Ozella Stroupe Buchanan and Kathleen Buchanan

00:04 My name is Kathleen Buchanan. I'm 44 years old. Today's date is January 13th, 2012. We are in Austin, Texas and I'm speaking today with my mother. Ozela Buchanan.

00:20 My name is ocella Stroup Buchanan and my age is 78. Today is January 13th, 2012, Austin, Texas, and my partner is my daughter counseling.

00:37 Mom, we were talking about your birthday and actually growing up January 13th was the day that you traditionally thought was your birthday and celebrated. Was that what you recall know? It was the 16th 13th was a cut of my niece's birthday and the 12th was in my mother's but they always told me and I celebrated the 16th. But when I first got my birth certificate it was the 15th and then I had to change around everything but it really didn't make any difference because we never celebrated birthdays and we never had parties and no one said oh, wow, it's your birthday. Happy birthday. So it didn't make all that much difference. But it was do you want to know who I was like that? And yes.

01:31 Well in the community, I grew up we had no doctor there was a doctor that was available, but he rode a horse and he really wasn't a doctor. He was a r e a d doctor. He had just read some books and everything would be kind of like a herbal medicine and I don't even think he had a stethoscope but he was a nice guy. So we had a midwife and everyone in my family all were delivered by midwives and maybe three or four times a year. She would go over to City Hall and she would record all the births that had been in our little community that we lived in we had a village like Hillary Clinton said I grew up in a village and it was a great Village because everyone was related to us. So that's how my birthday came back.

02:29 So tell me more mom about the community you grew up in and Virginia with Phil.

02:39 Well, it was just a little dirt road. It was about 5 to 7 Miles long and it branched off of a state road and everyone just about everyone that lived up there and I would say there was probably 30 40 50 families and everybody had a lot of children. It was just we were all related in one way or the other you were just related to everybody and it was like a village and you never got away with anything because everybody was your cousin your aunt you something or the other and that we were always looked after no matter where we were while we were doing somebody knew what was going on. So that was great and was very supportive because people got together and they helped each other and they were always there for each other. And so that was a great way to grow up yourself.

03:40 What kind of education did you have?

03:45 Well, my father was totally illiterate and my mother had been to fifth grade. We had two books in her house. When was the Sears and Roebucks catalog and the other one was the Bible and the only one in the house at that accept some of the older children that could read was my mother and she used to read the Bible to us and tell us Bible stories. And so

04:12 She came from a different family. She didn't grow up on the mountain my dad grew up on the mountain and she came from North Carolina and her family was a little more educated. So she was very interested in us going to school and so

04:32 We had at first in that Community where she went to live when she was married in 1903 DeVille to church and then they had school in the church and the county provided a teacher I would imagine just somebody with a high school education and my three of my siblings the older ones went to school there and then a 1929 they built the School the county that go to school for us and we were always referred to as the poor children and gave us a teacher and she was a wonderful teacher and who was her first teaching experience. She had had two years of college.

05:24 And you know, she just was great because she didn't know us and we were kind of like I don't want to say heathens, but I led you can't have to but she told me I went to visit her on her 99th birthday and she told me that it was just a great experience and she was a little scared because of superintendent of school said to are you sure you want to do this? These people are crazy. So that the first year that Miss pizzelle was teaching with when you started first grade. No. No she started when the school opened in 1929 and well, they ain't no that's not true. They had another teacher before that time. And then when that teacher left in this policy all came so my older brothers and sisters had a different teacher and she would bring my oldest brother sister very interesting in.

06:24 Learning and she would bring her a high school books to school with her and she would loan the books to them to take home to read and and so

06:37 Years later because everybody had to start working as soon as they could in my so they got their GED when that became available was like high school, but that was

06:55 Kind of the way it was and I went to that school until I was in fourth grade and the teacher was really good cuz she had said it was a one-room school and the higher grades used to help us out with some of the work that helped the teacher and I can still smell how the school room smell than we just had a cloakroom and out house has been and I remember that when Harold Hagee the one with me today to the start the other school.

07:31 She told us that we needed because we were learning faster than the others. We needed to stay till 4 and she let the other students out to but she kept some of us till 4 so she could give us extra instructions. So that was a good thing and what they did your oldest brother and sister Lester and Jetty go to 7th. They went through 7th.

08:05 Now

08:07 In after you finish the fourth grade at that lick Mountain School with Miss pizzelles your teacher what happened with your education?

08:20 Well, the war was on World War II was on and all of the guys and had to go to war. They just had they were taking the men and a lot of the women went work in the factories in to build planes and tanks and all kinds of stuff like that. But from our little community no women win, but a lot of the young men with butt in town and everything, they took School teachers, they took doctors. They took anybody and everybody you didn't stop at age 18 and so they took our teacher she had to go to town to teach in the school in town to replace some of the guys that they had taken it. So they didn't consider us important enough to keep a teacher and they did not provide any education and my mother would go to town and talk to the Board of Education all the time saying when are you going to give us another teacher so she did that for to you?

09:20 And we just finally I just finally got tired of waiting and

09:27 The two boys who lived up the road from us. I said, why don't we just buy us a pad of paper and a pencil and walk out to Uncle Henry store and just catch to see if the school buses stop and pick us up. We had no idea where we were going to we had no idea how we're going to get back. We told our parents what we were going to do and they didn't have any problem with it was okay and so the school bus stop. Mr. Brewer was a school bus driver. He stopped we got on the bus and it was eight miles to the school and we never been on a school bus before and so it was like an adventure to us and it was a beautiful school. It went through 12th in and we went in a lot of kids in the hallway with different than a little rough one room School.

10:21 So anyhow, I was in 5th grade and I stopped one of the older Boys in hallway and said could you show me where 6th grade is? And he said yes, and he showed me the room and I went in and I sat down and finally the teacher came by me. We were registered or anything like that. And I said to her I told her my name and I said I'm in 5th grade and she said will honey you're in the wrong room. This is a sixth grade. So the boy was playing a good prank on me, but she took me to my room and that's when I was there till I graduated from high school.

11:04 That first year that you caught the bus to take the trip into town to go to the school that they wasn't in the town. It was out in the county out in the county that the kids were going to school to see how many folks from your community were able to go to school that year. Just there was just three of us and after the other children learn that you are successful in and you were able to attend another school while the school on the mountain was still closed down how many other children start is probably 20 the next year and just kept coming because everybody like I said had a lot of kids and then maybe in another five years they gave us a school bus.

11:53 And so and then later on quite a few years later, they separated the group and sent part to one school and part to another school. So by that time we were in considered part of civilization and they were providing for us, but they never did staff that school again on your mountain in your community know they didn't they finally just sold the land to somebody they towards school down and so the land to somebody in the community and that was the end of that you were the the first child from the mountain you grew up on to graduate from school. Is that right? Yes the first to graduate in the community from high school, and then you also went on to take some more classes. Could you tell me about your decision?

12:53 And to further your education and how you made that happen after you graduated from high school. Well when I graduated from high school the only opportunity to a lot of girls unless you were from the city and you had a lot of money or had the means was to be to learn to become a secretary a schoolteacher join the waves. That was the military are the wax and that was sure option. So when I graduated from high school and they gave me a scholarship to go to Radford State teachers college and I said no way I could never be a school teacher because I knew that I would not make a good teacher, you know that I could manage one or two children but a classroom, that would be really no good. So I went and got a job in the hospital is a nurse's aide and I knew nothing about what I was going to do.

13:53 But I didn't want to go to work in a factory and so

13:59 I think I was divinely guided so I was in the hospital and they had me doing everything and I guess I must have shown that confidence and what I was doing or something cuz one of these are rancid to me. Have you ever thought about going to nursing school? And I said no she's so I think you would make a good nurse and she said I went to school in Richmond, Virginia. That was a capital and I went to St. Luke's Hospital School of Nursing and I think you would make a good nurse and I said, oh, okay, so she gave me all the information got all the information. I filled out all of the applications and all of that stuff and I had to go to the doctor to get a physical. So I went to dr. Grubb the red doctor and he didn't do anything but sign the papers and then I had to get all these recommendations for my prince.

14:59 Ball in The Minister's and self-worth. So the cost of the tuition was a hunt for three years. It was three years equal to 4 years of you know, now you get your BS and the cost was $150 for 3 years, but I didn't have any money. My family didn't have any money. So I went to my oldest brother Lester and I said Lester would you borrow the money so I can go to school and he talked to his wife because they both work one worked in us the silk Mill in one worked in the shirt factory. And so yes, he said I'll buy the money and we'll pay it back, but I had no way of paying it back. So I went to school and loved absolutely every minute of it was very happy and we did our College work at Virginia.

15:59 Institute we did like our chemistry in her microbiology and pharmacology and I'm trying to psychology and sociology all those courses that we got at the at the University and course the hospital with paying had to pay all that and there was only 10 girls in my class, but there were only 22 in my graduating high school class. So the schools were not big huge school and but it was a wonderful School.

16:32 So that's it. Did you feel that your education out on the mountain had prepared you for the nursing program at St. Luke's it? Sure did it came in handy so many different ways because when you grow up we were, you know, we did everything we grow our own food. We had our on meat and we had the cows and we had to sustain ourselves and it was during the Depression and things did not start to straighten out for us on the mountain until probably in the fifties somewhere. We didn't have electricity to the house until I think it was like 1962 or 1964, but I had already gone away to school and we never had a refrigerator and we even tell then we did not have a refrigerator, but

17:31 You know me and you had the country ways and means of doing everything. No one got sick. We never had food poisoning or anything like that so that and I just with the animals seeing an autopsy wasn't much different than hog killing time and that seems terrible to say that but you know, when you see them open up a pig, you know, it's it's we're talking about a human being in an animal but the sight of blood and didn't bother me and and just getting along with people in really physically being able to do a lot of work and I could not believe that I passed the state boards my vocabulary increase by ten thousand words, probably, you know, cuz you got to learn all that anatomy and all that stuff. And and for some reason I guess I just

18:30 Wasn't smart enough to realize that I should be worried about it. So it was it was good. It was all good. Where you homesick when you were away and never never I never was homesick a minute and that's because it's growing up when I grew up and because it was a village you were every for you weren't necessarily always home and you you know, you just let your mom know you're going to spend the night here you going to spend the night there, so I was never really attached to home because I had home was everywhere. So no I was never home sick and we only we got 18 days of a year off and I only went home.

19:19 You could go in the summer time or you could go in at Christmas because the home was like 250 miles away and you had to get there you had to have money to get there and I didn't have money to get there. And so you didn't go home real often. So but anyhow, that was okay. You got a letter every now and then but I didn't I didn't get home sick. Tell me about meeting Dad. Oh, okay. Well when we were in nurses training most of us did not have a lot of money some of the girls were from Richmond, but most part they were from all around the state.

20:01 So what we did for entertainment We join the Uso and you were a volunteer in as a volunteer was very well chaperoned and what you did was they would have, you know, a disc jockey you danced with the soldiers you played ping-pong with them and baseball you went to church with them on Christmas you encourage them to write home to their families. And so that's where I met your dad.

20:35 Yeah at a Uso because a lot of the the boys would come in to Richmond and they are away from home and they didn't have a lot of money and they were looking for something to do and they were the Uso was a great place. So in the three years that I was there I had about a thousand hours of volunteer work stuff. You know where I was spending my extra time. Absolutely. What did you think of Dad when you first met him? Well when I first saw him I said, who is that young looking Chinaman? I said to my girlfriend if you were there because he has very Oriental looking eyes. Although he's Irish so I don't know what happened there. But anyhow, so he was you know there with another girl.

21:25 And I was there looking for a boy that wasn't there. And so anyhow, I was surprised when you came over and asked me to dance and so, you know, we danced but you danced with a lot of people that was a lot of fun. I just love to dance and so then I guess he was there a few more times and he was getting ready to go home on leave and so I was getting ready to graduate.

22:04 And so he asked if when he came back from his leave since he could call me up and I said sure never thinking I've ever hear from him, but I did and so the rest is history. How did you hear from him? He came to the hospital. I was working that night and he couldn't even remember my last name because my last name was Stroup and he couldn't remember if it was straw first whatever and so he came in hospital and ask the operator and she I was on duty I was up in labor and delivery and she called me up and she said, you know, there's a nice young men down here asking, you know, if you're at work and I said, what's his name? And she sees name is Jim Buchanan. And I said, oh, yeah, I remember him. And so I said well, I'll come down in a few minutes as soon as I could. So I went down there and he had a friend with him.

23:04 And they wanted to go out somewhere for hamburger after we got through work after work. And I said well, I'll see if my friend is he can go and so she could and we did and so we had a good time and then maybe the next weekend. We all went to the carnival together and

23:25 That's how it started.

23:28 If you were growing up today, do you think that your career choice would be nursing still or what do you think you would do differently with your education? Do they would still be nursing because I just loved nursing and just like my mother was a midnight Midwife. She took over for Grandma Summers and she delivered all the babies in in the community. And when I was a nurse's training place that I like the most with labor and delivery and the second place was surgery. And so anyhow, I think I would still be a nurse because I love it and I still love it today and I read every medical article I can find and

24:13 Just in my grandfather was a medic in the Civil War. So it kind of came down.

24:21 I think through our DNA the love of medicine. So your mother delivered babies on the mountain she did and I can remember when they wrote her a bituary she delivered about a hundred babies in our community and not only and I remember cuz my mother when my dad wouldn't have work, my mother would clean houses and so she had to work sometimes but people had babies and they had them in the night and she would just go and you know help them, but when she wasn't working not only did she go and deliver the babies. She went back every day for 2 weeks, especially if it was a new mother to teach them how to bathe the baby. He had a nurse how to do all those things if when you first have your first baby you're scared to death of so, ashy.

25:19 She was a great Midwife and I can remember I would have to make breakfast sometimes when I was in high school because Mommy would leave at 5 in the morning cuz somebody was having a baby and dr. Krause the red doctor come on his horse and you'd say Kate sew and sews going to have a baby. This was her prenatal care. Yes. She's pregnant and she's going to come and get you when she's ready to do. So that was the prenatal care of that most of the people on the mountain had because that was what they had.

25:54 What was the Northridge blue red doctor red because he had no medical training. He had no medical training.

26:02 He had just read books of mad. And so they referred to them as read. And even when I went back home after I had graduated from nurses training and I was pregnant with Michael your oldest brother and Jim was in college and so he was living at the fraternity. So I came home and stay with my sister still had the baby and I would work at the hospital and the doctors would ask me about dr. Grubb and maids and they say to be now that you got to encourage those women out on the mountain to come to the hospital already had to have the baby and you know in all those years that my mother delivered baby. So there was never a death there was never hemorrhaging there was never a stillborn and an everybody was related to everybody else in there was never anybody with Down Syndrome.

26:59 So and they're always telling you that you know all that.

27:05 And it did they were all lots of the women wear way over 40 like my mother had my youngest brother. She was 43.

27:15 So I don't know so we weren't if all those things were happening. We were never aware of it out in our community. We had people who aren't too smart, you know, so but anyhow, and your mother also helped with animals livestock that we're delivering. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. She did and my dad was like, I'll a veterinarian he had these tools delivery tools that he had ordered from Sears and Roebuck catalog and he took care and helped other neighbors with their animals when they were sick, but my mother when she was 80 years old, and she was living she couldn't live alone. My dad had passed away. So she was staying with my sister.

28:08 Their cow was having a cat in the springtime and early in the morning warned. That was my sister's husband. Got my mother up and say okay. I really need your help. She said this cow has been labor and all night and I'm afraid we're going to lose her and my mother at that time her her. She was not real stable on her feet. Her balance was a real real good and where the cows were was kind of up a steep incline. So he helped her up to the barn and what she did was kind of like a yoga she you know, we're sitting on her heels and leaning forward and she examine the cow and she said the calf is coming wrong and she can't deliver her. So she pushed that calf all the way back into the mother cow and she was up to her shoulder into the cow.

29:08 And turn that calf around and in the brought the cats out help the mother deliver that calf and the calf was okay. And this was when your mom was 80 80 80 when she was 80. Yeah, so worn just couldn't believe it. You know, he had to help her down and help her up. But anyhow, she did that and she was good with the animals and she was good with people and so was poppy we didn't call him. Daddy. He we call him Papi he was real good to what did your dad do for a living when you were growing up? Well in his younger years he work for the railroad. He was a switchman for the railroad. I think it was a Pacific Southern or Southern Pacific Railroad that came through there.

30:00 And he work for the railroad and things were not grade. You know, they didn't make a lot of money but in the depression came along but he work for them until Roosevelt was in office during a reward and he he passed all that New Deal things and then Social Security and people had to get physical so the railroad did physicals and they said we have to let you go because you have a very enlarged heart and so then he had no job. So he was a farmer and then when you're in Roosevelt's New Deal, he was in the WPA and my brother went to the CCC camps and that was income and all.

30:48 When they were when they weren't working when my dad wasn't working, my mother would go to work and she worked in the laundry by that time. She was their specialty ironer to do a special and things that had to be hand done. She did that and she also clean houses and I think she cleaned mrs. Wilson's house. It's President Woodrow Wilson's wife. They had a summer place up there in the mountains. And that was the only time my mother ever voted was she voted for of Woodrow Wilson, and she said he was such a horrible president. I swear I never vote again and she never did.

31:34 So that was that was but she clean houses and we were about 8 miles from town and lots and lots of times they had to walk because there was another lady that lived out on the mountain that clean houses in town. She clean doctors offices and they had to walk the eight miles and walk the eight miles home. But if somebody had a car they would stop and give him a ride to the road that came up into the mountains and

32:08 There were not many cars where I lived. The only person that had a car was the mailman and he came everyday at 2 so.

32:21 Anyhow of

32:23 He

32:25 I remember my grandmother my grandmother the Indian she would come to visit my mother and she was she was she was American Indian and German is she was very very business and she's very strict and she was always teaching. She was the one that should have been a teacher and she twice she just gives me what she thought was. She would gather all us kids together and she take us out on this dirt road and should say now you walk on this side of the road in a car is coming. She gave us all these instructions for traffic and and the other thing that she taught us was our prayers. She made sure we all knew our prayers and she wanted us, of course. We always did we always had great man Orson and we always said please and thank you. And yes, ma'am and no ma'am.

33:25 All that kind of stuff and everybody was Miss or mister. And but anyhow, that was she that was her responsibility and to drive my dad crazy ass and give my mommy my mom money. So that was enough. So that was granny Krause. Yeah, that was Grandma crass and she was like The Beverly Hillbillies when she came on coke Lloyd would give her a ride and they come in this old pickup truck with it. It is Ted a small bed on it and she'd always bring her cot cuz you can imagine with all the people that we had in house. There were no in extra bed. So she would have a cot and she'd have a rocking chair tide on the top of the truck.

34:11 And so anyhow, it was it was doing all good. It was all good. You grew up in a very small house. Where did Grandma Krause stay when she came to visit? Well, when we lived in the first house at my mom and dad lived in when they got married, they got married 1912. It was just my dad and his brothers had built it and was just a two-room house. But by the time I came along there were nine of us said there were seven kids and my mom and dad and we had a we had a bedroom and we had a kitchen that they put a bed in the kitchen and then there was a back porch that they enclosed and made it the kitchen that was the the table that we ate on in the cooking stove and my mother didn't have cabinets or anything like that in the old house has never had closets. Not that anybody had enough clothes to fill up a closet.

35:11 And that was the first house we lived in and we live there we move from that house when I was about 5 and then the next house they built my dad was at night. They would take the lanterns and they would build this house on the weekend and at night and that was larger house and then she'd come and stay but when we just were in the two-room house sheets, she didn't by the time you moved into the house. That was a little bigger. There were two additional children. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. My mother was pregnant with the number 9 and my brother's wife was pregnant at the same time and they were born like a couple of days apart.

35:59 So anyhow, that was you know, the house was we just it was like huge to us because we've been living in such a small little place and did all the boys share a bed and all the girls share bed. How did you work at the Sleepy the my dad slept with the boys and I know my mother always slept with the baby and then it was three of us edge of foot of the bed and it would be too too too in the baby at the head of the bed. So that's a lot of people in the bed, but it was good in the winter cuz you keep kept each other warm your your folks almost died in the flu pandemic and 1918. Yes. Yes at that time my mommy and my poppy had had the flu and my their second child Jetty had been born premature 7-month sand.

36:59 He was two weeks old and they both got it and

37:04 And they both had us very serious case they were both unconscious for a while and my grandfather who had been a medic in the civil war came and stayed and took care of them and and and fed Jetty because my mother couldn't nurse and they didn't have formula then or bottles and all that stuff. So anyhow, he did that and he did a great job and my dad lost all of his hair and never really got most of it back and he he was unconscious for a while to and so anyhow, then my mother of the secondary infections that she had she had a lot of secondary infections and but eventually they got over it, but they told me stories about it and they had a soup wagon that came through once a day and some puny people were dying. They just

38:04 Put the corpses out on the front porch in and every so often a wagon would come by and gather up all the people who had died from Italy lost a lot of people in the community little I guess Nation. I mean, I guess they lost about 20 million people during that night in that butt all over the United States. You mentioned that your mom only voted once in her life. Do you remember your father voting or any my dad voted every time he was a Democrat and he sold his boat every time for $5 and I was like we were you know, it was like we won the lottery we wants to ask her but yeah, there was always people buy some food. So he wrote it every time but how did that happen? The politician would come through the community or word gets around, you know, and it's just like bootleg and liquor you don't talk about it, you know.

39:04 What's happening? And you know what if we were to go and and you know what you need to do and you know, I said to him later when I was in high school puppy didn't you feel bad about it? No, he didn't feel bad about it. I think he felt that they were all crooked sister. But anyhow,

39:24 That was that what was your first vote? Do you remember? Yes. Oh I didn't I thought I would be disinherited. I went away to school and I was in Richmond and it was time for

39:40 Stevenson and Eisenhower were running for office in so well, I didn't know republican-democrat. I just knew my whole family were Democrats because Democrat was all that we knew because there was so many programs that was offered and everybody was poor and everybody was trying to take advantage of them. So I went to see them and hear them speak and I voted for Eisenhower and when I came home and we were having Sunday dinner, like we would always get together on Sunday and have that chicken and so I said I said, I I just stated I didn't know I was committing the crime that I had voted for Roosevelt will all hell broke loose that I had voted for a republican omigod. I had broken some kind of

40:33 A code or something did some horrible thing and they were yelling at me. How could you do that? How could you do such a thing and I didn't realize I had really done anything. So yes, I was the first then probably only since that time ever the only person ever voted for republicans. And I said I voted for the man and what he was going to do, you know, or what I thought he was going to do at Stevenson was a nice guy. But you know, and did you feel like Eisenhower did a good job were you happy with your vote Yes. I think he did. He didn't do anything like outstanding or terrific but it was a wonderful time and in America it was peacetime and it was nothing war no wars were going on and everything was just people were building houses and progress was being made and and I was busy.

41:33 Add nursing school and I wasn't paying as much attention probably as I should be but everything seemed fine.

41:45 Thank you so much for taking the time to visit. Thank you cancel any.