Oral History Program Jaime Steren Interviewed by Mark Baird 22 April 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Jaime Steren Interviewed by Mark Baird 22 April 2008 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 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: Steren, Jaime, an oral history by Mark Baird, 22 April 2008, 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 Jaime Steren. The interview was conducted on April 22, 2008, by Mark Baird. Mr. Steren discusses historical events throughout his life as well as his own personal childhood and young adult memories. Also present during the interview was Kathryn Baird and Rebekah Steren. MB: Ok, this interview, my name is Mark Baird. The date is 22 April, 2008. This is for a project for a history project, History 3000, Investigating History and I will be interviewing Jaime Steren and just for the record how do you spell that Jaime? JS: J-A-I-M-E last name S-T-E-R-E-N. MB: Okay, thank you and just to kind of break the ice here, what year were you born and where? JS: I was born February 3, 1954, in El Paso, Texas. MB: And if you were to describe your childhood how would you describe it? JS: Boy, that's a big question. I think I can start off that my earliest years, I'll call it the predivorce, were until I was about 7 or 8 and before the sad things started to happen I felt a lot of love from both my mom and dad. That never changed, but it wasn't affected by as much pain as it was towards the end of the marriage. And the family clan on my mother's side was very close, so the majority of time was spent with my mother's side of the family and my cousins, and I remember it being sweet and wonderful. I guess there were signs along the way that things were not always good and we ended up moving from El Paso to Chicago and to Los Angeles or that area and Mexico City during difficulties that my parents had in their marriage. 1 MB: And by the pre-divorce you meant that you were, that that was before your parents split up? JS: Right, 'til I was about 7 or 8. MB: And what year were they divorced? Do you remember that off the top of your head? JS: I once knew that, but let's say it was pretty close to '62, about 1961 or '62. MB: And how did that affect you and your life, besides the moving around that you had spoken about? JS: My recollection is that my dad had some problems in his young life, because both my parents are fairly young. I think my dad was 19 or 20 when he married, but it was my father that was about 19 or 20 and my mother was a year older than he was. And neither of them had a lot of education, neither of them really spoke English, so getting jobs in El Paso was a little harder for them, or a lot harder than other situations, maybe. And I remember my father had a hard time holding down a job, and I also remember he had a gambling problem. He used to love to play billiards, so I recall, I guess these are some of the memories that I did not mention. These were sad even in my younger years, where my mother would take me to look for him on Friday nights, before he had spent all the paycheck so that we wouldn't have, so that we wouldn't lose the food money and the rent money. So there are flashes of memory when some of those difficulties of having people come to repossess property, furniture, and things like that, or encounters with the law. My poor dad he had some problems, so those were sad things, but I still remember feeling quite loved by both my parents and by my extended family. 2 MB: Okay. Before I forget, I would like to mention there are two other people in the room with us. One of them is Kathryn Baird, she is my wife. The other is Rebekah Steren, is my sister-in-law and the son of Jaime. JS: Daughter. MB: Daughter, son, what am I thinking? I am just weird like that. JS: She is going to do her best not to make too much noise, because she is going to be respectful of this interview. MB: Yes, thank you. So you mentioned neither one of your parents spoke English, and that made it hard for them to get jobs in El Paso. How do you think that affected you a lot, or did that affect how things went with them, or how you grew up? JS: Well, let me answer you this way, Mark. One of the earliest memories that I have is going to a border patrol prison, when I was maybe 4 years old. And my dad was not a legal, or documented resident. He was born of Ukrainian parents, but in Ciudad Juarez, Mexico, across the river from El Paso, my mother... MB: Can you spell that please? JS: C-I-U-D-A-D, Ciudad, which means "city" in Spanish. Juarez, J-U-A-R-E-Z, and that is directly across the river from El Paso, in Mexico, and from the State of Chihuahua. So, I remember wondering why these men kept my father in this place and wouldn't let him go with us as a family. The English portion of course, he knew enough English to get along with the prison guards and he was such a friendly fellow, that he had a good relationship with them, but he was still in prison. But I also think it affected his employability. My mother, I remember her holding down jobs as a seamstress in a 3 factory. I know at one time she worked for Farah, F-A-R-A-H, which was a slack company that has since gone under. But, I suppose she handled her seamstress work without too much anguish, but I would think that if my parents both had more English capability and skills and education and training, they would have done well economically and could have kept the marriage together. MB: Were they discriminated against? JS: I have no memory of anything like that. I know from personal experience it happened once when I got older I got to see it. But as a youngster— MB: Did you personally see it? JS: As a youngster, no. MB: And when you were older, you did see it when you were a little older? JS: Not a little older, I didn't really understand that aspect until I was probably, older than 21 years of age when I returned to El Paso, because I moved away from El Paso to San Antonio when I was 13. Prior to 13, this is when we had moved to Chicago or California and returned back to El Paso. Once I had moved to San Antonio, basically we just didn't return, until, maybe once in a great while. And when I was 21 or 22, I returned. MB: Okay... JS: And if you want to know about my childhood after the divorce. That was... I feel very lucky in many ways, I still had a really good relationship with my mother. My father pretty much moved out of State, actually to Mexico City, so I didn't get to see him but once. Let's see, maybe 3 times between the divorce and the time that he died when I was 16 in a car accident, or as a result of a car accident. I saw him maybe 3 times in 4 those 8 years. My mother had a common law husband and even though I was not particularly fond of him he did take us fishing and I enjoyed that part. I didn't really care much for him. But, I loved my mom and my brother and my extended family and my cousins and that seemed to make things better, much better. MB: Okay, I'm going to kind of change topics here. I think your childhood is fascinating, but I would like to speak about something a little bit different. You grew up in the 60's and 70's. Back when discrimination was a pretty big topic, maybe not so much with Hispanic versus White, but more with Black versus White. Did you see a lot of that, did you hear about a lot about the freedom rights, Martin Luther King, Jr.? Was that a part of your life growing up in Texas and partly in Chicago? JS: When I was in Chicago, I was only in first grade age probably, so I recall being maybe Kindergarten. So I remember being close to six or seven at that time. I lived in a neighborhood that had a significant number of blacks as well as Italians. I just remember it being very, very cold, and I wasn't able to take the cold so we didn't live there for very long, we moved back to El Paso. And even though I went to school for a while there, I don't have any memory of any of the discrimination or racist issues. In Texas, I was exposed to it only through television, I really wasn't apart, nor do I remember anything in my personal environment that dealt with that until I was in High school. And that was only incidental for having traveled in some of the small towns of Texas on a fishing trip, or it might have been a hunting trip or skiing trip or something. I remember stopping off at small town stores that had signs that basically indicated that Blacks were not allowed in the store, or the restaurant. It was very minor exposure, maybe once or twice in my entire pre-adult life. 5 MB: If you could for me kind of describe, this is kind of a vague subject, but could you describe how you remember your high school? Just kind of the high school life, maybe. Any aspect of that you would like to talk about? JS: I am happy to do that, Mark, can I just throw in a couple of items from my elementary and junior high? MB: You may. JS: I just wanted to mention that I remember very distinctly when John F. Kennedy was shot. I remember it was a very sad day for all of us. And I remember... MB: What year were you in school? JS: I was a fourth grader, and I believe it was '64, November '64, maybe it was November '63, I don't remember the year now. But I do remember that the school was closed early and it was a very sad time and I remember seeing all the funeral precessions on T.V. I will skip that. The next big flash is during Junior high. Actually it started in Elementary school, the Vietnam War. I remember one of the young men in our neighborhood returned home because he had been wounded in Vietnam. The next thing is the flash of the Pueblo Incident where one of our ships was taken, was boarded in Korean waters and that precipitated some big deal. I was about 16 or 17 at that time. Going through High school, politically speaking, I just want to mention one political aspect and that is that I turned 18 and got to vote, and I voted for Richard Nixon, my first vote for the Presidency in the United States. My High school years were really quite wonderful. My junior high years were filled with a lot of pain and misery. I was involved with drinking and drugs and problems, and I was real miserable. My sophomore year I made a huge 6 change in my life and it was a very significant religious experience, spiritual experience, that led me to join the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. I joined when I was 16, as a sophomore in High school. In December of that year, and from then on, I kind of cleaned up my act and had wonderful experiences with my church groups because we had music festivals, and youth conferences, and lots of dances and we ended up having some really wonderful experiences and I basically prepared then, during my entire High school experience to serve a mission, so I did. I served a mission in Argentina. I have nothing but sweet memories of the transition from my painful days as an eighth grader, ninth grader, and beginnings of my sophomore year. But my sophomore year, I made a decision that I was going to live up to my potential which I hadn't done in Junior high and whereas I had gotten poor grades, I became a 4.0 student in my sophomore year. And I did very well, joined the National Honors Society, and had a wonderful experience the remainder of my High school years. MB: I appreciate you going back to your junior high years. I did want to talk about the Vietnam War, and your aspect of that and what you knew of it and maybe what you read about it in the papers. How did that reflect on you, on maybe your parents and what were your feelings on it? JS: Vietnam was a word that I'd heard, I didn't know too much about it. I only knew it meant war and that there was pain in the lives of those who had been wounded, which was only a minor experience for me at the beginning during elementary school. Junior high, a friend of mine was in the Military and he was stationed there in San Antonio, there are many military installations, I forget which part he was with. But I remember going to the hospital there, the military hospital where they had a lot of burned casualties from 7 Napalm and other Vietnam related injuries, I don't know if all of them were from Vietnam but most of them were. And I got to walk the halls of the hospital with my friend and got to see some those soldiers that were quite badly injured as they were recuperating. But I didn't see too much, just enough to let me know it was a serious thing, pretty serious. And I wasn't too worried about it, because even though I got to see a little bit of that, it wasn't very real for me in High school; I was sort of still in la-la land. There was a lot of aspects of adult life that weren't really upper-most in my mind. But I later find out that my mother was afraid that I would get drafted and go to Vietnam. I graduated in '73 and it just so happened that, either within the year of that graduation, the war came to an end, or at least they stopped the draft, so I was saved by the bell and I didn't have to get drafted into the army. I did register for the selective service, however. I remember that being something. And I did attempt to join the ROTC Air Force, Air Force ROTC, but owing to some problems with my eyesight, I wasn't accepted into the program. MB: Okay, you mentioned that you had a change in high school. That you wanted to live up potential and you started getting this, you had a GPA of 4.0. Do you accredit that to your religious experience? JS: Nope although it did complement it afterwards but I felt a lot of shame of how I had lived during my Junior high years because during Elementary school I had been a really top student, very high grades and I felt ashamed that I had fallen way below my potential during Junior high and I was quite lost. I had moved from my family clan to a new city where I had no family, no religious ties, no social ties, no friends so I became vulnerable because I felt lonely and I wanted to join up with somebody that could be friendly with me and I fell into influences that were not for my best interest. So what I do remember is 8 that I felt ashamed. I remember the honors days when people came to see their sons and daughters receive awards and recognitions and I had none of those things. And my sweet mom showed up with a brand new pair of shoes so that I could be more presentable for the awards ceremony, and I was touched in my heart that my sweet mom would have done that and I was ashamed that I didn't have anything to show for it except that I'd been a member of the football team. So I made my mind up that I was going to exert myself and do my very best in High school. And so it just so happened that I started off really well. And in December I started taking the missionary lessons and so by the end of that year, 1970, I had a wonderful scholastic turn around as well as made a significant spiritual rebound. MB: You mentioned you did go on a mission to Argentina, and I don't really want to talk about that too much here in the interview, if you just want to say a couple words about that experience. But I would like to move on after that. JS: All I can say is that it probably the time in my life that grounded me in a real solid foundation which has lasted till now which is age 54. And I rather suspect that anything I will accomplish between now and my death and anything I've accomplished since my return is mostly owing to the significant inspiration that I received during those two years. MB: Thank you. I'd like to move on after the mission. After you came back from your LDS mission what did you do, where did you go? And I know you did start some college and I'd like to hear about that as well. JS: Well because I had gone to the Missionary Training Center which was called the Language Training Mission in Provo and it was at BYU in September of 1973. I got to 9 see the campus and how beautiful it was and I also got to see the cute girls and I wanted to have a part of that lovely environment. So when I was still on my mission I applied to be accepted to BYU upon my return. I probably did that after my return but I may have started some of that process before. And I got accepted into the winter semester of 1974. So I got back in September of 1973 and worked for a few months and then I started at BYU in January of 1974. So then I dove into college. I'd never been to college before and within a month of my arrival I was 22 and basically studied for a couple of years. The first summer I went back to Texas and worked and stayed with my mother and my stepfather. My mother had remarried and so I stayed with them that summer. And then I went back to BYU and I never went back to Texas as far as living there I just went back to visit. But once I got past that first three months of coming home from my mission living with my mother and stepfather and coming back for that following summer. From then on I was basically on my own living as an adult, working. So I worked part time and went to school part time and did that until I ran out of money. I felt like between my sophomore and junior years I had to get my head a little straighter because I was confused about whether I should pursue my major or not. So I stopped and earned money and worked full time in Salt Lake City. I ended up going to some night classes and the University of Utah and attended a single's ward in that environment there in Salt Lake City and that's where I met my wife. So I got married between, I think it was my junior and senior year and finished up at BYU in 1982 and then accepted an opportunity to go to graduate school at the University of Utah for a master's degree. 10 MB: When you first entered college, you mentioned you first entered in the winter of 1974, did you have any idea of what you were going to study? JS: I had set some goals during High school that I wanted some day to explore becoming a business man. So I went to school and emphasized accounting and business management and finance and I did get my undergraduate degree in business management and finance. I took a lot of accounting classes which is a good thing because I do a lot of accounting now for Salt Lake County. But I was confused as to whether I should pursue an accounting degree or a finance degree. While I was in between years working full time in Salt Lake City I chose to work for a financial firm which did a lot of financial consulting and investment consulting and that is where I decided that I would become a financial and estate planner. At least that's the emphasis that my degree took. I took a lot of accounting classes but a lot of emphasis with estate planning. But my degree was in finance business management, and my masters at the U was also in business administration. MB: Okay, what made you decide to go on to get your business administration? What made you go on to get your master’s degree? JS: I had several goals and one of them was to explore an MBA and one was to explore a law degree. When I graduated from the U with my masters I had applied for law school and had been rejected and then later they contacted me to see if I still wanted to explore an MBA degree. I think they were approaching a lot of minorities, at least they were making an effort to invite Hispanics to join the law school, and at that point in time I had basically run out of patience with school. I wanted to have "a real life" and make "real money" and have a normal experience and be out of school. So actually chose not 11 to continue with the JD degree and just stayed with my business degree and worked in that area. MB: Is that something that you regret? JS: The answer is no, but I did have a change of heart later after I'd had my family and I considered applying to law school again and actually applied to University of Utah and BYU. By then I had my home and all five of my kids and I came to grips with the fact that it might have been too hard for me to take that kind of stress and put in jeopardy my home. I just decided that it was too much. In hind sight there are sometimes when I wonder what would have happened had I chosen to go on to get a law degree right after MBA School. I might have done better then, but I don't really have regrets my life has turned out to be pretty nice. I feel very blessed. MB: Is there anything else you would like to add to this interview? JS: Yeah, I would like to say that I have a wonderful wife. My sweetheart and I have been married now it will be 28 years this December. I have glorious sons and daughters. All of them are wonderful sweet people that I love being around. And they're adding to my family with wonderful sons-in-law. I have a daughter getting married in less than two weeks. So my two daughters will be married. My oldest son is 26, that's Christian, and it doesn't look like he's anywhere close to getting married and if he is he's keeping it all a secret. 12