Oral History Program Suzy Patterson Interviewed by Alyssa Dove, Lorrie Rands, & Melissa Francis 14 August 2019 & 13 September 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Suzy Patterson Interviewed by Alyssa Dove, Lorrie Rands & Melissa Francis 14 August 2019 & 13 September 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: Patterson, Suzy, an oral history by Alyssa Dove, Lorrie Rands, & Melissa Francis, 14 August 2019 & 13 September 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Susie Patterson (right) & Jim Patterson (left) Circa 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Suzy Patterson conducted on two different days, in her home in Ogden, Utah. The first part of the interview was conducted on August 14, 2019, by Alyssa Dove. Raegan Baird, the audio technician is present during this interview. The second part of the interview was conducted on September 13, 2019, by Lorrie Rands. Melissa Francis, the audio technician, is also present during this interview. In these interviews, Suzy discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Day 1 AD: Today is August 14, 2019, we are at the home of Suzy Patterson in Bonneville Terrace, doing an interview for the Women 2020 project. I’m Alyssa Dove conducting the interview. Raegan Baird is here with me, and it’s about 10:06 a.m. So the first question that we have for you Suzy is when and where were you born? SP: Nashville, Tennessee, April 7. AD: How long did you live there for? Did you grow up there? SP: No, we left there when I was about nine years old. I went through the first three grades of school there, then we moved to Trinidad, spelled like the island, Colorado, when I was in fourth grade. Then the next year, we moved to Pasadena, California, fifth grade. Actually it was Altadena. I did fifth grade in Altadena and then Pasadena is down the hill. The mountain range is kind of like it is here only in reverse. So we started in Altadena which was high on the hill 2 and then we moved down to Pasadena, which is at a lower level, different school district. I was in sixth grade there. Then in the seventh grade, this is really confusing but I will explain it to you. At the time, California was on an experimental system. They called it the 6-4-4 plan or maybe it was 6-3-4, I guess. Eight, nine, ten in junior high and then you went to junior college which is Pasadena Junior College, eleven and twelve, that was lower division and then upper division was your first two years of college, otherwise known as thirteen and fourteen of your college years that would be upper division. The thing is too, at that point in time, the G.I. 's were coming back. You know what a G.I. is of course? No you don’t. AD: Could you explain it? SP: A government issue, which means a veteran. The veterans were coming back from World War II and now you’ve got these green behind the ears so to speak. Wet behind the ears is what I should say. Little kids who are juniors in high school and they are kind of in la la land. You’ve got these veterans that are coming back on the G.I. bill and they are serious about this. You have got to really knuckle down and if you’re going to make a decent grade because these guys, they’ve been through hell and back as you’ve probably heard a little bit about World War II I presume. AD: Yes. SP: Thank goodness, in this day in age they act like it never happened because there’s been wars in between and still wars going on. Sorry to digress. So we 3 had to really get with the program and pay attention and learn and do. Shortly after I left, they decided that wasn’t going to work, so they went back to the more traditional breakdowns of the schools, which is a good thing. AD: So how long were you in that set up? SP: I was in the public school's out there from sixth grade to my first year of college, it would have been my freshman year. Which was the third year at the Junior College. In a way that was helpful because you could take upper division classes, which I had like twelve credits toward my first year in college, which was nice. But California is always experimenting with something, but we won’t go into that. But what was your next question? Am I going in the right direction here? AD: Yes. Is it alright if I backtrack a little bit? Okay, how many siblings did you have growing up? SP: Actually none because I was a very late baby. My mother was forty when I was born and my father was forty-five. My brother, who was a genius, was fifteen when I was born and my sister was seventeen. I can vaguely remember them, so I didn’t grow up with them. AD: Okay. What were your parent’s names? SP: Alice and Jack. AD: So what was that like kind of growing up without siblings? SP: It was hard in a lot of ways because when you’ve got siblings, I imagine you fight with them, but on the other hand you have somebody to play with all of the time. 4 Because we moved so much it was hard for me to form a lot of close relationships with people and I was pretty much a loner and I was very, very withdrawn. Well, I was very shy and very insecure and very unsure of myself. That’s about the best way to describe the way that I turned out. As I got up into junior college, things changed because it was a wider circle of friends and I sort of went through a personality change and became more outgoing and became active in school events, school affairs, and really enjoyed my junior college years. AD: What do you think helped you change that? What helped you become more outgoing? SP: I saw my parents were very introverted and we never entertained, we never did anything. I had wonderful parenting. My mother was a wonderful parent. My father and I were not close at all. I really don’t want to go into that. AD: You don’t have to if you don’t want to. SP: No, I’m not going into that, there’s a reason for that, but I did not have a happy childhood and you can include that. When I got out a little bit more on my own into junior college, I decided I wanted to be more outgoing. AD: Okay, you said you got more involved in junior college, what did you get involved with? SP: Well there was a religious organization on campus. They had a basement where any organization that formed had room all to themselves. I’m a Christian Scientist and we had a Christian Science Organization and we met in this room and we had services of our own. The room could hold about thirty kids and we would 5 have Sunday and Wednesday services. Sunday morning and Wednesday evening. We would have what would be the equivalent of a Wednesday evening service, only it would be during our lunch break. Lunch break, when you are in junior college, you can kind of arrange that the way you wanted. I made some wonderful friends in that group, in fact I still see some of them occasionally when we go to California because we used to go out there on vacation a lot, my husband and I. Everything kind of builds up, and I did have a wonderful group of friends, in fact, one of the girls, her mother joined the Christian Science Church and I went with her every Sunday, but my mother never drove a car. There was a generation that didn’t drive a car. My father decided he was tired of taking her to church, so he took me out to Santa Anita Racetrack parking lot, which was about two miles away in East Pasadena. We were so close that we could hear when they were calling the races because the wind was blowing in our direction. You could hear them calling the races. I mean, you could place your bets at home. Just kidding. So he takes me out to Santa Anita parking lot and he teaches me how to drive. Here’s your steering wheel, and your shift is here, and he taught me how to drive. He used to step on my foot a lot and I was like, “Stop that.” So then we ventured out into the neighborhood and we were driving along and I slammed on the brakes, and this is in the days before seat belts. He said, “Why did you do that?” “There was a kid running, I could see out of peripheral vision, there was a kid coming toward me, out into the street, chasing the ball.” My dad said, “I never saw him.” AD: How old were you? 6 SP: Fourteen. As long as we were accompanied by an adult, you could get a license when you were fourteen, and of course, I always had my mother with me. Where was I going with that one? Oh! As a result of that, now I still drive the freeway and I don’t mind it. Once in a while, I’m not real keen on being on the freeway at night, and there are reasons for that and I think you know what happens on the freeway. You get people following and you get tailgated and there’s road rage and it’s ugly. I occasionally have a meeting in Salt Lake and maybe doesn’t get out until 10 or 10:30 and I consider that a little bit dangerous. You get the idea. I don’t have to drive. But, nonetheless, I have a lot of friends that won’t touch the freeway with a ten foot pole. They won’t even go on 89 and I got to tell you, the drivers around here are dreadful. You probably know that. AD: Yes, sometimes there are people that you wonder if they know how to drive. So you got involved with the Christian Science Church? SP: Yes, and then there was a council for each department like language and science and etc. I got into the language council and I chaired that. That was considered a big job, which it was. I can’t remember exactly what we did, I did not ever remember student government or anything like that. Anyway, I just got involved with some things there, and one of the gals in my Sunday school class was queen of the Rose Parade. You’ve seen or heard of the Rose Parade? AD: What’s the Rose Parade? I’m sorry. SP: Well that’s alright, I’ll have to explain it. You probably don’t follow football. RB: I’ve heard of the Rose Parade. 7 SP: Like the Cotton Bowl, the Rose Bowl, the Orange Bowl, all have big parades prior to their games. AD: Oh and so this is the parade prior to a game? SP: Yes, it was the day before. It was always on New Year’s Day and then the Rose Bowl would be the game in the afternoon. You should watch it sometime, it’s on January 1. I’ve watched it for years and not matter how late I stayed up on New Year’s Eve, I was up the next morning to watch the Rose Parade. It is fabulous. Everything in the Rose Parade, every single float, has a theme. They have a general theme every year. Every single float has to be made out of plant life. For example, my husband passed away January 4, 2018, so I thought, “Okay, I can’t do a Christmas here by myself.” I have a daughter in Park City who’s married and has a fourteen year old. So AAA offers, you know what AAA is? Okay, they offer a complete package with the exception of airline tickets, to the Rose Parade. It was a spectacular package, so I bought that as their Christmas present. The thing of it is, Christmas used to be a big thing and I would decorate this house from one end to the other within an inch of its life. I would start with the outside lights on the balconies the week before Thanksgiving, because otherwise it gets cold you can’t do that later on. I would decorate the inside and we would always have a couple of Christmas parties and we just had a lot going on here. Of course, I had two kids living here at the time. They grew up in this house. Anyway, this last year I took them to the Rose Parade, which is wonderful and we got to see the parade and they take you to what they call the Float Barns. This is where the floats are all made by volunteers. All of my friends were 8 allowed to go work on floats, not me. My dad just was so protective. I was never allowed to do anything like that. I was not allowed to learn to ride a bike because it’s too dangerous. My father really got to the point where he was so overprotective that if I had a date and I pulled up in front of the house and we spent more than thirty seconds out there, my father would be on the front porch in his night attire. That’s the best way I could put it. It was awful. But at the time I had a wonderful group of friends. There were boys and girls and there was a big auditorium there called the Civic Auditorium. It seated 2,000 people and they had very famous artists at the time, would perform there. Pianists and orchestras and so forth and so on. My mother would always take me to these things, so I was really brought up with a lot of music in the house and she used to listen to the opera which was broadcast on Saturday afternoons. On Sunday, in the afternoon, the New York Philharmonic put on their broadcast, a two hour concert. So I got to hear all of that and do all of that. Then she saw to it that I had piano lessons and I had dancing lessons, I had tap dance which I dearly loved, and ballet, which I was terrible at. At that time, you were competing with kids and there were a lot of song and dance musicals produced in that era. You don’t see that hardly any more at all. They were wonderful, staging and costuming, and fabulous dancing. It was the like Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers and these kinds of people. Every little girl, their mother wanted them to be a Ginger Rogers or a Fred Astaire, or at least, at the very least a ballerina. Well, I couldn’t compete in the ballerina thing because you have to learn to twirl, you have to learn to turn clear across the room and not wind up fainting or falling 9 down because you get so dizzy. I never learned to do that very well. I loved the tap dancing, that was a lot of fun. I tried to talk some friends here into taking tap lessons with me. There was a lady who is quite well known in the community who gives tap lessons, but she doesn’t start at square one with her students, she just throws you in the mix and good luck. Everybody else is out there dancing their little hearts out and you’re thinking, “I can’t follow this that fast.” I’m not that fast of a learner. AD: What was the name of your junior college? SP: Pasadena City College they called it, and the thing of it is, it was all free. That’s a good thing because you got clear through your second year without having to pay anything. I think they’ve done away with that. When I was getting in what would have been my freshman year of college, a relative, who was an aunt of mine, who was my father’s sister and she was very well to do. They had a lumber yard in Trinidad, Colorado. At the time, everybody was buying lumber and then they had a connection with Packard Motor Car Company which was based in Denver. The Packard Motor Car Company comes in because her husband or his brother went to Denver and had the Packard Motor Car franchise or a dealership I guess. Therefore, she had two Packards. When did they stop making cars? About late 1942. One was a 1941 and it was really a pretty car. But I inherited that and I sold that. See when she passed away, my aunt passed away, then my father and my mother went immediately out to Trinidad to take care of the house and get rid of the lumber yard and do all of this, and they left me all by myself at home. 10 AD: How old were you? SP: Let’s see. I was nineteen. I was a responsible child and they knew that, but my brother lived in Burbank, California and they sent him. He would come over every weekend and make sure the house wasn’t in shambles, which it never was, because I really had wonderful friends and they were a lot of fun. We used to go dancing every weekend because one of the things that we took in college was ballroom dancing. She taught us everything, even the mambo, which I have forgotten; how to tango, and samba, and rumba, and Viennese Waltz. She was just a little mite of a thing. She was about my size or maybe smaller. But she was like steel and she had flaming red hair. She was so adorable and one day, the Viennese Waltz was on and you’re supposed to go all in the same direction around the floors. Well, one day one couple decided to go the wrong way and they ran into another couple and it was all four of them on the floor because they’re moving pretty fast. She said, “If you do what I told you, then that sort of thing wouldn’t have happened.” She just got really crabby about it. But that really enhanced our social life, and we all loved it and it was in the era of the big bands. I’ll tell you, it was heavenly. It was fifty cents to go hear the big bands and dance all night. AD: What sort of big bands did you listen to? SP: Oh all of them. Harry James and Tommy Dorsen, Glenn Miller, by that time he died in a plane crash but everybody played his numbers. AD: This was in California? Where’d you go dancing? 11 SP: This was in California. We’d all go as a group and then we’d go out afterwards. The dancing was from nine to twelve and then we’d all go in a group over to a place that had wonderful hamburgers and malts and we’d all have a big fat hamburger and big chocolate malt and call it an evening. Then I’d get out of bed in the morning and stagger off to drive my mother to church and Sunday school which were actually at a different time, they were pretty early. This is why I had a license. It was a wonderful time to grow up, it really was. I know that when I’ve told my daughter this, she said, “You know, you grew up in a really good time. Things are harder for kids now.” I said, “I know that. I know that.” My granddaughter is going into Park City High School next year and she’s growing up around kids who do not even drink, let alone do drugs, and I know that’s really a problem up there. I don’t know how it is down here. AD: I think it’s pretty similar all over, yeah. SP: And it’s too bad, because it burns your brains out. AD: Okay, so this is kind of a question about looking back on your childhood, was there a woman, or women, that you looked up to growing up? SP: I had a Sunday school teacher who was really wonderful. She was the dean of women at Pasadena Junior College and she was an excellent Sunday school teacher and an excellent administrator. I looked up to her a lot and I looked up to my mother because she had a hard life. She was born with a condition that could be corrected in this day and age, but they called it congenital hip, which meant she couldn’t walk very well. She could walk without assistance, but she couldn’t 12 run if she had to. I remember her in Nashville, in the basement, you had a cold fired furnace and she’d be down there putting the coal into the furnace first thing in the morning, to get the house warm. Things used to be a little different than they are now. You just go to the thermostat and turn it on. AD: What about those women made you admire them? SP: My mother, because she was strong mentally, a very strong woman. The other lady, she was just dearly beloved but she was so kind and so sweet, and yet very smart, and didn’t lord it over people. If you had any contact with her, she was just who she was, loving and kind. AD: So were you encouraged to pursue an education? SP: Oh yes, there was no doubt about it. AD: I know that you owned a dry cleaning business for a little bit. SP: Yes, fifty-three years. My husband, Jim and I had two children, a son and a daughter. People said, “We’ve never seen a couple that the boy looks like is so much like his dad and the girl looks so much like her mother.” We took that as a compliment, it was really cute and we enjoyed that. Our son went to work in our business, we had a chain of dry cleaning stores and I don’t know how much of this you know. AD: I don’t know very much, so how did it start? How did that business start? SP: Well first of all, my husband was a graduate in geology from the University of Colorado in Boulder. They had branches all over the state. He went to work as a 13 geologist and actually, he was a geophysicist but that’s pretty close. Geophysicists study the art of fracking and all of that kind of thing. So he graduated in a class of 200 and four of them were offered jobs, and my husband was one of them. One of them was in Lake Maracaibo, Venezuela, one of them was in Argentina, one of them was in Ankara, Turkey. Oh boy, and then the other one was in Casper, Wyoming. So because my parents were getting on in years and they had a pretty good sized house to take care of, so we chose Casper because we could get from Casper to Trinidad, straight through in about seven hours. Five hundred miles, yeah, it was about seven, eight hours. So we were down there for all of the holidays and we would occasionally go down there for the weekends if we felt things were not looking good. This was okay. Anyway, we were working in Casper and Jim finally came home one day and he said, “We” never “I,” it’s always been Jim and Suzy and Suzy and Jim as far as the community is concerned. He said, “We’re never going to get in life where I would like us to be. We are going to go into business.” At the time franchising was really hot, and we were dealing with a dry cleaner down at the end of the street and they were always busy, because in that day everybody wore silks and wools and beautiful clothes. It was called Martinizing and it was really busy. Jim finally said to the manager, “Do you own this store?” The manager said, “No, it’s owned by three guys out of Denver. The distributor lives in Salt Lake City, that’s the person that sells you the equipment and will get you set up. The other two live in Denver.” He said to the manager, “Next time, when the one from Denver comes up, would you call me?” So we got 14 to meet Harold Voris, and Harold was just darling and he said, “This has been really good for us because we don’t have to do anything. We just come up once in a while to visit.” This is in the days before computers. They could have been stealing you blind, but they trusted everybody, you just trusted people, which we don’t do anymore. Then we decided to take on a one hour Martinizing Franchise and we took a weekend off because we couldn’t let anybody know. We were working for two different companies. He was with Pan American Petroleum, which is a wholly owned division of Standard of Indiana. His boss, who was the division manager and that’s over several states, he was making $30,000 to $40,000 a year. This is in 1961 so it would be a lot more now. I just have to give you the figures as they were then. Jim said, “This guy, he’s so nervous, he’s just a nervous wreck. This is not going to work for me. Let’s look around and see about going into business for ourselves.” So we started out looking at the Martinizing and we came over here on a weekend, and we flew in on what they call a tail dragger, which is a DC3 and I didn’t fare too well. I was violently ill, I think, because you’re flying over the mountains, over this range. It was 101 when we got over here, and on the way going home, it was just like this, just up and down. We always called it the vomit comet. I was so sick and Jim, that never bothered him, it never bothered him at all, but I hyperventilated. I didn’t know what it was at the time, but you’re all of the sudden just frozen. Jim is putting wet rags on my forehead and Dramamine, nothing helped. The pilot came back and said, “Do you want us to set down in Rock Springs and then you can drive home.” Well how could we get 15 home from there? We said “No, we have to be at work in the morning,” because we couldn’t let anybody know that we were gone because you’d get fired. So we survived that trip and then decided at that point to come over. We stayed at a motel out on Foothill someplace and it has a rooftop, there’s chairs up there and you can go out and you look at the panorama of Salt Lake City. We thought, “This place is gorgeous. Look how beautiful it is. It’s hot.” That’s okay. Dry cleaning stores are hot. Then we went to one of the churches here because we were here the weekend, because we thought, “Well we are coming into a community that maybe won’t do business with us. Maybe that won’t matter?” But we ran into a guy who was a salesman for Frito Lay or something like that at this church and he said, “You know, every place is what you make out of it, and you can make your own. It will be okay. Give it a try. What do you have to lose?” Well we didn’t have any kids and we didn’t own anything and we didn’t owe any money. So we came over here with everything we owned in a one-wheeled trailer, and the rest is history. AD: So it took off well? SP: It took off well, yes. We started with the one and we started out in Roy. It was a brand new shopping center and at the time, brand new center with a Safeway on the one end and a HD Sparrow in the middle and a barber shop on the other end. We took the end cap to that and there’s a brand new Bank of Utah right there in front of us and also out in front was a brand new Post Office, 84067. I think all of that’s changed. At the time, Roy, the demographics were a lot different. All the HGS’s you know what they are? You know anything about Hill Airforce Base? 16 AD: Not very much, no. SP: Okay. You know what a GS is? Okay, they’re high ranking. I don’t remember why they call it GS, but a high ranking like a 12 or 11 in the government service, is equal to like a lieutenant colonel, or colonel. AD: Oh okay. SP: They make a lot of money. Well, Roy was full of those and full of high ranking officers, so the demographics were really in our favor so we settled there. So we got everything in a one wheel trailer and we started this little plant. I got a job at first with Pioneer Pipeline, which I hated. Pioneer Pipeline is on 89, and it’s just a tank farm. If you got to drive to Salt Lake, you’ll see it. An interesting thing is there was a lot of wildlife to be hunted around in this area, and I had deer in my backyard. Anyway, the demographics were very, very good. GS’s and high ranking officers, they all wore uniforms and they all wore suits and ties, because they were making a lot of money and so we started there. The next thing we did was we bought a plant in Logan, Utah and then we bought three plants in Pocatello, Idaho. Then we thought, “Well we got to do something down here,” so we bought the store on 29th and Washington and we bought a store in Bountiful. The store in Bountiful which is at Five Points was owned by two of the guys from Denver, and we bought them out. They were fine because they were getting to the point where they didn’t want to come over here anymore. We originally lived in Roy and then we moved up here forty-one years 17 ago when there was one house and not the one that’s next door now, but the one beyond it. It was under construction at the time and we had this built. We lived in Roy long enough, and we were making enough money at the time, that we could belong to the Country Club. The guy that was the Postmaster there got to know us really well and he sponsored us for Country Club Membership and so we always called him our Den Mother. He had a party and introduced us to a lot of the people in town that had businesses, so we got acquainted around town pretty quickly. Then when we got up here I thought, “Oh boy, I’m going to be so alone up here,” because the next door neighbor was always off and across the street there was a house, it was under construction. Well the house two doors away was a giant house and ours was built in six months, and it took like a year and a half to do the other house. That belonged to an obstetrician, and he was a good looking guy. He had married the girl who was the Logan Dairy Princess. Everybody wanted him as their doctor because they were just swooning over him. It was kind of ridiculous. We lived in a little apartment on 1900 West when we first got here, with our one wheel trailer. We lived in an apartment that belonged to the mayor of Ogden at the time. His mother lived next door and she was like a midwife. I think they still did stuff like this then. Next door to us was a gal whose father had delivered the Osmond kids. She said, “Why don’t you go to him? I’ll give you a reference to him and you’ll like him.” I had two babies and he delivered them both and my daughter was the second one and that was the last delivery he ever did. He was seventy or seventy-one at the time, but he was just a really nice person 18 and I liked him. I certainly wasn’t going to go to the guy next door. Anyway, so I had two kids. Have I answered your question? Where were we going from there? AD: Well we can continue with the story, and then I’ll ask questions after. SP: I had done some things on the campus at Pasadena Junior College, but I think my first soiree into volunteer work was the JC’s. Now the JC’s are the Junior Chamber of Commerce. A lot of volunteer organizations are gone now and this is one of them. They did a lot of good work. We met a couple there, and the gals name was Vernie and she was a hardworking lady. She cooked for a restaurant and all that kind of thing so she never had an education or had been able to do much with her life. But she liked me. At the time we were running for office. There was two of us that were up for JC president. Vernie made up her mind that it was going to be me and she made up a little campaign thing and oh it was embarrassing. The other gal, she was a cute little gal, Charlotte something or other, I don’t remember her last name. But I won the election and I became Jaycette president and that was my entry level job into volunteer work. AD: So what did the Junior Chamber of Commerce, or the JC’s do? What kind of volunteer work did they do? SP: They would do festivals like Roy Days Festival. They would all volunteer, you would have a booth and they’d cook and they’d do everything. It was a big group and I don’t know who runs that now because I know there is a festival out there. I know every little town has a festival and they all now have more expensive things like fireworks that nobody can afford. I know they still have Roy Days and they 19 had a parade, and so Jim and I decided to join. Well, I worked for an ad agency. I got my dream job, the thing that I was most suited for. Jim and I said, “Well we’ll help with the Roy Days floats.” Nobody that was in the parade wanted to take the Pioneer Queen. They wanted somebody gorgeous and cute. Well the Pioneer Queen is an elderly person who is not gorgeous but they are lovely people and they have to have a history with the city, been somebody in the city, and then their attendance were the same. I was working for this ad agency, which is a whole different story in itself. There was me and two guys, and then the owner. The two guys, one of them was Dean Hurst. There’s a building at Weber State named after him. I think he’s still a Trustee there. Have you heard of the Swanson Foundation? He took that over. Okay, where was I going with it? AD: Parade day. SP: Now we are going with the float and we have to have the Pioneer Queen and I said to Dean, “Would you do me a favor? We’re going to do the Pioneer Queen. Would you mind designing a float?” Well he was happy to design a float. Do you know what Waldo the Wildcat is? AD: Yes. SP: Okay. Dean Hurst designed Waldo the Wildcat. Anyway, so Dean Hurst designed two floats and I think this was the first one. Of course they were not Rose Parade floats because they don’t have things pulling them. The drivers built into the front of the float and in the back end there’s somebody to steer if need be, and they’re all hidden. These were not that way. So he had somebody with a truck that could 20 pull the float and he designed a beautiful float for the Pioneer Queen. It was very simple, it was purple, and gold in the back and it was like the Queen had a big collar coming out off behind her. That was all done in gold and then down below it had a train that was trimmed in ermine, and there was some purple in there somewhere. I guess the train was purple. It was very simple and then her two attendants sat down in front. So the guy that’s driving the float, there were two of them actually, and one of them was riding and we’re sitting in the stands on the corner of 29th and Washington. Our friend Don is waving this big trophy about and said, “We won the Sweepstakes,” that’s the biggest thing you can get in this parade. We were so pleased, and Roy City built a trophy case and it was a big gold trophy. Then we took that up to Peach Days and we won “Best out of Town Float” up there. That’s not any fun because just to get it to Brigham City, because it’s just crepe paper and chicken wire, and your crepe paper is falling all over the place and you have to drive slowly so you don’t lose it all. You have to go up with it and patch it up a little bit and take the attendants with you. So, that was our entry into doing things, and that was all put on the JC’s and they did the thing in the park where they had barbequed hot dogs and hamburgers, and they had booths and the usual stuff. You know the face painting and you’d throw a ball and they fall in the water and bla bla bla, on and on. AD: Yes, all of those fun things. So we’re going to backtrack a little bit more. So after Pasadena Community College, did you go to a university after that? SP: Oh yeah, I went to Colorado College. 21 AD: What did you study there? SP: The ever popular English, but I minored in Business Administration. I took business law, and I took some accounting, and all of the above came in handy, because when we came over here, and started a business, I knew how to read a balance sheet, and profit and loss, and those kinds of things. I could add more than two and two. We didn’t exactly have an abacus, but we didn’t have computers either, so everything I took, served me well. Once we came here and I quit Pioneer Pipeline, that was awful. I didn’t like the commute, first of all. I didn’t have a decent car in which to commute. I had an old Ford that was about to fall apart, I mean, it had a hole in the floor right by the accelerator. It was like a $200 car, it was all we could afford. Once I quit Pioneer I had stumbled into this other job. I was hired by Pearson and Kearney Advertising, which is where Dean Hurst comes into the picture because he was one of the artists and Ken was the other artist. Ray sold things, he’d go out and sell to his clients and at the time, we were okay. Gage Foerer has an office there now on the corner of 26th and Washington I think. I got this job and Ray Pearson said I was hired to write radio copy. I went in at eight o’clock in the morning, and he comes in and he says, “You need to write. Here’s an ad,” and it was a Smith’s ad. It’s what they would call a double truck which means that when you open the page, it’s both sides of the page. He said, “I need six commercials, they have to be a minute long and Len Allen will be up to pick them up at noon.” I thought, “Oh my god. I don’t know how long,” and he said, “You’ll find samples in the file.” Because he didn’t say how many words had to be in a minute. So I looked and I counted a few of these and I had 22 an electric typewriter and luckily I worked at a law office earlier in Denver for a while. So it didn’t matter if you erased it, and I didn’t have to make more than one copy so I thought, “Okay.” He said, “Len Allen will be in at noon,” and Len Allen was the great and famous, Len Allen. At that time, radio was big and KLO had some personalities. KLO’s major personality was Len Allen and he had been here forever and ever. So, I was highly intimidated by this job. I thought, “This is just going to be terrible, how can I do that?” Anyway, he told me all of the ads I had to write: the meat, the produce, the bakery, the total double truck. I can’t remember what the other two were, so I finally figured out how many words were allotted and I’m in there. So I’m pounding my little heart out and by 11:30 I had the spots ready, and sure enough, Len came in. I had one chair in my office and he sat down in this chair and he looked down and he just read and read and read and he was kind of frowning. I thought, “Yep, I didn’t really want to work here anyway,” and yet I was really suited for it because I have a talent for writing. He looked up and he said, “Best spots I ever read.” I thought, “Yes. I’m home free.” KLO, they’re way out in Kanesville, where the transmitter is and the studio where they cut the spots. Now they decided they were tired of driving out there, and there was a big space out there in Ray’s office, so we’ll put an office right here in Ray’s space and that way then we can have another voice. So now am I not only writing but I’m helping him produce something. We did two voice spots and they liked that because they said, “You have a unique voice and you don’t sound like all the other announcers.” Which I didn’t, I mean, your voice is what it is. So that’s how I 23 learned how to write commercials and I used that when we had our business. We did radio and newspaper and I knew how to draft an ad, I knew what it should say and what it should not say. I cannot believe some of the ads I see nowadays because they will have purple letters on a black background for example. You can’t begin to read that now can you. A lot of them will leave out the two most important elements which are not your special because it can flash that out really big and so forth. You’ve got to have your address and your phone number and what other means of communication that they can get or if they got a website or whatever. It’s got to be clear and it’s got to be big enough so people are not getting their microscopes out to read it. Anyway, and then the other thing I got to be good friends with a company called, “Woody Printing,” which is down the street. A lot of times if the typesetters are making so many mistakes, I think, “Okay, I’m going to send you my ads. They’ll all be camera ready.” Then I won’t have to worry about all of these mistakes and proofreading and all of this stuff all of the time. So Woody did those for us for years and years and years. I got to know a lot of people in town. I got to know the editor of the Standard Examiner, he used to come in. The KLO announcers were all over the place because they had so many spots with them, and then Dean Hurst to design things. That was very helpful in our business because of the time. We were in business for fifty-three years and things changed. I tried to Facebook. I tried some Facebook ads, and we had a shirt special. They made this little ad and it showed Tiger Woods in his red shirt, and I said, “That’s not suitable for this area.” That was not working too well for us. I 24 also learned that dry cleaning people, it’s like going to the dentists. They don’t want to do this. So I figured out promotions to incentivise them. Also, by this time, we had bought an office building on Harrison. We’re in this office building and we had two great big offices and we had a conference room and we had smaller offices for our general manager, our lady who did training, and for our daughter, who also helped with the training. She did train people on the computers. By now, we had gone into computers and the other thing we got into early on, was a product called “Green Earth Cleaning,” because the government is coming down on you and saying, “Okay, perkleretholen is hazardous to your health.” We would go to conventions and we’d pay attention to what we learned and we’d get the first thing available, the new things on the market. So when perc was out we took on a product called, “Green Earth Cleaning,” which is made out of sand. We had little vials on a little display, “Here’s water, here’s sand, here’s perc,” and different things that people were using. But perc was banned, absolutely just considered a human carcinogen and could kill you if you breathe the fumes. We didn’t lose any employees from that. In fact, we had one guy in Pocatello, I don’t know what he was doing, but he sucked up some perc and swallowed it. I can’t remember, he was cleaning out a filter or some stupid thing. He was not the brightest bulb in the box. This is a guy that got married five times and to four women, but not all at once. He was a piece of work. Then we put in computers and that stopped stealing. I hate to tell you this, but the worst place for stealing was Logan. We just could not believe it. Logan, Utah of all places. But we caught it. This was a new 25 company formed, and they are still down there in Draper and they said, “Computer evidence will stand up in court. You need to go to court, we’ll go with you,” because we had a girl that had stolen and we knew who she was from the computer reports. We knew she had stolen $2,000 and so we reported it to the police and you know what the police did? They went to her house and of course the parents came to the door, and they asked for her and she came to the door and the policeman said, “They’re accusing you of stealing $2,000.” I got to tell you, they were livid. But they didn’t file a suit because she was smart enough to know that the computer evidence was there. Logan police are not the brightest bulbs in the box either. Are you both from Logan? AD: No. SP: Oh good, because we had an office manager, and somebody in her family was murdered and they lived in Logan. The police just gave up on it. She said, “I think I could tell them who killed her.” But the police wouldn’t pursue it. She was beside herself. It was terrible and we never quite understood any of that. But anyway, we sold Logan and Pocatello years ago for cash which was a nice deal, and then when it was time for us to retire so we cut a deal with Red Hanger to take over the stores and here I am. AD: So when did you start the company, what year was it? SP: 1961. AD: 1961 and when did you sell the company? SP: Let’s see. We retired four years ago. 26 AD: Okay, so 2015. Through your work experience, was there ever a time that you felt discriminated against because you were a woman? SP: Not at all. Of course, when you’re in your own business you control your destiny and I’m kind of a control freak. I did a lot of volunteer work and I’ve been president of a lot of things, and you probably know all of that stuff, but I don’t know if you do or not. But anyway I was welcomed quite a lot of places. For example, when I was with the ad agency, across the street was Jim Whitton Buick, you’re too young to remember that. Oh Jim Whitton was something else. He went to work for Howard Hughes, and you probably don’t know Howard Hughes either. That’s a real story, but Howard Hughes hired Jim Whitton who had a big Buick agency here for years and years. Because he was Mormon and Howard Hughes kind of double crossed him because he was very, very rich. In fact, part of this was in a movie. He got Jim Whitton to go to manage his property, which is the Desert Inn and it had a golf course and of course it’s a casino in Las Vegas. Whitton’s became very, very wealthy and they sold a lot. But I used to go across the street where the Bank of Utah is now and write these big classified ads and that was really fun because the guy who had ran it, Bob Johnson, we used to get to laughing. The ads were so different then. You just write a one liner and how much the car is, and a one-line is not very many words. Straight stick and O, you got to see this beauty. A straight stick means it’s transmission would shift, and O is overdrive, which is like fourth gear. I could go back to the office and see how many different versions of this kind of thing I can do, and I get to laughing myself. Then of course, Ray let 27 everybody go except me who was doing radio copies, sending out the bills, visiting Bob Johnson across the street, going to the Standard Examiner with stuff. I got to know the Standard Examiner people really well. In fact, Flora Ogen, she ruled the town. It was not the Mayor, Mayor Who? I shouldn’t say that, we knew who the mayor was. She was the editor of the Standard Examiner, she was in control of that paper and everything had to be approved by Flora. Once upon a time, the Christian Science Church here wanted to have an article in the paper. So I took the lady that wanted me to do this, she called me and said, “Can you introduce me to Flora?” I said, “Of course I can. I know Flora really well,” and Flora really liked me, I don’t know why, we just got along, woman to woman and this kind of thing. I always dressed professionally, you know, I had lots of suits and heels and this kind of thing. Upshot of that is if I requested something from Flora, she’d say, “Sure, bring them on over.” This gal showed up in her jeans and t-shirt, and she was very heavy set and I think she forgot. I don’t think she ever combed her hair, I don’t know. But anyway, I’m dressed in a suit and so is Flora and Flora’s kind of looking at me, “Where’d you find her?” Anyway, so Flora was a good person to have on your side, and she ran a good ship. It was a good paper and it was a lot better than it is now. It had big sections and it had big ads, because advertising was affordable then. We did radio and I figured out ways to incentivize. I notice that there’s a dry cleaning company that’s still in business, well first, Red Hangers who bought us doesn’t believe in advertising, and they’re not doing very well. It’s their own fault, I think. First of all, two things, we incentivize the employees with bonuses. 28 We did not hire part-time people because if you hire somebody six hours a day, five days a week, you just pay them minimum wage. That really cuts down on your payroll. We never did that, they were full-time and in some cases like plant managers and route managers, were bonused. Good bonuses based on their numbers. It moved them to bring in more business and it was just money talks. It’s pure and simple and I know Red Hanger doesn’t do that. They don’t believe in advertising and there’s an old saying, “What happens without advertising? Nothing.” AD: It’s true. SP: Yes it is. One of the fun things I used to do. We had Morris Murdock Travel Agent in our building which is on Harrison and in fact it still says, “Imagine Music” on the top one, but way up on the top. There’s a frame around it, and then everybody puts their lighted things in. Imagine Music bought it, David Owen, and he’s really grown like crazy. He also sells real estate just in case the students fall off. Maybe there’s no one in band for keyboard and guitar and stuff like that. It still says Patterson Plaza on the top. We had a really lovely office and it was full of paintings and I’m getting ahead of myself again. Through our connections we traveled. Jim became the president of the National Trade Association, which had 20,000 members at the time, and that was a really big honor. We’ve done a lot of travelling and by now, our kids are old enough we can back off. We don’t need to be at home with them. Our son was starting to take over our business, and he would have made a wonderful manager because he knew the business inside 29 and out. He said to his sister Alice, “You and I are going to make wonderful partners. You can train them, I will run the production. I will do what Dad does and you will do what Mom does.” I decorated the stores for the seasons and people loved that. We had a Christmas tree at every store and we would give little candy canes to anybody that came in. There would be baskets of them on the counter and we would have just really gorgeous decorations. I went all out. I got decorations coming out my ears, they’re in the basement. We did spring, summer, fall, and winter. We had Morris Murdock with us in the same building, and so I talked them into giving us a trip to Mexico during the winter. What are you going to promote? Do snowflakes, oh boy, everybody has seen snowflakes outside, they don’t need that. So I talked them into an all-expense paid trip, except you had to pay your own airfare, for six days. I said, “You’ll get publicity up and down the Wasatch Front.” They were pleased with that. I said, “This will be on our flyers,” because I used to print flyers with stuff on it and put it on each order. Then the second prize was a hundred dollars worth of dry cleaning, and third prize was a singing fish, the funniest things you’ve ever seen in your entire life. You slap it on the wall, and it’s like a stuffed fish and you press a button and it is just hysterical. People like to have contests to enter, and it was fun for us. We would do, two for one shirt specials and we would replace buttons on shirts. We had little button boxes made up, they’re about this big and it would have our little logo on it, which is a little butler holding a shirt and see Dean Hurst did all of that for us. It had little tiny buttons and most of them had shirt buttons, then we would give 30 these away to people. With every ten shirts you’d get a button box. We had a tote bag with Green Earth Cleaning on it and it had a wood handle and it folds up. It was to promote our Green Earth Cleaning which was absolutely earth friendly. I mean silicone is sand, how friendly can you get? People would say, “Do you clean our clothes in sand?” “No we don’t,” and we’re not taking them out and beating them on sticks like they do in India either. But, anyway we did this Green Earth Promotion and I advertised that you can carry your groceries in here, because they had a solid bottom to it even though when it was folded it was about this wide. You could carry your groceries home in this, even a small dog. People love that kind of stuff, and they liked the decorations and a couple of times people wanted to buy the Christmas decorations. I’d just throw them together and they were kind of cute and the counter girl said, “Well I didn’t know what to do.” I said, “Anything is for sale. Anything in this whole front office.” So there we had it. AD: Nice. How did you balance your responsibilities between work and being a mother to your two kids? SP: Well I kept my own office hours which was handy. When they were really little, I didn’t work. We weren’t that big then, we only had one store really, and then as we grew, they were growing. I figured it out so I could do a lot of this at home. In fact, I had a drafting table down stairs and I could draft my ads, and then if I needed to take them somewhere, I’d just bundle them up in the car and say, “We got a couple of errands to do.” So it wasn’t that difficult, and it was never a problem. When you are your own boss, you have a lot of latitude. In fact, I had 31 been the PTA president at Lakeview PTA in Roy when we were out there. I just got active, I was a room mother and it just seemed like a good thing to do and as you know from being a kid, you’re fine with your mother being in the school when you’re in elementary. In junior high, forget it. Brent said to me, “Mother, you don’t need to do anything at the junior high.” I said, “Okay, I won’t. I will remain quiet.” Anyway, so I did Lakeview Elementary and then when we moved up here, when the school was built, for some reason or another they had their pick of teachers and faculty and this was going to be their example of how a good school should be run. So they picked a guy by the name of Gary Francis who was considered a really good person to administer the school. They had wonderful teachers, one of whom now I know. We play poker with these people and they live up in the valley and she’s just darling and they had a guy by the name of Mr. Yates. I remember Mr. Yates like it was yesterday because this man dressed like a professional. He dressed in a suit and tie every day and the kids loved him. They respected him because he didn’t try to dress like one of them. So, they had heard and rumors spread that I had been PTA President at Lakeview, so they called up and said, “We would like you to be the PTA President at Uintah.” I said, “Okay, I can do that.” It’s a big job and anybody who has been a PTA President knows that. This is going to be a sexist remark, but you have to have a woman that’s PTA President because guys won’t do anything. They will not. They will not or their wife does it and doesn’t get any of the credit. Sorry, but that’s the truth. I saw that happen after I left. 32 So I was the first PTA President and we did a fundraiser and we raised a lot of money and we had a great time. We were able to buy, and this sounds really elementary because I’m sure all of the schools have them now, but we set aside a room and bought a kiln and pottery wheels and all of the materials to furnish it. So the kids could learn that as a craft and they loved that. They just loved it. I was really proud of that. Gary Francis was a wonderful administrator that I got to work with. For some reason or another, we went to some kind of a camp. I don’t remember if it was students and teachers. But it was like a freshman camp or an orientation camp. I remember Gary Francis, we go there and they had bunk beds and I remember Gary Francis gave me his mattress, because there wasn’t one. I guess he thought, “The PTA president volunteered for this, I’m getting paid.” His wife, she was darling. She was at Bonneville as a counselor, and I think all of the boys probably fell in love with her, she’s just a gorgeous person. Anyway, so I was the PTA president down here and I thought, “If I got up here, I’m going to be really bored,” and that didn’t turn out to be the case at all. AD: Doesn’t sound like it. SP: No, it didn’t. Then Jim got active on the military affairs committee of the Chamber of Commerce and I don’t know what the Chamber is like now, because I don’t keep up with what they’re doing. He became president, and at the time they were expanding the military. I know we went through a period of time where the military just gets shut down, now they’re starting to expand it again. But with that, we got all kinds of invitations to anything the General’s did. They used to do 33 things like big formal parties and you had to have a tuxedo and you had to have a long gown. I have a closet full of long gowns and Jim had a lot of tuxedos. There are cufflinks up there to die for. I mean, because we went to these things and we had to be dressed. You had what was called a Log Star, and I don’t know where that term came from, but it depended on how old you were. When we first started with this, we were in Roy and we got probably a Lieutenant and then that’s the first place we got into that because we’d already joined the chamber up here. Then we got to know the Generals and the Lieutenant Generals and the base is now run by Colonels. Anyway, we got to be good friends with General Marquez and General Bruno, and my husband, he had a friend who had become a General who was from Marietta, Ohio. Anyway, they knew each other from high school and he was at Holloman AFB in New Mexico. So he was to retire and we got an invitation to his retirement. We drove down and we went there and General Bruno and General Marquez were down there. General Marquez was a great big Indian. I mean, he would scare the living daylights out of you, but he was the sweetest guy and he had a darling little wife. General Bruno was the effervescent Italian. I remember one time we were sitting at a banquet together and I didn’t have my legs crossed and the next thing I knew he got his hand right here. I thought, “Is that necessary? Don’t you need that hand to eat with? Geez.” He was so funny. Because I remember Jim was like, “Get that little Italian boy away from you.” Sorry. It was kind of funny. 34 Anyway, when we went down to the retirement of this other General, this friend of Jim’s, then we went on a little trip, called the Turquoise Trail with General Marquez and General Bruno and we just had such a good time. One time we had them up here for a barbeque in the backyard. They got up here okay, and then when it got time for them to go, and it got dark. They said, “Well how do we get out of here?” Jim walked to the window and said, “See that out there? Just straight down.” So here they came back to the door and they said, “We don’t know where to go,” because there are about three ways to get out of here. So Jim gets in the car and goes and takes them down there to Harrison and then points them out from there. Oh geez, it’s so funny. AD: How do you think the world for women has changed? SP: Oh it’s totally different. Women are holding office in Congress and I guess there are some women governors. There’s one lady in Tennessee that I particularly like. She’s a senator and she is just adorable, very smart, and very articulate and is often interviewed on Fox News. I think women have really proved themselves. This Me Too thing has just gotten out of control. You know, everybody was groped, everybody was mishandled in some direction. Well, you can handle it yourself is my theory on that. A sharp elbow in the ribs or somewhere like that will do wonders. I mean, defend yourself if you try. Of course, if somebody pounces on you and you’re raped, why that’s a different matter of course. But I think there are other ways to handle that. One of my best friends was the assistant police chief here in Ogden and I guess the first thing they did with them was to teach them Judo, you know, how to flip a big fat guy over your shoulder 35 and she’s little. She’s bigger than I am, but she’s not enormous by any stretch, and she could take care of herself. This Me Too thing is like you’re either bragging or complaining. Is that the answer you want? AD: I wasn’t looking for any certain answer. I just wanted what you thought about how it’s changed for women in the world. SP: Well I think it’s changed for the better. Because women have proven themselves they can do anything they want. They can be astronauts, they can run for president, they can be in Congress. What else is there that they can’t do? Many women have founded very successful companies or have been heads of companies that are very successful. I think the most famous examples of early women succeeding would be in cosmetics like Estee Lauder. There was one years and years ago, I think I have her biography somewhere, Helena Rubenstein, she was a long time ago and she had a big cosmetic company. It’s gone now or bought out by another company. Elizabeth Arden is another typical example of a woman founding a successful cosmetic business. I still use those products. AD: So you said you’ve held multiple leadership positions. SP: You’re supposed to have all of that. Don’t you know all of that? AD: No. SP: What’s the lady that’s…. AD: Sarah Singh? She’s in charge of Special Collections at the Stewart Library. 36 SP: Doesn’t she know all of that? AD: Maybe, I haven’t asked her about what she knows or doesn’t know about you yet. SP: Because she said that I was recommended by several people. Do you know who these people were? AD: I was not there when they recommended you. SP: Do you want her to come over when she feels better? AD: Would you want to continue the interview at a different time? SP: I think maybe that would be a good idea, because I don’t want to have to repeat all of this stuff and you go back and she’ll say, “You forgot this that and the other.” AD: Okay. SP: I’m sorry she didn’t come. That’s too bad. AD: That’s okay. She just wasn’t feeling very good today. So you’d rather continue the interview at a different time? SP: Don’t you think that’d be a wise idea? AD: Probably. SP: Okay. AD: Okay, we’ll just pause it then. 37 Day 2 LR: Today is Friday the 13th of September 2019 and we are with Suzy Patterson in her home again. I’m Lorrie Rands finishing the interview and Melissa Francis is with me. It’s almost 12:30 in the afternoon. Anyway, so Suzy thank you again for letting us come back and finish. So you were just getting to talking more about your involvement in the community and some of your other leadership. You talked about the JC’s, but there were some other organizations you were involved in. Would you talk about those? SP: I got my start with the JC’s because we were living in Roy and we decided that we need to become involved in the community if we are going to make a success of our business. That’s where we had our first store, and we just became interested in franchising. Anyway, so we started out in Roy because we thought, “You know, this is just right for development.” There wasn’t anybody in the dry cleaning business, and at that time, people were wearing fine tweeds and silks and wools and all things that needed dry cleaning. It was before the days of polyester, which didn’t help the industry, so we started at a good time. Where do you want me to go from there? LR: She was asking what other leadership roles you had within the community and I know you wanted to talk about the Utah Arts Council, so let’s start with Utah Arts Council. 38 SP: Okay. It was a great honor to be on the Utah Arts Council. At the time, there were three major councils in the state. There was a Board of Regents, which governs the universities, there was the Economic Development Council with people like Jack Goddard—very well known in the community, and there was the state Arts Council. The state Arts Council consisted of eight working artists, such as Fred Adams, he’s the one that started the Shakespeare Festival in Cedar City, which in recent years won a Tony Award. It’s famous, people come from all over the world to go there. He raises money in other states, other countries, it’s just phenomenal. I got to know Fred really well, and there was an architect, there was Burch Beale and I can’t tell you much about him, but I just know that he is a very accomplished architect. He did a lot of well-known buildings in Salt Lake. L’Dean Trueblood, who was from St. George. She does portraits and would be commissioned by people in the east to do portraits, and then she went into bronzes and did a lot of sculptures. So they were all great and famous people, these eight working artists, and then there are five of us from the business and large community representing part of the state. So I was chosen to represent the top of Utah, so to speak. The other business person was Marcia Price. You’re probably familiar with Price, I think he made his money in construction. They were extraordinarily wealthy, and they live in Salt Lake of course. I’m trying to think of the other two. Anyway, there were three bodies of different areas and if you were appointed to one of those, it was the highest honor you could get in the state. Now I think I know how this came about. You probably recall Nolan Karras. He 39 was the speaker of the house years and years ago. We got to know Nolan Karras when he was a bag boy at Safeway when he was fourteen years old. Nolan must have majored in accounting and economics and this kind of stuff because he was a brilliant, brilliant stock broker. We took an account with him for our investments, and I think it was through Nolan’s influence in the House of Representatives because he was speaker of the house here, that I was asked to be on the state arts council. Actually that’s how it came about because he knew I had done a lot of things in the community. He knew that I had been active in, it’s now called On Stage Ogden. It used to be the Ogden Symphony Ballet Association. I was on that board for seventeen years. LR: Oh really? SP: Tila Lindquist at one point in time had an illness and she was very frail, so I filled in the end of her term and then I had two more terms as president, and they were two year terms. Then I went off for a while, and then another term as president. So I was on that board for a long time and now I’m an adviser to On Stage Ogden. There are five people that are advisers. I called them up not too long ago because they sent out a thing that said something about season tickets. “If you want your season tickets, here’s what the season’s going to be.” So I called up the office and the gals name is Melissa by the way. MF: Oh yeah. SP: I said, “I’m an adviser and I’m going to give you a piece of advice.” She said, “Oh okay, what is it?” I said, “You need to put a deadline on renewing your season 40 tickets because if you don’t, people need to understand that you can’t put these out to the public until the season ticket holders have renewed their tickets.” I mean that stands to reason, so they got that. They probably sent out an email and a postcard to that effect that said, “Your deadline is such and such.” So we could all have our proper season tickets. That’s the On Stage Ogden, so I’m an adviser and there’s some prestigious people who are advisers, and you can look in your program and see that. LR: We actually have the collection in Special Collections. SP: Oh good, you’ve got all of that information. Excellent. Anyway, my mother saw to it that when I was little I listened to the Metropolitan Opera on the radio on Saturdays. I had that sort of music in my head. I couldn’t tell you anything about them because I was just a kid, but then on Sunday the New York Philharmonic would be broadcast at one o’clock on the radio, and that’s how I developed my love of classical music. That’s why I subscribe and go to these things and try to support them as best as I can with monetarily and ticket sales. Years ago, when there was just one director and it was Jean Pell, who I think everybody knows, because there’s a scholarship in her honor. Now they’ve got like six people in the office and the more people they get in the office, the more confused they get. Everything used to be done by volunteers so when it was time to do personal donations, the board all sat around and we wrote down people that we knew that we thought could donate, and then we’d send them personally signed letters. Not handwritten, printed and then we personally signed them with a little note. We did 41 a lot by hand that now is outdated, and that’s not all bad, but on the other hand, it sometimes loses its personal touch. So the arts council was probably one of the greatest things that has ever happened to me. We met around different places in the state, and when we got there, our lodging was paid for and we would have our board meetings in a nice facility and we got to know a lot of wonderful people. I remember one time being in the home of Mrs. Walker Wallace, as in Walker Bank. Mrs. Wallace was having a dinner for the arts council and Governor Bangeter was in office at the time. He hadn’t arrived and so she said to one of her servants, “You call that contractor in the south side and tell him to get his tuxedo on and get over here. We are waiting on him before we serve dinner.” So we thought, “Okay,” and he did come. One of the most interesting things that I think I did when I was still on the arts council, or drew the attention, I’ll put it this way of the Bangeters. The governor’s mansion needed a fundraiser of some sort. So for some reason or another, Mrs. Bangeter decided maybe I was the person to head this. I thought, “Oh boy, this is going to be a challenge.” I got my brain together and I devised a fundraiser called, “The Governor’s Artists Series.” The Governor’s Artists Series was $125 to come and that included dinner. It was held upstairs in the mansion, in the ballroom. We would have a little buffet and then we would have somebody around the state that was a working artist that would come either play their violin or the piano or sing or whatever it was they did because of course we have a wonderful Opera Company. I watch that get hatched and that’s a different story. 42 Remind me in a minute. The Governor’s Artists Series at $125 every time you set foot in the place, was a pretty good fundraiser. So they went ahead and refurbished and the roof was leaking, you know, those old homes, that’s a very old house. It’s considered one of the most beautiful Governor’s Mansions in the entire United States and one of the largest. It truly is gorgeous. It has a lot of high end carved wood, murals, and one thing and another that you just don’t see everywhere. What did I say to remind me of? LR: I’ll ask you about the Utah Opera Company, but I’m curious, so besides the fundraising that you did for the governor’s mansion, what were some of your responsibilities on the Utah Arts Council? SP: Well, we had grants. Every grant that was written to the state had to go through three tiers. It had to go through a committee, it had to go through a panel, and then it had to go to the thirteen of us on the council, and there were certain things that we were looking for. In fact, I believe that maybe we started the one percent for art when I was on the council, as I recall. You know what the one percent is? No? Every time a government building is built, one percent of that construction is saved for a piece of art. LR: Oh. SP: Out in front of the, is it the Municipal Building? It’s right behind where Wonder Bread used to be? Is that the municipal building? MF: Yeah, the Municipal Building, the city county building. 43 SP: Yes, it has a structure and you never know what they’re going to be because what you do is you commission an artist and they submit a rendering. Either you like or you don’t like it and then you have to call on somebody else. Anyway, there’s a structure there, it’s pretty tall, and it has some panels on it that are sort of different shapes. They’re not big. But they’re called, “New Leaves.” In other words, people that go in there hopefully justice will be served and make a new person, in other words, a new leaf. LR: Oh okay. SP: Which is kind of a stretch. But that’s the way most modern art is. I think the one that I liked the best was done out at Hill Air Force Base. Because we said, “This needs to honor the people at Hill Air Force Base, their airmen, their civilians.” We kind of spelled it out for the person that was commissioned. So now we have out there a statue, it’s bronze, and it’s exquisite. It’s an airmen, you can tell he’s an airmen. He doesn’t have his hat on, but he’s got his uniform on. It’s sort of an anonymous uniform in that you know he’s in the Air Force but you don’t know what war. You know, we’re still fighting wars, and he’s sitting cross legged and he’s got something in his hand and you can’t tell if it’s a letter that he’s received from home or a letter that he’s writing. It is exquisite and it stands out there today. All of that stuff is in my gallery which is in the basement. It used to be out in the open. It’s encased with things that nobody can reach through and mar it. LR: Right, where is it located? 44 SP: I haven’t been out there for a song. Is it off Hill Field Road? Just a minute I have to work through this because they changed some things out there. There’s officer’s housing, isn’t there? LR: Yeah, there’s officer’s housing. SP: I think it might be in that area. LR: Okay, I’ve never seen it, so I’m trying to picture where it is on base. SP: Yeah, me too. I don’t go out there anymore either. LR: Okay, I was curious about that. So, talk about the Utah Opera Company. SP: Well actually one of my very closest friends whose name is Mary Evans—and I don’t know if I want to put this in or not—is kind of the mother of the Utah Opera Company. I first saw Glade Peterson who was the founder of the Utah Opera at a Miner’s Day Parade in Park City. We had a couple of condos up there which we bought. We lived in Colorado and we had seen what had happened in Aspen and Vail because everybody said, “Why are you buying condos in that old place?” I mean, look at Main Street, there was nothing on Main Street. There was one grocery store and it was the old fashioned grocery store with the tin roof and the squeaky floors. If you went up there, you had to take your own groceries. It was just as pure and simple as that. But it was a nice place, we lived in Roy at the time. We didn’t have any air conditioning. So we thought, “Okay, this is a great place to go for the weekend,” take the kids up and we would stay two or three days to maybe two or three weeks even because we could do that and still get back to our offices. 45 Well, one time, there was a Miner’s Day Parade, and here comes this gentleman on a horse and it was Glade Peterson. It said, “Utah Opera Company” on the side of his horse, because every thing has to be designated as what they are. I thought, “Well this is interesting, this is a cowboy and he’s on his horse, and he thinks he’s going to start an opera company. We’ve already got a major symphony.” Ballet West was not quite as famous as it is now. I said, “He thinks he is going to start an opera company here.” Holy Toledo what a brave guy. Well, now this friend Mary Evans, she and her husband came here from out of state. He was a grain broker and they just made a boatload of money. They have a big old home over on Old Post Road. Which has got a lot of acreage with it. So she invited Glade Peterson to come and talk about starting an Opera Company. He came and he sang and he discussed it and so we thought, “Wow, this is going to be fabulous if he can manage it.” Well it turns out there are a lot of nice voices in this state, and a lot of people that are well trained. After the Utah Opera Company was formed, then they said, “We’d like to have some things going on in Ogden.” So we decided maybe symposiums would be a nice thing. I’m going to tell you before I go any further that all of this, the symphony, and the opera guild, were tried in Provo and they went to a very prominent person down there. It wasn’t Mr. Ashton. I can’t remember who it was and they said, “We’re too busy, we can’t bother with that stuff.” Well we grew the opera company up here and we had these wonderful symposiums on Sunday afternoons, which we started out in the Eccles Community Arts Center. What it was, you’d go down in the middle of the afternoon and they’d send their resident 46 artist, they’re like apprentices that come for four years. There’s usually two men and two women, and they would come and sing and perform certain numbers from the operas. Dr. Carol Anderson, who's still their accompanist, would talk about the scenario of the opera, and then they’d serve a little light dinner. It was just a gorgeous Sunday afternoon. Then we outgrew that in a hurry because Sandy Havas was still at the art center then and she said, “If the fire chief should walk in here, we’d be in deep yogurt because there’s too many people seated here for this space and you need an aisle.” I thought, “Oh great.” So we hunted around. We went over to First Presbyterian Church because at the Art Center, it wasn’t that much work, she used to set up the chairs for us. Well now we move over to First Pres and they have a gymnasium upstairs. Well a lot of people couldn’t make it up the steps and now we’ve got a big space but we all have to set up chairs and we don’t have to set up any tables because if people wanted something to eat, they’d just have to stand-up, too bad. We did that for a while because we had to go into spaces that we could afford. We had started out with memberships. It was twenty-five dollars for a single membership. Thirty-five dollars for you and your spouse. That just barely managed to...because all of the food was volunteer, which really helped. All we were doing was paying the rent of the space. I think First Pres was okay. It was very, very reasonable. Eventually the Catholic Church down here on—oh it’s at the bottom of the hill. Holy Family. Bob and Mary Evans, again, who had been very successful, built that. First, they built kind of an addition to the church. It’s not attached to the church. 47 MF: I can’t think of the word either. SP: It’s not attached to the building but it’s where they first held their services. Well now, Bob and Mary funded the big cathedral. So now we have Holy Family, we can go there. We paid about $150, and then we would have to pay the artists. They required a certain amount of money. If we gave them $25,000 a year, then they would bring the symposiums for nothing. So we were able to do that for a number of years. We used to hold a fundraiser called a chocolate affair. It was all chocolates and it was a silent auction and it was all chocolates and Champagne. The publisher of the Standard Examiner used to live right up in the next house, which is that sort of orange house up there, the Navajo looking one. We got to know him really well because he was from Ohio and he came out by himself first, and since Jim was from Ohio, we invited him down to have dinner and we said, “Let us tell you who the great and famous are in this town that you need to know about and what they do and who you need to schmooze and who you need to get advertising from.” All of these kinds of things. So we gave him a lot of helpful hints and we became instant friends and we would go into the chamber meetings and his wife was very outgoing. She became very active in the Red Cross and a number of other things. Every time we went to a chamber meeting, we had a really strong chamber in those years. I don’t remember who was president, but they ran a really good chamber and had good committees. Which is going to lead me into the military affairs thing. But, he would come up to us in the buffet line, “Where are you sitting? Where are you two sitting? Can we sit with you?” Well you don’t need to schmooze us. “See there? Over there is 48 Homer Cutrubus. Go! He’s a big car dealer. He’s a huge advertiser” But it was kind of fun because he and his wife took us to a couple of things. They took us to a Weber State Basketball game and we sat in his box. Of course, as a publisher he would have that. They took us to the rodeo, same thing. Jim was allergic to horses so we had a little trouble with that because he was sneezing and coughing. Anyway, so the Chamber was really a good thing to be a part of. Jim became chair of the Military Affairs Committee. Which then brought us to the activities out there on the base where we got to know some of the Generals. You know that part of it, I guess. LR: Yeah, that was in the other part. You were really involved in that. You talked about that quite a bit. SP: Oh, I loved it because I still have some of the formals I used to wear out there. Jim had a boatload! He had tuxedos and he had cufflinks and oh geez. The first thing that we ever went to. We were still living in Roy and we were invited to a dining in and they pair you with people of your age. So we got a Lieutenant, a brand new Lieutenant I think. I have long white gloves that I wore and a full length dress. One time, you know the F-16’s that fly during the air show? LR: Right. SP: We were there when General Murphy was the general and we were sitting in the General’s area, in the stand that the generals and people from the community were seated. One of the jets augured in on the far end of the field because he was going to do this, where they dive and they go… 49 LR: Right. SP: He augured in out the far end of the field. Instantly, they come back in the missing man formation which you think, “Oh my gosh, that was terrible.” That was just awful and we all knew enough to know that it was over. We all left and it was awful. You just feel bad because this is not something you expect to see happen. LR: I noticed that everywhere you had a store, you were involved in their chamber of commerce. SP: Yes, that’s correct. LR: How did that help? SP: Well it did. For example, we have a store in Bountiful, and I still own the building down there. We had a manager down there who was extremely personable. Very nice looking young man and he had a nice family. They were just good all-around people. He gets on the chamber board down in Bountiful and he’s introducing John Huntsman Jr at a chamber meeting, and people pay attention to things like that. LR: Yeah, it’s true. SP: And then we did a lot of promotions. What was your question? How did being in the chamber help? LR: Yes, how did that help with your business and knowing the community? 50 SP: Yes, and then with Jim with the Military Affairs we got to know a lot of people. I just kind of followed him along, and got to know a lot of people as well. I remember one time while we were in the Roy JC’s and in the chamber, they invited Jim and I to come into Ogden. It was when at Christmas time all of the stores on Washington Boulevard that probably neither of you remember. There were wonderful individually owned stores, it was before the mall was built and we were invited to judge the Christmas windows. LR: Oh nice, I can only imagine. MF: I hear all of the time from people about just how wonderful Washington Boulevard was at Christmas time and the decorations and everything. SP: Oh it was. ZCMI, which went out, you know is the city building or something, had the talking Christmas tree. I remember taking my kids to see the talking Christmas tree, a great big thing. It was really cute. It was said that you had L.R. Samuels and he had the blue door, Fred M. Nye Company and just wonderful stores. They said people would come up here from Salt Lake to shop, and I can believe that. LR: I can too. SP: It was nice. It was small enough to be a wonderful community, and it’s still a wonderful community. Of course it’s growing a lot and it’s changed a lot, and in this case, not for the better because the Junction down there; you got a Megaplex theater, you got a couple of coffee shops, you’ve got nowhere to shop. It kind of leaves some of us in a pickle. Progress is not always for the better. 51 LR: It’s true. I’m curious as you’ve gone throughout your career, especially within the community, who were some of your mentors? SP: What do you mean by mentors? Somebody that gives you advice? LR: Yeah, so it’s people that you looked up to that helped you as you were growing your business, as you were building your career within the community. Who were some of the people who helped you along the way? SP: Well, I personally got into supporting the arts because I admired them so much as I told you a little bit ago. My mother saw to that. I couldn’t perform. So I thought, “Okay, I’ll never be a performer but I can support the arts.” So that’s how I got all involved with the arts and subsequently the arts council and so forth. LR: That’s great. I love that. MF: I just had a quick question. Just so we have it on the tape. What years were you on the Art Council? SP: The state Arts Council? I think it was from 1983-1991? I was eight years on that. MF: It’s like we better get that on the tape so we have that on the record. LR: Well and the same thing for Onstage Ogden. The Utah Symphony Ballet? When were you on that board? I know you said it wasn’t consistent? But for about seventeen years? When did you begin that, do you remember? SP: Early on I started doing volunteer work for them. Well let me backup a second. They used to have an organization called the Symphony Debs. Now that became outvoted in later years. But, they needed—Evelyn Kunz who owned Adventure 52 Travel, a travel agency, she was on the board of the OSBA and she said, “We need to have somebody represent us in Roy and would you do that?” Because they didn’t have any members out there. At the time to join, you didn’t just join, you had to be invited to join. So I said, “Okay, I can do that.” I entertained the Symphony Debs a couple of times out there. What you did was you brought them into your house and you served them tea and crumpets or something of that sort, just an afternoon tea. So I’d get out silver and nice things and then you’d talk to them about being a deb. They were divided by geography, and I guess it was me that talked to them about what being a deb involved. That involved ushering at the concerts and for which you would get a free ticket. That was supposed to be enough of a perk to incentivize them to do this. They were just adorable and I said, “You have to wear nice clothes. You can’t come take the garbage out or be in your yard and then come and be a deb. You have to dress up.” We always dress up when we go to the concerts, and they got that. That worked really well and now it’s boys and girls, it just became unisex and that’s not right. So that’s all changed, but I think they still usher and they still hand out programs and they still greet you and these kinds of things, and if you can’t find your seat, then they try and help you find it. MF: So it was like a youth volunteer group? SP: Yes. LR: I think it’s still that. The last time I went. SP: It is. 53 LR: They were younger. The ushers were younger and they looked like almost either high school or college students. SP: Yes, definitely, and it does develop in them, I think, a love for the music. LR: Were you on the council or on the board when they brought Julie Andrews in? SP: The OSBA? LR: Yes. SP: That must have been before. LR: Okay. That’s all good. I’m just trying to get a time frame that you were on the board. So maybe 1970s? SP: I don’t think I went on the board there until, let’s see… LR: We can look in the collection and see for certain. SP: Alright. MF: You mentioned that you and your husband traveled around the state with the council. What kinds of things would you do when you were traveling? Were you visiting specific sites? SP: Yes, yes, we’d go to visit a specific art form. Like we’d go to Cedar City to visit the Shakespeare Festival. Did we go to St. George? Yes we did because I remember Jim went off to play golf with a guy that was the architect on the board. What did we do in Cedar City? I can’t remember because that’s where L’Dean Trueblood lives. When we lost our son she said, “You know, I never met him and 54 it’s hard for me to paint a picture of somebody I’ve never seen. But if you would bring some photographs, I will do my best.” She would always bring her van. She had a big van, and she would always carry her art work with her. She would paint when she was on the road, and it was really interesting. So she did a montage of our son. I’ve got in the other room, but the other room looks like a bomb exploded in there. Anyway, it was really a lovely thing of her to do, and she gave it to me of course. She said, “I’ve done this once before…” She said, “I did it for a missionary who was killed on his mission and I had never seen him, but his mother gave me some pictures, so I know I can do something for you.” It was just lovely. MF: I had a few other general types of questions. As we’ve talked, clearly being involved in the community is important to you and was to your husband as well. Why was that so important to both of you? Why was that a shared value that you had? SP: I don’t know. First of all, when you run your own business, a lot of it is just instinct. We just felt that the more people we got involved with, and the people knew who we were, the better things it would be for us. We just felt like we wanted to do things in the community and I put that in a very selfish way, but I didn’t mean it that way. We just felt like the community was giving to us, so we should give back to the community. And to that end, we would do things like a coat drive. We were the first ones to start a coat drive. Now every dry cleaner does it. We would have barrels, actually they were big boxes and they would be labeled and depending upon the city that they were in. In Pocatello they had two 55 places they wanted things to go. In Logan, it was different yet, and here in Ogden it was the Salvation Army. I had worked for an ad agency, a very small ad agency, and I learned a lot. I learned how to compose ads. One of the gentlemen who worked there, do you know who Dean Hurst is? LR: Yes. MF: Yes. SP: Oh good, because I mentioned Dean Hurst to the girls that were here. LR: They wouldn’t know he is. SP: No, they didn’t. They had no clue. I said, “Well do you know about Waldo the Wildcat?” I think one of them said, “Oh, I think, is that our school logo?” I said, “Yes it is.” Well I worked with Dean Hurst, who designed Waldo the Wildcat. Once a customer came in, the first time they came in, we’d give them a bag to bring their clothes back in them the next time so they are not just all over the back of the car where the dog hair is on them and this kind of thing. So we developed these bags and we’d give everybody a bag. The first time we did, I think was Waldo the Wildcat, the Weber State bags. Then when we adopted the name, “Your Valet Fine Dry Cleaning,” we had our logo on it, so we had Your Valet Fine Dry Cleaning bags. Now came a thing out on the market, Perchloroethylene and it became obsolete so quickly. All of the sudden, all dry cleaners were in trouble. They had to get out perc or it was the end of life on this earth for them because the EPA was ugly about things. We had to clean up down in Bountiful because it was near 56 a drinking water well and what we dug up down there, took us $250,000. It was a tank of gasoline because the building that we bought, we didn’t realize it had been a little grocery store, and had a couple of gas pumps. It wasn’t even ours, but we still paid $250,000 to have that done. Now see I went off the track again. Oh, bags. So anyway we became among the first 200 in the nation to take on a chemical called Green Earth Cleaning. We wanted to get the heck out of perc, and Green Earth Cleaning is made out of sand. It’s silicone based and silicone is sand. People would say, “You’re cleaning our clothes in sand?” I said, “No, we take them out and beat them on the rocks in the river. What do you think?” Sorry, every once in a while I get a little smart alecky. A lot of people didn’t do this because it was very expensive. But we figured it was worth our while and it was. Then we had these bags that we had made and it said Green Earth Cleaning on them. That’s another thing, if you spent maybe ten dollars on an order or something like that, we’d give you this bag it’s about this big about this high, and it had wooden handles. It had a bottom in it that was kind of a coated cardboard, so if you got it wet, it wouldn’t matter. I advertised it as, “This is yours with $10 worth of dry cleaning. It carries your laundry, it carries anything you want, including even a small dog.” People liked that. We had our little valet man on it. This gentleman that I got to know at the art agency where I worked, Ken Kearny, did a lot of cartooning for us. Just really, really cute things. So we’d take our little valet and we had him doing really interesting things. For example, we were remodeling somewhere, so he gets the little valet man and it says, “We’re 57 remodeling.” It was one of our stores. It shows him tacking up a couple of boards along the side of the building. Just kind of silly things like that. Humor goes a long way, and people will remember stuff like that. I learned a lot of things at the ad agency. I was hired to write radio copy, and it was just Ray Pearson and Ken Kearny and Dean Hurst. The three of them. It was called Pearson and Kearny Advertising. I was hired to write radio copy, so then there’s a gal that filed all of the tear sheets and there was another gal that paid the bills and answered the phone. She was a receptionist. So I went into this office and I didn’t do this on the tape did I? LR: A little bit. SP: The story about Len Allen? LR: You know what, even if you did, go and tell it. I kind of want to hear it. SP: I’m sitting in front of a desk and I have a chair and I have a chair here and a filing cabinet here. I could see out the window, thank goodness. Ray said, “Okay, the first day on the job report in at eight o’clock. Here’s the news today Standard Examiner. You had to write six ads by twelve o’clock. Len Allen will be in because they have to be on the air by one o’clock this afternoon.” I think, “Yeah.” So then he said, “One minute.” He didn’t tell me how long a one minute spot was but he said, “You’ve got to write something on the meat, something on the produce, something on the pharmacy, something on the….” It was a double truck ad. “You got to have them ready by noon, you’ll find some samples in the file.” So I went into the file and I counted the words on the spot, so I figured that out. Then 58 I thought, “Holy Toledo, well I have two talents. One of them is writing,” and it’s always stood me in good stead for years. The others, I’m organized. So I got my act together and I pounded out these spots on my electric typewriter. Len came in, and he took the spots and he looked at them and he read them. He kind of just went like this and then he was dead quiet and then he looked up at me and he said, “Best spots I ever read.” MF: Nice, success. SP: Yes, yes. LR: So you worked for Dean Hurst’s ad agency? SP: It was Pearson and Kearney, which is Ray Pearson and Ken Kearney. Hurst, he didn’t have any money and or skin in the game, so to speak. So he was just a hired artist. But I kind of learned everything. Then before I knew it, the other two girls were gone. The one that was filing the tear sheets, I could do that, any idiot could do that. I hope she’s not listening. No, she wouldn’t be with us, I don’t think any longer, or she’s forgotten who she was. But the person that was paying bills and the receptionist was fired and then I had all three jobs. So when Len was coming in and taking the spots out to their transmitter and their studios out in Kanesville, which used to be considered the edge of the lake. It’s not anymore as we know, it was a long way out there. So they saw this extra space there, and I don’t know why it wasn’t filled, but it wasn’t. So they said, “Do you mind if we put a recording studio in here?” So they set up all of this equipment, and they could patch things through it like sports events and this kind of stuff. So now I’m writing 59 radio spots, and I decided to start writing some two voice spots, just for the heck of it because it was more interesting. They had had a studio up in the Ben Lomond and they decided they would move into Ray’s office, which was cheaper than being in the Ben Lomond Hotel. So I started writing two voice spots, and I was a different voice than anybody else’s on the radio. So that’s how I learned to write radio and that’s how I learned to write ad copy. I took all of that knowledge away from this job and I used it in Pocatello, and I used it in Logan, and I used it along the Wasatch Front with radio stations that I could afford. The Standard Examiner, they’d have somebody selling ads and it was under Glassman’s when we first got here. Then things changed and different owners took it. In fact, Flora Ogan was a person that I knew very well. I really liked Flora and she and I saw eye to eye on a lot of things. I really respected her and I thought she was a wonderful editor. She liked me, and I don’t know how that relationship grew, but it did. I wish I would stop interrupting myself. Where was I going with that? LR: You were talking about your job at the ad agency, and you took that knowledge. SP: I took that knowledge and I applied it to our business. I knew how to write ads. I knew how to lay out ads. Istill see this mistake today in the Standard Examiner. They’ll take and they’ll use a black background and they’ll put red print over it, and the red won’t overcome the black so you can’t hardly read it. That’s mistake number one. Sometimes it would be a huge ad, maybe a full page, and you have to hunt for the address, or it will say, “Also in Riverdale, Syracuse, and wherever.” But it doesn’t tell you the address. Now come on. 60 MF: How are people going to find your place? SP: Yes, exactly, exactly. You’re going to have to google it nowadays, if you really want to get there. I think it really helped because I learned a lot of pros and cons and what to do and not to do. So, there you have it. I took that knowledge to Pocatello where we had stores and to Logan. In Logan, I could get a really good package. I learned how to dicker. I’d go up there and we’d cut some spots and I’d say, “How many stations can give me for say four for the price of two?” Or something like that. Because one radio production company up there, one station, owned all of the radio stations. I think there were like five of them up there at the time. So I learned how to do that. Woody Printing was in business at the time. They just recently closed their doors. They were just a block and a half off Washington Boulevard which is where we were. Our office was on Harrison, across the street from Lutheran Church. I would go to Woody and I would take a layout because the newspaper was making so many mistakes and I thought, “I can’t take a chance on giving them a draft anymore. They’re just not getting it.” So I would go to Woody’s and I’d have him produce the ads, and then send them directly to the Standard and then I’d write the Standard guy a note. I wanted everything in writing because I figured that if I said over the phone, “I wanted to run these days and dates and so forth…” They wouldn’t get it right. So I sent a written copy, snail mail, or with the ads. Two, the paper so it would run everything, I had control. Being a control freak, that’s a good thing, and when you’re in your own business, you kind of have to be. 61 MF: One of the things you know, we hope with this project, that younger generations as they look at what women in the community have accomplished and contributed, they’ll have people to look to and be inspired by. So what advice would you give to young women today do you think? SP: Well, to inspire them, to do what? Follow their dreams? Well, if you have a dream, figure out how you can best achieve that dream. Do you need more study if you want to be a nurse? And you can’t afford it, look for possibilities of nursing scholarships. If you want to be a doctor, I mean any profession, anything that you aspire to. Look ahead and see what’s available to help you. What or who is available to help you. Don’t just set out say, go out the door in the morning and say, “Well gee, I think I’m going to become a doctor.” You’ve got to figure it out first. You got to figure out who and how to ask, and there is help and there are scholarships and there are people that will talk to you and guide you in the steps. I think that’s probably what you’re after here, isn’t it? Jim and I did not start out to be in the dry cleaning business. I told you how we got started. LR: Yeah, you did. SP: So if you see an opportunity, I mean, that was the furthest thing from our mind. But franchising was good and if you see an opportunity of some kind that you think will help develop your skills, then do it. I remember when we were up in the building where Foerer’s is now. Foerer’s Real Estate on the corner of—it’s across the street from the Bank of Utah downtown. MF: Is it 26th and Washington? 62 SP: It’s 26th, yes. I remember when that was a vacant lot and it was owned by Jim Whetton Buick. I was sent over there to do the ads. It was always a big ad like so. But it was a description of the cars. This is so funny because I wrote something like, “Straight Stick and O, you got to see this beauty. Only bla bla bla.” Something really, so you can describe the cars. I don’t do that kind of thing anymore. But there was just so many fun things about the job. It was just amazing. It was tailored made for me and I just loved it. I started to tell you about the standard examiner. I don’t know if it was because we were steady advertisers or what, but when they would hire a new ad person to sell display ads, they would come to me and they’d send the new person. This must have been passed down from people that were already in the ad department. They would come to me and I would tell them about ads and I would give them a few pointers and I would say, “I know exactly what I want, and this is going to be an easy thing for you.” So all of the newbies came to me and sat in my chair and in front of my desk. Every last one of them, I don’t know if I should say this or not, would sit there and talk to me, and they would tell me, their own personal problems. In fact, there was one guy from, and Jim would stick his head in like, but he was never jealous, bless his heart. He was the sweetest man on the face of the earth. But, there was a guy who used to sell for The Davis County Clipper. Jeff Roberts, red headed guy. I learned all about the government in Bountiful, in Davis County. Boy I learned a lot about Davis County. Jim would look in, “Good grief, that guy was in there three hours. What are you talking about?” I said, “I got the scuttlebutt on Davis County. Let me tell ya.” 63 LR: So, my next question that goes along with what she just said—and it’s something we’ve asked everyone we’ve interviewed. The term, “Women’s Work?” What does that term mean to you? SP: Nothing, because women can do anything they want. There’s just no limits nowadays. Now when I came out of school, I’d have to think about that. Secretary, Stewardess, nurse. Period, end of subject. Now you’ve got women flying for the Air Force, like the Thunderbirds. They can do anything. Now we’ve got women astronauts. So there’s just nothing that a woman can’t do. But you have to know what it is you want. LR: So before I ask the final question. Do you have any other stories you’d like to share that you think would be pertinent? SP: Well I told you about how we got started about the one wheel trailer. LR: Yeah, you did. That stuck in my mind as I was listening. SP: I’ve got one word of advice, and this is something I’ve followed from the very get go, even when I was little. Don’t spend money unless you’ve got it in the bank. And that applies to credit cards. If you don’t think you can pay for this—and of course credit cards just came into being, I don’t know, forty years? LR: They were more 1980s weren’t they? MF: No, they were before that. A little bit. LR: It became big in the 1980s, how’s that? 64 SP: But because I think a lot of people get in trouble by overspending. If you can’t afford it, don’t buy it. That’s one of the best pieces of advice I think I could give. LR: It’s a good piece of advice. SP: Then as I said, don’t let anything outline what you’re going to do. If you have a dream, figure it out first. Don’t just plunge off into the pool and hope you can swim. I think that’s about it, from the advice department. LR: Thank you. So again, this final question is a question we’ve asked everyone we’ve interviewed. How do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? So it’s a three-parter. SP: History. I think it shaped it for the best. I mean, for heaven’s sake, why not? Women are very intelligent. Men just didn’t give them credit in the early days as we all know. Okay, what’s the second part? LR: Your community. So in Roy when you were growing your business, how did that influence your community? SP: Well, it’s the same. I gave you this answer before I think. You can do anything you want as long as you figure it out. LR: Then how did it influence you personally? Having the right to vote? SP: I can’t imagine not having it. I just cannot imagine that. It’s just so archaic. That’s not a very good answer. MF: It’s a great answer. LR: It’s a really good answer. We all have a unique perspective and so… 65 SP: Yeah, that’s true. LR: I appreciate your candor, your willingness to share, and your patience with us.