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Legacies Project Oral History: Connie and Ethan Stewart

When: 2020

Connie Gibbon and Ethan Allen “Al” Stewart were married on August 31, 1948 in East Orange, New Jersey. Al had just completed his BA at MIT. They moved to Indiana for his job at Procter & Gamble. Within a few years Al started working for Ford Motor Company’s Saline plant and the couple moved to Ann Arbor. They had three children: Carol, Connie, and James. Connie organized a cooperative preschool with neighborhood mothers, and later in life she volunteered for Planned Parenthood, including serving as temporary director. They moved to Glacier Hills Retirement Community in 2004, and then Rochester, Minnesota to be closer to their son James. Al passed away on April 22, 2014.

Connie and Ethan Stewart were interviewed as part of an internship at Applied Safety and Ergonomics in Ann Arbor in 2008 as part of the Legacies Project.

Transcript

  • [00:00:09.98] SPEAKER 1: All right, so this is the part where we want to interview both of you about your life together. So I would like to hear from each of you a little bit about your children and what life was like when your children were young and still living at home.
  • [00:00:28.24] CONNIE STEWART: OK. We have lovely children. We're very, very proud of them. The oldest child is a girl, and as a lot of oldest children, she really excelled. She was head of her class at Huron High and won all kinds of awards, and she's now married and has two children of her own.
  • [00:00:56.59] SPEAKER 1: Is there anything else you remember in particular.
  • [00:00:59.67] ETHAN STEWART: No, I think she's doing fine.
  • [00:01:02.88] SPEAKER 1: OK. And remind me, how many children did you have?
  • [00:01:05.64] CONNIE STEWART: Three.
  • [00:01:06.09] SPEAKER 1: OK, three. Gotcha. So I'd like to hear from each of you about your working years and what it was like to go to your job every day.
  • [00:01:17.46] CONNIE STEWART: Well, I took off several years. It must have been about 12 from the time I first had a child until I went back to work. And I stayed home and was a stay-at-home mother. It was kind of fun.
  • [00:01:32.96] But then I got-- when they all were in school and doing fine, then I got kind of antsy to get back into my career. And they offered refresher courses in one of the main hospitals here in Ann Arbor. So I went and took that and got a big job. It was part-time, and there were no weekends. So that's great for a nurse.
  • [00:02:04.04] SPEAKER 1: How about for you? Tell me about your working life.
  • [00:02:08.34] ETHAN STEWART: Well, I covered earlier the experience in the war years, the Merchant Marine. After I graduated from school, MIT, I started working for Procter & Gamble. And I was assigned, basically, into a research and development job. I was more of a hands-on guy, and that wasn't too much to my liking.
  • [00:02:32.31] So I finally got into, basically, what is now called plan engineering and gained some experience in that. And finally, when they decided to build the current Ford Saline Plant, I was appointed manager of plant engineering. That was probably the most interesting job I ever held.
  • [00:02:54.58] SPEAKER 1: And what was a typical day like during the working years of your life?
  • [00:03:02.15] CONNIE STEWART: Well, we got up in the morning.
  • [00:03:05.51] ETHAN STEWART: Lunch was not at home.
  • [00:03:07.07] CONNIE STEWART: Lunch was not home. I remember we each got in a different side of the bed when we got out of bed and we made the bed together. I remember that. And we went off to work, and as I said, it was mostly part-time so that I had time to do housework, and I had time to do the shopping and all that kind of women's stuff.
  • [00:03:40.01] On my days off, I'm trying to think of why-- Friday evenings was special, because I didn't cook. Either one of us stopped to buy something on the way home or we had sandwich material or something like that.
  • [00:04:07.19] And then, I'm trying to figure out when I went to work at the U. First, I did volunteer work. I did volunteer work for Planned Parenthood, and then going to work at the U in an ob-gyn clinic. And those were good hours, and I had very good working companions there. So I worked there for 9, 10 years till my mother had to come live with us.
  • [00:04:44.05] SPEAKER 1: And how about for you? What was a typical day like for you?
  • [00:04:46.86] ETHAN STEWART: Well, most of the time, here in Ann Arbor, I was down at the Saline Plant, because it was a three-shift operation. If you want to cover information available for the guys in charge of each of the plant engineering shifts, you have to show up at 7:00 in the morning before the midnight shift guys go home. Then you have to stick around in the afternoon to welcome in the afternoon shift.
  • [00:05:13.14] So that basically got me down at the plant a little bit before 7:00 in the morning, and I guess I wouldn't come home till about 6:00 at night. So it was an interesting job, a very challenging job, a lot of information to be digested. As the plant brought in new products, it was principally an instrument cluster-- instrumentation type plant, it was always a challenge of learning that, so it was fun, interesting.
  • [00:05:44.72] SPEAKER 1: Good. And what did you guys like to do-- each of you individually-- for fun?
  • [00:05:55.97] CONNIE STEWART: Well, we gardened. We always had a garden. We had friends, and I play a lot of bridge now.
  • [00:06:07.24] He stopped playing bridge several years ago, but we would have friends in for bridge or go to their house for bridge and have people in for supper, the same thing. And it was mostly-- we didn't go to any shows or theater productions. It was mostly with our friends.
  • [00:06:33.50] SPEAKER 1: Anything else to add?
  • [00:06:34.84] ETHAN STEWART: Well, in the summertime, which is what we're in now, our favorite pastime is to go out to the Murray Lake Swim Club, which is an artificial pond operation. And Connie has a pair of flippers, and I have a pair of flippers and--
  • [00:06:51.30] CONNIE STEWART: We flip around the lake.
  • [00:06:52.51] ETHAN STEWART: We flip around the lake. Yeah, and that works out real well.
  • [00:06:56.27] CONNIE STEWART: And that sub-development we lived in, there was a pool there, and we don't like pool swimming, but it was better than nothing. And that was before we heard about Murray Lake. And they'd have adult swim time, and we liked to swim.
  • [00:07:12.17] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah, I belonged to a rifle club, probably the premier rifle club in Southeast Michigan. So there's a lot of gun nuts down there. Most of them have the World War II rifles, which is what I've got-- a standard infantry rifle for World War II, the Garand. So we did that and then you'd bang away. It's kind of a boy thing to do.
  • [00:07:41.71] CONNIE STEWART: And I belong to what's known as the City Club here, and it's women. It's not all women, men can join, but mostly they join to play bridge, and they have a lot of activities that go on for women. [INAUDIBLE] a social bridge group there that means that it's random dealing and you just come and be [INAUDIBLE] this not divisible by 4. And they also have fashion shows and that kind of stuff.
  • [00:08:18.03] ETHAN STEWART: An interesting point about the flippers-- I bought Connie a pair of flippers, and that completely changed her swimming experience, I think.
  • [00:08:26.76] CONNIE STEWART: Yeah, because I always felt I was going to sink, so I paddled around in the shallow water. And the flippers gave me a buoyancy feeling that I was going to stay on top.
  • [00:08:38.73] ETHAN STEWART: But yet the flippers don't float. They'll float in salt water, but not in fresh water. So the buoyancy she got is really, in my book, the confidence in being able to propel herself around the pond.
  • [00:08:55.08] SPEAKER 1: So when your kids were still at home, what did you enjoy doing with your whole family together?
  • [00:09:07.76] ETHAN STEWART: Watching Pixie try to swipe a frankfurter off the table.
  • [00:09:10.69] CONNIE STEWART: Yeah, we had a dog. He was just very much for several years. But most the things we did were outdoor things, and sometimes it was just Alan and the son, and sometimes it was me and the daughters. But I can't think of any activity that we did all the time. I mean, it was-- do this one time, and think of something else to do another time.
  • [00:09:43.58] ETHAN STEWART: I spent time tutoring the kids in math, which I was pretty good at. In fact, I tutored for a couple of years at Greenhills and they all turned out to be good at mathematician. We had a house with a gambrel roof that goes like this. And then on this little spot over here, I had a light bulb and a card table. And our oldest daughter would come out and pester me for something to do.
  • [00:10:08.87] CONNIE STEWART: When she was a little toddler.
  • [00:10:10.39] ETHAN STEWART: So I made up a 10 by 10, and I showed her with a stopwatch how fast I could fill in the products. I didn't tell her that it has an axis of symmetry tag-- kind of like this-- that once you do one side, you don't have to think anymore, just copy. So that was a fun thing. And I really enjoyed the change with the kids and seeing them develop mathematical knowledge.
  • [00:10:37.01] CONNIE STEWART: And when they were little, like 3 and 4, before they went to kindergarten, a group of women friends who had children about the same age, we had our own little nursery school. We'd take turns at each other's houses, and some nights just the mothers would get together, and we'd plan the activities, what we were going to do with the kids. And as a byline, when Who's Important in American Schools and Colleges came out, a book like that, and people buy it if the kid's name is going to be in it, every one of those kids was in it.
  • [00:11:22.14] SPEAKER 1: So about what time in history was this that you were raising your kids?
  • [00:11:31.23] ETHAN STEWART: Well, the first one was born in '52.
  • [00:11:32.51] CONNIE STEWART: It was after the war.
  • [00:11:34.31] ETHAN STEWART: It's easy, '52, '54, '56.
  • [00:11:37.36] CONNIE STEWART: It was after the war.
  • [00:11:39.84] SPEAKER 1: So do you remember if there were any interesting fads or slang that your kids were into? Like funny words they said or weird things they wore?
  • [00:11:53.55] CONNIE STEWART: Well, the girls wore their hair almost down to their eyes, like that. That was the style, and it drove him crazy. They couldn't see.
  • [00:12:06.20] SPEAKER 1: That's funny. Are there any special days or events or family traditions you guys had at the time?
  • [00:12:15.63] CONNIE STEWART: No, I can't think of any, but the usual. Thanksgiving and Christmas and--
  • [00:12:20.13] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah, birthdays.
  • [00:12:21.18] CONNIE STEWART: Birthdays.
  • [00:12:23.29] ETHAN STEWART: Anniversaries.
  • [00:12:24.29] CONNIE STEWART: Yeah.
  • [00:12:26.91] SPEAKER 1: All right. So when you think back on your working adult life together, what important social or historical events were taking place at that time, and how did they impact you?
  • [00:12:44.30] CONNIE STEWART: Well, historical things were the rebuilding of Europe after the war. And that, of course, was interesting, but I don't see where it impacted us at all. Can you think it?
  • [00:12:58.49] ETHAN STEWART: No. One of the things that I think allowed us to live together for 60 years is the financial information was shared. I would-- still do-- brief Connie on what the strategy is going to do if the checking account gets too fat.
  • [00:13:22.49] CONNIE STEWART: Well, we didn't argue over money. We had the same attitude toward money was that if it came to be a problem, we discussed it. And we always found an answer, whether it was a compromise or it was a give-in kind of thing, but we never fought about money, and a lot of couples fight about money.
  • [00:13:45.71] ETHAN STEWART: And Connie gets to drive the best and newest car. I get the '85.
  • [00:13:53.42] CONNIE STEWART: Well, that's because I have more gadgets on my car.
  • [00:13:58.56] SPEAKER 1: All right. This last section of questions here, it's about your lives from the time when you retired, probably for you just when your husband retired, up until right now, present day. So how about you guys tell me about any moves you might have made from the time when you retired even up until when you moved to Glacier Hills. Did you move at all?
  • [00:14:29.30] CONNIE STEWART: No.
  • [00:14:29.62] ETHAN STEWART: Well, we're funny. We lived in the same house on the northeast side, Georgetown Boulevard, for 42 years. And it's only been a little over four years since we've left that house and come here. So, yeah, I don't know how to answer.
  • [00:14:47.68] CONNIE STEWART: And the reason we moved initially from where we first lived as a married couple was because of job changes and transfers. Why did we leave that first apartment?
  • [00:15:05.87] ETHAN STEWART: Well, we started out in Cincinnati on 1122 Eden Court up on the second floor.
  • [00:15:11.15] CONNIE STEWART: I'm trying to think.
  • [00:15:12.51] ETHAN STEWART: And then we bought the McKelvey Road house.
  • [00:15:14.36] CONNIE STEWART: We bought a house.
  • [00:15:16.13] ETHAN STEWART: And then Ford transferred me up to Sandusky, and then Ford transferred me to the Saline plant, and that got us here.
  • [00:15:24.46] CONNIE STEWART: OK, that's why we moved.
  • [00:15:26.93] SPEAKER 1: OK, gotcha. And how did you come to live here at Glacier Hills?
  • [00:15:33.11] CONNIE STEWART: He fell and broke his neck.
  • [00:15:35.74] SPEAKER 1: Oh, all right.
  • [00:15:37.85] CONNIE STEWART: It didn't-- I mean, I don't want to say it didn't bother him. Of course, it did. He was in a helmet for a long time, but the bone shattered out and didn't shatter in, so they didn't cut the spinal cord. And we would have been talking about moving, because he retired, and I was finding that I wasn't as happy about growing all the vegetables anymore. And so we came over here, and they had villas available, and eventually, of course, his neck healed.
  • [00:16:15.56] ETHAN STEWART: Four years ago, they had not rented all of them, the 26 of those.
  • [00:16:20.57] CONNIE STEWART: Well, about that time when they built them, they had most of them taken, and then there was a depression. It was in the March of the year. Remember, the stock market fell, and a lot of people backed out.
  • [00:16:32.41] And so we had a choice, and we picked the one where we could watch the ducks and had a basement and everything we needed. It's a great place to retire. And eventually, of course, his neck healed.
  • [00:16:45.14] SPEAKER 1: What year was that that you moved in here?
  • [00:16:48.80] ETHAN STEWART: '04.
  • [00:16:49.62] SPEAKER 1: '04.
  • [00:16:50.44] ETHAN STEWART: August, '04.
  • [00:16:52.25] SPEAKER 1: How did you break your neck?
  • [00:16:54.77] CONNIE STEWART: He fell down the stairs. We were walking down the stairs together. We had been upstairs for some reason, and we'd started walking down.
  • [00:17:04.80] And where the banister breaks from the top to the bottom-- he had a bad knee at that point. As a matter of fact, he had an appointment to get a new knee, and he just tripped with that bad knee, and he went right down. He put his hand through the wall at the bottom of the stairs.
  • [00:17:28.10] And he had a drink glass. In there, it had a cherry. He must have been having a Manhattan. And when we fixed the wall, we just left the glass and the cherry in there, because we figured sometime that wall's going to come down, and people are going to make up a story. How come that glass with a cherry in it, a dried up old cherry, would be in there?
  • [00:17:50.70] SPEAKER 1: That's funny. All right, let's see.
  • [00:17:55.07] CONNIE STEWART: Well--
  • [00:17:55.90] SPEAKER 1: Oh, go ahead.
  • [00:17:56.38] CONNIE STEWART: Well, I was just going to say he was in the hospital, of course, with a broken neck, and our younger daughter, who is very, very talented with her hands-- she can do anything. She came, and she saw the hole in the wall, and she fixed it all by herself. I helped carry things and all that sort of thing.
  • [00:18:16.34] She fixed the whole thing. She even took the piece of the wall board that wasn't used and took it to a painter and got the color matched, because, of course, it had been painted several years before and the color wasn't a match. She even got that done.
  • [00:18:35.55] And so we decided we weren't going to tell him. He was in the hospital. We were going to let him be surprised. But our son came to see him, and he stopped at home, of course. And first thing, he walks into the hospital room, he says, you should see the wall that Stacy fixed.
  • [00:18:55.91] SPEAKER 1: So do you guys plan to live here for the rest of your lives?
  • [00:18:58.85] CONNIE STEWART: Yes. Don't you?
  • [00:19:02.33] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah, I can't think of a reason to move.
  • [00:19:05.45] CONNIE STEWART: No, and you can get care here. I mean, if we get invalid or something, there's care, and the other one's nearby to--
  • [00:19:14.40] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. All right. How did your family life change for you when Ethan retired and when all the children had left home?
  • [00:19:26.53] CONNIE STEWART: It was quieter.
  • [00:19:27.80] SPEAKER 1: I bet.
  • [00:19:33.51] CONNIE STEWART: Well, they left home. Two of them went to the University of Michigan, so they were home back and forth for meals and did their laundry and stuff at home. So we saw a lot of them.
  • [00:19:46.78] The middle girl went to MSU, and she came home fairly frequently, because she could take a bus from MSU. We didn't have to go get her. And eventually they all had their own cars, and so they were in and out.
  • [00:20:07.25] And we promised that we wouldn't call them unless there was an emergency. They had to call us, because we were not going to be monitoring what they were doing in college. And that worked out real well.
  • [00:20:27.92] SPEAKER 1: What was it like for you, Ethan, having the extra free time from retiring and not having any kids home?
  • [00:20:36.17] ETHAN STEWART: That's a hard one to answer. I don't know. I guess it didn't change the way my life went, other than the fact that I had to teach them how to drive, provide a car.
  • [00:20:53.09] CONNIE STEWART: It didn't change my life much, because they rang in. Eventually my mother came to live with us, as I said, and then I had to stop work. I just couldn't leave her alone for long periods of time, like all day, so that changed. That was a big change in our life.
  • [00:21:14.83] SPEAKER 1: All right. So what is a typical day like in your current lives here at Glacier Hills?
  • [00:21:25.46] CONNIE STEWART: Well, we get up in the morning, and we each get our own breakfast if we want breakfast or whatever we want in the morning. And then we usually have some kind of an individual activity to do. I play bridge, twice a week anyway.
  • [00:21:43.72] And he doesn't play bridge, so that early afternoon or late morning I'll get into a bridge game, but not here. I don't like the way they play bridge, here so I play at the City Club or peoples' houses. And then if we don't have anything to do in the afternoon, we come over and get cookies. In the lobby, they have cookies.
  • [00:22:16.19] ETHAN STEWART: Or take a nap around 3 o'clock.
  • [00:22:17.79] CONNIE STEWART: Or take a nap, particularly if we've been swimming in the morning. We swim according to the weather, of course. That's about it.
  • [00:22:31.96] SPEAKER 1: All right. What do you like better about playing bridge at the City Club than here?
  • [00:22:38.75] ETHAN STEWART: That's a good question.
  • [00:22:39.76] CONNIE STEWART: Here, they don't change partners. I like to change partners. And here, they do things like-- well, we don't keep score like that in New York. There's one woman that says that all the time. And, you know, so I just play at the City Club.
  • [00:23:04.55] SPEAKER 1: A little less quarreling over there?
  • [00:23:07.94] CONNIE STEWART: We don't quarrel over bridge.
  • [00:23:11.51] ETHAN STEWART: You know, I mentioned working with the kids mathematically. Our second daughter teaches at the West Michigan Academy of Arts & Academics. It's in Spring Lake. And she's the geometry teacher and the Algebra I teacher. So that paid off in the long run.
  • [00:23:33.68] CONNIE STEWART: It did, and she just loves it. She loves her job.
  • [00:23:38.99] SPEAKER 1: That's great. So now that you are here at Glacier Hills, what are your individual favorite things to do for fun?
  • [00:23:50.91] ETHAN STEWART: Watch the ducks in the pond. The momma duck's got five ducklings.
  • [00:23:56.25] CONNIE STEWART: We usually have a drink before then.
  • [00:23:57.81] ETHAN STEWART: She ran a pre-flight test the other day. She was at the far end of the pond with the five ducklings, and then she took off flying this way. And of course, the little guys are doing their best to keep up. There goes Momma, you know. And they went and flapped their wings like crazy, but their wings are little small things like that, more footwork on their part, plodding down.
  • [00:24:21.45] And that's what's nice about this place. You get to see little things like that. For a while, they had a muskrat in the pond. I doggy walk the dog across the street, doing a lap with the doggy, and that's a lot of fun.
  • [00:24:36.90] CONNIE STEWART: For a while, they had geese, which are horrible to have around. And they had dogs come to chase them, but the geese went someplace, not too far away. There's a series of ponds that go down Earhart Road, and they must have had a nest down there, because they brought their goslings back. And they were the weirdest looking things you ever did see.
  • [00:25:03.57] But the geese were good parents. They would take them across the street in one, the father or the mother, and the other one would stay on the other side, two sides, and they'd watch those geese. Those goslings would go across to get back to the nest, and as far as I know, traffic always stopped for them. They just stopped and waited till those goslings got across the street. We walk a neighborhood dog.
  • [00:25:36.64] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah.
  • [00:25:37.93] CONNIE STEWART: The parent-- the dog's parents, the mother and father of the dog, well, sometimes she can walk well, but she has emphysema, and he has something wrong with his back. He cannot walk a dog. So we take the dog for a walk probably once a day.
  • [00:25:54.68] ETHAN STEWART: The dog across the street is a local therapy dog. Every Thursday, his owners take him down to the Care and Rehabilitation Center and leave him. And then he walks around, goes up on the beds, let's him get petted, and then they pick him up. So every Thursday he's out of action, so I usually walk him in the morning. He's a fun doggy.
  • [00:26:14.78] CONNIE STEWART: Yeah, he's a very, very friendly dog. Everyone likes him.
  • [00:26:20.71] SPEAKER 1: So since you came to Glacier Hills, have you noticed any unique social customs here among the people who live here?
  • [00:26:30.16] CONNIE STEWART: I don't know what's unique. Is there a Friday-- every other Friday night wine and cheese?
  • [00:26:35.03] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah, every other Friday night.
  • [00:26:37.70] CONNIE STEWART: Every other Friday night, they serve wine and crackers and cheese and fresh fruit in the lobby. And then the Friday night in-between, the group of us get together in our villas and do the same thing. And that's formed a very nice little social group.
  • [00:27:00.53] SPEAKER 1: That's nice. And are there any special days or events or family traditions that you enjoy now with your family?
  • [00:27:11.56] CONNIE STEWART: Well, they all live far away. They're all coming for our anniversary. Oh, we got-- our boy is in Minnesota, and our younger daughter's on the west side of this state, and she comes in fairly frequently to see us. And the other daughter is way out in San Francisco.
  • [00:27:35.01] SPEAKER 1: So when you think back on your later life, from after Ethan's retirement up until now, what important social or historical events were taking place then, and how did they impact you?
  • [00:27:48.58] ETHAN STEWART: That's a tough one to answer. From my standpoint, the life hasn't changed dramatically, except we're in a different location. So there hasn't been a big impact. The things that I like to do-- go down to the gun club with the guys and bang away a little bit, or walk the doggies, or wolf around the property, that still goes on.
  • [00:28:13.39] CONNIE STEWART: We're not involved in politics. I mean, we don't run for office or campaign for anybody. So I guess that's it.
  • [00:28:27.12] SPEAKER 1: What about when you think over your entire life for each of you? What important social or historical event had the greatest impact?
  • [00:28:38.79] ETHAN STEWART: Getting an admission slip into the class of '48 while I was still 16 from MIT. That forever changed my life.
  • [00:28:45.93] SPEAKER 1: At 16, yeah.
  • [00:28:48.57] ETHAN STEWART: Because when you start shopping for a job and they ask, well, where did you go to school? Well, I went to school at MIT. You know, I can see past the secretary. So that was the biggest impact in my life.
  • [00:29:03.23] SPEAKER 1: Wow. How about for you?
  • [00:29:05.22] CONNIE STEWART: I think the war.
  • [00:29:06.25] SPEAKER 1: The war?
  • [00:29:06.72] CONNIE STEWART: Mm-hm. And all the changes the war brought for people in their late teens, middle teens.
  • [00:29:18.78] SPEAKER 1: How did you end up getting into MIT at the age of 16?
  • [00:29:24.59] CONNIE STEWART: Well, come on, you were smart.
  • [00:29:28.20] ETHAN STEWART: No, the thing that helped me is-- and this was at Stockton Place School, do you remember that? They decided that I was unsuited for third grade, because it was too easy. So they put me into fourth grade. So that made me a year younger than the other kids in the class, and that continued on up to getting out of high school.
  • [00:29:58.17] Why was I still 16? Well, I actually-- the high school ended in June, and I turned 17 in August. So, you know, it's a small gap.
  • [00:30:08.90] CONNIE STEWART: But he still had time before he had to do something like going into the service, because the war was on.
  • [00:30:19.48] SPEAKER 1: Well, let's see. When you think over your entire life, what are each of you most proud of?
  • [00:30:27.68] ETHAN STEWART: That you're still married.
  • [00:30:30.17] CONNIE STEWART: We're still married--
  • [00:30:30.97] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah.
  • [00:30:31.24] [INTERPOSING VOICES]
  • [00:30:32.38] You look around and you see that the success ratio is-- what-- less than 50% now.
  • [00:30:38.16] CONNIE STEWART: Yeah.
  • [00:30:38.40] ETHAN STEWART: And we've had one divorce among our two daughters, so the impact is there. And that was, to me, a very sad thing.
  • [00:30:46.81] SPEAKER 1: Yeah. What would you say has changed the most from the time when you were my age up until now?
  • [00:30:56.47] ETHAN STEWART: That's a hard one to answer. Go ahead.
  • [00:31:01.27] CONNIE STEWART: Sexual morals.
  • [00:31:03.91] SPEAKER 1: How so?
  • [00:31:07.87] CONNIE STEWART: Well, when we were teenagers, we didn't have sex. But now--
  • [00:31:19.09] SPEAKER 1: It's a lot more common. How about for you? What do you think has changed the most?
  • [00:31:23.19] ETHAN STEWART: I agree with that, yeah. I think one of the things that was an issue is the pregnancy issue. And at the onset of the pill, it's changed that game dramatically.
  • [00:31:41.50] SPEAKER 1: And what advice would you guys give to my generation?
  • [00:31:48.36] ETHAN STEWART: Do as well as we have done.
  • [00:31:53.03] CONNIE STEWART: I guess I can't disagree with that. I mean, we've had a nice family, we've had a good life, and there isn't much I can wish for, other than maybe seeing our children more often, but--
  • [00:32:09.01] ETHAN STEWART: You know, one thing that hasn't been mentioned is we never had a money problem. In other words, I was never without work, didn't ever have to borrow from relatives. So we were financially independent, and that separates a lot of couples who fight over money, but we never went through that.
  • [00:32:33.80] SPEAKER 1: Is there anything else you guys would like to add that we haven't talked about?
  • [00:32:38.47] CONNIE STEWART: I don't think so. You've covered everything.
  • [00:32:41.35] SPEAKER 1: We try. Anything else you want to talk about?
  • [00:32:45.25] ETHAN STEWART: I can't think of anything that would be of interest. We've covered the bulk.
  • [00:32:52.27] SPEAKER 1: All right. Well, in that case, thank you both for--
  • [00:32:54.77] CONNIE STEWART: Well, thank you.
  • [00:32:55.55] JIMMY: I have something.
  • [00:32:56.78] SPEAKER 1: What do you want to say, Jimmy?
  • [00:32:57.97] ETHAN STEWART: Fire away.
  • [00:33:00.22] JIMMY: Because you brought up about change, for instance, sexual mores. We talked a lot about historical events like the wars in Korea or World War II, but there's obviously been a lot of social change, like the '60s, that whole thing. How did you navigate those years where there were so many social changes? Because you were probably raising your kids right in the middle of that.
  • [00:33:30.29] CONNIE STEWART: You mean the hippies and that?
  • [00:33:31.40] JIMMY: Oh, well, they must have been-- like, they would've been teenagers right in the middle of a lot of the sexual and other kinds of cultural mores changing, and so how did you parent them through the shoals there?
  • [00:33:46.35] ETHAN STEWART: The issue of shoals, to my knowledge, never came up. I think the kids, looking at us and listening to us, decided that there was a certain-- I'll choose a fancy word-- modicum of decorum that they had to follow.
  • [00:34:03.09] CONNIE STEWART: Yes, and also because of the strict feeling about premarital sex at that point, we wouldn't expect them to come to us, the girls, and ask advice of mother. You know, should I sleep with him, or would you get me birth control pills? And birth control pills are easy to get once they got into college, I'm sure.
  • [00:34:27.89] ETHAN STEWART: Did you have to ever get any for the two girls?
  • [00:34:30.52] CONNIE STEWART: No. But I'm sure that they got them.
  • [00:34:35.41] ETHAN STEWART: Oh, both of them got them?
  • [00:34:38.14] CONNIE STEWART: They didn't-- I mean, it's easy to get them, but they were not including me in their sexual decisions. And I'm glad, because they weren't any better than any other kids, and I didn't want to get involved in that kind of advice with them.
  • [00:34:58.96] SPEAKER 1: So you-- didn't you volunteer with Planned Parenthood?
  • [00:35:01.72] CONNIE STEWART: I volunteered with Planned Parenthood, and I set up prenatal classes that I did sometimes as a volunteer. They weren't all prenatal, but they were in Pioneer High School and in Huron School. They had nurses that wanted to get some advice about birth control, et cetera, and so I gave them classes. And through that, I got out somehow into giving prenatal classes in the community. Lamaze classes, you wouldn't think of them probably as doing that, and some of that was volunteer.
  • [00:36:03.46] And I would go into the high schools and would put the-- it was just girls-- put the girls through an hour-long practice labor, speed the whole thing up, you know, and they liked it. The teachers would call me. I have another group of girls, will you come in? And if I drove to Dexter or Chelsea, I'd charge them.
  • [00:36:32.32] ETHAN STEWART: Speaking of Planned Parenthood, there was a period of time where the director left, and she became temporary director. And that was at a time when Planned Parenthood was a persona non grata, meaning that there was some risk that they might sabotage the building. I remember one night--
  • [00:36:58.75] CONNIE STEWART: We had to practice what would happen if someone bombed the building, and-- I don't know. We took it very lightly. And the person was telling us, don't take this lightly. They bomb Planned Parenthood buildings. They come in, and they shoot them up, but we--
  • [00:37:15.61] ETHAN STEWART: So we went down there one night, and I have a military carbine that was--
  • [00:37:20.96] CONNIE STEWART: We went down one night because another Planned Parenthood from out of town was holding a meeting there and discovered that the water boiler was leaking, and there was water all over the basement. And it was in a pretty bad district. I wouldn't go down there by myself, and so he came with me with a gun.
  • [00:37:44.19] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah, I have a World War II carbine that I got legally from the National Rifle Association.
  • [00:37:47.80] CONNIE STEWART: And he knew how to turn off the water so that it wouldn't continue to leak.
  • [00:37:56.16] SPEAKER 1: How would you say you ended up going from a very conservative childhood to being the temporary director of Planned Parenthood?
  • [00:38:07.51] CONNIE STEWART: My mother never understood that either. I didn't. I started-- I did volunteer work with them, and pretty soon they needed a nurse because the other nurse left, and the other nurse went on part time, so that we shared a job for a while. And then she left. And the whole thing was chaotic, and I was the-- for a temporary period, I was in charge of the whole kit and caboodle.
  • [00:38:38.85] ETHAN STEWART: For a long time, they had a guy who came in and did abortions in like about 10 minutes, lined them up and ran them through.
  • [00:38:46.33] CONNIE STEWART: Well, yes-- not 10 minutes. They were doing abortions there. Because I was paid with HEW funds, I had nothing to do with abortions.
  • [00:39:00.76] SPEAKER 1: And what got you into the idea of volunteering with Planned Parenthood in the first place?
  • [00:39:07.94] CONNIE STEWART: Well, in teaching the Lamaze classes, we made a book. And I went into Planned Parenthood to see what they were doing, because we were talking about birth control after giving birth, and I just got interested. They needed somebody there at that point just to answer the phone, and then the whole thing evolved after that.
  • [00:39:35.28] JIMMY: I have one other thing, because I started this whole mess. You mentioned Hoboken, New Jersey.
  • [00:39:40.53] ETHAN STEWART: Yeah.
  • [00:39:41.23] JIMMY: We're wondering in terms of the timing, any Sinatra brushes with--
  • [00:39:46.35] CONNIE STEWART: No.
  • [00:39:47.16] ETHAN STEWART: No. Nancy Sinatra lived in the area. Hoboken was the ferry terminus if you want to take a car out of Manhattan Island without going through the tunnel.
  • [00:39:57.49] CONNIE STEWART: Or take the-- you could take the ferry over and then catch a subway to wherever you wanted to go in Manhattan. The subway was quicker.
  • [00:40:09.10] JIMMY: I'm sure he would already been out by then.
  • [00:40:10.59] CONNIE STEWART: Yeah, yeah. He wasn't there.
  • [00:40:15.31] ETHAN STEWART: I can't even tell you whether the ferries are still running.
  • [00:40:19.61] CONNIE STEWART: I don't know either. We're out of the area.
  • [00:40:25.30] ETHAN STEWART: Some of the old ferry boats from the New York area wound up in Rio de Janeiro and the ferry service, and we were down there when one of them made the trip from the US down there. And what they do, the ferry boat has a big opening in the bow and a big opening in the stern. They built up a wooden closure so that if the wave broke over the ship, it wouldn't go on the inside, and they sailed them down there.
  • [00:40:57.31] As a matter of fact, a couple of the ferry boats and rail at the time were reciprocating. They had a single cylinder engine, and that would turn the wheel. And then, I think, they only had two that had twin screws in them, front and rear, so they didn't have to turn them around, but they were regular paddle boats. Very interesting to see that old technology. I have no idea what they do now, must have diesel power.
  • [00:41:25.28] CONNIE STEWART: Yeah.
  • [00:41:27.25] ETHAN STEWART: Well, if you're done with us, I enjoyed it.
  • [00:41:29.12] JIMMY: Thank you so much. Very, very much.