Beryl O'Dell interview recording, 1993 July 22
Loading the media player...
Transcript
Transcripts may contain inaccuracies.
Beryl Weller O'Dell | No, my husband and I began our life here in 19—the latter part of 1949. | 0:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What made you move to Wilmington? | 0:17 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Actually, I was contacted by phone by the principal of then Williston Senior High School to ask if I could come down to work for one year. My predecessor at Williston Senior High, a gifted young man who had worked in choral music was required by the department of it here, to go to get his degree. | 0:19 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I was asked to come for a year. That year lengthened into years and years and years. But that was why I came. Actually, the young man that recommended me was a classmate of mine at North Carolina Central. And so Mr. Rogers, the principal then called me to ask if I'd come down to do that. | 0:51 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your husband come with you when you were supposed to be coming for only a year? | 1:21 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | No. My husband was already working at Amour High School in Columbus County. Our home was in Connecticut, and he had come down to teach because he got his degree in North Carolina, his bachelors. We lived for that year with a resident here and then at the end of that year, we went into a home and Wilmington became our home. | 1:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So were you born in Connecticut Ms. O'Dell? | 1:59 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I was born in Massachusetts's, New Bedford. Was educated in New England schools. My father was a Methodist minister and presiding elder. I don't know if you know what presiding elders do, but they are the step below the bishop in the AME Zion Church and they have what are called districts, and they travel the district going from church to church to see how the churches are doing and so forth. | 2:02 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And my father was a presiding elder and that meant that we moved a good bit. So we lived in cities in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. And incidentally, I was born in New Bedford, Mass. Then my parents moved to Connecticut and then moved to Rhode Island and then back to what was my birthplace. I graduated from high school in the city where I was born, but interestingly enough, I had not been there for most of that time. | 2:38 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did your mother do? | 3:20 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, my mother was a wonderful pastor's wife, but prior to that she was a teacher and both she and my father had taught, were school teachers before he went into seminary and then of course became a minister. | 3:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where were your parents from Ms. O'Dell? | 3:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My mother was from Columbia, South Carolina, and my father was from what was then British West Indies. | 3:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Which island? | 3:52 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Jamaica. | 3:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How old was your father when he came to the United States? | 4:01 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I cannot tell you precisely because he came to go to college. He had already received a degree in the West Indies, but then he went to Lincoln University in Pennsylvania for his theological work and then he remained in his country. So you can figure he had gone for four years to do his bachelor's and then went to Lincoln to get his STB. I would assume that he would've been in his early 20s when he went to Pennsylvania. | 4:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you know where your parents met? | 4:50 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yes. My mother was teaching in—She graduated from Benedict College and then she actually taught in North Carolina. I cannot tell you the exact incident, but I'm sure that my father had gone for one reason or another to Columbia, which is her birthplace. | 4:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you know why they moved north? | 5:23 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | They did not go to New England from South Carolina. After my folks married, they went to California and that's where my brother was born. Then when they moved to Massachusetts, I was born there. When they moved to Connecticut. Both of my sisters were born there. | 5:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When they moved to California, I was wondering why they left the south. | 5:55 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Why they left the south. I don't think they left the south for any other reason other than assignment. My father's assignment was in California and my brother was born in Hanford, California, which I understand, I've never been there, but I understand it's the north-eastern part of California. A small place. | 6:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your parents talk to you about their childhood, about your mother growing up in South Carolina and your father in Jamaica? | 6:28 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh yes. Oh yes. They talked a great deal to us. | 6:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kinds of memories did they share with you? | 6:41 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My mother's mother was until age seven, a slave and she said that she told so many stories and I loved to just sit at her feet and listen to her. She's a very independent, tall, slender lady. | 6:44 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | She was a lady who worked for the president of a seminary. And we heard about Dr. Reed from an early, early age. I'm sure that this was the Miller in which my grandmother learned so much in the way of etiquette, which she passed on to her children. | 7:11 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My grandfather was a minister, her husband. You know how people of that generation were too talkative about certain things. I believe that at a certain point in time, my grandmother and my grandfather had separate residences for some reason. | 7:38 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I think this was responsible for the fact that she was very resourceful, very moral and upright, and she projected this and of course her children absorbed it. | 8:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where did you see your grandmother? Did you return to the south or did she come to north? | 8:20 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | We visited my uncle with whom she was residing, once, in Greenwood, and then she came to live with us in New Haven. My father was pastoring in a church there and she came to live with us and lived with us until she died. But that was in her latter years. | 8:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Was that your only visit to the south when you were a little girl or growing up? | 8:48 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | That one visit was the only one. | 8:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How old were you then? | 8:55 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I think probably about eight. My mother's older sister who lived in [indistinct 00:09:11], lived and worked in [indistinct 00:09:14], took us. This was her trip. She financed it. Took my mother and not my brother, but the two daughters with her to this visit to Greenwood and I will never forget that. That was very exciting for us because we had never been south before, but it was an eyeopener in that because we traveled by train, we encountered some prejudicial practices on the train because I remember very well, and I may have been younger than eight, maybe I was more nearly, six or seven because I remember myself and my perceptions and I told you that my grandmother was very independent. | 8:58 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, my aunt, Marion, was even more so. And there was something that she had done. I don't know whether she had gone in a certain area of the train or what it was, but I remember this porter saying to her and I'm going to use his vernacular, y'all ought known, y'all ought to know you couldn't do that and I don't know what it was she did, but I remember that, and of course, I didn't understand that very much, but I did sense that she had gone into forbidden territory. | 10:13 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Where it was on the train, I can't tell you because we did have Pullman and we did go to bed. So I don't know what she had done or what she had said. | 10:53 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Do you remember how your aunt responded? | 11:04 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | She just threw her hand up just to discount him, discount what he was saying completely. It just didn't phase her. Or if it did, it wasn't apparent to my sister or me. | 11:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You told me that you went to North Carolina Central University? | 11:29 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Mm-hmm. Actually, I said North Carolina Central because that's what it is now, but when I went to was North Carolina College. | 11:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What year was that that you went to that place? | 11:43 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | 1935. I went there for two years and I was on scholarship and at that time, they didn't issue a degree in music. I had to take applied music. Then my mother was successful on getting a scholarship from me to Wilberforce where they did have a music major. | 11:46 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I was there for my junior and senior years. I suppose at some time, you want me to talk about my father because I had been talking about my mother's, but whenever you want, we will. | 12:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I was thinking about the south and what made you go to North Carolina College, why you chose that college. Maybe we could pursue that a little bit then we can come back to— | 12:38 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Sure. | 12:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Why was it that you decided to— | 12:51 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I was offered a scholarship. All the way through college, I was on scholarship and although they did not offer the degree in music, I went there without a well-defined idea of what I wanted to major in. | 12:53 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I had played piano since I was three and so my scholarship was as accompanist for the choir, the college choir and that's how my bills were paid. But I was fortunate enough to win what is called the [indistinct 00:13:39] Prize Award at the end of my freshman year and that's awarded to the student, the freshman with the highest average. | 13:15 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And so the gentleman who had given the scholarship to me was chemistry professor, and he was wooing me every way he knew how to major in sciences and because of my affiliation with music department, I was being pulled in that direction. | 13:52 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Though they didn't offer the major. Professor Holmes wanted very badly for me to major in French because I was fortunate enough in New England to have studied under only French teachers in high school. I spoke French, they said, rather fluently. So I was able to just bypass my freshman year and go in as a sophomore in French. I was being pulled in really two different directions. | 14:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Maybe I should have asked you why you applied to North Carolina College. | 14:56 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I was awarded the scholarship to go, that's why we went. | 15:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I understand why, but were there other colleges that you thought of going to? | 15:05 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Actually, I guess it was finances. My ultimate goal was to go to Oberlin to major in music, but the finances were of such that I went where I got the best scholarship and at that time, scholarships didn't proliferate the way they do now. So it was sort of circumstance. I could go there and my way could be paid, and so that's where I went. | 15:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did you think about going to live in the South? | 15:47 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | To live or to go to school? | 15:50 |
Rhonda Mawhood | To go to school there. | 15:52 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I just thought that was going to be the land of milk and honey. There was just a real glamour associated to it for me. Maybe glamour isn't the proper word, but everything that I had heard about from the south because of my mother's background was said to me in positive terms, and anything that was negative just happened to her socially. | 15:53 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | For an example, when she was going to school, a bully would take her lunch every day. Things like that was my—Mother and daddy gave their children the legacy of feeling that they had a name of which to be very proud, the Weller name, and if anything, they made us feel as if we had to go just a step further than most. So we did not grow up in an atmosphere of feeling inferior. That didn't exist in our home. | 16:24 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Perhaps a part of that was that where we lived in New England, we were in the distinct minority racially. At that time that was the case, and so we didn't encounter what happened when numbers of African Americans came into Connecticut or Massachusetts or whatever. When we were going to school, there were many fewer African Americans. | 17:05 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I'm trying to explain why. I've looked back and tried to assess why it was we did not grow up in an environment of feeling inferior. We did realize we were different because we were in such a minority. There wasn't another African American in any of my classes until I was in the ninth grade. The very first day I was in grade nine, so grades one through eight, I was the only one. My sister was the only one. | 17:41 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My brother was a little different because my brother was older than we and—Well, no. Not very different now that I think about it. It was only when we moved to New Haven, that was different because there were more minorities there. | 18:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What was that like for you, going to an African American university? | 18:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I thought that was absolute heaven. I had never been in a situation like that before, and I think it was a combination of factors. As a minister's daughter, I had been very protected, always chaperoned. I remember when I went to my girlfriend's 16th birthday party, my father escorted me right to the door. | 18:47 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | When it was time for me to go home, he was there to carry me home. So here I was in an environment where I could talk. I couldn't stay out as late as I wanted because I don't know if you've run into this or learned this from anyone else, but Dr. Shepherd, who was the president of North Carolina College was very authoritarian. | 19:13 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | The doors to the dormitory were locked at a certain time, and girls did not go out after a certain time, but nevertheless, just I think it was to be in the company of African Americans, just everywhere I looked, that's all there were, African Americans. And of course at that time, never called Negroes, but I've trained myself to say African American, as bundlesome as it is. It's a lot of baggage, but I just enjoyed it. | 19:43 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My first Christmas, I wasn't the slightest bit homesick. The interesting thing is as I went through college each year at vacation time, I became more homesick, but not initially. I was enjoying myself too much. | 20:22 |
Rhonda Mawhood | You—I'm sorry, please. | 20:46 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | No, I was just going to say perhaps that was a protected environment. It was not the real world. The only time we met segregation was when we went to the movies. Then of course. And in Durham we walked to the movies. | 20:48 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I made the fatal mistake of letting friends woo me to do some things that were forboden. I remember Sadie Francis McGotry from Washington wanted to stop and get a bottle of lotion for her hair. And so we went in the beauty parlor and she bought it and we went on to the movie and by the time we got back, I was campussed. Both of us were campussed for having gone in. That was off limits college. College students were not to go into city establishments. | 21:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Into the beauty parlor? | 21:58 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Mm-hmm. They brought them on campus. | 21:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | My goodness. | 22:02 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | They had laundry, they set up for the beauty parlor for girls to have their hair shampooed, set, whatever, and they came on campus. We were not to go to the establishment. | 22:05 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I remember I was invited to a girlfriend's home in Chapel Hill for a weekend, and her oldest sister arranged for us to go to a dance. So we went to her godmother's home in Durham to spend the night after the dance and then go to Chapel Hill the next day. | 22:25 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | By the time I got back, I was campussed for that. Because when we signed out, we signed out to go to Chapel Hill. And you're looking back at it now and you see how times have really changed. And my poor mother, I guess she just shook her head. "Connie's campussed again." | 22:53 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I—I will never forget that I pleaded with Dean Rush, "You can campus me for the rest of the year, just don't call my mother." And she said, "Well Ms. Weller, we'll just have to do that." I think she gloried in it because she always smiled when she had to. | 23:13 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | That was the sort of life we lived. We were very protected and it was just, as I said, against the rules. When you left the college, you went from the college, to the theater and back so that we were not in a position to run into segregated practices more than having to go to an all-Black theater. | 23:32 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What theater did you go to in theater? | 24:04 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Gosh, I forgot the name. | 24:07 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The Royal? | 24:08 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Mm-mm. It wasn't the Royal. | 24:12 |
Rhonda Mawhood | But it was an all-Black theater. It was not a Jim Crow theater? | 24:13 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | It was an all-Black theater. We didn't go often, not too often. There were lots of things happening on the campus, and as I said, that was a life all its own, so we could go to stores. | 24:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I know you were working as accompanist and you were obviously studying hard. Were there any extracurricular activities that you were involved in? | 24:39 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | On the campus? | 24:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | On the campus? | 24:47 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh yes. Creative dance. Minister's daughter, yes, but creative dance and athletics. I played on basketball team. I played forward. People say, "You played forward as little as you were." I said, "But I was scrappy." | 24:50 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yet in New England, our schools were very well-equipped, and I look at—That was one of the very first things I noticed when I came to teach here. I could not believe when I went in the gymnasium, and I remember distinctly, I looked around and I said, "Well, where are the horses and the poles and the ropes?" And they said, "We don't have any of that." "Really? So what do you do when you go to gym?" | 25:12 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I didn't understand what you were supposed to do in there because the equipment that we had taken for granted was not there. So they played basketball and of course basketball, as you know, is here in Wilmington. We've spawned many greats, and that's one of the reasons why I think that these sports were so well developed because they could do that. There wasn't any problem to put up the nets and things, but the equipment was missing, I noticed. | 25:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'd like to ask you just one more question about college, which is did you attend church regularly when you were in college? | 26:33 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yes, but we were able—Both of the schools that I went to, provided the opportunity for Sunday school and so forth and then we could visit the churches. I remember, I guess just because I wasn't near my father. When we were growing up, we always were in our church all the time. | 26:41 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | We didn't visit other churches in our family. My mother would visit, but we didn't. We were always involved in our activities, so I guess maybe I just felt a little bit rebellious, and so I visited Baptist churches and so forth, and we enjoyed going to White Rock Baptist. And Miles Mark Fisher was very oratorical, so we enjoyed that. So we were encouraged to and did attend churches. | 27:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did your father know that you were attending other churches in the AME? | 27:41 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I'm sure he learned it somewhere along the line. | 27:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I said that I was only going to ask you one more question, but then I realized how did Wilberforce compare to North Carolina College, to you? | 27:53 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Okay. The atmosphere was much more cosmopolitan. The privileges were far greater. I must say that Dr. Shepherd was very diligent in getting funds for North Carolina College as a matter of history. | 28:03 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Historically, North Carolina College, which became central, always got funds. So that wasn't missing. But the general Cosmopolitan atmosphere was very evident. And of course, Wilberforce was much larger. It had the majors. At that time, there was Wilberforce and there was Central, and they were separate, excuse me. | 28:27 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | At that time, they were called church side and state side, and then they were accredited by North Central Association and they became separate entities. There was just much more in the way of offerings at Wilberforce. | 29:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And you had more personal freedom? | 29:21 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh, yes, yes. That, I could not believe. I really couldn't believe it. Whereas we were used to being always under the surveillance of the president there. When we saw the President, it was more of an occasion. | 29:24 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And actually the president of Wilberforce and my father pastored in New Bedford at the same time, and so that's how I got scholarship to Wilberforce because of the families knowing each other. | 29:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I remember very well, there was a strike once and I didn't want to strike very much. What were they striking for? I don't know. Maybe better food or something. You know how colleges do. And so we were sitting on the grass and I had to be sitting right at the sidewalk, of course, and the president came walking down the walk, shot a walk and looked down into my face and I felt like climbing up under a bush because I was there because he had given me the scholarship, and there I was striking with everybody else, but it was a distinctly different atmosphere. | 29:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did you use the freedom that you had there? Did you go out and, I don't know— | 30:47 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, this is very personal and I'm sure you weren't, well, I don't think you'll publish it, but I was told that I was one of five virgins on the campus. Five on the whole campus, so it was a very different life. Although apparently, although I developed and matured like most do. | 30:55 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I think I was too well-formed by that time to engage in some of the activities and experiences that friends of mine did. I'll never forget when Patsy Bradley, who was from Oklahoma, and she was a very close friend of mine, and she was going with one of the professor's sons. | 31:20 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And we knew that Patsy was going to stay out all night long, spend the night with him, and we were just on Tenter hooks until she got back in the morning. And when she came in, we were very relieved, but someone had let the dean know about it, and so she was dismissed. She was sent home. There were lots of activities there. I was a part of the traveling group, the singers that raised funds for the school. And I was— | 31:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh, I forgot to say that, at North Carolina College, along with the dance and the sports, I was also in drama. My very first trip to Wilmington was to Thalian Hall where we were presented in a play there. Yeah. | 32:29 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What made you finally choose music as your major? | 32:50 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I was always interested in music even before I went to North Carolina College, and the only reason why I didn't pursue it other than as applied music, I took piano there. That was my performing instrument, but that's one of the big reasons why I transferred to Wilberforce where I couldn't major in music because that was something I had always wanted to do and that was my eventual. | 32:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | The professors who tried to woo you into other disciplines that you weren't interested in that? | 33:25 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh, I was very interested, but that wasn't my primary focus. Yeah. Actually I got enough French to had to have a double major before I graduated. | 33:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I'd like to ask you about your father, Ms. O'Dell. What did your father tell you about his family or his upbringing or his homeland? | 33:46 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My father. Do you know anything about Jamaica? When I say anything about it, I shouldn't ask that way. Do you know anything about the structure, the social structure and so forth in Jamaica? | 33:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I have one—The wife of a friend who moved here from there when she was in her teens, that was maybe 10 years ago or so, and she has told me that racially, it's quite mixed, her own family is very much so. And I know a little bit about the more recent politics the last 10-15 years. | 34:11 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My father came from a background of gentility. We learned so much through a cousin who came to visit us, and this was interesting because my father's name as we knew it was Salesman Weller. Salesman William Weller. That's all we knew. And then this cousin, Violet, who lived in New Jersey, we learned about where she lived and all that. And of course my folks invited her to come see us. | 34:40 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | That was really exciting for us because we hadn't had the opportunity to talk with anyone other than my father's brother who had come to visit us. But Uncle Willie perhaps spent a week with us and then went back to Jamaica. And so we still were not able to get the objective view of my father's life. He had talked to us about his life, but not from anyone else, and the very first thing she said was, "Well, let me tell you about Cousin Sammy." | 35:18 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | When she said Cousin Sammy, our jaws dropped. Sammy, we had never heard Sammy before. And so then she said, "Oh, yes." One of my first memories as of sitting in cousin Sammy's home and his mother would always preside at the tour and the servants would come in and—Which gave us a picture of the environment that daddy grew up in. | 35:57 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | His father was a jeweler and my father's grandfather came from Scotland. As you said, you've already said that you've learned there's a lot of ed mixture there and my father's mother's forebearers came from Madagascar, so that was their background. | 36:32 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I think this is important to tell you because my father was very British. At the time that he came to this country. It was still British West Indies. And so he was British in his attitudes, in his loyalties. Every night, he would turn on short wave and we would hear God Save the Queen, every night. That was the last thing we heard when we signed off there. So the very fact that he would listen and we would hear that every night shows that this was what he was loyal to and remembered a great deal. My father was like a square peg in a round hole in this country. | 37:01 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | He was a part of the AME Zion church. I often wish he could have been in a different milieu because he was very respected, but he was not one of them. | 37:54 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | He was the one who was very adamant about table manners and etiquette and so forth. My mother was a gifted, remarkable woman who had what people would call the common touch. | 38:16 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | In church, she was the one the people flocked to. They respected my father from the pulpit. Reverend Weller was in the pulpit, but mother was the one they gravitated to. As I look back, it's amazing that she did the things she did. She conducted from daddy's study what people now go to employment agencies for. | 38:39 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | People would call her and they would need a job and mother would make the contacts. She was a pioneer. Pictures, I have thousands of pictures, but somewhere here I have a picture of mother standing with Eleanor Roosevelt when she attended the White House Conference on Youth. When she died, she was general president of WH and it was then FM. It's now OM, Women's Home and Foreign Missionary Society, which is the organization in our conference for women. | 39:05 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | There are no women bishops yet, but in the missionary society, she was the president. Now, I was talking about my father. It's difficult to talk about one and not begin to talk about the other. He was very cultured and very cultured, very scholarly and this was, I'm sure, the fact that these two remarkable people who at a certain point in time post-depression, did not have financial resources. | 39:57 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | But they gave their children what money can't buy and pride in self and integrity and an absolute feeling of worth, personal worth. | 40:40 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I know that you said that your parents instilled this pride in you. It was very important. Did they ever warn you or tell you that others might not treat you as you should be treated? | 41:01 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Because for the entire time that I lived with my parents, I lived in New England. In fact, I met my husband on my first job after I graduated and my first job was in Mississippi. | 41:30 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Now, you want to talk about meeting head on the bitter truths. That's where I met them. I did not meet them as a member in my father's and mother's home. I ran head on—I told you, when I went to college in North Carolina, we were living in such a protected, rarefied atmosphere that we still didn't run into the real realities of segregation and prejudice even there. It was when I went to work in Mississippi that I got my baptism by fire. | 41:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How was it that you came to have this job in Mississippi? And not somewhere else— | 42:41 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh, okay. Before I graduated from college, the financial secretary of the college, Herbert White, was recruiting. Not recruiting, he was looking for people to work there at Okolona Junior College in Mississippi, in Episcopalian junior college. | 42:47 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And so he interviewed several people and I was the one that he made the decision on. When I told friends that I was going to teach in Mississippi, they said, "Mississippi?" That was just like I was being condemned to death. "Do you want to go to Mississippi? Are you sure you want to go to Mississippi?" "Why of course I want to go to Mississippi." And so blindly, I said, "I'll go to Mississippi." | 43:14 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | It was not while I was working on campus that I really realized the harsh realities of segregation because here again, I'm working for an Episcopalian junior college that's near Tupelo, Mississippi. People knew about the teachers working there, and so they made charge accounts available. | 43:57 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | There was very little that I was doing in Tupelo, but of course I was learning about the deep south there. It was when I went to visit my husband's grandmother that I really ran into head on the realities of segregation. | 44:31 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I remember we went into the telephone exchange because there wasn't a phone in my husband's grandmother's house. They lived in Forest, Mississippi, a very small place between Jackson and Meridian. We went to the telephone exchange to make this call because I was called this very same Herbert White who had given me the job. And the operator said, "Who's your call going to?" Of course, she wasn't very civil. Just because I was a Black person. "Who is your call going to?" And I said, "His name is Mr. Herbert White and he's at such and such a place." | 44:56 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | "Who?" And I said, "Mr. Herbert White." "Is he a Colored man?" And I said, "Yes. We don't call no Colored man 'Mr.'" And she got up and walked out. Now the adjoining operator moved over into her seat and said, "I'll place your call." And so she did it. | 45:49 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I remember that. That just stood out in my mind. I didn't really run into the realities of segregation until I worked here in Wilmington. We had brought our little children here. I remember that we were walking downtown to the Bailey Theater. No, the Bailey Theater, I don't know if you know anything about it, that time had—I think there was— | 46:10 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | —this Bailey Theater. And our son said, "Oh, let's go to that one over there. I like what's playing over there." And that was, I think there was the Colony, on the left side. And so I'm saying to myself, "Now, how am I going to tell him this, without demoralizing him?" And I said, "Well, Sonny, we don't go to that theater." "Well, why not, Mommy?" I said, "Well, because here in Wilmington, people of different races go to different theaters." I thought that was the better way to put that. He said, "Really?" And I said, "Yes." He said, "Oh, let's go back to Connecticut. I'm not going to like it here." That was his introduction to segregation, when it came to theaters. | 0:01 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How old was he at the time, of that? | 0:56 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Sonny had to be—I have to stop and think, because he went back. He and our daughter went back one year, to stay with my folks, because they were in sort of ill health. And so, Mother said they'd be helpful. I would judge that they were like five and seven, something like that. | 1:06 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | That was, I guess my primary consideration, because I was considered—Oh, I was considered really radical. My husband, who I'm sorry, I wish you could have met him. He will have been dead 13 years in September, but he would tell our children later on, about the time he and I were sitting in the car. He left the motor running, and he ran across the street to drop something in the post office. At that time I wasn't driving and he said, "No," he said, "honey, just sit here." He said, "You don't have to do anything. Just sit here. I'll leave the motor running, and I'll be right back." | 1:30 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And so I'm sitting there, and I looked up, and I saw this cop coming across the street. And my husband swore that, he could see me from the other side, he said when the cop bent down to say something he said, "I could see your mother just raising up like this to tell him what she was going to tell him." He said he flew across the street and said, "Sir, here I am. I just left the motor running. I went to do so-and-so, I'm here." And the cop left, because by that time my husband was trigger-happy about me, because apparently I didn't have what one would describe as the proper control or reticence, or whatever it is you're supposed to have, in the segregated South. | 2:18 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I remember, I had a charge account in two places. The Sherilyn was one, and there was another. And the first time I was called Constance, I just terminated the account. And I'm sure that the clerks were astounded because this was not usual. People didn't react that way. But I guess it goes back to what I told you about our upbringing, and we were just completely convinced that we were as valuable, had as much value or worth, in some cases more, than the person we met. | 3:15 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I experienced, I must say, problems not only with Whites, but I experienced some problems with people of my own race. Who, I don't know whether they—I just seemed to be too different, or—I don't know. That's another story, because I think maybe the sort of job I was in where, I had to be engaged in performance. And I think you know that when you are a part of something that takes you before the public, if any excellence has been established and you get what people consider kudos, or praise or whatever, then there is a resistance or a resentment about that. So that's sort of a mixed bag, but you're more interested in vestiges of segregation and prejudice and what they do, I guess, than that. | 4:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I'm also interested in how your friends, or the community, what they thought of your, as you say, radicalism? | 5:27 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | This was not friends or people that I was thrown together with, because of my daily job, but it is a commentary on prejudice. My husband was still teaching in Columbus County, and of course because we were both living here, he was interested in working in New Hanover County. And he just could not get a job. We went to Mississippi because of his grandmother's stroke and eventual death, and we were going to bury her on, I'll say on Saturday, and a call came through Friday night. And it was, well, I called her my play daughter who was staying in our home. And she said that we needed to come home, because they were trying to reach my husband to offer him a job. | 5:41 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | We were about to accept one right there in Mississippi, because he had been offered a job there. Now, I am told that, I don't know if it was the superintendent, the assistant superintendent, you've heard of Roland and Grise. Whether this was their attitude, it might have been Mr. Grise's, but the remark was made where, "She's one of those New York Yankees, one of those Connecticut Yankees. We don't need another one down here." And my husband had not been placed, but for some reason they decided to offer him the job then, and so we stayed. And he was made assistant principal at—Not Peabody, Williston. No, it wasn't Williston— | 6:47 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Gregory? | 7:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | —Gregory then, and then he moved on to Peabody, and he was the principal there for 15 years until his death. | 7:43 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Back to attitudes and so forth. I remember that there was some looking askance at us, because we had in our home, particularly where we built here, people of all races. This was what I grew up with, and it was very natural for us to have friends and intimates who were Caucasians. I think people sort of looked askance at us, about that. | 7:51 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Back to my years at Williston personally, I was given I think a great deal of respect for my work, by people in the community. Initially there was some resentment because I had that job, and you remember I told you I had come for a year, and then I was just retained. And they found another job to give James Thompson, who was my predecessor, and there were his loyal friends and so forth who resented that. I think I was seen as a Northerner, and not a Wilmingtonian, and with some people that was always present. Overall, which would override any of that petty business, I think that their genuine respect for the reputation I earned here, I think that that was very manifest and still is. | 8:40 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I would be happy if you would ask me any specific questions, because when you start talking like this and you look back into memories and so forth, some of which are sort of vague. I'm not sure I'm giving you exactly what you want. | 10:10 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I think you are. I wanted to ask you about your work, but I also wanted to ask you if you remember divisions or conflicts based on skin color within the African American community in Wilmington? | 10:26 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I will say that when I was teaching and directing and so forth, my first concern was my professional life. I was very close to my students and the nature of what I was doing, I think, would explain that. I traveled with them. We were together in school and out of school. They felt free to come to my home at all hours of night. That was where I realized that I really wanted to counsel, and I went to Chapel Hill just to renew my certificate, it was required. And in order to do that, I took counseling courses. | 10:47 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, I was really hooked, and decided to go ahead and get my degree. But I wanted to say that because it would explain that I was very involved in the lives of the students, and of course observed their attitudes, and so forth. And there was a resistance, there was a resentment toward light complexioned, I'll use the word Negroes, because at that time it was. And I don't mind using it. So much so that after a while, when it was time for the kids to vote for the homecoming queen and Ms. Williston and all that, they were determined that she was not going to be a fair complexioned person. So it was a reaction against what had been the case, because in our race historically, I'm sure you have learned that privileges were accorded to people based on complexion. And that the fairest got most prizes, and the darkest were the ones who were most discriminated against. | 11:36 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | It's very fortunate that in recent years, even with the modeling profession where the ethnic beauty became sort of the standard, I heard Oprah Winfrey say one day, you know how Oprah talks. And she said, "Child, I'm telling you all these years I've been thinking about full mouth and all that, never did I think that my mouth was going to be the standard." And everybody just roared, but that's true. I don't think Blacks ever thought that Caucasians would be having their lips infused with whatever to make them fuller, but then you know, that's the way the fashion world goes, in standards. | 13:15 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | But I have always felt that the '60s were a real boon to our race. It brought some negatives and some adverse developments as well, but it did something to make Black kids really feel that Black is beautiful, because everything that they had seen and heard conspired to make them think just the very opposite. | 13:59 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I remember one day I was talking to my students about, I don't know what. I taught music, music courses, music education, et cetera, et cetera. But I would find a way to bring in my lessons, because I did feel very strongly that Black kids just had to be convinced that they were beautiful, worthwhile people. But with some, it was a losing battle. I remember there was a girl named Ruth. Ruth was about five feet, eight. She was dark complexioned, and I was trying my best to get a point across, and of course I don't even remember now what I was talking about in the main, but I remember this. | 14:40 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | In desperation I said to her, "Ruth, now look, I want you to imagine a situation. We're walking down a sidewalk, and the sidewalk is perhaps about this wide," and I guess I showed her about what, two feet. And I said, "A White man is coming toward you, and you're approaching him. There's not room for the two of you to pass each other. Would you get off the sidewalk to let him pass?" She said, "Yes, ma'am, I would." And I remember just feeling hopeless. I just sat down. And I said, "I'm not going to get anywhere with Ruth today," because Ruth truly believed in the superiority of the Caucasian. | 15:39 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | So in answer to your question about complexion, yes, I did see here in New Hanover County, when we came here. I noticed that the people they called the first families, Wilmington's first families, tended to be fair complexioned people. Or fair complexioned women and darker men, which historically, I guess I could go on with that forever because there are so many ramifications when it comes to color. But I do remember when the students at Williston began to resist that, and as I said, they had the power of the vote. And a fair complexioned girl just wasn't going to get queen, from that point on. And that lasted for a while. | 16:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did that start in the 1950s, would you say? | 17:30 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yes. It started in the 1950s, because it started before the decade of the '60s, where Black is beautiful. | 17:34 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did the teachers think of that? What did the teachers in the school think of that when the students elected, chose to elect darker skinned girls? | 17:44 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Probably, some of them were clapping their hands, because they themselves as adult carried these same resentments. So those who were not of the fairer complexion felt the same way, and so this was fine with them. For those of us who had come from another area, where there was not this, according a privilege and so forth based on color. Though I must say, my father came from an environment where this was the case. The graduations in Jamaica, just like in South America, Brazil, and those places, where you had the same gradations and the privileges based on color. So that within the race itself, it has been insidious. And people will be mouthing one thing, because this is what they want to be the case, but underneath they themselves have been programmed with some of these same attitudes. | 17:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How does that manifest itself? | 19:25 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I read, couldn't even tell you where, I'm sure you have books and magazines. And sometimes you don't know where you read what, you're just trying to read as much as you can. Where we talk about adopting Black babies, and you've heard it, this push. "People can get babies if they want." Talking to Black citizens. "We have many who want to be adopted." Yet the dichotomy is that Black individuals will talk about the fact that we must save our children, and we must do that. When Black citizens go to adopt, invariably the dark complexioned ones still want lighter complexioned children. | 19:33 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Now, these are painful facts, but we were victims of the divide and conquer, which had its beginnings in slavery. Even in slavery, my grandmother was a house servant. She never was sent to the fields, but my grandmother was certainly lighter—She wasn't there, but she was light tan, so she was privileged, as a child. Now, when masters have these attitudes and show them, because they can do whatever they please, they don't have any stops. They can show the favoritism whatever way they want, then of course, the slaves adopt these attitudes whether they want to or not. And it's not so much an attitude as it is what they have been schooled and programmed to think. | 20:28 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Now, I know this becomes very convoluted. There's nothing simplistic about this. | 21:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Not at all. I'd like to ask you a little bit about your work, about teaching. You were teaching music, and drama? What subjects were you teaching, exactly? | 21:40 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | At Williston? | 21:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 21:57 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Okay. At Williston I was teaching, all of my classes were music. Music education, and then I had, my main responsibility was the music groups, the performing groups. That's what I came here, in the main, to do. And that's what I did. Before I came here, I taught at St. Augustine's College, and there I taught music and music education. In Mississippi, I taught French, English, not across the board, but I was the French teacher and some English, and then the music performing groups. | 21:58 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So what kind of music did your students perform? | 22:50 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | We ran the gamut. We ran the gamut from the baroque to Broadway. I think we became, we've been described as the famed Williston Glee Club, so our fame perhaps was based on an appreciation of the way we did the spirituals, but that was not by any means our sole category. So we did run the gamut. | 23:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Where did they perform? | 23:35 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | When we started here, it was in churches, the Rotary Club, the Lions Club, the Optimist Club, all the schools, it seemed to me. And we did radio first, and then television. We started with Channel Six, Jim Burns was one of our staunchest supporters, he even sang with us one year. And we were broadcast, via mutual network, every year at Christmastime on that series. And one lady told us that she was in South America and caught us on short wave there. | 23:39 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Wow. | 24:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What qualities would you look for in someone who was trying out for Glee Club? | 24:37 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Of course, first of all, the timbre of the voice, the native voice, because in a performing group that's important. There's a place in what they used to call voice culture for teaching anyone who wants to sing, but not in performing groups. And so of course the voice quality comes first. Any experience that they might have had already is always a plus, like if they had sung in junior high or elementary school, and had been subjected to what you look for in performing groups. The ability to phrase, intonation is very important, because I don't care how you struggle with it, if you're not going to be singing, if your intonation's going to be faulty, that— | 24:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I don't know much about voice. Intonation is? | 25:51 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Is the ability to stay on pitch, because you can have a group of 75, if one person's flatting that's going to affect the performance of the entire group. They used to laugh because I would say, "I hear a blue note, here," and they knew what that meant. Someone's not on pitch. | 25:53 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I don't know whether you have even heard that, in 1984, a group of my former students, high school students came together to sing for a Martin Luther King celebration. And when word spread that the Williston folks were going to be singing, I was amazed. It was at St. Luke Church, and we were in the basement getting ready, and of course they were very excited. They were so excited because this was bringing Williston back. And one of the fellas said, "Ms. O'Dell, come here. I want to show you something." | 26:22 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | He took me by the hand. And we went up the outside steps. He said, "Look out there." Everywhere that you looked, I don't care in what direction you looked, were cars. And they tell me that they must have turned away a hundred people who couldn't get in, the place was absolutely jammed. I have a tape of that here somewhere, that appearance. And we were singing one spiritual, and we were not through when the applause started, and they just clapped and clapped and clapped. And we just kept singing, and it was a very emotional experience. And when that was over, the sentiment was, "We've got to keep going." | 27:00 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I hadn't bargained for this, because when they approached me and said, "Ms. O'Dell, we want to sing, would you direct us?" And I said, "You get them together, and if they're interested and they will rehearse, yeah." So we sang that day, and that was in February. And then that December we were presented at Kenan Auditorium, and that was another sellout performance. And we did that for several years, the annual Christmas program, and we have sung for Candlelight Tour, Festival of Trees. We were just presented at the museum, two weeks ago, so that is a group of my former high school students who are singing as adults. | 27:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were the parents of the students who were in the Glee Club involved in the Glee Club, in some way? | 28:54 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | If you mean like band boosters, that type of thing? No, not really. No, we didn't have booster clubs like that. One of the ways that we got robes was that we were being invited to sing at so many places, that I finally told the principal, I said, "Look, I think I'm going to make a stipulation when we sing, that there will be some sort of contribution toward robes." And we established a minimum, because there wasn't going to be any handing us $10. And I would tell them what the price of a robe was, and that's the way we defrayed some of our expenses for robes. So we didn't have a Glee Club boosters club. | 29:02 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How long did it take you to raise the money for the robes? | 29:57 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, of course there was an appropriation. We didn't have to raise it, solely. But that did bolster. And with the concert choir, the concert choir—We had the Glee Club, that was the big group. Then, ooh— | 30:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Got it? | 30:24 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I'm sorry, I forgot I had the— | 30:24 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I [indistinct 00:30:26] put the tape on, so it's— [INTERRUPTION] | 30:25 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | —that was the entire group. And then the concert choir was the performing group that traveled. And then we had beginners, and so forth. I'm familiar with the one that came out this year, this is the '92 one. I don't know whether the—This Miss Williston is one of my members, Emma Shepherd. Yeah. But I can show you that another time. | 30:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you. | 30:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kind of qualities did you try to instill in your students? | 30:58 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I remember, the first day of the school year, I would put a capital A on the board. And that was an inspiration one year. And then I just did it from then on, because I found that that was really the way to make them aware of what I meant by attitude. And I wouldn't tell them what the A was. Later on, and I'd go through the whole hour, and then near the end I'd say, "By the way, you wanted to know what that A stands for? It stands for attitude, because I think that that is most important. No matter what we're doing, your attitude is important." It's a basic, and especially if you have or want an esprit des corps, the attitude, the individual attitude, is important. | 31:09 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And then the concept of ensemble is very important in vocal music, in performance. I remember there was a girl named Shirley Hewitt. Shirley had a big, dramatic soprano voice. Had tremolo in it, but it was so powerful. And I used to post, every time we went out of town to concertize, I would post the performing group the prior week. Now, you understand the concert choir was meeting every day, but everybody didn't make every trip. And they would come, and they'd know I had that list posted, and they were on tenterhooks until they could see who was listed there. | 32:03 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | So this particular day, we were going to Kinston, I believe. And they all went and looked and found out whether or not they were performing, and left. So Shirley came to my desk and she said, "Ms. O'Dell." And I said, "Yes?" She said, "I just met the group." "Yes." "I think you made an omission." I said, "You did? You do?" "Yes." I said, "Why?" "My name's not there." I said, "I know." And so, she looked astounded. And I said, "Shirley, I don't know any other way to let you understand that in ensemble singing, you don't perform as a soloist. You don't project over your section. And maybe when you think about it, the next time—" | 32:49 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I give that as an answer to your question in that, in performance, a person's thinking of him or herself as an individual does not work at all in good performance. We were accorded a lot of praise, in our festival singing, we would get superior ratings regularly. But the thing that people would say who didn't even know music was, "We love to hear you sing. We can understand every word they say." So that phonetics, that was the basis of our training, the phonetics. Because it makes no difference how beautiful you sound if people can't understand what you're singing. | 33:44 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And then, interpretation. I've heard many professional groups that I think are good technicians, but they don't interpret at all. It's important to interpret what you're singing. So the interpretation of the lyrics, we would go into detail with that before we really started the composition, so that they were well aware. My mother, I didn't tell you, my mother was also a dramatic supervisor and my first lessons in drama were under my mother. And she taught us the importance of projection. So these are the qualities I look for, and find most important I guess, among them. | 34:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | How would you go about explaining, or going through the piece of music with the students, before they started singing it, too? So they understood? | 35:35 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, even when I was Minister of Music, and I didn't tell you anything about that part, Minister of Music at St. Luke, I was that until I was appointed the Executive Minister there. I noticed that the singers had no idea what the numbers at the top of the page—You know, when you see a hymn, and you see numbers at the top? And then of course a name here, and a name there. None of that, had they ever stopped to think two seconds about. And so we had little lessons in hymnology, and that was what I did with my students. When we approached a composition, they would learn who the composer was, circumstances when the composition was written. And then I would ask them, "Read that. Let's read it, in a little while, we're going to talk about what you think it's about." So that's the way we'd approach it. | 35:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Were there certain songs that your students particularly liked? | 36:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I'll tell you what the public seemed to want. They still say, Little Drummer Boy, nevermind that Harry Simeone and the Fred Waring folks brought that out. I think people think the Williston Glee Club brought it out. So the Little Drummer Boy was one of the things they were most famous for, in those. And then of course, the spirituals. There's no point in my going into the titles of spirituals, because they'd just be another spiritual to you. | 36:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, I know a few. I've heard a few. I've read them. | 37:17 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I tell you, we sang so many spirituals. The Williston Alumni Chorale Ensemble came back, the first time they sang was something they had done in high school, called I've Been Buked. And that's a very, very moving one. And it became particularly poignant during the '60s and the '70s, because it was sort of commentary on what Black people have endured from slavery, on. And although we've been buked, this is what we will do, this will be the eventual end, and that's the kind of spiritual I did. | 37:23 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What is your favorite music to listen to? | 38:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Types? | 38:18 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Types and specific compositions, if there are any? | 38:19 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I like jazz. I like good jazz. And when I say good jazz, I don't mean Dixieland. Dixieland, I can appreciate the fact that it has a history and all that, and Scott Joplin and all the people who have—But that's not my genre. I like jazz. | 38:23 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I like certain operas, I don't, not across the board. I'm not one of these who says, "Oh, I like opera." I think that's just like saying, "I like cake." Like, which operas do you like and why? | 38:46 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Which ones do you like? | 39:00 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh, I like Madame Butterfly. I like the lighter ones like Carmen. I like Aida. I like quite a few different ones, but I think I tend to like the Italian, I like French, the more delicate French music. I'm beginning to appreciate more and more some country music, which I hadn't learned to appreciate. | 39:01 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I am not what you call a gospel devotee, at all. However, I have heard some contemporary compositions that are very moving, but I just guess I'm affronted. My students in high school used to try to make me like gospel. And I said, "Can't you understand? I don't like it." "Well, Mrs. O'Dell, it's so pretty." I said, "You can't call that music pretty. That's not pretty music." I said, "It's emotional music." But I said, "The stridency goes against everything I have tried to inculcate in you." It's very strident music. | 39:47 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Now I've studied, I've gone to seminars and workshops and so forth, and I have sat under the spell of some very gifted gospel singers and directors. And I realized that, with gospel music, it's produced from a different place. Gospel music is produced here, whereas the music I train my students to sing is produced from here. So I've learned definitely, if you can't beat them, join them. So then, I've been able to be intelligent about that, and show my singers, "If you're going to sing gospel, realize that it's being produced differently. And when you sing this—" Then I think, because they feel I'm receptive to some of the music they like, then they're willing to not resist it. | 40:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What kind of music was in your home when you were growing up? | 41:31 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, first of all, I think I told you I started piano when I was three. Started. My serious lessons started when I was probably seven. So that piano was always in our family, mainly because I was playing it. My sister, the one next to me, the next younger, played violin. My brother, older than I, played violin. My father could play piano after a fashion. And all of us liked to sing. | 41:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what kind of music? Was it classical music, or was it just just anything? | 42:16 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | You may bet your bottom dollar it was classical music. Although my father, bless his heart, my father branched out and began listening to more popular music. I heard him one day humming Golden Earrings. I don't know if you ever heard, "(singing)," and I heard my father—I said, "Daddy?" He said, "What?" I said, "What are you humming?" And he was a fair complexioned man, he turned sort of red, and he began to chuckle. I said, "Daddy, you're humming Golden Earrings." And he said, "Yes, well, I heard it in the music store." And he says, "I thought it was rather pretty." | 42:21 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I thought that was so funny, because we grew up not expecting my father—He loved military bands. He loved the Army band and the Navy band. At that time we didn't have a television, and I remember my sister used to say, "Oh, Connie, Lord. Get to the radio, switch the radio. It's time for the Navy band." And I'd turn it, and my father would say, "Isn't it time for the Navy band?" And we would say, "Oh Lord, we lost again." He loved the military bands. And of course, religious music. | 43:23 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My father, I remember mother would direct cantatas in the church, and then we'd have some musicians, and my father would direct the little orchestra. My sister and I would be knee-deep in the presentations and stuff. We had a really rich life, our family did. Rich cultural life. | 44:04 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What did you think of rock and roll when it came out, now? | 44:33 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I thought that it wouldn't be around too long, and of course I was dead wrong. Just as I thought that rap wasn't going to live. I couldn't have been more wrong then. And I must say, I can't say I like rap, but I think everybody's entitled to a taste. But I thought rock and roll was just a passing fad. What about you? | 44:35 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, my goodness. What kind of music I like? | 45:05 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | No, I mean rock and roll. Are you too young for that? | 45:09 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 45:11 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Okay. | 45:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I was born in '66. | 45:11 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Because when was the rock and roll thing prevalent? | 45:11 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh, White people started listening to what they called rock and roll in the early 1950s. | 45:17 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Okay. | 45:21 |
Rhonda Mawhood | It grew out of blues, soul. | 45:23 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Was Elvis contemporary with rock and roll? | 45:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes, ma'am. | 45:30 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | That's what, I use him as sort of a mark. | 45:31 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Yes. He would, actually, for what people call mainstream American culture. He would be a pretty good marker. | 45:36 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I've heard lots of praise given Elvis, and the fact that he was sort of a pioneer, and began a whole lot. I thought of him as swivel hips, and I really never took him seriously. And I'm still completely mystified as to why people go to Graceland, and annually cry and weep and wail, and all that. I think that's a real phenomenon that I've never understood. I don't understand it yet, any more than, I guess movements that just live because people perpetuate them and keep them going. But it seems to me to reflect sort of a lack of—Mentally, I don't understand people who do that. | 45:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When your children were growing up, what kind of music did they listen to in the house? Or outside? | 46:34 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I have a son, and I have a daughter. My son likes, first and foremost, classical music. Second, he likes good jazz. My daughter doesn't care if she never hears— | 46:41 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yeah. | 0:03 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Did they attend Williston when you were teaching there? | 0:08 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yes, they did. And it's interesting. My daughter is married to Herb Cables. Herb, too, is the retiring deputy director of the National Park Service. Herb is from Milford, Connecticut. Lucienne was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. When people talk with her, people that they meet, she'll say, "Well, I'm a southerner." They'll say, "Baby, you were born right over here in Waterbury, Connecticut. Now, what do you mean by you're a southerner?" "I'm a southerner. I went to Wilmington when I was a baby, practically," she says, "And I'm a southern girl." And she believes that. | 0:09 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | She loved Williston. After they got over the initial shock of what it was like to live in the segregated south, they became really involved in the life that kids had then. And you do understand that it revolved around school, because in segregation, that was the main arena for them. And so, Lucienne was much more involved in Williston life than her brother. Her brother is sort of a loner. He had some friends, but Lucienne was plunged knee-deep in all of it. | 0:51 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And when you were asking about students and color, gradations of color and how that affected their lives, my daughter was the second girl who was a teacher's daughter, child who was in the court. She was runner up for Miss Williston. That was unheard of. Now, you talk about resistance. There was a resistance and a resentment toward teacher's children. And so, the fact that she was the runner up for Miss Williston, I think, was a real testament to the fact that she was very much liked by kids. | 1:36 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | She loved sports. She was always involved in sports. As I said, she's a creative dancer. She's very good at dancing. Always very gregarious person. Whereas Sonny, he was the loner. I remember one day I was down in my room and someone came flying in. "Ms. O'Dell, someone just hit Sonny." Well, of course, I was just like a lioness with her cubs. And I said "well, who—?" I asked her to get Sonny to bring him to me. | 2:28 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | So he came in, and of course, he was very reluctant to come. The last thing he wanted was to come to me. And so, I said, "Did someone just hit you?' And he said, "Yes." I said, "Who?" And so, he gave me the boy's name. I said, "Why did he hit you, Sonny? What were you doing?" He said, I was just walking along. And he said, 'Are you Miss O'Dell's boy?'" And he said, "Yes." Pow. | 3:07 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, I felt that wasn't something that was going to go unattended. Fortunately, I could send for the boy, I was a teacher there. I did it after hours. And so, he came in, and so he was sort of wary when he came in the door. I said, "Is your name so-and-so?" He said, "Yes." I said, "Have you had any problems with my son?" And he said, "No." I said, "Well." I'm about to lose my cool now. I'm trying to be objective. I said, "I want to tell you this one thing. I don't know what you have against me. I understand that you asked him if he was my son. And when he said, yes, you hit him." So he didn't say anything, just shuffled his feet. | 3:33 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I said, "I want to tell you this, if there's anything that you have a problem with with me." See, I didn't even know him, I didn't teach him. I said, "You come tell me. But I want to give you fair notice, if you hit my son again, because he's my son, I'm taking you to Third and Princess." Now, that was the byword then. Third and Princess meant to police station. I said, "I will take you to Third and Princess." I said, "That's all," and he left. But Sonny played football after a fashion. He was more cerebral. Lucienne was knee-deep in social life, dancing, sports and all that. So she loved Williston. | 4:26 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What do they do now? | 5:17 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Sonny took an early retirement from AT&T, was in management with AT&T for 10 years. And after savoring that, I couldn't understand how he wanted just to stop working. Well, I could understand why he stopped working for AT&T. He said, "Ma, I tell you, AT&T is a huge corporation that is dehumanized." He said, "Individuals don't matter." He said, "I am tired of having to categorize people in three groups. And when they tell me, 'Okay, we have 3,000 here. By year so-and-so, we want that down to 350. And so, you know what you have to do.'" | 5:19 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | He said, "And that method, I had to categorize these people that I rub shoulders with every day, see them as human beings, and phase some out. Just have to phase them out." He says, "Group one, they're fine. They're pluses. Group two, maybe group three, they have to go." And he said, "I felt I'd give it three more years." He said, "But when I was called and asked to commit to seven more years, or think about early retirement, I opted for the early retirement." | 6:13 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Now, he is working with REI, I think it's REI, where they furnish equipment, attire, and all that for people who want to go into recreational endeavors, like to the mountains or hiking or whatever. And so, he lectures at schools and colleges related to that recreation. | 6:46 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My daughter is a realtor now. That's new with her. For a while, she was not doing anything but accompanying her husband because he has to travel so much. And prior to that, she worked at Children's Hospital of DC and Yale University in health technology. The only two I have. | 7:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And does she live in Connecticut? | 7:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Their home is Connecticut. Their condo is Arlington. But he will be moving to, as a senior research scholar at CUNY. And so, they'll be living here. They're back and forth between the two places. They'll be living solely in Connecticut, and he'll commute to New York as of August. | 7:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And where does your son live now? | 8:10 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Atlanta. | 8:12 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Atlanta. | 8:13 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Stone Mountain. | 8:14 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Oh. | 8:15 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they are our two. Do you have time to tell me anything about yourself? | 8:16 |
Rhonda Mawhood | What would you like to know? I've asked you so many questions. What would you like to know? | 8:28 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I'd like to know, well, essentially thumbnail sketch of what you've asked me. Like where are you from? What are your goals, your experience and so forth? | 8:30 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Well, I'm from Montreal in Canada. | 8:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Ooh. | 8:44 |
Rhonda Mawhood | In Quebec. But normally, when outside of Canada, I tell people Canada. And my mother's family is from Scotland. My father's family is Quebecois. They went there from Normandy in the 17th century. My father is dead now. He died in 1989. My mother is still living. She lives in Ontario now. So I grew up outside of Montreal, but always in a francophone neighborhood and always in a bilingual school until senior high school. And then university, I went to McGill University, and that was in English, of course. | 8:45 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | My brother-in-law's medical degree, MD was from McGill. | 9:29 |
Rhonda Mawhood | That was the first faculty at the University [indistinct 00:09:39] was medical school. And quite a few Americans do still go there. And I did my master's in history at McGill as well. And then I moved to Durham last year to go to Duke to do a PhD. So I just finished my first year of the PhD program, and it'll take me three or four more years to complete. | 9:36 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And I suppose that I'll teach in a university when I finish. I'm not completely sure of that. I'm trying—I don't think about what I'm going to do, ultimately, very much right now. Probably teach, but there are certain other things I could do with a PhD. And I'm not sure exactly what I really [indistinct 00:10:27]. I want to have a job where I can think. And so, of course, teaching is one of those, but there are some others as well. That's the main thing for me, is I want to do something where I can think. And that's very rare in today's world. | 10:03 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh, yes. | 10:43 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And what else? I don't have any brothers or sisters. | 10:50 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | You don't? | 10:57 |
Rhonda Mawhood | No, I don't. And living in the United States is a little bit different from being at home. When I thought about coming to the United States to study, the other schools I applied to were in Canada for PhD programs. And I wanted to come to the South because, I don't know if this is true or not, but I felt that the contradictions which make up the United States are not hidden in the south. They are hidden in other places. | 10:57 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Yep, that's true. | 11:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | They're very open here. | 11:26 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | That's true. | 11:27 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And people don't really, they hide them, but they come out here, I think, more clearly than they do in other places, and I found that very interesting. When I visited here before actually applying to Duke, people I didn't know saying, "Good morning," to me on the street, having no idea who I was. But Black and White men and women, and yet still lots of racism and racial violence. And very sharp class divisions as well, which, again, are sometimes masked, but are often very open. So I found that very interesting, and I thought that it would be a good place to live if I was going to study the United States as such. My master's degree was in Canadian history. | 11:27 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | In what? | 12:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | In Canadian history. So I thought it would be a good idea to live, because the United States is such a presence in Canada. We are not here, or our country is not here. But in Canada, there's so much American influence, but it's not the same as being here. | 12:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So sometimes I just think, "Oh, I can't stand this." And then at other times I really, really enjoy it. And then I remind myself that a lot of things I don't like about the United States exist in Canada too, only maybe on a larger scale here, so I should get down off my high horse and face that fact. | 12:37 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | But I still think you're entitled to your likes and dislikes and your choices. I think anyone is entitled. I used to feel some guilt about when you have been reared to think of the propriety of things, then you tend to think, "Oh, maybe I shouldn't be thinking this." Well, when you go through counselor education, that's one thing. If it's a good program, you're disabused of that before you're finished. And I learned it at Chapel Hill, to take a good hard look at what my true values are. And my values are not my neighbor's values, that's okay. As long as you give me the right to have my own, then I give you the same right. So I tend not to apologize as much as I used to. It's basic in me to want please and I had to get over that. | 13:00 |
Rhonda Mawhood | One of the things that I do notice here is that when I comment on something which seems strange to me in the United States, people say, "Oh, but how do you that in Canada?" For example, during the election, I commented that last fall, [indistinct 00:14:17], I commented that it was strange to me that almost every candidate's poster I saw was red, white, and blue. And, of course, that's the American color, and they're everywhere, they're everywhere, everywhere, everywhere I noticed that too. | 13:59 |
Rhonda Mawhood | But I said, "Everyone uses the same colors." And they said, "So?" I said, "Well, in most countries where there are multi-party systems, in everyone that I know of, and on different continents, not only in Canada, but in Africa and in Asia, the color of the placard denotes the party, so people know." Because in Canada, if it's a yellow placard, it's the New Democratic party. Red is liberal, blue is conservative. | 14:29 |
Rhonda Mawhood | And people received this at first as if it was a Canadian thing, and I'd say, "No. Most people do it this way. You're the ones who are different." And they say, "Oh, you're so lucky in Canada to have national health insurance." I say, "No. Every industrialized country in the world except for South Africa and the United States have this. You're the exception. I'm not lucky." | 14:54 |
Rhonda Mawhood | So that is something that I do point out to people when they think that I'm so different. Because the United States is often so closed in on itself, and it really is stunning for someone coming from, especially those of us, well, like yourself as well, and I'm sure your father, who come from more diverse environments where people, in the United States there are places where are very diverse. But in Durham, North Carolina, places which are linguistically diverse like Montreal, where language is a huge issue at times. But then at other times you just speak whatever you can to get by and that's it. And that doesn't necessarily occur to people everywhere here. | 15:16 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | The assumption of superiority is something that I debate. I'm trying to think, we were going. For eight years, I was on the board of trustees at Cape Fear Community College, and I've just gone off. And we would be traveling somewhere and we'd get into these discussions about, invariably we'd go to the educational system in this country. Well of course, there's no one educational system, but you know what I mean, education in America. And I would talk about the fact that it's so unfortunate that our students are trained to think that here is our country and here we are, and other countries are subservient. | 16:03 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And this is something that's insidious. It's too bad that we've had to find ourselves in the kettle of fish we're in with education in this country. And the fact that we lag so far behind in so many respects. But prior to the rude awakening, it's always so late that we make these discoveries about America. | 16:54 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I've been to Africa twice. And I don't know if I told you, the sister next to me is married to an African. When she met him, he was, oh, well, that's another day for him. The Karifa smarts. My sister, by the way, is an Episcopalian priest. And she's married to a man who was with World Health Organization. He was assistant director general for five years. | 17:24 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And I was visiting them during independence for Sierra Leone. And his uncle Ernest, I just found absolutely fascinated. And I said, "Uncle Ernest, don't you want to come to America and visit us?" "No darling. No darling." He said that without hesitation. And I said, "Well, uncle Ernest, why?" He said, "Oh darling, I tell you, I just wouldn't be able to get that kind of a mindset." He said, "We've never been enslaved." He said, "And that's what's happened in your country. And I don't think I'd be very comfortable or I'd fit in very well." And I understood exactly what he was saying. | 18:00 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | When people run into, in Paris for an example, and of course I find Parisians, generally speaking, rather supercilious, but my niece is married to a Parisian. And we've talked a lot and I've learned what is behind a lot of that. And I think a good bit of it is they're poo-pooing our assumption of superiority. It's poo-poo. It's ludicrous to them. And so, particularly when someone comes in with pidgin French and they just don't bother with that sort of thing. | 18:49 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | But when I was going to the airport the first time in Africa, and these Africans were driving the jitney that I was riding in, and I could hear them talking in French. This was in Guinea Française. They laughed and they slapped their leg and, "So-and-so-and-so that American." And I said, "They're talking about me." And then they'd turn around and start looking. Turn around and giggle and stuff. | 19:31 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And this is just something here and something there. But after a while, you get the general impression that Americans are just deluded. They're deluded. They don't know facts. And there are many cases in which their education has been sorely limited, by a consolation of factors. But it's mediocre. You see? It really is. But I don't know how one gets around that, or I guess it just takes a divine plan to run its course. | 20:05 |
Rhonda Mawhood | I wanted to ask you when things, Ms. O'Dell, before we move to the forms, it's a complicated question, but what would you say the effects of desegregation have been? | 20:54 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I'm still hooked up. Okay. I was going to show you. In the one that you, this is '92, you got '93. | 21:13 |
Rhonda Mawhood | No, I got '92. | 21:21 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Okay. My editorial's in '93. And be when I'm not hooked off, show it to you. Because when I was asked, Linda Pierce asked me to, I was one of four, I think, that she asked to write something. And I said, "What do you want me to write?" And so, she said, "Well, what your view now of what desegregation meant." And she said, "I think maybe you might have a different perspective." | 21:25 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Well, I think I understood what she meant, that I was not a Wilmingtonian. I did not go to Williston High School. Therefore, with me, it wouldn't be the ringing of the hands or they quote, "They took our school away from us," which was the prevailing attitude and cry. I probably was in the distinct minority when Williston was closed. I do not think that it was an equitable solution to close the one Black high school and send them to New Hanover or Hoggard. I don't think that was equitable. | 21:55 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | However, desegregation in itself, I feel had to happen for inequities to surface, for all students to be exposed to opportunities which would not have happened had segregation continued. There is no such animal as separate but equal. It doesn't exist. So if you read that other, you'll see that I said that in it. It's non-existent. | 22:35 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And only as we approached desegregation did we realize, for an example, I was given a bonus one year of $200. And I wonder, "What is this? Why am I getting it?" Just came from the Board of Ed. I said, "Well, that's nice. $200 that I didn't have." And then the next year it was 400. Then I began to smell a rat. There's something here, more than meets the eye. And then I learned that the directors, the music directors of glee club, band, whatever, in the White schools had been getting bonuses for years. And they were more than what they gave me the first time or the second time. | 23:10 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | The science labs, the ones in Williston, were just severely limited. Just a mockery of what a science lab should be. The educational opportunities for scholarships and so forth, national merit and all that. I wasn't in counseling at Williston. I finished my degree requirements. But when I came back to Wilmington, the school had been closed. And I was then given three choices, and they would give me one. | 23:58 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And so, that was the year that I was at Roland-Grise. And Roland-Grise was a one-year school, to be a 9-10 school until they built the second school, the second building at Hoggard. Then I was at Hoggard for 15 years. Naturally, in guidance, because that was my field then. I learned what was available and what students had not been— | 24:46 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | When you have one counselor for all of those students, then this means a small select group will get the benefit. And that's what happened at Williston. The obvious elitist, mental elitists were the ones who were catered to, but not the whole mass. So, when I went into guidance and counseling, and as I said, well, I was guidance department at Hoggard for 10 years prior to my leaving, and we had a team. We had a team of four. We could have done with more, but that was good to have. And we were able to serve the school. | 25:16 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | So I could look in so many directions and see things that happen with desegregation. The minus side, the personal contact, the personal interest that teachers took in the lives of their students, that was no longer the case. That wasn't the way things went in Hoggard or New Hanover High. At the end of the school day, that was it. | 26:05 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Also, the interest in why kids weren't achieving, why they weren't in class and all that. Or at Williston, "Well, I know your mother you know. I will get in contact with your mother." Or I would receive a call. "Mrs. O'Dell." At that time, I had the students every day in the week, and then three nights a week, because we had a very demanding schedule. And the concert choir would rehearse Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays as well as meet every day. | 26:42 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And I would get a call 9:30, quarter to 10 most likely. "Mrs. O'Dell, this is Susie's mother." "Yes, Ms. Susie's mother." "What time did you let practice out?" "Mrs. Suzie's mother, practices are always out at nine. I always dismiss practices at nine." "Okay, Mrs. O'Dell. It's quarter 10 and Susie still isn't here." I said, "Well, I'm sorry. That's the time I dismissed them." | 27:14 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | When I get in class, wouldn't, of course, focus on any particular student, but I'd say, "I get these calls from parents, and I just want to tell you, if when you leave my rehearsal and you decide that you want to go to so-and-so, soda shop or Sea Breeze or whatever, you better have a good time. You'd better enjoy yourself while you're at it. Because when your mother calls me, I'm going to tell your mother what time I dismissed you." And that's all I'd have to say about that. So, even now, kids will come back to these commemorative programs. They're not kids now, I know their mothers. And say, "I never will forget what you meant to me and how important you were in my life." | 27:45 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | So desegregation ended that. And that's mighty important because you look at the total life of a child. I remember my husband would go, if a boy wasn't in school, he would go and find out why. And some of the things he would tell me would make me want to cry. "I found Bobby, he was on the front porch. I don't know where his mother was. The door was locked, and Bobby had been on the porch all night long." Which I could not fathom, because I guess I was an overprotective mother, but I could not fathom that at all. But that was the personal interest. | 28:33 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | And the fact that parents were so involved in the lives of their kids. Maybe their kids were rambunctious and so forth, but they were involved and they kept that contact with the school. In latter years, I found that the kids who needed to be, the parents who needed to be at PTA or PTO, whichever you had in your school, were the ones who didn't come. So it's sort of a multifaceted thing. But in this editorial, I talked about the fact that it's a different world these kids live in. | 29:25 |
Rhonda Mawhood | When was it that you stopped teaching, Mrs. O'Dell? | 30:12 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | 1984. I stopped counseling. | 30:15 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Okay. Excuse me, yes. | 30:18 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | I'm just making the distinction because I went out of the classroom in '68. And then from '68 to '84, when I retired, I was a school counselor. | 30:20 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Thank you very much. | 30:43 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Oh, yes. Well, I hope that it's been what you've wanted. | 30:45 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Been very informative. Thank you. | 30:48 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | Has it? | 30:49 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Mm-hmm. I have to ask you some more information. | 30:50 |
Beryl Weller O'Dell | All right. | 30:52 |
Rhonda Mawhood | Some family information. | 30:52 |
Item Info
The preservation of the Duke University Libraries Digital Collections and the Duke Digital Repository programs are supported in part by the Lowell and Eileen Aptman Digital Preservation Fund