Julie Perry and Kathleen Butler

[00:03] KATHLEEN BUTLER: I am Kathleen Butler, 89 years old. Today is Saturday, March 26, 2022, and we are in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Julie Perry is my interview partner, and she is my granddaughter.

[00:25] JULIE PERRY: Hi, I'm Julie Perry. I'm 33. Today is Saturday, March 26, 2022. I am in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Kathleen Butler is my interview partner, and she is my grandmother. Okay, so where and when were you born?

[00:47] KATHLEEN BUTLER: I was born in Okemah, Oklahoma, on December 19, 1932. We lived there because my father was employed at the creek Trading company. And this was during the dust bowl. And towards the end of it, in about 1938, the company closed. So my daddy had to sell the house and the car, and we moved to the country.

[01:30] JULIE PERRY: How is life different then?

[01:34] KATHLEEN BUTLER: It was quite different. We had no utilities. Everything was manual. We had to walk about a quarter of a mile to get water from a spring that was next to Rock Creek. Carry the water back several times a day because you use a lot of water. And we had, with the proceeds of the house and car, my dad bought a team of horses, a wagon, farming equipment, two cows, some pigs, chickens, and turkeys.

[02:26] JULIE PERRY: How is that different than living in town?

[02:29] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Well, it was quite different because I didn't know anybody. And my friends down the road were creek speaking, and I was English speaking, and we played together, but not too talkative. And I did learn to speak Creek a little bit from them and a little bit self taught.

[03:05] JULIE PERRY: You mentioned that you didn't have utilities. Can you tell me a little bit more about that?

[03:09] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Yes. We had an outhouse, which was quite a ways from the house. And it was quite cold in the wintertime. And we didn't have any refrigeration, no electricity. So we had what was called an icebox. And the gentleman that lived half a mile from us was a mulatto, which is half african american and half caucasian. And his name was Mister golden. And that suited him perfectly because he had this beautiful golden color.

[04:04] JULIE PERRY: Did you have chores in the country?

[04:06] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Oh, you bet I did. I had charge of the chickens, for one thing. And I had to feed them, gather the eggs, and I'd gather them up in the evening to get them in the chicken coop. And if it rained during the daytime, I'd have to gather them up and get them in the chicken coop because they would look up in the sky to see the water coming down and strangle them. And I also had to clean the globes from the kerosene lanterns. And I had to make the butter. And my mother had a churn, but she didn't like to wash it, so she put the milk in a quart mason jar, and I had to shake it until it became butter.

[05:03] JULIE PERRY: Wow.

[05:04] KATHLEEN BUTLER: And I had to do any peeling potatoes and stuff like that.

[05:16] JULIE PERRY: How did you get around town?

[05:19] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Well, we had this wagon, and it was horse drawn. We had the team of horses. One was red and one was black, and that was their names. And it was a duty that my dad went to town every Saturday to get groceries, and I always went with him. And I would go to the movies while he went next door to drink beer. Then when it was time to go home, we'd get the groceries and start home. Sometimes he would be. I would drive the horses going home, and he would be singing stomp dance songs. And I get so angry with him for imbibing. And I'd run the. Have horses trot, and I'd go in the roughest part of the road trying to bounce my dad off, but he'd just sit there and just. He was glued to the seat.

[06:34] JULIE PERRY: Did your father take you to school or did you go by bus?

[06:38] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Oh, no, he didn't take me to school. And there was no school bus. The only bus that came through there was for the african american children. In those days, they were called negro, and that was not derogatory. That was just their description. And just like we were called indian. And I had to walk two and a half miles to school. The first year that I went to that school, my brother and sister also were going. And when I'd get tired, my brother would carry me on his back for a little ways, and then he'd put me down, but the next year he was gone. And I'd ask my sister to carry me and she'd say, oh, no, you're going to walk. And we would cut through pasture of a neighbor, but they had a bull, so we had to really be careful. And so the following year, my sister was gone off to school, and so I had to go around the road, which was the two and a half miles. And there was a. A lad who lived north of us who rode his horse to school sometimes, and occasionally he'd give me a ride home on his horse, and that was fine.

[08:12] JULIE PERRY: So was the school segregated?

[08:15] KATHLEEN BUTLER: No, we had indian children and caucasian children, and I never thought of any difference. I thought, you know, we were just saying.

[08:34] JULIE PERRY: Did you have any siblings or friends?

[08:37] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Well, my two oldest sisters were married, and then Margaret went off to school, and my brother was in the CCC camp, which was a military oriented establishment for young men to stay at this camp. And they'd go out and do physical work, like building bridges and roads or whatever needed to be done. And they were paid a nominal sum, but they didn't get the money. The CCC organization kept part of their money and sent part of their money home to the parents. Then at the end of their engagement in that situation, they gave them all the funds that they had accumulated. So they had a nice little sum.

[09:45] JULIE PERRY: That is nice. So was that during World War two?

[09:48] KATHLEEN BUTLER: No, but it was just at the tail end of the Cici camp situation when the World War Two broke out. So that was a different thing.

[10:04] JULIE PERRY: What was it like during World War two?

[10:07] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Oh, my gosh. There were so many different things. First of all, in our school, we had to buy savings stamps. They were $0.10 each. And when we filled a book, we turned them in for a bond, which was $18.50. And it was to mature in ten years and be worth $25. And everybody accumulated all of their rubber goods, iron, aluminum, silk, rubber, anything that could be salvaged, the silk they used for parachutes. And then the ladies had to wear cotton hose after that. And every Saturday after we gathered up all of these things that we could find, every Saturday, we'd take them to town, and they had one location where everybody met and would sing, and everybody would take their contributions up to the front and have them all in one place. And I had a cherished Betsy Wetzy doll. I had wanted that doll for the longest time, and I just had gotten it for Christmas. And I thought, well, it's rubber. I need to give this doll to the. And I asked my parents if they thought that was okay, and they said, well, it's your doll. It's yours to do with whatever you want. So I hadn't really made up my mind until we got to the drive, and I took her up and laid her down, and everybody clapped for me, but I cried. Yeah, she was my beloved doll, Betsy Wetzy, off to war. And they also had lucky strike cigarettes that were in a dark green package, and they dropped the coloring and just put them in white packages. And they said, lucky strike green has gone to war. We had rationing everything. Almost everything was rationed. Nobody could buy a new car except the postmaster. And the things that were rationed were like rubber tires, rubber shoes that had rubber soles, and sugar. Oh, just millions of things. And sometimes people would trade if they. Like, if somebody didn't have a car, they'd trade their ration stamps for maybe sugar, like my mother did, because she did a lot of canning, and she made a lot of pies and stuff. Of course, the songs of the time were all very implicit. And the letters that we got from our loved ones were all censored. And so we'd get letters from them and they would have holes in them where they cut out pertinent things that might be given away where the, if the enemy had intercepted, they could see certain statistics. And my uncle had written a letter, and he got a message across to where he was in Leyte. He put in his letter, said, how is the lady across the street? Well, we lived in the country. There were no streets, and there was no house across the street, no lady there.

[14:43] JULIE PERRY: Oh, that's funny.

[14:45] KATHLEEN BUTLER: So they were. And my brother, I still remember his Social Security number was 18 084608, and he's been deceased for 40 years, or, no, 50 years.

[15:03] JULIE PERRY: So how was it that you went to a boarding school?

[15:07] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Well, in the country, they only had elementary school through fifth grade, and there were no buses, so you had no way of going to school after that. And my sister that was married, lived in town in Okemah, so 6th grade, I stayed with her, and she had four daughters, and her husband was in the army. And that year I went to school there in town. But the next year, she had moved to California, so I didn't have any option. And daddy checked around and found out that, that I could go to this Eufaula boarding school for girls. And they had a ruling, I guess, a procedure that the girls had to come from a broken home. And they let me go because of the no school availability rather than the broken home.

[16:27] JULIE PERRY: What was it like?

[16:29] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Oh, it was great. I loved it. First of all, many of the girls, all of us were forbidden to speak Creek. And many of the girls later in life said they forgot how to speak Creek since the, they were prevented from speaking then. But I had not forgotten. I don't know how they forgot. And it was when we first got there to school, Miss Woosley, the house mother, had to give everybody a head lice check, and I don't think there were very many who had head lice, but everybody had to have the treatment. And I guess it was a good thing so that there wouldn't have been any cases. And she also kept all of our money. If anybody got any money from home, we had to turn it into her, and she kept it. But every Saturday she would put out this display of candy, and we could use the money that she was holding for us to buy candy bars. And there were little girls that lived on the second floor and big girls lived on the third floor. And there was an attic where they stored our luggage. And if anyone had a wet the bed, they had to wash their sheets and hang them up in the attic. But on the first floor was the principal's office, the superintendent's office, and the library. And I spent a lot of time in the library by myself because I loved to read. And the superintendent was very, I guess, musical. She provided music lessons for everybody. And they had an all girl band orchestra that was called on to play at different places around the area, not just in that town, but in surrounding towns. And they were very good. And everybody had the opportunity to take piano lessons, and I was included. And some of them were just marvelous pianists, but not I. And the teacher gave me a recital piece and I couldn't memorize it and I barely could read it, but she gave up on that and assigned me to play long, long ago. And I was so embarrassed, but I had to play it at the recital. And the older girls had a dormitory above the kitchen and dining room, which was a separate building. And there was this walkway between the two buildings that had this arch, and it had wisteria growing on the arch. And, oh, it was a beautiful sight and smelled lovely. And the older girls that were working in the kitchen for their upkeep lived in the second story of that building. The little girls in the second story of the main building would sing their prayers every night. And my friend talked me into going into the pantry after dark and getting a jar of peaches and us to share it. And so I kept resisting, but she kept after me and I gave in. So we went in there and she. She was holding the jar and I was supposed to be loosening the lid. And the little girl started singing their prayer. Scared me silly. I thought it was angels singing. And I ran out of there lickety split and forget about those peaches. And we went to school. The 6th grade and lower went to school on the campus, but the 7th and 8th graders, we went to junior high school downtown, and we had to come back for lunch and then go back to school. And sometimes it'd be raining and we'd just be soaking wet, but that didn't matter. And every Sunday we all lined up and marched downtown to see a movie. And I always looked forward to that. And in later years, I've known some of the girls saying that was so embarrassing to be marching down to school by. I mean to the theater by single file. And I thought I was never embarrassed, but I guess everyone's different. And come graduation time, all of us had to make our own dress. Graduation dress. And so mine, my parents bought me a yellow dotted Swiss in a pattern. And, oh, that was the most beautiful dress. And I used it several years after for dances and singing recital. But at graduation, I was the second shortest girl in the class. So I was second in line. It was boy, girl, boy, girl. And the boy and I were the second shortest ones in the class.

[23:28] JULIE PERRY: So what came after that?

[23:29] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Well, when we graduated, we were. Some didn't go any further. Some went to school at Chilocco near Kansas. And I went to. I elected to go to Haskell Institute at Lawrence, Kansas. And that was a marvelous experience, too.

[23:56] JULIE PERRY: What was life like at high school?

[23:59] KATHLEEN BUTLER: When I left Okemah, I had to stop in Tulsa and change buses, and that went directly to Lawrence. And when we loaded onto the bus, all of the african american people that were on there were standing in the back of the bus, and there were empty seats up front. And I thought, why are they not sitting in those seats? And I asked the lady that I had sat down next to, and she said, well, they can't. Said, it's policy. It's a law. And I said, well, why not? I said, the seats are not taken. And she said, well, it's called a Jim Crow law. And I said, well, that's not right. I said, they should be able to sit. And she said, well, they can't. And when we crossed the Kansas state line, they all moved up, took those seats. And I said, well, why are they changing now? And she said, well, Kansas doesn't have that Jim Crow law. And I said, well, that's good. And we traveled on, and we approached an area near Lawrence. And, oh, it was just gorgeous. The maple leaves were in full color, autumn color. And I had never seen a maple tree before because all of our trees were just shabby trees, but it was just so lovely and just breathtaking. And I got to Lawrence and took a taxi out to the school, and my feet were so swollen from sitting all that way with my feet hanging down. But when I got there, forget about the feet. Everything was just beautiful. It was like a metropolis. All of the buildings were two and three story buildings, and they were all made of rock. And, oh, they were just fabulous. And they had already eaten, and they asked me if I was hungry, and I said no, because it was not necessary. But they had two dormitories buildings for the girls. The high school girls were in Winona hall, and the post grad girls were in Pocahontas hall. And the boys were all in one single building, and it was called Keokuk. All of these were named after native people. And we had a very good athletic program. We had a beautiful stadium. We had very good football, basketball, track and baseball. And the extracurricular activities were very superb. And I was in the dramatics club, and I had an opportunity to do a dramatic reading for the state in Topeka. And I took second place.

[27:54] JULIE PERRY: Nice.

[27:56] KATHLEEN BUTLER: And I also, when I graduated, I had the journalism award, Danforth award, and the other minor things, but those were the main ones.

[28:13] JULIE PERRY: Weren't you also the salutatorian, or didn't you do really well academically?

[28:18] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Yes, yes. And I was asked to be the emcee for the indian club when I was a junior, and I told the sponsor that I couldn't do that cause I didn't have my tribal dress. And she said, well, that doesn't matter, Sid. We have an extra one that somebody had left here and you could wear that. And she said, it's Seminole. But Seminole and Creek were very closely similar. So I said, well, okay. So I did. And I was in a lot of school plays also. But while I was in the indian club, there were two sisters, Madeleine and Marlene from Punk City, who did indian sign language to indian sounding poems and scriptures, 23rd Psalm. So I read for them while they did the sign language, and they were called upon to performed those at many places, Kansas City and Topeka and Olathe and a lot of surrounding towns. And years later, I went to a powwow at Red Rock. And when I got there, I needed to use restrooms. So I asked a lady who was preparing, getting dressed to go dance. I said, where are the restrooms? And somebody on the other side of my car, on the other side of the car next to me said, Kathy, is that you? And it was one of these girls that I had read for, and this was many, many, many years later, but she recognized my voice and that still amazes me. Yeah, but that was a fun thing. But when I left the class, I did go back for one more year for a postgraduate, and that was.

[30:56] JULIE PERRY: So what did you do when you left high school?

[30:59] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Well, I got married. I worked and got married. But before I got married, I worked at Brown Duncan, and I was a stenographer. And they issued us a number two pencil to use, and we had to keep that pencil until it became two inches long and then we could trade it in for a new pencil.

[31:20] JULIE PERRY: Wow.

[31:24] KATHLEEN BUTLER: And we did get divorced. And when we got divorced, all of our credit cards were shut down because he was the breadwinner. And so I couldn't take advantage of the credit cards anymore. And I went to work for a company that used a compyriter, which did automatic letters. And he also had a thing that looked like a piano roll where he punched holes in it, and it also worked like that. And we did address metal address things. They don't use those anymore. I graduated into different categories of self typing machines until eventually reached the computer. So it's been quite a change in my life from the beginning. It's been a glorious time.

[32:47] JULIE PERRY: Yeah. What about your children? How many children do you have?

[32:52] KATHLEEN BUTLER: I have five children, and they all are very good people. They used to follow me around like little chicks. And one time I was trying to put a latch on the bathroom door, and being very old wood, it was hard, and I couldn't get this to screw in, so I had this hammer, and I reached back with the hammer, and I hit one of the kids on his forehead.

[33:28] JULIE PERRY: Oh, no.

[33:29] KATHLEEN BUTLER: And I said, oh, did I hurt you? And he said, no, but it's a good thing you hit me on my rock. But one time when we were at the five civilized tribes museum in Muscogee, we saw this pot bellied stove, and I started telling my son Ralph and his family about it. I said, we used a stove like this at Eufaula and you put flat irons on there to heat, and then you have a handle that attaches, and you take it back and you iron your clothes, and when the iron cools off, you take it back and get a hot one and keep doing that. And I said, the big girls had to iron the little girl's clothes and the staff's linens. And my son Ralph, let me finish telling all of that story. And he pointed to this sign below. It said, donated by your fall of boarding school.

[34:39] JULIE PERRY: Wow, that's really neat. Do you think it could have potentially been the one that you used?

[34:46] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Yes, I'm sure it was, because that was the only one that was there. Oh, okay. Wow.

[34:53] JULIE PERRY: Well, it sounds like your life was certainly full of changes. You've had a wonderful life, it sounds like.

[35:01] KATHLEEN BUTLER: Thank you so much. It's been. Been wondrous, and I've cherished every bit of it.