Rosie with Grandpa Bruce

00:00 Okay. All participants introduce themselves. My name is Rose I'm 17 years old. Today is August 2, 2023, and I'm speaking with Bruce Henry. Henry Bruce Frederick, who is my grandpa. And I'm recording in North Liberty, Iowa. Now, you read from there.

00:24 I'm sorry, what was your question?

00:26 Just read there and fill in the blanks.

00:34 Okay. My name is Bruce Frederick My first name is really Henry, but I am 86 years old. Today is August 3rd, 2013. No, I think it'd be 2023. 2023. Geez. I'm really showing my age there. I am speaking with Rose who is my granddaughter. I am recording this. You're moving it. I am recording this interview in well outside of North Liberty, Iowa.

01:20 All right, now what? Okay, now I just read the questions.

01:25 Wait, don't you film him?

01:28 No, it's just audio.

01:29 Okay.

01:34 Oh, this is a good one. I didn't pick the questions. By the way. What is the worst thing that my dad ever did?

01:44 That's hard to choose. There were a lot of options. I remember one time the local police in Iowa City came to give us a visit because something he and his cronies had. What? You'd been throwing something at cars.

02:04 Eggs.

02:05 Throwing eggs at cars.

02:07 That's bad.

02:08 I remember that. That's when we were in high school.

02:13 Yeah. Who were your parents and what can you tell me about them?

02:21 Well, my father was Henry Frederick He spoke German when he was a child. He grew up in the family of his father and mother, immigrated to this country from Russia even though they were German speaking.

02:51 How does that work?

02:54 Well, it was a good thing they got out because the Germans who stayed behind had terrible fates as World War II approached much, much later. Oh, yeah, My Grandfather immigrated in 1891 or two. Must have been 1892, because my oldest, Uncle John, was born in Russia, near Saratov. And let's see, you asked me about.

03:30 Your parents, my parents, and then your mom's side.

03:34 And my father grew up in the countryside near Bessie, Oklahoma, in an area that a whole bunch of Germans from Russia had settled. And so he didn't learn English until he went to school because neither of his parents spoke English. My grandfather eventually did, but my grandmother died before I was born, so I don't know. I don't think she ever learned English. And on my mother's side, I think her family had settled in Oklahoma. You know, Oklahoma was the last place in the United States that was open for settlement. Oh, yeah, and they had home. They had got a farm up in northwestern Oklahoma. Quite a ways away. So my mother grew up there and when she. So I never knew them, of course, at that time. Yeah, when she was growing up. But she went off to college and went. Which was pretty rare in those days.

04:51 Very.

04:52 And while she was in college, I think in her first or second year, her mother died. And so she. And then my mother developed some health problems and she went back home for a year and then eventually went back to college.

05:17 She got her degree and everything.

05:18 And then she came back to the home area. She lived in what is called Cheyenne Valley, Oklahoma. That's not a town, that's just an area, but it's in the midst of the so called Glass Mountains, which aren't mountains, they're just big hills. At any rate, they're kind of circular. I think they're an old range of. What do you call it? 1. Geysers. Not geysers, Volcanoes. Volcanoes. But anyway, when she finished college she got a degree in education and she came back to her old hometown or her home area, I should say, which is not too far from Fairview, Oklahoma. Anyhow, she was a teacher, her first job. But the Cheyenne Valley schools ran out of money. This, of course, was during the Depression. And my mother was born in 1907. So this was probably 33 or 4 when she came back. And that's the worst of the depression. My father, by the way, was quite a bit older than she. He was born in 1893.

06:48 And when was she born again?

06:51 She was born in what, 19 years younger. I mean older. So what year does that mean she was born in? She was born in 1893.

06:58 So she was born in 19.

07:01 Well, at any rate, my mother was teaching at this in her old home school, in high school, but the school ran out of money and they couldn't pay their teachers and she didn't feel like working for nothing. And she heard this little German immigrant town or Russian immigrants really had a job opening for a high school teacher and they were paying their teacher full wages. So she up and moved and somebody introduced her to my father who had not married because he was going to get married once, but his spouse to be. Her parents moved to California and she went with him. So anyway, they met and one thing led to another and they got married in 1935 in April. And then I was born in October of 1936, not long after. A little over a year.

08:18 Yeah.

08:20 And then. So they lived in that town for many years. And my mother was a teacher. And in that era people were bailing out of Oklahoma it was in the middle of the Dust bowl where we lived. Lots of people were leaving, going to California, but they kept the school open until I was born. Then about when I started first grade, they closed the high school and the first grade, the school was down to two rooms. First through fourth grade in one room and fifth through eighth in the other.

09:11 Small.

09:12 And so my parents continued to live in that town until I started a high school. And then they moved to Clinton, which is a town of about 10,000, about 10 miles away, where I went to high school.

09:29 Oh, yeah.

09:30 So that's a short synopsis.

09:34 And was your mom still working when you were in high school?

09:36 My mom worked. When we went back to Clinton, she started teaching again.

09:41 Oh, nice.

09:42 And she had been teaching in Bessie in one of the great schools, which by that time they had. They had closed all the country schools around, and they all came to this little town of Bissi. And so then we were down to four rooms. We were up to four rooms for eighth grades. So seventh and eighth grade, fifth and sixth were together.

10:07 Still not bad. All right, well, I guess this is kind of the same thing, but do you know the story of how your family first came to this country?

10:25 Well, yes, I know a lot more about my father's side.

10:29 Yeah.

10:31 Since he was born right after they got to this country.

10:36 Yeah.

10:37 And then he had a total of three brothers and three. Six sisters.

10:43 Oh, a big family.

10:45 And one brother immigrated and actually they had another sister who died in infancy in Russia.

10:54 Was he the youngest? Was he the youngest?

10:57 What?

10:57 Was he the youngest?

10:59 Oh, she was the oldest.

11:01 No, but was he. That. Your dad, the youngest?

11:02 Oh, no, my dad was the second oldest.

11:05 Oh, okay. So everyone else was born in the.

11:07 U.S. everybody else was born in the U.S. nice. Now, my grand. My mother's side. I know they immigrated from what was called Scotch Irish ancestry. In other words, Northern Ireland.

11:24 You're Irish?

11:26 Well, they were really Scotch, but who had immigrated into Northern Ireland.

11:32 Oh, yeah.

11:33 And I, you know, I don't know my mother's side of the family very well because I never lived around them.

11:41 Oh, yeah.

11:42 And my mother wrote a book about her family, and if I'd read that again, I would remember which ancestor came.

11:54 But was it before your father's side?

11:56 Oh, yes.

11:57 It was a while ago.

11:58 Yeah. Quite a long time ago.

12:00 Nice. Okay, can you tell me about your childhood? Do you remember any of the stories they used to tell you?

12:13 Well, as I mentioned, I grew up in Bessie.

12:16 Yeah.

12:19 Which. And I had a lot of close friends. You know, it Was a little town.

12:29 Yeah.

12:32 So if you didn't get along with your classmates, you didn't have any friends?

12:36 Oh, no. Yeah.

12:38 And my best buddies were twins who were my second cousins. My father's cousin's children. Two of ten, by the way.

12:55 They were twins. Oh, yeah. The twins that said were not very back here.

13:01 I had another really close friend called Donald. His name was Donald Dean Miller. And his father had for. I don't remember the reason, but his father had taken. Had gone with Donald Dean's sister to Oklahoma City to, I think, visit some relative. And on the way home, they had a car wreck.

13:32 Oh, no.

13:33 And she was killed.

13:36 Oh, my God.

13:37 But he survived.

13:39 True.

13:40 But apparently I don't know the details because that was when I was in fourth grade and he was my very best buddy.

13:50 Yeah.

13:51 And after that accident and the death of his sister, his mother, I guess I don't know the details, of course, at that age, but I think she thought it was his fault. Her fault?

14:07 What, Dean's fault or Donald's fault?

14:11 She moved to Oklahoma City and separated. Took my best buddy. And so I didn't see him very often after that.

14:22 Do you still.

14:24 I see. I forgot what the question was.

14:26 It was just. Can you tell me about your childhood? Do you remember any of the stories?

14:29 Oh, yeah. I had a lot of fun in this little town of Bessie because it was a town of about 300 people. It had been a thousand. But we kind of roamed over the whole town. And I guess the town sort of looked after all the kids, you know, and we would go everywhere. Everywhere there was to go.

14:57 Yeah.

14:58 Nice little town. And we had a grand time.

15:03 That's awesome.

15:04 And then, of course, when I moved in ninth grade, we moved to Clinton, a town of about 10,000, and I didn't know a soul. Not one person.

15:15 That's scary.

15:20 So. But of course, it didn't take me too long to get to know people.

15:24 Yeah.

15:26 But until I did, my father taught me to play chess.

15:32 Oh, yes. Chess roots.

15:35 The thing is, he was a good Russian chess player, and he just could not bring himself to lose on purpose. So I learned to play chess pretty well because he wouldn't give me anything.

15:54 You would just lose over and over.

15:57 And then in high school, when I came to high school there, I thought, oh, my, all these kids have been to these bigger schools. But it turns out I knew just as much as they did.

16:10 And you were the valedictorian, and I.

16:12 Ended up being the class valedictorian.

16:15 It's impressive.

16:16 Four Years later. Yeah.

16:23 Oh, I guess. What was it like being a father? And what were your children like growing up, like that era of your life? How was that?

16:34 Well, I probably wasn't the best possible father because.

16:40 Oh, that's not true.

16:41 I was. When I. When your father was born, I was actually in Iowa City for the summer working on a research project. But I went back. I was teaching at a college in Minnesota, Gustavus Adolphus College, a Swedish institution. So for your father's first three years.

17:13 Yeah.

17:15 We were living in St. Peter, Minnesota, and then I had more time, but then we moved back to. I was given an offer at the University of Iowa, and we came back to Iowa City. But then in order to get tenure at a Big Ten university, you have to work your. You know what, off. And so, unfortunately, I didn't spend anywhere near as much time with your father as I had before, because I would work all day long, and then I would come home for dinner, and then I'd go back in the evenings.

17:57 Oh, my God.

17:57 I'd work on Saturdays.

17:59 Wow.

18:00 And your grandmother still reminds me of the fact that I didn't spend a lot of time with them at that age.

18:08 Well, you still. I know that. My dad tells me you went on vacations. Do you remember any favorite vacation?

18:14 Yeah. Well, of course, we went to Oklahoma. Now we went to Grafton, Iowa, to visit your grandmother's parents. We'd do that for sure at Thanksgiving and Easter.

18:31 Oh, yeah.

18:31 And then we'd go to Oklahoma, usually, which was, you know, 800 miles away. A long drive.

18:39 You would drive there every time.

18:41 We'd frequently drive it in one day. Later we took two.

18:45 Wow.

18:46 But we'd go there for Christmas and sometimes for a while in the summer and. Or you're asking about the. Yeah. And of course, when we lived in Minnesota, John's sister Kristen was born two years after him.

19:13 Yeah.

19:14 In July, actually, just a little less than two years. And his other sister was born after we moved back to Iowa City two years later. So during the early years, you know, it's typical of a university professor. Your promotion depends on doing research, publishing papers, and getting grants, at least in chemistry. That's true.

19:53 Yeah.

19:55 And so I think I didn't pay as much attention to the kids as I should have.

20:03 Well, I know my dad has fond memories of camping and stuff, and you always facilitated that.

20:08 Yeah. Yeah, we did go camping. I tell you a whole lot about him. I, of course, knew him over the years, but you know how you are when you're a kid. You don't you know how it is.

20:24 Yeah, I know how it is.

20:25 You're not that interested in your grandparents. You have other things to be interested in. So at any rate, I accidentally paused.

20:37 It for a while, but, oh, my God, I clicked it somehow. Here's a question. Do you remember holidays as a kid or traditions.

20:50 I'm sorry?

20:50 Do you remember holidays as a kid or traditions you had.

20:54 Oh, yes, mostly. You know how the Germans are. They always had a big to do about Christmas.

21:03 Oh, yeah.

21:05 And so we would always have a bunch of presents under the tree, My sister and I and both Bessie and Clinton. Of course. I remember maybe when I was a freshman in high school or somewhere there. My disappointment at getting no games for the first time.

21:35 Oh, you got no game. Oh, my gosh.

21:38 You know?

21:38 Yeah.

21:40 Started getting clothes and stuff instead of games.

21:45 You're like, really?

21:46 Yeah. So. And of course, my sister was still getting toys and dolls and things.

21:54 Oh, yeah. She's younger.

21:56 She was four years younger. So let's see, what was the question again?

22:01 Just holidays or traditions.

22:03 Yeah. So for Christmas, the Germans, of course, that was a big to do. Our family went to a Lutheran church in Bessie. They still had a German language service and an English one, too. But then my parents always went to the church in Clinton, 10 miles away because my mother didn't speak German. But both churches would have a big to do about Christmas. They'd have a big Christmas program. When you were a kid, you had to participate in that. In terms of other holidays, of course, Easter was a big celebration.

22:58 Oh, yeah.

22:59 Easter egg hunts, 4th of July. We would have fireworks.

23:04 Oh, nice.

23:05 Yeah.

23:06 In the small town.

23:07 Yeah. So.

23:12 Well, thank you. That's all the questions I had down. Unless there are any other particular stories you remember.

23:23 I'm sorry.

23:24 That's all the questions I had down, unless there's other particular stories. You remember.

23:36 We always lived in this little town of Bessie, which, as I mentioned, had about 300 people.

23:42 Yeah.

23:42 And when 20 years earlier, it had a thousand people.

23:47 Yeah.

23:47 But people bailed out of there. Dust bowl.

23:51 Yeah, the dust.

23:52 So at any rate, when I. Before my freshman year in high school, my father decided I was old enough to work on the farm. So like I said, we never lived on the farm, but we had farms in a number of places.

24:15 Yeah.

24:16 So I started driving a tractor before my freshman year in High School.

24:21 14 years. 14 years old.

24:23 And from then on, I worked on the farm until I finished college.

24:28 Wow.

24:30 And we would work really hard.

24:36 Oh, my God. Yeah.

24:37 Because we farmed quite a lot of Acres. And then sometime my father and his cousins rented land together in Texas, 200 miles away in the Texas Panhandle. So my second cousin twins and I would go out there when we were 15 years old. We would drive big trucks out there with D6 caterpillars, which are big tractors.

25:12 Oh, my God.

25:13 Each tractor would. We pulled what were called one way plows, great big disc plows. And we would pull eight. I mean three. Let me start over. We would pull four of the eight foot wide plows. So each tractor in 24 hours could plow 160 acres.

25:39 Wow.

25:40 And the way we did it is we worked six hour shifts. My twin cousins and I worked one to seven in the morning and one to seven in the afternoon.

25:52 That's terrible.

25:53 They got the cold shift and the hot shift and their brothers worked the other two shifts.

25:59 How'd you get stuck with the worst ones?

26:00 I know. That's because we were the youngest.

26:02 Oh.

26:04 And Chris. And so each tractor would plow 160 and 24. 160 acres in 24 hours. So we had to plow a lot of acres.

26:18 Oh, my God. Yeah.

26:20 So anyway, I did that all the way. Well, maybe starting my junior year in high school. Did you get paid good all the way through college.

26:31 And there's that one time the person asked for your ID and you were about 50 shades darker, right?

26:36 Yeah.

26:37 How's that story go?

26:37 Registered for the draft, which you had to do when you were 16. No, 18. You had to register when you were 18. And the draft clerk, they had to write down your appearance and they wrote down complexion dark.

26:58 They did. Oh, my God.

27:00 Because I was burned. I mean, I was so tan. I'd been out. Of course, I registered in October after my birthday in October. But I was still dark. And I registered in Iowa because I was in college.

27:19 Oh.

27:20 But complexion dark. Never quite got over.

27:23 So you study all year and then go work on the farm in the summer?

27:27 Yeah, I was burned to a crisp.

27:30 Oh, my God. They probably didn't recognize you when you came back.

27:34 Yeah.

27:34 After the summer. That's crazy.

27:38 Well, it was still. Despite all that work, it was still a good childhood.

27:44 Yeah.

27:44 I had a lot of good friends.

27:46 Yeah. Bessie sounds like a great child to.

27:48 Grow up in high school.

27:50 Yeah.

27:51 You know.

27:53 And you were valedictorian?

27:54 I still keep in touch with one of them.

27:57 One? Which one?

27:58 Well, his name is Buff Burdis.

28:00 Buff Burdis.

28:01 He was a fellow classmate. He became a doctor. He practiced medicine in Anchorage, Alaska.

28:10 Wow.

28:11 And then when he retired, he came back to Oklahoma. So I've seen him now and then.