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TI: So today is Monday, October 14, 2013, and we are actually doing kind of a second part of an interview about Gene Boyd, who was well-known in the Japanese American community as the athletic director at Collins Playfield. And earlier in the day we interviewed your brother, David Boyd, but now we have Marietta Boyd Gruner. And so, Marietta, I'm going to just start again. Can you tell me when and where you were born?

MG: I was born July 25, 1943, in Seattle at what was then Columbus Hospital. And just as a little note of personal interest, it's the same place where Henry in Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet was born, if you're familiar with that book.

TI: Oh, yes. So that's a real...

MG: It's a real place. It's a real place.

TI: So tell me again, where is that?

MG: It became, where all the other hospitals were, it became St. Frances Cabrini, and I believe it's no longer there, so I'm not exactly sure where it was.

TI: Okay, interesting.

MG: But yeah, when I read that book, it was just this huge "oh my gosh" moment of that is a real place, and that's exactly where I was born.

TI: Yeah, it was funny, when I read that, I didn't recognize it, so I thought maybe that was made up. Okay, that's good. Next time I see Jamie Ford, I'll mention that I met someone.

MG: I'm going to email him to let him know that I have these personal things.

TI: And then what was the name given to you at birth?

MG: Marietta Louise Boyd.

TI: And any significance to the name?

MG: Yeah, actually. My great grandmother on my dad's side was Marietta, and then Louise was one of my aunts.

TI: So you were born during the war, and so didn't know much about your father. But I know before the interview, I know you're collecting lots of information about your father. So why don't you tell me a little bit why you're doing this.

MG: Well, I think that it's just, it's really quite simple. I basically... I just adored my father. I mean, he just was... it's not working as well for me. He just, he was just an amazing person and was just such a huge, huge figure in my life. And not just my life, but in the lives of my children as well, and certainly my brothers and my sister. For all of us, he was as he was with the kids that he worked with. He was just this unifying person. He was the person... he was the guy who everybody else wished was their dad, was kind of how I saw it. And I felt like when I was with him, I was just basking in this glow of his presence, and looking at all these other kids, my cousins, kids that he worked with, just my own friends, and just thinking, I am so special because I am actually his daughter. Everybody was his kids, but I was his daughter. And so he's just an incredibly vibrant, alive, amazing person. And he did everything that he did, including being my father, in just the most natural way possible. There was just never any pretense or any preamble or anything. He just was who he was, and it was that that just... and so I just, kind of looking through this stuff, it's almost like trying to find... okay, I have some facts to prove that he was this amazing person. I need some facts to prove all of this.

TI: So it sounds like, when I talk to Japanese Americans who knew your dad, and they talk about how he was, it sounds like he was that same person at home, too.

MG: Yes, he was.

TI: Which is kind of sometimes rare. A lot of men in particular, they have kind of their work persona and then their home persona or their family persona, and sometimes it's different. But it sounds like he was just who he was.

MG: He was. He was completely consistent and completely comfortable within himself and just, and made everyone else around him feel instantly comfortable. And he was comfortable and he was proud, but he was never arrogant, he was never... he just, for one thing, I think that he truly, he loved people and he loved kids, especially.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.