Carol Anne Edison, interviewed for the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive, 2019A

The Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive oral history project was created to record the personal histories of 20th century women; to record memories and emotions related to historical events and social change processes; and to explore women's participation in and response to social and cultural changes. The project is conducted by Resources for the Study of Social Engagement, a non-profit organization, and is supported in part by the Clyde Family Foundation and by the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women's Legacy Archive at the University of Utah.

Carol Anne Edison Interviewed by Elisha Condie for the th Aileen H. Clyde 20 Century Women’s Legacy Archive Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library University of Utah September 17, 2019 Carol Anne Edison Interviewed by Elisha Condie for the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women’s Legacy Archive Special Collections, J. Willard Marriott Library University of Utah Born: January 16, 1951, Seattle, Washington Parents: Louis Hal Edison and Alice Nelson Edison Sibling: Margaret Edison Greenberg The Aileen Clyde Life History Project is conducted by Resources for the Study of Social Engagement, a non-profit organization, and is supported in part by the Clyde Family Foundation, and by the Aileen H. Clyde 20th Century Women’s Legacy Archive at the University of Utah. Elisha Condie conducted this interview. Edited by Dlora Hall Dalton and Dawn Hall Anderson. Footnotes were added by Dlora Dalton and Marie Cornwall and approved by the interviewee. Elisha Buhler Condie prepared the final manuscript. The focus of the interview project was three-fold: (1) to record the personal histories of 20th century women, (2) to record memories and emotions related to historical events and social change processes, and (3) to explore women’s participation in and response to social and cultural change. Interview (17 September 2019) Elisha Condie (EC): Today is September 17, 2019, and I’m with Carol Edison in her home. Thanks, Carol. Tell me where and when you were born. Carol Edison (CE): January 16, 1951, in Seattle, Washington. My dad had been called back to the army after the war [World War II] was over. He was called back to the Korean War,1 and they ended up in Fort Lawton, which is a suburb of Seattle.2 I spent the first six months of my life there and that’s the only six months of my life I have not been in Utah. EC: Oh really? Okay, so you spent only six months there; what brought your family to Utah? CE: Oh, pioneers on all four sides, all four great-grandparents. They came here because of the Church. EC: So is your family pretty religious? CE: Well, yes, parts of them. Not all parts! But all the great-grandparents were basically pioneers from Wales, England, Scotland, Norway, and Denmark.3 1 The Korean war began on June 25, 1950, when some 75,000 soldiers from the North Korean People’s Army poured across the 38th parallel, the boundary between the Soviet-backed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea to the north and the pro-Western Republic of Korea to the south. This invasion was the first military action of the Cold War. By July, American troops had entered the war on South Korea’s behalf. 2 Fort Lawton was a United States Army post located in the Magnolia neighborhood of Seattle, Washington, overlooking Puget Sound. While Fort Lawton was a quiet outpost prior to World War II, it became the second largest port of embarkation of soldiers and materiel to the Pacific Theater during the war. The Korean War brought a flurry of activity as troops headed to or returned from Korea were processed through Fort Lawton. 3 On Carol’s maternal side of the family, her pioneer progenitors include James Bevan (KWN2KFW), who came from England, was part of the Mormon Battalion, and arrived in the valley five days after Brigham Young. Also, Niels Nielson (KWNK-YK1) who came from Denmark, and helped settle Sanpete County. His wife, Martha Maria Dorius (KWN2-729), was born in Sanpete and the daughter of John F.F. Dorius (KWJH-RB4), a Danish handcart pioneer of 1857. Niels drove an oxen team across the plains and was a skilled carpenter who helped hang the doors on the Salt Lake and Manti temples. On Carol’s paternal side of the family, there is Thomas David Evans (KWJZ-4FW) and Priscilla Merriman (KWJZ-4F7), who were handcart 3 EC: So, think about your life when you were ten years old, that’s about fourth grade. Tell me what your life was like at ten. CE: I loved school. I loved school. I looked forward to it every year. All summer long, we’d play school. I loved school! I really liked history, and I really liked English, and I really didn’t care much for math or science. EC: I was kind of the same. And where in the Salt Lake Valley were you living? CE: In the south part of Sugarhouse about 9th East and 27th South. I went to Nibley Park School, that was my grade school, and I went to Irving Junior High for junior high. It’s funny to hear everybody talking about all the moms lined up to pick up their kids at school and that kids can’t go anywhere without being in Mom’s car. When I was in junior high, we used to walk to Irving, which was from 9th East and 27th South clear through Fairmont Park, coming and going, in the middle of the dark in the winter, all by ourselves. No one ever worried about us and we were just fine! EC: It was okay! Oh my goodness! But let me back up: what did your parents do once they got to Salt Lake? What was his job? Was he still in the Army? CE: My dad was nine years older than my mom and he had been a paratrooper in the war.4 He was from Hyrum and she was from Tooele but they met in Logan5 because she was going to school 6 there [at the Utah Agricultural College].7 He was the manager of a drugstore in Logan.8 pioneers from Wales and settled in Spanish Fork. And finally, from Norway are Anders Andreas Ediason (L7FY-D3N) and Ingeborg Maria Martinusdatter (LZVX-BHJ). They immigrated in 1885, settled in Hyrum, Utah, and were the only ones of this group who were not part of the Latter-day Saint migration. (Numbers after the ancestors’ names refer to their FamilySearch IDs, where this information was gathered from biographies located in their Memories section.) 4 L. Hal Edison was born 24 August 1919 in Hyrum, Utah. He was drafted into the army on 16 March 1942 and trained as a paratrooper. He was assigned to the 82nd Airborne in the 505th Regiment. He was discharged 25 September 1945 and signed up for the Reserves. (Information about Hal and his family in footnotes taken from autobiography found at http://richardsonfamily.homestead.com/Hal.html; accessed 17 April 2020.) 5 Hyrum and Tooele both began as pioneer settlements in Utah. Tooele is about 112 driving miles southwest of Logan, while Hyrum is only about 8 miles south. 4 My mom always told the story about how she needed to find a summer job the last summer just before her last year at college, and she walked up and down every street in downtown Logan looking for a job. No one needed anybody and the only place she didn’t want to work was the drugstore. [Finally, she tried there], and my dad hired her! So, that’s how they met. My dad was a drug salesman for McKesson & Robbins ultimately. He went in the army and he came back, but he was always involved in grocery and drugstores. From the time he was like ten, he worked in a grocery store. After he married my mom, he ended up being hired by McKesson & Robbins9 and when they came back from Seattle we lived in Ogden for about six months, I 6 Alice Nelson was the youngest of five daughters born to Dan Nelson and Stella Elkington on 11 July 1928 in Tooele, Utah. She graduated from USU in June 1950 majoring in Elementary Education with a minor in English. (Information about Alice and her family are taken from her obituary found at https://www.holbrookmortuary.com/notices/Alice-Edison; also from autobiography found at http://hechristensen.homestead.com/AliceE.html; accessed 17 April 2020.) 7 Utah Agricultural College was founded in 1888. By 1957, it was granted university status and renamed the Utah State University of Agricultural and Applied Science, soon shortened to just Utah State University. 8 The old Ben Franklin Store at 101 North Main in Logan was purchased by Earle Stone and remodeled into a drug store, named Low Cost Drug Store. In 1984 the building was again remodeled by Cache Valley Bank. 9 McKesson began in the earliest days of the United States when organized healthcare was just emerging across the country. Daniel Robbins originally started as an apprentice. In 1833, after walking 80 miles to answer McKesson’s first help-wanted ad, he became a partner, and the company was renamed McKesson & Robbins. In 1853, McKesson & Robbins pioneered the development of gelatin-coated pills, which were immediately in demand around the world. “A Heritage of Delivering Better Health” (PDF, 9.8 MB) download at https://www.mckesson.com/About-McKesson/Our-History/ (accessed 21 April 2020) 5 guess, and then moved to Salt Lake and that was the job my dad had his whole career. 10 And my mother, who had a degree in elementary education, waited until my sister was in junior high and then she got a job teaching kindergarten. She was a primary education expert so it was kindergarten, first and second grades,and she taught all those grades over the years. 11 EC: Neat. And so did you get to stay in the same house your whole life growing up? CE: Almost! Yeah, the same house until I was sixteen and I went to South for one year, and then my folks moved to a house in Millcreek and I went to Skyline for the last two years. 12 Which was absolutely miserable. EC: Oh shoot! It’s hard to change schools if you’ve been with the same friends all your life. So, when you were a little kid, was your family involved in the Church? Was that your social life? CE: Yeah, my family was very, very active in the Church. That was our social life. We lived on a little horseshoe circle. There were three streets: you would drive up one, come around, and then drive down and out to the main road—a little horseshoe circle. It was like everybody in that circle was our family. To this day, although we don’t really keep in touch and we see them only at everybody’s funerals, we have such strong feelings for them. It was a wonderful place to grow up. So our social life was the neighborhood and the ward. That was kind of our life. Then I spent a lot of time in Tooele too. Three of my grandparents had died when I was very young13 but I 10 Hal Edison applied for a job with McKesson Drug Company and went to work 17 September 1951. He worked for them the next 33 years. 11 After Carol’s sister Margaret started in junior high, Alice Edison applied to and began teaching at Roosevelt Elementary School on 33rd South and 9th East. She taught half-day for the first year, then full time after that at Roosevelt and at Libbie Edwards Elementary located on 33rd South and 15th East. Later she taught at Stansbury Elementary in West Valley City. All told, she put in over 21 years as an elementary school teacher. 12 South High School serviced the Sugarhouse area where Carol had grown up. Skyline High school serviced the Millcreek area, which was a different socio-economic area and had a much larger school enrollment. 13 Ferral (Fay) Priscilla Evans Edison (1893-1950; KWC4-RMN), Lewis Milton Edison (18911955; KWC4-RNJ), and Daniel Nelson (1888-1956; KWC4-RJM). 6 had a grandma who lived till I was in college.14 She lived in Tooele and we were out there at least once a week, hanging out in what felt like pioneer land to me.15 I thought that was so cool. You know, I was always very interested in Mormon Church history. I think growing up in the Church, if you are interested in history, it kind of feels like United States history is Utah history—at least it felt like that to me when I was growing up. EC: Very intertwined. That’s true. CE: So, you know, I loved going out to Grandma’s because we’d play pioneer out on all the old hay wagons and stuff in the back. I loved that. It was all great for me. EC: You weren’t very old when the civil rights movement was going on. Did that register or affect you? Did you notice that at all in your life?16 CE: I did notice it and was bothered by all of the information we heard about the trials of black people. Of course, we didn’t know any black people. There were hardly any in Utah, and especially then, but those stories were heartbreaking, and I remember feeling so glad that things were getting better.17 14 Stella Elkington Nelson (KWC4-RN1), Carol’s maternal grandmother, was born 21 May 1891 in Tooele and died 6 July 1975 in Tooele. 15 The Tooele Valley had no permanent settlement when Mormon pioneers entered the Great Salt Lake Valley in July 1847. It was covered with abundant tall grass, and the Mormons first used the valley as wintering grounds for their herds. In September 1849, three families settled there. Other families slowly joined them, and by 1853 Tooele City Corporation was organized. During the nineteenth century, the town was primarily an agricultural community until the 20th century brought more industrialization with a rail line coming through the city that encouraged mining. . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tooele,_Utah (accessed 20 April 2020) 16 The civil rights movement, the organized effort by black Americans to end racial discrimination and gain equal rights under the law, began in the late 1940s. Implementation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act led to violence in the South and the assassination of Rev. Martin Luther King in 1968. Carol was born in 1951 so she would have been in high school at the tail end of the movement, eighteen years old in 1969. 17 The first African Americans to arrive in Utah were fur trappers in the early 19th century. The second influx consisted of both freedmen who were converts to The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and slaves belonging to white converts. Later, most African American immigrants to Utah would migrate out for labor-related motivations. African Americans have traditionally composed only a small part of the total population in Utah, with the 2010 census 7 EC: Oh good. So you went to high school, and I’m assuming your parents probably encouraged college since your parents were both college graduates18. They valued education? CE: They did, and it was never any question from the time I was a little kid that I would go. They didn’t need to encourage it; I was going to college. In fact, if I thought, What am I going to do with my life? College was as far as I could think. All I knew is that I wanted to go to college. EC: And did you know what you wanted to study? CE: Nope. I just knew I wanted to go to college. EC: Did you know where you wanted to go? CE: Um, no, but I think I knew where my mother wanted me to go. (chuckle) EC: Where did she want you to go? CE: Well, I grew up with lots of stories about how people would move away and then they’d never be part of the family, so there was a lot of pressure to stick around. You add that to a kid’s own feelings of inadequacy and fear about leaving home, and it’s easy, “Well, of course I’m going to the University of Utah. 19 Where else would I go?” EC: I kind of felt that exact same way. “Duh. Why would I go somewhere that costs extra money? Do my own laundry? That’s insane!” Yeah. So, when you were in college, was that about the time of Vietnam?20 placing the percentage of African Americans at 1.06%. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_African_Americans_in_Utah (accessed 23 April 2020) 18 In 1947 after the war, Carol’s father completed his degree in Business Education from the Utah Agricultural College in Logan (http:richardsonfamily.homestead.com) 19 The University of Utah is a public research university in Salt Lake City, Utah. As the state’s flagship university, it offers more than 100 undergraduate majors and more than 92 graduate degree programs. 20 The Vietnam War occurred from 1955 until 1975, although direct U. S. military involvement ended on 15 August 1973. Opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began with demonstrations in 1964 against the escalating role of the United States in the Vietnam War and grew into a broad social movement over the ensuing several years. By the early 1970s, most 8 CE: Yes. I was involved in a lot of the marches and stuff around campus, but as I look back and think about it, I don’t think I really understood. I don’t think I really did. I mean, I knew I thought the war was horrible, but what I didn’t really understand was how politics works and what good or not the marches would do. I guess you’re just so naïve, really, when you’re nineteen, twenty years old. You just don’t understand any of that. So I was very supportive of and participated in [anti-war demonstrations] but I think I really was very clueless—and I certainly wasn’t a leader. I was just a participant. EC: And what did you choose to study up at the U? CE: Well, growing up, knowing I liked school and I liked English and history, I just thought, Okay English, of course. I liked to read books; that was always my main thing as a kid. I did three things besides work (which Mom kept us busy at): I rode my bike, I read mysteries, and I played the piano, and those were the three things I did as a kid. EC: What were your mysteries that you read? Were you a Nancy Drew girl? CE: I started with Nancy Drew, you bet!21 EC: I love Nancy Drew. That’s adorable! And who else? And you rode your bike and you played piano. Did you have to play piano? CE: I wanted to, I wanted to. Yeah. student protest movements died down due to President Nixon’s de-escalation of the war, the economic downturn, and disillusionment with the powerlessness of the antiwar movement. The Nancy Drew Mystery Stories is the long-running “main” Nancy Drew series, which was published under the pseudonym Carolyn Keene. There are 175 novels—plus 34 revised stories— that were published between 1930 and 2003. 21 9 EC: So your mom didn’t make you? CE: No, she didn’t make me. My piano teacher was in the ward. Her name was Hildegard Foster and she was the ward organist. As you got better and better, she’d have you play the hymns on the piano while she was playing them on the organ. EC: That’s scary to play in church. CE: Yeah, but it’s easier when somebody else is playing too. I really liked piano and I pursued that through high school. I switched to another teacher about when I was a senior and stared to learn about theory. I wished that I had had a teacher who taught me that from the beginning because by the time I got to college, I didn’t have time to worry about piano lessons. There were other things I was interested in. EC: Sure. And did you have to work in high school? Did your parents encourage you to get a job? CE: I wanted to work! I remember feeling so frustrated that there was no one who could help me get a job when I was a kid. Like, couldn’t so-and-so’s dad who owned a business help me get me a job? I couldn’t find any way to make money, and I hated it so much because I really wanted to have my own money. EC: Did your parents give you an allowance? CE: A little one, but you know they really couldn’t afford to give us an allowance. Back in the ‘50s and ‘60s it was hand-to-mouth still, even with good jobs. So my first job was at the Arctic Circle. This was probably when I was a junior in high school, and the Arctic Circle was out in Holladay.22 My mother always tells us this story: that I came home and said, “Mom, the lady who was the manager out there, her goal in life is not to let anyone know what the recipe is for the secret sauce! For the fry sauce!” 23 I can’t imagine a life like that. (laughs) 22 Holladay is a city in Salt Lake County. 23 Actually famous for inventing “fry sauce” as dipping condiment for fries instead of ketchup, Arctic Circle Restaurants is a chain of burger and shake restaurants based in Midvale, Utah. The company also claims to be the burger chain to invent and first to sell the kids’ meal. There were 62 restaurants as of March 2019, about a third are company owned and two-thirds by 10 EC: “It’s temporary and I never want to do it again”—that kind of a job. CE: That’s right. EC: That’s amazing. So, after high school where did you go? What did you get your degree in? CE: I got it in English, though I took lots and lots of art history. If I’d been smart, I could have had an art history degree—a double degree, if I’d paid attention, but I didn’t. I also wasted a lot of money and time on both French and German. I figured at one time I had a whole year’s worth of language. What can I say now? Not very much! But I loved all of it. I really enjoyed college. It was great. EC: Were you involved in any sororities or… CE: Yeah. EC: Which one did you do? CE: Delta Gamma. I would have died, I think, if I had had to just be at home: be at home, and work every afternoon, and just go to school. I would have been so depressed. My best friend Diane Partenheimer—we had gone to high school together—joined Delta Gamma the first quarter.24 I did not get picked. Not that I’d ever wanted to be in a sorority! That sounded like the stupidest thing I’d ever heard of—and that’s probably why I didn’t get picked. I was not very interested, really. But Diane got picked. We both were going to school. We’d drive up together everyday and had some of the same classes. It was great. The first quarter I had a full load. I got B’s and I was aghast! I’d always been this straight-A kid, you know? At the break at Christmastime, Delta Gamma had a rush again and invited more people to be part of the sorority. Well, I went and I got in the sorority. I was so happy and the next quarter I had eighteen hours and all A’s! EC: That’s what made the difference? You just felt better. franchisees, in Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Oregon, Washington, and Wyoming. About 50% of the restaurants are located in Utah. The restaurants serve typical fast food fare such as burgers, sandwiches, shakes, salads, fries, and fish and chips—and fry sauce. 24 Delta Gamma (DG) is one of the oldest and largest female sororities. It is dedicated to helping college women grow both academically and socially. Their motto is Do Good, and they consistently rank among the highest for philanthropy fundraising. 11 CE: Yeah. It was an incredible lift. It was so nice to be part of the sorority because I got to meet kids not just from out of state, which was wonderful, but I also got to meet Italian kids and Greek kids: Greek Orthodox and Catholic people who’d grown up in Salt Lake. EC: Who you’d have never known otherwise. CE: Yes, who I would never have run across or known. They became great friends. It was so wonderful to have the world opened up. EC: Oh, how neat. So that was like your first taste of that kind of experience. Did you stay in Delta Gamma for the rest of your time in college? CE: I did. I did. It was great. In fact, after I graduated, I didn’t know what I was going to do with my life. I can remember three or four of us hanging around in the Delta Gamma front room lying on the couches, saying, “I don’t know what I am going to do with these degrees in English? I don’t want to be a teacher, so what am I going to do?!” We were all moaning around, trying to decide what to do. Well, I really didn’t decide what to do the next year, so I decided what you always do: I’ll go to graduate school! So, I signed up for graduate school. At the same time, the house mother who had been there at the Delta Gamma house—an older lady who made sure the cook cooked the food, you know, and was there as the “chaperone,” and took care of things—she retired. One of my good friends in the sorority, Leigh von der Esch,25 who was a year younger than me, was going to be the president next year. She talked to her good friend Alice Shearer, who was an advisor for the Delta Gamma, and they hired me as the house mother! EC: Even though you were just a year out of school? Now you were the matron of the sorority! Oh how fun! CE: So I got the good bedroom and the single bath. The only bathing for the rest of facilities were showers in the house, so it was great. 25 Leigh von der Esch graduated in political science from the University of Utah in 1974. In December 2012, she retired as director of the Utah Office of Tourism after 28 years. Prior to that position, she was state film commissioner for 20 years. Leigh was also the chief administrative officer for the Utah Department of Community and Economic Development, an executive director for the Salt Lake City Council, and legislative assistant to a U.S. Congressman. https://csbs.utah.edu/alumni-spotlights/vonderesch.php (accessed 17 April 2020) 12 EC: And did they pay you? Was that a job? CE: You know, I cannot remember. It might have been just room and board. EC: Which was still fun because you had lived at home before, right? CE: Right, right, yes. EC: How long were you in graduate school and living in the DG house? CE: I lived there for a year and did graduate school, and then I ran into an old teacher friend of mine, my English teacher in ninth grade, Claudia Sisemore.26 I ran into her on campus. She had come back to school to get an MFA in painting and film. And I ran into her and we talked and visited for awhile and she wanted to know what I was up to. So she said, “Well, you know, why don’t you come up and stay with me in Centerville?27 I’ve got lots of room. We have a bunch of friends that live up there. It’s great! We’re all in graduate school. Come on up!” So that summer I moved up there, which was great. I continued school and I got my degree. I kind of did it a little bit at a time. I think it took me three years to get my masters.28 EC: And what’s it in? 26 Claudia Sisemore was born in Salt Lake City in 1937. She graduated with a BS in English from Brigham Young University (1959) and an MFA in filmmaking from the University of Utah (1976). She completed a four-year graduate program in painting as well as studying at the Salt Lake Art Center and exhibits abstractionist paintings (oil and acrylic). Sisemore has been a teacher of English, drama, creative writing, painting, skiing, and film production. She was a producer of educational films for the Utah State Office of Education for fifteen years. Over 35 years she produced films on a variety of subjects but her primary interest was in producing independent documentaries recording the histories of outstanding Utah artists. After retiring from the Utah State Office of Education, Claudia formed a small production company, Canyon Video, and is continuing to produce historical documentaries as well as other subjects. http://utahdcc.force.com/public/PtlArtifacts?field=artApp__Artist__c&value=a0j70000000Blga AAC&heading=Claudia%20Sisemore (accessed 20 April 2020) 27 Centerville is a city located about half-an-hour’s drive north of the University of Utah. 28 Carol graduated from Skyline High School in 1969 and got her master’s in English from the University of Utah in 1976. 13 CE: English! Another very helpful, really helpful degree! (laughs) EC: Because you’re “strong” in English? CE: Not anymore! EC: Okay, so after college you have this English degree. So tell me how you found your way, how you decided what to do next. CE: Well, I lived up in Centerville with Claudia and some other friends for a few years and worked at the TriArc Travelodge. I helped her with her painting: I used to stretch canvases and frame things. Helped her with her films: I’d help edit things, make suggestions, and do a lot of the hand stuff, and go out shooting with her. She produced documentary films on Maurice Abravanel,29 LeConte Stewart,30 Alvin Gittins,31 Doug Snow,32 Tony Rasmussen.33 29 Maurice Abravanel (1903–1993) was an American classical music conductor. He is remembered as the conductor of the Utah Symphony Orchestra for over 30 years. 30 LeConte Stewart (1891–1990) was a Mormon artist primarily known for his landscapes of rural Utah. He was commissioned by The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints to work on the murals in three temples and is well known for his impressionistic paintings of the desert landscape and northern Utah farm scenery. https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/1985/02/desert-brush-and-oil-a-portrait-ofleconte-stewart?lang=eng (accessed 21 April 2020) 31 Alvin L. Gittins (1922–1981) was an English-born artist who was a professor at the University of Utah. He has been described as “one of [the United States] greatest portrait artists ever.” Among the many people Gittins painted portraits of were David O. McKay, Henry Eyring, Maurice Abravanel, Haile Selassie I, and Joseph Smith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LeConte_Stewart (4 May 2020) 32 Artist V. Douglas Snow was born in Salt Lake City in 1928. He was considered one of the most exciting and dynamic painters of the West. He also ranked among the most significant influencers of the Utah modernist school. http://utahdcc.force.com/public/PtlArtifacts?field=artApp__Artist__c&value=a0j70000000ATi7 AAG&heading=V%20Douglas%20Snow (accessed 16 April 2020) 33 Anton “Tony” Rasmussen (1942–2015) created the large, hyperrealist murals depicting scenes of southern Utah for the Salt Lake City airport. He began his career as an abstract artist, from the action painting of his graduate work to large-scale depictions of microscopic cancer cells. He was the founding director of the Bountiful/Davis Art Center. http://artistsofutah.org/15Bytes/index.php/artist-profile-anton-tony-rasmussen/ (accessed 19 April 2020) 14 EC: Were you sort of familiar with those artists because of art history or did you know them because they were contemporary Utah artists? CE: Because they were contemporary Utah artists. I don’t remember [my college professor] Bob Olpin34 ever talking about anything except old dead stuff. EC: That’s true. That was his passion. He doesn’t care about people who are alive. CE: So, working with Claudia was a wonderful few years because I was being introduced to the contemporary art scene in Utah. I was learning about film. At one point I thought, Oh for sure I want to be a film maker. This is so cool. I’d gotten a 35-millimeter camera from my parents at college graduation so I was having fun learning, teaching myself how to use a camera, and taking photos. It was really great, but I didn’t have enough money to live! It was wonderful, but I couldn’t keep doing that. I couldn’t keep just helping Claud. So, I got a break. My old friend Diane Partenheimer from Skyline High, who I had gone to college with, got married to a guy name Hal Cannon. We’d stayed friends, and they’d been married for a year or so when she called me up—well, actually Hal called me and said, “I need some help and Diane said you can do it.” I said, “What do you need?” This was like July and I guess because Liese [their daughter Anneliese] was… EC: About what year is this? CE: This would have been 1978. I’d been out of graduate school for two years then. So he said, “It’s Liese’s one year birthday this month, so Diane will not let me go and the fellow I hired to and obituary at https://www.legacy.com/obituaries/saltlaketribune/obituary.aspx?n=anton-jesserasmussen&pid=174089329 (accessed 19 April 2020) 34 One of Carol’s teachers, Robert Spencer Olpin (1940–2005), was a professor of Art History at the University of Utah for 38 years and the (co-)author of several books. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_S._Olpin (accessed 19 April 2020) 15 run the Southern Utah Folklife Festival just quit on me. It’s happening the first weekend in September. Can you go down and put the festival together?”35 I said, “Well, I’ve never been to a folklife festival, I don’t know what it is, but sure! I’ve love to do that!” So that’s how I got involved in my career. I went down and got a room in a motel—a cheap room—took my camera with me, and went out and looked for people who did traditional skills. EC: Because he hadn’t already found those people? Were you starting from zero? CE: They had had a festival the year before so there were a handful of people from then, but they needed more. This was the second year of the event so I started . . . EC: Festival is in September and this was July? CE: This was July. EC: That wasn’t a lot of time for you! CE: I drove down there in my little [Nissan] Datsun and got the room and I started calling up people, “Hello, you don’t know me…” In those days, people weren’t so suspicious, you know? It was good. In the 1970s people would answer the phone and they’d give you a second so you could say why you were calling to bother them. Anyway, I started calling people and going to interview them, and taking photos because I ended up having to produce posters and brochures and do all the scheduling and make all the arrangements. It was a trial by fire that was absolutely wonderful. EC: Seriously! And where was the venue for this? CE: In Zion National Park. At the Nature School just inside the entrance.36 35 In 1976, Hal Cannon convinced the Utah Arts Council to start a Folk Arts program using some funding from NEA, and he became the first Folk Arts Coordinator there. The next year Hal developed a folklife festival in southern Utah, the Southern Utah Folklife Festival in Zion Park. It was later held in Springdale City Park on the first weekend following Labor Day sponsored by the Zion Natural History Association, the Utah Arts Council, the Washington County Travel Bureau, and the City of Springdale. (Information on Hal Cannon here and in other footnotes from The Big Book of Hal.) https://www.yumpu.com/en/document/read/62009000/the-big-bookof-hal (accessed 17 April 2020) 16 EC: Oh my word. And you pulled it off. CE: I did. It was great fun too. It was so wonderful.37 EC: Wow, and so after that, how did you get involved with the state Folk Arts? Did they even have a folk arts department then? CE: Yes. Hal was hired in, I think, in ’76.38 EC: Oh, that’s where he was coming from. CE: Yes, and he’d done the festival as part of his job. So I came back and then Hal, and ultimately I, worked for the Utah Arts Council, which was then part of what’s now the Department of Heritage & Arts. It was then the Department of Community and Culture. (No, it was something before that. The Arts Council has had several name changes.39) EC: It’s a state-funded organization. 36 Zion National Park covers 146,597 acres and was created in 1919. It is a red-rock wonderland created by wind, water, and snow. It was named by the Mormon pioneers arriving in the area in the 1860s. The Nature School, staffed by student teachers working under a cooperative agreement with the National Park Service, Southern Utah State College, and the Zion Natural History Association, is open to children 6 to 12 years of age during the summer months. 37 Carol went down the first part of August and the festival was the weekend after Labor Day in September, so she pulled it together in under six weeks total. 38 Hal Cannon was hired in 1976 by the Utah Arts Council to start a Folk Arts program using some funding from NEA (the National Endowment for the Arts). From 1975 to 1985 he served as the Folk Arts Coordinator and was named Utah’s “State Folklorist.” In 1985 he took leave to become the director of the Institute of the American West in Sun Valley, Idaho. He then went on to found the Western Folklore Center and organize the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Elko, Nevada. 39 The Utah Arts Institute was established in 1899 by the Utah Legislature three years after Utah received statehood. In 1967 they became the Utah State Division of Fine Arts. Under Ruth Draper in 1974 their name was changed to the Utah Arts Council. Currently, within the structure of Utah state agencies, the Utah Arts Council is part of the Division of Arts & Museums, which falls under the Department of Heritage & Arts, which is part of the Utah Community and Culture state agency. https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/u/UTAH_ARTS.shtml See also https://www.utah.gov/visiting/arts.html (accessed 17 April 2020) 17 CE: Yes, it is a state-funded organization, and you know in the mid-70s they were starting Arts Councils all over the country but Utah already had one.40 EC: Ours had been going strong. CE: Yeah, we already had one, so when they allocated some money, that was great. Ruth Draper41could do good things. She could do great things. She started bringing on a lot of staff and built it up, which was pretty neat. EC: We interviewed her for this project as well. CE: And you should interview your mother [Terrie Buhler] because she’s the one who really knows how all that worked.42 Seriously. EC: I will propose it. Okay, so you guys weren’t in the Chase Home way back then? 43 40 In 1965, Congress established the National Endowment for the Arts to support arts organizations and artists throughout the nation. Part of its mandate was to give funds to any state that had an arts agency. At that time, only two states had such agencies—New York, whose Council on the Arts was five years old, and Utah, whose Utah State Institute of Fine Arts was 66 years old, having been established by the state legislature in 1899. It was the only state-funded arts organization of its kind in the country for more than six decades, an indicator of the importance Utahns have historically placed on artistic endeavors. https://www.utahhumanities.org/stories/items/show/74 (accessed 17 April 2020) 41 Ruth Draper Crockatt worked as the Director for the Utah Arts Council from 1974-1985. During her time there, she was heavily involved in retaining funding from the Utah State Legislature. After leaving the UAC in 1985, she became the Representative for the Western Region for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) from 1985-1991. She continued to be involved with Utah Art events after her departure from the NEA including the Abravanel Hall/Art Center 25th Anniversary Celebration in 2004. http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv74951 [note: 1st marriage to Delbert Draper Jr in 1949; 2d marriage to William Crockatt in 1980] 42 Terrie Buhler retired in May 2004 after 30 years as assistant director and finance officer of the Utah Arts Council. She contributed invaluably to the arts and provided inestimable assistance to four directors—Ruth Draper, Carol Nixon, Bonnie Stephens, and Frank McEntire. She watched the Utah Arts Council grow from a small organization with five staff members and a budget of $200,000 to an agency with 22 employees and a budget of over $3 million. Ovations, Quarterly Utah Arts Council News, Winter '05, p.2, file:///C:/Users/gregd/Downloads/annual_report_fy04(1).pdf 18 CE: No, no. This was when I think they had just moved over to the Glendinning Home next to the Governor’s Mansion. 44 The Arts Council had just moved so the dates are kind of fuzzy for me. That was ’78 and I think I was gone for a while. I went back to Tennessee because my friend Ann was working there at the Joe L. Evins Appalachian Center for Crafts. They had hired her to put together a big grand opening for this craft center that a very influential senator had gathered money for. 45 It was for contemporary crafts like pottery, glass, textiles, that kind of stuff. It was the kind of contemporary craft you go to a craft school to learn or you go to a university to learn. This wasn’t traditional craft handed down to people. 43 The Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts is operated by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums, and has been the permanent home of the Utah State Folk Arts Collection since 1987. It is the only museum in the United States that is dedicated to displaying a state-owned collection of contemporary folk art produced by its residents. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chase_Home_Museum_of_Utah_Folk_Arts 44 Ruth Draper was appointed the director for the Division of Fine Arts (now known as the Utah Arts Council) in 1974. She and her staff of two administrators were housed in the Carriage House behind the Governor’s Mansion. Working with the Heritage Foundation in 1977, they persuaded the Legislature to purchase the Glendinning property to provide desirable office space for the Division of Fine Arts staff. https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/u/UTAH_ARTS.shtml. See also https://www.deseret.com/platform/amp/2002/11/18/19689006/don-t-move-arts-council 45 The Joe L Evins Center for Crafts was built with a federal grant spearheaded by the late Representative Joe L. Evins, Tennessee Congressman. Opening in 1980, the Appalachian Center for Craft is a campus of the nationally accredited School of Art, Craft & Design within the College of Fine Arts. It is located in Smithville, Tennessee. It also hosts multiple exhibitions annually featuring functional and sculptural works of traditional and contemporary fine craft and mixed media by international, national, and regional artists including artists from the Appalachian Center for Crafts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_L._Evins (accessed 5 May 2020) 19 EC: Usually when people say a “craft show,” I think they think of Swiss Days46 or Mormon Handicraft,47 or something like that. But you’re saying the Appalachian Center for Crafts was not that; it’s educated. CE: Yes, this was professional designer crafts. They built this whole big school so they could teach people. Ann Garrett was working with a fellow who couldn’t seem to get beyond his office and his coffee cup and his newspaper; he couldn’t do his job. Basically his job was to call up some nationally known craftspeople to come present workshops at this place in their first year of being open. Ann got really frustrated that he wasn’t doing his job and the date was coming for the opening and it was getting scary, so she called me and said, “Do you want to help us?” and I said sure. I went to Nashville for a couple months, well, just outside Nashville in Cooeville— Cooville as they called it there—and spent the time on the phone calling up artists and inviting them to do a workshop at the Joe L. Evins Appalachian Center for Crafts. That was a fun experience too and while I was there, I got to learn a lot about traditional crafts in Tennessee as well as these contemporary designer crafts. EC: Are you a participant as well as an organizer and admirer? For instance, do you do textiles yourself or anything like that? Have you ever wanted to? CE: I am so smart to stay away from all that stuff! I’m a much better appreciator than I am a doer. (laughs) The only thing that I do that has any artistry to it at all is I really like photography. So that’s about it. It’s good, though, not to be a competitor with the people you’re trying to promote. EC: Yeah, that’s true. There’s no conflict of interest at all. 46 Swiss Days in Midway, Utah, offers a wide variety of handmade items, antiques, fine art, and Swiss food. Between 80,000 to 100,000 people descended on Midway during Swiss Days, a tradition since the 1940s. 47 The Mormon Handicraft Shop began in 1937 to provide a market for the handwork of Latterday Saint women. It includes items such as intricately patterned quilts, colorful doilies, hot pads, China dolls, rag dolls, stuffed animals, baby clothes, afghans, decorative plaques, and pictures. Until 2005 it was located at 21 West South Temple in Salt Lake City where items handcrafted on consignment from both men and women are sold in the Gift Shop to the general public. https://latterdaysaintmag.com/article-1-7067/ ; see also https://eom.byu.edu/index.php/Mormon_Handicraft (accessed 5 May 2020) 20 CE: I came back after that nice opportunity and I helped Hal with a couple of little things. He had a big national show happening. I helped with the reception, that kind of stuff, and finally, he found a way to hire me. There were some CETA funds available, which was a government program from the feds that provided about a thousand dollars a month.48 He and Ruth [Draper] signed me up for CETA funding and I became Hal’s assistant. EC: And was a thousand dollars a month a livable wage? CE: It was because I was still living in Centerville for nothing! Yeah, it wasn’t great, but it was certainly better than nothing. EC: Your foot was in the door; you were in. CE: Yeah, my foot was in the door, which was great. So over the next few years after the CETA funding ran out, I would write grants. Grants from NEA (National Endowment for the Arts) 49 got funding for my position. I think from ’79 to’82 I was on CETA/NEA, and then I became a real state employee in ’82. That was great. EC: There’s security in that. CE: Yes, it was wonderful. EC: I know there’s a lot of programs that you started. I grew up coming to Mondays in the Park. Living Traditions wasn’t a thing before you came on, so tell me about those other programs. CE: Well, Hal was amazing. He’d gotten so many fires started. He had so many things going that I could pick and choose. It was fantastic. But one of the things that he got started was having folklorists in Arts Councils from around the West come together once a year at the Fife 48 The Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA) was a United States federal law enacted by Congress and signed into law by President Richard Nixon in 1973. Essentially, it was a jobs creation program that helped subsidize positions. CETA funds were administered in a decentralized fashion by state and local governments, on the assumption that they could best determine local needs. 49 The National Endowment for the Arts is an independent agency of the United States federal government that offers support and funding for projects exhibiting artistic excellence. It was created by an act of the U.S. Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. 21 conference in Logan. It was an academic conference and we’d have a parallel meeting for what we called public sector folklore. 50 We were all learning how to do jobs, we were all kind of new, and we were sharing ideas. One of the things we wanted to do was a project together, so we came up with the idea of cowboy poetry needing some kind of attention. As a group we decided what needed to happen with that, and Hal took a leave of absence to write a grant and plan the first Cowboy Poetry Gathering.51 That was his first step of moving away toward becoming the director of Cowboy Poetry and leaving the Utah job. That happened in the early part of the mid‘80s. At that point after Hal had gone to Elko [Nevada] to run the Cowboy Poetry full time, we were housed at the Art Barn—not in the Art Barn itself because that was where the City Arts Council was52—but we were in an old building they called the Annex. It was just this giant barnlike building. For several years some of the Utah Arts Council staff had gone up there and used the space. For instance, Dan Burke was up there with the Visual Arts Program, and then Hal came up with the Folk Arts Program. EC: On 1st South and like 13th? By the tennis courts? [1340 East 100 South] 50 The Fife Folklore Conference (FFC) is a workshop that brings together students and leading scholars in folklore and related fields from throughout the United States. In the early years of the conference, public folklorists (Western State Folk Arts Coordinators) met concurrently at Utah State University during the FFC and often one or more of the public folklorists would present at the conference. The Fife Folklore Conference officially began the summer of 1977. Through the years, the conference format has evolved, but it always includes presentations, lectures, and demonstrations on current trends in folklore by conference faculty and student participation through discussions and, at times, hands-on activities. http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv88607 (accessed 17 April 2020) 51 The Elko Cowboy Poetry Gathering started in 1985 as a place where Western ranchers and cowboys could gather to share poems about their lives working cattle. The Elko Gathering was renamed the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering by an act of Congress. Known simply as “Elko” to many, the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering is six days of poetry, music, dancing, workshops, exhibits, conversations, food, and fellowship, rooted in tradition but focused on today’s rural West. https://www.nationalcowboypoetrygathering.org/about-the-gathering (accessed 17 April 2020) 52 The Art Barn (54 Finch Lane, Salt Lake City) built in Reservoir Park opened in June 1933 and is now home to the Salt Lake City Arts Council. http://saltlakearts.org/about/ (accessed 17 April 2020) 22 CE: The Annex was where some of the original tennis courts were. There were tennis courts above the parking lot and then some below the parking lot, kind of right down there. There was an old building where the waterworks were and other stuff. Anyway, they took that all out and expanded the parking lot. That’s where our offices were and we had a little gallery space too, and it was nice. We were there for quite a while, and while we were there, we consulted with the City Arts Council. In 1986, they had a great opportunity: The Prairie Ship Liberty was coming through town, which was a giant art project to commemorate a hundred years of the Statue of Liberty. This prairie ship was going to go from the west coast back to the east coast and the organizers would set up their big ship and have local festivals in towns along the way to celebrate our multi-ethnic heritage.53 So the City Arts Council said, “We’ve got this opportunity coming. Want to partner with us?” I said, “Yes!” So that was the first Living Traditions Festival. 54 EC: Oh, that’s where that was born. CE: Yes, and it was up at Pioneer Trail State Park. EC: Where’s that? CE: This is the Place Monument? What do they call it now? EC: This Is the Place Heritage State Park? At the mouth of Emigration Canyon? 53 At each stop of this national touring art installation called the “Prairie Ship Liberty,” local community artists put together an ethnic festival to celebrate America’s diversity. Salt Lake City was chosen as one of the locations for the exhibit to stop and this was the beginnings of the inaugural Living Traditions Festival. In Utah the festival began in May 1986 at This is The Place State Monument. http://livingtraditionsfestival.com/history/ (accessed 17 April 2020) 54 The Living Traditions Festival (now produced by the Salt Lake City Arts Council) is a free three-day multicultural festival celebrating the traditional music, dance, crafts and foods of Salt Lake City’s contemporary ethnic communities. In 1990, the Living Traditions Festival moved from the original This is the Place State Monument site to its current location at the City & County Building and Library Square. http://saltlakearts.org/program/living-traditionsfestival/ (accessed 17 April 2020) See also http://livingtraditionsfestival.com/history/ 23 CE: Ah, it’s got a new name now. So, we held the Living Traditions Festival there for four years, and we got the fun stuff to do. We, at the Folk Arts Program got to contact all the artists, all the craftspeople, all the performers, and the food vendors, and arrange all that. EC: Was it hard to find performers and vendors, or were they already there and they’d just never had an opportunity to perform for the greater public? Or did you have to encourage people to put together an official group and come do this thing? CE: Well, there were quite a few already in existence, but most people didn’t know them. They’d just perform for their own community. Yeah, so it was fun to make connections and find those folks and invite them. But then, of course, as you get people there and other people come and see their performances, then they call and say, “Hey, we’re available,” and it just all mushrooms. EC: So, only the first year did you have the Prairie Liberty Ship, and after that it was without the ship but with the same festival? CE: Yeah. Fun stuff. EC: Find the craftspeople, and the singers, and the dancers. CE: And the food people. The City Arts Council had to do the horrible stuff, like the physical structure, the advertising, the fundraising. You know, all that. EC: Yuck, you got the best end of that deal! CE: That’s right. That was a good deal. So we were there at the Pioneer Trail State Park for four years, and then we moved down to City and County Building. EC: When did you guys get to move into the Chase building in Liberty Park? 55 55 The Chase Home is located in the middle of Liberty Park, Salt Lake City. The Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts there is the only museum in the country dedicated to displaying a state-owned collection of contemporary folk art. It features objects made by Utah artists from the state’s American Indian, rural, occupational, and ethnic communities. The Chase Home itself, built more than 150 years ago in a traditional hall-and-parlor style from adobe bricks, is a fine example of 19th century folk art. https://artsandmuseums.utah.gov/chase-home-museum/ (accessed 17 April 2020) 24 CE: We moved in the fall of ‘86 when Carol Nixon was the director of the Utah Arts Council.56 As I said earlier, the City Arts Council was going to tear down the Annex to expand their parking so we needed to find a place. The Visual Arts people had been in the Chase Home for a little while. The city owned it, and the DUP [Daughters of the Utah Pioneers] had used it for a number of years as a Relic Hall,57 but they’d given it up some time probably in the late ‘70s and it was empty. Dan Burke, who was a Visual Arts coordinator, had worked a deal with the city. Then he got some federal money to put on a contemporary craft show there. He worked with some interior designers and they fixed up the rooms, and they had juried artists who came and displayed contemporary crafts and filled the house with that. So the Arts Council already had the Chase Home because Dan had worked that deal with the city. The city provided manpower to renovate the rooms and then the grant money paid for the interior designers and all the craftspeople, and it was lovely. Dan had been running shows there for a few years (showing the state art collection), but it was a difficult place for fine art because there weren’t very many walls—it was mostly windows. Lots of windows. Dan had a lot of other things going on and he ended up moving on and Sheryl Sandberg took his place as the Visual Arts Coordinator. She was kind of left with the Chase Home and I think she was thinking, I just don’t know if I want to deal 56 Carol Nixon has been the president of Utah Families Foundation, the Utah Arts Council director, and the first female to serve as chief of staff to a Utah governor, Norman H. Bangerter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carol_Nixon (accessed 17 April 2020) 57 As early as 1903 the DUP were interested in the gathering and display of relics. The constitution of the DUP states that the purpose of their organization is: “to perpetuate the names and achievements of the men, women and children who were the pioneers in founding this commonwealth: by preserving old landmarks, marking historical places, collecting artifacts and histories, establishing a library of historical matter, and securing manuscripts, photographs, maps, and all such data as shall aid in perfecting a record of the Utah pioneers.” (See Utah History Encyclopedia https://www.uen.org/utah_history_encyclopedia/d/DAUGHTERS_OF_UTAH_PIONEERS.shtm l) (accessed 17 April 2020) 25 with this or not, so finally one day she said to me, “Do you guys want the Chase Home?” And I said, “Yeah, we’ll be right over!” Because we were desperately looking for a place and we knew the Art Barn’s Annex was on its way down. So we moved.58 It must have been in ’86 because we started Mondays in the Park in the summer of ’87. EC: Explain what Mondays in the Park are. CE: Okay. Mondays in the Park started out to be four concerts in July and ended up being eight concerts in July and August. They were free concerts we held at 7:00 Monday night right in front of the Chase Home. We’d put a big backdrop on the porch and have the performers on a little stage out in front of the porch with lights. People would bring their own chairs.59 Craig was the master! He was the one who did all the programming for Mondays in the Park. He had such great understanding, sensitivity, and knowledge about all of the performing groups. That was his expertise. EC: Craig? 58 The Utah Division of Arts & Museums’ primary offices, as well as its arts education and literary arts programs, are located in the Glendinning Home, next to the Governor’s Mansion in Salt Lake City. Its folk arts and museum services programs are housed in the Chase Home Museum of Utah Folk Arts. Its visual, public, and design arts programs operate from offices in the Rio Grande Depot in Salt Lake City. 59 Beginning in 1987, Mondays in the Park has featured performances from various cultural communities of Utah. Free concerts of traditional folk music and cultural dance are presented on selected Monday evenings in July and August in front of the Chase Home Museum in the middle of Liberty Park. Attendees bring their own lawn chairs, blankets, picnics, to watch these outdoor concerts. Mondays in the Park is now produced by the Utah Division of Arts & Museums and the Salt Lake City Arts Council’s “Living Traditions Presents” program. 26 CE: Craig Miller. He worked with me for years.60 And he put it together so that there would be at least two performances each night, maybe three. He’d invite people to bring their small dance troupes, the little kids even. So kids grew up having the opportunity to perform and having to work hard to perform. These were all groups from the community. We didn’t hire anybody from out of state or out of town. I think we brought a few cowboy poets from southern Utah a few times and maybe some artists from as far as Ogden, but other than that, it was all local performers. And we had a constant, loyal audience. It was great. EC: That’s so nice. I’m just curious. Is there any particular group that for you personally you remember being your favorite to work with or a performance that you remember being especially amazing? CE: Not really because they all kind of shifted and changed. Some, I can say I fell in love with the people themselves, you know, like Anastacio and Elisa Castillo. We used to have them occasionally. They began as a duo at that point, a husband and wife duo.61 We couldn’t necessarily present them at Mondays in the Park other than a real short set because we needed something bigger. We did a lot of dance and a lot of big, more splashy stuff and bands. But I’ll tell ya, you make lifelong friendships with some of these people because they are so absolutely wonderful. Their stories are wonderful; their talents are wonderful; their concern for their community is wonderful. EC: And did you get to record their stories as part of your work? CE: Yes, our work was in several parts. Our job was to find people who practiced traditional arts, document what they did through interviews and photography, encourage them through programs like apprenticeships or award programs, or performance opportunities or exhibit opportunities, 60 Folklorist Craig Miller received the 2014 Salt Lake City Mayor’s Award for Service to the Arts in recognition of his 30 years of highlighting the city’s ethnic communities and their heritage. Craig encouraged, presented, and advocated for traditional forms of cultural expression among the city’s many minority groups, both historical and newly arrived. (See https://www.afsnet.org/news/179582/Craig-Miller-Receives-Salt-Lake-City-Mayors-Award.htm) (accessed 17 April 2020) 61 The Rio Bravo Conjunto, founded by Anastacio and Elisa Castillo, continue with second and third generations of the Castillo family playing music all together for over 30 years at Mondays in the Park and the annual Living Traditions Festival. 27 and then find other ways besides that to share what they did with the public. That could include writing booklets or producing CDs, as well as traveling exhibits. So it was a really wonderfully fun and creative job. We could look out there and see who was in the community, what they were doing, what was significant, what was happening often enough that it was a marker of the community, and what was important to them. Then we’d find the best practitioners of that, and figure out the best way to share it—documented always with sound recordings and photography. Then we’d take that information and decide what was the best format to share it. Sometimes it was best to make it into a book, like the cowboy poetry book. That ended up being the best way to highlight them because we didn’t have enough poets here to do a lot of events—they’d all go to Elko—so we captured their stuff in a book.62 In the Hispanic community, there were some crafts but mostly performance, so we did our research, put together a book63, put together CDs, and did concerts. It was just a matter of figuring out what was most important in each one of these cultural or occupational or rural communities and then share that with the community. EC: You’ve had the best job in the whole world. CE: I have. Absolutely the best job. And it was the partly the best job because it was at a time when our bosses, like Terrie [Buhler], were always there to support and advocate. Also, the directors of the Arts Council, they were of the mind: We’ve hired subject specialists; these are people who know their constituency, they understand literature in Utah, they understand the visual arts. So let them tell us what needs to happen and we’ll say, “Yes, we can do that,” or 62 Cowboy Poetry from Utah: An Anthology by Carol A. Edison and F. Euray Anderson (Salt Lake City: Utah Folklife Center, 1985) 63 Hecho en Utah (Made in Utah): A Cultural History of Utah’s Spanish Speaking Communities edited by Carol A. Edison, Anne F. Hatch, Craig Robb Miller (Salt Lake City: Utah Arts Council, 1992). 28 “No, we can’t.” What they didn’t say was: “You’ll do this or you’ll do that.” We were able to devise what we wanted to do. Yes. The best. EC: I actually remember when I was a little kid and you needed stories. I hadn’t thought of it till just now, but it was for something about storytelling throughout communities in Utah—maybe you don’t remember? CE: Oh I do. EC: Your colleague, Dave Stanley, came and recorded me and my friends telling ghost stories at a sleepover when we were just little kids. And it was awesome. Has there ever been a group that has not wanted to be represented or included in sharing their culture or arts? CE: No one specific. Some people are shy, or they say there really isn’t enough material for a showing, you know, so we don’t push. But no, most people, most everybody is so happy to be recognized, that they have something special, and most of them are so willing to share. And that’s really wonderful. You get to see the good part of humanity. EC: Yeah, that’s true. And I feel like folk arts just popped up in unexpected places for us. I remember being at the fair once with my toddlers, the Utah State Fair, and we went in a building and you guys were there with hula dancers, and they did a performance and taught us to hula for a minute. It was so fun and unexpected. It was just such a treat to stumble upon that. CE: We did years and years of state fair programs. It would be a little bit different most every year. Depending on what we were doing that year, we’d highlight it out at the fair, finding some way to share it. You know, there’s a big audience that goes to the fair. EC: Yes, people who you wouldn’t normally reach. I just thought it was so much fun. So, one of our last questions is whether you feel like your life is different or the same as your mother’s or other women her age? Would your mother recognize the things you are doing and value them? Do you feel a connection to the things they were doing? CE: Hmm. Well, I think my mother was always surprised that I had so many opportunities that she didn’t have. EC: Was she nervous about your degree in English? 29 CE: No, my parents were always very supportive of what I did. And they were proud of the job I was able to have and the things I accomplished, though I think they sometimes didn’t get it. I think for a long time they didn’t know what I was doing!64 It’s funny, I have a friend who wrote a book called, Folklore Rules, and one of the ways they used to promote it was to say, “This is for students of folklore who need to explain to their parents what they do!”65 (laughs) So, it’s a problem throughout the discipline, but I think my folks finally kind of understood. They’re very conservative and I think they would have been uncomfortable in many situations I was in. I mean, I got to do great things like go to squaw dances on the Navajo Reservation, visit a mine and go down in the mine, and all kinds of fun things that were open to me because of a really great job. You know, I think it’s just the progression of time and the way things become more accessible and more open as each generation comes along. My parents were very much products of the Depression66 and of the World War. And my generation is very much a recipient of all the grace and the good that came from the World War. All the working together. EC: That’s a lovely way to say that. That’s perfect. That’s a beautiful note to end on. Thank you so much for letting me come. 64 To access an interview with Carol Edison specifically focused on her folklorist experiences, see the USU Digital History Collections: Public Folklore Oral History-Carol Edison at https://digital.lib.usu.edu/digital/collection/AFS/id/312/ (accessed 17 April 2020) Brief Description of Contents: “Carol Edison talks about how she accidentally became a public sector folklorist, after having earned BA and MA degrees in English from the University of Utah. She talks about the early days of public folklore programs in Utah, and how she eventually became the Utah Folk Arts Program Coordinator. She discusses the Utah State Collection of Folk Arts, and how it came to be. She also talks about her many experiences being a public sector folklorist over the years in Utah. Her interests include grave markers, Native American art (especially basket weaving), cowboy poetry, Mormon folk art, as well as others.” 65 Lynne S. McNeill, Folklore Rules: A Fun, Quick, and Useful Introduction to the Field of Academic Folklore Studies (Salt Lake City: Utah State University Press, 2013). 66 The Great Depression lasted from 1929 to 1939 and was the worst economic downturn in the history of the industrialized world. By 1933, when the Great Depression reached its lowest point, some 15 million Americans were unemployed and nearly half the country’s banks had failed. 30