Oral History Program Willie F. Moore Interviewed by Linda Sillitoe 14, 28 June, 17 July 2001 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Willie F. Moore Interviewed by Linda Sillitoe 14, 28 June, 17 July 2001 Copyright © 2017 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Moore, Willie F., an oral history by Linda Sillitoe, 14, 28 June, 17 July 2001, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Willie F. Moore in front of the Hotel Utah circa 1940s Willie F. Moore 2014 Willie F. Moore & Betty Moore 1 Abstract: The following is a set of oral history interviews with Willie F. Moore, conducted by Linda Sillitoe on June 14, June 28, and July 17, 2001. Moore discusses his memories of Salt Lake City and Ogden, Utah, and his barbershop on 25th Street in Ogden. Moore discusses his recollections of professional sports, including his time spent playing for the Harlem Globetrotters during the early 1940s. He also discusses religion, segregation, the Hotel Utah, and his association with Weber State. His wife, Betty Moore, is present during the interview. June 14, 2001 LS: This is Linda Sillitoe from the Stewart Library at the home of Willie F. Moore in Sunset, Utah. We're talking with Willie Moore about his life and his memories. Why don't you tell us a little bit about when you were born, who your parents were, where you grew up. WM: I was born in Ruston, Louisiana. My parents separated when I was about seven years old. They were working for some people, some Jewish people in New Jersey, and they separated there and returned to Louisiana. I decided after I'd seen my mother trying to take care of us five kids while we were in New Jersey- I just saw her crying one day washing clothes for fifty cents a load—I figured if those people ever left New Jersey, I would leave with them. The Jewish people were working in Mode O'Day stores, and then they came to Utah to work in a Mode O'Day store in Salt Lake City. 2 Then after that, a little while later, I started to go [to work] in the Hotel Utah. I worked in the Hotel Utah as a busboy until I got to be older. But during that time, there's quite a bit of experience I had. When I was fourteen years old, Shirley Temple came to Hotel Utah, and she was so exciting, the kids and the people tore her clothes completely off of her. The policeman had to put his clothes around her so she could get into the hotel. But when Veronica Lake would come to the hotel, she would always come with a pair of overalls on and her hair plaited in the back so they didn't know who she was. The Hotel was quite an experience because that was a place where everybody that came to Utah - professional people - would go. They had a lady there that I remember so well, and her name was Mrs. Bamberger. She was there in the Hotel Utah, and she just loved all the people who worked there--it was all black waiters and busboys and whatnot. So she loved us all. Then a person came from Seattle, Washington, and his name was Toomb. He came to take over, and he said, "Well, what I'll do... I brought my waiters and my busboys with me, so we'll get rid of all the black people, and we'll just put these people in." So then Mrs. Bamburger said, "Well then, I'll tell you what, you can take them back where they came from because I'm going to keep my boys." (She called us "boys" all the time.) She said, "You forget about that, and you take the boys back." So at that time he left, and he went back. We stayed there, and I can remember all the work that we did there because it was really tough working in the Hotel Utah. We were working in a place called the Roof Garden, and downstairs is where they cooked. The chef 3 was named Garaage. I think he was from Germany or someplace. So I worked there for a long time, and then I went to West High School a little while. There were some nice people from the Mormon Church who decided that they would help me. I wanted to go away to play basketball - they weren't using black players then - so they got together from this church and sent me to a place called Grambling College, in Louisiana, an all black school. And I was kind of glad because my parents lived there in Louisiana. After I went to school a little while at Grambling, then the Globetrotters came by in Louisiana but they didn't draft people like they do now. So when they came by (on tour), they decided they wanted somebody to play. They carried seven people with them to play, and one person had gotten hurt. I wanted to come back to Utah then, so what I did is, I said I couldn't play very well, but I played well enough that I could substitute for this team. So the Globetrotters called me Ducky Moore because they would throw the ball all over my head, see. So I would duck, and they called me Ducky Moore. LS: Before we go further into the Globetrotter phase - these are wonderful stories - could we pin down a few details? Where do you fit into the family you were born into? In the line of five children, what's your order? WM: I was the second child. There was my oldest sister, and then me, and then three others. LS: So, you're the oldest son and the second child? WM: I'm the oldest son. LS: And what were your parents' names? 4 WM: My father was named Willie Moore, and my mother's name was Lavada Champion. LS: You said that they separated when you were seven years old. Do you have any memories before they separated that really stand out? WM: Well, when I was smaller, I remember I could hear them disagreeing so much all the time, see. And I kind of leaned toward my mother because it appeared to me like she was the one taking care of us, mostly. So, I leaned to her, and the funny thing about that separation was, they never did leave Rustin, Louisiana, after they returned from New Jersey, and they always were friends (when they separated), even going all up to when they passed away. I have five step-brothers. They thought that I was dead, and then they wanted a boy named Willie Moore - same as mine - because I was gone. They didn't know where I was, see. My mother passed away at fifty-eight years old. It was so sad because she was so young, and my dad had all of the boys to come and dig a grave. They didn't want to dig it with nothing but a shovel, so they dug this grave for her. My father was always a good friend of hers, and all her sons were pallbearers when she passed away. LS: So she was buried in Louisiana? WM: She was buried in Louisiana. LS: How old were you when you went with these people who... WM: About seven and a half, eight years old. Just a child. The man I worked for was hurt - that's the funny thing - and I was pushing him around in the wheelchair, I can remember that. So he had a daughter and, like I said, my parents went to 5 New Jersey to work for the Jewish people, where they worked at Mode O'Day. Then I came with the Jewish people to the Hotel Utah in Salt Lake City. The man I worked for lived upstairs in the Hotel Utah. Part time, I was sleeping in the basement of the Hotel Utah. That's where I started to cutting hair. They had a barber shop in there, and I used to clean the barber shop up some. LS: So, do you remember the name of this family? WM: I do, but I won't call their name. LS: Oh, you'd rather not? WM: Call their name, but I know who they were. They could have been Myers. We'll say "could have been" Myers. The Mormon people I met while I was at the Hotel were really good to me. I was young, and all the way up, they watched me, and I watched them grow up. Mr. [Boyd K.] Packer and Mr. [Thomas H.] Monson, Marvin Ashton, and people like that. We're almost the same age and they were nice to me all the time. Then they had a black guy that came from some place or another, and he got in the Mormon Church. Mr. Finley was the first black that I know was in the church, and then this black guy [Rufus Bridgeforth] took over. I talked to him about getting into the Mormon Church all the time. Later he became the [branch] president, and they told him he couldn't be president then. He could be president, but he couldn't hold the priesthood. LS: This was in the Genesis Branch? WM: Right. And that was real funny about that... 6 LS: Yes, that was a strange time. So, this is Boyd Packer you're talking about, and Thomas Monson, before they were church leaders... WM: Yeah. I could see them on the grounds all the time. They were about seventeen, eighteen, nineteen years old. LS: What were they doing around there at that point? WM: Well, business, visiting the church because later they come to be missionaries. And the mission home was just northwest of the hotel. LS: The old mission home? WM: The old mission home. Then I could see them because it was close by, you see. And I could see them going in and out, then I'd speak to them, and they'd speak to me. Now Kimball, he came along a little later from Arizona. I remember that. LS: And he was always called the Indian apostle. WM: Right. He was called the Indian apostle...and he was good too, and he was so nice. One day he called me up. [He knew] I wanted to go on a mission, and they told me that sooner or later, I would go on a mission. He said, "Willie, you'll go on a mission, and you'll be proud, and we'll be proud of you." And then when they started that pushing of the Mormon Church, the blacks really charged ahead. Like in Wyoming, when the blacks didn't want their teams to play against BYU, and stuff like that. And they started pushing [for the priesthood]. So later we would talk to each other, and the funny thing about that is, when they did get the priesthood, Mr. Kimball - the same person who told me he would be proud - was the church president then. I was always still proud of him, you see. But I always wondered that Thomas Monson was a person who could - is this all right? 7 LS: Sure. WM: Thomas Monson was a person that could think of everything. He was a good speaker and everything. Now, Mr. Packer was kind of more businesslike. President Hinckley, he was up in Eden and Huntsville, up in that way, and he was smart, but he was a businessperson too. I knew that someday he would be a big person in the church. They were all kind of young. Of course, he [Hinckley] was older than we were. LS: Yes, he would have been. WM: Yes, he was older than we were then, you see. But then I saw them all, and saw them all grow up, and saw them even when they had a little airplane then. Some of them went off on that Western Airline. You could see them going to get on that plane. We went to see some of the missionaries get on the plane, and they felt so good, they would wave back at the Church. We paid attention to that. LS: So did you actually join the LDS Church or were you just around it? WM: No, I was just around it all and I stayed around it all the time. I hope I don't die before I join the church because I would really enjoy that... LS: So you think you might join, or you will join? WM: Oh yeah. Someday I might just join the church because they treated me so nice when I was young, and I never forgot that. LS: That's interesting. So how old were you when you left that atmosphere? WM: About seventeen when they sent me to this Grambling College. LS: Now you said some LDS people sent you. Was it just these people you knew? It wasn't a ward... 8 WM: No, no, just a group of people like I just said a few minutes ago, that just got together and said, "Well, we can't do nothing for you here because you can't play ball with the white kids, so we'll do this." I called it a little kitty they took up. But they sent me there, and they paid for me until I came back. I wanted to come back to Utah, so I didn't stay too long. LS: That's interesting. It's interesting, too, that so many of those people you knew then have become prominent. WM: Yes. [Howard W.] Hunter, all of those people. LS: How about Hugh B. Brown? He was a counselor to David O. McKay. Did you know him? WM: Yeah, I knew who he was, too, because being in the hotel, and waiting on them, you meet them all the time, see. But during that time I can remember that everything happened. They [the Browns] lived on the south side. I remember that. Hugh B. Brown was good, he was good. There was another fellow that I know who was good too, but he was a business person, too. LS: [N. Eldon] Tanner? He was very business oriented. WM: He was very business... [David O.] McKay was nice, he was kind of soft-like. He wasn't a hard person. I even have books downstairs, that I got from them. Especially, A Marvelous Work and a Wonder. I have that one, and that was by LeGrande Richards, I think. LS: It was kind of a different church back then. Of course, everything was different then. 9 WM: Oh, it was different. You know, when they - well maybe I'm going too far with this thing. When the Genesis Group started in Salt Lake City, they had a big group of people come in and they were going to dedicate this ward to the minorities. It was Thomas Monson and Boyd Packer and Kimball - I believe it was. I believe it was those three that were conducting this meeting in this ward. What they said to those people is this: they said, "Now, we're going to turn this over to the minority people. What we will do with this thing here, we will have a pipeline, and I will bring this thing down to you,"— this was before the [black men had the] priesthood - "and then you'll tell me something, and I'll take it back to the church." And he says, "Now, who are you willing to turn this ward over to for the minority people?" And nobody says one word, and he says, "Now, Mrs. Banks here would probably be over the MIA. And then Mr.--I forget his name-- [Bridgeforth] "he would be the president." And nobody said a word. Then he said later, "Now wait, they will not have a priesthood now, but someday they will have it, and they will be prepared. Could we get a yes, a no on that?" When he said they are going to have the priesthood, everybody in the church stood up and raised their hands, and says "We agree to them having it, but not with the priesthood." LS: So they-or you, too--took a stand right then? WM: Took a stand right then. It was really a stand then. LS: That must have been when? WM: About '70 or something like that. LS: Well the revelation [on priesthood] came in '78, didn't it? 10 WM: '78, yeah. LS: But Genesis was formed way before that. WM: Way before that. LS: My folks lived in the Liberty Park area... and the Genesis Branch was affiliated with Liberty Stake for quite a while. WM: Yeah, they started that way before. Now the thing that some of them I talked to later about - getting the priesthood. After they pushed so hard to get into the church they weren't letting any more come in. LS: Well, do you think that the visibility of the civil rights movement slowed down the process, or did it speed it up, or did it have any effect? WM: I think it was really a religious issue. I think it was between God and the apostles. I think they prayed over this thing. I don't think they had a whole lot. The civil rights was a part that they really didn't want. They didn't want it to go that way. They wanted it to be smooth. They wanted everybody to be satisfied. So the civil rights, it started it. It kind of made a little bit of difference, but I think all the apostles and everybody else really wanted us to come into the church. I think it was just not time. LS: They were waiting for everybody to get ready? WM: They were waiting for the people to get ready, then they felt like they were ready then. So they said, "Now, this is the time." I think - I'm not for sure - I think they went overseas someplace and built the church in a black neighborhood over there, in a black country, and they didn't let them dedicate that church... They came back, and they went upstairs. and they prayed, and then they got the 11 revelation, or whatever. They went back overseas and dedicated the church because we had the priesthood then. You see, the priesthood came between all of that. LS: What was it like when you went back to college? What was that period like for you? WM: In Louisiana? LS: Yes WM: It was okay. The coach there and I went to school the same time. He went as a coach, and his name was Eddie Robinson, and everybody knows him. Be sure to put that down. He went in the coaching [program] and I went in the student [program]. LS: Interesting. WM: And it was good and, like I said, I knew then, after the hotel experience, cutting hair and stuff and cutting all the waiters' hair, with all the help there, I could cut hair pretty good. Eddie Robinson would cut my hair, and I would cut his hair. So he was the coach, and I paid him ten cents to cut my hair. He had to pay me fifteen cents because he was on a salary. So, the college was good, but you know when you're raised kind of around all white people, then when you go back to the other race, you know, you're kind of different. You feel a little different. LS: Culture shock. WM: Yeah, you're not shell-shocked or anything, but once you see so many whites, then next time you see all black, then, you know, you're trying to get yourself together, see. But I enjoyed that part. 12 LS: So how long were you in college? WM: Oh, I was there about eight months; about a year. LS: And then the Globetrotters came after that? WM: And the Globetrotters came. The team wasn't so old then, the team was quite new. It started in 1927. They started in '27, and this was later. Because when they started, they weren't, the name wasn't Globetrotters, the name was the South Side Chicago Shufflers. And Abe Saperstein was the owner, and he decided, well, we better get this thing together and put all these blacks on this team and then play the white teams, you see. And they called it barnstorming. We went all over the country and played, see. LS: What years would you have been playing for the Globetrotters? WM: It would have been about 1940, '39 and '40. Something like that. LS: Okay. Now, as a historical note, I should ask if the Great Depression had any particular impact on what was going on in your life. WM: No, because I was still getting support from these people, so I didn't have to worry much... I do remember when the Coca-Cola truck would come into Grambling College. They were the only whites that would come. I wondered about that a little bit, you see. Because they weren't there long. They just dropped the stuff because it was a black school, no whites at all. LS: Did you think about things like segregation and integration going between Utah and Louisiana? As you said, that's a big shift. WM: It's a big shift, but going back and forth from there to here there, it was still kind of segregated here, too. 13 LS: Yes, it was. WM: So, it was just a black and white deal, you see what I'm saying? LS: Everywhere. WM: Yes, so it was everywhere. So it didn't really kill me, you see. It didn't bother me too much because first, I was with these white people and then, there, I was with black people. And then before things changed, we weren't able to do things here. We didn't try there because we knew they had "Colored" [on a sign] up there, and if you could read-. Here, they didn't have signs all over. LS: So, here it was really a kind of unwritten code. WM: Right, right. LS: You just had to know. WM: You just had to know, see, and that was what happened then. LS: Did you believe it would change? I mean not just with going on missions, but with everything. WM: Oh yes. Oh, I knew it would change. I knew it would change because the people were too good about change, you see. Like I said, the people here were so good to me. There was going to be no change for a while. Then after I knew them well, and they knew me well, I just said, "There's no way in the world that these people won't change." Because I hadn't done nothing to them, but help them. So they are going to be good, see. It's like going to Washington D.C. right now. I go to Washington D.C. right now and it's all almost black, and then I come back here and it's different, see. That's the way it was then. 14 LS: That's interesting. So, after the Globetrotters, you came back here. Did anything stand out during your time with the Globetrotters, any particular experiences? WM: Well, most of it was beating me over the head with the ball. [laughter] And then one time - an experience - when we came to Utah, the Globetrotters broke up. A person called up... Marcus Haynes broke away from the Globetrotters and built his own team. This was very exciting, and the way he put... the Globetrotters have six stars on the front of their uniforms. He put "Globetrotters" as big as the stars, and the "former" was so small you couldn't see it. The "Globetrotters" was all big, so when we would come ahead of the Globetrotters, then they thought we were really the Globetrotters. Then the sheriff stopped us in some place called San Pete County, and took all our monies, and told us we had to go to court because we had to change this uniform. The problem was that the Globetrotters, themselves, didn't want us to be going in front of them and collecting all the money. LS: Oh, I see. WM: That's why we would do it, see. We were collecting all the money so they didn't like that. Because that "former" that they had was about an inch high, and then the "Harlem Globetrotters" was always in front of us, you see. So, they thought we were the real Globetrotters. We were really the Harlem Magicians. That's what it was: Harlem Magicians. That's what we really were, you see. And we put that Harlem Globetrotter so big because we were all former players. We just got out because of the fact we couldn't get insurance... But the team itself had insurance on us, so if anything happened to us they would get the money, but 15 our families didn't get anything. See what I'm saying? So, that's the way that was. It was kind of funny. LS: Well, when you were traveling like that, were accommodations a problem or did you pretty well know where you could stay? WM: I did know where we could stay. We stayed in the old station wagon we had, and we ran over things, so it looked like every time the wheels turned we had a flat. But during that time there were no hotels that you could stay in. They were pumping gas for everybody but us. And then when we had to go to the restroom, we had to go before we got to the place, in the bushes, or we didn't go because they would say you couldn't go. And some of them said, they just put "Colored Only" and then "White Only," but you couldn't really go. You didn't have any place unless blacks owned some place. And this is why you couldn't really tell the difference [between Utah and the South]. And you knew segregation to start with, so you didn't pay any attention. You knew this was it, so you knew that you didn't have no place to stay... I remember one time I came to - I was going back, I came here and I was going back - to California to meet the team on a Greyhound bus. I had to take my lunch with me because I couldn't eat anywhere. And they took me about two blocks up the street to a park, and they went downtown, and I ate in the park. Then they drove all the way back up and picked me up. I was always kind of tough, I was always kind of tough, you know, when we started this Dee's Café thing. My friends bet me that I couldn't go in and eat in in Dee's Café, you know. And I told them I could, see. And they bet me five 16 dollars. The guys outside, they stayed out and watched me, you know. And I went in, and I ordered a hamburger to go. She was fixing the hamburger to go, and I told her, I said, "Would you excuse me please," I said, "I'd like to have another hamburger." And she says, "Okay, I'll fix you another one." Then while she was fixing the other one, I ate the first one." LS: I love it! Where was this again? WM: Salt Lake City, in Dee's Café on Fourth South. LS: I remember it. WM: So, it's kind of funny. LS: So, you won the bet. WM: I won the bet. I tried to go out and not pay for that last one, but they made me pay for it because they knew what I was doing. And while I was sitting there - it's funny - while I was sitting there eating, a guy came in and he ordered some coffee, you know. And the lady said, "How would you like to have it, what do you like to have in it?" And he looked right at me and he says, "Bl-a-ack!" LS: So you, personally, integrated Dee's Restaurant in Salt Lake City. When would that have been? This was a historic occasion. WM: It would be, oh I don't know, it was in the forties. Maybe '43 or '44 or something like that. And the bowling alley was the same way. I went to the bowling alley, you couldn't bowl in the bowling alley. So went into this bowling alley, and the guy says, "Well, we don't...," and I said, "Well, yes you do, you have a bowling alley." I didn't give him time to say you couldn't bowl. He says, "We don't...," and I 17 says, "There's a pair of twelves right over there, I [could] wear those shoes." I just started bowling. LS: So, this was in Salt Lake also. WM: Yeah, in Salt Lake City. In Ogden they had a sign where it said "Colored Only" and you go upstairs in the Paramount Theater. When I came downstairs, I kicked the sign out. Then they called the policemen on me. The police said, "Well, why did you kick the sign down?" And I said, "Well, I just saw it said "Closed," and I don't want to be no place where it's closed." [Laughter] It was quite, Salt Lake was...it was a nice place, though. It was nice. LS: If this is the forties, the war's going on. Were you ever in the service? WM: No, I wasn't in the service. What really happened to me when I was in Louisiana, I didn't tell nobody. But the whites walked on one side of the street and blacks were on the other; that's the way it was. Two of my brothers went into the service. And I was on my way to go into the service in the next two or three days. I was walking down on the wrong side of the street because I'd been here, I'd been in Utah, where I could walk anyplace, see. And this guy kicked me on my leg, just kicked me two or three times on my leg, then I never did get quite back into going into the service. So that's why I didn't go into the service, see. I always wanted to live in a way where I wouldn't be grumbling about a lot of stuff, though. It was just that way. I shouldn't have been there [on that side of the sidewalk]; I knew better, but I didn't know better because, like I said, I was here, then there, then here, and then there. He kicked me on that side of my leg 18 and it was just two or three times, knocked me down, so I couldn't go in the service, see. So, after I went back... See, I went back to see my parents, and that's when that thing happened to me, see. But I didn't see them. I didn't know my parents until I met my wife. I was so young when I left home, and we stayed in Jersey so long until I thought I actually was born in Jersey.... LS: So your parents really lost track of you. WM: The man [Myers] died. I remember when he died they left me six hundred dollars, I believe it was, and wanted me to go to a doctor or law school, be professional. Six hundred dollars back there in the early forties was quite a bit of money. That would have been a good start for me, but I decided that I wanted to travel, and I used that money traveling a little bit. This white lady, her name was Mrs. Lumas at the Hotel Utah--I was around the Hotel Utah again, I'll get back to that-, she told me, she said, "You really ought to go to school, you ought to learn the [barber] trade." And I said, "Oh, no." And she said, "Yes, you'll only go six months," she says. She was so nice to me, all of them were. She says, "Willie, if you take six months out of your life, you might live until you get sixty or seventy years old, you see what I'm saying? And you might not be able to play sports like you play now, see." Sure enough, I got hurt, see. But that was what happened. I couldn't go into service at all, see. They kicked me. I got a scar on me now. LS: So that injury... I don't suppose you sued them or you pressed charges. WM: No, no. 19 LS: Did you see a doctor or anything? WM: Yes, I went to the doctor. It was a charity hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. I went over there and they stapled my leg together. LS: So he did a lot of damage. WM: Oh, did he! I thought I was dead. I was kind of, you know, I was a big shot from up in Salt Lake and all. I came back down to this little place here, see. There was just a line there, and it was tough, tough, tough to live, but you didn't feel it, see, because it was segregated everyplace. But the different thing was then was the law. You could go to court here, but there, you couldn't go to court. You see what I'm saying? Like right now I'm saying this, and the [integration?] isn't as great as people think it is now, but what make it great is the money. The money is the thing that integrated. It's integrated, money is. LS: The opportunity to earn money and... WM: It's different, you see what I'm saying? So with that money you can do lots of things, because everything has turned completely to money now. If you don't have money now, you just starve. That's all. It's good see, but that's the way that goes, see. LS: Interesting. Have we covered everything to get you back to Utah or... WM: Yeah, we're back in Utah now, and as soon as I got back to Utah, then I started going to Salt Lake. We had about three girls, I guess, in between Salt Lake and Ogden, and we would visit and talk to them and everything. But in the meantime, I just wanted to be in something. When I did get married to my wife, I told her one 20 day, I said - it was on [28th] street- and I said, "You're gonna move to 30th street." And then after 30th Street, we came out here. But in the meantime I was getting into all these organizations. I'd been in all the organizations. It wasn't, as people would say, as a token. I never felt like a token. I just felt like I belonged there, you see what I'm saying? And then I put forth effort to belong there, you see. And the one thing that make me feel good about my life - this is way up in my life, and I feel like I was okay - the Utah Power and Light Community Advisory Committee was started fifteen years ago, and then it took away everybody we started with. Then an official of the Utah Power and Light called me and said, "Willie, I want you to help us when we get that program together again." And I felt like then I did a good job there, you see. And that's one of my favorite programs-- Utah Power and Light because we're using it now. His name's Steve Rush, the man who talked to me about getting it together. Then I went into all these other different things... I went into all of these at first; one I can tell you was the Red Cross. I was on the board of the Red Cross. Utah Power and Light, Chamber of Commerce - I was a member of the Ogden Chamber of Commerce. And the Job Corps Community Relations Board. LS: And these are all in Ogden? WM: These are all Ogden except the Clearfield Job Corp Community Relations Board. And the Family Counseling Service - I was right there. And Utah Corrections. And all these I'm telling you about now. Then the Utah Stars had started a campaign - the Utah Stars, that's basketball... I decided we wanted a boosters 21 club. I joined the boosters club, and got a bunch of members to join the boosters club, then we carried it over into the Utah Jazz, you see. I have always been involved in golf, and I won a lot a golf tournaments. Everybody knows me on the golf courses, everybody knows me on the golf courses. Then I've cut hair for the community. I go to the hospitals now and cut people's hair and don't charge them at all because they came to me when they could come. When I do get up to the hospital, everybody in the ward wants a haircut, so I do that part of it, you see. I've been barbering now for fifty-six years, that's a long time. I've been married now fifty-one years. Two kids: Carol and Phil, and you know Betty. I work now towards helping these different things that I can do to try to help because I had a kind of good and bad life. I really felt my parents should have stayed together, you know. Even though they took care of each other a long time, my dad never did like my mother to be separated from him. I went to see my mother, and that was really sad. I hadn't seen her for a few years. My wife here got in touch, and she was sick in the hospital with diabetes. I thought I would take her some shoes into the hospital. I bought her some pink slippers, you know, and I went to surprise her with the pink slippers, and one of her legs was cut off. I felt bad, and she didn't feel bad. She said, "Willie, raise that cover over there." The woman near her had both legs off, you know. She says, "Someone always is worse off." She always talked to me like...and she was so sweet. I can see her now; how sweet she would have been if I had known her. And my dad, I didn't 22 experience all that with him, but I did go to his funeral - he died about eight years ago. He was ninety-two, and she was just fifty-eight, and that was sad, it was really sad. LS: Now, some people would say that a little boy, seven years old, who grows up away from his parents wouldn't have a chance of turning out to be such a wonderful citizen. Somebody must have taken care of you... WM: They did. They took really good care of me, and they always said to me the same thing as Thomas Monson said to the church one time -I was in that church that time. You know, all the time I visit the churches because I cut the kids' hair who go on a mission..I even cut some of them now that have grandkids. So he [Monson] said, he always said to me, "Willie," he says, "don't never--" this is what made me feel good and I do it now--"don't never buy what you want, buy what you need." He said, "That's the best way to live." And then Kimball said to me, all the way on up they were talking to me: "Willie," he says, "now what I want you to do," he says, "in this world you're going to get knocked down, you're going to get beat up, and everything might happen to you." He says, "But if you get knocked down, Willie," he says, "don't lay there. Get up and produce." He said that's what you do. "'Because if you lay there, you can't go any place. If you get up and produce, you've got it made." I got something from them all the time, see, and it was good. That's the reason I said people can't be mean to you when you haven't done nothing to them if they know you. But they have to take you individually, see, because nowadays they don't take you individually. They just say, "A black guy did this," 23 and then all black guys are the same, see. But now you take them individually, and people are different, see what I'm saying? ...I like that. I like to be individual and going to church and singing for the church. LS: When did you start cutting missionaries' hair? Was that back in the Hotel Utah? WM: Yeah, the Hotel Utah. I started cutting hair in the Hotel Utah and then they would come down. Then some big people would come, like Richard L. Evans. Sometime they didn't get a haircut in the barbershop upstairs, and they would come down, and I could trim the hair up so they could get by until the next day...I cut some nice people's hair, and the one that I thought was nice that I met, just met him later, and that was [Howard W.] Hunter. He was such a nice person. He didn't last long. He died right away after he got to be church president because he was sick, I think, when he went in. LS: He was. WM: Benson, McKay, all those people were good to me, but I knew they were going to change... And I knew they wanted to change. I don't think that for one minute they wanted it to be like that....Thomas Monson went to [Bridgeforth's] funeral. He died about three years ago... I talked to him about getting into the church. And he got in there and he got to be [branch] president and later he got to be head [bishop] of the church... I know when black people came because I was a young kid then. I used to go meet the train and see people come in because sometimes it got a little lonesome-like, you know. You want to see some more people come in. People were coming to different bases, and they worked at Hill Field and stuff like that. I'm an old person now, you know, but still I wanted to see 24 people come in [to the LDS Church?] and I never did, never did. That's another thing -I forget what person told me this, but... I never did even drink a Coca-Cola back then, I've never had a cup of coffee in my life, I never had a whisky in my life, I never smoked in my life. I always tried, because that's, [Monson] says, "If you put clean things in your body, clean things will come out." LS: You really did listen to these guys. WM: I listened to them because they were my friends, you know. Because I was just kind of hanging, you know, and everything. I didn't do them like that, when I did a little cheating in the money business. When these big rich people [in The Roof restaurant] would get up, as I said before, when they would get up and go dancing and everything, you know, I'd throw the coat on the floor. Then when I'd see them coming, I'd pick it up and brush it off and they would tip me. LS: I think you earned that money. One way or another, I think you earned that money. WM: I'll tell you, one way or another, I think I did. But that was part of what went on. I enjoyed my life, and I enjoyed it more when I got married. You know, that was really a blessing for me. LS: Tell me about when you met Betty and what was going on then. WM: I knew her when she was young, but she didn't know me as well. I knew one day she was going be my wife. But when I met her, I think I was a young kid cutting hair and she came in the barbershop. LS: Now, this is when you're back in Utah. 25 WM: Up in Ogden on 25th Street,. 170 25th Street. She came in, and she brought this kid in to get a haircut. And I just stayed all around, and she stayed all around me. She wouldn't let me move around the chair, you know. ("What's this woman doing here?"-kept looking around here, you know.) And then she told me that a friend of hers or somebody who drank a lot came over. And I said, "Betty, don't worry," I says, because maybe you can't stop him yourself," I said, "but one time when you get to him, tell him that... if you have trouble, drinking will never stop your trouble, it will just make it swim." That's when I got her, right then, when I says, "make it swim." Then we got together and got married. We've been married ever since... Like I said, I would travel a lot in my life, and my mother-in-law told me, she said, "Willie, now we're going to see this marriage." So, I've got two licenses on her. I got one, we got married in Reno or someplace like that. And my mother-in-law said, "I'm not going to have that. You're going to marry her right here." So, I have two licenses. LS: So, you married her again. WM: Yes... But it was quite a life. We had a kind of success, and then I... my barbershop is the only barbershop I think that I had all white ladies [cutting hair]. I always thought everybody needed a job. I have all white help, two or three now. But at that time... Betty told me-she had worked and lived in this community-- "There's mostly white people in it. You're gonna have to cut white hair because there's not enough black hair." The railroad was supporting my business until they transferred the railroad to California, and then I did just what she said. When I did, everything worked good. See, and I have those [white] people [cutting hair 26 now]. They take care of my shop while I'm here talking to you, you see. But then, that was a "no, no." Ooooh, that was a "no, no" and they had people kind of boycotting me at first when I got all those women, but I couldn't get anyone else, see. LS: So, you had white women working for you back in the forties, even? WM: No, in the fifties. And that was, oooh, that was a, oooh, oooh. Man, some of them come in... and say to me, they say, "Willie, we have nothing against you, but you're going to have to get rid of these women. We don't feel like women should be cutting hair." I got a lot of bad stuff. LS: So it wasn't a race thing, it was a gender thing. WM: Yeah, it was a gender thing and every time I got one--funny thing about it,... I'd hire one and then the police--somebody would break into the barbershop and the police would search it all around. This guy says, "Well, I don't why these girls are working here and nothing like that, so we're going to check on you all the time." And they did. They checked on me. I had about four "break-ins" in one year. LS: So, they thought you were offering more than a haircut. WM: Yes, yes, that's what they thought, you know. And they checked on the girls. See, me and this one person when I first start to barbering, his name was Lefty Stewart and we had contracts on all the [military] base barbershops in the state of Utah. I mean Dugway, Fort Douglas, everyplace. We had contracts on base barbershops, you see. And the integration came right there in the barbershop. I've got to tell you this one here: this head of the base then - the general- I was cutting hair, it was a segregated thing then... So all of the blacks would wait 27 on me, and all the whites would wait on the other barber. So we had this big long line (this is when segregation broke up there), we had this big long line, and there was a black way on the end. I went back there, and I says to him, "I'm just going to cut this black hair and then I can keep cutting because," I says, "when Chambers (the white barber) gets to you, they won't cut your hair. So then Lefty (a white barber) won't be waiting all the time." Well, the general was sitting there. The general got up, and he says, "I'm next in the chair." He says, "That black guy," they called us Negroes then, "he might be bigger than I am, but I'm next in your chair." And I says, "Well, I...," "Don't explain nothing to me," he says, "I'm next in the chair." Then he got up and said, "Why did you do that?" And I told him, I said, "Well, I'm cutting this black guy's hair so I can get him out, and go on cutting and keep going." And he said, "Well, from now on, the customer who comes in here, whether he's white or Negro, you cut his hair. If you can't cut his hair, don't come to work." LS: Everything changed right there. WM: Everything changed right there. LS: So, when would that have been? WM: Oh, that would have been about '57 or something like that. Somewhere in there. When the Korean War was, something like that...And he got on those people. He would come back, and he checked on us. The segregation was all over. The barbershops--it was hard for me to get a barbershop because they weren't renting barbershops close to where the white people were, you know. We had to go into certain places, see. But after that I kind of got on the edge and 28 kept getting close to town until I'm right there now, you know. But before.. .we didn't have a place in Utah where you can just put a barbershop and say it's all black. LS: No, that's true. WM: No. And now we have so many Mexican people. We just have so many of them, see. And we appreciate that, but the missionaries come into the shop early. They come in the morning. The temple workers, they come in the morning... Mr. Buckner and all of that bunch come in early. LS: So, they still come in early? WM: The early mornings, because some of them have to be in, they want to be a little bit early. But I have enjoyed myself. LS: So, when you had the first shop, the first one was on 25th Street, right? WM: Before that, I kind of had a barbershop in Salt Lake City. I was robbed, and the guys had all these guns up against me and everything. Then I left Salt Lake City and came here, and didn't close up the barbershop in Salt Lake. I just walked out and kept going. Caught the Bamberger and came to Ogden. LS: The robbery in Salt Lake - where was that located? WM: The Independent Hotel. LS: Independent Hotel, and that would have been about, let's see... WM: That would have been the late forties. Kind of late forties. More about '44 or something like that. Yeah, and boy. I tell you that was dangerous. He had the gun up against my face, and he had a knife here... What happened was, I was shooting pool. I can play pool, and I was shooting pool, and I was betting a lot of 29 money. And they were sitting up watching me. That night they came and knocked on the door and said, "Willie, your girlfriend is here," or something like that, you know. And I opened the door, and they laid me down, and told me, "You lay here." LS: So they set you up. WM: Yeah, I laid right there and I stayed there. Then they started talking to me after that....Later, Doc White caught some people and it was them, right off Ogden's Bamberger. They put the gun up against his head and pulled the trigger, and the gun did not go off. These were all white guys. After Doc White captured the man, the gun went off when he tried it. They were mean. This one, he went and did bad in the pen. They took him to the penitentiary because he'd been doing armed robberies all over, see. They did it all the way from Ogden. LS: So, you knew who they were. WM: Uh-huh. They tied me up and they didn't tie me tight. In every place they did, they did the same thing. They tied so you could get loose. One guy told me, he says, "Willie," says, "I feel bad about this," he says, "but we have to have money and if we get enough money we will..." (they didn't take but twenty-five dollars) "when we get enough money, we'll come back and give you this money back." Yeah, we just got to be friends talking about Louis Armstrong and everything, but they still should haven't used their guns. That was pitiful. LS: But you still had had enough, so you walked out and left your shop? WM: I walked out of there, I says, "This is it for me." I was so nervous the next day, girl, that [shudders]. I didn't have a penny in my pocket. I went and told the 30 Bamburger man. He said that I should just take the Ogden, and it would cost me sixty-five cents. I said, "Take me to Ogden and I'll pay you later." And he did. I didn't ever go back, never did go back. LS: So, how did you get the shop on 25th? WM: One side of the street was black, the other side was white, you see, and I got the barbershop on the black side... It was quite a thing during that time because 25th Street, you know, you could wake up in the morning and trace blood to a person's house, you know. And I remember a guy who was robbing places in the wintertime, and they just tracked his tracks and his car right to his house, you know. Twenty-Fifth Street was, oooh, it was really something during that time, see. [They] even wrote a letter from Germany and it's put on there "25th Street" and forgot to put "Utah." Just "25th Street, Ogden" and it came to this place... That was quite a thing. But I stayed there a long time and I started moving around a little bit. And, as I said, the train jobs left Ogden and took most of the [black] people's jobs to California and Omaha. It just left the white people. Betty told me, "You got to do better," see. That's what I did. LS: So, this was the shop where you met Eleanor Roosevelt. WM: Eleanor Roosevelt was on the other side of the street. I moved on the east side of the street by a café called The Alexander, and it was run by Mexicans. A fellow had a barbershop - his name was Arturo. He gave it to me, and says, "I'm going into the white place, and you stay in the Mexican place." And Mrs. Roosevelt came down the street from - I think she'd been to the Ben Lomond Hotel - and she came down the street and we were all standing outside there. She had two 31 people with her, you know, and she just stopped and started talking to us. And she walked to the barbershop and shook my hand and just went on. But she was tall - like I remember her right now - tall and she had on a...her hair was all propped up like on her head, and she was so nice. I remember her real well. She came to the barbershop. LS: Now, was this while her husband was still president? WM: Yeah. He died right after that, I think. Yeah, he died right after that. She was nice, and I had a lot of big people in my shop: Wilt Chamberlain and Bob Gibson, but I knew them through the Globetrotters. I had some nice, famous people in that barbershop. Oh, yeah. I remember when Bracken Lee came to my barbershop in Salt Lake City when he was a young man. He told everybody in Salt Lake City to vote for him and came down in the black neighborhood to say, "Vote for me, and you can go to the Dixieland." That was a dancing place. "You'll go to the Dixieland, and I'll have all of you some whisky and wine there." And when they all got there, they crowded that place, and he had tea and soda pop. LS: That's a good story. WM: Bracken Lee. Oh. He was quite a fellow. LS: And then he was mayor later on. WM: Yes, he was mayor; that's what he was, the mayor. He got around, he was quite a fellow. But that was so funny. Everybody was there. They wanted to fight each other, when they saw there was no whiskey there. LS: Where was the Dixieland? 32 WM: The Dixieland was right out of Salt Lake City, kind of north of Salt Lake City, like about a mile. LS: In between there and Bountiful. WM: Yes, yes. Right in between there and Bountiful. It was big bands that came there. Big bands came there... And later they got the Valley Music Hall just a little later. Well, quite a bit later. LS: Yeah, that was the seventies, I think. WM: Yeah, and then big bands came there too. But when they had that big place in Salt Lake City - Coconut Grove I believe it was - that's when all the bands would come there: Duke Ellington and Lionel Hampton and Nat King Cole and all of those people would come to the... LS: Is that place on State Street? WM: Yes, I think it’s called Coconut Grove. Anyway, it was the biggest dance hall in the world; it had three steps, three levels to it. LS: Was it the Terrace Ballroom? WM: Terrace Ballroom, yes. That's what it was, I think. Because the Hotel Newhouse was right by it. I can remember now. I remember one time [Adam] Clayton Powell came in to speak, and they told him to use the back elevator. He walked out. He didn't even go up. LS: This was at the Newhouse? WM: That was the Newhouse Hotel. They told him to go use the back elevator. He came there to talk, and they told them use the back elevator, and he didn't. He 33 didn't go up and do nothing. And somebody else came there -I forget who it was - Lena Horne... LS: Ella Fitzgerald came to the... WM: Ella Fitzgerald came there, but Ella Fitzgerald -I don't think they let her stay in the Hotel Utah. LS: I think during the fifties she couldn't stay there. WM: No, she didn't stay in there because I remember that. The guy who they did let stay in there was a guy kind of like Jesse Owens or somebody. He was a track star or something like that. They didn't let her stay in there, see, and you know all of those actors - when they played the picture Jesse James - all of them would come for the premiere of this thing, and I met so many of them. And they would come - they wanted to get out a little bit, you know - and John Garfield and all that bunch. I said, "Well, when this Hotel thing is over-you couldn't drink there like that, you know-so I said, "When this Hotel is over, we'll go to this Dixieland." We went to Dixieland, and the police came and got them all -I was late - but he ran them all out of there because he said that, in the group, there were Communists. And they ran them all out of there. Ran them all out because they said that's what they were, you see. LS: Well, that was the best thing to call people around then, I guess. Did you ever do anything out at Saltair? WM: No, no. Just going to visit and that was it. That was all because when we went out there, we thought we were so far out of town, we'd have to have a passport. But I was young, see. But that was quite a thing out there. So, I enjoyed myself 34 when I was young man throughout Utah and to now. I really enjoy myself now cause I've been in so many different things through Betty... follow her around. I met so many nice people. Oh, and President Brady, you know his wife used to be in every Saturday morning. She'd bring us cookies down to the barbershop. Every Saturday morning. So, one day he came with her, and we were betting on Notre Dame... I told him, "Well, I'm Catholic," and he says, "Well, I'm Mormon." And he says now, "Willie," he says, "BYU's playing Notre Dame tonight," he said, "and if Notre Dame wins, I'm going to become a Catholic, and if BYU wins you will become a Mormon." I said, "That's a bet." And Danny Ainge--who is in broadcasting now—BYU was behind by one point and had five seconds to go, and Danny Ainge got the ball, and he drove all the way down and made a basket, and they beat Notre Dame by one point. Brady's office called me up the next day. His secretary says, "Willie, President Brady has water, some nice hot water, so you can come and be baptized now." LS: Oh, that's a great story. WM: You know, the main thing is to be nice, see. It's very, very nice to be important, but it's important to be nice. That's the way I always say it, and I always told them if everybody in this world is nice as I think they are in Utah, it would be a better country to live in. I've always said that and I believe that. Because Utah's a funny state. They don't give you a lot, but they put it out there, and if you can get it, then you're fine. LS: Thank you. These are wonderful stories. 35 June 28, 2001 LS: I'm Linda Sillitoe representing the Stewart Library at Weber State University. It's June 28th. I'm at the home of Willie F. Moore. He's talking about his life and memories. Now, we were just straightening out some facts here, so you check me on these if you will. You went to Grambling College near Rustin and Monroe in Louisiana. When the Harlem Globetrotters came there to play, they were down one man and picked you up. You went with them on their tour, and that brought you back to Utah. And then you worked at the Hotel Utah for a while and then went back down to Grambling. WM: Back down to Grambling. I went to the Hotel Utah so I could make a little money to go back to Grambling College, and then I got kicked out when I was down there, and then I came back to Utah. LS: And you didn't actually see your parents while you were at Grambling? WM: No, no. LS: Okay, and then you came back to Utah and went to barber school on Regent Street, and then had a shop on First South and Third West. WM: Right. LS: And this is where those guys robbed you, that was the shop? WM: Right, but it's not in the barbershop. ...I left the barbershop and went to the pool hall, and then we were shooting pool, and I was betting money. Those people were sitting around there looking at me get this money. And then one of them said that he wanted to play... They came over to the hotel and knocked on the 36 door, and I didn't know who it was, so I let them in after I'd seen them over to the pool hall. And then as soon as I opened the door, they came out with a knife and a gun, put it to my chest and they told me to lie down. I lay down on the floor. They took the sheet and put it around my mouth - cut up some sheet and put it around my mouth - so I wouldn't say something. Then they went through this hotel and one of them felt kind of bad and they started talking to me about...he said, "You know, it's too bad that I'm going to take this money from you," he said, "but if [we] can find enough money in this hotel to get along then I give your money back." LS: Now, which hotel was this? WM: This is Independent Hotel, owned by Japanese people. This, this was a big thing right there because that night when they were looking for those people, they found at least two or three hundred people that looked like they had something that they could arrest them with: knives or guns. The next morning, I mean before morning, the same group that robbed me - came all the way through robbing everything they could find all the way to Ogden. Robbed everything, but they would always let us...they wouldn't tie you, they would loosen you up so you could get away if you wanted to after they left. Doc White was a policeman then. LS: So, he was a policeman in Ogden. WM: He was a policeman in Ogden, and then they were on the Bamburger and he knew they were coming... When he got on the Bamberger before they got off, these kids had the gun, and they pointed it at him and pulled the trigger, but nothing came out of the gun. Doc White got the gun away from them and took it 37 out on the street, pulled the trigger, and it went off. It did have a bullet, but not in the chamber. Then after they'd robbed so many people then they put them... sent them to the penitentiary. And one of them twice broke out... one, he broke out of the penitentiary and they shot him, but then later...he was always threatening when he was down there because he said that if I hadn't told them about the robbery there, they would never have got caught. But then he got killed down in the pen, still trying to get out. His name -I can't give you the last name - David, that was his name; it was David. They tried to break out of the penitentiary two or three times. LS: Wow. Okay, so you a lot happened to you by the time you were what, twenty, twenty-one, somewhere around there? WM: Yeah, about twenty-two or three, something like that. A lot happened. LS: One thing that strikes me is that you were a pretty adventurous kid. When you were seven years old you picked up and went to New Jersey. Then, much later when the when the Globetrotters come through, you say, "Yeah, I'll go with you." WM: "Yeah, I'll go with you." Then... I told you about the Hotel Utah. I was there, and I saw all of those apostles. LeGrand Richards, and Kimball came from Safford, Arizona. About '41 or '42 he came from Arizona. And I would see these missionaries, and when they would leave we would all go to the airport. They used Western Airline... When they'd get on that plane, they looked like they would kind of wave back at the temple. LS: And you could walk right out on the tarmac back then. 38 WM: Yeah, just walk right out there, just a little fence and that was it, see, and then they would...I'd see them leave going on missions, see them come back, and I was in some of the wards and some of the places where some of them came back and told us about everything. That's when I was telling about it, I wanted to be...go on a mission. They told me if I made enough money, I could... LS: Now we didn't put that story on the tape. Maybe we should. You were talking to Spencer Kimball that time, right? WM: Yes, yes. And he told me...and then he told me... we were good friends, you see, really good friends, because he's the one that told me, says, "Someday you're going to go, you're going to get the priesthood and you'll be as good or better because you had to wait for it." That's what he told me. And he says, "You know, Willie, in this world you're not going to get everything that you want, but you'll get some of the things you need, and that will be one of the things that you get." I can remember that. And then he says, "Because... in this world you're going to have a lot of falling and stumbling and falling on your..." and then he said, "but if you stand on your two feet you won't fall on your face," he said, "but if you fall on your face, you get up and produce and then you'll still make it." And that's what [he] said to me. LS: So, since he came later - '41 or '42 - that would have been probably that period when you came back to the hotel, right? WM: Right, right. And then I stayed then. I didn't go away until I finished school... Oh, and let me get back to where this robber came from when I came to Utah. When they robbed me in the Independent Hotel I had the barbershop, getting fifty cents 39 a head then per customer. We were cutting soldiers' hair then, it wasn't all Air Force. Cutting soldiers' hair, and when they robbed me at the Independent Hotel I was so frightened that I did not go back to the barbershop, I came to Ogden. When I got to Ogden...I didn't even lock the barbershop or nothing over there, I just... and you could cut all night if you wanted to, see. I know a lot of times that I did if I needed some money or something like that, because the clubs stayed open. And the club was named Porters and Waiters. LS: I wanted to ask you about that, too. WM: Yeah, that was the name of the club. Downstairs in the Porters and Waiters was where my barbershop was, right across from the train station. LS: Okay, so this is on 25th Street, is that right? WM: No, no this is...this was a hotel, I mean...the place was on - like I said 1st.... LS: Oh, this is in Salt Lake - the Porters and Waiters Club. WM: Yeah, yeah, the Porters and Waiters Club was right across from the train station. The Independent Hotel was in Salt Lake. LS: Right, and where was the Independent Hotel? What streets? Do you remember? WM: It was on about 3rd South and South Temple. 1st South or something like that, right in there. LS: Yeah, Okay. I'd heard about the Porters and Waiters Club in Ogden, but I hadn't heard much about the one in Salt Lake. WM: Yeah, the one in Salt Lake was kind of the really the main... and his name who ran the hotel, his name was Hardy Davidson. That's who had the [shop]. 40 LS: So, you could work nights and in fact, that's probably the best time to work in some ways. WM: Yeah, you could work...because see, you had to wait until the soldiers come from the base to town, you see, and then you could work a lot. And Doc White...and I was...they had a club over there called High Marine Hall. Doc White lived in the High Marine Hall. All the time that he was in the service, he lived in the High Marine Hall. And then I would...then he came to Ogden. He tried to get a job in Salt Lake City, and they didn't give him the job in Salt Lake City, so he came to Ogden. They told him in Salt Lake, "You go to Ogden." They'll hired anybody in Ogden, anybody, see, so he came to Ogden. And he couldn't be a policeman then. What he was, he was a foot doctor to start with, and then he worked with the Health Department just a little while before he got to be a policeman. They worked him that way, other than saying, "You're a policeman." That's the way they worked it. LS: So from the Health Department to the Police Force. WM: The Police Department. LS: That's kind of a stretch. WM: Yes, so that's what they did, see. I knew more than anybody, Doc White. But that was part of my life because that time when I got robbed, I tried to get him to give me some money so I could come to Ogden because I was frightened. And he said, "Well, I better not get into this thing, either, because of me being an officer. I don't know how I would handle that, you see." That's what he said to me, and I said okay. But the person who ran the Bamberger says to me, "Willie," he says...I 41 told them I didn't have no money and I wanted to come to Ogden because I was frightened. I was more or less by myself all my life, even with those people [at the Hotel]. I was still by myself, you see, and I was kind of a loner. They always told me, "You know, you don't drink, you don't smoke, you don't do bad things, good things will come." And that's the way I try, that's why I didn't drink or smoke or I didn't even drink coffee. I didn't drink a cup of coffee in my life. Even whiskey or nothing in my whole life... LS: Okay, so when you get to Ogden, 25th Street is a pretty wild place, right? WM: Wild place, it was so wild. Twenty-Fifth Street was so bad... George Pappas was on the other side and Billy Weakley was on this side. George Pappas on the north side, Billy Weakley was on the south side, and they made a deal that if he would keep all the blacks on the south side. He'd keep all the whites out of Weakley's place. They really made a deal, a deal you see. Then I got this friend...we went back and forth. We had a barbershop in Salt Lake and one in Ogden, too. So I was going back and forth. A lady named Cora Eason, she had opened up a beauty shop and she had room for me to have a barbershop. So I went in with her-- I didn't go in with her, I rented this from her - and then I worked there awhile, and then I started getting on my own. Then I went up a little farther, left her place and went to a barbershop place called LaFrance Hotel. I had a barbershop in there. Then there was a person called Arturo - a Spanish fellow - and it was a café called Alexander Café and Arturo's barbershop was next to the Alexander Café. Arturo came to me and said, "Willie," says, "I'm going to move up into the neighborhood. You take this 42 shop," he said, "but you have to get the Mexicans to work with you because that's all it is along here, is Mexican people." I took the barbershop, and then I got me a Mexican barber and his name was Engleberto Garcia. And that was a strange thing about that deal because the day when he told me that, we had contracts on base, on base barbershops-- Hill Field, Second Street, and all those places. His name was Lefty Stewart. We had contracts on top of it, and with those, all we were doing was just collecting the money, you see. This fellow told me that day - this is really exciting to me - he told me he said I had to get a Mexican barber. I was coming from Second Street back to Ogden on the Brigham City Road, and then I saw some Mexican guy standing there... I couldn't understand him, but I brought him into town, and the paper boy told me that he was a barber. I said, "Really?" He says, "Yes, sir, I'm a barber." And then we talked, and he told the paper boy, [who was translating?] "If I had $150, I could go to Mexico and get everything--my tools and everything--and I could come back and work. But I want to go see my family." I went to a loan company and told them - this is still me -I went to the loan company and I asked Mr. Heiner - they had a loan company on Washington - and I asked him, I said, "Mr. Heiner," I said, "I'd like to have $150." Then I said, "This fellow wants to borrow $150." And he said, "Well, do you know him?" and I said, "No." He said, "How long have you known him?" and I said, "Just this morning," - this was evening. He said to me, "Willie," says, "now, you're crazy. This man's trying to get back to Mexico and you'll never see him again." And I says, "Somehow or another I need a Mexican barber, and I'm going to trust him." 43 Just like that...Mr. Heiner said, "Well, Willie, I'll tell you what I'll do," he says, "I will let you have the money. You don't have to co-sign, you do what you want with it and that's okay." I gave it to the Mexican man. And he told me he'd be back in one week. I looked for him Saturday night, he didn't show up. Sunday night, didn't show up. Monday night I was going to go from here to the barbershop, and there was a guy with his car all stopped and everything; wouldn't go. I stopped to help him, and it was my barber. He came all the way from Mexico... I said, "Well, can't you get some gas or something?" He said, "Well, I just have the $150 to pay back." Robert said, "Tell you what, Willie," he says, "this is your money. I want you to go and pay that man." I said, "I'm not going to do that," I said, "what I'm going to do is - because he called me crazy - I'm going to take you and let you pay him, see." And through that, the banker trusted Robert enough to give him $1,600. to buy him a trailer. He and his family lived in a trailer from then on because he brought that money back just like he said he would do. LS: That's quite a story. WM: Yeah, then he come...well, by that time I had married Betty then, I don't want to get ahead of myself... I was having a hard time then. And I told her, I said, "But I've got to take care of us. I've got to take care of this family." And I went over to the railroad and worked over there just a little while at night, and the barbershop in the daytime. The funny thing about it was the first the time I told her, I was 44 trying to tell her so she would be my wife, and she said, "Willie," says, "... do you think you can handle this?" And I said, "Yeah." She says, "How can you?" "I make about $7.50 a day," I told her, see. I made plenty of money, see. And the funny thing about it was on the first day I worked, I made 50 cents cash... And she said, "Well, that's all right." ...She said, "Willie, that's all right, you'll be all right," you know. And so she understood that. She was always part of my life because she says, "Now, Willie..."--I had a hard time trying to get her a place near a good location because they wouldn't rent to us down close to town. And then Betty said, "Willie," says, "you have to start cutting white hair," she said, "because you can't make it like this." She says, "Trust me, you start cutting white hair, and we'll be okay, see."..."Okay," I says, "Okay, I'll do that." Then I started cutting, and then this Max, he taught me so much about the haircuts, and then once in a while I would cut hair at Hill Field. Hill Field is where they were segregated in the barbershop, see. And I went to this barbershop with good intentions. It had long lines of soldiers, and there was a black guy on the back of the line, okay, and this is the way it got integrated... General Hubbard, that was the base commander-- and he was a little fellow, really small - and he said to me, he says, "Willie," says - he came up to me and my name's always up - he says, "why did you pass me up?" He was next in my chair. I didn't know who he was, nobody knew because he hadn't been there long. And I said, "Well, I'm going to tell you why," I said, "because the black guy sitting on the end over there has to wait until he get to one of these barbers, and they won't cut his hair." I 45 says, "So, what I will do, I'll just go and cut his hair and then let him go." And he says, "That won't happen." He says, "you cut my hair and from now on," he told the white barbers, he says, "from now on when a guy get to your chair you cut his hair or else you can't work here no more." And that was the part that integrated things. Then what happened was there, we moved a couple times and then the PX came down. I had some fellows work for me down town. I had a barbershop downtown all along...So we went on vacation and when I come back, well they had gone to Hill Field. We told them we weren't making much money, and those two barbers went to Hill Field and told them they'd work by the hour. That really messed up things. So we decided - myself and Lefty Stewart - if the PX took it over, we would leave because we could get 75 cents a haircut on the streets, see. So we left... Later, I moved across the street, and then one day Mrs. Roosevelt came from the hotel or some place up there where she had given a speech... Somehow or another we knew her, but she was walking down the street with two people - I guess they was guards or something - and she talked and came into the barbershop and shook our hands and went off. She was really, she was really nice and she told us good luck, but she told us who she was. She went on. She was very nice, tall, very nice lady. Old hat and a bow, a rose on the side of it. I can remember her coming in. Then on and on until I start to...my wife and I started to try to buy a house, so we bought from 28th Street up to 30th Street; from 30th Street we came out here. We've been here ever since. 46 LS: Now, you said that you knew Betty when you were really young. How did you know her? WM: She didn't know me too good, but I knew her because of church and her brother. Her brother and I was really good friends. But she didn't...I was kind of...I didn't make friends much because I was frightened. After I couldn't get that priesthood thing, I went to the Jehovah's Witness. I was in Jehovah's Witness a little while, and they kind of got on my nerves with that thing. I left that and visited my wife just a little while in churches. She was going to a Methodist Church, and I visited her a little while in the choir. I liked sports so well until the preacher, when he got ready to get into the pulpit-at 10:30 the ball game came on— and we'd sing until 10:30, and then he'd look around and say, "Willie, you'll be excused to go see the ball games." That was real funny, but then - my life started getting good then. Then the Globetrotters came...and I would visit them all the time because I knew them. There was a person called Marcus Haynes. Marcus Haynes was a dribbler for the Globetrotters, and he decided that he would get a team of his own, you see, because he and Abe weren't getting along good - the person who owned the Globetrotters name was Abe Saperstein. So Marcus Haynes got his team of his own, then I started back working with him some. It was a person who sponsored us - white fellow who sponsored all the games and his name was Al Wharton. That's a big part. Well, what happened was is before he could sponsor anybody in the Globetrotters' day, we would bring in the Harlem Magicians. LS: Oh, I see; that's where they came in. 47 WM: We changed to the Harlem Magicians, but we had the Globetrotters symbol all over us, but the "Former" was this size [small] right over here... One night we were working, and the Sheriff came in and took all the money that we collected that night, you see. And a person by the name of Arthur Wooley - he was the lawyer--came and said, "Well, you guys made"-- I think it was $250.. He said, "We're going to take this $250. away from you, and you're going to take those shirts and throw them away and start something else." That's what happened because Abe Saperstein had written Arthur Wooley and told him what we were doing. We were taking customers away from them because they thought we were the Globetrotters, you see. LS: So that was...after you got back into Ogden. WM: That was later, when started working for them. I mean that was, oh in the 1960s I believe. LS: Okay. WM: Then I started playing golf and the biggest crowd that they ever had at the El Monte Golf Course, I won the tournament— myself and a person called Larry Winchester. A hundred and fifty people played, and we won this tournament at El Monte Golf Course. LS: And when was that? WM: That's about '61. We won that, and that was really big, in the newspapers and everything. Then I won the next time, the first big tournament they had at Riverside after they opened that up, myself and a person called--oh I forget. 48 Everybody know him, he's still around. His dad is...but I'll get his name pretty soon because I just talked to him. He and I and a doctor won the first one at Riverside. I was...they had championship playoffs. They had the pros, the championship, and they'd playoff. So we all three were in the paper then together. But he would like that... oh I'll get to his name pretty soon - but he was a really great golfer. He was a pro all around in these places here, you know. We're still good friends, we see each other. We hadn't seen each other one time until about twenty years ago. I was on the golf course out to Royal Green, and he hollered and said "Heeyyy!" And I knew him then and we got together again. Oh, what's his name? Anyway, I played with him. I started playing bowling. I won a lot of things on bowling, and that was at the Ogden Bowling Lanes and up to - on the hill up there, it's up there now - in the White City. Yeah, the White City Bowling Lanes. And then Hilltop Lanes. Hilltop Lanes came a little later. So, I won a lot bowling trophies. You can see some of them downstairs. LS: I saw some of them when I went downstairs with Betty. WM: Yeah, I have some in my bedroom and have a whole sack of trophies in the barbershop because my wife said they were dust catchers. LS: Send them down there. WM: Right. Billy Downs, Billy Downs. Billy was a good... and everybody would know just exactly what I'm saying...That's what I did until later we met some people and we started going to, oh, the Boosters Club. Three other people organized the Boosters Club for the Utah Stars. 49 LS: Oh, right. WM: And that was a big thing. Then we took it all the way over, we took it all...I've got a lot of stuff that, I think I have just a little something about that Boosters Club in my pocket. I did have, anyway. I really like that Boosters Club, but this was ...one of the membership cards. Downstairs, I have some stuff for the Boosters Club. We started it with the Utah Stars, and then they made Betty and I they made us the sportsmen of the Utah Stars for the year. They had us out on the floor and Frank Layden and I, we went through a deal where we would-When we went out on the floor, Frank Layden came in and he put his arm around me, and kissed me on the jaw, and fell out flat on his back. It was 12,000 people looking on, you see. We practiced it all--he put his arm around me and kissed me and fell down. So many times I worked directly with the first owner, and I went around and I got a lot of stuff that we used. Someday I'll show it to you. LS: Okay. WM: And I'll get it together right away. I joined all these other things. I have: my star with the Utah Corrections. I have all of that. LS: Why don't we talk about Corrections for a few minutes, okay? WM: Okay. LS: How did you get involved with the Department of Corrections. WM: Betty. Betty was...they got some people together and she worked a little while and then she decided that she didn't want to work anymore and they selected me and then I worked a long time with... LS: Now, is this on a committee or a... 50 WM: This is an advisory board. LS: Advisory board, okay. And is that a statewide thing? WM: No, it was the Ogden board working under state jurisdiction. LS: And what would the advisory board do? WM: What they would do is planning about where they were going to build, and how much money they needed to build. [Note by Betty Stewart Moore: This started with the women's correctional facility and then the mission and participants changed. Much of this paragraph involves discussions of the correctional problems at that time.) Then they would also think about correcting some of the people they were...people were going into the prison and carrying drugs and things in the prison. They stopped that. First you could go in with all your clothes on and everything, and now they almost strip you down, you go in, see because they was taking in... some of them go to the restroom, the women would go to the restroom, drop it in the bathroom and then the guy would go in and get it. They were doing everything until later Mr. Turner - who's a tough fellow - and those people they kind of changed things around a little bit, but they would go in like with Kentucky Fried Chicken. They would have drugs in the hot dogs and hamburgers and stuff like that. But then the Corrections decided they would stop all of that. Like, a person would walk in when they got ready to have a riot. Well - those people - well they were building some stuff themselves in prison, you see, to have this riot. What they would do with that, some of them take so many of these paper matches to build up a lot of stuff and make a little thing like a bomb, you see. They were doing everything. DeLand kind of stopped them a little bit, 51 you know. And they've got Corrections in good shape, but before they were trusting them a little bit too much. Then we decided and they decided that they would have a place for the kids that have one first offense. LS: Youthful offenders or something like that. WM: Yes, if you got in trouble they would take them to jail then. They were supposed to...they took them to Camp Williams to what a boot camp was supposed to be. And they'd get up every morning and shine their shoes, and they would salute officers and whatnot. That was what was in one the planning we did, you see. That kind of fell through a little bit, and then they started talking about the parole system. That was real bad then, but they wouldn't go back to court. They'd promise him [the parole officer?} they'd do a good job. If they did a good job, they wouldn't go back to court. But if they didn't do a good job, then they wouldn't even go to court, they'd send them right to prison, see what I'm saying? So we had the first offenders. Then we went to all of the places where they would first build jails and prisons. The one down in... LS: Is it Gunnison? WM: Gunnison. We went to the one in Gunnison, and they told us when we got ready to eat that they were going to put glass and poison in our food. So we went to Gunnison, and bought our little food. Gunnison had only 2,100 people. If they would have filled the prison, it would have been 2100. So it would have been more than in the town. But the prison, itself, we had talked about putting it in Ogden. It never would have been in Gunnison, but the people decided they didn't want it in 52 Ogden. They tried everything [to get it] in Ogden. They said they'd put it farther out. No. So then when they put it down there, you see, then Ogden really lost a lot of money because I think it cost $60 million dollars to get it operating and working, you see, and everything like that. So Ogden lost a lot of money there. And then when we built the jailhouse in Ogden - this second or third jailhouse in Ogden - it's built almost exactly like it is in Gunnison. But we would go in there first and investigate, and see what it looked like. That was part of the thing. One time they mentioned, they would mention about what was going on in other places like in some states - another couple of them. In other states, we heard that they took the monitor, and they cut a hole right here in the guy's chest, and they would put the monitor inside the chest and sew it up. That was because a guy said that the kids would mess with them and everything, and in his chest, they couldn't get to it, you know. But then that was against the rights of the person. So they decided they couldn't do that. Then they were pretty good, but people who were going out of prison, they would somehow or another— they could get another person's clothes when you walk in. And some of those people had taken two suits into the prison, you see. They would leave it, and then the prisoner would go in there and get it and walk right out with it, you see. But they stopped that too. They didn't go along with that long. LS: So what years were you involved with this about? Over what period of time? WM: In the eighties. Just got out in the eighties. LS: Now you said last time you would do something like rap talk. 53 WM: Yeah, you'd go down to the prison and you'd do rap talk. And that would mean telling them just about what they should do, but I didn't use that on them. The preachers and everything used that. They'd say, "You shouldn't do this, you've got a family back there." I didn't do that. I did worse, because when I got through, they knew what I was talking about. See, I told them...First thing when you walk into the prison, you tell the people that "Somebody [must have] snitched on you because you're in prison," and they're satisfied then. They feel like you're on their side. If you walk in and start preaching to them, they won't talk to you, see. And then I'd tell them then, I said, "Now, do you feel like you're better off in here or better off out there?" [They would say,] "We feel better out." I said "Well, why don't we work at that," I said, "because the first thing you do when you go to prison, if you will do this, think about getting out. Before you do anything, think about getting out, then think about straightening your life out." I said, "That's what you do, because nobody's going to take care of you and your kids unless there's some communication there. You have to get out and take care of your family." That's what I tell them is you got to do that because a family can't take care of themselves, you know. I said, "Just get on out," and that's the way I talked to them, you know. And I said, "What do you think about that?" I'd ask them about what they think about it. I didn't tell them what they had to do. Most people would tell them what they had to do. But I said, "What do you think about that?" And they'd answer, you see. And then we would use that like we were going to a meeting with the Corrections board. It asked, "Have you heard anything? Do you know anything?" 54 Then we'd tell her what we heard, what we thought in these meetings... I was going to kind of pay attention, get a little tighter on these people were getting in and out so easy. It was getting out, you know. LS: Well, you were treating these inmates like they're human beings...individuals. WM: Yes, because if we didn't then they wouldn't talk. They were mad all the time, you see. Like I said and when I went down there - another thing, I went down there - I went down there with my work clothes on. You know what I'm saying? That represented work. LS: Instead of wearing a suit or... WM: Instead of wearing a suit and all that stuff like that. I made them feel like that I was part of them, you see. But I was out trying to tell them it's better out here than it is in the prison, see what I'm saying. So they wouldn't get mad. Like when the kids come to my barbershop. If they can say "Willie" I want them to say "Willie," I don't want them to say "Mr. Moore" because if [they have to say Mr. Moore] then that kid feel like I'm just a little bit older than he is, so he's not going to trust me as much, but they trust me when they think that we're the same age. And kids think you're the same age all the time. Well, that's the way those fellows down there... and they've done so many different things and they have corrected conditions in the prison so much down there until it's kind of on the ball now. LS: What about health care, has that gotten any better? WM: Well, the health care is a little better. The whole thing is a little better, but it takes so much money to do enough to get it's where it's supposed to be. They don't seem to go with that too much...Now, they've taken away summer studies, and 55 they've brought them back, and they take away summer studies, and some are working there. But they bring them back all the time because people were kicking on that, you see. Yeah, they were kicking on that really good. LS: It's a real problem, you know. It's hard to know what to do that's humane and everybody--almost everybody's--going to come back out. That's what you need to think about, you know. WM: Well, we've got...I believe, I think one time they said it was 80 percent go back to prison, you see. Plus, in other words let me tell you what they feel. That's another thing. The prisoner thinks sometimes, they feel like that they this is... down there is their home, when they go back so many times. LS: They get comfortable. WM: They get comfortable, and when they are let out a little while, they feel like they've visited, you see what I'm saying, because they know they going to go back home, see what I'm saying. And knowing that they going to go back home - the prisoners - they kind of will do something that isn't right. I remember one time we had a meeting down to the prison, and the fellow that we were talking to, he'd been in there so long - maybe fifty years, I don't know - and it was part of him and they let him out so many times, and he'd go back. We ate breakfast there, and he called before lunch and said that he couldn't stay out. Because when he left there - see, fifty years is a long time, and that's been almost fifteen, twenty years ago, it must have been twenty years ago - he called and said he couldn't make it outside. He called them himself, and told them to come pick him up because he couldn't make it because the cars were too fast. When he went in 56 there were horses and buggies and all that stuff. And you know, he would strut in there just like he owned the place. Let you in and out and everything, so they gave him those privileges. But they'd still try to get him...let him go out and he wouldn't go out, see. So they had to pick him up and let him eat dinner back down there.,, They talk about how the people bring and would try to bring stuff into the prison, you know. And they had so many different ways to bring it in, you know. So many different ways. Girls would bring it in different ways, men would bring it in different ways, you know. But they kind of understood that, and when they got ready to make a break they would make a chair, or a bedstead with a ball on them - you might have seen some of those with the little balls on the frames. Okay, well inside of this ball they would drill a hole in this, and then they would put a icepick in this little ball that they set on top and this is where they had... I forget now how they would say it to the other prisoners, you see. "It's a beautiful chair, did you get the..." Well they couldn't say a word like - do you see what I mean - about that ball. But there's a [code] word for it, you see, and they use that word that...so we wouldn't understand what they were saying, but later [we] caught onto that, you see. So they just kept going and going and going, until pretty soon did you get the idea there's something inside that bed So they just kept going on and on and on and that's one of the things. Another thing's prisoners are smarter than people think, but they're smart the wrong way, see. They're smart the wrong way. Let me tell you this: whenever you build a prison, a person is thinking about how to get out. You put it together, and he's thinking about getting out and sometimes they get out. Sometimes they 57 get out with a weapon in one of those little balls. "Did you get the point?" That's what they said. LS: Oh, "Did you get the point?" WM: "Did you get the point?" Well, the point would be down in there, but we didn't understand it, you see. Yeah, he says, "I got the point." Well, that mean that's the point in this furniture...they finally caught that, see. And I kind of liked that program because we were always over there and people... a nice one I went to, Governor Leavitt was there. That was halfway house over here, and he spoke to them over there and talked to them. But, oooh, it's dangerous sometimes, you know. But what I thought - and I talked about this a lot of times - I thought about the soft prison and the hard prison. I always thought that the soft prisoner was just there because he actually wanted to be there, he wouldn't pay child support or he would run, but murder's different. See, so that's a hard prison. Soft prison is you wrote a bad check or something like that. LS: Yes, you have the property crimes and then you have the rapists and the murderers. WM: Right, right. You see and if - we talked about all of that - and if, see, if a person went down that raped a child, they'd kill him - the prisoners - they hated him to come down there and say that they had done something to a child. They'd kill you, you know. I mean they would, you know, try. Oh, they hated it. [I'll put it that way]. They didn't want that to happen, you see, not to children. Now, I'll get over to the Utah Power and Light. I stayed over there, on Community Relations. That's an advisory board with the community involved, 58 Community Advisory Board. I was there all day yesterday. We were down there in Benson, and that's Cache Valley. We were down there all day yesterday, all day riding boats and trying... what they do, they try to figure out how to save power, see - and that's what they were doing - and how to get power and they wanted to know how you buy power. And you can't keep power like you can a gas; a gas you can tuck it away and bring it back later. Power you can't hardly do that, you see. So they talked about that. And then they talked about California. You know, they thought California had it real bad, and they feel like that's going to be covered up-what happened with deregulation. LS: Oh, they deregulated it. WM: Deregulation. That's going to come pretty quick, you see. But what California did - they thought yesterday at the meeting, yesterday - they thought that California did it when they were having the deregulation, they should have done it before, see. They got it all out of line and everything. And California's going to come up again. And whatever hurt California, it hurts Utah, see. And then, like I said, we go down and talk about buying power, selling power, putting up sub-stations, and that's what we talk about. We go and try to check the water for... see whether it's low or whether it's high. Now, that's Bear Lake. We weren't at Bear Lake--it was Bear River, I guess. [But] it was yesterday, some nice people down there, but we went through a whole lot of stuff there yesterday - a big meeting. And you go into the all...into all of the substations and stations, and they show you what's supposed to be done and they ask...they talk about "Do you think that we would have enough if we had the coal, would the coal be okay?" Well, we'd be on both 59 substations, but in this Community Relation Advisory Board of the Utah Power and Light, we have to go into the mines sometime, you see. Going into the mine, you have to put a brass thing on your arm. Once you put the brass thing on your arm - your name's on there - then you go...it's about five or six miles under the ground, and then after you go under the ground so far then you walk about a mile, I mean another block. It's with a first aid in both hands, and you walk to a place called high wall. And those high walls, they have electric lights all over. You can't touch the wall, so if you fall, you've got to fall forward or backwards because you can't fall to the side. If you hit that wall-- because they think maybe the electricity might be bare—those wires might be bare and kill you, see. So we go down in the [prop] planes, and the funny thing... The same lady gets in the same plane, and I have to be with her all the time. And the slowest plane I was in... we leave an hour ahead of anybody, and we were an hour late when we get there because you get three planes, you see. There's eighteen of us, six in each plane, see. We leave [in front them] and an hour later we get back. I don't know how she just does that-- "Come on Willie, let's go!" I said, "Oh, not again." All the time we always say that all the time, but that Utah Power and Light is really strong. I asked them yesterday, I said, "Why is it that you go into the power overseas, the," what's it called the power overseas? LS: I know there's a Japanese Market. 60 WM: No it's a... first it went to the Pacific Corps, okay, and then the Scottish Power. I said, "Why did you go into the Scottish power?" And they said, "Willie they just come in and bought us out." LS: Really? WM: "They just come in and bought us out, and we sold it to them." That's what they said yesterday. Because Utah Power and Light they were going to.. .I was with a part of it, see. Again, I was actually on the Community Relations Board because I was following them around. LS: So, is the function of the board to learn all this stuff and then take it back to the community and to advise them? WM: The first time we started this community - this is the second time around - first thing we did, we put a little piece in the paper about "How are you satisfied with the lights? Are you satisfied or what should we do?" And then we dropped that, you know because they had so many complaints. We dropped that. And another thing, they was...during that time people were stealing power so much, you know, like disconnecting the wire to come into your house, bypassing the meter, then hooking it back up when they bypassed the meter. Sometime they'd turn it upside down, then the meter could run slow. Sometime they'd put sand on it. The next time they would take a BB Gun and shoot right on this plastic, and the plastic would hit that meter and the meter couldn't go. LS: Oh, gosh I didn't know any of this stuff. WM: Well, they did that. It was about $185,000 the first two or three weeks. We found people cheating, and that was, that's really something that some people would... 61 one lady got a bill, I think it was $7,000 and she didn't even know what was going on. And it was really $70, but they made it bad, boy, and she raised a lot of hell. But right through here would be bad to make those suggestions, but people would call. They're pretty mad now, but this new gas company, they're kind of easing in on now, you see. So what the Utah Power and Light talked about yesterday was that they were going have to get that resource-oil, see, and sometimes coal. They go in with this digger, and they have this coal sometime it's twice as big as this thing here. Then they bring it out. Then they have a place called the crusher. They crush it up and then they put it on a carrier and they bring it out into a generator where they make the electricity. LS: So, they burn the coal to make electricity, is that what they do? WM: Yeah, yeah. See and what happens, see, is they pour the waters - you know about where the water is, it has something to do with the electricity, see because the water run on those big, well, those big machines. They have this level, and that level goes around, and as it goes around on the end over there, you see, it make a spark and that makes electricity. LS: So, it's the generators turning around. WM: Generators, you see. And they have generators...the biggest I believe one I like so well was in Huntington, Utah. But the one we went to yesterday was big too. It's old; it was put in in 1927... but it's serving the same purpose, you see. They think about trying to talk about how they were going to...before the thing got a little bad because the trees used to knock the power out. But what they did, they stopped those people who cut the trees down. That's when you had bad power 62 for some time, you know, because it would fall on those trees, you see, and mess that up, see. So we talked about how some customers cheated. You can save power if you can do your washing and stuff on Saturday or if you do it late in the evening... The hair blowers use more than anything for a little while, and then the washer and dryer use more than the rest of them. LS: And the air conditioner. WM: Right, air conditioner. Yeah, those, especially those electric ones, you know. So they use a lot. So that's...they talk about what... turn your lights out and a whole lot of stuff they try to talk about saving power, see. So that's that one. LS: That's interesting. WM: Job Corps -I get a little of that now - Job Corps. Myself and Bill Lawrence and a lady called Laura Ferguson - she was with Channel Two - and went to the Job Corps. Our purpose there was is to try to get the community to accept the Job Corps. They did not accept it at first. Most people here thought that the Job Corps center would be bad for the community, but after we got talking to them a little bit about that and trying to get them in with the community [they] would let them be patrol people and they would have people in everything, I think... Some of the people thought that would be tied up out there, and locked up and all that stuff. That's untrue, you know. And when you go out there, God, they got purple walls and red trimming, red and white. It's beautiful when you go into those places, see. So that was a good thing about the Job Corps Center. They would go to the big cities and get the bad fellows and bring them - Chicago and New York, New Orleans - they would do that, you see, and they would get people that 63 wasn't too sharp, but now this has all changed. They do it now for a person to get an education, and use it. That's what they do now, so now they get them from Idaho, Wyoming, places close by. They tried to put the Job Corps in places where they were needed so they could meet these criteria. Now, I'm going to go back to the barbershop. 64 July 17, 2001 WM: Earlier we were talking about the Porters and Waiters Club in Salt Lake. Later they called it the Bucket of Blood. The reason why they called it the Bucket of Blood, one person was mad at the other guy-the club had an upstairs—and this guy called this guy to the stairway and then cut his throat, and blood ran all over everything. That's why they called it the Bucket of Blood. LS: My gosh, so when would this have been? WM: Oh, it was in the 1940s, about 1948, something like that. BM: That's really true too. I didn't ever know why they called it the Bucket of Blood. I never did. LS: Okay, and that was about 3rd West and South Temple, somewhere around there. WM: Yeah, about 3rd West. No about 3rd West...North. LS: So, Salt Lake City, say in the 1940s. WM: The west side hotel is where they had some clubs. They had a lot of prostitutes. They had prostitutes in there, and cafés, and a dancing hall on the west side. Later that...it was kind of a segregation thing leftover, and later they all mingled together at the hotel. Big Bands would come and play there. LS: At the Independent? WM: At the...no, Independent was downtown. Right downtown. That was where the hotel was. Now we left there and went down west. LS: Oh, okay. So, farther south and west. WM: Yeah, farther west. [It] was a street down from there. 65 LS: I see, okay. Was there kind of a center for the black community there in Salt Lake that you remember? WM: Well, just on the west.. just [when] I was talking about the west side. But they kind of - in Salt Lake City - they kind of live kind of spread out a little bit more than they do other places, you know. One here and one there and one there, but the west side was where most of the minorities were. LS: Okay, and even the churches - not all of them, but most of them other than the Cathedral of Madeline and the LDS churches - a lot of them were, they were downtown, but they tended to be west of main. WM: Yeah, well the churches during that time were on the east side. The churches they had Trinity... LS: That's true, Trinity is. WM: And then they had another church...oh, I forget the...that church was right by Trolley Square. LS: That's right. The Baptists. The Baptist Church. LS: And then the Greek Orthodox and the Japanese churches...were on the west side. WM: They were on the west side. LS: And the black churches still are mostly in that sort of that Liberty Park area, right? WM: Right, right, they built a big Baptist church there now. Oh, it's a big one now. It will be completed in either the end of this year or next year. And it's by Reverend [France] Davis, who is the pastor there now. 66 LS: And that's still in that same area? WM: Now, this is about 10th South and - about 10th South and 6th West. No, no it's right off State Street. WM: It's going to be a big one. It's up in a million dollars - that church they're building. LS: Wow. Okay, and so if you compare Salt Lake to Ogden, say during the 1940s, is there a difference between the cities and between the black communities in those two cities? WM: In Ogden, I believe it was more blacks in one section. LS: Is that the railroad influence mainly? WM: Yes, Ogden - the railroad - Ogden was kind of the center of the railroads and that's where most of the people...that's where most of the people worked. LS: So, were there more cultural things going on here in terms of churches and clubs and social things? WM: Yes, in Salt Lake City they had a dance hall that was where the blacks all met, called High Marine Hall. And that's near the church that the Mormons donated to the blacks, the minorities. They donated a ward over there right by close to High Marine Hall. LS: Now, is that the Genesis Branch? WM: Right. LS: The Genesis Branch, okay. Interesting. Okay, so what about Ogden? When Betty gave her talk [at the Sons of the Utah Pioneers], she showed photographs of some of the clubs and people that were involved with those. You have referred to those several times along 25th Street. Is there anymore that you wanted to 67 say about that? Any stories or memories that go with those that we haven't talked about? WM: No more than when there were times when things were bad down there on 25th Street,. There were times when you could almost wake up in the morning and trace blood to a person's home; they got beat up and scarred up and fought so much because [you could almost] do that, you know. But it was a mixed situation; 25th Street was okay because it had one Mexican club there, and then there was a café called Alexander. That was the Mexican place. But then after that they did have some prostitute houses above Wall and above Lincoln. The police didn't know about that one. LS: So there's kind of a red light district there. WM: It was red light district. LS: Okay. WM: And the lady - I don't know, I usually don't like to call people's names - but her name was Rose, and the police department all of them knew that. The police department, you see... But, now 25th Street - going back to the clubs - 25th Street wasn't quite as bad as they say it was because Porters and Waiters were coming in. They would stay, and as far as social life is concerned they didn't have a lot to do, but they didn't have the prostitutes running out of that place like they did in the Salt Lake place. They didn't have any. LS: So, Salt Lake in that way was really wilder. WM: 2nd South was wild. LS: That's true, 2nd South used to be kind of a bad word. 68 WM: Ooooh, 2nd South was terrible. But to show you how well known 25th Street was-- a person wrote a letter to the Porters and Waiters and forgot to put the address on there. Put Porters and Waiters, USA and it came to this Porters and Waiters Club. It didn't even have an address, and it came from Germany there and they got the letter. LS: That's amazing. WM: That's how busy [everybody knew the place].,, They had one famous person just off 25th Street, just on the corner, and her name was L.B. Davis. She had... she housed a lot of those people because, as I said, it was prejudiced during that time. They couldn't get a place. Her name was Leager B. Davis. She owned and operated the Royal Hotel. They wouldn't know her where [we talk about it], see. LS: You talked some about sports, your years golfing and playing basketball, and all of that. Were there any other stories about sports in Ogden and the development of sports here...that you wanted to talk about? WM: Well, I can talk about Frank Robinson. Frank Robinson - big person in baseball now. Okay...was playing with the Ogden Reds, and he and one person called Langford came. But Langford didn't stay. Frank Robinson did, and he was one of the known first blacks in semi-pro ball. When he left me some tickets to come to the game - this is real fun -I was standing in line, you know. It was still kind of semi-prejudiced then - and I was standing in line, and when he struck at the ball, it had two strikes on it. Then he struck it another ball. This was one strike, and he 69 struck another ball over his head almost, and one of the guys said, "[Oh, that old Frank! Old Frank Robinson missed that ball." And there was just talking going on, you know. Then pretty soon he hit a home run as long as Ted Williams had hit. Ted Williams hit the longest one. All of a sudden, his name went from Old Frank to Frankie. They said "Frankie really hit that ball!" LS: Amazing what a home run can do, isn't it? WM: Yes, now he actually was just... was sitting in the barbershop all the time. When you mentioned Frank Robinson's name, the whole world knew him. The whole world, see. He is now a coach and has held several positions in baseball. He's coaching major leagues now. And then our next big person come in, we thought, was Alan Holmes, see; Alan Holmes was good. And then at the school up there they had another person: his name was Ray Freeman. Now, that was my wife's first boyfriend: Ray Freeman. And he was a track and football star for the Ogden High School, then he later went to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. But everybody would know him and he was good too as far as sports was concerned. Then along came me, and one of biggest things--they want to know about this. One of the biggest - when I was playing golf - one of the biggest, with the most entering this tournament that had a hundred and fifty people. Myself and Larry Winchester won it; the biggest they ever had. Then I won several, several other - I've got trophies all over. I won several other ones, but that was the biggest, and then they had a Catholic Tournament. I won that six years in a row for the state Knights of Columbus. LS: Wow. 70 WM: And that was for the Knights of Columbus. LS: Now this one with the hundred and fifty people what was the name of that one? Or who sponsored, do you remember? WM: It was sponsored by a few people like Pepsi and people like that, but it was the Ogden City Amateurs. LS: Ogden City Amateurs, okay. I told you I have a son who's a golfer, didn't I? WM: Do you? Is that right? LS: He doesn't get as much time to play as he used to, but he plays, you know, he plays in a couple tournaments a year usually. WM: Is that right? How old is he? LS: He's twenty-seven. WM: I just came from Hill Field, playing right now. Just got in... I play every day. I don't hit the ball as well now because of this relocated hip, but I won several tournaments. Your son may know this up-and-coming young woman who plays golf. Her name is Tenille, I think it is. Tenille Howe. LS: Good for her. WM: She played for Weber State. This is her last year; she's really good. She'll be good for sports. Now, bowling - I used to like bowling so much. I was a good bowler. We bowled in White City, and then the Ogden Bowling Lanes, and places like that. Those were some of the sports I could play after being hurt, you see. I could play those, and play them well. We used to play for turkeys and everything every year, and the bowlers would know this. They would tease me about taking 71 their ham, and I'd win every year. Turkey and ham: that's what they were giving us. LS: You could just count on it. WM: Yeah, they could just count on it. But I'd win that all the time. LS: Oh, that's great. What do you think about sports now? The professional athletes are coming in so young and getting paid so much. The kids come right out of high school, and all of a sudden they're in the NBA. WM: Yeah, well you know, I'll tell you it's hard to turn that money down. LS: Oh, I'm sure. WM: You see, now sports...before white people didn't play sports much because they said they couldn't jump, you see. But they were all doctors and lawyers so they didn't have to. But when they started paying those million dollars, those white boys would jump right out of the building, see. They would do that, see, because they could play as well as anybody, but they didn't have to do it. Now they're doing it, you know. Now what I think about that I think it's hard to get a kid to come out of high school because Moses Malone was one of the people that came to Utah, and he was one of the first high schoolers to come out. He and I were just tops friends all the way...I had a good decision on trying to talk to him to get him to come to Utah, see. I think it's a good thing, but I want to tell you this: when they say the ballplayers are getting so much money, the ballplayers will not get no more than the owners. LS: That's right. 72 WM: If the owners weren't making the money, they couldn't pay, and if the ballplayers weren't out there, the owners couldn't make any money. But I think that the young kids are a little bit young. But you know right now, if you would go back to school and somebody would come and give you $15 million, you'd better take the $15. Take it then, because then if you go back to school - you plan on going back to school, you see - you could take that money, and you could have money to do what you want to do. Education means making money, making money and learning to manage it. I think it's wrong for them to take them away from education. I think that when you think about the money, I think I would take the money. I really do because the danger is this: if a ballplayer was going to play ball, and they offer him that money, I guarantee it's not real money. A lot of them aren't getting real money, you see. The owners don't like to talk to you much about real money because this is the money you have to give them then, see. But this money stretches through a lot of years, like Pete Marvich. He stretched it out. He and I were good friends, everybody knew Pete. Pete came and told me one day, he said "Willie," says, "I'm not going to get all the money because it's scattered all over everything, and they traded me to another team." And later he died in Boston, see. But with the money they pay, I'll take it. LS: That's interesting. WM: The team that spends the most money is the team that wins, so that's what that's about. It's bad to take a kid out of school, but if he's finished high school, you 73 see, he can manage the money with a good manager. If he's in college and he can't manage, he's in the same shape. LS: That's true... WM: You think about all these millions of dollars they're getting now. See, if they weren't getting that kind of money it would be different, you see. But you can get a...Walter Ray Allen he just... somebody in the Knicks. He went and finished college, and they were going to play the next night or so. He was having his graduation, and he was going to be in that class, and he didn't play that night. He went to the graduation because he felt that was more important because he had his money already made, you see what I mean. So if you make that money, and you can manage your money, you're okay, see. But let me tell you, when I was playing for the team we would come out after the game all kind of girls standing there waiting for us, and all sizes, see what I'm saying? Some looked like they were fifteen years old. You might just make a big mistake with the guys taking those girls. I remember one time when Wilt Chamberlain - the funniest thing about him was, he came to play, and he was a friend of mine. But girls stand around waiting for you to get on the ground, you see what I'm saying. It's terrible. You might just get one, you know. LS: Well, that's the thing that it puts young people on a very fast track.... WM: Yeah, but you know there are some people who...take Larry Bird: he wouldn't have ever done it; Julius Irving wouldn't have, see. You have...if you sometimes you can handle yourself, sometimes you can't, you see what I'm saying? ,,,When they all get those million dollars, that's what you're going to school for – those 74 million dollars - then if you're able to manage, as I said before, you see. You have to be able to do that, but you can be a hundred years old and can't manage money; you'll still be broke, see. The managers are saying the real thing about it— they're not going to pay if they don't make that money, that's what they're calling a cap on salaries...So they have the money to pay them. LS: It's amazing how much money is going into sports now and how much interest there is in sports. WM: Right, right, see because Jazz was hardly a winner of a championship because they don't have the money or something. I think they have the money, but they don't want to spend it, see what I mean? The guys come out to get a ring. Larry Miller -as much money as he's making in all of those places - he could care less about a ring, because he could buy the whole jewelry store, see what I'm saying? Yeah, he could buy the whole jewelry store with that. LS: Yes, that's true. WM: So, the kids get the money and don't run. Get the money and manage it, and if you're not too able to manage it, go to the person you know best and talk to them about who they have manage their money. They'll be pretty fair, see, because that's their living. LS: Yes, that's a good idea. Okay, let's see, have you thought of things in between our talks that you wanted to bring up? WM: Well, no, no more than my game's getting a little rough. (Laughter.) LS: You know, you told me a story that was when we had lunch at the library. We've got several stories about you and Spencer Kimball on tape already, but when I 75 was going back through the transcript, I noticed there's one that we don't have yet... I think that's a good story. WM: Yeah, I can tell you the story because when I was working there I was friends to most of the fellows there, because I was a young person and they paid a little more attention to me than the rest of them, see.... I was talking to [LeGrand] Richards first and I says, "[LeGrand]," I says, "all of these kids are going on a mission. Why can't I go on a mission?" And he said, "Well, Willie, somebody else will tell you that because I can't handle that question." Then I talked to a Richard Evans - I think that was his name - and he said, "Well," he says, "someday you'll go and you'll be strong, you just wait, see." And then I talked to McKay. So when Kimball came I said, "We're both kind of friends like, so I want to tell you, I want to go on a mission so bad." And he said, "Well, Willie I'll tell you what," he says, "let's make a little something out of it, but sooner or later it will come true." That's what he says. And he said, "How much do you make an hour in your hotel?" And I said, "Thirty-nine cents." And he said, "Thirty-nine cents an hour?" And I said, "Yep." And he says, "You'll come to be a millionaire then. If you make 39 cents an hour and you get to be a millionaire," he says, "then we will turn you white and then you can go on a mission." So, I laugh about that all the time. We were good friends, yeah, and we could talk to each other, but Kimball was so funny about it when we were talking about that. That was way back in '41 or '42. He came her from Thatcher, Arizona, someplace down there. I think it was Thatcher, Arizona. He had enough money, and he could stand on his own, and 76 he could say what he wanted to say. I could talk to him the same way, you know, because he understood me, you know. Anytime that something happened he was always there talking to me about it, you know. And I would see people with nice cars and everything, you know, and he said, "Willie," says, "one day don't you worry," he says, "I don't want you to think about buying something that you want now," he said, "you just want the car," he says, "but you get things that you need," he says "someday you'll be a rich man, see." That's what he said, "Sometime you might not be a millionaire in money," he says, "but you'll be rich, a rich person in everything else," he said. He says, "Sometimes being rich doesn't make you, make the person, you know." Then I said to him, I said, "Well..."-my English wasn't so good then, you know, because I didn't think school would mean that much—and they would get on me about how I speak, you know. They kept bothering me so much— my cousin and everybody, they was lawyers and doctors and everything, so they need to have a job. But I had money, see, and I told one of them, I said, "I'd rather say that "I is rich" than "I am poor," I says. "That what I think and that's the way I feel, you know." LS: Did they have an answer for that? WM: They didn't have an answer for that one. They let me go then, see. Oh, they were just stuck all up. Uhhhh. Yeah, I told them, I said, "I'd rather say, "I is rich than I am poor," all the time, you know. So, we had that going and oh, another thing: everybody know this one. The Mormons taught me all the time to say, "It's always very nice to be important, very nice; but then it's important to be nice." 77 They used to say that to me all the time... So I always thought of that. That's one thing I used to say. Then I used to have another one: I spoke at a church one time, and I told them about this...This is what we were talking about with segregation then, you know. I was telling them about this person, one time, who was a black man who lived in a white neighborhood, see. The white man said to his wife, he said, "Well, I don't want those black people here," he says, "so what I'm going to do to keep from seeing them, I'm going to get me a big white fence so I cannot see them." And this black guy was sitting on the other side. He says, "I'm going to get me a big old black dog. If they come on this side of the fence, I'm going to put this dog on them, see." This is part of the segregation. "I'm going to put this dog on them." Then the white fellow went downtown, you see, and he left his baby in the house. They were still mad at each other, you see, but he left the baby in the house, and he seen all this big smoke. This black man on the other side of the fence, he went in the house, tore the door down, and got the baby out because he knew the baby was in there. And the white guy rushed back, and he rushed over to the black guy, and he says, he looked at him, he says, "Oh, gee, thank you so much," he said, "you saved my baby." And this white guy, he walked over with an axe, you know. This black guy said, "Please don't kill my dog, don't kill my dog." The white guy looked at him and says, "I'm not going to kill your dog, I'm going to cut this white fence down so we can live like neighbors." That's what he said, you know, and I told [them] that one. LS: That's a good story. 78 WM: It is a good one, see. And then another black kid-- this is a racial thing, so I'll be through in a few minutes. This little black kid moved into the neighborhood - these are true - in Detroit, and the white people got worried about this little black guy. He was playing out there with the other kids, so they call them all in and say, "Did you see something about this guy out here playing ball? Do you see anything different?" And the little kids says, "No, we don't." And he says, "Well, it seems to me like it is a little different out there." And one of the little guys walked to him and said, "Yeah, it is different," says, "that black guy over there, he's left-handed." That's part of the... LS: Yes... if you get them young enough and soon enough. WM: Sooner or later it will happen, see. And that's part of it. And another thing is when - then I'm going to quit now - I used to tell all these when I was in church--and see this sticking together. That's something we don't do - sticking together. So this guy went out to fish, and he carried this lady with him out fishing, and she stepped in quicksand, and she called a person to come help her. That man went to help her, and she reached one hand for him to pull up and it broke loose. She stuck the other hand up, and it broke loose. He starts walking away, and she says, "Aren't you going to help me?" And he says, "How can I help you lady when you won't stick together?" {Laughter.] That's another one. All of those were the segregation, but then that's the part that I know about - sports, segregation, and the clubs, and the way you lived... LS: Well, it seems to me you must have a real gift for making friends and getting along. As I go back and look through our conversations, there were white people 79 who kicked you off the sidewalk and injured you. They were white people who held you up with a gun and a knife. Now, some people might take offense at all that, you know. WM: Oh yes. LS: But you don't do that, you look past that. WM: No, when you come to my barbershop and see t