Oral History Program Lorrie Rands Interviewed by Tanner Flinders & Alyssa Kammerman 7 December 2018 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Lorrie Rands Interviewed by Tanner Flinders & Alyssa Kammerman 7 December 2018 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ 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: Rands, Lorrie, an oral history by Tanner Flinders & Alyssa Kammerman, 7 December 2018, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Lorrie Rands Circa 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Lorrie Rands, conducted on December 7, 2018 in the Stewart Library’s Archives Conference Room, by Tanner Flinders and Alyssa Kammerman. Lorrie discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Natalie Rands, Lorrie’s daughter, is also present during this interview. TF: This is an oral history interview with Lorrie Edith Rands. Today is December 7, 2018, my name is Tanner Flinders and I will be co-conducting this interview along with Alyssa Kammerman. We are also joined by Lorrie’s daughter Natalie Rands and we are in the Weber State University Stewart Library. Let’s begin with when and where you were born. LR: I was born on April 7, 1974 at the Cottonwood Hospital in Murray Utah. TF: So Salt Lake? LR: Yeah. TF: Did you grow up in Salt Lake? LR: I did. TF: How was it? LR: It was all I knew. I think I was two when we moved there so I don’t know where we lived before that but I lived on 7th east, right across the street from Liberty Park for the majority of my life. I don’t know what else to say about that. It’s just where I grew up. It was Salt Lake. 2 TF: How long did you live there? LR: I think I was two when we moved there. I don’t remember because I was really young. I left there when I got married in 1997. TF: Where in Salt Lake did you go to school? LR: I went to Emerson Elementary; I went to Clayton Junior High, and East High School. TF: Any fond memories of school? LR: Not really, I couldn’t say my “r’s”. So what do you call that? A speech impediment I guess. I remember when I was in the first grade, I don’t know if someone had dared me to get up on top of those big soccer goals but I climbed up there and I ended up falling off and I hurt myself. I was trying to tell my teacher what had happened, that I had fallen off this bar, but I couldn’t say, “bar” and so she just said “What did you do? What happened?” I think I sat there for five minutes trying to tell her what had happened. Finally, she understood. That was awful. That is what I remember, the stuff like that when I was in first grade. TF: Was it difficult being named, “Lorrie” and not being able to say your “r’s”. LR: I honestly don’t remember trying to say my name. I think I was in the fourth grade when they started me in speech therapy. Now, the only time I can’t say my “r’s” right is when I talk too fast or I’m nervous. So if I do my “r’s” wrong it’s because I’m nervous. NR: It also happens when she gets really tired from the blood clot. 3 LR: Oh yea, see? There you go. TF: That’s why your daughter is here. LR: That’s why my daughter is here. Thanks daughter. AK: Did you have any best friends in school? LR: I don’t know. I honestly couldn’t tell you. I don’t think I did, not until high school. TF: How was high school? East High? LR: Yeah, East High. I liked school. I liked learning but I didn’t like the social aspect of it. I struggled. This is where I don’t know how much I want to talk about because junior high and high school were really hard. I was bullied in junior high so I don’t have a lot of fond memories of junior high. Although, I did make the basketball team, that was the highlight. I loved it, I played basketball all through junior high and then made the team in high school. I played freshman sophomore year and then I had surgery on my jaw and couldn’t play anymore. TF: What position? LR: I was a forward believe it or not. TF: Really? LR: I was a short forward. TF: You said that you enjoyed the learning aspect of school, what were your favorite subjects? 4 LR: History. I loved History. I always have loved history. I always enjoyed P.E., the sports, and singing. I enjoyed singing. My sister and I would go around with my dad because he spoke in churches. Growing up within the LDS church, he would go to different churches and he’d always ask us to sing a song. My sister would play the piano and we’d both sing. I loved doing that. We harmonize really well together. I really loved singing with my sister. TF: Do you still sing with your sister? LR: When we have the opportunity. We’re old now and we live almost an hour from each other so we don’t get to do it as much as we used to. But on special occasions, you know at funerals and stuff, we’ll sing sometimes. AK: Are you a soprano, alto? LR: Alto. My sister has a larger range than me. She does soprano better than I do so I typically take the alto part. But she can harmonize better than I, so we have to play with it until we can get it right. AK: Did you do voice lessons? LR: No. I never did. She has, but I never did. It wasn’t that important to me, I just really loved singing with her. That was a fun thing that we would do together; it was our thing. AK: Growing up did you have something in mind that you wanted be someday? Was there this dream you aspired to? 5 LR: No. I was never encouraged to really have dreams like that. The one thing that I was always encouraged to do was get married and have children. NR: I was reading this book one time and you were so excited because that was what inspired you to go towards history. LR: Yeah, I don’t even remember what the name of the book is now. Johnny Walker? NR: I hated every minute of it. LR: I read that book in sixth grade and that’s when I really fell in love with history. Then in junior high I had the most amazing U.S. history teacher and I memorized the states and their capitals and I still know them. TF: I’d as you to repeat them, but… LR: Yeah, that might get a little weird. I know all of the states and their capitals. I can do it in alphabetical order too. AK: How many brothers and sisters do you have? LR: I have an odd family life in that regards. My father was married before he met my mother and had four children with his first wife. I have four older siblings, three brothers and a sister that I don’t know very well. My oldest brother is sixteen years older than I am to the day. I was his sixteenth birthday present and I don’t know how excited he really was about that. I ruined his prom. He was going to take the car but instead my parents went to the hospital to have me. He wasn’t excited. My parents had five children together. Of those five, I am smack in the 6 middle. Literally, I have an older brother and sister and a younger brother and sister. I make it uneven. With all of them, my dad has nine children. I’m the seventh, but if you just look at my parents, I’m the third of five. AK: And just for the record, could we get the names of your parents? LR: My father is Richard Blaine Hill. My mother is Edith Charlotte Decol Hill. TF: Is that where you middle name comes from? Edith? LR: Yeah. It’s also my dad’s, grandmother’s name. Both sides of the family. AK: How much younger is your youngest sibling from you? LR: Blaine was born in 1978, so he’s four years younger than I. AK: you graduated in? I’m trying to do my math and it’s not coming fast enough. LR: 1992. Form high school. AK: Did you go to college right after that? LR: I did. I don’t know why I did this, but I applied to the University of Utah and made it. I went there for one semester and I hated it. I hated the U. It just had this feeling and I didn’t like it. There was this program that the state had and they ended up paying for my college. I can’t remember what it was called but I went to Salt Lake Community College after that and did that for two semesters and then I went on a mission. TF: Where did you go on your mission? 7 LR: I was originally called to Minnesota, I spent four months there and then had a nervous breakdown, and my poor mission president didn’t know what tod o with me. So he just sent me home and I rehabilitated for three months and then finished my mission in the Utah Salt Lake City Mission. TF: Where you grew up? LR: Where I grew up. It was a little weird. AK: Was that a proselyting mission or were you on temple square? LR: It was a proselyting mission. Temple square is a completely separate mission. AK: Did you have a degree in mind that you were working towards during college? LR: When I started it was elementary education. I for some reason thought that I could be a teacher. I thought I could be an elementary school teacher. I don’t know why, I didn’t like the idea of it. It never appealed to me but I didn’t know what I was doing back then. I was so insecure and unsure of what I was doing that I was just going with whatever anyone said. “You should try this” and I would try it. TF: What made you switch from going to school to going on a mission? Had you always planned on going on a mission? LR: No, I hadn’t. In fact, when I was nineteen I had gotten engaged and it took me probably a good three months to realize that I shouldn’t marry the guy. He was fourteen years my senior after all. I broke up with him; he made it really easy for me to break up with him. He was not the smartest guy. It was after that I 8 thought, “Maybe I should go on my mission”. So that’s when I decided to go on a mission. AK: I remember thinking that you had told me you went to some rural areas in Utah during your mission. Is that true? LR: No, I was in Magna. AK: Magna, that’s what it was. LR: That’s the most rural area that I served in. I was in the old part of Magna, not the newer part. TF: The new happening part of Magna. LR: Believe it or not, there are two parts of Magna. There’s the old part and the new part and I was in the old part with the tiny little streets and the little tiny houses, and the water that sucks. It’s disgusting, the tap water in Magna. You can see the minerals in it. It’s gross, we always had bottled water. We did not use the tap water. AK: Could you see the minerals in the shower water? LR: I tried not to think too much about that, that I’m showering in that water. Yuck! AK: Was there anybody that you met on your mission that ended up being a good friend or that kind of influenced you or had an impact on you? LR: This is a really good question. Not really, I’m still in contact with one of my companions that I had. She’s in Arizona, but I was so super focused on just finished that so no. Sorry. 9 AK: After you got back from your mission, did you plan on going straight back to college? LR: Yeah, I immediately went back to college. I went back to Salt Lake Community because I still lived at home. I worked at LDS Hospital; I cleaned and sterilized equipment for surgeries. It was a fun job. I loved that job. NR: Was it me or Ryan that ended that job for you? LR: You. That was one of my favorite jobs I’ve ever had. It was hard. I worked my ass of in that job. TF: How did you get that job? Did you know someone? LR: My mom worked at LDS Hospital and so I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if I could just carpool with her?” I applied to whatever was open. Then I thought for a time, “Maybe I could be a Nurse.” That didn’t last long. I can’t separate myself form what’s happening. AK: Did you try any CAN classes or anything? LR: No, but surgery fascinates me. I would have been a scrub nurse if I had gone that route because surgeries are just interesting and fascinating. TF: And you were still going to SLCC at this time? Salt Lake Community College. LR: Yes. TF: Did you think about studying nursing or CNA? 10 LR: I was still on the elementary education route. I was really still just doing my generals. I wasn’t beyond that. TF: And I understand you met your husband? LR: That’s where I met Lee. In a ballroom dance class. He was the best dancer in the class. I wanted to get an A in this class so I told him, “You’re going to be my partner.” Poor guy, I don’t know how to let someone lead me. So, he struggled with me, that much I do now. But we got an A in the class and started dating. AK: Did you start dating after that semester or during? LR: During. We kind of hung out a little bit and then our first date was May 8th or 9th. He took me to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. TF: What year was that? LR: 1997. NR: You were married nine months later. LR: It was four months later. Our first date was in May, we were married in September. AK: Did you ever play any musical instruments? LR: I tried. I tried to learn piano. I tried to learn the viola. I’m just not musically inclined that way. I can sing, I can read notes, but I just don’t have that ability. I really don’t. AK: But you appreciated classical music and other things. 11 LR: I love classical music. I actually took a music appreciation class at SLCC and I fell in love with Beethoven. Especially his piano concertos, it was the most beautiful song I had ever hard. I love music; I love all types of music. Well not quite, but close. I don’t like rap. TF: That’s sad. There’s some good rap. LR: If you say so. TF: So you were going to SLCC still, and you married Lee. LR: I did, I married him. TF: When did you guys get married? LR: September 25, 1997. We were married in the Salt Lake Temple. TF: Is he LDS? LR: Yes. NR: Both of them were. LR: He wasn’t active when he met me but he got active so he could marry me because I wouldn’t marry him unless we could marry in the temple. I was very particular about that at the time because I had gotten off my mission. TF: Did he go on a mission? LR: No, he joined the Air force in 1993. As he put it, that was his mission. TF: Did he go right out of high school? 12 LR: He couldn’t, he had something wrong with his knee and so he had to wait a year. He enlisted on May 19, 1993. AK: Was he always National Guard? LR: Yes, he’s always been National Guard. AK: What was he studying at Salt Lake Community College? LR: I have no idea, just generals. NR: I don’t think he knows now. LR: He was just getting his generals done and then he took a lot of classes through the Air force. I think he has more credits than most seniors. NR: He actually tried ROTC for two years. That’s how he knew where the U’s ROTC building was. LR: I knew that he did ROTC I just didn’t know that. NR: That’s why he knew exactly where to go when I went. AK: After you got married, did you continue with classes? LR: I did until—when did I stop? I got pregnant with her [Natalie] and Lee was TDY’d to Peru about six months after we got married. TF: He was what? LR: TDY—Temporary Duty Station—for a month. We were so poor, I needed him to go so we could have some money because he wasn’t working. He didn’t have a job when we first married. He was doing temp jobs, so I said, “You need to go.” 13 Even though I didn’t know 100% that I was pregnant I kind of knew I was, but I didn’t tell him so he would go. When he got there, I took a home pregnancy test, and I called him, “By the way, I’m pregnant.” He was kind of mad at me for that, for not telling him. It was afterward that I had to quit school. It was too much trying to work full-time and be pregnant and so I quit going to school. No, I quite because we were in the car accident. We were married in September and in February we went to Montana with his parents. His dad was driving and it was a pretty bad accident. They should have totaled that poor car. All I remember was that he was so worried that I was pregnant and I wasn’t but I got pregnant soon thereafter. The insurance company settled with us and we ended up getting a lot of money. I thought it was weird because we were passengers in the car. We bought our first computer with that money. We spent $2,000 on a computer and it was top of the line. The hard drive was 250 megabytes. It was the fastest that they had and it was the biggest hard drive that they had. We actually had DSL. We actually paid for that extra, not just dial up. Man, that was way back when. AK: I’m sorry I don’t even know what DSL is. LR: So there’s dial-up and then DSL was after that and I don’t know how it’s different from dial-up. I left the phone line open, whereas with dial-up, if you were on the line no one could call you. NR: But the slowness was the same. LR: Yeah. 14 AK: Interesting AK: You got pregnant how many months after you were married? LR: Six months I guess. AK: And then Lee left for a month for a TDY to Peru? LR: Yeah. AK: After he got back did he leave at all for the rest of the pregnancy or was he around? LR: No, he was around for the rest. Natalie was born in November of 1998 and then it was February of 1999 that we moved to Mississippi because he changed units. That turned out to be a blessing, him changing units. He was in the 109th ground radio and he changed to the 151st Air Refueling Wing working in avionics on the airplanes. He had to go to Mississippi for 10 months and because he was there for more than 6 months, we all got to go with him. So I spent 10 months in Mississippi and I hope to never go back. TF: Why didn’t you like Mississippi? LR: Number one, it’s humid. Having lived here all of my life, where it’s arid it’s just…eck. When it rains it freaking rains and I’ve never known such ignorance; I’ve never seen such outright racism and it was disheartening to actually see that. We’re sheltered here in Utah and that’s where I had lived all of my life except for those ten months and a few months in Minnesota. It shocked me to see racism that close. The people could be so ignorant just because someone’s skin was a 15 different color. I was so happy when we left. I thought Utah was backwards. Biloxi, Mississippi was backwards. It was fun when we went to Mardi Gras that year. Natalie was with us, and Lee’s brother lived in New Orleans so we stayed with him and they told us, “If you stay out of New Orleans you can see all of the family oriented parades. They love the kids.” They were explaining o us how to use Natalie to get the best stuff, there was this women standing next to us who was overhearing the conversation, and she piped up and said, “That’s a terrible way to exploit a child. Can I borrow her?” “No, you may not borrow my child!” I was so mad. But we had bags of beads and stuffed animals because Lee cradled her in his arm underneath his coat and every time a float or someone would come by, he’d open up his little coat. Anything that was in their hand would be checked at Lee and then they’d reach down and grab their best stuffed animals and chuck them at Lee. We got a lot of loot. That was a good thing about thing about being down there is we got to go to Mardi Gras and be part of that. AK: Quick question, the racism you saw, was that mainly comments people made or were there some other things? LR: The one that is the most standout to me is I was in grocery store and there was a woman in front of me who was black and her cute, adorable, little boy was sitting in the cart. He was so cute and all I remember is I would, you know, what you do with kids, “Oh you’re so cute.” This old white trash man—beard down to here— 16 he just looked, he doesn’t look like you. He looked worse than you. Not that you look terrible. TF: Thank you. LR: He said it loud enough so that I heard him and I’m quite sure the woman in front of me heard him. He just said, “They let anyone in here.” I was dumbfounded. It’s like I had to pinch myself, “Is this really real? Is this happening?” That’s the one I remember the most. That was only off base. When we were on base, there wasn’t anything like that. But when you go off base, it was just shocking to me. AK: What was life on base like? LR: I don’t know. More like little communities like here. It was just small and based upon rank, your housing was based upon you rank. So we had a really nice house because he was an E-4. I’m sorry, an E-5. I get confused okay. TF: I don’t know what that means. LR: He was an NCO, Non-Commissioned Officer, E-5, Staff Sargent. So we had this two bedroom—No, it was three bedroom, or was it two bedroom? NR: How would I know? LR: I don’t remember. All I know is that it was huge and we didn’t need all of that space but that’s what they gave us so that’s where we lived. AK: Did they have little community things for the families there? 17 LR: I don’t remember. I really don’t. We didn’t get that involved, we weren’t there long enough to really get involved, and they were used to people coming and going. We got to know our neighbors and that was it, because they were our neighbors. AK: What prompted that job change? LR: You know I don’t know what prompted it but it ended up being a blessing. A huge blessing, at least for our little family. AK: As in like a better job situation? LR: No, 9/11. AK: Interesting. TF: Did you come back to Utah after Mississippi? LR: We came back here and we decided that we wanted to build a house and have our own place. We found a place and I was working at Cottonwood Hospital at this time, Labor and Delivery. We buy this house and Lee loses his job. We move in and he gets laid off because they didn’t like him because he was National Guard and kept coming and going, so they found an excuse to get rid of him. We moved in in September and he loses his job soon thereafter. I remember that Thanksgiving thinking, “How are we going to do this?” Because at that point I’d found out that I was pregnant with our son. We had been trying which is the sad part, because we thought things were going pretty good, so we 18 were trying to get pregnant. I was so sick with him, that I had to quit my job so thank god Lee got a job at L-3. NR: He’s been at L-3 for a long time. I remember him being at L-3. LR: Yeah, he was at L-3 for a while. TF: Were you in Layton at this point? LR: Yeah, when we moved we built our home in Layton. It was nice. It was a nice place to live. I really liked that house at first. That’s where we brought our son home and raised our kids. AK: What year was your son born? LR: 2001. July 30, 2001. AK: You mentioned that this new job was a blessing because of September 11th. Why was that? LR: So if he had been in the 109th, that unit was actually called to the front lines of Iraq. He would have been on the front lines and so I don’t think I could have handled that. I look back and think, “Could I have?” No, I don’t think I could have. It was hard enough when his unit was activated after 9/11. They were activated three times, went to Cyprus, Crete, and the Azores’, in that order. The first two deployments weren’t too bad, they were tolerable. Bu the third one was bad, because we knew they were starting to really gear up to start to invade Iraq. This was in 2003. I was terrified and trying to keep my kids from really knowing what was happening because they were young enough that you know, “Not a big 19 deal.” But that one was the hardest deployment because I truly had no idea how long he was going to be gone. I knew where he was, but I had to have my gallbladder out. NR: We drove dad off to the airport and took you to the hospital and we stayed at Grandma’s. LR: That was weird. TF: In 2003? LR: Yeah. He dropped me off at his mom’s who then took me to the hospital to have surgery. He hopped on a plane to go to the Azores. For two weeks, I had no idea where he was. I didn’t hear from him for two weeks. Finally, I went to his commanding officer on base and said, “Okay, where the hell are they? I haven’t heard from him. This is unnerving.” He said, “I can’t help you, I can’t tell you anything.” I was like, “Bull crap you can’t. Yes you can.” But I kept my mouth shut and it was shortly after that that Lee finally called and told me that they had done this little triangle thing because they would try to land at the Azores and the crosswinds were so bad. The pilot was an idiot and didn’t know how to land during crows winds. It was the only time that he was ever truly scared for his life was on that plane ride. AK: I’m sorry, Azores, is that within the country itself? LR: No, it’s a little island in the Atlantic. It’s part of Portugal. It’s off the coast there, out in the Atlantic. It’s a hub for a lot of airlines because it’s kind of that perfect spot in the Atlantic. So they would try to land and not be able to land. Then they 20 would go to Spain, and then go to Italy and then try to land again on the Azores. They called it a triangle. It took them two weeks to actually get to the Azores because the pilot was incompetent I guess. But when we came home, that was truly a moment. I was sure he was going to be deployed a long time but it was only about seven weeks. So we were all excited because they’re coming home. We got to the guard base to pick him up—Ryan was really too young to get what was going on, but Natalie wasn’t, she knew. NR: It was first that I was really able to be aware of. LR: She knew that daddy was coming home. I had her all dressed up in this really cute outfit and we had this little flower and balloon bouquet and she was so excited. The planes come in, the two air refueling planes, the KC 135’s. They come in low and their boom’s down and they do this little fly by. Finally, they land, and it’s interesting to look back at it now because I still don’t know how she knew it was her dad. I don’t know if you’re familiar with a military flight line area, but there’s a line that you don’t cross. It’s a red line. In this instance they had armed guards. NR: Dad said it was between the barricades that they had set. LR: They have their M-16’s and they’re just, “Okay, no one crosses this line.” Gotcha. I don’t think I was holding my son. I think Grandma had him. But I had a hold of Natalie’s hand. It was at least 100 to 200 yards between where we were standing and where the plane was. I still do not know to this day how she knew it was her dad. But he was one of the first one’s off the plane. One minute 21 I have this four year old’s hand. [To Natalie] You were almost five. The next minute, I don’t have a hold of this hand. I remember looking up at this armed guard thinking, “Please don’t shoot my daughter.” He tensed, “What do I do?” You can almost imagine what’s going through his head, “Do try to stop this little girl?” The newspaper caught a picture of it. It’s the cutest image of her just running with this balloon in her hand to her dad. I remember when they finally met, he just got down on his knees and just enveloped her and carried her back. That’s what I remember about that deployment the most was that homecoming because it was just beautiful. After that, he was never deployed with that unit again. He actually went into a different unit and he was gone even more. He joined the 85th CST in 2004 and was in that unit for ten years. That was awful; he was gone more than he was home. That’s when it truly became hard for the kids. We never knew when he was going to get the phone call that he had to pack up and leave. That was when I truly decided I was going to be a stay at home mom. That was what I was going to do. I loved it until I didn’t. I enjoyed being home and taking care of my kids because I also thought that was what I was supposed to do. I didn’t have that growing up. My dad wouldn’t let my mom stay home. She had wanted to and he told her she couldn’t. She always did what my dad told her to. I wanted to give my kids what I didn’t have. It was nice to stay home and take care of them until one day it was, “Okay, I can’t clean this house.” I had this system and I was bored. I couldn’t decide what I wanted to do. Do I want to go back to work? I tried going back to work and hated it. It was miserable. Lee actually 22 encouraged me to think about going back to school. That’s when I met Adrienne Gillespie, was her name at the time. TF: Adrienne Andrews now. LR: Lee and I had spent a night out and so we had decided to stop at Sill’s for breakfast in Layton on a Sunday morning and it was crowded and Adrienne and her fiancé were behind us. There’s four of us and I realized, “You know, there’s enough room for us to sit at a table together.” So I asked, ‘You guys want to just join us?” and they were like, “Yeah, sure.” “Yeah, just come and that way you don’t have to wait forever and we can just eat and all’s good.” “Oh yeah, that would be great.” I started a conversation and I had mentioned that I was thinking about going back to school and she said, “You should, you totally should. What do you want to study?” I was like, “You know I love history, but what can I do with a History degree? I don’t want to teach.” She was like literally, “You don’t have to!” Kind of in my face and her fiancé was like, “Calm down.” “I know, but there’s so much you can do with a History degree besides teach.” That was my first experience with Weber State. I knew it was there, but I didn’t realize how close it was. She gave me her card and her email address and said, “You know, if you’re serious, just talk to me and I’ll help you” and she did. When I was worried or discouraged, I’d email her and she goes, “You’re good, come on you can do it.” I applied and in the fall semester of 2011 I started back to school, majoring in History with a minor in public history because I didn’t have to teach and there were other things I could do and I just trusted that that was true. 23 NR: I know that if me, Ryan, and dad hadn’t been like, “Go, please.” I was just starting junior high and Ryan was still in elementary school. I don’t think if you knew that we’d be okay that you would have gone. We had to convince you for like a whole solid week, “Please just go.” LR: Yeah, that’s true. I was worried. I wanted to do right by my kids. NR: It was sketchy, but it definitely gave Ryan and I an opportunity to be independent. It gave you a chance to do your Weber State thing and I think it showed Ryan and I an ability to do the college thing and gave us an idea of what we wanted to do, watching you do that. LR: There you go. I just needed something new. I was so bored. TF: Would you say that it was because of Adrienne Andrews, that you chose Weber State or was it more of the closeness? LR: The closeness. I was going to do Weber State no matter what, but between her and Lee, they just told me, “Do it. What do you have to lose?” I applied for financial aid, because I wasn’t working and he didn’t make enough, so we qualified for financial aid and then I discovered scholarships. I sat and talked with Dr. Brower, he was the department advisor, and he said, “You should apply for scholarships.” I thought, “Really, why?” “Because why not?” Just start applying for department scholarships.” And I’ll be damned if I didn’t get scholarships. I got the Lola Sessions Scholarship the next year and then the Dean Scholarship the year after. Dr. Matt said to me that it was the best scholarship money she thinks they ever put out. That made me feel good. 24 TF: Really? That’s interesting. LR: It made me feel really good. So yeah, I go the two highest scholarships monetary wise. TF: Were they pretty competitive scholarships? LR: I don’t know because I didn’t have to do anything. I knew a lot of the history professors at that time. With the Lola Session’s one, I didn’t know anyone, but they looked at my GPA. NR: Which was perfect. LR: Except for the damn A- that Dr. Brower gave me. TF: What class was it? LR: It was history of the world. TF: Just an intro history class? LR: Yeah. He pissed me off. That A-. That was when I realized the importance of that scholarship. They’re not supposed to only give it to women because that’s discrimination. But the Sessions’ family, has always said that their mom wanted to go to school. She wanted to learn but she wasn’t allowed to because she was a woman. So she would just sit in on classes at Weber State just so she could learn but not for credit. They decided that was going to be their legacy for their mom, to give the scholarship to a woman. They have every year just given it to a woman. Because I’m a woman that’s why I got that scholarship but the Dean’s 25 Scholarship I don’t know quite why I got that other than I’d been working my little tushy off. TF: Were you part of any clubs or organizations while you were at Weber? LR: Only Phi Alpha Theta, but I didn’t want to get that involved because I decided I had wanted to be in school, while the kids were in school. So from 8 until 3 I could be in school and then I had to be home. I had to be there with the kids when they got home because I never knew when Lee was going to be gone and that was important to me. But that’s not always possible, especially, when you’re trying to get your degree There ended up being two classes that I had to take at night. Those ended up always working. NR: Yeah, I learned how to cook. LR: Yeah, it was fun. It was not my last year that I started thinking about my senior thesis and that’s when things really started to get exciting and fun for me. I started applying for the grant for the undergraduate research. It never occurred to me that that was even an opportunity. I applied because Dr. MacKay suggested I do. She helped me get it all together and I got a grant to go back to D.C. to do my research for my senior thesis. TF: What was your senior thesis on? LR: It was about the Ogden Red Cross Canteen that was at the Union Station during World War II. Maude Porter who ran it, she became the focal point, she wasn’t going to be originally but the more I learned and researched about her the more I realized she was the center of this thing. It ended up being more about her than 26 about anything else. In fact, it was entitled, Food, Comfort, and a Bit of Home: Maude Porter and the Ogden Canteen. That’s when I started working in Special Collections as a student. I interned, because what you have to do with public history is six hours is six hours of internship and so I started interning because I got access to these Red Cross records and Sarah decided she wanted access to them. So I scanned every one of those books. That’s what I did for the first six months I worked in Special Collections. TF: What year was this? LR: This was 2013. I was interning and then Sarah said, “Just apply for the damn job” so I did and I got the job. I worked as a student worker up until I graduated. Which was really nice because I hadn’t worked since I was pregnant with Ryan. So I had kind of forgotten what it was like to work at something that I enjoyed. Because I did work for like five minutes at Convergys. I hated that job. HATED that job. TF: Your senior thesis on Maude Porter, how did you decide to write about The Canteen? What made you want to write about this? LR: That was actually because of Dr. MacKay. John Sillito was the professor I was takin the class form, but he’s not the one that really helped me the most. I was chatting with Kathryn MacKay, talking with her, “This is what I want to do, I love the military, I love World War II because of my grandfather.” So we were just chatting about it and all of the sudden this light came on in her eye, “You should 27 write about the Ogden Canteen.” So I started doing some research, she mentioned Maude’s name. I started reading her journals that are here in Special Collections and I fell in love. I fell in love with this woman. “I’m going to do this. This is what I’m going to write about.” NR: And that’s all we heard about for four years. LR: That’s how that came about. Dr. MacKay gave me the idea and I did all of the research and went back to D. C. and found the tiny little snippets of stuff that was there. Dr. Little, Branden Little, before I left he said, “Now, when you’re there at the National Archives, don’t just look at what you need to, branch out and see what else you can find.” Because of that, I actually found some really cool stuff about Ogden that I didn’t know about. See you should always listen to your professors. That actually helped make the research a little more colorful and exciting. It was fun. TF: Other than all of these history professors, were there any non-history professors that made a big impact on you at Weber State? LR: There was one, and she was very interesting. She was a communications professor. That was my first semester back. I didn’t really like her, but I didn’t hate her, she was just interesting. But, whether or not she had an impact I don’t know. I can’t even remember her name. I just remember what impacted me was when she was struggling, she would mention, “You know what, I’ve had a rough weekend so bear with me today. Give me the benefit of the doubt, I’m doing the best that I can.” That’s what impacted me was that spirit of, “Okay, I’m doing this 28 a half of the time I’m a single mom. Women can do this and it’s possible for me to get my degree.” Because, in a lot of classes, I was the oldest person, especially the history classes. At times, it was frustrating because I would be surrounded by these young kids who could pull all-nighters. I was like, “Good lord how do you do that? I’ve got to get up with my babies.” NR: That’s actually how you heard about NUAMES was from one of those kids. LR: That’s true. In fact, that first class, one of the kids in my group was a NUAMES student and he talked about what he was doing, and I thought, “That’s kind of cool. I wonder if my kids could do that.” And of course, both of my kids have. And NUAMES has partnered with Weber State University. TF: You mentioned that you were sometimes a single mother. Was your husband deployed while you were at Weber. LR: Yes. But not in the traditional sense of deploy. NR: Most of it was classes. LR: He was always training. They were always training constantly and so they would have these training mission s for two or three weeks at a time and then he’d come home for a couple of weeks and then he’d leave for a couple of weeks and come home for a month and then leave again for a couple of weeks. Then we never knew when he was going to get the call. “Okay, there’s a mission we’ve got to go.” So it was always up in the air, “Are you going to be home?” That made it interesting. But I found a system when he first joined this unit that helped the kids and it helped me so I wasn’t so worried about the kids. We got this map. 29 First, it was a map of the United States and a map of Utah because he couldn’t be deployed outside of the states in the unit that he was in. On this map of the United States, we’d put a dot everywhere he was deployed and because he was in an army unit, we would use green dots. When he was deployed with the Air force they were blue dots, and when it was a real world situation, they were red dots. NR: But the stickers stopped working so we switched to thumbtacks. LR: Yeah, we had to go to pins. NR: I still have those. LR: SO that helped the kids because we had one pin that had a flag in it. “Okay, this is where your dad is.” That pin, wherever he was, is, “Okay that’s where dad is. Everything is good.” They were at Katrina and they went down after Hurricane Ike in Texas. Those were the types of big things they’d do and then the little call outs within the state. We never knew why he was being called out. NR: Until after usually. TF: So he’d just leave? LR: Yeah. He had a little go bag. NR: One was on Christmas, it really didn’t matter when. LR: No, it didn’t. The kids and I learned how to cope with him being gone and to still function and I think we did pretty damn good. NR: It was weird when he was no longer in the unit and here all of the time. 30 LR: That was very weird. In fact, it was 2014, that was the year that they kind of kicked him out of the unit because he had been in for so long. NR: That year was a lot. LR: That was a big year. That was in January when he went on his last trip with them. They went to Alaska and he was going to go to his next place but they told him that he couldn’t because something was wrong with his numbers and his blood work. So he had to go to the doctor. He really never deployed with the until after that. So that was in February of 2014. I had been worried he wasn’t going to be around for my graduation when I graduated. But he was, because he couldn’t go anywhere, he had to stay home. TF: What year did you graduate? LR: 2014. TF: Were you a first generation student? LR: Yes. My mother had done a little bit of work, she had an LPN but she made it sound like she never really graduated. My dad never got a degree, they were just little certificates and that’s what she got, certificates. She never got a degree. So yeah, I was the first of my parent’s children to get a college degree. Yeah. I really was. Wow. TF: Congratulations. So you graduated in ’14. LR: April 26th. TF: Were you full-time at Special Collections at that point? 31 LR: No, I was still a student worker. I should have quit, she should have gotten rid of me when I graduated but she was like, “You know what, I want you to apply.” Because Elliott left and Sarah said, “I want you to apply for the full-time position.” I’m like, “Okay, I’ll apply.” I was hoping I would get it but I had to go through the whole application process. She kept me on as a student worker even though she probably shouldn’t have. Here’s the reason why I got the job. I had scanning experience. None of the other applicants had scanning experience. So I had scanning experience, plus everything else that I did. So I got the job. AK: Scanning photos or documents too? LR: Well almost the first year in Special Collections as a student, all I did was scan. I scanned all of the logbooks for the Canteen. I scanned the sign-in books, I scanned St. Ben’s—all of their photos. I helped scan all of those. I mean that’s all I did was scan. I hate scanning. Just so you know, I hate scanning. AK: But you mentioned you really enjoyed the job. Did you get to do anything else like conduct oral histories in that job? LR: Oh yeah, they were doing the 25th street project at the time when I first started as a student worker. She said, “Here, go start doing these.” The ironic thing is that I had done an oral history for John Sillito’s class in public history, you know, how to do public history stuff. I had fallen in love with them. My grandfather—I interviewed him and I fell in love with oral histories. I fell madly and deeply in love with oral histories is all I can say. So when Sarah asked me to continue to do oral histories I was like, “Yes, that would be so cool!” So I just started 32 conducting oral histories for the 25th street project as a student. Ever since then, when there’s an oral history project Sarah’s said, “Here, here you go. You’re good at this, you do this.” Now I don’t want to overstep, but I love the fact that she has put me in charge or oral histories. I get to run with it and play with it and do all sorts of fun things now with oral histories. But that’s where I really started with it. That one class. AK: With the 25th street project, did you have anybody else accompanying you? LR: Oh yeah, we had other student workers—Woody Johnson. You don’t know Woodrow. He and I made a pretty good team. Then there were other students that we would go with, but he and I made the best team. That it was whomever the other good student was, we would go and it was a lot of fun. I loved doing that. AK: Did Sarah come with you at all to kind of determine who was good? LR: Sarah came with me once. That was actually for the Canteen project because we were able to interweave my canteen with the 25th street project because, Oh my gosh, they’re kind of the same thing. But yes, I did one with Sarah and I did two or three with Melissa. I learned a lot from both of them. Now I have my own style. NR: And now you teach classes at NUAMES because of Ms. Bass and the same subject. LR: Yeah, I do that too. 33 TF: It’s come full circle. You wanted to be an elementary education teacher and now you teach students how to do oral histories. LR: I know I find that humorous that I really never wanted to be a teacher. I didn’t know what else I could do, and now a little bit of encouragement from the right people and I’m doing something that I absolutely love. Because I listened and I’m grateful I did, I mean I love what I do. NR: I think Ms. Bass made a huge impact in all of our lives really. I mean she was really beneficial for Ryan and I to make NUAMES a great place. She made it possible for you to teach younger generations about this history that you love to do so much. LR: It’s true. She’s the first teacher that I ever taught with for oral histories in high school. And now I do it a lot. TF: At NUAMES? LR: At NUAMES and then I’ve taught at Ogden High. Next week, Box Elder Middle School. Anything else? TF: What made you decide to publish your senior thesis? LR: It’s because I was encouraged to. In April of 2014, it was a busy month let me tell you. I went to NCUR—National Conference of Undergraduate Research. Dr. MacKay encouraged me to apply for that, to go to that. Then the office Undergraduate Research actually funded me to go. I was the only history student that year to go to NCUR. 34 TF: From Weber? LR: Yeah, from Weber. Weber has a huge showing at NCUR, but I was the only history. Mostly it’s science. Imagine that. It was a lot of fun to share my research with a broader audience and to get an idea of what it was like to interact with students like that. It was just really cool. Then, later that month, I won some award for best outstanding research or something; I can’t remember exactly what it was. But I didn’t apply for scholarships because I was done right? I’m graduating this semester and I’ve got this letter saying, “You need to come to this luncheon.” I thought, “What for?” I didn’t do anything. Haven’t you guys done enough for me?” “ Just show up.” “Yes, Ma’am.” So I got to the scholarship luncheon and they gave me the Utah Award. I think that meant more to me than the scholarships that I had received because they recognized what I had done on The Canteen and it was the best thing for Utah. So the Utah Historical Society gives it once a year to a senior and there’s a little monetary thing that’s attached to it. Plus you get this lovely plaque and it’s kind of cool. I had no idea I was going to get that. That really excited me that I got that. Then it was at that point that I had Dr. MacKay and Dr. Little and I think it was Dr. Matt that all said, “you should publish this in the Utah Historical quarterly. You should try.” I thought “Really? I should?” Then Dr. MacKay said I should put in for the Helen Papanikolas award so I did. I got that award too in 2014. That one was hard to go to because that was right after my blood clot. I graduated in April of 2014 with my Bachelors and it was one of the most memorable days of my life. Having my kids there and my family there. It was just a good day. I was really proud. I was 35 proud and excited and I didn’t yet know where I was going but I had an idea that I could perhaps work in special collections. One of the best days of my life was when I graduated from Weber State. AK How do you think it impacted your life to meet so many different kinds of people through oral history interviews? LR: Oh my gosh. AK: Was there someone in particular that really hit you? NR: Every week she had a new story and every week we were like, “Okay mom.” LR: There you go. I don’t know what it is, but I have loved meeting new people, interviewing them and learning about them. It’s a great way to learn about history. You can learn a lot about someone because of what they’ve been through. I don’t know if there’s one that’s impacted me more than another, but he one that stays with me the most is from the World War II Project, Bob Ramos. He stays with me. He is just this humble man. I loved interviewing him. He was so open and honest and he would just cry openly about his experiences. He was a good. AK: I think that’s it. TF: Do you have anything that you want to tell us about that we may have left out? NR: I know the blood clot is a really dark time, but I really do think it completely changed how you saw interviews and the way you saw the histories. It made things more real. 36 LR: Well, the funny thing about that is that it does impact what I do here at Weber. When I was offered the job, my start day was the 16th of July, 2014. I remember coming to work that day and I wasn’t feeling great. My ear was ringing, it was weird—just my left one. But I was so excited, I was like, “Yes! I’ve got this job.” So I went around and met all of these people I don’t remember half of anything of that week. The next memory that comes to mind is researching for the Immigrants at the Crossroads. I was going through the newspaper archives, hating it. My head was killing. It was awful. This was on a Tuesday, so this would have been the 21st or the 22nd, so the next week. I had gone running that morning—these are the things I remember. I’m sitting at my desk and I sneeze. This is the weirdest thing and I have never experienced pain like that in my life. Oh god, it hurt so bad to sneeze. So I said, “I’m going to go home, I don’t feel very good.” I woke up the next morning, my head was still pounding, and I was going to get up and exercise because I was training to do the Tough Mudder in September with my siblings. I was in the best shape of my life just so ya’ll know. I still felt like crap so I think Lee had to have been with me because he drove me to the clinic and they said, “You just have migraines. We can’t treat you here, so go to the ER.” Of course, I had never had a migraine so they did all of the tests. I remember when he came back the doctor said, “So you have a blood clot in your brain.” And I said, “Oh, does that mean I’m not going home?” and he looked at me, “No, you’re not going home.” “Oh, okay.” And I’m kind of still trying to process all of this. He said, “Which hospital do you want to go to because we don’t have a neurologist on staff here?” and I thought, “What?” Finally, both Lee 37 and I decided upon Intermountain Medical Center. I said, “Can Lee take me?” The doctor just looked at me and said, “No!” I thought, “Oh, okay.” It’s still not occurring to me how serious this is. It didn’t for a couple of weeks really hit me, how serious it was. NR: She was planning on going back to work. The second she was able to get up she was going back to work. You were going to exercise a month a later. LR: I was very gung-ho. I was ready. It took me two weeks. I couldn’t work for two weeks at all. Then when I started back to work, I could only work ever other day for four hours. It took six months to get back to full-time. To where I could work full-time. I had to rethink everything because I loved oral histories but I couldn’t’ sit through them like I used to. My heart was breaking because that’s what I loved to do. I had to learn how to rely upon— NR: Others. LR: Others, my coworkers. I had a great student worker, his name was Brian and he ended up being a huge help. I learned how to have a little more empathy especially as we were doing the World War II project. It was easier to understand and I could think, “Okay, it’s time to stop, because if I’m tired you guys must be exhausted.” It gave me a perspective on how to do my job that I hadn’t had before. I wouldn’t wish that upon my worst enemy. I don’t’ think anyone should have to go through that. I think it’s given me, like she said, a different perspective. 38 NR: You seem far more in tune with who you are. You’re able to see other people’s history as their own thing and it actually has been an inspiration to watch you do everything because of how much love you have for everything now. LR: That’s my daughter. It did, I had always struggled with my own sense of being and a lot of that because of my younger years. Which I don’t’ like talking about, but it kind of helped me go back to what is important to me. But because of that—may not because of that. I don’t think it destroyed my marriage, but it didn’t help. NR: I think it brought out the flaws and made them more apparent. It made you see the things that needed to be worked on. It made them so you weren’t able to hide them as much. You were more worried about yourself and taking care of yourself and taking care of the fissures that were already there wasn’t part of anything that you could do anymore. LR: Yeah and you know, the constant go, go, go—it changed Lee. He still isn’t ready to look at the impact, the hardship that that had on him. That was the beginning of the end of my marriage—the blood clot. But it’s okay. I have finally been able to look at the blood clot as a blessing because it really has taught me a lot about myself and I like to think that I have a little bit more empathy for others and I’m trying not to judge. It’s so easy to look at someone and judge them, but the one ting that I have discovered through oral histories is that I don’t know what someone has been through, I don’t know their story and until I do, I truly don’t— how can I judge them? How can I even after I know their story, how can I judge them? But, it has give me more empathy. I’d like to think for those I interview. I 39 want to learn more about other people. I’ve grown as a human being doing oral histories. I love my job. Anything else? Is there anything else that you all would like to know? AK: I think that was excellent. TF: I think that was a great way to end it, “I love my job.” LR: I do, I love my job. TF: Well, thank you for letting us interview you. It was a pleasure. LR: Thanks for not being so terrible. I appreciate it.