Oral History Program June Agren Brown Interviewed by Alyssa Dove & Lorrie Rands 11 April 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah June Agren Brown Interviewed by Alyssa Dove & Lorrie Rands 11 April 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: Brown, June Agren, an oral history by Alyssa Dove & Lorrie Rands, 11 April 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. June Agren Brown 11 April 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with June Agren Brown, conducted on April 11, 2019, in Harrisville, Utah, by Alyssa Dove and Lorrie Rands. June discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. AD: Today is April 11, 2019 we are in Harrisville, Utah with June Agren Brown. This interview is being conducted by Alyssa Dove and Lorrie Rands is here with me. Okay, the first question that we have for you is when and where were you born? JB: I was born June 25, 1919 here in Harrisville. Well, not in this home but my home still standing down the road. It doesn’t look very good but that’s where I was born and raised. AD: How did your family come to be here in Harrisville? JB: Well, my mother was born in Harrisville too and so was my dad, so they knew each other growing up and attending church and school. So that’s how it happened. AD: What did your family do out here? Your dad was a farmer, right? JB: Oh my father, my dad was a farmer. He was a farmer and he owned quite a bit of land around here. He owned where we’re sitting here clear up to the canal [gesturing west] and up there about four houses [gesturing north]. We also owned a farm down where our home is [gesturing south] up to Washington Boulevard, from Harrisville it extended up to Washington Boulevard. 2 LR: That’s a lot of land. JB: I think all together, maybe it was twenty acres or something like that with both of them together. AD: Very cool, and what were your parents’ names? JB: My parents’? Stephen Andrew Agren and my mother was Semantha, do you want the whole thing? AD: Yes. JB: Semantha Cornelia Shurtleff Agren. AD: And did you have any siblings? JB: Yes I did, I had four sisters and one brother that lived and a brother and sister that died in infancy at a young age. AD: Where did you fall in the number of kids? Were you the youngest or the oldest? JB: I was next to the youngest. AD: And what were your siblings’ names? JB: I had a sister Ruth, that’s fourteen years older, Eileen, that was twelve years older, and Bertha, that was ten years older. Do you want the ones that died? Grant was let’s see, twelve years old, I think he was just eight years older. Then Phyllis, that was two years younger than I. AD: Oh okay. What are some of your memories of growing up? What’s your earliest memory? 3 JB: Well, what part of my life? What phase? AD: Just one of the earliest memories you can remember. JB: Well, that’s a broad question. LR: So elementary school? AD: Okay. Elementary school, do you remember…? JB: Oh yes, I had to walk from our home up to the school house, which was a mile and a half I guess or a mile, I don’t know the measurements. I walked to school every day from first grade to ninth grade to the Harrisville School. I walked with friends and neighbors and I remember going to school and the principal there, I remember him. And there were two grades to a room, like first and second in one room, third and fourth in another, and fifth was all by itself in a little room, and sixth and seventh in another room, and eighth and ninth in another room upstairs, those two. AD: And where was this school? JB: Up at Harrisville. AD: Do you remember the name? JB: Harrisville School. LR: So it sounds like you went to the same school from first grade ‘til ninth grade, is that correct? JB: I did, yes. 4 LR: Were you in school with all the different age groups then? JB: Oh yes, we were all in the same school. It was a lot different than it is now. In the morning, I think we just went into our classrooms. Then when we had recess, a bell would ring and everybody would march out of their rooms and downstairs to go outside or on the main floor to go outside. And then we’d line up, the first and second on one sidewalk, third and fourth on the other, and all the rest of them back. Then we’d stand and turn around and the principal would say, “Dismissed,” then we’d go play and that was recess. We played things. There were swings and teeter-totters and softball and, well, any kind of game, we used to play games during recess time. And then the bell would ring, we’d all line up again and then somebody upstairs would play the piano, we’d march in and march to our classrooms. LR: Huh, how different. JB: When I was in the eighth or ninth grade, my girlfriend that lived next door to me, and we would play the piano for them to march in. We’d go upstairs to the piano and he’d ding a bell and then we’d start playing, and they’d start marching in one class at a time. Oh and we had lunch, brought our own lunches and ate lunch at noon. AD: Did you ever help out on the farm with your dad and siblings? JB: Oh yes, I should say so. My father just had the one son, so my older sisters had to help on the farm and I helped on the farm. We had a garden and we would harvest our own vegetables. When the hay was ready to cut, my father would cut 5 it. And when I was old enough, I used to drive the horses on a wagon and roll around the field to pick up the loads of hay. Then my dad would drive it down to the barn, and then he put it in the barn with a big derrick that would lift it up and put it in the barn. Then I drove the horses on a rope that pulled the derrick up and went up to the barn and then over, and then he would pull a rope and drop it and I’d drive the horses back. I used to thin beets and we had chicken coops and lots of chickens. And my sister and I, our job, when we were old enough, was to gather the eggs, write down how many, and bring them to the basement where it was cold to store them. Then they were cased up once a week and sent to the Ogden Egg Company or some egg company. LR: How do you thin beets? JB: Well, when they’re planted, they’re planted in a row and they were close together, and sugar beets had to grow big to be three or four or six inches in diameter. So we’d have to chop out the extra beets and leave a space, and then chop out those and then leave a beet, so that they could grow and expand. And we had a hoe that was a short-handled hoe, bent over and chop ‘em out and go to the next place and just leave one beet and chop out the next, at least eight or nine inches, and leave the next beet. LR: What would you do with the excess beets? JB: Just leave ‘em there on the ground. LR: Huh, okay. 6 JB: Well, those were just starts ya know. They were only about four or five inches high, so they would just wilt and help fertilize the ground. LR: Gotcha. AD: Interesting. So you lived during the Great Depression, correct? JB: Oh, yes. But you know I was young, I didn’t know much about a Depression. I didn’t notice anything different about it myself, and I know we had a visitor that once came and ate dinner with us and he said, “You people don’t know anything about a depression.” We had our own eggs, we had our own chickens that we would kill, we raised a porker and beef, and we had cows, our own milk, and raised grain and my father took it to the mills to be ground for flour so my mother could make bread. We raised mostly our own food so we had plenty to eat, and ‘course he was farmer so he didn’t get fired from a job or laid off I mean. AD: Did your mother make your clothes? JB: Oh, yes. She was a good sewer, she made dresses and slips and all other things. She made most of our clothes. I remember, when I got older, one day we went to town and she bought two dresses for me to wear to school, and that was once in a while we’d buy things like that but not always. ‘Course we’d buy coats and boots and things like that. Well, you asked once about what it was like at home? AD: Mhm. 7 JB: Well, in the summertime, we always played games outside with our neighbors. Kids’d come over to our place and we’d play hide-and-go-seek and kick-the-can, if you know what that means, and games like that in the evening until their folks call ‘em to come home and go to bed. And in the daytime, we had a great, big front porch and we played jacks and other things like that and jump-the-rope. We played “house” with our dolls. We didn’t have any cellphones to stare at all day long. AD: Yeah, it’s very different. JB: Let’s see, oh we did work around the house too. I mean, we’d help mow the lawn and hoe weeds out of the garden and things that needed to be done around the house. AD: Do you ever remember your family having a horse and buggy? JB: Yes, I can just barely remember riding a horse and buggy. My older sisters, I mean, they can probably remember a lot more about that than I do. One thing that makes me remember is one time we were coming home from church in the buggy and the horse slipped and fell, but it jumped up and got up and we went on our way. I think that kind of imprinted my mind so I remember that. But then in the wintertime, my dad had what they call a bobsled, it’s just a big wagon with great, big runners on it that would run on the snow. He’d hook it up, and we’d get in it, and he’d drive up and down the road, and kids would hook their sleds on the back, and sometimes we would too. There was a hill in our back field that 8 provided fun to ride hand sleds down too. But that was what we did for fun in the wintertime. LR: Where did you go to high school? JB: It was Weber High School, and that was the old one that was on the corner of 12th Street and Washington Boulevard, it’s where those stores were at, like Shopko. AD: Shopko and Chick-Fil-A, I think, is there now. JB: They’ve been torn down now, but I went there for three grades. I graduated in 1937 from high school, 1939 from Weber State, and 1941 from Utah State. LR: You went to Weber Academy or Weber College? JB: Yes. LR: What did you study at Weber College? JB: Gosh, that’s quite a long time ago. I can’t remember all the classes but I took a standard course. I know I took swimming, I was on the swim team. There were science classes, sociology, English, gym classes, etc. AD: Oh really? Is Weber College where you studied to be a teacher or was that Utah State? JB: That’s where I started because it was only a two-year college then. Then you’d go to a four-year college, but I took education classes to teach school I know that. I majored in Health and Phys Ed. I took a lot of dancing classes, and sports 9 classes, because I taught Physical Education and Health and Science classes when I taught school. LR: That’s cool. AD: Yeah. Did you become a teacher first before you met your husband? Or…? JB: Oh, yes. When I graduated, I got a job the next fall and I taught at North Ogden, ninth grade English and other classes, and Physical Education in the afternoon. AD: Were you encouraged to pursue an education? JB: Oh, I don’t know, I guess I didn’t know what else to do. Women didn’t do as many kinds of jobs in those days as they do now. Now they’re in a lot of things, but then you were a secretary, or a teacher, or a nurse. Those are the kinds of things a lot of girls did, or clerks in stores, five and ten cent stores. I worked in there to earn money for school, during the time out for Christmas holidays. AD: Cool, so how did you meet your husband? And what was his name? I guess we should start there. JB: His name was Kenneth Brown. And I don’t know if I want to tell you or not, but he was my Biology teacher in Weber High School, but there was nothing at all happening in high school. When I went back into teaching, I was elected to be the representative for North Ogden, there was a teacher from each school that met and discussed school problems and everything, and he was also the one for Weber High so I saw him there. And ‘course we were acquainted but it didn’t 10 start right off, it took awhile for things to mature, to go on and build a relationship.. AD: When you were young, what women did you look up to or admire? JB: Gosh I don’t know, that’s a hard question. That was quite a long time ago, you know. LR: Was there a specific woman in your life when you were younger that just made an impression on you? JB: Yes, there was one called Sadie Parker that did. Oh, and Ada Taylor. She was a teacher in our church, in our Young Womens,’ and I admired her a lot. She had a sister in-law whose name was Ada too and so we’d call them Little Ada and Big Ada. Oh, and then I had a piano teacher that I liked. Her name was Brown too, she was kind of a distant relative. But I used to take piano lessons from her for several years and I admired her very much. AD: What made you admire them? JB: Oh, the way they treated young people and became our friend. In fact, Ada Taylor was the one that had a party for me when I got married. They were just interested in us becoming good people and they were friendly. They’d take us, in the summer, to Girls’ Camp and they would be there so we associated with them quite a bit. LR: What were some of the things you did during World War II? Did you join any groups? 11 JB: Well, World War II, when it started, I was at Utah State. Boys that were there too joined the army and left, I know some that didn’t come back. Then I taught school during World War II so I didn’t join any other kind of groups because I was teaching school. We were issued ration stamps. We had those to buy gasoline, I don’t know whether they limited our food buying or not. But there were a lot of songs that were written about war and winning the war and what we should do. There was one I used to sing a lot. Oh, and we couldn’t travel very much either then in those days. AD: What did Kenneth do? JB: Kenneth taught high school at Weber High first then he transferred to Ogden City schools. Eventually, he became an assistant principal and then a principal of a school. He worked in the evening at the railroad to help the war effort, he also had to sign up for Army service. He joined the Army but he never was sent into active duty. He took a course in signal, and some of the guys in that class were drafted in the Army, but he was older and he was a teacher so he wasn’t drafted, but he got his release when the war was over. LR: When did you get married? JB: It was 1942. I only taught school one year and was married. I taught for another half year after, I quit because I was expecting. You had to in those days. AD: How many kids did you have? JB: I had three. I had twins, the first, and then about four years later one boy, a son. I have three sons. 12 AD: And their names? JB: Bruce, the whole name? Bruce Brown, Brent Brown, and Christopher Brown. Christopher Brown’s her grandfather [referring to Alyssa]. He passed away on October 20, 2000. AD: What motivated you to become a teacher? Why did you choose to go into education? JB: Well, I guess because I had three older sisters that were teachers. All my sisters were teachers, and I guess I just decided that’s what I was going to do. AD: How did you balance between working as a teacher and your home life? JB: Well, when I was expecting the twins, I had to quit teaching because you didn’t do that in those days. So I didn’t teach again until Christopher was in kindergarten, the two older boys were in school and he was in kindergarten and I took him with me. He was in the other teacher’s kindergarten class. The boys were in school and we were teachers, so we were all gone at the same time and home at the same time. Well, a little bit later than they were maybe. But that went on for about twenty years. LR: Oh, so for the second time you taught for twenty years? Which did you like more, the high school or teaching kindergarten? JB: Kindergarten, I enjoyed kindergarten. I thought it was more fun. LR: Why was that more fun? 13 JB: I just loved the little kids. I taught one class in the morning then they went home, and I got another class in the afternoon. But it was just more fun. When Bruce and Brent were in kindergarten, I got acquainted with their teacher and I think that’s what inspired me to go to kindergarten, so when he was old enough that’s what we did. LR: Hm, that’s cool. AD: Yeah. Was Kenneth supportive of you going back to teaching? JB: Oh yes, he wanted me to. He encouraged me to go take a night class at Weber State to earn my primary school certificate—my first certificate was secondary. He helped out, in fact, he took Bruce and Brent to kindergarten where he was Assistant Principal. AD: Cool, do you have any memories of the Women’s Rights Movement that was during the 1970s? JB: I don’t think I had any, I don’t remember doing anything about women’s rights. LR: Did you hear about what was happening? JB: Oh, in the newspaper, yes. LR: What did you think about it? JB: We didn’t have TVs then you know. I thought they should be able to do what they wanted to do, get into the working force, and I thought they should be paid the same as men if they did the same kind of work. But I wasn’t involved in any classes or discussions or meetings. 14 LR: That’s perfectly fine. AD: How do you think the world has changed for women? JB: Well, for women or the world in general? LR: You can do both. JB: Well, I think it is changing for women. But I think that sometimes they go too far, and I don’t think they’re as interested in staying home and raising children as they are in working. I think for the children, it’s going to be different for them than it was for me when I was growing up. To go every day to be raised by somebody and brought home at night and then go back the next morning. All day with somebody else, I don’t think that’s good for the children. But maybe there’s some good classes, and some good areas, and good people raising them but you read about some bad things too. AD: Is there anything you wish someone would have told you when you were a little girl or advice you would give to yourself when you were younger? JB: Well, I think when you get older you look back and you regret some things that you wish you had done differently and sometimes it bothers me. But I try to keep it out of my mind, what’s the use of thinking about that? That’s negative, it’s past and forgotten. AD: It’s true. JB: But I have regrets of different things. 15 AD: What advice would you give to a young girl growing up? Sorry to put you on the spot. JB: I’ll tell ya sometimes I see what my great-granddaughters do and I’d like to tell them that I don’t like the way some of them dress. I think their clothes are sloppy. Maybe I shouldn’t say that, but I think that Levis with holes all up and down the legs is the sloppiest fashion I have ever seen. And why they think that’s good looking, I don’t know. But I’ve been told by my sons, “It’s none of your business, you’re not their parents,” and I say, “Well, I can give my opinion. I can talk to them anyway, I’m their grandmother. I’m interested in what they’re doing, want them to do the best they can.” AD: How do you think the world has changed? JB: I think the world and morals are going downhill, and you keep hearing about laws made. First, whiskey wasn’t allowed, now it is, and beer and drugs, and I think that’s bad for the country. I think people keep pressing and pressing to have those changed and I think their morals now are a lot worse than when I was young. People live together and they don’t get married. They don’t think they have to get married anymore, some of them, but I belong to a church that doesn’t believe in that. AD: How did the birth control pill affect you or someone you knew? JB: It didn’t affect me personally. I think there are maybe some times when it’s necessary, but not for long. If people are married, there are periods of time when maybe it’s necessary. 16 LR: When did you retire from teaching? JB: You could retire when you were sixty, but my husband was retired and so I quit when I was fifty-five. And maybe it wasn’t a good idea because my retirement is not very good at all, but it’s good enough and I’m getting along fine. LR: Oh, okay. What did you do after you retired? JB: We went on more trips. We’ve been to Europe, been to Hawaii, and Canada. We’d go, in the summertime, with some friends camping. But then we bought this place that we have now, we had to take care of our property so there was plenty to do. We have a cabin at Causey and spend time there. AD: When did Ken pass away? JB: August 4, 1991. AD: So you’ve been living by yourself for 28 years. JB: All since then. I worked in the temple and helped Christine and Brent after their spouses died. I found things to do to keep me busy. After Ken died, I went on trips with Brent in my trailer with other family members. LR: So in those twenty-eight years, did you find things to volunteer for? Were you volunteering in any groups? JB: No, and I think back now, I have friends who volunteered and things, and I don’t know why I didn’t. But what I did was work in the temple. LR: Okay, that’s a form of volunteering. 17 JB: I went every week for two days a week for quite a long time, about nineteen or twenty years. LR: Wow. AD: What kept you so healthy? What do you think has helped you live this long? JB: Well, you know, people keep asking me about things like that. I think one of the things is my inheritance. My mother lived to be in her nineties, and her brothers and sisters didn’t live quite as long as she did. But on my father’s side, he had four sisters that lived to be in their nineties and over nineties. He would have except he was a farmer, and I think that affected his lungs and dust from all that. I think it’s inheritance for one thing, and another thing I think is because I was raised on a farm and we ate vegetables, and fruits, and things that my mother cooked. We didn’t go buy a package of stuff and bring it home and warm it up. LR: No processed foods. JB: In the summertime, if we wanted a snack, we’d go out in the garden and pull up a carrot, and wash it, and eat it. We didn’t go get a candy bar because there wasn’t one in the house. I think that I was eating healthy, when I was young anyway. I don’t know about when I grew up, and started doing my own cooking, whether I was but now I try to eat healthy. LR: Are there any other stories that you can think of about just growing up that you’d like to share? 18 JB: That is a broad question, it covers quite a few years. A fun time in summer was going to girls’ camp with our ward mutual group. Another one was the end of World War II. We were living out in Washington Terrace then, we hadn’t moved here yet. And when that happened [the end of World War II], you heard whistles, you heard horns, people driving around honking their horns, and you could just hear them all over the city. It was just a good feeling. LR: I’ll bet. AD: I remember you telling me about dancing halls. JB: Oh yes! We took a square dancing class from a man who came and taught it, that was a lot of fun. We’d meet once a week and he’d teach us different square dances. But then in school, I taught dancing. I taught square dancing and dances to the kids. Then we joined a club that once a month we would meet at the old Berthana. You’ve heard of that? It was an old dance hall where we met in Ogden, I think it was west on 24th Street. LR: Yes. JB: My husband and I went to these, and we danced with a lot of people. You traded partners then, you didn’t just dance with the same partner all night long. You had a card you filled out and traded dances. AD: Did the men have dance cards or was it just the ladies? JB: Well, the couple had a dance card. In highschool and college, I went on a date to the dances too, you went in couples. 19 LR: Okay, that makes more sense. Did you ever go to the White City? JB: Oh yes. I have been to dances there, and after marriage, we attended often. Oh that was wonderful! I know every year there’d be certain big dances held at the White City. I don’t think that even exists anymore. LR: No, it doesn’t. JB: Those were the most fun dances and they were crowded. And live orchestras, that was wonderful. AD: Did you ever listen to any musicians in particular? JB: Oh, we had tickets to go to the symphony during wintertime at Weber College, they do it now too you know, but we bought yearly tickets to go to that. So that was part of our entertainment too. And we even went skiing. I used to ski, but I don’t anymore. AD: Well, I remember you telling me about musicians that you saw in person. Was it Sinatra? Did you ever see him? JB: No, no, but I listened to his records. But when we attended dances there were live dance bands that played instruments. They usually lasted about three hours. I have lots and lots of records of symphonies and classical music and Bing Crosby, some Sinatra. LR: Good ol’ music. JB: But now what do you do with those records? LR: They’re back in style. 20 JB: I was given a record player for my birthday by Alyssa’s family. I enjoy playing my records on it. AD: Do you remember any of the bands that played at the dancing halls? JB: The name of them, I can’t remember. But I know we went to these dance clubs that we belonged to and they had an orchestra, but I don’t remember the name of it. AD: How do you think women receiving the right to vote affected you personally, the world, or your community? JB: Well, when I was growing up, I didn’t know anything about that and as long as I have been old enough I have voted. So I don’t remember all of that back there, that was before my time because I’ve always voted. LR: How do you think having that right to vote has shaped you? JB: Well, good heavens why couldn’t women vote? Women can vote as well as men. They have the intelligence, they know things, they know what’s going on in the world. Why shouldn’t they vote? And I don’t know why they didn’t do it a lot sooner. LR: Amen. Well, thank you June so much for your time and your willingness to sit and do this. This has just been amazing and I have truly appreciated sitting here talking with you. JB: Thank you.