1 10 16 https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/7b748b10d301ba02e2650cbadc63e078.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=Qn5I-jmX5A-S5Mx9RS1qhbaLTH6U5ZQo14JVz97Url4HjBfN-H6O5FqIB5EeM4qv5ysxSafKgnG4F5610IkfXxlRI5f7yFrzteOCGWX6i8GOzrhBfPmBmD-j7qbl88XzjEEKiDxot25zKrU0XKwnj2tvLoE1FV9114OZp4OadIbuFqcpaY889n86rsXfd4yxi9pzwlzeZXC%7ETsB-Kzxe25G13deqk7IgLonDxN92Sdl5TDNEPRDJDU5ZV-8WfOE4AJpvdlBoqspC7zZOp7iiU6p8Jj9lGRMF9EHEe3EnUCLClyRHgE5ubdEukAixjB1NJDjA5AJng8Y14QwDaboDtw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM e3aed734f1714a5dff78706c8d075e4f https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/23efe0d23dea225558658d954400fc57.pdf?Expires=1782345600&Signature=BYgUHdqdZKOClwmlXpvy-NkDPE5U9dI0I3R9i2llHAvXrfJVrp-EA1sklRNEHlsZyeRH2FEqdiqRdnQJTKyePDhiSnnInsxdSzVyWRmqrm9QBGeaWQ0%7EKiXN09YPMmfsVb6nNl8PHvrwTHqb5gnrn4bwQRBLmXzsVWIFoqp0-x1QmzCqP3bCdSmspSL3OMHbNqktmNJYhYv%7Euh7gKc6bZGDfAu5PYvz89MRDXIbMW%7EaLMJ3z2EWvIHzDKBTpz7GEbRFEBDxJuVltC44fYGVSEFm22pRDzdy%7EekQBYzdYD1a%7EEbPhddxy7NHseXMjNdyE1ivrT3SysHu9cY1CVFGbLQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 34984fd25fe117cbc07defb5acdce5b6 PDF Text Text 00:00:00,000 Lisa Hayes Okay, so my name is Lisa Hayes. I'm the Director of Collections at the Charleston Library Society and I'm speaking with Anne Cleveland, our former Executive Director here in our home. It's Thursday, April 18, 2024. And we're continuing our conversation from earlier this year, learning about her time as the Executive Director and all of the wonderful changes she brought to the Library Society. So now we're going to hear a little bit about some of the authors that Anne was able to get in beginning with Pat Conway. So tell us about how you got him to come. 00:00:43,280 Anne Cleveland Well, one of the things that my predecessor left was a Rolodex, which I never kept a Rolodex. I'd never throw it away, but it's just not the way I function. But I was, you know, in the early days, there wasn't much to do other than all the moving and rearranging of use of space. That was what I focused on primarily those first few months. But then Pat Conroy was coming out with his book, South of Broad. And by then I had heard the story from Steve Gates that there'd been a lot of consternation about where the Library would build its first building. Because it was always such a vital part of the power structure of Charleston and South Carolina that when South Carolina was first established as a state, the Library Society was given the third floor of what was the state house, now the county courthouse. I mean, it was that important to the intellectual life of this growing city and state. And finally by the turn of the century post-Civil War, they decided that they needed to build a purpose-built library. And somebody else can fill you in on the whole Carnegie outreach. But the long and the short of it is that they decided to do it on their own so that they could restrict membership. And most people who used the library lived South of Broad. That was the, you know, it's not like there were lots of restaurants or anything of much cultural value and people were used to just going to Meeting and Broad to go to the library. 00:03:02,360 Lisa Hayes And right now, Anne's speaking about, so the library was built, the building that we're in now was built in 1914. And you were talking about the middle 20th part of the 20th century. Are you talking about more toward when you00:03:14,360 Anne Cleveland No, I'm talking about when it was built in 1912 and opened in 1914. And now I'm talking about why. 00:03:26,360 Lisa Hayes Oh, sorry. You were saying about Pat Conroy and the00:03:29,360 Anne Cleveland �Oh, oh, well. It became known that he was coming out with a book called South of Broad. And one of the arguments that had been given by some board members in 1900 for it to stay very close to the Four Corners of Law. In fact, the person who had earlier in the end of the 19th century purchased Steve Gates' house, which is on the corner of Tradd and Meeting. They purchased that and the properties north of 59 Meeting to have that be the site of the new library. But the countervailing belief was that the city was expanding and moving north and that it would be more important to have it above Broad. And so when I read the article about Pat Conroy writing his book South of Broad, I always tried to, in my appeal, talk about something that would be catchy. And I said that the Library Society, which was the second oldest circulating library in America, they had considered keeping it south of Broad, but ultimately decided that they would move it north of Broad, just playing on the title of his book. And I guess I can't remember whether I had seen his name in the Rolodex that Eric had left on his desk, or whether it was after I learned about the book and then just randomly was looking through. But however it happened, I had an address for Pat Conroy. So I sat down and wrote him a letter telling him all about the history of the library and how it almost had stayed south of Broad, you know, haha, but that it ended up where it is, and that we would love to have him come do a book signing and we would round up as many people as we could get. But you know, that was me just randomly writing after a couple of months at the Library Society. And one afternoon the phone rang and it was still, I was a teacher, I never had a phone on my desk. So it was still, and nobody was calling those first few months. So the phone rang and I said, "Anne Cleveland?" And there was this lull, you know, just silence and then, "Well, Anne Cleveland, this is Pat Conroy, what can I do for you?" And I almost dropped the phone. I mean, I just couldn't believe Pat Conroy had gotten my letter and called me. And I told him what I envisioned and that I had been helping the school out on Johns Island Charleston Collegiate, which was a very diverse school at that point, and that I'd love to get him to talk to the faculty and that I'd love them to stay for, you know, a week. Of course, they only lived at Beaufort. But anyway, he got him on a good, or he got me, because it was a good day, and he agreed to pretty much everything. And so we gave a dinner party that first night of friends of his, Alex Sanders, who had been president of the College of Charleston, and some other people of note. And it was just— 00:07:33,720 Lisa Hayes At your home? Did you have your work? 00:07:35,720 Anne Cleveland Yeah, had the dinner here. That was the first night, and then the second night was the—oh, and I got Joe Riley to, I said, "Can you give him a key to the city?" He said, "Well, we don't do that." But he proclaimed Pat Conroy Day, the day of the signing. And Angela Mack had lived across the street from us since we moved here, and so we arranged that we would do the book talk at the library society and then go over and have a reception. So it was combining resources, which most people weren't doing at that point. They still don't. 00:08:21,560 Lisa Hayes �Making those connections. 00:08:22,560 Anne Cleveland Yes. But anyway. And so that was something—that was big because Pat Conroy was very popular and well-known, and so it was something I could use in a letter writing to other people. And it had worked so well that time. I continued to try and do that. And we had gotten—we had Scott Tarot early on. And I can't even remember. It was just random. Anybody I could think of, I would figure out how to write and ask. But my true love was David McCullough because I was a history teacher and a student of history and had read almost every book he'd ever written. And John Adams had come out, which is what I had studied in college and written my honors thesis on. So I started writing him, and he wrote beautiful handwritten letters in response. But it was always, "Thank you so much, Mrs. Cleveland. I would love to come, but I'm very busy." And year after year after year. And then serendipitously because of connection through Wills being a lawyer who was head of an international legal group. And Steve Gates' roommate at Harvard Law School was a judge, federal judge, who had been a baby judge for Sandra Day O'Connor. And Will and I had had dinner with her and met her. And I told her all about the John Locke Fundamental Constitution. Anyway, the long and the short of it is we got Mark Wolf, the judge from Boston, to come down and speak about our collections, the John Marshall letter and the Fundamental Constitution. And we got Sandra Day O'Connor to come because she had mentored him when he first went on the bench. And I mean, it was just perfect timing. And there was a nice article about the Library Society, the paper, the next day, with a really flattering picture of me and Steve and Sandra Day O'Connor. And it just randomly occurred to me that David McCullough just might think I was some wizened and little librarian just stalking him. But this was a really nice picture of me with Sandra Day O'Connor and Steve. And so I wrote him saying that we'd had this wonderful evening with Sandra Day O'Connor. And it was everything I'd hoped it would be, except it wasn't him. And that's who I was really still hoping and praying would come to the Library Society and enclosed the article because it had the history of the Library Society. It was well done. And about two or three weeks later, I got a letter saying, "Well, next spring, I think will work." And it was when his book, The Wright Brothers, was coming out. And we met them at the airport at midnight. Their plane had been delayed, but we picked them up in my square car. And met them for breakfast the next morning and then had a lunch with Martha Ingram here. And then had a spectacular program and Gala and gave him the Founders Award. And by the next morning, he had offhandedly said, "This is where we ought to spend the winters," because they'd had a miserable two winters in a row in Boston. And I found two places, the carriage houses, on Tradd Street before they left. And they signed on the dotted line the following Monday and moved here the next winter. And the next winter, which was magical because we saw them all the time. But once you've got, you can mention Pat Conroy and Scott Tarot and Sandra Day O'Connor and then David McCullough, you have the veritas, the gravitas of being able to seem like a substantial enough organization to get some attention. And so it started mushrooming. And then, I guess what really upped it was when we had my older brother's roommate from college coming to talk about his memoir, which is Steve Forsman. And he started Blackstone and is now worth almost $40 billion. And he's been incredibly successful. �When I knew him at 18, his father ran a dry good store in a suburb of Philadelphia. And I mentioned that he was coming to Liza and Lou Kunkel and Liza said that the founder of Greystar was in awe of Steve Forsman. And I said, "Well, do you think Greystar might be a sponsor?" And the response was, "Hell yes." And that's how we launched the business and leadership. And that led to then having David Rubenstein come and he continued to come. And he's, I mean, he's, he has come five times. So and it was then that I was beginning to think it was time to contemplate retirement. But I knew that the number of people who have the skills that need to take the library business-wise in the right direction, which was not my great skill, would not necessarily have the kind of personality that I have that just thinks, "Just write them and beg them and tenaciously dog them until they say yes." And we were hosting the Century Club and Polly Buxton stopped by to introduce herself. And she had, after the last independent bookstore had closed maybe five years earlier. And that's another whole story, which I'll tell you in person. I mean, personally, rather than on this. But I was feeling guilty because I was so busy at the library I hadn't even gone over to see the bookstore. 00:16:33,080 Lisa Hayes That's when it was by the00:16:34,080 Anne Cleveland On Concord Street. And so she came in and introduced herself and I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry that I haven't even been over." And I have to back up a little bit. Things were evolving in a way that I also thought that we might want to reintegrate Jacques's antique space into the library because we were having so many programs. There were lots more lifelong learning classes and it justThere were enough things going on. I was contemplating the idea of bringing that space back into the use of the library itself. Anyway, she said, "No, no, I can understand you're so busy. Who knows how much longer we're going to be there?" And I said, "Why?" And she said, "Well, they're talking about building this damn hotel right across the street and that'll kill business." And it's like this light bulb lit up in my brain and I thought, "An independent bookstore on campus, given our history, the ability to attract big name authors, maybe that's what ought to do." And literally within 24 hours I'd asked her and Julian to come meet with me and discuss whether I should turn over the space to them. And it happened, and sure enough, I mean I look at all the programming in the year that I've been gone and 90% of it has been generated by all the connections that Polly and I have and the Buxton Books has. And so it's been exactly what I'd hoped it would be in terms of programming. 00:18:43,800 Lisa Hayes Wonderful for the authors to get their books sold and have them added to the New York Times bestseller list and great for the library society to be able to do it. 00:18:52,880 Anne Cleveland �When you can say that you have some authors who you have sold over 300 books, even great bookstores like Anne Pachett's bookstore in Nashville, she didn't sell 300 copies, but because of the reading room. We can do that and also do intimate ones down in the bookstore, but it's everything I had. I think that's probably going to be my legacy in terms of long term effect on the perception of the Library Society having brought Polly and the bookstore on campus. The authors, the programs, the bookstores, the bookstores. I mean I think the bindery was significant because there just aren't many libraries that have a facility that caters to taking care of books. 00:20:04,560 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Well when I left today, James was giving a tour to some folks who were publishers and showing them his space down there and the reading room that you were there to the renovation. We didn't even talk about the big capital campaign renovation that you were able to accomplish. The Igoe room of course and just there are so many, I think your lasting legacy is just the revitalization of all the different parts of the library society. It's been remarkable. 00:20:37,200 Anne Cleveland Pretty much opening the doors and letting people know about it. 00:20:41,800 Lisa Hayes But you were able to make those early connections that formed the baseline. You know when people like you're saying here Pat Conroy was here and David Rubinstein and they think well I want to be a part of that. 00:20:53,240 Anne Cleveland Right. 00:20:54,240 Lisa Hayes Yeah. That was really smart of you. I don't know if you, I mean when you started out you must not have thought it could be this big or did you think it could be as big as it turned out to be? 00:21:04,840 Anne Cleveland I'm not sure that I had any, I didn't have a goal or even an idea other than the fact that as I started learning what the library society was as a student of history to not have ever even set foot in the place before was horrifying to me and it was this jewel that nobody knew about that had been hidden for all these years. Not that it hadn't been a very, very appreciated jewel in its heyday after its founding. I mean my God, four of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were board members. So it's not that it hadn't been a grand well-respected hub �but during Warren Ripley's thirty-two years of being in charge as chairman of the board his approach and that of his boards was to protect the library society by hiding it and while it's easy to sort of dismiss that as dumb or certainly misguided in retrospect but they were doing what they could to preserve this gem in the 40s and 50s. Charleston was still suffering from the Great Depression and the Civil War. Of course that's what saved it from over development until recently. Anyway I'm not sure what, I never had a vision of what it would become. I just knew that having it be open and become the home to people who were intellectually curious and culturally adventuresome would be an open welcoming environment. 00:23:37,480 Lisa Hayes What about, so I know that you had written to Tom Hanks to try to get him to come. Are there some other authors that you were persistent with who weren't able to come? I'm just curious. Who were you interested in? 00:23:56,320 Anne Cleveland The second person after Pat Conroy was Bette Midler because Ryan Reynolds and whoever his wife is, she's a movie star too, I can't remember. If they got married here in Charleston, I can't even remember how long it was, but it was still early on. 00:24:23,000 Lisa Hayes At Boone Hall. 00:24:24,000 Anne Cleveland Yes, at Boone Hall. 00:24:25,000 Lisa Hayes Blake Lively. 00:24:26,000 Anne Cleveland Yes, that's who it is. I came over to the main reading room from my office and Janice and Carol were standing at the desk. This had to be after the second gala, had to be maybe 2014 because the front desk was by the, I had moved the front desk by that point. They just looked starstruck and I said, "What?" Janice said, "That's Bette Midler." I looked over at the reading table which was over in that corner and it was this sort of little old lady with short gray hair. Yeah, right. And Carol said, "No, look, it's Betty von Vulserberg or whatever and that's her married name." And I said, "What?" And they said, "Yeah, yeah." And they were not trying to pull, I could tell they weren't trying to pull my leg. And then I looked over and I thought, "Damn, that does kind of look �like Bette Midler without makeup and fancy clothes." And Carol told me that she had asked for poetry. She wanted to read poetry and she brought out, who's got the blood, the Confederate 00:26:07,720 Lisa Hayes Timrod. 00:26:08,720 Anne Cleveland She brought that out from the vault and Bette Midler was over there reading poetry from the nineteenth century. And I went over and I thought, "Oh my God, this is amazing." I said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt you." And she said, "Yes?" And I said, "I just want to thank you. You have made the year for my head librarian and Janice. I mean, they told me you were here and I didn't believe them, but clearly you are. But thank you so much. And I'm amazed that you're adventuresome enough to want to read Timrod and these other poets." And she said, "Oh, well yeah, when I come to a new place I want to try and get to know it. And I was wandering around and I went to the Gibbes and I went to the Historical Society. But then I walked in here and just decided to sort of sit down and enjoy my afternoon." And I said, "Well, thank you so much." And she said, "Well, now what's your business plan?" And I said, "I mean, I had no business plan." I said, "I don't know what you mean." She said, "Well, I'd like to make a contribution." And I said, "No, no, no. I tell you what, if you would come back and speak, we'd had Pat Conroy, talk about the creative process. That would be the coolest thing in the world." And she said, "Oh, well, thank you." Anyway, and I then said, "I don't want to bother you anymore." And I went back over and our daughter Meg was working at the library at that point. And when I related the story to the staff at the end of the day, Meg said, "You ought to be fired. Why would you not take a donation from Bette Midler?" And I said, "Well, I think it'll be much better if we can get her back." So I wrote her for years. But she kept starring in movies and she's in her eighties and she's still always busy. That her executive assistant and I still have a relationship. So she was the next big name that I went after. And Tom Hanks, of course, I would have loved. Ken Burns. And it was through David that I, well, through David we met Ken Burns, spent a whole evening with him. So it was easier to write him. But David and Tom had worked together on Ken's Civil Wars series, all kinds of things. So I mean, David was the voice, the narrator in Sea Biscuit, that movie. In fact, we watched that the other night just to hear David's voice. But anyway, and I've gotten, I mean, both of them continued to write me back, but I never have, never got them to Charleston. But not for lack of trying. 00:29:43,600 Lisa Hayes You are persistent. 00:29:44,600 Anne Cleveland Yes. �00:29:45,600 Lisa Hayes Well, so I did mention the capital campaign and the renovation. And I know you got the, is it called the Order of the Palmettos? You were awarded the-00:29:58,320 Anne Cleveland No, I was-00:29:59,320 Lisa Hayes By the governor? 00:30:00,320 Anne Cleveland No, no, I didn't get that. I got, see, I don't, I can't remember what it was called. But from the Humanities Award for the state. And the governor did award it. But-00:30:21,120 Lisa Hayes I have the name wrong, not the Order of the Palmettos. But some very special recognition of your work to revitalize, like you said, the humanities. And was the building not part of that recognition too, maybe? 00:30:35,840 Anne Cleveland You know, I was embarrassed by the whole thing and didn't want anybody coming and it just-00:30:43,600 Lisa Hayes Well, I remember when it happened thinking that that was well-deserved. Well-- And I could tell that you were embarrassed. But I thought it was well-deserved. And yeah, and the building is obviously a lovely, lovely space. And I hope you felt that way after all that. 00:31:03,600 Anne Cleveland Oh, yeah. Once I realized, and I'm sure-- I know you heard the story, but for posterity-00:31:11,560 Lisa Hayes Yes. 00:31:12,560 Anne Cleveland �There was the northeast corner of the building had a leak in the very up in the ceiling that we had fixed. And then a year later, it was back. And I had it fixed again. And then another year later, it was there. And I finally thought, we're probably going to have to replace the roof. But let me get a structural engineer. Because we'd had good roofers who had come, thought they'd identified the problem and fixed it. And to then have it not work was-00:32:01,280 Lisa Hayes Frustrating. 00:32:02,280 Anne Cleveland Very frustrating and questioning. And anyway, so I finally then hired a structural engineer, assuming that I was going to be told and we were going to have to, as a board, realize that we were going to have to re-roof the-- repair the roof, the whole roof, not just that corner. Then the report came back mind-bogglingly telling us that the interior guttering that had made the Beaux Arts building so beautiful because they hid all the gutters in the walls had essentially compromised the entire structure of the building, which I was not prepared for at all. I never thought of myself as having to be a fundraiser. I was-- I grew up in Asia enough that I was always looking for ways to save money. 00:33:05,000 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah. The Euro-50. 00:33:07,000 Anne Cleveland I really don't like spending money. So that I-- but I never thought of myself as having to ask anybody for money. And the way I had-- by expanding the membership and then adding levels of support with the fellows that had all made sure that we were never in the red. We were always a well-run business, but not asking anybody for money. Just getting them excited enough to be supportive. But that meant that we were going to need a whole different approach. And fortunately, I went to a social friend, Doerte McManus, who did exactly that kind of stuff. She was the head of development for the Gilliard and begged her to come help me and thought she would be the perfect person to transition to down the road years later. And she was ready to move on herself and came. And we were-- it was just the perfect combination of very similar talents, but then wildly different talents that complimented each other. And so we-- but once we realized we needed to remove the entire roof-- do you remember when we had those huge sort of Lego-looking cement blocks? 00:34:46,280 Lisa Hayes Yep. �00:34:51,760 Anne Cleveland They had to create a temporary roof to then be able to take up the entire roof of the building. 00:35:03,440 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 00:35:04,440 Anne Cleveland I mean, it was-- and that was before we got to the interior. That was a whole year and a half with construction. But we thought we needed to raise $4 million. And then it was $5 million. And then I said, "It makes no sense to be raising this kind of money just for the structural." And then you still go down the stacks. And we had old neon-- what do you-- no, not neon-- fluorescent bulb lighting in the stacks with the string that sometimes worked to pull and tear them. But I mean, the lighting was just awful because it had been added-- you know, it was built in 1912. 00:35:58,000 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 00:35:59,000 Anne Cleveland And it had been sort of updated and then adjusted when they added air conditioning. So I mean, it was all haphazard. And I said, "We've got to, at the very least, make-- upgrade the electrical work and the lighting." And then it started saying, "Well, and we ought to, you know--" 00:36:23,200 Lisa Hayes Do the elevator and-00:36:24,760 Anne Cleveland Well, that was even farther along. But it just started expanding. And then we decided to-- and then in conjunction with finally having worked and worked hard at cultivating Skipper Igoe to leave his Shakespeare collection to us, then all of a sudden when we got it, we realized we ought to-- we would need its own room. And that meant changing the layout of the new building, which is where the offices were. And so it just kept growing. And fortunately, Doerte knew how to do that. 00:37:17,240 Lisa Hayes Yeah. �00:37:18,240 Anne Cleveland And-00:37:19,240 Lisa Hayes Well, gosh, I guess I hadn't thought about that we got the Igoe collection simultaneously-- I mean, they knew simultaneous, so they're renovation. But what if we had gotten it just after their renovation had been done and we would have had to like retrofit or something? I wonder-00:37:35,360 Anne Cleveland I'm not sure what we would have done. I mean, it was all-- there was so much-- there were so many moving parts at that point. That's when I was also thinking of reincorporating Jacques's Antique Store. So the bookstore, the end of the capital campaign, the Igoe Shakespeare Library, I'd have to go back and look at my notes in order to see the real timeline. But it all just kind of bubbled up together. But I had said it makes no sense not to upfit the lighting and make some of these changes more permanent. 00:38:22,560 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Good job. 00:38:26,040 Anne Cleveland Yeah, yeah. The only thing I-- there's-- that I sometimes think I should have fought harder. We had the original toilets in the ladies' room and the men's room. The men's room, I didn't care about saving them. But I really thought we can upfit and make it a lovely-- with new cubicles and stuff, have it lovely. But they're perfectly sound working toilets. And they got the insignia from 1912. And I just thought it's not that they're uncomfortable. But I got outvoted. 00:39:11,040 Lisa Hayes Well, I have a picture of them if you ever want to have a recollection. That's funny. Well, and so next to the Library Society is a really lovely-- not lovely now, but going to be lovely space that I know you were instrumental in getting that to happen. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how that worked? 00:39:36,960 Anne Cleveland That was-00:39:37,960 Lisa Hayes �I know persistence is another word for this. 00:39:42,280 Anne Cleveland Well, of course, I didn't get to the Library Society until 2009. And prior to that, the Gibbes had been trying to look forward to getting SCE&G leaving that strip of land just north of us. But that historically moved like a glacier just not even inches, but milli-- and when I came on board, I certainly agreed with Angela and the Gibbes that we ought to try to preserve that as open space. And it was very subrosa for many years. I mean, we would meet with people and think we'd made some headway. I actually had struck up a-- excuse me-- a friendship with the CEO of SCANA. I can't remember what-- because there's SCANA and SCE&G and another entity. But Kevin Marsh, because he had a school-aged daughter who loved to read. And I had created the conference room. It was one of the first things I did because we needed it, because we hosted the membership libraries group a few months after I had taken over and there was no place to meet. But anyway, and we were in there and I kept saying I wanted him to bring his daughter. And we'd gotten to know each other well enough. And he had finally written me an email that he was inclined to-- because they had been out of the property for at least five years at that point. And we knew it was-- it could be developed or it could just be given. And they could get some tax benefit if they gave it. And he-- anyway, he said that he was inclined to go that direction. What none of us knew at that point was that he was involved in sort of the cover-up of the $9 billion fiasco of the nuclear power plant. And they lost all perspective and even ability to consider what they were going to do with the property. And got caught up in the whole lawsuit and he ended up going to jail. It was-- oh, it's just a disaster. But it took everything-- all of the years of sort of cultivating the people in the positions of power who could have made those decisions just got wiped right off. And so we started again. And at that point, the Gibbes had finished their renovation and their business model depended on having lots of wedding receptions in the Lenhardt garden, which didn't matter to me. But it reached a head when we started-- when Dominion decided that they were going to-- they had bought the-- they had bought SCE&G. And so after a number of years, they were going to try and sell off a lot of the properties that SCE&G had accumulated over the century. And they were negotiating with the Gibbes solo. And I said, no, we needed to be involved. And just like the previous point where we thought we had some agreements, it all sort of started falling apart. Anyway, the Gibbes then came to us and said that they had a generous donor who was willing to buy the property for $10 million and give the Gibbes the E.B. White building, which is all they wanted to begin with. And they wanted our approval because we had been working so much. John Tecklenberg, the mayor, I'd known through family connections for years and years. So I kept an open line with him, making sure that the library society's interests were going to be considered. And it all went downhill because they said-- I said, well, I can't just agree to that because what's going to happen to the rest of the property? It sounds like they're going to develop it. Well, we don't know. We don't know. We just need your approval. And I said, well, I can't do that. I've got to meet with my board and was told, no, you shouldn't discuss this with your board. And I said, no, I'm going to discuss it with my board. And we'll try and get back to you next week. And that was-- that was a frigid reception. And I convened the board via Zoom, which we'd all learned to do by then. And they all agreed, no, we need to know what's going to happen because we don't �want huge buildings going up on our side. And so we said, no. But we hadn't heard anything back from the city. And hadn't heard anything back from the Gibbes. And I finally called the mayor's office and talked to his secretary. And I said, I haven't heard anything. And I really need to talk to John before too long because there's pressure from the Gibbes to-- on this development. And she said, well, he signed a letter. And I said, what letter? The letter saying that the library approves. And I said, no, we haven't given our approval. I just had my board convene yesterday. And she said, no, he signed a letter. It's in the outbox. And I said, you need to pull that letter because our board did not approve the plan. We're still trying to figure out what's the best way to move forward for the piece of property. It's the last open piece of property in the historic district. And having six stories of condos is not what we think is best. And she said, I'll be back in touch. And then Rick Daru, his chief of staff, called and said, what is going on? And I said, Rick, we did not give our approval. He said, well, we were told you had. And I said, well, that's not the case. And so they pulled the letter, which made me the bad guy in-because it all fell apart then. But still nothing was happening. And the Gibbes was still trying to negotiate with their people to get it. And six stories of condominiums were going to be built, but they were going to get their building. And I asked if I could go speak in front of city council. 00:48:36,000 Lisa Hayes I'm going to record on my phone, too, in case this runs out of batteries. Sorry. 00:48:42,440 Anne Cleveland Which is not-- I'm pretty comfortable speaking to people, but not in that kind of formal way. So I made Will go with me and hold my hand. And we practiced because I had four minutes. Or maybe been three-- anyway, I got up and said that it was vital that we save the last open piece of property in historic district. And I thought, a park, what would Central-- what would New York be without Central Park? And I just thought it was a mistake. And of course, some people looked like they were just reading a book that the city council members had no reaction. 00:49:29,760 Lisa Hayes Was that the first time that a park had been considered for that spot? 00:49:33,720 Anne Cleveland Well, no. With the mayor. We almost had it. It was almost signed in red. It was so close to being finalized. Anyway, but I thought I've now gone and made my appeal to city council. They didn't look like they were paying any attention. But it's now public record. So I contacted Robert Baer at the Post and Courier. And he had no idea what was going on. The Post and Courier had no idea that the property was even in play. And so he wrote an op-ed. And then another series of sort of quiet letters were exchanged. And then Ben Navarro read the second op-ed and called the mayor and said, "I'd like to look at it." And all of a sudden, it was a done deal. So we-- if I �had not called Elizabeth Bailey asking, "Why haven't I heard?" I just got to speak to John. And she told me, "No." I mean, it would have been too late. 00:50:57,700 Lisa Hayes Yeah, wow. Your instincts and good timing and luck. 00:51:03,120 Anne Cleveland Yeah, it was total luck because if-- I mean, he had signed a letter saying, "Yeah, it's fine from the mayor's point of view because the library societies in sync and all this." Then they would have signed a contract with the developer and it would have been too late. 00:51:24,120 Lisa Hayes Well, and I know speaking from someone who works at the front desk, I hope that they're going to put a restroom building over there somehow because-00:51:33,220 Anne Cleveland Oh, they will. 00:51:34,220 Lisa Hayes --that will, you know, a really nice park like that. People will be there all the time. It's going to be so nice, it sounds like. 00:51:40,340 Anne Cleveland Oh, my-- what Casey Lavin certainly told me while I was still involved was that there's going to be high-end receptions, which is what upset the Gibbes so much because they looked at it as competition. But they are-- I said, "If you're spending $100,000 on a reception, you don't want a trailer bathroom." 00:52:05,440 Lisa Hayes No. 00:52:06,440 Anne Cleveland He said, "No, no, no. We will have facilities for high-end facilities for the park." 00:52:14,280 Lisa Hayes �Do you know what the building-- what will happen with the building that's on King Street? Is that part of--? 00:52:20,580 Anne Cleveland It's-- it-- certainly when I was still involved and I asked to remain involved, but that hasn't happened. But it was historic and couldn't be torn down. So my guess is that they will gut it and have a sort of kitchen-type facility, bathrooms, that will service the park for special events. 00:52:54,880 Lisa Hayes Perfect. Good. 00:52:56,880 Anne Cleveland I mean, that's my assumption. 00:52:57,880 Lisa Hayes It seems like a good plan for it. It's going to be so nice to have that right next to the library. 00:53:01,880 Anne Cleveland Yeah. 00:53:02,880 Lisa Hayes I'm so glad that it worked out. 00:53:03,880 Anne Cleveland Yes. Me too. Shakespeare in the Park. 00:53:07,000 Lisa Hayes Yes. Well thank you for your time, and I don't know. Is there anything else you can think of that we haven't talked about that you would like to talk about? I know you've done so much and there's probably a million things we could-00:53:23,000 Anne Cleveland Well I think for a good run of years the thing I probably took the most pride in was having brought together what I thought was the perfect group of people to shepherd the library society. It was, we had a few hiccups when when Carol retired, we had two Jessica's. I mean, we had, �you know, I'd never been in a position to particularly hire people. Oh, and I'll go back just when the last bookstore, it was in the paper. I can't even remember the name of it. Over on Folly Road, the paper had an article about the last independent bookstore closing in Charleston. It was just so sad. I had gone there some. I didn't go on Folly Road that much, but I got in the car. I said, "Janice, I'll be back." And drove over and I said, "What are you going to do?" And she said, "I don't know. All I've ever done is sell books." And I thought, "Well, and this was still early on enough that we didn't have a children's library and we didn't, I mean, there wasn't somebody permanently at the front desk." Anyway, I said, "I will find the money to hire you in some capacity because you know how to sell books, which means you'll know what the latest books are and all that kind of stuff." And she was a nice person. And of course, I didn't have anything in a budget to hire her, but I figured it'll work out. We didn't have anything in the budget to buy a Steinway, but I figured it out anyway. And she was a nice person, but she loved her job in her bookstore because she sat there and read all day long. And she wasn't somebody who just took the bull by the horn, so it didn't end up working. My heart was way ahead of any business sense. And so we had some ups and downs like that, but then we had a core of people that were together for a decade that really understood why the library society is so unique and special and cared so much about it. And I was really proud of, especially you. I could hardly wait to finally convince you to come full-time. 00:56:24,040 Lisa Hayes Well, you fostered a very collegial work environment. 00:56:28,320 Anne Cleveland Yeah. It was just, I could hardly wait to go to work. Well, I think everybody felt that way. 00:56:36,320 Lisa Hayes Yeah. I don't know if the phrase is salad days, but I do feel like the library has had so many ups and a long period, I think, of downs. But then really, I feel like during her tenure, we began a very forward trajectory that is still increasing. 00:56:56,320 Anne Cleveland Yeah. 00:56:57,320 Lisa Hayes I feel good about being there, so thank you. 00:57:00,320 Anne Cleveland Oh, yeah. Well, I'm so glad you are there and holding down the fort. �00:57:05,320 Lisa Hayes Doing my best. 00:57:07,320 Anne Cleveland Yeah. Well, if you think of other questions, I'm happy to talk. One of the things that I need to do is come. I still got hundreds of pictures on my phone of the renovations when James and Steve knocked out the entrance into what is now the Igoe area with sledgehammers. Do you remember any of that? 00:57:44,560 Lisa Hayes No, I probably wasn't there that particular day. I remember what the research and writing center used to look like. 00:57:52,880 Anne Cleveland But we had to move every book out of—but anyway, I've got hundreds of pictures on my phone that I need to just come over and I guess sit with Gabriel and just download them. 00:58:12,280 Lisa Hayes I think Danielle could help you with that. She's such a wiz. She'd be glad to help you. 00:58:17,520 Anne Cleveland Yeah, because I don't need them anymore. 00:58:20,520 Lisa Hayes Yeah. And if you did keep a diary or a journal or something like that, we'd certainly love to talk about a way to get your papers. We have a small collection of things relating to you and your family already, so if you wanted to, we could talk about that. 00:58:39,520 Anne Cleveland I kept my calendar. 00:58:42,520 Lisa Hayes Planner. �00:58:43,520 Anne Cleveland For every month that I worked there. 00:58:48,520 Lisa Hayes Smart. 00:58:49,520 Anne Cleveland And I scribbled on that a lot. And then I—for a number of years, when we had Monday meetings, I made up the week— 00:59:00,000 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah, you have all those? I have all those. 00:59:02,000 Anne Cleveland Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to, but I don't know that it'll make sense to anybody unless I just transcribe it all. 00:59:13,520 Lisa Hayes Oh, no, yeah, don't feel like you have to do that. Debbie has a lot of—well, your emails and things too, I'm guessing, are in the archive. I don't know, but— 00:59:23,520 Anne Cleveland They're supposed to be. 00:59:25,520 Lisa Hayes I don't know. Well, like I said, thank you so much. 00:59:29,520 Anne Cleveland Oh yeah. 00:59:30,520 Lisa Hayes It's nice to visit with you. Keep in touch. 00:59:32,520 Anne Cleveland �Oh. Yeah. Well, you can— � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 0:59:36 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 00:00:00,000 Lisa Hayes Okay, so my name is Lisa Hayes. I'm the Director of Collections at the Charleston Library Society and I'm speaking with Anne Cleveland, our former Executive Director here in our home. It's Thursday, April 18, 2024. And we're continuing our conversation from earlier this year, learning about her time as the Executive Director and all of the wonderful changes she brought to the Library Society. So now we're going to hear a little bit about some of the authors that Anne was able to get in beginning with Pat Conway. So tell us about how you got him to come. 00:00:43,280 Anne Cleveland Well, one of the things that my predecessor left was a Rolodex, which I never kept a Rolodex. I'd never throw it away, but it's just not the way I function. But I was, you know, in the early days, there wasn't much to do other than all the moving and rearranging of use of space. That was what I focused on primarily those first few months. But then Pat Conroy was coming out with his book, South of Broad. And by then I had heard the story from Steve Gates that there'd been a lot of consternation about where the Library would build its first building. Because it was always such a vital part of the power structure of Charleston and South Carolina that when South Carolina was first established as a state, the Library Society was given the third floor of what was the state house, now the county courthouse. I mean, it was that important to the intellectual life of this growing city and state. And finally by the turn of the century post-Civil War, they decided that they needed to build a purpose-built library. And somebody else can fill you in on the whole Carnegie outreach. But the long and the short of it is that they decided to do it on their own so that they could restrict membership. And most people who used the library lived South of Broad. That was the, you know, it's not like there were lots of restaurants or anything of much cultural value and people were used to just going to Meeting and Broad to go to the library. 00:03:02,360 Lisa Hayes And right now, Anne's speaking about, so the library was built, the building that we're in now was built in 1914. And you were talking about the middle 20th part of the 20th century. Are you talking about more toward when you- 00:03:14,360 Anne Cleveland No, I'm talking about when it was built in 1912 and opened in 1914. And now I'm talking about why. 00:03:26,360 Lisa Hayes Oh, sorry. You were saying about Pat Conroy and the- 00:03:29,360 Anne Cleveland Oh, oh, well. It became known that he was coming out with a book called South of Broad. And one of the arguments that had been given by some board members in 1900 for it to stay very close to the Four Corners of Law. In fact, the person who had earlier in the end of the 19th century purchased Steve Gates' house, which is on the corner of Tradd and Meeting. They purchased that and the properties north of 59 Meeting to have that be the site of the new library. But the countervailing belief was that the city was expanding and moving north and that it would be more important to have it above Broad. And so when I read the article about Pat Conroy writing his book South of Broad, I always tried to, in my appeal, talk about something that would be catchy. And I said that the Library Society, which was the second oldest circulating library in America, they had considered keeping it south of Broad, but ultimately decided that they would move it north of Broad, just playing on the title of his book. And I guess I can't remember whether I had seen his name in the Rolodex that Eric had left on his desk, or whether it was after I learned about the book and then just randomly was looking through. But however it happened, I had an address for Pat Conroy. So I sat down and wrote him a letter telling him all about the history of the library and how it almost had stayed south of Broad, you know, haha, but that it ended up where it is, and that we would love to have him come do a book signing and we would round up as many people as we could get. But you know, that was me just randomly writing after a couple of months at the Library Society. And one afternoon the phone rang and it was still, I was a teacher, I never had a phone on my desk. So it was still, and nobody was calling those first few months. So the phone rang and I said, "Anne Cleveland?" And there was this lull, you know, just silence and then, "Well, Anne Cleveland, this is Pat Conroy, what can I do for you?" And I almost dropped the phone. I mean, I just couldn't believe Pat Conroy had gotten my letter and called me. And I told him what I envisioned and that I had been helping the school out on Johns Island Charleston Collegiate, which was a very diverse school at that point, and that I'd love to get him to talk to the faculty and that I'd love them to stay for, you know, a week. Of course, they only lived at Beaufort. But anyway, he got him on a good, or he got me, because it was a good day, and he agreed to pretty much everything. And so we gave a dinner party that first night of friends of his, Alex Sanders, who had been president of the College of Charleston, and some other people of note. And it was just— 00:07:33,720 Lisa Hayes At your home? Did you have your work? 00:07:35,720 Anne Cleveland Yeah, had the dinner here. That was the first night, and then the second night was the—oh, and I got Joe Riley to, I said, "Can you give him a key to the city?" He said, "Well, we don't do that." But he proclaimed Pat Conroy Day, the day of the signing. And Angela Mack had lived across the street from us since we moved here, and so we arranged that we would do the book talk at the library society and then go over and have a reception. So it was combining resources, which most people weren't doing at that point. They still don't. 00:08:21,560 Lisa Hayes Making those connections. 00:08:22,560 Anne Cleveland Yes. But anyway. And so that was something—that was big because Pat Conroy was very popular and well-known, and so it was something I could use in a letter writing to other people. And it had worked so well that time. I continued to try and do that. And we had gotten—we had Scott Turow early on. And I can't even remember. It was just random. Anybody I could think of, I would figure out how to write and ask. But my true love was David McCullough because I was a history teacher and a student of history and had read almost every book he'd ever written. And John Adams had come out, which is what I had studied in college and written my honors thesis on. So I started writing him, and he wrote beautiful handwritten letters in response. But it was always, "Thank you so much, Mrs. Cleveland. I would love to come, but I'm very busy." And year after year after year. And then serendipitously because of connection through Wills being a lawyer who was head of an international legal group. And Steve Gates' roommate at Harvard Law School was a judge, federal judge, who had been a baby judge for Sandra Day O'Connor. And Will and I had had dinner with her and met her. And I told her all about the John Locke Fundamental Constitution. Anyway, the long and the short of it is we got Mark Wolf, the judge from Boston, to come down and speak about our collections, the John Marshall letter and the Fundamental Constitution. And we got Sandra Day O'Connor to come because she had mentored him when he first went on the bench. And I mean, it was just perfect timing. And there was a nice article about the Library Society, the paper, the next day, with a really flattering picture of me and Steve and Sandra Day O'Connor. And it just randomly occurred to me that David McCullough just might think I was some wizened and little librarian just stalking him. But this was a really nice picture of me with Sandra Day O'Connor and Steve. And so I wrote him saying that we'd had this wonderful evening with Sandra Day O'Connor. And it was everything I'd hoped it would be, except it wasn't him. And that's who I was really still hoping and praying would come to the Library Society and enclosed the article because it had the history of the Library Society. It was well done. And about two or three weeks later, I got a letter saying, "Well, next spring, I think will work." And it was when his book, The Wright Brothers, was coming out. And we met them at the airport at midnight. Their plane had been delayed, but we picked them up in my square car. And met them for breakfast the next morning and then had a lunch with Martha Ingram here. And then had a spectacular program and Gala and gave him the Founders Award. And by the next morning, he had offhandedly said, "This is where we ought to spend the winters," because they'd had a miserable two winters in a row in Boston. And I found two places, the carriage houses, on Tradd Street before they left. And they signed on the dotted line the following Monday and moved here the next winter. And the next winter, which was magical because we saw them all the time. But once you've got, you can mention Pat Conroy and Scott Turow and Sandra Day O'Connor and then David McCullough, you have the veritas, the gravitas of being able to seem like a substantial enough organization to get some attention. And so it started mushrooming. And then, I guess what really upped it was when we had my older brother's roommate from college coming to talk about his memoir, which is Steve Forsman. And he started Blackstone and is now worth almost $40 billion. And he's been incredibly successful. When I knew him at 18, his father ran a dry good store in a suburb of Philadelphia. And I mentioned that he was coming to Liza and Lou Kunkel and Liza said that the founder of Greystar was in awe of Steve Forsman. And I said, "Well, do you think Greystar might be a sponsor?" And the response was, "Hell yes." And that's how we launched the business and leadership. And that led to then having David Rubenstein come and he continued to come. And he's, I mean, he's, he has come five times. So and it was then that I was beginning to think it was time to contemplate retirement. But I knew that the number of people who have the skills that need to take the library business-wise in the right direction, which was not my great skill, would not necessarily have the kind of personality that I have that just thinks, "Just write them and beg them and tenaciously dog them until they say yes." And we were hosting the Century Club and Polly Buxton stopped by to introduce herself. And she had, after the last independent bookstore had closed maybe five years earlier. And that's another whole story, which I'll tell you in person. I mean, personally, rather than on this. But I was feeling guilty because I was so busy at the library I hadn't even gone over to see the bookstore. 00:16:33,080 Lisa Hayes That's when it was by the- 00:16:34,080 Anne Cleveland On Concord Street. And so she came in and introduced herself and I said, "Oh, I'm so sorry that I haven't even been over." And I have to back up a little bit. Things were evolving in a way that I also thought that we might want to reintegrate Jacques's antique space into the library because we were having so many programs. There were lots more lifelong learning classes and it just- There were enough things going on. I was contemplating the idea of bringing that space back into the use of the library itself. Anyway, she said, "No, no, I can understand you're so busy. Who knows how much longer we're going to be there?" And I said, "Why?" And she said, "Well, they're talking about building this damn hotel right across the street and that'll kill business." And it's like this light bulb lit up in my brain and I thought, "An independent bookstore on campus, given our history, the ability to attract big name authors, maybe that's what ought to do." And literally within 24 hours I'd asked her and Julian to come meet with me and discuss whether I should turn over the space to them. And it happened, and sure enough, I mean I look at all the programming in the year that I've been gone and 90% of it has been generated by all the connections that Polly and I have and the Buxton Books has. And so it's been exactly what I'd hoped it would be in terms of programming. 00:18:43,800 Lisa Hayes Wonderful for the authors to get their books sold and have them added to the New York Times bestseller list and great for the library society to be able to do it. 00:18:52,880 Anne Cleveland When you can say that you have some authors who you have sold over 300 books, even great bookstores like Ann Patchett's bookstore in Nashville, she didn't sell 300 copies, but because of the reading room. We can do that and also do intimate ones down in the bookstore, but it's everything I had. I think that's probably going to be my legacy in terms of long term effect on the perception of the Library Society having brought Polly and the bookstore on campus. The authors, the programs, the bookstores, the bookstores. I mean I think the bindery was significant because there just aren't many libraries that have a facility that caters to taking care of books. 00:20:04,560 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Well when I left today, James was giving a tour to some folks who were publishers and showing them his space down there and the reading room that you were there to the renovation. We didn't even talk about the big capital campaign renovation that you were able to accomplish. The Igoe room of course and just there are so many, I think your lasting legacy is just the revitalization of all the different parts of the library society. It's been remarkable. 00:20:37,200 Anne Cleveland Pretty much opening the doors and letting people know about it. 00:20:41,800 Lisa Hayes But you were able to make those early connections that formed the baseline. You know when people like you're saying here Pat Conroy was here and David Rubinstein and they think well I want to be a part of that. 00:20:53,240 Anne Cleveland Right. 00:20:54,240 Lisa Hayes Yeah. That was really smart of you. I don't know if you, I mean when you started out you must not have thought it could be this big or did you think it could be as big as it turned out to be? 00:21:04,840 Anne Cleveland I'm not sure that I had any, I didn't have a goal or even an idea other than the fact that as I started learning what the library society was as a student of history to not have ever even set foot in the place before was horrifying to me and it was this jewel that nobody knew about that had been hidden for all these years. Not that it hadn't been a very, very appreciated jewel in its heyday after its founding. I mean my God, four of the signers of the Declaration of Independence were board members. So it's not that it hadn't been a grand well-respected hub but during Warren Ripley's thirty-two years of being in charge as chairman of the board his approach and that of his boards was to protect the library society by hiding it and while it's easy to sort of dismiss that as dumb or certainly misguided in retrospect but they were doing what they could to preserve this gem in the 40s and 50s. Charleston was still suffering from the Great Depression and the Civil War. Of course that's what saved it from over development until recently. Anyway I'm not sure what, I never had a vision of what it would become. I just knew that having it be open and become the home to people who were intellectually curious and culturally adventuresome would be an open welcoming environment. 00:23:37,480 Lisa Hayes What about, so I know that you had written to Tom Hanks to try to get him to come. Are there some other authors that you were persistent with who weren't able to come? I'm just curious. Who were you interested in? 00:23:56,320 Anne Cleveland The second person after Pat Conroy was Bette Midler because Ryan Reynolds and whoever his wife is, she's a movie star too, I can't remember. If they got married here in Charleston, I can't even remember how long it was, but it was still early on. 00:24:23,000 Lisa Hayes At Boone Hall. 00:24:24,000 Anne Cleveland Yes, at Boone Hall. 00:24:25,000 Lisa Hayes Blake Lively. 00:24:26,000 Anne Cleveland Yes, that's who it is. I came over to the main reading room from my office and Janice and Carol were standing at the desk. This had to be after the second gala, had to be maybe 2014 because the front desk was by the, I had moved the front desk by that point. They just looked starstruck and I said, "What?" Janice said, "That's Bette Midler." I looked over at the reading table which was over in that corner and it was this sort of little old lady with short gray hair. Yeah, right. And Carol said, "No, look, it's Betty von Vulserberg or whatever and that's her married name." And I said, "What?" And they said, "Yeah, yeah." And they were not trying to pull, I could tell they weren't trying to pull my leg. And then I looked over and I thought, "Damn, that does kind of look like Bette Midler without makeup and fancy clothes." And Carol told me that she had asked for poetry. She wanted to read poetry and she brought out, who's got the blood, the Confederate 00:26:07,720 Lisa Hayes Timrod. 00:26:08,720 Anne Cleveland She brought that out from the vault and Bette Midler was over there reading poetry from the nineteenth century. And I went over and I thought, "Oh my God, this is amazing." I said, "Excuse me, I'm sorry to interrupt you." And she said, "Yes?" And I said, "I just want to thank you. You have made the year for my head librarian and Janice. I mean, they told me you were here and I didn't believe them, but clearly you are. But thank you so much. And I'm amazed that you're adventuresome enough to want to read Timrod and these other poets." And she said, "Oh, well yeah, when I come to a new place I want to try and get to know it. And I was wandering around and I went to the Gibbes and I went to the Historical Society. But then I walked in here and just decided to sort of sit down and enjoy my afternoon." And I said, "Well, thank you so much." And she said, "Well, now what's your business plan?" And I said, "I mean, I had no business plan." I said, "I don't know what you mean." She said, "Well, I'd like to make a contribution." And I said, "No, no, no. I tell you what, if you would come back and speak, we'd had Pat Conroy, talk about the creative process. That would be the coolest thing in the world." And she said, "Oh, well, thank you." Anyway, and I then said, "I don't want to bother you anymore." And I went back over and our daughter Meg was working at the library at that point. And when I related the story to the staff at the end of the day, Meg said, "You ought to be fired. Why would you not take a donation from Bette Midler?" And I said, "Well, I think it'll be much better if we can get her back." So I wrote her for years. But she kept starring in movies and she's in her eighties and she's still always busy. That her executive assistant and I still have a relationship. So she was the next big name that I went after. And Tom Hanks, of course, I would have loved. Ken Burns. And it was through David that I, well, through David we met Ken Burns, spent a whole evening with him. So it was easier to write him. But David and Tom had worked together on Ken's Civil Wars series, all kinds of things. So I mean, David was the voice, the narrator in Sea Biscuit, that movie. In fact, we watched that the other night just to hear David's voice. But anyway, and I've gotten, I mean, both of them continued to write me back, but I never have, never got them to Charleston. But not for lack of trying. 00:29:43,600 Lisa Hayes You are persistent. 00:29:44,600 Anne Cleveland Yes. 00:29:45,600 Lisa Hayes Well, so I did mention the capital campaign and the renovation. And I know you got the, is it called the Order of the Palmettos? You were awarded the-- 00:29:58,320 Anne Cleveland No, I was-- 00:29:59,320 Lisa Hayes By the governor? 00:30:00,320 Anne Cleveland No, no, I didn't get that. I got, see, I don't, I can't remember what it was called. But from the Humanities Award for the state. And the governor did award it. But-- 00:30:21,120 Lisa Hayes I have the name wrong, not the Order of the Palmettos. But some very special recognition of your work to revitalize, like you said, the humanities. And was the building not part of that recognition too, maybe? 00:30:35,840 Anne Cleveland You know, I was embarrassed by the whole thing and didn't want anybody coming and it just-- 00:30:43,600 Lisa Hayes Well, I remember when it happened thinking that that was well-deserved. Well-- And I could tell that you were embarrassed. But I thought it was well-deserved. And yeah, and the building is obviously a lovely, lovely space. And I hope you felt that way after all that. 00:31:03,600 Anne Cleveland Oh, yeah. Once I realized, and I'm sure-- I know you heard the story, but for posterity-- 00:31:11,560 Lisa Hayes Yes. 00:31:12,560 Anne Cleveland There was the northeast corner of the building had a leak in the very up in the ceiling that we had fixed. And then a year later, it was back. And I had it fixed again. And then another year later, it was there. And I finally thought, we're probably going to have to replace the roof. But let me get a structural engineer. Because we'd had good roofers who had come, thought they'd identified the problem and fixed it. And to then have it not work was-- 00:32:01,280 Lisa Hayes Frustrating. 00:32:02,280 Anne Cleveland Very frustrating and questioning. And anyway, so I finally then hired a structural engineer, assuming that I was going to be told and we were going to have to, as a board, realize that we were going to have to re-roof the-- repair the roof, the whole roof, not just that corner. Then the report came back mind-bogglingly telling us that the interior guttering that had made the Beaux Arts building so beautiful because they hid all the gutters in the walls had essentially compromised the entire structure of the building, which I was not prepared for at all. I never thought of myself as having to be a fundraiser. I was-- I grew up in Asia enough that I was always looking for ways to save money. 00:33:05,000 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah. The Euro-50. 00:33:07,000 Anne Cleveland I really don't like spending money. So that I-- but I never thought of myself as having to ask anybody for money. And the way I had-- by expanding the membership and then adding levels of support with the fellows that had all made sure that we were never in the red. We were always a well-run business, but not asking anybody for money. Just getting them excited enough to be supportive. But that meant that we were going to need a whole different approach. And fortunately, I went to a social friend, Doerte McManus, who did exactly that kind of stuff. She was the head of development for the Gilliard and begged her to come help me and thought she would be the perfect person to transition to down the road years later. And she was ready to move on herself and came. And we were-- it was just the perfect combination of very similar talents, but then wildly different talents that complimented each other. And so we-- but once we realized we needed to remove the entire roof-- do you remember when we had those huge sort of Lego-looking cement blocks? 00:34:46,280 Lisa Hayes Yep. 00:34:51,760 Anne Cleveland They had to create a temporary roof to then be able to take up the entire roof of the building. 00:35:03,440 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 00:35:04,440 Anne Cleveland I mean, it was-- and that was before we got to the interior. That was a whole year and a half with construction. But we thought we needed to raise $4 million. And then it was $5 million. And then I said, "It makes no sense to be raising this kind of money just for the structural." And then you still go down the stacks. And we had old neon-- what do you-- no, not neon-- fluorescent bulb lighting in the stacks with the string that sometimes worked to pull and tear them. But I mean, the lighting was just awful because it had been added-- you know, it was built in 1912. 00:35:58,000 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 00:35:59,000 Anne Cleveland And it had been sort of updated and then adjusted when they added air conditioning. So I mean, it was all haphazard. And I said, "We've got to, at the very least, make-- upgrade the electrical work and the lighting." And then it started saying, "Well, and we ought to, you know--" 00:36:23,200 Lisa Hayes Do the elevator and-- 00:36:24,760 Anne Cleveland Well, that was even farther along. But it just started expanding. And then we decided to-- and then in conjunction with finally having worked and worked hard at cultivating Skipper Igoe to leave his Shakespeare collection to us, then all of a sudden when we got it, we realized we ought to-- we would need its own room. And that meant changing the layout of the new building, which is where the offices were. And so it just kept growing. And fortunately, Doerte knew how to do that. 00:37:17,240 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 00:37:18,240 Anne Cleveland And-- 00:37:19,240 Lisa Hayes Well, gosh, I guess I hadn't thought about that we got the Igoe collection simultaneously-- I mean, they knew simultaneous, so they're renovation. But what if we had gotten it just after their renovation had been done and we would have had to like retrofit or something? I wonder-- 00:37:35,360 Anne Cleveland I'm not sure what we would have done. I mean, it was all-- there was so much-- there were so many moving parts at that point. That's when I was also thinking of reincorporating Jacques's Antique Store. So the bookstore, the end of the capital campaign, the Igoe Shakespeare Library, I'd have to go back and look at my notes in order to see the real timeline. But it all just kind of bubbled up together. But I had said it makes no sense not to upfit the lighting and make some of these changes more permanent. 00:38:22,560 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Good job. 00:38:26,040 Anne Cleveland Yeah, yeah. The only thing I-- there's-- that I sometimes think I should have fought harder. We had the original toilets in the ladies' room and the men's room. The men's room, I didn't care about saving them. But I really thought we can upfit and make it a lovely-- with new cubicles and stuff, have it lovely. But they're perfectly sound working toilets. And they got the insignia from 1912. And I just thought it's not that they're uncomfortable. But I got outvoted. 00:39:11,040 Lisa Hayes Well, I have a picture of them if you ever want to have a recollection. That's funny. Well, and so next to the Library Society is a really lovely-- not lovely now, but going to be lovely space that I know you were instrumental in getting that to happen. Do you want to tell us a little bit about how that worked? 00:39:36,960 Anne Cleveland That was-- 00:39:37,960 Lisa Hayes I know persistence is another word for this. 00:39:42,280 Anne Cleveland Well, of course, I didn't get to the Library Society until 2009. And prior to that, the Gibbes had been trying to look forward to getting SCE&G leaving that strip of land just north of us. But that historically moved like a glacier just not even inches, but milli-- and when I came on board, I certainly agreed with Angela and the Gibbes that we ought to try to preserve that as open space. And it was very subrosa for many years. I mean, we would meet with people and think we'd made some headway. I actually had struck up a-- excuse me-- a friendship with the CEO of SCANA. I can't remember what-- because there's SCANA and SCE&G and another entity. But Kevin Marsh, because he had a school-aged daughter who loved to read. And I had created the conference room. It was one of the first things I did because we needed it, because we hosted the membership libraries group a few months after I had taken over and there was no place to meet. But anyway, and we were in there and I kept saying I wanted him to bring his daughter. And we'd gotten to know each other well enough. And he had finally written me an email that he was inclined to-- because they had been out of the property for at least five years at that point. And we knew it was-- it could be developed or it could just be given. And they could get some tax benefit if they gave it. And he-- anyway, he said that he was inclined to go that direction. What none of us knew at that point was that he was involved in sort of the cover-up of the $9 billion fiasco of the nuclear power plant. And they lost all perspective and even ability to consider what they were going to do with the property. And got caught up in the whole lawsuit and he ended up going to jail. It was-- oh, it's just a disaster. But it took everything-- all of the years of sort of cultivating the people in the positions of power who could have made those decisions just got wiped right off. And so we started again. And at that point, the Gibbes had finished their renovation and their business model depended on having lots of wedding receptions in the Lenhardt garden, which didn't matter to me. But it reached a head when we started-- when Dominion decided that they were going to-- they had bought the-- they had bought SCE&G. And so after a number of years, they were going to try and sell off a lot of the properties that SCE&G had accumulated over the century. And they were negotiating with the Gibbes solo. And I said, no, we needed to be involved. And just like the previous point where we thought we had some agreements, it all sort of started falling apart. Anyway, the Gibbes then came to us and said that they had a generous donor who was willing to buy the property for $10 million and give the Gibbes the E.B. White building, which is all they wanted to begin with. And they wanted our approval because we had been working so much. John Tecklenberg, the mayor, I'd known through family connections for years and years. So I kept an open line with him, making sure that the library society's interests were going to be considered. And it all went downhill because they said-- I said, well, I can't just agree to that because what's going to happen to the rest of the property? It sounds like they're going to develop it. Well, we don't know. We don't know. We just need your approval. And I said, well, I can't do that. I've got to meet with my board and was told, no, you shouldn't discuss this with your board. And I said, no, I'm going to discuss it with my board. And we'll try and get back to you next week. And that was-- that was a frigid reception. And I convened the board via Zoom, which we'd all learned to do by then. And they all agreed, no, we need to know what's going to happen because we don't want huge buildings going up on our side. And so we said, no. But we hadn't heard anything back from the city. And hadn't heard anything back from the Gibbes. And I finally called the mayor's office and talked to his secretary. And I said, I haven't heard anything. And I really need to talk to John before too long because there's pressure from the Gibbes to-- on this development. And she said, well, he signed a letter. And I said, what letter? The letter saying that the library approves. And I said, no, we haven't given our approval. I just had my board convene yesterday. And she said, no, he signed a letter. It's in the outbox. And I said, you need to pull that letter because our board did not approve the plan. We're still trying to figure out what's the best way to move forward for the piece of property. It's the last open piece of property in the historic district. And having six stories of condos is not what we think is best. And she said, I'll be back in touch. And then Rick Daru, his chief of staff, called and said, what is going on? And I said, Rick, we did not give our approval. He said, well, we were told you had. And I said, well, that's not the case. And so they pulled the letter, which made me the bad guy in-- because it all fell apart then. But still nothing was happening. And the Gibbes was still trying to negotiate with their people to get it. And six stories of condominiums were going to be built, but they were going to get their building. And I asked if I could go speak in front of city council. 00:48:36,000 Lisa Hayes I'm going to record on my phone, too, in case this runs out of batteries. Sorry. 00:48:42,440 Anne Cleveland Which is not-- I'm pretty comfortable speaking to people, but not in that kind of formal way. So I made Will go with me and hold my hand. And we practiced because I had four minutes. Or maybe been three-- anyway, I got up and said that it was vital that we save the last open piece of property in historic district. And I thought, a park, what would Central-- what would New York be without Central Park? And I just thought it was a mistake. And of course, some people looked like they were just reading a book that the city council members had no reaction. 00:49:29,760 Lisa Hayes Was that the first time that a park had been considered for that spot? 00:49:33,720 Anne Cleveland Well, no. With the mayor. We almost had it. It was almost signed in red. It was so close to being finalized. Anyway, but I thought I've now gone and made my appeal to city council. They didn't look like they were paying any attention. But it's now public record. So I contacted Robert Baer at the Post and Courier. And he had no idea what was going on. The Post and Courier had no idea that the property was even in play. And so he wrote an op-ed. And then another series of sort of quiet letters were exchanged. And then Ben Navarro read the second op-ed and called the mayor and said, "I'd like to look at it." And all of a sudden, it was a done deal. So we-- if I had not called Elizabeth Bailey asking, "Why haven't I heard?" I just got to speak to John. And she told me, "No." I mean, it would have been too late. 00:50:57,700 Lisa Hayes Yeah, wow. Your instincts and good timing and luck. 00:51:03,120 Anne Cleveland Yeah, it was total luck because if-- I mean, he had signed a letter saying, "Yeah, it's fine from the mayor's point of view because the library societies in sync and all this." Then they would have signed a contract with the developer and it would have been too late. 00:51:24,120 Lisa Hayes Well, and I know speaking from someone who works at the front desk, I hope that they're going to put a restroom building over there somehow because-- 00:51:33,220 Anne Cleveland Oh, they will. 00:51:34,220 Lisa Hayes --that will, you know, a really nice park like that. People will be there all the time. It's going to be so nice, it sounds like. 00:51:40,340 Anne Cleveland Oh, my-- what Casey Lavin certainly told me while I was still involved was that there's going to be high-end receptions, which is what upset the Gibbes so much because they looked at it as competition. But they are-- I said, "If you're spending $100,000 on a reception, you don't want a trailer bathroom." 00:52:05,440 Lisa Hayes No. 00:52:06,440 Anne Cleveland He said, "No, no, no. We will have facilities for high-end facilities for the park." 00:52:14,280 Lisa Hayes Do you know what the building-- what will happen with the building that's on King Street? Is that part of--? 00:52:20,580 Anne Cleveland It's-- it-- certainly when I was still involved and I asked to remain involved, but that hasn't happened. But it was historic and couldn't be torn down. So my guess is that they will gut it and have a sort of kitchen-type facility, bathrooms, that will service the park for special events. 00:52:54,880 Lisa Hayes Perfect. Good. 00:52:56,880 Anne Cleveland I mean, that's my assumption. 00:52:57,880 Lisa Hayes It seems like a good plan for it. It's going to be so nice to have that right next to the library. 00:53:01,880 Anne Cleveland Yeah. 00:53:02,880 Lisa Hayes I'm so glad that it worked out. 00:53:03,880 Anne Cleveland Yes. Me too. Shakespeare in the Park. 00:53:07,000 Lisa Hayes Yes. Well thank you for your time, and I don't know. Is there anything else you can think of that we haven't talked about that you would like to talk about? I know you've done so much and there's probably a million things we could-- 00:53:23,000 Anne Cleveland Well I think for a good run of years the thing I probably took the most pride in was having brought together what I thought was the perfect group of people to shepherd the library society. It was, we had a few hiccups when when Carol retired, we had two Jessica's. I mean, we had, you know, I'd never been in a position to particularly hire people. Oh, and I'll go back just when the last bookstore, it was in the paper. I can't even remember the name of it. Over on Folly Road, the paper had an article about the last independent bookstore closing in Charleston. It was just so sad. I had gone there some. I didn't go on Folly Road that much, but I got in the car. I said, "Janice, I'll be back." And drove over and I said, "What are you going to do?" And she said, "I don't know. All I've ever done is sell books." And I thought, "Well, and this was still early on enough that we didn't have a children's library and we didn't, I mean, there wasn't somebody permanently at the front desk." Anyway, I said, "I will find the money to hire you in some capacity because you know how to sell books, which means you'll know what the latest books are and all that kind of stuff." And she was a nice person. And of course, I didn't have anything in a budget to hire her, but I figured it'll work out. We didn't have anything in the budget to buy a Steinway, but I figured it out anyway. And she was a nice person, but she loved her job in her bookstore because she sat there and read all day long. And she wasn't somebody who just took the bull by the horn, so it didn't end up working. My heart was way ahead of any business sense. And so we had some ups and downs like that, but then we had a core of people that were together for a decade that really understood why the library society is so unique and special and cared so much about it. And I was really proud of, especially you. I could hardly wait to finally convince you to come full-time. 00:56:24,040 Lisa Hayes Well, you fostered a very collegial work environment. 00:56:28,320 Anne Cleveland Yeah. It was just, I could hardly wait to go to work. Well, I think everybody felt that way. 00:56:36,320 Lisa Hayes Yeah. I don't know if the phrase is salad days, but I do feel like the library has had so many ups and a long period, I think, of downs. But then really, I feel like during her tenure, we began a very forward trajectory that is still increasing. 00:56:56,320 Anne Cleveland Yeah. 00:56:57,320 Lisa Hayes I feel good about being there, so thank you. 00:57:00,320 Anne Cleveland Oh, yeah. Well, I'm so glad you are there and holding down the fort. 00:57:05,320 Lisa Hayes Doing my best. 00:57:07,320 Anne Cleveland Yeah. Well, if you think of other questions, I'm happy to talk. One of the things that I need to do is come. I still got hundreds of pictures on my phone of the renovations when James and Steve knocked out the entrance into what is now the Igoe area with sledgehammers. Do you remember any of that? 00:57:44,560 Lisa Hayes No, I probably wasn't there that particular day. I remember what the research and writing center used to look like. 00:57:52,880 Anne Cleveland But we had to move every book out of—but anyway, I've got hundreds of pictures on my phone that I need to just come over and I guess sit with Gabriel and just download them. 00:58:12,280 Lisa Hayes I think Danielle could help you with that. She's such a wiz. She'd be glad to help you. 00:58:17,520 Anne Cleveland Yeah, because I don't need them anymore. 00:58:20,520 Lisa Hayes Yeah. And if you did keep a diary or a journal or something like that, we'd certainly love to talk about a way to get your papers. We have a small collection of things relating to you and your family already, so if you wanted to, we could talk about that. 00:58:39,520 Anne Cleveland I kept my calendar. 00:58:42,520 Lisa Hayes Planner. 00:58:43,520 Anne Cleveland For every month that I worked there. 00:58:48,520 Lisa Hayes Smart. 00:58:49,520 Anne Cleveland And I scribbled on that a lot. And then I—for a number of years, when we had Monday meetings, I made up the week— 00:59:00,000 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah, you have all those? I have all those. 00:59:02,000 Anne Cleveland Yeah, I mean, I'm happy to, but I don't know that it'll make sense to anybody unless I just transcribe it all. 00:59:13,520 Lisa Hayes Oh, no, yeah, don't feel like you have to do that. Debbie has a lot of—well, your emails and things too, I'm guessing, are in the archive. I don't know, but— 00:59:23,520 Anne Cleveland They're supposed to be. 00:59:25,520 Lisa Hayes I don't know. Well, like I said, thank you so much. 00:59:29,520 Anne Cleveland Oh yeah. 00:59:30,520 Lisa Hayes It's nice to visit with you. Keep in touch. 00:59:32,520 Anne Cleveland Oh. Yeah. Well, you can— Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Anne Walker Cleveland (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on April 18, 2024) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cleveland, Anne Walker Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-04-18 Description An account of the resource <a href="#oral-history-item-type-metadata-transcription">Transcription available below.</a><br /><br />Anne Walker Cleveland was born in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father served as a professor at Yale University. She studied at Smith College, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa for her work in history. She married Will Cleveland, an attorney, and they lived in Charlottesville, VA, San Francisco, CA and returned to SC in 1983, where they raised their three children in Charleston. Anne taught history and English Literature at Charleston Day School for many years before becoming Executive Director of the Library in 2009. She served as Executive Director until her retirement in 2023 as we celebrated our 275th year! Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AnneCleveland_OralHistory_20240418 cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/a09cd0840929fbd40a68db7b372c1251.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=Jd6YMf1gVb29aXiomMjcF29PnjFhv007Z3WXo8NSuItcJFsVPaMg2Oynu2MbUnZUZr7NGROYATXO5fW6WleSFg5SYt0ojkEt1WkJpgEI15QDmyR7RQwZqdmmU7RKk7cUA0HOj0Jbo1jXaJhpNQ947jRHKRC2w%7EgVDpXYbq-glzAm2EsBMFUmTtWom3YgbLpEEiYx%7EAbohqDa80OiKI3g-uGramzpeJhRGYbi6egqmZOKdVg7hLiwBw9cOWJvl3%7Ek0PWHEnoUWVhwhn42j4qZLb1jD7cKQd5sMGTMlgRqWwAnxTKoXoWEEOh6Tu%7EgqkZ3mLE-yVcKDN4OnOGqqVYwAg__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 87605801067397f4d2fc790290925561 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:00:41 Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 0:00:00 Jessica Mischner Amazing. Okay. 0:00:21 Anne Cleveland So, whatever you want. Figuring in on an hour. 0:00:22 Jessica Mischner Yeah, we'll keep it to an hour or less. This is Jessica Mishner. It's 2:09, Monday, August 21st with Anne Cleveland and Lisa Hayes. We're on the record. If we need to go off the record we will pause it and we will all be respectful of that and we're so excited to have you here. 0:00:42 Anne Cleveland We can dispense with that. 0:00:44 Jessica Mischner We're being so professional. So Anne, you and I talked a lot in the past and even before I was here and after I was here about this place and kind of your time coming here and what it was like for me as I went back and like I said look at the 20 pages that I've transcribed from our interview in 2020 which was really about sort of coming over from Charleston Day but like it was just it was it was the big overview of your time here up until that point and we were midway through the pandemic so we could probably pick up after that and look at sort of how you guys fared during that. And I also want to cover the next chapter and all of those big campaigns and I think that's really important for the history of the library society but the one thing that I kept thinking about as I was listening back to our conversation and thinking about all the things I learned from you was what it was like to build a team here. What it was like to come into this team. What it was like to kind of come into this place that you know you not only restructured physically right with stacks in the front room and dearness said hurricane man but but what it was like to rethink the way that people would engage with the library society on a community level. I think, Lisa and I were talking about, really briefly this morning, we're going to need to do two parts of this, we hope you'll agree to. But the big picture stuff is really the history and your time here and what your vision was, but also what the implementation of that was like when it comes to curation of the team and the catalog and then community engagement, really making the place Charleston's living room and building the legacy that we kind of get to take away. So I'd like to start there. I'd like to start with, well, it was like coming in here and we could start with your first day, but just recreating this space for other people to come into, 'cause this was hidden in plain sight, right? And people weren't engaging with it. So what was it like to come in here and decide or see something that didn't exist, which was a community space? 0:03:21 Anne Cleveland Well I think I would have to step back by a month. The beginning of July, Steve Gates, you've heard the story, invited me to go have lunch with him. And since we were social friends, the idea that it wasn't Laura and Steve and Will and me, I thought, "This is different." He started telling me all about his having gone on the board of the Library Society, which as a former history teacher and somebody who had lived here decades longer than he had, was embarrassing that I had no idea what the Library Society was. I knew where it was, but I had never set my foot through the door. I thought he was crazy, but he said, "We have a speaker tomorrow night, Dottie Frank, and I'd love you and Will to come." I walked in and it was dark and dank, and the executive director had gone and gotten a big plastic platter of cheese cubes and vegetables and just took the top off. 0:04:55 Jessica Mischner It was upstairs? 0:04:56 Anne Cleveland Mm-hmm. 0:04:57 Jessica Mischner Okay. 0:04:58 Anne Cleveland But there were probably 16 chairs set up between the existing steel stacks that broke up the floor. So clearly it was not going to be a big crowd. Janice was working that night. He greeted Will because he had handled the law work getting the—determining whether or not the news—or the news and couriers copy of the Declaration of Independence had been stolen from our collection. 0:05:39 Jessica Mischner So this was 2009? In 2009, okay. 0:05:41 Anne Cleveland And Will had been involved with that litigation. So we walk in and Janice says, "Hello Mr. Cleveland." I, the history teacher who taught a block away, had never set foot in the place and yet here's this gal who knows Will. I later said, "How in the hell did..." You know. But she was very formal, as you could imagine. And we sat down, Dottie Frank was probably one of the most entertaining speakers you could have ever asked for. So it was a fun evening. But there were mostly board members who'd been asked to please show up, Ben Moore and others, others because Steve was in charge of finding the replacement for the executive director. And Steve had said, "Just come look at it and don't make a decision." Because I was saying, "This makes no sense." And I just saw such potential that I couldn't help myself. 0:06:57 Jessica Mischner In what? 0:06:58 Anne Cleveland Well, just the space. I mean, it was beautiful. Anything lined with books is going to be attractive, but it was so chopped up and forbidding, which it shouldn't have been. I mean, I just, I didn't know anything about its history yet, but I just felt that it had a lot of potential. And when he explained, not in full detail, all the challenges there were, I'm not sure I would have taken it on. But it just, I was flailing around looking for something to do. I had left Charleston Collegiate and had told the law school I was going to cut back on the number of days that I taught writing at the law school so that I would be able to go see grandchildren and stuff like that. But it just was too good an offer. So I was then interviewed more formally by Will's law partner, whose office was next door to Will's for 20 years, and Ben Moore then hired me, and it was going to start August 1st. The outgoing executive director who had only been there, I think, fifteen months, was moving on to the State Archives, if you had the State Archives. I'm sure that certainly in terms of prestige that was far greater, but from my perspective you're going to give up this to move to Columbia? 0:08:45 Jessica Mischner (laughing) Such a Charlestonian thing to say. 0:08:50 Anne Cleveland Well, but I came via Columbia. So anyway, I accepted and then started reaching out to Eric to please, I'd love to meet him and find out what the hell I was gonna be doing. 'Cause I've been in charge of everything on a family level, finances everything for my whole adult life. And I was academic dean at the day school, but I was, I had never been an executive director. I don't like being a boss, as you know, so I wasn't going to be looking at it that way, but I still needed to know what he thought. And I asked him if I could meet him the following Monday, and he said he didn't know. And I thought, well, so I just came in the entire month of July I came every day hoping he would come meet with me. And Janice would have to Janice and Debbie would kind of talk to me and I'd ask them questions. But I would wait back in the Bischoff Lounge, which had two sofas and two chairs. And that was all. There was a card table with a Keurig that Ben Moore had bought. It was bleak. And of course, I felt disoriented just coming from the main building. But I would sit there and wait. And his office was locked. It was always locked and the door closed. And weeks went by and I felt incredibly frustrated that I wasn't going to be able to hit the ground running on August 1st, especially since I had a grandchild due, I think Anna was due that summer. Anyway, I would try to ask Janice questions, but he was still her boss technically. She and Debbie were absolutely discreet and professional and not forthcoming. But finally, about Wednesday of the last week before I was gonna be starting the following week, She saw me, I mean, I was almost teary that I just– 0:11:31 Jessica Mischner Did he just not come into work? 0: 11:35 Anne Cleveland Yeah, he was packing up his house. 0:11:37 Jessica Mischner Okay, yeah. 0:11:38 Anne Cleveland And she called him and said, she at least needs to see the office where she's gonna be, that she has asked me repeatedly, and so I'm going to unlock the door and let her see. And he came within 15 minutes, and he spent an hour with me showing me how to turn on the computer. But that was about it. 0:12:06 Jessica Mischner Do you remember what Ben Moore asked you in your job interview? 0:12:11 Anne Cleveland No. I mean, we'd been social friends for 30 years. 0:12:16 Lisa Hayes Was it scary or not having much direction, or was it sort of free to know that you were, you could mold this place into whatever you wanted? 0:12:29 Anne Cleveland I never even thought about that. I already had. My mind was reeling with what I was thinking. 0:12:36 Lisa Hayes You knew what you wanted to do? 0:12:39 Anne Cleveland Yeah. But I had no idea who carried our insurance, how to log into the computer. I had no clue how I was going to do that. And he was not helpful at all. But fortunately, Rob Silva was—who had had to be brought on as a full-time staff person because it was just Carol who had announced that she was going to retire. Kelly-Carroll Jones, head librarian announced when they announced that I was coming on that she was going to leave Janice. 0:12:24 Jessica Mischner No relation, just timing? 0:13:31 Anne Cleveland Well I think she had been so unhappy. She had been unhappy. Everybody had been unhappy apparently but I didn't know that. But the idea that I was going to lose the head librarian I'd only had an hour hour and a half max with my predecessor, I just wanted to be able to be comfortable with that kind of stuff. And I didn't need insurance because Will's law firm, Ben Moore's firm, was a very good coverage, whereas the library is not all that good. It's better now, but Not good. So they couldn't keep Janice with insurance unless there were at least two people. Because Debbie was covered through her husband. 0:14:19 Lisa Hayes So how small, the staff was just like Rob, Debbie, Janice, and you? 0:14:24 Anne Cleveland And Carol. 0:14:26 Lisa Hayes And Carol. 0:14:26 Anne Cleveland Yeah. 0:14:27 Jessica Mischner And Carol's going to take you all over. 0:14:29 Anne Cleveland Carol's insurance was through the state government when she had taught, when it had been librarians in public schools, which was much better. So Janice and Eric, who had Eric, his wife, and two children, had enabled them to be covered. But when he left, and I wasn't gonna take insurance, they needed another person. So Rob was promoted from student assistant who did the computer, he was the IT and he covered Saturdays with Debbie. So that's how we expanded. And I immediately began begging Carol not to retire. And she finally decided that I was not gonna be the Marine that Eric had been and that it would be okay to stay on. Yeah. Oh God. Well, she's also a close friend of Janice's and she was gonna go work at some craft. I mean, it wasn't like– 0:15:39 Jessica Mischner She was nervous though. 0:15:40 Anne Cleveland It wasn't like Anna Smith's. 0:15:45 Anne Cleveland Oh, Joyce. It wasn't like Joyce, but it was gonna be something like that. But she just was ready to get out of the library society. But anyway, so that's-- 0:15:56 Jessica Mischner How long had Carrol been here, I'm sorry. 0:15:58 Lisa Hayes I don't know. 0:15: 59 Anne Cleveland She'd been here, I think, five years. She overlapped with Cathy Sadler. But there'd been a big crew under Cathy, which is why they were hemorrhaging money. But anyway, so that's how I started. But from day one, I knew that it was only gonna be successful as I tried to learn about the Library Society if we were an equal team. I would spend a lot of time up front just asking questions and blowing the dust off the -- and that's when Janice asked me the famous question, "Have they told you all of your duties ?" duties. 0:16:49 Jessica Mischner Wait, so Anne, before, because I want to pick right back up there, but there is something about people who kind of build something from something, but really turns out it was actually almost nothing when they built it, where there's a little bit it's not a naive day but it's just you don't know how hard it could have been like you just don't see how hard it was until you look back on it right like you come in and you just all you see is potential but you don't even stop to think that it might fail or oh my god like this could be the worst thing I've ever done you don't see the other side and it seems like there was never going to be another. You came in with that and you just came in and the only possibility was success. Right? 0:17:50 Anne Cleveland Well the the only way was up. The fact that I really love history. The fact that I'd never come was shocking to me as I started to learn what this collection had and the history of the libraries to say I had no idea it was that old. I mean it just floored me that there was such a significant historical, not just facility, but entity that I would not have known about and that nobody seemed to know about it except a a few old South and Broad types. So to me, anything was going to be an improvement, which it was. I did challenge the board because I immediately realized that the membership was tiny and very exclusive. And I said, "I want to open the doors and invite anybody in and everybody in." And that means Jewish people, black people, Asian people, poor people, you know, across the board. 0:19:19 Jessica Mischner Young people. 0:19:20 Anne Cleveland And they said, "Go for it." I mean, fortunately, Steve said, "Go for it." And so just immediately trying to, one, learn the history, and two, start reimagining use of space, and then three, getting my children's friends, contemporaries, and all my former students who were old enough to, "You need to come learn about the Library Society," what helped sort of launch my first year. There was just, there were so many things that you could begin to check off. Well I've gotten lots of people to know that I'm here and, you know, and I write lots of letters. 0:20:14 Jessica Mischner The low hanging fruit is that Janice tells you, "I need you to know what you've gotten yourself into." So describe the conversation. This is lore around here. 0:20:26 Anne Cleveland Well, no, it's not lore. It is the truth. Because she is so professional and so discreet that I kept saying... She kept asking, "Did they really tell you all the things that you're responsible for?" And I'm thinking, she's uptight because I'm not a librarian. Not a librarian. It's the first time there has never been, well, Eric, but he kind of doesn't almost count, that there hasn't been a librarian who's in charge of the second oldest circulating library in America. So I was very defensive in trying to explain, "Well, there's more to it. They want me to try to increase memberships and have programming and whatever I think of, get more young people in. And she said, yeah, but did they tell you everything? And I would say, well, they explained this. And I just kept feeling like she was questioning whether I even had a brain in my head, but it was just her sense of humor. And she finally said, did they tell you that one of the things Eric did to save money was to fire the cleaning staff and the librarians clean the floors and the bathrooms on Wednesday mornings. And I said, no. 0:22:01 Jessica Mischner I'm taking them off of my bag right now that I'm taking them to watch. I'm so very much appreciating this. 0:22:06 Anne Cleveland No, they never mentioned that. And when she and I finished that particular discussion, I went straight back to my desk and hired a cleaning crew from who'd been doing the cleaning at Charleston Collegiate. So, yeah. But that first Friday, I invited everybody to come have a drink at our house, 'cause we're only a few blocks away. So we closed early, which was fine on a Friday 'cause nobody was in here. So I had fixed hors d'oeuvres and Will had, you know, bar set and of course Janice doesn't we drink, Rob did. Carol had a glass of wine and Debbie brought George. I mean, I'd invited Jimmy of course, but I'd never met Jimmy and it was years before I finally did meet Jimmy. But George came and of course George is so entertaining. Well, we sat around probably for two or more hours, which was just so much fun. But I think they finally really believed that my approach was, I'm deferring to you all, to be my guides. I'm gonna ask you whether you think it's a good idea, but I've got lots of ideas and I will defend my ideas, but I'm not gonna be dictatorial. And so from there on, in fact, I didn't remember it as clearly obviously as Janice is, but she really, I think, went home crying a lot of days, mostly because she doubted her own abilities because I was trying to get her to use the computer programs for all of the bookkeeping. She still does everything by hand in addition is still more thorough than anybody you could ever want. But I, she was always so generous that when I had said I really want to bring in my grandmother's piano and could we dismantle all of these bookcases because a lot of the stacks were the shelves were half full, quarter full, some were full, but they weren't all packed. And I just threw that out and I came back around lunchtime and there was Rob with screwdriver and wrench dismantling and Carol had already moved that whole 10-foot steel bookcase. I don't know where she had moved the books, books, but they were already starting. I went, "Whoa! " I mean, I had thrown it out and she said, "Well, you wanted to know. The only way to know." Of course, then I had to get a floor man in because the stains from over a hundred years of those steel bookcases with rust and everything, but gave us an excuse to then really clean and buff the floor. Oh, it looked so pretty the first time. 0:25:32 Jessica Mischner I think too it speaks to outside I mean in a lot of ways this place still is a gem hidden in plain sight right but I mean inside it's always a congenious chipped in she says 20 bucks among three people for the first microwave that was ever in this place. I mean inside it's always been a culture of just like sort of dogged and dogmatic I mean appreciation you know I mean this place doesn't continue for 275 years just because these men had a vision you know Thomas Jefferson was for it continues on because we all still believe right and and I think getting other people in here who believe but just the idea that a teen, no matter how small, you know, and you coming in and you just saying, "Yeah, this is a place that's been sitting here dusty, but right in the middle of King Street. I see it. Other people see it. I've got a board that is filled with people who I know in my circles, and they believe in me, and I'm going to come in here, and I believe in this place." and just that vision being able to then, and you're talking about your letter writing skills, I mean, but just in person, being able to bring people together to appreciate it. And the staff, so your first Christmas party, right? Janice has talked about this, which caused you the spider, because she said it was like, you know, she had eight arms and she just brought everybody all together and that was-- 0:27:17 Anne Cleveland It was more engendered by you get so excited that you want to share it. Why would you not want other people to find out about this gem? And I think what's been true from the very beginning is that everybody who's ever worked at the Library Society has had, is invested in it emotionally as well as intellectually and cares for it. And that automatically then leads to wanting to share with other people. It was Warren Ripley and his caring about the Library Society by wanting to protect it that led it into its sort of cave-like period. Because before that, it was the most visible, important, significantly influential entity in the state period. I mean it was as important as the state government because most people in the state government were members of the Library Society and it was only in the 50s or 60s when that group thought that the way to protect it, because they loved it, was to hide it, it just went into a decline. But when I look at the statistics of people who were still leaving property to the library society in the 70s and 80s, I mean that's amazing. So it was still vitally important, but fewer and fewer people knew about it. 0:29: 21 Jessica Mischner Property records have to be so telling to just give them how Charleston just the value of property during those times I mean that has to be such an amazing history in and of itself so okay back to so we've taken out the stacks right you have this vision you bring in the piano talk a little bit about just the floor plan right and your vision coming in because bringing out bringing the main reading room into what it is now. You know we're currently sort of in a battle of the soul with the Charleston plays and B Mach about their referring to the third Red Club and their lobby as Charleston's living room but they're not. We are. 0:30:07 Anne Cleveland Yeah I've told Casey Lavin that. 0:30:07 Jessica Mischner Yeah me too. As I'm like shepherding him out of the back I love being there going thank you thank you thank you we can't wait to work with you more but you know Charleston's living room, but just speak a little bit about your vision at that point because you knew it could be bigger for members but it could also welcome people in. 0:30:30 Anne Cleveland Well it was the main reading room was so easy. There was no question that it was beautiful space that could be made more beautiful and definitely more usable. It was things like the fact that where the bullpen, your office, the Igoe, all that was like a warehouse room. And that's where they housed the children's library. That was insane to me. And the microfilms, readers, and all of the storage microfilm and microfiche was all down in our break room. And the big table which is still in the bindery was as you come down those three steps there. And the break room with a bed and so much, sorry, but crap that had been accumulated for decades because they never threw anything away. There were broken chairs, broken lamps, a broken Victrola and some-- - 0:32:00 Jessica Mischner Careful, man, we have a dumpster coming in and we're all very nervous about what's gonna get thrown away over the next week. 0:32:05 Anne Cleveland Well, but this all-- 0:32:07 Jessica Mischner - It needed to go. 0:32:09 Anne Cleveland This was needed to go. And so-- 0:32:15 Jessica Mischner - I like it. 0:32:19 Anne Cleveland - But the problem was, and that's when all the pre-1970 book, No, what was where the book sale area was all-- 0:32:27 Lisa Hayes - East basement books? 0:32:29 Anne Cleveland Were supposed to go to the vault, but they had been, they'd gotten a grant to, they were all wrapped in yellow. 0:32:41 Jessica Mischner What was the grant? 0:32:43 Lisa Hayes I don't remember who gave it to us. 0:32:44 Anne Cleveland - I think it was, it wasn't the Donnelly, 'cause it was the application for a grant from the Donnelly Foundation that spiraled into the firing of the head librarian and the realization that the Library Society could be closing its doors because they were in such debt. I mean, they were just hemorrhaging. 0:33:11 Jessica Mischner So as an aside, this is when you walk in the back door of the Library Society as it currently stands to the left and the right of the safe underneath the stairs. two sets of stacks, there were two openings and what was there then that we're talking about? 0:33:28 Lisa Hayes That was what we call the East basement on that side. 0:33:32 Jessica Mischner Oh, okay so what? 0:33:34 Anne Cleveland That was all stuff that needed, had been catalogued and wrapped in protective paper and was eventually going to go to the lower vault. 0:33:49 Jessica Mischner And we had that building then that now-- - 0:33: 53 Anne Cleveland Oh yeah, yeah. 0:33:54 Jessica Mischner So this was still the third building, this is before, behind Buxton, we have the East basement. Okay, all right. 0:34:00 Anne Cleveland And outside, well, do we have a name for this? 0:34:05 Lisa Hayes The Young Adult. 0:34:08 Anne Cleveland YA area was stacks, steel stacks, that had pre-1970 fiction, was the original. 0:34:18 Lisa Hayes The newspapers weren't the newspapers down here? 0:34:22 Anne Cleveland No, the newspapers had been moved, but it was stuff that then got moved to where we moved the falls. 0:34:33 Jessica Mischner What was in here? What was in the fella's room where we are now? 0:34:38 Anne Cleveland Every pretty book that had been given but never accessioned. So it was just beautiful books but they didn't have numbers or anything. They'd never been non-circulating. Nobody would have known what was in here. In fact, when I turned this into the fellows room and the conference room table was in here, which meant you really didn't have room for anything else. It was a big cabinet down there. Anyway, this was several years later when I decided to try to make this into a fellows room where people who gave more than $500 a year, there were so few we were trying to get a few to do that, could come and relax. We'd have a coffee maker here and anyway, never quite got off the ground because it still had the cement floor but it did have the beautiful rug that's now in the I go. But I was determined to move the children's library. I want children to read. I want children's experience at a library to be one that they can hardly wait to go back. And that room, and you've seen pictures of this big cavernous, I mean it really looked like a warehouse. 0:36:16 Jessica Mischner That was like 2010 when we were moving, yeah, it was so media. And in here, you made some big changes. Within a year. 0:36: 26 Anne Cleveland So that first Christmas, I started in August, that Christmas is when I hired a couple of college boys to come and we cleared out everything in the, now the children's room and then cleaned it up and repainted the walls. 0:36:48 Jessica Mischner Because that was Mr. Hinson's. 0:36:50 Anne Cleveland That's where the Hinson Collection had been, but the Hinson Collection had been moved before I got here. 0:36:58 Jessica Mischner Oh, okay. We still feel like he was down here until very recently. If you talk to Marian. 0:37:05 Anne Cleveland Janice says that he hasn't been back since I came. I don't think he's been back since I came. 0:37:10 Jessica Mischner I believe that. Marian feels him everywhere, but I definitely don't feel him down here. Occasionally I feel him in the pamphlet section of the Hinson. 0:37:19 Anne Cleveland Well, the library had never been closed from before Christmas to after New Year's. They were closed to Christmas Day and New Year's Day. That was it. But I came in saying, "I'm still a school teacher at heart." That's right. Yeah. So we're going to close. I need to be cooking on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, which means Tuesday is our last day, that kind of thing. I mean, I think I warned everybody that to get anything out of the break room that they wanted, but we gutted it. But Carol was then faced with, "What are we going to do with all the children's books ?" Well that meant we had to move something over here in order to bring the children's books down to both. There weren't bookcases in the children's room at that point. 0:38:16 Jessica Mischner What was everything sitting on? 0:38:18 Anne Cleveland No, the books were in the floor to ceiling metal book shelves. 0:38:24 Jessica Mischner But what was in there? What was in where the rabbit hole is now? 0:38:27 Anne Cleveland There was the refrigerator, the microwave. 0:38:30 Jessica Mischner Oh, that was the break room. 0:38:30 Anne Cleveland That was the break room. And a bed where they took naps. 0:38:35 Jessica Mischner But what was so bare was just... 0:38:37 Anne Cleveland That had been the microfilm. 0:38:40 Jessica Mischner Okay, okay, okay. 0:38:41 Anne Cleveland Yeah. 0:38:42 Lisa Hayes Who took naps? 0:38:44 Jessica Mischner I would now. A 1000 percent. 0:38:47 Anne Cleveland Their schedule was that they had two-hour naps. 0:38:53 Jessica Mischner No. 0:38:53 Anne Cleveland And they worked four-day weeks. 0:38:56 Jessica Mischner Wait, Anne, that was like part of, before you got here, the library staff, the bed was for... 0:39:05 Anne Cleveland No, no, before Eric. 0:39:06 Jessica Mischner Before Eric, the bed was actually put to use? Janice did, I mean, I'm sure she didn't take naps. 0:39:12 Anne Cleveland No, I doubt it, but... 0:39:13 Jessica Mischner She monitored it? 0:39:14 Anne Cleveland You asked her, no, no. 0:39:16 Jessica Mischner Oh my God, it's crazy. 0:39:17 Anne Cleveland Yeah, and no one worked more than four days a week. And they had full health insurance and retirement. 0:39:25 Jessica Mischner The two hour naps, I mean, in a lot of ways that was sort of before its time. 0:39:30 Anne Cleveland Well, no, I mean, when we... 0:39:31 Jessica Mischner I mean Palo Alto, that would have been bigger. 0:39:34 Anne Cleveland When we moved to Charleston in '83, the day school still ended at two in time to go home for dinner. 0:39:44 Jessica Mischner For supper, yeah, for dinner. For dinner, yeah. The supper was at night. 0:39:47 Anne Cleveland Just bizarre. 0:39:48 Jessica Mischner Yeah. But there used to be a time when they would let out from something like 11: 30 to 1:30 before, I think this was in Charleston Day's second home, and everybody would go home. And then they'd come back and they have a snack of like gross crackers dipped in warm milk. 0:40:08 Anne Cleveland Yeah. 0:40:12 Jessica Mischner Um, but anyway, okay, so this was, we're talking, yes, we're old Charleston. 0:40:16 Anne Cleveland But anyway, so it's at that point that I had people worrying about my sanity because that for Janice who might as well be a librarian but for Carol and for Debbie it meant now we have to move all the books in the book sale area to the right of the back door over to the vaults so that then we can move all the books in the Florida ceiling stacks in the YA area to that area so that we can then bring all the books that are in the children's room down here and just logistically that's a lot for that size staff and I said once we're at the point where you've moved the priests well the the vault books out and the pre-1970 fiction over, I'll take care of the rest. I said, "What do you mean ?" Well, no, it was before that because I said, I gave a party. 0:41:39 Jessica Mischner We're still in the first year. 0:41:40 Anne Cleveland Oh, yeah, yeah. 0:41:41 Lisa Hayes We're still for Christmas. 0:41:42 Jessica Mischner Yeah, I just like, this is crazy. 0:41:44 Anne Cleveland No, this is after Christmas. 0:41:46 Jessica Mischner But still, we're still in mid-2009 to mid-2010. It's just amazing, I guess, yeah. 0:41:53 Anne Cleveland So I pulled together about 20 young people, Meg's age, and younger, and I said, "I'll provide beer and wine and pizza, and please come help." And so we broke into two teams, and I will say, and Trish Kometer had hired her by then. And Trish and Carol, of course, are thinking, people are gonna just put books on carts and move them. So they were in charge of, one was in charge of moving all the books from the YA floor, they were floor to ceiling stacks to the other area. because that had been empty. And then either Tricia or Carol, whoever was over in the children's set up carts and you were given a number. So one went first, two went first. And then as these stacks started emptying into the book sale area, and it meant you had to bring it over, come down the old elevator, get off, and then get the books off the car down the steps. 0:43:11 Jessica Mischner It was old elevator, was there a different elevator in here or no? 0:43:14 Anne Cleveland Oh, it was an old elevator. 0:43:16 Lisa Hayes In the same spot. 0:43:17 Anne Cleveland Same spot, yeah. But anyway, so we were here for, I don't think we stayed till midnight, but as soon as they started arriving from their work, it just was like a conveyor belt and we got it all done. 0:43:35 Jessica Mischner At this point, had you created the idea of the rabbit hole? Have you created the name? Like talk about a bat a little bit. Because I've seen pictures of the kids of essentially where the Igoe Room is. And you know, and some of those kids are older too, right? So like it seems like you recognize not only that we needed the YA space, but somewhere for younger kids. 0:43:59 Anne Cleveland You just needed the place that had-- 0:44:02 Jessica Mischner And my kids both with their nanny, I mean for lack of a better word, we moved here in 2010. Rabbit Hole firmly established, like they, I mean, they basically grew up down there. No one knew that I was their mother until I walked in here like five years later and someone was like, oh, are you here to pick up Camp? And I was like, I’m his mom, but because I'm still working at Garden and Gun. But so, like, that, I mean, you did that really quickly. Like when I was playing it all together for me. 0:44:36 Anne Cleveland Well, like I said, I started August 1st and that first Christmas, six months later. 0:44:41 Jessica Mischner Where did the name come from? And the mural? 0:44:43 Anne Cleveland Well, I, by then had learned, I think our children had been given the country bunny and the little gold shoes when we moved to Charleston. I had no idea, I knew it was by DuBose Heyward, I think. But it was more just a story that was great for children. Had no idea that there was a connection with DuBose Hayward and the Library Society that he'd written it for his daughter here. And the illustrations are just so special that I asked Whitney Kreb, who was a friend of Meg's and Eugenia's, could I hire her to do murals? And she said, sure. And so that January and February, she freehand just painted the murals and it was done. 0:45:36 Jessica Mischner It's just so crazy. I mean, truly, it never occurred to me. Camp was born in December of 2010 and started coming here, you know, right after, I guess, 2011, but it never occurred to me that it was that fresh. 0:45:52 Anne Cleveland Oh, it was. 0:45:53 Jessica Mischner Yeah, so great. So, okay, keep going, sorry. I'm inserting myself into the narrative, but it's a time stamp. 0:46:02 Anne Cleveland Well, and so obviously I had done a lot of changing the use of space. And this was a very attractive enough room that I think it's where the board met once. well four times a year, but it was never used. And even now, everybody referred to it going down to the basement. And I would say, it's not the basement, it's the ground floor. But, you know, do you remember the old ramp in the parking lot? It was so awful looking and decrepit looking. I just was dying to do something with that and finally repainted it, but it still was a disaster. And that, that's another whole story. But I had changed so much that that's when I was down having dinner with Steve Gabel and his mother and Will. They played tennis and stuff. And she asked me, "Well, my God. can't have any more things you could possibly do at the library." And I said, "Well, I wouldn't say that." And she said, "What else is there that you could possibly think of to change ?" And I said, "Well, there's the book sale area, which is the entire first ground floor of a King Street facing building that's used six days a year for the fall book sale and the spring book sale and it's just nasty and you know the librarians love it because they cull some special books out out of donations and we make several thousand dollars a year from the book sales, which in the big scheme of things by then I knew was a drop in the bucket. I mean, all you needed was to get four fellows each giving $500 and you don't need the book sale for that kind of income. she said, "Well, what would you do with it ?" And I'm thinking, "Well, we get rent from Jacques Antiques, but I don't think we need another rental." And what I, Marge Palmer, was a dear friend of mine, and she was a book binder as her hobby. And I said, "Well," And she was trying to divide up the bookbinding equipment that Kathy Forrester's grandmother had given to the Gibbes back in the early '80s. I think it was in the '80s because she was a bookbinder. And she was wealthy enough. She bought her own press. She bought her own everything. And she'd given it to the Gibbs, which was the cultural institution at that point in the city. And they, she may have even given them the building, where Husk is. 0:49:39 Jessica Mischner Yeah, she did. She did. So I have an interview with Brian from the 2015 of that oral history list too, by the way. We could add. 0:49:47 Anne Cleveland But anyway, so she gave the equipment to the Gibbes to have a bindery. The Gibbes, as soon as she had died, had no interest in a bindery. So they then gave the equipment to this group of ladies through Marie Thrower, who was the librarian conservationist at the college, who was a dear friend of Marge's. And they got a space at the Confederate home because Marge was head of the board. And all the bookbinding equipment went to the Confederate home. But by 2010, Marge was still very involved with the Confederate home. And they were getting—that space was free, because all those ladies were either on the board or big helpers at the Confederate home. But they realized they needed more rental income. And so Marge was looking to get rid of the equipment. and Marie was talking to the Harlan and there was sort of negotiations between the library and the college. But it made such good sense. We have so many books in southern condition because they'd been in un-air conditioned humid rooms and buildings since 1748 that we could use help taking care of our books. So that was just a no-brainer. So I said to Steve's mother that I would turn it into a book bindery. And she said, "Well, how much would that cost ?" And I said, "I don't know." She said, "Well, you ought to find out." Well, I did, but that was the end of it, because I knew she was wealthy, and Steve had already pledged $10,000 from his little foundation. Kelly - So Steve Gabbo was there? Boggs - Yeah. And I don't want to ever have somebody think I'm looking at them for money, But a year later, she said, "You never told me what it would cost. Do you still want to do that renovation ?" I said, "Well, yeah." She said, "Well, did you find out ?" I said, "Well, yes." She said, "Well, how much was it ?" I said, "It was a lot." She said, "Well, how much ?" I said, "Over $50,000." She said, "Well, I'll do that." I went, "What ?" said her mother, I mean Deanna had been a socialite, came from lots of money and lived in Manhattan and had the farm up in New York and East Hampton all that kind of stuff. She was much happier milking cows and her mother had been a beautiful socialite. You've seen the picture of her, Dorothy the book binder. I mean she's beautiful, but her friends all were in the horsey set or bridge or whatever and she, her hobby was to bind books. I mean not many books but she found that fun and interesting. So she had some equipment. So that was close to DeAnn Turney's heart that the one thing that I thought I had left to do was to put in a book bindery but she never said that but she wrote out a check. Then I had to find, oh my god now, how do I, so I got Palmetto Craftsman who had given me the estimate to then come and we gutted it and it had asbestos, so we had to do all the, you know, all kinds of stuff. And then I thought, "Well, I don't know how, how would you do a layout asset to Carol and Trish ?" I said, "What, what it would be the best layout for a book bindery ?" "I don't know." So I reached out out to Etherington and said, "Do you have somebody who could come down to advise my librarians if we put in this bindery how best to utilize a bindery ?" You know, what -- they don't know about book binding, but -- so this young gal who was looking for sort of more money than Etheringdon was paying her said well I'll come down and I said you can stay at our house we'll feed you she said well I'll come down you know it and I said well how much will it be she said maybe $1,500 for the week and I said you got it I didn't have it but I figured I could get it and then I thought I said would you teach a bookbinding class my husband that for Christmas, you know, and she said sure. So, Steve Gates, Will Cleveland, I can't remember who else, we all convinced and we charged $250 or whatever. So, we have completely, didn't completely offset the cost of her coming and meeting with Debbie Finn, Trish Kometer and Carol, and she gave us the sort of, not blueprint, but how she thought best to utilize that space. So we went ahead and we gutted it and did it. She did the bookbinding class and Will had so much fun, he started going up to the college to learn more from Marie. And that's where he met Brian Beidler, who was about to graduate with a degree in chemistry. And he didn't have a job, but he was getting married. And Will came up with this hair-brain scheme that they would take-- we've got some unique volumes if we digitized them and then beautifully bound them and sold, you know, a hundred at $500 a piece, you know, you'd have an income stream. And I said, you are not, you're in la la land. We don't have a hundred members of the library society who will buy a $500 book. But I'll hire you as a book binder. And he didn't have any other job. And I figured out how to carve money aside and hired him for, I don't know, $30,000. And he was in heaven 'cause it was, yeah. 0:57:10 Jessica Mischner I have two questions. One, how long has the relationship with Etherington gone long? 0:57:18 Anne Cleveland It certainly predated me, yeah. 0:57:20 Jessica Mischner But does anybody know? 0:57:22 Anne Cleveland I don't think not, I think maybe back, I mean, Kathy would be the best to know that. 0:57:30 Jessica Mischner That's just a really long standing relationship is cool. The other thing is, and then we're gonna stop 'cause I'm gonna have you for an hour and you're gonna have to do more of this. So we're gonna use you good and not-- - You can tell how hard it is for me to tell. Lisa kind of set my expectation for two. I think we're getting three, but I'm gonna say two, but the other thing is, is there a reason why in thinking about that downstairs space, you never went to retail? 0:57:59 Anne Cleveland Oh. 0:58:02 Jessica Mischner You just never went to retail. 0:58:03 Anne Cleveland Well, one, I was thinking-- 0:58:05 Jessica Mischner For retail for this place. 0:58:07 Anne Cleveland This, oh. Well, you got the children's library, the staff room. You, no, I wouldn't have wanted this to be retail. That's, I mean, you want this to be a sacred space for kids and for staff and for fellows. I do think that this is, still has tremendous potential to be used in a way other than just as it's used now. 0:58:50 Jessica Mischner I used to always talk about how we wanted subscriptions to all the international magazines and you would have a more international free news stand out here. 0:58:59 Anne Cleveland Well, my young friend Caroline Lord, Abert Lord, who is a member, but she just finished her master's at Clemson. She came and lived here for a year getting her master's in urban resilience. 0:59:22 Jessica Mischner Oh my gosh. - But-- - What a cool thing that no school is ever gonna be able to have and colleges keep going anyway. 0:59:28 Anne Cleveland But anyway, but Caroline came over yesterday just to say goodbye 'cause she's been here for a year. I wrote her letters of recommendation and all of that, but she's moving to Asheville to be near her sister. And she said that she had come in, sometime in the last week or so after she finished, gotten her masters, and she said, "Oh, I used to dream about going in and reading magazines." And so she said she came in and yes, her membership was still valid. And she said she spent several hours just sitting over, looking through magazines, 'cause she has not had time to even look at a magazine for the last year. 1:00:09 Jessica Mischner You know, that's what you feel like when you're a mother. - Yeah. - You're like, "I can't wait to be bored over reading something." Okay, I'm gonna stop us here because we are in our... In Cleveland, we are signing off at 3:09 p.m. I'm gonna give you this. This is the questionnaire. Oh, the only thing that you really need to fill out. So you've signed this. Lisa, you... I don't want to mess up your fuzzy ASMR. and I... Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Anne Walker Cleveland (interviewed by Lisa Hayes and Jessica Mischener on August 21, 2023) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Cleveland, Anne Walker Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-08-21 Description An account of the resource Anne Walker Cleveland was born in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father served as a professor at Yale University. She studied at Smith College, and was a member of Phi Beta Kappa for her work in history. She married Will Cleveland, an attorney, and they lived in Charlottesville, VA, San Francisco, CA and returned to SC in 1983, where they raised their three children in Charleston. Anne taught history and English Literature at Charleston Day School for many years before becoming Executive Director of the Library in 2009. She served as Executive Director until her retirement in 2023 as we celebrated our 275th year! Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hayes, Lisa Mischner, Jessica Cox, Danielle Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AnneCleveland_OralHistory_20230821 cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/7762d8c2ba1b422aa3ae6bc52f737254.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=XzUn-O%7EOMUa09JGmVOsZPF3sJQgDwXLC9AszkPzCH-QFKuuIFqCx%7EKUQnTN9IRjz1MFFG7Q0%7ETvjWP6-YuzH7iNzlBNczYf3EPYKxBCEGvQtPlpOfUUt190ANLmSqkPUHQ5pLL94ThKfshE8ZskToiGb%7EkNLjlItJmOCuyeIsnmcCyujwSfxlp00BptgExQ8hz9hjFpJlSP1owTgFeUdKpGnT-cVsV-bs7XxOPis9pqhpXqktv%7EyiQjvsBqXLLiHg0rNfM9CSL1FG1Dl2X2%7E1g2sw42v7foh2SHGma9YCdfB4aPOHBryEkjSTtqW8psKDlb9IxWqF0rKnraqWPBtpA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 2eddd2dd32a66e24587d6ffcf7f294b7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:55:42/105.9MB Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound Raw 0:00:00 Henry Grimball --slammed with books. 0:01:00 Lisa Hayes Is that right? 0:02:00 Henry Grimball Yeah, and I don't need people to have given me lots of books and I've got more books that I can read in the rest of my lifetime. And there are books that interest me and so I haven't had the need to come here. I used to come here once a week and get books. 0:17:00 Lisa Hayes Is that right? 0:18:00 Henry Grimball That's right. 0:19:00 Lisa Hayes And now you have your own collection at home. 0:21:00 Henry Grimball I've got a collection and there are lots of things I'm interested in reading and another problem that libraries have now is Kindle. I had one of the very first ones and I use it and my wife started to use mine as fast fall so I gave one for Christmas so I can have mine back. 0:42:00 Lisa Hayes I love my Kindle too. Do you know the Library Society has a subscription now that you can borrow books that way through us? 0:49:00 Henry Grimball I didn't know that. 0:50:00 Lisa Hayes You don't have to just do it through the county library. 0:51:00 Henry Grimball I didn't know that. Yeah. I didn't know that. I'll have to find out how to get that done. 0:56:00 Lisa Hayes If you need help navigating it just give me a call. 1:01:00 Henry Grimball All right. 1:02:00 Lisa Hayes Good. All right. So my name is Lisa Hayes. I'm the Special Collections Librarian. And I'm here today speaking with Henry Grimball. I'm here at the Library Society. It's January 5th, 2024. And just want to thank you for your time today. 1:19:00 Henry Grimball Happy to be here. 1:20:00 Lisa Hayes Thank you. So, Mr. Grimball, tell us, tell me, about your childhood. I know you were born here in Charleston. 1:22:00 Henry Grimball I was born in Roper Hospital on August 23, 1948. 1:34:00 Lisa Hayes Was that when the hospital was on Colonial Lake? 1:37:00 Henry Grimball No, the hospital was at that point up at Calhoun Street. I asked my mother about that. I was her second son. I have a brother Billy who is two years older than I am. He was born there as well. We were all born there, all four of us, but I asked her what it was like and she said, "All she's ever said is, 'Son, it was hot.'" No AC. No AC. Can you imagine? Labor? And I was a big boy. 2:05:00 Lisa Hayes And you were one of four? 2:06:00 Henry Grimball Four boys. 2:07:00 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 2:08:00 Henry Grimball William, my older brother, he's the one that I mentioned, has the brick, which I think I think he's the only one that's still in existence. And he's two years older, once September 3, '46. And then my younger brother Arthur is four years younger than I am. And he was a rogue. Instead of going to Sewanee, he went to the University of Virginia for undergraduate and became a heart surgeon. My brother Frank is 10 years younger than I am and Billy, myself, and Frank, all lawyers. We got the rogue heart surgeon. 2:51:00 Lisa Hayes Did you all go to Sewanee? 2:53:00 Henry Grimball Except for-- - Except for-- For Arthur, all three of us went to Sewanee. 2:58:00 Lisa Hayes Well, so where did you live downtown? And what did your parents do? 3:04:00 Henry Grimball Well, we lived, to get you oriented, you come up Logan Street, Lakeside Sweatman's was on the right, right there on the southeast corner. It probably wasn't Lakeside Sweatman's back then, something else, same sort of thing, drug store. And diagonally across the street, there are now three or four townhouses on the northwest corner. Back then there were three or four big frame apartment houses. There were houses that had been divided into apartments and we were the second or third house from the corner of Broad and Logan on the north side of the street. Right behind us was Short Street and we had, my mother corrected me before she died, I said we were on the second floor, we were on the third floor. No elevator, so it was a walk up. And when I was born, we lived on Greenhill for a short time. We lived with my grandparents, Judge William Grimball and his wife, Panchita, on Colonial Street for a short time and got the apartment on Broad Street. And I was there when I was three, four, five years old. When I was six years old, my dad, he did something that was in the vogue at the time. He wanted to live in the suburbs. He had an opportunity to buy my great grandmother's house on lower Church Street, 26 Church, which he didn't do. He could have bought that house for $15,000 in the mid-50s. And instead, he built a house for somewhere around 20. Over in South Windermere, we were the third house. The roads were dirt and we could do anything we wanted within reason. We hunted, we had shotguns and we went crabbing down on, it was now Rebellion Road, old houses and then that was a mud flight back then and there was a little creek we crabbed at. And that's where we grew up and my mother and father lived there until his death in 1999. And a year or two later, two years later, she moved to Bishop Gadsden and she died December, a year ago, at age 100. And she was Frances Lucas Ellerbe. Her grandfather was Governor of South Carolina. Her father was a lawyer and a colonel in the Army. He was in coastal artillery in both wars and wound up in the Darwin Peninsula in World War II. She had one brother, William Hazelden Ellerbe, and he went to the Citadel. When he went to the Citadel, she came down there and became a secretary on Broad Street. She was a high school graduate. She loved Broad Street, and that's where she met my dad, who was a lawyer back in the late '30s, early '40s, right before the war. And Bill, her brother, was a Citadel grad and became a B-29 pilot eventually in World War II. He flew the hump for a while across Himalayas. That's very dangerous. A lot of planes were lost. And then he was stationed on Tinian, where they engaged in the spring of 1945 in five major bombing raids, incendiary bombing raids over Tokyo. And he was killed in the last one, May 26, 1945, there were upwards of 500 B-29s. There's a book that's been written about it called Black Snow and I've read it not long ago. It's written from the vantage point of the pilots and the people on Tinian and from the recipients of the bombs and it's terrifying. 7:19:00 Lisa Hayes Is your uncle mentioned in that book? 7:24:00 Henry Grimball No, he's not. He was a major in the Army Air Corp, when he got killed. And so mother married a father in 1943 in St. Michael's Church and was essentially a housewife the rest of her life. I used to think that wasn't any big deal, but it's one of the hardest jobs on the planet. I have a granddaughter now, Eliza, who's two on February 3, and when I take care of her, it's a full-time job. On the other side of the family, William Grimball, the judge, my grandfather, was the only circuit court judge in the 9th judicial circuit for about 35 years. And that was a big job back then. Now there are lots and lots of circuit court judges. It's not as impressive a position as it used to be. And he was married to Panchita Heyward. They were cousins. His middle name was William Heyward. It was Heyward and she was Panchita Heyward. She was born and raised on a Wappaoola plantation up in Berkeley County on the west branch of the Cooper River. One of the, I think that was the last plantation of Nathaniel Heyward. Nathaniel Heyward, who, he was, I think, my sixth great grandfather, maybe seventh. Nathaniel Heyward was a half-brother to Thomas Heyward, who signed the Declaration of Independence. He was buried down in Bluffton. Nathaniel Heyward had nineteen plantations from Beaufort to Georgetown, and he was the largest slaveholder in the history of the South, which is an unfortunate part of our family history, but that's the way it is. He owned over 2,000 slaves. 9:22:00 Lisa Hayes And a member of the Library Society 9:23:00 Henry Grimball Not only a member of the Library Society, he was a participant in the move of the Library Society to a brick building. I believe it was a building down on Broad Street where the legal department of the city is now. 9:37:00 Lisa Hayes Yes, you're right, the corner of Church and Broad Street. 9:40:00 Henry Grimball Church and Broad, that's the northwest corner. But anyway, the people who did that, the financiers were given the brick, which is a permanent free membership in the Library Society for as long as you held the brick. My brother Billy has that brick now. He lives up in Norfolk. 10:01:00 Lisa Hayes I've never seen one of those bricks before. 10:06:00 Henry Grimball It's just a little certificate, maybe eight inches by five inches, and it's in a frame. 10:13:00 Lisa Hayes It's a piece of paper. It's not a brick. 10:18:00 Henry Grimball It's just a little certificate, maybe eight inches by five inches, and it's in a frame. It’s a piece of the Library and I wish he’d give it to the Library because things like that have a way of getting lost. But so that's the Heyward side of the family and believe it or not my great-grandfather John Grimball, who was a Naval Academy graduate, at the start of the Civil War. He resigned his commission and became an officer in the Confederate Navy. He fought on the Arkansas, which was an ironclad on the Mississippi River. It had a bad engine. They went through the Federal Fleet on the way to Vicksburg and tore it up, one of the worst defeats of the United States Navy ever. But they got to Vicksburg and the engine didn't work there. Well, they eventually scuttled it and he came through Charleston to Bermuda to Liverpool where he got on what became the Shenandoah, which was a raider that went around the world, went around the Cape of Good Hope to Australia, up into the Arctic Sea. It was a hybrid. It had a steam engine. It had three masts. So you could sail and be powered by steam, which meant that when it got up into the whaling fleet, if it was a calm day, it could steam and the whalers couldn't move, which meant that they stopped and burned over 30 whalers, much to the chagrin of the United States government, which was on their trail. And they were nearly caught up in the Arctic Circle when the ice started to form. But they got out, got down off California, stopped an American ship, and were told that this was in July, that the war had ended in April. And so they disguised the ship as a merchant ship and went back around Cape Horn up to Liverpool and turned it in. He came through Charleston but didn't stop there because there was no reason to. This place was on its back that was just devastated. And so his mother was Meta Morris. And her papers are up at Chapel Hill. But she was like the fourth granddaughter, great grandchild of Lewis Morris who signed the Declaration of Independence and his son Colonel Lewis Morris was the aide de camp to General Green in the revolution in South Carolina in 1780-81 which was a terrible time. It was after Yorktown but horrible. Families against families and just a mess. 13:19:00 Lisa Hayes Just going back right quick to the Shenandoah, did your family give us the logbook? You know, we have the logbook for the Shenandoah here. 13:30:00 Henry Grimball We had it. So it had to come from my father. 13:32:00 Lisa Hayes You did it, yes. 13:34:00 Henry Grimball Yeah. It had to come from my dad. But anyway, he went on up to New York because Lewis Morris, whom we refer to as the signer, owned Morrisania. And Morrisania is now the Bronx. And they were a very wealthy, influential family up north. And so he practiced law in Manhattan for years and made a good living and then finally came back to town. He had a house down on, down close to what's down Murray Boulevard on the western side of the city. That house is gone now and all that was filled in and made streets and more land for the development of the city. But he had four boys and one of them was my grandfather, William Grimball, who was a circuit court judge. He had three children, Panchita and Judge Grimball had three children, John Grimball, my Uncle Jack, my dad, William Grimball, and then Frances, who was known as Fan Grimball, who married Henry Gaud, who's a lawyer. At one time in the mid-fifties they owned the entire Sword Gate property and ran the Sword Gate Inn. And they had three children, my first cousin. And John Grimball, whom I affectionately referred to as Uncle Jack, joined in World War II again. He enlisted as a private. Up in Columbia. And he went to Fort Jackson. people who knew him and knew the family said he shouldn't be, he's a lawyer. He had a law degree. He shouldn't be a private. And immediately the Commandant of Fort Jackson moved him into the office of court where he was trained and he became a tank commander and went to Europe to head a squadron of Sherman tanks and arrived, I believe it was October 1944, but it was just in time for the Battle of the Bulge and he and his squad were caught of a town called St. Vith, V-I-T-H. They were surrounded. Some rangers opened up a route out of there. They got out. He fought, he won either one or two silver stars in the Battle of the Bulge and then they moved on into Germany. Actually they moved toward Germany and by then they had Pershing tanks which were much better. Had a much bigger gun. It could tangle with any tank that the Germans had. They came to a little town called Remagen, near the Rhine River, on the Rhine River. And he and a superior lieutenant, he was a lieutenant there, a superior lieutenant, were told by a scout to come up on a hill and look. And they looked down and there was the Remagen Bridge, which was intact. And they captured the Remagen Bridge, the first bridge over the Rhine River. And he actually reconnoitred the bridge under .50 caliber machine gun fire. He won a Distinguished Service Medal for that, right under the Congressional Medal of Honor. And he became a circuit court judge in Columbia. He lived in Columbia the rest of his life. 17:17:00 Lisa Hayes I thought you were going to say he was killed. 17:20:00 Henry Grimball No, no, no, he survived. But he was, you know, I'd go visit with him in the house. We used to sail boats up on Lake Murray, which always stayed with them. He was a very heavy drinker. I resolved in my own mind when I read and matured and read more about it that he was probably self-medicating because of the horror he'd seen. 17:49:00 Lisa Hayes Was he one that we talked about what had happened when he had seen or was he never talked about 17:56:00 Henry Grimball No, not at all. He did tell me, and I can say this for the record now, the Battle of the Bulge, they would capture German troops and they had no place to put them, nobody to guard them, no way to do anything with them and they shot them. It was terrible. They hated it, but that was just part of that. That's the biggest battle the United States Army ever been in, Battle of the Bulge. He was there. 18:24:00 Lisa Hayes Thank you for sharing that. Your right to be proud of your family's history. 18:32:00 Henry Grimball One other line that I can't forget is Paul Grimball came here in 1682. He was the secretary to the province. He worked for the Lords Proprietors. They gave him a few thousand acres down on the North Edisto River and he took his wife. By then he had a son named Thomas, and I don't know that he had any slaves. He may have had some indentured servants, but they sailed down there and came up the North Edisto River to Point of Pines, which is directly across from the Bohicket Creek where Rockville is. And I've got a photograph of it, but there's a tabby pillar that's about 10 feet tall as the remains of this house, right on the shore, or very close to the shore of the North Edisto. And he handled a lot of the finances, sale of properties. I've actually got a deed that was given by a friend of my father's to him, and it was witnessed by Paul Grimball in 1692, deed to property in Berkeley County. It’s on vellum. I've got it in my office hallway at home on Orange Street. 19:48:00 Lisa Hayes So he was secretary to the province? 19:52:00 Henry Grimball Right. And he had all the Grimballs in the United States have descended from Paul. All of them. He was the original and only one. He came from England. I think he was involved as a businessman, merchantman in England and came over here, became secretary of the province and he farmed down there. His first house on the north of Edisto, while he was in Charleston, the Spaniards came up from St. Augustine and burned it down and took everything he had and he was very much upset by it. He communicated with the Lords Proprietors. He wanted to be reimbursed for his loss, and they said, "No." He had children and their children and children and finally Meta Morris married John Berkeley Grimball and they had that son John Grimball who was what we call the OC dog, he was a Confederate naval officer. He descended from Paul Grimball and then married into the Morris line and that was Meta Morris, direct descendant of Colonel Lewis Morris. And there's a tablet to Lewis Morris on the south wall of St. Michael's Church. Yeah, anyway. And he owned several houses in downtown Charleston. Their family was members of St. Ann's Episcopal Church, now the Bronx. And that's where the signer and Colonel Lewis Morris are buried. 21:28:00 Lisa Hayes Well, I can see that you would make a very good attorney with your ability to recollect all of these facts. Do you have, is this written down somewhere? 21:38:00 Henry Grimball Oh yeah. 21:39:00 Lisa Hayes Is there a book about the Grimball family? 21:44:00 Henry Grimball Grimball family, Morris family, Ellerbe family. 21:48:00 Lisa Hayes Yeah. So it's all documented. 21:50:00 Henry Grimball All documented. Oh yeah. It's, and I've got lots of papers in my house that document it. I'm a member of the Society of the Cincinnati. The only way you can get in is to have had an ancestor who fought, an officer who fought in the American Revolution for at least three years or was killed in service. And that's Colonel Lewis Morris. So my brother Billy got in and then his brothers all came in. Actually he got my father to join because the way we work in South Carolina, it has to be a direct line. So he got my dad to join. He was a University of Virginia law graduate, and he didn't like the Society since then. He was a Jeffersonian, my father. And Jefferson did despised the Society of the Cincinnati. And Jefferson thought it was a holdover of royalty from England and had the potential of an army coup to make Washington king or whatever. Washington was the first president general and Louis Morris was our, what they call it, propositus to where we've gotten into it. And I and my three brothers are all members, and I've been president of the Cincinnati in South Carolina. My brother Frank has, and Frank is now the treasurer general in the National Society, which has a magnificent house called Anderson House on Massachusetts Avenue. 23:36:00 Lisa Hayes Does he get to live there because of his position? Is that what you mean? 23:41:00 Henry Grimball Anderson House is principally a museum and a library. It's got an unbelievable collection of Revolutionary War books and documents. It's incredible. And it's ultra-modern. Ultra-modern. 23:56:00 Lisa Hayes Is it the headquarters of the Society of the Cincinnati? 23:58:00 Henry Grimball Of the National Society. Each state -- the Society of the Cincinnati is really a state rights organization each state runs its own show but we all together collectively support the national society which is really interested in projecting through education the values of the American Revolution which is considered really important by the Society and it spends hundreds of thousands of dollars a year doing that. 24:35:00 Lisa Hayes Well, and you must be gearing up, I would think, for the 250th anniversary of the Revolutionary War. 24:43:00 Henry Grimball You know, I don't, I was real active in the general society at one time, but I'm not active in it anymore. I know that, you know, we have a big meeting every three years called the Triennial. That's when the new president general is elected, and that's next year. Twenty odd years ago it was in Paris and actually it was back in Paris because the French sent over lots of officers like Marquis de Lafayette who was a member and they have it about every twenty years in Paris. The one I attended twenty odd years ago was unbelievable. We had our meetings in the, I've always mispronounced it, Invalides or whatever, where Napoleon is buried in that huge building. We had the most modern buses, ultra-modern buses, and they didn't use Parisian police, they used national police on big motorcycles. It surrounded our column of buses and we'd go across Paris through all the red lights (laughing) and had the meetings there. And we had a luncheon in the Hotel de Ville, the city hall, which was 7 or 8 hundred people. 26:08:00 Lisa Hayes Wow. 26:09:00 Henry Grimball It's huge. And it was magnificent. And then last night, we had a ceremony in the Hall of Mirrors in Versailles where the French presented to the national society reproductions of all the French battle flags from the revolution. and then we walked from there into the Hall of Battles where they served an unbelievable dinner. I was so intrigued. I got another glass full of the best champagne I've ever had, and I walked from one end to the other in that room. That room has huge paintings of great French victory scenes ending in World War I, and none after that. But anyway, it's over 100 yards long. Well, that's a football field. It's as wide as a football field. 27:03:00 Lisa Hayes Paintings on both sides? 27:04:00 Henry Grimball Paintings on, huge paintings on both sides. It's as wide as a football field. And the ceiling is so high, I'm not sure you could, you could kick a football in there, not hit the ceiling, but it's high. I was just, it was stunning. 27:22:00 Lisa Hayes That's quite a celebration. Does your son, you have two children. Does your son have any interest in being part of that? 27:28:00 Henry Grimball He's in the officer corp of the state society. My son Henry just turned 41. My daughter Emily is married to Stuart Longley and he's in it through I think the Connecticut Society. 27:43:00 Lisa Hayes Will they be going to Paris next year? 27:47:00 Henry Grimball If I finance it. 27:48:00 Lisa Hayes Are our spouses included? Are they invited also? 27:50:00 Henry Grimball Oh yeah. 27:51:00 Lisa Hayes Is your wife included? 27:52:00 Henry Grimball Oh yeah, oh it's a glorious social event. It's just unbelievable. But you know that's just that's one of the things I've done over the years. Not devoted a lot a lot of time to it but enough to have a lot of fun and help. And so that's kind of the family background I guess. 28:21:00 Lisa Hayes Will you tell me about, so you lived in West Ashley for a lot of your childhood. 107 Chadwick Drive. What could you do in West Ashley when you were a boy? What was fun? 28:31:00 Henry Grimball Yeah. Well one thing we Henry Fishburne who lived over in the Crescent in Gerard Sterling who lived in the country club right on the water we used to swim off of his dock. We could get bikes and pedal to all houses that were being built and collect all the empty soda bottles turn them in at the A&P that was being built in the South Windermere shopping center, I'm getting two cents a bottle. So we collected money. But I attended, as all my brothers did, Gaud School, which was in downtown. Berkeley Grimball came back from World War II. He was a doughboy in Italy and he saw terrible things. But anyway, he came back and he bought the Gaud School from my Uncle Henry Gaud, who Francis Grimball “Fan.” Henry Gaud's dad, Bill Gaud, had started the Gaud School for Boys. And Berkeley Grimball bought it for, I'll probably be off a dollar or two, but it was like $128. Well, it wasn't anything there, it was just a name. There wasn't any building that Bill Gaud owned. And so Berkeley's mother, Mrs. Elliott, had had three husbands. The middle husband was a Grimball, and that's where Berkeley came from. He died, as did the first husband, who I can't remember his name. And then she married Exum, E-X-U-M Elliott. And they lived down on Broad Street, I can recognize it but I don't know the number, but that's where she had the Watt, W-A-T-T, school. I suspect that was the name of her first husband, but I'm guessing. But anyway, the Watt school was grades one through three, girls and boys. And she funneled all the kids to Berkeley's, to the Gaud School, and he had the school from the fourth grade when I went there, through the seventh or eighth grade. And about every year or two he added a grade until he had a high school. But until then the boys who went to grad school went on off to prep schools like Episcopal and Chote, other schools. And so off to the high school of Charleston. My dear friend in law practice, Foster Gaillard, and his older brother, Paul, went to the High School of Charleston and they got great educations back then. That was a fine school. But we went to the Gaud School because of my father's connection with Berkeley. And when I was in the seventh grade, Berkeley had that school down at South Adger's Wharf. There's a plaque on it. That school was in a building there on the northeast corner of South Adger's Wharf in East Bay. The playground was East Bay Playground. That's where we went to play. It was a rap. And when he added grades he had to expand and just to the north of that building was Viohl's, V-I-O-H-L, hay and grain warehouse, because there's still a lot of horses in town then in the early 50s. He had big salt blocks, he had hay, all kind of. It was an anachronism for downtown Charleston on East Bay. But Berkeley leased the attic. To get to the attic he built a walkway across the rooftops. No cover to it. It had rails so we wouldn't fall off, but if it was raining we just had to run to get into the annex in the attic of Viohl's Hay and Grain. 32:31:00 Lisa Hayes And you had classes up there? 32:33:00 Henry Grimball Oh yeah, classes. And there was one big room where we had -- where they'd play the piano and we'd sing songs and gather once a week. 32:42:00 Lisa Hayes Are those buildings still there? Is it homes? No? 32:48:00 Henry Grimball The Gaud School Building is still there on the south, on the northeast corner of East Bay and South Adger's Wharf, but the warehouse, Viohl’s, was all torn down years later and made into townhouses. It's a stretch of townhouses. It's right across from Rainbow Row. Right, exactly. So and then in the seventh grade, Berkeley had the need to expand further so we bought what became which John Rutledge's house on Broad Street right at the mouth of Orange, you come across Orange. There it is. It's now an inn and it's got all the wrought iron work. It goes out three floors. He bought it. I'm a guest now and I'm pretty sure this is a fairly accurate number for something like sixty seven or eight thousand dollars. And that property scratched from Broad Street all the way to Queen. It's a tremendous backyard. And now at the north end of that lot of some houses that hold nuns. It was nunneries there. It also stretched over to King Street, if not to King Street, close to it, and that's the parking lot of the King and Queen building. So it was a huge piece of property. The problem with Berkeley always was timing and when we were there and when I was going into the 11th grade, he merged the Gaud School for Boys with the Porter Military Academy, which was Episcopal oriented. Bishop Toomer Porter had founded it after the Civil War. But anyway, that's a whole different story. But it was up on where the Medical College Now St. Timothy's Chapel is still there right on the corner and Colcock Hall is still there. I think they preserved that. The rest of it is all the field where the Porter boys marched and all its all buildings now. But they merged and in the eleventh grade we went to school on the Porter campus and he sold the Broad Street property for a loss, a few thousand dollars, loss, believe it or not, timing is everything. And he just missed. That property now would be worth fifty million dollars if he had to guess the whole property. Huge. And anyway, the Atlantic coastline gave the Porter Gaud school its property over at Albermarle Road. And while we were in the 11th grade at Porter Military Academy property, they built a new school over on Albermarle. And I was in the class, the first class, to graduate the next year. We were seniors and I was in the first class to graduate. We only had about fifteen boys in a class. Yeah, I mean it was reasonably small. It's grown like a weed since then. 36:21:00 Lisa Hayes That's a lot of campus hopping for one person. 36:35:00 Henry Grimball One of the things that I should mention because it struck me as a stroke of genius. Berkeley didn't have any money. And when we were down South Adger's Wharf he hired retired military people to teach. It was an amazing assortment of men. Bill Ross, we called him Captain Bill, Captain Ross, he had been a Marine in the Pacific in World War II, went ashore, landed at different islands to fight with the Japanese. And he taught us, what did he teach us in the fifth grade, I think maybe history? Another teacher you had was Ken Houk. Kenneth Houk was a great friend of Miss Rugheimer, who was the librarian back when I was a child, right here at the Charleston Library Society, a wonderful lady. I remember her. I remember what she looked like. And Kenneth Houk was a great English teacher. He was a graduate of the College of Charleston, and he connected everybody at Gaud school at this library, if he could. Yeah. He was really fond of this library. And he went on and stayed at Porter Gaud and retired, he was retired when my brother Frank graduated, it was a long time ago. Anyway, because Frank's, I'm seventy-five, Frank's sixty-five. So he graduated when he was eighteen, you could figure that out. Berkeley hired Admiral Bentham Simons, Benny, who lived in the Lining House at one time. Bentham Simons was captain of the Raleigh at Pearl Harbor, and he saved that ship. It's documented. I'd always heard about it, but it is documented that he got that ship under way. He was on the bridge in his Navy-issued blue pajamas, commanding the Raleigh. It got severely hit, but he saved it by running it aground. He ran it up on a bank and kept the ship from sinking. That was Bentham Simons. He taught history, I think. General Sullivan, I'll think of his first name in a moment. Sullivan taught geography. He was Mark Clark's Supply General in the invasion of Italy. He had been a hero in World War I. I didn't know this until I started researching it for biography and writing, autobiography and writing. Anyway, a memoir. And Sullivan was unbelievably handsome when he was young and he was severely wounded in World War I. He stayed in the army, became a general, and was Mark Clark's right hand in the invasion of Italy. And he got back to Charleston because Mark Clark became president of the Citadel and got in touch with General Sullivan, his nickname was Sully, and asked him to come help him in the administration of the Citadel. When he finished that, then he became a teacher at Gaud School. 40:08:00 Lisa Hayes Having the Navy base here in Charleston, did that make some of these folks want to come here? 40:15:00 Henry Grimball Oh, yeah. Charleston has always been very friendly to the military, very friendly. As my father used to say, the rest of the country doesn't quite understand what it's like to lose a war. The South knows all about it. We lost. And losing is not a good thing. So the South, and in particular a place like Charleston, has embraced the military because we know how important it is to have a strong military. You don't want to lose. You lost. A terrible event. So, yeah. Good for the country, but not so good for the losers. So anyway, that was Gaud School. After I graduated from Gaud School, I went on to Sewanee in 1966. 41:02:00 Lisa Hayes And then you went to Oxford also. What were you doing there? 41:05:00 Henry Grimball I was an economics major at Sewanee. One of the most interesting things I ever did, I got a job as an intern with AT&T in Manhattan in the summer of 1969. And they paid me an astronomical amount of money for that time. And I somehow, through an older lady at Sewanee, discovered that a relative of hers, I don't know whether it was a son or a son-in-law, was coming to Sewanee to teach in the summer music school. And he had an apartment on West 79th near Riverside Drive. And I sublet from him for $550 for three months. And then I got two roommates and we split the $550 three ways. The only deal was I got a little small bedroom and those two guys had to share the big bedroom. So I had my own room. It wasn't much of a room, but it was a nice apartment. It had a baby grand, had a violin. 42:17:00 Lisa Hayes That sounds fun. 42:20:00 Henry Grimball Just west of the Museum of Natural History. 42:23:00 Lisa Hayes What a location. And that's when, July of 1969, we landed on the moon. 42:29:00 Henry Grimball Right. 42:30:00 Lisa Hayes Do you remember watching that on TV or what you were doing in that? 42:34:00 Henry Grimball I had a mentor, Larry Cataldo, C-A-T-A-L-D-O, who was in his twenties. And his family had a house on Lake Winnipesaukee and he invited me to go up there for the weekend and we drove up in his beat up old car. Think it was a rambler. We drove up there and had a lot of fun and on the way back we were on the Hudson Parkway and we were listening to the radio and he said, "We got to pull over." So we saw a filling station, we pulled in, and it had a black and white TV in there, and we watched right there. But that was a very unusual summer, and I was in the office of economic analysis of AT&T at 123 William Street. The headquarters was on a lower Broadway, the international headquarters was on a lower Broadway. But we were on, what was way up in this building. I forget what floor we liked, the 17th floor of this skyscraper. 43:41:00 Lisa Hayes Walkup? 43:42:00 Henry Grimball Oh no, oh, a big bank of elevators and I commuted every day by subway, hot as hell. The subways weren't air conditioned. I'd get to work soon. But it was a great job and I was interested in economics. The problem that I faced with economics when I went to Oxford on a scholarship, I got to the finals in the Rhodes but I did not have a varsity letter. I raced sailboats. We raced. When I was 11 we bought a jet 14, my older brother and I for $700 from Johnny Jenkins who had it on a mud bank down at Brickhouse on Edisto. And we started racing it the next year after three days of training by Jimmy Hare, H-A-R-E. Jimmy was a nice guy, still around town. He retired as a colonel in the Army. But anyway, I probably didn't mention it in that bio on Thanksgiving morning, 1956. I was eight years old. And I was down Chadwick Drive playing with the Maloney Boys. Bad Boys, bad. And they had fireworks and they put up some firecrackers in the plastic doll baby that was on a trash pile. And when that, I was 10 or 15 feet away, but when it blew, it damaged my left eye. I'm blind in that eye. You can kind of see if you look at it. It's got a big, anyway, I I can't see it of it. And that, when I got drafted to go to Vietnam, that kept me out of the military. But it also meant I was forbidden to play contact sports, football, which I loved, basketball, because of the danger of an injury to my good eye. And we bought that sailboat when I was 11, three years after that accident, and that was like perfect. because I have no depth perception. Your brain adjusts in odd ways to make up for the handicap of no depth perception. But sailing is most of the time slow enough where I could cope with it. And I actually wound up doing a lot of competitive racing and was good at it. I won trophies and had fun with it. And when my older brother Billy took, when I was a freshman at Sewanee, we traded in the Jet 14 and bought a Thistle, which it was bright red, we named it the Red Baron. And it had a red, white, and blue spinnaker. And we raced that a lot. And it was also a good picnic boat when you were taking girls out of it. And Billy took it down to Pensacola when he moved down there as a lawyer for the Navy, in the civil work for the Navy, and I got into ocean racing, and I did a lot of ocean racing. I crewed, I never owned a big boat, always wanted to, but I crewed, and I steered, and I worked the spinnaker. Those were my two specialties, and they were perfect for that. But I got to Oxford, I got to the Rhodes finals in Atlanta, but I didn't have a varsity letter. And of the 12 of us who were interviewing for the finals, I was the 12th, the last. And that was not a good position to be in. I was not fresh. But I did get a scholarship through the Episcopal College and Universities to Oxford. I went and my economics tutor was the son-in-law, Sir Alec Douglas-Home, who was the prime minister at the time. And his specialty was the mathematical model for economics. And it gets very obtuse, it's calculus and statistics. And I could do it, but I did not like it. And so I cut the two-year program short by a year, came back to law school, and I practiced a long time, for 51 years. 48:09:00 Lisa Hayes Well, so you so I was thinking you had wanted to be a lawyer for your whole life. No, no, no 48:15:00 Henry Grimball I know I kept my father was pretty you know my father was on the board here for about 20 years he was a trustee But he he was a lawyer and a really fine trial lawyer and but he he never pressured us to do any one thing. He wanted us to do the best we could and even though I persuaded him to become a Republican, he said he always admired the Kennedys because they were full bore into life, sports, sailing, all kind of things. Full bore, and he wanted us to be that way, but he didn't want to aim us in any direction, he was leaving it to us. 48:57:00 Lisa Hayes So you went to USC Law School? 49:04:00 Henry Grimball I came back, Billy was, my older brother was still in the Navy, Vietnam, Arthur was still at the University of Virginia undergrad, and Frank hadn't gone to Sewanee yet. But my father said we could go to any graduate school we wanted. I led my class at Sewanee. I was a valedictorian. Four years, straight A's. And I overloaded. And I overloaded after the first year I took seven three-hour courses every semester, which is a huge amount. But I loved it. I loved the educational part of college. So I could have gone all kinds of different places, but he said if you're out of state, you pay for it. If you're in state, I'll pay for it. And so the three lawyers all went to Carolina Law School and the heart surgeon went to the Medical University of South Carolina. That's the way it was. And Father was very generous about that because that's hard to educate four boys. Three at Sewanee and one at the University of Virginia and then pay for the graduate schools. 50:17:00 Lisa Hayes A lot of money. 50:21:00 Henry Grimball He was a good role model that way. 50:23:00 Lisa Hayes And you said 51 years you've been practicing law. 50:25:00 Henry Grimball I started clerking at Grimball and Cabaniss, my dad's firm in 1971 after my first year of law school and I clerked there '71, '72, '73, graduated in '74 and that's when I, in November of '74, started practicing law. 50:47:00 Lisa Hayes Yeah. And you're 75 now, is that what you said? Do you have plans to retire or are you? 50:53:00 Henry Grimball Well the problem I've got right now is I've got two cases left. One of them is the one I mentioned as I came in today. This had been going on for about three years before I was the construction of a house on Hilton Head. It was very poorly constructed. It took over $700,000 to repair when it was brand new. And that's in litigation, both in state and federal court. In federal court, the carrier denied coverage to the general contractor whom we sued. I represent the owner and sued the general contractor. And the carrier said we don't owe anything. No insurance has brought a suit in federal court called a declaratory judgment action to determine what coverage they owed or didn't owe. And Judge David Norton, who was my hall proctor at Sewanee when I was in McCrady Hall my freshman year, as a federal district judge. And we were about to have a hearing on a motion of mind for partial summary judgment and the judge said stop the music, this is a declaratory judgment action, I want to know whether I should retain jurisdiction. Because that's one of the few things, few kinds of cases where a federal district judge can refuse to take the case. He can refuse the jurisdiction. And he sent us an email and said, tell me about this case when you studied the Quarles Q U A R L E S case a 1937 case and the Nautilus case which was a 1992 case and we briefed it and yesterday afternoon at 2:38 p.m. in came an order from the judge bouncing the case out of court and I'm getting ready to sue that that carrier which sued my client in federal court I'm getting ready to sue them down in Beaufort County they're not gonna like it, and that's why I'm doing it. So that's that case, and then I have what we called a Bomasada case, which is a case that I got in 2011. It involved the construction 150 Bee Street condominiums right there on Lockwood. 53:05:00 Lisa Hayes Oh I know those condos. All that work's been done on the outside there. 53:12:00 Henry Grimball Well, it completely reworked because they leaked. That case went into suit January 26, 2012 when one member of 150 Bee Street LLC sued my clients who were also members of 150 Bee Street LLC. That LLC was put together to build the building. That was the purpose of it. One member sued us, my members, saying that they had misbehaved in the handling of the funds of the LLC. And that case finally came to an hearing before three. Three lawyer arbitration panel, October a year ago, eight-day trial, between three and four hundred exhibits offered in eight days. We traded over three hundred thousand documents. Enormous case. Thank goodness we have electronic files now because I could find anything in moments where had it been a paper file it would have been terrible. I actually had a paralegal, I did a medical malpractice, my first medical malpractice plaintiff's case, first medical malpractice case at all, which is about 20 years ago, between 15 and 20 years ago. We represented a lady who was operated on a T-3,4, T-7,8, to scactimate an inter-body fusion, which is in this part of the back. T-3,4 is right where women's breasts are right here and the doctor came in from the back which is almost never done and he didn't go out laterally enough. So he crossed her spinal cord permanently paralyzed from T-3,4 down Um, it resulted in two different suits and we got multi-million dollar settlements in each suit. I had a wonderful paralegal and when that case was over we counted the bankers boxes and multiplied by the length of each box and we had over 180 feet linear feet of paper in that one case and I had a lot other cases going on at the time but the Bomasada case was much bigger than that. Paperwise and that case resulted in a verdict against our clients but it was modest but they still wanted us to appeal and that appeal, that appeal from the arbitration panel goes to circuit court and whoever gets a bad decision there goes to the court of appeals in Columbia. And we argued that appeal before Judge Bentley Price who will no longer be a judge in June because he's been found to be not qualified. 56:21:00 Lisa Hayes He's the person I've seen in the news. 56:23:00 Henry Grimball The one you've seen in the news but we argued before him a couple of months ago. Hour and a half, two hour argument I had told him it was complicated that's why we needed extra time and we went in and I told him I said this is complicated and he said he'd give us a decision in a day or two and we hadn't heard anything in a a couple of months because it's a very complex case. 56:52:00 Lisa Hayes You said it started in 2012. 56:55:00 Henry Grimball The initial suit was filed. It's called a derivative action. The plaintiff member of the LLC brings a suit on behalf of the LLC, which makes it derivative, brings it on behalf of the LLC against the elements of the LLC for the benefit of the LLC. So it's a derivative suit. 57:22:00 Lisa Hayes Like a brother and sister fighting in the family. 57:30:00 Henry Grimball Whatever. Yeah. Anyway, that suit was first filed. January 26, 2012. But you know, we had COVID, which messed the whole legal system that screwed up. And we also had, and that was February 2020 for a couple of years, and we also had the construction litigation over the leaks in the building which erupted in the middle of the suit derivative action. And our case had to go, had to stop while the construction case was resolved, and that took two, three years. So that's why there's such a big time. Nobody's going to want to know that. It's fascinating and it's but the problem is that the appeal, if we get a bad decision out of Bentley Price we're going to the Court of Appeals and you're talking about another year, year and a half and I can't quit while that's going on. I can't. 58:37:00 Lisa Hayes How many-- I don't know about how it is to practice law, but are you the only person in your firm that's working on this case? 58:52:00 Henry Grimball Oh no, no, I had to enlist Morris Ellison, who's a brilliant commercial real estate lawyer, to help me. I got him involved in 2012 and he and I have had the best time working together on that case. I've become very close to him. He's an absolutely strict orthodox Jew. After sunset on Friday, he does not get in the car. Always leaves the office early on Friday. And his brother, as it turns out, I've had cancer. I got prostate cancer back in about 2010. I had surgery at Johns Hopkins and two years later the cancer came back. In 2012 I went there for radiation therapy. For two months I lived in a condo in the Inner Harbor. But we had merged in 2012, Buist, Moore, Smythe, and McGee that I went to when my dad retired in 1997. I moved to Buist, Moore, Smythe, and McGee, but I had good friends, and was my Henry Smythe, Foster Gaillard, great group of guys. Anyway, we merged, Buist Moore merged in 2012, as 15 years after I went there, with Womble, Sandridge, Carlyle, and Rice, out of North Carolina. And so when I went to Baltimore for the radiation therapy, we had just merged and there was a Womble office in Baltimore. So I practiced law seven days a week as usual. While I was being treated every day, every week day at 2 p.m. I had a driver drive me over to Johns Hopkins for that. I told people I had a torrid love affair. We got in bed every day at two o'clock naked with linear accelerator number five. And the door is about a foot thick and when they shut that dang door you're in this room. The room is bigger, somewhat bigger than the room we we’re in now. It's filled with electronics. And they played the damnedest music the first day. It was a rap, a lot of four letter words. And you know this thing is over you and it's got a cone. I thought it was coming down. I learned on the very last day that the gurney I was on was going up. Because on the last day I was about to jump off and they screamed at me as they came through the door, "Don't jump, you're six feet up in the air." I didn't realize that it was the gurney moving and not - but that cone shaped big old hunk of equipment did nine shots anywhere from ten or fifteen seconds to thirty or forty seconds around me and underneath. And so they played this terrible music and I got out and I told these nurses and I said, I want some music tomorrow and it's going to have one four letter word in it. And the full letter word is B-A-C-H. That's what I want to hear. And from then on out I had classical music. 1:02:30 Lisa Hayes I was surprised they didn't ask you before they played that. 1:02:34 Henry Grimball I was a little surprised by it. 1:02:36 Lisa Hayes But anyway. So, anyway, will you tell me about how you met your wife? Tell me about her. 1:02:42 Henry Grimball Anyway, Virginia Virginia's family is really the real good roots down in Montgomery, Alabama. She had a grandfather grandfather, great grandfather, who was governor at one time. The Gayle G.A.Y.L.E. Planetarium in Montgomery is her family. Her name is Virginia Gayle Grimball. She went to St. Mary's and then to Chapel Hill, two years at St. Mary's, two years at Chapel Hill, and worked for the Gignilliat firm. That's Gignilliat is Gignilliat, G-I-G-N-I-L-L-I-A-T. and there was a Gignilliat who was a quarterback of the Sewanee football team while I was there. Hugely well liked. His family had a law firm and that's who Virginia worked for and I think that firm was in Georgia. Pretty sure it was. She decided she wanted to see the ocean, live on the coast, have a dog, and she came and got a job working for Buist, Moore, Smythe and McGee on Exchange Street. She actually was going to interview at Sinkler, Gibbs, Simons and Guerard, which was further east on Exchange Street after you pass number five, which is Buist Moore on the right, you go further down and Sinkler was on the left, and who should be on the corner but Peter McGee, Joseph McGee, my law partner, and he intercepted Virginia. She was kind of asking questions about where she needed to go. And he said, "You don't want to go there. Buist Moore is a lot better firm. Let me show you our firm." And he takes it down the street into Buist Moore, where they promptly hired her as a paralegal. And my older brother Billy bumped into a first and said, and told me, 'cause we were practicing all together, he said, "There's a real nice girl down at Buist, Moore, you should call her." And one thing led to another. And so we got married on May 21, 1977, in Charlotte, because that's where both of our grandmothers still lived. And we have two children, son Henry and daughter Emily. Son Henry just turned 41 and Emily's 37, I think. 1:05:27 Lisa Hayes And then Emily, does she work at Doyle? 1:05:31 Henry Grimball She started that Doyle office. She worked for Christie's in Manhattan for thirteen years. She was up there and son Henry worked for a hedge fund there for six or seven years. Henry lived at seventy-first and first and Emily bounced all around. She wound up way downtown. Both of them were there in the crash of 2008. And Emily's position was not far from human resources and she saw lots of friends go in and come out in tears because they'd been sacked. Henry's hedge fund collapsed, went out of business, and he was tasked to marshal all the funds and send them back to the people who, to whom the funds belonged. So he stayed in an empty office on Fifth Avenue for some months. But they both saw what could happen in a heartbeat. But Emily loved it, but she got married to Stuart Longley, I guess about four years ago, and they were living in a tiny apartment in Manhattan. And Stuart has a wonderful job, he can work anywhere, like a salesforce kind of a job, and works on a computer. And she got pregnant and COVID came and they said, "The heck with this." So they moved to Charleston and rented and then bought a house in Avondale and now they've just bought a house at 112 Tradd right around the corner. And they have a daughter, Eliza, who was born almost two years ago on February 3. I'm taking her to lunch every Friday. 1:07:26 Lisa Hayes Oh, that's nice. 1:07:27 Henry Grimball Very nice. 1:07:28 Lisa Hayes Let's talk now a little while. What's the time? Doesn't matter? Okay. So your father was on our board, and you remember coming here as a child. What was the library like when you were a little boy coming here? 1:07:45 Henry Grimball Nice. 1:07:46 Lisa Hayes You remember Miss Rugheimer? 1:07:47 Henry Grimball Miss Rugheimer. Miss Rugheimer was a very, like a grandmother. Yeah. And very interested in children. There was a big children's section. As you come into the main entrance, off to the right was a big children's section. All lots of children's, both puzzles, wooden puzzles, all kind of things. And my dad, by the way, in the Great Depression, he was born February 6th, 1917. He would come here as a young man because he didn't have any money much to do anything. He'd come here and get a book and sit in an easy chair and read all the time. 1:08:28 Lisa Hayes So he loved the library? 1:08:30 Henry Grimball Loved it from when he was a little boy. And I don't know that I can say that about either Fran or Jack, but my dad loved the library and felt a great affection for it his entire life. He persuaded the board to ask me to become a trustee. And I would just tell you, Lisa, I have real problems with names and dates. I was a trustee, I think for 19 years. You'd have to look at the record. And I don't know whether you're gonna want to publish this but I'm going to tell you exactly how things went. Warren Ripley was the president over 30 years. He worked for the Post and Courier. Very interesting person. An expert on Revolutionary War and Civil War munitions. The reason the pedestal on the north west corner of White Point Gardens as you come down King Street and reach South Battery right across to the left on that corner is a pedestal. It's gray, it's about three or four feet high. There's nothing on top of it. That was a Revolutionary War cannon that was on it. Hugely valuable. And people steal stuff off the Battery. You know, the monument, as you come down Meeting and get to South Battery directly across the street is the monument to the Hunley. And it's got, it's a fountain, big granite obelisk, and on either side, east and west side, is a dolphin. Those things are bronze, and they're maybe three or four feet high. Somebody stole one of those one time. Stole the damn thing. And it had to be replicated and put back on. Well, Warren was concerned that that gun was gonna get stolen, so it's in the museum now. He had it removed, and it's because it could have been stolen. Small enough, not like it was a great big Civil War cannon. This was a cannon maybe about four feet long. And so he was an expert in munitions, very interesting guy. We'd have these meetings and it didn't seem, Paul Trouche was a trustee too and Paul's about my age. We'd talk about it and say, "Nothing really going on." And my father's attitude was, and he said this to me so many times, "Warren is brilliant. Don't worry about it, he's got it under control." He did not. 1:11:31 Lisa Hayes This is around, let's just give a frame of reference, 1:11:34 Henry Grimball I forget the date when I became president. 1:11:41 Lisa Hayes Well, I think in your form here it said 2006, maybe 2008 is when you were the president. 1:11:49 Henry Grimball Well, this would have been in the nineteen years leading up to that because we were coming out of a meeting one night. We met down in the trustees room, which was down below us in the main. Yeah anyway I don't know what they call it and I hadn't been in there in years but we'd meet down in there at this nice elegant table and Warren would sit at one end and conduct a meeting and and Carol Rivers was the secretary and we were walking out one day and he looked at me and said you're gonna be the next president and I said say again because it hadn't been discussed at all It was just like a bolt out of the blue. So I thought, well, why not? So I became the president. And I was edgy. The thing that made me edgy first was the finances of the library, because that's what keeps something like this afloat. You have to have the right finances. I knew that there were funds, and I forget the names of them. There were different funds. Anyway, Frank Rogers was a general in the Air Force, handled half of the funds at his stock brokerage business, and I forget what brokerage business it was. And there was a woman who worked in another brokerage house who handled the other half. And I went to both of them and I said, "I want to know what's happening with this money and where we're going with these funds." And they each wrote separately. They didn't collaborate. Each wrote separately a report back to me. And the graphs in each were terrifying. We were going to go bankrupt in 15 or more years. That's when I learned about the Monte Carlo rule. You can only take 4% or 5% out of your holdings, financial holdings a year in order not to chew through it and eat it and exhaust it. If you take 10 or 15% a year, it's unsustainable. And that's what was happening. 1:16:07 Lisa Hayes Well the, so now when we have a budget, it's my understanding that it has to be approved and goes through all these hoops and stuff. Did they not have a budget that had to be approved by the board? 1:16:20 Henry Grimball We had budgets but it was just not paid any attention to in those trustees meetings. There was no real analytical approach to it. It was just trust Warren and he knows what he's doing and it wasn't working with all due deference to Warren. I was very friendly with him. He was a nice guy, but it was not working. The library wasn't growing. The one thing I did while I was on the board is I had a law office in the Frankie Building, and I'd walk from 11 Orange Street through this beautiful gateway walk through the library, through St. Phillips, and on up. And I passed by this building every day. And it was, most of the building was gone. It was a front facade, maybe 10 or 15 feet, and there were two posts that propped it up. And I looked at that thing. Pun Ravenel had something to do with it, I forget. But anyway, I'd look at it and I thought, that's the only place we're going to expand in my lifetime. And I went to the board and said, said we ought to buy it. And we did. And I was real active. I was a trustee at Historic Charleston. I was president of the Preservation Society and I got the preservationist and we came up and got on the other side of Broad Street, above King Street and looked at that facade and they said you've got to save this facade. It's real important. This tin facade is only one other like it. It's way up on upper King St. And so I persuaded trustees that we needed to save the facade. And the building was built. The facade was saved. It's named the Ripley-Ravenel Building. And because Warren was the president at the time. But that was one of what I considered my greatest contribution as a trustee because I ignited that project. 1:18:27 Lisa Hayes You had the foresight to build the vaults, you knew that we needed some climate control areas for the rare books. 1:18:33 Henry Grimball I don't remember that and I don't think I had anything to do with that climate control vault. I may have, I don't remember, but I did have everything to do with buying the building. Yeah, because it was a no-brainer. It's the only chance in my lifetime to expand the library, we needed the room. So anyway, what really was a straw that broke the camel's back was when I was told, and by the way Angie Leclercq became a trustee. She was a head librarian at Citadel. She later committed suicide, I'm sorry to say, but she was on the board and I consulted with her all the time and I called Angie out. She's a Whaley. She's Ben Scott Whaley's daughter. You know, Mrs. Whaley's garden. That's her mom. And those are strong people. Whaley women are strong. And I'd call her up on the phone and she'd say, "Henry, don't relent. Do not relent. You know what you've got to do. Don't relent." And she kept me bucked up. You can't, this is a very historic important part of our culture, this library. And I was just beside myself that it was going to be run into the ground. And we never had an executive director, I forget his name again. 1:20:02 Lisa Hayes Eric Emerson. 1:20:03 Henry Grimball Eric Emerson. Anyway, so we hired Eric Emerson. And he was with us a couple of years and I went off. By the way, I don't know what the status of it is now, but I was so upset about a person being the president of the library for 30 years, I persuaded the board to change the bylaws to have term limits. I don't know whether that's still in there or not because when I left, I wanted a clean break and I'm going to tell you something. I was tired. I had kept two or three big bankers' boxes to the side of my desk for three years because something was happening all the time. Oh, yeah. If I had kept hours, it was like the second job. I was so tired when I finished my three years as president, but I didn't put that term limit thing in place I hope it still is. It should be because it gives fresh life all the time. It's what's wrong in Washington. They don't have term limits. But anyway, you know then Van became the president and I'm sitting there at Buist, Moore working with him and he said we want to hire Anne and her husband was a law partner at the firm. And I had heard stories about Anne from her teaching over at Charleston Day School and I was concerned about it and I talked with him and he said, and we had a very cordial talk, I loved Anne, and anyway. We talked and he said, "I think it's worth a shot." And she was fantastic. She was fantastic. She helped. She wanted this library to live and grow and grow in a positive, effective way. And so she, and I take my hat off to her. She used to tell me when she first became the executive director that I was the person who saved the library. But that kind of faded into history as time goes by. Things fade. 1:22:28 Lisa Hayes I think you definitely sound like you started the library on its healthy trajectory that we are on now. 1:22:34 Henry Grimball Well, I didn't do it because I thought bells were gonna ring and trumpets were gonna blow. I did it because I didn't want it to fade away. It's too damn important. 1:22:46 Lisa Hayes Your family loved the library and you loved the library. 1:22:50 Henry Grimball Very much, but it's an institution, it's a cultural institution. It's been very important in the life of the city. 1:22:58 Lisa Hayes 275 years old. 1:23:01 Henry Grimball Yeah. 1:23:02 Lisa Hayes To have it, in your tenure, to have it disappear, that would have been heartbreaking I’m sure. 1:23:07 Henry Grimball A black mark on all of us would have been terrible. And so I'm thrilled it has. And every now and then I come to one of the events there. like I say, I was jammed. I'm trying to get rid of books. I can't read them all. And I take books to the office and put them on a table and people take them. And I just can't read it all. But it's just a thrill to see the things that turned out as successfully as they have. And I don't know anything really much about where the library is today and who's actually on the board because I'm busy and I've moved on to other things. You know, you move on. I've been the, I was the head of the president of St. Andrews Society during COVID, which was a mess and different responsibilities require time and you move on. 1:24:07 Lisa Hayes Well, thank you for what you did 25 years ago. And for coming today. 1:24:13 Henry Grimball It just shocks me how time flies. When I was president of the Society of Cincinnati and the State of South Carolina, Frank Rogers called me and said, "I'd like to buy you a drink at the Yacht Club. I should have known something was up." We went to the Boathouse, we sat on the north wall up on the second floor, sat at a table against the north wall. He said, "I, we need to put up a statue to Moultrie, and we need to get it done." They've tried about eight times, and everyone's fizzled, all documented by the way over the many decades and he said “I think we're close I need you to really help me push this thing," and I took another sip of alcohol and said yeah of course why not and but things like that and this is the Frank Rogers who'd been handling the money half of our funds. He was a great guy and he'd been president of the [Society of the] Cincinnati. But something like that is a whole new diversion from my law practice. And by the way, until recently when I stopped taking cases a couple of years ago, I don't want to take on new cases because it could be like Bomasada and I'd be 90 years old if I got was able to retire so I quit taking cases but at one time I had I had so many cases that I was handling once I've tried over 300 cases in common place court nobody does that anymore I was bouncing around all over South Carolina from Greenville to Beaufort to Horry County Myrtle Beach all over trying lawsuits and I worked seven days a week. I was working seven days a week. I've been a member of St. Michael's Church all my life. I was a lawyer for St. Michael's, solicitor for 25 years and in the middle of the big fight with the national church. And time was tight. You know I can take a couple hours off today to meet with you, but I couldn't have done this ten years ago absolutely not I'd have met you at six o'clock at night for a couple hours but not during the day because I was working too hard and I put 15-20,000 miles on my car every year driving all over taking depositions and I didn't have time and when I finished with the Library Society I was so tired and I also think it's It's really smart, especially when you've been through such a hard time for the new people to get in and be fully in charge and not having some has-been yakking at them. I think it worked better, I'm pretty certain it did, but I didn't have time anyway. It's something like that statue. I wound up in charge of all the inscriptions on it, and I wound up writing the bio of Moultrie that's on the west wall of the pedestal, one of the hardest things I've ever done in my life. 1:27:55 Lisa Hayes To get the research done, the writing just right? 1:27:57 Henry Grimball There was no book. There was no biography of Moultrie at that point in 2008-2009, whenever it was right around the end. There was no single biography. Chip Bragg, who's a member of the Society of the Cincinnati, South Carolina, is a doctor, lives in Thomasville, and he wrote the first bio of Moultrie, one of our members. It's very well received, but I had to do the research, and I only had so many periods, commas, capitals, lower case. There was a tight restriction on space and what I could put. And that alone was an adventure you cannot believe, and I must be very brief, try to be very brief. There were six or seven organizations that contributed directly to that statue. They're on either the south or north side. Then there are other organizations, then six or seven or eight who were ancillary contributors and they're on the other side. And I wrote each organization and said, your name is gonna go on this pedestal, what is your name? I want it in writing and I want a reply. Or I'm not putting it on there. Because the names of societies are different than what most people think. And on the east side we just put Moultrie. But on the west side, Crites, who runs McCarthy's, do you know anything about that? McCarthy's, as you go up to Magnolia Cemetery when you turn in Crites' place of business is right there, right off whatever it is, the Meeting Street Extension. And they do tombstones. And they inscribe them. And when my dad died in 1999, I went up there after he was buried and Crites, the tombstone was there. Born February 6, 1917. Born September 9, 1999. I looked at mother and she looked at me and I said, well, he's a born again Christian, you know, he's born again. She said, no, no. And I talked to Mr. Crites and he said, we'll fill it and recut it. And I said, no, you won't. Cause that will not be permanent. Bye-bye tombstone in the Cooper River at Magnolia Cemetery. So, Crites was in charge of the pedestal of the statue to Moultrie. I was in charge of the inscriptions. Crites and I like each other, but he didn't want that pedestal to go into Cooper River. 1:31:15 Lisa Hayes So you had to get it right. 1:31:17 Henry Grimball I had to get it not just right, but really right. At the very end, do you know how they inscribe? It's fascinating. For example, on the west side of that pedestal where the bio is that I wrote, they make stencils that are rubberized cloth and it's thick, like a fourth of an inch thick. It's a stencil and it's got sticky on it like a sticky note and they stick it onto the granite and then they sandblast through the stencil. That's how it's done. It's done in, each stencil as it goes down, it's not all just one long piece, it's in sections, but Crites made me sign and date every one of the final stencils. 1:32:20 Lisa Hayes Do you think that's because you have the discrepancy with your dad? 1:32:24 Henry Grimball Absolutely. Not something else. Absolutely. He knew. 1:32:27 Lisa Hayes You in particular. 1:32:28 Henry Grimball Me in particular. And there was only one error I made in that bio. I said that General Moultrie, when he was governor, oversaw the ratification of the Articles of Confederation. Wrong. And you know, what I wrote went to the City Arts and History Committee, and they got some smart people on it. And that was the one thing that they corrected. The Articles of Confederation were ratified during the Revolution, not afterwards when he was governor. The Constitution was ratified afterwards, but not the Articles of Confederation. And I got it out of a source book. And it was just wrong. And I should have known it intellectually, I should have known that, but I just got it out of this source. And so that was corrected and later Chip Bragg read what I'd - he studied what I wrote and he said it was correct, which is like a pshh, you know, everything is right on it. And by the way, do you know what was there before the statue of Moultrie? The statue is on the east end of White Point Gardens and it's about 10 or 15 feet off the west of the sidewalk right in the center of the east end of White Point Gardens and the statue is enormous. I mean it's the statue on the pedestal is 15 feet high. The pedestal I didn't have anything to do with the design of the pedestal or the installation of the pedestal. What had been there before was the capstone of the Maine, the battleship Maine, sunk in in Havana Harbor, all of them. And when they lifted that up, and I don't even know where that is now, it's stored somewhere. But when they took it out, they found bones underneath because they had to get the foundation really right to hold tons of granite of the pedestal. So they dug down and they're pretty deep and they found bones. That stopped everything. They had to make sure they weren't human bones and they weren't. Anyway, somehow they got balled up in the city and when they brought this big flatbed truck in and had this huge crane to lift these pieces, the pedestals in like six pieces. A city policeman said, "Y'all don't have a permit to do this. You got to stop." And it was raining. It was raining. So that delay there, it was a big screw up. When they lifted that big piece up that has all the inscriptions on it, it weighs tons. They lift it up with two very heavy straps. There's already a piece below it on the ground. They lift it up and move it over and set it down. How did he get the straps out of it? How did he get the straps out of it? No. 1:35:56 Lisa Hayes What did they do? 1:35:58 Henry Grimball You know, the Egyptians used sand. 1:36:00 Lisa Hayes Oh, yeah. 1:36:02 Henry Grimball Ice. 1:36:03 Lisa Hayes Oh. 1:36:04 Henry Grimball They had blocks of ice, and when they set that pedestal down, it was on the ice, and they took the straps out because it was elevated by the ice, and then they had to hold it carefully in place as it settled down into places the ice melted. Brilliant. The only thing wrong with that pedestal, the last piece before the statue itself has got a Greek motif and there’s a name for it I never can remember, it's like Eric Emerson, I Anyway, it's three grooves, a little space, three grooves, a little space, three grooves. And that section is about ten inches deep, maybe a foot deep. And that section was put on upside down. And you can look at it, if you know, you can look at it and tell. 1:37:16 Lisa Hayes Is it a little bit that way instead of that way? 1:37:19 Henry Grimball No, no. It's just that the way those three grooves were put in, it would look better if it was reversed, if it was flipped over. It's just not right. But the architect, Constantine, went absolutely ape, went bananas, and it was all in the newspaper. And the committee that I had served on said, "Well, you're the lawyer. You take care of it." And I wrote and said, in effect, "The statute has been dedicated to the city. It's not ours anymore. You have to deal with the city." We also looked into trying to cut it, you know, glued as--and pegged and glued. It'd take a diamond saw, a band saw, and probably do more damage than good. 19, 20 thousand dollars worth. We just decided it was better just to leave it alone. You would never notice it if you went down there, except for the fact that I've told you. 1:38:40 Lisa Hayes And now people might know. 1:38:41 Henry Grimball But those things are such a huge distraction for somebody working seven days a week. Forgive me, but when I finished with the library, I had to quit and move on. Just so much time in a day. 1:38:53 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Yeah. Well, again, we thank you for all those years of work and hours of work, it sounds like, and it should be your job and your family and all that time you put in for us. 1:39:05 Henry Grimball Well, it was, no lawsuit, I told my wife, I said, "Wake up in the morning." I said, "You know, no lawsuit, would wake me up in the middle of the night like this damn library." I'd be lying in bed and I'd look up. By then my dad was dead. He died in 1999 and I'd say, "Father, please tell me I'm doing the right thing. Please tell me I'm headed in the right direction. Please give me some guidance somehow. Am I doing this right?" And it'd wake me up at night, worrying about it, for three years. It was something. It really was, and I didn't want to walk away from it. I wanted to run when I was through three years of being president. I was just tired. I was done. 1:39:58 Lisa Hayes Well coming here today I hope that it makes you feel like, gosh, that was worth it, because you can see how well the library is doing. 1:39:59 Henry Grimball I've never, never had any doubt that it was worth it. 1:40:11 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 1:40:12 Henry Grimball You know, it was really a—between Ms. Rugheimer and Eric Emerson, the library hadn't changed at all. It was in the backwaters of -- it was just ghosting along. 1:40:31 Lisa Hayes We have now -- we have the most members that we've ever had, so that's really good. And you know, we do all the programming. 1:40:38 Henry Grimball How many members? 1:40:39 Lisa Hayes I think it's about 2700 members. 1:40:40 Henry Grimball I think when I was president, it was like a thousand, maybe 800 or so. 1:40:41 Lisa Hayes Yeah, and I think when Anne started there were maybe even a little less than that. So yeah, that's like memberships. And then if you count people in a household, it's a lot more than that. There's a lot of people. 1:41:04 Henry Grimball I wonder what the future for libraries is, you know it worries me because I was a trustee of Historic Charleston for nine years. how I got to be a trustee is a joke. I was on City Council for two terms and I learned a lot about city zoning and planning and when I was no longer on City Council I developed a zoning practice. If somebody wanted to change a house or build something or do something I had a pretty good clientele. And, at one meeting, Peter McGee and Mrs. Edmunds, Frances Edmunds, representing Historic Charleston, were opposed to my proposition. And we had this debate. And to beat Frances Edmunds and Peter McGee is going somewhere and I beat them and I got what we wanted. The next day, McGee called me. I was not at Buist Moore yet, I was at Grimball and Cabaniss. He called me and said, "Would you be interested in serving as a trustee of Historic Charleston?" I was so flattered, I didn't even think of my zoning practice, which evaporated overnight. 1:42:29 Lisa Hayes I bet. 1:42:32 Henry Grimball It did. So I said yes. And back then the Nathaniel Russell House was the headquarters. And when there was a zoning issue I would walk from 11 Orange Street over to the Nathaniel Russell House, about three blocks, four blocks. And go up to Frances Edmunds office which was in one of the big bays on the south side of that building. She was a force. Wasn't afraid of anything. Nothing. If she had somebody who threatened the lawsuit she'd say, "Go ahead. I've got the best lawyers in town. If you want to fight, you looking at the right place." Nothing like that bothered her in the slightest. She was a Smythe. She's Henry, Big Henry's sister. And his son is my friend in law partner, Henry Smythe Jr. And Frances Edmunds had gone in and she said, "Mr. Grimball, Henry, would you care for a cup of coffee?" It was eight o'clock in the morning. I said, "I sure wouldn't Mrs. Edmunds." She'd ring a little bell and this Vietnamese, little Vietnamese man named Ming would come in. 1:43:50 Lisa Hayes He's still around. 1:43:51 Henry Grimball I know he is. He is. And she'd say, "Mr. Grimball would like a cup of coffee plain black, please." Two minutes later, Ming would come in. And I did zoning work for them for a while, and then the Nathaniel Russell House is a fabulous house. Its use has changed. And apparently museum properties are apparently institutions like Nathaniel, like Historic Charleston are selling their museum houses. That's the trend. But you wonder where that unintended consequence is to all that. 1:44:37 Lisa Hayes You're speaking about the Historic Charleston Foundation's decision to sell the Nathaniel Russell House. 1:44:45 Henry Grimball The number of people that come to see the Nathaniel Russell House has been in a decline. And that worries me about the library as well. Young people, what do young people do in my, you know, a lot of the lawyers in our office don't subscribe to the damn Post & Courier to the newspaper. Like what? Where are you getting your news? And then they have a big to-do in the newspaper this morning about how people didn't understand John Tecklenberg. I understand it. He let that riot take place up there. 1:47:28 Lisa Hayes A lot of people were unhappy about that. 1:47:30 Henry Grimball Real unhappy. I remember that night because we were going over to East of the Cooper for some social thing. And as we went up East Bay Street to go on the bridge, there were rioters up there. We went across and we were told later how dangerous it was to go downtown. So I think we took North Bridge and came in through West Ashley to Orange Street and avoided that whole section of the city. Stuart and Emily were driving in from New York and we told them not to come downtown but to go West Ashley, coming to the city from the west. And it kind of, you just, there's enough out there that worried people, and I knew his dad pretty well. Henry Tecklenberg was a nice guy, and I'm sure he's a nice guy, but I don't think that's where the city wants to be run. 1:48:53 Lisa Hayes Well, I guess the voters decided that. We'll see when mayor Cogswell, the future mayor Cogwell, takes over. 1:51:29 Henry Grimball I dated his mother before she married, before she married. Sally Eichel. I had to support him, and he's a nice guy. 1:51:40 Lisa Hayes He is a nice person. And I like John Tecklenberg too. 1:51:42 Henry Grimball I think John is a nice guy. I get along real well with him. One of his problems is that when we lived in that apartment house on Broad Street, Short Street was just to the north. We got in the backyard, which was mostly dirt. And it was a chicken-wire fence that separated the backyard of our property from a house on Short Street. And Short Street was totally integrated. There were Black children who were on the other side of that fence. And we saw, and we never associated too much, but Short Street was all black. And Price's Alley was Black, Rainbow Road was Black, lots of downtown was African American, and people got along great. 1:52:40 Lisa Hayes That's what, so I talked to Jenks Gibbs, you know. 1:52:45 Henry Grimball I know Jenks. 1:52:46 Lisa Hayes And he kind of had the same take on it that South of Broad was pretty integrated when he was growing up. But same kind of thing, they didn't play with the African American kids, but they were... 1:53:00 Henry Grimball They were all around. And maids would come walk to your house or whatever. But what's sad is that the economics of Charleston have been highly detrimental to the integration. It's becoming segregated and that's affected, that is, I'm sure affected the African American vote that Tecklenburg was counting on, but not nearly as many African Americans in the city now as it were when Riley was first elected. Not nearly. So that created a problem. And you know, there's only like 800 votes separated. 1:53:46 Lisa Hayes Is that right? 1:53:47 Henry Grimball Yeah. 1:53:48 Lisa Hayes Not many. 1:53:49 Henry Grimball Not many at all. This has been delightful. 1:53:53 Lisa Hayes I really enjoyed it. I could talk to you for a lot longer, but I know you're busy, busy. 1:53:58 Henry Grimball Well, I don't want to miss my lunch. My lunch with my granddaughter. 1:54:03 Lisa Hayes Where are you all going? Or do you go to her house? 1:54:05 Henry Grimball We go to the Carolina Yacht Club, South property. And that's a whole other story. I was on on the committee that set the footprint when they renovated the set of property. That was the most fun of all. 1:54:19 Lisa Hayes (laughing) 1:54:20 Henry Grimball It was fascinating. But we eat in the saloon, it's called a saloon cause that's where this big bar is, but we eat in the saloon, which has five or six dining tables because Eliza's so little and if she started to lose it, we wouldn't disturb everybody who's in the main dining room just out west, but she's never done that. And the staff absolutely loves, Eliza's a beautiful little girl and the staff loves her to the point where not only Zach, the manager of the whole entire club, but two other staff members we see most times we go there for a meal, gave her Christmas presents, which is out of the blue. 1:55:12 Lisa Hayes What does she get to eat there? Do they have kid-friendly food? 1:55:16 Henry Grimball No. 1:55:17 Lisa Hayes No. 1:55:18 Henry Grimball But we give her... she's gotten more picky as she's approached two years old, but she used to eat anything. She ate she-crab soup, salmon, chicken, anything. She's more picky now, but she always at the end had peppermint ice cream and chocolate sauce. 1:55:35 Lisa Hayes Well, enjoy that. It's really been fun talking to you. Thank you so much. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Henry Grimball (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on January 5, 2024) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Grimball, Henry Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2024-01-05 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context HenryGrimball_OralHistory_20240104 Description An account of the resource Henry Grimball was born in Charleston in 1948. The Grimball family has long connections to South Carolina and to the Library Society, going back at least to the “brick” membership of Nathaniel Heyward in 1835. Mr. Grimball relates stories of his ancestors’ lives and discusses the legal careers (including his own) of three generations of Grimballs. He and his father both served as Trustees of the Library, and, as President, Henry Grimball led the charge to buy the Ripley Ravenel Building, current home to the Library’s staff offices, the vaults, Buxton Books, and the Igoe Shakespeare Library. cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/ab077ee0b2910302c68ea7ab593073a4.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=ngCec7lXosyFg338C5vkfHqehArlerzAmJKaCxzOShoN3ZRjqFkmd7o93WbiFJhcwul5omYCE6V-73v1ItUg7GDcE-fWqtaj6tuTUee5hmvqM-07eDHNYRcWgbD6EpIbz6dFw-kdnL96PF1sCsqZbn9Oh38nYrtRwMrc96gOFCg87KfPc9NGn4EWbNtOffDBSzprVZHgFrFFSthehzagvAOMIvBFAs74z0N3qZrjIkSgm%7Ens7go4B194zF4cL-JXUEFgARxS5uCRPo0mstGyU4X7RdkHRTYGpy7oIiH%7E9dSNNvKajf-%7E6HCfbXDBZVeX7kaLceto1TIG1y99nDjDpA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 3aaeae1ed31daa93a8699105c0b18b56 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:26:10/118.3MB Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 00:00,000 Lisa Hayes Yeah, so don't worry about the rambling. And I tend to maybe-- 00:09,580 Jack Alterman I've been called loquacious once in a while. 00:11,580 Lisa Hayes Loquacious? 00:12,580 Jack Alterman Loquacious. 00:13,580 Lisa Hayes Loquacious. That's a good word. [ Laughter ] 00:16,580 Jack Alterman I had to look it up first time I heard that. [ Laughter ] But then I turned around, I was telling you that, so I said, "Aha." 00:25,840 Lisa Hayes So I'm Lisa Hayes, I'm the Special Collections Librarian, and I'm here at the Library Society in the fellows room, and we're talking today with Jack Alterman, who's a photographer here in Charleston, and we're going to learn more about him and about his life and his work. So thank you for doing this. 00:43,960 Jack Alterman You're welcome. 00:44,960 Lisa Hayes It's very nice of you. 00:45,960 Jack Alterman Pleasure. 00:46,960 Lisa Hayes And like I said, we'll just keep it pretty informal. Oh, I should say the date. It's September 5th, 2023. And yeah, I told you I followed you on Instagram. And I have for quite a while, so I'm familiar with your work. And the thing that stands out to me the most is how soulful your work really is. And have you always taken those kind of such, I don't know, lovely, lovely snapshots or how-- 01:19,800 Jack Alterman I think that soulful is a nice way and a good way to put it. I think that when you become an artist or photographer in your recording, the things that you see and feel, that that is where it comes from in your heart. And it develops over a long period of time. I don't think I've always been consciously soulful of my work. It started off where I was a commercial photographer, that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to work with advertising companies and art directors and creative directors. And I don't know why, but I started off being a little more artsy, doing people that I would see and doing contemplative portraits of people on location. And over the, say, decade or more where I was really commercial, industrial, I learned how to problem solve. And that, I didn't realize it at the time, that's really the key to becoming whatever it is that you want to be. You know, you've got to learn how to use those tools, and you've got to learn how to solve problems with, in my case, light and composition and personalities. And in many cases, you know, architectural detail and the time of day, all of that. So yeah, and so about 20 years ago, I just sort of broke out. I wouldn't call it an epiphany or anything, but I think that I just got tired of doing the commercial work and gradually started on the side doing other things. And the primary thing that was happening at that time let’s say, the year 2000. So we kind of had that tipping point, you know, a century mark right there. And at the same time, so much was happening in Charleston. You know, I'd already moved my studio from Meeting Street, where I had been for a long time in the corner of Meeting and George Street, And I moved it uptown to a warehouse on Upper King Street. And at that point I had a very large space. And within a year or two, everything sort of started transforming in the city. I mean, the bridge was being built, the Ravenel Bridge. You know, I grew up with those two Cooper River bridges, the Grace Bridge. And they were very meaningful to everybody, especially when there was just one. 03:55,600 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 03:56,080 Jack Alterman You know, just the terror of driving over that bridge. You grew up with that. And that was the first experience most people had when they came to town. So that was going on right in the shadow of where my studio was on Upper King Street. So I was right under those overpasses. So all that activity was happening. And that's when I really started to say, hey, let me start documenting what's going on here in some way. So that just going to answer that question, have I always been photographing things like you're seeing on Instagram? They're the same but different. Instagram and social media have given us a way of staying out there, letting people know that we're alive. And they were doing-- answering that old question, and what have you been up to? And that to me is why I do it once a week. Just to further answer that, so around 2000, I find myself up there. There's a lot of other changes going on in the world, in technology, in photography. And I had sort of cut myself out of a large piece of the pie here in Charleston when I was doing a lot of different things. And as technology changed, I knew I had to get out in front of it, you know, digital photography. And so all of a sudden, the space I had, I had six, seven, thousand square feet of just warehouse space. Great. And I didn't need it anymore, you know, because the dark room was now the light room. And I needed to have people around me who were teachers of that. And they usually were photographers who were ahead of that curve. You know, so it sort of transformed it and started finding people who could teach me and also other people. So it just reformed a club, if you will, which I recently just found out that George Johnson, who was photographer the last term in the century, started the Charleston Camera Club. And I didn't know that until recently. I just picked up a book about him. I'd seen his pictures. So he did, and he was talking to people like Alfred Hutty, who came down from New York during the '20s. So the Renaissance hadn't even started yet. But the Charleston Camera Club, I thought that was interesting. I didn't know that, but we just called it the Charleston Center for Photography. And that was inside my studio. We met once a month, and we had a presentation by somebody. So as this was going on, I was able to learn how to transition from film to digital. I was using both. And so during that time, you know, like I said, the bridge was being built. I had a good friend who was a painter, her name was Susan Romaine, who's now passed away. Susan was painting some pictures, paintings of buildings. And she would come into the studio and say, "Hey, can you photograph this for me "so I can paint from it and stuff like that?" And I said, "That is such an incredible perspective." And she'd say, "You know, I have this old bucket truck and I used to rent them. These were ways during the commercial times to get up high and photograph property. It could be a big industrial site or it might be something being built downtown. I found an old cable man's van that was a white Ford van, and on the back it had a lift, you know, to get you up to the top of a telephone pole. Perfect height. I thought it might be the third floor. 08:01,400 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 08:02,680 Jack Alterman You know? And so I saw her and she was photographing cornices or she was painting them. And I said, I want to do that. She said, you know what? Let's do a book together. And you do photographs and I'll do paintings. We won't even talk to each other for a while. You know, I won't show you my paintings. You won't show me your photographs. And at the end of that day, we'll, you know, which was about a year, we'll see what we have and maybe do a book. 08:32,080 Lisa Hayes That's wonderful. 08:33,380 Jack Alterman So that to me really was an epiphany in a way. So because I was able to also collaborate with other artists, John Doyle, for instance, who was a good friend who's now gone, and Harlan Greene. So Harlan, you know, has this inexhaustible knowledge of the history of Charleston. And, you know, by the time we had put this book together, he was writing up the introduction and John was writing up another one for this. There were two different perspectives. I just realized that I had found a way of telling the story of the transition of Charleston. And I just went full force on this thing. So those pictures turned into a book. They were paintings and photographs, so like page by page, her painting, my photograph. But the point of it was that nobody else was looking at this part of the city. And I didn't realize just how important it was. So as a kid, I'm going to go back up a little more. And I grew up here, you know, my dad came home from World War II, I was one of the first baby boomers, and dad was an artist also. He was also active in the Footlight Players. But he and my mother, right after I was born, opened up a shop on King Street, on the 300 block of King Street. So that's between George and Calhoun, it’s Burn’s Lane in the middle there. So they opened up a little ladies shop called Elza's Dress Shop, which is my mother's name, a block south of there on the other side of the street, on the 200 block, two something block, was Rosalie Meyer's dress shop, which is my grandmother's. My grandmother helped my mother set up a little bit. Dad had the creativity and realize that we've got to bring high fashion to Charleston. It's changing. So time goes on. They expanded the store. They opened up another one, a bigger one, right across the street. The building used to be Andelo’s Candy Store. The dad had this eye. He said he was looking, I have to imagine this, but he would look out the little window of the first store and see that old building and appreciate the architecture that he saw and it was crumbling. It was not being taken care of. You go in and you buy the little benne cookies and they sort of invented those and he had a load of chocolate. He'd always bring home things. Time passed and the building went up for sale. He said, "I want to buy the building if I can." He got the money from the bank and long story short he said we're gonna move in we're gonna design brand new store it’s gonna be fantastic the building was in such bad repair they had almost disassemble it and rebuild it and so what he did was he used old Charleston floors that he was able to find you know in salvage he built a fireplace in the middle of the store made out of Charleston brick put the seating area in front of it along with racks of clothes all around and made this very attractive to the men in the family who would come along with their daughters and their wives and spend the time while they shopped in front of the fireplace having cocktails. So and they over here they sold you know perfume like Estee Lauder they brought that down from New York. He would go to New York once a month with or without my mother and watch what women were wearing on the streets there. And he said, "This would be good." And I know, you know, so and so would look so stunning in that. So he took the chance and he'd say, "I want to buy a size 8, 10 and 12, and could you had to buy three?" And I found that out because I used to go up there with him on the buying trips when I got a little older. So I don't know if that's where I started noticing things, but certainly back from the cornices. And so at the same time, you know, I'm going to school, now I'm in high school, junior high school, which is on King Street. And as I said when I was filling out your questionnaire, I said one of the things that forms the template of Charleston to me was King Street, the whole thing. It's definitive, really. the second oldest street in Charleston. Here we are talking at the Library Society on King Street. So when you think about it, you divide it up to lower, middle, and upper. Sort of everything cultural, artistic, and retail, and the entertainment of everything. As a child, not only did my mother and my grandmother have stores on King Street, not only did I go to school on King Street. But every movie you would see would either be at the Gloria Theatre, the Riviera Theatre, or the Garden Theatre. And the only other one was The Lincoln, which at that time was segregated. So at that time everything was segregated. And that's the other thing of course, you're growing up during, you know, Jim Crow, the South, during the 50s. Was a very interesting, fun time, the Leave it to Beaver type of atmosphere, but at the same time there's this other thing. So with all of that going into my head, once I started to see what the cornices represented, what the architecture represented, I figured I could tell a story of what Charleston used to look like. And I also had the other privilege of knowing so many of the people who operated their businesses in those first floors. And I remember even people living in the second floor. There was everything from Reed Brothers up on Spring Street all the way down here to Berlin's. And then as you went further south, you got into the more residential and all of that. But if you notice, and that's the thing, people don't notice, it's like people don't look up at things in Charleston. You know, it's a flat city. What's happening right now is they're building vertically and we're all sort of upset with that. The skyline is being changed. It used to be just church steeples were the tallest thing. You know, and ships were able to navigate because they think there's the steeple at St. Michael or St. Philip's. And so now you know when they built the People's Building on Broad Street that was very controversial. But then once that controversy cooled they said okay it's okay to build and we went higher and more and more locations and of course the Medical University and everything. But people don't ordinarily look up they're looking down where they're walking, they don't want to trip over the uneven sidewalk, whatever the reason, they're just not making eye contact with other people or with where they're walking. And I notice if you did, you saw something very different. You know, the names of the buildings, as Harlan, I think, put it, you know, the vanity of the buildings that people put into it, the architecture. And sure enough, there were the names of the people who owned the building at the top. There was the date it was built. And there was another date. Sometimes the date was ten years before. I never understood that they just did it. And so then, like I said, I had this tool at my disposal which gave me this third floor view of what was so familiar already. And that's where the magic really started because I would get up at sunrise, I'd get up before sunrise and get myself within my head, I said I want to be on the corner of this and that. And I concentrated a lot on King Street but then I went all over the city. And once you have this sort of very intimate knowledge of the layout, you don't have to just look, you go there, you're prepared to do it. And like I said, the tools of my journey, I had solved the problem solving issue. So I said, well, what time of day do I need to be at this corner? And where do I need to park it to get it just so and to wait for the light? 17:35,560 Lisa Hayes Well, I was gonna ask you about the access because I've seen a lot of your photos are from rooftops or they appear to be of rooftops or from rooftops. And I thought maybe you'd have to get permission to do that from these places. 17:49,800 Jack Alterman That's a very good question. 17:50,820 Lisa Hayes But it's the truck that you have, the third floor, sounds like. Do you still have something like that? 17:55,400 Jack Alterman I don't. Now I have a drone. 17:57,080 Lisa Hayes Oh. 17:57,920 Jack Alterman A drone, I say technology keeps changing. But your eye doesn't. You know, in other words, that's just another way of solving a problem. You can get extraordinary picture, but you still do it at the 30 foot level. You don't fly so far. in other words, is possible to be in a third floor building and see these pictures that I take. You know, the fact that I don't have to go up the steps or knock on a door. But a good interesting part of your statement there was that the permission part. So back in the earlier days of this, and I, like again, I had my studio on upper King on the 600 block, So that's over by the Post and Courier Building behind there. And I did a lot of people. People would come in and I would do executive portraits, a lot. You know, headshots, as you would call them. And so one day, Joe Riley, our mayor, came in, and I had known him for a long time. He said, "Hey, Jack." And he booked a time to get a headshot, official portrait. And he, so we did that, and he's walking out and he sees some prints that I had just done of some of these buildings, the tops of. And he says, "Gee, you know, I haven't never seen that before since I was a little kid. We used to go up on the roof and we'd jump around, you know, just like this." He said, "How did you do that?" I said, "Well, I've got this van and I park it in." And he goes, he starts to say, "Hmm." He said, "You know, okay, that's interesting." And he didn't say much more, and he left. And the next day, a courier comes by with an envelope, with, and I opened it up, and it's an official, you know, City of Charleston logo, you know, and letterhead, and it's from Joe Riley, and he said, "This, you know, to who it may concern, This gives Jack Altman permission to park his bucket truck vehicle on any city street in Charleston, as long as he has a camera. And so I thought, "This is great!" That wasn't word for word. So I folded it up, put it back in the envelope, and put it in the glove compartment of the truck. And I'll tell you a little story about that in a minute. But the, so that just went on and on. Now I really felt like I had license to do whatever I wanted, whenever I wanted. I lived right down here on Queen Street. So for me to get in this thing and plan a morning shoot, which would be 90% of what I would do, because at sunrise you have very few cars on the street, you have very few people on the street, therefore it's not dating the picture. If you see people, you've got a fashion style. If you see cars, you can date the car. So I try to avoid that. So at that angle, I was able to then, you know, layer the city from a foreground cornice to a far, you know, removed steeple. And then even a horizon of the harbor and the ship coming through it. So I found these things that were just happening. They were things that were going on. I expanded that to the harbor from a small boat that I had. And I keep it at Toler's Cove. So again, I get there early in the morning. I get out. And I did a project called "Buoys." I called it red, right, returning, but they were pictures of buoys and ships and sailboats, either racing from the yacht club or big container ships coming in and tugboats and all of that and the Navy ships, that was such a big part of the city. So the short of it is that over those years, there I was, the bridge is going up and it's almost completed, it's 2004-ish, and I'm watching these people who are building the bridge. They're parking near my studio up there behind the Post and Courier. And then they're shuttling up to the bridge and back every day. And I'm getting to know a few of them. I said, "I gotta do this." So I just did a project called the Bridge Builders. And I just started catching them on the way. And finally I said, "Look, who's the good foreman of this thing? I just want to ask him permission to use all of you." And he said, "I called Mr. So-and-so and I got a phone number and I told him who I was and what I was doing, and I said, "Is there a way that I can get a request to everybody who works on the bridge?" And he said, "On payday, I guess I could put a little note in there with their paycheck." I said, "Would you please tell them that I'm a photographer here at the foot of the bridge, gave them the address, and I'm doing free portraits of them for an art project on whatever it may be?" And so he said, "Great." And I gave them two dates to do it. And so after work, so I set up my studio and six, seven o'clock, cars, trucks started coming in, people speaking languages internationally. I had people from, that were Russian, they were people, they were French, Spanish, I should say Mexican, wherever speaking Spanish, Irish, and they were coming in, they had been here for years, relocated here to build this bridge. And it gives you the sense of, you know, this community, how things are changing here, how that bridge was going to be so instrumental. So I did, so I did a show. Like I said, I had a large space and I turned it into a studio, to a gallery and invited them all, you know, and they came with their families, I had it catered and all. And they brought their children. And I learned something that was so valuable to me was just how much it meant to people to be looked at. And to be given soul in a heartful way and to actually apply their picture to a wall with the light shining on them. They're important and they're part of something. And I saw on their faces the little kids looking at my dad and the white, that's my husband. Proud. And it was really very very moving for me. So I kept that going on for all these years too. I later did a very, I think, important project on the east side of town that was rapidly changing and you know it was called East Siders Matter and it I went into the all over the east side with a portable studio like a tent and I just popped it up it was literally eight feet high eight feet wide you know a cube and that's how the light you know would filter through from the sunlight and also put them, take a person out of context. So I see a kid walk by and I said, "Hey, you want to be part of my art show?" He said, "Sure." He'd get in there, you know, and he'd get in there, he'd stand and he'd do whatever. And then I would then communicate, I'd get the look, I'd get it more serious. And that went on from six year olds to 96 year olds to little groups, two or three or four. It was amazing. And I moved around and I went out every couple of days and until finally they said, "Hey where's that guy taking the pictures because you don't want to bring so and so." And everybody said, "Is it okay?" I got sort of a verbal model release. And so at the end of all of that I printed them up. One of the things I have is a great big 44 inch wide printer. It's a giant thing. And I printed it out on a waterproof kind of material. Sort of a satin. And I printed it, I think it was 35 of these things. They were 4 feet by 5 feet. In black and white. I put grommets on the corners. And a friend of mine and I and a couple of other kids went out on the fence that goes along Columbus Street. And it's 150 feet long. And we just spaced it and I put these things right at eye level all the way down the block with a sign at the end that said, you know, "East Siders Matter" and sort of cool graphics. And then we did it at night. So the next day, I remember it was a weekend day, it was Saturday or Sunday, And I went over and I parked across the street and I just waited. And the people started walking by and looking and people who were in the pictures, people would say, "Hey, go tell Jimmy!" But people who were in it, they would walk in. And then the cars would be coming. So then the traffic started. And I watched people who would never have looked before stop and literally stop. Some of them actually got out of the car and walked as if it is what it was, a gallery. So that's when I was asked to do this TED talk and I called it "Roll Down Your Windows and Unlock Your Doors" because as I was going up and we drove through that neighborhood, my mom, they said, "Roll up your windows and lock the door." So it was like, that's what you have to do. I just think that's a metaphor for life, you know, to stop being afraid. In fact, that's what brings bad things to light, is being afraid. And look at people. Look at things that you were not looking at before, whether it's the top of the building or somebody's face or a neighborhood that you think is bad for some reason. So that's sort of been my way of looking at Charleston for the past at least 20 years. And I say it was out of a 40 year career because the last 20 was just more of it. And I saw more changes. You know, if you talk more about what happened after the big Hurricane Hugo in '89, but it was a physical change. In fact, it might have been good because it took all these bad rooftops and they repaired them, which I noticed a lot when I was up there. So that book came out way back in 2005. Then I did a second book called My City Charleston, which incorporated all that I did since then. And I found it to be a much more beautiful book and it was more poetic. In fact, I kind of based it on a poem from DuBose Heyward. You know, the starts off, it says, "They tell me she is beautiful, my city, that she is unique and all this and that." But when I read that, "my city," that's the name of the book. But he did talk about the harbor and the light and what made it so beautiful and special. And so as I was photographing I couldn't help but think that way. And I wrote that in the book. It's got the whole poem in the front. a wonderful introduction from Joe Riley who just said some wonderful things about it. He said, "If you've never been to Charleston before, this is how you should see it. This is the best book that I've ever seen on Charleston and the best that there will ever be." Sort of a quote. And then Josephine Humphries also wrote in that. So two people who are so close to the city, and writers themselves, and emotionally involved, soulfully involved. And then, you know, I mean, at that point, it was 2015, and there were several more shows. I was concentrating more on people now. And I started putting that together in a book during COVID. So during that year, I'd moved now from Queen Street to now to Wadmalaw, which is just, I love. And here are the places that were on the outskirts so long ago that I would just love to go out and photograph and go to Dixie Plantation, for instance. That to me is the epitome of living in the Lowcountry. And now I'm living, I have my own Dixie Plantation. And it's like, I just can't believe I'm living here and watching that sunrise every day in this great place. So that book was about, so to me, I thought, I just include things that I wouldn't, that aren't Charleston. And it's got new pictures from the third floor and it's also got people from all over the world. 32:23,080 Lisa Hayes What's the title of that book? 32:24,200 Jack Alterman It’s called My Lazy Eye. And the reason I thought of that, I almost didn't and sometimes I wish I hadn't, because it's got to be, of course it actually had a medical, you know, relative there called amblyopia. It's just, I was born with a lazy eye. And still, you know, I see blurry in one and perfect in the other. And it had a profound effect on my life. especially when I picked being a photographer, it's all about that, but you only need one eye. So I called it that and I explained in my introduction how I had been, that had been a problem for me. You know school wise, I wasn't the best at academics and everything like that. And they kept thinking I had a problem. So they would put me back a year. And that end I was ADD like crazy. So my attention span, it was a double whammy. So it turned out that I used it in my favor. But it put me on different paths. After high school, rather than go to college, I enlisted in the military. I ended up in the Marine Corps and spent 1968 thinking that I was going to Vietnam, but they sent me instead to Okinawa where I had more clerical work. I never saw, never shot a gun except in boot camp. But it gave me the first time, it gave me this discipline, this great sense of something I was very, very proud to be a part of. And after that it gave me the GI Bill. So where I could get into the University of South Carolina or to College of Charleston anything in state, this gave me a ticket to go wherever I wanted to because at that time big colleges, some of them were being created because of the GI Bill that started back before me. So I applied to a school in Santa Barbara, California because hey, it’s Santa Barbara, California. And I said I was going to take over classes at Isla Vista which is UCSB. I mean this would have been like wow. So I sent them some pictures I had taken and they accepted me. So that lazy eye, you know, this is the, I have to back up one second. So when I enlisted in you know after high school, I enlisted in the Coast Guard because my best friend and I were going to do this together. And we were harbor people out here. And we loved the Coast Guard, they're right here in Charleston Harbor. And I said, "That's what we should do." So I get in and I go down to the Federal Building and enlist in there and he said, "Okay, great." And they give you a test and physical and they said, "Okay, so we'll call you when it’s time to come." So a couple of weeks later I get a call from this recruiting officer and he said I'm sorry Jack you're physical turned down because of your eyes and I said I told you I had this lazy eye and he said yeah I know but I didn't realize it but the Coast Guard requires that you're the bad you know it has to be correctable to 20 40 or something at least and yours can't be corrected and And he said, "Oh my God, so I guess I'm 4F. I won't have to do anything." And he said, "No, you're 1A. In fact, because of this, the Army has been notified. 36:05,820 Lisa Hayes Oh. 36:06,820 Jack Alterman You're gonna get a draft notice." I said, he said, "But let me tell you something. I've got somebody I want you to meet. If you can come back here tomorrow, I'm gonna introduce you to somebody who might be influential in your decision." And so I came, went back, and there in his office, did this marine gunnery sergeant, a bunch of stripes, and he said, "Hey, Jack, I looked at your application and your academic thing and your physical, and you're outstanding, your tests were great. Don't worry about that eye. The Marine Corps will teach you how to use the good eye." And he said, "Really?" And I looked at this guy, and he’s just beautiful, looked at And I said, "Marine," I said, "19, maybe almost 20." And I'm thinking, "You know, I can do anything, and wouldn't that be amazing?" And I just said, "Okay." Didn't ask my mother anything, my father just did it, and freaked them out. And within a month or six weeks I'm at Parris Island. And so sure enough they taught me how to use my good eyes. I went left handed on everything. So anyway, that's just been, that's why I called the book that. And if you look at it, it just sort of meanders through years of travel, but it points out the way I see things. And that's why I called it that. I thought, look, we all have a perspective. We all have a story that we tell, you know, in a certain way. And that's the way I see. I loved it because I found a continuity from a very young person to where I am now. And the difference being that I had, you know, learned how to do, to solve these problems, to get in front of people especially and get them to look at me without being self-conscious and tell them in my own way how to express something, their inner soul, through their face, through their eyes, through their expression. And then I would apply my tool, the light and the composition, to capture them and make them a portrait. And so that book has a lot of that. with artists in their studios like Mary Whyte, who tells her story so brilliantly, to West Fraser, who does the same thing, Jonathan Green, are all in there, and they're all allowing me to do this because of that special something that I have in my eye that gives them the trust in me. 39:07,300 Lisa Hayes You recognize, they recognize that. 39:09,100 Jack Alterman They recognize that. That was so special, because I think a perfect stranger sees it too. So then that leads us to today, the posts on Instagram are just basically things to keep me inspired that I love listening and seeing who's out there. And it's just a little note to everybody to say, hey, I'm still here. 39:35,020 Lisa Hayes Sunday morning especially. It seems like, yeah. 39:37,020 Jack Alterman And you can make them timely, you know? I mean the hurricane I put the moon up this past week. But then interestingly I did a second one on Labor Day yesterday which was a picture from Susan Romaine who was the woman, the artist that did the cornices with me. Yeah and it was a guy you know taking a break on a construction crew, the hard hat on. So I said take a break. 40:05,360 Lisa Hayes For Labor Day. 40:06,160 Jack Alterman Yeah. So there's-- That's sort of my story there, but any other questions? 40:13,400 Lisa Hayes Oh, well, I mean, I have a million questions really. Well, tell us the name of your parents' store, the one that they built, and is the building still, what is it now? 40:23,320 Jack Alterman So it was called Elza's, E-L-Z-A, Elza's dress shop. My mom's name was Elza. The other one was my grandmother, Rosalie Myers. Her name was Rosalie Myers, and she had her maiden name. And so she ran that store until about 1996 or '97. And she just, by that time, you know, they were late '80s, almost I think close to '90. And she just really didn't wanna do it anymore. And I'll tell you why, I'll tell you what date it was. It was 1990, I must just guess 1998. Because that was the year that Saks Fifth Avenue opened up on the corner of King and Beaufain. Majestic Square, that was just good. Target there, is there now. When she saw, I remember, my father went to New York every month to watch what women were wearing on the street. This is the beauty of this story in a way that, I'm telling you, I'm looking at the way people walk down the street too. And he did that study too, what makes people tick? So here it is, my mother saw, Saks Fifth Avenue has come to Charleston on King Street. It's time to move on. Because they're bringing a much bigger resource of that, of that fashion with them. She'd done her thing, she knew that was her timing. So she rented the store out to a dress shop, a young, you know, 20-something year old. It started something of their own. And it went on for a while and finally, She passed away, she was 96, and at that time, my studio was right behind the store, it was a building that the family owned, and I was transitioning myself into less of a physical place, you know, that I could just be very mobile. And so when she passed on, my brother and my sister and I inherited that property, and it was sold to what's there now, which was a boutique hotel and a place called Pinch, I think it's called the Pinch, don't know why. And again, moving on because you know what, happening today right across the street from 36 George Street, a very historic old building where my studio was for almost ten years, And it was a parking lot. That parking lot is and was essential to the retail stores on that block. You had M. Dumas and Son. They had my Rosalie Myers, my grandmother and so forth. They all had a little piece of that parking lot. They all owned something about it that allowed them to go on with their business and always say we have customer parking and employee parking. And right now it's being transformed. I mean they're reinventing that block. So it's going to be apartments, hotels, the whole thing. I mean it's at the BAR. So again, you know, you've got now facades of these buildings, which I bet you, because I know some of the owners of this store, Krogan's for instance, who has been long, long time, who hasn't gone anywhere. Dumas has been there a long, long time, hasn't gone anywhere. Those two alone would have just negotiated, I think, with whoever's doing this and say, "Well, fine, you build a parking garage, "but we want X number of parking spaces forever." 44:06,760 Lisa Hayes Right. (laughs) 44:08,120 Jack Alterman That's the deal. And probably more. So the, you know, the city has, just having said that, The city has gone from people where it was. Everybody that I knew all those years were from here. We used to have, when I was in my 20s partying on Market Street, we'd have somebody who had a t-shirt that said, "I'm not a tourist, I live here," or something like that. And it was a joke, because the tourist was such a minority. Now, you know, the binheres are in the minority. And the comehirs, as they say, or the comehere, some people pronounce it, are in the majority. And we have given that away. Let's face it. So the cruise ships and all the things that we have experienced have changed the real nature, the real, I'm not going to go so far as how you said the soul, but in a way, you know, there are more people here now who lived in the northeast than who have grandparents from Charleston that are living in the same places that they are working in the same place. 45:29,200 Lisa Hayes Well you live in Wadmalaw now, was that a goal or did you feel sort of like you? 45:34,200 Jack Alterman That was just a happening, you know, it just came up. I said, a friend of mine, somebody I knew, who had a store on King Street, an office supply place, and it was Jack Hugely, who was his father with John Hugely, and for many, many years he had a place there. And I saw it on Instagram or Facebook, he said, "Yellow House, for the first time, is for sale. Please contact me if you're interested." He's a real estate agent. I said, "Y'all know that. That sounds cool." And I said, "Jack, it's Jack. Can I come and see this place?" He said, "Absolutely." So that day, if not the next morning, I drove out there with my wife Jenet, who is very much a part of all of the history of the city. Her father, who started the Footlight Players, who rubbed elbows with all those people from the Renaissance period and who changed the city. We went out there and I said oh my god I was driving down an avenue of oaks to a, not a huge house but something that took you right out on the water that just took you away and so that day I said I'm going to buy what I want. So long story short, I bought it four years ago, four and a half years ago. I added on to it. I built this at any other, I made it into a paradise and where I thought oh I could never not be downtown. I kept coming back, we had our house for a good part of that four years, and we weren't coming down here. We ended up really renting the house to Mary Whyte who used it as a studio. I said how perfect is that? I used the little carriage house and when my book came out, the lazy eye, she gave me a signing party there. And it was just like, and at the same time, you know, a neighbor who had the identical house said, "Look, you know, I always told you if you ever want to sell it, my brother is dying to live next door to me." And whatever it is, it is. And that's what happened. 47:50,660 Lisa Hayes But where is your, you had the studio that you said was on Upper King. When you go by there now, what's there? 47:56,540 Jack Alterman You know where the daily is? 47:57,820 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 47:58,660 Jack Alterman Okay, that whole complex right there. So what that was when I moved up there was Ferguson Fulghum Paint Company. And they, you know, been in Charleston many, many years. So it was practically an industrial site. And they rented to me a double sort of warehouse. And it was just funky, you know, it was way uptown. I used to tell people, "Hey, I moved up to Upper King Street." He said, "Where?" And I said, "Oh, you went way uptown." And I said, "Yeah." And I kind of missed because I moved right on George and Meeting. And so when I said where I was, everybody knew where I was. My name was on the building, like, you know, on the landmark. This turned out to be a very interesting move, but as things progressed, you know I'm renting now. When I had the other one, I co-owned it. So you lose control, leases tend to come due, and they say, "I'm sorry, we're selling." And so the classes we were giving at the time, because of the Center of Photography, that sort of kept its name going on. to this day, one of the teachers that was very prolific in doing this with me, now owns it. So I passed the name on to somebody, they kept it going, but it was more on site. It wasn't location located. So they gave classes and workshops on “Meet Me At” or something. So by the time that it was time to move to Wadmalaw, I realized that I could get into town to do an interview with you in a heartbeat. As long as I have something to do here, it is nothing more than a 30 minute drive down here. And I go home to something that I can't have here. 50:03,260 Lisa Hayes Right. I know. 50:05,260 Jack Alterman So you get used to it. You get used to it. I miss it, but you know something? I go out and the only sound I hear are frogs and birds and the sights I see are a dolphin going down my little almost private river and my boat. Everything is there that I used to have in different places. And it's all consolidated. So, I still have all my friends. They live here and there. and I can get there whenever we want to. 50:36,280 Lisa Hayes Tell us about how you met your wife. 50:38,860 Jack Alterman So a date, blind date, some mutual friends of ours. I was a big sailor back in through the '80s and '90s and into the 2000s. And I had a boat that I kept, the 35-foot sailboat. And I would sail all the time in breaks out here, but mostly just cruise. I traveled a little bit with it too. So one day a friend of ours, a woman said, "Jack, you've got to meet this woman. She's just back in town. I mean Jenet Robinson. You might know her." I said, "No." "Let's go take her sailing. Let's all just go sailing." So she and her husband at the time and me and then Jenet shows up. So we go sailing and we're in the harbor, it was one of those beautiful days. And you know, back and forth, I’d come back into the dock. And we were just basically sitting there together, talking about everybody we know about, our parents, about how my dad acted in a play with her father, blah, blah, blah. And I'm thinking, this is just clicking like crazy. And you know, I, we just, That's just how we met. So we just kept dating and one day I had to say, "Look, let's just make this official." So we had that, so much in common, and we traveled a lot together. We moved from a tiny little house that I really loved, that's the one that I did miss, on Council Street. It was set way back off behind another house, it was sort of very private, but it's small. So by the time we got married we decided to upscale the house. And the place on Queen Street was available. And it was a Charleston single house brick. And I made that a project because it had been damaged in the 1887 earthquake and big ole cracked down it. Finally after about twenty years from there I had it finished. But it was fun. I love projects, whether it's construction or photography. So that's how we met. 52:51,580 Lisa Hayes And you go, I saw you were active in the KKBE synagogue, or you, have you been? 52:57,980 Jack Alterman I'm not active, you know, I grew up in it. You did. So the idea of that place is very special. When I went to high school, I went to Rivers High School in upper King. At the time in the 60s, early 60s, most people had not, West Ashley hadn't developed to the extent it did. There was a few communities right just West Ashley. And then there was this exodus from the area like on Grove Street, St. Margaret Street, that whole place, the Hester Playground area. And all these people were opening up these neighborhood like the Crescent, Confederate Circle you know a lot of the folks there were Jewish they were Greek and they were Protestant and there seemed to be this movement so where was I going with that I'm just trying to think. What was a question? Oh active in KKBE? Oh okay. So all during that time, my grandmother was a member of that synagogue, as was her father. So we go back to the mid 1800s, and so it was reform, where all of the friends that I was in school with were sort of not. They were sort of orthodox, were conservative, and they went to someplace else, which I didn't like at all. Their parents were just very, you know, that. And I didn't want to, you know like Catholics would go to Mass, when Jews would go to Sabbath, it's just I don't have that much interest. And so, but ceremonially, the one, the KKBE is the most beautiful place. And if you go there you just, you don't have to listen to anything, you can just look at the stained glass windows and the light coming through and the chandelier and the engraving up there and even the sound system was cool, whereas the rest of them were just echoey, modern, you know, auditoriums. So it became special. And I went there and went to Sunday School there, I was Bar Mitzvahed there. And I did that because it was totally social. There was nothing religious to me about it. I memorized what I had to say and went out and did it. So I still support them and I think that where they are today they are in a better place with the current Rabbi Alexander and it's a, I mean it's the real thing. I don't mean just as far Judaism versus anything else. But you know, people who are clergymen seem to tell you things that are too hard to believe. And there are some people that interpret religion in certain ways that actually give you some space there. That just don't say this is the way it is, this is right and wrong. you know, I'm going to end this by saying something because I was listening to a TED talk recently and this guy said, he said, I heard an interesting story and he said, this teacher was in front of her class, there was an all-girls school and there was a little girl in the back who was notorious for just not paying attention and so the teacher gave an assignment that day to say, sit there, I want you to draw a picture of anything you want because here's a pencil and here's some paper and passed it out and they all started drawing pictures and she looked back there the teacher did and saw a little girl drawing a picture so she walked back and she said okay so what are you drawing a picture of and she said I'm doing a picture of God and the teacher said to her but you don't know what God we don't know what God looks like. And said, she said, "You will in minute." And the moral of the story is that from that early age, you know, teachers tell us what's right and wrong, and until that little girl was so creative that she could figure out what he looked like without knowing, because she had an imagination. The teacher's going to tell it, but we don't know what they look like. And you're going to keep hearing that the whole time you're in school. That's right, that's wrong. You get an A, you get a C. You've got to do it over. So by the time we're finished with school, the creativity's rubbed out. And fortunately for a lot of people who do over, you know, educate, and we'll give that a break when you talk say about doctors. I found that doctors, physicians, MD doctors, tend to love to go back to art. They are artists that found a way to make a living with it in a sense. And as a matter of fact I had a dear friend who has passed on who was a surgeon, brilliant, and he helped me with that when we started teaching classes. And he retired and loved the camera. And he would come and meet with me at my studio and he'd say, "Let's do this, let's do that." And he just wanted to learn and soak it up. And his intellect just rubbed off on me. You know what I mean? Like it made me start thinking deeper and more about the technology, not taking it all for granted. And when you teach somebody you have to sort of re-state what you know and how you learn it. I love that. I love that, because that little story about a little girl, you later in life have to sort of give some relevance to how you are sure about what you're doing. And someone said, "How do you do this?" And you say, "You do it this way." Well, how do you know? Because you figured it out. 59:13,320 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Well, and were you starting to say, "Tell me if I'm wrong," that Rabbi Alexander, Stephanie Alexander isn’t that her name. She gives space for these kinds of questions and it makes you feel like they're in a good place at that synagogue. 59:28,800 Jack Alterman I assume so. But you know what, I feel bad. I don't go, I'm assuming that because I know her personally. I've talked to her not so much from the pulpit but from one on one. And I've listened to her talk about people who have passed on or whatever the subject may be that is not being read. Yeah. That she has studied it, but when she vocalizes it, it's coming from her heart. And I find that to be the best way to do it. Yeah. Yeah. You know. 01:00:03,280 Lisa Hayes So talking about creativity, were your parents supportive of your, did you have a camera when you were a little boy or? 01:00:11,000 Jack Alterman There were cameras around. I didn't necessarily show any interest in it, my dad, loved taking pictures like any dad, but he's, you know, growing up, I don't think I knew what I was going to do. Part of the reason I joined the military was because I thought that was just something, a way of getting out of where, doing something that I wasn't really doing well. That maybe, and I don't know how I made that decision myself. Cause I didn't ask, I said, "Can I go do this?" I was 18 or whatever, I was legal at the time, and I said, "I'm gonna do it." I did. But I was so frustrated, and at the end of my school, I didn't know, everybody was saying, "I'm going to law school, I'm going to medical school, "I'm going to do this." And I had no idea what it was gonna be. I was terrified of what I might not be. And I would probably end up going into the business with my parents, that they probably thought. It wouldn't have been such a bad thing. 01:01:16,880 Lisa Hayes Sure. 01:01:17,720 Jack Alterman So that was, you know, maybe what sort of set me on that road. 01:01:27,680 Lisa Hayes The trips to New York City, you said you went with your dad on some of those. Was that a kind of a, did you get an eye for fashion? And for? 01:01:35,880 Jack Alterman Well, it was a process. You know, when I went with him, and my mom would come along too. In those days you go to the designer, you know, you go to, you know, Bill Blass or some of their studios where their children, and you sit in a room about like this, and you get a chair like that, you know, a notebook which was order form, and the salesperson would come in all elegant, and in comes the model. And You know, beautiful model comes in, twirls around. And this is number 102. And it's the chiffon, blah, blah, blah. It's available in magenta, cyan, and yellow. And dad would say ok. The mom, as she said to my mother, said, I think Mildred would look beautiful in that, don't you? And she said, yes, I think she's an eight. We'll have that in an eight. And we'll have magenta in a 10. So you have to buy three. And then that would be that. I thought the theatrical part of it I loved. And Dad, also being an actor, loved going to theater in New York. And so I got to go into those. That was never something I wanted to do because it was too many things like rehearsing, doing something over and over, a repetition I couldn't do. 01:02:59,440 Lisa Hayes Didn't enjoy. 01:03:00,560 Jack Alterman Photography is a great thing because there's not a lot of repetition. You got a picture in your mind, go ahead and do it. You're even getting better with the technology today because you can make sure you've got it, done one picture, I don't want to do a whole roll. So that was what I picked up along the way. But like I said, the ADHD part of me, which I still have, is something that I was overwhelmed with and by. And the way I control it now is just the fact that I've had it for so long, you just work with it. Whatever it is, I couldn't tell you what that is. But that's who I am and that's why I do, what I do and how I do it. The only way I know how. 01:03:57,040 Lisa Hayes and do you have any projects now that are upcoming? 01:04:01,680 Jack Alterman Well, yes. One is really front and center right now. I've been working here about a year and a half with a very close friend of mine that I met when I went to school in Santa Barbara. And his name is Jay Silverman. And he and I went to school at the same time. He's from LA and went back to LA as I did to Charleston and did a similar process. He opened a studio, did a lot of the commercial work, mainly being that he was in Hollywood. He was doing things for big ad agencies who handled celebrities. So on a given day, Clint Eastwood might walk into his studio and he would do a headshot where I would do Joe Riley. 01:04:43,840 Lisa Hayes Right. (laughing) 01:04:45,960 Jack Alterman So his lineup of celebrities were just endless. And so he did ads with them and all this kind of thing. And that developed into later in life, did really, really well by buying the property that he worked on. So now he has that kind of, you know, and so he started about eight or nine years ago. He started saying, "I'm just going to make, I want to make a movie." And so now, so he made three movies about, you know, different things. The first one was about his daughter who had a problem when she was born speaking. And so she did it, and there was also a problem with post-traumatic stress. So he made this beautiful movie, and it would just address that. And he did that for himself as a legacy piece. So then he made a couple of other movies for the heck of it. And so about a year and a half ago he asked me, "You want to help me make this movie? It's going to be called 'Camera.'" And I said, "Oh, that's interesting. Oh, this is perfect. This is us." Because, you know, that's how we know each other. And it's about a little boy, a nine year old boy, who was born with the inability to speak. And he goes back to his daughter a little bit. This is more severe. And so he had had an operation where he was born prematurely, he had a tracheotomy, and he can't speak. His mother's husband is killed in Iraq. She moves to a little fishing village to start her life over with this little boy who can't speak named Oscar. And the village is on the coast of California and it's going through a transition of the fishing, fishing's drying up. What are we going to do because we can't make a living soon? And there were offers on the table of a resort hotel and they said, "Oh, it'll mess it all up. We have to stay with fishing so the other one was a cannery and they were fighting back and forth you know, it's tug of war and there was all this going on in the movie with the players and then The little boy is walking around thinking look I can't talk, his father had left him that most important part a camera that was an old-fashioned double lens big time to look down. You know big yeah, you're a little kid big camera. And it was broken, it couldn't take pictures. So he used the viewfinder to sort of frame things up. And he carried with him a sketch pad and he would look at the scenery like the shore, the lighthouse, and he sketched it. And he looked down through the lens and he sketched it. And he had that little notebook and he carried it around and the spring around his neck with the camera. So he was learning how to see and he would be bullied by the typical bully kids and chased and all this. And one day he gets chased into the back door of a little repair shop on Main Street. And he goes into the back door and locks the door and the bully says, "I'll get you next time." And he's going, "Oh." And He hears some voices and in the front of the shop is a man who's talking to his customers and he's the owner of the repair shop. His name is Eric. He's an older man in his 80s and he is played by Beau Bridges. So Beau Bridges is in the movie. He's the big name in it. And he's got a big beard and he's just a great guy. And he says, "Who's that back there?" And he just catches him with his camera. And he said, "What are you doing with that? That's mine." Because he was a photographer, too. And he said, "You can't take things that don't belong to you, you know, give me that." And so Oscar can't defend himself. So he just, he said, "Now go on home and all that." And then he looks at the camera, and looks at the bottom, and sees the little engraving of the word "Tommy," which was Oscar's father's name. And he goes, "Oh, geez." He said, "Wait a minute, wait a minute. I made a mistake. I have a camera just like it. I thought you took mine. Come back here. This one doesn't even work. Let me fix it for you." So he teaches the little boy how to take pictures. He has a dark room. He goes in the dark room. They have this relationship that's just like father son, mentor, you know, type of relationship. And so Little Oscar then, now armed with a real camera that works, goes out and starts photographing the people on the street. all of them that the bullies, the people, the fishermen, they're fighting to change the town. And he's clicking away and they're all saying, "Stop getting my pictures," and all that. And, but so, so, Eric, you know, Beau Bridges, little to our, we know he's not feeling well. And long story short, he was dying. He dies. And so, he had told one of his friends, one of the fishermen, "Look, I need you to do me a favor." So he had taken all the negatives that Oscar had taken and he was filing them for him. And he printed them up four feet by five feet. This comes from Jay. When I did that show he was in town. And he said, "We're going to make the end of the movie like that." And so at the funeral they're all talking nice about Eric being such a great guy. They all leave the graveyard and they're walking into town as a group, all the actors, like 30 people. They get to the town and all of a sudden there are these pictures of them in the wind. They're up, they're nailed up on the side of the building. And Oscar didn't know about it. So he comes in the car and I picked him up. He and his mom had no idea. She didn't even realize that he had any talent. And they see these pictures up there and just like I described earlier, how when they saw it on the east side, they in the bridge doors, saw their smiles on their faces. They burst into like, "Ahh!" How about that unity between them with instant at the end of the movie and the mother looks at the boy. He looks at it with tears in his eyes, sees the scene of them dancing, which is part of the movie, in the dark room. Oscar and Eric just having this good time. And you end up, I mean I'm gonna cry telling you. And so that's what's happening. And so Sunday, you know, there's a writer's strike going on in Hollywood. So being that he's, this is an independent film, still the people that are in the film are part of the union, including Beau Bridges. And some of the other names aren't as noticeable, but they're professionals all of them. So he slowed things down. So we got to the part where the track, the music, the background music had been composed by somebody in Bulgaria, in Sofia. And so the idea was they would get it and we'd get this music and I kept listening to it and it was too loud, too fast. And he said, well, you know, the guy going to, you know, a lot of Hollywood people go there or have this orchestra there, record the music, because it's much cheaper. Long story short, we decide to go. So Sunday, we're flying to Sofia. 01:12:53,440 Lisa Hayes Oh wow. 01:12:54,640 Jack Alterman And so I'll be there Monday. And then Tuesday night we start recording. We go in, and I'm assuming it's just a big stage. And Jay and I will be there sort of conducting. There'll be a real conductor, but we don't have any other. And apply strings versus something else and see what works. And there'll be two days of that, really at night. And during the day, we've got the day to explore this place. And it's like nobody we know has ever been. 01:13:31,800 Lisa Hayes You've never been there? No, no, no. 01:13:34,720 Jack Alterman I haven't met anybody who's been there. But it's an ancient place. And with Roman ruins and gorgeous places. So that's the next project. That's it. And I am basically a co-producer. And it's an honorary thing because being an independent film, he's paying for it. I paid my own way to there and we went to Halibach, we were gonna do the film there. We ended up doing it in California. But that, I'll tell you, that is something I just did because I had never done it before. It is such a complicated process. And like I said, being the ADHD that I am, the M-O-V-I-E-S is not my cup of tea. It's just so repetitious. It's so many layers. And so many things can go wrong, not to mention personalities and talents. 01:14:36,880 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 01:14:37,720 Jack Alterman And you cannot do it by yourself. 01:14:39,840 Lisa Hayes Did you take the pictures that were used as the blowups or did your friend do it? 01:14:43,000 Jack Alterman Some of them. Yeah, the technology is such that a lot of it was taken, the cinematographer was doing stills as we were shooting. So it wasn't like come over let’s pose. A lot of these were semi-candid pictures. like stay still while we were filming. Cause they had to be in character. And so there was a couple of shots in time. I have a cameo in it. I have a little hat on, I got a pipe I'm puffing on and a big bushy beard. And it's a cold place. Even it's a place called Morro Bay, California. If you look at it today, it's probably high of 60. And it's a little Oscar and all we were walking with a red scarf in my hands. I was part of the writing, I was rooming with the writer, who's from Ireland. And I said, "Look, you wrote this in summer because you wanted the little boy to be on school break." But they're all bundled up. This is winter. You've got to change that. So, yeah, okay. So we changed it to, "He's on break." 01:15:55,460 Lisa Hayes Unspecified break. 01:15:59,460 Jack Alterman It's Christmas break. So the, like I said, it's a very, very complicated thing. It's a lot of re-shooting, a lot of, you know, color correction. I had no idea. The learning process. And I learned that this is not something I want to do often. So by being a producer and being a, and I had to qualify, I mean I had a questionnaire sent to me by the, you know, the producer's guild of America. He said, "You can't be a producer unless we say you can." So tell me about your involvement. And I had to tell him, I said, "Well I've been to all the locations, I've been to filming, I'm in it, I'm going to help record the music, I am the support mechanism for the director." I tell him, I didn't tell him this, I said I tell him when he wants to hear how wonderful he is and how great this film is going to be because you lose that faith in things so quickly you know when things just don't line up. And you could hear in his voice often, oh man I did terrible. And so I said Jay, great. all you have to do. And that's what I think my job was. 01:17:22,740 Lisa Hayes I'm sorry. Well, I look forward to that because I wonder if there's a way we could have a movie screening here or something, you know, maybe there would be a program that could come out of that 'cause I, it'd be wonderful to have a program with you at some point. 01:17:38,220 Jack Alterman Well, you know, the movie will be a, I could probably get a hold of it before it's released. And the independent films are not released like mainstream. The way he's done it the past would be like at Sundance and such and even at the Charleston Film Festival. The way he's going to try to do this is to actually sell the right to it to a Netflix. And because of the strike that's going on, see if that becomes more possible because they're looking for content. So as far as me seeing a finished thing, I could maybe, show it to you, I'll send you a trailer of it. 01:18:19,180 Lisa Hayes Okay, that'd be great. 01:18:21,580 Jack Alterman And, but like I said, that's not about me. What it is really about is the lifelong friendship that was based around what we had in common. That was the camera, photography, staying in touch, having that huge thing in common, and watching our lives parallel just in that way. He'd been married three times, he's got all of these things that I don't have. I got married once and I just sort of don't have a kid. But I sort of lived precariously through him in what was going on in his life as he did with me. And the great thing was we were on two different coasts. So it was far enough apart. I think people's friendships maintain better, have a, you know, it's easier to maintain. when you're not next door to them. 01:19:16,120 Lisa Hayes Yeah, yeah. 01:19:16,960 Jack Alterman So. 01:19:17,780 Lisa Hayes Okay. Well goodness, well thank you so much for your time. This really was a lot of fun for me. I could ask you a lot more questions, but I'll let you go. Maybe this could be one of two, or like I said, maybe a program. Getting to know you more in a program would be great. 01:19:32,720 Jack Alterman Yeah, I think that really, when you start talking to some of the other people, and you might be interesting to see, like Harlan Greene's one to mine all the time because he's written so much about it and lived here all his life. And is a member of that same organization. 01:19:52,300 Lisa Hayes Mm-hmm. 01:19:53,140 Jack Alterman You know, not to mention how he has been involved here. So it'd be interesting to see where all these stories sort of connect. 01:20:01,420 Lisa Hayes Yeah, yeah. We really are trying to capture the story of Charleston. You know, how Charleston was and how it is and people's experiences as it's changed throughout their lifetimes. 01:20:14,560 Jack Alterman Yeah, and the key word has changed, it's not going to ever change back. 01:20:18,640 Lisa Hayes No. 01:20:19,480 Jack Alterman It's like we all have our memories and we're all nostalgic about the old Cooper Bridge versus the new one and so forth and so on. You still will never be able to go walk into the Riviera theater and see a movie unless it's a conference or something. 01:20:35,060 Lisa Hayes (laughing) 01:20:37,240 Jack Alterman But institutions like this, It is maintaining itself. You know the Gibbes, the Charleston Library Society, the library itself, and several other places. Some of the churches and those things seem to have the longevity, you know, that is deeply rooted in the history of the city. 01:20:59,520 Lisa Hayes Yeah. We try to be a constant presence for sure. Actually, I didn't ask, were your -- was your family members here at the library society? And do you remember the library from when you were a little boy? 01:21:11,120 Jack Alterman You know, as, yes, I do, but I can't draw on any real specific memory. It just always been here. And, you know, in this book, there's a big picture of it. As I saw it one day in the fall when you have all the leaves that fall in what kind of trees, all those yellow. 01:21:30,240 Lisa Hayes The gingko trees. 01:21:31,520 Jack Alterman That still happened. So the picture in the book is the spread of the Library Society, of the library, you know, the Charleston Library. And with that happening, with the steps leading up to it, it's, you know, it reminds me of something that, you know, Harlan wrote again that, about the cornices that he wrote in that book long ago, was that they are so much like the books that nobody reads. You know, we're sitting here in this library right now, this little library, and there are books here that very -- No one reads. And if you look at the architecture of the city, what people don't see is that's it. I have pictures in there from behind things that might let you know that Rainbow Row is over there. But the only thing that you'll ever remember is going to be Rainbow Row. You're not going to remember the Coates Row from the backside, the little cupola there with a ladder affixed to it. That the only people who have ever seen that are the people who put the roof on, people who built the building or who maintain it, nobody else sees it. Cause I'm in my third floor, little mobile third floor, which makes it impossible for anybody else to see. That's really, I get a great kick out of that. 01:22:51,200 Lisa Hayes It's not that we don't notice things, it's that we just can't see them. 01:22:54,620 Jack Alterman Everyone is not capable of seeing the same thing. My wife and I went together and she'll say, the next day I'll show her a picture. Where did you see that? We were sitting right next to each other. And you know, people see differently. They read a book and they hear a different story. Same thing with a movie. You know, you walk out with a different critique of it. 01:23:21,880 Lisa Hayes Right. 01:23:23,180 Jack Alterman You know, that's why there's five star ratings. You see somebody's always going to rate it with a one. 01:23:26,600 Lisa Hayes Right. (laughing) 01:23:30,140 Jack Alterman So, yeah, that's really what it's all about. And, you know, artists are just the most important part of Charleston, when you get right down to it. The longevity of artists, which you look back at the old, you know, photographs of George Johnson and you look at the old, at the artwork of Elizabeth Verner and all of them, to this day, when you look at Mary Whyte's work, she's almost blurring history, so that people can see what Charleston used to look like. And you have to experience it. The African American Museum is a physical expression of that, if we don't go see things, you walk in this library, you cannot unless you know where to go. You're never gonna find the book. You know, a museum is a place that, I'm gonna point it out to you. Stand here, look at this long enough and you're gonna get it. 01:24:38,440 Lisa Hayes Well, there's such a movement now to acknowledge the work that went into physically building Charleston through enslaved people and also just so many unnamed kind of laborers, like you were saying about the bridge builders, sort of recognizing their humanity and their value in the physical place. Do you, I mean, what do you think about those attempts that people make to tell stories that-- 01:25:07,100 Jack Alterman I think they can do it well or not. You know, I think they have to keep trying. 01:25:11,180 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 01:25:12,020 Jack Alterman You can't say that's not good enough. I mean, they make it hard enough to do that anyway. But see, as artists, you don't have to have permission to tell a story. And as a bureaucracy, like a museum, you need more than that. 01:25:32,340 Lisa Hayes The city of Charleston. 01:25:33,340 Jack Alterman You get out of the city, you gotta have a board of directors, you gotta have funding and constant reinforcement from them. So I think the most important people are the artists because that's what they do. go to a show they're trying something they're like the little girl who's painting the picture of God she doesn't know what it looks like and by the time I love that by the time she's finished you're going to know what he looks like in her eyes. 01:26:03,540 Lisa Hayes Well thank you again it was really nice to talk with you yeah. 01:26:07,000 Jack Alterman Yes thank you. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Jack Alterman (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on September 5, 2023) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Alterman, Jack Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-09-05 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Description An account of the resource Jack Alterman was born here in Charleston and has had a long career as a professional photographer. Mr. Alterman reflects on his family’s life and their dress shops on King Street, along with all of the changes he’s seen downtown during the last half century or more. A Marine veteran, he discusses how he creates art and the different projects he’s worked on and the people with whom he’s worked. Mr. Alterman has published several photography books and speaks about an upcoming film project. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context JackAlterman_OralHistory_20230905 cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/a2ca3d98b1d6686ad951caad1a2bbaab.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=SAhdVd2N8f-2SLKfSlEVWW1lUvu2or3X9epnySezyCpOBywjhJm5sfb5sR-PHzAL1fGWjk8%7EfWskvzJ3C9E8cEYpqW7oWsA8wdVm1E1JFQ7d%7EQ0T8xV8294VLm%7ECQ5OjH0PBTaRTdDydVT-93mgox55K6z7klCyDRe%7EtExeF0g1BO%7E7zJ-fgZnz6cA8etl8aozCKTDKTzbUk-MzOtdU33S5HoWh06fmbwBETVsegHuD0gnAYZFylI-yzB0zq8cTArDvTMGC0bBLWNzb7W6wz7P2oC-9Kz3YMwYX4BJBiR%7EkBtuyI%7Ejp3weVTZbxiYKS7H2ft6xxa7pzEb7XBYUWp8Q__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 237b79e50536e1df70167799966104e4 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 59:57/605.1MB Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 0:00:00 Jessica Mischner Well, so we're just gonna ask you, thank you for filling out this questionnaire. It was incredibly thorough. also I think would make anyone feel unaccomplished about their lives because of everything that you've done. I know you've worked with Lisa before, you've been here for, since college you said, was your sort of first introduction and we just wanna go a little bit deeper into your relationship with the Library Society. So I'm gonna start out of order, if that's okay. Since we're already talking about your time on the board here, Could we just start there? 0:37:00 Richard Porcher Sure. 0:38:00 Jessica Mischner And then we can back up into your introduction here, but I think-- 0:41:00 Richard Porcher You don't wanna start when I was in college? 0:43:00 Jessica Mischner We can start at college, yes. 0:45:00 Richard Porcher Well, that's my first introduction. 0:46:00 Jessica Mischner Okay, let's start there then. 0:48:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, well, I went to College Austin, and I can remember coming down here. I don't remember just what I was looking for, but I do remember I first introduced you to the Library Society. It was like this mystical place I remember. And I do remember coming down, I think I took a course in art history, took a course in musical history, and I do remember coming down to the Library of Society. I just don't remember what I was looking for at the time. 1:14:00 Jessica Mischner Did a professor or someone at the college send you here, or did you— 1:18:00 Richard Porcher It was a course. It was a research course. I took a course in cultural history of something or architecture, and obviously you come down to a place like this that—so I remember coming down and doing work. I just remember what it was, but I do remember my introduction to this mystical place. We heard so much about the Library Society. And my mother would talk about it because she'd always mentioned the Library Society, so I'd known about the Library Society ever since college. 1:48:00 Jessica Mischner Do you remember your impression when you walked in? 1:52:00 Richard Porcher Not really. That was so long ago, my word. That was back in the 1960s, '57, '60s, something like that. I remember the building, how beautiful it was, but I don't remember much besides that. 2:05:00 Jessica Mischner Well, you said you've researched four books using materials. Oh, yes, one here, one right here. Right. So when did that start? 2:13:00 Richard Porcher I started really when I did the Sea Island Cotton book. My first book was two books on wildflowers, which I didn't use the live it. When I first did the book on Sea Island Cotton, in fact, here's one of those little diagrams right here that came from the Library Society. So I've-- 2:32:00 Jessica Mischner The map of John's Island, 1820. 2:36:00 Richard Porcher So I've done four books that have related, that I've used the Library Society extensively. The Sea Island Cotton book, the book that is finished called Our Lost Heritage, which I've published privately. I think I gave you all a copy of it. I did the Market Preparation of Carolina Rice and now I finished up a book on the Santee Canal with two other authors. So there are four books on history that I've used extensively in these four books. 3:03:00 Jessica Mischner About how much time would you spend here doing your research? 3:07:00 Richard Porcher Oh Lord. I remember. 3:08:00 Jessica Mischner Maybe it's just your research in general, but I'm curious to know how much of a primary source was this outside of the field. 3:16:00 Richard Porcher Well, the Hinson collection, this is a primary source for everything I've done. You've got all the newspapers going back to 1700s. And then I said, "Where do y'all keep those now?" Oh, the old newspaper. 3:29:00 Lisa Hayes Those are in the building where the bookstore is and they're in the vault down there. 3:34:00 Richard Porcher In the vault? Yeah. So I remember sitting, going through those, what do you call it, the turn of the crank and going through hundreds and hundreds of newspapers. I couldn't tell you how many hours I spent doing that. Especially for the book on the Sea Island Cotton and the Rice Country Book. Tracking down the slave histories and going through those newspapers. I don't know how to put any hours out, but I guarantee you, the day after day after day, I spent in the library going through the newspapers. 4:03:00 Jessica Mischner Would you work with any librarians here, or did you see other researchers recur? 4:10:00 Richard Porcher Well, they would tell me where they were. They would always have to go to the Hinson Collection and pull things out of it. You know, the Hinson Collection is extremely valuable. 4:20:00 Lisa Hayes The pamphlets, Mr. Hinson Collection? 4:22:00 Richard Porcher All the pamphlets. Oh yeah, my lord, all those pamphlets. I mean, I use those extensively. I can't remember who sent the set up the Hinson Collection, but it is an incredible archives. So I use those extensively in this book and the book on rice culture. 4:38:00 Jessica Mischner When you—was the Hinson Collection in the rabbit hole at that point? 4:43:00 Lisa Hayes So is this in the 1980s when you were coming to do research for the books, or like what years were you coming to do your book research? 4:54:00 Richard Porcher I guess it started this book right here. I published this book. Because before this I was doing Wildflower books, and so I didn't have any reason to come to here. This was published in 2005. So I meant early 2000, I was starting to use the library extensively. Cause I did this one, came out right after that, I did the book on rice culture, and then the book on Our Lost Heritage, and then doing the book on the Santee Canal. So basically from a little before 2005, I've been down here continually. 5:36:00 Jessica Mischner So you come from a family of archivists, documentarians, curators, authors, publishers, and people who have turned field work really into or have just always felt the need to catalog. 5:51:00 Richard Porcher Oh, I've come from so many people, historians and architects and everything. 5:56:00 Jessica Mischner I love how you describe that sort of your work wasn't something you set out to do as much as who you were. And I wonder to what extent your personal collection informed your work and then did you find anything here that was sort of like a missing piece. I'm curious about your research process. 6:17:00 Richard Porcher Oh God, that thing down here don't exist anywhere else at all. I found things down here I didn't know existed. I do have some old family archives, but we supplement those with what you all have down here. people didn't realize what's here until they had to come here and start working. And they started pulling things out of the red book room. My lord, that's a gold mine. I just sort of go through this sometimes and I spot things I didn't even know they were there. So because we were here, and also what y'all do is people realize is you'll have all the cultural programs. A lot of them based on the things that y'all have here. 6:59:00 Jessica Mischner Yes. 7:00:00 Richard Porcher Oh, no. No. Go ahead. 7:03:00 Lisa Hayes Well, I was sort of going back to the archives. Do you remember directing some of your students to come here for any of their projects? 7:10:00 Richard Porcher My students? Do we have? One of the recidital? No, because I was a field botanist. And I don't think there was anything, if I had been a historian or something like that, that would have been different. But I don't think that you have anything in field botany and wildflowers and things here. Just not not not what you have. 7:28:00 Jessica Mischner So I was just gonna ask again about your sort of approach to documentation really which is so in line kind of with the ethos of this place and we're getting to your time on the board. Do you feel like it's a uniquely Charlestonian thing to self-publish to have this desire to document. Well because I love here. I feel like I don't see that many places. 8:00:00 Richard Porcher My folks go back to, Lord the 1685 and they first came. My whole life has been wanting to document the history of the Lowcountry. 8:07:00 Jessica Mischner Self-publishing didn't really become sort of a widespread thing until Amazon made it easier for people to publish their own books but here and in Camden where I grew up too to a large extent, people felt driven to record what they saw and what they knew. And I think that's part of what animates this project for us. And I'm always curious, because it's not without labor to not only do the work, but then document the work that you've done. And I just wonder, was there ever a question of whether you would do that or not? 8:47:00 Richard Porcher Was there a question that I didn't want to document? No, no. Of course, I started documenting as a botanist, the wildflowers and the botanists. That was my first area. It wasn't until I got into this book that I started doing history and then realized I needed to document. We've got a big project right now in the Santee Delta. One of the biggest projects I'll ever be involved in for trying to document the entire cultural history of the Santee Delta. That could be a five-year project. We're right now at 27 LCC, but that's just a different way. The main thing we're trying to document in the Delta is the enslaved life that lived out of the Santee Delta. So this is the same type of project we're talking about documenting the history of the Low Country. 9:31:00 Jessica Mischner Tell us more about that project. 9:35:00 Richard Porcher Well, the entire Delta was basically the largest section of rice culture in the country. And the name of the Delta was a cypress swamp and all cleared by enslaved labor and created into the rice fields. Enslaved people lived out of that Delta as they worked the rice fields. In fact, some of them probably lived into the Delta and never ever got to the mainland. The entire life was spent in a little section of the San Diego Delta working rice fields. When emancipation came, enslaved people gradually left the Delta. Nobody documented their history. Most of the villages, the wooden structures rotted away, people came out and stole all the bricks over the years. So there's not virtually any of their history left except underground. So I'll put together a team of people, archaeologists will be out there doing work, digging down in the ground, trying to see if they can put together how these enslaved people lived up, where to get their food from, where to bury the dead. Nobody knows anything about their history at all, zip zero. So we got sort of a five-prong study. We'll do the foundation culture, the natural history. I always worked with Hayden Smith on the agriculture, the rice culture, and then we got the archaeologists who will work down in the slave villages where these people live, trying to go down in the ground and find some idea of how these people live. So it's a very large project. It'll take us five years even to even finish it 11:09:00 Lisa Hayes Excuse me, can you tell us how you determine where to dig like well we found we find the village you do 11:18:00 Richard Porcher Well, I did a survey that back in the 90s and 2000 hundred did a survey when I went We take a boat every time we see a little tree or shrub we get out the boat and go to see what was there So I've located all where the villages were you can still see the remains of the cabin even though most of the bricks are gone You can still see the bases all the well the cabins were so I've located all the well all the villages were So we've got that as a background and I spent what I did to work on the rice culture I had to go study the Delta So I've got this map of the Delta which every rice mill everything that's every brick out there I've got it all marked out. So now the team, when we start doing the work, we know where these structures are. So they will go right up. Hayden Smith, I don't know if you know Hayden Smith or not. He did a book on rice culture. He and I will do the aquaculture, basically the rice culture. 12:14:00 Jessica Mischner When did you start in earnest, this project? It sounds like you had a lot of-- 12:20:00 Richard Porcher About last year. About as though-Yeah, right now, the main thing is now getting an, also on LTC so people can donate funds. It's supposed to be pretty well finished. The historical Charleston foundation will be the, they will hold the funds for us from the LTC. So people will raise funds. We need something like, I think it's $750,000. That's our budget. So people can donate, organizations will donate money. It'll go to the LTC which is held by the historical Charleston foundation and then they will dispense the funds to us. of the funds go towards the archeology, high, people that go out and do the work. People on my level get no salary at all. Everything I do is free, so people on my level aren't getting any money at all. All the money is for expenses. 13:10:00 Lisa Hayes Just one quick question. Do you think you'll be doing some field work also, or are you mainly overseeing how things go? 13:21:00 Richard Porcher I set it up. It was my idea to set it up. Once it's set up, I'll probably step back and turn it over to some other people who, I've got too many other projects, but I can see the idea and sort of set it up. But once it's really in place, we'll probably hire a coordinator and some of the other people who are involved in it will probably be more involved, will probably sort of take over that part And I'll back off because I'm doing a book right now called A Field Guide to Saving South Carolina's Rarest Native Wildflowers. I'm in the middle of doing that too. So I can't oversee it anymore, but Hayden Smith and I will simply do the rice culture aspect. And I'll turn it over to some of the more people, people who are being more involved out actually going out doing the research in that field. 14:16:00 Jessica Mischner Has all the work that you put into teaching at the beginning of your career, paid off at all in terms of being able to bring some of these students into any of this work? 14:27:00 Richard Porcher Anyway, I said again, what? 14:28:00 Jessica Mischner So teaching, that's a big part of your career. 14:33:00 Richard Porcher Oh, sure, I've got one. 14:34:00 Jessica Mischner So have you had former students who-- 14:37:00 Richard Porcher I guess I've mentored about 15 students over the years that got interested in botany and history based on going out in the field with me or taking courses, yeah. 14:47:00 Jessica Mischner And some of the younger students and people at the Citadel? 14:51:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, some people took, some of the cadets who took courses went into field botany, oh yeah. 14:57:00 Jessica Mischner Well, that's great, I mean, I keep, I was looking at the list of all of these projects that you've either been an advisor on or consulted on or spearheaded and thinking about time you put in the classroom. You sure hope you get a return on that output. But do most of these projects originate with you or do they originate with other organizations who need your expertise? 15:25:00 Richard Porcher Well, now, I got people interested in the field, like Dr. Joe Gramling. He took a course under me about 20 years ago, and all of a sudden realized, hey, I like the botany, what can I do? So I said, you go to Chapel Hill and you get your PhD under so and so. And by the time you finished, I was retiring position to open up, so now he's just taking my position. So I've got numerous on Celia Daly. I met her about 15 years ago, just by chance. And now I got her into graduate school at the Citadel and now she's out doing, I don't have any projects working on the book with me. So all through my career, this is what we do, not just me. Dr. Batson, when I went to Carolina, I was a zoologist. Didn't even know what a plant was. They put me, Dr. Batson, store field course at Botany. And first thing he says, Richard, you know who Henry Reb now was? I had no idea who he was, so I called Mama. Who's Henry Reb now? Well, he was your great uncle, he was a botanist. And so through Dr. Batson and knowing who my ancestors were, I switched to field botany. So that's just what we do as professors. We just get people interested in what we do and then they come along and follow us. It's a continuation. Dr. Batson, to Richard, to Joel, to Seeley, it was a continuation. 16:44:00 Jessica Mischner It just seems like so much, how do you balance your time? I mean, you've done so much and you're clearly, it's such a resource for people, just thinking about how you do that and write and have a minute to sleep or eat, seems a little superhuman. I don't know, 17:02:00 Richard Porcher I just get up in the morning and start working. (laughing) Every morning I wake up, I start to work, I never thought about it that way. 17:11:00 Jessica Mischner And it does seem like these projects-One thing I've done though, one thing I did, 17:16:00 Richard Porcher I've always, mentally, always worked with people, put a team together. Two of us did this book, Billy Judd and I did the Rice Culture book. I could not have done the diagrams, the "Lost Hairseats" book. I had two other people working on it. So I think my main thing is I've been able to put a team together. Follow me? Just like with the Delta project, I put about 15 different people together in that project. I couldn't do that by myself, no way. I could not have done the rice culture myself cause I could not have done all the diagrams. Let's see what else, the Santee Canal book, I've got Village Judd and Little Miss Connor, all three of us putting it out. So all of us, so my main thing I've done is to partnership or bring people into a project and then do the project jointly. 18:02:00 Jessica Mischner What do you look for in team members beyond just the fundamental expertise? 18:06:00 Richard Porcher They've got to have a passion for the work and then also the skill, Village Judd. can't even tell you what that man has done. The diagrams he's done. I mean, he has a passion for doing diagrams. All the machinery he drew in the rice culture book, nobody in the world could have done that. He had the passion to do it. So it's just people who have the passion to do the work. Just like I do. 18:27:00 Jessica Mischner How often do people exceed your expectations? 18:31:00 Richard Porcher Say it again. 18:32:00 Jessica Mischner How often do people exceed your expectations when you bring people into your teams? 18:38:00 Richard Porcher How often do they do what? 18:39:00 Jessica Mischner How often do they exceed your expectations? 18:43:00 Richard Porcher Always. 18:44:00 Jessica Mischner Like, yeah, that's good. I've never had anybody involved in a project that didn't do the job. 18:51:00 Jessica Mischner And they surprise you? 18:53:00 Richard Porcher They what? 18:53:00 Jessica Mischner Surprise you? Surprise you, do they surprise you? 18:57:00 Richard Porcher No, not really, I knew Billy's there before. I knew these people before. I know Celia Daley, she's working on the new rare plant book. four people who worked in a while, if I worked Pat and I know them from Clemson, you're gonna go, "Lord, I know what he was gonna do before you started." 19:14:00 Jessica Mischner So before we get back to the Library Society and your time on the board, I did wanna ask you about the intersection between natural history and cultural history, because you focus so much on both. 19:29:00 Richard Porcher Yeah. 19:30:00 Jessica Mischner How much of that came from realizing it in the field when you were working with plants and you were doing botanical field work. 19:40:00 Richard Porcher The whole system of rice culture. When I was out leading field trips and bought botanical trips, I'd come across these chimneys, rice chimneys. I'd go down to Middleburg to look at the rice fields and there's the chimney there. So I simply thought of asking people, what do these chimneys represent? And there was nothing at all. You had nothing in the literature at all. See a steam engine out in a swamp somewhere. What is that steam engine you know here? So a lot of us doing the cotton work, I'd be out in a swamp or someplace. I could see the old rows where the cotton field was worth it. What are these looking like? They're rows. What are people doing, growing stuff out in the middle of a swamp? So much of the work I did based on the things I began finding out in the field as a field botanist. When you go to St. Adelpha, check into the vegetation out there and you find remains of chimneys and remains of villages, He simply asked you, what the hell, what is this? 20:37:00 Jessica Mischner But it does seem like it wasn't something that people were putting together in an academic way or publishing. I mean, it really was, now you have archaeologists who are landscape archaeologists or excavations taking place for different reasons, but it wasn't the natural landscape and the cultural sort of history, wasn't something that there was a lot of people talking about when you were first. 21:03:00 Richard Porcher Well, a lot of things I was doing out there, nobody even knew about them. 21:07:00 Jessica Mischner That's right. 21:08:00 Richard Porcher No, I mean, nobody even knew, nobody documented chimneys. I couldn't find a soul to tell me what these rice, what these steamings were doing out in the woods. A lot of the material, a lot of the stuff I started, it didn't totally forgotten. I mean, still people went, when they did the article three years ago in the news and courier, our secret Delta, and I started explaining to the guy who was doing the article, took them out to where the villages were. Nobody even had any idea that all that's been forgotten. Totally forgotten. So we're bringing to life a lot of the things that just go on by the wayside. People didn't realize they were out there, what they were. 21:49:00 Jessica Mischner So let's go back to the Library of Society. So you are here, you're doing your research. At what point did they approach you about joining the board? 22:01:00 Richard Porcher Oh, I think Henry Grimball was on board and he recruited me if I remember correctly. I can't think we were sitting chatting at a social function when they had made it to your club. And I think he started talking with the library side and he said, "Why don't you come on and be on the board?" Something like that. Anyway, Henry Grimball recruited me for a member. He saved the library society. I don't know if you all know what I'm talking about. It was going financially downhill. It was in trouble. I'm not gonna get into that why. If y'all wanna get into that with him or someone else, you can. He came on board and basically saved the library society. 22:40:00 Jessica Mischner Well, it seemed like an instrumental time to be a board member. 22:44:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, I was. 22:45:00 Jessica Mischner I mean, without going into any sort of proprietary details that we don't really need, what was it like to be on the other side of shepherding an institution like this? 22:58:00 Richard Porcher I don't think any different. It was just two different roles. I'd still come down and reason the library research. It didn't, using it as research didn't, I didn't think about it as being on the board at the same time. It was just, they were two separate things. But I knew being on the board that we were saving, we were doing things that ensured that all this material that I use in research is being saved. That's the key to it, things we're doing. we're making sure that the archives of this library would be here forever. So that meant I'd have these things for them the next day, put another hat on or down here doing research. 23:36:00 Jessica Mischner I ask because I'm trying to constantly figure out how to wear two hats because sometimes I'll be at my computer doing the work that I, you know, am here to do. Apparently. And then I'll end up in the stacks and I'll find Lisa and just, I'll realize I've just been mesmerized by something that I found. or some sort of pamphlet that documents a piece of history that I had only loosely known about. And so it's overwhelming to be around a treasure like this. 24:09:00 Richard Porcher I agree. 24:10:00 Jessica Mischner I mean, it's not that different than being out in the field, I guess, too. 24:14:00 Richard Porcher Look, with always being on the lobby, if I needed anything, all of a sudden Janet would say, "I'll get it for you right off." 24:21:00 Jessica Mischner She's a card catalog. Sure, yeah. It's in her head. 24:23:00 Richard Porcher Just because I was on the board and everything doing my job on the board, I always had preference, let's put it that way. 24:29:00 Lisa Hayes Janice commented that you took the job on the board very seriously. 24:34:00 Richard Porcher Oh, certainly. 24:35:00 Lisa Hayes You came to so many events and really were a great advocate for the library. 24:40:00 Richard Porcher Well, I've had every function you have. I haven't done, I have a hearing problem, so I really can't do what I used to do. I can't come to our lecture anymore. I can't hear. I just know in the world. It's not that I don't want to, but I do come to the music games. I can still hear the music, but somebody giving a lecture, I just can't pick up enough to -and I'm trying to get this new hearing edge right now and see if they'll help me a little bit, but the ones I have right now are worthless. So I just don't -I can give a lecture, but I can't hear lectures anymore. I've got to go to France in August, in October, and give a lecture to the Rabinera Union. I've already got it all set up. 25:20:00 Jessica Mischner Do you enjoy giving lectures? 25:22:00 Richard Porcher No, that's what I love. I really enjoy giving lectures. That's my first love right now. I can't hear anybody else, but I can give a lecture. 25:31:00 Jessica Mischner Sometimes that's the best way. 25:33:00 Richard Porcher I have these PowerPoint presentations. I just finished a Ravenel history, and I'll give that in Vitrinex, I guess, in 1st of October. So I really enjoy that. 25:45:00 Lisa Hayes Do you speak French? 25:46:00 Richard Porcher Yeah. 25:47:00 Lisa Hayes Will you do it in French? Do you speak French? 25:49:00 Richard Porcher Oh, it's the Ravenel reunion. The Ravenel family. We're going over to Vitre. Rick, you know, Rick Wilson is down here. Rick and David, they set up this trip for the Ravenel. 80 of us going over to Vitre. That's where the original immigrant came from, Vitre, France. 26:06:00 Jessica Mischner But do you speak French? I mean, some of the Ravenels like to dabble in... 26:11:00 Richard Porcher Oh, no. I flunk French in college. 26:17:00 Jessica Mischner So no part of this will be delivered in-- 26:19:00 Richard Porcher Oh, no, no, no, no, no, I'll give it. I'll never mind. In Berkeley County-ese, how's that? That's what I generally speak. But a lot of the material in my lecture, like things that actually came from the library society. Cause I've got, you know, I've copied things over the years, so I'll use those same things again. The indigo, remember the diagram on the indigo? I've got that in the lecture. So I use the material I get from y'all all the time. 26:50:00 Jessica Mischner So one of the things you remarked on about what's changed in Charleston was the loss of natural habitat, natural history, and then the awareness of African-American history. 27:04:00 Richard Porcher The key to me is African-American history. 27:06:00 Jessica Mischner I wonder if you could speak a little bit to that because I think that's really, really interesting. 27:11:00 Richard Porcher Well, the entire wealth of the low country based on slavery. Everybody knows that. Up until the point where the African American Museum really hasn't been discussed or talked about, look at what's going on down in Florida, the Disantis. I don't want to get into it anyway. Up until Riley started its museum, I don't think we really concentrated on the role of African Americans, what they played in the Low Country. That's what we do in the Delta. The reason I'm down in the Delta doing this project is to document that aspect of African American history. We're doing the rice culture and building nothing but the main emphasis. I'd go out and when I started this project in the Delta, locating all the rice culture things, then I started coming across the villages where the slaves lived. There's one called Crow Island. It banked off the marsh and then the slave cabins were in that banked off area. And I'd go out there and I'd just start to sit and say, "What do these people do when they came in from the rice fields? What did they talk about? Where did they get the food from? What did they tell the children? What aspirations did they have for the children? I couldn't even have any aspirations out there. What was their life like?" So that's, in the early 2000s when I started thinking, somehow we've got to tell this last aspect of African-American history what they did out in the Santee Delta. The ones that lived on the high land, we know about their villages there, right next to the plantation, we knew more about them. But the ones that lived in the Delta, we know nothing about their life. For me, it's the last major aspect of African-American history I think we can uncover. The museum is doing a lot of it, Africa will do a lot. But we've got to go out in the field and try to find out how these people survived out in that delta. If you've ever been in the delta in August, it's 110 degrees, the mosquitoes, the flies, everything, I just don't know. We may never know. 29:22:00 Jessica Mischner There was an organization from Spain, well it was international, but it was called Cook It Raw. They came years and years ago, but one of David Shields, sorry, and a few people who were in the food culture when that was sort of becoming a topic. 29:42:00 Richard Porcher Who was it? 29:43:00 Jessica Mischner David Shields. 29:44:00 Richard Porcher David Shields? Oh, I know him well. 29:46:00 Jessica Mischner I love David. had organized this trip for us all to go out and harvest rice. I cannot imagine, I mean, I will never spill a grain of rice ever again. I mean, when you think about what it takes and just a simulation of what that culture was like and how brutal and grueling you appreciate the lives behind. 30:12:00 Richard Porcher That's what I'm trying to do. We have never really appreciated what those people did for the low country, the wealth that they produced in the low country. We've sort of forgotten about just how rough a life it was. I couldn't survive. 30:31:00 Lisa Hayes Has your research taken you to Africa? Have you been—? 30:35:00 Richard Porcher I went three weeks in Africa. What did you do while you were there? I was just trying to understand how they grew rice over there now. I took a course. I did my masses at the Citadel. I took the nine courses and never did research, so I didn't get the degree. But one course I took, the students went over to Africa for three weeks and I went with them and sought a sign up for a research course, I guess. And that was just trying to track down some of the ways they were still growing rice up in Africa. So that's what that was for. didn't really have that much impact on what I'm doing here cause it's a whole different system. But still, I enjoyed it three weeks over there. 31:12:00 Jessica Mischner What do you feel a sense of urgency about? I mean, you've accomplished so much, but you're still hard at work. Do you feel more urgency about the cultural history, the natural history, the retreating landscape? 31:27:00 Richard Porcher I'm doing, I've got the new book. We did last year, we did the new Wildflower Book. A wildflower book gets people interested in wildflowers. They get out in the field and track down all the beautiful wildflowers. So the wildflower book gets people interested. Now the next step is getting those people involved in trying to protect what we still have. That's why I'm doing a book called The Field Guide to Saving South Carolina's Rarist Native Wildflowers. We'll take the rarest plants, talk about 'em. We understand now that the population of plants starting to decline, decline, decline. We want to document that in this book and really get people involved in trying to say what we have, you know, maybe stop the decline, but we know that climate change is going to happen. The whole issue of the delta now is climate change because for too long that delta will be underwater and all right history will be gone because nobody's going to go down underwater and excavate a slave village. So we're in a hurry now to get this project done before some of those areas are flooded. 32:34:00 Jessica Mischner How much of it your work involves working with communities that descend from some of these, like the Gichigola, like... 32:46:00 Richard Porcher I really haven't gotten that involved with the... because I guess what I'm doing out in the Delta there, it didn't... not many people can go out there. It's such a inhospitable place. but all the people here we gather we hope will be used by these communities. 33:03:00 Jessica Mischner Right. 33:03:00 Richard Porcher Put it that way. They all could be, "Well, Herb Frazier will be with us." That's right, yeah. You know, I mean, I think you know her, what he's done. 33:09:00 Jessica Mischner Well, Herb. 33:09:00 Richard Porcher Didn't even give a lecture here recently, didn't it? Did. How did it go? I couldn't. I couldn't. 33:12:00 Jessica Mischner It was great. It was fantastic. Yeah. 33:14:00 Richard Porcher But he's on the team, by the way, on the Delta team. 33:17:00 Jessica Mischner I mean, he's such a, anybody who's been in journalism is such a legend. And so, and I had interviewed Joe in 2016, maybe, and when he was just starting the slave dwelling project. 33:27:00 Richard Porcher Well here's what we're gonna do in the wintertime I'm gonna get all our whole team together with Herb and Joe and we're going out on Murphy Island and camp up for night in the old in the village. That would be great. There's nothing left but the chimneys and everything but that's in my plan to get us all up there one night and spend it like he did in the cabins we'll certainly be up there in the remains of the villages so that's that's on my goal. 33:56:00 Jessica Mischner Well, so Joe had introduced me really in 2015, 16 to some folks up at the Baruch, the Bernard Baruch's place who were working with the community on Sandy Island, who took me over to Sandy Island. And just thinking about communities like that that are still trying to maintain a way of life while being open to people. Yeah, it's pretty incredible. 34:19:00 Richard Porcher Just why people are trying to say Phillips community. 34:22:00 Jessica Mischner That's right. 34:23:00 Richard Porcher You know what's going on out there? 34:26:00 Lisa Hayes In Mount Pleasant. 34:27:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, yeah, certainly. I mean, the people up there in Dunes West they could care less about, they wanted the Firebane Highway to go right through Phillips Community rather than go an edge of there. Anyway, I can't get involved in that. Y'all know what's going on out there. 34:42:00 Jessica Mischner I'm gonna let you ask anything you wanna ask, but what's the most excited you've ever been after a day in the field? or a day giving a talk. I mean, everything-- 34:55:00 Richard Porcher Come by and find some of our real wildflower. 34:57:00 Jessica Mischner Okay. Yeah. What's your favorite flower? 35:00:00 Richard Porcher Well, some of the orchids. 35:01:00 Jessica Mischner Which one, any? 35:03:00 Richard Porcher Not any, they all get all so beautiful again. 35:06:00 Jessica Mischner Yeah. 35:06:00 Richard Porcher Just basically. And the carnivorous plants too, I guess. Everybody, fascinating about the carnivorous picture plants and the orchids. 35:13:00 Jessica Mischner Well, we-- 35:15:00 Richard Porcher Cause I'm still going out on this. We're up that boat now. I'm heading down to Brookgreen Garden. I'm working on Huntington Beach after I leave here looking for a plant that's in the book, and then I go up to Pass Myrtle Beach to Heritage Reserve trying to find another rare plant photographing for this book. So the fun of what we do is finding these rare plants. 35:35:00 Lisa Hayes How do you get access to the land where you find these? 35:40:00 Richard Porcher Well, state property or federal property is no problem. But remember, I've been here since 1685, so I know other plantation people from the Yacht Club, and things like that. I generally have access to a lot of property that most people wouldn't have access to. And so I can take my field, my botany friends out to these plantations. 35:59:00 Lisa Hayes When you're in these private plantations, do you ever educate them about the use of like Roundup or things like that? You must see that. 36:09:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, they ask me, you know, what can I do to protect these plants? They will tell them what to do, they will give them some advice. I don't go out and start telling them right off, you need to do this, you need to do that. That's not the way it works. But if I can get them interested and show them that you've got these beautiful wildflowers and then they'll start saying, well, I'll show them you need to burn it every year, you need to do this, that's where you work it. Let them sort of ask you what's the best way to protect these plants, that's how you do it. We had one botanist who went down to Okeetee and really started telling people, Okeetee, what the hell are you doing wrong? Well, we can't get back on those. 36:48:00 Jessica Mischner Yeah, a gentle approach. 36:51:00 Richard Porcher That's not the way you do it. But once you show them, when you bring the wildflower book, you can't amaze him any copies of wildflower books. I have to buy them $40 apiece, but every time I go to a private land, I give them a copy of the new wildflower book. I can start pointing out in there, "Hey, you got this plant right over there." And that gets him interested in it. 37:12:00 Jessica Mischner Do you keep a journal or a diary, something that's more personal or fiction? 37:16:00 Richard Porcher I've been writing in the journal for sixty years. 37:19:00 Jessica Mischner I think about your stories, Ben Moise, you know, when he was the only game warden for so long. All of his stories about his work were so interesting. 37:31:00 Richard Porcher I write in the journal every night. 37:33:00 Jessica Mischner Where are you going to leave those papers? Where are you going to give those papers? When you finish, is that a collection you would consider sharing with the Library Society 37:46:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, it wasn't that, no problem. Have you thought about that? 37:50:00 Jessica Mischner Well, I think your USC would probably like to have them, too. 37:53:00 Richard Porcher USC wouldn't know they wouldn't. They'd have no interest in field lightning anymore. 37:58:00 Jessica Mischner Yeah. I mean, as an English and history major, the liberal arts and the sciences, the life sciences aren't really anything anyone's really interested in. 38:10:00 Richard Porcher Well, I think what he promised. Oh, I what he promised and my general. 38:13:00 Jessica Mischner Oh, okay, good. Oh, I forgot, yeah. 38:15:00 Richard Porcher Okay. 38:16:00 Jessica Mischner Well, I asked Anne to promise us her letters. 38:19:00 Richard Porcher I forgot about that. Yeah, I've already had her promise her years ago. You can stack them up and have them need from the floor like this. I mean, almost 60 years of a journal. 38:31:00 Lisa Hayes Not anytime soon. 38:32:00 Jessica Mischner No, and I'm not suggesting that this has to be posthumous. I'm just saying if you need room in your garage or something, what do you have in there? 38:38:00 Richard Porcher I'm already told Anne and all my journals would be given to a lot of society. 38:42:00 Jessica Mischner I'm trying to pry Anne's letters out of her hands every time she comes in here. All the people she correspondes with. 38:47:00 Richard Porcher So many things in the archives that people have that refuse to give them up and they need to be in the archives. I had a, my Charleston made sideboard and I gave it to the Historical Charleston Foundation because it belongs in the archives somewhere, people can study it. So, I don't have any things I've pried over the family. We finally got the Pashé Bible at the Huguenot Society. It was in McClellan. Percy had it, and I finally got him to give it. I don't know how many things like that I've gotten people to donate to the library to different places. 39:23:00 Jessica Mischner It's hard to be a steward all around. Stewarding everything. 39:27:00 Richard Porcher We were just begun. We got so many things. We haven't even begun yet to document all the wildflowers and real plants in the low country. That's just an ongoing thing. 39:39:00 Jessica Mischner Really? 39:40:00 Richard Porcher We're still identifying new species that we didn't even know existed. 39:43:00 Jessica Mischner Wow, that's amazing. So when will your next book be out? 39:46:00 Richard Porcher The Santee Canal book comes out in April. That's already, it's in production. 39:50:00 Jessica Mischner Right. Those books, I got those with the Conrad Settle. She's the first author because I didn't have time to do the working with the US Press. I did the research and Billy Ye did the diagram. So that comes out in April. So if you don't want to have a book signing your weapon, yeah. 40:05:00 Jessica Mischner Great. 40:06:00 Richard Porcher Well, it'll be in the warehouse in April and the bookshelves in May. 40:10:00 Jessica Mischner That'd be great. 40:11:00 Richard Porcher That's what I've heard. 40:12:00 Lisa Hayes Yeah, we'd love for you to come for that. 40:14:00 Jessica Mischner One thousand percent. 40:15:00 Richard Porcher I've got a beautiful program of proud want presentation already set up for it. 40:21:00 Lisa Hayes That'd be great. 40:22:00 Richard Porcher It will bring Herb and Billy, three of us, going to give it together. 40:26:00 Jessica Mischner Okay. We'll take you up on that. 40:28:00 Richard Porcher Yeah. 40:29:00 Jessica Mischner Truly. 40:30:00 Richard Porcher Okay. 40:31:00 Jessica Mischner So expect an invitation to come. 40:32:00 Richard Porcher Well, I think I didn't see Ellen Cotton book here. Maybe I can talk Rick into who I'm talking about. I'll make sure he helps along with some of the food. I'll get that out. I'll see that in this afternoon and I'll tell him he needs to help with that. 40:52:00 Jessica Mischner That's nice added value. We always like a little extra. 40:54:00 Richard Porcher I think I gave you a copy of the Lost Heritage too. That was almost fifteen years of work. 41:01:00 Lisa Hayes That's quite a massive publication. 41:05:00 Richard Porcher It was too big, too complex to do in an academic press, so I just had it published myself. If I'd gone to an academic press, I'd still be trying to go through all the changes. I wrote the book the way I wanted to. This is what I'm writing, period. And so we simply ran copies off at a printer. 41:25:00 Lisa Hayes Yeah. 41:26:00 Jessica Mischner So I found there are two types of writers, those that love writing and those that love having written because you feel like you have to get it out but the process itself is torturous 41:38:00 Richard Porcher maybe it's just the anticipation. When you get a box in the mail and you open it up and you pull up this book and you look at it you're hooked. 41:43:00 Jessica Mischner So you like writing the act of writing itself when you get into it? 41:51:00 Richard Porcher I enjoy the research part. Not so much sitting down and doing the typing that's that's that's just needle work but I love doing the research right and being able to put it all together into a document and then have people say oh my that's so beautiful that's what I like when you see this book you sit I'll sit back and tell them and I'll say hell that almost where did all that stuff come from? 42:13:00 Jessica Mischner Well hat's the best is when you impress yourself after the fact you can't believe where they're all came from. 42:26:00 Richard Porcher That's right. That book on Lost Heritage, there's 600 something pages. I have no idea where all that stuff came from. It just boggles your mind. 42:33:00 Jessica Mischner But now it exists and you don't have to worry about it anymore. 42:36:00 Richard Porcher Don't have to worry about it again. So now the canal book is done. Working on the rep and I think I'm going right to that's a new end of our work on the rare plant book. And we move it along on the delta. We probably get three or four smaller books out of the delta project. And then Pierre Manigault's gonna publish everything into one large volume, which includes everything. 43:01:00 Jessica Mischner Oh, wow. 43:01:00 Richard Porcher So that's the plan. 43:04:00 Jessica Mischner That's amazing. 43:05:00 Richard Porcher Post-incurator. So he's said he's hired the lawyer to do the LTC, and I hope in a month or so we'll be back in the Delta. 43:15:00 Jessica Mischner Well, you know, Pierre was the patron saint of Garden and Gun, so. 43:18:00 Richard Porcher That's right. 43:19:00 Jessica Mischner He was the patron saint of Garden and Gun, too, so when I worked there. 43:23:00 Richard Porcher Oh, yeah, yeah. 43:24:00 Jessica Mischner Well, that'll be a good Christmas present for people. We'll make sure to put that on our list. 43:29:00 Richard Porcher If we get this project the way we want to, it's gonna be something special. I mean, people will not realize what was out in that Delta. It was a city state. I mean, if you went out there in 1850, there were boats, chimneys, belgies full of smoke. Thousands of enslaved people out in the fields, working in the rice fields, villages. Everywhere you see a village, four, five, nine, cabins all in a row, it was a massive city state at one time, and it all forgot totally. And what we're gonna do in the room, but this big, we're going to model the whole delta. Every little river, every little rice field, every little village, every steaming, little models of the whole delta will be modeled out in some kind of, you see people do a city block, That's what we're gonna do for the Delta. That's the plan. 44:23:00 Jessica Mischner Where? 44:24:00 Lisa Hayes Where will that be? 44:25:00 Richard Porcher Oh, I don't know. 44:26:00 Lisa Hayes Oh. 44:27:00 Richard Porcher We got the, oh, two, the Clemson School of Design. Is that what it is? Right now, East Bay Street. And then the American College of Building Arts. Got two people on, from either one of their staff. And they'll be, that'll be there for us. 44:44:00 Jessica Mischner I'm sure they'll love that. 44:46:00 Richard Porcher Christina Butler, she's-- 44:48:00 Jessica Mischner She'll be here next week. 44:51:00 Richard Porcher Oh, interviewing? 44:52:00 Jessica Mischner No, just doing a talk. She'll be one of our speakers on her new book, Horsepower. 44:59:00 Richard Porcher Which, what's the-- 45:00:00 Jessica Mischner It's called Horsepower. 45:01:00 Richard Porcher I don't hear about it. 45:04:00 Jessica Mischner It's about the history of equine transportation and horses and– Of Horsepower. 45:09:00 Richard Porcher Oh, I didn't know. 45:10:00 Jessica Mischner Horsepower. 45:11:00 Richard Porcher Okay. Wait, when she'll ask if she's on the project. That's great. I'm trying to make who else is on the, anyway. So we got, and they'll, either one of those will do, I build a model. 45:22:00 Jessica Mischner I'm sure Ray Huff is upset that he's not over at Clemson at the design school anymore. 45:27:00 Richard Porcher Who is he? 45:28:00 Jessica Mischner He was the head, the former head, but he grew up, he's so interesting, he just retired. But he grew up on Hampton Park when there was still a zoo. And he, they didn't have air conditioning, so he would go to bed at the sound of lions roaring at night, so he just, and he was an architect before he took over. Ray Huff, H.U.F.F. 45:50:00 Richard Porcher I don't think I've met him. 45:51:00 Jessica Mischner He's lovely and he might be a little older than you, but he's a lovely man who loves building replicas of parts of Charleston, and especially cityscapes that are forgotten or-- 46:06:00 Richard Porcher Well, it was forgotten, that's what we're doing. 46:08:00 Jessica Mischner Or planned and never came into fruition, so that's so fascinating. 46:12:00 Richard Porcher Well, my dream is, as part of the project, is to get that big model of the entire delta built. 46:19:00 Jessica Mischner It's incredible. 46:20:00 Richard Porcher And we have little villages once, we know where the villages are, how many cabins are there, what, so that's, that's. 46:27:00 Jessica Mischner Please keep us posted on that. 46:29:00 Richard Porcher Well, we will, we will, yeah. 46:31:00 Jessica Mischner What else, what am I missing? 46:33:00 Lisa Hayes I don't know. Will you tell us something that you do for fun? I know you had a passion for genealogy. 46:43:00 Richard Porcher For fun? 46:44:00 Lisa Hayes History and botany. 46:46:00 Richard Porcher What do you kind of-That is my fun. 46:48:00 Jessica Mischner Yeah, read any books like fiction? 46:53:00 Richard Porcher I don't read fiction, I read the history books. 46:55:00 Jessica Mischner What are you interested in right now other than the things in your world? 46:59:00 Jessica Mischner Something totally different. Hot air balloons or cooking? 47:04:00 Richard Porcher I'm so involved right now in this project 47:06:00 Lisa Hayes that my mind is-No free time. 47:09:00 Richard Porcher No free time. No free time right now. The wild blood book, I've got to be out in the field two days a week on the new real plant book. The Delta book is heating up, and that's just all I can think of right now. 47:20:00 Jessica Mischner Do you carry a notebook in the field with you? Do you carry a notebook? 47:24:00 Richard Porcher A book book. 47:25:00 Jessica Mischner A notebook in the field? 47:26:00 Richard Porcher Oh, certainly. 47:27:00 Jessica Mischner What kind of notebooks and pens do you like? 47:29:00 Richard Porcher Like to jot down where I am. 47:31:00 Jessica Mischner The top spiral or side spiral? 47:33:00 Richard Porcher Little spiral, side spiral book, yeah. 47:36:00 Jessica Mischner What kind of pens do you like? 47:38:00 Richard Porcher Pens? I just use a pencil. 47:44:00 Jessica Mischner Oh, okay. What kind of pencil? (laughing) I love to know this. 47:51:00 Richard Porcher It's whatever I can find at the time. 47:53:00 Jessica Mischner But just a graphite pencil, not a red pencil, or a black lead pencil? 47:57:00 Richard Porcher Whatever pencil I can find in the floor of the car. 48:02:00 Jessica Mischner Okay, so you're not partial to anything? 48:06:00 Richard Porcher No, no, no, no. I have my GPS I can document where we find things, everything we found with GPS that when I come back and put the coordinates on Google and print a map where the structures are. I should have wrote a book with me where I'll have today in the field a little map where these plants are. 48:28:00 Lisa Hayes Has technology really changed how you research? 48:32:00 Richard Porcher Oh, the GPS. Oh, I mean, we can document a plant at the coordinates and then we can back to this very spot. I've got things I collected back in the 70s and 80s. I said no these intersections so and so and so and so maybe never find it again but the GPS we can document we find a plant we do the coordinates and ducts and tend to send the coordinates of the state and they're there forever somebody can go right back to the very spot virtually within a few feet where we found the plants well that's the major thing the GPS system. my own map saying mile and a half, southeast of the intersection of highway so and so and so and so. 49:12:00 Jessica Mischner There's something to that too. 49:13:00 Richard Porcher But the GPS system now just— 49:14:00 Jessica Mischner That's incredible. 49:15:00 Richard Porcher Yeah. And out in the delta, everything we find in the delta, we GPS it. 49:29:00 Richard Porcher Well my dream is to get 12 books out. 49:31:00 Jessica Mischner That's amazing. 49:32:00 Richard Porcher My dream is to get 12 books. 49:33:00 Jessica Mischner And then you're done? 49:34:00 Richard Porcher Well no, but I get to... 49:35:00 Jessica Mischner You'll be happy. 49:36:00 Richard Porcher Well never gonna be done. That's true. If I love you 100 I'll be writing forever. Well, I really got to get a, the Canal book will be nine, Ravenel book will be 10, whatever come out of the Delta. And then Rick and David, Rick and I, he's pushing me to do a book on the Porcher family, on Porcher Plantation. 49:57:00 Jessica Mischner Yeah. 49:58:00 Richard Porcher So he and I might do that together. That's my family place, place called Porcher Plantation, it's under the lake and it's gone. But so I might get a book on that. So I think I can get 12 books out. If I can do 12 books and cover them natural history, cultural history, architecture, everything, I think I can say I did a good job. That's the goal. 50:23:00 Jessica Mischner So for so many things that are underwater, do you work with Steven’s Towing, people at the Navy Yard? How do you go in and find some of those, I don't know, artifacts or bits of forgotten structures. Do people at those companies that kind of do, not just dredging, but towing, you know, who are always on these waterways that are deeper? 50:51:00 Richard Porcher Well, you lost me. How do we protect those things? How do we- 50:53:00 Jessica Mischner No, just, how do you find some of the things that are deeper? 50:58:00 Richard Porcher I don't know, I don't do that now. When I did "Lost Heritage," I just documented based on maps and things and what-- 51:06:00 Jessica Mischner You're just looking at what used to be above. 51:09:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, right. On dry land, got it. 51:10:00 Jessica Mischner And I don't go below. Well, the village here did actually dove in Lake Moultrie and photographed a couple of the locks of the Santee Canal. I don't get involved in that. I can't do that. But there's a lot of underwater archeology people do. 51:27:00 Jessica Mischner Especially down toward the Yemassee, so I was just curious of you. 51:30:00 Richard Porcher But Delta will be in the water one day, whether you believe in climate change or not. That's gonna happen. So that's one reason why the state is also involved in this too, 'cause they own so much land in the Delta. And they realize that we don't get it soon. It'll be going forever. So their partnership, DNR is working with us in this project. 51:51:00 Jessica Mischner So you haven't had trouble with government support 51:55:00 Jessica Mischner for this kind of work? Nothing to say, 51:56:00 Richard Porcher Yeah, that's good. yet. Now with some private owners, My dream, which will never come true, the dream is to get to Santee Delta as a World Heritage Site. It would qualify, but there would be some landowners who don't want to do it more than likely. You've got to get everybody in the delta to come on board. People say, "Well, we don't want the government involved in our work because that might restrict what it can do." So we may never get to Santee Delta as a World Heritage Site, but that's what we started working towards one made, the dream, is to get that delta entirely protected forever. So we'll see what happens. And then the idea is to take what we do in the delta and move to Winyah Bay and use the same technology we've done in the delta all the way up to the Waccamaw River study that system. So that's the long-term goal. 52:50:00 Lisa Hayes You have put in place these big pieces that really could save parts of the East Coast. 53:02:00 Jessica Mischner I mean, it's scalable. The models are replicable. 53:04:00 Richard Porcher I'm not one in time. They're buzzing right now. All right, say it again. Sorry. That's all right. It's not your fault. It's my fault. 53:14:00 Lisa Hayes We were just complimenting on you on building something with your team that is scalable to more properties along the East Coast that you really could help save things. 53:22:00 Richard Porcher Oh certainly, yeah. That you do the, we do next to the Winyah Bay, maybe some, that may get people to kick fear up there, go back down to Combahee River, certainly. Yeah. 53:34:00 Jessica Mischner It's remarkable. 53:35:00 Richard Porcher Well, it's... 53:36:00 Jessica Mischner It's so impressive. 53:37:00 Richard Porcher What happened? At the bottom of my, oh God, damn it, Teddy Roosevelt. He had a quote I use all the time. I can't think of it. Those who don't understand history or something, I can't remember what it is right now. I'll have to send it to you. Anyway, we need to know what was in the past that helps us build the future. Oh, I guess that's what he said. 54:06:00 Jessica Mischner Do you have to repeat it? 54:08:00 Richard Porcher Something like that. So I use that as a sentence all the time. My ledger on my diary, I have that at the bottom, so it goes right above it every time. So I've had that same sentence for maybe 20 years. I transferred to the new ledger every year. 54:28:00 Jessica Mischner Well, given how busy and important you are, we're going to let you, we're going to free you from this. This was such a pleasure. Thank you so much. 54:37:00 Richard Porcher I'll have two hours an hour I'll be at Brookgreen, three hours an hour at Brookgreen, not Brookgreen. How do you reach? Walking at me, looking for a rare plant. 54:47:00 Lisa Hayes Oh, wow. 54:48:00 Richard Porcher I'm going up to see Rick and David, Rick Wilson, and I'm going to drop off and say hello to them, because they're at Paulish, staying at Paulish for a while and I'll... 54:58:00 Jessica Mischner Tell David Shields that Jessica Mischner said hello. I'll send you an email. 55:01:00 Richard Porcher I'm trying to think, last time I talked to David. Anyway, you know, was he here recently or what? 55:10:00 Jessica Mischner No, he-- 55:12:00 Richard Porcher You ought to get him down to find the right place to go. 55:14:00 Jessica Mischner He's great, I mean, I just met him when he and Glenn Roberts first started working on the CILPs and, you know, just the, I mean, so long ago when people were just sort of bringing rice back or, you know. 55:28:00 Richard Porcher I was on that rice culture board that, when I dropped off it had too many other things going on. It was mostly about food and everything. 55:34:00 Jessica Mischner It was food, it was bringing back food. And then the native pantry. 55:38:00 Richard Porcher That wasn't my field. My field was the artifacts and so forth of the rice culture. 55:42:00 Jessica Mischner And it was very trendy at the time too. But which benefited David's work a lot because he was able to-- 55:49:00 Richard Porcher Oh, he's brilliant, oh my God. 55:50:00 Jessica Mischner Yes, and all of the research and documentation he had done found this whole new audience though. I mean, it spreaded everywhere. 55:59:00 Richard Porcher Nobody knew it was there so well. 56:00:00 Jessica Mischner He had a platform that was amazing because people got obsessed with it. So it was great. 56:05:00 Richard Porcher This project here for you lost me what are these interviews for? 56:12:00 Lisa Hayes Well you know we're celebrating 275 years the Library Society is. Oh I forgot that note. So we're doing the theme of storytelling and trying to capture people's stories about the library society. Okay. We're so grateful for your time. Yeah. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dr. Richard Porcher (interviewed by Jessica Mischner and Lisa Hayes on August 24, 2023) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Porcher, Richard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-08-24 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Mischner, Jessica Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Description An account of the resource Richard Porcher was born in 1939 in Charleston. He grew up in Moncks Corner and has had a long career as a biologist. Dr. Porcher has written several books on cotton, wildflowers, rice culture and cultural history. He served on the Library’s board and reflects on his time in the Library doing research for his books. He gives an overview of his team’s current efforts to connect the history, geography, and the cultural history of a place all into one end-product, with a framework that can be adapted by others in other places. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RichardPorcher_OralHistory_20230824 cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/9b6dd8cd98f244cbcae4b9e8cc5641e8.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=b5LVTYuGraZAsomfKirbU8eDGUVt1bvkLATuxj0GIRosg9bELIzMH8NN1ocP7W8GLGIRfTVlGZPxqoisa3m31oCPlisG7loxs8vqMdRTBU9TLmeOawVt655B1RopMsUQiBbwWmYh9Ee8j3zVph0EZIq-Ygd8VNSGslc1O3OdTcrkj93mSNwNthWkVYBzYNKaG9ZEPTRBGqhSvwcVH%7EalnaCUSWqSDx9gbU6-AL59dKvuPZTelovSgZEtRnELRZImFwE%7EFAoX-F-gdRSuEzZtHKupvDtSSvaijax5AuXu4lZPWAHkVnfGe3Dr97y%7Ef8mdWT8nVO7ZSV8KiQ1ANV2M1g__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM c25f1240f91de4f34f80f605410e1375 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 00:00:05 Cathy Sadler I'm not. 00:00:06 Lisa Hayes Me either. It'll just be fun. So my name is Lisa Hayes. I'm the special collections librarian at the library, Charleston Library Society. It is Monday, May 1st, and I am delighted to be here in the conference room with Cathy Sadler, who is here today to give us an oral history about her time here at the Library Society and growing up in Charleston. Cathy was the head librarian here from 1971 until 2008. Is that right? 00:00:42 Cathy Sadler I was the assistant librarian until, from ‘71 to ‘78, and then head librarian from January of ‘79. 00:00:52 Lisa Hayes Oh, that's a very long time. So she has a lot-- 00:00:55 Cathy Sadler And a student assistant. 00:00:57 Lisa Hayes Before that, when you were in college, that's right. 00:00:58 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes. 00:00:59 Lisa Hayes So she has a lot that we're going to be able to learn, learn from her. So thank you for, for being here. So. So let's see. So you were born in 1949. And I know you didn't, you weren't born here in Charleston, but it, it sounds like you grew up right across the street from us. Can you tell us about that? 00:01:16 Cathy Sadler Yes, I was. I was back here by the time I was 2. And we lived on Orange Street with my grandparents for a couple of years, and then we lived on 5 Gateway Walk, which is right across the street. So yes, and then I, we moved to Tradd Street after that. 00:01:35 Lisa Hayes After that. So when you were a student assistant, where were you living? On Tradd Street? 00:01:36 Cathy Sadler On Tradd Street. 00:01:41 Lisa Hayes Well, so I know the Gateway Walk right now. We walk through there often to get to, during lunch to get to the Unitarian Church. Tell us about what that was like? What, what was Charleston like when you were living there, and also on Tradd Street? So much different than it is now, I guess. 00:01:58 Cathy Sadler Yes, it was much more of a small town feel. James Island, Johns Island were the country, and people went there for the summer and didn't come back and forth. When I was on the Gateway Walk, I went to Miss McGinnis’ first grade, which was on Chalmers and walked through the Gateway Walk that way to school. And then I walked through the churchyard to get to Memminger regularly. We, once we found a rabbit at the Gibbes, in the yard. Pat Rabbit, that we took home. We found out he liked to drink Coca-Cola and he liked to nibble on books. And then we had at one point we had two monkeys living next to, chimpanzees and monkeys, living next door to us at 4 Gateway Walk. 00:03:02 Lisa Hayes Those were someone’s pets? 00:03:02 Cathy Sadler So, yes, they were studying animals. 00:03:03 Lisa Hayes Oh my gosh. 00:03:06 Cathy Sadler It was a scientist and they were studying animals and found that chimpanzees have to wear clothes inside because they can't be potty trained. And spider monkeys like to climb up your window. 00:03:19 Lisa Hayes So, well, so you have three siblings and you're, you're the oldest. 00:03:23 Cathy Sadler Yes. 00:03:24 Lisa Hayes Well, did you all grow up with a lot of books in your home? Did you love to read? 00:03:27 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes, yes, I was a bookworm all my life. And I loved to read. The others didn't read that much. My brothers were dyslexic. So they had trouble reading. But my mother read to us regularly. 00:03:51 Lisa Hayes And, and so you joined the Library Society when you were a child, is that right? 00:03:54 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes, I had a child's membership on my grandfather’s card. 00:03:55 Lisa Hayes Oh, who was your grandfather? 00:04:02 Cathy Sadler Harold Allen Mouzon was my grandmother, my grandfather, and he was on the Board of Finance and the Book Committee. So yes, yes. And he used to come to see his lawyer downtown. He used to come in every Wednesday and sit and read for a while and we would come over when Daddy got home from work and get him and take him back to the house for drinks and then he would go to the Old Bats and play poker. 00:04:52 Lisa Hayes What is the Old Bats? 00:04:53 Cathy Sadler What is its proper name? It's an artillery organization, supposedly an artillery organization, but it's really a poker club. 00:04:53 Lisa Hayes Did they meet in someone's home to play poker? 00:04:54 Cathy Sadler They meet. Yes, I think they usually change around, but I'm not sure exactly how they do it, but they play poker every Wednesday and I think it's still going. I know Mr. Ripley was a member. 00:05:09 Lisa Hayes So your grandfather was a member. Was your dad also a member. 00:05:12 Cathy Sadler No, he was not. He was not. He was a civil engineer at the ports authority. 00:05:18 Lisa Hayes And what about your mom? What did she do? 00:05:20 Cathy Sadler She was a homemaker. She worked for a while at Delta before she was married, and then she volunteered at the Preservation Society store for years before she died. 00:05:39 Lisa Hayes So you, so your grandfather was on the board here and you all were members. Did you come here like once a week when you were a kid, or more, more than that? 00:05:45 Cathy Sadler Well, it came probably more than. Yes, this was our library. This was our Public Library. I don't think I ever went to the Public Library until it moved to King Street. 00:05:58 Lisa Hayes Well, so we have the picture that you mentioned in the reading room right now that shows you and your sister and Julia Logan and Garden Frampton is looking like she's reading a story to you or about to read to you. 00:06:10 Cathy Sadler She was an assistant, student assistant at the time. 00:06:14 Lisa Hayes So what were some of the things that you would do when you were here at the library? Did you go, I know there wasn't that there wasn't a rabbit hole, but where would you sit and read? 00:06:25 Cathy Sadler It was on the main floor right next to where the desk is, the circulation desk used to be. It was just that one little area. A table and two rows of shelves for books, yeah. 00:06:41 Lisa Hayes So the kids section was really small it sounds like? 00:06:43 Cathy Sadler Very small. 00:06:44 Lisa Hayes And do you remember some of the librarians at that time? Who was the? 00:06:49 Cathy Sadler Miss Haigh and Miss Rugheimer. 00:06:50 Lisa Hayes So Garden Frampton's mom was the, was the librarian. And then. 00:06:54 Cathy Sadler She was assistant librarian and Miss Rugheimer and Miss Sheetz was here as well. I did not know her that well. We, Margaret now used to make loom woven potholders for the librarians for their tea breaks. 00:07:15 Lisa Hayes Did the library close during the day for any amount of time or? 00:07:20 Cathy Sadler No, it was open 9:30 to 6:00. They did have an hour and 1/2 lunch breaks, because the librarians went home for lunch, as did a lot of lawyers and people at that time. The library was open until 6, yes. 00:07:34 Lisa Hayes But the library was open. What about on the weekend? Do you remember? 00:07:40 Cathy Sadler It was open till 6:00 on Saturday. Not open on Sunday, was never open on Sunday. 00:07:46 Lisa Hayes Do you remember any of the people from then besides the people who worked here? Any of the members that would come in, any names come to mind? 00:07:56 Cathy Sadler At that time, I don't. I know John Ziegler used it a lot. 00:08:05 Lisa Hayes Did you know this is, this is early. Anybody like, well, later I guess it would have been Sam Stoney, when you were older. 00:08:16 Cathy Sadler Oh yes, Sam Stoney and Milby Burton both. And they were both deaf, so, so one of them would be in the locked section and one in the main reading room, and they would be yelling back and forth at each other. And Milby, Burton was a cusser, shall we say, that was his normal speech, but they toned it down when they were in here in deference to the ladies. But it still got pretty hot. 00:08:51 Lisa Hayes So you started as a child, as a student assistant when you were eight. 00:08:54 Cathy Sadler I was promised a job when I was five. I started as a student assistant in ‘67. 00:09:01 Lisa Hayes And you were 17, is that right? 16 or 17? 16. So you were at the College of Charleston? What did you study in school? 00:09:12 Cathy Sadler I got an AB which requires 3 years of Latin or Greek. I took the Greek. I don't remember any of it. I majored in English and minored in a bunch of different things because I was into three different catalogs. So I think officially it was French and history, but I'm not sure . 00:09:33 Lisa Hayes Oh, wow. Well, so you worked here and then, I want to hear about that. But then you went to Florida State. Is that where you got your library degree? 00:09:40 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes. 00:09:41 Lisa Hayes OK. And then you did, you know when you were getting your library degree, you wanted to come back here and work? 00:09:47 Cathy Sadler I do. I would like to at some point and but she's had been letting me catalog before I went. So I knew I was going to be a librarian when I was in college. I did interview one other place that was on the border of Alabama and Georgia for a children's librarian and county system, but I would have had to buy a car. It was miles from any place, I think Atlanta was the nearest city. And it was like 2 hours drive or three hours drive or something. And I could work here and use my grandmother's car. 00:10:36 Lisa Hayes And live downtown? 00:10:37 Cathy Sadler And live downtown. 00:10:37 Lisa Hayes You can't beat that. 00:10:40 Cathy Sadler So, and walk to work all the time. 00:10:44 Lisa Hayes So let's go back to when you worked here, when you were a student assistant. What were some of the duties that you had then? 00:10:50 Cathy Sadler We reshelved books. We did the circulation. We, I cataloged maps and manuscripts because they knew what I was going to do. That wasn't the normal thing. We marked and shellacked books. Had to shellack them to keep cockroaches from eating the covers. We served at the annual meeting. When I first came, it was downstairs in the Barnwell annex. 00:11:27 Lisa Hayes That's what the bindery is today. 00:11:32 Cathy Sadler And we carried trays of sandwiches, some things around. The members made a lot of food. And the librarians always made, made cucumber sandwiches and shrimp sandwiches. 00:11:48 Lisa Hayes It wasn't catered by Hamby’s. 00:11:49 Cathy Sadler It was not catered. No, it was not catered and we all, we made the punch. So yeah, it was put on by the library staff and a few members. 00:12:01 Lisa Hayes So that was when you were a student. So tell us about, gosh, so you got to work on the manuscripts. Were the, were those, were, do you feel like some of the manuscripts you got to catalog had not been seen by anyone in 100 years? 00:12:16 Cathy Sadler I think they had been seen, but they were disorganized. And you might have noticed that the letters of some people are broken up into their correspondence. That was because we, they were not copied at the time. They weren't all microfilm or fiche. And so we didn't want people going through everything in some of the bigger collections. So we split it up so that we could give them one folder at a time. 00:12:52 Lisa Hayes Do you remember some of those collections now? Does anything come to mind? 00:12:56 Cathy Sadler Francis Marion, John C. Calhoun. Lots of them. 00:13:02 Lisa Hayes That's, I mean, that's amazing. 00:13:03 Cathy Sadler Lots of them. The Ross Estate manuscripts. 00:13:06 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah, you worked on that. 00:13:08 Cathy Sadler They were all part of the manuscript collection. 00:13:11 Lisa Hayes Did, I mean you were, you were a kid. Did you know how important some of those papers were? 00:13:16 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes, yes, yes. I learned early on, yes, but yeah. 00:13:23 Lisa Hayes That's remarkable. So OK, so you went to college and who, who hired you when you came back from? 00:13:31 Cathy Sadler Ms. Rugheimer 00:13:32 Lisa Hayes So she hired you? And what did you? What was? Did you? Were you excited about coming here or did you see the library as a place, as a sort of a stepping stone to working somewhere else? Did you think you would be here for so long? 00:13:50 Cathy Sadler Probably. I had no great desire to go any place else except England, which I did later on. I would have stayed in England, if I could have gotten a job there. But otherwise I was never tempted to leave here. I enjoyed it. 00:14:08 Lisa Hayes Tell us what the University of Hull is. I don't know what that is. 00:14:13 Cathy Sadler It's an English university. And I got a Bachelor of Philosophy in Victorian literature, which is a masters degree by coursework and dissertation. Because the English at the time a master's degree was just the dissertation. So I wanted to do the coursework as well because I felt like I would be cheating if I didn't. 00:14:41 Lisa Hayes Well, you said by correspondence, what does that mean? 00:14:43 Cathy Sadler No, not by correspondence. I did it in Hull. I was in Hull for a year. 00:14:46 Lisa Hayes You were there. I bet that was really fun. 00:14:49 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes. 00:14:51 Lisa Hayes And you would have stayed there if you could have? 00:14:52 Cathy Sadler I, I loved it. Yorkshire was wonderful. 00:15:00 Lisa Hayes Yeah, it's beautiful. Well, I'm glad you came back here. So what was one of the most, the thing that you were most afraid of when you first moved back here, as far as getting to work? Not afraid, but like what was so daunting about working here? Anything? 00:15:15 Cathy Sadler Nothing, because I'd done it before. 00:15:16 Lisa Hayes You were very comfortable. Did you want to change anything? 00:15:23 Cathy Sadler We changed some things along the way. I reworked the Cutter system, for the nonfiction, particularly. Because airplanes and things have been added so we, and some things were split up in different places. So we worked to that. I checked all of the book catalogs and marked everything that was in those to go to the vault because the latest one was 1876. 00:16:02 Lisa Hayes So let me pause. So Cathy is telling us about the Library Society’s catalog of books. So we have these going all the way back to 1750, and she's, she was able to go through and, and I've seen these cards, so she marked on the cards in the card catalog or in the shelf list when a book first appeared in a catalog. So a book from 1790, she will have written on the card “first appears in the 1806 catalog,” something like that. So, sorry, go on. 00:16:33 Cathy Sadler And these were book catalogs, not card files. 00:16:38 Lisa Hayes Yeah, yeah. 00:16:39 Cathy Sadler So they were published as books. 00:16:42 Lisa Hayes So you pulled things that were on the shelves and, and put them in the rolls. 00:16:44 Cathy Sadler Yes. Among them a copy of The Rights of Man from the 1700s, which had a card and pocket in it and circulated. Oh wow, yeah. So we moved all of the early books to East Basement at the time because we didn't have room to move them to the vault. When we got the new building we moved those to the vault. 00:17:12 Lisa Hayes So was that under, is that where like, under where Janice's desk is now? Is that where you kept things? And that was not the locked section, that was... 00:17:16 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes. East basement. The lock section was on the floor by Janice at the back, and that was more a reference collection with some of the genealogical books and things in it. 00:17:35 Lisa Hayes And then the old books and the manuscripts also were. 00:17:38 Cathy Sadler No, the manuscripts were in a manuscript case at the time. They were in a cabinet. 00:17:41 Lisa Hayes And, and, where was that? 00:17:44 Cathy Sadler On the ground floor in front of the ladies room with the Hinson clippings. 00:17:51 Lisa Hayes And was that accessible to people or, or that was, yeah. 00:17:53 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes. The manuscript cabinet was locked, but the others were accessible. 00:18:00 Lisa Hayes Did you divide, were members allowed down there and and without staff, or was there someone down, down there also? 00:18:11 Cathy Sadler But not research members. 00:18:14 Lisa Hayes What's the difference? 00:18:15 Cathy Sadler And they were the two. The section with the early books was locked up, to each door on it and the individual rooms downstairs were locked up. The Hinson Room and the washroom and the staff room where the maps were, were all locked up. 00:18:33 Lisa Hayes Uh-huh. Uh, huh. So did you have circulating books down there? Or was it just the Hinson clippings? 00:18:40 Cathy Sadler We had circulating fiction down there. And we had periodicals down there. 00:18:47 Lisa Hayes Ok. Was it an inviting place or was it kind of dark down there? 00:18:51 Cathy Sadler It pretty dark down there. That, we tried to leave the lights in the, in the stacks downstairs off as much as possible to save energy. Anybody looking for old fiction, we also had plays down there too. Anybody looking at those could turn on the lights in the stacks when they were down there, but otherwise we tried to keep them turned off. 00:19:18 Lisa Hayes Ohh lights. What were some of the other cost saving, or I guess you had some financial challenges probably at the beginning or? 00:19:33 Cathy Sadler It wasn't too bad. We had a book budget, which was the Jockey Club income. 00:19:45 Lisa Hayes How much was that? Do you remember? 00:19:46 Cathy Sadler It varied. It varied. But it was always supplemented from the regular income as well. We got books from the newspaper. The review books came here. Unfortunately, we still had to buy a lot of the fiction in order to get it, because you had to order it in advance. 00:20:16 Lisa Hayes Did you, were you in charge of acquisitions after a while? 00:20:19 Cathy Sadler We did. Everybody did everything. 00:20:20 Lisa Hayes Ohh everybody did OK. 00:20:22 Cathy Sadler Everybody did everything except for Janice. She did memberships and bookkeeping with me. And she gets some. But she did reference work and all as well. But we all did acquisitions. We all read reviews. Made cards out for things we thought would be popular. Put them before the book committee. They added their things. 00:20:51 Lisa Hayes So tell us about the book committee. Who, how big was that and how many? 00:20:55 Cathy Sadler It was 10 to 12 people usually. 00:20:59 Lisa Hayes Is that it? 00:20:59 Cathy Sadler They didn't all come at the same time. They were members. And they could bring in selection, suggestions for us to buy. 00:21:10 Lisa Hayes Did you vote on something or was it just up to your discretion? 00:21:17 Cathy Sadler They discussed everything that we put before them. I don't think they actually voted, although in some cases they did turn things down after discussion. 00:21:27 Lisa Hayes Do you remember what's a, what's a reason a book would have been turned down? 00:21:46 Cathy Sadler An expensive reprint of Audubon or something that we had already in other copies. You know if it was a, reference books never went before them. Children's books never went before them. But the adult circulating books went before them. 00:22:09 Lisa Hayes They were asked about those, right? And you said the acquisition fund varied. Did it depend on the like, how the endowment did? 00:22:20 Cathy Sadler It was the income from the Jockey Fund. 00:22:20 Lisa Hayes And so it varied because of the economy. Yeah, yeah. Was it? Do you, I mean, are you talking like $5000 a year or like $1000 a year? 00:22:31 Cathy Sadler No, it's no, it was maybe $10,000 or $12,000 a year probably, but then a book only cost $5 at the beginning, you know, so. It went a long way. And we got a discount when we ordered them so. 00:22:47 Lisa Hayes Who did you order the books from? 00:22:48 Cathy Sadler Emory Pratt was the big one, and then when we got into large print, we ordered from Ulverscroft, which is a British large print company. 00:22:49 Lisa Hayes Yeah, we still have some of those books, yeah. So did you weed also? What were some of the other projects that you worked on? 00:23:09 Cathy Sadler The fiction collection had been weeded numerous times, the last time before I came. A lot of the early books have been moved downstairs, including books that had been weeded but hadn't been thrown out. So we found, next time we inventoried, we found a large number of novels downstairs that weren't in the catalog anymore. So I weeded a lot of those. I gave some of them to Nan Morrison for the English department because they had maybe five more readings of them before they fell to pieces and we finally got all of those straightened out. The nonfiction I don't think had ever been weeded. And it was very difficult to do. Because of course, we had things from the late 1800s on. We ended up moving some of those to the vault. We went through the others. I had several people look through lists of them. Nan Morrison did literature, PJ got and did the gardening books and the cookbooks. And when I left, we were trying to look up the remainder to see if they were on WorldCat nearby to see whether we thought we thought we ought to keep them or not. 00:25:05 Lisa Hayes You look to see if the College of Charleston had a copy. 00:25:07 Cathy Sadler Right. Yes, yeah. 00:25:07 Lisa Hayes Yeah. OK. Well, so you brought up WorldCat, so you were here for the, not for when the the online system, not for when our... 00:25:18 Cathy Sadler Not for online. 00:25:19 Lisa Hayes But, but we did have computers during your time. 00:25:21 Cathy Sadler We had computers. We were using computers for the bookkeeping. And we had, the order lists and all on the computer, yes. 00:25:31 Lisa Hayes You could order them eventually through the computer. Did that make things easier I suppose, or did you feel like it was unnecessary? 00:25:45 Cathy Sadler When I started, we started with floppy disks. For example, one of the board members wanted to put the manuscripts on to digitize them. I did not feel that was the time to do it because I knew there were lots of changes that were going to come up. And you're going to have to redo it every single time. They ended up being microfiched by the Historical Society, although some of them are unreadable. 00:26:26 Lisa Hayes So what year, when did the microfilming project take place? I know we did this. 00:26:30 Cathy Sadler Well, the filming of the newspaper started before I started. 00:26:33 Lisa Hayes OK. 00:26:35 Cathy Sadler And we continued that. We were working on the 1800s. Sending those off to be filmed. We had to collate them. Fill in blanks, all that stuff, you know. 00:26:53 Lisa Hayes And filling, filling in blanks, you would request a copy from someone, from another... 00:26:57 Cathy Sadler Well, we didn't actually. Miss Rugheimer had requested copies from people for their early papers. When we got to the later ones, we had double copies of some of them because the College of Charleston had given us some. And so we had to go through both volumes and insert missing pages and that kind of thing. So we usually ended up with full copies. But the American Antiquarian Society filmed those. And they filled in the gaps if there were any. 00:27:29 Lisa Hayes OK. Would you send off like a volume at a time or would you, were you sending off a whole bunch? 00:27:35 Cathy Sadler They had to go off by truck because they had to be insured, yeah. 00:27:36 Lisa Hayes A whole bunch of volumes. 00:27:38 Cathy Sadler And so it was like 10 or 15 at a time of the bound volumes. 00:27:46 Lisa Hayes Did you feel like that was a, I know that people have said that having those newspapers in their college, you know, all over the world has made such a difference to their scholarship. Did you know at the time that you were being able to provide that kind of access? 00:28:01 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes, we did, because we had research, researchers come in one, one summer we had three men working on the same newspaper time period and we would load the newspaper bound newspapers onto a book truck and roll them up to the table. They all sit at the same table and they would use them as they needed them. It worked out very nicely. 00:28:31 Lisa Hayes And then when it was microfilm, did you ask people to use the microfilm? Or, yeah. 00:28:34 Cathy Sadler Yes, once you were on film the originals were not in use anymore. 00:28:39 Lisa Hayes And did you, were you here when that really big old microfilm machine was being used? Or did that predate you? 00:28:48 Cathy Sadler The one that magnified? 00:28:49 Lisa Hayes Yes, yes. 00:28:50 Cathy Sadler There were two of them and they were wonderful because they magnified yes. They were great. They were downstairs below Janice. 00:28:58 Lisa Hayes OK, there's still... 00:28:59 Cathy Sadler One of them was by the safe and one of them was on the other side by the dumb waiter. 00:29:02 Lisa Hayes We still have one of those, and we should try and try and hook it up and use it one time. 00:29:03 Cathy Sadler They're wonderful. 00:29:09 Lisa Hayes Just for fun. 00:29:13 Cathy Sadler You could get seasick reading them, but that was true of all microfilm. 00:29:19 Lisa Hayes Make your eyes go crazy. So let's see. Why, would you tell us about the, without naming names, the theft of the Audubons? Is that something you would like to talk about? 00:29:38 Cathy Sadler They were in the green top table downstairs. And it was very difficult to get the drawers open. So people weren't just, you know, that's where we put the shellacked books. There were fifteen of them that have already been redone. And they were in the Ross Room. Fifteen were not stolen, yeah. We had a security system at the time but it was on the doors. It was not a motion detector. And one of the members, he found out they were in there. He was going through things he shouldn't have been going through and pulled the drawers open. 00:30:34 Lisa Hayes Yeah, yeah. 00:30:38 Cathy Sadler And said something to the student assistants who were down there. Excuse me. We don't know exactly what he did because he has to have had a truck to carry them in, but he stayed behind in the building, hid in the stacks somewhere. And walked out with them. 00:31:00 Lisa Hayes And did that set the alarm off when he went through the door? Do you remember? 00:31:10 Cathy Sadler No, that one did not have, didn't have an interior alarm on it. It wasn't dead bolted so it, it would unlock from inside, which we had to have for emergencies. And so he walked out with them. We would have found them anyway because he started bragging about having them. But the student assistants we, Miss Rugheimer went downstairs about a week later to send some more off to be worked on. And they weren't there. And the students said about it. And so we found them. So he was, I think there was one person right after the Civil War, but he was basically the first person to be blacklisted from the library. 00:32:07 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah. Was he trying to sell them or was he just having wanted them for himself? 00:32:11 Cathy Sadler He intended to sell them. He had not sold any so far, but he intended to sell them. 00:32:20 Lisa Hayes So the, so he returned them and... 00:32:21 Cathy Sadler And they were returned. They sat in a bank vault underground vault for years after that in wooden crates. That were screwed and strapped. And I had to go once a year, and they had to be pulled out on the floor because they didn't have a table big enough for them. They had to be pulled out on the floor and I had to go through them all one at a time because he couldn't unstrap two of them at the same time, so it was very very time consuming. And there were two other complete sets in town. So at that point, we decided to sell them in order to pay for humidity control for the preservation of the rest of the collection. 00:33:16 Lisa Hayes Well, that makes sense. So we sold the, sold the Audubons and and we're able to... 00:33:24 Cathy Sadler Only the birds, not the quadrupeds. 00:33:25 Lisa Hayes And we still have those quadrupeds and they are lovely, lovely books. 00:33:28 Cathy Sadler Yes, you still have the quadrupeds. 00:33:32 Lisa Hayes Well, thank you for that. I, I didn't know all those details. How about? Let's see. The Aiken Garden Club collection. Do you remember receiving that collection? 00:33:46 Cathy Sadler It was received before I came. And it was a permanent loan. By the time I came it had been cataloged and it was shelved in the Ross Room as a separate collection. And it had had book plates put into all the volumes. Long after Ms. Rugheimer had retired they came in one time to see the collection. Well, we had added books to it since that time, because it was a garden collection, so we just added some of our own collection. Then we got a letter saying they wanted it back, so we wrote to them and we said could you send us a list of the books that you gave us, which they did. We pulled those books out and we, we moved the book plates out of everything else that wasn't actually part of their collection, and we separated them. The end result was that they got a new president and they had no place to store the books in temperature controls. And they wanted to put it in the library in Aiken, and nobody in Aiken would take it. So we finally got it given to us. 00:35:47 Lisa Hayes Well, that's great because I... 00:35:47 Cathy Sadler But that's the story of Aiken Garden Collection. 00:35:49 Lisa Hayes The story it did include, I know it includes books dating back to the 1500s. It's a, it's a neat collection of books, yeah. Well, tell us about when the library purchased the newest building, 160. 00:36:04 Cathy Sadler Well, it was a wreck. It was, the front of the building. 00:36:06 Lisa Hayes What was that process like? 00:36:10 Cathy Sadler It was the front of the building and the property was foreclosed on. One of our board members heard about it. 00:36:21 Lisa Hayes This was 1995, right? 00:36:23 Cathy Sadler And went and purchased it. We already owned the Barnwell Annex. And this was right next door to us. So they purchased it. 00:36:36 Lisa Hayes For the library or? 00:36:39 Cathy Sadler For the library. Kitty Ravenel had died and left her estate to the library. We used the money from her estate to build that building. 00:36:54 Lisa Hayes With the vaults and some staff space? 00:36:56 Cathy Sadler With the vaults and the normal shelving, compact shelving and two offices and the children's collection was over there at one point, and downstairs was to be a meeting room in the front where the bookstore is now and the vault in the back and we moved the Hinson collection, the bound periodicals, East Basement, to the vaults. 00:37:28 Lisa Hayes OK, I always wonder why the East basement is called that because it's not right now the East basement, but that's because it's the old location that's in the name. OK, that makes sense. 00:37:39 Cathy Sadler Yes. Yeah. Periodicals were on the other side on that level. 00:37:48 Lisa Hayes Did you enjoy working with the board? Was the, did you feel like the board was for the most part, pretty easy to work with for the librarians? 00:37:57 Cathy Sadler We did not attend board meetings. Miss Rugheimer did under Mr. Gibbes. I was never invited to attend a meeting except when they were discussing the tea craft for our retirement. I was allowed to, I was invited to go to that one. That's the only board meeting I ever went to. 00:38:20 Lisa Hayes Did they? Did you? 00:38:21 Cathy Sadler I presented a report, a quarterly report to them. I don't know. We stayed away from the boardroom, while they're having meetings. 00:38:35 Lisa Hayes Well, so let's see, what about, are there the ghost of Mr. Hinson? Can you tell us any stories about Mr. Hinson's ghost? 00:38:40 Cathy Sadler Yes, I've seen him. I've seen him. Yes. He, he didn't like the humidity control, though he hasn't been around since then. Janice and I both saw him at different times. Mr. Hinson had left his historical collection, including novels, but basically the Civil War to the library. 00:39:07 Lisa Hayes In, in, in 1919. 00:39:08 Cathy Sadler And it was in the room above the boiler room. Which is down, it's now the rabbit hole. 00:39:17 Lisa Hayes Ok, the rabbit hole. 00:39:22 Cathy Sadler He also left his clipping file, which we had added to over the years, and there were four or five file cabinets worth of clippings. And there's also a portrait of him. And every now and then, people would hear books shifting in the Hinson Room. And footsteps. Including some of the student assistants. I mean, some were really scared by it. I saw him standing in front of his clipping file. In a frock coat and top hat, looking into the files. 00:40:09 Lisa Hayes Oh my gosh. Where, where were those cabinets? Were those in that room? 00:40:12 Cathy Sadler Those were in front of the ladies room. 00:40:14 Lisa Hayes OK. 00:40:18 Cathy Sadler On the same level, but not yeah. And I saw him early in the morning when I came, I was the first one in one morning. And so I'm there. 00:40:26 Lisa Hayes Oh, my goodness. Were you scared or was it? 00:40:27 Cathy Sadler No, I knew who he was right away. I don't know how, but I did, you know? I mean just. 00:40:34 Lisa Hayes He was seeing and seeing what had happened to his clipping files. 00:40:34 Cathy Sadler That’s Mr. Hinson. He was using them for research And then we had a, we had a janitor early on. William McCall. And William used to climb around on the outside of the big windows, washing them from the ledge on the, on the main building, yes, yes. The main reading room and the windows opened at the time. When I first came the windows were in use. And he would, if it started raining, he would jump up on top of the bookshelves to close the windows because he was little... 00:41:21 Lisa Hayes So yeah, well, I've heard that someone else I spoke with said the air conditioning in the library society was really good in the summer, that they would come in here to cool off specifically because we had good, good AC. 00:41:34 Cathy Sadler That was not until the 70s. Before that, there was no air conditioning in the building at all. And it was rather interesting because we had maybe 400, 450 members. Adult members. But a lot of Charlestonians left for the summer went to the mountains or the beaches, of the islands. And so in the summer time, we did projects. We leave two people upstairs and everybody else would go in the basement or something and do projects. 00:42:15 Lisa Hayes Because it was so cool. 00:42:16 Cathy Sadler Because it was so quiet, yes. 00:42:20 Lisa Hayes Well, times have changed. I guess we still, the summer is still our quiet time now with programming and, and that kind of thing. Well, tell us what you think about the library. I know it's changed a lot. What are some of the biggest changes? 00:42:31 Cathy Sadler I have not been involved in that. I mean, I've just come in to check out books. You've added all the programming, although at the end of my tenure we had a former student assistant who was hired to do programming. But it wasn't allowed to be advertised outside of the membership. So it didn't draw in any new members. Basically, you know, wasn't, and it was maybe once a month in the winter. 00:43:10 Lisa Hayes Was it with like you would invite an author to come present? 00:43:14 Cathy Sadler And that was it. The annual meeting there was no, well, the speaker was the president. And the librarian initially gave an oral report because members are the library. They're the society. So all Members could attend, not most of them did. But they came for the food is what they came for. The President would give his report, and then the librarian would give hers. But when Mr. Ripley took over his report was the same as like the librarian’s report. 00:43:57 Lisa Hayes He would read. 00:43:57 Cathy Sadler So he did. He just did the whole thing. Before that had been, John Gibbes had done it like history things. The library has report. And then they elected the new board members and then they went and ate. Some of them had already started eating. And then we still served them. We went around with the trays and refilled trays, served punch, and then after which you had to go around the reading room and look for all the glasses, people that left sitting on the shelves. 00:44:34 Lisa Hayes Did we use the silver punch bowl during that time? 00:44:36 Cathy Sadler Yeah. Yes, yes. And the candelabras, we used all the silver. We used the silver trays. That's what everything was served on. 00:44:45 Lisa Hayes Were, were you here when we received, I guess, was that from the Kitty Ravenel collection? Is that the silver or the Ross family? 00:44:53 Cathy Sadler No, the, I think some of it's from the Ross family. The candelabras were from Miss Rugheimer’s friends, they were, but and they were sharing an apartment. Miss Rugheimer originally had rented from her, and she loaned us the candelabras every year. So she left them to us when she died. 00:45:26 Lisa Hayes So, so tell us about Miss Rugheimer. What was her, what was she like? What was her personality like? 00:45:37 Cathy Sadler Janice will tell you she was always going, “Now do this, girls.” She was very pleasant. She could be stern. She always wore a skirt or dress. Which I did too. And she had, she had started the filming of the papers. I think she may have gotten the first typewriters. Because under Miss Fitzsimmons, all the cards were handwritten. They didn't get an electric typewriter until ‘71 because I was off at library school, and then she typed me a letter on it. Well, I learned to type on catalog cards. 00:46:37 Lisa Hayes Oh wow. 00:46:39 Cathy Sadler We used to put them in a wooden box that the secretary at the time had. And we would, this is why everything's on the back of the main entry. We typed the main entry when we cataloged. And then she typed all the additional cards. Which is why the accession number and the subject headings and all on the back of the main entry, because that's what she takes. 00:47:08 Lisa Hayes She did that, yeah. And when did miss Rugheimer retire? Did she? 00:47:11 Cathy Sadler ‘79. January of ‘79, she and Miss Haigh both retired that year. 00:47:13 Lisa Hayes And that's when you became. OK. And then you became. How, and how many Members do you think we had? Did the membership grow much? 00:47:24 Cathy Sadler It was about 450 when I was a student. And it grew, yes. At one point we said we had 1000, but then Janice discovered that it wasn't really 1000 because they hadn't pulled the numbers for the people who died and you know, so I don't know how many it was. We had lots of research workers at that time because nothing was on film or computer. 00:47:51 Lisa Hayes Uh-huh. 00:47:54 Cathy Sadler People would come, so people had to come here to use them. So especially the newspapers that hadn't been filmed. 00:48:02 Lisa Hayes Tell us any topics you remember that people were most interested in. 00:48:09 Cathy Sadler Black goldsmiths, shipping, travel, submarines, Civil War, genealogy, of course. Craftsmen. All sorts of things. 00:48:30 Lisa Hayes Did you, when you were helping people, did you learn about all these topics too? I guess as you were helping them find things you must. 00:48:36 Cathy Sadler Somewhat, yes. Yes, I think you always do. 00:48:43 Lisa Hayes Well, I know you like to read still. Tell us what you enjoy reading now that you're retiring. 00:48:47 Cathy Sadler I like cozy mysteries and nonfiction. Social life and customs of England and Europe. Sometimes I read them on Indians, American Indians. I did go through a period I was reading Egypt and China. But things of that sort. History of different periods. But not the straight history. The social life is what I'm interested. 00:49:22 Lisa Hayes And who you like? Cozy mysteries, who’s of one of your favorite mystery writers? 00:49:26 Cathy Sadler Oh Dorothy Sayers. Agatha Christie, Corola Dunn. Radford. Lots of those. 00:49:34 Lisa Hayes Do you, I know some people would mark in the back of a mystery a little mark to know that they had already read it. 00:49:40 Cathy Sadler That was actually, they didn't realize that they could tell from the card number in the front if they'd already read it. 00:49:46 Lisa Hayes They had already read it there. 00:49:48 Cathy Sadler Yes, there were a lot of people who did that, and they each had their own little symbol. 00:49:54 Lisa Hayes Well, did you make, you must have made a lot of friends working here? 00:49:57 Cathy Sadler Yes, yeah, yeah. 00:49:54 Lisa Hayes It sounds like you have really fond memories of your time here, yeah. Well, thank you. Thank you for your time. 00:50:06 Cathy Sadler Working with the board. Challenge. Yeah, it depended on what mood they're in. You know? And then we had the old leak and the old old leak and the new old leak. 00:50:19 Lisa Hayes Yeah, where? 00:50:20 Cathy Sadler Oh, you know. 00:50:20 Lisa Hayes Where was? Where did we have leaks? 00:50:22 Cathy Sadler The windows in the reading room, especially the front, lower the, the top of the two southern windows. 00:50:32 Lisa Hayes Where would it come in? At the top or the bottom? At the top? And what, destroyed their plaster? 00:50:33 Cathy Sadler At the top. And drip down the, yeah. 0:50:38 Lisa Hayes Oh my gosh. Did it damage books? 00:50:41 Cathy Sadler No, no. The only time we ever had books other than in a home. The only time we ever had books damaged by water was in the hurricanes. 00:50:50 Lisa Hayes So yeah. 00:50:51 Cathy Sadler And the in Hurricane Hugo, the roof hatch blew off, and the books directly under it just happened to be theology, got wet. Just that books in the one section. 00:51:05 Lisa Hayes Is that the skylight kind of a thing? Was that whole thing on? 00:51:07 Cathy Sadler It's helpful to get on the roof. 00:51:08 Lisa Hayes But oh, so not. 00:51:11 Cathy Sadler It's in the balcony. 00:51:11 Lisa Hayes Oh, oh, oh. Upstairs on the, OK. 00:51:12 Cathy Sadler Upstairs in the balcony here. 00:51:15 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, that's that's still the theology section. 00:51:16 Cathy Sadler Where the ladder is. 00:51:19 Lisa Hayes That's right. So we lost that, that collection there. 00:51:21 Cathy Sadler Well, not the whole collection, but that section, yeah. 00:51:24 Lisa Hayes Some of those books. Were you part of, did you stay for Hugo? Yeah, I think Janice said you took your family. You brought your family here. 00:51:33 Cathy Sadler I brought my family here later on for another hurricane. But because we stayed in the new building I was not in the building for Hugo. I was on Green Hill with my sisters, but we stayed and I came in the next morning and wrote checks. 00:51:54 Lisa Hayes What do you mean you had to, you just kept payroll? 00:51:57 Cathy Sadler Paychecks and everything to do so.I went every room. We didn't have any power, but I could write checks. 00:52:02 Lisa Hayes You didn't let it stop you. Did you worry about mold when the power was out for so long after that? 00:52:11 Cathy Sadler The things that have already been sitting around here for, since 1814 with no humidity control so. What difference did it make, right? 00:52:26 Lisa Hayes Well, is there? Are there any other things that you would like to share about your time or your impressions of the library society? You know so much. 00:52:40 Cathy Sadler What I liked was meeting people. And it wasn't very good for production, probably. We were all in the area by the staircase. That's where our desks were. So some people think all we did was read because we're reading book reviews. But I would go up to the, excuse me. When somebody came in, I would try to go up to the desk and ask whoever was up there, what they thought of this book so people would realize this book reviews we were doing. But you heard all the questions. And so if somebody was helping a researcher particularly, and you knew something about the subject, you could go up afterwards and tell the the other librarian that. 00:53:46 Lisa Hayes So that she could share it with her researchers? 00:53:47 Cathy Sadler So she yes, there's a lot of that. And then there were members who would come in and say, “I want the next 10 mysteries.” 00:54:01 Lisa Hayes And you would get, you would help them get that. 00:54:03 Cathy Sadler When you just go to the next ten mysteries from the last one she had. 00:54:07 Lisa Hayes Was it self-serve? Or did you go retrieve them from the shelf? 00:54:10 Cathy Sadler Well, people would call in. And want the next ones on the shelf. Didn't matter who, they were by, yeah. OK. So that was, that was interesting, yeah. I have, I have wondered though, and I haven't checked it. When you, you, because you changed the cataloging on the fiction. You don't have the cutter system anymore, you just have it alphabetically, but what do you do with Ellis and Elizabeth Peters? 00:54:50 Lisa Hayes We do still have the cutter system? I think for a while after you left, they attempted. This is before my time. But they did attempt to start using the Library of Congress classification system. 00:55:01 Cathy Sadler Oh yes, they did and it didn't want to work. It wasn't worth it. 00:55:06 Lisa Hayes So we do still use the Cutter system. 00:55:08 Cathy Sadler But I'm talking about the, the last name part. 00:55:11 Lisa Hayes Oh. 00:55:11 Cathy Sadler The last name Cutter. 00:55:13 Lisa Hayes Well, tell me what, what's your question? 00:55:14 Cathy Sadler The, in the fiction you now use the last name of the author, but what do you do about people like Ellis and Elizabeth Peters? Because they have the same last name and the beginning of the first name. 00:55:27 Lisa Hayes So we put like we would put Ellis all the same first name, I don't know. 00:55:32 Cathy Sadler I mean cause Ellis is yeah, ELLIS. 00:55:32 Lisa Hayes I don't know. I guess we just have their two sections being distinct. I don't, I don't really know. 00:55:42 Cathy Sadler I know you've got some of them labeled by the detectives. 00:55:45 Lisa Hayes By the series, I don't know. 00:55:46 Cathy Sadler Yeah, but. 00:55:50 Lisa Hayes Two authors with the same name, I guess. It would be hard. Well, I'm so glad that you came in today and did this because I, I really enjoyed talking to you to do it and I did. 00:56:00 Cathy Sadler I’m glad to do it. I don't know whether we've ever here at all. Let's do this. We used to throw Christmas parties too. 00:56:20 Lisa Hayes Oh yeah. Tell us about it. 00:56:21 Cathy Sadler For the staff. 00:56:21 Lisa Hayes Christmas parties. 00:56:25 Cathy Sadler Well, sometimes we went out to eat for dinner and sometimes we had it here. And we did things, we didn't exchange presents normally. But we did. I made a pie once. With streamers that pulled out a little little gift, yeah. Let's see. Oh, we used to give sherry to the board all the time. That was from, from Doctor Joe Waring, he used to give us a bottle of sherry every Christmas. And that used to be served to the board until we had some who had to go to Alcoholics Anonymous, so we had to stop serving the-- oh, government documents. 00:57:16 Lisa Hayes Oh no. 00:57:20 Cathy Sadler When I first came, all of East basement was dug deep with documents shelved 3 thick. Because nobody ever used them. So we had to pull them out, I, we had to pull them out, box them up, bring them over downstairs here. Then rearrange them all by number, then contact, um, I think it's the Citadel and forgot who else, other other depositories in the area? And see if any of them wanted them, which of course they didn't because they're crumbling leather bindings, before we could get rid of them. Yeah, yeah. I think that's probably, yeah. Except for the annual reports. We used to do ourselves. And take them, copy them, staple them together. Fold them, put them in envelopes and you, we had an assembly line for that. 00:58:44 Lisa Hayes You would give those to just the board members. Or did those? 00:58:46 Cathy Sadler No, that went out to the whole membership of the members. 00:58:47 Lisa Hayes Was it is it kind of like our what we do in the newsletter now? The reader? No? More elaborate? 00:58:53 Cathy Sadler No, it was a full financial report for the year and gifts from members. You can look back and see them, but it was, we had the financial report. We had my report, which was what had happened during the year. And we had gifts with it. 00:59:21 Lisa Hayes So, learn, you could learn a lot about the library’s history during your time by looking at those annual reports. All right. Well, well, thank you. 00:59:30 Cathy Sadler And I learned a lot about it because I went through the old minute books. And made notes of when we got various things. 00:59:39 Lisa Hayes Yeah, I've seen those notes. 00:59:42 Cathy Sadler So that was even more in depth. 00:59:46 Lisa Hayes Yeah. When did, so, you went through what we call Ms. 29. When did you do that? For a lot of, was that your tenure that you were doing that? I mean, your, when you were a younger person doing that or did you do that when you were older? 00:59:59 Cathy Sadler I did that when I was, right before I finished college I did that. 01:00:06 Lisa Hayes When you were working... 01:00:07 Cathy Sadler Not when it, that's not when I went through them. I went through them later on, any time I had time. 01:00:11 Lisa Hayes You read, you read those? Those are interesting aren't they? Learning about the library’s old history? 01:00:16 Cathy Sadler Yeah. Mm-hmm. 01:00:17 Lisa Hayes Old history. Well, I think. 01:00:19 Cathy Sadler And the gentleman that tried to throw the desk out of the window. Threw the half of the desk out of the window. That was the other one that got blacklisted, yeah. 01:00:27 Lisa Hayes Oh, is that right? 01:00:30 Cathy Sadler That was in the brick building. 01:00:32 Lisa Hayes Well, Debbie, Debbie Fenn, our current curator and historian, she is going through those same books and and transcribing them so that they'll be available to, to people down the road. 01:00:42 Cathy Sadler Good, yes. 01:00:45 Lisa Hayes Yeah, well, it's a lot. 01:00:47 Cathy Sadler I did not transcribe them. I was thinking more in terms of indexing them. 01:00:52 Lisa Hayes Sure, capturing the highlights. 01:00:53 Cathy Sadler Yeah, yeah. 01:00:57 Lisa Hayes Yeah, yeah, all of it's built on what people before had done. So this interview, I think you know, in 100 years, maybe somebody will be writing a history of the library society in the 20th century and they'll they can listen to to you sharing, sharing your, about your time. 01:01:11 Cathy Sadler Well, we had Mr. Raven come in and do a whole book on the library. Based on the booksellers and the revolution. 01:01:22 Lisa Hayes Right. Do you remember working with him? He's a delightful person, yeah. 01:01:24 Cathy Sadler Yes, yes, he could walk along the shelves and pick out the books that they had sent us from the binding. 01:01:31 Lisa Hayes Oh, from the binding. 01:01:34 Cathy Sadler Well, so that's cool, yes. 01:01:37 Lisa Hayes All right. Well, thank you, Cathy. Really nice talking to you. 01:01:39 Cathy Sadler Well, thank you. Talking with you. Thank you. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Sadler, Cathy Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-05-01 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Language A language of the resource English Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context CathySadler_OralHistory_20230501 Title A name given to the resource Cathy Sadler (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on May 1, 2023) Description An account of the resource Cathy Sadler was born in Vicksburg, MS in 1949. She was promised a job at the Library Society when she was five and went on to work at the Library for nearly forty years, first as Librarian from 1971 to 1978, and then as Head Librarian, from 1979 to 2008. Ms. Sadler talks about projects she worked on and how things were organized during her tenure. Her grandfather served on the board of the Library and her family roots go back to the Mouzon family of Huguenot descent. cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/aac68b8f1e64fb7c049620137d3c0f21.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=C6WC9x%7EFqVRicNCYnIWCkX5lx7-1l%7EJrdwZR5p7uAJ7Jr690zki5iP6swgqwjOoScfjRCyjhxRUSGJTY5PXdCIqHPwYZUCSfAL3nQTBip63c2C1PQAreZIsIYL6GeDq65cMMOdryoj5hUnQw122fu1wMW60tPRwnMIxI1e4NCYPkjKsFOX-gklNhOb9mkOFZjaC6qgTTqqrv3dAQFXHQXcoVOeMAONtp87qQ10yVwuqJ9HHpeWJg052f31WSIGPvlZBQLHAikkpY7B90KqttqJRDF8cmwOwLTCnDQqiA3fj4Fj4iwREQPOL--ehup0%7EN2R3t0-QVA8fbpy0HFmemEA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM deda4dacd59ae3557737fe687bfb0970 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:30:32/913.9GB Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 00:00,000 Lisa Hayes Yes beautiful room. 00:02,000 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah, well, thank you well, so. 00:07,160 Lisa Hayes Is it are you recording? Okay, so the recorder recorder is on we can chop things out. I'll just keep it relaxed and thank you so much. 00:20,000 Martha Rivers Ingram No problem. Dani you're welcome if you haven't heard all this before you welcome to listen. 00:26,000 [Dani Assistant] I might hang out. 00:38,500 Lisa Hayes You don't. 00:39,500 Martha Rivers Ingram You're not taking any pictures. 00:43,300 Lisa Hayes You look beautiful. So let me just, so my name is Lisa Hayes and I'm the Special Collections Librarian at the Library Society and this is Danielle Cox , our digital historian and we are here today I'll just say the date it's November 29th 2023 and we are we're delighted to be in the house the home of Mrs. Martha Rivers Ingram and so we're just gonna keep a nice loose comfortable conversation going and take pauses or whatever we need. 01:22,000 Martha Rivers Ingram It's up to you I've pause I've had had lunch I hope you all have had some lunch. I don't since I've lived away so long now I don't know how much I will remember that will be of interest to you so you can clip take whatever if there's anything there that you're worthwhile So you just, you know, I guess I've given a fair number of interviews for one thing or the other. So you guide me through how you would like this one to go. 02:06,960 Lisa Hayes Oh, thank you. You're right. It was pretty easy to prepare a list of questions and thoughts I might ask because you are well-documented and you have given some great interviews. I listened to Jenette Alterman's interview with you from 2010, so 13 years ago. You spoke with her at the Center for Women here in Charleston. So I listened to that, so I have that to my advantage. She did a really nice job. But I just thought it would be nice for us at the Library Society to capture some about your time here in Charleston as a young person and then some about your philanthropy and your work here in Charleston also. And then any connections you have to the Library Society. I know that we were pleased to honor you with the Founders Award in 2016. 03:01,680 Martha Rivers Ingram That was lovely. Yes, thank you. 03:03,680 Lisa Hayes Yes, that was nice for your advocacy for the arts and for keeping things going here in and I'm Charleston, and revitalizing things for us at the Library Society. Anne Cleveland, I know is someone who really respects your work. 03:23,040 Martha Rivers Ingram Anne Cleveland? 03:24,320 Lisa Hayes Anne Cleveland, yes. 03:25,640 Martha Rivers Ingram She and Will, her husband, were here for dinner last night. 03:28,280 Lisa Hayes No. 03:29,560 Danielle Cox Will was in the Library today for the event we had. 03:31,760 Lisa Hayes Oh, wow. Well, yes, we do have so many good events at the Library Society. Actually, we have the symphony coming this weekend, and I was going to see if you had any interest in coming on Friday or Saturday night. welcome to you don't have to tell me now but are you leaving town again you're going... 03:45,240 Martha Rivers Ingram I think we leave Friday, isn't that the first? Yes yes yes I've been here for almost a month now and you know love being here love being in this house and of course as you know I grew up here and never thought I'd ever live anywhere else except that I ended up falling in love with this very handsome man that lived in Nashville, Tennessee. So that's now my home and sadly he died of cancer about 25 years ago. So and my mother died one year before that and left her house here to me. So this house, I guess I've owned it now because of her thinking of me and her will for over 20 years. And I enjoy it every time I'm here. This is a portrait of my mother there. And my father is here in photographs and the gentleman on the wall over there is somebody who we don't know whether he lived here or somehow that portrait ended up in the house that I grew up in which was 20 Church Street and so when I inherited the house and I had heard that he had built the house here that that moved from 20 Church Street to where it is now. 05:28,000 Lisa Hayes Do you know what his name is? 05:29,900 Martha Rivers Ingram Ball is his name. I have some history. From time to time, this house is opened for tours for fundraising purposes, usually Historic Charleston or sometimes a church or sometimes an arts group. They put down the appropriate plastic mats and mats for people in high heels to walk on my very special oriental rugs. I try to protect them as best I can because nowadays at least people are more thoughtful when they're touring homes and try to, because they're more comfortable, try to remember to put on soft shoes that don't have heels that puncture into the oriental rugs. So anyhow. 06:31,940 Lisa Hayes Tell us about your time on Church Street. Was it in a home this grand or did you have furnishings like this that you had to be careful with when you were a young child? 06:41,780 Martha Rivers Ingram Yes. 06:42,780 Lisa Hayes Yes. 06:43,780 Martha Rivers Ingram I grew up at number 20 Church that was furnished with antiques. All, probably all of them were English antiques, or some may have been built in Charleston. In fact, there are some pieces in the dining room, a big cupboard that was probably built here in Charleston. I have several pieces that were, I know, built here. The dining room chairs were carved by a German who was obviously a transient or an immigrant who was here. His name was Neumeister. That's probably N-E-U-M-E-I-S-T-E-R. I remember them being carved when I was a little girl, and that's been a long time ago. So they're more than 50 years old, but the man was a person who had come from the old country and he and his father set up this shop here up near Queen Street, I seem to remember. My mother, because she ordered twelve of the chairs, we would go from time to time and see how he progressed with the chairs. But they're all now in the dining room here. So they're all together. So almost everything here is an English origin or certainly a European origin. 08:32,820 Lisa Hayes Were you able to sit on the furniture when you were a child? Did your parents let you do that? 08:39,820 Martha Rivers Ingram Yes. We had some newer furniture. It was overstuffed furniture. But the furniture was mostly like this more traditional English library-type furniture. 08:58,820 Lisa Hayes It is very pretty. So what did your parents do for, what's your dad do for his profession? 09:06,180 Martha Rivers Ingram He was, he graduated from college in the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. So he started out as a banker and through his banking business He was selling stocks and bonds, which was part of what he did. He was transferred to Greenville, South Carolina, and he was selling stocks and bonds to a man named Mr. Hipp, like your hip, H-I-P-P. He was one of my father's customers. And in the course of his selling, my father heard that he had a radio station in Charleston. And he said, "Well, you know, that's where I grew up." And Mr. Hipp said, "Well, you know," I think his name was Francis Hipp. He said, "You know, I've got these radio stations there. But the financial man there doesn't seem to know what he's doing. He's not making any money. I wish he would leave the banking business long enough to try to help me understand whether I need to sell the businesses or how I can make them profitable." And so my father said, "Well, I don't know, but I grew up in Charleston. I'd love to live back there. I'm not married, so I can go anywhere." And so they had a handshake deal that my father would see if he could get a leave from his bank, the Bank of South Carolina, I think it was, where he worked, and move back to Charleston for some period of time to help advise Mr. Francis Hipp as to whether he should keep the radio stations or whether he should just sell them. And so that occurred and my father moved back to Charleston and the bank let him take a leave and he decided that in his opinion my father thought that running a radio business was a whole lot more interesting and fun than being in the banking world. And so he asked Mr. Hipp if he might be able to buy him out since he lived in Greenville and didn't want to have his, neither he nor his sons wanted to live in Charleston. So that all occurred. And so while this was all being worked out, Mr. Hipp, the father, and the customer of my father's bank transactions died. And lo and behold, my father thought his career change was dashed, was ruined. And so he said to the sons, "I have nothing in writing about this conversation, but I can tell you what he agreed to sell his stations for to me, and I have nothing to prove it. But if you would let me do that, that's what I'd very much like to do." And the sons huddled and they said, "Well, if this is what our father told you that he would sell them and this is a price that he had named, I think that we would just do that because we are getting into other kinds of businesses but not the radio businesses and it would be a good thing to get that off our plate." And so my father said he didn't know whether the deal would be honored or not. The deal was honored and the brothers came back, Mr. Hipp's sons, came back to him and said, "We have decided that you are an honest man and if you tell us that this is what our father said, and this was a deal the two made, we accept it. Well, that had all happened. My father moved back and he became a radio man instead of a banking man, but he still understood the numbers and the systems. But I grew up hearing the story of how important integrity was to a person because of this one incident because my father said the young men, the sons of Mr. Hipp, I had never even met them, but they thought that I had a name could be trusted, a good name. And so the deal went through and I became the owner of some radio stations with some borrowed money that I had to eventually repay. But he said that's how I got into the radio business. And instead of going back to the banking business, I decided that I understood why the company wasn't making money and I thought I could make it make money. I could know how to do it. I could figure out from my educational background what was not being offered, what was not being promoted and so that's how I ended up in the radio business. So that was in the long, the Reader's Digest version I guess, of how he went from being a financial banking person and became a radio financial person and also had to learn what the radio business was all about. 15:39,700 Lisa Hayes That's nice. A lesson in integrity for you when he-- 15:44,500 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, it was a story that I grew up hearing around the dinner table. sister and I heard it over and over again it's so important to have a good name don't let anyone ever take it away from you it's the most important thing is to be a person of integrity a person that can be trusted and that is more important than anything else that you can ever achieve and you've already achieved it and so just don't let it get ruined or messed up by some wrong decisions just be careful in your decision-making. 16:29,000 Lisa Hayes Well will you share with us how your parents met? Do you know the story? 16:35,000 Martha Rivers Ingram My parents met because my father had been transferred up to the Greenville area in the banking business and my mother was at Converse College and she was about to graduate and he decided that he would be very interested in marrying her if she would be likewise interested. So what-But they met as—she was still a college student, and he was a newly-minted college graduate who had been with the bank for a very few months. But that was how they met, and all of a sudden their lives shifted and changed dramatically. And here they were, living in Charleston, South Carolina, in the radio business. 17:32,160 Lisa Hayes Well, and you have a sister. You had a sister. What was the age difference between you and my sister? 17:39,040 Martha Rivers Ingram My sister is still living. She is at Bishop Gadsden now, and she is two years younger. My brother, John Rivers, is ten years younger. So they considered themselves well-established by the time he was born. 18:05,980 Lisa Hayes And you went to Ashley Hall. What was that like when you were going there? Was it a fun experience? 18:13,600 Martha Rivers Ingram It felt very privileged because it was all girls and we were lucky enough to be amongst them and so many of those girls grew up to be our good friends because we were in the first grade together and went all the way to the 12th grade. 18:40,160 Lisa Hayes Do you keep in touch with anybody from Ashley Hall now or are there still some friends around in Charleston? 18:46,560 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, my sister, of course, graduated. And she graduated in 11 years. She was so smart. They made her skip a grade because she was too smart for the rest of the children in her class. So after I graduated, I went to Vassar College up in Poughkeepsie, New York, which I heard of is one of the best colleges that a girl could go to because in those days, days only boys got to go to the Ivy League colleges and in those days that was the same thing but she entered Vassar the year after I did she we were both good students and so we both ended up in Poughkeepsie, New York and both graduated from Vassar. She was just a year behind me. 19:51,480 Lisa Hayes That was probably nice to have a sister right there with you so far from home. 19:55,760 Martha Rivers Ingram Yes, it was very nice. For me and for when I went to Vassar there was nobody there from this part of the world, from the South. It was highly unlikely to even have it suggested that one go as far away as from Charleston to Poughkeepsie, New York, but it turned out that the lady who was head of Vassar at that point had some roots in Charleston. So we had heard, you know, I knew that she was the kind of person that I would like to be associated with and she'd understand where I had come from. So it worked out very happily, but all of a sudden I had a whole new cast of characters who were my friends. And mostly they were from the New England area, New York, New England, Boston, Chicago. And so different for me and certainly right behind me my sister is saying. So it was particularly nice to have a sister there since all these other people. They were relatively new, but even though I was from down south, they were very nice, very friendly. And I'm very pleased to have had the opportunity to get that kind of training. It's mental training, I guess, as much as anything else. bigger ideas, bigger thoughts, and not everything about the South was said to be perfect. In fact, there were a lot of things that needed to be changed, like the segregated schools and things that today we take for granted. It's the way they should have always been, but they were not necessarily always that way. But it turned out to awaken my mind to a lot of things that I'd never, never even thought of that. And my sister as well. But proximity to New York was very important. In those days, the New York Central went from Poughkeepsie into New New York City and it was about an hour and a half on the train. And so we had the advantage of going to the theater and the opera and of course lots of plays. And we had both been to New York several times. My sister and I had both been there several times because of our father being in the radio business and he went up frequently to New York on business and he frequently took either me or my sister or both of us. And we got to see a lot behind the scenes in the production studios. The only radio then, but I remember there was, our favorite radio program was called “Let's Pretend.” And it was all just what you could hear. and the actors would come in on stage and get behind the microphone and do what they were supposed to be doing. So that was, we thought, a special treat. But we saw plays that were just opening in New York and one I remember was called “South Pacific” and there was one called "Annie Get Your Gun" and there was a play about a rabbit called Harvey that was an invisible rabbit. I mean it was just a whole kind of mind-blowing experience to go into New York City. And then of course the museums were just down the streets and We had some friends in New York that we could visit. Anyhow, it was living in a different world from Charleston. 24:31,700 Lisa Hayes Do you remember during World War II talking about the radio, did you all have a room that had a nice radio in it where you would gather around and listen to the news? 24:41,780 Martha Rivers Ingram Yes, to the Lone Ranger. 24:42,980 Lisa Hayes The Lone Ranger. 24:44,660 Martha Rivers Ingram And the news, whatever the news was. But yes, in those days also, although we were not told to be fearful, but we did know that there were German submarines during those early years, during the World War that were just off the coast. And we had to be prepared to dive underneath the dining room table to try to-in case the bombs were dropped on us. I don't know how we thought-our parents thought that that was going to somehow protect us from bombs. Maybe they weren't as lethal as today. Anyhow, we had the advantage of the-my father was too old to be drafted into the war. But he was not too old to raise money for the war effort, selling war bonds. And so many of the people that were helping him-And these people were helping various fundraising efforts around the country. But there were movie stars. There were people like Paulette Goddard and Martha O'Driscoll. And I don't even know how I remember those names but I can't remember who I met last week. So it was a scary experience to think back on it, knowing that the German submarines was just offshore. But we didn't know very much about it. We just know that there was some boats out there that weren't supposed to be there. But the last thing that we're trying to do was to scare us. But when I watch television today and think what people are going through, it makes me realize we have a very mild experience compared to what we see going on today with more terrible weapons and more horrible things happening. 27:04,660 Lisa Hayes That's true. Well, do you remember anything about the Library Society from those before you went away to college or maybe coming home from school? Were your parents members of the library or did you come to the library? 27:16,660 Martha Rivers Ingram My grandparents were. My grandfather was a lawyer and my mother was a college graduate too. But what I remember, you may find amusing, irrelevant, but we had a nanny and every Thursday the nanny was off, her day off. And our grandparents would come to 20 Church Street, where it is where we lived at that point in time, and get my sister and me. And they had a big Buick, which was, I don't know why I even remember, but it was longer than most Buicks are today even. They had in the back seat, they had two jump seats and then a bigger kind of almost sofa size seat where my grandparents sat and then my sister and I were on these little jump seats. And every Thursday, because that was when the nanny was off, our parents would come with their driver whose name was Edward who was an African-American man and they would get my sister and me and the first thing we do would be to go to the library society because my grandmother evidently had two books that she got out of the time and Edward the driver would go up those steep steps and return those two books and bring out two more books that she had not read. And that was for the coming week. And all I remember that may sound really weird today, but my grandmother would look at the new books and say, "Edward, these should be just fine." But now and then she'd say, "But Edward, this one already, I've already read this one, I can tell, because my circle is on the title page. And the circle meant she read the book. And, you know, today it would be like, "Oh no, you'd be defacing it." I have no memory of what she read, whether they were novels or whether they were biographies, or I don't think there was any science fiction. I have no idea what it was, but it was a routine that we did. And after we had the old books and brought the new ones, and then we had the next thing that we did was we'd go out to Magnolia Cemetery, still in the car, still in the jump seats. And if it was cold, we had what in those days, there were no heaters in the cars. We just had a lap robe that you put around you that had been brought somewhere on a trip to Europe. We'd go out to Magnolia Cemetery. That was where my grandparents would visit the little graves. They had five children, as I recall, that had died either from diphtheria or the childhood diseases that now are no more but they were they you know no matter how good care the level of care you tried to have your children. Sanitation just was not what it is today and diseases if they got to be a pandemic kind of thing it killed a lot of little children because there were no shots, there were no things to protect them. And so we'd go see the little graves, the little children that were lost and that had died. So that's the other thing I remember about those Thursday trips. 31:39,760 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Do you remember feeling scared that those were children and you were a child, that that could happen to you? 31:46,480 Martha Rivers Ingram No, because I felt so protected, you know, from, I guess, growing up. And, you know, I'm going to go get some water so I don't cough into your machine. 31:59,360 Lisa Hayes I haven't touched mine. Can I give it to you? 32:01,360 Danielle Cox I have a bottle of water if you want? 32:02,360 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, I'll do that. Yeah. Sorry. When I talk too much, my throat gets dry. 32:06,360 Lisa Hayes Sure. 32:16,360 Danielle Cox It happens to me too. Yes. 32:18,360 Martha Rivers Ingram Sorry about that. Thank you. But, you know, considering how life is today for younger people, So I think we were so lucky to grow up in Charleston, which was a very safe place, and to live amongst people that we knew, and everybody seemed to be nice to each other. So it was, even today, I don't have many friends still living. I'm 88 but they're, you know, and I have two or three friends that are that age but most of my other younger friends that were younger have died. So, but I know even before they died, we all, whenever we get together, we say, weren't we lucky to have been the safest time in life to be little and vulnerable and to live in such a nice city and such a nice neighborhood. And we could roller skate up and down the streets or ride bicycles to our friends' houses. There were so few cars. 33:43,160 Lisa Hayes Do you know the name Jenks Gibbs? Do you recognize that name? 33:47,160 Martha Rivers Ingram The Gibbs? 33:48,160 Lisa Hayes Jenks Gibbs? 33:49,160 Martha Rivers Ingram I do. Lisa Hayes I don't know what his given name was, but he goes by Jenks, but he tells the same story. He's the same age and grew up on, not on Church Street, but nearby. And he would talk about being able to just go all over and not worry about anything. And the gangs that you had in Charleston, you know, that you would be the so-and-so street gang and go over to the park over here and does all that sound familiar? Martha Rivers Ingram I wonder if you talked about the neighborhood playgrounds. 34:23,800 Lisa Hayes Yes. 34:24,840 Martha Rivers Ingram And we played the girls played girls teams from other parts of town are and the boys had boy teams. We played kickball and we played basketball and ping pong was something not a team sport but that was available in East Bay playground now Hazel Parker playground. But you know everything seems so safe and we could get on a bus for a nickel or a dime or something and go to different parts of town or even walk up to the dime store. The Woolworths, I guess, would have been one of them. But I remember going on the bus up to see a friend that I knew from the summertime from Orangeburg, South Carolina. My parents would just drop me off at the bus station and I'd get on the bus and go see my friend in Orangeburg named Lyle Wannamaker that I knew in the summer because her family had a summer beach cottage here. So it's almost unimaginable to think of what we were allowed to do. I can remember riding my bicycle across the Ashley River Bridge and going over there. There were some low-hanging trees and tree branches and climbing those trees. It was just such an entirely different setting, a different feel. Everything was, seemed so safe and it, you know, there were certainly occasional stories of, I remember, I knew one little girl that got killed on her bicycle up on the post office corner here at Broad and Meeting Street and she just didn't pay attention to the fact that a bus was turning and killed her. But that was, her last name was Huguenin, but I can just remember, it was so shocking, but it was the object lesson for my sister and me is that you've got to be careful of the traffic. These buses, they have a job to pick up and take people around. You just can't get close to where they are. But as far as someone shooting you or doing physical harm, that just never entered my mind. I don't remember ever being fearful of any of that. But it was, I mean, it's just hard to believe that there was ever a time like that when we know turn on the television now and this is sort of one tragic thing after another happening. 37:45,360 Lisa Hayes It does feel that way but well I'm glad to have this story that I'm glad to have this story that you shared that's nice. So you went to Vassar and then I know from listening to the other interview that I did or that Miss Alterman did you came back to Charleston tell us what where you worked when you came back to Charleston. 38:06,920 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, when I came back after graduating, my father said, "Well, now what are you going to do?" And I said, "Well, I don't know. I really don't know." He said, "Well, you know, you will have to work. I mean, you will be doing something. If you haven't found anyone you want to be married to, you will be working. Would you like to come work for me in the broadcasting business?" I said, "Well, I don't know. I don't know." He said, "Well, why don't you come and find out?" He said, "You're smart enough." And he said, "Why don't you come and see if it's something you like?" He said, "You know, you've got a little brother, but he's 10 years younger than you are. So if you want to do it, you can be my successor." What? That was shocking. So, but I went to work and I had learned how to type at Rice Business College every summer for I guess six weeks or so. I came in every day, every other day to go to Rice Business College, which was right where King Street is in the downtown. But you said they're learning the keys and learning how to not look at the keys. It's the kind of muscle memory, I guess. But anyhow, so my father said, well, you know how to type, so you can write up program introductions whatever needs to be done you you can help in that sense but he said and furthermore my secretary is really quite ill and probably is not going to live. She had cancer and died he said why don't you just come and be my secretary for a while and I said well daddy I don't know how to do shorthand he said "Well, we have dictaphones." This was the new big thing. "You know, you'll just, you'll just, I'll, I'll," he said, "I'll dictate a letter and then you'll listen to the dictaphone and then you'll type it up and that way you'll be learning about my business and what I do and you can see see whether it's something you can see yourself doing at some point." So that's how I got started into that. And at one point I thought this is a little boring. And I said, "Hey, Daddy, I've got an idea." I said, "You know, I took some music courses. I played the piano. You made me go to piano lessons for 10, 12 years or so, a long time, with Miss Hester B. Finger. But I do know now because of my music courses, I know a fair amount of that history of music and there's no classical music on the radio. Why don't I put together a program every evening during the dinner hour for a couple of hours that's classical music. He said, "Well, that would be something a little different to do it on the radio part, the FM part. We've now got that along with the A.M. And you could do that." But he said, "You know, this is not a non-profit. You've got to figure out how to make money doing that." I said, "You mean I have to get sponsors to sponsor the program like you do on, you know, the Lone Ranger and all the other serials and soap operas and things, he said yes. So he said, "Well, if you can figure out how to do it, we'll give it a try." And so I ended up doing that. He said, "But, you know, you've got to have somebody on the air introducing the recordings." And he said, "But you can't just put yourself on the air. I don't like the idea of Martha Rivers being the one to do it." He said, "First of all, it may not work. And secondly, I just don't want your name all over the air. So you've got to make up another name. But you can do it. I'll let you give it a try, see if you can make a business out of it." OK. So that's what I did. So I became Elizabeth Crawford. That was a, I looked in some of our family albums and that was a name that I thought sounded properly classical. I was probably so terrible when I lowered my voice. I tried to sound sexy. But I had to write up the programs then I had to find sponsors. So the first one I went to call on was Hugh Lane at the bank. I can't even remember what the name of the bank was then that he was president of. Citizens and Southern, I think it was. And so I did that. I did it from seven to 11 every night. The first seven to eight, I called that part of the program Candlelight and Wine. And then that was sort of, it was kind of pop music, I guess we'd call it today. And it was something that you could listen to while you were having dinner. And then at eight o'clock till it finished, it was probably another two hours, My program was called Music from the Masters, and I'd do Beethoven one night and I'd do Mozart another. But I'd give a little bit of the introduction of their lives, and I was probably pretty awful. But nonetheless, I got some, believe it or not, some fan mail to Elizabeth Crawford. Anyhow. That was fine and I kept renewing the sponsorship. It was very cheap by comparison with anything today. But nonetheless, it was some... I told my father that this is a line of business that you didn't even know you had. A way of making money you didn't even know you had. because we do have some listeners and they are writing in, telling us what they like and what they don't like. So I became a disc jockey. Time went on and my previous boyfriend, I had met in New York, who had been at Princeton, then gone in the Navy and was now, he called and asked if he could come see me and so forth. So I started having dates and then he wanted me to marry him and moved to Nashville, which is what I ended up doing. That ended my career. 45:56,280 Lisa Hayes How did you meet your husband? 45:59,800 Martha Rivers Ingram I met him on a blind date in New York City. He was there with a -he had a date and a man who was earlier out of the Navy who -he was her date and they had this friend named Bronson Ingram who was just out of the Navy and didn't have a date and so would I be the date so I was the blind date and and you know we've had a very nice time. We went to see it was so long ago we went to see in the opening week of “My Fair Lady” and Julie Andrews and that original crowd were what we saw. And we saw, it was a very, I would say, a very extravagant experience because most of people I knew in college didn't have much money and certainly not anything that they could afford to do on the scale but these men were from wealthy families and had money that they saved up while they were in the service. So anyhow we went out for several months and all of a sudden he asked me to marry him. And I said, "Yes, but I'll have to give up my broadcasting company." And so that was how that ended. And they basically, there was nobody there prepared to take it over. And so we just said, "Well, I hope you've enjoyed these programs. And perhaps it will start up again later." And, you know, I didn't know at the time that I was going to be moving to Nashville, that he wasn't going to be moving here. And so that's what happened. And then after I'd been there a short while, we moved to New Orleans because he was in the oil business and he was in charge of the company's filling station business. It was throughout the southeast. It was filling stations that wanted to sell gasoline for less money than Exxon or Gulf or the major brands of the time. And so it was called Ingram. And they had, we had small stations and never wanted to have more than six in one city because the price wars were going on. If one brand dropped the price from 30 cents a gallon to 32 cents you had to follow it or fight it. So it was a different world from the broadcasting world. And so as it turned out that almost right away I was having a baby and you know it just sort of one thing led to the other. My career turned into motherhood. 49:38,660 Lisa Hayes When did you have your first child? What year was that event? 49:43,140 Martha Rivers Ingram 1960 And then I had a second one in 1961 and another one in 1962. And it was, I mean, you know, my husband, I guess, was 27 when we married and so he was getting on to 30 something. And you know, it was kind of, in those days, it was thought to be, he was getting kind old and I guess I was twenty three or four when we married and I had the last child when I was 30 and that was considered a little high risk. 50:26,000 Lisa Hayes Wow so yeah you all had four children is that right and when did you move to Nashville? 50:33,780 Martha Rivers Ingram When did I move? To Nashville. Well we married, let's see, I graduated in '57 and I guess I guess 58 or so. Well I guess we, I don't know the time it goes by very quickly but I I was the class of '57, I guess. So we moved to Nashville right after. Everything seems sort of compressed, what I think that got. But we barely moved to Nashville when his father, who lived in Nashville, or his business headquarters was there. But he was in the oil refining business, and that all happened in New Orleans. And his father wanted him to move down there and keep an eye on the business and develop the filling station part of the business. So we lived there for about three and a half years and came back with two babies. New Orleans, there was something in the water we said. And then they've lived in Nashville ever since. Although, you know, we have a second home here and there. But as he became more financially able to have those things. So that's just kind of moved right along and you know sadly he died of cancer. Of course we had all the children but he was only 63 or so when he died. So, and by then I was in the community, working in the community, and interested in trying to get music and arts more involved in the community. And then when he died, I inherited a very large business. It was international. And so in addition to having all these babies, I had a big business that I moved into to become Chairman of the Board. And that was the end of the babies. Well, of course, the babies grew up and just had different situations, different problems. I just had to go to their games, their baseball games or whatever. 53:31,840 Lisa Hayes Well, I know you were the first woman on a lot of boards and the first—well, and you volunteered a lot when the kids were growing up, it sounded like. You were just very busy and then like you said you inherited your husband's company and have really been a leader in Nashville it sounds like in cultural circles. So tell us, so you mentioned the opera and the symphony and I know that you work with a ballet also. Are those your three sort of big passions? 54:07,160 Martha Rivers Ingram Mm-hmm, and the repertory theater. 54:10,040 Lisa Hayes Okay. 54:11,040 Martha Rivers Ingram But none of those things were in -the opera -I mean the -let's see, the symphony was operating on a small scale. And it was okay, but it was not great. And I'd heard some great music in New York when I'd been there during that time and seen the opera, been to the Metropolitan Opera numerous times. I don't know how I had done so much, it seems, when I would think back on it, in just a little bit of time. But we had no ballet company. But now we have a ballet company that has an annual budget of eight and a half million dollars, you know, from zero when we started. In fact, the first year I helped get a performing arts center started. It took several years to get that done, but getting the ballet going took a while to get people to even know about ballet and to even think they wanted such a thing. So I feel as though fundraising to me is really about selling. It's about trying to get the vision right and then trying to sell it to other people. And sometimes you have to adjust it a little bit as you go along. But because of that, I think it was, and these things had never happened before. And I think that's why the businesses had never had a woman on the boards before. And so all of a sudden everybody seemed to want a woman on the board. So because I could add and subtract and attend in the business world, I was offered a lot of positions and was very flattered because I was usually the first woman who's ever been on the board. And so that was very nice and my hope was that I would not mess it up so that there will never be another woman on the board, that I could do a good enough job that they'll think it's a big, a good thing to have a woman on the board. So that kept on growing, but then there were companies outside of Nashville, Baxter, up in, outside of Chicago. There were just a lot of companies that decided they needed a woman. So I was ultimately in a Warehouser’s board, the first woman. It turned out my husband's grandfather had been one of the founders of Warehouser, which is a big lumber company out in Tacoma, Washington. So it was not just local boards all of a sudden. It was when somebody would say, "Well, I'm looking for a woman. Have you got any idea of somebody?" Or somebody would say, "Well, I hear there's this woman who's doing this kind of thing. You think she would consider coming on the bank board down at Birmingham?" It was just—and then it got to be a logistical problem, having the children looked after and going through school and also taking these opportunities to, you know, it was kind of a badge of honor, I guess you could say, to be the first woman on these boards and nobody ever, you know, how do you handle it? How do you, I said, I don't know, you just, you just do it. 58:33,720 Lisa Hayes Well, and you strike me as a bridge builder and a person who looks for ways to cooperate and build consensus and that kind of thing. So I'm sure you were very effective on the boards and also in your career. 58:50,720 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, it all seemed to have worked together somehow. But I, and part of that maybe came because I had so much up-close experience with my husband's company. And I traveled to Europe with him when he was building the book distribution business. And we had offices all over Europe. And he always wanted me to go with him and that created some babysitting problems. But my parents were, I was fortunate to have parents that would fly over to Nashville and stay with the children. They didn't have to do the cooking or the, I had helpers to do that. But they liked coming to Nashville, which was very friendly to them. And they really have a chance to get to know my children pretty well because I was gone so much. And they got to be sort of the substitute parents from time to time. It was a living, learning, growing experience, I guess. I think back on that sometimes think how did I work all that you know have-- 01:00:18,200 Lisa Hayes But you know Rosalynn Carter who just passed away and she's been in the news so much. 01:00:24,680 Martha Rivers Ingram Rosalynn oh, yes. 1:00:25,000 Lisa Hayes Yes. I am I've enjoyed learning more about her and how instrumental it sounds like she was and her husband's success and you know 01:00:35,140 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah, I was interested in that too. And of course my husband was not in public office office, but he had a public company and it was quite visible. So, you know, I had to learn how to do that too because although I was there and very involved in what he was doing, I was not the final decision maker until all of a sudden after he died very suddenly of this very aggressive cancer. I had to learn to deal with the press and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's never been dull. 01:01:19,640 Lisa Hayes No. Well, and tell us about your -I want to hear about the Gaillard, of course, but your four children. I know you -from just reading online, it sounded like you -they are also kind of following in your family, your legacy that you have as far as being philanthropic. And that must make you very proud to know that they are doing the same kind of work. 01:01:44,500 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah, they are. They're better. No, they're doing, yes, they're combining community responsibilities with the business responsibilities and the family responsibilities that go along with it too. No I'm very pleased. They all, they've never known not to work. They just grew up with both mother and father working and yes we had a lot of help but I I couldn't have kept my mind together, had I not had people that did the cooking and the cleaning and that sort of thing. But still, there's the mommy and the daddy work that had to be done, too, to attend the events that children expect their parents to go to. And you want to go to, you want to see how they're functioning. But, yeah, it's been a busy time. It's a very busy life. But it's been very fulfilling because of not only exposure to a lot of wonderful things, but to have access to money to be able to do the, build performing arts centers and to lead by example by putting our money up front and that gave other people confidence to join in and be helpful. So you’ve been to the Gaillard, so you know what that's like. And that doesn't just happen. It was a combination of going to the mayor and saying, We've got this terrible facility here in the old Gaillard And I don't know how Spoleto is going to keep going if you don't have a better facility, because the sound is terrible and everything about. And I said, I can put up a lead gift if you'll join in and help make it happen. And he did. And so, you know, we were partners in that. And he got more money from the city than anybody thought possible. And I got more money from the private sector here than anyone expected to have happen. And now we've got the beautiful facilities and I've done all that before in Nashville. So I felt as though I knew how to do it. I knew the people and my husband's position in the communities gave me credibility because he had put so much trust in me, I guess, that they thought, "Well, if he trusts her, we've got to trust her too." It all had been very supportive. So it's a combination of things. It all kind of starts with a vision. How do I really, what is it we really need here? And then trying to figure out what the road is going to be to get to the end. Or sometimes it's like how do you get to the goal post. It's like a football game. You have to decide where you want to go and then how do you do it. But then, you know, it's never just you. It's always selling other people on the idea because you can never do these big projects by yourself. You've got to have a team. 01:05:56,180 Lisa Hayes Well, the success of the Nashville Performing Arts Center, I would think, was helpful in getting the Gaillard work done. Is that right? 01:06:07,700 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah, because I knew how to do it by then. But, um... 01:06:12,540 Lisa Hayes Was there anything that you changed based on what you learned from Nashville to the Gaillard? Did you do anything differently? 01:06:21,340 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, it's... You know, you kind of have to sort of... I don't know if you play tennis or... You've got to be able to be flexible from one thing to the next. But I would say the main thing for me here was that I already knew what a good facility would take, what it would be like. And it was trying to figure out if I personally had enough money, access to enough money to get it started and going and did I have enough community clout here of the knowledge to be able to raise the additional money but also to have access to the mayor and I met him along the way. So much of it is in the beginning that was having access to my husband's network of power brokers. And then here it was trying to get Joe Riley going and then to get enough community members going to, you know, and Nashville is a wealthier community than Charleston. And so, I mean, I think we had something like 31 million-dollar-donors in Nashville. And here, I think we ended up with maybe 5 million-dollar, 5-1 million dollar donors. So it's just, so again I had to learn to paddle faster, you know, for the smaller dollars to try to, because when you're doing these projects, if you're going to do them at all, you want to done right, you don't want to, I mean we had this terrible Gaillard that was better than nothing until finally people stopped wanting to go because it was so bad. You couldn't hear, you couldn't see, you couldn't get to a bathroom, you couldn't-- 01:08:46,060 Lisa Hayes I remember that. 01:08:47,060 Martha Rivers Ingram You remember that, too. So it's trying to work out all those kinks and I don't know, I think we were lucky to get as much work done as we did but it came out close to perfect and -- 01:09:09,860 Lisa Hayes It's beautiful yes I was there not too long ago for a performance and we sat in the I brought my daughter sat in the back and had such a nice view even way in the back it really is yeah nice you can hear my space oh yeah you can hear everything 01:09:25,500 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, one of the things I had to work on that I didn't expect to have to work on is I had the same team of people that we'd used in Nashville. So I knew what to expect from them and the team of people, I wanted them, these same people to come here because I knew what to expect. And then I found that Joe Riley had decided that he had a, I don't know, that was a supporter or somebody he wanted to use as the sound design guy here. And I just happened to run into him in New York right after I thought all those decisions had been made. And I ran into him in New York at Carnegie Hall and his name was Ralph, oh, I can't think right this minute. But anyhow, I said, "Have you gotten started on the project in Charleston?" He said, Ralph Scarborough is his name, is his name. And he said, "No, I didn't get the job." I said, "What?" I said, "We had a handshake deal that we would use the same people that we used in Nashville because I know them and we can trust them. They know what they're doing." And he said, "Well, I just had this old crony that I thought that he'd worked on the bridge going over to -is somebody just walking. And that's all. Maybe it was just something else. I thought I saw someone walking up the steps, but maybe not. And anyhow, he said, "Well, I didn't get the job." And I said... Well, wait a minute. Someone just walked down the stairs. See? Are you expecting anyone else? 01:11:45,040 Lisa Hayes Oh, she's pulled into your driveway. She has blonde hair. 01:11:50,680 Martha Rivers Ingram Wrong address. 01:11:51,920 Lisa Hayes No, short blonde hair. A woman. Do you want me to see if she left a package or something? 01:11:58,960 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, she might have left something at the front door. I don't-- 01:12:02,400 Lisa Hayes Do you want me to check? 01:12:03,360 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, if you don't mind. Sure, yeah. Let's see in cases, something that might melt. That maybe it's just maybe it was just a note. I'm sorry. 01:12:27,460 [Dani Assistant] Everything okay? 01:12:32,360 Martha Rivers Ingram Yes, somebody just dropped something off. 01:12:35,760 Lisa Hayes She saw them up the stairs. 01:12:42,260 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, I don't have my glasses on, so. 01:12:44,000 [Dani Assistant] It's official invitation to a ball. 01:12:46,660 Martha Rivers Ingram You can see if there's anything I need to do anything about right away. 01:12:52,020 [Dani Assistant] Oh, I would imagine to probably thank you notes from last night. Oh, well that's a good one. That's just my thoughts. But I'll leave them right there. Well, you were the chef. 01:13:06,740 Lisa Hayes Looks like Anne's writing. 01:13:08,740 [Dani Assistant] There you go. 01:13:10,740 Martha Rivers Ingram You were the chef. Thank you. 01:13:12,740 [Dani Assistant] Yes, ma'am. 01:13:14,740 Martha Rivers Ingram So, anyhow, so when I got back from New York, I may have called from New York, but anyhow, I called the mayor and I said, "I just ran into this man, Paul Scarborough, that was part of a team to come from Nashville to Charleston to work on this new project. And I said, he said he had not been hired. I said, what do you mean not hired? You and I had a handshake deal. And he said, well, I didn't think you cared all that much about the sound. I said, Joe, let me just tell you, I care so much about the sound. If you don't rehire or hire this man, it's the sound guy, and fire the guy that you put in his place. You're going to lose me, your chief fund-your chief funder, your title person, and your chief fundraiser, because I'm not playing that game. And he said, well, I didn't think you cared that much. I said, well, I do. And I said, "I'll give you until tomorrow to make it right and put it back the way it's supposed to be." And he did, and it went on. But it's that kind of thing that, you know, and he really was fine on everything else we did, even the color of the hall, because when the architect said, "Visiting room, what color do you want this hall to be?" Meaning, "Gaillard." I said, "Well, I love the Celadon Green we have in Nashville." He said, "Well, we can't do the same one again." I said, "Well, then my next favorite color would be kind of an orange-y color." see not, what did I call it, well it'll come to me, but not tangerine but it's like 01:15:34,000 Lisa Hayes sherbert. 01:15:35,000 Martha Rivers Ingram No it's not, it's well it'll come but any anyhow we got it we got it But see, that's the kind of thing. And he didn't do that again. He didn't try to switch it out on anything switching it out on me. But anyhow, we-- 01:15:57,960 Lisa Hayes You have to have the sound right in a performing arts center. You can't have the sound not be perfect. 01:16:07,680 Martha Rivers Ingram Well this man, Ralph Scarborough, is known for, he works for a company, I think he may be head of it now, called Acoustics. And they have since hired him to New York, to Lincoln Center, to try to straighten out their sound for their symphony hall there. I mean that's how good he is. I just got the reputation, and that's why our sound is so good here. So it might not have been. In fact, somebody was talking to me about that last night. How did you get the sound so right here and also everyone said that the sound in Nashville and here amongst the best halls in the world. And I said, "Well, it almost didn't happen here in Nashville." I was much more involved on that level in the beginning. I didn't realize I didn't have it covered here, but it was not. And so fortunately we found out in time and got Paul Scarborough back on the sound here and Yo-Yo Ma says that two of the best halls he plays in, this one and the one in Nashville. When I was complimenting him, he did say, "Well, you know, I do play all over the world and nobody has better sound than you've got right here." And so, you never know where the curve ball is, and I don't like to play what I call the money card, but this time I thought, I've got to have him back this out, this won't do. And so I told him, I said, "I'm playing the money card. I'm out of here unless you go back." We had a--. We don't have it in writing, no. I didn't think I had to have things in writing with you. I thought we had a handshake deal. And so a handshake deal is important to me. And if we don't do that, then we don't really have anything else to discuss. I'm just out of here because I can't deal with somebody that doesn't do what he says he's going to do. And so... 01:18:49,980 Lisa Hayes Well, it brings it full circle to the story you shared about your dad and the integrity that he shared. 01:18:54,980 Martha Rivers Ingram Yes. It's not an integrity thing. You know, it's more important than money, but it's about honesty and integrity. and doing what you say you're going to do and You know certainly worked hard to try to get that point across to my own children and I think that I've never heard anyone say that they were other than other than honest, other than doing you know doing what they agreed to do and you know of course it belonged the way you can't do it or something happened. But you don't just not do it because you found somebody who is cheaper or better that you like better. So it's just a matter of priorities. I guess in the last analysis it kind of gets back to the character of the situation, the character of the person, character, the importance. And I think that the Library Society that, you know, that Anne Cleveland certainly has gotten her thinking, getting everything back to what the Library Society stood for and has stood for, you know, for a place where you can have discussions about whatever it is you want to have discussions. It's not trying to sell propaganda from one point of view or the other, but it's a place that people can come to make their views known to other people that they respect. And they don't have to agree. They can still walk away as friends. 01:20:55,480 Lisa Hayes That's right. Yeah, that's right. Well, thank you so much for all this time today. It was very generous of you. 01:21:02,800 Martha Rivers Ingram I'm not sure I've done anything to illuminate anything very much. 01:21:07,960 Lisa Hayes Oh, you did. 01:21:08,960 Martha Rivers Ingram But maybe from the point of the vantage, from thinking back on, you know, you have to live with these decisions. Yeah. 01:21:24,440 [Dani Assistant] Sorry to interrupt. I'm going to run to the store. 01:21:27,360 Martha Rivers Ingram You're going to run? For dinner. [Dani Assistant] Are you going to be okay? 01:21:30,840 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, I don't they don't look like murderers to me. 01:21:34,840 [Dani Assistant] I just want to make sure y'all aren't murderers, right? Just kidding. I won't be long. I just want to let you know. 01:21:41,440 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, just that's fine. Just don't rush. Just take your time. 01:21:45,040 [Dani Assistant] Okay. 01:21:45,540 Martha Rivers Ingram Don't rush. 01:21:47,840 [Dani Assistant] Okay. Thank you. 01:21:50,640 Martha Rivers Ingram Since you gave me your water, do you need? 01:21:54,440 Danielle Cox No, I'm good, actually brought two. 01:21:56,240 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah. 01:21:58,240 Danielle Cox What anything could happen if you need another one. 01:22:04,240 [Dani Assistant] Goodness. Just left you some soaps too. They're from Sally and Charlie. 01:22:11,240 Lisa Hayes Oh my goodness. Nice gifts today. 01:22:13,240 Martha Rivers Ingram That was really a face on your good cooking. 01:22:17,240 [Dani Assistant] Oh, that's okay. You can keep it. [Laughter] 01:22:22,240 Martha Rivers Ingram Dani was our chef last night. She's really quite wonderful. She used her father's was a party manager, party giver, caterer, and she used to work with him and she said she got tired of doing all the hard work as the youngest one and so she when I fell and hit my head and had all these problems. And so my children decided I needed somebody to help me with the driving. I shouldn't be driving and that kind of. So Dani, this was now I guess year and a half, almost two years ago. So she came to work for me. So she, it's really got in. She does a very, very nice job. And she said, but it's so much nicer than carrying all those trays and catering. (laughing) So as long as she's happy, she can drive and go wherever she wants when she wants. And when she's going to the grocery store, I guess she decides what we're going to have for dinner. I don't have to make that decision anymore and I don't have to go do it. I don't have to. So she has a credit card, so she can buy what she needs. So anyhow, it's kind of weird, but it's a different lifestyle from the corporate boards and all the things that I've done all my life, most of my life. And so I don't miss it. You have asked me if I'm missing all that. Nope. I did it. I've peddled as hard as I could, as fast as I could, for a long time. I wish I hadn't fallen and hit my head, but I had one of these blackouts. They don't know where it comes from. They said that when you get-I'm in 88. They said, "When you get in your 80s, "there are little wires around your head "that can come loose or something." Just, "We don't see anything that's really bad." And they did all these MRIs and things. They said, "Just go and enjoy your life and don't worry about it." And I said, "Okay." 01:24:54,640 Lisa Hayes Well, and I see you have this picture next to you of your family. Do you get to see your family a lot? 01:25:02,600 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah, they all live in Nashville. 01:25:04,060 Lisa Hayes Oh, they do? Okay. Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah. But there are more of them than that. Lisa Hayes Oh really? 01:25:10,400 Martha Rivers Ingram Because I've got now five great-grandchildren, and the other-the grandchildren, that's from the grandchildren having children. But I've got dinner Christmas day at my house under a tent. It's got to be heated and natural, of course. But last I heard I had 45 coming from family Christmas dinner. 01:25:39,080 Lisa Hayes Sounds nice. 01:25:41,360 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah, it is nice. And the good thing is they kind of like all getting together with each other. And my big conversation the last day has been with my brother John, who has three teenage children. And they wanted to come to Nashville, too, because they have been there for a couple of weddings recently. And they said, "Well, people there are just-your family-there's so many of them. They have such a good time. They have more fun than any of the rest of us, so we want to come and do that." I said, "Well, OK." And the color I was trying to think of is apricot. It's the color-you've seen the facility, right? 01:26:32,280 Danielle Cox I haven't been there in a while, but apricot is always a nice color. 01:26:36,280 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, that's the color. And with the mayor, they asked him at the same time, "How do you feel about apricot for the color the architect did?" And he said, "Oh, I just love apricot." And I thought, "Well, that's fine." And I heard he's colorblind. [Laughter] I don't know. It doesn't matter. It is what it is. And most people seem to think apricot is perfect. It's very pretty. 01:27:09,480 Lisa Hayes We used to work at the Library Society with Doerte McManus. Do you recognize? 01:27:14,440 Martha Rivers Ingram Oh, Doerte. 01:27:15,440 Lisa Hayes Yeah. Doerte. She worked with us while we were doing some of that fundraising early on. 01:27:21,480 Martha Rivers Ingram Yeah. I liked her very much. 01:27:22,680 Lisa Hayes She's wonderful. She did the same thing for the Library Society when we did a big capital campaign for the renovations to the building. Doerte was the chair. 01:27:30,000 Martha Rivers Ingram Where is she now, do you know? 01:27:33,000 Lisa Hayes She's retired. She and her husband are, they live on Tradd Street, so not too far from here, but yes. 01:27:38,000 Martha Rivers Ingram Oh, so they didn't go back to Germany? 01:27:43,000 Lisa Hayes No, no, they live here. 01:27:45,000 Martha Rivers Ingram Oh, good. Well, I just haven't seen her in a while, but you know, I like to, it's hard not to like her. She was just so pleasant, jolly. And Anne was always so accommodating and so interested in what we were doing. She told me last night, she and her husband Will were here for dinner along with the Duells. I don't know if you know the Middleton Plantation Duells. And anyhow, they seem to all be moving along happily, but they all talking kind of like I do now about retirement. It's not all bad, you know, it's okay. If you worked hard and done your best, it's all right. 01:28:44,680 Lisa Hayes Enjoy it. Yes, good. 01:28:46,680 Martha Rivers Ingram So anyhow. 01:28:47,680 Lisa Hayes All right. 01:28:48,680 Martha Rivers Ingram Well, I don't know if any of this covered what kind of thing you were looking at. 01:28:53,960 Lisa Hayes It's perfect, really. I mean, hearing about your life in Charleston and then the story about your grandparents taking you to the library, that was great. And your career as a DJ, that's fun. 01:29:07,320 Martha Rivers Ingram You know, it's sort of fun because I'm also very involved in Vanderbilt University. I was chairman of that board for, I don't know, 15 years or so. But anyhow, the girls would make appointments and still do, to want to come to talk to me. And usually they want to talk about, you know, their careers, how they're going to get from here to there. And almost always they'll say, "Mrs. Ingram, "How did you start at?" I said, "Well, as a disc jockey" (laughing) Here I've got the corner office. (laughing) So, anyhow, well, you have to start somewhere. Just find something you like and relate to and follow the trail. 01:30:05,120 Lisa Hayes That's good advice. 01:30:07,520 Martha Rivers Ingram I would say that's my best advice for anybody, not that you all need it or ask for it, but it's just to find out what interests you and then go for it. 01:30:19,640 Lisa Hayes Do you mind signing the agreement? Can I get your glasses? Where did she say they were? Yeah, yeah. Mm-hm. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Martha Rivers Ingram (interviewed by Lisa Hayes and Danielle Cox on November 29, 2023) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Ingram, Martha Rivers Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-11-29 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource WAV Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context MarthaRiversIngram_OralHistory_20231129 Description An account of the resource Martha Ingram was born in Charleston in 1935. She grew up downtown and went on to study history at Vassar. Mrs. Ingram shares about her family’s visits to the Library as a little girl and she recounts her job as a DJ at her father’s radio station in Charleston in the 1950s. Mrs. Ingram married Erskine Bronson Ingram and they went on to have great success in a variety of industries. She discusses her philanthropy both here and in Nashville and her success in getting major arts facilities constructed in both cities. cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/2a89d79dff301f9301cbb7c782c4294f.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=YgnWu9DPrSh5RjA7CanM5N4rbbUVaa7cYhpzmoI77UdZWLybTCiY7JcjeKZafCbBbKAqkHoFu5ddPkPwHPKtjLlWdkO3N5ByA74Ty6exsXiak8pte43But7lX%7Ek6LgovRtH5N5%7EMg5TvK1345BlhyCoevF3huJCkaDqAoT3tEGFVj3wVFXBnhSv2BciMLEYo4CmoASx8T31gqk9c7VsvS0W9xxaY6fJOOgQ6J5hTh8qFioacR9G1aJetTPJk6zlLAhKTCXUc5rmt5HFgEJfEcPwKFdKLBODvmf80CgrL8neApOSpDrMJYa7%7EJpZbbF8Iqqrvxg5I%7E83O0EGx5UI7sA__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 07397fd5ece6d5a9736ff654c7ceb0a7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:47:14/1.06GB Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 00:00,000 Laura Mina Okay, I'm going to point this towards you. So, my name is Laura Mina, and I'm the head librarian here at the Charleston Library Society, and today is September 15, 2023, and it's 12:20 in the afternoon. And this afternoon I have Mariano La Via, who is a long time resident of Charleston, South Carolina. So, Dr. La Via, tell me a little bit about your background, where you were born, when you were born, and what life was like at that time. 00:52,920 Mariano La Via I'm glad they're sitting down. (both laughing) I tell you when I was born, it may shock you, I was born in Rome on January, at the end of January of 1926, which makes me contemplating very peacefully the arrival of my 98th birthday this coming January. 01:20,840 Laura Mina It's very special. 01:21,840 Mariano La Via I don't know about special. I don't know about special. I don't consider birthday special. That just happened. It's another day. It means you're a year older. 01:32,680 Laura Mina It means you've accomplished another year of life. 01:35,320 Mariano La Via I guess, but you know, the problem is that every day I wake up in the morning and say, "Here's another day. Keep on going." We're worried about tomorrow when it comes. 01:47,880 Laura Mina One day at a time. 01:50,520 Mariano La Via But so that's a little bit soft. What did I do? Well, I moved a lot. My father's family was caught in the big financial mess of the late '20s, early '30s. I was just born, and they had some significant financial problems, not of their own doing, but because of the imprudence of an in-law who had married my father's oldest sister. So my father, who was aspiring to a university chair in philosophy and had the benefit of having been one of the four pupils of Giovanni Gentile, who was a philosophical powerhouse in Italy and even in Europe in those days, he felt that, you know, he would be able to stay home, live with the family there, live with my mother and whoever children came because his father was well to do and could do it, and do what was supposed to happen, prepare his scientific or philosophical production, write books, articles and so on, and then concur. 03:52,060 Laura Mina Can you hold on just one moment? I'm gonna stop whoever that is from hammering. Do you hear that? I can hear that, and it's making it hard for me to hear you, hold on. 04:01,140 Mariano La Via That's what happened. So at that point in time, my father was faced with the choice of having to work to support the family while he was working on preparing what would eventually have gotten this university chair that was at that time the apex of a career. So he taught high school and made some money teaching high school, but also moved as there appeared to be some progress in his career, getting closer and closer to the final goal, university professorship. What happened a couple of years later is that he had a conversion crisis and so abandoned Giovanni Gentile's philosophical bent, let's say, let's call it this way, and started working on a critique of his master and a devising of a new philosophical system that he called absolute realism. So what happened, Gentile was very powerful, and so he just, every time my father presented his credentials to the committee that set up every year in Italy to choose three people for university chairs, Gentile would always boycott them underground, and so he had to wait 10 years before Gentile said, "I don't agree with La Via, but he's finally shown me that he really has a viable system of philosophy, therefore I will stay out of the way." And that was the year the Second World War started. 06:30,120 Laura Mina Your dad sounds like he was very persistent and he was an academic who really believed in his work. 06:38,660 Mariano La Via Exactly. So after, let's see, Assisi, Pérezio, Genoa, Urbino, finally after four moves, we moved to the chair that was available in Sicily, in Messina, and we spent all of his career. 07:07,700 Laura Mina So your family was, so Urbino, Assisi, so that was mostly in the northern part of Italy? 07:17,300 Mariano La Via Yeah, from Rome we went to Assisi and to Varese, which is right at the foot of the Alps, north of Milan, then from there we went to Genoa, which was on the coast, pastel in the north. Then from Genoa we went to Urbino, because that was the big promotion, because Urbino, he could shed the teaching of high school and work at the university level. Nubino is a university, it's a small one, but it's very well known and it's very good. So he was able to get a, not a permanent position, but a temporary position that would carry him for a couple of years, and it turned out that after three years of that, the final thing clicked. So I was in 1936, I was 10. 08:19,440 Laura Mina So early on— 08:21,740 Mariano La Via No, wait, excuse me, 1939. I was 13. And I ended up, my mother said, "Why Why don't you go spend the summer with your grandmother on the southeastern coast of Italy where my grandmother went every year to be with one of her daughters. And so I went down, got on the train, traveled all night, arrived, spent the wonderful summer. One week before I was supposed to go back, one of my uncles who was there turned on the radio in the morning to listen to the news and Hitler had just invaded Poland. 09:01,500 Laura Mina So you heard or you your family at 13 years old you directly encountered the beginning of the Second World War. 06:15,000 Mariano La Via Exactly. So I went back home and the first thing that happened and my poor father was deprived of his only pleasure in life, coffee. Coffee disappeared from the market completely. For the next several years, people in Italy drank what they could concoct. The most common thing was barley that was roasted like coffee, ground, and then "coffee" was made with this roasted ground barley. (laughs) Besides the fact that there were other things, I had to get up at four o'clock in the morning to go stand in front of the butcher shop because meat was in very scarce supply. And usually by the time I got there, I would be third or fourth in line if I was lucky. And the butcher, luckily for me, was only a block away from our house. 10:21,280 Laura Mina So you were experiencing rationing? 10:23,860 Mariano La Via Well. 10:24,860 Laura Mina And shortages? 10:25,860 Mariano La Via Absolutely. So we are rationing and shortages. 10:31,960 Laura Mina So in that time period, you also experienced the rise of fascism and Mussolini, correct? 10:41,880 Mariano La Via Absolutely. 10:42,880 Laura Mina And what was that like? 10:49,500 Mariano La Via It was very hard for my father because it was very, you know, at my age I didn't understand what was going on. This was between the age of four, five, and thirteen. And then when the war started, it was even more confusing. So my father suffered a great deal. My father had to, as a government employee, be a member of the fascist party. Otherwise he wouldn't get paid. 11:33,920 Laura Mina Yeah. 11:34,920 Mariano La Via It was like forced acceptance for the livelihood of your family. I have a picture of my father with this little thing on the lapel that signified his belonging to the fascist party. My father was arrested. 11:52,840 Laura Mina He was arrested? 11:53,840 Mariano La Via Yeah. And interrogated for one whole day. And they let him go because they thought that his ideas were not in keeping with the fascist ideas. 12:07,120 Laura Mina Well, as a philosopher, a free thinker, a man of letters, a scholar, those are usually the people that are targeted in a dictatorial environment. And it sounds like your father had that experience. 12:24,920 Mariano La Via Yeah, that all happened after we went to Sicily. He started there, and two years later, as the war was getting hotter, and they were beginning to bombard from the sky the area where we were, not very frequently, was mostly the British that were doing that, so they would come maybe once or twice a week. My mother decided, "Let's go to Rome for Christmas, because I spent time there." Okay? Two years after we got there, we went to Rome for Christmas vacation. And what happened? We were stuck. We couldn't go back. 13:04,320 Laura Mina For how long were you stuck in Rome? 13:08,200 Mariano La Via Well in Rome, only for about a year. But then in Italy, in the summer, you don't stay in the city because the children need to have some space to do something, to be out in the air and so on and so on. a custom back in those days and it still is in Italy. When summer comes, people get out of the big city and they go to out in the country, they go to the beach and so on, which is what we did. But, so my mother said, "Let's go to Urbino." We know Urbino, it's a small town. It's in the mountains, it's nice, it's great. We weren't there, we have friends still that we had made when we were there before. So we went back there. So one year and a half years in Rome, we went there. And finally, in 1945, we were able to go back to Rome. And back to Sicily, where we had no house anymore. Everything had been stolen, destroyed, or something. 14:15,760 Laura Mina So you reference air strikes essentially. What was that like as a child with, I mean, here in the United States, we can only conceive of what that's like. We can guess at what that might be as an experience for a child. But you directly have that experience. What was that like? Do you remember air raid sirens? Do you remember having to have blackouts at night? Like what was that like for you as a child? 14:50,100 Mariano La Via I remember, and I remember very simply when the British started coming to Messina and throwing a few bombs here and there. Okay, there will be a siren going on, of course. And then when the thing was over, the siren would come the second time. I went to bed, went to sleep, and I still remember that I did not have to wait for the siren to come. The siren is a little thing that whirls. When the whirling started, the little sound would wake me up every time. 15:21,200 Laura Mina Wow, where did your family go when that happened? 15:23,300 Mariano La Via That's subsidized. There was no air raid, anything, because our house didn't have a basement. So we went down to the first floor where there was a retired army person that was living with his wife, And we all find out when it's a perfect. And spent the evening there until we heard bombs falling here, bombs falling there, and hoping they wouldn't fall on our house, which never happened, thank God. So that was my experience. 15:58,380 Laura Mina How did your parents explain that to you? I mean, how did you navigate that? How did they navigate that with children? 16:07,980 Mariano La Via By trying to live as normal a life as possible during the week and a half or so between these air raids that were very, you know, at the beginning they were not very frequent. The reason we couldn't go back after we went to Rome for Christmas was that the big push from the Allies came. And by then, what had happened was a total political upheaval. Italy signed an armistice on the side. The German Mussolini was captured and the Germans grabbed him, brought him up to the northern part of Italy. where he set up a mock republic that lasted for several years, which is all historically documented. And essentially, Italy became a free war area between the Germans. They were trying to keep the Allies from coming in, and the Americans on the West Side and the British conglomeration of Gurkhas and Indians and Cypriots and Greeks and so on, because Britain had all these people that were all part of the side where we were. That's where I learned English because they were coming up. 18:00,020 Laura Mina So you learned English essentially from the Allies. 18:03,060 Mariano La Via Yeah. I got mad. I knew German because I'd taken five years, four years of German in high school. And so I said I have to learn to understand what languages people speak. So I learned English. And I learned English by just learning. I can tell you a little story which is very interesting. One day, well, first I had my brother who had had English in school, the four years that everybody has to have in Italy, you know, this mandatory in high school. You have to have four years of a foreign language, chose English. I used to wake up in the morning and say, "How do you say this in English?" So one day, Baptist under fire, I was in the square of this little town of Vino, And a jeep stop, this guy came off, came straight to me and started talking to me. My friend and classmate in medical school at that point, I started medical school, who had had English in high school and was next to me, new vocabulary. I didn't know vocabulary, so I kept asking him, "How do you say this? How do you say that?" All I did, I was able to explain to this lieutenant of the Canadian Army that the place where he wanted to go was that way. So then he decided that he liked me, so he said, "You know something? I'd like to invite you. We're having a dance tonight at our office." I said, "Well, why don't you come? Do you have a girlfriend?" I said, "No." I said, "Well, come anyway." So— 19:39,780 Laura Mina That's nice. Yeah. Was it fun? 19:42,780 Mariano La Via It was fun. And so that was essentially my introduction to English. 19:48,780 Laura Mina Wow. 19:49,260 Mariano La Via Which continued because when we were able to go back to Messina in 1945, Messina is a port city and had a medium-sized contingent of British Navy there in port. and I befriended a dentist who was a lieutenant in the British Navy and an engineer who was from Malta. So he spoke Italian, he spoke English of course because Malta they spoke both. And I spent hours every week with these guys doing things you know, going around showing them things that they didn't know, and celebrating birthdays and so on and so on. So by the time this was over, I had it introduced to my German. 20:46,520 Laura Mina Wow. So I mean there's nothing but like immersion, right? 20:50,960 Mariano La Via Right. 20:51,960 Laura Mina Immersion with friends. 20:52,960 Mariano La Via Right. 20:53,960 Laura Mina And there you've got the patience, yeah. 20:54,960 Mariano La Via Yeah. And interest because you have to be interested. None of my brothers, none of my brothers was able to do that. I don't know why. But they didn't. They did it later because they had to. 21:08,240 Laura Mina So that actually brings me to, you know, I see listed a number of brothers. So what—tell me about your brothers and where you belong in the line of siblings. 21:22,200 Mariano La Via Number one. 21:23,200 Laura Mina So you're the oldest brother. 21:25,160 Mariano La Via I'm the oldest. The only one that, well, one of the only two that are still alive. I'm still here and my youngest brother who's 16 years younger than me is still around. 21:42,200 Laura Mina What's his name? 21:43,200 Mariano La Via Luigi. 21:44,200 Laura Mina Luigi. And then I see Francesco. 21:47,200 Mariano La Via He died the last time we were in Italy seven years ago. I was there next to him, when he died. 21:55,200 Laura Mina He died. 21:58,820 Mariano La Via He moved away. He moved to northern Italy, and we didn't see him very much after we grew up. I mean, I was away, so I left home. I came to this country, so I would come to that later. He died—I remember I was walking into the house here in Charleston. My phone was ringing and I picked it up and it was my sister-in-law. She says, "Mariano, I have some very sad news. Your brother, which was ever died this morning. He had a stroke." 22:42,140 Laura Mina And then Nicola? 22:43,140 Mariano La Via Nicola died just before his seventh birthday. 22:46,140 Laura Mina Seventh birthday? 22:47,140 Mariano La Via Yeah. That really, really was horrible for my father because he was the last one of my brothers being born. Luigi was born several years later. There were about four years between Nicole and Luigi. Then Nicola developed what is an acute necrosis of the adrenal glands and that dropped her blood pressure to zero and you died. He died. He walked he Night, he was perfect. You know went to bed walk up in the morning was a little groggy But one of us then-- 23:26,000 Laura Mina Wow do you remember that happening? 23:28,340 Mariano La Via Mm-hmm was that 23:31,000 Laura Mina Was that-- 23:31,940 Mariano La Via We were in Rome. We are just we were during the period before we went to a vino In fact, we went to be no without him and my father was really devastated. But my father has really become very attached to him since he was the last of the children for quite a while, for several years. So yeah, it was not a very good thing. 24:01,220 Laura Mina So sorry. So his name, your father's name was Vincenzo La Via. And then your mother's name was Carmela Carbone? 24:11,180 Mariano La Via Carbone, yeah. 24:12,180 Laura Mina My sister worked at a restaurant in New York City called Carbone. So was your mother, did your mother and father stay married throughout your life? 24:27,500 Mariano La Via Yes. 24:28,500 Laura Mina How did your mother navigate the loss of Nicola? 24:40,940 Mariano La Via She, you know, I think that when I was at that age in my early teens and I was living between Rome and Urbino, you know, in that very bad, strange period, you know, and then we came back and so on, and then we went back down not to Sicily. It's very difficult for me to say, to answer that question because the way people react to the death of a family member, I noticed back in those days, and I found the same thing here. It's directly related to what is their foundational belief in life and death. And if you have, a foundational belief, that essentially looks at that as a transition point to a different life. Then it's easier to deal with it. I mean, grieving is not, you know, I had the pleasure of small parenthesis during my Denver eight years of getting to know Elizabeth Kubler-Ross 27:07,520 Laura Mina Really? 27:13,400 Mariano La Via She was married to one of my colleagues. And we used to get together with the residents in our department, because my wife was still doing a residency in pathology, my first wife. So I was clearly invited to these things and and Manny Ross was Elizabeth's husband was still a fellow and so he was invited also so and I got to know her very well and I read her books. And it's it's clearly I mean she addressed the process of grieving very well and it's very important. But you know I'm facing death every day at nine almost 98 you know you discuss your miseries every day. My wife carefully just this morning said you know this guy he was he was a physician I said no you lived in Wadmalaw Island or something I said you no, I don't know but you know it's... So my mother, yeah, my mother clearly was not very, very happy. I mean, you cannot be happy when, you know, it's your child. It's your child whom you've carried for nine months and then it was your youngest child for four or five years, six years, and then all of sudden, bingo, in six hours, gone. 29:26,260 Laura Mina It's devastating and yeah, I mean people really respond to that very differently, but it's the greatest fear of a parent to go through that. But it also, you know, I mean, I know this is kind of out of order, but there is a parallel to it that you encountered a lot of death through your profession and the time in the world when there was a tremendous epidemic happening and you were on the front lines of it essentially here in Charleston. So you have had a lot of experience with grieving, is my guess, and that-- 30:26,740 Mariano La Via I was thinking of it this morning. 30:29,940 Laura Mina Yeah. 30:30,780 Mariano La Via Yep. I've seen a lot of people, not because I was a clinician, but because of what I was doing for, as a service to infectious disease people who are treating these people. And I got to know these people because they were coming by the lab so that we could take their blood and analyze what was necessary. And you know, at the beginning, what there was nothing you could do, all you could do is just grieve when they were dying. 31:10,580 Laura Mina So just for the context of the HIV pandemic, would you call it a pandemic or epidemic? 31:18,620 Mariano La Via Well, it was not a pandemic because it didn't. Although I think at one point it did spread so widely that maybe it should have been. But then there was something that could be done unlike the HIV, I mean the COVID. So because there were drugs that were developed that worked. And so let's call it an epidemic, which is what really the people that know these things characterize it as. But it was even in Charleston. It was pretty bad. 32:05,860 Laura Mina So, you know, there's, you've had these like tremendous life experiences that have, you know, that have meant a lot of loss, but also a lot of adaptation and world experience that most people don't have in their lives. So, when, so I'm going to move us to the place of of what happened and how you came from Italy to the United States. Tell me about that and was it at the behest of your family, was it with your family, what was that process? It sounds like you were in, were you in Urbino or Rome and then you came? Or what was the, what was the timeline of that? 32:59,620 Mariano La Via When I started medical school, it was during the Second World War. 33:03,860 Laura Mina Right. 33:04,860 Mariano La Via Okay. And I transferred, I had to transfer to Messina because I couldn't stay in Rome. Because my mother told me, she said, you know, you cannot stay with one of your uncles who live here because they wouldn't be fair. We cannot support you here, so you come home with us. So I transferred. which is very easy in Italy, just transfer, just go and register at the new university. So I finished there. When I finished, I went back to Rome because there wasn't much to do down there. I had a very, very short employment with one of my professors, but you know, I wasn't anything that would support me. I mean, so I was still getting money from my family to live. I'll go to Rome and see what's going on there. It was a little bit better so I could find. But I wanted to get away. That was something that somehow my mother had always hoped that my father would do when things were tough and he was not able to break through the barrier we talked about before. And I don't know why I got that thing but then I looked around and Germany was, I had been to Germany for two weeks on an exchange, a student exchange, short three years after the war ended. 34:36,860 Laura Mina Wow. 34:37,740 Mariano La Via I had been to, I knew England because, you know, it was a place for a lot of good things that happened, but England was wiped out. 34:49,540 Laura Mina Right. 34:49,900 Mariano La Via France was in a nightmare. 34:52,260 Laura Mina Right. 34:53,620 Mariano La Via So what was still semi-normal in Europe were the Scandinavian countries. Do you want to go there and learn another language and do something? My interest had developed by then. I wanted to do immunology somehow in some way or fashion. I decided I was going to stay in academia because I wasn't interested in going out and being confined to to practice in medicine and not be able to do some research and some teaching which was one of my major interests so that meant academia, you know. Maybe my father infected me. I don't know So I decided that I would try to go to the only place that was still reasonable to go to, the USA. 32:54,000 Laura Mina Why was that reasonable? 35:56,820 Mariano La Via Because they had, you know, they had what my impression for what I saw and for what I gathered by talking to people was that the problems, the United States were touched by the Second World War, but not to the extent that Europe was. I mean, there was no fighting in this country going on. I mean, the Germans tried to land somebody in Chicago, the submarine is there exhibited at the Museum of Science and Industry, and they threw some bombs over on the West Coast, I think. And that was it. 36:43,820 Laura Mina Oh, you mean in Pearl Harbor? 36:45,540 Mariano La Via And then, no, no, no, I'm talking about, and then of course, Pearl Harbor was the absolute disaster. Please. 36:55,060 Laura Mina So you directly experienced the physical devastation of the European continent and England. I mean, it sounds like, I mean, I lived through 9/11 and I remember going to, I'm a New Yorker. And so I remember seeing ground zero. But the idea that there was such a high level of destruction throughout that continent and you saw so much of it. 37:30,540 Mariano La Via You know, Messina was wiped out. Messina was bombed, don't worry, I just turned it off. 37:37,580 Laura Mina Thank you. 37:42,620 Mariano La Via Messina was bombed every day, three times a day, beginning in January, because they were trying to prevent the Germans from bringing in more material. So they were planning the invasion, which was supposed to be a tripartite thing, was supposed to be in the western corner of Sicily, which happened, south of Rome, which happened. And unfortunately, it was halted when they reached Monte Cassino. They had to destroy the monastery because the Germans were there and it was up high and they just couldn't do anything except to bomb them out of existence. And then all the mess that was happening in the north with the party's houses were-- 38:43,820 Laura Mina What a mess. 38:47,060 Mariano La Via I mean, I saw people that I knew in Urbino were there during that interim, when we went back from Rome. Friends of mine that I had had some contact with in the afternoon and were found dead the next morning, killed by the Germans because they were going to do something at night that was meant to be. 39:14,300 Laura Mina Yeah, yeah, covert. 39:20,420 Mariano La Via I will give you a very little thing. One of my classmates was a guy in medical school, was a guy that was a son of an Italian family in Boston. His father was a very staunch believer in the fact that the Italians had it all. And so he decided that his son would not go to school in this country. He would go back to school in Italy. He sent him back. The guy got caught by the beginning of the war, never came back. And so he ended up going to medical school there. The entire family came at graduation time they arrived with a big American car. Very hard to navigate the Italian streets, but they brought it. They toured and saw it and asked me to accompany them at one point. One of his sisters, one day we were talking and he said, "You know, it's really interesting. All the young people that I have gone out with in the United States are like children. You're all grown up." I looked at Adele, we went through a war. 40:41,680 Laura Mina That's true, yeah. 40:46,020 Mariano La Via That makes you grow up fast. 40:49,320 Laura Mina Yes. It gives you a very different set of life experiences. 40:53,860 Mariano La Via Yeah. 40:54,700 Laura Mina It becomes about survival and adaptation, and there's just, there's little else. It's Maslow's hierarchy, right? And so, yeah. 41:05,500 Mariano La Via And one of the things that when I came, finally, and we'll get back to that in a second because I can tell you this little vignette. It was interesting when I came, and this was a country of children, the parades, the graduational exercises, gaps and gowns and all sort of funny things. Come on, grow up. It's not a joke, it's life. But anyway, let's go back to where we were. I'm sorry that I keep… 41:49,160 Laura Mina Please, no, because the thing is, you know, your experiences, there's very few people… I think you might be the only person I've ever met that was in Italy during World War II. You know, my family, my great grandfather, actually a few of my great grandparents are from Italy, but they left before World War II. So hearing this, it's so powerful. And I think the vignettes are the things that make history. They're the things that are lost to the noise of time that really bring history to a life, to life and show how it was really lived rather than the generalizations that so many of us know. But you made a decision to come to the United States. You had been through-- 42:42,920 Mariano La Via Yeah, I mean, I made the decision because I needed to find out what's going on. There were no jobs in Italy either. So I needed to find out something. And I came and it was tough. I got in touch with these people at the University of Chicago through a group that I started working with that was doing some outreach programs with university, high school students and so on, they had retreats and things like that. So they said, "Can I talk about this?" And they said, "Yeah, we know somebody there at the University of Chicago. He's a member of our group who's working out there. Maybe he knows someone," because he was a physicist. I'm quite removed from what I was interested in. But he talked to a professor in the Department of Biochemistry who was Peruvian. And we had been doing some of the seminar work on the radiation damage. 43:59,180 Laura Mina Radiation damage from nuclear war? 44:02,740 Mariano La Via From? 44:03,740 Laura Mina The Hiroshima? 44:04,740 Mariano La Via Yeah, from isotopes, from nuclear bombs and so on. Those sorts of radiation damage would they count. So he put me in touch with this guy. And this guy said, "Yeah, I can talk to Bob Wiesler very well. He's a young assistant professor in the department of pathology and wanted to correspond with him. So I correspond with Bob Wiesler and Bob Wiesler said, "Yeah, sure. If you want to come for a year, that's fine. But we don't have any money. So you better find some money. And you better get a visa of some kind to come." So three years. 44:42,980 Laura Mina You were there for three years? 44:45,980 Mariano La Via Couldn't find any money. Couldn't find any money. I couldn't find any money. I applied for a visa. They turned me down. The secretary said, "Come back. Reapplied." He said, "Wait a year or so, reapplied." Reapplied. I remember going there and she said, it was just wrong. He said, "He just got back on vacation. Hopefully he's in a good mood. So she walked into the the door of the council came back smiling and she said you got it. Wow. Three month visa. Visitor visa. I had to demonstrate in writing with documentation that I would go back to Italy. There was no planning to come here and then stay Because they were trying to avoid having masses of people now emigrating with some kind of so anyway Go to Chicago and what do I do? I Had I put together some money borrow some money from my parents from God My parents didn't know what they gave. And seven days later I was in New York from Naples. It took me seven days from Naples to New York. Naples, Gibraltar, Portugal overnight, and then straight across to Halifax overnight in Halifax and then I remember my New Yorker cabin mates who said, "Oh, you have to stay up and see the lights in New York. They're so beautiful." So I stayed up all night seeing the lights on New York, but you stay there. You don't go in until the next morning because they had to clear us out. 47:07,180 Laura Mina Did you go through Ellis Island? 47:09,620 Mariano La Via not was after it was done, but it was still, you know, they, they, they, you went through and they checked all your documents and everything. 47:18,180 Laura Mina So do you remember coming through like the Verrazano Straits into Manhattan? Yeah. So you... 47:25,700 Mariano La Via Under the bridge. 47:26,780 Laura Mina Yeah. 47:27,780 Mariano La Via Yeah. I remember that very well. 47:30,060 Laura Mina It's a big, it's a big bridge. It's hard to forget, right? 47:32,580 Mariano La Via Oh, yeah. 47:33,860 Laura Mina So you came by sea. 47:37,740 Mariano La Via I don't think it was much in those days. I mean, my first two trips back were by sea because aviation was not really doing very well in those days. I mean, they were just beginning to do all, you know, Pan Am was the one, and TWA were the two figures, but they didn't have to manipulate. They had, you know, they were expensive, but the voyage by sea was short, was faster, and it took only five days, not seven, because it went straight. 48:12,660 Laura Mina Right. 48:13,660 Mariano La Via So with New York, Genoa, or New York Naples, that's it. 48:18,460 Laura Mina So you hit the shores of New York on a three-month visa. 48:22,420 Mariano La Via Yeah. 48:23,420 Laura Mina And then you went to Chicago from there? 48:27,060 Mariano La Via I had one of the people that was, that had helped me to get in touch with Dr. Barone and then in turn with Bob Wiesler, happened to be in New York for some reason. He told me, "If you had time to stay there a couple of days, I'll drive you back." I said, "Okay." So then he said, "But I have to stop in Boston. I'm in no hurry." 49:04,740 Laura Mina A little out of the way. 49:05,740 Mariano La Via I had a three-month visa, but I'm not as well because I don't know if it doesn't work out, because at that point I didn't know how long my money would last, and it's it from Chicago. There was no sign that they would help me to survive. So I said, "Well, since you're stopping in Boston, "I made," there was a guy in Boston that I had somehow found out was there, and somebody, I can't remember who said, "Mariano, if you ever get to Boston, "go talk with him, he might be able to talk to his boss." He was Italian. And I did go to see him, and you know what he did? He thought I didn't speak English very well. 49:58,280 Laura Mina He told you you didn't speak English very well? 50:00,480 Mariano La Via Right, so he talked to his boss in English, and he said, "So, you don't really want this guy. "He's nothing, he hasn’t done anything." 50:10,440 Laura Mina Huh, little did he know, what laid ahead. 50:13,760 Mariano La Via I hadn't done anything at that point, I agree. So maybe, but you know, you don't get, anyway. So that being the end, but I arrived in Chicago and so finally I went over and I said, you know, here I am, I don't have any money. So Bob Wiesler said, well, Mariano, I don't know. Let me talk to my chairman. So I talked to the chairman and he said, can you come back tomorrow for sure? So I came back tomorrow and she had me meet with Paul Cannon, who was the big nutritionist who had done a lot of research on nutrition for the Navy on some Navy contracts during the war. And he was very well known for that. 50:56,480 Laura Mina Come on in. Oh. Hi. Not finished yet? No, we're still chatting. Okay. I'll just go upstairs. 51:11,480 Mariano La Via Okay. Very good. Why in the world is my phone... Why won't my phone leave me alone? I cannot believe it. No, I turned it off. It keeps ringing. I don't want to answer, I don't want to answer. 51:26,980 Laura Mina Technology. 51:29,840 Mariano La Via Yeah, anyway, so to make a long story short, after two or three visits and so on and so forth, Dr. Cannon, who had discouraged me and he said, you know, this is, we're just coming out of the war, we don't have enough money, everything is this and then that, and we'll see what Dr. Wiesler can do. Okay, fine, thank you so much. So Bob Wiesler called me two days later, called me, they said that they had found some money. 52:03,200 Laura Mina Wow. 52:05,240 Mariano La Via So I can give you $200 a month and you'll have to pay social security and taxes. And I had a place to stay, which was a student thing. And I was paying $100 a month there. And getting some meals too. It wasn't very elegant, but it was okay. So, you know. 52:33,540 Laura Mina Well, cheap. 52:34,380 Mariano La Via It was a bed to sleep and-- 52:36,020 Laura Mina And you had been through World War II, so you had the adaptive ability to be able to tolerate that. 52:41,980 Mariano La Via Exactly. 52:43,340 Laura Mina So, you know, not to make light of it, but, you know, as you were saying, you knew that, you know, being under that duress, it forces us to be able to, or I can't speak to that experience, but I know that duress forces people to adapt, have to be flexible, have to live with the minimum, and that prepared you well for the experience of being an immigrant to the United States. 53:11,200 Mariano La Via I have a lot of vignettes that I can tell you about after we finish, maybe, so that you know how the-- that couple of years in Urbino in the interim, you know, until we could go back to Rome and then back to Messina, were spent. My mother used to send-- she found the truck driver because they were the only people who could go through because they had to go through the German lines. The Germans were north of us and the Allies were south. And they came- so if this truck driver could do that, she used to get a suitcase and send them meat and bread and things like that. Rome was starving. Because the Germans were taking everything. I remember reading about that at some point. The mayor in our town gave us 100 pounds of wheat to get it away from the Germans. 54:10,900 Laura Mina Wow. 54:11,900 Mariano La Via So I used— 54:12,900 Laura Mina Your family 100 pounds of wheat? 54:14,900 Mariano La Via Each family. 54:15,900 Laura Mina Wow. 54:16,900 Mariano La Via it, put it away because the Germans would take it. So I used to go down to the mill, have it milled, get the flour, make ten pounds of flour, make bread once a week for the family. 54:39,020 Laura Mina You made bread for your family? I bet you made very good bread. 54:44,380 Mariano La Via The lady next door, asked my mother, she said, "How come Mariano makes such good breads? Can you give me the recipe?" So I said, "Yeah, tell her that the recipe is very simple. I use, you know, you save the dough to which is the starter, okay?" And since I had biochemistry already, I used to add a little sugar to it because the yeast grew faster. And so the bread got flopier. Well, that's, but you know. So I told her, I said, "You know, this, the recipe." So she said, she tried and said, "Oh." 55:19,180 Laura Mina I bet you still make bread. Do you still make bread? 55:21,540 Mariano La Via No, I don't make bread anymore. I buy it. (laughing) 55:25,060 Laura Mina The conveniences. 55:26,060 Mariano La Via I cook, but I don't make bread. But anyway, you know, it's, yeah, it was-- 55:32,340 Laura Mina Forced adaptations. 55:36,940 Mariano La Via Well, you know, we were walking home one day after I'd been there for about a year, and they helped me to extend the visa so I could say and they could pay me a little money which was part of the whole thing. Bob Wiesler was living across the street from where I was and so we used, many times we walked together to go home. And I've gotten very close to him. He has a very wonderful family and the whole thing was a family. It was a great department. I mean, it's unbelievable. But he said, "You know, we like what you do." I said, "Thank you very much." He said, "Have you thought you might want to stay?" So I said, "I can't. I don't have a visa. That will allow me to." He said, "Well," he said, "you know, there are legal ways to do that. the important thing is you have to make a decision. So let me know. What would you do? It's a gift. 56:46,100 Laura Mina Right? And it sounded like your family supported you being here. It sounds like they wanted it. 56:51,540 Mariano La Via Yeah, my mother and my father were just, my mother always told me it's your life. And you had to do what you see as being the thing that will help you to live your life in the way that you want to live. 57:11,220 Laura Mina My father is very much like that. 57:13,940 Mariano La Via And my father never said anything. My father wrote it in his little room, smoked these big cigars, Italian cigars, Toscani, and wrote philosophy. 57:28,000 Laura Mina Your mom sounds like a very evolved person. 57:31,180 Mariano La Via My mother was incredible. My mother was just the best mother anybody could have. At the age of 13, when I went down to see my grandmother, she gave me the keys to the house. She said, "You're an adult. Here are the keys to the house." Wow. I don't know if my mom would have said that about me at I said, "I'll trust you. I know you won't do anything wrong." 57:55,620 Laura Mina Wow. So you really trusted me. She really believed in you. 57:58,620 Mariano La Via Yeah. She was really great. Anyway, that's my story. I don't know. What else do you want to know? What have I done for the Charleston Library Society? Nothing. 58:10,620 Laura Mina Well, I want to take you in a little bit of a loop for a second. So I know that you were in Chicago for about eight years, and then you were, right? 58:18,620 Mariano La Via Did my residency there and worked for three years on a very junior type of the appointment, which I was sort of, you know, so-so. Then I decided I met this medical student who kept disturbing my peace and we ended up getting married. I had to get away because Chicago was really, I had to cut the umbilical cord. And so I started looking for a job. Bob Wiesler was not very happy. He wanted me to stay, but he had nothing that he could offer me. It would be a career path. So I ended up, I interviewed three places, Rochester, Denver, and Chapel Hill. Chapel Hill didn't work out. Rochester, okay, I mean, the chairman there was really, really very, I mean, wonderful person, and I would have gone, but when I went to Denver, I was able to have lunch outside with the person that took me around, was an Italian, and so they asked an Italian guy, an Italian virologist to sort of be, shepherd me through. And he took me to lunch outside in January, with 70 degrees. I said, and the sun shining brightly. I said, you know, everything else being equal, pick the weather. In Rochester, I think I remember it, I came to pick up at the hotel. There was a little drizzle that was coming down. It was not drizzle, it was snow. And I said something, I said, "Well, Mariano, if you come here, you get to get used to this. This is practically every day we have two or three hours of this." So I compared them every day. Then I said, "Mm-mm." I mean, he kept writing to me. He really wanted me and he kept writing. And Bob Wiesler started asking me, If you want to come back, I still have a job for you. 01:00:41,660 Laura Mina That's about right. You catch your people's hearts, so I understand that. So you went to Colorado, you were there for, it looks like, eight years. 01:00:52,940 Mariano La Via You're like number eight, if you're like-- I had for eight years and had five children. 01:00:56,940 Laura Mina You had five years when you were living in Colorado? 01:00:58,940 Mariano La Via Five children. Eight years, yeah. My wife finished a residency, finished medical school because she hadn't graduated when we moved, finished medical school, finished the residency, and we -- and then my dream fell apart. 01:01:17,280 Laura Mina -Your dream fell apart? 01:01:19,280 Mariano La Via -The Republicans won the legislature. 01:01:23,320 Laura Mina -In Chicago? 01:01:24,960 Mariano La Via No, in Colorado. 01:01:26,620 Laura Mina -Sorry, Colorado, my apologies. 01:01:28,520 Mariano La Via -And so, first thing the governor did, he cut the budget for the university, including the medical school, the president of the university resigned on the spot and left. 01:01:42,000 Laura Mina Wow. 01:01:44,120 Mariano La Via The dean of the medical school, who was my idol, I had known him when I was in Chicago because he had come there to do a side visit for a big grant that we were applying for. And he, when I went to Denver to interview, He asked to have me come by his office. The deans don't do that. He did. And he told me, he said, "Mariano, we want to make this the Harvard of the West." So he lasted two years and then he went to Stanford. 01:02:18,900 Laura Mina That's kind of like the Harvard of the West. 01:02:23,940 Mariano La Via So my chairman lasted a couple more years, but then he ended up going back to New York where he had grown up. And then he ended up going to Chicago to be the dean of the University of Chicago Medical School. 01:02:37,580 Laura Mina Well, it comes back to Chicago. 01:02:42,860 Mariano La Via So the new chairman said, "Oh, I'll support you. I really think it. I like what you do, as far as work." This was in Chicago. I had gone to a meeting and he wanted to see me and he said, "I'm here. Let's talk." And so I just had done plenty of this, plenty of that. I will promote you. I'll raise your salary." So I went back to Denver and told my wife, I said, "You know, things look pretty good. We're going to stay here." Well, he came, started his job, interviewed everybody, and when he came to me, he said, "You know, I'm really not interested in what you're doing because I am an oncology person and I'm interested in tumors and tumor pathology and so on and so forth. Immunology, I don't know very much about it but you know, I know you know Frank Pixar, you know this and that, you know all these people. You know it's okay, you have tenure now and I cannot touch you. So, but I can't raise your salary and I have to cut your space, your research space. So I started looking around and I remember I had a one and a half hour conversation with Bob Wiesler because I always consulted him. And at the end of the thing he told me, he said, "Mariano, you can be a big fish in a small pond but a small fish in a big pond." I had an offer from the University of Pennsylvania. Great job, great school, great everything, immunology, they were really. But salary was less than I was making in Denver. 01:04:44,100 Laura Mina In Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania? 01:04:46,300 Mariano La Via And I told him, I said, "You know, I can't support my family." I said, "But you know, that's all I can tell you. That's all I can give you. That's what they allow me to pay you. I can't get any more money." So I hope you will come. So I ended up taking something else because, you know, when you have a family to support, I ended up taking something else, which was really my major mistake. Because this guy really sold me a scam. 01:05:20,460 Laura Mina And that's Bowman Gray? 01:05:22,460 Mariano La Via Right. 01:05:23,460 Laura Mina Is that what you say? 01:05:24,460 Mariano La Via He was doing everything, and I was going to help him set up the entire research wing of the department and then do my pathology work, of course, which was part of the whole thing and the teaching and so on. And after I had to buy the house, because we rented a house that was offered with an option to buy, I ended up having decided to buy it after we looked at everything and I told him, "I think so." I went to talk with him. I said, "Okay, when do we start?" I said, "When do we start what?" I said, "You told me all this." He said, "Mariano, I don't have any money." So I went to talk to the dean, and the dean said, "Mariano, I'm sorry. That's what the chairman says. I can't help you." So I let people know that I was available. Then three years later, through a series of circumstances, Emory brought me down. new chairman. They didn't have anybody that could do any immunology teaching to the students so he brought me down with an honorarium and travel expenses twice and then after the second offered me, said if you're interested I'd like to offer you a job. I'm setting up the department. I'm new. So I ended up getting there. So I went there for eight years and I would still be there except that I started thinking about retirement and after looking around I decided I liked Charleston and it was a good place to retire. So I quit looking. And I used to come from time to time. My friends had moved here. I had students moved here. And I liked Charleston. So I used to come for a variety of reasons. And then someone moved there whom I had known. and it knew a book I had co-edited with one of my Denver colleagues that was used widely for non-medical students teaching, and in some places also the supplement to medical school teaching. 01:08:05,820 Laura Mina What was it called? 01:08:07,820 Mariano La Via Principles of Pathobiology. 01:08:10,820 Laura Mina Light reading. Just kidding. Light reading. That's a joke. 01:08:16,820 Mariano La Via You can read it if you want to. 01:08:18,820 Laura Mina Actually I'm very curious. 01:08:20,820 Mariano La Via Actually I was trying to get your neighbors here to find, because I have only the third edition, and I cannot find the first and the second. It was my fault because they told me, the publisher said, If you want them let us know because we're you know, we're not selling much anymore. So we're not going to reprint it so went to through three editions and and and I neglected to do so I saw you know time passed and then now and they said that it would put but I've never been back to Said something to Polly. She said But I haven't been back. It's my fault. I keep—I've let things slide. But anyway, back to— 01:09:07,660 Laura Mina You're about at 1979, right? 01:09:11,780 Mariano La Via Yeah, I this guy when I came and I called him and I'll say how are you doing? You know he didn't move the air from From Medical College of Georgia and And You know with Through the this book and through other things and he had asked me to go lecture to some of his residents from time to time Atlanta come over to Athens and then So anyway, he called me and he said, "I've been here." And I called him and we talked over the phone. And I went back, was sitting in my office, my phone rang, and he said, "Mariano, this is Armand Glassman. I need you." He said, "Armand, I'm not moving. I'm past 50 and I made a resolution some time ago that I would not make another move after 50. So six months later I arrived here with a box of my special mice that was using for some of my experimental work that I could not put on the shipping van. I put them in my car and I called the guy after I arrived and he said, "Call me and we'll put them in the animal quarters." So I called him, I still remember, from the telephone on the corner, what used to be the Sears store downtown. 01:10:51,240 Laura Mina Was that up that way, by Calhoun? 01:10:52,240 Mariano La Via Yeah, the one over here, the one that used to be the old orphanage and then became— 01:11:01,240 Laura Mina Oh yeah, the Jenkins Orphanage. 01:11:02,240 Mariano La Via And then it became the Sears store and there was a phone on the corner there and I stopped the car and I picked up the phone and called him. I said, "I'm here." And he said, "Come over." I still remember I went to the, to the Holiday Inn, the Round Holiday Inn to spend the night there because I had to rent by miracle. I found an apartment three weekends I came and there was nothing to rent and I found a miracle. I found one wonderful apartment on Queen Street. 01:11:31,400 Laura Mina So right here? 01:11:33,480 Mariano La Via Yeah, right down across the across Meeting on this side. 01:11:42,520 Laura Mina Okay. 01:11:44,520 Mariano La Via And so I mean, but my furniture had to arrive and everything. I slept at the hotel for one night and then the lady said, "Look, I've got a cot. I'll give you a cot if you don't want to stay in the hotel." And she was so nice. And so that's what I did. 01:12:04,200 Laura Mina Where was your wife and children at that point in time? 01:12:09,360 Mariano La Via My wife and children at that point in time were in a small town on the state line between Wisconsin and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where she had transported her whole family when she sent somebody to my office at Emory University to serve me some papers. 01:12:41,480 Laura Mina So she served you papers, you divorced, and she moved to— 01:12:51,740 Mariano La Via She had a great job in—first of all, I don't know, the Atlanta move was really very bad because something was going on. I couldn't figure out what was going on. She took up with a young high school graduate that she brought down to work in her lab from someplace. Anyway, at the suggestion of the guy that she had hired to be the supervisor of the lab who knew this fellow. And said, "Well, you know, this guy, he's just finished high school two years ago and he doesn't have a job. I know he could come down. He can do some of the menial work like wash, glassware, do things like that." I was, I had to go to a lab, I mean, I had to start my job there. She just, the first thing, "Well, I'm not ready to move." That's why after we sold the house and this and that. 01:14:02,480 Laura Mina So she didn't come to Atlanta with you or she did? 01:14:06,360 Mariano La Via She ended up coming finally, yeah, about a year later. And got a great job at Piedmont Hospital. 01:14:14,280 Laura Mina In Atlanta? 01:14:15,280 Mariano La Via Yeah. 01:14:16,280 Laura Mina And were you still married at that time? 01:14:18,280 Mariano La Via Yeah. We were married at that time. But she got this guy to come to Atlanta. And then after I was served those papers, she decided, I don't know why, that she didn't want to stay in Atlanta. Quit the job. They got married and moved to this little town. And that ended up very badly because this guy didn't do anything. He kept-she told me, I remember, when we finally started talking, I got a little bit more than we had for a long time. She said, "You know, he used to go out and buy me a present for my birthday and charge it to my credit card." 01:15:06,220 Laura Mina Oh. 01:15:07,220 Mariano La Via Oh. 01:15:08,220 Laura Mina Mm-hmm. 01:15:09,220 Mariano La Via Not only that, but he sued her for support for-- 01:15:14,260 Laura Mina The children? 01:15:16,260 Mariano La Via Yeah. And won. 01:15:18,260 Laura Mina That's so strange. 01:15:21,260 Mariano La Via In the area that part of the country, evidently, they believed that women and men had equal rights. He won. She had supported me for four years because he claimed that he had stopped his studies and hadn't been able to go to college because he was supposed to stay home and watch the children while she was going to work. 01:15:46,940 Laura Mina Well, that must have been really hard for you to not be around your children. 01:15:55,580 Mariano La Via Yeah, I mean, I couldn't go there. I mean, there was almost over a thousand miles away from Atlanta. So I had to fly, take three flights, because I flew to Chicago. Chicago there was a little plane, but clearly Charleston, Atlanta, then to Chicago, then a little plane that was going to that little airport, one of the little-- 01:16:24,940 Laura Mina Propeller planes. 01:16:25,940 Mariano La Via Propeller planes. And, you know, and I could do it. I could do it at Christmas time. I could do it sometime during the summer, but I couldn't do it just anytime I wanted to. Yeah, I didn't spend a lot of time with my children. But, that’s life. 01:16:43,980 Laura Mina That's a big loss. But it sounds like you just kept moving. And you, so you lived in Charleston. You lived at this apartment on Queen Street. And were a professor at MUSC. And it looks like from 1979 to 1991. So it sounds like you didn't retire right away. 01:17:09,060 Mariano La Via I retired in '91 and then I stayed on as an emeritus professor for six more years because I wanted to continue doing some research that I was doing on the effect of stress on immune response and disease. 01:17:29,460 Laura Mina So you, how did, so when you were at, Over the years, you began with getting a medical degree and then you moved into the deeper research aspect of medicine and you followed that trajectory and became an immunologist, right? So what were the different, kind of briefly, What were the different kind of strands of your study, and where did you end up? 01:18:07,500 Mariano La Via Okay, my, what I was, what Bob Wiesler told me, he said, "Mariano, I don't want you to make any decision, until you talk to the three people in the department that are doing some serious research." One was Earl Bendit, who ended up going to be the chairman of the department at the University of Washington, up in the Northwest. And the other one was Bob Briesler, who was doing some immunological work, but his primary interest was in atherosclerosis and the mechanism of fat deposition and arteries and so on and so forth. And he had a big huge program project that went on for years until he got a little losing the mind and then he had to sort of quit working. And then the other one was a surgical pathologist, Paul, I can't even think of his last name, was doing some stuff, tissue, tumor pathology and so on. I talked to all three of them and then I told them, you know, my major interest which developed in medical school is immunology and I know that the immunologist is going to become very important in medicine. I can see it after, I graduated and immunology started growing because when I graduated, immunology was about this. And now we're dealing about molecular immunology. 01:20:04,280 Laura Mina So you were learning early on that diving into the body’s ability to fight sickness was something you wanted to pursue. And so you pursued it and it brought you to the front lines of the HIV pandemic here in Charleston. 01:20:22,080 Mariano La Via And it's a very good connection. 01:20:25,000 Laura Mina Right? 01:20:26,000 Mariano La Via Not very happy. Very good. 01:20:28,080 Laura Mina It's not a happy connection, but it happened and it was necessary. So it was the direction of your field. And that work of immunologists is I just remember so well, you know, I grew up like, you know, my high school years were during HIV. I was in New York. I was very, very influenced by what I was hearing about it and the discussion of it being this virus that hit the immune system so very hard and it created kind of like a hopeless situation for people. 01:21:09,640 Mariano La Via That's exactly the point of the whole thing was that this was something that really, really interfered with people's lives. 01:21:30,000 Laura Mina And like it was petrifying. Mariano La Via And it was, I still remember the conference in New York, the New York Academy of Science, and they were debating whether it was a bacterial infection, whether it was a viral infection, what it was. I mean, you know, for three days. And the emotional component for anybody who was in any way touching this disease from the outside. I mean, you know, June gives me a hard time. He says, "Well, you know, this gay guy said you come to this and that." And I told her, I said, you know, I had a very, I developed a close friendship with a guy in Atlanta who was one of the old-fashioned gays He and his partner have been together for 30 years and he used a joke and he said, "You know, I guess they're in Atlanta that looks like they're putting something in the water because everybody comes here." 01:22:42,520 Laura Mina Yeah, well I think there's a safe place for populations. 01:22:49,000 Mariano La Via And he was, I mean, I still remember. And one day he called me and said, "You want to go meet my parents?" I said, "Yeah, I'd love to." He was from one of the Louisiana bayous, and he had moved to Charlotte to Atlanta, and he was working for the phone company, was an engineer. I said, "Yeah, let's go." So he borrowed his pink Cadillac from his partner. We drove the pink Cadillac to the bayous country on Louisiana. 01:23:21,960 Laura Mina That sounds like an adventure. I can't even imagine. 01:23:25,880 Mariano La Via And so June keeps telling me, "Wow, all these contacts, come on, what is it? Did they ever make a pass at you?" I said, "No, June, they didn't." And it's so funny. 01:23:38,480 Laura Mina It is. It's a beautiful thing and it's, you know, I grew up very close to it. I grew up in a town that was very close to Fire Island. And, you know, it was, but, you know, I grew up during the AIDS pandemic. and I, or epidemic, and it was the messaging in high school and throughout my early adult years was just that this was a death sentence for people. So when you were doing the work around this, what did that look like and what were some of the discoveries you made? Cause it was very powerful science at that time. 01:24:18,200 Mariano La Via Yeah, well, my major involvement was to work with infectious disease people to provide laboratory support. Okay, number one, because I developed a false-automatory laboratory at the medical university, which is still there and it's grown and is already on this third director now because Sally Self, whom I trained and who took my job, retired, and this guy is now here. I don't know, I've never met him, so. But that's what we did. Then there was clearly my association with two or three other people that had what was the only thing with the week or two, some kind of way of devising mechanisms to control this thing and trying all sorts of things. 01:25:24,900 Laura Mina Like antiviral? 01:25:27,900 Mariano La Via And that was the hard part, devising whatever. We didn't know. There was nothing at the beginning, nothing. 01:25:36,900 Laura Mina There's no way to interrupt the infection. 01:25:38,900 Mariano La Via Right. You shut up clinical studies and you try things. I said, "Remember, I was saying, "we ended up going back to NIH." She left here at one point. I was very upset because we had been working on one of these clinical studies, which ended up in nothing because it didn't seem to make much difference between the ones we were treating and the ones we were not treating. This kind of stuff. But I mean, and that really is not a very pleasant thing to look at because these guys and these girls were dying right and left. And then you get interested and you say, "Well, how can we offer some support?" And I helped with three or four or five other people were involved because of their belonging to the gay community, trying to devise how can we support the people in some ways. So this thing which has changed name three times was set up and still going, they've grown, they've been able to attract support and so on, including my little track every year. And so we did everything we could, and that was not the research. My research veered a little bit because the problem was a problem that was slowly solved by the pharmaceutical companies that were able to find things that would work. 01:27:57,200 Laura Mina It might intervene in some way. 01:28:00,520 Mariano La Via Exactly. And now, of course, now it's become not a disease that you die of, it's a disease that you manage. There is no vaccine and there is no way the vaccine can be made. It's been tried and it just doesn't work. 01:28:14,480 Laura Mina But you watched it come around a corner and it took a long time to get around the corner and science tried perpetually to find a reason for its existence, a way to stop it, and then finally pharmaceuticals caught up and were able to start intervening like antiviral medications. And I remember those medications hitting the market and being prohibitively expensive. 01:28:38,920 Mariano La Via Oh yeah, I mean, not only that, but I mean, some of these guys told me, you know, I have to take 10 pills every day. Yeah, I was like, "Are you kidding?" I said, "No, I have to take 10 pills every day." But not anymore. 01:28:51,040 Laura Mina Right. 01:28:52,040 Mariano La Via Yeah. And incidentally, the thing that has happened is that the antiviral, which is the major antiviral used for HIV control is now in combination with another antiviral, the one that is used for COVID. 01:29:10,880 Laura Mina No kidding. It's amazing how science builds on its own. 01:29:13,880 Mariano La Via It's a combination of these two antivirals. The one that existed and the one that was, well, what they did, they tried it and it seemed to do something in COVID. So they said, well, let's see if we can make something similar, But not the same. And see how the combination works. And it did. 01:29:30,880 Laura Mina And it did. 01:29:31,880 Mariano La Via Yeah. I had COVID because my wife's younger daughter who is a Halloween nut had a little party at her house and of the 12 people she invited, six got COVID including June and me. And her dad and her stepmother. So anyway. To make a long story short, you know, Paxlovid, five days. 01:29:57,240 Laura Mina Yeah. 01:29:59,360 Mariano La Via And you know, and it's a miracle drug. 01:30:01,560 Laura Mina Yes. So, I mean, you've now lived through the AIDS epidemic and now you've lived through the COVID pandemic. You've seen these drugs that have intervened. I mean, that's humongous, like, feat of human accomplishment. And to have been on the sidelines of this, essentially watching it, is pretty amazing. So I know that we've been speaking for a while, so I know that you're probably ready to wrap up. And so I'm just gonna bring you to one last thing before we wrap up. 01:30:36,640 Mariano La Via This must be the-- 01:30:37,480 Laura Mina Tell me about June, and tell me about how you met, and what your life, what’s happened in your life since that happened, and when you met as well. 01:30:52,480 Mariano La Via HIV brought us together. 01:30:54,680 Laura Mina No kidding. Well that's a powerful thing. So tell me about that. 01:31:02,680 Mariano La Via I had some very tough years between some very tough years between my divorce and my couple of adventures. You know, I think in Italy there is a saying that are called a nail chasing a nail. 01:31:34,280 Laura Mina A nail chasing a nail? 01:31:36,280 Mariano La Via Yeah. (speaking in foreign language) A nail will chase an nail. So, you know, the nail is a bit upset and you try to find another aide and it doesn't work. So anyway, one of my colleagues who was in the Department of Family Medicine and did a lot of counseling and so on. Decided to have a two-day meeting entitled A Community Reaction to AIDS. So he had a speaker that came the first night to talk about the HIV from what was known at that time. And then the next day, a series of small meetings, each of which will be led by two people, a physician and a non-physician. So he asked me if I would, said, "Sure." He gave me, as in opposition, the guy who was the, whatever, you call it, administrator of, the head honcho of the Roper Hospital. Well, so I went there. The night before, there was this talk, and then there was a little party in the ballroom at the Francis Marion Hotel. I stayed behind after the talk ended to talk to some people. So when I arrived back at the party, it was, you know, the party was in full swing and so on. And I saw one of the nurses that was part of our small group that met weekly to discuss, you know, progress and things that could be done and so on and so forth and how to deal with the health department that wanted this report that is an infectious disease thing that we were totally opposed to do at that time anyway because that may be later, but not right now. But anyway, so this nurse was there and she was talking to this woman. I looked at this woman and I saw this wonderful, nice. And I said, oh boo, over there. I said, I got to meet this woman. I don't know who she is. So I went over there and I said, "Hi, Pat, how are you?" Like the nurse. And she said, "Fine, were you here?" I said, "Yeah, I was here." I said, "I just got delayed." So she said, "I want you to meet June." So she introduced me to June and then after we talked about 10 minutes, she said she saw somebody she wanted to talk to her, she says, I need to go over there and talk to this guy. Would you forgive me? I said, sure, don't worry. So then June started telling about also things about herself and the fact that she lived with her father who was Irish and from Belfast and had come here and married here And had two daughters. She told me all sort of things. 01:35:27,780 Laura Mina You’re easy to talk to, so I'm not surprised. 01:35:31,120 Mariano La Via Yeah, so I said, you know, I'd really like to meet this guy. He sounds like a little bit like my father. 01:35:37,520 Laura Mina Belfast was a difficult place. 01:35:39,320 Mariano La Via She said, oh yeah, sure. Well, this was February of 1989. 01:35:45,220 Laura Mina Wow, okay. 01:35:46,940 Mariano La Via So I never saw her very much because she was busy wandering around the hospital, social workers move a lot. And I really wanted to get to know her a little bit better. But every time I called her phone, the phone that was listed, their department would answer and say, "Why don't you page her?" Well I wouldn't go to page her because I don't want to disturb somebody doing so. There was no reason for me to page her. So I said, so finally I discovered where she was. She was at a little office and I decided to do one thing. My good friend and one of the people who had been involved in that little meeting when We set up the support group for the HIV, the AIDS HIV people. Verner Gross, who had a flower shop downtown. I called him and said, "Verner, I want you to make one of those beautiful bouquet that you make and send it to this place. And don't put anything in it, just send it." Okay, Mariano, will do. Incidentally, he lived with me for a year because he was completely wiped out by the hurricane. And then very scandalous because he was gay. I thought so. I don't know what people thought, but it doesn't bother me. I've got broad shoulders and, you know, as I keep saying, no matter what you do, they’ll think something. So, all right. She claims that she knew who sent that, but how do I find out? I don't know. Anyway, all her colleagues were wondering, "Oh, what's going on?" So anyway, what I had found out during that conversation the first night is that her, she had remarried and her husband died of some liver problem, I don't know exactly what, only nine months before I met her. So I just respected her, her grieving. Didn't push her to do anything. And so finally one day I told her, she was going to a meeting and some talk that I wanted to hear also. So I said, well, I really want to hear that talk too. And the talk ended, it was about dinner time, you know, 7.30, 8 o'clock. I said, "Would you like to-can I take you to dinner? You're not going to go home and cook at this time." I said, "Listen to him," or he never cooks. I know, she survived anyway. So anyway, I-she said, "Oh, yeah, yeah." Well, I said, "Well, my car is outside." I said, "No, no, no, I'll drive myself." All right. We went to that little restaurant that it's gone, it's been gone for a long time. It was a restaurant. They also sold Italian things. What's the name of this lady that had it? We still see her all the time and she's still doing catering now. But she quit the restaurant business. It didn't work for her and she didn't want to devote so much time. And so she decided to do catering and she does catering and does very well. She very, very good cook. But I can't remember her name. That the restaurant was called, was called, what's her name? So that was it. And then... I like emeralds. 01:40:18,780 Laura Mina Emeralds are beautiful. 01:40:21,780 Mariano La Via Yeah. I do. I liked them forever. In Atlanta, it was a shop that sold nothing but emeralds emeralds in one of the shopping centers. I used to go there and look around and got to know emeralds pretty well. When I wanted to give her something, and I said, "Well, why not an emerald?" No. She had blue eyes, emeralds are, you know, blue, green, whatever, so. So I saw one in a window of a place in Rome that I used to walk by, and so I walked in, and the guy said, "What would you like?" I said, "Well, I'd like for you to make a ring for me." for example, and not for myself. So we talked and so, and I kept going back to this one. He kept saying this and that and then and then. So finally at the end of the conversation he said, "You know emeralds, don't you?" He said, "A little bit, not as much as you do because you're the professional." Well, so you picked a very good one. Thank you. So I decided to invite her to dinner and had Verner make a thing of white tulips, because I discovered that she likes white tulips, and put the thing in there and go to my favorite restaurant and said Verner. And go ahead, my favorite table is always the one in the corner there and deliver it there, and then you know so that worked out. Except that she I went there and I got a drink in the bar and sat down and waited and Jiri Jilich was at that time my favorite restaurant I'm sorry that he ended up… 01:42:12,500 Laura Mina What was it called? 01:42:16,500 Mariano La Via Jiri Jilich was the name of the guy. The restaurant was called Jelix. 01:42:20,500 Laura Mina Jilich, okay. 01:42:21,500 Mariano La Via Yeah. And he came over and said, "Dr. La Via, "there's somebody on the phone for you." 01:42:29,580 Laura Mina Really? 01:42:31,320 Mariano La Via I stepped down. I've been there for an hour and a half. And she said, "Oh, I'm sorry, I'm just kind of "a little late, you know, I was delayed at work and so on. "I'll be there quickly." She showed up about 25 minutes later. 01:42:45,200 Laura Mina Always waiting for women. 01:42:48,400 Mariano La Via So we went, sat down at the table, and she looked at these things. Oh, these flowers are so beautiful. So I think she looked further and found these things. Oh my goodness, what is this? So anyway, there was a present. 01:43:03,160 Laura Mina Did you get engaged right then and there? 01:43:06,360 Mariano La Via No, no. I didn't want to disturb her grieving. I mean, she was still, And she was also concerned by the fact that she discovered I was 15 years older than she is, and I was here. So she said, "I'll have to wait until I'm 60.” I had to wait three years. 01:43:33,840 Laura Mina You're really good at just sticking it out. 01:43:38,440 Mariano La Via What was I gonna do? 01:43:39,480 Laura Mina I don't know, but I mean, I'm just hearing a theme of that. I'm hearing a theme of that with your dad. Yes, and I come, my, my, my interlude was something I'm not very proud of because I did also crazy things and I hurt a lot of people in the process and, and that's the way life goes. So I thought I discovered the famous thing that really is the thing. So. 01:44:19,680 Laura Mina What's the thing? 01:44:22,680 Mariano La Via Whatever you want to call it. The important thing. 01:44:27,760 Laura Mina What is the important thing to you? 01:44:32,760 Mariano La Via Somebody who whom I can love not By using the word love as it's common interpreted, but they're using it in its true sense Because love true love is spelled W-O-R-K 01:44:59,720 Laura Mina To you, that's what love is? 01:45:01,720 Mariano La Via To anybody who believes in true love. 01:45:05,380 Laura Mina It's work. 01:45:08,880 Mariano La Via Yep, takes a lot of effort. It really does. It's not something that comes. I discovered it by all my little escapades and so on and so forth. 01:45:20,600 Laura Mina I think you're right about that. Yep. I think you're right about that. And you know what? That's the perfect place to end. Imparting your wisdom about love, it is work. Brilliant. 01:45:41,720 Mariano La Via No, I'm the son of my father. My father taught me a lot. My father didn't talk very much. But my father showed. 01:45:54,520 Laura Mina Right. Yeah, well we can say as much as we want, but we have to deliver right yeah? Yeah, well, thank you so much What a treat we're really lucky and when the community's been really lucky to have you and You just you bring so much to the library society, but you just bring some you brought so much to Charleston And I'm grateful that you're here. Thank you 01:46:26,480 Mariano La Via Thank you. 01:46:28,000 Laura Mina Is there anything else you want to add at all? 01:46:31,000 Mariano La Via I love you. 01:46:32,000 Laura Mina Oh, I love you, too 01:46:33,420 Mariano La Via Thank you really Laura Mina This has been my pleasure. I've been looking forward to it for a very long time. Yeah, I think I talked to you about this like two years ago Long time Mariano La Via Yes I remember 01:46:53,380 Laura Mina Yep, I remember you're very special person So we've left June to wait for you this time we'll have to give her an emerald ring 01:47:07,060 Mariano La Via Sorry, no, she’ll survived 01:47:11,620 Laura Mina [LAUGHTER] Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Dr. Mariano La Via (interviewed by Laura Mina on September 15, 2023) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource La Via, Mariano Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-09-15 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Mina, Laura Cox, Danielle Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource WAV Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context MarianoLaVia_OralHistory_20230915 Description An account of the resource Mariano La Via was born in Rome in 1926. La Via was a young man living in Italy during World War II and describes those harrowing times, losing friends, and then arriving in New York by sea, and seeing the Brooklyn Bridge. An immunologist, Dr. La Via moved to Charleston in 1979 to work at MUSC in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine. His career focus includes time spent at the forefront studying and fighting the AIDS epidemic in Atlanta and Charleston during the 1980s. cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/0c5e3eafd840adcc53f9b9161ba2473d.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=tsc9JgRFbovMDiNPDEPcOnGTHPNOyUXoDNbdWt43lutJlY6g4Qq8okY%7EfxlnbFAeC%7EaHIi6UTHJpBK%7EPTnaiyCjsFDX98QIYznR23jKL7ZhtKu7RCTTvdsvjWW34Unw3KLBJfcX7fsd%7E5JJp7BOwENLPC0SajOg1kqZkkRSZg3sD3Aih9DWmY2F3B1DybhtM%7EsNxOrFJLG%7EkI2Ytmc4mDeEbylY4SBKPuEUxnAEUOjbVHJX0nMXCs9v0yoV7cMb%7ED7k49eLnPIbdIX28pGXeWhjRc7StI08HhqI96LgKHcLRYSO-gqarXu3bDGpISKY8bQNjJVKKcySTmqRSB-6zIw__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM d19a0d8b9c4a4bc70bf05341cbdaff6e Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 23:39/32.3MB Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 0:00:00 Elsa McDowell Today is August 17th, 2023, and I Elsa McDowell have the great pleasure of interviewing Ann Boatwright Igoe. Welcome, Ann. 0:00:11 Ann Igoe Thank you. 0:00:14 Elsa McDowell As a longtime newspaper writer, I won't bury the lead. Ann, you have been associated with the Charleston Library Society for years as a member. But in 2019, you made a gift that is considered the library society's crown jewel, and we are sitting in it. Would you tell us about the Shakespeare Library? 0:00:34 Ann Igoe Well, first of all, I really can't take credit for much because it was totally Skipper Igoe's collection. 0:00:43 Elsa McDowell Skipper being your late husband. 0:00:45 Ann Igoe Yes, my husband. And he made many trips to England to collect books and paintings of the Shakespearean era. So I just went along with everything, but it's totally his collection. And it's too bad that he was not able to be here for the actual celebration of giving it to the library. But that's the way it goes. 0:01:18 Elsa McDowell But it was your decision to, he didn't leave instructions for where this collection would be stored or provided. And you made that decision. You and your family. 0:01:31 Ann Igoe Yes, I did. He did come to the Library society and looked around and he went to the College of Charleston and looked around. And then he became disabled, and before it was actually to be given. So it was up to me to place it. And one thing that I had absolutely in mind was I wanted it to be in South Carolina. And then I started wanting it to be in Charleston, SC. And the big reason why is because when I was young I was, I was... I wanted to be an artist and I grew up in a very small town without any exposure to art, and I think so many people in the South would not be able to travel to New York or Chicago to view real things, not televised things, but real objects. So I wanted it to be in the, in South Carolina so that people could have access to the real objects and see the real paintings. And that's the reason. Well, I thought about different places and my children thought about different places and they gave up. And so I finally decided that the library society would do so much for the collection, and they have. They have. They have made a delightful room and I'm so pleased with the way all of the objects in the collection have been presented and maintained and made safe and open for anyone to come and look at. 0:03:22 Elsa McDowell It is extraordinary and it's, it's you do. Being in the presence of the actual paintings is far different from seeing it in the pages of a book, but if you want to see the books, you've got that here too, and you've got furniture, Elizabethan pieces in specific. Is that correct? 0:03:46 Ann Igoe Yes. He did collect furniture of the period. 0:03:50 Elsa McDowell And, and the volumes that are here, there are the complete collection of, of Shakespeare comedies, histories, and tragedies. Is that correct? 0:04:04 Ann Igoe Yes, yes, and and he has the a couple of folios which are very early. And the Bible, which was used by Shakespeare. He has that in the collection. Not that, I don't think it was the actual Bible, but the edition, I think. The Geneva Bible 0:04:24 Elsa McDowell But that's still pretty old Bible to get your hands on for sure. 0:04:31 Ann Igoe It was an original Geneva Bible Shakespeare used as a reference. 0:04:41 Elsa McDowell Wonderful, and I gather that scholars and other people come from all over the South to be, to do research here or just to be inspired in this... 0:04:51 Ann Igoe This if they were interested in Shakespeare in this area, this is the place to come, the Charleston Library Society. 0:05:02 Elsa McDowell Well, it is an extraordinary collection and an extraordinary gift. But, so you grew up in Darlington, is that right? 0:05:13 Ann Igoe Yes. And actually I was born on a farm in Darlington County, but I spent my teenage years in Darlington. 0:05:23 Elsa McDowell And then went to. Not one, not two, but three colleges, none of them in Charleston. But but. But you did have connections to Charleston. Your mother was from here. 0:05:35 Ann Igoe Yes my mother was from here and I heard a lot about it as all Charlestonians are very vocal about that connection to Charleston. 0:05:45 Elsa McDowell Absolutely, when people die and go to a better place, they're not talking about heaven, they're talking about going to Charleston. So did you visit family as a child? 0:05:56 Ann Igoe Very much, yes. 0:05:57 Elsa McDowell Did you ever come to the library society as a child? Do you know? 0:06:00 Ann Igoe Now I don't remember if I came. I don't think so. But I came early on. 0:06:07 Elsa McDowell What, I read something about your, maybe your first encounters with the library would, might have been when you were dating Skipper. Is that right? 0:06:18 Ann Igoe Yes, absolutely. And yes, I guess he did bring me here. John Doyle had a poetry group at the library and we came to that because he also wrote poetry. 0:06:35 Elsa McDowell John Doyle being the very well known Charleston artist who is long gone. So you always had an affinity with artists and people in the arts I guess then. 0:06:49 Ann Igoe Yeah, I have actually. 0:06:54 Elsa McDowell But dance was what you'd studied in college and what you worked in after graduating. Is that right? 0:07:02 Ann Igoe That is right, yes. Modern dance, modern dance. And I studied with Martha Graham and Jose Limon and some of the great dancers. 0:07:13 Elsa McDowell Was that at Santa Barbara? 0:07:16 Ann Igoe No, it was in Connecticut because the dancers took their vacation and spent it in Connecticut, Connecticut College. So that's where it was held. 0:07:30 Elsa McDowell Well, did you aspire to dance professionally or to teach? Or was it just something you loved doing? 0:07:38 Ann Igoe Actually I wanted to be an actress, but my boyfriend at the time encouraged me to study dance for very various reasons. 0:07:53 Elsa McDowell Well, I'm glad he's your former boyfriend. What did he know? 0:07:59 Ann Igoe He knew a lot, so. 0:08:08 Elsa McDowell Your mother was Rose Simmons Boatwright, who lived in Charleston and then your father was William Hurt Boatwright. And, but you mentioned knowing or, when you were talking about memories of the library society about Minnie Pringle Haigh. Minnie Pringle Haigh. 0:08:31 Ann Igoe Oh, she was a delightful woman, yes. 0:08:33 Elsa McDowell She was the director of the Library Society? 0:08:35 Ann Igoe I don't know. She was always here. And so we always chatted when I came here. But I don't know what her actual position was at the library. 0:08:48 Elsa McDowell What can, what can you tell me about her? 0:08:50 Ann Igoe I can tell you that she had an amazing vocabulary. And her daughter, Garden Frampton, anytime we needed a word, we would call Minnie Haigh and she would explain the word to us. 0:09:05 Elsa McDowell Lovely. Wonderful. 0:09:07 Ann Igoe And we would have a lot of laughs too. 0:09:11 Elsa McDowell Well, so instead of being an actress, you were, pursued dance and did what very well. Did you dance professionally or? I know you taught. 0:09:27 Ann Igoe Just a little bit. I danced here in Charleston for, I guess that would be professionally with Stanley’s son Parker. 0:09:37 Elsa McDowell Yeah, I used to keep his picture in my sock drawer because I didn't want people to know I had a big crush on him when I was four. Sorry it's not about me. So, but you also mentioned the more recent changes in the library society under the direction of Anne Cleveland. 0:10:03 Ann Igoe Yes, she did an amazing job of making it a vital and delightful and very intellectual, along with great fun to come to the library. Made it a great cultural place with great speakers coming here to give lectures. And a few parties too. 0:10:27 Elsa McDowell And music. 0:10:30 Ann Igoe A lot of music. 0:10:33 Elsa McDowell You know, I think it's it's like a renaissance. I think of the library society, and now she is passed the torch to Laura Pelzer, who is doing good things herself. So who knows what will come next? But I see the library society and the City of Charleston being both institutions that really draw significantly on their past and who they were and where they came from. And, but building on it and enlarging upon it and celebrating it in a, in a way that suits the present, is that fair to say? 0:11:18 Ann Igoe Oh yeah. Oh yes, it certainly builds from the past and it has. Ancient books and that's that in the controlled library part. And it is building towards the future too. 0:11:35 Elsa McDowell Well, I think for it it had some wonderful years where the people who loved it came here steadfastly, they loved to come in and read the magazines and check out the books. But I do think the appeal has broadened considerably and the... 0:11:53 Ann Igoe The membership since Anne Cleveland took over has increased amazingly. 0:12:00 Elsa McDowell And it is just a fun place to come. You're right. You said it well. 0:12:04 Ann Igoe It is always cool in the summer and warm in the winter. 0:12:08 Elsa McDowell What more do you need? So what do you think it will look like in 25 years? What could they possibly be doing in 25 years that they're not doing now? 0:12:25 Ann Igoe Good Lord. I don't know what's going to happen in 25 years because the last 25 years have been horrific and the library doesn't have much territory to expand. Parking, I think, is its main problem. It is difficult to park in this area. But I think it will continue to grow as more and more young people find out about how wonderful it is. 0:12:56 Elsa McDowell Were you a great reader as...? 0:12:59 Ann Igoe I was a great reader, but a very slow reader, so I had to research actually before I read anything. I had to know that it would give me something and I wouldn't just be reading, spending my time reading for pleasure. Actually I did a lot of reading for knowledge. 0:13:23 Elsa McDowell And, and you're painting now. You have a studio in your new residence, James Island, and, but you've just recently moved, so I wouldn't be surprised if you haven't picked up a brush in a while. 0:13:39 Ann Igoe It's been a long time. 0:13:41 Elsa McDowell But promise me you will. 0:13:45 Ann Igoe Okay. Like I'm going to do everything else. 0:13:50 Elsa McDowell So tell me how your art has progressed. What did you, what kinds of art did you do early on, and take me through the history of your? 0:13:59 Ann Igoe Well, I've never really had any actual training. Like a school or anything. But I've always drawn as a hobby as a child, and then actually I took painting lessons from Ray Goodbred. And when I moved to California for about 20 years, I wrote an independent study out at the University of California at Santa Barbara because they had a large press and I began to make prints. That's my favorite medium. 0:14:38 Elsa McDowell But it's also a very challenging one, isn't it? 0:14:41 Ann Igoe It is very challenging, yes. 0:14:44 Elsa McDowell But watercolors, also oils, any pastels? All of the above? 0:14:49 Ann Igoe I really am a Jack of many trades, I must admit, and, and accomplished in actually none of them. But it's been a lot of fun doing all sorts of things. If I had a, if I had been able to, I wish I had concentrated in one field because I really am just a Jack. 0:15:15 Elsa McDowell I think you've got a lot of fans who like you just the way you are, so that's OK. Now you also have two children. 0:15:22 Ann Igoe Yes, I have a son and a daughter. And two grandchildren. 0:15:28 Elsa McDowell Where are they and what are their names? 0:15:30 Ann Igoe My daughter is here. She is, Ann Bacot Daughtridge married to Belk Daughtridge and my son lives in Virginia. He is actually, he's Harold Eustace Igoe, III. But his name is Sam. And he is a teacher. 0:15:51 Elsa McDowell Are they? Did they inherit any of the Shakespeare passion? 0:15:56 Ann Igoe My son does. Yes. My daughter grew a little tired of it because it did dominate our family. 0:16:07 Elsa McDowell But she's a great reader, I know, and is a real scholar. And I have heard her present papers before, when they were very well done. So she gets that from you, I guess. 0:16:23 Ann Igoe No, she's very much like her father, actually. My son is more like me. 0:16:31 Elsa McDowell Either way, I like what I know. So what have we not talked about that is the essence of you? 0:16:40 Ann Igoe Well, I really don't want to spend all the time on me because it is Skipper’s collection. 0:16:46 Elsa McDowell Would do tell us something about him? Then if you would tell us how he developed this passion for Shakespeare. 0:16:53 Ann Igoe I think he was. He he got interested in Shakespeare, I think at Gaud school and then at Episcopal High School, he was, got very interested. And then we both began to just swim upstream for a few years and have children. And then it became an obsession with him. So it was Shakespeare he memorized a lot of the quotes from Shakespeare and all the conversations at the dinner table were about Shakespeare, and he began to go to England and collect first editions of very great books and then began to collect the paintings. I really, I can say that I had nothing to do with buying or collecting any of the works. He chose them all and he's totally responsible for this collection. The only thing I'm responsible for is placing, placing it at the Charleston Library Society. 0:17:58 Elsa McDowell Well, both, both are terrific things that occurred and they work together well. So if he just had it and nobody saw it. 0:18:10 Ann Igoe That's right. He kept it in a dark room, very lit with special lights and only showed it when people asked to see it. 0:18:24 Elsa McDowell Well, I think Shakespeare would approve. I think he was a showman and he would have liked that. 0:18:30 Ann Igoe I think the library Society has done a magnificent job with the collection. 0:18:38 Elsa McDowell Well, this is off the path, but I remember when you also taught exercise for all of us who were at, were not at our prime, having had babies and struggling to look good. 0:18:54 Ann Igoe I think about how I began to teach exercise in Charleston. Long ago, before it became very popular. So I was sort of the only thing around, and I mostly taught dance as exercise at the Family Y, which was at that time on George St. I think. 0:19:20 Elsa McDowell And you do yoga too? Is that right? Do you do yoga? 0:19:23 Ann Igoe No, I don't do yoga. I do my well, that's not true. I do a combination of yoga, ballet and modern dance and things I make up. 0:19:37 Elsa McDowell Well, and as your student. I know everybody wanted to look like you and that's why they were there. That's true. That's true. So just so you know, she's telling me not to say that. Being modest. Do you travel a lot? 0:19:59 Ann Igoe Not now. I don't like to travel. I love to be there. But going there is too much of, too much trouble. Now I'm old. I’m an old woman. 0:20:13 Elsa McDowell Being old is no excuse, right? 0:20:18 Ann Igoe Well, that may have about done it. I just want to keep emphasizing that I had very little to do with collecting the collection and it was really hard to decide to put it at the library society because one of the children wanted it to go to the Folger in Washington and actually he had loaned several of the paintings to the Folger. And I think he did for safe keeping, but now they are at the Library Society, but that he's been in close contact with the Folgerand the library in California, which I can't remember the name of. And he would travel anywhere to pick up information about Shakespeare. And he read the plays Which is something most people interested in Shakespeare don't get around to doing. They just watch movies that they. 0:21:22 Elsa McDowell Well, at least it would be fun to read. You could read it aloud and and yeah, hear what it sounded like. Well, this has been a great pleasure. Thank you so much for the time and for your amazing foresight in finding this home for the collection. 0:21:39 Ann Igoe I am so happy with the home of the collection. And I hope more and more people find out about it and I hope a lot of the schools will find out about it and bring students who are interested in English writing or Shakespeare. Shakespeare can be very rowdy and very bloodly. Bloody. So the children who are interested in both those things can start with Shakespeare very early on. But thank you. 0:22:14 Elsa McDowell So they get get a little bit of taste of the stuff they thought they weren't supposed to get, which makes it more interesting. Well, if we think of anything else, we'll call back and let you know. But for right now we’ll say thank you very much. 0:22:31 Ann Igoe Well, thank you for having me. I went on and on. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Ann Igoe (interviewed by Elsa McDowell on August 17, 2023) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Igoe, Ann Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-08-17 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource McDowell, Elsa Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Description An account of the resource Ann Igoe was born in Florence, S.C. in 1935. She grew up in Darlington, S.C. A teacher of modern dance, Ms. Igoe has been in Charleston since 1959. She and her late husband Harold (“Skipper”) Igoe were participants in the poetry group that met at the Library in the 1960s. She reflects on how the Igoe Shakespeare Collection was given to the Library in 2019 and her hopes for its use in the community. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context AnnIgoe_OralHistory_20230817 cls oral history https://d1y502jg6fpugt.cloudfront.net/62403/archive/files/f14fbeb88ed06166928d25cd573ae1bc.mp3?Expires=1782345600&Signature=LalqCLU1XEGjbAwUvWcFN1bUe%7EtX4mp9lplR2o9YbnHVJYyZNIFQCvnmBoQOo8uexp9ol2jZYqew4doDjFKHFCjMSKlYXd61PKHweukWl3SWHaJgrvhIMn8o6xi3bPdbm4kTNCZScPyeR8McQAr5-Is-sc16BE0lwhcoSyD6IhboGesjKR2PVxjZcI9ueb%7EU3RlKYoMe-o9CcV3z1B1uPEC97EITyd3m533o9DwetbhockmGXFwJRSt-BZq4Q81omrWRwHnslI%7EmbAWLojd9ofU113cBgoGyPwRtVTLGJCvNTAtNgK1h4pIznCpa3KOqzVA-OJCwotv8WdCtfVpTIQ__&Key-Pair-Id=K6UGZS9ZTDSZM 07610639d1554d10a7753ebdfa6670b7 Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Viva Voce: Charleston Library Society Oral Histories Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Charleston Library Society Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2022-2023 Subject The topic of the resource Charleston (S.C.) -- History. Subscription libraries -- South Carolina -- Charleston. Libraries -- South Carolina -- History. Publisher An entity responsible for making the resource available Charleston Library Society Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Copyright Charleston Library Society. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in writing to the Special Collections Librarian. Permission for publication is given on behalf of the Charleston Library Society as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by the researcher. Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource audio/mp3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Source A related resource from which the described resource is derived Ms. 29, Charleston Library Society Oral History Collection Language A language of the resource English Description An account of the resource For over 275 years, the Charleston Library Society has been an influential part of the community and a major feature of the social and intellectual map of the region. We have been devoted to preserving the historical memory of the city and Lowcountry, and have amassed an expansive library of books and archival collections. In 2023, our "Year of Storytelling," we began an oral history project to capture the voices and stories of individuals with close ties to the Library and the Library's recent history. Past employees, board members, and library members have participated in the project so far. Our goal is to expand this effort to highlight stories of more individuals with varied, but vital, stories to share. By archiving the narratives of our neighbors, we hope to preserve a body of knowledge that will inform and engage those who come after us. An ongoing effort, the Library's Oral History (or Viva Voce meaning "with the living voice" or "by word of mouth" in Latin) Project was conceptualized and brought to fruition by members Sister Buchanan and Will Cleveland several years ago and wouldn't have been possible without their essential help. Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 40:27/55.5MB Transcription Any written text transcribed from a sound 00:00:01 Lisa Hayes OK. All right, so my name is Lisa Hayes, and I'm the special collections librarian here in Charleston at the Charleston Library Society. It is Monday, June 5th, 2023 and I am sitting here at the Library Society with Richard Lilly, who has been kind enough to agree to speak with me today to tell us a little bit about his life and to learn more about his connections to Charleston and the Library Society. So thank you, Mr. Lilly. It's really nice to meet you. 00:00:36 Richard Lilly Well, it's nice to be here with you, Lisa. And I'll tell you a little bit about my background in Charleston. My family moved here in 1937 because my father was moving here to become pastor of First Scots Presbyterian Church. I was 7 at the time and fortunately they brought me along. I grew up here, of course, and it was a great place for growing up here, it was very safe. Children could go out on their own at any time. At age 7, I could walk to school at Craft School and later we bicycled to a school on Wentworth St., a public school, and then to the high School of Charleston, just north of, just north of Calhoun on Ashley, on Rutledge Ave. Growing up my close friends and I very much enjoyed playing in the neighborhood where we lived. The block bounded by Water St. and Atlantic Street and Church Street and East Bay was ours. We knew every inch of it. We could jump over any fence in the back, back of peoples gardens. People put up with us, almost all of them. There were two ladies who, sisters who always called out to us and said, “Get off my property.” My friends were Rivy Jenkins and Jean Guerre, [?] Guerard, Louie Dawson, Budsy Howard. We played an infinite number of hours in Zigzag Alley and enjoyed that. We also played at East Bay Playground, used to ride around on the backs of Olan’s trucks, Olan’s grocery store located at the corner of of Water and Meeting. One would go in there and give his order. A maid would usually read off a list and she could either carry it home or it would be delivered by truck, and so they had several trucks and we loved to ride around in the back of and it, swinging out fromit, screaming, making a general nuisance of ourselves. As teenagers we could get a full drivers license at age 14, which gave us enormous freedom. And of course, at age 14, some of the girls could barely see over the dashboard, but we had a a wonderful teenage life here. There were the beaches, sailing every summer, lots of sailing. There were about 20 boys and 20 girls in a loosely knit group that ran around together. We had a terrific time together and when I moved back here almost 50 years later, unfortunately, about half of that group still lived here, and that was unusual for an American city where people have frequently all of them have gone to live in other places. But it was a wonderful welcoming back with the, the people I have grown up with in the early years. It wasn't all joy. We had a terrible tornado. Actually 5 tornadoes hit Charleston in 1938 and they have about 30, 32 people killed as I recall, nearly all of them South of Market Street. We lost almost all the windows in our home at 48 King Street. Uh, it was really a terrible time. 00:05:22 Lisa Hayes You, you were at home when it happened? 00:05:24 Richard Lilly Yes, yes, it happened about 8:00 o'clock in the morning. Fortunately, it was not later when more people would have been on the street. But we were just getting ready to go to school and very dark clouds came over and within, within a minute or two thereafter, the tornado just did enormous damage. The next year Charleston suffered a polio epidemic. That was 1939, and there were a number of deaths of young people and a number of young people who caught polio, or with, with severe effects. 00:06:17 Lisa Hayes Did you know some of those children, any of your classmates get sick? 00:06:22 Richard Lilly No, I don't think so. But others who were friends. Rutledge Webb, for example. Who suffered with after effects of having polio as a teenager. And all of that summer children were restricted from doing anything. You couldn't go out. You couldn't go to a movie. There were no movies, no church, no schools until about the end of October. Talk about sheer boredom. Everybody got very tired of the children, and the children got very tired of the situation. And then the next year, 1940, we had a a very bad hurricane. And I recall on Folly Beach out of the front row of 25 houses in one stretch, 24 of them were lost, so it was a pretty substantial hurricane. But all in all, it was a wonderful teenage, wonderful growing up. After high school here and I went to the public high school of Charleston. I went to Davidson too young at age 16 because, at that time South Carolina only had 11 grades, which placed you at a great disadvantage versus your classmates. Nearly all of whom had come from states and prep schools that had 12 schools, 12 years. So the first year, the first semester particularly I was, I was really running scared. Charleston, talking now more about Charleston than how it's changed. In the 40s, 50s, and 60s there were many military installations here. But very little business activity. There was the sub base and the destroyer base and Air Force Base and and other military bases, but very, very little business. Charleston was to say the least, impecunious. There was just no money about. Houses sold for very little. Usually they were in a poor state of repair. Very few people moved to Charleston. Charleston was quite inward looking, not because it meant to be, but because there had been no reason to have it otherwise. Each day the schools let out at 2:00 o'clock, children went home for lunch at 2:00, which was really dinner. The dinner for the day at 2:15. It was dinner, because at that time, aides were in almost all homes. They cooked the midday meal, and the evening meal was a very small one. Men walked home from Broad Street to their homes for dinner and frequently they took a little nap before going back to all this. Very few people moved to Charleston at that time. Possibly it was the 300th anniversary of Charleston in 1970 that brought the city to other peoples attention and gave it publicity. And then it started to change and become much more recognized as a possible destination for tourists. And of course, you know, the growth since then. It certainly accelerated as the years went by. Nowadays neighbors likely to have moved here. And they're very nice people. They've done a wonderful job of restoring their houses. Sometimes excessively so, but usually not. We have 8,000,000 tourists a year. Prices of houses have soared at that time. The church bought the house, a home at 41 Church St. as a mans for my father and his family. They bought it for $12,000 in 1945. Sold it for $14,000 in 1955 ten years later, and felt that was a really good deal. The last time that same house sold, it sold for $3.8 million about five years ago with only modest changes in between. It has, it has had the effect that many of the people who grew up here, the next generation finds it difficult to afford the, as young people difficult to afford those houses. When I moved away from Charleston, after Davidson and I went to Wharton after Davidson. And after 1951, I really was out of the nest and away most of the time from 1951 to ‘97. I went in the Navy and served on destroyers for three years in the Atlantic and Pacific fleets. And that was really an excellent time for me when they gave you great responsibility at a very early age, 22. You can see why captains get gray hair turning over their ship to a 22 year old as Officer deck at sea. But then, after the Navy, 10 days after the Navy, I went into Harvard Law School. Was fortunate in meeting my wife, Laska, there. We met the first couple of days I entered the school in September and married 2 3/4 years later and right after the final exams. 00:14:12 Lisa Hayes Was was she in school also? 00:14:14 Richard Lilly We're married in 1957, so we've just celebrated our 66th wedding anniversary. 00:14:21 Lisa Hayes What an accomplishment that's that is wonderful. 00:14:25 Richard Lilly I then started working for ESSO and worked for the, the companies of Standard Oil New Jersey, now Exxon for 35 years, working about a quarter of the time on the Gulf Coast in Baton Rouge and Houston, a quarter of a time in New York and Rockefeller Plaza. And there are, the remaining half in Europe. And we very much enjoyed Europe, European living. We were, we were there 23 years in total and that was a wonderful experience. We returned to Charleston in 1957 and bought 23 Tradd St. just a couple of blocks from where I had grown up and it was in awful condition and we had to do a year of restoration on it. But then it became a house we enjoyed very much. I was fortunate in being asked to be on the Board of South Carolina Coastal Conservation League and the Historic Charleston and and then the Library Society, Charleston Library Society starting just before Anne came here. The Library Society before Steve Gates and Anne Cleveland was unbelievably different from what it is today. I asked my brother-in-law, who was a member. He asked me if I would like to become a member and I said, “Well, I don't know. What goes on there?. “What are the advantages? Well, there really aren't any. And what goes on there? Well, nothing really.” So that was a a full statement of Library society at that time. It was snoozing quietly. It was digging into its funds. It had a, had, had about $5,000,000 in endowment and it was using up maybe $300,000 of a year of that to keep going, just quietly snoozing and burning up its endowment. Then Steve Gates came around, was able to persuade Anne Cleveland to become head and things started changing unbelievably. Those two were great combination and they both just fed on each other's enthusiasm and and very hard work. Steven's death was a great loss to the Library Society. To Anne as her friend and mentor. To Laura, his wife. To so many facets of Charleston and to his friends. The growth in Charleston Library Society is really entirely due to, and I shouldn't say entirely, but predominantly due to Anne and early Steve before his death. The capital campaign and the building's restoration and visible manifestations of what they did. In their extraordinary growth and the impact of those two on the Library Society and on Charleston. Well, that pretty well wraps it up for me. We moved from 23 Tradd St. to Bishop Gadsden in 1918, 2018. My wife and I are enjoying living there. Well, we all, we really miss being on Tradd St. Charleston, where we could walk around and see so many of our friends just within a few blocks. Do, I'll have wonderful walks every day, but it was time. And so there we are. 00:19:45 Lisa Hayes Well, thank you. That was a really nice description of, of your life and of Charleston and your time. I really appreciate you writing that up for us. Can I ask you a couple of other questions? So do you remember the Library Society from when you were a child? Like, would you ever come to the library when you were a little boy? Your, your parents weren't members here? 00:20:15 Richard Lilly No, my parents were not. To the best of my knowledge. Now I, it didn't play a role in my early years at all. 00:20:30 Lisa Hayes Very, a quiet place until you learned about it from your brother-in-law. And then even then you didn't want to join, which is which is really a fun, funny story. Tell me about, so I've spoken with Jenks Gibbs who I think is a little bit younger than you. Jenks Gibbs, do you, do you know him? 00:20:54 Richard Lilly Only slightly. 00:20:54 Lisa Hayes A little bit. So he told us a funny story about being part of the Savage St. gang, and I wondered if you had been, if your neighborhood group of friends, did you all have a rival gang or were you part of anything similar to that when you were a little boy? 00:21:12 Richard Lilly And what was his group called? We were very close knit, just, but geographically. But it was not a, not an exclusive thing at all. And we, as we became teenagers, we played with Rufus Barkley and well, a whole group that played at Moultrie Playground. It was just a geographic split. Peter McGee. Oh, Archie Baker. They were a wonderful group. And there was, there was no feeling of dislike at all. We, we all liked each other. It was just a geographic split. I would have to say the ones I mentioned in their group were infinitely better athletes than we were. 00:22:29 Lisa Hayes Well, and and you mentioned the grocery store. Was that like a corner grocery store where you could get things every single day? 00:22:37 Richard Lilly Yes, and it was a, it was a large grocery store. It had a wonderful candy cabinet, probably 5 or 6 feet wide and maybe two or three feet deep with a great array of candies. I remember you could get 5 hersheys kisses for a penny. You could take in a a nickel and really have a field day. 00:23:24 Lisa Hayes Would you take the streetcar? Did you walk to that and then ride that anywhere? 00:23:29 Richard Lilly No, the street cars went out about 1938. And the buses were substituted. At first the buses ran on electricity with overhead lines and then later became, had their own engines. No. The bicycle was my my sole-- 00:23:58 Lisa Hayes Were you allowed to ride as far as you wanted? Like, could you go to Magnolia Cemetery on your bike? Would your parents let you do that? All the way up there? 00:24:08 Richard Lilly The cemetery didn't attract me but but. 00:24:11 Lisa Hayes That's the landmark I can think of. 00:24:13 Richard Lilly But I could have gone there easily and anywhere we wanted to go, we did. And gasoline rationing went off when I was 15 and so that was a blessing to the, all of us who were teenagers. We could get the family car and go to the beach. 00:24:38 Lisa Hayes And you would, if you had gone to Sullivan's, I guess you would have taken that really old, the Pearl, Pearlman Bridge. Is that what it was called? 00:24:46 Richard Lilly Yes, yes, we yes, we took the Old Cooper River bridge. We thought was just normal, although when a large truck was coming towards you, you really paid attention and stayed over your side. I had a friend, a girl who, she's still alive. When she went over the old Cooper River bridge, she said the Lords Prayer 3 1/2 times. 00:25:31 Lisa Hayes And when you got to Sullivans, or when you got to the the edge to, sorry. When you were in Mount Pleasant trying to get to Sullivans was the bridge there or would you have to do some kind of a ferry or? 00:25:45 Richard Lilly There was a bridge there. Yeah, and we would go to the home of some friend who would have some bath houses underneath. We'd rarely went up to anybody's house. We just used the bath houses underneath and then went out on the beaches and leave. 00:26:11 Lisa Hayes Do you remember some of those names of folks? I know, let me think. Was, did Dubose Heyward have a house out there in Sullivan's? I know he's, he would have been a lot older, but do you know some of those family names from Sullivans when you were growing up? 00:26:31 Richard Lilly Well none who are still there. The reason I volunteered for this today was that I thought about the people I grew up with, and even the men who I, and I extended relationships as a teenager. And I could not think of anyone who was still alive. So I thought, well, I should volunteer because they won't have many representatives from that time period. 00:27:16 Lisa Hayes Well Mr. McGee, you mentioned Peter McGee. He, I know he's, he did an oral history interview with the Historic Charleston Foundation and you doing this. Do you, do you think the other folks that you mentioned? They're basically not around anymore? The other, the playmates that you mentioned? 00:27:37 Richard Lilly Yes, yes, none of them are. 00:27:38 Lisa Hayes Yeah, none of them. 00:27:41 Richard Lilly Ohh, Peter is the only one and I'm glad Peter did that because Peter has got a fabulous background and knowledge of Charleston and is such a wonderful person. 00:27:57 Lisa Hayes His memory? Yep, Yep. 00:28:00 Richard Lilly But Peter is less well now, I'm sorry to say. Three years ago, I was in a luncheon club. We went to the Yacht Club 9 of us every second Thursday for lunch. Only my brother and I are still around of that nine. So as as we've hit the 90s, we've lost a lot of friends. 00:28:38 Lisa Hayes Well, so your brother, does your brother live here? Still in Charleston? Do you see him often? 00:28:44 Richard Lilly Ohh yes, he lives at Bishop Gaston, so I see him all the time. He's 97. 00:28:52 Lisa Hayes He's older than you. Well, how did you meet your wife? You said you met at Harvard. Was she in school there? Or was she living there? 00:29:02 Richard Lilly She had just finished Connecticut College for women, and her home was in Bath, Maine, so Bath seemed like it would be a little quiet for the winter. So she and a friend got a an apartment in Cambridge. And a friend was coming from Chicago. And at that time, the middle days of September, there were lots and lots of students coming from Minneapolis, St. Paul, Chicago, other Western cities to the east for school, and it was heavily concentrated in mid-September. While she was on that train, one of those trains. And it was sort of a rolling house party on wheels. And everybody was going up and down the aisles saying, where are you going to school, where you're going to live? She ran into the person who was to to become my roommate for first year in the dormitory. They found that they were only going to be living maybe three blocks apart, so she invited him around for a drink. And then later called and said if you've got a roommate, bring him. That's how we met. Blind date. 00:30:39 Lisa Hayes Well, and I wanted to ask about your service, did you, was that during the Korean War? 00:30:43 Richard Lilly Yes, it was. Went in in September of ‘51 and got out and. About the 1st of September of ‘54. And was on two destroyers, the Sigourney 643, D 643 and. It was a, you know, for a 22 year old, it was wonderful. We got to travel a lot. We went to Europe a couple of times. Then when we went to Korea, we came back the long way, so we went completely around the world, stopped in many ports. Uh, you know. It was, it was fun and interesting. Hard work when you would see you got if you were lucky you got five hours of sleep. 00:31:52 Lisa Hayes Well, thank you for your service. 00:31:53 Richard Lilly I was the beneficiary of it. Never got shot at. We got to Korea six days after the shooting stopped. 00:32:06 Lisa Hayes Your mom and dad were happy. 00:32:07 Richard Lilly That's good timing. 00:32:10 Lisa Hayes Were you an officer since you had been to Davidson already? Do I have that right? 00:32:14 Richard Lilly Yes, yes, I was an officer starting off as an anti submarine, more officer and communications officer and then Operations Officer. 00:32:27 Lisa Hayes And, and you went to law school, did you, when you were in law school, did you know that you wanted to practice sort of corporate law? Is that, is that what you did? 00:32:35 Richard Lilly No, I did not want to and I went to law school knowing I did not want to. But that so much was happening that affected business by government, and especially by the administrative agencies, the alphabet agencies. My professors at Wharton wasn't kept saying, “Well, this is going to be affected such that you better see your lawyer on this.” And I thought well. It would be helpful to know more a lot more about that. And it did benefit me. I, for 2/3 of my career with Exxon, I had a loan department reporting to me. And it helped me to understand what they were saying and sometimes how hard to believe them. 00:33:42 Lisa Hayes And you retired after 35 years. Did you think you might want another career? I know you had already been in... 00:33:50 Richard Lilly No. I didn't want another career. I mean, working for a different company or something or consulting. No, that was not my objective. I really wanted to manage my own things better and when you're working for a large company, you work hard, 55 hours a week or more, and wanted some more time to enjoy life. 00:34:29 Lisa Hayes Well and, and the boards that you were on, the Conservation, Conservation League, the Coastal Conservation League and the Historic Charleston Foundation, and then the Library Society, I would guess that those might take up a good amount of time if you wanted them to. 00:34:47 Richard Lilly They they did. I was active on some of the committees, particularly finance and investment and such. And so they do take some time and it was very enjoyable and a wonderful way to meet people and their, their fine organizations and the boards of them were just chock full of interesting and and fine people. 00:35:16 Lisa Hayes Did you know Steve Gates for a long time before you were on the board with him? Had you been friends for a long time? 00:35:22 Richard Lilly I had known him since he and Laura moved here. I don't remember how many years that was in between. 00:35:38 Lisa Hayes And some of the financial challenges that we had at the Library Society when you came on board. Did you feel like those were like, surmountable, or were, was there ever a fear that the library really couldn't come back? 00:35:54 Richard Lilly No, I think we felt it could. 00:35:56 Lisa Hayes You thought it would. 00:35:57 Richard Lilly You know, it had so much going for it and it has this fabulous building. Potential, enormous potential. We felt we just needed to get it in gear and offer, offer people sound reasons for becoming members and becoming active in it, and that we could get good contributions if we got real interest in the organization. And the contributions came along quite reasonably. Within a year or so, I think it was break even, which you know was very comforting. From then on, it just prospered. 00:36:58 Lisa Hayes And, and do you attribute that, I know you do to to Anne and to Steve and to the other board members? Was it programming that got people to want to join again or or the? 00:37:08 Richard Lilly It it was Anne’s programming and the different things offered here, the talks, the music the pointing out the, the fabulous collection that the Library Society has. And as people joined, they were happy to contribute. 00:37:33 Lisa Hayes Although I know I never knew Steve Gates, but I know he had a love for history and for the collection. As you say, the manuscript collection. So do you feel like? One of his priorities was getting the word out about the manuscript collection in particular? Do you remember that about that time? 00:37:53 Richard Lilly Well, I I think that was, but I wouldn't say. Well, I think his breadth of interest was great and he was interested in every, every item and, and strengthening the, not just the finances, but strengthening the ability to do things, adding to the personnel, improving the salaries of the personnel which were too low. Improving their retirement arrangements, which were just unreasonably poor. So it was a very broad interest of both Steve and the board. 00:38:58 Lisa Hayes Well, and I am the beneficiary of your hard work because I... 00:39:03 Richard Lilly Well, I was just one contributor. There were, you know, other people on the board contributed, but it was Steve and Anne that I want to throw the spotlight on. 00:39:22 Lisa Hayes Well, thank you. Well, let's see. Is there anything else that you would like to share today about the... 00:39:40 Richard Lilly No, I think I've probably worn out any listener. 00:39:46 Lisa Hayes Not me, not me. I would love to hear more stories, but I think we have... Let's see what time it is. This is, it's been great to talk to you. It really has. Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Title A name given to the resource Richard M. Lilly (interviewed by Lisa Hayes on June 5, 2023) Creator An entity primarily responsible for making the resource Lilly, Richard Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 2023-06-05 Contributor An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource Hayes, Lisa Cox, Danielle Description An account of the resource Richard Lilly was born in Birmingham, AL in 1930 but grew up in downtown Charleston. He discusses his colorful childhood in Charleston, including experiencing devastating tornadoes that passed through in the 1930s. Mr. Lilly was in the Navy and had a long law career with Esso, which allowed him and his wife of 66 years to live abroad in Europe. He moved back to Charleston in 1997 and he reflects on the significant changes brought to the Library by the leadership of Steve Gates and Anne Cleveland. Language A language of the resource English Format The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource MP3 Type The nature or genre of the resource Audio Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context RichardLilly_OralHistory_20230605 cls oral history