Social Change Related to Education, Gender and Sexuality from 1939 to the Present

Interview with ML , History 150 Spring 2021, Conducted by Luke Armstrong, March 13, 2021.

Introduction to Interview

This interview was recorded on March 13th, 2021 with my grandmother, ML. She was born in 1939 and went to college and then into the workforce in the 60s. For me, I really wanted to capture a time period that wasn’t my own. I had set out to ask questions about perception about gender and sexuality. These are both things that I know we today see completely differently. I wanted a look into my grandmother’s perception as she had once been married to a man (my grandfather) but now is married to a woman (Nancy, who appears in the interview as well). As the interview was supposed to interact with history, I expected big events in the interview like a notion of Second-Wave Feminism across college campuses in the 60s and drastic workplace discrimination against women. Instead, I received the small story. My interview with my grandmother doesn’t belong under any bold-faced heading in a history textbook. Instead it is a story about a normal childhood, working as a technician, moving, social pressures not society’s, and views on marriage, relationships, and divorce. There are anecdotes about Mahjong, IBM, smoking, and being on a plane for the first time. It is an interview with the “little guy” which spans a whole life. In the end, this was more valuable to me than hearing about anything that related to a textbook. I wanted the details, the stories and the snapshot of time that my grandmother holds in her memory. This is what is truly important. No one will forget the textbooks but memories like her’s are priceless.

Biography

My grandmother was born in 1939 and grew up in Hammonton, New Jersey. She was daughter to 2^nd generation Italian parents who were business owners in town. She was the first of two and graduated college in 1961 and married in 1964. She held a math degree and worked at General Electric in Valley Forge as a technician with Nimbus weather satellites. She then moved to work as a tech with RCA( an electronics company) and then NCR (the national cash register). She divorced with my grandfather and is now married to a woman as of 2020.

Luke Armstrong
This interview will be between me and my grandmother about the perception of gender roles and sexuality over the time in her life. My grandmother was born in 1939 and grew up in Hammonton, New Jersey, she was daughter to second-generation Italian parents who were business owners in town. She was the first of two and graduated college in 1961 and married in 1964. She held a math degree and worked at General Electric in Valley Forge as a technician with Nimbus weather satellites. She then moved to work as a tech with RCA, an electronics company, and then NCR (the national cash register.) She divorced with my grandfather, and is now married to a woman as of 2020. This is the interview.

Thank you for being in this interview. Very grateful. Let’s go with the questions.

Okay.

Luke Armstrong

So growing up, were there any ways that you were strictly supposed to act, or, you know, in either relation to having company over or just in the family, different than your brother or anything like that?

I don’t remember any differences at all between–
my brother is seven years younger than I am. So obviously, I hit different things, in my experience things differently in my life than he did just because of the age difference. And, and by the time he got to be a young teenager, I was out of the house. And so I didn’t really see what he went through. But I would say that there wasn’t any, there wasn’t any difference in treatment between boy and girl.

I would say if anything, I was more of a tomboy, then, you know, like, not so much playing with dolls, or, you know, like, I played baseball, I had a lot of, there were a lot of (pause) boys in my neighborhood. So if you wanted to go out and play, and you know, I’m talking about, from, say, like, six to 12 type thing, if you want to go out and play you played with the kids that were in the neighborhood, and they’re playing ball on the street, you play ball. So I, I saw no difference intreatment or things being told to me that I should or should not do based on sex, um based on gender.

And as far as by the time I got to high school, I participated a lot in music where, you know, I saw no, no gender dissuading or, you know, for, for having to be able to do something, because I was a girl.

I went to Catholic school. And I went to Catholic college, I went to , I went to coed Catholic High School, and all girls Catholic college, which was a shock for me.

When I got there, like, I was used to having boys in the class and you know, the horsing around that went on and, and that kind of stuff didn’t happen too much. You know, what, because this is a Catholic girls school, and they all came from Catholic schools and so—- Everybody, they all kind of obey the rules pretty much!

And I saw, no, nothing suggested to me in college that, that I wouldn’t be able to do anything that I wanted to. But I had no idea what I wanted to do. I decided I was going to be a math major only because I liked math. And it’s like, oh, what am I going to do with that? Like, I don’t know?

So by the time I got to be a senior, we kind of, you know, begin to talk a little bit about what your path is going to be. And things hadn’t really devel—, even though women had at that point, were beginning to get into engineering and the technical field that had only been for men.

I wasn’t so aware of what those job situations were. So when I graduated college, I told you this before I went ahead and went to Europe for six weeks. It’s like oh, I guess I’ll find a job when I get back. And when I got back, I sent out resumes and I did get a job at General Electric as a techie. And I, I would say I was kind of umm naive about the fact that, that I was doing a role that maybe if a guy was in there would not– I don’t know that I really paid attention to that. If my, my life wasn’t wrapped into my career, most of the kids that I went to school with their life wasn’t wrapped into the career. A couple were, but some, most of them were- This is a, this is a placeholder, this is an experience I need to have, because my eventual goal is to get married and have kids. And, and, not probably, and probably not continue in the workforce, because it was very unusual.

Now, am I going beyond?

Luke Armstrong
Yeah, you sort of just did- just did touch on the next question that I did have, since we went over it. But, so, I’ll reiterate it.

The expectations of your family when you went to college, were almost non existent? Because you you know, you didn’t know what you wanted to do. You didn’t have a career path is the next question.

ML
I did not have a career path. My, my parents knew that it didn’t really, you know, I would say, in their eyes, this was kind of a placeholder to, you know, like, this was part of growing up process, you go to school, you know, because eventually, she’s going to come out of college, and she’s going to get married, have family. And that’s, and, and the I know, I can remember talking about this? Well, the education isn’t wasted. It’s not like a wasted education, you still are, YOU are getting educated as a person, you just aren’t presenting it as a workforce [pause] or into the workforce. And I you know, it’s this, again, this is my perception of it.

Luke Armstrong

Right. That’s very interesting to me. Knowing that even though as it became more acceptable and more normal for women to go to college, it still wasn’t in terms of having a career yet. Is that, is that what you’re…?

You’re right, you’re right. (interjection)I don’t think it was.

Nancy (ML’s wife)

Now, unless you wanted to be a teacher…

Unless you wanted to be a teacher and you have that in your mind. And I also went to school with a couple I was in college with a couple of kids that wanted to be doctors. And they did. They did do that path. I wasn’t drawn into anything like that.

Luke Armstrong

Wow. All right. So I guess since you didn’t stay there very long. I don’t know how much we’ll get out of this question. But I know you held the tech job working with RC- RCA[ Radio Corporation of America, electronics company and related to General Electric] and NCR [National Cash Registry, specializes in accounting machines and appliances such as ATMs] Do you have any perceptions of the American workplace? In those days? What was it like?

Um, I didn’t witness any kind of sexual harassment. Um, I do think that I, I do think that I took the job that I did with NCR. So that was like, I went from GE to NCR. I do think that that particular job was only offered to women, because it was lower paying, I don’t think a guy would have taken that spot. Um, and again, this is my, the only people that I saw in that job were women. In that particular field, which was installing accounting machines, that was my– programming the accounting machine, take it to the customer, install it, show them, show them how to use it, make sure it was all, you know, if they had any problems, they called you with and that was, my that was my job within NCR. NCR was big into accounting machines. This is all pre computer or pre, pre personal, you know, the Small Business small business didn’t have—

Just like my father had an office at the auto parts store. And when they had to send out their bills to, to all of their customers that mostly they got done by hand, or then by typewriter, and then from typewriter, they went to this accounting machine that they just punched in the numbers and it, it moved the machine from column to column to put the information that needed, kind of like a spreadsheet or an Excel spreadsheet type thing.

And so, for the years that I…. let’s say until the…. I bet, I don’t know, I would say until the 90s, maybe that my father’s business operated on an accounting machine.

So okay, I digress. Go back to the question!

Luke Armstrong

Yeah, we were just talking about the American workplace holding those tech jobs. Maybe we should elaborate, I guess…what you… on what you did, and, and have it in here just in case?

ML
On what I did? For that?

Luke Armstrong

Or what you did for all these, these jobs, that you held after going to college

The job, what I started with, at General Electric, was as a techie, for thermal engine, thermal heat transfer engineers, so these are guys who are digging, putting information together for the heat panels that are on weather satellites.

So that–I’m gonna liken it to solar panels. So how much can these devices take?

So a lot of my work was putting together- doing the actual multiplication. So that, so that things could be fed into the big main mainframe computer, that, that they had programs for that we’re going to calculate what the heat, what these heat panels were able to take.

So that didn’t get very exciting. (laughs!)

Because, you know, it just, it just wasn’t, there wasn’t a, it did whatever kind of, I would say, kind of clerical work that was that was needed in that department.

So, I worked there for about a year. And at that point, I was, I had gone, I had gone through high school with a group of five girls that were in my clinic. And so, when we all finish schools, like, the big goal was, we’re gonna live together, we’re all gonna live together in an apartment, and we’re all going to go to work. Okay, and you know, doesn’t matter what the work is, because the fun part was, we’re going to be in an apartment or on Friday night, it’s time to go out and go there. So that’s the way the nine to five on Monday through Friday only supported what we did on the weekend. You know, I didn’t have any other bills and wasn’t anything.

And I told you this before, I came from white privilege. My dad bought me a car as I know, I didn’t have any, I had no, I had nothing that said to me, you better get a job that pays more, because you need, you need more to support your life, I didn’t need it.

So after having done that, for a year, year and a half, I finally decided that this just wasn’t it wasn’t for me, and I wanted something else. So, I started looking for another job and I got this job with national cash register, NCR, and it was installing accounting machines, which I knew nothing about. I had had an economics class, and I knew my arithmetic (Nancy laughs), you know, so like, I could figure out how to do the, you know, this is the balance and you take this away then this is because essentially, what you had to do was program the accounting machine so that everybody else could that was going to work it would it would that it would be easy for them. So they sent me to school and I thought, wow, this is cool. There I got my first plane ride. They sent me to school in Dayton, Ohio, where that was the home base of NCR. And they taught us how to do programming. And and I thought that was really cool. I got to I got to ride an airplane for the first time. So I was 22.

That’s another whole thing. Look at that. You guys have been in airplanes, how many times to go to Disney and do all those. And here I was 22 was my first– I was scared to death

A plane, you’re gonna get in a plane!

I actually flew a few times with that company, because the company sto–next step up from the accounting machine was a very, like an entry level computer that read mag strips on the back of sheets. So, they had five mag strips that ran down here, kind of like the little stripe that’s on the back of your credit card. So, they said that it read all the data that was on printed on the front, but it was it had been written on the back on the strips. I have no, I don’t know how. But-

So that that was step number two from the accounting machine to this thing that was the introduction into comp- to computers being used in accounting departments. So, another I got another plane ride to go. So, and every time they sent me for something, you know, you had, you had to go away to school to learn it.

So, I did, I stayed with them for about a year and a half. In the meantime, I had started dating Frank. He asked me to marry him. Now you have to understand– — I just said to you, he asked me to marry him. There was never any. And I think this the attitude of two people getting together and deciding that they want to get married is much more where it is today. People you know, you talk to your boyfriend or girlfriend about the possibility of living your life together. And what that’s going to be like. That was not in the perception of how that went. It’s just the driver of the relationship was the man…in my experience.

And I you know, thank God, that’s not the way it is today.

And you know, there are a lot of things that that your eyes get opened up to, after all of that and tell you—”Oh, wow, look at that. I didn’t know that.”

So, when I made the decision, yes to go ahead and do that.

I couldn’t stay in the job that I had at NCR because he had a job in Pennsylvania. And we were going to be living where his job was. That’s another thing we didn’t talk about. “Well, I have a job to I’m going to keep my- “No, that it just didn’t get talked about.

So, I went where he had a job. And we stayed there for a little while.

This really, I don’t know whether you need all this story. You want to hear it anyway.

Luke Armstrong

Yeah!

Okay. So, we lived in Devon, Pennsylvania, he worked in Paoli so like near Valley Forge.

Very near, Villanova where Emily is. [My girlfriend]

And we only stayed there a year because in the course of that time, my father asked Frank if he wanted to learn the auto parts business ‘cause my father knew he had a business, he had built that business up and at that time like 50s and 60s, he was doing very well. This was all pre big box stores, so this little guy was expanding because cars had expanded. Everybody had a car. Everybody had to get their car fixed. They either fixed it themselves or the service station did it. His business started to grow. He didn’t see big box, he didn’t see Walmart coming in. Nobody saw that.

So, so he asked Frank if he wanted to join the business, learn the business and see whether or not he wanted to get into it. Now, Frank knew the business was profitable. My mom and dad were living really well. And so, he gave it a try. He worked. Okay, so he started working there. I’m trying to think before he- Michael [ML’s son, my Uncle] was born a year after we got married. Michael was born, Frank was still working for Burrough’s [business equipment manufacturer] in Paoli. And it might have been January or February before he made the decision- Yes, he will try Bruno’s [name of ML’s family business, auto parts] and we move we moved to Hammonton lived in grandma and grandpa’s house for a while we were finding a place to live. And Frank worked there for, I’m going to say a year and a half or so and realized this was not his thing. And he put some feelers out for a job and got a job with IBM, IBM was, at that point, really moving up. They were hiring all kinds of sales people. And I thought, “Frank’s not really a salesperson”, but they didn’t want the kind of salesperson that you know, as a car salesman. They wanted somebody that has some technical background. So, he went in to IBM, and we moved, where did we go? To Cherry Hill! He was working out of Philadelphia Office. So that was commutable. Now am I completely off? Should I keep going?

Luke Armstrong
I yeah, we’re actually getting to the next question.

Go ahead.

Luke Armstrong

What What were your feelings like? Leaving that job getting married? having, you know, the birth of my uncle? What changed? And how did that? How did that feel? For you?

ML
Um, I was okay, into all of that. You know, I was a newlywed. This was still I certainly didn’t regret stopping my job. There were times after that. I would say, you know, five six seven years later, where I kind of realized that, you know, maybe that wasn’t the smartest thing to do, but, but it wasn’t—[Pause]. I hadn’t witnessed it being done by other– sometimes when you witness other people doing things, it becomes a little bit—Maisie[ML’s dog] just spotted the dog running out there

So, so I was okay with that. I kind of figured I wanted another kid. In a couple years. We had another another, your mother. And we were still living in Cherry Hill when, when Mary was born. No, no, no, no, no, no. Mary. That’s not right. We were living in Hammonton when Mary was born and we were about to go to Cherry Hill because she was, she was only a few months old when we went there. And I was still okay, I was I was into– I lived on a street where all the other women were home. The husbands had gone. And so, you know, you knew you play Bridge in the afternoon. You took care of your kids, but when your kids were in school or whatever, you know, you had Bridge, you had Mahjong, you know, you had a group of— so my college smoker days were just on Greenvale Avenue, that’s all, it was in a different neighborhood instead of sitting in the smokers. So, this is my mentality—

Nancy

Does he realize what you just said, that you were a smoker?

I was a smoker.

Luke Armstrong

Yeah I knew that. I kinda knew that, I think.

You knew that?! I was a smoker from the time. I like I guess I started senior year of high school, not during not during school, of course. But maybe that summer. So, by the time I went to college, I was into I was into smoking. I smoked all through college. I smoked until I got married. Right after I got married. I came home from my honeymoon, sick. I had an awful sore throat. I didn’t know what was the matter with me. I went to the doctor and he said I think you have mononucleosis. So, I got diagnosed. I had been at a wedding with 150 people who everybody wanted to kiss the bride. And I had mono, but I didn’t know it!

So that was a complete aside. I could not smoke a cigarette, because inhaling, cigarette just did me in on my throat. So, I stopped smoking. And I haven’t smoked since.

Nancy

And the world is grateful!

And the world is grateful for it. (laughs!) So, so the idea, when both my kids were born, the idea still in my head was this is this is the way it is. Right? That what I’m doing is I’m staying at home raising my kids. And that’s it. And work never going back to work never entered in.

So, we stayed in Cherry Hill until Michael was five. And we saw we were there like two and a half or three years, Frank got offered a job in a different territory, which was Reading, Pennsylvania is like, okay, IBM stands for

ML and Nancy

I’ve Been Moved.

Luke Armstrong

(laughs) I have never heard that before.

And because IBM needed people here. And then if they’re building something over there, and there’s lots of if the development is going up, and they need more banks, banks use IBM machines, we need to move a crew of people to sell to the banks to service the bank, we move ‘em. So, you just you got very much into the swing of that. But this is the way it is in order to climb the ladder. In order for the man to climb the ladder in the business field. You got to go. So we were actually lucky. He was in Reading for (gosh) 5,6,7,8, 8 years, seven or eight years. And his job he was able to change territories, but still we were able to live in Reading. We loved Reading. It was just it was great. Out of the way of the city, so it was getting used to a much easier life than I had been into in Cherry Hill. Just a different class of people. So still, I have my own little group, I joined the garden club, I joined the Women’s Club, I joined I joined the church course. And then I started playing guitar. I had played– I had been involved in music all through high school, and really stopped in college. Because I was against, I was, if I went into anything that was in the music field. And while I was in college, I was competing with all the music majors. And I wasn’t I wasn’t equipped to do that. Background in music wise I wasn’t equipped to do that. So, I didn’t do music in college. But when I got to reading, I had a friend that said “hey, you know how to do you know how to sing and you know how to read music. Of course I’m going to teach you how to play the guitar” because guitar folk music had infiltrated the Catholic Church. And so they changed their focus from all music being organ to the introduction of their were a group just like there are the Beatles in popular music. There were groups within the catholic church who had written religious music. And they had–they had followings, just like the Beatles. And so, you got to learn them. And anyway, so I played guitar and I was happy in that whole environment… I had my daytime Mahjong and my day time music thing and I played you know, church music on Sunday. I was very I got very involved in church music. So when it was time when Frank got the opportunity to come back to New Jersey because IBM, I’ve Been Moved had a big thing here in Plainsboro and Dayton. And so, he took a job here, and we moved here. It was, it was not a happy move. I think we all cried on that ride from Reading to Princeton, even though we knew we were getting a big, you know, we had found a house, it was a bigger house and everything, but it’s like leaving your—we had found this family and family atmosphere of, and it meant we had to leave all those friends, these kids. I think Michael took Michael must have taken four or five years before he was able to adjust to what it was like to find new friends to be thrown in a situation with new friends. Because what do they do on the bus when you’re new? That’s who they pick on. This is about me, right? (laughs) Okay. I digress. Um, so we moved here, and I got very involved in church music here. And so that was my, you know, I wasn’t going to work. But that was my work.

Nancy

You volunteered for (unintelligible)?

Oh, yeah. I had some volunteer things that I did. They weren’t. They weren’t any kind of focus. My focus was on church music.

Okay, were uh. What are we up to?

Luke Armstrong

I guess, just socially, I guess your feelings on divorcing my grandfather and how that came to be and all that. Say as much as your your comfortable with.

ML
Yeah, it it starts when kids leave the house. And you have… So, we have been a family unit of four people. And the main focus of that is the two kids that you’re raising. Frank took care of earning the money that we needed to live. I took care of what the house I had to keep up and meals to prepare for that. And when when the kids go off to college, and then you don’t you don’t have the distraction of what those two kids are doing to you. And then then it’s you and he or two, it’s the two people together that realize that, where is my life going now? What am I doing? And what’s my? What’s this? What have I invested in this relationship? How much do I know of this person? Yeah, do I do I? Was I even aware of, of where of where it would go? So anyway, I got to see that we didn’t have a whole lot of similarities. These are the things that I should have done when I was dating, but I had no no guidebook. I had no—there, there wasn’t a script for this. I hadn’t, I hadn’t invested in my in forming a relationship that was going to be binding or or that was going to- not binding– that was going to survive the taking away of distraction of the of the kids. And so it didn’t, it just didn’t.

Um, I don’t know how much more I’m comfortable in, in saying about that. It wasn’t

I guess we just we we grew. We grew apart instead of together.

Luke Armstrong

I understand

Yeah, right. There was there was counseling involved, both of us as individuals and as a couple. And it just didn’t.

You know, I want to back up a little bit when I said that, like today’s kids, I think are much more aware of discussing certain things just like, it was never discussed about what I would do with my, my life, whether or not my career was, was at all important. It just, it wasn’t important to me it hadn’t been—I hadn’t been educated with the idea that I was going to do something with any of the education that I had, like, I see a difference in what your sister is doing with her idea of what she wants to do. And she’s, and she’s focused beyond that. And yet, she knows that she has a boyfriend that she’s been with. And so, when she’s considering what it is that she wants to do, obviously, they’re discussing it. That kind of stuff I was never aware of. Because in my head, what women were meant to do was-“ okay, you can go ahead and you can get an education, whatever, but you’re going to stay home and take care of the kids because that’s, that’s the way it is.” So, whether that came from only from me, whether it was instilled in me, I came from a house that my mother was home, my mother never went to work, ever. My father was the breadwinner. And, and my mother was home. So that, you know, I grew up in that. And so did a lot of–a lot of that generation. Okay, am I off on a tangent?

Luke Armstrong
No, I think it’s, I think it’s related. I’ll sort of reiterate, see, if I got the the point there, you’re, you’re saying that the idea that you could have something more even communicate, a relationship was just less open. And so, it didn’t leave a lot of room to really, to really have something stable have, you know, that kind of stuff?
Yeah, I have my final question here, then. How do you feel knowing now that social constructs regarding sexuality have changed? and how that relates to your life? Yeah.

ML
Well, I’m very happy that all of that has changed. I have to mention one. I have to go back a little bit. Because I don’t know how much YOU are aware of. I grew up in a house. I don’t remember ever hearing about anybody that was gay. And, and yet, my uncle was gay. I did not know that. For the lo-ng-est time.

Nancy

You knew he was different.

I knew. Yeah. I knew he loved to stay with all of us. You know, he would come in. If my mom and dad were going out, he would come and sit with us. And (pause) hello! (The lights in my room went off here) Oh you had to turn the lights on? I wondered what that— (laughs)

Luke Armstrong

Continue?

ML
You know, he was he was the best uncle in the world. But I, we– and we knew he had male friends. But I just it was it was naive. It was stupidity. It was ig–It was ignorance. Yes. Right. Just not. And, and I don’t I don’t remember my brother ever saying anything about you know, we just know that. And it wasn’t that. They didn’t know. They did know- my parents, but I just I just never was aware of.

Nancy

And they accepted him anyway.

Oh, yeah, they accepted him. You know, there’s, there’s something about a gay man. That’s very likable, and all and they have an awful lot of–they’re very well liked in the female community. And we found that out when—

Nancy

They’re like your best girlfriends.

They are. They’re like your best girlfriends. And we found that out when we went to Gay Men’s chorus and we joined Gay Men’s Chorus they opened up their arms then they were happy to have us there.

Nancy

Every time they see you, they gotta hug you and kiss you and “it’s so great to see you!”

So, the so the acceptance of that is really, you know, that’s wonderful to see. It’s to know that You have a special— that you have found a special someone that actually sits with you to listen to talk, whether that person is male or female is a very important thing to, to have. And when– when you realize that, that that— that that is an okay thing to have, then that’s what that was the hardest part for me was to realize that the feelings that I had, were an okay thing. And that the person that I had fallen in love with for as strange as that seemed to me, coming from the era and the family that I came from, to accept that, that was the hardest thing for me to say that okay, this is okay. It took years for me to be able to. Yeah. Right. To be able to, to. It was (interjection)terrifying. Yes. Yeah.

Luke Armstrong

Wow.

And we thought we would lose everything. Yeah, just it’s it’s–

Nancy

church, our friends.

Our friends, yes. Well, we lost our church, but on–

Nancy
That was for some other reason…

ML
But we just, you know, you just think that everything’s gonna be it’s like my whole life—I didn’t prepare for this. It’s, you know, kids today, there are kids today that have that have decided that they that they are gay or that they have. (pause) It has, it has to be terrifying. If I was terrified at the age of—

Nancy
I think it’s easier for kids these days. Because they, they see it all around, they hear it on the news, they see it in the movies and on TV. They, they hear it discussed generally. So I think it’s not as scary.

Luke Armstrong
I don’t want to I don’t want to make you elaborate more on that. But that’s, that’s a very interesting idea for you and just knowing that I guess you’ve perceived that that’s changed. But it being terrifying for you. That’s, that’s got to be— that’s got to be one of the hardest things, things to ever do.

ML
Yes. Right. Because you’ve come you’ve come from it’s, it’s different than if you’ve announced that and you’ve decided that, or you’ve been always been attracted to women and you knew that when you were a teenager, that would be different than been realizing that it didn’t didn’t matter that this person was a male or a female, that you fell in love with this person. You fell in love with that person. And it didn’t—and the gender didn’t matter. I mean, that’s, that’s my simplistic view of that.

Nancy

And I think the most terrifying thing was telling our kids.

Oh, yes, you weren’t even born yet. Right?

Luke Armstrong
Yeah. Yeah, I did not exist. Yeah, if you’re comfortable telling that story, I’d love to hear it after the interview.

ML
So I think Cassie [My cousin, Michael’s daughter] was born, but not Emma [my sister] yet. And I, I said, I have to tell my kids that this is happening. And I can’t remember which came first whether I did that before. I don’t know. I don’t know. Timewise, I can’t.

But anyway, I remember meeting– I had told them that I wanted to meet with them.

Nancy

Separately. We met with Mary [my mom] and Blake [my dad] first. Right?

I don’t remember. I remember. I remember going to Mike and Shelly’s [my aunt] apartment.

Nancy

We went to two different places. Yes. I’m sure because I had to wait in the car.

Right. Nancy waited in the car and I will so I so I was separated then at that point. Okay, so I, Frank and I had separated we had decided we were divorcing and so I remember the first meeting was with Michael and Shelley’s department. And an all I can remember is that Michael wanted to tell the story about Cassie had thrown the toilet–thrown a diaper down the two or Michaels pants, Michaels underwear down, flush it down the toilet, and they had this backup in the apartment and how terrible that was. Anyway, you know, and he, I had I had a really serious thing I wanted to talk about I didn’t care about it. Anyway, they were they were very accepting of the of that idea. And I remember Shelley saying, “Well, where is Nancy then? Where is she? And I said she’s out in the car and so she said “Well let her come in.” Ah, so it was a scary thing to say it but they my kids did not disown me for separating from their father or for picking a lifestyle that they weren’t–not that they weren’t happy with it, but was different than what–that because both of both of them had just, yeah, gotten married and committed to a relationship– heterosexual relationship. So, and I can’t remember going to Mary’s that’s terrible. I don’t remember that at all.

Nancy

I remember. Mary crying.

Where did they live?

Nancy

In that in that uh yeah what’s it called , it wasn’t tamarin…

They were living in Tamaron.[apartment complex] Oh!

Luke Armstrong
All right. I guess that that concludes it. That’s, that’s amazing.

Is that enough information?

Luke Armstrong

I mean, it’s a lot of your life story and I’m glad to have heard it and I’m glad that you decided to do it for the for the interview.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

Research

I looked into sources to get a bit of what college life was like for women in the 1960s. The topic here that I chose will cross paths with this at least once so I’d like to get an idea of what it was like. In the early 1960s, I gathered that the idea of ‘wild hippie liberals’ had not yet taken hold and instead schools were rule driven in an attempt to stifle bad behaviors. Women of course had more rules than their male counterparts. I looked into the background on racial history in New Jersey during the era where my grandmother grew up. As a whole, NJ seems to have desegregated fairly early, but in doing so created defacto-separations that have existed to this day. I know my grandmother went to a high school with no blacks so it will be interesting to see her point of view if the topic comes up. I have chosen to not focus on race but it may come up so I’ve kept the research. Finally, I looked into women’s roles in the 1960s to get a better understanding. This era gives way to birth control approvals, equal pay for work, and sharing the responsibilities of child rearing. This article cites the change from men only jobs which could relate to my grandmother’s math degree and subsequent tech jobs. I would like to know her point of view entering a field which was and still is male dominated.

Bibliography

McAndrew, Frank. “Controlling the Conduct of College Women in the 1960s.” Psychology Today, 15 Feb. 2017, www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/out-the-ooze/201702/controlling-the-conduct-college-women-in-the-1960s.

Wright, Giles R. Afro-Americans in New Jersey A Short History. United States of America, New Jersey Historical Commission, 1988.

Walsh, Kenneth T. “The 1960s: A Decade of Change for Women.” US News, 12 Mar. 2010, www.usnews.com/news/articles/2010/03/12/the-1960s-a-decade-of-change-for-women#:%7E:text=In%20the%201960s%2C%20deep%20cultural,sexual%20harassment%20at%20the%20workplace.

Follow Up

ML approved the transcript 3/27/21

No further edits requested

Interview Process

Zoom was used for recording the audio interview while Otter.ai was used to get a rough transcription. The rest was edited by hand.

Transcription Process

Otter. ai was used for a rough draft. The rest was pieced together by a listen of my own interview. I cut my own stutters and word repetitions from my questions so they are easier to see upon the page. My grandmother’s tone was preserved however as I did not take out her extra words, “so’s” or pauses. I did remove them some times if it made the transcript incredibly difficult to read but as a whole, I wanted to reflect where she makes pauses and repeats herself because it is important to her meaning as she clarifies. I used clarification brackets as the guide suggests but ignored more of the formal paragraphing rules because I wanted to separate responses by their content. I left contractions that aren’t really real like “gonna” and words like “yeah” in because I think they would formalize my interview. This contrasts what the guide says but I liked the conversational tone we achieved. Brackets explain details that my grandmother and I know but that the viewer wouldn’t.