Mary Duncan and Shelly McCollum

[00:02] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I am Shelly McCollum. I am 56 years old. Today is Saturday, March 19, 2022. I'm at the Greenwood Cultural center in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and I'm going to be talking with and asking questions with my mom, Mary Duncan.

[00:18] MARY DUNCAN: My name is Mary Duncan. I'm 77, almost 78 years old today. It is Saturday, March 19, 2022. I am at the Greenwood Cultural center in Tulsa, Oklahoma. I am going to be interviewing and answering questions from my daughter, Shelly

[00:42] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay. So the first questions I wanted to talk to you about, the things I wanted to ask about were when I was a kid. So the first thing I have for you is, how did you first find out that you were going to have a kid? That you were pregnant?

[00:57] MARY DUNCAN: That I was pregnant.

[00:58] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: How old were you and what was the situation?

[01:00] MARY DUNCAN: Okay. Well, as you know, I was pregnant with you when I got married. So I wasn't married at the time. I was in school at Phillips University in Enid.

[01:15] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[01:16] MARY DUNCAN: And when I realized that I might be pregnant, I called a friend in Tulsa, an older lady that I was friends with, and she was from Enid, which is where Phillips is.

[01:32] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay.

[01:32] MARY DUNCAN: She was from Enid. So she gave me the name of a doctor to go to. I went to the doctor, and he confirmed that I was pregnant. And, of course, then I had to make all kinds of arrangements to quit school. It was, let's see, you were born in September.

[01:54] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So how far along were you when you.

[01:56] MARY DUNCAN: Oh, not very. I finished. I think it was January when I found out. Okay, maybe. Yeah, maybe January. Anyway, we, we, because Frank was there with me, and we both quit school and came back to Tulsa. And my mother, who, as you know.

[02:25] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Was just horrified, I'm sure this was 19.

[02:28] MARY DUNCAN: We had announced, we had announced a wedding. In fact, the engagement had already been in the paper, and we had announced a wedding for March 20. And so my mom, your mama said, well, we'll just tell them you wanted to get married on Valentine's Day. And so we moved it up February 14.

[02:55] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: All right.

[02:56] MARY DUNCAN: And as far as being pregnant, I was thrilled.

[02:59] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: You were?

[02:59] MARY DUNCAN: I mean, scared, you know, expected, but I was thrilled. You know how I love babies and you love babies, and my mom loved babies, and that just runs in it. Oh, my.

[03:10] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I know. I've wondered sometimes, you know, I'm sure that mama, your mother, my grandmother, as much as she loved babies, I don't think I've ever asked you what her reaction was when you were pregnant, since you weren't married.

[03:22] MARY DUNCAN: Oh. She was like, what will people think? The typical, she said that when she told Papa that I was pregnant, he didn't say a word, which is typical for him. He said not a word. And he got a big glass of wine and went and laid down on the couch and never talked about it.

[03:43] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: That's funny. I remember when I was old enough to look at your wedding date and then my birth date and go, oh, that's interesting. When I was old enough to figure that out, I didn't have any judgment. I was just surprised.

[04:00] MARY DUNCAN: I didn't know you figured it out.

[04:02] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I did figure it out at some point. And interestingly, I don't know if you know this or if I've ever told you this, but my good friend, the redheaded one, you might remember her from high school. Her parents also were married on Valentine's Day. And the same year you were really? Which was 19. 65.

[04:22] MARY DUNCAN: 65, right.

[04:22] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. And her birthday was one week after mine, so they were exactly, almost exactly the same situation as you and us. So we kind of bonded over that, that we both figured out.

[04:36] MARY DUNCAN: I did not know that. Yeah.

[04:38] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So, anyway, I did not know that. So when I was born, what do you remember? What your first thing, what your first feelings were, what you thought when you saw me?

[04:49] MARY DUNCAN: Okay, this could take longer than you think.

[04:53] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: It's okay.

[04:57] MARY DUNCAN: I went into labor early in the morning. We went to the hospital, and the doctor came out and told Moma and Frank were there. And the doctor came out and said, it's going to be a while. She's going to be quite a while. So you might as well just go, you know, take a break. They went downstairs and got coffee, and I was. You were born five minutes later.

[05:28] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, my goodness. So that was Frank, my dad, and mama, your mom that were there.

[05:36] MARY DUNCAN: And so, you know, when they came back up, they told them, you know, that you were here. And I don't remember much of anything from then. I do know that that quick birth, not being prepared, I was torn in pretty bad, pretty bad shape. But then I guess they took me to my room, and I had been given. What was that drug they used to.

[06:09] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I don't know. I've heard of twilight sleep.

[06:12] MARY DUNCAN: No, I don't know what the drug was. No, I hadn't. Like, what I think is today, like an epidural. I had a saddleblock.

[06:21] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay, I've heard that term.

[06:22] MARY DUNCAN: I had a saddle block, but they gave me Demerol. That's what I was trying to think of. They kept giving me Demerol shocks.

[06:30] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So you were kind of out of.

[06:31] MARY DUNCAN: It through the whole labor and I remember nothing about the labor. And then I remember the nurse and mama was there and Frank bringing you in and telling me I had a baby girl. And, you know, and they had you wrapped up, and they were showing you to me, and I couldn't see. It was so blurry, and I wasn't comprehending. So it was later that day before I actually got to see you and hold you, and everything seemed normal. But at first, I guess they didn't consider what damage might happen from the demerolization. I know they gave it routinely because when I first got there, and they put me in a labor room, and the girl next to me was, you know, several beds in there, and the girl next to me was screaming and crying and telling to stop, and blah, blah, blah. And I said, can't they give her something? And she said, oh, she'll never remember that. She's on demerol.

[07:55] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Interesting. So I figured you were screaming and you don't remember it.

[07:59] MARY DUNCAN: Exactly. I figure that's what happened. Interesting that I don't remember anything about it.

[08:05] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Did you have a preference as to whether I was a girl or a boy?

[08:09] MARY DUNCAN: No.

[08:10] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: You didn't care?

[08:11] MARY DUNCAN: There was no preference. But of course, I was happy with it.

[08:14] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Did you already have a name picked out?

[08:16] MARY DUNCAN: I did. There was that song, michel Ma Belle I can't remember who sang it.

[08:24] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I think it was the Beatles, the Tudor, clark, maybe. I don't know.

[08:27] MARY DUNCAN: I don't know.

[08:27] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I'm probably wrong.

[08:28] MARY DUNCAN: I don't know who's.

[08:30] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: We can google it now.

[08:30] MARY DUNCAN: But I like the Michelle.

[08:32] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay.

[08:33] MARY DUNCAN: And so I was gonna do Michelle, and I do not have any idea how I came up with Diane. I think it was just because they sounded together, and our last name was Duncan, so it sounded good.

[08:49] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Michelle.

[08:49] MARY DUNCAN: Diane.

[08:50] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: It does have a nice ring to it.

[08:51] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah.

[08:52] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: It's interesting because when I think of my middle name being Diane, I feel like it has hardly any connection to me. I know, but it's very distant from my identity, which is interesting.

[09:04] MARY DUNCAN: It wasn't a family name.

[09:06] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. And did you plan to. Even though you named me Michelle, how did I end up being Shelly

[09:14] MARY DUNCAN: I wrote Shelly on your birth announcements, so I planned from the beginning. And I've always said, you know, I go by my middle name, and it's a hassle every time I go to the doctor's office. I have to be Mary, not Mary anything legal. And so it was just a pain. And I said I would never do that to one of my kids. But then I called you Shelly from the beginning not even thinking. That's like a different kind of the same thing.

[09:43] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Cause, yeah, when I go to the doctor, I answer to Michelle.

[09:47] MARY DUNCAN: Right?

[09:47] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: And I'm almost conditioned in medical settings to, you know, I know that I'm Michelle in a medical setting.

[09:53] MARY DUNCAN: I do, too. I mean, they wake me up for surgery, and they're going, Mary, Mary, I know who it is.

[09:59] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, that's funny. All right. I'd heard a little bit of that, but I hadn't heard all of it. I do remember you one time, either you or dad saying that somebody wanted to name me Penny. That was the name that you thought that was one. We considered that, but that somebody didn't like it. Somebody vetoed it.

[10:18] MARY DUNCAN: I think Frank did, but I can't.

[10:20] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Say that I remember once I heard that as a kid thinking, and I think a lot of kids are, like, wishing their names were different. I remember thinking, oh, I really wish I was penny. That's so much more fun. But when I said that to my own daughter, Kate, she's like, oh, no, Shelly's much better.

[10:35] MARY DUNCAN: No, you're Shelly.

[10:37] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Kind of funny. So what do you remember me being like when I was a baby and a kid? I kind of, you know, I kind of feel like I have my own impression based on the things you've said and the stories and things of my baby book. But what, like, what are your memories if somebody was going to ask you to describe what I was like as a kid?

[10:56] MARY DUNCAN: Well, you were a very good baby. You didn't. You slept all night early. I don't remember how many weeks. But, you know, it's not like I had to get up and be up at night with you for very long. So you were a good baby. You were healthy, and I thought you were beautiful. I remember those pictures at Mother Goose studios we used to take, and I just couldn't wait to get those pictures and go show them to the people I worked with.

[11:30] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Is that how you got. I mean, did you take snapshots? Did you have a. You know, now we're so used to being able to, you know, have our pictures instantly. Did you have a camera, or did.

[11:39] MARY DUNCAN: You just go, Frank had a camera. He bought a good. A 35 millimeter, actually, just about the time we got married, I think, is when he bought that. And I don't know why we don't have more pictures. I mean, we have, like, snapshots, their slideshow. Yeah, because everything was slides, so.

[12:01] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: And it was kind of fun. I remember as a kid, I was always get excited when we put the screen up. You know, we had that screen that we'd put up, and you'd set the slide projector up. It was almost like watching a movie. I loved watching the slides of myself as a kid. My kids don't like it, but I liked it when I was a kid.

[12:21] MARY DUNCAN: That's cool.

[12:22] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So that was cool. But the mother goose portraits, and those are the ones, they kind of would take them, and then they did. They tint them. I think some of them, like, are a few portraits that, like, they were tinted afterward.

[12:33] MARY DUNCAN: Well, they were colored pictures, and they didn't tint them. They. They were poorly processed and they faded.

[12:40] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, okay.

[12:41] MARY DUNCAN: So that's why some of them are just odd colors and. Yeah. And that place. This has to do with Tulsa, where we live. That mother goose studio. It was in that cookie shop that you went into the other day. Oh, that's exactly where it was.

[12:59] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I had no idea.

[13:01] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah, that's where we went.

[13:03] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: That's really cool. I'll have to tell them to tell those people next time I go in there. So how do you think? Do you think we have similarities, differences? Are we alike?

[13:14] MARY DUNCAN: Definitely.

[13:15] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: What ways are we alike, do you think?

[13:17] MARY DUNCAN: First of all, everybody tells me how much we look like. Of course, I guess that's a matter of DNA.

[13:24] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, I hear that a lot, too. And the same with Kate.

[13:28] MARY DUNCAN: And same with Kate.

[13:29] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, my daughter.

[13:35] MARY DUNCAN: Okay. My mind just went blank. How are we alike?

[13:38] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[13:41] MARY DUNCAN: Well, I think we both have a very strong work ethic.

[13:45] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: You're probably right about that.

[13:46] MARY DUNCAN: I think we're both very truthful, honest in most ways. We both, of course, love to read and enjoy the academic side of life.

[14:02] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. I think we're different in ways. I was thinking about that, and it was different. Yeah. I couldn't really think of a whole lot.

[14:14] MARY DUNCAN: Well, no. Except silly little things like what we like to eat and don't like to eat.

[14:21] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[14:21] MARY DUNCAN: Things like that.

[14:22] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. That's true.

[14:23] MARY DUNCAN: But as far as trait character traits, I don't know. I don't know what I would think of that. Would you?

[14:31] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. I had a hard time coming up with some. I think, obviously, you and dad, too. But, you know, you're being a teacher and, you know, knowledge, and this was important to you. I've been told I have an overdeveloped sense of justice with somebody's exact words.

[14:48] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah.

[14:49] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So I thought, oh, okay. But that sense of fairness and, you know, maybe.

[14:54] MARY DUNCAN: I think we both have that.

[14:56] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[14:56] MARY DUNCAN: Is something I was told one time that I had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility. And it was because it was when Greg was a teenager and you were already gone, and I was, you know, trying to please him and do what he wanted. It was right after the divorce, and somebody told me that, about that, what I was doing. Interesting that I was not responsible for his happiness. Yeah, that's what they said.

[15:24] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. Which is a hard thing as a parent. Sometimes when your kids are struggling or unhappy, you know, from some recent stuff that Kate has been through, you know, about that, it's so hard to note, want to step in and try to make it better.

[15:38] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah.

[15:38] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: But anyway, I was curious about this. You sang songs to my kids a lot when they were little, and you would rock them. You would sing them songs. Did you sing to me and Greg?

[15:53] MARY DUNCAN: I did.

[15:54] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: When you were little. Do you remember? I did.

[15:55] MARY DUNCAN: Mostly I would sing, like, when I'm trying to get you to sleep and I'm holding you and walking around, I sang you are my sunshine.

[16:04] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, you are my sunshine my only sunshine.

[16:07] MARY DUNCAN: And then I sang songs that. They were like, camp songs. They were like things we'd done in church camp.

[16:15] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay.

[16:16] MARY DUNCAN: And like John Jacob Jingleheimer Smith.

[16:20] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, yeah, yeah.

[16:21] MARY DUNCAN: Anything to be singing. And I remember with Greg, he was a little harder than you were. A little harder to get to sleep and stuff. And I sang this song called just dig my grave with a silver spade.

[16:37] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, I've heard that.

[16:38] MARY DUNCAN: And I would sing that thing over and over, and I remember doing it and thinking, this is terrible. But also thinking, no, it's just the music. It's not the words. It doesn't matter. And I just. I sang that song. I don't know why he liked it so much.

[16:57] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. It's funny, I. You know, this. The songs you sang, my kids, the one I remember the most is something about a rose of Sharon.

[17:04] MARY DUNCAN: Sweet.

[17:04] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: The sweet baby. Yeah. I always think of the rose of Sharon.

[17:07] MARY DUNCAN: I didn't. You know, I didn't know that song when you guys were little.

[17:10] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Really?

[17:11] MARY DUNCAN: It's a. It was a takeoff on a hymn. Because it's not sweet baby, it's sweet Jesus.

[17:19] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, interesting.

[17:20] MARY DUNCAN: The original song.

[17:20] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay. I always wondered where that song came.

[17:22] MARY DUNCAN: From, so I changed it to some things about it, you know?

[17:26] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. I always wonder, because I then would pick up that song, I would hear you singing it, and then I would sing it to my kids, too, as I would rock them. And I like to say it's the only time anybody was happy to hear me sing, because I'm not a very.

[17:40] MARY DUNCAN: Good singer singing either.

[17:42] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. And, you know, there came an age when instead of my kids being happy to hear me sing, they were like, mom, shut up. You know, if I'd sing along with the radio. Be quiet. But I still like to point out to them that when they were little, they wanted me to sing to them.

[17:55] MARY DUNCAN: They do.

[17:56] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: And they did not judge my singing ability. So I'm looking forward to the day when I have grandkids. So you can sing, because I do enjoy singing. All right. What was your relationship with your grandparents like? And I should add, before you start, you know, I had a really close relationship with mama.

[18:19] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah, we should talk about that.

[18:21] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. And she wasn't a perfect person, but she was a really good grandma, you know, and she was, in some ways, you know, almost like another mother. There were some times that I felt like I could, you know, because you were my mom, and I didn't know how you'd react. I could ask her.

[18:35] MARY DUNCAN: But she kept you for the first two years of your life.

[18:37] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. And she loved kids, and she knew how to, you know, I have a picture of her with Kate, her great granddaughter, and they both have. They're in the yard, and there's piles of leaves, and they both have a rake, you know, and she's pretty. Kate's pretty little. And it reminded me and made me think of how mama was really good at just, you know, kind of incorporating kids into whatever she was involved in. She'd give them something. So they felt like they were helping, and they felt really big, and they learned to do things. And so, you know, even though she did have some. Some parenting traits that didn't benefit anyone, she was a really good grandma. So what was. I'm curious what your. I know you've talked about your grandparents, and I knew them a little bit when I was really young, but what was your relationship like with them when you were.

[19:28] MARY DUNCAN: My grandparents were kind of distant for two different reasons. On my mother's side, there were six children and 17 cousins, and so nothing was very personal. Our grandparents, they had us come. Like, I would go spend the night at her house, but there would always be three or four of the other girl cousins who would be there at the same time.

[19:54] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay.

[19:55] MARY DUNCAN: And it was fine. I mean, you know, she was.

[19:58] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Is this Grandma Cooley

[19:59] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah.

[20:00] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Your mom's mom.

[20:01] MARY DUNCAN: Right. She. And so she was nice. She wasn't overly attentive.

[20:11] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay.

[20:12] MARY DUNCAN: But just kind of grandma there, you know? And we went to their house on Christmas Eve, and there were, you know, tons of people because they had so many aunts and uncles.

[20:22] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Did you and. Did you like that?

[20:23] MARY DUNCAN: Oh, yeah.

[20:24] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, I like that. I remember, you know, I know now, sometimes I feel kind of sad that we don't have a bigger extended family. Right. For holidays, I hear people talking about going to weddings, and so and so had a baby, and, you know, there's no babies in our families. I can't remember the last time I went to a wedding. And, you know, I miss. Even when I was a kid, holidays were a little bigger. You know, we'd go to mama's and the cut, you know, and now it just. So sometimes I'm not unhappy with anything, but, you know, it just sometimes I miss that, so I get a little jealous of that. And I think your probably family celebrations were even bigger than ours were when I was a kid. When you were a kid?

[21:03] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah, when I was a kid, yeah.

[21:06] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay. Almost. Almost done talking about. When you were younger, in your past, did you ever get in trouble? Cause I was kind of a goodie two shoes, I think. Did you ever get in trouble?

[21:15] MARY DUNCAN: I got in trouble. I'm sure I did. I remember only being spanked twice in my life. The first time, I'm not even sure what it was for. I was five years old.

[21:30] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Wow.

[21:31] MARY DUNCAN: Five or six.

[21:32] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Who spanked you?

[21:33] MARY DUNCAN: Paw paw. And the other time, I was about eight or nine. And you know how they played bridge? They had all these couples they played bridge with, and these people came. Their last name was heard, and the daughter's name was Susan. And Susan and I were about the same age. And so while they were in the house playing bridge, we decided to go play in their cardinal. And so we were. I don't remember what we were playing. We were just in the car, and we figured out that you could push the cigarette lighter in and it would come out red.

[22:16] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Uh oh.

[22:17] MARY DUNCAN: And so we took that thing and we decorated the sides, the inside of their door. Oh, my God, the upholstery on their car. Yeah.

[22:25] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, my God.

[22:26] MARY DUNCAN: It was bad.

[22:27] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I can't even imagine how Pawpaw would I react to that? It happened.

[22:31] MARY DUNCAN: It was bad. Thank goodness it wasn't our car. He might have been even madder.

[22:37] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, my goodness. I've never heard that story before.

[22:39] MARY DUNCAN: I just remember being in trouble and thinking, I didn't know that was a bad thing, you know, which is stupid.

[22:47] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: But it does seem kind of hard.

[22:49] MARY DUNCAN: And I don't remember what the consequences were. I mean, they probably had to pay for it, you know? And, of course, that would really make him mad the money part.

[22:59] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Right. Cause Papa was very frugal, maybe is a nice way of putting it.

[23:05] MARY DUNCAN: Very nice.

[23:06] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. That's funny. I've never heard that. So you were a teacher, you're retired. Do you remember your very first day as a teacher?

[23:17] MARY DUNCAN: I don't remember my first day, but I remember my first classroom and my first class.

[23:23] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So where was it?

[23:24] MARY DUNCAN: I remember everything.

[23:25] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Grade was it. And where was it?

[23:27] MARY DUNCAN: It was. It was September. Because we didn't go to school in August back then.

[23:32] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Right.

[23:33] MARY DUNCAN: So it was September, 1966.

[23:38] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay.

[23:41] MARY DUNCAN: 66 67. That was my first year to teach. 66 67. It was Franklin elementary school, Tulsa public schools, and the school was at 11th and Yale.

[23:54] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: And it's still there.

[23:55] MARY DUNCAN: And it's still there. It's an academy of some kind, like.

[23:58] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: A. Oh, that's right. It was street school for a while, and then I don't know what it is now, but. Right, okay.

[24:04] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah. And I was totally green. I mean, I look back on that and. But you know, when you have a 22 year old teacher who comes in, the kids just love.

[24:19] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[24:19] MARY DUNCAN: They love you right off the bat because you're.

[24:21] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I kind of remember that liking really young teachers.

[24:25] MARY DUNCAN: My phone's ringing in my ears.

[24:26] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, no, sorry. So what grade was it again that you taught there?

[24:33] MARY DUNCAN: Just a minute. I'm sorry.

[24:37] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: It's okay. Hazards of modern life. Even though you've got your phone turned off and you have your hearing aids in the. It's ringing.

[24:44] MARY DUNCAN: It's ringing my ears. Yeah. I should have just turned it completely off. But anyway. Okay, your question again about what was the grade?

[24:54] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: What grade did you teach?

[24:55] MARY DUNCAN: Oh, I taught fifth grade half of the day and 6th grade half of the day.

[25:02] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, so you had, like, one class, like, in the morning, and another one.

[25:05] MARY DUNCAN: At the time, Tulsa public schools did what they called it was the Paris project that they adopted, and it was to have platoons. You had.

[25:17] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, I remember that word in school. Okay.

[25:20] MARY DUNCAN: You had half a day of what we called home room, and that was spelling, language, reading, social studies, and math. We did that the first half or one half of the day. And the other half of the day, you would go to special classes, and there would be art and science, and they alternated with each other. Art and science, and there was speech.

[25:46] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Speech and music, I think. Music.

[25:48] MARY DUNCAN: Speech and music.

[25:50] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Library and Pd.

[25:51] MARY DUNCAN: Library and Pb. Yeah.

[25:55] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay, so you did one fifth and one 6th at Franklin, which is where I lived kindergarten for a little while.

[26:02] MARY DUNCAN: Where what?

[26:03] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I went to kindergarten there for a little while. So you went there yeah.

[26:07] MARY DUNCAN: That year you walked from that nursery. What was the name of it?

[26:12] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I don't remember, Aunt Ann. Maybe it was the place where I told the only lie that I can. Purposeful lie that I remember. Do you remember when I told them that it was my birthday? It wasn't. Apparently somebody had had a birthday at the little nursery school where I stayed for half the day. And they got to wear this pin that was really cool, that had a ribbon on it, and they got all this attention and apparently, I guess I must have thought that was pretty cool. So I told them that it was my birthday. One morning when you came to pick me up, I had that little pin on. And they said, here's your birthday, girl.

[26:51] MARY DUNCAN: And I, oh, my gosh.

[26:52] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I have this memory of you looking at me with just this glare of like, what? And I remember you saying in the car, wait till your dad. Wait till we get home, and your dad hears this. But that's all I remember. Like, I don't remember what happened to me after that, but I remember being deeply ashamed that I did it.

[27:12] MARY DUNCAN: I do not remember that.

[27:13] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, it was like afterward, I remember thinking, oh, my God, you know, not in those words, because I was five. But I definitely had this sense of, that was really wrong. I should not have done that. And I remember thinking, they must be really disappointed me at school, you know, and thinking they're going to think less of me now.

[27:34] MARY DUNCAN: And I remember when you were at that nursery school up there. It was just down the street from where I taught.

[27:42] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[27:43] MARY DUNCAN: And you walked. And so there were a number of you who came to Franklin for kindergarten from that place. So I can't remember if you were in morning kindergarten or afternoon kindergarten. But my, my classroom was on the side of the building where you would walk.

[28:02] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay? So I'd always, oh, you'd see me walk over there.

[28:06] MARY DUNCAN: I always look for you.

[28:07] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I'm pretty certain I was in morning kindergarten because you used to tell me that you really wanted Greg and I both in morning kindergarten so we could take a nap in the afternoon because we took afternoon naps. And that's just a story I remember you telling me.

[28:20] MARY DUNCAN: Probably was.

[28:21] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: It's interesting. I remember Franklin. I remember my favorite thing in kindergarten. There was, we had little jobs, you know, that we would get to have in the different centers. And one of the jobs was mail. We probably called it mailman then instead of, you know, mail carrier or post post person. But anyway, when I got to be the mailman, they had, the teacher had this leather bag. I don't know where she got it, but it was a super cool leather mail bag, and we would bring old envelopes from home. And that was the source of me wanting to be a mailman when I grew up, for a long time, I wanted to be a mailman. And at one of our preschool classes at my school now has a little mail, a little post office in there, and somebody I work with knows that I wanted to be. And they said, you, Shelly, you have to go look at the mail center in the early primary room. And it just was like, oh, I remember playing post office. I actually think I would have been pretty good at it because I like.

[29:21] MARY DUNCAN: To organize and sort organize, but I don't remember that.

[29:25] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, I loved. I loved it when I got to be the. Got to be the mailman in that class.

[29:31] MARY DUNCAN: Do you remember your kindergarten teacher's name?

[29:34] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: No. Williams? No.

[29:37] MARY DUNCAN: It might have been. I don't know.

[29:38] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, you don't know?

[29:39] MARY DUNCAN: I don't know.

[29:40] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I remember misses Barber and she. We saw her obituary in the paper recently.

[29:45] MARY DUNCAN: Actually, she was first grade.

[29:47] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I had her for first grade. Yeah, at a different school. So I'm just kind of curious. You have told me, I've heard in the past a couple things. One, that. That your dad didn't want you to go to college. And then you also said once that you talked about how it was the policy of Tulsa public schools that you couldn't work if you were at a certain point in your pregnancy and if you had a baby under a certain age.

[30:16] MARY DUNCAN: Right.

[30:17] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Which seems, you know, like, what? Really? They literally wouldn't let you work. Like, it seems wrong. What did you think about it that back then? And then. I'm sorry, I got two questions there. But I was thinking about women's roles. Right. Your dad didn't want you to go to college, so it was policy.

[30:33] MARY DUNCAN: And so I didn't. You know, there was not that awareness.

[30:38] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Okay. Of, was this the way it was?

[30:41] MARY DUNCAN: No, it's like, you know, except that it was kind of lenient. Because, first of all, when I told my principal that I was pregnant with Greg and he was due in July, he said, well, we'll just make that September or November or something so I could finish out the year.

[31:02] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: You kind of looked the other way. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

[31:06] MARY DUNCAN: But then I had to quit. And this was really unfortunate, because I had to. I had two years. Greg was born that summer, and I couldn't go back because he wasn't nine months old.

[31:22] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, wow.

[31:23] MARY DUNCAN: And because I only had two years and not three, I had to resign.

[31:28] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Oh, wow.

[31:29] MARY DUNCAN: And then I had to reapply and fortunately they needed me back at Franklin, so I got one more year there before they transferred me. But, yeah, that was just because. And then.

[31:41] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: And did that. I mean, were you, were you pissed about that? Like, you know, was it, were you mad that you couldn't go back? I mean, did you want to go back?

[31:50] MARY DUNCAN: Well, I always wanted to stay home being a stay at home mom and couldn't do it because we needed the money. I don't remember being mad. Later I realized what a stupid policy it was and there was a lawsuit and they changed it.

[32:07] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. I mean, interesting. So why. And I asked this question earlier, and I should have done it separately, but why did Papa not want you to go to college? Was it just because you were a woman? Did he think it wasn't appropriate? Was.

[32:22] MARY DUNCAN: I doubt he ever framed it in those words, but he just didn't think there was any value in it, I guess. And he, not only that, he didn't want to spend the money. I mean, that was number one on his list. That was going to cost money. And he said, you can go down here and tell us it's a drawing business school. And he said, you can be a secretary. And my secretary makes good money. And of course that was important to him and so it wouldn't cost him as much as going to college. But I was already determined that I was going to be a religious education director and I was going to go to Phillips University. And I guess, you know, I guess my mother probably had something to do.

[33:05] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: With convincing him or making it happen.

[33:09] MARY DUNCAN: I did have a scholarship and tuition was dollar 600 a semester.

[33:15] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. Wow.

[33:15] MARY DUNCAN: If you can imagine, I did get a scholarship, which helped. And of course that didn't cover room and board, but in spite of his feelings, I went to college. Never became that religious education director.

[33:30] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Before college, you just became a teacher. When did you change your mind?

[33:37] MARY DUNCAN: Well, when I got pregnant, I had to. I had to get a job. I mean, I didn't get a job when I was pregnant, but when we got married and.

[33:50] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. So you had to change it so that you could.

[33:52] MARY DUNCAN: I had. You see, I had. I had one semester and then I had another semester of student teaching. It lasted all semester and then I graduated and then I.

[34:08] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: And you came back and told you didn't graduate from Phillips, you came back from.

[34:11] MARY DUNCAN: No, came back.

[34:12] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Graduated from TU, University of Tulsa. Yeah. And that's where dad went, too.

[34:17] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah, exactly.

[34:18] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[34:19] MARY DUNCAN: And, you know, we had to work, make a living and the odd thing is, I mean, I was born to teach. There's no question. Yeah, I love it. Loved it. To this day, I still want to create lessons. You know, there's nobody to teach.

[34:44] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I wish I could get you. So, you know, I'm a. I mean, you know this, but I'm a school librarian, and I'm in a small private school, so I do that. But I also do a lot of admin stuff. Cause we're small, so I do a lot. But the actual teaching of lessons part is, like, my least favorite part of being a librarian. Like, I love sharing books and talking about the books. And so I think I did somehow. Did not. I inherited the. Well, I don't know if I inherited, but I'm like you in that I love working with kids, and I love, you know, seeing that. That excitement when you share something with them. But the actual lesson part and the instruction, like, if that wasn't part of my job, that'd be okay with me. So somehow I missed out on that. I wish I was better at it.

[35:30] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah, well, I don't think you're bad at it. Well, you just don't enjoy it. When you enjoy something, then you get better and better and better.

[35:36] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah. And I'm. You know, I think the kids know me as, like, this promoter of books and reading more than, as, you know, an instructor. Of course, I don't give grades or anything like that in the library.

[35:47] MARY DUNCAN: It's not the same today as it was.

[35:50] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: No.

[35:50] MARY DUNCAN: Then very. Don't get much freedom to create your own lesson plans.

[35:55] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So I think we're running low on a little bit of time. So I just have one more question. This is a big one. So, you know, what do you think are some of the most significant changes, just in general, in society, over your life?

[36:09] MARY DUNCAN: Oh, my goodness.

[36:10] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: I mean, you know, socially or politically or, like, you know, you have a gay grandson. You know, I think of changes like that. What? Yeah.

[36:23] MARY DUNCAN: Whereas that never would have come up. That wouldn't have been a consideration that somebody was gay, you know, if they didn't get married or whatever, you wouldn't even. And certainly. Well, I didn't even know what that was, so who wouldn't have asked? Well, so many things have changed. It's impossible to listen to anything stand out. I was thinking earlier today, actually, that it seems like we've grown exponentially and we changed exponentially in my lifetime, even just in the last 40 years, much less, you know, almost 80.

[37:05] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[37:05] MARY DUNCAN: I mean, it's like, nobody from, like, Bessie, my grandmother, my great grandmother, would note, even recognize the world that we're in now. And I wondered then I thought, well, she used to tell me how her life changed, and I thought, maybe it's the same exponent with every generation feeling that way. Yeah. Ongoing, but, yeah, that a lot of people feel that way. Like, say you're 70 years old and you look back and you think, oh, my gosh, 70 years ago, it was crazy. And somebody else could have said that about the previous. Yeah.

[37:49] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: About any 70 year span.

[37:51] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah. Yeah.

[37:52] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: So what year would Bessie have been born? Like, was she born in the 18 hundreds?

[37:57] MARY DUNCAN: 1889.

[37:58] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Which, like, seems when I think about, you know, that there was someone in my life that I knew fairly well that was born in the 18 hundreds.

[38:05] MARY DUNCAN: Yeah.

[38:05] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: And, you know, now it's, I still can't believe it. It's 22, but it just, I just think, oh, my gosh, that's 1880s. That's just like the Civil War was just. Had just happened, you know? And I don't know, it's just kind of mind. It's mind boggling to me. And then when I talk to the kids at school, you know, things that I take for granted, like Watergate and, you know, even 911, they weren't born when those things happened to them. Those are way in the past. The Vietnam War is way in the past. And, I mean, so it's just, I mean, I know this is obvious, but.

[38:43] MARY DUNCAN: It still, when you think about it.

[38:44] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: As you get older and you start thinking about the passage of years and you realize. Yeah, that, you know, the seventies were, you know, we used to say we dress like the seventies, and now kids are, like, having nineties dress up days. I'm like, nineties dress up.

[39:00] MARY DUNCAN: I know. I know.

[39:02] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah.

[39:02] MARY DUNCAN: It's like. It's like, it feels like the seventies weren't that far back. But I was thinking last night how I'd been. I've been divorced. I had to figure out how many years. 37 years.

[39:14] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Yeah, it's.

[39:15] MARY DUNCAN: It's crazy. It.

[39:17] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: It does feel that way. Feel that way. Well, I feel like we can talk for hours with questions, of course, but this has been really, really cool to hear. Some things I learned, some new, some things I didn't know.

[39:28] MARY DUNCAN: Well, I enjoyed it. I think you made good questions.

[39:31] SHELLY MCCOLLUM: Cool. Well, thanks for coming down to do this with me. It was really cool.

[39:34] MARY DUNCAN: Good, right?