Legacies Project Oral History: Mary Ellen Guinn

Mon, 08/29/2022 - 12:07pm

When: 2022

Transcript

[00:00:11] INTERVIEWER: You can call her a break at any time. Also remember that you can decline to answer any question or I terminate the interview at any time.
[00:00:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[00:00:20] INTERVIEWER: First I'm going to ask you some simple demographic questions. They may jog some of your memories, but please try to keep your answers brief and to the point for now. We can elaborate later.
[00:00:31] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[00:00:32] INTERVIEWER: First, please say and spell your name.
[00:00:35] Mary Ellen Guinn: Mary Ellen Guinn, M- A-R-Y E-L-L-E-N G-U-I-N-N.
[00:00:45] INTERVIEWER: What is your date of birth including the year?
[00:00:48] Mary Ellen Guinn: June the 9th, 1934.
[00:00:50] INTERVIEWER: How old are you?
[00:00:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: Eighty three.
[00:00:54] INTERVIEWER: How would you describe your ethnic background?
[00:00:58] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let's see. My maternal grandparents were Irish and my paternal grandparents were Irish and English, so Irish and English.
[00:01:10] INTERVIEWER: What is your religious affiliation if any?
[00:01:13] Mary Ellen Guinn: Roman Catholic.
[00:01:15] INTERVIEWER: What is the highest level of formal education you have completed?
[00:01:19] Mary Ellen Guinn: I graduated from University. My concentration was sociology.
[00:01:26] INTERVIEWER: Did you attend any additional school or formal career training beyond what you completed?
[00:01:33] Mary Ellen Guinn: Because my career was in ballet, I was in formal training for that most of my life.
[00:01:39] INTERVIEWER: What is your marital status?
[00:01:42] Mary Ellen Guinn: Married.
[00:01:43] INTERVIEWER: Is your spouse still living?
[00:01:45] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes.
[00:01:46] INTERVIEWER: How many children do you have?
[00:01:48] Mary Ellen Guinn: Three.
[00:01:49] INTERVIEWER: How many siblings do you have?
[00:01:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: I have three siblings, one living now.
[00:01:57] INTERVIEWER: What would you consider your primary occupation to have been?
[00:02:03] Mary Ellen Guinn: Mother and then ballet dancer and teacher.
[00:02:08] INTERVIEWER: What age did you retire?
[00:02:11] Mary Ellen Guinn: I left formal performing when I was 26. I began teaching then when I was 50, and in-between I was a mother and wife.
[00:02:30] INTERVIEWER: Now we're going to begin the first part of our interview. Beginning with some of the things you can recall about your family history. Do you know any stories about your family name?
[00:02:44] Mary Ellen Guinn: I really don't. I have to get on the phone and talk to my sister.
[00:02:49] INTERVIEWER: There's no problem. Are there any naming traditions in your family?
[00:02:56] Mary Ellen Guinn: The only one that I can remember is that somewhere in the family lineage was someone named Artemisa. Each time someone in the family became pregnant and was expecting a baby, we called the baby to come Artemisa. [LAUGHTER] But that's the only tradition we had. No Artemisa's were named after that.
[00:03:18] INTERVIEWER: Why did your ancestors leave to come to the United States?
[00:03:24] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think that my maternal grandparents probably left Ireland during the Potato Famine. They settled in New England. I don't know that much about my father's parents.
[00:03:38] INTERVIEWER: Do you know any stories about how your family first came to the United States, like where did they first settle?
[00:03:45] Mary Ellen Guinn: I'm not certain of that. I do think that my maternal grandparents came and settled in New Hampshire in Maine. I don't know once again about my father's parents.
[00:04:01] INTERVIEWER: How did they make a living either in an old country or in the United States?
[00:04:07] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't know that either.
[00:04:09] INTERVIEWER: No problem. Describe any family migration once they arrived in the United States and how they came to live in this area?
[00:04:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: My father was born in Corsicana, Texas and as far as I can tell, his family stayed pretty much in that area. But my mother's family had an interesting history, and that was that she had four brothers. Two of whom died in very early childhood because of cold related illnesses, I think a flu and then some other complication. It could have been tuberculosis, I'm not sure. But my grandfather was distraught and he had a brother who lived in Texas. He decided that the climate was just too terrible and he packed his family up, put them on a boat, and they arrived in Texas, and that's how my family arrived there.
[00:05:12] INTERVIEWER: What possessions did they bring with them and why?
[00:05:17] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't know that.
[00:05:20] INTERVIEWER: Which family members came along and who stayed behind?
[00:05:24] Mary Ellen Guinn: My mother and her two brothers, her surviving brothers, my grandfather and grandmother. They left behind my great grandmother, whose husband had died by then. My great grandmother had three children who remained there. My two great uncles and a great aunt, and I visited them during childhood, one of my fondest memories.
[00:05:57] INTERVIEWER: To your knowledge, did they make an effort to preserve any traditions or customs from their country of origin?
[00:06:04] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think their faith was central to their lives. They were an Irish Catholic family. Most of the traditions were related around living through that tradition. Once again, when I was thinking about this, I don't know about my father's background. I even called my sister to find out and we just don't know about that early background.
[00:06:28] INTERVIEWER: Are there any traditions that your family has given up or changed? Why?
[00:06:36] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't think so. Faith was central and there was a great love of the arts in both families, and we certainly carried through on that.
[00:06:55] INTERVIEWER: What stories have come down to you about your parents or grandparents, more distant ancestors?
[00:07:05] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let me think. The stories that have come. I really don't know stories from my distant ancestors. With my grandparents, my grandfather was known to always wear flower in his lapel. As a child, I remember going to see this grandfather and he always had a sweetheart rose or some kind of little flower in his lapel. When he died, I remember that my brothers saw to it that he had that sweetheart rose there. I can't really remember there. There are other traditions.
[00:07:49] INTERVIEWER: Do you know if there is a reason for that rose? Was it symbolic for something?
[00:07:51] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think he just loved flowers and he always had a sweetheart rose bush growing outside the kitchen door, so I suppose he brought them when along his way.
[00:08:08] INTERVIEWER: [OVERLAPPING] Do you know any courtship stories like how did your parents, grandparents, other relatives come to meet and marry?
[00:08:20] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't know about my grandparents. Yes, I do. I know that on my paternal grandparents side, my grandmother and grandfather were eloped. In fact, that was a fascinating story. She lived in Corsicana. In those days, a horse thief was a terrible thief and someone stole one of my great grandfather's horse. Someone else came down and said the man who stole your horse is in town at a pool parlor. My grandfather went down to confront him. The man came out and hit him with a pool cue and he died of blood poisoning. My great grandmother remarried. The man she married was not as kind as as her first husband had been, and my grandmother was a young girl in high school and she eloped with my grandfather. It's a little bit of history of the West and that background. The other courtship story involves my mother and father. My mother started losing her hearing when she was 16. She didn't lose it completely, but she knew that she had a significant hearing loss. When she and my father were dating, she was very embarrassed to tell him that she was losing her hearing. She told a story that one day they were driving in the car and there was a trolley car going beside them and just as the trolley car got there, it rang a very loud bell. She said that my father who was driving, looked straight ahead and he said, " Well, Hellen, I guess that's the first robin that you've heard this spring." [LAUGHTER] My mother knew then that my father had known all along she was losing her hearing and they proceeded from there.
[00:10:45] INTERVIEWER: Wow, that's quite a story.
[00:10:48] INTERVIEWER: We're going to move on to your childhood up until you began attending school.
[00:10:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[00:10:56] INTERVIEWER: Where did you grow up and what are your strongest memories of that place?
[00:11:02] Mary Ellen Guinn: I was born in Houston, Texas and at the time my parents were living in a little town on the coast called La Porte. In-between birth and five years of age, I don't have a lot of memories. I remember I had two older brothers. In fact, my mother and father said they had two families because the boys were 15 years older than I and then my sister was five years older. By the time I was five years old, they were well into high school. These vague memories are of being on the Gulf Coast at the bay with a peer and my brothers, wrapping me up in towels and taking me back home. I have very few memories from that period until starting school.
[00:12:05] INTERVIEWER: How did your family come to live there? Now, I think you already mentioned that earlier that they migrated into Texas. But is there anything else?
[00:12:14] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, my grandparents migrated into Texas and then my mother and father lived there because my father was in the oil business. When I say oil business, he was middle level. He was not in the roughnecking part, he was not an owner, he was what was called a field superintendent. In those days, which was from 1935 until really about 1950, we moved wherever there was oil exploration in the Gulf area. So we lived all over Texas, and Mississippi, and Louisiana, and it was a very gypsy-like happy existence from my standpoint.
[00:13:03] INTERVIEWER: Did you move a lot when you were really young, before you started attending school?
[00:13:08] Mary Ellen Guinn: Not before I started attending, but when I was about five years old. We moved to Franklin, Louisiana. Because we moved so much, mother and daddy seemed to have hit upon an ingenious way of handling things. I need you to stop because my nose is running. [LAUGHTER] What was that? Did we move a lot? My mother and father devising a method. Because we moved so much, it seems that my father would know that we were going to move to a different place and he would drive into that town and ride around and see where he would like to try to find a place to live. Then he would knock on a door and introduce himself and say that he was Heidi Jackson and his family would be moving there and he had two young girls, and did they know of any place. As a result of that method, we had the most wonderful experiences. I'm thinking of this place in Franklin, Louisiana, where this elderly woman said, well, I have an upstairs that's vacant. This was Mamie. Mamie became like a second grandmother to me. We lived with her off and on for some time, occasionally moving back to Franklin. My mother's method of handling the moving was that, I can remember several mantras and one was, girls when you move, you just assume you're going to be there for the rest of your life, and so she would get busy fixing up everything and it was a flurry of activity. She'd say, when you go for a picnic, use your silverware just be sure you count it all before you get packed up the picnic because she was very concerned with all of the moving that we wouldn't have a sense of home. They were wonderful about that.
[00:15:19] INTERVIEWER: That's great. I know you said you had many different houses but can you recall one? What was it like?
[00:15:24] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, Mamie's house, later when my children were born and we were once driving back to Texas from Michigan and we went through the Bayou Country and it turned out that Mamie's house was then on the Bayou tour. It was just this wonderful big house with the backyard sloping down to the Bayou Touch. It was a fascinating place. Then we lived, I think one house that I certainly remember was in Laurel, Mississippi where we lived for a while. I can't think that there was anything especially particular about the house just that we seemed to be there for several years.
[00:16:17] INTERVIEWER: Okay. How many people lived in a house with you when you were growing up and what was their relationship to you? I know you said you had moved in with Mamie once.
[00:16:25] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes. Well, when I said I moved, it was Texas. It was New Iberia, Unis, Napoleonville, La Porte, Veil plot, Laurel, it was a move a year practically for a long time. Now I've forgotten exactly what you said, what I did.
[00:16:56] INTERVIEWER: I was saying how many people lived in a house with you and your family?
[00:16:59] Mary Ellen Guinn: How many lived with me? My sister was five years older than I, so at that point the family was mother, and daddy, and my sister, and I. My two brothers were in college and then World War II intervened. An overriding preoccupation during those years was World War II, and where both of my brothers were in the Air Force and where one was in England and one was in India. We were just very concerned about what was happening on a day-to-day basis. They weren't living with us, but they were certainly in the house with us.
[00:17:46] INTERVIEWER: Were different languages spoken in different settings such as home, in the neighborhood, local stores?
[00:17:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: No, it was really a homogenous culture then.
[00:17:59] INTERVIEWER: What was your family like when you were a child? I know you said your brothers were away, but was there anything else to add?
[00:18:07] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I said that really life was about the family, and faith, and the arts. My father had been quite an athlete in his younger days and he had attended Ryce Institute on an athletic scholarship in three areas. I think maybe his athleticism because he was a diver, and track star, and football star, he just loved seeing bodies developed and talents used in that way. My mother loved dance and she did have an aunt who had been a Danishon dancer. That was, in itself in that day, modern dance was in its beginnings. The Danishon dancers were very famous. Somewhere in her background she had this relative who was a Danishon dancer, and then she danced only just because she studied it. But we moved so much and we frequently were in small towns so wherever we were, that was the heyday also of community concerts. In these little small towns, you might have four concerts a year. You'd have a piano, stone on singer. We always had those. Then my parents would take two or three trips to New Orleans, which was the closest city, sometimes Houston, so that we could go to the valley and the Opera and see those things. We were steeped in that. Because we were living in Mississippi and my sister and I were studying dance in Texas, families who knew us said, would Mary Ellen and Margaret be willing to teach our children? We started out teaching four or five of our friends and then that grew and grew until we had a dancing school. At a very early age, my sister and I had a business and we continued that. We had over 100 students. We taught ballet and tap, and all of those things in this little town. As a result, we were making enough money that it paid for all of our training. We would turn around and go to Houston, Texas, where there was a very famous ballet dancer and I studied with him from the age of about 10 until really had left for New York.
[00:20:52] INTERVIEWER: When you moved, did that affect your business? Did you take it with you?
[00:20:56] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, we continued that through. My sister was five years ahead of me. When she went to college, I continued the school and then I left and went to college and that was the end of the school.
[00:21:13] INTERVIEWER: What work did your father and mother do? I know your father was in the oil business, did your mother have a job?
[00:21:19] Mary Ellen Guinn: No, she didn't. She was a stay-at-home mother. Well, I'd say that when we ran our dance school, my mother was the go-to person for everything. My sister and I did nothing but teach. Because my sister, she was not interested in becoming a performer, but she was a very good teacher, [NOISE] she started out teaching and I would be there with her to demonstrate and so forth. But mother was there handling all of the books, making all the phone calls, and telling the parents where to go when we would have our little dance recitals. Even my brothers would come home from college during that time, and when we would be putting on a performance, they'd come home and help pull curtains and do the usual things.
[00:22:11] INTERVIEWER: Now, back to your childhood early memories, what is your earliest memory?
[00:22:22] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think chickenpox you kids have not had to go through these childhood diseases. But in those days, chickenpox, measles, mumps were routine. I remember being very young and very sick and in a dark room and aching and awakening to find some sweet underneath my pillow, which was just, I can't remember what it was, whether it was a little chocolate or something, but probably that's my earliest.
[00:23:05] INTERVIEWER: So what was it typical day like for you in your preschool years? Can you remember?
[00:23:10] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't remember the preschool years.
[00:23:13] INTERVIEWER: What did you do for fun when you were younger?
[00:23:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: We played and played and played and what was fun, it was whatever happened to be around. I didn't particularly like dolls. I was very athletic, so I liked running games and tag and bicycling on hopscotch and all of that. I really don't remember that much about it.
[00:23:42] INTERVIEWER: Did you have a favorite toy, game, book other entertainment?
[00:23:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: The games were, as I said, they were usually running Red Rover and kick the can and I was always convinced that in red rover that I could break through the line of the strongest kids they are and I would knock breath out of myself trying to do it because I was skinny then, you wouldn't believe that but I was very skinny. Whatever I did, I do remember that everybody in the families to say something about Mary Ellen not being able to sit still and I also remember a great uncle of mine having me sit under this enormous wall clock and timing me five-minutes to see if I could sit still at the end of which I was given $0.50 [LAUGHTER]
[00:24:44] INTERVIEWER: Were there any special days, events or family traditions you remember from this time?
[00:24:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: No. I think that even birthdays were celebrated without a lot of fault role. They were always celebrated. But home life was for me was really happy and non problematical and I did not like school. I would much prefer to be at home where it was much more interesting to me. Part of that could have been because my start at school was a little difficult in that my mother was in the hospital and my sister was going to take me on to introduce me to my first grade teacher and somehow there was a mix-up on that. The school bell rang and I think my sister and her excitement went running in her school room and she happened to look out the window later and there I was on the school yard and the swing by myself. I had never gone out and I wasn't happy mother wasn't at home. In fact, she was in the hospital for a month. It was a rocky start and I just always was having more fun at home.
[00:26:14] INTERVIEWER: Do you recall why she was in the hospital?
[00:26:17] Mary Ellen Guinn: She had a major kidney infection and in those days that was a very serious thing. In fact, we were living in a small town in Louisiana and she was in a hospital in New Orleans. My father was flying up to see her and he was trying to hold down the fort at home and work and get to New Orleans so she was quite ill.
[00:26:44] INTERVIEWER: Did school get better as you grew older did you enjoy it more?
[00:26:47] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think school was fine. I think I just didn't like it as much and I love what was happening at home like what we did at home was just much more interesting to me at that time.
[00:26:59] INTERVIEWER: So we can take a break here.
[00:27:01] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[00:27:12] INTERVIEWER: Now with this guy's your time as a young person combat the time that you started school, up until t you began your professional career. So did you go to preschool? Where and what do you remember?
[00:27:25] Mary Ellen Guinn: No. I don't even think preschool existed. I'm 83, so I don't think we had preschools. I was at home until first grade.
[00:27:39] INTERVIEWER: Then you did not go to kindergarten, anything?
[00:27:42] Mary Ellen Guinn: No.
[00:27:44] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to elementary school? Where and what do you remember it for?
[00:27:48] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, the elementary schools were in various towns. I was in several Catholic schools. I was in several public schools depending upon where we moved. I do remember taking a bus on occasion because we lived in one place rather far from the school and that particular place at a horse and pigs, and it was a farm where we lived. I remember a big run down to catch the morning bus and taking it in. That was the fun of the day.
[00:28:35] INTERVIEWER: Did you prefer the Catholic school to the public school?
[00:28:39] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I think I told you I wasn't really thrilled with going to school and so I think it depended upon on my various teachers. I had a couple of favorites and I don't think there was a clear preference.
[00:28:59] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to high school? Where and what do you remember about it?
[00:29:03] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes. I went to a high school in Laurel, Mississippi. Then that was also where my sister and I had our dance school. That was a very happy experience. It was a town of about 30,000 and we probably knew most of the children in that town because we were teaching them. Then two my sister she taught ballroom dancing so I think everyone in that town knew how to foxtrot rhumba, tango samba, they all studied and everyone knew basic etiquette at dances, which in that time the boy would come across and ask the girl, may I have this dance? She would reply, Oh, yes. He'd take you out on the floor and dance and return you to your seat. It was not like social dancing of today. My junior year, I forgot to tell you that. I had a ballet teacher in Houston, Texas named Alexander [inaudible 00:30:17] and how he ended up teaching in Houston, I don t know. But he had been married to Nijinsky sister and he had been in the ballet, was Nijinsky, so he was a wonderful teacher. I decided to go to Houston to study with him my junior year in high school. I lived with my aunt and uncle and had a year of training with him and Kaci wanted me to stay in Houston. I was too homesick to do it so I went back to finish my senior year in Laurel. Then when I went to college, I went back to Houston and continue to study with him until he died.
[00:31:11] INTERVIEWER: Did you go to school at career training beyond high school where you [inaudible 00:31:15]
[00:31:19] Mary Ellen Guinn: You are speaking out about since my field was belly, that would have been then.
[00:31:23] INTERVIEWER: Yes.
[00:31:26] Mary Ellen Guinn: I had decided that I wanted to be certain if something happened to my legs, I'd have a career to fall back on. I went to the University of St. Thomas in Houston. My major there was sociology. While I was there, I was already training with Cauchy and I taught for him some. Cauchy died and about that time, the Houston Ballet was farmed. Even while I was in college, I had a performance outlet there. First, in musical theater with theater incorporated, which was the performing venue then, and then with the Houston Ballet. I continued that training, while I was in school. I was always training another program for what I eventually want you to do which was to go to New York and gotten a ballet company.
[00:32:29] INTERVIEWER: Please describe the popular music at the time when you were in school.
[00:32:38] Mary Ellen Guinn: My husband and I both talk about this because since we were in the arts, our tastes seemed to run toward, I'll say, for want of a better word, gentler form of music. The whole Beatles era just went over our heads. We were interested in Frank Sinatra, we were interested in Johnny Mathis. It was much more mellow. That was prior to the Sinatra and Mathis eras. That was the era of the big band. We were used to hearing that music. Both of us loved musical theater, and that was the heyday of Rodgers and Hammerstein and all of those things. I loved that music. If you asked me about Beatles song and that was latent in our growing up years. I really don't know that much about it, except for my kids. My kids have introduced us to all of that. My son just I'm ashamed to say, but I just found out about Hallelujah and Leonard Cohen, so I'm getting there. [LAUGHTER]
[00:34:04] INTERVIEWER: Did the music have any particular dances associated with that?
[00:34:09] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, there was jitterbug, there was slow dancing, which was basically a foxtrot. Then that was the beginning of latin dances in popular dance form. We did Mambo, and we did Samba, and very little tango, but it was mostly traditional, what would be called Fox Trotter two-step.
[00:34:39] INTERVIEWER: But what of that clothing hairstyles at this time you were growing?
[00:34:47] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let's see. Ballerina skirts. Then I think those morphed into poodle skirts where you had these big, tight waists, huge flares with a poodle and a little leash going down. Decide if you're scared. We wore pedal pushers in Bermuda shorts. We wore for hairdos, there were bouffant, much larger hairdos than you kids wear today. Or ponytails. Page boys and bangs, French twists. I don't know if you know about French twist, but you would wrap up, take your hair and wrap it up into a little a top knot. But the back would have these lovely lines. That was, if you wanted to be really dramatic, you wore a French twist. [LAUGHTER]
[00:35:50] INTERVIEWER: Can you describe any other fads or styles from this?
[00:35:56] Mary Ellen Guinn: The fads and styles? I can't remember what they were. I really don't.
[00:36:08] INTERVIEWER: I know you mentioned that [inaudible 00:36:09]
[00:36:11] Mary Ellen Guinn: But skirts in general were calf-length. Then later on they became middy and then they became many. Then people started wearing pants more than they did dresses. Certainly, we wore dresses most of the time and blue jeans. The girls liked blue jeans, and a man's shirt over the blue jeans, you wore an Oxford cloth shirt.
[00:36:40] INTERVIEWER: When you were like in high school?
[00:36:43] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes.
[00:36:44] INTERVIEWER: You wore dresses but also.
[00:36:46] Mary Ellen Guinn: We wore dresses. We did not wear slacks or jeans to school. But on weekends and things you wore blue jeans, and we loved those just an Oxford cloth, masculine shirt on top of the blue jeans.
[00:37:04] INTERVIEWER: Were there any slang terms or phrases or words that are common use today that you may have used?
[00:37:11] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't remember them. I can't. I'm sure we have them. I just don't remember what they were.
[00:37:23] INTERVIEWER: What was a typical day for you in this time period?
[00:37:30] Mary Ellen Guinn: This time period, meaning right now?
[00:37:33] INTERVIEWER: No. [OVERLAPPING]
[00:37:35] Mary Ellen Guinn: When I was in school? Well, it was unusual. Because I had this business going, that just had fallen into my lap. I loved ballet, that was what I wanted to do. I would go to school. Then two afternoons a week, I taught from about 04:00 in the afternoon until 6:30 or so. On Saturdays, my sister and I taught maybe from 10:00 in the morning until 3:00 in the afternoon. We'd have four or five classes and we divvy that up. She would be teaching some and I would be teaching some. While I never had a job per se, an after-school job, that other kids might have. We just had this little business going on and loved it. [LAUGHTER]
[00:38:39] INTERVIEWER: Did you continue your own training at the same time?
[00:38:42] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, the way we handled that was that in the summer, we went to Texas. Because my grandparents were there, we always had a wonderful place to stay in a prolonged visit with my grandparents. We studied every day with our ballet teacher. We had a private lesson with our ballet teacher. At the end of the summer, we would go back and teach what we had learned to other kids. I didn't realize how fortuitous that was because there were not that many good ballet teachers in the South at that time. Later on when I went to New York, and I saw young girls and boys coming to New York trying to get in ballet companies. Sometimes, their training had been so inadequate that there just wasn't a chance that they were going to be able to get into those companies. I was just very fortunate that my mother discovered that this wonderful teacher was there, and that we took advantage of the training with him.
[00:39:56] INTERVIEWER: I know you mentioned your business. But was there anything else that you did for fun?
[00:40:02] Mary Ellen Guinn: I felt like I did it all. When I went to college, I was no longer teaching. I did want everybody else to did. I dated. I was still studying. But by that time I was also very involved in doing musical theater in Houston. We were doing carousel in Oklahoma and paint your Wagon shows like that. It seemed it was all of that was fun plus the family activities.
[00:40:39] INTERVIEWER: Did you have any voice training that along with the dance?
[00:40:41] Mary Ellen Guinn: No, I did not. I do not have a voice, a singing voice.
[00:40:46] FEMALE_1: Can you stop real quick?
[00:40:46] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 00:40:46]
[00:41:08] INTERVIEWER: In your youth, were there any special days, events or family traditions that you remember?
[00:41:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think all those trips that we took they were family trips that I told you about to New Orleans and Houston because we were living in such tiny towns that that was a huge treat for us to go in. In fact, I remember in New Orleans, this will probably just shock you. My mother and sister and my dad would go shopping, the store my sister loved to go to was Maison Blanche, and that was the huge department store. But I was given $10 and about a block away from Maison Blanche, there was a five and dime store or Woolworth. I was told the first thing I was to buy was a large shopping bag for my purchases and then I spent half the day by myself going up and down the aisles in Woolworths, something that your parents and no parent would allow their child to do today, but it was safe then, and I just loved it. I bought goldfish on one occasion and the gold fish were put in a tiny little half pint container, and the fish was bumping its mouth on the side of the container and I was distraught because I couldn't meet my mother for another hour. I thought the fish was going to kill itself and by the time my mother came to pick me up, I was in tears that I had bought the fish and it was going to be dead and my mother said, no problem, she said, do you want it? I said no, I don't want it now. She just walked to the back of Woolworths and opened the top and dumped it in the water and off what we went. But that was unusual for a young child to be able to go in and do her shopping there alone.
[00:43:22] INTERVIEWER: What is Woolworth?
[00:43:24] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let me think what would be probably comparable to a dollar store. It was every town had a Woolworths store, and it was called the five and dime. You could buy something for a nipple, you could buy something for a dime, $10 was just a huge cash money. That lasted me and then some for my shopping spree in New Orleans in the big city.
[00:43:54] INTERVIEWER: That's the end of that section. [inaudible 00:43:57] Thank you so much for your time. [BACKGROUND] You can go for a break at at any time you want.
[00:44:22] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[00:44:22] INTERVIEWER: You can decline to answer questions or to make anytime for any reason. [BACKGROUND] Did your family have any special sayings or expressions during your youth?
[00:45:01] Mary Ellen Guinn: Sayings or expressions, I can't think of any.
[00:45:09] INTERVIEWER: Any changes in your family life during your school years, I know you moved around a lot but anything specific?
[00:45:17] Mary Ellen Guinn: I guess the biggest event was World War II, and since my brothers were 15 and 14 years older, it was mammoth. It was really a moment that just didn't change my entire youth.
[00:45:39] INTERVIEWER: Were there any special days, events or family traditions you remember from this time?
[00:45:45] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think I told you that mostly our traditions were the family traditions celebrated in Roman Catholicism. Other than that, I can't remember, it was Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, the usual ones.
[00:46:03] INTERVIEWER: I think you already answered this, but I have to ask. Which holidays did your family celebrate? How were holidays traditionally celebrated and has your family created its own traditions and celebrations?
[00:46:19] Mary Ellen Guinn: Those same holidays of Easter, Christmas, New Years. All of those things were celebrated usually in family fun. It was not big parties with neighborhoods. It was mostly within the family.
[00:46:42] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember a specific memory from those celebrations, maybe?
[00:46:50] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let me think. This is not in a celebrated fashion, but I do remember my mother being very brave one Thanksgiving. It was the first Thanksgiving when the whole family was not together because my two brothers were missing. They had both gone one to England and one was in India during World War II. The table was empty compared to what it usually was. A mother was being very brave until she took her first sip of water and then there was this big [NOISE] at the end of the table with my mother swallowing back the tears. That's all I remember about a special thing then.
[00:47:39] INTERVIEWER: What special food traditions does your family have? Any recipes passed down?
[00:47:48] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes. That would reflect some of my travels since we lived in the South and we lived in the Gulf coast. There were things like craw fish, etouffee, you girls don't know about craw fish. When it would rain in Louisiana, mothers would hand their children a big dish pan and you'd go out in the yard and literally be able to pick up craw fish that were coming up out of the holes. Then the Southern Creole tradition of making craw fish etouffee and craw fish bisque and all of those things. I think turkey was the big thing in our family. On Christmas, the turkey was put in the oven before we went to midnight mass. At 2:00 in the morning, we came home and we celebrated Christmas after which we would open all our presence and then we head to the kitchen where hot turkey would come out and at 3:00 in the morning we all ate. That's the big memory there.
[00:48:58] INTERVIEWER: When thinking back on your school years, what important social historical events were taking place? Was there anything other than World War II that you would like to elaborate?
[00:49:10] Mary Ellen Guinn: The historical events. In those early years, that was a constant on my mind so much so that I have one memory of, in those days we would go to the movies on Saturdays and prior to the movie starting, we had a newsreel which brought you up to date on what was happening on the war of France. I knew that my brother was in England. I knew that there was a lot of secrecy surrounding where our troops were and so forth. I remember whispering to my friend, my brother is in England, and then the rest of the movie I couldn't even remember or think about because I was so afraid I had disclosed a secret that I would be responsible for a bombing that would take place in England because I whispered, my brother is in England. It was on my mind constantly.
[00:50:24] INTERVIEWER: Now we are going to move.
[00:50:26] INTERVIEWER: Marriage and family. After you finished high school, where did you live?
[00:50:33] Mary Ellen Guinn: I went to Houston, Texas because I was interested in ballet, because I had a teacher there, Alexander Kachatovsky, who was a wonderful teacher from the Russian school. I felt like I can get my degree. I was afraid if my ballet career didn't work out, I wanted something to fall back on. I went to the University of St. Thomas in Houston where I majored in sociology. During that time, I studied with Cauchy. Then at that same time in Houston, the Houston Opera was getting started. The Houston Ballet and a place called Theater Inc. Theater Inc. only did musicals. While I was going to school, I was also performing in musicals and studying ballet with hopes of a ballet company. That was my first love.
[00:51:33] INTERVIEWER: How did you come to live there? I think you answered this. Did you remain there or move around throughout your working adult life? What was the reason?
[00:51:45] Mary Ellen Guinn: After I graduated, I went to New York. That first year in New York, a choreographer that I had worked with in Houston asked me to perform with a company on Cape Cod called the Hyannis Melody Tent. I went up there to do Susan Infineon's rainbow and a couple of other roles that they were doing for musicals. I left, headed for New York, but then I had that little hiatus there just doing fun things, came back to New York, and I was invited to join the Joffrey Ballet company. I joined the Joffrey Company and then that was followed by American Ballet Theater, which was the company that I loved. I joined them just in time for a State Department tour of Europe and the Soviet Union, which was exciting for me because at that time we were still in the Cold War. Going behind the Iron Curtain was fascinating for us.
[00:52:57] INTERVIEWER: Do you want to tell us more about your time on there.
[00:53:01] Mary Ellen Guinn: On the tour, you mean?
[00:53:02] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
[00:53:04] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, let's see. That particular tour was two months long. We started in Lisbon, Portugal. We went in Portugal, Italy, Bulgaria, Romania, Spain. It was really wonderful. For me, it was an introduction to Europe because I'd never been there. It was wonderful to be able to work and see the country. Then when we went to Moscow, we were told exactly where we could go and what we could do. That was fascinating to us because young people there were dying for news. We would find that when we were walking on the streets, teenagers would be behind us saying, they whisper. Do you have any magazines with you? Do you have any blue jeans you could sell? Things that teenagers wanted that they could not get. They wanted news of the West. We were, of course, told that we could not do any of that because we were representing the State Department. It was really fascinating. Wherever we went, we had interests guides who would take us. They represented Russia and they told us where we were doing in the history of what we were seeing and doing. A lot of artistic things, meeting their artists, and a lot of historical things.
[00:54:46] INTERVIEWER: Varying topics about your family life. Tell me a little about your married life. Where did you first meet your spouse?
[00:54:58] Mary Ellen Guinn: That was really a fairy tale. My husband and I are both from Texas, and we grew up 30 miles apart. Didn't know each other of course. He went to Northwestern, I went to school in Houston. He's a singer, Opera in concert. That first year, I told you about the hiatus when I went to the Melody Tent. The following year, I was going to visit a relative in Maine, and I thought, oh, I'll stop by the Melody Tent and say hi. When I did, the director came out to the car and he said, Mary Ellen, do you have your ballet shoes with you? Do you have your bags? Can you stay and work for a couple of weeks, a dancer has had an injury? I said, "Wonderful." The show was Most Happy Fella. Who should be my partner, but less like wind. That show, if you don't know about it, has a Texas theme. In big D and standing on the corner, my future husband to be was my partner much of the time. We met on the Cape, and I went back to New York to be with Ballet Theater. The draft intervened and for him, he happened to be on tour at that time with little Avner on the road. Young singers who are aspiring for careers in singing would audition for the United States Army Chorus, which he did. He was a soloist in Washington for the Army Chorus, and I was in New York, which made it very convenient.
[00:56:53] INTERVIEWER: How was it like when you two were dating?
[00:56:56] Mary Ellen Guinn: Like meaning what?
[00:57:00] INTERVIEWER: Just tell me a little bit about it.
[00:57:04] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, now that I'm thinking about that, ours was long distance dating because I was with a ballet company and he was serving, doing his army tour. He ended up being the soloist for President Eisenhower's church. He was going to the White House to sing and I was off in Europe. My favorite story about that is that while I was in Europe, we've been dating for some time, just seeing each other when we could, and I got a telegram, and the telegram he had picked up belodic terms by that time. It said, would I please advise of an attitude toward pas de deux. I said absolutely, yes, I'm feeling very happy about that. Attitude is a step in ballet, and as you know, a pas de deux is steps for two. That was my proposal.
[00:58:07] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your engagement and wedding.
[00:58:12] Mary Ellen Guinn: The engagement, I think that was for about seven months. I injured my knee in Leningrad. I came home two weeks early. I went into my head therapy and we at that point, were able to see each other with more frequency because I was not in a company right then. Then he wrote and said, the priest here says that December 2 is the date that's open. Well, I had been engaged to do a season with the Joffrey Company again at New York City Center. I had a one night and I packed my two twos and ballet shoes and got on a bus and headed to Washington and I was married December 2nd.
[00:59:14] INTERVIEWER: Did your family come to that?
[00:59:17] Mary Ellen Guinn: They did. My mother had died. Let's see. My mother died about a year after I went to New York and I had come home to be with her in Houston when she was so ill and then had returned. Then my father had remarried several years later. My father, stepmother, one of my older brothers and my sister came and we had our wedding on the army base there in Arlington, Fort Myer. When you said, well, did my family come? They came. I knew no one in Washington and Les knew his army buddies. But the morning of our wedding, a carload of the dancers from the Robert Joffrey Company arrived and they pulled up and had driven from New York. We had friends there for it, but it was a quiet wedding.
[01:00:28] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about your children and what life was like when they were young and living in the house?
[01:00:35] Mary Ellen Guinn: That started a glorious time in my life. Robin, our eldest, was born when we were in Virginia and my husband was just getting out of the army and ready to start his career. Robin was only three months old when I discovered that we were going to have a second child. Jonathan was born later. That was a hard time for us because Robin was born with a urinary tract obstruction which required some serious medical care. We were commuting, we had moved to Princeton for Les to start his career. And thinking that we would not live in the middle of the city with our children. But then her medical needs were such that we found we just had to be closer to care. If you can believe it, at that time, Princeton did not have a pediatric urologist, so we were having to go into New York or the University of Pennsylvania. We moved into New York and lived there for awhile, then eventually to White Plains, New York, and our third child, Rachel, was born there. We have those three. Robin is in North Carolina, Jonathan's in Grand Rapids, and Rachel is right here in Michigan. She's a deputy superintendent of Birmingham schools. [BACKGROUND]
[01:02:32] INTERVIEWER: I have another question. How did you come to Michigan?
[01:02:36] Mary Ellen Guinn: Les was performing for the May Festival. At that time, the Philadelphia Orchestra would come for a week's residence. I think he sang in Ann Arbor maybe two or three times. He knew some of the faculty here. Then he was singing for a festival in Alaska. The chair of the department here was also singing a tenor and he said there's going to be an opening at Michigan, would you be interested? By that time Les established his career and was eager to put down roots and have the children in a place where there was not so much commuting in New York. I had never been to Ann Arbor. I really didn't know too much about it. I had visions of moving to I don't know what the middle of a wheat field or something [LAUGHTER]. We moved and I had no idea what the cultural life in Ann Arbor was going to be like. But it was wonderful for us because the ease with which we could go to a theater, all those things that were important for us, and Les loved the university, the children loved Ann Arbor, so it was a good fit.
[01:03:56] INTERVIEWER: Were you working at that time?
[01:03:58] Mary Ellen Guinn: I didn't. After we married, I was a stay-at-home mother. Then when I came let's see, I don't remember the exact year, but I think that Rachel, our youngest, was just starting high school, and the telephone rang one day and the University of Michigan said, we're starting a musical theater department and we need somebody to teach ballet and tap. My years of musical theater paid off because I didn't know how to tap dance as well. I thought tap and ballet for musical theater students.
[01:04:52] INTERVIEWER: We're going to talk a little more about your work. Your primary field [inaudible 01:04:58], I think we've got over how you first got started with it. How about what got you interested? Was there any specific moment you can think of?
[01:05:10] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think I may have told you that my mother and father both loved the arts. I think that was a cohesive factor for the family when we were moving so much in my childhood that my mother would locate the nearest ballet teacher. During World War II, that was no easy task. There was rationing, which meant tires. Rubber was hard to come by. You had these little ration books where you would get so many tires per year when you were driving as we did from one little small town to find, in my case, a teacher in Lafayette, Louisiana and another teacher here and there we were constantly traveling. That was just a very cohesive factor. I think that that kept going because my sister and I both loved it so much that they just encouraged that. I think I told you about our ballet school, that we just locked into that and we had a wonderful little business when we were quite young and it kept going all through high school. All of that was delightful.
[01:06:29] INTERVIEWER: [inaudible 01:06:29] Describe the steps or the process involved in your job from start to finish. Let's involve raw materials you used. Where do you get those materials?
[01:06:54] Mary Ellen Guinn: The job, meaning in my ballet career?
[01:06:57] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
[01:06:59] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, if you're a performing artist, your body is your raw material and training is of the essence. You have to seek the best training that you can find. Many are not fortunate to have good teaching. Or they do not have the innate qualities needed for a particular form of art. The makeup of your own body, in my case, was essential. Do you have a turnout, all of those things? You said the steps, that it's essentially training and it's grueling training. It is day-by-day that you just establish a pattern. You have daily class, you have to stay in shape all the time to prevent injuries. In my case, I never had an injury until the end of the tour. Probably fatigue of touring played a role in that. But the larger role was that in Europe many of the stages are raked. That means the stage is slightly tilted so that the people in the back of the house can see the back of the stage. It's very, very slight. But we are told as dancers, this is a raked stage. It happened that the one in Leningrad was the steepest rake we had. I remember doing this jump and thinking, where's the floor underneath me and landing and feeling, oh this didn't feel very good. You face those trials whether you get L or whether you just have something that may impede your progress and that, fortunately for me, I had a wonderful doctor in New York who used to operate on ballet dancers and baseball players [LAUGHTER]. I remember that I was having surgery and Mickey Mantle was having surgery and he was the baseball player of the time. Then you go back into therapy and then you go back to rigorous training. It takes tenacity. It takes discipline.
[01:09:32] INTERVIEWER: Did you go back to training afterward? Or when did you end your professional career?
[01:09:36] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I ended my career when I decided to marry Les and I moved to Washington. I was very happy to do that at that time. Dancers did not dance into their 50s as they do today. But I knew that I wanted to have a family and marry and I had had a long time of dancing. I was absolutely ready to stop that. I can't remember now, what did you say? What did you ask me?
[01:10:10] INTERVIEWER: I just asked you when you ended your [inaudible 01:10:11]
[01:10:11] Mary Ellen Guinn: Oh, so when I came back, I returned to dancing and I danced for a while after I had had the injury and surgery and then I had decided to leave and I got married.
[01:10:27] INTERVIEWER: How was your rehabilitation process like for you?
[01:10:30] Mary Ellen Guinn: It was fascinating. There was a woman in New York who worked with dancers, she sometimes would even go into surgery and see what was happening. You probably know of Pilates training, which is a famous technique. She was an early student of Joseph Pilates and extremely well-known in that field. It was meticulous rehabilitation. Much as what we didn't have was what athletes and dancers have today and that's the advances in medical care where you have imaging and even during your training, you're seeing where does the foot strike the floor and what's your stride like in these really detailed measurements that could help you tremendously. We had none of that. It was certainly more primitive than what you have today, but it was solid.
[01:11:29] INTERVIEWER: How long did it take?
[01:11:32] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think it took about four months. I can't really remember whether it was three or four months. It was not very long after that then I was back.
[01:11:47] INTERVIEWER: Let's go over a typical day during your working life.
[01:11:55] Mary Ellen Guinn: In New York, I was studying at American Ballet Theater and we all had our favorite teachers. I was very fond of Madam Perry Islavic and William Dollar. Perry Islavic had a 10 o'clock morning class so that meant getting up about eight o'clock, having a good breakfast, getting to class. I can remember thinking, it's a snowy day. Nobody is going to show up for class and I'm going to get there and I'll have Madam Perry Islavic. No, that didn't happen. Every dancer was thinking the same thing. Those snowy days, the barn was crowded more than perhaps on other days. You'd have class in the morning, you'd have a break, you'd have an afternoon class if you wanted to. That was it. That would be three hours of training at that time. Once you got into a company, then all of that changed. Company life meant that the company had, in the case of Ballet Theater, a huge number of ballets in the repertoire. You knew which ballets you were going to be in, you knew the schedule. There was company class, and everybody attended company class. Then you started your rehearsals. Those rehearsals could go on for six hours a day. You did have a union to put an end to the number of hours because in smaller companies, sometimes they would tend to want to work the dancers for very long hours. If you were with a large company, you were not allowed to do that. But anyway, after rehearsals would end, then if it was a performance schedule, you'd have a performance that night so you were back in the theater at 7:00, from 7:00 to curtain, 10:30, 11:00.
[01:14:05] INTERVIEWER: We'll take a break here, the bell's going to ring soon.
[01:14:07] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[01:14:13] UNKNOWN_1: [inaudible 01:14:13] [BACKGROUND]
[01:14:47] INTERVIEWER: Are we recording? [BACKGROUND] I just wanted to ask you about your secondary job or training, was it sociology?
[01:14:58] Mary Ellen Guinn: Sociology. Yes.
[01:15:00] INTERVIEWER: Did you ever use that or were you in that field?
[01:15:02] Mary Ellen Guinn: I didn't not use it. I did casework when I was getting my degree. At that time, the famous MD Anderson Cancer Institute had just been built in Houston. My sociology professor said, "Mary Ellen, would you do your casework at MD Anderson?" I had thought that I would do placement work for an orphanage and so I was thinking in those terms, but I did go ahead and do it at MD Anderson. That was an eye-opening field. I was in the head and neck clinic and I was just there for a semester of doing that. Long enough to know that my heart was in ballet. I did not explore it after that.
[01:16:06] INTERVIEWER: I think we've covered this, but what specific training or skills were required for your job? What tools are involved and how and when are they used?
[01:16:16] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, the tools, I guess, would be simply toe shoes, ballet shoes. What you wear. You certainly don't have your own barn. You go to classes. It's a pretty simple list of needs that you have. Just endurance, day in and day out training. That really is all that it is, good teaching.
[01:16:56] INTERVIEWER: What technology changes occurred during your working years?
[01:17:08] Mary Ellen Guinn: By technology, as applied to my field or you mean technology in general? Because no cell phones, no computers, I mean, all that life would be different, and really I can't think of anything other than what I mentioned, that now, athletes, anyone who is pursuing really fine tuning skills that involve your muscles have the advantage of everything that you can have on film, and studies, kinesiology and all of that to help you with what you're going to do.
[01:17:45] INTERVIEWER: Was there a specific technology that you found most impactful? It doesn't have to relate to your field, but just during your working years.
[01:17:53] Mary Ellen Guinn: No, I think that I relied pretty much on what I had always had and known. I'm not sure just exactly what you have in mind.
[01:18:09] INTERVIEWER: Yes, do you use technology a lot? Anything like that?
[01:18:13] Mary Ellen Guinn: No, not really. Bear in mind that my husband proposed via telegram. Have you ever gotten a telegram? I can't think of anything.
[01:18:37] INTERVIEWER: What is the biggest difference in your field of employment from the time you started until now?
[01:18:45] Mary Ellen Guinn: The advancement in technical skills, certainly stagecraft, when you see the incredible productions now and design and all of that. The basic needs of good dancers and orchestras. Now because of the cost of companies carrying orchestras with them, very few travel with live orchestras. Mark Morris is certainly one who insists upon live music. But in stagecraft, the advances are huge, that kind of technology. But for the dancers, I think toe shoes and all of those things, while they're better, is basically the same thing.
[01:19:38] INTERVIEWER: Have you been to a show recently that has impacted you or that's shown you [inaudible 01:19:44]
[01:19:49] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, anytime that I've seen shows on Broadway, certainly, all of those shows have incredible technology that we haven't seen before. But I haven't seen display in those shows. But the advances with technical use in stagecraft on Broadway certainly that's reflected.
[01:20:24] INTERVIEWER: How do you judge excellence within your fields? What makes someone respected in that field?
[01:20:35] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, there is a technical standard which you simply know that this is the standard for ballet. That's not to say that all of the dancers have exactly what it takes to acquire that perfect standard. No, you train, for example, with turnout. You would think that the perfect turnout would be to be able to put your feet literally on a straight line, but that's not possible for some dancers. Your training is such that you know that if you don't want to have injuries you have to compensate by being sure that the knee is over the toe when you land. You make exceptions for whatever your body allows as long as it's within that norm for ballet. I think in other forms of dance, it's much more forgiving than ballet with the expectations for what you were able to do with toe shoes and so forth. Go back to the question again.
[01:21:59] INTERVIEWER: What makes someone respected?
[01:22:02] Mary Ellen Guinn: What makes someone respected? First of all, they do have to be technically capable of doing what needs to be done. Beyond that, I don't know how to define art history. There are those artists who simply have an interior gift that they have to give the way they perceive or whatever it is that they are trying to express in their art. I think that depends upon whether or not you can show the truthfulness of the moment. That takes learning and an observation and being able to access your emotions so that you can express that and that varies given from dancer to dancer, artist to artist. People simply have different gifts and they have to find what it is that they want to express.
[01:23:11] INTERVIEWER: Did you have any sponsor or anything when you're dancing or dance for some companies?
[01:23:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: No, I didn't. I went about the way most dancers do. Now there are so many regional companies that are excellent. But when I was going, I graduated from school in 1955. At that time, New York was the go-to place. San Francisco had a ballet company, Houston did. But Regional Ballet was not where Regional Ballet is today. Was just astonishing companies. We went to New York, we went to whether or not it was New York City Ballet or American Ballet Theater or Joffrey or Martha Graham or whatever your field was. You went and showed up for classes and the powers that they would see you and speak to you about doing things with them. In my case, that was what happened. I took classes and then I received a call saying, we'd like you to come and audition for the company.
[01:24:31] INTERVIEWER: What do you value most or what you did for a living in life?
[01:24:37] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I think if you get to do what you love, I love music and I loved ballet, I loved all of the arts. There were such joy in that for me so to be able to make a living at doing that. Though I didn't do it for very long, I certainly did it for as long as I wanted to do. It was just an invaluable experience for me. The people that we met, the traveling that we were able to do, any number of things, it was fascinating. I loved all of it. Plus I met my husband.
[01:25:21] INTERVIEWER: What age did you say you stopped?
[01:25:24] Mary Ellen Guinn: I stopped when I was 27.
[01:25:35] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about any moves you made during your working years and retirement prior to your decision to move to your current residence?
[01:25:44] Mary Ellen Guinn: The moves. We lived in Washington DC after I was married and then I mentioned that we wanted to avoid living in the middle of the city with young children so we had friends who lived in Princeton and we thought that's an easy commute. We lived in Princeton for a short while. Then when we realized that was not practical both for our daughter's health reasons and also that commute is not as easy once my husband's career was really going, having to get on a commuter train for rehearsals and all of that so we moved to New York and we lived in Jackson Heights and then my husband was singing in White Plains and someone said that their mother had died and they did not want to rent or sell her house. Did we want it? Were living in Queens at the time, but we moved to White Plains and we lived there for a number of years. Less, his career was established by then, so he was doing a lot of travel and that was a lovely experience for us. Then we spent summers in just wonderful places because he was invited to participate at the Marlboro Music Festival in Vermont so we would be in Vermont for the summers. Then Aspen, Colorado music festival, once we moved here and we did that for about, 13 years. I think our first year here, we even spent one or two summers at interlock, and so the children had the experience of we would live in one place for nine months and then they'd have three months at one of these music festivals. That was wonderful. But once we move to Ann Arbor, that was our go-to place. We always thought that probably we'd retire and go to the Sun Belt because we like warm weather. Then we realized when he retired now, we really like it here, going to stay put. We pop down to warm up and thought it out and February and March or so, and then come back. Ann Arbor is home for us now.
[01:28:29] INTERVIEWER: Can you tell me about some of your vacations, maybe?
[01:28:32] Mary Ellen Guinn: Vacations?
[01:28:33] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, your vacations or visits.
[01:28:36] Mary Ellen Guinn: Our lives, it had so much traveling that we did not "Vacation" We would go certainly back to see our families. His family was still in Texas, so we'd go back to Texas. My father had moved to Jackson, Mississippi from Houston, Texas after I had left for New York and so we'd occasionally go there. We bought a place in Sarasota, Florida and when he retired, then we would go to Sarasota during the winter months or maybe sometimes December through April or May. Then we sold that place a couple of years ago. But our vacationing has been in tandem with his performing and our lives in the arts.
[01:29:43] INTERVIEWER: I think you've answered how you come to live here at current residents. How do you feel about your current living situation?
[01:29:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, where to time of life when we are thinking, we've been fortunate enough to live into our '80s. Our son is a graphic designer and he's in Grand Rapids. As I mentioned, one daughter is in Birmingham, so we see those two quite frequently. As matter of fact, our daughter in North Carolina, we see with great frequency. But we are thinking we would love to be in our own place. We love where we are. So far we've been healthy but we're thinking we need to look into other possibilities and so we're looking into all sorts of things, the most recent of which is an organization I think that's here that helps people who are like us and say we want to stay put and they assist you in staying put with people who can do various things that you may need to do. If there were health problem then that would have to be faced. We faced one of those and it certainly challenge to our thinking and we do have to realize that our children are all working and we need to see about that. We're looking into that. It's a huge change.
[01:31:31] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. [BACKGROUND]
[01:31:36] INTERVIEWER: Tell me about any moves you made during your working years and retirement prior to your decision to move to your current residents here at Michigan.
[01:31:49] Mary Ellen Guinn: Prior to when?
[01:31:51] INTERVIEWER: Your current residents?
[01:31:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: No any moves [OVERLAPPING]
[01:31:55] INTERVIEWER: You made during your working years.
[01:31:57] Mary Ellen Guinn: During the working years. My working years were in New York City. Then when I met my husband and we married, we lived in Washington DC. Until he finished his years with the Army Chorus, where he had been drafted. From there, we moved to Princeton for awhile. Thinking that we could raise the children in Princeton, but we had to move to New York City shortly after that because of our daughter's medical needs. Then the next two years were spent in New York while he established his career, in both New York City, in Queens, and in White Plains, and then we move to Ann Arbor. But after we got to Ann Arbor, that was our base. We did live in Germany for two six month periods, because he was performing in Stuttgart and in Hannover. We got to live in Southern Germany, we got to live in Northern Germany. But Ann Arbor has been home.
[01:33:09] INTERVIEWER: Do you want to tell you a little bit more about your tenant journey, is there anything?
[01:33:13] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, that was fascinating. As you know, probably, almost every city in Germany, every city of any size has an Opera house. It's like a little city in itself. My husband was taken care of royaly by the Opera House. But I had to contend with the bureaucratic business of living in Germany. So I had to go to the police station and answer questions like, how many square feet in your apartment? To try to do that with my one semester of German that I had taken before we went to the residential college and took a quick German course. Our daughter, who was in the 7th grade, accompanied me for these official visits that you had to do if you were living in Germany for a six-month period. She had become quite fluent because she was in a regular school in Germany. She told me after one visit at the police station, she said, "Mom, you told them that your husband was your God?" [LAUGHTER] I don't know what I said to them. But they asked me something and in my broken German, I must have said something that absolutely shocked my seventh grader. Anyway, that was fun. Just negotiating all the living in a foreign city like that. We made wonderful friends there who were marvelous about showing us everything we needed to know to live very comfortably and happily there.
[01:35:05] INTERVIEWER: Now, how did you come to live in your current residents?
[01:35:12] Mary Ellen Guinn: Do you mean live in Ann Arbor or the current house where we're living in Ann Arbor. [LAUGHTER].
[01:35:18] INTERVIEWER: Start in Ann Arbor.
[01:35:19] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay. My husband was performing for them a festival here several times, he was in and out of Ann Arbor. I had never known Ann Arbor, had not visited Ann Arbor. So after his career was established and we were longing to have a place to raise the children, he started exploring university positions, or they contacted him [NOISE] He was invited by the chair of the department to come to Ann Arbor and see what he thought. I was very concerned about it, I thought we were leaving New York and all the cultural things that we had enjoyed and we're interested in. Didn't know what Ann Arbor was like at all, but that's how we chose Ann Arbor. Then [NOISE] we lived all over and Ann Arbor. Because our first year was a sabbatical home on Dell High road. In-between our house and the Huron River, I think there were only about three houses then. My children went from playing on the pavements of New York City, to being able to Rome and honey Creek and all the way to the Huron River. It was wonderful. Then we moved to the West side of Ann Arbor and then we moved off of Jackson Road where the Three Sisters lakes are. During those years is how we drive my husband to school by North campus. There was a house there that I kept saying I love that house. He was performing in New York, doing a concert and I opened the paper and it said, "House on the top of Broadway Hill for sale." That was our house. That's where we've been now for the remainder of the time, he was able to walk from his office on North Campus and be home for lunch and it was ideal for us.
[01:37:18] INTERVIEWER: So you live there now?
[01:37:20] Mary Ellen Guinn: We do.
[01:37:21] INTERVIEWER: So how do you feel about your current situation?
[01:37:24] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, we have reached that stage where we now realize that we are in our '80s, and that we had a health scare. My husband had a very serious health challenge. So we're beginning to think about all of that and we're doing what our friends have done. We're exploring what residential communities are like. We've looked at Glacier Hills and we know that there are organizations that will help you stay in your home as long as you are able to. We're looking at that. We're exploring all of it, we'll stay in Michigan and we'll stay in Ann Arbor most assuredly. Two of our children still live in Michigan, so we're going to stay here. But it is a change. It's a time of life that we're thinking, we love where we are, but we may have to think about other things too.
[01:38:17] INTERVIEWER: Yeah for sure [NOISE] Now this set of questions covers your retirement years to present time.
[01:38:28] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[01:38:30] INTERVIEWER: How did family life change for you when you and your spouse retired and all of the children not at home?
[01:38:41] Mary Ellen Guinn: In terms of not seeing them with frequency, that's the greatest change. But we're able to see them, we go to see them, they come to see us. We take trips. One daughter's in North Carolina, our son is a graphic designer in Grand Rapids and a daughter right here in Birmingham. They are in and out and we're in and out. We have more flexibility. For awhile, my husband retired and he worked for the vocal health clinic. So after those years of singing, once a week, he'd adorn his white doctor's coat and say I'm going to heal the sick. He would go to help professional voice users who needed help. That was a wonderful segue into sort of semi-retirement. We still see the children in life goes on much as it has.
[01:39:39] INTERVIEWER: What is it typical day in your life currently?
[01:39:44] Mary Ellen Guinn: It's slower currently. We tend to make appointments later in the day. I'm very involved in activities at St. Mary's student chapel. We really do enjoy the life of Ann Arbor with the mix of ages. That was certainly brought out. During retirement years, we had a place in Sarasota, Florida, and so we went down there. As you know in Florida there are quite a few snow birds and quite a few with gray hair like mine. We noticed when we would go out to dinner that frequently, waitresses would say things like, "Well, pumpkin, what can I get for you today?" My husband said, "Mary on are we that all that old, we're going to be called pumpkin, do you hear that?" and I said, "Yes, I think we are." But anyway that those changes have taken place.
[01:40:48] INTERVIEWER: What does your family enjoy doing together now?
[01:40:53] Mary Ellen Guinn: We are bunch of blubbers and talkers. When we get together, there is hardly a window of opportunity. Everybody seems to be very verbal. Normally were together for various festivities, they're going to be, holidays of Thanksgiving and Christmas. But then several times a year, in fact, when someone is celebrating something, a graduation from college, first communion, whatever it is, the whole family gathers here and now we have a granddaughter in Massachusetts who manages to fly on. They're very close, happily fun family visits with food and talk and relaxation.
[01:41:48] INTERVIEWER: So going after that, what are your personal favorite things to do for fun?
[01:41:57] Mary Ellen Guinn: I love to read. You can imagine any form of theater. We really enjoy travel. [NOISE] Excuse me. Travel's is limited these days because my husband's health after. Had a lung problem and it seemed every time we got on an airplane, he would pick up something. We travel by car and and we do fewer fewer travel, fewer visits out of town.
[01:42:36] INTERVIEWER: Have you had like a favorite one recently?
[01:42:42] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let's see, last year we were in Florida. I was very interested in seeing a place called Gee's Bend because I had become interested in quilts that were made by a group of women formerly slit. They were descendants of slaves. They live in a very small area in Gee's Bend, Alabama. I'd read about their history. On one occasion, we'd seen their exhibit at the High Museum in Atlanta. On our trip home, we detoured and took an extended visit through that part of Alabama to visit their town. It was an eye-opening visit. That was fun, very remote, difficult to get there. In fact, the day that we were there, the ferry was closed because of a lightning storm. That meant instead of a 10-minute visit to get there, you had to go by car for an hour to get around. Then once you get there, they have a cooperative and they do extraordinary abstract quilts. That was wonderful.
[01:44:03] INTERVIEWER: We may have already covered this, but are there any special days, events or family traditions you especially enjoyed at this time in your life?
[01:44:13] Mary Ellen Guinn: At this time of our life?
[01:44:15] INTERVIEWER: Yeah.
[01:44:16] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think I enjoy them all. It's, they are the usual ones. They are around Christmas time, Easter time, Thanksgiving, birthdays with now, because of the children being in various places, we usually celebrate those remotely. Our own anniversaries after 56 years of marriage. That we have to stop and say which one is this. Anyway, that's always an occasion for us but.
[01:44:59] INTERVIEWER: When thinking what your life after retirement or when your kids left home, what important social or historical events were taking place? How did they personally affect you? Here again.
[01:45:09] Mary Ellen Guinn: We were through the Vietnamese War by the time I retired. A huge interest has been in the struggle for civil rights because I was raised in the South. Well, I was very fortunate that my family was very progressive and, I do feel some sense of guilt and realizing as a child. I saw injustices in the form of fountains that were for white children only or bathrooms that were for white children only. At the time that was so pervasive in the South, I did not think much about that. But when the Civil Rights Movement started taking place. Of course, because my husband and I were in the arts, literally everybody was a friend. We certainly became very sensitive to that. I think that's been the most interesting. It's interesting events to follow politically in civilian, in every way.
[01:46:36] INTERVIEWER: When thinking back on your entire life, what important social-historical event had the greatest impact to you?
[01:46:44] Mary Ellen Guinn: It certainly would have had to have been World War 2. [NOISE] One brother was in England as a mechanical engineer. I knew that he was inspecting planes that had been shot at and came back with motor troubles. I also knew that the mechanical engineers would repair the plains and they would have to fly them before the planes could go out again. My other brother was a pilot and he was flying the Himalayan Mountains. He was stationed in India. But that was an all-pervasive thought when I was younger, or are they safe, that preoccupied the family. That would have had to have been the biggest thing. When they came back, it was just like, my goodness, we can relax again.
[01:47:43] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. When you were in Germany, was there any historical since there?
[01:47:49] Mary Ellen Guinn: [OVERLAPPING] Absolutely. I forgot about that. The last time that we were in Germany, the wall came down in Berlin. We were very busy right at that time because my husband was doing the ring in Hanover and we were immersed. He was immersed and I was immersed also because we were dealing with the various things we dealt with in living in a foreign country. Seeing that all went well. But we couldn't believe our eyes when we were watching this on television. Television was different in Germany. It was not an all-day affair where you could just turn on the TV and see this program or that program. It was fairly limited. Perhaps I didn't know how to access certain things and was too busy to do so anyway. But that was momentous to hear. That wall needed to come down and it was coming down.
[01:48:59] INTERVIEWER: Do you know what time is this, is this the Cold War era or?
[01:49:04] Mary Ellen Guinn: The Cold War era was in the '60s and we were in Germany in the 80s. But the Cold War, I was with Ballet Theater and we were touring in Russia at that time. It was the first ballet company to go behind the Iron Curtain. We were in Romania and Bulgaria and Russia or all over Russia from Moscow to Leningrad, too Blazy to Kiev. We got to see all of that and that was, that was fascinating.
[01:49:47] INTERVIEWER: What family arrogance or key sakes do you possess and what's their story, their values?
[01:49:54] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let's see. I have my father's cigar stamp collection. [LAUGHTER] He had a little leather book and he apparently as an eight or nine-year-old, collected cigar bands. My grandmother said that he would walk the street with one foot on the curb and one foot off looking for the cigar bands. But in this little collection, and he offers a reward if this book is ever lost, he's going to give significant amount of his allowance for his Garbian collection, but he started collecting the precedence. He has a George Washington band and I cannot remember now where it ends. But there are quite a few pages of his cigar bands. Because he was an athlete at Rice Institute and he was a superior athlete. I have his medals and and record of his history at Rice Institute. My mother, Let's see. I have my grandmothers, China, my great grandmother's silver pitcher, and things that my mother handed down that were things that she used on a daily basis. They would not put up, because we moved so much. My mother had a dictum and that was, you pretend like you're going to be wherever you are all your life. You even use your silver for picnics because you want to enjoy these things. The silver, my grandmother's, my great-grandmother's silver pitcher was always in the living room with flowers in it. Then I have of my mother's, a bracelet. That bracelet, I have a picture of her in this very beautiful bracelet, was worn on her upper arm. I couldn't, even when I was at my skinniest, I could not get it over my elbow. [LAUGHTER] Mother was just about five feet tall and very petite. It was a fascinating little bit of Victoriana.
[01:52:20] INTERVIEWER: Thinking back over your entire life, big question. What do you most proud of?
[01:52:28] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think family, without a doubt. How wonderful children, how wonderful grandchildren, and my husband. I've been blessed that way. It's been an exciting, interesting, and very unpredictable life for us because it was a life in the arts and that simply was different with travel. Not only in my own career but my husband's. I remember you asked me too, about vacations. But because of his work, we would go for entire summers to Aspen, Colorado, or the Marlboro Music Festival, or wherever he was. I don't think we ever said, let's have a vacation. We with, unfortunately, he worked while we played in the mountains and he had to keep his voice and shape. It was not as much of a vacation for him as it was for us. But anyway, I'm most proud of the family.
[01:53:43] INTERVIEWER: What would you say has changed most from the time you were my age till now?
[01:53:51] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, technology would be huge. I can see my children's eyes rolling in their heads. When I call and say, I have a little problem getting on Facebook, what did I do wrong, or whatever it is. But medicine.
[01:54:11] Mary Ellen Guinn: I had measles and I had chickenpox. When I was a child, polio was a huge frightening event. In fact, one of my good friends, I can remember went to the movies to see Bambi and came out and said she didn't feel well, and the next day she was down with a fever and she emerged from that illness quite crippled. I mean that was just huge. Right now, I guess the equivalent would be with flu epidemics. But all of that's changed with immunizations. For example, my three children are separated by let's see, the youngest child is six years younger than her brother and sister who were just a year apart. But when I went to the hospital to have my first child, your husband took you to the hospital and you waved goodbye at the door, and then you came out with your baby. By the time the second child was born, your husband got to come into the labor room with you. He was there, but by the third child, which was seven years later, he was able to be with you for the entire procedure. In the case of my daughter's surgery, she was very ill and in the hospital for a year, but hospital rules said that parents could not be in the room overnight with their child. That must sound really archaic and it was, but at the time those were hospital rules. I do remember my daughter had surgery and a young woman doctor came out and she said, the hospital says that you cannot stay overnight. But she said, I don't think that's good for children, and she said, If you would like to sit up in a chair beside her bed, I won't see you. This doctor allowed us to be with our child after very serious surgery. That progression in Medicine I mean, it's just mind-boggling now, that would be huge.
[01:56:42] Ciana: Yeah, sure. What advice would you give to our generation?
[01:56:58] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think that you face some difficulties in that, it seems to me the structure around growing children. There was an agreed upon structure, this may be because I lived in a small town. But there was agreement about behavior that was acceptable and behavior that wasn't acceptable, that was very gently given. I mean, I don't know if anybody who was expelled from school, we just didn't have those things. But the whole community, I think, did step in, and if your next door neighbor saw you doing something, well, she would be out there correcting you in addition to your mother. That's helpful. But for you, I think to try to really think about your own value system, to do that earlier rather than later, not following the crowd necessarily. The crowd is fun and wonderful, but just really important to think about a value system to really enjoy what you're doing, being expansive and what you want to explore, and think about and do with regard to safety and a value system that is consistent with what you're doing. I think all of that.
[01:58:37] Ciana: Definitely. Is there anything you'd like to add that I haven't asked you about?
[01:58:43] Mary Ellen Guinn: Ciana, I don't know. I think you've asked a huge number of questions.
[01:58:50] Ciana: I think so too.
[01:58:52] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think that we've covered more than I thought about in a long long time. [LAUGHTER].
[01:59:00] Ciana: Yeah. Well we can definitely take a break and then come back with some more questions everyone can ask.
[01:59:05] Mary Ellen Guinn: It is okay. My feet are cold. They kept picking up a sound. They were doing it at midnight, did he tell you about this? They were doing a Stephen Foster recording and they were using the instruments of the period. The technicians came in and they realized that the Hope Diamond security system was causing this strange sound. In the middle of the night, the security people had to come to the Smithsonian and turn off for a second time before, not a second, I'm sure they were there for three or four hours to get this sound off so that they could do the recording.
[01:59:54] Ciana: I was just wondering a little bit more about your brothers in the army. Did one of your brothers die out while they were serving?
[02:00:02] Mary Ellen Guinn: No. Both of them came safely home. I'm trying to think. We were living in Mississippi and my brother was on a train. I don't know where he had landed when he returned from the war. But the train went through this little town of Laurel, Mississippi, and it stopped for just a few moments, remember there were no cell phones, no ease with contacting your parents. He leaned out and yelled, would you call Hardy Jackson? He gave the telephone number to someone standing on the platform there and told them their son is home, and that's how we knew that he was back in the States. They came back very safely without any problems. They had fascinating stories to tell about their time there. One brother had read a book called Bayous of Louisiana, written by Harnett Kane, who was an author who wrote about Louisiana quite a bit. When he was in England, he read this book and he wrote The New Orleans Times-Picayune saying, I'm serving my country and he said, I just read this book and he said, I read such an interesting description of crayfish bisque. He said, my salivary glands were working overtime. My mother picked up the paper one morning and it said, US fly boy, lump-sum for the taste of crayfish bisque. My mother said, this is Hardy Junior. We all crowded around the paper and sure enough, this was his letter. My brother said that every woman in Louisiana who made and canned crayfish bisque started sending it to England. He said they stored it in the hanger and they had a party in England in World War II with crayfish bisque. They were back safely and all was well.
[02:02:25] Ciana: All right. Do you have any specific memories from [inaudible 02:02:27]?
[02:02:30] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes. We got in the car, we were hanging out, I was very young. My sister had learned how to drive then, and everybody in this little town was in their car downtown honking horns non-stop and everybody hanging out the windows and sitting on the hoods of cars and that went on for hours.
[02:02:54] Ciana: What town were you in?
[02:02:55] Mary Ellen Guinn: This was in Laurel, Mississippi.
[02:03:05] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any reason rationing [inaudible 02:03:07]?
[02:03:08] Mary Ellen Guinn: Of what?
[02:03:09] INTERVIEWER: Rationing?
[02:03:09] Mary Ellen Guinn: Oh, yes. We had little coupons and so sugar, rubber, gasoline, all of those things were rationed. That was huge in our lives because I think I told you, my mother always found a teacher for our interest in ballet and so we traveled. That meant we had to use our rubber rations to travel to and from these cities. So rationing certainly wasn't something I thought a lot about, but I knew we had those little booklets and the coupons and what went into that?
[02:04:08] INTERVIEWER: Are there any specific moments of your children's lives that you can remember as a moment where you thought to yourself, wow I did good? [LAUGHTER]
[02:04:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: Oh, I think that literally with each child I thought, wow. I'm pretty spectacular and so is my husband. We were just so ready for a family and so delighted with them that I think that I felt that from the very beginning. Not that they weren't stinkers later on. They did their share, but they're pretty special.
[02:04:57] INTERVIEWER: Does it feel more special to you now that you're older to speak to your children, is it more important and valuable?
[02:05:09] Mary Ellen Guinn: Certainly all were grown and understanding. I think that it is such a gift to be able to hear your adult children come to you and share not only what's happening in their lives at the time, but their perspective on what happened in the past. My husband's challenge with his health problems was a challenge that the whole family took upon themselves. I remember our daughter from North Carolina was up here for a week, setting up her office in the house. Thanks to technology, able to do that from a remote place. My son did the same thing for a week. My daughter who was in Birmingham and had just become a principle of Sehome High School, was coming to the hospital and spending all night in the hospital sitting up with her dad and leaving in her jammies in the morning to go to her job at Sehome. All of those things were huge. I can't remember now how to elaborate more on that.
[02:06:27] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, I was curious about the way [inaudible 02:06:32].
[02:06:33] Mary Ellen Guinn: I've thought about that so much because I was not especially attuned to that and I think the reason is I had this very bizarre childhood experience of having a job when I was very young. My sister who was five years old had this dancing school, and I helped her when she went to college, it became my dancing school. So I literally had a job. Then my field was ballet and women were able to excel and do well in that. So I didn't feel the thrust of the women's movement. Then I was ready to establish a family, to embark upon having a family. So I was not really tuned into that the way I should be. As my daughters were becoming attuned to it then I was really more interested in that. I think too that because we were in the arts. No, I should say that when we became involved in teaching at the university, that was something that was in the minds of everybody but them. So I mean, that development was huge, but I have to say that I was late coming to the realization of that and I'm thrilled with where it's going.
[02:08:07] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. It definitely make a lot of sense.
[02:08:10] Mary Ellen Guinn: Oh my goodness. Yes.
[02:08:12] INTERVIEWER: Because you worked in a ballet.
[02:08:14] Mary Ellen Guinn: Oh, right.
[02:08:22] INTERVIEWER: When you were a little girl and you were envisioning your life in your head, do you think now that you lived your life the way that you envisioned it or that it's completely different from how you envisioned your life?
[02:08:39] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't think I thought about the larger picture. I knew that I loved the arts of all kinds. I was just very fortunate in that I had good teachers. I eventually lived in Houston, Texas while I went to college and I was pursuing it. I wasn't really pursuing it aggressively. I was just slowly doing what I enjoy doing. I was fortunate that while I was in Houston going to college, Houston had a ground opera and it has had a musical theater venue. So I was doing that there. Then I was fortunate that when I went to New York I was able to get in a company right away. I did some television in New York. Agnes Tamil was the big choreographer for groundbreaking musical theater Oklahoma. Where she melded story with dance. She also was the choreographer for a rodeo in ballets that were significant fall river legend. So she did an omnibus television show on the history of the dance. So I went to New York and I did that the omnibus show with her and then was able to get into the Joffrey Company. So it wasn't that it was something I wanted to do. It was not something that I just really stood back and said, this is what I'm envisioning my life to be. It just unfolded and it unfolded much to my liking. I was very fortunate and then my husband introduced me to the whole world of singing, and opera. So I literally, we were song and dance team for a lot of years.
[02:10:48] INTERVIEWER: I like that. [BACKGROUND]
[02:10:58] INTERVIEWER: To start, we're going to focus on how you got into dance, it's our Act 1.
[02:11:02] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[02:11:03] INTERVIEWER: Our first question we have is, so we remember that your love of dance started very early in your life. How old were you when you first realized you love dance exact form?
[02:11:14] Mary Ellen Guinn: Oh well, I think that had to be around at least five or six. In fact, my husband's mother said that my husband used to rock himself to sleep singing in the rocking chair at two, and I wasn't dancing at two but at five, I knew what I wanted to do both of us we're lucky in that respect. [NOISE]
[02:11:40] INTERVIEWER: Awesome. There I guess our next question is, how did you become involved in the art?
[02:11:44] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I started out like every child does. I started studying at the local dance schools and then as my interests developed, we get heard of a wonderful teacher in Houston, Texas. There were very few good ballet teachers in the south at that time so my mother and father took me to Houston and I would study there in the summers. He was Alexander Cauchytoski, and he had been married to Nijinsky sister so his grades were really wonderful. I studied with him all through high school. In fact, one year in high school, I moved from the town we were living in and went to a school in Houston and studied with him for a year, came back and completed my final year, and then I went to college and Houston and study with him the whole time, join the Houston Ballet first.
[02:12:41] INTERVIEWER: [NOISE] [inaudible 02:12:43] When did you start studying with him? Were you really young?
[02:12:55] Mary Ellen Guinn: Very young. I was probably about 10 when I first started going and my grandparents lived in Houston. That was very convenient. In the summer, we would go and study with Cauchy all summer long. Then we go back to whatever little town we were living in in the South, and my sister and I would practice. Then we wait for the next summer to go back and then when I got really serious in high school is when I started going for more intense times. [NOISE]
[02:13:29] INTERVIEWER: You are talking about a little bit moving around during your childhood. What was the reason for moving from place to place?
[02:13:36] Mary Ellen Guinn: My father was in the oil business, and when I say oil business, that was the early exploration of oil before oil had a dirty name and we knew everything we know about pollution and so forth. But anyway, wherever there was oil exploration, those families moved so all over Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi in the Gulf Coast areas and then mother and daddy even lived in Wyoming for awhile, I wasn't born yet, but we moved many times.
[02:14:15] INTERVIEWER: How did this moves impact your school life?
[02:14:20] Mary Ellen Guinn: I loved it, I think because my mother was very skilled at making it fun. She had a philosophy about life since we would be moving with frequency and never knew where the next place would be in that was that she would say, okay girls, now, we're going to pretend like we're going to be here for the rest of their lives and so she get busy and sat down roots. She'd say if you're going to go on a picnic, take your sterling silver with you because [LAUGHTER] you may not be in one house long enough. But we just got used to that and my mother's attitude was so wonderful about it that we thought it was an adventure.
[02:15:03] INTERVIEWER: It's awesome. How about this moves affecting your social life?
[02:15:07] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't remember that it affected my social life in any way. We were very interested in the arts and no matter where we were, mother and daddy saw to it that we would go to the nearest big city for getting our fill a ballet, and operetta and we did that several times a year and it just seems that wherever we were, there was no problem with that, that I remember.
[02:15:40] INTERVIEWER: Do you want to describe some of the dancer art shows you experienced during childhood?
[02:15:46] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, at that time, the major ballet companies were the valley roost of Monte Carlo and American Ballet Theater. Whenever they were in New Orleans or Houston, we were asked to be there because not only did I love Diane's, my sister did, and my mother did. [NOISE] We saw them with great frequency and then we solve whatever other things might be around.
[02:16:14] INTERVIEWER: Nice. Are there certain places like in your childhood that have certain significance to you certain town or home?
[02:16:26] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, certainly Houston. Houston was where I was born, but did not really live there until my college years. It was a place we went back to because my grandparents were there. We lived in the Bayou Country of Louisiana, which was fascinating. Then when I was in, I guess late elementary school, my family moved to Laurel Mississippi, and that was where my sister and I, since we both studied dance, and the parents of our friends knew that we studied dance and we're serious they asked my mother and us if we would teach their children. My sister, who was five years older than I started ballet school. We started out with just maybe five or six friends, and then it eventually grew to over 100 and my brothers who were in college would come home to help us when we put on our role, recycles and pull curtains and move sets and things. But that ballet school was extraordinary for me because it literally paid for all my training so when I would go to Texas and study with Cauchy, then we were able to afford doing that for longer periods of time, than we would have. Then eventually we started going to New York and Jacob's Pillow and those places. [NOISE]
[02:18:00] INTERVIEWER: That was like junior high school life when you were studying more with [OVERLAPPING]
[02:18:04] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes.
[02:18:06] INTERVIEWER: Pressure in Houston so how about when you are moving like when you were younger and how did that impact your love of dance? Were you still able to train even maybe?
[02:18:15] Mary Ellen Guinn: We did because my mother would scout around to find out where there was a school. When we were in Louisiana, that was an interesting period because it was World War II. There was rationing so you had little coupons for tires and you had coupons for sugar and various things where those goods were limited. The tires figured prominently because there are no dancing schools and our little towns. I can remember that every Tuesday we drove to Lafayette, Louisiana, where there was one school there, and the concern about the tires, well, these tires hold up was that was a big consideration, but for me, I can remember those Tuesdays of mother picking me up at school early and my dance outlets would be in the backseat and snacks for the ride, Lafayette and coming home at night asleep in the car. It was an adventure.
[02:19:18] INTERVIEWER: How old were you at that time?
[02:19:20] Mary Ellen Guinn: I was in the fourth grade when I was doing that. Then we continued, let's see. No fourth-grade was in Laurel so it was even earlier than that? Probably third grade.
[02:19:43] INTERVIEWER: Okay. [inaudible 02:19:43]
[02:19:46] INTERVIEWER: All right. We went over how you continued dancing even though that you moved a lot. What age did you see dance as a future career?
[02:20:00] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I certainly knew in late high school that I wanted to pursue it, and I also was torn because I knew that most young dancers head for New York at a very early age. I wasn't eager to do that, and I also felt if something happened to my legs, I wanted an education. So I decided to go to college in Houston, and that allowed me to go to college and I got a bachelor of art with a concentration in sociology and then I was able to join the Houston Ballet while I was there. I was pursuing that on a regional level and finished school, and then I decided I would head for New York, so I'd left then. But I had decided late high school.
[02:20:55] INTERVIEWER: Perfect. Now, we're going to move on to answer more of your high school life and that dance school that you had. My first question is, where did you live during high school, and did you move during your high school years?
[02:21:10] Mary Ellen Guinn: I lived in Laurel, Mississippi for all of my high school years except my junior year, and then that's when I went to Houston to study with [inaudible 02:21:19] I attended St. Agnes Academy there and lived with my grandparents while I was in Houston for that year. Then at the end of that year, they had Summer Shine Light Opera. It was like a musical theater program with maybe five or six musical theater shows. So I auditioned for that and I was just 16 then. In fact, I wasn't 16 because I couldn't quite sign the contract. It was an equity company. They said, well, start rehearsals and then you can sign the contract two weeks into it. That's what I did. My junior year, I was in Houston. I stayed on for the summer that year in Houston and then I went back to graduate in my hometown.
[02:22:14] INTERVIEWER: When you were in Houston, were you not teaching at your dance school at that time?
[02:22:17] Mary Ellen Guinn: No. In fact, because my sister was five years older than I, she was the primary teacher, and while she loved dance, she did not have the body and technique for a career in it, and I don't think she even wanted it. She just enjoyed it. When she started the school, it was the Margaret Jackson School of the Dance, and I was her assistant teaching and demonstrating and so forth. Then when she went to college, it became my school, so I continued that all the way through my sophomore year, and then when I came back my senior year, they asked me to start it and so I did it again. But it was wonderful for that little town because everybody wanted to study ballet and tap and it was a delightful experience. All my friends were there and the kids below me, I knew everybody in town.
[02:23:22] INTERVIEWER: Where do you had this dance school, was it in your home?
[02:23:28] Mary Ellen Guinn: No. We rented various places. There would be some place with a very large room, and so I think there were maybe three separate locations as the school grew, and mother really handled all the business and we were just there to teach and I taught. I know I taught all day Saturday and then I think we taught during the week, maybe one or two afternoons for just a couple of classes, but it kept me very busy and I enjoyed them.
[02:24:10] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that leads me to my next question. What was a typical high school day like?
[02:24:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: Nine to three, something like that, at school. I did not have much spare time. I don't remember wanting that. It seemed to me that I had my school days and then two or three days a week, there were days when I could do whatever I wanted, but then there were commitments. There was other days that were pretty significant. It was an absolutely typical day in terms of what you would have to do for going to school. The town was very small, so there was none of the problems that you might have in facing traffic and negotiating various things. It was small, so easy to do.
[02:25:07] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. What did you do for fun? Was it just dance or would you ever like just going out with your friends?
[02:25:13] Mary Ellen Guinn: I was very athletic, and not athletic in terms of sports, but bike riding and roller skating and swimming, and all of those activities which were all very casual. No big planned activities, no clubs. I do remember that a lot of the kids would go and watch the sports activities. They'd go watch the football team, and I never had time for doing that. I can remember some days where I think I'd like to go do that, but basically it was a very relaxed childhood.
[02:26:02] INTERVIEWER: Awesome. You talked about this a little bit. How did you establish a dancing school? Did it just like happen?
[02:26:12] Mary Ellen Guinn: I think that the parents in that town, they were literally saying, won't Margaret and Mary Ellen consider teaching? At first, we didn't know what to do with the idea, and then we said, well, yeah, fine. We did that on an informal pattern, and then when more people wanted to come, I can remember mother had a little briefcase and that was like our office, and so she handled all the business aspects. I think we charged $5 a month at the time for kids to come once a week and take their lessons. Well, by the time we had over 100 students, we had a healthy little income for that time, but mother's office, the briefcase, $5 bills would go into the briefcase and mother would write a receipt, and that was about as complicated as the business would get. We need to do that again.
[02:27:14] INTERVIEWER: Did you forget it?
[02:27:15] Mary Ellen Guinn: Did I hit your question?
[02:27:19] INTERVIEWER: That's all right.
[02:27:21] Mary Ellen Guinn: Guys stop at gesticulating.
[02:27:26] INTERVIEWER: You've told me a little about what it was like having a business, but what did you like most about having a business.
[02:27:35] Mary Ellen Guinn: About having a business?
[02:27:36] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, at such a young age.
[02:27:40] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let me think, like most. Well, I think that I did not enjoy the actual teaching aspect as much as I enjoyed recitals that we put on and those were big events in that little town. We would have either the local school auditorium or the local theater and because I had done so much studying with my own teacher in Houston and saw what he did, we would put on full scale productions of Snow White or whatever. It was a matter of seeing to it that the Snow White had the little squirrels to dance with her. Whatever we used for the storytelling aspect of it, the creativity in that aspect was what I really enjoyed. That happened twice a year and I think probably that was the thing that I most look forward to.
[02:28:45] INTERVIEWER: What was most challenging?
[02:28:54] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let me think. Probably difficult students, some who were there and really didn't want to be there, but their parents wanted them to be there. Or having someone be very disappointed because they felt like they weren't doing well or [NOISE] excuse me. You're asking me about something that I can't remember thinking too much about it.
[02:29:29] INTERVIEWER: That's okay.
[02:29:29] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay. I really can't remember things that were terribly challenging about it. It was very routine. You know what? I'm so cranky, I need water.
[02:29:42] INTERVIEWER: It's okay [NOISE] [LAUGHTER]
[02:29:50] Mary Ellen Guinn: Poor a little.
[02:29:50] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Water the mike, sees it grows.
[02:29:55] Mary Ellen Guinn: I should've gotten up and started talking this morning. [NOISE].
[02:30:07] INTERVIEWER: Now the next question, how did you manage to continue your own training as well as teaching junior high school years? Was it just in the summary that you were able to get ready?
[02:30:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: The summer was the primary time. Sometimes we would make trips over and there were occasional study down. But the Summer wasn't really intense for us and as I said, because we had the school, I would go and have literally a lesson every day for an intense period. But then when I came back, I worked on that myself. I was able to practice what I had learned and then there were times when probably I wasn't really fooling with it at all. I might come back and for a month, be busy doing something at school or whatever it was and I wouldn't work as hard at it. I didn't wanted to sound like I was just absolutely riveted toward practice, I wasn't. But I was fortunate in that I was able to do it and continue it and practice on my own when it was comfortable.
[02:31:25] INTERVIEWER: Yeah, that makes sense. What there a class in Houston that you changed junior school years?
[02:31:34] Mary Ellen Guinn: No. Well, as I said, one year we went to Jacob's Pillow and that was very interesting. Among the dancers there, that's summer, there were a lot of the soloists from American Ballet Theater, which was the company that I joined when I went to New York. But in addition to that, I'm sure you've all heard the name Pilates. Well, Joseph Pilates was the teacher there for the ballet dancers so that before we had classes in the early morning, we had to meet with Joseph Pilates, who was a very, very difficult task master in terms of core training and strength training. That was all new for dancers. Basically, you trained in ballet, but you didn't do any sort of training in terms of building up your muscles in certain prescribed ways as he would do.
[02:32:39] INTERVIEWER: Was that in high school still?
[02:32:42] Mary Ellen Guinn: That was.
[02:32:43] INTERVIEWER: Okay. During your age of training, was there one specific instructor who influenced you [inaudible 02:32:52]?
[02:32:55] Mary Ellen Guinn: There were several. As I said, Alexander Konchatosky was his name, but the term of endearment was Conchae. Conchae was from the Russian school, as were most of the teachers in America at that time. They had come from the valley, gruesome Monte-Carlo and most of the famous teachers in New York were Russian. When I first went to Conchae, he had a big cane and it terrified me. I looked at that cane as he was walking by Var and wasn't sure what that cane was for. But one day I went in and I saw him giving a lesson to dancer who was probably in late high school or maybe college. I remember that she did develop, she raised her leg up and extended it as high as she could, which was happened to be right near Conchae's face as he was walking by and she just took her foot and flicked him on the chin. I saw this student discipline area and what the cane look over and give a big smile so I knew I wasn't working with the kind of disciplinary and I thought he was my first lab. Then when I went to New York, I had several teachers there. Now I'm trying to think of my most favorite dollar was there William dollar.
[02:34:34] Mary Ellen Guinn: Who would I say? I studied at the Balanchine School. When he gave class, of course everybody left to be in Balanchine's class, but he was not there. [FOREIGN] they were all Russian favorites. Then in New York, I discovered that Robert Joffrey was just a wonderful teacher. I floated between American Ballet Theatre in the Joffrey Company.
[02:35:04] INTERVIEWER: The fact after you graduated?
[02:35:10] Mary Ellen Guinn: Before I graduated in the summertime when I was in high school, I would sometimes go to New York for a period. I was testing to see, what I was going to like, which school I was going to like who I went to study with. Madam Perio Slavic, I forgot to mention, and she was wonderful at Ballet Theatre. I studied with her as well.
[02:35:40] INTERVIEWER: Now we're moving on to our act 3.
[02:35:42] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[02:35:43] INTERVIEWER: This set of questions focuses on how your love of dance lead to your lab and your husband.
[02:35:50] Mary Ellen Guinn: Okay.
[02:35:52] INTERVIEWER: We're going to start with just an overview question of how do you think your life would have been different if you didn't have the dancing school?
[02:36:00] Mary Ellen Guinn: The dancing school? I think I would probably still trained and danced. That was just a wonderful gift that made it possible for me to go in the summer and do things I probably could not have afforded if I had not had the dancing school. But I still think that I would have gravitated toward that career without a doubt.
[02:36:28] INTERVIEWER: When and how did you meet your husband?
[02:36:32] Mary Ellen Guinn: That's fascinating because he grew up in a little town 30 miles from Houston, Conroe, Texas. His father was also in the oil business. We later realized that when we were five years old, our families were living in Franklin, Louisiana at the same time. He went to Northwestern, and he was on a voice scholarship. When I was late in my college years, I did a lot of musical theater. I was doing roles in summer stock. I had been asked to Susan Infineon's rainbow, the deaf mute role at Hyannis Massachusetts for that summer stock program. I did that stock that summer. Then my mother became very ill. I went back to Houston, and she died that following year and I decided I was going to go up drive option Main and see my relatives there. On the way I stopped at the Cape Cod Melody Tent where I had performed the previous summer. When I drove up, the manager saw me and he came out and he said, Mary Ellen, do you have your ballet shoes with you? I said yes, I do and he said, a dancer has just been injured, and could you possibly stay with us for the next two shows? I said yes, I can, I'm just going to see relatives, and I'm free. The show at that time was Most Happy Fella. When I started rehearsals, who should be the most happy fell off, but the man I was going to marry. [LAUGHTER] He was my partner in that show. We worked together that summer. Then he was trying to launch his career because he had just graduated from Northwestern. I was getting ready to launch mind because I was headed back for New York, and he was drafted. I joined American Ballet Theatre and I left and was on tour. He then had to serve his duty, which he did in Washington, DC. We met each other on the Cape, and then he was in Washington, and I was in New York. And so we had a couple of years of seeing each other before we actually married.
[02:39:24] INTERVIEWER: What were your first impressions of [inaudible 02:39:25]?
[02:39:28] Mary Ellen Guinn: We were having a wonderful time. He was my partner in for the number called Big D, which was ironically Most Happy Fella set in Texas. Big D is about Dallas. He was my Texan and husband to be and I'm a Texan, and he was my partner. My impression was that this was a talented, fun, wonderful person.
[02:39:58] INTERVIEWER: That is how the arts connected you to him. You said you get separated after that. Did you keep in touch?
[02:40:08] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, because I was in a ballet company, I was on tour. At that time, when I was in New York, he would come up from Washington, and we were able to date then I would go down and see him perform. He was performing with Army Chorus, and he was also the soloist for President Eisenhower's church. He was having a good time. He was being invited to the White House to sing, and I was watching his career go. Then when I was on tour, I started getting notes from him that were very serious. I think I told you at one point, Ballet Theatre was in Russia and I got a telegram, and it said, please advise of attitude toward a potted so he had assimilated ballot terms to propose to me and that was that. [LAUGHTER]
[02:41:13] INTERVIEWER: Actually, my next question is, how did he propose to you? Try to tell me a little more about that.
[02:41:18] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, that was certainly I had a hint that we were headed in that direction. Both of us had worked long and hard for our careers, and we were eager to get that all a try. The proposal literally was that telegram I wrote back and said, yes, very interested. But then when I came back to New York, he was still in the Army Chorus. At that time, because of the draft, young aspiring singers who were serious about concert careers or opera would audition for the chorus because they were able to be in Washington and pursue things. He was stable there, but I was still on the road. We just had to negotiate that and work things out.
[02:42:22] INTERVIEWER: How long have you guys doing separate careers before you get married?
[02:42:28] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I graduated from college in 1955, and so I was embarking upon that then. He was behind me at Northwestern, I think maybe 1956. We got married in 1961. About six years. Is that six years? 55-61. We were pursuing our own things and then of course he had the business of trying to once we got married, he left the army as soon as he was able to, and then he had to start New York to launch his career. That was a busy period for us.
[02:43:14] INTERVIEWER: Do you remember when you guys first met?
[02:43:20] Mary Ellen Guinn: I don't remember the exact year.
[02:43:22] INTERVIEWER: Was it like right after you graduated college?
[02:43:27] Mary Ellen Guinn: It must have been around two years later.
[02:43:33] INTERVIEWER: What places such were most significant to you and as a couple?
[02:43:40] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, New York City certainly. We started out in Washington. When we were married, we were married at the Fort Myer Base, the Arlington Chapel there right next to Arlington Cemetery. We lived in Washington to start it out. Then we moved to Princeton thinking that we had a baby. We thought rather than take this baby on to New York City, we had friends in Princeton and we thought it would be nice. It'll be an easy commute. Well, it wasn't an easy commute at all. Furthermore, she had a kidney problem that required significant medical care and eventually surgery, so we moved into Jackson Heights and we lived there for a couple of years. Then we knew someone in White Plains whose mother died and they offered their house for rent. They were not ready to sell their house and they didn't want someone in it that they didn't know, so they made it possible for these struggling artists to live in White Plains. By the time we did that, we had two children. Those cities, Washington, New York, and White Plains, were very significant. Then we spent a lot of time in Marlborough Vermont because Les did the music festival there and then Aspen, Colorado. We were there every Summer for about 14 years.
[02:45:36] INTERVIEWER: You mentioned you that you were married in New York?
[02:45:38] Mary Ellen Guinn: We were married in Washington.
[02:45:40] INTERVIEWER: In Washington.
[02:45:41] Mary Ellen Guinn: Yes.
[02:45:42] INTERVIEWER: Do you mind telling me just a little bit about that?
[02:45:46] Mary Ellen Guinn: Let's see. I finished a ballet one night at New York City Center with Joffrey and I got on the bus the next day and went to Washington. We were married at the Arlington Chapel right there, at Fort Myer Base. It's located right there in Arlington, Virginia. We were married right there on the Base. I was surprised because it was to be a very quiet wedding with just our families and a few of his friends. I didn't know anybody there, but the Joffrey Company all piled in a car and they came down for the wedding, so we had a happy wedding then. What did you ask me about, the wedding itself?
[02:46:40] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. Just try and do that.
[02:46:41] Mary Ellen Guinn: It was very quiet, very small. I think we didn't even, really at that time, had not planned honeymoon because we were really watching our pennies. Then I think some lovely wedding gift arrived and so we struck out for Williamsburg, Virginia. Then we spent the next one more year in Washington and that was that.
[02:47:18] INTERVIEWER: How do you think your children had to play a part? How did you pass that down?
[02:47:26] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, they enjoyed the fun. Going to performances, they're all musical. They started out on keyboard and then one played violin and one played viola and one played flute. She thought she was going to major in music and went to the music school, was accepted here. But they knew the hard work and the discipline that goes into that and they were not interested in pursuing that as a career at all. All of them have music in their lives and they love it, but definitely were not so in love with it that they wanted to pursue it in a professional way. What they most enjoyed was our Gypsy existence, where Summer times they knew they were going to spend Summers at wonderful music festivals and wonderful places. One even came to Germany with us when my husband was doing the ring. No, she came when he was doing bought sec in stood guard. She left school here and entered again Nauseum. Was furious at the time that she was going to go to a German school and didn't know German and didn't know how to make any jokes in German. She eventually ended up teaching German for a while before she went into administration. She's now the Deputy Superintendent of Schools in Birmingham, so she's in education in a big way.
[02:49:12] INTERVIEWER: We are starting to feel enough pressure to choose additional college majors and career paths. What advice would you give to young people who want to pursue a career in the arts?
[02:49:23] Mary Ellen Guinn: In the arts?
[02:49:24] INTERVIEWER: In the arts.
[02:49:26] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, I think that you have to be realistic about it. I think that at the School of Music frequently you hear the expression, it's very difficult field and don't go into it unless you can't live without it. If you're that serious about it, then you have to know that you have hours and hours of perfecting technique. So much so until you, you perfect your technique enough that you can put that aside and let the artistry work through that. But I would say, you do need to be realistic about it. The opportunities are limited and its exact thing and demanding and if you can't live without it by all means, do it. On the other hand, I've even heard one of my doctors say that when students have applied for the medical school and they see a degree in music, they think that's a wonderful indication that that student will be able to meet the demands of med school because they know that the discipline probably started at a very early age and it's a life of discipline.
[02:50:51] INTERVIEWER: Yeah. I just had one more question I remember. You and Les you first met working together on a show. Did you ever work together at any other shows?
[02:51:04] Mary Ellen Guinn: No, because it was really a fluke. I was in ballet and I had done musical theater in college. That's how I ended up doing Stock. He was doing Stock because it was his first job right out of college, but he was interested in opera and concert. Then it happened that he was drafted while I was pursuing my career. I did one season for the New York City Opera with the Joffrey Company. That was my long venture into dancing in Opera, but the rest of my career was done with a ballet company.
[02:51:53] INTERVIEWER: Then, how did the art affect you guys now?
[02:51:58] Mary Ellen Guinn: Well, now, my husband has been retired for the last maybe 18 years or so. We've had some limitations because [NOISE] as luck would have it, he has a very serious lung problem. We haven't been able to go to concerts the way we normally did, but there is music in the house all the time. We attend some. It's limited right now. I would say, our lives have been inextricably entwined in music and the arts and loving it, but right now I would say that it's rather limited.
[02:52:55] INTERVIEWER: Do you have any question to you? [BACKGROUND] It's all the questions that I had.
[02:53:01] Mary Ellen Guinn: Was it?
[02:53:03] FEMALE_2: It was okay.

Media

2022

Length: 02:53:01

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

Rights Held by: Ann Arbor District Library

Downloads

Video - 3.4GB

Subjects
Legacies Project