Oral History Program Dave DeRyke, Bud DeRyke & Darlene Overdiek Interviewed by Brian Whitney and Tanner Flinders 9 April 2015 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Dave DeRyke, Bud DeRyke & Darlene Overdiek Interviewed by Brian Whitney and Tanner Flinders 9 April 2015 Copyright © 2015 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 Immigrants at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories, photographs and artifacts related to the immigrant populations that helped shape the cultural and economic climate of Ogden. This project will expand the contributions made by Ogden’s immigrant populations: the Dutch, Italian and Greek immigrants who came to work on the railroad and the Japanese who arrived after World War II from the West Coast and from internment camps. ____________________________________ 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: DeRyke, Dave, DeRyke, Bud, and Overdiek, Darlene, an oral history by Brian Whitney and Tanner Flinders, 9 April 2015, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Liberty Home Bakery Decorating Class Topper’s Bakery Alligator from Topper’s Bakery Making Cakes DeRyke Family Richards, DeRyke & DeCarlo Topper’s Bakery on 25th & Monroe Bakery Remodel David & Valeen DeRyke in Topper’s Bakery, 2016 1 Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Dave DeRyke, Bud DeRyke and Darlene Overdiek. It was conducted April 9, 2015 and concerns their family’s Dutch heritage and immigration to Utah in the early 1900s. The family also discusses the establishment of Topper’s Bakery and the impact it had on Ogden’s history. The interviewers are Brian Whitney and Tanner Flinders. Also present is Valeen DeRyke. BW: Today is April 9, 2015. The time is approximately 3:30 p.m. We are at the home of Dave DeRyke; we’re interviewing Darlene Overdiek, Dave DeRyke, Bud DeRyke, and also present is Valeen DeRyke. Interviewing today is Brian Whitney and Tanner Flinders from the Special Collections Department at Weber State University. Thanks for letting us come back and harass you some more. DD: Welcome. BW: So why don’t we go ahead and start with some of the earliest stories that we can from the old world from Grandma and Grandpa. DD: Okay, you’ve been there and you’re older than me. BW: First of all let’s just state their names. DO: Okay, Grandma was Pietranella Adrianna Sandman and Grandpa was Marinus Jan DeRyke. BD: Jan. DO: “Yan” I guess is how they’d say it. The story goes that Grandma was working in a confectionary store in South Holland and I’m not sure if it was Rotterdam or Dordrecht because she was from that area. 2 BD: She was from Dordrecht. DO: But she might have been working in Rotterdam. Anyway, Grandpa was in the Dutch Calvary and I think he was an officer because he came into the confectionary store with a big hat with his uniform on and Grandma immediately fell in love with him and the uniform. She was a little tiny thing, I don’t think she was even five feet tall and Grandpa was tall and had this big hat on and he always wore a stove pipe hat when he was out of the military. He was in his uniform and was, I guess, quite impressive so she fell in love with him. She probably made quite the impression with him too because eventually, and I don’t know how long before they got married, anyway they got married and settled down and that’s what I know about their courtship. BD: Just one thing about Grandpa. He apparently was quite an athletic gentleman because he could springboard over I think five horses I was told at one time. Anyway and the name DeRyke means “The Rich” and he got that name because one of his ancestors saved one of the royalty’s sons from drowning and was given a parcel of land which he farmed I believe, and that’s about the basic that I know of the previous for Grandma and Grandpa DeRyke. Grandpa was a foreman. DO: Well go back, when Grandpa was a little kid his father had a farm in Zeeland which is in South Holland. It used to be an island out there, now they’ve drudged the sea more and so you can just drive straight to it. There’s a family farm down in South Holland in Sirjansland, Zeeland. The family farm was down there and 3 Grandpa’s mother died and Grandpa ended up marrying supposedly the wicked stepmother. She used to box his ears to keep him in line. DD: This was Great-grandpa. DO: Great-grandpa married again, so Grandpa Marinus had the stepmother and she had two or three kids when she moved into the farmhouse. She didn’t like Grandpa and probably Grandpa didn’t like her too much either. He was forced to sleep out in the barn while her children slept in the bedrooms of the home. When he was pretty young and, I don’t remember the age, he ran away from home because he couldn’t take it any longer. That’s probably when he ended up joining the military and advancing in the ranks there. So he left home just as a young teenager. So he was on his own for quite a while. BW: When was he born? DD: October 9, 1873. DO: They immigrated in 1910 and the reason they immigrated when—okay, now tell about Grandpa and his liquor factory. BD: Oh, he was foreman of the largest distillery in Holland and as such was an official taster too. Grandpa had a nephew, Ari Sandmen, who was immigrating to the U.S. and was loaned the money to immigrate by a Mormon missionary over there. The missionary was LeGrand Richards and Grandpa wanted to know or meet this man who would loan somebody that much money to immigrate to the United States. When Ari, the nephew, went to the ship to immigrate to the United States LeGrand Richards was there with him. Grandpa went to see him off also and had 4 met LeGrand Richards and LeGrand Richards asked him, “Would you like to know more about the church?” He said, “Well I’ve had missionaries before,” and Richards said, “That’s all right. You know we’d like to talk to you again.” So for a long time, I don’t know how many weeks or months, the missionaries visited with Grandma and Grandpa. Grandpa would often invite anybody that would debate with Mormon elders to come to their home on the night they met with the missionaries. He would bring ministers from their churches to debate with LeGrand Richards, and every time they would leave, they did not have answers to Grandpa’s questions. Toward the end of the discussions LeGrand Richards (he was only eighteen at the time and it was his first mission to the Netherlands) asked Grandpa, “What do you think about our teaching?” I don’t know how many times they’d been taught by the elders but Grandpa told LeGrand Richards, “I would give everything that I own and all that I hope to own if I could prove one thing that you’ve told us is wrong.” LeGrand Richards looked at him and said, “Thank you for bearing your testimony.” “I didn’t bear my testimony!” Grandpa said. “You certainly did. If you can’t prove us wrong you’ve definitely proved us right with all the help that you’ve had to try and condemn us. So when do you want to be baptized?” So they were baptized and came to the United States. Before they came to the United States, LeGrand Richards promised that because they had been married for thirteen years and had no children, he said, “If you’ll immigrate to the United States you will have a family.” DO: They immigrated to Ogden, Utah in 1910. BD: 1911 they had our Aunt Nellie. 5 DO: Yeah they immigrated in 1910 and she was born in March of 1911. Two years later Dad was born in 1913. So they had the two children, one boy and one girl. When they immigrated they had nothing. They lived in a little house. BD: Shanty basically, cardboard and tin. DO: I think when they first immigrated they lived on 36th street around Eccles, you know Van Buren around in that area. It was just in the middle of a field. There was nothing there. Grandpa would work all day. They immigrated in the winter time and Grandpa got a job at Ogden City Cemetery. BD: Digging graves. DO: So Grandpa would dig graves by hand in the frozen winter. BW: Did he know any English? DO: No, not when they immigrated. He was trying to learn the language and then when they get done digging the graves he got a little apprenticeship with a bakery in town. He would work there for free and just get a few bakery goods once in a while to help him and Grandma out. Grandma—the story is that she did have to keep a candle in the window because they didn’t have any electricity. She’d burn a candle in the window so that he could find his way home at night. BD: He’d walk from— DO: The cemetery on 21st and Adams. BD: Probably further down. DD: Where was the bakery he worked at? DO: I don’t know because Dad never mentioned what bakery it was. BW: How much of an age difference was between Grandma and Grandpa? 6 BD: Two years. Marinus was born October 9, 1873 and Pietranella was born September 17, 1875. Grandpa started using clay from the graves to mold bread and he thought, “You know I could do this.” So he left a life that was quite luxurious in Holland to the United States where he lived in a shanty. Grandma would go out during the day and gather sagebrush because there was a lot of sagebrush in the area to burn in their stove. She’d pick the bugs off the sagebrush; they were wood ticks and she didn’t know that. She never had it—Rocky Mountain spotted fever—she never got contaminated with it. DO: After Grandpa’s hour shift of digging graves in the cemetery, he’d go to a friend’s bakery where he learned to make bread, rolls, doughnuts, pastries and certain kinds in the next period of about two to two and a half years. So I’m wondering if that was Dalebout. BD: It probably was. BW: I just want you to finish your thought there about the ticks. Was this during the time the Spanish Flu was coming through? BD: I couldn’t tell you, I don’t know. I wasn’t there. DO: That would be right around 1910, 1912. BD: Yeah sometime. BW: I think we were having a major flu epidemic at that time. The Spanish Flu took a lot of lives. 7 DO: After they lived out on Quincy they moved out to North Ogden and do you know where the ATC [Applied Technology College] is out there? What is it? What do you call it here? DD: It used to be the State Industrial School. Now it’s the ATC. DO: Okay the ATC took over the property there and right next to that, to the north, was Ome Pete’s house. Now that’s Uncle Pete and that was Grandma’s brother and they lived by them in a little place next to them for a while. That’s when Aunt Nellie was little and when Dad was first born. They moved out there and Grandpa was still I think working, apprenticing at bakeries. At that time that Dad was born he was very malnourished and they didn’t know what the problem was. Grandpa expected the phone call all the time because he was then I think working at a bakery in Salt Lake. They were just getting ready to move and so they moved to Salt Lake when Dad was little and they found out it was milk from Ome Pete’s cow that didn’t have the nutrition that he needed. Once he got into Salt Lake and got on a different milk formula he was able to survive. BD: This is a photograph of that first bakery Grandpa owned. BW: When was your dad born? BD: 1913. DO: January 20th of 1913. BW: How many children did they have? DO: Oh, they only had two children. Nellie DeRyke Leishman was born in 1911, March 11th of 1911 and then Dad was born—Harry was born January 20, 1913. 8 You know when Dad was a little kid, Grandpa started his bakery in Salt Lake and I’m not sure where that was even located. BD: It was up on Liberty. DO: The Liberty Home Bakery so it was right by Liberty Park in Salt Lake and the address was 1218 South 4th East, Salt Lake City. Grandpa started Liberty Home Bakery, so Dad when he was just a little kid, even at eight years old he’d take the bank deposits and go to the bank. Dad was helping Grandpa at the bakery all the time. BW: Was this about 1921, around there? BD: Yeah, probably. DO: Then Dad ended up quitting school in the middle of the eighth grade just to work full-time for Grandpa and help him out. DD: Which was fairly common then. BD: Yeah. DO: It was and then the Depression I guess hit and Grandpa probably lost that business. I don’t know, we don’t know why Grandpa shut down that bakery. Do you? BD: No, I’ve never heard. DO: Then eventually Grandpa went to Arco, Idaho and started a business up there. During that time Dad worked for Highland Dairy in Salt Lake and he was a milkman. He drove a milk wagon with the horses. It was during the Depression and one maybe funny story that you might want is that he lived at this landlady’s house and about all she’d feed him was carrots. He said he had carrots fixed 9 every way possible. He had raw carrots and baked carrots and cooked carrots and boiled carrots and steamed carrots and carrot casserole. He had carrots fixed every single way and he had this horse that he’d take on his deliveries and he says, “Even my horse got sick of carrots. The horse wouldn’t even eat carrots after a while.” That’s how it was; everybody was desperate for their food and stuff. That’s where he met our mother, Florence Yates. She was a secretary at the Highland Dairy and he met her there at the dairy. She was dating somebody else and he decided that he was going to outdo him and so he did. BW: When was she born? DO: Mother was born… BD: April 30, 1913. BW: And what’s her background? DO: Her father—she was a Yates. Her father was a history teacher in Salt Lake. Grandma was a midwife. BD: Grandpa taught elementary and high school. DO: They used to live on McClellan Avenue in Salt Lake and Grandpa used to walk to school every day. Mom didn’t like being in his class because he never called on her. She always had the answers but he wouldn’t call on her. Think it was preferential treatment and she didn’t like that. Grandpa was the nurturer in their family. Grandma was stricter, but Grandpa was the nurturer and she loved her dad. BD: They were British. DO: Anyway she and Dad got married. 10 BW: Again, about what year? DO: May 20, 1934. BW: So a good little while before the Depression hit anyway, six years later. DO: Well yeah, they got married during some really hard times still and it was right after they got married that they went up to Arco to help Grandpa at the bakery. BD: Dad or Grandpa had an old truck and Dad would make the deliveries for Grandpa. They’d take bread, food all over the area. One day just shortly after—I don’t think they had any kids… DO: No, they hadn’t been married I don’t think six months. BD: Anyway Dad got in a head on collision and made the headlines of the paper. It said, “Arco Man Killed in Crash.” BW: Which obviously didn’t happen. DD: Which was our dad because we were born. BD: Dad was one of the first people ever to have a spleen removed in the United States and live through it. DO: I think he said he was the third man in the United States to live. DD: Yeah, when the newspaper called the hospital they wanted to know how he was doing, if he was going to be okay. The hospital told them that he was really bad and he will not make it through the night. So that’s why the newspaper listed that he died. Apparently there was an error there. DO: He said a while later he had met some lady that had read that article and she had met up with him. She about passed out on the street because she thought she 11 was seeing a ghost. She thought that he’d died and was really shocked to see him. BW: So when did they come back down to Utah? BD: It was during the Depression. DO: After he worked for Grandpa in Arco, Dad decided he was going to start his own shop in Smithfield. So right from Arco he and Mom went to Smithfield. Only I think Mom came down and stayed at her parents in Salt Lake. She had Diane I think at the time or was going to expect Diane, our oldest sister. There he was trying to set up this business and stuff. Anyway he was only in business in Smithfield because he says in his diaries that he had to have everything new and shiny and unbeknownst to him just starting in the Depression times, and being in a farm community he didn’t realize all the ladies made their own bread and cakes and everything. So it was a total disaster. He ended up being in debt four thousand dollars with nothing when he left the shop in Smithfield. Then they had to come back and stay with Grandma and Grandpa Yates in Salt Lake while he was trying to pay off his back debts. He was trying to pick up work wherever he could go. BD: He worked for the National Tea Company for a while. He worked at Zions National Park for a while. DO: He was the head baker in Zions doing birthday cakes for a lot of celebrities that had come in on the train. You know Shirley Temple, he made her a cake when she was just little, a lot of other stars as well. DD: Yeah, the guy over the railroad, some railroad guru was there. 12 BD: Union Pacific. DO: That’s when the railroad had all the concessions and did everything. So the trains came right in to Zions Park I guess really close there. He had all kinds of little jobs. BD: He also worked at the Ben Lomond Hotel for a while. DO: He was a baker there for quite a while. Then they went out on strike and he was the only one that wouldn’t go on strike because he was desperate for the money. He was a scab crossing the lines every day and it got to the point they told him if he crossed again that they knew where he lived and his wife and kids would be in jeopardy if he crossed it. So he never was a union person. BD: No, he wasn’t. DO: He hated the unions after that. He just didn’t think that they did any good. DD: But he still crossed the line. And he told them, “I know where your family lives, too.” As a result nobody did anything. Idle threats. DO: We weren’t around. None of us were around at that time it was just the two older sisters. By that time, I think Diane and Carole had both been born. Then they were still living in Salt Lake I think with Grandpa and Grandma off and on most of the time. Grandma and Grandpa were really good about supporting Mom and the girls. BD: And Dad too. DD: Now he went and sold bakery stuff, too. DO: Is that with National Tea? 13 BD: Well, there was another company that he worked for too that’s not in business anymore. DD: He went to a place in Nevada, I think it was Winnemucca. Went to a gentleman who had a restaurant, I think a Chinaman. When he went in and told the gal that he’d like to talk to the manager, the owner, the manager came out with a cleaver. Chased him out of the place with the cleaver. Dad went back in again and asked the gentleman, finally he’d calmed down enough, asked the gentleman why he was so upset. The salesman before Dad had padded to the orders to the point where he had stuff that he had no need for, didn’t need, didn’t want and so Dad said, “Just load it up in my car and I’ll take it back.” He did, he gave him credit and the gentleman was a good customer from then on. Dad made some decisions that almost cost him his job there. DO: He was always honest. It took him years before he got that four thousand dollars of debt paid off, but he paid every penny of it he owed from his business he’d lost in Smithfield. BW: When did he start the bakery? DD: 1939, November. The one here in Ogden and when he went in there to do that the lady that owned the building was, her name was Mrs. Fisher and her ghost is still there. You can hear her at night. BD: Here’s a picture of the original Topper Bakery. DD: The bakery was in the front part and in the back was an apartment and that’s where Mrs. Fisher lived. BD: That was before the bakery though. 14 DD: Before it is now. BD: Well before it was then too. She had several people in the bakery or in that store before, the property that had run bakeries. She said, when Dad asked her if he could rent the building for a bakery, she said, “I’ve had several in here before and none of them made it. So what makes you think you can do it?” He said, “I have to.” This was still during the Depression. She said, “Well, okay but…” Then Dad said, “I need another favor. I want the first month’s rent free and I’ll clean the building. I’ll clean the place up.” Then when she finally said, “Okay,” then he had to go get equipment. DD: He had nothing. BD: Not a thing. DO: And no money. He had like two dollars and forty-seven cents. DD: Well he had a black pan. That’s about it. DO: Grandpa had given him a couple old pans when he started his business in Smithfield, but they weren’t good enough for him at that time, but he kept them anyway because that’s the only thing he had when he left Smithfield. He said, “They were darn good enough for me to use then.” The scales that he had to use and the bowl that he’d mix the dough in and stuff it was all by hook or crook and his proof box— BD: His proof box was just… DO: What? A tea kettle and a hot plate. He improvised. 15 DD: He had a little potbelly stove. His doughnut fryer was a lard can, he had cut it in half, set it on there and just controlled the temp by how many logs in the fire I guess. That’s how we got started in Ogden. BW: And it was an overnight success I presume? BD: No. BW: No, tell me about this. DD: Well when he started he didn’t have any startup money. You know he was busted, but Diane and Carol my two sisters had little piggy banks. They broke them open and ended up with—how much change was it? BD: About thirteen cents, I think. DD: Something like that, and he said if somebody would’ve come in and bought a dozen doughnuts and given him a dollar he couldn’t have made change. The first day he did like two or three dollars’ worth of business. The next day he did six or eight dollars. It just kept doubling every day for quite a while until he started making a good living on it. BW: Then the war hits. BD: Yeah. DD: And when the war hit, business picked up because—was it Browning? BD: Yeah. DD: Browning ordered doughnuts that Dad would do at about cost for the soldiers as they would come through on the train. DO: He says he did over a million doughnuts for the military as they came through on the train. 16 BD: The Red Cross and the military. DD: He opened up another shop down on 25th Street, and that was pretty much strictly doughnuts. All they did was fry doughnuts. BD: I think that was the shop Rex Decker ran. DD: Yeah Rex ran that one, but a lot of doughnuts went out of there. BW: Tell me about the flour restrictions at that time. DD: I don’t know if there were flour restrictions. There were sugar restrictions. BW: Sugar—tell me about the sugar restrictions. DD: Okay. During the war, Andy Anderson was the sugar man, wasn’t he? BD: I can’t remember his name. DD: Yeah Andy Anderson. He came to my dad and said, “How much sugar do you want this week?” Dad says, “Ah, just maybe a bag is all I can afford.” He goes, “Or a bag or two you know, a couple bags.” Andy goes, “Well if you could afford more how many would you get?” “Well I don’t know, double it or something.” He says, “Well how much would you need to carry you for a month or so?” Dad goes, “Well I can’t afford that.” He goes, “Well I can figure this up.” Dad goes, “Well, okay. Anyway just get me my couple of bags that I need.” He goes, “Okay.” When the order came it came with almost a truckload of sugar, just a bunch of sugar. My dad goes, “There’s got to be something wrong. I didn’t order that. I can’t afford that much sugar.” He says, “Well you better call your salesman.” So he got in touch with the salesman and said, “How come? What are you doing to me? Sending me all this sugar and I can’t afford it.” He says, “Harry, I think there’s gonna be some sugar rationing and pricing on it. I sent all 17 that to help carry you over because I think it’s going to be really hard to get.” My dad goes, “Well I still—I can’t pay for that much.” He goes, “Take it and just pay for it as you use it. I’ll come in every week and just pay me for what you use.” Dad says, “Okay, if you trust me.” He goes, “I trust you.” So they brought in all this sugar, as much as they could put in the flour room at the bakery, and they hauled it down the basement at the bottom of the—remember the chute that used to go down there? They hauled it down there and stacked it all in that room. One hundred pound bags. Then it hit about two weeks or so later and sugar was rationed. They couldn’t buy it, it was for the military; they needed it and nobody could get sugar. As a result several bakeries—and bakeries were a popular thing—they were all over in Ogden, lots of different bakeries. They couldn’t get sugar, they couldn’t bake. So my dad you know, they’d call my dad and say, “How do you do this? How are you getting sugar?” He’d tell them, “Hey I’ve got some sugar, come and get what you need, pay me for it as you can,” so he kept several bakeries in business during those years because they just couldn’t get the product. Made a lot of friends with bakers. BW: That’s a neat story. I also understand that your dad would sponsor an employee and other Dutch immigrants? DD: Yeah, there was Nell and Koos Uitdenbogaard. They were the fourth family he sponsored. DO: Barend and Tony DeRyke. They were the second family. Dan and Ann Vanderwaal, they were the first. BD: Yeah, Dan and Ann. 18 DD: They were first, huh? DO: It was Dad’s cousin, Anna Sandmen Vanderwaal, and her husband, Daniel Vanderwaal, and their two children, Audrey and Pearl, they came over after the war. They immigrated and they lived with the folks for a while and then Uncle Dan helped Dad in the bakery… DD: As part of the immigration, didn’t they have to have employment? DO: They had to have a sponsor and so he sponsored his cousin Anna and her family over. You know they lived with the folks for a while and then Dad was able to put them in the home, help them get into the home right next to Grandpa and Grandma down on Quincy, between 26th and 27th street. So they lived there and then Dan worked for Dad at the bakery for a long, long time. Then he went to work for… BD: Continental. DO: Yeah, it was Barend DeRyke that went to Continental. BD: They both did, I think. BW: Would your dad help them learn English? DO: Oh yeah. BD: Yes. DD: Yeah. DO: You know he’d speak to them in Dutch too. You know we all got a little bit of Dutch. BW: Sure, especially when you were in trouble. 19 DO: When you’re working and you know we’d all speak English and learn the language and learn to do things in English. They were just great friends. So the Vanderwaals were the first, and then he got a letter from a Barend DeRyke from Holland asking if he would be their sponsor. They figured, “Well the name’s the same, we might be related here somehow,” so he and his wife and—how many kids did they have at the time? BD: They had two daughters and two sons. DO: They came and lived with the folks. BD: He worked for Dad. DO: He was a really hard worker; he was a lot of fun. DD: He was. DO: He was so ticklish and you’d get him just in the back of the ribs and he would just shoot right through the roof. I was just being a little kid going in there and he’d get so mad at me. He couldn’t do anything because I was just a little kid. BD: He was good with cookies. DO: He was an excellent cookie maker, and even when he went to work for Continental Baking to provide better for his family, he’d always come back when Dad needed extra cookies made. He’d come in on his off time and help make cookies. That was good. I don’t know when Nell and Koos came over. BD: 1958 I think, thereabouts. DD: Now what was her full name? Pietranella? DO: Tante Nell (Aunt Nell). DD: I know, but Nell wasn’t her full name. 20 BD: Tante means aunt. DD: And Ome Koos, Uncle Koos. BD: His name wasn’t Koos it was… DO: Jacobus. DD: Jacobus Uitenbogaard. You can write that down too. DO: They came over with two children, Burt and Joe, were their two boys and she was expecting a daughter, Carolyn. By then Grandma and Grandpa had passed away and so they took over Grandma and Grandpa’s house and they lived right next door to her sister, Anna Vanderwaal. Koos cleaned the bakery. He got a job as a custodian at Madison Elementary and then Ogden High School, the head custodian at Quincy Elementary for a long time. DD: For years he cleaned the bakery. DO: Since the day that I think they immigrated, he came over and cleaned the bakery and scrubbed the floors. You know, wash the pans and everything. BD: Made a lot of noise. DO: He did make a lot of noise. When his wife called he would say, “Oh it’s the war department.” DD: He was a great worker. BD: Yes. DO: His wife, Nell, was always so appreciative of what Mom and Dad did for them that she’d come over and scrub the floor out in the store. She still helped you. DD: She did the walls and ceilings too. 21 DO: She would work so hard because she always felt like she needed to pay back. She was such a good soul. DD: She lived late, they’re both deceased. She lived to be how old? DO: Ninety, ninety-one because… DD: How old was Koos? I thought Koos was ninety-one and she outlived him. DO: Well she was younger. Carole did a ninetieth birthday party for Koos and then she did another one for her mother. Aunt Nell didn’t live that much longer after her birthday party. So they were around ninety. BW: Were any of these other families that came out, were any of them also religious converts as well? DO: They all were. BW: Was that how the connection was made you think between… DO: Well… BD: Not necessarily. DD: Not really. DO: The connection with Nell and Anna were they were cousins to my dad. Let’s see, they were Sandmans. They were Grandma’s brother’s daughters. So there was the family connection there, but with Barend DeRyke the only connection was the name. DD: Another interesting thing with Barend DeRyke was one of their sons was diabetic too. BD: That was Mike and he died early. BW: Let’s move forward in time a little bit. I understand there was a robbery. 22 DO: Oh yes. DD: We should have Kathy here. DO: I was there. DD: Oh yeah, you were there too. DO: That happened December 8—was it 1962? Bud, it was right when you went on your mission. Was it 1961? BD: 1962. DO: I was just barely thirteen, and my sister Kathy was fourteen, and my dad. There were the three of us there at the shop. It was about eight thirty at night. We usually closed the shop about eight o’clock, but we worked a little bit late. It was Christmas time so we always worked late. BD: Always. DO: We were just closing up and we used to wear these little uniform things and so Kathy says, “Well I’ll finish up here, you go get changed.” So I started back to the bathroom to change my clothes and I just got in the bathroom when I heard that she was kind of screaming. It was like, “What’s going on?” So I buttoned back up and ran out, “What’s going on?” She was telling my dad that we’d just been robbed. A guy had come into the shop and he was a black guy and he wore a blue and white polka dot mask. She didn’t see his face, but he held a gun. They figured it was a .22 revolver as she described it. So Dad asked her, “Are you all right?” “Yeah, I’m okay,” but she was just really shaken up because she’d had this gun in her face. So he made sure that she was okay and he says, “Well I’m going to go out and look.” 23 BD: First you said you called the police didn’t you? DO: No, not at first. I said, “I’m coming with you,” because I didn’t want—I was going to protect him. I was afraid; it was cold and it was dark, there wasn’t a light anywhere. We went out and he looked from side to side. We looked and there was nothing out there. There wasn’t a car on the street. BD: There had to be. DD: Yeah there’s one. DO: They were parked. DD: But none moving. DO: Nothing moving on the street. We went back in and he says, “Are you sure you’re all right Kathy?” She says, “Yeah, I’m okay.” So he tells me to call the police and that he’s going to go get the car which he always parked about three or four houses down from the street to save the parking for customers. He says, “I’m going to go get the car and I’ll bring it around and I’ll take you both home as soon as we’re done with the police.” I says, “Okay.” So in the meantime here I am thirteen years old, this is before 9-1-1. You know what it’s like to dial seven numbers first correctly when you’re shaken up and you’re upset. I tried dialing three or four times and I couldn’t get the right numbers. So then I just dialed the 0 for the operator and asked them to get me the police. So I’m talking to the police officer on the phone and telling him that we’ve just been robbed and they need to send somebody up, when there is a couple and I can see that my dad is walking between this man—sorry I try not to think about it. He’s in his white from the bakery; his white pants, his white shirt with this 24 man on one side, woman on the other helping him in and he’s got red all over his chest. I can see that the way he’s kind of slumped from walking in that he’d been shot. Even though I hadn’t heard anything because my mind wasn’t in that realm because nothing had been out there. So I yelled to the policeman on the phone to get an ambulance up there quick because Dad’s been shot. By then I was hysterical and I don’t know at that point if Dad had walked around the counter and come back inside to where David’s got the ramp now that goes into the back. It used to be a couple of stairs and he just slumped down and sat on those stairs. I think he came in there because he felt like it was protection. What had happened, he’d gone out to get to the car when this guy had come from behind a tree and coldcocked him with his gun. Hit him in the back of the head with his gun so that he would go down. Well he went down, but he wasn’t unconscious and then the guy stepped back and started shooting at him. DD: First of all he kicked him. DO: Well he kicked him while he was down too. DD: Broke a couple of ribs when he kicked him. DO: Kicked him in the chest and then he stood back and shot him. As he was shooting him Dad was rolling on the ground to try and avoid it. Well one bullet went through his shoulder this way, one went through this way and went through both lungs and the other one went down through his bowels and intestines causing about, I can’t remember how many holes. Twenty-six holes because it had spiraled, you know. BD: Something like that. 25 DD: Yeah, they sewed up, I think it was thirty-six holes altogether. DO: Anyway, it was a lot. BW: That was at the Dee? DD: The old Dee. DO: The old Dee Hospital, yeah. So the police got there, and the ambulance got there. Ken and Roger Porter used to do a lot of driving for Moss Ambulance in those days. It was Ken and Roger that came and got Dad. Dad had known them from boat patrol and Red Cross and different things, so we’d known who they were. So they came in with a stretcher and it was hard for them. They had to go over the showcases to get him out and to the hospital. They were working on him and getting him to the hospital and we were still talking to the police. By now Kathy is completely in total shock and so am I. I mean a thirteen and a fifteen year old, that’s a lot for kids to have to deal with. Then it dawned on me I have to call Mom. I have to tell her. So I couldn’t, I just called her and said, “Mom we need you to come to the bakery.” She says, “Well I’ve got a couple of things, I’ll be down in a few minutes.” “No Mom, you have to come now.” She could hear my voice, something was terribly wrong even though I didn’t say so. We lived on 27th and Brinker, so it just took her a couple minutes to drive down, but she comes around the corner, she sees the police car there and then she sees the ambulance pull in and then she’s pretty upset too. I mean we’re all basket cases. DD: I remember getting out of the car because I rode down with her. DO: Yes, you would’ve had to come with her. Karl was probably out on a date and Bud was on his mission and Carole and Diane were both married by then. So we 26 all end up going to the hospital, locking up and going to the hospital and the prognosis wasn’t good for Dad. He had one chance in a thousand to live. At that time Ken Knapp was the administrator of the hospital. All of a sudden everybody in Ogden was in the emergency room. Mom and Dad had more friends than you could ever imagine because they were always so good to the community. He had the rounds every Saturday night. He had twelve to fifteen widow ladies that he stopped by to see every Saturday night, and dropped off bread and goodies or whatever we might have left. DD: In fact, he made us bake extra for that so we’d have some left. DO: If they were out of town or if they were going to go out for the evening or something and us kids wanted to go do something. That’s fine you go do it, but before you come home you make the rounds. We had a list and our friends had to go with us. If we had the car, that was our responsibility to see all these widows around the town. They were so good to the community that everybody just loved our folks. BW: How was your dad after this? DO: He was never the same. It took a lot out of him. His heart stopped two or three times on the operating table when they went in to operate. The doctor told Mom that she had to bring my brother home; Bud had to come home from his mission to run the business because Dad wasn’t going to make it. She said, “Like heck he’s not.” When Bud left to go on his mission, Richard L. Evans was one of the Apostles. I don’t know if you’re of that age to where you even know who he was. BW: I’m a historian. 27 DO: He set Bud apart for his mission. Bud was diabetic so we were all really worried about his health. When he got set apart we thought, “Oh please just bless him that he’ll be okay.” Well in the blessing he blessed Bud that while you’re faithfully serving your mission your family will be preserved. DD: So apparently he glitched there somewhere. We thought he’d glitched. DO: It’s like, “What? No that’s backwards Elder Evans. He needs to be preserved.” Well he hadn’t been out more than what, three or four months? BD: Yeah I went out in September, this was in December, three months. DO: So my mother was such a woman of faith that if the Lord promised me this blessing he’s not coming home, because I want that blessing and I get that blessing. So she made him stay out on his mission. Elder LeGrand Richards heard about Dad’s plight and called Mom. “What can I do for you?” She says, “Well, can you give him a blessing?” So he came up from Salt Lake a couple times while he was in the hospital to give him special blessings. He was promised that he would live to be a miracle. He did and you know he lived another ten, fifteen years after that. BD: 1962 to 1974. DO: So he never was the same, but I’m sure it was because of having his heart stop and getting zapped a couple times on the operating table. He went in for open heart surgery because he had an aneurysm. They went in to try and fix that, but the heart was just damaged too badly. They couldn’t fix it, so it was from 1962 to 1974. You know, during that time, he did really pretty good. He was grateful for every day and we were grateful for every day that we had him. 28 DD: One of the bullets was still in him. They never removed it. DO: They never got the one out. BW: Let’s finish up with the transition of the bakery from your father to the next generation. DD: How did that happen? Well I got back off my mission. While I was gone my dad had a heart attack. DO: And while he was gone Mom passed away. DD: Mom died, so things were tough at the shop. Bud had his job, Karl had his, but it was a hardship on everybody. BD: We both came in. It was not easy. DD: So my dad sold the place. He sold it to another baker who wanted it. He ran it for—how long was Joe there? DO: Six or eight months, just enough for him to ruin everything. DD: During that time the place was a mess. I mean it was a mess. DO: All the equipment was broken and Dad went down to help him too. To try to transition. DD: Joe didn’t want his help. BD: No he didn’t. DD: He said, “No, get out of here I’m doing this.” So Joe didn’t want to work and as a result during the time that Joe worked there he only made one payment—that’s all he made. So my dad went down there to say, “Joe can you pay me anything?” He says, “No, don’t want it. It’s too hard work. I don’t want to do it, it’s yours. I’m out of here.” He left Dad with a huge mess. He didn’t know what he was going to 29 do. Everything was busted, everything was filthy and you know it was just—it was just bad. DO: And his clientele had been ruined. DD: Yeah, nobody was coming in. My brother lived in Brigham and all the family came down whenever they could. We closed up the shop for about two weeks and all we did was throw stuff out and clean. It was so filthy in there that we even found weevil bugs in the salt bin. It was horrible. So everything got thrown out in the dumpster and we cleaned and cleaned and cleaned, and then we cleaned. BD: And repaired. DD: And repaired and fixed and lubed and oiled and greased. BW: Probably a little cleaning too. DD: Got it all going and then my dad put an ad in the paper because he says, “I don’t know if we’re going to make it.” He put an ad in the paper that says, “Topper Gang is back.” It was like half a page big ad. Everybody came back, he was shocked. We had to work our butts off. BW: That’s a good story right there. DD: We opened up, we had things running good, everything worked out, been running ever since. Then when he went in for his open heart surgery, I was down there working with him actually more than anybody. DO: You had to because I was giving birth any second. DD: He said, “Do you want to do this?” My major was electrical engineering and I said, “I kind of want to do that, but Dad I’m starting to like this. You know this is starting to be fun. It’s not like before I went when I had to do everything. Now I’m 30 back, everything’s appreciated. You know there’s a whole different feeling down there.” I actually liked it and he said, “Well we ought to form like a joint venture or something like that.” I go, “That’s fine with me. I’d love to do it with you.” He goes, “Okay.” But that’s about as far as it got because right after that he went in for his open heart surgery and that’s when he died. When he died I thought, “Dang we oughta keep this going.” DO: The rest of us are, “What are we going to do with the bakery? We don’t want it.” David said he wanted it, we go, “Woohoo!” DD: So they made me a good deal and I took it over, but then after I took it over I started getting sick. I was diabetic, had been since I was twelve, and diabetes started to take me down. As a result I started going through kidney failure. So what I would do is I would go down there and work a little bit and get sick and go in the office and lay down on a cot for about a half hour or hour or so; then get up and go in the bathroom and throw up because it was just too much work. Then I’d work and go lay down and get up and throw up and then go work, because after I threw up I always felt better. Anyway, it got pretty bad. So I couldn’t repay the family because I wasn’t taking in that much. They worked with me really well on it and we got things worked out so I didn’t have to worry about it. Then my sister who lives in St. George, Kathy— BD: The one that was robbed. DD: The one that was robbed, yep. We went in for a kidney match to see if anybody would match, and she went in and matched. They said, “Yep you got a good 31 match here.” Her husband supported her and said, “Yep if you want to do it we can do it.” So that was thirty—how many years ago Valeen? VD: It was in 1987. DD: So twenty-nine years ago, something like that. BW: Close to twenty-nine. DD: It’s getting close to thirty, so I’ve had a record breaking kidney for a long time. When I had it done, usually the most they got out of them—if it was very successful and well done—was ten years. So we’ve about tripled that and it’s still going. BW: I just have a couple of quick, shorter questions to wrap up with. Number one: how important was it to your father to maintain the Dutch heritage in your family? DD: Well we’re mad at him for not teaching us more Dutch. BD: We had the opportunity though and just didn’t take advantage of it. DD: Yeah. BD: Because they spoke Dutch a lot at the bakery. We had a lot of Dutch clientele there. DD: A lot of the Dutch supported us like crazy. At Christmas time, boy, that’s when the Dutch came out. We did Dutch Konfect, we did speculaas… DO: And butterletter. DD: Butterletter, pffefferneusse, a lot of Dutch pastries. So the Dutch people would really come in and support us. It taught us a lot about Dutch traditions. 32 DO: We were 50% Dutch and 50% English, but we were Dutch. Mom and her family got the shaft, but Mom thought she was Dutch too because of all the Dutch relatives and everybody there. DD: That seems to be all that we ever saw. DO: We were born and raised Dutch. We don’t speak the language, but we know a few swear words probably. DD: “Get to work” and “hurry it up” and stuff like that. DO: We know what jongens and meisjes are—you know, the boys and the girls. Us kids were always working. As soon as we turned twelve we were working side by side with Dad in the bakery. DD: What do you mean twelve? BD: I was eight. DD: I was eight. DO: You were not. DD: I was too. I was frying cake doughnuts. BW: I think we’re starting a family feud here. DO: I’ll say more full-time at twelve. DD: The girls got off until twelve, the boys started at eight. DO: Okay, he’s wrapping up. BW: Last question, what’s the legacy of the DeRyke family? I’ll tell you one word that comes to my mind and you run with it: resilience. DO: That’s a good one. BD: That’s a good one. 33 DO: Persevering to the end because we still get stuck having to help with the bakery. DD: Yep, if they stop in to see me they know where the aprons are. DO: You know we worked so we could eat and we ate well. DD: We’re still eating well, especially at Christmas time. BD: We never did go hungry. DD: Bud will come in and help with all the Christmas stuff, all the Dutch stuff, and I’ve got a nephew on my wife’s side who feels the same way. It’s not Christmas until he comes in and works at the bakery to make butterletter and pffefferneusse and whatever. He has to help with butterletter though or it’s just not Christmas. BW: Any other last minute thoughts, after all of this? BD: We used to have… DD: No, my son Lance works down there with me and he’s kind of thinking about taking it over, and I’m turning more and more over to him all the time. The older I get the more I like to turn more over to him. DO: And he’s going to be doing it all summer. DD: He’s stronger than me. He’s faster than I am and he’s very precise. DO: And he’s a lot better looking. BW: Bud you wanted to say something. BD: For a long time—I don’t know if it started right after the bakery was started, but Dad would have a birthday party at the bakery every November, and he would sell bread for the same price he sold it— DD: When he first started. BD: Was it like twenty cents a loaf or something like that? 34 DO: No, it was even less than that. It was like fifteen cents a loaf, because when I was working a loaf of bread was twenty-one cents and that’s 1965. BD: And now you can’t buy a loaf of bread for that price. I just looked at the store the other day and they’re anywhere from five to eight dollars a loaf. DD: Boy am I cheap. Hey, we got to do some pricing. BD: He would have a birthday party every year. DO: And KLO radio would be up there. They’d have disc jockeys and the big old spotlight they used to go around. DD: The searchlight. BD: Dad would have a big cake like that one, Topper’s Treat. He would serve everybody. They had people coming from everywhere and we would make probably five to eight batches of bread on that day and fill the oven with each batch. DO: We didn’t have time to slice it. Come right out of the oven and right out the door. BD: Then the doughnuts, more doughnuts than you can ever count. DO: Doughnuts are still great. BW: Well I really enjoyed this. Thank you for talking to us today.