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Legacies Project Oral History: Pamela Shultz

When: 2020

Pamela Shultz was born in 1925 in New Smyrna Beach, Florida. She attended Florida State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and majored in Psychology. She married Edwin (Ted) Shultz in 1946, and they moved to the Detroit area soon afterwards. Shultz got her master’s in Special Education from the University of Michigan and taught developmentally disabled children in Livonia schools and the Plymouth State Home in the 1960s and 70s. She passed away on January 30, 2015.

Pamela Shultz was interviewed as part of an internship at Applied Safety and Ergonomics in Ann Arbor in 2008 as part of the Legacies Project.

Transcript

  • [00:00:09.11] SPEAKER 1: --will help us sort the information again. OK, this is [? Jared ?] [? France ?] interviewing Pamela Shultz on July 14. Please say and spell your name.
  • [00:00:22.17] PAMALA SHULTZ: The last name is Shultz-- S-H-U-L-T-Z, no C. Pamela-- P-A-M-E-L-A.
  • [00:00:31.51] SPEAKER 1: OK. What is your birth date, including the year?
  • [00:00:34.82] PAMALA SHULTZ: 1/12/25.
  • [00:00:39.50] SPEAKER 1: How would you describe your race or ethnicity?
  • [00:00:42.98] PAMALA SHULTZ: Caucasian.
  • [00:00:45.74] SPEAKER 1: What is your religious affiliation, if any?
  • [00:00:50.18] PAMALA SHULTZ: I'm a deist.
  • [00:00:53.91] SPEAKER 1: What--
  • [00:00:54.13] PAMALA SHULTZ: Many pathways to God.
  • [00:00:57.22] SPEAKER 1: What is the highest level of formal education that you have completed?
  • [00:01:00.95] PAMALA SHULTZ: Masters.
  • [00:01:02.44] SPEAKER 1: Did you attend any additional school beyond what you completed?
  • [00:01:06.43] PAMALA SHULTZ: I have hearing aids, but I still cannot hear your enunciation sometimes. The latter part of that sentence, please.
  • [00:01:15.10] SPEAKER 1: Did you attend any additional school beyond what you completed?
  • [00:01:20.38] PAMALA SHULTZ: No.
  • [00:01:22.63] SPEAKER 1: What is your marital status?
  • [00:01:25.81] PAMALA SHULTZ: Married. 61 years. Same husband.
  • [00:01:32.91] SPEAKER 1: OK.
  • [00:01:33.30] SPEAKER 2: Way to go!
  • [00:01:34.09] PAMALA SHULTZ: [LAUGHS]
  • [00:01:35.50] SPEAKER 1: How many children do you have?
  • [00:01:37.30] PAMALA SHULTZ: Four.
  • [00:01:38.62] SPEAKER 1: How many siblings do you have?
  • [00:01:41.14] PAMALA SHULTZ: I had two. One is deceased.
  • [00:01:46.84] SPEAKER 1: What would you consider your primary occupation to have been?
  • [00:01:53.89] PAMALA SHULTZ: A housewife and a mother. Also a special ed teacher, but that would be secondary to the first roles.
  • [00:02:04.03] SPEAKER 1: So you were paid to work outside the home for the special ed--
  • [00:02:08.41] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh yes.
  • [00:02:08.98] SPEAKER 1: OK. Anything else that you have done outside the home for pay?
  • [00:02:14.43] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh, I've done lots of things outside of the home. A major thrust has been volunteerism. But I helped set up the first group homes for the mentally impaired in the state of Michigan. We laid groundwork for that.
  • [00:02:33.08] SPEAKER 1: All right. OK, I think we're ready to get going. There are three parts to the interview. This is part 1 covering your childhood and school years, the second part will be your adulthood, and the third part will be after retirement.
  • [00:02:48.49] PAMALA SHULTZ: After what?
  • [00:02:49.42] SPEAKER 1: Retirement. All right. Where did you grow up and what are the strongest memories of that place?
  • [00:02:57.43] PAMALA SHULTZ: I grew up on the east coast of Florida in New Smyrna Beach. It was a little town of 10,000 people just below Daytona Beach. I have very wonderful memories of growing up there. We had not only the Atlantic Ocean to enjoy, but the Indian River. The natural world there was very lovely except for the surge of mosquitoes in the summertime before insect control.
  • [00:03:37.52] We-- in those days, we were not entertained, we entertained ourselves. But we had a wonderful sylvan sort of environment. Spent a lot of time on the Indian River in kayaks and swimming in it, too. In rowboats.
  • [00:04:04.31] SPEAKER 1: How did your family come to live there?
  • [00:04:07.01] PAMALA SHULTZ: My father was an engineer from Tulane University, he finished there at age 19. He went to war, World War I, and then he decided to go to Florida to help build the first roads after the advent of the automobile. So he started building roads down there about 1920. And that's how he got there.
  • [00:04:32.63] My mother came with her father and mother. He was told to go there climate-wise for a condition he had in his sinus.
  • [00:04:46.68] SPEAKER 1: What was your house like?
  • [00:04:51.13] PAMALA SHULTZ: Still there. It was a wonderful house. My father built it just before I was born. In fact, I was born in bedroom number 1. He-- as our family expanded, he added bedrooms at the back, but it was a 1920s Florida bungalow all on one floor. And it had lots of land around it. So that we had a cow, and we had chickens, and later ducks, and lots of-- and mini dogs. Lots of good animal life.
  • [00:05:35.23] SPEAKER 1: How many people lived in a house with you while you grew up, and what was their relationship to you?
  • [00:05:41.02] PAMALA SHULTZ: We had two women of color who lived with us, one for 10 years, and the other one for 45 years. And she was-- the second one was like a second mother to me. Emma Lou. She cooked, and her sister, who was there just 10 years, did all the sewing. And our clothes were-- she made all of our dresses.
  • [00:06:11.59] Later, she became a very fine seamstress, self-taught, at the only dress shop in New Smyrna. But she was very good at what she did. Emma Lou was wonderful. And she took care of us. When we were sick, she was the one that was by our bedside. My mother was great, but she loved people and she was often away very often with friends. But always caring and loving with us.
  • [00:06:47.33] SPEAKER 1: What was your family like, then? How did you get along?
  • [00:06:51.57] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well we got along very well. We were noted for our food. Many people said, you had the best food on the east coast of Florida, especially fried chicken. And Emma Lou, fried chicken just about every other day for us. We had-- my father loved to eat, and so he loved to do things like making ice cream hand-churned in a big freezer on the back steps. And we didn't do it in quart sizes, we did it in two-and-a-half gallon sizes.
  • [00:07:38.91] SPEAKER 1: Oh my goodness.
  • [00:07:39.87] PAMALA SHULTZ: And it was every weekend. And we would sit on the top of the freezer. And Emma Lou would do the hard work of turning it. And by Sunday night, starting on Saturday, the two-and-a-half gallons were gone. And we ate it. And our cousins came from Winter Park. My uncle was a doctor over there. And when they came to visit us, they said, the Hotards-- that was my maiden name-- the Hotards, they eat ice cream not in bulk-- ice cream dishes, but in soup bowls.
  • [00:08:22.25] And we did love our ice cream, and then he would go to the wholesale drug places-- this is when you had soda fountains and ice cream there, and he would get big jars of chocolate sauce and walnuts and syrup and maraschino cherries and all sorts of things. And we would go in the butler's pantry and make our Sundays. And we all wore chubbed-up dresses, I might add. That's the-- those were the dresses made for heavier little girls.
  • [00:09:00.77] SPEAKER 1: You mentioned your father worked on the roads. Is that right? He built roads?
  • [00:09:04.89] PAMALA SHULTZ: Yes.
  • [00:09:07.20] SPEAKER 1: What else did he do and what did your mother do?
  • [00:09:10.08] PAMALA SHULTZ: My father did many things. When the big Depression-- the crash and The Depression came in the late '20s, the advent of the automobile had come to pass, and people all wanted automobiles, and they needed to buy them on time because nobody had much money. So he founded the first mortgage reserve company in New Smyrna and he financed automobiles.
  • [00:09:40.86] And then later on, he decided that with the tourists coming down from the north and the advent of motels-- until then, there had just been rooming houses, but when the motel business came into being, he realized that they were going to need lots of linen for their beds. So he went into the laundry and dry cleaning business. And he did very well-- that was up in Daytona that he opened that business. And that's what he did until he retired much later.
  • [00:10:19.88] SPEAKER 1: What did your mother do?
  • [00:10:21.63] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, my mother decided that she wanted to go into drama and speech. And so she lived in New Smyrna-- they didn't even have high school there. She had to go to live with her older sister in Jacksonville where she went to high school. And she heard the Chautauqua players. Have you ever heard of them? Well, they came even to Florida and to the East Coast. And she heard the Chautauqua players perform. And she said to her dad, you know, I could do as well as them. And she said, won't you let me go to drama school in Jacksonville? And so he did.
  • [00:11:06.18] And after that, she came back to New Smyrna. And she taught in the school, not as a member of the faculty, but the principal secured a place for her to teach over there. And she taught speech, and in those days, they call it elocution. But she taught the young people to stand up on their two feet and speak in front of groups. And she did that, and later became a marvelous bridge player in retirement. Oh, she was a master bridge player.
  • [00:11:50.34] SPEAKER 1: How would you describe your relationship with other family members during your childhood?
  • [00:11:55.71] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, I was two-and-a-half years older than my youngest sister and only one-and-a-half years older than my middle sister. But in those days, in high school, the middle one was two years younger-- two years behind me in school, and that's a big gap. So actually, my closest friends were girls my age. And we had a-- we have a good relationship now, but growing up, I was way above them because I was a year-and-a half and two-and-a-half years older. So I had my friends because they were considered young still.
  • [00:12:41.89] SPEAKER 1: What was the typical day like when you were growing up?
  • [00:12:47.62] PAMALA SHULTZ: A difficult day. Well, I love to play the piano. And one thing that happened to me was I was about a senior in high school, and I was supposed to play in front of the assembly "Libre Strom." And I got up to play "Libre Strom," and I sat out at the piano, and I couldn't remember a single thing. And I had to get up, and it was the student body, which wasn't very big, but it seemed like I was performing, I don't know, in some huge auditorium, and it was very embarrassing to sit down after the dead silence from the piano.
  • [00:13:40.84] SPEAKER 1: Can you describe the chores or duties that you had at that time? Any chores you had?
  • [00:13:46.51] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, you know, I'm ashamed to say, we didn't really have any chores. We were very indulged. And later on when I had so much to do with four children that came all within six years and living in Michigan rather than Florida, I had to do everything. And we always laughed and said, well, we didn't get put upon growing up, so that now we could go into it with great enthusiasm and verve. And we really kind of enjoyed the delight of learning and doing.
  • [00:14:28.75] SPEAKER 1: What were your favorite things to do for fun when you were growing up?
  • [00:14:32.98] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh, we loved to go to the beach. We often walked to get there. And in those days, it's only a few miles to walk to the beach, but that was quite a feat. We'd walk over and spend the day. And then we'd love to take the rowboat and row all over the river. And we had the creeks and the mangrove trees across from the river, and we'd love to go and spend days-- a day over there almost getting lost in the creeks. And we'd take our picnic lunches, and that was lots of fun.
  • [00:15:14.10] We did some hiking in the woods around New Smyrna, but it's very buggy, and of course, there are a lot of snakes, too. So for hiking and woods, it's not nearly as nice as Michigan.
  • [00:15:31.45] SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm. Can you remember any interesting fads or slang words that you used during that time?
  • [00:15:39.19] PAMALA SHULTZ: Any what?
  • [00:15:41.05] SPEAKER 1: Slang words? Like if something was cool, did you say "cool?" Or did you call it something else?
  • [00:15:46.51] PAMALA SHULTZ: No. We didn't use the word cool. I know some, I have to just try to pull them up out of my memory. Right now I don't have a memory for it. Give me one from the '20s and '30s. You've interviewed other people.
  • [00:16:13.83] SPEAKER 2: Neat.
  • [00:16:16.02] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, is "neat" current?
  • [00:16:17.88] [LAUGHTER]
  • [00:16:20.20] SPEAKER 1: It's still used, yeah.
  • [00:16:21.72] PAMALA SHULTZ: I thought that was fairly current. I can't-- I can't think of one.
  • [00:16:28.39] SPEAKER 1:
  • [00:16:28.61] SPEAKER 2: Snazzy.
  • [00:16:29.10] PAMALA SHULTZ: What?
  • [00:16:29.55] SPEAKER 2: Snazzy.
  • [00:16:30.66] SPEAKER 1: Spiffy.
  • [00:16:32.07] PAMALA SHULTZ: Spiffy?
  • [00:16:32.39] SPEAKER 1: Mm-hmm.
  • [00:16:34.90] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh, I go way back beyond that. [LAUGHS] In time.
  • [00:16:41.16] SPEAKER 2: What about like clothing trends? Or music or dances?
  • [00:16:46.82] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh, well, of course, we loved the swing era and the big bands. And the Dixieland blues and jazz. Love all that still. And it's still going strong, too, all of it.
  • [00:17:04.17] SPEAKER 1: How about the clothes? How did people dress?
  • [00:17:07.55] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, we had our hand-knitted sweaters that a librarian would do in her spare time and we bought them from her. And then she would hand-knit these bobby socks to go with our saddle shoes. And they matched the sweaters. And-- oh, in the summer, they had those broomstick skirts. And you know what they are, don't you?
  • [00:17:35.58] SPEAKER 2: No.
  • [00:17:36.27] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well you put a broomstick in the middle when you've washed it, and the skirts are thinner material, and you whirl it around the broomstick and tie it in places so that when you unfurl it, it hangs with lots of creases in it. It's called broomstick. Of course, if we went to a dance-- and we only went to dances a couple of times a year. The graduation dance and the prom dances, but we had-- we love to go out and get something very formal and dressy for that.
  • [00:18:17.40] But nobody wore [INAUDIBLE] at all. I mean, this business now is-- it was unheard of then. And even strapless, that was not done either.
  • [00:18:34.45] SPEAKER 1: Can you remember any special days, events, or family traditions that you especially enjoy when you were growing up?
  • [00:18:42.57] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, our family tradition was to always have our relatives from my mother's side over for Thanksgiving and for Christmas. And when I say the relatives, there were two sisters and their husbands and my grandmother. This was after my grandfather died when I was quite young, and they always came for these dinners.
  • [00:19:08.83] And oh, for those holiday dinners, the tradition was to fill a sideboard. Every lady in the family made a cake. That was all special-- their specialties. And they weren't done with cake mixes, they were done starting from scratch with real butter and sugar. And then we didn't have ice cream back then, even though we churned it on the back steps. At holiday time we had what you call ambrosia. And I don't know whether you know what that is.
  • [00:19:49.28] SPEAKER 2: No.
  • [00:19:49.86] PAMALA SHULTZ: It's four oranges and bananas and some coconut. And later on, people put pineapple and other things, but that's what we always had on our sideboard for dessert.
  • [00:20:05.23] SPEAKER 1: Thinking back across your childhood and school years, what important social or historical events were taking place at that time, and how did it personally affect you and your family?
  • [00:20:18.70] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well of course, when I was in high school, junior-- or no, I was-- I was a senior. It was December, I think, of '41. World War II was declared, that's when we joined the forces in Europe. And that was a very momentous occasion. I can remember even now, we were taking typing and shorthand classes. Everybody sort of did that as a matter of course in their senior year or two in high school. And the teacher stopped everything so we could listen to Franklin Roosevelt on the radio. And we did. And that was the most momentous historical happening.
  • [00:21:16.50] SPEAKER 1: How did that personally affect you?
  • [00:21:20.70] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, amazingly enough, at that age-- we were talking about this just recently. And as a girl not being concerned about draft or anything, it didn't affect us the way it should have. Back in those days, we were not cognizant of current events nearly the way people are now. So the way we listened to Jim Lehrer's program every night. We weren't that attuned to world events.
  • [00:21:54.88] So the main thing was the shortages. We did have shortages, and then we did volunteer to go up into the tower over on the beach side of New Smyrna called Coronado Beach, and if you can believe it, we were put there to look out for any activity on the shorelines of the Atlantic Ocean there, because there were many German submarines. And some of them did come up to Jekyll Island and landed there. And so it was not just a lark, it was very serious business. But that was one way we volunteered.
  • [00:22:46.87] SPEAKER 1: All right. This next set of questions covers a relatively long period of your life from after school. And so all of your children had left home-- or your spouse retired from work. So it could be four decades here. After you finished school, where did you live?
  • [00:23:11.46] PAMALA SHULTZ: When I finished school, we married. After I finished in June, we married in September. And we stayed at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I'd gotten a degree in psychology in June, and my husband came back from the Pacific where he'd served for a year and a half after being in ROTC at Chapel Hill first.
  • [00:23:41.97] And he came back and we married, and then he worked on his masters at the University of North Carolina. And I had become sort of a protege of the head of the psychology department, and he asked me to be the departmental secretary. And thank goodness, I had done that shorthand and typing back in high school, because it was very crucial to the job, but I was also the student advisor to all the undergraduate psychology students.
  • [00:24:17.13] He and another professor, well they had first given me a fellowship in the psych department when I was a junior. And with the fellowship, they encouraged me to go up to a mental hospital, a private one in Hartford, Connecticut that summer between my junior and senior years to see how I liked clinical psychology and abnormal psychology.
  • [00:24:45.81] And I was-- I was there, and then he said he could get me a job teaching at a college if I wanted it, just basic general psychology. It was a new field at the time, fairly recent field of development. And I chose to marry and work for him, and that's what I did originally. And then we stayed there two-and-a-half more years. And in 1949, we moved to Michigan when he was offered a job at Ford Motor Company.
  • [00:25:23.80] And then the next few decades, we were in Michigan. That's a long time to cover. How long do you want me to talk?
  • [00:25:34.08] SPEAKER 1: That's perfectly fine. That's good right there. I'd like you to tell me a little bit about your married and family life. First tell me about your spouse. Where and when did you meet him?
  • [00:25:49.89] PAMALA SHULTZ: I met him at Chapel Hill when I first arrived. There was a blind date get-together-- not exactly a date, even, but in our dormitory, a group came over and wanted to play bridge. And so I went down as one of several girls to play bridge with them, and that's where I met Ted.
  • [00:26:14.04] And he had come from TVA territory in Eastern Tennessee, Norris. And we met and we-- it was-- we did fall in love right away, and we were together for about four-and-a-half months before he went overseas. And he came back, and his major interest after the war was-- he had gotten a degree in naval science, but his major interest was in industrial relations and personnel work, and that's what he studied then. And statistics. And then Ford actually interviewed him by telephone, but opened up a job for him in Michigan.
  • [00:27:18.09] SPEAKER 1: What was it like when you guys were dating?
  • [00:27:22.10] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh, there were some wonderful places to walk and spend time with-- spend time in at Chapel Hill. We had an Austrian place in the heart of town called Danziger's, and that's where you went for-- now they call it latte, but we had wonderful coffee with lots of hot milk in it back then, too, and all sorts of wonderful Austrian pastries. And we hung out there and there was another wonderful place in town that served food and beer, and we hung out there. And there were places like Gimghoul at Chapel Hill, and the outdoor amphitheater, and we loved to go walking to those places.
  • [00:28:18.31] And oh, we-- my husband was in a fraternity, Phi Gamma Delta. I was in a sorority, Tri Delta. We hung out at those two places, played bridge. We didn't really have to do much in the way of planned activities the way people-- young people seem to need and have to have right currently. Their days have to be well-planned, but we just let life unfold.
  • [00:28:53.90] SPEAKER 1: Tell me about your engagement and wedding.
  • [00:28:58.62] PAMALA SHULTZ: Well, let's see. The engagement actually didn't-- we sort of made a commitment to each other before he went overseas. But then I was still at school another year and a half. And when he came home, he gave me a ring. And it was some-- from a tie class, a cluster that had been in his family. And then we married about three months after he came in from overseas. So we weren't engaged very long. We married in New Smyrna Beach, Florida.
  • [00:29:43.07] SPEAKER 1: Tell me about your children and what life is like when they were young and living in the house.
  • [00:29:49.23] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh. Well, we started out in Dearborn, Michigan. In West Dearborn. In what you called back then a row house. In our block, there were many houses on each side of the street. And one day, I counted the number of children in the one block, and you know how many there were? 90-some-odd in one block.
  • [00:30:18.02] And so we didn't have to make a date for our children to play with other children. All we did was walk outside. And back in those days, they could play out in the front lawns and in the backyards fairly freely. They didn't have to have too much oversight, and there was no fear of molestation or kidnapping or anything like that. Life seemed to be a little safer than it seems to be now, I don't know. It was hard work, though. We stay very, very busy.
  • [00:31:09.15] SPEAKER 1: Can you tell me about your working years outside of the home?
  • [00:31:15.72] PAMALA SHULTZ: Yes. I worked for almost 10 years. First, though, had to become qualified-- my degree was in psychology. So I came back to Michigan and took about 55 hours of classes, and it gave me a certification in education, and also a master's degree. And it was special ed.
  • [00:31:41.30] And the reason that prompted me to level in on mental retardation as the chief aspect of special ed that I wanted to get into was our fourth child-- and her name is Pam also-- she was born-- they called it brain damaged. And they weren't sure whether it was before, during, or after pregnancy. But she was proclaimed to be severely retarded when she was about two-and-a-half years old.
  • [00:32:19.07] And I decided that I wanted to go into that field when I was in psychology. They only devoted about five pages to mental retardation in the textbook, so I decided I wanted to go into that if I could do it and if I liked it. And it would help me to keep up with her and what was going on there.
  • [00:32:43.82] So I came to Michigan, and before that, though, I did volunteer work at Plymouth State Home, which became a very negative institution in my view later on, but it was brand new then, and they had a wonderful teacher out there who inspired me to really want to work with mentally impaired. She worked in classrooms out there with them.
  • [00:33:23.07] And that's when I decided I would go for it. And they had a-- stayed home suggested Michigan over Eastern. But in retrospect, I think I should have gone to Eastern for better training in special ed, but it didn't matter, I got other courses over here in Michigan. And overall, I'm glad I went there.
  • [00:33:53.76] I worked in the field for 10 years. We had a marvelous facility, called ourselves the Trailblazers in North Western Wayne County, and set up-- they were just setting up the first classes of mentally impaired within the school system. And they took-- the facility I worked in was at the trainable mentally impaired level, which means those terms are even current now, but back then, the IQ was paramount, and the 30 to 50 IQs were the trainable level, and I worked with those children for 10 years at all levels, from little ones on up to the older ones. We worked with them till they were 18, and then they went on to a skill center where they were worked with and trained until they were 26.
  • [00:34:59.91] And then the group homes during that time were coming into existence. So there was a place outside of institutions for mentally impaired children to live their lives, and they came into being.
  • [00:35:18.80] SPEAKER 1: What did your family enjoy doing together when your kids were still at home?
  • [00:35:23.14] PAMALA SHULTZ: Oh. Well, for one thing, we loved Silver Lake right out here, and going for all-day picnics. And they had boats you could rent, and we spent many, many happy hours at Silver Lake, and our friends would come out with their children and we had picnics. And that was before they expanded the parking lots the way it is now. And there weren't many people back in those days that even knew about it. So it was a lovely place to know about.
  • [00:35:58.56] We also spent many, many happy times in the summer in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado at Estes Park. And in route, we would go to daughter Pam who for eight years was in a wonderful place in Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas-- or not Lawrence, Wichita, Kansas-- called the Institute of Logopedics. And Dr. Palmer from Michigan, he graduated here, was the head of that. And it was a speech center where they worked with all sorts of children, but a few were mentally impaired. And they had wonderful training facilities there for her. And she-- the most important thing was she could live there and be in a cottage with just one house mother one on one.
  • [00:36:59.58] So when we weren't with her, she was able to have a foster mother. She-- they said after eight years there, that they should send her back to Michigan, that they had done what they could for her.
  • [00:37:19.53] SPEAKER 1: I'm going to ask one more question, I'm going-- I'm out of tape. What were your personal favorite things to do for fun?
  • [00:37:28.16] PAMALA SHULTZ: What was what?
  • [00:37:29.55] SPEAKER 1: Your personal favorite things to do for fun while your kids were at home? So maybe like not involving your kids, what did you enjoy doing by yourself?
  • [00:37:41.61] PAMALA SHULTZ: I've always enjoyed needlework. And back then, I was doing much finer stuff than I can see to do now. But I'm still doing it. I hooked rugs and wall-hangings and dyed my own wool. And I still enjoy it very much, working with my hands. I've always loved the piano, so we've had a piano wherever we've been. In fact, when we were in our row house, my husband surprised me. One Christmas, he brought this old upright piano in and put it in the basement with help from the neighbors, and they painted it down there. And I used to go down and do the laundry, but I hated the basement. I never even saw the piano. And on Christmas morning, they surprised me with it. They said, this has been here for a couple of months and you haven't even seen it. And there it was. But we always had a piano.
  • [00:38:45.09] And another thing we loved to do is to sing around the piano. That was great fun. My husband's a trout fisherman, and I he-- you want me to stop?
  • [00:39:01.47] SPEAKER 2: No, you can go.
  • [00:39:02.75] PAMALA SHULTZ: He loves stream fishing with the flies. And he taught our son, and our son, in turn, has taught his son. And my husband's father did it. And the women didn't trout fish, but we love to do the hiking and to hang out on the streams. We've always loved outdoors, so we're amateur botanists and love the natural world and everything that we can observe there and enjoy.
  • [00:39:45.24] SPEAKER 1: All right. I'm about out of tape, then.
  • [00:39:47.15] SPEAKER 2: OK. Yeah, we just gotta change the cassette tape here.
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2020

Length: 00:39:55

Copyright: Creative Commons (Attribution, Non-Commercial, Share-alike)

Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library

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Subjects
Pamela Shultz
Edwin Ted Schultz
New Smyrna Beach FL
Dearborn
World War II
Psychology
University of North Carolina
Plymouth State Home
Special Education
Group Homes
Education
Oral Histories
Legacies Project