<Begin Segment 41>

LH: So after Northwest Airlines then what did you pursue?

FG: Oh, well I got married and it was a student from Japan, and he had worked for my dad. And he asked my father for my hand and my father said yes. [Laughs] So then Hiro and I got married. Hiro was here as a graduate student and so going, we were trying to save money and so going from here to the airport every day took a lot of gas. So I got a job on campus at the University of Washington library, typist. Incidentally, I was working for Paul Allen's father, Kenneth Allen, Ken Allen.

LH: What were you doing and what was his position at the library?

FG: He was the... he was a... was he the head librarian or he was the manager? He was managing. He was a librarian. He had a library degree, but he worked right under the head librarian. He did administrative, he was an administrative librarian, I think, but I just did clerical work. Kind of interesting because he's the one that the library today is named after, that Paul named it after. But, anyway, yes. So I worked at the library and then I was asked if I would like to work at the Seattle Public Library as a, working with children as a... Now, you call that what? Paraprofessional or whatever you call it. It's a paraprofessional librarian. But, anyway, at that time we were called clericals, but we did the work of the librarian without a library degree. And I only had a bachelors so I was a paraprofessional and I did that for about ten years. And in the meanwhile, I had children. And then I was working and then my supervisor asked me to go back to school and get my library degree and I thought well, I don't know. And she insisted on it so I thought all right.

LH: Why did she insist that you go back and get your degree?

FG: Because we were, there was a group of us that were hired as paraprofessionals doing the children's library work. And she was about to retire and she felt that she couldn't protect us after she retired, after she was gone because we're supposedly any person, anybody that works in the librarian's capacity, has a library degree.

LH: So without the degree there wouldn't be any guarantee that you would still have a job.

FG: Exactly. Exactly. And that's what worried Ms. Darrah and so she asked me to go back to school and I did, but what I did too was I went to, I went to school. I was accepted into graduate school and into the school, library school and then I worked as a librarian. I worked in the library. I worked the nights and I went to school in the day at daytime.

LH: And this was still while you were raising children.

FG: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 41> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.