James Russell and Amy Russell

00:00 Very smart.

00:08 Okay, my name is Amy Russell. I'm 24 years old. Today's date is April 20th 2008. We are in Georgetown Delaware at the mobile storycorps booth and I'm here with my father.

00:23 Hello, I'm James Russell. I'm going to be 55 years old next Saturday. Today's date is April 20th, 2008. We are still in Georgetown at the Del Tech campus. And this is I am father to the lady who just spoke.

00:40 Okay, so you grew up in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Tell me about your childhood there and your family, all over the place. I can get extremely cold in the winter and not really that hot in the summer. Just a few minutes could be.

00:59 During my childhood.

01:01 Of the steel mills for King Edward. Definitely, what Pittsburgh was all about. It was often referred to as the Smoky City. In fact, my father told me that when what about time I was born he would actually wear two or take two shirts to work, one to wear in the morning and one he would change into at lunch time because the air was so dirty and City.

01:22 And oddly enough later on. As I got out of high school. I went to work in the steel mill to one of the dirtiest parts of the milk called the Coke Ovens. And we had two guys walking around behind us all the time with these blue helmets on and they were from the air pollution control. Of course, they were the enemy at that time. But Pittsburgh now has very good air and it's no longer the Smoky City. That's for sure. It's a lot better. How long did you work in the steel mills? I work for three. Summers in the stadium. Is the college. I went to California. State University in Pennsylvania.

02:03 They would start the first Monday in October, which allowed us to work much longer in the Summers, which made the summer season, much better as far as hiring us than other people. So, you got like, First Choice, First Choice coming back. Yet you chose to work in the dirtiest part of the steel mill.

02:25 Call me greedy.

02:29 So tell me about your parents. How did they meet overlooked Pittsburgh? And believe me? It was more like a mountain and a hill and my father grew up in Millville, which was really just a little Valley between two Hills. It was right outside the actual city limits of Pittsburgh oddly enough. They both met at HJ Heinz company, which was at Barrett right at the very base of Troy Hill.

02:59 And my father, he was sort of like a delivery boy inside the plant, he would have pick up samples from the various foods that they were making that day and take him back to the scientific lab and they would analyze and make sure they were fit for eating and tasted good and all that stuff. And my mother was at one of the places where he would go and they struck up a conversation in a friendship. However, my father went off the world war. So my mother wrote to the rumor, I gave his that, she wrote to several men, but we like to think it was just my dad.

03:34 And when he came back, they were married. Now. I heard, she used to be a model.

03:40 Amazingly enough. My mother was a model that was before she was my mom.

03:45 And I saw pictures of her and it was amazing. She actually was pretty sharp-looking. Even if she was my mom, and she was in a bathing suit. And had the biggest hat I've ever seen in my life on her head, and I asked about that. And I understand in the late thirties. That was the style. You had a big hats were in

04:08 She was still pretty even, you know, later in her life. You could always tell she was very like, elegant and trim. Looking.

04:16 So, tell me about some of your other family members. Uncle Jack worked at the Heinz company.

04:30 Also in Pittsburgh and this was in 1913 and the owner came up to him and he was again a delivery boy like my father was but he would pick up messages and take him around because they didn't have intercom systems and things like that in the early 1900s and he would go down to the loading dock. When he's drop off a message down there, and he'd pick up some apples or any other fruits or vegetables that could be eaten raw and he would take them to all the secretaries at the various places where he picked up messages because he was quite the ladies, man, as a matter fact. My uncle jack was married. Four times, have I lived all four wives and when it was 95, my mother and father, and I went to visit him.

05:14 We knocked on the door, we knocked on the door and we just be you and I have to work finally answered the door and they said, you have to excuse me. I have AIDS and I said, oh my goodness, that you raised. He said, yes. I have one hearing aid on the right ear and hearing aid on the left ear and I walk with a cane. So I have AIDS and I noticed the entire time I was talking with my Uncle Jack, he was staring at my mother's boobs.

05:41 He was amazing. A ladies man, right to the end. He live to be 99 years old and he was quite the character, but I did show you a picture of him with me and my father and my mother.

05:58 What about the my grandfather was a stonemason and a brickmason he could do both and my uncle was also a builder. So my uncle build a nice house of Stone House in my grandfather and he did a bunch of the work on it. And finally, my uncle had to go off to work and make some money. Couldn't spend all this time. We're going to sow, so I left my grandfather behind and before he did my uncle build a chimney in the whole time. My grandfather said that's not going to draw. That's not going to draw. The smoke is going to come into the room. It's not going to go up the chimney and of course, my uncle. So I know what I'm doing, you know, how men are

06:36 Well, needless to say, wee little fire in the fireplace, smoke up the whole house. And my grandfather was brought into the scene again. This time. My grandfather was told to take down to the masonry fireplace and build a new. My grandfather was busy an alcoholic. So, my uncle hired a guy, a young fellow, and the young fellows. Only job is to sit there and get what my grandfather needed and then take him to lunch at the Corner Bar, how you for always be here and make sure he ate something cuz otherwise it just drink beer. And then after lunch they would go back and clean up the tools and go home. And the young man ask my Uncle. He said, what you shouldn't we work all day on that. She said, no. My dad is going to be too drunk by the end of lunch time, to do any decent work said, but he still better than me for half a day than I am a whole day. So, let him do his thing and this fireplace with work and sure enough. When my grandfather got it, done 5, Grace work, great. It was a beautiful stone fireplace and it still stands today.

07:36 It looks good. So you come from a long line of people who work with their hands Uncle. I spoke of another uncle on that side is an electrician. Another uncle on that side, as was the tool and die maker, which work with metal, and it was amazing. I almost a whole family could do your house and I guess I'm the only one in my family that got that trait. Because I notice my two brothers, you give me a hammer and a nail in their, hit the wrong mail every time.

08:14 So, tell me about your brother's. What did they do? Well, I have two brothers, one of them work for what then was lovingly called Ma Belle, which is now Verizon. It was Bell. Telephone when he work for them. He worked there. All 32 years and retired and he he currently still lives in Pittsburgh love to hunt and fish, especially hunting. He said he's so amazing and in health and stature he's big and he's got a big full beard and he's actually kind of scared to look at it. Kind of looks like Grizzly. Adams, every winner crossed with Kenny Rogers. Has he always been so healthy and struck his left arm. So badly that it's shrunk or has really just never grown. And it almost looks like he has a young boy's arm on his left side and a full-grown. Very muscular man's arm on his right side. He was the first

09:14 Child in Pittsburgh, to have split muscle operation, where they took some of the live mussels from his thumb and they split them. And his first two fingers were basically unusable and they split these muscles and put them in there. And now he has use of his hands. Of course, every time he moves his thumb, the other two fingers go with it, but he said that's a small price to pay. So he made medical history. Now. He helps you on your house dude, and he helped me build my log home and that was quite an experience and quite a pleasure to he was in charge of the drill and he doesn't weigh as much as I do. So when we use the bigger drill occasionally would have to grab him as he was spending in a circle, due to the power of the triple had. It would throw him around quite a bit. So what about your other brother? Uncle Glen? Bone marrow Survivor he had lymphoma, which really took his told on him, but amazingly enough.

10:14 The 52% survival rate. He is indeed surviving and we're all thankful for that and he worked at Westinghouse in the credit department, which I didn't realize Westinghouse made loans, but then all the big companies do apparently. And then he worked for the railroad running their computer systems. He was one of the first people to get into computer systems, setting up programs and things like that cuz he is older than I am, and I'm old. So, you know, when he did that computer for the size of a decent-sized hotel room course. Now, they're a wee bit smaller, just a little bit.

10:51 So now how about you? When you started out you were a teacher that right doing jobs in college. Carpenter jobs. I was study. What was then called industrial Arts. Most people called at shop and I graduated from California, State College in Pennsylvania, with a teaching degree. And I went on to get a masters in secondary guidance, which is better known as a guidance, counselor.

11:25 And while I was doing that also, did construction work in the Summers, which was kind of how I really got a good start because I develop more customers and more customers. And at the end of seven years, it looked as if I was going to be laid off from teaching for the 4th time and I said, you know what, I just need a little more control over my life. So I went into business and if you want to get control over your life going into business for yourself, may not be it. You are certainly at everybody else's desires and whims, but I made it this far and raise them children off of that, and some flies and things. So construction, which by the way, is very fortunate, being an industrial Arts. I knew how to use all the tools when I got into the field.

12:13 Which I think in the long run has helped helped me immensely and the counseling courses that I took from my master certainly helped a lot. When you have an upset customer and you've just done something to their two or three or four hundred thousand dollar house. You really need to counsel them carefully. Do you, regret leaving teaching leaving teaching? As when I see my people and friends that were teachers the same time as me and they're now retired. And of course I'm not. But then amazingly enough most of what I see them doing is fixing up their own houses. So I guess I'm pretty much doing the same thing as them for money. What's your favorite story from when you were when you were teaching?

13:04 Let's, it's really difficult to come down to one particular story. But one of the fellows that I knew very well, when I was teaching over in Easton, Maryland, this this man would always that. He's like the man of the sea. It was him and he was smoking a pipe. That's right. He smoked a pipe in school, which is hard to believe, but this is a long time ago and he would be standing there working on little model boats and he will also teach the class, but when the class was busy, he would stand errands, be sanding, something or carving with his Andrews, always busy with his hands.

13:41 And finally, I asked you. What do you do with all these little boats? I meant. You must have quite a few of them.

13:47 He said well, that's what I'm doing here. I'm finishing it up and it'll be in the Smithsonian Institute as a model of a skipjack. That's used throughout the Chesapeake. I should work for my goodness. That's amazing. Do you have any other? She said? Yes, he showed me this boat. It was about a foot long and it was a perfect miniature of a working crab boat.

14:11 And he said, I have one of these in the Smithsonian Institute also, and I thought this is really amazing. I was just fell out taking his time to the teach students young children. And at the same time, he's preserving history. That's pretty amazing. He was doing the future in the past and the present.

14:31 Tell me stories about the one about your supervisor when you're teaching is not a principle. He's over a couple of principals and he would have to observe every teacher at least three times a year and a second year. I was teaching for this man. I realized that he was going to find something wrong. No matter what. Because every time he observe me his complaint would primarily be that I did not wear a tie to teach because that was required by the school board and I was breaking the rules. Well, I didn't believe in wearing a tie is industrial arts teacher, because it says, right on the machines, do not wear a tie or any other loose clothing because it tends to grab them and pull you in and caused bodily harm. I didn't want to be harmed. So we would have this go around every time. So finally out about the 56 time, the observed me, I said, well, I'm going to head this problem off. So I had the art teacher cut me out.

15:31 Nice-looking paper time. And when he came in, I take my paper tie on my shirt.

15:37 And it's hard for me, even to this day to believe that he was not as amused by that paper towel, as I was. So he wrote me up. Sometimes you just have to do things. Speaking of the future in the past. I have one short story about my father. My father was in World War I mentioned earlier, and he went over to Australia as matter fact, he tells the story of flying over Australia with the Bombay doors. Open course, he was in the Army. So he certainly was not the Bombardier, but they open the doors to get some air and could look down and see the whole continent of us are Australia. And he said, the only thing you saw was dirt and dust a few bushes. And a kangaroo here and there. So, we asked him about his great trip. It's about always got to say it. Anyway, he was stationed just on an island. I think it was New Zealand, and he was a radio.

16:35 Originally trained as a Radioman, but then they ask for volunteers who could type in my. But my father says to this day. I remember knowing darn. Well, you the Army, you do not volunteer for anything, but he said he step forward. He says to this day that probably saved his life because he was sent off to decode and encode messages coming from the submarines in the Pacific Fleet and then taking them to wherever they had to go to the various Admirals on down. So we had to pass up rather difficult test for this, but he did and he goes about doing his mission. And he says, sending off these Reno messages to submarines, receiving them, and doing his job. The captain calls him into his office is Regis. That's my father's name.

17:20 Oddly enough. None of us are named Regis. I guess he didn't like that name. But anyway, he says Regis are you. I've got yourself an appointment to West Point. You took that test to be a decoder ring colors and you scored so high. Your one of four ordinary soldiers throughout the Pacific. You were going to get to go to West Point. He says, I can't order you to go there and my father said, well, I got it pretty good here. I think I'll just stay here. What if I want to go to West Point for that course, my father says, now looking back on it, realizes the captain was probably a graduate of West Point because the captain says to him while you're going and you're either going to Westpoint. Are you going to Guadalcanal and be a Radioman? Of my father says there was a lot of shooting going on. They're not that I was afraid but I felt I could be better used in West Point. So off to West Point he goes, he goes to finishing school and you got sick and never got to attend there. Anyway, apparently, he got pretty bad disease and they eventually gave him a medical discharge.

18:20 Hey Mary, my mother right after that. So it worked out. Well, it worked out very well. And I was with him in the 19 or 1999. I think it was. And we were over at the Baltimore aquarium and it was a submarine there and they were giving free tours. And I said to my dad, I said that, why don't we go on that. I've never been in a submarine and I would like to go. At least said sure, so we can go in there and there's a gentleman in there. I'll give it a talk while we're standing inside the conning Tower and after he gets done, my father goes over to him since I was in World War, II was a Radioman. I sent messages the submarines and they get to talking. And as they thought they saw, you were away into finer and finer details. And finally, it turns out my father had probably sent this man messages. He was a captain of a submarine in, my father, had probably sent him and receive messages from that man. And that is amazing half a world away. Fifty years later, and they're talking.

19:20 And I had actually spoke to each other before has amazing.

19:26 What do you remember about those? Like, what your favorite childhood memory? With your dad? I have a lot of favorite memories.

19:35 I guess the, the favorite one is a, is a one and a lot of kids, think I'm fun. I'm one of seven children and one day, my father takes me to a Pittsburgh Pirate game at the old Forbes field, which is no longer there, but I still remember it and he takes me to a game all by myself. It's just me and my dad, which is unusual in her seven children. So we're watching. It's a regular game and the Pirates are losing.

20:01 That was a surprise. But the buyers for losing 4 to 1 and we're about to leave. It's the ninth inning and the first guy up gets a single. My dad's. Let's just sit here and wait, I'm pretty happy about that while the next guy on gets a walk. So now there's two men on the next guy on hits out. What should have been an out, but the ball is dropped and now there's three men on and a guy by the name of Ted Savage who have never heard about before, or since kids up. He's a pinch-hitter and he hits a homerun. So, with the grand, slam the Pirates win the game and then we're really feeling me that was pretty exciting. And I think that was probably one of the best days. It was just me and my dad together sharing time together and I just still remember that to this day. Another power gaming, on the way home. Somebody slammed the car door, and my hand. So I don't remember the game, but I remember my hand.

20:58 Chanel, your brothers were both older than you.

21:02 Yes, they were still up but you were of course, the Golden Boy rather used to call me the fair-haired boy, because my father had a temper, like most men, and what he would physically correct us. My mother would almost always intervene before he got to me. Of course, I figured by the time I got to me, it be tired anyway, but nope, what? Few times he made it to me. He wasn't. So she would intervene because I was born premature and I had a lot of ear infections in your problems, and my dad, always liked to hit us on the head cuz that was closest.

21:37 So now you and your brother. So even though you fought a lot, you got into a lot of Mischief, do a lot of troubles and both. My older brothers have said, if I'm ever arrested for murder or some sort of violent crime that they indeed would stand up and my defense and say, it's not really my fault. It's theirs because of the way they treated me, just an example, one time. They they would they like to hold my hands and feet. And swing me around. I look kind of like a hammock at the time. They had me stretched out like that. And it did it over the steps one time. We had a two-story house and I said, all, you won't throw me down. So, of course, I did. So I hit my head. Pretty hard at the bottom of the steps on the front door, and I was crying and my dad came out and smack me for trying and disturbing everybody.

22:30 I remember you telling me a story about recycling glass one time.

22:38 My father had a job 35 miles from our house. So he finally decides to move up there. But he's going to leave my oldest brother there cuz he had gotten married and had a child and needed a place to rent. Anyway, so my father leaves him in the house, and he's paying the rent. And I'm staying with them because I'm working in a steel mill, which is only a few miles from there. And it's like, 40 mi from where my parents have been sober, living together there and everything's happy. And we're thinking that we ought to do something for the environment. This is the 70s. I'm sorry. Yeah. It's the early seventies. So we're going to do something for the environment. So we got all our beer in, it was a no returnable glass bottles. That we thought was rather than throw them in the trash. We're going to recycle a 55 gallon drum and we put it on her asphalt driveway, and we stand it up and take the top off as we drink beer, which kind of drink. A lot of we would put the bottles in there and break them and smash them up. Then we had all these bottles smashed up in the air and it took us a good 3.

23:38 The Village 55 gallon, drum to the top. There was an impressive sight. So we're going to take it to the recycling place and guess what? We can't move because it incredible weight. That 55 gallon drum.

23:52 I'm at drum was so heavy that it actually dug into the asphalt. So we emptied that stuff a bag or two at a time into the trash cans over the course of the next six months. And then Friday, you got 55 gallon drum out of the driveway, and I'm going to guess that ring is still there today.

24:15 So now after you know, you you get married and you will move to Delaware and then you do after your teaching career. You start you start your own business now, so you started building houses. Were you scared the first time you build a house? Aaron? This is a big company. We got to do a good job, and we did we did fact in the most difficult house. I ever built was the first one that I had a partner at the time and we tried doing a house on around, we were going to be big time.

24:55 I think when we got all done and figured it out, we made about 16 or $17 a day, which I got to tell you in the early 80s. It wasn't much money.

25:07 So, now you go to our house and you've your house. How many houses do you think you've built while haven't memorized? Hey, there was a gentleman when I first started that have been in carpentry, for a long time. And I asked him, I said, how many I love you built in this at all. I don't know, maybe a hundred and I thought to myself, how can you not? Remember, how many houses are built? Well, I'll tell you how you, wait till you're 50 years old. And you said, I'll home and I don't remember how many I feel that if I had to guess it would be somewhere around 50.

25:41 And I've enjoyed everyone. I certainly a, I do love what I do and and, and fortunately, my son seems to want to take over the business and I hope he enjoys it and my daughter who I'm speaking. As help me build several of those houses and I think she's a better person for it. It's a good skill to learn that. You've told me over and over how upset you are, that they don't have shop anymore in the high schools. Do you see that? You know, when you try to hire people to, to build your house and try to, you know, get people to go to work for you can't measure

26:19 I don't know what course in high school or Junior High School is responsible for that, but it's not working. They can't measure.

26:28 They have no Hands-On skills. I don't think there's any real Hands-On education in the school. System's not just the carpentry. There's no masonry. No Plumbing. There's nothing. They do with their hands. And yet, in our County Construction is has been rumored to be somewhere around 12% of population. Works in construction. Somebody should be taking note of that and preparing tomorrow is Labor's or we're going to have to hire out of the country.

26:59 So now, if you running the school again, what would you, what would you do? Like, how would you fix it? Every Junior High student, male, or female would take at least a semester of some sort of a Hands-On type of shop. And I don't mean this segregating to the girls into home economics, in the boys in the shop that it that was never right? Some of my best students when I taught Middle School where we're girls.

27:31 And they had a great idea there. They would do nine weeks of shop and they would do nine weeks of homak everybody. And I thought that was fantastic. I'd like to see it go to a year. And then in the high school level not everybody is going to be able to do computer-generated types of jobs. Computers are great, but they do not put roofs on houses and put up walls and fix people's plumbing and somebody's going to have to do that. And if we're not going to teach him then some other country or some other state is going to do it for us and they're going to come here.

28:08 So you're a carpenter with a master's degree now and you've obviously got a lot of ideas. What's it like being a carpenter with master's degree? Do you think people expect that or no. Expect me to have a master's degree or bachelor's degree for that matter? And I don't go around and I have a sign on me that says that, but I think they know by the time they're done talking with me that, that I'm not. Somebody who quit High School in the 10th. Grade. I've had high school dropouts and frankly, they are at a disadvantage and everyday life. If there was some way, I could communicate to the young people today to finish High School. I would certainly do it, but I am an older adults and that usually means they must ignore me.

28:59 Okay. So now do you see your former students? It's amazing. The number of former students that I see and a lot of times I don't reckon but I know they recommend recognize them, but I know they're my former students because they refer to me as mr. Russell and it's it's it's always a pleasure to see them. The other day. I was in church. I kind of go to different churches and I went to this church and they announced the young man to come up. And I say, young, man. He was only 46 and he went up and eat. Read a passage out of the Bible and I thought I recognized him when they gave his name. I knew I recognized it. So I saw him after the service and I asked him how he was doing now. Bear in mind that I used to teach industrial industrial Arts to some of the

29:48 I would say most disadvantaged students in the high school for five years. I taught the high school, and basically, if they were Trouble Maker the game to me, it doesn't mean that everyone, I had was a troublemaker. But anyway, I saw this guy and I went up by not going to do stuff first. I asked me if you recognize my voice and then I could tell he did, he was just, he was thinking, and thinking the smoke was coming out of the smoke was coming out of his ears. And he was thinking hard, finally. I told him, I said, what? I'm Jim Russell. When he looked a little bit harder, I said, you would know me as mr. Russell read that thing, and I was really amazed that he finally learned how to read. I thought they was great cuz we teased each other for a while because he really could read before then, but it's that kind of

30:36 Relationships that I developed with the students to be able to tease them and stuff that I think has been made most of them. Anyway, remember me and I went by the philosophy. If I can't, somehow entertain them and introduce some knowledge to them that they're not going to pick up the knowledge. That doesn't mean you have to be a first-class comedian, but it it helps if you can somehow make it interesting. Nobody learned anything sound asleep, except some of those amazing taste. They have the teacher foreign languages.

31:04 So, how you learn Spanish?

31:12 So,

31:15 Give me to, what does the California State College? Also, and we met and fell in love with an end of our junior year, and all three of our senior year. And what I did we had a placement office went to college placement. Office does is help you find job when you graduate. And I are colleagues was exceptionally good at that. And so, I would take the placement bulletins and everywhere that had a job for my future wife, which was special education, Highwood Circle, that, and red, and everywhere that had a job in industrial arts for myself. I would Circle that and blue on a map of eastern United States. We think it was zeroed in a little, when those two circles got close together. We would dash off on resumes. And I would go down there and kind of paved the way because she had a

32:12 Decent paying job and I worked in the mail and always had two days in a row up and sure enough. One of the places was right down here in Seaford and Georgetown Delaware, and we were both giving jobs and that's where we went. And that's where we been ever since.

32:28 I was only going to stay five years till I got my Master's and then I was going to teach College. I got the Masters in the five years. However, I did not get the college teaching job, except a very brief, part-time student at Delaware, Technical College, which I really enjoyed the evening. I would like to have a job again. Thank you.

32:57 And ironically, I teach there now and then she can hire me.

33:17 Alright. Thank you.