Oral History Program Flora Ogan Interviewed by Avery Pince 7 August 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Flora Ogan Interviewed by Avery Pince 7 August 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library 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 Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ 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: Ogan, Flora, an oral history by Avery Pince, 7 August 2013 , WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Flora Ogan August 7, 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Flora Ogan. The interview was conducted on August 7, 2013, by Avery Pince. Flora discusses her experiences with 25th Street. AP: We are here today with Flora Ogan in her home. I’m Avery Pince and here with me is Woody Johnson. Flora, we are going to just ask you a few questions. We talked to you before about your experiences on 25th Street and I was hoping that you could elaborate on some of your stories. You worked at The Standard in the main building for 30 years, is that right? FO: I had a total of 40 years in and 36 years full-time and the other four years I was a freelance writer for them. AP: Are there any particular stories that stand out to you from when you worked at The Standard, particularly pertaining to 25th Street? FO: The only 25th Street story I recall writing was when they bid out the buildings for the new federal building. The police had one last tour of the opium dens and they called over to The Standard and invited a reporter to go along and I was brand new on the staff and nobody else wanted to go, so I went. We went into what was a barbershop on Kiesel just north of 25th Street that had a gold rail on it. We went down these stairs and into a barber shop and all of a sudden we opened the doors and we started going down through walls that were not cement, but packed dirt. We probably walked to the middle part between Grant and Lincoln. They would open the doors and say, “This is such and such a place,” and you 1 would look and there were little offices where they used to keep track of whatever they were doing. The one place I remember was the Senate Café, but that was the only story I ever did about 25th Street. I was very familiar with 25th Street and we had a lot of things happen down there. When I was city editor, I remember the big fire in the Reed Hotel and we lost lives on that. There was the Windsor Hotel that was always a problem and it’s still a problem for them. I don’t think it’s filled with anything it’s just sitting down there. At the Marion Hotel there was a lot of drug action and that’s where when I used to drive to work I would see the young women prostitutes that would stand on the corner and they had a way of putting one leg up over the bumper of the car and you knew that’s who they were. I remember the stories coming in about the Kier Company taking over the Marion Hotel and rehabilitated it and they made rooms for these people that were homeless on the street. That sort of started the clean-up process. AP: You had mentioned that somebody didn’t like that you kept talking about the opium dens. FO: Yes. That was about ten years ago. Jim Stravakatis arranged for channel seven to come up and interview a lot of us and talk about Ogden in the 1950’s. One of the questions came up about 25th Street and the opium dens and I said, “Yes, I was very familiar with them. A police officer named Lee Howe took me personally down through them.” Afterward, I received word that Spencer Eccles from the prominent Eccles family thought it wasn’t good to have Ogden advertised as having an opium den down on 25th Street, so they tried to dispute it. Every time 2 Charlie Trentelman would write a story saying there really wasn’t any opium dens down there I would call him and say, “Charlie, there was. I was in them.” If you go down to the Athenian, right by the front door there’s a trap door you can go down in still. AP: If they were so embarrassed by the opium dens, why would they invite a Standard reporter down into them? FO: The police weren’t embarrassed, it was Spencer Eccles was. He didn’t want the opinion of Ogden to be nothing more than the notorious 25th Street. It really did have a reputation across the country. During the war, the soldiers would all get off at the trains there and go up 25th Street to the bars. It had a bad reputation and the leaders of the community, like Spencer, who doesn’t even live here now, didn’t want Ogden to be downgraded with the notorious 25th Street and having an opium den just wasn’t what he thought the city ought to have out in front. Jim Budge, who ran the Ben Lomond Hotel for several years, was in town last week for Stravakatis’ funeral and I said to him, “You once told me there was a door in the Ben Lomond basement that went into the dens on 25th Street.” He said, “Yeah, it’s still there.” AP: That’s incredible. Do you remember spending a lot of time on 25th Street as a kid? You grew up in Ogden, right? FO: I grew up in Ogden and 25th Street was off limits to me by my parents. When I was a little girl, if I was good we would get in the car on Saturday night and go watch the drunks on 25th Street and I remember it was just packed with people. Then, I’d get an ice cream cone. 3 AP: So you were allowed to go to 25th Street as long as you were with your parents? FO: Yes, but in a car. I had a girlfriend whose dad had a barbershop just west of Washington and when we were junior high kids, we’d go downtown and she would go to her dad’s to get money and I had to wait up on the corner because my folks told me never to go down 25th. AP: Just the one street, huh? You were okay on 24th? FO: Yes. It just had a reputation and this is what Spencer Eccles didn’t like was the reputation that had built up over the years about 25th Street. If you’ll notice, in the stories run now it’s, “the once notorious 25th Street,” it’s just there. AP: It’s part of the history. FO: Yes. When the war was over, the Italian prisoners of war were turned loose and they hung out on 25th Street. They would pack right in front of the corner of 25th and Washington and whistle at girls. AP: Did you ever interact with them? FO: No, I was young. That’s when I was a teenager. I remember seeing them though. AP: A lot of them stayed here. FO: A lot of them did. Riggo had a restaurant on 28th and Washington and he married an Ogden girl and Miconi Tile, he married an Ogden girl and stayed here. I think they had to go home and then come back, but they did. They’d watch the Germans very closely so they weren’t downtown at all. AP: They stayed away from 25th Street I guess, if they stayed at all. 4 FO: They were always hooked up to cuffs on their legs and handcuffs and stuff. They just turned the Italian prisoners loose. AP: When they were still prisoners? FO: Italy surrendered much earlier and that’s when they turned them loose. A lot of them went to work out at the Arsenal out of Hill Air Force Base to finish up the war. AP: That’s good. Do you remember The Standard ever having a hard time with 25th Street as far as getting stories or interacting with people about it? FO: I don’t. I’m sure that there were a lot of stories written about it. By the time I became active in the Standard, it had pretty much died down, you know, the notoriety. I parked my car just off of 25th Street in a parking lot and I remember if I had to work after dark I was scared and run really fast or have somebody walk me to my car. AP: Where was The Standard located? FO: It was at 24th and Kiesel in the Kiesel building which is still there. They moved shortly after I started working there to the old armory on 23rd and Adams. It’s gone now but it was nice new offices when they moved up there, because they rehabbed the whole thing and that’s where I worked the whole time. AP: You said that your family worked in Ogden or your family owned a business here? FO: My father worked on 24th And Kiesel in Read Brothers where the horse was on the building. Then, in 1950 he opened his own store in Roy and that’s when the 5 family all moved out here. I grew up on 30th and Jefferson. I went to Washington Elementary School and Junior High and Ogden High School. AP: You mentioned the fire in the Reed Hotel. FO: I just remember going up 25th Street and going to work that morning and the fire trucks were everywhere. I think there were a couple of fatalities in it. It was where some of the people that patronized the state lived. It was never really a high class hotel down 25th Street. At one time, there was the Healy Hotel right on the corner across from union station and I remember it, it had a beautiful staircase and I think it was a pretty popular hotel, but the others on 25th were just flop houses mostly. AP: So the Healy was the higher class one and the others were just for people coming and going. FO: It would be your homeless people that would go in for a night and flop. I don’t know where they found them. The most active place down there for people to stay was the Porters and Waiters Club. They had a reputation of being for the African Americans, but everybody went there. AP: Did you ever go there? FO: No. the only time I went down there was when we had an editor who would go on a drunk for several days and when he wanted to sober up he’d go over there and Annabelle Weekly would take care of him. One time he was ready to come back and I drove down and got him and that’s the only time I was in there. AP: What was your perception when you were in there? 6 FO: Fine. I got to be pretty good friends with Annabelle because she would come down and give us stories. There were a lot of features done on Annabelle and her husband. AP: So she would come to you, you wouldn’t go to her? FO: We would converse on the phone. Another notorious couple on 25th Street that we did a lot of stories on was the Rose Room. I can’t remember their names now but she was famous for driving around in a purple convertible. WJ: Rosie and Bill Davies. FO: Yes. I just remember seeing her in her purple Cadillac. That was very famous. That was during the era of Mayor Peery when he opened up 25th Street. That was before I was writing so I really wasn’t involved in the stories, but they were still in operation when I worked at The Standard. AP: The Davies were? FO: Yes. The purple Cadillac was still around for a long time. AP: So you weren’t such a big fan of the politics? FO: Oh I love politics. AP: Mayor Peery’s shaping up of 25th Street? FO: I don’t think that there was all that much political activity about 25th Street. Harm Peery took over and he sort of opened up the city to a lot of vices. He did a lot of good, but he wasn’t one to make the law this or that. He wanted action and he got it. 7 AP: What kind of action? FO: Like Pioneer Days and he used to have a carnival down by the old Municipal Building and he was riding around town on a horse. It was his family that built the Egyptian Theater and the Ogden Theater, so they were very good humanitarians and philanthropists too. He really had a lot of action when he was mayor. That’s when I was just sort of in between college and going to work. I was raising babies. AP: But you were still sort of aware of what was going on? FO: Oh sure, I’ve always been aware. AP: Did you ever go to any of the shops on 25th Street? FO: I haven’t. There’s one little shop down there I’d like to see now. I go down there now all the time to Karen’s and we go to the Athenian and I go to Rooster’s and it’s just amazing what’s happened down there. AP: You didn’t go there beforehand? FO: No. AP: Was it because you were never down there or because of the reputation? FO: Well, I was never down there and I was always told to stay away from there, so I did. AP: Even as an adult? FO: Even when I was an adult. When I became an adult it was when it was in shambles. It came up from where it was during the war and it had this period of 8 just falling apart. All of a sudden, the city decided to do something with it and I think I told you about Scott Parkinson, who was the planner for the city. They started it and there was a fellow that had a little shop of kitchen goods. I can’t think of his name now, he was from Riverdale. He worked with Scott and they started building it up down there. The first time I went down there to eat was when the building where the Athenian is was a little coffee shop that was run by Dr. Reis’ wife. I remember going there and I was so excited to think that there was a nice place like that on 25th Street to go to. Then Rooster’s came in, and there have been several people that had shops down there. I can’t think of her name now, but there was a woman who had her gift shop down there and was in charge of the Christmas Village. She was very instrumental in getting 25th Street going. She was married to Scott Buehler, but used her maiden name down there. I do take pride in 25th Street and I think it’s wonderful that we’ve got it, to watch the transition was something. About a year ago the Salt Lake Tribune did a feature story on Ogden and what it has to offer. The reporter was somebody that I knew from the system and he just barely covered what was going on in Ogden. I sat down and wrote him a letter and I told him all about 25th Street and that he could get on the Front Runner and get off and walk up there. I told him about Dinosaur Park and the Aerospace Museum and, bless his heart, he came and brought his wife and stayed overnight and went everywhere and then wrote a beautiful story about the renaissance of 25th Street and all that Ogden had to offer. 25th Street is a real attractive place for tourists now and I think we’re 9 marketing it, I know we’re trying, but people still see it as this notorious street where all the drunks hung out and that isn’t it anymore, it’s a beautiful place. AP: You told me last time that you wrote the lead story on Marshall White. FO: I wrote the original story on his shooting. It was about three years after I started full-time at the Standard. The paper was out, but not on press yet and all the other editors had gone to lunch and told me to listen for the phones. On the police phone they were saying, “Michael Jones has escaped, he’s going over on Fowler Avenue.” I was sitting there listening to all this and finally they said, “Doc White has got him cornered in a house on the 100 block of Fowler.” Pretty soon it said, “Doc White’s been shot, get an ambulance.” I’m thinking, “I’m alone. What do I do? We’ve got a policeman shot and a deadline.” I listen to it and they said, “We’ve got him out of the house, we’ve captured the kid and we’re going to St. Benedicts.” I wrote a note to the city editor and said, “I’ve gone to St. Benedicts Hospital, Marshall White has been shot, I will call you.” I went up there and I got there just as they pulled in and watched what was going on with him. I knew he was a goner, so I called in the story about him getting shot. I used what I heard on the police radio and had a page one story. AP: He spent a lot of time on 25th Street and did a lot of Civil Rights demonstrations and things. FO: I don’t remember a lot of demonstrations. I don’t think anybody really cared all that much. Did you talk to Velma Saunders? She had a home down there and she used to campaign all the time about how they were being treated down there. She got a stop light on 26th and Wall so that people could get across 10 there. There was a rendering plant just west of the Union Depot and the odor was just atrocious. It would waif over the town and she kept going to the city council complaining about that rendering plant and they ended up closing it. That was part of the start of the renaissance of 25th Street. AP: Cleaning up the area around it? FO: Yes. There was a tunnel that went down to the trains from the west side of the depot and I remember they filled that in because the homeless people were sleeping down in that tunnel. AP: Did you ever go down into that tunnel before they closed it? FO: I remember being down in it once and I think I went on a train somewhere when I was a little kid and I remember going down there. AP: Did you go to the train depot often as a kid even though you didn’t spend a lot of time on 25th Street? FO: Had I been to the train depot a lot? AP: Were you down there as a kid? FO: When I was in high school they had a beanery which is a restaurant. They called them beaneries in train stations. After dates we used to go down there and eat at the beanery. I remember there was a little gift shop and I would look in there, but I didn’t hang out down there. I didn’t’ see trains at all hardly. There was a laundry. The laundry building is still standing down there on the southwest corner. The beanery was torn down and it used to be on the south end of the depot about where those trains are on display. It was a very nice restaurant to eat in. 11 AP: You went to Weber State, right? FO: Yes. I went to Weber State when it was downtown. AP: What was that like? FO: I can’t compare it to anything. I had a good education there for a couple of years. I had always wanted to be a writer and I was on the school paper at Ogden High School and I had a little scholarship and I went over to Weber State when it was in the Moench Building. I’m not sure I remember the name of the teacher, I can see him, he had a lot of gray hair, but not long. Some of the people I went to school with were Dean Hurst and Lawrence Burton, they were all up there. I remember seeing them at dances over in the old Weber gym building. I was working for the telephone company part-time and going to school and they needed an operator out on the Wendover Air Force Base and they asked me to go out there for the summer. I met my husband out there and got married, so I didn’t go back to Weber State until after my third child was born and then I started going back. I went in the buildings by the Stewart Tower which are kind of like a barracks and I took some classes up there. Right after that I went full-time at the paper. AP: Even being so close to the notorious two-bit street going to Weber and working at the main building, you still somehow managed to avoid 25th Street? FO: 25th Street was never an issue with me actually. I just knew it existed and that I was supposed to stay away. When I went to the paper I drove it and I would see what was going on down there, but I didn’t hang out there. 12 AP: That’s interesting. Did any of your family go down there? Did your dad spend any time down there? FO: No. My dad was very religious. AP: So the street made him nervous. FO: Well, he was at church. He did take me down there on Saturday night to watch the drunks. The interesting thing I said to Bob Hunter, who runs the United Way and has been a commissioner, I said, “Have you been contacted?” I told him you were doing 25th Street and he said, “Well, I was just a kid then. The only thing I remember about it is my dad used to take me down there to watch the drunks.” I thought, “I guess that was every family’s entertainment on Saturday night.” You’d have to line up to get a parking place. AP: Really? FO: Oh yes. AP: I’ve heard that from a few people. FO: They’d say, “If you’re a good girl today we’ll go down and watch the drunks.” AP: It sort of sets your idea of how 25th Street is pretty early. FO: Yes, exactly. AP: Where would you go get ice cream? FO: At the barrel on 27th and Washington. It’s gone. They took the barrel and made it into the trock and then the trock moved down on Kiesel, but there was a big barrel and it served ice cream. 13 WJ: You were talking about the hotels on 25th Street and only the Healy was the classier one. What kind of stories do you remember from the others? FO: Probably the fact that maybe they were taking it down was the only story I remember coming out about it. The only time we would do stories down there is if we had a murder or something like that. We didn’t really patronize it as a source for news all that much. The Rosie thing was pretty much in the news a lot with the Helena Hotel, I think that was her place. If it wasn’t its right next door. As far as a lot of coverage down there, I don’t have any recollection of doing coverage down there other than the normal crime stories. The crime stories and the whole story about that were just these poor people wandering around down there with no place to go and annoying other people and that was the story. It wasn’t that there was a lot of crime going on. There was a murder down there. Linda Odas’ father got murdered down there. There were a lot of businesses down there like the Cutrubus business was a place with candy distributors and cigarette distributors and they had a lot of people worked out of that store. Homer says he remembers being a little tiny kid working down there. Doug Black’s father had a store down there and Linda Odas’ father had a store down there. There were a lot of good little stores down there. AP: Linda was your friend from college, right? FO: Yes. I thought she might still be teaching up there, but she could be retired. She’s about my age. AP: Did you know her when her father was killed? 14 FO: I did not know her other than her affiliation with Weber State and talking to her a little bit. When she was up at Weber she was quite prominent up there. I can’t remember what she taught, but she was a very active teacher. AP: So, Rose Davies was in the news fairly regularly? FO: Quite often. They knew how to cultivate a news story if they needed it. AP: Milk it a little bit. FO: Yes. A lot of people do that. AP: Do you think that most of what was printed about her is true? FO: I’m sure some of it had to be true. She had a big fur and she’d ride around in that Cadillac. She was colorful. AP: Quite the character. FO: I think she was a friend of Harm Peery too, the mayor. I hope you got a lot on him because he had a lot to do with 25th Street. AP: We’ve heard quite a bit about him. Do you think they were friends with each other? FO: I don’t know how much they were friends, but I’m sure they associated in some way. AP: You never met her? FO: No, I don’t think I did. I’ve tried to think if I ever did, but all I did was see her. She was very prominent driving around in that Cadillac. AP: You were the editor by that point, right? 15 FO: I was the city editor in 1969 and then I was editorial editor in 1981, so I was only a reporter for ten years. AP: Do you remember any sort of big or notorious events? You said there were a couple of murders down there, but was there anything else? FO: I remember that one specifically, but those homeless people would kill one another once in a while. AP: Would you run a story on that? FO: Oh sure. We had a police reporter that followed whatever was going on. WJ: You were around when 25th Street was frequented by the trains and you were around when the trains no longer came and 25th crumbled and you’ve been around on the rebuilding of 25th Street. Do you find that it is an effective rebuild? Do you think that documenting the history to preserve it, but having the modern 25th Street incorporate some of that history is effective? FO: My feeling is that they have done an exceptional job of restoring 25th Street because everybody that’s down there seems to want to claim part of the history, but they want to show that we’re now a new modern city. I’m amazed. My son moved away and when I brought him home for a visit he couldn’t believe this had happened to Ogden. It was such a wonderful transition to see from when he was a little boy to adulthood. I think they’ve done a marvelous job and I think that the Browning people are still helping down at the Union Station and they’re committed to make that place a tourist attraction, yet comfortable for the locals. I think they’ve accomplished it. It’s beyond any expectation I ever had. 16 AP: They’re still pulling a little bit from the history. If you drive around you can see some of the signs that remind. FO: Oh sure. They’ve done a wonderful job of promoting. They always end up with all these little programs like car shows and we used to have a street festival uptown and now it’s down 25th. They’ve done a marvelous job. AP: Do you think that people on 25th Street are proud of the history? FO: They’ve got to be proud because they’ve done a wonderful job. AP: Well, do you think they’re proud of the history? FO: The earlier history? I don’t know how much. Karen worked for my dad’s store at one time and that’s where I met her. She had this dream that she wanted a restaurant so she started on the north side facing the south up somewhere around the Athenian; it was so popular that she moved down to this new building. People that are down there, a lot of them probably remember some of the historic families. AP: Do you have any other special stories you want to tell us before we conclude the interview? FO: We talked about it at coffee about some of the characters that used to walk the streets. There was a little old, I don’t know if he was a Catholic Priest, but his name was Dominguez or something like that and he had a little shop up 25th Street. He used to walk around town with this tree limb as a cane and when the girls would walk by he’d flip their skirts up. The police were after him all the time. We talked about him at coffee. There was also an older woman that wore a black 17 hat like a witch and a black outfit and she had a baby carriage and pushed a doll around town all the time. We were talking about how we don’t have those characters anymore. WJ: Do you remember a drunk that went by “Airplane?” I’ve heard a lot of stories about Airplane and it would have been during the 1970’s. He was a man that was always on 25th Street and drunk and pretending to be an airplane. FO: I haven’t heard about that one. WJ: With your stories of the characters and also seeing the drunks when you were a kid, what type of characters do you remember that were drunk when you went down with your family and watched them? FO: I just remember a lot of people staggering around down there. A lot of them were soldiers during the war. They’d get off the train and come up the street. When I was just viewing 25th Street, there was no one in particular that I remember. Of course, I knew about Rosie and the Porters and Waiters and there was the Pappas family down there. I went to school with Tom Pappas and I remember him telling me that he could go down to his dad’s store, but he couldn’t go out on the street. That was in high school. That was The Club, down on the lower end. AP: Do you still talk to the Pappas’? FO: They’re all gone. AP: There is a couple left. FO: The last one I remember was Leah and she used to come in my office all the time and visit with me, but Tom died early. I think there’s a George that’s still 18 around, but I don’t know George. Tom was very popular in high school and his father ran the club. AP: You didn’t go to the club downtown, you just knew about it? FO: I’ve never been to the club. The only ones I’ve been in are the Athenian, Roosters, and Karen’s. I remember eating in the Senate before it was torn down. I don’t remember a lot, but it was run by a Chinaman. AP: The Senate? FO: Yes. There was a place called Ross and Jacks and it was very popular down there and I remember walking over to Ross and Jacks when I worked at The Standard, but right after that it go torn down. When they tore down the Broom Hotel, they tore down Ross and Jacks. AP: Did they share a wall or were they close together? FO: They just tore out that whole face of 25th Street and built the new bank. Right on the corner of Kiesel and 25th on the northeast, there was a Greek man that had a pool hall. I remember that got torn out with it too. AP: Thank you, Flora, for your time. We really appreciate it. Your stories are very interesting. FO: I can hardly wait to hear the final results. 19