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TI: Now, was there something that you can, like a story or memory of you with your father that would kind of help explain how he was? Like maybe there might be a difficult time that you had and he helped, something like that.

MG: Well, and there are so many things. I mean, he lived a long life, and we were very close. I guess maybe one of the things I would point out, you talked about how men in particular aren't... possibly have a history of having their separate lives, their work life and their home life, but with him it was very seamless, possibly it was because he worked with kids, but I think it was because of who he was. But Dave had mentioned how we didn't really see him during the week. When he became a district supervisor, which was later in his career, he would sneak home for dinner. He was actually not supposed to take that much time to come all the way to the north end for dinner, but he was always home for dinner. And so we did have kind of more of that time with him, but he worked until ten o'clock at night, he worked on Saturdays, because he had to be at the gym on Saturdays, so Sunday was the only day he had off. But that day he spent with us. He would take us, I remember distinctly going... every place in Seattle, especially I remember going with myself and my next younger brother Mike, and we would go to the zoo. We knew, as I used to say, we knew, we were on first name basis with every lion and bear and whatever at Woodland Park Zoo, because we were there so often. And part of the reason he did that was because he was giving my mom a break. My mom was with us for six days of the week, and so that was special time that we had with him. And so we'd go to the zoo, we'd drive out to Camp Denny, we'd go to Collins even though the field house was not open at that time and he was no longer working there when I was, had these memories, he would take us down there. And we would go in because he had a key. [Laughs] And frequently, I think you guys, didn't you guys go down and play basketball on Sundays?

TI: He would open the gym up?

MG: He'd open the gym up just for us. So there was that. And I mean, literally, Dave mentioned the plan for Seattle Parks, which was actually really quite well-done, and the guy's name was Olmstead (...). But any rate, I grew up knowing the history of all of those parks and the location of all of those parks. I probably couldn't find them now, but I knew where they were. And we would take these, we would have relatives come from Kansas, Missouri area, which was where he grew up, or from my mom's relatives from Chicago or other places, Pittsburg, other places back east, and we would go on, he would take them on tours of Seattle. And I was at the age where I was not too young that I had to be left at home, I could go along with. And so I was on every one of those trips throughout Seattle, and I knew where every single one of those ballparks were and every single one of those playfields, and I knew, at the same time I knew the names of half of the kids that played there, because we would drive, and he'd say, "Okay, this is Collins," and then there was this team and there was this person on it and this person on it and this person on it, and then there was this team and we did this, and so we'd hear all these stories over and over and over again. And I never was tired of listening to them because he was a great storyteller among other things. And all of these people that he talked about, even if I never met them personally, they were real people. And so he would start talking about a particular kid, one of his kids, and then before that story even got into the actual story, I would have learned the names of every single one of this brothers and sisters, his mom and dad, his cousins, his whatever, because he had that capacity for remembering those things, and he also had that ability to connect all of those dots together. I mean, it wasn't just that kid, it was the brother who did this and the sister who did this and the mom and dad who did this. And so it was just this entire picture that I would get. And it was just amazing and it was interesting, it was fun.

And even later on it would get, I mean, when I became a teenager and was in that car driving around with him, which was also the Gene Boyd patented lecture forum, when I had done something that had disapproved, usually my mother, than he'd, "Okay, I need to go on this errand, so come with me." And in the car, doors were locked, you got no way to get out, and you would get the lecture. "Well, now, your mother is not very happy with you about," blah, blah, blah. "And you really need to, your mother has sacrificed everything for you," and blah, blah, blah. And in the process, then, I would also learn all of these other stories about people. And anyway, so it was just always about, certainly, as Dave pointed out, the sports were the, that was the language and that was the thing that held us together, but I was pre-Title IX, I didn't get to play sports. I did not get to participate in that process, but I was still involved in it, and still learned from it and learned from his example. And I played my first sports at the age of thirty when I started playing soccer.

TI: So you still play?

MG: Well, actually, that's a little bit of an exaggeration. No, I blew out my Achilles when I was... I was still playing when I was sixty, but I blew out my Achilles and my children took away my cleats. So I'm no longer playing. But I also coached. I coached baseball just based on having hung out with my dad when he coached my brother's Little League team. My son was seven years old and was, I didn't think being treated fairly, was never getting to play, and I decided the next year, I know how to do this. I watched my dad do this, I was with my dad when he did this, I can do this better than most guys. And so I became a baseball coach, I became a basketball coach, never having played these sports, but did that. And my dad was still around during a lot of that time, so he was my consultant. I'd go down and say, "What's this about an 'inbounds play'? I don't understand this." He'd say, "Okay, here, we'll draw up the play. And he would draw up an inbounds play that he thought I was capable of teaching my kids. And then a week later he'd call me on the phone and said, "Marietta, guess what? UCLA is using our play." [Laughs]

TI: That's funny. That's a good story.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.