Abstract

Elizabeth Hallal reflects on her experiences growing up in the Tremont neighborhood of Cleveland, Ohio. Hallal discusses her family's history, including their immigration to the United States and settlement in Tremont in 1919. She shares memories of her childhood during the Great Depression, her education at Tremont School and Lincoln High School, and her involvement in community activities. Hallal also describes the impact of World War II on her life, including her work with the Navy and the changes in the Tremont neighborhood over the years. The interview offers insights into the daily life, cultural dynamics, and social changes in a working-class, immigrant community during the 20th century.

Interviewee

Hallal, Elizabeth (interviewee)

Interviewer

Nieser, Molly (interviewer)

Project

Tremont History Project

Date

11-11-2003

Document Type

Oral History

Transcript

Molly Nieser: What is your name and can you spell it for me?

Elizabeth Hallal: Elizabeth Hallal, H-A-L-L-A-L.

Molly Nieser: Ok, when did your parents move to Tremont?

Elizabeth Hallal: When they were married in 1919.

Molly Nieser: Where did they come from?

Elizabeth Hallal: My mother came from Pennsylvania and my father emigrated from Russia to Boston and then he came to Cleveland.

Molly Nieser: What are some of your early childhood memories from Tremont?

Elizabeth Hallal: Well I grew up there. For seventeen years I lived there. I went to Tremont School, I went to Lincoln High School. Growing up was during the Depression and times were pretty bad. We didn’t have a lot, I mean we didn’t miss it because we didn’t know. Growing up was a lot of fun. I had a lot of friends there on Clarence Court. I lived on Clarence Court. We used to play on a farm below our house. It was called Hedlow Farm. And we used to ice skate in the winter there. I used to go to the library a lot, the Jefferson branch. It was just a very nice time.

Molly Nieser: Can you describe for me the education you received?

Elizabeth Hallal: I went to Tremont School for eight years, from kindergarten through the eighth grade, and then I transferred to Lincoln High School. I went there from the ninth through the twelfth. Then I had to go to work. It was during the World War II. I took a few courses at Cleveland College at that time. After I was married a number of years, I went Tri-C for two years. That’s about the extent of it.

Molly Nieser: OK, perfect. Did your parents work?

Elizabeth Hallal: My mother worked as a domestic. And my father worked at the White Sewing Machine Company.

Molly Nieser: Did you work growing up?

Elizabeth Hallal: No I didn’t work growing up because there wasn’t many jobs available then.

Molly Nieser: Did you have chores around the house?

Elizabeth Hallal: Well we had to help my mother clean because my mother did work a lot. And I used to go grocery shopping for her. I had a bicycle so I used to go, we didn’t have a car so I used to go to the grocery store for her and I used to run errands for my neighbor next door.

Molly Nieser: Did you come from a big family?

Elizabeth Hallal: I had two sisters, one older and one younger and my self.

Molly Nieser: Were the chores split up evenly?

Elizabeth Hallal: Well my one sister was like five years older then I so she did a little bit more than me. My other sister was twelve years younger so she didn’t have many chores.

Molly Nieser: Where did the neighborhood children play? Did you guys use schoolyards? Public parks?

Elizabeth Hallal: We had, I told you, the farm below us. We had the Lincoln Park and we used to play in the street.

Molly Nieser: In my last interview we talked about the pool. Did you go to the pool?

Elizabeth Hallal: Umm, we never had a pool. We used to go to Brookside Park. They had a pool there. We didn’t have a pool in our neighborhood. The park was very plain. There wasn’t a lot to do there.

Molly Nieser: Were you guys interested in sports?

Elizabeth Hallal: I was interested in sports. I played tennis and I rode the bike of course, and in high school I was a cheerleader and I played basketball. That’s about it.

Molly Nieser: Were you involved in any clubs, social clubs or anything like that?

Elizabeth Hallal: At school?

Molly Nieser: Anywhere. In school, out of school.

Elizabeth Hallal: We used to have a dramatic club during the summer at the park, Lincoln Park and we used to do little drama shows there. And in high school I used to belong to the choir and the National Honor society and the Commercial Club. Like I said I was a cheerleader and I was a senior girls leader in gym.

Molly Nieser: OK. Was religion important in your life growing up?

Elizabeth Hallal: We belonged to Our Lady of Mercy Church, but we used to visit all the other churches. As you know Tremont has a lot of churches, so we used to go to all the different churches there.

Molly Nieser: Where did teenagers go out on dates?

Elizabeth Hallal: We used to go to the movies mainly and dances. We used to go to St. Michael’s. They had dances on Friday nights. We went to the Aragon Ballroom. We went to the various churches around that used to have dances. Mostly dancing was where we went. And to the movies.

Molly Nieser: Now with dating, did the boy ask the girl? Did the girl ask the boy? Was it a big group? How did it work?

Elizabeth Hallal: The boy usually asked the girls. The girls wouldn’t ask the boys at that time. Umm, that’s how it worked, the boys usually asked the girls to go out.

Molly Nieser: Did teenagers have special hangouts?

Elizabeth Hallal: Just the dance halls, like St. Michaels or you know, the different churches and clubs.

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

Elizabeth Hallal: Usually to library.

Molly Nieser: That’s a good place

Elizabeth Hallal: Oh, we had a large backyard and I used to read a lot, so I liked to go back there. There were a lot of trees. It was quiet. It was real nice.

Molly Nieser: Did your family socialize with other families?

Elizabeth Hallal: Not really. My father belonged to a club on Auburn and he was involved in this Russian Club, but my mother didn’t really socialize with other people.

Molly Nieser: Umm, were your parents strict?

Elizabeth Hallal: Moderately. My mother wasn’t too bad and my father didn’t say much. They weren’t that strict.

Molly Nieser: OK. Are you married today?

Elizabeth Hallal: Yes.

Molly Nieser: Did you marry someone from the neighborhood?

Elizabeth Hallal: I married somebody I met in high school.

Molly Nieser: Oh really? Wonderful. And where did you guys marry?

Elizabeth Hallal: We married at the Blessed Sacrament Church on Fulton Road.

Molly Nieser: Do you have any children?

Elizabeth Hallal: I have three children.

Molly Nieser: When did you leave Tremont?

Elizabeth Hallal: In 1943.

Molly Nieser: Why?

Elizabeth Hallal: Because we bought another home and we lived down on Clarence Court and it was run- down. It was getting kind of run down. So we moved out.

Molly Nieser: Have you been back since you left?

Elizabeth Hallal: Well yes. I’ve been through there many times. We drive through there. Let’s see, Clarence Court where I lived is no longer there. I did visit the churches there a few times. We drive through there once every few weeks.

Molly Nieser: Do you think that things have changed?

Elizabeth Hallal: They have changed a lot.

Molly Nieser: For the better? Worse?

Elizabeth Hallal: I think so, I think so. They are, people are buying homes there and there are a lot of upscale restaurants there. And the Park has improved a lot. It looks nice from what I have seen. They tried to preserve a lot of it, so.

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

Elizabeth Hallal: [long pause] not much, I mean if you are interested in all the other things that I did you can read my other.

Molly Nieser: Yeah lets see what he; lets compare what we didn’t talk about. [long pause, reading] Clarence Court we talked about.

Elizabeth Hallal: Uh-huh.

Molly Nieser: When they made the freeway, you remember that?

Elizabeth Hallal: Uh-huh

Molly Nieser: Umm, you like to read. [Long pause] Sports. [Long pause] Church. [Long pause] Did things change during the war in Tremont?

Elizabeth Hallal: In Tremont, well I went to work for the Navy Department. It did change because most of the men were taken into the army or navy. My boyfriend at the time, I married him later, he went to the navy and umm, we didn’t go out as much. We had rationing. We had to have stamps for food and stockings and sugar. Everything was rationed.

Molly Nieser: How did they determine? Was everything standard?

Elizabeth Hallal: Well, we were issued a book with so many stamps and when we went to the store we had to use the stamps. I was pretty, you know. We didn’t have a chance, we didn’t go out much. When I worked for the Navy Department, I used to go to dinner downtown when I worked and we used to go to the movies. There wasn’t much to do. It’s not like now. People seem to get along in their life better now, but during that time it wasn’t too good.

Molly Nieser: Do you know if the Jefferson Library is still there?

Elizabeth Hallal: It is still there. In fact, they, Jefferson Library just acquired a picture that I used to really love when I went down there. They took it out of the library and I was real sad about it because it sort of took a picture of Clarence Court, which is no longer there. So then I was real amazed when the Plain Dealer ran a picture, the picture in the Plain Dealer a few months ago. They acquired it back, so I want to go down there and take a picture of it. It’s a really nice picture.

Molly Nieser: Where did they put it when it wasn’t there?

Elizabeth Hallal: They took it to Oberlin and they restored it. I guess it needed a lot of work. It’s quite a beautiful picture and it shows the field we used to play on. So it was real interesting. I was real happy about that.

Molly Nieser: Oh wow. How long did you work with the Navy Department?

Elizabeth Hallal: I worked for five years at the Bureau of Supplies and Accounts.

Molly Nieser: Where was that?

Elizabeth Hallal: That was on [long pause] he corner of East 12th and Euclid.

Molly Nieser: Did you take a bus?

Elizabeth Hallal: That was the only means of transportation that we had. Yes, I took a bus. We worked six days a week. We were only off on Sunday.

Molly Nieser: What was a typical workday like?

Elizabeth Hallal: We had to be there at eight o’clock. It was strictly naval. We had Ids. Naval personal was there. They were stationed there. We worked right with them. And I was a secretary. Type and secretarial work.

Molly Nieser: What time were you done?

Elizabeth Hallal: Till about a quarter till five. It was a long day. And then back home and get ready for work the next day, six days a week. So Sunday was actually the only day that we had off.

Molly Nieser: Wow. Umm, in my interview last week, this man talked about the showers at school and the bathhouse. Do you remember that?

Elizabeth Hallal: Yes, the Lincoln Bath House. They have condos there now.

Molly Nieser: What a difference.

Elizabeth Hallal: Yeah, have you ever been down to Tremont?

Molly Nieser: I’ve driven through, I haven’t really spent time.

Elizabeth Hallal: It’s fun to just walk through there. Lincoln Bath House was on Starkweather, I believe across from the park, and we didn’t have bathtub at home and so we used to go up to the bathhouse with bar soap and towel and take showers there. And then later on they shut that part off because people started getting bathtubs in their houses. And so we used to go there for tap dancing and they used to flood the back and go ice-skating back there. But now they have two hundred and fifty thousand dollar condos there.

Molly Nieser: That’s unbelievable.

Elizabeth Hallal: It is. I went to an open house there and it was amazing, you know.

Molly Nieser: Were you comfortable with the concept of bathhouses?

Elizabeth Hallal: No, but.

Molly Nieser: You didn’t have a choice.

Elizabeth Hallal: We used to take a bath at home in a Calvinized tub, once a week, otherwise we just did sponge bathing, but if you really wanted to take a shower it was there. It wasn’t a bathtub, but showers, you know. It was all right.

Molly Nieser: It worked out well. Umm, lets see. Did you go to the West side Market often?

Elizabeth Hallal: Yes, yes we used to cross the Abbey Bridge. We used to walk a lot of times there. The West side Market is all open air. It’s really a nice place to go. I haven’t been back since they enclosed it. I mean closed the outside so it’s not quite so cold.

Molly Nieser: Is that where you would do your shopping or was it a special event?

Elizabeth Hallal: No, special. We mainly went to the neighborhood. There was a butcher, a dairy, there was a grocery store.

Molly Nieser: All separate?

Elizabeth Hallal: All separate. And we had to walk everywhere. And we didn’t go grocery shopping once a week to a supermarket. They built one on the corner of Literary, I believe and Professor, that was the first one, Fisher Foods. It was a marvelous supermarket. It was quite a thing.

Molly Nieser: Do you keep in touch with anyone from Tremont?

Elizabeth Hallal: Yes I have a lot of friends that I keep in touch with. I went to high school with them and then I do still keep in touch with them after all these years.

Molly Nieser: That’s wonderful. [Long pause] That’s pretty much it for me. Anything else you want to add?

Elizabeth Hallal: No, you can read everything else there, whatever that could help you in any way. END OF INTERVIEW

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