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TI: Going back to your research, was there anything in particular, or what are some of the things that you found that you felt were really interesting about your dad?

MG: Well, some of the things I found were... and actually, I was familiar with this research, that particular research that I did because there were a lot of newspaper articles of this kind of thing and they were just kind of languishing in boxes in my house until I guess I was bored or something when I was in high school, and I'm actually the one who ended up putting them all in scrapbooks and so forth. So I was, had kind of really familiarized myself with those at that time. So this was a matter of going back and reviewing and refreshing, but I think that the thing that struck me the most about everything that I read, you know, I mean, people say nice things about people when they retire and when they die and all this kind of stuff, and so that's to be expected. But there was just so much, I felt, real, genuine appreciation and affection for my dad that I saw in these things. And not just what they said about him, but what he did. For example, there's one article which I have made copies for you, and it talks about Brotherhood Week at Collins Fieldhouse, and how that was somehow such a big deal that we had to have a complete article in the Sunday Seattle P-I or Times, whatever it was, about this and about this multicultural, which was not a term that was used at that time, or "diversity," I don't think either. But that these kids, an African American kid, a couple of Japanese kids, a Chinese kid, whatever, that were all playing on the same basketball team together, and I can remember looking at those articles when I was in high school thinking, well, so what? That's what my dad did. Why is this newsworthy?

TI: You didn't realize how amazing that was.

MG: No, and I think that that was one of the things that he did for us, was that he, as you said before, he brought his work home to us in this way. And so I grew up being, thinking about names and how important names are, and learning names, and me personally, from a very young age, being fascinated with names and what that said about a person, where they came from, what their culture was, perhaps something relating just to their family. But how significant the idea of a name was to an individual, that's the first thing a little child learns, is they learn who they are through their name. And how he was able to put that into practice in his work, and then pass that on, just very subtly. He didn't lecture me about that, he just told me stories about those things, and that just became just ingrained in me to do that. And so he would... shoot, I had a little train that was going there.

So I'll just jump to this. So then when I became a young adult, I worked on the playground and then became a teacher and became a mom, that was, it was all about learning the kids' names. That's the very first thing that you did, was you learned the kids' names and you knew who every single individual kid was by name, and that that was... that in and of itself, just knowing the kid's name was such a huge bond and a recognition of them as an individual. So it was like the sports thing where you're all in there as a team, but yet everybody is still an individual. And I can remember going to Husky basketball games with my dad when he was much, much older, well after he retired, in his seventies, probably, and inevitably somebody would stop him, and it usually, as it turned out, would be an Asian person, typically a Japanese, possibly a Chinese person, and they would stop him, and they'd say, "Gene." And he would literally, it bothered him if he couldn't get the name instantly, but he would get the name. But it was probably one of the hardest things he found about getting old, and one of the few things of frustration that he just could not accept that he would not be able to remember these names. And then usually that would be followed, the, "Hi, Gene," and then, "Oh, it's Bob," or, "It's John," or it's whoever it is, or the Japanese, it was Shobo or, you know, whatever their name was, their Japanese name was. And then the next thing would be, "Gene, I want to talk to you about that foul you called on me back in 1942." [Laughs] And then, of course, they'd laugh or whatever. But for him it was all about those, it was all about those personal connections. And I don't remember any real specific elaborated stories, but I just know that he talked about the kids, the Japanese kids, the Chinese kids, the African American kids, of course, they were "black kids" at that time was the preferred thing.

And I just know that I was just... with him, the other thing about him that I think was really amazing is that he could, when he had to discipline somebody or when he had to correct somebody, he could do it so quickly and so meaningfully. And just a couple things that he said to me at various times, and told me once and I never did it again because of that bond of respect and the fact that he didn't just arbitrarily always be saying, "Don't do this or don't do that." It would be only for very significant things that he would do that. Anyway, he was just, he was an amazing person to have as a father and as a role model. And one of the things that came up earlier was something about us being jealous. My brother is -- I don't always agree with him -- but he's absolutely one hundred percent correct in that I don't ever remember feeling jealous of him spending time with other people's kids or talking about all these other kids or anything. It was a source of pride for me and a source of just great joy, really, to, as I said before, to be that close to this person who not only cared that much about other kids, but whose kids cared that much about him.

TI: Marietta, thank you so much. This was a great insight into your father. So thank you so much.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.