Oral History Program Carolyn Flinders Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 18 June 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Carolyn Flinders Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 18 June 2019 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: Flinders, Carolyn, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 18 June 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Helen Ransbottom, Carolyn Flinder’s mother. Circa 1970 Helen Ransbottom, Carolyn Flinder’s mother. Circa 1970 Carolyn Flinders 18 June 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Carolyn Flinders, conducted on June 18, 2019, in her home in Pleasant View, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. Carolyn discusses her mother’s life, experiences, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Alyssa Dove, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: So today is June 18, 2019, we are in the home of Carolyn Flinders in Pleasant View, Utah for the Women 2020 project at Weber State University. I am Lorrie Rands conducting the interview and Alyssa Dove is here on the camera. Okay, thank you Carolyn for your willingness to sit down and do this. We are talking about your mother, so let's go with, what is your mother's name? CF: Helen Packer. LR: And her maiden name was Rusmussen? CF: Ransbottom. It was actually Ramsbottom, but they changed it. My mother changed it to Ransbottom. LR: That’s interesting. So it’s Ran, is there a “d” or just an “s”? CF: Rans, and then just “bottom.” LR: Alright, so Helen Ransbottom Packer. CF: Right. LR: When and where was she born? CF: She was born in 1920 in Whitney, Idaho on a farm. 2 LR: Okay, do you know who her parents were? CF: Yes, they were James Raymond Ransbottom and Freda Eliza Wickham. LR: Okay, and were they both from Idaho? CF: Yes, they were. LR: So growing up in Whitney, did she grow up on a farm? Or did they live in more of a town? CF: She grew up on a farm. AD: Did she tell you any stories about what it was like growing up? CF: Yeah, quite a few. Her father was a dairy farmer, but he also owned a gravel pit just up from the house on the farm. There were four children and she was the oldest of four, and of course, being on a farm, there’s a lot of chores to do. She would tell stories about how she would get up as soon as the sun was up and go out and bring the cattle down from the field above the house to have them milked. The way she put it, it was a hard life but a very rewarding life working on the farm. They were a very close-knit family, because they were all expected to pull their weight. LR: So she was the oldest of four, how many brothers or sisters? CF: She had one brother and two sisters. LR: Okay, and do you know where she went to school? CF: It was Preston High, Whitney had one school. 3 LR: Did she ever share any stories of going to school? CF: No, not really. She used to tell me that when it would snow really hard, and the bus couldn’t get through, her father would hook two Clydesdales, Mutt and Pearl, to his sled to take some of the kids from Whitney to high school. She said that one time he gave rides to twenty to twenty-five kids and it took a couple of trips. Her mother made quilts out of Levi material, and she would heat rocks and wrap them up in the material so the kids could put it over them as they were riding in the sled, so that they would stay warm. LR: That’s funny. CF: Yeah, I kind of pictured that and I’m like, “That would be kind of fun.” I’m sure it’s easy to say, living compared to today. But that was pretty much it about school. I know that her father was on the school board and that used to bother her, because if she ever got out of line, of course, he was the one to know or reprimand. LR: Besides being a dairy farmer and being on the school board, what else did her father do? CF: He was very active in the community. He was on the school board, and I think he probably had something to do with the dairy association, and he and his father ran a gravel pit. So through his gravel pit, there were a lot of buildings and things built in Whitney and all around Cache Valley. He was also active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. LR: What did her mother do? 4 CF: Her mother was a homemaker. She helped take care of the farm too and raised four kids. I don’t think she was real active in the community but she was active in the Church. I don’t remember any stories of her community involvement. LR: Okay, do you know what some of your mother’s hobbies were as she was growing up? CF: She’s always loved gardening. I know that my grandpa used to tell me that the farm that they had there in Whitney used to bother her because she didn’t want it to look like just a farm. She liked to have flower beds and she even created a few little lily ponds around the house. As a young girl, she was just always making improvements to the farm to make it less farm-like, or maybe more city-like, with the flower beds and the ponds. LR: Okay, and her parents were okay with her doing that? CF: Yes they were. They supported her, especially her father. They had a very good relationship, and her mother too, but mostly her dad she was close to. LR: That’s really cool. When did she meet her husband? CF: She met him in the high school, and I guess they ran around in the same crowd. Then they both went to Utah State and dated for a while until they got married. And then just a short time after that, Dad was drafted in World War II. So they were married for just two years before he went to the war. LR: So was your mother encouraged to get an education? 5 CF: Yes, very much so. I don’t know if she ever graduated from college, but I know that she was very big on education. She wanted all of her kids to go to college. LR: And her husband’s name? CF: Samuel Lyle Packer. LR: What year were they married? CF: Let’s see, 1942. LR: Okay, and then he was drafted shortly after they were married. Do you by chance know which branch of the service he was drafted into? CF: He went into the Army. He fought in the Philippines. He was actually in charge of a construction crew that built runways and bridges in the Philippines. LR: Okay, that’s really cool. CF: He’s got some really cool pictures from it and stories. Well, he didn’t tell many stories, he didn’t like to talk about it. LR: That’s very common. So when he came home, you know about what year he was finally released? CF: Well, I know the war was over. My mom told us kids once that she moved back home to help her dad with the farm because there weren’t that many men around. She tells a story of when she is out in the field driving in her father’s truck and she hears on the radio that the war is over. She says at that point, she starts honking the horn and yelling, “The war is over!” She said that her father and the neighbor were in another field and she drove over and told them, and 6 they started spreading the world. Anyway, he arrived back home on May 15, 1946. LR: So during the war, she spent most of her time helping her dad on the farm? CF: She did, and there was a hospital in Brigham City called I think it was Bushnell, and that's where they would send the young men who had lost their limbs. When she tells the story that it was mentioned in church that these young men could use time away from the hospital, she would go down and pick up three or four of them and bring them back to the farm and feed them. Her mother was an excellent cook and, of course, living on a farm everything is just cream and butter and all of that. So they would come up there, and the farm was kind of up on a little bit of a hill, so they would get chairs out and put these young men in the chairs so they could sit out and just look over the valley. I guess one of them wanted to do some target practice, and Grandpa told us that he had rabbits and squirrels that would eat his alfalfa and make a mess of his fields, so he dug a ditch so he could back his truck in it so they could just wheel right into the back of his truck. They would sit in the back of his truck and pick off the squirrels and the rabbits in the fields, and then they'd get their target practice in. Then they'd have meals there and Mom would take them back to the hospital. She usually would get another group a week later or something. LR: About once a week she would do that? CF: Yeah. LR: And was that for the duration of the wary that she did that? 7 CF: She never said. I think she probably did it most of the time Dad was gone. LR: Wow, that’s really cool. So when Samuel finally comes back, where do they end up? CF: In Logan, both going back to Utah State. During that time, they had their first two children, my brother and sister. When my dad graduated, they moved to South Ogden. I want to say he worked for a company called Marquardt. He also had his own construction company for a while. Then after that is when he went up to Weber State. LR: Okay. During this time, do you know about where they were living in Ogden? CF: They were living on Country Club Drive, out by the golf course at the south end of Washington Boulevard. LR: Oh okay, so kind of in the Washington Terrace area? CF: Yeah, but a little more towards the east. LR: Okay, about how long were they there? CF: Let's see, we moved to Pleasant View in 1960. My brother Bob helped them build their house in Pleasant View and he was thirteen, so probably about twelve years. LR: During that time, your dad was working at Weber State? CF: Actually, no, he wouldn’t have been. He must have been at Marquardt, because I know he started at Weber in 1966. 8 LR: So you were in Pleasant View when he started at Weber State? CF: Yeah. LR: Do you know what he did at Marquardt? CF: Well, he had a degree in Engineering, but I don’t know what kind of work he did there. LR: Okay, and do you know what your mother studied at Utah State? CF: I think it was Physical Education. LR: Okay, and did she ever teach or was she just a homemaker for her kids? CF: She was a homemaker, but she was very active in the community with the PTA and she was very civic minded, so she was always attending city council meetings. She was always pushing for, I guess you could say, her platform, which was beautification of the city, keeping it natural. She pushed for several parks to be put in the city. In fact, there’s a park down here on 600 West called Shadylane Park. All along the east side, there are pine trees. I remember when I was probably a pre-teen, she used to fill garbage cans with water, put them in the back of Dad’s truck, and go down and water the pines, because they didn’t have a watering system at that time. She would just take a bucket and go up and down the row and water them. She was very big on parks and trying to keep the area natural. I know she had a few enemies because the developers wanted to bring in homes and cut down a lot of the vegetation. She was a big instigator of saying, “No, we’ve got to keep it more natural.” 9 LR: Would she do this when she was in Ogden? CF: I don’t think so. We moved to Pleasant View when I was a year and a half, so I don’t remember much of Ogden other than pictures of the home. LR: So your parents moved here in, you said, 1960, about where in Pleasant View did they move to? CF: They lived on 900 West, just up from the elementary school. LR: Okay, so not far from here? CF: No. LR: Okay, you said that she was always going to city council meetings and wanting to keep things undeveloped. I know I read that she was appointed to be on the beautification committee, did she ever think about running for city office? CF: She never really talked about doing it. I think there were several ladies in Pleasant View that I think, not really pushed her, but thought, "Helen, you can do this." When I think back, there was a lady by the name of Collette Healy. Her and my mother were very good friends and Collette was very determined, like my mother. So when it came to the community, they both worked to have their voices heard. LR: When did your dad start at Weber State? CF: 1966. LR: Okay. So they were almost doing the same sort of things, because wasn’t he a head of the grounds? 10 CF: Yeah. He was the Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds, so yes they did. I remember many discussions at night, Dad would give Mom ideas. She had problems with the city, one being the ditch. He always supported her and he encouraged her. There were many conversations about his work and what he was working on at the college. Yeah, they kind of fell into the same thing. LR: I think that’s really cool. So I’m going to talk about your dad for a second. What were some of his duties at Weber State? CF: Well, I actually have an article on it. There were five building built while he was there, he was over those and he was over the grounds. There was no Shepherd Building, no Stewart Bell Tower, no Union Building, no Dee Events Center, no Val A. Browning Center or Social Science on campus. So I guess in the twenty years he was there, those buildings were all put in. I imagine that a lot of them aren’t there anymore. LR: Actually, every single one of them is. CF: Oh really? Awesome. LR: In fact, you look at the campus now and those buildings, you can’t imagine them not being there. AD: They are pretty special. CF: Okay, well, I knew the Union and of course, I’ve seen the Bell Tower. LR: They just renovated the Social Science Building. CF: I remember my son Tanner telling me that. 11 LR: The Browning Center, it’s right next to the Shepherd Union Building. They are very iconic. Every single one of those buildings is still present. CF: That's awesome. LR: Did he help create the buildings? CF: You know, I don't know. I remember as a child he had a desk and he was always drawing up building plans. I know he had a degree in Engineering and he did some architect work. Whether he designed those buildings, I don't know. But I know there's a couple of buildings up on Harrison Boulevard, just south of 2nd Street, that my mom used to point out when we were kids and say, "Your dad designed that building." I can't say for sure whether he designed them or just kind of watched over the construction of them. LR: Yeah, those five buildings, there isn't a student now who wouldn't know what those are, they are very .central. Did he help develop the grounds the way that they are now? CF: He did. Both my mom and dad had a knack for landscaping, and the home that I grew up in, a couple of blocks over, was an acre. On that acre, there were two ponds that my parents put in. There was a waterfall, a good size garden, and then in the back part of the lot we had a barn. And of course, we had to have a horse because we three girls all loved horses. They worked on those projects at home all of the time. I think Dad kind of had a knack for that landscaping, and my mother really did. She would draw up landscapes plans for a lot of yards in Pleasant View and would give away plant starts from her yard. Some plants 12 would multiply and she would put the starts in a pot, and then when she would help landscape someone's lot, she would give them the plants. LR: So now, is this just something that she would do or did she create a business out of this? CF: She didn't create a business, I think that she was paid for it but not much. I think it just goes along with that she wanted Pleasant View to be a beautiful place, and this was her way of having a hand in that. She was just very much into beautifying. LR: I think that's great. So I was reading in the newspaper that she was appointed to the Beautification Committee in 1970? AD: 1975? LR: And she was appointed, so she didn't nm for this office. Did she ever talk about whether or not she really wanted to do that or was she grateful for the opportunity? CF: I think she was grateful for the opportunity. I would have been in my teenage years and I do remember I was the only one living at home, so I was requested to be involved in a lot of the beautification projects. Whether it was a service project, picking up litter around the city or digging holes for trees. That was a big part of her life, and she enjoyed it. LR: So was it a seat on the city council, or did the mayor just create this position? 13 CF: It might have just been created. I think Tim Healy was the mayor at one time, that was Collette Healy's husband. It may have been during the time he served as mayor, but I'm not sure. LR: I love her nickname, “Queen of the Ditch.” Where did that come from? CF: At our home on 900 West, there was a ditch that ran down the east side of the road and it was just dirt. During the spring runoff, from the foothills below Ben Lomond, quite often, it would go over the banks and flood some of the homes there. So she and some of the neighbors got talking about it, and I remember her saying she went to my dad and he walked up the street with her and he said, "You know, you could dig it out deeper and pour concrete and put rocks up the sides, and you would have to pour asphalt up to the rocks so they won't wash away," so she took that idea to the city council and they agreed to do it. And I don't know if they said, "Only if you provide the manpower," or if she offered that up, but they would pay for the supplies, so she talked to the neighbors on 900 West and they all agreed to help. So they all got together, and I can't remember how long it took but I remember cement trucks coming up, wheelbarrows, and men and kids working on the ditch. After it was all done, they had a party and gave her a golden shovel trophy and some new gloves, because her old gloves had asphalt all over them. She loved getting people together and working on a cause. Even as a young kid she was that way, always looking for something to improve. LR: Did she ever think about running for office? 14 CF: I think she did. She was a very determined person, and she got a lot of support from my dad. He was very quiet, but he was very supportive of her. She ran in 1979, and that was the year I was married so I don't remember hearing much about it, but she got it. In fact, that year, I got married and she made my wedding dress. She was an amazing woman. That same year, her father passed away in October, and I remember her feeling so bad because she didn't get the chance to tell her father that she won the city council seat. He would have been so proud of her. That kind of made her feel bad. LR: How many women were on the city council at that time? CF: Just her. LR: Was she the first? CF: I believe she was. In an article I found on her, I believe is said that she was the first. LR: Okay, so what started out as an appointment, she ran and made it into an office for herself. Do you know how long she was on city council? CF: She served her full four-year term. LR: Did she ever run again? CF: No, she didn't. My father started having a little bit of health problems in 1983, and I think that she might have decided that she had done her time and wanted some family time, especially with Dad. 15 LR: You were married the same year that she won the council seat. Do you know how much time that took up? I’m curious if she waited until her kids were all gone before she did that. CF: I don’t know, but it wouldn’t surprise me because she was very big on family time. I’m the youngest in the family, and when I started having kids, I was working full-time. She never pressured me, but she used to say, “Your kids are young only for a short time.” I did end up quitting my job when our second child was born, but that was also due to our first child having some health problems. She was very big on family, so that might have been why she waited. LR: That makes sense. AD: Did she ever tell you any stories about some of the challenges she faced being the only woman on the city council? CF: She did, but not many. I just remember one where there was a gentleman on the council that used to subtly belittle her and it bothered her quite a bit. Some of the men on the council were very supportive of her, but he would make negative comments, I believe one of them was, “You should be home in your house.” This is a very obvious sexist remark. I’m sure she really came back at him because she was that way, but I don’t remember her really complaining. I don’t think it slowed her down. Maybe if my father hadn’t been so supportive of her. So, I think she felt comfortable. LR: Okay, so I'm going to switch gears just a little bit and talk about you. CF: Okay. 16 LR: So when and where were you born? CF: I was born at the old McKay-Dee Hospital in Ogden in 1959. LR: Okay, and so you only lived in Ogden for a year? CF: About a year and a half before we moved out to Pleasant View. LR: Most of your childhood was spent in Pleasant View and that’s where you grew up. What are some of your memories of growing up in Pleasant View? CF: When I grew up, there were a lot of orchards and a lot of agricultural farms. I had a horse, and so my girlfriend and I would spend a lot of time just riding our horses around Pleasant View. I was expected to work hard. I think the fact that my mother grew up on a farm, she expected us kids to put in several hours every day during the summer, working. We would wake up in the morning and there would be chore list on the fridge. It was a lot of working out in the yard, working in the garden, and then, as we’ve talked about, she had projects around the city and we would usually be asked to help. I played a lot of sports. It was just a really great place to grow up. Up a couple of blocks, on 900 there is a place we called the Hollow. A little river ran down through it that was the runoff that went into the ditch on 900. I remember my older brother used to tell us stories about Indians that had lived in the Hollow and the things that they had left behind like arrowheads and stuff. He was twelve years older than me and knew about that, so my girlfriend and I would ride our horses up there quite often and spend a lot of time in the Hollow looking for stuff like that. Pleasant View is where I met my husband. He moved here when he 17 was, I think eleven, and we just used to hang out in the neighborhood together. We played a lot of dodgeball, and there wasn't much traffic so we just played street dodgeball and stuff like that. LR: As you were going to school, with your mom being so active in the community, were you expected to be like her? CF: I think as I got older and I knew how active she was, I think I felt like I was supposed to be, but I wasn’t. I’m like my father, I’m very quiet. But I have two older sisters, and my oldest, Kris, is very much like my mother. She's very civic minded, in fact, she lives in Taylor and she's done a few things out there through the community. I don't know off the top of my head what they've done, but both of my sisters are very active. LR: How many siblings do you have? CF: I have two sisters and a brother. LR: Okay, so as you were growing up, what were some of the women that you looked up to? CF: My mom, my grandmothers, and some of the women of the community. I probably looked up to people like my mom who would stand up for themselves. LR: What do you think was one of the biggest lessons you learned from these women that you looked up to? 18 CF: I guess, if you see something that needs to be done, try to do it, whether it's by yourself or to get others to help you. If you feel that there's something that needs to be done, whether for one person or for a community, speak up. LR: You mentioned that your mother was really big on education and encouraged all of her children. How do you think that has helped you as you are older and you look back on that? CF: Well, I didn't graduate from college. While I was going to college, I got a full-time job that I really enjoyed. So I just kind of stopped my college education there. But I think she wanted all of the children to be self-reliant, she used to say, "If something were to happen to your husband, you've got to have something to fall back on." My brother graduated from college, my sister Kris graduated from college, but Shauna and I didn't. I believe in education. It's very important, and I kind of regret that I didn't get a degree. Tanner keeps telling me, "Well you still can mom," Tanner has a grandmother, my husband's mom, who I think graduated from Weber State when she was in her fifties. AD: What was the full-time job that you enjoyed? CF: I worked for a mortgage company. AD: And what did you do? CF: I was a loan processor and I just enjoy working in an office. I got that job when I was nineteen, and I worked there until we had our second child. LR: So you were married in 1979, but you had known your husband for a long time. 19 CF: Yeah, five plus years. LR: Okay, and you both decided to just stay here in Pleasant View after you were married? CF: Well, we lived in Ogden for a while, for the first four years of our marriage, and then we moved to North Ogden and that's where I got pregnant with our first child. It was in 1984 that we had our little girl and then in 1994, we moved back to Pleasant View. I wanted my kids to be able to live a childhood like I got to, even though, when we came back there were a lot more houses and stuff. I've always loved Pleasant View and my husband just really enjoys it, in fact, my husband served on the Pleasant View City Council. LR: Tanner always calls it the best place—the best city to live in Utah. CF: He used to refer to it as his Pleasant View, and the people around here know Tanner well because he's really friendly, I mean, just extremely friendly. When he was a little boy, he used to be out on the front lawn and neighbors would drive by and usually little kids don't pay attention, but he'd be waving. He could talk to adults, even as a child. I used to think, "Wow. This kid is just so comfortable around people." I think all of the kids enjoyed growing up in Pleasant View. Our daughter now lives in North Ogden and the two boys are in Ogden. AD: How many kids do you have? CF: Well, we had four, but we lost one, a little girl, our first daughter. 20 LR: As you have gone through your life and you look at the things that your mother accomplished, what are some of the lessons your mother taught you that have helped you? CF: She taught me how to work hard, and through working hard, I get a lot of satisfaction. Being appreciative of nature and caring for the environment. As a child, I remember picking up litter along the streets and that was just really planted in my head that you do not litter or anything like that, we should keep the environment beautiful. She had cancer and her odds weren't very good that she would survive. But I remember her doctor saying that with the personality that she has, the positiveness that she had, she has a chance of beating it, and she did. I remember when our daughter passed away, we were living in North Ogden at the time and mom and dad were over here in Pleasant View. It would have been easy for me just to pull the covers over my head and stay in bed, but my mom wouldn't let me. She would call me, get me involved in a project. She asked me if there was anything that I wanted to do in our house, maybe an improvement. I said, "Well, I've been thinking of doing something in the living room." So we decided to do wallpaper, and the home had a vaulted ceiling. She took me down, we picked out wallpaper, and she'd call me each morning and say, "I'm coming over to help with the wallpaper. Your dad will come and get Hailey and babysit her while we do this." She would let me mourn, but she wouldn't let me sit and feel sorry for myself. LR: Is there any other story that you can think of that you would like to share about your mom before I ask my last question? 21 CF: There's so many. My mother was a leader. I remember our home was the home where all of her siblings and all of my cousins would come every summer to have a reunion. She would always get family together at Christmastime and Thanksgiving. Everyone came to the Packer’s. She was always there for others. When my aunt lost her husband in a plane crash down in St. George, I remember her packing us up and taking us to St. George so she could be with her sister. I don't know how long we stayed there but we played with our cousins, and she just was always there for people. LR: I was just thinking of another question as you were saying that. When you were working as the loan officer before you decided to be with your family, what was that like? In the sense of you are a woman working in what was still a very male dominated field. CF: Well actually, I was a loan processor. I didn’t work with the people much, I packaged all of the loan documents. And in the office where I worked there are four females and two males, so we dominated. All of the women in there seemed very confident, I do remember that. In fact, one lady that I worked closest with reminded me of my mom. I think I learned things from her because when someone would be overbearing to me, she used to say to me, "Don't let them get away with that." LR: When you said that you quit working around the time your second child was born, did you ever at any point decide to go back to work? 22 CF: When my youngest was not quite in Kindergarten, I started a part-time job at a floral shop, working three to four hours a day. I had watched my mother create floral shop, working three to four hours a day. I had watched my mother create floral bouquets as a child. It was a fun part-time job. I had several part-time jobs where I was able to be home with our kids a lot. When they got into school, I worked at a dental office from 9-3, I could be home when they left for school and home after school. Once the kids came along, I wanted to be a stay-at-home mom and my husband supported me in that. AD: I was going to ask about the home-life balance thing, but you already answered it. LR: What do you consider women's work and how do you think that has changed over the years? CF: Women's work, I guess whatever they want. It's such a vast scale, you know there's just a lot of joy and contentment being at home with your children, and then I'm sure there's a lot of satisfaction for a woman that chooses to pursue a career. I think both are fine. I know it's changed a lot since my mother's time. That's a tough one to answer. LR: Last question. How do you think women receiving the right to vote, shaped or influenced, history, your community and you personally? CF: Well, giving women the right to vote, of course, gave them a voice, which everyone should have. Everyone should be heard. Personally, it gave me the right to have a voice and to pursue any direction that I'd like in life. For the 23 community, I think it makes women feel more a part of the community, to be able to step up and share their opinion, because women have great ideas, like my mother for example. I think it's important that women in the community know that they have the right to say what they think. I'm grateful I have a voice and I have the opportunity to vote. LR: Well, thank you. I really appreciate your willingness and your time. It's been fun to learn about Tanner. He's talked about his grandmother all of the time and when this project came up, he was all, "You have to talk to my mother about my grandma." So I'm really glad that we had the opportunity. CF: Yeah, he was close to his grandma.