Oral History Program Irene Medina Interviewed by Alyssa Dove & Nute Rands 9 May 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Irene Medina Interviewed by Alyssa Dove & Nute Rands 9 May 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: Medina, Irene, an oral history by Alyssa Dove & Nute Rands, 9 May 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Irene Medina 9 May 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Irene Medina, conducted on May 9, 2019, by Alyssa Dove and Nute Rands. Irene discusses her life, her memories and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Darius, Irene’s grandson, and Lorrie Rands, are also present during this interview. AD: Today is May 9, 2019, we are here with Irene Medina. I’m Alyssa Dove, conducting the interview. NR: I am Nute Rands and I am assisting. AD: Yes, and we’re here at Union Station. What is your connection to the railroad? IM: Oh my! I was born in Faust, Utah and that’s named after a president or somebody Faust, whoever he was, but anyway the town was named Faust. It’s a section house that Union Pacific, put some of their good workers that followed the railroad for work. My father was one of those railroad workers, so we lived in the middle section house in Faust, Utah and I was born there in the house. AD: How long did your dad work for the Union Pacific? IM: I don’t know how many years he put in, hardest working man I ever met. Well he was a section-man, you know the ones that pull out the tracks and replace them, that’s the hardest job for the railroad and that’s what he did until he retired. He started, I think he said, when he was twenty-something years old, then he retired. They would have all the years of service at Union Pacific, because he retired from there. 2 AD: Do you know how he got involved with the railroad? IM: He worked, at that time, in the CC camps, which were work camps for men, and they would go and they would take Native American men and Oriental guys and they would tell them, “If you want a job come to work for Union Pacific,” and so they would be in labor camps for working men. So in these work camps, the good workers they would keep and they would move them from job to job and section to section. When they would finish those miles of track sections they’d move them to the next. They would build section houses, and they would only take their best workers and my dad followed the railroad forever. My parents had ten children. I was number eight, but I was the only one born at home. Union Pacific Railroad girl. AD: So you were born in a section house on the railroad? IM: Yes, in Tooele County, and I’m the only one with a birth certificate from Faust, Utah. My birth certificate says hospital of birth it says, “UPRR,” for Union Pacific Railroad, “section house, closest city: Vernon,” which is a tiny town. Faust is just a sign on the side of the road, I call it my hood. AD: Did your dad ever tell you any stories about his time on the railroad? IM: Always. Well, we lived on the section and I’m sixty-five, so believe me I heard their stories. I remember the train stopping. Actually sometimes the hobos getting off, and my dad used to tell my mom, “Mary, feed these guys please.” She said, “What, you brought more guys that are hungry?” He’d say, “They were on the train and they haven’t eaten,” and my mom would say, “Okay, I’ll cook for them.” 3 So I thought that was sweet, I thought, “Mom cooked for the hobos!” Then we used to sing this song for them and it used to go, “Hallelujah, I’m a bum. Hallelujah, bum again. Hallelujah, give us a handout to revive us again,” and then it’d say, “I don’t like work and work don’t like me, and that is the reason I am so hungry. Hallelujah, I’m a bum. Hallelujah, bum again.” And those were the hobos, so we used to sing them that hobo song, and my mom used to feed ‘em. AD: What is a memory of the railroad that stands out to you? IM: Us putting pennies on the tracks, always getting in trouble for going too close to the railroad track. We would get in trouble. My mom would say, “Stay away from the train!” But what would we do? We’d hear them coming down the line, put a penny on the train, and wave to the conductor so he’d blow the horn. AD: What would that do? IM: Smash the pennies. Like now they’ve got the machines, right, that you put fifty cents and they smash a penny for ya. Well, we didn’t have to pay fifty cents, we just put the penny on the track, so that’s what we used to do. We would put pennies and then once in a while a nickel or something. And you know we thought, “Nickel?! We don’t want to waste a nickel,” but pennies? We smashed many pennies. So my memory was always mainly smashing pennies and the hobos. Feeding the hobos, feeding hobos, every time I turned around, my mother was feeding somebody. AD: What was that like, growing up with the railroad so close? 4 IM: The Union Pacific section that we lived in, Faust, was about twenty miles maybe from Tooele, which is the city, and I just remember for us to go to town was a big deal. Until you know we started going to school then it was a big bus ride! I mean the bus would pick us up, we’d have to walk from here to forever and then the bus would show up and then it would take us forever to get to town to go to school. If you miss the bus good luck! NR: Can you say your dad’s name for us? IM: Juan, J-U-A-N. Juan is a way to say John, but it’s a Latin, a Native name. So it’s J-U-A-N. The last name Medina. Juan Medina, he worked for Union Pacific forever. AD: What was your mom’s name? IM: Mary, oh she was so sweet. Little Mary, tiny. All my sisters come to my shoulders, so they’re all little, tiny pygmy people. My mother was tiny but my dad was tall, like me. Well I guess I’m like him. AD: Where was your dad from? IM: My father was from Wagon Mound, that’s in New Mexico. It’s by the New Mexico Pueblo Tribe, so we were from Laguna. I think it’s Picuris, New Mexico. AD: And how do you spell Picuris? IM: P-I-C-U-R-I-S, Picuris. It’s a reservation, it’s a Picuris, it’s for Pueblo people. I’m Peubloan. We’re actually called Puebloan but the Caucasians started calling us 5 Pueblo Indians, but it’s actually Puebloan. So I’m Pueblo Indian from the Laguna Tribe, Tewa Clan. AD: That is so cool, so interesting. You said that your dad got involved with the railroad through the work camp and he was in his twenties? IM: He was twenty years old I think, when he met my mother, so he told my mother, “I’m gonna go work on the railroad,” and she was saying, “So you’re leaving, huh?” he says, “Not without you, marry me.” So they got married and he took her with him every place he went. They stayed married until they died, so they were married seventy-something years. They were married a long time. They had the most beautiful story. They got married—my father was born in 1919 and my mother was born in 1920. She says, “He’s an old man,” and I used to think, “Yeah, he’s a whole year older than you, Mom.” So 1919, my dad, and 1920, my mom, and they stayed married forever, raised ten of us. Ten. Always railroad, we went from one section to the next to the next, Wherever they sent us we would go ‘cause they’d say, “Juan, we need you in this section,” and he’d always say, “Mary, they’re gonna move us again.” My mom would say, “Well you’re such a good worker.” We always moved where they had the section houses, for some reason he was such a good worker they’d put us in the section house. We didn’t have to rent in town or nothing, we’d be in the section houses. So we moved from Faust to Warner Station, they used to have a station in Tooele called Warner. Most people in Tooele don’t even know about that station, but I do ‘cause I lived there. 6 That’s why I tell people I’m a “Big city girl!” I was born in Faust and then we moved to Warner, there’s nothing there, “Yeah, big city girl! My hood!” I loved living out there. I loved the trains coming and we’d say, “Here comes a train!” We’d all run outside and just like they do for the diesel trucks [pumping fist up and down] We had the trains! “Wooh! Wooh!” ‘Cause we’d go [pumping fist up and down] and the conductors would pull those things to make the loud train sounds for us and I used to think, “He did that for me.” I mean, that’s how we felt. We were little so we thought, “That’s for me,” when you know they were just doing it. But it was fun. A lot of good people worked for the railroad in my opinion. Then we’d get to ride the train for free. So we were a poor family—I mean, ten kids? Come on, you don’t have a lot of money when you have ten kids and the railroad didn’t pay miraculous money but, I mean, they made a living and so every year when we had vacation my dad would say, “I get vacation Mary, where should we go?” We had relatives in Colorado and in California and my mom would say, “This year let’s go to California,” or “Let’s go to Colorado,” and we’d all ride the train and we would take fizzies. You guys don’t know what that was, but in my time fizzies was a little, tiny, little fizz ball you would throw in water and make a drink, and they were called fizzies. So I remember we’d go on vacation and because we knew mom wasn’t going to buy us all sodas, she’d pack fizzies for us and we’d go to the water in the train, put the little cup under there and get water, drop a fizzy and drink it. But the train rides were the best. The best. AD: What made them so fun? 7 IM: Gosh, just being able to be on a train! I mean the trains would pull up, I mean they’re massive, they’re beautiful, they’re neat, and to us it was like a hotel. You know we lived in a tiny town in the middle of nowhere so the train was like the closest thing to a hotel you got. Train would pull up, we’d get on the train. The seats—you could sleep in the train. You know it was just, to us, neat. NR: Why did he choose the railroad? IM: Just because at that time there wasn’t a lot of opportunities for a lot of minority people and so the railroad would go to where they found the workers and they would get Native American men and others needing work. They didn’t have a lot of opportunities. They used to say, “Only good Indian’s a dead Indian.” Okay? No, there wasn’t a lot of opportunities so when they would offer a good paying job you took it. Since there wasn’t a lot of other opportunities that’s why they took the train jobs because they didn’t discriminate as much because the railroad was more fair. I know that’s what my dad used to tell me. I’d say, “Why are you working for the railroad,” ‘cause I used to say, “why don’t you work someplace else?” He’d say, “These people treat me good. They treat me with respect. They give me a job,” he’d say, “I can support my family through the railroad,” and he stayed so dedicated until he retired. I mean, that’s a hard job to work, section man, taking out the railroad ties. Who’d want to do that, you know? He was even older and still did that until he retired. They treated him fair you know and they treated him good and that’s what he always said, “Union Pacific treats me fair.” So that’s what took him to the railroad. 8 NR: Was his only job doing the section ties and moving the ties, or did he do anything else? IM: Oh everything to do on the section, only the labor work is what they did. He wasn’t a conductor or an engineer or nothing. He was a section man, they called them, because that’s exactly what they did. They did sections of the railroad hard labor. When they did all these, let’s say a hundred miles long or whatever, or from this town to that town, once they did all that they’d move to the next section and the next section. That’s how they did it all across the U.S. Hard job. Freezing cold, I remember. AD: Yeah, when did he retire? IM: Oh boy, I wouldn’t even know, but I know the Union Pacific would have that. Union Pacific will have that information because he was one of their retired guys. So I’m not sure. I know he was still working when I graduated in the 1970’s, 1972, so he worked longer than sixty-five years old. He worked a long time. NR: Did he only work with the diesel trains? I know he never actually worked on the trains but he was a laborer on the tracks. IM: I remember seeing the old diesel trains. I remember him taking us to see them when they would have big send-offs for a new train. I mean, I didn’t know ‘cause I was a kid. But just like at the ships when they do christening, whenever they had new trains come through that’s what they would do too, ‘cause I remember sometimes he’d say, “Mary, we’re gonna take these kids and go see the new train.” We’d say, “Ah a new train?” He’d say, “They got a new train and we’re all 9 gonna go see it.” We’d think, “Yay, we’re gonna go!” Sometimes it’d be in Colorado, sometimes California. Wherever they were gonna do them he’d say, “We’re gonna go, Mary,” and we’d get on the train and go. It was neat. AD: You talked about putting pennies on the railroad with your siblings. IM: Yeah, and got in trouble for it too. We would think they’re neat and then my mom would say, “Ah where’d you get those pennies?” “Oh I found them.” “You did not, there’s not a lot of people around here.” Of course you’d say, “Who am I gonna blame?” and so we’d say, “I don’t know, I found them.” She’d say, “Don’t lie,” and we’d say, “Okay, I put it on the train track.” She’d say, “Be careful! You guys could get killed,” you know ‘cause really you could, so she always made a rule so that you could never put a penny on the train. She could say not to do it but she knew we were gonna do it, we were kids. Then the neighbors, they were Native American too, the Johnsons and they had like eight kids. Then the foreman, Mr. Maxfield, nicest man around, and he was the big boss and he used to say, “Juan, you’ve got a lot of little Indians in here, which ones yours and which one belongs to Mr. Johnson? There’s a bunch of them running around.” ‘Cause the Johnsons had eight, we had ten, eighteen kids between two families. So he used to say, “Which little Indians belong to you?” My dad would say, “Get over here you guys,” and we’d all run to him. He’d say, “Those ones belong to me. The ones that stayed over there, they’re not mine.” AD: Were pennies on the railroad your earliest memory with the train? Or were there others? 10 IM: Mainly the earlier ones were just being little, just being little and my mom taking us out there to watch the trains go by, and to wave at the conductors and hope the conductors waved back and blowed the horn. I’d say, ‘cause I was just a little toddler, I’d be thinking, “They’re not blowing the horn,” and she’d say, “Go like this [pumping fist up and down].” So I used to stand there, teeny [pumping fist up and down]. And I used to think, “They’re never gonna see me,” but yet they would see kids and they would honk their horn, and they just made me feel like they did it just for me. Sometimes my sister would be at school and everybody would be at school, ‘cause I was at the time the youngest, so I’m there alone and sad thinking, “The train’s going by and won’t honk,” and my mom would say, “You can go outside and watch it.” I’d say, “Yeah and they’re not going to blow the horn for me,” and I’d go stand outside but of course the conductor, “Little kid?” Booh! Booh! I used to think,” Ah! Mom he did it just for me.” It made me feel so special, even though you’d know it wasn’t for me, but at that time it was only for me. AD: That’s cool. Your dad said that Union Pacific treated him good, so he didn’t have any problems with discrimination or anything? IM: No, and he did in other jobs, but through Union Pacific he never did. He used to always say, “They treat me good.” Because I used to always tell him, “Go to work at Tooele Army Depot.” The depot is like here in Ogden with Hill Field and I’m military so I knew about that place. We used to say, “Dad! You should go work there, they make more money there,” and he used to say, “No, they treat me pretty good here.” He said, “You never leave where they treat you good,” he said, 11 “You might earn more money someplace else but if they don’t treat you good, why stay?” So to him the value was not in the almighty dollar, it was in the respect and treating you good. That’s why he worked at Union Pacific. That’s why I brought my grandson here from Tooele. I picked him up in Layton, let him miss school, brought him just to see the train where Grandpa worked, who was his great-grandfather. NR: What was the community like within the section houses? IM: What was neat about it is, we knew the Maxfields and the Johnsons. So the adults would say, “Well, we’re done at this section but since you’re good workers, if you want to go to the next section, we’ll send you.” My dad would say, “It depends on housing,” you know, because of course you’ve got to have housing for your families. They would say, “You’re a good worker, Juan. You can live in a section house,” so we would move and get the section housing. I don’t know if they were free or what, most likely they were free. I’m guessing, but I was a kid, I didn’t have to pay nothing. AD: Yeah, so you guys were pretty close knit? IM: Mhm. It was always the same people, which to me was fun, ‘cause it wasn’t like moving when you don’t know anybody. We’d move and I already knew some people, like the Johnsons. I’d say, “Wow, the Johnsons are here!” My mom would say, “Johnsons are here, so are the Maxfields,” and I’d say, “The Maxfields too!” They’d say, “Yup, the same people.” So we’d move, but yet I remember the same kids growing up. 12 NR: What was your connection to Hill Field? IM: My connection for Hill Field is my grandson’s other grandpa, who’s ninety-five turning ninety-six. He’s still alive, he lives in Layton. He worked for Hill Field but he was military, so was I. So they would offer military people jobs, I didn’t want to work in Ogden because that’s far from Tooele and my father and mother lived in Tooele because of Union Pacific, so I worked at Tooele Army Depot. So my association to Hill Field was just through relatives working government jobs, and mine was because of military. AD: So did the railroad become a sort of home for you? IM: Definitely. In fact, like now in Faust—which is still a sign on the side of the road, that’s all it is—but now there’s two prefab houses there. The three section houses that Union Pacific had right by the railroad tracks are torn down of course. I still go out to that little town weekly to let my huskies run around because it’s my hood you know, it’s where I was born. I always tell people, “I was at my hometown,” they say, “Oh I know Irene, Faust!” And I say, “Well yeah!” AD: So what does this hundred-fifty year anniversary mean to you? IM: It’s going to make me cry for one thing. I have a lot of respect for Union Pacific. I’ve got a cousin who’s an engineer for the Union Pacific railroad. So it’s just ingrained in my family because of my dad and because they treated him good, and not everybody did. I know some people say, “Well you’re lucky ‘cause they’re not prejudiced in Utah,” and I think, “Uh, yeah they are.” I’m sorry but they are. I tell them, “It all depends on what color of eyes and skin you’re looking through,” 13 because yeah, I’ve seen a lot of racism. I just know on the railroad we didn’t even know that existed until we actually lived in town and went to regular schools all the time, then we found out what prejudice was about, but not while we were living on the section. It just didn’t seem that way, even though the Maxfields were a Caucasian family and he was the boss, the foreman. He could’ve been an ass but he wasn’t, he was so kind, so all we knew was nice people. Once you started school and everything, you were no longer living in the section. You grow up and you don’t live with Mom and Dad no more, they were still working railroad but I wasn’t. But then I found out, “Hell, there’s prejudice all over,” I never knew that growing up, never even knew it existed. So to me, I thought that was a beautiful part about Union Pacific. We didn’t know prejudice because everybody there treated us good. Even when we rode the trains, nobody treated you bad. We showed up and my dad always had his tickets and I’m sure it said railroad worker, or whatever, but yet they would treat him good. This meant a lot to me, so I kept watching on the news and everything kept saying, “I know when they’re gonna start!” So this morning I just said, “Mhm,” picked up my grandson, “we’re going.” The rest didn’t want to come but I thought, “I don’t care, I’m taking him. T-shirt, souvenirs, go to eat, everything you want. Let’s go checkout where Grandpa worked.” So that’s why we’re here. LR: What is your grandson’s name? IM: Darius. 14 LR: Darius, come here. I’m gonna put you on the spot. Could you answer a question? Could you go sit next to your grandma? IM: Isn’t he adorable? He’s only seven years old. He’s got a new t-shirt, huh? Union Pacific. Which one did you get after all? DM: The Big Boy. IM: The Big Boy. That’s all he could talk about today, the Big Boy train. LR: So Darius, what has this been like for you, to come and see some of the trains that your grandpa worked on? DM: Good. IM: What do you got in your hand? He even had to buy a train, he wanted a train. DM: The Jupiter. LR: So what have you learned about your grandpa? DM: Many things, he had the hardest work. IM: His work was very hard huh? [Darius nods] He worked hard. LR: So has this been a lot of fun for you? [Darius nods] Cool, he said yes. Thank you. I know I put you on the spot but I was curious, so thank you for doing that. You don’t have to sit there anymore if you don’t want to. DM: I want to. IM: Are you gonna go check out the trains more? [Darius nods] I told him I’m gonna take him on a train ride to go from—I forget the name of the town—I took my five 15 kids when they were young like him. I went to some town in Arizona outside the Grand Canyon and you could ride a Union Pacific train, and they’d take you from that town all the way up to the Grand Canyon and they drop you off. But on the train ride they hold up the train and blah blah blah, and it’s all on a Union Pacific train. He’s ridden the train you ride to go to Salt Lake from here. NR: Oh the Frontrunner? IM: The Frontrunner. You ride that but you’ve never ridden a Union Pacific train, huh? [Darius shakes his head] But I’m going to take him,‘cause I’ve got to. Trains are trains and we love them. AD: So we are doing a project, an exhibit really, next year celebrating the hundred year anniversary of women getting the right to vote. IM: Definitely! Like I’m not a protester. No, I am. In fact, the name Renie Medina, if you Google it you know what you’re gonna find? Do you remember Bear’s Ears and Staircase Escalante? Well what you’ll see, it’ll pull me up on Google and it’ll say all the Native American tribes. All of the printings, you’ll read about everybody else and then it’ll say, “Renie Medina,” they’ll tell Zinky, “I hope you remember her when you go to bed at night,” because I cried throughout that entire time because they were taking away sacred land. So I was there at the tribal meeting and I didn’t even know that every camera was on me ‘cause I wasn’t one of the speakers. They did take a few pictures of the people speaking but every national magazine: Salt Lake Tribune, Deseret News, City Weekly, had a picture of me. My son’s an Army Airborne Ranger serving in Georgia, he called 16 me and he said, “You were crying, huh Mom?” And I said, “How did you know?” He said, “Mom, you made all the newspapers,” he said, “you made every Native magazine.” Truly American, or truly Native, or truly everything, he says, “You’re in everything, and it talks about Bears Ears and Staircase Escalante and Renie Medina.” He says, “Everybody kept telling me, “Isn’t this your mom?” and he’d say, “Oh my god, that is my mom and she’s crying.” So they called me and said, “You’re crying, huh?” And I thought, “How did you know?” He goes, “You’re in the newspaper Mom.” I actually made the Deseret, no, the Salt Lake Tribune Top Twenty Photos of 2017. I’m December’s picture crying, “Eeee!” That’s all you see, you could tell my bracelet, because I’ve had it since I was sixteen, but in the picture you see this bracelet or my watch or something but it’s me. AD: That’s amazing. So in honor of women receiving the right to vote, we’re asking women about their feelings about getting the right to vote. How do you feel like it has impacted you personally, your community, or history in general? IM: Oh my gosh! I think that if they hadn’t given us the right to vote—well, I wouldn’t have a couple of university degrees, I can tell you that much right now. I wouldn’t have been a social worker for thirty-eight years. None of these privileges. I don’t think women would have had you know about the lower pay they got compared to men. We wouldn’t have any of these rights if we didn’t have the right to vote. I thank God we did ‘cause look at some countries that still don’t, you know. They’re back in the middle ages and we’re not, so thank God. We even have females running for president. Come on, that rock! AD: Well, thank you so much for sharing your story with us. 17 IM: Thank you so much, I appreciate talking about my daddy. AD: Yeah, he sounds like a really amazing man. IM: He was the most amazing man I’ve ever met in my life, I’ll tell you that much. He was wonderful. Respectable, very kind, very knowledgeable, you know, and he could’ve been a beast with ten kids. [jokingly] But of course the halo on my head is not tarnished. So he survived ten kids. LR: Wait, so where do you live? IM: Tooele. LR: So you live out in Tooele, okay. So this is literally just a stop in the thing. I was just curious, we haven’t had a lot of minority women willing to talk about their stories and so that’s why we’re throwing that question in. IM: I think it’s wonderful. LR: So thank you very much for your willingness to answer that, I appreciate it. IM: And yeah everybody says, “You went back to Tooele?” Yes, afterwards I moved away and blah blah blah and then I came back to Tooele. When everybody would say, “Why’d you get back to Tooele?” I‘d tell them, “My hood!” I was born in Faust, the big city of Faust, so of course I’ve got to be in Tooele. LR: This is cool, I have never heard the stories about the sections and so that’s just amazing. IM: Amazing, and that was just the hardest job they had. In the middle of winter with a pick and a shovel. Snow to here? [indicates her knees] I remember my dad 18 because he’d come home wet, soaking wet, and I used to cry. I used to say, “Dad, please don’t go to work today,” he’d say, “I have to go to work.” And I remember my mother tearing up the old sheets in long strips, and I used to say, “What’s that for?” Nosy me, I was following him all the time, and he’d say, “I wrap my feet so they don’t get frostbite.” And I used to think, “Dad, that’s awful!” So he’d wrap his feet with the strips of sheet to keep from getting frostbite on his toes. Then he’d put his socks on and then wrap more rags around his socks and put on another pair of socks, and I used to say, “Why do you do it that?” He’d say, “So they’ll get totally wet, instead of my toes.” Because your boots get wet, they’re leather but they still get wet, you know, they have shoelaces and everything. He’d say, “When your shoes get wet and we take lunch,” he says, “I can take off a pair of socks and unwind some of those strips, and then I still have another pair of socks and more strips.” I used to think, “How smart?” But yet it used to break my heart ‘cause I used to think, “I go to school, I’m warm, and my dad’s out there working, and he’s freezing.” But he would never complain and I’d come home and I’d say, “Dad, it was cold, huh?” ‘Cause you know we get a lot of snow in Utah, and in Tooele we get a lot, and I used to say, “Dad, it was freezing, huh?” He’d say, “Yeah,” [rubbing her hands together] and he’d be like warming his hands or something. And I’d say, “I’ll help you take off your shoes,” and he’d say, “They’re pretty wet,” and I remember helping him take off these leather boots that were soaking wet and helping him take off the socks and unwinding the strips of sheets that he’d wrapped around his feet. I’d say, “They’re wet Dad,” 19 and they’re so wet, and I’d be crying and he’d say, “They’ll be dry. Don’t worry.” I’d take off a layer and take off his socks, and then the next layer they’d be dry and I’d say, “These are dry,” and he’d say, “I told you my feet aren’t freezing.” So I’d unwrap them and he’d say, “They’re not cold,” and I’d feel his feet and I’d say, “They’re not frozen.” He’d say, “No, the shoes are wet, the socks are wet, and the first layer of straps of cloth are wet, but the last layer of scraps and my socks are dry.” And I used to think, “Yay! He wasn’t cold,” he was wise. But yet that memory stays in my mind forever ‘cause I think, “I’ve never been that cold in my working life.” But he went to work that way every day, but you’d never know because he didn’t complain. It wasn’t like he’d come home and say, “I hate that job. It’s freezing cold, I’m not gonna work.” No, never. And when I would say, “Dad, you need to quit and go work at Tooele Army Depot or Hill Field.” He’d say, “Union Pacific treats me good, I’m staying here.” He’d say, “You have to be devoted. When you find a company that is devoted to you, you stay devoted. There are too many companies that treat you like nothing. They don’t treat you good, you’re just a paycheck, so you’ve got to go where you find respect. It’s not about the mighty dollar.” I think that’s beautiful. AD: That is beautiful. IM: It is.