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Tape Summary Subject: Lucille Magnuson Date of interview: 03-25-96 Place of interview: Lucille's horne in Kendrick, Idaho Interviewer: Eric Lee Hansen Course: History 398 Women's Oral History Project, Washington State University 000-055 056-071 071-075 076-095 095-120 120-147 148-186 186-197 197-204 205-214 215-244 244-245 245-254 254-274 274-280 280-284 285-290 291-294 Introduction. Parents background. TAPE 1A Mother was born in Wisconsin, but her family carne out to the Seattle area when she was an infant. Father was from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her mother met her father while he was a soldier at Fort Lewis, and they were married in Cedar Rapids in 1919. LM was born in Cedar Rapids in 1920, and then the family moved out west. LM had only one other sibling, a younger sister, Florence, born in Tacoma. Father was a soldier during the First World War and was in Fort Lewis in 1918. He worked for the Rock Island railroad in Iowa before he went into the Army. After he got out, he transferred to the Northern Pacific Railroad in the west. Mother always wanted to move back west. LM born in 1920 and family moved to Tacoma from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, before she had her first birthday. Mother was in first class to graduate from Lincoln High. She had been raised on a little farm in Milton, W A. She stayed with an older sister, so she could go to Lincoln High. She worked for Western Union telegraph briefly before she married and off and on after getting married, whenever they needed extra money, but never as a steady job. Early childhood. LM and her family always lived in South Tacoma near the railroad repair shops where her father worked. LM graduated from Lincoln and had some of the same teachers as her mother. She started piano lessons when she was 5. Parents encouraged her. Mother played piano, and her parents loved to sing, mother played piano a little bit. She also took dancing lessons when she was 5, and recalls having a beautiful dance teacher. music and dancing were all private lessons Attended Horace Mann School (grade school) in Tacoma. She transferred to Edison School. The family lived in three different houses, but they were all in South Tacoma. She never considered a career in dancing. She always wanted to be a teacher. Her sister, Florence, was the dancer. Florence was seven years younger, so they did not do a lot of activities together for a long time. Lincoln High School. She was in the largest class to ever graduate from the school. She graduated in 1938. They had to build a new high school the next year. There were over 2500 students enrolled and over 500 graduates. [leaves room to get high school annual] "We went through the depression, and in '38 it was getting a little better. We had a lot of military people at Fort Lewis .... Well, I can remember when the railroad was trying to give the workers one day a week. It was pretty grim. [looking through her Lincoln High School yearbook] She still attends class reunions. "I had a good Japanese friend who played the marimba, 'course I was always in the music department." Then she began playing accordion. She taught piano and accordion in Kendrick for many years. LM belongs to the Lincoln High alumni which does some scholarship work. [blank tape] 294-319 319-343 343-364 364-380 380-408 408-418 418-425 425-429 429-448 448 "I had too mw;h fun in HS to be an honor student in high school." The curriculum was full. South Tacoma versus North Tacoma. LM talks about the ethnic and economic divisions in the city and as it was reflected in the two high schools. "All of us poor people were out in the South end." They were really proud of the quality of Washington state schools compared to what she perceived to be the quality of education her cousins were receiving back in Iowa. Most of her Iowa relatives have since left for other western states, such as California and Arizona. Family reunions. LM's mother was the thirteenth of sixteen children. Her father, Clarence Rudd, came from a family of eight [children?] in Cedar Rapids. Story of her father's grandfather, Lafayette. He may have been a stowaway who came up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and was adopted by a German family. Her father's mother was an immigrant from Ireland. "By the time you get down to me, I have a lot of mixture." [Attitudes concerning the West and opportunities] Music activities while in high school. She went to St. Louis in 1938 with her school's a cappella choir. They had been invited to attend NEMC (a national conference for music educators) to perform. Her mother was a chaperone. They took the train and stopped to give whistle stop performances. Types of music they performed. LM received her accordion in 1937, and "my school work suffered. I was playing for social things, outside of high school." She joined the music union. She was a member of an accordion band led by her "charming" accordion teacher. "So I was probably neglecting my school work, when I look back on it." [blank tape] "We did some polkas, but my teacher happened to be Italian, so we were big on tangos and the more classical accordion music." Trip to New York. Visited her accordion teacher's teacher. In 193 7 LM went to Brooklyn, New York, as a delegate for the school. She was taking the school publications class and working on the school newspaper, and since she could get a railroad pass through her father, they asked her if she would go. She went by herself "I don't know how my parents let me go as a junior." [end oftape] 000-126 032-044 044-057 057-126 126-146 146-154 164-171 171-184 184-195 195-203 203-211 211-223 223-264 264-295 296-302 303-323 323-333 333-339 339-375 TAPElB New York trip (continued). School newspaper conference held at Columbia University. [goes to get newspaper clippings oftrip] Sister was a very different girl than LM. Tacoma businessman saw her picture in a New York paper and offered to host/entertain LM for several more days after the news conference. She still writes to the businessman's wife, and they even visited her in Kendrick years later. While in New York, they took her to meet the accordion maestro, Calarini(sp?), teacher of her own accordion teacher back in Tacoma. She got her accordion when she was 16. Her father bought it for her. "I'm sure they couldn't afford it." [blank tape] "I was very proud of my accordion." [shows me her new accordion) She played it the previous Saturday for a program for the seniors citizens with one of her former students. I had 25 annual recitals. Taught beginning piano and accordion for 25 years. LM's first husband. She got married immediately after high school to a "charmer" she met at one ofthe engagements at which she played. "It spoiled all my plans for college. Too young, too young." The marriage only lasted about four years. Then she met Robert from Worley, Idaho, and she moved to Idaho. "Followed him to Idaho, and we've been moving around in Idaho ever since." Her first husband's name was C.H. Magnuson (Robin's father). They were married in 1938. "Coy we called him. He was a very charming and handsome and darling fellow, and I guess he still is." LM married his cousin, Robert Magnuson, in 1943. "I've had a real exciting life." Robert's and C.H.'s mothers and fathers were sisters and brothers. Accordion engagements included banquets, dinner dances, intermissions during dance bands, evening entertainment for big crowds, and wedding receptions. They played popular music, tangos, marches, accordion band selections, and Scandinavian numbers. The accordion band consisted oftwelve members. [LM moves to her workroom to get samples of accordion band arrangements. We comment on the oil landscape paintings she is working on and the Bob Ross PBS painting series.) Coy was a union meat cutter, and their four years together were in Tacoma. Robin was born the day the Tacoma Narrows Bridge blew down. "We always blamed the stork." She went to the hospital about 4 AM while the storm was raging. "I still get excited watching that movie of it." LM divorced C. H. in 1942, and she married Robert in 1943. She had four children with Robert, all born in Idaho. Two were born in Idaho Falls. LM, Robert, and Robin came back to Idaho and her husband was drafted. Robert took her to Bonners. "It was scary at Seattle. There were lots of drills, you know, of worrying about invasions from Japan, and moving the Japanese people away." "My Japanese friend from school had to move out of there, and they had a beautiful place I remember; it was so sad." "I lost track of her. I never did hear from her after that. Never knew what happened to her." They were pretty much disillusioned when they left Tacoma; they probably never did come back there." Their house was taken. [LM looks at yearbook picture of Japanese friend.] They played music together. "It was a sad time." 375-387 387-395 395-402 402-417 417-422 422-423 423-448 448 When Robert went into the Army, he left LM at his brothers in Bonners, because it was safe from attack there. "We had barrage balloons flying around, you know, and the night watch, and the blackout windows. It was kind of a scary time." "I was young, and ... foolish ... not particularly frightened. Bob was not a worrier but always very cautious and always thinking of the future, and he was a wonderful husband, and worrying about me and Robin, and he always just kind of adopted Robin." "My first husband had many of the same good qualities, you know, and it's one of those things that the attraction was a family thing. It wasn't a bitter ... venomous divorce, or anything like that. He didn't care so much for the child [Robin] for one thing, and that's what made it hard." Concerning the divorce. LM's mother's family was catholic, and there was a lot of "frowning." "It was shocking to their families and their backgrounds, you know, and they were sad about it It's never a happy time." While LM stayed in Bonners, Robert went to basic training at Camp Abbot (sp?) in Oregon. He had arthritic feet and eventually got an honorable discharge. "He was quite a pacifist anyway, but he was going to go and do his duty in spite of it." He was sent him home a week before he got any benefits. They looked for work for awhile before moving to Idaho Falls for four years, where Bob worked for the Farm Credit: a government job. "I was just having babies." During her first marriage in Tacoma, LM had taught piano to a few students. Her second child, Dee, was born in 1944, and Dana was born in 1947, both in Idaho Falls. Her last two children were born in Kendrick. Lee was born in a nursing home in 1954, and Gisele was born in 1957 in the house next door where LM and Robert used to live; her son, Dana, and his family live there now The doctor still made house call deliveries at that time. [end oftape] 000-026 026-031 031-057 057-095 095-143 143-176 176-199 200-215 216-233 234-244 245-250 250-261 261-279 280-290 290-300 300-315 315-317 317-325 325-350 350-365 365-369 TAPE2A All of her other children were born in hospitals. The deliveries were "pretty natural." Dana was a breech birth. Robert was postmaster ofKendrick for 19 years. LM started to teach and give private piano lessons in Kendrick in 1952. [goes to get recital information in her workroom-difficult to hear] She estimates that she started 300 people on piano. Her own children were also involved/interested in music. Her daughter, Dee, is in charge of the music at the Mossyrock school system in Washington. [Interviewer is looking at clippings and programs for recitals while LM talks] She often played with her own family members. Lee lives in Washington, D. C. and plays in a group which plays Scandinavian music at functions there. "I'm still working to improve some of my numbers." "It's really enjoyable to hear them [former students] say that they are using it [music]." All her boys played the trombone. LM plays the autoharp and is teaching herself violin. Dee had the "real" violin lessons. She's proud of all her children and students. "Probably music is the most rewarding of my activities." Robert was very supportive and encouraging of all the lessons and traveling for the children. They had to go to Lewiston for the children's more advanced lessons. [blank tape] "I always wondered how I had such wonderful children, really." "I always said they were smarter than I was at that age and more capable, and my husband [Robert] was a very stabilizing influence, I think. Robin always felt that he was so supportive and so interested in Robin's sports life." "My husband was always right there to be his mentor, if you will." LM characterizes her style of child-rearing as being permissive, but within bounds. "I never said no unless it was important." "1 was very spoiled as a youngster." "But with ordinary requests, I think of that quite often when I see other youngsters. We didn't say no if it was something we thought would, that they would be learning from it and it wasn't harmful." "I just think of that quite often." LM thinks this small community is good. "I was always a little bit, yearning for a little bit more city things, because I remembered city activities as a youngster. I was always wishing my kids could do some of the things that I did, that you could do in a bigger school and a bigger city." "We would have to go to Moscow or Lewiston and you have to make the effort to do it. Musical programs and the concerts." "Here [in Kendrick], the activities in a small town, you're part of it; you have to do it; you have to make the music; and you have to do the play; and you have to help with the props and the stage and everything, where if you go to see one performed, you can sit and just drink it in and enjoy it. So there's something good for both ways [city and small town life]. LM was involved in many local activities to include PTA productions and talent shows. The music teacher at the school in Kendrick is one of her former piano students. [blank tape] LM received no steady formal education beyond high school. She has attended/audited many evening classes and music classes. She had private lessons in Tacoma from professional piano teachers, and her accordion teacher was probably the best professional accordionist on the West coast. LM's sister played clarinet. They played duets, and her sister took dance lessons. "She was just a lovely dancer." Her sister married and raised four boys. Their parents encouraged their music and dance instruction and made sure that they always had lessons. "And I'm always thankful for that." Her sister stayed in Tacoma all her life and died in 1989 of cancer. 369-374 374-392 393-409 410-417 417-425 425-436 436-443 443-449 449 000-007 007-064 064 [blank tape] "I've always had a piano except when we lived in Idaho Falls, because we felt that was a temporazy job. Every year the government renewed this job that my husband was on." LM raised her family in the house next door. When Robert went to the care center, she couldn't bear to be over there (in the big house), and that's when she switched into the smaller house of her son, Dana. Her husband bought a huge theater organ for her when they lived in the big house. "With his stroke and having to be in the care center, I just had to make some changes, so I gave it up." "I spend a lot of time with the music now that he's away, and he always enjoyed having me play for him, and buying me instruments for me to play on was his joy." [blank tape] "I think of my West as being Washington and Oregon, and when I moved to Idaho, I felt like I was moving east. But I realized that this should be part of Washington actually, this north Idaho. Well, geographically yes." "And the mid-West to me is, I guess from Montana to Chicago." "West to me was always toward the coast." If she had not moved out here from Iowa, she feels that "music would still have been my thing, the feelings I have for it, and the feelings the family even in Iowa that's still there, are still doing some of the same music." "And I hope I would've been able to do the same musical things." "I know that they [her relatives in Iowa] were anxious to leave Iowa, the ones that went to California and the ones that came here, always thought things were better in these areas than in Iowa." LM doesn't feel that the people here are all that much different than people in Iowa. [end oftape] TAPE2B (blank tape] LM agrees that the geography in Kendrick does limit what can be done with old, small communities. The older part of town stays the same. She comments on how the teachers don't even live within the school district anymore, and she points to the house on the other side of her house where teachers were once boarded. Distance and commuting is no longer a major concern or worry. [end of first interview] See the enclosed transcription for the second half of this interview which was also conducted on March 25, 1996. Second half of interview with Lucille Magnuson on 03-25-96 This portion of the interview took place while we were eating lunch. The recorder was not in an ideal location, so the sound quality was very poor. The following is an accurate transcription of most ofthe conversation. [Fallowing her first divorce, Lucille went to work at a Safeway in South Tacoma in 1941 when Robin was just a baby. The store asked her if she would like to become an assistant manager.] I was very proud that they even wanted me to be an assistant manager, because I didn't feel like an authoritative figure at all (laughs]. [previously, she referred to this job as the only real employment she ever had-I took this to mean fulltime position] In '42 I quit the Safeway, and well, for one thing I missed the baby. You know, I was alone with Robin, and when I took a job with another widow, that is, a widow who's husband had been killed, and took care of her two children, so I had three children during the day while she had a good job downtown Tacoma. So we lived together, maybe for a year or so. [Was that a union job at Safeway?] Yes. They were strong in Tacoma, very strong. Safeway #111, South Tacoma. The building is [still] there. I went by, but it's not a Safeway. [when asked again about the popularity of accordion music and bands] I don't know what they have in Tacoma right now, but it kinda waned, and in the 50's it came back with Lawrence Welk and his accordion players--two or three good accordion players in that series. And we did have a lot of fun. [when asked about liking swing and big band music] Me too, I love that. My accordion teacher, well, I dated him for awhile, that year. That was an interesting period in my life before I ever went steady with anybody. He took me to his home, and his parents were Italian immigrants. And that was very interesting to me. [Did they speak any English?] I don't think his mother spoke very much English. She had to look me over [laughs]. [This was in Tacoma?] Tacoma. [How big was the Italian population in Tacoma?] Quite big at the shops with the railroad workers. He was a railroad man too with his father. These repair shops ... it was a big center for repair-Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads. Big buildings. My father worked on freight cars, but they had sections of repairs for Pullman cars and all types of repair work was what he was in. But meeting the Italian family was interesting to me; I'd never been acquainted with Italian people, and the part of the shops that my dad worked in they kind oflooked down on the Italians, you know, in that era ... sections of people were really interesting. [Was Tacoma divided that way also?] Well, North and South ... more beautiful homes and moneyed people were all in the north end, and with all these cousins that I had, I had cousins going to Stadium High School, terrible rivalry, you know [laughs]. Stadium and Lincoln and all that beautiful ... competition and everything, so it was interesting. And there were both types of people in both sections of town, but that was always the atmosphere of, you know .... You live in the north end; they're the people with the money [laughs]. Across the tracks out here in South Tacoma where us poor shop workers were, and then, it's the same in any culture I guess, here. My dad, and maybe some of the Italian workers in the shops, were different, you know. He says, "Well, they just can't even speak English," he says about the Italians and here is this boy from Iowa [laughs]. So he always thought the Italians were kind of beneath him which wasn't true, of course, just different. And we had a big Japanese section, you know, but they lived more in the Puyallup Valley where the gardens were beautiful. More of the Japanese lived on the east side of Tacoma toward their farms and their industries out in the valley. This girl that I new, on the marimba, I never went to her home or anything, but she was . . . . I'm sure her family had more money than my family. She was exquisitely dressed and this expensive marimba, which was probably more expensive than an accordion, I don't know. But we had that in common. We were interested in all the music and the numbers. She was an artiste and probably more serious about her music than I was. I was such a flibberty-jibber. A wonder I did as well as I did. [Did you have any favorite subjects in school other than the music?] Yes, I liked the literature and English, and I loved history, but I flunked in Latin and was disgraced. [Latin was] required if I wanted to go on to college, and I struggled ... and I liked it, that was the sad part of it. But I wasn't good enough at homework and working at it. I was a lazy student. I was too busy playing music [laughs]. We had languages. I should have taken Spanish. We had French and German. Spanish and Latin offered. And I liked the Latin, but this teacher, I had, had had my mother. My mother took German from her, and my mother was a bookworm. And Miss Liddy, she just thought I was a disgrace to my mother's memory [laughs] and didn't work like my mother did. That's all I heard was, "Your mother never would have had a paper like that" [laughs]. Yeah, I didn't do well there. The more I failed, the worse I got, and the more I enjoyed the music and the fun. So I was too shallow at that age, but I sure did have a lot of fun [laughs]. I had those trips. I had a lot of other education. Advantages, really . . . . I don't think spoiling ... that's a bad word for it. The indulgence, I think, is more enlightening than the strict humanities type of stuff [after interviewer comments about how music can influence and enrich one's life] I see music that way too. I think it's just a doorway to lots of things; it has been for me. I run into [former students] all the time. When I started teaching the children of some of my early students, I had to think, I better ease out of this [laughs]. They're still asking me, you know, "would you teach, would you teach." But when I retired and announced that I, I taught a few of my grandchildren, but I didn't take anymore students after that ... well, I got a job at the Post Office while Bob was in the Post Office. There was an opening for a clerk, so I took that more of a regular job that I hadn't done for years, clerking, and it was pretty hard to schedule, because I had lessons scheduled, and they needed me at the Post Office, and I had to reschedule all these youngsters, and it just got to be a real tough situation with trying to not miss lessons, which I didn't like to miss, their weekly lesson or anything. Well, I might tell you my first hobby was ... my first trip I got these bells. I had lots of musical bells. That was my first collection. And I started getting them when I went on these train trips, I'd bring home a bell. I went to California quite a few times. Spent two summers in California with relatives. Go down by myself on the train. And I went on a train, every year, to Portland, Oregon. One of my Aunts ... visited her for five different summers that I spent with her, and she was quite a cultural influence. My mother felt like Aunt Mamie would really straighten me out as far as manners. She had been a school teacher. She was a lovely aunt, so I'd stay with her for the month in the summer, and so these were things I did in the summertimes. Then people started bringing me their traveling bells, and I still pick up one when I get to go on a trip. I'll have to have a bell from Japan. I have more India type bells. But I have one from London, and one from Sweden, and the trips that Bob and I got to take, one from Hawaii, one from Japan, several from Washington D. C., and one from New York, other trips that I've been on. I think that my granddaughter counted them and there's a hundred and thirty. And they're beautiful. [when asked about the train trips she took on rail passes] [You] sit in a day coach with a pass. I was small and I could curl up. Really, I traveled well. The day coaches at that time had straight seats, and I could lie a long ways on a seat, you know. [The New York trip] took us five days and four nights and a two hour layover in Chicago, I remember. Took a city tour when I went back. Just a Gray Line tour, so I got to see the city. I had time to do that. Well I've been there since, but then that was when I was young; I thought I was pretty smart to do that. We took our trip, before Bob got sick in '89, we took a train to D.C., and it was wonderful. We got a roomette; it's different than when I used to go as a kid. It was a wonderful trip; I'm glad we did it. My son lives there. Lee lives there. He works at the Swedish embassy. And I'm so glad we did that, 'cause the next.. . . We went there for Christmas. Actually, he [Robert] started ailing in March and had a stroke in summer. As I look back, I know he didn't feel really well. [Did you do a lot of sightseeing in D. C.?] Well, we've been there, I've been there ten times now. Every time we see something new, but we try to see everything there, and of course, Lee always has things lined up for us to do. [Lee's] an office manager partly, and he drives a messenger truck out of the Swedish embassy. He took Swedish at WSU. That's how he got that job. He's supposed to go to the airport once in awhile and meet people who do not speak English and help them. He says, "They all come and they want to speak their English; they want to practice their English. I never get to speak any Swedish" [laughs]. He's been there ten years now. Before that he worked for Senator Church back there. When he first went back that was the job he had. At that time, when we went back, he took us through the Capitol and the White House. [Have you been to the Smithsonian?] We spend a lot of time there. We always have a day there. We had lots of good trips; I'm glad we got to do those things. But he [Robert] had planned more things for our retirement than having a stroke, so I'm doing the trips for him [laughs]. [while interviewer takes her picture, Lucille comments on photos on wall] That [pointing to picture of a marquee reading "Happy Birthday, Lucille"] was a year ago on my birthday. They rented the top of a motel at Wallace, Idaho, and we had family, all the family got there-75th birthday. You're only seventy-five years old once, you know [laughs]. [Inside Dana's house next door, which used to be her house, Lucille shows me her player piano, plays a few flourishes, and shows me the "infamous" bedroom where the baby, Gisele, was born.] I have to go sing tonight. I sing with the Sweet Adelines at Lewiston. So I go every Monday night and sing. So Monday's I practice my songs, and get ready for my Monday night meeting. I sing bass, lowest alto. It's a cappella, too. Barbershop harmony. It's a unique music, too. [You have to really trust your other singers quite a bit singing a cappella, don't you?] Oh well, we go flat, but we go flat together [laughs]. It's loads of fun; it's a wonderful group of women. If you get to hear us, why, come and hear it. I went to hear the group from Coeur d' Alene Saturday night. They put on a show up there, and my daughter took me up to see their show, annual show. We put on a show every year. We're starting a show for November.
Object Description
Rating | |
Title | Magnuson, Lucille Oral History Interview, 1996 |
Interviewer | Hanson, Eric Lee |
Date | 1996-05-07 |
Description | 87 minute oral history with Lucille Magnuson, conducted for a Women in the West (HIST 398 course at Washington State University). She talks about her family's move to Tacoma from Cedar Rapids and her early childhood playing music. She explains that her father worked for the railroad and that her parents encouraged her and her sister's music and dance talents. Lucille married Robert Magnuson in 1943, then moved to Kendrick, Idaho, where she remained. |
Subject | Working mothers; Housewives; Music education |
Coverage | North and Central America--United States--Washington (State)--Pierce County--Tacoma; North and Central America--United States--Idaho--Latah County--Kendrick |
Type | Sound |
Genre | Interviews |
Publisher | Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries: https://libraries.wsu.edu/masc |
Rights | http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/ |
Rights Notes | In copyright. Item is in copyright until 95 years after 2011 publication date. |
Identifier | ua262b01f06 |
Source | Is found in Archives 262, Women in the West Oral Histories https://libraries.wsu.edu/masc/finders/ua262.htm at Washington State University Libraries' Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) https://libraries.wsu.edu/masc |
Holding Institution | Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries |
Contributors | Digitization and description funded through a National Endowment for the Humanities We the People grant for Washington Womens History to the Washington Womens History Consortium, a part of the Washington State Historical Society. |
Language | English |
Digitization | Original audio cassettes were converted to wav files using Audacity and a USBPre interface. Mp3 files were then created from the wav files for online access. Film clips were created as mpeg-4 files using Adobe Premiere Elements 9 to add selected images to the wav audio files. Print documents were scanned to pdf format using a Xerox Workcentre 5030 copier/scanner. |
Description
Title | ua262b01f06_Abstract |
Full Text | Tape Summary Subject: Lucille Magnuson Date of interview: 03-25-96 Place of interview: Lucille's horne in Kendrick, Idaho Interviewer: Eric Lee Hansen Course: History 398 Women's Oral History Project, Washington State University 000-055 056-071 071-075 076-095 095-120 120-147 148-186 186-197 197-204 205-214 215-244 244-245 245-254 254-274 274-280 280-284 285-290 291-294 Introduction. Parents background. TAPE 1A Mother was born in Wisconsin, but her family carne out to the Seattle area when she was an infant. Father was from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Her mother met her father while he was a soldier at Fort Lewis, and they were married in Cedar Rapids in 1919. LM was born in Cedar Rapids in 1920, and then the family moved out west. LM had only one other sibling, a younger sister, Florence, born in Tacoma. Father was a soldier during the First World War and was in Fort Lewis in 1918. He worked for the Rock Island railroad in Iowa before he went into the Army. After he got out, he transferred to the Northern Pacific Railroad in the west. Mother always wanted to move back west. LM born in 1920 and family moved to Tacoma from Cedar Rapids, Iowa, before she had her first birthday. Mother was in first class to graduate from Lincoln High. She had been raised on a little farm in Milton, W A. She stayed with an older sister, so she could go to Lincoln High. She worked for Western Union telegraph briefly before she married and off and on after getting married, whenever they needed extra money, but never as a steady job. Early childhood. LM and her family always lived in South Tacoma near the railroad repair shops where her father worked. LM graduated from Lincoln and had some of the same teachers as her mother. She started piano lessons when she was 5. Parents encouraged her. Mother played piano, and her parents loved to sing, mother played piano a little bit. She also took dancing lessons when she was 5, and recalls having a beautiful dance teacher. music and dancing were all private lessons Attended Horace Mann School (grade school) in Tacoma. She transferred to Edison School. The family lived in three different houses, but they were all in South Tacoma. She never considered a career in dancing. She always wanted to be a teacher. Her sister, Florence, was the dancer. Florence was seven years younger, so they did not do a lot of activities together for a long time. Lincoln High School. She was in the largest class to ever graduate from the school. She graduated in 1938. They had to build a new high school the next year. There were over 2500 students enrolled and over 500 graduates. [leaves room to get high school annual] "We went through the depression, and in '38 it was getting a little better. We had a lot of military people at Fort Lewis .... Well, I can remember when the railroad was trying to give the workers one day a week. It was pretty grim. [looking through her Lincoln High School yearbook] She still attends class reunions. "I had a good Japanese friend who played the marimba, 'course I was always in the music department." Then she began playing accordion. She taught piano and accordion in Kendrick for many years. LM belongs to the Lincoln High alumni which does some scholarship work. [blank tape] 294-319 319-343 343-364 364-380 380-408 408-418 418-425 425-429 429-448 448 "I had too mw;h fun in HS to be an honor student in high school." The curriculum was full. South Tacoma versus North Tacoma. LM talks about the ethnic and economic divisions in the city and as it was reflected in the two high schools. "All of us poor people were out in the South end." They were really proud of the quality of Washington state schools compared to what she perceived to be the quality of education her cousins were receiving back in Iowa. Most of her Iowa relatives have since left for other western states, such as California and Arizona. Family reunions. LM's mother was the thirteenth of sixteen children. Her father, Clarence Rudd, came from a family of eight [children?] in Cedar Rapids. Story of her father's grandfather, Lafayette. He may have been a stowaway who came up the Mississippi River from New Orleans and was adopted by a German family. Her father's mother was an immigrant from Ireland. "By the time you get down to me, I have a lot of mixture." [Attitudes concerning the West and opportunities] Music activities while in high school. She went to St. Louis in 1938 with her school's a cappella choir. They had been invited to attend NEMC (a national conference for music educators) to perform. Her mother was a chaperone. They took the train and stopped to give whistle stop performances. Types of music they performed. LM received her accordion in 1937, and "my school work suffered. I was playing for social things, outside of high school." She joined the music union. She was a member of an accordion band led by her "charming" accordion teacher. "So I was probably neglecting my school work, when I look back on it." [blank tape] "We did some polkas, but my teacher happened to be Italian, so we were big on tangos and the more classical accordion music." Trip to New York. Visited her accordion teacher's teacher. In 193 7 LM went to Brooklyn, New York, as a delegate for the school. She was taking the school publications class and working on the school newspaper, and since she could get a railroad pass through her father, they asked her if she would go. She went by herself "I don't know how my parents let me go as a junior." [end oftape] 000-126 032-044 044-057 057-126 126-146 146-154 164-171 171-184 184-195 195-203 203-211 211-223 223-264 264-295 296-302 303-323 323-333 333-339 339-375 TAPElB New York trip (continued). School newspaper conference held at Columbia University. [goes to get newspaper clippings oftrip] Sister was a very different girl than LM. Tacoma businessman saw her picture in a New York paper and offered to host/entertain LM for several more days after the news conference. She still writes to the businessman's wife, and they even visited her in Kendrick years later. While in New York, they took her to meet the accordion maestro, Calarini(sp?), teacher of her own accordion teacher back in Tacoma. She got her accordion when she was 16. Her father bought it for her. "I'm sure they couldn't afford it." [blank tape] "I was very proud of my accordion." [shows me her new accordion) She played it the previous Saturday for a program for the seniors citizens with one of her former students. I had 25 annual recitals. Taught beginning piano and accordion for 25 years. LM's first husband. She got married immediately after high school to a "charmer" she met at one ofthe engagements at which she played. "It spoiled all my plans for college. Too young, too young." The marriage only lasted about four years. Then she met Robert from Worley, Idaho, and she moved to Idaho. "Followed him to Idaho, and we've been moving around in Idaho ever since." Her first husband's name was C.H. Magnuson (Robin's father). They were married in 1938. "Coy we called him. He was a very charming and handsome and darling fellow, and I guess he still is." LM married his cousin, Robert Magnuson, in 1943. "I've had a real exciting life." Robert's and C.H.'s mothers and fathers were sisters and brothers. Accordion engagements included banquets, dinner dances, intermissions during dance bands, evening entertainment for big crowds, and wedding receptions. They played popular music, tangos, marches, accordion band selections, and Scandinavian numbers. The accordion band consisted oftwelve members. [LM moves to her workroom to get samples of accordion band arrangements. We comment on the oil landscape paintings she is working on and the Bob Ross PBS painting series.) Coy was a union meat cutter, and their four years together were in Tacoma. Robin was born the day the Tacoma Narrows Bridge blew down. "We always blamed the stork." She went to the hospital about 4 AM while the storm was raging. "I still get excited watching that movie of it." LM divorced C. H. in 1942, and she married Robert in 1943. She had four children with Robert, all born in Idaho. Two were born in Idaho Falls. LM, Robert, and Robin came back to Idaho and her husband was drafted. Robert took her to Bonners. "It was scary at Seattle. There were lots of drills, you know, of worrying about invasions from Japan, and moving the Japanese people away." "My Japanese friend from school had to move out of there, and they had a beautiful place I remember; it was so sad." "I lost track of her. I never did hear from her after that. Never knew what happened to her." They were pretty much disillusioned when they left Tacoma; they probably never did come back there." Their house was taken. [LM looks at yearbook picture of Japanese friend.] They played music together. "It was a sad time." 375-387 387-395 395-402 402-417 417-422 422-423 423-448 448 When Robert went into the Army, he left LM at his brothers in Bonners, because it was safe from attack there. "We had barrage balloons flying around, you know, and the night watch, and the blackout windows. It was kind of a scary time." "I was young, and ... foolish ... not particularly frightened. Bob was not a worrier but always very cautious and always thinking of the future, and he was a wonderful husband, and worrying about me and Robin, and he always just kind of adopted Robin." "My first husband had many of the same good qualities, you know, and it's one of those things that the attraction was a family thing. It wasn't a bitter ... venomous divorce, or anything like that. He didn't care so much for the child [Robin] for one thing, and that's what made it hard." Concerning the divorce. LM's mother's family was catholic, and there was a lot of "frowning." "It was shocking to their families and their backgrounds, you know, and they were sad about it It's never a happy time." While LM stayed in Bonners, Robert went to basic training at Camp Abbot (sp?) in Oregon. He had arthritic feet and eventually got an honorable discharge. "He was quite a pacifist anyway, but he was going to go and do his duty in spite of it." He was sent him home a week before he got any benefits. They looked for work for awhile before moving to Idaho Falls for four years, where Bob worked for the Farm Credit: a government job. "I was just having babies." During her first marriage in Tacoma, LM had taught piano to a few students. Her second child, Dee, was born in 1944, and Dana was born in 1947, both in Idaho Falls. Her last two children were born in Kendrick. Lee was born in a nursing home in 1954, and Gisele was born in 1957 in the house next door where LM and Robert used to live; her son, Dana, and his family live there now The doctor still made house call deliveries at that time. [end oftape] 000-026 026-031 031-057 057-095 095-143 143-176 176-199 200-215 216-233 234-244 245-250 250-261 261-279 280-290 290-300 300-315 315-317 317-325 325-350 350-365 365-369 TAPE2A All of her other children were born in hospitals. The deliveries were "pretty natural." Dana was a breech birth. Robert was postmaster ofKendrick for 19 years. LM started to teach and give private piano lessons in Kendrick in 1952. [goes to get recital information in her workroom-difficult to hear] She estimates that she started 300 people on piano. Her own children were also involved/interested in music. Her daughter, Dee, is in charge of the music at the Mossyrock school system in Washington. [Interviewer is looking at clippings and programs for recitals while LM talks] She often played with her own family members. Lee lives in Washington, D. C. and plays in a group which plays Scandinavian music at functions there. "I'm still working to improve some of my numbers." "It's really enjoyable to hear them [former students] say that they are using it [music]." All her boys played the trombone. LM plays the autoharp and is teaching herself violin. Dee had the "real" violin lessons. She's proud of all her children and students. "Probably music is the most rewarding of my activities." Robert was very supportive and encouraging of all the lessons and traveling for the children. They had to go to Lewiston for the children's more advanced lessons. [blank tape] "I always wondered how I had such wonderful children, really." "I always said they were smarter than I was at that age and more capable, and my husband [Robert] was a very stabilizing influence, I think. Robin always felt that he was so supportive and so interested in Robin's sports life." "My husband was always right there to be his mentor, if you will." LM characterizes her style of child-rearing as being permissive, but within bounds. "I never said no unless it was important." "1 was very spoiled as a youngster." "But with ordinary requests, I think of that quite often when I see other youngsters. We didn't say no if it was something we thought would, that they would be learning from it and it wasn't harmful." "I just think of that quite often." LM thinks this small community is good. "I was always a little bit, yearning for a little bit more city things, because I remembered city activities as a youngster. I was always wishing my kids could do some of the things that I did, that you could do in a bigger school and a bigger city." "We would have to go to Moscow or Lewiston and you have to make the effort to do it. Musical programs and the concerts." "Here [in Kendrick], the activities in a small town, you're part of it; you have to do it; you have to make the music; and you have to do the play; and you have to help with the props and the stage and everything, where if you go to see one performed, you can sit and just drink it in and enjoy it. So there's something good for both ways [city and small town life]. LM was involved in many local activities to include PTA productions and talent shows. The music teacher at the school in Kendrick is one of her former piano students. [blank tape] LM received no steady formal education beyond high school. She has attended/audited many evening classes and music classes. She had private lessons in Tacoma from professional piano teachers, and her accordion teacher was probably the best professional accordionist on the West coast. LM's sister played clarinet. They played duets, and her sister took dance lessons. "She was just a lovely dancer." Her sister married and raised four boys. Their parents encouraged their music and dance instruction and made sure that they always had lessons. "And I'm always thankful for that." Her sister stayed in Tacoma all her life and died in 1989 of cancer. 369-374 374-392 393-409 410-417 417-425 425-436 436-443 443-449 449 000-007 007-064 064 [blank tape] "I've always had a piano except when we lived in Idaho Falls, because we felt that was a temporazy job. Every year the government renewed this job that my husband was on." LM raised her family in the house next door. When Robert went to the care center, she couldn't bear to be over there (in the big house), and that's when she switched into the smaller house of her son, Dana. Her husband bought a huge theater organ for her when they lived in the big house. "With his stroke and having to be in the care center, I just had to make some changes, so I gave it up." "I spend a lot of time with the music now that he's away, and he always enjoyed having me play for him, and buying me instruments for me to play on was his joy." [blank tape] "I think of my West as being Washington and Oregon, and when I moved to Idaho, I felt like I was moving east. But I realized that this should be part of Washington actually, this north Idaho. Well, geographically yes." "And the mid-West to me is, I guess from Montana to Chicago." "West to me was always toward the coast." If she had not moved out here from Iowa, she feels that "music would still have been my thing, the feelings I have for it, and the feelings the family even in Iowa that's still there, are still doing some of the same music." "And I hope I would've been able to do the same musical things." "I know that they [her relatives in Iowa] were anxious to leave Iowa, the ones that went to California and the ones that came here, always thought things were better in these areas than in Iowa." LM doesn't feel that the people here are all that much different than people in Iowa. [end oftape] TAPE2B (blank tape] LM agrees that the geography in Kendrick does limit what can be done with old, small communities. The older part of town stays the same. She comments on how the teachers don't even live within the school district anymore, and she points to the house on the other side of her house where teachers were once boarded. Distance and commuting is no longer a major concern or worry. [end of first interview] See the enclosed transcription for the second half of this interview which was also conducted on March 25, 1996. Second half of interview with Lucille Magnuson on 03-25-96 This portion of the interview took place while we were eating lunch. The recorder was not in an ideal location, so the sound quality was very poor. The following is an accurate transcription of most ofthe conversation. [Fallowing her first divorce, Lucille went to work at a Safeway in South Tacoma in 1941 when Robin was just a baby. The store asked her if she would like to become an assistant manager.] I was very proud that they even wanted me to be an assistant manager, because I didn't feel like an authoritative figure at all (laughs]. [previously, she referred to this job as the only real employment she ever had-I took this to mean fulltime position] In '42 I quit the Safeway, and well, for one thing I missed the baby. You know, I was alone with Robin, and when I took a job with another widow, that is, a widow who's husband had been killed, and took care of her two children, so I had three children during the day while she had a good job downtown Tacoma. So we lived together, maybe for a year or so. [Was that a union job at Safeway?] Yes. They were strong in Tacoma, very strong. Safeway #111, South Tacoma. The building is [still] there. I went by, but it's not a Safeway. [when asked again about the popularity of accordion music and bands] I don't know what they have in Tacoma right now, but it kinda waned, and in the 50's it came back with Lawrence Welk and his accordion players--two or three good accordion players in that series. And we did have a lot of fun. [when asked about liking swing and big band music] Me too, I love that. My accordion teacher, well, I dated him for awhile, that year. That was an interesting period in my life before I ever went steady with anybody. He took me to his home, and his parents were Italian immigrants. And that was very interesting to me. [Did they speak any English?] I don't think his mother spoke very much English. She had to look me over [laughs]. [This was in Tacoma?] Tacoma. [How big was the Italian population in Tacoma?] Quite big at the shops with the railroad workers. He was a railroad man too with his father. These repair shops ... it was a big center for repair-Great Northern and Northern Pacific Railroads. Big buildings. My father worked on freight cars, but they had sections of repairs for Pullman cars and all types of repair work was what he was in. But meeting the Italian family was interesting to me; I'd never been acquainted with Italian people, and the part of the shops that my dad worked in they kind oflooked down on the Italians, you know, in that era ... sections of people were really interesting. [Was Tacoma divided that way also?] Well, North and South ... more beautiful homes and moneyed people were all in the north end, and with all these cousins that I had, I had cousins going to Stadium High School, terrible rivalry, you know [laughs]. Stadium and Lincoln and all that beautiful ... competition and everything, so it was interesting. And there were both types of people in both sections of town, but that was always the atmosphere of, you know .... You live in the north end; they're the people with the money [laughs]. Across the tracks out here in South Tacoma where us poor shop workers were, and then, it's the same in any culture I guess, here. My dad, and maybe some of the Italian workers in the shops, were different, you know. He says, "Well, they just can't even speak English," he says about the Italians and here is this boy from Iowa [laughs]. So he always thought the Italians were kind of beneath him which wasn't true, of course, just different. And we had a big Japanese section, you know, but they lived more in the Puyallup Valley where the gardens were beautiful. More of the Japanese lived on the east side of Tacoma toward their farms and their industries out in the valley. This girl that I new, on the marimba, I never went to her home or anything, but she was . . . . I'm sure her family had more money than my family. She was exquisitely dressed and this expensive marimba, which was probably more expensive than an accordion, I don't know. But we had that in common. We were interested in all the music and the numbers. She was an artiste and probably more serious about her music than I was. I was such a flibberty-jibber. A wonder I did as well as I did. [Did you have any favorite subjects in school other than the music?] Yes, I liked the literature and English, and I loved history, but I flunked in Latin and was disgraced. [Latin was] required if I wanted to go on to college, and I struggled ... and I liked it, that was the sad part of it. But I wasn't good enough at homework and working at it. I was a lazy student. I was too busy playing music [laughs]. We had languages. I should have taken Spanish. We had French and German. Spanish and Latin offered. And I liked the Latin, but this teacher, I had, had had my mother. My mother took German from her, and my mother was a bookworm. And Miss Liddy, she just thought I was a disgrace to my mother's memory [laughs] and didn't work like my mother did. That's all I heard was, "Your mother never would have had a paper like that" [laughs]. Yeah, I didn't do well there. The more I failed, the worse I got, and the more I enjoyed the music and the fun. So I was too shallow at that age, but I sure did have a lot of fun [laughs]. I had those trips. I had a lot of other education. Advantages, really . . . . I don't think spoiling ... that's a bad word for it. The indulgence, I think, is more enlightening than the strict humanities type of stuff [after interviewer comments about how music can influence and enrich one's life] I see music that way too. I think it's just a doorway to lots of things; it has been for me. I run into [former students] all the time. When I started teaching the children of some of my early students, I had to think, I better ease out of this [laughs]. They're still asking me, you know, "would you teach, would you teach." But when I retired and announced that I, I taught a few of my grandchildren, but I didn't take anymore students after that ... well, I got a job at the Post Office while Bob was in the Post Office. There was an opening for a clerk, so I took that more of a regular job that I hadn't done for years, clerking, and it was pretty hard to schedule, because I had lessons scheduled, and they needed me at the Post Office, and I had to reschedule all these youngsters, and it just got to be a real tough situation with trying to not miss lessons, which I didn't like to miss, their weekly lesson or anything. Well, I might tell you my first hobby was ... my first trip I got these bells. I had lots of musical bells. That was my first collection. And I started getting them when I went on these train trips, I'd bring home a bell. I went to California quite a few times. Spent two summers in California with relatives. Go down by myself on the train. And I went on a train, every year, to Portland, Oregon. One of my Aunts ... visited her for five different summers that I spent with her, and she was quite a cultural influence. My mother felt like Aunt Mamie would really straighten me out as far as manners. She had been a school teacher. She was a lovely aunt, so I'd stay with her for the month in the summer, and so these were things I did in the summertimes. Then people started bringing me their traveling bells, and I still pick up one when I get to go on a trip. I'll have to have a bell from Japan. I have more India type bells. But I have one from London, and one from Sweden, and the trips that Bob and I got to take, one from Hawaii, one from Japan, several from Washington D. C., and one from New York, other trips that I've been on. I think that my granddaughter counted them and there's a hundred and thirty. And they're beautiful. [when asked about the train trips she took on rail passes] [You] sit in a day coach with a pass. I was small and I could curl up. Really, I traveled well. The day coaches at that time had straight seats, and I could lie a long ways on a seat, you know. [The New York trip] took us five days and four nights and a two hour layover in Chicago, I remember. Took a city tour when I went back. Just a Gray Line tour, so I got to see the city. I had time to do that. Well I've been there since, but then that was when I was young; I thought I was pretty smart to do that. We took our trip, before Bob got sick in '89, we took a train to D.C., and it was wonderful. We got a roomette; it's different than when I used to go as a kid. It was a wonderful trip; I'm glad we did it. My son lives there. Lee lives there. He works at the Swedish embassy. And I'm so glad we did that, 'cause the next.. . . We went there for Christmas. Actually, he [Robert] started ailing in March and had a stroke in summer. As I look back, I know he didn't feel really well. [Did you do a lot of sightseeing in D. C.?] Well, we've been there, I've been there ten times now. Every time we see something new, but we try to see everything there, and of course, Lee always has things lined up for us to do. [Lee's] an office manager partly, and he drives a messenger truck out of the Swedish embassy. He took Swedish at WSU. That's how he got that job. He's supposed to go to the airport once in awhile and meet people who do not speak English and help them. He says, "They all come and they want to speak their English; they want to practice their English. I never get to speak any Swedish" [laughs]. He's been there ten years now. Before that he worked for Senator Church back there. When he first went back that was the job he had. At that time, when we went back, he took us through the Capitol and the White House. [Have you been to the Smithsonian?] We spend a lot of time there. We always have a day there. We had lots of good trips; I'm glad we got to do those things. But he [Robert] had planned more things for our retirement than having a stroke, so I'm doing the trips for him [laughs]. [while interviewer takes her picture, Lucille comments on photos on wall] That [pointing to picture of a marquee reading "Happy Birthday, Lucille"] was a year ago on my birthday. They rented the top of a motel at Wallace, Idaho, and we had family, all the family got there-75th birthday. You're only seventy-five years old once, you know [laughs]. [Inside Dana's house next door, which used to be her house, Lucille shows me her player piano, plays a few flourishes, and shows me the "infamous" bedroom where the baby, Gisele, was born.] I have to go sing tonight. I sing with the Sweet Adelines at Lewiston. So I go every Monday night and sing. So Monday's I practice my songs, and get ready for my Monday night meeting. I sing bass, lowest alto. It's a cappella, too. Barbershop harmony. It's a unique music, too. [You have to really trust your other singers quite a bit singing a cappella, don't you?] Oh well, we go flat, but we go flat together [laughs]. It's loads of fun; it's a wonderful group of women. If you get to hear us, why, come and hear it. I went to hear the group from Coeur d' Alene Saturday night. They put on a show up there, and my daughter took me up to see their show, annual show. We put on a show every year. We're starting a show for November. |
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