Oral History Program Muriel Alma Hanson Hardy Kathryn MacKay April 11, 2009 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Muriel Alma Hanson Hardy Interviewed by Kathryn MacKay 11 April 2009 Copyright © 2015 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: Hardy, Muriel Alma Hanson, an oral history by Kathryn MacKay, 11 April 2009, 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 Muriel Hardy. The interview was conducted on April 11, 2009, by Kathryn MacKay, in Mrs. Hardy’s home. Mrs. Hardy talks about her life and also discusses the Modern Literature Club she belongs to. Lee Hardy is also present during the interview. KM: Today is April 11, 2009, and I am Kathryn MacKay, and I have been invited to again interview in regards to a local book club. I’m going to ask you to state your full name, please, for the recording. MH: Muriel Alma Hanson Hardy. KM: Excellent, and Mrs. Hardy, can you tell me when and where you were born? MH: I was born 1911, Howard, South Dakota. KM: But we’re not in South Dakota, we’re in Utah, so how did you get to Utah? MH: My father was transferred to Utah, and I was in junior high, about that age. And his brothers, they had a big family and my father was the baby of the family. His name was Gordon and they always called him Gordie, he was still the youngest, even after he was an old man. He accepted work in Utah, they were horrified. One uncle said, “Take those little girls to Utah?” I guess they keep thinking of Utah as very polygamist or something. KM: Alien territory. MH: And this was along 19- what would it be? LH: Well, let’s see, if you were born in 1911, about 1924? MH: Yes, that would be about right. I was in the last year of junior high school. Went to East High School. Are these the things you want? 1 KM: Absolutely. MH: And from there I went to the University of Utah. I had a wonderful time, I was not a serious student. I really went for the fun and I had it. I belong to Pi Beta Phi Sorority, had many friends. KM: That’s great. MH: That’s where I met my future husband. KM: I’m going to ask you about going to college, because it is unusual for young women to go to college, particularly, let’s see, you would have been attending college, then in the thirties, is that right? In the Depression years. MH: Right. KM: Even more difficult to get to college. But you had family support, the family wanted you to go to college? MH: Oh yes. KM: Why did they want you to go to college? MH: Surprisingly, the Depression was very good, financially for my father. KM: Ah-ha. MH: He was in a business where he, he was, I’m trying to think of the right way to say this. KM: He was in insurance, wasn’t he? MH: Yes. Many people withdrew their money from the bank when the banks started to fail, and they invested it in life insurance. Which was a good thing at the time. KM: And so he had the money to support you to go to college. 2 MH: Yes, oh I had a fantastic life. I came home from school one day, I was at The U, I was a freshman, and took the Fifteenth East bus and got down and walked to my parent’s house and there was a little green Ford Roadster, they called them, in the driveway and I thought my mother’s got company. I walked in and said, “Oh, who’s here?” and she said, “No one.” And I said, “Well there’s a car in the driveway.” And she said, “Well your father had it sent up for you girls.” KM: Oh. MH: But my sister was only twelve. So I really knew whose it was. KM: That’s exciting. So you must have been even more popular because you had a car, so you could take friends— MH: Oh, we went everywhere. That little car just took us all over. KM: That’s great. The friends that you did things with, were they mostly connected with your sorority? MH: Yes, they were. KM: And what kinds of things did you do? Did you go up into the mountains, into the canyons? MH: Yes, we have a cabin, the Hardy’s did, my future husband—I didn’t even know him then—his sister was a very good friend of mine. Mrs. Hardy, my friend’s mother, the most hospitable woman you ever knew, and I think about it and I think, now I couldn’t have handled that. It’s a big cabin and we’d all go there, sleep in our petticoats because we didn’t wear pants in those days, and she always had food, she always had huge breakfasts in the morning. I think about it, I mean she was always prepared. 3 KM: I think that’s great. So you met your husband then, at the University of Utah, what was he studying? MH: Yes, he was in, what was it? LH: I was thinking it was business maybe. MH: It was. He majored in business. KM: And was he also local? Of course he was if the family had a cabin in the canyon. Which canyon was the cabin in? LH: It was up Weber Canyon, east of Oakland. Smith, Moore house. It’s called Holiday Park. KM: Yes, and how did you meet? So you met through his sister then? MH: Yes. I was invited to their cabin many times, and he would come up, course he was working, he had graduated from The U and had a job with a bank. And his friends all envied him very much. It was the Depression and a lot of these young people graduated from college and no job. But he did, he worked at a bank. It was a small amount of money, but he was happy he had a job. KM: Absolutely. MH: He would go up weekends to visit his family, his mother, and take the groceries that would last for the week. She would have a list for him. KM: That’s great. MH: Their Sunday roast was described this way by a friend: they said it was a cow with its head and legs cut off. In other words, it was a huge roast. KM: So she was really intending to feed a lot of people. 4 MH: Oh yes, she loved company, and everybody would—I think about it how everybody would just go there and not think about taking a bag of oranges or anything, we just knew there was going to be food. KM: That’s great. MH: And she welcomed everybody. Couldn’t have been a nicer lady. KM: That’s wonderful. Did you graduate from college? MH: No, I didn’t. And I feel so terrible about that now, but it was the Depression, and that didn’t stop me really, because my father would have taken me, but I met Mo and he had graduated and he was ready to get married, and… KM: It was the thing to do. MH: I didn’t have anything in mind of a career. KM: Sure. MH: And I don’t think girls did then. It was during the Depression and any jobs were for a man, not for a girl. KM: That’s right, in fact there was a lot of discouragement for married women to have a job. MH: Oh yes, you’re supposed to stay home, have your dinner ready for your husband, have a baby. KM: And did you do all of that? MH: I did every bit of that. KM: Excellent. What year did you marry? MH: 19— LH: I thought it was ’32. 5 MH: I think it was ’32. KM: So early in those Depression years. MH: Well, yes. KM: And you had children. MH: I had four children. I had Joanne, and she lives in California now. And John, he lives in upstate New York. Tom, thank goodness Tom lives here. And Elizabeth, she died— LH: In, it would have been, ’99. KM: Lee, because they are going to hear your voice on the tape, I need to also make sure that the transcriber knows who you are, so tell me your connection. LH: My name is Lee Hardy, and I’m Muriel’s daughter-in-law. KM: Married to— LH: Her son Tom, for the last, what, thirty-three years. And we only live a block away. KM: That’s wonderful. MH: I wouldn’t know what to do without them. LH: And I was wrong on the marriage date, it was January 10, 1934. KM: Now I knew that you were a young woman when you lost your husband, and that this was a very traumatic situation for you, and it also was both clearly an emotional difficulty, but also a financial difficulty, an economic difficulty. And I wonder if you would talk about how you really survived the loss of you husband. I know probably the family and friends gave you support, but what did you end up doing? Your husband, well, disappeared you said, and the body not found until some months later. How did you manage that situation? 6 MH: Only because I had the family that I had. And I look back and think, how did I get up in the morning? But I had a wonderful mother and father, I had a wonderful sister, and her husband was very, very good to me. I can’t think of one person who didn’t come to my aid. And Modern Literature Club was fantastic. I can’t tell you how wonderful those friends were. KM: Let’s talk about that club. The Modern Literature Club. Great title. Talk to me about how you got involved in that club. Who invited you to be part of this club? MH: I’m trying to think now. LH: I thought you said it was a neighbor or friend. MH: Oh, it was. Elizabeth was six months old and, no I guess she was about a year old because I’d walk her back and forth, and I had a neighbor who would see me, and she loved the babies. She’d see me and she’d come say, “Oh I’ve got to see your baby, how is she?” and so forth, and she found out that I was a stranger in Ogden, moving here recently from Salt Lake, and she said, “You know, I belong to a club, and we’re having a guest day and I would love to have you come as my guest.” And I was so happy, because I didn’t know anybody in Ogden and very few, and this was just wonderful to have an invitation with other women. KM: Absolutely. I’m going to clarify because we are actually sitting in your home, which is on 27th Street in Ogden, and this is the home you moved into, is that right, from Salt Lake? MH: No, I lived on Van Buren. We rented a house. KM: Okay, so was it a neighbor in that area? 7 MH: Yes, we rented a house because we were advised, “Don’t buy when you first move because you have to find out where you want the house to be located.” So we rented this very nice house on Van Buren and I liked it because it was close to school, close to Central, junior, close to Ogden High. Kids went to all of them. KM: When did you move into this house? LH: Would’ve been after Mo died. When you were looking for a house to move to. You said that your dad found this home for you. MH: Oh, we were living on Van Buren, and he would stop and pick up Elizabeth, who was in kindergarten, because he didn’t want her to cross Harrison, and he saw somebody knocking a for sale sign in front of this house, and he told me he made a U-turn. He said, “Take that sign down until my daughter looks at this house.” I came over and went to the back door, and there was this very inviting patio back there and I said, “This is what I want.” And my practical dad said, “Wait a minute, wait a minute, look at the house.” I said, “No, I want this house.” And he said, “Well, let’s go in.” And I said, “Well, but I still…” This house was perfect. The only thing, it didn’t have a dining room, and I love family dinners, and I still miss the dining room. KM: But it really is convenient. MH: Oh it’s wonderful. KM: Close to Ogden High School, and your children could walk, and you knew that they were in a safe neighborhood. MH: Right, yes. It’s been a very good house. 8 KM: But you continued to be part of the Modern Literature Club, even after you moved to this home. MH: Yes, Modern Literature Club has really been part of my, should I say life? LH: Oh yeah. MH: Social life, everything. KM: Let’s talk a little bit about how it was put together; had it been in operation very long before you joined it? Or was it fairly new? MH: It was—Abby Turner, the neighbor, just asked me, “Would you like to be my guest?” And the very next meeting, things were so formal then, if that’s the word. Two ladies came to the door, they had white gloves, and they had hats on, two things you never see anymore. And they were two ladies from the Modern Literature Club, and they invited me to be a member. It was like joining a sorority at the college! I was so happy. KM: Yes, well and you had had that experience in college, so I can see that that would be very appealing. How would you characterize most of the women in the club? Were they mostly women in the neighborhood, were they women who worked for wages? Let’s talk about who were members of the club. MH: Well, you know, most of them were school teachers. KM: Ah-ha. MH: Our meetings were always in the evening so that they could attend, but I think that happens, you know, one invites a friend to be a member and the friends will be wherever you’re working, and they happened to be school teachers. KM: Was the neighbor who invited you a school teacher? 9 MH: No she was not, she was retired. At one time I think she was a school teacher, and as I say, we became acquainted because I had a baby and a buggy, and that drew curiosity and a friendship. KM: Did you meet in people’s homes in the evenings? MH: We did, in the evenings, and life was very formal then. We all came in hats and maybe white gloves as I remember, and we would meet and have a dessert, and that part is about what we still do. And have a program. KM: Now, what kind of desserts? Did you feel like you had to have special desserts? MH: Oh yes. KM: And outdoing one another? Was there a little competition with the desserts? MH: I don’t think anything like that, because we always had a good dessert. KM: Now who picked the books? How did you pick a book? MH: The person, am I right? The person who is— LH: Well the person who’s president picks the theme. MH: That’s right. LH: And then everyone picks their own book. KM: So is the theme for a year? LH: For the year. KM: So give me an example of a theme. LH: The theme this last year was politics. KM: Ah-ha. 10 LH: And everyone was to prepare a report on that theme, and you didn’t have to choose that theme when you chose your book. Some people do and some people don’t. Now back then, did they always try to go with the theme? MH: No, no. LH: Oh okay, it was the same way. MH: Just a popular book, one that you thought everybody would like. KM: I need to clarify what you’ve just described to me, so not everybody read the same book? LH: The books are passed. KM: So somebody comes in and is recommending a book to the group, or is reporting on the book or… LH: No, it’s a very different book club. You don’t buy one book and have everyone read it, everyone buys a book, and then every two weeks, that book is passed to another person. KM: Oh, I see. LH: So, say there’s sixteen members, over the course of a year you’d read sixteen books. MH: And you know, that is the greatest thing. I think we all tend to read what we like. I like historical biographies, but other people have other interests. So we have a good selection of books that, probably, we wouldn’t have picked up. KM: This group has been together for a long time. LH: Yes, it actually started in 1924. KM: In 1924. 11 LH: So when you started in 1948, it would have been around for 24 years. And of course you had some of your original members, the founding members when you joined. KM: How large of a group is it? Has it ever gotten very big, or is it always been kept a same size? MH: We try to keep it fairly small, because we all entertain in our own homes. And, what do we keep it at? LH: It says sixteen, at least that’s what the by-laws read, sixteen. I mean they have as many as two inactive members, which would mean they would have eighteen. KM: So really, if you decide to stay for your lifetime, nobody’s going to be invited until there’s a space available. LH: Right. KM: Wow. Let’s talk about the books you said that you liked. You said historical biographies. So give me an example of a book that you presented, that you recommended. MH: Did I write that down. LH: I don’t think you did, and one of the problems we have is she had kept all the programs, ever since I think the first one you have is 1950-something, but we’ve given all those to the college. KM: Oh dear, so here I am asking you something and the college actually has the materials. That’s wonderful though. LH: That will show the list of all the members, and it also shows all the books you’ve read. So that’s nice too. 12 KM: Excellent. Well let me ask it this way, I want to go back to your comment about how much support you felt by this group of women, that it became something that was part of your routine but was different from your routine. This was, these were people that you could count on. Did you in fact socialize with these women outside of the book group? MH: Well, no, because we met every two weeks, and that actually was my social life. KM: Talk about, in the years after you husband was gone, what did you do to sustain yourself financially? MH: I got a job with Fuller Paint Company, I don’t think they’re there now, I know they’re not. I was hired to go out and help people choose wallpaper. People chose wallpaper, but they’d come in and say, “Oh, I love this, but I don’t know whether that would look good.” And so, my job was to go there and haul all of these books, I don’t know how I did it, and help them choose their color schemes. Oh for years after I stopped working, I would see a lady and she would say, “Oh, you helped me pick out something for my hall and I still love it.” And it was fun. I really enjoyed that. KM: That’s great. How long did you work for that company? MH: Twenty-five years, wasn’t it? LH: Well, it’d probably be more than that because you started when you were about forty, right? Because it was when you were on your own, and then you didn’t retire until, well, yeah, I guess you’re right, you retired in ’68. So we’re talking about 28 years. KM: That’s a good long stand. 13 LH: The Company changed right? Fuller Paint and then you went to Crittendon’s. Did you actually change companies, or did Crittendon buy Fuller? MH: I changed companies, yes. KM: Did you like working for Crittendon’s? MH: Oh, they are still my best friends. Wonderful people. KM: Love that company, I know of them because, of course, it’s a local company, it has a very good reputation. MH: Wonderful people, and they’ve been very good to me. Still good friends. KM: Excellent. So did you choose the décor in this house? MH: Yes I did. If you would call it that. Plain wallpaper and some pictures. KM: Well, it looks really good though. It looks very good. LH: Wasn’t your major in interior decoration? MH: Yes. KM: I was just going to ask how you possibly got into that. So after all that, your years in college did help you. MH: Oh, definitely. KM: Let’s talk about the book group as it is currently constituted. Do you still attend the book group? MH: Every time. It’s my social life. KM: And do you read the books now, or do you listen to them on tape? MH: I read them. LH: This was one of the choices for this year, she’s got it on her coffee table. KM: The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. Oh I love the title. 14 MH: Yes, oh don’t you love the title? KM: Yes, that is wonderful. That looks like a great book. Talk to me about some of the people there. You talked about Evelyn and of course this is Evelyn Bertilson, and I know Evelyn and I know that she is, in fact, a retired school teacher, and very involved in the library. I’ve come to know Evelyn because she’s on the Friends at the Library. So what I’d like to have you talk a little bit about is, I suspect that many of the women in this club are connected in the community, that they, like Evelyn, that they’re involved in some other kinds of things. Did you get involved in other kinds of community projects, and did you network with some of the women that you already knew from the book club? MH: I don’t think I did. KM: Okay. MH: I think that it was so wonderful to stop work, be in my home, do the things I wanted, go to book club, play bridge, etc. KM: Was the bridge club a separate group? MH: Yes. And I still play with them. KM: Oh you do? MH: Yes. KM: I used to belong to a bridge club, but that was a long time ago and I haven’t played bridge in, I don’t think, twenty years. My grandmother had a bridge club. MH: Yes, I think it doesn’t appeal to a lot of young people. KM: No, but again, that socialization, being with the same people. MH: And you know it keeps your brain going a little bit. 15 KM: That’s right, you’ve got to do a little math. MH: Not that I’m a great bridge player, but— LH: Oh I heard you’re a really good bridge player. You win a lot. She plays duplicate on Monday, and then a more social group on Friday. KM: Oh you’re a serious bridge player. Let’s talk about, perhaps, some ways that you might have used your involvement in the Modern Literature Club in terms of your own family. The research says that families, where there are books in the home, that this matters with children, that your children see you reading and being excited about books, and of course you got involved in this club a little bit later, after your children were older, but do you think that it mattered in your children’s lives that you were a reader? MH: Yes, because my children are readers. Tom is always reading, isn’t he? LH: And Joanne. MH: My daughter Joanne, who lives in California. They’ve always been very involved. KM: Do they belong to any book clubs? LH: I think Joanne does, Joanne belongs to a book club, and hers is more of the traditional kind where they all read the same book and discuss it. And Liz, I bet, belonged to book clubs, when she was in college, and she was a librarian when she was in college. And I think John and Tom are more social really. MH: But reading all the time. LH: And John especially, in upstate New York, that’s the only way he survives the winter. KM: So a real family of readers then. 16 MH: Yes. KM: It’s, I think, challenging for those of us who do love to read, to see all the discussion about—we seem to be a society that’s moving from being people to text to being people to the screen, and everything is now film and not as much reading, and I think that’s hard for some of us to see that. MH: Well I don’t know what I would do if I didn’t have a book on the coffee table, and you sit down and read for a while, or I don’t do this so much anymore, but I used to take a book to bed and read all night, until, you know I’d think I’ve got to go to work in the morning, I better turn out the light. I don’t do that so much, but I do read every day. LH: And it has gone down generationally too, we just had a big family gathering in March, and quite a few of the grandchildren were here. And I think all of your grandchildren and even great-grandchildren are readers, some of them aren’t, but generally. KM: Did you used to give books as gifts? MH: Oh yes. KM: What kinds of books would you give as gifts? MH: Well, depending on the person I was giving it to, and John loves biographies. Tom does too, well they all do, what does Tom lean towards? LH: Tom leans a little bit more to light reading where John is very much a history buff, so usually you always give John something to do with history. I think you gave him, oh I can’t remember the last one, I think it was about World War II history. MH: Oh yes, it was. 17 KM: Again, that’s an important tradition in the family to both give books as gifts, but expect to get books as gifts, that you’re not disappointed when it’s a book, instead of a toy, but you’re expecting it. MH: I always get a book from John. LH: And actually, this book is from John, even though it was also one of our modern lit selections for this year. He had read it. KM: I’m going to ask you one last question, and I’m going to ask you to be thoughtful about what you think is the importance of a group like the Modern, and I’m thinking not just in terms of the support that you felt personally, but what do you think it matters in a community that there are these reading groups and book groups. Can you be kind of philosophical about this? MH: I think it keeps you connected with people. KM: Well, I was thinking about, for example, one of the projects that I’m in is this Weber Reads project, and so we’ve been asking book groups, would they consider doing Frankenstein as their text, and it’s been fun to see lots of groups say yes, we want to be part of this, we want to encourage. So many of the book groups in the community have connections with the library, you know, to donate to the library, or to give support to reading projects. Has your organization done that? LH: Yes, we did donate a tree to the new Pleasant Valley Branch. KM: Oh excellent. LH: And when we do lose a member, the Memorial is always a book given to the library. 18 KM: Wonderful, that’s a wonderful tradition. To the Weber County Library? LH: I think it’s usually been to the Weber County Library. But this time, we collected a little bit more than the five hundred we need for a tree, we had six hundred, and all the members donated, and so I think they were going to buy a book with that extra hundred. We only need the five hundred for the tree, and we bought an English book. MH: We’ll have to go and look at it. LH: Yes, well, I got an invitation to the grand opening, it’s next week. KM: I think that’s right, the 23rd, I think or something like that. It’s a lovely building. Let’s hope all of the book clubs show up and really celebrate this. I think that’s an exciting thing. LH: We even had some ladies who volunteered their time to shelve books, of course Evelyn. KM: Sure, sure. Thanks a lot, thank you. 19