Abstract
Debra Martin, a retired teacher and Beachwood resident, grew up in the Glenville neighborhood in the mid-1950s to mid-1960s, when her family moved to the Lee-Harvard neighborhood. She recalls that her Glenville neighborhood, which had become almost entirely Black by that time, had a politically active block club. She describes a childhood in which her parents sheltered her and set high expectations for her schoolwork. She describes being among the few Black students at St. Aloysius School and among the first Black students at Ursuline Academy of the Sacred Heart. She talks about how her experience of going downtown was limited and did not include most of the commonly cited nostalgic holiday shopping experiences often recalled by whites. She laments the decimation of the once-thriving Euclid-East 105th “second downtown” that accompanied the Cleveland Clinic’s expansion, as well as the east side’s loss of the Cleveland Aquarium that her family often visited when she was a child.
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Interviewee
Martin, Debra (interviewee)
Interviewer
Gabb, Julie (interviewer)
Project
Project Team
Date
4-30-2014
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
85 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Debra Martin interview, 30 April 2014" (2014). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 999120.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1046
Transcript
Julie Gabb [00:00:00] Today is April 30, 2014. I’m here with Debra Martin in Beachwood, Ohio, and we’re going to start off the interview with, could you tell me about yourself.
Debra Martin [00:00:11] Well, I’m 63 years old. I’m a retired teacher. I taught kindergarten in Solon, and I was also an at-home mother for ten years. So I have a strong interest and investment in raising children and teaching young ones. I am active. I swim and dance and do lots of physical activities, and I like to read. I’ve been married for 41 years to my husband Leo, who I met in Glenville, and I do not have grandchildren. We had our children later, so my three adult children are successfully pursuing their careers and living independently, and it gives us a lot of time to look at ourselves and enjoy our own time again. But I would welcome them if they came. The grandchildren. I have one sister and no brothers, and my parents are deceased, so that makes it pretty small potatoes. We don’t have a big family here in Cleveland. There’s cousins elsewhere who I don’t know well. They grew up in other cities, but I have a very strong group of friends, many of which are in that picture. We all went to St. Al’s, and I’ve known them over 50 years. So I have a strong group of friends who are like family, including about four girlfriends that are like sisters. So.
Julie Gabb [00:01:44] What years did you live in Glenville?
Debra Martin [00:01:49] I started living on Elk Avenue, 10561, when I was four. We moved there as a family in 1954, and we moved out of Glenville in 1964, so I lived there for ten years.
Julie Gabb [00:02:07] And why did your family move to Glenville?
Debra Martin [00:02:11] My mother and father were interested in being homeowners, and from what I understand, they lived in other rental areas. I think they lived on Adams and on 115th Street. I’m not positive if that was Glenville or not. I think it might have been. But I know that the area they lived in on Elk Avenue was strong residential homeowners, and that’s what they wanted. My mom and dad were from Chicago, and they had lived in apartments growing up, and I think they really had that as their goal and ethic to have a homeownership, and it was their first home. I wound up living in three homes, which, no, just two that were home owned by them. So, you know, I don’t know why they chose Glenville, but it was a great family neighborhood, and so that probably led them there.
Julie Gabb [00:03:13] What was your impression of Glenville growing up as a child?
Debra Martin [00:03:17] I think Glenville provided a really strong sense of family. The neighborhood that I lived in, each home had a single family with many, many children. My next door neighbor was one of my best friends. Her name was Mary Ann, and she was the youngest of 13 children. Her sister’s and brother’s children were older than we were, and so she was their aunt, but they were older than her, so that was, to me, was really odd. And then the next door neighbor to them had three or four children. And on up the street at the time, I could name every family, and we really didn’t go off our block. So the neighborhood provided a real sense of security, comfort. It was happy, you know, from a child’s point of view, and beautiful. We had major huge trees, much bigger than these locust trees that were around here. And the proximity to the lake was also excellent. It was fun knowing we could get that close to the water. And we had great services. There was a swimming pool within walking distance from my home, and there was a corner store. So it really provided a lot of comforts for living.
Julie Gabb [00:04:41] Did your street have, like, a street club?
Debra Martin [00:04:44] Yes. Mm hmm. The street was highly political, and my parents were part of that machine, so to speak. Most of the families had one car. Most of the homes had one-car garages. Everybody put their car away. And the street club was strong about what they would like the neighborhood to remain as. They wanted it to be, neat and clean and all that. And we would have street club meetings in my house. I remember that. With a lot of excitement because everybody came and the children who were little, because I was among the littlest. My sister’s four years older, so I was with that little group who came with their parents and had to be quiet. And it was exciting to have my friends over late, you know, which was probably 7 o’clock, but we went to bed early. So I also remember the street club working towards solving problems such as there were rat problems for a while, and they had a project about it, and then that the rats went away. I remember Leo Jackson was a councilman, and he was on our block and would check on things. And the politics was strong, and the neighbors were responding well to the politicians. I don’t know the name– I heard you refer when you were talking to Leo about the Glenville Plan. I’m not aware of a name, but I’m positive there was great organization around making our streets successful. And I felt it even as a little girl, not knowing, you know, the details.
Julie Gabb [00:06:42] Was there a contrast at all to Glenville compared to other neighborhoods in terms of, like, appearance with, like, we’re saying, how it was very well-kept and all compared to other neighborhoods?
Debra Martin [00:06:53] From a child’s point of view, I never really knew about other neighborhoods. I was like, I went to church. I went to school. We didn’t really go that far. We would go to the art museum. We went in the city more than out of the city. And as far as I was concerned, they all looked just like my neighborhood. I didn’t feel like anything was better. I guess I was aware that there were apartment type living. We used to drive downtown to somewhere on 30th. I guess there was a market down there. And I remember going down Kinsman for some reason, and somebody was kind of slumped over near a building. And I was probably six or seven years old. And I was, you know, I said, Daddy, Daddy, the man is hurt. He’s drunk. He’s hurt. And I didn’t say drunk, but I said, he’s hurt. And we actually went and found a policeman, and the police told my parents that he was sleeping off being drunk and just in the street. And this was not my neighborhood. This was on Kinsman. But to me, that was shocking. And I remember that, you know, I’ve talked about it over the years with my sister. Did that happen? What was that all about? And so we did not have the consciousness of – the social ills that we see in today’s world were not in my consciousness. You know, I didn’t know that people were poor. I didn’t know, you know, if we. I’m sure we weren’t. You know, I felt like I had everything I needed. I felt like my neighbors had everything they needed, not knowing whether they did or not. But it seemed like everything was like a Hallmark card. You know, it was a great way to grow up.
Julie Gabb [00:08:45] What were some of the things that you would do for fun, both in the neighborhood and out of the neighborhood?
Debra Martin [00:08:51] Well, in the neighborhood there, like I said, there was a great sense of family. So when the fathers came home, most of the dads worked in a plant. My dad worked at General Motors in Euclid. He was a welder. So that was kind of a skilled labor thing. And I really don’t know where other people worked. I just know that when they came home, daddy was home. And we had a huge community on our porches, because our porches were the type that you could sit on one and look all the way down and see everybody on the porch. And we lived on the corner, so we could not only see one direction, I could look around the corner and see the front of people’s houses on that corner curve. So I had a great sense of, we’re all on our porches. You know, we had porch swings, and we used to play jacks. We would have dinner, and then we would- I went to Catholic school, so I always had to come out of my uniform and put on my after school play clothes, so I would have on my play clothes, and I would play in my side yard, and Mary Ann was right next door, and we would play across the fence. Didn’t really go anywhere, because it was just the standard that you stayed in your own space. And I didn’t know any negatives about that. Like, if I went over there, I would have a problem. I just never went there. And the standard of our parents was, you stay on the porch or wherever I can call your name, and you can respond. So, you know, there was no going anywhere. But remember, I lived there until I was 13, so I was in my little years, so lots of social things. We would rake leaves as a family, and we had brick streets in those days, so the men and dads would come home and make little piles and burn the leaves right on the curb, so there would be little spots of burning leaves, and it looked really romantic, like an old movie or something, you know? [laughs] Some of the boys would make, like, a baseball in the street and. Or probably some of the dads. I didn’t have a brother, so I wasn’t interested in that stuff. I was interested in- Like, I’d walk up the street, maybe two or three houses, and say hello to my neighbors, and we would talk about, you know, what I had on, or my doll carriage, or, you know, it was very cute and funny. As far as going out of the neighborhood, we would go to church, which is not out of the neighborhood, but that was a constant. And we went every week, and we went- You know, that was the same place I went to school, so it was kind of a track. I would go to the swimming pool, which is on Dupont, and you could get to it through the park, or it wasn’t a park. It was a sand lot. What did we call that? Because now it’s a park, but it wasn’t a park. It was just sand. And we would- Oh, the field. We called it the field. We would cut through the field and go to the swimming pool, and we went with our elder siblings. So my sister and her friends, who would be- So if I was ten, she would be 14, and then there was probably a 15 or 16 year old among them, and they would all- We’d all go as a group, so there weren’t parents there, it was just the grown teenager-type kids. But I got to go as the little kid, and to me, that was great fun. So we would run over there and go swimming and then come back. But there was never a sense of needing to be watched. You always felt like you were capable of taking care of yourself, and you also knew your parameters, so you didn’t stray away or create, you know, worry for your parents. And somebody was always home. My mother was home. Or Miss Cox, the neighbor across the street, was home. There was always watchful neighborhood eyes, but you didn’t feel it as a child. It was comforting. It was comfortable. You could go, and the lady next door, Miss Minnie, you know, you could go and ask her for a drink of water or if you needed advice, Miss Ellington was home. Mrs. Hayes. I could go up the block. Somebody was home. So it felt good. Didn’t feel nervous or nerve wracking. Very seldom saw people that you didn’t know. And if you did, it would be like, ooh, who are you? Where do you live? Are you new? So it was a welcoming, not a, ooh, we better go in the house like it is kind of today. Not that I would still approach people, but as a family. We would go to the art museum a lot. We would walk there, and I don’t know how we did it because it seemed like it was a very long way, but we would walk through the Cultural Gardens, which are on Liberty Boulevard, which is MLK now, and we would go to the aquarium, which is right in that off of Lakeshore, not Lakeshore, but where the lake was. And we didn’t really go to the, to hear the concerts unless it was with school. But we went to the art museum a lot. A big deal was to go to Howard Johnson’s for breakfast after mass on Sunday. And the Howard Johnson’s was on 107th and Euclid. And so you’d have to drive through the neighborhood and it’s like, ooh, where are we going? You know, because I really literally did not go very far away from our neighborhood. It was self-sufficient. The grocery store was on 105th and St. Clair, and I didn’t have a lot to do either. My parents left us home- I didn’t go to the store a lot routinely. I wasn’t involved with those types of errands. You know, I was mostly at home or at school. So.
Julie Gabb [00:14:54] How was Howard Johnson’s?
Debra Martin [00:14:58] It was– It sounded exciting to go there because there were two that I knew of. The one I’d said and then the one at Top of the Town, the Downstairs on 55th by where channel eight is now, there was a Howard Johnson’s right there. And that was, like, the big deal restaurant when I was growing up. Cause there wasn’t a whole lot of restaurants. And I also remembered Manner’s Big Boy was a big deal restaurant. But going to Howard Johnson was kind of a cultural shift, because when you went up there, there were white people there. And in Glenville, where I lived, it was very segregated Black. There was, I think, one white family still on the street. But when I moved into our house in ’54, I understand later that we bought that house from a Jewish family. I think they were Rosenblatt was their name. And it seems like we were the last family that moved in. And then the street was- I don’t remember any other white families that were there. Seemed like everybody else was already there. And I didn’t recognize that because my school was integrated. St. Aloysius. And that’s why I wanted you to see the picture. My best friends were either white or Black. It didn’t matter. And I didn’t pay attention to it at that time. And so going to Howard Johnson’s was an opportunity for us to see people we didn’t know. Maybe that was the best way to put it. And it’s not that they were white or not, and I didn’t see white people. It was just- I didn’t know. It was like, ooh, here’s new people, you know? Cause I knew everybody at church. I knew everybody in my neighborhood, you know? And so. And you didn’t- We went there for probably the hour that it takes to eat, and then we went home, so. And I was a protected little girl. My mom and dad were always- One of them was always with us. And my sister and I really didn’t go anywhere alone except the pool and school. Nobody took us to school. But I had a route to walk. I couldn’t walk an alternate route. And if my dad came from work and I wasn’t where I needed to be, I would have been in trouble by the time I was in 7th and 8th grade. So I always walked the straight and narrow. I knew exactly where I was supposed to be, and I was there. So. I guess it helped keep the neighborhood neat. [laughs]
Julie Gabb [00:17:32] So, you said that you would like about– I guess I wanted to talk about– You’re saying that white flight– Were there also businesses that were moving out of the neighborhood, too?
Debra Martin [00:17:44] The whole time I lived there, there were corner stores. There was– So we had Ben’s on our corner, Murphy’s was on the next corner, and those were the two that I knew well. And there were other kind of- Clevite and other kind of businesses were on 105th, and most of the rest of where I lived was residential. So I didn’t have a whole lot to do with businesses. From what I could see, it did not seem as though people it was leaving. It seemed like it was very stable, because the whole time I lived there, for ten years, those same stores were there. Nothing moved. I think at one point a Lawson’s might have come to the corner, but that was developed to be the Lawson’s. It didn’t replace anything. So it seemed to me that it would be growth as opposed to flight. And we also had the bus come to turn around. So there was a bus line, which I guess helped the businesses stay afloat, which might make some sense. On Clairdoan, which was about two streets away, or maybe it was the next street, seemed like it was far away. There were apartment buildings close to 105th. So with that multiple living, there might have been more need for more businesses and stores. And there was a post office, which is a stable place. So the answer, you know, I didn’t sense it or feel it. No. Probably right about the time that I moved in 1964, it was kind of the what, when I noticed that the white people were leaving St. Aloysius, but I was also leaving. So, you know, I felt like I might have been, in retrospect, I feel like I was leaving the same time. The very last of the white flight of people who left left. Because when I went to my high school, which was in East Cleveland, about four or five girls from my grade school class went to my same high school, and it was Catharine Reichenbach, Gloria Waukesh, a couple other girls. I can’t remember their names, but they were white. Oh, Linda Mullen. And so, no, they didn’t fly away. You know, they stayed there. And I don’t know if it was economics on their part or they just didn’t care or they wanted to go and they couldn’t. You know, I don’t know all that. But from my point of view, it was like, okay. So I guess I was more naive than a lot of others who might have been in different parts of Glenville because I had such a stable setting. I wasn’t suspicious of anything. You know, it was just real idyllic. And, you know, unfortunately, in retrospect, it makes me feel like, what did I miss? Or how did I not notice these negative things happening? But they didn’t happen to me. That’s why I really wanted to talk to you, because it’s a whole different experience than even my husband, who had moved so many times. You know, I moved in, I lived in two houses, so I lived there. And then Lee and Harvard, and then I went to college. That’s pretty boring. [laughs]
Julie Gabb [00:21:17] So you said about St. Aloysius was your elementary school?
Debra Martin [00:21:23] Yes.
Julie Gabb [00:21:24] And where was that located?
Debra Martin [00:21:25] It was on 110th and St. Clair or Lakeview. So it takes up the whole block. It’s still a huge monolith. It’s actually a historical marker church. It’s over 100 years old. And it was a real landmark and anchor. Even if you weren’t Catholic, you knew what St. Al’s was in the neighborhood. And it was kind of an oddity, you know, for Black kids to go to St. Al’s. There weren’t that many African American Catholics from cradle, you know. Do you know what a cradle Catholic is? So, you know, my parents. My mother was born Catholic, and she was originally from Louisiana. So that whole Creole thing. My dad converted. I don’t think he was a Catholic in his heart, but I think he did it for her. But we were raised to be, you know, completely ingrained is the best way to put it. And I bought it lock, stock and barrel. You know, we did every– We did novenas and all the things. 40 hours and confession every, you know, four weeks. And what did I do? Nothing. So I had to make up some confession things. I did- I was a sacristy girl. I sang in the choir. Sacristy girl means you clean the church for free, basically. [laughs] You know, it was a lot of issues around the church, which are now known, that are so negative. And it’s hard to accept the fact that I bought it so wholeheartedly. But I loved my school. I loved the experience. I thought it was great. I had a wonderful education. I had fun with my friends. I was a Girl Scout through the church. And my memories are golden. You know, those are my same girlfriends that I referred to in the beginning. And I wouldn’t have changed any of that. I know that I was in a protected kind of a setting. I didn’t see fighting at school or any kind of disruptions. We were very disciplined. And the reasons that people send their kids to Catholic school was just the way we were. And it wasn’t about having to be forced into doing anything. Discipline was just part of your life. And we were all studious. We all did our homework. Nobody skipped school. Everybody passed. The argument was whether you got an A or A minus. I mean, you literally had that high of a standard. So the majority of my friends, everybody graduated from college, we’ve all got professional degrees, we’ve all retired from our professions, and, you know, so it’s a hallmark, back to those habits. And I think that many of the things that the public school was struggling with didn’t allow those students to have that same comfort because I loved school and I thought that was my job, you know, and it was my goal to do it really well. And that, you know, was no, the end, you know, there was no discussion at all. I do know that some of the kids who lived on the other side of Lakeview, there was when, when I was like 6th, 7th and 8th grade, there was a story, and I’m sure it’s true, that some of the public school kids would chase us, the Catholic school kids, and beat ’em up and all that stuff. That never happened to me because I stayed on the path that I was supposed to be on. And literally the parents of the people who lived in those neighborhoods literally sat on their porches. Hi. I would say hello to people all the way home. So I always felt safe and I never felt watched, though I was obviously being watched, but I never wanted to be the- I never felt like I needed to go try anything, like, ooh, let me go try and smoke or try and, I don’t know, whatever people did. I went home, I took off my shoes, my saddle shoes and my uniform, and my biggest thing was taking five minutes to rest and watch Captain Pandy or whatever was on and do my homework. That’s all I did, you know, pretty boring, but absolutely how a child’s life allows them to develop. I really feel like I had a great, full development of my childhood. It was just unglamorous, you know, and I would never think about going to a party like on the week night, school night, or trying to sneak and go somewhere. You know, why, why would I want to do that when I could ask, or I could just say, I want to do this? And then we would go, do, you know, so law positivity, those were just kind of normal. And my friends are just as naive as I am [laughs], so, you know, but we made really good teachers.
Julie Gabb [00:26:46] Did you, did you have any like nuns or priests as like your teachers?
Debra Martin [00:26:51] I had twelve years of Catholic education and I had one lay teacher, so, yes.
Julie Gabb [00:26:56] How was that experience? Especially like in the fifties and sixties.
Debra Martin [00:27:01] In the fifties, I was again, a very compliant person. And you really should interview my sister because she was a non-compliant person and she was always in trouble. Just personality. But I was the good little Debra who, you know, if the bell rang, I would put my things away and I’d be waiting for the next direction, and then I would be the first one in in the morning, and I clap the erasers and I got to answer the phone. In 8th grade, I like the nuns. I wanted to be a nun when I was nine. I thought, oh, this looks great, because I could put my hair back and, you know, put the thing around my face. I had favorite nuns. I could tell you the name of all of the nuns that I had from kindergarten, I mean, from first grade all the way up. So it was fun. I was not- I didn’t have a negative relationship with them, though I did see other kids who did. And we had a nun, Sister Ann Michael was a huge woman that used to really threaten and demean the boys. And the thing is, when you’re a good student and a smart person and a good student and a cooperative person, you are a witness to things as opposed to participating in them. So I saw terrible things, like the swatting of the nuns on your hand and all that. Never happened to me. The worst thing that I. That personally happened to me was we had to write a task. Do you remember? Do you know what a task is? So when I was in fourth grade, we had- And the thing is, when you go to school, all these kids in this picture I went to all these years with all of them. So, you know, we all know each other like brothers and sisters. And, you know, the boys would be silly and act crazy, and we wouldn’t be, like, standing perfectly quiet in the hallway like we were being asked to. So Sister Denise in fourth grade said, all right, your task, you have to write, I will not blah, blah, blah, like a hundred times. And I would- Instead of arguing, I would just- I would be outraged, in tears. I would be crying at school and just like this, shaking. And my mother, I would come home and I’d be writing my task, and she’d go, what’s wrong? And I said, I cried a lot. I said, they were talking. We had to write a task. So my mother would sit down and write the task with me. She helped me and explained to me about who has the power and how you have to cooperate with the system. But you, until you are the one making the decisions, you have to concede and do the punishment and accept the law, so to speak. So I was always very law-abiding, but I made sure if I didn’t think they were going to cooperate, I’d already be in the room. Can I help you erase the board? I would remove myself so I wouldn’t have to be in the group. So I figured that out real early, how to stay safer and not in- But then that ostracizes you because then you’re the goody two shoes. But I didn’t care because I had my other nerdy friends, and I guess I was probably one of the first nerdy type. You know, if you had to categorize people in this kind of a setting, the nuns were probably suffering from what now we know was a lot of oppression from the priests and all that. But we didn’t know that. Excuse me. We had, you know, we would- It was like a movie, like The Singing Nun. I mean, that’s. All that stuff was out. And we thought, oh, let’s all be nuns. And we would put towels on our head and we played with it. My sister and I used to play mass in the- You know, she would always be the priest. Cause she was older, but, I mean, we knew the mass that well, that we could just say the whole thing and literally play mass. Like, who does that? No, we were honorable. I was honorable to them. My sister, as she got older, they were more critical and they used to say racial things to her. She’s very light skinned. And they actually said things to her. One particularly horrible one was, oh, you almost made it. You’re almost white. Now this was a high school nun at Notre Dame on Ansel Road, and I guess that’s Glenville still. I don’t know. But before it moved out to Chardon, I didn’t experience that, you know, and she would have all these anger issues around that. It wasn’t- I didn’t get it. Cause it wasn’t my issue. So even in my own house, there was a separation of what our experience was. I thought they were wonderful. You know, Sister Cecilia was our Singing Nun, and we would sing all the time. And sister Andrew was kind of our senile nun, and we would, you know, ask her off, off the wall questions to stop the conversation about what was really- [laughs] That was 7th grade. I’ll never forget that. I didn’t learn anything in 7th grade because we just manipulated her the whole year. And then Sister Patrick Marie was our 8th grade nun and she was the administrator of the school. So we often did our own learning because she was always on the phone or paying bills or something. [laughs] But we were smart enough to go ahead and study. And then I took this test, and that’s what got me at Sacred Heart because they really used me and Mildred Jordan from St. Aloysius to help integrate Sacred Heart, because when I got there, there were only four, five of us who were not white in that class. And Sacred Heart is Ursuline Academy of the Sacred Heart, it’s the same nuns as the Beaumont School and Villa Angela, which is now Va. Villa Angela. St. Joe. Our school didn’t make it. They closed our school. I got in there in ’64, and this is in East Cleveland, and I graduated in ’68, and by ’70, no, ’74, maybe, it was closed. And it just didn’t want to seem to serve the Black community because East Cleveland was flipping real fast and Holy Rosary and Holy Family were the two feeder schools for that. And then St. Al’s, we were like, oh, we’re not supposed to go there. You know, I don’t know where we were supposed to go. But they had built Hoban Dominican and Lee Harvard. And that’s where the majority of the people in that picture who are African American went. But Charlene Ngofka and Kathryn Reichenbach, Gloria Waukesh and Amy Wancheck, those are my friends who came from St. Al’s. And they, they were there. So, you know, it just. I was in the middle of a whole lot of change, but my particular microcosm was very stable, so my little petri dish was just moving along. You know, I was a cheerleader and I had a boyfriend and, you know, he went to Latin, which was right there, Cathedral Latin High School. So. I don’t know, the nuns, they didn’t bother me. They were okay.
Julie Gabb [00:34:30] Did you have to- How often do you go to mass? Every week?
Debra Martin [00:34:34] Every– We actually, at one point we went every day. It was very brainwashing. Now that I look back and- But it. When I was going, I thought it was great [laughs] because I didn’t have to go to school. We were like, we would go every day during Lent. We would go during adventure. So that’s spring and fall. We would go, even on Sunday, we sat with our class. We didn’t sit with our family. And I don’t know if you ever go in St. Aloysius. The church is gigantic, like St. John’s downtown. I remember standing room only in that building. That’s how full the parish was because it covered all of the lower area, all the way up to East Cleveland, where St. Philomena’s is. So, you know, and it was mixed. It was, you know, Black and white together. And the parents sat behind the school children. So it was grades one and four, two and five, three and six, four and eight. And that’s how we sat and our nun sat there. And on Monday, if your envelope didn’t get turned in, they would wonder why, you know, where’s your envelope, Miss Martin, Miss Handy. That was my maiden name, so I always had my envelope in, you know, with my 15 cents or whatever I had. It was just– It was crazy, you know, in retrospect. But when you’re in it, it just felt great because it was comfortable and you didn’t have to do a whole lot of thinking. You just followed the rules. And if you were a rule follower, it was easy. But if you weren’t a rule follower, you were in big trouble. So.
Julie Gabb [00:36:17] Do you remember any specific cases in Catholic school or, like, someone, like, acted out?
Debra Martin [00:36:26] Oh, there was a boy. Unfortunately, this poor child was biracial. His name was Richard Curtis, and he was- He actually looked like my sister. Very fair. And I remember one time in 8th grade, he went in the hall and you heard, and he came back and his face was flaming red. The nuns had wore him out. I don’t know which nun it was, but we were- I was like, oh, my goodness. So, yeah, lots of those. And I had one, the sister Ann Michael, she lifted up one of the boys and hit him against the back of the blackboard, and the board kind of cracked. Yeah. Lot of abuse. A lot. I didn’t have it, but I witnessed a lot. And I just like, oh, you shouldn’t have been talking, you know. Cause I felt– I felt like, well, they never bother me, so why don’t you just be good? You know? [laughs] I was really off the wall on the meter of compliance because I just. I guess it was my way of being safe. You know, I didn’t want to get involved in any of that. And they treated me really kindly and nicely, you know, so it’s real skewed, very inappropriate. You know, you can’t overly love one and then overly do that to another. That’s completely wrong and crazy. So I’m lucky that I survived it, and I did learn from it because I did not manage my classroom that way. [laughs] You know, actually, I probably favored the more active and outspoken child because of that. Having witnessed that, you know, they need more attention, you know, the kid like me, it’s like, here, go read this. Leave me alone. You don’t really have to do much with that child. You know, give them an independent study. That’s what they call it now. But, yeah, it’s all, a lot of what is said about the Catholic upbringing is very true. You know, it’s very harsh. It was very overbearing, you know, adult. You can look back and say, yeah, the nuns were neurotic. You know, you can make all those cases for sure. My experience, I was in a Disney movie. [laughs] You know, it just wasn’t. I didn’t have any of that. Yeah.
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