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TI: So I want to jump back now to your, your family. So at this point, you and Lily are, are married.

FS: Yes.

TI: And so let's pick it up there in terms of children. Why don't you talk about your children?

FS: Oh, we, we were blessed with a son and a daughter. Nancy is the oldest, she was born in, I think, 1960. And she's, she went to college here in Cheney at Eastern Washington, and has a degree in education. And she, she taught here in Spokane for three or four years and then went to, went to Japan on an exchange, two-year exchange program. So then she liked the country, liked the kids so well that she, she applied for a job with... she was teaching in the public school system there, applied for a job at this, was directed to ask this Catholic Girls Academy in Nishinomiya to see if she could get a job there, and she's been there ever since. So she's in there teaching at this Girls Academy for almost twenty years. Seems happy there, she just in the last few years built a house, and I suspect that she's put down roots in Japan. But she again was, like the rest of us, couldn't speak a lick of Japanese. I can recall that she would call us about every other day from Japan, and one of the conversations that we had was, "You know, Dad," she says, "I might as well be on Mars." She says, "I can't speak the language, I can't read anything, I can't order any food, I just, I'm really," she was really homesick at that point. But she came right along and she, after a few, maybe after about five or six years, she took a year's sabbatical and went to this intense Japanese language school, and she's developed great skills and she reads and writes and all this kind of stuff. So she, she seems to be happy there.

TI: I'm curious, what is it about Japan that really attracted her? Here she was, grew up as an American, went there, and struggled initially, but then decided this is where she wants to make her home.

FS: She's, she's really very adventuresome, obviously, but she's, she's, ever since she was twelve years old, was gonna be a schoolteacher, that's what's she's gonna do. And when she, well, I'm sure a lot of school systems are the same, she started, they start 'em out in probably the toughest schools, I guess, just to season them. And she was really disheartened with the things she had to put up with and the circumstances of the kids, the family backgrounds, some of them were, were abused children, others would, I recall that she would give away some of her clothing to the kids because --

TI: This is within Spokane?

FS: Here in Spokane, kids came to school without jackets and stuff. And it was, I think it was really discouraging. She was finally moved to a, another school here in a more affluent part of town, and I think she enjoyed it more, and I know that the other teachers really liked her. But then there was just this opportunity to do the exchange program. And from what I gather, just listening to her, she, Japanese students come to school to go to school. She didn't have to take care of the social problems and all this kind of stuff. And so she, she really liked it, she liked the kids, and she likes these kids at this Catholic Girls Academy. They're, they are, kids whose parents have money, but in most cases, they, these kids are, their circumstances are such that they study. They know that that's, they have to, in order to get ahead, they have to go to school and learn things. And so it's easier for her to teach. She just doesn't have to wipe noses and, you know, "kick butt," I guess, is the expression. [Laughs]

TI: Now, have you and Lily ever been to Japan?

FS: Oh, yeah, we've been there twice. The first couple years, after about two years we went over there, this was in the late '80s. And she was teaching in the public school then, and last year, we went again to, to see her, and she was, we went to this Girls Academy to see her. She, by then she had had this house built, and she's living by herself in this, this little house. She seems to be happy, and we're pleased.

TI: So you mentioned you had two children...

FS: Yeah, and we have a son Michael, and Michael is the younger, he's a great kid. He grew up pretty, he's really independent. Both kids did well in public school, but Mike developed this interest in gardening from a young age. We had, when I was, when I was a director of the air pollution agency here, one of the, one my board of directors, the chairman of the board of that air pollution agency was a gardener, but he, his specialty was he grew dahlias for show. And so I would go over to talk to him about, about the air pollution program, and Mike would go with me. And so he, he picked up this dahlia thing, and finally he went to ask, he said, "Dad, would you ask him, Mr. Allen, if he would show me how to grow dahlias?" And so Mr. Allen, this commissioner, took him under his wing and gave him roots, and he would come over and help him plant the dahlias. And Mike got to be a heck of a dahlia grower. He was in, he would compete in the 4-H dahlia show at the, at the interstate fair, and he would win everything. The kids just hated Mike, he was so good. He'd get all, he'd get all the cups. You'd see his flowers, and there would be four cups there all around his... and, but, and with that, at first, the whole backyard was, there were 150 dahlia plants, and there were umbrellas covering them so that they didn't get, get bleached in the sun and all this stuff. And along with that, he would start vegetable gardening in flower beds and stuff. So he did this all through high school; he didn't tell his friends that he was growing flowers. [Laughs] But, so it was time to go to college, and I said, "Well, why don't you go to Gonzaga where I went?" He went down there and he was not really pleased with that, and so he wanted to go to UW and I said, "Well, what are you going to study?" He said, "Maybe I'll study pre-med." And, "Great, go at it." And then he decided that wasn't his thing, so he got into civil engineering. And he did that for a couple years and says, "Dad," he wanted something that would be out of doors, and I said, "Mike, for cripes sake, you like, you like outdoors, you like gardening, why don't you go into landscape architecture?" He said, "Well, no, I want that as a hobby. I don't want to, I don't want to do stuff like that." But he finally gravitated to the, to the landscape, the architecture, landscape architecture plan, and I guess it's a two-step thing, you go through so much undergraduate and then you go into these specialty schools. But got in right away, God, his grades went up, and he, he, obviously he enjoys that. Except, I think he's discovering that if you do your job well, then they make you manage people, and that, that's always a difficult transition.

TI: Because right now he manages big, big gardens, right?

FS: Yeah, he manages, he's one of the managers of the Seattle Park Department's new park program. He does like to work outside, but he also is, manages people, and that's not always easy. We've, he and I have discussed this many times. That's what happens when you do a good job.

TI: It's really clear from you talking about both children, how fond you are of both of them.

FS: They're, well, we're pleased. We're pleased; they've done us well.

TI: And Lily, what activities is she involved in?

FS: Well, she was mostly a stay-at-home mother. She, she worked part-time on occasions, but she's a, she's a housekeeper. And her interest nowadays, well, ever since Nancy was born, she's played golf on and on, and but that's, that's her warm weather thing, she likes to play golf and she does play at least two times a week.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.