Kenton Allen, Kathleen Allen, and Kim Allen

00:03 My name is Canton Hall Allen. I am Believe It or Not 71 years of age. And today's date is July nine 2008 my 40.

00:19 9th wedding anniversary with my wife Kathleen. This is in Foley Square in New York City. And my partner with me is my wife at 49 years Kathy Allen.

00:34 My name is Kathleen George Allen. I am 67 years old. Today's date is July 9th 2008. We are at Foley Square in New York City and my husband Canton and I are being interviewed by our daughter Kim.

00:52 My name is Kim Annette Allen. I'm 46 years old on July 9th 2008 in Foley Square in New York City. I'm going to interview my parents Canton Allen and Kathleen Allen.

01:07 And what I'd like to to do today is its find out and share with my my siblings and with my niece and nephew with some of the things that I know and perhaps don't know about you as as a young man and woman as a married couple as parents and as people who done good work in the world.

01:33 And so first of all, there are more children than me. So who are your other children?

01:42 Well, we lost a daughter Christie years ago. She was born with the deformity and we loved her and she was 9 months old and then. Then my first daughter that sitting here is Kim and she lives here in New York City. And then there is Carmen who lives in New Jersey and she's married to Yasser Al Rashid from Syria and I've got two lovely grandchildren from that and then there's

02:16 Human who lives in Brooklyn and

02:20 We're proud of all of them.

02:24 And he's married to Jen Jen. Of course just recently wow, and don't forget Gustav bagpuss for cat.

02:36 So a long time ago when you met can can you recall if you can rewind the tape what your earliest memory of one another was?

02:54 Mom, she think back.

02:58 We were in college that was before the session began. We were both there early.

03:04 And I was with the a friend of mine from from Honduras and she introduced me to her boyfriend Canton Allen and he was a football player. He was extremely dark and just come back from spending the summer in Mexico.

03:26 I thought he was very interesting and exotic.

03:30 Okay.

03:32 And I'm supposed to look at your earliest. What's your first earliest age when she was standing in front of the dorm at Lakeland College Sheboygan and young man had his arm around her and I thought wow she she just quality and okay. I met her in it and then I was happy when she broke up with now, it's true that your girlfriend was a Honduran woman named Gladys Castellanos. She's actually responsible for our family right now. If you want to look at it that way and she want to take you off a missionary.

04:18 Emotional and clothes and and she wanted me to marry her and she wanted to get me to go to Honduras and be a missionary and I panicked and I told her no, sorry and luckily Bill Britt away broken up or Cathy broke up with him and we comforted each other and the rest is history.

04:46 So Mom last night, I want a quote you you said Kenton you were really after me now that I think about it. So my question to you Dad is where you of course and I was 21 years of age or something like that and I was ready.

05:11 And she was my first really serious girlfriend.

05:16 And I wasn't even yet eighteen when I met him and I wasn't ready. I was just beginning.

05:23 My college life was the first time I'd really had a chance to be around other people who challenged me until actually a very exciting time. It's very exciting.

05:35 So, where were you from?

05:37 That's from a small dairy farm in the center of the United of the, Wisconsin.

05:44 And going to a small College in eastern Wisconsin for Kenton happened to be

05:50 So yeah, it was a very important time in my life.

05:56 In my life, too, of course.

05:59 And how did you end up at that College?

06:03 Because I got a scholarship their aunts and my parents were poor. They had no money. So I had to I had to sweep the floors and clean the bathrooms of the girls dorm for pocket money and

06:24 But I said, but I didn't feel poor.

06:27 I felt very fortunate and I was at Lakeland College cuz my father dr. Alvin Allen was a professor and that gave me free tuition and that's why I was there because she was free.

06:42 So so how do you think about your parents and your grandparents for like talking about how you fell in love and got married and all that? How do you think that the parents you had maybe your grandparents? You had shaped the kind of you you had about relationships between men and women were like what marriage might be

07:04 What kinds of expectations did you walk around having about what what that might look like?

07:15 You first my father was a really rough man in many ways, but but he was very very respectful of my mother and then loved her a lot.

07:29 So I think I always wanted to be loved the way my mother was loved.

07:33 Even though it was with a difficult man to have a passionate relationship. They did they did and

07:42 And I had a very contentious relationship with my father.

07:46 Because he really wanted to control my life and make plans for me but to his credit that included Wayne College.

07:54 And getting an education because he had never had that opportunity.

07:58 And my mother always pushed me.

08:01 To do things that I was afraid of doing.

08:05 Cuz I think in many ways she and I were alike and that we would prefer to be in the background instead of being in the Forefront and she wasn't satisfied for that to be my life.

08:20 So

08:22 And both of my grandparents and grandmothers were very strong women.

08:28 I think I came from a family of really strong women.

08:33 Poor and

08:38 I don't know why I never thought of my mother is being poorly educated, but she actually didn't have many opportunities, but she wrote.

08:49 She was wanting to be a teacher.

08:53 Set matter to her a lot that you got an education and what about your grandmother's marriages? Did you learn anything from them?

09:07 My grandmother's never talked about their marriages. It's only things I've learned.

09:13 Many years later

09:18 I know I never thought about those things when I was child. I was like that's just what happened that wasn't that the way everyone's life with a lots of kids that had lots of kids.

09:31 But my both of my grandmothers were very well spoken and

09:38 Now they were lovely women.

09:41 Who are the names Josephine and Lillian?

09:47 Dad, what about you? What did you what did you think marriage might be based on your parents and your grandparents?

09:57 Well, I knew one thing I had to go to college and why they they expected me to be a teacher. I know that because my father was my mother was my brother was for a while before he couldn't cut it and am I

10:12 My sister Karen was supposed to be a teacher, but she decided to be a nurse instead my father and mother.

10:22 Well, my mother was sick a lot of her life and my father was had an inferiority complex and always tried it tried to he needed to be praised and

10:35 My mother was very very warm with me. My father was very proud of me, but it wasn't an aggressive relationship. My father was messy and my mother was.

10:49 Messi to hoof in the

10:55 But I feel a lot of love and I've got tickly close to my mother and my father was particularly close to me.

11:03 Did you know your grandparents very well know they lived a long ways away Pearl out of Wilbur Allen and they were just folks and they were where we talkin to Jetmore Kansas out in Western Hodgeman County and they were farmers and

11:24 Very very poor, but just nice people. I guess I really didn't know that I my Pearl and I know had the same birthday as mine and that was the most interesting thing for me, November 8th.

11:42 Your birthday my birthday.

11:46 Alright, so let's go back. Go back to your courtship. All right. So apparently you were really after Mom but that you also claimed last night that she made the first move. That's what I say. Okay, so Mom, is that true? No.

12:02 Okay, so I want to hear both versions go ahead defend yourself.

12:09 Well, he always said that I asked him to hold his hand which may be true. It was but I don't consider that the first move.

12:20 Because he was always looking at me.

12:23 And I was like just getting out of this other.

12:28 Relationship that I felt I really had no no desire to be in.

12:33 We were just 17 and I was just Seventeen and I was studying Russian than organic chemistry in an English literature and I was excited about all of that. But but he was he was a different kind of person from what I had met growing up in Wisconsin because

12:54 Yam.

12:56 He was gentle.

12:59 And

13:01 Yeah, he was fascinating to me.

13:05 And I really wanted him as a friend for sure.

13:10 And then I don't know. I just kind of went to something else.

13:14 Yeah, and then he was injured in a car accident and

13:20 And his family was far away and I sort of turned into his family and

13:26 One thing led to another I don't think I was seeking the relationship. I just kind of happened.

13:33 I guess I did Chase her to school at Quality Inn. And I was old enough and serious off and I was a yes third semester senior and

13:49 I was ready to establish a life and man as I say she was the first serious girlfriend I'd ever had and it's a family family history about some odd location for the proposal for marriage told us many times. You want to put it on record Lakeland College was a real college and most people lived in the dorms and so forth is pretty hard to be alone. So my wife and I my girlfriend and I went to a garbage dump and that we could be all all private there and I purchased a diamond ring that you didn't know about.

14:30 How to get the money from the college and made the present a little bit disgusted cuz I was supposed to use it for education but I used it for the ring and so I proposed to her in the car in the dark garbage dump bed.

14:50 She said yes, one of the Great Moments Of My Life.

14:55 Right

14:58 The mom you would explain how you ended up getting married twice.

15:06 Good luck. Okay. Well.

15:10 So we were engaged after his graduation in the summer of 1959.

15:18 And my family had moved to Terre Haute, Indiana.

15:22 So that's where I went and he continued to go to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin and Madison, which is about

15:29 I don't know 3 hours away.

15:32 And every weekend he would drive down to Terre Haute during the summer during the summer to be with me.

15:39 And about the same time. I was having a quarrel with my father because he wanted me to stay there and live with them and go to the state Teachers College and Terror, which was not what I wanted.

15:55 And you said for younger siblings and I had four younger siblings but a wonderful family.

16:04 And I don't know it just seemed like

16:08 Like what it was time to get married because we really loved each other and we didn't really want to wait. So how did your parents find out you were married? Well, we just thought we could kind of keep it quiet because we we probably were going to get married within the next year. We had a quite decided how or when because we didn't have any money. So we just thought we just keep it quiet and we were sitting in kenton's car and my younger sister open the glove compartment just started going through things and some

16:46 Careless person had put the marriage certificate inside the glove compartment.

16:52 And she said what's this?

16:56 And of course she was like

16:59 She would have been 13 14.

17:03 13 I think it's so it's so we told her what what it was and what it meant and she immediately ran into the house until my mother.

17:13 And my mother and father were pretty unhappy and mostly unhappy because of my age because I was just 18.

17:25 But also because it hadn't been a church wedding so we decided we met with the pastor and decided that.

17:36 Over Labor Day weekend in the fall at the end of the summer before going to Kansas. We would be married again. And then I would go to Kansas with Kenton to start our married life.

17:48 So that's what we did and was kind of a chaotic wedding, but all the family came and so we were married again second time.

17:59 I've been married twice to the same woman, which anniversary is this one Today Show. This is the first one because that's the only considered we were married.

18:09 We're not going to ask for any more details. Thank you.

18:13 So you're 18 years old and you got pregnant with Christy.

18:22 That's a pretty hard story. Can you tell us a little bit more about Christy? She was born the following spring and about six weeks before she was due. I started having medical problems. I had some

18:37 High blood pressure toxemia I think is what it's called. And so I was hospitalized does bed rest and then they decided that she should be born because they couldn't control my blood pressure.

18:55 So she was born.

18:58 And she had multiple birth defects.

19:03 She had some spina bifida, which is an opening in the spine and hydrocephalus, which is the accumulation of lymph fluid on the brain.

19:13 And my mother came

19:17 She hadn't planned to come but she came after after Christy was born.

19:22 And she stayed with me while Canton and a nurse took Christy to a specialist pediatric specialists in Kansas City MO. It was so sad because there was nothing they could do science wasn't that advance that time we how long was she supposed to live? I would just probably a matter of weeks perhaps months. They didn't know but they just told us to take her home and love her and that's what we did.

19:50 And she lives for 8 months can to not 9 and she died in November.

19:58 But during that time we had some wonderful months.

20:03 I love going to achieve back. I remember that dramatically during the time that she was alive. She she developed pretty normally.

20:18 And that probably would not have continued but

20:22 What's really amazing is that you managed to have she managed to meet all of your family. She did we took her home for the summer.

20:30 Another tragic things of that time is that the doctor said that because of the seriousness of that Kathy couldn't have any more children and that was devastated. But then he died. Yeah. Well our our our doctor said you should not have any more children. So we really loved her because we thought she was the only child we would ever have

20:54 And and then she developed meningitis control from the bed or something Leanne and she developed now. I don't know if that's caused but she died after about

21:11 For five days in the hospital

21:14 And

21:16 Shortly after that the doctor died.

21:20 And we decided to go to Kansas City and get some genetic counseling which is fairly new thing then and they did took our family history and did a bunch of blood work and

21:37 I think we actually did that a year after she died.

21:41 And told us that that they thought that this was an environmental thing rather than a genetic thing.

21:48 So then we decide to have you and I could remember when you were being born our friend Lucille Glenn. We're going to Kathy's very best friends and I were holding hands out in the lobby.

22:06 And when I knew that you were born in

22:09 And you are good and fine is one of these very very most. Happy moments of Our Lives.

22:18 Can I still love you?

22:20 You know, I was just talking to someone the other day. I think the fact that I was born healthy after all of this is part of the reason. I think that we all think we're supposed to do something with her life.

22:35 Because I think that there is a sense that it's a it's a miracle to have this kind of health and you're supposed to use it in some way while now that I look back, you know at the time when someone told me that I could couldn't have children that I wasn't going to be able to be a parent except.

22:54 For a short time for a a little child that wasn't going to live on that thing like the greatest tragedy in the world to me. But as I look back, I know there are many ways to be parent and I've been to so many other people besides the three children I've had so

23:11 With the wisdom of the years you look back and realize

23:16 But at that time having a child with some really important thing to me you were still a child yourself. Yeah. It was what you told me when I was 18. You told me that my mother was much more to her at 18th, and I was

23:31 So so I know you were very happy that I was born healthy and we can you remember anything about Carmen being born.

23:45 Carmen was born two and a half years later and it was a much less tense time because you had been born healthy. So we felt like then we weren't taking such a chance because we knew we were taking a chance.

23:58 Well in Carmen's biggest problem is she just wouldn't get born. She was like so overdue that it was great release was born on January 6th, so we didn't get a tax deduction for her. But she was a New Year's baby of the county the paper paper in your mom's picture in the paper in the carmans picture in the paper. Brenda all kinds of gifts from the community in

24:26 And what I remember is that Carmen looked totally different from you and she was born because you were like this little blond thing with translucent skin and and blue eyes and

24:39 And when Carmen was born she had extremely dark hair and dark skin and very long nails and eyelashes and eyebrows and it was hard to believe that you were sisters, which is really strange because now that you're grown women you actually look very much alike, but it was the

24:57 Quite a contrast. So we expecting a little brother 7 years later. Here's your little brother was a complete surprise and devastated me when I found out I was pregnant didn't get to go back to Cali and is planning to finish education go to school.

25:14 But he was a tax deduction. He was a tax deduction.

25:19 And having three children has been a wonderful wonderful day and that meant something different three girls and then a boy.

25:29 I don't know.

25:31 I'd liked it.

25:34 Like you to I mean that said nothing bad about that.

25:40 But it was quite a guy.

25:44 Blonde curly hair a little hippie child. Do you remember any things that we used to say or do when we were little Miss small children? Will you I said when you were needing comforting you'd reach up and say Mommy I want to have you and who was it said Merry Christmas was in Carmen Carmen to take Merry Christmas. That was cute.

26:18 And I remember you girls loving when I told super baby stories and I just love Kevin Kevin to he loves you loved it when he told that he told you stories.

26:42 So

26:46 Like when you were when you were raising us as as parents, did you have kind of a different?

26:52 A change in the way that you raised Kevin. Let's say from the way that you raised us. You were really really young when you had me and Carmen and then you were it was a very different time. When you're raising County parenting change for you and as you got older absolutely, I think when you and Carmen were born my goal was to have you be a good little girls that would fit into society and do all the right things and have a good education by the time Kevin came along. I wanted him to be a free thinker and I can't express himself and by that time we actually had begun to see those kind of parents for you girls to but Kevin was born in the 70s. That was a totally different time.

27:39 And he was just like

27:42 Free expression then

27:45 It's just a much more open time difficult to raise.

27:51 You think we were in some financial difficulty and I was working.

27:58 We were always into jobs and learn summertime and so forth and I didn't have as much time to be a parent and a lot of that KitKat he had to bear.

28:10 And that's one of my big tragedies of my life is that I didn't have the access time to spend with my kids and I think it heard Kevin probably more than anybody. What do you think the hardest thing about being a parent is?

28:28 Even be hurt.

28:32 Kind of hard to avoid to

28:36 I think that.

28:45 Can you?

28:48 Can you imagine what you might have done had you not been able to have more children after Christi?

28:57 We would have had children.

28:59 How to De I mean how is that if we would have done something family with five kids in a great mother and that was obvious even with Christy. She was a great mother very loving and

29:19 She just had to do it.

29:23 Probably having Christie's what bondage the two of us together forever that no matter what difficulties we went through no matter how young I was when we were married.

29:37 With whatever we did. We were always going to be together because having survived that together.

29:45 Was a deep bond ever survived 49 years together.

29:51 Well, I'm up kind of hard sometimes.

29:55 Unfortunately, that's not the subject of this interview.

30:00 So how is being a grandparent different from being a parent or grandparent of two kids?

30:12 Being a grandparent.

30:15 It's like sitting in the back seat of the car because you're not driving.

30:22 But you're observing and it's still your life. So you're still you're still involved and what happens and it still affect you deeply.

30:33 But you don't really have much control, but you watched and You observe and you actually participate.

30:42 So it's it's a great pleasure great pleasure.

30:47 Not so much responsibility.

30:50 I took that too. Well. Well well said

30:53 So what are the things about your two? Grandchildren Muhammad Zana that you most cherish?

31:03 When I see Carmen's face and them or her actions and them or I hear them repeating things that she says.

31:12 They're at their Lively and fun and so smart. I'm not just a pretty Des grand father. I know they're great.

31:22 Loud

31:25 I also think that they are like a result of the things that we both valued all through our life this idea of wanting to know about other cultures in a why when I was it 17 year old College freshman in the middle of the Midwest. Why did I study Russian? Why did your father go off to Mexico to Summers and study there instead of just taking a class from whatever school he was in we just we just both of always had this deep Fascination for other cultures and other people

32:01 So so having our daughter marry someone from Syria and having our grandchildren.

32:08 Aldi have Siri on that's pretty appropriate. I think pretty appropriate.

32:15 What you think when you're younger than cuz you're much more than just parents and grandparents. You do the work that you do is really important. What did you think you were going to be when you grew up when you were younger?

32:28 Wow.

32:30 What was going to be a journalist to write a newspaper 7 Sports columns and so forth. But you know, I had to go to college next year and that's the year. I met Kathy because I wasn't to be a teacher. I want to go to be a teacher then it became a teacher.

32:54 I don't know why I never really had time to dream about that cuz life just kind of happened. I knew I wanted an education and I knew I wanted to travel. Those are the two things. I really and I wanted a family.

33:07 But career, I don't know.

33:12 But when I became a teacher, it was a very good fit and working with foreign students was a very good fit.

33:18 So once once I knew it was doing the right thing, I knew it.

33:23 I don't think I ever had dreams.

33:28 But understanding people that were different from me was always important to me.

33:35 Thinking about we all this this work that you've done in the teaching working with exchange students the the working the peace movement in the Civil Rights Movement all the stuff that you done.

33:48 Why have you invested so much of your life and your children's lives to some you given up a big chunk of Our Lives to other people why?

34:03 Purpose of living is to make

34:07 Make a difference.

34:09 Make the world better and we have a responsibility to do that. It's a mission. It's just a calling.

34:18 You got to do it.

34:24 I think my father taught me that the worst thing is Injustice.

34:29 And I I remember hearing stories about him helping unfortunate people people who were in difficulty and didn't deserve it.

34:40 And kind of an aha moment I had was when I read the autobiography of John Lewis who's exactly the same age as I am and I realized how little I knew about what was happening in the world.

34:55 And so I think I wanted my children to know the rest of the world and to care about it because I felt like I hadn't those I put when I was younger.

35:05 So

35:07 To make it a just world the peaceful world for our children and grandchildren greatest things for us is that we look at our three children and the people that married in there.

35:22 They're just people.

35:26 And caring people and they want to make the world better to

35:31 Do you?

35:34 Do you have any regrets though that we didn't like go on family vacation to the Grand Canyon and do stuff like that and out of it.

35:49 And that we had a lot of debt in our life but together we work things out a house and we're still working on them. We're not a finished product yet. I got to make one more year to be in the 50th. You know, we're still working on everything.

36:03 I hope you're not finished. What do you want? What do you want for us in the future? I mean like to live my last question. So what do you see for us as your children?

36:15 I'm 20 years from now.

36:19 I want you to care beyond yourselves.

36:23 When should I care about the world?

36:26 Amen

36:28 Okay, that's a promise.