Legacies Project Oral History: Norma Smith

Mon, 08/29/2022 - 12:14pm

When: 2022

Transcript

• [00:00:08] INTERVIEWER: Any additional home run career training behind what you completed?
• [00:00:14] Norma Smith: I have a bachelors in history. I took some master's classes. I never did get a masters, and I took years of executive training programs and leadership programs.
• [00:00:33] INTERVIEWER: What is your marital status?
• [00:00:37] Norma Smith: Well, I was divorced in 1976. My former husband has passed away, so maybe I'm a widow.
• [00:00:51] INTERVIEWER: How many children do you have?
• [00:00:52] Norma Smith: I have four children.
• [00:00:55] INTERVIEWER: How many siblings do you have?
• [00:00:59] Norma Smith: I had four siblings. They have all passed.
• [00:01:05] INTERVIEWER: What would you consider your primary occupation to happen? For example, housewife. Where did you get paid for work?
• [00:01:17] Norma Smith: Well, for 15 years, I was a stay at home mom and then I went to work in private industry. I was there for 20 years. When I retired, I was the vice president of operations. Then I immediately began doing consulting work. I'm always been an active volunteer, so I consider that too.
• [00:01:46] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any stories about your family name?
• [00:01:52] Norma Smith: My maiden name, my family name is Mayer M-A-Y-E-R. My grandfather, Carl Mayer, came to this country from Alsace-Lorraine. He grew, he was born French, and then the Germans came and took over. When I knew him, he was fluent in French, German, and English.
• [00:02:24] INTERVIEWER: Are there any name and traditions in your family?
• [00:02:29] Norma Smith: The Carl Mayer, my grandfather, my father was the second, my brother was the third, and my nephew is the fourth, but he pretends he's not.
• [00:02:47] INTERVIEWER: How did your grandfather make living in when they came to the United States?
• [00:02:54] Norma Smith: All four of my grandparents were immigrants and my grandfather Mayer, who I've mentioned before, he started out shining shoes, hanging wallpaper, painting homes. Then he opened a tavern, then a bigger tavern. By the time I was born, he he had a major restaurant in the downtown area. My other grandfather, my mother's father, he came as a boy, so he did some schooling here and he had a successful printing business. Then he became a landlord. He kept buying up homes and renting them out, and they were both very successful and very industrious.
• [00:03:51] INTERVIEWER: Are there any traditions that your family has given up or changed? If so, why?
• [00:04:00] Norma Smith: You're speaking my family of origin. Yeah. Well, I moved away right after I was married, I left the area so I didn't participate in a lot of the traditions that they continued in my absence. My family and I, we started our own traditions. But I remain very close to my family of origin. I went home for some of their events. I went back home.
• [00:04:43] INTERVIEWER: What are the stories that have come down to you by your parents and grandparents, or even more distant ancestors?
• [00:04:52] Norma Smith: I don't really know much about my distant ancestors. I know that my grandfather Mayer, remained in touch with his sisters. Even when World War II started, he was able to send them food. But by the end of the war, he couldn't find them anymore. We don't know what happened to them. His wife, my grandmother, she also came from Alsace-Lorraine, but her entire family came so she had no connections. And the same of my grandfather, my mother's father, and mother. They came in their families and they did not remain in touch with their former country.
• [00:06:04] INTERVIEWER: Where did you grow up? What are some of the strongest memories of that place that you have?
• [00:06:09] Norma Smith: I grew up in Buffalo, New York. We lived in the city. I was the youngest of five children. I had wonderful memories and some annoying memories because I was the youngest. My brother picked on me all the time. We were a strong family and we were very connected to all my aunts and uncles and cousins. We had a beach house on Lake Erie, so I spent all my summers there. Well, most of my summers there as I got older, I know but as a youngster, yes, that was where we were. All my aunts, and uncles, and grandparents, and cousins were there too so those are fond memories of those times.
• [00:06:59] INTERVIEWER: How did your family come to live there?
• [00:07:07] Norma Smith: Both of my grandfathers, as I understand, the one especially who came on his own, my grandfather Mayer, he knew someone in the Buffalo area and there was at that time, there was a large area of the city where they were a French and German immigrants. He moved there and that's where he started his work. My other grandfather, his father had come here earlier to try to earn enough money to bring the rest of his family. He actually worked on building the Erie Canal so that he could earn money to bring his family. That's why he was there.
• [00:08:01] INTERVIEWER: Were there any special relationships you had with one siblings or with your mother and your household?
• [00:08:10] Norma Smith: I feel very close to all my siblings, even though I left the area. My mom, my dad passed away when he was 73 and I had three small children so I didn't see enough of him. But I had felt more connected to him while I was growing up. My mother then was a widow for years. She lived till she was 96 and I had the pleasure of helping care for her the last five years, I drove to Buffalo for one week a month for five years.
• [00:08:56] INTERVIEWER: What languages are spoken in your household?
• [00:09:00] Norma Smith: English was spoken, but my dad because his parents spoke French and German, he learned that as a youngster. Of course my grandparents knew that. Especially at the beach, if my grandparents or my father wanted to have a conversation that they didn't want us involved in, they just moved into another language.
• [00:09:35] INTERVIEWER: What work did your father and mother?
• [00:09:39] Norma Smith: My mother never worked. She had five children and those were the time she didn't work. She drive a car. She was just a mom and a lady. My dad from the time I knew him always worked and then took over that family restaurant when my grandfather retired and passed on.
• [00:10:07] INTERVIEWER: What was a typical day like in your preschool years?
• [00:10:14] Norma Smith: I didn't go to preschool. I went to kindergarten and I came home and told my family that I didn't like it because I had to sit on my left hand all day, and I was in a Catholic school and the nuns did not believe that children should be left-handed so they told me to sit at my hand. My fondest memory as my father walking me to school the next day and explaining things to the nuns and I never sat on my left hand again. I don't have any really other preschool memories other than that moment. It was big I'm still left-handed.
• [00:11:08] INTERVIEWER: What did you do for fun during that time period?
• [00:11:15] Norma Smith: Well, we lived in a city neighborhoods, so there was always something going on. We lived very close to a park. I could walk to the zoo, I could walk to the museums. We had a lot more freedom. I knew the bus and trolley system and could get around so those are all good memories. At the beach [NOISE] we were a gang. That's what we called ourselves. It was mostly cousins. Not all cousins, but mostly cousins. The interesting thing was we did everything together at the beach, swimming and singing, and I don't know how much I can tell, so maybe I'll stop there. But then when we all moved back to the city, we didn't live near each other and we went to different schools, so we hardly saw each other so it's just an interesting dynamic.
• [00:12:20] INTERVIEWER: Did you have a favorite toy, game, book or any other entertainment during that time?
• [00:12:27] Norma Smith: It's always an avid reader and I went through the series my favorite was Sue Barton, Student Nurse. But I did a lot of the mysteries that came up. I don't remember having a favorite toy. At the beach we spent a good deal of time in the water and we only owned a little dinghy, but we knew everybody in the base So I got to sail the lot and go out in boats and swim out to rafts and stuff like that.
• [00:13:16] INTERVIEWER: That's all part for part 2 for today. Is there anything else that you'd like to talk to us about about that time period or your family?
• [00:13:29] Norma Smith: Well, I don't know what you're going to ask me next. But I do remember the World War and I could talk about that.
• [00:13:40] INTERVIEWER: What age were you during that time?
• [00:13:45] Norma Smith: I'm sorry? I was born in 37. The bombing of Pearl Harbor was 1941 so I was four and I really don't remember that. But I do remember that something changed and then throughout the years of the war, I remember the blackouts. I remember we lived in the city. My father was one of the neighborhood wardens, so he carried a gas mask and I remember all the rationing. You had little coupons and things and because the family had the restaurant, we got a lot of foods so my dad was always trading the food coupons for a shoe coupons. I could walk to the butcher and the drug store and the grocery store and I vividly remember selling rubber bands and fat from cooking bacon or from deep frying, the butcher would buy that and then he would resell it and they would convert it for I assume I use in weapons or something like that. We saved everything and lived very differently and I do remember all of that. Then my sisters were 11, 10, and 9 years older than me. They all had boyfriends who were there in the war and I remember them knitting Argyle socks. [LAUGHTER] Always knitting socks and sending them to them and then when they came home on leave, these young men would come to the door and their uniforms and I was enchanted by them. I just thought they were the best thing around. Then the last thing I would say, because it is such a fond memory was we were at the beach when the war ended and [NOISE] my grandparents, who had grown up in that Alsace-Lorraine area. My grandmother, who was a very proper woman, she gave me a soup kettle and wooden spoon and we all went out and bang, done this stuff to celebrate the end of the war.
• [00:16:41] INTERVIEWER: How do you think that there's any family dynamic traditions or ideas from your childhood growing up that influence you as a mother and starting your own family?
• [00:16:56] Norma Smith: Yes, because my parents were good loving parents and I went to Catholic schools so grade school was boys and girls, but starting high school and college I was in school was all women and that did make a difference. I'm not sure it would today, but back then, it meant that we were the leaders of the school, so we kept in the teams and we were ahead of the student council and all that thing, which I thought was always pretty cool. The other wonderful thing was buffalo was a very Catholic town so we were surrounded by Catholic boy schools and we did plays with them and of course we had a lot of dances with them and prompts and things like that. Those are all good things. With regard to my own parenting, I think my parents set a good example and they were vastly different. My mother was more strict and afraid for us. I think I was raised differently because I was the fifth child so he was like, I trust you go out and have fun sort of person. That was good model for me with my children. I just think them frequently for the blessing of them all being delightful and contributing human beings and good parents themselves.
• [00:18:57] INTERVIEWER: These questions are from [inaudible 00:19:10].
• [00:19:10] Eli Kirshner: How much time do we have?
• [00:19:13] INTERVIEWER: We have [inaudible 00:19:19]. Do you want to do some more questions now or do you want to [inaudible 00:19:22]. We have three separate interviews, so it can help this process and they're split up like throughout the ages of your life. You can start the next section now, or we can just end it for today and then you visit like your next-.
• [00:19:38] Norma Smith: What do you want to do? I'll do what you want to do. What did you say?
• [00:19:43] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 00:19:43].
• [00:19:46] Norma Smith: You want to continue?
• [00:19:48] INTERVIEWER: Let's do a couple more. I know this question is about we already talked about basically it go kindergarten. You already talked about that. Digital elementary school and what do you remember from that time?
• [00:20:06] Norma Smith: Elementary school, it was a neighborhood school. I walked to school and I walked home for lunch. What I came home for lunch, I could have lunch, but then my brother and I had to make all the beds [LAUGHTER]. Were a lot of people living in that house. Before we walked back to school. I knew everybody in the school, you know, because was the neighborhood and we were small classes and I loved school. I loved being a student. I loved getting in trouble from time to time. I found it very annoying that the nuns would tell me about how good my sisters had been and that I wasn't living up to them and that would make me behave a little worse just to annoy them. I do remember all of that. I remember one time skipping school and getting caught with a group. That was so dumb, I can't believe we even did it. Almost every girl in our grade skip school. And only one mother worked, so we were at that house. sister Borromeo called and said you get back in the school, we all did [LAUGHTER]. I do remember that very well. It was a good time. Everything wasn't perfect. But I don't have any terrible memories. There's nothing that I could conjure up that would be like, this happened and I hated it. I just don't have that at all.
• [00:22:08] INTERVIEWER: How was your high school time?
• [00:22:13] Norma Smith: High school was fun. I were uniform every day. Black surge with white collars and costs and the white collars and cuffs. But none and [inaudible 00:22:26] so we had to wash those and starch them and iron them all the time. It was all girls. Our school was a former mansion. It was always lovely. The hallways and the sculptures around things like that. It was a good education. I was in a [NOISE] college bound. They had college bound in business and I was in college bound. I had to take four years of science, four years of Latin, I had to take three years of another language. As one of my choices, I hadn't sure out that school I had two choices. One was the language. I chose French and if you want, I could sing Lamar say, [LAUGHTER] because my grandfather loved it, but I can't do anything else in French. The other thing I could choose was as a senior, I could choose either study hall or typing. I chose study hall, so I still can type, but I'm pretty good on my phone and my computer. It was a strong, solid education and very challenging homework all the time and we had some sports, not many. The boys schools, they had sports, so we went to their football games, and their basketball games and we knew them and it was a big deal if you could date one of the athletes and all of that. Despite the fact that it was an all girls school, we were all in this mixture. I swear I really maybe on my street there was one family where they went to the public schools, but pretty much, we were isolated and that was in our schools then we're the best schools. Times change that would have been in the '40s and grade school. Then in the early '50s in high school.
• [00:25:06] INTERVIEWER: Please describe the popular music during this time.
• [00:25:16] Norma Smith: I loved Frank Sinatra, [NOISE] Perry Como. There was this other guy, Johnny Ray. He didn't last very long, but I think he had a song. Cry me a river or something like that. We would sit on the beach at night and have a bonfire and sing all the songs and I knew every Sinatra song. It was every inflection that he had. And Johnny Ray song that was one of them. I don't remember many female artist there were female artist s I didn't pay much attention to them. Pardon me?
• [00:26:05] INTERVIEWER: Elvis [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:26:06] Norma Smith: Elvis came around at a time when I just really wasn't paying a lot of attention [LAUGHTER]. I didn't I didn't join in that and matter of fact, one time I mistook visiting Nashville with some friends. We were in a souvenir shop and there was a life-size pelvis. I thought. I would have put my arm around this life-size cardboard and said, here's all of us and my friends went to pieces because it was James Dean, I guess [LAUGHTER]. I cannot missed the whole thing. I didn't pay too much attention. I felt very sorry for Elvis. I would have an emotional reaction to him as a parent and just to see how he felt he was really taken advantage of and didn't didn't have the wonderful life that he wanted to have.
• [00:27:13] INTERVIEWER: Are there any dances connected to the different music during that time?
• [00:27:20] Norma Smith: I was really good at Jitter bugging. I knew the Charleston because of my parents. My parents were dancers, they loved to dance. I knew that I did go to dance class, which I think I was still in grade school, might have been eighth grade, seventh or eighth grade. I was with boys, which was like, Oh my gosh, you've got to hold their hand and dance up close and that was just so awkward [LAUGHTER]. But I know I had a year of that and we learned walls and fox trot and all of that was all very proper and my mother had hoped that I would learn more etiquette. [LAUGHTER] I was a high-energy kid and blasted true things.
• [00:28:23] INTERVIEWER: What were the popular clothing and hairstyles during that time?
• [00:28:33] Norma Smith: I don't remember much about hair. My hair at that point was curly. I just kept it clean and wandered around with my hair like that, so I didn't pay too much attention to any of that. Clothing was such an interesting thing because I wore a uniform every day to school. I had these favorites. I had a white blazer that I loved. I suppose blazers were big then. Yeah. I don't know that it started in high school, but I had those well plaid skirts that pleated that came around flat in the front and then he had a big gold pen here. Not a bunch of those. I didn't have many clothes because of being in a uniform all the time. Then in the summer, I pretty much lived in a bathing suit and a sweatshirt. I had one dress for church on Sunday and I wore shoes that day. Clothes just weren't important.
• [00:29:56] INTERVIEWER: Okay. I think we are going [OVERLAPPING] .
• [00:29:59] Norma Smith: My granddaughter is 28. She's a professional woman. She's very successful and she's absolutely enchanted with Harry Potter thing and the whole Tolkien Lord of the Rings and Sherlock Holmes. She's got all these things. We went out to Oxford University and she had a beer in the Eagle and something. I shall bring pictures maybe next time where Tolkien used to go to drink beer when he was writing The Lord of the Rings. She also got really involved with Harry Potter stuff. She went to a special museum and we didn't do this but she had her plan when she goes back as there's a Warner Brother's place where they did all the filming. But then she and my daughter and I was not with them this day. I wanted to go to a museum that they weren't interested in. They rode the tube out to King's crossing and they both had their pictures taken at nine and three quarters. There's a regular photography set up there. Their pictures each one of them shows them pushing the cart with the luggage on it.
• [00:31:30] INTERVIEWER: Yeah daughter.
• [00:31:32] Norma Smith: Then they each chose a scarf for a different whatever house yes and the way they explained it to me, I'll get them to send me copies of those. Going to push the car and as the photographer was ready to snap the picture he would yell scarf and somebody off camera would take a hold of the scarf and throw it up in the air like it looked like it was flying.
• [00:32:02] INTERVIEWER: Like a movie. It was so cool.
• [00:32:05] Norma Smith: They were thrilled with those pictures. Yeah. They did a lot of that.
• [00:32:13] INTERVIEWER: Now you've got your cool blue veins now. But what were the popular clothing hairstyles like when they're younger, then teenagers [inaudible 00:32:20]
• [00:32:28] Norma Smith: Well, certainly nobody colored their hair. But my hair then was pretty much black. One time some of us locked ourselves in a bathroom and did peroxide pneumonia. I had this big white streak across my hair, my front of my head, which really upset my parents. But I don't think when I was growing up there weren't extreme hairstyles. I was long before. The big bird cage things and all of that. I hardly paid attention to other people's hair because I didn't have to pay much attention to my own. It was just there.
• [00:33:22] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember any fads that happened maybe you didn't partake in them? [inaudible 00:33:26]
• [00:33:38] Norma Smith: The school I went to, there was no such thing as a fad. I mean, we all had to wear black shoes. We wore black uniforms. From time to time, some of us would push the envelope. One time for St. Patrick's Day, I dyed my color in cloves green and I had to go home. But there may have been other fads in the larger community, but in our community we were pretty limited in what we could do and our little statements were, we thought a big deal.
• [00:34:26] INTERVIEWER: All right. Continuing with talking about fads and stuff, were there any slang terms or phrases you used like plaiting during Saturday, do you remember [inaudible 00:34:36]
• [00:34:38] Norma Smith: That's a good question, but if there were, I honestly I don't remember. We were, especially in our speech, pretty just straight. We didn't I'm sorry, because I think my experience was narrower than many who were my age then, but it's the best I can do.
• [00:35:13] INTERVIEWER: During this time period, can you describe what you [inaudible 00:35:17]
• [00:35:24] Norma Smith: I think I mentioned last week that my schooling was very academic and strongly academic. We did have a certainly activities. We had a student council, we had a basketball team where we played half court, and we did running. I think we did some distance walking activities. But it wasn't like the co-ed schools around us where they had so many activities.
• [00:36:17] INTERVIEWER: Were there any changes in your family life during their schools grades?
• [00:36:25] Norma Smith: Even in grade school and high school because I'm the youngest of five, there were weddings and babies and baby sitting. I have vivid memories of losing my sweet Irish grandmother when I was a freshman in high school and then my grandfather her husband, who I felt especially close to, he passed away in my senior year of high school. That's the first time I can really remember being very emotional about a loss. Although others I was part of a large extended family, so others had passed. That time really touched me.
• [00:37:30] INTERVIEWER: Did having such a large family like so many older siblings. Did that affect how you want in your own family look as far as kids go like marriage?
• [00:37:40] Norma Smith: In my own family?
• [00:37:42] INTERVIEWER: No.
• [00:37:43] Norma Smith: My children?
• [00:37:44] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
• [00:37:47] Norma Smith: I was certainly used to large families, so it didn't occur to me to not have children. Four seemed like a good number. I suppose it was part of my own family of origin, time that I didn't think too much of it.
• [00:38:15] INTERVIEWER: I understand. I think I remember correctly from Austin, you ended having a divorce after your children?
• [00:38:21] Norma Smith: Yes.
• [00:38:22] INTERVIEWER: How did that affect your family? Did it affect extended family like your nuclear family, what happened following that?
• [00:38:32] Norma Smith: It was a double blow to my children because not only did we divorce, but my former husband went back East where we had come from and I chose to stay in Michigan. Our lifestyle certainly changed. I hadn't worked up until that time. I had to find employment. My youngest child, Brad, was just about to turn six so it did impact him because he was very used to having me around all the time. But as I look back and I think my children would agree with me, the older ones I think they were 11, 13, and 14 and they pretty much rallied and decided that we could handle this. They were the ones who Brad came home to from school rather than me. They set a goal for college that they all achieved. It wasn't easy but I have really good memories of that time. Also we were in a really supportive neighborhood and a church at the time and so I felt like there was a lot of support all around us.
• [00:40:25] INTERVIEWER: Were there any special traditions that your family had, saying holidays that you guys celebrated earlier, or you and your head staff, or your larger extended family?
• [00:40:37] Norma Smith: I think maybe once we all went back to Buffalo where I grew up, and my large family of origin was, I think we went back once for Christmas. But it was hard financially. It was hard for me to get time off, I didn't have a lot of seniority then. Getting holidays was hard. After that, we put together our own holidays, especially Christmas, and we made it very special. Then for Thanksgiving, our neighbors who lived right next door and there were four children. They weren't the exact same age as my children, but close enough, and they were from Wisconsin. They were a married couple. We did Thanksgiving. We took turns doing Thanksgiving together. I think that worked out very well.
• [00:41:52] INTERVIEWER: How old would you have been during this time you were living with your children alone and you were working?
• [00:41:58] Norma Smith: I was 39.
• [00:42:00] INTERVIEWER: This would've been 70' s.
• [00:42:02] Norma Smith: It was in '76.
• [00:42:06] INTERVIEWER: From what I understand, there was a big push for women in the workforce, that never really happened before. Did that affect you going toward? Did that affect you personally as a woman who now was going to enter this workforce? [OVERLAPPING]
• [00:42:19] Norma Smith: Well, I have to say there was a man then, a neighbor, he and his wife were neighbors. His name was Jim. I was telling them my degree was in history with a minor in secondary education. But I thought if I was a teacher, I'd give them my best to everybody else's children [LAUGHTER] and come home too tired. I mentioned that to them and he just stopped right up and said, well, I'll give you a job. He hired me. I had never worked in business, but he was like this delightful mentor who really believed in me and frequently he would say to me, you can do this. I figured, well, I can do this. It's hard to explain, but it seemed to me whenever I really needed some outside support, it was there. Jim and his wife came to my retirement party. I just never forgot that start. Then I was able to work my way up. I always had great jobs and great people around me. Not all great people around me, but I was really good at tagging the ones who weren't, and I figured out how to work around them.
• [00:44:13] INTERVIEWER: I have a question. I don't want to let keep changing time periods, but I know like last week we were talking about how you saw the war and things like that. You lived through the time period of the war, if you could maybe go into more depth with that I know we didn't fully cover that time period.
• [00:44:31] Norma Smith: World War II, you're talking about? I can't remember exactly. I think I told you about my grandmother giving me a kettle and a wooden spoon to bang on. I have brief memories. I can remember sitting on the floor in front of the radio while my mom and dad listened to FDR's fireside chats that he did on the radio then. I was aware because of I think I just mentioned rationing and all of that, I was aware that it was something big and bad, and after and I will mention this because it was as a grown woman that I figured this out. If there were two men in the greater neighborhood who had been neighbors, and then you would see him going in and out of a bar and you would see one just walking aimlessly. My dad who did not fight in the war, he was older, he would say to me if we were going by in the car, he said, no, that guy has been impacted by the war. We just need to pray for him, rather than something negative about some guy going in the bar. Well, after Vietnam, it made me realize that those gentlemen were victims of PTSD, but it didn't have a name then. It's in many cases, then I think families supported these people. They were not homeless, they had homes, but they certainly were struggling. It was interesting to me that I put this whole picture together back during the time of Vietnam. Of course, I will remember Vietnam and all of these conflicts since.
• [00:46:59] INTERVIEWER: [BACKGROUND] How old were you then, one more time?
• [00:47:10] Norma Smith: I was born in '37. Pearl Harbor was bombed in '41, and I'm not sure I have a memory of that or if I made up a small memory of, I'm not certain. But because of the war went on until 1945, I remember a lot during that time, and I mentioned my older sisters were knitting socks for the soldiers.
• [00:47:38] INTERVIEWER: How do you feel your role changed as an American from [inaudible 00:47:42] moving towards Vietnam? What was the difference do you feel from what you did recall?
• [00:47:50] Norma Smith: I was a active protester against the war in Vietnam. I was homeless for children, so I didn't go out and march. But I wrote a lot of letters. I wore a copper bracelet for a prisoner of war until he was released. It really changed my political leanings. I think Vietnam had a terrible impact on not exactly my generation, but yes, my generation because we got to see all these young people being killed for no really good reason. I think for me one of the most emotional events in my life was when I saw the Vietnam War Memorial and all those names. Over 50,000 young men and two of them lived in our neighborhood. That really changed me. I was too young to have an opinion about World War II or even about Korea. I was in high school during Korea and it was not in my awareness, but certainly, Vietnam really changed me. It's the first time I can ever remember being active politically.
• [00:49:41] INTERVIEWER: What inspired you or I guess what drew your attention to the war or something? Did you see the protest? Did someone speak to you about it? What was that inciting incident?
• [00:49:51] Norma Smith: Well, I didn't really need anybody outside to tell me it was wrong. At that time, I studied at home all the time with my children. But I studied the news very carefully. There wasn't a lot of TV news in those days, so it's not like now. I did a lot of reading and I just couldn't see any value to it. I wrote letters and I got answers in many cases. We lived in Connecticut for a good part of that. The congressman, I think he was a representative, I don't think he was a senator. Chris Dodd, I think his name was, he always responded to my letters and that was new to me. I had never written [NOISE] to Washington. I had never gotten responses from people in office. It made me much more politically aware. [BACKGROUND]
• [00:51:33] INTERVIEWER: You said seeing the memorial was one of the most emotional.
• [00:51:36] Norma Smith: It was.
• [00:51:37] INTERVIEWER: Moments of your life, when did you see the last time?
• [00:51:42] Norma Smith: It might have been in the mid '90s, I was there on business and I took my son in because he was on his break from Michigan State, so he came with me and we just went to see it on a Sunday afternoon. Not too long ago, I'd say seven or eight years ago, my granddaughter was in college and she had an internship at National Geographic so I went back to DC then as a tourist with my daughter and her husband and we went on a memorial tour, and I stayed on the bus for the Vietnam. I could not go back and look at it. You'll have those moments in your life where it's just overwhelming that something like this could happen and I couldn't do anything about it.
• [00:52:50] INTERVIEWER: I don't want to drive back in time too much, but if you think back to after you finished high school, you know, about those college years, were you still in New York or did you go back?
• [00:53:02] Norma Smith: I lived at home. I was what they call a day up, that would take two buses in the first year, proved my father I was serious, and then I could use the car to go back-and-forth, and then I picked up riders to pay for the gas. College was great. I loved it, it was private. Again, all women's college with really high academic ideals and I enjoyed every bit of it. I enjoyed the instructors, I enjoyed how we were as a school politically aware. I remember as a freshman in high school, there was a Hungarian uprising, this would have been in '56, I think, and we marched out, again, in the neighborhood to support the people who were being persecuted in Hungary, and I loved that. I loved that we were the small school. Again, there were three men's colleges around, so we didn't lack for entertainment.
• [00:54:39] INTERVIEWER: College you spent in Buffalo, right?
• [00:54:42] Norma Smith: I did, yes. I lived at home. I was the only one left at home, I love that too. I had a car. My mother cooked whatever I like to eat and it was a great time in my life. I was very active, I held offices and volunteered in the city and was hard, the studying part was hard and I spent a great deal of time in a research library because of being a history major.
• [00:55:26] INTERVIEWER: Can I ask why you decided to major in history?
• [00:55:32] Norma Smith: Yeah, it was impulse. I went in and as freshmen we all had to take the same thing. You can imagine because it was like the same extension of my high school. We had to take Latin again and Greek for that first year, and a science and a language, and English and history. I thought I would be an English major because I love to read and I love to write and I thought that would work for me. But I had a history teacher who was very inspiring and she lit a fire and I never looked back.
• [00:56:21] INTERVIEWER: I understand you started moving around in your adult life, and when were you married? Were you married just after college?
• [00:56:30] Norma Smith: I graduated in '60 and I was married in the following '61, so I was a year out of college. Yeah.
• [00:56:38] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me where and when you met your spouse?
• [00:56:45] Norma Smith: I know his sister, she was a year ahead of me in both of the schools, so high school and the college, and so I always knew who he was. I did date him a little as a freshman, but he was much too serious and I was just having fun [LAUGHTER]. But then we started dating again in my junior year. I knew his sister, I knew his family.
• [00:57:20] INTERVIEWER: How did you guys reconnect from your college days?
• [00:57:34] Norma Smith: There was a small group that hung around together and then a larger group and he was always part of the larger group, so it wasn't like we didn't see each other. I think he just called me up after we had seen each other on a Saturday night at some event. In my college years more than my high school years, we were very socially active. There was a lot to do in Buffalo, there was a really good sports teams and we had a good time.
• [00:58:24] INTERVIEWER: You started dating in your junior?
• [00:58:26] Norma Smith: I think so, yes. Toward the end of my junior year.
• [00:58:29] INTERVIEWER: That was like three years or something?
• [00:58:31] Norma Smith: Yes.
• [00:58:34] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about your engagement and your eventual wedding in Buffalo?
• [00:58:39] Norma Smith: We became engaged at Christmas time, pretty traditional thing, and we married in June, and it was very nice. We were families that knew each other, and my nieces and nephews got to take part in it and they were just so much fun at that point because being the youngest in the family, there were a lot of nieces and nephews around by the time I got married. It was a very special day, I think for everyone. My cousin, John was a priest by that time and he presided at our marriage and it was his first one, so he was never sure. [LAUGHTER] We had a lot of fun around there.
• [00:59:44] INTERVIEWER: From what I understand, you first move outside of New York took place after that marriage?
• [00:59:51] Norma Smith: We lived for a year in Buffalo, my oldest boy was born there and then we move to Rochester, New York, which isn't very far, maybe an hour-and-a-half drive then, I think now it's less than an hour because of how the highways. We lived there for I think nine years, the other three children were born there. Then we moved to Connecticut, and we were there for several years, then we moved here to Celine.
• [01:00:23] INTERVIEWER: What was the reason for all this?
• [01:00:25] Norma Smith: My husband's transfers. I was just coming along with the kids.
• [01:00:38] INTERVIEWER: Where was your husband's [inaudible 01:00:39]
• [01:00:39] Norma Smith: He was always in finance. He had a really good jobs in finance with different companies. He always advanced and we advanced with him.
• [01:01:00] INTERVIEWER: What was your family like when you and your husband was so together and [inaudible 01:01:09]?
• [01:01:09] Norma Smith: It was good. We were pretty strong family. As time went on, my husband became more and more involved in his work and in friendships with work people. On the other hand, I was involved in getting the boys to hockey. They were in band and well, you can imagine in orchestra, in all of that. I was doing that part of it. He was out doing his thing. Pretty soon there wasn't much left to our marriage. It was not a nasty situation. We never shouted at each other. We didn't use the children against each other. He was, I believe, relieved to go back East and he didn't really want to be a parent much. For few years he just saw the kids once a year and they managed with that. It was not terrible.
• [01:02:43] INTERVIEWER: If you're comfortable talking about [inaudible 01:02:45] .
• [01:02:45] INTERVIEWER: [OVERLAPPING] I just want to make sure that you're answering in complete sentences because that just will make the editing process easy.
• [01:02:52] Norma Smith: Oh, that's right. Maybe we didn't remind me.
• [01:02:58] INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] You're fine. Anyway.
• [01:03:00] INTERVIEWER: I just wanted to make sure.
• [01:03:01] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
• [01:03:02] Norma Smith: I really needed to be reminded, but I'll try from now on. [OVERLAPPING].
• [01:03:07] INTERVIEWER: I think it's sound really good to advocate.
• [01:03:10] INTERVIEWER: It natural actually, if you just go on.
• [01:03:15] INTERVIEWER: If you're comfortable talking about this as far as, how did the divorce affect you personally?
• [01:03:25] Norma Smith: I think this is worth mentioning because it didn't have a real impact on me. The people next door who I mentioned who we would do thanksgiving with, he was a psychiatrist. I just went to him for six months and just I think of him now. He absorbed all of my anger. He listened and I looked forward to that time and they're still friends today. Recently they celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary and all of us went. We're still connected. I wished for anyone who had a crisis in their life to have a shrink next door. It was just a perfect thing. Then, I had to find work. We as a family had to adjust to much less income and living differently. We really didn't have a lot of time to stomp around or anything. We were on the move to make all this work. I think we did all right.
• [01:04:49] INTERVIEWER: Did you have support from your extended family maybe there was?
• [01:04:53] Norma Smith: I always had loving support from them, yes. At first, a brother and his wife would come to visit and I always managed to take the children in the summertime. That would be my vacation. I would take them back to buffaloes so that they could remain connected. My mom, she was a widow at that time and she would come to visit and she made a nice difference. She came when things got hard. When two of them had to have their tonsils out at the same time, she came in and helped me run the household, yes. I always felt loving and support from my family.
• [01:05:53] INTERVIEWER: Did we talk all about your children first time?
• [01:05:55] Norma Smith: My children.
• [01:05:57] INTERVIEWER: Your children. Just their names and something like that.
• [01:06:02] Norma Smith: Well, my oldest boy is Chris. I talked to him last night for quite a while. He lives not too far from Peoria, Illinois. He and his wife have a home on the lake, and they have two children. Nathan around 26. I get their ages confused, but he is in LA. He works for SpaceX, he's an engineer, which cool. Their daughter McKenna is a junior at Butler. Then I have a daughter, Julie. She's married, she lives just outside of Chicago and she's 56, I guess, but she retired a few years ago. She and her husband had a plan. They have two daughters and one graduated from Butler, one graduated from Purdue. When the second one graduated, she retired. Tara, the older girl, she's in a corporate communications and Colleen, who I find this all very enchanting, her major was fashion merchandising. She works for a bridal salon. But she sells and she models and she buys and it's the perfect job for her. When I visit them, I tried to visit the bridalshop because it's like a big room full of fluff and it's a lot of fun. My daughter has been a big help because of being retired. In the past year, she came spent a few days with me when I got new carpeting and then she went to her brothers because they were packing to move. She helped with that and then she went down to Ohio to be with a granddaughter who was not able to go on the family vacation because of some state swim meets and so she stayed with her. She's been a great joy and she doesn't seem to mind. Brandon is my son. Brandon must be 54, I think. I don't know. I could figure it out. It must be 53. He was born in '65, so he must be 53. He lives in Savannah, Ohio, which is close. He and his wife Julie, they have two children, Leah, who's a year-round swimmer and is very tall, and Parker who is 12 and he is a lacrosse player. I have loved having them close by because they're the first grandchildren who had been close so that I can get to see them and be around them. Then my youngest child is Brad, and he and his wife live in Seattle. He is a two-time cancer survivor. I think last year, he celebrated 20 years with Microsoft. His wife's a teacher. She teaches elementary. I think she might be a resource person or something like that. They do not have children. Brad is the one I think I told you I went to Yellowstone with Brad and Julie, my retired daughter. We were the three who spent time there. I can't tell you how blessed I feel that these three children have turned out to be delightful and remarkable and they are good spouses and good parents and good in their community. They're all very nice to me.
• [01:10:30] INTERVIEWER: How many questions do we have?
• [01:10:31] MALE_1: [NOISE]. [inaudible 01:10:31]
• [01:10:31] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:10:31] .
• [01:10:31] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:10:31]
• [01:10:49] INTERVIEWER: I don't know what we did last time. I asked you were like raising your children and like the other teenagers and things. Over some of the popular music that you maybe have listened to, are there some you were [LAUGHTER] interested in?
• [01:11:03] Norma Smith: I honestly have to say I didn't pay a whole lot of attention. [LAUGHTER] I can tell you that when I pulled into the garage with all the doors in the house closed, it felt like the whole house was vibrating and they would hear me pull in and tone everything down. But they all had favorites and went to concerts. I remember Brendan, he was a big James Taylor fan and the margarita guy. Who is he? You know who I mean?
• [01:11:47] MALE_1: Jamie [inaudible 01:11:47] or something.
• [01:11:49] Norma Smith: Whatever he was I know that. I know Elton John. I can't speak for Julie and Brad. I do know, this is an interesting story. I was on business with Sony, visiting Sony, their plant in Terre Haute, Indiana, and they owned Columbia Records. Years ago, they used to be a record club and you could get those tapes. I don't know what you'd call them anymore. After we were finished with our work, our hostess took us to a warehouse that was filled with returns of records and these cassette tapes. They were sorted by artist. I had a free reign, I could have taken as many as I wanted for no charge and I couldn't remember a name. I honestly thought my children would never forgive me. They would imagine this warehouse. [LAUGHTER] I took a handful of cassette tapes. I think I might have gotten an Elton John because I remembered Elton John. But it was a moment that I wasn't sure I'd ever recover from because they couldn't believe I had this opportunity.
• [01:13:28] INTERVIEWER: Well, I know you said your children are very active with the orchestra and different things like that. Did they ever take any dance classes or any just popular dances that were in that time?
• [01:13:44] Norma Smith: I don t know. I should and I can picture them. They always knew the latest thing and they'd be bouncing around in the kitchen. I tried not to get involved in all of that. I didn't want to limit them or discipline them. We went through this whole situation where it didn't matter to me. I had to choose my battles and music and dancing, that was not a good battle. Their hair. They tried all different things with their hair. That wasn't a good battle. I had to choose what I was going to require of them as their parent. Some of those things, I honestly don't recall. If they ever hear this, they'll be horrified.
• [01:14:40] INTERVIEWER: I already mentioned your Sheldon went to a lot of concerts. Did you ever go to any of those concerts with them?
• [01:14:48] Norma Smith: No. I managed to only go to, what's the place in Ohio, the theme park or the park?
• [01:15:02] INTERVIEWER: Cedar Point.
• [01:15:03] Norma Smith: Cedar Point. I managed to only go once, which I thought was pretty good having four children. But I know they got to go a lot. I put them in cars and buses, however, to go there. In that time, I didn't have time for that. When I wasn't working, my work was very demanding as I moved up the ladder. When I wasn't working, then I had to prioritize the household stuff and try to make it work for them like Memorial Day weekend. They were all grounded for that weekend. We did all the big chores. If there was any painting or scrubbing or lawn stuff or anything, we did all that and then they were free for the summer. Then the rest of the time, I tried very hard to not other than they had their own chores. I think I didn't have time for those things.
• [01:16:19] INTERVIEWER: While you were raising your children and seeing them grow up and things, were there any political issues or social issues during that time period that you feel actually affected? You are raising your children and their children themselves.
• [01:16:34] INTERVIEWER: She talked a little bit about the [inaudible 01:16:35]
• [01:16:36] INTERVIEWER: It's like anything else, like even as you're graduating and things like that.
• [01:16:48] Norma Smith: When we lived in Connecticut, was when Nixon ran against McGowan, you probably don't remember that. It would've been probably '72, I think.
• [01:17:06] INTERVIEWER: [LAUGHTER] US history. [OVERLAPPING]
• [01:17:15] Norma Smith: Well, I was very down at Nixon. I just thought that this man was a crook, and my husband, who is a pretty loyal Republican, didn't pay as much attention as I did because I was the one who had the time to read and all. He was off for Nixon. So, when I went to vote, I took all four children in the voting booth with me. There was one that had a curtain a close, so they were all in there with me because I wanted them to remember that their mother voted for [LAUGHTER] McGowan. It was a bone of contention with my husband that I made such an issue out of it and we cancel each other's votes essentially. But yes, my children remember. Most of them now, I don't know their politics that well. We pretty much agreed not to talk politics that much mostly because if you were to listen to my son Brad, he says you always know more than I do. I don't like to talk to you about it. Because I'm a junkie with news and politics and I hang around with a wild group of people who argue it all.