Oral History Program Lou Homer Interviewed by Michael MacKay March 2004 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lou Homer Interviewed by Michael MacKay 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: Homer, Lou, an oral history by Michael MacKay, 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 Lou Homer. It was conducted in March, 2004 and concerns Leslie 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: This is March 2004, and I'm Michael MacKay. We're doing an interview of Lou Homer who is Leslie Hodgson's second to the last daughter. LH: There was one boy. You said next to the last daughter. That's okay. MM: It was the last child, or second to the last child. Okay. So why don't we go over that first, how many people were in your family, excluding the four that died? LH: There was my father, and five children. MM: Five children. LH: There was Norma, Phyllis, Bob, me and Adele. MM: And Adele, she's the youngest and she... How much younger is she? LH: Eight years younger than I am, so she'd be 80. Her birthday's the 29th of June. I think she'll turn 80. MM: She'll turn 80 this year. Great. Where does she live at? LH: Hurricane. Utah. MM: And you two are the last two that are alive? LH: Uh huh. 1 MM: Well, first of all, why don't I ask you what was your most memorable thing about your father? LH: I think his kindness to everybody. He was the most generous man that I think I've ever known with his family. He adored my mother. And he was kind to her. He was kind to his friends. His friends liked him. He said to me once. "When you have little troubles don't tell mother. She's a little bit frail. Come tell me. Because I'm big and strong, and I'll help you. He took care of people that he loved. MM: It sounded like he really shielded your mother a lot. LH: She was a little bit frail. She couldn't stand the heat. She had had a sun stroke when she was little. If it got too hot, her skin would go just dark red, and then a couple of times she passed out, oh several times. It scared me to death, because I was just a little kid. MM: Now your mother had an illness that was... LH: No, when she was 9 years old, she got polio, and her father was a doctor and they didn't call it polio then. They called it infantile paralysis or something. He took her to a doctor for consultation and she was in the other room and she was playing on the floor with a skull, and she heard the doctor say, "Well, Javis, your daughter's going to die." And he said, she's not going to die, because I won't let her. And he didn't. He treated my mother himself and saved her life. And she lived for a while, but when she fell down one day, not far from home, but she didn't even get frightened, because she knew he'd come right along and find her, and he did. But she got stronger and stronger, and by the time she was married, she had no signs of it. I don't know how long it took. 2 MM: So her polio had cleared up by the time she met Les. LH: She got completely over it and had nine children. MM: Wow. That's amazing. How did your mother and father meet? LH: Well, I don't know exactly how they met, but she knew him...I don't know how she finally met him, but she was being dated by Leroy Edgar, and then my father came along, so they were both dating her. And she just compared them, I guess, and chose my father. MM: Well, I think she chose a good man. LH: She did. She really got the right man. I don't know anything about Leroy Edgar. He was an apostle, later, I think. He was a wonderful, honorable man, but my father, I guess she just preferred him and married him. They were happily married. They were married for I don't know how many years. I guess I could look it up. But I don't know. MM: It's all right. So when your father died, what did your mother do? Did she still live in the same house? LH: Yes. He built that house. It was beautiful. It's still there. People still live in it, I think. It's 2255 Madison Avenue in Ogden. And it's two doors away from the ward, but the ward.... He put an addition on the ward later. But the ward was built when we moved there. They lived there for years and years and years. And then, after he had worked for McClanahan, his partner for several years, they had six children. They were younger and they just had one after another. And I was away to college. I got a scholarship up at the USU for a year. It was BAC then, but I was gone when this happened, but they got together and decided that we had a 3 great big house and they had a small house. All the children were gone but me and Adele, so they traded houses, and they built both houses, but this was a brick house on Marilyn Drive. They switched houses. I went to school one week. The next time I came home I lived on Marilyn Drive. MM: Wow. Well, they must have had a good relationship to just switch houses. LH: They did. They did. MM: Did Leslie have a tight bond between all of his partnerships? LH: What? MM: A tight bond between his partners? LH: Oh yeah, yeah. Everybody liked him. He was very serious about his business, and I think that people got the idea that he was stern until they knew him, and then they knew that he was a gentleman. MM: So on the outside he was very stern and austere? LH: No, he wasn't very stern and austere. But he was just very dedicated. MM: Dedicated. Okay. LH: And he was very intent on his business and stuff, but when they got to know him they knew he had another side that was delightful. MM: Delightful. That's wonderful. Do you know why your father got into architecture? LH: Because he loved art. He only had an 8th grade education. But then he taught himself. He studied and studied art and he taught himself until he had what would have been a college level. And he studied art and he practiced and he practiced, and he read all he could about it, and he just devoted himself to it. And he...it surely paid off, because he was the top of the best. 4 MM: So was he considered to be the best architect in Ogden? LH: I'm sure he was. MM: That's wonderful. Did he ever talk to you much about his early career in architecture before McClanahan? LH: He worked for another architect. I don't even remember his name. But he didn't ever talk about that to me. He was well established, and he didn't think about that any more. He and mother moved to California when...I guess in about 1905 and around in there. And he was going to set up a business down here, because he felt qualified. And they went down there. I don't know if they were there for a year or two years or how long. But the fleas just ate her up. They just made her sick, so he brought her back to Ogden, to establish his business there, I'm glad to say. MM: Yeah, definitely. Why did he choose Ogden over Salt Lake? Do you know why he made that choice? LH: I don't know. He was born in Salt Lake. I don't know, because he worked for an architect in Salt Lake, or with one for awhile, and then I think they decided to build that...He decided to build his house in Ogden, to make his business in Ogden. If you ever drive past that house, it's a big brown shingle house. It has a big front porch, and it has railings on it this wide. We could get up on them and play jacks and stuff, and they say it's still beautiful inside. MM: Yeah. I've driven past it before. LH: I've never gone in. I've never gone back. I don't know. Maybe Shirley's mother did. Somebody went in. I think the woman knew somebody that owned it. I think 5 she went in maybe. But they lived in Ogden. I was in Salt Lake, so I don't know the details. MM: So your mother stayed in that house that you lived in until she passed away? She stayed there? LH: No, she passed away in the one on Marilyn Drive. But he didn't pass away until after they were up there. And it was...Let's see. I was out of school, because it was the summertime. And we went up in the canyon. He built a home up in the canyon. Beautiful cabin. MM: What canyon was that? LH: South Fork Canyon, I think it was. It was right next to the girl scout camps, so you can check on it. But it has two rivers, and they divided like this, and he built this cabin here. MM: Right in the middle. LH: And he built a cute little bridge to get to it. And he had a lot of friends who were our contractors really. And first he built a big platform, the whole size of the house and put a huge tent over it so we could use it. The heat was killing my mother. He had to get her out of it. And so we used it that way for one season I think, and then every Thursday night he'd get his cronies and go up and work on it. Then they'd play cards or something, I don't know. And then they'd come home. And he looked forward to that. He loved his contemporaries. And they all helped him and they loved it. When we'd go up there, he'd cook a roast or something for the family, and anybody that wanted to go...and he beautified it. He spent hours and hours. He had some daisies up there as big as plates, china 6 plates. And he built a back house across the bridge, and then he built onto the house a little addition that had a bath tub and a monkey stove in it to heat the water so people could take a hot bath up there. And it was like a second home. MM: And he used to bring all of his contractors and people he worked with up there? LH: When they were building it, he had a whole, maybe five or six of them up there. And they'd all help him and hammer and work and they were all trained. They liked him. They loved him. And it had a real kitchen in it, a nice kitchen, and he had some kind of a real stove in it, a real size stove in it, but he hated the cold, and he fixed it so that it was always comfortable. And it had a huge big room and then a kitchen. Then it had a hole in the ceiling, and a ladder that would come down and up, and you could go up that ladder. It was the whole length of the building. And it had all kinds of beds in it for any number of people. I think it had curtains or something to divide it off. I can remember Bill and I went up there after we were married for a while. And we went upstairs and we were looking out the window at the rivers. See, they came like this, and there was a tree right across it, and I said.... We had the window open, and I had a flipper I was playing with, and I said "What will you give me if I can hit that tree?" I guess I had some rocks or something. He said. "I'll give you 50 cents." And in those days it was a lot. I hit the tree. MM: (laughs.) LH: So, it was just good luck. So I said, "What will you give me if I hit it again?" He said, "I'll give you another 50 cents." And I hit it again. Isn't that funny, those things that stick in your mind? 7 MM: Oh yeah. So you mentioned before that he was friends with Royal Eccles. You said he had a good relationship with him? LH: Yes, I think....Yeah he did Royal Eccles' home, and it still is a landmark in Ogden. He was a friend. I was a receptionist, and Royal Eccles would come in all the time, and ask for him, and then he'd talk to me until my father could come out and talk to him. He had a little private office. There was this big dressing room, and then there was this reception room. Then there was a private office, and that's where he did his consulting. And he had a thing with shelves on it, and I don't know if there were doors or not. I think there were. He always had those white peppermints that had X's on them, and you could help yourself any time you wanted. I could go get a peppermint. But he'd take me in his private office and tell me some things that he wanted me to know, you know, and I recorded all his...some kind of bonds that he had. He had a lot of bonds when he died that were worth a lot. MM: That's wonderful. Did you ever know Heber... LH: (How can you ever find anything?) MM: (Yeah. I've got to get this...) Did you know Heber Pearce, by chance? You didn't know him? LH: We lived on Marilyn Drive 1265, and then there was Harrison, and he lived on the corner on the northeast corner of the Harrison intersection, and they were good friends. MM: They were good friends? Did he come and work a lot with your father? LH: I don't know how much. It was before I worked for him. 8 MM: Okay. It was before. LH: But they were good friends, and I think they did work together quite a bit. MM: Now when did you start working for your father? MM: I was about 16. And I worked there for...well I didn't work during the school year, but I worked during the summers, and then when I got that scholarship for a year, I was up in Logan. Then when I came back, I just worked there, and after I was married I worked there. I remember Norma used to tend my daughter so I could work there, and then when I was doing it every day, I was doing it a half a day, I think. And we lived in Ogden then, and let's see, I think we did. No, after I was married I lived in Salt Lake for three years, but I went back occasionally and worked for him. But when I was working for him steady he had an extra room. And he fixed it all up for a playroom for LuAnn so she could play in there, and she'd play in there. When she'd get bored, I'd take her out and let her ride up and down the elevator, and she'd go back. He was crazy about my first little girl. She followed him around. MM: LuAnn? LH: Uh huh. And he called her his little Enoch. MM: Little Enoch (laughs) LH: She adored him. He gave her a 2 dollar bill. And she still has it. MM: Still has it to this day. That's wonderful. LH: But Marilyn and Bob never knew him. LuAnn was about...let's see, she was about 7 years old when he died. Boy, she cared. MM: With him being so dedicated to his work, did he always find time to come home and help everyone out at home also. 9 LH: He worked late sometimes, but he tried to get home in time to be a companion and stuff, but mother knew that sometimes he'd have to work late, but he didn't work on Saturdays. He was home on weekends. He taught Sunday School for a while, but he'd be home where he could be in yard and in the garage, and he grew some peonies, big white flowers, and he had a space about this wide along the side fence, and they just grew huge, and on decoration day, he'd get one of these galvanized iron tubs, and put those in it, and bring it to Salt Lake and they'd put it on the little four grave stones. That was their Decoration Day project. She'd sit in the car. She was terribly upset about those. He'd do all the work. She was too little. She was little, and she was...he wouldn't let her. She's get out and help a little, but he'd do it while she waited. MM: Yeah, with his family he was well loved. How did others see him that weren't a part of his family? LH: Well, my husband really loved him. Bill loved him. He loved my mother too. He always tried to please my folks. But my father didn't make too many demands on people. He either liked them or he didn't. And I went with Bill for a couple of years, all through Weber College before he went on his mission. When Bill came back and I started going with him again, we wrote all the time. My father said, "I don't have any fears about you marrying that boy." So it worked out. MM: That's wonderful. Like the community of Ogden, as he was building all these buildings, was he very well respected because of all those buildings? LH: Yeah, he was known, well known. Yeah, he was known by Marion Eccles, Royal Eccles, and there was people named Schocroft that were wealthy and Dalrimple, 10 and he built fancy houses. I think Royal Eccles' house is still a show place up there. I think they made it into the Weber Club or something. I haven't seen it since. MM: Yeah, the whole Eccles Avenues still have plaques in front of them with your father's name on there. That's great. Let's see, do you know what was your father's daily routine? Did he have a routine that he went through each day, like waking up and going to work? LH: Yes, he was an early riser, and when he had a real rush job, I can remember sitting at my typewriter. I was just sitting there one day. It was 6 o'clock in the morning, and we were down at the office, but it didn't bother him to get up early, and it didn't bother him to work late. But he worked too hard sometimes, and he worked too long. MM: Really. He was real dedicated? LH: And my mother was lonesome and she wished he was home, but she'd beg him not to work so long and get so tired, but he'd say, "I'll come home as soon as I can get through." MM: Yeah, he was real dedicated to his work. LH: When I think of the modern things that could have saved him hours and hours, like the blue printing, sticking it out the window and stuff. MM: Right! LH: I think the Eccles Building has been built into a hotel, or something, I don't know. MM: Yeah. The Schocroft Cannery. They just barely saved that also. They're going to redo that. 11 LH: Oh did they? He was really fond of the Schocroft man. I don't know his first name, but I went to school with him. I knew a couple of the girls in school. There was one named Rosemary that was about my age. That's what my name was supposed to be. MM: Rosemary? LH: Uh huh. Every time he had a girl, he wanted to name her Louie, but my mother, she didn't like it. So they chose Rosemary, and they went to Fast Meeting, and got up to name me, and they got up and they named me Louie Marine, so I'd have her initials which was Louie Maud, and he changed it to Marine. And she couldn't do a thing about it. (Laughs) LH: Somebody said she wouldn't speak to him for a while, but I doubt that. But he never called me...everybody calls me LH, but he always called me Louie. MM: He was the only one that... LH: Well, I let Merrill's piano teacher call me Louie, because she said, "Oh, Louie!" and I liked that, so I let her do it. If people did it, I'd correct them, and say LH or something. I don't care now. MM: So did your father have any hobbies or additional things that he did other than... LH: He loved to work on his cars. He only had one at a time, but he had one of the first cars. And he'd always buy the odd brands. He had one that he called a Kissel. We'd never heard of it. He and mother drove it back to Chicago, and it got them there and then it died, and then he came home with another one, as I remember. And then he had one called a Veeley, and he had two cars, and he let 12 me use one when I worked at the Ogden High School. He let me go to work in the Veeley. That was my car. You didn't turn on the key. You pulled a button. MM: You just pulled a button? LH: Uh huh. MM: Those were some of the first cars then? LH: Uh huh. And then he bought a Hudson. It was called Terraplane, for my mother. Beautiful car. It had the little gear shift on the steering wheel. You just flip it. I loved it, because it was easy to drive, and he used to let....She never learned to drive. I took her out to teach her how to drive, and she drove a half a block and stopped at the stop sign, and said, "That's it." And so she let Bill and I use it. We used to be able to bring it to Salt Lake and keep it for a week or so, and then I think they gave it to Adele afterwards when she was.... MM: Well it sounds like it was a good car. It lasted for a long time. LH: It was a bright blue, and it was a real pretty car. I loved it. Then he went into Buicks, and he loved to work on cars in his spare time. He had quite a big garage in the back, and it was well built and it was all bricks, you know, and really nice inside, and he'd like to go out. That was his relaxation. He'd go out and work on his car. MM: On his cars, uh huh. LH: He did that on the weekends a lot. He didn't do it on the working hours at all. MM: Right. One thing I'm not real clear on. There were four other children that your parents had, and those four died. Do you think you could tell us a little bit about all four of those? 13 LH: Well, the girl died first She was a year and a half old. She died of, I think it was, red Cholera now, but they called it Summer complaint, and babies were very subject to it. And she died and she was a year and a half old, and oh, it broke their hearts. MM: That was their first child? LH: Yes. And then I don't know the order of the other ones. They had a stillborn named Ralph. I think he was the second. Let's see. No. I guess Leslie was the oldest boy. No. no, he was the youngest boy. Let's see, there was...Marion was the first, and Ralph was stillborn, and then they had one called Stanford. He died, and then Leslie. Leslie was five year old when he died. MM: Leslie was the dentist? LH: I don't remember him because I was about a year old. They used to take their tonsils out at home, and they had this...he'd had his tonsils out once. My mother's father was a doctor, and he took them out. And then they grew back for some reason, and they were bothering him. And they have two doctors, one to give the anesthetic, and one to do the operation. Well, the anesthetic doctor got there first and the other doctor was late. He was started giving the anesthetic, and he just chloroformed him to death. MM: Oh dear. LH: The other doctor came, and they worked on him and worked on him, but they used chloroform, instead of ether in those days. He was out playing the garden, as I remember, and he picked a little rose or something, and asked my mother to hold it for him while he had his tonsils out. and they worked and worked on him. I 14 don't remember him, but I think I was about a year old when he died, but my sisters surely remember him, and my brother. His name was Leslie, and I think he was the oldest boy, because he and my oldest sister were best friends, were together a lot, and he couldn't bother, so he said Buzzy, so he went by Buzzy, until he died. But his name was Leslie. It was Marion and Leslie, and Ralph and Stanford. MM: You say your mother was really cautious about going to the dentist after that. LH: The dentist? Or taking your brothers and sisters to the dentist? LH: It was the tonsils. She was very apprehensive, but I guess Leslie was the youngest of the ones that died, and when Norma was 9 years old, she had terrible tonsils. She had tonsillitis all the time. So he made arrangements for her to go to school. He'd pick her up on the way to school; then he was to do it in the doctor's office. So he picked her up and took her to get it done and brought her home. We had the Model T Ford. I did when I had mine done, and mom took care of her and she got better, but she was afraid of the operation itself. The same thing happened to me, so he told me one night, "I have an appointment to get your tonsils out in the morning, but don't tell mother. He said, "It'll worry her." He said, "When you get up, don't eat, because you can't eat. I'll pour your hot chocolate down the sink, and I'll eat your toast. So he ate my piece of toast, and I was about a block from home. He picked me up, and I had my tonsils out, and when he drove in, she saw him drive in and saw us get out, saw me with him, and she knew exactly what had happened, but I got along just fine. MM: It sounds like he was really caring for your mother. 15 LH: He protected her from every part of stress he could protect her from. When I was in high school, she had a kidney infection and he nearly lost her. Oh, he worked hard on it. He came home early, and tried to help her, and she finally pulled through. There was a doctor lived around the comer from us, and I remember he ran all the way to the doctor's house and got him back, and that doctor was our doctor from then on. But it's sure scary. They called it uranic poisoning. But that was one of the bad times in my life, and then I got ran over. That was the other bad thing. MM: Oh really. When was that? LH: I think I was about 9 or 10, and I wanted a bicycle. My friends had bicycles, and I wanted a bicycle, and my mother, she was kind of....I don't know what you call it, psychic or what, but she said, "No, if you get a bicycle, I'm afraid you'll get run over." And I wanted a bicycle, and I cried for two weeks, and finally my father was out in the garage one morning, Saturday, I guess. I think it was Saturday. She said, "I can't stand this any longer. Go tell your father." So I went crying to my father and said "I want a bicycle." He said, "You can't have a bicycle. You know why. Your mother's worried about it." And I said, "Well, all my friends have a bicycle. I have to have a bicycle." And he said, "Well, if you don't quit, I'm going to punish you." And the way he punished us is we held out our hands and he's slap them. But he had a little fly swatter. It was one of those fringed ones. He said, "Hold out our hands." And I looked at that fly swatter, and I started to laugh; then he started to laugh. Then he put the fly swatter away, and then the next day 16 he bought me a bicycle. He put it together, and I rode it, and oh, I had a wonderful time with it, and I got run over. MM: You got run over. Was it soon after? LH: No, I had it for quite a while. It was one Sunday morning, and if I'd gone to Sunday School, I wouldn't have got run over. But I decided not to. And I went past the church, and there was a big bump in the sidewalk, and I called it my bump, and I said to myself, I'll ride it to my bump and back. And I was coming back past the church, and there was this big addition my father had put on it, so I couldn't see the car backing out, and the next door neighbor pulled me and the bicycle right under it. And he heard the bicycle crunch, and it went spinning clear up to here. And I had the tire marks on my legs. Big design in black and blue. My muscle was sticking out of this knee. They thought I'd always limp, but my mother went out and saw me laying there, and when he heard the crunch, he spinned his wheels to get off me, because he knew something was wrong, and he spun the skin off. And my mother came out on the porch and saw me, and she fainted dead away, and I heard somebody say, "Oh, her mother's fainted." So I got up and walked in the house, and said, "I'm all right." I never walked again for two weeks. I had to learn how to walk all over again. I never went to the hospital. Mother wouldn't let me, and we had the doctor come and he put cloth around it, this one knee, and then he put.... He asked for some brown paper bags, and he packed those around it, and that was to keep it damp. And he said, "She'll probably limp, but keep that muscle damp." Well, I got over it, and in two weeks, she said, "Okay, it's time for you to walk." And I said, "I can't walk." "Yes, you 17 can. You're going to walk." She got me out of bed, and I fell back against the table, and she said, "Never mind. You can walk." And I walked, and I went to school, probably that week. MM: Wow. LH: And I never limped or anything. MM: And I think I sold my bicycle after that. I used to go with another girl that had one. There was a mulberry tree. We lived by Liberty Park over there. We'd go over there and play every day. And play on the things. And there was a Mulberry tree, and if you put the bicycle leaned against the tree, and then stood on the seat of the bicycle, you could reach the berries. And we'd prop our bicycle against the tree, and eat the berries. It was on a parking lot. I don't think there was a house there. Nobody cared. But I did all kinds of stupid things like that and never got hurt on it, until I got run over. You probably don't need all this stuff. MM: Oh, no no. This is great. It's good. Another question about towards the end of your father's life. I know he was doing Government work, working for the Government a little bit. LH: That was the high school. That was the Government project. He had three copies of it. Everything. MM: Right. You say you were copying all the WPA files or dittoed, made dittos of it. LH: We did the specifications with the ditto machine, and it was three books. But we loved every minute of it. She loved him as much as I did. He made that nine months or whatever it took us. It was just like a party instead of work. MM: Really. It made it really enjoyable? 18 LH: Uh huh. It made it fun. MM: I know it was quite a stretch to do Ogden High School. How did the people think of Ogden High School when it was first being built? Were they pretty excited for it? LH: I think they were. I think they were glad that he got it, because we'd had hard times during the war, and the people were glad of any new building or anything to improve things. But it turned out to be so elegant. And I remember his talk at the assembly for the opening of it. They introduced him, and he told them how precious the things were, the marble stairs and he said I ask you not to mark up my beautiful building. And I think the kids didn't. It was gorgeous. I was really familiar with it when I worked there, but I can't remember as much now, except I can remember those marble stairs. MM: They're beautiful, aren't they? LH: And I remember the office space was ample. It had a counter. I remember a counter in the office, and the teachers would come every morning and get their papers, whatever they were. And I'd try to have a joke to tell them. And I got in with a lot of the teachers, liked them. MM: Out of all of his architecture, what would you say he held the most pride about? LH: I think he had the most fun of all with the Egyptian Theater. Harmon Peary was the mayor and he owned it, and they were good friends. And they had a lot of fun with those hyroglyphics, and they said some funny things. And I think that was his pride and joy at the time. He didn't have the high school then, and after that it was, but that was his favorite building. And opening night was a beautiful thing. 19 After he built it, he and mother could walk in and take anybody they wanted and sit down and not pay. He didn't do that very often, but they could. MM: Right. Now did he...what kind of preparation did he put in to actually do the Egyptian Theater. Did he have any training? LH: Well, he was a bonafide architect at the time. But I was only 9 years old. I was the one that gave out the roses on the opening night, but I don't remember anything about the building except everybody was talking about it, and those lights that went on and twinkled, and those clouds that came out in the sky. Well, they do that now, but they didn't do it then. It was an absolute novelty. And I said, "What lights did you use for those twinkle lights?" And he said, "Flashlight globes." And I think that it still does it, I think. When I went to that opening it did it. There are a lot of people that have copied it, but that was the first one that I know of. It had more seats than most of the theaters. And it had these two Egyptian characters, you know on each side of the stage, big full-size ones. MM: Right. LH: It was beautiful. Then the organ was over by one of these figures. MM: Uh huh. Did you remember any of the little sayings that he had in the Egyptian characters? LH: Well, he had one of the characters....I don't know whether he'd want you to publish this or not, the Peary family, but they had this drunk leaning against the lamp post, and underneath it said, "Harmon Peary is a bum," in hieroglyphics, so no one could read it. Then there was one that said, "Little drops of mortar, little 20 bits of tin. It's a damn good theater for the shape it's in." That's the only two I remember, but there were a lot of them. Some of them were just hyroglyphics for ornaments, but some of them really said things. MM: Now, did Harmon Peary know about all of them? LH: Oh, yes. He laughed. He was glad that he was in on it. I think. They were such good friends. I suppose my father told him he was going to do it. MM: Oh, that's funny. LH: Cause nobody could read it, and nobody knew what it said, so it didn't hurt his reputation any. MM: Right. Now, towards the end of... actually, why don't you tell me the story of how your father died? LH: Well, we all went up at the canyon on the 24th of July, and he was working around on the grounds and beautifying things. He had a pool. He built a pool over towards one end of the property. It was in plain sight from the cabin, and it was just the right distance. It was a round pool. It was about that deep and he had goldfish in it. It was beautiful. And my little Marilyn fell in it once, and my nephew and LuAnn were playing together, and LuAnn was about 7. I guess she was about, because Marilyn was about a year old or a year and a half, and she was walking around the rim of this, and she fell in. and the two kids had a big tire around them, because they were playing something, my nephew and LuAnn, and one would push up and the other pull down trying to get out of it, and LuAnn was screaming and Bill heard her, and Marilyn was floating around like a lily pad. I had made her...I don't know if I made the coat. I think I did. a little coat of wool, 21 and I'd embroidered flowers on it. bright blue coat, and it was wool, and it was holding her up until he could grab her, and she was on her back, and Bill just scooped her out, and mama turned the oven on and dried her hair with the heat from the oven. She still remembers it. I think. LuAnn surely does, because she couldn't get out of that tire. And she was screaming, and we heard her. But then there was no tragedy, so we kept on going, but that wasn't on the 24th of July. It was just another time, because she wasn't born that 24th of July. It was six weeks before she was born. We went up there to celebrate, and I think it was a Thursday, because they went up on weekends. My father said, "Well, I'll come back on the 26th on Saturday, and I'll buy a big roast. He used to go to the Hostess place and get a whole bunch of stuff, and they'd give him a lot of stuff, and he'd always have treats for us. And so he said. "I'll come back on the 26th." That's Saturday. That's the day he died. Mother got up. He'd been out trimming the hedge the night before, and he said. "It's getting too dark. I'll have to finish in the morning." And so he went in the garage and put the shears away, and that morning she woke up about 7, and she looked and his bed was empty, and so she went and looked out and he wasn't trimming, and she looked out, and she walked out to the garage, and it was locked, and so she went back in, and then she saw him on the other side of the bed, and he said. "I'm going to die with my boots on," and I think he was sitting on the side of the bed putting on his shoes when he toppled over. It was terrible. Bill got this phone call right after 7 in the morning, and he came in the bedroom, and he said, "Can you take some bad news?" Cause I was real pregnant. And I said, "What's happened? What's 22 happened to mama?" He said, "It isn't your mother. It's your father." So that was one of the worst days of my life. It was sad when my mother died, but it was different. She lived so long that she was....We had to put her in a hospital or a daycare center or something, because my sister moved in with her for a year and a half. She had lived down the street from her, and she stayed with my mother night and day, almost night and day until she went home to her family in between, for a year and a half, and then my mother kept falling down. We were afraid she'd hurt herself too bad. She'd had....her health went right down like this after he died. She had a gall bladder problem, and her appendix broke, and they took it out, and so she was not able to do anything, finally. She was there three months when she passed away. MM: How much longer did she live after your father died? LH: I have a thing in my head of 17 years, but I'm not sure. Let's see, he died in '47, and she died on January 11 of '94, right after we moved in this house. We moved in this house on the 27th of December, and she died two weeks later. So it was from '47 to '94. You figure it out. I can't. MM: That's all right. LH: But it was a long time. MM: Heart attack. It was a heart attack? LH: He had been to the doctor with his heart, and the doctor had told him to be careful and all that stuff but it was his heart that gave out. MM: He was such a hard worker. 23 LH: Yeah that was one of the saddest days of my life. I couldn't get over it. Maybe it's because I was so pregnant, but I cried for about 3 weeks, you know, on and off. I just couldn't stop. But I finally accepted it. Now they're all gone but me and Adele. MM: Just two left. I think their legacy still lives, though. LH: Yes, yes it does. MM: Now, after your father's architect business....What happened to it after he passed on? LH: Well, my brother-in-law and my brother took over for a while. Phyllis' husband and my brother. They were good friends, and they worked there, so they did what they could to close it up. I think they just closed it up. I'm not sure. But I think Shirley would know that, because see, I was...Oh, I was living here, but I didn't know as much as the ones that were there, but Norma told Shirley a lot of things, and she knows a lot of things about it MM: Well. I'll have to ask Shirley about that. Was there anything else that you think might describe your father that you'd like to say? LH: Well, when I was in junior high I had a date to the girls' dance. Did I tell you about it? MM: I think you told me once before, but I'd love to hear it again. LH: Well, I had this date with this boy that sat across the aisle from me in the Latin class, and I'd gone with his brother. I mean we hadn't dated, but we'd gone around a little bit, but he was the good-looking one. And then he started asking me, so I asked him to the girls' dance instead of his brother, which was probably dumb, but he was so tickled, and so the day of the dance I got ready to go, and 24 he didn't come and he didn't come, and finally, I don't know....It was getting later, and I started to cry, and my father said, "I'll take you. Don't worry. I'll take you." He said, "Let me take a bath and get cleaned up and I'll take you." It was junior high. He took me to the girls' dance, and I had the program all made out. All the girls danced with him. He had little candies in his pocket, and after he got through, he'd give them some candy and thank them for the dance. He was just a perfect escort, but he didn't want me to miss that dance. And the boy had gone home. He'd had an after-school job, and he'd gone home and he got tired and lied down for a minute and slept right through the dance. Oh, he felt terrible. I wasn't going to speak to him again, but I kept on going with him for a while. We used to ride bicycle together, a group of us, and I didn't want to miss that, so I got over it. MM: That's wonderful. LH: But when I was in high school, my junior year, my history teacher's boy...his name was Dee Wainsgard...took me out, and he was an Army boy. You know, he was one of these. And we had a good time, but I never got carried away or anything. We had an ROTC unit at the high school, and it was very important to him, and when we were somewhere he said, "If I get to be chosen to be a captain in the ROTC will you be my sponsor?" And it wasn't until the next year. Well, that was about the highest honor a girl could get, and I wasn't popular at all in junior high, and I felt so bad, because there was a big group of girls that ran everything. I remember Jean Bell was the leader, and they just snubbed everybody else, and I told my mother about it, and she said, "Walk up to them and say 'Hello! I would 25 like to join your group.'" And I said, "Oh, mom you don't do that." She said, "Yes, you do. You've got the Hodgson blood in you. You can do anything you want." But I never did it. But anyway when the next year came, it was six weeks before anybody knew, and he got to be chosen captain, and he kept his word. And I got to be a sponsor, and that changed my whole life. Yeah, the sponsors were the thing. We marched in the parades with the boys. We wore the ROTC uniform. I still have mine hanging in the closet. I couldn't even get the vest over my arms, let alone button it. But I weighed 98, and I rescued it and put it in the closet over there. The Sam Brown, everything. And the cap that I took the spots off. Three spots for captain. I put them away, and I can't find them. I think they're in my cedar chest or somewhere. But anyway, it changed my whole life. I was at the top instead of at the bottom. And those snobs from the junior high kind of faded out. That made it real easy. I had a lot of attention, and that's what I loved, and it carried over into Weber College. But then I met Bill there. We were going there, and his ___group and the girls got together, and we were running everything. That two years was the best two years of my school life, those three years, in senior high school. MM: That's wonderful. LH: I don't know what all this means to you. It's just my memories. MM: Oh, it's great. That's wonderful. LH: But, then I won that scholarship. It was between me and my best friend, but I got it. So she went to the Y, and I went up to.... It's USU now. But I loved it, but when the year was up I didn't go back up there. I wanted to, but my father got the high 26 school job. He said, "If you'll take a year off, I'll pay for the rest of your education." I went up to the U and was interviewed by a nerd that was later....I don't know whether they kicked him out. He was head of the speech department, and that's why I went to him, because I majored in speech. And he told me the most gruesome things that I had to do for 27 hours, and he said I'd have to get a tutor to help me finish doing it. And he discouraged me, and that's what he was trying to do. And I don't know why he took a disliking to me or something. But he didn't last long and I should have gone over his head. The man I was supposed to see that was head of the department was on Sabbatical, so I couldn't see him. I had to see the underdog, and that's what I got. So I never went back. Bill kept coaxing me to go back to finish, but by then I had kids and I didn't want to. MM: Yeah, it's hard after that. LH: You're not supposed to be as smart as your husband anyway. He'd say, "Why don't you finish. I'll pay for it. Why don't you finish?" I'd say, "Well, cause it pays to be ignorant when you're married to a smart boy." So I finally gave up. I never did miss it, really. MM: Now you say your husband used to work for the Eccles also? Is that right? LH: He worked for First Security Bank for 28 years until he retired. MM: Wow. LH: When he got out of school, when he got out of college, we got married. Well, it was two years after or something, but we went together. Well, we went together after he got home from his mission. He hung his pin on me, and it's still in on my purple suit, and we got married, and he was the secretary to the quorum of the 27 12 apostles for four years, and then the war came, and so he took his civil service exam, and he got a good offer to be the purchasing agent at Hill Field, and he didn't know what to do, and he talked to one of the apostles, and he said...the man that was ahead of Bill...he said, "I'll never get to the top until he's gone." Well, he lived to be 101 or something, and so Bill evidently made the right decision, and he took the job. So we moved to Ogden, because my folks were there, and that tickled me, and we made a promise that if we moved to Ogden for five years, I'd come back. Well, we stayed 11, because after he got through with Hill Field, they transferred him up to Bushnell General Hospital at Brigham City, and he was purchasing agent or whatever it was us there until after the war. And then we made friends up there, and we didn't want to come back for a while. And then when he took the bank job we came back. He saw George Eccles on the street, and he said...Mariner was back east and he was coming home...He said, "Hill needs a secretary. Do you want the job?" And so Bill took it. MM: Wow. LH: And we moved. Bobby was 2 and Marilyn was 5, and LuAnn was in junior high. I didn't want to come back so bad. I could hardly stand it, but I came. I'm glad now. I was glad, right away. MM: And then he worked there for 28 years? LH: After Mariner died he was made a vice president and he worked there until he retired in '79, I think it was. Then he was retired, and he got...I don't know what he did. He did some other things. But he didn't just want to sit around and be 28 retired. He wanted to be working, and so he got involved in several different things until his health gave out. MM: That's amazing. So, he ended up being the vice president of the bank? LH: I've got the thing in on the desk. Do you want to do see it? It says vice president. 29