Susan H. Duda and Kathleen Washy
Description
Susan talks to her daughter about her childhood, her college life, growing political awarness, her pride in her computer skills and expectations of women who raised families.Subject Log / Time Code
Participants
- Susan H. Duda
- Kathleen Washy
Venue / Recording Kit
Tier
Keywords
- anti-war meovement (Vietnam)
- Betty Fridan
- Cold War
- college
- Coxsackie
- craft, skills, and procedures
- family trips and excursions
- fear of disease
- Glens Falls
- Great Depression stories
- historical events/people
- left handedness
- mathematics major
- McCarthy era
- McGovern campaign
- memories of former times
- Polio
- political beliefs and practices
- school day memories
- social beliefs and practices
- Spouse
- World War 2
Subjects
Transcript
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00:03 My name is Kathleen washy. I am 40 years old. Now. I'm 39. I'm not forty yet. Today's date is June. 19th. 2006. We are at the storycorps booth at the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And I am interviewing my mother. I am her daughter.
00:25 My name is Susan Duda. I'm 65 years old, and today's date is June 19th, 2006. Where in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania. And the person who's interviewing me is my daughter.
00:43 Throwing up during the World War 2 in post-war era is what I was going to focus on initially. What was your earliest memory from your childhood? My earliest memory was stealing my brother's gum and hiding behind the couch and chewing it. All he did the dishes and we didn't get much done in those days. Cuz of sugar rationing we were only allowed one pack of month or something. So my guilt is kept that memory alive in me. How old do you think you were at? Probably 3 to 4.
01:25 What was your immediate family like?
01:28 At that point. At that point, we only had a mother because my father was in the Pacific. He was on a cruiser in the Pacific. So we had gone back to my mother's home town in Massachusetts, and there was my mother and my brother. And I
01:48 When did your father get deployed?
01:51 I think, late 43.
01:56 He he he was up for the draft. So he joined the Navy and he shipped out with the ship. It was being built. He shipped out with it from Philadelphia.
02:10 And I was think about October 43 and he was an officer. He was a lieutenant JG at first and he was in charge of communication on the ship and had a lot of very interesting experiences and a lot of horrifying experiences, of course to and while he was out in the Pacific, you then stayed it with your mother or your experience is like during the duration was a pretty normal life and my mother's best friend lived across the street from us or best friend from high school. And we played with the neighborhood kids, and had a pretty normal childhood except that nobody had fathers except the next door neighbor. She had a father and he slept on two pillows, but
03:08 But why did they have a father and everyone else didn't? I don't know. He was older and maybe he just hadn't come up. My father would have been limited because he was born in 1910. So he was quite old for the draft with two children, you know, so I would say, if he were two years older. He probably wouldn't have gotten to come up for the draft. He would have been a little bit over thirty at the time. He would have been 33 at the time. He dreamt, he shipped out. And I think he probably, what was only in the Navy about 6 months before that. So he would have been just turning 33 when he started. How do you think we're War, affected? You basically the disruption of the life and we followed my father around from City to city. Now, I don't recall it. Well, so that it wasn't a major trauma as far as my memory is concerned. If my brother, my older,
04:08 The deck would have remembered it more because he was a little older. It was my, my mother did not drive. So we did not have a car for that entire. We went by train and but I don't recall it being very uncomfortable. I wouldn't my mother had to fight some fights for my brother. And remember he got in a fight with a big older girl that turned out to be his age and little girl and my mother storm down things like that. So I'm sure she had that she had all of the the responsibility. She later said that when my father returned from the Navy, it was the toughest period of her life because she had gotten used to being
04:58 The owner of the house, the person in charge, and then she had to go, they had to reconnect and we rebuild their marriage.
05:12 What was life like for you and your father returned because when he left you a very young we send a lot of records and kept talking to to him on records in got back records to when he came back. The biggest thing. I remember is we got to stay up late. It was a Christmas Eve of 44 and we got to stay up late cuz he was coming in and have hot chocolate and that was exciting. I don't remember much else. We can mediate Lee moved to Glens Falls, where we had been before the war, and he got his job back. And we started teaching, and, and then he was teaching at the, at the high school. He taught history at the high school and
06:00 When he came back, he he they had kept the Jobs alive. A lot of somewhere like retired women, who then took the jobs for the duration.
06:12 And kept the jobs open, so generally they kept their jobs open in those days.
06:20 What do you have any? Favorite are important stories from your childhood?
06:26 Well from the from that. I'm that. I remember when we move back to Glens Falls. I remember the boys across the street and I were buddies and we made Kool-Aid out of those red. Berries off the bushes and went around trying to poison our enemies. By selling them. This was a Charming child.
06:57 What other stories that dick was always my big older brother, and, and always protective and he was in a Oz when we got there. One time I got on the bus at school, to come home. We had a bus pass to get home and Mother's Day at stood at the bus stop and I decided I wanted to try the whole route.
07:25 So I stayed on the bus and went around the hole. So it was a circle rule in the city. And when that we got back, she got yelled at by somebody on the bus. You didn't even had, I didn't even have my ID and people's out my ID that was in my pocket and
07:41 Melin school life? What kind of student were you? And you have any favorite stories from? Well, early school. I was probably a very good student, but sometimes a bit obnoxious cuz I didn't want, I recall being told that I didn't want to read because I couldn't, I didn't want to listen to the teacher read Because I could read better than she could. So, I was probably a little obnoxious. I recall in third grade. I got a mark down for being too talkative.
08:15 But I was generally a good student throughout, but I was also didn't care when I got. So if I did Super well, that was okay. And if I did Super poor, well, so
08:31 The most pain I recall in school was writing because I'm left-handed. The teachers didn't know how to teach left-handers and it was a lot of stress over the reigning. I can recall and 5th and 6th grade Miss Morris taking my we had to have our pain loose and I can remember having my hand like this so that the pain would be loose. So she could wake up and prove. I was relaxed.
08:59 Pulling the teacher. I was there a teacher or teachers who had particularly strong influence on your life. So I don't really relate to one teacher or not. I think maybe my parents were the teachers that had the most related effect on me being both teachers and mother was very very much of a teacher in English and that in my father, got my interest in history, which I still have to this day. I think probably they were the teachers that affected me the most
09:34 Who are your best friends and what were they like, okay.
09:38 Well, there was Betty Beaman and Betty was.
09:46 Very,
09:48 They were wealthier than I and she was very proper and I wasn't always. She was the main friend that I would have had. And in the neighborhood, there are others that came and went but she and I were fairly close. We the neighborhood would get together as a gang off and on evenings and we play hide and seek and games like that. And so be the whole neighborhood including my brother, and the older kids and the younger kids. She was the only one that live close enough. That was then I had another friend that was about three blocks away than I would go. Visit a lot. I would visit her her mother and her her and we were very close friends later. At first, it was mostly bad Baddie cuz she was closest.
10:45 And then,
10:47 That's it was basically girls in that. I don't recall any boys in the neighborhood that I played with and you went on to live a couple items that I remember. You took a trip West at one point. Yeah, we spent probably about 1950 ish. We took of 1946 Nash and went across country grandpa or my father.
11:20 Took a course at University of Colorado. For this summer school. It would he was using up some of his GI Bill credits and teachers had to keep educated and so dick, and I spent the summer. We had a wonderful time. That was when I knew my brother, the most was when we were travel cuz most of the time, he kind of ignored me being with kids sister, but we try, we went all over the University of Colorado campus following the the
11:57 The water that was being piped around 2 to irrigate and I had a wonderful time with the water all summer. I remember that. Then we also lived for two weeks in a hotel in Brooklyn, on my father was getting Navy. He was he was in the naval Reserve after him after the war. And he was, he was a
12:25 Are they gone Lieutenant Commander by the time he retired and retire. When we moved from Glens Falls to cook sake and in 1953 and went one summer. We were down in New York for two weeks and we had a good time down there. We had a pool in the hotel. So that's where I learned to swim. My brother taught me.
12:46 And we went all over by Subway and
12:50 I was Brooklyn like, at that time.
12:53 Well, I remember New York more than Brooklyn. I think we would go over the bridge on the subway up to New York and then we'll course. Grandma would go to the stores. One time. It must have been safer feeling cuz I remember one time dick went to a game at Yankee Stadium by himself, and he would have been maybe 12:13.
13:14 And we met at, we've got on the subway, coming back from shopping my mother and I and there was Dick on the same car. So,
13:25 I know he must have gone alone.
13:29 You move to cook sake in 53, in a major move in your life. That was a major move cuz my father before, that had been a teacher in Glens Falls. When we move to cook sake, he got a quite a raise and he was a principal. Also my relation to my father change before that. I can remember being kind of annoyed cuz my friends would come over cuz my father was a lot of fun and I sometimes complained that they came to see him and not me.
14:04 After that, nobody came to my house because he was the principal.
14:10 It was a total change as far as social, but I enjoyed I had a lot of freedom in cook sake. Being a small town. We had new bike cuz we got English bikes as far our reward for the move my brother and I and we rode all over town and it was very nice that way.
14:33 At this time, it was a cold war. How do you believe that affected you and your family? We were not conscious of the Cold War, that much of the McCarthy era. We were very conscious and my father was somewhat liberal.
14:50 And he was threatened by neighbors to be turned in at during the McCarthy era. So that was quite uncomfortable. And times the Cold War. We were that conscious of most during the during my growing-up. It was just some kind of a vague threat out there. We didn't do Duck and Cover. I don't remember ever doing that and it just was something
15:23 And if for a child, I wasn't aware of it. I was aware of McCarthy because I did get some flak from Neighbors. You were also where polio as a big thing. My mother wouldn't let us go swimming. We weren't allowed to do a lot of things in the summer. Couldn't run through the sprinkler out. That would be horrible cuz you'd get polio. So she was terrified of polio. And so it affected our lives a hugely because
15:56 We weren't allowed to do anything. And as soon as the polio shots came out, I was sitting high school at the time. We were given shots.
16:04 Later, they assumed, I may have been.
16:10 Immune to it cuz I probably had had cook. Socks cook sake virus, which supposedly made you immune to Palio.
16:20 But so I may not never had any threat, but one of my class had polio and was out for a year and then came back with braces and and and in terrible shape in it. That was a very big threat in those years. He and that was much more of a threat than the Cold War Cold War.
16:44 What was what were your grandparents like in your extended family? Okay, my my grandparents lived about 75 miles away in Kingston. And until we moved to cook sake and then it was only 30 miles away. So the happy side and they and my aunt would we would visit or be visited by several times a year, and my grandfather look like Harry Truman, but he was conservative, and didn't appreciate looking like, Harry Truman. My grandmother was the typical, very typical homekeeper. She loved her housekeeping. She did. I mean, she would she loved cooking. She loved everything about being housekeeper. I'm on the other side. My mother hated being housekeeper and was not happy. Being stuck in the house.
17:37 Her parents my grandmother on my mother's side. Grandma. Her grandma read she
17:46 Died when I was about 1, I believe. And so I never knew her Grandpa Henry. He lived with my cousins. And so we saw him when we visit my cousins. He was a very portly old, man and Maze. Mostly sat in a chair, a rocking chair and talk to us. He died when I was about in 2nd grade.
18:12 So he had been both, grandparents have been hurt by the depression. My mother's side. He had lost his job. He lost his house ended up living with, with his daughter and I hadn't had really nothing during the Depression. He would go into Boston, everyday and try to get a job and have a donut that he wasn't allowed to have at home. And I'm trying to look for work, but he I don't get the impression. He ever got more than any real job after he was, he lost his job. He worked at a hardware store in
18:55 In Brockton, Massachusetts, and and he never got a job and they had to move down. They had to downsize, sell their house and move to a smaller. And what was he before? That he worked in a hardware store and then he, yeah. And then the store went out of business and and he lost everything. How about on the happy side? The happy side grandpa. Happy my my grandfather. He always had a job. He was he was a truck driver for a Rocher, grocery wholesale business. That took groceries all throughout the Catskills, to all these little stores until the end and all that kind of thing. So he never lost his job. They lost all their money. They had invested in stocks and they lost all their money, but they had their house, they had he had a job. So they really came out of the depression pretty well.
19:48 What about your parents? My parents happened to graduate from college in 1932, which was not a good time to graduate from college. And both graduated my mother and my mother and father, both went to BU my father. I think he may have been a year after my mother made me was 33. He, he went a year, 6 months or 3 months to RIT, but then he had an appendicitis and so he never got back and he changed his mind. Went to be you'd be a minister. What you didn't become.
20:24 My mother was an English major at bu, and they met there when they were students in Boston. And for the first time I first, they could not get a job. They had them, they, they
20:41 Dad couldn't get a job teaching and and my mother was a comptometer operator.
20:49 And he opened a little watch repair, our clock repair shop just to make money and he had a special that he would repair any clock $4 and that's how they got married. The money they got in from that than they got back from the honeymoon and he had a lot of hard to clocks to repair.
21:09 And how did they make it to the depression? Well, in, at some point, I'm not sure. What point did he tell you that? He got a job in teaching, was $90 a month and then he would clean out chicken houses for spare money, and they barely made it through. Then, when I was about six months old. He got a job in Glens Falls, which was a much better job. And he had a had more about and, and Summers here, in Glens Falls. He drove a milk truck up around Lake George, delivering milk.
21:50 Van to college Years. He went off to college and where did you go? And what did you major in? And what did you think your life would be like if I got an engineering scholarship from New York? So I went to University of Rochester, went on a math, major Moe actually started out. I was going to be a physics major and then I decided that was way too hard and when did not Max physics at U of R was just absolutely horrid. And why do you say that would have really obvious that it wasn't into it. And so and I found I really didn't like it. I didn't like Lambs. I didn't like the exactness of it and the fact that they didn't come out, the way they were supposed to and that kind of thing, so, I went into math.
22:44 And I loved abstract math. I found I really like it when I first hit it, I hated it and then I really like loved it. So what's it unusual for you to be a math? Major? Yes, the head of the department was trying to get rid of these women that got into his Department. He did not want us there. He gave special courses just to try and and confess to leave. It. Really didn't feel any how many cents stated this in public, you know.
23:18 There were about 7 in my class out of how many women probably 200.
23:29 What were your experiences from your college days with my well, College was a very different world in those days. We got hazed. We wore beanies of our freshman year for the first month and a half. We had to wear beanies with her name on them. And so it was a different world.
23:54 I love school. I began to beware more politically because the class after me was was starting in toward the Baby Boomers, and they were very politically conscious. So, you went there, what 1959? And look at Rochester. And the class after me, was very politically conscious. So we started having rallies in signing petitions, and picketing we picketed Betty. Ford, an would have her book would have come out while you were there. Yeah. Now, that affected, my mother, not me, that affected my mother dramatically, it changed her view of the world and what way?
24:37 She was a lady teaching by that point. She already teaching, but she was very unhappy.
24:43 Still. I think cuz you said she went back to teaching and in 1956, probably.
24:52 She took, she had to take classes to an education. She had never had any occasion. So she had to, she went Summer Schools. They had a special deal because they needed teacher so badly that you could take summer school and then teach during the year. She taught fifth grade. So Betty Ford and it affect her enormously I was in in between and was was willing to give up my job to. I I did get a job at IBM for a year when you graduate and I graduated I had taken, I had pad computer at University of Rochester. The head of the computer Department was an air of the jello Fortune, but he worked cuz he loved working with the computer and we had classes, they were not.
25:46 Credit classes, but on the side, in, in computer programming. So then I went IBM and worked a year, but I was willing. And then I had to quit to get married because we are moving back to Rochester.
26:00 And then I found out I was pregnant and I I did not push to try to get a job at that time. It was considered that you didn't work at that time. If you had it, if you had a baby.
26:12 How did you meet Dad and what did you think of him when you met him? He was my
26:19 Assistant for I was too, I had a minor, a strong minor in Psychology and I was taking experimental psychology and we had four assistants. There was the tall, dark one, the short, Dark One, the redheaded one in the other one. The other one was Dad.
26:37 And I was not a weakling say who do you have for for lab this week? And I'm saying, well, it isn't the tall. Dark one. It isn't the short dark, what it is. It's the other one. So, we started calling him the other one. And, but I only started getting interested in each other at just was kind of one of those gradual interests things. They grew up.
27:01 What did you think of him at that time? At least started. Dating a first when I am in class, he was kind of nondescript being your fault. You I'm paying you remember him being rather nondescript, but. He he he was very intelligent and fun to talk to and we we had a lot of good times.
27:20 Do you have any favorite stories from when you were dating in those early years? So one time you took me into the park, when we were really dating. I thought he's going to kiss me instead. He got out and fix the rotors or something in the car.
27:39 What did you think your life would be like new when you grew up when you were in college? What we here. I kind of wanted that kind of life. I did get, I kind of wanted a husband who had a good salary and a good job, but not a wonderful one and that would be part of the family, and I wanted to children. I got a Bonus, a couple of bonuses on that one and it was pretty much what I wanted. I then when I'm always proactive, so, when once I start, we moved to Geneseo, I started taking courses and got my Master's Degree, and then when we moved to Erie, I took more courses. And you move to Geneseo. After after he got his Ph.D married in 65 and had Betsy in the 66th, and you and 67.
28:39 About 6767 when you were about nine months old.
28:46 And while they are, you worked on your mouth while they are. I got my Master's and head and two more babies. How is that Lori? There's six years.
28:57 How was it looked on? When you're working on your masters of being a woman here? You are now, how many years are I was very welcome. First place. There were not that many students were that Mariah Geneseo. And I was really, I stood out comparative Lee. They are. So there. I was given a great deal of respect and have no problem and I was very well treated there. They were only like five others in the program. And and most of them were teachers were busy. And now we're as I was as a mother who was glad of a distraction would watch the kids. When you were generally, the courses were night in his courses were irregular so he would come home and I would go
29:45 Do you have any thoughts on what was going on in society? At that time? I was conscious. I was conscious of the Vietnam War, very much.
29:59 We began to be aware of the
30:05 Your grandfather that time worked at a college and so they were very active in trying to be proactive as far as they join the students in their protest March so that it became less angry and less deflated. The college at this was in Plattsburgh Plattsburgh state college or university. I don't know what it was called at the time. But anyway, I see me and I was aware of it in Geneseo, but it was not too visible. They're obviously aware of it on TV. My neighbor across the street was very angry at them. The students, when they were protesting.
30:52 I was very sympathetic which caused me eventually to work on the McGovern campaign.
31:01 Because I very much felt we needed to.
31:05 So I got coloring books and you got coloring books bribed to stay in the car while I would work in the, in the shopping center, them fed and handing of peanuts for Jimmy Carter.
31:23 What are some of your favorite stories about your children from these early years from the early years of my children? Will Betsy was of course a unique child because of her birthday fax. So she was to the first time he was the first. She was my oldest and, and when she was born,
31:44 It was very traumatic. She was had to be operated on immediately, because of her stomach and esophagus. Yeah, and she said, she didn't have a lot of energy. So she slept most the time. She was very pleasant. She didn't bother me at all, then her younger slaying came and she was not so Placid.
32:13 Nor am I today and grandma called her atom bomb Kathy? Because I was born December 7th into the link to any other favorite stories with a younger and Dave just carried around all over the place and did ask for her and she would laugh at them and encourage them. And so she didn't really learn to walk early because there was no need to. She got her sisters to carry her instead and she was very reluctant to do anything until she really could do it. She was, she would, she was not like you, you you weren't dumb fight and fight. When you were six months, you just stand up there in the middle of the field.
33:10 And you couldn't go anywhere, but you'd stand there and push yourself up Deb didn't care. She would wait until she really could walk, and then she would. And then David was the boy at David was Betsy said, send them back.
33:27 He was a shock to all of us after three. Girls. And boy was quite a shock when you went back to work and went back to work. When I was a senior in high school, freshman in high school setting.
33:43 What what did you go back to work at? And how did you find it as being a working mother? And I went back and computer. I had trained in an accounting, but they didn't like old people in accounting. So I ended up back in computer where I had started.
34:03 And the job was very exciting, but very time-consuming and home life was very stressful and hard to keep everything. I had my older two daughters to helping with the younger kids. It was very hard to keep all of those just as it is today, all of that working, right?
34:25 You were unusual at the time in your department, as that you were. I was very old for the Department. I trained all of them and child-rearing, they all have come to me in recent years and send, you know, I got through my child because I remember David.
34:45 We're I would get called. We only had one phone on the wall at first and I would get called on the phone on the wall. And dad would be seeing where are David shoes.
34:58 What did you find the most challenging? At that time? I loved my work. I love the computer programming. But I will text her always challenge challenging and the stress. Leave the pressure getting things done at the time that they were needed to be done. You are always over working.
35:19 Okay, we're coming to the end of the interview.
35:24 Who was the most important person in your life? And can you tell me about him or her? Probably dad?
35:30 And Dad was with some an absent-minded professor.
35:36 He on top psychology and he also had a deep interest in electronics that he had been with Ed been his first career. And he often was not there at the table. Even if he was sitting there with glasses on top of his head.
36:00 And he was he was a very loving husband Funtime absent-minded. He wouldn't have gotten his PhD. If I hadn't typed it because he was a perfectionist his books. He typed over and over and over, once he got a computer he could just keep perfecting and perfecting and he embraced the new new world of computers and new world of everything. And and he had enjoyed life enormously. He wanted 12 kids. He did compromise and we ended up with 4.
36:40 Because he wasn't neither of us. We were social partygoers and that kind of thing. So he wanted his social world at home.
36:51 What are you proud of stuff in your life?
36:56 Probably my four children and I think the second that and I think I was a really terrific computer programmer. So I was very proud of my ability and computers and in my work. So that I think that would be one of those would be the two things that I'm proudest of, in my life. Do you have any regrets?
37:22 Little regrets, of course, but big regrets. I pretty much love in my life. When I wanted. I mean, there were periods where was very stressful. I'm sure you remember some of but in general, I had a good life. We were poor for a long time. His dad didn't get much pain, but and then we got wealthier, we didn't have time. But and that's the problem for everybody. Once I get went to work. We had more money, but less time.
37:58 +. But I would say generally my life was a very good life and and it wasn't good. That Dan stayed around long enough for the empty nest and we had a wonderful time the empty nest he'd call me up every afternoon and say what do you want to do for supper about 4? And I'd say any place but eating Park cuz I only allowed that once a week. And he said, okay. Well, how about we meet at or sometimes we go home, but it was it was it was an enjoyable, really am dating. Of our lives and we had a good time. So I was glad that we had that. After all the kids were gone. So that that I have that to remember and I appreciate the time you've taken.