Josiah Johnson and Jeanine Hewitt

[00:00] JOSIAH JOHNSON: All right. All right. My name is Josiah Johnson. I am 26 years old. Today's date is May 6, 2023. I'm in Logan, Utah. The name of my interview partner is Jeanine Hewitt, and she's my grandma.

[00:19] JEANINE HEWITT: And I'm Jeanine Hewitt. I'm 85. Today is May 6, 2023, Logan, Utah, and Josiah Johnson's grandmother.

[00:36] JOSIAH JOHNSON: All right. Well, let's start off, and I guess the first question I want to ask is, can you tell me about growing up in France before you moved to Africa?

[00:47] JEANINE HEWITT: Well, I grew up in basically Saint Victoria in 1938. It was basically about three years after the war had started and was pretty much raised by my grandmothers paternal and maternal and basically had a happy life. I was very nurtured. My mother was very young, so I really have very little relationship with her. It was mostly my grandmothers who took care of me.

[01:25] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, because your grandparents were in their thirties when you were born, right?

[01:27] JEANINE HEWITT: Right. They were very young. My grandmother was 37, and everybody thought she was my mother. In fact, I thought she was my mother, too.

[01:38] JOSIAH JOHNSON: She pretty much was, though.

[01:39] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, that's true.

[01:42] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Now, how old were you when you went to Africa, when you moved to Morocco?

[01:45] JEANINE HEWITT: Well, I was between three and a half and four. And I remember that my grandparents came with us to Marseilles, and we were to go and take a ship because my father was going in the war to Italy. He had been assigned there. My grandmother wanted us to really leave because of the Germans were so close to Saint Victorie. And I remember looking at this big old ship, and it was just terrific.

[02:27] JOSIAH JOHNSON: It was larger than life.

[02:30] JEANINE HEWITT: It was larger than life, but it was also very scary. I couldn't figure out going onto this big thing. I mean, for me, it was just like, I know I was crying a lot, and my grandmother kept trying to.

[02:44] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Reassure me because that was going to be the last time you'd see them for a while.

[02:49] JEANINE HEWITT: And then we had a reprieve for about a week because they took our tickets away and gave them to another family that really needed to go, priority. And I realized it had to be a miracle because a few days later, they announced that the ship that had gone to see was actually exploded on the german mine.

[03:16] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Now, that story always gives me chills. I love that, because if you had been on that boat, you wouldn't be here today.

[03:22] JEANINE HEWITT: That's right.

[03:23] JOSIAH JOHNSON: So by giving the ticket to somebody that needed it more, a family that needed it more, it actually ended up saving your guys life.

[03:31] JEANINE HEWITT: That's right.

[03:32] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Crazy.

[03:33] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. And I always remember that it stayed with me. My mother kept talking about it also. She was young. She had two kids. I mean, my brother was only like 19 months old.

[03:48] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[03:49] JEANINE HEWITT: And I realized now how hard it was for her to be shipped out to a country she didn't know. It was a colony. And it was called at the time Poliori. And after I left the place, it was renamed as Kanetra because it was under a colonized protector. And the American, at that time, when we arrived in Morocco, were trying to establish some of the base out there. So they were fighting with the Muslim and we were fighting the Germans on the other side. And so it was really a horrible theater because we ended up in marine barracks, military barracks. And I remember my brother and I looking at the airplane going overhead and all those shells from the guns just falling off the sky.

[05:05] JOSIAH JOHNSON: That's crazy.

[05:06] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. Wow.

[05:08] JOSIAH JOHNSON: So you were in the act.

[05:09] JEANINE HEWITT: We were a kid, and it was fun for us because we thought, wow, this is great. We'd go out there and pick them up and play with them.

[05:16] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Hot shells, loud explosions. Now, you did say that your brother was only about 19 months when you were about three and a half or so.

[05:25] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[05:25] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Now, I remember you telling me that you did raise him for a good amount of time.

[05:30] JEANINE HEWITT: I did. As I said, my mother was very young and she wasn't very maternal. So her point was, all of a sudden her husband wasn't there. And so it was like, way, I'm going to have a good life. You know, we were in those barracks for almost three or four years. We lived in there and adjacent to that where trenches, where the American were fighting. So they weren't very far from where we lived. And the sad part of it is, you know, at night, it was scary because they would come and knock on the door, they would be drunk and they were just, you know, thinking they were going to do hoopla, you know, and my mother was all alone with two kids. So I remember that because it was scary for me. I could hear all those shouting and, you know, if you never seen an american drunk, it's going to scare you with you little girl.

[06:40] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, it is.

[06:41] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[06:42] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay. Well, going back to, I guess, your brother. How was it that you raised him in Africa, though?

[06:54] JEANINE HEWITT: Well, my mother saw a real life because, you know, my mother was 18 when she had me, so for her it was the beginning of life, freedom. Also from a husband. I used to lock her up, you know, and so I remember my grandmother used to have to crawl through one of the windows because in France you locked the doors from the outside, and she couldn't get in. And so that was the kind of life between her and her husband. It's very possessive, and it was a mess. I guess me, I didn't really pay too much attention or remember much things from it other than the things that she sold me. So she made a lot of friends in Morocco, so she would play tennis and go bike riding, things that she never did when she was young. And, yeah, I was the babysitter. I was the mother. I had to watch for him all the time. She was very, very strict. We had a fatima. But at night, when she would go out with her friends, the fatima had a boyfriend. And that I remember very well. So being the fatima was there, I felt secure. I'd go to sleep, and then I would wake up in the middle of the night scared because she was not there anymore. And so I remember hopping out of the windows and going to some of the other chalets that were next to us and calling the neighbors because I was scared to death. My brother, he was young, three years younger than me, and so he sound asleep, you know, but I was frightened of the dark. And I think it's why, until I was 15, I slept with the COVID over my head all the time.

[09:13] JOSIAH JOHNSON: That makes sense.

[09:14] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[09:15] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Can you define what a Fatima is now? What's a Fatima?

[09:20] JEANINE HEWITT: Grandma Fatima is imracan woman. And they're all called Fatima.

[09:27] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Kind of like a.

[09:28] JEANINE HEWITT: Like if you uncalled. Well, not so much. A Fatima is a lady.

[09:35] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[09:35] JEANINE HEWITT: You call a woman a lady. The fatima is. That's what it is.

[09:41] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[09:42] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[09:42] JOSIAH JOHNSON: And so she'd watch you, but then she'd leave, and your mom would be out.

[09:46] JEANINE HEWITT: She would leave with her boyfriend. And, you know, when you're four or five, what do you do?

[09:54] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Go to the neighbor's chalets.

[09:56] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, exactly.

[09:59] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Well, I remember you telling me that there was this one place where you lived in France, and it had, like, a square in the very middle of it with a fountain. And can you tell me more about that place?

[10:11] JEANINE HEWITT: Well, the San Victoria was a little village with, like, one coffee shop and.

[10:21] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Which also doubled as a tobacco, right?

[10:23] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, that's right. I. And you've been to France, so you understand that. And the way the village was constructed is the middle of it represented the middle of the village itself, the heart. It was a very small community, and so everybody gathered around this fountain. The place was a big concrete floor in the air with no, you know, it's just an opening space, and there we have dances and, you know, when the holidays would be, we'd have dances, so they would have contests. They would have all kinds of things going on. And then the coffee shop, and then there would be a small, dirty place that was open for La Petonc, which is something that french people do. They play Les Boule.

[11:32] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Now, what's that?

[11:33] JEANINE HEWITT: Okay. Do you remember those metal, round balls? And then they throw those balls to a spot that has another big ball, and you have to hit this ball.

[11:46] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Oh, yeah. Like that.

[11:47] JEANINE HEWITT: And it's called le Boule. Le Boule or la Pitanken.

[11:50] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay. Le Petonc. Okay. Good to know.

[11:53] JEANINE HEWITT: I have played bocce before, and that was not too far from where my grandmother's house was.

[12:00] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. I remember you telling me that the window of where you slept opened up onto that square.

[12:05] JEANINE HEWITT: Right, it did. And when they had the dance, my cousin, who was much older than me, by about four years, she would holler at me from the other because both houses were kind of like a corner, and we could see each other from window to window. So she would say, tie your sheets and crawl out. Because if I'd go down the stairs, my grandfather would hear me, and I was, what? 1213? You know, what do you do at 13 when you hear the music and everything is. You hear all the smile and. I mean, the scream and the people talking and laughing. And so we would go there. My grandmother would wake up in the middle of the night, and she knew where we were, and she'd be chasing us back up to the room. We'd get in trouble.

[13:07] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Not too much, though, because she was grandma, right? She was grandma.

[13:11] JEANINE HEWITT: Oh, yeah.

[13:12] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Now, your grandparents, both maternal and paternal, they were very important to you.

[13:17] JEANINE HEWITT: Oh, yes, they were.

[13:18] JOSIAH JOHNSON: They were like caretakers parents. They were everything to you. Now, do you have a favorite grandparent?

[13:27] JEANINE HEWITT: They were both my favorite, actually. They were both very important to me because they were very caring. My paternal grandmother, when we had those big family dinner, I remember she would actually cook chicken, and I'd love to get into the platter with the chicken and get to the grease and put. And wash my hands and my. You know how kids.

[14:06] JOSIAH JOHNSON: And the grease.

[14:07] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. And then just rub it all over my arms. And my grandmothers would say, go ahead, do it. Makes your skin good.

[14:15] JOSIAH JOHNSON: I mean. Yeah. Moisturize.

[14:18] JEANINE HEWITT: Direct moisturizer. Olive oil.

[14:20] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Nice.

[14:21] JEANINE HEWITT: You know, and my mother would have a fit. My grandmother would say to her, just leave her alone.

[14:28] JOSIAH JOHNSON: She's a child.

[14:29] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. So I was very, what you call in France, Gatte, which is spoiled.

[14:37] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[14:37] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[14:38] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. It seems like you were and you guys weren't rich, but rich in history.

[14:42] JEANINE HEWITT: No, we were comfortable, but not never been rich. My grandparents were very hard workers.

[14:49] JOSIAH JOHNSON: They were farmers.

[14:50] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, yeah, yeah. My grandmother would ride her bicycle to the next village. She would go and work with the farmers, getting potato out of the ground, grapes when it was the time.

[15:03] JOSIAH JOHNSON: All day long.

[15:04] JEANINE HEWITT: All day long.

[15:05] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Wow.

[15:06] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[15:07] JOSIAH JOHNSON: And so what would you do on a normal morning, waking up in San Victoria?

[15:11] JEANINE HEWITT: Well, it would depend if it was cool, you know, I would have to ride my bicycle to the train station, which was the equivalent of going from my house down to downtown Logan.

[15:27] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[15:27] JEANINE HEWITT: But there were a couple miles. Big hill to climb.

[15:30] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[15:30] JEANINE HEWITT: And that would be when I was in high school. I had to go and take the train to go to Marseille, actually.

[15:39] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay, so your high school was in Marseille? In San Victorier. How far away from Marseille is that?

[15:44] JEANINE HEWITT: About 32 km.

[15:46] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay, so a good amount away.

[15:48] JEANINE HEWITT: Oh, yeah.

[15:49] JOSIAH JOHNSON: But San Victorier was the small mountain town, and then Marseilles was the little village.

[15:53] JEANINE HEWITT: It was a little village, yeah. And my father was born in San Victoria. My mother was born in Marignan, which was a bicycle ride. So those two village were kind of like interconnected with this big old boulevard that wasn't very big. And that's how they met.

[16:14] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, yeah. Well, and so when you guys went back recently, what was it, like, 2017, like five or six years ago? It was a lot different than when you were there last, which was in.

[16:26] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, it was 2016, actually.

[16:29] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. And so from the early nineties to 2016, I mean, how different was it?

[16:34] JEANINE HEWITT: Oh, it was 100% difference.

[16:37] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Was it a shock?

[16:38] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, it was a shock because my grandmother's house was not there anymore, and my grandfather had died, and a big garden that he used to farm, basically, which fed the whole family. And it was basically, everything was sold. So those houses were renovated, rebuilt for the time that it was more modern because the house was very simple. There was never any port au party or anything like that. I mean, wow. Yeah. And no frigidaire, no tv. It was very simple and very common. As you see in the olden days, you know, in the movies, we didn't have much in there.

[17:37] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Well, yeah, you'd have to go to the market every morning, but we did.

[17:40] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. My grandmother, to fix breakfast, would go to the boulangerie. She would get a baguette, she would get butter and kept all that in a cupboard. So every day you went to the butcher and they were all around. I mean, it was very. It was a small community.

[18:03] JOSIAH JOHNSON: You knew where to go. Yeah. It's just that you had to go out and get it.

[18:06] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. It's like going across from your house to your garden.

[18:11] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[18:11] JEANINE HEWITT: You know, it's right there, which is.

[18:13] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Nice, but, yeah, if you're not used to that, it's a little bit weird.

[18:16] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[18:17] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Especially somebody in the modern times. Now, when I went to Paris last, and this was without you, they were doing a lot of modernizing of the old, like apartments and buildings and stuff. Now, was that happening in San Victor? A. Because the ones in Paris had bathrooms?

[18:34] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. Well, no, because when I came back to France in 1959, and that was just a few months before I immigrated to the state, they still didn't have any bathroom.

[18:54] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Really?

[18:55] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, but they still. But they had television and they had a fridge there, which was something that was unknown. However, when I went back with my husband back in 1982, at that point, he had bought a frigidaire from Canada and paid a lot of money for it. So they still didn't have many houses, didn't have refrigeration like we have here.

[19:30] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Wow. And so he couldn't just get her fridge in France. He had to order it.

[19:34] JEANINE HEWITT: No, your fridge was the cool air that you got out of the window, basically. Yeah. She used to make, during the winter gets. It's a little bit like California temperature. It's very mild in the winter. It was a mild winter. And so if she made something that needed refrigeration, she'd put it outside on a window. Yeah.

[20:03] JOSIAH JOHNSON: And I noticed that you carried that into your adult life as well. Because I'll walk out sometimes into the garage and there will be a casu lay from yesterday sitting out on one of the steps. And it's cold enough, so, I mean, it works. And I eat it the next day and I'm totally fine.

[20:20] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, you carry your old ways. My shock when I came to America was actually the way people are so spoiled and the availabilities of things even now.

[20:35] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. It's not changed in that way.

[20:38] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. I remember I came through New York. I remember getting in the elevator. I didn't had no idea that you had to push what an elevator even was. I'd never been in an elevator in my whole life, and I was 21 and never driven a car other than a bicycle. And I got in this elevator and I kept pushing button, and I kept going up and down and up and down, and finally got back to the lobby for the third time, and I decided to climb the stairs, and it was like climbing Mont Saint Michel, same thing. That many.

[21:22] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[21:23] JEANINE HEWITT: Steps. Yeah.

[21:24] JOSIAH JOHNSON: No, Mont St. Michel. For those that don't know what it is, it is an abbey in France and it is gigantic. Like, it's basically just on a hill and all of it is stairs. So. And water around water around the island and just a giant mountain of hills. An island of hills. But. So going back to, I guess, let's go back to Africa. Now, when you lived in Morocco, you said that what was the town called?

[21:53] JEANINE HEWITT: It was called Porliote because it was the colony and it had a french name. The French renamed it and it was actually, the real name was Qunitre.

[22:10] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Quinitre.

[22:11] JEANINE HEWITT: Right. And they renamed it Pourlori. So when there was the revolution and they finally, in 1950, 1956, started to kick the French out of the colony, they basically put the name back on.

[22:29] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Because that was basically the reason why you went to Morocco is because it was under french rule.

[22:33] JEANINE HEWITT: It was under french colony. Yeah.

[22:36] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Now, how far away from Casablanca is the place that you stayed?

[22:42] JEANINE HEWITT: It was basically a train ride.

[22:44] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[22:46] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. Rabat was actually the closest to Kenetra.

[22:52] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[22:53] JEANINE HEWITT: Then you have Rabat and then Casablanca.

[22:56] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[22:57] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[22:59] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Well, let me see here. How much time do we have? Oh, wow.

[23:07] JEANINE HEWITT: So, you know, my father came back from the war in 47, I believe. And I think I was about six, seven, something like that. Probably a little bit younger than that. And I remember him hopping the train because those barracks were facing basically the train station. And he came and he had a duffel bag over his shoulder. And he came into the house and my mother was playing tennis and he wanted to know where she was. And I told him I didn't know because I didn't. She was with friends, so he stayed in the house until she came back. Yes. I'm curious how you describe it being difficult, obviously, moving to Morocco after growing up in this beautiful part of France. Can you describe, like, what that feeling was when you were there and how long you were there? Well, the feeling was. You mean how long I was in France? In Morocco. I was in Morocco until the age of about ten, when is because of what was going on in Morocco with my mother and us kids being out on the street, basically, you know, my mother was gone constantly. She was also working for a winery as a secretary, and so. And she had met a friend, a female, who had a little kiosk and was selling newspaper. So when she'd get off work, this is where she would end up all the time just hanging out with her, just hanging out. And she wouldn't come home until really late. And so you're going to ask, well, what did you guys do? Well, we had no food, so the neighbors used to feed my brother and I. And so at that point, it was. What kind of life was it? It was a hard life for me because I became seven years old, a woman, so to speak. I was a mother to him because he was three years younger than me. And I fought the battle that he was fighting with kids at school and stuff like that.

[26:07] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Not just taking care of him and.

[26:08] JEANINE HEWITT: Just took care of him from the barracks. We actually moved into a hotel, you know, because when my father came back from the war, she decided to divorce him. So he ended up going to Africa, northern Africa, and that point. In a Sudan.

[26:30] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Sudan.

[26:31] JEANINE HEWITT: To the Sudan, right. And went actually to Dakar.

[26:36] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[26:37] JEANINE HEWITT: And so I was all alone with my brother. Basically. My mother took care of what needed to take care of, like school and stuff like that. But other than that, most of daily life, if we went in school and we both. He was going to the father's school and I was going to the sister's school, and without the in between time of all this, we were out on the street, basically, living in this hotel. This hotel had a lounge, and there was a beautiful moroccan lady that ran the lounge, and she would set us up there and she would feed us and everything. She'd set us up in a little corner, but, you know, it was a lot of going in and out, beautiful ladies and men and stuff like that. And as a kid, you know, you learn things that you shouldn't be learning for your age. My brother was a little bit insulated because he was younger and didn't have what was going on. I was protected by him. I knew what was going on, and I was at risk. And she was my protector, so to speak, but she was like a call girl.

[28:04] JOSIAH JOHNSON: How were your grandparents through this?

[28:05] JEANINE HEWITT: My grandparents were in France, both maternal and paternal. My paternal parents couldn't do anything about. My mother had left. She had no contact with them. But my maternal grandmother was writing letters all the time to my mother, and I knew that because I found the letters later on, and she was concerned. She would send packages like toys and food and things. So she was really still caring, even though she was so far away. And she finally, and I don't know how, found out that we were out on the street 24/7 basically, and when we weren't, she would lock us up in this one room that we had that we lived in. Yeah. Like on weekends, she wanted to go with her friends. And so she would lock us up, and there was a little window over the top of the door, and we had no way to get out of that room until she'd let us out. Sometimes she would come in, let us out to go to the bathroom, but there are times where she wouldn't come in at all. And so my brother would actually climb on my shoulder, and then I would hoist him to the window, and then he would go out, but he couldn't get back in. So we'd get in trouble because he'd be out, and I'd be in, you know. So anyway, that was that kind of a life. And my grandmother found out about it. And one day we were out on the street, and that time I was nine and a half or ten, almost ten, and she found both of us on the street. And what we were doing, we were roller skating, and, you know, we were on the street, period. That's it. Just like a kid on the street, of course, nowhere else to go. So passing the time, we were constantly I remember one time I bicycled all the way to the kiosk, which was downtown. It would have been like coming from my house, going down Logan.

[30:33] JOSIAH JOHNSON: So a couple miles, yeah.

[30:35] JEANINE HEWITT: And I bicycled to the kiosk, and she got really mad at me for being there. And so anyway, we were playing, and we would go from the train station. It was kind of like a big downhill street. We'd go from the train station on the skate. And mind you, the skate weren't what they are today. They were big old metal skates. And I can confirm that because of my knee.

[31:10] JOSIAH JOHNSON: You biffed it.

[31:11] JEANINE HEWITT: And we would come down, like, 100 miles down that road, you know? And here's my grandmother in front of the hotel, and I recognized her. She yelled out my name, and she said, where is your mother? And I said, I don't know. And so she said, well, what are you doing? And I said, we're playing. Well, who's looking after you? I don't know. Nobody. And so she came into the room, of course, and she saw how we lived. We had one big bede. My mother slept in that bed, my brother and I. And she also if she had a friend, she would bring the friend, and she would use the bed with us in the bed. So you get the picture.

[32:10] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Gross.

[32:11] JEANINE HEWITT: Yes. So she got really upset.

[32:15] JOSIAH JOHNSON: I would, too.

[32:16] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[32:17] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Took you back to France.

[32:19] JEANINE HEWITT: She went back to France and told my mother, she said, I'm taking those kids with me. And she brought both my brother and I back.

[32:30] JOSIAH JOHNSON: And then that's where you stayed.

[32:31] JEANINE HEWITT: I was eleven by then, and I swear we stayed there until my father came from Sudan and I was almost 17. And then again, I was scared of my father because I didn't know my father. To me, he was just a man.

[32:50] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Just a man. Yeah.

[32:52] JEANINE HEWITT: And, you know, we were both raised without him, and I didn't like the way he looked at me, and I've told you that before. And he would take me to Marseilles and buy me clothes and suits and, you know, things that I've never had. And I thought that was pretty cool. But then I realized that that wasn't the intention. That wasn't a father intention. It was other than that. And I was glad he was married. And I told Rene, his wife, that I was not comfortable with the way he was looking at me. And so anyway, without going into a lot of details, he told my grandmother, my paternal grandmother, I'm in charge of her, and I'm taking her back to Sudan. And I didn't want to go. I cried my eyes out. And I remember the trip in a boat. We went through the canary island, and he was introducing me as his friend, and that was really bad. He had left his wife. Rene had stayed in France because she didn't want to go back to Africa. And so here I was, just him and I up there. And I used to lock myself up in my bedroom because at night he would get drunk, drink a lot of wine, and then he would knock on my door and he'd ask me to open up. I'm your father. I wouldn't answer him. I would just not answer his knock. And then the next morning, he acted like nothing had happened. So I ended up writing to my grandmother, my maternal grandmother, because I knew my paternal grandfather. She was illiterate, so she couldn't be of help to me and told her what was going on. And so she notified Rene, his wife. And then there comes Renee, you know, and she asked me, what's going on? And I said, this is what's going on, and I want to go home. So he wouldn't let me go. Then I got really sick, I got malaria, and the doctor said I needed to go back to france because the climate wasn't any good for me. I was losing weight, and I almost died. I ended up being shipped back to my mother, to Morocco, because it was the only place I could go. My grandparents were working. They were getting old. I was going to be 18, and I weighed 39 pounds.

[35:57] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Wow.

[35:59] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. Could hardly walk from the airplane, and you're like 5ft.

[36:03] JOSIAH JOHNSON: So 39 pounds because of malaria.

[36:07] JEANINE HEWITT: Pretty bad. I was skin and bones. Yeah. So my mother was really upset with him for what had been going on, and so. But she had a friend she was living with and she also had a child, and that was Jean Luc. And Jean Luc was about three years old at the time.

[36:34] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[36:35] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. So I ended up being the babysitter. And then I remember asking that I wanted to go and have a job. And so she was really upset because nobody was going to check on Jean Root, was going to help him out. I ended up going to get a job. I had a job with the french police as a secretary, typing.

[37:06] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Working on the base. Right.

[37:08] JEANINE HEWITT: Not on the base yet.

[37:09] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Not yet. Okay, so you worked for the police force before?

[37:13] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[37:13] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[37:14] JEANINE HEWITT: Exactly. After. I. I mean, she was horrible to me. She was beating me up. She was directing my life. And, you know, I was 18 years old and I was like a three year old.

[37:28] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. But an adult.

[37:30] JEANINE HEWITT: I had five minutes to get from here to there. And so it was a very difficult life. And one day I got really, really depressed. I took a whole bunch of pills. And that night she told me afterwards, you know, that she had had a dream that I was under a rock in a, like a water place, like a yemenite in a river somewhere, under a rock. And she ended up saving my life, basically.

[38:09] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Your mother?

[38:10] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah, because she came home on her bicycle, and it was just. It was horrible. So anyway, the french police wanted to know why I did that, because he had gotten. He was, my boss, was an older mandeh, and he had children, and he wondered why I did something like that, you know, being 18. And so I told him. I told him what was going on, and he said, well, I'm going to talk to her. So he did. She was pretty good for a while. And so I quit my job because I ended up getting a job on the base, which I really wanted to be on the base to begin with. The base was several miles. It was like going from here to Ogden. So you had to catch the bus to go to the base as a civilian. I got a job on a flight line as a secretary. And again, you know, I'd go home, the same thing would happen. She was brutal. And so one day my boss noticed that I had a bump on my head, and he said to me, what's going on? You know, because I was the only one up there. Marie worked for the dental office up there on the friend Marie?

[39:49] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[39:49] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. And I worked on the flight line, ground in flight safety. And so I told him what was happening, and I told him I was. By then I was like, what, 20? And I told him I was planning to run out of home, but I didn't know where to go. And so he told me. He said he had, you know, wife and children, and I babysitted it for him a couple of times. And he told me, he says, I will help you find a place. And one morning I left with the clothes on my. On my back, basically, and I had a ride, you know, because they were picking me up to go to the base. And so he picked me up. It was six in the morning, and I left with nothing, just what I had on my hip. And he found me a place, and then he found me a place to temporary to be with some people. And after that, I heard she came to the base several times, trying to get me to come back home because my paycheck was helping her and I didn't want to go back. So she took my passport away, took it down to the embassy, and told them not to give it to me until I was 21. So I worked for the base for three and a half years, basically. And 59, they kicked the French and they kicked the American out, too. So because the bays were closing, I had already done my papers, but there was a mistake I had made on a date when I was up in Sudan. And so they told me to get those papers back to France and start all over, so I had to wait. And. And France? Oh, about eight months. It's a long time since 1960. Yeah, 1960 is when I immigrated.

[42:20] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Okay.

[42:21] JEANINE HEWITT: In October.

[42:22] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Well, we have to wrap it up now, but I have one last question. So basically, as, like, probably my closest. Not just grandparent, but probably one of the closest people to me in my life. I want to know how have the experiences with your grandparents affected how you were a grandparent to me?

[42:43] JEANINE HEWITT: A lot. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because, you know, you. If you live a hard life like I have had, basically, and I don't. I'm nothing. I'm not ungrateful. I'm actually very grateful that I've had a hard life because I probably learned things that I wouldn't have learned otherwise. And, yeah, it teaches you how to treat people. It teaches you how to love your own children and how to take care of your children. And one thing that I've always done is care not to be like my mother and not to do the things my mother did. So I did support all my children, probably too much. And the same with my grandchildren.

[43:44] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah, you did.

[43:47] JEANINE HEWITT: And, you know, you transfer the knowledge that you have.

[43:51] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[43:52] JEANINE HEWITT: To whoever you touch.

[43:54] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. Yeah. No, you definitely have transferred a lot of knowledge to me. Well, I'm really glad that we got to do this. Thank you.

[44:03] JEANINE HEWITT: You bethe. Okay.

[44:20] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Well, so probably one of the biggest influences that you've had on my life is probably just, like, giving me the, I guess, ability to see everything in, like, a positive way, because no matter what happens, you know, you always do find the positive in it, and then, like, you've got a great story that you can tell, so even if something bad happens, there's always a positive that comes out of it. So I feel like that was probably one of the biggest things that you've probably taught me in my life.

[44:52] JEANINE HEWITT: Well, you were such a beautiful little guy, and you still are.

[44:57] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Still am.

[44:59] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. You know, I raised my children wanting the best for them, and I've always worked two jobs, and, you know, that. Told you. I used to work, you know, after I divorced my first husband, who was also a wife beater. You know, he was a horrible person. He was a drinker. And I decided I didn't want this kind of life. So I was only married three years, and Rodney was my firstborn. Was actually not even a year when I left home in the middle of the night with his sister because he tried to wrap a telephone cord around my neck. So again, you know, you have this brutality that goes in marriage, and it made me not only my life that I had lived made me not only a survivor, but it made me want to not be, you know, in this kind of situation. And so I left him because I was strong, because I was resourceful. I knew I could do anything I needed to do. It wasn't that I wanted to do. It was I needed to do. So my needs were to go back to my sponsor, because I had a sponsor here to the state, and at this time, they went from Rapid City to Glasgow, Montana. So I spent. When I left him, I spent almost six months there. I left my business. I left the house. The only thing I took was the return income tax and his car. And I kept the car nice until he came to get it. So then I decided, okay, I needed to put my life back together. Now. I had a toddler to take care of. It was about a year and a half when I came back to Salt Lake. I mean, actually bountiful.

[47:30] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Did you get flashbacks of having to take care of your little brother around that time, was it?

[47:35] JEANINE HEWITT: Not really. Not really? No. No. There was a task that needed to be done. He was my son. He was not my brother at the time, you know? I mean, it was a different life.

[47:48] JOSIAH JOHNSON: So you weren't afraid or anything when this happened?

[47:50] JEANINE HEWITT: I was not afraid, no. Not for a minute. That's good. I knew that. I worried about where to go and live. Because I was coming back. And came back to my in laws. And I knew I could find refuge there, so I did. And my sister in law, who was the oldest of the Hepworth family. Said, you can live with me. I said, okay. So I got a job. But I got a job in Salt Lake. Because Bantu fall at the time. Was a little place like Logan, you know? And I got a job bartending. And now I have to tell you that when you work in a bar in Europe, in those time. You're looked as a person of. How do you say? Volatile means? In other words, it's not the kind of life that my grandmother would have seen me do.

[48:58] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Live fast, die young.

[48:59] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. And I never told them no. It was demeaning to go work in a bar, you know. But I had no support. I had to earn some life.

[49:11] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[49:12] JEANINE HEWITT: So anyway, I found a job in a beer drive. And I had never held a tray in my life. You know, all I knew was office work. And so. And, of course, I knew how to get potato out of the ground and that kind of stuff. Because I worked with my grandparents doing those kind of shore in the summer. Those were my summers working in the farms, in different farms with my grandmother. My maternal grandmother was working at the airport as a regular person. And my other grandmother, who was illiterate. Her job was to just help the farmers and do farming work. You know, she used to tend cattle in her youth.

[50:03] JOSIAH JOHNSON: And it wasn't a barefoot.

[50:04] JEANINE HEWITT: Never went to school in barefoot in the snow. Yeah.

[50:07] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Crazy.

[50:08] JEANINE HEWITT: Her mother gave her up, and she died, I guess. And I understand her father could not raise her, so he gave her up to farmers. That was her life. Can I ask you a question? Can I ask you how youre definition of home has changed, having lived in so many different places. And having to find comfort in each of those places?

[50:35] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[50:39] JEANINE HEWITT: It's. I don't know. It's something that's just, you know, I do whatever happens in my life. And so I don't know what you mean by definition of home.

[50:57] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Is it like home is where the heart is? I get wherever you are, wherever grandpa was not really.

[51:03] JEANINE HEWITT: I'm adaptable, and I'm a survivor. And so wherever you're going to put me, I survive. That's all I know how to do. So therefore, you know, when I came back, I decided that I looked for a job in office and couldn't find anything. And I decided I've got to do something. And so I went to work in a beardron and I told the guy, I said, I've never been in a beard joint. I don't even know what it looks like. But I said, I need the job. So anyway, I learned a lot. I'm a fast learner. When you're a survivor, you learn very quickly. And I made money, and that's what I needed to do was make money. And so then in between that, I found a day job as a teletype.

[52:07] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Oh, yeah.

[52:08] JEANINE HEWITT: And those days, you know, we didn't have those nice typewriter and computers and what have you. And so I founded a job in a place called the civil company. It was a production type of place. And I met the guy in the bar. He owned the place. And he said to me, do you want a job? And I said, yeah, I want a job. What about doing? He says, well, answering the phones and they had those telephone that you plug in, you know, one. Did you remember that?

[52:49] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[52:50] JEANINE HEWITT: Okay.

[52:51] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Plugging in different holes.

[52:53] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. Anyway, so I got a job and I kept my job. So I was working two jobs and I was making good money. So then I bailed out from living with Connie, my sister in law, and got a little apartment on the avenues in Salt Lake.

[53:14] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Just you and Rodney?

[53:15] JEANINE HEWITT: Yep, just me and Rodney. And one more question, and then we're gonna wrap up here today. Can you tell Josiah what you are.

[53:26] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Proud of about him?

[53:29] JEANINE HEWITT: I'm really proud of being strong and being able to, not needing a man to take care of myself.

[53:41] JOSIAH JOHNSON: And can you tell Josiah what about.

[53:43] JEANINE HEWITT: Him you're proud of for him? I'm very proud of what he, speak up. Can you address him, though? Can you say, Josiah, I am proud of you for. Yeah. You know, when you started living with grandpa and me, I gave you everything that I knew because I wanted you to become a survivor. And you did. You accomplished that. And I'm so proud of you.

[54:20] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Thank you.

[54:24] JEANINE HEWITT: There's nothing you can't do. You can do anything you want. You're smart and you're good.

[54:33] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Thank you.

[54:35] JEANINE HEWITT: And I didn't realize that you also lived with your grandparents. Talk about that a little bit and.

[54:41] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Then you can if you want to. Well, living with my grandparents is definitely a challenge. I am taking care of them.

[54:50] JEANINE HEWITT: You live with Jeanine

[54:51] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. But, yeah, I guess after grandpa died, we just kind of had to get a little closer and I take care of each other more.

[55:00] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah.

[55:01] JOSIAH JOHNSON: So, yeah, no, I'm, I like living with you guys, and it's been a really great opportunity to get myself back on my feet, you know?

[55:09] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. Josiah has been with us since he was born.

[55:14] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. You guys have kind of almost raised me as much as my mom has another set of parents. Do you guys feel like your lives are a bit parallel in that way?

[55:27] JEANINE HEWITT: Oh, very.

[55:27] JOSIAH JOHNSON: A little bit, yeah.

[55:28] JEANINE HEWITT: Can you say that to each other? Yeah.

[55:30] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. My mom says that I act like you all the damn time, so sometimes in a positive way.

[55:38] JEANINE HEWITT: Well, you're also a Gemini, too.

[55:42] JOSIAH JOHNSON: We're both Geminis. And a little bit crazy.

[55:45] JEANINE HEWITT: It is crazy because we do get in each other's nerve.

[55:50] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. Many times, especially with it just being us, too now. It's. Yeah, sometimes crazy.

[55:56] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. But you've, you've made so many changes. Oh, yeah.

[56:00] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah. I have grown up.

[56:02] JEANINE HEWITT: You have grown up? Yes, a lot.

[56:05] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Well, thank you.

[56:07] JEANINE HEWITT: A little less spoiled. And, and you keep, you will keep growing up.

[56:12] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Yeah.

[56:13] JEANINE HEWITT: Because you will face many things.

[56:16] JOSIAH JOHNSON: I know.

[56:18] JEANINE HEWITT: Some are going to be good, some can be bad. But you can do it, and I believe it. You're strong.

[56:28] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Thank you.

[56:30] JEANINE HEWITT: Yeah. You're a piece of me.

[56:32] JOSIAH JOHNSON: Mm hmm. I am.