Abstract

This oral history interview with Eugene Bahniuk, conducted by Molly Nieser on November 5, 2003, captures Bahniuk's recollections of his childhood and early adulthood, focusing on his experiences growing up in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio, during the Great Depression. Bahniuk discusses his family's move to Tremont in 1933 due to his father's job loss, their life in the neighborhood, and his schooling, which he recalls fondly for its progressive teaching methods. He also reflects on his father's work as an automobile mechanic, his own early work experiences at a gas station, and the cultural and social activities he participated in, particularly those related to the Ukrainian community.

Interviewee

Bahniuk, Eugene (interviewee)

Interviewer

Nieser, Molly (interviewer)

Project

Tremont History Project

Date

11-5-2003

Document Type

Oral History

Transcript

Eugene Bahniuk: Hi I’m Gene or more formally Eugene Bahniuk. That’s spelled B-A-H-N- I-U-K. And I’m here having an interview with Molly who I suspect is going to ask me something about Tremont.

Molly Nieser: [laughs] OK when did your parents move to Tremont?

Eugene Bahniuk: Um I was about seven years old at that time. So, that would make it about 1933.

Molly Nieser: And where did you, where were you born?

Eugene Bahniuk: I was born in Weirton, West Virginia.

Molly Nieser: What brought you guys to Tremont?

Eugene Bahniuk: My dad was out of work. It was the middle of the depression and the job he had in Weirton um couldn’t have him anymore. So, he came to Cleveland and um left me and my mother back home. A month later he came back and said he found, arraigned for a partnership in fixing cars and we were going to move to Cleveland. So we moved to Cleveland and um we lived on west 11th street, right across the street from Lincoln Park.

Molly Nieser: OK and what are some of your early childhood memories?

Eugene Bahniuk: [long pause] you mean of Tremont?

Molly Nieser: Growing up in Tremont.

Eugene Bahniuk: Yeah, OK. Well, I remember school of course. That was where I remember learning to write my name in long hand and things like that. I remember some of the kids, I don’t remember their names but I remember some of them. I remember getting my first box, school box, or pencil box so I could keep all of my pencils in and erasers and such. And [long pause] I remember playing in Lincoln Park a lot, playing with the neighborhood kids at night under the lights, street lights and some playing, playing it and whatever. And waiting in the pool in the center of Tremont park, or A Lincoln Park there was a pool some maybe 25 feet in diameter something like that. When it was really hot it was a nice comfortable place to go and it was close to home. Home was right across the street. We lived there upstairs and rented there for a while, while my dad worked at near Clark on West 14th near Clark Ave. and another mechanic partnered and setting up an auto repair business in a garage behind this house. It was a relatively large garage. It was suitable for such things as fixing cars and such. Umm, I remember there getting a little car that you can sit in and pump with your legs and drive around. [Long pause] I remember I got first introduced to steam engines when they our first grade teacher took us on a walking tour into the flats and we umm were able to walk through a steam engine that apparently was brought over there for us kids to look at. We were sort of impressed by that. And we went back to the schoolroom we had to draw it in our own best ways. I remember learning counting up to one hundred in first grade.

Molly Nieser: In first grade?

Eugene Bahniuk: Well Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then going to second grade and learning my multiplication tables and one of the things I remember was that it was a poor neighborhood and not everybody could afford to have showers and baths in the their houses and so I think it was every Friday, the teacher would ask anybody who wants to take a shower could take one. So there was time set aside and she would escort whoever generally about four or five kids would volunteer and a she would escort them down to the boys and girls showers and we would a use them. I was sort of apprehensive about that I remember that when I was pretty scared of the teacher so I didn’t volunteer but finally for some reason she said well why don’t you go you might like it and then I enjoyed it. I wished she’d told me that earlier. But there was no need in my particular case we did have a bathtub at home but a lot of kids didn’t. The, another facility that was opened to people in general there was the bathhouse, which was right across the street from Tremont Park. And, a, it was available, public showers there that was also the night in back of it there was basketball courts we played on concrete and lot of the kids who ended up being on high school varsity they all learned there skills back there playing basketball at night or evenings and so on. The [long pause] it was sort of hard economic times for a lot of kids, people at that time. I remember some of the kids in the wintertime not having shoes and coming to school with their feet wrapped up in rags and things. But for those the school of course didn’t tolerate that and they then supplied shoes to those kids. Lets see what else?

Molly Nieser: Well we can move on to another question. OK?

Eugene Bahniuk: Sure OK.

Molly Nieser: Um why don’t you, besides your multiplication facts and counting to one hundred, what else did you learn in school? What was your education like?

Eugene Bahniuk: Oh, well as I progressed of course to higher grades I remember more about them. The 1 and 2nd grade were Tremont Elementary, that’s 1st and 2nd and I think I may have even had 3rd, no I didn’t have. First and second grades we were there. Then my folks moved, one closer to where my dad worked. We moved to Buhrer on West 14th and went to Buhrer Elementary School and I remember that probably most. That was very important in my early life I think, for a number of reasons. One, it had an excellent playground that I took advantage of in the summertime, but the teachers, I appreciate them more and more with time, were really great I even remember the principal, Miss Maple McGovern excellent teacher, principal, really loved the kids and so on. But she was very much ahead of her time, some of the techniques of teaching which are sort of considered modern now, she was using actually in elementary school way back then. Things like progressive education, a kid although say you were like a third grade person you were learning math and your math exceeded the other kids you would go to an advanced math class and you’d advance as you mastered the various topics and that was a very unusual thing that that was done at that time, she would raise money for the school by having paper sales once or twice a year, I shouldn’t say paper sales, I forget exactly what they are called, but each homeroom was given like a ten by twenty square foot area out in the school play yard about once or twice a year you got all the papers you could get, newspapers, and you brought them and put them in your homerooms area and they sold those papers, they got a lot of them because what you did was the parents saved the papers, they didn’t throw away the newspapers they saved them for the school so each family would have quite a bit by the time the next contest was, I say contest because the school room that brought in the most papers, they weighed it all, got a free ice cream party kind of thing we worked like “heck” for that. She raised some extra money for the school that way. She would invite some of us over her home; I went over there several times. I even got to know her grandson, I played with him a lot, she lived on, that is the principal, lived on the East Side of town she commuted over there. If I wanted to see her nephew I took the streetcar way over to 105th Street, (long pause) but all the teachers were excellent, they were very capable, they pushed us faster than maybe was traditional. We were doing, I learned library research in the 3rd grade, we had to go look up, you know, the life of Beethoven and the life of Mozart, whatever we were supposed to do this strictly by the rules, now you go to the library and start digging and then you write your report. Again something quite ahead of the time they had, if you were interested in Cleveland Orchestra music once or twice a year they would charter buses and take kids that were interested in that to Music Hall and got introduced to music by the Cleveland Orchestra.

Molly Nieser: Did you play an instrument?

Eugene Bahniuk: Not in the elementary school, I did in high school a little bit. I played a trumpet but I was never very good. I just felt that I don’t have the rhythm in me or something but the culture side is even being able to appreciate the music. Cultural music even though you don’t play it, Ms. McKenna, our 3rd grade teacher, would bring records of masterful work of famous orchestras, such as the Cleveland Orchestra she laid out things about the music, the caliber of the Cleveland Orchestra, she played out things about the music, that was something that you ordinarily wouldn’t get introduced to unless you were studying music later on in life, but we got introduced to it anyway. So it wasn’t a stranger to us when we grew older. The teachers were all very capable, all very strict, you really didn’t, and they had complete control. Not from what I understand occurs in the classrooms now. They had absolute control over the kids and the general feeling was that you went home to complain to your folks about the teachers you got smacked for obviously doing something wrong. All the parents that I knew, they supported teachers 100%. There was no doubt in their minds that you kids would listen and do what they say. It didn’t hurt any of us, none of us got scarred emotionally or psychologically but we did learn to respect that kind of authority. Oh, the other thing was, kind of interesting, we had in those times public works support for people, like musicians could join an orchestra and get support from the government to play in that orchestra that went to high schools and elementary schools probably once a month, something cultural like that would happen, traveling orchestra or whatever, marionette show, various things, that was part of my memories from then.

Molly Nieser: That sounds good. Okay, you said that your dad worked on cars. Was that his job?

Eugene Bahniuk: Yep, that was his job. He was an automobile mechanic all his life. Well, that is not quite true, he was born just like my mother was in the Ukraine and he neither of them got much education. At the age of 2, that was the end of your learning you knew how to read and write and you knew how to do arithmetic and what else would you need to know when you are out mending the cows or whatever. So the kids were put to work early, he didn’t, he wasn’t going to have a farm, because what they did was you acquired land, and generally, customarily, when your parents died you inherited land and they would divide it up. In his case that didn’t work because they had so little land and it only went to the older son so my dad apprenticed as a blacksmith for awhile but by the time he got 15 or 16 years old he left and went to the US to earn enough money so he could go back and buy farmland but that never happened because he got married to my mom and then WWI came along. So he did was when he came to this country he had several jobs, when he first came, of course he didn’t speak English at all, didn’t know anybody. Came by himself at that age and he worked for a day at a coal mine and said that’s it, he worked to the nearest equivalent to a blacksmith. A forge plant where they bent metals and formed them, once they were heated, just as a blacksmith made horseshoes and stuff only that they did it on a larger scale. Places like that, and somehow he got connected to a garage, I guess because he had those skills, metal working, using tools they hired him and he was sent to school to learn to fix car engines and even though he didn’t speak English he picked up enough in school just by his internal understanding of things mechanical that he became a mechanic and worked for this company, he worked on Studebakers, he learned how to fix Studebakers cars and he learned in West Virginia and he worked there until the jobs ran out, he came to Cleveland and continued fixing cars there on West 14th where he had a partnership and then after a few years he bought some property on Stark Weather and Scranton Roads and built a gas station there, he and his partner. And he worked in that gas station until he retired. So he did work most of his life as a mechanic.

Molly Nieser: Did your mom work?

Eugene Bahniuk: No, she didn’t. When she first came to this country, she came also by herself, from a different village, didn’t know my dad but came at the same age and the reason she came was that things back in her home were so dire that there was concern about survival and starvation. They got some money together and sent my mom. She was the youngest and least likely to survive and the weakest, so they sent her to the United States to earn money to pay the ticket of the next child and so on. And so when she came over here she showed up in Ellis Island with no knowledge of anything or anybody or a job or anything. What they did apparently at that time was the people who wanted house help or any other kind of help would make some arrangements with Ellis Island and the suitable people were given those jobs. So when she showed up a lady from New York, a family hired her to be like a housemaid. So she traveled up from Ellis Island to Upswedon. She worked there for a year. She didn’t like it. I think that she; well little I remember about it that it wasn’t pleasant working. So she came to Cleveland. When she came over actually another girl from the same village came over on the same trip also alone and she went to Cleveland and she got married here. She then contacted my mom and said why don’t you come to Cleveland so she came to Cleveland and she met my dad here and they got married. When she was single and came to Cleveland first, she was working in a restaurant downtown, a Greek restaurant, but when she got married and started having children that stopped and she just worked at home all of her life.

Molly Nieser: Did you work growing up?

Eugene Bahniuk: Did I work growing up?

Molly Nieser: Did you work growing up?

Eugene Bahniuk: I had to. At twelve I began working in the gas station. I then worked for the next twelve years. I earned a lot of money too. I earned five dollars a week and that was a lot compared to. I was relatively wealthy compared to the kids.

Molly Nieser: Umm, did any of the other neighborhood kids work with you?

Eugene Bahniuk: With me? Oh no I was the only one. Sometimes, I had some cousins from Weirton that, we were living with them for part of the time, so my family maintained close contact with them. And some of their children couldn’t find work in Weirton so my dad gave them jobs at the gas station and that was the only person that worked there. But no I worked by myself. When I left home for the military, my younger brother took over and did the same thing.

Molly Nieser: Describe for me a typical workday for you. Did you work during school? Did you work over the summer?

Eugene Bahniuk: Well I worked all year round. Generally during school year, I attended school and then after school I would go down to the station, just walk. It was only a mile away so I just walked the distance. I’d work from after school till maybe seven or eight o’clock. Something like that. I did all of my homework at school, in study hall so I never had any for home. I also worked all day Saturday. And I worked frequently Sunday mornings. That was my dad’s rest. He would get to sleep in on Sunday mornings and I would go open up the gas station. And I’d work there until maybe eleven o clock or so and then he would come in and take over. That’s essentially it. I did no other work other then that.

Molly Nieser: Did you have chores around the house?

Eugene Bahniuk: Sort of. Saturdays were clean up days and my job was to sweep the carpets, so I did that. There wasn’t much else for me to do. Of course I was always running to the store. You know then the stores were relatively small. We didn’t have any of the big major things that we have now. You wouldn’t really order huge amounts of food once a week but instead bought things almost daily. There were some things, major kinds of things that my mom would buy that lasted longer, like potatoes. Almost every other thing she would give me a list and I would run down to the grocery store and there were several that my folks dealt with. The reason that there were several was because my dad being in business was always trying to cater to as many people as he could to buy gas from him, so he would have to try and give business to many different people. He would go to one store and another and he made sure that I let them know who I was. But umm, most of my chores were at the gas station and not at home. I didn’t even have to wash dishes or put those things away.

Molly Nieser: Did you come from a big family?

Eugene Bahniuk: No, not really. Most of my memories are growing up by myself. I had an older brother, I remember a little bit about him. He was killed accidentally when I was six. And then I had a younger brother come to us when we were still living on West 14th but by that time we were separated by ten years of age, so the main thing I remember about him was that when he was very young, one or two years old, my mom would send me to pull him around in the wagon. And I’d get home and she would say pull him around again. That way she’d get us out of the way. My brother and I had relatively light interaction. When I got out high school, I went into the military that was required and during his more active years I wasn’t home. So in one sense I’m the only son, and in another I have two brothers.

Molly Nieser: OK. You mentioned that the neighborhood children played in Lincoln Park. Was there anywhere else like the schoolyard or you mentioned the pool?

Eugene Bahniuk: Yeah. When I was very young we played in Lincoln Park and that was generally nothing more formal then that. I can’t even remember the kids or where they came from. I guess they just came out of houses in that local area. And we played tag and those kinds of games, on the lawns, street lawns. But when I was a little older and we moved to Buhrer, and then played in the Buhrer School there. They had swings and a sandbox and sliding boards and teeter-totters. We entertained ourselves that way. But when we got older, we started playing pick up baseball. Somebody showed up with a ball and somebody showed up with a bat. We’d start playing with no particular organization to it. Who ever showed up would play. It was relatively informal. Of course when we got to junior high and high school, then the opportunities were organized playing for the school for football. I played football, I ran track.

Molly Nieser: Were you involved in any clubs at school? Like social clubs.

Eugene Bahniuk: Yeah. I belonged to several school sponsored things like the honor society and some organizations that they had. I was a guard, street guard and so on. The most influential club along that line was High Y. We had a group sponsored by the YMCA and we would meet once a week, on I think it was Franklin Ave. which is in Ohio City but that was where the Y was. There were no Y’s in the Tremont. It was common at that era that the boys would organize their small group at the High Y and each class sort of had one. We were the Alpha High Y. One of my closest friends, he was a little bit older then I; he belonged to a different group. Those were very important informative years for us. Not only the commorotery and the swimming together and having picnics together but also things like organizing and having a dance. Like what you do. Our leaders, we had to have an adult leader. They did an excellent job in that regard, teaching us things about parametric procedure and things to that sort. They were a basis for forming life long relationship. Two of the High Y members and my self had lunch in the Tremont area just yesterday. We get together every once in a while and we talk about the other guys.

Molly Nieser: Like a fraternity almost.

Eugene Bahniuk: Yeah, that’s what it is a fraternity in that regard. It had the same objectives and thoughts as a fraternity did. They were there to do social good in a limited range, they were there to develop character and they did that. The school was very good in sponsoring that sort of thing.

Molly Nieser: What age did teenagers start going out on dates? Do you remember when your first date was?

Eugene Bahniuk: Yeah. I’m afraid that I was very slow about things like that. It wasn’t like [long pause] we weren’t interested. We sure were but things like that I couldn’t handle. I didn’t know how to talk to the opposite sex. I was always awkward around girls. I did invite one girl to go to one of our High Y dances, Ellsey Jacobianski. She lived in the Tremont area. They were probably the first. I remember one incident that was along those lines. It was prom. I took Ellsey to my own but the year before that, there was a girl in the class before mine, who asked me to take her to her prom. I absolutely refused. I couldn’t do that, rent a tuxedo that cost five bucks and buy a flower, three or four dollars and I don’t know what to do with her or what to say. There was a group of four or five girls that worked on me daily. I eventually couldn’t refuse and I took her to her prom. And I remember I was still very awkward. I couldn’t enjoy my self. I met her again just recently at our fiftieth reunion and we enjoyed the fun of it. It was sort of the ritual of growing up and getting exposed. It didn’t seem to me that the dating and hooking up with girls is much the thing that it is today. I remember a couple of guys who had steadies, some girls that they went with, and they were sort of oddities about that. I think there was a lot more of it going on then I was aware of. I don’t think we are all Neanderthals. But I wasn’t really very much exposed to it. But what I did along that line was always in protest in spite of the fact that I was very much attracted to girls. My genes were pushing me one way but my inner self wasn’t giving in. There were a lot of girls in elementary school but that never went very far, it never went anywhere. So that was a problem that lasted with me through out the military.

Molly Nieser: When we talk about dating, did the boy usually the girl out? Was it mutual? Did the girl ask the boy?

Eugene Bahniuk: I think then the culture that I knew that normally, for normal the guys were supposed to invite and when we had these formal dances we were told we had to do that and so we found somebody. But the girls really in some ways were limited to what they can do. I don’t think it is appropriate for them to ask a boy. But what they would do was organize some kind of party at their home for sometime when they knew that their folks weren’t going to be there and they would invite the guys that they looked favorably on to these little parties. Through that mechanism, they were able to be a little bit more aggressive. It didn’t happen that the girl generally asked the boy.

Molly Nieser: Well you said that you guys went to those dances, did you go to the movies?

Eugene Bahniuk: Well whenever I invited any girl it was to go to one of those High Y dances. It was either because we had a dance or we had a picnic. Or sometimes we would go to the beach or something. Oh yeah I remember what I was thinking. Actually the way we got together mainly, our biggest interaction with how we got together with girls socially in my particular case was within Pilgrim Church.

END OF SIDE A

Eugene Bahniuk: Pilgrim Church organized sort of a nightclub for Lincoln High School. If you were a member, you were aloud to attend the get together, nightclub once a week. You had to get a letter of recommendation from a teacher and then you became a member. We would go to these, the basement. They had one side set aside for us. It was nicely decorated. And there was always music played by record and we had little tables and you could buy soda pop and so on. That was the biggest interaction with girls. That was a lot of fun. And nobody had to become obligated to anybody. That’s where I learned to dance and so on. We that was always a fun thing to look forward to. I think that was the strongest interaction I had with girls. And I think my little Alpha High Y was the same. We were all a little awkward. One particular guy was awkward. He would always arrange for some girl to go with him, but he didn’t enjoy it at all. Sort of interesting to me is that I think this world that I grew up in is so totally different from what I see on television and so on nowadays. Those kinds of interactions.

Molly Nieser: Did teenagers have special hangouts besides the church or?

Eugene Bahniuk: That was probably the one that I’m aware of. There are some drugstores that were favorite hangouts. Another place as we got older was the Aragon Ballroom on West 25th street. That was a wonderful place to meet woman and all. That was not limited to, it was open to the general public. It was more of an adult thing then I was comfortable with. In later years, that also was a good place to interact with women. But the biggest thing to me was this High Y group. When somebody had a birthday or something we would get together and the boys would hang out with the boys and the girls would hang out with the girls. And that’s as far as it went. We really enjoyed it.

Molly Nieser: Where did you go personally when you wanted to be alone?

Eugene Bahniuk: [long pause] [laughs] I don’t know how I could have been alone. I don’t think there was enough, I don’t recall that I very much wanting or needing that. There seemed to be very much going on between school and working there wasn’t much free time in that sense. I didn’t have a need for being alone. I still don’t have a need to find someplace to be where I’d be all by myself. If I looked for it I think maybe, I liked to go walking along the Flats area. Down from where we lived on Buhrer there were the steel mills and there was a lot of land there that was unused, maybe where the dumps had been. There was a lot of marshland with short stubby trees. And there were several slopping hills there. I would go there and walk around and then enjoy looking for tadpoles and minnows and sort of enjoy what I could see. That would be the early teens time. I can remember how nice it was to be walking around those places because there wasn’t traffic, there weren’t people. I think I did that not because I needed to be alone, but because there wasn’t anything else to do, or no other guys to go anywhere. So I think that one is covered there.

Molly Nieser: Did your family often socialize with other families?

Eugene Bahniuk: Oh yes. My family very much did. Our primary togetherness was at a club called the Ukraine Labor Table Temple. It used to be on Auburn and West 11th Street. It was a social club for Ukraine’s and they maintained a lot of the cultural heritage of the Ukraine there. They had Ukraine school that I attended to speak a little Ukraine. They had concerts and they taught us Ukrainian dances and so on. They had a lot of picnics and a lot of banquets. Banquets and picnics all the time. The Picnics were south of Cleveland, generally south of Broadview land. When I was growing up the area was sparsely populated, there were farms. The farmers would rent out their land for picnics and so on. That was our major socialization. Then there was other friends of the family that would visit. I really didn’t have, especially in Cleveland, have any relatives because both my parents came here by themselves. We had an uncle in Weirton that was the reason we went there one time. We’d get together with them two or three times a year. It was pretty close to us. They felt protective for us. I was actually born in their home at 1706 County Rd. in Weirton. My folks lived there maybe until I was five. That was the closest relative. And I still get together, just this summer I went to visit the one person who is still alive. The other nine have departed. And her kids still carry on the yearly tradition get together by that group. I get invited every year and every once in a while I get to go and see them. There was a lot, my dad was pretty active. They had plays on various plays and music at this hall. We’d go there. There were other Ukrainian Halls on West 14th. There is one now that I think is part of Grace Hospital and we had some contact with them. But that’s it.

Molly Nieser: Were your parents strict? Did you have rules? A curfew?

Eugene Bahniuk: It’s a mixed kind of thing there. If you transgressed the punishment was very bad. The sort of thing that would get parents today thrown in jail. But it was very effective. You didn’t really mess around much because you knew what was in front of you. My dad was the enforcer. The worst words I could hear from my mom was your dad is coming home because when he came home and she said she had a complaint, the punishment was instant, swift, pretty severe. In that regard, we learned to be disciplined and behaved. That was during the early informative years until ten, after that, that sort of thing didn’t happen. But on the other hand, most of the time, the way I remember my parents is that they would give me most anything. They would sacrifice. If I was interested in something, I would get it, even if I didn’t know I was interested in it. I got some interest when I was at the High Y in target shooting and before I knew it, my dad (and these are Depression times) had bought me a target rifle. And when I was a little older and I went hunting, he bought me a Fine Shotgun. They are still with me in the family. They dressed me well. I don’t ever recall having need for something because they refused it. They treated me with a great deal of respect. It is sort of interesting to say that, I think they did. They encouraged me in all sorts of ways. Once I had some of the guys that I hung around with, four or five guys, on a Sunday and we were having fun. My folks all of a sudden weren’t around until the guys left. After they left my folks came back and I asked where were you? And they said we wanted to let you have your privacy. I never thought of anything like that. I thought they were going to be with us. My mom sensed, she was very sensitive of how people felt, and that’s the sort of thing that they did. I can’t really think of many things but I think overall this respect that they had for me was countered any negative things I might have said. I was fortunate. My mom conditioned me to be an engineer when I was six years old. She would do things like, see that bridge there? Isn’t it pretty, engineers designed it. She did that, so I never had to worry about what I was going to do. I took for granted that I was going to be an engineer. I was pushed that way in a sense, not in a way that I recognized at the time, but in a way that when I was older I just recognized that that was something that she had done. My dad ran the business and my mom ran the home. The ran things together too. For instance when my dad was considering buying some property, this meant financial obligations on his part, I remember talking it over with my mom in detail. It was really my mom who pushed my dad into it. As far as people outside the family who know, my mom had nothing to do with business but in reality she was part of it and an important part. They spoiled me in a sense. I thought that the kind of relationship that I saw there was the norm, it’s not and in that regard, it might have been better to have prepared me better. I can remember, we would have tea together, my mom and dad would be there. We would talk about various things, I usually just listened. When I got to be seventeen eighteen, my dad told me that I needed to become more involved in the business. My mom said, “I think Gene is planning on going to college”. My dad was taken back but then said “OK”. From that point on I knew I was going to college. I had no idea about the expenses or reality about that sort of thing, but the decision had been made, the planning had been done. My dad didn’t realize that my mom had been setting it up for years. The kids to me, I see it in my grandkids, they have indecision in want they want to do. They don’t know if they want to be a painter, a mathematician, a plumber whatever and there is a lot of anxiety on their parts. They bounce from one education thing to another thing with out a clear idea, they are searching for a Utopia to strike them and tell them what they want to be and that doesn’t happen. In my case that didn’t happen. They told me what I was going to be. It was very nice.

Molly Nieser: Are you married?

Eugene Bahniuk: Yeah, of courses you met my wife. Actually, Margaret is my second wife. I have five children; they are all by the first wife and eleven grandchildren. They are scattered around. Some are in Cleveland; there is a daughter in Boston, a son in Memphis. Did I catch them all? Oh and a daughter in Elyria.

Molly Nieser: So did you marry someone from the neighborhood?

Eugene Bahniuk: Yeah my first wife was my next-door neighbor. I think again that was more a statement about my shyness with girls. She was somebody I knew.

Molly Nieser: When did you leave Tremont and why?

Eugene Bahniuk: I left Tremont when I was a senior in high school because my folks moved from West 14th out to Memphis and West 60th. I don’t really remember why though. It was relatively a short time for me because it was in my final year at school. When you turned eighteen you were drafted, so I lived at the house just for one year. So I went into the military and when I got out of the military my folks had moved to Parma Heights. So the reasons I moved was because my family.

Molly Nieser: Right. Have you been back to Tremont since you left?

Eugene Bahniuk: Fairly frequently. We have these get together. I’m talking about my friends, once a month, usually the first Tuesday of every month. And we get together. We were down at the University Inn today. The next get together will be at Grumpy’s on Stark Weather. I don’t know, one of those streets. Have you ever eaten there?

Molly Nieser: No

Eugene Bahniuk: The food is excellent. Very well done. That’s one of the biggest changes. When I was growing up nobody ate in restaurants. I ate in one once when my mom was very ill. My dad took me that was the first I had ever been. They had a few restaurants on West 25th. That’s probably the biggest change in Tremont. Now Tremont has a lot of nice places there to go to. I think it is a very positive kind of happening.

Molly Nieser: Is there anything else that I didn’t ask that you want to tell me?

Eugene Bahniuk: I guess about the only other thing, I guess you hit on it with the education, I feel that I had excellent teachers, not only in elementary school but also high school, and they prepared me much better then I had thought. I didn’t know much about colleges or relative rankings but I always had the impression that Lincoln wasn’t the best place. That I should go to West Tech or private school. There I would get a better education. I don’t think I could have gotten a better education then the one I got from Lincoln High School. Our teachers were superb, absolutely superb. I never felt ever that any high school education could have surpassed my education. I was as well prepared that I think you could be. Our teachers were really excellent. They were mainly teachers that went into supporting themselves during the Depression. They sent themselves to college. Teaching was left. They were very capable people who had nothing left. I appreciated what they taught but also their outlook on life, their morality, an understanding of finer things in life. It was a good place to grow up.

Molly Nieser: Sounds like it.

Eugene Bahniuk: I can’t think of anything else.

END OF INTERVIEW

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