Oral History Program Alice Giauque Interviewed by Sarah Tooker & Sarah Storey 2 August 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Alice Giauque Interviewed by Sarah Tooker & Sarah Storey 2 August 2019 Copyright © 2022 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The Beyond Suffrage Project was initiated to examine the impact women have had on northern Utah. Weber State University explored and documented women past and present who have influenced the history of the community, the development of education, and are bringing the area forward for the next generation. The project looked at how the 19th Amendment gave women a voice and representation, and was the catalyst for the way women became involved in the progress of the local area. The project examines the 50 years (1870-1920) before the amendment, the decades to follow and how women are making history today. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Giauque, Alice, an oral history by Sarah Tooker & Sarah Storey, 2 August 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Alice Giauque 2 August 2019 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Alice Giauque conducted on August 2, 2019 at the Stewart Library, by Sarah Tooker. Alice discusses her life, her memories at Weber State University, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Sarah Storey, the video technician, is also present. AG: I was born in St. Anthony, Idaho. I was born in Idaho, we moved to Brigham City, Utah then to Kaysville Utah. My father was a—he worked at Hill field. ST: Wonderful. AG: My mother was a teacher. I guess why it’s hard is my father died when I was— after my freshman year. ST: Oh I’m sorry. AG: Here at Weber. ST: I’m sorry for your loss. AG: So I guess Weber was—I come from a family of ten children. All of us have bachelor’s degrees and most of us… some of us have master’s and doctorate degrees. So, my mother was a teacher and so education was important. And I guess Weber was the only, was really the only option. So of the ten of us, 9 of us attended Weber. ST: Oh wow. That’s fantastic. So it’s a legacy. 2 AG: And my two older sisters came here in probably ’58, ’57. Well, ’57, ’56, maybe even my brother in ’55. They were student body—the two sisters were student body officers and so I just assumed that I would come here and be like they were. But that didn’t work out. And of… so they, so I was looking up here and it says that like the three of the ten have associate’s degrees when it was just a two-year college. I had an associate degree in English as my major and then I went to the U of U for a while, ran out of money, came back and so I’ve on and off. So I started in ’60, 1960, graduated with the associate degree in ’62. Went to the U of U for two terms and then came back for one term and then I went on an LDS mission to France for two years. Came back and finished up my degree in teaching. I did my student teaching through Weber College in English. I taught at Washington Junior High, here in Ogden. It was a very hard experience because I was always a good student and this was an inner-city school, junior high. So, I taught English and French in that school. And so what happened is, I had my evaluation after my first—well it was not a full year, it was about half… I came in January and I got my evaluation and the only good thing he said about me was I dressed well. SS: Oh. AG: So with that in mind, I thought, “I guess I better not be an English teacher.” So I didn’t ever do that again. So I basically found out that my choice of degree was not a good one for me. I was not cut out to be an English teacher. So I thought, “Well I’ll move to French.” Since I already had my French and my experience with French at Weber was during my sophomore year. And my first French 3 experience was with a new teacher, fresh out of college. And we spent our entire time in the language lab using the what they called the audio/visual—listen and repeat. And that is not, absolutely not a good way for me to learn a language. I could repeat, but I could not understand. And if anybody ever talked to me, I couldn’t answer. So I came out with that with good grades. I was getting A’s and B’s but when I went to the U of U and came into a real French class, I worked really hard. I mean I was not a slacker, I went to class every day, I studied every day and got a D at the U of U. ST: Oh that’s hard. AG: So, I came back because I ran out of money at the U and came back here and took another class and I did slightly better. I got a C here because we had a new teacher and she had a different teaching style. So then I went to France on my mission and came home and my mother was a widow with—at that time there were, of the ten children, there were still 7 of us who were unmarried and all going to college. And so I had to make my own way. So I was a scholarship person and in my first year at Weber, I got a full ride tuition scholarship. SS: Wow. ST: That’s wonderful. AG: For $75. SS: Wow. AG: And I worked… 4 ST: I wish that full tuition was still $75. AG: $75 for a full tuition scholarship and that was probably for two years and my first, my first year I worked at Lagoon in the summer and made $600 at Lagoon and that got me through that first year. And then, the next summer, I cooked, I didn’t want to go back to Lagoon. Later on I didn’t find a job and my father was ill. He died in September. So, I commuted from Kaysville. That was a very hard winter, it snowed a lot that winter. The winter of ’62 and that was hard. Commuting, it was only 11 miles as you look at it. And 11 miles it seemed like 200 miles. ST: Yeah. AG: So anyway, the commute was hard. My first year, I lived in a little house just over here on 36th street. And I did want to be in the club that my sisters were in. But that did not work out and so the club that wanted me, I didn’t want. And so I did not, I was not. I was one of those, “I can’t have what I want, it won’t be.” Which was silly, but you know, you look back. So anyway, I was not really active except I was the president of the WHIP club, which was the service club, during my sophomore year. And I was also active in music. Not really good, but good enough to be on one of the good groups. It was called Vocal Co-Eds with Dr. Hansen. I don’t know if you know Dr. Hansen from the early 60’s. So I looked through my records, I tried to remember some of the teachers that influenced me. Well, it was Dr. Monson who was the head of the English. He was head of the humanities department, and he was very knowledgeable. It was my first experience with Shakespeare and we always joked about Dr. Monson’s being the spiritual values of Shakespeare, that was what we called him. And then I loved 5 Dr. Beus who was geology. And went on a geology trip with him down to the goosenecks. So, I also worked closely with Dr.—with Mrs. Marva Gregory, wonderful woman. And I took some psychology classes from Dr. Stratford who was the dean of men. Most interesting man. And I think those psychology classes influenced me in a good and bad way. Looked at life way too much, as far as psychology. Psychology can twist your mind. It’s supposed to clear you to see the possibility. And then, the French, I had one year of French and like I said, I did well in the class, I got okay grades, A’s and B’s. But came out knowing nothing. Another one was a very fine doctor, Dr. Hayes who is a psychology—not psychology—physiology. I had class from him, and his daughter became my best friend. He was a wonderful person and then when I came back after my LDS mission, I went and did student teaching with another teacher called Florence Barton, I did my student teaching under her and in a junior high in Layton, Utah. So after my bad experience with the junior high, I said, “No more. No more English teachers, so I’ll be a French teacher.” And so I went and worked on a master’s in… a master’s of French and English from BYU. I never really wrote my thesis. I was not a good writer. Then during that I married. When I was at BYU, I met my husband who has a Ph.D. in French and Spanish. So that lead us towards the language side of it. But I had such a bad experience being a teacher that I didn’t go back even after we got married and had our children, we have five children. We did spend a year in France. He was doing a sabbatical in France. We took our five children to France and we lived there for a year. They 6 went to French schools, so language, French language because of my husband, he is extremely fine learner of languages. He speaks French extremely well for an American as the French would say. SS: Yeah. AG: And I guess I do okay because when we lived in France, during this year in France with our children, he was teaching in France. And I went into a store and someone said, “Where are you from?” And I said, “Guess.” And they did not guess American. ST: Oh that’s good. AG: So that’s good. AG: That’s the French side. But, let’s go back to that. So after that I then taught French after, during and before my children were born. And I also taught a year of English in a school in Missouri. And I discovered that that was not for me. So when having our children and living on a professor’s salary, I thought, “Well I’ve got to do something to make things a little better.” So my father was a handy man. And I said, “If he could do it, so can I.” And so that is what I did, we lived in Flagstaff, Arizona for 17 years and during those 17 years, I became a building contractor. SS: Wow. ST: Wow. So from teaching English to a building contractor. 7 AG: To a building contractor. So, what I learned about me is that I am more visually oriented. Quite visually oriented and fix it and if I see something, I can usually do it. And I’m not orally, I’m not language, I’m not as language oriented as you need to be when you’re an English teacher and French teacher. And let’s face it, I did well. Over the course of 20, 25, 30 years I have actually designed and built with the help of other contractors 12 houses—investment houses. SS: Wow. ST: That’s fantastic. AG: So that’s where, that lead me. It’s back to, as a woman, looking and starting school in the 60’s I should have been an architect. Or I should have been an engineer but that was not part of what the 60’s were. The 60’s woman who came into college, at least in my background, were teachers. I have five sisters, of the five sisters they have teaching certificates. And I have a teaching certificate and I have one sister who went to Weber. My youngest, my next to youngest sister, she has a degree from Weber in Math. Which is more of, which is more of what my families—my brothers, I have lots of brothers who were in Math. I have a niece who has a Ph.D. in Math. My brother—I have three brothers that taught math. One in the University. So Math was more than the language, so you have to go with what your talents are. And so what I did is I would go to houses that were under construction and I’d draw pictures of how it was built. I would just look at it and say, “Okay, that’s how the trusses go in and that’s how it goes in.” And I said, “Who of all of construction workers, who makes the most money? And it was electricians. And I said, “Okay, I can be an electrician.” I can. So, I 8 studied how to be an electrician and of those 12 houses, I did the electricity that wired the houses for probably half of them. ST: That’s amazing. AG: Half of the houses. So that’s the way my mind works. I see things visually and I—so I drew all of… of those houses, I drew all of the architectural plans, the blue prints for all of those houses. And then what I’d do is I would hire someone to come in and frame it, do the drywall, do the insulation. I did all of the painting. I did all of the woodwork. I used to do all of the woodwork, I don’t anymore. So in others I learned how-to put-up doors. Put in baseboards and paint. So I did a little… I’ve done a lot of, a lot of painting—exteriorly and interiorly. A lot of painting, so that’s where I went from English and French and Psychology over to construction. And then I discovered that once you’ve got the house built and you have a renter in it, then that’s the hard part. Yeah. ST: Yes, that is a hard part. AG: The hard part is keeping the renters happy, finding good renters, knowing when to kick them out, and when to be lenient. That’s a hard part. I don’t know what part of Weber did that for me, but anyway. That was hard. And so I moved into rental management. ST: Okay. AG: Of my own things. I never did it for anybody else. I never did any construction for anybody else. Although I did have a contractor’s license in Arizona, because you need a contractor’s license to get loans. To get a loan to build a house. And 9 so I’ve done fairly well but not super well. You know, I think back and say, “Okay, I could have made more money on that.” And so then, also then there’s the math which comes in with the accounting. And being able to figure out about loans, about accounting, about when to buy and sell. Sometimes I did okay, sometimes I didn’t do okay. But nothing was… I learned that when you are in business, you have to make sure your debt is in line. You can’t have too high of debt, especially in real estate. So I’ve listened to a lot of people say, “Go out and buy for nothing down.” That never seemed to work for me. I don’t know what Weber did to help me learn that I don’t know, maybe just being on my own. Because from the age of 13 because of the financial situation of our family, I’ve probably… I supported myself. So anyway, what else do you want to know? SS: Would you mind if I asked you a quick question? So, when you were building and you were getting loans because you had a contractor’s license, did you ever have any problems with that? Because you were a woman, were you able to get those all by yourself? AG: Well, I never ran into problems that I was a woman. Because part of it is that my husband had a full-time job. He was working and so we would use his income as a basis for what the two of us were doing. So what I would do is I would—often times I would have a house that we owned and then put in a bigger mortgage on it and use that money to build the house. And then when, so then the renters would come in then that would give it income. So no, I never felt like there was any discrimination. But part of it was because it was my husband and I together. I was using his financials, although teachers don’t make a lot of money, but you 10 know it was helpful for loans. I do remember once, someone called me up when I had a contractor’s license. It was under my name and they called me up and said, “You’re a woman would you like to take advantage of the fact that you’re a woman?” And I never wanted to do that because I was doing this for our financial, not to help someone else. I didn’t want to get into that. So every piece of property that I built, it was an investment for our portfolio. So I would—I’ve done some remodeling. They call it flipping now. But I don’t do that anymore. I’m too old. I’m too tired. My back is too bad. Too tired. So let’s see what other questions you might have. Do you have any other questions you want to talk about? ST: With your time with the WHIP club, what kind of activities do you remember? Is there anything that sticks out in your mind? AG: WHIP club was basically a service club. We often helped with the football games and basketball games. Where we would do whatever was needed to—what else? Mostly the basketball games, football games. We would come and usher. Oh I know, we ushered during those years Weber had no place to put on performances. ST: Okay. AG: So for example, first year, I was in the musical, what was the musical? Come on. The musical… South Pacific. ST: Oh that’s a lovely one. AG: South Pacific and that was held in Ogden High School’s auditorium. 11 ST: Okay. AG: So most every event during the 60’s—’60, ’62 was held in Ogden. Or in the LDS Tabernacle downtown. ST: Okay. AG: So anytime that Weber had a graduation. So when I got my associate’s degree in ’62, that was held in the LDS Tabernacle. And South Pacific was in Ogden High. So we did that if the symphony came into town it was at Ogden High. So, I still remember going as the president of WHIP club with the, she was probably the registrar. Went with her to get things ready for the graduation and for things like that. I worked with, like I said, Marva Gregory, she was a very gentle and accomplished beautiful woman. I think she was a widow. So that was what WHIP club did is to be more ushers and things like that. ST: So do you think your time being president of the WHIP club and being involved with coordinating and things like that, do you think that helped you later in life with your business? AG: I never thought of it that way, but it gave me experience, yes. ST: Wonderful. AG: I was not… before I did that. I did not do any leadership. I was at Heisman High School, I was not a student officer. I was more in with the yearbook, so I was not into coordinating people or organizing things. So that’s WHIP club. I think another cute little side line as I was thinking about this. I was looking through the 12 yearbook and it talked about the outstanding sophomore. And I got a little trophy as an outstanding sophomore. But I think there were a dozen of us, a dozen women. I thought, “Okay, I know why I got that.” My good friend was on the committee. So anyway. ST: That’s awesome. AG: Anything else? So now, what has happened, over the years, I would buy and sell houses. At one time, we had eight pieces of property and now as we are getting older, I’m looking at the taxes. A lot of years, I worked on the taxes for my rental properties and would study that out to see what would be the best way tax wise to stay away from capital gains and that sort of thing. And how to keep away from the depreciation situation. So we did a lot. We did a lot of what you’d call, you move in, you have a rental property, you move into as a principal residence, and then you can sell it after two years and get a tax break. And we did that four, four times. So we did a lot of moving. So we would have a rental, or another thing was it’s called a 1031 exchange. We did that. In other words you look at— it has to do with accounting, and it has to do with taxes and so at the present time we have four rental properties. ST: Okay. AG: And so it… I was talking to a friend just the other day and she said, “What do you do?” Her husband died. She’s trying to figure out what to do and she said, “What did you do?” I said, “Well we had a condo, we had a condo in Salt Lake that we lived in for a while. Now it’s rented. We moved into a big house.” And she said, 13 “Oh that’s interesting that you moved from a condo, to a big house.” She kind of hinted that she would not be able to do that because now that her husband was, had died and she was… that’s only one social security check instead of two that maybe she didn’t have enough money with social security and with the investments. They both were school teachers. ST: Okay. AG: So, the building has given us additional income so that we can afford to live in a lovely home in Bountiful. And make more money than we could spend. ST: That’s always nice. AG: It’s always nice. Now we aren’t really rich, but you know, we are good. So anyway that’s basically where it’s gone. Advice. Well starting in my field, I guess don’t be afraid to change. Okay, what are some of my favorite, fond memories of Weber State? Weber State was hard for me. Part of it is, I should have been in the club, I didn’t, I chose not to because I didn’t… it was not the club that I wanted. When I could have been in something else. Okay, what was Weber State like when I started? Very small, four buildings plus the temporary union building, which was called the TUB, plus it had a fairly large technical building. And they had a presidents home and when I was in South Pacific, we did all of our practicing down at the old downtown and the swimming pool was downtown. So, the commuting was hard. Commuting from Kaysville into Weber. I did that for quite a few years. That was hard. Other than that. And why did I come to Weber? Because it was close and it’s what we could afford. 14 ST: Okay. AG: I think that’s… mentors? I guess I mentioned those. Challenges? The challenges I faced, I probably chose the wrong field to start with, but that was what women did, I guess you might say. In the late 50’s early 60’s, they went into education. They didn’t go into engineering. ST: Yeah. AG: So, but it’s turned out okay. My biggest problem is now I can’t do it anymore. That’s the hard part. Okay anything else? ST: Well for our final question, how do you think women receiving the right to vote, shaped or influence history, your community, and you personally? AG: I’m not a real political person. I’m not really drawn to women’s issues. I do have a daughter who is struggling. Well she’s… okay, this daughter is 42 years old. She lives in Brooklyn New York. She worked for 10 years with American Express. She has a master’s degree, an MBA. She got her degree in finance and French. She’s lived in Manhattan… in Brooklyn for over ten years. And she is very much into that. So maybe, maybe she is me. Me in this century. Struggling with equal pay, she just sent me an email about how poor Utah is doing as far as equality and pay and she’s you know… But she’s unemployed. She’s been unemployed. And she has a degree in finance, which is a man’s world. ST: Yeah. 15 AG: And she’s moving into something different. Going to get out of finance, I think she’s going to get out of finance and more into computers and technical. ST: Okay, that’s a really good field. I was, I looked at jobs the other day. So I think she’ll be able to find a job in computers. AG: So what it is, she loves Brooklyn. She loves the, you know, I had to smile at her. She said, “Oh yes, the world is so consumer… so consumer oriented.” And let’s face it, Brooklyn is extremely expensive place to live. If you want a place to live, then you can’t consume and be unemployed. ST: Yeah. AG: So, she’s owned two condos’ there in Brooklyn. The first one she sold for $450,000. It was a very small one bedroom, but in a good area. That’s important. And she bought another one for $650,000 and sold it for $700,000 almost $800,000. It was a two bedroom, but she sold it because she lost her job and so she’s got I don’t know how many hundreds of thousands she’s got to live on. But she, you know, that’s my daughter. So now I’m seeing the women’s issues through her eyes and I don’t like it but, anyway. Okay, receiving the right to vote. I’m sure she will be very, be happy to celebrate the women’s right to vote. ST: Okay, do you have any other things you wanted to tell us? AG: No, no, I don’t think so. ST: Okay. 16 AG: Let me look at my list. No. Okay, I’ll say a couple of things. I was on the it’s called the cultural committee. The first year that the old Union Building was built, the cultural—I guess, I don’t know if it was Ogden City… Ogden High School or Weber College had a poet named Ogden Nash. ST: I’ve heard about Nash. AG: And he came, and it was a delight. So I do mesh my English background and my interest in literature. But it was not the right thing for me to be professionally involved in that. ST: Understandable. AG: So I have five children. All three of them have MBA’s, so I guess they are highly influenced by my business. And all of them speak French. ST: That’s wonderful. SS: That’s wonderful, that’s great. AG: So they all speak French and three speak Spanish, so we have a combination of the language and the business. SS: Nice. ST: That’s wonderful. SS: How did you manage to balance all that you were doing with all of your building and your business and then take five children at the same time? 17 AG: I was busy. I was busy, so I sent them off. I was not the kind that would, that could be a homeschooler. So I’d send them off to school and do my work or do the work late at night when my husband came home. So I worked late nights lots of times or I did a lot of this after they were in school. SS: That makes sense. You’re very ambitious, that’s wonderful. AG: Can’t do it anymore. It’s done. ST: Well thank you for coming. AG: You’re welcome. ST: We appreciate your time.