Family Histories

When brother William was on a mission, he needed some money and father didn’t know how or where to get it right then. One day when he was tending sheep on the banks of the Snake River about where Milner is now, he was walking along and kicked up a stone that looked like gold. He had it assayed and the assayer gave him the amount that he was to send to William.

“The Idaho Southern Railroad was coming from Milner, Idaho to Oakley, Idaho. Ferris and Kessell were the contractors. They told lies to get them to sign papers for a right-of-way through their land by saying that other people had signed without being paid. Both statements were untrue. The track was laid up to Grandpa’s fence and Grandpa and Grandma were standing in front of the engine. Grandma had a stove poker in her hand about two feet long and was shaking it at Ferris and Kessell telling them how they lied and how crooked they were. They (grandma and grandpa) held them up for about an hour, but there was nothing they could do, so the railroad went on through.

There was a small railroad station just before they got to Grandpa’s land. The boys (grandpa’s sons) used to grease the tracks and the wheels would spin. I used to sit on the fence and watch them. Then the boys got to carry sand and put on the rails so the train could move.

it was in the wintertime when they didn't have any central heating, of course, and we always used to come tearing downstairs - there was a whole bunch of kids - and we'd come tearing downstairs to get dressed around the big potbellied stove in the living room 'cause it was so darn cold upstairs.

It was after... no, it was before my Aunt Marion died because she would go home in the summertime when they still had the house on Hazard Parkway. I don't know whether she was there that summer, but I had pretty good sized feet so I could wear her shoes, and I loved to get on her shoes and wear them. So I got this bright idea - I can't tell you how old I was, and why they even let me do it, because it had to be a mile and a half or two miles anyway from where they lived out to the cemetery, it was this big huge cemetery where my grandfather was buried. And they had one boy who was buried out there, my mother's brother. So anyway, I got this pair of shoes of my aunts, and they had heels maybe an inch so high, and I started walking out there. And I got out there and I had such blisters on my feet, it was awful. I ended up walking back to my aunt's house, the one who lived down in downtown Albion because my feet were so sore, I didn't think I could walk all the way back to my grandfather's. So I walked down there, and my poor feet, they were all swollen and they had these big blisters from those crazy shoes.

caster oil used to be a remedy for all things. And I can remember one morning I was supposed to get caster oil because my stomach had been on the blink. Oh, I detested it, it was awful. I can see my father coming up the stairs, and he'd have this tablespoon of caster oil and a glass - oh, no, it was a little small glass, and in it was a tablespoon of castor oil, some lemon juice, and water. And he'd have a teaspoon with soda in it. And he'd come up the stairs, and he'd say, "Come on, Jean, get over here." He'd say, "You got to drink it while it fizzes." And he'd drop the teaspoon of soda and it would fizz all up and I had to drink it, that fizzy stuff, and all the castor oil fizzed up with it. Oh, it was terrible. So this one morning I got up before my mother did, and I went down and hid the bottle of castor oil under the sofa. And my mother was heavy, she couldn't get down and get it. And it was one of these big wooden sofa things. It had a wooden back with spindles in it and wooden sides, and it was heavy as the dickens. She couldn't lift it and get the thing so she could get under it. So my father had to finally end up getting the castor oil - no, no, they made me go get it, after she took me out in the kitchen and sat me down on her lap and whacked the heck out of my rear end because I'd hid the bottle of castor oil (laughs).

When we were little, the one time I remember - we had to come home for lunch from school, and I can remember my mother had fixed - she used to take stewed tomatoes and fix them like creamed tomatoes or something, and we'd have it on toast, and that was our lunch. It wasn't all that bad, but anyway, we were sitting at the table eating this tomato stuff on toast, and my brother said something. I got mad, and I picked up the fork and threw it at him. I got a spanking for that too. But that's one of the few things I remember about any fights we had or anything.

I remember a dog that he got that my mother had fits about, but she let him have it. It was a big german shepherd. And I remember that dog, when my brother died, he had bought a - no, my father had an old Studebaker that he let him drive. And as far as the dog was concerned, that was my brother's car, and he always went with him, when he was driving that one he'd always go with him in the front seat. The only way my brother could keep him out of the car was to put a rifle on the seat because he was scared to death of guns. So after my brother died, they were going to sell the car, but it was in the garage and they didn't dare have anybody come and take the car because the dog would have ripped them to pieces. And they put the dog down in the cellar, locked all the doors, shut him down so they locked all the doors but there was a small window in the basement where they used to deliver coal into the coal cellar. They burned coal in furnaces then, and they'd come with this big coal truck and put a chute down there from the truck and shoot coal down into this coal cellar. Well, there was still some coal left in it, and that dog climbed up on the coal that was in there and dragged himself up that wall and got out that window and wouldn't let that person take the car. Believe it or not.

He couldn't go to school when he graduated from high school. He was too young in the first place. Jobs, well, there just weren't any in 1933, or '32 it was. So he got a job delivering groceries on a motorcycle thing with a sidecar. He loved motorcycles. Of course that's the way he was killed, on a motorcycle. But anyway, he had this sidecar thing on the motorcycle and he'd sometimes come home at noon for lunch, and I'd be down on a corner and he'd pick me up and let me ride on that motorcycle down to the middle of the block where we lived.

she was chubby, and it bothered her terribly, just awful. And I never knew whether we made too much fuss about it, or not enough fuss. We did take her to a pediatrician, and that was sort of an unusual thing back when she was little. But I can remember her going to 4H and they had to make skirts. Oh, she hated that skirt because it was a full one, it was on a band, and filled in on a waistband, and it made her look twice as big as she was. Oh, she hated that thing, she just hated it. And I don't know, I think I used to make her wear it, because I was kind of proud of it. It didn't bother me that it made her look chubby, but oh, she hated it.

we'd go out after supper in the springtime and in the summer - we had streetlights - and we'd play kick the can or hide and seek. There was always a few little things that went on that maybe shouldn't have gone on as far as kids that age are concerned. He used to keep pretty good track of me. I never knew it. But he'd watch what went on, and he knew where I was all the time. If I was over on the next street... I can remember one night, a couple of the kids going in one of the garages, and I can remember coming home and telling my mother about it. I don't know whether it was then that she told me or later, but she said my brother kept pretty good track of me and about where I was. Probably if I'd been getting into any trouble, either he would have let my mother know about it, or he would have let me know. So I guess I was pretty safe.

But the girl who lived next door, we were the same age. She had older brothers and sisters, but one of her sisters had a back bedroom, and I had a back bedroom in our house and we had windows right across from each other. And I can remember, I was trying to work out some thing where we could pull things back and forth on a string. We had it working for a while, but we didn't get along very well, we fought an awful lot, so that didn't last very long. But it was quite a thing when we finally did get it going. We'd just raise the window and sit there and talk out the window if were on good terms. Like I said, most of the time we weren't on very good terms.

we'd go down to the beach and have camp-outs and cookouts, and we'd go visit other churches. Just a lot of Christian oriented things. The kids could choose. If they had something particular that they wanted to do, they expressed what they wanted to do and we'd work on it and do it. It was really a good deal for kids. I think it really helped keep a lot of kids out of trouble. A lot of the activities that we got into would be during the week, especially during the summer. But there was always the Sunday night activity after Sunday dinner, so they always had the regular. And I remember - you know what the "mispah"is? 108 JV: No. JG: After we got through with the BYU meeting and we were going to break up, we'd all stand around in the circle, and that was the "mispah". We'd say "God...." Oh dear, now I can't remember. I thought I was so smart. "The Lord watch over me until we meet again." Oh, we'd sing, I guess. (Singing:) "Till we meet, till we meet again. God be with you till we meet again."

My junior year in high school I started going with a college kid, so that pretty much solved the problem as far as my chasing boys and stuff was concerned because he was in the University of Rochester, and his parents had both died, and he had a guardian in Rochester. He went to the University for two years, then he decided he didn't want to go any more, he wasn't getting anyplace. He felt he had - one of my girlfriends' brothers was his fraternity brother, and he came up and spent a Christmas at their house. And there was Christmas dance, a girl reserve dance, and I didn't have anybody to go with because the guy that I had asked to go backed out at the last minute. And so Dorothy got this bright idea that - her brother went with a girl who was a senior, no - she was away at school but they had been high school sweethearts, and they were gonna go to this dance just for the heck of it. And Dorothy went with a boy, so she was gonna go. So she cooks up this deal that I would go to this dance with Harry, or Harry would go with me. And so we went together from then on until I went into training. And for a year or so when I was in training I went with him. 129 JV: So Harry, what was his last name? JG: Wardell. And the reason he came to Lockport was because he was interested in YMCA work, and he got a job working at the Y, and until he got that job, and enough so he could live by himself, he lived at our house. (My mother had said he could stay there, and my father had six kids. But my mother said... (tape cut off) 130 JV: Ok, now why was he staying at your house again? JG: Because my mother had said he could stay there until he could find someplace to stay, and he just sort of kept on staying, and that's when my father didn't like the idea. She just said, well, at least we know where she is, let's cool it for a bit. It's when she said "Familiarity breeds contempt, and maybe it will work." And it did, eventually, but I went with him for a long time after that.

I fell in love with Robert the minute I saw him. In fact, I fell in love before I saw him, because Lucy Gould Weaver had a picture, his graduation picture when he graduated from the accounting school at Bentley. She had that when she came in training. No, he sent it to her when we were in training, and that's when I fell in love with him.

Bonnie did a teaching project when she was at UT(?), and she taught at an elementary school in a little small town outside of Knoxville. And one of the teachers that she was involved with, her name was Lloyd. And Bonnie got talking to her, and she asked her where she was from, and she came from "some little small town up in New York, around Buffalo," she thought it was. And sure enough, that's where it was. Her husband is a lawyer in Knoxville, and he also is on the UT teaching faculty. So I've never met him, but apparently they go back and forth between... Bill and his wife lived in, oh, Hendersonville, because it's just south of Ashville, and that is close to this school winter camp that Carol went to in the last semester in February. I haven't seen them at all since Helen died. Now, I'm sort of mixed up, aren't I? 141 JV: Now what was the relation, there, was that their son? JG: Yeah, the lawyer was their son. And I did know that they had a son, but I never thought about it until she ran into his wife. They got a big kick out of it. In fact, I got sort of a kick out of it because this Mrs. Lloyd, the teacher, told Bonnie that they had gone to Hendersonville for a weekend to see them and she told her father-in-law that she had run into the daughter of one of his old girlfriends. And she said I don't think his new wife was too happy about it. 142 JV: His new wife? JG: Yeah, well, this is after he'd married. Helen had died, you see, a couple three years ago. Helen and I were good friends. That part was all right. But this new wife didn't particularly care about bringing up his old girlfriends. Who was a widow, incidentally. 143 JV: That's funny. JG: I got quite a kick out of it.

He took me to dinner at a nice restaurant, and I always thought I loved lobster. And I don't know why he felt so posh, but anyway we went to this restaurant and I ordered lobster, and you know how they serve lobster? They just broil it and cut it open and broil it and put bread crumbs and stuff on the top? And it's in the shell, and you're supposed to just, you know, take these little forks and pick it out. I didn't know what I was doing, all I did was eat the bread crumbs. I left all the good lobster. (Laughs) It was awful when I finally learned how to eat lobster.

JV: No time for clubs? What about church, did you have time to go to church, because you had to work? JG: Very seldom. If we worked in the morning, we went to work at 7:00 and worked until 1:00. And this minister that I told you about, I can't remember for sure but I think he was still in Rochester - well, I know he was because he was in Rochester when we got married. He was still there, but I didn't even get to his church because it was way downtown. In fact, it was beyond downtown, and we just didn't have time. If we did have Sunday morning off, we had to be back and have our dinner before 1:00 because we had to go on duty at 1:00 and work until 7:00. So there really wasn't much time for anything. We didn't have much social life. We did occasionally, there was a conservatory that trained Baptist ministers, or mostly Baptist, I think it was. I can't remember the name of it, but I'll think of it later. But sometimes we would go out with some of the guys that went to the.... In fact, Lucy went with two or three of them over there. I went with one for a while, but it was all very plutonic stuff because they didn't have much time either. There again, people were still feeling the results of the Depression. It took a long time for lots of people to get back on their feet, so they didn't have all that much money either, most of them.

JV: Did you guys take any family vacations - I know this was right in the middle of the Depression, but did you ever get to take any family vacations other than, you know, to your grandparent's house at Thanksgiving? JG: Not any really...trips, I believe, because my father was tied up in the restaurant. It was closed on Sunday, but a lot of his ordering and getting things ready for the following week he had to do on Sunday because it was the only time he had. He had men who worked for him, but he really couldn't take too much time away from the store. So that was until '33, well then, the Depression hit and we didn't have the money to do anything anyway. So the only thing we really did was we'd - my mother would go down to the lake with us. We'd rent a cottage, because all 5 kids that went would help pay for it, and sometimes my father would come down and stay. But I don't think of any other.... I remember my mother and father going to New York one weekend, but that was way back in the '20s when I was little. But for them really to take any extended trips, I don't think so. My father always - not always, but for several years he went to Canada for a couple weeks. It was way up over around Michigan, up north of Michigan. He'd go with these men that were Masons, there were about 5 of them that went up there every year to fish, but they never took any women, it was all just the men. And my mother just didn't care that much about going anyplace, I don't think she ever went, really. I can't think of any place that they went. If I rack my brain, something might come to me, but there sure isn't anything that stood out plainly. 184 JV: Maybe it wasn't such a big deal back then. JG: It wasn't back then. Really, in fact that trip that they took to New York over a weekend was a big thing, it was a really big thing

we had friends that were in this group that they went around with. They had a cottage up in Canada, and the man of the family had a jewelry business in Lockport, so he would take his wife and his daughter up on a weekend and then just leave them there, and then he'd go up the next weekend. And we'd gone up there a couple summers, I remember doing that, and stayed maybe a week or so. 185 JV: Up in that cottage. JG: Yeah. I remember, we did do that. 186 JV: Just you and your mom? JG: Yeah. I don't think my dad ever went up there. But I hadn't thought of that in years and years and years. But that was something that was a real treat. 187 JV: When you went down to the lake, who did you go with? You said it was you and 5 other kids, or you and four other kids. JG: Yeah, girls that I went around with. This was the group that I went around with mostly in high school. They all thought my mother was great, she got along real well with all of them. She didn't put up with a lot of, I mean, we all behaved ourselves, but she didn't get upset when we got silly and fooling and laughed and giggled and all that stuff. She handled that pretty good, and they thought that was great. They were always real happy to have my mother chaperone. The same thing people say now the mothers of the other kids would say to her, "How do you stand them?" But she'd say, "They don't really bother me."

But I quit going to the.... Well, I told you we went to the Methodist church when we went to Middleport, and I just - I was baptized by immersion in the Baptist church when I was twelve, and I never took my membership out of that church in all those years. Even..... I joined the Methodist church in Middleport, but just by affirmation of faith, not by taking my letter from the church. But when we moved on the Day Road, the minister, whom I really didn't know, and was not very well liked in Lockport, came down to see me because we still went to the Methodist church because that's where the kids were brought up in Middleport and they still went to school in Middleport. That's where all their friends were. So we kept that one. So anyway, this minister came down and he told me that he felt that as long as I was now in the area that I should go to the Baptist church and support the Baptist church, and wold not listen to my reason. So he told me that he just didn't feel that they should carry me on the rolls of the Baptist church any more. That's why I was no longer a Baptist. 198 JV: Just because you were..... JG: Because they were carrying me on the rolls as a member of the Baptist church. Well, as far as I was concerned, I was a Christian of the Baptist Church. I did not agree with that at all. But he felt that if they were carrying me on that church, I should support it. 199 JV: And because you weren't supporting it by going, he felt.... JG: By going there and pledging and giving money to the church, then he didn't want me on the rolls. Which was not a very Christian thing to do, I didn't think. Because I told him I was proud of the fact that I had been baptized in that church. And I didn't want to change. 200 JV: So you still felt like you were allied with the Baptist faith? JG: Yes. 201 JV: Even though you were going to the church that your family.... JG: Yes. Because like I told you, you can be a Christian, whatever church you go to. But he was not a very popular minister, he didn't last very long, I'll tell you. I never made a fuss about it, but I just would not go to that church when we stopped going to the Middleport Methodist church.

We always sat in the same pew, right down in front, so the kids had to behave. I sang in choir for a lot of the years, so Father had all the kids, which is probably just as well because they behaved much better for him than they did for me.

I can still see us, we just had this little bitty small apartment, and we had two couches together in a triangle shape, and they doubled as beds, but Dordy slept in one and I slept in the other. But we were sitting there because we only had one leather chair, and we were sitting on it listening to the news when Pearl Harbor was bombed. So that night, I don't imagine we got much sleep, but we decided to get married.

I liked the operating room better than any, that was my favorite place to work. But there again, the operating room is entirely different than it is now because we weren't allowed to scrub - well, for real simple operations we would scrub, but we weren't allowed.... The woman who was superintendent of nurses, who ran the nursing school, had no use for the operating room, she hated it. And anybody who liked the operating room wasn't much nursing material as far as she was concerned. So there wasn't a great deal of operating room in our curriculum, but what we did have I liked. And the other thing that made it special for me is because at that point, there was not too much brain surgery being done. And there was a doctor there who did nothing but brain surgery, and he had his own scrub nurse and the woman who was the head nurse in the operating room knew how interested I was, and they got this Dr. VanWagonen to agree that I could come and stand on a stool on an operating room and watch him operate. He hated students anywhere around, and he always could tell a student because we wore black stockings. But for some reason or another his scrub nurse and the head nurse were good friends, and she convinced him and I went in and watched him operate, do a brain operation. I thought I was pretty special, I'll tell you. And that made me really want to do a lot of nursing.

I was upstairs with her one afternoon. I was holding Bonnie, and by then Bonnie was 5 or 6 months old, so she turned, I was holding her and she turned and sort of looked at my mother and put her hands out because she'd remembered her wheeling her around in the wheelchair, and she wanted my mother to take her. And I said "No, babe, she can't, grandma can't take you." And she says, "I damn well can!" and she put her arms out and she took her and had her on her shoulder. But that's one of the last things that she ever did.

Robert put David up on top of the refrigerator, sat him up there and let him fall down in his arms, and my mother had a fit! She let this whoop out of her, and she screamed because she thought he was going to fall. And he got so angry, and he took David and went over to my mother and he just threw him at her practically, put him in her arms, and he said, "You take care of him, I'll take care of Sharon!"

Robert had decided that I had so much to say about how we spent money, and because we never seemed to have any, and he just finally sitting at the dining room table one night, and he said, "Since you know so damn much about it, you do it." And he handed me the checkbook and all the bills, and he said, "You pay 'em." And his favorite expression was, when I would say something as far as, "We've got to do this," or "We've got to do that," he would say, "And what do you expect me to use, Chicklets?" That's exactly the way he used to say it. So that's how I acquired the financial handling of the Gould family

he decided he could do it better, and he proved to himself that he couldn't, so I got back to it again. No, that isn't quite fair because after he retired and took it over is when he began to slip, and we think that he had all these little bleeders in the back of his brain a lot longer than anybody ever knew anything about, and it just began affecting the way he thought and what he did. But he sure as heck couldn't... Some of the checks, well, he would have died if he'd known what he was doing, really. The checkbook would be an absolute mess! He'd balance it finally, but he had a terrible doing it. And that was just so un-Robert, it was awful. But anyway, I finally took that back again and relieved him of it. We had some great times, I'll tell ya.

Jim and Jean Bartrum were there, and somebody made some crack about my being pregnant, and I was standing there serving something, and I said, "Well, I'll tell ya, if you want to know who's really responsible for it, it's that guy right there!"

Lots and lots of people knew him, and I think that made him quite happy. But he never was a person who - he never cared about making a lot of money. In fact, he could have made a lot more money than he did. He never would push people. After we started in the business, we'd have payroll to meet, you know, this is after a couple three years, and we had people working for us. He'd have a payroll to meet, and we didn't have any money, and he'd call a client and he'd say, "I need so much." The client would owe him a sizeable amount of money. He'd say, "I need so much to meet payroll this week, can you do it?" That's how he functioned. He was satisfied doing it, so, it was all right. I never wanted for anything really, so I wouldn't complain.

Robert never did. If he didn't collect it, he didn't collect it. And he retired from that business with people owing him a lot of money.

he was always willing to do anything. He used to take my washing, I had the washer in the kitchen. So I would do a load of wash in the morning, and he would drag it upstairs to the attic - heavy, wet clothes - hang them up in the attic, and then when they were dry bring them down for me. He always did that. And he did all the work outside that he could handle, and he used to come in in the summertime because he had just a little fringe of hair around his ears and around the back. And he'd come in and there would be little lines of blood streaking all down from his hair line where the fruit flies would bite him. He was just used to it, didn't bother him. He'd just wipe it off. Because he liked to be outdoors, he always gardened. He always did all the gardening when they lived in Geneva. He dug up Grandma's azaleas, she had. No, not azaleas, I'll tell you in a little while. But anyway, she had these big, big flowers, and they had to be dug up in the fall, replanted in the spring, he did all of that. all of the marking and everything. He was a very patient man. The only time I ever got really impatient with him was when I'd come home from work, he always wanted to be there so he could do anything that I needed done. And if I'd sweep the floor, he was always there with a dustpan to hold for me to sweep.

he wanted to die. Because I told you he used to get himself out of that bed, and he'd say, I'd ask him, "Why do you do that, Robert?" "Because I want to die! Kill myself!"

David had a paper route, and it was in the wintertime of course, and there wasn't anybody that wanted to take over a morning paper route in the wintertime. So Bob and I used to take him back and forth to Middleport every morning to deliver his papers.

father was home, and that was bad, that was bad. Well, I remember one time - I can't remember what she had done, but Robert thought she had lied to him - this was Bonnie. He thought that she lied to him, I think, but anyway, he had to go to Rochester on business, he was having lunch, and he made Bonnie ride down - it was a hot summer day - and he made her ride to Rochester with him, sit in the car while he had lunch with this guy, and I was very upset about that. Bonnie has never forgotten it, because it was very, very harsh treatment, I thought.

I can remember bringing your mother up on the grass in front of the house in Middleport and taking down her pants and spanking her because she was whittling her doll buggy up and down the middle of the street, and I had told her no, she wasn't to do that. There was a sidewalk that she was supposed to walk on, but she liked the middle of the street. And I can remember spanking her for that, because I had told her no, and she just went ahead and did it anyway.

I can tell you of another instance that I don't think was very fair, and Linda remembers this one. We had a round, one of those plastic pools, and I can't remember all the details, except that the gal next door who had kids our kids' age. The kids had gone over there after school because I wasn't home, and it had been arranged, it was ok, but Bob had told the kids that they were not to go in the pool until we were home. Well, Vivian didn't know that, and Vivian told the kids that they could go in because it was where she could see them, and they couldn't get hurt in that thing anyway. But it was the fact that Bob told them that they couldn't go in the pool. He didn't wait to find out that Vivian had said they could go in. He came home, and Linda was in the water, and he spanked her. And she's always felt that it was very unfair. And it was when you know all the circumstances, but the point is that he had told her not to go in, and that's what he knew, and she did it anyway, and that's why he spanked her.

We went to Canada, and we went over in the boat to the island. Barbara jumped out of the boat and went tearing up the dock, and she slipped or tripped or something at the end of the dock, and her toe got caught in the slats in the dock and she dislocated her big toe. So here she is looking down at this toe that's sticking right up straight or hanging down, I don't know which, but Robert got there first and he knew what had happened so he just pulled the thing and put it back in joint. And it hurt terribly when he did it, but he was the one that had the sense to do it, I probably never could have done it.

We had a little radio. There was a small table, about like this, and it had leaves that came up on the end so you could use it for other things, but the radio was right in the front so it looked like a draw with legs on it. And the kids used to lay down under that and listen to the radio programs. And they had kids programs, don't ask me what they were because I can't remember, but I used to do the same thing when I was a kid. We had this big battery thing, and they had some program on at 5:00 at night that I always listened to. This is going way back again, and I can remember, they had a contest for kids to submit names for something, and I can't remember what the name was, but the prize was a little cocker spaniel - no, poodle - and I was so sure that I had won that dog. JG: When I didn't win that dog, my heart was broken, because I was at the same stage that Rosanne is now [11], she wants a dog. And my mother did not want a dog - we didn't have a dog. And I thought if I won that dog, I would have it because she wouldn't say no. And she probably wouldn't have, but I didn't win the dog and it was very heartbreaking. I was so sure I had. I can remember honestly the feeling, and I cried, and I was just heartbroken. But eventually, we got dogs and I made up for it later on in life.

my father had left Helen his insurance. And Bob and I borrowed that money from her, and paid her so much a month, we paid the interest for it every month. And she ended up in the hospital, and she needed - she really should have gone in a nursing home. And I said, we hadn't paid her back yet, and I said, "We'll pay you that money, put her in a nursing home." "Well, we would be using up all that money then." But the thing, what really happened was that when we borrowed that money from Helen, it gave her some income on that money because we paid her more interest than she could get in the bank. And she said when we borrowed it, and she had it in her will at one point, that we would keep on paying her interest on that money, and when she died it was going to go back to me because it was originally from my father. Well, they wouldn't take it to put her in a nursing home, and before she died, they got another lawyer and said that she had changed her will and needed that money. So we paid it back before she died. She lived with Betty, the younger one, so they got her to change her will and had us pay her the money back. Which I guess was all right, and it was the fact that they wouldn't use it to put her in a nursing home that bugged me, and their attitude about, you know, they would spend all that money and it would all be gone. At that point, they didn't know that she had said and put in her will that it was to go to me. And so it sort of caused a little bit of hard feeling because I didn't think they were being fair to her. They couldn't take care of her. Dan was sick - it was a real bad situation. I don't know. So we never were too close after that.

We didn't have a new car when he came home from the service, and they were offering Veterans some of these surplus stuff. So he hitchhiked down to New York, borrowed the money from my father to buy this Jeep, and my mother thought it was the stupidest thing that ever was, that we should have a crazy old Jeep, lugging a kid around in a Jeep because David was little. In fact, it was one that just had curtains on the side, you know. And we drove to Middleport. But to backtrack a little bit, he had to have transportation back and forth to school, because Niagara University was in Niagara Falls. And so anyway, we went to Geneva for Christmas when Sharon was little, and she rode in the bed part of that Jeep with a canvas over her. She was in her basket - we had a great big huge basket that all the kids were lugged around in until they went in a crib, because it was, oh, that long and that wide, it was a good big one. And so she was in that basket with all this canvas stuff over her so she wouldn't freeze to death. Every once in a while we'd stop and make sure she was all right, getting enough air. (laughs) Oh, my mother had a fit, she thought it was terrible that we would do a think like that. We got there all right, she survived.

And I remember one day, the girl next door that Barbara played with, they were playing and they went into Sharon and Linda's bedroom. And we had just bought them a new bedroom suite, and had a big chest with double drawers in the thing, hard maple. It was really very pretty with a great big mirror. And I don't know where they got the perfume, but they got into some perfume or cologne someplace, and the bottle got wet, and they set it on top of the chest and there's a ring there to this day. It was Barbara, and you'd better believe the girls were pretty mad about that. I think of it every time I looked at it, because Bob and I eventually took over that furniture.

I can remember one report she had, she was using the encyclopedia on something - I think it was for history or social studies, one of the two. And she thought she had to get way involved in the thing, and get deep, deep in this situation, whatever it was, and her father got very angry with her because she was up practically all night doing it. Of course, part of that was probably procrastination, waiting until the last minute, but he did not like that at all, and he got very, very angry. He talked to the teacher, and the teacher said she just went way too deep into it, she wasn't expected to do that. But that's a good example of Sharon.

we had a good time taking her out to school, because we all went. I don't know about David - yes, he did too, because we stopped at Reno. And Bonnie was very angry because she wasn't 12 yet, and she couldn't go into the casinos. I don't know what they had to be, but she just wasn't quite up there, and she didn't like that at all. No, that was a good trip. I think we went to St. Louis first and then flew from there down through Oklahoma to Los Angeles, and if I'm not mistaken, that's the time we flew into Oklahoma, and there was a fire alert on the runway because either they had not been able to pull up the landing gear when we left St. Louis, or we couldn't get it down, I can't remember which. But they were all prepared for a fire. And their father knew it, I didn't. And I don't know whether the kids knew it either, but we found out afterwards. We were lucky, I guess. Nothing happened, everything went fine, but they were ready for it if it did. Which made you feel kinda good. And then we spent a bit of time in Los Angeles, and I think we rented a car in Los Angeles and then went up to San Francisco and stopped at Weavers, and then drove over to school.

I can remember this incident with David, when he graduated. They were having a graduation party or something, and this friend of his, his parents had a place, a cottage down at the lake, and so they were going to go down there and have a party. And his father let him take the Cadillac, and of course the Cadillac was the pride of our lives, you know. So he drove down to the lake with some kids in the car, and I don't know whether it was on the way down there, or they got out and went out to play chicken, and David left because he was so afraid something was going to happen to that car. So he left and came home. Which I thought - especially a high school graduation and stuff - I thought that proved that he showed quite a bit of responsibility.

Mr. Cutting, who was the main partner in Graft, Cutting, and Coit. And he was the one who, when they merged with Pete Marwick, was the partner for a short time before he retired. Now he didn't retire until he was 70, but when he retired from Pete Marwick, Robert offered and insisted that Warren take a little - in fact, we moved our offices so he could have it, have an office. And he had an office, a room in our suite of offices, just because he was so used to working, so used to being downtown and involved with people, that he'd just come and go as he pleased. I mean, sometimes he'd be there all day long, other times he wouldn't be in for two or three days. But he had a place he could go. And I always felt that he felt that maybe Roger should or would do that for him, and he didn't. And I think it bothered him. He never said anything, but I think it bothered him a great deal. Because he would have gone back - he would have gone back just to sit up there and read a book, rather than sit home and be out of the mainstream. He wanted to see and keep abreast of what was going on. And it didn't happen. And I think that's one reason retirement was so difficult for him.

But the night that she died, she just - late in the afternoon, she just opened her eyes. I can see her laying there in bed now. She was in a hospital bed, and she just opened her eyes. She looked at me. I was doing something for her, and she stared at me, right fixed, she didn't move her eyes or anything, just stared at me. And I said, "Mother, what do you want? You want something, don't you?" You could tell by her eyes. And I said, "You want Dad?" And I gathered that that's what she wanted, so I said, "Well, you just hold on, he'll be here because it's almost 5:00," and he'd get there shortly after 5:00. So she did. I stayed with her, and he got home, and he went up and sat with her. And she tried, all that time, from 5:30 on 'til about 8:30 or 9:00 before she died. Her eyes were opened when he got home, and then she just sort of slipped into unconsciousness. But she had a hold of his hand, and she hung onto his hand until she died. In fact, I can remember the whole scenario. You know, it really wasn't very easy. But it always made me feel good because, I mean, that was a cleansing, a forgiveness, everything. Because she had felt so guilty about my brother. And he, I mean, he held a little bit of grudge because - he held it against her, I think. He tried not to, but I think he did a little bit. And she, of course, blamed herself. But I think it was a very good thing in the way she did it. It wasn't easy, but it was still good, if you know what I mean.

I remember the night that he was killed, my mother had three women over there playing bridge, and he came home on his motorcycle to tell her that he was going up to Niagara Falls. And I can remember hanging out the window - there was a window in the living room that was on this little front porch that we had. I opened the window and was hanging out talking to him because I needed - something was going on the next day, and I had 20 cents, I think, and I needed 25. So I conned him out of a nickel, and he gave it to me. I can remember after he died - that was in the days when they had funerals in the home, people were laid out in their caskets at home - and I had gotten, I don't know whether it was the same nickel, but I owed him that nickel as far as I was concerned. And when they brought his casket home, I put the nickel in his hand because I owed it to him and I didn't to have him go to heaven without that nickel. I can remember that very plainly. And I got very upset with my grandmother because I thought she had moved it. I had it up on the mantle by that clock that you have out here, and I went to get it and I couldn't find it. I thought she had dusted or something and knocked it off. But I found it eventually, and put it in his hand.

The Life and Times of Jean Gould