Oral History Program Erika Daines Interviewed by Frances Kelsey 29 April 2008 i Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Erika Daines Interviewed by Frances Kelsey 29 April 2008 Copyright © 2012 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 University Archives. 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: Daines, Erika, an oral history by Frances Kelsey, 29 April 2008, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Erika Daines. The interview was conducted on April 29, 2008, by Frances Kelsey. Daines discusses her childhood in Germany, the traveling she did before coming to Utah, and her general experience in Utah. FK: Why did you move to Utah? ED: I think it was late ‘78, almost 1979 and the reason for that was that I'd been widowed. I've had kind of a very eventful life before. As you know I was raised in Germany right after the war, so I was born 9 months after my father came back from being a prisoner of war. I used up my 9 lives while I was still a fairly young child. He was in Hungary when the war was over and the Russians left him because he was too injured. Somehow he ended up with the Brits and they fixed him up and sent him home. So he came home much earlier than everybody else. Whereas my Uncle, the Russians took him and he didn't get home until 1953, so I wouldn't have been born. It was a very difficult time for my parents and my older brothers, I don't remember it. My mother had a suzerain and in ‘47 there was no proper hospital so they gave her schnapps as an anesthetic and all kinds of horrible things and we all survived because my brother stole from the Brits. It was a British occupied zone and they didn't have anything themselves and the soldiers didn't have anything to eat either. They were kind enough, they left open their railroad carriages at night so the locals could steal from then on purpose so they'd have cold because there was no heating and it was a very cold winter and so that's how I survived. Very hearty, good social Darwinism. So I did survive and became 1 a survivor. I left Germany when I was—after I graduated—26 and went to London. I was going to leave; I was not going to stay. So I left and worked there and after a couple of years I was an interpreter for a large carrier engineering and I did all the wage negotiations and specifications and everything for them in German and in Spanish, and in Russian. Which was interested, it was fun I enjoyed that. I wasn't married so London was interesting. I was very active in the anti-partied movement and things like that, you know a young woman around town. Not married, no children, nice income and socially conscious, being of that generation. And then I decided that was getting too boring, I wanted to do something else and I'd studied a lot of economics at school, almost seven years and at least one economics class a semester. So then I decided I was going to do my part for Utopia and Idealism and I decided to volunteer to teach and that was new for me because my father was a teacher and both my brothers, and I was going to be damned if I was going to be a teacher. I did not want to teach. My family complained, so I came to teaching "like the Virgin to the child," as we say in German, it was not planned. So I went to the common wealth office and they sent me to Nigeria. So I went to Nigeria and taught math. Economics is all math, so it wasn't a problem and English to the native speakers because everyone there had English as their mother tongue. So I did that and I got married, married a Nigerian. Northern Nigerian, one of those nice good looking people that look like the Somalis, tall and skinny and handsome, and traveled all over Africa. I never went to South Africa; I was not allowed to go. I did my thesis on South Africa on how South Africa was breaking sanctions financially to Rhodesia and how large companies were subsidizing, were getting money. Rhodesia declared independence illegally at that time and British and South African companies 2 were getting money illegally. So that was the subject of my thesis, the relationship between Britain and South Africa and I got a nice note from South Africa house that I was not welcome, I should never ever travel to South Africa. So that's one country that I couldn't go, so but I traveled every place else during that time. Spent six weeks in Kenya, got malaria, which I have to this day, on safari. Just by myself and a guide with a gun and we just traveled the Bush, and my dog, I had a big black German shepherd. So, very eventful. My husband was killed in a car accident and so I hadn't been married very long, it was a happy marriage and I was just devastated, and so I left. I just left everything and basically fled. I left my household, I left everything, everything. I didn't have a diploma, I had to go back to the university and get a piece of paper that said "yes, you did graduate." I left everything behind it was so painful and I flew back to Germany. I wanted to start a new life, and I didn't want to stay there. So then I applied to the U.S. "I've never been there, I need to go someplace else." I wanted to go away from Europe, I'd lived in Spain for a while, Spanish was my second language, other second foreign language, so I applied and came and got a green card. Then about six months later I stated Weber State as an adjunct, teaching math. The then dean said "Oh we need somebody that can teach people that don't speak much English and they want to be engineers and they need to learn shop math, and we need a non-traditional teacher. So we want to hire somebody who's not a PhD in math." So there we are, I taught math. It's no different than teaching a foreign language, it's the same it's just a language and I'm good at both of those. So they tried me out and said "this is wonderful." So I taught math for quite a few years as an adjunct. FK: What year did you start? 3 ED: '79. My first paycheck from Weber State was in 1979, long before you were born. I really really enjoyed that, and then, I can't remember which year it was, it was in the 80s. The head of the Department of Foreign Language was a German, a German professor and his wife was a German who was also teaching here. He became very sick and couldn't teach anymore, and they needed somebody else so they hired me as adjunct in German, so then I did math and German together for a while. Then he had to quit work and they needed somebody full time, so then I started teaching German full time. Then I had to go and go through the process of having my degrees recognized, everything's different, and it's not called a PhD. It's the same kind of work but it has a different name. So that takes quite a while, you have to go to Washington D.C., submit all this stuff and they send it to university. So it takes quite a while, so I went through that process over the years and here I am. So then I got married again. I wasn't going to stay. I came to Utah because my mother always fed missionaries, although not religious at all. But my brothers had left home, they're a lot older than I am, before the war, and I think she just missed some young men in the house. So she said, "Oh yes, you can come I'll feed you. I don't want to talk religion, it's really boring, but if you want to come and eat with us you're welcome." So I'd met a lot of people and had stayed in touch with them, so they all came back and spread around here, so I said, "Oh, well I'll go to Utah." So I've always been in Ogden this entire time. So then I visited some of the old missionaries, I was just a child at the time, maybe not even a teenager. Then my mother came and visited. So then we looked up one of the very first people, she considers him a son, in Idaho Falls. So I drove her up to Idaho Falls and we visited and it was just like a long lost reunion. "Oh my mother, meine Deutsche Mutter.” My German mother So it was 4 really fun. I was going to stay for two years, and then I was going to Tonga. Somewhere different. Not married, no children, enough income and then I met my current husband and he persuaded me to not do that. We had an agreement and he had five children and I have none. So he has a huge clan. He comes from a large Mormon family with a polygamist grandfather and great-grandfather. Enormous family and I'm all by myself. So there needs to be some compromise. So I can't be their mother, I won't have grandchildren, that's not the kind of person I am. We need to leave the country three times a year, and that's it and he said "well that's all? Well that's easy, no problem. You just tell me when I need to be at the airport." I told him he had to go to the opera with me and I learned to hunt and fish. My wedding present was a rifle and a pistol and I learned to shoot and really enjoy it. You know Germans, "Ew guns" so I'm a very good shot now and I've hunted, until last year, hunted every year and go fishing and thoroughly enjoy it, all the things I couldn't do in Germany. So it worked out very, very well. So that's why I'm here. This is my home; I became an American citizen in the 90s because this was going to be my home. People ask me, "Isn't it hard to be all by yourself?" I said "No, I go back every year and it's very nice. I see my brothers and my nieces and nephews and then I'm delighted to be back in Utah." A lot of people don't understand that. I said "Yeah, I love to go to Europe, its great! But I want to live here now, but I need to go three times a year. Every few months I need to go." FK: What's your favorite part about Utah? ED: Probably the scenery. I think it's the landscape. You know Germans are very fond of nature and everything. It's so varied and so different and since I was raised in the city, people everywhere, I like to go into the mountains and not see a soul. Yesterday and 5 Sunday, I went into the Uintahs and spent all day, not seeing one person. That to me is bliss. It's heaven. I just have my dog; Flocky of course is with me. I didn't have to see anybody, talk to anybody and I didn't see a soul. I didn't see another car and it was absolutely wonderful. I adore Lake Powell. I have to go every year, have to go every year. Rocks without vegetation and it doesn't rain and there's nothing green, is so unusual for me. I can never get enough of that and the idea that I can have space around me. My personal bubble has now grown from a European to an American. I don't like the car driving an inch from me, it makes me uncomfortable. I prefer a little more space around me now. So to that part I've become very Americanized. My in-laws think I'm 200% European but my family in Germany, think I'm 200% American. So I sit somewhere in the middle but they think I've gone absolutely and totally bush. I've gone over to the other side completely, and then some. But the other side doesn't think that at all. It's interesting. So yeah I'm just a bloody Yank now. FK: What's your least favorite part of Utah? ED: That's hard to say. I don't like people who say that they have absolute truth in anything. Whether its religion or politics or anything that's wildly fundamentalist, I have a problem with. So my first husband was Muslim, very tolerant man, he didn't care but some people in his family felt that that was the only true religion and nothing else would work. I had a real problem with that. Some of my husband's family feels that only Mormonism is the absolute truth and there is nothing else, and everybody else cannot be good. I have a real problem with that, not with their religion but as long as they will tolerate that there are other points of view, they can have all the religion in the world that they want, I have no problems with that. It's sometimes quite funny. I have some students, when 6 they find out in first year that I'm not a believer, I don't have a religion, I don't believe in God, and they said "But you are such a decent person." So that's always quite funny. So that's probably my least favorite but it's not particular to Utah, people like that exist everywhere. I miss the cafe life. I do like that part of my life but for that now I go into the mountains so that's more important than cafe life. Of the two I would choose the empty mountains and the fresh trout over the cafe life but I do miss it, but every three months, that's ok. FK: How has the area changed since you've lived here? ED: I'm disgusted to see all these ugly houses everywhere. The population has grown so much and it hasn't improved the aesthetic appeal. All of West Roy and all those nice marshy areas have houses that I consider ugly as sin and that I find very distressing. This is such a beautiful place and of course there has to be growth, I know that, and I know people have to live some place, but it doesn't have to be so ugly. That part I find very disturbing. FK: Have you seen any good changes? ED: I think the quality of education has improved since I've been here. I think people are more aware that they need to be educated; their parents are more supportive of sending their children to be educated. I definitely see an increase in the quality, in my little sphere that I see. I've seen family size be reduced. I remember the first class I taught in German, 101 at that time, and the average number of siblings, the first thing they learned to say was eight or nine and that has come down to three or four, that has really changed and I think that has been beneficial to the educational qualities of those four or 7 five. I think they're getting a better deal from their parents and from their community. Just because the per capita numbers are not so extreme, I think they're directly related and that I think is beneficial. FK: What changes would you like to see occur that haven't occurred yet? ED: I don't have a crystal ball. Nobody knows the future. I don't know. Nobody knows what's going to happen in the future, none of us do. Utah will change and I have no idea in which way it will go or have any influence in that, I don't know. Everybody who predicts the future is wrong. They’re not even odds; they don't even get it right 50%. So there are too many things that come out of the blue that we cannot predict and some of them will be beneficial that we will never have thought of. FK: What's the community like where you live? The immediate community. ED: Very little contact between the neighbors unless they go to the same church. Almost none. I know who my neighbors are and we say hello when we pass in our cars. I'm the only one who walks, because I walk my dog. Everybody else drives in the garage, goes in the house. Unless they happen to be right there, they will wave, but almost no contact. But they all go to church together so they know each other. Other than that they don't talk over the fence, or they have somebody do their garden, I garden myself because I like it, I don't hire anybody but they hire somebody to cut their lawn and there's almost no contact. I know every Sunday, at nine o'clock, they drive out in their cars but there's almost no contact, which is very strange to me. I come from a high contact culture where we all know each other, very well and talk to each other all the 8 time, and gossip a lot. To this day. So that's very strange to me but they seem happy enough, I've adjusted. I find my physical contact elsewhere but not in my neighbors. FK: Has that changed over time? ED: No. Not a bit. I've been in the same house for 26 years, not a bit. The neighbors have change all around me, all the same. Hasn't changed at all. So it's not the individuals, so that's just the way things are. They're very friendly, if I had a problem, I'm sure if I went and asked for help they would be very supportive and very friendly, but there is just no contact other than that. FK: What are some of your favorite memories that have come about because of where you live? ED: Oh the first time I saw Lake Powell. Oh that was so bizarre. I've traveled all over the world and I've never seen anything like it. That there is just rock and dark water and every color of red and orange and beige. I went into some slot canyons; I've never seen anything like those before I married. I think my husband was trying me out to see if I'd really fit in, if this was really going to work and he took me to Lake Powell. I'd never been on a boat, the boat broke down of course, engine quit. We were in a thunderstorm. Totally disabled, very un-European but nothing fazes him. He's a trauma surgeon so nothing fazes, he's seen everything. He said "Okay, now get in the water and swim and you take the rope and you just walk it to blah blah blah blah blah and the waves and ok." So we went into some slot canyons and the thunderstorm came and there was some flooding, we could hear it and we had to scramble up, and there was some flash flooding. Nothing to him, to me, I thought I was going to die again. So I climbed up those 9 rocks, I still see my hands in panic and I forgot everything pointing to the wall as if it were the canyon wall because here was orange this way and there was puce going that way and I forgot all my panic and I just climbed up there, the flash flood came and it was a nothing. They are so stunningly different and starkly beautiful, I'll never forget that. That was the first time I'd seen anything like that and I'd traveled all over Africa but I hadn't seen anything like that. So we did get to shore and I swam the boat to shore, we did make it. So I guess I passed, we got married after that. FK: That's a good test. ED: Yeah and I did become a good shot and I did kill a deer. I went hunting and I'm a very good tracker. I'm the best in the family for spotting deer; I'm a very good hunting companion. They all shoot very well, they grow up with it, being raised in Brigham, but I see better than they do. So I can pick out the deer ten to one over anybody in the family. So I'm a very popular hunting companion. FK: If there was something you'd want people to know about Utah, what would it be? ED: Certainly Europeans, certainly in my family, everybody had read Riders of the Purple Sage, Zane Grey, about polygamy and these weird Mormons and everything, so I'm dispelling a lot of myths every time I go to Europe, starting in the plane. "Oh are you going home?" and I say, "No I live in Utah." "You live here?? Isn't that awkward, you can never get a drink?" and I say "All of this patting hip is all wine, it's not food." So there are a lot of myths to dispel, but it's getting a lot better than it was 25, 30 years ago. Thirty years ago, Europeans knew nothing about Utah. That has changed so much. It’s probably dispelling myths about things that are just not true, about these weird people 10 that live here in the dessert. I don't want to martyr them at the same time, that ruins my solitude, so they're not all supposed to come. I've never met anybody that I personally knew, that came and didn't absolutely love it and want to come back. All of my friends come on a regular basis. Not to go shopping, to go to Lake Powell, to go to Antelope canyon, to go to the Uintahs, because we don't have that. It's not like the Alps, because they are full of people. To go skiing in powder and not have to wait at the lift. Germans complain when they have to wait for three hours to get on the lift. We complain here, my husband, "Damn lift lines, five minutes." So, "Okay calm down." So Utah is a great place to live, for Europeans, a lovely place to be. FK: Do you think Utah does a good job of preserving its history? ED: No, I don't think it does. It does very little to preserve its natural beauty. I'm so happy to see an Environmental Club coming up, and they won an award in Crystal Crest, which I'm happy to see. No, we don't do nearly enough. We don't take care of our water, we dam everything up, we waist a lot of water. People have huge amounts of lawn. Weber State has fountains of water that they sprinkle, that all seems such a waist. We're not taking care of things very well. I think it's changing very dramatically because your generation now has an awareness and I'm very happy to see that. My husband's generation, they pay lip service, they say "Well yes, of course we want everything to be natural and beautiful," but they're not taking any kind of measures to prevent damage. I don't want to see nuclear waste in Utah coming from Italy, that's ridiculous. They need to take care of that themselves. They do waste, fine, take care of it. We need to take care of our own problems. I don't like to see houses everywhere going up on the mountains. They can go down in the valley that's fine. Why do we have to go clear to 11 the top and cause flooding? It's an unstable area. My generation is not doing enough, but I think your generation will take care of things. You have a totally different attitude and I'm very happy to see that. It's overdue as far as I'm concerned. FK: Just for the record, where exactly in Germany where you born? ED: I was born in Bremen but I was raised in Hanover. My mother comes from Bremen, that's where she was with her parents. Well with her mother at that time. My grandfather got killed after the war. He was run down by a drunk British soldier on a motorbike. SO he was the breadwinner for the whole family, so things kind of fell apart and went to hell. So that's where she was with my two brothers when my father came back from being a prisoner of war. So I was born there but then just a few months later they went back to Hanover where they'd lived before. The apartment building had not been rebuilt, so we were still down in the basement, in the rubble. My earliest memory, we all lived in the cellar basically until the wall could be redone. The bomb had hit the house next door, and so the house we were in, they were in, didn't collapse completely, but half of it was gone. So everything was open so it had to be rebuilt and that took a while. My earliest memory is my mother running towards me, screaming, and took something out of my hand. I didn't know what it was, but it was a hand grenade. That's all we had. I had my first piece of meat when I was six years old. Of course I didn't like it, "Bleh, what's that?" It was horsemeat. I didn't know that, but it was a very difficult at that time. I didn't know because I was a child, everybody was in the same position. I went to bed hungry until I was about six years old. Turnips and more turnips and potatoes, because that's all there was after the war. During the war, the Germans could pretty much rob from everybody in Europe. So life during the war wasn't as bad, but of course after the war, why would 12 anybody want to help Germany? So until the Marshall Plan in '48 there was just stark starvation and lots of people died from hunger or just from the cold. You have no coal and nothing to burn, nothing to stay warm. I didn't know, I was a very happy child. I didn't know any different. Just lived in the dirt, no supervision, the adults were all busy. My brothers went to school, they were so much older, and they were like a second family. So I was left totally to my own devices as a child. As a four-five year old, I played with the other children in the forest, in the dirt, in the rubble; we played soccer because the adults didn't have any time for us, nor were they inclined. It was very difficult to make a living. We were sent out to gather acorns or nut type things as very small children. I was sent to the forest when I was four years old. Nowadays, "My God a little girl by herself? Oh my God, somebody's going to rape her." That wasn't a discussion. You had things to do and that's the way you did it. So you grow up very early, because you have a job all the time. Very responsible, you have to work early on but I was an extremely happy child. Probably because I was so neglected, it was wonderful. Totally deprived, but I didn't know it. No toys, no clothes, everything hand me downs from my brothers or something because there wasn't anything, and a very happy child. FK: What year were you born? ED: '47, February '47, nine months to the day after my father came home. They needed a child like they needed a hole in the head but planning doesn't always work. I told you what my brothers said. My brothers, of course, being normal siblings, always said when I did something stupid as a child, "Well no wonder you're not very smart, after all you were just filtered through the handkerchief." Because contraception didn't work in those 13 days. Nice brothers. So that was a standard reply, then I had to come up with something equally nasty for them. 14