Interview with Jane Beebe, Ron Beebe Click for bio
Jane Beebe, Ron Beebe
Topics:
Okay, it should be going. Let me get a secondary recording going just in case.
Ron Beebe: Now it says this meeting is being recorded and I have to click okay, I guess.
Silas Beebe: Alright.
Ron Beebe: Wait a minute, I lost your voice.
You there?
Silas Beebe: Yes, there is my microphone working all right?
Ron Beebe: Okay, so I don't we don't have to keep our heads close together, you know what we look like, you just want to get the message of what we're saying.
Silas Beebe: Yeah, yeah, exactly, just the words are the most important part. So to start, we have just a little bit of an oral consent form I'm just going to run through really quick and just have you guys agree to it if that's all right. So let me just read it aloud and and let me know if that's all right.
Participation in this project is voluntary. You may withdraw from the project at the end of the interview or at any time. Duration of the interview will only last up to 60 minutes. It doesn't have to be that long. But the interview will be recorded and transcribed. A copy of each will be made available to both of you. The recording of the interview may contain material which you hold copyright. You may transfer copyright of this material to University of Idaho if you so choose.
Transcriptions will be made available to the entire class for research purposes, and they will then be preserved by our special collections and archives. And the University of Idaho students, faculty and staff, as well as researchers visiting the special collections and archives may use the interview for research, educational, promotional, or other purpose deemed appropriate. Does that all sound good to you guys?
Ron Beebe: Yes. Of course. Wonderful,
Silas Beebe: thank you so much, appreciate that. Well, let's hop right into it. What year were each of you guys born?
Ron Beebe: Okay, I was born March 9th, 1942.
Jane Beebe: G: Okay. And I was born in 1944.
Silas Beebe: S:Okay, wonderful. So you both be what?
Ron Beebe: Grammy is 80 and I'm 82. Okay, okay.
Silas Beebe: So Pop, you were like 18 going into 1960 and Grammy, you were 16?
Jane Beebe: Yes.
Silas Beebe: Okay, very cool. So not far off on my age. So what was that like starting off your lives right into the 1960s?
Ron Beebe: That was a fun year, I thought, because I graduated from high school in 1960. And, um, I was going to go off to college and I did for six months and it wasn't for me.
Silas Beebe: Okay.
Ron Beebe: And then I went right to work.
Silas Beebe: Wow. Uh, where did you go?
Ron Beebe: Insurance company, insurance company of North America, which was in Philadelphia.
Silas Beebe: Okay, okay. I think when my dad and I watched the film Philadelphia, he showed me one of the buildings. He said Pop worked at an insurance company there that I thought was pretty cool.
Ron Beebe: Yeah.
Silas Beebe: And how long were you with the insurance company?
Ron Beebe: 32 years full-time.
Silas Beebe: Wow. Oh my goodness. That's a solid career.
Ron Beebe: Yeah. I retired when I was 57 and they asked me to work part-time two days a week, a total of 14 hours a week.
Silas Beebe: That's pretty good.
Ron Beebe: And I did that for 10 years.
Silas Beebe: Wow.
And so Grammy, you would graduate high school in 1962 then?
Jane Beebe: That's correct.
Silas Beebe: So what kind of foods did you guys eat regularly growing up?
Jane Beebe: We had, our, my dad was a blue collar worker. He was a sheet metal worker. So we grew up with meat and potatoes.
Silas Beebe: Okay, nice. Yeah, absolutely. And Pop?
Ron Beebe: Yeah, my family, I was the only child, but my dad had to have meat and he had to have potatoes. And he loved peas, which that's what I learned to hate.
Silas Beebe: That's funny. I love peas. Were there any restaurants or diners you guys loved to visit in the 1960s?
Jane Beebe: It was called the Hot Shops.
Silas Beebe: The Hot Shops?
Jane Beebe: Yeah, it was in the suburbs of Philadelphia. So it wasn't actually in Philadelphia. It was in Upper Darby, a suburb of Philadelphia.
Ron Beebe: And it was a gathering place for young people. You would pull up and pull a tray over to your window.
Okay. And speak your order in and then a young lady would bring it to you and you would sit there with it sitting on the tray. It was on a tray but it was hooked right to the side of your door where the window was.
Silas Beebe: Absolutely that's cool. And what kind of food just like hamburgers and fries and stuff?
Jane Beebe: Yeah milkshakes hamburgers typical teenage food. There was another I call it a fast food restaurant called ginos.
Ron Beebe: and they would have sandwiches and hoogies and they would make steak sandwiches. But basically hamburgers. Hamburgers, yeah.
It was kind of like the first McDonald's before McDonald's came out.
Silas Beebe: I see, absolutely.
Ron Beebe: It wasn't a chain, it was just a local shop.
Silas Beebe: Oh, very cool. And now…
And the more up-to-date and upscale restaurant was called Timbers.
Ron Beebe: That's where Grammy and I had our wedding reception in 1965. They had steaks and all the stuff that wealthy people would eat.
Jane Beebe: But you know, there was another one called Horn and Hard Arts. It was a very unique place where you put your money in a slot and then you'd open the window and the sandwiches or the desserts or whatever.
were behind the window so you could look at all of the selections and then you put your money in and then you took out which one. And that was very unique for the time frame because you wouldn't see anything like that now.
Silas Beebe: yeah, it was like a restaurant vending machine or something.
Ron Beebe: That's what it was. Yeah, absolutely. Yep. But that was always cool. That was kind of our family place to go because it was like you had all these selections right in front of you to pick from.
Silas Beebe: So did you guys both grow up in the Philly area?
Ron Beebe: I grew up in Southwest Philadelphia.
Silas Beebe: Okay.
Jane Beebe: And I grew up in Overbrook. Which would be in West Philadelphia.
Silas Beebe: And now over the course of the 1960s, did you guys see any shift in the way like restaurants did business or how food was prepared?
Ron Beebe: I think there were more and more fast food places that started opening up and they were everywhere.
Jane Beebe: Yeah, I remember when I was growing up a very unique pharmacy that you could go into and they had booze and you could get ice cream served there or you could get sandwiches served there in a pharmacy. Which was very unique.
Silas Beebe: And now have you guys always gone to church?
Jane Beebe: I was in church from the time I was born.
Silas Beebe: Wow, and Pop the same?
Ron Beebe: No, neither my mother or father went to church, but my mother made sure that I went to church and would drop me off at the church. But I rarely stayed for the service. We would take up collection at the church.
and we would sneak off to a restaurant to have coffee and pie and then come back in time to take the collection. But I didn't learn much by going to church in those days.
Silas Beebe: And how has going to church and just religion in general had a positive impact on your guys' lives?
Jane Beebe: Well, it changed our view from a different worldview as far as how we should be living our lives and the values that we had. And again, it was based on what God's Word had to say that we tried to live that way and apply it to our lives. That would be what I would say.
Ron Beebe: Absolutely. And I think values change over time. When we got married in 1965 and started attending church together, we learned values from the different churches that we were
And that began to shape our outlook on what was right, what was wrong. And it helped us to notify, identify things that people were doing that were not according to what the Bible had to say.
So from that standpoint, it began to shape our outlook on life.
Silas Beebe: Very cool. so how did you guys meet if you married in 1965?
Jane Beebe: Well, when I was in high school, when I was a senior, they had a program called a co-op program. So I was not in the college of, I don't know, root or whatever you would call it, track, that's it. I was in what they called the clerical track. And so they gave us the opportunity that I worked at Insurance Company of North America one week and then the next week I went to school. So I ended up working at the insurance company North America. And then once I graduated, because I had already been employed there, they offered me a position. And so then I ended up taking that position.
Silas Beebe: Wow. Okay.
Ron Beebe: And I had already graduated from high school when I was looking for a job and started to work for the insurance company of North America in a clerical position.
And that's where Grammy and I met, because we were in the same department, not in the same unit, but the same department.
Silas Beebe: Very cool. How long after you guys met did you start dating?
Jane Beebe: Well, I graduated in 1962 and then 1963 was when we started dating. Yep. I guess it was probably a couple of months afterward because Grammy was into roller skating and I was too and there was a roller skating rink and we knew each other from work. But then we bumped into each other at the roller skating rink. And then we started skating around together at the roller skating rink. And then eventually we started to date. Very cool.
Silas Beebe: And then you'd get married in 1965. So when did you ask Grammy to get married, Pop?
Ron Beebe: In 1964. And we waited a year to get married to save up some money. And
just to make sure that we were gonna be compatible. We continued dating quite often all throughout that time.
Silas Beebe: Very cool. What was the...
Ron Beebe: Lost your voice.
Silas Beebe: Okay. So what was the proposal like, Pop? Where'd you ask her to marry you?
Ron Beebe: It was in a glider on the front porch. Oh, the back porch. Oh, the front porch. It was right there in the front porch, right at the street level. And I asked her to marry me and said yes.
I'm losing, I can't hear you right now. Now I lost you, now we lost you.
Silas Beebe: I'm losing my audio. Course with Zoom. Okay, that should be better now.
Oh my goodness.
Jane Beebe: Now you're back. You're back.
Silas Beebe: All right, I'm back.
Just covering the proposal.
Ron Beebe: Yeah, so, yeah, so I asked Grammy to marry me and she said yes.
And we, I think we told my mother first and then we told your mother and father. Which was not good.
Silas Beebe: So how different...
Ron Beebe: I lost your voice again.
Silas Beebe: Oh my goodness, one sec.
Ron Beebe: Yeah, now you're back. I don't know, seems to go in and out.
Silas Beebe: Okay. All right. Do you read me now?
Ron Beebe: Yes, we can hear you.
Silas Beebe: Okay. I think we should be good. I think my microphone was just unplugging a little bit. So I reconnected it. So we should be good now. So how different was it for you guys to buy like groceries and gas and other essentials compared to today?
Ron Beebe: P: Well, I know I didn't have to buy any groceries because I lived at home. And my mother took and father took care of that.
But the one thing I remembered is I had a car when I was 16. Yeah. And the price of gas was 25 cents a gallon.
Silas Beebe: Wow. That is wild.
Ron Beebe: For a dollar, I could fill up and my friends and I could go riding all around for a dollar.
Silas Beebe: That's really cool.
So what car did you have when you were 16?
Ron Beebe: I had a 48 Hudson.
Silas Beebe: And so how much were you making when gas was 25 cents a gallon?
Ron Beebe: Um, I really wasn't working at the time until after I finished high school. Yeah. But, um, I think it was, uh, $2,600 a year. Okay. $4,800 a year. Yeah. When I first started out, that's the small amount. But one thing that was very unique where I grew up was.
there were grocery stores on various corners because a lot of people didn't have cars. Yeah. And so local shopping was very popular. There really weren't any big supermarkets close to where I lived. And we used to have a wagon that we would pull to the grocery store and then load the wagon up and bring it back home again.
Silas Beebe: Wow. So like no plastic grocery bags or anything. You could take the wagon and that's wild, that's cool.
Ron Beebe: The one thing I remembered is going to the grocery store. Well, it's small corner stores. There was one close to us and you could go in and buy a tasty cake, which is something that's still in existence today.
Silas Beebe: I like a tasty cake. Tasty cakes are good. I like the chocolate and peanut butter ones.
Ron Beebe: the tasty cake crimpet was 15 cents and you got three in the package. And if you bought a pie, it was a quarter. It was a small pie in a cardboard box with cellophane across the seal. They were mostly fruit pies.
Silas Beebe: So my dad told me, Pop, that he's always told me that you were in the Air Force. What year did you join?
Ron Beebe: I joined in 1961.
I had gone to college for six months and I had a major of accounting and I failed accounting. So I figured, well, that wasn't for me. So I enlisted in the Air Force to learn a trade. And when I signed up, I was supposed to be a telephone poleman. But of course, the military has other ideas. You fill the need that they have at the time. And I became a painter.. I painted houses. I painted trucks. I painted airplanes.
Silas Beebe: Yeah.
Ron Beebe: Painted lines down for the airplanes to land on, on the flight line.
Silas Beebe: Wow. I didn't know that. That's, that's cool.
What was your experience of joining like? Did you have to go through like training and all that?
Ron Beebe: I had to go to basic training in Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. And it was in the September timeframe and it was extremely hot.
Silas Beebe: Yeah, I can only imagine.
Ron Beebe: There was a hurricane coming through and we were on standby to help people that had damage done as a result of the hurricane, but we never had to go anywhere.
Silas Beebe: Wow. So how long were you in the Air Force total?
Ron Beebe: Well, a little background before my father died after he came out and visited me where I was stationed in Salina, Kansas. Yeah. And he died of a heart attack while he was there. And my mother
and she was having psychological problems as a result of the loss and I was the only child. So a family doctor called me and asked me to see if I could get out of the military and after three years I had a hardship discharge to come home to be with mom.
Excerpt Redacted
Silas Beebe: So during the time you would have been in Kansas, the Cuban Missile Crisis of course, of course occurred in 1962. What do you remember from that?
Ron Beebe: Well, that was the base that I was assigned to had what they called KC 97 air refueling planes, which were prop and they had B 47s, which were bombers. And there was a wing of each, but during the Cuban Missile Crisis, all the bombers took off and were flown to.
somewhere in Texas and Florida, and all the air refueling planes from other squadrons came to our base. And you weren't allowed to leave the base, you had to stay there. Yeah. And there were restrictive areas that you couldn't go into. They had what they called military police with German Shepherd dogs that make sure you didn't go in a place you weren't supposed to. But it was, everybody was very busy and
You didn't leave the base at all. And we didn't know whether war was going to turn out or not.
Silas Beebe: Grammy, what do you remember from that time?
Jane Beebe: I don't remember anything. *she laughs*
Silas Beebe: That's all right.
Jane Beebe: I wasn't a part of my life because what was that, 1962?
So I was in school. So I was just totally oblivious to what was happening around me. Yeah, absolutely. I was busy having fun.
Silas Beebe: Yeah, oh my goodness, that's wild. Yeah.
So then, that would lead into the Vietnam War pretty quickly. What do you remember from that?
Ron Beebe: I remember there were some guys that were in the area that I was in, and they wanted to go to Vietnam. And they had to qualify shooting a 45 automatic handgun.
And what I remember is the one young man that wanted to go really bad, failed the test three times before he finally could hit the target at that time. And then he went off to Vietnam and I lost track of him. But very few of the people on the base that I was located at went, was mostly army and Navy that was involved in Vietnam. Airforce pilots, but not the everyday ordinary airmen.
Silas Beebe: Grammy, what do you remember from the Vietnam War?
Jane Beebe: Very little impact. Not many of my friends, not many people in the community were really impacted by it. Wow, OK. I didn't expect that.
I don't know if it's because we were so young that they really wouldn't have really qualified to be a part of it, because I was two years younger. But I honestly did not know anybody that was involved with the Vietnam War.
Silas Beebe: That's interesting. From my perspective, when I read about the Vietnam War, it feels like everybody got involved.
Yeah, that's all everyone was talking about, that everyone coming out of high school was getting sent off. That's a really interesting perspective
Jane Beebe: Yep. I honestly could not tell you one of my classmates that went into the war. Now we know people who were in the war, but back then I didn't know anybody. Yeah.
Silas Beebe: So Pop, of course, you being in the military, you're a little bit more on the pulse of the fact that we're going into the Vietnam War. Did you have any particular feelings about it or any memories of certain feelings?
Ron Beebe: I didn't have a whole lot of understanding what the war was about and why we were there. I just knew that some of the guys were wanting to go. That was beyond me, why you would want to go into a hostile area where they're shooting.
As an Air Force person, you were just where the planes were. You weren't in the jungle or anything. But at the time, there were a lot of a lot of discontent in the general population. Yeah. Because young men were dying in the jungle and being shot in Vietnam and a lot of body bags were coming back. And that was, why are we there? Let them fight their own war.
was the kind of attitude. And it got to the point where if somebody came home or leave and wore their military uniform, they were criticized and ostracized and very angry and hostile that they were fighting a war in a foreign country. And there was a lot of population who were spending all that money.
there for nothing. It's not going to help us. So that was kind of the general attitude. And I have to say this is the first war that when men returned, they weren't considered heroes. But after the First World War, Second World War and Korea, the veterans were as heroes, but not Vietnam.
Silas Beebe: Wow. That's wild. I never thought about it in that lens. I've heard about that in readings and stuff of soldiers coming back and wearing their uniforms and getting like tomatoes thrown at them and stuff, people screaming at them. Yeah. But I never considered that was the first war where it was, there was a negative take on veterans. That's wild.
Jane Beebe: And Jane Fonda was a very loud voice in opposition to it. And a lot of people in Hollywood then joined her and she was very, very, very vocal.
And I think she kind of like was the spearhead to get people to be so opposed to it.
Silas Beebe: So speaking of Hollywood a little bit, what movies and films do you guys remember watching around that time?
Ron Beebe: Well, I think the one wasn't the Carlton Heston movie. El Cid.
with the chariots running around it. I forget what that was called now. I think that was in the 60s, wasn't it?
Jane Beebe: John Wayne was, I think, the one that I can remember most being popular in the 60s. There were war movies. A lot of, and even the Western movies. Yeah. Yeah. Westerns were very big in the 60s. Very big in the 60s.
Silas Beebe: Yeah, I remember watching some John Wayne films at your guys' house when I was younger. That was like my introduction to Westerns for sure was with you guys, with John Wayne. Do you remember the Green Berets with John Wayne in it?Yes. That was like the, you know, a big Vietnam piece at the time that was sort of pro-war. I remember we were talking about it in class and it was pretty heavily criticized as like, you know, kind of going against all of the counterculture , the people that were against the war. They did not like the film, the Green Berets, because it was so like positive about it.
Jane Beebe: So the first date that Uncle Ron and I had was to see McClintock, which was a John Wayne movie. Wow. That we had.
Silas Beebe: Oh, that's cool. Very cool. So around this time, of course, JFK is president starting in 1960. What do you remember about his presidency? How did you feel about him in general?
Jane Beebe: Well, that was something like you asked about what was happening during that time. And because he was the first Catholic that ever ran for president, that was a major ordeal. And that was something that people were always a little bit of in opposition to, because in the past there had never been a Roman Catholic that had run for president.
Silas Beebe: Yeah, no, we talked about that in class. My professor asked why was like JFK such a controversial president. And I don't know where I'd read it, but I remember answering that question in class because he was an Irish Catholic. And we'd never had, you know, like an “ethnic” president for lack of a better term.
Ron Beebe: Yeah. Yeah. I was in a friend's house in the neighborhood where I grew up and came into his living room and
television was on and then they broke into the news and they showed the shooting of Kennedy in the limousine and his Jackie Kennedy trying to climb out of the limousine and they would show it over and over and over again. That was and then of course all the conspiracy theories.
Jane Beebe: How many shooters were there? Yeah. Was Oswald the only one? And who put them up to it? And was there a money trail and all kinds of things? Yeah, absolutely. It was the CIA involved and all that. It was in the news not that long ago that they thought they had uncovered some new evidence that supported that there was more than one shooter.
Silas Beebe: Yeah, wow. That's crazy. I didn't realize that they played it on TV like that. I don't think they would show it. I mean, it feels like the, you know, like 9-11, the World Trade Center attack.
Ron Beebe: They even showed on television when they were taking Oswald from one jail to another place. And there were all these newspaper people and stuff in this room. And Jack Ruby, point blank, shot and killed him.
Silas Beebe: Yeah, I've seen both pieces of footage from just being in history class. We've seen them.
So, Grammy, where were you when you found out that Kennedy was shot?
Jane Beebe: I was still in school because it was 1963 and it was a Friday. So I was still in school. So I didn't find out until I got home from my mom's home.
Silas Beebe: Alright, wait, can you hear me now? We're good? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Cool. I like bumped my arm on my microphone. And it was my speakers somehow for disconnecting my microphone. So you said you were still in in school when that happened.
Jane Beebe: I was still in school. So I didn't find out until I got home. And my mom wasn't a TV watcher. She always had the radio on. So it was when I got home, she had heard on the radio.
Like, I mean, honestly, everybody went into mourning, everything shut down. I mean, a store shut down, businesses were not operating, movie theaters were not available for shows. I mean, it was just like everybody went into mourning.
Silas Beebe: Yeah. Wow. That's that. That's crazy. I can't even imagine in, you know, compared to today, you know.
So moving on to the civil rights movement a little bit, something we've been talking a lot about in class. What do you guys remember from the civil rights movement of MLK and the March on Washington and all that?
Ron Beebe: Well, there was a lot going on and a lot of different things in the news. The, um, there was a, uh, uh, a black woman on a bus that sat in front of the bus when she wasn't supposed to. Yeah. And, um, she was arrested and then there were, uh, some, uh, there was a, um, Oh, I can't think of his name right now. He was governor of, um, Alabama. Alabama. Yeah. I think it was.
and he was not going to allow black students to go to a white school. And then he was shot and became paralyzed and was in a wheelchair after that. So there was a lot of anger going on. And it was more in the South than in the North because the South still had that segregation mindset. And they grew up that way. And their parents were very hateful toward black people. So.
Children would just adopt the attitudes that their parents had toward it. So there was a difference between living in the North and living in the South. But when Martin Luther King was doing his marches, and then of course, when he was assassinated, that was all over TD. And it was kind of sad to see he was just a preacher that was trying to do
what he thought was right and what the Bible was teaching him or what he was reading from the Bible and he gave his life for that.
Silas Beebe: So that specifically resonated with you guys being Christians.?
Jane Beebe: Very much so and I guess personally because both Uncle Ron, both Pop and myself, we went to schools that were very integrated.So I had a very high population of Black students in the school that I went to. So it really didn't impact us because that was just common everyday life for us to interact with them and to live with them. But there was a distinct line where people...
Black people lived on the other side of 63rd Street, and the white people lived on this side of the 63rd Street. And one thing that I remember was that a Black family moved into, they crossed the line, and they moved into the white section. And I remember people throwing rocks at their house and windows being broken.
And it got so bad that they actually had to have police stationed outside of the house because they were the first family to move into the white section and people were not not happy about it at all.
Silas Beebe: So ive heard similar things like when I was working for the Idaho Black History Museum in Boise, there was an area that was like across the tracks that was down by the river where was the same exact situation.
And the guy I was working for, Philip, when his family moved across the street, they had a cross burned on their front yard and they were Baptists.
Jane Beebe: Yes, they did the same thing. They had a cross that they burned there too. Yep, they did the same thing.
Silas Beebe: Shifting out of the civil rights movement a little bit, something a little more positive, what music did you guys listen to in the 1960s?
Jane Beebe: Can you answer that?
Ron Beebe: P: I was listening to a lot of country music in those times, but it was more, I guess there was, what was it called, Bandstand in Philadelphia where there was a place where young kids would come after school and they would dance and there were different people.
They had a DJ that would play the records and then people would dance. Yeah, and they would dance and anytime a new record would come out, it would be debuted, so to speak, from the bandstand location. So there were a lot of kids would go there and it was more of cliquish, the people that went and they were filled with themselves.
and wanted to be on TV. And that's their main reason for going. But there were a lot of different dances, dance movements that got started and you could see them on bandstand. And Grammy and I used to go to a Catholic church in Upper Darby, right outside of Philadelphia and close to where Grammy lived, to go to the dances. And they had slow dances, fast dances, and...
They would also, what was the other dance? Cha Cha. Cha Cha dances.
Silas Beebe: Pop, you a good dancer?
Ron Beebe: We got into a dance contest one time. Yeah, we won the twist contest. Yeah, the twist contest. Chubby Checker.
Silas Beebe: Did you win? Did you get close to winning?
Jane Beebe: Yeah, we did, we won that one.
Silas Beebe: You won? Oh, that's awesome. That's cool.
Jane Beebe: That was like when the Beatles were really popular and, Okay. You know, it was a lot of rock and raw. I mean, I honestly listened to more, Johnny Mathis was one of my favorite musicians and he is, I think I just told Poppy's like 89 and he's still gonna be down at Atlantic City singing. Oh my goodness. I know, I was blown away. It's like, this man is still around.
Silas Beebe: Johnny Mathis, okay.
Ron Beebe: And then they would have, there were a couple of clubs that were not necessarily for people over 21 and they would bring some musicians in and then you could go to those locations and see them live. Bobby Rydell. He was a big one. Yeah. And Chubby Checkers and he used to have his own little dance routine for that.
P: But there's something you might be interested in now is the same place where Bandstand was. Right next to that was where you would go roller skating. That's where Grammy and I met on the roller skating. Okay. And would also be converted into a wrestling ring.
Silas Beebe: Whoa.
Ron Beebe: And all the wrestlers that were popular at that time. That's right. Would come there to wrestle.
Silas Beebe: Okay, I remember my dad. I think he said that you took him to a few wrestling matches, Pop.
Yeah, this wouldn't be in the 60s. That would be in, you know, in the 70s and 80s. Did you ever take him to any boxing fights?
Ron Beebe: No, no. We would watch boxing on TV with Muhammad Ali or Cassius Clay, as he was called then, and Frazier. And yeah, that was it was usually, I think, on Friday nights, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And that was the big thing. Families wanted to get home and watch the fights.
Silas Beebe: Oh, that's funny. That's what we do every Saturday now with UFC. I've got a poster of Cassius Clay in my room or Muhammad Ali. That's cool you guys gotta see that live. So how overall did you see the culture of the nation shift throughout the 1960s? What did it shift away from? What did it shift toward?
Jane Beebe: Well, I think for me, what I saw was a kind of a movement of people moving from a city to the country, to the suburbs. And that happened a lot during the 60s where, again, because there was that, I'm going to call it infringement of different people, other than the
Irish or Scottish or English moving into the area. And so consequently it was, they lost their identity because the culture changed and a lot of Italians moved into where I was. And then when that black family moved in, I think people were threatened that this now was going to change their environment.
So there was a vast exit of people moving to the suburbs from the area that I lived in. Okay, we've read about that exact phenomenon.
Silas Beebe: I think they call it urban flight. Yes, yes. We've talked about that pretty extensively.
- Title:
- Interview with Jane Beebe, Ron Beebe
- Date Created:
- 2024-10-01
- Description:
- A perspective on the 1960s from two Philadelphian Christians who were teenagers going into the year 1960. Topics covered include JFK, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Vietnam War.
- Subjects:
- crm jfk mlk vietnam money childhood
- Location:
- Digitally, Via Zoom
- Latitude:
- 46.72821545
- Longitude:
- -117.0124598
- Type:
- text
- Format:
- record
- Preferred Citation:
- "Interview with Jane Beebe, Ron Beebe", The Long 1960s - 2024 Fall, Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL)
- Reference Link:
- /thelong1960s/items/beebe.html
- Rights:
- In copyright, educational use permitted. Educational use includes non-commercial reproduction of text and images in materials for teaching and research purposes. For other contexts beyond fair use, including digital reproduction, please contact the University of Idaho Library Special Collections and Archives Department at libspec@uidaho.edu. The University of Idaho Library is not liable for any violations of the law by users.
- Standardized Rights:
- http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC-EDU/1.0/