Oral History Program Edward Brady Interviewed by Andrew Smith 23 June 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Edward Brady Interviewed by Andrew Smith 23 June 2008 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. Archival copies are placed in University Archives. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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 All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Brady, Edward, an oral history by Andrew Smith, 23 June 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Edward Brady. The interview was conducted on June 23, 2008, by Andrew Smith, at the I.R.S. 1160 Tomlinson Way. Edward discusses his life experiences and recollections which range from growing up in Missouri and ending with his time as a student at Weber State. AS: Alright we are here today with Andrew Smith and Edward Brady. I work with him and he was kind enough to a help me out with my history project and we'll just be listening to Ed's Stories. I guess the first question I'll ask you is where were you born? EB: St. Louis Missouri. AS: Alright, what year? If you don't mind me asking? EB: 1942. AS: Ok, that was a few years before I was born. EB: I imagine it was a day or two. AS: Did you have any brothers or sisters growing up? EB: Two brothers and one sister, uh first brother and I were fairly close; there was approximately 3-3 1/2 years between us. The younger brother was born well after that, I can't remember exact dates, then the sister was about two or three years after him. So that I wasn't as close to them because by the time they came along I was getting on toward leaving home. AS: A bit of an age disparity there. 1 EB: Yes. AS: How about your mother and father, where were they born? EB: They were both born in a little town of De Soto Missouri. AS: Is it close to maybe where you guys had grown up? EB: That's where I grew up, I was born in St. Louis, and I didn't say that I lived there. Actually I did live there but very, very briefly. What had happened is, my maternal grandmother died approximately a month before I was a year old and my parents were living in St. Louis at that time. My maternal grandfather had worked for a couple of different railroads and on the last one he had been injured and lost one of his legs below the knee. So my parents moved in with him to help care for him. He got around really well but he did need someone AS: What did your father do for a living? EB: Well now he had several careers, He worked for a federal small arms factory in St. Louis for a while, He worked for the post office in St. Louis for a while, He worked for Pittsburg Plate Glass Company in Crystal City Missouri for a while, but most of his career was with the post office in De Soto. AS: I imagine De Soto as a smaller town? EB: Well if we ever hit 4,000 people well then it'd be a miracle, we must have had a convention AS: That's interesting, now um, with your mother, did your mother work? 2 EB: Not until the later years. She worked with a department store—which was actually two stores—one was the "higher" society store and one was the "bargain" store. She did work in both at one time or another. The name of the place was Sherman's. That's real famous as you can tell. Laughter AS: Compared to a lot of families now-a-days where usually you have two cars and two parents work—did your family have two cars? EB: My family didn't have a car until I was approximately 14 and that was a 1935 Ford Coup that we couldn't all fit in. We later got a 1940 Chevy which was also fun. It was a sedan we could all get in it, unfortunately there was a problem with the shift so that if you were stupid enough to put it in reverse you had to get out with a wrench and pop it back in before you could go forward again. AS: That's a great story. So how about entertainment while you were growing up? I had heard that movies were called Talkies back then. EB: There were two theaters in town The De Soto Theater and the other, what did they call it, I can't remember the other one, same guy owned both of them, the other one was the High Falootin Theater, because it was newer. We also had a drive in that he owed. The De Soto Theater had matinees on Saturday for the kids and I can recall that dad would give us a dime and we'd go down and we'd see the movies and buy enough stuff to get sick. They had 14 cartoons a couple of serials some short subjects and then what ever the movie was. In other words, something to keep the kids busy and out of trouble for a while. AS: So it was kind of an event, going to the movies. 3 EB: Yes, yes. It was every Saturday for the kids. AS: That's interesting, How about radio programs? I know that back then that was the era of radio's golden years. EB: I used to listen to Ma Perkins, which was on Monday through Friday around noon. They had Little Abner. There was Eddie Cather; of course, he was getting towards the end there. I didn't listen to the radio that much but these were things that I knew that were going on. AS: How about television, do you remember when you got your first television? EB: I remember the first time I saw a television. I stayed with my aunt and uncle my mother’s sister and brother in law when my first brother was born. Uncle Tom took us over to the bowling alley on Main Street. The bowling alley had the first television. It was set up in the window and you couldn't hear it but you could see it. I mean the sidewalks were packed. I hoped nobody had anything to do that night. Well Uncle Tom saw that and said "I got to have one." He, he got the fancy one, really High Falootin there, ours I was probably around 8 or 9 I don't recall exactly we were still living with our grandfather, that would've been about the right age. Of course it was only on for a short time during the day and at night. You had a choice of any station you wanted as long as it was the only one that was broad casting and if you didn't like what was on you found something else to do. All the networks came through on that single channel. I can remember as a kid watch the westerns and the cartoons on Saturday, there was Wild Bill Hickok, Cisco Kid, The Lone Ranger, Tom and Jerry and stuff like that, Bernie and Cecil. I remember that stuff, I remember one kid was so engrossed and Hop a Long Cassidy was in some 4 kind of trouble, He was a western by the way, and the kid got excited pulled out his cap gun threw it at the screen and said "take mine Hoppy" breaking the Television. Yet there were people back then that believed what was on T.V. was absolutely 100% true. There was no fiction on T.V. People would stand up at night when they played the national anthem. AS: In their living rooms? EB: Yes, just them at home they would do that. Not everybody, of course, but a lot of people did. All the commercials were live. If they screwed up, you saw it. In fact, I remember one beer commercial where they had taken a break and the guy poured the beer and he's talking about it and the cameras were supposed to be off him, but it didn't and the guy poured the beer down the sink. Of course, it really wasn't beer but it gave the impression that I am not drinking this stuff. AS: That would defiantly be different. I'd like to talk for a minute about your dad and his job at the post office. It was a small town and his job would be considered important, considering that the mail was a primary mode of communication, actually very important. EB: There were deliveries twice a day, a first class letter was three cents and then it went to the hellacious price of a nickel. AS: Now with your dad delivering the mail, considering where he lived in Missouri and the era with in which he lived…was there any type of stigmatism of delivering mail to black people or African Americans, 5 EB: As a matter of fact, that's what my dad did. The east side of town is where almost all of the black people lived. And that was his route and he did it up until the day he retired. They talked about it at this funeral a couple of years ago. That he would start off in the morning and he'd go up Boyd street, and its kind a like a valley there and he'd have to walk up a hill and back down and he told somebody one time that going up that hill there are actually 139 steps. That you had to either climb or come down. After he finished that he'd have to go to the east side of town. Now there was a creek that runs through there the Juapa Creek, supposedly the longest creek in North America. On the east side of the creek is where the blacks lived, there were a few white people too but that's where the blacks mainly lived and on the west side is where the whites mainly lived. The east side was his. AS: Now with it being the primary mode of communication, and I would say an important job, was there any type of times when he felt pressured, or that he felt the white mail was more important than the black mail. EB: No he never treated anything that way, was my father prejudiced he may have been, if he was he never ever showed it to us, so we didn't grow up that way. My mother was highly prejudiced. But my father was the stabilizing influence there, so was he prejudiced? Maybe, if he was I never saw it. AS: Its defiantly unique, in my own personal experience growing there is not a lot of black people growing up in Utah. What would you estimate the black population in De Soto when you were growing up? 6 EB: That's hard to say, it really is because for the most part they were invisible. I mean you knew that the people were there but there wasn't much interaction. I've told you this one once before, in my earliest years people still used the ice man. Our ice man lived in our neighborhood and he was black, but he was tolerated there because he was the ice man. So that at least I had very limited but some contact with blacks, and as I said I never saw any discrimination from my father or my paternal grandfather about it. My mother yes, it wasn't that harsh and as years went on, she became less prejudiced I think. Because of things she would say about to us about stuff that happened. AS: Tell us about the ice man, for a lot of people who don't know or understand what the ice man is. EB: Well you know back before you had refrigerators yea there was a time, you'd have someone deliver a block of ice and you'd have a box that was pretty well padded one way or another to keep that ice as long as possible and that is what cooled down, things like that. It wasn't perfect it defiantly wasn't as good as a refrigerator. It'd keep mike fresh for two or three days maybe, of course milk in those days was delivered straight to the house anyway. So you didn't have to go any longer than that, of course you didn't have to get butter or eggs stuff like that was delivered. AS: The actual milk man, an actual milk man. EB: Yes regular deliveries that's how you did it, you could buy it in the store but most people either didn't have a car or it was too expensive to run the car except on special occasions, you had stuff delivered. That why there were so many neighborhood grocery stores mom and pop grocery stores. We had one a block away and another a block 7 away in the other direction and there was one a block further away from that second one. They were just everywhere, and were talking about a small town now. Walking down town was not that big of deal. AS: It’s interesting to think that there would be that many grocery stores in a small town. I like to jump ahead and talk about your high school years. EB: My high school years huh, first of all I was the youngest one in high school when I started and that's because I started school early. Partially it was an accident, what had happened was my mother was pregnant with my brother and she had known the principal for years and asked about getting me in early because my birthday was in November. He misunderstood and didn't know she meant the next year, so I started school at the age of three. And I went into high school I was smaller than all my classmates and I was younger that all my classmates. The senior girls thought I was just the cat’s meow, their boyfriends hated my guts. Also discrimination, legal discrimination, came to an end while I was in high school I remember when the first blacks came to high school. There weren't that many of them, but there was a star, Bull Townsend, football, Bull was good people without being a star but for most of the kids making him a star was the thing that got the rest of the black kids accepted more readily, not perfectly, but more readily. Because bull lived up to his name, he'd get out on the field and he'd walk to the next goal, dragging guys with him they couldn't bring him down. I remember one time, it was purely an accident some guy came running at him. The bull saw him out of the corner of his eye, turned and hit that kid and flipped him completely off the field. They thought he had broken his back. They take him to the hospital, thank god he was ok. Bull was a big guy. 8 AS: A big powerful man. EB: Yes. AS: Um, Now there a lot of organized sports growing up and in high school? Was it something that was encouraged? EB: Now football was there they had track, there really wasn't much there for sports, a little baseball here and there. There wasn't really that much for sports most of the sports that occurred would be just one on one games just some kids getting together. AS: How important or how emphasized was It I should say, graduating from high school, you always hear stories of the older generations, EB: It was a given! There was no argument, you didn't even think about it. You just knew that's what was going to happen. You have the kids today who don't want to go to school and they just don't go. That didn't happen you went and you best not sneak around and try not to. You went. AS: That segues into my next question, there has been a lot of stuff in the news about teachers disciplining kids; you know putting them into time outs instead of dragging them out by the ears. What would have happened if, let’s say, you were in high school and one of your class mates mouthed off? EB: I can go even earlier than high school. Let’s go back to the fifth grade, I don't even remember what the poor kid did and I won't give his full name, first name was Danny. Whatever it was he did, the principal came in and he had a wooden board with holes drilled in it, he bent Danny over the teacher’s desk, two whacks just as hard as he could and the first one straightened Danny completely standing up. I remember two kids were 9 having a problem they were remodeling the basement at the junior high building at the time so that the basement was unfinished. The principal took both kids down there put boxing gloves on both of them and said "Have at it or you'll have at me." They just completely whopped at each other. In high school it wasn't quite the same because the kids where older, but you still knew better than to pull anything. J.C Caldwell was the principal of the high school. Very, very well educated man and very fair. If J.C. came to you and said you were in a world of trouble you knew he meant it. He didn't have to touch you, you knew it. I saw one person once threaten to hit him and J.C just walked up to him and said "Go for it." That was the end of it—the kid turned and left. He knew; it’s just the way it was. If the teachers needed to rap you they'd rap you. They wouldn't hurt you or mark you but they'd let you know, “You’re not going to be getting away with that stuff.” AS: You might have something smarting but not anything loose. EB: Right. AS: Now that's interesting the different approaches, of the modern day vs. then. I'd like to fast forward now. Did you ever serve any military? EB: 10 years, 2 months, 29 days in the United States Navy. AS: Sounds like you did then. EB: Anybody who's ever been in service could tell you that, they saw it on their DD 2-14 when you got out. AS: How do you think the time in the military might have influenced your life? Maybe given you a different perspective on the world. 10 EB: Well military first of all was important for one thing initially, and that was fulfilling my education. My parents were not rich I could never had gone to college. I had this thing that I was going to be a journalist. So this recruiter came along promising me the world and I was dumb enough to believe everything thing he said. Yea I could go join the school navy's got one no problem. Turns out the only thing I was guaranteed was education of some kind. I was still in basic where you and the recruit were lower than dirt. The guy with two stripes was probably god and if you went any higher than that well it was above that. They set us down with the classifier as I remember he was second class personnel. And he said maybe we can get you into Yeoman's school. I didn't even know what a Yeoman was but I said no I joined for the journalist school and if I can't go there then you might as well send me home. Well he didn't quite know what to say to that, here is this lower than an earth worm telling him what I'm going to do, so he thought about it for a little bit and then he said "Ok, here is what I'm going to do, I'll put you down for it but it’s extremely hard to get in there the class are always full so it may be some time before you get there. So I said "That's fine." When I finally got my orders, I went to journalist class-A school. I remember walking in and handing this chief who was there at the time and he looked at me and I handed him my orders. He asked me "You related to somebody important?" I said "No". He then asked, "Is your parents somebody?" I said "No." "How the hell did you get into this school?" I said, "I walked in the door with my orders, Chief." I learned a lot I enjoyed it quite a bit, I was fortunate in that I got my first exposure to people from other countries. We had two sailors from Korea; we had an Indonesian captain who tried to convince me to go back to Indonesian with him. There were people from the Army, Navy and the Marine Corps. I 11 don't recall any Air Force there might have been. But that was my education as far as a journalist. It was very thorough, even though it was a long time ago. School lasted about three months, journalism in all aspects. And the Boss in charge had been a technical advisor on the movie South Pacific so naturally when they ran that at the base you had to go or else. AS: What happened after that? EB: Well here I was really still a raw recruit three months out of basic and I listening to the old salts and that we are supposed to put in for what kind of duty we want. We'll they told be "Boy, if it’s something you don't want then that's what you make first choice cause you never get you first choice." And then their talking about different places they've been in the navy. So the worst place in the world to me sounded like Nawfolk Virginia. So by god right at the top I put Nawfolk Virginia. When I got my orders I went to Norfolk Virginia McKinley Air Force Northern Atlantic fleet. In the public information office there, again low man on the totem pole there. I enjoyed that quite a bit, main letter station. From there I went aboard the U.S.S Intrepid at that time was an attack air craft carrier and we went on some cruises, never been to sea before. Ended up going to the Mediterranean, spent six months in the Mediterranean, got around pretty well, you know France, Spain, Italy, Greece. While aboard there, I also managed to get to Canada, sailed right down the St. Lawrence River as far as Quebec. We went to Guantanamo bay, Jamaica the Virgin Islands, Venezuela; we were the recovery ship for the second Astronaut in space and on that one I was kind of a liaison for the navy to the pool reporter for the AP. UPI. So I worked with him during that. After that where did I go? While I was still stationed on the ship they sent me on a temporary duty to Antarctica. 12 So I got to go to the Phoenix Island, Fiji, New Zealand. I remember the day we got there, we didn't shut the plane off it was twenty below. I thought this is a dream because I've got to be having a nigh mare because this can't be real. Then the next day it was forty below but it was the edge of spring so summer was coming, all the way up to thirty five there for a while during the day. Of course it almost always day where I was it for the most part at McMurtle there is a hill, I could say north but every damn direction is north. But the sun would go in a circle in the sky and it would go behind this hill, observation hill and I guess that was night time for a few minutes. I remember over at observation hill they had a nuclear power plant one of those small ones and which they never could get to run right. Anyhow there were snow cats that would take the guys up to the power plant so somebody put up great big school bus signs. That said, "school bus stop nukie poo elementary district." Of course there were the signs "Keep of the grass," Highway signs, of course the air field was out on the west ice shelf at McMurtle because the ice shelf stays frozen. It did then anyway I don't know about these days. Mount Arabis and that's the only active volcano in Antarctica. AS: I didn't know there was an active volcano in Antarctica. EB: Mount Arabis, in fact McMurtle is built on a volcanic island so that's where it came from. At the time I was down there they were building Burt station differently from all the other stations. They had actually dug down into the ice and carved it out and then were covering it over so the snow could pile on top. I think but I never heard anything about it but what I think what that probably resulted from was the fact that the original station was on the surface and as the years went by it was below the surface from the built up. You walked down to the station and there were really two south poles. One had the 13 barber pole with the gold ball on the top for the tourists, the really pole was a while off and was just a set of oil drums. Of course I had to re-set my watch every seven steps. AS: Sounds like the navy took you around the world. EB: It did. I lived in Taiwan, I lived in Greece, and those were the only countries I actually lived in overseas. Of course I was in Antarctica, I was in New Zealand for several months but I lived in Taiwan for what was a little over two years. I don't know how long I was in Greece. In the states I lived in Norfolk, I lived in Washington D.C. Pretty much that's it. The rest of the time I was traveling. I remember when I was in the Pentagon. What had happened there was at the end of my first enlistment. I had gotten out, that was in 63' because I was on the minority list when I joined the service because I was under 18 when I joined. That was the same year that Kennedy say killed. I worked briefly with the local hometown publisher. He put out two weekly newspapers. I got bored with it and decided to re-enlist. I went to Washington D.C for reassignment and while I was waiting for orders they sent 7 of us over to the Pentagon to be interviewed and I was supposed to go back but I got orders while I was over there so when I came back they gave me the orders. I called the chief I had talked to and told him I've got orders I wouldn't be back because I just got my orders. He said oh yes you will and he had me reassigned right then and there. I had orders to go to the Pentagon and had a job. So I went to work at special operations, walked in, low man on the totem pole again. Then I threw them a monkey wrench, when enough time had passed I became a journalist 3rd class at the Pentagon. That didn't go over too well with what we were doing. But there was one kid there, name was Cannelis, he worked with the files from Joint Chiefs of Staff. I remember that I had to go down from time to time and pick up 14 those files. Now what's important about that is when the Pueblo was captured and then the crew was released, I was in San Diego then. I was working for public information office there. They put me on the information bureau to work with the crew. Because the crew when they were released went to Buenuva Hospital in San Diego. While I was there, they brought in some of the crew members and there was Cannelis. He was one of them and we talked about it. That was one of the things I got to work on. AS: Interesting. EB: And that's also to give you a time frame, when laugh in started. When I had night duty we'd sit there and watch laugh in. We had to man the information office 24 hours a day and it was at the anfibia space here in San Diego, which is actually a strand off of Coronado for the crests. Some body was always there sometimes times I'd get night duty. AS: How did you end up in Utah? EB: I was in Greece met this female who was from Utah. I got out of the service. Came back to states and all this time I had been around the world and not seen much of the U.S. Illinois, Virginia, Missouri, Californian and that's it. So I decided to try at hitch hiking. I never tried it before in my life. So I started and I hitchhiked a different way from everybody. I never put my thumb out once I just had my little suit case and walk down the road. People would stop or they wouldn't. I went down through southern Missouri into Oklahoma, and then through Texas, went up into Colorado, then across Colorado. I-70 wasn't completed then, I remember coming out of Montrose Colorado on US-50. You come around this curb and up high you see this big valley and that's Utah. Of 15 course I still agree that "Welcome to Utah set your watch back 30 years" but anyway. So I remembered this gal somewhere in Utah and a started walking North, Wasn't Salt Lake City. Some small town, not like De Soto but ended up in Ogden. She had told me her grandfather's name. I looked that up called. "What are you doing here?" "Who knows?" So I ended up in Utah then we eventually got married. We had lived in San Diego, Buena Vista California, Phoenix, Albuquerque, and Boston. AS: And still married. That's great. EB: I tell everyone it’s all my life plus 3 day. Going on 38 years. Seven natural kids and one new one. AS: That's quite an achievement. Well you've had a very interesting life and I must say that you really have. In all this time did you ever feel like you had to or needed to attend college? EB: I did attend college, AS: Please tell me about it. EB: I went to Weber State. But I didn't graduate. Uh, Sometimes I regret that and sometimes I don't. I was going year round and I was taking more of a load than I should have. I was in my third by the end of my second year. I had burned myself out and I knew I was wasting time and money and that's why I quit. I initially started going with a major in accounting. I took an economics course, the basic one, did very well at it. I remember the instructor was Dr. Richdy. He told me I should major in Economics. I told him I already had a major. He said ok, Dual Major. Work towards corporate tax law. So I did. 16 Of course I took a Geography class. I got a letter and they wanted me to major in Geography. I said, “No, I don't think so.” AS: The triple major. EB: I mean I enjoyed college quite a bit. Some of the instructors I had are gone now, like Melanie Burroughs in English. I remember writing the thesis, essay, whatever you want to call it she wanted and I my research on and I wrote it and it had to do with the end of civilization as we know it. It was the economic destruction of civilization, and based it on all these facts and all the references. When she gave me the paper back she said "You scared me so bad I wanted to fail you." However you earned an A. AS: Sounds like a good paper. Oh man. Have you been up to Weber State lately? EB: No I haven't been up there in years. AS: Did you attend it when it was on 25th Street or when they had moved? EB: It's the same Campus, but it was designed totally differently. But it was the same campus pretty much. AS: Thank you for your time. 17