Oral History Program Verniece Thomas Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 19 March 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Verniece Thomas Interviewed by Woodrow Johnson 19 March 2014 Copyright © 2014 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 Golden Hours Senior Center provides services to many patrons in Ogden, Utah. In 2014, the public history class conducted oral histories with several of these community members, covering topics such as World War II, education, segregation, Weber State University, Ogden City, and 25th Street during the 1940s and 1950s. These interviews add to the community history of Weber County. ____________________________________ 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: Thomas, Verniece, an oral history by Woodrow Johnson, 19 March 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Verniece Thomas March 19, 2014 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Verniece Thomas. The interview was conducted on March 19, 2014, by Woodrow Johnson. Lorrie Rands is on camera. Verniece discusses her life, and her experiences in Ogden, Utah. WJ: I’m Woodrow Johnson, and we are interviewing Verniece Thomas. VT: Another thing I forgot about, and I got to thinking about it as soon as I got home. Back in, I think it was probably in 1947, we lived down in the 19th Ward which is down on 30th Street there, and I worked at Kress’s, and I had run an ad that I wanted to babysit. Well, I had to go to work at Kress’s at that time so I, I don’t know whether I referred the girl or if she had also advertised, but her name was Shirley Gretsinger. She went out with this guy, picked her up to go babysit, he took her out to Riverdale and he killed her. I don’t know whether he raped her, but he did kill her and, of course, my folks had left town that day so we were scared to death at what was going to, you know, I mean it was right down in my neighborhood so we were all scared to death. So my brother and the neighbor were going to protect us, but weren’t very good at that because if anybody even a cat would come by they would jump and run in the house probably. I remembered it then that she was a poor little gal that they lived down below Wall Avenue and she was always kind of grungy looking, you know what I mean, like nobody at home cared about her and that’s what’s really sad about it. Because she just was trying to make some money, probably just to go to the grocery store and buy ice cream for her or something you know? 2 And then another thing that happened in Ogden was, I think it was probably around 1946, this man shot up his family and it had something to do with the Ogden municipal building. It was up in there, but he shot and killed, I think, his wife and two of his kids. Yeah, that’s about all I can, I was trying to think of other things. I went to Washington Jr. High, my brothers and sisters all went to Pingree. Have you ever heard of Pingree School? Yeah, they had one teacher, Mrs. Polk, and all my sisters and brothers just thought she was the most wonderful teacher they ever had. Whenever you talk about Pingree School they always talk about her. Like I say, my brother he lives in Germany, but he wrote a real good history of what he did living in Ogden, and I think that might interest you quite a bit, because I was looking over it today and I thought, well maybe I better find out if you’re interested, but it told about him going to Pingree school and all the uniform, girlfriends, and everything. Probably a lot more than I can tell you about Ogden and then the rest of them all went to all but the youngest one went to Pingree School. It was quite as school, you know, and it was right down there, and that area was all railroads back then at that time you know, but now it’s low income place, but it’s still nice. There is a grocery store there, I think it was Co-ops, they had the, local grocery store and then there was a grocery store on the corner of 31st and Wall and that was the place to be. It was one of these little probably not much bigger than this room. All the kids would go down there your mother sent you down there for a loaf of bread or whatever you know, but it was right on and that was 3 called Brimhall’s. Well let’s see, what else can I tell you about Ogden? I probably told you about taking my cousins down 25th Street when they first came to town. WJ: Tell us again. VT: Well we had only been moving in here for about two or three weeks, and of course, all of us were scared. We heard horrible things about Ogden. I mean we come into town and we’re sitting in the car like this, oh, they wanted to go someplace, and these are three real good little Mormon gals in a little town from Idaho. So I don’t know why but we went up 25th Street and there were four kids that were so darn scared that they were going to come out and jump us or something you know, and they “Oh, oh, oh” because it was all bars at that time. Oh, let me see, and my mother in law and her husband, my husband’s family. Every Saturday night and there was quite a few people done this, went down 25th Street and parked, that was your Saturday entertainment no television. And they’re sitting there right on the corner of 25th and Grant I think it was, and they’re just sitting there enjoying themselves and I think a guy got shot, there was a fight and a guy got shot and landed on the hood of my mother-in-law’s car, they never went down there anymore. Oh, let’s see, my brother sold papers down on 25th Street. He took and sold papers on 25th Street and that was in the days when kids went out on the street and actually sold newspapers instead. I think he sold the Salt Lake Tribune, and I don’t know what else I can tell you. It’s just like I said most of us, most of the people that were down there were railroad people. That was when Ogden was railroad but my folks, my dad worked for the Hill Field. 4 WJ: What about before Ogden, where were you born, where and when? VT: Preston, Idaho, in 1930, and we always called us kids the war-time brats because there was no work in Preston. My folks had a little farm, but there was no way to make money so my dad came out and started at Hill Air Force Base and that’s when our life really changed. Remember we moved into a brand new house, and indoor plumbing, gas stove, refrigerator, and all that kind of stuff because we never had those in Preston. WJ: So with this big change, I mean, with the change, let’s hear about life prior to that change, life prior to indoor plumbing? VT: Well we had an outdoor, and we had coal stoves, no water in the house, they had to bring water in. My father had built that house and he had put in the room for the bathroom, then of course they, they never could afford to put the bathroom in there, but here was a room in there you know. We had a lot of family stuff because all my dad’s family was up there and it was really nice, we had cousins and stuff like that you know and when we moved out to Layton, boy, we didn’t have any relatives around here. I think it was really hard for my mother because she would go over to the neighbors about once a week and call her mother that lived oh, what, three miles from Preston, and she didn’t have anybody anymore, and then to have to get used to a refrigerator and a gas stove, which almost blew up the house one time, and an indoor toilet and stuff like that. It was really different. WJ: What did you do for fun? 5 VT: Oh, what do kids do? Hm. We played in the river in the creek, we’d go down and go swimming in the summertime, and then we’d lay out on the on the bank and get dry before we went home because our mother would just have fits because we went and uh, in the stink. We worked, we lived down over the canal and on Saturdays my folks always went to town, that’s what farmers did in those days, you went to the grocery store, I mean that was the place you met. So they’d go up to town and as soon as they got down over the hill, why, my sister, the oldest woman in the family, would find something for us to do. We’d make fudge and we had this old buggy we’d push it up the top of the canal and then all jump in and ride it down. We had pigs and chickens and my sister and I had to feed pigs and until the day she died she wouldn’t eat pork. We had a big family. There was thirteen of us. And thirteen of us, I mean twelve of us were born in Preston. My youngest sister was born in Ogden. In the summertime we made clay, Preston is famous for a certain kind of dirt on the bank. We would make little clay pots and stuff like that. We sit on our neighbor’s porch and they had furniture that was made out of willow, and they had this chair and my mother and sister (would sit in) that one in the summertime, we had to embroidery. We had to make a set of dishtowels. And she was a beautiful seamstress, we’ve looked at stuff since then, my sisters and I and thought, “Oh, how did she get let us get away with it, because it was terrible.” And then another wintertime, they had an ice rink out in the city park and people would go ice skating on that. We’d get snowed in in the wintertime, and we had to walk to school and they had buses, but we were just two blocks off the 6 bus route, so we had to walk. And they didn’t plow the roads, so we’d climb through the snow and through the fields to go to school and to church. Was very active in church, of course, because what else is there to do in Preston, especially if your name was Sharp. WJ: So after, after Preston you guys moved to Layton? How old were you? VT: I was twelve when we moved to Layton, yeah. WJ: So how did that experience differ? VT: It was quite a bit different because I was in the fifth grade when we went from Preston, and when my mother talked to the neighbor she says, “Oh Verniece is fine, why don’t you put her in the seventh grade?” Well then the seventh grade, so I never went to sixth grade. And it was all together girls wore lipstick, they combed their hair, all kinds of stuff like that, we didn’t do that we, I mean, you didn’t wear lipstick till about 17, 18 years old you know, and stuff like that. We rode a bus out to school out to Clearfield, that is still the school is still there. North Davis I think it is, yeah. And, we drove over to Kaysville to basketball games, my girlfriend and I, we’d go. I don’t know how we got over there, but we’d go over to Kaysville and we’d come from Layton to Ogden on the Bamberger and that was fun. That thing just rattled and we just had a ball on that, we’d come into Ogden and maybe go to Penny’s or maybe something like that. Get on the Bamberger and go home. Let’s see. And we were all, most of the kids in the in the division where we lived were from other places you know, we’d never been around people from Oklahoma and California. It was real interesting, we were all in the same boat so 7 it wasn’t a case of, “Well your dad is a banker so you’re much better than we are.” There was no class distinction, we just had a good life like that. Let’s see, we moved to Ogden, and that was another different thing because we were right down in the kind of poor section of Ogden. 31st you know by the where you come off the freeway now, but of course at that time it was just a little old street. Played baseball out in the street and, let’s see what kind of things did we do in Ogden? WJ: What year did you move to Ogden? VT: 1945 we moved there in, we moved there on the 28th of July, 1945, and on the 28th of July, 1950, I got married and moved out. WJ: So what did you do for fun in Ogden that differed from Layton? VT: Oh, well, the most exciting thing in the summertime was they always had an accident every week on 31st and Wall. It just was something that, and of course we’re sitting around, “OOOOHHHHH,” and oh we’d run down there because that was the most exciting thing in town to do. I was in the pep club at Washington High School and I went up to Ogden High School. That was another great change, because that was, at that time there was the rich kids and then average kids and they were, they were a completely different thing, the rich kids lived, oh well if you lived above Washington you were kind of the upper class, if you lived below Washington well, “Oh, those kids huh?” And everything so, when I bought my house that I live in now, I bought it just two blocks just below Harrison, and now Harrison is you know, that’s where the fancy people live. So anyway, well let’s see, what did we do? 8 WJ: Tell us about your experience at Ogden High School. VT: Well it was very different; it was a real class thing. And I was very, very, shy. I didn’t do much in high school, because like I say, we were so different. We’d go out to the show, go to the movies, and we’d go to basketball games and football games and stuff like that. I didn’t go to any of the dances or anything, because, we just didn’t fit in. And my girlfriend lived above Washington Boulevard and used to say, “Wow Carol, can you have anything to do with us people down here?” I had a girl friend named Connie, Weber and Ogden were different schools, if you were kind of the country type person you wished you could go to Weber, and the other kids of course liked to go to Ogden, and Ogden was pretty wild. I mean they had a reputation that they got, the kids, the guys would go outside of the gym every day and smoke and everything and get picked up for that. They were just wild, it was just, different like that. If you were kind of on the shy side, you just, didn’t fit in that well you know what I mean, weren’t included in stuff. They had clubs, you know, like, they had women’s clubs and girls clubs. There were one or two that were for the little the shyer people you know that, we never went to proms or anything because I was just, well for one thing, it was expensive and most of us couldn’t afford stuff like that, so we never went to proms, I can’t remember any of my girlfriends ever going to prom. In those days you’re either a teacher, a nurse, or a secretary. Well, I knew I didn’t want to be a teacher, I had all these kids around the house I had to teach, and I know I’d never be a nurse, so I decided I’d be a secretary. I took short hand and typing, and English, and I thought I was going to go out into the world and make and be 9 one of these secretaries like in the movies and stuff, ended up at Hill Field. When we lived on 31st Street, there was this girl across the street went with this boy and they used come over and see her all the time, and it was my husband, but I, I didn’t know anything about him at that time, and so I saw him lots of times before I ever went with him. It was about three to four years later before I ever went with him. There was a bunch of us got in in those days, well and they probably, might still do it, but you’d meet with Joe over here and he’d have a buddy, and so all your girlfriends and all, you know, go with that group, and I was going with this one fella. He was a real nice guy, a real sweet guy, but he was very bossy, and he worked at his mother and father’s, and his mother lived out in five points and they were quite poor so he had to find work. So he went to work for a construction company, and I was going with him and he said to me, “Now, while I’m gone don’t you dare go with Don Thomas.” And I thought, “Oooohhhh, nobody ever tells me who I can go with.” And when he came home two months later we were engaged, Don and I. The second time I ever saw Don was this fella had come and he said, one of the guys was getting married, it was up the street and he didn’t say anything but he comes by about 6 o’clock and he says “We’re going to a wedding,” and I said, “Oh are we?” and he said, “Yeah”, and I said, “No, we’re not,” because he never told me and nobody was going to tell me where we were going. And so he comes and knocks on the door and my folks went to the door and I looked out the window and Don was out there and he was the only one who had a car, and that was the first time I’ve ever seen him, then we got married. 10 WJ: So now you’re married to Don, where did you guys move to? VT: Harrisville Road. His dad had died a year before, and so Don decided we would move in with his mother and his sister in this little house. It was supposed to just work out perfect. His mother went to Denver and she wouldn’t come home for our wedding, she was sick. Well she said she was sick, but she didn’t come home for our wedding and while she was back there, her sisters all lived back there and so they decided that, Hey this is not going to work, Don and Verniece would not stay married very long with this situation,” so they talked her into going back to Denver and live. And here’s a lady that been a house wife and never lived in the city and then she went to work for a green stamp place. She was a gal that was easy to get you know, she was real friendly and that. But I think about, well, how she lived you know, and just stayed home took care of her kids and then all of a sudden she’s pushed into that you know. We decided to buy her house, so Don and I bought the house and we lived there for, and she was gone for about 13 years and then her husband, she got married and at that time, her husband died, he committed suicide and so she and Don went back and took and got her. So Don decided we had a pretty good size lot out in Harrisville, so somehow Don decided he would build a house for his mother. He had never, he’d nailed, build a cupboard but that was it. We went through all kinds of stuff to get, the neighbor didn’t want us to build it because he thought it would be a shack and everything. But we went through all kinds of stuff to get a permit to build it, built this little house, the day that the before we were supposed to pour the cement for the foundation, the neighbor who didn’t want us to live there had turned in the 11 irrigation the night before and it was full of water, and so we had to wait a few days. He done a lot of little silly things like that, but we built a cute little house out there it’s still out there. My dad and Don did most of the work on it there, we built, we had an old shed out in back and Larry had come home from school and tear it apart, and we used a lot of the old wood and that to make this house. And then she lived there until after Don died, about 5 years, 6 years. Then she went back and she got in bad health and there was no way I could take of her because I had a handicap daughter and plus I had to work, so they went they decided to take her back there and she went in to a nursing home. I lived there for 10 years after Don died then I sold the house, I rented the house for a while and I moved into town. WJ: Tell us about, tell us about raising your kids. VT: Oh, it was quite a funny neighborhood. Oh, I hope you guys are not Mormon, the neighborhood was a Mormon family and my mother-in-law and her family were not Mormons, but uh, my mother-in-law decided that in order for her daughter to fit in the neighborhood, that she should join the church and Annette was real active, just primary and all that kind of stuff. When I got married I was active in church, and I went to church quite a bit, but the people were very friendly. If you were not active in the church they practically ignore you, and they would tell you, we don’t think you ought to be here because you don’t go to church. I was a den mother out there, which was an experience. I didn’t attend church, and the gal that was with me didn’t attend church too much either so the people in the ward that did attend church and had kids in there did everything they could to 12 discourage us from having those cub scouts and we were determined they were going to have cub scouts. I got five, four and she had about four, we had a lot of fun, we’d have banquets and then, oh we didn’t know it, but we had decided to have coke as a drink, well the day before we had the banquet, they had some kind of a banquet every year, awards and all that. They decided we could not do that because Mormons didn’t drink coke. I didn’t know that, and so we had to get, hurry up and get I think it was Kool-Aid or something for the kids to drink. Most of the time they met at my house and my kids had a train and they would go down in the basement and play in the cot, in the basement with their train. They went to Lynn school which is not there anymore, and then they went to Mt. Ogden I think is the name of it, then Ben Lomond. Then I had, like I say I have a handicap daughter and she went through the school system, and the school system well, it’s not a bit like it is now, they work with handicap children, they didn’t in those days, they’d just shove them off in a room and they’d play and stuff like that, never tried to teach them. So Kathy had a pretty rough time. WJ: How many kids did you have? VT: Three, two boys and a girl. WJ: And their names? VT: Larry is the oldest one. He is a long distance truck driver, and then Kathy is the retarded one you know, and then Dennis is the youngest. Kathy lives in Provo, in a group home, well she lives with another companion who is handicap and then she goes to handicap program you know. She lived in Ogden, when she lived in Ogden they had, at that time, they were trying to get, they had a home up on 13 25th just above Washington that they were trying to get places for handicap children at that time, and it was, it was a good little situation but the fella who had it wanted to, the kids to do things immediately, like go downtown and buy stuff, which these kids didn’t, so he’d send them down town and let them buy stuff and they were, they were just overwhelmed with it, and so I brought her home and then, and she was pretty, she’d get very aggressive and she was a pretty good sized gal and so finally my doctor told me, he says, “Verniece you can’t do this, you’ve got to put her in a supervised place.” he says, “either that or she’s going to hurt you sometime.” And what’s going to happen because my two boys were in the service at that time, my family just completely ignored Kathy so, and I put her in American Fork… you don’t want to do that to anybody. But she is, she been in quite a few programs, she does real well, she goes to school, and she worked at BYU for years and then she had an accident and she couldn’t go back to work but she’s real proud of herself, what else can I tell you. Larry went into the service a year after his dad died. WJ: What year would that be? VT: Don died in ’69, and Larry was to graduate in in May of ‘70. He didn’t want to graduate, because his dad was not there. I thought all these years and he’s not going to graduate, so finally he decided to go. Then he decided he wanted to wear a lace shirt, and then we had a fight about that. He graduated and then he went in the service and it might have been ‘71 by the time he went. Then Dennis joined the service when he graduated and I don’t remember what year that would be for him, but my kids went into the service because they wanted an education. 14 At that time the GI Bill, was a good way to get an education you know. The youngest one went to Germany, but neither one of them got in any conflict. WJ: So after ten years on Harrisville road? VT: Ten years? I lived out there for 30 years. WJ: 30 years, I apologize. VT: Yes, because it was 10 years after Don died, but I lived out there for 30 years. I’m not a person who moves because I lived in my house for 32 years. WJ: Well what was the drive to come to the city from Harrisville road? VT: It was, about three miles. We were just barely inside the city, so my kids went to city schools. At that time when we first moved, when I first moved out there, Don had been out there around seven or eight years. It was a pretty busy street, and we had a good-sized yard, so I put Larry out and he had a little belt and I put a rope on it and tied it to a tree. He’s out there playing just having a ball one day and some woman stopped and (gasp) she just lit into me how terrible I was that I let my kid out there on a harness and she’s going to call the police. I kind of stood up, I said oh lady go away, he’s ok. WJ: So what made you want to move to the city from Harrisville? VT: Well, it got to be real bad, and we had neighbors and this gal would get out in the middle of the street at night and flag down cards cars and silica, I mean she really did. And my boys were both gone in the service and so thought this is not a real good place to live. I just decided to see about moving into Ogden and, and I thought that was pretty brave for me, that’s what I did and it’s been nice. WJ: So what’s kept you busy since? 15 VT: Worked at Hill Field for 23 years. And before that I worked a lot of crummy jobs. I worked at Kress’s, then I worked at Woolworth’s, then I worked at Newberry’s. My sister and I went out and peeled tomatoes out in the Ogden canning factories. They had quite a few around here, we went out there and peeled tomatoes at the canning factory and get our school clothes for that year. My sister never wanted to work. Every morning I’d say, “Deanie, come on, we got to go to work.” “I don’t want to I don’t want to,” and I’d drag her down to the place to peel tomatoes and stuff like that. Tended kids, had some dumb experiences with that. WJ: Would you like to share any? VT: Well, my brother had a friend from Preston that had moved in Ogden and he said he asked me if I would tend their kids that day and I said, “Oooohhhh.” I wasn’t too happy about it, but I went, and they never told me that in the middle of the day they had had a fire in the bedroom. And they had put it out and put sheets on the bed and it looked alright. Put them to bed and after, I went in to look to see them and I thought it smells funny and the room was filled with smoke. That fire had broken out again, so I called the fire department of course they come out and they wanted to know all the circumstances and I told them I’m just babysitting here I did not know anything about this. So anyway, well they finally came home and I told them how terrible it was and they didn’t pay me that night, so I had to go back three times to get two dollars to tend kids. I had a lot of dumb experiences, one guy, his father died and they lived up the street from us and I tend his kids for him for quite a while. Coming home he thought, well hey I got this cute little gal in my car and he started to molest me and I opened that door 16 and I ran like the devil for about five, four blocks. I was so scared that—and then told my mother about it and she said, oh it’s just one of those things that happens. WJ: How old were you at the time? VT: Let’s see I was probably 15 -16 years old, yeah, babysitting was kind of a fun job, you got some interesting people. WJ: Sounds more like an adventure. VT: I worked all the time, I always had some kind of way to make money. My kids did the same way, they’ve all, even when they were kids, paper routes and stuff like that. My sister just younger than me, she did not want to work and she never ever had a job or anything like that you know. Until I forced her to work. WJ: Lorrie, do you have any questions? LR: That’s why I brought my pen so I can write stuff down, I did, but I can’t remember them now. VT: I wrote my family’s history about a year ago. I decided there’s not many of us left anymore, but I wanted all my brothers and sisters to write down what their life was like. I did and my brother that’s in Germany did and my one sister did as well. The one in Germany sent me a real long letter, he told me a lot about his life and in Ogden. I was going to put it all together and give them each a book of it but they didn’t want to so I never did. Last summer I had a party at my house and I’d taken a lot of pictures. We have a family reunion every year and I’d taken a lot of pictures and so I decided to take them all and put them in scrap books, worked 17 all summer with it, and they come out and says oh this is nice, didn’t even look at it. So, oh well, yeah? LR: I remember my question, you talked about Pingree School. VT: Uh huh? LR: Where was it located? VT: Let’s see, now it’s on, it’s on 30th Street, yeah, probably, I think it was on what they called I think it’s Doxy I’m not sure I’d have, but eh, everybody you know all the kids around there and that was really the gathering place you know, all the kids around there. And everybody you talked to that went to Pingree School most everybody thought it was the greatest school they ever gone to. Especially this Mrs. Polk, they all talked about this Mrs. Polk. LR: I wonder if Polk Elementary is named after her. VT: Yeah, but, I don’t know, well Polk was a school when she was a teacher down there so I don’t think so. We had a history teacher in the 10th grade, he should’ve never been a history teacher. He talked in the same tone of voice all through the class. A few of us were together and said do you remember, and we don’t even remember his name, we just couldn’t get out of his class because he never made it interesting, it was American history. You know history teachers sometimes make it interesting but he never did. I volunteered at the Union Station for twenty something years, and I loved it. Volunteered at the hospital as well. When I was first single my friends and I, we’d go out to out to supper or we’d go to a restaurant or bar. We’d go to Salt Lake, there’s a whole bunch of us that went to Salt Lake every Friday night. It was a real joke between us that if a guy came on 18 to you and wanted your number and stuff like that, we always gave him a phone number but it was never ours. One time we coming back we got lost and I was with this one girl and I’m the driver and I’m driving all over Salt Lake, don’t know how to get out of Salt Lake, and then when we get on the highway, well everybody that passed, “oh my gosh, oh my gosh, that guy was looking at us” or “oh my gosh that guys going awful fast,” well when we finally got to Ogden oh was I glad to let her out of the car. We square danced, I belong to the square dance group here in Ogden. Single swingers. WJ: Very good, anything else you’d like to share with us? VT: I can’t think of anything. WJ: Well thank you Verniece, for allowing us to do this.