- Emelie Lanou Interview, History 150 Spring 2016, Conducted by Nicole Toven, Immigration Interview, March 4, 2016.
- Transcription:
A. This interview with Mrs. Toven was conducted in person at her house in Rockville, MD. I did not have to edit the interview recording at all because we chose a very quiet location with no distractions. Mrs. Toven and I did a pre-interview discussion, and we were able to do a brief run through of the topics and questions before we began the official interview. This definitely helped us both feel more comfortable and made the interview much easier to get through. Then, we ran a few tests of where the recorders should be located in order to record both of our voices very clearly with little to no background noise. We used GarageBand on my Mac computer, as well as a hand held voice recorder that Mrs. Toven owns.
B. Emelie Lanou Toven was born August 9, 1941 in Rutland, Vermont. Emelie had three siblings. Two older brothers and a older sister. Emelie was 12 years younger than her oldest brother and 6 years younger than her younger brother, who was the sibling that preceded her. The life that she lived was extremely different than that of her siblings. Since there was such an age difference, Emelie felt sometimes that she did not have siblings so much as having five parents. When they traveled as a family it was the six of them. Their mode of transportation differed depending on which country that they were moving to. When she moved from the United States in May of 1950 to France, the Lanou family took a boat called the Queen Elizabeth. Mrs. Toven says that she always thought that riding the boat was an incredible experience, and that she was always amazed by the ability to travel across the world on a single ship. Her family traveled so much because of her father’s job. He was in charge of the Marshall Plan in France, and also worked for the Atomic Energy Commission. She eventually after many years of traveling returned to The United States to settle down and go to school. After attending College for a while at Georgetown University, Mrs. Toven decided to take a break from school and began working for the government where she later met her husband. After getting married in Washington D.C. to her husband Richard, she later went back to college at the University of Maryland where she received her Bachelor of Science degree while working for the Montgomery County School system in Wheaton, Maryland. She was married to her husband Richard Toven for 43 years before he passed away in April of 2007. She is a mother to two boys, Christopher and Jeffery Toven. She also has three grandchildren, who are 19, 18, and 16 years old. Emelie currently lives in Rockville, Maryland, where she is very close to her children where she can continue to watch her grandchildren grow into young adults.
C. I have done some research about The United States and France during the period of the 1950’s because it was during this time that Mrs. Toven moved out of the U.S. to France and eventually returned to the U.S. During this time period in the United States, cars were becoming very popular and the interstate highway system was becoming extremely prevalent and popular as well. Our nation was recovering from World War II and The Atomic Bombs were also being perfected. During this time Senator Joe McCarthy was attempting to rid the world of Communism. Meanwhile in France, the French were extremely hostile towards American’s because of their capitalist society that was slowly integrating its way into the French society. It was not uncommon to see signs of “Yankee Go Home” that were directed at the US. Also at this time, The Marshall Plan was in effect and was attempting to provide financial stability to Western Europe as a result of the effects of World War II. During this time, Mrs. Toven’s father was not only the commissioner of Atomic Energy but he also was the controller of the Marshall plan in France. He was a man of great importance and status for the United States. Because of his job, this lead to his family moving wherever the government told him to.
D. Interview:
Nicole Toven: Can you please tell me your full name and where you were born?
Mrs. Toven: Well, my name is Emelie Lanou my last name now is Toven as my married name. And I was born on August 9th in 1941 in Rutland, Vermont.
NT: Okay, is that where you lived all of your life?
ET: Oh no. I was born in Rutland. My parents were living there at the time and very shortly after I was born, probably that winter, we moved to Montpellier, Vermont. Then, my father’s work took him back to Burlington, Vermont. After that, when I was four we went all the way across country, and settled in a small town outside of San Francisco called San Lorenzo, California. And lived there, I went to kindergarten there and first grade. We then moved again across the country to Oakridge, Tennessee. My father worked with the government there on the Atomic Energy Commission. Following that, two years later we moved to Paris, France. We lived in a little town outside of Paris called Saint Cloud. And I went to school there at the local French school, and then later at the American school in Paris. And spent my last year at a boarding school in Switzerland right outside of Lucerne. We came back to the United States. We lived in Alexandria, Virginia for a while. And then we went to Haiti. I however, lived in a boarding school in Miami [Florida] for one year and then at a boarding school in the Dominican Republic for two years, which is where I finished my high school years. We went from there to Cambodia, and while I was in Cambodia I went to work for a company that had me train for six months in Vietnam and I lived there in Saigon. Came back to the United States to Washington D.C. I went to Georgetown University and from then, pretty much my whole life has been spent either in Washington D.C. or in the state of Maryland.
NT: So you moved around a lot..?[Joking around with her]
ET: I moved around an awful, awful lot. And as a young kid it was, it was hard because you had to keep making new friends, and you didn’t have the old friends to rely on. But I found that the older I got, the more that I missed that moving around. And it was an adventure every time that we moved it was something new. It was magical.
NT: I’m sure it was! So, where the reasons for moving around so much because of your dads work/your dad’s job?
ET: Yes, my father’s job. My mother did not work outside of the home. She was, you know a great mom. But it was my dad’s work that took us all over the place. He was a Mechanical Engineer graduate, and he always worked in the area of finance. And it just so happened that he came to the attention of the Federal government. He worked for the Office of Price Administration, which was the job that took us to California. From there he worked on the Manhattan Project. He worked in Los Alamos with the Manhattan Project and then after that with the Atomic Energy Commission in Tennessee. His work with the government in France was with the Marshall Plan. He was the controller of the Marshall Plan and that was a time of life that was really good for all of us. My brothers and sisters and I all lived in a really nice place outside of Paris. We came back home to the States and my father continued his work with the government. And then after his retirement, they [her parents] moved and settled in, in Florida. So, it was his work that took us everyplace that we lived.
NT: Okay! How old were you when you moved to France?
ET: I was nine when we moved to France.
NT: Okay.
ET: We went there, by boat. I believe we sailed on the Queen Elizabeth going to France. That next summer we came back on a brand new ocean liner called The United States I believe it was called. We spent the summer in Vermont at a place that we owned on Lake Champlain, and we went back at the end of the summer to France to resume our life there. We always took a boat across the ocean. Flying at that time was not the “norm” way of travel.
NT: Mhmm. Okay, and so what were some differences between living in France and living in the United States?
ET: Oh huge! For one thing, the houses were different. We were used to central heating and the house that we lived in [in France] only had central heating on the main floor. That was a big difference believe it or not because going to bed where it is cold and you have to pull the covers up is a little bit different than when you can just turn the thermostat up and get the heat that you are used to. The other differences were that we had “people” who helped us in the house. We had a cook, we had somebody who cleaned for us everyday and lived there. We had a gardener that was something that we had not had in living in The United States. We were also part of the Diplomatic Corps. It was a small diplomatic community at that time in Paris and you were privy to meeting all kinds of people from, Dwight Eisenhower, Matthew Ridgeway, The Commanders of SHAPE [Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe] to Art Buchwald, who sat with me [laughing] while I watched the televised marriage of the now Queen Elizabeth. It was broadcasted, I don’t quite know how, but we sat there. So Art Buchwald was part of our everyday life, and you know we were “special people” and in The States we were neighbors.
NT and ET: Both giggling.
NT: So that’s a big difference.
ET: It’s a huge difference! And when you’re a little kid you’re really impressionable and it’s very easy to get spoiled with all that attention which I took full advantage of, yes.
NT and ET: Both laughing again.
NT: So it sounds like your life was maybe made a little bit easier after you moved to France just because of all of the things that you had, maybe?
ET: Well, yeah… Creature comfort wise it was certainly easier. But, it was still pretty much the same because I still had my family, and that was very important [choking up a little bit] yeah so you know, it’s not better, no, not necessarily better just different.
NT: Okay, well what were some things that were more difficult? The language was probably pretty difficult.
ET: No, the language was not more difficult.
NT: Oh, okay.
ET: Because when I was little, the language in my house was French. Now, it wasn’t Parisian French but it was French-Canadian French. But it was a language that we all very readily reverted back to very quickly. So that was not a difficulty. The neighborhood we lived in, we were friends with many of our French neighbors and playmates that I had were just coming out of a very devastating war [World War 2 and the French-Indochina War] and a very bad situation for them that had lasted as a nightmare for them for about eight years. That was a difference between the two of us. I didn’t have that pain or the knowledge of hardship that they did. So, that was different.
NT: Okay, umm. And how was the immigration process going into France? Was there one?
ET: Well there really wasn’t one at that time as I mentioned, we were Diplomats, we had Diplomatic passports. People just took care of us going through Customs [at the border] we didn’t have to stop. And the assimilation process was very easy because it was a community of Diplomats that we existed within. So, it wasn’t like a culture shock thing at all, the transition was made very easy for all of us.
NT: Oh, okay! And the schooling, it wasn’t very different than that in The United States?
ET: Well… that was a little but different.
NT and ET: Both laughing.
ET: I had been used to being in catholic schools and I went to a catholic school the first year. But their strictness in the educational process was very different because even though I had been in catholic schools and it was fairly regimented, the school that I went to in France was very regimented. And very unlike anything that I had ever had. Keep in mind that I was in third grade and did not know how to write French. I could speak French but I couldn’t read or write it. So, that was a whole learning process that I had to overcome. I kind of think that I didn’t do too well, I could be wrong [both of us smiling.] Because the next year I went to the American school in Paris.
NT: Okay. So that was a lot better? [Laughing]
ET: Yeah! That was again inside this little cocoon of the Diplomatic community, and we were classmates with people like the children of Gordon parks and all of these figures that I didn’t know at the time but were really world famous people. It’s just something that you live through and I can’t say that its wonderful but it sure was a lot of memories.
NT: Oh I’m sure!
ET: Yep!
NT: Did both of your parents share the home duties equally?
ET: Oh Id have to say no definitely. My father always cooked breakfast after mass on Sunday when we were younger not so much after he had more and more important jobs. But my mom was a home maker, she was definitely the authority in the house even though everybody acknowledged my father as the real leader in the house, he really wasn’t, she was. She was a pianist of great accomplishment. She made it very culturally fulfilling to all of us but she would wash the dishes and cleaned and cooked like everybody else. Although, she wasn’t a particularly great cook.
NT and ET: Both laughing.
ET: That is one thing that I would have to say that I benefitted from in France was to have somebody to cook for us.
NT: Yeah, so she didn’t cook at all in France she did it mostly when you were back in The United States?
ET: Absolutely! Yes! She did not do any of the cooking, we had a full time cook and as was the case in Haiti and Cambodia too she did not do the cooking because we had full time help.
NT: Oh, okay! What was the gender makeup of the schools that you went to in France versus The United States?
ET: Well, the schools that I went to in France were co-ed but boarding school in Switzerland was definitely all girls. It was a culture shock there, yeah. I would not send my children to an all-unisex school.
NT and ET: Both laughing.
ET: Believe me! [Laughing]
NT: And in The United States they [schools] were also co-ed?
ET: No, the boarding school that I went to in Miami was again a girl’s school. And I went to St. Mary’s Academy, which was in Alexandra, Virginia that was all girls. But other than those instances, yeah it was all co-ed.
NT: Okay! And then when you were younger, what were some expectations of young women and how did they differ from The United States versus in France?
ET: Well, when I was young it was assumed that my path in life would be to meet somebody, get married, have children, bring them up and be a grandmother. And I think that even though there were opportunities for women in The United States, I never really saw that. I never really saw women as leaders or peers with men in high positions. In France it was even more pronounced I think. Although, I do remember the people we made friends with in France were very well educated but they weren’t financially successful and they didn’t really have a career because they were women, was the impression that I got.
NT: Okay, and then my final question is how did your upbringing and the traveling that you did, how did that affect your life as a mother and an adult?
ET: Well, I think that it allowed me to bring a sense of “there’s a whole world out there than just what your seeing” and an excitement because I could tell my children stories about places that I had been or things that I had done that wouldn’t be stories that they would be hearing from their friends in the neighborhood. I don’t think it would have been very fair to say that it really changed what I did as an adult, but I think it was a memory that you always carry with you. My childhood was like a field trip twenty- four hours a day. It was always challenging, new information and it wasn’t always great, there were sad times, there were great times but it was always interesting.
NT: I’m sure!
ET: Always interesting [tearing up].
NT: Okay! Thank you.
- My interview went really well! Considering I interviewed my grandmother I was very comfortable asking her questions and feel comfortable reacting to her when she became emotional. I wish that I had reacted more to her responses. I was very focused on listening to the information and staying on track with my questions that sometimes I forgot to comment after she was finished answering the previous question. I felt that the interview flowed extremely well. I was able to ask the questions that I had prepared in order and Mrs. Toven was able to answer all with a lot of detail that thoroughly explained all the aspects of her travel and experiences during her younger life. I not only learned a lot about history during this time but I also feel a deeper connection to my family from this experience.