Mary Charlton, Lea Charlton, and Leslie Stigaard

00:01 We are now recording.

00:05 My name is Mary Charlton and I am 77 years. Old today is Saturday, July 3rd. 2021. I am in Atlanta. Georgia and my partner's. Today are Lea Charlton and Leslie stigaard guard and I know them because they are my daughters.

00:31 Hey, Mom. This is where I am Lea Charlton, and my age is 56. It's Saturday, July 3rd. 2021. I'm in my sister's house in Atlanta. And I'm here with Mom and Leslie. I am so excited to have you guys with me. So I'm, I'm Leslie stigaard and I have had my mother and my sister. Join me here in Atlanta to talk with our mother about influential time periods in her life. One of the things about growing up with parents. Is that sometimes you we don't really get to know so much about who you guys are as people. You're always just our parents.

01:31 As far as people and the things that happened in your life, that may be influence the way. You see the world, the way you raised your children, the way you make decisions. So I'm really excited to have this time to talk with you, and I'm glad that Leah is here to hear it as well. So, thank you for taking the time to do this with me about maybe some

01:57 Life that influence to our influence, the world or things that you experience. Yes. I think we thought maybe one of the most influential time from 1968 to 1973. When we lived in Berkeley, California while Woody was going to school at the University of california-berkeley. And I was getting a master's degree at California State University of Hayward and Woody at that time. Before we started school and moved to Berkeley. We were living in Leesburg, Virginia. And Leah was about

02:43 Three years in 3/4 months old and Leslie was about two months old, six months, six weeks to a month or something like that. And what he was working at an R&D, your father working at an RN, the company that did contract work for the military and Pentagon and CIA. It was kind of top-secret and it was the time of the Vietnam War and he was very concerned cuz he was essentially, passive is very opposed to the war at that time. It was a hot-button issue, all through the country and

03:30 He didn't like feeling like, in any way. He was, cooperating, or assisting in this war. So he wanted to go back to graduate school and he started to decline and the two places that he really thought he could get the best education for the area. He was interested in human lives in electrical engineering. He was very interested in areas that were impacted, that way. What was the University of Wisconsin at Madison and UC Berkeley, and UC Berkeley, was really the historic choice because he had attended the account meant, for citizenship a couple of years, maybe three or four years previously. And that was that held at Berkeley in the summer. It was for high school students across the country.

04:30 It was established by Eleanor Roosevelt. And the purpose of it was to acquaint students from all areas in the country. Geographic areas, as well as he could not agree with each other to promote knowledge of people that are somewhat different from yourself. And in fact, while he was chosen, I think, primarily because he was from the south and of course, people from the south then and sometimes now as well have sort of a reputation is maybe being prejudiced against others and so he was chosen and he was very glad to be going and he attended and lived in the dorms at the University and what an education he got. He he met Eleanor Roosevelt.

05:30 And he spoke to a gang leader spoke to them, the red fox. I heard a lot about the red fox. He was the leader of the Oakland, California, gang, and Mom. This was in high school.

05:48 In the summer. It was like at a summer camp. Okay, so he knew a little bit about. He knew he liked it. He likes the counterculture aspect of it. I was torn for Madison, Wisconsin because my mother thought it would be a very bad thing. If I took my little girls and we went to Berkeley California because it was full of hippies and radicals, you know, so it turned out I was a little bit. I had had some propaganda said to me by my mother but so I was

06:31 I was 21 when I was 24, I by the time we got there, I was 25. I was very prim and proper. I wore my hair in a French roll, and it was always super neat. And I were just the right things for Leesburg Virginia, but they weren't the right things to Berkeley, California in 1968. And so, I had quite a rude awakening. When we were living in married student housing, which were converted Barracks. They had been built in the second world war really close. Actually, they were built on landfill. So they're very close to the bay and just across the water. You could see the Golden Gate Bridge. So that was their location. A little bit. North of San Francisco.

07:31 And they were built for war workers during the war and then

07:37 After the war, they were converted to be housing for students at the Cal University of California at Berkeley. So we were able to get in there. We were considered quite fortunate. My mother had a connection and pull some strings. So she knew the secretary to the president of the University because she was a member of the same executive secretary so I can say. So once again we got there and it was such an eye-opener. I was so out of place with my attire and hairdo and I for the first six months or so, I didn't do very much. Leslie was only

08:29 Maybe she was only six weeks old when we got there. Certainly no more than 2 months old. So she and I would stay at the little apartment and housing all day. And when he would ride the bus to school and he took, you know, we had a little carpool and Leah went to the Montessori school all day or in Berkeley and I met this lovely lady and she and I should carpooling became a very good friendly, taste. And her little daughter was that maybe about a year younger than you, maybe she was three and you were four almost.

09:12 Anyway.

09:15 Pretty soon, not here long after we got there. There was a big slap to University because they wanted Eldridge Cleaver to come speak. He had been in prison and I'm not sure exactly what for, but he had been released. He had written a book called soul on ice and it had to do with his experiences growing up as a black use. And I think you think he was from Oakland and growing up is a bat, a black youth in the ghetto is sencha and in West Oakland and he wanted. He was very notable at that time because he have his book so long. I had really taken off and everyone was talking about it. So he was invited to be a lecturer at the University. I can't think of the name of the life.

10:15 It was adjacent to sprout Plaza and he, I don't know what group unhappy with that choice and said, no, he couldn't speak and that was all it took to create a huge outrage among the students and then there began to be shortly there after a boycott of the classes and then there came to be some rioting with the youth and pretty soon. The National Guard was called out and was Biv will act not very far at all from where we were living in our little Barracks Apartments. They would be black down by the bay. And so, one day Leslie my little baby and I are in the little apartment.

11:11 Doing our little happy things and the baby starts, sneezing sneezing and then pretty soon. I start sneezing. And then I'll come running out of their apartments and they're sneezing. Sneezing and our eyes are watering and I grab Leslie. And I ran out and all the other mothers were standing over their babies and we didn't know what it happened. What happened as we later Learned. Was it the National Guard in fooling around with their tear gas canisters and their pepper, gas canisters. Had release and pepper gas, and the prevailing winds coming from the ocean headed east towards us. Right there had carried the gas and we had all been gassed. Meanwhile down at the University. I don't know how many miles away for maybe they were

12:11 Rioting and what even is going everyday, loving, every minute of every wearing his hard hat. And he was, he was just in his element and there was rioting and there were police, and people were getting arrested, and our rights are being violated there. Rioting because Eldridge Cleaver felt censored. Yes. Yes, and this was a great Free Speech University. Some years earlier in the early sixties have been a big cannot think of the man's name, but he was the student there who had created quite an uproar about the rights of people to have free speech and to speak out about any topic.

13:00 So, that was the first time and he does. Tear gas.

13:10 Let me see, two months later. What he had picked up Leah from Montessori school. So, she was like, four and that he taken her into the bookstore, while he was getting some books. And she was at the age where she touched everything. Everything. She's very practical, and she was running her fingers, all over the books and pretty soon. She started screaming. She had gotten teargas on her fingers. Had rubbed your eyes and it was you remember that. I absolutely do? Remember it. It was very painful. Maybe my first child wanting clarification. Were you inside the bookstore Leah? Yes. Yes, they had gotten into the store. Yes. Wow, so the rioting

14:10 That occurred in the big open Plaza at the University, but the bookstore was just adjacent to it. Yeah, so that was that was the beginning of some of the experience. By this time. I've gotten rid of my French Rolex, lay my hair go long, and I naturally have straight here. So that's not a problem. I was quite a load straight here and I didn't have to dress up anymore. I wore jeans all the time and I was making friends and I made friends with some women in marriage and housing that were conscious consciousness-raising folks. And we started having women's Liberation meaning we would meet at night. After all the dinner has been served and cleaned and the children are put in bed. We would go to someone's apartment and we would sit around and we would talk about the ways. We

15:10 Been impressed by being women and it was very enlightening. And then I discovered there was a place up on

15:23 I can't think of the name of the street. Now that ran right by the university, there was a small little building and they called it Sherwood Forest because in it was gay, the gayest only, they called it. I forget what they call their place, but the women's Liberation movement also had a little office there and we could mimeograph materials and you know, I'm not sure they called me back then but I can't remember. What was the appropriate terminology. But anyway, then some of my friends and I we would go and get really active in literature prize in literature and grafting. It Distributing at trying to have a little meetings, trying to have, I don't think we organized the March just us, but we certainly

16:23 Been some marches and so the I was getting infused with the whole atmosphere, what it was like to be young to feel like you had a right to express yourself and to discover who you were aside from being someone's wife, mother daughter and there were other women and they were educated. I was educated and we wanted more education in time. The world is going to change began protesting the war that was something that was really getting hot troops are starting to come home and they and their ships would be met with people that were screaming at the soldiers. It was horrible that they were baby killers and things like that. So we

17:23 Would try to organize a different group to go down to the Alameda, the naval base. And instead be a Counterpoint to that.

17:35 To that that protest against the soldiers in the Navy and the sailors. And to say to them, we we respect you for whatever it was. You had to go through. So that was a big thing of the protesting in the war. We got together a big event to march from the bay to Baker's Breakers to the ocean. And I can't think what day that was. What year, but we had Leslie in a little red wagon and Leah was walking. We started with a whole bunch of people, thousands of people and we walked from the starting point, which I think would be down.

18:25 Now about where the ferry building is that hilarious change since that earthquake, but we walked and we sin and there were signs and all kinds of different groups of people Harry Krishna people were dancing and there were women's groups marching together and we were with some friends. It was thrilling and it was really exciting that day and we marched all the way down to the Pacific Ocean and then there was a rally down there. Then there became another protest which was to shut down the university until

19:11 Now with that, that would be Lyndon Johnson, I guess until late the next pulled out of Vietnam. So the whole university of california-berkeley shut down, and nobody went to classes anymore. What they did instead was to go out into the streets, and we had armenio graph materials again, and we would have little stations for. We would talk to people came by so the aliens about the War and why we were opposed to it and I had they would divide areas of the Town certain streets and I had areas that were close to our little housing area and I took Leslie live was at her school and you were just a baby. You were maybe

20:03 Maybe not quite a year old.

20:06 So I would hold you in my arms and go up to these houses and this was down and what they called Flatlands which was Blue Collar country and it actually the little area we lived in Albany was the headquarters of the John Birch Society. So there was a lot of

20:29 Negative towards people protesting the war. So I would, I was determined. I wasn't aware that anything like that. Keep me from having my say and giving out my materials and then people know I'm supposed to the war in Vietnam.

20:55 I went to the South and they had a John Birch Society. So, I'm in the window and I knocked and someone came to the door. I don't remember, but I told him who I was and what I was about, and they were very nice. Now. I don't know if they would have been As Nice is if I hadn't had the baby Aria side in a different color. Who knows. But I was proud of myself for not being intimidated by the John Birch Society sign. Then I went to another house and knocked on the door. I mean, I went to a lot of houses, but this is a very memorable occasion and the woman came. And she was pleasant and I told her what I was doing if I was there. I'd like you to meet someone. So we walked in. Those were little houses that they built kind of like it was the first Housing Development.

21:55 In that area. So they're very small and their narrow. So they go way back and they have the bedrooms in the rear of the building. So we walked down the Long Haul, it's kind of dark in the very back. Bedroom was very old man. She was in the bed and she said, tell him what you told me and I told him what I was doing while I was there and his kraklio voice. He said, I was in the Spanish-American war and I didn't want to go to war. I want to see

22:34 Yeah, yeah, so that was something very memorable.

22:40 So, we did that. So time rolls on, and I'm hip ear and hip hear my mother doing on the time. I have a question for you.

22:57 So, one of the things that I really,

23:02 Respect about you right now is that you are still going out and you're active in your you live in Arkansas, and you're very good at

23:14 Standing up for people and protesting and do you think that you would be doing that? If you hadn't moved to Berkeley in 1968, you think you would have found your way to activism like you want a good idea to think about what he was such a person who believes in the rights of everyone going to be able to express himself and have all the kinds of freedoms. Everyone would have kinds of freedoms as others have, and he was a real light to me and that regard when we were living in Leesburg. He joined

23:56 He joined, I'll come now. I can't think of the name of the organization because they were not allowing black people to get into the apartment buildings where we live. And so did he went with some of the black people that were trying to get an apartment?

24:15 And I'm sorry, I can't think of the name of the organization that he went with them to talk to the owners of the apartment complex. And they said, if we rent to you, nobody quite Woodbridge Apartments in. She piped up and said, well, I would, cuz I do so he was very out front about protecting other people who have been diminished in their opportunities.

24:45 I'm sorry. I can't think of the name of the organization right now of corner before Acorn. Know it was anyway, so what he wants and his parents had been as well. They were Bohemians and they were people in socialist in the twenties in the thirties. I mean, grandma grandma. Yeah, they had a lot. So I would like to think that I would have found my way to thinking this way, but I do a tribute a lot of it to him and he and his intellect and his desire to make sure that he could do what he could in this life to protect people. If you don't mind me interjecting, how did you meet Woody? What was it about. Did you two to him?

25:42 Oh, well, okay. I met him because his sister was married to a distant cousin of mine. So, his sister, Willa introduced. She told Woody that I was coming to the university and gave him. Some information about me, University of Arkansas University of Arkansas, and

26:09 And I, I did not pledge a sorority, which was significant because he was supposed to the Greek system and that it was so, so she said, I think you should look Mary up and I was living in a dorm that hadn't quite been finished. So they didn't have telephones. A lot of things were, we had to be out of the door by 8 every morning and couldn't come back till 5:30 at in the evening cuz she came in and worked in it. So he had sent a message and it has been put on a bulletin board, but I never saw it and he kept trying after we finally got. So he was able to call and we had a date and we had a lot to talk about and he was so smart. And I'd like to think I was smart and he had traveled and

27:09 I've done a little bit of traveling and we felt away about so many things. I always always admired. His in there. I was dazzled by a guy really wants. His parents were academic people and they talked about interesting things.

27:32 It was a very appealing lifestyle to me when I was with him.

27:40 Yeah, that sounds like probably Woody helped. Oh, yeah, cure activism that you all really landed in the right place at the right time yet. So, I forgot to tell you, we did have a protest at the University of Arkansas. The dorms were not integrated. And so he arranged a big protest. March that was actually somebody and we marched in front of the library. And

28:11 My mother, of course, I didn't tell my mother. I was getting into these things and doing these things, but on the front page of the Arkansas of this far and immigration and then White and the girls,

28:39 And did I get a phone call? Yeah, other faces being black. They didn't black out, the boys, only the girls.

28:59 And that funny. So yeah, it's all started back. Then. I'm sorry it all started back then and then we were back in Berkeley and let's see towards the end of our said he's working on his dissertation. That was a hard time, his research and I had I was going to school at Hayward getting the master's degree in counseling and if you remember or maybe you've heard of the Patty Hearst kidnapping the, Lees, symbolize symbolize simulation front, something like that. This group that kidnapped Patty Hearst and they had some connection with someone is married student housing.

29:54 And all that, was there looking for Patty Hearst, and they have some knowledge that someone that knows about these kidnappers were sitting there racing housing. One day, this helicopter comes and grassy area. Patty, Hearst Symbolese Liberation Army, right? That was the name of the group and it was quite an excitement. People were running around with guns. Trying to look for people. It wasn't anyone in our area? The housing, but it was just like, you never knew what was going to happen next.

30:39 Can't think of all the really.

30:42 Bizarre things, but I came to just accept it. But what I really loved about living in Berkeley, was the freedom to be, who you were, and I experienced things. I've never experienced before fabulous. Ethnic food places to go little cheap hole-in-the-wall restaurants. Shoot little Indian. My daughter's in to remember your cute little dress and then the beautiful blue. Jean skirts, skirts. I would give my eyeteeth for the snow.

31:24 And we had access to the university and they could go with Nelly learn-to-swim up here and Strawberry Canyon. And I would take her in the morning for her swimming lessons, and it was so cold. You had to wear a snowsuit. Put her little shivering body into the ice. Cold water around a lot growing up. Yeah, we did. But you were in your

31:57 Mid-twenties. When you lived in Berkeley, I went there when I was 25 and so you really talk about all the things you love about it. How do you think it influenced you after you moved away? Like we lived in Massachusetts and then we moved back to Arkansas. How do you think growing really coming? Or it's not really coming of age, but being in your twenties to thirties in Berkeley socially,

32:36 I've changed how I thought about things my parrot, my mother and my grandmother were Democrats, but I don't know if I would consider them a living but I think it altered my view of the world and how I thought things should be an ought to be input. Maybe I could do to make it because I was a moderate, I wasn't there. When I went to the Lefty. Nobody'd, ever seen anybody that Lefty and in Massachusetts, I was

33:19 A French person may be to accept because it was largely Academia. I didn't feel that so much. And if you are a liberal Progressive liberal, don't you think absolutely.

33:42 Lea is that where you live? As we're Mary, where do you and Leah live? Currently she lives in Little Rock, Arkansas and I live in Fayetteville, Arkansas.

33:55 Thank you. And I grew up in Arkansas. Yeah, but I came to be ashamed of it. And, and when we traveled in like Leslie, said lived in a lot of different places, I was hesitant to tell people because this was not very long after the Little Rock school crisis and the governor shutting down the high school in order to prevent them from being integrated. That was something that happened in Little Rock when I was in high school, so I would go other places in the

34:32 I try to avoid telling people where I was from except on occasion. My dear friend would say, aren't you. Afraid people won't like you and I hear your accent, so I tried to get rid of that.

34:51 That was interesting for us. Cuz we, we, we grew up in so many different places and then to

34:58 You know, I was in Middle School and Leah was in high school to have you guys suddenly decide you want to move back to Arkansas. I don't think I ever really knew.

35:09 How close she felt to Arkansas cuz I think sort of that idea that maybe.

35:15 I just didn't see it as a place that you would want to go back to. So it was really interesting when we did went back. Let's see 6, and we were living in Woods Hole, Massachusetts and then the lab that he was working and closed at the NBL, Marine biological lab.

35:43 It closed. And then that was when he got a, a posting at UC Med Center, UC San Francisco working in a lab there and I had gone back to school to get school psychology certification. Well, so four years later, the lab at the med center close. And then the job I had at Berkeley public schools at the school psychologist Savage, the last one hired and they had to let me go. We didn't have jobs. I didn't realize that. So he didn't have a job and I didn't have a job and we came home for the summer to Arkansas. And I said, Co or he's, he decided. I don't know why, but he went up there to see if they had any openings and they hired him right away as professor and

36:42 The engineering it electrical engineering department. It was a necessity in Arkansas, and it was because we didn't have jobs.

36:59 I didn't know that say again. It's so interesting to see you guys as people ugly. Now, that I have children, like, you just see your parents differently than in, who they who they all are. So it's interesting to learn all this. We were worried. I had started interviewing. And he, but the lab at The Med Center, I think maybe the man that had the lab and had the contract for the research program going. I think he got really sick and it was just almost instantaneous it closed down.

37:39 But so that was the summer that I didn't know what we were going to do, and all of a sudden he had a job and it was, it was a place we knew or place we were from. And we just came right back packed her things up. And he came Woody came first with the dog.

38:01 And Leslie was in which hold this thing, Janine and you and Nathan and I came in the car later. Do you remember that? I remember not telling you that the emergency brake was on because I was so resentful. Okay to leave and go do something to learn these years later. That I mean, I don't I don't think I even thought about like how you get jobs. I mean I was eleven or twelve or so I didn't. This is the first time I've learned that you have been, you know, like the school system had a layoff and that his dad. Also, I just thought one day you guys woke up on the like we want to move back to Arkansas. Let's take our poor daughters in our tiny baby boy and go. So that is really interesting. I really appreciate you taking the time.

39:02 Your life as a as a person and not just my mom.

39:10 Sometimes we get into our own lives that we don't pay as much attention. I want to get back into some details because you are a wealth of information.

39:37 If you have a few last things to say, go ahead with we're good. We're right at 40 minutes. So you can, you can talk a couple more minutes. If you'd like. What brand has just been really nice. I think it I think it's a good rap and a good. A good education that I didn't have any idea. They didn't know what was going on in our little lives and maybe that's the way it is. A lot of times, the children don't realize why the parents have wrinkles and look where it there's another sister. Do you, will you say the names of all of your children for me, please? Okay, so there's Leah and Leslie and have a son Nathan. He was he's 12 years younger than Leah and eight years younger than Leslie told me. He wasn't necessarily an afterthought, but a blessing.

40:34 All right. Thank you. I think that is. So I'm going to turn off the recording now. Thank you so much Mary. Thank you, Brenda.

40:48 You get pinched?