Interview with Kay-Hall Click for bio
Kay-Hall
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Connor Dremann: Hello, my name is Connor Dremann, and this is my nineteen-sixties oral history interview with my grandmother Kay Hall. Alright, let's start with. When and where were you born, and where were you grew up?
Kay Hall: My name is Marjorie K. Hall. I was born in the mining time of Kellogg, Idaho. I lived in the nearby town of Wallace, Idaho when the town was booming with the mine business. This is where my father worked through my entire childhood. Growing up there was always something to do around town. I mostly helped my mom look after my 4 younger siblings. I was born first in my family and am a member of the silent generation. I attended an all-girls school with the graduating class of 11.
CD: What was education like? Were there any challenges?
KH: When I was at school, education was sitting in my seat and listening to what the teacher had to say. Every girl educated back then was for a test, it wasn't why things happened just know this information, and we pretty much worked on the knowledge base. School was challenging in its own way. You mostly got the information from a textbook and had very few group discussions. It was uncomfortable to ask questions in the classroom, unlike today. Although I do feel like I received a great education. There was not a lot of extended curriculum like today, such as electives. There was no preparation for high-level math in high school, it was not taught in the lower grades. This was coming from a parochial(Catholic) school. Growing up as a girl, they would influence us to pursue the career paths, of secretary, bank teller, teacher, nurse, nun, or housewife. Although they did not discourage us from receiving higher education. In my high school graduating class, I was one of the few students to continue my education and finish my degree. I started my college career at North Idaho Junior College, where I received my provisional certificate to start teaching after two years of education after that I would go back to summer school, every year, working towards my degree at the University of Idaho. Finally, in 1966, I received my BS from the University of Idaho. I then taught in Las Vegas for one year and then decided I'd like to go abroad to teach. So I taught for the Department of Defense, first in the Asia theater in Okinawa, then later moved to Germany to teach.
CD: Did you enjoy it? What were the other countries, perceptions of the United States?
KH: I taught in Okinawa in 1967 I was on an Air Force Base, so I had very little contact with the native Okinawans, so I really don't know how they felt about us. I felt, I think they felt like they were there to be subservient to us, because we all had to have a maid, and they worked in the officer's clubs and all that. This was also at the height of the Vietnam War. The base was packed with troops and their families. Because we were so crowded we had to have split sessions at the elementary school. The typical day was 12:30-5 with a 15-minute break. Germany is a little different story. I could pick up on questions like, Why were we in Vietnam, and things like that. They were they wanted to question us. And most of the people at that time wanted to know about the Kennedys overseas. They would always ask me like I was personal friends with them, you know, and they people abroad, really liked JFK. In 1969, this is where I met my husband and we got engaged. I knew this was when I was ready to start my life with my husband as we moved back to the United States. Back to Georgia where we would start our family. I had your mom in 1970.
CD: Did the Civil Rights Movement impact your community or your personal life? Were you involved in or affected by any of the events?
KH: As far as the Civil Rights Movement's having an impact on me or my community? I don't think so, because I, at that time was either living in northern Idaho or Montana, in all-white communities, so no one really discussed it, as far as me personally, when I watched on the evening news, Walter Cronkite and he was showing the riots in Selma, Alabama at the different station of Martin Luther King at Malcolm X, and the little children that were killed at the Baptist Church of Birmingham, Alabama. That really affected my life and I kind of became very prejudiced against anybody in the south, thinking that they all treated everybody treated black people like that. Little did I know that I would marry a Southerner and move to the South.
CD: That's interesting. role did music play in shaping the culture around you? Did you have any favorite artists or memorable concerts back in the 60s?
KH: Music was very important to all people. I think no matter where you live, everybody loved to dance. Everybody loved to go to clubs and dance from country western clubs to rock and roll clubs. When I was in the 60s, the first concert I can remember I ever went to see was Pat Boone, and I thought that was really something I'd never been to a concert before my life. And then that was about it for me in the 60s, as far as going to concerts, I've always loved music. And it was so important back then because people, like I said, they dance. Some of my favorite artists were Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Bob Dylan, Steppenwolf, Rolling Stones, and the Beach Boys. It was a lot harder to listen to the music at home, I had to wait weeks before the records came to our local record shop. In Wallace, there was one record store and we had to wait weeks until we could purchase the new track to listen at home. Otherwise, I had to rely on the radio at home. I remember Woodstock, it had a lot of influence on the younger people and their views. It was broadcasted on TV. I haven't seen an event like this since.
CD: Did you notice any significant changes in gender roles or women's rights during the 1960s What was your perspective on the feminist movements?
KH: Yes, I did notice some changes during the women's movement during the 1960s I was very interested in it. I read everything I could get my hands on. And of course, at that time, you were thought of as being kind of weird or a real progressive liberal if you did that type of thing. But I was raised in a family of strong women, and I was always taught to stick up for myself. Both my mother and my maternal grandmother taught me that well, so I never let people push me around. I was never obnoxious about it, but I stood up for myself as an example. I never had a woman principal until I was in Okinawa. Administrative jobs were typically held by men. When I first started teaching school at Kalispell, the women would always come in and make the coffee in the morning, and the men never had to do anything. And finally, I said, I'm not doing it anymore until the men take their turns a small thing but it was just expected the women, waited on the men.
CD: Were you aware of the counterculture movement? What was your reaction to the culture shift?
KH: Yes, I was aware of it, but not part of it. I was just that much older that I wasn't in that generation that were hippies and free love and all this type of thing. However, I have a younger sister who was very much into it, with the long hair and all the makeup, short mini dresses, and things like that, she looked at the world totally different from me. Let me tell you. What I do remember about this time was how people dressed, bell bottom pants, the dresses, lots of loud, loud colors, lime green, bright lemon, fuchsia pinks, lot of color and design, big flowers. The women wore a lot of makeup, long, straight hair, and dangly earrings. I first became aware of the hippie movement when I read about and saw on TV the hate Haight Ashbury Park. My sister Mary, was very into this so I was able to experience it firsthand even though I did not participate.
CD: Contrary to counterculture, how did the people around you feel about the Vietnam War, and how did it influence your opinions on politics or the government?
KH: First of all, this was the first war we saw every nightly, nightly on the news. We saw the fighting. We saw the destruction. We saw what was going on. So it really had an effect on all people, all people, whether it be positive or negative. To me, it was a negative thing. My father was a World War Two vet and he was very anti-war, after being in the war, and I was anti-Vietnam, I did not see the reason for us to be there. The My Lai Massacre, the war crime by the United States Army in March of 1986, was the final nail in the coffin of my feelings towards the Vietnam War. And that's, why I expressed my opinions about that. I was very verbal about my feelings about Vietnam and mostly it was by what I saw on TV and my parents. At this time, Lyndon Johnson was our president, and I did not agree with him, sending more troops to Vietnam to be killed, and slaughtered. I did not sign anything that was Anti-war.
My younger brother was in the army at the time and I did not want anything to affect his career. And I didn't blame the young men who went to Canada to stay out of the service because it wasn't a war defending our country it was a war, we should not have been involved in in the first place my opinion. War, my thoughts and opinions change from rather conservative to far more liberal. I felt the Vietnam War was a war, fought by young men and women who came from poor families because if you had money or influence, there was a way to get out of it, ie Trump. Most of my friends were pro-Vietnam and I was one of the few that was anti, and sometimes I just had to keep my mouth shut, I did voice it when I thought it was appropriate.
CD: Do you remember where you were when you heard about the assassinations of the prominent figure John F.Kennedy?
KH: Yes I do, I was teaching school Kalispell, and it was lunch hour, and at that time, schools did not have school secretaries, and the phone kept ringing. and ringing and ringing in the office, and I got sick and tired of listening to it ring so I left my classroom, and went down to answer it, and it was the police and they said John F Kennedy had been shot at that time we had we did not know if he was dead or alive. Once we found out that he had died. Everybody was very sad. He was a beloved president by most people. And it just kind of made us sick to think something like this could happen in our country. That evening, when I watched, Walter Cronkite, and he announced that, indeed,Kennedy had died as a result of an assassination. He broke into tears, first time I've ever seen this happen with the National Broadcasting broadcast. At the time, the country felt insecure as we did not know what was going to happen after JFK had died.
CD: Do you remember where you, you were, and when you heard about the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
KH: I don't really remember where I was, but I remember it very clearly. And it's terrible, as this may sound bad, I thought, another white person was guilty of the assassination. As a result of Martin Luther King's assassination, I was fearful of a lot of riots taking place in various cities in our country, and I knew that was not what he wanted because he believed in peaceful tactics. When I lived in Georgia he was a man that everyone knew. He stood up for what he believed in and was an inspiration to me. Although I would never share the same struggles as him, it helped me push the boundaries for women's equality.
CD: do you remember where you were and when you heard about the assassination of Robert F Kennedy?
KH: Yes, I do. I was sitting with my grandparents at that time, and I was just getting up in the morning, and I could hear the TV on in the living room, and I thought I was kind of dreaming that they were talking about John Kennedy and finding it dawned on me that they were saying, Robert Kennedy and I came out and watched the whole thing on TV. We got to see this on TV, pretty much, as it happened. This was months after Martin Luther King Jr. had gotten shot and it just felt weird how so many prominent figures were dying in such a short amount of time. There was a lot of uncertainty within the country and I was one of those people. Not sure what was going to happen but as long as my family and friends were safe that is what mattered to me at the time.
CD: How did these three major events impact the national mood during the nineteen sixties?
KH: I think it has made us more aware that we're not as safe as we think we are in this country, and that a lot of bad things can happen. I think up to this point I just thought I was in America and everything was okay. And we're all going to be just fine. And I realized that was not true at that particular time, and a lot of people did too. Especially with what was happening in Vietnam and the Cold War
CD: What were your personal views on communism during the nineteen sixties, and did the Cold War affect the daily life of where you lived in the sixties?
KH: Communism was something to be very fearful of you were always afraid that the communists were going to come and bomb us. People built bomb shelters, and they bought food to have in the bomb shelters. I remember, at school, we took drills on what to do in case we were bombed and so we kind of lived in fear. We were always, this was always on the back of our minds, you suppose they might do this to us it we were fearful of what could happen during the Cold War.
CD: Did you ever think you had Communists around you?
KH: Funny that you ask that, there was always the idea that someone around could indeed be Communist. I did not believe that at least where I was living because once I moved back to the small town of Coeur d'Alene Idaho, there would be no threats of communists in my area. So it was never really something that I deeply thought about even though the news would try and make you skeptical.
CD: The Cuban Missile Crisis was a grave threat. Were you fearful, or were others around you fearful of an attack? What were your opinions on it?
KH: Yes, I was fearful because none of us were aware that Russia was putting missiles in Cuba and when we found out, everybody thought, boy, this is it this is the big one, they're going to get us. We all kind of just had a lot of faith that Kennedy would be diplomatic enough to hopefully get us out of this mess. Here again, it made us all realize that we weren't as safe as we thought we were if this could happen right off of our shores, what was really going to keep us safe? It made us realize that we were not as isolated and insulated as we thought. This has happened in other parts of the world but it could happen here.
CD: What was your view on the space race and the moon landing in 1969?
KH: Well, I really wasn't aware of the space race at first, until, of course, the Russians put somebody in orbit, and John Kennedy said in one of his addresses that this was going to be a focus of his and I could still remember when they blasted off to go into space and when they landed on the moon. I could remember where I was, my family and I were hiking at Rainier National Park, and we had a transistor radio with us. It was so important, we wanted to hear all about the landing. We sat down on a rock and listened to the broadcast about the landing on the moon. And the whole time, I was thinking to myself, What if they can't get them off the moon? What are they going to do? I guess they just do what they want if they could get them off that was the end of them. They weren't going to get back home. Most people watched on their televisions but it was during the summertime so my family and I were on a trip. I was able to watch the landing later that evening on TV. What a proud moment got all Americans. It was an exciting time for America. Kind of got our minds off of war. We started to really appreciate the sciences and how important science is in education for our students that we still had, there were some things that we could do that other countries could not do.
CD: What role did television or the radio play in shaping your opinions and what kind of television shows Did you listen to at the time?
KH: People communicated and stayed in form by doing a lot of reading. We had people take a lot of magazines that they read. They read the Daily newspaper thoroughly and watched the nightly news, which started out at 15 minutes and actually went to half an hour. I think TV news came to reality when we started having it be up to an hour a night. Up until then, I always got my news when I went to the movie, and we saw the news in the first part of the movie called the newsreel. And what's TV came into my life. I started to realize how, what was going on in the world, affected my life. I realized exactly how small I really was when I started to realize about all these different places in the world when they came into my living group. Up until then, I'd always read about them in books, but once I saw them on TV, I just realized that I'm not all as important as I thought I was, and that I'm part of a whole for the first time in life, I started to realize I'm part of the whole thing called humanity, and that's true.
CD: Was there any shows you enjoyed?
KH: I watched the Billies and Mayberry, I also got a big chuckle out of laughing I think maybe that might have been my favorite show of the 60s and the Smothers Brothers show. Star Trek just came out and was something that we had not seen before. It was exciting and interesting to watch.
CD: What major sporting events and stars do you remember in the 1960s?
KH: At that time, we knew who all the baseball players were. It wasn't like that was kind of football back then, it was baseball. I remember when Mickey Mantle played his 2000th game. I remember who hit what seemed like year after year. The Yankees were always in the World Series. But we really knew what was going on in the World Series. That was the big sport back then like football is today. It was baseball back then, and then later in the 60s, boxing, because of Cassius Clay, who later became Muhammad Ali. Friday night boxing was on TV every Friday night, of course, and everybody watched it, perhaps, Blue Ribbon sponsored it I can remember that. Basketball was upcoming but not many people were able to watch. I always heard of the great Wilt Chamberlain or Bill Russell and the Celtics winning every season. So boxing at baseball were big sports and locally basketball.
CD: What was your opinion on Muhammad Ali being so vocal on civil rights and the Vietnam War?
KH: At first, I was kind of hesitant about his feelings, because I thought it was a big, big blowhard. But then I later realized he he promoted himself very well. I remember seeing him on TV, you know, talking about he was always the greatest. I'm the greatest. And I guess maybe he was one of the greatest boxers ever. He told us he was, and we believed it. And as far as his me wanting to stay out of the war, I was anti-war. and I was behind him 100%. He did not care about the consequences. He was very vocal and was willing to go to jail. Just to have his opinion heard. He believed in civil disobedience.
CD: Was there a clear separation between church and state, unlike now?
KH: Yes, in the 1960s there was a clear distinction between church and state. In fact, in 1963 there was a law that was passed that local governments could not require the Lord's prayer in school or any Bible readings. Up until then, teachers would read through the Bible every day. And there weren't the big churches that tried to have political influence like today, most of the churches were traditional and stuck to religious topics, and they did not bring politics into their servants.
CD: What were some of the biggest differences in daily life like transportation compared to today?
KH: Well, in transportation, pretty much it was a car or Greyhound bus. If you went on an airplane, that was really a big deal. people did fly that often. The first time I flew, was when I was 25, to Japan. And when they did fly out of their plate you dressed up and looked very nice. You do that was just expected. Like today we get on in our pajamas that just did not happen in the 1960s.
CD: What was entertainment like compared to today?
KH: Back in the sixties, entertainment was going to the movies. we did not have these big concerts like they have nowadays where I live, but maybe in the big cities they did. you might the movies might go to dances. uh, entertainment was playing cards with your neighbors, playing cards with your friends. Not like today where everything is just it fast gear, people spend more time communicating with each other, and visiting I think they do nowadays.
CD: Looking back, what do you think was the most important or transformative moment of the 1960s for you personally?
KH: Yeah, probably teaching overseas, really, that changed my attitude on a lot of things. Probably that looking to see how other cultures navigated life and learning about different cultures really was probably one of the biggest events in my life in the 60s. Moving from a small mining town to teaching abroad widened and changed my perspective on life. For example, I did not know Judaism was a thing until I was exposed to it.
CD: Do you think the 1960s are often romanticized today? Or do you believe the current understanding of the era reflects its actual reality in this way?
KH: I think it was romanticized. I think people think of the 60s young people. We all were out there smoking pot joints and doing drugs and going to concerts, kind of not working and doing as we pleased. In actuality, that was not the way things were. It's when I think we first started to see a real split in our country because people felt they could have voiced their opinions without being labeled as anti-patriotic or whatever. The Vietnam War, that's kind of started the dividing of our country. It was different, that they got out of their social norms to do what they wanted. to do with their life they did feel that they had to be buried, they had to have children, or whatever they could do what they wanted to do. positive about the 60s was the Civil Rights Movement, and giving the minorities in our country, The hope that they will be treated fairly, and the same as anybody else that lives in the country.
CD: Are there any other events that left a mark on you or that you found interesting in the 60s?
KH: In the 60s, yes, one was, it was the first mass shooting in the 60s, where 16 people were killed when an individual got in a tower at the University of Texas, it killed people on campus. And then that's when I first real, another time that I realized that people aren't as safe as we think we are. And of course, the Manson murders, I'll tell you, that was really something you thought, Oh, my goodness, they went in and killed all these people, and there again. It was all blamed on pot, drugs, and whatnot, which ended up being true. Another thing that I thought was interesting in the 1960s was the start of superheroes, like Batman on TV. These were the first times we saw these kinds of shows on TV. Another thing was, of course, the Cuban Missile Crisis, which we talked about a little bit earlier, and the Bay of Pigs, where we sent Cubans down to attack Cuba. It did not end well. Also, the Six-Day War was fought and won by Israeli, Israel against Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. And we've had our first black present Marshal. That's it is that it is okay. Okay, everybody was talking, towards the end decision just restarted. No, yeah, yeah, you're good. And of course, the book everybody loved could wait to get their hands on. In the late 1960s, was The Godfather, which I read many times. When the Mustang came on the market, everybody wanted to have one, and I was really disappointed because I bought a Corvair. And I thought, Oh darn, I wish I would have waited and gotten a Mustang.
CD: If you could offer one piece of advice to younger generations based on your experience of the 1960s what would it be
KH: From my experience in the 1960s, I would advise young people, first of all, to communicate with each other. The number way, way to get to know someone is to communicate with them, and not through technology, person to person, visiting with them, and also to realize to listen to different opinions. It's amazing how I've changed my way of thinking by listening to what other people have to say and doing some thinking after I listen to what they have to say. this may seem like a very simple thing to say, but I really feel think about how you would feel if someone said something hurtful to you. the most important word in our vocabulary is kindness. If we are kind to people, I don't think we'll regret anything we've done if we are tied to them and take care of them. Remember, we're one human race. I need that. That. and always be proud of standing up for what you believe. Don't let people run over the top of you and say, though, no I'm right. Stand up for what you think and what you believe.
- Title:
- Interview with Kay-Hall
- Date Created:
- 2024-09-27
- Description:
- This interview dove deep into the thoughts of the educator Kay Hall. She gave her opinions on topics like Vietnam and the Civil Rights movement that changed her views on life. Kay takes account of what life was like before and after the use of technology in our everyday lives.
- Subjects:
- vietnam civil rights assassinations education entertainment
- Location:
- Coeur d Alene, ID
- Latitude:
- 47.6809583
- Longitude:
- -116.7690929
- Type:
- text
- Format:
- record
- Preferred Citation:
- "Interview with Kay-Hall", The Long 1960s - 2024 Fall, Center for Digital Inquiry and Learning (CDIL)
- Reference Link:
- /thelong1960s/items/hall.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/