Abstract
Kathleen Tripp grew up in Connecticut and moved to the Cleveland area in the 1970s. She and her husband lived in a farmhouse on Case Western Reserve University’s Squire Valleevue Farm in Moreland Hills and then spent time living in the Netherlands and traveling in Europe before moving to Cleveland Heights in 2002. In the following year she joined the Village Garden Club. She describes club activities including during the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020-21, the club’s admission of its first male member, and the controversy over plans to remove the Horseshoe Lake dam in the Shaker Lakes.
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Interviewee
Tripp, Kathleen (interviewee)
Interviewer
Cameron, Caitlen (interviewer)
Project
Shaker Heights Historical Society
Date
8-19-2021
Document Type
Oral History
Duration
61 minutes
Recommended Citation
"Kathleen Tripp interview, 19 August 2021" (2021). Cleveland Regional Oral History Collection. Interview 918005.
https://engagedscholarship.csuohio.edu/crohc000/1236
Transcript
Caitlen Cameron [00:00:00] Alright, so today is August 19, 2021. It is sunny out. We are in Cleveland Heights, and I am with...
Kathleen Tripp [00:00:11] Kathleen Tillson Tripp. [spells her name]
Caitlen Cameron [00:00:21] Great. And I am Caitlen Cameron.
Kathleen Tripp [00:00:23] It's nice to meet you.
Caitlen Cameron [00:00:24] Nice to meet you. And do you consent to being recorded?
Kathleen Tripp [00:00:28] Oh absolutely.
Caitlen Cameron [00:00:30] Alright. Well, are you ready to get started?
Kathleen Tripp [00:00:32] Yes, please.
Caitlen Cameron [00:00:33] Okay, so I guess I just want to start out with where were you born and what year?
Kathleen Tripp [00:00:40] Oh, well, I was born in a small town called Stratford, Connecticut, which is about sixty miles outside of New York City along the Long Island Sound, which meant that childhood was very much about living in a Cape Cod house with a father who was a very enthusiastic gardener and a mother who was a very enthusiastic cook. So together they comprised, I guess, what one might call a typical New England upbringing. And the kids spent the summers on the beach barefoot and innocent. And from that, Stratford, Connecticut, whose only fame to claim really is that it housed, it's now, it no longer exists, the only American Shakespearean theater in the country.
Caitlen Cameron [00:01:29] Really?
Kathleen Tripp [00:01:31] Authentic or bona fide or whatever you want to call it. And it was really quite wonderful with all the actors coming into town in that sort of thing.
Caitlen Cameron [00:01:38] Wow. So you've been there?
Kathleen Tripp [00:01:40] I grew up there.
Caitlen Cameron [00:01:41] Okay, but you've been in the theater and everything?
Kathleen Tripp [00:01:43] Oh, the actors used to come and teach in our schools.
Caitlen Cameron [00:01:45] Wow.
Kathleen Tripp [00:01:46] Or they would come into that little town so people knew one another.
Caitlen Cameron [00:01:49] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:01:50] And they'd come into the little sort of diner-type restaurant in the center of town, have a grilled cheese sandwich and talk to everybody and that sort of thing. So, yeah, it was great fun.
Caitlen Cameron [00:02:03] So you were there like grade school through high school?
Kathleen Tripp [00:02:08] I was. I left at 17 and I went to university, and I studied to be a teacher, and it was the outbreak of the Vietnam War.
Caitlen Cameron [00:02:18] Mmm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:02:18] So I had a little bit of difficulty getting my qualifications because all the protests, all that... Well, all the professors were protesting. So you had to sort of really, you know, meet in a field or something. And finally, I did get the training that I wanted and all of that. And when I... Do you want me to keep going?
Caitlen Cameron [00:02:34] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:02:36] And after that, after that... And that was in New York State, and after that, I got my I went back to Connecticut to look for my first teaching job. But the jobs were given mostly to males who also had trained to be teachers, but wanted to have a deferment to not fight in the Vietnam War. So there weren't very many primary school teaching jobs available at the time. So I went to work in publishing for three years and it was the most fun I'd had ever because I'd never had a job and really, throughout all of my career, for the most part, with the few exceptions, didn't have a job which allowed me to travel, whereas the publishing job was great for that. So.
Caitlen Cameron [00:03:20] Really? So what did you do in the publishing job?
Kathleen Tripp [00:03:25] Well, because I was trained to teach small primary school children, I worked in the Education Department and they were publishing, within this small publishing company, they were... They had an education book, and it was our job to go out and sell them to the universities...
Caitlen Cameron [00:03:41] Really?
Kathleen Tripp [00:03:42] To be used in the courses. So we would go to large meetings, education meetings, and talk with teachers and talk with professors at universities who were teaching teachers and all of that sort of thing.
Caitlen Cameron [00:03:58] Wow, that sounds like a fun job.
Kathleen Tripp [00:04:00] It was great fun. It was really very, very interesting. And then eventually the Vietnam War ended. Eventually. 1974 or whenever it was, and jobs opened up. And I decided that, you know, I had trained to be a teacher and by golly, I wanted to get to it. So I found a job in Connecticut and I stayed there for a couple of years.
Caitlen Cameron [00:04:21] Really? So was it hard, say like with the Vietnam War and everything going on, with it ending, like how did that impact you at all? Like your family?
Kathleen Tripp [00:04:35] It made me... Coming from a small town where it was fairly homogeneous, almost completely homogeneous, everyone was white, Anglo-Saxon, Protestant to an awakening, a political awakening, that the world was a more complicated place. It was a kind of growing up experience, if you want to think of it that way, broadening in one sense, but also just realizing that the world was a different place than I had imagined. Well, in fact, the world was different, but so was I, if that makes any sense at all. And it, well, it affected a lot of people. It changed the way in which marriages were organized so that the divorce rate was very high during that period of time because people, women's lib and lots of other things were happening where people were starting to say, well, this isn't really what I want. It's just the only choice I had when I was 17.
Caitlen Cameron [00:05:38] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:05:38] I've thought it through and I want to do something differently. And so it kind of blew open the way in which people lived and the assumptions that we had and the ones that we grew up with, which was very difficult on a lot of families.
Caitlen Cameron [00:05:51] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:05:52] And society at large, I think. I'm not saying it wasn't worth it. I'm just saying that it was it happened. And it's part of our national story.
Caitlen Cameron [00:06:01] It definitely changed a lot. And I think it's not always the time people talk about. They talk about it, but not as much, I think.
Kathleen Tripp [00:06:09] Well, and now as we're dealing with the Afghan circumstance and it's being correlated directly with our departure from Saigon, it brings back those memories, I think, in a way. And whether the correlation is legitimate or not, I don't really know.
Caitlen Cameron [00:06:27] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:06:27] But I suppose everyone has to decide that for themselves.
Caitlen Cameron [00:06:31] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:06:31] And we, of course, have to decide that nationally as well. But... Yeah, it definitely... It definitely changed things and made even lives in small towns very different. All of a sudden the world was opened up.
Caitlen Cameron [00:06:51] Yeah. So, you changed over to be a teacher right after a publishing job. So was it still in your town or did you move somewhere else?
Kathleen Tripp [00:07:01] No, no. I moved to another part of the state. Connecticut isn't a very large state, but for a variety of personal reasons, group of friends and that sort of thing, we all came to the University of Connecticut and Storrs area, and we all got jobs in that area for whatever the reason. And so we as all single young people in our twenties lived there for a while. And I started a master's degree at the University of Connecticut. And several of my friends did as well. And then I met my husband there who was a professor on campus. And the story goes on.
Caitlen Cameron [00:07:50] Oh, wow. So you met your husband there. Did, so did you live there with him and everything?
Kathleen Tripp [00:07:58] We just met there. We dated there.
Caitlen Cameron [00:08:01] Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:08:01] We romanced there. But we quickly separated and fell in love and separated due to circumstances. John's tenure was denied, which was not a happy thing for him. And my job could have gone on, but I decided that I wanted to do something different. So I got a Commission of the Arts grant and I went off to Boulder, Colorado.
Caitlen Cameron [00:08:29] Really!
Kathleen Tripp [00:08:31] Because I wanted to study the impact of national educational programs within the Indian schools and within Indian programs. So anyway, [crosstalk] so it was a one year... It was a one-year grant. John came to Cleveland and got an adjunct professorship at Case. So that's the Cleveland part of the story. So, we were both on soft money and whoever got the most... Whoever got a real job, because we decided that being apart was not an option.
Caitlen Cameron [00:09:03] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:09:04] And the year apart taught us that. And so John got the job. So I moved to Cleveland and shortly thereafter, we were married.
Caitlen Cameron [00:09:18] Okay. Was it hard to leave Boulder?
Kathleen Tripp [00:09:20] No, I was so in love.
Caitlen Cameron [00:09:23] [Laughs] That's, okay. That's good to hear!
Kathleen Tripp [00:09:25] The adventure was over.
Caitlen Cameron [00:09:27] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:09:28] And it was time for a different thing in life. I was 27.
Caitlen Cameron [00:09:33] 27? Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:09:35] Yeah.
Caitlen Cameron [00:09:35] Wow.
Kathleen Tripp [00:09:36] And moved to Cleveland when I was 28 and married at 28. Yes, that's right. That's the way it went.
Caitlen Cameron [00:09:42] So did you live where you live now? Or where did you...
Kathleen Tripp [00:09:46] No, that's not that's a pretty long story, but I'll shorten it. John continued with his work at Case and it extended to some summer fellowships at NASA. In the meantime, we had nowhere to live and to be perfectly honest, not an awful lot of money.
Caitlen Cameron [00:10:02] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:10:02] So we looked around and things, I think, some of the most important things in life happen serendipitously. You don't even know it's going on and it's happening. And we were going out to Squire Valleevue Farm.
Caitlen Cameron [00:10:18] Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:10:18] Do you know it?
Caitlen Cameron [00:10:18] Mm-mm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:10:20] It's 500 acres of land that was given to Case Western Reserve University in 1920...
Caitlen Cameron [00:10:24] Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:10:25] By Andrew Squire, who was a very wealthy attorney in the city. But it was given to the university with the sole purpose that it be used for educational pursuits for women as well as recreation...
Caitlen Cameron [00:10:42] Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:10:43] For all students. And so we were walking along and we got talking to some people and said, you know, we were just about to be married and didn't have anywhere to live. [laughs] And, you know, and they said, well, do you see that house there? We said, yes. And it was an eleven-room farmhouse that Andrew Squire had built on the property. He had a mansion on the hill.
Caitlen Cameron [00:11:05] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:11:06] But he'd built this farmhouse, simple clapboard farmhouse with eleven rooms on this 500 acres of land right on Fairmount Boulevard. And it had no one living in it.
Caitlen Cameron [00:11:20] Really?
Kathleen Tripp [00:11:21] Because it was too far from campus. And so... And students couldn't afford it.
Caitlen Cameron [00:11:26] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:11:26] And faculty didn't want to live there because it was, as I say, too far from campus. And we were delighted. So we moved into this eleven-room farmhouse, and John needed the facility because he had to work in an environment which was magnetic free...
Caitlen Cameron [00:11:41] Oh.
Kathleen Tripp [00:11:42] Because he was doing what I think simply is a precursor to the MRI.
Caitlen Cameron [00:11:47] Really?
Kathleen Tripp [00:11:48] He and his colleague, David Farrell. Bobbie Farrell, have you interviewed her?
Caitlen Cameron [00:11:52] Yeah!
Kathleen Tripp [00:11:52] Well, her husband and John were colleagues...
Caitlen Cameron [00:11:54] Wow.
Kathleen Tripp [00:11:55] And David was the experimentalist and John was a theoretician, a physicist. And they constructed this machinery and would bring patients out there and all of that. Anyway, that story goes on and on and on. But we lived there for eight years.
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:09] Wow.
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:11] And... Do you want me keep going?
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:13] Yeah, go ahead.
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:15] Okay. And then John came home one day and said, Darling, would you like to go and live abroad? And we had a son by then. And I said, well, you know, it depends. Is it a place with clean water and good schools and all of that? He said, how about Holland?
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:34] Really?
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:34] I said, Delightful!
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:35] [Laughs].
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:36] When do we leave?
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:37] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:38] And of course, you know, we didn't have a lot of belongings at that point because, I mean, although we'd lived there for eight years, as you know, you quickly collect things.
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:45] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:45] And so off we went and...
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:47] What year was that?
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:49] 1985.
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:49] 1985, okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:12:49] And so we packed up our... And John was British, so for him to go back to Europe was fine and dandy.
Caitlen Cameron [00:12:59] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:00] And for me it was a huge adventure. And we thought for our son, European education would probably be a good idea. It would be broad. Not that we were unhappy with American education. We weren't.
Caitlen Cameron [00:13:12] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:12] But life offers opportunities and you either take them or you don't for whatever circumstances as they are. So off we went and, excuse me, we moved to a 13th century village and then found a house and I went to work in the international schools. And John worked in a in a laboratory doing some research. No teaching.
Caitlen Cameron [00:13:37] Really?
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:38] So and we lived there for seventeen years.
Caitlen Cameron [00:13:40] Wow! Oh my gosh.
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:42] It was fun.
Caitlen Cameron [00:13:42] So, you, you only had, so you had...
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:44] We had one child.
Caitlen Cameron [00:13:45] One child, and then he was raised over there. So, okay, tell me how he got back or at least...
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:54] Case.
Caitlen Cameron [00:13:54] Case?
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:54] Case again.
Caitlen Cameron [00:13:57] Really. Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:13:58] John, can you come and can you do some work? Yes, but I'm not teaching undergraduates, he said.
Caitlen Cameron [00:14:04] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:14:05] It's graduate students or nothing. And so we did a bit of... John was about 65 at this point, was really not retiring because he was lively.
Caitlen Cameron [00:14:15] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:14:15] And not really and didn't, actually never really did retire. He just kept working, just in different capacities, always research, always mathematical physics, which can very easily be done as a one-man business or, you know, can just be done...
Caitlen Cameron [00:14:33] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:14:34] With a... He used to work on a brown paper bag or a beer mat where he said he did his best work, in a crowded cafeteria, which is bizarre but anyway, that's the way he was. And so then what happened? Yeah, so. Oh, we bought this house.
Caitlen Cameron [00:14:54] Okay, so you came back. So do you still have a place over there did you...
Kathleen Tripp [00:14:58] No, no we didn't. We had a house and we sold the house. And then we knew that we weren't going to move back there. We could certainly visit, but we weren't going to we were going to move back. We were going to come and whether we were going to stay in Cleveland or not. Now, that was another matter, but still.
Caitlen Cameron [00:15:15] Okay, so we're back in Cleveland, and you moved in this house. I guess. So you, so were you teaching still or did you...
Kathleen Tripp [00:15:26] Yeah, I taught in the international school when we were there...
Caitlen Cameron [00:15:29] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:15:30] In the primary school. And, do you want me to talk about that?
Caitlen Cameron [00:15:35] Yeah. Well, I guess when you came back, were you still teaching at another school?
Kathleen Tripp [00:15:40] Yeah. Yeah, I was. I taught here for it. Oh, I don't know, maybe five or six or seven years. Something like that. I don't remember exactly. Excuse me. And then I retired and John and I spent about eight or nine years just traveling. So we just, you know, we had enough money and nobody needed to work. And so we said, well, let's just go. So we'd go to England for two months and come back and...
Caitlen Cameron [00:16:12] Wow. So where all did you go? Have you been to all the continents? I know...
Kathleen Tripp [00:16:15] No, no. We didn't do any far and wide. John traveled a lot for for his work.
Caitlen Cameron [00:16:20] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:16:21] Conferences and things like that. So he would go to Asia and things like that. But no, we basically, when we lived there, we had a Volvo and we went around in a tent.
Caitlen Cameron [00:16:34] Really!
Kathleen Tripp [00:16:35] And we just we just camped.
Caitlen Cameron [00:16:37] That is awesome.
Kathleen Tripp [00:16:38] We loved it.
Caitlen Cameron [00:16:39] That's such a dream.
Kathleen Tripp [00:16:39] Yeah. It was wonderful. It was just wonderful. And we'd go through France. And so if people say, you know, if you've been to these big places and the answer's probably not. I mean, maybe here and there, we did a city, but mostly we were in the small towns in the countryside just messing around really.
Caitlen Cameron [00:16:57] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:16:58] Just going around the chateaus or the churches or the wineries or whatever the case may be always with a swimming pool and some mini golf, you know, kind of thing. So we did that for, well, the twenty years. Seventeen, actually. And yeah. So and then after that we just, we'd travel from here in this house.
Caitlen Cameron [00:17:29] Oh, did you have a favorite place? Like a favorite town that you visited, like fond memories, when you were traveling?
Kathleen Tripp [00:17:36] Ooh, that's difficult. I would have to divide that by climate, I think. Warm weather climate, probably somewhere like Provence.
Caitlen Cameron [00:17:45] Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:17:47] And then over toward the, well, over toward the coast of France, all the way up to Brittany. Saint-Émilion in the south and toward the Spanish border, and then up the coast, I found the French Atlantic coast to be particularly fascinating, and particularly in the northern part where it was more regional, particularly in the food, and it was absolutely wonderful. Everything was, you know, regionally grown, and especially in places like Normandy where the cheeses were so exquisite and all that. And the wines, of course, and Italy, it's hard to beat.
Caitlen Cameron [00:18:28] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:18:30] I don't know. We would stay up in the hillside towns in our tent and and then, you know, come down into Florence or whatever, whatever the other places were, we'd go to the museums and do all the tourist attractions if we felt like it. If not, and then, you know, catch a pizza or go back to the camp and cook or something or, you didn't takeaway in those... And of course, you wouldn't do that in a place like Italy!
Caitlen Cameron [00:18:54] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:18:55] Where food is paramount to the society. You know, food is life and living. And but I just speaking of that, I do remember one adventure. I don't know why this comes to mind. Just to underscore how much food is part of it all, we were driving along and we had the windows down in the car and we saw this woman with a sort of bow, wooden bow over her, over her neck and carrying two buckets. And she'd been out in the fields and she picked basil.
Caitlen Cameron [00:19:27] Oh, wow.
Kathleen Tripp [00:19:28] We put down the windows just to put down the window, so we allow her to cross the road. And as she went by, we could smell the aroma from this basil. [laughs] I mean, I don't know why I haven't thought of that in twenty-five years probably, but it was a pretty, you know, that kind of thing, little things like that. I just so, so important, I think, to the traveling experience, much more so than... We avoided four-star hotels. We couldn't afford them anyway.
Caitlen Cameron [00:19:55] Mhm. And tourist traps.
Kathleen Tripp [00:19:57] But we didn't want them, didn't want any part of it. Because you don't meet anybody, you don't meet the people that live there or you don't spend time sitting in a small town square and tasting the local coffee from a Tuscan hill town or something like that.
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:15] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:15] But anyway, I could go on all day, as you....
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:17] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:17] I could be Rick Steves for you...
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:19] Oh, no worries!
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:19] If you like.
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:20] I studied abroad in Viterbo, Italy.
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:23] Where were you?
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:24] But, Viterbo and...
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:25] I don't know where that is
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:28] So it's, I'm trying to think, it's in the middle of Florence and Rome and it's like right in the [inaudible].
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:35] So it's Tuscan or it's Emilia, no, Emilia would be in the north, that would be Venice,
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:42] It's Tuscany.
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:42] Or Umbria would be there, would it not?
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:45] Yes. yes.
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:45] So it was in Umbria.
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:47] Yes. And it's...
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:48] Well, how old were you?
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:50] This was three years ago, I'm thinking.
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:53] Oh, absolutely fantastic! And it changed you forever.
Caitlen Cameron [00:20:57] Yes, yes.
Kathleen Tripp [00:20:57] The rest of your life, you'll never be the same.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:00] No.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:00] No.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:00] We saw Civita di Bagnoregio, it's like the Dying City, and it's just on this hill and one day it's going to disappear.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:08] So you saw it before it did?
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:11] Mhm. So it's, so like I said, I agree with you on all those experiences are invaluable and...
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:16] Completely.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:18] Small towns are way better than big tourist traps.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:21] Absolutely. But if you want to see if you want to see Michelangelo.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:26] Yeah. And you can go...
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:27] Then you must go to Florence and, and, or Paris to see Mona Lisa.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:33] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:35] It's only this big.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:36] Yeah. I want to see Paris. I never got to go.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:39] Oh. But that's a whole other thing.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:41] You will. Oh. How old are you?
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:44] Twenty-three.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:45] Oh you have a lifetime of adventures and they're all wonderful! On that score. Right.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:53] Can't wait. But I guess I should loop back.
Kathleen Tripp [00:21:57] Right.
Caitlen Cameron [00:21:59] Shouldn't talk that much about myself. But, so you left Holland and all of the adventures and came back to Cleveland, to this house...
Kathleen Tripp [00:22:07] Mhm.
Caitlen Cameron [00:22:07] Which is beautiful, so I guess I want to know how you got involved in the garden club.
Kathleen Tripp [00:22:13] Well, that goes back to the people I mentioned the Farrells. And have you interviewed Susan Dahm?
Caitlen Cameron [00:22:20] No.
Kathleen Tripp [00:22:21] Okay, she's in Pennsylvania.
Caitlen Cameron [00:22:22] Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:22:23] That's... Okay. You will. They are both physics wives.
Caitlen Cameron [00:22:25] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:22:27] And friends. Very, very, very good friends. And they brought me in. They invited me almost upon arrival. And I worked, so, and the meetings are on Monday at lunchtime. So I would bow out on Mondays and have my lunch hour at the Garden Club meetings when I could.
Caitlen Cameron [00:22:45] Really.
Kathleen Tripp [00:22:46] When I could. And it was through their invitation because you must be endorsed...
Caitlen Cameron [00:22:50] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:22:51] To join the club. You can't just walk in. But it's not snooty. The requirement is that you love gardening. That's it.
Caitlen Cameron [00:22:59] Yeah. Did you did you have a big garden when you joined or did you...
Kathleen Tripp [00:23:03] Well, we lived in this house and John and I were working on it.
Caitlen Cameron [00:23:05] Okay.
Kathleen Tripp [00:23:07] We had a, well, I'll show you when we walk around. But when John was alive, we had a very, very large formal perennial garden in the back. And we used to have croquet parties and things like that...
Caitlen Cameron [00:23:18] Really?
Kathleen Tripp [00:23:18] In the back garden. And of course, it's too much for me now. And I can't... You'll see, I can't take care of what I've got.
Caitlen Cameron [00:23:25] Mhm.
Kathleen Tripp [00:23:25] And this is a third of an acre, so it's not that huge, but it's big for a city house.
Caitlen Cameron [00:23:29] Oh, yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:23:30] And it's plenty once you start working in it
Caitlen Cameron [00:23:32] My garden's only like six foot, and it's already enough. I can only imagine a giant one in the backyard.
Kathleen Tripp [00:23:38] But you have a garden and that's a wonderful thing. That's, that's how... One way in which... A friend of mine once said it's how an adult person becomes a child. It's like a child with a canvas is an adult in a garden. Or I don't think I'm saying that quite as well as she did. But we paint in our gardens, I think.
Caitlen Cameron [00:24:02] And experiment and try. Yeah.
Kathleen Tripp [00:24:05] And we see it as a visionary blend of color and texture and senses and all of that. Seeing as you want to know about gardens, I thought I'd throw that in.
Caitlen Cameron [00:24:18] Yeah, thank you. So you had this... You had this person who asked you to join. Was it like, were you scared, nervous to join?
Kathleen Tripp [00:24:27] I was very grateful because although I had lived in Cleveland before, coming back was different. Not just that I was different, but so is everyone else. We were all nearly twenty years older and children had gone and that sort of thing. And I had to reestablish myself in terms of friendships and fitting in, you know, so but I'm a churchgoing person, so I go to c
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