Oral History Program Marcy Rizzi Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 17 August 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Marcy Rizzi Interviewed by Sarah Langsdon 17 August 2019 Copyright © 2022 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 Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ 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: Rizzi, Marcy, an oral history by Sarah Langsdoni, 17 August 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Marcy Rizzi 17 August 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Marcy Rizzi, conducted on August 17, 2019, in her home, in Ogden, Utah, by Sarah Langsdon. In this interview, Marcy discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Cheyenne Fresh and Alicia Rizzi are also present during this interview. SL: This is Sarah Langsdon and I am interviewing Marcy Rizzi at her home. It is August 17, 2019. Alright, Marcy, we’re going to start at the beginning. MR: Let’s do it. SL: Tell us where and when you were born. MR: Ok. May 12, 1975 at the old St. Ben’s hospital at the top of 36th and Polk. I don’t remember much of it, but my mother has good stories about it. SL: Does she? Stories of the nuns, probably. MR: Yep, exactly. SL: Are you an only child? MR: Nope, I have a sister who was born fourteen months after me. I don’t know what hospital she was born in. July 18, 1976. Jennifer Marie Taylor. SL: 1976, it could have been either. MR: Yeah, that’s what’s hard, and I don’t remember the stories, I think I was just that inquisitive kid that wanted to know a little bit of everything of my life, so I was Barbara Walter-ing my mother about my life. SL: That’s a good thing to do. So tell us, what did your mom and what did your dad do for a living? 2 MR: My dad was a computer programmer. So he kind of moved around different jobs, he worked at a place called Unisis in Salt Lake, I-Omega, and he ended up retiring from Thiokol. SL: Ok, that’s interesting that he did computers that early. MR: Yeah. So, he actually went to Weber State College I think in like 1985, so he’d worked at a place called TrammelCrow. It was a trucking place and I think he just got sick of it and went back to school. It had to be early 1980s ‘cause I remember being young and him going to school and us having a babysitter so he could finish school. He probably finished like in 1985, so he was in that early stage of computer programming. SL: What was your dad’s name? MR: Leslie Manning Taylor. SL: What about your mom, what was her name and what did she do? MR: So, my mom grew up as a military brat, so she went everywhere. She was born in Massachusetts and had lots of family in New York. Her full name is Bonnie Marie Baldwin was her maiden name. Weird enough, my parents actually met in Florida; my dad was in the Navy and she was working as a nursing assistant there, with a woman named Marcene Manning Taylor. That’s my father’s mother. She said, “Hey, I think my son’s in port, I think you guys would have a good time, you should go out,” So they did, they dated. It was a quick dating, ‘cause he had to come back to Utah, and once he came back to Utah he realized that he just loved her and wanted to marry her, so he proposed over the phone. They got 3 married in Florida and their honeymoon was driving from Florida back to Utah, so that’s how my mom ended up in Utah. SL: What did your mom do? MR: She worked at the IRS, she retired from the IRS. I bet you hear a lot of that here. SL: Yeah, there’s a lot of government installations. MR: Yeah. So she worked there for thirty years and retired. SL: What was it like growing up in Ogden? MR: I loved it. You know what’s weird though, I think a lot of times you just don’t really know what’s available when you’re a child, you’re parents are like gods, right? So then the gods have created this small world, so I don’t really think I even thought of what’s outside of Utah. We grew up at 567 Fowler Avenue which is about a half block above Monroe past 7th Street. I can remember when you drive down Monroe towards 12th Street, there’s orchards there. You couldn’t go all the way through, up to the area of town. It just felt like a small community. I have to say though, being non-Mormon growing up in Utah at that time was difficult too. School wasn’t always as easy. I think it’s changed some, but for me I can remember a specific incident in high school, ninth grade, when you have home ec. We had class time, and then we got divvied up to go in the kitchen to start cooking. I can remember this one girl, she asked me what ward I belonged to and I told her I didn’t. Five, ten minutes goes by, we’re starting, and I ask her to hand me a measuring cup or whatever and since I told her I wasn’t Mormon, none of them talked to me. Not one of them. Just weird thinks like that. But as far as Ogden goes, I’ve really enjoyed it, obviously I’m still here, I don’t hate it so 4 much that I wanted to leave. I never felt like I fit in, but in a weird way, I feel like Ogden is ok with that, like this is kind of where the misfits go, at least it used to feel that way. So in a weird way I felt like I didn’t fit in in a fitting in sort of way. SL: When you were growing up, who did you look up to? MR: Oh, my dad, and usually dead authors. My dad, as a living example, be when I was young I just wanted to be and do everything he did. But I found solace, and as far as wisdom goes, I’d say authors have always comforted me that way. And there’s Monty Ogden, I love him. I had him for, it was like a current events class. SL: Yeah. At Ben Lomond? MR: Yes. It’s interesting cause what we’d do is he would subscribe to Newsweek. So every week we’d get a Newsweek and he’d tell us a specific article to read and then he divided the class pro and con. It was fantastic. Typically I was alone in my thinking. I can remember there was actually an abortion issue once and it was either for or against abortion and I was for and I legitimately was the only person sitting in the for, so I had to debate the entire class, but Mr. Ogden was fantastic, he actually helped me hone in my debating skills. Perhaps he doesn’t want me to tell people this, but I can remember once he pulled me in after class and it was just me and him and he said, “It’s really refreshing to have another liberal in the class.” SL: So were you encouraged to pursue an education? MR: By my parents absolutely, it was almost an expectation that we would go to college and graduate from college. Mainly a bachelor’s degree, but I don’t think 5 there’s ever a time in my household that it wasn’t discussed that we would be going to school. It just was a given that you’d go to college or a university. SL: Where did you go to college? MR: So I still don't have my degree. I went to Weber State in 1993, August or September, and I was going for a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice and psychology. I was about twenty when I stopped going and got a job with Weber county sheriff. Actually my first job was with Salt Lake county sheriffs, and they sent me to the police academy. I feel like I was almost wasting time in college until I was twenty-one to go get a cop job. That’s what it felt like, and then I got the cop job, so I just stopped going to school. SL: So, talk about going through the police academy as a woman in the early 1990s MR: It was mid-1990s. I think there was like three of us? It was a class of twenty-five to thirty and there was three women. It was kind of brutal, but let me tell you how the cop thing came around, really quickly. I had a French teacher, of all things in high school, go around the classroom and ask what we wanted to be when we grow up. Well, I was kind of a hellion, I was a wild and the back parking lot kid, and so me and my friends thought it would be funny if I said I wanted to be a cop, ‘cause half the time we were running from them or trying to stay away from them. I said, “Yeah, when I get older I want to become a cop,” and me and my friend kind of snicker and the teacher said, “Well, you can’t. You’re a girl and you’re too small.” I don’t know man, I’m a contrarian at heart. So when he said that, it was like, “Oh, well, guess I’ll become a cop.” SL: Prove me wrong. 6 MR: Yeah. Which didn’t really serve me well, ultimately for me, on a personal level, but I did it, I absolutely went back and saw him in uniform. SL: So what was it like going through the police academy? MR: Interesting enough, I don’t know if I really noticed the gender difference at that time, it wasn’t ‘til I started working in the job. But for me it was I hated running. This is another contrarian story. I smoked, and one of the instructors was like, “You need to quit that or you won’t be able to get your mile and a half in time.” You have to run it in a certain amount of time. Well, as we kept practicing I realized I was going to be fine. So on the actual testing day I put a cigarette lighter in my waistband and made sure to light up and blow smoke across the finish line. SL: You didn’t get reprimanded? MR: No, I did not. He just shook his head like, “You’re an asshole,” more or less. SL: So, after you get through the academy, first job was with? MR: Actually, weird enough, when I was at Salt Lake County, I didn’t want to have to continue to commute, so I’d been applying at Weber County and Box Elder County, ‘cause they were closer to home. Right before I graduated, Box Elder County reached out and did an interview and actually hired me. So Salt Lake County got me through the academy and then I switched over to Box Elder County and I only worked Box Elder for like six to nine months before I got hired at Weber County. I wanted Weber County, it’s close to home. I got hired at the Weber County Sheriff’s Office in January 1999 I think. SL: Ok. What types of jobs were you doing at the sheriff’s office. 7 MR: I only, I worked in the jail as a correctional officer. I started in the jail and I did, at one point, work with ICAC, Internet Crimes Against Children. FBI agents online were posing as fifteen-year-olds and then they’d make a location to meet. They would use me cause I’m 5’1” and at the time I weighed like ninety pounds and I’ve historically looked young. That’s catching up to me now, but I would go to a mall, just hang out in a hoodie and the person would come and say, “Hi, are you so-and-so?” and use my username and then we’d solidify that he met me to have sex and then he’d get arrested. Then the last five years of my career at the sheriff's office, I was on the SWAT team as a negotiator. That’s what kept me that last five years, it’s pretty intense, I liked it. SL: I bet. So what was it like being a woman...? MR: I would say awful. I’m trying to be judicious and fair in this, but I think what’s weird is when I started the Weber County Sheriff's Office when I was like twenty-two or twenty-three I didn’t pay attention to it in the beginning. But I did feel the sense that, especially like I just explained my physique, I’m little so I felt like I had to overly prove myself time and time again that I’d be useful in situations where physical contact was necessary with the inmates. What I’ve learned as I’ve progressed is that I’ve felt as though the standard was you needed to be physically strong, but what I found was that my mouth got me in and out of everything. I still feel that our law enforcement and correctional facilities in general are still hyper-focused on this idea of, “We need to have strong people,” and I feel like they disregard the value and power of words. As you will soon 8 learn, I love to read and how much words have meaning, they had power. I feel like we underutilize that tool in law enforcement in general. SL: More force. MR: Yeah, absolutely. SL: So what about being a negotiator for the SWAT team? MR: Oh, sweet. I’ve just got saying how much I love words and words have power, that was a definite indicator of that power of words. It was interesting ‘cause you have to go through an interview process. Originally, Weber County Sheriff’s Office didn’t have its own SWAT team. There’s a metro unit, meaning a lot of different police departments came together, they’re trained, and then they would go to high critical incidents together, so you had different departments together. I don’t know the politics behind why Weber County wanted to split away from that and create their own team, all I knew is I really wanted to do negotiations. I applied for that, you go through an interview, and then you go through a pretty intensive training. There’s FBI that comes out and helps train, and that’s probably two or three weeks worth of training, and then you just kind of see for your first callout, which still uses pagers which makes me laugh, that is such a 1990s thing. That first one was pretty intense, because it’s one thing to train and you know, another cop or another civilian’s on the other side pretending. Whereas this is like a legitimate... and that adrenaline rush is unreal, there’s no drug that can ever touch an adrenaline rush like that ever. I only did it for about five years and then I actually quit the sheriff's office. But I felt it was the most gratifying, but to be fair, it’s also probably the one thing that’s caused a lot of PTSD for me later. 9 Because when things don’t go right, there’s an audio or a visual representation of failure, that’s what it felt like. It’s taken me a long time to recognize that those people that ended up taking their own lives or whatever the bad outcome would be, it wasn’t my fault. But there’s a part of you that wonder, ‘cause words have power, “Did I use the right words in the right sequence to have an impact or an effect?” SL: Could you’ve done something differently? MR: Absolutely. That lingers with you the rest of your life. There’s no way to get away from it. There’s a way of dealing with it differently, slowly. Your brain starts to deal with that differently. SL: So when you were with the sheriff's office, how many other female officers were there? MR: Oh, I’m going to have her help me, too. Can we do it by rank? SL: Yes. MR: She chuckled ‘cause there’s not a lot of women there still to this day. Ok, there’s never been a sheriff that’s female. There’s never been an undersheriff that’s been female. There’s never been a chief that’s female. Now we’re getting to captains, there’s never been a female captain during my time there, there’s only been four female lieutenants. Lieutenant Debby Hall, Tracy Taylor. What was the woman’s name that did IA? Flory Peterson. Van Orden. Now we’ll do sergeants when I was there, I left in 2011, and then she’ll be able to tell you currently. When I was there, there was me as a sergeant, Michelle Tashne, Cara Genus, Marilee How. Four female sergeants? Am I missing somebody? 10 AR: Maybe one or two. MR: Then you have lead officers, or corporals. There’s Rizzi— AR: [Talking off screen.} MR: Probably a third of them. When I very first started, if we’re just talking line officers, there was probably five or six of us. Then Rizzi’s academy came through and there was a lot more women that came in then. But at the time I got hired, Flory Peterson—I don’t know if anybody’s ever mentioned that name to you, but I’ve got to tell you just a little bit about Flory. SL: Yeah, tell me about her. MR: Flory started and she was the only woman there. They called them ‘matrons’ they didn’t even call them officers even though she did everything the same. It became a really derogatory way of calling a female officer. But she actually worked in the jail when it was on the ninth floor. SL: Oh, of the city county building? MR: Yes, and like I say, they called her a matron, she was never ‘Officer’ until obviously later. She used to work at Stimpsons and this guy, this officer, used to come through every morning, get his coffee and he’s just like, “Man, they’re going to start letting women work in these places and to be honest I’m actually kind of glad because then we don’t have to search the female inmates.” He’s like, “You should do it, you should do it,” I believe she took because it made more money. But she is a pioneer. Pi-o-neer. I am forever in debt to that woman. Ever. Like, she paved a way for all of us, she just retired what, five, six years ago, babe? She stayed for a long time and she obtained the rank of lieutenant before 11 she left. But she paved the way for all of us, any woman that walks through the doors at Weber County Sheriff’s Office, it’s because of Flory Peterson. She’s badass. I loved her too because she’s motherly but could be an ornery, cantankerous woman when necessary. She treated all those inmates so kindly, firm but fair. I got that from her. Absolutely, she taught me a ton. SL: Was there a, sort of a comradery among the female officers or not really? MR: See, this is the problem, as I see it. Women have to come in and they have to act like men and if they show anything that seemed nurturing or kind, it means weakness. It’s almost like the women are trying to out women, or out masculinize other women. It’s a sad dynamic, in my opinion. I’ll be honest, there’s different divisions to the jail and at one point they put me at the Keisel facility, which was the work release community service facility. When they told me I was going back to 12th Street, I wanted to become a sergeant so I didn’t have to go back to alpha pod, where the majority of women work. That’s the women inmates, because I didn’t want to be in the viper pit, is what I used to call it. Women could just be so awful to each other. However, you do get a few that just don’t play that game and I felt a certain sense of comradery with Lieutenant Tracy Taylor. She was an amazing person for me to be around, ‘cause she really knew how to just focus in on the policy, make sure we’re doing our job. I’m going to give you a secret: The majority of people there that are gay ‘cause there are some I think they couldn’t share their personal life. At that time, especially men would never say that they’re gay, working in those professions. So people like Lieutenant Tracy Taylor, myself, Rizzi, you become almost super hyper focused on making 12 sure you don’t violate policy because if they find out you’re gay then they won’t have anything to hold against you. As long as you toed that line and you’ve done everything properly, there’s no way they can get rid of you simply because you’re gay. But I had an interesting dynamic that way because I went in married to a man. After I came out... SL: Was there? What was that? I mean... MR: Well I used to always be invited as like I call it arm candy, I was the cute girl that they’d take me to golf tournaments to sell tickets and whatnot. If they like you a lot, you get treated really well, a golden child. When I came out, and I was uninvited from being a golden child. Super interesting. SL: So, ostracized. MR: Yeah. Sometimes I wonder if it’s just unconscious bias, I wonder if they don’t even recognize that it’s happening, or if perhaps that’s me giving them excuses for their behavior. It makes you wonder sometimes if they even recognize that they did it. Some of the people you work, there’s some very overly-sexualized people that work in law enforcement. You’ve got a lot of power and power can breed a lot of different neuroses, I guess. I don’t know what else to call them, but I also recognize how I used my beauty and my wit in a different way when I was married, ‘cause I never had to think about it. I could walk down the street holding my husband’s hand and nobody’d say anything, right? Then all of a sudden you pay attention to everything around you. What year did we get together, babe? AR: 2005 13 MR: Yeah, so early 2000s. It’s changed a lot, even in fifteen years. It’s an interesting dynamic, I think they used my cuteness to their advantage, but then all of a sudden, it makes you wonder, did they think they had a chance and now all of a sudden the doors are shut? It’s weird what runs through your mind of why you are all of a sudden you haven’t changed your working style, the only thing you’ve legitimately changed is who you spend your off duty time with. There’s a lot of things you question and wonder. I think that can drive you crazy though, I think there came a time where I was like, “Ah, it doesn’t matter, keep doing your job.” I got supervised through the year, got a purple heart while working there. I did a lot of good things there. It was a hard decision to leave, but also probably the best decision. SL: Do you want to talk about coming out? MR: Sure. Absolutely. She’ll have a different story for you, but for me I just never hid who I am. I don’t know how to live that way. I can remember Rizzi and I having a conversation about that when we were dating. I can’t not be open about who I am with anybody. I just can’t live my life that way. I’m super lucky. My mom’s sister is a lesbian, so she grew up with a lot of that. I worried the most about how my dad would react. That story’s kind of crass, so I don’t know if you want that story. SL: Doesn’t bother me. MR: Ok, so I’m a cancer survivor, I had cancer right after I had my daughter, Cheyenne. The way I had told my mom I had cancer is I called and asked her if she wanted to go to lunch. She was like, “Sure,” and I told her I had cancer and she was upset. So fast-forward, I call her to let her know that Rizzi and I are 14 dating. Because if I’m being honest with you I just love people, I don’t really care about gender, but it’s just easier to call me a lesbian. But anyways, so I call my mom, not even thinking about the cancer stuff, ‘cause that’s been years ago. I’m like, “Hey, Mom, do you want to go to lunch?” She’s like, “Oh my God, do you have cancer?” She started crying, like getting ready to cry, I’m like, “Mom, no, I just want to go to lunch with you.” She’s like, “Just tell me now! What’s going on?” I was like, “Oh my gosh, Mom, I just wanted to tell you that I’m dating a woman,” and she goes, “Oh, thank God it’s not cancer!” So that made it super easy, right? It was like, “Cancer or gay? I’ll take gay.” But I had asked my mom not to tell my dad. You’ve got to remember, I looked up to my father, my father was like my little pattern of life. So, I can’t believe I’m going to tell you this story, but it just kind of gives you an insight into me and my family. So I told my mom, “Don’t tell Dad, I’ll just come over and tell him myself.” So I got over and we’re sitting on the porch. He’s sitting below me, I sat above him, and he offered me a beer and I haven’t even drank the beer yet, but... I can remember being nervous, I just didn’t want him to be disappointed. I was like, “Dad, I have something to tell you,” I got all nervous, he is a crude man. Just throwing that out there. You won’t be able to print this, I don’t think. I said, “Dad, I have something to tell you.” He’s like, “Alright.” Takes a swig of his beer and I was like, “I’m... I’m dating a woman.” They’d met Rizzi... I think they’d met you by then. I tell him who it is and he just sits there, silent, and I’m like, “Oh, God.” My heart is pounding, I’m like, “Oh, he’s so disappointed.” He goes, “Well... if you need any tips on eating out -----” I sat there for a minute and I go, “Actually, I 15 probably could give you some tips.” He goes, “You win! You win, we don’t need to talk about it anymore!” So it was pleasant. That’s the only family I have here is my mom, my dad, and my sister. My dad’s mother used to live with us and he’s got a sister that we don’t really talk to. We don’t have a huge extended family, so I didn’t feel like I lost out on anything family wise. I don’t think I even lost friends. They may have had their own personal opinions. I did have a ton of guys tell me, “You just haven’t found the right guy, yet.” “It’s just a phase.” That kind of stuff. But other than that I feel lucky that I came from a family that was very open and don’t really care about that, they just wanted me to be happy. But I just got out of a really shitty marriage like a year before, so I think they were just glad to see me happy. SL: With your marriage, you have two kids, right? MR: Yep. SL: Wyatt and Cheyenne. MR: I’ve been married three times. SL: Oh, you have? Wait a minute. MR: Back it up a little. All throughout high school from the time I was fifteen, I dated a boy named Sunny Alan Ricks. I still like that guy, and we got married when I was twenty. It’s interesting because I feel like we were really good friends, and at some point we were both like, “Oh, this is the next step is to get married.” We were only married a year and a half, and then we were seriously sitting down to spaghetti dinner. Remember those tables in the late 1990s that were tile? SL: Yes. 16 MR: It was one of those tile table, we were sitting there eating spaghetti and we’d been talking back and forth about did we do the right thing, to get married? We both just agreed we should just remain friends. Which we did. He ended up killing himself, he was a police officer for Salt Lake City Police Department. He was there a long time and he started to have alcohol problems. I’d get those two AM calls from him all the time asking me, “Why are you so happy in life?” He killed himself probably six years ago? You know it wasn’t a surprise to me. His father had also attempted suicide, I mean there’s this long history of mental illness in his family. So I wasn’t necessarily surprised that he killed himself, what I didn’t expect, or the impact from that, was every high school picture I have, he’s in it. And, “Oh, I remember a Sadie Hawkins dance, who did we go with?” It’s hard, I can no longer call and be like, “Sunny, do you remember?” There’s a part of your history that gets erased simply out of memory. Somebody else can’t help jog that, that’s the thing I didn’t expect. But after we got divorced, I met my kids’ dad, Andrew Fresh, at the Layton Hills Mall. I worked security there and he was a cop for Layton City. We dated probably for a about a year, maybe two before we got married. We were together, I think total time was eight years. Then I got with that amazing human, we’ve been together almost fifteen years. I have two kids. I have Wyatt Andrew Fresh, born July 26, 2000 and this cool kid, Cheyenne Taylor Fresh, August 20, 2001. SL: You are so close to 18! MR: She is, it’s wild. I can’t believe I’m going to have all adults. That’s kind of the relationship aspect. Kids are awesome, never wanted kids, just kind of 17 happened. I was told I couldn’t have kids. I have one ovary and it’s crap, told I couldn’t have kids. I’ll tell you a quick funny story about kids. I’m at the jail, working at the jail, and my breasts were really tender. I was outside smoking telling the jail nurse that and she goes, “You’re probably pregnant.” I was like, “Oh, I can’t get pregnant, like I’ve been told by my doctors I can’t have kids.” She goes, “Just humor me and take a jailhouse pregnancy test.” Which isn’t from the dollar store. So I took it and I wasn’t even thinking anything of it, I’m doing up my pants, she’s like, “It’s positive,” and I start laughing and I’m like, “Yeah, you’re funny.” She’s like, “No, it really is.” I still didn’t believe her, I actually waited two or three more weeks and then my gynecologist needed a blood test to confirm it, and I told him he was a shitty gynecologist. SL: He told you you couldn’t get pregnant. MR: Yeah. I told him he was fired. Kids are, like it’s a life changing experience, as you know. It’s awesome. SL: So, you left the sheriff’s office in...? MR: April 28, 2011. Do you want the story of why I left? SL: Yes. MR: I’ve gone through like, I’m going to exaggerate here, probably my thirtieth internal affairs investigation that was unfounded. I had a lot of internal affairs investigations based off some weird, like the example on this one was that I was, I can’t remember what the officer said. So I went through this IA and it was unfounded, but they took me out of my specialty assignment and put on a Monday through Friday gig, which I’d never had. In all the years I’d worked there 18 I’d always been rotating shifts. For the last year of my career, I was given a specialty assignment at the work release community service. An officer had falsified a report and I wrote her up and she ran straight to the sheriff and it went straight to IA, which is a huge no-no. I go through this IA and they’re super draining. Whether you’re guilty or innocent, it’s a major thing, I mean, your career’s in the balance. So it’s unfound but they still moved me out of my specialty assignment and I was not having it. I had a lieutenant, she’s no longer around, but Lieutenant Jewel Feukes. I’ll never forget, she had cancer. On our last time talking she was like, “Why are you wasted potential? You’re bigger than this place. I don’t know why you stay, you should live for me.” I was like, “Haha, Jewel, you’ll be fine.” She ended up dying like a month later. That was the impetus of, “Why am I wasting time? I am wasted potential here.” So I quit April 28, 2011 and I wanted to go back to school. I actually wanted to go to law school was the original plan, and I would have started the University of Utah in January 2012 working on getting a bachelor’s degree in gender studies and English. Still don’t have it, four classes away ‘cause I ran out of funding and opened a bookstore! So, I quit. I was thirty-six years old and just decided to do it different. It was scary, it’s scary as hell. But I wouldn’t know you, we wouldn’t be talking. I wouldn’t know a lot of people had I stayed. SL: So the decision was, you decided to quit school again? And then you opened... Booked? MR: Yeah, so Rizzi was sitting on the couch and we were talking about what was I going to do without the funding and she mentioned, “You should open a 19 bookstore.” I kind of laughed about it, and then I started to think, “Why don’t I open a bookstore?” ‘Cause forever and a day, I complained that Ogden didn’t have a great bookstore, like an independently run bookstore. I’d always end up driving to Salt Lake or other places to go sit in the indie book shop. My whole life has been structured around books. I can’t even remember when I started reading, it’s just always been a part of life. Except when I was married to their dad, but that’s another story. So that was in January of 2016. So I started going to the business development center and had them help me look at economic data, more or less I had them help me put together this business plan. That became my full-time job because I wasn’t working anywhere else. At that time I saw that it could be feasible. And so I opened Booked on July 9, 2016. SL: What was it like being a female business owner? MR: Interesting enough, 25th Street’s the place to be if you’re a female business owner. There are so many female-run businesses down there, which I thought was interesting because 25th Street’s this huge cultural pull for Ogden City. In an interesting way, women are creating the culture in Ogden. But men get a lot of credit for it, unfortunately. You would know this better than I—that that’s been the case since 25th Street’s inception. I mean, even the branding of the name recently of Ogden, I think it’s, what? Untamed? SL: Still untamed. MR: Yes. We’re talking about women then. We’re talking about how women are creating this space of “untamedness.” Which is also interesting to me, too because women also create, in my opinion, in Ogden, a sense of safety as well. I 20 know everybody says this is like a “snowflake” thing to say, but they’re creating safe places, safe spaces, for everybody. That’s nesting on a community level. It was interesting and kind of lovely to be around those strong women. I never felt unwelcomed on 25th Street, there was never a time when I felt there was this huge competitive nature that you would assume would happen in business, and in bookstores that’s absolutely true, there’s no competitiveness between independent bookstores. We all help each other. Ann Holman of the King’s English was actually my mentor and she literally opened her books to me. She let me see all of her expenses. I don’t know any other business in the industry that would do that. Once again, woman owned. SL: And been around for a very long time. MR: Yes. Well, today, I want to capture this, is Weller Works, or Sam Weller’s bookstore’s 90th anniversary. Ninety years! That’s wild. That is super wild in my head. It’s cool. SL: There’s independent bookstores that... MR: Yeah, kind of sad to see them go. Honestly, I don’t think I ever imagined that I’d get rich owning a bookstore, there was never a moment where I was going, “Oh, I’m going to be a millionaire by opening an indie bookstore. My whole idea of it was, “How do I pair my desire to create a culture and foster reading, but also create an environment where like-minded people can come together? Or even not like-minded people, but have this space where intellectualism takes place.” Historically bookstores and coffee shops have been spaces of revolution, and I just wanted to feel a part of that and I got to be, for a short time. 21 SL: Taking off on that, what impact do you think you felt you had on Ogden owning that bookstore? I mean, it was a short period of time, but... MR: I don’t feel like it was enough. If I cry, I’m sorry. SL: That’s ok. I made Cindy Simone cry. MR: It wasn’t long enough. Sorry. I’m just, I think, in the process of mourning the loss. I wish I could have done more for sure. I think the time that I was there, I gave a vision of what could be possible and different ways to engage the community. They have arts festivals which are beautiful, and a lot of times we have markets, but I also think that I showed a way to be able to blend those two things; whether it be literature or have an impact on your community, meaning get engaged politically, “Come tell us what’s important to you.” Having candidates come in and speak to people, pairing that with books, but then also recognizing that we need spaces where we can mourn, I know after the presidential election, I had thirty, forty women in there, talking with each other, crying with each other, hugging each other, but also building plans, making sure that they could stave off things that they were fearful of, taking that fear and making it useful instead of just sitting in it. Those are things I’ll never forget. I’m so sorry. SL: Looking back and seeing how much in your short time, you really did impact the community. MR: Thank you. I hope so. It’s interesting because there’s a selfish part of me that’s like,” Of course it felt good to provide that space,” but you hope that in some small way, it changed something for somebody else. Since I sold the bookstore on May 15th of this year I’ve just become more or less a hermit. I think it’s just 22 protecting myself, but at the same time there’s a sense of failure. And I don’t do well with that. I don’t know many people that do. So I’m trying to find the balance again and finding a way to be able to impact the community a different way. That’s going to take me a minute to find that balance. I keep threatening Rizzi I’m going to run for city council and she told me that’s a deal breaker. So, barring that, what way can I become involved in finding the things that I want to do, and finding a platform, because I don’t feel like I’m done. I’m a person that you can’t shut up anyways about how I feel or what I believe in. But I think since the sale of the bookstore, it’s been really difficult to find. I’ll run into people and I don’t want to talk about it yet, ‘cause I’m just not there yet. Yeah. I loved it though and like the selfish part of me, I’ve met some people that I would have never known, including yourself. The list could go on, all these professors for Weber State that I didn’t even know prior to opening this bookstore. It’s an amazingly gratifying feeling to know that I’ve at least made some human connections that will never go away. I miss it. I do like the job I’m doing now too, though. SL: Right, and you’re impacting in a different way. MR: A lot of it is women that are bullied by men and I get to bully the bullies. I do miss it though and in a weird way, I’m glad it’s changed. I just dropped off books yesterday, I obviously believe in bookstores. I want it to stay around, but I’m glad it changed. I think it would be too hard to go in there and see it the same way I used to have it, for sure. I wish them well. I know it’s hard. It’s a hard business. I’m just going to be honest with you: Ogden’s finicky, it’s a finicky town, and I love it for that, I really do. I’m alright with living in a place that’s a little 23 finicky and a little strange and eclectic, but at the same time it’s really difficult, Ogden is really good about new things and they run to the new glittery thing and then something else opens. That’s the sad part about 25th Street, in my opinion, it’s the turn over there. How many families in this community have had to do exactly what I did? They put their heart and soul into something and you just don’t know ways to create it any better. I’m worried that Booked won’t be a long sustaining thing in the community, which is unfortunate. One of the reasons I was okay with selling the name with the bookstore is because I wanted it to create a legacy. But even then maybe I’ll just become that old woman with a library in the front yard still peddling books. SL: Given your busy work life, have you been able to be involved in any other community organizations? MR: No, I think I want to create my own. I don’t know what I want to do yet. But like I say, I’m not finished. I think there’s amazing things out there, but I really want to start this revolution of changing our yards and feeding each other. I’ve had this thought in my head for years, I actually have a Facebook page called the Ogden Vegetable Garden Network. What I want to do is get, and it’s mainly women, I don’t care if men are involved, obviously I’m not a man-hater, but I want to help each other feed each other. There’s a couple things in my mind that say the environment’s a super important thing we’ve got going on here. Without the environment, it doesn’t matter if gay marriage is legal, I mean there’s so many issues, right? But the environment needs to be stable, we need to be healthy and fed. I’ll kind of give you an idea where this is coming from. Way back in the 24 1970s, 1960s, the Black Panthers as they organized, one of the things they offered was breakfast before school, it wasn’t even school related. As a community they came together and fed their children. At the same time they got to spread their wisdom. The government saw that as such a threat that that’s why we now have school breakfast. Did you know that? SL: I didn’t know that. MR: School breakfast is because of the Black Panthers. So in what ways can I create a revolution simply by feeding people? I don’t know where I’ll go with that, though. You’re right about the work thing, and I think honestly right now, where I’m at mentally with the loss of Booked, I’ve needed to hermit. I’ve just needed to come home. I don’t think you’ve heard the last of Marcy Rizzi’s adventures, it probably just won’t be a business. The other organizations throughout the community, to be fair, I don’t feel like I fit in. That’s why I probably feel like I need to create my own. Plus, I’m super outspoken and they probably just think, “Ah, it’s Marcy again. Here she comes with her grandiose ideas.” AR: It’s not grandiose [?]. MR: I agree. SL: When your kids were little, how did you balance that work and family? MR: Man, that’s a good question. SL: ‘Cause I know, it’s not something men have to think about. MR: I agree. I absolutely agree. When I was still married to the children’s father, they were like three and four when we split up, so we worked off shifts so that we wouldn’t have to get any kind of daycare provider. So I worked graves or he 25 worked days or vice versa. Interesting enough, I was the one always in charge of coordinating that. I was the one that had to figure out daycare providers, I had to cook and I had to clean. What a difference it is when you get with a woman. I don’t even remember what we did when we got the kids. They started preschool and stuff like that, so that made it easy. There were some times during the day and then we used a daycare provider, it was actually St. Paul’s. That’s back when they had the school. We did that for the first couple years. As far as like household chores and what not, holy Hannah, it was amazing, because it wasn’t just, “Oh, that’s woman’s work.” Maybe it is and that’s why it gets done! But it’s always just kind of worked out. We didn’t really use daycare that much, once they got into first grade. We had some opposite shifts on occasion, too. It’s weird how you don’t really think about it. It’s just something you do and then somebody asks you the question you’re like, “How the hell did I do that? How did I get all that done?” Especially now that they’re becoming adults, I don’t honestly remember. CF: I remember going to Dad’s for weekends. MR: Yeah. So they do every other weekend with their dad. But he’s gone to Afghanistan for three different times now a year each as a contractor. So when they were little, there’s two full years during that time that we actually had the kids full time. It just worked out, we just got it done. It’s kind of weird, I’ve never really thought about it. SL: I think that’s what women do. MR: Yeah, they don’t think about it, they just do it. If you’ve got to take care of shit, you’ve got to take care of shit. 26 SL: Well, so going back, you used the term “women’s work.” MR: I say that, you’ve got to remember I got that gender studies degree almost under my belt, right? SL: I understand, and so that’s what one of my questions is. MR: It’s interesting. Division of labor, right? Talking about “women’s work.” I think it’s funny that we say that. We kind of had a conversation prior to you filming about how the history of this town is always male-centered. It’s because they did something like being mayor, but behind that dude is all these women making it happen. They’re the secretaries out making the phone calls, they’re filing that paperwork. This man had a great idea and women made it happen. But whenever we say “women’s work” we think of cleaning, cooking, taking care of children, gardening, and making sure we’re dressed in our pretty dresses with a cute little drink for our husbands when they come home, and that’s just not the case. I mean, flat out. Look at Martin Luther King. The women behind, the women made him who he was. I’m not saying the man didn’t have amazing skills and a great brain, but nothing can be done, really truly, whether it be oration or anything in history could have taken place without women behind the scenes, behind that curtain of Oz, pulling the triggers, pushing all the buttons and getting everything done. I always say “women’s work” tongue in cheek, because if we took the idea of women’s work as cooking, cleaning, and whatnot, then I never would have worked at the sheriff’s office, I wouldn’t have owned a business, and I wouldn’t be a paralegal. That’s the only thing, too, my job now is actually interesting, it’s 27 exactly what we’re talking about. I have an attorney and I love him, he’s amazing and he does great work. But behind the scenes, right, are all these paralegals writing up those drafts, taking what his ideas are and helping us learn the skills to more or less write all the paperwork for him to go to court. Women’s work. Always behind the curtain of Oz. SL: So looking back, like to your mom and even your grandma, how do you think the role of mothers have changed over the decade? And maybe going forward. MR: I don’t know if it has. And let me preface that: we’re “allowed” into different spaces, but we’re still expected to care for our children. I work for a family law firm, and you can sit down a woman who’s come to us to divorce her husband and you can say, “So tell me a little bit about your kid?” She’ll rattle off, she could go for hours. Then you’ll say, “Who’s the pediatrician, how did you choose the pediatrician? Who’s the dentist, how did you choose that?” Then you get the man, the husband or the father, and he’ll be like, “I don’t know, my wife does that. I don’t know, my wife does that, I don’t know,” so roles as mothers, I don’t know if it’s changed. In my opinion, I think there’s more of a demand, I think we’re more vocal, ‘cause everybody’s like, “Why do we need feminism? Women can go to work, they can do this,” and it’s like, “Great! Thanks for allowing us to go to work, now maybe you should start paying me for all the damn dishes I do and all the laundry I do: ‘cause you go work your forty, you come home, put your feet up, it’s been a long day, you’re tired.” Every woman I know except my sister, her husband’s incredible, is still working two jobs. We got out of the house so we can go work forty a week somewhere else and then work another forty at home. 28 You asked “how do you think it’s changed?” I don’t think there’s an expectation to have children anymore. I think there’s pressure for that, but there’s not the same expectation. So my daughter has grown up saying she never wants kids, and you’d be surprised at women who say, “Why not? Why wouldn’t you want kids? You just wait, it’ll change.” So as a society, we still think it’s odd, but you’re not ostracized, or you don’t have to make excuses that you’re going to be the old lady at the library who comes home to her cats. I think that’s changed a little bit, I think the expectation to actually even be married and have children has changed. There’s different social ideas of what motherhood could look like, but being a mother, I don’t think has changed. We’re still expected to nurture and love and take care of, not just them, but our husbands, or our... you have to take care of the world, we’re like the cleaners of the world. SL: Right. So when did you and Rizzi get married? MR: Oh, that’s fascinating, right? Because I couldn’t get married when we first got together. SL: Right. MR: We got together in April of 2005, but we did not get married until the Supreme Court decision came out in December of 12 or 13. I worked for Camille Knighter, who just became the first out LGBT judge at the second district court, I used to work for her as a legal secretary. She called me up that day and she said, “Hurry and go get married.” I was like, “I don’t want to get married in a shotgun kind of fashion, I want to actually have a wedding.” She was like, “Just do it, you need the legal protections.” So we got married on Christmas Eve of 2012 or 2013, 29 whenever that court decision came out, at Amy Wicks’ home. She actually reached out to us and offered so, it was super cute. I was like, “Thank you, so much, that would be amazing,” so we went to her house and she had it decorated for Christmas so it was cute and she got us both roses. So it was good, but it’s not what we wanted. Her family lives in California, it was just my family there. We didn’t get to celebrate with anybody. We keep making jokes though, ‘cause the only reason we got married is I needed medical insurance. Rizzi just retired and she threatens me sometimes, “Now we can get divorced.” So for us, marriage was never the real goal, it just wasn’t. But once the government decided to blend governmental benefits with a marriage... I feel like everybody should have to have a civil union and if you want a marriage, which should stay religious, go get your marriage. We’re married, but we don’t celebrate that as our anniversary. We do the April one. SL: The April one when you first got together. MR: That’s when it meant the most, right? Wink, wink. SL: So, I’ve got one final question unless you have anything else that you feel like we didn’t cover. MR: I think we’re good. You’ve got good questions. SL: So my last question, this is one that we’re asking everyone. Because of course this whole project centers around, came because of the 19th amendment’s hundredth anniversary, so women getting the right to vote. So how do you think women receiving the right to vote has shaped or influenced history, the community, and then you personally? 30 MR: Oh, I love the 19th amendment. First off, the fact that we even needed to have a debate of where some point in history that women should be involved in making decisions that directly impact their lives. It’s mind boggling to think back and think there was a point anybody in their right mind thought that was a good idea. However, I can see why these men in power were scared, because I am of the true belief that women as a general role are some of the most powerful beings. I mean, my God. We gestate children. We give life to things and I understand why men were worried, I do. We’ve talked about this, with the sheriff’s office. Power is an intoxicating substance and being able to relinquish that can become difficult. What I love about the majority of women that I’ve seen hold any kind of leadership position is they know how to balance that power with compassion. If the 19th amendment had never been around and women had no say in anything that happens to them on a legal perspective or culturally, ‘cause our laws can create culture. I wouldn’t have been able to be in the sheriff’s office, I could have never been a business owner, I could have never been with a woman. I would have been castigated. I think for our community, the people like Amy Wicks, the people that have come in in these positions... well, even take it a step further. Me being able to go vote, do you know how empowering it feels to know, on a local level, that my voice actually matters? That these people will be held accountable by me as a voter? I think my life would have been so different. I always say that you look back at history, and you’re like, “Man, what would it have been like to be in the Wild West?” Well, that’s easy for boys to imagine, but us women, like, “Hell, no!” 31 If I was going to be Wild West days, I wanted to be a dude. I’ve always imagined myself as a gunslinging guy walking down the street. I never saw myself with a dainty parasol and a dress crossing mud. There was no power for women. Still to this day, I’m surprised it took so damn long, to be honest. You know how much I love books, and you can see when you read these 18th century Victorian novels of the women who are trying to bust out of that. They’re trying to make novels where they would be strong women, but they still had to keep them super feminine. Can you imagine if nothing would have ever changed? We’d still be reading those books craving, just to feel that independence, not just mind, but of our bodies. So for me, I couldn’t have lived. Especially being as opinionated as I am, my God. They would have locked me in a madhouse and told me I was hysteric. So, and as far as the community goes, I dare say Ogden would just still be shooting in the streets. Women in this area, I mean, look at the Junior League of Ogden and how long they’ve been around, Weber State and the impact that they’ve had on educating women in this area. The professors that are up there, even now, like these strong, brilliant women teaching other women in these science fields. Stacy Palin, Caril Jennings. Like what do you do without these people? They’ve made Ogden beautiful, strong, independent, culturally exciting. None of those people would have been able to do anything there would have been no impact on this community whatsoever without those women, without that vote. I want to kiss the people that got that through, and the men too, you had to have allies. That’s the other frustrating part, you have to cozy up to people that 32 have historically wanted to keep you oppressed. What a badass group of people, that they could set aside those feelings to come to some sort of accord, having an impact on the whole entire nation, and the world. ‘Cause you’ve got to remember the 19th amendment also created a movement outside of the US, women looking in at what’s taking place here, going, “Wait a minute, I should have a say!” That little drop of a pebble in that pond has long lasting ripple effects that you and I get to enjoy, and my daughter at some point. SL: I do have one more, I remembered. So, looking back and your life now, who are some women that you feel have mentored you? MR: Ok, let’s do it. Definitely Caril Jennings, Stacy Palin, Amy Wicks, Susie Daily. Mrs. Painter, my first grade teacher. Mrs. Hodges. Good God, you’re going to have to give me a minute ‘cause there’s so many. SL: I understand. MR: Lieutenant Tracy Taylor. My daughter. Rizzi. Help me out, Chey, you know I talk about a ton of people, how amazing they are. CF: People that you know personally, or just anyone? MR: Oh, it could be anyone, Virginia Woolf. Audrey Lorde. Cortez... Michelle Obama is a badass. That’s a hard question, but I’m going to tell you this, and I mean it with sincerity, I’m not saying it to be overly broad. Any woman I’ve come in contact with has taught me something. Every single person. It could be a transient talking to herself, pushing a cart, to the vast knowledge of a physics professor at Weber State, every single one of them has an impact on how I view this world. I see every single human being as a question mark. Too often we see 33 human beings as periods or exclamation marks, so we no longer ask questions. But if you see another human being as a question mark, it makes you strive to ask questions, to understand who they are, why they are, what they are and how they got to be where they are now. I have surrounded myself by strong, independently minded women, that to ask and give you a list would be too exhaustive for you and too exhaustive for me. But I can tell you this, wherever they are, that I just feel kinship and I feel like we need to give everybody a platform. If I could end with something I think I would love to see the women of Ogden get together that those—subaltern people are people that have no voice. They have no sway, so think of people like women in jails and prisons. They have no mouthpiece. I would love to see us all get together and create some sort of way that we give to those women. Give them a platform, give them a way to voice what they care about, what their concerns are. These women, they’re mothers, they’re daughters, they’re wives. We all kind of just forget them., and that’s what makes me sad. So I can see you and I can see Rizzi, I can see my daughter, I get my visual representation of kinship, but who are we missing by looking at just each other? SL: Well, thank you, Marcy. MR: Thank you so much.