Interview with Annette Hunt

Patricia McGuire History 11H Mr. DeMazza June 6, 2012

Name: Annette Hunt Age: 72

She was born in Indiana, and lived on the outskirts of Indianapolis until the age of 28, in 1967, at which point she moved to Connecticut. She studied music education at the University of Indiana. She moved to Connecticut with her husband, to whom she is no longer married, because he was offered a job as a music teacher at Hotchkiss School. She also worked at Hotchkiss upon moving to the area, but since she was a woman, she was not able to become a full-time faculty member at first. She taught piano at Hotchkiss for about forty years, eventually having become a faculty member with a salary. She had one son, who married and now lives in Australia. She now runs a linen business out of her home and teaches private piano lessons.

Questions

1. When Dwight Eisenhower was running for president, would you have voted for him if you could? 2. Did you notice any racism in your area? 3. Did you hear about riots and stuff happening in other places, on the news? 4. I know you got to be on a TV show for all these things- (referring to pictures) 5. Did you ever find out if he (President Eisenhower) liked your pie? 6. What did other people think of you getting to do that? Did people travel a lot like the way you did? 7. Well I mean people that you knew back at home. Did a lot of people travel around the country? 8. So you said that there was a girl from Hawaii, which had recently become a state. Was there a lot of excitement in the country when that happened? 9. Was there a lot of discussion about the Cold War in your school? 10. So did you not discuss current events in your school? 11. So did you vote for Kennedy? 12. Did you ever have air raid drills in your school? 13. How old were you at that time? (of ration stamps and bomb shelters) 14. Were you personally afraid that there was going to be a nuclear war? 15. Was the Vietnam war publicized a lot when it began? 16. Did you hear a lot about all the protests that were happening?

17. Did you know anyone who had been drafted and had to go into the (Vietnam) war? 18. Were people in your area strongly opposed to the war? 19. Is what you expected to happen with Obamas presidency happening? 20. Back during the Civil Rights movement, was there this sort of tension between the two political parties? 21. Was there a lot of support for civil rights in the area where you lived? 22. When did you notice the change from blatant black and white segregation to the more subtle racism?

When Dwight Eisenhower was running for president, would you have voted for him if you could? Probably, but I was not political. I mean I wouldnt have known the difference between a republican and a democrat, because part of that time was not to talk to your kids about politics. Parents did not discuss religion, politics, racism, babies. These were not subjects that were part of the dinner table discussion. So I didnt even know what my parents own politics were. Theyd go and vote but that was a secret.

Did you notice any racism in your area? Yes. But it wasnt part of the daily situation there were no revolutions, no rebellions, no attacks, nothing of that. There was, I think, one black girl in my class, and I went to a very large high school. There were two thousand kids; there were a lot of us in the senior class. And this one girl, Barbara Cantrel, was the only black girl that I knew. But we didnt call them black back then either. That was a word I had to learn, which is also part of the history, because we called them negros. And people who were not as kind about it called them other words. If my dad wanted to explain what a fabric print looked like and it may have had really, really bright colors with florals and something tropical, and I dont mean this in any demeaning way, but he would have called it a nigger print. Which we wouldnt even say today! Alright, so anyway, there were not very many black people around. There were not very many people from any other place around. When I was in college, in my senior year the housing was very crowded and we had to share like three bunk beds in a single

room, all stacked up. And one of my friends in that room was a polish girl and her last name was Balka, B-A-L-K-A. She was the youngest of 12 kids, from a family in South Chicago, Polish. I didnt know anything about her culture. I was raised Protestant and she was Catholic, and her father was in her seventies at that point and Terry was just eighteen. And she used to laugh at me because she said she could drink the boys under the table, and Id never had a beer! So, at eighteen she would go to the only beach sort of situation there is in Indiana, and thats the Indiana dunes, which is sandy area on lake Michigan but thats very, very far away from every place. Chicago is like a hundred and sixty a hundred and ninety miles from Indianapolis, where I grew up. So where she grew up was a very different culture from where I grew up. And my neighborhood was pretty much the way it is here in Litchfield County with houses on the street front and fields or property behind, no city. And she grew up in the city with her dad having a grocery store right on the street corner. And they lived behind that. So her culture was very, very different from mine. And she was a blonde, blue-eyed white girl. And she was the only person I ever had met like that in college, because every body I ever went to school with, except for the one black girl, were all white. So we didnt have riots, we didnt have rebellions, I cant remember what trouble we ever did have.

Did you hear about riots and stuff happening in other places, on the news? No. The first thing I can remember on television news because I can remember when we had our first television, that was in 1952, black and white, and before we had one, other people in the neighborhood had TVs and neighbor friends would

come to each others houses on Saturday night at each others homes and it would be a television party, just like a movie party would be, you know, or watching videos today. And youd have something to eat, people would contribute to the snack pile and youd watch several hours of programs. So we didnt have a lot of the same social things that you have today. People didnt just hop in the car and drive everywhere. If you did it was to a drive in food place, like the A&W root beer stand.

I know you got to be on a TV show for all these thingsYes, because my teachers really pushed me in high school. It was a very large school, and several of the students had won national prizes. Ive got two pictures here that are the two things that I do, in part. This ones a picture of me as a pianist, thats when I was your age. And this is a dress that I made, and I remember it very well. It was iridescent which means it shimmers in two colors. And it was violet and blue violet, a very pretty sort of periwinkle color, like irises in the springtime. And I was playing for some dinner, because I played for stuff all the time. And the other thing was to do activities in 4H, and this one is a photograph that was in a newspaper somewhere, my mother kept it. I had won this cherry pie-baking contest that was a national event. But my teacher had already groomed to girls who graduated from the same high school, in years before me. Jackie Hanaman had done it first and then Anne Abbot. And I looked up to those girls. Jackie would have in high school when I was in grade school and Anne Abbot would have been a senior when I was a freshman in high school. And both of those girls had been groomed to win all the levels of competition before they got to national. They had to do township, county,

state, and then the national competition with a girl from every state baking cherry pies and explaining how to do it. It was sponsored by a cherry pie growers. Like a dairy association today has many farms that belong to it, or beef growers or something. Or like the community supported agriculture of today, the CSAs, you know, theres a membership. So it was the cherry growers, which were in Michigan, and they sponsored these for years. But this outfit was yellow dotted swiss its a black and white photo but was yellow with little white dots, and then the cherries were embroidered on the collar. And you can see my state, it was Indiana. And that competition was in the Palmer house in Chicago, which still exists; its a big hotel. And they turned the ballroom into a huge bakeoff. And the ballroom had a double row of electric ranges, big GE stoves, arranged in two concentric ovals, two big circles. And there were fifty girls in the competition, because Hawaii was there, and I think Alaska was there too, although I cant swear to that. I know Hawaii was there because she gave me a present. And every girl had her own station with a worktable like your kitchen table and a stove. And we were there for three days being judged, and the judges lived with the girls in the hotel and there were events for three days, sort of the way the beauty contests are today where you have to speak for yourself on a variety of subjects and social situations as well as what youre trying to do. So the judges were judging the girls as well as the product; we had to present ourselves very well. So my teacher, Mrs. Welsh Martha Welsh had groomed me for this and we would practice every few days, you know, going through the steps on making the pies and how to talk about them and so forth. So anyway, I won. And my mother was immensely proud. I was just excited. The prizes were pretty amazing. Because that

was in February, in honor of George Washington, because of cherry pies, and the cherry tree. I have a little piece of jewelry upstairs thats like a charm for a bracelet but its a pin, about an inch long. Its a silver hatchet, with the clasp on the back that represents the cherry pie competition. So the winner of this got a five hundred dollar scholarship, and that was significant because the tuition at a state university was just a few hundred dollars for a whole year it would have paid for the year. I took piano lessons for a whole semester for 84 dollars. And fees today for one semester would probably be 4 or 5 hundred a semester, for one instrument, one lesson per week. So I remember earning money like that and it would pay for the whole semester. So I won the five hundred dollar scholarship and I won a GE stove, and the hot color in the mid fifties was pale pink enamel. The boys in choir, I remember this one boy that was kind of a goof off in choir, tenor, Ronnie Jester, good last name, he wore the pants that were the style, they were black but the seam down the side like tuxedo pants had the pink stripe in it. And the color in appliances, like stainless steel today, was this pale pink. My mother had redecorated the kitchen with pale pink and dark gray curtains in this print. So she got the stove, because I certainly didnt want it at age seventeen. And we had that for many years in our kitchen. And then the trip that went with it was to New York, and to Washington D.C., and then during the year that followed I got to go to a lot of places. Just like you know the person that wins a big competition is that person for the year. One of the events I did was to go to Louisville, Kentucky. Because GE had a big plant there General Electric and they were just testing microwave ovens. This was a big new thing, I mean nobody had heard of microwaves. And GE was having a problem with

them because when they would cook cherries in them they would explode. And we understand that today. But it was a whole new process then, and I had just come off of winning this competition, and they wanted me to bake a cherry pie and see what would happen to it. Well me and my arrogance and naivet, I thought, well, its gonna to be great. I just won a national competition, of course its gonna be good. Well the cherries didnt explode, and to this day I couldnt tell you why. Why wouldnt they? You know, when you put something in a microwave, youre supposed to pierce it. You pierce egg yolks and potatoes, so they dont blow up. And I dont remember if I baked it in a glass dish. Surely we did, because you cant use metal, but I dont remember that. So that was an interesting trip during the year. But the trip that was the prize, to New York, was really a big adventure, because Id never flown anywhere, so that was my first airplane trip, from Chicago to New York. And it was at night, so to see the city with the lights sparkling like jewelry was really beautiful. It was really nice. And because I can play piano, which is the other skill I grew up with, they had me do an appearance at the Taft Hotel, which has a grill in it. And in New York when theres a room that is the grill there very often is entertainment and a certain food on the menu. Very often there are resident orchestras or piano players or musicians who are there for either a permanent job or for long runs. And Vincent Lopez had the orchestra that was the Taft Grill, he was the piano player in the orchestra. And I had played some of his music see, just like you would now, as a student, popular music. So I remember sitting on the bench with him and he interviewed me at the Taft Grill just for the people who were in the room dining, but I thought that was pretty great. And then I was on Steve Allens

tonight show, and that was still broadcast in back and white. And it was live at 11:30 at night. It wasnt done at seven and taped and presented three or four hours later. It was live at 11:30. And being a musician, I had heard of Edie Gourmet, this really great jazz singer, who married Steve Lawrence, who is also a wonderful singer. And I remember seeing her get ready for that performance. Now she was on every night, so Im sure she was very used to it, and tired. And TV was black and white, and I remember the pancake makeup, do you know what that is? Where you just look really, really plastered. And she had on a dress that, if we were wearing it to a party today it would look like it needed a good cleaning or it was a very unflattering color. It was sort of a dirty beige. Tulle and chiffon, you know. All dresses then were strapless with zippers up the back or under the arms and tight waistlines and full skirts. So she had on this beige sort of chiffon dress and pancake makeup and I remember thinking at the time that if it were a live performance out on the stage she probably would have worn different colors and looked better. I think she was just probably tired. But she performed late that night. And Steve Allens a piano player too, and a composer. Its very, very good popular music. Hes a very smart man. And he always played piano on the show. Usually horsed around and made a lot of jokes while he was doing it. So when he found out that I had on this he had to interview me, Im sure it was boring as all get out to him, with this seventeen year old girl from Indiana who had never been to New York before, but I didnt know that then. So the sponsoring organization for the cherry pie contest was the Michigan Red Cherries so his line was oh, so are there blue cherries? you know, and so the audience is laughing, just a dumb joke. And then when he found out I played piano, we went

over to the grand piano on stage, he wanted me to give him four notes, and he would improvise a song on it. And thats really very good. And so I gave him notes, which were really tritones, which I thought would be kind of hard. And he didnt have any problem with that at all. He improvised this sort of rhapsodic kind of piano piece. And then I got to go to Villa Nova, Pennsylvania. I also got to go to Washington D.C. I got to go to Villa Nova because the county extension agent who was my 4H teachers superior, of all the club leaders, was my chaperone to go to those set of flights to different cities. And her brother was either president or very high position in Sykorski aircrafts, which were making helicopters for the wars. With any of the wars, 50s, 60s, 70s, youll hear about Sykorski. So the country extension agent who travelled with me was Janice Berlin, and her brother was named Berlin. And they had a very, very large house, in Villa , Pennsylvania. And Id never been to that part of the world either, on the main line. When we went to Washington, D.C., I was to present a pie to the white house, and Dwight Eisenhower was president, and Mimi Eisenhower was first lady. People always remember her, she had dark brown hair and she was small. Women wore their hair in curls in the fifties, kind of tight, not relaxed looking at all. Mimi was very well liked, people didnt say anything critical about Mimi, she was very well loved. She had very short bangs, dark brown, they would look too short to us today. And curls around her ears in the back. Dwight Eisenhower had come out of the second world war, and came home and eventually ran for office and was elected, because people trusted him. People really trusted him because hed been such a good general. But we didnt think about whether he was republican or democrat. As a kid, I didnt. And I wasnt old enough to vote for him, I

was still in school. The first president I was old enough to vote for was John F. Kennedy.

Did you ever find out if he liked your pie? Well Mimi wrote me a letter. And I had a box of mementos from a lot of these big events from high school that unfortunately turned to black, ooky slime in a flood in the basement of the house here in Connecticut. And she had written me a letter, I can still see it in my minds eye, on White House stationary. One of the gifts I had been given, and I honestly dont remember if it was from the Cherry Growers or from the family in Villa Nova, they gave me a pie basket, like you would buy from Vermont Country Store. Like a Shaker basket that has a platform inside so you can carry a pie on the bottom and a pie on the top, and like picnic basket handles. So, I had gone to some kitchen as a seventeen year old, you dont know whats going on, everybody sets up all the events and makes all the arrangements I was taken somewhere where there was an institutional kitchen and I baked this pie for the White House. And we carried it to the White House, somebody drove us, dont remember that either. And I had this pie carrier, you know, this Shaker type basket with the pie in it. We were met at the side entrance of the White House in one of the rooms where the public can be received; you dont get into the private quarters. And Dulles, that the airports named for, I think, was secretary of state. I dont remember if the time he was in charge of operations at the White House and later became secretary of state See, I was so unpolitical at the time. But I remember his name and that he was there in the White House. He received the time, and it really was

still warm, because I had just baked it a few hours before. And when the letter was written back to me, Mimi had signed it now whether she had ever ate it, whether they were allowed to eat it, because of Secret Service things werent very tight then, they didnt protect people like they do today but she said they had received the pie, and it was lovely, and it was still warm, and all that. Which was very nice, to have a letter from the White House.

What did other people think of you getting to do that? Did people travel a lot like the way you did? I dont really know if the girls who won before me And nobody won after me

Well I mean people that you knew back at home. Did a lot of people travel around the country? You mean had a lot of people had airplane trips like that, visiting other cities? Not too much. It was a very big deal. And when I flew back home first of all it was a little unusual for me to get to go to three cities, because I was planned to go to New York for the prize winning, and because Miss Berlin had a brother in Pennsylvania, they entertained me in a mansion. I got to go to Washington, which I think may have been part of the original gift, Im not sure about that. I did have some extra benefits because of the music, and because of her relationship to her brother, with Sykorski. But when I got back home on the flight back into Indianapolis, a lot of my friends from high school and my neighbors were there at the airport, just like, you know, when the Beatles arrive. They were all out on the, what wed say the tarmac today,

but they were out on that area where you can see people get off the airplane. Also, its a million years ago, there was no jet way to get from the air terminal to the plane. You went outdoors, you walked across the cement, you went up the steps to the airplane, and got on the airplane. Security there wasnt any security, they checked your ticket and you got on the plane. So when I got from off this trip, it was February in my senior year of high school. It wasnt snowing, it was decent, it was cold but it wasnt awful. And all these people were waiting for me at the airport to yell and cheer. And that was my senior year in high school so there were events all during that spring that I had to go to, be introduced at. But see, I didnt I appreciated it, and I dont want to sound arrogant at all I had worked hard, I had been ten years in 4H, I had been groomed for years to give demonstrations, which is like do it yourself television programs are today, where you show how to do something. And I had been performing as a pianist all through high school, just like you do. You play for shows, you play for singers, you play for events to raise money, you play at church, you play in competitions, you play for judges. And I was used to being up in front of people doing things. Because thats what teachers in music groomed me for, and what my teachers in 4H groomed me for. So it felt normal. And I hadnt had a terrible failure, so I thought that if I worked hard and prepared well, that it would go well, and it did. But I think it was good luck and good teachers.

So you said that there was a girl from Hawaii, which had recently become a state. Was there a lot of excitement in the country when that happened?

Yes, she represented her state. Yeah, we remember it. It was a topic of discussion. It wasnt controversial. It was like oh yeah, good! (claps). Everybody loved to go to Hawaii. That was the big vacation spot. Florida, California, and Hawaii, thats where you went on vacations. It was very far away. Ive never I have flown over Hawaii going to see my son in Australia. Its only one third of the way across the ocean, which puts things in perspective. But to make a trip across the United States by air in the mid fifties was a big deal. You know if you were going to California that was a very big deal. It didnt have Disney World yet, you know.

Was there a lot of discussion about the Cold War in your school? Not at school, not at school, no. It was on the news. Because the nightly news would be ABC, NBC, and CBS. Those networks have been the networks all of my life that I can remember. I dont enjoy movies about wars at all, because I grew up hearing the evening news my entire aware life, from the time we got a television in 52, which was Dwight Eisenhowers time. I have seen I can see it right now as were talking about it these black and white scratchy films of people running out of huts on fire, and bombs, and buildings falling, and the hydrogen bomb testing, and missiles. I don not want to spend any more time with that than I wont go see it for entertainment. I did not go see Apocolypse Now, and the fact that he used the Wagnerian writer the Valkeries for the musical score really bothered me. Theres been a lot of war movies that have been very good, but I dont like to go see them.

So did you not discuss current events in your school?

We had to take civics. It was a half-year course in your senior year, where you learned about voting and you know, the formulation of the United States and civic duties and all that. We didnt discuss well first of all the civil rights movement hadnt started. Blacks in the army were still one of those hush-hush subjects. All these different platoons that served so well for the United States that werent even recognized. Weve done terrible things in the past of passing over people. So it wasnt open for discussion yet. And when I was finishing college, it was still highly controversial for John F. Kennedy to run for president, because he was Catholic! Being Catholic was a big controversy in my youth. The battle between Protestants and Catholics was sometimes territorial, sometimes town by town. Some of them shunned each other, and I just thought that was ridiculous. Ive always felt pretty open about everybody, and all the religions. In fact Ive belonged to three or four of them myself. I feel like I belong to all of them! I joke about myself and say Im ecumenical, because to me were all trying to figure out how we should behave and who God is, and I personally believe its the same God for all of us, so everybodys path is different. But it doesnt mean that one way is better than another, or that people should fight and kill each other about it. I mean the revolutions in Ireland are horrible, between the Catholics and the Protestants, its ridiculous. And having lived a whole lifetime of two groups at each other, just pick any two groups! The one that made me laugh out loud was the Koreans and the Blacks, and I think that was because of fighting over street corners for vendors in New York City. You know the green grocer, or the cart on the corner to sell things. I just think prejudice is the

most stupid and upsetting, wrong. If people werent prejudiced we wouldnt have any of these wars going on in the world.

So did you vote for Kennedy? Yes, I did. I never liked Richard Nixon. When he was with Dwight Eisenhower, whom we all liked, I always felt there was something a little strange about Richard Nixon. And I remember then when he was president you know the words that start a, amoral, atheist? Without, you know? I always felt that he was amoral. He was probably my first awareness of political maneuvering, where you just do whatever to get you wherever. Everything is negotiable, maneuverable. You know, be on this side of the issue now, be on that side of the issue then. Or had no conscience about it at all. You know, you just pick a road thats the least full of obstacles, perhaps. But then you get a lot of bad choices. Today we call it collateral damage, which is a very offensive term, we didnt have that term then. But I remember thinking Richard Nixon didnt have a sense of right or wrong. When I was eighteen I had that feeling. It was just a gut thing, and then he sort of proved it.

Did you ever have air raid drills in your school? No, oh no. No no no. The two things I can remember, having been a little tiny kid during the second world war, we had ration stamps. I remember those books very well, in fact my mom probably still had one in her momentos of life, you know,

where you keep things. They were little books, really about this size, (referring to picture frame) stapled over here, not quite this wide, in brown paper. Like brown paper bag, craft paper. And they had black printing on them, and they were your ration book. I dont know where our parents picked them up, but it would be at some local government office, maybe the post office. And a family would have a ration book. Inside there would be a page with perforated all the pages were perforated so you could tear out a stamp at a time. And there would be an allotment for sugar, for gasoline, and any other thing that the government felt we needed to ration because it was needed for the war effort. And you could only buy so many in a certain amount of time, and that was your ration stamp. Gasoline was rationed for a while. And I do because my dad smoked, he smoked the terrible things that give you cancer, which he died of. The inside of the cigarette pack, this was pre-filters, when cigarettes were a little shorter, they werent quite so long. The inside of the cigarette package was lined with tin foil, and during the war, children got to do this because they have little teeny fingers, they could separate the tin foil from the paper with their little tiny fingernails. You pull that off of the paper and you collect all that and you turn in the little balls that you would make of tin foil you just keep adding to the ball, wrap another sheet around it, and turn it in, because they were recycling all the metals to make weaponry in the war. That was ration stamps in the forties, and I dont remember how many years that went. And then later, in the Cold War, the only thing I remember about a precaution for that was that when people would build a home and this was when ranch style houses, which I hate; theyre boring. I left the Midwest and hopefully all of them behind. If people were building a new

home, or if they had enough money to renovate their old home, they would build a bomb shelter. And this had to be a safe place. Now, getting in a storm cellar, which I also grew up with in the Midwest, just like in the Wizard of Oz, you get in the storm cellar underground. That would be a place where you would keep things under the house, whether it was your canned goods because it was cool down there or a root cellar with your garden crops like potatoes and onions and carrots and all that. My grandparents did have a cellar, but a basement would not be protection against bombs, or nuclear. So when those bomb shelters were built, they were absolutely windowless, they were sealed tight, they had and I dont know anybody who actually had one they would have benches, or bunks in them to sleep on, and a place to put a lot of food that would not spoil, and water, cans of water. We never did that, and I dont know what the water would have been in. Because we didnt have all the plastic bottles that we do today.

How old were you at that time? Well that would have been in the fifties, you know, after the second world war, when Russia was considered our very scary threat for espionage and spying, and counterspying that was a big time to talk about, counterspying and double agents. That would be a very scary job, I think, where youre fooling both sides that youre working for. They do it now with the Muslims, infiltrate Al Quieda and other places. Because if they find out youre not part of them, thats the end of your life as a double agent. And there were a lot of movies and a lot of books about spies and

agents that were very, very popular in the fifties and sixties. Thats when James Bond started.

Were you personally afraid that there was going to be a nuclear war? No, because Americans had been so lucky. We had the Civil War on our soil, which was horrible, and many people died horribly, because medical care was terrible, weaponry was fierce and brutal. It was not a reality, because none of our cities have ever been not until 9/11, you know, in this century did any city get attacked, except Pearl Harbor. And of course, Pearl Harbor is a biggie. And the men of my generation are in awe of Pearl Harbor because theres a romance to it, theres a horrible reality to it, theres a bravery to it, and theres a bizarreness. My own brother in law loves that. I dont like to seek it out, and I didnt go see the movie called Pearl Harbor, and Ive never been to Hawaii, but when they went to Hawaii they went to Pearl Harbor to see it. Its a big part of the culture to talk about Pearl Harbor and all the people associated with it. But in terms of bombs dropping in this country, I mean, missiles were a big deal of the conversation, you know, building missiles, anti-ballistic missiles that are gonna go off from our continent and intercept something coming at us from Russia. And now its almost like a joke, where you see comedic spies like Austin Powers - you know which one I mean? that make a joke of all this Cold War stuff, where you have the red phone, the red telephone, not a cell phone, the kind that you dial. The red phone in the presidents office where it can hook you up to the premier in Russia. And thats gone through several heads of government in Russia. But now its almost like a comedy routine,

when you think about it. In fact there was a movie, I dont know exactly what year it was made, maybe in the late sixties, I saw it not too long ago on one of the old movie channels, called the Russians are coming, the Russians are coming the titles twice. It takes place way up in northern Maine, as close as you can get to Canada and out in the ocean as you can get. And this one boat, this one submarine of Russian sailors strays into the waters off of Maine, and its just a little fishing town. And so the townspeople are having that panic reaction The Russians are coming, the Russians are coming!, which is just like The British are coming, the British are coming! and all the craziness. And theyre just guys. Theyre lost, the ones that strayed into our waters, and the people in the village are just villagers, fisherman, very simple people. So it makes for a good comedy, and its all based on that Cold War thing, which we never did actually have. I dont know what we would have done if hadnt taken all the precautions. But then Ronald Reagan gets the credit in the eighties for tear down this wall! remember that? So, weve had our go-arounds with the Russians, and the Germans.

Was the Vietnam war publicized a lot when it began? Oh yeah, and it was very controversial. By then we were so sick and tired of war. When you consider that weve got our first television, the second world war was already over. My uncle Wayne, I remember him coming to visit, my dads brother, and he had on his army khaki outfit, that tan color, you know. I dont know what he did in the war. The Vietnam War was enough later, because youre forgetting the Korean War, which was in between there. And in college, some of the other

classmates were veterans from the Korean War. They were a few years older than us because they hadnt come straight out of high school to college. You didnt take a year off between high school and college, you went from high school to college, you didnt take a gap year like its popular now. So there were guys in our music class whod already been in Korea, and put in their time, and come back and gone to school then. So they were not interested in silly things, theyd been through a lot of other stuff. And by the time we got to the Vietnam war, it was so unpopular for us to be involved that those soldiers unfortunately had a hard time coming back, because the country was not happy that it had ever involved our sons and husbands and dads. Were still fighting with that.

Did you hear a lot about all the protests that were happening? Yes, because by then everybody had televisions, and it was on the news every night. When I make sort of a quip, Ive just grown up through one war after another. And I wasnt political at all; I wasnt even interested in it. I didnt have any boyfriends that went to service. For most part they would try to be in the reserve and get away from active military duty, because the draft was a requirement. The draft had not been taken away. My own son who was born in 1970 did not have to answer the draft. All young men had to register, but I was so thankful that there was not a war going on that he was automatically called up for duty.

Did you know anyone who had been drafted and had to go into the war?

Oh yeah, yeah. I mean, it wasnt right after high school, it was later. But youd hear about Oh so and sos in such and such. Maybe they were stationed in the United States. Some of them never left this country, but others did. So it was not my favorite subject. Fortunately I didnt know anybody who died in the wars. Nobody in my family. It hit different times, and I didnt have any brothers. I have a sister, so it didnt affect me personally.

Were people in your area strongly opposed to the war? Well, when I moved her in 67 to Connecticut I dont remember what year it started, but they have been standing on the village green at the White Hart for decades, protesting whatever was going on. They would just do a silent vigil. And that was about all that I was ever personally aware of, because the timing never hit where I was in a city living in a city or involved with somebody, either children or a husband, who had to be called up for duty. When I got married, my husband went to reserve, and that wasnt dangerous then, in the sixties, because everybody was in the army so the reserve never got called up. The most a reserve ever did was maybe go out and help a town that had a flood. You know, it wasnt the way it is today when were depending on so many of them, because of the volunteer army. Personally, I wish we didnt have to do any of it. Im very tired of it. What I can see looking back on my whole life is that Ive been opposed to war, opposed to prejudice, probably a Democrat all my life, just looking at what Ive believed in, because I believe that all people should have the opportunity. Ill tell you this, I always felt that Republicans were the ones who kept the financial spending and any

of the extreme ideas under control. If there were ideas in the country that were getting too far to one extreme or the other, the Republicans would keep things under control. Not that I thought it was a Democratic issue to be out of control, thats not part of what I was thinking. Now I could not assign that definition to the way Republicans are behaving, because they have such extreme sections in their membership, Im not even sure that they would be comfortable with what some of those extreme groups are causing. Ive been a registered Democrat for most of my life I mean, no, I said it wrong a registered Independent. I joined the Democratic party just when Barack Obama was running. Because I really thought maybe it was a new time. New century, new time, that people were really ready to change things. But Washington is just so obnoxious. Its difficult.

Is what you expected to happen with Obamas presidency happening? I think his ideas have been blocked so thoroughly from the day that he took office by the people in the other party. Not all Republicans, but enough noisy ones that it caused some good things that could have happened, not to happen. I dont think either side is blameless, and I dont think our two political parties are both responsible for the mess the countrys in. But were in such a stalemate in the country now that nobody can get anything done. And nobody seems to be willing to compromise on anything. You would think that was a four-letter word, to compromise. Compromise is a good thing. Thats how you solve problems. Its dreadful right now.

Back during the Civil Rights movement, was there this sort of tension between the two political parties? I viewed it more as a Northern/Southern issue, as a mindset issue, not the two parties. I saw it more as because this was true a lot of white prejudice, out of ignorance. And I didnt grow up with any black kids around me; there was one girl in my class. And there were two thousand in the high school, I think I said that to you at the beginning. And this was a rural school, this was on the west side of Indianapolis, before those counties were considered part of the city. So I didnt see the issues as Republican/Democrat, I saw them as black and white and northern/southern.

Was there a lot of support for civil rights in the area where you lived? Well, I was living in Connecticut by 67. Before that I lived in Indiana. Indianapolis did not have riots until later, and it wasnt bad, not like Detroit had riots, and some in Cleveland. Here, its so rural, and I dont live in a big city, but I remember when Hartford was on fire in the hot summers, when we first came here, and that was distressing. But there was too much inequality. Just too much inequality. And its still going on. When you consider that parents are scared to death for their children, I mean there have been children killed by stray bullets coming into a house that has nothing to do with anything thats going on in the streets. And all the families that have lost teenage sons because of gang wars, I mean its still going on. But its not totally black and white, it even involves other ethnic groups and territory, and then

we get into drug problems. Drugs are terrible now, have been for a long time. But drugs were not a big issue when I was a kid.

When did you notice the change from blatant black and white segregation to the more subtle racism? After Lyndon Johnson, because he had the courage to put in the civil rights laws. Busing was a big deal, where you would make kids go to different schools so that the balance of kids would be more representative of the populations, instead of all white school, all black school. I didnt live in any city where that was happening. It was after I moved here, which is so rural, but I was very aware of it then. And after George Wallace, do you know he is? George Wallace, the governor? (No) People have said some amazing things thinking that they were right, you know, public figures. And he was absolutely in favor of segregation in education, which is ridiculous. Anyway, weve come a long way in the civil rights movement, accepting each other. Not being aghast that you have a friend in another race, or that you marry one in another race thats still a problem. The reason I dont belittle it, and I dont make it unimportant, but when I was a kid it was Protestant/Catholic. Because my husband was a Catholic. And it wasnt until I got interested in him as a musician, because hes a musician, a composer, one of the smartest guys in school because he was Catholic, from a Catholic town where 95% of the town was Catholic, it was so insular in Southern Indiana. Found out that my own grandfather whom Id grown up with next door - he was my babysitter my whole life, till I went off to school had come from a Catholic family, I didnt know that. Because he wasnt practicing

Catholicism. It was a hushed word, you didnt even talk about it. So, when I grew up it was not the racial issues it would have been a big stink, but then it would have been impossible-. There was one boy in college, Avon Galespi, whom I liked a lot. (Brief computer issues) Avon was the only black guy in the music department when I was in college. Good tenor, liked him a lot. I never felt the separation from these other races of people, because they were musicians, or they were classmates. I didnt see what the big deal was. So I think I was born not wanting to support any prejudice. Looking back on my life, Ive always felt opposed to it, and it didnt make any sense to me. The people I cant tolerate, and I had an uncle who I cant tolerate hes gone, but I still get upset about him I cant stand prejudiced people! Theyre the ones I dont have any compassion towards, because it just infuriates me, it doesnt make any sense.