OH#7 - McNeese State University



Interviewee: Matter, Mrs. Keitha (Granddaughter of John McNeese)

Interviewer: Kathie Bordelon

Date of Interview: October 27, 1988

Subjects Discussed: McNeese Family

OH #7-A (1 Tape)

Additional Material in McNeese Collection #031

Kathie Bordelon (hereafter referred to as Kathie): Today is October the 27th, 1988. I’m interviewing Mrs. Keitha Matter, granddaughter of John McNeese. Uhm, my name is Kathie Bordelon and this is being done for the McNeese Oral History program.

Okay, the first thing that I want to talk to you about is getting some of the history of the family. There’s been a lot of contraver-, well not controversy really, but there’s been a lot of confusion about John McNeese’s children and what happened to all of em and what their names were and how many they were. I’ve read so many different accounts. I read a letter just recently that gave a list of the children’s names and left out 3 or 4 of them that I knew were his children. So I know it’s really confusing, but Jonathan and Stafford, were those 2 children that were born and named and then died?

Mrs. Keitha Matter (hereafter referred to as Keitha): That’s right. uh huh.

Kathie: How long did they live?

Keitha: I think they were just infants-

Keitha: just infants.

Keitha: when they died. Uh huh, because you know, their names don’t even-, they ring a bell when you say the names, but I never think if them, but I remembered reading in some of the material that I had that uh, they had 8 children. And uh, one of the letters that grandpa wrote to someone, and I know that there were only the 6 that I knew of.

Kathie: Okay. There was Oswald, William,

Keitha: uh-

Kathie: Hawley and Timothy were the boys.

Keitha: Well-

Kathie: Oswald-

Keitha: uh, William

Kathie: William, Hawley, and Timothy. Those were the only boys that lived?

Keitha: that-, yeah.

Kathie: And then there would have been Jonathan and Stafford if they had lived. And then Stella and Emma –

Keitha: That’s right.

Kathie: were the only girls. So that’s 6 and then there would have been 8 if the other 2 had lived.

Keitha: Uh huh. Mama was the oldest, Emma, and then Oswald was next and I’m not sure. I-, it was either John or Hawley-

Kathie: Oh John, we forgot John.

Keitha: Oh, well John-! John was in the service.

Kathie: That’s 7. Well we have had -[laughing]

Keitha: Oh, we gonna find a lost one yet.

Kathie: All right, Oswald, John, William, Hawley, Timothy, Stella, and Emma. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6- that’s 7. Is there another one? This is terrible; we can’t get all the children.

Keitha: Emma, Oswald, John, Hawley, Will, Tim, - I said Stella. [pauses]

[sound of pages turning]

Kathie: Okay. Look at this, I have Emma, Oswald, Stella, John, Timothy, Hawley, William. And then Stafford and Jonathan, those are the only ones that I’ve got. And I had that they were 10 that were born do there must have been one maybe that didn’t have a name. Could that have been possible?

Keitha: It, it’s possible. I uh, I’d almost have to go through - all that material.

Kathie: Yeah.

Keitha: I had a lot of paper clippings about my sister, [?] if you wanted all that, about her death and-.

Kathie: Well that’s Sue?

Keitha: w- Sue.

Kathie: Yeah, I’d like to see those, because I don’t know-

Keitha: I think I have em at the house. I’ll find out and if not, I’ll have to clean, but there’s several paper clippings, you know that Mama kept of that.

Kathie: Um-kay, Oswald had 3 daughters.

Keitha: Uh huh

Kathie: Right. And that was Laura and –

Keitha: See, Mary Garland then uh, Susan, then Laura.

Kathie: Okay and William had no children, Hawley had no children, Timothy had no children, and John had no children.

Keitha: No. John had a child and it died. She was just a-

Kathie: That was Virginia.

Keitha: just a little girl, maybe 3 years old.

Kathie: Okay. So there was-, there were no boys then to carry on the family name, as far as Oswald had 3 daughters and that was, he was the only son that had any, any children.

Keitha: As close as we got to it, John was, John McNeese Gauthier.

Kathie: Uh huh. Yeah. And then she didn’t [laughing] have and children.

Keitha: No. But I think uh, Susan was named, Susan McNeese.

Kathie: Uh huh. Yeah, I think so. Okay and then Stella married Overton Gauthier and they had 2 children, John and Overton Junior and neither of them had children, did they?

Keitha: Uh, John had never married and Overton has been married twice, but they never had children.

Kathie: And then Emma married L. L. Squires and had 3 daughters. Sue, who died at a very young age, what, what did she die of?

Keitha: Not Sue, Sue was about 28.

Kathie: Well that’s still too young.

Keitha: She would have been married about 2 years. She uh, had peritonitis. They didn’t have the antibiotics then. That’s a terrible infection. And she had surgery then she died about 1 or, 1 or 2 o’clock the next morning. I’ve forgotten when.

Kathie: And then as far as we know, Mina, or mine-a Rhorer is still living in Houston. And she had just, she had one son?

Keitha: Larry Joan.

Kathie: One son and one daughter?

Keitha: And that’s, Larry Joan, she didn’t think she’d, know she’d ever had anymore. She lost about 4 babies and uh, then Lawrence Osburne, or Sonny.

Kathie: And then you.

Keitha: Yeah.

Kathie: For a family that started out very large, it just kind a-

Keitha: dwindled out.

Kathie: dwindled away, didn’t it?

Keitha: Sue wanted children so bad and she took Sonny home and Mina was sick and got sunburned and Mina got mad and came back and got him.

Kathie: [laughs] Okay when were you born?

Keitha: When was I born?

Kathie: uh huh.

Keitha: March 4th, 1914.

Kathie: Okay and your grandfather, John McNeese died in June of that same year.

Keitha: June, same year. See Mama had a little girl, Little Emma and she died when she was about 2 and a half.

Kathie: Oh, she did.

Keitha: They had dynamite at the creek and they had a fish fry and it, the church people. And uh, she was little and you know they drank the water and they didn’t know that there had dynamiting stun-, stumps, and so the doctor came you know form Sugar Town and she had locked bowels and they didn’t know what to do for her. She died. Very [?]-. And then when I came along, Mama said, “we had prayed for another little girl”. And then when I disappointed her, she’d say, “ooh, I put all my hopes in you”. [Laughing] -disappointed.

Kathie: [laughs] That’s a burden on a little child, isn’t it?

Keitha: It really, she’d just make me-

Kathie: ooh.

Keitha: Limp as she’d tell me about Little Emma. Of course, she would go back there to go to the cemetery all the way up to Sugar Town.

Kathie: Well your mother, she went to school at Lake Charles high school?

Keitha: Uh huh.

Kathie: And how d-, where did she meet Mr. Squires?

Keitha: In the home of John Carroll, C-A-R-R-O-L-L in Merryville uh, she was with grandpa. They were visiting the schools and my dad was a principal. Either a principal, I guess he was a teacher of the school in Mary- Merryville. And I think he was staying there. And they met at Carroll’s home. And neither Mr. and Mrs. Carroll could write, read or write, because they, they was, they were in their probably 70’s then. And they were so strong for education. They had, they had about 8 children and [Evie?] was youngest and uh, her daughter and I grew up together. Her father was the dentist in Lake Charles when her mother and daddy separated. And uh, they moved to Houston, but Carol would come to had to visit her, she had to come to see her daddy every summer and she’d stay a few days. He married again and she wasn’t happy there, because they had adopted a little girl. So she would come and stay with me. So she called me the other day and said she wasn’t gonna be able to get over, but I’m planning to go there next year. But, she lives in the Woodlands in Houston, beautiful new development there. She’s, her husband died of cancer and she had 2 daughters, they married. But uh, of course daddy was in school, school-work until he, he developed malaria from the working, being a nurse in the uh, Spanish-American War in Cuba.

Kathie: I didn’t know he did that.

Keitha: He was a male nurse.

Kathie: That was before he was a teacher?

Keitha: And he had malaria so bad that his spleen was just as hard as a rock. So they put him in the VA hospital and he had lots of trouble. He wasn’t well -. So Mama really was the bread-winner of the family.

Kathie: Well she was city clerk for a long time, wasn’t she?

Keitha: 30-

Kathie: 30 years?

Keitha: 30 years. And there’s a picture of it. You have that picture.

Kathie: uh huh.

Keitha: of Grandpa as superintendent and Mama was the secretary in the office and a clerk.

Kathie: So your father was a teacher at Merryville when he met your mother and then when did he, where did he go from there? Did he go to Lake Charles from Merryville or-?

Keitha: I, uh he must have, he became, I think when he and mama married he was principal at the high school in Lake Charles, [?]. And he was in school work until his health was –uh, but uh, of course mama, I guess wasn’t working then.

Kathie: Did your mother have any favorite stories that she used to tell about her father?

Keitha: Well, yeah. One uh, grandpa always wanted to get out of the uh, buggy. They’d have a pa-, picnic lunch along you know and they’d eat and he’d say, “well now uh, Emma you go watch the horses and the hay. Don’t, don’t get em excited” and he’d lie down on the pine needles under the trees, you know and take his nap. So mama was sitting there bored to death. I guess she was just you know about 18. And she was flickin’ the whip and she hit a [laughing] hornet’s nest. [Laughing] and the hornets stung the horses. They took off and mama could contain, control em and grandpa s, heard her scream. They c-, stung grandpa. They were really mad. She said, boy she knew her name was mud.

Kathie: Yes.

Keitha: but then she went to a big dinner with him where he was to give the main address if the evening and he always tucked his napkin up under his uh collar. [laughing] And he stood up to speak and he had tucked the table cloth under instead and he pulled all the-

Kathie: [laughs]

Keitha: [laughs] And mama said she, that they had of course cameras or lamps or something to light, to luminate the place. [laughing] and she said, she had been waiting for a chance to eat the chicken that she couldn’t eat politely at the table so when all this happened, [laughing] she went under the table and ate the piece of chicken. [laughs] Said, “She didn’t want to be there seeing her father so embarrassed. But all the plates and food fell off on the floor, but grandpa got his- breath back and the speech went on, but he, he’d pull one thing after the other. Just-, and I know, I say that’s where my mother got her wit, because grandpa. Uh, I don’t know if I should even say this, but Hawley was giving them a lot of trouble and he was staying with mama and I think Aunt Stella was keeping either Uncle Will or Uncle Tim. They had to look after the younger-kids. They were the only 2 s-, so he said, “well, uh give Hawley the money that he needs. We want him to get educated and uh, if he’d just go to school, we’ll keep sending money to keep him there”. Evidently, he was going to school there where mama was. And he said, “He’s just more trouble than he’s worth, but he’s ours and I guess we’re gonna have to just put up with him”. [laughing] “make the best of him”. But it’s in those letters. I-, I, I’ve learned more things about my grandpa doing this research, I’d stay up ‘till midnight reading these things and reading mama’s funny letters.

Kathie: [rustling or static] She’s talking about these letters that she brought

Keitha: Grandpa’s penmanship was so gorgeous.

Kathie: Oh!

Keitha: And I said I can’t read my own writing when it gets cold and I tell you, I think that those-

Kathie: Those are letters from John McNeese to his daughter, Emma.

Keitha: I never, I never found the ones from mama to grandpa, but these, naturally, would be more interesting. I mean.

Kathie: Well tell, tell me some more about Susan McNeese, Susan Bilbo McNeese, because there is veeery little about her in any of the things that I have read. She was-

Keitha: Well now there’s, there’s a letter-. There is a lot in there from Grandma written written to mama.

Kathie: Oh good.

Keitha: Now if it’s n, if you didn’t find it, I may have it at home but I’m not-, I mean here at Beverly’s. I’ll look again through those things that I wanted Joan to take and you can have them too. [laughs]

Kathie: Well yes, if she doesn’t want them I definitely do.

Keitha: She’s no collector. I wish I’d of thought to just stick em in. But we’ll bring em all.

Kathie: uh huh. But uh, Susan’s family was from the DeRidder area?

Keitha: Let’s see, where was her family from? She was a Bilbo.

Kathie: Uh huh.

Keitha: And grandpa writes it, but uh, about meeting grandma when he was out there planning marriage to one of those girls-

Kathie: Yeah. I, I read something in there, in of them about how he didn’t, he was surprised that he wasn’t planning on marrying or something like that.

Keitha: I think she was uh, -. She, she raised chickens. Oh they worked so hard, but her letters were so sweet to mama and always telling grandpa to write to Emma and be sure to tell her to come and to bring the children that she missed seeing them. and uh, to, to not worry about something that grandpa loaning mama money. 10 dollars you know, not to worry, that uh, she’s do without something in she needed money. And he sent, and sent valentines to the children. See you just get a different picture when you read all these when they were young.

Kathie: He looks like one stern man.

Keitha: He looked like such a stern-. Whooh! -

Kathie: [laughing] But he wasn’t really.

Keitha: No. He wasn’t. He had a terrific sense of humor. And he graduated a class, a high school class of 3 people that that [?] 3. She said, “I have to be at the service tonight to present the diplomas and have a speech”. She said, “I have 3 graduating”. [Laughs]. But I just- all I remember is that she was a Bilbo and she had a sister, Rebecca. And I had that furniture that they had when uh-

Kathie: uh huh

Keitha: they bought new ottoman. See they lived in Baton Rouge and lived in New Orleans.

Kathie: while he was going to law school?

Keitha: Yeah. Now I don’t know why he would have been in Baton Rouge. But uh, mama was, she was with em in New Orleans, because she wrote home with so many things. I guess, maybe mama and Uncle Oswald-. I can’t, I can’t get Jimmy to give find, I mean uh, Cliny Hanchey’s son Jimmy, until the 30th or 31st and I hope I can reach him to find out about that beautiful dresser.

Kathie: well you said you-

Keitha: He never married, you see?

Kathie: uh huh.

Keitha: It may not mean anything to him. But you see, if it meant a lot to his mother and she died just uh-.

Kathie: uh huh

Keitha: It might so just have to try. Linda [?] said she didn’t know, she didn’t remember wanted me to come up there and visit.

Kathie: Well you said you were born in Sugartown or out in the country close to Sugartown?

Keitha: Well it, Sugartown was the post-

Kathie: the post office.

Keitha: Post office. Uh, and Elizabeth, the paper mill town, wasn’t too far from there.

Kathie: I think they just recently closed that mill.

Keitha: I heard that. I, in fact, someone I met in the Kroger’s the other day lived in Elizabeth. She even said the town and she said uh, that they had closed down the mill and uh, she said, “it is now”, we were talking about cranberries, I think. People in my part of the country never heard of a cranberry and I said, “well they’re not, they’re about the same size of”- I don’t mean cranberry-

Kathie: blueberries.

Keitha: mayhaws

Kathie: Oh mayhaws

Keitha: Said, “they’re the same size as cranberries, but you make jelly”. And she said, “They’d remember if they ever had any mayhaw jelly”. And I said, “we used to take and old blanket or old sheet and get em, shake the limbs. And I always thought about going out toward Iowa and Welsh in bogs. She said, “Elizabeth is now the mayhaw capital of the world”.

Kathie: I hadn’t heard that.

Keitha: And I said, “I never knew they had mayhaws and I Elizabeth, Louisiana”. And I, that’s where I learned to work the switchboard. Little flap would come down, you know, from the number. And uh, Helen Segram listens in on everything. [laughs]. She, she knew everything about everybody. Well I was anxious to learn that little board, about this big. So I, I, didn’t know the people anyways so I wouldn’t listen in. Half of it was all was her family, but uh, we loved to go. When they lived on the farm and we lived across John’s Gully, which was named for Mr. [Suber?] and uh, it had a little old bridge across that gully and they would come across form my house to Mama’s house. And mama was with the Siglers helping Mrs. Sigler, she and her, f, youngest child I guess was born. No, it wasn’t the youngest, 3rd- youngest boy. And they named him Winfred, well he became Bo. And the next day mama was down having me, the 4th of March. And so we became sweethearts. Bo would keep, we lived in Lake Charles so we would go every Sunday and I can just remember that all the Sigler kids waiting out there on in the yard for us to come unload the car, because we’d be bringing loads of bread. I don’t guess it was sliced bread then, but just white bread and I’d be waiting to get biscuits and corn bread.

Kathie: [Laughs]

Keitha: Mrs. Sigler made the best chicken and rice. Just certain things I can remember that she cooked. And they’d send us home with a watermelon. And uh, all kind of vegetables. And I remember [Leila?] LeBleu that we rented our big house from, her family. She and I were real good friends. She and I fought for watermelons. We had about 6 in the dining room, trying to keep em cool. So we wondered which one was the ripest so we cut plugs into each one of em and [laughing] turned em away f-[laughing]. And then they started, everybody said, “[sniffing] something don’t smell right”.

Kathie: [laughs]

Keitha: So of course, old innocent I say, [running words together]“u - uuh, - know what it is”. Every one of em sour, of course, practically every one. They could have killed me, because they couldn’t afford to buy a watermelon.

Kathie: You really did get in a lot of trouble when you were growing up.

Keitha: And I told my neighbors, neighbor kids that uh, my family was gonna buy a house all on, out on Louisiana Avenue Mr. Kushner had built, because we had looked at it, they had talked about it. They went and told the LeBleu kids and the LeBleus told their parents and they gave us notice to move. They had been wanting us to move, because the wanted to make several apartments out of that house, thought they’d make more money off of it. I think we were paying $35 a month for a 2-story house and we rented an apartment. The Vidrines, he was uh, one of the type-setters at uh, American Press. Had their first little boy and when they lived at our house, I always go to [?] they [?] little help this time, but uh, - and we had the Vin Dixons lived with us and-, I remember one time, we were going to Jennings. First time I had ever been that far on a train and mama was gonna take me with her to go for a weekend. And I never we-, never went to the bathroom until I absolutely have to go. And I dashed in, hit, fell and hit my head on the-. And I was bleeding like a stuck pig. And mama had 2 Catholic sisters. I mean just not, not of a order, but just sisters. And she called up, she said, “please, somebody come help me. Keitha’s just gonna bleed to death and they grabbed their rosary and got down on their knees and [laughing] started reading their peace at once. “I need help. Somebody hold her while I open the trunk and get some stamps”. [?] saving stamps at-, we didn’t have it easy taping all that to hair. And uh, so she had to do it all by herself. She had to hold onto me and lift that heavy trunk lid and kept the thing down.

Kathie: And they were praying all the time?

Keitha: So she took me to Dr. Kreiger and uh, he, he, he took a couple of stitches. I’ve still got a scar up there. And then he put, he said, “Well Keitha, you’re gonna be a Red Cross nurse” so he put a cross up here and he put this little fluffy thing on my head you know and I - . – I must have been maybe 4 or 5. And mama never did get over those 2 women letting me bleed, her yell come help her. That was really just one thing after the other. I told you about Overton, Jeanne’s brother? That mom, that was [?] and she came up to Sugar Town to visit us. He came in and he said, “Aunt Emma, I want some sugar to roll my gum in. It’s not sweet anymore. So she said, “well it’s on the back of the kitchen table, Overton, so go, get find it”, so she and Aunt Stella started talking again. He came in here, [in a frightened voice] “I been poisoned mama, I’ve been poisoned”. And he was kinda foaming at the mouth and Aunt Stella said, “My God Emma, what have you done? You poisoned my only child”. And mama started laughing. And Stella said, [astonished] “How can you laugh? Look at my child”. She said, “Don’t worry Stella, it’s Epsom salt. I spilt some and put it in a saucer”. [laughing].

Kathie: [laughs]

Keitha: Uh, I told Jeanne about that. She said, “I don’t remember all that stuff”. She said, I told her how I always wrote to her on her birthday. She said, “don’t ever write past the first page, because I don’t turn it over to read the back part.

Kathie: She’s a character.

Keitha: I said, “don’t worry, you won’t hear from me anymore. You don’t send me birthday cards”. She said, “We don’t even remember each other’s birthday. I don’t know when my mother’s birthday is. I don’t know when my dad’s birthday is”. We always have a big dinner and, and invite our friend or 2 in. Uncle Will would drink in front and embarrass all of us and we’d wish mama would quit inviting Uncle Will.

Kathie: Whatever happened to Uncle Will?

Keitha: huh?

Kathie: Whatever happened to Will? As far as you remember?

Keitha: Oh, he went to uh, Waco, Texas and went into the VA hospital there as a patient. Now he didn’t, I don’t think he ever had TB, but he wasn’t well. He had worked for Uncle Oswald in the war department office in New Orleans. Had a good job and he, Uncle Oswald said he, “never had a smarter man work for me that my brother”. And he lived with Aunt Clevie and, and Uncle Oswald and the girls. And then he came to Lake Charles and moved in with grandma and he just, [claps] lost interest. He got to drinking. He went from bad to worse. And uh, he used to come, I told you that, he used to come to the house and Sue would say, “don’t you let Uncle Will pick my sweet peas. I’m taking them to some party or something tonight, I promised”. And I said, “Well, I’ll try”. He said, “I lived here before you did and I might live here after you’re gone and I’m gonna pick what I want”. So he’d cut all the sweet peas and come in and eat it. As soon as daddy was gone, he’d come eat. And he’d leave and then everybody would be mad at me, because I was the youngest. [laughs] But I couldn’t a’ managed him. But Uncle Timmy never gave us any trouble, but I told you about Uncle Tim. How he, he just, his mind snapped taking care of grandma. So they put him in a Pine[?] insane asylum. He was a gardener. He could grow anything, and grandma could, I said, in one of her, the letters I read said, “Mr. McNeese could out a shoe stick in the ground and it would-

Kathie: [laughs]

Keitha: Grow something beautiful. Oh and I said, “I didn’t get that gift”. I don’t know who did in the family. Mama didn’t, I didn’t. But uh-

Kathie: So where did, William-

Keitha: He lived there. I mean he, he died in there, in a, [?] but he was happy.

Kathie: What about, where did William die?

Keitha: Who?

Kathie: William, Will.

Keitha: Well, he lived, he died in uh, in Waco.

Kathie: Oh, in Waco.

Keitha: He came home came to mama’s and stayed uh a while and she didn’t know that it was kind of a trial run if he got along all right. They wouldn’t, wouldn’t take him back. And he had been working in the office and I went to see him. I was visiting in Dallas and the sister-in-law to this girl, my friends that I visited, first sh- her uh, brother had married this girl from Lake Charles that I used to take to Kellog’s plant. And her youngest sister was working in that office. Her family moved there. And she said, “you mean Mr. McNeese is a patient in the VA hospital here”. And I said, “well yes”. He took me to his room and showed me where he slept and showed me some of his clothes and some of the things mama had sent him. She said, “He’s the smartest person in the whole office”. She said, “we all go to Mr. McNeese for help, because he’s so willing to help us. And Uncle Oswald wrote letters to the heads of the VA and I had copies of all those letters he said, “my brother has worked faithfully all those years and saved you all that money”, thousands of dollars. He was just being taken care of. He didn’t get anything for working in that office and now that he’s not able to work, there gonna put him out in the pasture. My sister is not well, she’d alone, and she cannot take care of Will. He’d get [?] , 3 hot meals a day into the slop jar, because the bathroom was on the other end of the apartment. And mama said, she wrote to me she said, “I just cannot keep up. I don’t know what I’m gonna do about Will”. And Beverly said, “well as long as your mother forgets to turn the water off and y’all-

OH#7 side 2

Keitha: -Nope, there was nobody left to do it. Aunt Clevie was making them –[?].

Kathie: What about John, John in Mississippi?

Keitha: Well, I only have seen uh, Uncle John and Aunt Mildred one time and only in like, no 2 times. We took, Glen and I went with mama to just visit on our way back to New York and uh, that was the second time I had ever seen em and he wasn’t a bit well. And then after he died not too long after that. So Aunt Mildred has lived alone out in the country from Booneville, Mississippi in the clay hills. Everything looks alike out there. But Uncle John – would put everything on his plate and he’d pour gravy over the top of it and Aunt Mildred would put potatoes and eat the potatoes. She would eat and sh-, eat beans and she’d put some-. That was the funniest thing for them to be married. He just had aaall this food. She had one thing at a time.

Kathie: [Laughs].

Keitha: It’s funny how children are impressed with things that just-. And Aunt, my grandmother, I think it’s the only funny thing I ever saw her do and we’d always poke each other at the table. Grandma would go to that open curtain into the kitchen where we’d pass through, cook food through. She always would go there to that winda, put her hat on just like it was a mirror. She never failed. All you did was look into the kitchen at the stove and the dirty dishes.

Kathie: why did she do that, I wonder.

Keitha: I don’t know, there was no mirror anywhere around, but she always stood there and put her hat on. Just funny thing.

Kathie: Well do you know anything about John when he lived in Lake Charles?

Keitha: I don’t remember anything.

Kathie: I know he left, he left Lake Charles at a pretty early age, didn’t he?

Keitha: He must have, but I don’t remember at all. You know there’s just not too much in these letters about papa John. Uh, I guess there would be even more about Hawley, because his wife, he married late in life; married a, a nurse who had worked at the VA. and I don’t know if Hawley -in the VA or not. But they met and they married. Now oh, I guess she must have been close to 50 when they married, but she and mama corresponded and they lived in San Francisco. And I think she came to see mama one time after I had moved away from home.

Kathie: You don’t remember her name?

Keitha: Grace. Her first name was Grace. She may have been married before, but I don’t remember. But she must have been close to 50 when they married.

Kathie: What about Oswald? I know he, he’d buried at Arlington and Clevie, his wife, she’s buried there, too, isn’t she?

Keitha: Probably is. They lived uh, in Washington and Aunt Clevie n-, knew history. She was a, a [togist?], uh, a teacher at uh- Oh, what’s the-?

Kathie: Opelousas?

Keitha: Huh?

Keitha: In Opelousas?

Keitha: No! In, in uh, New Orleans. See they lived in New Orleans when I visited them. Well I visited the both places. I- Sophie Newcome! Sophie Newcome! She was a brilliant professor. And I went and spent Christmas. She wanted me to kind of look after the 3 girls when I was maybe 2 years older than Mar-rie, 2 or 3. And she uh, [sighs] I, I, she had bought this, she had me wrap all these dolls and clothes. I don’t know what all, but things I’d like to have. And I had one, one gift, a Child’s History of England. I never read the first page. I wasn’t interested in a Child’s History of England. I wanted [laughing] something to play with.

Kathie: That’s what she gave you when you were-

Keitha: That was my gift. But she was a very studious person. She was uh, she gave book reviews to the [Sulgrave?] club, whatever that was, in Washington and all the first ladies and their ladies and all the big shot, the senator’s wives came to this club and to heard Aunt Clevie, hear Aunt Clevie review these books. And mama went to stay with her. she wanted me to go and Aunt Clevie said, “Well, it won’t be convenient this time. You’ll, you can come again another time”. I didn’t want it, uh, Mama didn’t want to go without me, but, but she, she went. And Aunt Clevie said, “Now Emma, I want you to uh, call Ms. So- and so and thank her” for the tea or the coffee or whatever she had given her. Mama said Aunt Thea had written a note, “I don’t like to talk on the telephone. I don’t hear that well”. She said, “well you’re gonna call her before you leave. That’s the rightful thing to do”. So she did and then I went to see her and she came in from somewhere. I don’t know where she’s been. She had on her hat, had her purse over her arm, had books in her arm. She went right in the kitchen and started cooking. She didn’t put the books down, didn’t take off her hat, her purse; she just started getting pans and pans out. I never saw anybody so attached to things [laughing] that didn’t even put em down before they went in the kitchen. And she got mama to sleep on a cot in the dining room. I remember that. Mama came back from New York; her back was killing her. She said, “they out me on a cot in the dining room and Laura had the whole bedroom to herself, a big double [blanket?]. Laura would have given it up if they had ask her, but she was probably 13. You know, you just don’t think. Well I put Steve out of his. He’s sleeping on the sofa and I’ve got the bedroom.

Kathie: You don’t wanna go back to North Carolina with a backache.

Keitha: Paul, well I had to get boards to put in that bed. The soft mattress was so soft, the neighbor brought boards and put on the bed for me. I said, “[? Deb], I’m gonna have to sleep on the floor or on that couch in the living room”. She’s got a brick thing above the fire place and has this big foam rubber pad. And I said, “I could sleep here”. And she said, “No, you’re gonna sneeze here”. So I said, “I have to have some boards” so they got the neighbor. A fella I’d [laughing] like to take home with me.

Kathie: Now was Oswald, what was his position in Washington? I know he was-

Keitha: He was a Colonel on MacArthur’s staff and he and Eisenhower worked together. I wish I’d have brought some of those things. I have pictures of them in his uniform, postal cards he sent all of us from Paris and all of these places uh, where he had to go during the war. Uh, he was veeery thoughtful of the whole family. He kept in touch with everybody. Uh, he came to see Mama when she was with us. She and [?] and uh, to visit and he kept calling Mama instead of Emma, he’d call her Mama, because she had gotten thin in the face like grandma. He said, “Oh Keith, I’m so sorry”. He said, “Emma looks so much like Mama I can’t, I can’t get it out of my head”. And I said, “that’s all right, Uncle Oswald. She’s not gonna notice anyway. We all call her Mama”. Glen called her Mama so-

Kathie: It wouldn’t matter if one more called her that.

Keitha: But she was, he was so sweet and thoughtful. Aunt Clevie wasn’t. She was like a little snapping turtle, like Glen’s mother was and his dad was so lovable. Just a difference in personality I guess.

Kathie: Well is there anything else that you can tell us about John McNeese before we stop?

Keitha: It’s just unfortunate that I, you know never-

Kathie: Never knew him.

Keitha: had, had the privilege of knowing him. Well all I remember are the things that Mama told me. I told you about the, all the children going fishin’ and taking Uncle Will to the doctor’s office, to his house. Well, they, someone caught a fishing hook in Uncle Tim’s nose.

Kathie: Yeah. You told me about that. Tell, tell [Angie?] that’s a good story.

Keitha: So the kids took the pole, carried it and somebody held onto the line. They led Uncle Tim all the way from the fishing – creek or wherever they fished and led him up to the doctor’s house. And Uncle Tim was just as dumb as the rest of em and he went along. And he’d holler when they’d pull a little so Mr.-, Dr. Perkins said, “oooh my goodness! You have really, made the catch of the day!”. And Uncle Tim said, [in the voice of an angry child] “I’m never coming to him again. I hate em”. So Uncle, Dr. Perkins took a knife outa and cut it. And he says, “well I’ll keep this fish”. [laughs]. All he had was a hole right through his, his nose and he was mad at the whole bunch, but they didn’t have enough sense to know that they should cut the line that’s –[got?] him. Those are just little funny things that, that I can remember, because I, mama got mad at her neighbor in Merryville, because she accused Mama of stealing her chickens that were over digging up mama’s garden. And mama said, “I”, she said, “I never have a temper”. Wasn’t allowed to have a temper. She said, “I went over the fence and I told that woman, “I’d kill her if she ever accused me of stealin’”. She said, “Your chickens have ruined my garden. They’ve scratched everything up that I’ve planted and I haven’t complained. But you’re tell, accusing me of stealing!” she said, “You better kill those chickens before the disappear”. [laughs]. Just, that’s the only time I ever heard about her really getting mad enough. She said it’s the only time she ever got so mad that she really just stuck her foot in the door. Never did, been, accused of stealing. She used to swipe our candy our boyfriends would bring us. She wasn’t supposed to have nuts and my sister used to get Brazil nuts, chocolate covered Brazil nuts. And I’d get a box of candy. We’d hide it under our underwear and we’d say, “we’ve gotta set traps. We got mice in our bedroom and can’t, can’t figure out how they find it”. And mama’d say, [mimicking he mother’s voice] “well that’s awful! We’ll just, we’ll just do that! we’ll just”-. [laughing] Never would admit she was taking-

Kathie: [laughing] Your mother was taking your candy.

Keitha: Sometimes we’d just forget about it. You know, and we’d go back and there’d be just a few papers, maybe one or 2 pieces [laughs]. Ooh, she-

Kathie: Do you have any more questions?

Unidentified person: I think I’ve go everything for the cutest story that [laughs] for homecoming. This is gonna be really cute.

Kathie: Oh this is gonna be out next week.

Unidentified person: Uh huh

Kathie: You’re leaving on Tuesday?

Keitha: You know, Elizabeth said to me, “Keitha, you say you’re gonna leave-

[end of transcript]

................
................

In order to avoid copyright disputes, this page is only a partial summary.

Google Online Preview   Download