Jean Michell | Interview 1 | December 1, 2011

REDMAN: My name is Sam Redman, and today is December 1, 2011, and I’m here in Orinda, California with Jean Michell. First, I’d like to ask if I’ve stated your name correctly, and then if you could spell if for me, that would be terrific.

MICHELL: Surely. It’s Jean J-E-A-N, and Michell, M-I-C-H-E-L-L.

REDMAN: Let’s start with the basics. I’d like to just ask who you are now today. You live in Orinda, and you had a career for quite some time. Is that correct?

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: And what was that career?

MICHELL: Okay. In 1960 my husband started his own business, and it was an air 00:01:00conditioning and heating business, and I ran the office, and did the billing and took care of the finances, et cetera.

REDMAN: And have you lived in Orinda for some time?

MICHELL: Next year will be fifty years in this house.

REDMAN: I’d like to turn back now if we could to your parents, and talk a little bit about who they were, and how they met, and when you came along.

MICHELL: Okay. My mother was born and raised in Petaluma, and her father was a farmer. Then she came to San Francisco and went to the Teachers’ College.

REDMAN: In San Francisco.

MICHELL: In San Francisco. And that is now Cal State San Francisco.

REDMAN: How did they meet?

MICHELL: Well, then he went to Berkeley. He was in the Class of ’22 and was a tennis player, on the tennis team. He ended up in Petaluma as the football coach and PE teacher, and my mother ended up there as the music teacher.

REDMAN: They were both interested in education.

MICHELL: Yes, So they ended up at Petaluma High School and got married. He was born and raised in a small town in Humboldt County called Loleta. So I’m a third-generation native-born Californian.

REDMAN: Now, your father was in the service, is that correct?

MICHELL: No, that was my step-father. My parents were divorced when I was about five.

REDMAN: So some of your earliest memories, then -- did you stay with your mother or --

MICHELL: Mother.

REDMAN: About kindergarten age, do you have some early memories, or do you have early memories of your parents going separate ways?

MICHELL: Not really. I mean, he just disappeared out of our lives. I never saw him again until I was a freshman at UCLA. There was no contact between the two.

REDMAN: Did you have siblings?

MICHELL: No. I’m an only child.

REDMAN: You and your mother, where did you guys go? Did you stay -- ?

MICHELL: She went back to school at San Francisco State because when she got her 00:04:00original degree it was what they called a normal school, and you got a teaching credential. But in the early thirties things had changed, and you needed a four-year college education. So she went back to San Francisco State to get a credential for two years.

REDMAN: Did you, then, start about kindergarten in San Francisco?

MICHELL: I went to -- they had a training school at the University, or College at the time, and so I went there for kindergarten, first, and second grade.

REDMAN: So this would have been around the time, I suspect, of the market crash and then --

MICHELL: The market crash was in ’29, and I was four. I don’t remember that.

REDMAN: The effects of the Great Depression, of course, were felt for several years.

MICHELL: Oh, yes. My mother had a very difficult time getting employment.

REDMAN: So this is after she completed her new degree.

MICHELL: Right. And we moved in with the head of the music department and lived there for a year in Sausalito.

REDMAN: Now, your mom being educated, and herself studying childhood education, was she very keen and interested in your development as a child?

MICHELL: Oh, yes. We were very close.

REDMAN: What sorts of things would you do together that made you so close? Were there particular activities that you two enjoyed?

MICHELL: I remember taking many trips up into the area which is now around Napa and stuff, and they used to have all different kinds of wild flowers. And we 00:06:00used to pick wildflowers. I can remember that.

REDMAN: So those were some fond times with you and your mother?

MICHELL: Yes. As far as that goes -- I was telling someone the other day about it, the movies, that we hadn’t gone to movies for several years, and how expensive they were now, you know, even with the senior discount -- and I was telling them that when I was in third grade my mother gave me 15 cents every Saturday morning. And I went down -- and this was in Sausalito -- and I went down the hill, because we lived up on a glen, and spent a nickel buying candy, and you could get a lot of stuff for a nickel in those days, and then a dime at the movie. And they were all westerns, and John Wayne was really big in those 00:07:00days. I mean that’s before he got to be -- and Tom Mix and Roy Rogers, I think, were coming along, but anyway. And they always had in the theater what they called a serial, like The Perils of Pauline, you know? And at the end of one chapter the heroine would be roped to the railroad track, and the train was coming. And then that would be it, “Come back next week, and find out how she escaped,” you know. It was funny. They would last like maybe ten or twelve weeks.

REDMAN: Oh, wow. Would you almost have to commit to going to -- ?

MICHELL: Oh, yes. I mean, this was my Saturday.

REDMAN: Sure, so you’d love following along.

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: Now, would they also do newsreels?

MICHELL: Oh, yes. And sometimes -- oh, what do you call those things? Pathé 00:08:00Newsreels, yes. And then short subjects, sometimes.

REDMAN: I’m going to pause this for a minute. [Pause] When we left off we were talking about movies, and going to see the movies. How about radio programs? Were they a big part of your life?

MICHELL: Oh, yes, In fact, we had a black cat that I named Chandu because there was a radio program called Chandu, the Magician.

REDMAN: That you were fond of.

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: Were radios in the thirties when you were young -- I understand that some radios were hard to obtain because maybe they were maybe prohibitively expensive --

MICHELL: Oh!

REDMAN: Was that ever an issue, or was it --

MICHELL: I don’t think so because the lady we lived with that was the head of the music department, she was like a grandmother to me. And I don’t remember 00:09:00anything about that.

REDMAN: But she would have had stable employment and --

MICHELL: Oh, yes. And was fairly well-to-do. I mean she had a really nice home in Sausalito up on the hill.

REDMAN: So that must have been a nice time in terms of your childhood and upbringing. Did your mother -- you got along quite well with the head of the music program.

MICHELL: Oh, yes. She was really nice, yes.

REDMAN: Did you learn any music by living with her?

MICHELL: Unfortunately, my mother was extremely talented. I can remember back in the “dark ages” being in Golden Gate Park on the fourth of July, and my mother signing The Star Spangled Banner in Golden Gate Park, and then in the 00:10:00early days of radio -- and this was before we moved, I mean this was when I was a little preschooler -- she was part of a women’s quartet that sang -- it was a regular radio program, I think it was on KGO.

REDMAN: Wow. So she was quite talented

MICHELL: Oh, yes. She was. And before she married my father, there was vaudeville, and what she worked for was the Panteges Circuit, and she would go up the coast from San Francisco as far as -- I guess this was before I was born 00:11:00that she did this -- and go as far as Vancouver, BC, you know, to do shows. Yes, so she did have -- she had a very good voice.

REDMAN: Did you end up taking some music lessons as well, or were you a little shy about it?

MICHELL: No, I was never particularly shy. I just was completely lacking in talent.

REDMAN: I see.

MICHELL: And she had naturally curly hair, and mine was just straight as a string. So I looked more like my father. And unfortunately, I did not inherit any of my mother’s talent.

REDMAN: I can sympathize with that as far as far as the musical talent.

MICHELL: But these ladies that were part of the quartet were long-lasting friends.

REDMAN: Oh, wow. So they continued to spend time together.

MICHELL: Well, yes. Like even when I came out here to Berkeley the one lady lived in Piedmont, and then they had a home out -- a ranch, like -- out in the Martinez area. And she belonged to the Orinda Country Club, and she would have me out here for dinner. Then when we got married, and we needed, like, fifteen hundred dollars or something for a down payment of the house, her husband, you know, advanced the money.

REDMAN: Now, spending time growing up in Sausalito --

MICHELL: We were just there the one year.

REDMAN: So would that have been in the 1930s, during the construction of the Golden Gate Bridge?

MICHELL: Well, I was in third grade, so it was probably ’33.

REDMAN: So the bridge must have just been starting.

MICHELL: No, the bridge didn’t get built until ’36.

REDMAN: But it took several years.

MICHELL: Yes, that’s true.

REDMAN: So do you remember what it was like to travel between the --

MICHELL: We rode the ferry.

REDMAN: Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like to ride the ferry?

MICHELL: Sometimes we’d take bread crusts and throw them to the seagulls, because they followed the boat. And I can remember going into the bathroom and -- you’ll probably think I was really weird -- they had liquid soap dispensers, and I would blow bubbles. With the liquid soap, you know. And then later, they sold that stuff in little bottles, and you had a little wand, and you dipped it, and it made bubbles all over.

REDMAN: So as a kid, that was a fun activity to take the ferry?

MICHELL: Yes. It was the way you got from Sausalito to San Francisco, yeah.

REDMAN: Can you maybe compare, then, going over the Golden Gate Bridge on cars when you became a little bit older -- can you talk about the differences, maybe, between taking the ferry, being on the water --

MICHELL: Well, of course, they are practically obsolete now, but they have kind of revived some of them. They have ferries now that go to AT&T Park.

REDMAN: I’m curious if --

MICHELL: When they opened the Golden Gate Bridge, we left -- third grade -- we left Sausalito, and my mother got a teaching job in a little town between Paso Robles and King City. You probably don’t know where that is. It’s on Highway One, or 101. And it was a one-room schoolhouse, and so she had everybody from 00:15:00kindergarten to twelfth grade. Maybe it was eighth grade. But I was in fourth grade by then. And there were like twelve kids.

REDMAN: Was that quite a difference moving from the city to --

MICHELL: Oh, yes, because it was like -- there were only 75 people in this town. There was a general store and a few houses. And we lived in a house, you know.

REDMAN: But your mom was able to find a job there?

MICHELL: Yes, but it lasted only one year.

REDMAN: So it was pretty tough for teachers in that era.

MICHELL: And from there we moved -- I think it was really tough for everybody because I can remember living in what they called a flat in San Francisco after 00:16:00my mother lost her house because she couldn’t make the payments. And we lived closer to the school in a flat. And I can remember that the people across the hall from us were on relief. Now my mother had a stipend. You know, because she was like a T. A. I don’t know what they called them then, but -- anyway, they were on relief, and people would get deliveries of food outside their door.

REDMAN: Can you tell me a little bit about -- there were around that same time New Deal era programs like the WPA, and CCC, and NYA, and all these alphabet agencies. Do you recall anyone in your family or acquaintances talking about these or maybe working for the WPA or --

MICHELL: Never had anybody that worked for them, but I was aware of them.

REDMAN: What did your mom think and then later your step-dad think of FDR? Did they have feel a particular feeling toward --

MICHELL: My mother was a lifelong Republican. She voted for Alf Landon, who was the governor of Kansas. She voted for Wendell Willkie, who -- I had a Willkie button.

REDMAN: What drew her to the Republican Party? Was there a family history there?

MICHELL: I guess so. They just were kind of very conservative. She had a brother and a sister, older. She was the youngest of three children.

REDMAN: Was she religious at all?

MICHELL: Actually, I was brought up as a Christian Scientist, but if I needed 00:18:00something we went to doctors. But my aunt, who was eight years older than my mother, was what they called a practitioner, which was, I guess, that they prayed or something, you know. In fact I have known people as an adult that had like breast cancer, and the prayers didn’t make it. I mean, you know. So I went to the Christian Science Sunday School. So I had a background in the Christian Science. And there’s a lot going for that because if you can control what’s going on up here --

REDMAN: In your mind?

MICHELL: -- then you don’t end up with a lot of, you know, other problems. Do you follow me?

REDMAN: Yes. Certainly. I’m curious still in the differences between life in San Francisco, or Sausalito, and then moving out the to the country --

MICHELL: The boondocks?

REDMAN: -- for one year, and then what happened after that year?

MICHELL: Well, she lost that job, and then she got another job in Monterey in the adult education.

REDMAN: Now, as a young girl, moving around quite a bit, it sounds like, what was that like for you as a small child?

MICHELL: You know, that’s all you know, and you kind of just go.

REDMAN: Did you suspect that other families were having a similarly time during the midst of the Depression?

MICHELL: Not particularly. I don’t think I was particularly aware. I always had plenty to eat. I know that there was a very very difficult time when she finished school, you know? And that’s why we moved in with Mary, who was the head of the music department because it was either moving in with her and accepting charity or sticking me in an orphanage. Although she didn’t ever -- I found this out later. I mean, you know, this was not over my head, “You be good or I’ll send you -- ”

REDMAN: Right. So you didn’t realize, as a child, maybe, how tough times were for your mom at times?

MICHELL: No, no. I mean --

REDMAN: Right. So then she met your step-dad.

MICHELL: Yes. He was stationed at the Presidio in Monterey, which was where they have the language school now, but it used to be an army facility. The Presidio, like the one in San Francisco. So he was stationed there, and he went to take night classes, and he met my mother.

REDMAN: Oh, your mother, then, was teaching an adult education class.

MICHELL: Right. Non-music at that point. I mean, that kind of disappeared.

REDMAN: What was your reaction to your mom meeting this gentleman?

MICHELL: Uhh --

REDMAN: Did you take to him?

MICHELL: They knew each other for I guess about three years before they decided to get married. I liked him okay until I got to be a teenager, and then I hated 00:22:00him. [laughs] Not really. I mean, he was Army. Regular Army. He had been in the Army for thirteen or fourteen years or something. And everything was strict and by-the-book, and as a teenager, well, you were one once, so --

REDMAN: Right, I can completely understand.

MICHELL: Yeah, Your ideas don’t always --

REDMAN: Match up to those of the adults.

MICHELL: Yeah.

REDMAN: I’d like to hear a little bit about what your life was like when you were in school, you know, in high school and the teenage years, actually. Were you particularly interested in school, and studying and reading?

MICHELL: I was a very good student.

REDMAN: Did you particularly enjoy certain subjects more than others, say math 00:23:00and science, or reading and art?

MICHELL: Oh, yeah, I was -- I’m still an avid reader. I just read junk.

REDMAN: So you were into popular movies, on Saturday; were you also into popular books, or --

MICHELL: Well, those movies were oaters. You know, they were all cowboys and Indians.

REDMAN: Right. Did your change a little bit, I assume, then, when you became a teenager?

MICHELL: Oh, yeah. Well, then we were living on the Army post at that point in time, back in New Jersey.

REDMAN: Oh. So then your step-father gets transferred --

MICHELL: He got transferred before they got married.

REDMAN: And your mom followed him out to New Jersey.

MICHELL: Right.

REDMAN: What was life like for you, then, in New Jersey?

MICHELL: Oh, fine. We lived on the Army post, and I rode about two and a half 00:24:00miles into Red Bank, New Jersey, the town. We rode, actually, in an Army truck. You know, the back.

REDMAN: To get to school every day.

MICHELL: Yeah, yeah. And we were all buddies, you know. It was fine.

REDMAN: I’ve talked to some kids, who -- what’s the phrase, “Army brat? -- would travel around, and it would be kind of tough --

MICHELL: Well, yeah. We were there in Red Bank for my second half of eighth grade -- they got married just about on my thirteenth birthday. And we were there -- I finished my sophomore year in high school. And then we started the trek.

REDMAN: And the trek involved moving first to Florida --

MICHELL: No, first we moved to Long Island. I went to four different high schools. And we were up on Long Island for one year, but I went to two different high schools because they had moved from one place to another. And then we moved to Florida.

REDMAN: Was it hard for you to make these moves and meet new kids and start over?

MICHELL: Every time we moved after she married him and stuff, I got sick. And it wasn’t until I was like a sophomore at Cal that finally somebody, and me, we worked it out. It was all emotional. It was gastro-intestinal sickness. I 00:26:00didn’t have a fever or anything.

REDMAN: Yes, the stress of moving.

MICHELL: Yes. I mean, it was just before we moved. Not afterwards.

REDMAN: Can you tell me if you have any recollections about the start of the war? Pearl Harbor being attacked on December 7, 1941?

MICHELL: Oh yes. In fact, before then -- I mean, you know, we went through the debacle with Churchill. You know --

REDMAN: As a high school student were you paying attention to some of these --

MICHELL: Oh, yes. My stepdad was frothing at the mouth all the time. I mean, you know, he was -- my mother was really with what was going on, and he was too, though his service. And so I know all about lend-lease, and all this stuff, yes.

REDMAN: So it would be accurate to describe them as politically conservative. Were they also more isolationists, would you say?

MICHELL: No, not particularly. My father -- this is my step-father; I called him my father -- but he was, you know, all gung-ho about going over there and killing Hitler. [laughs]

REDMAN: So he was approving of, then, the entry into war after December 7.

MICHELL: We didn’t have much choice.

REDMAN: So do you remember December 7.

MICHELL: Oh, yeah. It was really funny because we had gone to the movies. It was a Sunday. And being as we were in Florida, that was the eastern standard time. 00:28:00So the Pearl Harbor attack was early in the morning, but by the time we went to the movie, like one o’clock, we hadn’t heard anything. So when we got out of the movie -- we had a radio in the car -- the Japanese had attacked Pearl Harbor. And I have a cousin that was on a battleship that was at Pearl Harbor, named the Utah, and that did not get sunk. The Arizona, of course, is still there. I don’t know if you’ve ever been there or not.

REDMAN: I haven’t, but I’ve seen photographs of the monument.

MICHELL: Yeah, you go out to the Arizona. They raised it.

REDMAN: Now, I’d like to ask -- one of the perceptions is that many people in the US had no idea where Pearl Harbor was before the attack. You know, they maybe knew it was in Hawaii. People knew where Hawaii was, maybe. But a lot of 00:29:00people were unaware that Pearl Harbor existed. Your cousin being stationed there, did you have any inkling that he was in Hawaii?

MICHELL: Oh, yeah. I think so. My mother’s brother had four boys, and one was in the Army, and the one that was in the Navy was out there.

REDMAN: Was that a pretty scary time for your family?

MICHELL: Well, yeah. They immediately transferred my father back up -- he was a master sergeant, which was the highest enlisted rating -- they immediately sent him to OCS [Officer Candidate School], which is in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey.

REDMAN: Can you tell me a little bit about what he was doing during his time in the service by that point?

MICHELL: Yes. He was setting up early warning systems throughout the 00:30:00southeastern part of the United States. In fact, I’ve got a little thing over on the table there that I was going to show you.

REDMAN: Okay. We can pause the tape. [Pause]

MICHELL: They would have a big table with a map of the area. And then they would have people hooked up to the phones. And if some Farmer Brown heard an airplane traveling over his farm, he would look up and see this plane, and then he would call in to this station. And then they would have these little pips, and they would set them on the map on where he called from. And where -- like this is 00:31:00like unknown, multi-engine, single-engine, or bi-engine -- so, you know --

REDMAN: So then they could classify where the sighting was --

MICHELL: Yeah! And then, see, it says “high,” that would be way up, and “unidentified,” or “low.” And they would set these up around on the map, so that they, I guess, could figure out, you know --

REDMAN: I’ve seen pictures where young boys or young girls would be encouraged to sort of volunteer and have their binoculars out to call these early warning --

MICHELL: It could be, yeah. It could be that they were, but mostly the really young kids would be at school.

REDMAN: And then I’ve also heard that -- seeing images of these call centers 00:32:00being operated by young women.

MICHELL: Oh, yes, they were. Mostly women.

REDMAN: So was your father, then, working with civilians?

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: Okay, so could you talk a little bit about that? Were you aware of that at the time?

MICHELL: Well, my mother worked there. And then I used to go there after school or stuff. But it was at certain levels; the ones up above were the ones that took the phone calls. And then they would transfer it down, and they’d push -- they had like a pool cue but not exactly. More like a hockey stick, you know? And stick these things around on the board. Because they were really big.

REDMAN: So they had a method for reaching and --

MICHELL: Yeah, and pushing them around. And then I guess what they tried to do was to figure out was, “Who does this plane belong to?”

REDMAN: And trying to identify it first of all --

MICHELL: Yes. And then sometimes -- because then you’d get another call, and basically they’d work out that it was the same plane, and it would be in a, you know, a pattern. And as far as I know we never had any that were bad guys.

REDMAN: That would be my next question. What if, in that instance -- would your father have a chain of command, then, to report up to?

MICHELL: I guess so.

REDMAN: But it never got to that.

MICHELL: No, fortunately.

REDMAN: Now, I’m curious, as a young person your mom is working at the station --

MICHELL: Well, as a volunteer, yeah.

REDMAN: As a volunteer. Was that something that induced a little bit of fear, or was that something that you took for granted, the idea that the coast may be 00:34:00attacked at --

MICHELL: I can’t remember being afraid. I guess we always felt that we were protected in the United States because of the oceans.

REDMAN: That it was so far away that there was less of a danger than, say, in London.

MICHELL: Oh, yes, because London, they bombed the hell out of that.

REDMAN: Right, right. This was in ’41, and then finally you would wrap up high school. Where did you graduate high school?

MICHELL: It was called Plant High School, and it was -- they had like three high schools. This was in Tampa, Florida. And Tampa was certainly not like Tampa is today. I mean, I haven’t been back there, but now, you know, they’ve got baseball, they’ve got football, you know. It’s a big-time city. But in those 00:35:00days, the biggest industry -- they had tons and tons of Cubans, and they had cigar factories. And mostly women worked in the cigar factories, and they hand-rolled the tobacco into cigars. There were several factories there.

REDMAN: And they would be boxed up in, I suspect, unique tobacco boxes that would be shipped --

MICHELL: I don’t know about that, but that was the big industry, and -- I’m trying to describe it --

REDMAN: So how about the people that you interacted with there? Were they pretty different from the people that you’d met up north in, say, Long Island or --

MICHELL: Well, except that -- I was going to say, they had three or four high schools. The high school I went to was in the upper part of the city, the 00:36:00students, okay? Then they had one in the northern part of the city, and that one was okay. But then they had one across the river, and that one was all black, because everything was segregated.

REDMAN: Yeah. Jim Crow South.

MICHELL: Oh, yeah. I mean, they had separate drinking fountains, separate bathrooms. In the movies they were up in the upper upper upper balcony.

REDMAN: Did that surprise you, or did you kind of take it for granted?

MICHELL: Well, I was raised with no prejudices. I think I told you on the phone about the incident where we were part of a drill team or something for the high school and that we had gone somewhere on the bus to practice, and when we came 00:37:00out, you know, we had to wait for the bus. And there was a bus stop with a bench, and there was a cleaning woman there. And I went over and sat on the bench. One of my theories is, “Never stand when you can sit; never sit when you can lie down.” [laughs] So that’s probably why I’ve lived so long. But anyway, I went over and sat down, and, you know, it was no big deal. And my two friends,”How could you sit by that Negra?”

REDMAN: Really, that was their reaction.

MICHELL: Oh, yes. I mean, it was just their way of life. They had been raised that way. And it was pretty gross because instead of people having washing machines, like we do, they would have these black help. And they would do the laundry in the back yard. And they would have like a big barrel or some kind of 00:38:00container, and they would have boiling water in there, and they would be putting -- yeah, I mean, it was just unreal.

REDMAN: Yeah, unreal to see that first hand?

MICHELL: Oh, yeah, although we had had -- well, afterwards, when my mother was doing the radio programs, back when I was a preschooler, we had babysitters, you know, that came in, that cleaned the house while they took care of me. And none of them were Negro as I remember, but I had French and Chinese and Japanese. You know, various and sundry people.

REDMAN: So that exposed you in some sense to diversity of backgrounds --

MICHELL: Of people, yes. But I don’t remember any of these people.

REDMAN: Kind of as a young and --

MICHELL: Yes. And it wasn’t on a daily basis or anything, like maybe once a week or something.

REDMAN: After you graduate from high school, you make the decision to go back to California --

MICHELL: No. My step-father got transferred back to Forth Monmouth in New Jersey, and my mother decided that we would stay in Tampa until I graduated -- because that was like in December or January -- that we would stay and I would graduate from that high school, and then we would move back up to New Jersey.

REDMAN: You have a pin here. Would you show that to me? And hold it like this. 00:40:00If you could hold it back towards you. Perfect. Tell me about what that is.

MICHELL: Well, my mother decided that I was -- when I graduated from high school I was just barely seventeen. I was seventeen in March and graduated in May. And she decided I was too young to go off.

REDMAN: And did you think you were too young?

MICHELL: I agreed, yes. And I knew there was a money problem. By then I was conscious of this. So, anyway, we moved back to New Jersey, and I got a job as a junior clerk typist and worked. And I got like $120 a month or something, and I think we worked like a forty-eight hour week.

REDMAN: Was that for a young person a pretty good salary; did that feel like a 00:41:00pretty good -- ?

MICHELL: Well, yes, and I was living at home, and I didn’t get charged room or board, and the understanding was that that money went in the bank so that when I went the next year, when I was a year older, that I would have the money for school.

REDMAN: To start college.

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: It seemed like you had in your mind you wanted to continue your studies, but I imagine --

MICHELL: Oh, yes. I think when we took our tests, and there were like maybe 250 people who graduated in my class, and when we took our comprehensive tests -- they weren’t SATs or anything in those days, but they were standardized tests -- I was second in the high school out of the graduating class. So I had almost all As and Bs.

REDMAN: Student earning pretty darn good from the sounds of it --

MICHELL: Oh, yes.

REDMAN: -- and you’d wanted to go on. But, now, when you were a clerk for that window of time, for that year --

MICHELL: Typist.

REDMAN: Typist, okay.

MICHELL: I was working more with adults, yes.

REDMAN: And what was that like? Did that reassure you that you wanted to go to college, or was that money pretty attractive?

MICHELL: It was kind of boring, but it was okay. I mean, the people were okay. You know.

REDMAN: So then you decided to go to college. Can you tell me about what -- ?

MICHELL: Well, I would meet somebody, like one of the women that I met was from the University of Minnesota. And I would say to my mother, “That’s where I want to go to school.” And then my mother would say, “Hmmm.” And then another went to Duke -- but the vast majority of the people that I graduated 00:43:00with from high school, they -- at that point in time there was the University of Florida at Gainesville, and that was all men, and the Florida State College for Women was at Tallahassee, which is now Florida State? Big football, but then, it was all ladies. And my mother was strongly against non-male-versus-female. She thought they should be integrated. She was strongly against that. So, you know, she kind of put the kibosh on all these things. My mother’s sister was single at that point in time, and she lived and had a shop in Los Angeles. So that’s why I ended up at UCLA.

REDMAN: You had thought about Minnesota or Duke or --

MICHELL: Oh, yes, all these different schools, yes.

REDMAN: Tell me what your reaction was when you finally ended up at UCLA, what school was like in your freshman year.

MICHELL: Well, first of all, I had led a rather sheltered life. I mean my mother did everything for me. I had never washed my own hair, and I never had cooked. I used to dry the dishes and she washed the dishes, you know, but I just was rather sheltered. I had never done any ironing or any of that stuff. My mother did everything. So when I got out there to college, and it was really funny, 00:45:00because you just in those days -- you know how hard it is now these days, particularly, to get into Cal; they don’t even take 20 percent of the people who apply as an undergraduate, you know -- in those days I just walked into the admissions office and said, “Here I am; I want to go to school.” And they said, “Well, what’s your major?” And I said, “I don’t know. But I liked chemistry when I was a senior in high school.” So they signed me up as a chemistry major. And it was a very minimal amount of money, something like fifty bucks tuition, I mean, everything was really cheap. And then I found a place to live.

REDMAN: In the area? In Westwood?

MICHELL: Oh, yes. It was actually a sorority that had gone kaput. And it was 00:46:00like twenty-five girls that lived there. But it was, yeah. I don’t know if you are familiar with Westwood, but the sororities are all on one road. And the guys are over on the other side of campus. Fraternities.

REDMAN: You started to take chemistry classes.

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: Did you find those enjoyable, or particularly difficult compared with what you were used to, or --

MICHELL: Yes. When I took my first test, and I got a C, I thought my life had come to an end. Because I was used to getting all As, you know.

REDMAN: Yeah, you were used to getting all As, and then you were also on your own for the first time, so that --

MICHELL: That’s true.

REDMAN: -- that must have been a difficult transition.

MICHELL: But I think where I lived, as I remember -- we had two meals a day, breakfast and dinner -- and I don’t remember about -- and of course a housemother.

REDMAN: What was a housemother’s responsibility? What would they do? Can you explain that?

MICHELL: Oh, well. Things were much much different in those days. You had a housemother, and they made sure that everybody was where they belonged. And even when I was in Berkeley you had to be in by 10 o’clock at night during the week, and then Saturday and Sunday night, no, Friday and Saturday night, I think it was 2 o’clock. And if you didn’t get there on time and missed lockout, you were in deep doo-doo.

REDMAN: [laughs] So they maintained order and --

MICHELL: Oh, yes, right. And, of course, we all sat down at the long table together for dinner. You had no choice of what you got.

REDMAN: So you knew who was there and what was going on.

MICHELL: I know.

REDMAN: Did you like the other girls at UCLA?

MICHELL: My roommate was a really neat gal, and the two that lived across the hall, the four of us kind of got together all the time. We got along very well. But my roommate, Toni, was -- she helped design, you know, the card tricks that they do, the automated things that they do during half-time?

REDMAN: Oh, the card stunts.

MICHELL: Yeah, yeah. She was very artistic, and she was working -- did that.

REDMAN: Oh, for UCLA football games?

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: Did you ever go to games at the Rose Bowl, the UCLA football games?

MICHELL: I’m sure I did, but I don’t remember them being at the Rose Bowl. I remember going to USC. You know, their thing is right there at the --

REDMAN: Now did you like the living experience of being in LA, compared to --

MICHELL: No. I didn’t like it. No, and my aunt expected me to spend every weekend with her. It was an hour by the bus from the campus. She was down near the railroad station.

REDMAN: So it wasn’t a great fit.

MICHELL: No, it was pretty boring. And then my roommates, most of them, had homes. I mean, Toni, my roommate, was from Altadena, and she went home every weekend.

REDMAN: I see. So it was a pretty lonely --

MICHELL: Yeah, Yeah. It wasn’t the best of experiences. That’s one of the reasons I wanted to depart.

REDMAN: And then were there any other reasons that you wanted to leave UCLA?

MICHELL: I just was not particularly into it, and then Berkeley beat UCLA at football [laughs], and I thought they’re a much better school. And my father had gone to Berkeley.

REDMAN: Had he told you a little bit about what that experience was like, or he had encouraged you to go up to Berkeley, or you just sort of --

MICHELL: He just sort of did. I mean, this was the first time I had seen him in like thirteen years or something.

REDMAN: Tell me a little bit about what that experience was like, seeing him for the first time in a long time.

MICHELL: I didn’t really like him.

REDMAN: Oh, really.

MICHELL: No. I didn’t think that he -- and he had a new wife. Now, the new 00:51:00wife was very nice. But, I mean, he had basically deserted my mother and me. And he never sent any support money, ever.

REDMAN: That’s a pretty tough situation.

MICHELL: Yes.

REDMAN: With that, before we get to talk about Berkeley and school up there and your life in the Bay Area, I’m going to put in a new tape.