Oral History Program Louenda Downs Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 9 September 2019 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Louenda Downs Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 9 September 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: Downs, Louenda, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 9 September 2019, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Louenda Downs Circa 2015 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Louenda Downs, conducted on September 9, 2019, in the Stewart Library at Weber State University, by Lorrie Rands. Louenda discusses her life, her memories, and the impact of the 19th Amendment. Brooklyn Knight, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: Today is September 9, 2019. We are in the Stewart Library with Louenda Downs, for the Weber State University, Women 2020 project. This is where the editing process is amazing. I will sound good. My name is Lorrie Rands conducting and Brooklyn Knight is with me. Louenda, thank you so much for your willingness to be here. Let’s start with when and where you were born. LD: I was born in Brigham City, Utah. February 18, 1953. LR: Did you grow up in Brigham City? LD: I actually moved to Garland, Utah, when I was not even a year old, so I grew up in Garland and lived there until I was age twelve. Box Elder County. Then my father’s employment took him to Davis County. So we moved to Kaysville and I jumped into eighth grade in Davis County, and Davis County was good to us. I lived there until probably two and a half years ago. LR: Oh, wow. So, growing up in Garland, what are some of your memories, I mean it’s not a very big town. LD: Not at all. My father was one of the coaches at Bear River High School, so we attended a lot of athletic events and community events. I also remember growing up in what really was country. We would go water-skiing on the canal, and we 2 would walk everywhere we needed to go. Just a tight-knit little community. It was a community that was built probably around farming. They had a sugar factory, that was the big place where a lot of my friends’ parents worked. Sugar beets, they have what they call “Wheat and Beet Days.” I remember it was a safe little community. My mom could say, “Here’s a dollar fifty, will you walk down to the store and buy a half gallon of milk and some bread (and whatever else a dollar fifty would buy.)” We had a great little family, and great little community. We lived on Main Street in Garland, and next to our house was a wheat field, this was Main Street. It had probably, I would guess maybe, three or four thousand people at the very most, even in the outlying communities. One of my friends had a celery farm and one family had wheat and they had cows, they had different agricultural jobs. It was just tight-knit, it was fun, sweet, and it was happy. It was just downtown America, in a really small sense. Christmas was fun. There was probably only three houses that had little tiny strings of lights on the outside. School was great, I always loved school. And lots of good friends. It was a great place to grow up. LR: You mentioned your parents. What were their names and what were their occupations? LD: Wendell Hess, my dad. In fact, when I was a little girl I wanted to grow up and be a dad, just like him. So awesome and amazing and I thought he was the handsomest guy in the whole world. My mother’s name was Louise Turley Hess. Seven brothers and sisters. My mom was incredible, never completed a university degree, she was married before that, but she was determined and 3 always said, “I want my children to start from shoulders. I want them to know everything I know and then they could start learning from that point.” So every time she had an opportunity, we were in the car with her, we were doing the dishes with her, we would can peaches with her, she would just grab our attention and say, “Guess what I read about today, guess what I learned today, guess what I,” and she would download everything she knew, everything. She would study hard so she could download to us. We loved education and we loved learning. My dad was a coach when I was young, he also taught English, and so it was very important that we learned to speak properly. I remember one Saturday we were supposed to have done our work around the house and we were watching a sports show on television or something and he was very kind and very wise and he walked in and he said, “Hmm, I remember the word in the dictionary, it’s ‘procrastinate.’ Look that one up.” We looked it up, turned off the TV, and we got busy. That’s all he had to say. Very wise. Just an amazing childhood, very safe and it was happy. LR: Where did you fall in the seven siblings? LD: Second oldest. LR: Ok. Was it a brother or sister older than you? LD: My older sister. LR: Ok, and brothers, sisters? LD: There were three girls and four boys. Always an adventure and someone to play with no matter what. 4 LR: That is true. So what are some of your favorite memories of your schooling in Garland? You mentioned a little bit, but do you have a favorite memory? LD: I remember my sixth grade teacher, Mrs. Pugsley, gave us a lot of opportunity to excel, to research, to do things beyond just what was in the classroom. Our motivation was, if you finish your math, if you finish your spelling, if you finish your English, then you can work on making a big bulletin board, or work on the musical that we’re doing or the class program that we’re doing. So I was driven to finish the routine and get to the music and get to the extras. I remember in the sixth grade, I was invited to be a presenter at the UEA convention, and I presented a math concept. I just thought I’d died and gone to heaven, it was great. But she really motivated me to want to do more than just what was in the book. I wanted to learn, I wanted to research, I wanted to get out an encyclopedia and figure out how life in another country is and how ants work, how the sun, the moon, the planets, how everything fits together, I just wanted to learn more. LR: Ok. Speaking of that, as a young girl, who were some of the women you looked up to and why? LD: Many of my teachers in school, teachers in church. Women in the community. Women in leadership roles, and there weren’t very many. I remember, as a little tiny girl, Miss Wheat and Beet Days, she was just graceful, she was articulate, she was charming, and I thought, “I really want to be like that.” I always remember my dad would point out women to me, who were leaders, who were graceful, articulate, and he would always say, “Walk tall and keep your head up 5 and keep learning. There’s more you can do, like these women, if you’ll do that, so that you can be an example, so that you can be worthy of their emulation.” Besides teachers, I had a friend whose mother was an artist, and I was intrigued by what she did. So when I got to the point where I was going to the university, I split a major in art and music, because I was intrigued by these women who were musically talented and artistic, and I just wanted to learn more about them. (Lola Scalley that was her name). LR: Moving to Davis County, Kaysville is a little larger than Garland, and you were moving into your teenage years, well, you were a little older than that. What was that like for you to move from a small town to a little bit bigger town, was there any sense of culture shock? LD: No, I always felt safe, I never felt unsafe. There’s always the beginning of moving into the friends arena, but I moved into an area where the church-school community was safe, and quickly made some great friends. I don’t remember ever feeling unsafe or insecure. Plus the fact that Mom and Dad were, “Hey, we’re family, we’ve got your back if there’s every any problems, any issues, we’re there for you,” and I always knew I had someplace to go, I had somebody I could lean on. I think the church culture that I was involved in, the community culture, and the neighborhood, was a really safe, great place. So I didn’t feel a lot of stress, or a lot of anxiety with that. It was the end of the summer, and I jumped right in. I got involved in a lot of things in school, and made some great friends. LR: What were some of the activities that you got involved in? 6 LD: Oh, I joined the choir. I was involved in Pep Club, and I was elected to be an officer. I got involved in the journalism class and I found a little part-time job so that I could have some money. With seven kids in the family, our family mantra was, “When you turn twelve, if you want new clothes and you want new shoes, you’ll have to find a way to get them.” So we had to get a job. I picked cherries, I babysat for one of the high school coaches for a summer; I just found little jobs that I could earn some money that I needed, and I met people when I did that. LR: Did you go to Davis High? LD: I did go to Davis High. LR: Ok. It almost sounds to me like you were encouraged to do a lot of things. Were you encouraged to pursue an education? LD: That was probably a given. We were encouraged to begin to save for that. Mom and Dad would not pay for it, but they did have a kind of unwritten rule. They would pay for us to live away from home, because they felt strongly that that was an education in and of itself. But we had to work for scholarships. So, I did that. I worked to be able to have a scholarship to go to a university and I also saved money, I worked at Lagoon for many, many years during the summers and saved money so that I could further my education. I had great teachers in high school who didn’t say, “If you go,” but, “When you go.” And, “This is what you should look for and this is how you get in.” They would pull me aside and help me understand some, of the gifts that I had or the skills that I seemed to have and say, “This might be an option for your education, this might be an option for your education, and you should look this up and try this.” 7 I had some great teachers, and I had one teacher I’ll never forget, probably my sophomore year, tenth grade. We, as a family hadn't been able to afford to go snow skiing or do anything really extracurricular. We would camp and we would do fun things as a family. She looked at the class and she said, “I’m from out of state and I moved to Utah and there is not greater snow in the whole world. How many of you ski?” And then she looked at the rest of us and she said, “And you live in Utah and you haven’t tried that yet?” So I took up snow skiing. I scraped and saved and found a way to do that. But just challenging us to explore the world, to try some things and, in addition, there were some great teachers in education that said, “You know, you can explore the world of education and there’s a lot of world to learn about. It’s yours.” LR: Ok. I’m curious about working at Lagoon. What was that like for you then? I’ve had some nieces and nephews that have worked there and I’m just curious what that was like for you? LD: It was a good adventure, but was hard work. We worked long hours. I remember some nights, we would stay there until one, two in the morning cleaning up. I worked in foods and there were sticks that went in these little ice creams that we’d twirl in the chocolate and the nuts, we would stay and do that ‘til late and then we’d get up and had to be to work the next morning by 9:30. It was hard, hard work, but it was ok. Wouldn’t probably be ok now with those same hours, but I learned a lot. I learned a lot about myself too. Even when you’re tired and things are hard and it’s hot, can you still be pleasant? So, it stretched me in a lot of ways, and I made a lot of friends. As they say in New Zealand, which I just 8 returned from, “Heaps of friends. Heaps and heaps of friends.” It was good. I worked there probably three years maybe fours years, in the summers. It was a good adventure. LR: Alright. When you graduated from high school, what were your options? Did you have a scholarship to go to a university? LD: I did. I had a leadership scholarship to Utah State. That also included being involved with the freshman class and doing some things with the university, which was good. I loved Utah State University. I learned much more than just the classroom. I saw the value in living away from home that my parents thought was so important. The first two or three weeks you think, “Oh, I’m on my own, I can stay up late.” but then after that, you begin to say, “I think mom and dad were right.” I studied hard, I came to appreciate the things that were important to me. I remember several professors in psychology and sociology, challenging things that were core values to me, and I had to determine why were they core values to me, why did I believe that, why did I feel that way. Nobody was there to say, “This is what you should think, this is what you should do.” I had to do some pondering and deep thinking, praying, figuring out who I was and why I was that and what was really important to me. It was a valuable time, and I determined who I was and what direction I wanted to go and I was resolute in that. I’m so grateful for that time. LR: What did you major in? LD: Well, when I was at Utah State, I majored in business. When I was back in high school I’d been involved in a lot of extracurricular activities, a lot of them, but I 9 also was involved in the business class and the business teacher was just delightful and I thought, “Maybe I could do this.” I was not the fastest typist, couldn’t take shorthand the fastest, but I thought, “This is great, business is a great career.” So I began looking for a career at Utah State in business, I was actually intrigued by business law, but I worked on that and then at the end of the first year at Utah State, I thought, “You know, I maybe want to change things a little bit.” So I applied to go to BYU and I got accepted, went down there and thought, “I want to switch to humanities, I really love art and music, I just do.” I’d taken some great classes at Utah State and I wanted to take more literature and language, so I went down to BYU. But I only stayed there for one semester. One other aspect of my life: in high school, my girlfriend and I had started a band, so we were playing in a little soft rock band. By the time I got to BYU we were coming home every weekend to play in the band, and it was really tough. I thought, “Maybe I should think about switching universities and being a little closer to where these band jobs are.” So I applied at Weber State University, got accepted and came back and started going to school at Weber. But my humanities degree did not transfer from BYU to Weber, so I switched again. I probably graduated with more hours, but it was great, I love learning, I love education. I switched when I got here, I had an art/music emphasis and I began to get an education degree. LR: Ok. You mentioned this band. What was the name of your band? LD: The first band was Spectrum. Then, when some of the members of the band had moved on, we changed some members and we had the name of Trax, T-R-A-X, 10 and then, we changed again to Windows. So it was thirty-three years about, we played in a band. It got us through school and then it was on weekends, and a little extra money, plus we loved singing. T.C. Christenson was our first guitarist, so we started just rookies in high school. Then my husband was playing football at Utah State, and when he finished doing that, he was invited to come back and he’s a great vocalist, and bass guitarist, and so he was in the band too. So you can see where that led. LR: Ok, so I’m curious about the band and what that brought, what that gave to you. Was it an all-girl band or was it a co-ed band? LD: No, when we started in high school we had four boys and two girls. Drummer, two guitar players, a keyboardist, and then the two girls were vocalists. I played a little bit, so I morphed onto the keyboard, playing just a little bit, and we just did what we loved. Whatever songs were on the top ten or top hundred, and over the years, we began to do a little bit of country western. We actually did a little bit of oldies stuff. We eventually had a couple of sound engineers who were keyboardists and guitar players in the band, so we were able to orchestrate some of the things that we did a little more. We played here at Weber State University a lot, we would do a lot, a lot of high school proms, and a lot of company parties at Christmas time. Actually in the end we were doing a few more weddings. People were having dances at weddings. I think we only played out of state just a handful of times. But it was great fun, and it was also a great opportunity to use a talent that you have. There’s nothing like performing on stage. We actually played for the Utah Stars, (they were the team before the Jazz,) when they 11 hosted the ABA all-star game, we would play at their games, during halftime, and just between quarters. Great opportunities to meet a lot of people and it was just fun because we loved to sing, we loved to perform, we loved to play instruments. It was good. LR: How do you think that experience helped you as you moved on? LD: Good question, because when you’re in a band and performing a gig somewhere or just doing a program even, you have to be able to interact with the audience, you have to be comfortable on stage. I know that later on, in my elected positions, and opportunities for that, being on a stage never frightened me. Every so often you’d get butterflies and I found that butterflies actually help you perform better, they give you the energy that you need. It was a great precursor to future opportunities, I served on fifty, sixty boards and sometimes being the chair you had to be very comfortable in the limelight a little bit. So for that it was great, and also it was a great relationship builder. My husband and I would harmonize, so that was kind of fun. When my two daughters were just little, sometimes we would let them come to a band job if it was not late at night, and they would play the tambourine and dance a little bit, so they got to be comfortable too. So it was a fun thing, and we met a lot of people besides. LR: I can imagine. You mentioned your husband, you met him at Weber, at Utah State. LD: I actually knew him before. I went to Davis High and I was on the drill team and he was “the athlete” at Layton High. I’m six feet tall, he’s six foot eight (when I was asked to a prom or something, I’d have to find flat, flat shoes because I was 12 so tall, so I had my eye on anybody who was tall.) It was really nice to find someone who was quite tall we dated a little bit in high school, his mother was my drill team advisor. I knew him and knew of him and we had mutual friends. LR: Ok. When did you get married? LD: In 1974. He had finished playing football. We had been dating while we were playing in the band, a little bit, and got to be really good friends. It was just a very comfortable thing. He’s a good man. LR: Ok, my time’s all messed up here. When did you start going to Weber? LD: Probably in 1973. Around the time we were married. LR: Did you continue to go to school after you were married? LD: You know, I stopped for a year to help him finish his degree and to work. Then I went back, probably, the beginning of 1976. LR: What was Weber State like then? I know it’s not a fair question and eventually I’ll ask you to compare it to now, but what was it like for you then? LD: It was a great school. In fact, their education program was renowned. I started in art and music and we were in the acappella choir. Had a lot of opportunities to perform with them. I loved that because I loved the music, and I had some great art classes as well. I was also involved in the LDS institute. The Union building was a great place to hang out with a lot of good friends. It was a great university then. It was much smaller, it was called Weber State College at the time, but it was a great school, and I really enjoyed the social life. LR: What about that did you enjoy, the social life? 13 LD: People were really friendly and I made a lot of friends. BYU had great people, but it was so big and I made friends in my classes, but here I made friends on campus. LR: That makes complete sense. When you graduated with your degree, what were your career options? LD: I actually graduated in December, and I had a teaching job waiting for me. I went in at the half of the year. A teacher had left, she was leaving to have a baby, and I just got a job right away, so I started teaching third grade. LR: Ok, you said you were in Kaysville for a long time, so is that where you and your husband decided to... LD: We moved to Layton. LR: Ok, and out of curiosity, where? I lived in Layton for eighteen years. Where at in Layton? LD: 259 Barbara Avenue. Not too far away from where the mall is. That’s just down the street from where my husband grew up. His father passed away when he was three, so he had a little bit of a federal help, (his father was military,) a little bit of savings, and so we bought a house. We thought we’d died and gone to heaven, because we were able to buy a house not too far away from where he grew up. BK: After you guys got married and you went back to school, how long did you wait before you started having children, cause you said you have two daughters? LD: Great question. We had hoped to have a family around that time, but ten years came and went and no children. So, we were checking out doctors and trying to 14 figure out what could we do. We really wanted to have a family, we even had an Indian placement student, a girl, come and lived with us for a year. We finally felt really strongly that we should apply for adoption, so we applied with the LDS social services. I’d been teaching school, I was in my seventh plus year of teaching school, and I just got a really strong feeling that, “You’re going to get a baby pretty quick,” and they said, “No, you can’t, because you haven’t been on the list for a year and then we usually wait for a year or two after that.” I said, “No, I think this is going to happen.” So, June 12th of that year that I said, “This is going to happen,” 1984, we got a call. We were actually playing in the band down in Provo on the BYU campus for something, we got a call and they said, “Come and pick up your little girl.” So we did and three years to the day after that, we had applied again, we got another call for her little sister. LR: How fantastic. BK: So they’re related? LD: Actually not related, but now they are. But born on the same day, June 12th. Interesting, that a year after that, I did get pregnant. But I ended up in the hospital for months and ended up on a life flight and everything went terribly wrong and lost that one, but the due date was June 12th. I know. Go figure. I do remember that date. George W. Bush was born on June 12th as well. It’s a good date. LR: Yeah, it is. How did you balance your responsibilities between home and work, as you were working your career and once your family was started, how did you balance that? 15 LD: Good question. I learned a lesson early on, when my oldest daughter, Mary Ann, was two. I was encouraged to run for political office, they asked me to run for the school board. I quit teaching when she was born, so I thought, “Yeah, I think I could do that,” so I ran for that office and I was elected to the school board. She grew up with me being home a lot of the time, but I was gone a lot with the school board. About that time they came out with the big cell phones and, because I was on the school board, I had a big cell phone and I had a briefcase. She was probably three, her little sister had just been born, maybe three and a half, and I said, “What would like for Christmas, would you like a doll?” She said, “Oh no, I would like a cell phone and a briefcase.” That was a [mimes being stabbed in the heart]. So I determined then that I needed to be more careful, because you can always go back and serve in the community, but you can’t go back on the years when they’re little. I learned early on from my parents that it’s really important that if you have these little souls, that when you give them to the world, they’ve been loved and they’re good citizens and they’re safe and they’re trained and they’re the best you can do. I thought, “I’ve got to concentrate on this. I’ve got to be the mom first.” So I pulled back a little bit, I was still on the school board, but I determined that “mom” came first. I remember, my girls were probably eight and five, they had a dance recital, and I was the chair of the school board at the time, and I had said to all the members of my school board and the administration, “We have got to go to this conference. It’s really important that every one of us go because we all need 16 this training.” It was in South Carolina, so everyone of us made arrangements to go, and my daughters came home from dance and said, “Mama, guess what, they changed the dance recital.” It was the same day we were to be in South Carolina. I thought, “What will I do?” One of my mantras is, “What will I wish I would have done a hundred years from now?” So, I went to the dance recital, and I haven’t regretted it since. They were important to me and I wanted them to know they were number one. I was still able to do it, I just had to be careful. There were some other little funny things I let go of. I love to play tennis and there were times I had to say, “I can’t play that game.” I liked to play competitive tennis, but I had to make some decisions. It’s good for you to have to decide what’s most important, learn your values. LR: That is true. You mentioned that you were involved in politics before the school board. What were some of the things you were doing? LD: It was really just community. Go to the meetings that you have, just get involved with whatever party that you align yourself with and be involved there, locally. So I was involved in that. If there were issues that came up, I would try to go to the city council meeting, so for me it was involved. I wasn’t well known, but I got involved in politics, and when people said, “Why don’t you consider running for the school board?” I said, “Sure. Be glad to.” LR: Why was it important to you to be involved on that level? I know it’s small, but why was that important to you? LD: I grew up pledging allegiance to the flag, to God, and to my country. I, early on, determined that I would do everything I could until I didn’t have any ability to do 17 more, to be true to those causes. I love them both, and I will continue to do whatever I can in whatever arena I can to pledge that allegiance, to be true to it. I wanted to serve, I wanted to help, and I thought there might be some ways that I could do that. There were a few issues, I don’t even recall some of the issues now, but I thought, “I think I can get in there and help. Bring help and hope and something.” LR: Right. After the school board, you said you took a break and you just stayed home. LD: I stayed home for five years, maybe, and one of the ideas we had started while I was on the board was a foundation, an education foundation. The superintendent said, “Would you consider coming back and helping up with this and getting this going. We have a couple of positions that you might be able to make a difference.’ I said, “That’s great,” I could go back and do that part time. So I got involved in the Education Foundation, and worked there for four or five more years and then got a call from a friend who said, “There’s an opening on the county commission. Would you consider?” One of the reasons that she called, she was a legislator. She said that, “The position that’s being vacated is being vacated by the only female commissioner that’s ever been in Davis County, and we’d love to see another woman get in there, bring another perspective.” So I threw my hat in the ring for county commission. That started another eight years of being involved in politics. LR: What were some of your duties as a county commissioner? 18 LD: Well, it’s not a very well understood position, because one of the things you have responsibility for, is the sheriff's department, even though the sheriff is an elected official, you still have responsibility for their budgets. The county recorder, the libraries; one of the responsibilities I had was over the seven libraries in Davis county. I was over the children’s justice center as a member of that board, and also the county commissioner who has responsibility to make sure things go well for that. We had responsibilities with transportation, with roads, multiple departments in the county, and then overseeing the budget, and public works, those were all pieces of what the county would be responsible for and then all of the contracts that would come in. In addition, because of the position, you’re automatically on a lot of boards. We were on the waste management board, I was invited to be on several medical boards, hospital boards. I worked with the Wasatch Front Regional Council and another friend and I had this vision of, “There needs to be an active transportation committee in the state for all the trails,” so we got that started and we got really involved in all the trails in the county and in the state. We were very involved in economic development, I was on EDCU, the Economic Development Corporation for the State of Utah. The governor calls and says, “Would you be on the Great Salt Lake Health Advisor Board for the health of the Great Salt Lake?” Another board (The free market protection and privatization) free where we ran through the contracts the state wanted to make sure they were not unfairly competing with private businesses all I’m trying to remember, the marketing, I don’t even recall the names of the different boards. I was over the homeless 19 committee, I was on the... pioneer adult rehabilitation center board, I was on that committee just by nature of being a commissioner. LR: At the time were you the only female on that committee? LD: On the commission, yes, I was the only female on the commission and worked with some great men. Some great men. But there was just a little rumble, women in the state saying, “We need to get more women involved in this.” So there were opportunities to be on panels and talk about what it means to be a woman in a political position. LR: What was that like for you, to be the only female on this commission? LD: A little bit of two different worlds. One was pioneering, there are still a few men from an old school that said, “This is not where you belong.” We had to break through that and at first, my type “A” personality said, “You go get them and you just tell them that you’re here and you’re going to...” That just worked like a lead balloon. Then I found that after doing some soul searching, that there’s a better way, it was better to just go in and do your job and show them that you’re capable and that you have what it takes and you want to work with them. There’s also a tendency for women in positions like that to sometimes say, “We’re just going to go out and get all the women in the world to fill these positions and we’re going to do it by darn, and the women ought to be the ones there.” I don’t have that philosophy, I think still, if I want this country and this community and this state to function well, we need good people, and it doesn’t matter what the gender is. It doesn’t matter that we need more women, we need more men, we need more blondes, we need more brunettes, we need more brown or red or 20 white skinned or black. I took a little different direction on that, I just think we need good people, regardless. But I saw a lot of doors open up during that time period. I saw some other women who struggled with being a woman when the men said, “Let’s go golf. Oh, you don’t golf.” (But I do golf, but anyway.) Things have changed considerably, but it’s good, it’s opened more doors for more people: women, men. It’s just opened doors. LR: Ok, So you were on the county commission for eight years. Was that two terms or one? LD: Two terms. I did two terms on the school board, I’m a two termer. I think after that, it’s somebody else’s turn, they need an opportunity. So yes, two terms. LR: Gotcha. So after your terms on the county commission, what was your next adventure? LD: I had in my mind, and my husband and I had talked about, him retiring. He was teaching and coaching at Farmington Junior High. We’d talked for years about saving up and going on a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, so that was the time. I retired at the end of 2015, so 2016, we thought we would apply and go on a mission right away, but he finished one more year teaching, and then after that we threw our names in the hat and said, “Take us and use us.” we were called to go to New Zealand. My husband has been working with young people for years, loved working with young people, and he makes a great difference in their lives cause he’s so kind, and he just loves them. His rules in the classroom were, (there’s three): Be nice, be nice, and be nice. Very simple, but it’s hard to live. We had determined that we wanted to continue 21 to work somehow with young people, so we actually got a call to go teach in New Zealand to teach Institute on the university campus of Auckland University and Auckland University Tech. So we’re on a campus just loaded with young people. We spent two years in New Zealand working with young people, following them around, staying up late with them. LR: Ok. Culturally, how is it different? How was it similar? LD: When you say culturally, there are many different kind of cultures there. There’s the Kiwi culture, which is a little bit European with some Maori, they say. That culture was very English, very British, the Queen is still on the money. Then there are a lot of Tongans and Samoans and Niueans and Fijians and Cook Islanders there, and that’s a very different culture, driven by family and tradition. You don’t mess with family and tradition. We found, it was very, very steeped in that, but the new generation, coming up, is challenging that just a bit. We had a lot of Asians, Chinese, Korean, from a lot of the Asian countries. We had a lot of Philippine students, students from Mongolia, from all over the world. Each one of the cultures were quite different. But the young people adapt really well to requirements, to changes to education, and we found that refreshing. We worked sometimes with their parents, and we actually spent six weeks on a very remote island. There was this accident that had happened, and they needed someone to go to the island of Niue. We were there for six weeks, during cyclone season. It was quite an adventure. That culture is very, very traditional, and you fit in, and you speak like them, and you say what they say, and if you don’t you get corrected, “This is the way we do things here and if you don’t like it, 22 there’s a boat that comes once a month.” They were charming people, but the culture was very, very different. We found each culture has traditions that they’re not willing to let go of. One thing I did find in New Zealand, which is a beautiful country, the holidays are not over the top. Christmas was just very simple, everybody didn’t have their house strung with lights and everything else, and they hadn’t spent thousand and thousands and thousands. They just had very simple family time, and I thought, “Maybe we have some traditions we ought to relook at, reconsider, things that we think are so wild. But maybe we need to relook at some of those.” I Love New Zealand by the way, and learned so much about so many things. New Zealand is a very safe country, the policemen did not carry guns until there was the Christchurch shootings, someone outside of the country that came in and really violated the safety and the love and security of the New Zealand people. But, yeah, very different feel. LR: So were you still in New Zealand when the attack happened? LD: When the shooting happened? LR: Yeah. I’m assuming you’re talking about the same incident... LD: Yes. LR: You said it changed the culture and the safety. LR: Yeah. How was that, to witness? Being there, being a part of that. LD: You know, you talked about women. I have incredible respect for Jacinda Ardern, who is the Prime Minister of New Zealand. She’s a class act in many ways. You have differences of opinion on something, but she determined that the police would have to carry guns for a while, but she rallied the country and said, “We 23 will stand with our Muslim friends and we’ll stand with our Jewish friends, and we’ll stand with anyone who has a different culture, we’ll stand with them, we don’t have to believe the same things that they do, but we are all human beings here.” That country pulled together in a way I have never seen. Our students wanted to go down to the Muslim prayer chapel and take them something and let them know, “We love you and we’ve got your back and you’re safe here.” I saw some incredible things happen because a woman at the helm said, “We will not let evil and tragedy destroy us. We’ll use it to make us stronger.” I thought, “I want to continue to be a woman or an individual, just a human being, that says we can do this.” She brought hope. I want to bring hope. So it was a great lesson for me, I was glad I was there. I felt bad that fifty people had to lose their lives, but there were many, many, people that learned deep lessons from that. LR: So, now you’re back, and you mentioned you’re currently on boards of certain things. LD: Yes. I left as a trustee of a university, and when I came back they invited me to come back and serve as a trustee at Weber State University. BK: When did you get back? LD: I got back in June of 2019. BK: You just got back. LD: We just got back. We sold our home before we left, so the first two months, we enjoyed waking up to three little tiny granddaughters, and then spent the afternoons looking for a home. We found one,so we’re good. 24 LR: So you were on the board of trustees before you left, and if I remember correctly from talking with Karen Fairbank, that’s a four terms? LD: Four year terms. I had served two and a half, maybe three years on that board prior and now this is a new term, a new four year term. LR: Ok. You’ll do one more term and then? LD: You know, that’s a really good question. There are opportunities. We’re teaching an Institute class at the University for young people, and we want to still be involved in the lives of young people; helping them find direction, helping them find hope, helping them find healing if they need healing, helping them find where they belong, where they should go and find direction, and find goodness. We have opportunities, nothing specific just yet, but we don’t plan to let any moss grow around our feet. We want to be busy and be involved and continue to make a difference to somebody somewhere. LR: How has Weber State changed? LD: Weber State has grown incredibly. It’s now a university, not only do we have master’s degrees, but now we have a doctorate degree in nursing. LR: That’s right, I forgot about that. LD: Much to be proud of, much to connect with other universities. We actually have quite a place in the nation, with programs that we’re running, with things that are happening with the young people. It’s a destination now. Even athletically, we’re doing really well. But it’s a destination for a lot of young people. Kids coming from out of the country, a lot from out of state, finding Weber is the place they need to be and where they want to be. So it’s a university that is up and coming and 25 doing great things. The new president, Brad Mortenson, he will lead this university to great, great things. He’s quite a respected voice at the legislature, which is very good. LR: So throughout your career and your time on the various boards, who were some of your mentors? Not just women, but overall. LD: Right. I appreciated the leadership of the governor. Didn’t work, certainly on any specific board deeply close to him, but served on some boards where his leadership was much appreciated. I’ve spent a lot of time at the legislature and I respect his philosophy, his values, and that he’s true to them. I had a friend, the friend who invited me to run for the county commission, Sheryl Allen, we don’t always agree politically, but she has always been one who has said, “Hey, how can I help you? Can I give you more information.” I appreciated, very much, her willingness to see where I was and see what she could do to help me be and do my best. I have had opportunity to work with a lot of legislators, we have some phenomenal ones, and I have appreciated their philosophies, even Rob Bishop, was a friend at Davis High School. My older sister, and I always appreciated his way of making things just down to earth. I worked, on the school board with Dan Eastman and Lynn Summerhays, and men of great wisdom, but very, very honest, very casual, very comfortable to work with, and I have just appreciated people of great wisdom. There are ones who have helped me, and they're not even alive. My father, man of great wisdom, Two Abrahams: Abraham Lincoln and Abraham in the Bible. So sometimes when I’ve wanted to have great wisdom or wanted to know, wanted to sample it and chew it up and digest it, I read. I like 26 to read. So there’s a lot of individuals in history that have been inspiring. There are other women, women in positions in the community and the church leaders that inspire me that are tenacious and willing to do hard things. Willing to stand up for what they believe, and I have always appreciated someone who does the right thing. LR: How do you think education empowers? LD: Education is the beginning of knowledge. You need facts, you learn throughout the world that you live in and then as you pursue even more education, begin to internalize those facts, and you can begin to gain wisdom and understanding. Then it becomes more a part of you and it shapes who you are, and what you do. It unlocks a door I came early and I just decided to browse through some library books and I learned about Maria Montessori and how she started this educational direction. I am fascinated by people who determined to know more about where they lived and who they were and how human beings were. I love to read Cicero, just because he stopped to think about what’s the right way to do things and how does this work with human nature. It just fascinates me. If you don’t have a book and you don’t have an opportunity to learn more, life just is dark. But education is the light, it’s enlightenment. When things get really dark, that’s when you start looking for light, for a good book, and you try to enlighten your mind. I saw in New Zealand, in the islands, what education can do for people it opens doors and it brings light to lives. 27 LR: You mentioned, at the very beginning, and I can’t remember exactly how you worded it, but there’s education in the classroom and then there’s education in the world. LD: You asked about the education philosophy, maybe in my family. My parents wanted us to learn and know everything we could so we could make better decisions, so we could make good choices, so we had the information and even the understanding. There were seven children and we didn’t have a plethora of money, my parents determined that they would provide an opportunity for us to live away from home when we went to school. Part of the philosophy was, there’s as much of an education that you get in the classroom of the world, and they wanted to provide that for us. They could provide that, because there’s education in the classroom and there’s education that you get in experiences in life, and they wanted us to know that there were two kinds of ways to get experience. My father had been able to get the college education, my mother had not, but she was well-educated. LR: Ok. I wanted you to highlight that, because I love what you said before we turned on the camera. Two more questions and both of these questions are questions that we’ve asked everyone. So, the term “women’s work.” What does that mean to you? LD: Women’s work? Whatever a woman determines to go and do and be and spend her time doing. I don’t know if I like the term women’s work. Because it has offence around it. I feel strongly that women have an innate ability to love and nurture. I’ve just seen it, it’s a natural thing, and that’s great. I’ve seen some of 28 the qualities that men seem to have, natural things, and they’re great and they should be built upon. I think we all need to take responsibilities where we have our qualities and strengths. Woman’s work, it’s a pretty universal field. It’s not a confined thing, I like better the term “responsibility.” We have responsibility and that would maybe determine our work. If I’m married and I have children, those responsibilities would help determine what my work would be. If I’m an elected official, those responsibilities would help determine what my work would be. If I’m male or female, black, white, green, purple, or so on, I think we all need to be responsible citizens, responsible parents, responsible children, responsible workers, responsible employees. I would say that your responsibilities determine what your work is. I don’t think that you would free yourself from all responsibilities because you don’t like what your work is, if you have some responsibilities, you do your work and you get it done and you’ve got to do it cause it’s yours. LR: Before I ask the final question, is there any other story or memory you’d like to share that’s just popping into your head. LD: There’s so many stories and memories. But my life has been rich, it’s been full, I’ve learned from wonderful people, dear parents, wonderful mentors. A short video can’t capture that. Everybody has their stories. LR: Alright. So I have two more questions. So you mentioned you’re working a lot, still, with young people. So if you had an opportunity to be in a room with young women today, what advice would you give them? 29 LD: It would depend on what that responsibility was. Is it an ecclesiastical responsibility, is it a political responsibility, is it an educational responsibility? Because there would maybe a little different slant in some respects. But maybe the overall would be, find out who you are and what you value. Make sure that it’s not just fashionable, it’s not just the catchword of the day, but make sure that it would withstand a hundred thousand years. Make sure that it’s solid, and then be true. My last little piece would be, “You can do anything if you’ve pledged allegiance to God and to a country or to a cause. There’s nothing that can stop you. There’s hope and help and healing all along the way. Nobody can stop you but yourself.” I would just tell them that they’re awesome. They can do it. LR: Finally, this last question is: how do you think women receiving the right to vote shaped or influenced history, your community, and you personally? LD: I’ve thought a lot recently about the different milestones I read histories and the Bible and different things, and women, in the traditions and the customs of the day, they faced a lot of shut doors and fences that kept them from doing some things. I’ve looked at those milestones that have made changes, I’ve watched in some third-world countries in the world, where finally women have emerged from the hidden to the seen. The right to vote was a great stepping stone, a great milestone, in moving the opportunities for women ahead. There are two camps, in this case and we have to be really careful. There’s the one, where women need to be recognized and be given responsibilities and be given opportunities. Little boys, little girls, big boys, big girls, opportunities. I’ve also seen the other side of the coin where they say, “No, women have to win out and we have to be 30 better than you men are, you’re no good.” We’ve got to find this balance in between. You’ve got to come back to the middle where we’re working together and we’re saying, “Hey, I’ve got a responsibility now.” Maybe you’re the dad and you’re responsible for the kids, maybe you’re the mom and you’re responsible for the kids. Well, be responsible. Maybe you’re the breadwinner and maybe you’re not the breadwinner and maybe you’re both the breadwinners, but be responsible and be good. Do good things and do your best, and then if we need to have more milestones where women have opportunities, then let’s look at them. I think the right to vote was a huge milestone and I’m glad, I’m proud that Utah was on the forefront of that saying, “We’re all people and we all have great opportunities and we can all contribute and we all have good heads and we all can think things through and we all ought to be able to vote.” I think that was a big milestone. LR: How about for you personally? LD: So grateful for that, because when I pledge allegiance to a country and to a God, how can I do anything about that cause if I’m prevented from being involved and from voting and having a voice? I love having a voice. LR: Alright. Thank you for your willingness, for your time, and your patience. I appreciate it.