Oral History Program Marie Haws Beecher Interviewed by Alyson Eversole 24 May 1997 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Marie Haws Beecher Interviewed by Alyson Eversole 24 May 1997 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: Beecher, Marie Haws, an oral history by Alyson Eversole, 24 May 1997, 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 Marie Haws Beecher. The interview was conducted on May 24, 1997, by Alyson Eversole in the home of the interviewee. The interview discusses the personal history of the interviewee, as well as her work and education experiences in Utah. AE: We are talking with Marie Haws Beecher in her home. It is May the 24th, of 1997. So let’s start out: Marie, when were you were born? MB: September the 10th, 1919. AE: And where were you born? MB: I was born across the street from the house where I live now, in Hooper, Utah. AE: Wow. And what is your earliest memory? MB: I remember when I was about three or four or five pushing my little baby sister in the baby buggy. I don't remember much else while I was in school, first grade. AE: Tell us a little about your family, about your immediate family. MB: My brothers and sisters? I had my mother and dad and then there were eleven of us in the family. AE: Wow, and where do you fall? MB: I was right in the middle. There were six girls and five boys, and I was kind of in the middle, the middle child. That syndrome, you know? AE: Yeah. How was your relationship with your family? 1 MB: Great. We had a wonderful time; we may have been poor, but if we were we didn't know it. AE: You didn't know it? MB: We lived on a farm and we lived through the Depression years and it wasn't hard because we had everything we needed. AE: So the Depression years, you didn't feel much effect from it? MB: My dad was a farmer and my brothers all milked the cows, so we just lived like, you know, like we weren't poor. AE: Did you have certain chores on the farm that you had to do? MB: No, I worked in the house, washed the dishes, peeled the potatoes; I did all the beets and thinned beets. AE: But it was the boys who... MB: They did most of the farm work. AE: That's fun. What about your school? Do you remember school? MB: Yes I do; I remember walking to school, we walked a mile each way. And in the first grade my teacher put gingerbread boys all around the room, first of the year, and they had our names on them. And the last day of school she gave them to us and we ate them, and they were dusty, but we were so excited to get our own gingerbread boys. I don't remember learning to read but I suppose I must have. AE: Were schools set up the same as they are now? As far as the grades and the classes? 2 MB: We had a first grade, it was a big first grade. We were pretty much graded, some of the grades were smaller and when they were they combined them. But ours was the big grade. About thirty in the first grade. We went through school together and ended up about ten of us graduating from high school. AE: Only ten? MB: Yeah, that's about all. AE: It was still the twelve, you went through twelve grades? MB: We went through nine grades in Hooper, and three grades at Weber High. AE: And so how long did it take you, is it very far from here to Weber High? MB: No, it was ten miles, not that far. AE: Still quite a ways to travel to high school. MB: Yeah, but it was fun because we could go on the bus, and it was kind of fun. AE: What kind of activities did you participate in during your school years? Were you in any clubs or organizations? MB: I was on the yearbook staff, so I worked with that, and I was in, it was called Scriptus Magnus, where we used to write poetry and things. That's about it. I wasn't in pep clubs or anything like that. AE: Did you find in school that teachers would try to steer the women towards maybe different careers or subjects than the men? MB: No, I didn't find that. The thing that bothered me, and it still does, was that they had the football coaches and the basketball coaches teach us history and literature, and they 3 didn't know much about it. But no, they really didn't steer us at all to what, to where we would go. AE: Did they encourage you to go on to college? MB: No, they didn't. Not that I remember. We did that on our own. Most of my friends didn't go to college. AE: Well, what made you decide to go to college? MB: Well, my older sister was a school teacher and I think I kind of wanted to follow her path. So two of my friends and I went to college. Most of my friends, like I say, they got jobs, maybe doing housework, but not many of us went to college. AE: Were most of your friends in your high school years girls? MB: Most of them were girls. Well, yes, they were. Only about three of our Hooper boys went to high school with us, the rest of us were girls. AE: And where did you attend college? MB: Weber College. AE: And how long did you go there to get your degree? MB: I got my, what is it? Your two-year? AE: Associates; is that all you had to have to teach? MB: No, I had to have three years, so I went up to Utah State a year. AE: When you went to Weber, did you still live at home? MB: No, I lived in Ogden with my sister part of the time. I had a married sister. 4 AE: So is that the first time you had left home? MB: It was. It wasn't fun, I didn't like it at all. I got homesick and we didn't have cars to go back and forth like they do now. AE: Would you go by bus if you were coming back and forth? MB: No; sometimes we would hitchhike, or ride with the mail lady or the paper lady or the milk truck.... So it wasn't a bit like now. AE: Did you enjoy your college experience? MB: Oh, I did. I really did. That was fun. I think I learned literature in college. I had a good literature teacher - I loved him. I also got to like history in college. AE: Were your classes very big? MB: They were big. AE: Were they? A lot of people? MB: We were down in the old Moench building, which was downtown. And yes, the classes were big, they were fun. AE: Did you notice in your going into teaching, was it male dominated or woman dominated or was it kind of a mixture? MB: I didn't get into that until I was up at Utah State. It was woman dominated. AE: Was it because it was considered a woman’s career, or did men just... MB: It was because I was getting into the elementary education, and women were... AE: That's still the same today pretty much. 5 MB: Right. AE: So after you graduated from Weber, you went to Utah State. MB: That's correct, for one year. AE: And got your certificate? MB: And got my certificate. AE: Were you married yet? MB: No, the war was on so I wasn't married, married women couldn't teach then anyway. AE: And why was that? MB: I don't know, it was quite a while before, if a woman got married she had to give up teaching. My older sister had to, because she was married. AE: So when you graduated, did you get a job teaching? MB: I got a job. AE: Where did you teach? MB: I taught up in Ogden Canyon up at Eden. AE: Oh! MB: Then that was fine, I taught there one year, taught over at Taylor one year, and then I went to work at Hillfield and didn't go back to teaching until after I was married and had children. AE: In your early years of teaching, what surprised you the most? 6 MB: I don’t think much surprised me. We had some really good teacher trainers up at Utah State, but of course my two schools were small, when I taught those first two years. When I went back into teaching it was different, because they had big schools, and I was in a big school. AE: Did you just teach one grade? MB: Over in Eden I had three grades. AE: In one classroom? What did you find the challenges of that were? MB: I thought that was great. AE: Did you? MB: I did. Because, of course I hadn't done that before, but the older kids could help the little kids, and I kind of liked that. AE: When did you meet your husband? MB: Well, when the war was over. AE: Had he been serving in the war? MB: He had been in the South Pacific and I met him and married him and had four children and then went back to teaching. AE: What do you remember the most about your early years of marriage? MB: Oh, I thought it was a wonderful time. I never planned to go back and work. AE: Where did you live when you got married? MB: I lived here in Hooper. 7 AE: Was he from Hooper? MB: No, he wasn't. He was from Salt Lake when I married him, and then he moved to Hooper. AE: And what do you remember the most about those times? Your dating and courtship and early months of marriage? MB: It was a good time because we had a car and we could go places, and even though we didn't have much money, nobody else did either. And it was just nice to be married and get babies, and my sisters were all getting babies. I didn’t want to work and he didn’t want me to work. And then my husband got sick, so I was allowed to go back for one year and pay off our medical bills. And I ended up teaching twenty-five years. AE: When you were courting, was it still in the era where men and women shouldn't be alone or was it more like today? What was dating like back then? MB: It was kind of group... Although most of my friends were all married before I was, but we'd go to dances. We went to a lot of dances, and had our dance cards, and traded dances. We went to dances in Salt Lake, but courting I guess we went alone. The two of us went alone most of the time. AE: What year did you get married in? MB: 1946. AE: And so how old were you at the time? MB: I was 26. AE: Was that considered old for the time, to be married? 8 MB: Probably, because most of my friends were. My younger sister was married before that and had three or four children before I ever got married. AE: And how soon after you got married did you have kids? MB: It was five years before I could get pregnant. AE: And then you had four... MB: I had four. AE: Were they close together? MB: Four boys, and all of a sudden it stopped. AE: Did you want more? MB: Oh, I would have had whatever I could have had. AE: Tell me a little about - since I'm pregnant I'm a little bit interested - about your pregnancy and your birth and stuff back then. MB: Well, I mentioned that I had lived in Hooper. We went to Pennsylvania, my husband and I, ’cause he worked for the genealogical society microfilming. And since we didn't have any children we went there. And we hadn't been there very long, until I got pregnant. And I was so excited, and he was too, and we lived in a little tiny apartment there, and we had a nice home so we wanted to come home, so we did. My sister was expecting a baby at the same time, and it was just a fun time. I thought getting married and having babies was what it was all about. AE: Was there still a lot of midwives up at the hospitals? MB: No, I don't know that there were any. 9 AE: I know it’s kind of gone back, we are starting to get midwives again. How long did you stay in the hospital after you had the baby? MB: With Kenny, I stayed probably five days, with my last one, Alan, I came home on the second day. AE: So pretty quick. MB: And before that my sisters were staying ten days, but I didn't do that. AE: You didn’t have to stay for ten days. MB: No, thank goodness. AE: How old were your kids before you went back to work? Were they older or.... MB: My youngest one was just a year old. But my neighbor tended him, so it worked out good because most of the time I was home when my kids were home. AE: Oh, that's great. MB: Teaching, that's a good profession. AE: Was the school year the same? MB: It was the same as now. AE: What did you like about school back then that maybe you see deteriorating in our society today? MB: I always said it was so much fun I would have done it for free because I enjoyed it. I really loved it; I taught first grade and I really enjoyed it and I loved the teachers. But the last year I taught I thought things were going downhill; they had changed the dress code and some kids were coming in whatever they wanted. 10 AE: Before it was uniforms? MB: Well, no it wasn't. But they wore dresses and stuff. They couldn't wear shorts. And the teachers wore dresses or nice pant suits, and at the last year or two the kids were using bad language and all that. That came in with the allowing any kind of clothes. So I could see schools kind of deteriorating. AE: In your marriage and going through and back into your teaching years were you involved in any kind of things outside school as far as clubs or any kind of organizations? MB: Yes, we have a women’s club in Hooper that we have had for fifty years, I was involved in that. AE: Tell me, what did you do? MB: We would have a speaker come, and for a long time we had news items, we would tell things that were going on. We always have a speaker that keeps us up to date on different things. I was involved with that and always with the church I was involved. AE: Do you find with the women's club, now is it just the older women who were in it earlier? MB: There are twenty-one women, and the only way you can get in now is if somebody dies, because we limit the number, and most of them now are younger than I am. There are a few older, but everyone wants to get in because it is a fun thing to be in. AE: Is that where a lot of your friendships came with women? MB: I always known the women; in a small town you know everybody. AE: Do you like living in a small town? 11 MB: Very much. AE: What was a really hard time in your life, a time when you really struggled? MB: When my husband was so sick; my children were young, in fact my youngest one was born when he was just starting to get sick. So he grew up with a dad that couldn't do everything that boys like their dads to do. So that was a hard time. AE: And when did your husband pass away? MB: 1984, so then my sons were all married and we had some grandchildren. AE: Is this the house that you and your husband lived in? MB: We lived here, except we were in Pennsylvania for a year, and we lived in Salt Lake for a little while too; we lived here and he did most of the remodeling and changed the old house into a modern house. AE: What are your kids doing now? MB: Three of them live around the street and one of them lives in Seattle, so my boys are all close around. AE: And how many grandchildren do you have? MB: Twenty, I have twenty grandchildren. AE: You have a lot. And what do you think made your boys stay in Hooper? MB: I think that they grew up here, a lot of kids that grew up here that moved away are coming back, we have a lot of people doing that. AE: Are they? 12 MB: Well one thing, we gave our kids each a building lot, so that helped. They have just enjoyed living around here and working, have jobs close around. I have a son that works at Hillfield, another son owns a Burger Bar in Layton, as well as he does real estate sales, and my third son works for Mountain Alarm. AE: Are you glad that your family is here? MB: I’m very glad. AE: What about your relationship with your brothers and sisters, now that you are all grown? MB: Very good relationship. My sisters come over here every morning at ten o'clock, we have a little get together. AE: All of them? MB: Well, there are only three of them close around. Every morning we meet, and then my little brother over here usually comes over, my brother next door, and once a month we have a family get together with all my brothers and sisters and our spouses. So we have a good relationship. AE: So they are all close around? MB: They are all close; one brother is in Salt Lake. AE: So all eleven of you? MB: I have had two brothers die. AE: Oh, okay. What do you think, do you think it was the small town, or what do you think made your family stay so close? Do you think it was the farm, or do you think it was your parents? 13 MB: I think it’s kind of typical of the whole town. A lot of families are close here, but I think it has to do with the small town, the closeness of the town. AE: Because you don't find a lot of families that stay close right now. MB: Not in the cities you don't. AE: What occupies your time now, what do you like to do? MB: Now that it is spring time I like to go outside and work in the flowers, I love to garden. I like to do some writing and some poetry. I don't know, I keep busy every day. AE: Do you like being retired? MB: I do, I do. After I quit teaching I never did go back to substitute, I never did want to go back to work. AE: How old were you when you quit teaching? MB: Oh, I don't know, I retired before I had to because my husband was sick and I wanted to be home with him. AE: So you retired before the retiring age. And since then have you worked at all? MB: No, I haven't. Stayed at home. AE: There is always stuff to do. What kind of role would you say religion has played in your life? MB: I'd say a great role, it really has. Most of the things I have done have been teaching though, most of the organizations. AE: And would you say as far as the town, what is this town like as far as the religion? I mean, is it pretty much LDS? 14 MB: It is mostly LDS. AE: And that is probably another reason that the town is so close. MB: It is a town that really has respect for women; in our ward they really are nice to women. AE: Did you find that growing up, did you feel at any time in your life that you were discriminated against because you were a woman? MB: Never. AE: Which is great. MB: In our family we never did. The girls were as good as the boys. AE: Did you see more than now maybe a separation of women's jobs as opposed to men's jobs? Or just their sphere? MB: My husband drove a school bus for quite a few years. After he died, women started to drive school buses. I think he would have liked to see women drive school buses; I think changes like that have come with women that we didn’t have before. AE: Were you involved, were you interested in all in the feminist movement and all that is going on? MB: No. AE: It sounds like you lived in an area that there wasn't really a need for that. MB: No. I think you are right. There hasn't been a need, we could always do what we wanted, there was always plenty for women to do. AE: Did you find at the University that there was a greater percentage of men? Or was it pretty much equal? 15 MB: I would say probably so, although I don't know. I don't remember, I was more involved with the women because of my education classes. AE: If you would tell something about yourself, what would you tell? An introduction if you were giving an introduction? MB: The other day my niece called me and she said, “If you were to tell what made the most effect in your whole life what would you say, what event?” I said it would have to be World War II. Because my whole world changed with World War II. AE: How old were you when the war started? MB: I was going through college, and I taught school for two years, so I was old enough to have done that, but I gave up teaching and I went to work at Hillfield. AE: Did you do that to help the war cause? MB: Yeah, I went and I had a good chance to work through the summer and I was going to go back to school, but I got so much more money at Hillfield and they needed me, you know. And so I just stayed. And because of that I met my husband, and because of that my whole world changed. I really enjoyed those Hillfield years and I felt like I was helping the war effort. AE: Were there very many changes in your community, it being a small town, during the war? MB: Yes, there were. We used to have a lot of farmers in Hooper. Most of them left their farms and went to war, and now their farms are subdivided and we don't have very many full-time farmers in Hooper anymore. So the war made a big difference in our 16 town. We have maybe three or four full-time farmers, and then that is just acre farms, and one or two dairy farms. So the war changed our whole world really. AE: Did you have brothers that fought in the war? MB: Yes, I had three brothers in the war. AE: And was that hard for your family? MB: It was. My little brother was in the South Pacific and it was a worry to us, my other brother was in Iran and Iraq, and that was a worry to us. AE: Were your parents supportive of them going? MB: Yes. AE: Was everybody pretty supportive of the war effort? MB: Everybody was. AE: There weren't these draft dodgers? MB: That's right - we all knew that it was their duty to go and they went. And one difference is that we didn't have television so we didn't know all these things that were going on, or we would have been more worried. It was a different war but we were all very supportive of it. AE: Talking a little bit about technology, what invention or technological advances have you liked the most? MB: If my dad came back today he would never believe the world, since so much has come to since he died. AE: And when did he die? 17 MB: He died in 1938. AE: You weren't very old when he died. MB: No, I wasn't. AE: And you had some real young siblings. MB: I had four younger than me. AE: Did your mother ever remarry? MB: Yes, she did. AE: So you had a stepfather? MB: Yes, but not until later on. We didn't have television, we didn't have computers; all these things have come about and even the things in automobiles were after his day. My children were born and all these new things have come in. I can't believe how fast the world has advanced in recent years. AE: I don't know that I have any more questions. This is going to be put in the archives up at Weber State, just to get a kind of history a little bit, the only people who can actually use it are the archivists or the people who are there. MB: Well along with advancements, I think like in your condition now, having babies is so different than even when I had them. ‘Cause I've been with my daughters a lot and they didn’t even know they had pain. And I had pain. AE: Did they have any kind of, what was medicine like? MB: We had gas, I don't think it was ether I had but I remember them putting me out, but I remember it hurt. 18 AE: They didn't have any kind of… MB: Epidurals, and all these things that you have now. And then another thing, now you can tell if it's a boy or a girl, we didn't ever know that, we just..... AE: Do you think you would have found out? MB: I don't know if I would have or not... AE: Just curious. MB: I wondered that too; my youngest one the doctor always said was going to be a girl because of the fast heartbeat, but it was a boy, so I'm not sure. Did you find out with yours? AE: No, I didn't find out. We just wanted it to be a surprise. MB: I always thought it was nice to be a surprise too. AE: Did you travel very much with your husband? MB: Yes, we traveled a lot. AE: And what was your favorite place? MB: We went up to the Northwest several times and that was a good place to travel. We didn't travel by airplane ever, I don't think we ever did go by plane, quite often we would just take little trips. We would just decide to go and we would go someplace; our kids wouldn't know where we were. He liked to travel and so did I. AE: And you do lots of traveling now? MB: We do a lot more now than we did then. 19 AE: Why do you think you like traveling, do you like to see places? MB: I like to see places, I like to see what the rest of the world is like, I like to see how the rich people live. Last week we were in Seattle and my son took us around Lake Washington and we saw where the rich lived along the lake. So it’s kind of nice to see how people live, and then to be happy with what we've got. AE: You just like to see the variety? MB: I do, I like to see, I really do like to see what's out there. I like to read, so that's next best to going places. AE: Well, that will probably, a good many types of history, thanks for doing this. MB: You're welcome. 20