Oral History Program Bernice Williams Interviewed by Scott Stephenson 26 February 1998 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Bernice Williams Interviewed by Scott Stephenson 26 February 1998 Copyright © 2014 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 University Archives. 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 Kelley Evans, 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: Williams, Bernice, an oral history by Scott Stephenson, 26 February 1998, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Bernice Williams. The interview was conducted on February 26, 1998, by Scott Stephenson. Mrs. Williams discusses some of her personal memories while living in Utah and Idaho, as well as some of her family history. SS: I am here today in Mrs. Bernice D. Williams home, the date is February 26, 1998, and we are conducting an oral history interview here. Mrs. William's will you go ahead and tell me about where you were born and raised? BW: I was born in Perry, Utah and went to school in Brigham City and graduated from Box Elder High School, and my folks owned a fruit farm and a regular farm. They sent tomatoes and beans and things like that to the Perry Canning Factory, and I worked in the canning factory too. SS: You had a job in the canning factory? BW: Yes. We peeled tomatoes and sorted tomatoes and all the things that you do to make a perfect, good can of tomatoes when you open them later. And I went to the church at Perry, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, and graduated from religion class and primary and taught a Sunday school class when I was 15 years old. Later in the tape SS: How long were you in Idaho? BW: Oh, we were up there off and on for about 10 years. His sister (her husband’s) lived in Malad and his brother in Cherry Creek. And we went then on up into Idaho Falls and opened up a shoe store. Johnny, after I met Johnny, he was a shoe salesman and 1 worked for the Wool Shoe Company out of San Francisco, California. And also, he was under a store in Salt Lake City that he worked for too, and deleted text stores for them too, keatings it was. SS: Can you tell me more about how you met your husband? BW: I was at a dance at Crystal Springs and had a date with another fellow. Johnny wanted to meet me so he came over and was introduced to me and I changed dances with him. He wanted me to go home with him but I said no, I’ll go home with the one that brought me. So I went home with the fellow that I dated and that's how I met Johnny. The next Sunday, the next day was Sunday, and just before noon a knock came on my front door and I went and opened it and there stood Johnny. And I said, “How did you find where I lived?” and he said “Oh, the kids told me, your friends told me.” I happened to go through to the front door and the neighbor had come over to visit my mother and I was holding her baby in my arms when I went to the door. Johnny looked at me and pointed at that baby and he said “Is that yours?” I said “No, it’s the neighbor’s baby.” So I invited him in to come into the living room and he came in and I introduced him to mother and the lady that was the mother of the baby that I was holding. SS: So you ended up getting married? And how did you and your husband end up moving to Ogden? How did that transpire? BW: We was married on the 24th of October in the Salt Lake Temple. SS: You mentioned that you had worked down at Sears for a while; what kind of other jobs did you hold? 2 BW: I worked at a hat shop— Minmax Hat Shop— and sold hats for a while, that was a saleslady job, too. And then I went with Johnny to Idaho and we opened up a shop which was called the Roseanna shop up in Burleigh. Johnny was the manager of that shoe store. And then we went from there up into Pocatello and he opened up the Roseanna shop. In the one side of the Roseanna shop was a deleted text . He had the shoe side and I had the dress side, and it was the Mode O’Day and the Roseanna shop and he managed the one and I managed the other. I managed the Mode O’Day. SS: So you guys had a business together? BW: Yes, we had a business together. SS: That’s neat. BW: And it was beautiful living up there. We used to go out to Shoshone Falls and see those beautiful falls outside of Pocatello and Twin Falls. That was so much fun to go out and see those falls. It was beautiful, very beautiful. SS: I'll bet it was a beautiful place! You had that shop for a while, and then what other kinds of things did you do? BW: Well, after we left there Johnny came back to Ogden and worked for Ben Rich and his shoe store. And then Gus Wright— that was the owner of the shoe store and Wright's Department Store— sent Johnny to Salt Lake to manage Whipple’s. That was a beautiful ladies shoe store. So we moved to Salt Lake until they decided they wanted to close the Whipple’s store. Then we moved on to Provo and had a little shoe shop in Provo for a while, then we came back up here and we have been in Ogden most of the time. 3 SS: Most of the time? BW: Ah huh. SS: Now I know that we were talking about it and you said that you worked for a bank? BW: Yes, I worked for First Security Bank. I got to be manager for the sportswear department at J.C. Penny's and then I wanted something more upgraded with a little more income so I quit there and went over to First Security Bank. Bob Heiner was my boss and he is that one that hired me to come and work for the bank. He wanted me to be the receptionist for the bank, but I didn't want to be a receptionist and sit on a chair all day. I wanted to be where I could associate with people, so I asked him if I couldn't be a teller instead of sitting on a reception desk and he said "Bea if you come to work for me you can have any job you want in this company." So I worked for First Security Bank for about ten years and then Johnny went out on the railroad and he worked for the railroad. He was a brakeman to begin with and he worked up to be a conductor and also joined the Weber County Sheriffs Mounted Posse, he was affiliated with them, and real good causes. If anybody would get lost in the mountains, why, then they would call in the group to go out and look for them. SS: So they were part of the search and rescue? BW: Yes, they were deputized sheriffs at that time to. Yep, they were deputized sheriffs. SS: Wow; that is neat. Now, you said that at one time, you mentioned that you were a member of the Daughter of the Utah Pioneers? BW: Yes. SS: Okay, tell me what that is about. 4 BW: Well, my aunt and uncle were the first ones to come to Perry, Utah. That's three miles south of Brigham City but at that time it was called Three Mile Creek. And Uncle Frank had the first blacksmith shop and the first Perry store. He called it the Perry Mercantile Store. And they sold all kinds of goods and groceries out of that Perry Mercantile Store, and he had that for many years. While they had that store my mother had a beautiful yellow rose bush outside of the house, and some tourists came by, it was right after they opened the Lincoln Highway from the east coast to the west coast. There was some tourists come through and they saw this beautiful yellow rose bush so they came in and asked mother if they could have a bouquet of those roses and mother said, “You sure can.” So she went out and cut them a bouquet of roses and they gave her fifty cents. So that gave her an idea. So she decided that she would try to sell some stuff along the highway and she would put cantaloupes and fruit out there and she did real well. She was the very first one to have a fruit stand on the highway between, well anywhere actually. My mother started that, off the little porch of that Perry store. 5