Janae Copeland and Marilyn Nelson
Professor Earl Mulderink
History 2700
Service Learning Project
When Janae and I discussed doing this project together, our idea was to interview some of the residents of Toquerville, Utah. We wanted to record their stories of what it was like to grow up in Toquerville, Utah. We chose Toquerville because, to us, it represented the quintessential pioneer town. We drive through there from Hurricane, where we both live, to Cedar City almost every school day. It is hard not to notice what a quiet and neatly kept little community this remains amid all the growth in the other small towns nearby. There is some new development in Toquerville and will undoubtedly be more as people discover its charm. Right now there is not even a store, gas station, mini mart, movie theater or other commercial enterprise. It is, however, only about 10 minutes to Interstate 15 and south to St. George or north to Cedar City. There is a post office and a church but no schools. The children are taken to schools in Hurricane about 15 minutes away.
Another important consideration of choosing Toquerville is that many of the residents have lived there all of their lives or have moved away for awhile and returned as they retired or even before retirement. Some of the “old timers” have moved to other communities close by, such as Hurricane, but still have their fond memories of growing up in Toquerville.
We hoped that this project would be a benefit to the Toquerville community as they read these stories and especially benefit those who participated and shared their stories with us. Most all of the people we interviewed are in their 70s, 80s and 90s. Their untold stories will be lost forever unless, one or two generations removed, they are related by their children and grandchildren. It is much more interesting to hear them from the original source. For the most part you could tell that the people who we interviewed were interested in the personal attention and interested in assisting us. They truly enjoyed sharing their memories of older times in Toquerville. Some of our interviewees just wanted to talk for much longer than we had time to stay in their homes.
To get some assistance with our project, we contacted Wesley P. Larsen. He is long time resident of Toquerville. Dr. Larsen is a retired professor of Biology who taught for a number of years at Southern Utah University (SUU). His great interest now, by avocation, is as a historian. He is very knowledgeable about Southern Utah History. He was very helpful and encouraging. He gave us a list of possible participants as well as some topics that would help our participants get started. This turned out to be valuable advice because if you just ask people to tell you about growing up in Toquerville they might be reluctant where to start or what to say. When you give them some ideas to focus on, even if they talk about something else, it starts their thought process and brings up all sorts of remembrances.
We originally started with twenty names that we were going to divide between us, but thanks to the advice of Professor Mulderink we trimmed this down to five each. This turned out to be very good advice because the interview process from contact by phone, one or two follow-up visits to do the actual interview, and finally the transcribing, took, on the average four hours each. This project did turn out to be much more labor intensive than we thought it would be at the beginning. I think that this was a good lesson for us. We found out that doing oral interviews is a lot more complicated that just putting a microphone in front of someone. It is something that I personally, would like to learn more about, as I am not going into a teaching career, as Janae will be doing.
Another source that was very helpful was Janet Seegmiller and Marie Nielson in Special Collections section of the SUU Library. Janet gave us advice on the length of tapes to use and some tips on how to conduct the interviews. She also gave us permission to use their transcribing machine, which made the job of doing the actual transcribing much easier. Marie does much of the transcribing for Special Collections and helped in showing how to set up and use the machine.
From the middle of September until nearly the end of November both Janae and I have been making the contacts, conducting interviews and transcribing our tapes. We each used our own recorders and purchased our tapes (60 minutes). We used the library computers and printers as well as home computers and printers. Also as mentioned we had use of the transcribing machine. We then went to the Steamroller Copies, in Hurricane and arranged to have our work put into a booklet. Because of the cost already incurred we have made only a limited number of copies: one for some participants, one for each of us, one for the Special Collections, and one for the Service Learning Project. We are hoping that someone in Toquerville will take interest in this project and perhaps follow- up and have our booklet made available at the next Toquerfest held in August each year.
Things beside the time factor did not always go smoothly for us. We had several problems. One of our main problems was to get the message across as to what our purpose was and what we needed from our participants. Sometimes this took longer than doing the actual interview. Some of the people we interviewed thought we wanted to get a history of Toquerville and kept trying to find books for us or recommending books or other sources. There have been many histories written about Toquerville and the other communities nearby and histories of special events like the building of the Hurricane Canal. So it took some time to explain that we wanted to hear their own stories about what it was like to live in Toquerville or to recall events that they personally had heard from someone else. Once this hurdle was over then we got some very interesting stories.
Janae and I had a little different approach. I had asked each participant to tell me about one or two things that we had on our list of topics, some of which were:
· The Old Cradle
· Race Track Valley
· Pranks
· Indian Artifacts
· Polygamy
· Wine making
· The Depression
· Herding sheep and cattle
· Devil’ Hole
· Fruit Growing
Or we invited them to tell us any other topics that they wanted to speak about. Janae, on the other hand, gave them the list and just asked them to talk. Most of her interviews cover shorter statements about a lot of topics.
Toquerville is a small community and most of the residents are familiar with the same stories and places. However, we noticed that some would remember events and places others could not recall at all. Other times we would hear about the same place or event but get an entirely different version or perspective. Traditions seemed to be unchanged with age. However memory varied with the age of the participant. For example some of them remembered details about Race Track Valley and others did not recall even hearing of Rack Track Valley.
We both met some reluctance in achieving necessary cooperation. I met with one gentleman that now lives in Cedar City and after a couple of phone calls and visits his wife decided that they were too ill and anyway he did not remember anything. We both experienced some times when we were interviewing a husband or wife and the other spouse would interject a comment or roll their eyes. This would be followed by a little discussion between them until the matter was successfully agreeable to both parties or one would just give up and sometimes leave the room. It was really interesting to watch this interaction between couples that had been married for many years.
We also experienced some reluctance with their talking to “strangers.” These folks did not really know us and we were essentially making what is called in the sales world, “cold calls.” In these times when there are many who may want to defraud, con and sometimes rob older people, you can not blame them for their reluctance to have us into their homes. I think we did have some advantage, as we were a little older than the average student and were women. We also used, to some advantage, “name dropping”. We always mentioned that Mr. Larsen had given us their name as a possible participant in this project. In this small town, almost everyone knows everyone else and Mr. Larsen and his wife are quite well known by everyone. They also know that he has a keen interest in local history. So that connection certainly helped get us into homes.
I also used my own ancestral connection to Toquerville to get people interested and feel my sincere interest. This helped me and the people I was interviewing feel more connected and comfortable. My mother was born and raised in Toquerville and lived there until she was about twenty. There was always some discussion about what family she belonged to and the fact that I had two sets of grandparents and great grandparents buried in the Toquerville Cemetery.
Janae had an advantage also. She is originally from California but has lived in Hurricane for fifteen years. Her next door neighbor is Lola Campbell who was one of the people on the list we had. She knows Lola well. Lola is also a member of the Daughters’ of the Utah Pioneers, which is a history-orientated organization. Janae also interviewed Lola’s son, the current Mayor of Hurricane, who Janae knows personally.
As I mentioned before, some of our interviews just fell through and that was frustrating, especially after investing the time getting them set up. I had one lady who kept telling me interesting stories about all the music talent there was in Toquerville. However, I could not get her to repeat any of it into the recorder. She said, after going on for some time that what she knew was not unusual. I never could get her to understand that what she was relating to me was just exactly what I needed. Suspecting that she just did not want to speak into the recorder, I invited her to write some things down and I would come back get her notes. She never did follow-up on that.
Another gentleman would not speak into the recorder but he wrote down two pages of notes for me. Another time I had set up an interview and when I called to confirm, as I always did, the woman I was going to interview was in the hospital. It was fortunate that we had twenty names to start with, since the list became shorter as we tried to make contacts. There were others that we just could never find at home when we called and had to give up on finding them at home. In some situations we ended up getting better cooperation from the spouse of the person that was the intent of our interview. I found out that the woman seemed to remember more than the men. I think that this is typical for remembering details of the past. For example one man took me out by Ash Creek and was telling me about all the Indian artifacts that he and his boys had found in his yard. He told me about hiking in the hills just outside of Toquerville and finding what he thought was Chief Toquer’s burial site. He had other stories related to Ash Creek. I was really excited to return to visit with him, as I had recorded no other stories about these topics. When I returned he would not talk into the recorder. His wife said he was very shy. He went into another room and she let me record some of her own stories.
Both Janae and I have really enjoyed working on this project even though it took much more time than we had anticipated. We both felt that if we were going to do something that it needed to be worthwhile and done with our very best effort. We may have made some mistakes along the way but it was a learning project. I think we have both received a lot of satisfaction by seeing how most of our participants really wanted to have their stories heard. For example on lady, who Janae had arranged to interview, had a death in her family that morning and she still wanted to proceed with the interview. She said it would help her feel better. There are a lot of ordinary people, not heroes or heroines, by most standards or even extra ordinary by their own standards who have had great and interesting lives. They have experienced many events and changes during their lifetimes and some of them have been hard with which to deal. When you listen to their stories about living through the depression and World War II times and how they dealt with that they are really heroes. They have all had to work hard to take care of themselves and their families and also care about their neighbors. These residents of Toquerville are good people, interesting people and still interested in life around them. Our older people can teach us much if we will listen to them. As heard in a Monty Python Movie, “We aren’t dead yet!”
Janae feels that this has been a good learning experience as a future teacher of elementary school students. It is good for any students to be involved in and appreciate their community. Projects would need to be appropriate to their age level. Students could even do a project similar to this on a scaled down model. For example there are many nursing homes that house a group of older people who would probably be delighted to have someone listen to them and maybe write or record their stories. The students could draw pictures, write poems to add to their stories and present their finished project to the nursing home residents. This is just one example of a way that students could learn to better appreciate the value of older people who are not just their grandparents or other relatives.
I mentioned before that I am not going into teaching but I have for a long time been interested in being able to do historical research. Right now I do not know too much about the methodology of research but I hope to learn more about it before I graduate and as a graduate student. If there are some ongoing projects that, with my limited experience, I could participate in I would be very open to exploring the prospect based on the availability of my time.