Oral History Program LaWanna Shurtliff Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 31 May 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah LaWanna Shurtliff Interviewed by Sarah Taylor 31 May 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Shurtliff, LaWanna, an oral history by Sarah Taylor, 31 May 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. LaWanna Shurtliff Circa 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with LaWanna Shurtliff, conducted on May 31, 2019, by Sarah Taylor. LaWanna discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Alyssa Dove, the video technician, is also present during this interview. ST: The date is May 31, 2019. 10:41 AM. I’m here with LaWanna Shurtliff. I’m Sarah Taylor and Alyssa Dove is handling the camera for us. Thank you. We’re in LaWanna Shurtliff’s house. Why don’t we start with where and when were you born? LS: I was born in Smoot, Wyoming. That’s in Star Valley, as most people know. ST: When were you born? LS: June 13, 1935. ST: Okay. I’m presuming you moved out of there eventually. Did you stay there for most of your childhood, though? LS: Yes. I was born and reared there. I graduated from Star Valley High School. I did spend one year in Brigham City, my junior year in high school. That’s another long story. ST: Could you tell me more about your family? Your parents? If you had any siblings? LS: Yes. My mother was married to my father and had two children. I am the oldest, and I have a brother younger than I am. They were divorced and she remarried and had three more children: two girls and a boy. There were a total of five of us, and like I said, I was the oldest. When my stepfather was forty-five he passed 2 away, then when my mother was forty-five she passed away and she left this family of five, so I’ve had the opportunity to raise my siblings. My brother, younger than I was, was in college, and then there were the three others and the two older ones, one that was fifteen and one that was thirteen, came to live with me, and the baby sister was nine and she stayed with my grandparents for a period of time. There’s so many side stories to this. People say “What?” But that’s what happened to our family. My husband was a gem. He and I had been married about eighteen months, and we quickly built a home, and they came to live with us. It worked out really well. My sister stayed for a while; she was kind of discontent about the whole thing. But my brother just became like a child to us. In fact his kids call me “Grandma Lou.” Kind of an unusual family situation, but it has been wonderful. All the family has done well, had families. It’s been a good life for all of them. Maybe we were a little bit like survivors, but my brother has been a judge in town; my other brother has the master’s. We’ve all done really well, academically. ST: That’s amazing. You said there are a lot of side stories and you probably don’t want to go into all of them, but I was curious as to what kind of big, key struggles you remember from this time of trying to raise your siblings? LS: Oh, I think it was very typical. Teenagers. My sister that was fifteen when she came to live with us, she was not happy. Not really with me or with my husband, but with life. She kind of blamed God for taking her mother, so she left and went to live with a couple of other uncles. She ended up back in Star Valley, but she did marry and have a couple of children and did okay. My brother, he just kind of 3 settled in. He was kind of strong-willed, and he just went to junior high, went to Weber High School, served an LDS mission, came back, went to University of Utah and got his law degree and has done exceptionally well in the community. The baby sister, she just finished high school in Star Valley, married her high school sweetheart. AD: Where were you living when you were kind of raising your siblings? LS: In Roy. We were living in an apartment. My stepdad had passed away, so mother was by herself for about five years, raising the family. Then she got cancer and she died. We were in an apartment, and then we quickly built a home in Roy. There was a subdivision going in and it seemed to be the answer to what we needed. So that’s where we were. AD: How did you make that decision to raise them? What made you decide to do that? LS: Well, my mother was an only child, so it was either me or the grandparents and we kind of left it up to them, and they decided they wanted to come and live with me. As I remember. That’s hard to remember the details of that, but it is not like we forced them to come. When we got the home built, they just packed up and came to our house. ST: What brought you to Roy in the first place? ‘Cause you said you were already there when this happened? LS: My husband was from Ogden, and we were living in an apartment in Ogden. Really the reason we went to Roy was because the housing was less expensive, where we could get more house for the money. 4 ST: Okay. How did you meet your husband? LS: At Utah State. He had graduated and had gone to the service. He got a commission with the ROTC, so he went and served in the military and he came back to get his Master’s. That’s when a good friend introduced me to him and we started dating. ST: So what were you studying up at Utah State? LS: My degree is in business with a minor in English. At that time, there was a lot to do. You could still do shorthand and be a secretary and there was actually a degree in that. Mine went beyond that. I took a lot of economics and accounting then decided to get a teaching certificate, so I came away with a teaching certificate. My husband’s Master’s was in economics. I taught school for over thirty years in the business area. Twenty-eight of it in Ogden High School. AD: What was that like, teaching at Ogden High? LS: Loved it. Loved it. I’ve always said I bleed a little orange and black. When I first graduated from college and we came down and got an apartment here to live in Ogden, I worked in Weber County for a couple years. They hired me to set up the typing program for ninth graders. They weren’t sure ninth graders could type. We have to smile at that nowadays, but that was it. So they called me in and said, “What kind of typewriters would you like?” Well, that’s not something you really learned in college, about typewriters, but I thought, “Well, I like Royal.” So I said, “Royal,” and they bought 36 Royal typewriters and put me in a room at Wahlquist. I taught typing to ninth graders a semester at Wahlquist. They would test my kids against the high school kids. My kids won! Because I was really 5 intense on making sure they learned how, and they did. Then they moved the typewriters and me over to South Junior High School, and I traded places with the gentleman who was teaching geography and he went to Wahlquist. Then we went through the same thing at South Junior High, tested really well. The next year I went to Wahlquist and Roy. Then I didn’t teach for a few years. I stopped, had a couple of children. After my kids started growing, right about the time we needed to send my brother on a mission, I decided I needed to go back to teaching. That’s when I was hired at Ogden. AD: So what did you teach at Ogden? LS: I started out teaching English. They needed an English teacher, which was my minor. But I loved it, I really did. I learned so much. I had a great background in my grammar because you get that in business, you’ve got to have all that sentence structure and what not, so that piece of it was easy. But literature, I really had to work at but learned to love it. And it’s really made a difference in my life, being exposed to as much of it as I was. Then, as openings came up in the business department, I ended up teaching accounting and economics. You know, keyboarding. Computers came in, learned what to do with computers. AD: Why’d you decide to major in business and minor in English? What helped you decide that path? LS: My grandfather. When I was just little, he had an office and he’d take me with him to the office, and he let me play on machines you two young people haven’t even seen, old adding machines, and comptometers and all that kind of thing, that was mechanically what computers do today. I’d get to play on that and play on the 6 typewriters. And he’d just always say, “You’re going to go to college, and you’re going to become a secretary.” So I did. The minute I graduated from high school, at that time I lost my stepfather but my grandparents were very influential in my life, and I headed out to school. There were three friends I had and we all came down to Utah State and got an apartment and all started school. One left, two of them got married, and the one did finish, even married, but the other two didn’t. I just kept going to school ‘til I spent four years and got a degree. ST: You said that your grandparents were very influential—you kind of already described how your grandpa influenced you to go into business. Were there other ways they influenced you? LS: Oh what has it been? Twenty or thirty years ago, when we were kind of having some racial problems, a little bit more than we’re seeing now, and we had quite a few black students at Ogden High and we even had a few fights between the blacks and the whites. It was a little scary and a little sad, but that happened. They set up a program for teachers to go up to Weber State to talk a little bit about diversity. It was a great experience. But the first thing they had us do, all of us had to go home, and find out the person that influenced you most in your life. So I go home and I start thinking about this, and it was my grandfather. I mean, he used to take me with him. He was, kind of like the Farm Bureau is now—it was called the PMA, then—and he would go out and look at people’s alfalfa crops and whatnot in the valley, or whatever they were growing. He’d take me with him. So that started the business kind of thing, and always, “You can do anything you want.” He just was a real strong influence in my life. 7 AD: So you talked a little about how your grandpa’s the one that set that expectation for college. Does that mean you were encouraged to pursue an education? LS: My friends, I think we all had decided. In fact, we were all going to go to the University of Wyoming. That was the plan. And Joyce’s mother said, “She can’t go that far away from home. If you go down to Logan one year then I’ll let her go next year to Wyoming.” And two of them got married, so Joyce got married. That was an influence also. The four of us were kind of buddies and we decided to come to school. But I don’t ever remember questioning that I wasn’t going to go. It was just, “You are going.” I think it’s important that people do that nowadays with their children. You know, say, “What are you going to do after you get out of high school? Are you going to go to college? Are you going to go to technical school? What are your plans for school after high school?” Because high school doesn’t cut it anymore. You need more. ST: Did you face any other challenges as you were pursuing your education? Other than the ones you’ve kind of already mentioned? LS: Well, yes. Money was always a concern. My mother was a widow at that time. I would leave college in the spring and I would go home and go to work. Sometimes I worked two jobs, and the main reason was to get enough money to go back to school. I usually could earn enough to get me at least—that’s when it was on the quarter system, we had three quarters instead of the two semesters you do now—and I could get through probably two quarters then my mother and my grandparents would help me get through the third quarter so I was able to stay. Other than that . . . I don’t think any serious difficulty. I mean, probably went 8 into a class or two I didn’t like very well or something. But I had a really good college experience. AD: Were you part of any clubs or organizations? LS: I was a member of Kappa Delta sorority and that’s really part of what kept me in school. I was sad because all my friends left, the other three, so I met girls from the sorority and I was initiated into the sorority, so I just moved into the sorority house, so I always had some place to live and not trying to find roommates. AD: Does your sorority have a focus? LS: It’s a national girls’ sorority and, of course, it’s always scholarship. That’s number one, you have to keep up your grades, which is good ‘cause it’s certainly easy to start playing instead of studying. So yeah, grades, and always did a philanthropy project kind of thing. Just eating in the sorority house, we had a house mother, and she would teach us manners for the table. Which you think might not be a big thing, but I’ve been in some situations and I’ve thought, “I’m so glad Mother Robinson has taught us this,” you know, even how to pass a dish or anything. So, there’s a lot of things that I learned from living in the house and living with other girls and ideas. We played bridge too, so it was fun. AD: This is backtracking a lot. You said that you went to high school in Star Valley and then your junior year you were in Brigham City? What took you to Brigham City that junior year? LS: My stepdad came down there for work. He had decided to leave the job he had in Star Valley, and came to Brigham City for a position, so we moved down there 9 with him. But it was there where he died. He had a cerebral hemorrhage so we picked up and moved back to Star Valley. AD: Okay. How old were you when your father passed away? LS: It was my junior year so I was seventeen. AD: Your junior year. Okay. Was it just the two of your siblings, you and your younger brother, for most of growing up? LS: No. By the time we were in Brigham City, there were all five of us. AD: Okay. I guess what I meant to ask was how old were you when your biological father passed away? LS: Okay, after my mother’s divorce. I was five years old when they divorced. Then she married within the year and she had the other three children. So we’re not that many years apart. AD: Do you have any distinct memories of growing up with your siblings? LS: Well, probably lots. I’ve never thought about any specific ones. AD: I guess, to narrow it down, what’s one of your happiest memories about growing up? Does that narrow it down at all? LS: Maybe. These are kind of scattered. My grandfather had a farm, as I’ve mentioned, and they used to haul hay on a wagon with horses pulling it ‘cause it was not a huge farm, it was not like bailing or anything. My brother and I would have to tromp the hay. They’d throw the hay up and then my brother Vern and I would tromp the hay, and we laughed and talked about that. Pretty soon I’d cry, “I don’t want to tromp this anymore.” But we remember that with fondness as something that really stood out in our lives. We lived on the farm quite a bit 10 because of Mother going through the divorce and she was their only child, so Grandma and Grandpa really fit into our life a lot. We have a lot of good memories about the hay and the chickens and milking and all that kind of thing. That was in Smoot. Smoot’s a little town outside of Afton. When Mother married my stepfather we moved to Afton, and I went to elementary there and that’s when I got a new baby brother and I got a new baby sister and I was able to babysit them. So I have great memories with that. Well, my brother and I got a Shetland pony. Of course, the pony went to Afton with us. It was the most stubborn pony in the whole world. You’d get it to go, we’d be heading somewhere, all of a sudden it would turn around and it’d go back home. There’s no way you could get that horse to go anywhere but back home. So, I have memories of that and of course raising the kids. Good friends around. Yeah. Can’t think of anything specific. My stepdad owned a grocery store and then they sold it and that’s the reason we came down here. Then there was an old pick-up truck that he would let me drive, when I was probably not ready to drive it yet. Good memories. AD: Sorry, we backtracked a lot. More about the adding machines and the other things your grandfather would let you play with. What were they called? LS: Well, an adding machine is... you might see an adding machine around a bit. AD: Is it like a calculator? LS: Yeah, like a calculator except they were big because it was all mechanical inside instead of the digital that we have with computers. An adding machine would be this big and you may have just the ten numbers here. But most of them had a 11 whole row of ones, twos, threes, fours, all the way up to nine. So if I wanted to put $1.95 in I’d have to hit the one here, nine, five, and then pull the handle and it would make a tape and it would do it that way. A comptometer was a bigger machine with a big kind of carriage up here on the top and you could multiply and divide on it. It was the most complicated thing in the world, but it had the same kind of keyboard, numbers in ten rows up to nine, so you’d put the numbers in then you would see it spinning up here on this keyboard, on this rod—if you were multiplying it, then the numbers would come out. Yeah, I haven’t seen a comptometer in forever. I’m sure somewhere they’ve probably got one stacked back in the corner, because they would really be antiques. ST: Yeah, I’ve never even heard of one before today. I did have one other question kind of related to the technology. You said that when you were teaching kids with the typewriters that they would test them. How would they test them? Would it just be how many words you could type out in a certain amount of time? LS: In a minute. Yeah. It was basically speed. ST: This is kind of jumping—You mentioned earlier that you had kids. How many kids do you have? LS: Two. ST: Okay. And you said when they were born, you kind of decided you had to go back to teach? Did I hear that right? LS: Yeah, my brother was living with me. He wanted to go on a mission, and we wanted him to go on a mission. Financially, we’d been married, what five years or 12 something, six years, and I said, “Well, I’ll just go back and teach.” That gave us enough money to help him with his mission. ST: Did you stay on teaching after that, even after he left? LS: Oh, what did I do? I guess I did. Yeah, I did stay on after that. ST: This is when you were teaching English? LS: Yes. ST: So I guess my other question is, you said that this is the time where he went off to his mission. Did you have any kids come in later or is it around the same time period? I’m trying to figure out the time stream, so you’re not doing everything at once. LS: My brother and sister came to live with us in October and my son was born the first of December. ST: Wow. What are some of your memories of that? ‘Cause just hearing about it, I’m thinking “Stress,” but that’s me. Other people can handle things. LS: Well, you know, I don’t remember a lot of stress. I remember, and this is a silly thing to remember but I do. I had a planter. One of the two of them, I think it was my brother, was playing around and knocked it off and broke it. I remember being, “You’ve broken my planter.” Then I realized he was in a lot worse position than I was with the broken planter and I needed to make sure that he felt that I still loved him even though he broke my planter. That stuck in my memory. But they were good. I mean, I had my baby and they loved that baby then Christmas came about the same time. My grandparents came down; we had Christmases 13 together. My husband was a giant. He was a great hunter and fisherman and my brother was just right behind him every minute, so he was wonderful. AD: How did he help you through all of this? LS: My husband? Part of it, he never really got upset. I mean, he was working a lot; we were young and trying to make a living and we had two extra kids and he just was pretty mellow about the whole thing. ST: That does help. Did you two ever have any trouble balancing, ‘cause it sounds like you had to do quite a lot of work, and then the two kids you didn’t necessarily plan but you still wanted because they were your siblings. Did you have any trouble like balancing all of that? How did you manage your home and work life? LS: You know, you’re kind of asking me questions I can’t really remember to tell you the truth, because it’s been so many years ago. I mean, it’s just all kind of meshed in. As we look back at it, it was okay. It was no problem. But I’m a very A personality. I keep moving every minute. I’m sure I drive some of them a bit crazy. I think because I was fairly organized and I just moved along and did what had to be done. ST: Alright, so I guess my next question would be kind of going back to you teaching. So you taught for how many years was it? LS: Thirty. ST: Thirty years. Are there any key memories that you have of that, that you haven’t already mentioned? LS: Well, I mentioned the one about the typing. Then I went to Ogden High and taught English and moved into the business department. I had the opportunity to 14 be the advisor for the National Honors Society. I was the advisor for graduation. I did graduation for about eight or nine years. I was the pep club advisor. I was the cheerleader advisor. I did a lot of it. We bought a van, my husband and I, so when I had the cheerleaders I’d put them all in the van and we’d go to all the games. They just thought that was wonderful, even though a couple of them had to be on the floor. Just had really, really good times. I have fun awards downstairs for being the “Tiger of the Year,” or something. I can’t remember all of them. But I had a really, really great experience teaching. On top of that, I had to learn a lot of new things when computers started coming in and keyboarding and that kind of thing. That was always challenging. I became involved in the Teachers Association. I served as president of the Ogden Education Association and then I was on the State Board, the UEA. I spent two years as the director for the NEA, the National Education Association. I would travel to Washington D.C. to represent the teachers from Utah for a couple of years. So, I have all of those experiences. I tend to like to do those kinds of things. There’s several little organizations I belong to now. AD: What are those organizations? LS: I belong to one called Arts International. It’s a ladies organization that is interested in different subjects. It’s kind of assigned a different one every month, like we meet and we talk about maybe art one time, and then we talk about politics one time, and then we’ll talk about decorating your house. That would be part of it. And we used to get the international exchange students to come—they haven’t done this for a couple of years. You know, just ideas about what’s going 15 on in the community. Then I belong to Alpha Delta Kappa. That is an international teachers association. Again, it’s building skills for education. ST: One thing you mentioned earlier that I’d kind of like to hear more about. You said that computers were challenging when they came in. I was wondering if you could give us more specifics about what that experience was like? If you remember them of course. LS: Well, when computers first came in, they just brought a computer in the room, and that’s when they were just kind of one big box. I remember setting up three in the room then they showed us how to program it a little bit about three lines, then said, “There you go, you’ve got them!” We’re looking at each other and say, “Excuse me?” That was the beginning. We were trying to bumble around to even find out what a computer was. There was a gentleman out in Vernal that taught accounting and he had built a little program that we could use to do some accounting on the computer. I was able to get that, put it on these little computers, and allow each one of my students to make a few entries. That was the beginning. Then to get it set up, when we first got them, we had to have the printers that had the spokes on the side and moved the paper through that. It just was new technology. They’d bring it in and they’d kind of dumped it a little bit, or give one quick lesson. One guy said to me, “Just let some kid experiment on it, he’ll figure it out.” And I, “Okay, okay, okay.” But it was just new. And it’s still new. It’s still changing all the time. AD: So when did you retire from teaching? LS: 1994. 16 AD: 1994. And what was the next thing that happened? What was the next part of your life that you turned your energy to? LS: Well, about the same time—I think it was the year I retired or the year before, I’m not quite sure it was the year I retired—the gentleman who was the Uniserv director came to me and said, “Why don’t you run for the state senate?” And I said, “What?” He said, “Winn Richards is retiring and that seat’s open.” And he said, “Will you run?” I said, “Don, do you think I’m smart enough?” And he said, “Have you been down there lately?” That was his comment. I just laughed and I said, “Hey.” Anyway, that’s what he said to me. So I ran for Winn Richards’ Senate seat, starting in 1994. I went down and put my name in to run and then Nate Tanner put his name in to run, and Nate Tanner had a clothing store downtown that everybody knew. Everybody knew Nate. Nate had served as a regional representative for the LDS church. He was president of the school board. Anyway, he had these credentials and I came home and I said to my husband, “I’ve just done the dumbest thing I’ve ever done in my life. I’m running against Nate Tanner for that Senate seat.” And again my husband, “Aw, you can do it.” Very supportive. So we did. We worked really, really hard and the Senate seat goes here, it goes out to Hill Air Force Base, goes out to Sunset. I was walking all over Sunset. I had a really good group of people, and out of about 15,000 votes, I lost by 140. I came that close. So, I felt like I’d done a pretty good job. I came back home. My political career was over as far as I was concerned. Did some substitute teaching and I’m a golfer, I like to play golf and I 17 like to bowl. I play bridge. So I’ve been pretty active. Pat Larson, who has District Ten, which is this seat, she got some health problem, so she came and said, “Run for my seat.” This was in 1998, so it was four years later and she came and said, “Run for the seat.” And I said, “Oh, Pat, you know I’m...” And she said, “Oh, your name’s out there, people know you.” So I did and I won it. I ran five elections and I won all of them. I served ten years. At the end of ten years, I said, “I’m ready to go home.” I was getting older; my husband was getting older and I just felt like I needed to come home and spend time with him. Even though, you must realize the session is only seven weeks of the year, from January to the middle of March is the session and then you have things to do, but it’s not like you’re working every day. Those are the only seven weeks that you go every day to Salt Lake. The other times, we go the third Wednesday of every month for some committee meetings. It’s not like I took a whole new job kind of thing. But anyway, I decided to come home. So I did and, it’s been ten years, and last March is when you had to file to run again, and this seat came open. Nobody was running for it. The person who’d been here decided to retire. The gentleman who was going to run for this seat is an attorney and he did some work and it was paid for by the federal government. If you’re paid by the federal government you cannot run for elected office. Anybody that works at Hill Air Force Base cannot run for elected office. Anybody that works for the IRS cannot run for elected office. Most people don’t know that. That made him under the Hatch Act and it was three days until they needed a candidate. Here came these young men, two of them from Weber State, came with another fellow and said, “We’ll 18 run your whole campaign if you will run.” And I said, “I’m old, nobody will vote for me.” “They will. Yes, they will!” My husband was not well. He was over at Mountain Ridge Assisted Living; I couldn’t take care of him anymore. But my kids kind of said, “Go for it, Mom.” I think they thought I couldn’t help him and it’d keep me busy. I’d had surgery on my foot, so I couldn’t walk, put up signs, anything like that. They said, “We’ll run your campaign if you just put your name on the ballot,” and they did. They put up all my signs; they did all the walking. I just put brochures together and made sure it was saying what I am and who I am and whatnot. And I won. After I won I thought, “I’ve got to get up every morning and be down in Salt Lake!” January, February, and March. But it was great to go back. It was a lot of fun. ST: Were you always interested in politics or is this like a later thing? LS: No. No. I look back at high school and I can remember arguing with people. I’m a Democrat. I am the only Democrat in Utah outside of Salt Lake. They make a fuss over it. But I came from a very democratic family. My step-grandfather served in the legislature in Wyoming. My grandfather, who was so influential, he was always talking politics and he was involved in community things. I was very little, but I can remember when World War II was on and they were selling savings bonds and that to get money for the war. My grandfather ran all of that. I think I got some Grandfather genes to tell you the truth. I can remember arguing in high school about politics with friends. I guess it’s always been there. In college, I didn’t particularly get involved too much. Well, a little bit ‘cause I had one fellow I dated, he and I didn’t agree. Yeah, it’s always been there. 19 ST: So what was it like finding out that you were elected? Is that like one of the great moments? How did that feel? LS: It was fun. It was fun. We had three or four democratic candidates in Weber County that came within like 200 votes of winning. So it was close. Whether you have feelings one way or the other, we need to build a Democratic Party more in Utah because we need better debate. If you have more, then you have better debate. We have one party that’s making a lot of the decisions. The Democratic Party is kind of their conscience sometimes because there’s enough Democrats that they make a difference, but if we just had a few more it would make a big difference. I don’t know where I was headed with that. I got off the track. What did you ask me? ST: I think I asked, what were your impressions like the moment of being elected, what were your thoughts around that? LS: Oh. They were having a party and we were all there and watching the results come in. And they were excited. It has been, and it almost sounds like bragging, but it has been so much fun because—of course they were delighted when I won. The Democrats from Weber County, they were just ecstatic that I had won, and sad that we had lost the others because we came so close. Then when it was time to go back down, right before Christmas, they kind of have an orientation for new legislators and I thought, “I better go down. I mean, it’s been ten years, they’ve changed a lot of things I’m sure.” So I go down with the new legislators, and that’s fine; I’m just sitting there and listening to what’s going on and then we talked to the people from General Council—that’s the attorneys—so 20 we’re in this room and they walk in and the two main guys were there when I was there before. They’re both named John and they look over and they say, “Lou! We’re so glad you’re back!” And made a real fuss and so all the new ones are looking at me like, “Who’s this woman?” We got over to the budget part of it, money part of it, this other Jonathan walks in and looks and says, “Lou! We’re so glad you’re back!” So that’s been kind of fun. The Lieutenant Governor Spencer Cox. Oh, I like him so much. Anyway, he always takes some time and he meets all the new legislators. I went down and I spent my ten or fifteen minutes with him and he heard about me being elected up here. He was just charmed by it, thought it was wonderful. I was in the elevator one day, an assistant was there and she said, “Have you listened to his podcast?” I said, “No, I don’t really listen to podcasts.” She said, “You gotta listen to the Lieutenant Governor’s podcast. He talks about you.” So I find the podcast and on it they said, something, “Out of all the new legislators is there one that stands out?” And he said, “Yes, and it’s a Democrat.” And he talked about me getting re-elected, so it was kind of fun. That’s kind of what’s happened. People have been very generous and have just made a fuss over the fact that I went back. AD: As a woman in politics, have you ever faced discrimination of any sort for being a woman in an area that’s usually male dominant? LS: Probably the first time that that ever happened to me, and it happened, I was president of the Ogden Education Association and the president of the Weber Education Association was a man, so we would have these meetings together 21 because we function as, what they call, a ‘uniserve.’ I can’t remember exactly the subject now, but he was kind of taking over and putting me down a little bit and I just had to stop and say, “Wait a minute. I represent just as many people as you do.” I really kind of just told him what I thought. That was the first time and I realized a little bit, “This is going to happen to you.” But I found if you know your subject, if you’re credible, if you’re willing to speak up, you don’t have to be aggressive but you just have to be firm, that usually you don’t have any trouble. Women sometimes have trouble doing that. They stand back and they don’t say anything and they should be able to say, “Excuse me. I represent just as many people as you do, and this is my opinion.” Like I said, if they know you know the subject, then you don’t see as much of putting women down. ST: Do you have any other advice to give to women aspiring for politics? ‘Cause you have the, “Know your subject, stand your ground,” is there anything else you’d like to add to that? LS: I wish I’d started in politics a little earlier. We don’t, as women, because we have families, and so we feel an obligation to a family. And I did that. I didn’t really get involved until my family was older. But if you really want to do it, your family will survive. They’ll be okay. There’s so many opportunities. If you really think you’d like to be involved in politics, start at the bottom. Go down and run for city council or get on the planning commission or just something that’s local. If you’re in college, you don’t have to be elected president of the college, but there’s all kinds of committees. Because you learn. If you belong to those, you learn how to do the things I’m saying. You learn how to speak up; you learn how to give your 22 opinion and your opinion is just as good as somebody else’s, even though it may be wrong. I mean, I’ve never been wrong, excuse me. But you know, give it a shot. You may find that you serve on a city council and say, “This is not my thing. This is not what I want to do.” But if you like it, you do it. I never would have been involved had Don Hillman from Uniserv not said, “Lou, will you run for Winn Richards’ seat?” Never! I guess it was politics with the Teachers Association and that, but to really step out and do it? I never would have thought about running if he hadn’t said, “Do it.” So, if somebody says to you, “Why don’t you do it?” Do it. ST: One other question I had was, you were telling us about that one time earlier where you kind of stood up and said, “I represent as many people as you do, I have a right to an opinion.” I was wondering if there were any other times where you felt like you were brave at work, whether it be with teaching or politics? Are there any other stories you can think of? LS: Do you know, I’m sure I did but I can’t really think of them right now. Yeah, in fact, I still don’t like this guy very much. Sometimes the Senate and the House will disagree on a bill so they will call a conference committee and they will appoint three or four from the House and three or four from the Senate, and we meet and we go over this bill and we try to make a compromise on it. This had to do with taxing in Riverdale. I can’t remember all the details of it, but there is this gentleman from Salt Lake who’s a Democrat, and we got in there and he was just kind of taking over the thing and he has nothing to do with Riverdale. We had most of us from up this way talking about what was happening up there, and I 23 said something, and he just kind of ignored me, and I said, “Wait a minute.” You just have to be willing to say something. AD: Who were some of the women you looked up to when you were growing up, or, I guess, still today? LS: A woman role model . . . I always thought Eleanor Roosevelt was wonderful. Now that’s maybe because I’m a Democrat. She was so dynamic and so outspoken. President Roosevelt, his health was not good, and she was strong. I’m sure there’s others, but no one I can think of particularly. That’s interesting, I don’t think I’ve ever thought about that. When I got into the legislature, I became really good friends with Olene Walker. She actually served as Governor for one term. When Governor Huntsman took the job and left, she finished out his term and they didn’t reelect her, which was a real mistake. She and I became really good friends and I really admire her, and that may be one that’s kind of influenced me, but it’s certainly been later in life. There’s women like Michelle Obama. I really like her; I think she is just very genuine and very solid. If we go back to wives of the presidents… Hillary was okay. Good question. I need to look at that and think about that more. AD: What was your impression of the women’s movement in the 1960s? What was your experience with that? LS: Oh! That’s interesting. Yes. Well, that came out because of the ERA. The LDS Church, which I’m an active member, came out and was really upset about it and they had meetings—I went to meetings in Salt Lake—saying, “We don’t like the ERA. Women are going to have to go to the Army. They’re going to be recruited,” 24 kind of thing—It’s really hard to explain. It was like they wanted to keep women where they were. As I look back at it, at the time, I was kind of, “Okay.” But as I look back at it, it was a time where women were kind of saying, “We’d like to be involved more, we’d like to do things,” and many organizations, like I said the Church was one, and several others didn’t like it. What it did, though, it did spin off, for hippies and a few things like that, because women were feeling they could be more free. So there was good and bad with it. Being a Democrat, it really hurt us in Utah, because the Democratic Party got labelled a lot more with being liberal and doing all these things, being okay with abortion and all that kind of thing. Until then, the Democratic Party was as powerful as the Republican Party in Utah, but the 1960s really hurt the Democratic Party in Utah. This is only one example, so when I was campaigning at one time, and I only had it happen once: This woman answered the door and I was saying, “I’m Lou Shurtliff,” and she said, “You’re a Democrat?” And I said, “Yes.” She said, “You’re for abortion.” I said, “No, I’m not.” “You’re a Democrat so you’re for abortion.” I said, “No, no, wait a minute.” But she just yelled at me and finally shut the door. There was a lot of labelling that came out at that period of time. Like I say, different Democratic Party, especially in the state of Utah. And that was because the Church doesn’t believe in abortion. But I think we have to remember that they do believe that incest, rape, health of the mother, viability of the child, that there’s the possibility of abortion, which is liberal compared to what’s happening in Mississippi. But, yeah, it was a real turning point. AD: Do you think that movement helped polarize the political parties even more? 25 LS: I don’t think it did at the time, because as I was growing up transportation wasn’t so easy and all that kind of stuff, they’d get back in Congress and they’d battle on the floor then Tip O’Neill, who was a heavy duty Democrat, and—who was the Republican?—would go over to have a drink together. There was a lot more comradery back then and a lot more negotiation than there is now. A lot more. I don’t know that it came from the 1960s. I don’t know exactly where it came from, as bad as it is. ST: But there had been that kind of shift over time. LS: We’re very divided now, very divided. AD: Do you remember when birth control came out? LS: Yeah. I do remember. AD: What were your impressions of that? LS: Well, before the pill, there was the diaphragm that could be worn, that was birth control. Men had whatever you want to call them, rubbers, that was birth control. So the pill was just a more convenient way of birth control. I’m not opposed to birth control. In fact, I would so much rather see women not have children than to abort children. I’m not in favor of abortion. But I believe there’s circumstances where abortion is necessary, and I would so much rather people use birth control, whether it’s the pill, whether it’s whatever, than to have children that are not wanted. We passed a bill when I was in before that said, “No public money could be used for an abortion.” This means a woman who’s on welfare or destitute couldn’t get an abortion unless she got some money somewhere else, and if the 26 doctor performed the abortion, he would lose his license. Right after that, two people called me up here, one was in North Ogden and one was in Roy. Both of the women were carrying dead babies and no doctor would take care of it for her. They didn’t dare take the babies. One went to Seattle and one went to Denver to have those dead babies removed. It’s just such a hard thing, so many emotions around it. I don’t know. Like I said, I’m active LDS. That’s where I am. AD: I have one other question. This is more focused around the racial tension that you witnessed. What was it like? What was going on? LS: We had, and there still are, quite a number of black students at Ogden High. When I say a lot, I mean, twenty, thirty, I just can’t remember how many. When the racial thing was going on in the South, segregation and all that kind of thing, I had a room down on one end and I saw a white kid with a sawed off billiard cue chasing a black kid around the building. Then I saw a black girl and a white girl in a fight. I don’t know, it was maybe a total of five or six fights. But it was kind of a tension. A little bit like the Blacks knew their place and now they wanted to be more involved, more of the student body. Even though there had been black students elected to offices. Just this little period of time, maybe just a year or two, it happened, and then it was gone. It was just a couple years, and most of it was because of what was happening in the South. I had the sawed off billiard cue. In fact, I probably still got it around this house. Because the one guy went out and took it away from the white kid, then he said, “Here, Lou,” and handed it to me. And I went back and put it in my locker for evidence, I guess. After a few years I just kind of left it there. 27 ST: You might have already answered this a bit, but what were your impressions of this whole thing as it was going on? Like the fights. LS: I wish I could remember more what was happening in the South. I mean, it was around us all the time. It was on the radio; it was on TV. When I was growing up, people would say ugly things about black people. They would make up poems . . . not kind things. One lady said, “If I shake their hands, my hands will be black.” Woah, woah, woah, woah! There was real feelings. When I was younger, I went to a high school that had no black students so I didn’t know anyone. But it was kind of the Blacks saying, “We’re people, we want to be part of what’s going on.” I wasn’t feeling anything any different than what was out there. Just trying to save a fight. Ralph Russo and I were down on the end, Ralph would run out, we were down on the end where a little bit of it went on. AD: I know that in the 1950s there was that expectation of the perfect housewife fed to women. How do you think that the role of a mother has changed? I don’t know if “evolved” is the right word, but just transitioned from that idea? LS: Oh yeah. What is it, “Leave it Beaver?” That was the mother with the apron on and that kind of thing. You know, women have businesses now. They have all kinds of opportunities, and a lot of them did some of that then, but very few. Most of them, their job was to be home and take care of the family. When I went back to teaching, I was even feeling a little, “Should I do this? Shouldn’t I be home?” But we were in a position, financially, that we had to do it. Since the 1950s, we’ve just grown to allow women to be in business and to be a CEO of a corporation and to invent things and to work in research and medicine and be doctors. I 28 would guess in the 1950s maybe a handful of women that were doctors. They were nurses. Women were to be nurses; men were to be doctors. And men were not to be nurses either, that was beneath them. So roles have intertwined. ST: Alright, do you have any other stories or thoughts you’d like to voice before I ask the final question? LS: Well, you girls have asked me a lot, you’ve jogged my memory. I think my life has been exciting because I have tried so many different things. I’ve always loved learning so if somebody says, “Let’s go do this,” very seldom do I say no because I always think, “You will learn something.” The sesquicentennial that just came in with the trains down here. I was down there. I wanted to see what’s going on, and I’ve been up to the other one. Then to find out about the Chinese. I mean, they really have an anniversary. The number that were used, like 50,000 Chinese came over to build that railroad. One of the representatives from Salt Lake is Karen Kwan, and her ancestors came to build that railroad. To get to know her and to hear a lot of that history was like, “Wow!” I just think I hope everybody would be interested instead of watching some dumb TV show—not that they’re not fun—but would listen to some history and learn. That’s just me. AD: I just remembered, your first campaign, or not the first but the second time. The two men that helped run it were from Weber State? Is that right? LS: The one in 2018. AD: Do you have any ties to Weber State? Is there a reason why they…? 29 LS: Well, I give money to Weber State. I sit on the Weber State Behavioral Science committee. I’ve chaired the Ethics committee over there. I’ve done several things with Weber State. AD: I was just curious to see if there was any connection to the two men from Weber State. LS: Well, Zach Thomas, he is the chair of the Democratic Party of Weber County, and he’s a student at Weber State. So that’s one. He does a good job. ST: I do have one question, ‘cause I remember you saying that quite a while back, you’d come up for diversity or something related to that? Is that connected to this or two separate events? LS: That’s two separate events. That was when the fights were going on. They just figured some teachers needed some background on diversity, so we went up there. All of the instructors but one were black. Anyway, the one fellow—I don’t remember his name— would say, “Do you think all blacks are athletes?” He said, “I can’t jump anywhere,” and things like that. Just tried to make the teachers realize that they were okay, they were human beings. ST: Alright, here’s our final question. How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? LS: Oh, gosh. Well, it’s given women opportunities that they would never have, and it’s exciting to know—let’s see, are we the first state or the second state to have women vote? Wyoming… ST: I think Wyoming was the first, but we were definitely up there. 30 LS: Yeah. Which really speaks loudly for Utah to recognize that women—I mean, you think about it, we were almost property at one point in our lives and it just seems like we are better than that. So oh yes, it’s made a difference in my life and it’s made a difference in women’s lives. It’s given them opportunities, hard fought opportunities. I don’t know, personally, how to put that. Like I said, my grandfather always just said, “You can do whatever you want to do.” I don’t think I was thinking, “Oh, because I can vote I can do it.” I just think the women at the time it was given would have felt more how important it was. Now we take it for granted. ST: Alright. Thank you so much for agreeing to do this. It’s been so fun talking with you. Thank you for putting up with all of our questions. LS: You know, and really truthfully, I’m old enough now that I think back fifty years and sometimes it’s really hard to remember all of it. My life has been good. I’ve had a really good life, you know, with taking my brothers and sisters in and everything. Life has been really good.