Waltraud Kuerschner and Ariana Kramer

[00:01] ARIANA KRAMER: My name is Ariana Kramer. I am 51 years old. Today is March 26, 2023, and we are in Taos, New Mexico, and I am here with Waltraud Kuerschner who is my mother.

[00:21] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: My name is Waltraud Ilse Kuerschner My age is 80, and today is March 26, 2023. We are in Taos, New Mexico, and I will be interviewed by Ariana Kramer, my daughter.

[00:47] ARIANA KRAMER: So I just wanted to start by saying that we. This is kind of a continuation of a conversation that we had ten years ago when StoryCorps came to Santa Fe, and the two of us did a recording then, and now it's ten years later, and we are living together in Taos. And so, let's see. I wanted to start by asking you if you could just quickly name the different places that you have lived in the US. So I think we talked before about your life in Germany and then you coming over on the boat to the US and a little bit of your time in Huntsville, so maybe you can pick up from there.

[01:45] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Well, I'd like to say that I realize in thinking about my life that I have had to be very adaptive because. And I learned that because of the life that my parents had, to a degree and then my own. But I have lived in Germany and many places because of World War Two and what was going on there. And then coming over to the United States, I would like to say this happened because my father came with a paperclip project, which was a group of scientists that were people that had been chosen for specific work in Germany to come over to the states. So he came first, nine months in 1947, and nine months later, my mother, my siblings, my sister Krista and my brother Eric, and I came over together with my mother and came to New York City, which, having basically only been in small towns or the countryside, I was just stunned. And we first lived in Fort Bliss, Texas, on the base there for, I think it was around two years. Then we moved to Huntsville, Alabama, and all the moos had to do with my dad's work. He worked on the base there, and that would have been from 50 to 52. And in 52, we moved to Alamogordo, New Mexico, and were there for five years, then moved to Santa Barbara, California, to my great dismay, because I'd been in Alamogordo for five years, and that was the longest I'd ever been anywhere. So that was home. And I didn't appreciate having to move, especially not to a fancy place. So there I went to high school and to college and began my work life as a librarian and assistant, not a head librarian. And I lived in Santa Barbara, first of all, making a life for myself together with Gary Chafe, who was an artist in Santa Barbara that is fairly well known. And we never had children, but he had a daughter from a previous relationship, Maya, who now as Maya de Silva Chafe, who ended up becoming a well known flamenco dancer. And Gary and I parted our ways, and I took up with Ariana's dad, Henry Paul Kramer, junior, also an artist. And this was when the Vietnam war was going on. So he was a conscientious objector. And when he received that status, he was assigned to work at Sonoma State Hospital in northern California for two years in lieu of going into the armed services. So I also. I drove up and joined him and my first daughter together with Henry. Allegra Heidelinda Kramer was born in Glen Ellen, a little township that was close to the hospital, and all the people there worked at the hospital in some capacity.

[07:24] ARIANA KRAMER: She was born at the Santa Rosa hospital.

[07:28] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Allegra. Yes, she was born in Santa Rosa in the hospital.

[07:33] ARIANA KRAMER: That was when you were living in Glenellin.

[07:35] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: At the time, my thinking had been, I would really like to try having a home birth, but that didn't work out, because back then, in 69, it was really hard to find people who were midwives who were willing to do home births. And so we ended up Santa Rosa.

[08:04] ARIANA KRAMER: Can you, before you continue on the timeline, can you say a little bit about your garden there?

[08:11] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Oh, I was. When I arrived, my job was to find a house, because Henry was living in kind of the hospital barracks. And I found this wonderful woman from the Ozarks who was renting a house in Glen Ellen. And so we had the front house and the front yard, and she lived with her daughter and family in the back. And I asked if I could grow vegetables in the front yard, if I could take up the grass. And it kind of surprised her a little bit. But she said, of course, I'm used to vegetable growing, vegetable drying from where I grew up, and storing vegetables. And that sounds like a good idea. And what was really wonderful about it was that, and I do have photos of it, was that by the time we left at the end of the two year stint that Henry had for service, there were other people on that street who also tore up the grass in their front yard and planted vegetables. And that was in 70, 119, 71. And you've always had gardens since, even in Germany during the war, there was a communal garden. We all took the trolley to worked and harvested, and so. And my mother made sure we always worked in the family garden, vegetable garden. But we also had a small area where we could plant anything we wanted, which I think was her tricky way of keeping us together with the garden.

[10:31] ARIANA KRAMER: I remember you doing that with Allegra and I in Arreo Seco, when you gave us a little area that we could plant whatever flowers we wanted in. Let's see. So after Glen Ellen. So then you became pregnant with me in Glen Ellen.

[10:51] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Right.

[10:51] ARIANA KRAMER: And then you moved. After dad finished his two years at the state hospital, you moved back to Santa Barbara, which is where his family was.

[11:01] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Right. I do want to say one thing at the hospital, about the hospital, because I wanted to keep myself busy. I went to the hospital often and walked there because Henry would take the car to work, my little vw bug. And I got to know the people who were at the hospital, who were confined there. And I was just so amazed by their ability to be in life so fully, even though they had different disabilities. And they were just full of curiosity, being interested in anyone they were around. And I realized at a certain point how much I was learning from these people, and that it was something so unexpected, and I've treasured that all of my life.

[12:17] ARIANA KRAMER: Is there one particular story about them that you. Or about one of the people there that you want to share?

[12:25] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Well, Henry and I were having lunch at a picnic table, and these two men waved, came over and sat down, and they watched us and indicated with gestures that they also wanted some of the food. So we shared that with them. And then they started doing what amounted to a pantomime, as though they had. Were brewing coffee and had cups set out and poured the coffee, and then served all four of us a cup of coffee. I just. That was one of the things. I was just so amazed about the creativity of people. And, you know, and I also, at that time, worried a little whether they had the ability to really be themselves very often, because they have such a confined life.

[13:38] ARIANA KRAMER: And what. Can you tell the story about you going through the windows? Through the what windows?

[13:44] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Oh, you mean in a little barrack where Henry and mother, you were pregnant with Allegra. Right? Right.

[13:53] ARIANA KRAMER: And you couldn't stay the night with daddy?

[13:57] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: No, I couldn't legally stay the night. So I found a way to go around the back of the building and crawl in through his window. I mean, women were not allowed in that barrack. And so, until I could finalize having the house, I spent a few nights in the barracks with him and was.

[14:28] ARIANA KRAMER: That, were you not allowed in there because you weren't married or because.

[14:32] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: No, because it was just barracks for men.

[14:38] ARIANA KRAMER: Yeah.

[14:38] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Yeah.

[14:39] ARIANA KRAMER: And then one more memory from Glenn Ellen that I know you wanted to share was about the taxes, the tax letter.

[14:47] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Oh, when I, I was trying to be make myself useful in Glen Elle and so I did the taxes in the winter because I knew once Allegra was born at the beginning of December, I'd be too busy. So I did the taxes in a format that we were a family, put our names down, Social Security and so on. And I received a letter back from the government which said, we do not approve of this type of arrangement. You are not a family in view of the government. And please do your taxes to where you each individually.

[15:53] ARIANA KRAMER: Fill out the taxes.

[15:54] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Yeah.

[15:59] ARIANA KRAMER: So then you moved back to Santa Barbara where you had me, and, and then we'll circle back to some of these places. But then from Santa Barbara you moved to. Well, you spent some time first in Colorado and Oregon on Bud's ranch, right. In Pueblo, Colorado, where you lived in a barn that you fixed up.

[16:33] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: My brother was teaching at the. Oh, I'm not going to remember the town, Pueblo. Pueblo. Thank you. He was teaching at the Pueblo college. And so we all came out at that time, all four of us came to Colorado to try and see if we could get anything going as far as art and Henry. And so we, my brother was living on Bud Reno's ranch, 17 miles, I think, south of Pueblo, Colorado, and in the Verde valley. And we just thought we'd check it out. So in order to do that, we lived in the top story of a barna, in a room that did have a door. And our neighbors up in the barn were bats. And it's. I was never really concerned about them in any way, but we watched them a lot to see what they did with their babies, like how they operated, how they used the barn. And it was just a great source of entertainment.

[18:02] ARIANA KRAMER: And so this was you, Uncle Eric, Aunt Suzy, and then Carrie, Nonna, my cousins.

[18:08] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Right.

[18:09] ARIANA KRAMER: And then it was you and dad and Allegra and I that were living there together. And then you went up to Oregon with Eric and Susie where Susie's parents had a. A house, a farmhouse.

[18:29] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: A farmhouse, a ten mile lake. Yeah.

[18:32] ARIANA KRAMER: And so I know there was a story you wanted to tell about traveling to Oregon when you went up to Walla Walla, Washington, on the way to get.

[18:41] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Well, at that point in time, 71, 72, 73. I would say that my brother's family and my own family. We were all looked at as, quote, hippies. And so there were, because of our hair, the way we dressed, and the way we traveled around. And so we had a problem as we were entering washing Walla Walla.

[19:28] ARIANA KRAMER: Walla Walla, Washington Walla Walla, right.

[19:32] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Yeah. We got there, and we were really low on gas, and they wouldn't sell us gas. And it was pretty clear they had no intention of having anything to do with us. And I had really never met people that I would consider redneck people before. And it was really scary because I had two little children to look out for. And so I encouraged my brother Eric to walk to the other end of town and see if the filling station there, which we'd heard there was one, would sell us gas. That was no. That was a no. And so I realized we had to spend the night there, and I was really afraid. So I took you and Allegra and went to the one kind of traveler picnic area in Walla Walla that had cemented picnic tables and cement benches. So they were really locked into place and took blankets and things and took you, Ariana and Allegra and myself, and kind of scooched in underneath the cement picnic table, because I just viewed that as the safest place I could get to because of it not being able to be broken very easily in any way. And so nothing happened during the night. And the next morning, we were somehow told we could get gas. So my thinking was they just wanted to give us a good scare, make sure we didn't come back, and then wanted to be rid of us. And that was, I think, one of the reasons it really scared me is that when Allegra was just a baby, we had driven Henry and Allegra and I drove to San Francisco, where his sister lived, and saw, oh, the movie I told you about.

[22:21] ARIANA KRAMER: What was it? Oh, easy writer.

[22:23] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Easy writer. So when we were in Walla Walla, you know, that movie just came back to me, and I realized that you could be in danger just for who you were. That I'd already realized in terms of black people in the south and in California, but not in terms of people who were young people and, you know, moving around.

[23:04] ARIANA KRAMER: Yeah. So then. So then you were up in Oregon for a little while, and then you came back to Santa Barbara, and we lived there for a little while, and then you moved to Albuquerque with dad and with us with legendary. Right.

[23:29] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: We moved there because my parents were living in Albuquerque, and they were wanting to be part of your lives and help out so that I could work and so on. And so we moved to. Yeah. The middle of Albuquerque, basically.

[23:52] ARIANA KRAMER: And then that's where you and dad split up and you got together with Grady. And then we all moved up to Taos together.

[24:03] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: So Grady, William Burton, my partner, well, we together with the girls, moved up to Taos because he had skied all of his life and he loved skiing. So we moved to Arroyo Seco and worked at the ski valley. And because of having jobs up there, we could ski for free. Everyone in the family back then with. Yeah, the blakes were very generous in that regard.

[24:46] ARIANA KRAMER: Ernie and Rhoda.

[24:48] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Ernie and Rhoda.

[24:49] ARIANA KRAMER: And you worked in the Rhoda's. What was it called, the shop that you worked at?

[24:54] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: I know, the COVID up. The COVID up, right. That was the only very small store up at the ski valley that sold any clothing at all. Yeah, yeah. So we got to see the, you know, all of kind of the population of who skied. Yeah. From people who barely could figure out how to do it to people who had a lot of money.

[25:27] ARIANA KRAMER: And so in those years, like, what were some of the other things that we. That you remember us doing as a family?

[25:34] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Well, we had a really big garden in Arroyo Seco. We lived behind the old church in the field, in an adobe that was built in 1901, which the guy, I think it was, who was called Primo and worked at the San Cristobal area. Oh, at the landfill there. Yeah. He told us about the house and the pond behind in the pasture, and that anyone who had learned to swim in Saco had learned that pond. So this would be 1980 when we moved into that house. And you guys walked to the Arroyo Seco school. And it was great. And we worked. I had you and Allegra help me, and we worked in the library there and straightened things out. Yeah.

[26:46] ARIANA KRAMER: And then we moved across town to where we're living now in the top of foothills. And then I. You became very involved with. Well, and then, I guess, in that house in Seiko is where you had Ilsa. That's important.

[27:03] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Right.

[27:04] ARIANA KRAMER: That was in 83. And then shortly after that, we started building the house out in Tulpa and getting ready to move.

[27:16] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Well, we bought land and a house that was what we could afford was a house that was called a dried in dwelling. So in the event of weather, the house would be sound and the plumbing was there, but there were no doors, no walls inside, just the studs that made the. Supported the house. And so we had to do, like, the outside plastering the inside walls. Plastering, oiling the wood, tiling the floors, and I. So that worked out just fantastic for us because there wouldn't have been a way, even back then, in time, that we could have gotten into a house or purchased a house that was finished. And I should say the reason we were able to do that, too, was because Grady became. Went to, I can't remember, the school in Albuquerque that had to do with plastering. So he kind of became a professional plastering guy, both for outside plastering and inside.

[28:50] ARIANA KRAMER: And then he became a contractor.

[28:53] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Yeah, well, he was. That was his specialty as a contractor.

[29:01] ARIANA KRAMER: And you may have mentioned this already, but I don't remember that. We also did a lot of fishing and camping.

[29:07] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Oh, yeah.

[29:07] ARIANA KRAMER: Going in the woods together.

[29:09] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Well, that started firewood, and, yeah, that started in Seiko. We always went and got our own wood, and that's how we heated the house. In Seiko. We had corner fireplaces in the bed, in two bedrooms, and in the living room. And, yeah, we fished a lot, ate fish a lot, froze fish. And one day, Grady said to me, what do you want to do today? Should we get wood or should we go fish? And I said, I think we better get wood, because that way I know that we'll have something when we get home for sure.

[30:06] ARIANA KRAMER: That's funny. And then you became very involved with the schools, right? You were, when Allegra and I were kids, but especially, I think, when Elsa Washington, going through school, you were involved, and then you became. Then you started working with leaping lizards. And so say a little bit about why, like, why you wanted to work with kids.

[30:34] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: And, well, the very important person in my life was my mother's father in Germany, Wilhelm Triple, who I was only around for maybe two years of my life. He died, I think, when I was four, and he treated me like a person. He talked to me like I was any person about serious things. He did not treat me like a child is mostly treated. And in doing that, he taught me a lot, and it also taught me to listen to children and what they had to say. So, yeah, I started working in school settings, subbing at the old Hondo school, and then getting my degrees in early childhood and working at leaping lizards at Yahchi, at Anansi and Tisa until I retired. Yeah.

[32:00] ARIANA KRAMER: And you also focused in your education on multicultural education.

[32:06] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Oh, yeah.

[32:07] ARIANA KRAMER: And why was that important to you?

[32:11] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Because I realized often that I was looked at as a person being like, quote, white, who probably didn't even have a culture. And actually, I had a culture that was very similar to what I found in northern New Mexico. It's just I didn't get to stay in it because of world War Two and we had to move.

[32:47] ARIANA KRAMER: But when you say that, like, what are the things that you think are similar? What were the things you thought were similar?

[32:55] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: That family is really important. You went to everyone's birthdays, you had gatherings, you worked in gardens together, and people looked out for each other, you know, around my parents big table when we had get togethers, my godmother would pass little pieces of candy underneath the table to all of us kids because we were so bored having to be in that kind of situation. And, yeah, it's when we lived in Saco, we had the cordova's who kind of took us in and had us cook food that was typical for here, taught you guys dances. And later in life, I helped misses Cordova because she was a diabetic and went out and split wood for her. And it was so lovely just to pay her back in some way.

[34:13] ARIANA KRAMER: Yeah. Um, I think we don't have a whole lot of time left, but I was wondering if you wanted to say a little bit about Margie. About Margie? Oh, Margaret Clark, your, your good friend.

[34:34] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: My very best good friend Margaret Clark, that I met in, in California and was lifelong friends with from the time. Well, I was in my very early twenties and she was five years younger. Yeah. No matter where we lived, she ended up in Hawaii, which was her place of culture that she just adored. And we ended up in northern New Mexico, and we always shared what we had with each other. She would come visit here, I would go visit in Hawaii, and she would be sure I understood about the food and the customs there, and I would do the same for her here. We went raspberry picking and apple picking and to the pueblo and, you know, to the plaza and. Yeah. And she passed on last year. And that was a real hardship for me because she was definitely a sister and the closest person that I had of my own age from the sixties.

[36:12] ARIANA KRAMER: And you lived together in Santa Barbara with Sunny? We did. With another friend, Sunny. Right, right. Yeah.

[36:23] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: She ended up in seed, doing seed saving work at the tropical botanical gardens on Kauai where she lived, and listening to the people she worked with. She did some extraordinary things that I was not aware of.

[36:46] ARIANA KRAMER: And was she in? Because I know she worked, like, with the Hoopa tribe up in northern California.

[36:53] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: The hoopas.

[36:54] ARIANA KRAMER: The hoopas. And was that when you guys were up there in Glen Ellenhouse?

[36:59] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: When we were in Glen Ellen? Yeah.

[37:01] ARIANA KRAMER: Yeah. And then she lived in Bainbridge, Washington, for a while, right when I was up in Portland. So I got to visit with her.

[37:13] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: She was the person, the first person that we know for sure started putting organic produce into a regular, more fleshed out grocery store. And this was because of. Help me with the name, because of the family on Bainbridge.

[37:36] ARIANA KRAMER: Oh, the Tanaka family. They had a grocery store.

[37:40] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Yeah.

[37:41] ARIANA KRAMER: And then from there, Margie went on to work on the national organics certification.

[37:50] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Right? She was on that board.

[37:52] ARIANA KRAMER: Yeah. The very first one that set up what the standards for organic agriculture would be.

[37:58] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: Right. She would talk about, you had gardens together, she would talk about vegetables, and I would talk about kids. And somehow it all kind of made sense and our attraction there.

[38:21] ARIANA KRAMER: Do you have any closing thought you want to leave with?

[38:30] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: I think it's going to be very important that all of us, wherever we are, know that we need to depend on each other, on our neighbors, on our communities in order really to have life, period. And it's going to be a different kind of life than we've all grown out of, I think. But my hope is that it will be a life that is more supportive of people and the environment than has happened so far. Where it's been like a money economy. I'm looking for an economy of people helping each other. As our friend out at the Pueblo said, we need to get back to that more than we, in a way, that is more than what we have going on now. Maybe a little start is happening, but needs to really move along.

[39:45] ARIANA KRAMER: Thanks, mom.

[39:47] WALTRAUD ILSE KUERSCHNER: You're welcome, Ariana.