| Summary: This is an interview of Jean Dwyer
Fox (names changed at interviewee’s request). Jean Fox
was born on December 27, 1924 in Toledo, Ohio. She grew up in
a large family. Her mother died in childbirth with her ninth
child when Jean was 13. Jean, upon finishing eighth grade, was tasked
with taking care of her youngest brother. Her father was a grocer
and money was tight. Most of the children worked in the store
in addition to attending school, but it fell to Jean and her sister
Ellen to take care of the house and the babies. When she was
seventeen—immediately after graduating from high school—Ms.
Fox began to study nursing at the Mercy School of Nursing. She
married her husband, Scott, in 1944, two and a half years after he
proposed. She worked as a nurse until her husband took a job
with Corning Glass in Pennsylvania and they moved there from Ohio.
They moved around a lot after that because of Scott’s job.
Jean Fox had five children. In her interview, Jean Dwyer Fox discusses work as a child and later as a nurse and her educational opportunities. She also talks about motherhood (1)(2) and her experiences early in life with her siblings. She talks about the impact of technology on her life, the women’s rights movement, the Great Depression (1), World War Two (1), abortion, and birth control. Transcript of Interview by Erin Fish of Jean Dwyer Fox March 3, 2004 Erin Fish: When and where were you born? Jean Dwyer Fox: In Toledo, Ohio on December the 27th, 1924. EF: Where did you grow up? JF: In Toledo, Ohio. EF: What was your life like as a child? JF: I was very busy, my mother died of childbirth with the ninth child. They put him in the hospital until I graduated from eighth grade, and then they brought him home from the hospital, and I had him for the summer. EF: What did you do to take care of him? What was your role? JF: Everything, I’d get up at night with the baby, I…walked the floor with the baby, I fed him, I taught him how to crawl and to walk. Anything a mother would do, I did for the baby. I had been working for a neighbor as a nanny after school until my mother’s death, and then my sister took over my job and I came home and took care of the baby. We prepared meals, we did dishes, we cleaned the house, we did the washing…. [Hesitation] EF: Were you still attending school at this point? JF: Well, in the summer, see, we were off. They tried bringing in housekeepers but none stayed very long at one time. When we went to school, there was somebody with my... [Brother] Bob, but when he became four years old, we couldn’t find a housekeeper, so a teacher friend put him in her kindergarten class, and he was in kindergarten a couple years, and then he started first grade. EF: So, what would you say your family’s economic status was if you were able to hire housekeepers? Were you well off or just making it? JF: No, just making it, and not making it sometimes. Had trouble paying the electric bill, the coal for the furnace…the groceries, my father had grocery stores so we had groceries for free come into the house all the time, and it took a lot of groceries. EF: So, you had plenty of food but as far as the upkeep of the house, that was more difficult? JF: Much more difficult. With nine children, you know, we really did try to keep the living room presentable and the dining room we used for all of our meals, with the big table. There were seven bedrooms and they were divided up in different ways at different times of our lives. EF: What was your relationship like with your father, since your mother had died? JF: Well, he worked twelve hour days, and he was never home. He would come home unexpectedly to check on us, so we never know when he would pull in the driveway…he was stern, but he had to be, being responsible for nine children, and he did very little if any care of the little ones…because Jim was only two when my mother died, so it was all up to us to keep everything going. EF: When you say “us,” which siblings are you talking about? JF: Well…mostly Ellen I guess, Ellen and I. Marie worked at the grocery store…she was a brain and so she worked the cash register very easily. All the little ones stocked shelves in the evening, sometimes after school, depending on the time of year…everybody reported to the grocery store most of the time, but whoever was responsible for the babies, so I did not work at the grocery store nearly as many hours as the others did. EF: Because you had more responsibility with the kids? JF: Yeah, because I was kind of responsible for the food getting on the table, three meals a day, and taking care of the little ones. EF: What age did they start working at the grocery store? JF: Oh, stocking shelves, like four, five. EF: What kind of relationship did you have with your siblings? JF: Oh, very good. None of us had very much, so we all helped the other ones…at school, we had mission collections, especially during Advent and Lent, and every time somebody was supposed to take something to school, they sent fudge, and I would make the fudge. I would go home on my lunch our, make the fudge, and sent that child back to school with the fudge that could be sold for pennies…often they’d raffle off a cake, and often, one of us won the cake, so that’s about the only time ever had dessert…. We had basic foods, a lot of meat and potatoes, like all the Irish people had, the big meal was at noon. EF: Was there a large Irish community where you lived, and is that what you connected with? Or, was it more like a large Catholic community? JF: No, it wasn’t at all. Very few Catholics…my father’s partner was his boyhood friend in Plattsburgh, New York…and he became a lawyer and the two of them came out. My father married my mother and got on the train and went to Toledo to start his life in the grocery store. Before that, he was principal of a normal school…that was like a high school. EF: Was it difficult being an Irish Catholic in Toledo if there weren’t many other people there that were? JF: No, we never thought about it. We attended public schools in our early years because my mother taught school also. Upon her death…no, no, I started Catholic school when I was in fourth grade. That’s about when anybody started after me…as in fourth grade, and we had to walk about…four miles, and home for lunch and back again. When we were old enough to skate, we skated, and every Easter instead of getting candy, we all got new skates that would last until the snow started to come in the fall. EF: In the school that you attended, what kind of schooling did you receive? JF: I would say, very good schooling. EF: Was it primarily academic schooling? And was there any distinction to the schooling that the boys would receive as opposed to the girls? JF: Ah, no, no. We were all in one big classroom. I would guess we were about forty to a classroom. And…in public school it was the same way. I can remember…having to go to a trailer in the public school, for one of my early years, you know? EF: Overall, looking back on your life as a child, what would you say your role in your family was? JF: Well, I don’t know the terminology you’d use today. Kinda a pacifier. I kept everybody together, I think…I still do to this day. If there’s a problem in the family I’m one of the first ones to hear about it, and they always know I’ll find some way to settle it…I have eight sisters and brothers, and all but one still living today. EF: When did you decide that you wanted to be a nurse? JF: That’s the only thing I’d thought of all my life and I knew absolutely nothing about nursing at all. I don’t know why I wanted to be a nurse. I knew we had no money, and I imagine, they told me, they gave me a poor girl’s scholarship. But, I really think my very rich godmother probably paid for my tuition, which was fifty dollars for the year. EF: Do you remember how old you were? JF: Yeah, I was seventeen. EF: So, was that after high school then? JF: Immediately after, we had no summer vacation. It was during WWII, and I think I was off like ten days or something from the graduation date ‘till I started nursing. EF: What type of nursing school did you go to? JF: Well, at that time there was only one type, it was general nursing…you went in as a student, you had to work so many hours every day, plus all your class work. It was very tough for me, but I was never a good student, and I got through on a wing and a prayer, I tell you. I probably was the lowest…I held the lowest grade all the time, through all the two and a half years of schooling. We didn’t have much vacation, so instead of three years we got through in two and a half. EF: What was so tough about nursing for you? JF: For me, the studies. I loved the people. I thought I was very good at nursing…no money to ever go to a show or anything, unless I had a date for it, before I graduated. Once I graduated, I had a paycheck, which wasn’t much. I made five dollars a day, and I was responsible with my friend, who was my boss, who was about three years older than I am. We worked six days a week and we were responsible for about fifty men. If I was on duty she didn’t have to be if something came up, and also if she was on duty, then I could take the day off if I became ill or something. Otherwise you both worked six days a week. She always wanted off on Sundays, so I usually had to work Sundays. EF: You said you were responsible for fifty men, what type of tasks were you responsible for? JF: Well, I had student nurses under me and graduates. I was responsible for their entire care. You had to go…with every doctor to see a patient at that time. A doctor never went into a room without a nurse being with him. You had to know everything about that patient of his since the last time he visited (the day before usually)…and I didn’t find it a hardship. Walking the halls were as probably as hard as I found…I really felt very capable by the time I graduated, and I took the summer off because I was very tired of nursing at that time as a student, and my father promised me a trip to New York City to see his sister when I graduated. So, I worked at the grocery store all summer and towards the end of the summer he and I went to New York City and then up to Plattsburgh. My mother was from Lake Placid, and we also visited her family. EF: Going back to nursing, what effect did the decision have on your family? What did they think about your decision to be a nurse? JF: Well, I think they were very definitely all for it. It was the only thing I had talked about all my life. So no one ever expected anything differently from me. EF: Was it hard on them for you to leave the family, since you took care of so many people? JF: It probably was, but I didn’t realize at the time it was a hardship. But…I’m sure it was, because you had to go in and live in the nursing home, and you were only off half a day when you were a student, and sometimes you didn’t even get half a day off, week after week. It was a lot of hard work. You were always very, very tired. EF: Were most of the nurses that you went to school with females? Were there any males? JF: Yeah, there were no males. EF: What was life like in the school when you were living there? Was it social? Was it like the dorms today? JF: Probably a lot like the dorms today, only they had bought a large mansion, and that’s where they put us. I had two girls, the first year, from the same town. They knew each other, but they weren’t friends, and myself in the one very large room…and you were responsible…you didn’t have to do your uniforms, your uniforms were done for you by the big laundry, but any other parts of your clothing you had to be responsible for yourself, in between everything else…. Most rooms held at least two, and some four. There were forty-two of us started, and nineteen of us graduated. It was very hard, very hard. EF: What was the name of the school you were at? JF: Mercy School of Nursing, run by the Mercy Nuns. EF: When did you quit nursing, and why? JF: I…well, I’ll go back. I worked until middle of fall and…a boyfriend was discharged from the service and he came to visit me…and we didn’t get along at all. So, I sent him back to Pennsylvania, and I was also dating one or two other fellows. But, then he came back and pleaded his case after a few months, and we decided to be married in about two months, in the very late fall. EF: What year was that? JF: …I believe it was ‘42. I’ve been married 55 years, but then I didn’t get married, you see. My father had a heart attack when I told him. I told him in the afternoon when I picked up the groceries for supper that I was thinking about taking a ring from this boy that came from Pennsylvania. He didn’t discuss it with me, he said, “what do you want to cook for supper?” With that, he gave me the groceries. I went back home to cook food enough for ten of us for supper. After we had eaten, but I didn’t have to do dishes that night, he and I met a group of my friends for the evening. We went dancing and so forth, and then I stayed at my best friends over night, because she only lived about two blocks from the hospital, and I could get up early in the morning and walk to work. So, at 6 o’clock, the phone rang, and it was my sister Marie, who is the one older than I am, saying that dad had had a heart attack. I said, “Who’s on the ambulance?” because I knew all the ambulance drivers, and I said, “Tell him not to worry about calling a doctor, I’ll go immediately to the hospital and I’ll have a doctor waiting for him.” I think I had like six doctors in the emergency room waiting for my father because they knew this was a man raising nine children by himself, and what would happen to all of us, especially the younger ones, if he died. So, it was a very severe heart attack, and I ‘specialed’ him for days, and then I told Scott to go home, because I had no idea when I would have any time to even see him, let alone go out with him, and I told him to, “forget about us getting engaged because I have no idea when or if I’m ever gonna marry ya.” With that he decided to go back to Pennsylvania. Then he decided to go back to college, so he enrolled in Carnegie Tech and I continued nursing. It took me about six months to get my father on his feet again, that he was able to work at all at the grocery store. In the meantime everybody helped in every way. At that time, we were used to hard work, so there was no problem. I went back to my seven to three job at the hospital, on the men’s wing, and just continued working. It was two and half years later before I decided I would get married. I really wanted to wait another year and save some money, but he had been waiting two and a half years, he said for us to get married, he didn’t want to wait any longer, so we got married on a shoestring, had no money at all. I saved a little money and bought a couch and maybe a chair and a table, a kitchen set maybe, because I was only making five dollars a day, and that didn’t add up to very much, even in those days, so I went to Pennsylvania to live. He took a job with Corning Glass upon graduation, and we stayed with Corning Glass our entire life, moving fourteen times over the many years. EF: So, when he took the job with Corning Glass, is that when you stopped nursing? JF: That’s when I had to stop nursing, because I was nursing in Ohio and he took a job in Pennsylvania, and he really didn’t want…he was tired of coming in for a weekend and spending half the time with me either working or sleeping or putting up my hair and taking it down, and he just didn’t want me to work. I was extremely tired by the time the wedding came because I had put it all together…oh, my friends really did, I shouldn’t take any credit for it. But anyway, I just, I was very tired, and we hadn’t been dating that much, so we just wanted to go out and have a good time for awhile, which we did. EF: When did you meet your husband? JF: I met him my freshmen year of nurse’s training…I didn’t believe in blind dates. My girlfriend lived at the university, in the dorm, where the cadets were stationed, Air Force cadets, and she wanted to fix me up and I wasn’t interested. I was dating some other…and I wasn’t interested in dating someone I didn’t know. That week, the nun told me I had to take the half day for the following week…well, I didn’t have a date or anything, so I called my friend Phyllis and asked her if she had plans, and she said, “no,” and I said, “ well, how about getting together and we can go to the show?” and she said, “well you got a new suit for Easter,” (which I had), and she said, “why don’t we get all dressed up and go to the show?” And I said, “Fine” So, I got dressed up and took a bus out to the university and I knew her roommates and she said she wouldn’t be there, but her roommates would be there. We sat around and talked, and then she came in, and she said it would just take her twenty minutes and she’d be ready to go, and in the meantime, the loudspeaker, “Miss Fog, [that was her last name] your dates are waiting here.” That’s the first I had any inkling that I had a date for the evening, I could have killed her. She comes out, and says “don’t say a word, they’re waiting already, we have nothing to say to each other, I’ll explain it all later.” Well, she already had a date when I had called her she didn’t want to tell me that. I met him, but we didn’t let on I was a nurse ‘til the end of the evening, and he asked if he could call me, and I said, “You know, don’t bother because there’s only one phone for all of us, and I’m never there in the evening.” I said, “I had a wonderful time, but let’s forget about it.” So, with that, every night he would call and every night I wasn’t home. So, the girls said they’d stay off the phone at three minutes till ten (they shut them off at ten), I’d have to be in at that time, because I had to be in by ten, so that’s how he got through. They all told me, “you have to give him a date, you have to give him a date.” So, I think I gave him a date the following weekend or something, then I saw him till he left town, and then his group was in Columbus at one point, they flew to Toledo, and I fixed up the other fellows with dates and we all went out on a Saturday night and had a wonderful time, and then they had to fly the plane back to Columbus again. I really had a real good time during nurse’s training, I really did. EF: What was dating like? What was the typical date like? JF: Well, with me it wasn’t too typical, because I never had a lot of time. Eating, I think that was my…I was always hungry. I didn’t even weigh a hundred pounds, but I didn’t like the hospital food. So, anytime you wanted to feed me, you had a date, and one fellow said to me one time, “you know I don’t mind paying for all this food, but do you realize that you never eat it after we order it.” I said, “Well I eat as much as I want to.” So, I said, “okay, I won’t order anymore food when I go out with you.” “No,” he said, that’s not what I meant, I just wish you’d eat more. He kept feeding me. I dated him right up to the time I became engaged because I was thinking about marrying him. He was a real…oh, he’d give me the heaven and earth, real nice guy, he had a beautiful convertible and a nice boat. I doubled with my girlfriend all the time. She dated his best friend, and so we did a lot of things together the four of us. EF: What made you decide to not marry him and to marry Scott instead? JF: Oh, just because I think he [Scott] was a little harder to get. I think the other guy laid the gold at my feet and he [Scott] wasn’t so easy. I think that’s the only reason, probably…I just, it was one of those things, I think that if I would have married the other fellow, I think I would have had a great life, too. But, I didn’t pick him and chose Scott, and I think my father had the hardest time because he thought I was marrying someone I didn’t know anything about, and he was probably right. EF: So, how long had you been dating when you told your father you were going to marry him? JF: Only when he’d come in from Pennsylvania and not very much. Of course, I dated him after we finally got together I dated about every weekend before he left town. Then, he came in from Columbus at different times, and then I went up to Columbus for something... probably a dance or something, and had a great time. Then he wanted me to come and meet his parents before he was shipped overseas, and I said this was kinda ridiculous, all this was done by letter because you couldn’t afford a phone call. I said, “You know, I’m not interested in meeting your parents,” and he had told me, one night while we were waiting for another couple to meet us, he says, “my mother would absolutely kill me if she knew I had a date with you tonight.” I said, “Well back up, does your mother know me?” He said, “no” and I said, “how can she be upset you’re dating me if she doesn’t even know me,” [He said,] “I was never allowed to date a Catholic girl in my lifetime, in high school she wouldn’t let me date anybody.” But he had a real close friend, he probably would have gotten married after high school, if the war hadn’t been there, he probably would have married the girl…a beautiful redhead, I never met her. I just…getting back to dating, it was mostly dinner…I never learned to ice skate, and went ice skating a couple times because I could never stay up on skates. Dancing, a lot of dancing, and I never really cared a lot about dancing, I went along with the crowd, you know, you didn’t dance that much, you spent most of your time talking and drinking a little bit. I did like my liquor. My father used whiskey for everything around the house, when any of us had a cold, we had whiskey. But, so I really enjoyed my liquor until I found out I was a diabetic and really shouldn’t be drinking, and that’s what told me something was wrong with me. I used to be able to hold my liquor, no problem at all, all at once, I came to the second drink and I thought, you feel it, what’s wrong with you. And that’s one of the first things I said to the doctor, “I don’t know what’s wrong with me, I used to be able to hold my liquor, and now on the second drink I know I’ve had some liquor.” But, they had terrible time diagnosing me, I kept going through the different tests with flying colors and it took years to pinpoint it. EF: When did they finally diagnose you? JF: ...it was not until I went to New York to live, it was when my daughter, Donna, started Bowling Green [State University]. They diagnosed it when my son, John was born, he was a ten and a half pound baby. I carried all of my boys ten months... my sister and I did, and the girls I only carried nine months. John was a ten and a half pounder and they sent a pediatrician to the house to examine him for me, and he took one look and he said, “They didn’t tell me you’re a diabetic.” I said, “Well I’m not,” and he said, “yes you are, they just haven’t diagnosed you yet. You’re definitely a diabetic.” That was the first time, but then I went back and passed the tests right after that again. I just didn’t feel good, and everybody said I was missing my daughter too much, that’s what was wrong with me. I said, “You know, I don’t really think so, I’m not much of a worrier or anything,” so the doctor said to me, he called me on the phone, he said, “Do you have plans for Monday?” I always had plans way ahead, and I said, “Doctor, why do you ask?” “Well, I wondered if you could come and stay in the office for about three hours and let me take some tests on you.” I said, “Well, I have a committee meeting, could I bring the other two girls and have a committee meeting in the office?” He said, “Yeah,” so that’s what I did, that’s how busy I was with everything, we held a committee meeting in his waiting room. EF: What committee was that? JF: Oh boy, it was usually a Catholic…it was probably Women’s Club for St. Mary’s and the church was in the next town. We didn’t have a church in our town, and they wanted to start a Catholic women’s group, and they asked if I could open my house to this and I said, “yes, but I don’t want any chairmanship or nothing,” [They said,] “no, no, you don’t have to.” Well, nobody else would be head of it. I had all these wonderful women that would help me and do anything, but they wouldn’t be in charge, so I took over as president and I stayed president for years because nobody would. But, they did all of the work. I didn’t do the work, they really did. But, it became kind of a social club, really, and our husbands were invited and we went out to dinner had one of these roving dinners where you started with appetizer one place, went to the next house for a big meal, dessert one place, after dinner drinks the other place. You’d use all these different homes, you know…and they were all fairly well-to-do, so you didn’t worry about the money that they spent. And I started…my mother helped the poor, I could remember that before she died, and I always thought you should help the poor, I suggested that when Christmas came upon us, we did [donated to] so many families. So, I think we started with ten or twelve families the first year. The year I had to move away, forty-two families we did out of my house. Isn’t that something? And we had seven gifts for every person, plus food for a week for that family. EF: How did your life change once you were married? JF: Well, the biggest thing was the pay check. I was paid every two weeks and that really sent me. But, my husband was paid every week, so that helped us. But, then he came home one time and said, “I got a raise but now I’ll get paid once a month.” I said, “go back and give him the raise, tell them we can’t live on money once a month” that’s how naive I was. But, of course, the rest of my life, I lived for the eighteenth, which was pay day…and I’ve been known to hit fifteen stops on pay day to get all the different shoes, dresses, any gifts that were needed for the next month, then made due with whatever money was left. That included the milk, everything. EF: What was your role in your family once you were married, as a wife and a mother? JF: Well, I had wanted to be a mother, and I was kinda a mother with my brothers. I just wanted to be the perfect mother, since my mother died the day after I was thirteen and I saw a lot in the hospital that shouldn’t have gone on. I wanted to be one of the most perfect mothers ever born, and that’s what I aimed to be most of my lifetime. I know I didn’t succeed, but I really tried hard. I never missed a ball game or sports event or anything any of my children were ever in, unless I was sick. That’s the only excuse. I never let any social obligations, unless it was the glassworks, interfere with any of my children’s things, and that very seldom ever did. We did a lot of entertaining in the years to come. My first party was…my husband wanted to entertain the people he worked with, so I came up with a chili supper. Well, we were born and raised when you go out to somebody else’s house, to take one helping, and no more. Well, I had this chili supper for everybody to have one helping. Well, we ran out of chili the first hour. I was so embarrassed that never happened the rest of my lifetime. We always had plenty of food waiting to be served, I was so embarrassed, I could have died. To this day, I don’t see why people go to a party and help themselves three times, they act like they haven’t eaten for days. I really think that...I think that I was brought up right, to just take one helping of someone else’s food…and that’s all I ever do, to this day. EF: Would you say that you had a social role in regard to your husband’s job? JF: I had to learn [the card game] bridge, that was the number one thing. I had never played cards in my life. His best man and his girlfriend came down every Saturday night, and we played bridge all evening and into the night. Every single Saturday night they came and we played bridge…and I still am not a good bridge player. I do not have any card sense. To this day, especially if I have a man for an opponent, I pray hard that I don’t get anything, so I don’t have to say anything, and nobody knows that I don’t know what I’m doing…and that’s the truth. I’ve been playing for fifty-five years, I know how to hold the cards, I know how to play bridge a little bit, but I’m far from a good bridge player. EF: Do you think that hosting parties helped your husband in his job? JF: Oh, very definitely. I don’t think we could ever have gone up the ladder if we didn’t do our part with playing bridge and entertaining. The one town we lived in, everything was bridge. You were invited to brunch and bridge, lunch and bridge, dinner and bridge. I mean everything in that town was bridge. EF: Which town was this? JF: Greenville, Ohio. We stayed in Greenville for a while. We had to build a house because he was made plant manager…and you had to entertain in your homes when you were plant manager. They didn’t want their people out in any of the bars or anything. You joined the country club and that’s where you took the people to eat. I didn’t have to serve dinners, sometimes I did, but not on a regular basis. Sometimes I would open my house to pool and cards three times a week. That’s how much entertaining. I would bake pies because it was the cheapest way to entertain people. I would get up and get the children off to school…and I would turn around and bake two or three pies…and so we always had fresh pie to serve that evening when the men got tired of playing pool and stuff and wanted to sit down. Scott could always offer them pie. I never stayed up. I had everything ready…the dishes. But, I never stayed up to serve the dessert because that would be very late at night or towards morning, and I had to get up at six with the children for school. EF: What was your relationship with your children like? JF: I don’t think I did too well…. Don’t know why. I think maybe I was too busy with everything all the time. But, that was my life. I felt I had to be as busy as I was to keep everything going, and I had to stay home and cook meals if I was going to be at a ball game into the night. So, I don’t know. I tried very hard, but I don’t think I succeeded at all. EF: What were your daily interactions like with your children? What did you do with them in a typical day? JF: I had to get up and pack lunches for everybody. We didn’t have the money to give them for school. So, packed lunches everyday for everybody. It depended on where we lived, if there were buses. Scott, at one point took Donna and her two brothers to the Catholic school and dropped them off. And then also took another family, the Builders. And then she [the mother] brought them home every day. We only had a car until after I had five children. The only transportation I had was after he came home from work late at night and I’d go and get groceries. Now, I must admit, I usually had a friend that went to get groceries with me, so I wasn’t by myself at night getting groceries. Now I always had to do everything once I got the car…and if I really needed the car, I would take him back after lunch. He came home for lunch every day of his life practically, and then I’d take him back and I’d have the car to do errands and so forth in the afternoon, and then had to go back at five thirty to pick him up. EF: What was your relationship with your husband like? JF: Very good. We’ve always had a great relationship. Maybe because we had to wait two and half years to get married…he’s quiet, unassuming, the brains of the family, and I was always the people person all my life. They say opposites attract and he and I are certainly opposites. We were attracted immediately to one another. I think he’s had a very great life, he feels, which is wonderful. EF: What obstacles did you face as a wife and mother? JF: I didn’t have a mother, as I keep saying, so I always tried to be home when they came home from school. That was very important for me to be home. I baked cookies when they got older. So, when the school bus came, my sons and their friends could all get off the school bus and come in knowing that there were fresh cookies waiting to be eaten, and sit around our kitchen table an hour or so, before they went home. Their mothers were working, and they were in no hurry to go home. And often I was ironing or sometimes I had groceries to be unloaded from the car, and I would say, “Boys, unload the groceries before you start eating today,” or something like that. I treated all the boys in the neighborhood like my other sons, and had no problem with that at all. I still correspond with Brian, the boys’ best friend across the street. EF: As far as child rearing is concerned, do you think that you had more influence on raising the kids than your husband did? JF: Oh, he had very little influence. I took full responsibility. You can’t work the hours he did, seven days a week…and be responsible for five children. I very seldom ever told him any problems I had with the children, unless they were over and done with, and then I just told him what happened. I think the biggest thing was that I got up one morning to get everybody ready for church, and one son had never come home that night at all…and it had never happened to me. He was probably in high school, probably a junior or senior, it was after prom I think…and so we went to church, and I sat down and started praying, and I said to myself, “you can’t stay in church.” So, I gathered us all up and walked back out of church again, and came home, and he was home by that time…and I said, “Hello,” he said, “hello.” I didn’t say anything more to him. Then, Scott came home, I said, “we need to talk to John,” and Scott’s laughing, he knew he hadn’t come home, but see he wouldn’t take any responsibility for disciplining. He said, “You discipline people and they still like you, the kids get upset if I discipline them.” So, he very seldom ever did any disciplining at all, with any of the five children. And we [the children] got along fine. Only I grounded that boy [John]. I went to a dance that night, a church dance, and the girl’s parents were there, and they came off the dance floor, and said, “You’re not grounding...” and I said, “Why am I not?” They told me to forget it there was a big something in two weeks, and their daughter wouldn’t have a date (they were going steady). I said, “I’m sorry, tell her right now to hurry and get a date, because I don’t change my mind.” That was something I very seldom ever did, was change my mind once I said…I thought about it a lot and I set down rules, and I had very few rules, but if you broke them, you really paid dearly for breaking any of my rules. Staying out all night had never happened to me before, and I was just livid. EF: What were some of the rules that you had? JF: Oh, probably no lying to me when I asked a question. I wanted to know where they were going to be in case something happened. Every time I moved, I was anxious to get a lawyer that would know me, so in case, one of the children, high school age, would get in trouble, I would know a lawyer to call, and meet at the jail, because I know of instances where people had been harmed in jail under the police protection…and I worried a lot about that, but all the time I got all the different lawyers every time we moved, I never had to call them. I didn’t have too many rules, their friends were always welcome…if they were going to spend the night, I wanted to know before hand, and we talked it over to see if they were going to spend the night. With five children, I didn’t want to be running into some stranger up in the hallway. I really can’t think of too many rules I had, for any of them…. I probably had two or three, but I didn’t have a list of rules, because I thought that if you both had a respect for each other, you would not break the rules, and you wouldn’t need many rules to be broken. EF: To what extent did the experiences of your life, influence the decisions on how your sons and daughters were educated? JF: Well, my father always wanted all of us to have an education, in case one of us were widowed or our husband walked out that we could still support a family. Now, what I thought I was going to do [if I was widowed], was become a housekeeper for a rich person, or a social butterfly for a rich man, who needed somebody to set up his different entertaining and so forth... and could take care of his children, getting them to their dentist appointments and doctor appointments and all that. I thought I could do that very well and still have a home for my family within his home. He wouldn’t have to pay me much in wages as long as he fed all of us. I really thought I could do that well. Only if I was widowed, that’s how I was going to make enough money for five kids and educate them. It takes a lot of money to educate five. We watched our pennies all the time. We did celebrate when your mother graduated from college. We went to Ireland and England and Scotland for three weeks. But, when it came time for Pat to graduate, we already had John in and Kathy thinking about it. We didn’t have any extra money. We had very little money. I was allowed to buy one thing for each child when we were over there, and I bought them each an Irish sweater. That’s what I brought home to everybody. But, we had no extra spending money. We watched every time we ordered anything at any restaurant. But then, afterwards, the company would send us on these trips and then we didn’t have to worry about paying for anything. EF: What was your relationship with your siblings like once you were married and moved away from Toledo? JF: Not very close…well, yeah, I guess very close in comparison to most families. My sister, Nancy, came to stay with us for a few weeks, and she didn’t have any clothes. So, Scott allowed me to go out and we shopped all day in Pittsburgh, the two of us…and we got her a jumper with a couple different tops and one dress I think. I only felt I could spend so much money and we did it, we interchanged everything that we bought. We checked the prices in all the stores, and then we went back after grabbing a peanut butter sandwich or something for lunch, and spent the money on clothes. To this day, I was shopping with my daughter Kathy, when she was in college, and I bought her good clothes so I wouldn’t have to buy them again, and here she shot up. She called and said, nothing fits me, and I couldn’t believe it. But, she came home and nothing fit her. So, she and I took off early in the morning to hit the sales, like I always did... and probably about one or one-thirty in the afternoon, she stopped dead on the sidewalk and said, “you haven’t changed a bit,” I said, “I thought we were getting along pretty well.” She said, “But, don’t you ever get hungry? You have never taken time to eat anytime I have ever shopped with you all your life, mom.” And I said, “Well, yeah, I’ll feed you, I had never thought about it.” If we were spending money for sales, I wasn’t looking at spending money on food. But I took her someplace and fed her and then we continued shopping. But, we watched every penny. I bought six bottles of pop, for each child, whatever they wanted, each payday…and that had to last them the whole month, unless a friend dropped in when they were drinking theirs, and then I always replaced whatever they gave a friend. But, we just…. I baked all the time. I never bought anything sweet at all. We lived on basics, like potatoes and meat and spaghetti, a lot of casseroles, and we ate a lot differently when Scott was in town, because I felt like he needed the nourishment. So, meals were much better when he was in town. When he wasn’t in town, I just threw everything together in a pot, probably put some soup with it, and baked it...and that’s what we had for supper. EF: What was the impact of the changing household technology on your role in the house? JF: I never had a dishwasher until I had five children. The only reason I did then was the contractor wouldn’t build this expensive home without a dishwasher. I was in the hospital from a stroke, and Scott came in and said that they will not build the house unless you allow them to put a dishwasher in. I had never heard of such a thing, and he said, “Well, that’s what he said.” Nobody would ever buy the house from us if it didn’t have a dishwasher. He couldn’t believe that we still washed and dried the dishes…and I said, “Well, then put a dishwasher in.” The house was all ready to be started. So, that’s when I got my first dishwasher. Before that, one child per night would help me with the dishes. I would wash them and they would dry them. I wouldn’t bring up any subject at all, if they didn’t want it to be quiet, they had to do the talking. The same way with the car. If you were in the car with me, I never turned on the radio. You’d get so tired of no noise at all that you talked, then you had something to say with me. I did that all my life, those two things. EF: What was your relationship like with your father once you were married? JF: With my father…I think I was more like my mother than anybody else, he kept telling me that anyway, and he and I got along very well. I kinda stood up to him when I thought he was wrong a few times. But, outside of that, you never crossed him at all. His word was gold, you know. Well, he was never home, only to eat and read the paper a little bit and go back to work again. He had a very hard life, but the good Lord let him live until I think he was eighty-four or eighty-five. He saw all his children do well, and that was a big thing in his life. John was an international speaker, and Jim had his own advertising firm, and Bob, of course, was just coming along. But, John had promised his brother Bob that he would have a place in his insurance agency if he kept his nose clean and studied during college…and that’s what made Bob the millionaire he is today. EF: What did you think of the women’s movement and feminism? Were you a part of it or did you look down on it? JF: No, I never even gave it a thought. Those days, I never thought about it at all. EF: Even in the 1960s when it was on TV? JF: No, I don’t think I gave it much thought. I never really watched much TV and I don’t watch much of it today. I would much rather have a good book to read…and now, everything takes more energy than I ever thought it would. I always thought I would walk miles my whole life...and of course I don’t anymore. I just learned last week I can only do one load of clothes a day, or it’s too much on my system. I just have to cut down. I always worked as hard as I could for as long as I could with every job I’ve ever had. EF: Going back to historical events, how did the Great Depression affect your life? JF: Very much, I remember when the banks closed, and we drove by the banks to see if they’d opened up and all these poor people were sitting around. It took all my father’s money, and we paid the dentist by…he got groceries from the store to pay his bills. We did that with the doctor, paid him with groceries. We didn’t have a lot of doctor bills, we had a lot of dentist bills because most of us have small mouths. Electric, now dad had a terrible time paying the electric before it was turned off. That’s why I think, to this day, I never want to owe one penny to anybody, and I always want to have a lot of cash around. I never want one of my children to need something, and I can’t produce cash at the moment for anything that’s within reason. I don’t trust the banks. I don’t have very much in the banks. EF: What about World War Two? How did that affect your life? JF: Well, that’s where I met Scott. I was going to join, at one point, I went into nursing thinking I was going to be an army nurse. But, decided not to do that, and the war was over when I got through. EF: So, the war was over, and that’s what helped you make the decision? JF: No, I think I had made the decision before. I had heard so many stories. EF: What type of stories did you hear that made you not want to do it? JF: Well, the nurses had trouble not being raped. Gang raped sometimes. That kind of story is what scared me off. They didn’t have much respect for the women in the service. EF: How did you hear these stories? JF: Word of mouth. EF: Ok, going back, the money that was made from the grocery store, and that your siblings made from the grocery store, would you ever actually get money from your father, or was it just that the labor helped keep the business going? JF: Yeah, we never got paid a cent for all the work we did at the grocery store. You could work eight hours a day, five or six days of the week, and you never got paid a cent. EF: Looking back on your life overall, are there any moments of truth or crisis that made you rethink how you lived your life or your goals? JF: Yeah, probably my three miscarriages. That takes a lot out of a woman…and then just eight years ago…nine years ago, I had the miracle of both of my eyes. That made me think why did the good Lord give me a miracle, and all of these saints that are praying all the time? I do a certain amount of praying, but, you know, I’m doing other things too. Many times I’m doing other things when I should be praying, but I think maybe, when I decided to lead the rosary every morning at church for fifteen years…I think he was thanking me for getting all of these people to pray for his mother. I think that’s the only reason I can think of, because I’m no better than most of the people on this Earth, and I’m not nearly as good as a lot of my friends. EF: What exactly happened with your eyes? JF: I was ready for surgery, but then there was nothing that needed to be done with my eyes. Everything was wrong with my eyes, but cataracts. Now, nothing’s wrong with my eyes at all. I’m a very severe diabetic, type A, have been a diabetic all of my life. EF: Were there any major changes in your economic status during your life? JF: Well, of course, there is. We aren’t putting any more children through college. We have enough, if we watch our money, to have a very pleasant life. We don’t, I don’t have a hobby, Scott’s always told me I needed a hobby. Well, he found out living with me that people are my hobby, I don’t have time for a hobby. I just go from day to day. I love people and I get along with most people. The good Lord puts your friends everyplace you live and every time I moved, the good Lord found me some real good friends to help me through the crisis. My husband was never home, or usually not even in town, when something would happen to one of us... and I just had to depend on my friends like I would a sister. My friends have been very, very good... the ones here, I don’t have as many here now that I am older. But, they’re just every bit as good as the ones I have met along the way. EF: Are there any regrets or disappointments from your life? JF: Regrets? Oh yes, I should have written Grandpa [my father] much more. With five kids I didn’t take time to write to him very often. He always felt he was welcome to come and visit... he never stayed long. He never had the time…why sure, I could have been much nicer to everyone along the way in my life. EF: Any decisions that you made that you wish you would have handled differently? JF: ...Nothing that bounces out at me. One thing that has been a big help to me has been having Father Jim Bruce, the stigmatic priest, as such a good friend, and his mother an even better friend of mine. I always feel like if I have a question about anything, he can answer it. If it’s very important to bother him, otherwise I say something to his mother. Not in a question for him, but I discuss it with him. But, he is so shy and retiring. When he came to see me in the hospital, I couldn’t believe that he would take the time to come see me and stay so long... we have a great rapport, he and I. He has already said he would speak at my funeral, wherever it is... and our priest at St. William said he will assist him with my funeral mass…. Boy, I don’t think I have too many regrets. See I grew up a lot faster than you did, with my mother dying. So, I had to make big decisions when I was thirteen years old and I’ve been making them ever since. I wanted a bigger family. I wanted nine children, that’s what I really wanted. EF: Why didn’t you have nine children? JF: Well, because I lost three, then I was about too old to have any more. EF: So you lost your children after…? JF: In between the other ones. I lost one before Donna was born, and one after her, and then I lost one after Patrick I think it was. EF: So, then you felt like you were getting too old? JF: No, you can only have them so long, and I was going forty when Mike was born. EF: For safety you decided not to…? JF: No, it was…if I would have gotten pregnant again that would have been fine with me. No, no, I never decided not to have any more children. It just didn’t happen. See, they told me after your mother was born that I wouldn’t have anymore children. So, I didn’t for five years, well four years. Then a doctor friend of mine said he would go to Canada and get me a baby. So, we went to Toledo to sign the papers. I signed. When it came time for Scott to sign, he looked up and said, “I’m not going to sign these.” The doctor said, “I don’t blame you, I wouldn’t either.” My friend the doctor! Here I made the trip from Pittsburgh to Toledo to sign these papers to get a baby, and Scott decided he didn’t want to adopt a baby, and hadn’t told me. I don’t think he had made up his mind really. I don’t blame him. I don’t think he had made up his mind and didn’t want to ‘til we were there. So, then I went home and my father’s there and I said, “No baby, Scott wouldn’t sign the papers.” My father said, “I’m glad, I really don’t believe in adoption.” So, you know, I’d been used to disappointments other times, so it didn’t hit me as hard as you feel it would at that point. I just thought I’d have an only child, which wasn’t what I was thinking all of my life...and so I was happy I had five. But, wish there were more of them. I think my children are very happy they have each other, you know…and if they aren’t, I’m sorry. You see, I’m still very close to my seven [remaining] brothers and sisters and my sister-in-law. You have a different relationship with each person. Now, if you’d ask Marie, she’d say that I’m closest to her. If you’d ask my sister, Marg, she’d say I’m closest to her. If you’d ask my sister, Lib, she’d say I’m closest to her. She skipped grades and caught up to me. We went to high school together in the same grade. And then if you’d ask my sister, Ellen, well she knows she’s the closest to me because we stay at her house. So, you know, I’m jumping everybody all the time. But they all have a different place in my heart…and my brother Bob feels he can call me and say anything to me, and I feel the same way about him. I also feel if I ever really needed anything in my whole life time, he would have given it to me. But, so would my brother John. My brother John was very free, and Uncle Bob has given a car to somebody because I said they needed it, a new car. So, he watches his pennies, but if somebody needs something, he’s ready to hand out the money. But, if I had ever needed anything in my lifetime, my brothers would have come through…and that’s a great feeling to have. EF: Was there anything in you life you wish you could have done? Any unfulfilled ambitions? JF: I wanted to go to Rome. I guess that’s my number one thing. But, Scott, not being Catholic wasn’t interested in going to Rome, and now I’m not, I don’t have the health to climb all of the steps and do everything. I wouldn’t want to waste the money going to Rome. But, outside of that I’ve done everything that I wanted to do. EF: Going back to what you were saying about Scott’s mother, and how he said something about not being able to tell his mother that you were Catholic...how difficult was that to marry someone who wasn’t Catholic? JF: I think it was extremely difficult for her. They weren’t going to attend the wedding until the last minute...and of course, my family went all out for them and saw that they had a good time. I think it was a hardship for the rest of her life, for his mother. Because we weren’t even allowed to go into his church for service at that time. You stayed away from non-Catholic churches entirely and so I was never there. His father and I got along extremely well. I was the daughter, I think, he never had, and he really thoroughly enjoyed me…and he enjoyed Donna, they both did immensely, and Pat, those were the only two born before his father died. But I think it was a big hardship and a blow to her. I feel sorry for her now, looking back, that her only son had to marry a Catholic...and if I would have been thinking, I probably wouldn’t have married him. I hadn’t thought about it at the time. EF: What do you think was so wrong in her eyes about marrying someone that was Catholic? JF: Well, because they expected them to have big families and the man working all the time, never having a life for himself, just trying to keep food on the table for all his kids. Catholics had large families, they didn’t practice birth control at all. They lived in a small town with lots of Italians and they had big families. His mother was really going to be very satisfied with just one child, and she told me that. Scott was an only child, he didn’t want to have an only child if he could help it. He thought he had missed so much in life, and after being around my family all the time, he knows he missed an awful lot. My sister and brothers are always there. No matter what you need, there’s someone to help you out. We’ve helped each other out with money, clothes, with everything all of our lives…we’re still extremely close. EF: What degree of choice or control do you think you had in the direction of your life? JF: Oh, a lot of control. I think I’ve controlled my life pretty well. EF: So, you don’t think anyone ever held you back or prevented you from doing anything that you wanted to do? JF: No, I don’t think so. I just wanted to be a nurse and I worked for years... loved every minute of it. I would have worked another year or so longer if Scott would have waited to get married... and I wanted a family, and I’m happy to have had a family. I always wanted friends, never had time for friends…to this day, my oldest friend still says “you never called Sav [nickname from nurses training] unless you absolutely had to.” Then [I] got on the phone [they’d say], “Sav, we’ll pick you up at four o’clock,” and then [they’d] hang up. There were nine people, ten people that used that phone. For years we didn’t even have a phone, and everybody had to have their dates, and all of us were dating. So, you never stayed on the phone for more than about two seconds, unless you absolutely had to. We all did it that way, we never even thought anymore about it. We lived an entirely different life than you know about. EF: Do you think your life was typical to other people during that time period? JF: Oh no, it was a much harder life than anybody else I knew, because we had to work so many store hours, cook, do dishes all the time. You had dishes for ten or eleven people three times a day, that’s a lot of dishes. We never had paper plates, they cost money…. I think the biggest hardship was that every other one in the family was a true brain. Graduated from high school at fifteen or sixteen and went on to college right away...and I had no brains at all. I had to really work, and I couldn’t retain it. So, I think that was the hardship of my lifetime. I had to work so very hard and I still got F’s and D’s. EF: Well, thank you for your time. JF: It was not a problem. Feel free to call me if you need anything else. [March 31, 2004] EF: How was the grocery store able to stay open during the Depression? JF: We had a very hard time. Often we couldn’t pay our bills. We’d have to ask the meat packer if he could wait another week to be paid for the meat he was delivering. We asked the electric company if they could wait a while to be paid. We asked the telephone company if they could bill us a few days after the date when we’d send the check. We’d call the people on the phone and ask them to hold a check. We did that a lot. We asked them to hold a check ‘till a certain date so that it wouldn’t bounce. EF: Were there still as many customers at the grocery store? JF: We took as much charge as we could from those people. When it got up too high, we had to tell them “no more.” But, that was very rare. They always tried to pay a few bucks a week and then eventually, the majority paid off in the years after that, but many people didn’t. EF: Did anyone pay in services or in ways other than money? JF: Not that I recall. EF: Do you know anything about the aid programs during the Depression? Do you know anyone that took part in them? JF: The only thing I know is that the WPA had a program for children for recreation after school. They taught dance at different levels. I had taken awhile and I caught onto the steps, so they asked me if I would teach some four or five year olds how to do the time step for tap, and then progress from that. I was more than happy to do it. I was in the seventh or eighth grade when that happened. Then, I didn’t go anymore after I was in the eighth grade. I don’t know what happened to that program, but the teacher was excellent. She had to be in charge of all the different ages. There weren’t that many students I don’t think. I guess probably thirty or forty students all together. They had to have transportation out to this playground that had a pavilion where the dance lessons were taught. EF: Did you get paid for that? JF: Oh, no. Just helping out. Volunteer work. EF: Going on to World War Two, how did the shortages during the war affect you? JF: Well, because my father owned grocery stores, it didn’t really affect us as much. We were very careful of the things that were low so that we didn’t take more than we should. But, there were ten of us to feed, and we watched…we didn’t throw anything out. On Sunday, we always had fresh fruit salad that we had prepared in the afternoon from the fruit going bad at the grocery store. Every Sunday evening, we had fresh fruit salad and bread for supper. EF: What about nylons? Were there problems getting them? JF: There was a big black market for nylons, and they were scarce…they seemed to always be available. EF: So, you could still get nylons if you wanted to…did the price go up? JF: I think most of mine were gifts from people. We were a poor family and people feeling sorry for us would give us nylons. You know, with six girls you used a few nylons. EF: Did you support the war? JF: Oh yes! After they invaded, we had to back it up. Oh, absolutely, positively. Everybody did, there were not war mongers at that time. EF: Do you think that the war changed your life? JF: I met my husband because of the war. I was a nurse in training at a nice-sized Catholic hospital. I met my husband on a blind date. We really didn’t hit it off. I dated him every once in a while until he left the area. He was probably there six months and he had a late night to be back in the dorm on Saturday night. My late night from nurses training was Sunday night. Often, I had to work at the grocery store. So, we would go out in the afternoon and I’d go to the grocery store to work and he’d go back early to the university campus. That’s how we met. But then, he’d be able to get a plane and fly into Toledo and bring a few extra fellows with him and I’d fix them up with the nurses. He wanted me to meet his parents, so I went to meet them before he went overseas. Then when he was overseas, about nine months, he flew the European tour with a bomber. He was a pilot. The other fellows kept saying he was the best pilot. Everybody wanted to fly with him. But, I got a note from his mother asking if I’d heard from him since a certain date because they hadn’t. You never think about using long distance telephone at that point. I wrote back and told her that I had. About five days after her last note, I’d received a note, but I hadn’t heard from him since then…and he’d been downed over there. But, I think one fellow was killed and he got the rest of his team to safe haven under the American troops somehow. But, they had a terrible time getting out of the mess they were in. I don’t really know. He doesn’t want to talk about it. I think that was the only airplane he ever lost, when they crashed over there. EF: So, you said he was on the European tour…do you know where he was stationed exactly? JF: Over Germany. He’d fly from England and then back again. His base was England. EF: So, you met him at the beginning of the war? JF: I think it had been going on for nine months to a year when I met him. He was already picked for the Air Force, that’s where he tried to be. He flunked out just so he could get in the service because his mother wouldn’t sign for him. He went back to Carnegie Tech later after the war. He was overseas for about six or nine months. They could only have so many tours and then they were sent back to rest up. Once he was sent back, the war was over. He was out in time. It took a few months to get rid of everybody. Then, he came to see me and we broke up at that point. I thought he had changed completely. EF: How did he change? JF: His ideas were foreign to what I was used to…and…I felt he was a little too full of himself. I wasn’t the least bit interested in continuing the relationship. I was dating someone else, that probably helped. Then my graduation from nurses training came along. He did not receive an invitation to graduation. I didn’t want him there and didn’t expect him there after we broke up. But, he sent a large package for my gradation gift. I was so upset with him, I just left it there, I didn’t take time to open it and all the other nurses on the floor wanted me to open this big package. I finally told them to open it up themselves. So, when I came home, they had opened it. It was two pieces of luggage, one stacked inside the other. Gorgeous, gorgeous luggage. I hope I sent a thank you, but I’m not sure. My Irish was probably up. I do have an Irish temper. I very seldom let it go, but when I do I know what I’m saying to the person. It’s not off the top of my head at all. Usually I don’t care if I ever see that person again. That’s how Irish I am. EF: Did you keep up correspondence with him during the war? JF: Not very well. I was dating all the time and working long hours and studying. No, I did not correspond very well with him. EF: How often do you think you did correspond? JF: Every couple of weeks I probably sent off a letter. I was also corresponding with a boy I dated who went into the Coast Guard. I worked under his aunt as a dietician. I had to go through that program. Once she had me, every time she needed an extra nurse, she’d call and ask for me. Wherever I was, I had to go down to see her. She’d ask me if I had received a letter from Fran [Francis]. So, I’d run over to the nurses home to see if I had received a letter. If I did, I would come back and tell her that he was fine…. I really didn’t think I was going to get married for many years. You know, I raised my brothers and sisters and then went to nurses training. I was in no hurry to get married. EF: What made you decide to get back together with Scott then? JF: Oh boy, he started calling once a week, or twice a week. He’d get one of my sisters and brothers because I was out. I told them to tell him not to call anymore. It was just costing him money. They got so they were talking to him on the phone, long distance. I told them not to tell him anything. Of course, I didn’t think about him ever coming. One night I was at a party with my boyfriend and I was called to the phone. My father was on the phone. He never made phone calls. Everyone hushed. He had taken a phone call from him [Scott]. He promised him I would be home at ten o’clock. He wanted me back home at ten o’clock so that I could shut off the phone calls. He [my father] didn’t care what I told him. Scott had told my father that he was going to be there in two days. I knew he couldn’t. I had to tell him myself. I told him off, but it didn’t do any good. Then he arrived with the ring, of course he didn’t tell me. He was sick as a dog. By the time he pulled into town, his reservation at the hotel was taken. Eventually he found someplace else after my father had said that he could hit a couch. I didn’t want him in my house. But, he called in saying that he had found a place. My father simmered down and I went to bed. So, I took the day off. I met him at the door, everyone else was gone to work and school and stuff. I invited him in, and we talked a while. He told me that he had a ring with him. He said it was going to be on my finger. He told me he didn’t care what he promised me. He said I could have anything in the world, just so I’d take the ring. I hadn’t even been speaking to him before he walked through the door. It took hours and hours. Then we took the ring down and left it at a jewelry store because it was much too large for my finger. We left it for an hour. Scott was afraid that they’d change the stones in it. After my father’s heart attack, Scott went back to school. I told him to forget that we were engaged. It was going to be years before we got married. It was two and a half years later that we got married. EF: When you were raising your siblings and your father didn’t re-marry, what do you think other people thought about that? JF: He was a very good-looking fellow, and always had women come to the store for the third time in one day chasing him. But, with nine kids, do you have time to date? He didn’t even have time to keep his old friends. The old friends kept him, but he really didn’t have time for anything but existing. It took him six months to recuperate from that heart attack. EF: What about when your mother died, do you think that changed him a lot, too? JF: Oh, very definitely. It was weeks before he went back to the grocery store, and that he could meet anybody without crying. He idolized my mother, and again, his folks were against the marrying. They were married at five thirty in the morning, and none of his side was invited. Then, they caught the train to Toledo where they were going to make their home. EF: How do you think her death affected the kids? JF: Probably drastically, but when there’s that many kids, you’re used to doing so much work anyway. She taught school until she had the sixth or seventh child. She’d bring a colored girl from the South through connections. She’d teach her how to cook, how to wash clothes, how to keep house and how to drive (that was the biggest thing). Then, she’d go back at the end of the year, like in May, and send a cousin back in September to be taught all those things, too. They had a room to themselves and everybody wanted to come and work for my mother. Everybody loved my mother. She was a very, very nice person. We had to work harder. We had to help each other. You’d depend on what your siblings said to you. You always knew who your sisters were dating. My father didn’t know anything. He just worked at the grocery store. It was all of us helping each other. EF: Do you think you were a “stand-in” mother then? JF: Oh, probably so. Dad gave me the job when he brought Bob home from the hospital that day. He said, “Here’s your job for the summer.” He meant Bob, and Jim, who was two. Now, Marg was in a crippled children’s home, so you did have some time there. But, nobody was big enough to do too much besides stock shelves at the grocery store. EF: Going to when you got married, what did marriage mean to you? JF: That you were married for life, no matter what happened, or what obstacles you were up against. You wouldn’t take any abuse at all because that’s why my father made sure we all had an education so we would never have to stay in an abusive marriage. I think the fellows that married us knew we wouldn’t take anything from anyone. I was married about a month when the phone rang one morning. [My brother-in-law] told me that when I wanted to leave my husband, I could call him and he’d send me money for a ticket. Everybody knew I wasn’t going to stay with him. They just knew we wouldn’t get along. Everybody thought it wasn’t going to work out. EF: How do you think you proved them wrong? JF: Probably stubbornness, Irish stubbornness, plus I really wanted my kids to have it better than I had it, as everybody does. In the world we lived in, I had to be the perfect wife, the perfect groomed mother. I had to be everything for everybody. I was just determined that I would make a go of it. Money was very, very tight. He gave me 250 dollars a month for everything. I paid the electric, gas, everything, plus bought the groceries and clothes, any spending money. Everything had to come out of 250 dollars. EF: So, you were in charge of the finances? JF: I did everything but the mortgage. He always paid the rent or the mortgage. I never wanted to ask for money. Once you have your own pay-check, you don’t want to ask anyone for money. EF: When you were having your children, what did you think about mothers who worked and also had children? JF: I don’t know. I thought it was a full time job, and maybe because I didn’t have a mother myself after I was thirteen. But, I think there’s so few years that you’re home with your kids, that I wanted to enjoy it, and I wanted them to enjoy me. I found that my kid’s friends would come and talk to me and tell me things they should be telling their own mother. When it came to the boys’ age, I always had the ironing board up. When it was time for the school bus, I always had home-made cookies. They could always come over and have water and home-made cookies. I would be there ironing. You couldn’t help but overhear some of the conversation. Sometimes they’d stay an hour. They’d gotten off the bus and wouldn’t have gone home at all. I’m not a perfect mother. I’ve done lots of things that everyone thinks I’m wrong about. But see, when you have your own rules and regulations for yourself. You don’t bend them very easily, and if you bend them, you don’t break them. EF: Would you have continued working if you could? JF: No, no I wouldn’t. My husband didn’t want me to. I have never nursed since. We waited two and a half years to get married. He wanted my full attention. He was tired of waiting for me to put up my hair while he waited to kiss me goodnight. I didn’t want to, I really didn’t. We wanted a family. I wanted nine, but lost three, probably because I’m a diabetic. I just thought I’d make the perfect mother. EF: What did motherhood mean to you? JF: To be always there for children, through thick and thin. I don’t think I ever missed anything any of my children were ever in, if I could possibly do it. EF: What values did you teach your children, or try to instill in them? JF: Oh boy, it wasn’t neatness. I always picked up after my kids. Honesty would be number one and love of God should be one plus. Love of God first. I really do think that religion makes a big difference in everybody’s life whether they realize it or not. If you know you can always fall back on the good Lord... maybe that’s why he gave me the miracle of my eyes. In my whole life I never dreamt a miracle for me. But, that probably had changed my life a lot…. Kindness towards people, and look out for the ones that don’t have as much as you do. Always look out for underlings. EF: What about abortion? We learned in class about illegal abortions, what did you think about that? JF: It really didn’t come up in the Catholic faith very much. We knew we were very definitely against it. We were brought up to be against it. In the hospital, I had people who had had them and then ran into trouble with hemorrhaging. They always felt so bad about it afterwards. It changes your life completely if you have had an abortion. They tell you that if you have had an abortion, you have trouble living with your soul. EF: Did you ever hear about any acquaintances that had one? JF: No, I really didn’t. But see, I went to a Catholic high school, and then a Catholic hospital. I really didn’t run into that at all. EF: What about birth control? JF: I just…. I think it’s everybody’s own choice. I myself have to live with me. I really think the good Lord doesn’t send you anymore children or anything else in your life that you can’t handle. I think he prepares you for any problems he sends to you. EF: Well, I think that’s everything. JF: Well, I’m glad I could help. Call me if you need anything else. |