Oral History Program Marna Maynes McGee Interviewed by James McGee 27 April 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Marna Maynes McGee Interviewed by James McGee 27 April 2008 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library ii 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. Archival copies are placed in Special Collections. The Stewart Library also houses the original recording so researchers can gain a sense of the interviewee's voice and intonations. Project Description The Weber State College/University Student Projects have been created by students working with several different professors on the Weber State campus. The topics are varied and based on the student's interest or task for a specific assignment. These oral history assignments were created to help Weber State students learn the value and importance of recording public history and to benefit the expansion of the Weber State oral history collections. ____________________________________ 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 All literary rights in the manuscript, including the right to publish, are reserved to the Stewart Library of Weber State University. No part of the manuscript may be published without the written permission of the University Librarian. Requests for permission to publish should be addressed to the Administration Office, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, Utah, 84408. The request should include identification of the specific item and identification of the user. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: McGee, Marna Maynes, an oral history by James McGee, 27 April 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: This is an oral history interview with Marna Maynes McGee. It is being conducted on April 27th, 2008 at her home in Brigham City Utah and concerns her life in Little Cottonwood Canyon from 1931 to 1952. The interviewer is James McGee. JM: Tell me about the background of your parents MM: How far back do you want me to go? I can only tell you what I've heard. JM: Just tell me what you've heard. MM: I think Dad was born in England and came over with his mother, they lived in Salt Lake and mother was born in Granite, Utah, um umpteen years ago. I don't remember. I don't know how they met. Mother worked as a house keeper in Salt Lake and she went to the LDS business college and I don't know where she and Dad met. When they got married, Dad's parents gave him the farm that we lived on; that I grew up on. JM: Where and when were you born? MM: I was born on that farm. The mouth of Big Cotton Wood Canyon; and on September 1st, 1931; at 2 o'clock in the afternoon I think; I am actually not sure of the time. But it was on that date. JM: What were some of your experiences growing up during the thirties? MM: Well, we had to walk approximately a quarter of a mile to a half of a mile to catch the school bus. That's from our house down to the road where the bus was; then we road to the grade school and the Jr. High and the High School from there. I established an early morning; getting up and doing chores before we'd go to school. We'd catch the bus 1 about eight o'clock, maybe earlier, depending on whether we were going to high school or just to the grade school. We lived on the farm and so we did a lot of the farm. I did most irrigating with my brother. We had a truck on the farm. We raised vegetables and things like that. We also had orchards; apples, and peaches and pears and cherries, and apricots. That's all I remember of what was in the orchard. We had cattle, and we had cows and when we were little, we'd heard the cows and we'd do it up on the mountain side where we kept the cows to feed was up on the mountain side; and the irrigation my brother and I planned on making a swimming pool but it didn't work because the ground was too soft and it wouldn't hold the water. It would get away from us. Let's see; the water came through Big Cotton Wood Canyon and we'd sometimes get fish that would come down in the ditch and that was mostly the boys liked to go fishing. I had eight brothers older than I was and a sister younger than I was in our family. By the time I was old enough to remember too much, most of the boys were gone, and then the war started. And a, the middle boys, because the oldest one was in the defense plant working and they didn't draft those people because it was important for them, the work they were doing was just as important, if not more so than the soldiers. And uh, I can't remember whether John went into the service or whether he was working in the defense, but he was the second in line. Bill was in the Air Force, the Marine Core. Lawrence was in the Marine Core; he went in the South Pacific to fight. Alden was in the Air Force and he went over to England, stationed in England, and he flew over Germany. He was shot down over Germany and captured. He spent the last part of the war in prison camp. Bob was off. He had double jointed elbows and they wouldn't take him and Gaylin had been injured in the forest service and his legs didn't heal 2 completely; he had problems with that; in fact, he still does. Fred was in the Navy, and he was in the South Pacific; he was young enough that it was more occupational type service, not fighting. He was in Japan. Mary and I were just home. My Dad died just before I turned nine. In July before I turned nine. He left mom with a big handful to take care of. We had our own meat, and having cows we had own butter and we had our own milk. We raised pigs and chickens and cows; so we had basically everything we needed during the depression. So it didn't hit us as some people that lived in the city because they didn't have that to fall back on. We remember one time when they killed the pig in the back yard. They'd hang it up to dry, they would cut it up. I don't know how they kept it? I think they kept it in the creek that ran by to cool it; instead of having an ice box. Let's see, what else. Oh, during the war time they had a metal collection, drive, and we gathered up all the old box springs, and head boards and all that kind of stuff we could find around the property to send to the war effort. We had rationing; I remember that. But like I said, it didn't affect us too much. They rationed sugar and margarine and I can't remember what else; gasoline of course was rationed too. We didn't live close to any store; so we didn't go shopping very much. We didn't have the money to do it with anyway. JM: During the Depression did any of the brother's work on the CCC camps? MM: Yes, John did. John worked on a CCC boot camp. JM: What did he tell you about that when he came home? MM: He didn't. He didn't tell us anything. We had a camp not too far from where we lived. They used to come over sometimes. Mother would do laundry for them, so we did see them and they were involved in the park; the canyon where they had picnic tables. They 3 built the tables and made picnic areas up the canyons. Dad was involved in the WPA; if that's what it's called. He was employed there until he died. JM: Do you know what he did for the WPA? MM: No, I don't; seems to me like it was something like book keeping. I couldn't swear on it. I don't remember. What else do you want to know? JM: How did you meet dad? MM: On the telephone. When I graduated from High School I went to work in a sewing factory in Salt Lake. When it got so it was hard to get to and they were hiring telephone operators, because they were going to shut down the operators and go mechanically? No... Automatically. So they needed temporary help; and I went to work there. We had split shifts. We would go from 9-1 and then from 6-10; the shift was; so you had the afternoon off. That's when I met your Dad. When I was in high school I was a member of the Charlonian Club which was a pep club for the high school; at Jordan High. They had a policy of inviting back the Charlonians two years after they graduate. Every year; for two years. This was the last year I'd be able to go to the dance and I really wanted to go. I talked to my cousin and he set it up with your dad to meet; and Lloyd came and picked me up at the telephone company and brought me home and we talked. JM: Which cousin was that? MM: Merlin DeSpain. When Dad moved up to Granite they were quite good friends, Merlin and Ward. Ward was also your dad's friend. They were all around the same age. Ward married your Dad's sister, Irene and the family became involved {unintelligible}. They lived at Granite. Everyone in Granite was related accept his family and to make up for it 4 he married. His sister married my cousin and I married him and my brother married their sister; we got them involved with the family. JM: What was your first apartment like after you were married? MM: It was terrible. The colors; it was painted. The apartment itself was nice, but the colors it was painted was sickening. It was dark blue and a dark red. They just clashed. We lived up on the avenues in Salt Lake. JM: How about life after Dad got out of college living on the East Coast? MM: Well, it was more complicated when we did get married because we lived across to the university while he finished up. He was working on his doctorate then when he got his doctorate we went back east; had two children, ages three and four and we had some friends from the university living in Delaware and we stayed with them until we found an apartment out there. Mother went with us and she stayed with us for a while. It wasn't bad making the transition I guess. Easily adaptable. We lived there for about two and a half years then we came back to Utah; that's when Thiokol started up out here. JM: Your brothers had served in Europe; did they tell you any stories when they came home? MM: Not when they first came home. We heard more after because I'd make some comment, and it was only Alden that was in Europe. He'd say, oh no that's not what happened, that's not the airplane I flew, or things like that. We did get some letters from him, from the prison camp. I think he was better off in the German camp than he would have been in the Japanese. Japanese weren't very good. He went on a march in January, they took the prisoners, marched them further into Germany and survived that march by 5 going to the farmers and trading their cigarettes for eggs and bread and stuff like that. That's about all I can tell you about that period of time. I don't remember an awful lot JM: How was life in the sixties around here? MM: Sixties? I don't know. When we came back from Delaware, we had three children. You were born back in Delaware and Linda was born shortly after we arrived here. He had four, and we built our home because we didn't have room in the apartment for all you kids and us too. So we had to have a bigger place. And the people here were not very happy with the Thiokol people that moved in. They were very protective and ignored you as much as they could when we would go into stores and that. You know, usually the sales people want to help you but at that time they didn't want to help; they wanted you to go away and stay away. JM: Ok thank you. 6