Laurie Dwire Oral History Interview, February 8, 2018

EZMIE TREVARROW: Hi, could you start off by saying your name, the date, and where we are?

LAURIE DWIRE: My name is Laurie Dwire. The date is February 7-

ET: Eight.

LD: February 8. We are at the library on the campus of OSU.

ET: Alright. I am Ezmie Trevarrow and I will be conducting this interview. Just to start off, can you tell us where you were born and where you grew up?

LD: Yes. I was born in Billings, Montana, in 1953. My parents relocated to California about 2 or 3 years after that, so I was raised in California, a Los Angeles suburb: Alhambra, San Gabriel area.

ET: Is there a reason that your parents made that move?

LD: They made that move for a number of reasons. There wasn't much happening for them in Montana, as a young family, growing family, and my father wanted to take advantage of the educational system in California at the time. It was very important to my parents that we were educated.

ET: Were your parents highly educated?

LD: First generation. My dad was a college graduate. My mother met my father at the Missoula University, so she didn't finish graduation, but my father did.

ET: They put a big emphasis on education.

LD: They did. They met in college. They had a wonderful college experience at MU and had hoped that we would have the same experience with college, I think, and really felt that education was the way to secure a future as well as being of course the individuals that they had hoped to raise.

ET: Can you tell me a little bit about your family relationship and dynamic?

LD: Our family dynamic was very tight. We were a very close-knit Irish, Catholic family. There was a lot of support among my siblings. I come from a large family, 9 of us. I'm third oldest. My parents were Irish Catholic and alcoholic, 00:02:00there always some difficulty, always some challenges at home, which I think bound us as siblings together in order to get us through the day-to-day of what that is.

ET: Was religion a big part of your life as a child?

LD: It was. It was. It was a lot of the structure that we had in our household was based on what was happening at church. We went to church every Sunday. We went to confession every Saturday night before Sunday so we could all receive communion. We all received all of the sacraments, and that was always a big, important day in our family is when one of us or two of us would have our first holy communion or our confirmation. It was important that that structure and the progression of being a Catholic continued, so yes. Some of my fondest memories are holiday related. Of course, Christmas was huge, Easter was huge, very much 00:03:00centered around the religious rituals of Roman Catholicism.

ET: Did you enjoy having a religious upbringing? Do you think that benefited you?

LD: I did, and as I talk to my other siblings, my brother just finished a book of short stories. He indicates in his book there is a great short story of him being an altar boy, and how because there was chaos at home, I found as well a certain comfort in just the ritual and structure of the church activities. The church was always clean. The uniforms were always laundered for the priests and nuns. I just felt, oh my gosh, what an orderly way to live. It was very attractive. My brother actually expressed the same thing in his short story about being an altar boy, how he would arrive, things would happen on time, things would be ready for him to do. It really did just allow some organization 00:04:00to our upbringing that we didn't really always have at home.

ET: That was because of your parents'-

LD: Drinking.

ET: alcoholism and-

LD: Yeah, and because the number of kids. We were the house that everybody hung out at. All the kids came after school to our house. There was always a lot of activity, a lot of chaos at home.

ET: Did your parents start drinking from an early age?

LD: They drank in college when it was very accepted. Nobody talked about drinking. Nobody talked about alcoholism. This was before anybody started talking about how awful the disease is. Doing some research, it runs in my family. It's generational. It is genetic. It shouldn't have been a surprise that there would have been some issue with my parents given their parental history, but it wasn't something that we talked about back then. We're talking early '50s, late '40s, early '50s into the '60s.

People didn't talk about alcoholism. People had 3 martini lunches and that was 00:05:00completely fine. It was not addressed in the way it should have been. Of course, later on it was but during my parents' time it was not.

ET: Did you think that was a normal thing to happen because both of your parents were alcoholics? Did you notice a difference between your friends' parents, how they acted?

LD: I think there was a lot of drinking going on in a lot of the families, as I'm thinking back. I thought it was perfectly normal, of course, because we were able to sustain that sort of facade for so long. I just thought of course this is-it wasn't until I started doing a little research and had trouble with my own substance abuse that I realized oh my God this is not normal behavior. Then the pieces started falling together. At the time, no, just everybody drank. Even the priest would come over and drink with my parents. That was always a big night is when Father McCormick would come over and have some drinks with my dad. It was 00:06:00very common.

ET: Leading off of that, can you talk about your parents' death and how alcoholism led to that?

LD: Absolutely. My mother died when she was 43 years old. After having 9 children she was just physically done. My father died 4 years after, I think as much from a broken heart as his own alcoholism, but how it affected me-I'm sorry, is that the question?

ET: Yeah.

LD: Because if you get me started, I'll just keep talking. Yeah, it was something that really as I said earlier brought the siblings together because we were for the most part raising ourselves, raising each other as well as our parents to some degree, which really bound us close together, but as we began to leave the house to go to college we realized that drinking was something that we 00:07:00really had to be concerned about because a lot of our habits were beginning to repeat. We would talk about it among ourselves. We would see problems among ourselves. Some of us came to deal with it sooner than others, but it was certainly a part of growing up. I think the question was more about the death of our parents early on, which, again, just brought us closer together, made us take a closer look at how we were conducting our lives, but something that just happened recently, actually, I realized. My father explained my mother's death to us as being something other than it was, because there was the embarrassment attached. For the longest time as a young woman I was trying to put together my relationship with my mother and how that looked and some of the heartbreak there and couldn't understand, because according to my father my mother died of uremic 00:08:00poisoning, whatever that is. It was until I was in my late 30s going through some papers that I found her death certificate and it said acute alcoholism. That would've explained so much behavior to me as I was growing up. I was like why didn't we know this? Why weren't we told this? This explains so many of the little episodes that happened. That helped put things in perspective and that helped me actually move on into my own personal growth.

ET: You talked about the shame associated with alcoholism, even though it was so rampant at the time. Was it coming from a specific community or like-?

LD: The shame didn't really start to, for me it was more about, it wasn't shame so much as it was just, I don't know, embarrassment? Maybe a little anger 00:09:00involved there. Everybody we knew drank as much as my parents did, or appeared to anyway. I don't think there was really that much shame attached until probably when I got older and I started thinking back on some memories and some certain instances and episodes where there was, whatever, some disappointment or whatever, thinking that that probably should have-that was shameful behavior, but it didn't appear to be that way at the time, really. I don't know if that answers your question.

ET: Yeah, that's-

LD: Hopefully we can do something about that. Okay.

ET: Did your parents ever reach out and try to receive help?

LD: This is a real, that's a great question because they did not. Because there were just not those kinds of resources for them. Their resource was the Catholic church and the Catholic church failed them.

There was nothing in place that could help them identify these problems, never 00:10:00mind working through them. Again, it was something that wasn't really talked about much even though everyone knew what was going on. But, no, there was no resource. Their circle of friends were drinkers.

ET: Did that contribute to your lack of religion now?

LD: I would say it certainly does. I still feel the pull of the holidays, and still I love the music. That was really what I evidently really enjoyed about the church was the performance element of it. I loved the vestments and the smells and the flowers and everything. It was just such a sensory sort of environment being in those-and it would change from season to season. It was always a little exciting to go to church for that reason. But not now. No, I still have an affinity for Christmas music and of course the holidays but I don't celebrate Easter, the lesser holidays I don't pay attention to and frankly 00:11:00I have moved on from Catholicism into some other way of explaining why we're here and what we're here to do. Lapsed Catholic in the strongest sense of the word.

ET: But the church did provide some sort of structure for you that you lacked in your own home.

LD: Yep, absolutely, and promise. There was always promise of something better.

ET: Just to backtrack a little bit. How old were you when your mom died?

LD: Seventeen when my mother died and then 23, 24 when my dad died. But I have so many younger siblings I always in my own mind thought I was one of the lucky ones because at least I was a little bit older. The youngest was 7 when Mom died, which is so, so young, and then 10 or 11 when Dad died. My grief, my 00:12:00whatever was always eclipsed by the younger siblings because they actually had less time with them.

ET: Did they view your parents' death in a different way than you do now?

LD: You know, I would say of course they do, and I don't know that I've had that conversation with them to tell you the truth. We certainly talk about the folks when we all get together, but in terms of their own personal way of working through it, I've never probed with them. Maybe that's something we should talk about now that we've distanced ourselves a bit.

ET: How old was the oldest sibling?

LD: That would be my older sister, who is three years older than I. If I was 17, she was 19, just leaving for college, trying to get herself into college. Second older sister the same when Mom died. By the time my dad remarried, for obvious reasons-I don't know that we even want to get into that-they had already left 00:13:00the house because this woman brought with her her own three children, so the house was getting very crowded. They were the first to go and I was there for about 8 months after our stepbrothers and sisters moved in I was out of the house as well. It did expedite the whole departure, certainly. I was ready to go. I think that 16, 17 is a good time to strike out. I waited until I was 17, 18. At that point I was in college, well junior college. I had a job. I had a car. I was ready. It was time. It was time for me to go, even though I felt pulled to stay behind for my younger siblings, it was time to go.

ET: After your dad died, how did the younger children, where did their living 00:14:00situation end up?

LD: They stayed at the house where we grew up until they could leave. I'm trying to remember-I think that's 17, 18 back then when you could leave the house. Maybe 16, 17, but young, certainly. I remember that on their birthday, August 7th, when they had pulled together between-it was the twins at that point. We were all moving up to central California to the Santa Barbara area, that's where my older sister had established herself. She was going to UCSB and had an apartment and she was much more accessible and just able to accommodate all of us as we began to find our way out of the home situation into our own lives, so we all ended up in Santa Barbara as early as-boy, I think my brother moved up there when he was 16, 17. As soon as we could leave the house.

When the twins, who were the youngest ones, on their sixteenth birthday, I think 00:15:00it was, October 7th, had pulled together a used car that would make the 100-mile trip to Santa Barbara and left as soon as we could.

ET: They lived with your stepmother until they-?

LD: Until they were old enough to leave on their own, which was about 3 or 4 years after the stepfamily moved in. Which sounds terrible, because now we kind of friends, we're kind of friends, but at the time it was a rough transition.

ET: You older siblings definitely felt an obligation to take care of the younger ones?

LD: Oh, yes, absolutely. My oldest, oldest sister, Ann, who had been of course as you can imagine given the situation I've described was tasked with really raising us to a large degree. She took her chance when our stepmother moved in. And our stepmother and our dad were very supportive of this older sibling, Ann, to get herself in college and to move away from home and to really finally have 00:16:00some time for her because she had been so involved in our family life for so long. She was off at Claremont, she was at Scripps College at Claremont. The next sibling, Kate, my sister Kate, had moved up to Santa Barbara. Santa Barbara was much more accessible than Claremont, so we just followed Kate to Santa Barbara. I'm so glad we did. It was a fantastic place to spend time.

ET: Do you feel like the deaths in your family you lost the opportunity to have part of your childhood?

LD: I do. I do, but at the same time you know it's made me who I am today and I really do appreciate a lot of that experience because it allows you a perspective that not a lot of other people have. It's really formed who I am and how I approach my life and the world and that's pretty much how it works. Just 00:17:00the way it works.

ET: All your siblings are very close now?

LD: We are. As a matter of fact, I'm going to have a house full of siblings in about a week. Looking forward to that. We enjoy ourselves as adults. We know each other's histories. We're very forgiving and supportive and just so, so grateful that we're all talking to each other and I'm just so fortunate. I really am so fortunate to have the family I have. I just wish my parents were around to enjoy it.

ET: Moving on a little bit, can we talk about your higher education?

LD: Sure.

ET: Can you just start of by telling us where you went, what you studied?

LD: Absolutely. It was always understood that all of us would go to college. It was never clear how we were going to make that happen, but it was an expectation 00:18:00and it was really the only expectation I remember my dad having. I remember him saying the phrase, I don't care if you get a degree in basket weaving, just so long as you get a degree. I think in his generation at his time that was really the key to a future was an education. I don't know that that has shifted now, but back in the '50s that was what you did if you were going to be successful and have a fulfilled life, is you would educate yourself. I found certainly that just getting myself to class was the education. It wasn't so much what happened once I got there. But because of the lack of a lot of support, I mean there was never any money to go to college. It was always really tough to get Dad to break with his W-2 forms so I could file for financial aid so that we could talk about grants. It was always such, such a struggle. I don't think he realized how difficult it was to make that happen. We didn't go visit campuses. I mean, we 00:19:00didn't do a lot of that. We pretty much were left on our own, which explains why I was just looking for the best theater school I could find or that I could afford basically which was the community college. I went to community college for 2 years, where my older sisters they were more focused. My older sister, Clairmont, literary. She wanted to be a teacher. My sister Kate, scientist. Knew that very early on, so she ended up being UCSB. I wasn't quite sure what I wanted to do, except I thought it might be theater, so I just went to a community college. It was the cheapest, closest, easiest thing to do. That's what I did. That's where I started and then of course once I got into it, I loved it, realized yeah this is something that I could do and after the two years at the community college because of a contact I had made there ended up at Long Beach State University.

Which may not have been the greatest choice but it kept me focused for a time, 00:20:00so I did about three years at Long Beach, working the whole time. You have to understand there was really no parental support at that time ever, so that's how I explain it took me six years to get my degree. I ended up at Santa Barbara after Long Beach and completed my degree finally at UCSB. Rather circuitous way to do it. If I had it to do over again I would do it different, to tell you the truth. I don't think I would have spent so much time at Long Beach State. I could have used a lot of counseling. I could have really used some career counseling, but that's not what theater departments do. They need to make, you know, they need to support themselves and now I know of course it was all about the money. It wasn't about my growth. It was about keeping the theater department open. I could have probably gotten better guidance at a different place, but I didn't. That's what happened.

ET: You punctuated your education with taking care of siblings?

LD: Yes, because it was interrupted because at the time after my dad passed away we found out a lot of legal nonsense that hadn't been take care of. My stepmother had her three children living at the house and I still had two, three, four younger siblings at the house that hadn't turned 16 yet, that weren't able to leave yet. After returning from a European trip with her children, my stepmother returned and had a nervous breakdown and committed herself. That left the house empty without any adult at the house. I got a call from my brother and said Laurie can you come down? Ursula's in the hospital. We don't know what we're doing for dinner. We don't know what's happening. I said, okay. I drove down there. Took a leave of absence from my job, dropped out of 00:22:00college for a while. When down there and kind of found my mother's death certificate, went through some papers, found some things and it was like oh my God what's been going on here? I was pretty committed to that for about 8 months, almost a year trying to straighten things out. We ended up having to go to court and doing some legal nonsense to help my stepmother get back on her feet and capable of taking care of what still needed to be taken care of. Had to sue her for executor of my dad's estate, which was nothing. I mean it's nothing, but there were some oil leases from Montana because my dad worked for Standard Oil while he was up in Montana and as I think about this now, this was something I think my parents hoped was going to come through before it did. We had these oil leases, even though there had been no activity on them, there was no interest in them at all, but at the time we were in an oil crisis and everybody 00:23:00just thought that was going to be the windfall and it was quite difficult sorting out the oil leases, which have yet to produce anything at all but there was a lot of interest in that and that complicated the whole legal situation because of these darn oil leases. We straightened that out and moved on.

ET: Did that stress the family dynamic?

LD: It separated the two families, I'll tell you that. The nine of us pretty much were solid, but you know it just seemed so odd that this new family was going to-that had such a vested interest in all of this, so it got nasty. It got nasty.

ET: I guess going back to college, you got a bachelor's of arts in dramatic arts?

LD: Yeah, in dramatic arts, yeah. I finished at University of California. I had about a year and a half left to do. Again, not the smartest transition. I ended up repeating courses that I had to repeat, because if you're getting a degree from a university a certain number of credits have to be worked or completed at that university. I ended up repeating a lot of courses. It would have saved me a lot of time and money had I stayed in Long Beach, but that's not what happened. At that point I have to admit I was pretty finished with it. I was pretty burned out with it. I had a lot of fun doing it. I was very successful doing it, but I was exhausted and I just, yeah, a lot of drama in theater. Go figure.

ET: What were the types of jobs that you worked to support yourself?

LD: Food service. Always food service and my husband teases me that it's because I was hungry as a child. That's what he said, which can be true.

Yeah, it was just the easiest first job I ever had was in a movie theater 00:25:00working a concession stand and I thought boy this is pretty sweet. You're around all this-this is not so bad. Then of course hostessing and then waitressing. Waitressing at the time was, and we're talking now probably early '70s. It was just so much fun. This was before they started taxing tips. The money was fantastic. I was good at it because I had a lot of theater experience. I was fast on my feet. I was friendly. I stuck with that for a long, long time. I waitressed for years and years: while I went to school. Would do it during the summer. Worked Lake Tahoe, at a casino. I traveled with it. I was able to work the 1980 winter Olympics at Lake Placid by doing it. It's a great way to travel. I thought about doing cruise lines for a while, but I'm glad I didn't do that because I've read a little stuff of what goes on there. It was just a great way to have some fun and Santa Barbara of course was just the perfect place for 00:26:00that. This was a time where in the finer dinner houses they still weren't letting women, it was all men, it was all waiters, so the big breakthrough was when the Four Seasons Biltmore finally allowed a woman to work in their fine dining room. I ended up at Four Seasons eventually but not during that time. That whole business was transitioning at that time as well, and Santa Barbara was just a great place to be knowing how to do that because there's some great restaurants there and a lot of money. That was a lot of fun. Then, I decided that okay I'm having too much fun waitressing and I'm getting older and older, I should probably think about where this is going to take me. I actually went back to school in Santa Barbara at the Santa Barbara Community College. They had a culinary program there, a management, a hotel restaurant management program for two years that I completed and after that, after I finished that, well actually 00:27:00before I even graduated, I was asked by the department head of the culinary department if I was interested in working for him. I said absolutely. I took over his catering department at Santa Barbara Community College.

ET: How old were you at that point?

LD: I was an older student. I was probably in my 40s at that time. Which is a great thing about community colleges is you can come and go no matter what. I was ready to get started to do something that was a little bit more professional at the time. It was important to me to do something other than waitressing. I remember applying for scholarships and grants within the culinary department and having to write an essay and I remember starting the essay off saying that, and this was actually true, I was at a luncheon with some friends and some older friends that I didn't know and this gal would seat people around the table intentionally putting me next to somebody who you didn't know in order to 00:28:00generate conversation and I sat next to this older gentleman and as soon as I told him I was a waitress I could see him check out. He just, oh, and move on to somebody else. I thought wow, people just-it didn't occur to me that waitressing was that low ditch at the time or that I could do more, that I could be more. That kind of got me thinking. After that I thought maybe I should pay more attention to this and see if there's something out there besides, what's the next step. That's when I decided to consider management.

ET: Can we talk about your career with working in the university in Hawaii?

LD: Sure. After working at Santa Barbara Community College I became aware of food servicing on college campuses because I had never been in a dorm or a res hall or knew what that looked like when I went to college, because I was working 00:29:00off-campus, I was taking care of myself, I didn't realize that there were places on campuses that actually fed students, that this was an option and quite a good one. I realized then after being at Santa Barbara, I thought somebody's got to feed these students. There's a real career path here for me. My husband, not at the time but we were talking about how I could parlay this into some other place if we ever wanted to leave Santa Barbara. He goes, well, after Santa Barbara it's got to be Hawaii. It's like, you're right, maybe I should start looking for something in Hawaii. We've always been careful about where we've lived. That's pretty much driven where we go. I applied. I went online and I saw this position open at the University of Hawaii and I thought why not?

I'll be darned I got hired with the promise that it would eventually evolved into a tenure-track position with this culinary program. I would be front house 00:30:00manager teaching students in the program fine dining service, front house restaurant management, what goes on out front. All the culinary students knew what happened in the kitchen but there's a lot of stuff to know that happens out front. That's what I did for the University of Hawaii and I loved it. I did that for four years. My fifth year would have determined whether or not this position would remain tenure track forever, which meant that the department, the actual culinary department, would assume the expense of having me as their employee, my benefit, my salary, everything. They decided that the department just couldn't afford to do that, so they were going to rotate to be a continual rotating position and not a tenure-track position. Because I had already served the four years, that eliminated me from rotating back into the same position so they had 00:31:00to let me go. That was quite a heartbreak. Here I am in Hawaii. I kind of stepped back and tried to see what other options on a management level were available to me in Hawaii. Ended up working for Sodexo at the University of Hilo, not associated with the University of Hawaii in terms of their food service because the Hilo campus is so small, Sodexo ran their food service. Had a terrible experience with Sodexo, so resigned from that position. That brought me back to Maui where my husband was working. We stayed on Maui for about another three years enjoying Hawaii until we realized okay we're not moving forward, and I started missing everybody. The little things. By this time, my sisters, my younger sister was having children, my brother was having children. I was missing the graduations and the holidays and all of that. Anytime anyone 00:32:00would come to visit us it was just a huge production, once in a lifetime kind of thing. I'm not really seeing what I want to see in terms of what's happening with my family. That combined with the fact that the work had dried up, we decided to move back to the States, back to Napa. People ask me all the time how could you leave Hawaii? It's like well once you're there for 10 years, once you're there for a while you see a side of Hawaii that a lot of the tourists of course are not privy to. It had run its course. We were ready to come back.

ET: At that point, how old were you when you moved back?

LD: That was only about 4 years ago. I'm already late 50s. I'm 64 now, so late 50s we're moving again. Yeah. My brother-in-law asked us if we could help him transition into retirement. They lived in the bay area, bought a house in Napa, were not quite ready to move into it yet. It was just a great opportunity to move back in to California. It was a good way to transition back in. Once we got 00:33:00back to California we realized, no, we left California 10 years ago and we just really don't want to live here, even in Napa. We started talking about moving again and my sister had a house in Corvallis. We took a road trip up to Oregon and thought about moving to the Pacific Northwest.

ET: Now you actually live in your sister's house. Can you talk about that a little bit?

LD: Yeah, she's got this great little house two blocks off of campus. She bought it while she was going out school here. This is the same scientist sister that was in Santa Barbara. She's been great. She bought this house while she was going to school here and has had it rented out. She lives in Colorado now, has been renting it out to students ever since she graduated. She was very anxious to have somebody she knew move into her house, and my husband of course is an 00:34:00electrician, carpenter guy so he's very handy and it was available. It turned out that the students that were there were on their way out and the timing was just perfect. We're in her house now putting it back together.

ET: You're pretty new to Corvallis. Is it different from the other places that you've lived?

LD: It's different in the way that it's-and I don't know, maybe it's my age, maybe it's just because this is what I'm looking for. But living in tourist areas: Santa Barbara, Hawaii, even Napa now, it's just nice to live in a place that has some foundation to it, that really has a history that you can still see that has not been gentrified, that has not been made to look like every other city in California. It has some character to it.

It just has a feel of being an old town that can roll with the punches and still 00:35:00maintain a certain integrity and character to it. I love the buildings. I love OSU campus, of course, I was totally sold on that because you just don't see this kind of architecture in Hawaii. It was like oh. I love the Whiteside. I love the Darkside. Just the little places downtown, it being on a river, close to a body of water's been important to us. We like being around water. But it's the size, the size is manageable and the people are just so wonderful and friendly and we're just finding a real place here.

ET: Would you think that, do you feel like this time in your life it's good for you to live in Corvallis or do you think that you could have enjoyed here when you were younger, or did you need to be in a different environment at that point?

LD: Good question, Ezmie. I think I can appreciate Corvallis because of where 00:36:00I'm at in my life. I don't know that I would have found this comfortable when I was younger, because when you're younger you just want to experience everything and try everything new and that's what great about this, is it's not, there's some sort of calm about Corvallis. I don't know that that was what I was looking for when I was in my 20s or 30s, or in my 40s, really. Part of that is because I of course never intended to have a family. I could see where Corvallis if I was a young parent it would be a wonderful place to raise a family, but that was not my situation. I would say, yes, it's probably my age that makes it so attractive. I've never known so many niche shops and yarn stores and barber shops and all those fun things that you don't see in the bigger cities anymore. It's all strip malls and yeah, shopping centers.

ET: Can we talk a little bit about how you never wanted kids?

LD: Sure. Well, that goes back to my upbringing, I'm sure, Ezmie. I mean, I was changing diapers and making bottles before there were disposable diapers and instant milk or whatever. I mean, I remember having to sterilize bottles on the stove and being really careful that you didn't break them. They were glass because the last two siblings are twins, so my mom had a set of twins at the end and boy they were, and her health was failing at the time so we did a lot of that. I had no, I mean there was no fantasy about children. I knew the work involved. I knew what it took, and I just thought I'd had enough of it by the time I was able to do it myself. This is something that does not interest me at all. I knew very young, which was a real issue in Hawaii because family is so 00:38:00important to Hawaiians. A culture of extended families. There was a Hawaiian tradition, back in the ancient Hawaiians, that if a couple were unable to have children they would actually give children to these couples because it was so important to raise children as part of your own personal development kind of thing in Hawaii. When I would tell older folks, particularly in Hilo, I had folks working for me that were in their 50s and 60s and had extended families and of course the conversation when you first meet somebody would always go: so how many children do you have? Tell me about your family. I was like, well I don't have any kids. Oh, they just thought I was some kind of freak. It was really, really unusual for a woman not to want, need children. Since then of 00:39:00course I've talked to women. In fact, just last night I was talking to someone and she overheard me talking to somebody else and she goes, Laurie I never hear that from people, from women, saying that no, I knew young I was not going to have children. I just knew I wasn't. I think women do know this, and I think, in history, women have known that and yet were forced to have children and then those children of course suffered from that. I think it's important to go with your gut and if you, no matter what anybody else is telling you, if you know you're not suited to it then don't do it, because it's just going to change your life. That's why.

ET: Do you feel like your parents let you down, you and your siblings, by not being the best parents they could be?

LD: You know I did for a long time, Ezmie, to be honest, and that's a lot of the growth is the forgiveness and then once you do that and here's what happened.

Once I reached the age that my mother was when she passed or once I started 00:40:00reaching those years when, oh my God at this point Mom had 5 kids. At this point, Mom had 7 kids. Me, at my age, could I have 7 kids? You start putting it in relation to your own timeline and your own life and all of a sudden you go oh my God I so forgive you for this because I don't know how you managed to hold it together as long as you did. You went to what was natural, you went to the drink, because that's what you learned to do when you were in college, or whatever. That's what your mother did. That's what her mother did. That's what-I mean it is a genetic, progressive sort of thing and there wasn't the information at the time. There wasn't all the research done. It was, ah, he just can't handle his drink. That's how they just wrote it off. It's like no, it's a predisposed genetic condition that people need to be aware of so people can take the steps they need in order to prevent themselves from going down that path. Just like any other disease. Just like diabetes or anything else. You can do things to help yourself through this. But at the time that information wasn't available. All of that combined with, like I said, realizing that oh my God my 00:41:00mother was you know you start realizing in relation to your own life. Then the forgiveness happens. Even with my dad, he had hopes and dreams and then he had kids. Then it was the kids. It's the forgiveness that does the healing. But of course, you're always like, geez, well why? Even as a kid I remember one night we had a huge fight and I for the first time found the moxie to ask him why did you have so many of us if you don't want to spend time with us? Why did you do this? I know that that was happening during the time, but then as I said as you age and you get to know yourself a little better and you start realizing everything, it's like I get it now. They were just people, just like me, making bad choices. It happens.

ET: Do you think it's kind of a generational thing to have the stigma around not 00:42:00having children?

LD: Generational? How do you mean?

ET: Well, at least from my point of view I don't think having children is such a big deal now.

LD: Good. I guess it is. There was a time a woman was defined by her family and how she raised her family. I mean that was what we were supposed to do. That's what determined your value, your contribution to society was the family that you raised. I don't know that that holds true. I can't speak for this generation coming up, but I know in the '50s and certainly in the '60s it was about the presentation of that perfect family. That's what we were watching on TV. That's what we were reading about. It wasn't until later in the '60s and early '70s where things began to really get honest. I think a lot of women, and the ones 00:43:00that didn't were not accepted and ostracized, and I can't think of any names offhand, but there's several documentaries about women artists and women photographers who really had a issue with that whole expectation of having kids. No, they wanted a career and they had a rough time doing it. Does that answer that question?

ET: Yeah.

LD: Okay, good.

ET: Even though you never had kids, family is obviously really important to you. Can you talk about your relationship with your siblings now and their children?

LD: Sure, sure. We're all very tight. We're all very-we're not in each other's business, so to speak. When my sister was raising her two kids she was having some trouble with her husband, eventually ended up divorcing. I would encourage to leave him earlier. I was always, you know, just you can do better on your own. We'll be here to help you. But she felt such a need to, you know-and now 15 00:44:00years later they all go out to breakfast together. They all celebrate holidays together. I think Coleen was right. I think she did the right thing, even though it was so, so hard for her to do, but she maintained that family unit despite a lot of challenges in that area. I know I've gone off, I'm not answering your question. Remind me again what we're talking about.

ET: Just your relationship with-

LD: Siblings and their children?

ET: Yeah.

LD: So, I was pretty much the one that was always a little bit, oh, Coleen just leave the bum. She was like but I've two kids. I've got-I go, yeah but they're doing more harm than good. We had that discussion, but she stayed strong and came through the other end and I think her kids are just fantastic.

They're curious and smart and sensible and aware of the alcohol issue, making 00:45:00choices, good choices in that regard. She just did a great job under a lot of, gosh, amazing story there. Then my other brother had three kids of his own that are struggling to some degree with the curse but are coming through and working hard at it. I'm not as close to them as I like to be, because they're dealing with some of their own personal issues and I want to give them time to take care of that before we get in there and start telling them our stories. We're a tight unit, I would say, Ezmie, and intend to be forever. There's just nothing we can't get through now. We know we've been through the worst already, so no matter what happens we're going to be there for each other.

ET: Having a big family didn't stop some of your other siblings from having children?

LD: Mm-mm [No]. But they're the younger ones.

ET: Oh. That was my next question.

LD: My younger brother did, but really not many of us, only three. Three out of the nine of us started families of their own and then never more than two kids, or three kids, sorry. Three kids was the largest family and that was because, again, the last birth was twins. Yeah, smaller family, certainly not that huge family that we had. But, yeah, my sister wanted, my younger sister wanted children. My brother wanted children when it came time to make that decision. My other brother was driven certainly by his wife who had to have a child. There's reasons why, but yeah I'm surprised we got-what'd I say six? Six nieces and nephews? I lose count. Shame on me, yeah.

ET: Do the older siblings who didn't have children do they cite the same reasons 00:47:00as you for not wanting children?

LD: You know, I don't think we've talked about that, Ezmie. That's a good question. I think my older sister thought she wanted to have children, but it just never worked out. She just never had a relationship that would sustain that. My sister Kate I don't think ever did but I'm not sure if she would have if she had to. I don't know. That's a good question. I doubt it. I doubt it. I'm going to say I doubt it. I'm counting my nieces and nephews, sorry, go ahead.

ET: Let's move on to talk about your husband a little bit.

LD: Okay.

ET: You've known him for a very long time.

LD: I have. I've known him for 38 years. He's been, just so, so great. So great. I met him after a pretty rough battle with someone who I was trying to fix which 00:48:00is a behavior I picked up from parental residue. I was very good, or thought I was, at fixing people. I got involved with a guy who I thought I could help out and before I came to the excellent realization that you can't change people, but again my best shot. But I met my husband through this guy so maybe that's what that was all about. He was a drinker at the time. We were both drinking at the time. Had a great time doing it. Then we both just decided to get sober. We just thought this is ridiculous. We can't do this much longer. Got through that. That's when I made this great realization that I will share with you, Ezmie, that I think there are three things that couples have to work through before they can actually make things work: they have to feel the same way about money. One can't want to make a lot of money and the other one not care about it. They both have to be on the same page when it comes to money. They both have to be on 00:49:00the same page when it comes to kids. The wife can't want kids and the husband not, or vice versa, and they have to get their substance abuse worked through. They have to figure out where they land on that. Once you get those three issues figured out, the rest is gravy. That's what we did. I mean, Paki, my husband, never wanted kids, loves the fact that I didn't want kids. Actually loved the fact that I didn't have any parents at the time because then there was no dinner with the parents. He goes, yeah, that was alike alright. It was kind of a joke. Once we worked through our addictions, our substance abuse, and got on the same page with that, had the kids worked out and we agreed we're pretty much on the same page when it comes to money management, which is not great but at least we agree on what role that's going to play in our life.

You take care of those three things and I think you're pretty well on your way.

ET: But you guys chose to wait a long time to get married?

LD: We did. We knew we weren't going to have kids. We wanted to travel. We wanted to move around or be able to move around whenever we wanted to. Owning a house was never on my radar. It was never important to me to do that right away and I just, it just seemed unimportant. I was always able to move when I wanted to and change jobs when I wanted to. I didn't have the weight of having to support two or three little ones that would mean that I needed to stay in a job I hate in order to make their life better, that kind of thing. It just seemed to be a better way to be free of a lot of stuff. That's what we did.

ET: Did you face the same stigma for being an older non-married woman as you did 00:51:00for not having children? That was poorly-worded.

LD: Oh, no, no, non-married?

ET: Yeah.

LD: It never bothered me, Ezmie, I didn't care. I didn't care if I was married or not. Again that was something that just wasn't important. I had a good man. I had a good, solid relationship. I didn't need to be married. I knew we were connected and because again you know we weren't financially tied to anything. We didn't have other people involved, children involved, it really did allow us that kind of lax. A lot of couples can't afford to do that because there are other commitments. I don't think marriage was important. The only reason we finally did get married was because his parents were aging and his mother wanted to see him married before she passed I think. Because he was a bit of a rogue, he was kind of the family rogue. They were pleased to find out that he had been in a relationship as long as he had at that point and I of course had met 00:52:00everybody at that point and they accepted me and they were just so, so glad Paki had someone in his life to take care of him and to share his life with. We never even thought about marriage until all of a sudden we found ourselves in this beautiful place where people get married every day of the week and thought you know, maybe we should just throw a big party and invite all our friends and family to Hawaii for a reason. At least it'll all get them here at the same time. His folks have met at Pearl Harbor while the both of them were in the Navy, so it was kind of a reunion sort of thing for him. I know that his father, Bob, wanted to visit Pearl Harbor one more time. Roberta wasn't interested at all. She stayed behind. She goes, I don't want to see it again. Those big Naval ships, that's where they met and that's where a wonderful part of their life was 00:53:00shared. We thought oh they'll come to Hawaii, and they were in their 80s at the time. It was not an easy trip for them. Once they got here, Paki's older sisters made sure that they traveled with them and helped them arrive and get them set up. Once they were here they just had a blast and of course the wedding was wonderful. But that's why we did it. We did it because we just wanted to throw a party, have a reason to throw a great party in a beautiful place in the world.

ET: Moving on, let's talk about your career at OSU, finally.

LD: Okay.

ET: How did you start here? What's your position title? The basics.

LD: My title is operations manager for the University of Housing and Dining Services on the campus of OSU. That means I am one of four, hopefully soon to be five, people that just keep it all spinning, keep it all-that's a terrible way 00:54:00to say everything that we do. We are in the business of engage, enrich, and thrive our students. That is our mantra, but with the end-game, of course, the end result being that there is food for students to purchase that have bought a meal plan and are living in our res halls. That's about as simple as I can put it. It took a little bit of a way getting here. I knew once we had arrived in Corvallis with my experience at UHDS and Santa Barbara City College that I could probably get a job in food service on this campus. I wasn't sure how that would look but I figured I could. I remember doing a phone interview for Memorial Union or retail food service in Napa that was awful. Oh, God.

Of course, didn't get that job. When I came back up here, I thought okay what 00:55:00else is out here? I was just like I was so embarrassed, even then, a year later that I had tanked that interview so bad. It was just awful. Because I think I was just so used to talking to people and when you're on that phone you don't have that contact. I was just stalled. I just couldn't pull it together. Anyway, I got hooked up with a guy at the Memorial Union who was still there: Joe's Burgers. He was looking for somebody to open up and manage that burger place that's down in Memorial Union now. This was before it had opened up. I got a position with him for about 6 or 7 months before it became obvious that I didn't belong there and was a terrible fit and I needed to get out. By then I had already been applying with University Housing and Dining Services and got an interview, a live interview, and was better prepared and was offered the 00:56:00position after that. Three days after I quit Joe's I started at UHDS and that's how I inserted myself into UHDS. At the time we had a different general manager who was very generous, let me just ease in easy, because it's a huge job. Right now my energies are mostly focused on hiring students because we have 300 some odd students who keep everything working. We do have classified professional staff in place as well, seven of which are my direct reports whose careers and jobs are my responsibility for the most part, job performance et cetera. It's a big job, Ezmie. Yeah. But that's how I got here.

ET: Do you notice a difference between managing staff and managing students?

LD: Good question. Well of course. The staff of course are much more concerned about the end product, I think. The students are, I would say the biggest difference that I've experienced, there's a difference between a student who is focused on a culinary degree in a culinary program. That student is much different than a chemistry major or a civil engineer or anybody else who is doing food service to help their focus or for extra spending money. There's just not the focus in the students that are not that interested in culinary. That's always a challenge, where the staff, of course, this is their passion, this is their life, they've been doing it forever. For the staff it's more about just directing and keeping them happy, letting them feel as though they are contributing and whatever they have to offer is of value and yes keep thinking of solutions because God knows we've got enough problems. Let's keep you 00:58:00thinking about that, where the students are more concerned about, you know, I get a break, can I have a break? Where's my-all my shoes I don't need them. There's just not that kind of dedication to the task with the students.

ET: Can you go through your daily routine?

LD: Ah, would there be a daily routine. That would be nice. Well the daily routine is just gearing up for whatever is going to come at you next, because you never know. There is no routine. You might do something one day and then the next day it's completely different. You never know. You never know. That's the routine, is trying to keep yourself energized and focused enough to be able to bob and weave and move from task to task and do what needs to be done. I try to settle into a routine because that certainly is something that helps me, but I often can't even get my coat off before I've got people coming at me asking me to fix this and do this and do that. When I do have an opportunity, I try and 00:59:00get my desk set up, get my coat hung up and check my emails. I'm actually checking trades in the trade board on our when to work scheduling system before I do that. Now I've learned to include that in my early routine, because students often assume that we're at our computers every minute waiting for them to talk to us, when that of course is not the case. My routine now is to go in and look at the schedule board, see where we're in trouble, then go to the trade board, see how we can fix that, if anything on the trade board can maybe help out with what's going to happen that day. Then I go out and do what I call my lap. I just go out and try and touch base with all the leads in every concept to see what challenges they're really facing that day. Is it staff? Is it equipment? Is it supplies? What is it? Then I just kind of in my head prioritize which is the most important and make that happen.

Right around then it's probably time to do some more student interviews. I try 01:00:00to schedule them as much as I can throughout my day. Then, when we're short, and we always are, I will fill in whatever hole needs to be filled in. That can be anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours depending on who hasn't shown up for their dish shift, and it's usually dish room. I'll be in the dish room for an hour or so, and then I come back to the desk and try and catch up on some emails and my evaluations and all the rest of it. I haven't really verbalized that routine in a while, so thank you for that.

ET: Would you consider the job high stress?

LD: Yes.

ET: A lot of mental juggling all the time?

LD: Yes. And I find, Ezmie, this is something that I'm really grappling with. Things change here often and fast. We've got a lot of people thinking up lots of great ideas. My challenge, my real challenge, has been the technology involved 01:01:00with that. Just when I get a hold of something, I feel like I'm really solid on this. I know how to send a student employee request form. Oh, they're going to change that whole process now. Now we're going to do a DocuSign, now everything is going to be-okay. Now I have to, and now it's just moving from one computer technology-whatever that is, application to another. I just, I find it could be my age. It could be whatever, but I just don't have that mental acuity like I used to in order to be able to you know. What happens is I'll be at my computer and all of a sudden a block will come up saying oh you have to restart your computer. Do you want to do it now or do you want to do it later? It's like, what? What is this? It's like, or we have to change your password every 90 days. It's like, what? That, and your generation, the generation that's like yeah, just do this. But it's like for me, that's like but why? Why do I have to do 01:02:00this again? This is going to take me 20 minutes to learn how to change my effing password? It's like why, you know? Then the frustration and it's only because-I've heard that it's not that you don't know it. It's just that you don't know it yet so be patient with yourself. You can get this. But things move so fast that there's not always time for yet. You have to know it now. That's where I really lean on Chris, Chris Anderson, my officemate. I'll say Chris, what is this? He goes, I don't know. Do this, boink. It's like ugh. And he fixes it. It's how did you know how to do that? He goes oh, I've been doing this for-it's like, okay. That's how you know. I'm intimidated by these things. Most people are not. Most people are just into them and it's like some big game to them to figure out what this computer is, trying to hang you up on. But I have to get through that.

ET: So, you rely on your coworkers?

LD: I so do, Ezmie. I so do. And Bruce and I, who's an older employee, he's more 01:03:00of my generation, he and I often commiserate together about how fast things move and did you see that new email about how we're going to be doing this digital now. It's like what does that mean? I don't know. I don't know either, okay? We'll figure it out. There's always that, where Chris is the go-to. He just has such a great attitude about it. He's just oh, let's figure this out. Where I'm just like oh my-so it's all about approach.

ET: So, there's a good sense of community between you guys?

LD: Definitely. Definitely. Yeah, when you work that hard together and you rely on each other that much, yeah, relationships build. Yeah.

ET: Had you experienced that at the other workplaces you've been at?

LD: I would say that's probably true in food service in general, because you've got to be crazy to do this kind of work. We all have that sort of understanding about how weird we are for doing this kind of work. I know that sounds awful, but it's true. There is a comradery that certainly happens no matter where you 01:04:00are, but I think more so at OSU I would say because the demands are so strong and just so much that you just can't do it alone. That's what you're told when you get in here during the orientations as new employees, is that you always have resources. Here they are. Here's a list of resources. They give you pages and pages of things to read and know, that you're never alone and you can always share whatever problems you have. There are programs offered for employees about life work balance that I've never had the time to take advantage of. I always just delete that. Oh, Tuesday, can't happen. Delete that. A lot of those resources I'm not able at this point to take advantage of, but they're there. And knowing they're there is important. Whenever we really do, and it's happened, I'll be honest, where I just really have melted down, I can go to any 01:05:00one of my coworkers, any of my co-managers.

They'll support me and just go Laurie, we know. We know and here's why and this happened to me and I did it this way, but I always feel like I can go to them and spill, as my sister says.

ET: Have you noticed any other differences between the campuses that you've worked at and OSU?

LD: I would say OSU more than other jobs I've held on other campuses are so, so concerned about the students. It is the students. Of course it is. It has to be. But often other departments I've worked for are just so concerned about keeping themselves solvent and viable, that that's where their concern is. But at OSU it is about student success. It is about students finding what it is that they can do and that they want to do and how we at this level of management can make that 01:06:00happen for them and happen better and more effectively. It is about-it is a very student centric work environment, which is great. Which is why we're all here. Which is always good to know.

ET: Is it interesting for you, like, you never wanted kids but so much of your workday involves working with not quite kids but young adults.

LD: I can say something really awful right now, Ezmie, but I won't. It often confirms my instinct, but at the same time, now, I love being around that age, because that age is just, it was a good time for me in my life. Chris and I used to say during our board meetings that we're like vampires, we suck the energy out of the younger folks to help sustain us, but I don't know if that's really 01:07:00true now for me, maybe because I'm more privy or I'm just seeing more of the angst of the age. It is such a difficult age. It was not the best time of my life. It was probably the most productive in terms of self-knowledge. I learned so much about myself during that period, and that's what's happening to students we're in contact with. That's fun to be a part of. It's also like I don't know, it's just such a mixed bag. I would say that I love being around students just because it's just such a critical point in their lives. I tell them this is could be the best time of your life, not always, but it could be, so enjoy it and try and relax and have a good time with it, because you don't get it back. I hope that answers your-I'm trying not to suck the life out of my students anymore. I try to bring a little life into their life.

ET: Alright. Are you part of the union?

LD: No. No. Not at this level. Our classified are, but managers are not.

ET: Okay. Do you feel like there's enough support around you guys, though?

LD: Absolutely. Oh yeah. We've got some pretty clear direction from the top as to what we're trying to do. We're trying to engage our students, enrich their lives so that they will go out and thrive in whatever field they decide to do. That's really drilled into all of us. Everything we do is driven by that. If you are not engaging your students, whether it's a disciplinary engagement or a complimentary engagement, it's all about reaching out to them. Again, that's something that is unique, frankly, to my experience.

ET: So, you're on your third year of working here, correct?

LD: I am.

ET: Are you feeling done with the experience or are you still-?

LD: Not... interesting you would put it that way.

ET: Sorry.

LD: No it's still exciting, Ezmie. It's still challenging. It changes day to day, just like operations change day to day, and students change. Every encounter, every engagement is different. That keeps you interested in the process, I guess. I'm tired. I'm exhausted, I'll tell you that. It's important and as I attend leadership development opportunities and share these thoughts with other professionals, there's a lot of that. Self-care is huge.

Something that didn't even have a name 10 years ago, as far as I know, but now in every group, every group of restaurant folks or food service folks, when we 01:10:00get talking about our day to day there is always comments about how I need to take better care of myself. I need to get more sleep. I need to lose weight. I need to gain weight. I need to work out more, because it's so external. Everything you do is so out, it's hard to realize that you have to walk the talk you're telling everybody else. You have to take care of yourself. It is, it's exhausting, Ezmie. It is. But that's the work. I'm sure every job is as exhausting. I mean, this is a common complaint. You do have to be aware of that work-life balance and take advantage of whatever self-care opportunities you can.

ET: Do you see, what is your future that you see for your career at this point?

LD: I see my career winding down, to tell you the truth. I don't know how much more I actually have to offer given that everything seems to be going so digital and so computer. I really don't know. I have other interests that I've been putting on hold for a while that I would like to get back to. As far as a career, I really want to work. I mean I still want to work, but frankly I just don't know that in terms of moving the next step would be GM. I have no interest in that. I just don't see, I see me staying, I don't see that kind of progression happening anymore. I'm where I thought I would be at this point, but I don't want to stop working at the same-it's a conundrum. I want to work. I want to stay involved. I want to, I still want to connect with people, but I 01:12:00just don't want to work this hard. Which is hard for me to say, because I've worked hard since I was 15, 16, but I don't think I have to be defined by how exhausted I am at the end of day anymore. Now I want to have energy to do other things.

ET: Speaking of other things, do you want to talk about others. Do you want to talk about your other interests?

LD: Yeah, so I've got myself involved in a show, another show. First one in about two years, three years. I did one in Maui, but that seems like a long time ago. A way of sort of life-balancing. I thought I'm going home exhausted every night. All I'm doing is reworking my day, reflecting on my day, catching up on work I didn't get to. That kind of thing. Now I'm going back to work in a headspace that is not healthy. I need to break it up a little bit. I thought, well, I'll audition for this show just for the heck of it and I got cast. It's 01:13:00like oh, now I've got to do the show. I'm doing a show, which is great. It's been a lot of fun and it has helped clarify some areas of my life that I've been neglecting, so that's been a lot of fun. It's good to get back into it. I'm still very sort of like, oh, there's a little drama there. People can be so weird, but I think I can find my way through a little better now. I'm more mature. I have a better sense of self. I can find my way through it better, and it's just been so, so much fun.

ET: What is it I like to revisit a passion that you've had since childhood?

LD: Good question. What is it like? Gosh. You know, it's so funny I was just talking to my husband this morning about how it's so strange to find myself doing this again, but it's you know I'm confident I'm doing this for a reason. I'm confident I'm doing the right thing at the right time. How do I know that? 01:14:00Because I'm having so much fun. I'm challenged, but I'm not overwhelmed. For the first time, I'm not feeling as though I'm not able to keep up. I'm feeling like I'm actually, this could work. This could work. That's very rewarding and I made some great friends. I forgot about how the friends. You really do meet some great people.

ET: That's your form of self-care right now?

LD: Evidently. Yeah, a good way to put it, Ezmie, I guess it is. Yeah. It is my self-care.

ET: Moving on, you mentioned earlier that you have a lot of political worries right now. Do you want to talk about that a little bit?

LD: Yes, I do. Which is another reason why I think I need to start involving myself more in what's happening politically these days.

I think we're I this mess because a lot of people like myself were more 01:15:00concerned about their own personal careers or families or whatever and didn't get themselves involved. Democracy is something that every, it's a government by the people. We have to take an interest in it. We have to involved ourselves. Whether we understand it or like it or whatever. We don't get to choose. This is the way our government works. I am just so concerned about the direction we're headed and yeah, I could get awful about this, but I'm trying to contain it a little bit. I want to make myself more available to build the country that I think we are and that we should be. I want to be more a part of getting our country back on track and spending more time educating people about just reminding them what America is or what my view of America is, what I was told America was when I was in school.

ET: What kind of actions do you plan on taking?

LD: Well, I intend to get more involved with some of the resistance. Certainly, whether that means organizing marches, if that means getting the vote out, if that means picketing for whatever. There's just so much to do. I don't know. I have to insert myself into some organization and let them tell me what I can do to help. I'm not afraid to talk to people. I'm not afraid to put it out there. I think I could probably be a pretty good canvasser. I know a lot of that is volunteer work, so I need to get myself in a place where I can afford that, but I need to surround myself with people that are like-minded because often if you just read the news you just think everybody thinks like Trump, and I don't believe that. I just don't believe that. I think that America is bigger and better than that. I need to get myself around people that are like-minded and as 01:17:00focused and concerned as I am about what's going to happen, or what is happening. It's already happening and what really concerns me is that a year after this clown got in our systems are not holding. For about the first six months I was thinking, no we've got checks and balances. We've got things in place that is going to not make this happen and those are beginning, those lines are moving. That's becoming very fluid. Now all of a sudden it's okay to-it's just frightening. Yeah, it's pretty motivating when I see what's going on. Now I guess we're going to have a military parade, because we need one of those. Yeah. It's like nobody saw Raiders of the Lost Ark? Does that not look like Nazism to-what? I'm just terrified we're headed in that direction and everybody seems 01:18:00to be okay with it. We've forgotten what America is. It's a country of immigrants, that's how we do it here. That's how we roll. We don't keep them out, we bring them in. It's just, yeah, it's exhausting isn't it?

ET: Have you always been politically conscious?

LD: I have. Again, that was a gift from my dad. He made sure we all-in fact, I remember the first time I voted was McGovern. My dad was there with me, walked me into the voting poll when they actually did voting polls with little pins. I was in eighth grade when Robert Kennedy was assassinated, which was huge for our family, as you can imagine. We're all Kennedy junkies, so you know. That was just awful and I think that after that happened, and I was only in eighth grade when that happened, but I knew it was important. I knew it was huge, but I also 01:19:00didn't really think I had any involvement, that I was too small, I was too unimportant to make a difference politically. That all just happened over there with the grown-ups, until you grow up and you realize oh my gosh, I am the grownup that is driving this and I better get myself involved. I would say there was always political discussion at the dinner table. We always talked about that kind of stuff. Yeah, that was part of being alive was knowing what was going on in your country.

ET: Changing subjects a little bit...

LD: Please. I'm not near as articulate as I would have liked to have been.

ET: With the current #MeToo Movement there's a lot of sexual allegations coming out.

With you and your background in food service, food service is known for not 01:20:00being the best in regards to women's rights. Do you want to-?

LD: You know, I never really encountered, I have to say, any problem. I did have a theater arts instructor when I was in junior college that decided he was going to do an at-home experimental theater program, where we were definitely exploited, I would say not to the point of criminal accusation, but he was out of line. He was so out of line, but in terms of food service, no, the other thing was the discrimination between women and men waiters. That was always kind of odd to me. I do remember, though, now that you mention it, when I started waitressing, one of my first waitress jobs I was advised by the other waitresses to wear a wedding band so I wouldn't be approached by customers and people. I 01:21:00thought, that's ridiculous, but they were right. I remember one time, actually, and I was so naive, explaining to a customer-they would totally lead me on-what a zucchini was. I'll let you use your own imagination. I said, oh, it's a small little, and sometimes it gets really big, and oh they thought it was hilarious. That was that, but men felt perfectly comfortable bringing you into a conversation that nowadays would be inappropriate. Did I know it at the time? Probably not. I do now, but at the time I didn't. There was some of that, but as far as actual job discrimination, no. As far as actual harassment, I would say really not even. Not even. There was always talk about uniform and how short or how long you should wear it, depending on the amount of tips you wanted to make that night. There was always that. That was just talk. That was just bathroom 01:22:00talk. I can't remember anything specifically to tell you the truth. In fact, I sit at a table now with three men. Sometimes I mean at OSU, I mean I'm the only woman manager in our dining center. We have other women managers in other dining centers, but I think that may have been a part of my advantage coming into the job is that they didn't have someone that a female student could feel comfortable approaching for a tampon, you know what I mean? It was just something that, Laurie can you take care of that? Sometimes I get tasked with those things that are so gender specific. No, the team that I work with are just so professional. Yeah. I'm not surprised to hear about all of this, though. If you ask me to tell you the truth. In fact, I'm just so relieved that it's all coming out, especially in the performance industry. This has colored my view of 01:23:00awards shows completely. All of these women, now many of them have-? The award show just make it sound like it's one big, happy family and then you realize no these women did not get there because of that, they got there-yeah, it's really colored the whole conversation. That's for sure. Made it better for folks like you, which is great. Maybe we'll finally get a woman president.

ET: Did you ever face any push-back as a woman in a manager position?

LD: You mean whether or not I should have the position to begin with, or-?

ET: Just from like-

LD: Was I qualified because I was a woman for the position?

ET: Just from staff under you, did you ever sense that they were, had some reservations about you?

LD: I would say Hilo. I would say Hilo, Hawaii. I worked with a chef and a kitchen crew that were local Hawaiians and they didn't appreciate what and how 01:24:00to do something by a white, Haole, middle-aged woman. That was really the only time I really, I mean it was palpable. It was obvious that they had a real problem taking direction from me because I was Haole, I was a woman, and I was middle aged and they did not appreciate that direction at all, which is why I was there for 8 months instead of longer.

ET: Did that leave like a lasting effect on you or did you just brush it off?

LD: No. It was, I remember, oh my God, what a throwback. The big island is about 5, 10 years behind the rest of the country. It likes being that way.

That's the way they like it. It shouldn't have been a surprise to me, but I was. 01:25:00I was very surprised. It was just like, what? Is that the problem. It's like, oh that is the problem. This runs deep. This runs really deep and there's not much I can do about this, even though my boss, the general manager, was a woman. But she was a local. She was a Hawaiian local woman that had been there for years and years. No, the guys didn't respond well to me at all. Some of the women didn't either, frankly.

ET: Just jumping a little bit, do you want to talk through your personal addiction problems a little bit and just-

LD: Well, I let's see, I became a real, well, no actually it wasn't a problem yet but I had hooked up with my husband, who is now my husband, and he decided to quit drinking. Once he decided to quit drinking I thought geez, what are we going to do now. It was pretty obvious that I had to if we were going to stay 01:26:00together. That's where I came to that realization that look, you both have to be on the same page about addiction and about drinking. I'm not going to drink around Paki if he's not drinking, so I guess I'm not drinking because I want to be around him as much as I can. That was really a no-brainer. It really wasn't that hard for me, Ezmie, to tell you the truth. I think I was lucky that I caught it when I did. I was getting bored with it anyway and I knew where it was going to lead me because I had done some reading, so it was really a no-brainer. It was like, nah-what was hard for me was to quit cigarettes, because of course I was smoking and drinking at the same time. Cigarettes, oh that was tough. That was really tough, more so than the alcohol. I never got into coc[aine], thank God, even though there was so much of that going around in Santa Barbara in the '80s, but that never interested me. I had coffee. Coffee worked just fine for me. Pills, never got into pills. It could have been a lot worse. It could have been a lot, lot worse. But cigarettes was my big thing. I was just-and even 01:27:00today, even though, gosh I figured this out before I came in. I had smoked for 18 years, I think, before I quit, and I drank for almost the same amount, 17, 18 years before I quit, but even now today when I'm faced with something that is really difficult I just hear myself say you quit smoking, you can do anything. People say, oh, the weight gain. I said, if I can quit smoking, I can lose weight. It was tough. I hooked up with a bunch of waitress friends about 5 years after I stopped, because you all go smoke in the back in between tables or breaks or whatever. We were all out in the backyard smoking and I got so sick. I was like why do I think I want to do this anymore? Ugh. That was it. That was the last time. It has no appeal to me at all.

ET: You did it all personally, not through any organization?

LD: There were any organizations out there at the time. This is, yeah, it's kind of. Well, that's not true. By the time we had decided to stop drinking AA had pretty much put their stamp on recovery. I think Betty Ford was actually beginning to talk about it, so people were aware of it, but no I didn't, we didn't go through AA. That was just kind of, you know, I didn't want to drink that Kool-Aid, I didn't want to get in that mindset. It was very successful for my brother. He actually is a sponsor now. He's involved with AA. It just didn't appeal to my husband and I. We though, no, we can do this without that help. We managed to. At the time, there weren't patches or e-cigarettes or whatever they are. You had to quit cold turkey, that was the only way to do. So, that's how we did it. Yep.

ET: That covers most of my topics. Is there anything else you want to-?

LD: Well, I'm just, thank you Ezmie for this opportunity. I mean, gosh, I was thinking about this this morning, I kind of wanted to-it's just nobody really is that interested in the details of my life at this point, so this was very flattering and yeah, I hope you got what you wanted.

ET: Yeah.

LD: I'm sure I could have been a little more articulate when I was talking about the political end of things, but I find myself even now holding back because I was raised to respect how other people think, and that's something I got to get over. We've got to get over that politeness, because it's going to take that. That's what the democrats are doing wrong. Let's just call a spade a spade and impeach this idiot. That's where I'm going with that. He's such an embarrassment. But thank you for letting me try and tell you about my life and how it all fits together.

ET: Thank you for sharing.

LD: You're welcome. Is that it?

ET: Yeah.

LD: Are we done? Thank you!