Donald Davis and Paula Murphy

00:02 My name is Donald Davis. I am 46 years old today is Saturday, February 15th, 2024 in Chicago, Illinois. My interview partner is Paula Murphy. She's a good friend and she was a co-worker of mine of former teacher of co-worker of mine at Corliss high school together 20 years ago.

00:29 My name is Paula Murphy. I'm 72. Today's date is Saturday, February 15th, 2020. We are in Chicago, Illinois. I'm being interviewed by Donald Davis.

00:46 And we talked together and spent several years as the coaches of the Academic Decathlon team history teacher in a math teacher make a good team.

01:01 So funny that you had a hard time with my name because your your son and your your husband both have the name Donald and so this was kind of a match made in heaven in your birthday is October 14th day after my mom's birthday, but your son has my mom's birthday. So I always thought these things were aligned when we we first met, you know, if you felt the same way I say we both lost a parent in a plane crash and so it was a story story that we shared and you don't get to meet other people that that happened to very often very true virtue. Both are your mom and my dad were pilots and I think yeah the fact they both were killed in plane crashes. I still remember remember the professional development where we had that that that kind of Ice Breaker where we sat in a big circle and you had to say, you know move your feet are going to get out of your seat if you remember this and you did that,

02:01 You said move your feet are over if your your parents died in a plane crash with my students cuz it's so much fun to get them out and move him and I really appreciate that. One thing. One thing I asked you to come here today was I'm really curious about your background and you know, where you grew up on you mentioned your one-year-old grandson Bryson and about your what kind of stories you would want to tell him, you know, and I'm to keep those stories for the future. So I wonder if you could start by talking about your background like where you came from, you know you the town that you grew up in and some of the things you like to do if you wouldn't mind sharing some of those so I grew up in Plymouth, Illinois, which when I was growing up there as you drove into town, the sign said 800 happy people

03:01 I don't know about the rest of them know they're only eight hundred people in my hometown we moved there when I was going into.

03:12 Third grade my father grew up there, so

03:18 My sister and I spent our first you're getting our cheeks pinched so they could say oh you must be Johnny's girls because we look like our dad and

03:30 Now I think that town maybe has 400 people and a couple of my high school friends still live. There are high school had a hundred students in IT classes of about 22.

03:46 They

03:49 We will we will spend our summer outside. I spend my summer Barefoot and outside when school the Day school's out. I took off my shoes and only put them on on Sundays for the rest of the time if I could help it.

04:06 And we had a big yard. That was three lot. Everybody came to our house to play baseball.

04:12 Dumb

04:14 My parents ran a small store up on the little towns in Illinois have downtown's that are called squares because they're four sides going around. So my parents were on the Square and we had a younger brother who's five years was five years younger than me who is severely retarded and we have had him to take care of quite a bit when we got a little older because he didn't really feed himself or couldn't be left alone.

04:47 And

04:49 And then there was my sister who I'm still very close to we grew up together sort of like the little kids neighborhood couldn't tell us apart and would just call us both Paula Barbara or Barbara Paula, whatever it was. It was really a good and my mom was the kind of person who made sure we still had experiences even though it was a small town which a lot of our friends didn't so much like she put us on a bus and send this to Carthage to take swimming lessons when we were pretty small we would go on the bus take swimming lessons walk over to the dog & Suds and have a hot dog and a root beer which is what we had money for and come back and swim in the afternoon then come back. So on your about a 20-mile. Yeah when we were

05:42 Play foreign 6 she put us on a bus with a bunch of people from our town but nobody was being responsible for us and send us to a carnival now. We're like really I don't know. Nobody would ever do that now, but I mean people newest and younger brother with us a lot but not on those kind of things wouldn't cuz you couldn't be responsible for him. They said he would never walk and he didn't he always ran everywhere. You couldn't keep up with him. But yeah, we did things like

06:24 Go to a movie we went to drive-ins because if he decided to be yelling for the whole movie, it wouldn't matter. You know, you learned easy got a little bit of a thick skin because people

06:39 Look at you when that's happening, but you know, I'm happy for the kind of upbringing I had but when I got ready to go to college I said I'm going to go somewhere where nobody knows me and nobody knows my business unless I want them too. And that's how I finally ended up in Chicago is the teacher. So why did you decide to go to Iowa Wesleyan for for college? I was actually completely signed up to go to Western Illinois University, which was only 20 miles from my hometown. I had a room assignment and everything but also at the same time I had tested and applied to I Whistle and they had given me early entrance and some scholarship money and I just decided that I needed to be that much further away because my mother was

07:39 Kind of person that could do everything. So efficiently I felt like I was never completely going to grow up if I didn't get a little further away and how much farther was it away from your house only 85 miles. So now that doesn't seem like a long distance doesn't my parents would never drive 85 Mi and I was only allowed to call Long Distance once a week cuz it was a long distance call. I know I think so much about how different it was for my children to keep up with her high school friends because you know, everybody just calls up on the phone and talk on their cell phone wherever they are, but that is not how it was for us.

08:22 Yeah, did you do any extracurriculars while you are at Iowa Wesleyan any any clubs or sports or anything sorority oriented and my parents were just like we can't afford to do that. Sorry. So I did have a group of friends that did things together. But the social it was harder to get into the social life there. But I always worked like as an RA on the floor and stuff like that. So that kept me busy and we had to be in the dorm at 10. So no guys at that time and but I was I played basketball.

09:11 I played Intercollegiate basketball which was a big thing in Iowa at the time. We didn't really in Illinois, but that was when there were six people on the team and only the forwards nude back and forth and then they were like guards I wasn't aware it was and I played and I played in a Collegiate volleyball. I need a Collegiate volleyball at the time. You can hit the ball. You can set your own ball and hit it across the net for now you can only touch it once sleep one of the stories when I was a new teacher and I worked at a branch which branches are like on the third floor schools, but we had a little gym up there. So we were having a freshman again. We only had freshman in the building but freshman against the teachers volleyball game. So we were the short ways across the court right and I

10:11 The first person to serve and I serve the ball and it went across the net and into the basket on the other side and the kids were all like three points 3 points. So I had a reputation of being a volleyball player when I was a new teacher. What year did you graduate from September of 69 in October of my first year of teaching history teacher? Of course, when I ask you these History questions, we have to apologize. Did you ever see anything like anything else dealing with the students as a teacher?

11:11 I was at Kelly High School and Kelly had a large polish neighborhood. But during the time I was there they started getting a small population of black students and there was there were some difficulties first. Let me tell you a little bit about Kelly when I walked in. This is a 1969 September right hanging on the wall over the office door was the air raid rules what to do during an air raid left from World War II? Yes, so I was like, um, where am I and I got sent to a freshman Branch. They had three branches at the time. So I worked at two different branches where we had Elementary School downstairs and only freshmen upstairs and those attendance books that we used to have to

12:11 Cheap there were all these symbols and rules that you had to do that. I'd never even seen before. So I was really lucky to be part of a small school with a small faculty of 17 where I learned how to do all of those a little of the principal whose name was Donald Murphy. Not the Donald Murphy. I'm married, but my first principles name was, and he was he would call me in a few times and say this you have to be accurate with this this and this and go through again the symbols it was very difficult, but I was really lucky because my after my second year of teaching the Chicago Board of Education decided that schools could be called integrated if they integrated the faculties so a bunch of people got moved.

13:08 Teachers that why teachers that were in white schools and low seniority got moved black schools and that is how the city's divided they were very few schools that had integrated student bodies, but they integrated the faculties in this long as it was a 40-60 faculty schools were considered integrated. So I got transferred from Kelly to Crane.

13:40 And at that time the Blackstreet Rangers had been the year before the two years before that. I was reading about them in the newspaper. They had been they had been going through the school every day saying turn this place out and marching through the halls and throwing desks down staircases. And that's where I was going, but actually my experience there was wonderful.

14:09 Although many things went on during the first couple years that I had to adjust to First.

14:18 The first day I got there when I had been traveling in Europe the summer before that for 60 days and we got home two days before school started and I went over and found this cool cuz I didn't even know where it was. I was not a Chicago native and had not been in those neighborhoods and I went over to

14:41 Crane and I found it but that morning I got lost. So I just I'm running into the building running into the building cuz I'm going to be late for my first day of work and that was not the traffic with which I was raised. And so I a man stalked me out in front of the building was a huge building and I had to park quite a ways away and I was very very upset but I was polite so the man stopped me and he started telling me a story about white policeman that was beating up on a black woman and he told me this whole story which I politely student listen to and then when he finished I said, I'm sorry, but I have to get in this building and he started screaming at me. I knew you wouldn't care. I knew you would know where am I then I go in the school and they underestimated their freshman class that year. So I had a division that had

15:41 45 kids in it in a room with 28 seats. So I told them they got to sit down every other day and every other day they had to stand against the back wall. And I never ever got the whole attendance taken. Not one day. I don't think and they said

16:04 On the first day of October, they leveled all the divisions out and told us that we always had had 28 kids and we could never say we had more than that. And then I had a study hall right before division that was on the other side of the building which is a fourth of a square Block in four stories high.

16:28 So rushing to get from one of the study hall had 63 seats and 128 students and nobody told me that most of those students would sign out to be assistance to teachers within the first week. So again, I assign people a standing day in the sitting day with your they were still rioting in the lunchroom a lot. But mostly most of the gang stuff was over and I loved loved being at a car at a crane because I had been in a freshman Branch but my are my most specialized area of mathematics is geometry. So I got a program that had for geometry classes free Geometry classes and to business math, which is another story but the geometry classes I love teaching job.

17:28 And I was like, you know the difference between freshmen and sophomores is you talk to sophomores but you talk at freshman. So I enjoyed having students that actually responded to what was going on with some intelligence. It was fun. I love teaching geometry and I got

17:51 Better and better at it actually had a textbook the other was called transformational geometry and I had not been introduced to that. Mostly you don't get a geometry class in college. I had one but it was very theoretical. So what you taught in high school geometry, I knew from when I taught high school geometry, but this book was call transformational. It had all the transformational. It was just a great book and I was learning as fast as the kids faster actually luckily for me and maybe years later. I work with doctors value system from the University of Chicago on a couple of projects. One of them was we wrote a textbook that I was the field teacher.

18:41 I feel talk-to-text woke the doctor uses good was writing of the University of Chicago along with two other High School Math teachers from the city and they would

18:54 We would get together like every six weeks and he would caught you know, ask us about things and the book was coming like a chapter at a time. So you didn't really have the whole picture. You just had to fix the chapter. They said she would teach but I said to him one time when I first start CC geometry had this book that I loved. He said was it called I said transformational geometry said who is the author and I said, I don't know. I don't think I ever paid attention. He said it was me, but yes, I learned a lot from him.

19:31 Him on another project much later. Do you remember when Chicago started doing the case exams Chicago academic they were going to yet or started teaching and I was and I was part of the team that was riding the geometry question for the case exam. And dr. Youssef Ben was our Mentor overall. So I worked on that project but we wrote those whole set of tests and then they scrapped them all but maybe they got given twice they were way too hard for the kids. They didn't give the information. They thought they would give all the way wrote them within the guidelines date.

20:15 Gave us but could you tell me a little about your family how your family reacted you go into Chicago, you know where you were teaching at. Did you did you ever feel any pushback or any any, you know your parent discouragement from your family to not go this route?

20:40 About all of my life they were okay with everything my dad. However, when I the first time I left to come to Chicago he said to me promise me, you'll never drive on the Dan Ryan because some places it's 7 Lanes, right and I promised him but I did drive on the Dan Ryan a lot. I mean, my first car was a 1969 Chevy Chevelle red with a black interior. It wasn't a wonderful car the car ahead of 402.

21:24 8 Soldier it was a fast car. I used to be able to get home in 2 hours and it's really a good 3 hour dry about your mom send you off, you know with your sister to to go to the swim classes over the summer makes me realize yeah, they they really do know had a lot of faith that you were going to be safe, you know, when and allowed different than what we were able to do with our kids are sure I can because it's very odd eye.

22:05 I think I am my mother's daughter as you know, my mother was a World War II airline pilot, which there only a thousand women that were part of that group The wasps and so she pushed us to be independent and

22:23 In a way, she was a feminist although she came home.

22:27 Just worked raised us didn't you know regular follow-up with the WASP friends, but

22:40 She

22:42 When I went to college I was thinking maybe I would be a dietitian probably cuz they're going to push me about my weight all the time, which is still a big problem. But she I thought I would be a dietitian and there it has a lot of math and I was thinking about being a dietitian the hospital but I did take a Calculus class and the first Calculus class. I took was taught by a man who looked at me and said women cannot be math Majors. This is a 1969 fleas. My mom was an airline pilot. I can be a math major if I want to so I completely changed my mind and majored in math, but I did have to get out of his calculus group.

23:30 And I took my algebra. I took the linear algebra out of order and took differential equations and third semester calculus the same semester of my I went to a different teacher who thought maybe women could be math majors and that is how I started the major to talk a little bit more about your mom and you know, you know like the stories that I think we really fascinating about her experiences, especially becoming a pilot and so she grew up on a farm outside of Carthage Illinois, which is close to Plymouth and it's where we lived until I went into third grade and we moved to Plymouth where my dad grew up but my mom when she was 18, she

24:25 She went to

24:28 Business college in Quincy, Illinois Gem City, and then she went out to the airport and just signed up for and got her pilot's license and after she got her license they sent out a call for women who already had pilot's license to try to become.

24:52 Wasps women Air Service Pilots, they were called they were

24:59 A civil attachment to the Air Force they were not actually they did not receive military recognition until 1975 or 1979. So she does have a military headstone Air Force and they did the gun salute and gave us the flag and stuff at her, but she

25:32 Came to Chicago to take the test. That's where she had to come to be a wasp. And this is I kind of told you but this was one of our lessons about perseverance. She said she came and she said they tested him on all different subjects. It was all day and you know some things you knew something about and some things you didn't but we like maybe 500 women in the auditorium when they started and after the first hour maybe a hundred had walked up and left and she's like, but if every time you came across an area that you didn't know much about, you know, if you left it might be something coming out that you knew something about stuff the way to do it. So she said by the lunch like half the women were gone and they came back in and by the end of the day only 15 women were still there, but I think they all passed and made it and that's how she became part of the watch. She was one of the very thing they trained in Sweetwater.

26:32 Deep heat down in the desert. They had a few minutes doctors, but it was mostly women and they reacted with each other. I've got a couple of books about the history of them in general and mom's name is on everything and

26:56 Jacqueline Cochran was the person who was the woman pilot who went to the government the Senate and got them to open this group along with a male pilot whose name I do not recall on the 1970s when they when they tried to push them to recognize with their established the WASP as a group one time when I was in eighth grade refreshment because I always read the whole literature book the first two weeks and then I came home and I said to my story and I told her about the story and she said who wrote it and I said Jacqueline Cochran and she said well, that was my commander when I was in the Watts and I was like, okay, that's good.

27:56 But yeah, that was who started it and I've seen some things since then big they actually closed them in 1945. So my mom was only actually an active-duty for about a year and she went to Independence Missouri what the women did the women who were washed some of them the earlier ones did some tests flights and flu.

28:25 What do you call like Charter airplanes over to foreign countries and but a lot of them worked as instructors for the young guys that were coming into the air force open? So that's what country was dependent the Missouri the year that she did work. Her class was W-4, which was one of the last class is Thor or w44 there like only 45 or 46 classes. So did she do much flying after the war or you know, you said she didn't answer he's like 46 so they had a business on the square.

29:25 And so she sold the store and started working again as an instructor a pilot and instructor at the Macomb airport. They have they had last time I was there a plaque in her name. She must have did Charter and instructing and the maybe the last year she moved from Macomb airport to Quincy Airport, which was a little bit bigger airport, and she was flying out of Quincy when she crashed in Rocky Mount.

30:03 Sorry, okay, I think that's right. Okay, so she was alone on the customer. She was going to pick up a client and

30:17 Got it was flying into some really bad weather and fog and she came down once and didn't get Visual and that's the way it worked them. They didn't have those kind of instruments in a second time. She came down. She was too low and hit the ground we never

30:36 Really saw they and they gave us her wedding ring. She had just remarried before this happened about from February to November and she was like flat. I was just a flat piece of metal. So we're pretty sure we didn't want to see her that was harder at that point when your

31:12 Was not either 9 when you're my dad's plane crash and he was with another instructor and they they were actually doing routine kind of Dives and they were you know, he wanted to be able to teach others to be that so and they didn't pull out in time and they crashed and and so it just a matter of that was it wasn't even their fault because they what they didn't consider was the weight of the man in the plane and the FAA later ruled that it was not pilot error. It was a matter of the calculations were not accurate. So you mentioned Matthew know that it they didn't know this at the time and this happened to another group of men a couple years later and then the FAA realized that this was an issue that when they need to calculate, you know, doing a dive and coming out of a dive need to have the weight of the man who are flying or the people so that's why you know, so around the same time.

32:14 If you don't mind, I've never heard the story so I'm kind of curious so I know well.

32:20 So

32:23 I had a friend that I worked at summer program with and she was working for Midwest Community Council this which was near

32:35 Crane and what's that other school right over there on Kedzie on the westside Marshall Marshall doing a summer program. That was at Marshall, but I'll 1 South Kedzie where they employed students and work with was there and she worked in that program and I worked kind of for her and she quit Midwest Community Council and took a job as a bartender at a little place on Pulaski and 122nd Street.

33:16 And my husband live near there and so on my birthday another friend and I was dating a guy who left town on my birthday. So another girlfriend and I went this was my 25th birthday. We went to this bar. And when I walked in my husband said, hey miss lady, which I don't like what what kind of thing is that to say to somebody but we danced and spent the evening together and

33:49 Started seeing each other. And before I knew it he was living with me my sister the very first night we stayed out really really late and my sister was already living with me. She came up here to teach two years after me. She's two years younger. Okay, so we had an apartment together. Yes. I will tell you the story about why I know where Math teachers now, but I'll finish it real quickly. So Donald and I live together for quite a few years and then we got married. We live together for like 9 years. We got married in 1980 right after my mom and dad were both dead and not because

34:37 My has my mother said to me I told you to find somebody tall dark and handsome but I wasn't thinking that dark I was going to ask you but he came home with me a few times and stayed down there but there actually is a law on the books in Plymouth that a black person cannot spend the night in town. Nobody was enforcing it at the time, but I do know that it was still on the books at that time. It was different. I mean things happened. I don't know.

35:14 I think now I would think about everything differently that background and cultural differences can be difficult to overcome.

35:24 But I didn't feel like that at the time and

35:31 I mean, we we've now been married for forty years and live together all before the year's this year and we've been together for eight years before that why I feel like that it's going to last. Yeah, you would think he would think but very different to know and I feel like mostly he does not know what's on my mind cuz I don't tell him because he thinks we're so in sync on everything but we raced two kids together and they both turned out great. And now I have a grandchild so it's all worth it and

36:15 We we accomplished a lot. I think with through our marriage having the kids and he was always supportive of what I wanted to do. So I would do professional development. I did, you know ran summer programs. Like I ran a summer program on the campus of Chicago State for fermilab where we had math. I was the math coordinator, but we had math physics chemistry and biology teachers 15 of each every summer. We did these big planetary sessions. That's why I learned a lot about Big Bang Theory for real. They have speakers that came from all those Aries current what was currently happening in the education they are so

37:08 So is there anything you really miss about not being a teacher and being retired from teaching the kids the kids got out of the classroom to work with adults.

37:23 I was like

37:25 No.

37:27 Kids pushing back on you that's their job. That's how they came to do. But adults that, you know just won't cooperate and are just lazy. I didn't like it but later I went back and work with adults and did like it. So I like the kids and I actually miss figuring out math problems before. Well. That's what you you're passing the I like it when I teach history, I love history and that's why I am asking somebody about your how you your history coincides with other history. But yeah, I agree. I think I am I going to be 20 years this December, you know, and I consider I probably missed that I would miss that, you know, and my principal says you really value relationship with students, don't you but I do you know what I love my content to I love the history. So and I think there's a lot of emphasis about, you know, teaching reading and writing which is important but also then knowing

38:27 History is important to that's why I'm hoping that you will come to my class and show that story about where were you know that you were exchanged a lot of who got into programs and things and was able to make the change. I freaked when I was coaching and talking to Young teachers. I was in in 19.

38:58 80

39:01 They put out the principles for math standards for National Council of Math teachers put out the set of principles and they said math teaching is not just content. It's reading communication reasoning.

39:20 And one other thing which doesn't come to the rightful problem-solving. So, you know, these are the things that are important not just these isolated skills that we teach separate you need these mask kills to be able to use them to do these things. And at first we were all like we can't teach reading we're not teaching reading but the more I learned about what was actually being said what became my passion was teaching mathematics in a problem solving way introducing here's this problem we want to solve now. What do we need to be able to do to solve it and working through? Oh, here's a Content. We need some information on and then teaching a skill because we were going to use it to do something and it's particularly why I love teaching geometry through my career more and more. Yes lot of places to use geometry in real situations.

40:21 And then I

40:24 Started working with just buy lock when I went to when I first went to Corliss the teacher who had been working on a project down at the board with Doctor Dorothy strong.

40:40 Left the school. And so the principal had asked me what this was the second year I was there because the first year when I arrived she called me in the office. This is dr. Edith Sims. She called me in the office and she said she like the way I was dressed I had she was a very

40:59 Very stressed more suits and you know, and I had we have become more and more casual and I wore slacks and tops. I remember the outfit I had on that day and I said to her my this is what my wardrobe looks like and I just came off of maternity leave so I can not afford its symmetry really was not paid for us then so I cannot afford to change my wardrobe with as I start changing it. I will keep in mind what you're saying. And then she said to me well something about our children need this and I said to her well, they'll be my children to and

41:48 I know I'm good at my job. And when I've been here for a while, I think you'll know. I'm good at my job also, and so the next year she introduced me to everybody by saying she told me she was good at your job and she is nice because I came off of my maternity leave with Norma. And so it was in the middle of a school year when I arrive so we're almost out of time. I just want to say thank you so much. I mean I really learned a lot about you. I know there was a lot you really are like a second mom to me and I really love you and I appreciate the fact that you know, you always keep this in mind for the spaghetti dinners every year and and just buy Girl Scout cookies for my daughter cuz you are former Girl Scouts and a lead Girl Scout leader. So thank you. Thank you. This is really been great. I love spending time with you again. Almost like our former lunch hour together Everyday Will you suspend lunch hours?

42:48 I need a shower for for my oldest child. Yes, and I love your children. I enjoyed seeing them recently and letting them catch me up on their lives. They are interesting and awesome. Just like you and your wife and your mom and I love all of your family and I love you. Thank you.