Kathlynne Espy and Rosemary Duffy-Cooper

00:03 Hi, my name is Rosemary Duffy. That's my maiden name and my married name is Rosemary duffy-cooper.

00:12 I am 60.

00:16 3 years old and today's date is Saturday, July 20th, and we are in Columbus, Ohio where I live.

00:27 I am here with my sister Cathy.

00:30 And we will be talking about our family heritage civil rights are parents and growing up.

00:41 Hi, my name is Katherine Bruce Duffy SB commonly known as Kathy. I am 75 years old.

00:53 Today's date is Saturday, July 20th, 2019 and we are in Columbus Ohio. My interview partner is my sister Rosemary Lane duffy-cooper, and we're excited to be here.

01:12 And we're going to begin by speaking about our

01:18 Parents

01:21 And

01:24 I am I'm Cathy. I'm the oldest of four.

01:28 And my sister with me is the youngest of four.

01:32 We were raised in Toledo, Ohio.

01:36 And our parents were Franklin for let Duffy and Helen Louise Jones Duffy.

01:46 Our mom was from West Virginia. She was born in Moundsville, West Virginia, and I Dad was born in Toledo, Ohio.

01:58 So Toledo is a good place to grow up. Whatever we didn't have we didn't know we didn't have it. Our father was a dentist and our mother was a school teacher and we we had a nice home and we had a church and All Saints Episcopal church, and our family was a prominent black family in Toledo.

02:28 And

02:30 We are involved in different activities and all four of of our all four of us as children went to college.

02:40 And you know had our own children and then we lost our mother first and then our dad about 5 or 6 years later.

02:52 And

02:57 So my dad was also raised in Toledo and his mother's name was Mimi or Duffy and his father's name was Joseph or let vandora Duffy.

03:10 And so my dad lived in Toledo pretty much his entire life until his death around 93.

03:19 His mother was the president of the NAACP in Toledo, Ohio, and he first went to West Virginia.

03:29 State College

03:31 And then he left there and decided he was going going to Agriculture and went to the university arm. I'm sorry, Michigan State University in Lansing.

03:43 And he paid his tuition and did everything he was supposed to do he got accepted and when he arrived on campus, they told him that were there was no housing for black students that he could not live on campus. And so my grandmother said well, we pay tuition and did everything that we were supposed to do so, he should be able to stay on campus like everyone else so she contacted the NAACP in Detroit and was on the front page of the newspaper long story short. My father was the first black student to be admitted to the dormitory.

04:21 At the Michigan State University and his major was agriculture science.

04:33 Our Father Franklin Duffy married to her mother in about 1940

04:39 And

04:41 They went to a small town in Ohio. I'm not remembering the name right here right now, but someplace where you could drive from Toledo to that town in a very short. Of time and they got married and so before our parents died my sister and I never asked them why they they ran off and got married, but I know that my mother's mother a grandmother was upset that her daughter had gotten married. I don't think she told her first and

05:13 Then I was born in 1944 my mother and I lived in Toledo with my father's parents because he was in the Navy and I didn't see him or meet him until I was about to so that was about 1946 and then they move to Raleigh North Carolina where he was a soil conservationist or of Agriculture person. They showed people in the South how to rotate the crops and what's soil

05:44 Production man and what you should plan and all that all that at that farmers needed to know people in the area who had grown up and they have farms and all that but they didn't know the technical side in the outlet scientific side about it and he did that and my brother was born there in 1947. So we were there a little over a year.

06:09 I still remember the street we lived on Jones Road, and they had chickens in the backyard. I remember that and

06:18 My father was out of the restaurant one night with our mother and some people in the Ku Klux Klan beat him up because they want to know why this Niger was having dinner with a white woman. Our mother wasn't white although later on in years when we actually did or DNA. She was actually more white than black but you know black people come in all colors and shapes and all that so still identified as black and so the next day my dad said that he wasn't going to stay in the South was going to raise my brother and I in the South because of that treatment and we moved back to

07:00 Ohio and our father ended up going to Ohio State as one of the first blacks in the College of Dentistry and then when he finished dental school, we moved to Toledo and so I was twelve when we moved it Toledo and then later on came to my children are brother Eugene and my sister who's with me here today. So as I said Toledo was very rich and for us we was a good growing up and I guess there was some things we weren't exposed to we we never wished we live for a short time in California, but my mom didn't like it and so we came back but we often speculate on what our lives would have been liking if we have been raised to say it stayed in California if you don't even Franklin, California, yes, only the two oldest ones cuz it was 10 years yet before the other two kids could come if my sister is 75 and I am

07:58 62 I thought it was 63. She's 13 years older than I am and I remember vividly that I was starting the first grade excited to learn my colors and numbers and letters and she was going off to college at Ohio State with the car packed with stuffed animals and clothes and boots and shoes and everything that she had in her closet colors before first grade. I don't know.

08:27 So she left for College Ohio State and I again started to kindergarten in Toledo and my brother would probably been in the second grade at that time. So my parents were married for over 50 years and they essentially had two families that Kathy and Frank and then waited 10 years later and had my brother and me and so

08:54 They were changing diapers for a long time throughout their lifetime. My father was one of how many 9 and so

09:05 He had a sister who was probably 20 when he was born and he also had a younger brother. So my grandmother probably started having children after she got married at 18 or 19 and she had her last child when she was 42 and that was my Uncle Walter Walter Leroy Duffy who died a couple years ago in California.

09:31 After

09:35 My father was raised in Toledo. His whole family was in Toledo. And if I said he had older sisters who ended up moving to California. So when his father died and age 70 or so the girls the older girls convince. My mother are his my grandmother and my father's Mom Mother to move to California to be with them. And so she left and went to California and started a whole new life out there with her children after her husband had died and

10:07 But my dad and one other sister remained in Toledo.

10:12 Yes, our father's brother Walter. He actually was the first one to go to California and shortly after his mother followed and the other girls followed again, except for up my dad and his sister Hazel cuz it was Walters house at 2425 1st. And I think Lily was out there first. I'll maybe so Lillian was out there and maybe was out there Walter came with his mother. So he was not the first one. I thought he know they went first. So she was teaching school and Walter and he moved because his mother moved.

10:48 So I am

10:53 I talked a little bit about ourselves. I'm I'm married. I have one child. His name is Joshua Franklin. Emmanuel duffy-cooper. Franklin is named after my father Franklin Duffy. Emmanuel is after my husband's father. Whose name. My husband's name is Robert Cooper Robert Winston Cooper and I followed in steps in my father. I'm a dentist. I got my degree from Case Western Reserve University and I practice for about 2 or 3 years my father and then got interested in public health. So I ended up attending the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and got my degree. I got a master's in public health and then I did a residency and I ended up joining the United States Public Health Service service commissioned Corps. So this is

11:46 Anon we do not carry weapons, but wear uniform service where one of the seven Uniformed Services.

11:55 That I'm clean the Army the Navy excetera and our leader is the Surgeon General of the United States and we work and public health capacities all over the world and that includes the Centers for Disease Control, which I worked a long time for the Food and Drug Administration the environment Protection Agency and so forth and so on and so I retired from the United States Public Health Service commissioned Corps with 25 years in and my last assignment was with the Centers for Disease Control and prevention and I traveled the world. I did a Bola I was down there when Katrina hit on sooner after after Katrina hit and help with the hurricane victims been providing care.

12:46 So I have a degree in dentistry, but I also have a green epidemiology. So I was able to sort of use both those degrees to do a lot of studies and interesting things across the world.

13:00 I'm thinking about one of the questions I was asked about what what was your relationship with your parents? So I think we had a good relationship with their parents. We always laugh in our family because we always said that our youngest brother was her mom's favorite and that my sister was my dad's favorite because she was the dentist like him. So we don't have any Rancor about it. We just just noted that we were very loved but we always kind of talked about that my sister and I did a great amount of caretaking for our parents in the last 20 years before they died and they died maybe about 10 a 10 years apart, but our mom was a diabetic and

13:48 Had some heart problems in so we were on the road back and forth from Columbus to Toledo for many years very often and

14:01 So one of the questions was what do you think was a perfect day when you were a kid when I was in my early?

14:10 Teens from 10 tomorrow with teens. I just I like to read all the time. I remember one Christmas. I just wanted nothing for Christmas, but about ten bucks Nancy Drew Mysteries and books like that, Louisa May Alcott Little Women all that that was that was a perfect day being able to just curl up in a chair and read.

14:31 We took care of our parents, but my brother is also helped Cathy and I were the primary people but I'll have to say when a lot of people say who all helped my brothers did step up to the plate many times. They stayed in the hospital all night, and they took off work and they took family leave and they showed up for our parents as well. So there is but we did more they certainly did a lot don't talk about your family or marriage or children. I'm married for fifty-one years scuse me.

15:10 I went to Ohio State University and I married the first man that I met at Ohio State. I thought he was great and I want to get married the next day, but he didn't want to and so I 51 years. We've been married and we have four daughters oldest artist Elizabeth. She works for the Atlanta police department and she's a realtor in Atlanta and all four of our daughters went to Spelman College and our second daughter is Amy s p Smith and Amy is a physician and lives in Bowie Maryland. She has four daughters and our third daughter is dr. Laura Esquivel. She lives in Columbus, Ohio. She's married to Stephen Bell Amy's married to David Smith and Laura has three children one girl two boys are youngest daughter?

16:06 Is Lynn SB William? She's an attorney in Washington DC area and she has a son and a daughter and she's expecting as of this recording a baby in October 2018 a little girl.

16:20 Our brother Eugene Jones Duffy lives in Atlanta and he has two children. He's married to Noreen Duffy being Johnson Duffy and he has two daughters. One is Rosa.

16:37 Patrice Duffy and Josie Helen Duffy Josie Helen. Duffy is an attorney. You can follow her on Instagram. She runs the appeal and she does podcast podcast in just called Justice in America. Rosa has her own bookstore in Atlanta, which is really has focused on all black books and interesting. I'm like Jets and Ebony's and all kinds of books were it's a black-owned store, but it's also most of the books are from Black authors and could be hundreds of years old or just more recently.

17:16 Our brother Frank is married to Roseanne Muse Duffy and he does not have any children. He lives in Columbus, Ohio.

17:26 Talking about grandparents are grandparents on her mom's side. And for Rosalie Leah Bruce Jones and Eugene Wayman Jones, and they met around Parkersburg, West Virginia, probably.

17:46 Early night early nineteen hundreds and they settled in Moundsville West Virginia. One of the very few black families there a grandfather had a grocery store and he was an accountant and our grandmother was a house maker and our mother was one of four kids two girls and two boys and her she was raised by her grandmother because her mother died when she know his grandma Jones who was raised you said she was your grandmother drones with Mom jobs being raised by my grandmother her grandmother because her mother died early in childbirth with it was a little boy

18:28 And

18:31 Her mother her grandmother was a slave and what's your name? Is your name was Rosa Bruce. They called her grandma Bruce.

18:39 And

18:42 We always like going to Moundsville we had it was a small-town everybody knew we were the Joneses grandkids and we like going to his grocery store and getting candy and and there were there was a very active Church Bethel AME church and they worship their and I was a small church, but we were known and used to it and like going there.

19:08 Our grandfather was kind of rather Stern never drew never knew how to drive and later on when everybody had a car the family had a car. He was always in the front seat directing us where you want to go but they never drove is Young, you know, this if parents are is matriarch and patriarch of the family.

19:34 They are both buried near Moundsville West Virginia. So they live there from the time they were young with their young kids until you know until later life and we've gone back there periodically just to go remember the house and see who's living there now, not much has really changed.

19:55 I was on a talks about this ask question about school. I went to School My Grade School and High School in Toledo and to this day I have

20:07 For friends that I went to grade school and high school that I'm still very close with and actually still meet and take vacations together. All of all of us have been married and have children, but we still have kept in contact over the years, but now you went to school in Moundsville and had to go you have one one year. My grandfather was very ill and my mother actually took my brother.

20:32 It took us to Moundsville. We stayed there about four months while my mother helped her parents get it get on their feet and helped her get her father get back. And so we withdrew from school in Toledo and went to live in Moundsville West Virginia for that. Of time, so I had always go onto an integrated school and I figured I'd be going to school there Columbus when he went to school because I would have been in Toledo know what have been in Columbus.

21:03 Do you live here in Toledo? Oh, okay. So you may be known I would have been born so you hadn't could have been through already, but I know we have to get together on the times. But anyway, there was a red brick Schoolhouse there and everybody went there except for the black kids had to walk by their side to walk by that school every morning another block or so down an Alleyway. There was a little small building is called the black Shack and that's where everybody went to school. Every black kid in Moundsville West Virginia went there and it was from kindergarten to first grade up to high school. So I was in the wrong room when we was one big room and everybody was in there no matter what your age and had a little small coat room when you brought your own lunch.

21:54 And the teacher was with lady we called her Miss Ethel.

21:59 And the one of the boys who went to school there with me now is now the mayor of Moundsville West Virginia's name is Jeanne Sanders Sanders or Saunders. So a lot happened in those years before but I was I was just sort of put out because I didn't know anything about segregated schools at that point and I thought I'd be going there and I remember my mom telling us that we wouldn't be going there and and showing us how to get to the other and we walked every morning while the white kids would go in front of a bus and go into the white school. We had to keep on walking go to the bike Shack. So and I know my mother worried because

22:43 We were there for five months and she was afraid we would all on my brother and I was flipping our studies because we weren't getting specialized studies for the grade. We were in we were just trying to teach to you know, a whole bunch of kids and all different classes.

23:02 Though, I remember one time taking the sheet music from the top songs of the day and writing them all down in a notebook so I could see him on the way home to talk about my daddy sisters. So our father was there were nine of them. He had six sisters Kaplan who I'm named for Mamie Lillian Hazel Laura and Ethel

23:33 So I've Kaplan died in 1939. I think she was maybe twenty one. She died the same day as her graduation from the University of Toledo. She had meningitis which now could be cured but at that time and so when I was born in 1944, I was named after her so that's where I got my name from Lil Wayne was the oldest and she was a hundred and two or three when she died. She was a school teacher in an author and when she moved to California, she moved in the circles with w e b DuBois and she she knew all of them and she was very she married once for short time to a man named up the Grove and then her sister was Mamie. She was married three times and she and her husband third husband were the first black residents in Camarillo, California, which was the town that was started.

24:32 It's not an old old town. It's been there for a while and

24:39 Then Ethel I was a school teacher. Also Laura was a social worker.

24:45 And Hazel was the only one of them who did not go to college. She married and she's the one that remained in Toledo. She was married to Wilber Marshall.

24:54 And then Daddy Our Father Franklin and his father was Walter Leroy who who was in the war? He was a soldier in the army.

25:04 And later in life has some mental challenges about remembering things and

25:11 And all that but was always an entertaining and good good guy.

25:15 And they grew up on 941 Pinewood and on 1015 Woodland Avenue in Toledo, Ohio. I don't think either of them. Are there any longer by one funny story? I remember there with the Frankenstein movie. I guess at my dad and his brother Walter went to the movie you could go on a certain night. If you were black and yellow to sit in the balcony and they were talking about how afraid they were when the monster up somebody put his hand on The Munsters back of the monster put his hand on somebody's back and it was really scary and the Thriller in they jumped out of their seats and they were so scared and they were they were probably 9 + 9 + 11 or something like that. I have to check the ages and all that but they walked home in the middle of the street with the street lights on and he said that night they were both so afraid they got in the bed with her mother and they little boys cuz they were scared about Frankenstein for if you can see the kind of scary movies they have today they be really surprised.

26:12 So papa dear was their father and he was a mailman and it works the library and he was a porter on the railroad. He was based in St. Louis. I think that's where he met her grandmother and Toledo was one of the stops on the train and you know, if you were a Pullman Porter, you've had your time off you had to take it wherever it stops. So he got to know blacks in Toledo and you couldn't stay in hotels or anything. So people would take them in on a regular basis whenever they had an off-day in the train stopped till they had to be back at the train for the next run. And so when he and my grandmother decide to get married, they like Toledo and he's been there in so that's how they ended up in Toledo.

26:59 I thought they were from Natchez, Tennessee for before before St. Louis to Natchez.

27:05 I mean Pulaski Tennessee was where a grandmother's people actually were from and they were there to Seattle Washington. It was Saint Louis, wasn't it?

27:21 So that's how we ended up in Toledo and then stayed in Toledo for those many many years because of our grandparents meeting and and and staying there and like I said, my grandmother was a homemaker but with 9 kids she had almost a home. One of her first child is Joseph and he died and he died when he was three or four and then kathlynne died when she was 21 to let seven of them left my Athol hurt her. She was her married name was woods with Ethel Duffy Woods. She had her Masters in French and Spanish. He was fluent in both of those languages and she taught 4 years in California. You think high school or grade school? And is she I rather Aunt Mamie was a school teacher and then she went to the University of I mean Columbia University and was

28:21 One of the first day actually have a little plaque for her because I think she was one of the first black person to graduate from Columbia University with a master's and I'm sorry family has been educated over the many years our parents and grandparents and I'm sure great-grandparents stressed education and told the importance of it and wanted everybody to go to college in and give a good education. My parents were liberal for the most part, but they believe that they did not have prejudiced Creed color any kind of gender. They were Let Live and God.

29:09 Created everyone and you accept people for what they are regardless of of.

29:18 But they with their color or their race is or their Heritage or whether they were gay or lesbian or heterosexual excetera.

29:30 We'll talk by where you work what you do in Columbus, Ohio.

29:36 Oh, I work for the Mount Carmel Health System Mount Carmel College of Nursing. It was small baccalaureate degree granting Institution for people want to be nurses and then I moved out to the the system corporate office where I did diversity and inclusion work Community engagement work and worked with a Associates who had Grievances and didn't really have anybody to talk to the talk with about what their problems were.

30:15 One of the questions under your parents is do you remember songs that are that used to be sung in your family? So our dad like 200 closer walk with me. Just a closer walk with thee sometimes shaving in, you know, let it be noted that my father could not sing but my mother had a beautiful voice my father was tone deaf almost our mother saying on the radio and Wheeling West Virginia when she was only thirteen to the beautiful soprano voice and she sang in the choir.

30:54 Your mother was a teacher always said that already.

30:58 Do our parents are buried in Ottawa Hills Cemetery in Toledo, Ohio.

31:05 And

31:07 Our father's father or grandfather. Joseph is buried there and so is one of them to Kaplan my dad's sister and Hazel his sister. They were off their also be right there.

31:24 And on our mother's side people are in Moundsville, West, Virginia.

31:37 And then there's some people buried in California. Yes, and and some of the Camarillo and La Camry in Los Angeles.

31:51 Talk about I missed her. So I have a son Joshua Duffy Hooper. Again. His name is Joshua Franklin Emmanuel duffy-cooper. He was born July 17th 1999. So he just turned 20. He is now at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He will be a junior this year.

32:17 And he's very bright and he's majoring in political science international studies in Spanish. I had encouraged him to learn Spanish because I think the world is changing and it's to your advantage to know a different language and be fluent in something other than English. We don't know where the world's going to be 50 60 years from now, but I think it's always good to speak another language. He's very he's he is very bright. He was in a lot of plays and high school. He played football and now he's off being more independent and becoming an adult.

33:03 We have a dog because of him who's crazy about him. Her name is Missy and we got the dog because of Joshua.

33:18 One question says when did you first find out that you'd be a parent? And how did you feel so when I was 12, I want to read all the time and I read.

33:28 10 or 11 so somewhere near Little Women and I cried when best the character in Little Women died. And I said, oh when I grow up and have a child get married and I'm going to have a girl named her bed. So I grew up. I got married. I had a daughter. I named her Beth Elizabeth Calder Beth and then add a second daughter. I named her Amy. Then. I had twin daughters and I couldn't quite go with the Margaret in the Josephine. So I will and Laura and Lynn, but that book had a profound.

34:00 Had a profound impact on my life and also another book called Angel unaware that was written by Dale Evans. Who was the wife of Roy Rogers when their daughter died and I didn't know I had no experience with anybody losing their kids or anything is our mother lost a set of twins before my sister and younger sister here with me today my brother, but that was my only experience. And so anyway that that I always think about remembered about it says talk to talks about how you were you were as a parent. I was extremely happy to be a parent. I was thrilled to be a mom loved taking care of my girls and doing things for him and dressing and them and

34:49 Not being a good mom to them. And I think that's Ruth reflective into how they are. Today is grown women.

34:56 And

35:01 My sister had been was divorced and I ran into a man. I had gone to a state with who was the physician in the hospital where I worked.

35:14 And so I wanted I asked him if he would take my sister out on a date. She was coming to town if he would be her escort. And so he started Hamden Hall and said he wasn't much for long distance romances, but that's why I'm not asking you to get married. I'm just asking you when my sister comes to town. If you just go to this party with us, my ladies group is having a party. So he did so Adventure. So after all of that they end up marrying you already heard my sister talk about her son. So we laugh about that now twenty-seven 20 years later.

35:55 Or dad as we remember work two jobs he work for the health department in Toledo and as a dentist, and then he had his own private practice as a dentist and he worked there in the evenings for many years. And of course maybe Saturday, so but you had four kids and trying to send everybody to college and so he did that for a long long time working two jobs as a dentist to help take care of everybody and he work during the day and health department and at night he come home and we would sit down as a family 5 and eat dinner. My mother will come home from her teaching job. She will cook dinner. My father will come home from this one job. We all eat and my father would then leave and go to the second job. And again, he did that for a long time till he finally stopped working at the health department in and had a full-time private dental practice.

36:49 And they called him dr. Feel good because he could really give a block and and you would not feel any pain when you went to see him as a patient.

36:59 And I learned a lot from him when I worked with him those three years. I work with him private practice before I want to get my Master's and on to the federal government.

37:11 Doing epidemiology.

37:14 And so I would say all in all we had great parents a good childhood and we hope that we instill that in our own children and we hope that 50 years from now a hundred years from now when our ancestors hear that they will hear our voices and

37:36 For a little bit of history about their family.

37:42 So as we're sitting here in this little trailer in Columbus, Ohio down in an area that they call the short North. I'm thinking about somebody listening to this, you know, if you'd meet you have 50 hundred years from now, we did not follow the script. They give you suggestions. We should have taken each category and gone through it. So maybe we'll come back and do it again sometime but I'm laughing because there are so many things we could share that, you know, we just can't get too but I think we get 40 minutes, but we thought I did was hilarious our mom doing some ways but one time he and my sister they were working on in a complicated Dental case for the patient. And so

38:33 My dad said something at one time I could have handled any of this. I can handle anything that came down the pike. Whatever you gave me any kind of any kind of impacted tooth any kind of feeling any kind of extract the weather was I can handle anything cuz I was a bad boy then but then he just paused and he looked at my sister and he said but I ain't no bad for it no more because he could not get this to you know, whatever they were trying to do. You can do it for my sister had to take over and do it but we always laughed at that because when things would come up in our lives we would tell each other I used to be able to handle anything, but I know baby boy now. That was well and when he was in his seventies, so he was gone the down spot as his practice.

39:19 We have one minute left. So.

39:22 To all our relatives that will listen to this many many years from now.

39:29 Maybe I would have met some of you maybe I would not meet any of you but you have a strong history a proud heritage.

39:38 And your family and I hope you remember that and stay true to what we've talked about here.

39:49 And thing I'm most proud of I think are my four daughters. Oh, I think they're all just fantastic people. They've made a fantastic accomplishments. They've always done. Well never been a disappointment. And so when they hear their so their kids later,

40:06 Now, I feel like I'm starting to tear up any way. We love we love you.

40:11 And you too little Mister you mister. Just remember that.