Doris Neiditch Guss, Interviews with Jews in Utah, Accn 998

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Doris N. Guss 7-9-84 Side 1, p 5 rather to make me understand how important it was to be proud of who you are and what your language was and never to be ashamed. And to this day, I'm grateful for that lesson in life. Because I taught that to my children. And I think it's - it's been a won­derful - it was a wonderful growing up here and then, of course, my father passed away when I was not quite thirteen. L What happenedto your father? DG He had what they call - I don't know what the term was then, then they called it dropsy. Where the fluid drowns the heart. And he was just a young man, forty years old. And at that time my mother had my sister, Annie, and another sister who was four years old, a little over four and the baby who was only three months old. We were four sisters. And so he left her a widow early in life. And it was quite a struggle, quite a struggle for her. And it made it difficult for me for school. I was then, I think, in the 11th grade. I went through school quite rapidly and I had the privilege of being asked, because I had done so well in school, that because of the situation at home, that I need to learn a profession so I could help support my mother. So the community, the Jewish community helped me to go to a business college where I learned shorthand and typing and I got myself a job and I worked for a couple of years and then I met my beloved when I was seventeen. Met him at a mutual friend in Salt Lake City and it was love at first sight. And he gave me my ring on my birthday in December. L On your seventeenth birthday? DG Uh-huh. On my seventeenth birthday and we were married the f~l­lowing June.