guys at church knew he didn’t like to dance, and they all danced with me because I’m a good dancer. He was in college at Wayne (State) University, in his last year in college, so two days after he graduated from college, we got married. He didn’t even have a job yet! So in the mornings, I’d get up and go to work and Lou would get up and have breakfast. My mother told me, “How can you have a husband and you work, and he doesn’t work?” I told her he was looking for a job, and she said, “Well he should’ve found a job before he got married!” I said, “Never mind, mother, it’s okay.” She just couldn’t understand how I could go to work and leave him in bed. 

One of the nurses at Dodge Main said (before I got married) to come up in the factory with her, and we had to wear white uniforms, which was easy on my income because I didn’t have to buy any clothes. She said that one of the gentlemen had an apartment on the boulevard, and he might have an apartment for me. At that time, homes were hard to rent, so we went up and talked to the General Manager (Mr. Thurman), and I asked if they had anything available in February, since we were getting married February 2. It was $32 a month for rent, which was a good deal back then because they had rent control. We always paid them more, though, because we had the money at that time. It was a living room, dining room, small kitchen, and two bedrooms. We were very happy there.

    Then we bought a house, and the Thurmans came out to see it. Mrs. Thurman went into the bathroom and you could hear her opening the medicine cabinet. Mr. Thurman said, “Libby, what are you doing in there?” and she said she was just checking to see how much room we had in the medicine cabinet.

That’s about it. We had Cathy, then we had Peggy, then we had Matthew, and here I am. We’re still very happy and love each other dearly after 61 years.

Tuesday Interviews

My first round of interviews was awesome, I really got a lot of valuable information and incredible stories.

I'm going to try to see if I can go again tomorrow, but either way expect a few stories on Friday!

Great news!

I just returned from my meeting with the Life Enrichment coordinator, and it looks like everything is all set!  I have a list of residents who she thinks will be the most cognitively able to give me some good stories. At this point, it looks like I will be able to publish their recordings and transcripts of stories to this blog (I will, of course, get permission from them first).

To take photos, however, I will need a waiver, and I'll work on getting that for next week. I want to provide a complete profile for each resident, and as the old saying goes: "A picture is worth 1,000 words."

My official start date is going to be Tuesday, February 8, and I'll take it from there based on how my first couple of interviews go.

I can't wait to update you with my first interview!

Tomorrow

I'm going to meet with the Life Enrichment coordinator at Wynwood to set up times for the interviews! Wish me luck :)