Interview with JoAnn Lampman

Joann Lampman (#243) Transcript

AB: This interview with JoAnn Lampman is being recorded on April 20, 1982.

The first area, I wanted to talk about, I wanted to have you talk about, was just a little about your childhood, and your home life, and the school that you went to, and your family, just to give a background and put things in context a little bit.

JL: Well, you probably haven't met many people who are Madison [INAUDIBLE], have you? I was actually born in Madison, and I have met not all that many people that have been, in the university situation. And I was the daughter of a YMCA secretary. My dad was first the physical director of this downtown Y, and then the general secretary which is the top [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. And we moved from Adams 00:01:00Street, is where my father built his first house, out here in [INAUDIBLE]. Matter of fact, it's one block over. And so when Bob and I moved back here, we sort of knew where we wanted to live. We at least knew the city, [INAUDIBLE].

And I was one of three kids, the youngest. My mother was a very, is a very smart gal, and I guess if people had been working, in her day, she would have gotten money for what she did, which was a lot of religious education kind of work. She was just a very involved churchwoman in those days, and since. So our life was sort of, on all sides, influenced by the YMCA, and the Presbyterian church. So 00:02:00that molded us and a lot of our attitudes that we had about life, and [INAUDIBLE] the kind of people we would be. The people we would marry, even.

AB: Did you have ideas, as a girl, about the sort of person, what the person you married would do, and so forth? What your life would be like?

JL: Not in the least. I never thought about it. I can't remember ever thinking about it, until I got to the university. I was very active in high school [INAUDIBLE], and liked what I was doing, and enjoyed high school, and here, nowadays, kits don't enjoy high school, for instance. I thought it was just a lot of fun. And was a good student. And I guess I never thought much about marriage at that point. Or about the kind of a guy I wanted to marry.

But then, at the university, lo and behold, I met Bob the very first year. And I was, knowing my background now, you'd know I'd go over to that press house. That's where I sort of made my home, as did a lot of people that I came to know and like, and also Bob Lampman. And Doc Lauer, who was minister at that time, said to Bob, I want you to meet a young girl I know, and he brought him over, and introduced me to Bob.

I guess at that point, I did start thinking about the kind of guy I'd like to marry. But he had no idea about being a professor at that time. [INAUDIBLE] He was a senior. And he thought more of seminary.

AB: So he was quite oriented towards religion.

JL: Yeah, he came from a very strong Methodist background, out in the middle of the state, [INAUDIBLE].

AB: That's where they raise potatoes.

JL: That's exactly where they raise potatoes. And his father was a high school teacher and principal. But the background was generally farming, as a lot of our parents and grandparents did. I think that he also, as I recall, he thought he would be-- well, he thought strongly about law. He was taking a minor in law, and a major in Econ.

And at that point of course, the war was [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. And it turned out, he didn't have choices, to think about anything. The only choice he had was, shall we get married or shan't we get married? And it's like, maybe you recall my 00:05:00saying to you up at the [UNINTELLIGIBLE] that day. I think maybe if there hadn't been a war, we undoubtedly wouldn't have gotten married. Well, his sights were going onto graduate school, or law school, and I certainly would have finished college, which I still have a year to do.

So I'm not one of your highly educated, at least formally educated [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. I suppose if I had stopped to add up all the courses I've taken since or applied them, I would have long ago graduated.

AB: You just pursued areas that you were interested in, rather than formally trying to complete a degree. That makes more sense when you're-- [INAUDIBLE] this is making noise. Put this down on the floor.

So as you were growing up in Madison, were your family friends with a number of 00:06:00people from the university, or did you have a different circle?

JL: Well, actually, we, meaning my parents' friends. Well, I would say, my parents' friends definitely have been within their own YMCA and church-related kinds of activities. But our next door neighbors were the Elvehjems. And we used to babysit the Elvehjem kids. And mother and Connie Elvehjem are still quite close. When they see each other, they have lots to talk about still, [INAUDIBLE].

But I knew kids of faculty at West High. And I guess I wasn't always, as kids aren't always terribly aware of what people, of friends' parents did. There always was a certain amount of talk, but I never associated it necessarily with 00:07:00them. With the idea that I would like to be a faculty wife, or marry a professor. Never thought along those lines. It's what people do.

AB: I did!

JL: Did you really?

AB: When I was a child. A little bit. Not a lot.

JL: You mean to say that marriage was really sort of uppermost in your mind, even though you're a lot younger than I was? I wasn't thinking about that!

AB: No, I didn't think a lot about it, but I sort of had some ideas about--

JL: I guess my folks' tack, actually, was that you marry someone-- not necessarily within the church, but you don't marry out of your kind, sort of. That there are enough problems, they thought, in marriages without marrying a Greek, or a Catholic, or a Jew. They weren't prejudiced, necessarily. I mean, 00:08:00that wasn't part of it. It's just that they thought that life would certainly have fewer stresses if you married your own kind. I don't know that they put it just that way, because that does sound almost bigoted. But they weren't, they particularly weren't that.

And I feel very fortunate about the attitude my folks did pass on to us. I think that they did a good job with family-raising. And you can only assess those things sometimes when you look back. Mother was very instrumental in organizing dancing classes for us. There wasn't anything like that in the town at that time. It seemed to me she had very forward-looking ideas about young people in general, about sex, and how to be instructed within the home and the church. 00:09:00Nothing was done in schools in those days. I don't know how much is being done now [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

Anyway, I think that they did give the three of us a very sound view of that aspect of life. But they didn't give us, I feel, and I am even a bit resentful about it, I guess, is good conversation about the world. So that when I got to college, those things that people talked about was ever so enlightening and broadening. I don't have the kind of memory about these things, that my sister had. She seems to be able to have a facility for that kind of memory. But I don't-- it wasn't so big in our family life, that I remember having good 00:10:00discussions about the war, even.

And they were very Republican. I do remember my father talking about that man, you know, Roosevelt. And I don't know when I began to turn away from that. Could've been after I met Bob, who came from a very different background.

AB: Was his background politically more liberal?

JL: It was progressive.

AB: Coming from a more rural area, I guess, that'd be illogical.

JL: Yeah, and my folks were sort this of [INAUDIBLE]. My mother's father was very republican. So I mean, she came by it naturally. They were both college-educated, both graduated from Northwestern.

AB: When you got to UW, what did you major in?

JL: Well, I was just a freshman when I met Bob, of course, and everything after that was sort of down the hole. But I was an English major. It wasn't just a liberal arts bent type--

AB: And when did you marry, at the end of your freshman year?

JL: No, actually, at the end of my sophomore year. I had two years here. And then Bob had gone on into the Navy, and had had his cadet training, and had just absolutely put the thought of further education out of his mind. I mean, who could think about anything but the war in those years? I mean, he was just stuck. And I guess there weren't, I didn't know anybody, and I guess he didn't either, who protested. I mean, there wasn't that's the kind of activity you had in later times. So he came, after his cadet training, came back to Madison, and 00:12:00we were married in the Presbyterian church. Proper fashion. Mrs. Elvehjem arranging the flowers, and friends of my mother doing the calling of the invitations, because he came back on a leave, you know, all of a sudden he could come, and suddenly, all our friends got on the telephone, and we had a full, proper ceremony. And my sister had been married just three weeks before.

AB: Oh my goodness!

JL: That had been planned, mind you. And so I wore her wedding dress, and the kids, we picked the friends who could fit into the same bridesmaids' dresses. [INAUDIBLE]

AB: So when he finished with his military service--?

JL: Then, let's see. Well, we had been in Florida. He was down there, by then, 00:13:00doing teaching stint of navigation; he was a navigator in the Navy [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. He decided to-- this is in '46--

AB: Oh, well actually, I didn't want to just jump over that whole period. Maybe you just talk about after you were married, where you went then, and--

JL: I-- he was based first in San Diego and then up in Seattle. He was to fly to the Aleutian Islands, and be based up there. But actually, he was based in Seattle and he flew out of Seattle and to the Aleutian Islands and so on. But because we were so newly married, we decided that I would try to find school out on the west coast, preferably a smaller school, near Seattle, if possible. I guess I didn't consider going to the University of Washington, I don't quite know why at the time, and I can't recall why I made a decision to go to Reed College. Because I didn't know a soul there. Didn't know anybody in Portland. I just knew Reed was a good school, and it was small, and I could probably get in. 00:14:00And I don't know that I could, nowadays. It's kind of a classy, intellectual school. But at that time, of course, there weren't many man around, and were probably taking anybody they could get! Anyway, they did welcome me. And so I had another year there.

AB: So did you live on campus?

JL: I lived on campus. Most people lived on campus. There were very few city people there. And I made some good friends that I still keep up with.

AB: And it wouldn't necessarily have happened with only a year.

JL: Yeah. And I took interesting courses, and I met interesting professors. In fact, one of my professors I've kept up with until he died, in Seattle, just a bit ago, and I still correspond with his 99 year old widow in a nursing home there. Anyway, I have kept up with some of the Reed College people. I don't know 00:15:00too much about what's happening at Reed itself these days, but I keep up with particular people.

And Bob would, on his, well, whatever they-- when he'd get back into Seattle, I would fly up from Portland, and we'd have a day or two at the Meany Hotel, near the university. You know the Meany hotel? Every room a corner room? And that was a set of all these little bits of honeymoon that we would have, when he would come back. But anyway, at the end of that school year, as it turned out, he came back just at a good time, and we few down to, or we drove to Florida, actually, and he was at the Banana River Naval Air Station, which is now Cape Kennedy. And our first son was born down there.

And I was pregnant with a second when the war ended, and the put all our little 00:16:00belongings in the car, and drove to Madison, Wisconsin, and he registered as a graduate student in Econ, Economics. And we lived, mind you.

So much of our early life-- really, I wasn't a faculty wife, and he wasn't on the faculty. We married very young. I was like, almost 20, and he was 23. And so I wasn't think about being a faculty wife, at that time, and he wasn't thinking about being, necessarily, a faculty. But, I mean, he could have gone in several different directions. He could have been an economist with a bank, or a corporation, or whatever. And anyway, we lived out there at Badger Village. Have you ever heard of anybody living out of Badger Village?

AB: I've heard of it.

JL: Now that was rough living. Kids these days that live there at Eagle Heights don't know what it's about. I mean, we had a coal stove, for instance, in the middle of our living room. And my first son burned his arm, learning to walk 00:17:00sort of out there.

AB: It wasn't a Quonset hut, was it?

JL: No, no, they were row houses. Or they were duplexes, mostly? Yeah. [INAUDIBLE] I think they were duplexes. But lots of them, and on that slat, there, where the ammunitions plant is. It's just a giant--

AB: This was at Baraboo?

JL: Yeah. Isn't that Baraboo? Yeah. You hit there before you get to the hill. I mean, it was on that plant where the ammunition plant was. I think that plant was still there, and there may be a few buildings on the other side of the street, which was where we all lived. It was-- and then the guys had to take a bus in, every day, 30 miles.

AB: Were you able to, I suppose there were lots of young parents. Did you make friends there?

JL: Well, nobody I've kept up with. Although I've-- the Heffernans were there. We did know them. Justice Heffernan, you know Nat Heffernan. And I guess I've 00:18:00heard a lot of people, since, who were there. We were there, I believe it was just a year, and then we bought a little house here, near Sherwood. Burbank place, right near [? JoJo's ?] now. And we lived there a year, after our second child was born.

AB: So life in Badger Village sounds as though it might have been a little depressing.

JL: It was depressing. And it was rough, and we had no money to speak of. Well, I shouldn't say that. Because he still had Navy money. Maybe we were richer than we were for the next ten years, I don't know! Well, we always managed to get along. But it was such a grim little place, and we didn't attempt to do a lot of fixing up and stuff. We had, you know, I was terribly busy with being pregnant with a second, and having a boy a year old. We had two 13 months apart. So I was too busy to think about anything else. I don't even remember doing a lot of 00:19:00reading, at that time or anything.

AB: Well, it's a holding operation, strictly a holding operation--

JL: A holding operation, right. I guess I didn't complain about it. I think women nowadays might really object to something like that. They would really feel resentful. I don't remember having any of those feelings. We were very in love, and very happy with one another, and we were happy that there were kids coming along. And I guess there was money to feed and clothe them, because I--

AB: Was that the GI bill, was he falling under the GI bill?

JL: Exactly, so there was some money. I don't recall that amount, those amounts were. Of course it went a long way by comparison to today.

AB: So he was a full-time student, and you were just kind of being a mother, and that was it.

JL: That was it. And you didn't have long-term goals. I didn't. He perhaps did, 00:20:00but I mean, getting through this day was goal enough in those days. I don't think I was a very good mother. I wasn't really, I mean, a housewife kind of a mother. I wasn't really prepared in any particular way. I guess. The only thing I was ever, I mean, aside from helping mother dust and bake cookies, she wasn't very great housekeeper herself, and she didn't like to do a lot of--

AB: Did you have people at your house who would come in and do that?

JL: Well, at some point we did. I think it was more like, when we got on into the junior high years. Mother did have a lady come and help her do things. But up until that time, I remember, my sister always had the job of ironing shirts. She got nickels. And I didn't like to iron. But I did like the kitchen, and I've always liked the kitchen, and I did all the cookie baking. I have recipes from 00:21:00way back. And I did like that aspect of it.

AB: So that was probably one thing you did when your kids were little, was probably plunged into cooking and enjoyed it.

JL: Oh, yeah. And I do that with my grandchildren. When they come, we always spend a lot of time baking cookies, and working in the kitchen. The boys as well as the girls. This isn't necessarily any kind of a sexist thing with me I just-- they look forward to coming here, because grandma likes to cook, for instance. So I involve them, and we have a good time.

AB: Yeah, that's nice, to be able to do it and feel comfortable with--

JL: And I don't let the mess of it particularly bother me. I've gotten to be a lot neater than I used to be. As a matter of fact, I know this is jumping the gun just a bit on the story, but when we had three little kids, we lived in another hovel situation. And when you have three kids, there's always somebody 00:22:00sick, right? Or there's a mess, always. And we entertained one of Bob's students, it was a nice young man from Spokane. And his girl was coming over. And this was our launch. We said, well, come on out and have supper with us. You know, bring her out and we'll have supper.

And the next thing I knew, was we were bending over helping our kids out front with something. In fact, it was our son's fifth birthday, and we were involved in putting a bike together. And on this long walk, we heard heels clicking. And I don't think I had a pair of high heels in those days! But this lady came clicking down our way, and they were both dressed to the teeth. And we had the kind of living room-- the whole house couldn't have been any bigger than from, you know, this to there, and we had, you know, the twin bed thing that was the 00:23:00couch in the living room, where you had to put a thousand pillows in the bag, so that your legs wouldn't be up on the bed.

Anyway, it was very awkward situation. It turned out that later it was told to me, that she had said, if this is what being a professor's wife is, I don't want any part in it. That came to me many, many years later, and actually, it's someone whose name you would know, so she shall remain nameless, but I remember it startled me, and did get me thinking about the kind of rough life we did lead. And I don't know that it was any different than any young faculty family with three kids would find it today, but possibly, I see an awful lot of young people today with ever so much more money than we had, buying houses here in the 00:24:00[? Comar ?], or Shorewood. They're young people, I don't know whether they inherited it, or what. But my folks didn't have any money, and Bob's folks certainly didn't have any money, and whatever we had, Bob earned. And it was never a very high pay scale in those days.

AB: When did he get his first faculty appointment?

JL: That was in 1948. We went out to the University of California at Berkeley for the final year, before his PhD. But he actually got it from the University of Wisconsin He was out there doing a thesis on the sailor's union. And so we lived out there, and the job, actually, the first offer came from Ames, Iowa, mind you. And he was planning to accept that, because there wasn't anything else 00:25:00at that moment. In fact, jobs were sort of tight, and all the graduate students in that particular class [UNINTELLIGIBLE] out there said that they would never leave the Bay Area. I mean, everybody was so wild about that place. They said, no, they would never leave the Bay Area. I think now that there may be two of that bunch who stayed, and everybody else had to eat.

But then the job came from the University of Washington, and that intrigued us ever so much more. We sort of wanted to stay in the northwest if we could, or on the west coast, if we could. And that intrigued us, so he wrote to Ames and said that he was taking another job. And we moved up there when our daughter, was born at Berkeley, was, what was she, six months old. And we moved into the Union 00:26:00Bay Village, it was called. It was the housing that would be comparable to Eagle Heights. Well, it wouldn't be Eagle Heights, it would be University Houses. But bears no resemblance to what you see up here. They were also duplexes, set in large courts. There would be one, two, three, four, five duplexes in each court.

And a lot of those people, we have kept up with. That was a very warm and wonderful time for us. And we knew very few people who could afford to buy houses at that time. I think one of our friends did move out, and buy a house. And I suspect that their fathers gave them the money to do that, because there wasn't that kind of money. I think our salary was like $400 a month. And of course, it went a lot further, mind you. We thought we were pretty rich. But 00:27:00never quite rich enough to buy a house. So we didn't. We rented.

AB: Was your life rather informal?

JL: Rather informal? That's got to be an understatement! I can't think of anything formal we did. We did go to church in those years, and we did meet some people. We went to the University Congregational Church out there, and it's been the-- it actually turned out to be a very big thing in our children's lives, as well as ours. It was the one place where we did meet some non-university people. And also a lot of university people. But we did things in those years that we look back on with great affection. And it turns out now that our daughter just 00:28:00had her two children baptized there, and our son came down from British Columbia, and he had his three children baptized there.

AB: Really! So that was just a very important place for them.

JL: Yeah. And it wasn't, and our children are not really terribly church-oriented. And we are not particularly, either. But we did teach Sunday School in those years, and there was a very fine church program, Sunday School kind of a thing out there. And it was called Character School. It was run by a Dr. [? Liggum ?] from Schenectady, New York.

AB: It sounds very New England-y.

JL: Yeah, it was. And it was a program that has since died out. It's not there now. But we thought that was just a wonderful way to teach religion to kids. And you didn't read the Bible and such. But everything sort of--

AB: It's more ethics.

JL: Yeah, it was ethics, right. And in fact, we have a good laugh about our older son. He is, to this day, extremely persistent, and we said he always had 00:29:00too many units in persistence in Character School. They were sort of divided up in units like that. But anyway, they were all very fond of that church. And so two of them had-- and those children are young, they haven't really thought about baptizing their children at what would be called the usual ages of baptism. But somehow, they've come back to it. So that was [INAUDIBLE].

But the university housing itself was, those Union Bay Village houses have just been torn down within the year, and rather nice places put up. But they were an eyesore, what was considered an eyesore, in a very fancy district, probably comparable to Shorewood. And the people that had to ride by Union Village on their home every day just thought it was a terrible blight on the community. And perhaps it was.

AB: But it sounds like kind of fun place to be.

JL: It was, in the same way that University Houses and Eagle Heights, We just met all kinds of people from all, not just, I mean, there were a few from economics, but we still keep up with them.

AB: Has that influenced-- this makes it sound very formal, but the sort of, the pattern of making friends, you think because of that experience you might have a different group of friends now, or more varied group of friends?

JL: Well, possibly. I wouldn't be able to exactly document that. The fact of the matter is, we came back to my hometown, and I think that, probably, was more instrumental in the breadth of our friendships at this point. Because I did, that there were just an awful lot of people that I knew from high school, would perhaps I haven't kept up with in the intervening years, but I established contact.

AB: But you had a wonderful basis.

JL: Oh, I had a-- and Bob enjoys all of those people. He loves getting away from 00:31:00the university people.

AB: And those people tend to be in business--?

JL: Some, yeah, some. And then in music, and--

[BREAK IN FILE]

--the wife of a professor influenced me, to the extent that I felt I needed to be a faculty wife, with quotes. I just, I've never really participated in the organization. I've always send in my dues, because I'm told that that is helpful to scholarships, and so on. The only other thing that we did, and we did it as a couple, not necessary as a faculty member, was we [INAUDIBLE] students. And that interest came about because we did a lot of traveling, and met people abroad, and many of them came here, and we've performed that duty of being hosts and hostesses.

AB: So that has been an interest that's continued, it's sort of a commitment that you've felt.

JL: Now, we haven't been doing that particular thing for a number of years, but this year, we had an Australian daughter, and we did go to the picnic, and so on. But I've never been, I've never participated in the organizational part of it.

AB: Let me ask you about a related area, and that is, have you at various times helped your husband with the matter of reading books, or--?

JL: Never. I'm really not basically interested in economics. He might ask me about a word, or about a choice of words. I've always enjoyed words. I'm not particularly articulate, but if I had some good dictionary or thesaurus, I might do that kind of digging and thinking with him, or for him, even. But I don't 00:33:00edit for him, and I don't read his things, necessarily. It's not exactly bedtime reading.

AB: And typing?

JL: I type miserably, fortunately. I mean, I'm not sure I would have done that even if I was a typer. I guess I always had enough to do. And he's never imposed that kind of thing on me. If I'd done it willingly, it wouldn't have been an imposition, of course. But I mean, he didn't say, ever, wouldn't you take a typing course so that you could help me do some of this stuff? Actually, the typing pool in his economics department has always been adequate. He's never had any problem getting things done. No, he's never sort of overwhelmed me with his work.

AB: How about, to what extent has there been sort of a departmental social life, and events that you had to attend, and dinner parties within the department that were--?

JL: Well, I guess I never felt that I had to do any of that. In the earlier days, now, we came here in '58, the department was ever so much smaller, and I can't tell you exactly what it was. But certainly triple that now. I think it always was a big department, but it wasn't overwhelming in those days. Nowadays, no one pretends that they can entertain the economic department all at once.

AB: Really?

JL: Oh! What have they got to be? There have got to be 60 people in it or something?

AB: Well, are there annual cocktail parties or something like that?

JL: I think there has been an attempt, over the years, for the chairman to do something early on. The current chairman now has done brunches. And he has them at the university, he doesn't them at his home. Now, there was one chairman's 00:35:00wife who, it was a second marriage, and she came from the medical school tradition, which is ever so much more-- elegant, I guess. And this was Betty [? Erly ?]. And she always managed to do an elegant cocktail party, and it always seems to be a terrible expense. And somehow, they carried it off. I didn't know where the money came from, but when Bob was chairman, I assure you, we didn't do that! I mean, we just didn't. We couldn't afford to do that. There have been Christmas parties, especially, and I'm talking about, now, the early '60s, where attempts were made to have a Christmas party and everybody brought their own bottle, but there have been very few sort of formal, whole department things 00:36:00where people were expected to come.

AB: How about, well, in History there are little sort of subgroups, what are called caucuses, sort of interest-- they have to do with areas professors teach in, like there's an American caucus. Is there any kind of subgroup like that, where people would see one another more frequently, because they'd be on the same committee, and that's something?

JL: As couples, now, you're talking about?

AB: Well, no. I mean, the men seeing one another more often, and as a result, perhaps the couples see something more of one another.

JL: I suppose that does happen. I'm not so aware of it, actually. What does tend to happen, because it is such a large department, is that if there's a visiting fireman, a fellow who department, whose area, the guys coming in, will attempt to arrange, well, he'll have a seminar, and then, maybe they will get some of the people who are interested in the subject, and their wives, possibly, but not 00:37:00necessarily, to go out for dinner, or to have a drink at the house. And I guess we've done that, over the years. But we don't-- sort of an open invitations, anybody in the department could come. Like, Bob never bothered to bring home all those invitations. And so they say, I didn't see you at so-and-so's. And I say, well, I've got one of those absent-minded professors. He either decided that he didn't want to do it, and I was never for doing that, partly because we had kids at home at cocktail type times. And so maybe that sort of thing happened at the age I am now, where you could get out. And we always hated to invite somebody, to get a babysitter, to come and have a drink, and spend money to go out for dinner? I mean, wow. That's what I would call an imposition. And I guess we did refuse things like that.

And I guess, and I have to think back, because the one thing we did feel we had 00:38:00to do, early on-- see, I'm tending to look at how things are now. But when we came, and Bob came to help Professor Witte, first of all. He came for a year before we actually came here, because he needed help. He was the chairman, and things were overwhelming him. He was getting near retirement. So he did come for a year that year, and then the next year, we came permanently. But Mrs. Perlman, at that time, did have a sort of event where we were expected to come. And Mrs. Witte did this to me once, to. She called and said, So-and-So, Professor So-and-So from Princeton's coming, and I want you and Bob to come to dinner. Or we're taking you out, I guess is what she said. And I said, well, we did have 00:39:00another engagement. Well, I know Evelyn won't hear of it.

And so I-- it was-- I did something I would never, ever do again, and I called my hostess, and I said, we had had this invitation, and she would not hear of our not coming. And I broke that engagement. I would never do that again. And I think it was not looked upon kindly, as I can understand at this point. But I was sort of caught between being sort of, Bob was supposed to be there. And we were sort of on deck. But that was early on, Professor Witte and Professor Perlman were old-time faculty.

AB: So that was almost the pattern from another generation.

JL: That was very much so. And I can remember Mrs. Perlman had high teas. And we 00:40:00were all invited. Kids, too. That was Brenda. And she did like to do it very properly. But as I recall, we were only invited once to dinner. Do you suppose it's because we had three kids? Yes, it was very proper. And they were very good to us, as young faculty, however. And very kind, generally. And I guess we had-- our affection was mostly with Professor [? Whitty ?] and his wife. And then Harold Groves was at that era too [UNINTELLIGIBLE] he was in public finance. And he had a million PhD students, and they all came back at his retirement, and they had a wonderful seminar. And Bob keeps up with a lot of those people, that 00:41:00were more or less the same era as he.

AB: You mentioned that over the years, you've taken quite a few courses. What areas did they tend to be in?

JL: Well, mostly art. Art history. I guess I've done a lot of things over the years. Part of them stemmed early on from just being frantic to get out the house, and I can remember at The University of Washington, for instance, Bob would rush home at five o'clock or something, and we would push dinner down everybody's throats, so that I could go off to a woodworking course at the Seattle Technical School. And I don't know why I picked woodworking. Honestly, I don't know to this day why I did that. I still have things that I've made, that we use. Mostly upstairs, out of the way. But they were not bad. But I was 00:42:00desperate, in those years, to get out of the house, and to do something entirely different. And I would go to this technical school, where the saws would be so loud it would blast your brains out. And yet, it was just like music. Just like music to me. And the smell of the wood, and all that I found very relaxing after a day with the kids.

And the other thing I did, in those early years, was legalize voters. And I did that, of course, in the evening. I belonged to an evening group so that I could just arrange it [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. Also in a way [UNINTELLIGIBLE] established patterns for me, but I also sang at the university, in those years, in a choral group.

AB: This is still at Washington?

JL: Yeah. And I guess I didn't do singing when I got back here. I got out my violin, though, and I started playing violin again. I had always taken, my folks 00:43:00were very conscientious about finding the money, I should say, to give us all music education. And it wasn't in the schools in those years, so you had to do it on your own. [INAUDIBLE] piano. And then, when instruments did come into the schools, I was in eighth grade, here in [UNINTELLIGIBLE] school, and I picked out the violin at that point, and I've kept it up ever since. It's only within the last five or six years that I've given it up, due to arthritis. And I sold my violin. I may be sorry about that. I still have one violin, that's my daughter's. My first violin, my daughter took up, and will eventually get into it again too, I guess, when her family's of a decent age. But it doesn't something, music like that on an instrument, isn't something you can just pick up and do once a week. A violin has to be practiced every day. There's just no 00:44:00getting around it. So eventually, that sort of went by the boards too,. Although I did play with the community orchestra, [INAUDIBLE].

AB: So you were practicing, you had to practice.

JL: Yeah. I kept that up pretty regularly. In fact, I can remember, Bob often had his classes out here, his public finance classes, a night class, it was. And he had one of the regents as a student, at one point. And I'll never forget, I said, well, Bob, if you have it on Tuesdays, that's OK. But I have community orchestra that night. And I'll lay out the cookies, whenever they were having, I don't know what it was. But you have to do it yourself. And I can remember coming down the stairs with my violin under my arm, and a roomful of students.

And the regent approached Bob afterwards, and said, what is it your wife does? 00:45:00In effect, why isn't she here? And he said, well, he always thought it was good that I wanted to do that. Now, he really wasn't being critical, the regent wasn't. But he was interested that I would depart as soon as the company, so to speak, arrived.

But that was something I did, and Bob's always been extremely supportive of anything I wanted to do. If I wanted to work or take a job, he would have turned handsprings to make it possible for me to do that. And so I've never felt constrained in this way at all, like I think some, perhaps some wives do. That their husbands really don't want them working. And guess I just felt that was always an option I had, if I had, in fact, wanted to. But the truth of the matter is, our family kept us so busy. Kept me so busy. Anybody with four kids is bound to be. I guess I felt that was number one job.

And we did do entertaining students, all those years. We haven't done it so much [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. But we do do it. I find that enjoyable. [INAUDIBLE] I don't feel it's something I have to do, partly, I suppose that's-- If Bob said, well, you know, this month we have to entertain three groups of students, or something, or I want all my TAs over for dinner, but it's something we've always consulted about. [INAUDIBLE] It's been very easy. It's been a nice life. I haven't found anything onerous about it at all. I really don't.

Do you want me just to ramble this way, really? You want me to ramble this way?

AB: Yeah, exactly. That's fine. We've actually covered just about all of the bases.

JL: One of the biggest pluses, however, if I can talk about a real plus about being a professor's wife, real advantage, for me, has been the travel aspect of it. And I guess Bob always know I liked to travel, so maybe we went out of our way to do some things that he wouldn't necessarily have done, because I think in his work on poverty and income transfer, that kind of stuff, probably the best places for him to be are Washington, D.C. and places within the country, but there have always been opportunities, he has always been asked a lot to go abroad, and do whatever stint he could do in other countries. And so, whatever stage we were at, with our family, we decided it was a good stage, for instance, to pick up and go, and we've done that. Where have you lived? Well, we've lived in Beirut, back in the '50s, early '50s, and we lived in the Philippines, and in 00:48:00Asia, in Germany, and in Australia. Not full years, always, but chunks of time. We lived a full year in the Philippines, and a full year in Beirut. But the others were shorter. Three months.

AB: And did you find those times to be rewarding?

JL: Very rewarding. When young people are thinking about traveling, I've got nieces [INAUDIBLE] who have thought about traveling in foreign countries, and taking families. I always say, make sure that your marriage is good and strong before you go. Because there are so many frustrations in living abroad. That if you aren't a good strong family with a good marriage, I've seen more marriages break up overseas than you can shake a stick at. There are just a million frustrations. And I think young people tend to go over and think, well, I can't 00:49:00stand it here anymore, I'm going to over there, we're going to start a new life, and this, that and the other thing. And you go over there, and it's a very hard way to live. If you're living on sort of a professor's salary. You don't have a chauffeur coming to get you every day, and tend to all your needs. The field, as they say, is a very hard life.

AB: Where there American schools that your kids went to? How did it work?

JL: In Beirut, our kids were very young. Two of the kids did go to school there. But it was an American school, it was American University of Beirut, is where it was, and this school was in conjunction with it. In the Philippines, Tom was at only in the fourth grade, and they had so many road problems, construction problems, that the American school was sufficiently far off from where the University was, in Quezon City, that we decided not to send him to the American school. As it turned out, so we went to what was called their lab school, at the campus, and he was maybe one of two Americans kids there. And it was extremely 00:50:00hard on him. I think we probably did make a mistake in not sending him to the American school. It was a miserable year for him. He became sort of solitary kid, and a lot of reading at home. He loved to read. But English was supposedly spoken in the lab school, at the university, but it was spoken badly. And on the playground, it wasn't spoken at all.

So that really, he suffered. He really, truly did suffer. And he looks back on that now, and he can talk about it now, of course, and he says that really was a rough year. But he can, at this stage, sort out some good things about it, too, and he does remember a lot of things from [INAUDIBLE] that he doesn't regret. And in Indonesia, that such a culturally rich place, that he learned lots of 00:51:00things, that he could never learn anywhere else. He would love to go back there. Just to see the dance, and so on.

So it's been a, the travel has been a very enriching time. The oldest boy really didn't get his share of it, I think. He was sort of, he was in Beirut, that was the only place he was with us. And we spent some time in England, and our son, who was a medical student at that time, came over and lived with us, then, briefly, and did some work over there. So he had that. Becky was a freshman at the University of Philippines. She had just graduated from high school. And that 00:52:00was OK for her. And then when we went over to Indonesia, she came also, we spent time with her, and enjoyed that. And she went into Asian Studies because of it. [INAUDIBLE]

So I guess the travel part, for the kids themselves, has been interesting enough, and for me, it was fantastic. So when would I have ever had a chance to travel a lot? And I guess that's part of reason so many non-university people envy us. I don't mean us, I don't mean the Lampmans in particular. But envy university people. And what they don't know, is a lot of university people don't get to do that.

AB: Yeah. Or decide, or choose not to, because they do feel it's disruptive.

JL: Well, nowadays, with the women working, the men may want to go, and I've 00:53:00heard this several times over, well, I'd really like to go, but Marge has got her job, and we just can't do this.

AB: It's nice to have the flexibility to be able to do that.

JL: And I guess I'm just at the age where I don't see myself changing, or moving into the job market. So I've found all along that that flexibility has been a real plus in his job, and in our marriage. It's just been a great thing for us.

And we did have a strong marriage, we do have a strong marriage. So when we met problems, they were easy to handle, and deal with. There are always problems. 00:54:00Any marriage in any profession has them, and I'm not saying it's all been peaches and cream. But it's been worth it. And we've loved it together.

AB: I think I'll-- that sounds like a good place to end . [UNINTELLIGIBLE] So you collected [UNINTELLIGIBLE] over these travels?

JL: Whenever we've traveled, my interests seem to be the ones that make the trip more interesting than his job aspect of it. We couldn't travel, except that he would be working, and we never just traveled just for the heck of it, just for the sheer fun of it. But so many good things have come out of it. But mainly, it's been my interests that have broadened him and broadened us both. For instance, in England, to go around to the workshops there, the pottery studios 00:55:00and so on, and in Canada, I've done the same thing. When we go to visit my son, I don't just sit at their house. I look up and find ways to find out who the potters are, and I will go around, and he will most often come with me. And music, the same way. He wouldn't go to operas unless I had been terribly interested in them. And he's enjoyed all that stuff now. He can almost talk it, which is good, because economics can be a very tight subject.

AB: Yeah, it's nice to have other areas that you can talk about.

JL: And so I figure I've gained a lot from being a faculty wife, and he's also certainly gained lots in having a wife with some broader interests.

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to retooling again. And I don't do it on any competitive sort of basis. It's strictly hobby. I can sell enough to pay for my 00:56:00clay, but I don't go to shows.

AB: Do you exhibit?

JL: No, I really don't. I've never done that much, but people who know me will come over and say, I've got to go to a wedding, and have you got a casserole, or whatever. And one year, my daughter felt the need, she's got two little kids, and she felt the need of doing something. She's very artistic, actually, much more so than I was. She was always doing sculpture, and she said she'd like to come home and have me teach her to use the wheel, and do some production type things.

So we paid her way, and her two children, to come home one summer, about four years ago, and we found a babysitter, and every day, the babysitter came, and I took her down to my studio downstairs, and we threw clay on the wheel, and now she's teaching. She can teach pottery. And her own kids, I mean, she's just a wonderfully, wonderfully artistic, creative mother, her own kids are going to be 00:57:00just fantastic artists, they have had it offered to them at a very young age. And I can see it, in this little girl's drawing, for instance. Not just clay, I mean, she can do-- she should have been in art school, is what she should have been.

And she worked, incidentally, for a while. She taught school, and now is going back to get her certificate. She can teach K through 12, and she's going to go back and get a, I guess it's an M.A. in Elementary Education, out there [INAUDIBLE] in Seattle, so that she can teach younger kids. She is still most creative with that age, apparently.

So I feel like she's gotten a good start. Maybe she's doing what I would have done, if I'd been younger, or times had been different, or whatnot.

AB: My daughter just took a pottery course at the Union for a few weeks, and really enjoyed it.

JL: Doesn't she go to West High?

AB: No, my daughter's still at Van Hise. My son goes to West High.

JL: Because they have a marvellous pottery teacher there. It's a marvelous department. You know, when I was a kid, there was no art in schools at all. When I say, there was an art teacher that came in once a week, and we were told to draw something. And I mean, had none of the creative aspect of drawing to music, or whatever they do these days. But there was nothing at-- well I shouldn't say there was nothing at West High. I actually couldn't, I didn't have time for art at West High. I was sort of into Latin. Latin and languages, at that point. But I hear now that the studio, as a matter of fact, I went back there for a reunion a couple of years ago, [INAUDIBLE] former West High kids, and their studio is 00:59:00fantastic. They've got wheels, and kilns, and a marvellous teacher.

AB: Oh, gosh! She'll be pleased. I'm pleased to hear about that too, because she can use a little [UNINTELLIGIBLE].

JL: Some of these neighborhood kids here, that knew I did pottery, they've all been up and seen the wheel and played in the clay a certain amount, one of them was Chris [UNINTELLIGIBLE]. And he didn't care for school all that much, but he got really interested in pottery, and did very well over at West High. And another one was this Olson boy who's just one of Marshall Olson's kids. He's got four boys. And Doug Olson has been winning prizes at the high school level. And he's says the teacher over here is absolutely tops. I don't know the teacher, but there was an article about him in the paper recently. So they've really made a big effort at West High anyway, I don't know about the other high schools, to present this to kids. Because there are a lot of turned-off kids these days, and 01:00:00they have a really good art department. It's got to be a lifesaver.

AB: Yeah, I think so. My son's gotten--