Oral History Program Shirley Van Natter Interviewed by Michael MacKay 19 March 2004 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Shirley Van Natter Interviewed by Michael MacKay 19 March 2004 Copyright © 2004 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Van Natter, Shirley, an oral history by Michael MacKay, 19 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 Shirley Van Natter. It was conducted on March 19, 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: Today is the 19th of March 2004, and I'm Michael MacKay, and we're here at Shirley Van Natter's house, and we're going to do an interview for the Leslie Hodgson research project, and so we'll just get started. So the first question is, why don't you tell us how you're related to Leslie Hodgson. SV: He's my grandfather, my mother's father. MM: Okay. Who is your mother? SV: Norma Hodgson Zen. MM: Zen was her last name. Okay. Now how old were you when your grandfather passed away? SV: Sixteen. MM: Sixteen. Okay, so do you remember him pretty well, being 16? SV: Yes, I think so. We lived two doors down from him. MM: Oh, okay. So did you live two doors down from him the whole time he was alive when you knew him? SV: We lived there for about six years, I think, before he died. MM: Uh huh. That was from when you were 10 to 16? 1 SV: Uh huh. MM: So you lived next to him for the last six years of his life. Okay. Great, great. So tell me, what's your most memorable memory about your grandfather? SV: Just being up the canyon, and working, and my grandmother used to say, "Sit down and rest. Take it easy." He'd say, "I'm having fun." He loved working in his yard. MM: So even when they prompted him to stop working in the yard, that's what he liked? SV: He liked to. MM: Okay. SV: And another thing I remember is every 24th of July we'd go up the canyon, and he'd buy fireworks. We'd all sit around the bonfire, and everybody would set off fireworks. MM: That was annually on the 24th? SV: Yeah, that was annually. That was when you could set them off up there. MM: So how often did you guys go up to the cabin? SV: We didn't go up an awful lot, but I went up a lot of times without my folks. I went up there with my cousins, or my aunt, when my folks didn't go up there. MM: Now, were you able to ever go inside of Leslie's, your grandfather's work office? His architecture office? SV: Oh, yeah. I worked there, filled in for somebody, I think, for just a couple of days at one time. That was after he died, come to think about it. But we did go down to his office. 2 MM: What was the environment like in his office? SV: Just everybody busy. There weren't that many people, but they were...I don't know. It was nice. MM: Real busy. Huh. That's neat. How would you perceive Leslie Hodgson....If you were to describe him, how would you describe him? SV: Quiet, honest, kind, caring about his family, especially my grandmother. MM: Uh huh. So he took care of your grandmother really... SV: He was just very, very kind to people. MM: Now you were telling me before we started that you kind of saw your grandfather, and you were kind of intimidated. Is that... SV: Yeah, you know, he was such a quiet man, and I was just a little kid, and he never was cross or anything else. He was just busy. MM: Yeah, kind of a quiet demeanor. Okay. Now, you perceived him as kind of intimidating. Do you think that was really how he was, or... SV: No, I don't think he was that way. Yeah, just me, I guess. MM: How do you think beyond that quietness, how do you think he was? How would you describe him beyond the quietness? SV: Like I say, very caring, and he...Oh, he gave things to people, you know. He'd help these kids out, and he'd just quietly do things without asking for...I can remember one time we came to our house for Thanksgiving Dinner. And after it was over and everything and we went to clear up the table, he left a 5 dollar bill underneath his plate. Just little things like that. And he'd see somebody down 3 the street, a homeless person or something, and he'd help, but he didn't ask anything in return. He wasn't for show. MM: Right. Everything was really sincere. SV: A quiet man, but he was very well-liked. MM: So how did people outside of the family, how did they perceive him? SV: Well, I guess... I don't know whether they knew that much. I mean...I know he was very well-respected. You mention his name around school, people that knew him, "Oh, yes I know him, yes." MM: Okay. So he was a very well-known man in Ogden. How was it to live next to him? Did you see him a lot when you lived... SV: No. MM: He was still pretty busy, huh? SV: He was busy. We'd see him come driving up the street. He could drive so slow. He had an old Hudson, and I remember him driving up the street. He bought a car for my grandmother, but she couldn't drive. She didn't have a driver's license. She never drove, but he bought this car. It was called a Terraplane, so that she had a car, so nobody could use an excuse that they didn't have a car, or couldn't take her any place. MM: Uh huh. But she never drove-your grandmother? SV: She never had a driver's license. She never even tried. In fact, she said after he died, she says, "You know, I've never been inside the Ogden Post Office." MM: Really? SV: But I know that there were little things. She liked ginger ale. 4 MM: Uh huh. SV: And he always saw that she had ginger ale. And just little things that she liked that he'd just very quietly see that she had. MM: Make sure that it was there. SV: Well, she had a real bad time with the heat. She couldn't stand the heat. And that's why he bought the canyon home. MM: Oh, to take her up there where it was a little cooler. SV: To take her up there and get out of the heat. That was before air conditioning. MM: Yeah. We can't imagine it without air conditioning now. SV: Yeah. MM: So, do you remember when he passed away? SV: Oh, yes. I can remember my mother answering the phone, and she said, "Pop's dead." And it was horrible. I just...It was the first day that I really realized...I'd lost my other grandfather, but I was just a little teeny kid. The first time I'd ever really lost any member of the family. MM: Yeah. It was pretty devastating to you? You say your mother was even more devastated, or she was... SV: Oh, it was just really, really, really hard on her. She was very close to him. I guess all the kids were really; when you think about it, but my mother says she could remember him...They had a player piano that he had designed. MM: Oh, he designed it? 5 SV: Oh, and on each corner they put like an old-fashioned street light on each corner. But mother said he'd sit on this bench and play the player piano and let her sit there. The keys would move, like she was playing and a lot of things like that. MM: Oh, that's interesting. He had that in his house, and he designed it? SV: Yeah, he had that in his house, and then we had it for a while, and I don't know if they gave it to Lou, but when we had it, we cut off the light posts. MM: Oh, really. SV: We sure had fun with that player piano. MM: Yeah, those are fun, aren't they? SV: But, anyway, he was a good man, and well-liked and a lot of building. Somebody asked him about a contractor once, what he thought of him, and he said, "Well, he sure can make the cheapest cement." MM: Yeah. SV: In other words, instead of bad-mouthing him, he just said he made the... MM: That's what your grandfather said about him? SV: But, he wanted his buildings to be really good buildings... MM: He took pride... SV: ...and they were for that time, for that era. You look around, and a lot of the buildings in Ogden, schools were built by him. MM: Right. SV: And some of them that need rebuilding now, were built long ago, that he did do. MM: Now, what school did you go to when you were that age before he died? SV: I went to Ogden High. 6 MM: So you were going to Ogden High before he passed away? SV: I guess I did, I don't know. I could have been...I went to Lewis Elementary and I went to Central Junior High, too, and I'd gone to the Polk School. He did that one. MM: Right. Polk, also. SV: But I went to Ogden. See, when I went to Ogden High School, it was only senior and junior and so 9th and 10th were still in the junior high. MM: Oh. SV: I think I was still in junior high when he died. MM: Uh huh. Now when you went to Ogden High School, did people appreciate the buildings that he built? SV: I don't know. I think so. Yeah, I think they liked the...This is the auditorium. It's so pretty, and I think people felt proud that they could, you know, meet in a building like that. MM: Right. SV: Besides, how many of your buildings, school buildings had marble walls? MM: Exactly. And terra cotta art deco on the outside. SV: He was the first one to use art deco in a building west of the Mississippi. MM: Uh huh. SV: And I know when he was going to do the Egyptian Theater, they said he went down to California to some of the theaters down there. I don't know what it was. MM: He got educated on the... SV: On the hieroglyphics... 7 MM: Yeah, he was telling me a little bit. So you remember some of the funny things that he wrote on the walls? SV: One of them was. "How could he do this with his little checkbook?" MM: Uh huh. SV: And I don't know what else, but anyway. MM: Yeah, those are funny. SV: He just did a lot of the buildings in town. I remember, oh, a few years back, when they wanted to tear down the Ogden Municipal Building. MM: Yeah. SV: Then they put money into it. MM: Put money into it to preserve it. SV: He did the Forester Building that's up on 25th. MM: Right, and art deco, also. SV: He did buildings that are not just steel and glass like they do now. MM: Right. Yeah. His are beautiful buildings. SV: Well, his children went other ways. I can see things even now with art that comes out in grandchildren and great grandchildren that I think go back to his being so artistic. And my grandmother, for her era, she was very, very well-educated. She was always a lady. It's funny how some of the art things that the kids did, and his kids were talented in different ways. My mother was...She did every kind of handicraft there was. I think...I don't think a day went by that she didn't do some kind of crocheting from the time she was 9 years old, unless she was unconscious. And Phyllis wrote poetry, and Jeanine, you know, does art. 8 MM: Oh yeah, she showed me all of her art. Yeah, that's wonderful. SV: And just all through the family. MM: Just a lot of talent that came down through the line. SV: Did she tell you about Adele? MM: No, tell me about that. SV: She's done her living room with Garden of Eden! MM: Really? She's painted the walls with that? SV: She's got flowers. I haven't seen it. But I guess she's just made it like the Garden of Eden. She has a tape playing with birds singing or something. I guess she was insulted when somebody asked her if she had a snake in it. But anyway, I haven't seen it, but I guess it's quite a thing if she's done her living room in the Garden of Eden. MM: Yeah, I want to go down to Adele's and talk to her, too. SV: Yeah, she was the youngest. My grandmother wasn't well after she was bom, and my mother practically raised Adele. MM: Really? Your grandmother had....What was it that she... SV: Well, she was 48 when she was born. I think about 47 or 48 when Adele was born. MM: Oh, really? SV: And mother was a teenager, and I don't know. She just helped out, just took her over. In fact I named...One of my daughter's name is Adele. MM: Named after Adele? Okay. That's great. Now, how old was your mother when Adele was born? 9 SV: Oh, I don't know. She was a teenager or older, I guess. I don't know. Well, Adele was born in...She's eight years older than me. She must have been born in 1924. And my mother was born in 1906. MM: So she was 18. Eighteen years old. SV: Yeah, and they lived there on Madison, and she used to put her in the buggy, and they went over to the park. And anyway, she was her baby for quite a while. MM: Oh, that's awesome. So, tell me about your mother. Your mother married....Who was your father? SV: Overton Zen. MM: Overton Zen. SV: Then when he died, she married George Simmons. MM: Then George Simmons. Okay. And what order was your mother... SV: Well, my grandmother had Marian, and she died when she was two. MM: Right. SV: Then she had Phyllis, I think. I don't know. Leslie came in there somewhere, and I can't remember where, and he died when he was five. And mother came after, I think. Mother was third or fourth in there. Mother was old enough, so she could still remember when they called him Buzzy, because that was his name. When he died, mother can remember that. MM: Right, and Buzzy died when he was five from the anesthetic, from having his tonsils out. SV: They were doing it on the kitchen table. And my mother said she could remember my grandfather took him and put him in cold water and hot water, back and forth, 10 trying to shock him alive again. At that time they didn't know what to do. And I guess they tried everything. MM: So they over-medicated him and then. SV: I guess, or else he was allergic to the anesthetic. MM: One or the other. SV: They used to do it at home! And that's how they did it. So when my mother had to have her tonsils out, they were afraid that'd get my grandmother upset, so she didn't know it. And of course she couldn't eat breakfast, so my grandfather took her like she was going to school and picked her up and took her down to the Eccles Building, and she had her tonsils out with only novocaine. MM: With only novocaine. SV: She says she can remember seeing one whole side of her turning black and then on the other side. Then she walked home after. MM: Oh, my goodness! So it was your mother that Leslie snuck her out of the house to get her tonsils out. SV: Grandmother didn't know it. MM: Oh, my goodness! SV: But I still remember that house on Madison. It was so... just a kid's delight. MM: Yeah. That's your grandfather's house. Kid's delight. SV: And then they...His partner had about six or seven kids, and my grandfather was down to two, so they traded houses. MM: Uh huh. That's Merle McClanahan. SV: And so, anyway, then they moved up there until he died. 11 MM: Uh huh, and then you guys moved away since then or did you still live in that...on Monroe there? SV: We moved when he died. Or no, it's on Marilyn Drive. MM: Or excuse me, Marilyn. SV: Yeah, I lived there until I got married. MM: Oh, okay, so you stayed in that house after he moved, and then you still lived there? SV: In fact, we all got married from there. Mother didn't move...They moved out to Cross Street after all of us were married. By then...In fact, they didn't move out there until after my grandmother died. They stayed there at the house. MM: Oh, I see. That's interesting. Did your mother ever tell you stories about your grandfather? SV: Just the one about the tonsils. But I don't know. You know, my mind's a little bit____ MM: It's been years and years. How does it make you feel to know that your grandfather was such a dominant architect in Ogden? SV: I'm really proud of it. I'm really thrilled with it, to see that he's passed these things on to his grandchildren, great grandchildren. You know, the driveway at their house on Marilyn Drive, from the back of the house, clear back, was one great big rose garden. And during the war he had an alley out in back, and he built...took the alley and made it into a victory garden, and he was always working in the yard or working in the garage, I don't know, just doing things. MM: Happily doing everything, huh? 12 SV: Yeah. MM: When he was relaxing, he was working. SV: I don't remember him ever relaxing that much. Before the days of indoor plumbing, he fixed the pump. He built a bathhouse out behind the house in the canyon, so we could go out there and take a bath. MM: So that was up there by the cabin in the canyon there. SV: And he only raised the one son. MM: Right, there was only one. SV: His grandson, especially, was very close to him, too. MM: Yeah, the one that died at 30. Okay. SV: Yeah, they lived with them for a while. Yeah, it was pretty hard when he saw his two grandsons go to war. MM: Now who did he see go to war? SV: Stanford and Leslie both. MM: Stanford and Leslie went. SV: Stanford was in the South Pacific, and Leslie was in European. MM: Really. SV: And Leslie was hurt, crossing the Rhine River. A dump truck ran into the Jeep or something they were in, and he cut his head. He was in the hospital for a while. MM: Really. SV: I remember going down to Fort Douglas to see him down there. MM: So they brought him back to Fort Douglas-SV: I guess. I don't know what he was down there for. Anyway, he was down there for something, because I went down 13 there to see him. Anyway, he was hurt during the war with his head, but I guess it wasn't anything he was going to die from, or anything. MM: Right. It wasn't fatal. SV: No. MM: Do you remember your grandfather being involved with any other...Like, he did help with Bushnell Hospital, and also... SV: He got some kind of an award for that or something and I don't know if it was from the president at the time, and I don't know what it was. It was recognition or something. MM: Civilian...I can't remember what it was called, but it...Was he pretty involved with that? SV: Yeah. I think so, as far as I know. I don't know whether he had anything to do with...You know, Washington Terrace and Sahara Village and some of these were temporary housing that they put up for people that came in, before they were remodeled. And I don't know whether he had anything to do with that or not. I can't remember. MM: Yeah, I don't know either. SV: I don't know either. So... MM: That's interesting. SV: I know he was very artistic. I still remember their Christmas tree. MM: Yeah. Other people have mentioned that. SV: Well, it had this ceiling that went like this, and so he'd had a ten-foot three or whatever it was, and boy did he...he was just very artistic in decorating it. 14 MM: Really? What would he do to the three, like what type of things did he- SV: Oh, they had those old German hand-blown ornaments and all kinds of stuff on it. MM: Oh, wow. SV: I remember going there on Christmas and seeing it. And he'd just grin. He wouldn't say much. He'd just smile at everybody. MM: Just smile. SV: Yeah. MM: So did your whole family get together on Christmases? SV: We'd go up there and see them on Christmas. Usually with Thanksgiving and then we'd have them all to her house. MM: Uh huh, so most holidays you got together, huh? Now, did you guys have any traditions within those holidays that you did? SV: I don't remember. I know that we couldn't go in the living room, until we all got dressed and ate. MM: Oh. Really. Was there presents in there, or what... You had to be ready- SV: Well you know my dad works graveyard. He wouldn't get off work til 8, and we'd want to get up, get dressed and eat, anything to pass the time til Dad came home from work. MM: Oh, I see. SV: But, anyway, I know my mother... There was a man named Orville, and my dad's name was Overton, and my grandfather could never remember. He called them both Orvillton. But I know my dad sure respected my grandfather. And I 15 remember one year we got a doll house for Christmas, and my dad says. "Well. I helped Pop...(We called him Pop) I helped him make it. I painted it." MM: He was even respected by the son-in-laws. SV: I don't know anybody that didn't like him. MM: Yeah. SV: A lot of people knew him. He was known throughout the city, and schools and everything else. So... MM: Yeah, he was definitely a well-known man, wasn't he? Well, can you think of any other stories about your grandfather that you can tell us? SV: I can't think of anything right now. MM: Well, those were definitely wonderful. SV: Yeah, I always had a soft spot for that place in the canyon. We'd go up there every night and sit on the bridge. There was a bridge to get down to the camp. We'd go up there every night and sit on the bridge, and fish. And he'd go up there with us and fish. MM: So did he enjoy fishing? SV: Uh huh. MM: And he took the grandkids up to fish on the Ogden... SV: Oh, the bridge. I remember he had a windmill up there. Everything had to be done by a pump. He had to pump the water out of the river to water the lawn. He had a pump. So he got a windmill, and put a pump inside the windmill. The windmill didn't have anything to do with it. It was the pump, but it looked like it was.... 16 MM: He had the windmill connected to the pump to power the pump? SV: No. MM: He just had the windmill. SV: He just had the windmill with the pump inside. It didn't really have anything to do with it, except it was inside. It wasn't out there where anybody could get into it, I guess. MM: Oh, I see. SV: And he had hammocks, these hand-made hammocks that he had had made, and there were two or three of them, and they hung between the trees. We used to live in those hammocks when we'd go up there, but I never remember him using them. MM: Yeah, he just got them for you guys! How big was the cabin? What was the size of it? SV: It was a good size cabin. There was a great big room, and then off to the side were two smaller rooms. There was a bedroom there, then a kitchen, and then you climb up a ladder thing that pulled down, and you go up into the loft, and it was one big room-but there were these strings between this, and there were about three or four, five beds up there. I don't know. I know my sister went up there to see him one time...see it. She was so disappointed; she said they turned it into a condominium. MM: Oh, really. So did you guys sell it after your grandfather passed away? SV: My grandmother kept it for a while, but Phyllis and her husband, I guess, were more or less taking care of it, and they didn't want it, so they sold it. Oh, my 17 husband wanted it so bad, but they didn't ask anybody in the family. They just sold it. MM: Oh, really. Rats. SV: They sold it lot, stock, and barrel, and there were hand-made quilts and antique furniture and all kinds of stuff up there, but they just- MM: Sold everything. That's too bad. SV: It is too bad. I'm sure the children would have liked to have had memories of it, anyway. I remember wading in the river, some things like that. MM: Uh huh. SV: He was quite a man. I wish my husband could have known him. MM: Your husband didn't know him. Oh, yeah, you were only 16 when he died. SV: So, I guess he knows him now. MM: Yeah. SV: I don't know whether Stanford was married. Stanford was probably married the first time before he died... I know Adele, all of her kids were married. MM: Well, I sure appreciate you letting me come over again. SV: Like I say, it's been so long. I wish I could remember more. I guess that's why they tell people to keep journals, huh? 18