Legacies Project Oral History: Faye King

Mon, 08/29/2022 - 11:52am

When: 2022

Transcript

[00:00:10] FEMALE_1: Hold that thought while we changed the tape and we'll pick up from where we left off. I'm going to first start asking you some simple demographic questions. While these questions may jog memories, please keep your answers brief and to the point for now. You can elaborate on later in the interview. Will you please say and spell your name?
[00:00:33] Faye King: Technically my legal name is H.Fay Easkew King, H. F-A-Y E-A-S-K E-W K-I-N-G
[00:00:41] FEMALE_1: What is your birthday including your year and how old are you?
[00:00:45] Faye King: August 15th 1947. I'm 67 years old.
[00:00:50] FEMALE_1: How would you describe your ethnic background?
[00:00:53] Faye King: African American.
[00:00:54] FEMALE_1: What is your religious affiliation, if any?
[00:00:58] Faye King: AME, African Methodist, Episcopal.
[00:01:02] FEMALE_1: What is your highest level of formal education you have completed? Did you attend any additional school or formal career training beyond what you complete it?
[00:01:10] Faye King: I have MSW.
[00:01:13] FEMALE_1: What are your marital status?
[00:01:16] Faye King: Marital.
[00:01:17] FEMALE_1: Marital. Thank you. If married is your spouse, still living?
[00:01:21] Faye King: Yeah. Married.
[00:01:23] FEMALE_1: How many children do you have.
[00:01:24] Faye King: Two.
[00:01:25] FEMALE_1: How many siblings do you have.
[00:01:26] Faye King: Two.
[00:01:28] FEMALE_1: What would you consider your primary occupation to happen?
[00:01:31] Faye King: Social work.
[00:01:37] FEMALE_1: Now we're going to do basically family history. Do you have any stories about your family name?
[00:01:46] Faye King: Easkew is a very rare name for African-Americans. The only other Easkew we've ever seen until I moved here at Harbor were white people who were in the South. We never came across anybody with our last name ever. But when I came to Ann Arbor, there is a former teacher who taught at Scarlett whose last name was Easkew.
[00:02:12] FEMALE_1: Are there any naming and traditions in your family?
[00:02:16] Faye King: In my husband's family, generally, all of the girls names begin with an A. The grandmother Audrey, the daughter is Adrian. My granddaughter is Amelia. It's just A's.
[00:02:32] FEMALE_1: Why did your ancestors leave to come to the United States if this applies to you.
[00:02:38] Faye King: My answer is I did not leave to come to the United States. They were brought over here against their will.
[00:02:45] FEMALE_1: What stories have come down to you about your grandparents and parents?
[00:02:51] Faye King: Briefly. My grandmother's mother was born a slave and my grandmother was from a family of 13 kids. She was the third from the youngest girl, so that by the time all of the household chores were divvied up, there were no more ladies chores for her and so she spent her time with her dad and her two younger brothers. She thought she was a boy until she was 10. When she tells stories about her childhood, she would always say, well, when I was a boy. She spent really much more time with her dad, than her mom, which really and he was an orphan, his parents had died. Or somehow he lost his family and he really went from relative to relative to do work on the farm. He never really had a family and he could never go to school. He impressed upon them the importance of education. My grandmother totally continued that idea through all of our lives. That's who she was.
[00:03:59] FEMALE_1: Do you know any courts shipped stories? How did your grandparents, parents or other relatives meet or come to my area?
[00:04:08] Faye King: I don't really know that story at all and to have some vague memory of my grandmother ended up marrying my grandfather, which was unusual because they came from a family that owns land in the South. That was really rare for African-Americans to own land. The tradition of their family was each of the sounds, we get a parcel of land once they married. I think her married him was unusual because she did not come from the same background.
[00:04:46] FEMALE_1: Where did you grow up and what are your strongest memories of that place?
[00:04:51] Faye King: Wow. I grew up both in St. Louis and Chicago. I should really talk about St. Louis because that's really my younger days and I remember having to share my birthday parties with my brother because my birthday is the 15th, his is the 12th. But I remember going to school. My memory is that the kindergarten class was this huge room with hardwood floors. We had a slide and a sandbox in the room. We had our own door to go to our own playground for recess. Apparently this was unusual for the times, but I just remember how huge this classroom was. It seemed to me at the time, and that the older kids brought a snack every day until we had chocolate milk and bottles which they don't have anymore, and cookies for snack. I remember being struck with how a huge the classroom was to me.
[00:05:54] FEMALE_1: How did your family come to live there?
[00:05:58] Faye King: My grandfather died of tuberculosis when my mother was five. Because he died and she was living on the land that was given to the sons. The family really moved her around a lot and told her that this really wasn't her land because her husband had died and she was really angry about that. She just packed up her two little girls and got on a train and came to St. Louis because her older sister was in St. Louis. The real sad thing about that was that my grandfather was really ill with tuberculosis, but he had not passed away when they left. Then when he died, she didn't have enough money to go back to Arkansas to go to the funeral. To me that was like just the saddest story ever heard in my life. Ever.
[00:06:58] FEMALE_1: What was your house like?
[00:07:02] Faye King: The interesting thing about this house was the kitchen was in the basement. I've never been in a house where the kitchen was in the basement, but the kitchen was in the basement, and the washing machine was in the basement and the furnace. This is I'm old, and so it was a coal furnace and the coal man would come and dump the coal through the window and my grandmother shoveled coal, and my brothers were old enough, they shoveled coal. My grandmother had this really old antique clock. I've never seen a clock like it before, and it always chimed the hours and I think as a kid I was fascinated by this clock that always chimed the hours. But my grandmother was very into making sure you got your lesson. I just remember her spending a lot of time with us on our homework, but she also taught me a lot of crafts, like I made pot holders with those loopy frames, and she taught me how to crochet and she taught me how to knit. But she also taught me really about the value of education, and I know I'm supposed to be brief, so I'll just stop there, but that's the stuff there.
[00:08:23] FEMALE_1: How many people live in your house with you and when you were growing up, and what was your relationship with them?
[00:08:28] Faye King: You see, this is where my life is confusing. Because I was the oldest and both my parents worked, there was no way for me to go to kindergarten half day. I left Chicago when I was five to live with my grandmother to go to kindergarten. I was really separated from my family at that time, and my aunt, who's my mother's sister, was still home finishing college. I was almost like her guinea pig, because she was learning to be a teacher and she was doing all this stuff to me. But in Chicago, I lived in a house with my mother and my father and my two brothers. But my two brothers they were younger, so there was child care for them all day, and so they didn't have that, so I had to go. But when I went to the first grade, then I came back home. We lived in this house that had this lovely mirror in the hallway that like took up the whole wall, and I remember as a little girl I would stand in front of the mirror and pretend like I was a dancer and would dance all the time front of the mirror. But there were no grocery stores, supermarkets like we have now. I just know every day my mother would come home from work, go to the grocery store, cook a real meal, which I didn't really understand until I had to start cooking meals. Actually, it worked all day, and so we had real food, real dinner, and my mother was really into making sure we have that etiquette, and how you eat and how you chew your food and proper etiquette and get to trees off the table. She was really about making sure that we were well socialized. But at the same time, she always told us that you could ask whatever question you wanted. If you wanted to know something, always ask, and don't be ashamed to ask. My dad was like this really tall guy. I mean, I just remember him always putting me on his shoulders and when he bought a motorcycle one day and came home and took me for a ride on this motorcycle, and I was so excited and my mother was screaming like that baby should not be on a motorcycle. Get the baby off the motorcycle. But he was [inaudible 00:10:40]. He was an entrepreneur. He really ended up having a lot of businesses and having a lot of money. But when I was eight, they got divorced and so then we went back to St. Louis and stayed with both grandmothers. I stayed was his mom for a while and then stayed with my other grandmother for a while.
[00:11:03] FEMALE_1: What languages were spoken in and around your household?
[00:11:06] Faye King: English.
[00:11:11] FEMALE_1: What was your family like when you were a child?
[00:11:15] Faye King: I think I've said it a little bit about that. I was the oldest girl and I had two younger brothers. My memory of them is really destroying all of my toys so I would play cowboys and Indians with them. They would kill my dolls, and so I'd have to play with whatever. I'd be the Indian, whatever, and I'm the oldest. My mother would always say, you're the oldest, so you have to be responsible, and they were never held accountable to me. But we always had dinner as a family. We always sat down for dinner. My mother always had dessert. We would have like bread put in a rice, put in a jello or cakes. I can't believe she did that really. I think about that sometimes about working full-time and then coming home and cooking like a real dinner. We went to church every Sunday. I went to Sunday school. But really it was a time where we could really just go outside and play. We played in the neighborhood. We could only go on our block. I remember going back to my grandmother's house as an adult and seeing how small that whole area was when as a kid it was like this huge block. But that was as far as we could go. We couldn't cross any streets. We were good friends with another family that had the same constellation of siblings, the girl being the oldest and two younger brothers and we all played together. But they lived on the other side of the street, across the street. But their mom was stay-at-home mom, so she would come and help everybody go across the street so we could all play together. We just played. I mean, we made up games. I really could jump double ditch really well, as long as I can remember. I remember my next door neighbor, who was a teenager, taught me how to play Jacks and we played hand clapping games and we played like chase games and hide and seek games. We would make up games and we had mud pies and all of that. It was just fun. It was a different world. We're very safe. All the neighbors clearly were disciplining us, and if we did something wrong they would just tell my grandmother and my mother and then we would be chastised twice. It was just a different time. There was no fear of being unsafe. I remember it was so hot one summer that the news said that it was so hot you could fry an egg on the sidewalks. We just went in the house and got an egg, and in the middle of the street and cracked it and it really did. It really did cook. We had a good time.
[00:14:09] FEMALE_1: Did you have any favorite books or anything?
[00:14:12] Faye King: I went through genres when I was a kid. I think first I was really into fairy tales, and where I went to school there was a bookmobile that came to the school. I never saw a library in a school building until I came in Chicago. In St. Louis this bookmobile came to every school once a week and the librarian would work with us. I was into fairy tales. The fairy tales had colors, like a fairy tale blue, fairy tale purple. I went through all of them. Just read all of them. Then she said, well, what are you going to read now? I said I don't know. She said, well, here, try this. This is about Clara Barton. She was a nurse, and so I said, okay. Then I went through this phase where I just read biographies about people. I would just really read anything. I always went to the library. My whole life, it never occurred to me to buy a book. I know we had books, but my thinking was not about owning books. Once I read a book, I didn't need to have it because I had read it. I mean, always, to this day, I still go to the library to get my books. If I buy a book, it's a book that I like and I want to read again, I think. I would get in trouble because I would when I was supposed to be asleep. I would wait until everybody was asleep and then I turn on my light and I would read in the bed. Reading was really a vital part of growing up. I really read a lot.
[00:15:52] FEMALE_1: Were there any special days, events, or family traditions you remember from this time?
[00:15:57] Faye King: Yes. Holiday meals. Holidays were very family-oriented. It was the only time we could drink pop because my mother was really this health freak. We couldn't drink pop. Only on holidays. Holidays were just a family time and the food was good and you'd look forward to it. We believed in Santa Claus until there was one year where I was beginning to wonder, was there really a Santa Claus. My friend and I decided that we would ask for skates, but we wouldn't tell our parents. We could only write just to Santa Claus and we weren't going to tell them. In my family, we woke up like at two or three o'clock in the morning to have Santa Claus, and then we'd have to go back to bed. But the skates weren't there, and so I knew there was no Santa Claus. Then we woke up in the morning, had our real breakfast, and my grandmother says Santa Claus came back because he got to the bottom of his bag and there was this gift for you, and it was the skates. I asked my grandmother, really, where did these skates? All my life, after I was an adult, I would ask my grandmother, tell me about those skates, and she said, Santa Claus brought you those skates. Now, this is when stores would not open at nighttime. I don't know how they got those skates. But it really made me question. Maybe there is a Santa Claus. I get to hold on to that a little longer. Also, Easter and Christmas we ran a little program at church and we were in a little children's choir. It was just really was around food. All the relatives came. All about food.
[00:17:46] FEMALE_1: Did you go to elementary school, if yes, then where, and what do you remember about it?
[00:17:53] Faye King: I talked to you a little bit about kindergarten. I went to school in Chicago at some time and I went to school in St. Louis some time.
[00:18:04] Faye King: Oh, asked me the question again.
[00:18:06] FEMALE_1: Did you go to elementary school?
[00:18:08] Faye King: Yes.
[00:18:08] FEMALE_1: Where and what do you remember about it?
[00:18:13] Faye King: What do I remember? I remember always getting in trouble because I was talking and I would go to my friend's desk and help them finish their work so that we could go to the toy's table and I would always get in trouble. I thought that the teacher read with us in different groups because she couldn't read with everybody at the same time. I had no idea that we were reading based on our reading levels. I had no idea that there was any tracking going on when I was in St. Louis. When I came to Chicago, it was clear that you were tracked, that you were in advanced classes, I mean, in the college prep. I remember when I was in elementary school and I had transferred from St. Louis to Chicago. They put me in the 7th grade classroom and I was wondering when the lady was going to start teaching because she kept talking about sit down. I mean, I felt like there was no teaching going on. I think after I'd been in that class are like two weeks. She came up to me and she said, Sweetheart, you're in the wrong class and she took me out of that class and put me in another set of great class where, okay, this is what supposed to happen is if I see her teaching, and so I didn't really understand what was going on until I was really older. But yeah, so school to me, it was fun. I mean, I agree, you know, it was fun, learning was fun. I remember the couple of African-American teachers that I had because there weren't many of them. I remember we sung we had in St. Louis, there was a choir that was a community. They had a community concert every year and we all learn the same songs and then in the spring, all of the elementary schools would go to the high school and we would have this spring concert and we would go based on the part that you're saying. So like I was a second soprano, so we would go to the lunch room in the high school and all the kids who were second soprano from all the elementary schools and fed into the high school, would sing, we would all sing together and then we go on stage and we saying parts and everything. This started like when after like the second or third grade. I had no idea that was an amazing music program. I just thought that was the way it went.
[00:20:38] FEMALE_1: Did you go to high school? If so, where?
[00:20:41] Faye King: Yes, I went to high school in Chicago and that's when it was clear to me that we were all tracked. I was in honors classes and I remember one year I decided I wanted to not live at my house and lived down the street with my friends family and so my mother allowed me to spend the summer living in their house and so they sold and so we made, there's a parade in Chicago for African-Americans. We made these coolies to go to the parade and so we all sold and so my mother said, Oh, you want to sell, you should take a class and I'll teach you. I said I wanted to take sewing. They said, Oh no, you cannot take sewing. Sewing is a double period and it is not for college prep kids and you can't take that class. So that was high school. But I was really active in high school. I mean, I was on the yearbook staff and all the choirs and I was a cheer leader which I don't really tell people about and so it was fun.
[00:21:40] FEMALE_1: Did you go to school or career training beyond high school? If so where do you remember?
[00:21:45] Faye King: I went to college. Here's the my mother clearly gone to college. But in those days, parents were not involved in your world saying where they are now. If your parents had to come to school, you are in deep trouble, so parents did not come to school, they were not involved in that. So the counselors really were the people that advice us about where we're going to go to school and what we're going to do. I knew I wanted to be a psychology major because my brother was so weird, I had to figure him out. I wanted to go to UCLA because I was born in California and I was really trying to get back to California because it's too cold in Arizona is a cold place. Then I applied to Kalamazoo because they had a really good Psych department and I apply to McMurry College, which is in Illinois. I got accepted and I only applied the three schools who know. My mother allowed me to make these choices. I was going to UCLA because I was going to California, it was a good school and my mother, the wise woman that she has said, Congratulations, and so but, you know we can only afford for you to come home once a year. Well, at 17 the thought of like not being able to come home. It's like, Oh no, I can't do it. Then I said, okay, I'll go to Kalamazoo. Then this woman in my high school was going to Kalamazoo who I could not stand and I said I'm not going there. So I ended up going into McMurry College. This is how you make decisions. 17. But it was a small liberal arts college, Methodist affiliated. Thousand kids, there were eight African-American women and eight African-American men that were admitted to the school the year that I came there like about five upperclassmen there. They thought they had taken care of the children of color and I was taller than all of them, so clearly nothing was going to have. For me it was almost like going to an all girls school and so that men were down campus and their dorms and the women off campus. The cafeteria was in the middle and all of the classroom buildings were around and so we had to be in the dorm like at 10:30 on weekdays and midnight on weekends and it was just such a different world for me coming from the city to be in a small town. It was the social part of college was much more impactful, I think for me. But I made really good friends and they are still my friends today and I made them all come to Chicago with me after we graduated and so we get together now once every year. It was like going to all girls school, but really yeah so it was interesting.
[00:24:43] FEMALE_1: What about your school experience is different from school as you know it today?
[00:24:48] Faye King: Well, yeah. I got COVID. So I went to college during the '60s and there was a lot of student involvement in trying to make sure that there was equality and the women's movement was happening and Black Power was happening. McMurry was a very wise place and so the faculty decided to, instead of having us try to close their doors, that they were just have two days where we would not have class. The students and the faculty would have, it was like we had a conference and we had workshops and they facilitated a process where the students really talked about the things that they want it and so we ended up having a African American Library. We got key cards so we could have come in whenever we wanted to. We still had to only men could come into dorms certain days with the door open, the trash can with. There was a lot of change and input from students around what we wanted and what we want in college life to be like and what was unique about McMurry. It says that they created a form for us to have these conversations and the faculty had one vote, and we had one vote. It was really a very equitable peace.
[00:26:15] Faye King: They were a very smart administration.
[00:26:19] FEMALE_1: Please describe the popular music of this time.
[00:26:23] Faye King: We were like Motown, the Supremes, the Beatles. We had great music. You-all music today is like really crappy, but our music, it was so much a part of our lives. It's interesting when you think about it. Because the high school I went to was integrated, we really listened to all music and we all party together. I think there was something very unique about us and where we were in the times that we were. They were just starting to do research and education. We had some special math class, we had some special US history class, we had some special biology class. They were like experimented on us in terms of learning. The music, I think was really what binds teenagers. We had parties all the time and the music was really so much a part of those parties. We had what they called, I forget what the name, varieties so day where the students, I'll put on, we dance, we saying we get various things. And the music was a part of that. It was all about really Motown and the Beatles.
[00:27:57] FEMALE_1: Do you remember any particular dances that you all do and the names of them?
[00:28:02] Faye King: Totally. We did the Tutsi [LAUGHTER] that jerk, the twist. We did a line dance, which I can't even really think of the name of right now. We did the Bugger Lou, and we had a lot of dances that we did back in Chicago was known for the BOP and the walk. In Chicago, there was a way that we fast being asked with partners in healthy hands. There was a way that we slow dance that you walked literally to the music and then came back together with your partner. It's a very distinctive dance thing in Chicago but still exists today. Today still exists.
[00:28:46] FEMALE_1: What were some popular hairstyles at this time?
[00:28:50] Faye King: Well, we could not wear pants to school back bend. We only wore dresses and skirts. We went through this phase where everybody wore Brook brothers shirts with the button-down collar and that was really cool. We had the Ivy League who dressed more and collegiate as to what we thought of it. Then we had the Gaster's and they wore niche shirts and pleated pants. The community that you lived in really determined whether you were Ivy League or Gaster. But the girls, the mini came into being during that time. We were wearing minis and our parents are like, my God, you have dressing, can't go. It was an interesting time. But there was a social dress code as well as whatever the fashion was during the time.
[00:29:51] FEMALE_1: Were there any slang terms, phrases, or words that are used to comment today?
[00:30:00] Faye King: Not really because you-all are not very creative. A lot of our slang words are words that you guys use today. Groovy probably is not something that people use today. But when I think about the slang terms, they don't seem unique to my time. I think that there's something about us that our time seems to be more lasted through different generations.
[00:30:31] FEMALE_1: Did your family have any special savings or expressions during this time?
[00:30:36] Faye King: My grandmother had many little sayings. [LAUGHTER] If we would complain about something or that we wanted something or she would say, you take care of your needs and some of your wants, or she would say one time she was really angry with people and there was the handyman who would come and fix things and I don't know if he didn't fix something right or something. She said that the door not hit you where the good Lord splits you. I had never heard that before. She would say things like, take what you got and make what you need. She had all these little expressions to fit whatever the situation was and they just come off the top of her. Whereas my mother was very, I'm going to call proper. The way that she communicated with us and the way she talked to us, but she also, gave us a voice. She was really about hearing us and listening to us. It was this itchy. I reflect on my mother and realize that she was way beyond her time in terms of her attitude about parenting, really felt like she was amazing what she has done with us.
[00:32:12] FEMALE_1: Well, I think we're doing really good right now. We can here actually. We got through a lot of questions. Here you could take some more of these questions. We answered a lot of questions last time really good. Now we're going to sketch to adulthood, marriage, and family life. Let's see, after high school, where did you live?
[00:32:34] Faye King: I went away to college. I lived in Jacksonville, Illinois. Went to Mick Murray College, which is a small liberal arts college in Illinois. I lived during a time when they were trying to integrate colleges. There were a lot of scholarships and recruiting of African American students.
[00:32:58] MALE_1: Good morning, [inaudible 00:32:59]. Sorry for this brief interruption. I'm just letting everyone know we aren't.
[00:33:05] FEMALE_1: I'd like you to tell me a little bit about your marriage and your family life first, tell me about your spouse. Where and when did you meet?
[00:33:12] Faye King: Well, we went to the same high school, although, we're not together in high school, we're really just good friends and hung out with the same crowd and he really went out with my best friend. It was just a very interesting thing because I was the only one that really went. They were like four of us that like far away and didn't go to the University of Illinois people went. Because she was my girlfriend he knew everything that happened to be my whole college life. Because they were integrating the colleges they had like admitted eight African American males and 80 African American women and they thought they had taken care by us. But I was taller than all of them men. They were only four African American upperclassmen. For me, it was like going to a girls' school. But because I was in this environment, I started going out with just white guy. I got these letters from my husband and another one of our friends who was at the University of Denver, Santa Fe, we know that you're out there. It's not a lot of choice, but don't go over the deep end. You're almost done. We got a year to go. He'll be home back in Chicago where there are plenty of African American. It was really funny. When I graduated, I made all my friends come with me and live in Chicago. My husband was in a PhD program at the University of Chicago and economics. I ran it to his brother. His older brother and his older brother said phase back home. One day he just came and knocked at the door. My roommates and I, we just adopted this poor, struggling student who didn't have any food. We would feed them and we really just were friends and then we started going out and dating and ended up together. If anybody, we went to our 25th at a high school reunion and it was easy because we both went to the same high school. We both need the same people. I didn't have to worry about how he was going to be, even have to worry about how I was going to be. We just went our separate ways. Our kids were little at a time and because when you go to high school, you also live in a neighborhood. You have neighborhood friends as well as friends from school. I hadn't seen my neighborhood friends hadn't seen for a long time because they don't family and everything. After we had running because we went to the point which is this place on Lake Michigan and Chicago. When we all get back to the picnic area where we're going to eat. What am I neighbor friends can't reset. When you didn't tell me you'll marry Richard King. It was like everybody was really surprised that we got married because no wave with anyone one ever thought that. But here we are 40 years later. We've been married a long time, were really good friends as well as good buddies, and really care a lot about each other. We've had a really lovely life. We really have really had a good time. We lived in a lot of different places. We lived in Canada before we came here, which is great.
[00:36:32] FEMALE_1: What was it like when you were dating?
[00:36:36] Faye King: It was really such a gradual thing because we were really more friends. Then we started dating and we knew that we really cared about each other, but he didn't feel like he was at the point to make a commitment, and so he was trying to decide what he wanted to do with himself and was he in the PhD program for himself or for his dad? He decided that he was just going to go on this bus to visit his friend who was going to business school in Philadelphia at Wharton and told me that if I found somebody that I liked as much as I liked him, I should go ahead and be with them because he wasn't really made that commitment. Now, he has absolutely no memory of ever saying any of this is just hysterical to me. [LAUGHTER] So I said, okay, fine, but your cake, and so I lived my life. Then he came back to town and he started calling about this time I'm dating other people and stuff. My roommate said Richard called. He called at midnight. He called at this time and you weren't there. Fine. He said, okay, I'm ready to make the commitment. Anyway, it was fine [LAUGHTER] . It was just funny. But he has no memory. No, I don't remember this at all. But I think when I talk to friends, it always seems that you really find the person and then that guy is not ready to make the commitment, and the curse for them obviously is a whole different ballgame or something. But it's those relationships that have that back-and-forth moment that really seem to last a long time and that's certainly the key for us. We were very different from our other friends because we decided to go to graduate school at the same time and we ended up going to different places. We did both apply to Boston, and New York, and Chicago, but he really liked the program at Tuck, which is in Hanover, New Hampshire. I really liked the program at BU which is in Boston and so we decided we would just go to graduate school for those two years and I got the dog. But all my friends said, "What are you doing? Why would you do that? Why don't you let him go for two years and then you go for two years" and I thought, okay, well that's four years. Why would we want to take four years for something we could do it two? We were like two-and-a-half hours away, and so it was fine. I would drive up to visit him on the weekends. He would drive down and he would write me letters, it was feeling really nice. Then in the summer, he had to work. So we spent the summer together and so it was fine. It allowed us both to really get involved in our program in a way that we would not have been able to do if we also had to worry about who was going to cook dinner, who's got to do this, who's going to walk the dog. I think it really gave us the freedom to really delve into our programs and really be present in a way that we would not have been if we could really had tried to be married and negotiate all of those other things. It was funny because I lived in Cambridge in a nice apartment with another woman and he lived in the undergraduate dorm. But the second year he and somebody submitted a farmhouse and so that was nice. It was fun. It was an interesting time in our lives. But I really got really into my program and really made some really good friends. When you go to social work school is really about self-awareness and you're examining your psychological, emotional, or whatever. It's a really intense time. There were a lot of people who were in my program who ended up either divorcing their person, realizing that they were not heterosexual they were homosexual. It was just people like just getting all these interesting awarenesses. But one of the things that our class did though was different in the past; is that we decided that we would have a multicultural organization as opposed to just an African-American organization. It was a very interesting experience because Asian people, some of them do not consider themselves a minority. It was very interesting to have Asian people, part of our group who considered themselves people of color, and there were other Asian people in the program who like just float through the rural as if they are white people. That was just very interesting to me. But it gave us a commonality and they became more of us. We created a scholarship for minority students, we talked to the faculty about putting more emphasis and recruiting students of color, we talked about how important it was to include diversity in the practice so the people learn that cultural differences impact how you treat people and the values that people have that you're trying to work with. But then I became friends with these three other women. When my husband came for my graduation, we were just crying because we're terminating from each other and we're just gone through this process and finally just said so are you okay? It's just commenting stuff like okay, just I don't know. We have to do this. So we're just done. But he gave us our space. Is good thing about Richard. He had to stay and the space that I needed. We were able to terminate because as we learned in social work school termination is really important and it is a process. We did that, but it was fun. Then my mother and grandmother came for the graduation. I think they forgot I was there and they started talking about things in the past. I was a grown-up and I was at the table and I realized I shouldn't ask any questions because they remember, I was there. Anyway, it was funny to listen to them talk about the past and family stuff, that I'd never knew anything about but I knew I couldn't ask questions because then they stop talking. Because they grew up in a time where that was girl folks' business.
[00:42:47] FEMALE_1: Tell me about your engagement and life.
[00:42:51] Faye King: Now, this is an interesting thing. We decided that we would live together for two years. My husband got a job in New York. Was either going to be Detroit or New York. We visited both places and then we decided that we couldn't live in Detroit. Detroit was like a wasteland and we're from Chicago, which is a vibrant city. In the early '70s, Detroit was terrible because of the riots and white people had fled, and the city was just in a bad place. We ended up going to New York and before we left we just said after a year, we'll get married and then move forward and I said Uh-hum. Then in the spring, he said, okay, we need to start planning. I said, oh what, no, because I really was happy living together. I didn't really understand how being married was going to make any difference. I felt we'd already made our commitment to each other and he said, "No, we can plan." We're up all night for three nights talking about this whole thing, about getting married. I said, okay, fine. Because he felt he could not plan his life if he wasn't married. For him, it was a different commitment. Then we had to talk about, well, it was the same commitment for me. I don't understand why is a different commitment for you. But it's really about relationships. It's how you negotiate and how you really are able to share with one another the things that are important to you and people talk about compromises, but I don't really think of it as compromises, I think it's really about weighing the things that you think are important that you really want to fight for versus the things that may not be as important to you. But then we decided after we were going to get married, we're in New Jersey because he worked in New York, so we're living in New Jersey, we're going to get married in Chicago. My mother [LAUGHTER] and I had to play this really long distance and we decided that we would just have a small family wedding and then have a reception and invite all our friends. Because the wedding is a family. My husband is very into family. Family is the most important thing again. It was just fascinating trying to do this with my mother. My mother seemed like she was easygoing whatever we wanted to do, try to shape us, help us be independent.
[00:45:12] Faye King: Then we get to this wedding and then she becomes like this traditional person, like, we need to have this and we need to have that. I said, mommy, this is my wedding. If you want to have a party and invite your friends, you can do that. But this is my wedding, so I get to decide who's coming, I get to decide all of this. She was like, "You just never let anybody help you out". I said, "Well mommy, you really made me this way." You wanted me to be independent and you wanted me to make up my own mind and not being influenced, this is what I want to do. She said coup I said no but I like daisies. She said with daisies that are the cheapest flower, I said I don't care. They're daisies, they're sunny. They remind me of the sun. Anyway, we are finally able to get this together and we got the pastor, we met with the pastor and Richard and I had written down on our scrapped sheets of paper cutter with the vows because that time people said their own vows or made up their own vows. I don't know what they do now, it's a little different now. It was really important that you decided where you wanted to commit yourself to and not that traditional, took the actor as part and the man has control or whatever. We meet with the minister and we tell them what we want to say and how we want the to service to be. Then at the actual service, he ripped out our little scratch pieces of paper. He says, these young people [LAUGHTER] just thought it was just, it was almost embarrassing. They are really serious about this commitment and these are the things that they want to make sure that people understand about them, and so they've given it a lot of thought. It was just I didn't believe he pulled out our scratch sheets of paper and showed everybody at the wedding. But anyway, so it was just his best friend was his wherever the person is called, I'm having a senior moment and my best friend was my person. It was like, very nice. We wanted to be married on the lake in Chicago, but we knew we couldn't deal with the weather, so we gotten married in I guess a conference room or something in a hotel that had this huge window with the lake. It was really pretty and there was our background. Then the photographer wanted to close the blinds because the sunlight was ruining his pictures. I'm like having a fit like Mommy, and mother said what do we have to do with the photographer says. I told my brother, would you go downstairs and get Richard and tell him to come and fix this? My brother went and got Richard [inaudible 00:47:36] but the blinds were open when my step father walked me down the aisle and that's all I cared about. Then we had to walk through the whole wedding again afterwards so he could take his photos. But anyway, so then we had a party and all my friends came and we had a good time and it was great. There was an open bar and if they had music and it was a fun time, we had a great time. It was fun. Then I did not know where we're going on our honeymoon. It was a surprise. He just told me to pack a bathing suit. I had absolutely no idea where we're going. We had decided we needed to rest after the wedding. We spent the night in the hotel where we had the ceremony and then got up the next day and went to the airport and I had no idea where we're going. We went to Jamaica, Ocho Rios and stayed in this really lovely small English inn, where we had a balcony and they brought flowers in our room and they served us breakfast in bed and we can eat on the patio. We had our own private beach and it was just lovely. Then we did touristy things too. The bad thing is I lost the camera. We have no pictures of our honeymoon. I put it on top of their rented a car and I forgot, I put it there and we just drove off. We have no pictures of our honeymoon because I lost the camera. But anyway, I know, but it was great. It was really great. Then for our 25th wedding anniversary, we were going to the family reunion. My son was working at the camp here in Ann Arbor up north. We decided that he was going to take the bus and we were going to meet in Chicago as a family and then we're going to go to the family reunion all together with everybody. He wakes me up like at seven o'clock in the morning, he says we have to take my mommy someplace because I said, Well, why do I have to go? Can't your sister go? He said no, she wants you to come with her so. I said, okay. So I get in the car and go and I fall asleep and I wake up and we're at the airport. I said, what is this? He said, Happy Anniversary. We went back to the place that we went to for our honeymoon, for our 25th anniversary. He's really very romantic. He does things like that. We went to Paris for our 30 year anniversary, for two weeks, went to France and it was great. He's really been good about that kind of thing. Anyway, I know he loves me. He really takes care of me.
[00:50:15] FEMALE_1: Tell me about your children. What was life like when they were young and living in the house?
[00:50:24] Faye King: We decided that we were going to have a house, be secure in our jobs, do all this stuff before children came into the world. We wanted to make sure that we had done everything that we wanted to do because we knew that once you have children it changes who you are. We traveled when on cruises, all the islands just did everything that we thought we wanted to do as a young couple. After we had been married for eight years, we decided well, okay, we'll try to have kids. Well, we could. That was a whole trauma because we couldn't have our own kids. For me, the decision was not just to have kids, but it was to be parents. For me once I knew that it wasn't going to work this way and we had gotten to AWS and fertility stuff. We were just before they did in vitro fertilization and they were just inventing it, they said because it's in the experimental stage, I was too old. I was like 34. But anyway, so we ended up I said, we just need to adopt. My husband said, no, we're not doing that. Well, I can't raise some strangers children. I'm like really? Now we had this whole other process that we had to go through, like what is this? I was talking to his friend who we went to college with and his wife and they had adopted kids. She said, you just need to bring Richard up here. You all need to come here and spend some time so he can see how Joe is that these are our kids. I said okay. We need to go see Joe and Franceen and I've always wanted to go on a train trip where you sleep in the train. Because I like those old 40 movies where people slept in the train. I just thought it would be fine. We went to connect to the New York in a train and a sleeper car. It was really fun. It was like a cruise ship, like the bathroom and everything was all tiny infinitesimal space. Anyway, so we spent a week with them and just really get to know their kids and just had a good time. When we got home, he said, okay. Have you called the people about adoption? That was like yes. So then we went through this process to adopt kids and I'm a social worker. When you adopt, you have to go and do a family study. We had this social worker who really wasn't very skilled and it was hard for me to watch her struggle. But she would ask us questions and my husband would say, okay, so tell me what does that have to do with us adopting or being parents. I mean, he was like why are you asking me this question? How is this information going to be helpful? I just saw the lady struggling. I wasn't going to help much, [LAUGHTER] but it was fascinating, really watching him in this role. I think for her, most people are like, we just want a baby. We'll do whatever we can to have a baby. But that wasn't really who we were. We were like, what is the process? These are the things that are important to us. We want a healthy baby, we want to know everything about the baby. The baby can't have any problems. No, nothing, no medical. We need everything because if we're going to screw up, let it just be us. We want the babies to be as new as we could get them. We go through this process. She says, okay I think I have a baby for you and she shows us this picture. She says so you guys go and talk about it. I'm thinking in my head, this is not the right baby. How am I ever going to tell Richard that this is not the right baby? He's not going to get it. He's not going to understand it. We go to McDonald's, which is like down the street from the adoption agency. He says Faye, that's not our baby. I said, God, thank you, Richard, because it just wasn't feeling right to me. I don't know how it's going, but I didn't feel right to him either. We spent the rest of our time to try to figure out how are we going to tell the social worker that we don't want this baby. Because I'm sure that had never happened before. We go back and we said, no, not the right baby. She said, can you tell me what is it about the baby? We said it doesn't feel right. She said well, okay. I understand because she didn't have anything to go on, but it just didn't feel right. Just that baby just didn't feel right. Maybe about three months later, she calls us. She says, the foster mother is here with the baby that I think would be good for you guys. He's two weeks old, come see him because before she'd given us a picture. I think she thought if we saw the baby in real life, it would be okay. We go, we see this baby and I look at this baby and I said, this is the one. Richard says, yes this is the one. She said, okay, you can take him home. We were not prepared. Okay. We had no idea she's going to let us take this baby home. We were going to have a real diapers, diaper service and we went right to towards her as a guest on pampers and some formula. It was just wild. The irony of this was, is that at the time I was working with pregnant teenagers and telling them everything about how to parent. Then this little person is in my house and I have no clue what to do. When I think about those first weeks, the most hysterical time was when Richard and I tried to bath this baby, it was just hysterical because we didn't want to break him. He's so delicate and fragile. It was a riot, but anyway, so that was how we got our Brian. Then we decided we wanted a boy first and then a girl. We had moved again to Detroit and we were going to adopt in Detroit. But in Detroit, you can't adopt a baby until the baby's three months old. We said, no too much can happen in three months, we can't do that. So we had to go back. We said we'll adopt a baby through the agency that we got our first baby, but because we're in Detroit, we had to do the family study with the people in Detroit and so we did that. We lived in Farmington Hills at the time. Brian was like three because I wanted them to be three years apart. I said we're going to adopt the baby and I explained it. There was a time meant to refresh for him all about what adoption was, and we'd been reading adoption books and because you believe should tell children right away they're adopted.
[00:56:53] Faye King: It was just taking forever and I say, well, I need to go work. I said, well, I'm going to take a part-time job. This baby is not coming. Brian was going to nursery school at that time, so I could work like three-half days. I get this job working with kids who had been sexually abused and court order for counseling, a great job. We created this group for these little kids. It was just a wonderful job. I did family therapy and I loved my job. I was having this job for like three months and then they call and they say we have a baby for you. We go to Chicago [LAUGHTER] go pick up this baby. We had no name, because we could not agree on the name. We did not have this problem with Brian. Brian was no problem. Brian means strong, king, princely, last name is king, no problem. We wanted to make sure that the kids had names that people couldn't make nicknames out of because we don't like nicknames. We get to Chicago, we're in the hotel. I wanted to name her Tyler and Richard said that's a boy's name. The name he wanted I can't even remember, it was so horrible so we called his mother and we said, RG we're about to go pick up this girl, this baby tomorrow and we have no name. You got a name? She said Vanessa. I said Vanessa. Richard said Vanessa, good. I said, bye RG. [LAUGHTER] We went and picked her up the next morning and Brian, he said, is this my baby? We said, yes, this is your baby sister. She was in this little bassinet and while we were there talking to the social worker and filling out the papers and forms, he was guarding this baby. It was like this was his baby and he was guarding her and didn't want to let her out of his sight. He was always like that with her. I remember when she was four months old she went to get her shots and I took Brian with her, and she got her ears pierced at the same time and he started crying. She stopped. She cried like then she was done. He was hysterical. The nurse had to come and get him to take him out of the room. He just couldn't handle it. That was his little sister and that's the way he was with her. We made a decision that I would be a stay-at-home mother. Well, we of course could afford it. It did change our lifestyle somewhat, but we thought it was important to really be home with these kids and that those early years are really important and we wanted them to be the best people they can be so that's what we did. I was a stay-at-home mom for 10 years, and joined all these little groups. Started a play group with some women and we design the playgroup for the kids. We got a church to let us use a space for free, and we took turns with the activities for the kids. It wasn't way to connect with moms at but at the same time have a place for the kids. This is before people had playgroups. I was in a book club and my neighborhood had all these different things. I played tennis. It was just a very different lifestyle that I had when I was working all the time and so it was fun. We got to do a lot of things and we also did our vacations, so that they were focused on the things that the kids would enjoy and they would learn and we always went to museums. [LAUGHTER] My kids whenever we went, what museum are we going to now mommy? It was always about some adventure and some exploring as well as getting to know the place and where we were visiting. We always went to Chicago for family and for awhile we would have Santa Claus in Chicago and then we said, we cannot be driving these toys back-and-forth every year, so we decided we're not going to travel anymore for Christmas and that was going to be our family time. I know the grandparents were not happy with us, but it could do. My mother died before we adopted Brian. She died in August and we got him in March and so she's told my kids never had a grandmother from me and my husband's mother and then had what they called a spinal stroke and so she was in a wheelchair for all of their lives. They didn't really have grandparents and we never lived by family, never. Maybe Brian's first year we were in Chicago and then we move to Farmington Hills, no we moved to Boston first. We lived in Boston for a year and then we came to Farmington Hills. We had to make family and create a family where we were and made really good relationships with people and of course, when we came here, it was clear that this was a community where our children needed to have something about their own culture. We went to church and joined Jack and Jill just so that they would have some African American influence. Brian because he was an older one, we lived a lot of different places and because we had to sell our house fast, we had to always make sure that we were living in areas where we could sell our house and it wasn't going to have a good school district. He grew up really basically as many times the only person of color where he was. This one time we went to Chicago for Thanksgiving and we were driving around in the city and every time Brian would see a black person, he said is that my cousin? I said Richard, we have got to do something. This boy [LAUGHTER] cannot grow up not understanding who he is. When we came to Ann Arbor, we wanted to make sure that we live someplace where there were other African American families. We went to all these subdivisions and we thought we could buy a house. We ended up having to build a house. It was a process. We drove around and see if there were any other black people around and Ann Arbor is a strange place to try to buy a house based on the experiences we had before. I can't believe we were going to have to build a house and so we had to build a house. People wanting the same money for these old houses that you're going to have to rehab like do the kitchens and the bathrooms and they wanted the same money. I said no, I can just build without one and that's a huge responsibility, but anyway. We live right next door to a family of color [LAUGHTER] and there were like five other African American families in our subdivision. That's really why we chose it, and so they could go outside and see people that look like them, and play with people that look like them and that would be normal. It didn't really work because [LAUGHTER] Brian was already formed and he always felt more comfortable around white people. Whereas Vanessa, her experience was just always with black people. Brian married a white woman, Vanessa went to an all black college. The first year she was in Atlanta she said, why did you all bring me up in Ann Arbor? Black people are really great. It's really nice to be in an environment where they're all black people where people are about something. She was like, why did you raise me in Ann Arbor? They are very different in terms of how they look at race and their comfort level with race. Vanessa really only wants to be around black people and she can hardly come home. She just left here. [LAUGHTER] She's in a hurry to get out of here and go back to Atlanta, whereas Brian is much more comfortable around white people and has always had a friendship group that is very eclectic and very interracial, and that's just who he is. He has great friends. He does. He has friends from Africa, Asia. He just as really good friends, and it's been really helpful that he his good friends because something terrible happened to his wife. That was really the difference. He never really felt comfortable around black kids and they teased him because he had a learning disability in expressive language and he hated church. It was tough for him and we had to move him out of Pioneer because there was just not working for him.
[01:05:42] FEMALE_1: Tell me about your working years.
[01:05:46] Faye King: Well, I told you a little bit. I really wanted to be a social worker and I wanted to figure out why people behave the way they do. My brother was so much different from the rest of us. I asked my mother was he adopted? Why was he so different? How can you grow up in the same household and be so different? I went to graduate school, I learned social work, and loved it. Really had a good time. I was nominated by the faculty and the staff. Now I'm going to tell you stuff I don't usually tell people.
[01:06:23] Faye King: In high school, I was voted the most popular. In college, I was homecoming queen, which was very significant at the time because they were 860 black people. These white people had nominated me and because I was a psych major in undergraduate school. I went to that school because they had a great site department. I want to be a psychologist. We were the only undergraduate school there every year went to the site conference. People were always amazed because we like Graduate School students that are here and here we are. I wanted to graduate. We've talked to us and they say, wow, that's really a good program. We were at the conference when the campus voted on homecoming queen. My friends call us in the hotel and it's a failure and nominated, you were elected homecoming queen. Now, trust me, I thought the nomination was a token, I assume the queue. Just was going on about my business because I knew that my my sweet mate who had been nominated every year for the homecoming court, her senior year, she has got to be queen. No problem. I said, what? But anyway, I'm digressing. When I graduated from graduate school, I was nominated by the faculty and the staff to give this speech. I gave the speech and really was trying to decide where in social work I want it to be because I had learned my placement, you have to do an internship, and I got a fellowship whatever. I got to work in the developmental evaluation clinic, and so we learned really all the terrible things that can happen to children from birth defects to weird syndromes, and how to create a plan for their family, for the kids, so there were all these different disciplines. I worked in the lesson, GYN clinic and talk to and counsel girls who were having abortions and actually got to seek an abortion. I worked in the psych department and did play therapy and family therapy. I decided that I really wanted to work with teenagers. I got my first job working with pregnant teenagers in Chicago in an alternative high school for pregnant teens. It was a great job. I did that job for seven years. I loved the weekends, do individual therapy, group therapy, but we were still social workers. We had our own clinic and we had a nurse practitioners, so we worked really closely with the nurse practitioner. One of my and I had the eighth grade kids and mostly all of those little girls had been sexually abused and that was while they were pregnant and young and didn't really understand what was going on. They had grouped twice a week. Those young little girls were really the hardest because they did not have sex to get pregnant, and so they were tough. They're tough groups. One of my little girls went into labor in schools, so I took her to the hospital and we called her mom and her mom didn't get there in time. I was there. I was there when she delivered that baby and Cope says the row, and so I actually got to see a delivery. There were two alternative high schools in Chicago. Half the staff worked at the school on the south side of the other half worked at the school on the west side. We really felt that we needed to have group supervision because there were some things that we thought we could share and help each other with them separate. We still needed on individual superficial, but we thought we could do some things and planning. We talked the management staff into letting us take our lunchtime and give us an extra half hour. We're going to have group supervision every other week and we did it and it was incredible. It was totally groundbreaking stuff. We learned a lot from each other. The psychiatrists who was our consultant was really amazed at the base that we were doing with that group supervision and how we use that to help us work with these girls and their families and design programs and do interesting things with the groups. Then we moved to Canada. I couldn't work in Canada. Because you've got to really work Canada has different immigration laws and we do. I volunteered as a group facilitator for a drop-in program for moms with little kids just to keep my scale up. Then basically, I was an at-home mom for 10 years. I worked for a year, one day a week after we adopted Brian at the agency with the pregnant teens because I had been doing therapy with this woman who had been abused by her brothers and her stepfather us for years, but she was really smart and she also had a defective kid and so it was helping her deal with feeling defective as a person and then having this kid that was defective. I really couldn't believe her because we read the appointment there where she really needed. I kept seeing her an idea that element two groups. I found this woman to watch my child and I interviewed her just like a social worker because I'm leaving you with my baby. I need to make sure you're okay. She was wonderful. When we moved to Canada, I say, do you want to come with us because she was good. She played with him. She was good. She was really good. When he took a nap, she may have anything to do. She would clean my house. That wasn't even prior to the deal. She was like wonderful. But anyway, so they were moved to Canada. I couldn't work. I did the volunteer thing. Then we came to Michigan. I'm an at-home mom and joined newcomer, did all of that. Then when Vanessa was in the first grade, she was going to school all day and I said, okay, let me see if I can find a part-time job. But I had not worked in really for 10 years, so who's going to hire me. Then I went and decided that I would just practice interviewing just to see what was out here, see if anybody would take me. I interviewed at SOS and it was an incredible interview. I think I was there for different times, interview with different combinations of people. They said, okay, we want to hire you as a full-time. This is what it is. I didn't think anybody was going to hire me. I'm really I'm just going through the process, and so I assume, Richard, they want to hire me full-time, what should I do? He said, full-time job and so I did and so I was there for 20 years. I was a great place to work. We work with homeless families with kids. I developed all of the programs I permit from the kids to the grown-ups. I have a skill set that is unusual. I know about kids as well as grownups. We had a therapeutic daycare program. We had after school programs for the kids. We had tutoring. We had a partnership with you and them. That was a creative arts literacy program called telling it. We had a girl scout troop because I believe in practical programming, something they could do when they leave us. We had an eight-week summer activities program. They thought it was camp and it was totally therapeutic. I created what we call a consumer advisory board with the homeless women who have graduated from our program, and I got a grant to do eight weeks women's leadership training that I just created off the top of my head basically. I know a lot and I don't really understand how much I know until I actually like I'm trying to do something like that and got the grant and started this program, which we did for eight years. All of our women who were in on our advisory board, they had to make a year's commitment and one of them graduated with my son from Eastern. One of them is going to Graduate School of Social Work at U of M in the fall. Another one graduated from Eastern in hospitality stuff thing. Then another one was interested in doing child development, and so it was a way for me to understand how our programs really did change people's wives and how everything is an accident of birth. None of us decided or got to pick the family that we were raised in. It's a crap shoot. If you born into a poor situation, it doesn't mean that you're dumb and stupid or that you are unworthy. It's really about giving people an opportunity and the tools and to believe in them. It was way more satisfying to me in ways that I never could have anticipated when I thought I was doing something for them to give something to them that was not based on some deficit they had, but to give them some skills so they can be better advocates for themselves and their parents. They became an advisory board. They reported to our big board, so it had staff were not involved at all, to make sure they have some power. I'm telling you these women, they helped the blueprint on homelessness that we have in Washington County. They went to Lansing where we had policy academy for homeless families with children, and it formed that group. We got to do a workshop and Michigan, where we talked about how you use consumers and train them to help your organization. They created their own consumer satisfaction survey that they administered and gave to women who were still in our shelter programs. Once a year we had like a big, I forget what they caught it. Really, it was very rewarding. When I retired, they came it came to the retirement party. It was very cool. Very nice. I really had a good time. I had love my job. It was it was the politics that a lot of what happens to this video. [LAUGHTER] Just say that the politics challenging for me because I was really focused on the people that we're trying to serve and I felt that other leaders of non-profits and the homeless were more interested in their power and their control and building organization as opposed to making sure that they were doing the best possible service for the people. That was hard for me.
[01:17:51] FEMALE_2: Good lesson.
[01:17:54] FEMALE_1: What technology changes occurred during your working years?
[01:17:59] Faye King: The computer email, all of that stuff. I think about when I was in graduate school, computers, were these things on big reels that went around and around. All the information was on tape. It's really the communication and the technology. We went from really using email all the time to having our own agency, website, web page, using social media to fund raise and to recruit volunteers, to using electronic databases to track client information. It just really was a huge shift and really and we were just before I left, I retire, we were trying to think about how we could go paperless. The challenges around that as a social worker is that you have to maintain client confidentiality. We had policies about not talking about clients via email because you can't really protect that. We were really instrumental in making sure that the communities policies and round that database for really clear. Also about at every step of the way honoring that confidentiality, because working with homeless families, people who need stuff will agree to anything to get what they need. As social workers, we have to protect their confidentiality. When you work in an environment where all the professionals who are running organizations are not social workers, then you have a class of professional values and then you have ethical challenges. It's something that we have to really think about. Because one of the downsides is that if you have all of this information on a database, they are creating ways where you can share information via databases and so DHS decided, which is Department of Human Services to link their base with the police base. They deny people benefits if they found out they had drug convictions. I think people did not give permission for that sharing. I think that it's going to be interesting in the future to see really what happens with that technology and maintain the people's privacy, and the cell phones. Cell phones, my God, you young people and these cell phones, you don't talk to each other. You sit next to somebody and you text them. My daughter cannot be without her phone. If something happens to her phone, it's the end of the world. My son has his phone and does everything with the phone. He uses his phone more for information than but my daughter is very interesting. She's now doing some work for people who are starting businesses and using whatever that stuff is, social media to promote their businesses. It's wild. Very interesting and I think somebody should do some research about how socialized you are and the lack of socialization skills children growing up with this technology will have as they get older. Teaching classes online has also been something that's of interest, especially in the social work field, which is so much interactive. How do you do that? Well, online.
[01:21:36] FEMALE_1: What is the biggest difference in your primary field of employment from this time until now? From the time you started till now.
[01:21:44] Faye King: Well, primarily my trajectory. I mean, I started doing direct service and I ended up running an organization. I think the biggest difference is that I started in the '70s where there was a lot of federal money for programs like mental health, substance abuse, they had community mental health centers. There was money to help low-income and poor people. The war on poverty was still happening. Now there's been a total shift in terms of the politics around helping people who are low-income are disadvantaged. There's this whole debate about government influence versus not having so much government involvement in that thing. Which makes it difficult for non-profit organizations because we're trying to provide services for people. As the resources dry up, it makes life much more difficult for them. People don't really recognize that policies dictate what people are eligible for and the quality of people's lives. in our society, education is based on your property tax. If you live in a low-income community, you have a much poorer education, period. It's just less money. People didn't decide they were going to be born into a poor family. It's not really a choice if they have. A lot of people believe that, you can work hard in this country and, lift up your Bootstrap, but everybody didn't have a boot.
[01:23:24] FEMALE_1: How do you judge excellence within your field? What makes someone respected in that field?
[01:23:28] Faye King: I think it's really abiding by the social work ethics and really understanding that our role is to facilitate people being able to solve their own problems. It's about helping them develop and get in touch with not only their internal resources, but also make them aware of external resources and how to advocate for those resources. I also think it's about helping people understand the systemic pieces of our society that contributed to their challenges that they have in life. A lot of times people will tend to blame the victim for this situation. But oftentimes it's about the system and the system has really contributed way more to the challenges that they're having in their own personal choices. Not that people still do not make interesting choices. However, all of that is built upon everything that's happened to them as they have grown and mature and the resources that were available to them in that process.
[01:24:32] FEMALE_1: What do you value most about what you did for a living and why?
[01:24:35] Faye King: I think I value how we treat people. I think it's really hard to go to strangers to an agency to ask for help, especially things like food or not being able to pay your rent, or not being able to pay your utility. I think it's important to treat people with dignity and respect and to understand that people have strengths and how do we identify those strengths and how do we use those strengths to help propel them towards self-sufficiency? What I really like about social work is really that access of philosophy around service delivery. But also the fact that it's also about social justice, and how do we use our work as a launchpad for being able to inform policymakers.
[01:25:30] Faye King: Because I believe policymakers are really trying to do the best that they can. But they got people doing their research and they have a lot of things coming at them. It's up to us who are actually practicing to inform them about how this policy, thought this was going to work this way. But a lot of times it will lead to unintended negative consequences that people didn't anticipate. How do we also inform people about these are really the issues contributing to this problem. Really it's about poverty and why as a nation do we not want to address poverty? We think about it in these little pockets like teen pregnancy and juvenile delinquency and substance abuse and homelessness. But it's all about being poor. Why do we need to, we have way more money in this nation. We should not have any people who are hungry. But we do.
[01:26:27] FEMALE_1: Tell me about any of those you made during your working years in retirement prior to your decision to go to your current residents?
[01:26:37] Faye King: I can only say that most of our lives we move based on my husband's job. But when we came to Ann Arbor, we were about to move yet again to Denver. We discovered that my son had a learning disability and expressive language, and I said, we really can't keep moving. We need to be in one place. Ann Arbor is a place that it is small enough that you feel like you can navigate the system and so we need to just let him have the stability. That was a choice that we made. The difficult choice that we made was to take him out of Pioneer. Pioneer was not a good place for him. I really should have let him go to Community, but his teacher consultant said he needed more structure, but he didn't really need more structure. The Pioneer of teacher consulted didn't understand why she even had him on her caseload because he tested all the 12 grade for every subject from middle school to high school. He said because he has a learning disability. We moved him to the Washington Technical Middle High School. As a social worker, I know you're not supposed to move your children when they're in high school as benefit of developmentally. It was a tough decision for me. My husband thought he's not thriving, we need to move him. We talked about it, visited the school and it was really the best thing for him. He even told us that he's glad we did that for him.
[01:28:06] FEMALE_1: How did you come to live in your current residence?
[01:28:09] Faye King: Well, when we left Canada and we're coming to Ann Arbor, I thought that I can move into a nice old house. I love old houses. In Canada, their housing is really expensive. I also thought house would be cheaper here. But as we were looking for housing, people want real money for these old houses that you need to update the bathrooms, update the kitchen. I said we're going to do, I'll just build our house. We ended up building our own house, which was not really fun because you know [LAUGHTER] that if it's not right, it was your fault because you had an opportunity to get it right. Anyway, because my husband is really 63 ways, almost 190 pounds if we need a lot of space. We made the ceilings foot higher and that thing, but anyway. But we really wanted to make sure that we were in a culturally and ethnically diverse community. We drove around all of these communities, and Ann Arbor and stopped to target people who are outside, their yards and people took us in their house so we could see what their houses look like, trying to convince us that we went to their subdivision. We ended up moving where we live now because there were five African-American families in that subdivision, and one next door, and we were in a cul-de-sac. It was a place where they could just go outside and play. We didn't have to worry about it and they would see people who look like them.
[01:29:43] FEMALE_1: How do you feel about your current living situation?
[01:29:45] Faye King: I'm still in that same place. [LAUGHTER] It's the longest place I've ever lived any place and went home. It was weird. For my daughter, basically, she was three-and-a-half when we moved here. For her, this is all she knows.
[01:30:03] FEMALE_1: How did family life change for you when you and/or your spouse retired and all the children left home?
[01:30:11] Faye King: Well, the children left home first and that was, I didn't really understand the whole emptiness syndrome. I don't really understand why people have problems with that because it's like, oh, our house is back. When we come home everything is where it is when we left it. When we go into a refrigerator there is stuff that we left in there. But also it was, my husband and I like really were able to get back to that place that we were before children. It was just really nice that we can now do some stuff that we wanted to do. Not that we didn't do things that we wanted to do with the kids, but it was just more of our time. It was really different. Our retirement, I haven't really quit. People tell me I failed retirement because really what I've done is like I don't have a full-time job but I'm pretty busy, like on a board I teach social work. I did a consulting job for homeless this in Detroit. But it keeps me still in the fields, still fresh. I feel like I'm contributing. The most interesting thing that I've done is I'm in a group with women and we're talking about aging, because aging is very different for women now, and we all understand that when our parents and grandparents were our age they were really old. They acted like old people. But we aren't old. We still are vibrant and we still have a lot to contribute, and so we're talking about what is the last thing we want to do and how do we age gracefully. How do we make this part of our life as meaningful and important as the rest of our lives have been. It's been cool. It has been very interesting.
[01:32:05] FEMALE_1: What does a typical day like in your current life?
[01:32:10] Faye King: Typically, I get up, I have my cup of coffee, I read my email and then I figure out what I'm doing for the day. Like who do I have much where, do I had to prepare for my class? Do I have to do something for the board meeting? What meetings do I have? Then I always try to do some little project at my house because my goal when I retire was to clean my house, purge because I am somewhat of a pack rat. I've been more or less successful with that. I don't really feel like, I think about other people retiring and they stay home and they watch TV, I don't know what they're doing. But I'm out and about and doing stuff.
[01:33:03] FEMALE_1: What does your family do for fun now together?
[01:33:13] Faye King: I think we try to do something at least once a year with everybody. I have fibromyalgia, so I need to be someplace where it's not cold in the winter time because my little bones and muscles are aching. The plan is to sell out my parents house in Chicago. Sell our house here, find a ranch so that we can age in place. Then find something in the South where I can go and be a snowbird. We're going to Alabama for Thanksgiving to look at this community in Alabama and see if that's where we want to have the warm place to live in at winter time. Anyway, so that's what we're doing is we're taking my son and granddaughter with us, and so they'll have more of a vacation time. [LAUGHTER] We're looking at neighborhoods and stuff. Then because the community that we're looking at is half an hour from Pensacola, which is where my husband and his brother and sister, Leah. It will be closer to family as we do that. That's what we're doing. But in the past we went to Orlando once and stayed in a really resort hotel, which I had never really done before. It was fascinating because they had all these things for kids. My granddaughter was maybe a year old, and not quite a year old and they had stuff for her to do. It was interested. But we did not do any of the Disneyland stuff. None of that. We decided we would try to see what else is in Orlando, and it was interesting. We found some really nice restaurants and it's fun.
[01:35:08] FEMALE_1: What are your personal favorite things to do for fun?
[01:35:12] Faye King: I cannot sing, but I really loved singing. Am happy that these people allow me to sing with them because they can't really sing. But I really like to read. I like to read novels all the time and I've always read, I still read to this day I really enjoy reading. I also like to be with people. I have learned a little groups of women I do things with. Once a month I do something with this group. Once a month I do something with that group because I'm an extrovert. I understand that I get my energy from being around people, and I enjoy being around people. Whereas the other people in my house are all introverts and they could care less. [LAUGHTER] I have to get them to prepare them for real social outings. I just like to be around people.
[01:36:11] FEMALE_1: Thinking of your life after retirement, are your kids left home after the president, what important social or historical events were taking place, and how did they personally affect you and your family?
[01:36:23] Faye King: Well, I think the most significant thing that happened was is that we elected an African-American president in my lifetime. I did not think that would ever happen. I reflect upon my grandparents and even my parents. Really the progression from African Americans in this country just based on my family and their experiences. I think if my grandmother had been alive, how meaningful that would have been to her. If my mother had been alive, how meaningful that would have been to her. The fact that for the first campaign, how effectively he used social media as a strategy to get young people involved. I grew up in the '60s when we were very involved with social justice and a whole bunch of different movements and really felt that we can impact policy and political decisions. I feel like the country has become pretty apathetic and so many ways and people don't vote. People believe whatever they hear on TV. They don't research these people they believe. It is fascinating to me that we don't think. The onset and the popularity of reality TV is more than just saying to me, I cannot understand. I believe that it is a tactic to get us not to think and not to be involved in politics. It's a distraction and so I think it's really awful. But I was happy to be involved in the election, and really made a decision that I was going to be actively involved and call people on the phone and all that stuff. I was hopeful because I said, it looks like people understand the political process, how it really works in this country. People are getting involved. The only way we can make change is if people are getting involved, because we elect those people and they represent us. People don't understand that if you vote and you call your congressman or your senator, they call you back. If you don't vote, they do not. I learned that in my job because when there was a policy or something going around homelessness, I would just pick up the phone or email and call somebody and they say, oh, Ms King is fascinating. That gave me some hope. I'm not helpful anymore because we seem to have gone back to the apathy, and not really being involved in the political process. Now I understand that people in this state want to change the way the Electoral College voting works. If they do that, then we will no longer really have a two-party system. Anyway that's what has happened in my lifetime around what's happened in the world.
[01:39:32] FEMALE_1: What family, airlines or [inaudible 01:39:34] do you possess? What's the story, and why are they valuable to you?
[01:39:40] Faye King: I have two things. I have a turquoise and silver necklace that my mother bought when she went to Mexico. The reason that's significant is because my mother never really had a vacation, really on her own without us, really. She never had a vacation because we would just go see family. That's not a vacation. The significance of that is that she went on a vacation, and she went to some tropical place and she had a good time. We didn't have study abroad like you-all have. We had an exchange program in Mexico City and I went to Mexico City. I was in undergraduate school, and I just thought it was cool that she chose to go to Mexico because I had been there and it was just really neat. I have that. Then the other thing I have is a quilt that was quoted by somebody on my grandmother's family. It's not a fancy quilt, it's not gorgeous. It's a quilt made by poor people. It's just old and it's nice and is for my family and it's just nice. I like having that. It reminds me of my grandmother telling me stories about how people like you will use to have quilting bees like they would come to other people's houses and sit down. Then women would soul by hand these quilts. But it was also a time where they talked and they staged ideas. It was like a women's group, so to speak. But back in those days, people had to get something done. They didn't have the conveniences that we have now. Those are the two things that I have that are meaningful to me.
[01:41:28] FEMALE_1: Thinking back over your entire life, what are you most proud of?
[01:41:37] Faye King: That's an interesting question. I could say that I'm proud of all of the accolades. I was the social worker up to year, I was the women's person of the year. I was a Girl Scouts woman of distinction, so I have those things. What am I most proud of? I think I'm the most proud of the fact that I'm still married. I think that it is a work in progress and I think we have had a really nice life and it has given me companionship and somebody who knows me really well and keeps me in check and somebody I know who really cares about me, somebody who really has my back. Yeah. If I had to really think about like one thing because I have spent most of my time in that relationship. Really 40 years is locked up. Yeah, I guess I was proud of that. But I guess on the other hand, as a social worker, I think I have a lot of respect in the community because I really care about the work, I care about transforming people's lives, and so I think that I had been very consistent in the community about that people do not have to wonder, what do I think? [LAUGHTER] Yeah.
[01:43:21] FEMALE_1: What advice would you give to people in my generation?
[01:43:26] Faye King: I think that you guys do not have all the baggage that we had. As an African American, it was always the first hired last fired. You have to be the best, you have to be better than. As a woman, you have to be the best, you have to be better. Men are always your competition that we will not be evaluated just in the same way. I think there's a freedom that you guys have to really be the best people that you can be, that they're still have barriers, but they aren't the same kinds of barriers and the attitudes of people are really changing it. It's been interesting to me since I've been teaching to really see how all of the diversity and all the education about cultural differences really is making a difference. It may not be the difference that we'd like to see immediately, but I think people's values are changing and people are questioning what they were taught in their family of origin and people are much more open to learning about people as people and not as identifying them based on how they look. My advice would be for you to be who you want to be and to make good friends. Make friends who share your values and beliefs. Because you need support of other people, and to make real friendships, and be able to tell the difference between a real friend. Understand that part of that is your evolution and part of growing up. But as much as possible to try to really be independent thinkers and figure out how to negotiate in this world to get where you need without hurting and harming anybody else.
[01:45:42] FEMALE_1: Is there anything that you'd like to add that I haven't asked about?
[01:45:52] Faye King: Not that I can really think of. I think it's an interesting process, interesting program. I remember at some point when my grandmother was thinking about all the technology and inventions that had happened to her lifetime, from the telephone to the airplane. In our lifetime, it's really about how technology has made the world closer. I think one of the challenges of the United States is that we're now a global economy and we can no longer behave as if we're number 1 and we're the boss and we can do whatever we want and we can control the rest of the world. No, we cannot do that. The world is outpacing us in terms of how we educate our people, and if we don't educate people, we will not have the talent to compete in the global world we just want in the global economy. Even in social work, technology has allowed us to share the knowledge that we have with people in third-world countries, so they don't have to make the same mistakes that we've made as they are moving forward and trying to transform this society. It will be interesting to me to see what the world is like 20 years from now. It seems like our leaders aren't forward-thinking. I think we've ruined the environment and people are paying attention to it. It's snowing today. It's been freezing cold. Just think of the weather as a way that we have really messed with their environment and the whole global warming thing and people not taken as seriously and valuing money over people's health and the state of the world. Once we lose the world, we have to figure out how we're going to exist and water is water. We don't have any more water when it rains. We're not getting new water, we're recycling that old water, and so people are going to have to actually pay for water, maybe had to pay for the air they breathe if we can't figure this out. We're really selfish is what I'm trying to choose to say, because we're the only people who are not part of this net world pax about global warming than saving the economy. The US and Australia the last have not signed on. What we do not only impacts us, but any impacts the whole world. It's a global thing. Anyway, that's my last thought. [NOISE]
[01:48:38] FEMALE_1: [inaudible 01:48:38].
[01:48:38] MALE_1: Yeah. [NOISE]
[01:49:42] FEMALE_1: How about some families then? There's a good topic because we love care and retrofitting.
[01:49:47] MALE_1: We could get those lines in the background.
[01:49:52] FEMALE_1: That way because there'll be sure.
[01:49:56] MALE_1: We do it. We do still need to make sure that she.
[01:49:58] FEMALE_1: You call that you can call me anytime the last anything or you can find any answer or terminate the interview at any time if you want to.
[01:50:17] Faye King: Is it looking around you all agree?
[01:50:24] MALE_1: It always looks fine.
[01:50:28] FEMALE_1: Then I want to tell your story as one of loved and perseverance. Some questions may seem familiar because we asked them before, during our first sessions, we're asking them again because the questions are critical to their story that we want to portray for you and because it will be easier for us to edit the video tape into the story and engage the audience. We have about 26 questions to get through today, so yes.
[01:50:56] Faye King: Well, I was messing around with she.
[01:51:03] FEMALE_1: We wants to begin your story by asking you to name on your proudest moments as a parent.
[01:51:11] Faye King: I think one of my proudest moments as a parent was when my son, who was 32, was able to say to us that he really felt that we had done a good job as parents and he appreciated us for being his parents. I was like, wow, because it's like not during the actual parenting phase that that parenting because you are a parent for life, but for him I think is because once he became a parent, I think he really connected all the dots for himself and really realized how fortunately he was to have been raised in New York so that was really very rewarding because you don't really know how your children feel about you. It was cool.
[01:52:05] FEMALE_1: The next few questions are designed to set up the stage by creating picture of your childhood. Where did you grow up?
[01:52:12] Faye King: Interesting so my family is from St. Louis and I was the only one who was born in California because my parents had left St. Louis and I got to California. But then when my mother got pregnant with my younger brother. They decided that she couldn't have that baby. That's so far away by herself, like they had me, whatever. She went back to St. Louis to have my brother and then my dad missed her he packed up the house and came back. Then we grew up basically between St. Louis and Chicago. My parents really were the only ones to really leave St. Louis. Everybody else really stayed in St. Louis so I was in St. Louis probably until the seventh grade and then move to Chicago. Now because I was the oldest, I ended up, I went to school, I went to kindergarten. My family moved to Chicago, but when I had to go to kindergarten, there was nobody to be with me for the half day so I went to St. Louis for a year, my kindergarten year and live with my grandmother. Because there were all these cousin who could walk into school and babysit me, I guess when I went for the half-day. I went to school in St. Louis primarily for elementary school in Chicago for but you all recall middle and high school.
[01:53:44] FEMALE_1: Who was a part of your family union?.
[01:53:48] Faye King: My two younger brothers and my mom and my dad and my parents got divorced when I was in third grade. That was an interesting experience because my dad and I mean, I have no memory of them ever fighting it. I have no memory of them ever disagreeing and I remember one time in the middle of the night I heard them arguing and so I came into the living room and they just both like stopped arguing and together put me in bed it's fascinating when I think about it now. But I only have really positive memories of, my dad and how he will come home from work and put me on his shoulders and he bought a motorcycle and took me for a motorcycle ride and my mother was really mad. But it was really fun. Then my mother remarried and we knew that something was up because when she introduced us to the guy, he's got to be a step father. She let him buy us comic books so we knew that we didn't read comic books. My mother said if you're going to read a real book and so the fact that she allowed him to buy us these comic books and my brothers and I said, okay, something's up with this notion comic books. He was very interesting. It was interesting because even though he was a primary figure in our lives, he really defer to my mother when it came to disciplining us unless we had done something really egregious. Like we all my mother taught us all to do everything so she didn't have this gender thing. When it was the bathroom and kitchen mapping and sweeping and vacuuming, and we rotate that. My brothers learned how to clean up the kitchen and the bathroom and mop and vacuum like me and when it was your week in the kitchen, you need to make sure that you had cleaned up the kitchen before you went to bed. My brother's a couple of times went to bed without clean it up, a kitchen and Clarence, our stepfather, had his own liquor store and he would close up on midnight. He would come home like about 12:30 or 01:00 in the morning and he would get them up. Get up. You didn't do what you needed to do. Get up, clean up the kitchen, they understood that they needed to do that before they went to bed. But for the most part he was a support. But never really overstep that bound. Everything was a very interesting thing when I reflect on it now. But he was also about teaching us about the real-world. I remember this one time because my mother always play card games and board games with us. He said, well, let me teach you guys how to gamble and how to play poker, gets piggy banks. We've got piggy banks and he taught us how to play poker and how to bed and then so we did that. When we were done and had to, he had won all of our pennies. We said, we want our money back and he said no, he did not give us our money back and we said mommy he didn't give us our money back, and I think that was a good lesson because I do not gamble, he said if you risk it, then you lose it and it was a good lesson.
[01:57:35] FEMALE_1: Where are you in the birth order?
[01:57:37] Faye King: Oldest.
[01:57:39] FEMALE_1: What did your parents do for a living?
[01:57:42] Faye King: My mother worked for something called the railroad retirement board, which is a pension plan for people who worked for the railroad. In some ways, I think she was it was almost like being a social worker, which is what I am. She really made sure that the primarily men who worked for the railroad really got the best payout and understood what their pension benefits were. Really advocated for them and made sure that they got what they deserved. My dad, birth dad, he was an entrepreneur. He owned a grocery store, cleaners, buildings. He was really about making money and he was very good at it. My stepfather was a barber and he and his buddy owned a liquor store. That's what they did.
[01:58:42] FEMALE_1: Share one strong memory of either your mother or father?
[01:58:50] Faye King: I remember when I was about 12 years old, and I had two really good friends. One friend wanted me to go skating, and one friend wanted to go to the movies. I said mommy a friend asked me to go to the movies, another wants me to go skating. What should I do? My mother said, what would you like to do? We had this conversation where she was trying to get me to make my own decision and I'm like, could you just tell me what to do. I remember thinking, I just want you to give me the answer, why are you making me make my own decision. She went through this process to really help me clarify what I wanted, which was a very wise thing to do. Because as a teenager, I was rarely influenced by peer pressure. She really understood the importance of being able to make your own decisions and really to clarify what it is that you really wanted and that what you want is more important than what other people want. But I just remember resisting that experience. But as I learned and I remember it so clearly, so clearly I remember because I just said could you please just tell me. Tell me what I should do, and she wasn't not doing it.
[02:00:17] FEMALE_1: How would you describe your mother and/or father's parenting style?
[02:00:23] Faye King: My mother was wise. She was just wise. She taught us that you could ask whatever questions you wanted to anybody because that's how you learned. We weren't really bad about that, we did that. I think a lot of grownups in our world really wish that we weren't like that, but she really taught us that if you want to know something, just ask the question. You always need to be polite, you always need to be respectful. She really created a relationship with us so that we really felt like we could talk with her about anything. Clearly, we talked to her about everything. But my friends, especially when I was in high school, and I didn't really understand this until my mother died. But my friends loved my mother because she treated them I guess, very differently from the way their parents treated them. She really treated us like we were real people who had our own wants and desires. It was never about her really telling us what to do or not giving us an explanation about why we needed to do certain things so it was really almost Socratic the way she handled us. But at the same time she was really working hard to make sure, I know especially me, be really independent. Now the downside of this was that I also was responsible for these two little people, my brothers, who were just terrible and got me in trouble all the time. It was always my responsibility regardless of what they did. I have no idea what the advantage of that was. But it was I think about me being responsible and me understanding that it doesn't really matter what they did, but it's really about what do you do because you were in charge of them. But I hated that too. I just hated that. The moment my mother died and my friends came because we had all moved away. Nobody lived in Chicago anymore. All of my good friends came for my mother's wake and they really talked about how wonderful she was, how she helped them through their adolescence. I'm going to hit these two frets. We went to this party and they drank and we didn't drink. My mother had kind of demystified alcohol for us. They were planning to spend the night with us, but they were throwing up all over the place and so my mother just calmly says go to the bathroom and then the next day she talked about okay, this is responsible drinking. You're ladies, you don't ever want to be in a position where you are vulnerable and alcohol makes you vulnerable. If you're going to drink, this is how you drink and she really proceeded to explain to them and me about how you drink and how do you be sure that you're safe, that you don't compromise yourself and get yourself in situations where you can't handle yourself. My friends really talked about how helpful she was with them and how they really loved her. That was really powerful for me to really understand that not only was she a good mom for me, but how she was helpful to my friends too?
[02:03:55] FEMALE_1: What two or three words best describe the values imparted to you by your parents?
[02:04:03] Faye King: Kindness, independence, and strength.
[02:04:18] FEMALE_1: The next few questions related to the formation of your family unit. Describe the circumstances under which you first met your husband, including where you met, what you're doing, either school or career-wise at that time?
[02:04:33] Faye King: Okay. We went to the same high school. We were in the same grade. His locker was next to they put us in alphabetical order by lockers [inaudible 02:04:43] freshmen. He was across the hall, which is how I first met him. But when we were in high school, we just all hung out together. We all hung out together so there's like even though there were certain cliques, there was a lot of integration of those clicks. He was in our friendship group and he started going out with my girlfriend. That was really when I was much more into his world than we've ever been. My mother, the wonderful person that she is, we used to have co-ed sleepovers. My husband wanted to come to one of our co-ed sleepovers. My mother said, oh no, aren't you girlfriend and boyfriend? No, you need to go home Richard. She understood what the limits were to this co-ed sleeping. She really was interesting when I think about her. When I graduated from high school, I was the only person that really me and Webster, we went away. Everybody else went to the University of Illinois or, Northern. They stayed in the Illinois. Because she was my best friend, he knew everything about me because every year she and my other good friend, they would come to the school I went to and they will spend three or four days on-campus with me. When I graduated from undergraduate school, I convinced my friends to come live in Chicago. I met his brother, who I hadn't seen in a long time so we went out for a couple of times and that wasn't going to work. He told his brother that I was back home in town and one day he just knocked on our door and he was in the PhD program at the University of Illinois, University of Chicago. Me and my roommates, we just took him in. He was this poor graduate student who didn't have any food. We used to feed him and then we would go out on debt, you pay for yourself. Really we just grew, we just really grew from a friendship to a relationship. Yes, I'd known him more than half my life. Yes. When we had our 25th high-school re-union and I think I told you guys this. We were, there's a place in Chicago called the Point, which is a park by the lake and high school in we all hung out there. For our 25th reunion, we had a picnic there and we were all over the point and because we went to the same high school, we didn't have to worry about each other. We could just go and talk to whoever we want it to. When you go to high school, you have neighborhood friends plus the friends that you make in high school ones. I hadn't seen a lot of my neighborhood friends in a really long time. At some point in the reunion, one of my neighbor friend said, Faith, you didn't tell us you married Richard king. It was surprising to me when I think about it. But it's totally surprising to the world that we're married anyway, because we really were totally just friends in high school.
[02:08:20] FEMALE_1: How long did you date before you're married?
[02:08:26] Faye King: Probably three-and-a-half years. Because we lived together for probably almost two years before we got married, so yeah, about three years.
[02:08:40] FEMALE_1: How did your upbringing influence your values on marriage?
[02:08:47] Faye King: I think because my parents got a divorce. Nobody gets a divorce in my family it was a real. I think my mother was always a little embarrassed that or embarrassed I guess is the word I don't know what I'd said that she ended up getting divorced at her marriage was not a success. It's a commitment that you make. But also that it's important to choose somebody that you like [LAUGHTER] and that you're friends with. As well as love. The value, I guess would be really about commitment. That is relationship that's really designed to support you and to encourage you and to help you grow. I had relationships all around me where that was a model. My mother's only has one sister. Her sister, we're all in her wedding and they were always such a part of our extended family. I like, saw their relationship all the time and then my mother had a lot of first cousins who were married. We just really saw people having fun and enjoying their partner and, but also being able to disagree and have that disagreement, not just totally collapse everything but healthy disagreements.
[02:10:38] FEMALE_1: Your lifestyle at the time that you and your husband decided to start a family?
[02:10:45] Faye King: We decided that we were going to do everything that we wanted to do before we jump to [LAUGHTER] We traveled. We made our own furniture. We spend money on furniture, we ate out. I mean, really we went on cruises, we went to the island, we bought a house. We did everything that you need to do before you because we knew that once we did that life would be different. We really consciously made choices, especially how we spend our money so that we would be not feel that we were missing out on anything. We had our kids much later than all of our friends, like all of my friends had, like [LAUGHTER] we would visit them and they had babies and kids and we we didn't have that. I think we were married nine years before we became parents. Now, we decided after we have been married for seven years that we would start a family. But then it turned out that we had to go through all this and fertility testing and so we ended up adopting both of our children. But yes, we had a very pretty middle-class time because we earned a lot of money and we can just do things. It was fun, really good time [LAUGHTER].
[02:12:18] FEMALE_1: How did you and your husband arrive to the decision of adopting children?
[02:12:25] Faye King: That was probably one of the more interesting times in our marriage because in my mind, the decision was to be a parent. But from husband it was about having his children. I'm like well, if we can't have our own let's adopt, and he was like, oh, no, I'm not taking on anybody else's problems. I'm not doing that. They won't be a king and I'm thinking, really? It was an interesting moment. I just listen to him and said, we cannot adopt if we aren't both onboard. His good friend had adopted their two children. His wife said fair just bring him, you all just come visit us and once he sees Joe with these boys, he'll be fine. I had always wanted to do the sleeper car on the train like they have in the old movies. We took the sleeper car train to visit his friend. They went in Schenectady, New York and we went to visit them. We spent a week with them. Really after that, he says on the train ride home. Have you called the adoption of people? I said, I'll reach again. We really talked about it more seriously, but I think that experience helped him understand that they're your children. It doesn't matter how they come. They are your children. Within the funny, then we go so then we go to the adoption [LAUGHTER]. Richard is such an interesting person. When you go to adoption agency is like, please, can I have a baby? That's the attitude that you have. We have the social worker who's doing the family study and she's asking us all those questions and my husband says, can you tell me what that question has to do with us adopting a baby? That was his attitude and I'm thinking, oh, my goodness. Then I felt really bad for the social worker because she had never really, I guess, encountered anybody like my husband. I couldn't help her even though I am a social worker because that was not my role and it was just interesting watching her struggle with him, and so Richard is just him. He's very analytical and he wants to know why you're asking them these questions. He does not, and he's also has a interesting sense of privacy that I still haven't quite figured out and so part of that is the boundaries that he has around, how much information do I share with you guys? Who are you? But anyway, so it was interesting [LAUGHTER].
[02:15:08] FEMALE_1: Did working through this decision strengthen your bond between you and your husband?
[02:15:12] Faye King: Totally. Because his whole not wanting to adopt was something that I didn't really know about him. But I know that family is really important to him and I really had seen how his family works. This whole notion about there wouldn't be a king, I'm like, really? But I recognize that that's something that's instilled in their family and when I think our son was like maybe four, Richard's little sister had a baby and he was crawling around and the baby had taken a toy from Brian and Richard's mom was yelling at Brian for not letting the baby had the toy. Richard said, really came to Brian's defense. Really because there was something about how she did that that made him feel like she didn't really accept him fully as her grandson the way she did her daughter's baby. Basically, he just said, mom, these are both your grandchildren and we're not going to have this. Really, I don't think that she really consciously was aware that's what she was doing, but I thought, Richard. This was like one of those points in our relationship where we were not on the same page. I think that I didn't know that. Really having worked through that and then really actually seeing him as a parent because I would not have known that part of him if we didn't have kids so.
[02:16:54] FEMALE_1: Briefly describe the adoption process. How long did this process take from beginning to end?
[02:17:00] Faye King: Well, this was really the sad thing because my mother was dying. I didn't know until her wake when her best girlfriend told me that she was just really wanted to have grandchildren. She had never said that to us because that's who she is. She never pressured us with what she wanted versus what we should be doing, what our path was. I thought that we would get a baby before she passed away, but it took like nine months and no idea would take that long to adopt. We had got the room together and it was just weird. They call us and they say we have a baby and so we go and we look at this picture. All I can think of us, this is not our baby. How am I going to tell Richard that this is not, how am I going to tell him I don't want this baby and how do you tell the adoption agency you don't want this baby because you really do want a baby, but there was something about that baby didn't feel right. The social worker told us to go and talk about it and come back and let us know. We go to McDonald's was just down the street. When we talk about it Richard says, hey, I don't know how to tell you this, but that's just not the right baby. I go Richard, great, because that's not the right baby. Then we talked the rest of the time was spent. Well, how are we going to explain this to the social work? I said, we just say it doesn't feel right.
[02:18:28] Faye King: We tell her and she's like, why can't you tell me what it is about this baby? Because she's like it has to figure out what to do next because I don't think anybody's ever rejected a baby, but it didn't feel right. It just didn't feel right. I can't even explain it any differently than that. The next time, maybe a month, maybe six weeks later, she says, we have another baby because we wanted a boy first. She's dead. But he's going to be here two weeks old. He says foster mother is coming to the agency so you guys can actually see him because she thought maybe it's because we don't see the baby in real life. We go to the adoption agency and we look at this little baby and I was just saying, yes. We knew that was our baby. But then she said you can take him home [LAUGHTER]. We were not prepared. Because we were going to have diaper service and do all this natural stuff. We took that baby [inaudible 02:19:29] formula. It was wild. We had no idea they wouldn't let us take that baby home. We had no idea what to do with this baby. I mean, I used to work for pregnant teenagers. I did work groups and trainings on how to care for babies and how to be a parent. The funniest thing was both of us bathing him for the first time and somebody could have taken a video of that. That just would have been hysterical. Because it would be really fragile and it was funny.
[02:20:09] FEMALE_1: What was the most challenging or difficult part of this process?
[02:20:22] Faye King: I think the weight. I didn't anticipate because we were led to believe, especially because we wanted a boy and because African-American adoption, they're always looking for people to adopt African-American children. Most people want girls, not boys. We just thought, okay, after we did the family study, there would be a baby. It never occurred to me that it was going to really take nine months. I said [inaudible 02:20:50] because you told that lady you weren't going to answer her question. That's why we have [inaudible 02:20:54] but yeah, it was really the weight. I had told my job that once we got a baby that I was going to stop working. Really we had a transition plan in place. I say we can't do is. Let's just keep moving because we don't know when this baby is coming. I think the weight was really the hardest part about it.
[02:21:23] FEMALE_1: Do you recall enjoying any part of the process? If so, what part and why?
[02:21:30] Faye King: When I saw that baby. The first time we saw Brian. It was like that survey. I don't know if I'm psychic, I have no idea. We both looked at him and we said, this is our baby. We knew that he was our baby. When we brought him home, he was only two weeks old. But when we were taking him upstairs so he could take a nap. He was looking around like he knew that he was in a different place, and I thought, he's really smart. [LAUGHTER] It's looking around and knows there's something different. It's just nice to know that we had our baby.
[02:22:20] FEMALE_1: As you were raising your children, what events of any, reminded you of similar teaching moments from your childhood?
[02:22:30] Faye King: What you know when you're a parent, you always say, I'm not going to do this that my mother did. I'm not going to say this to my children. Then things are out of your mouth. They're in there somewhere. I don't think people really understand that you really parent the way you were parented. But because if you are used to gathering information to help you do a good job, it's a way to counteract some of those things that you said you were never going to come out of your mouth. When I think about my mother and what she did for me, and I think about my children and how I parented them. I don't know if it was easier because they were adopted. But I really saw them as their own little people, their own selves. I didn't think of them as being like Richard or being like me or being like my grandmother on my aunt. I mean, they were already their own selves, I guess. Really being able to individuate them and to really honor who they were and to support their natural leaning, it's only way I can think to talk about it. I think was the gifts that my mother gave me. They're people, they aren't extensions of you. They're your own people. It's interesting but I have friends who talk about when I get, my kids are going to do this and do that and I'm thinking, you ask the children to come, they do not ask to come. This was the choice that you made. I have no expectation would be lovely if they do take care of me, but I had expectation that that's their responsibility because we made the decision to be parents. Yeah, it's really to see them as individuals who are their own person and to enjoy that.
[02:24:50] FEMALE_1: What unique challenges that you face with their children. Were there any different because they were adopted?
[02:24:57] Faye King: I don't think so. I think the real challenge is because Brian had a learning disability and and I knew when he was one of [inaudible 02:25:06] developmental evaluation clinic in Boston as my internship and I knew that as smart as he was, his language was not where it needed to be. I told his pediatrician, I said something's wrong with him. He's not talking in sentences. He's got a lot of words, but he's not talking in sentences. The pediatrician said, don't worry, he's a boy and they always develop language later. When we went home for Christmas because we lived in Boston. When we went home for Christmas to Chicago, my buddy was a pediatrician and I said guessing something is wrong with this boy. He is if I bring up let me see. He assessed him and he said failure right. Based on where he is developmentally for everything else. His language is delayed. His language is not delayed based on his age, but because he is so advanced in all of these other areas, his language is delayed. You go back and tell a pediatrician that you want him evaluated and speech and language play. So I go back to Boston. Said I wanted him evaluate a Speech and Language Clinic. They said, we'll give you the referral, but he's going to be two, I got to see him. We go to the space and then evaluate him and they didn't want to give me an appointment.
[02:26:25] Faye King: It was clear that I was always going to have to fight to get him what he needed. Because it was like these systems have like when he's two-and-a-half, that's when we will start speech therapy. I push, they evaluated him and they said, oh, he has a language development problem, it wasn't a speech problem. Because it was language development, they saw him right away. Really, he has no memory of this, but it was really, there was something in his brain that didn't click when it was time to talk in sentences. I knew that that was a saw signs. He went to school in Canada because we lived in Canada before we came here. He was fine in Canada because it's a whole language hands-on learning. But when he came to Michigan, they expected him to sit in the classroom, and listen to the teacher talk, and that was a problem. We have evaluated and we had to push to have him evaluated. A psychologist knew something was wrong, but she couldn't find a test that would give her the gap that she needed. She found some test where you analyze something abstractly and he could not do the beginning of the test [NOISE] but he got all the way to the end. She said, I have never had a child who could get to the end of this test. But why did he have some stall at the beginning? I had no idea. I don't know what the issue is, but now we can certify him. The whole time because he was so bright, it was hard to get him any special services. He had some issue and expressive language, they don't even know what it was. I worked with low-income families who had kids that had various and sundry disability and I understand how hard it was hard for me to fight for him to get him what he needed. I can see for people who aren't as educated is the word I'm going to use because you have to learn how these systems work. It's hard to fight for your kids and to get them what they need. When he took the test in the eighth grade to figure out what happens in high school, and when we had his IEP, the teacher consultant said, Why am I here? His scores are on the 12th grade, I have kids who can't read. He doesn't need me. My husband said because he has a learning disability, we don't know how he learns, but he needs help. That was really the hardest thing to get him what he needed and to have him. It was really hard for him in middle school and high school, because that's when language is so much a part of how kids interact. There was something about his processing for him to get what he wanted out. If he was just talking, naturally, he didn't have a problem. But if you asked him a question, his process to think about that answer always took logger and for kids, it's all back-and-forth really quickly. Now, when he was in the fourth grade, he had a teacher who understood that and she said, ''Brian in a minute, I want you to answer this question.'' She talked to the class and she said, ''Okay, Brian,'' and he would have answered. He just needed that little extra time.
[02:29:32] FEMALE_1: How do you think family values have changed over the years? Let's say the second.
[02:29:39] Faye King: I think that parents do not understand their role as a parent, that they are the grownup, and that they are the ones that set the tone and set the standards for their families. Yes, we want them to be little people. We want to honor who they are but at the same time it is our responsibility to teach them what those limits are. Because if we don't, then they act up all over the place. I think that people have started using the TV to babysit their kids as opposed to letting the children explore the world. I think that parents cave in to their kids. I've been watching my son, my granddaughter, she cries, you'll just give me what, and I tell her, you know what? You can cry. You could be sad, but that's not happening. But she cries so you need to be sad for a minute. Come sit on Grammys lap, you can be sad for a minute. That's okay, but that's not happening. It's about, because you should know best the kid is a kid, they don't know what they need to do. Allowing children to make certain decisions before they have the equipment to make those decisions. I think the people are more concerned about their kids education and learning as opposed to letting them be kids. I think a lot of times there's a lot of pressure on kids now to perform way before they needed to have that pressure. They need to be kids, there's a reason why they have to go explore in the world. They don't need to be [inaudible 02:31:34] to be teaching them how to read. They don't need to learn how to write their name at three, that's not going to help them. There's the play and the exploration and discovery of things that really helps them. I think that people give lip service to the family values. I think the political world talks about family values as a way to support conservative thinking. I think that our society does not value children. I think that when you look at policies, we have now criminalized children. Four-year-olds are being expelled from daycare. Zero tolerance if you do anything, you expel kids from school. What are they going to learn when they're in school. I think that how our society even abused. How do you try a kid as an adult and give them mandatory life sentences? The whole construct of childhood is just weird now.
[02:32:29] FEMALE_1: What two or three words best describe the challenges of your parenting?
[02:32:36] Faye King: Advocacy [LAUGHTER] for Brian and adult patients with Vanessa. Yes.
[02:32:43] FEMALE_1: What two or three words best describe the benefits of parenting?
[02:32:47] Faye King: How many? Joy, amazement, and wonder.
[02:32:56] FEMALE_1: Lastly, what advice would you share with other parents looking to adapt their children?
[02:33:02] Faye King: You have to be sure that that's what you want to do. I think it's important to tell children that they were adopted. I think it does harm to children if they find out some other way that they were adopted. I think, you need to be honest about it. You need to both people have to want to adopt a child and they have to be clear about their values and opinions about parenting. Because a lot of times people are about a replica of themselves or continuing the family line. I think you need to be clear about why you want to be a parent because that's a huge decision. It is a life changing experience and you are a parent forever. You need to be together in terms of your beliefs about children, what do you believe about them, how they form, how they grow, they become people, so that you don't lay your own stuff on that child.
[02:34:21] Faye King: Hey, can you keep it rolling for a good? Can you pointed it out a bit, please. I want to have something on camera so I can explain something. Seriously, pointed at your feet. Can you tap your foot, please? [NOISE] Can you do it again? [NOISE] Thank you. The reason I asked you to do that is because occasionally, basically the entire interview, you would tap your foot on that thing and it would make this loud pop. I'm fine with it honestly. I can always edit around it but in the case of situations where I can, I want to have some [LAUGHTER] explanation for it.
[02:35:01] Faye King: Okay. Wow. [NOISE] I was on this thing.
[02:35:04] Faye King: Yes.

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2022

Length: 02:35:05

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Legacies Project