Mom was born in 1947 in Texas when grandpa got back from WWII. She grew up in rural southeast Iowa. Hear about life before indoor plumbing, in one room schoolhouses, multiple school consolidations; all the way through getting her Masters degree from the University of Michigan.

048.mp3 (1h 6m 28MB)

Mom in my genealogy data.

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Transcript (via OpenAI Whisper):

We can talk about anything we want as Jay Flaunce is ignorant. Welcome to Jay Flaunce’s Ignorance, episode 48. This is the early oral history of my mother, Sharon Hanna. We hope you enjoy this episode. If you’d like to call in to the show, you can leave us a voicemail at 1-402-577-0117. Before I was a twinkle in your eye. Back in the year of our Lord, 1975. Way before that. Yes. There’s a rumor going around that you were a fully formed individual without me existing in the world. I can confirm that. So tell me what’s your earliest childhood memory, if you remember. Well, I guess, yeah, that’s what I’m shooting for is the earliest thing you remember. Yeah. My earliest childhood memory. Is it fair for this to be a picture generated thing? Yeah, sure. Okay. The earliest picture generated movie I have, memory I have, is my mother and I walking on the beach of South Padre Island. Really? Your first memory is Texas. Yep. South Padre. The first, well, let’s define our terms. When I say picture memory, I mean what’s the earliest documentation of my life as a human being that I can retrieve. Yeah, I’m not trying to prove anything in a court of law. I’m just curious. Right. So you were born, let’s see, hold on. I can do math. No, you just go ahead and tell me. I was born in 1947. Okay. The circumstances of my birth, this would be interesting for posterity. The circumstances of my birth were my mother and father, Earl Chapman Humphrey and Maisel Maureen Stark, dated when they were youth living literally within two miles of each other in their family homes. And then my father- That was near Mount Pleasant, Iowa, right? That was the Henry County- Southeast Iowa. Yep. On each side of the Henry Jefferson County line. Yep. They dated. My father enlisted in World War II, enlisted in the Navy during World War II at age 17. So he went off to war. My mother graduated from high school, went to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, to be credentialed so that she could teach school, which was at that time a two-year certification. And she taught in a variety of rural one-room country school houses around within 25 miles of her parental home. When my dad came home from the war, he completed his tour of duty in Corpus Christi, Texas. I know nothing about the exchange between them that resulted in this phenomenon. I only know that she left her teaching job- well, that may not be accurate. She may have stopped teaching before that. But she went to Corpus Christi, Texas, where my dad was completing his enlistment, and they were married in Corpus Christi, Texas, where I was born pretty much literally a year later. So I have memories, I have pictures. You were born in Corpus Christi. I was born in Corpus Christi, Texas. I believe the name of the hospital was Strang Memorial Hospital. We lived, at the time of my birth, we lived in a very small two-bedroom house on what was then called North Beach. I believe it still is. But I have seen and have in my possession, I believe, pictures of me in a bassinet in that house. So I would have been weeks old, probably. What I recall about my birth, because many years later, I pressed my parents that it was unfair that I did not have an older brother. And their reply was, that would not have been possible since I was the first child. So then I gave slack and said, then why don’t I have a younger brother? And the answer, kindly spoken, was that when I was born, I had a hernia, an abdominal hernia. My belly button stuck out. And that needed to be repaired. You had to wait a certain time with the baby before it could be repaired. And during that time, there was a coin placed over my belly button and tape wrapped around my waist, holding the coin in place. And that my mother was very anxious always that somehow the tape would come off and the coin would come off and there would be damage done or something. That I would be somehow injured as a result of that before it could be repaired. And that was why I had no siblings. That one safe child is enough. Another to risk, because they didn’t know what could, or she didn’t, probably she didn’t know what could go wrong. And based upon my later, actual, easily remembered relationship with both my mom and my dad, I’m quite confident that that caution was far more my mother’s than it was my dad’s. Because mother was, it’s really interesting because in my view, mother was quite adventuresome in her own person. As evident by the fact that she left southeast Iowa alone, traveled to Corpus Christi, Texas to marry a man that she had not seen in over four years. So she was not timid in her own right. But when it came to her child, she was very, very protective. Are there other adventurous things grandma did? Because I’m not remembering any. Well, I… Did motherhood change her, maybe? That’s a possibility. Was my mom adventuresome? I would say taking on a schoolroom of probably as many as 30 children in all grades required a reasonably adventuresome spirit. And to the best of my knowledge, that was a clearly chosen profession that she chose. She became a schoolteacher because she wanted to be a schoolteacher. And that’s one room schoolhouse, no water, outhouse, no water, no electricity. Yep. Hot village stove in the middle of the room, one room. So that’s chalkboards and… Right. That she would have fuel in the wintertime. She would have fueled that stove with wood that would have been provided by the community, I’m sure. She wouldn’t have chopped the wood, but she would have fed the wood into the stove to keep the schoolhouse warm during the day. Probably with the help of the older children, because there would have been 12th graders. So I’m picturing in my mind children just show up, most of them on foot. Were some of them on horses? Yes. And then the parents would show up occasionally, I’m guessing, but not every day. They’re not getting dropped off or anything. No. They’re going to school and they’re going home. Right. And the parents are like, hey, you’re back from school. As you said, most commonly walking, occasionally riding a donkey, a mule, a horse. And so during, I don’t know exactly how long it was between my birth and Dad’s completing his tour, his enlistment requirement. But I do know, I remember both my parents saying to me when I was interested in travel and things like that as a child, I remember asking them why they went back to the Midwest to live. Why did they not go someplace else to live? Why did Dad not reenlist? And of course, there was no conversation about the fact that he had been a prisoner of war for three and a half years. In my childhood, they wouldn’t have talked to me about that. But they just said that they knew enough about travel, that is travel in the sense of moving a family from place to place, that they didn’t want that lifestyle for me. They wanted a secure lifestyle. So that, of course, was what they returned to. One set of grandparents a mile and a half down the road, and the other set of grandparents two miles down the road, and an aunt and uncle a mile in the other direction, and eventually five cousins in that household, and people that our family had known, another aunt and uncle north a mile. So a very familiar community. So Grandma never taught school again when you were school age? Correct. Okay. So her schooling, her teaching career was very short then. Yes. Because they were roughly the same age, right? Right, right. So her teaching career, and I’m guessing here, would have been five years, six years maybe at the most. Did she go after that? She went back to work. She did not work when I was a young child. She went to work when I was in seventh grade, and she worked in Mount Pleasant, Iowa. She never taught school again. She worked in Mount Pleasant, Iowa, which was 12 miles away from the house where we lived. Most of the time, she worked as a clerk for the Sears catalog order office in Mount Pleasant. She also worked at a company called Metromail, which did, at that time in the U.S., there were lots of samples that were sent out to everybody. So bar soap, for example, every time there was a new brand of bar soap, everybody got a bar of that particular soap free in the mail. So dish soap, bar soap, a variety of things. So Mom worked in that company that did that mailing for various products, Metromail. So your earliest memories of childhood were the house you were in. Was that house gone by the time I came around? Because my earliest childhood house is the one that I grew up in every summer, basically. That was a new, modern, fancy thing that Grandpa and Grandma built. So what happened to the house that I grew up in? The house that I grew up in was an eighth of a mile down a gravel road, two-bedroom house, kitchen, living room, dining room. Did not have an inside bathroom when we moved in. I have memory, I must have been seven, maybe eight years old, when our neighbor, who was a carpenter by trade, built a bathroom on our house. Before that, we had an outhouse. So you had well water from the beginning? Yes. But you pumped it yourself in the early days? Yes. Hand-pumped well water. Right. No electricity yet in your early childhood? I don’t remember ever not having electricity. Okay, so maybe that house had electricity already. Yes. 1947, so we would have been talking mid-early 50s, early, mid-1950s at this point. Right, right. Early 50s. But pretty rural, like this is fairly rural Iowa, because Mount Pleasant wasn’t enormous. No. Mount Pleasant, at the time that I graduated from high school, Mount Pleasant was just over 100,000. Over 9,000. 9,000? Yes. Really? Yes. Okay, I stand corrected. Your dad’s more knowledgeable about that stuff than I am. Yes, because Sioux City is only like 65,000 people, right? Sioux City, Iowa, I thought. So Mount Pleasant was 9,000-ish people at the time, maybe, yes. Yes, but that was the closest town of any size. Right, right, right. Yes, there were three towns within a 10-mile radius, but they were population like 200 to 300 somewhere. Yes. With a gas station, a store, a small grocery store, but no other business. So what was your favorite part of life as a child in southeast Iowa? Oh, gosh. In the 50s, early 50s? Yes. I would say if I had to pick a favorite part, my time with my dad was absolutely my favorite part. My perception is that my father adored me, and the only verbalization that I remember was Mom saying to me one time, when I became pregnant, in those days, of course, they didn’t know what gender babies were until they were born, but I remember Mother saying, when we found out that I was pregnant, your dad said, I hope it’s a girl, which was not the standard thing in that day. The vast majority of men wanted sons, particularly their firstborn to be sons, but the legend was that Dad wanted a girl, and I was Dad’s constant companion from the time, I think, almost that I could walk. When he would go drive our pickup truck the 30 miles to buy coal for our coal furnace that he did in that house, I would go with him. He and I always went mushroom hunting in the spring after I was big enough to not stumble over things. That would have been after I started elementary school, probably. Some of my favorite childhood memories are in the companionship of my dad. These are examples of the contrast between his, what I label now as teaching me to take on life,

To learn, to navigate life, to have the internal strength and confidence to navigate life. But he would do things like, we had a phenomenon, a vegetative phenomenon in southeast Iowa that was colloquially referred to as horseweeds. I don’t know what the technical term is, but they were probably an inch and a half in diameter and grew as much as six feet tall. And he would take his pocketknife around the Fourth of July, we’d always get little firecrackers, the two-inch long firecrackers that you lit individually, and he would drill holes with his pocketknife all the way up the horseweed and then stick a firecracker in the hole and he would drill the holes up just as high as I could reach. And then he would teach me to light the top one first and that had fell the top of the horseweed and then light the next one and it had fell another chunk. And one of my distinct memories was my mom and dad’s bedroom in the two-bedroom house. I had the window, the only window, on the east and the horseweeds would grow up next to the window and mother liked to leave them because they shaded the window from the morning sun. And that was one of the spots that he chose to drill holes in the horseweeds and we would fell those at Fourth of July and was displeased by the fact that our horseweeds had been destroyed. And the other two major memories was I would have been seven, eight, nine, somewhere along in there. And it was deep wintertime. We had lots of snow but the roads, the maintainers had come over the county roads so the roads were passable in the car but still had lots of packed snow on the road. And one winter he said to mom, I want to take Sharon on the sled down to your folks. So he lashed this very short, what, four-foot sled with rails on the back of the car bumper and about, on about a 40-foot rope and he laid down on the sled and then he said, get on my back. And I laid down on his back and wrapped my arms around his torso and he said to mother, now go, drive to your folks. And of course she barely, the car was barely moving and he, his one hand was up and he was yelling, go, go, go, and she, so she’d go for a hundred yards and then she’d slow way down again and he’d say, go, go. So that was one of my dad’s, dad’s the one who makes things fun over mother’s caution. The other favorite memory in that theme that I have is, and I would have been older then, I would have been probably twelve. We were down to her folks and the house, there were two, three doors to the house but one of them faced the south and you looked out across the yard toward the gravel road that passed by the house and he, dad was out in the yard, I was in the house with mother and my grandma and dad was out in the yard and I happened to look out the window and noticed that he had caught a little garter snake, he was holding it up and when I looked out the window I went to the door and spoke to him and he motioned me to come out, which I did, and went to him and he had this garter snake in his hand and he said, do you want to hold it? And I said, yes. So I took it from him and as I took it I noticed that he looked toward the house and when I turned around and looked toward the house, mother was standing in the doorway of the house with both hands on the frame of the doorway with a very pale look on her face because she was very averse to snakes, but he was teaching me that that snake would not harm me and allowing me to hold it in contrast to her reaction to snakes. So that was very typical of when I was a teenager and began dating, whenever my date would bring me home after the date, we had a little driveway that Arlene came down and you could either pull directly into the garage or you could turn slightly to the right and there was a 30-foot driveway. So we always pulled into the driveway and there was of course necking going on before I went into the house and within five minutes from when the car pulled up, the porch light flashed on and mother would position herself in the doorway. There was a window in the doorway, she would position herself there. So both myself and my date knew that she was watching us in the car and that was the pattern and yet my dad never ever said or in any way behaved that he was concerned about the behavior that I might either participate in or allow. Did either of your parents give you the talk about snakes? Oh no, no. That’s another one of my favorite memories. So how old would I have been then? Probably would have been 12, maybe this was before I started dating, but I had seen various farm animals in copulation and so I had some inklings of how things worked. And they didn’t teach you anything in school, right? No. No. But our kitchen had a large window over the kitchen sink that looked out over our backyard and we had ducks and chickens and guineas and various fowl as part of the family entourage and there was a drain board that as you faced the sink, the left side of the sink, there were two sinks, holes, wells for the sinks and then there was a drain board on the left. And it wasn’t unusual at all for me to just hop up on, sit on the drain board while mother was washing dishes. She’d wash in the sink closest to me and then put the dishes in the sink to her right to dry. So I just hopped up on the drain board and I thought she would tell me about things and was hoping that she would tell me about things, male and female, and so I hopped up on the drain board and watched quite carefully and it happened that, I’m sure it was ducks, two of the ducks, a male and a female, were copulating on the lawn and I just turned my head and said, mom, what are they doing? And she immediately went to another subject and talked very rapidly for long enough that I gave up and got down off the sink and left. Oh, you can’t cover up your mic. You can move the mic to the, you can move your mic to your jacket, you put a jacket on, yeah, if you’re cold, you’ve got to move it. So that was my sex talk. That was a talk, yeah, you got the talk, it was on another subject. So your earliest school memories, you go to school, was that a one-room schoolhouse? Yes, sir. So when you were in school, was that electricity, was that water, did you have bathrooms yet or was it still an outhouse? Outhouse, pump, again, pump, water, hand-pumped water, yes, electricity, again, the wood burning stove in the dead center of the large room that was the schoolhouse. So what I’m imagining, in my total ignorance of how this worked, is in one-room schoolhouses, the teacher would have materials for each grade level and a rough agenda of, okay, in March we’re going to get through these books of these subjects, and so I assume they would distribute, but you wouldn’t take anything home, I assume, because the materials were a lot more expensive and precious than materials would be today, you know, paper, I assume, I’m just guessing. Yeah, but the other side of the coin, I think, Jay, was that children generally, where I grew up, when I grew up, were meticulously responsible. So it was very unusual. Any child that was in that school of the twenty, let’s pick a number, twenty-two, and I don’t remember exactly how many it was, but let’s say it was twenty-two, of those children, there would have only been one child out of that group that would have not been meticulously responsible to take materials home and bring them back in perfect shape. I assume the state, the Iowa State Board of Education or whatever, had the third grade math. I’m sure they did. Right? So by the end of third grade, hey, this is what your kid should understand. Right. Yeah. Right. So I assume they’re teaching, kind of, to those materials, milestone-wise, like here’s the milestones, blah, blah, blah. And the fascinating thing about one-room country school, or one-room school anywhere, is that there is no auditory barrier. So if you’re teaching the twelfth grade, the kindergartners can hear what you’re teaching the twelfth grade. And they’re supposed to be doing whatever they’re supposed to be doing. Right. Right. But depending on how conscientious they are, how bright they are, they may already be through with their, write the letters of the alphabet three times. Right. So children who were inclined in that direction were learning things above their, quote, grade level. Oh, right. Yeah. Yeah. So I would think with a mix of difficulties, you would get a much, kind of, broader, natural jumping to where I need to be kind of thing. Because if you’re bored, well, you just listen when Johnny’s getting his fourth grade version. Whereas if you’re struggling, you pay extra attention on the grade below you, where it’s like, what was that again? Kind of thing. I would think, though, from a time efficiency standpoint, I don’t know that it’s great, but I would think that the flexibility of, hey, different layers of difficulty of the subject matter are available to me all day long, if I’m not so busy writing the alphabet for three times. Yep. That that would be interesting. Right. Right. And the flexibility of most of the children is also very influencing. So in my case, for example, when I was in third grade, the teacher, I don’t remember if she came to our house or if she asked mom and dad to come in or what happened, but I was part of the conversation that the teacher had with mom and dad. And she said, Sharon is very capable of taking the third grade, which she’s age-appropriate for, and the next grade all this coming school year. She can do that work. She can take two grades in one year. But the system requires that she be approved by the regional psychiatrist for education, whatever, I don’t remember the terms. So I had to go into Fairfield. Mom and dad said, great. So I went into Fairfield, mom and dad took me to Fairfield, and I went through this battery of tests so that the psychologist for the district could put his rubber stamp on my taking two grades at once. Was that subject-specific or just skip the whole grade basically? The whole thing. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. And then when we had school consolidation, which closed that country school, and I went into a larger school a few miles away, I was then a grade ahead of my age bracket. I was in, I was advanced one grade. I was younger than the kids in the grade ahead of me. Did you like the consolidated school thing or did you, was that a bummer? No, I liked it. Yeah. I liked it. Mostly. So you had a much more logger commute, right? Oh yeah. School bus. Oh, there was a bus that came down your road? No. It came to the end of our lane, so I had to walk out. Your lane is like your private driveway, right? Right. Okay. Yeah. So you definitely have to go to the public road. Right. But it came to your public road. Right. You didn’t have to hike two miles. No. Okay. Yeah. Yep. Okay. So now it’s a- I liked the consolidation because there was sports, there was band. Oh yeah. That’d be, yeah. Those opportunities. Right. And a lot more opportunities. Right. And a lot more kids, right? Right. And then there was breakout by grades. Right. So now you’re clustered with kids your age. Exactly. Yeah. Yep. Or in my case, kids a little older because I was younger. Sure. Because I’d taken the two grades at once. What grade did you- Third and fourth. If there was a kindergarten thing, and then first, second, third grades in a one-room schoolhouse, and then you transitioned, did you say Fairfield is where you were going? Stockport. Stockport. We went into Stockport. Fairfield was where I went to get tested. So was Stockport kind of the big city, or were you used to that at that point? It was- Psychologically. 300-ish. No, I mean, but in your brain as a kid from the woods, from the cornfields, it didn’t feel like a big city? No. No. Because I had been back and forth, like I said, a lot with my dad, back and forth into town and- Yeah, into town. Yeah. But you guys weren’t like living there- No, no. Or socializing there? No. I assume you weren’t eating out a lot- No. In restaurants or anything. No. That wasn’t a- Yeah. That was for wealthy businessmen traveling through town kind of stuff, I assume. Have you talked about the role of your grandparents? No. What was the role of your grandparents? Dad’s over in the corner- Well- Replying to these questions. Yeah. Probably, other than the fact that they just loved me all over the place and I always knew that- And they were physically extremely close. They were. Yeah. And my paternal grandparents lived within a quarter of a mile. Our house was less than a quarter of a mile from their house. And my maternal grandparents lived two miles away. Were they farming? Yes. Both. So they weren’t retired yet. No. And they were actively farming the land? Yes. But Grandpa wasn’t farming, right? He went to the ammunitions- My dad? Yeah. Yes. My dad, Earl Chapman Humphrey, worked for 27 years from the time he completed his enlistment in the Navy and returned to southeast Iowa with me and my mother when I was a baby. He took a job at the Iowa Army Ammunitions Plant within months of returning to southeast Iowa. And he worked there for 27 years. Who worked for Bluebird? Somebody worked for Bluebird Bus, right? Yeah. Your family. All right. We’re not talking about that guy. All right. So okay, so transit, I would think that would be a really big monumental thing, going from one room schoolhouse to the School of Consolidation. And maybe you didn’t react to it as much as I imagine I might have as a child, I don’t know. Well, I think I wasn’t a talkative child, but my view of myself is that I was a very secure child, even when I was just young, largely because of my dad’s influence. He had behaved in a way that said to me that the world is a safe place, that yes, you need to be smart, yes, you need to learn things, but you’re very capable of learning those. So I was secure. And I think the fact that I had the affirmation of taking two

Grades in one year said to me, you’re a smart kid, you know, so all the cards were in place for me to feel confident. I had begun dating when I was 14 years old. My second person that I dated was the star center on the basketball team of the larger school, Stockport. Oh, it was school over. Oh, wait, no. You were in, wait, where were you going to school? Stockport. Stockport. That was the pattern. Had multiple high schools? Oh, yeah. Really? One room country school. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Consolidation. Those schools closed. I wasn’t imagining Stockport had multiple high schools. No, no, no. Stockport didn’t. Oh. But Stockport had a high school, K through 12. Twenty-five miles away, Keosauqua had a high school, K through 12. Twenty-seven miles away the other direction, Mount Pleasant had a high school. So there were schools that included high schools around all over the place. Okay. You were going to Stockport. Yes. And the basketball guy was some other? No. He was Stockport. Oh, on Stockport. Yeah. Yeah. So another transition question. So you went from being in the same building with one teacher for years to—did you have multiple teachers at all of these schools? Oh, sure. Yeah. So it was like a per-class kind of situation. Yeah. Okay. More like the modern or the whatever that I’m accustomed to. Right. Right. And I don’t remember a lot of details about this, but we had a homeroom, I think, that was one grade. I don’t remember very much about that, so I shouldn’t report that inaccurately. Yeah. When I was in high school, the first class we went to was homeroom. Yeah. And I don’t remember what the point of that was. Oh, Brad’s got his headphones on. Yeah. But it was like announcements and stuff and just miscellaneous. It was only 15 minutes. Yeah. But it was 15 minutes every morning. You were in homeroom for some reason. Yeah. I don’t remember a single purpose of ever being in that room. Yeah. And then we would go to science and then whatever. Right. Right. That’s what I remember also. Yeah. And what is the point of that? So did you graduate high school in Stockport? No. So there was a two-wave school consolidation during the years that I was in kindergarten through high school. The first wave was the closing of the rural one-room country schools. That was wave one. You’re covering up your mic again. School consolidation. Wave two school consolidation was combining some of those smaller K-12 high schools. So some of them went away and some of them became larger, more students. So when that second wave of consolidation happened, because of our residential location where our house was, determined where we went to school. And I don’t know how all of this worked, but the parents also had some ability to request where they wanted their children to go. So as long as you were on the edge of where the bus route was so that the bus driver didn’t have to go over here and come back, then if your parents requested that you go to a certain school, you could go to that school. I went into Mount Pleasant when I was a junior in high school. And graduated from Mount Pleasant. And graduated from Mount Pleasant. So at what point did they tell you you were always going to college? Or was college a complete unknown? Because neither of your parents had been to college, correct? Mother had been to teacher’s college, two years teacher’s college. Sorry. Yeah. Dad never went to college. Dad’s highest level of education was eighth grade. I grew up in what was then the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. When I was a small child, every Sunday my mother and I and my mother’s mother, my grandmother Stark, went the 26 miles into town to attend church there. In that environment, I was introduced to Graceland College by name. That is, I learned that the church had an affiliated college called Graceland College. So I grew up hearing about Graceland College. And there was always just conversation about you graduate from high school, you go to college. Graceland College was the college. So I just went to Graceland College. Were your parents saying that? Or they were just the church attendants fed into that and they never questioned it? I don’t remember. I just remember. So there was, within a two-mile radius, I had five cousins living, three of whom, four of whom were older than me. I was the first child in our family to go to college. Did you have a driving desire to study something specific? No. Interestingly, in that era where I grew up, it was kind of just understood that there were women’s professions and there were men’s professions. So the women’s professions were teaching, nursing, and, well, the two primary were teaching and nursing. So if you advanced your education, your target was to become a teacher or a nurse. Did you have any interest in teaching or nursing? I had an interest in nursing, but I happened to be dating a guy who was very, the comment that I recall was, white stockings don’t get it. And nurses in those days, the nursing uniform was white shoes, white stockings, a white skirt, a white top, and a nurse’s hat. They don’t get what? White stockings don’t get it, get what? Yeah, they just, they’re unattractive. Oh, nurses are unattractive? Because they wear white stockings. And that dissuaded you from nursing? Unfortunately. Really? That did it? No, that wasn’t the only thing. The other thing that dissuaded me from nursing was there were chemistry, oh, when I first went to Graceland, I was a pre-med major, so I took chemistry and biology and those kinds of things. And chemistry was very difficult for me. I ended up essentially being privately tutored by the chemistry professor at Graceland to get a good grade in chemistry. But unfortunately, that signaled me in my own brain, it wasn’t accurate, but it signaled me that I wouldn’t be able to handle the nursing curriculum. So I changed majors. Oh, yeah, that was probably false, right? Like, you probably didn’t need a lot of chemistry for nursing. You probably did have to survive a class or two. Oh, sure, yeah. But then you were home free, probably. Right, right. And, you know, many of the other classes I could have done as easily as I could have been able to. So nursing and teaching were the only things. What in college actually interested you? Did you think you wanted to be a teacher then? No. The major at Graceland, I don’t know what it was like in other colleges, but at Graceland, the major, the catch-up major, was social studies. The social studies major, if you graduated with a degree in social studies, you took history, religion, some science, and no math. By that time, I’d taken math in high school. So I graduated with a degree in social studies, which is just a general degree. A four-year bachelor’s degree in social studies. Bachelor’s in social studies, okay. And then, we’re jumping way ahead, but just to fill out the academic portion, I guess, you later, oh boy, okay, when was this? So I was… Yeah, when we were living in Livonia, Michigan. Junior high. Uh-huh. Right. When you were in junior high. Okay, so you gapped your education for X years, and we were in junior high, and you went to go get your master’s. Right. So tell me about what made you want to get your master’s. You were in junior high. I knew… I was driving you crazy, and you wanted to get… No, not at all. I loved being a mom. I always loved being a mom. I knew, because I had worked as a bachelor’s level social worker in three different jobs before we moved to Livonia, Michigan, there was nothing there… Well, the pay was not much at all, and I was dissatisfied with that, but I knew in the field of social work, if I wanted better pay at all, I needed a master’s degree, because there was a significant jump from a bachelor’s in social work to a master’s in social work in terms of pay grade. We were living within 20 miles of the University of Michigan, which was one of the best schools of social work in the Midwest, so it was very convenient for me to go and get my master’s while we were in that area. Was that a two-year program? Two years. Master’s in… Social work. Social work. Okay. My degree is MSW, Master’s of Social Work. My highest degree. In Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada, did they let you work as an American citizen as a social worker in Canada? I never attempted to work in Canada. Oh, okay. I wanted to assure that the fact that your dad was gone for large blocks of time, as much as three weeks at a time, so you and Brad did not have a male parent in the home for three weeks at a time, and I wanted to be sure that you had an available parent. Brad was not yet in school. You had just gone into kindergarten when we went to Alberta, so I had no intention of working while we were in Alberta, and so I never looked into it. I don’t know if I could have or not. Every time I cross the border into Canada, they say, So what are you doing? And I’m like, Oh, just vacation, but I work too from the RV at the time. And they’re like, Well, you can’t work in Canada. And I’m like, No, I’m… What? No, I’m a computer programmer. I’m just on the internet doing work. They’re like, You cannot work for a Canadian company in Canada. And I said, No, it’s not a Canadian company. It’s an American company. And they’re like, Oh, that’s fine. And they let me in. But I got that lecture every time. They’re very protective of Canadian jobs. That’s fascinating. Yeah. But that’s my record. That happened to me three times, I think. Wow. In the RV. They gave me a little lecture on the spot, and I was like, I wasn’t trying to… Well, I know your dad went through… But you were working for an American company. Yes. Oh, sorry. You’re not on my bed. I could throw a microphone at you. In order to achieve me being able to work in Canada, the Bishop of Canada had to convince the Canadian government that I was not replacing a Canadian worker. There was no one in Canada that could do what I did as the regional administrator for Alberta and Saskatchewan. Okay. Yeah. Right. Okay. So that’s schooling, right? That was… Okay. We covered schooling. As much as I’ve had. Right. So far. Formal schooling. I do not intend… You don’t want a PhD in medical school or social work? I do not intend to get a PhD, nor do I intend to get another master’s degree. A PhD in social work would be for teaching social work, correct, or not? The vast majority of jobs, yes, would be teaching. Occasionally, depending upon the social service industry, company, organization, you might find an occasional PhD, but they would be extremely rare. Cool. Okay. Schooling. So we can end this now. Or we want to go do something else? Or we… I don’t even know how long we’ve been going. Sure. I don’t know what time we started. But that was great so far. Yeah. Maybe that’s a first. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you for your interest in my life. So, yeah, when I was born, all these things, like not having electricity, were just unthinkable, right? Oh, yeah. Sure. That’s when I was born. Yeah. Well, when my son was born, not having the internet, high-speed internet, is unthinkable. Like, he can’t fathom a world without high-speed internet. Well, that wasn’t Gen X, like Generation X me. Right. And those total perspective shifts, right? Where someone born in the year… You know, like there’s Gen Zers now with jobs and houses and stuff that were born in 2000. Yep. They’re 24. It’s crazy to me that people born after… Because in my frame of reference, the year 2000 was the distant future when I was in high school, you know? Like the year 2000. Oh, sure. Who knows if I’ll ever… You know, that was crazy. That was crazy. And now here we are in 2024. And, you know, now that I’m pushing 50, I’m looking at history books and I’m reading, like, Lincoln and the Civil War 1865. I’m like, 1860, that wasn’t that long ago because I’m pushing 50. Yeah. This was unimaginable. Like, if you told me something happened in the 19th century when I was young, I was like, oh, well, right. That might as well have been, you know, the second century. That might as well have been Egypt in the second century, you know, B.C. or whatever. Like, this is ancient. 19th century, ancient history. Like, anything that far back, I couldn’t wrap my head around. But now that I’ve been alive 50 years, Abraham Lincoln wasn’t that long ago. Yeah. It’s crazy to me. Like, there’s just such a shift in perspective over the… I still think one part of, key element of Sharon’s upbringing was her relationship to her grandparents. That’s true. Well, tell me about that. Flesh that out a little. Particularly my paternal grandparents, who lived literally less than a quarter of a mile away from us. And I never… Oh, no. Okay. I have memories of a great-grandparent in a nursing home, a woman. I have no recollection of who that was. But I remember going to visiting her in a home, or in like an apartment type thing. That would have been the Senior Living Center in Salem, Iowa. And she was extremely old, and I was extremely young. Right. So who was that? She wasn’t extremely old. I mean, she would have been in her 80s. Oh, really? Yeah. Well, from my three-year-old eyeballs or whatever. Right. Yes. Exactly. And who was that? Who was that? That was my paternal grandmother. Okay. So here’s the story. What’s her name? Maggie. Maggie Humphrey. So I met Maggie as a very young person. Maggie would have held you on her lap. Okay. Yes. And delighted in holding you on her lap, by the way. Would that have been the only great-grandparent I met? I do remember meeting her. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So tell me about Maggie when you were young. Yeah. Because your maternal grandparents would have both been dead before you would have been alert to. They were not dead when you were born, but you would not have been alert to them. You wouldn’t have been old enough to be aware. So your dad’s mom, Maggie. Right. Tell me about your relationship with Maggie when you were young. Yeah. I’ve described my relationship with my father. So it would have been an older generation extension of my relationship with my father. So, for example, one of my first, you’re a capable person, you can be adventuresome, you can be in charge of your own well-being, was to walk the less than a quarter of a mile from my parents’ home to my grandparents’ home through an open field, then across a little branch riverlet of water that was maybe five foot from bank to bank, that was maybe a foot and a half deep, and across the field to my grandparents’ home.

arrive at my grandparents’ house. At that point in time, I would have been, I know I was walking over there at seven years old. So the way that worked was, when I left the house, our house, my mother would call on the crank telephone, would call my grandmother and say, Sharon is leaving now. I would leave the house, walk to my grandparents’ house. When I arrived, my grandmother would call my mother and say, Sharon is here, and all would be well. So I would stay overnight sometimes there. I would feed the chickens with my grandmother. Every spring, my grandmother got 100 baby chicks that she raised and butchered. So I would have fed the chicks. I would have cared for the garden. I would have climbed the maple tree. I would have, that was my first experience in learning to drive. I learned to drive by driving the tractor, pulling the hay bale wagon while my dad and my maternal, my paternal grandfather picked up the bales of hay. They were small bales in those days. Put them on a flatbed wagon that was pulled by a John Deere tractor. I was driving the tractor. Grandpa and dad were putting the bales out of the field onto the tractor. And then I would drive the tractor to the barn. That’s probably not right. Probably I just drove the tractor around the field and then grandpa or dad would drive the tractor. That’s an example. So again, the affirmation of me as a capable person. It was very common when I stayed overnight that my grandfather would go to the upstairs bedroom of my grandparents’ house and sleep and I would sleep with my grandmother. And my grandmother would tell me stories about how my dad and my three male cousins would walk up the branch near their house, take off their clothes, go swimming, leave their clothes on the bank. You know, all kinds of stories about my dad as a young person growing up and his brothers, particularly his brothers that he grew up with. One of my favorite memories of my grandmother was the day I probably would have been seven. At this point, we were walking down the lane that led to their house and there was a mother killdeer with four little baby killdeers that looked very much like baby chicks, only they had brown on them. And we were talking about the killdeer because killdeer protect their babies by telling the babies, I’m assuming this, the babies get shuffled off. And then the mother killdeer comes and pretends that she has a broken wing and draws the offending thing off in the other direction. And so I saw the baby killdeer and I said to my grandmother, I would love to hold one of those babies. So my grandmother, who is in a dress and an apron and wedge-heeled shoes, which is what she always wore, pursued one of those baby killdeer down into the hollow next to the lane, brought it back and let me hold it. That was the way that my grandmother loved me. If you wanna experience this, I’ll go out of my way to help you experience it. Burt and Maggie, Burton Litton Humphrey, and Maggie Hudson Humphrey. And my grandmother had no middle name. I’m not sure this statement will be completely accurate, but I am pretty sure my dad was the fifth generation on that property. So my granddad would have been the fourth generation living on that land in Southeast Iowa. Cool, yeah, I’d have to check my genealogy chart and see how much of that I have. And I don’t think I have the land records associated with that, you know? So the longevity of the land as Humphrey land, I don’t think I have that stuff in my stuff yet, but great. Well, thank you for session one of… Thank you for your interest. Sure. All righty. Will this go in the Smithsonian? This just goes in my podcast feed. I don’t… The Smithsonian’s welcome to a copy of it if they want. Help yourself, guys. It’s free, it’s on the internet. Grab it. All right, bye for now, internet. Say bye to the internet. Bye, internet. It’s been fun. I’m so pleased that my son is a podcaster. If you’d like to call into the show, you can leave us a voicemail at 1-402-577-0117.