Oral History Program Bernice C. Stromberg Interviewed By Rebecca Ory Hernandez 3 October 2012 24 October 2012 i ii Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Bernice C. Stromberg Interviewed by Rebecca Ory Hernandez 3 October 2012 24 October 2012 Copyright © 2013 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 Weber and Davis County Communities Oral History Collection includes interviews of citizens from several different walks of life. These interviews were conducted by Stewart Library personnel, Weber State University faculty and students, and other members of the community. The histories cover various topics and chronicle the personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ 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: Stromberg, Bernice C., an oral history by Rebecca Ory Hernandez, 3 and 24 October 2012, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Bernice Stromberg October 24, 2012 1 Abstract: Bernice sat down with Rebecca Ory Hernandez in October of 2012 to share stories of growing up and moving several times with her family in Southern Utah. Her father was a well-respected music teacher. Bernice is the widow of Mr. C. William “Bill” Stromberg of Ogden, UT, who served on the founding Board of the Stewart Education Foundation. During this time, Bernice became very good friends with Elizabeth Stewart. Bernice is also a very good friend of former Weber State University President, F. Ann Milner. Since Bill’s passing in 2010, Bernice has remained a regular attendee of many WSU events, especially football games. The Stromberg Complex is named in Bernice and Bill’s honor. ROH: Today is Wednesday, October 3, 2012. We are in the home of Bernice Stromberg in Ogden, Utah. I am Rebecca Ory Hernandez with Weber State University and the Stewart Library. Why don’t you tell me when and where you were born? BS: I was born in Kanab, in Kane County Utah, on January 12, 1927. My dad taught music in the high school down there. The day I was born, my dad and the doctor were going to go to a basketball game, but when dad got home from teaching, there was the doctor waiting for him. My mother was on her knees scrubbing her floor. Dad said, “We’re going to the ball game.” The doctor said, “Oh no, we’re not. I’ve turned our tickets in. We’re going to have a baby around here if I can get you to get your wife into bed.” So Dad did. My dad had arranged for the neighbor to take the three older girls just to get them out of the way. I was the youngest in the family. He told my sisters as he dropped them off, “Now when you get home you’re going to have a really nice 2 surprise. So you be good and when I get home I’m going to show you your surprise.” When the girls came home, after I was born, they all cried and said, “I thought it was going to be a puppy or candy or ice cream or something. Not just a baby.” I have always said, “It’s good that I didn’t know it then because I would have had my feelings hurt.” ROH: How much distance is there between you and your sisters age-wise? BS: The one just older than me is Arlene and she is three years and three months. My oldest sister, Rachael, was seven years older. My next oldest sister was Lois and she was about five years older. ROH: So there were four girls total in your family? SB: Four girls, no brothers. When I got married, I didn’t know boys teased like they do and I had a hard time dealing with some of these things that came up in our marriage because I didn’t know how to respond. It was a wonderful life with a house full of girls. ROH: What was your maiden name? BS: Christensen. We did not live in Kanab terribly long because as happens in school nowadays and all time, what’s the first thing they cut from schools? This was during the depression. ROH: Art and music? BS: Art, music and all of those things. They cut out the music department. Dad played the violin. He lost his job and couldn’t get a job anywhere. Later in life, he 3 was in the first Utah Symphony Orchestra as the first violinist. It was a WPA Project. Reginald Beal was his director and Dad loved the Orchestra. It was a great time of his life. ROH: Where were your parents from? BS: They were from Moroni, Utah in Sanpete County. My ancestors came from Denmark. Most of the Scandinavian people settled in that part of Utah. That’s where my parents were both born. I don’t remember what year they came over from Denmark, but most of the family came. Mother and Dad went to high school there, from kindergarten to High School. They said it was a fun town. My sisters and I loved to go down there to visit. Grandma Christensen would let us go to the chicken coop and each gather one egg. We would take them to the grocery store and spend them or a bag of candy of our choice. Moroni is just East of Nephi, in the valley there. Dad finally bought a Model A Ford. It had no heater and no air conditioning. It took four hours in that Model A to go down Moroni to visit and we would come home the same night. We weren’t real happy going down just because of the long ride. Mother would heat rocks or bricks in the oven and get blankets and coats to keep us warm and we four girls would sit across the back seat. We kept warm but we didn’t like to stay so cooped up for that long. ROH: Did your mom work in the home or outside of the home as well? BS: She did work outside of the home. We were very poor after the Depression and we had no money. Many times we didn’t know where the next meal was coming 4 from. I ate more bread and milk during that time than I would ever like to say because sometimes that’s all we had. Mother would make bread because she had flour but we all liked it fixed differently. I liked mine hot with salt on it. My dad liked it cold with sugar on it. The rest of them just had their own way of having it too. It kept us alive and we got along just fine. My mother, bless her heart, made such a pleasant home. In the summertime for every meal, no matter what we had to eat, there was always a bouquet of flowers and a tablecloth on the table. She loved flowers and she grew a lot of them. We moved a lot during my life. I was teased quite often from my friends because of this. They’ll say, “Name a town, Bernice lived there.” ROH: Tell me some of the places you moved to that you can remember. BS: We moved to Richfield when we left Kanab. Dad did a number of jobs there to feed us. He sold the Deseret Newspaper and did anything he could find for work. I was only three when I lived there, but this time is the clearest part of my memory. I don’t know how mother let us do some of the things we did. We had an irrigation ditch in front of our house and we had a wide canal in the back of the barn a little ways. The girls would go down to the canal and pick Potawatomi Plums to make jam. (They were named after some of the Indians in Southern Utah. When Bill and I moved to our home in Ogden, I found a tree just like them in my backyard. I said, “My word where did that come from up here?” They were really good). One day, I just thought, “I’m going to go with the girls down to the canal”. We all were down there and I decided I wanted to go home, so I left by myself and decided to take a short cut. The field next to where we lived was all in 5 clover that was in blossom. I thought, “I’ll just run fast through that field.” By the time I got home I had literally hundreds of bee stings on my ankles and my feet. My feet were swollen and they really hurt. I did learn to never go through that part of the backyard again. We had a lot of fun experiences there and some not so fun ones. We had two dogs. One was a black and white spotted bird dog. The other was a curly haired white dog. I was so afraid of that white dog, because she would get hold of my coat in the cold weather and she would just shake her head as hard as she could and drag me all over the yard. I couldn’t get away from her. The big dog was my companion for my nap. We would lie behind the coal stove and he’d lay his arm over my shoulder and we’d have a nice nap together. ROH: That’s very sweet. BS: It was. I really slept so good back then. I remember that my mother made handmade soap. You have to use ashes for that, so she’d burn her trash out in our backyard and get the ashes from there. ROH: Did you have any other family around? BS: No. Before I was born there were places they lived that had some around. They lived in Bingham and they had an experience up there. Mother had Lois (my sister) sleeping in her crib in front of the window of the bedroom on the back side of the house. A huge rock dislodged and rolled down the mountain, through the window and into Lois’ crib. My mother just knew she was gone, but she was up in 6 the corner of the crib and the big rock went in the rest of the bed. Lois was not touched at all. We felt that was a great miracle. We moved to Salt Lake from there when I was in kindergarten. The only thing I remember about kindergarten was that we had to take naps. We had to bring a blanket and a pillow. I would lay mine down and this little boy in my class named Danny would wait until I lay down and he’d bring his blanket and lie down right next to me. It irritated me to no end. I would get up and move somewhere else and he would too. He was determined to take his nap next to me. That’s all I remember about kindergarten. ROH: You don’t remember learning to read and write, just remember that. BS: We didn’t learn to read and write until the first grade. ROH: Oh you didn’t? BS: Kindergarten was more of a social learning and how to share with the other children. It was learning how to get along with other children and it was a playtime. The teacher would read stories to us, but we didn’t have reading or writing. We’d color and things like that, but we didn’t have any kind of instruction while we were there. ROH: That must have been fun. BS: It was. About this time Dad heard that California had all the jobs, so we up and went to California. ROH: What part of California? 7 BS: Oakland. Dad and Mother both tried to find work there. ROH: What year is this? BS: I was five so about 1931. I don’t remember much about California because we weren’t there long enough. We rented the basement of a big home. I have no idea what they paid for it, but I know the lady gave it to them for almost nothing. My mother and dad even got down to the point where they were selling toothpaste door-to-door to earn enough money to feed us. I remember we had sub for Santa that year. Someone brought in all of these boxes for our Christmas. It didn’t bother us. Everybody was in the same situation. The only thing is my mother thought I had measles, come to find out it was fleas. We had fleas in the beds so bad that mother had to take the bedding outside to shake them and wash them often. I was allergic to the flea bites and I was covered from head to toe. That’s why she thought I had measles. They itched. Oh my gosh, I thought I’d die during that time. We used to go out in the desert and get turtles. We loved the desert turtles. They are very calm. Dad would drill a hole through the back of their shell and chain them to a post in the ground so they wouldn’t run away. It wasn’t harmful and it didn’t hurt them. We fed them religiously, particularly the outside leaves of the lettuce and what food we didn’t eat. It was a fun time there. We looked forward to Christmas, because that is the only time in the year that we got an orange. Oh, I looked forward to that one orange we would get. 8 ROH: What were some of the things you would eat when they did have a little bit of money? BS: We would eat vegetables. Mother would usually plant a garden. We would have a little bit of meat. Some of the neighbors that had cows would bring us over some milk. Fruit was too expensive. We just couldn’t buy fruit, except to can for the coming winter. ROH: Except for those plums. BS: Yes. While living in Oakland, my sister, Arlene, had an assignment in her school class to draw a picture with snow in it. None of the kids had really seen snow because it wasn’t cold enough. Arlene drew a picture and the ground was all black and the snowflakes were black. The teacher said, “I thought snow was white.” She said, “Well, you’ve never seen Salt Lake snow then.” Everybody in Utah used coal stoves to heat their houses, so it would be absolutely black in a day or two from the soot and smoke of burning coal. Arlene thought the snow was black. It makes sense. ROH: It does to a child. BS: Soon, California announced that they would pay the train fare for anyone that would go back to their home state. We decided we’d take advantage of it because we were worse off there than we were at home. So, we went back home and when we got there, I broke out in red measles. ROH: Were you the only one out of the four girls that caught it? 9 BS: Yes. I also had pneumonia with them. We had no place to go when we got to Utah, so my aunt took us in. We’d sleep on the floor in front of the fireplace. I would open my eyes when we’d lie down there and see these spinning things all over the fireplace. Of course, I was hallucinating from the fever. We lived with my aunt until we found a place on 5th East and 4th South. It was just one room above a business. It had no refrigeration and no air conditioning. It had nothing in it but beds for us to sleep on. You had to go down the hall to use the bathroom. I was still very sick when we moved in. They had the doctor come out again and he told mother, “That child has to have milk, or I’m not sure she’s going to make it.” Mother said, “I can’t afford milk.” He said, “Use canned milk and dilute it.” We had no place to keep it cold if I didn’t drink the whole thing in one day. It was always warm. That was the worst thing I ever drank. I don’t like canned milk to this day. I use it for cooking, but I don’t like it. ROH: Was your dad able to find a teaching job in Salt Lake? BS: Not at first. He was still struggling to find one. He decided he was going to open a printing shop. He would print and help distribute things. The business did not make much more money. We were still struggling. We finally found a little house in back of a larger house. I remember while we were there that if we were naughty, Dad would say, “You need your legs switched.” But he wouldn’t go out and cut the switches. We had to go out and cut our own switches. We would try to find the thinnest switches we could find. But we soon found out that they would 10 sting worse than the thicker ones. We straightened up pretty fast with that. It did not happen very often after that. ROH: I would imagine. Let’s take you back to Salt Lake. Were you in school in Salt Lake after you got well from the measles? BS: Yes. We came back to Salt Lake City before I finished first grade. I went to the Liberty School there in Salt Lake. I remember only three of my teachers in school and that’s all. In the first grade, her name was Ms. Anderson. My fourth grade teacher was Ms. Morgan. In the sixth grade, I had Ms. Jensen. In those times, a married woman could not teach school. I had a lot of girlfriends during my school years. After we graduated, 2 of them moved to the Ogden/Weber County area. It was great to renew our friendships. ROH: At what point did you move to Ogden? BS: We moved to Clearfield when my dad finally found a good job at Hill Field. My mother was working at the Ogden Arsenal. I also worked at the Ogden Arsenal between my junior and senior year of high school. I worked for a captain as a stenographer. His name was Captain Haugh. He said, “As soon as you graduate next year, come back and I’ll hold your job for you.” And he did. I had to report back to work on the last day of school. I checked with the Principal and he said that if I did not attend that last day, I could not graduate. I went to work that last day and when I went to graduation no one said anything about it and I graduated with the rest of the class. 11 ROH: Which high school did you attend? BS: I attended South High School in Salt Lake. ROH: Where were you in junior high? BS: In junior high I was at Lincoln. During the time I was in junior high we only went to junior high for two years. 7th grade was half a year and 8th grade was half a year. This meant that we only went to school a total of 11 years, so I graduated at 17 years old. ROH: Were you in Salt Lake for a long time? BS: I was in Salt Lake City all through my school years, until I came up to Clearfield to work. I was the only one at home by the time we moved to Clearfield, my sisters were all married. They all married within four months of each other. ROH: Wow. Your mom was busy. BS: She was busy. I think it’s easier if you have them close together. I had Louise and Connie get married one in January and one in August. That was harder to do because we were out of the mood, having them all together is almost easier. ROH: Were you involved in helping your sisters with their wedding decorations? BS: Oh yes. And we all wore the same wedding gown. My mother made my oldest sister’s wedding gown and we all wore the same one. We couldn’t afford more than one. ROH: Do you have pictures of everyone in the same gown? 12 BS: No. I have a picture of mine and Rachael had hers. The other two didn’t have a reception so there were no pictures. Unfortunately, the dress couldn’t be worn to the temple, but it was fun for us all to wear the same one. ROH: Do you still have the gown? BS: No, my oldest sister had it and I don’t know where it is now. She passed away a year ago. ROH: I hope she kept it in the family. BS: I’m sure it is. I think her daughter, Susan, may have taken it. ROH: That’s a special gown if four girls got married in the same dress. You touched a little bit about the fact that the Depression was going on. Do you have any memories of the Depression other than not having food to eat? The further we get away from it, the more people seem to forget that it was real. BS: It was very real. We were all aware of it. I don’t remember a whole lot as I was young when it began. When World War II started, gas was rationed, shoes were rationed, food was rationed, and meat was rationed. You couldn’t get butter, you had to use margarine. It came white and had a yellow pill in it. You’d break that pill and knead it in the plastic bag until it was yellow. They couldn’t sell it yellow. Sugar was rationed. We had food stamps for all of this. We were still feeling the effects of the Depression and when the war started it got even worse. I remember the day they announced the war on Sunday, December 7th. In Salt Lake at that time, the newspaper would send out a special edition 13 newspaper and the newsboys would go up and down all of the streets in Salt Lake saying, “Extra, extra! Read all about it,” trying to sell newspapers. They said, “The Japanese have attacked the United States in Hawaii.” I was just getting ready to go to Sunday school and that’s the way I heard it. After the World War II started, we still had to watch pennies. ROH: Were your older sisters working? BS: Yes, they all started working when they graduated from high school. My oldest sister, Rachael, went on a mission for our church to New York. The rest of us worked during this time. Arlene tried to go to the University of Utah. She graduated from high school when she was sixteen. She just could not seem to fit in with all the people at the University, because they were older than she was, so she got a job. I went to work during my senior year of high school. ROH: How did you get that job? BS: Well, because of the war the men were all gone, so all the women had to take on the jobs that the men weren’t here to do. I was very fortunate. I got a job at Deseret Book typing school orders for the Salt Lake schools. ROH: Was that being done at Hill Field? BS: No, I never worked at Hill Field; I worked at the Ogden Arsenal. Let me get back to that in a minute. You asked me how I moved to Clearfield. We decided that as long as all three of us, Mom, Dad and I, were working up here in this part of the state, we might as well move up here, rather than make that drive every day. So, 14 the family moved to Clearfield. We lived right there next to the Ogden Arsenal. It was closer to work. ROH: Was there a train at that time? BS: The Bamberger. Only the older people know about the Bamberger, at least the younger generation doesn’t. How can that be? ROH: Everybody talks to me about Bamberger. That Bamberger was very important. BS: When Bill and I were dating, we had to date by riding the Bamberger. He was in Ogden and I was in Clearfield. We didn’t have a car, and he couldn’t get any gas because it was rationed. He got 15 gallons of gas a week to go to work and he could have two gallons of gas for pleasure. Gas was a lot cheaper then, it was only about 18 cents a gallon. ROH: It still didn’t get you that far. BS: Exactly, we didn’t have the gas. I had money to buy gas, but gas was not available to buy. ROH: So your job was at Deseret Book? BS: Yes, I worked at Deseret Book in Salt Lake and I’d go in at 1:00 p.m. and I’d work until 6:00 p.m. President McKay, before he was President of the LDS Church, spent so much time in the Deseret Book, and I got well-acquainted with him. In fact, he married Bill and me. He was also my mother and dad’s friend and we, Bill and I, visited his office and asked him to perform our ceremony. 15 ROH: Today is Wednesday, October 24, 2012. We are in the home of Bernice Stromberg in Ogden, Utah. Present are Bernice and Rebecca Ory Hernandez from Weber State. Before I turned on the recorder you said there were a couple of things that we didn’t talk about last time. Why don’t you go ahead and tell me a little bit about your mom? BS: When I was in grade school, mother finally decided she would certainly like a washing machine. We had been using the scrub board. She said, “I’m going to go to work so I can buy a washing machine.” She worked for a dress factory and her job was sewing sleeves on dresses all day long for 10 cents an hour. She was such a beautiful seamstress. She went on later to work for Ehlers Drapery Company. She made band uniforms and the heavy velvet stage curtains for schools and churches. I don’t know how she did it because she was just a little bitty lady. ROH: Drapes like what you would see at an auditorium or a stage? BS: Yes. When I was a junior in high school, she quit work. That was the most delightful thing I had happen in my life because it was so nice to come home from school with my mother there. The house was warm and smelled good because she had been baking and cooking. It was such a wonderful feeling to have mother there when I got home. I was the youngest, so I was the first home all the time. Another thing I hated about coming home and being alone when I came home school, was the fact that we only had a coal stove in the kitchen that we cooked on and a Franklin pot belly stove in the living room for heat. Since I 16 was the first one home, I had to build all the fires in the stoves. I did this from the time I was probably eight years old. (When Bill and I were married, he couldn’t even build a fire in a fireplace. I’d have to build the fire in the fireplace because he couldn’t get it to start—even though he had been a boy scout). My high school years were not the most fun time in my life. I loved school, but there was just too much drama going on and people hurting one another’s feelings. In my year book, one of the girls wrote, “Bernice, I really would have liked to get to know you better, but you were always so stuck up.” I was not stuck up, I was very shy. I was totally afraid of strangers and other things. I was so shy that I would hold myself back and she thought I was just avoiding them all. Had I known, I might have done things differently. ROH: You graduated, but you didn’t walk? BS: Yes, I graduated and I did walk. Education has always been so important to Bill and me. Neither of us had the opportunity to go to college. As I mentioned before, we were very poor and going through the Depression. There was no money. I could go to work, but I couldn’t earn enough to pay tuition. Mother and Dad couldn’t work more than they already were, so I was unable to go to college. Bill tried to get in the service, but they wouldn’t take him because of football injuries he’d had in high school. ROH: Where did Bill go to high school? BS: Ogden High. 17 ROH: Let’s talk a little bit about Bill’s background as far as you are aware. Where did he grow up? BS: He was born and raised in Salt Lake until he was nine when his dad moved to Ogden because he got a better job there. ROH: What was his dad doing? BS: At that time, he worked as a grocery salesman. He’d go around to the stores and get all the food orders. He had all of Utah, part of Southern Idaho, and part of Wyoming as his district. He would write up all the orders and turn them into the grocery chain. ROH: Does the grocery chain still exist? BS: They’re gone now. The building is still there on Wall Avenue with the name on it, Utah Wholesale Grocery. Bill grew up in Ogden and graduated from Ogden High School. He played football and that was very important to him. ROH: What position did he play? BS: Tight end. He played both offense and defense back then. His school took region the year he graduated. After graduation he went to California to the Curtis Wright Air Technical School and learned to be an airplane overhaul mechanic. He liked mechanics, so he went there by himself. He had a buddy that was going with him, but he decided not to go. Bill told him, “I don’t care. I’m going anyway.” He went and when he came back he was 18 and went immediately to work for Hill Field. 18 ROH: What was Bill’s date of birth? BS: It was the 28th of February, 1925. He worked at Hill Field and loved what he was doing. We got married on August 29, 1945. I was still working at the Ogden Arsenal. I was eighteen and he was twenty. He lost his job three weeks after we got married. They were laying people off at the Base and if you didn’t have military experience, you were the first to go. He was one of the first to go. I said, “I’m not sure this is quite fair, I go to work every day and you stay home.” He got another job at the Navy base which was located where Freeport Center is now. He worked there for three years and then Hill started hiring and hired him again. He had been a warehouse man at the Navy base and when he went back to Hill, he qualified for a desk job rather than mechanics. Before he retired from Hill Air Force Base, he was the Branch Chief for the Material Management Department. He had been able to work himself up. ROH: When did he retire? BS: He retired in 1977. He was 52 years old. He called me one day from work and he said, “I’ve got a chance to retire Bernice, what should I do?” I asked, “Well, how is it going to affect our income?” He said, “It won’t affect it a bit.” They wanted to release one of the highest paid positions. So when they came back to him, he said, “Okay, I’m letting go of myself.” They said, “You can’t do that.” He said, “Yes I can.” They said, “We’ll transfer you.” He said, “You can’t. That’s an adverse action.” So, he retired. 19 He had a lot of things he was interested in doing after that. He went into land development and timeshare. It was a blessing in disguise. I didn’t work terribly long after we were married. I stayed home and became a housewife. We couldn’t have children right away and didn’t have Christine until 1947. My neighbor once came to see me and said, “Bernice, I need to talk to you.” I said, “Okay, what do you need?” She said, “You know how when girls get married and they have babies right soon everybody talks about them? Everybody at church now is talking about you and Bill and why you’re not having children.” I said, “I wish I knew why we weren’t having them. I don’t know.” We really did want children, so after a year or so I went to my doctor and he said, “You’ll never have any children.” I had a growth that had totally filled the uterus. He took that out I got pregnant right away and have had six children. ROH: You had many children. BS: It was a great thing. ROH: How did you meet Bill? BS: A girl that worked in the same office with me and I became very good friends. One day she said to me, “There are two really good looking guys that go to Mutual. Come with me” I said, “Okay.” It was Bill and Glen Robertson. Bill asked me on a date. The way we had to date was even funnier because gas rationing was still on. I lived in Clearfield and he lived in Ogden. The Bamberger was still running 20 and it would run to Ogden. The only stop close to where I lived was at the West gate of Hill Field and the Ogden Arsenal in Clearfield. I would take the train to Ogden and we’d go on our date. Bill would pick me up at the station and then take me back to the station after the date. I would then take the train back and then I’d have to walk on the highway to my house. I lived in a housing development down the street. When I think back on it now, that was a dangerous thing to do because sometimes it would be 10:00 or 11:00 at night and it was always after dark. But it was a different time then entirely. Telephone calls were ten cents each and ten cents was a lot of money then. We had to really plan our dating so that we could use the train for transportation and not have to use the phone to make plans. ROH: Where did you like to go when you did go out on dates? BS: We would go to movies, go for long walks, get ice cream cones, or we danced often at White City Ballroom. There was a hamburger place down on Grant Ave and everybody went there. It was open for years and they were the best hamburgers in Ogden. The place was run by a husband and wife. When they gave it up their children didn’t want it. They helped for a while and then they didn’t want it, so they sold it. It was a block west of Washington on Grant Ave. Of course, things have changed so much since then. ROH: Where did you get married? BS: We got married in Salt Lake at the LDS Temple. 21 ROH: Where was your first home? BS: It was a duplex on the corner of 29th Street and Jackson. ROH: Is it still there? BS: Yes. We had no furniture or anything, but we were stable. I said, “You know it is amazing what you could do without.” We were as poor then as I had been all my life. He hadn’t had to do without so he was not use to it. We bought a little wooden table and chairs for the kitchen. His mother gave us a hide-a-bed couch. I had a rocking chair that my mother gave us and we bought a bedroom set. Later on, we were able to buy a washer and dryer. Sometimes we would have no more than ten cents, after paying the bills and buying food, and we would walk up to Harrison Blvd.to Judy’s Ice Cream Store and we’d each buy an ice cream cone with that dime. We were broke. We both worked the first year and our annual income was 2500 dollars. That’s what we lived on and that’s what we bought the furniture with. A Grocery Store was just kitty-corner from where we lived. We had a big garden and we would sell a bushel of tomatoes to that store. They were always glad to get homegrown produce like that. Food was cheap back then. Lettuce was 5 cents, bread 10 cents and hamburger was 25 cents a pound. ROH: Did everyone have a garden at that time? BS: Yes. During World War II, they asked everybody to have a victory garden. Everybody who had a place where they could plant a garden did. I loved my 22 garden. I even planted some veggies out here this last year. I wanted some tomatoes, zucchini and cucumbers so I had one little spot where I took out roses and put in veggies. We really had a wonderful life. He brought home $64 everyday two weeks. We had to pay rent, buy groceries and we had to pay all our utilities, but we never went into debt. It’s just amazing what you could do that back then. When we were first married, Bill had a yellow convertible. Later on, He sold that car and we bought a lot next door to Bill’s parents on Mount Ogden Drive for 500 dollars. We built a house on it. It was a nice home. Our lot was large and went through the whole block. Years later, we sold the bottom half to a younger couple and they built a house on the bottom half of the lot. Soon all of the property owners did that. ROH: When you were home alone before you had children, how did you fill your time? BS: I started out right away working in my church and with young women. I was 18 years old and I taught girls that were 17 years old. I did lot of things with them. I also started doing genealogy work. I worked periodically. I worked as a ward clerk at the old Thomas Dee Hospital and I volunteered a few years in the McKay Dee Hospital. I told Elizabeth Stewart once, “I want to volunteer.” They had come in with a grandmother program at the McKay Hospital where older women would go into the nursery to feed the preemie babies. Elizabeth said, “I’d like to go with you but I wonder if they’d let me not ever having any children”. We went over and they said, “You bet.” We would go over once a week and feed these teeny tiny 23 babies. She absolutely loved it. They have done away with the program now. I don’t know why. One day, I had a little colored baby. He was so cute. His name was Maurice. I fed him, held him, and talked to him. He just grinned. I said, “You can’t grin.” He didn’t weigh five pounds yet and he was 3 months old by that time and he could grin. I thought, “You’re too little to smile.” That was a great time in my life. I had plenty of things that I could do. ROH: Tell me about your children. BS: Christine was born in 1947. She was not a happy baby. She cried night and day for seven months and we’d take turns sleeping. I would sleep a few hours and Bill would sleep a few hours. But she was a beautiful baby. She wasn’t even red or anything. She had such fair skin and looked like she was two or three months old when she was born. She got her first teeth at two months. She has taught school. She graduated from Ogden High Schools and Weber State University. She earned both a Bachelor’s and Master’s Degree. She married Travis D. Crowther. We encouraged all of our children go to college because we felt it was very important. She received a “normal scholarship” in the education department. You had to teach in Ogden schools for one year if you accepted that scholarship. It covered the tuition. She went through college and always said, “I really want to be a college bum. I would like to go to college all my life and never quit.” She’s done that and gone into so many things. She taught anything from second grade to sixth grade. They wanted her to go into high school teaching, but she said, “I don’t want to because if kids don’t get a good foundation in elementary school, they have too much trouble in junior high and high school.” She’s retired now. 24 ROH: She’s not still going to school? BS: No. Both she and Travis are retired and they want to travel and be with their grandchildren Richard was our second child born in 1949. He was a good baby and a good child. But he’s now so full of, I do not know what. He’s always teasing. Sometimes I wonder about him. He went to Weber State University too, for computer science. When he got his master’s degree, he went into mathematics. He decided mathematics would do him more good in what he’d probably end up doing. So he got his master’s in mathematics and went to work for Phillips Oil. He works at Northrop Grumman as an engineer in missiles now. Richard had a hard start in school. In the first grade, I was very worried about him. He would go to school, but I knew he wasn’t learning to read or the other things he should be learning. I would call the teacher and go to all the parent teacher conferences and she would say, “He’s just doing fine.” At the end of the school year, that teacher said, “You might just as well forget that boy. He’s never going to learn anything.” I said, “You’ve been telling me all year he was doing fine.” She said, “Well he isn’t. He’s not smart enough to learn.” I found out later that he had spent the entire first grade on a chair in the closet or out in the hall. She didn’t like him and she didn’t want to be bothered with him. I went to the principal and that teacher was transferred the next year. I was not the only parent that had problems with her. So Richard had a hard time trying to catch up. When he was in the fourth grade he had a marvelous teacher, May DeLange. She called me on the phone and said, “Bernice, will you have Richard do his oral reading at home 25 and I’ll have him do the silent reading at school. They all make so much fun of him and call him Bucky Beaver.” You see, his front teeth stuck out so far that he could not pronounce some letters. He could not have his teeth fixed until he was 11 years old. He really developed quite an inferiority complex, which you wouldn’t know nowadays. Through high school he still had problems. Every time they had a parent teacher conference I’d get a letter that said, “You need to bring Richard in. He’s failing in school.” I made an appointment and went over to discuss this with his teacher. He told me that he gets an A on every exam, but he never hands in one page of homework. You get that many zero’s, the A’s can’t cover it. I asked him, “Why? I know you do your homework because we all sat at the table and you did it.” He said, “I know. It’s in my locker.” I said, “Why didn’t you turn it in?” He said, “Because I think it’s about time they grade you on what you know and not what you do.” When he graduated from college, he did some graduate student teaching at BYU. I asked him one day, “Do you require your students to hand in their homework.” He said, “Well, of course, how can I watch and follow their progress?” I said, “My how things have changed since you went to high school.” He graduated from Weber State University and received his Master’s from Utah State University. He married Pamela Day Cook. Third was Louise, born in 1951. She was so timid that many the kids bullied her. She’d go down to wait for the school bus but she wouldn’t get on the bus, she’d walk back home. I didn’t always have a car to take her to school because we only owned one car and Bill had to take it to work. She had to wear glasses in the first grade and that bothered her too. She was such a smart girl. 26 She attended Weber State University for her Associate degree in Nursing. She went on and finished her Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees. She is now just finishing her Doctorate Degree. She teaches nursing at Weber State. At this time, she has passed her doctoral exam and only has her dissertation to do in her doctorate of nursing education. She is married to Michael Salmond. She has four children—two sets of twins. Fourth, came Connie and she was something else. She was born in 1954 and she was so anxious to be born that I almost did not make it to the hospital. She was so effervescent that she couldn’t sit still to eat her dinner. She would be on a chair, off a chair, up and down and around the chair. I’d say, “Just sit on your chair.” She’d say, “I can’t, Mom. I just can’t.” She would walk to school down to the bus with Louise who just prodded along, and Connie would dance around her and the other kids at least six times before they got to the bus. She did well with school and did well with friends. When she was in third grade and I went to parent teacher conference the teacher said, “That child is the most effervescent child I have ever had in school.” I said, “Yes I know she is. I’ll talk to her and see what we can do.” Mrs. Brown said, “Don’t you dare. Can’t you imagine how wonderful life would be to be that happy? She does her work and she doesn’t bother any of the other kids.” She’s still that way. She attended to Weber State University, for only one a year. She took all of the business classes and she’s since been the head secretary in the Cook Elementary School where all her children went to school. So that worked out fine. She married Stanley W. Sims and they have four children. 27 Douglas was our fifth child, and he was as bad as Connie was and couldn’t sit still very long. He loved to be alone and he loved to be home. He could not sit still in school. I told the teacher, “I’ll talk to him and see what I can do.” She said, “Don’t do it. I can teach him on his feet as well as I can teach him on his seat. He never bothers anyone. He just walks around the room and comes back and sits in his chair.” I thought, “Oh, what a marvelous teacher.” President Thompson used to call him the renegade because he’s the only one that didn’t go to Weber State. He went to BYU because he had a full ride scholarship in football. He received his Bachelor’s and Master’s from BYU and then went to Hanuman Medical University in Philadelphia for a Master’s of Physical Therapy. He now works in physical therapy at Logan Regional Hospital. He married Maren Smith. Then there’s Curtis. He was the best baby and little boy we ever had. We’d take him to the grocery store and he’d get in front of the cereal shelves and just look at things. He’d put his hands behind his back and never touched a thing. We’d do all our shopping and go back and he would still be looking at the cereal. I remember getting in the car one day to go home and said to Bill, “Oh, I think we left Curtis in the store.” He did well in school. He’s principal now at the Kaysville Junior High School. Most of our children went into education. ROH: Did they all go to the same school growing up? BS: They all went to Ogden High School. Christine, Richard and Curtis got their master’s degrees from Utah State. Louise did hers online. She got her Master’s 28 through Phoenix and her Doctorate through North Central in Phoenix. She said, “I’ll graduate in May, 2014 and I expect you to go to Phoenix. I’m going to walk. I put enough into this that I’m going to walk, so I guess I have to go to Phoenix with her.” They’ve all been good kids and have good jobs. ROH: What were some of the family traditions you had with the kids? BS: Well, Bill was traveling so much, so we took one big vacation a year with all the children. But I went alone with Bill a lot of times when he went on TDY. The grandmothers were always thrilled to take all those children for a time like that. Sometimes they’d divide the week. My mother and dad lived in Salt Lake and Bill’s mother and dad lived on the other side of the Weber State campus on Mt. Ogden drive. ROH: Where did you travel to when you took vacations? BS: We went where he had to go work. We would go to Las Vegas and Disneyland every year since it opened, when our children were at home. He’d often have to go down to California and we would rent a house on the beach or close to it and take all the children. You would think we were nomads because we had the play pen, the high chair, and everything on top of the car and all the kids and suitcases inside the car. He had to go to several places in California and when he became branch chief of the material management department he had to visit every air base, even the ones overseas. For three years he was gone 70 percent of each year before he got his technicians trained to do it. He said to me at that time, “Bernice, you’ve 29 stayed home and raised our children, when I retire I’m going to take you to Europe and to every country I went to.” And he did, except for Trippoli. Cadaffe had already taken that country and that air base was closed. ROH: What was that like? BS: It was wonderful. On one trip we visited ten countries—Italy, Germany, Austria, France, Netherlands, and so many around there. We took Don and Elizabeth Stewart with us and my sister and her husband. It was a wonderful trip. We also went to England a couple of times and went to Israel, Egypt, and many other places. ROH: On the same trip or a different? BS: No, it was at different times. Elizabeth wanted to go do some genealogy in England and Scotland, so we went there one time. When I think about all the trips, they were wonderful experiences. We later bought a condo in Indian Wells, California down in the Palm Springs area and we built a cabin up at Baer Lake. We also traveled a lot with the children. Yellowstone was one of the favorite places as a family. ROH: Tell me a little bit about Elizabeth Stewart because you were friends with her and her name is on the library. I like to ask people to tell me a little bit about her. BS: She lived just two doors up the street from us on College Drive. Bill was Bishop then and we got to know her well through the ward. We traveled a lot with them in their big bus. She became one of my best friends. We confided in each other. 30 One thing I remember so well is when she got irritated with Don somehow. All of a sudden the doorbell rang and here’s Elizabeth. She got in her car and drove down to my house, past only one house, into my driveway and came in just fuming. I can’t even remember what it was, but she was so irritated with him, so we sat and talked. Then all of a sudden she said, “I think I can go home now Bernice.” So she got in her car and drove past the one house again and up into her house. She and I did so many things together and I remember once she was over and I was complaining about my children not doing what they were supposed to be doing. She took me by the shoulders and looked me right in the eye and said, “Bernice, I would give everything I own to have your children.” We were good for each other because we could say things and the other would never get angry or upset; we’d just take it with a grain of salt. She was one of the most generous people I have ever met. She loved children. Our children called her Grandma Elizabeth. She was also known as the cookie Grandma. She tried to teach me piano lessons, but I didn’t do too well. My dad was a violinist and he was in the first Utah Symphony Orchestra. One day I said, “Dad, I want to learn to play.” (Richard did and he played in the youth city orchestra, but when he got to high school and played football he would not carry that violin to school). I did my best, but I don’t hear music very well. One day after we finished the lesson my dad said, “You know, Bernice, I think you 31 ought to choose another instrument to play.” It was the same with piano, I could not do it well. ROH: Just not your instrument. The piano wasn’t either? BS: No. You can see why I didn’t do much outside of the home with all the children home and no husband most of the time. When all of the children graduated from high school and were working and such, Curtis was the only one that was still home and Grandpa Stromberg was living with us as well. I also had my mother with us for 8 years and him for 20 years. Then Curtis had a friend that went on mission and his mother had cancer. He knew she wouldn’t live until he got home from his mission. When he did get home his mother had passed away and his dad had remarried and moved into a trailer home. The new wife had a teenage daughter and his dad just looked at him and said, “I’m sorry Greg, you’re going to have to find another place to live because I don’t have room for you anymore.” Greg tried living with his sister, but she and her husband were newly married and it just didn’t work. He was going to Weber State and he asked Curtis, “Do you think your mom and dad would let me live with them while I go to school.” Curtis said, “I’m sure they would.” So we took in Greg. Then, we took in Debbie who wasn’t a member of our church but she wanted to join so badly. She and her mother lived here in Ogden in the East Ridge apartments in a one bedroom unit with her live-in boyfriend. Debbie was sleeping on the couch. She came to live with us and eventually joined the church. 32 She lived with us for a long time. I still call her my bonus child. We had both of them for a while. When Greg finished school and went back down to Centerville. We had a swimming pool in our back yard and Curtis and Annette wanted their little girl to learn to swim. They brought Kari Sue up to teach her to swim in our swimming pool. Kari Sue was not a happy girl and she finally said, “Can I come live with you?” I said, “As long as your parents give you permission.” That was always the one criterion with all the kids that lived with us. Her parents came up and visited with us and they said they thought it would be a good thing. She later went to Seattle for a better job. Then there was Michael, who had dated Debbie and wanted to come and live with us. By this time Debbie had dated and had been engaged to another young man. One week before the wedding was to be he said, “I don’t want to get married.” We had to give all the things back and I had made her wedding dress and everything. She was lost and I said, “Would you like to go on a mission?” She said, “Yes.” So we sent her on a mission down to Costa Rica. She was such a spoiled child because she was an only child. I said, “You know, you’re never going to make it down there with all the bugs and the forest and all of that. I’m just not sure you’re going to make it.” She told me later, “Bernice, every time I felt like coming home, I thought, no way I am not going to give you the chance to say I told you so.” She stayed her full time. She spent some time in the hospital because she caught some of the bad bugs. 33 After Bill’s mother died, Grandpa Stromberg came to live with us. He was pretty good for quite a few years, but then I had to watch him every minute because he’d wander. Later, my Ddd passed away and my mother was living alone, but I was afraid of her falling so we took her in as well. Counting the seven years that I took care of Bill, it had been 35 years that I was taking care of elderly people or teenagers in my home. I loved every minute of it. I really did. Bill’s dad was the sweetest man I’ve ever met. I always called him my spiritual giant. ROH: What was his name? BS: Verner Lorenzo Stromberg. His parents came over from Sweden with one sister and two brothers. One baby died and they buried him at sea. Verner was born here. One day, his dad didn’t come in from the fields, he was 35 years of age and they found him dead out in the field. His mother and grandmother were living here too and they didn’t even speak English. It was kind of a hard time for them. My ancestors came from Denmark. I’m a pure Dane. Bill and I really had a wonderful life. We were always together. Everything we did, we did together or with the family. Did you want me to talk about Weber State? ROH: Yes, I was going to ask you how you became so generous with your time with Weber State. BS: It was a pleasure. I love the people there and the people that work there. John Johnson, the athletic director, I just felt like he was my own. He wasn’t married when he was here and he’d come over to our home and sit in the big chair in 34 front of the fire place and say, “I absolutely love to just come over here and sit and talk with you and Bill.” Bill was involved first, other than our involvement with the children going to Weber State. I did take one class there in home decorating. When Elizabeth and Don Stewart became sick and needed to have some more on their board, they asked Dean Hurst, Jack Lampros and Bill if they would serve on the board. ROH: How did Bill meet Elizabeth? BS: He was her Bishop at that time and she lived two doors up the street from us. ROH: Okay, so that’s how they met originally? BS: Yes. Well, we knew them before that because we lived so close to them. She was the most generous person I’ve ever met in my whole life. A lot of people tried to take advantage of her. She’d get 15 to 20 letters in the mail asking for money. ROH: From random people in town? BS: Yes. They’d say, “I’m a friend of so-and-so who’s the friend of…” and on and on. She said, “Well, I can’t give it to you. We are a 501c3 charity organization and we cannot give to just an individual. It has to be charitable organization.” That would cut most of them off. ROH: You’re not the first person to say that to me. The first time I heard it I was surprised. Now, I’m surprised to continue to hear it. 35 BS: They knew she had money and wanted some of it. I had Don and Elizabeth over for Sunday dinner for 30 years, except holidays when they would go to Carol and Dean Hurst’s. My mother was living with us at this time and would always make pies for dinner. She was the best pie maker in the world. When Don came to my mom’s funeral he said, “Bernice, who’s going to make our pies now?” I said, “Probably me.” ROH: Do you? BS: Oh yes, I’ve made pies for a long time. ROH: So she taught you how to make pastry and pies? BS: Yes, Danish pastries and Danish foods, which I love. A Danish soup called hot soup. It’s made with raisins, prunes, sliced lemon, cinnamon sticks, and tapioca. It’s all boiled together and all those flavors blend. Oh, I did love that soup and so did Bill’s dad because it was also a soup they had in Sweden. I finally found a recipe for it. My niece took all of mother’s recipes when she passed away and I didn’t get some of them that I wanted. My children and Bill hated the soup. It was so good though, I couldn’t imagine them not liking it. Another quick thing about Elizabeth, she was known as the cookie grandma of the neighborhood. She always made cookies and the kids would go to her house or mine after school. I would always have hot bread and peanut butter and honey. One day, Douglas came home when he was about five and said, “You know what, Mom, I’m going to marry Elizabeth.” I said, “Hun, she is already married to Don.” He said, “I don’t care. I’m going to marry Elizabeth.” He 36 just kept telling her that and we just laughed about it. When he got engaged to be married, he came home from the “Y” and said, “I’ve got to go talk to Elizabeth.” I said, “Okay, what do you have to talk to her about?” He said, “I’ll tell you when I come home.” He went up there with his bride-to-be, and asked her permission to marry Maren. She gave him and Maren her permission and blessing. ROH: That’s so sweet. BS: It was just a sweet, sweet thing. ROH: That’s adorable. How did you start to get involved with Weber State? BS: I always went with Bill. I was always with him because they invited us to everything and that’s how I got to know Presidents Ann Milner, Paul Thompson, Steve Nadauld, President Bishop and Bill Miller. So you can see how far back we go with people from the university. I just tagged along with Bill. ROH: I’ve talked with the Miller Sisters. BS: Their mother, Mary, and I were so close and every time I’d see her she’d say, “Bernice, remember you’re talking at my funeral. I’ve told the girls that you’re going to be the speaker at my funeral.” I just fluffed it off and she lived a lot of years after that. When she passed away Donna called me and said, “Bernice, I’ve got a question to ask you. “Would you mind if we girls talk at mother’s funeral? We think that would be nice, but I know mom always said you were to be the speaker. I wanted to clear it with you before we did anything about it.” I said, “Oh you sweet girl. I always expected you to.” That family was a very 37 special family. It wasn’t until Bill passed away that I was asked to be on the Stewart Foundation board. That’s when I got a little more involved myself. I knew everybody so I felt like I was part of them already. ROH: Like part of the family. BS: Right. It’s a great experience. That’s why when they called me recently on the MS thing she said, “We’d like to know what you’ve done in the community.” I said, “Shelly, I haven’t really done a whole lot in the community.” Bill and I liked the weight training building and they needed to make it bigger and get all new equipment and so Bill and I did that. I always think about what Jack said one day when they were asking him about donating money to the college. He said, “You know, it’s an awesome experience to be an entrepreneur. Especially when you do it with someone else’s money,” meaning the foundation’s money. I really laughed at him. ROH: He is funny too. BS: He is. Both he and his wife are. That’s my connection with them, the foundation, and we became friends and traveled together. I can’t say that I have done much other than just being a part of all of it with Bill. ROH: Well, that’s very important because without your support we wouldn’t be able to do all the wonderful things that we’re able to do and it means a lot to the university. 38 BS: That’s about all I did. I had been asked during all those years of raising children, if I would be the Weber County chair of one of the county foundations. They asked me many times if it would be possible to come and work in the social services to work with the pregnant girls, to be their friend, take them to Dr. appointments and let them know that someone cares and loves them. I wanted to help, but I always had someone at home that needed my care. I’ve always felt bad that I couldn’t do more. I started working with the young women in our church when I was 18 and did that for 44 years. ROH: Are you still doing that now? BS: No. I had to give that up. It got to where I could not do the camping and hiking Ben Lomond and all those things, but I did teach for a while. They said, “Just come back and teach the girls and we’ll get you help for the activities. You can just do the lessons.” ROH: What keeps you busy now? BS: Great grandchildren. ROH: Are you still serving on the board? BS: Yes. I still am. I’m trying to think of what I do. ROH: Trying to keep up with all the family? BS: Well, that’s the thing, I always have somebody here. Earlier I had an Avon lady that came to my house and she said, “I can’t wait to come here. It’s just like a three-ring circus. I never know how many are coming in and out.” Ours was a fun 39 home. Bill and I both thoroughly loved teenagers. When the kids got to be teenagers and people, we just had a ball. Also, Ned and Maggie Favero had the White House wedding reception—do you remember that? ROH: I’ve read about it. BS: She asked me if I would consider doing catering for them. This was a perfect opportunity for my girls and me. We spent many, many hours together baking, making candy and tarts, talking, laughing, and bonding our love and lives together. It gave the girls work experience and an income. I loved to cook. I hate it now, but I loved it then and in the stake anybody that had a problem with cooking would call me. In fact, one ward has already called to see if I would make chocolates again. I said, “No, but Christine and Connie can do it.” It really was a circus. We loved kids. When people start complaining about their teenagers I think, “Why? They’re all so wonderful.” I still have them come and visit, some of those that I taught back in 1945 and 1946. For years they would invite me out to lunch once in a while. Teenagers are pretty smart, they know genuine love and they know a put-on. Bill felt that way too, he absolutely loved young people and they knew it. I smiled when one of the hospice people came in and she said, “The first time I walked in your kitchen, I knew that this was a happy home.” I have a sign up on the wall that says, “It’s a Wonderful Life.” Another lady in our ward brought me one that says, “Life is good.” It was good. It really was. I can’t say we always agreed. We could build houses and get 40 along fine, but put us in the yard and there was no way could we work together. I always said to him, “If you want to get a housekeeper or a gardener, be sure it’s a housekeeper because I want to stay the gardener.” He loved to build and I loved to work in the yard. My life was full raising our children and caring for parents, filling our home with teenagers when ours began to leave. When we moved here to Chimney Hills, it was the first time we lived alone, Bill and I. I really miss the full house. We have been truly blessed with a great posterity, 6 children, 26 grandchildren and 55 great grandchildren. When you add in all the spouses, that is over 100 in our family. Life’s been good, and I wish I could share more. I’ve helped a lot of people, but it’s just been me doing the things I love to do which is helping people. I still like to serve people. ROH: I thank you very much for taking the time to share your story with me. BS: Thank you, I am really glad to get better acquainted with you.