Karen Bahow and Ellen Boone

[00:02] KAREN BAHOW: Hi. My name is Karen Baho. I'm 54 years old. Today's date is October 15, 2023, and we are in St. Louis, Missouri. I'm here with my mom, Ellen Christina Boone and that's who I'll be talking with today.

[00:23] ELLEN BOONE: And I am her mother, Ellen Boone I just turned 82. It is October 15. As my daughter Karen said, I'm happy to be now living with her in St. Louis, Missouri. Karen tell me, why did you sign up for us to do Storycorps?

[00:44] KAREN BAHOW: That's a great question, mom. And the first thing when I saw the opportunity to think about talking about Washington, grandma. My grandma, your mother, I think she was an extraordinary person. And one of the ways that she was so extraordinary, well, she lived to 104, and so she was a. She was a presence in my life for so, so long. She died ten years ago this year. She would have turned 115 this year. And one of grandma's. Grandma had so many gifts, and one of her wonderful, wonderful gifts was her ability to tell stories. So even though her husband, your father, my grandfather, died the year I was born, and I never knew her parents, your grandparents, Nana and papa, all of those people were so present in my life my whole growing up, my whole life, and in my sister Anna and my sister Meg's lives. And it's because the stories grandma would tell about them, to keep them so present. And I thought that doing a story corps interview with you about grandma and about our family and our stories would be a great way to remember and to honor her.

[02:16] ELLEN BOONE: Absolutely. Absolutely. Do you know what I believe led Grandma to become a professional storyteller in her eighties?

[02:24] KAREN BAHOW: Well, that's so interesting. I just learned that from you recently, because one of my fondest memories as a very young child is grandma always lived out of town from us. So when we go visit her in Washington, in Arlington, Virginia, and Washington, DC, or she'd come visit us in Ohio, one of my absolute favorite things and favorite memories is we'd always say, grandma, tell me a story. Tell us a story. So Meg and I shared a room. Grandma would lie down on the floor in between our beds and reach out her hand and hold our hands as we were in bed. And I don't. Anna was there somewhere. My older sister and grandma would say, what would you like to be in the story?

[03:11] ELLEN BOONE: And do you remember what Anna would always say?

[03:14] KAREN BAHOW: Well, we had common themes here. We had flying horses were often in.

[03:21] ELLEN BOONE: The story, princesses and an enchanted forest.

[03:25] KAREN BAHOW: And an enchanted forest. And grandma would proceed, and it would be different every time on the spot to make a story for us and to put us to sleep going to that story. So I just always knew grandma as a storyteller. She was a storyteller my whole life. And whether those were stories made up stories for children to go to bed or stories of our family, that's one of the ways I feel. Grandma was extraordinary.

[03:57] ELLEN BOONE: Yes. She didn't become a professional storyteller until she was in her eighties, and she was an acting eleanor Roosevelt at the Brunswick, Georgia, library. And the head librarian said to her, Olga, you're a storyteller. And soon after that, grandma became a professional storyteller, the Golden Isles storyteller, representing the islands where she lived off the coast of Georgia.

[04:26] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah.

[04:27] ELLEN BOONE: And it helped, I think, her to portray Eleanor Roosevelt because she had actually met Eleanor Roosevelt. Yeah.

[04:32] KAREN BAHOW: There's a wonderful story grandma told about that. Do you remember that story?

[04:37] ELLEN BOONE: Oh, of course. Grandma was in college at the University of Maryland, where she got her bachelor's and her master's.

[04:44] KAREN BAHOW: And what year was this, mama?

[04:45] ELLEN BOONE: Oh, this would have been in the early thirties. And she was hurrying to the weekly session that they had on campus that everyone was required to attend. And she was rushing along the little street there on the campus, and a car pulled up behind her and asked for directions. My mother started to give her directions, and she said, well, just hop in and go with me. So they drove together to the place where the presentation was going to be made.

[05:15] KAREN BAHOW: I think it was the field house.

[05:16] ELLEN BOONE: The field house. I think maybe it was the field house. Karen and a man met them at the door and usher and said, oh, you're late. You're going to have to stand in the back. And Eleanor Roosevelt said, I am the guest speaker. I'm Eleanor Roosevelt. And that's how grandma met Eleanor Roosevelt when she was a student at Maryland University.

[05:38] KAREN BAHOW: And we figure she must have been. Eleanor Roosevelt was probably campaigning for her husband for president at that time, and that's one of the reasons why she.

[05:48] ELLEN BOONE: Was there, possibly, possibly to speak. Grandma came a long, long way. She was a first generation Swede. Her parents left very poor Sweden in the early 19 hundreds. Nana is. Which is what I called my grandma. I guess I called her Nana because to my mother, her parents were mama and papa, and I changed their names, probably as a two year old or less. As to Nana and papa, anyway, Nana came over in steerage when she was about 19 years old.

[06:25] KAREN BAHOW: Steerage? What do you mean by that?

[06:26] ELLEN BOONE: Steerage is the poorest place on the boat for the poorest people. I think they were below deck, and I think it was very poor papa, family lor goes, jumped ship. So while Nana came in at Ellis Island, Papa came in. Otherwise he became a sailor. As a young man, he sailed, but probably a merchant marine type of venture between Sweden and England, and that's where he learned to speak English. So Papa always spoke with a british accent. Nana always had a slight swedish accent. And they didn't meet each other until they both lived in Minnesota. And Papa was dating Nana's roommate.

[07:11] KAREN BAHOW: What was Nana doing when she came?

[07:14] ELLEN BOONE: I guess Nana would not talk about her early years. There were some tragedies involved, apparently, but she would be, I guess, like a housekeeper or a nanny or something like that for wealthier families.

[07:27] KAREN BAHOW: Okay. And they met in Minnesota?

[07:29] ELLEN BOONE: They met in Minnesota. I think they met at a church supper and fell in love and married in January 1908. And then your grandmother, Olga Christina, was born in late September in 1908, their one and only child. Grandma always felt. Yeah. Somewhat sad about being an only child. So when she gave birth to me, she was determined that there was going to be another baby. And that baby was my sister Julia, who came two years later.

[08:05] KAREN BAHOW: That's great. What did Papa do when he came to the United States? Because he. You've. You and grandma told the stories that he left school very early to help support his family.

[08:16] ELLEN BOONE: Yes. At my, at grandma's house a couple years before she died, she showed me a paper where it was in Swedish, but grandma knew enough swedish to read it to me. The superintendent of schools had allowed Papa, and his name being Gustav Hill Merlevgren, to leave school early to help support his family. So we have a picture of papa as a bellboy in a fancy hotel in Sweden, I think in Malmo, Sweden, where he worked as a bellboy. And he would talk to me. I would say, tell me about when you were a little boy. And one of the stories he would tell would be about bringing some kind of a bakery treat home to his family from the hotel, possibly from the hotel. I don't know. I wish I knew more. My knowledge is sketchy. You always think later what you should have asked your parent or your grandparent. But thank God I do know many little stories.

[09:16] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah. And then he went, you said he became a sailor and then he went to England, apparently.

[09:22] ELLEN BOONE: Apparently he did. And he was in a tavern of sort of wherever people go to have something to eat. He noticed a man at a table near him and said, why are you eating your potato that way? The man was scooping out the inside of the potato and putting it aside on the plate so he could eat the skin. And the man was a physician, and he explained to Papa that the healthy part of the potato is in the skin. And the man also had some sort of a boxing ring as an aside. And he asked papa, would you like to become a sparring partner? And so that's what Papa also did in his early years.

[10:03] KAREN BAHOW: Mm hmm.

[10:04] ELLEN BOONE: Yeah.

[10:05] KAREN BAHOW: I remember seeing a postcard. It was a picture postcard. And I don't know enough about those days, but it was of grandpa posing shirtless. And he sent it to Nana.

[10:15] ELLEN BOONE: Well, he was showing off his bicep, as I remember.

[10:17] KAREN BAHOW: I think so.

[10:20] ELLEN BOONE: But they were very poor. There's one both of the families. And I remember Nana saying that a special treat for breakfast was when they could each have half an egg, her and the children. She was the oldest of five or six children. She was determined that she was not going to devote her whole life to caring for her younger sisters and brothers. She wanted more for herself, and that's why she came to this country at 19. I don't know what year they actually became citizens, but Papa would tell, and grandma would tell about Papa, that when Papa became a citizen, he kissed the ground. He was so thrilled to be a citizen of the United States. But they always maintained a connection with Sweden. And Nana, when she would decorate a Christmas tree, always put swedish flags and american flags. And then your grandma went on to be head of the swedish organization for a while in Toledo.

[11:22] KAREN BAHOW: Are there other stories about Nana that you'd like to tell me?

[11:27] ELLEN BOONE: Well, Nana and papa both having to leave school. I don't know when Nana left school, but it was both. It was early and they never went to high school. I'm sure they wanted education extremely badly for their one little child, little Olga. And Olga was growing up in her early twenties, late teens, during the depression. Nana had worked, and somehow she got a job as the cook for the secretary of state in Washington. I think you and I looked it up. And Stimson served from, like, 29 to 33 as secretary of state. And Nana was his cook during those years because also your grandma was going to college. Six years of college, two years of junior college, majoring in phys ed, and then four years of University of Maryland, and then her master's degree after that.

[12:29] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah. So grandma was working, Nana was working.

[12:33] ELLEN BOONE: As a cook during that time. Yes.

[12:36] KAREN BAHOW: And you also told me stories, or grandma told me stories about even earlier when Nana was working for other families as a cook. And then grandma was a kitchen as a child. She was a kitchen helper in some of the families.

[12:51] ELLEN BOONE: Yes. Yes, she was. Yes. Yes. In fact, she even lived, they even lived at a hotel for so many months when grandma was working there. And grandma was credited with saving the baby of another lady in the hotel whose baby was not doing well. And grandma took her under her wing and saved her.

[13:09] KAREN BAHOW: I. Nana did?

[13:10] ELLEN BOONE: Yes. Your grandma. Nana did. I mean, my grandma.

[13:13] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah.

[13:14] ELLEN BOONE: Yes.

[13:15] KAREN BAHOW: You know, you've told me wonderful stories about Nana, and. And she was, you know, so she worked as a domestic cook and a, and a housekeeper. And then when you were, I guess, still in elementary school, she moved in with you. So she would do cooking at your home, and then you would tell me stories as you would teach me and my sisters to bake cookies and things like that. And we'd use Nana's cookie cutters and things and recipes.

[13:46] ELLEN BOONE: Swedish cookies, she would call them, those little s shaped sugar cookies. But Nana was not only involved in what in the house, she was very much involved in her swedish Lutheran church in Washington, DC. I don't know if you know this, Karen but she, with the assistance of the minister's wife, started a young at heart club.

[14:08] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah, you've told me. We actually have some pictures of her with that.

[14:11] ELLEN BOONE: She felt there was something that should be there for older folks. That's great.

[14:16] KAREN BAHOW: That's amazing.

[14:17] ELLEN BOONE: I want to go back to a story that grandma used to like to tell, and it's related to her becoming a storyteller when she was in school. It turned out the regular teacher suddenly became ill and called in sick. And the principal, not knowing what to do to take care of this class of children, called the next door neighbor and said, could you come in? And the neighbor was not a teacher. And she explained that to the class. Well, I'm not a teacher, but I do know poetry. And that's when grandma fell in love with poetry. And grandma would quote by heart the spell of the Yukon by Robert service. I wanted the gold and I sought it. I scrabbled and mucked and like a slave. Was it famine or scurvy? I fought it I hurled my youth into a grave. She sounded kind of like that when she told us story, didn't she?

[15:12] KAREN BAHOW: She was very animated as a public speaker. Yes, I, you know, grandma was amazing. So you, you've told about how her parents, you know, barely Finland, finished elementary school in Sweden before starting work and then coming to this country. And yet they put, even during the depression, their daughter, through school. They also somehow arranged for her to go to a very good public high school in Washington, DC. Central High School.

[15:44] ELLEN BOONE: Central High School. Yes, you're right.

[15:46] KAREN BAHOW: Grandma would tell about putting newspapers in her boots to be able to walk the mile to the district line to catch the streetcar. She lived in a place called Colmar Manor, Columbia, Maryland. It was a little community on the border between the District of Columbia and Maryland. Colmar Manor. And putting newspapers in her boots to be able to make it through the rain and the coal to catch the streetcar, to be able to go to high school. So she.

[16:20] ELLEN BOONE: Yeah. And Grandpa wore newspapers under his coat to be warm enough to make it back and forth.

[16:26] KAREN BAHOW: Your papa.

[16:27] ELLEN BOONE: Yeah. Yeah, my papa and grandma would laugh, and she would tell about how papa, who built the house they lived in with the help of a friend named Willie, how Papa made the first shower for them. He hung a bucket of water outside, and they would pull the string, and that was their first shower.

[16:47] KAREN BAHOW: That's great. Very ingenious.

[16:51] ELLEN BOONE: Yep. Listen, papa was very smart. He became a carpenter and journeyman carpenter, and he invented a number of things that he never got credit for. One of them was the two headed nail. If you have two heads on a nail, then you can remove it if it's only a temporary thing. And he built bookshelves and dresser drawers. I know, Julia. My sister has some at her house. I think you have one.

[17:21] KAREN BAHOW: I have a bookshelf. That's my nightstand. But, I mean, he. Didn't he help build the Pentagon?

[17:25] ELLEN BOONE: Absolutely. He built the Pentagon little, knowing that that would be where I had my first job at age 17 as a typist.

[17:33] KAREN BAHOW: Well, weren't you born while he was working on building the Pentagon?

[17:38] ELLEN BOONE: I'm not sure what he was building on. I think he was. I think he was working in indian head, Maryland, when I was born, because grandma said he had a cake sent up to the hospital back then. Mom stayed in the hospital a couple weeks when they had a newborn, and he had a big indian cheek head put on the cake.

[17:58] KAREN BAHOW: That isn't for. Yeah.

[18:00] ELLEN BOONE: For the staff there. Yeah.

[18:02] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah.

[18:03] ELLEN BOONE: I want to talk a little bit about my dad, too.

[18:06] KAREN BAHOW: Yes, please, tell me about grandpa. How. How did grandpa and grandma meet? Well, grandpa didn't grow up in Washington.

[18:15] ELLEN BOONE: No. Let's go back a little bit to explain that. My dad. Your grandpa, lived in Maryland, close to the Pennsylvania line. Hagerstown, Maryland, mostly, was where the family was. And he was the fourth of five brothers in his family. In other words, the next to the youngest.

[18:36] KAREN BAHOW: And there were a couple of girls?

[18:38] ELLEN BOONE: Well, yes, there was a sister, Julia, that my sister's named after. No, I mean, no. There was a sister, Gertrude. Yes, that my sister's name, middle name. But she passed away before I was born, as did his parents. But my daddy won a typing contest in Hagerstown, Maryland, high school, and that entitled him to have a job in Washington, DC. So that's when he moved to Washington, DC, first working for the Treasury Department and later for the general Accounting office. General Accounting Office, they called it back then. Papa helped build one of those, and I can't remember which of those. I think it was the treasury department.

[19:20] KAREN BAHOW: The treasury department. He built that building.

[19:22] ELLEN BOONE: Yeah. Anyway, so that's how he got to Washington. And I think maybe my parents met at church.

[19:29] KAREN BAHOW: And was this also during the depression?

[19:36] ELLEN BOONE: Well, I don't remember how late the depression last. Grandma graduated from masters in 1936. She married in 37, so it was still so around that.

[19:46] KAREN BAHOW: So grandpa came to DC during the.

[19:48] ELLEN BOONE: Depression, I would guess. Oh, he did. Oh, we didn't learn until we went to that family reunion on the Susquehanna river several years ago. How very important and valued and treasured your grandpa was, Uncle Jim. He was to his nieces and nephews, and he worked in Washington. And at christmastime, he'd load his car full of presents for the nieces and nephews. They wouldn't have had a Christmas if it hadn't been for Uncle Jim.

[20:16] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah.

[20:17] ELLEN BOONE: And then they also had very wonderful times with Uncle Jim when he played his violin.

[20:23] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah. Tell us, how did he start playing?

[20:25] ELLEN BOONE: I think his older brother, Uncle Clyde, also known as Clyde Daniel Boone played. I think he started. But your grandpa greatly, greatly advanced beyond the level that Clyde could play. And you have explained to me, Karen since you and your sister went on to study violin. Another influence of your grandpa, how difficult and complicated an instrument it is, and how unusual that he was able to play classical violin in chamber music, but also to play for round and dances, as they called them back then. Round and square dances. Even in the fifties, they were very popular in Washington. Daddy played with Jimmy Dean country music.

[21:14] KAREN BAHOW: For a while on the Jimmy Dean.

[21:16] ELLEN BOONE: Show, and then he. But he played for balls at Pearl Mesta, who was the hostess with the mostest in Washington.

[21:24] KAREN BAHOW: So he was a part of a popular group there, too.

[21:27] ELLEN BOONE: Rock Creek promenaders. They were the ones who had many weekends. They played for square and round dances, as they called it back then. Yeah. And Julia and I would go sometimes we learned the shottisch, and we learned other few little dances back then that we would go. And we learned how to square dance, because as we got older, he would take us with him.

[21:46] KAREN BAHOW: And he also played for a chamber orchestra, so he played classical music too.

[21:51] ELLEN BOONE: Yeah. And I think it was the Fairfax Symphony that he played in, too.

[21:54] KAREN BAHOW: Okay.

[21:55] ELLEN BOONE: Yeah, yeah. I, you know, I did not appreciate, I did not appreciate until your sister was in elementary school and decided to play the violin. I did not appreciate what a complex instrument the violin is. We were real excited to go to the elementary school for the fourth graders who'd been taking violin. Were going to put on a program for parents. So I eagerly awaited the children get on stage and starting to play sweet and low. And my ears were assaulted by the most horrible screeching and scratching.

[22:32] KAREN BAHOW: Well, they were trying, they were trying.

[22:34] ELLEN BOONE: And I tried so hard to not laugh or anything, which I think I maintain my, my facial expression and composure. Yes. So I, and one of my greatest regrets, Julia and I, my little sister and I took piano lessons and she quit after a while, after two or three years, nothing before we learned how to play some duets together, which was fun on the piano, but I kept it up. I got to be the top student of my piano teacher and I told my parents I want to quit too. And I regret that very, very much. I regret that I decided that and I regret that they let me. I was probably about eleven. I was pretty good back then, but I wasn't nearly good enough to play with my father. And he was so, so patient. You know, that picture of me playing the piano and his playing the violin. Yeah. The other thing that. But so I was very, very, I am very sorry that I didn't pursue piano because he deserved to have someone play the piano with him at home. He did often have friends come over and play music. Usually it was more the light hearted kind of country thing. One of his friends played the sweet potato and I don't know how to play that. It's some kind of a horn. It comes in different sizes. And we would have parties in our backyard. We had a large backyard in Arlington, Virginia, and my dad and his friends, guitar, ukulele, whatever instruments they played, they'd often play out there, which would be in for a fun party in the backyard in the afternoon. And we discovered one year that the neighborhood kids were hiding in the bushes. They wanted to hear the music. And my parents said, come on, come on, come on out in. And they said, no, no, no.

[24:37] KAREN BAHOW: Well, and you have wonderful pictures and actually even some recordings of some family parties and the musicians being there and being together. So those are wonderful, treasured memories.

[24:50] ELLEN BOONE: Yeah. Yes, yes, yes. Well, I want to talk a little bit about grandma, because you mentioned about her being 104.

[24:57] KAREN BAHOW: Yes.

[24:58] ELLEN BOONE: And I. This goes all the way back to Papa, because so many of the traditions that are big parts of our lives now go way back to Nana and Papa as a very young man. Papa was waiting table and a patron. Papa was his favorite. Waiter said, what's the matter, Gustave? You look like something's bothering you. And Papa said, it's my little girl. There's no exercise in her school. In Sweden, we all have all the children exercise. And the patron said, well, I have the solution for you. Sign her up for dancing classes. So Papa did, and grandma had every kind of dancing class. She started teaching in the neighborhood children for ten cents a lesson, teaching them ballet. And she was alone a lot as a child when her parents were gone.

[25:54] KAREN BAHOW: So dancing, they both worked.

[25:56] ELLEN BOONE: They both worked. And dancing became a big part of her life. So she would dance on a stage back when I was a young person. And before that, many movie theaters would have entertainment before or after the movie. And Grandma would dance on the stage. And you reminded me the other day of the story where not only was grandma dancing on the stage, but it was a competition. And there was another performer who played the. What do you call the board that you.

[26:32] KAREN BAHOW: The washboard.

[26:33] ELLEN BOONE: The washboard, yes. Another performer played the washboard and other players. And the audience was invited to choose which was the best performance. So hold up your. I will hold up my hand over this performer and you clap. So they held up their hand over grandma's head and they, she got a lot of applause. And then the MC held up his hand over the washboard players head and he got even more applause. So he won first prize, which was five dollar bill. Grandma won second prize, a five pound ham that she brought home.

[27:12] KAREN BAHOW: But Grandma did a lot of dancing. She danced in hotels. And then she also told the stories of dancing with the Dennis Shaw dancers.

[27:21] ELLEN BOONE: Oh, absolutely. She went to the same studio where Kate Smith was. Kate Smith was a little older. Kate Smith became very, very famous for God bless America, I think was her song. And she went to this. They went to the same studio. But grandma also started her own little dance company, the all Gorlofgren dancers. We have that picture of her holding up her arms in the air, surrounded by the other dancers. Yeah, that's great. And your little sister Meg, has followed that tradition with dancing.

[27:53] KAREN BAHOW: She does. But grandma also did some other things that. And I often wonder where she got the moxie, the courage to do it. She entered in all kinds of contests not just in the theater, but she entered beauty contests.

[28:11] ELLEN BOONE: Oh, yes, she did. She did. And she even inspired her first cousin to do that, who was a little younger. And her first cousin, well, she.

[28:20] KAREN BAHOW: So grandma became Miss Maryland.

[28:23] ELLEN BOONE: Oh, my gosh. Yeah. She tied for Miss Washington and she became Miss Maryland. She represented Maryland and New York City when people. When women came from all the states. Yes.

[28:34] KAREN BAHOW: For the physical, cultural, physical culture award. Award. Because I think in your cupboard at home, mama, there's a statue about two and a half feet tall of Venus de Milo.

[28:47] ELLEN BOONE: Absolutely.

[28:48] KAREN BAHOW: And grandma said that was for winning a contest. Flo Ziegfeld was the sponsor of the contest, the Ziegfeld Follies. He was the sponsor of the contest and presented her with.

[28:58] ELLEN BOONE: Well, and Bernard McFadden also was the person that grandma would mention. And Miss Physical culture was a predecessor, apparently, to Miss America. But the emphasis in Miss physical culture was being physically fit. Not just beautiful, but physically fit and healthy. And grandma is featured in magazines of the time.

[29:20] KAREN BAHOW: I know. I'm so glad we have those magazine photos of grandma doing that. Yes. And then her cousin, Papa's brother's daughter, uncle Oscar's daughter.

[29:32] ELLEN BOONE: Yep.

[29:35] KAREN BAHOW: Entered some of the same contests that.

[29:37] ELLEN BOONE: Well, not the same contest because they lived in Boston, Massachusetts. But she entered a contest and someone in the audience said, come with me to California. I'll make you a star. So her mother and Eleanor, her name was back then and her two siblings all went to California. And she.

[29:57] KAREN BAHOW: She did. She became Gene Rogers.

[29:59] ELLEN BOONE: She became Rogers. And she was the love interest on.

[30:02] KAREN BAHOW: That all the Flash Gordon, the very.

[30:05] ELLEN BOONE: First Flash Gordon movies and many other movies after that, but especially Flash Gordon.

[30:09] KAREN BAHOW: I mean, I was seeing her on the television late night when they were rebroadcasting Flash Gordon movies. Really?

[30:15] ELLEN BOONE: Well, I. And I saw her when they would show serials after the main movie as a little kid.

[30:20] KAREN BAHOW: Right.

[30:21] ELLEN BOONE: In the movie near us.

[30:22] KAREN BAHOW: Yes, I know. One of the themes you wanted to talk about and things was that both Grandpa came from a very humble background, went to DC and was very good in giving to his family, as well as talented. But grandma, her parents not finishing elementary school, but they made sure she went through college and then graduate school. And then she's passed that on. I mean. And you have passed that on.

[30:54] ELLEN BOONE: Well, of your sisters, three of you and me, three of the four of us have doctorate degrees.

[30:59] KAREN BAHOW: I know.

[31:00] ELLEN BOONE: And that's bringing to fruition the dream that Nana and Papa had with their limited education system. Thank God that grandma lived to know that you got your doctorate. Meg got her doctorate. I got my doctorate, and then Anna's got her masters. Well, Anna has her master's. And partly that was funded by grandma's legacy to her.

[31:19] KAREN BAHOW: Well, and grandma helped pay for my.

[31:21] ELLEN BOONE: Of course she did.

[31:22] KAREN BAHOW: Of course she did as well.

[31:24] ELLEN BOONE: Yes. So that has definitely been a family tradition, focus on education and help other people. But being a teacher through the years in many, many ways, not only did. Grandma's first job was in a reform school for girls. The second year she taught in the very highly valued school that President Obama's daughters went to.

[31:47] KAREN BAHOW: Sidwell friends.

[31:47] ELLEN BOONE: Sidwell friends. Right. And she was not invited back because she was pregnant with me. And that would be awful to have a pregnant teacher in front of children.

[31:59] KAREN BAHOW: Well, you know, when I was in college, I took classes in, and this is in the 1990s, I took class. When I was in college, I took classes about us women's history. And it was amazing for me to really understand and realize grandma was born in 1908. That was twelve years before women had the right to vote. To know what she did. She worked her whole life. She went to, you are just reading her master's thesis, which was about education and educating poor people in the United States and filling in the gaps in the education system and studying about that and then passing on that education. She became, I mean, in addition to every amazing thing she did, taught etiquette to congressional wives growing up in DC, but she also taught in the public.

[32:53] ELLEN BOONE: Schools, and she taught English as a.

[32:55] KAREN BAHOW: Second language and through the DC public school system. And that's where she ended up retiring from. So that legacy of education is just right. Amazing.

[33:07] ELLEN BOONE: And I just loved rereading part of her masters. This morning, she wrote about how education, public education did not exist. It was only sponsored by, well, by people who had donated and were wealthy or by churches. And the reason they called them Sunday schools was that these schools took place on Sunday because children and other adults had to work all week. So they weren't there to teach religion, they were there to teach reading mostly, probably writing, arithmetic, too. And her 1936 thesis is just so amazing. She writes about the contention with people who were black who were not allowed to learn in some southern states, it was against the law to teach reading. And here she was advocating for education for everyone and promoting those historians who took such a big part in that movement to make public education for all possible.

[34:07] KAREN BAHOW: Yeah. And grandma kept learning her whole life, like you said, she was in her eighties. She became a professional storyteller. She also became a fitness instructor in her eighties.

[34:18] ELLEN BOONE: And here she is in this picture I'm looking at, she is just before her 102nd birthday, she did a waltz, an exhibition waltz for the crowd there at the Sylvania, Ohio senior Expo. Senior expo. And she also delivered a short speech to them. And that was just right before 102nd birthday. So grandma was, was alive and vital. And when we would go out to lunch, she'd walk up to the next table sometimes and say, hi, I'm a hundred. And sometimes she would say, wow, we never met anyone. It was a hundred. But she was always very outgoing, gregarious.

[34:57] KAREN BAHOW: How did grandma make you feel? Loved.

[35:01] ELLEN BOONE: Oh. Oh, that's so hard to say because it was in so many, many ways, she believed in everything I was doing. And just like Papa, when he said, what are you going to be when you grow up? When I was little, and I said, a teacher, I guess he said, oh, no, Ellen you will be the principal. So I think that acknowledging my strengths and my possibilities, I think that definitely was through Paffa, but it was also through my mother.

[35:31] KAREN BAHOW: What about your father? What is your favorite memory of grandpa?

[35:36] ELLEN BOONE: Well, of course, his violin playing was favorite, but my daddy insisted I take typing in high school, which it was the first c I ever got. I was terrible in typing, but it got me my job with the federal government when I was 17. Between college summers, I worked for the Pentagon. One year the Smithsonian, another year the general accounting office, and the fourth year for the head psychologist of the VA. And the fifth year, too. So. And I typed my own doctoral dissertation. So daddy was right. Typing is a very important skill. But it's his music that especially endears me to him and his quiet, gentle, loving ways. Like the picture you made for me for my birthday that I asked you to copy of my daddy with a little wild bird on the backyard. In the backyard, sitting on his finger, close to his face. It's like the bird picked up on his gentle spirit.

[36:37] KAREN BAHOW: What about papa? Any special, lasting thoughts and memories about papa?

[36:43] ELLEN BOONE: Oh, so many. Well, many, many wonderful memories. He was so different from my father. And what a blessing it was to have a grandfather and a father who both loved us completely, but who were so different personalities. Yeah.

[36:58] KAREN BAHOW: And then Nana.

[37:00] ELLEN BOONE: And Nana. And her quiet ways had an impact in quiet ways that weren't easily recognized. Just like my dad was the quiet partner in my parents relationship, Nana was the quieter partner in my grandparents relationship. But she made quite an impact with the young at Heart Club at Augustana Lutheran Church in Washington. And she also did other things. But I just remember that one, especially mama.

[37:29] KAREN BAHOW: I've loved knowing these stories and hearing these stories from you and grandma through all the years. Like I said, they've made Nana and papa and grandpa alive and part of me and part of, and their love and their legacy still lives on in my heart. And I think my sister's heart. Thank you so much for doing this with me, to be able to remember them.

[37:55] ELLEN BOONE: And thank you for helping me recall and dig out grandma's thesis and recall all these memories as we've talked. It's a real blessing, Karen Real blessing. Just, you three girls are a wonderful blessing to me, just like my parents and grandparents were. Blessing. I'm very, very grateful.

[38:12] KAREN BAHOW: I love you, mom.

[38:13] ELLEN BOONE: I love you, too, Karen It.