Helene Horn and Karen Azer

00:06 My name is Karen horn Kaiser and I'm 57 years old today's date is July 2nd 2008 where in Glens Falls New York and I am the daughter of flame horn and I will be interviewing. I'm Helen Elizabeth Wilson horn and I am with my daughter here for the storycorps interview today, and we're in Glens Falls and I'm 83 years old and we're looking forward to being able to share some of my memories with each other today.

00:45 Let's start mom with you know, some of your where you're born and some of your information about your parents and where you grew up. Yes, I'm Helen Elizabeth Wilson and I was born in Nashville, Tennessee in January 1925, January 8th 1925. And my father was a doctor. My mother was a nurse but before that I want to backtrack a little bit and tell you something about my parents because some of what they did before I was born I think affected things that happened to us as we were children and my father was a doctor born in Bloomfield, Tennessee and he lived he was brought up on a farm in Boones Hill my grandfather had this farm and also had a little country store and I should tell you the population of Boone Hill Tennessee was maybe a hundred and ten Max. My grandfather had a store in the little store had a porch where Farmers would sit on the front.

01:45 Fortune chew tobacco and there was a hand pump gas pump outside that people could come up in old cars and hand pump up a little gasoline for their cars inside Farmers so very good Housewives Farmers wives would come to buy things and they had a little post office. It was the whole General Store back in those days. I remember visiting it when I was a kid. It was a it was great. We have an excellent drawing of it and Engraving that somebody did of the old store and it's it's sad that it's not there anymore. But my mother was a nurse and was from Lake George New York. And so she became a nurse by graduating from Ellis Hospital and how she happened to beat. My father was he came from Tennessee after graduating from Medical School Vanderbilt University. He came to New York Women's Hospital. My mother came from Ellis Hospital gown to work in New York at the New York women's hospital. They met there and I don't know exactly how things can

02:45 Fired after that but eventually they got married World War one came along and my father was a captain in medical Corps station Allentown Pennsylvania. And as soon as the war was over he was asked to go with International Red Cross to the near East relief in turkey and so since he was a doctor and my mother was a nurse they were both accepted to go on this volunteer trip. I guess you got some kind of stipend to help you eat. But anyway, there's their story about how they took a big old ship from my New York to Fred's and then a train across France mind you this is 1919 down tomorrow side where they took another ship across the Aegean Sea and eventually wind up and can't Constantinople are turkey. It's interesting because they're traveling there on these on these ships was interesting because being Red Cross

03:45 Hunter Missions, they didn't have anything like a stateroom. They had a like a dormitory for the women wear their worse when I was swinging hammocks that the women slept in in the men head hammocks from some kind of another place from Constantinople. They were able to regroup and get the people that we're going to go with my father's and mother's group down into Mirage turkey.

04:11 They were being sent to Mirage because my father was going to be in charge of setting up hospitals to deal with the Armenians who had been mostly massacred by the Turks. How many of them were sick or wounded or families were refugees and they were in need of medical care and so for about a year-and-a-half they lived in Turkey. I did that and the thing that's really relevant to my childhood is after we were living in Miami some of these Armenians that they had met in turkey and that they had taken care of their eventually came to our house and I'll tell you about that a little bit later on.

04:51 My mother's family was

04:55 Last name Weaver of Lake George and when we were children, sometimes we used to come up and visit Tim up in like Lake George.

05:06 I was born in Nashville Tennessee after my parents had gotten back from turkey and your parents were older when they had you get my right. Yes, you were the old was about 38 when I was born and then I had to she had two more girls after that. So they were older when I was born and my father had started practicing medicine in Nashville, which was not too far from Boone Co, you know, maybe not in my house ruins here where he'd grown up after about a year and a half or so in Nashville or after I have been born they moved to Miami and that was interesting because when my father had finished medical school

05:49 You have to take your state boards to be certified to be a physician and he very wisely took the state boards for Tennessee, New York, Florida and California all the same time after he got out of the service and went to practice he had the choice of going to any of those States. So we started in Tennessee and then they decided I was things were beginning to bloom in Florida back in 1926 or so, and I talked about the Florida booming economy and people were moving all the way down the coast to Miami, you know, so my parents were some of the early settlers Miami so was different growing up in a city like Miami, you know when we were kids, but one other thing that I think you mentioned that your father was from Boones held and we have some lineage right connected to Daniel Boone. Absolutely my my great great great great uncle I may have left out a grain was Daniel Boone. And so we always used to live

06:49 Because I had a actually first cousin whose name was boom Wilson and my grandfather whom I really never knew because he died when I was just a tiny turtle. His name was Addison Boone Wilson. So the Boone name was carried through for several Generations after that. So we have that Lennie at your butt.

07:12 What when I when I move to Miami, but I was taken to Miami I should say since I was just a toddler we had settled in Miami and probably August of 1926 and I had a sister that way was born just about the time we had gotten down there. I think it was more than a month or so after that are very large and well remembered hurricane hit Miami the 1926 hurricane and I have this recognition for my very early childhood of this little colored girl who work for us sitting at a big overstuffed chair holding an umbrella over the baby my my little baby sister because all the tar paper roof had peel off the house and it was leaking.

08:12 House

08:14 I like remember this new house. It was a two story in Miami to yes two-story concrete block house, which is what they were building there now and head Spanish tile roofing. Miami was already influenced by a Spanish-speaking people in Hispanics, even back in those days, you know long before any Cuban refugees has came from early days might be worst affected by an influencer positively by many people from South America our new house. Was it a section called Shenandoah and a bad section now, it is completely Hispanic and is part of what became known as a Little Havana. We re able to go to school at an elementary school, which was down the street from us and this walk to school about two blocks and the little Elementary School.

09:07 Which made up of a little wooden Shacks a little wooden Shack sitting on concrete blocks for the kindergarten a little wooden Shack sitting on concrete blocks for the first grade a separate little Jack for the second grade and all the way up to 6th grade. So you went to whichever one of those little wooden building suited your grade. And do you have any hard to know this but do you have any idea how many people are in Miami at that time? And it sounds like there weren't many schools or anything yet know I don't know what they're 100,000 people there yet or not, but the population growth rate quickly in the twenties. No late 20s, you know, I'm people kept hearing about things doing better in Florida. So people began to move their thinking it was potential to earn a bit earlier, you know,

10:02 What else do you remember about being in Miami? I think one of the fun things about growing up and I Miami which was this small City at the time where our house was built had formerly been an orange and grapefruit Groves and behold Grove was divided into 50 foot walks. So that subdivisions were made just like the end of these days only you can have a 50 ft Lupton which is a very big and the Lots behind our house. Y'all had the orange trees and grapefruit trees on them. So we used to go out and play and not climb up in the orange trees and grapefruit trees and pick off all the fruit. We wanted and we could play Tarzan in the trees with vines and everything but all up and down the other streetwear houses that have been built there. And of course those other Lots with the trees didn't last much longer they begin to disappear to

10:59 Then not too long after you got there probably the Depression started right? I mean did you start to feel the effects of that my family having my father be a position where we were not very much affected by the depression just a little bit. We still had them are young colored woman who came in work for us some and I think they got about $8 a week at the time to come and work. I don't know how many days but probably long hours and doing everything they were able to help my mother with the three girls because by this time we had three daughters, so we we didn't suffer very much one of those stories that I remember from the depression time, though. People were hungry.

11:52 Everybody didn't have as much food as we did and I remember that someone broke into our kitchen back door one.

12:04 Manasthan, just get a drink of water.

12:10 A man was looking for food and broke into the kitchen and just added our back kitchen table eating chicken out of the refrigerator. You don't I think we came home and found them are either got up in the morning and found and you know, he just took off and left because all he wanted was something to eat. I have another recollection of childhood there in Miami when we had this young colored woman that came to work for us. They lived in a section where blacks lived course in a very isolated so I can gated community and all very poor and they pump the lady one of the woman's name was Fannie and a wheel of Fannie. She was just great. She used to come and take the streetcar which was the Southwest 6th Street streetcar that she would take from down in the session is now call over town and if she would get off

13:10 On 6th Street and then have to walk over about six blocks over to our house six or eight blocks our house and then she would knock on the door and I would go down later in its 7 in the morning because I was usually the first one up one morning. I heard her down at the back door really kind of screaming and I went back down and found her there and she was holding her arm and her boyfriend had followed her going to work and when she had gotten off the streetcar he had attacked her with a big knife and cut her arm open shoulder to the elbow and then she had walked all the way over from the trolley over to our house and Chris. She she knew my father would fix her up what she did so he had been a surgeon and I was able to take care of it, right? So that was a rather unfortunate. I think I haven't another story that I remember from

14:09 All those days when people didn't have very much a woman came to our door one night and asked for my father rang the doorbell and ask for my father and went to the door to talk to her and she had been a patient of his by this time. He was a specialist In Obstetrics & Gynecology, but she came to the door and asked to see my dad and I know he went to talk to her and she had six little sterling silver forks with her that she wanted to sell to him, you know, and he was very glad to give her money for him because he knew she needed the money and she said she just wanted $0.50 and he said no I'll give you more money than that, you know because they're worth more than that. She said no, I only need $0.50 and that's all she would take 50 Cent. So my dad gave her the $0.50 and he took the forks and accidentally I have two or three of those Forks yet to this day. But anyway, he heard.

15:09 Some days later than that. She had taken to 50 Cent's and gone to the drugstore and bought some kind of medicine and killed herself with it because I did not have enough money to live in the end. If we don't really know who sure but that was you know, obviously upset after yeah, I can remember from my Early Childhood. I mean to sometime between Sage of six and eight or nine or 10

15:38 Not far from our house on a Main Street, which it would be. What's the Tamiami Trail now in the Tamiami Trail runs from downtown Miami all the way across to the West Coast and up to Tampa. And of course, it was named Tamiami because it combined Tampa and Miami together to become at Tamiami Trail. There was a funeral home beer and a man who own this funeral home having a good friend of our family. We were riding in our car one day down down this 8th Street, which was the Tamiami Trail and in front of the funeral home. There were these Ku Klux Klan members lined up.

16:18 Maybe six of them on each side of the sidewalk lined up in and some kind of phone order there and they were carrying a casket out of the out of the funeral home. You know, when these men were in these terrible looking white robes with a pointy with a hood Saint Lawrence and hats and everything and knowing it just scared us to death, you know, and I just looking at them and what do you think was going on while they were being one of the Ku Klux Klan members, you know when they just had their full regalia on you know, and at that time the Ku Klux Klan was very busy, you know around South, Florida.

17:03 I certainly hope it's a lot better now than one egg, and I was do some.

17:09 Another more positive a note that I can remember in those days, which would be in the 30s occasionally. My father would take us out for Sunday dinner and you could go to a restaurant over not far from where this Funeral Home was and for $0.50 you could have shrimp cocktail and steak and then others. Do you know out for dinner? And I guess 50 Cent seem like a lot more.

17:44 We used to like very much when we were kids to go fishing and after things begin to pick up a little bit financially around Miami. My father had a small boat and we sometimes go out and go fishing and then he had a friend who had a bigger boat and we would go out and go deep sea fishing sometimes and that was always fun. We would get fish and be able to take it home and clean it needed and we all enjoy that very much when you were talking about your family not being so affected by the depression were there things that you know, you can think that your family did to help help some of those that you know, cuz I know our family value is always been to help other people, you know, it's a strong value that we share and I'm just wondering can you remember things that you know, probably your father would have done to help some of them. I know my father did was eat people for no pay. Yeah. I wish he didn't

18:44 I think some doctors still do that to me.

18:49 About 1935 or so. There was a another very large hurricane that hit South Florida not a hundred percent sure. It was 35, but it was a young.

19:03 An extremely bad hurricane and if we looked up all the history of the hurricane is on the internet, we would have identified it quickly it primarily hit Key West and keep Key West at the time was not connected to the mainland of Miami at all. When when Franklin D Roosevelt became president and I think took office in 33 he started programs to put on.

19:33 Veterans from World War 1 who were

19:37 Many starving to death because they had no work. No jobs. No no food very often. So he started several programs that put them to work in different ways to the initials like wpan works progress administration in civilian concentrate Civilian Conservation Corps CCC and several others work programs. What are the work programs that they did was to put some of these soldiers to work building the railroad from the mainland in Florida to build it all the way to Key West and those men wear down living in the keys and working building that railroad when the hurricane hit and unfortunately, whoever was in charge of all the men working down there didn't tell anybody that hurricane was coming and they didn't know it was coming several hundred of the Underground Railroad work was wiped out and

20:36 Many of those men working there were never identified. They were buried in a common grave in the cemetery. That's on Southwest 8th Street in Miami. Now a big grave there were these hurricane victims were buried together and

20:57 Couple my friends and I are no head lemonade stands and other things to raise money for the Red Cross and I can't remember exactly how much we raised would probably less than $10 but we thought that was a whole lot and we took our Diamond got on the bus and went to downtown Miami because it didn't matter if you only 9 years old, then you could get on the bus and go to downtown Miami for 10 and I worry about that worried about it. We went to the Red Cross headquarters and gave her the money. We've raised no to help. You know, what I remember doing with your friends when you're growing up. We used to ride bicycles a great deal. We used to play in the streets because it wasn't much traffic. You could play Kick the Can out in the street.

21:44 We know curse word climbed in the Orange grapefruit trees along, you know that kind of thing. And I know you were friends with her when you were younger or I didn't know her until high school high school 11th grade. You're my friend and I am Webster Smith and I got acquainted in 7th grade, and she and I were good friends until she died just a couple years ago.

22:14 I think growing up in the city or small City though. It was you know, it was quite different than people who grew up and try to see though where my father had been a child with people and grew up and watch you have you have different things that you do different?

22:35 Activities play activities, you know, it sounds like the city was pretty safe then though. So it's certainly different than growing up in the city now button and then you went to boarding school for a while, right? We did my mother I guess decided we all need to go off to boarding school. So send us to North Carolina for a couple years, you know one know how we we went there a couple years but then came back and went to Miami back to the either elementary school or the Shenandoah junior high school or Miami senior high school and the Miami Senior High School is still bear the story when I graduated from Miami senior high school at age 16 and 1941. We had a graduating class of 450 or so because it was already a good types High someone they were not a lot of high schools. They were probably that one and one other one I think of the time but anyway, so when we had a graduation ceremony, I'm the

23:35 Oratorium, you know where all of us.

23:39 And you and I were crammed in these cap and gowns in chairs close together up on a very stuffy stage. And of course there was no such thing as air conditioning and it was very uncomfortably hot. And of course at the time I was still a Wilson so I was near the back row because it went in all in alphabetical order and the people behind me word Zimmerman's and whoever else but we were we were all just died on the back because it was so hot and stuff for you. So we finally talk somebody on the back row to slip under the curtain go out and we gave them some money and they went under the curtain in duck duck down there and went over to the corner drugstore and came back in about 10 minutes with several bottles of soda, which they managed to pass up and down the back row so that all of us in the back and have a drink because we were so

24:39 The graduation was the last a long time then was too long for that hot day, you know the war started the year after that and I can start off the college already and World War II affected people in Miami and various ways. One of the things I remember as a child, you know was a young teenager in them.

25:09 If you lived on Miami Beach, everything had to be blacked out at night and everybody had blackout curtains. So that submarine German submarines are other in the submarines could not see the coastline at night. So thanks for blacked out. Everyone's car. The headlights on their cars were blacked out except for a little strip of white light down the center of it occasionally when we would go over and walk on the beach in the daytime. You would find stuff that had washed up on shore from a sunken ship of some kind. You know, what?

25:48 Pieces of debris that you knew I'd come in some Wrecking some place.

25:56 We certainly were not affected much did our whole country as far as the war is concern people try to volunteer and help do things, you know, even though the bus at work old enough to do March volunteered for the Uso roll bandages for the Red Cross and that kind of thing. But what was the Uso United service organization it is still functioning and he tries to help service people still today, you know, I sent some contributions to it for the service people are serving in Iraq. Are they still trying to do that? I remember also going to University of Miami for a semester during that period when the war was still on and took a drafting Course and there has been a hundred Sailors who had been stationed in Miami at one of the Naval bases and you know the university which is full service people that were being sent here to be trained to do to

26:56 Thanks, Mom. And Chris. The rest of us were going you just went wherever whoever was there. Are there many females in the class are hardly any female Sailors at some time or just a few. How do you happen to take the course? I want to take drafting Stone. There were two or three of us plus all these Sailors from from a naval base the hotels in Miami Beach were turned into officer training a headquarters and many of the big hotels became headquarters for service people so that they can make it take part in training missions in different parts of the county fair because suddenly when we were at War, you know, you had everything had to go towards the war effort to train people or building things or whatever. It was needed to dismember feeling afraid.

27:56 Because the country was at War we were we were afraid at all. We did be good to have a rationing of food of different kinds of water was rationing meat was rationing. So you had intercourse gasoline was very much rations, and I may not have to do that again or something. Say it start doing that pretty darn soon, but you got your stamps and you got so much me to get every week or so. Everybody had a rash and everybody had a rational Chris are always some people that got around the rationing van. They had anyone with a butcher in with the black market or something, but most most families here Drake carefully to the rationing system.

28:47 I think come as I am married, you know 1944 the war was still on when I got married and that I wound up going.

28:59 After my husband got out of the Navy we wound up going to California to the University of California. So I was able to go back to college to finish my college degree on a cruise by this time. We had two children and we used to have great fun at the University because we had to rent an apartment, you know, being married and having children and I would done.

29:20 Let your father go to class and I would keep the kids and then I would meet him in between classes and give him the kids. I would go to class, you know for a while and eventually we both finished. He's made it through with graduating at the University, California. And when did you graduate 1952? We lived a year in Los Angeles after that where he taught school and I had a job at the Bank of America. So you're after that. We move back to Lake George and I was I sent your father, you know, you you choose where you want to live. I said, I don't I don't want to stay living in California. But if you you choose if you want to go back to Miami if you want to go back to Lake George where he had been from Lake George his family because you wanted to be near family. Well, I had gotten sick out in, California.

30:20 When the kids were sick, they had chickenpox and I got really sick and it wasn't anybody out there to help you out or take help him do anything, you know, so I said, I'm not staying here pick where you want to go and I'll go you know, and he chose to come back to Lake George and he got a job teaching school and I'll like Lucerne we moved here back to let you know and I was never sorry. We came to like you over here by the next year after we got back here. I started teaching school too because you couldn't afford to live on one teacher salary and we had to save some money over the years and

31:00 Boy the first year we were here out here and so little teaching school that we spent, you know, practically everything we'd saved up. So I got a job the next year. So two of us. School, we've managed to get by even paying $55 a month rent. You can just about make a note to teacher salary. So how much was the rent at the time $55 a month? So in during this time. Like what was life, like for most people and then people were a lot of people struggling just to get by or I think that people today. Well, I should say let's let's save from 20 years ago. I think people never have really understood how little money people used to have except for a segment a very small segment of well-to-do people professional people like my father had good incomes, but we're not rich they made no made a good living on head.

32:00 And I needed but in general people did not have much money and wasn't until after the war was over and all the War factories and places where they had built things for the war effort. They began to turn those into producing things for consumer goods and for new automobiles and Carson. No new water bill to Belton years, you know because they couldn't feel anything like that. So suddenly they were Building Products that people needed and so the economy began to come around after the war and also one of the greatest things that happened after World War II was the GI bill when the GI bill was created.

32:48 You know, it was carried out so that the service man who came back could go to college even though they didn't have enough money to go and by creating they created a an educated middle-class and they were they became good producers of income and also buyers of consumer goods in the economy began to Boom in large part in the end of the war and the GI Bill together, but people before that time had very little money, you know, I remember a story if they said thank you told me that your dad during the war when he was an obstetrician and having to deliver all those babies in Miami and he made a lot of money but most of it went to tag. Yes during the war he was course. It was a little older by the World War II so that he didn't have to go in and serve a door, but all the younger obstetrician

33:48 Left so he was left in Miami and delivered. You can offer Garden 607 babies 1 year, which was a huge number and of course is hidden cam went way up. But I remember that I can't remember the exact number right now. But if he if he earned $80,000 that year I would say sixty thousand of it was paid in taxes because our huge percentages of people's incomes went to pay for the war. You know, that doesn't happen. Now with your rock war people don't nobody pays much taxes to to buy fix the Iraq War. We just charge a retainer so back then they just started taxing everybody to help pay for the war. Yes, and it was based on your income. You know, if you didn't have much money you didn't pay much tax, you know, the tax rates were up to like 80% for who had a more income because you could get along on the 20,000.

34:48 It's fine where you could live. Well drain that so I wasn't exorbitant.

34:54 Anyway, you know.

34:58 You know times were very different sin and yet many problems that people have today or problems people have been but the things we do now in our country or different, you know, we

35:10 Weep. We run up debts for things now that you never used to do that. We used to save up money and buy something, you know, things are done differently now well and people probably didn't run up debts before and like they do now. Weather wasn't in there such thing as a credit card. So so things are quite different you quite different and I guess I'm 25 years from now it'll be different again, but somehow or another we have to get people so that they they value what they have and take care what they have support one another better than we do now and it's been kind of fun talking about some of these things. It's sort of racks my brain trying to think of nothing. Should I like hearing about him, you know, especially from you know, your perspective on what life is like as a read about it in history, but it's very different when you talk to the person who lived

36:10 Live during at 9

36:12 Well, you think about even babies back then when your head baby shouldn't have to go buy a lot of toys. You just took all the pots and pans out of the curb and let him play with those, you know, when they were through your washer and put them back in the cupboard again and got along just fine.

36:28 Is there anything else that you can think of that you know?

36:33 That would be important to share.

36:36 I guess not. I think it's been a blessing to me to have family and to be able to share things with the family and so having somebody like that to share things with is certainly I'm wonderful because your people who don't have any family. So and also I think our family is got some very good values in terms of sharing and helping other PDL and you know, Dalian what's most important in life.

37:05 That was really glad we did this, right?

37:09 We think storycorps.