Oral History Program Beulah Illum Melissa Harms 21 February 1998 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Beulah Illum Interviewed by Melissa Harms 21 February 1998 Copyright © 2012 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Illum, Beulah, an oral history by Melissa Harms, 21 February 1998, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: On February 21, 1998, I interviewed my grandmother about her life. The interview took place in her home in West Haven, Utah, around her kitchen table. This is an excerpt from the interview. MH: First, I would like you to state your full name. BI: Beulah Mae Holmes Ilium. MH: When were you born? Bl: October the 7th, 1928. MH: Since you grew up during the Depression, what was it like to be a child during the depression? Bl: During that time, everyone lived in the Ogden area either lived on farms or worked in service jobs of for the railroad and sugar factory. There wasn't a lot of industry. I grew up on a farm, and everyone was poor, we didn't know we were poor because everyone was, but the great fall of the stock market took place when I was one year old on October 29th 1929. And at that time the banks closed and so everyone who hadn't had a chance to get in to withdraw their money lost every cent they had. They just closed the doors and no one had money. So, that was the biggest problem during the Depression, that no one had any money. And, there weren't many jobs at that time. My dad worked, they called it the campaign at the sugar factory and ran a farm. And even though we didn't have any money we always had food to eat. I remember we used to go barefoot in the summer not because we wanted to, but because we only had one little pair of shoes to wear for summer until school started. In my mother's history, she states that Jean and 1 I never had a bought coat until we were in high school. She always made our clothes out of clothes that people gave her; her family or someone she knew handed down clothes for us. And, one of the highlights was when we visited my grandma in Provo and my grandpa had a good job in Provo and they used to give us ten cents to go see a movie, and that was about the only time I saw a movie during my childhood, except the Wizard of Oz when it came out. The PTA, or someone who felt sorry for us because we were poor and living out in the country and so on and so on. We had a field trip and we went into Ogden and we saw the streamliner that came in from California they took us through, it was the fabulous thing to do. Then we went to the Egyptian Theater and we saw the Wizard of Oz. MH: Where did you attend school? Bl: I went to school at Wilson, the old Wilson School, that’s over on Wilson Lane. And I went there from my first grade through ninth grade. We didn't have junior highs. And then I went to Weber High and I graduated from Weber High and then I went to Weber College for one year and then I was married. MH: Do you remember your favorite subject in school? Or your favorite teacher? Bl: Oh, I think my favorite teacher was my fourth grade teacher Miss Hunt. And she was just really pretty and dressed well and she was just, you know, really special for all of us. And I can't remember my favorite subject. I can remember my worst one was always math, but I suppose reading was my best one. I like reading. MH: How did you meet your husband? 2 Bl: He went to school at Wilson with me. I think we were, I think when I was in the second grade, they had a split class and he was in my class. So I've known him all my life. He lived over on Wilson Lane and I lived over here on Taylor Road, 2550 South now. MH: And when did you get married? Bl: I was married on September 10th, 1947 MH: And what is most memorable about that day? Bl: About that day? Well, I remember it took us a little while to get to Salt Lake and a long time to go through the temple and we were married; we went in the morning, but we weren't married until two o'clock in the afternoon. And after that, Darryl's mother and my mother and my Aunt Sarah and Uncle Jack went out to eat and then they went home and we stayed in Salt Lake that night. We saw a movie and it was the Ghost and Mrs. Muir and then we came home the next day and we had our reception in the old Wilson School in the gymnasium. We didn't have a background or anything for flowers. We stood there in a line and all our friends came and it was like a dance, we had a full dance for the evening. And I remember my mother went to Cresses, it was a dime or fifteen-cent store, whatever you called them, and bought cookies there from the big bins they had and served cookies and punch at my wedding. And in those days we had a chiverly. Do you know what a chiverly is? MH: No, I don't. Bl: They always took the bride and groom and did something, sometimes mean, sometimes fun. And when they took us, they took us to one of our friends house and they dressed my husband up like and old lady and dressed me up like a farmer and then they took us 3 back to our wedding and I had to walk through the dance leading him with a rope around his neck. It kind of spoiled my wedding, I didn't like that. Everybody got a kick out of it, but just us. They don't do that anymore. But everyone used to have a chiverly at some time. MH: How did World War II affect your family? Bl: Well, when World War II come, there hadn't been jobs in Ogden. And I guess the biggest thing that affected my personal family was that when they built Utah General Depot, we always called it Second Street, my father found a job there in the motor pool, and he'd only just work there a few months and just farm part time and work over there. And, he was killed in an ambulance crash. He was being a rider in the ambulance while another young man was driving the ambulance. And the guy went through a red light and a car hit him and my dad was killed. And then that really affect us because at that time there was hardly any jobs for women. I don't think Hill Field had started yet, but my mother was always just a little, she had never worked in her life and so she wasn't prepared to do anything but be a mother and housewife. And so her friend took her to Shupe Williams Candy Company where she was working. She worked at Shupe Williams Candy Company for about twenty five cents an hour or something like that. When my mother died, we looked at her check stub and in two weeks she had made about fourteen dollars take home pay, to support four children. But she did get some kind of government insurance, but she got money from that for the rest of her life, so much a month and that's what tided her over. MH: So, was twenty five cents a low salary for that time? 4 Bl: Well, it was a lot lower than what they were paying had she gone over to the Depot or to Hill Air Force Base. But she was too frightened to do that. She was just scared. She didn't think she could do that kind of work. She was scared, I don't know. But that was where the money was, was at the government jobs. They even offered her one over at the General Depot, but she turned it down. So, she just didn't have the courage to go over there. During the World War, I of course was thirteen when Pearl Harbor was first bombed, and so my growing up years were all during the war because it wasn't over until 1945 which is the year before I graduated from high school. But, all the boys had to go and a lot of them they let out of school early if they were eighteen before they graduated. They just joined the service and then they had ways to help them so they could graduate. And I remember when my sister graduated in 1944. There was so many boys that they let come home from the service if they could, for the graduation, and it was really sad to see them all up there in their uniform, you know, when they honored them from being home. We all just bawled and bawled our eyes out. Then, they just had to leave after the graduation, and it was awful because you knew when they left that a lot of them would be killed because that was just the way it was. 5