Walter Sangree, Cora Sangree, and Lissa Sangree-Calabrese

00:03 Hi, my name is Alyssa and I'm 16 years old today's date is July 6th, 2016 or in Providence, Rhode Island, and I'm here with my mother and my grandfather.

00:14 Hi, my name is chorus. Angry. I am 54 years old. Today's date is July 6th, 2016 from Providence, Rhode Island, and I'm here with my daughter and my father.

00:25 Hi, my name is Walter Sangre. Actually, it's Walter hinchman. The Sangre my age is 90 and today's date is July 6th, 2016. And I'm here in Providence Rhode Island with my daughter and granddaughter the granddaughter. Will I think will be the main question asker.

00:43 Okay, so I think we could start with just kind of comparing our childhood cuz I know we've had very different childhood. Like I'm an only child and you're a child of many and I know if it's maybe like talk about what it was like growing up with among a lot of people in like a big family. Well, I think it's a very interesting contrast. I feel as though my growing up and with many children. I didn't only have many children. I had my mother's and father's I had one mother who was a constant and her name was Constance and she was the mother of all eight of us all a children, but she had three husbands in the Carson my life the first one of my father's she divorced in the second one died or when I was I guess it was 10 and the third one died. Well very recently 2003 step father's were very fortunate people with me. I mean

01:43 Treated me. Well, I was it was a no Wicked step parents and the same was true of the the people that they had married excessively married afterwards. Stepmother's were involved and they were really well. They were just too my father had two successive wives and second one died when I was about 12.

02:08 He married her when I was about seven or eight. Oh, I guess you died when I was 15 actually and and then I he remarried when I was 19 and she was a wonderful woman also and so I've been very lucky in terms of parentage and had a lot of them and then I also my mother felt obliged and I think the lighted to have she wanted to have three children by age husband and she didn't quite make it she only had to buy the last husband and then she got quite old and was unsuccessful and having the child but we all go up together except my oldest my older brother who will live with my father and my sister who's the oldest of all and I would go back and forth between my father and our step.

03:01 But we had only three weeks with my

03:04 With my father and stepmother and my brother also went back and forth, but he had only three so we had six weeks together every year the three older siblings. And but otherwise the whole family was a unit of all these various children that came later on by other stepfathers and frankly. I can't tell you which is my favorite father. They were all favorites in a very special ways, but it really enriched my experience and then having Ali siblings that ones that were closest to me weren't necessarily the ones who am I full siblings or not. It doesn't seem to be that isn't the way it all worked.

03:51 And so that was you know, it was a I got used to having a lot of children that people around my first wife and I we've been in Africa together for two years. I would like to apologize. And after we came back I said, well, I want to have some children don't you and she said why I said well, I don't know. It's just the way I like it and she wasn't quite so convinced but she went along because everybody expected her to have children after filing married five years and certainly the people who have been studying expected it but that's another story. And so that's quite different from what I see that Lissa has gone through and I'd like to know what her

04:41 Haha, she compares to that.

04:44 Briefly

04:46 Quite different

04:51 And I know

04:53 Good. It's interesting talking to people who had a lot of siblings or even like any siblings does always likes a lot of friends growing up with siblings that always feel like complaining about them and stuff. And I just feel like I don't have this experience names like all you're so lucky. You don't have anyone around. So I think that way was a lot different than other people but I never really felt I found only child says it's like really lonely and I never really felt that lonely because my parents were never going to like leave me by myself. So I don't know I didn't ever feel like you're always very willing to engage with me and I'm lucky in that part because you know one with the teacher and one of them is majority self-employed so they can spend time with me and I cannot take off Summers and go on vacations and stuff. So I'm not on my own all the time, which is really nice. But I think it's also partially having a really close friend that I've been friends with but you know, I've been friends with Lily for my entire life. Basically, she's like my sister but I don't know. I've never really felt like isolated in my own little world the seven siblings about you know,

05:53 Easy reaching of each other not cross the street but almost I mean, you know 10 minutes apart. So, okay. Now that the other thing is it's an interest me at this point is it you know, they just had this big to-do about my being 90 and I feel as though I should say something about what it's like to feel United as it's been a big thing to do for me because I just had to hips replaced when I was 89 and I was suddenly, you know on the skids. I mean literally I was in a wheelchair a year ago or not in a wheelchair, but I was walking with two sticks and hurting and this operation is read. I feel as though I've gotten 20 or 20 years back on my life. I know that even though it's only three or four years that I was feeling unable to move very well, but the if so, yeah, it's just changed everything and so I haven't got the energy.

06:53 But otherwise, I feel very very lucky and I have some kind of Notions about perspective of what the world is. Like. There are really I think the benefit of being around so long now, I don't know whether that's well. I feel much more.

07:17 I feel basically much more humble.

07:20 I feel as though I know a lot less and I'm comfortable feeling I know a lot less there more questions than there are answers and anytime anybody tells me how something is I feel as though haha, but you're not seeing or that it what about other things and the other thing is that I am much more respectful of things that I hear from people who are younger and I used to I've always been curious about what people say of all ages, but I'm now I have a sense that the Notions of reality that are really important start very young and that's in hand in hand with what I've learned about being an anthropologist having really learned two cultures quite well, we're had to learn a completely different language in a different way of life and different family system family systems that were very much more similar to mine rather than this is where extended family was. It's a natural.

08:20 I need a more extended in some ways than mine was and and it be there the whole Notions about these people really are you know, they're just learning to read and write and they're just they're basically moving out of the Primitive age and now isn't get older and I'm still working up some of my shirts and writing it up that I had in the sixties. I realize that these people were wiser than I was then and I'm just beginning to realize how wise they were and how on to me they were they have been experiencing Europeans missionaries colonialist British Colonials for 50-60 years new skates from the beginning of the twentieth century, and they had learned how to handle what they would call Europeans eat or both societies one a Nigerian want it in Kenya where they subjected to British colonial rule. And so and that's

09:20 Learn how to deal with these foreigners who were English speakers and mostly English but also American missionaries and I was just another one and the fact that I elected to stay in the second Society or both these societies for a long. Of time at well. We got to deal with him, but he's a little different and we'll we'll try to

09:44 Deal with him a little longer a little differently here seems to be open to wanting to learn something and the more I understand the whole world had a lot of trouble with the language the more I realize how little I knew and how much help I got and how they're inside the world. Absolutely and keeping our test insightful wise as there's no such thing as a primitive Society in terms of what we think a primitive Society is in terms of their knowledge of their their perspective their Outlook, they're usually less primitive because I had to deal with a II Society imposed on them, which we haven't so recently we will all those immigrants have gone through this and we try to forget it and pretend we're all the same and now that we're not quite so much.

10:44 Same many of the insights that they have they say well, of course in other words, I'm beginning to realize how little we are civilized even realize how civilized so-called uncivilized educated unschooled people maybe and of course the idiots and fools all groups. So this is hitting me more and more as I get older and older and the contrast that I was pretty naive about things that I thought as an anthropologist. I was very sophisticated about I didn't realize how much they were trying to help me understand things that they knew I really didn't get to hang out and it's partly their language and the way it was the express things and linguistically I didn't know how to deal with her grammar.

11:41 And that's something I've been help but recent Anthropologist have gone in and discovered how they use tones how to use emphasis how to use various kinds of cases that we didn't know existed in their lives to put nuances on and why I was there for having so much trouble learning their silly language which two seem to have no rules rules were there are rules and they weren't interested in telling me the rules because I just spoke it they're interested in helping me learn it, but who's supposed to be the room acre in terms of language? Well, they didn't pretend they were

12:18 So is it the whole thing is becoming very I feel more and more humble about my own knowledge in my own smarts. And this isn't just because my brain is deteriorating. In fact it it seems to be to Terry writing lesson some levels than most of my peers and and that's I feel very grateful for that and I've always had a bad memory for a recent events. And so that hasn't changed and my memory for events is because I never had a good memory in the first place hasn't either so I'm enjoying being able to think and not feel as I'm out of the loop when it comes to thinking and I also happen to have very good ears and only one eyes consult a cuckoo so I can see pretty well and so I can keep in touch and I'm enjoying that.

13:18 Immensely, I'm really feeling you know, what the Lissa? Okay. I'm getting a chance to really understand what being parenting is all about because now I'm sitting it happened.

13:32 The second time and it seemed to It's a Wonderful part of being a grandparent.

13:43 What made you so interested in anthropology always felt different from most OK prism on my mother was a Pioneer in divorce. I mean, she would offer middle-class family and you just didn't divorce and my father had it was a shame you came from preacher's family. They didn't divorce. Well they did and so and they found the whole business of divorced just a horror. And the one thing that I decided that I would never do is get divorce. And of course I did and so it's interesting. They are I had to stop and pick the wife who seem to be somebody was just a hundred not getting divorces. I wasn't holding over overtime. It's he realized that she really wasn't.

14:36 She wasn't good for me and I wasn't good for her anymore. And so that that was a growing experience that I had to sell.

14:46 Get over my absolutism about divorce is the worst thing that can happen to you actually in our case. It was the best thing of your lady that happened when it happened and it should have happened a little bit sooner. Maybe maybe maybe much. I don't know that's a question but it allows certainly me and then perhaps my former wife to continue their development. And so of course I was the one that held on to the marriage when she was really wanting to figure out how to do it without too much pain to either of us me as well and it's thanks to her. I got a divorce and then I got to go live on anyways that we hadn't been able to achieve.

15:31 And so that's a blessing but it also means that these fixed Notions about what's right and wrong what you need to avoid that you've got from your parent both who went through hell with their voices and made some of the really wrong decisions about it was a reflection on my older brother living. He was kidnapped by his father my father in order to bring my brother back on the best advice of her parents with its mother was a worthwhile person. She'd always return to her oldest son. Can you imagine such a salad? This is from a group of people who were preachers and Believers in God and all that stuff and and and he did it and I regret it for the rest of his life. I mean, I mean, he's still a functioning.

16:27 But it had a rotten childhood thanks to this and I had a great childhood. And I mean it was another dimension and they say it's it's it's um, well it's made complications between him and me. I mean, he always reverts back always to the fact that I'm the brother the favourite brother emotionally, even though we always gets out of it. He's walking past it but things happen to it. It's haunted him and me both and times. So I and I feel guilty about the fact that I was the lucky one and I can't do anything about it and he feels mad that he wasn't both of us about it, but it's there still.

17:13 And it's well, anyhow, that's the end of this.

17:25 Anthropologist understand your own family. I really did I think and also

17:32 The question is how do you move from a family like that into a being independent? And I took the psychological rude first. I want to become a psychologist and psychiatrist understand how the mind works and I found it very soon. The personality was in what interested me and then turned out that these people all assume that you are.

17:55 Middle class 1 hour or two siblings growing up their samples were all drawn from college students. I had it didn't fit my family and I had an anthropologist in in. Well, I began to get interesting at the project because I found out about places that will really different in terms of family structure and I realized with my family was much more like a really different one than the one that and then when it came to study I really question practically every conclusion they had in terms of the sample that they were taking him late and I just knew this is not the world you talk about this is being people and I don't really want to know about psychology of upper middle-class Americans will their problems. I wanted to know what people are like

18:48 And so I was just naturally this, I can get some answers or at least raise the questions in anthropology. And also I found along the way that I was bad at math. I didn't realize that but I was also in Miley dyslexic because I haven't been invented yet. And so my memory is full of quirky. I tend to not remember things and then I finally remember them but they're really from the seat of the pants. I get, you know, I I just can't think of words when I want to especially when I'm asking somebody somebody's name and so on. This has been true all my life and and I've learned to live with it by faking it and and and waiting around until they somehow spill their name and you know, you always fix it ticket and that really is an impediment to a lot of academic achievement. I had to learn how to beat and I was interested in things I could do and I was good at some kind of thing.

19:48 Again back, I would learn them always I scramble them, you know, and and so I can get zero in the same with math when it comes to equation quadratic equations. I get the most right but you can't get math questions almost right geometry. You can do that with a logical things yet. So it really got me out of the physical sciences that I was so interested in push me over towards social science where you can say to your sloppy and so on and where of course they were pushing this whole business of quantitative science, which I began to find very suspect. Okay, what are you adding? If you don't know what you're adding then with the sum is but what doesn't doesn't work. So, you know always looking at this special case and trying to get details about it and you don't really worry about whether it's it's the representative of

20:48 You just want to get the rich data about whatever you're looking.

20:54 And it fits I was in the same with the language if you don't even know.

21:00 The grammar, how can you ask the grammar follow the grammar and that you should sit around and sort of learn to talk like a kid and get pretty fluid but you don't know what the girls will grammar and that I've Gotten Good at learning languages that way that it works in anthropology better than going in and can you teach me at this language and then saying on that? What's the what's the word? I don't even know what you're talking about. And usually if you do get that you're leaving out.

21:32 Three-quarters of what they do do

21:34 Which is what linguists are finding out now about their tonal languages in their there are various kinds of categories that we just don't have any

21:46 Inkling of intransitive Greek graeco-roman traditional usual so

21:53 I fell into a at something which I've been good at and that's nice.

22:00 I was able to have a good career.

22:04 I'm still working on the material.

22:07 In the academic setting

22:12 Trying to figure out how to Archive stuff that I'm never going to get around for other people can use it Boston University Library.

22:26 So what was it like living in Africa for so long?

22:30 It was wonderful.

22:34 Well, I was only there for years on two years each place a little less than two years and then I've been back for brief time since all that the whole thing is about for you. And so but there's something to me so kind of open and totally surprising about every day, you figure out what I'm going to do today and it turns out that you're overwhelmed by events that you didn't have any idea what happened the next day. So every day's a surprise and you have to start over.

23:06 Add live ad hoc. I'm just adjust to this and and it's exciting as hell exhausting and and and your your throne back on on being charming and ways would say except. I mean you're you know, you're an idiot 7, you're a child at all. You're somebody who's as a shape.

23:30 Shifter, but you don't shift shape in terms of what you are trying to get to them you shift shapes because they're what they're showing you the shape you thought you needed for the day just doesn't work and and that's

23:49 Well, it's a it's a very exciting kind of thing. And of course on your trying to record all this stuff writing a little notes and you're exhausted and that you're on a high the whole time that a person can you get a tropical disease that set of wax you down? And that's what you would you have to get over that soon because you're busted to I was lucky. I never got no permanent Leo with anything.

24:17 But I got lots of the little cakes of malaria.

24:29 Yeah, I was lucky.

24:32 Favorite store

24:39 Pirate story I have about 15 of them.

24:47 I don't know.

24:51 Being in in Kenya like and your relationship was with Moses and what that was like, which I always thought was really interesting because Moses was a was about as sophisticated as educated as I was he was the I think the the to rekey this is a group I was with the most highly at school, but I need to re-key at that point. He had had a teacher's college education. Don't think he'd been abroad on it always but he didn't yell in Nairobi and around and go visit Professor pretty sophisticated placed already in the 50s. I mean really are very sophisticated and he had a science

25:39 He was bringing to the science and natural science course he ended up mostly teaching English and all that kind of stuff in the high school level and then his wife who was very very smart and knowledgeable and sort of knew him better than he and that's a whole other story. His wife came up from the one of the original Christian families in the western Province, and she was from a remarkable family and her brother brother was the head of the of the Quaker gathering in East Africa for a while her oldest brother. They're all married women were all married two interesting people in the slums all work out her other brother was a PhD who and was running one of the labs in Nairobi and he got appendicitis and in the process C

26:36 He was operated on by somebody who left a tool in his body.

26:41 Horrible death, but I mean like

26:46 So all I'm saying is she in her own way with and she was very bright, even though she only had a high school education. She really had a sense of what to do more than he who is much more of a normal intelligent man Moses and and she helped to make career choices and he switched from being in the school high school teacher to being an administrator when they were first letting Canyons end of the administration the British were and he became an officer and they and they and the local and provincial Administration and worked himself up and was high and the embassy later on and then later on head of the of the

27:38 Fishing the Ottawa and also in India adding and and and and left all that behind and he's very close friend of mine. I mean, we sort of grew up together he and his wife taught me luje. Really they had enough smarts to be able to tell me the grammatical structure in their language is much simpler for European to learn than the ones in West Africa didn't have much in the way of tones very simple tones.

28:11 There were a couple of times but only not sixtones. Well, and I was I was living in we were living in a rest house. That was a place that European administrators would come to when they were on tour in spending a night in the local place. It was Justin Tin Roof place with

28:42 Are pickles made out of I don't know whether it's another weather was bricks bricks wall brick wall, but Rumsey living in a room to sleep. You have a local guy was doing you're cooking for you. And and who is you know, what kind of camping with the roof over you and we wanted to get down where we were living among the people that we were trying to study instead of always being where they ministrative would come up and I try to speak Swahili to is which I didn't know it wouldn't really help me and so through Moses and Helen who I don't remember exactly how he met but it was really for the missionaries Quaker missionaries.

29:29 The

29:31 We said well, you know, we've just we're getting married and once we get married, we have to live and learn my father's house for custom for a few weeks, but then I'll have a schoolteacher. I'll have a house and what am I going to do with the house you can live there and my father doesn't know an English. My brother's don't know much English there in high school the ones if it there or are grammar school and you'll just be right there and we did and then we'll be found people who could coaches and they helped us in their mission home and that's how we got going. And in the meantime Moses was interested in learning how to drive. So I told him how to drive and and you know, we just became very good friends and Helen became a very good friend of Cindy's my mother had about your mother your mother live with my first wife and send it to learn the local language and she became very much.

30:30 Involved with the women and she was injured in sociology and anthropology and it's only later when she had sort of a major anxiety problems that really had nothing to do.

30:43 Part of her

30:46 Being and she didn't want to leave and be left alone with people who are so strange and that she kind of became my assistant, but she always want to be with hailing distance of me. So that really meant that she didn't do independent field work of me, but she was a tremendous help to me. And of course she was made very good friends with the women and and some Moses and Helen became major figures in our lives because they were totally bilingual especially Moses and Helen was

31:23 Really very good in English giving those he was innocent schoolgirl English, but the very bright very good memory and had sweetest very shy.

31:37 And then they so there we got to know their family and that's how we got to know the extended family system of those people and all their relatives. We lived in that Community. I mean he didn't live because he he had the up where is positive and his mother and that's how we got our own tray. This is kind of a different branch of questioning, but I actually don't know how to do animal of meat

32:09 Well

32:10 I was going to a work camp in Finland.

32:16 Oh mama. Oh Nancy Adam.

32:30 I had had a girlfriend the year before who was painter and was a hand-me-down girlfriend from John my brother another Brotherhood gotten divorced and had a girlfriend that who is it was trying to break up with and she was sweet and she was driving and witty and and

32:52 Well, you know, my brother is clearly it was delighted to have me.

32:58 Beer beer girlfriend. Is that a caveat emptor? I mean, I'm not sure she's really what you want. But if you do is fine with me, so there wasn't but that's how we met that what the point is the Iowa free year and then tuck it in the summer was helping her not year, but the whole summer helping her set up an extra bit. I was we were an item. This was after I left Sunday night splint and we are living different lives. I guess. It was one away either was the divorce was Final are already been fixed gear. Because of the divorce laws.

33:37 When we couldn't be anybody's.

33:40 Novus was after that. Yeah, it was just after was as soon as that happened. I thought I'd met this girl young woman in the end. We got together and and

33:51 And it will any how to make a long story short the next year by XU is pretty clear. We're not an item and Nantucket people solid. We were inside wilhousky. Well, oh well, oh, oh who you know I said, well if you got any good ideas, let me know I can don't worry. I'll I'll get rid of my things. You don't have to be responsible. But I'm really looking I didn't like the single life very much and and Nancy introduced me and she had split and it was it was absolutely determined not to have any more relationships. But I mean, you know, this is new relationship. This is what I want and

34:44 So it just the way I was very lucky you and came together over three years time, but I was at the time at Harvard, you know, you know, honey a sabbatical leave and doing stuff with I think it was the actually the center for population studies trying to figure out what to do with all this information. I had to West Africa family information demographically and she was studying down in Hartford. But I mean Dartmouth father Dartmouth is near hot here in Providence, but in Massachusetts and the trying to get some training to be a social worker and we arranged sell it on weekends we get together and

35:35 By the end of that year, we really were an item and she moved to Rochester with with me and we waited and then married when it was.

35:45 Auspicious in terms of tax

35:53 You just happened. It really works. She's great and she's been everything that my former wife wasn't and and not very many things. It's my woman. My wife was and the same was true with her previous experiences. One of which is come back not the hottest butt to help us. I mean her first husband is moved right in near us and where he can be see a lot of his daughters and they departed I never thought I mean they fought the sense that she lost him because she couldn't stand living with it and she still can't stand living over to the same reasons, but they're not the kinds of reasons it to preclude being friends with him.

36:42 Or I know I'm not being a responsible co-parents. So

36:48 It's one of these interesting things were up a former husband and I have become very good friends and

36:56 You know, I have a lot in common go to each other's reunions.

37:02 Family party

37:05 Do you have any last words of wisdom or things that you want to impart? Well, I would say there's no such thing as last words and if so, well, that's too bad. I mean that you know your dad at that point.

37:18 I've had this feeling I'll probably be babbling once I'm still in still been already turned to ashes.

37:28 So I see you throw me that the winds I'll be so sorry. I don't know. I mean it.

37:37 And I'm very pleased and very lucky to have you and I feel you no more anchored to life now that I have a grandchild who can interview me and it's a like bookends almost.

37:54 I feel is over. You know, she'll lose me is a bookend, but then she'll have other books own children and children are adopted or someone. This is become really meaningless to me. I mean that in my own family experience the half-brother half-sister stepbrother sepsis. It's who brings you up? It's really important than who cares for you later on this whole business on our genes and all that. The genes are out there.

38:33 And what you get is pure luck. And of course, it is influenced terms of quality, but also you can

38:42 You might say Mary or you do Mary jeans that are different and you know, who you love. I mean who's important to you is Not Mere biology. It's who takes care of you who makes you feel good when you need peeling Goodwin feeling is more important than thinking and so there.