Oral History Conference

  “A’a i ka hula, waiho i ka maka’u i ka hale”  (Dare to dance, leave shame at home). Hawaiian proverb

 Liz Wuerffel and Allison Schuette on hike near Salt Lake City, Utah

Utah bound, I was up at 3 a.m. to catch a 7:45 flight to Salt Lake City for the 53rd annual Oral History Association (OHA) conference.  At the Welcome reception Diné (Navaho) women demonstrated how to make fry bread, a symbol of hope and survival, as tribes pushed west often were given only lard and wheat during the journey.  I chatted with old friends from past conferences Kristine McCuster, Ruth Hill, Alphine Jefferson, and Don Ritchie, the latter a fellow Sam Merrill student at Maryland who is presently completing a book on outspoken American columnist Drew Pearson.  When I mentioned that Seinfeld co-creator Larry David graduated in 1970 with a major in History, the year I received my PhD, Ritchie said that the department contacted him and discovered that he often cut classes and only recalled one professor Keith Olson. At a lunch with Larry David, Olson admitted he didn’t own a TV and knew nothing about Seinfeld or Curb Your Enthusiasm.  One of my favorite professors, Olson put together a special seminar to prepare grad students like myself for our comprehensive American history exam.

The Sheraton’s only breakfast choices being an over-priced Starbucks or room service, I spotted a MacDonald’s a block away and ordered an egg McMuffin meal with o.j. and milk after making myself admittedly good Starbucks coffee in my room.  A young man on a cellphone nearby appeared to be explaining that he needed $38 for epilepsy medicine before his young son could board a plane for get medical attention.  As he started to leave, a man gave him the money.  In all likelihood, it was a scam, but, if so, the guy was a great actor.

I went to a session to hear Kate Scott, a former protégé of Dan Ritchie at the Senate Historical Office, who offered common sense advice on setting aside one’s political beliefs and getting subjects to open up.  Also on the program was Pitt professor Kathleen Blee, who had interviewed white supremacists but worried about giving them a platform for their hateful beliefs.  She belonged to the Tree of Life synagogue where a neo-Nazi massacred 11 people, one of whom was Kathleen’s friend.  I met three women from UNLV, who contributed oral histories to a book about a Healing Garden dedicated to the concertgoers gunned down in seconds two years ago from a hotel room.  Barbara Tabach used the word Latinx, gender-neutral academic jargon for Latinos and Latinas that I refuse to adopt.  I also learned that Mormons prefer the term Latter Day Saints.

Tanya Pearson

Juan Coronado, whom I met last year in Montreal, took part in a plenary session titled “Potholes in the Path” about oral historians’ mishaps. I could have added a few of my own.  At a session entitled “Rock and Roll Will Never Die,” tattooed Tanya Pearson recounted interviewing “Women of Rock,” including Fifties child star Brenda Lee, Exene Cervenka from the L.A. punk pioneers X, Tanya Donelly from Belly (one of my favorite alternative bands), and Liz Phair, whose image appeared on her arm (also Judy Garland). I asked whether young punk bands admire 70s forerunners such as The Ramones; all panelists emphatically answered in the affirmative.     

Chris Stanley and Valerie Yow

Waiting for the bus to the Presidential reception at The Leonardo, a modernistic museum, I struck up a conversation with Ponaganset (R.I.) High School teacher (and volunteer fireman) Chris Stanley, winner of a teaching award named after an OHA founder, Martha Ross, who was responsible for my getting involved in the organization.  Stanley’s students produced oral history documentaries on clambakes (he described the procedure) and Vietnam vets.  They invited several distinguished authors to visit their class, included Tim O’Brien (“The Things They Carried”); all came, accepting no speakers fee, only air fare. On the ride back to the Sheraton I chatted with OHA veteran Valerie Yow, who interviewed three generations of North Carolina women mill workers and whose primer “Recording Oral History” has gone through several editions.

Our session “Do You Hear Race?: The Ethics of Interweaving Black and White Oral Histories in Audio Documentary” went exceptionally well, despite a fire alarm went off about 30 minutes into it.  We all trooped outside until receiving word that it was just a water leak.  Nearly everyone returned, and several African-Americans familiar with such practices as redlining and block busting had particularly interesting things to say about growing up in neighborhoods similar to Gary’s Central District. Allison Schuette and Liz Wuerffel wisely passed out typescripts of three audio clips that blended various narrators’ testimony. Here is a sample from the “Neighborhood Chorus”:

  In those days, everyone was Mr. or Mrs. or Grandma This and grandpa That.  They were just neighbors, but we presented ourselves and talked to them with respect. I got to see doctors, dentists, architects in my neighborhood.  So I knew that if I grew up and this is what I wanted to be, I saw an example of it.

  Most of the fathers were steelworkers.  It was very working class; everybody’s parents made about the same amount of money.  Lots of home cooked food.  We didn’t go out that much.  We didn’t have a refrigerator back then.  You had an icebox, and I can remember eating beans three days in a row.

  Five kids, two adults, two-bedroom house, one bathroom.  

  There were four families in my household, so I know what it’s like to sleep seven deep.  Mom and dad slept in the living room on a pull-out couch, my grandparents stayed in one of the bedrooms and the four of us girls stayed in the other bedroom.

  During the summer we got up, ate breakfast, went outside, ran the streets till we were hungry, came home, had lunch, went back out.

  We rode or bike miles away from the neighborhood.  We’d go to the back of the school and play in the dunes and come back with our socks full of sand.

  If my parents weren’t there, the next-door neighbors were like my surrogate parents or my surrogate grandparents.  It was a time when the neighbor’s mother wasn’t shy about telling you if you did something wrong. 

In the "Flight Paths Chorus," one person concluded, “It is easy to pinpoint the reasons for the fall of Gary on a race or a person, and the fact of the matter is, there were many factors, and in 1967 it was a perfect storm.”

Alexis Ching second from left

A wonderful session titled “Voices from Hawaii” took me back to starting married life in the Aloha State.  Chaired by Tamara Halliwell-Verhault from the University of Hawaii, Hilo, it began with all four participants, plus Micah Mizukami from the U. of Hawaii Center for Oral History, performing an Oli or chant, after which Tamara explained the various uses of chants, including when visiting friends and neighbors.  Lynne Wolforth’s fascinating talk on Hawaiian cowboys, “Stories of the Paniolo,” made me think of Chang Apana, the inspiration for fictional detective Charlie Chan.  Apana started out as a paniolo on the Parker Ranch, once the country’s second largest cattle ranch.  Alexis Ching described outrigger canoe making and recounted a myth about boat harnesses originally designed by a jealous chief as a chastity belt for his Polynesian princess.  

At an LGBTQ session, “Silent No More,” I heard stories about Wendelinus Hamutenya, who called himself Mr. Gay Namibia, and a trans Vietnam vet who’d been gang raped by fellow sailors.  Commentator Estelle Freedman of Stanford did an excellent job of putting the case studies in historical context, mentioning, for example, gay soldiers during World War II. I brought up Anne Balay’s “Steel Closets” documenting homoerotic horseplay by macho steelworkers, who didn’t regard getting blow jobs at work as queer behavior.

The International Oral History Association reception was pretty tame compared to last year’s gathering at an Irish pub in Montreal.  One highlight: Kerry Taylor from The Citadel introduced himself as a 1995 IUN Labor Studies graduate familiar with Steel Shavings and a friend of Ron Cohen and Ruth Needleman.  At the time he lived in East Chicago, and we had many Miller friends in common. After receiving a PhD from the University of North Carolina, Taylor published “Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below during the Long Seventies” (2010). At present he is interviewing Latino workers in the Charleston (SC) area.

 Ball State filmmakers; Elizabeth Agnew and Ren Halter Rainey in back, right

Bibi Bahrami, first woman Islamic Center President with Ball State Pres. Geoffrey Mearns

Saturday I attended a session devoted to Muslim oral histories plus a screening of the award-winning documentary “Muslims in Muncie” produced by students at Ball State who received 15 credit hours for working on that one project for an entire semester.  The narrators were from many different countries and included several African Americans and an Irish-American skeptic welcomed by members of the mosque. Al and Liz mentioned having interviewed several Valparaiso University Muslim students for the Welcome Project.  Undergraduate Ren Halter Rainey spoke about the importance of pre-interviews, something I’ve shied away from for fear the retelling would lack freshness.  He and Religious Studies professor Elizabeth Agnew had attended our session, and we all promised to stay in touch.  

 Jimbo and Juan Coronado at Sunday Send-off

The Southwest Oral History Association awards reception guest of honor was Ignacio M. Garcia, who grew up in a poor Texas border community and heard tales of Mexican Revolutionary heroes Pancho Villa and Emiliano Zapata from a gardener.  A medic in Vietnam, PhD graduate from Arizona, and professor at Brigham Young, Garcia has written such award-winning books as Viva Kennedy, When Mexican Could Play Ball, and a forthcoming memoir Chicano While Mormon: Activism, War, and Keeping the Faith.  At the Sunday Send-Off Juan Coronado, who had introduced Ignacio, said that they were from the same hometown.  We’ll see each other in two weeks at an MSU conference in East Lansing honoring Julian Samara, as Juan convinced me to submit a proposal on “Maria’s Journey.”  At my table was Miyuki Daimaruya from Yamaguchi, Japan, who is researching Japanese-American Korean War veterans, a subject unfamiliar to me.  Many, interned during World War II, were inspired by the example of the decorated Nisei 442nd Infantry Regiment that had fought in Italy.  Topaz internment camp in Utah was about 100 miles from Salt Lake City. The OHA organized a tour but it was for an entire day, so I reluctantly declined. 

On the ride to the airport I noticed that the Wasatch Mountains were snow-covered unlike five days earlier.  Fellow Sheraton bus passenger Stephen Sloan mentioned attending an unscheduled tribute to Tom Charlton, an OHA mainstay who had launched Baylor’s prestigious oral history program.   Charlton was a class act. In the airport I watched the futile Bears struggle against a New Orleans team competing without future Hall of Fame QB Drew Brees and stud running back Alvin Kamara. The plane ride was uneventful, but I noticed that United flight attendants no longer parroted the half-century old slogan “Fly the Friendly Skies.”  Home by 10 p.m., I described a few conference highlights to a weary wife, popped a beer, and put on Weezer’s Blue album.  The six-pack purchased at a Salt Lake City gas station food mart turned out to be 3.2 beer, I learned later, so it was nice to savor a Yuengling and ruminate over a productive five days.  

While gone, the family celebrated Angie’ 49th birthday. Jonathyne Briggs reported that Hanif Abdurraqib gave a stirring campus talk, reading one of my favorite essays, “It Rained in Ohio the Night Allen Iverson Hit Michael Jordon with a Crossover,” from “They Can’t Kill us Until They Kill Us”   Corey Hagelberg dropped by with a copy of his latest project, an ecology-minded coloring book.  On a sad note Philosophy professor Gianluca Di Muzio informed me that longtime colleague Ed Kenar fell off the roof of his house in Hammond and died.  He was a gentle soul who went out of his way to tutor students struggling with the material.  I called Paul Kern in Florida to pass on the grim news, skipping over the usual lamentations over the Bears.  Ed started at IUN in 1983.  Here is an excerpt from the obit:

    Edmund was one of those core people who quietly went about his life’s work. He was devoted to the care of his family, especially his mother. He was passionate about teaching and his students and poured himself into every course and class. He loved working with his students and colleagues. He carried his burdens with stoic grace and dignity and maintained the family property, built by his grandfather, with skill.   Edmund was a devout member of the Carmelite Monastery and took comfort and solace in his community of fellow members there. He was a true Eagle Scout. He was a graduate of St. Stanislaus School, Bishop Noll Institute, and Fairfield University, and attended Notre Dame University, and St. Louis University.

Ed Kenar