Oral History Program Nancy Cundiff Veibell Interviewed by Collin Olsen 18 April 2014 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Nancy Cundiff Veibell Interviewed by Collin Olsen 18 April 2014 Copyright © 2014 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 Golden Hours Senior Center provides services to many patrons in Ogden, Utah. In 2014, the public history class conducted oral histories with several of these community members, covering topics such as World War II, education, segregation, Weber State University, Ogden City, and 25th Street during the 1940s and 1950s. These interviews add to the community history of Weber County. ____________________________________ 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: Veibell, Nancy Cundiff, an oral history by Collin Olsen, 18 April 2014, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Nancy Cundiff Veibell April 18, 2014 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Nancy Marie Cundiff Veibell. The interview was conducted on April 18, 2014, by Collin Olsen, in Riverdale, Utah. Nancy discusses her life, and talks about moving to Utah and traveling. CO: Let’s start with your earlier life. When were you born? NV: I was born on November 7, 1939, at about 7:30 AM eastern time. CO: And where were you born? NV: I was born in Union Hall, Virginia, and that's in Franklin County, Virginia. CO: Who were your parents? NV: Johnny Buck Cundiff and Dorothy Marie Arrington. CO: And what did they look like? NV: Well, they both had dark hair. My mother had really dark, black, curly hair, and my dad had dark, brown hair and they were slim. I have seen pictures of them, they were both slim. They got married when my mother was 16 and my dad was 26. CO: And what year was that in? NV: 1936. CO: Did you have any siblings? NV: I do, I have an older sister that is 16 months older than I am. I had two brothers, one’s two years younger than I, and one was 14 years younger than I. CO: And what are their names? 2 NV: My sister’s name is Shirley Jean Cundiff Wray. My brothers were Johnny Buck Cundiff Jr. and Bruce Allen Cundiff. CO: How good of a relationship do you have with them? NV: We had a great relationship. My sister and I are still very close. I go back to see her in Virginia two or three times a year, or she comes out. My two brothers have died. My brother next to me died of a heart attack in 1994. My younger brother died when he was 48 in 2002, in a car wreck. CO: That's awful. How would you describe yourself as a child? NV: As a child, probably hyper. I loved going to school and being with my little friends. We had the same school, six rooms in a little country schoolhouse. Burnt Chimney Elementary. And we all played at recess all kinds of games that now are outlawed. They are outlawed now because the government stepped in and says you can’t do things we did as kids. We took our lunch. I lived close to school, so if we didn’t want to take our lunch we would go home for a hot soup or a hot sandwich, or something we had at home. CO: What kind of games are you talking about? NV: We played Dodgeball, we played Kick the Can, we played Whip, we played Softball. CO: What is Whip? NV: Whip is when a bunch of kids get together and you have your arms spread out and last one you swing falls. Heaven help them where they landed. They would go around until sometimes we would get about 20-25 kids and 3 the teacher, we always had a teacher out on the playground with us. And dodge ball, we loved dodge ball. We just had lots of good fun physical, and we all had to go out and physical exercise is what we had at recess. Then we’d go in and we’d sit there and we learned. The teachers didn’t take no for an answer, we had to learn our lessons. CO: So did they do any corporal punishment? NV: Yes, yes. If you did something you weren’t supposed to, the ruler would come out and thump on your head. Sometimes it would thump on your hands. Sometimes the teacher would keep you in for 5 minutes of your recess time to find out why you were doing what you were doing. Sometimes they would put you in the corner, sometimes they would put you in the coat closet so you’d know you’d been a naughty child. Now days the parents would be after the teachers, but we learned a lot. We learned ourselves, we didn’t have the internet or anything else to teach us. And a lot of our parents were not highly educated, so they weren’t able to help us on a lot so we depended on our teachers. CO: Where is Burnt Chimney in Virginia? NV: Burnt Chimney is in the southwestern part of Virginia. You can look out and see the Blue Ridge Parkway. It’s 6 miles from the Booker T. Washington National Monument. CO: What are some vivid memories of other school years as you proceeded, like junior high or high school and your teenage years? 4 NV: Okay, the teenage years I went from 1st to 7th grade in elementary, then from 8th to the 12th grade in the high school. Now it would be the high school because they have another school that is the middle school. In elementary we had May Day. Every May we would have May Day and each class would have certain things to present. The May Pole dance was special. We did healthy things like one class I remember we had a little toothbrush, it was a May toothbrush we made, and we all ended up brushing our teeth and dancing around the May Pole. And we had a King and Queen and their court and all the parents would come to that. So that was a big activity, especially in May, we’d look forward to it every year. CO: What did you wear as a teenager? NV: In 8th grade I started out with a pair of penny loafers and bobby socks, and then we went on to the black and white saddle oxfords. Then we went on to the grey felt skirt with a poodle on it or a pink felt skirt. Then we had the Nilo sweaters, they were really expensive. If you got 2 sets a year, you were just so excited. Then we wore Dickeys, little collars and we would wear our long sleeved sweaters backwards and wear our little collar. Now the girls would think we were crazy. Our socks would be rolled down and our hair would be in a ponytail or be short. I had a pixy cut because I could never get my hair long, so I would have a pixy or a short haircut. In high school I was in the band, high school marching band, Franklin High. I was on the basketball team. I got a letter in basketball in high school. We would play other schools, we had real tall girls. Those days we’d play half- 5 court basketball. Kids now go full court, my goodness, but I was a guard and I was the shortest one on the team. I was about five foot five and a half. We had some pretty tall girls though, and we were known for the high school basketball. And I loved to play softball. Then I couldn't understand why girls didn’t like softball. And then in high school we had health two days a week, and we had P.E. three days a week. Then on Friday’s we would have our P.E. class with the boys. We just dance and we learned dances and exercises and boys haven’t changed any, they just thought it was awful if they had to dance with a girl. So things haven’t changed too much in that field. But we had nice school lunches. I rode the bus. The high school was 7 miles from my home. So we all rode the bus. We all looked forward to the bus. We were like in church, we all knew where our seats were on the bus, we had friends, certain friends we would sit with and we would just enjoy the friendship. CO: What were the names of those schools? NV: Burnt Chimney Elementary, and Franklin County High School, and it’s still Franklin County High School. Then when I was a senior in high school I thought I was smart and heard my friend had gone to Roanoke to high school, and I thought I would like to since it is only 13 miles away. So then I went to Jefferson Senior high school my senior year. There I met friends and I worked there part-time in a men’s department in a big department store. It was called SH Hieronymus. I really enjoyed it there. We met a lot of friends and my friends worked, and we just worked a few hours when 6 they were having sales we would work. Then on every Wednesday my friends would go to the movies. There was The American Theater, so we’d go to the movies. I can still see the theater with the red drapes and go up the steps and red carpets. It was really a treat for us, going to the movies Wednesdays after school, and then we’d go to Planters peanuts after that and after that we’d would walk home. The movies were a quarter and the peanuts were about 15 cents for a bag. That's what we enjoyed as friends. We had one friend that was special, Calvin. He was the only one that had a car, so we had 5 girls and Calvin and we would make him drive us around. We had more fun, but he always had a brand new car so we enjoyed it. We’d take him along just for his car. He has since become a millionaire. We all just kind of lost track, but we had a fun time then. CO: What kind of car was it? NV: ‘56-‘57 Chevrolet. CO: So that’s what you did for fun? NV: Yeah, we danced, we’d go to sock-hops, we had our proms... CO: What are sock-hops? NV: You’d go dancing with your socks on, you had music. That was the beginning of Elvis Presley and there were three or four others. And we watched American Bandstand, every day it was on after school. They would dance and it was out of Philadelphia and we would watch them dance. And we would go to sock-hops and you would take off your penny loafers and saddle outfits and dance with your socks on. That's why they 7 called them sock hops. We would do the Bunny Hop, we would do a lot of different kind of dances then. Of course, most of them were girls dancing as usual at that time. CO: Did they have a religious aspect to school, in the south? NV: Yes, when I was in elementary school, we had two ladies come, and every month they would teach us Bible lessons. We had bible verses to memorize and they would bring us a treat, some kind of fruit. They would give us a lesson on the felt board and they would let us know every year that we could go to bible camp. If you learned so many verses, most kids tried to, then you could go to bible camp. I went to bible camp 5 years. It was by a Methodist Minister. They had that camp for any denomination. We would go different places every year and we would be in cabins out in the open. Girls would be assigned to different cabins and boys would have their cabins. We would have a fireside service. You would do crafts and do lessons in the morning. It was just one week every summer, it was a real treat for most kids. I enjoyed that. CO: Wasn’t the South segregated at that time? NV: It was. It was segregated, but I didn’t know that it was segregated at that time. I never heard the words segregated or integrated, I didn’t know what that was. We were just people. In my community, there were as many African Americans—we called them colored—as there were whites. Family never noticed any difference. We just enjoyed the friendship. We had two little friends named Bert and Shirley. They had older brothers and 8 sisters and we’d go over there and just enjoy the time with them. We would be the only three little white kids sitting at the table full of coloreds and we never noticed. And Mrs. Taylor never made any difference with us than she did with her own kids. If we did something she didn’t like, she let us know. Once again the parents were in control of the children. If you came to their house, they would reprimand you, they would teach you what they knew as right. I left Virginia in ’59, and I didn’t notice it until the early ‘60s. I had heard about it in Arkansas and different places, but I never noticed any difference. CO: Where did you go when you left Virginia? NV: I came to Utah. I’d gone to a year of college, National Business College in Roanoke, and then I came out to visit my cousin, who is 5 weeks older than I am, and she had married her husband and her husband and my first husband were very good friends from elementary right on through the Army years. I met him, and he and I were married in ‘59. I’ve been out here ever since off and on. I’ve moved back different places but I’ve always called this home. This is where my children were raised so that’s why I’ve called it home since then. CO: What was her name, your cousin? NV: Barbara. CO: Was there a last name? NV: Kidman. Barbara Blankenship Kidman. 9 CO: What can you tell me about your first date? How old you were, maybe the name of the guy? NV: I was 19, and my first love was Wendell Nelson Veibell. Barbara, Lee, Wendell, and I went down to a drive-in theater that is now across from Sears on 36th. There’s now a big box company there and it was a drive-in theater. And our first date was the 4 of us went on to the drive-in theater. It was the 4th of July. I had known him for about 6 weeks before but the 4 of us didn’t actually go out on our first date until the 4th of July, 1959. We got married in August in ’59, and we were married for 21 years. And then things just happened and we just got divorced. We have 3 beautiful daughters from that marriage, I am very proud of them. I have 9 grandchildren and I have one great-grandchild and they are all just beautiful children. Adults now. CO: What was the date that you got divorced? NV: May 8, 1980. CO: And what was his name? NV: Wendell Nelson Veibell. CO: What are the names of your kids? NV: Wendy Marie Veibell (Salas), Tamara Lynn Veibell (Riggs), and Traci Ann Veibell (Holmes). CO: When did you remarry? NV: September 24, 2006. CO: Who are you married to now? 10 NV: Thomas Lee Launs CO: Where did you meet him? NV: At a Salt Lake City dance. CO: So when you came to Utah, how long was it until you went to Stevens- Henagar? NV: I got here in June, and then I went there in December, 1959. I graduated from there in 1961. CO: What was your degree in? NV: Secretarial Science. That was my associate’s. From there I took a few classes at Weber, it was Weber College then. In 1980, I started right from day one and got my Bachelor of General Studies and graduated in 1984. CO: What is a bachelor of general studies? NV: It is three minors, so my minors are Communications, Psychology, and Office Administration/Office Management. CO: How was Weber back in the day? NV: I loved it. I went to work for Weber when it was Weber State College in ‘73. I went to work as a secretary in the mathematics department. I worked for Dr. Fernandez, which was later Dr. Patricia Henry and she was so nice. The professors there were just super. Occasionally, I would get one I didn’t like much, but most of them were a joy and really nice. I took math classes, and I told them I am not going to do your work until you tutor me with my math question. Then they got so scared of coming into the office, 11 for fear I would have a question. They were great. They’d sit down and tell me when I was missing a point or something. CO: So you worked for the math department? NV: Math secretary. I worked there six years and I really enjoyed that time. I took some classes then, and as I worked I took classes, evening or on my lunch hour. Dr. Henry was so nice, she would say... I’d say I’d like to have this class at 10:00 and I would use that for my lunch hour. So we would have work study students come in and relieve me, so I could go take my classes. She was good to work with. CO: Was the campus very big? NV: Not at all like it is now. I worked at those first little four buildings. I worked in building four upstairs, on the north end, was the math. On the south end was the language department. Then we had the Sheppard Union Building, and Val M. Browning was there. I think we had a couple of buildings. I think a psychology and a history building. There weren’t very many. Then we had the gym up on the hill for P.E. CO: How were the age groups in the classes? NV: You know, I thought I would be so old when I went there and I went to work there when I was 33 and took classes. I didn't notice once you get in a class that some of the kids were so much younger and some were a lot older. I was probably right in the medium at that time of the age group. CO: Which was about? 12 NV: Anywhere from about 33-38. See I graduated when I was about 44 from there, and I didn’t notice because once I got into my minors which was a major, I found a group that was going through we would just hangout together we would have time to study together, do projects together. I did take a lot of evening classes because I was working at the time at Hill Air Force Base. CO: How did you get to working at Hill Air Force Base, was that before Weber? NV: No, that was after. I went to work there in ‘81. CO: What did you do for them? NV: I started out being a secretary and then went into item management, which was where I managed parts worldwide for the F-16 aircraft. Then I got a promotion and went to Wright-Patterson in Ohio. I worked there as a liaison for a computer system. CO: Were the kids older then? NV: My girls? CO: Yes. NV: While at Hill Air Force Base they weren’t married... they were in high school and college. I took a class with Wendy, my oldest one. She and I had a class together and we enjoyed that. Then I took a class with my middle one, Tammy and I had a class. Neither one of us cared for that class, so we dropped it. When I went across the stage to get my degree, I heard them clap “yeah, mom way to go.” That was worth it all, because I 13 had spent a lot of time trying to get through that and to work full-time/part-time and take care of a home, and the girls, but well worth it. CO: You must have loved learning. NV: I did. I did. I still do. I love to learn. I hate the homework, but I love to learn. CO: I heard you went to work for United Airlines? NV: I did. I went to work for the state of Utah and retired from there in 2000. I worked from 1996-2000 for the state of Utah in the Division of Professional Licensing and Investigations and in Child Support Recovery services. I retired from there and then I went to work Continental Airlines. In January of 1995, I left the civil service world of the government and went to Virginia to live with my family. My mother was alive then and we had just lost my brother. I lived there until July of 1995, then I drove across country, just my bird and me, and back here to Utah. I went down to a convention in Australia and toured Australia and New Zealand with a group for three weeks. CO: How did you end up working for the airline? NV: After I retired from the state, I had a friend and she suggested, that I come and be one of the agents in Salt Lake City for Continental. So I went down there and applied and interviewed and got a job and did reservations for them from 2000 for 10 years. Part of that time was working from the house. I worked part-time. I traveled and enjoyed traveling, I traveled with the government. Traveling, that was part of the benefits. CO: So you got free flights? 14 NV: Yeah. So I have gone to different parts of the world. CO: Is there a particular place that is your favorite? NV: Israel. CO: Israel? Why Israel? NV: I love Israel. I just love the people in Israel, I just love going there and walking where Jesus walked and went all through Jerusalem and all down the roads he walked and going to Bethlehem. First I went with a friend of mine and then I went with my grandson and then I took my 3 daughters and my sister and my cousin and we went and had a great time. I got baptized there in the river Jordan, my sister got re-baptized, my daughter got re-baptized, and then as the girls said mom a lot of people come up just wiping their face. What does our mom do? Just come up clapping, I was so thrilled. I was baptized by an Evangelical minister out of Geneva, Switzerland, and his choir was there and they just sang. I didn’t know what they were singing but I knew the tunes. I knew they were good hymns. We spent 8 days over there, so it was a great time for all of us. So I’ve been there and I really like Belfast, Ireland, too. I enjoyed Belfast. CO: Why? NV: You know it’s just, I don’t, I can’t explain it. We went from Glasgow, Scotland, to Belfast and we saw where the ship was built. I went on a tour of the Queen’s University. And I kissed a blarney stone in Ireland. I’ve just enjoyed the traveling. And then my husband and I have gone on a lot of cruises through all different parts of the world. No. No. Anyway... 15 CO: A dingy? NV: No, it was big one. But that’s what happens when you get older. I can see it, but from Glasgow over to Belfast and there is a big sign that says where the Titanic was built. It shows that. So, that was interesting. I just think it’s interesting to go to different places. We’d go to castles and like I’ve always said, you can only see so many castles and so many churches, only see so many museums. So I’ve always picked out a couple churches, one or two museums, and maybe it will be an art museum or a historical site, and then a castle. You can walk through these castles and walk and walk and walk and then when you get home you think, where was that? Where was that? So I think you have to be kind of, this is what I want to do because you can take pictures and then when you get home, oh where was that? So, just special places in the world I’d say is Israel... and I like Ireland. CO: So I take it your not big into taking pictures? NV: You know, I don’t usually. I have an iPad, I do take pictures. On cruises my husband likes to... he buys all these pictures. CO: So you’ve adjusted to technology well? NV: Oh, I think just as much as... yeah. I enjoy the internet. I love the internet and now I’ve got my Facebook and I have the iPad. I take pictures and enjoy looking at them. Which I do. My friends say, where was this taken? I say, I don’t know... I forgot. But I just noticed the other day that one of my 16 friends in Arizona, just took a beautiful picture of a cactus. I’ve enjoyed the cactus this year. I’ve really enjoyed the cactus in Arizona. CO: So do you travel to Arizona quite often? NV: Well, this is the first year. We bought a place in Arizona. This was our first winter in Arizona. But I enjoy seeing the countryside much more than I do going into every little place in the cities. Or going on tours, you know you can see a lot of things in the countryside if you just take the time to look. You can see an old barn, an old house, and you wonder, who lived there? Were they happy? Who built that barn? Who built that? And you can see old cars. I love looking at old cars. So I can just go and enjoy old cars and these are things you don’t have to have so much...you just look and you can remember if you’ve ever watched any T.V., usually they’ll show. Of course in my day, I know a lot of them. But my grandparents, I had 3 or 4 sets of grandparents at the same time, so they’d be driving cars and they’d tell you about the first horse and buggy or they’d tell you about the first cars that they had. So I enjoyed that. So of course my family being into trucks and things, I learned a lot about trucks. CO: I bet you’re handy around fixing things. NV: I am. I was just caulking in my bathroom when you guys came in. That’s what I was doing when you guys came through the door; I was just pulling off the masking tape. CO: So your dad taught you how to do everything? NV: No, my dad didn’t teach me anything. 17 CO: Really? NV: He didn't know how to do anything, around the house they had it done. I enjoy learning. My first husband did a lot of that. My husband now is a tennis player and a hiker, but he doesn’t like doing things like that. And I love to. I enjoy doing...I just say I can do this and I just do it. CO: And if I may ask, how old are you currently? NV: 74. CO: Do you like the new technology over the old technology? NV: Well you know I enjoy it, it’s like everything. As I said once again...I love to learn, but I don’t like the homework. I took a class on the Internet, and I had to do all that...and I told my teacher, I said I will be here every time but I’m not doing the homework. So he knew that I wasn’t going to do the homework, but he gave me papers, and I said okay I’ll look at them. And I’d look at them but...you know, if I need them I’d go through them and have a look. You know at this time in my life it’s time for me to enjoy. I don’t have to do the homework. But I do enjoy learning. CO: So that’s what you like to do for fun now? NV: For fun...I think just sometimes I like to sit and smell the roses, sometimes I just like to go out and work in my yard, sometimes I go out biking or hiking with my husband. I sometimes, when he’s desperate I’ll play tennis with him. I just enjoy doing. I’m getting ready to paint the inside of my house now, so I’ll be painting. Then I have some projects outside to do. I exercise 3 or 4 days a week at Roy complex. We’re just like school kids 18 again. We just go in and chitchat about the things we’ve done and about what we’re going to do for the day and, you know, each phase of your life you can enjoy or you can be oh...disgruntled. CO: What is your secret for staying so active? NV: I don’t know...I guess it...I guess I always knew that you can do what you really want to do. Some things I tried I hate them and I don’t do them again. I hate crocheting and knitting, I’m not a crochet-er and I’m not a knitter. I learned to sew, I don’t sew anymore, but I learned to because the girls said our neighbor sews. Mom, why don’t you make our clothes? I learned to do that, you know, just at that time. But they have given up on me, they said “you can’t crochet, you can’t knit, why would you try?” So why would I break my brain trying? Two of my daughters can just do it and just love it the other one is just like me. She’s not that type of a person for crafts. But I do enjoy...you know crafts doesn’t have to be these old things… I thought about this year...I would like to maybe do is learn to do some more embroidery. But I’m probably to hyper to sit for too long to do that kind of stuff. To myself, I’m honest. CO: Was that hand sewing or machine sewing? NV: Machine, machine, I have an electric Kenmore. Yeah, I bought the electric Kenmore with all the fancies then and I’d sew. CO: It sounds to me like you are somewhat of a gypsy in your family? NV: Oh, I am, my parents lived in the same house from the time I was 5 until my Dad died in the house in ‘84. My mom sold the house in ‘91 and 19 moved into a townhouse. My brothers, my sister, they all live about 15 miles from my parents. Their spouses live in about the same neighborhood to, but they’re happy, they’re thrilled. My sister and her 3 children live within 20 miles of one another, and my nieces and nephew live close to where they are raised. My brothers died, but his 2 children live, in fact the daughter lives in the house, she bought the house when he died. The other niece lives close to her mom, she has a longing to be close to her mom. But I’m a gypsy. I wouldn’t change it. The adventures I’ve seen, the places I’ve been. Would never give up my 3 daughters. They’re near the same community that I live in so. CO: So when you moved from your high school in Virginia to Roanoke, did you go by yourself? NV: It was only 13 miles from home. I lived with my aunt during the week and I’d go home on the weekends. My mom and dad, it would be just what we called over the mountain. And over the mountain there is just a little...it’s called Early highway. It’s not even like...what would be compared to over the mountain...maybe going from here to like, like North Ogden. You know North Ogden is just a few little hills to Salt Lake. It wasn’t very far. But I was just an adventurer, my parents said okay, if that's what you want. They trusted me, they knew that I’d make the right decision. And it wasn’t like I was living out on my own, I was living with my aunt. She was stricter than my Mom and Dad. I enjoyed it, I enjoyed going to a different school. I still had my friends in the other place, but I enjoyed it. 20 CO: What was your aunt’s name? NV: Bernice Loudermilk. CO: Can you spell that? NV: Louder-milk. CO: Is there any family traditions that you have that are sort of unique? NV: Sweet Potato Pies. CO: Sweet Potato Pies? NV: My Mom and Dad, my Dad was a hunter and a fisher. We had fish, he’d hunt game, if he got it, we ate it...squirrels, rabbits, frogs, eels, chickens, you know, just that. My parents didn’t go out and hunt and fish for the fun of it, they fished for the food of it. They had gardens. CO: And they also lived in Virginia? NV: Yes, everyone...I’ve had five generations. Probably started at Plymouth Rock and came across and went right down to Virginia. CO: What were your grandparents’ names? NV: Cundiff on my Dads side and on my Mom’s was Arrington. Then it went to Bates and Maxey...different ones. I tell the girls their names so that they can do their genealogy. I don’t like doing genealogy. But I have a lot of stuff...I said girls I have made a copy, you put it together. To me that’s the most boring thing in the world doing genealogy, just to do it. I enjoy it...my fourth, second, third cousins, you know, we all have big reunions because they all lived in the same area. So yeah, I go back and tell the girls, this is such and such and it belongs to this one and this one to this one and... 21 CO: So it sounds to me like you like to learn about it, but you just don’t like to do the homework... NV: That’s right. But now the girls on their Dads side, I think they have genealogy...all his parents are LDS. His family is actually Utah LDS, so I think the girls have that genealogy. And I got stacks of things that they’ll go through. If they want to make copies, they can...pictures and different things you know of family members. CO: Does that mean you’re LDS as well? Where you raised LDS? NV: No, no, not at all. CO: What were you raised? NV: Baptist. CO: Baptist. NV: Southern Baptist...born a Southern Baptist, die a Southern Baptist. I have a lot of different denominations of churches for friends. I have a lot of Mormon friends who I just love. I go to church at Summit Chapel here in Ogden. I have friends there, I just enjoy people. I look at them as people not as what church you go to or how many children you have...what job did you have. And to me that’s the way it is...or how young you are or how old you are. I don’t want to be friends with you, I don’t think I have anything in common with you guys at your age, but it doesn’t mean that I can’t talk to you. It doesn’t me I don’t enjoy listening to you and learning from you. So that’s respect. CO: Was your family political at all? 22 NV: You know, we never talked about that. I remember when WW2, during the war time, my uncles went into the military but as far as being...I don’t remember them...but I’d look back and I think they were probably Republican. But I do remember my Mom when she paid her poll tax. I never knew what it was until just a few years ago when I was studying, poll tax is what you paid in order to vote. She didn’t say anything about it...she just went up there to the County Treasurer and said I want to pay my poll tax. I think it was $1.50 or something, but I didn’t know what it meant, but I do remember going with her. And the County Treasurer happened to be the meat cutter at the grocery store there, so, that's how small our town of Rocky Mount was. I guess he worked part-time as treasurer and full-time as meat cutter. CO: Speaking of food, what other dishes were common, while you were growing up? NV: We ate a lot of vegetables, and a lot of pork. Every year they’d kill a pig, they’d kill a beef...mostly pigs...I like chicken and pork. And not too many but occasionally beef. And vegetables, we loved them, we had them out of the garden, whatever we had, oh turnip greens, you all call them collards, but we called them turnip greens. And we had turnips and just fruits, but pies, we always had them. My sweet potato pies were good. Corn on the cob, we loved corn on the cob. My grandmother put hers in her stove, she had a wood stove, she’d put ears of corn in there and they’d get really brown when she’d do that for us. 23 CO: So did you live out in the country? NV: It was a little village, the elementary school that was there...well, it was a good block and a half from where I was raised. We had 2 stores, we had the service station and the grocery store and then we had 10-15 families in that little area, and we knew them all. CO: How big was the school that you went to? NV: The elementary? CO: Yes. NV: Probably 300 kids, and then the high school was really big. It was big. We only had one high school in the county and we still only have one high school in the county. So some kids would have to go 40 miles to get to the high school. Now they’re talking about building another high school closer to the kids going 40 miles. It's a long ways, especially if they are going to participate in the sports or the activities. Today many kids drive a car so they don’t have to worry about that too much. CO: So is there anything you’d like to leave us with, anything you’d like to add, or any advice for other generations? NV: As I tell my grandchildren, you should go get your education, that’s the most important thing. And you should go to college or decide what you want to do at that time. As I went back to school later in life, I feel like I would have been more—management, I’d been in management. I would have had a lot different jobs if I had had my education when I was 21 and 22, instead of when I was 44. I think that what I would encourage my 24 children and grandchildren is get your education. Learn, learn as much as you can, now a days professors can’t pull anything over on you because you have the Internet and all. You’ve got to realize we are all human beings, nobody’s more perfect than the next person. But enjoy what you do...think with your head and live with your heart. So you think and think rationally and you live your life and things will work out pretty good for you. If you don’t always have to be the top dog, you don’t always have to be the top person, but do what you would enjoy doing and don’t try to put something ahead of it. There are certain things in life that we know that takes time, and we all don’t mature at the same time, but we should at certain ages expect you do to do certain things. I keep along those guide lines, that's about all. CO: Well great! Thanks for the interview. NV: You’re certainly welcome; it’s been nice meeting you. Thank you.