Oral History Program Elizabeth Stewart Allen Betz 30 August 1974 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Elizabeth Stewart Allen Betz 30 August 1974 Copyright © 1974 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 Weber State College Oral History Program was created in the early 1970s to “record and document, through personal reminiscences, the history, growth and development of Weber State College.” Through interviews with administrators, faculty and students, the program’s goal was to expand the documentary holdings on Weber State College and its predecessor entities. From 1970 to 1976, the program conducted some fifteen interviews, under the direction of, and generally conducted by Harold C. Bateman, an emeritus professor of history. In 1979, under the direction of archivist John Sillito, the program was reestablished and six interviews were conducted between 1979 and 1983. Additional interviews were conducted by members of the Weber State community. ____________________________________ 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: Stewart, Elizabeth, an oral history by Allen Betz, 30 August 1974, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. 1 Abstract: The following is an interview with Elizabeth Stewart, conducted by Allen Betz on August 30, 1974. Stewart discusses her childhood in Ogden and her experiences with music groups, specifically the Utah Symphony, in Utah. AB This is an interview for the oral history library at Weber State College with Mrs. Donnell Stewart at her home at 4226 College Drive in Ogden, Utah at five minutes after 10:00, August 30, 1974. Mrs. Stewart can you tell me something about your early experiences and so on? ES: Well, I was born at 1447 Washington Blvd. in April 1905. My mother and father lived there all their lives after they were married and I lived there until we moved to this house on College Drive in 1961. So I was a native of the noisy end of town and that's where most of my memories and recollections are centered. I was an only child and that always makes a difference in one’s life. But I had a happy childhood—a nice good childhood—and my mother and father for a good many years struggled along financially but later after things began to work out a little bit better for them, you know, we had a good home and my friends were always welcome and we had many, many good times with lots of children and young people around. Though I wasn't ever allowed to go very far from home to play, we always had plenty of my friends there with us. AB: And is there anything particular about North Ogden that you remember? ES: Well of course 14th isn't quite North Ogden. North Ogden starts way out there. But I remember that when I first started school it was in the Mount Fort School. 2 They had a kindergarten at that time and Mother took me to school about three years, different times before I was old enough to go to school because I wanted to go so bad and then I went to kindergarten there and on up to the sixth grade and by that time the junior high school division was then completed and so I went to junior high school in the new building which was called Mount Fort Junior High School. And spent two more years there before I started in high school at Weber. Not Weber High school now but Weber High school before it became the college. AB: Oh I see. I didn't know that it was a high school first. ES: Yes it was. It was first an Academy, I don't know what the date, it was started 1898 [1889] or something. -I don't know when it was changed, but we had class rings and class pens that had WHS--Weber High School on it. A lot of people haven't put that part into it, they just said from it went from Weber Academy to Weber Normal College which it didn't. It went first into a high school then into a normal college. And we had WNC now, Weber Normal College and that was about 1922 or ’23. The last high school graduating class was the year I graduated in 1923. Then it was a full two years of college from then on. And I went back again to Weber in 1924 and graduated from two years of college in 1925. The North end of town is not anything like it used to be. It was mostly a residential area and there are very few residences left out there now, it's just commercial buildings. Almost the whole way from Ogden River Bridge on up to Five Points. AB: Is there any musical education that you remember in particular that you had as a young person? 3 ES: Yes, of course in the school we had music and I was never much of a singer but there were others who could play better than I did so I didn't ever get much chance in doing anything in it. Living at about Eighth and Washington, a little bit north of the corner was a family named Bailey, and Ruth Bailey was my first music teacher. She taught me what I knew about reading notes and things and kept on until the time she was married and moved away. At the North end of town also, there was the Thatchers. Now Mr. Thatcher, and I can't remember his first name, was a real fine musician and he had an orchestra that went all over town playing. And the violinist in his orchestra was his daughter Lilian, and Lilian was a real fine violinist as well as a good teacher. And one time after my grandmother Shaw died… Well before she died she gave me her violin which she said was her prized possession, and I felt it my duty and obligation then to try to learn to play it. I went to Lilian Thatcher to try to get her to teach me to play the violin a little bit and I did a little with it, very little. Then she had a little orchestra, and at the time I was also teaching school, and in this orchestra were some of my school children. When I couldn't play as good as they did, it was a little discouraging. Both for me and for them, so it didn't last very long. But there were two real fine musicians in the North end of town Well from taking lessons with Ruth Bailey after she was married and moved away, I went to Vera Frey Bussen and one time as a group of her students, she took us to the old church that was there on Twenty-Fourth between Washington and Adams, maybe the Presbyterian Church I’m not sure, but later it was torn down and it's about where that Ogden credit place is now. That was the 4 first time I ever heard or saw played, in my recollection, a pipe organ. And when I went home I said to my mother, “Someday I am going to learn how to play an organ like that.” So after I graduated from high school and then from Weber in 1925, I went to Logan to Utah State for two years and graduated there in 1927. Then I came back to Weber to work and I worked a number of different places in office work there at Weber and about this time Weber bought that organ that was put in the old Moench building. It was one of the theatre organs of the Alhambra I think, I'm not positive, but it was put in in the auditorium at the Moench building. Claire Anderson was there and that was when I first started to learn how to play a pipe organ, which is what most people label me by anymore as playing an organ, they don't think I can play the piano anymore but I fool them once and a while. Just the piano and the organ is all I've ever done. AB: Then have you ever been connected with any orchestras before the Utah Symphony or do you remember any particular? ES: No. No, only as I mentioned the Thatcher’s orchestra, I was never connected to it in any way except they were friends of my mother’s family and my father’s family and we knew them very well. AB: Do you remember anything about the beginnings of the Utah Symphony when it first started? ES: Well, after I quit taking piano lessons from Mrs. Bussen I went along for a long time without taking any music and finally decided that was stupid and I better get back to it so I went to Mona Smith and took lessons from her for a good many 5 years after that, off and on mostly on, but sometimes I had to quit for a while. She was instrumental in the beginning of getting the Utah Symphony into Ogden. Now I don't know how much she had to do with the formation of it in Salt Lake. But she was a real fine musician and very much interested in these things. She also helped a good deal in bringing about these series what do you call it? Unity concerts. But, she was very closely connected with the beginning of the symphony orchestra. AB: Can you tell me anything more about Mrs. Smith? ES: Miss Smith, she was a girl that came here from Chicago. Her folks were New Englanders and she was very precise and a very fine musician. She had an illness that prevented her from doing as much as she was capable of doing. She started out in her life taking voice but she got a bronchitis condition which kept her from singing any more, but she had studied in New England and she had studied in the conservatory in Chicago and had won quite a good deal of fame. She taught at the conservatory in Chicago and then because of her illness she came west and settled here in Ogden and I’m sure that if you were to go to Ruth Lindsey Barker, Mrs. Thomas Barker, she could tell you more about the beginnings of Miss. Smith here. She first lived at Lindsey's home and Ruth knew her from the beginning of the time she came here. But she was Ogden's… really an outstanding music teacher and has done a lot for teaching and promoting music in Ogden. Probably as much as any other person or more. She was a very hard taskmaster, she really made you work which was good, and she put out some very fine students. I am not included in the list, but she has some very 6 outstanding students. For example, Lauren Willhide was her student, and Sterling Bill Wright was her student, and some people who are still teaching here in Ogden with her methods like Norma May Cox, Ruth Barker and Gladys Bader who only recently moved to Denver. But all these teachers, a number of them, were her students and she taught them not only how to play but how to teach. AB: Do you remember when Maurice Abravanel first joined the orchestra? ES: Oh, in my remembrance he was just there, I didn't know there was an orchestra before that time. I was way out in the sticks you might say, out north and I didn't know as much about things that were going on. I was busy, I was teaching school and I really was not very well informed about the beginnings of it. AB: How about more recently then for example, do you attend the concerts and do you know anyone? ES: Well I've always had a ticket to the concerts, and if I didn't attend I gave them to somebody else to go. I haven't had one hundred percent attendance I'll tell you. AB: How do you feel about the music of this place? ES: I think it's great. I really enjoy every bit of it. Sometimes it's a little bit over my head, but then they make that up with something that isn't. I think they have improved so much and they have a really fine orchestra. The last few concerts I have been to, I have thoroughly enjoyed. I especially enjoyed the pianist they brought in with the orchestra. 7 AB: And what kind of an influence do you feel that the orchestra has had on this area? ES: Oh I think that’s… it can't even be measured it has done so much. What I think it has particularly accomplished is to teach young people in the school through their programs there and appreciation of something a little bit finer. Sometimes the young people don't use it but they still know it. And they know far more about music history than I know or ever will know. Probably because of the influence of the orchestra and the influence it has had in their lives through their school programs. AB: How about these concerts in Ogden, do you know anything about how they started or anything about the symphony guild? Do you know how they got connected with Weber College? ES: I suppose the reason they got connected with Weber College was because that was the only place they could perform. It was the only auditorium in which they could perform. The old Tabernacle was not sufficient, and besides that, it wasn't built for it and I’m sure that it took a place for them to be. I don't know if they ever performed anywhere besides up at the college in Ogden not to my recollection but I don't know for sure. AB: Can you tell me anything else about general music in Ogden or in the Salt lake area or anything like this? Any specific people you'd know. ES: No I can't think of anything right now. Probably when you’re gone I’ll think of it. 8 AB: Well you’re a member of a MacDowell ensemble, can you tell me anything about this? ES: Well this was Mona Smith’s project through some way, I don't know what, she was closely connected with Mrs. MacDowell and after the death of Mr. MacDowell, Mrs. Smith and Mrs. MacDowell were very often in correspondence with each other and Mrs. Smith used to tell us about it. All adult students of Mrs. Smith were eligible for lunch at the MacDowell ensemble and we met each month and we had a sort of a lesson and some of us would play. We'd have a little program one, two or three maybe would play something. She would center her program lessons around a certain theme for a year. And probably a composer or a type of music or something like that. And it had started long before I ever got to Mrs. Smith, so when I got there I just got on the bandwagon and started along with it. Then we went along this way. We used to laugh, and she did too, and call her the dictator because she was the one that kept the thing going. Then when she died which has been several years ago, the girls felt they didn't want to quite give it up, they’d like to keep it going a lot of them did and the rest of them didn't so at that time our forces started to split and some pulled away and some stayed together and I have tried in whatever way I could to hold the group together. Now the others have worked hard too, I don’t mean that, except that I have the biggest space for them to meet. We had our spring musical, which came the first Sunday in May each year, generally here in our room. So that, in this way I tried to keep it going. After Mrs. Smith’s death we started out with very few members and we didn't have 9 many of Mrs. Smith’s students then to feed the membership. So we branched out and brought in others. Some of them were students of Mrs. Smith’s students like a couple of girls out in the Roy area that were students of Norma Maycock, who was one of Mrs. Smith’s students and others like that. And some that were interested in music and we just, the whole purpose of the thing is to keep us busy with the music as far as we can. And each of us play once or twice, this has brought about the use of two piano music more than we ever did before. I don't know why, but psychologically some way when you are playing with somebody you’re not as distracted as when you’re playing alone. The MacDowell group has about twenty members I guess, and we pay dues each year and contribute to a number of things, not a lot, but what we can. We usually send some money back to the MacDowell colony in New York, in New England I better say to be safe. We give money to Ballet West and to the symphony and to… I guess that's all. But this kind of keeps us in touch with these organizations and it's been good. AB: Why did you choose the name MacDowell's? Or I guess you didn't choose it? ES: No, I didn't choose the name, it was chosen because of this MacDowell colony back in New England. Now that's a place where artists of different kinds-- musicians, art students, writers, anybody who has a project to do can go there and be in somewhat of seclusion and be able to work on their project. A number of fine musicians have been there and written their music there as well as people who have written books. But this little colony, it's like a little village, a very small little village. I think they have a central dining room from what I understand and then these little cabin-like things up in the mountains, among the trees where 10 these people can go and not be bothered by the outside world as far as they want. And because of this colony, Mrs. Smith being associated with Mrs. MacDowell, who established this colony made it the MacDowell proper name. The MacDowell Ensemble of the MacDowell Colony Leads is the proper name of it. This means then that we’re a branch of the MacDowell Colony Lead and there are many out there in other states too. It's not a local thing exactly, it’s national in its scope. There aren’t a great lot of them, but then there are others whose names are not the same as ours. But, that's how we got our name, the MacDowell Ensemble based on The MacDowell Colony Leads. AB: And this is headed by Mrs. MacDowell? ES: It was for a long time, I don't know just how it's headed now. I think the last I knew she was very old and I think she died didn't she? I'm not sure, but she is very old. She had a secretary who did a lot of her work. Where it stands now, I really don't know who takes care of it. AB: How did you get to become a patron of the Utah Symphony and why? ES: Well there is hardly anything going on in town that I don't get a chance to donate to you know. But anyways, I don't know when I first started, but some of my relatives like Elizabeth Dee was on the Symphony board for a while and whether she got me on this or not I can't remember but somebody just said, “Won't you do it?” And I did. AB: Well that's fine, thank you very much then. ES: Well I hope I have given you something, I don't know. 11 AB: Oh yes, this is very fine. Elizabeth Dee Shaw Stewart 1905-1996