Richard Hunter Oral History Interview, November 11, 2019

RUTH KORNBERG: Interview with Richard Hunter on November 11, 2019. Well, we've already been chatting for a while, getting to know a little bit about you, but let us start all over, like we said. So, let's start with where you were born and kind of bring us up to, then, how you came to Oregon.

RICHARD HUNTER: Well, I was born in Portland July 18, 1953. My parents were Archie and Bernice Hunter. At that time they were living at 1801 North Vancouver Avenue. This was before the freeway, I-5, was built. It's interesting because it was in a house that I thought was an apartment. I thought somebody lived 00:01:00upstairs. I'm not sure. I think it was just a house. But, it had one bedroom. Me, I think it was about 5 brothers that slept in that one bedroom.

RK: All on one big bed.

RH: All on one big bed. Then, my sisters, they slept in the living room, all in one bed that they put out every night. Then, we just had this one little old stove that everybody would stand around in the morning to get warm. There was this little nook area that my parents used for a bedroom. It was tight quarters, but it was my humble beginnings. Until they decided to build the Memorial 00:02:00Coliseum and the I-5 freeway. Everybody who lived in the area lost their homes and had to relocate. My parents aren't originally from Portland, Oregon. My father was born in Nacogdoches, Texas. He was raised in Kirbyville, but he was born in Nacogdoches, Texas, in 1915. My mother lived, she was born in Kountze, Texas, like around by 1921. But my father, he, they lived on a farm and they ended up, he left home when he was 14 years old because the way he felt about 00:03:00his dad.

Then he moved away and then when his father passed away, he came back home to help his mother. Then he went to Baytown College with his younger brother, Benjamin Hunter, enrolled in school there in Baytown. Then they ended up answering the call to Kaiser during the war. Kaiser wanted ship builders. They had just both graduated from Baytown and they came out here together to Portland to work in the shipyards. In Kirbyville he had built his first home, because he was a carpenter, and he had built his home that he and my four oldest siblings was living in before they came to Portland. But he came out here by himself. He 00:04:00brought his younger brother with him, but his younger brother got drafted in the Army. He ended up not living in Portland any longer, but he came out here, got established. When he got a home, he sent for my mom and my four oldest siblings, brought them out here. They lived in Vanport for a while, and two weeks before the flood came they moved to Guys Lake. Then after the flood, they ended up at 1801 North Vancouver Avenue where I was born.

RK: At the time of the flood, did they actually lose everything?

RH: Yeah. Everybody did.

RK: All of their material goods?

RH: Uh-huh.

RK: How did they gather up their wits to start again and rebuild their own possessions and stuff?

RH: Well, see it was easy for my father because my father was a carpenter and a 00:05:00mason. My father, he built his first home. He also, despite the efforts of Portland Development Commission to keep Blacks from buying property. My father ended up owning property. He would buy a house, he will fix it up and rent it out. They were business, they were entrepreneurs. They've had a number of businesses that kept them afloat. My father, he worked for the railroad, because a lot of times, you're not going to be recognized as a carpenter in a good old boy's school, and so he was a, what do you call, the red caps? For the railroads? Those were the only jobs that they would allow Blacks to have. But he 00:06:00worked 2 or 3 jobs a day. He did his skills and helped do homes and stuff like that, but he had his medical and stuff like that coming from the railroad with family.

RK: Given that Blacks weren't really allowed to buy property, how did he maneuver it so he could?

RH: Well, that, that I don't really know because I knew that my father knew how to save money, and he knew how to make money. He also knew how to make friends. Because my father was also, when he came out here, a Mason, a Fraternal Order Mason. He already had 33 degrees in the Masonic Lodge. He came out--I think 00:07:00being in that fraternity gives you some kind of connections and clout. But he, Sovereign Grant Commander S.C. Marshall of the jurisdictions in Texas gave him credentialing to come out here and to establish Oregon Lodge. He helped set up the Evergreen 2001 and the St. Joseph Lodge.

RK: Were those lodges racially mixed?

RH: No. They were African American lodges. There was a little trouble because the Prince Hall Lodge kind of rejected Scottish Rights. You know, the Scottish Right didn't want to recognize the Prince Hall. Prince Hall believed they had more of a right to be a part of that because of those fraternal organizations 00:08:00originated in Egypt, and I think Prince Hall was of the order of Misraim, and Misraim was the father of the Egyptians and blah, blah, blah. Anyway, the Scottish Right kind of looked at them as a clandestine lodge. They don't recognize them. But, Prince Hall felt that way of the Scottish Right, you know? They didn't accept people like my father when my father first came out here because he was Scottish Right. But my father got permission from the Scottish Right to establish a Scottish Right Masonic Lodge here in Portland, mostly African Americans. I imagine he was with the first, just about 1944.

So, he came out here in 1945, and I owe a lot of knowledge that I have gained to a man named Raymond Burrell, who was a historian, African American historian and a member of Vancouver Avenue First Baptist Church who recently passed away because of cancer. He's given me a lot of information. He interviewed me about my father and he did research and found out a lot of things that I didn't know. But when my father started that lodge, I believe that because of that fraternal order, that might answer a lot of questions about how he was able to get property and stuff like that. There's a lot of people, a lot of White real estate men, who lost their jobs because of selling property to Black people. 00:10:00But, my father managed. He was a landlord. He owned homes. He didn't have to pay nobody else to come fix the house. He'd fix it up himself.

RK: Let's get onto, then, finally you were born.

RH: Yeah.

RK: Then what?

RH: I remember this man by, this fella by the name of Teddy Nickels, because I remember I was hanging on the banister. I was playing and then slide down to the ground. Once I was down on the ground one time, I think Teddy, he was a pretty big fella, he decided to sit on the banister and it broke and he fell on top of me [laughs]. I had a bloody nose and everything, but it wasn't that bad. I think 00:11:00most people thought it was funny more than anything else, but I had an excellent childhood growing up in there for my first few years. But, as soon as they decided to build a freeway, I think I might have been about 3 or 4 years old when we had to move, and then we ended up getting a place. I don't know if you're familiar with Unthank Park? In Portland? Okay, well Unthank Park is also the property where Self-Enhancement Incorporated, SEI, sits on that property. Before there was SEI or Unthank Park, there were all homes. We lived at 3955 North Haight Street. That's where I continued to grow up at.

RK: What was that house like?

RH: It was interesting because I think it had 3 bedrooms, had 3 bedrooms. That was interesting. It was a tiny house, but I thought it was big. It had 3 bedrooms, and then my two older brothers, I think they lived upstairs in the attic. That's where they slept. My sisters all had a bedroom to themselves. My mother and father had their bedroom, and all the boys, like again, put me, Michael, Donald, Charles, I think Carl did sleep, I think Lee was the only one had his own bedroom up in the attic. We all slept there and we was in one bedroom for a minute and then we got this bunk bed. Then I remember, as I grew up older, I got my own bunk. I slept on the bottom. It was interesting. I went 00:13:00to Boise-Eliot. It was just Boise Elementary School at the time I went. I think it was from 1958. Yeah, I was born in '53, so I think I started in first grade at Boise. I went there all 8 years.

RK: When you were saying it was interesting, tell us some stories about what made it interesting.

RH: What made Haight Street interesting?

RK: What made your life interesting then?

RH: Well, the fact is I was a preacher's kid. My father was also an ordained minister and pastor, so he had pastored several churches, even before I was born. I grew up as a pastor's kid, and we had a huge family.

RK: How many were you altogether?

RH: Actually, by the time we moved was living there, I think there was a total of 10 siblings. We weren't all living there.

RK: All the same mother, same father?

RH: Yeah. Of course, my father had a son by his first marriage in Texas. When my oldest stepbrother came out of the service he came to live with us. A matter of fact, he came to live with us when we was on Vancouver, 1801. Then he followed us on over there. But then he had to eventually move to California and started a family. Life was different, because we had great use of our imagination growing up. Everybody in my community had anywhere from 6 to 11 kids. So, there was all big families. Everybody looked out for everyone. You were never alone. There was 00:15:00always a lot to do, a lot of people to play. Every parent knew each other, and every parent had a call. When it was time for you to come in the home, your mother had a special call for you.

RK: What was your mother's call?

RH: Oh, she would say--All Richard. Or All Charles. The friends would say, man, your momma's calling you better go home. Some mother's had a little square bell they'd ring. Some would have a little yoo-hoo call or something like that, but everybody knew each person's mother's special call. They would nudge you and say, man you need to go home, man. Because your mother's calling. You're going to get in trouble. You don't see that today. People ignore their parents. They got cell phones now and won't come home when they're supposed to. Then, you 00:16:00couldn't do anything in the community without being watched and helped raised by other parents. If I was getting on the bus, if I was going to the store--I admit that, you know, I don't know why I would do it, but I admit trying to take something out the store and put it in my pocket, and then the mailman that lived down the street from us that delivers our mail, he was in the store. He said, little Hunter, now you know better than that. You know your parents raised you better than that, blah, blah, blah. I remember, even when I went to high school, even as maybe a sophomore, I would skip class, and we would be on the corner of the building with my friends smoking a cigarette. Then, I'd get home and my 00:17:00momma said, Richard. I said, what? She said, come on in the kitchen for a minute. I want to talk to you. I go in the kitchen and she'd say. So, tell me something, when did you start smoking cigarettes? Now, how did my momma know I was outside smoking a cigarette? Because all the parents worked together in the community. So, one parent saw you doing something, your mom would find out about it. If they had to whup you for something, you'd get another whupping for having to get a whupping for doing something you weren't supposed to be doing.

Even when I was in elementary school, I didn't want to, my daddy bought me, we weren't, I guess you'd say we might have been poor in a way. That's a big family to take care of, and so we had to get a lot of hand-me-down shoes and stuff. I had some sandals my father gave me. I said, I'm not going to school with no 00:18:00sandals on. Kids would laugh at me and make me cry. So, he said, you're going to school with them sandals. So, I go to school, but I don't go to school. I ended up playing hooky for the whole day. I played in the little parking lot of the grocery store and everything, and just about the time when it was time to go to school to get out, I decided to go home. My mother said, well, how was school today? [Laughs] Oh, I said, it was alright. It was a little boring. She'd say, yeah, okay. That's interesting, because somebody said they saw you sitting on the curb in the parking lot of More For Less and that you were just sitting there just playing with rocks and stuff. But now, you know, parents will get 00:19:00angry if you knew anything about their children. They don't respect that no more. It was a whole different era that you--

RK: What you're saying is, if it's a parent of a different child that's monitoring a child that's not their own, the parent of that child would get angry.

RH: Right. Today.

RK: Today.

RH: Today, yeah. Mm-hmm. You try to tell somebody something bad that your child had done, and they'll tell you it ain't none of your business. They might want to pick a fight with you. I grew up in a real well-respected environment and community, a sense of community. Everybody was together. We learned so much. It was told that our communities were full of drugs and prostitution and crime, but 00:20:00that wasn't the way I grew up. I found out later that it was worse in southeast Portland than it was in the area--because they're trying to destroy the Black community. The way to destroy it is to label it, you know? Anywhere Black people go, the neighborhood goes down. The code name for Black people was blight. They got a lot of urban renewal dollars for calling our neighborhood blight. Sometimes we couldn't do things in our neighborhoods, even with my own father trying to get money. They not only redlined us so you couldn't buy property, but they also kept the banks from loaning you money. How can you repair your home and fix things up if you won't give us any money to do it? It's not that we 00:21:00can't pay you back. It's not that we're not honest. We're Black. We got to do everything we can from keeping Black people from building an economic base and improving themselves. We're trying to get rid of them, not keep them. But, my father, he managed.

There was a lot of... in my neighborhood, we had a lot of pastors, government workers, school teachers--when you have that kind of community, where's all the drugs and the prostitution that they're talking about? Everybody, I don't care who you are, even if you went out partying on Saturday night, everybody went to church on Sunday morning. The churches were full. People respected preachers. 00:22:00People respected people who call themselves Christians or saved, whatever the case may be. There was respect for that, even though they did whatever they wanted to do with their own lifestyles. I imagine that some people's lifestyle is pretty shaky, you know, hypocritical, and it may be the reason why people don't have respect for churches or religious people today, because they have such raggedy lifestyles themselves.

RK: You were the son of a pastor. Tell us a little bit about what that was like and how it influenced you.

RH: Well, we--you get tired of going to church, because you went to church all the time. You had to go to Sunday school. You had to go to morning worship. You had to come back home, and you might have to go back to a youth meeting. There was always some church in the community as having a program or some sort of from 00:23:00either a pastor's anniversary, church anniversary, mission department, women's group--everybody had something every Sunday all the time. You was always going, going, going, going. You'd get so mad as a kid, because you're watching this TV show, somebody: come on, let's go. It's time to go. I don't want to go to church. I want to watch Outer Limits, or I want to watch Star Trek or something like that. But, no, you got to go to church. As you grew up in the church, I grew up being actively involved, even as a junior usher, as a youth leader, singing in all the choirs, from the youth choir to adult. I ended up directing the choir, playing the piano for the choir, and I guess the influence comes from the fact that people was always telling me you're going to be a preacher just like your daddy. I said, you must be crazy. No, no. An old woman told me that 00:24:00all the time. She said, you're going to be a preacher just like your father. I said, no. I think you got me mixed up with some of my other brothers or something. So, I did become a preacher.

RK: You were saying a youth leader. What were some of the activities that you did as a youth leader?

RH: As a youth leader, mostly catechism. We had competition for learning Bible verses and memorizing books of the Bible and certain types of scriptures that might be salvation scriptures, promise scriptures, things of that nature. Then, you know, just organizing and planning different kinds of activities for the young people or whatever it'd be.

RK: What kind of activities?

RH: Mostly fun activities, like picnics and parties and stuff like that. This was outside of the regular Bible study and meetings that we would have.

RK: Can you give us any stories about some of those activities, something specific that you organized and how it worked and what happened and so on?

RH: Well, I know we used to play a game sometimes to teach people that sometimes the way gossip can be detrimental, because sometimes when it's first told it doesn't always come out the same way when it's being told over and over and over again. We'd have everybody line up in a line. The first person would tell a person behind them something. They were supposed to turn, in turn, turn and tell the person behind them what they heard. By the time it gets to the back of the 00:26:00line, that person is told something totally different from what the first person said. That was always a fun game that teaches us not always to listen to gossip, that if you wanted to know something go to the first person and ask them.

RK: What were some other games or activities?

RH: Just the Bible verses memorization and stuff. I think we gave a lot of music to the kids, because music was a big thing in our church and we had so much talent. But I think the only reason why I think I was really excited about being in the youth department because I think the young lady that I was working with, I think we kind of liked each other. So, we was very committed to the youth 00:27:00program because we would see each other all the time. We've never, nothing ever became of that, but I think that's one of the highlights of working with the youth department.

RK: So, that kind of the source of your first girlfriends?

RH: Well, you might say that. I guess you could say that. We are great friends today. We all have been married and have lots of kids and grandchildren, but we're still good friends even to this day.

RK: What was your schooling like?

RH: You know, one thing I didn't say about myself is I've always spent a lot of time to myself. My mother has always said I was like that, that I'm always playing by myself. I was kind of like stand-offish a lot and watching other 00:28:00people. People look at me today, you would never believe I was an introvert. I tell people today that I'm still an introvert. I'm an introvert that's forced to be an extrovert. I'd rather not be involved with a lot of people, but how can you get away from a big family? You have all these brothers and sisters. I benefited from that because I was well-protected. My family was well-known. People knew my older brothers and siblings. Nobody would never mess with me because I was Charles's brother. I was Lee or Carl's brother. Nobody messed with them. I lived in the shadow of a lot of my older siblings. I lived, my brother 00:29:00Charles, I still live in his shadow. People see me sometimes, and they'll say Charles. I'll say, no. No. that's my brother. Charles is your brother? Blah, blah, blah. A lot of people, I talk to them today and we'll be in conversation and they may not be that excited about me when they're talking to me until they find out I'm Charles's brother. Oh, you're Charles's brother? Blah, blah, blah. Then the conversation gets more exciting and everything. I'm like, oh, I'm special now, because I'm Charles's brother.

RK: How did that make you feel?

RH: It was never a bad thing, because there was great benefit from that. All through grade school he was the man that was in charge of our bedroom. He always had these grand ideas about what was going to go here, what was going to go there, as we were growing up. We would play church sometimes. He was always the 00:30:00preacher. Even after elementary school into high school, I followed him. He was a senior when I was a freshman. Everybody, that's little Hunter, Charles Hunter's brother. I did that into college, because he was at the college I went to in Southern Oregon University. People find out I was Charles's brother. I got all kinds of perks. I enjoyed it, because being Charles Hunter's brother, that was the bomb diggity. You had a lot of clout as Charles Hunter's brother.

RK: In school, then, tell us about what the school itself was like.

RH: It was a predominantly Black school. Everybody that went to the school, we 00:31:00all lived in the same community. The learning was great and everything. I think I experienced how some teachers don't always understand their students. Sometimes you can think that maybe you're not as smart as you should be. You're not excelling here. You're not excelling there, and maybe you're getting Cs and Ds and a few Ss or Us, for Satisfactory or Unsatisfactory. Then, sixth grade I get this male teacher who's Hispanic, Mr. Bonelia. I got straight Es that year. 00:32:00There was something about Mr. Bonelia that connected to me. He made me excel. He understood me. I was able to do great things under his tutelage. The other teachers didn't have what Mr. Bonelia had. That's what's lost in teaching sometimes. There's a disconnect, the lack of the ability to bring the best out of a student. I think that if more teachers was like Mr. Bonelia, we'd have a lot of successful students.

RK: So, that was elementary school.

RH: That was elementary.

RK: Tell us about junior high.

RH: Well, that's when I first started playing the trumpet. When I got into the fifth grade, they asked who had an interest in music. If you had an interest in 00:33:00music, what kind of instrument you think you might like to try to play? For some reason, I wanted to play the trumpet. I started playing the trumpet. I remember learning how to play and everything. It was easy for me to learn how to read music. The hard part was disciplining your lip. I had a few busted lips from playing the trumpet until you build your lip up nice and strong until you can [makes blowing noise], you know. We had concerts in our elementary school. Our elementary school bands played.

RK: Elementary or junior high?

RH: Elementary. Well, the thing about it there is they didn't have junior high when I was going to school. They just had 1 through 8. Now they have middle schools and junior high, but they didn't have it then. They just had straight K through 8. It was, actually, the sixth, seventh, and eighth grade that I 00:34:00actually was a trumpet player. Now, the way that worked with all of the elementary schools during that time had music programs. Everybody was coming out of elementary schools already knowing how to play an instrument. So, they fed into the high schools. Boise fed into Jefferson High School. I didn't have to go to Jefferson and learn how to play the trumpet. I already knew how to play the trumpet, so I fit right into the band. I played fourth chair my freshman year, third chair my sophomore year, and then I graduated to first chair in my junior and senior year. It was just, that's music. I remember playing as a little boy, playing at Christmas program at church, playing the trumpet.

RK: What kind of music did you play?

RH: Well, we learned various pieces by... you know, I can't even remember. I'm 00:35:00trying to figure out, remember what the genre was of playing, but it wasn't like we was learning how to play soul music or anything like that. We were playing what people all across the country were playing in these elementary school bands. We was getting learning knowledge about Beethoven and a lot of different brass instrument pieces, whatever the case would be. We didn't have orchestra, so we didn't have stringed instruments in elementary, not at our school. It was more like a concert band type thing. When I got to high school, then they had all the stringed instruments, because I played in the orchestra, this concert band, the pep band doing basketball games, and the marching band doing football 00:36:00games. We began to learn a lot of different things and exposed to all different kinds of music, but I did have a little soul band that I played in. I played the trumpet. The few guys that were in the band we started our own little group, and we were called The Soul Excursions. I remember playing for a few gigs in the city. I remember we played once for a high school dance.

RK: How did you do in high school academically?

RH: Academically, I did poor. I graduated, and it was okay then, I graduated with 2.0 in high school. I don't think you can graduate with 2.0 now.

RK: Probably not.

RH: [Laughs] I went to Southern Oregon State College. I did not pass my SAT test, but Charles was at SOC, and my father said, I want Richard to go to school 00:37:00down there where you're going. So, because I was Charles Hunter's brother, I didn't need an SAT test [smiles].

RK: Were you interested in academically?

RH: No. I was just going because that's what my father wanted me to do. I was there for a whole year, and then it was a party town. Actually, I lived like a king when I went to school there. I did everything. We did all the partying. It was just really nice. Enjoyed myself. Then, I remember starting the next year they wanted, I had to go get my financial aid packet. They told me I had to go see the registrar's office. The reason they wanted me to go see because they 00:38:00wanted me to go home. They said they don't think I'm serious about school. I wasn't.

RK: You weren't particularly interested in the academics, but I wanted ask you what were your interests as a child, your childhood?

RH: I always loved music. I was kind of sad because I don't think I was getting the help I needed to be a better musician, but I was always there. I was just, that was the think that interested me most, was music, music, music, and the trumpet. I was so in love with all the trumpet players. They were so fascinating to me: Dizzy Gillespie, Hugh Masekela, and all those guys, just like I want to play the trumpet like that. Then I started learning about all the different kinds of trumpet. I found later that even playing the trumpet, sometimes I 00:39:00always thought the trumpet was hard to play. But if you had enough money and you bought the right brand, playing the trumpet would have been easy, smooth, because you're playing on them cheap instruments and you have to work harder to play. But, when you buy a Selmer or something like that, you got a quality trumpet. If you keep it clean and well-oiled, that thing just plays so smooth. I said, how come I didn't get one of these growing up? Like I said, I feel sorry for people that have to grow up playing instruments and have to play on cheap instruments. That is not the best way to learn how to play anything. But money 00:40:00gets you quality. I do remember that because music's such a good to me, I like it so much, I think because I'm in tune to my feelings. People who are musicians can feel things better than most folks. I remember when John F. Kennedy got shot. I actually cried. I don't know how many people did. I don't know how many Black people did, but as a little boy sat there watching on TV, watched his head almost falling off. When I was a little boy, I used to come home from school and I used to watch a program on TV that John F. Kennedy produced. It was called Profiles In Courage. Have you ever heard of that before?

RK: Mm-hmm.

RH: They would do this piece on famous Americans. It wouldn't just be about White people. Sometimes it was about Black people or Native Americans, but it's called Profiles in Courage. I found my--I said, I love that. I was so passionate about stuff like that. But I was, like I said, I was an introvert and quiet. Everybody would be out playing sometimes; I'll be sitting there on the sidewalk with chalk by myself. I'm that way today. I love being by myself. Today I'm ready to get out of this place so I can have this solitude that I need. I don't want to share things with people. I think that's probably why I feel, maybe I feel better being single [laughs]. Martin Luther King--I grew up because my 00:42:00parents, my father was a pastor, I grew up every Sunday morning after Martin Luther King got killed... and I don't know how many people had the opportunity to do that. I think everybody, you don't really know Martin Luther King unless you know him for what he was. He wasn't a civil rights leader. He was a preacher. He was a pastor. Every Sunday morning I listened to one of Martin Luther King's sermons, because my mother be cooking in the kitchen getting ready for Sunday and she would always play his program. That is something I wish every child could have done, was to hear his sermons every Sunday morning.

RK: Why is that?

RH: I mean, I would go and listen to other people's preaching. I said, you know, I'll come back here and preach like Martin Luther King. Because Martin Luther King was a great preacher. He'd break things down, make you understand it. Then, 00:43:00that's the reason why I feel so passionate about certain scriptures in the Bible, because when I look at White churches and even Black churches and people, you know, I'll say, you know, if they, they say they read the Bible. I'm sure they might have run across Isaiah 51? Or is that? What it is? Or Isaiah 58. Any church that knows the Bible, how can you have Isaiah 58 and still allow slavery or racism or anything like that?

RK: Repeat what Isaiah 58 is.

RH: Isaiah 58, oh I'm getting in trouble now. Okay. The gist of Isaiah 58 is that, you know, it was about the fasting that the Jews were doing. It became 00:44:00like a custom to put on sackcloth and ashes and to be sad and to come before the lord and boom, boom, boom. I guess the lord was kind of getting tired of it, because it's almost like you're not really getting the picture here. It's not about fasting. What is the fasting God would be pleased with? That's what the prophet was saying. Is this not the fast that I have chosen that you undue the heavy burdens? That you set them who are captive free? That you feed the hungry? That you take care of the immigrant? Blah, blah, blah, blah. You know? So, how can any Christian in any Christian church read Isaiah 58 and refuse to set the captive free? Or even President Trump, you know? People make him out to be like 00:45:00God put him there. Even Trump, has he ever read Isaiah 58? But, no. The truth comes out that people who call themselves religious are some of our greatest oppressors. I've been always in tune to that. Maybe that's why I've kept to myself. I look at the world and see things going on. I don't understand why, because it seems like it's a no-brainer. It's easy to do right. Why do people spend so much time and energy doing wrong? I don't know.

RK: You were saying more things about your childhood that you wanted to talk about.

RH: Yeah. I have a great imagination. Maybe that's the musician in me. I don't know. But, they always say that an idle mind is the devil's workshop. Maybe it 00:46:00wasn't good for me to keep to myself a lot, because then you know I, there's nobody help check my mind. I try to be popular. I try to do what everybody else do. Everybody's smoking weed; I'll smoke weed. Boom, boom, boom. Because everybody had it. It seemed like everybody was doing it. I know everybody wasn't doing it, but it seemed like that in the '60s and '70s. I had a friend of mine that we hung out together. We was best friends. He lived right across the street from me. We had this hippie friend that had drugs. He always get new stuff in. 00:47:00We would always try it out. So, we start experimenting with a lot of different stuff. I experimented with stuff I wish I had never touched before. I never got hooked on drugs like a lot of people do. They used some of the stuff I've tried and they're hooked on it, and they go downhill. I had some bad experiences, you know? But, like I said, I don't want nothing to do with that no more. My friend, on the other hand, he continued, continued, continued. I remember when I got saved, because I had, I think using drugs made me paranoid, or, anything like this. I would just, I even had suicidal tendencies. I couldn't take my life, but 00:48:00I kind of didn't want to live.

One day, I was in my apartment, and I prayed and I prayed, and I said, God help me here. Then something started, like I was dizzy, like I was going around in circles to the left. I was going around to the right at the same time, like centrifugal force. Then I was kind of off the ground in mid-air, and then there was this peace. I had never known any peace like that ever could exist. It was like, how do you express it? I said, well, you remember Spock on Trek? He does the Vulcan mind grip? Everything that he knows you can know. That was my only 00:49:00way I can describe my communication with God at that time. It was like saying, well, if you go out and you preach for me, you, boom, boom, boom, live for me, you could have this peace forever when it comes time for it. But I couldn't believe that I was up in the air. So, I opened my eyes and I wasn't up in the air. I was on my knees on the floor. I had my elbows in a pool of tears that I had done. I got a butter-soft vinyl couch that made it look like that. I said, oh, wait a minute, I'm in communication with God! I tried to get the connection back again, and it wasn't the same. It was still there, but it was a little faint. Called my father, and I said, how do you know when you've been called to preach?

Well, my father, he dropped everything he was doing, came straight over to my 00:50:00house, read a couple of scriptures to me, had prayer with me, and scheduled me to preach the next Sunday. He had one of his preacher friends that was there that was one of his partners in the trades, because he was a master painter. He don't need tape to put on anything. He can just paint a straight line just like nobody. But he came there, but he was also a preacher. He was very spiritual. My father told him that I'm going to preach my first sermon. I had a problem as a little boy of explaining myself, expressing myself.

RK: How old were you then?

RH: At the time that I got called to preach?

RK: Yeah.

RH: I was probably 21, 22? Something like that. But as a young boy, my family 00:51:00teased me because they say that my speech, I didn't know how to express myself, explain myself. They'd act like they couldn't understand what I was saying. My older brother was in the congregation when I preached my first sermon. Right in the middle of my message, Reverend Fury stood up: God called Richard to preach! God called Richard to preach! God called Richard to preach! I finished preaching and then after the service was over, my oldest brother said, I know God called you to preach because I understood everything you said.

RK: Do you remember?

RH: Hm?

RK: Do you remember what you preached on that particular day?

RH: Mm-hmm.

RK: What kind of--

RH: I preached on the 13th chapter of 1 Corinthians.

RK: Tell us about that.

RH: About love. You know, if I have, if I give my body to be burned, give all my goods to feed the poor, and I have not loved, it profits me nothing. You know? 00:52:00So, that's the love chapter in the Bible, 1 Corinthians 13. But, no, that, and I was committed. I was dedicated. I had thought that if you get saved that you couldn't listen to jazz anymore, soul music, anything like that. I had a big collection of albums, of all the latest of Black groups: Bootsie, Rubberband, The Stylistics, OJ, everybody, I had a big stack of albums, the whole stack itself could have been worth about $500. I thought I had to get rid of them, so I gave them to my father. He had a secondhand store on 15th and Alberta. I say, here. Maybe you can sell these in your secondhand store. For one day I went there to find out, how did you do on selling my records? He said, oh, some guy 00:53:00came by here. I told him give me $10 to take them off my hand. I said, no you didn't! Later on, as I matured, I found out I didn't have to give up my albums [laughs]. You're not unsaved because you have that music, whatever the case may be. I said, man, I could have kept all of those albums. Those albums would have been worth money today. But, you know, we learned. Sometimes we get exposed to bad teaching. I don't think I really got, say I got bad teaching from my parents, but there's a lot of bad teaching in our communities about what Christianity is all about.

RK: What are some of those?

RH: Well, I always tell people this, because Jesus had the same problem with the people in his day and they always want to come and try to trick him and ask him 00:54:00questions. Like, the disciples came and said, Master which is the greatest commandment? They were arguing about, you know, this is the greatest commandment over here, this is the greatest. So, Jesus, which is the greatest commandment? Jesus said, well, thou shall love the Lord with all thy heart, with all thy soul, with all thy strength, and with all thy might, and the second is like unto that--you should treat your neighbor like yourself. On these two hang all the law and the prophets. Then they want to try and trip him again. Well, who is my neighbor. So, he tells them about the road to Jericho and how when the priests, the rabbis saw him he walked by on the side. The priests walked by on the other side, but the Samaritan stopped and bandaged the man up, gave him his clothes, and took him to a hotel and paid the man, and said if there's anything else over this let me know I'll pay it.

So, he said, who was that man's neighbor? That's what it's all about. Jesus said, by this shall all men know that you're my disciples--if you have love, one toward the other. So, even Jesus in the sermon at the mount. He was talking to the woman at the well. They say on the mountain is where you worship God. They say in Jerusalem you should worship God. Jesus said, there will come a time, and now is, where you won't go to Jerusalem nor to the mountain to worship God, but true worshipers will worship Him in spirit and in truth for the Father seeketh such to worship Him. I always had that problem with all our churches in the community. We're building all these great cathedrals and empires and stuff like that, but that's not what God asked us to do. What He asked us to do is to live 00:56:00together, love each other, and work to make sure that we have a nice, workable, livable society to live in honoring each other, but sometimes our churches miss the mark on that. Churches, synagogues, the Muslims, you know? I think the only people that seem like they understand stuff is Buddhists and the Unitarian churches [laughs]. Everybody else, they're rivalries--you're not part of me, you're not part of the right group. There is no right group. There's just right living.

RK: Tell us a little bit about practically, then, so you went through high school.

RH: Mm-hmm.

RK: Then what did you do and how did you earn a living?

RH: Well, I, like I said, I became ordained at an early age. I was in my early 20s.

RK: You mentioned, I'll interrupt you a minute, because you mentioned that you were in an apartment when you had your--.

RH: Yeah.

RK: So, when did you, you lived in home.

RH: It was my first apartment, though.

RK: Tell us about how--so, the first place you lived with your...

RH: Wait a minute. It might have been my first apartment. It might have been, yeah, it maybe was my first apartment.

RK: So, let's get the chronology. You have the house that you lived in where--

RH: Right. When they built Unthank Park, because that was another thing that forced all the families to move out of that area, my father bought the house across the street. It was doing what they call the Urban Neighborhood Improvement Project in the '60s. Some people were getting loans to repair the house. My father was getting loans, but my father was one of the only ones who 00:58:00was doing the work himself. I finished growing up at 3960 North Haight Street. We moved there just in my last few years of grade school. I finished high school living there. What was your question?

RK: Now you finished high school?

RH: I finished high school.

RK: Now what did you do?

RH: I went to college at Southern Oregon State College.

RK: Still living at home with your parents?

RH: Yeah. When I came back my mother co-signed for a loan for school for me. When I came back, I got me a job.

RK: What job?

RH: At... I can't remember that first job I had. That is very interesting. I got 00:59:00a job. After that, I got a job at the airport. I was working at Sky Chef in the flight kitchen. When I was in high school, they had training program through Oregon Department of Transportation for civil engineering. I was in that class, and they would take us out once a month and show us different things. They hadn't even built the Fremont Bridge yet. They just had the concrete pillars. So, we was able to climb up on top of the pillar and take a look over the city of Portland. We were working with the civil engineers who were designing everything. When I graduated from high school during the summer I worked with the survey crew. We blue-topped I-217. That was when there was nothing but dirt 01:00:00for miles and miles. It wasn't a freeway yet. I don't know if you know anything about blue-topping. The survey crew goes and measures everything and then you take these little wooden stakes, and they say the people with the blue doors, or whatever, they have to shave off the ground. If we hammer that thing, if you go below the ground you have the shave it down to the blue spray paint to be put on top of the hub. If it's sticking up out of the ground, they have to fill it up to that point. We did that all through the length of I-217 all summer long. I had the suntan to prove it.

At that time, I had just before I started that job I was in my kitchen cooking some food, frying some French fries. That was a big thing on Saturday morning--a 01:01:00cartoon was on. I had the skillet heating up, and I, my mother had her buffet table there with a little mirror over the wall. You could see the kitchen. I was watching cartoons, and I noticed in the mirror there was some flames, and the skillet was on fire. I took it and I put it in the sink and turn on the water. You don't do that and [makes whooshing sound and sweeps hands over and above face]: singed my face, burned my mother's curtains and everything. I was peeled this way and all over here [sweeps fingers across forehead and under eyes and cheeks]. I remember the driver's license I had. I had to get my first driver's license had me with burns on my face. I put cocoa butter on there for six months until my color came back. I was out there blue topping. I was dirtying up my 01:02:00momma's bathtub. Every time I came home from that job, I get in that tub and boy it be just big dirty ring around the tub, all that dirt and everything. That really was the first job, because that was right out of high school.

RK: What were the other people who worked on the job? Was your relation with them?

RH: With the, you're talking about the survey crew?

RK: Yes. Just wondering, just describe?

RH: Okay. Well, this is their work. They do this for a living. They do this all the time. I was just a student that was in the training program that got to work with them for the summer. They were really nice people. I learned how to drive a stick with them. They told me that if you don't know how to drive a stick, you don't know how to drive. I almost stripped the gears a couple of times, but they let me learn how to drive that survey truck. Wonderful people. As a matter of 01:03:00fact, one of the guys that trained me when I was working at the airport, I ran into the guy, Mr. Butler, and he say, hey how you doing? I said, I'm doing alright. He said, are you looking for work? I said, well, anything be better than what I got. He said, well, you, we are trying to hire and you were one of our better students. Come on down and I'll get you a job. So, I started working for the highway division again. Not with the survey crew, but I worked in advertently for them, because they were in, and one of the guys was one of the teachers, he became my good friend and my mentor. I worked for them for about 6 years. I was pastoring, too. I had some kind of strange idea that a pastor shouldn't be working a job, he should be pastoring full-time. That's before, 01:04:00people think like that are not really thinking. So, I quit my job after 6 years with the highway division and moved full-time into the ministry. Worst mistake I ever made. I brought so much financial hardship on my family. I ended up with an itch all over my entire body. It was so bad, that I prayed that Lord, will you stop the itch or take my life--one of the two. I would go to see a dermatologist for like 3 months and they couldn't find no known physical cause for my itching. I never told them I was a pastor. I never told them what happened. But when I did, they said, well that explains it. Because they were attributing to a high level of stress.

Then, Coca Cola, I was involved with the employment department, with a job 01:05:00search and training. Then one lady thought I was ready, so she gave me a lead to Coca Cola. She said, Coca Cola is hiring, boom, boom. So, I always liked to do research, because I don't care who you are I want to know about you before I go. I did some research on Coca Cola, and then I went down to Coca Cola and I did an interview. They asked me, well, tell me something, what do you know about Coca Cola? Well, I know that Dr. Pemberton sold his headache tonic recipe to Asa Candler and that the first glass of Coca Cola was sold for 5 cents a glass at Jacob's Pharmacy on Peachtree Street in Atlanta, Georgia. He said, I didn't even know that. So, I did my homework. He said, well, we'll get back to you. I couldn't get home. My wife told me Coca Cola called and wanted me to come back 01:06:00up there. I went back up there, and they asked me when can I start?

RK: You had been, so what made you understand that you should work while you're being a pastor.

RH: Well, you got to have money to feed your family. You can't just stop, you know. The church had no financial way to fully support me as a full-time pastor, so it was foolish to make that choice to do that. It was foolish to make that choice without consulting your wife.

RK: Tell us a little bit about that family, then, that you had with your first wife and the children?

RH: It's interesting. She's the mother of all my kids. I don't think she... I robbed the cradle. I was 24 when I met her. She was 16. I was trying to start 01:07:00this youth fellowship amongst the different churches with this other minister friend of mine. She just like, when I was sitting in church, she stuck out like a sore thumb. She just seemed like as a young person she was so dedicated and she loved the Lord. Boom, boom, boom. So, I wanted her to be a part of our group. I'd meet with her mother, and the mother's trying to get me hooked up with her daughter. The mother said, you know, I made some freezer wine. You want some? I said, sure. We were drinking freezer wine.

RK: Did you say freezer wine?

RH: Freezer wine, yeah.

RK: What is that?

RH: That's a wine that you can make that you can put in the freezer but it doesn't freeze. Does that make sense?

RK: Well, alcohol, it just does...

RH: It's cold. Well, you put wine in the freezer, it'll freeze. It'll get slushy.

RK: It will get slushy.

RH: Well, yeah, it was slushy, though. It was slushy. But it doesn't freeze hard. But it was good. It was really good. Next thing I know, she was telling me, you know, well, you know you can take my daughter out any time you want you. I said, I'm not over here to take your daughter out. You know? But, her mom liked me. I did like her, too. We were getting together and everything, and I think my father, he owned that secondhand store on North East 15th and Alberta. It's called Bernie's and Minnie's Secondhand Store, named after my mom and one of their co-partners, Minnie Keys. She had a lot of stuff that was in the, antique stuff, stuff like that, little consignment. She rented an apartment to 01:09:00me next door to her house. She had this big house, where it was an apartment, had the lower part of it was one home for the one lady and the upstairs was an apartment. It had one bedroom. It had a kitchen, a living room. It had a loft up there, a bathroom, everything.

RK: Who was it that--?

RH: $89 a month.

RK: Who was it that rented the apartment?

RH: My father's business partner.

RK: Yeah, okay.

RH: I rented it from her. For $89 a month, and that's when I was dating Maxine. Maxine came over to my house to visit, and during that time Alberta, 15th and Alberta, that wasn't a nice area back then. Taxi cab drivers didn't want to come in that neighborhood. I called a cab for Maxine to get home. The cab never came. 01:10:00So I called again. I said, hey, I called a cab. He said, well, we're sorry we've been really busy. We're going to be there shortly. The cab never came. They weren't going to come. It got too late for her to get, it was dark and it was too late. So, we just said, you know, call her mom. Said, you just have to spend the night and you'll go home in the morning. I let her sleep in my bed. I slept on the couch. Her mother was convinced that we'd done something, that we slept together. We couldn't convince her otherwise. She got called all kinds of names and everything, but we didn't do nothing. The cab wouldn't come, you know? But I think to this day I think her mother really believed that something did happen, but nothing happened. When we got married, she moved into that apartment with 01:11:00me. That's the first time I had a rent increase. It went from $89 to $119 [laughs]. You can't find rent like that no more. I think, after that, when we moved into another apartment in southeast Portland it went up to $350. It started going up ever since then. But, no, those were nice prices back then.

I did have a car. One thing I didn't say about going to college, there was an old man that had this 1955 Buick Special. He sold it to me for $99. I was going to drive it home. I was happy I got my own car and driving home and all of a sudden [makes thudding noise], the universal joint fell off. My father had to 01:12:00drive down there and tow my car to Portland. I got that fixed, but the car ran pretty good. It was two-toned gray. I put donuts on them, on the tires. We was rolling down, and that car could take scratches and nothing would happen to it. When I had it at the college, I was driving and I didn't know anything about hydraulic brakes. I didn't know you had to pump them, anything like that. I was parked on a hill, and I was facing toward an intersection at the bottom of the hill. I get in my car, and I'm driving down the hill, and I decide, I don't wait like, some people wait until they get to the corner and then they put on the brakes. I start pumping my brakes when I'm halfway there, but nothing would happen. I'm flooring it, and nothing is happening, so, I said, okay, 'm not going into that intersection. I pull over by these, I don't know if it was 01:13:00blackberry bushes or something like that. I put much to that until the car kind of slowed down a little bit and then stopped. That's when I found out somebody said that you, it's hydraulic brakes. You have to pump them. I said, whew. I had that car. I was sure when I was driving around Portland with this nice two-tone, green, '55 Buick Special with donuts [laughs].

RK: Now you're in your apartment and you're with your first wife.

RH: Yes, we would have a glass of wine every night with dinner while we listened to Barry White for six months. Then, she got pregnant with my firstborn son.

RK: Did she work at the time, or just--

RH: No, she never. Matter of fact, she was still in school.

RK: Mm-hmm.

RH: I dropped my wife off to school on my way to work.

RK: So, in high school.

RH: Yeah. She was a senior in high school. I took my wife to the prom [laughs]. It was quite interesting. We did everything, her father told us not to get married. Her father told us to wait until we graduated from college to think about getting married. She said, well, I'll be turning 18 on September the 18th. We're getting married on September 23rd. When I'm grown, I will do what I want to do.

RK: You were, at that time--

RH: I was 26.

RK: 26. So, you were 8 years older.

RH: It was 6 years. She turned 18.

RK: You were 26.

RH: Was I 26? Okay, then maybe I was 22 when she was 16. Okay. Because, there's 01:15:00a 6-year difference.

RK: Six years.

RH: Mm-hmm. But she was still 16 years old, you know.

RK: That's a big difference.

RH: That's robbing the cradle [laughs].

RK: Did you have a wedding?

RH: We had our wedding in her father's house. Her father was married and had this nice home on 24th and, that was just down the street here, not too far. He had a swimming pool in the backyard. I don't know why we didn't get married in the church. Here I am getting a truck and hauling our church organ to her father's house for our wedding. Why didn't we just get married at the church? I don't know. That was interesting. I remember that I got the food for the catering, too. My brother was working at Jefferson High School in the TJ room, 01:16:00and he fixed all the food for us. I had to pick it up and take it to my father-in-law's house. I had to get the organ, take it over there. My wife didn't, had a run in her stockings. She needed a new pair of stockings, so I had to get her some stockings and then after all of that, I told my best man, I said, you know we still have to get showered and put our tuxes on. I got to the point, said, well, I'm not rushing. They cannot get married without me. We just took our time and got dressed and everything and when we got there, we got there. They were wondering, what happened to Richard? What happened to Richard? Silly thing, her matron of honor was joking around and said, he ran off with some other woman. [Shakes head] That was a bad joke, bad joke.

I finally showed up, and we got married. My father officiated my wedding. She 01:17:00never wanted me to be a pastor. She was there when the church had the meeting and my father needed an assistant pastor. My brother claimed that, well, he got up and he made a motion, he said, I make a motion that we close the nominations. He said he did that because he didn't want there to be a split-up between me and him. I ended up being the assistant pastor. My wife hated that. She never wanted me to be the assistant pastor, and then when my father passed away a year later, I became the pastor.

RK: Why didn't she want to be a pastor?

RH: I don't know why she didn't, but she didn't want to and everything she seemed like she did from that point forward worked against... you know. It was 01:18:00an interesting battle. There was a lot of great things that happened at our church, a lot of growth. I got to the point where I was listening to other people, especially people who thought maybe I was having marital problems and say, well, you just need to resign. Then, I listened to other people and I did that and then I started to listening to God, and God said I didn't tell you to resign. When I tried to go back, one of my deacons that came up under my ministry said that I was wishy-washy. First I said that I'm resigning and now I don't want to resign. That sounds wishy-washy.

RK: What was the name of your church?

RH: Neighborhood Church of God.

RK: Neighborhood Church of God.

RH: [Nods] Neighborhood Church of God. My father founded it in 1961. Mm-mm. 01:19:00Yeah. He was, during the late '50s he had started a little congregation called Christian Center in the old building where Mrs. Collins used to have her place, Grace Collins of Memorial Christian Center. She had a daycare and everything like that. It's now the Wonder Ballroom just around the corner over there on Russell Street. So, he was having service there. There was another Church of God congregation, because my father had come over to the Church of God from the Baptist. Reverend Victor Brown was having his congregation there and having service. My father said, it doesn't make sense for these two Church of God congregations to be having services in the same building at different times. He said, let's come together and have one service. As a matter of fact, I'm new to 01:20:00the Church of God. So, why don't you be the pastor? I'll be your assistant pastor for a couple years while I learn more about the Church of God and then I'm going to go ahead and start my own church.

We did that. For a while we were a part of Community Church of God. Then in 1961 my father bought the property from Reverend Cheek, who was the pastor of the Mt. Sinai Baptist Church. Mt. Sinai Baptist Church had recently bought the church that we bought from a Jewish congregation, called Congregation Tifereth Israel. They had moved over to 15th and Wygant, in that building. They sold that building to Reverend Cheek, a Black congregation, that the White people in that area was upset that they sold it to a Black congregation. Anyway, they was telling what their Jewish charter says that they don't discriminate and 01:21:00everything. My father was friends with Reverend Cheek, When Reverend Cheek bought the place on 6th and Prescott, northeast 6th and Prescott, he sold his old building to my father. In 1961, we moved over there and started that church.

RK: Going back then, so, how long were you married to your first wife?

RH: We were married for 13 years.

RK: How many children did you have?

RH: We had 3 together. We have a fourth one, but he was, you know, one of the reasons why we got divorced was that my wife left me and she wanted to move on, you know? Even though she said after she left, she said, you know, we never, by 01:22:00the way we haven't had sex in over a year. So, a few days later she came to me and said, I want a divorce so I can get on with my life. I said, I just don't believe that's God's will. I don't believe that's God's will. Come back a couple months later, I need a divorce. I got somebody loves me. I love them. We want to get married and get on. I said, I just don't believe that's God's will. When she started showing, she came back and said, I'm pregnant. We want to get married. I need a divorce. I said, well, you can have one. So, when the kids would come over, they would sometimes come over to visit me and they wouldn't bring their little brother.

RK: So, who were your two?

RH: Huh? Three.

RK: Three, two, three that you have with your wife.

RH: With her, yeah. So, I have four children altogether.

RK: Who's the fourth?

RH: He is.

RK: The one that your wife gave birth to...

RH: Right.

RK: ...that wasn't your own child?

RH: Right. Yeah. So I told the kids, I said, you know, that's your brother. He needs to come, too. He would come over. We'd all, every time the family got together, we all did things together, because it is not his fault. I have such a beautiful relationship with all my children, including him. He was going to Concordia College. He said, Daddy Richard, he said, the kids keep asking me who my daddy is. Can I tell them you are? I said, yes. I'd be honored. Now, when I go around, even today when he introduces me to people, he says this is my 01:24:00father, Richard.

RK: Did your wife marry the man that...?

RH: Huh-uh [shakes head side to side].

RK: So, he didn't really have another male figure in his life.

RH: Hmm-mm, no, no, no.

RK: Then, at that time, so for 13 years did you live in that same apartment? Or move?

RH: For 13 years we moved around all over the place. We were living in a duplex. We lived in a place that her father owned. We were renting from him. We always had trouble financially and ended up having to move somewhere else. We lived in several different places, but all--the farthest we ever lived was out on Southeast Woodstock. Mm-hmm. That was a little ways away, but it was nice little ranch-style home. For the 13 year period, we never lived by ourselves. We always 01:25:00had somebody living with us. It was either her friend that needed a place to stay, stay for 2, 3 years. Some other young lady, some guy going to college. We always helped somebody who was living with us. It was a ministry.

We even had a guy who was Church of God pastor who lived in Klamath Falls. His daughter was coming over to go to school and he wanted his daughter to be safe, wanted to know if we could take her in while she was in school. She came, and she lived with us. We just had a history of people living with us. I had a friend of mine that I let him live with us. I remember being embarrassed because I was complaining, because I said, well, he said he was only going to be here for a couple of months while he finds a place. It's been over 6 months and, you know. I said, he's eating up all the food. Blah, blah, blah. Then we heard 01:26:00something moved on the out porch. I said, oh, man, he's here. He came out with his coat leaving, said, man I'll be out of here in a week, and he was gone. I didn't mean it that way, you know. But, you know, I think at a certain point you say, why does everybody want to live with us? We've helped a lot of people.

RK: What were the different jobs that you had?

RH: I worked with a lot of service industries, like Sky Chef at the airport in the flight kitchen preparing meals for the airlines, going on the airlines stripping them out and coming back in. I loved that job because I could take 01:27:00home unopened bottles of champagne and boxes of peanuts. That stuff is already paid for. They can't resell it again. It's either in the garbage can or employees take it home. It was fun. Sometimes untouched first-class steak dinners, you know? I opened it up, [makes biting gesture] take steak, put it in the garbage disposal [laughs]. That was a fun job. I enjoyed that until I met my brother at the highway division that offered me a job. Then I went to work for them. I worked for Oroweat Foods out in Beaverton. I really loved that job. I got that job before me and my wife got divorced. She went on a vacation with my two oldest kids with her family, and I kept our newborn baby girl with me and I 01:28:00had an interview and I took her with me. I think she's the reason why I got the job, because they were impressed. That was a good job, too. I really loved that. I never bought bread as long as I worked with them, because I'd take home bread for me and the rest of my family. It was simple. It was really neat. Oroweat foods is good food. They own Entenmann's. I don't know if you've heard of that. The pastries, the donuts and stuff like that, Entenmann's out of Seattle. They're owned by Kraft General Foods, too.

Anyway, I enjoyed working with that. But then I said, I really want to work with something ministry-related. I want to get a job where I'm getting paid to do stuff that's part of my collar. So, Albina Ministerial Alliance had a community services program. They were looking for a case manager with their housing, 01:29:00transitional housing program. I was one of the first case managers with that program. That kind of rolled over into the community services, because Urban League was getting rid of their community services program and they wanted to roll it over into Albina Community Services, so a couple of Urban League staff came over and started working with us. Then we went to the little church on Dekum and 15th where AME had their offices. We started working in there and started working with all kinds of programs. I became the person that was handling the rent assistance. Anybody that needed rent assistance, had to come to me to get rent assistance.

I also became, before I quit, I became a housing specialist. It was a pilot-type job, where we create the job. I was doing new innovative things, and I was 01:30:00creating these housing stabilization classes for families and people and working with transition people that was going in hotels or in transitional housing and stuff like that. It's just really neat working with people trying to help them change their lives and get established. I think I left there because I got married again and moved to Wisconsin. Then I got involved there. I was with, Racine Weed and Seed as a community organizer. I became a police officer at a juvenile detention center. I didn't like that because I ended up tearing my rotator cuff completely trying to throw an unwilling juvenile in his cell. That's a--I'm not a jail officer, not me.

RK: What was that like in Wisconsin? Tell us a little bit more how that--?

RH: How'd I get married to her?

RK: Yeah.

RH: The connection?

RK: Why you did move to Wisconsin.

RH: Well, my extra-curricular activity brought me to Wisconsin, because there was a lady in about 1990 or something like that, she was part of the Sabin Neighborhood Association, and she wanted to go house to house and find out who was interested in affordable housing. Well, I said, yeah I'm interested in affordable housing. So, I started working with her, because Sabin Neighborhood Association wanted to, they wanted to get involved in building affordable housing, but they can't do it as a neighborhood association. They have to create a community development corporation in order to do that. They started one from the ground up. I ended up serving on that committee. I became their first board chairman. I served there until I moved as a chairman of the board. We got 01:32:00housing. We went through training and everything like this. We bought--the training that I went through is now being offered as a 2-year degree program at Portland Community College, but I did it in 6 months. We acquired property. We did a couple of programs. We had this place called the House of Eugene? Something like that. Anyway, it was a transitional house for African American women coming out of prison to get acclimated back into society. They go to the transition housing and get case management and everything like this.

Then we started building another affordable housing in the city, and they now got their own building on 15th and Alberta with apartments on top of it. They've done lots of things, apartment complexes and things around the city. Plus, I 01:33:00worked with Housing Our Families, which is another community development organization. I started getting involved in community development type stuff, grassroots type stuff, and that's the reason why I was working with Racine Weed and Seed. I said, I kind of like this stuff. I was involved with Racine Interfaith Coalition. They don't have nothing like that on the west coast, but in the Midwest these churches came together and did some fantastic things. They were made up of Baptist, Church of God, Pentecostal, Catholic, you know. I think we had every kind of denominations, including Unitarian, except for Jewish. We hadn't got them to be a part of us yet when I was there, but was able to get teachers--we rallied together to get teachers a raise, and we got teachers raises through our grassroots organizing. We did a lot of things. We'd see some 01:34:00good grassroots community training through them.

RK: When you were here?

RH: Mm-hmm.

RK: Then there were opportunities for paid work within that whole...?

RH: Yeah, because I had a good pastor. It's not what you know because I went there with impeccable credentials. I did innovative work with the housing as a housing specialist. I went there, and I saw them, they were hiring somebody for a job with the county and I qualified for it. I gave them my resume. I didn't get the job. Next thing I know, they got a job, a new job, announcement. It was a housing specialist. They copied my resume for the job description.

RK: What was the difference?

RH: There was no difference.

RK: With the person?

RH: Racine is not a big, huge city. It's not a small, tiny city, but it's small enough so it's not who you know, I mean it's not what you know, it's who you know. So, I applied for this other job, Racine Family something, anyway, the guy who was the director, he's a friend of my pastor. He comes to our services sometimes, and there was this other lady who was applying for the same position. She got the job. I didn't. The guy who's a friend of my pastor said that the reason why she got the job and you didn't get it, because everybody knows her 01:36:00and nobody knows you. They're not hiring prop--and then, less than a month, the job was opening again. Why? Because she went to the highest bidder. She wasn't even committed to stay with them. She took the job from me and then she didn't want it. You know? They asked me if I wanted it. I said, no. You guys had your chance the first time around. You don't get me just because the first thing didn't work out for you. You could have chosen me anyway, because I don't play that. I just started working with my church. We had a childcare center. I drove the bus to pick up kids, to bring them to the center, take them to school when school started, pick them back up and bring them back until their parents come back up. I was the cook. I fixed nutritional meals for all the kids and everything.

RK: Did you get paid for that?

RH: Yeah.

RK: Yeah.

RH: Yeah. I got paid. My pastor made sure I had a job.

RK: Now, this is in Wisconsin?

RH: Wisconsin.

RK: With your second wife that you met in Portland?

RH: I met her in Chicago. I didn't get into how we met.

RK: Okay.

RH: There's an organization in the Church of God called L.I.V.E Ministries: Laypeople In Vital Exchange. It's been mostly just a White group. They didn't have much African Americans in their group. They didn't do much outreach to African American churches, and they wanted to do that. One of the first churches was a church in Chicago. When I went to that, I was working with Sabin Community Development Corporation. I was on the board. There was a Dr. John Perkins, who's the founder and director of the National Association of Christian Community 01:38:00Development Corporations, sponsored a conference, a community development conference that was going on in Chicago. The U.S. Bank gave Sabin $1,000 to go to that conference. While I was at that conference, I was killing two birds with one stone. So, I went to that one and then I was going to go to the Chicago L.I.V.E. Ministry thing and work on that. I met her at the first year that we went to a L.I.V.E. Ministries in Detroit, Michigan. Then we went to Chicago. I was trying to find somebody to stay with, because the hotel couldn't accommodate me for all 3 or 4 nights that I was going to be there. There was just going to be one night only, because the other nights were booked up. I didn't have no 01:39:00place to stay. I was trying to find somebody, and she said, well, you can't find nobody just let me know. I let her know, I said, I can't find nobody. She would drive all the way from Racine to Chicago. She picked me up. Then she arranged it where I'm not going to drive you all the way to Chicago this time. I'm going to take you to Kenosha. Hop on the train and then you go to Chicago.

Well, the way we met, I kind of look at it this way. She's a pastor's kid, too. Her father used to pastor a church in Saginaw, Michigan. He was one of the associate ministers at the church that I was at after we got married. She's a pastor's kid, a preacher's kid. I'm a preacher's kid. Two preacher's kids, the 01:40:00way we got together, that's not the way you're supposed to get together, because you're preacher's kids. You should have known better. You know, you go out of town. Don't go stay with a woman, and then the next thing I know I'm getting asked a question, does this mean that we're dating now? [Laughs]. Okay, what did I get myself into here? Then, we started corresponding back and forth, and she wants to get married. I'm not really ready to get married. She gets mad. She hangs up. If you don't want to get married, I don't see why we're even dating. Calls back later. She apologized. She shouldn't have said that.

RK: About how old were you at that time?

RH: I was in my early 40s.

RK: She was similar aged?

RH: Yeah. Very nice lady, too. I just didn't feel like that I loved her enough to be married to her. My son, my oldest son, was involved in gangs, The Bloods. I had already been going to court and me and his mom is always there for him, and I just, he ended up, I said, well, then when the pressure come on about getting married and me moving there. I'm just thinking, I said, well, maybe this is a good opportunity for me to get my son out of here, get him in a new environment, boom, boom, boom. Maybe the idea of getting married to Doris is not 01:42:00a bad idea. But, I'm sitting there at the altar thinking I'm making a big mistake here. But I go ahead and I get married. Then we go on the honeymoon, and now I want to say I think we made a big mistake. Of course, I sleep on the couch. But we walked along the beach talking about it. Bottom line was, well, maybe you'll grow to love me, because my take was, I don't think I love you enough to be married to you. So, we tried it out. I talked to my pastor, and I told my pastor, my pastor said if I promise to help you and work with you, would you promise to stick with it? I said, okay. So, after a year or two I told my 01:43:00pastor, I said, it's not going to work. It's not going to work. We're the only couple I know of where I'm leaving, my kids came to stay with me for the summer, but we're all going back to Portland together. Before that happened, here's my son. I'm thinking I'm getting him out of the gangs. I didn't know I was taking him in a worse environment. Now, he's hooked up with the Gangster Disciples. He's selling drugs--matter of fact, after my son ended up back in Portland, when we moved back to Portland, there's a guy that came--my ex-wife gave me some money. He said, this is for your son. No, the guy, before I left, the guy gave 01:44:00me some money, said, give this to your son. He sold me some weed, and I didn't have all the money. I said, he sold you some weed? I didn't say that, but, you know I'm saying. Man, I said, I thought I'm taking him away, and I'm really making a big mistake because I'm making a big booboo, because I married this woman that I really don't love enough to respect her to be her husband. I don't think I was supposed to be married. Even today, when we talk, she admits that she pressured me into getting married. You know, some people say, well, nobody can make you do something. But, with all the factors that was in play, figured I need to get my son out of there. Come back to Portland. He's still getting in trouble. I come back home. I stay with my niece for a few months.

Anyway, before I get to that, I'm leaving because I'm not going to be with her more. She knows that I'm going to be getting a divorce. We the only ones that know that: church don't know that, family don't know that. But, we had this big old party, going away party. We had so much food. I mean, goo-gobs of food. We had hot links and chicken, friend chicken, and barbeque ribs and potato salad, greens, and cornbread and everything. All kinds of food. We made homemade ice cream and packed them into dozens of quart containers and everything. We had so much food that was good. We invited the choir members, church members, and family over. Next two Sundays, we was sharing leftovers with large groups of 01:46:00people. Everybody thought I was going back there to get a job. Nobody knew that I'm not coming back. Her dad said, you and Richard are not together anymore, are you? When I met her dad, she wanted me to ask her dad for her hand in marriage. Her dad thought that we should just be friends. But we didn't do that. Nobody listened to the dad anymore. First wife, dad said, no, wait until you graduate from college. Second dad said, just be friends. Didn't do that. He was hurt, because now this was his baby girl. All his other daughters got married and divorced. He didn't want that to happen to her, and it has. Both her parents are 01:47:00deceased now. Right after her father passed away. Her mother passed away shortly after that. I'm back here in Portland now, you know? I'm not married to her. I'm in Portland still dealing with my son. Here I'm at my niece's house staying and it's pouring down raining. I chuckled because my sister Linda, she smokes weed. She was telling me, said, oh, I just seen your son. He just sold me some weed [laughs]. So, here I am at my niece's house. It's pouring down raining. There's a knock at the door. Open it up. There's my son in this see-through rain coat, blood everywhere: face, body and everything. I said, what's? He said, Dad, I need $100. I said, $100 for what? I short-changed a drug dealer. He said, $100 01:48:00or your life. I didn't have but $100 in my savings account. So, I said, come on, let's go. No, Dad, don't get involved. I just need $100. So, I go to the bank, I draw out my last little $100. I give it to him. I said, I want you to know that this night your life is only worth $100. He goes back.

But my son is amazingly a positive individual. He's doing great things. He's got 3 sons now and a great wife. They live in a nice home in Vancouver, Washington. He's been doing his music career and done some great CDs. I don't know why. You 01:49:00got to pay people to rotate your CDs. You have to pay people to acknowledge good talent. That's kind of dumb. He's got all this great music talent and everything and all these great CDs, and nobody doesn't hear them. But he's good. He's good. He's a good father. Now, he's getting a job at POIC and Rosemary High School to work with kids involved with the gangs.

RK: That's great. So, tell us a little more about the different jobs you had. Then, after that, I want to find out a little bit more about where we are sitting and where you've been living and why and bring us up.

RH: Okay. Gosh, I think the first, you've heard about the jobs at Racine with the juvenile detention facility and the Racine Weed and Seed as a community organizer. One of the things I liked about that job was that you get to get out and meet people in the community and talk to them about what they need to see and everything like this. They even had all the churches were like houses of faith, so that when, if a police stopped somebody they may have an ounce of weed or something like that, they don't go to jail and get a record. You take them to one of the houses of faith. They have a commitment wot work with that person, 01:51:00help turn them around. It avoided these people getting caught up in the system. I liked that and then getting involved with the neighborhood association. I never been involved with them before, but I got involved with them through Racine. Then I had a problem with my employer, because somehow she didn't think I was doing the work. She thought I was just wasting time out there. I'm not doing the work. I don't see the work you're doing. Then, we clashed heads and everything, and she says, well, maybe you should get your things and leave. I said, well, I don't have to leave. I'm quitting, because I don't have to take this disrespect, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Then I think the chairman of the board of directors wanted to talk to me on the phone. I said, I ain't talking to nobody. I'm out of here. Nobody's going to change my mind.

Then I went back in the community. There was an African American woman that was doing my job. She was going door to door. I said, hello. You're the person that's taken over my job. She said, yes. I said, well, are you having any success? She said, not really, because everybody say you've already been there [smiles]. He's already been here and talked to us about this. And my boss don't think I'm out there doing nothing. I said, I don't beg for work. I don't let nobody disrespect me, either, because I know my skills and everything like that. I'm playing no games with nobody, you know. I always believe that when I'm looking for work, it's all about whether I want to work for you or not, not I need a job. I don't work for nobody just because I need a job, because I may not 01:53:00like you and your morals might not be great, so why would I want to work for you? I worked in employment, right down the street there. That'll bring you to this place. I started working for the Urban League in 1998, because this was right after I came back from Wisconsin. I got divorced in '98. Then this one lady that got pregnant, she recommended that they hire me to take her place until she had her baby. I was a community organizer for Housing Our Families, which was a community development corporation. After the lady came back to get her job back, I ended up getting a job working for Albina Ministerial Alliance again, you know? But it wasn't the same. It wasn't the same. I ended up getting 01:54:00a job working for Urban League as an employment specialist. I worked for the northeast one stop career center. That was during the days when Lawrence Dark was the president of the Urban League. That was also during the days when the Urban League was not kosher what their financial dealings. Multnomah County was pulling money out and they had fired an orange dart and everybody else was getting their pink slips from the one stop. I got my letter from Urban League saying, sorry, we have to let you go.

Work Systems Inc., who funds all the workforce development activity in the state 01:55:00of Oregon, took over the one stop. I think out of the Urban League people I was the only one that was rehired by Work Systems Inc. Then, the lady that's the reason why I went into this place, she became our manager. Then I worked with several other new people. I was getting paid. I was hired to get paid $24,000 a year from Urban League, but they were actually paying me $26,000 a year. They were doing stuff like that. When Work Systems Inc. hired me, they started paying me $30,000 a year, which is more. And the benefits, whoo. Boy, I got spelled with them benefits. They had super benefits. They even bought you an annual bus 01:56:00pass every year. Then, in 6 months, they raised it to $35,000. I said, I was getting paid $26,000, now I'm getting paid $35,000. But they can't micromanage, so after 2 years they had to open it up for RFP, for fiscal management, and Portland Community College got the grant, got the contract. One of the ladies that I worked with, she went over--first, Maggie wanted to start her own business. So, she brought Mulou and everybody else over here, but we weren't going to make no money at first, because we just started business. Mu said, no, I have to have some money. So, Mulou went over here and took a job at the one stop at the workforce training center at PCC.

Then one of the ladies said that, that was working here, she said her husband 01:57:00won't allow her to work for nothing. She left out of here. Then there was only 3 of us left with Maggie. Then, two: me and Alexis. We work with Maggie, and it was touch and go for a minute. Maggie had to kind of let the business go, but the reason why I first came here--I was living at the Yards at Union Station right down by Naito Parkway. When I lost my job at the one stop, I had no income, except for the unemployment. Well, that wasn't enough to keep that apartment over there. I ended up losing that apartment. I didn't have nowhere to go. Maggie let me, she had her office set up in here, an office upstairs, and her main office up in the loft. She even rented it out to some people. Then, she 01:58:00let me sleep on the floor upstairs, and that's what I did for about a couple years. I slept on the floor. Then, finally, nobody was using the upstairs anymore, so that ended up becoming my apartment. Then, because I was here, our congregation was in transition. So, we needed a place to worship. We couldn't continue to do at the Hampton Inn at the airport no more. When I told Maggie, I said, we can use--she wanted to get out of this, up from under this, so when I told her the proposition of our church. She said, yes! Yes. She was standing 01:59:00with her husband, he said, yes, yes, yes. But what it is is that Maggie became my landlord, because the place is leased to her. She was beginning to sublet it: the apartment to me and sublet this to the church.

RK: Now explain a little more what is the business that Maggie had.

RH: Brister & Associates, business and employment consultants.

RK: What is that?

RH: It's an employment agency, but we specialize in not only providing people for employers but also providing training, not only for the employees but for the employers, because employers need training sometimes. We were professionals, and we knew our business and we offered those services. I'm not really a phone 02:00:00call person or anything like that. I don't like to do cold calling, but I don't think I was that good at this. It's just not something that I wanted to do.

RK: Explain a little more for just what the business was.

RH: It was a business and employment services.

RK: It was a, so you had a private business? It's not a non-profit.

RH: Right, well, we... no, it wasn't a non-profit. We actually like a temp agency.

RK: How would you make the money? The person who came to answer the job would have to pay?

RH: The employer would pay us.

RK: The employer?

RH: The employer. Just like they pay temp agencies for people. Then it would be our responsibility to write a check and take out the taxes for the temp workers. 02:01:00Sometimes, we would do recruitment for employers. We had a construction company owner that did framing, and so he would work for us to provide people to work with him to frame houses. He would pay us to recruit. Then we did resumes. People paid us to do their resumes and their bios and portfolios, those types of thing. They had job fairs. For instance, we had a job fair one time where we invited Nike to come and then we would have food and some jazz music in the 02:02:00background, stuff like that. Then we, no commitment by the employer, then we had the prospects to dress up and had their best resume that we put together for them and just come and just mingle. Have some ours 'devoirs and listen to some nice music and just kind of mingle with the employers, and people got hired that way. It cost money to do that. We weren't going to be that successful to stay in business, so Maggie still works in employment. She works with employment with Goodwill Industries, so she's all over the place with people. This place is also, those three signs that's on the door, Maggie's also the president of the 02:03:00Jefferson Alumni Association. She graduated in 1980. I graduated in '71. I'm on the board, an active member. So, we have our board meetings here as Jefferson Alumni Association and then Neighborhood Church of God. When the landlord, when the top landlord, when they send us mail, it's always addressed to Maggie and all others.

RK: So, how long did you participate in this business? Or did it become a business?

RH: For the first three years, first three or four years.

RK: About how much were you able to make as a take-home salary?

RH: Not much. I think I got into trouble, because I think at one point I thought 02:04:00she wasn't taking out the taxes. I think she was depending on me to pay my own taxes. I got into trouble [laughs], because I didn't do that. But it got cleared up.

RK: That was three years, from what year to what year?

RH: So we probably started here in 2000, 2000 to 2004, maybe. She's still actively involved with the employment consulting work, and she's the person that the place is leased to. So, what she's allowed to do is sublease. She sublets it 02:05:00to me as a tenant in the residential part and the church as a commercial, for the commercial part.

RK: Since 2004, what have you done to be earning a living?

RH: I was working with the Oregon Department of Transportation. I didn't want to work for them, but they was the only one that hired me. There was a few other people that I wanted to work for. They didn't hire me. In 2006, I started working for the Department of Motor Vehicles as a transportation service representative, at DVM on Southeast 87th and Powell. I retired from them in 2015.

RK: As a service representative, what did you do?

RH: Everything. When you go to the DMV, everything you go to the DMV to do, I'd do that. You get your license renewed, you get your tags renewed, you put a new 02:06:00title in your name--anything, you know? You got to register your vehicle. You got to register your camper or your semi or whatever the case may be. Whatever you came to the DMV for, we do it. Every person does that.

RK: You were behind the counter?

RH: I was behind the counter. I was out doing drive tests. I'd go out do inspections.

RK: It was a very small office.

RH: No. it was a big office.

RK: A big office?

RH: It's one of the biggest ones in Portland.

RK: But you still had all the multi jobs?

RH: Yeah. Everybody does that. One day I may be on counter 1 or 2, where I service more people, but my main job is the set people up on the knowledge test on the computers and check people in when they come back from a drive test and 02:07:00have passed. Or, one day I may be down there by the camera area. I'll be doing my normal job, but my specialty down there is people getting their license they got to get their picture taken. I make sure to take people's check or replace their license, or whatever. I may be at a counter where, because we used to have a drive through window. I might have been through that. Whatever we do, we do it at different days of the week.

RK: I see.

RH: So, everybody is doing everything. Whatever the DMV does, everybody who works there does it.

RK: I see. About what was your salary then, about?

RH: Pathetic. You know? I made my big bucks at Coca Cola [laughs]. It was halfway decent a few times. I'm not good at saving money. That's the reason why 02:08:00I'm low-income today. Retirement and Social Security--it's a struggle, but I didn't work long enough. Because when I was working for them between '74 and '80, when I left, I didn't think I was ever going to come back again. So, I took all my PERS out. IF I had of left them in here [laughs], man. I messed that one up. I only worked for them for 9 years. I retired because I was 62. Actually, I've been working since I was 14 years old. Social Security has that documentation that I've been paying taxes since age 14, every year. I said, well, I'm not working past 62. So, at that time I could either, I was at the 02:09:00tier where I could retire at 62 or retire with 25 years of service, something like that. I didn't have but 9 years, but I had the 62. After I quit, and I'm retired, that changed. Because the person that's coming behind me you can't retire at 62. You have to wait until you're 64 or have 30 or 35 years in.

RK: Now we get up to now. Your main activity is as a pastor?

RH: Yeah. I've been retired. My main activity is being actively involved in the community. I'm actively involved with the Eliot Neighborhood Association, the Humboldt Neighborhood Association, the Jefferson High School Alumni Association, 02:10:00the AARP, the genealogical form of Oregon's African American Special Interest Group, and the church. I decided, I told my brother, I said, next year I don't want to be registered as an associate pastor anymore. I'll be 67, and that's not what I want to do. I want to concentrate all my effort on my book. Since I did that book, that book has literally increased in size by a third. I met a new family. I'm the only one doing this, so I need to concentrate on that. That's the legacy I need to leave behind. That's all I want to do, is just stuff I do in the community and family historian and genealogy stuff.

RK: Though, on Sundays does this turn into a church service?

RH: Yep. I set it up in an auditorium format. All these churches be sitting back over here. I set it up. We have game nights on the first Friday of every month. I may set up tables with the felt cloth for dominoes and other games. We had, let other people use it. We had a salsa band that was getting ready to perform Friday, so there were three days prior to that that they had rehearsal here. A couple of times they had it on a Saturday, from about 9:00 to 11:00. This last week on Wednesday they had it from 7:00 p.m. to 9:00 p.m.

RK: So, they're paying in rent?

RH: Well, I told--we have a thing here, when we let people use this we don't tell them you pay us this much to use it. You can use it, just give us a donation. That donation can be anything they want. If they want to just give us $5, hey that's cool. Give us $55 that's cool, too. For $200, he practiced here 3 times. Nice salsa group. You like salsa?

RK: I like all kinds of music.

RH: [Laughs] Then people have meetings and then, like I said, there's a friend of mine, she has done a couple of pop-ups here. She's African Essentials. She's got a lot of African soaps and stuff like that and different types of things. 02:13:00She was having a party here. She had a paint party. So, you had the thing around here where they had all these ladies that was in here, and they were all sipping wine and painting the same thing. It was nice. This place has been transformed in so many different things.

RK: The original owner still owns it?

RH: Yeah. The people that own this whole complex.

RK: It's the whole complex, I see.

RH: Yeah, this whole entire complex is owned by Billy Reeds and his son runs this, they got property all over the place. They got the complex that's over off to the left, across the street, behind us on Grant Street, other places within the city they own. They allow Maggie to sublet this, and Maggie uses the place 02:14:00quite often and she leases it to us for what we use it for.

RK: Now tell us about this apartment that you're hoping to get.

RH: Well, based on my income, I thought that I had to apply for federal preference when they opened it up, meaning that you get higher up on the waiting list if you have federal preference. You get federal preference if you can prove that your housing, you lost your housing because of urban renewal or eminent domain. You had to provide documentation. I had to go through archive stuff. 02:15:00I've got pictures of my older brother when he was a little boy standing in front of the house, 1901 North Vancouver. I got pictures from, I guess a lady named Mary Hansen, who works for the city auditors, she provided me with any kind of documentation I need: old pictures, stuff like that. Then, I had copies of Oregonian newspapers, not copies of paper, but microfilm, showing the apartment and I was born at that address to Archie and Bernice Hunter, and then one that was actually verifying the residence of Archie and Bernice Hunter and what he did for a living and all that kind of stuff. I provided all the documentation they needed, then they sent that paperwork over to Magnolia II Apartments. They 02:16:00emailed and told me that I was at the top of the list. Then when the lady called me from Magnolia, I was the first person called because I was at the top of the list. I ain't never been at the top of nobody's list before. I'm on the waiting list for PCRI, Portland Community Reinvestment Initiative, that do a lot of affordable housing. I got on their waiting list in 2015 when I retired. Then in about 2017, I came up to the top of the list and then they told me that, well, you're at the top of the list. We do have this one studio. Would you like to take a look at it? Well, I said, I'll take a look at it. I took a look at it, and I didn't want it. Because I took a look at it, they put me back at the 02:17:00bottom of the list.

I just got a letter a few weeks ago saying that I was at the top of the list again. I had to come in and update my documentation. On September 3, I applied for federal preference for them to get on the waiting list, and I rose to the top already. I'm going to be one of the first ones to move in there when it opens up in January. I told the people at PCRI, I don't know what's wrong with you guys. I've been with you guys for about 3 or 4 years, and you guys have done nothing for me here. They're pretty pathetic. I tried to apply for a job in one of the apartments they had built, called the Beatrice Morrow as a resident coordinator. I got background experience in that. I didn't get hired. I understand that that position hadn't even been filled yet. I don't know why 02:18:00people don't hire the right people for the right jobs. I don't know that. They could be a lot better off if they did. But, no, I'm here waiting for them to finish building that, and I'm feeling good about being able to move into a brand new apartment. I'm getting tired of waiting 10, 15 minutes for my water to get hot because it has to travel through all these little pipes and everything. These pipes are the same way all through every unit all over the place. The walls are paper thin. I feel like I have no privacy, and I feel like I don't need to be hearing some of the things I hear [laughs].

RK: Another subject--you were pretty young at the time of the Civil Rights Movement, in the '60s and '70s. Did you, were you aware of what was going on? Did you participate?

RH: You know, it's kind of weird. I never participated but I was always aware of what was going on. I remember the riots that went on in my neighborhood. I always wondered, why do we burn down our own stuff? That didn't make sense to me, but what made sense was that we were tired and fed up. You ain't going to turn around and kill Martin Luther King. You're going too far now. I know my father, I don't know if you know the history about the Egyptian theater in Portland.

RK: Can you tell us about it?

RH: It was racist. Blacks could only sit in the balcony, only. They couldn't sit 02:20:00in the main auditorium. They couldn't get one of them little special suites off to the side. Just in the balcony. My father, I had a picture, and I let a gentleman see it that he never did get it back to me. I kind of lost that picture, but it was a picture of my father standing in front of the Egyptian Theater with flyers. He had on a trench coat and a brim hat boycotting the Egyptian Theater. I'm trying to find that picture again somewhere. I'll never let stuff like that out of my hand again. I trust nobody. Yep. I see that all the time. My father was always actively involved and doing a lot of things in 02:21:00the community to help folk. Because of his skills, he and another person who was a mason worked with someone else that was trying to put together a trade school where they would teach a trade to people that wanted to learn a trade. I don't know how many years that went on, but they stopped doing that. My father during the '60s and probably the early '70s, they owned a restaurant called Bernice's Kitchenette. It was right on Vancouver, I mean Williams Avenue between Ivy and Cook. Nice restaurant. My mother can cook. I always heard her beef stew was so good that one of the guys that's the pastor of the True Vine Missionary Baptist 02:22:00Church, pastor Raymond Edwards, a bus driver for TriMet, and he will double park his bus right in front of our restaurant and then come in and sit down and have a bowl of beef stew and a cornbread muffin [laughs]. He never got in trouble for it. Then we had ice cream parlor, too. We had a big machine in the back where my father had fun making 5-gallon containers of ice cream: black walnut, lemon custard, French vanilla, strawberry, chocolate, all kinds of stuff. We had a lot of people come by because that was good food.

RK: Talking about food, so you're a bachelor and you're living here. Do you cook your own food?

RH: I cook my own food. My ex-girlfriend nicknamed me Mr. Persnickety, because 02:23:00I'm always--my thing is that I'm a good cook. If you can't cook as good or better than me, why am I patronizing your business [laughs]?

RK: What do you cook?

RH: Well, I'm not that great of a cook, but whatever I cook, I cook good. I find it lately that it's not so much about me is that people have different types of tastebuds. They might find something that I think is secondhand, they might find it absolutely delicious. I don't know. Their tastebuds are different than mine.

RK: What kind of food do you like to eat that you cook?

RH: That I cook? I try to keep to simple things like boneless chicken breast. I like African stew. I'll get my tomato sauce and my spicy seasonings and my diced 02:24:00tomatoes and onions and bell pepper and carrots and peanut butter all that kind of good stuff and make me some nice peanut butter stew and put it over some rice. Gumbo. I think I make pretty good gumbo. There's so many different varieties of gumbo. I think I make--I can't do fried chicken but I can bake most any type of meat, from beef to pork, or whatever the case it be, season it where it will be nice and tender and melt in your mouth. Cornbread, because they make it easy for you. Mrs. Marie--just add water. I don't like Jiffy no more because I don't feel like buying milk and eggs just to make cornbread. My momma used to 02:25:00make everything from scratch. I make banana pudding. I think I make the best banana pudding around. There's a lot of people think they can make good banana pudding. I'll say, who told you that?

RK: How do you make banana pudding?

RH: From scratch.

RK: What's the recipe?

RH: I don't do the double boiler, which is probably the way you should do it. I get me a nice, smooth pan that you can cook, a pot you can put over the stove and get you a nice whisk. I use my flour and my sugar and my vanilla extract, your eggs and your bananas and your vanilla wafers, of course. You get all your liquid and stuff together with your eggs and stuff like that, you sit there and you just kinda slowly stir it as it cooks, as it thickens. Then, do all your 02:26:00layering and just pour that pudding over there and everything. It tastes pretty good. I don't do none of that pudding and pie filling thing, you know. Peach cobbler, sweet potato pie--all my daughters outdo me in the kitchen, but most of the men in my family are good cooks.

RK: What are you going to do for Thanksgiving?

RH: My daughter invited me to come up there. They say all their families are trying to do something with their own families on Thanksgiving, but she wanted us to come together on that Wednesday and have something together since she's, her and her husband is no longer together. They're divorced. So, she has her kids on Wednesday. He has the kids on Thanksgiving. She wants me to come up there for Thanksgiving with them. But, no, they--my son, he thinks he can cook a 02:27:00little good, a little bit, but I know what I can do and I know what I can't do. I know what tastes good, what doesn't taste good. There was a guy at the store around the corner from the church on 20th and going, they always sell fried chicken wings. So, I stopped by there to get me some. They look real good sitting up there in that warmer. So, I said, get me 3 chicken wings. This other guy had 3 chicken wings. When he came out the store he was like [imitates eating chicken wings] Man, this is good. I took a bite of my chicken, and I said, it's not even done. Then I was saying, he just like think this chicken is the bomb diggity. I'm thinking, I said, well, who told them they should be in business? That doesn't meant that the chicken wasn't good, that just mean that my taste is different from a lot of other people [laughs].

RK: Okay, well, I'll just ask you another general question to tie up, because we have a lot of interesting things that we can go on talking forever and forever. Just, when you look back at your life what were some of the best parts in it? What were some of the not so good parts?

RH: Well, I think some of the best parts of it was the fun that I had growing up in the community. Everybody played. You'd look in these streets down here, you don't see any kids playing in the street. Nobody's playing kickball or mother may I or red light-green light, anything like that. Nobody plays hide and go seek or hide and go get it. There's, man, there's just so much fun. We used to 02:29:00play parade. Everybody get a stick or some shovel or something like that and pretend it was an instrument and we would march down the street as a band playing. Is that creativity? You don't find no kids going to do that today. They see you walking down the street like that, they'll think you done lost your mind. The thing that really I like best is the fact that I always like it when my sisters' friends come over. They always had some good-looking female friends. I would just love when they would come over to visit all the time. I had a crush on a few of them.

Then the fact that while I was young the band, I think if it wasn't for music, I think my life would have probably been boring, because we did everything in 02:30:00music, everything, from field trips to even going, taking trips, we'd go down to the Shakespearean Festival and performances, marching in the band. I marched in the Rose Festival Parade 4 years in a row. We played the same song: everything's coming up roses. You know [imitates trumpet melody]. I even remember the fingering. I remember always being at the basketball games, the pep band playing, football games, the marching band is playing. But now, I'm involved with the Alumni Association, I go to the games. We don't have a band. They don't have no music department at all. One of the things that I'm now working on that I didn't write down was that Jefferson High School, Wilson High School, and 02:31:00Cleveland High School is coming up for the next bond measure. They just finished, they finished Roosevelt. They finished Franklin. They just got through a grant. Madison is being done now. Now, all these schools, each of the schools have what they call a conceptual master planning committee, and I was selected to be on that committee. So, we had our third meeting and we got one more meeting coming up, and then they're going to have a general thing for everybody else. I get to help come up with a conception, because they want all these schools to be comprehensive, at least 1,700 students. I get to have input on what that's going to look like and what Jeff should look like in the next 50 to 02:32:00100 years. Hopefully, as an alumni association, we can help work to make sure that some of those things are brought back. I think--I look at other schools, like Central Catholic, and the other schools they have bands. They have a good, sound music program. Just to see their band at the basketball games and they're coming to our school and we ain't got nothing but cheerleaders. It's sort of a sad scenario, but I think school spirit has picked up. I think people feel better about their school when they got a good music program.

RK: Well, is there anything else that you want to add at this point?

RH: No. I think, I remember, one of the things I used to get excited about--I don't know if ever heard of Mr. Softee? It was an ice cream truck?

RK: Ice cream, yeah.

RH: Yeah, you've heard of them before? Yeah, and the music was distinct, as different from any other music from an ice cream truck you've ever heard. When I used to live where Unthank Park is, we could get up on that banister and we could see the top of the truck over the hill. We'll say, oh, Daddy can we have some money? Mr. Softee's coming. That was exciting for us just as little kids. Then there was a snow cone truck that used to go by. I remember my older brother, Charles, he wanted to be the big shot. When everybody was trying to run and jump on the back of the truck, which was dangerous. So, he was knocking everybody else off and he was jumping on them. So, everybody went on in the house. Charles came back crying and holding his head because he had fell off the back of the truck and kind of gashed his head a little bit. We were saying 02:34:00that's what you get [laughs]. There was a lot of fun things. There was a lot of tragic things that happened, like I remember my younger brother that we had a glass, a mirror that was kind of cracked on the edge and it had a sharp edge to it. I think we kind of got into it and I remember pushing him back and he fell back and gashed his head on that thing there. I felt really bad about that.

RK: So, what would you say was the best thing in your adult life?

RH: The best thing in my adult life? Wow. Retirement? [Smiles and laughs] You just said senior life, you should say adult life. I don't know. I think the best 02:35:00thing has been community involvement. They had nothing like being involved with the community and helping people to work together to accomplish goals. I live for that. That's the reason why I'm actively involved with it now. I'm not working and I got time to give, and I give back generously.

RK: Okay, well thank you very much.

RH: Mm-hmm, yeah.