Oral History Program Janis Vause Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 8 July 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Janis Vause Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 8 July 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: Vause, Janis, an oral history by Sarah Taylor, 8 July 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Janis Vause Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Janis Vause, conducted on July 8, 2019, in the Stewart Library, by Sarah Taylor. In this interview, Janis discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Lorrie Rands, the video technician, is also present during this interview. ST: Today is Monday, July 8th. The time is two o’clock. The place is Stewart Library, room 209, on Weber State University Campus. I’m Sarah Taylor. Lorrie Rands is operating the camera, and we are interviewing Janis Vause. Thank you so much for agreeing to meet with us and agreeing to participate. JV: No problem My pleasure. ST: Alright. For our initial question, why don’t we start with when and where were you born? JV: I was born in Ogden, Utah, May 26, 1955. ST: Could you tell us a bit more about your parents and family growing up? JV: Sure. I was one of six kids growing up. My father worked for Wonder Bread so we felt like we had a celebrity for a Dad, because he brought home Twinkies and Cupcakes and Ding Dongs and all of these sweet wonderful things. He would come home for lunch in the summer in his Wonder Bread truck and it had the big side door that went open and we would get to get inside the truck—these were in different days, not so much liability and litigiousness and all that—but we would get to ride maybe a block or so with him. He would take off, then we would jump out and go back home and resume our playing. Yeah, I had a wonderful childhood growing up. I was born and raised in Washington Terrace, the south part of Ogden. Lived a fairly sheltered life. My 2 parents didn’t make a lot of money, but us kids didn’t know that. We just felt loved and blessed and like we were part of a family. That was a lot of fun. We spent a lot of time playing together and making up games. Our side lawn was the neighborhood gathering place for volleyball and soccer. My two older sisters would have their boyfriends over and we would play endless hours of soccer and volleyball games. Just had a fun, fun neighborhood. Usually on Sunday evenings, we would invite families over from around the neighborhood and have what we would call a “watermelon bust,” and we would always beg our parents to let us do the watermelon bust every Sunday evening. We were a happy, social, pretty well-adjusted family. Again, not upper class in terms of finances or even education. Neither of my parents went to college, but we just always had what we felt like was a good childhood and had parents that were hard working. There was no sense of entitlement at all with my parents. We weren’t without some hardships. I remember I couldn’t get the name brand clothes that some of my more wealthy friends had, but it didn’t have a big impact on me. I did have a younger brother, when he was fifteen, just about sixteen, who died at Bonneville High School, on the track when he was in gym class. I was like nineteen, so that was kind of a hard time in life of our family. He died exactly one month before I was to be married. But again, our family just kind of took it in stride and with the faith that we have, we all felt like we would see him again. But I remember it was a lot harder on my parents, particularly my mom, than it was any of us, and a lot harder on my other younger brother who was only about a year older than the brother who died. They were best buddies 3 and always together. It had the most impact on my younger brother. For me, I was off to a new life getting married and starting a new adventure of my own. That was clearly a very difficult and yet joyous time. The hardest thing I encountered to that point in time. I do remember another difficult time, when Wonder Bread went on strike. I remember some of our neighbors and our church bringing us food until Dad got back to work. But, other than that, we just had a pretty normal well-rounded childhood. ST: Could you tell me maybe more about Wonder Bread going on strike? Is there more of a story there? JV: Sure. When they went on strike, my Dad couldn’t work. He was quite involved with the Teamsters Union, which to us was “oooh” because we’d heard stories about the mafia affiliation and that kind of thing, but locally, with Wonder Bread, it wasn’t like that at all. It was just good, hard working people standing up for their rights. I remember my dad talking about the strike line and he hoped that there weren’t scabs, that’s what they called people who crossed the picket line, and continue to work for the company. Money got real tight, and I really don’t remember how long it lasted, but I do remember that my parents were worried and money was tight and Christmas time was coming around. Actually, that Christmas is one of my best childhood memories. I remember we didn’t have the money to buy gifts for each other, so what we did is we provided service for each other. On Christmas morning, instead of opening gifts, we had little envelopes— and this is nothing all that unique, but it was special to us at the time—with homemade tickets we could redeem the promised service. You know, things 4 making each other’s beds or my brother taking me on more motorcycle rides than he usually would, or some fun things like that. LR: Do you remember what year this was? JV: It was probably in the mid to late 1960s, but I can’t swear to that. LR: Okay. Before we continue, what were your parents’ names? JV: Carl S. Barker was my father, and Gwendolyn Chipman Barker was my mother’s name. They actually met at Wonder Bread. She worked on the line where they were wrapping the Twinkies and all the wonderful good stuff along with bread, and he was a salesman. He would deliver to various stores around Ogden. Mom caught Dad’s eye and he made a point of walking through the factory where she was working and say to her, “Marry me, Slim, and you’ll learn to love me.” She was actually a little chubby, so he nicknamed her “Slim.” She wasn’t so sure. He was like nine years older than her, but, she gave in and yeah, they had a wonderful life together. LR: That’s really great. And in your siblings, where do you fall? JV: I’m in the middle. I have two older sisters, one older brother, then me, and two younger brothers. So I felt like, growing up, I had the best of both worlds. I had the two older sisters who would go to the proms and dances, and I remember rubbing their shaved legs and thinking how pretty they were. I also developed a crush on their boyfriends that would come around. But then I was in between brothers, because two years ahead of me was a brother and then three and four years after me were two more brothers. I remember all the times of playing with them and making up games. I felt really lucky because—we didn’t know at the 5 time—but my older brother who was two years older than me was really smart. We thought he’s just our dumb brother, you know? But he actually ended up being the WSU’s History department’s outstanding student the year he graduated. He went on earn a law degree at the U of U and then on to NYU for his post doc. After working for a while in NYC as an attorney, he returned to Utah and became one of the principal partners of a large law firm in Salt Lake. As a kid he’d make things with the erector sets and out on the side lawn he’d make high jump pits with blankets and pillows to land in. He’d get pieces of wood and measure each inch and put a nail in, push them in the lawn and lay a long stick across then so we could have high jump contests. He’d help us just do all kinds of fun things. I always remember thinking that the things that boys did were a lot more fun than the things that girls did. This is probably an antiquated term, but I was a tomboy growing up and was very athletic--really involved with sports. I felt lucky with my placement in the family because I felt like I had my two older sisters that provided me with certain types of things and then I had my brothers that provided me with other kinds of things. ST: Could we get their names? JV: My oldest in JoLynn Barker Bell. The second is Sharon Barker Stephens. Then Lorin Barker and then myself and then Kevin Chipman Barker, and Brett Chipman Barker. Brett’s the baby of the family and he’s the one who died so young. Kevin was one in the family most impacted as he and Brett were only about a year apart and very close. ST: Where did you go to school, throughout your childhood and teenage years? 6 JV: Growing up in Washington Terrace, I went to Roosevelt Elementary, T. H. Bell Junior High School, and to Bonneville High School. ST: Do you have any key memories from your high school, or junior high, or elementary experience? JV: My mom called me the social butterfly of the family, and I had great experiences in school. I remember several of my teachers, and that I wanted to make good impressions on them particularly in elementary school. Of course, like all kids, I remember our recesses and playing kickball and playing four square and just having a blast. In junior high, then boys started coming into the picture. I remember my first serious boyfriend and I remember times when boys would be boys. One memory in particular—I don’t know if I should say this. LR: It’s entirely up to you. You can always edit it out if you want to. JV: Well, a boy in the neighborhood started telling everyone at school that he saw me, through my bedroom window, practicing my cheers—because I was a cheerleader in junior high—in my underwear. And it made my boyfriend mad. I remember walking through the halls at T. H. Bell Junior High and hearing, “There’s going to be a fight!” “So-and-so is going to fight so-and-so because he said this about her,” so I remember all of us running to the fight. Just kind of dumb things, but the kind of things that made life kind of fun and interesting. I liked being a cheerleader but, I was always more of an athlete. Cheerleaders in those days were very different than cheerleaders are now. But, loved it because I loved the socialization it provided me. Again, I remember some wonderful teachers who relay influenced me. When I finally got to high school, I loved it. I 7 liked the academic part, I can’t say that I loved it, but I did love the social life. There probably was not one dance, or a stomp, or an activity that I wasn’t at. I was a Lakette, and had a great time with that but, I really wish girls sports had been available, I was a year too early. The Lakettes and school band had the opportunity preform at the Calgary Stampede. Yeah, I had a fun time during my high school years. LR: I have a quick question of Washington Terrace. It hadn’t been incorporated very long when you born. What was that like? I know I’m asking an unfair question. JV: Yeah. Well, I think we were kind of sheltered, I could count on one hand the number of people of color in my high school or in my neighborhood. We were pretty much an all-white, middle class neighborhood, and really didn’t know a whole lot about the rest of the world. The only people, who travelled out of the country, that we knew when I was young, were Mormon missionaries. We didn’t know many people with advanced degrees or who were professionals like doctor or lawyers. My world way got different later on in my life, but as kids we were fairly sheltered. We were scared to death of Ogden High School, it had a rough reputation. The funny thing, as an adult I ended up being a strong advocate for OHS. All four of my kids went to Ogden High School and my grandkids are likely going to Ogden High School. So I’m definitely a Laker at heart, but also a converted Tiger. We felt safe in our neighborhood, like we could sleep out, and we never felt scared, and we never felt a lot of the tensions kids in other parts of the country or, for that matter, other parts of Ogden did growing up in the 1960s. 8 When I graduated from high school in 1973, there were a lot of things going on in the world. I remember in high school the older boys getting draft numbers and how nervous I was for these boys. I remember some of them joining the Reserves or organizations like the Peace Corps to do humanitarian service instead of risking being drafted. I remember seeing some of them who, when they finally got their draft number, had really high draft numbers and at the time things in Vietnam were kind of winding down so draft numbers didn’t go very high. Somewhat ironically many had already joined the National Guard or the Reserves. So there were a lot of things going on in the world, but we were a little bit sheltered from it, I think. LR: Who were some of the women that you looked up to as a young girl? JV: Well, as a young girl, I did a lot of babysitting, because that’s how I earned my money, and I remember the people I babysat for, I loved them I loved their children. One woman in particular was Annette Stevens. I babysat for her and she was also my piano teacher. I just thought that she was the neatest thing in the world and she was and still is. She was a really neat role model for me, she was a very accomplished pianist. Actually, ironically enough, the other woman that I babysat for a lot was a very recognized piano accompanist. Growing up, my mom, two sisters and I would sing as a quartet. We performed in churches and at business parties. Janice Boyington, who wasn’t my piano teacher, accompanied us, and she was marvelous then and is still marvelous. I still keep in contact with both of them. A good part of my life as an adult has been playing the piano and accompanying people to sing or play other instruments. I 9 absolutely love to accompany choirs and soloists and others who perform. I feel like there’s mechanics to playing the piano, but then there’s also a feel for playing the piano and there’s also a feel for accompanying people and being able to follow them and do justice to their talents. I feel like I really learned those thing from these two women. Those were of some of the things that stuck with me. As far as any other, my mom was always a role model for me. She was fun, she was smart, she was active. She would do things that she felt like made a difference for people. I remember my mom raising money to build an exercise course in Washington Terrace. She applied to a several private foundations and bringing in the funds to build an excellent exercise course in Rohmer Park. She was somebody that was always giving service to people, whether it was on a community-wide basis or as a neighbor. I’ll never forget many times taking meals to people. It seems like that was more prevalent for her generation. I think people still do that, but she was always serving other people by doing kind things. I remember the grand opening of the exercise course and how she made drapes to put over all the different stations and we undraped them as people from the community walked the course for the first time. It was really neat. She was just a great example of compassion and love and service to me. Three things that are really meaningful in my life now. Oh, let me say to: Maria von Trapp. Who didn’t love her? Julie Andrews, who didn’t love her? I love Julie Andrews because music is a huge part of my life and a lot of her movies like Mary Poppins and, of course, the Sound of Music, 10 made me want to be Maria von Trapp. So that was someone else that I looked up to as well. LR: The actor or the person? JV: Both. I loved her. I mean, we didn’t go to lunch. But I would see her interviewed and she was different because of her beautiful British accent. She was just unique enough that I thought she was very cool. I loved the parts that she played. LR: Were you encouraged to pursue an education when you were young? JV: Not really encouraged. Not discouraged. We had to pay our own way to college, either get a scholarship or we had to work to earn tuition, because it just wasn’t possible on the family finances. Actually, all of us kids did go to college and we actually all got degrees. Then I married someone who earned a PhD in English and now my daughter is working on her PhD in English. One daughter holds a BA and the other, a MEd, so, to me education is a big deal. We strongly encourage our grandkids to set college as a goal. Number one because we want them to be open minded about the world and have an idea about the world and that comes with a good liberal education. We also want them to be able connect to what they love to do as a means to provide living for their families. But it wasn’t a big deal where we grew up. When we were young, we thought people who were educated were kind of weird but, that’s because we didn’t know better. ST: Where did you go to college? JV: I attended Weber State and loved it and still do. It’s provided our family livelihood for the last thirty-eight years. My husband is an English professor: Mike Vause. Do you know Mike? 11 LR: He was the provost. JV: No, that’s Michael Vaughn. ST: Isn’t he responsible for NULC, like National Undergraduate Literature Conference? JV: Yes, he and my daughter actually run the National Undergraduate Literature Conference, where they bring in the best authors in the world to WSU and the Ogden community. But I’m sure you know, our good friends Gene Sessions and the John Sillito. We even have dear friends in the sciences like Craig Oberg and Mike Slabaugh and his wife Jan from Technology. ST: Why did you choose to attend Weber? JV: Hometown? I really hadn’t set my sights on anything else because that wasn’t part of our world. It was the hometown college, at that point, and my older siblings had attended Weber State and I just thought that’s what you do next as a matter of course. So that’s what I did. ST: What did you end up studying while you were here? JV: Well, I ended up with my Associate degree which is all I have right now but, when I retire in two years, I plan to go back to school. I’m surrounded by people who not only have their four-year degrees, but they have very advanced degrees. I felt like going to graduate school with my husband was not only an education for him, but it was for me as well. I read a lot of the books that he read and just followed along in that way. I’m kind of embarrassed to say that, actually. LR: Is that what you wanted to cut? JV: Yeah. I’m kind of embarrassed about it. But it’s okay. 12 LR: I was going to say, the fact that you “only” have an Associate’s degree almost makes me laugh because I understand this. It took me until I was forty to get my Bachelor’s, so I don’t think it’s ever too late. JV: I don’t think it’s ever too late either. I do plan to go back if that’s what I want to do, and I think that’s what I want to do. But the interesting thing is most people who we associate with are very educated and they just assume . . . I remember Dr. Neila Sechachari who taught at this university for years and years and years; she just knew that I had a graduate degree, which I didn’t! It’s what it is. LR: Did you end up getting married is that what—I’m making an assumption here, but let me re-ask it like this. In this time, did you get married? JV: I did. I started going to school and then I met my husband-to-be, and then we did get married. I was nineteen but just about twenty, so it did enable me to get as far as I could, but at that point we started having children and we knew that it wasn’t feasible for both of us to be doing this and to take care of a family, so he became the first priority for school. Which in a way, kind of goes against my grain, but it’s the way we did it. LR: Do you remember what year you got married? JV: Yeah. I got married in 1975 and our first daughter was born nine and a half months later. Then we had three kids in three-and-a-half years, then we had a fourth one, so I have four children. ST: Can we get their names? JV: Yep. So my oldest is Kelly; then Emily, with a Y; next is Sarah, with an H. And Jared is number four. 13 LR: Your husband, when you met and married him, he already had his...? JV: No. No, he didn’t even have his Bachelor’s yet. LR: Where did he get his Master’s and his PhD? JV: Okay, so when he finished here, we went back to Bowling Green State University in Ohio and he earned a dual MA and PhD. It was really fun for our family, because at this point we had young kids, so we all packed up and went to Ohio and it was a wonderful experience for us. Made friends there that are lifetime friends. Because we had always been used to being around family, so when we were in Ohio, our friends became our family. Many of which we still have contact today. In fact, one couple will be meeting us for the 24th of July. They live in Florida, and they’re going to come and stay with us for a few days. That was a really neat experience, to live out of state. Even though we valued our families, it was a neat experience to depend on each other and to form, maybe some deeper friendships by being away from home. ST: You said it was kind of an interesting experience to live outside of the state. Was there anything that kind of struck you as different between Utah and Ohio? JV: The weather! Yeah, I was used to a dry climate and, of course, we have the four seasons here, which I love because I’m a variety person. I will never move to California or somewhere to always have it warm--I love the variety. When we moved back east, with its high humidity making summer a bit uncomfortable, but humidity coupled with the wind chill factor in the winter is another story altogether. I remember our first winter it broke records for cold. In fact, Bowling Green, being close to Lake Erie, was many times the coldest spot in the country 14 with temperatures dropping to as low as minus 81 due to the wind chill. I remember going from my car into my house or my car into the store and thinking, “It’s going to take a minute for my face to thaw,” it was just so cold. Then in the summer we would wash things and they’d never get dry because of the humidity. But a big bonus was the fireflies, I had never been around fireflies here in Utah and I love the outdoors. The thing that was different as well was we weren’t around mountains. My husband and I were both runners and used to running in the hills. To do any hill training was to run back and forth over the interstate overpass. That’s the weather, but interesting people. It’s a university town so a lot of the people that we associated with were part of the university, either as students or as faculty or staff. The people were wonderful. We just really enjoyed the variety of backgrounds. We’re members of the predominant religion here, yet we really enjoyed being in a place where being Mormon wasn’t the norm. Number one, we learned, firsthand how other people must feel while moving to Utah. But number two, just the opportunity to feel like we could broaden our horizons and be around people who we loved every bit as much as our friends back home. They offered something different, so that was really enriching for us. LR: While you were in Bowling Green with your husband, what are some of the things you would do? You mentioned that you would read the books he would read and stuff like that, but what are some of the things you would do? JV: I took up a hobby—which surprised my family because I’m not like this so much—but it’s called “Counted Cross Stitch.” Because I have to have something 15 to do and it’s better if I do it with my hands. Mentally I was getting pretty stimulated with reading some of the graduate level literature that they were having him read, but also I had a really good friend, who I loved how she had decorated her home and she had a lot of counted cross stitch. It sounds very quaint. But, I got really into doing the counted cross stitch and I came home with more pieces to be framed of counted cross stitch in the short period of time than I will ever do in a complete other lifetime. In the rest of my life. And I don’t do it anymore because I have enough. But I would just go look at her things and she would actually let me borrow them. I wouldn’t even go buy a pattern. I would just look at them and I would count and I go home and my family said, “Wow, that just doesn’t remind us of you to do counted cross stitch” and I said, “That’s because, this is how I did [grunting with fierce expression].” I mean truly, I would just attack it because I wanted to get this piece done. I wanted to do this and this and this, and that’s just kind of my personality. Too much testosterone for a girl for one thing. But yeah, I’m passionate about things and I love to, if I do something, I really do it. Of course, we would jog and I had girlfriends that I would do that with as well. ST: So what brought you back to Utah? JV: A job. Mike ended up getting hired and in his field. I mean, he’s an English professor and to think that you’re going to be able to get hired in the hometown that you grew up in. It was a great opportunity, so he got hired here and that’s why we actually came back. ST: Do you know what year that is? Do you remember? 16 JV: I could guess. He’s much better at the years than I am, but I think 1982. LR: When you came back here, you no longer needed to do the counted cross stitch, so what were you doing to occupy your time? JV: Well, when I first came back, I actually went into selling real estate. I sold real estate with Caldwell Banker for a couple of years and really enjoyed it, but the hardest part about it was you have all kinds of people with all kinds of tastes, and I liked a particular style. I had to really listen to people to get what their style was because I wanted to show them what I thought was really cool. A house nestled by the mountains so you could go and run through the mountains and that kind of thing, but a lot of people have different tastes in what they want, so that was the most challenging part about it, but I enjoyed working with the people. I enjoyed the camaraderie within the company, and that was really fun for me, to get to know the agents. I loved looking at homes so that kind of satisfied that. I actually went back to school to get my real estate license. I took that from Dr. Handley, who recently passed away, who was at the university for thirty plus years. But loved the challenge. I turned into one of those kind of student that I hated when I was a young student, that would sit on the second row or the front row, always had a comment and would always raise their hand. I just turned into this obnoxious, conscientious, overachiever. If I got a 96 on a score and I thought it deserved to be a 98, I would go and talk to the professor, so I turned into one of those that nobody likes in their classes. Since then I’ve mellowed a little bit but, I loved going back to school, and I think that’s why I’ll probably will go because there are some other areas that I’d love to pursue and to be able to be a part of. 17 LR: Coming back to Weber State after you, I know you weren’t gone for very long, but what were the differences between when you left to go to Ohio and when you came back? JV: I’ll have to think about that a little. LR: It sounds like there were four to five years. JV: Yeah. We probably looked at things a little differently because our experiences had broadened our perspectives. By living is a different geographic location, by being around different types of people than we were used to, so when we came back, it wasn’t the same as it was before because we were different people. It wasn’t the same, but it wasn’t worse and it wasn’t necessarily better. There were people who had been our friends before we went to school who continued to be our friends. I think we just came back with a little broadened philosophy of life, and I don’t know if it was worse or better. I mean, we love where we live and it’s not like when we left it didn’t make us want to live away from here, but it made us really grateful for that experience. It made us want to tell our kids and other kids seeking advice that it’s very healthy and a very good experience to live away from home and get different experiences in your life. So that for sure. Sorry, that’s not a very good answer. LR: That’s a great answer. When you actually started your profession, knowing that we don’t know what that is yet, were your kids older? JV: They were. I think they were mostly in school, but maybe not quite all of them. I figured it wasn’t financially viable to pay daycare, because I had the three so close, so I wouldn’t have to pay. It eased up a little when I had my son, who was 18 the youngest, so they were in school. A friend of mine just called me and said, “There’s this job opening that I think that you would be really interested in.” And I said, “What is it?” And she said, “It’s a foundation director for a non-profit for the school district, for the Ogden School Foundation.” So I said, “Hmm.” I didn’t know anything about it. I didn’t know anything about fundraising. I felt like I was pretty well connected in terms of, I’m from the south end of town and Mike is from the north end of town, so we knew a lot of people, which is a big part of fundraising, but I also knew that I had a love of our school system and that I wanted my kids to have the best opportunities and best education they could. So I went and interviewed for this job and got it. It was kind of a fluke. But it started out very small. Like four hours a day. It was the director of the Ogden School Foundation. It was really challenging because it was something that I hadn’t done before, but part of my personality is that I have to have variety, and this provided variety because in this position some days I’m writing grant requests, some days I’m running a golf tournament, some days we’re hosting authors coming in the schools to talk to our kids, so it offers a broad range of different things that I think are pretty neat to be able to participate in. It started out as four hours a day and I think we had $70,000 in an endowment fund, then it went to six hours a day then, they asked me to do something that a lot of people thought was impossible. I don’t know if either of you were around when they restored Ogden High School. The school was shot. It needed new everything. But it’s a historic landmark, so the district had to make the tough decision, if they were going to bulldoze it—which they wouldn’t have been able to—but if they were going to try 19 to find other property, build a new school, have a complete restoration of this school, but the community spoke out loud and clear, that said, “This will remain a school and this will stay here. We’ll chain ourselves to the front doors if anything happens to my beloved school.” These were people in the community who were folks of fairly high exposure, like with Spence Eccles. There’s a huge list of distinguished graduates, who graduated from Ogden High School, who have gone on to make big contributions in their communities. Some very influential people. So the district decided that they would take on the restoration, but—since historic preservation is much more costly than new—they needed to be able to raise some money to help bridge that gap, and not just pass that onto the tax payers. They came to the Foundation and asked us if we would raise nine million dollars. We were a little school foundation that did some cool things, but never to the extent of raising nine million dollars. Coupled with that, we just got started, and then it was when the recession hit hard—the end of 2007 and into 2008. Here, we’re a little school foundation; we’d never had a million-dollar donation and they’re asking us to raise many millions of dollars to restore this school. We set up a community meeting and we got people in place who were really excited to help. We ended up with folks like Alan Hall as the co-chair of our fundraising committee, along with Rob White who has been on the National Historic Preservation Board and several other local people that were phenomenal. We ended up raising nine million dollars. It was really kind of a miracle because it was huge ticket item for us at that point, a huge learning curve. I was kind of terrified to do it, when we first took that on, but at the end, we all grew, learned a 20 lot. It was really a phenomenal education. We were able to raise the nine million dollars despite the downturn in the economy and people didn’t have as much to give, but that school is such an iconic school and the graduates of that school absolutely—I mean, I have never ever seen such loyalty to something as I have to that. So, I think buildings do make a difference in influencing people. You know sometimes we think it’s not that big of a deal: you go to school and really it’s the teacher; it’s really the educational delivery system and yeah, it’s that, but I think that there is something really neat about being in a place. . . I mean, the architects were Hodgson and McClenahan and it’s an art-deco design. They claim, and I think it’s true, it’s the first million-dollar high school built west of the Mississippi River. So all of this extra care and all of this art-deco to the hardware and every doorknob and the transoms above the doorways and the auditorium. The auditorium is unmatched; it’s unbelievable. The proscenium above the auditorium is one of the most beautiful prosceniums I’ve ever seen, and I’ve been all over in the theater world. It’s amazing. As part of the process, we had to make a decision: are we going to expense of replacing the gold leaf with gold leaf or just gold paint? We decided on the gold leaf, and people stepped up and with their generous donations, made that happen. It was just unbelievable. A kind of cool side note is they built a dance floor: it was a false floor that went up to the ceiling. It stopped ten feet from ceiling so the painters could paint the proscenium. The contractors hired a gentlemen who was a really renowned painter to do decorative painting. Center stage in the middle of the proscenium there’s a rosette, 21 an architectural element. The painter noticed names written around this rosette and they turned out to be the names of the original painters from 1936. It was quite a shock for him as had apprenticed with them and learned to decorative paint work as well as the gold leafing. He was using the very special delicate painting tools to do the gold leafing that they had given him. So the same tools that they used in 1936, were used again in 2008-09, to restore their original decorative painting. Talk about a really, really cool story in terms of fundraising for the restoration. We would actually do tours and invite people from the community to come up on the dance floor and be able to get just a few feet from proscenium rosette. To hear this decorative painter talk about how he had been trained by these old craftsmen, who did work beyond anything that you usually see today, and to think he was using their same tools meant the world to him. It was a really neat experience, really neat. School foundations have a national organization that holds a yearly conference to workshop and provide seminars for directors. The organization also recognized the top fundraising organization. We were named number one based on certain criteria, not just money brought it. But we were the number one for our size of school district in the nation, so that was a neat thing which kind of propelled the Ogden School Foundation name to national recognition and made others in our profession to be aware of who we are and what we do. That recognition has helped us to to raise funds for the many other things we support. We provide aids for literacy; we provide teaching materials for math and science, technology, theatre; we bring theatre to our kids every year and involve the 22 Southern Utah University’s Shakespeare troupe. A lot of our kids would never have the opportunity for these kinds of things because we have—I think about seventy-something percent of our kids that are economically challenged. So the things that we’re able to do to enhance what happens beyond the limited school budgets can really make a big difference. We provide classroom grants for teachers to fund things that they wouldn’t normally have to match their induvial teaching styles. This kind of support helps to make them better teachers, that makes the kids more interested and engaged in the learning. I can’t think of anything that I would rather have been doing for the last 28 years than to provide neat, unique opportunities for our local educational system. When I first started, I saw the impact it had on my kids, because my kids were all in the system, and now my grandkids are all in the system. So, I’m on a hike with my grandson and I ask, “What was your favorite thing in school today?” and he names two of the things that we had funded, it just makes me happy and proud and that makes me love my job. LR: Just so I understand, what’s the difference between the foundation and the school board? There’s obviously a difference, but I’m trying to understand what that is. JV: It’s kind of a complicated thing and a lot of people have a hard time understanding it. I am actually an employee of the Ogden School District and my staff is as well; there’s three of us. We’re paid by the district, but the foundation has its own bylaws and our own Articles in Corporation. So also, we have an Ogden School Foundation Board that is totally different than the Board of 23 Education. I actually have two bosses, which can be a precarious place to be, but it’s worked for all these years. I mean, my paycheck comes from the Board of Ed. and from the superintendent, who are my bosses, but I take direction from the Foundation Board of Directors. The foundation is here in support of the district, so we’re kind of under the district umbrella, but we operate fiscally independently. We are philosophically aligned with the district and our goals match those of the district. Our mission is to enhance educational opportunities, but we do that through the initiatives and the direction that the Board of Ed. For example, they might adopt a new math program in the district, and they can’t afford all the little math manipulatives to go with it, so we’ll come in and help provide support materials. We provide classroom grants to the tune of a quarter of a million to three hundred thousand dollars every year to teachers who apply to us and we’re able to see that the grant monies go right into the classroom. In addition to all this, we do a Weber State “College Bound” program. A lot of our kids are not college bound, because if they are, they’ll likely be the first in their family, so that’s become one of the district’s strong initiatives. Every year we work with Weber State through the athletic department, and we bring up 800 fifth-grade kids on campus, because the number one goal is to get them to feel comfortable on a college campus. Some of their parents come as chaperones, so we have the WSU student ambassadors or the athletes take the kids around to the different places on campus, for an hour and a half tour. Then we go over to the ice-skating rink by the Dee Events Center and we’ll have a spirit assembly where the University President will talk to them, the athletic director will talk to 24 them, the athletes will talk to them, and explain how important it is to do well in school, to attend school, and that they want them on this university campus in a few years. It’s a good marketing tool for the university; it’s a phenomenal activity for the kids to realize that a college education is well, “within reach.” When they’re going around on the campus tours, they’ll ask questions like “How expensive is it?” and “How do we pay for college?” That’s an open opportunity for adults to say, “There’s all kinds of ways, just because you might not have the money to go to college, there’s all kinds of ways to get you there.” You can apply for a grant, you can get a scholarship, which really opens up our kids’ eyes to the possibility of being able to go on beyond high school and to get a degree. The culmination of the event, we walk up from the spirit assembly across the parking lot to a men’s basketball game. We’re clear up in the rafters yet the kids are cheering their heads off, so that’s kind of the fun part of it. We provide a sack lunch for them so they have their dinner at the game and we have balls that we throw out to them, independent of what the university is doing, and it’s just a real great experience. Stuff like that we do district wide. We provide music programs district wide. Like I said, we bring Shakespeare to the schools. We bring authors to the schools. In fact, that book that I’m reading right now is an author that people are saying will have the same impact as the book Wonder. I’m reading her book and I can’t wait for the kids to hear her. This fall we’ll host Chad Hymas; he’s a professional inspirational speaker; he’s paraplegic. The only thing that works is his shoulders and from his neck up. He’s such a neat guy. We had him speak at 25 three of our schools last year and it was so inspirational to our kids. He is an example of somebody that had something bad happen to him in his life and he’s still making his life what he wants his life to be. This is the kind of message that we’re trying to get to our kids. It’s expensive, but we’re sending him to all nineteen of our schools. He will make a difference in their lives, I guarantee it. He will touch lives. That’s what we like to do. Our biggest fundraiser event is called the Fall Author Event. We started in 1996 with Ray Bradbury, and then trying to keep it on the same level which is hard! I mean, the second year was Chaim Potok. We’ve had David McCullough, the historian. We’ve had Stephen Ambrose, we’ve had Amy Tan, we’ve had Sue Monk Kidd—The Secret Life of Bees; Erik Larson—The Devil in the White City, that’s the Chicago World’s Fair. He was last year. This year we have an author named Rebecca Skloot, and she wrote the book The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks. I don’t know if you’ve heard of it. But, Henrietta Lacks went to John Hopkins University Hospital because she had cancer, and when she died the research doctors took some of her tissue. They had been trying for decades to grow tissue outside of the living body to help with research. Her’s was the first tissue sample that actually continued to replicate outside of its host; this black woman who was living in poverty. Her cells became the first “immortal cells.” They’re all over the world and whatever medicine, if you’ve taken anything, you’ve been touched by Henrietta Lacks’ life. She helped find the cure for polio, she helped find the cure for some types of cancer. Anyway, she’s a less known name, but we were sold out in March and the event is not until November. It’s the biggest event that happens of this nature, 26 in our community. We have over 1,100 people who attend, so it’s kind of an event that lives our mission because we’re putting a world class author in front of our community and our students, and we’re able to raise money, to help continue to do all these cool things for our kiddos. LR: I’m curious how many students actually attend these things with the authors. JV: The fall author event is the big one and that’s when we have the big-name author. We provide other authors, like elementary authors and different authors throughout the year that will maybe go to a grade level or to a school or something. But with our Fall Author Event, I mean, who wouldn’t want their kid to hear Ray Bradbury or Ken Burns, the film maker. We had all these people. We bus students from around the district to the Ogden High auditorium, so we’ll have 800 kids grade appropriate depending on who the author is. We had Daniel Handler, who was Lemony Snickett’s author, so that went down to elementary, and we had tons of kids for him. It is really meaningful. Usually it’s just at the high school level—but like I said, depending on the author—we’ll have a writing contest, and the contest prompt for contest will be based on the particular writer’s style. With Ray Bradbury, it was “write about your summertime experiences, like he did in Dandelion Wine.” With Chaim Potok—Jewish writer, The Chosen, The Promise—Anyway, his writing contest was something like, “Find someone who is different from you, whether it be your religion, your culture, your ethnicity, and write about that.” It’s very meaningful to these kids, especially the ones who participate in the writing contest. There will be a couple of hundred kids who enter the writing contest. We have judges from the English department at Weber 27 State who will make the final judgment. We generally have ten winners, and they will get to sit at the feet of a world-renowned author, in their own private little setting, these ten kids—I’ll never forget when David McCullough was going around the room with this little half circle of these ten kids and said, “Now who had the title of such and such” and somebody shyly raises a hand. “That was a great title! Who wrote about this? With a little work you could develop that into a college essay.” I mean, it changes lives. After, we have the evening event, like on a Thursday night, that we have all the community come to a banquet and formal reading/talk by our guest author. We actually recognize the student winners and we invite their parents to come too and they get honored and introduced in front of the whole community. But then the next day is kind of their assembly where they get honored in front of the 800 or 1,000 kids who are at the assembly. After the author has spoken to the student winners, then they go into the big assembly. For some kids, maybe will forget it, but I got a little thank you letter from a student after Ken Burns was here. He said, “I used to hate history. I love history now. And I owe my love of reading and history to this experience.” Okay. So do you know why I love what I do? LR: Yeah. JV: Okay. I could cry, but I’m not going to. Yeah, it’s been a phenomenal career for me. I’ve absolutely loved doing it. 28 LR: Okay, I do have a question. It’s amazing to me what you do. And you’ve been doing this for a long time. As your kids were growing older, because you obviously love, love, love what you do, how did you find that balance? JV: Well, it helped because I was doing something that I know directly impacted them. Not everybody gets to do that. In fact, probably most don’t, unless you’re a teacher, which is the noblest of any profession. It helped knowing that my kids were going to be able to be exposed to these enhancements that we give to them. Then it gets validated when I have conversations with my kids and grandkids and they say, “Wow, we got to look at the big books today, Grandma. That is my favorite thing.” Well, we funded that. We funded these learning centers that these kids got to go in. That helped because I felt like my profession was directly connected and beneficial to my own kids. I also chose something that let me have flexibility and again, not everybody’s lucky enough to have this. I never missed a ball game. I mean, all of my kids were athletes. I didn’t work as many hours when they were younger then, since the Ogden High thing in 2007, I actually went back to six hours for a while and knew that I just couldn’t do it for six hours, for whatever reasons. I always put my family first. Now there was some times where the lines get crossed, and I think we all have to be okay with that. There were definitely some times where my kids suffered. There were some times where my work suffered, because if you’re in the middle of a big project or a Fall Author Event, maybe I wasn’t…but my family is number one. They were all very athletic and I’m talking like state championship level athletic, and my grandkids were too and are. I don’t 29 think I ever, ever missed a game. I may have had one meeting that I had to miss something. I mean, you can definitely count on one hand. I just tried to keep my priorities straight. If you’re goal oriented and if you’re organized and I’m a little bit anal when it comes to detail. You know, our best qualities are our worst flaws. I would feel like I’d have to be really organized and I’d feel like I couldn’t waste time. When I was at work, I’d feel like I’d need to be doing work and getting that done and then, when it was time to play, I needed to get that done. I mean, I just picture my husband and me going on bicycle rides with all the kids in tow and at one point we had a little trailer that the two littlest would ride in, and the two bigger ones would be following us. I don’t know. I didn’t want to look back twenty years from where I was at whatever point, when I was thirty-five or forty and say, “Oh, I wish I would have done that. I wish I would have spent more time . . .” I didn’t want to look back with regrets. I feel like, overall, I’ve kind of been able to keep it balanced and not look back and say, “Wow, I ditched my kids, I shouldn’t have done this.” This isn’t for everybody, but for me, I did feel like I did need to be home when they were preschoolers. But when they went to school, I did feel like to keep me as a better person, as a better role model for my three girls and for my son, I did want to be active and I wanted to be engaged and to be involved and to make things better for us, for our family, for our community. There’s a lot of things that you “coulda, woulda, shoulda,” but I don’t think that’s productive to waste a lot of time on that. But if you feel like you’re grounded from the beginning and you feel like you have certain priorities and values that are important to you, that you can make it work 30 and I don’t think you can make it all work all at the same time. Maybe some people can and more power to them. People have different capacities, and people have different talents, and I think that a lot of women do need to share their talents, number one with their families, but other people need them too. With the job that I do now, I see all these kids who need stuff, who have hard, hard, hard lives, and they need adults to believe in them. I feel like love is the answer. I feel like you need to try to be the best you can be and live your life according to your set of standards and your values and to people that you are obligated to and should be obligated to and care for everybody. What I said to one of my grandkids when their parents got divorced, I said, “Here’s the thing. Love can go beyond. It doesn’t mean, if they’re divorced, that they’re going to love you any less. It doesn’t mean that I’m going to love you any less. That’s the way that love works. Love can transcend and love can continue to impact people. It’s not a finite thing. It doesn’t stop here because it has this limit.” I said, “That’s not how love works.” I really believe that, and that was kind of my little advice to a little hurting heart at a certain point in his life. That’s kind of personal… ST: I did have one question kind of related to what you were just talking about: How do you think the role of mothers has changed over time? You’ve been kind of going into parenthood, so I was wondering how you feel about that. JV: Well, I grew up on “Leave it to Beaver.” How cool was that for those people that could do that? I think I kind of just expressed it, that I think we’re all given kind of God-given gifts and I think that motherhood is my highest priority, but I’ve seen 31 so many women who are so bright and have so much to offer, and try to fit into a little mold that doesn’t let them express that. My opinion is, if they’re able to still continue and learn to grow themselves with being a good parent, a good mother, that they’re better for their kids, too. Not only just an example for what they could become, but just they’re better. I don’t mean it in a selfish way, but we all need to fill our own bucket, and if somebody is this phenomenal writer that just is gifted, they’re going to be better for their kids if they give some to that, too. LR: Kind of in the same vein, but kind of not. How do you think education empowers women? JV: Oh, I think education is probably one of the biggest things. I mean, education just opens up worlds. I never felt like, if my husband died, that I wouldn’t be able to provide for kids, and I probably should have felt it, because I didn’t have a degree, and I didn’t have any specific training. I thought, “What would I do? I’d be a mail carrier because I love to be outside and I love the outdoors and they make good money!” So there’s a real pragmatic side of that where you do need to be prepared. I just hate it when women are so dependent on men to provide that, because they may be in a position that they don’t have that additional income, or that primary income, and they need some way to be able to provide for their family. That’s a real practical side of it. But, I just think that everybody has something to offer, and I don’t know if everything can be accomplished all at once either, but I think that you need to know who you are, and everybody is a person of beauty and talent and not just care-giving. Caregiving is a huge part of 32 mothering or anything, but there’s something that runs a little bit deeper than that. We all know that the better educated you are, the better chances there are of getting a better job. That’s kind of changing. I mean there are plenty of entrepreneurs in this world, but you still need to have some set of skills. I just think you’re a better person. Women need to be educated and a lot of times that happens before you’re married and before you have kids, sometimes it happens during, sometimes it happens after, but I think education is definitely a key to helping them feel prepared in a practical sense and also helping them to feel more of a fulfilled person. LR: I’ve been thinking about your job, and you talked about that one year that you raised that exorbitant amount of money. Was there another project, another time when you were fundraising that was as memorable as the Ogden High restoration? JV: That’s probably the most memorable because that was the largest. What that did was it put us on the map to be able to then become a bigger, a better organization, more known, more access to donors. If I’m approaching somebody for some learning thing that we’re doing and they say “Now, are you the ones that raised the money for Ogden High?” So it gave us automatic credibility. Our Fall Author Event has done the same thing. Events aren’t the best way to raise money, but they give you exposure. If I’m sitting down with a donor and I’m needing some money for College Bound, or to bring Shakespeare, or to provide our classroom grants or whatever, and they say, “Oh my gosh, you guys are the 33 ones that brought Amy Tan, right? Oh, we loved it.” Ray Bradbury was in 1996, and that was the first thing that gave us some credibility and then the Ogden High thing gave us huge credibility. We’ve just become more successful at what we do, we raise more money now. We have over two-million-dollar endowment now, when I started it was like seventy thousand or something. I don’t know if you’ve been to the Spence Eccles Ogden Community Sports Complex that’s on the campus at the district offices at 20th and Monroe. It’s a beautiful, beautiful venue and it was a grass-roots organization of parents that actually started fundraising because they felt that we need more state-of-the-art soccer facilities around here. They wanted the turf, so they started doing this, but it came with about a five-million-dollar project, so it was hard. Of course, it’s for us, it belongs to the Ogden School District, so they brought us in on that and we were able to finish that out and that was a big project. Again, that was a five-million- dollar project. I don’t know if you’re in the world of these comp soccer teams and they keep growing every year. So, I’ll tell you what, people love sitting at that completed venue—because of the vistas that are all around them. It is good for the soul. Heck with the soccer game. That’s what sold Spence Eccles into giving his million dollars for that. Because he stood out in the field and he looked around and he said, “This is incredible.” And the police league could have midnight games here because it’s surrounded by buildings so it’s like not in a neighborhood that’s going to be all disruptive for residential people. So that’s what sold him on it. It’s just a beautiful spot and people love playing on it. Plus, being able to raise all of that private money, it enabled the district to get more 34 money that they were able to get a loan at 0% interest to put in artificial turf at both high schools, so they’ve turned into these beautiful venues as well. It has a domino effect that these good things can keep on giving. Back to the Ogden High thing, I think probably the most memorable time was when we had the big grand opening of the auditorium at the school for the donors. We were still two hundred thousand dollars short and our big donors had given. Alan Hall is standing up at this grand opening event and it was just a beautiful, beautiful ceremonial thing where we thanked the donors and had kids perform and we showed old, vintage photos from when they were in school. It was just a beautiful evening. Alan Hall stood up and jokingly said, “We are still two hundred thousand dollars short of our goal, so these doors will remain locked until—” Of course, everybody starts laughing. After the formal part of the presentation in the auditorium, as we’re all getting up to tour the school, Rich Brewer, who was a dear friend, and on this committee ran up and he said, “Janis, have you talked to Spence?” And I said “no.” And he said, Spence said “This was such a beautiful presentation. He wants to wrap it up, put a ribbon around it, and tie it up tight with a beautiful bow. You’ve got your last two hundred thousand from him.” And I just about fell on the floor. Because there aren’t that many people with that capability to give that. I mean, there are private foundations and we had several of them step up, but they had already given. But he was so touched, and if you’ve ever heard Spence Eccles speak, he loves Ogden; he bleeds orange and black (he’s Ogden High grad). And so do a lot of these people, and that’s been cool. But I want to make clear that the Ogden School 35 Foundation—I talk about the Ogden High Capital Campaign because that was the biggest fundraising event that we’ve done—but we represent all nineteen schools. We fundraise and we provide these classroom grants and these wonderful opportunities for all nineteen of our schools in the Ogden School District and we love all of them equally. Ogden High just happens to be a historic, iconic structure. We’ve done a lot of things for Ben Lomond as well. We’ve given a lot of support to all the schools in the district. ST: You mentioned, kind of before the interview that you were part of “Friends of the Stewart Library,” and I’m kind of wondering about what your role was. JV: Well, that was just a board put together up here at the university to help with things at the Stewart Library. Some of it was fundraising and some of it was actually making the decisions on what the funds would go for, what purchases would be done. It was just a really fun board to belong to because Joan Hubbard or John Sillito would come to us and say, “We’re really in need of these things, or these things, or whatever.” We would have a certain budget that we would kind of pick and choose and say, “Yeah, this seems like a priority.” So it was a fun way to get to know some people at the university level in addition to the English department and to be able to see the neat things that were going on in the Stewart Library. LR: That’s really cool. That makes me wonder, did you ever once think that you’d be a fundraiser? You could actually do this for a living? JV: No. I really didn’t. Well, number one the thing that it offers me is purpose and meaning, because I love the mission and I love what we do. But, it offers variety 36 and I’m a really competitive person—I’m really nice but I’m really competitive. But just the challenge… A lot of people who aren’t in the industry say, “How would ever dare ask people for money?” Well a lot of people are looking to give money away. They are. They have to. They form private foundations because by tax standards they have to give a certain percentage away, so why not have it be to the kids in the Ogden School District who need it so desperately? ST: Before we ask our final question, do you have any other stories or last-minute thoughts you’d like to share? JV: I think I’ve kept you long enough. LR: No, it’s been good. ST: Yeah, it’s been great! Our final question is how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? JV: Okay. Given the right to vote, how has it shaped things? Well, men and women are different. I wish we had more women represented in places where high level decisions are being made that impact all of us. In government, in agencies, in universities, in school districts. I’m not just saying the things that a lot of people think of typically “men” traits or “women” traits, because I don’t buy into a lot of that, but I think that... we are different, and there are things that women bring to the table that are positive, that are good, that are wonderful. But we all need to be able to be the beneficiaries of them and be able to say who we want in elected offices. I just think it’s made a huge impact for the better. LR: What about the community? How do you think it’s shaped the community here in Ogden? 37 JV: Oh, I think it’s shaped our community a pretty big way. I love and respect a lot of men and I love and respect a lot of women and I just think some of the role models that I talked about, some of the work that I’m doing now, is hugely impacted by women with their ability to maybe look at some detail of things and to look at some of the kids maybe in a different way than some of the men maybe would have looked at them in the school district or even in the community. I just think that our community’s a better place when everybody who has something to contribute is given the opportunity to contribute. Does that make sense? LR: It does. And how about you personally, how does it affect you? JV: Well, I just value my freedom and my rights to be able to vote. I probably don’t value it as much as I should until I start reading and remembering and looking at what some people had to go through in order to get it. Just in terms of some of the literature that I read where, in Sue Monk’s Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees, the black woman—I don’t know if you’re familiar with it—but the black woman who went to vote and even though they were given the right at that point, was beat and was ridiculed, so I think that we all need to remember that there were people who came before us that helped us to be able to have this right. We all need to appreciate them and give credit there and exercise our right to do it as a sacred, valued opportunity and to become aware of the issues, which I know I need to do more of, because then my vote becomes more meaningful to me. ST: Thank you so much. JV: I don’t know if that’s a good answer or not, but it is what it is. 38 LR: It’s a great answer. The reason I love capturing more than just one of two oral histories is the diversity and the differences and everyone has something to say. What you’re thinking, “Oh, it might not be great.” But if you look at all of these together, it’s fantastic, the different, the way we’re all different, the way we’re all the same. That’s how I think about it. Thank you so much.