Oral History Program Rene Van Wagoner Interviewed by Michael MacKay 17 March 2004 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Rene Van Wagoner Interviewed by Michael MacKay 17 March 2004 Copyright © 2004 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management 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: Van Wagoner, Rene, an oral history by Michael MacKay, 17 March 2004, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Leslie Simmons Hodgson 1879-1947 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Rene Van Wagoner. It was conducted on March 17, 2004 and concerns her grandfather, architect Leslie Simmons Hodgson. Hodgson was an important architect in Ogden during the early part of the 1900s. He is best known for his work on Ogden High School, the City/County building, and the Egyptian Theater. The interviewer is Michael MacKay. This oral history was part of MacKay’s senior thesis for the Weber State University History Department. MM: I'm here with Rene Van Wagoner. I'm Michael MacKay. And Rene Van Wagoner is the daughter of Robert Hodgson who took over the business of Leslie Hodgson, and was Leslie Hodgson's son, and we'll let you introduce yourself and tell us who you are. RV: I'm Rene Van Wagoner, and as he said I'm the daughter of Robert D. Hodgson and a granddaughter of Leslie S. Hodgson, and great people. MM: Tell us how old you were when your grandfather died. RV: I was 14 years old. MM: Fourteen years old. Right. Well, maybe the first question I'll ask is what is your first memory. How you remember your grandpa? RV: He had a cabin up South Fork, and he loved to work in the...It wasn't exactly a yard. It was left kind of wild, but he did plant a few flowers, and he loved to work there. And unknown to me until just recently...and he's been gone a long time since about '47...I realized that he was a very, very depressed person. I mean he 1 would struggle with depression all his life, as did my father. And I didn't realize that about either of them until after they were both gone. MM: How did you come to a realization of that? RV: Because I'm clinically depressed. And now I recognize it. We called him Pop. MM: Pop. RV: Grandpa Hodgson. MM: Uh huh. RV: And when he passed away, we began to call our father Pop, instead of Papa. But Pop. Grandpa would work hours and hours out in the...raking leaves, planting flowers, just taking care of the place, and we loved to go up there, and there was a loft in the building. It was a log cabin, only it was great big. We loved to go up and play in the loft. Pop, grandpa again, would always, almost always, when we were up there, would toward evening, get his fishing pole and walk down to the bridge that we had to cross to get across the Ogden River to get into the property where his home was. And he'd sit on the bridge and fish. He was kind of a loner. I thought. But I remember two or three times my father Bob asked us to sing for him when we were just little girls, my sister-in-law, and we'd sing. I don't remember what we sang. It might have been Church hymns; it might have been little ditties that we had learned from mama. But whatever it was, it always shocked me, because Pop would sit there with tears running down his face, and that seemed so different to me as a child, from the way I perceived him, which is not what he was at all. Sadly as a child, I didn't understand. I had to get to this 2 point before I really understood that both of them were very, very depressed. And this was before there were medications to take care of it. MM: How did you perceive him when you were a young child? RV: I was a little afraid of him, because he was quiet. He was a tall man, taller than my father I perceived him. And that is about all that as a little child, I...You know... MM: Yeah, there's not a lot of_at that age. RV: And the fact that he cried when we sang, which seemed so different from everything else I perceived about him, which was stern and very quiet, which of course now, as I look back I realize that wasn't the situation at all. that he was a very loving man. But, struggling with depression. I do remember how well he took care of Danny his wife. Louie Maud Hodgson. He was very tender with her. Now, I more heard this than saw this, heard it from my aunts. But he took such good care of her. She had, I believe it was polio, when she was a little girl, and her feet quit growing. She had little tiny feet, and she couldn't walk a lot, very little. And he would take such good care of her, such loving care, and that did impress me very, very much. But that frankly, is about all I can remember about him, because as I said he died at 14. I know we were up at the cabin, a cabin my father owned on Pineview Dam. This was quite a ways from where his cabin was up South Fork. Well, not too far, but a ways, and I remember my cousin driving up and telling my father, and I had no idea the impact it had on him at that time, but being both working in the office with him and being his son, his only son...He just went off alone, and either...I believe he sat looking out over the water. It was on Pineview Reservoir, and he sat there a long, long time, and he grieved, and he 3 loved Grandpa Pop, far more than I ever dreamed, and I didn't realize it until then. Of course, as I said, I was a child, and I didn't know about relationships, except mother and father and child, which I was. MM: Right. So the effects of his death were large? RV: Well, yes it was, because it was sudden. Gammy, Grandma Hodgson, Gammy went in to finally, apparently, didn't sleep in the same room at that time, and she didn't seem...She went around to the side of the bed. And she was on the floor on the wall side of the bed...And I know Gammy didn't smile, didn't even smile for a year or so, maybe longer than that. I never saw her smile, and we saw her quite often. But finally...I know she never got over it. But finally she began to take an interest in other things to a degree. And her daughters took over where Pop had taken care of her. Her daughters took care of her, but they lived close by. Two of them lived on the same street. MM: Right. RV: So that's all I can remember that I know of, of personal things about Pop. MM: Do you remember any stories that perhaps your aunts or your fathers tell about your grandfather? RV: I really don't remember any at this point. I know he loved to fish, but I knew that firsthand. And I may even have gone to the bridge with him a time or two. I remember sitting with my legs swinging over. It was just boards across the river. There was no sides to it, so you could just sit down and look over. Turn it off for a minute. (Dog barking) 4 MM: Now, at the time of your father's...or your grandfather's death...your father took over the business, right? RV: Yes, but he did not have a license. He was not a licensed architect at the time. You're probably aware of that. MM: Right. RV: But his older sister's husband. Uncle Roy had an engineering license. He was a civil engineer, and he used that license until a couple of years after Pop's death, and at that point he took the Utah test and became a licensed architect. I remember his studying and studying and studying for it, and how we had to be quiet and allow him to study, because... MM: It was so important. RV: Yeah, and he was a draftsman, and I think way back then if you spent enough years as a draftsman, then you could become an architect, but maybe not, because by the time Pop died, Grandpa Pop, he had to have a license, so he became a licensed architect, too and headed up the business, and he and Uncle Roy were partners. MM: Did the business struggle much when there was a switch, or was it able to just keep going? RV: I think...this is my assumption. I don't know. I would guess that there was a bit of a struggle. And Pop, I mean my father Bob...I'll try to call him Bob...He was the one who would go out and get the jobs. What I mean, he'd go out and talk to the school board members, the superintendent school board members and those in charge, and I'm sure there were bids. Now, maybe there weren't for the architect. 5 Maybe it was when the construction companies came in. I don't know how that worked. But he was the one who would go out and do that. He had two or three draftsmen and a secretary. Her name was Gladys. MM: Now there was three people that were part of his architecture firm, right? RV: Well, there was Uncle Roy who was a civil engineer, who did that end of it, the engineering part. There was my father who were partners. There was Ken Hall, and Jim Chamberlain, and Gladys, whose last name I do not remember. MM: She was the secretary? RV: Yeah, and she helped read the specifications. They would...I don't know whether they would draw up plans first or after, but they would do the specifications, and my father, after she's type then up, she and my father would read them together to make sure they were correct. They'd each have a copy, and my father would tell her when something was incorrect, or when there was a change he wanted made. She was a wonderful secretary. MM: Did she work for them before your grandfather died or did she come later? RV: I don't know. I would guess she came on later, but I do not know. MM: Okay. RV: But I think it must have been later. MM: Yeah. After they got it going, did you feel that the architecture firm was successful after that? RV: Yes, very. They built their own building. They built it up on Monroe, between 25th and 26th Street on the east side. Later, after my father retired and sold it. it became a doctor's office for Dr. Nebeker. Conrad Nebeker. But they designed it. 6 and they used it for years and years. That was their office, and I think that they were very successful from all the buildings my father did on Weber State campus and up in Box Elder County Schools. Layton High School and homes, fancy homes. They did very few homes, but they did a few beautiful, expensive homes for friends. And...or people who could afford them. (Laughs) And, as I said, they did several buildings up on Weber State's campus. MM: Now he mainly just did buildings, not residential? RV: Not much residential, no. And I don't know if you want personal things about him... MM: Yeah, personal is exactly what I'd like. RV: Well, he was a hunter. He had beautiful, beautiful guns that we three children inherited, rifles and pistols, and he did his own loading. And. often he would send one place to have the stock made, often carved, and the barrel he would send to another place. I think Belgium to have it blued, whatever that means. And I'm not a hunter. I have his guns simply as a keepsake. And, then he had all of the triggers gold-plated. As I said, he loaded his own cartridges. He had it set up in the basement so he could load. He had a loading table that had everything that he needed to load these cartridges. He hunted every big game animal in North America and got a trophy, except a mountain sheep. MM: Awesome. RV: He got one often buffalo permits in the state one year. I guess he put in every year. He took friends with him, but they could carry rifles. And one interesting thing: the guide told them that there was one mean old buffalo, you know. He 7 was just as mean as he could be, this bull, and they had shot him with a tranquilizer or whatever to put him to sleep, and they painted great big targets, the round targets on both sides of him hoping somebody would shoot him, because he was so mean, but my father did get the buffalo, and his friends helped him clean it out and then he divided the meat with them, because a buffalo is a great big animal and we ate buffalo for quite a while. We ate venison and elk. I think we ate moose. I tasted antelope, but it tastes like real, real strong mutton. And I hated it. In fact, he finally gave the meat to my aunt who was not well-off and who seemed to enjoy it, she and her family, but the meat never went to waste. MM: Yeah. RV: He didn't kill indiscriminately. He killed and used the meat. So I was not crazy about venison, but mom could cook wild duck like you wouldn't believe. It was delicious. He hunted pheasants and I think quail, and occasionally when he got a permit, geese. And I can't remember what else, but we ate everything except the antelope that he killed, and that went to my aunt. So he was an avid hunter, loved the outdoors. MM: Did he pick that up from your grandfather? RV: Yes, yes, when he was just a kid went camping and hunting. I didn't know Grandpa Hodgson, Pop when he was in his younger days. I didn't remember him in his younger days. Pop, I believe was the youngest. Maybe not, maybe he was in the middle. Wherever he was, I don't remember, except Grandpa Pop's fishing. But I do know that he went hunting, and that's where he picked up his love for 8 both the out-of-doors and hunting. There were several buddies who...and I think their fathers were friends of Grandpa, and the boys were friends of my father, and they did a lot of things together through high school, these boys, and my father was...I think he was the top ROTC shot at Ogden High School. No, he didn't go to Ogden High School. I don't know where it was... MM: ROTC top shot. RV: Yeah, but he was a top shot. I think he either got a hundred out of a hundred or 99 out of a hundred. And this is when I believe they used clay pigeons. And when we were kids up at the cabin, he taught us to shoot 22's. I don't...I'm not interested at all in hunting. I'm an environmentalist, but I do know that deer die all the time if there's a heavy winter, and that by hunting, the herds are controlled more and there's less starvation. But I couldn't shoot an animal. I'd have a hard time killing a mouse. I mean, I could set a trap if it invaded my space, but the only thing I gladly would kill is a spider if it were in the house. But anyway, he loved the out-of-doors. He played poker. He had a bunch of guys that met, and they played poker all the time, once a week. And my father would cook, because he hated to clean up, so he always did the cooking, and they could clean up. One time he decided to feed them rattlesnake meat that you can get, and he fixed it and fed it to them without their knowing what the meat was. And apparently it tastes somewhat like chicken, and it wasn't until after they had eaten that he told them. And one of his friends went outside and threw up. MM: (Laughs.) 9 RV: Yeah, he had kind of a sense of humor about that. He belonged to the Weber Club. Now, this, at the time, was where the men met to play poker and other card games, I suppose, gin rummy. And he was a master. My brother went on a mission, and when he would need money...This was before there was a set amount that you sent...and Bob my brother was in Germany, and when he'd write home and said he needed money. Pop would play cards and win, and that's how he kept him on his mission. (Laughing) Strange, huh? My father became much more active in the Church in his later life. But when we were up to the cabin, even as a kid. I remember that he had a calling to teach the Deacon's quorum, and he taught it for 29 years, and all that time, he would drive down home, get dressed up, go to church to Priesthood meeting, teach the Deacon's quorum, and then come back up to the cabin. And so many, many of those young men said that he encouraged them to go on missions. This, in spite of the fact that he didn't seem very active at the time. He really wasn't then, but I adored him. When I was a little girl, we didn't talk about sex like we do now, and a girl friend told me a few things about sex, and boy were they skewed! And I was too bashful to talk to my parents about it, and I began to have nightmares and terrible things, because it was horrible the way she described it, and I felt like I needed to talk to my father, actually confess to him that I'd had these dreams, because I thought it was wicked, and I remembered he took me into the living room in the evening, and turned off all the lights and had me sit on the footstool in the dark, so I couldn't look at him, couldn't see him and talked to me and let me tell him my dreams when I didn't have to look in his face. And that to me was one of the tenderest 10 things he ever did for me was to understand. Maybe he understood better than I realized that I had depression, because I have had it as long as I can remember, even when I was four or five. I felt like the whole world was dark, and he must have felt the same way. And I think he understood, and helped me that way. You'll have to ask me questions. I'm not sure what else to tell you. MM: It's those anecdotes that help a lot. So... RV: Oh, I remember when we got engaged, my husband and I...My husband talked to Pop, because I insisted he had to, to ask for my hand in marriage. MM: Right. RV: Pop said , "Yes, but from now on, come often, and go home early," because they wanted to go to bed, and not wait up for me from dates. But anyway, I remember one other thing. You may not want to use all of this. I'm sure you won't, but he was out hunting, and he always went with some of his friends. He was out hunting, and there was a valley, and then a ridge on the other side, and he was on a ridge here, and there was a valley between them, and it was quite a distance, and all of a sudden he heard a bullet whiz by him, and he grabbed his binoculars and looked and saw a guy on the other side who had shot toward him. Well, he was furious, so he picked up his rifle and very, very carefully he aimed at the guy's canteen, which was not on his body, and shot it. And shot a hole right through it so it squirted. That was kind of dangerous, but he did it. And also, when we were up to the cabin, he taught us very carefully how to handle guns. Mostly we handled 22's and used 22 shorts, because they can't travel all that far. But he said, "I want you to know what it sounds like to have a bullet pass you, so 11 that you'll recognize it if it ever happens. We had some big, big trees when we were children, so he had us stand behind the tree, also maybe dangerous, with him on the side that we weren't, and he'd say, "Are you ready? Stay put." And we'd say, "Yes." And he'd shoot past the tree so we could hear the whine of the bullet. And he did that with each one of us, and he said, "Now you know what it sounds like if somebody's shooting towards you or at you." MM: Right. RV: And he was a fanatic about gun safety, which has also made me a fanatic about it although I don't handle the guns except to look at them occasionally. But anyway, let's see. Is there anything else. He would tell us ghost stories around the fire at night. And some of them were pretty spooky, and one of them was a true story called the ghost in the New York Museum of Natural History, and we were quite a ways from the cabin, and we'd have to walk back to the cabin, and we had an outhouse. We did have a chamber pot, but sometimes we would have to go out, and that was pretty spooky, I'll tell you! MM: (Laughs) RV: Yeah, there were cabins on either side of ours, and we were the only ones in this... MM: Is this the cabin on Pineview? RV: Yes, there were two cabins. They raised the dam, and Pop had to sell the land...the three guys did and their families. But we grew up with these children, some of whom I still know as friends, about my age, but the two men were hunting companions of my father, and I guess he did most of his hunting with 12 them for a while, and then he hunted with one of his partners, maybe both of them. Uncle Roy Holbrook, the engineer, and Ken Hall, his draftsman, yeah. And he loved the out-of-doors. He loved to see the country. He did most of his hunting in Utah, although he did some out-of-state, I think, but not much. MM: Mostly here in Utah? RV: Yeah, because the permits were not as expensive here in Utah, and the deer herds were big then. The buffalo herds were much smaller than they are now. MM: Oh. RV: They hadn't cultivated them, and they were wild. I guess they were really all bison. I guess that's what all of them are. I don't know, but I think so, but we all called them buffalo. MM: Uh huh. RV: But he was fascinated with any books that had anything to do with hunting. I know he loved John Wayne's movie Hatari, which was in Africa, I believe. He had a book about buffalo, and I can't remember. It had to do with the Indians and buffalo, and it showed pictures of them, and he took magazines that had to do with hunting. He was an avid reader, by the way, with all kinds of novels as well as hunting magazines. And he read all the current best sellers. And if he felt they were a little beyond us, he would put in the front, he would write, age 17 or adult, so that we were not supposed to read them until then. I don't know about the other kids, but I did honor... MM: ...what you were supposed to read. 13 RV: Yeah. When I was in the fourth grade, I believe, I got sick. I'm not sure what the illness was. They tested me for scarlet fever. No, for tuberculosis. It might have been scarlet fever, I don't know, but I was down in bed for two months, and could only get up long enough to go to the bathroom. And my sweet father would bring me books to read. And James Oliver Kerwood was a writer of quite a while ago, adventures in the north country, and mostly in Canada, and a lot of more animals, "The Grizzly King" I think was one, and let's see, something about the wolf, Kazan. I found a copy of that, and I still have it, a wolf, whose mate was blinded by some accident, and so they would run, and she would always run with her nose on his flank, and neat, neat stories. One or two of them had people in them, but a lot of them didn't. But that's where I gained my love for reading, my first... Well, from him, but also from him bringing me books that I could read that were I mean he read them too, those adventure books, because they were about animals. He, by the way, got a bear in Utah. MM: Oh! RV: And had it made into a bear rug, except the head which was intact. Oh, what else. MM: Now, your grandfather's cabin, what did they do with that after he passed away? Was there someone who took care of it, or... RV: I think they sold it. I think they sold it, and I don't know if it's still standing, but we knew the neighbors. See, it was kind of an island, because there was a creek, they called it, a creek on one side of the place, and then the Ogden River came down and around it, and there were three or four cabins there. 14 MM: On that one island? RV: Yeah. I think it was an island, and we'd go along this little creek, my cousin and I, Stanford to show me the animals that were there, and to catch them. He would catch the frogs on flics, and then we moved the hook and put them back, and apparently they didn't die. MM: He'd catch them with the flies? RV: Yup. And, I think I've about run out, at least of what I can think of. But my father was a remarkable man, and I know he felt that way about his father, although I didn't know him that well, but I have always been so proud that my grandpa helped design these three buildings. When I went to Ogden High School. I was so proud then too. And I do hope that they restore it and leave it, bring it back to what it was, even though it's got lots of stairs. MM: Yeah. Now you went to Ogden High School. What year did you graduate? RV: '51. MM: '51. Now at that time, did people still regard Ogden High School as a wonder? RV: Oh, yes. Grandpa...I know you've heard this...received awards for his building, because it was art deco, I believe, and the finest art deco building west of the Mississippi, and he had a plaque or a certificate or something, hanging in his office, but yes, it was a beautiful building, and we were all proud of it. Sec, it was built in the thirties. MM: '36. RV: Yeah, and I was only three years old then. MM: Uh huh. 15 RV: And I graduated in '51, so for a building, that wasn't awfully old then, especially one made like that one, built like that one, with marble and the structure, the strength and everything. MM: Right. RV: So...That's about all I know that I can think of. If you can think of anything to ask me, go ahead. MM: Yeah, well I think that's very well done. 16