1. My interview was conducted over the phone. My grandmother lives in California and we had to arrange for our conversation to occur at a reasonable time of day for both of us. I used my phone on speaker, and recorded the conversation with the voice recording app on my computer. I conducted the interview in my room and made sure my roommates were not home so there would not be any additional noise. My interview ran very smoothly, however there was a short interruption to the conversation to make sure the phone connection would be reliable for the full course of the interview.
2. Johni Helen Pittenger Sowder was born November 26th 1944, in Cumberland County, VA. She grew up in rural Kentucky and was the daughter of coal miner and the head nurse at the Corbin County Hospital. She grew up extremely poor in a family with five other sisters and an older brother. She left home immediately after finishing high-school and moved in with her older sister. She started taking classes where she met Robert, and fell for him very quickly. She soon became pregnant, and upon finding out, her parents disowned her. Johni and Robert married when she was eight months pregnant, and she lived with him in New York. She eventually moving in with his parents in Ohio so they could assist in childcare while he returned to film school in New York. The next time she saw him however, he admitted he had become engaged to someone else. This change in events led her to move back to New York to work and create her own system of stability and support as a previously rural girl, into an urban-working woman.
3. My grandmother was born in the 40s and therefore grew up in the 50s and 60s. This was still a time when women were expected to settle down as soon as possible and have children. My grandmother however, got pregnant before she was married. This was considered completely unacceptable in society. Her parents had strong views of this as well, and for this reason they disowned her when they found out. Because she had to support a child as a single mother, my grandmother decided to return to school. Most women never furthered their education by attending a university. Typically, the main focus of a woman was to find a man to marry who would support them. It wasn’t until the 70s that most state colleges even ended their gender segregation. At this point though, women were increasingly attending universities given the increasing amount of career opportunities available beyond the traditional professions such as teaching, nursing and home economics. There was a lot of controversy over women’s roles in the workforce during the mid-20th century, and overall a woman’s position was still considered to be as mother and caretaker of the home. With the progression into the later period of the 20th century, women started to gain more equality in the workforce. The equal pay act was enacted, and women began to work in job roles that were previously dominated by males. My grandmother took a position in a government sector which became increasingly more common at this point for women
4. [Transcription Begins]

GC: Okay, I will be conducting this interview with a focus on immigration and women’s perspective with the gender inequality that was occurring. Will you go ahead and state your name for me please?

Johni Pittenger: My full name is Johni, there aren’t too many female Johnnys. My middle name is Helen and my last name is Pittenger.

GC: I want to start by asking how you would describe your transition from living in rural Kentucky to living in urban environments, for example New York.

Johni Pittenger: Trauma. I can remember specifically walking down the street of New York City and realizing that the safest way, because I was afraid of all the crowds coming from a small town in Kentucky, realizing that, number one; I needed to walk fast and number two; I needed to keep my head down so that I was not aware of.. or people weren’t aware of me. I was more or less hiding, but it was traumatic. It is a transition and certainly you’re not in an automobile in a big city, you’re on a subway and that’s another adjustment so yes it was traumatic. It meant you had to stay alert and it meant also that you had to be strong because you have to learn fast to survive. And that was kind of like initially how I felt but I grew to love it because the benefits of the city of course are enormous in terms of arts and everything available to you.

GC: What qualities do you think growing up in Kentucky you brought with you into your new experiences though?

Johni Pittenger: Well I grew up, again, in a small town and the recreation in the small town centered around the church including church picnics, church outings. But there was Sunday school in church and in the middle of the week there was the training-union in the church. So you could go late at night to services. So I was inundated with the teachings of the Bible and the Ten Commandments… Based on that I think today the person that I am continues to rely on the morals and the religion, not so much because I go to church or because I’m am religious, but the doctrines that came early into my head and brain are still with me and I still feel like I lived my life by the Golden Rule; do unto others as you would have others do unto you. And sometimes when I’m particularly kind to somebody by letting them in line in front of me when they have one thing and I have 10 I just say pass it on. That’s kind of how I feel about that kind of thing and I will also tell you that I have a little scroll that one of my sisters gave me of the Ten Commandments and I keep it in my bedroom and I look at it often and it’s comforting.

GC: I wanted to ask how it was they got your job as a contract negotiator for the government and what your experience was in this role.

Johni Pittenger: Well, I graduated commodities from college and at the time people representing the government came to the school and they were recruiting. They advised us who were interested that they were realizing a shortage of people in the procurement field which was of course contracting; buying for the government. Those interested could apply and I was able to apply because I had very high.. well I had very high grades. It was basically an internship because I had to enter into a two year training program following graduation from college and as an intern in OJT, on job training in addition many many many classes before I graduated. So when I graduated I entered the government as a GS-5 and when I came out I was a GS-7 and was able to, at that time, I took the job in Huntsville, Alabama, at the Missile Command there. That’s where the Space Program was born. When your grandpa was transferred to, or I should say when he was accepted at graduate school at University of Pennsylvania Wharton School, I was able to transfer again with the government to Philadelphia. When he took a job in Washington after he graduated grad school, I was able to transfer again to the Washington DC where I spent most of my career there with the agency for international development. From there he was transferred to California and I ended up with a space program and the Covert Program which was a very exciting period in my life, and so that is how I got into contracting. I ended up as a Contracting Officer and I went through the period of when I would enter a room, which was all business men, because I bought many different things for the federal government over my career. Most of the men considered me, these businessmen, probably a secretary. And on one occasion I was asked to please bring the men coffee which I had to laugh, because I had come to run the meeting and conduct it, I had not come to bring them coffee.

GC: Can you briefly describe what initially encouraged you to go back to school

Johni Pittenger: I had walked out of college and run away to New York and about I guess the year was about 63, very turbulent years, and I had not.. well, I was.. I ran away to New York City with my first husband and became pregnant probably on route. I was able to get a job there. I think I was working at the [unintelligible], later I was working as a dental assistant. My oldest daughter was born in New York City in the year 65 and that marriage didn’t last very long because it wasn’t built on any strong foundation so I was left with the little girl and I knew that to go back to college meant that I had to take better care of her because I loved her so deeply. My older sister living in Alabama, knowing that I was in New York City and had no business being in New York City alone with a little girl asked me to come back, live with her and finish my education. So that is why I went back to Alabama to finish my education and so life has been very very good to me following that because there in Alabama I met your Grandpa. In 2021 we will be celebrating our 50th Anniversary. So life has been good.

GC: So you stated already that the 60s were a turbulent time. Can you touch on a little bit overall what your experience as a woman felt like?

Johni Pittenger: Well it was a turbulent time in our country. It was the Vietnam War going on and of course there were many people opposed that war. It was a time when our soldiers would come home and they were pretty much boo’ed, so it was almost like they came home with their heads down. A lot of us rebelled in general about the norms of society. It was at that time a lot of drugs, the drugs today are I understand are 25% stronger than they were in my day, but there were certainly drugs around everywhere, marijuana particularly, and I think there also was, yes, there was LSD, that was around. It was just a time when rebellion seemed to be a really cool thing to be and do. So it was all a part of the whole country in the universities, in the schools, rebell meant that you were cool.

GC: Did you consider yourself to be feminists to any extreme?

Johni Pittenger: I certainly, like all people, evolved with how I thought. I didn’t really know what a feminist was but I might have mentioned at one point one day I was in New York City. I lived on the lower East side, it a was very poor living condition, I think I had sheets on my windows for curtains. I had my little girl in the stroller and in the stroller, because I had stopped to pick up groceries, she was loaded down all around her with milk and all the things that we bought, and I don’t remember exactly what we’d bought. But I remember also that we had also come from the laundromat where I’d had to go to wash our clothes. So I had a big bag of laundry on my back pushing a stroller with one hand crossing the street with a red light and I said, I looked up, and I said, “God you better bring me a strong man because I have become a strong man myself.  I remember that distinctly, and God did bring me a strong man.

GC: With that being said how did raising a child affect your life especially at the point at which Grandpa Bruce joined in on that aspect of your life?

Johni Pittenger: Well, then he asked me to marry him, this was prior to him going to graduate school, he did not approach me. He approached, at that time, she met him when she was four, but I think she was five at the time. He asked my oldest daughter, Zezette, first if she would marry him and if he could marry us. She agreed and when we got married we went to grad school and we applied immediately for her adoption, legal adoption, and we had to wait a year according to the law. So she was adopted legally. I went to work as I told you in the other question and worked and worked and worked and sometimes I would say, “I want to make a baby,” and well, he would say we need a home first. “Well, I want to make you a baby..” “well, we’re almost ready for a home.” So by the time we decided to make a baby the gynecologist had said, hey you’re in your mid-30s, which of course it’s after the age of 35 the chance of Mongolism is at its highest.. or higher. So he said it’s time to make a baby, so we began trying. We were not successful and so we went to the doctor, and this is a funny story because while we were at the doctor I actually was pregnant with my youngest daughter [Jessica]. We made a choice in our family that two children was all we wanted. So I immediately at the time I gave birth, on the same table, I had a tubal ligation meaning my tubes were tied so I couldn’t reproduce again. Because we wanted to stop with two and I have.. I can say that being a mother and being a career woman has been extremely fulfilling in my life, and I enjoy being a mother, and I enjoyed being a grandmother, and it’s just like being stuck with this name Johni, which is a male name. I was at the doctor’s office this week and someone came out to call me in and they wanted me to call me John and I looked at her and said add an -ie on the end. We smiled and I said, “have you ever heard that song, I Enjoy Being A Girl?” Because I do, and I have enjoyed being a girl, being a woman and being a mother, being a wife and all of it is just a fabulous story.

GC: Having your life stable in the way that you did when you had Jessica how would you compare that a little bit to the difference in raising my mom [Zezette] before that occurred?

Johni Pittenger: Well there wasn’t any difference in love, I think parental love you never really know it until you experience it. I never.. I felt, and I’ve said this to you before, I never felt like I knew love until I held that first little baby in my arms, and that little baby’s arms reached up to me and I had the experience of nursing. It was just an unbelievably beautiful experience. Now there are 13 years difference between my two girls so basically that meant.. pretty much I had two single, or individual, I should say.. just they didn’t grow up as really close sisters because they were so far apart in age. It was like having an only child. This situation you have with a teenager is so entirely different from what you have with an infant and a toddler and the early developmental years of learning to real read, etc. Both of my girls were in child care while I worked, and I don’t think they either one of them were hurt as a result of the experience because they were in very loving environments and if I have that choice to make all over again; I would choose a family and a career, because I think you can successfully do both and lead a happy life.

GC: So you mentioned before that you moved around for work a lot, and I know you raised my mom the majority of her life in Alexandria and that is where are Jessica was raised as well?

Johni Pittenger: Jessica was born in Alexandria. When Jessica began the first grade we were transferred to California, and so she went from 1st to the 12th grade in California. At that time, your Grandpa was transferred back across the country to Connecticut, and she chose to stay in California and go to college in California when we were called back to Connecticut. So I’ve been back and forth across the country a couple of times and I’ve had the pleasure of living in several states and it’s beautiful country

GC: You are such a happy person at this point, you’ve been hugely successful in your family and your job and you just have a beautiful home now and beautiful outlook on life, what might you attribute some of your progression, growth and success to?

Johni Pittenger: You know that’s an interesting question that you ask me because one of my favorite shows of all times was The Sound of Music with Julie Andrews and she sings this song that maybe answers it for you, somewhere in my lifetime I must have done something good because there you were standing there and as I said 2021 I will celebrate my 50th anniversary. I married my best friend. If I said in the course of my life I need to climb Mount Everest, he would say what kind of rope do we need to get for you. So I guess I contribute my attitude and everything about my happiness to my partner.

I really enjoyed doing this interview, I gained lots intriguing insight about my grandmother. If I had another opportunity to do this interview, I would like to focus on her experience as a women directly compared to that of a male in this time period. This conversation certainly flowed, and I did tend to go off-script which might have geared the responses in a bit different of a direction that I’d initially anticipated. With that being said, the responses I received seemed very personnel rather than more general about the topics.

Work Cited

“Evolution of Working Women in the Work Force (1865-2015).” Workingwomen.web.unc.edu, workingwomen.web.unc.edu/.

“Mrs. America: Women’s Roles in the 1950s.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/wgbh/americanexperience/features/pill-mrs-america-womens-roles-1950s/.

“Public Higher Education in America.” CUNY, www.cuny.edu/site/cc/higher-education/women-higher-ed.html.

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