Elinor Elfner and Eric Elfner

00:03 I'm Eric elsner 47 years old. Today's date is November 14th 2008.

00:11 I'm in Gainesville, Florida, and I'm here to interview my mother.

00:17 I'm Eleanor elfner age 74 today is November 14th 1902 thousand eight. Where in Gainesville Florida and I'm going to be interviewed by my middle child my son Eric.

00:33 Well Mom first thing I'd like to ask you is.

00:39 Is that what's your earliest memory from your childhood?

00:43 Well, I certainly don't remember being born in Newton Massachusetts though. I've heard a lot about that and read about it in the writings of my parents. But I do remember something from Salt Lake City where my father went to be doing missionary work for the American Baptist Institute and travel in three states. And I remember the huge what seemed to me a huge picture window that looked out over the mountains. I also remember

01:15 Sitting on the front steps of that house and remember my mother warning me not to go or talk to any stranger who came by and that there were some people may thought there was somebody in the neighborhood might be a sexual predator and so I was warned very early not to be involved with any stranger who might come by the house or try to entice me to leave the steps. How how early was how how young were you this was before the age of three? Because we my brother was born

01:49 When I was when I was three.

01:53 That's the earliest memory now, you know, we were there for about three years and then went to Fargo, North Dakota.

02:04 My my father apparently from records I have ended was very worried about my going to the schools in Salt Lake City for some reason.

02:16 At some kind of an interesting retrospect. I course. I didn't have any feelings about that did the Mormon population have anything to do with this? I think it probably did but if you have it, you know it just for me. It was my family. I remember my mother having foot problems, and I remember just had about my brother being born there. That's probably the earliest and then we went to Fargo North Dakota was it where he took a pastor that was a totally different environment and probably the most impressive memory I have is walking out the front door after my father had shoveled the snow on the walk and the snow was piled up higher than I was on either side.

03:06 We live Trent we're renting a house on a corner now in the summertime. I know he had used to have the youth group from the church come over for activities and they would do croquette play croquet on the side yard, but there were times in the spring when the Locust were so heavy that I just hated to go into the side yard at all. But in many ways it was a good place to live because we had there not many people live in behind us and there was a sidewalk on that street. So I learned to ride a bike on that street.

03:46 It's your your dad. So what was his role in the church, but he was the minister of the First Baptist Church in Fargo North Dakota at that time and it was the largest church largest Baptist Church in North Dakota the time and he ran into a lot of problems there. I remember just a little bit of it and some of the discussions that were there was tension over salaries. It was just before World War I and my father was a pacifist and all that wasn't going over very well with the bankers in on the board and some of those types who were much more militant four ways of solving issues and I remember some of that that discussion and I remember the discussion wants the board had cut his salary

04:46 And they were just my mom and dad were determined that they were going to continue to make their pledge to the church no matter what.

04:56 And so I remember very much them talking about.

05:00 How little we could do other than make the minimum.

05:07 Do you remember any effects of your dad talking about being a pacifist and what wouldn't in the family? So yes, he died at the age of 47. And when I retire from retirement, I'm going to try to write some of his history because my mom and dad were very interesting people and having grown up on a cattle ranch in Nebraska.

05:39 Where his family did a lot of reading and research for how to do the best farming methods and so on and then when he decided to go into the ministry, he he was only it was after they were married and they would he would only go if my mother who had a two-year teaching certificate would finish college also, and of course this was back in the days when women didn't worry about going to college let alone helping to support their husband while he went to and then they went on to Newton where I was born when he went to Seminary, so I do remember

06:18 A lot about his his roles and I think that his pacifist thing was it he felt he needed to do something to improve The Human Condition and he was much more religious than I am, but I really felt

06:41 That the stuck what stuck in my mind was when we were in Winnetka, Illinois now by this time, I was in 3rd grade through 6th grade World War II ended and

06:56 He had been working for the what was then the home missions Council one of his jobs was go to Oak Ridge, Tennessee, which most people didn't never heard of but he was going there to survey to find out which churches they should encourage to build churches there. And of course the community at Oakridge during World War II grew up overnight. It was just a massive construction effort because of the war effort.

07:27 I felt that he went and did one trip.

07:34 And had a pass for three days, but after two days, he had gotten the information he needed and didn't go back and I recall when the FBI came to visit our house.

07:46 In Winnetka to find out

07:50 An interview him about why and with his prior.

07:56 Pacifist positions. I think that he may have already had a record and I've never gone about to check Rafi. He was working with the church his working with this not with the past not he was not pastor of the church. He was now working for home missions Council and during the war they had a office in Chicago. So we live just north of Chicago. Can you be your parents full names and their where they were born? My father was Don Franklin pielstick p i e l a s t i c k. My mother was Margaret Mae Anderson peel stick and they were from kummrow, Nebraska.

08:43 So it's right now at least when I was in high school, it was only a Crossroads there wasn't even a little store left there. But it was that a but they literally had a cattle ranch and raised cattle and mother milk cows and all of that.

09:00 And though what kind of relationship do you feel like you had with your parents in? This is early years.

09:11 I felt my parents put a lot of pressure on me a lot of pressure to do what when their mind was right for the world during World War II when we were in Winnetka. All the kids would bring their dimes in for war stamps.

09:34 And my parents did not believe in supporting the war effort. So I would make a donation to the Red Cross every week out of my allowance and the

09:48 The pressures were always gentle.

09:53 I mean these this went on throughout I felt that they

09:58 You know, like you'd have a plant that's growing in your nurturing it and feeding it just right and shaping it this way and giving it just the right in order to turn it out to be what you want. I felt a lot of that kind of pressure that they were trying to make me what they wanted me to be and I think part of it was indirect and that's what made me feel.

10:25 I don't know uncomfortable about the whole thing. And that that was not just true then it was also true.

10:34 You know when I decided to marry John Wayne was your natural father.

10:42 So it with your own your family, I'm your brothers and sisters. Do you feel that they were kind of in the same role or did you have a different role and your family from your brothers and sisters? I was the oldest and so yes, I had a different role and I had a different role for several reasons. I was we were each about three years apart.

11:07 And my father traveled a lot when he work for home missions that I've already spoken about and then after the war we moved to New Jersey and

11:20 Ennis Madison New Jersey a suburban area with a my parents were almost afraid to let me loose because there were so many big city influences and I think that protective mode they had died some as the other kids came along now, of course, I was just about 21 when my father died and my brother Bucky had just been accepted at Kalamazoo in Michigan for schooling for college and part of the reason for that. Was that school seem to be appropriate for him?

12:03 And my father traveled enough that he could stop by and see him periodically. So after my father died, that was a bit of a crisis for my brother my next younger brother Rex. It feels now that he doesn't remember it much of anything about our dads except that

12:25 He left when he desperately needed him the most.

12:31 Now my is my sister was mostly raised by my mother. She was 10 years old when my father died.

12:43 I talked a lot about my father but you know, my my mother was an incredible person because sometimes during the war she managed the household and the kids schooling and everything for sometimes two months at a time before he could get back and of course he did most of his travel by train in those days. They communicated mostly by mail. We didn't have cell phones or even telephones in fact.

13:14 After the war when we were in New Jersey, that's when we had a phone but it was a party lineup for party line and I was taught that you only use the phone for absolutely essential business because you didn't want to tie it up for other people and I found that very difficult in my own when I work for the state of Florida and education that my boss said to me. Once you said, you know, one of your assets is that you're very direct like a Yankee but the in the South you need to take time to talk to people a little more about their families and how everything's going before you get down to business. Well, I came by it because that's the way my parents taught me to be at your house. Just me or my brother with sister Karen that we have picked up on any of these characteristics.

14:12 Well, certainly Karen talks on the phone all the time. I think you kids are all much more involved in in these things. But to be focused on tasks. Yes, I do think that tends to be a family trait it to you. Once you get something going you kind of keep pursuing it in learning more about it. I think that some of the things that my my parents taught me through all of this that were

14:44 I think very important were the value system.

14:49 And a sense of responsibility, which I may have assumed to be more important than it needed to be.

14:59 That you're as a human being.

15:06 We each have a responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it.

15:13 And that's an incredibly difficult task.

15:16 And I often feel the pressure of that and I think it's what drives a lot of my volunteer work and social activities now, but I see a lot of that trying to being concerned and trying to make the world a better place whether it's directly in terms of how you raise your own kids or your own goals. I see that influencing all three of my children and I think that's a that's an important ethical Legacy that I'll leave to you and

15:55 Can you do you think your role as an educator?

16:01 Was that partially chosen or influence by the values? Oh my role as an educator. Yes, but even more so because you see my mother was an educator and although I was in a relatively Progressive High School where we took a lot of aptitude test. They never told me that yes, you really have great special abilities and you really would not to look at more math and science. I had already said I'd be a teacher like my mom and they were happy with that. So that's where I went the way you think you decided you're going to be a teacher probably Middle School, you know, it was one of those those things and it's

16:45 I feel it's unfortunate that I didn't have a chance to pursue some of those natural attributes. I had as you know, I I love designing houses working on Renovations. And I've done a lot of that. I've done a little bit of work with habitat and I hope to build a Net Zero Energy house just for the hell of it because I want to I want to see a show that I can do that and it can be a modest but fascinating home. So those are parts of the the value system.

17:22 I don't know where we influence as an educator was more because I spent most of my education time as an administrator and that people tend to think I'm organized until they see my office but I think that part has rubbed off but definitely has rubbed off on you and Karen and in a different way on which something but I do think that the the part that rubbed off on wet was even more living a very very simple life.

18:09 And not falling into the traditional expectations that Society has for you but shaping your own life and I think that the influence of having been an educator for you and Karen has much more structured how you can take on so many tasks and juggle a lot of activities and still keep a focus on each of them or you're growing up. I've always

18:35 Psalm whitning very similar people and driven in the same with the same value system and seems very cool for me that I think if you look at our lives we're so different.

18:51 How do you see that commonality? Yes the values. Yes, absolutely at its it's amazing and I think you're right that it's even stronger between you and wet then Karen and the the two of you but you know, she was she was younger the two of you were very close.

19:13 When I you asked about early memories, well, I remember the time I decided that time the marriage wasn't going well with your dad and you had been born in April 30th and that Thanksgiving.

19:32 I decided I just needed to go home and see my mother. This is John wine. I just had to go see my mother in New Jersey and we were in Madison Wisconsin at the time and so I got my airplane tickets which and we are finances were very very limited, but I thought I just needed to do that. And I took the two of you with diaper bags snow pants the whole gear and it was just under 3 at this time under 2 and 1/2 actually and got on this plane from Madison to Chicago and I never would have made it to the next plane if some woman hadn't offered to carry one of you because it was just more than I could possibly deal with but it's not unusual for me to get myself in deeper than I can handle.

20:26 But it was important if in my mother and I had a strange relationship you had asked earlier. Um, I think there's four there was a mother-daughter conflict that so many acres in so many and I've learned to appreciate her much more in later life as I've looked back over the things that she was able to do and how she handled things. In fact a red one letter was she had hoped at some point to go to Seminary herself never had that chance, but she had started back to teaching when they were so desperately in need of teaching and we were in New Jersey, but only after we had a family conference

21:09 So we can all talk about what it would mean to each of us in the family. If mother had to was going back to work rather than simply take care of the house and all I guessed 10 or 11 college girls that were renting rooms on the second floor this big old house. Then my parents had bought right after the war and so you see she had a very different kind of an influence. I always thought my father was the one influence the values and they kind of the intellectual side, but my mother really it influenced a lot on the Practical side and what you do for society does influence what you do with your family and that they need to be involved in those positions tonight. I just I remember us sitting around the table and talking about it, which is an unusual memory. I think of her job, but they're you know, I also remember the last time she swatted my bottom for something and I was talking back to her or something.

22:09 And them

22:15 Do you think that?

22:20 With your your mom and and those influences.

22:26 Going forward from after you get became your Administration education. And then you were tired. Do you see that your activities if changing in your focus focus on what you been doing has changed.

22:43 Oh, yes, my focus has changed and you don't want I retired. I thought one of the things I would do would be work through all this some those letters my father had written in my mother had dutifully saved so that there would be a written record of some of his thoughts and all of his sermons and all that kind of stuff, but I've gotten sidetracked and I haven't gotten back to that. Although I've done some initial phone scanning of materials.

23:14 Yes, now I got gotten back into the whole issue of climate change and trying to help the United States especially as my local community see that we need to change the way we live and we need to look more at the impact. It has on the earth and the sustainability of where we are. So let's talk about some of the things you've done.

23:43 Well after

23:47 I have my second husband that I lied after split. I got back involved with the intern Universalist Church in Tallahassee know we had been involved in Kent, Ohio before when you boys were young and I had been director of the religious education program for a little while. But after we moved to Tallahassee, it didn't seem to be a high priority for anyone in the family, except me. And does she get these beautiful weekends and all this lovely nature out there. There's plenty of marvelous things to do other than go to church on Sunday, but I got involved again after Lloyd and I split and at that point I felt that this was probably the group I could relate to his my extended family more than anything else.

24:33 And so I've had different roles, but more recently. I had one time of facilitated the study group on economic globalization.

24:43 And then when the next study issue came along about

24:49 Global warming

24:52 They kept asking me if I wouldn't handle that study group and I finally said okay you get 12 people that will commit to it to get together and all facilitated.

25:03 Well, we did and we started at my assumption was that we all knew there was an issue there and we can get started on working on Solutions, but I was told know that we need to deal with more with the study of what the issue really is of global warming and so we went to a lot of that but the spin-off from that was a community group that we got involved organized called Big Ben climate action team and it's some a non organized organization. That is we don't have any officers. We don't have we do have a website.

25:38 But we got started working with the city of Tallahassee utilities because they were just starting on their resource plan for the next 20 years, and we had had two meetings with staff on that when the mayor announced Tallahassee was going to participate in a coal plant in Taylor County.

26:08 And we immediately went on the defensive on that issue and worked with a lot of other people and started trying to get the information out about the relationship of this to climate change because it just the fact that any coal plant is going to put twice as much carbon dioxide in the atmosphere as the natural gas which the city had been predominantly using was horrifying to us at this point in life when they had had a relatively clean source of fuel relative to many of the providers in Florida. It just really really upset us impact our climate our church group couldn't decide whether we are to talk about global warming climate change or climate disruption, and I think it's the climate disruption that people refuse to look at and see what it's doing.

27:08 Worldwide

27:10 Now that we've ended the cold plant and there is not going to be a coal plant in Taylor County.

27:17 And the City of Tallahassee has finally settled their relationship with those with Jacksonville electric utility and Reedy Creek and the small Municipal Utilities on that issue.

27:35 We're trying to push other things. We did do put together a PowerPoint on possible sources of energy and what they could do including Energy Efficiency.

27:47 And it's interesting to look back now and see how some of that and that was the baby cat group put together and we were able to get an audience to do a presentation to the City commissioners. And I think it did make them look more seriously at to the roles of different of biomass, which is now a discussion in Tallahassee as well as Gainesville re-issue was we need to control the feedstock that you don't use feedstock. That would be unsustainable for the environment to handle but that it is a good alternative because of its carbon neutrality in terms of generating electricity, but some of the things we've pushed poor have not materialized we'd like to see a lot more on solar and we would like to see a lot more decentralized issues and I personally think

28:43 That decentralized systems is going to be a lot of the future because the more you pull it all together the first of all they talk about terrorism or you're just setting up targets for all kinds of things and the more you can decentralize the less you have problems with transmission if its electricity is it is the baby cat still pretty active out of meeting about a month ago. We decided that we would mean about twice a year to each share what we were working on. I'm now working more on issues in Wakulla County and some of them are working more on issues with the governor's climate action team and summer trying to stay on top of what the Public Service Commission is doing. So we have different areas. We also have some church groups that are doing some things are Church.

29:41 Was the first one to will figure out how to use the rebate from the state and the loan system from the city in order to get a 10 kilowatt solar panels up system. And the right now one of our members is working. One of the baby kept members is working with First Presbyterian on that and I know that it might work with the young Green living Expo in Wakulla County and we're preparing now for a third-year on that that the there's a Methodist Church in Tallahassee that also has done a lot of practices to become more sustainable. So I think the the future BB cat is to keep us individuals going as we need reinforcements from others. So as you look back on things you've accomplished so far.

30:36 What are you most proud of stuff the proudest of?

30:47 I'm proudest of my kids.

30:50 The each one is such a different individual and has dealt with life in as honest terms is like Han and yet with a broad perspective for what life really means for us as individuals and as country

31:12 I think that.

31:15 Keep being disappointed that I can't do more.

31:22 Or that I didn't get started on some of these things earlier, but I think we did get a pretty good exceptional education program going in Florida when I was working on the program Development Area there.

31:35 And some days I just feel that the best thing I've done is to hang in there a lot of things and things can get discouraging but I think that one of the things I've learned is you need to find who are the persons that you need to keep around you in order to nourish your own soul and to keep you able to make your own personal decisions without getting warped by Society or by family or by your agency you're working for there's just so many

32:14 So many opportunities out there and there's so many eat ways to get distracted and to not continue the way you'd like to think the same pressure your dad felt.

32:26 Yes.

32:29 I mentioned to you last night that I read over some my notes and there was one letter where he felt that he just could not.

32:37 Have the impact that he thought he should be able to have and some of it is learning how to work with people and you know, people are hard to influence and we're not always right. So I have to allow for that error in our own judgment as well and still help nurture.

33:00 How do you feel about talking to your mom in a very different way? I'm glad to see that you do have some balance in your life.

33:12 That you're very driven and you like you've accomplished a lot.

33:22 I think it's really cool. I think my siblings are so cool.

33:30 And if you was talking I was thinking back about when we move to Wakulla County.

33:37 And you designed her house there?

33:41 Yeah, that was in the 70s when everybody was worried about energy at that time and where I wish I had known then what I know now I could have made it more but I got the solar orientation. Right and I got to the screen porches. Right and I got the swimming pool right for the kids in fireplace in there and we have the geothermal open system now because we had 40 acres there for our heating but now I know so much more and I I really hope that someday I will before I die. I'll be able to do a Net Zero Energy House of all those things are the one thing. I really remember was the TV room.

34:31 Which in this modest ice house, but the TV room is I recalls about 5 by 6 ft and head room for a couch and a dresser and a TV and

34:46 I think it showed me the emphasis on.

34:53 What's important?

34:55 Yeah, we had it there we could use it, but we didn't run our lives and we did have our game table in the main room and we had our big harvest table so that we could have lots of friends around for meals and we use that screen porch like another family room.

35:15 I think you boys did a great job and having that what I remember about those days and that took place in what color was you going out on your own with your Hatchet and building the walkway and then you came back one day and said mom I've put up a railing so you can come and walk on it and I really appreciated that because I know that show that you want to share what you have done for yourself, but you also want to make it so that I could actually enjoy it too. That's the value systems you kids have gotten and I really appreciate it very proud of you.

35:54 Is there anything you'd like to ask me?

35:58 That's it. This interview might have triggered.

36:03 Well, I think just the the the question I just had about how you felt about interviewing me in a different way because when you first asked it was like a special gift that you were giving me to have a chance to ask about things and for me to have a chance to talk about my parents and some of the things that I thought were so important in my upbringing and that I have in many ways tried to share with you. So do you feel you're sharing those with your kids? I'm trying to matter if we never know until it's over is it?

36:45 We just do the best we can I'm very proud of my children. I think that they're doing they're doing well.

36:53 I like to think I'm passing good values on to part, you know, we talked about living wills, but it makes the

37:02 This is what we live leave to our children in values that will make the world better. And the one thing I having children.

37:14 Really recall hearing and now living is a fact then.

37:20 Don't really appreciate your mom.

37:24 Appreciate your parents until you have your children.

37:27 Karen has told me that so many times we can't let you know.

37:39 Thought I would appreciate it. I want to tell my children that they need them.

37:46 The only one day they'll know one day is Frank. Thanks so much Harry. Thank you.