Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: David R. Boyd - Marietta Boyd Gruner Interview
Narrators: David R. Boyd, Marietta Boyd Gruner
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 14, 2013
Densho ID: denshovh-bdavid_g-01

<Begin Segment 1>

TI: So today is Monday, October 14, 2013. We are interviewing Dr. David Boyd, and also in the room is Marietta Boyd Gruner, David's sister. And behind the camera is Dana Hoshide, who is doing this, and I'm the interviewer, Tom Ikeda. And so I'm just going to start with some basic questions. And so, David, can you tell me when and where you were born?

DB: I was born in Seattle, here, February 2, 1937, at the... actually, I think I was born in a doctor's office. We didn't have enough money for a hospital at that time. I was born in the, it's now the insurance building over on 45th Street.

TI: Okay, so on 45th. And what was the name given to you at birth?

DB: David Ross Boyd.

TI: And any significance to that name?

DB: Well, I think David was probably sort of a biblical name, and Ross was the name of my uncle, my (mother's) brother, who was a very wonderful man, young man, so I was always proud of both names.

TI: Good, okay. And so as a young boy, so your first memories... tell me where you grew up.

DB: Well, we grew up initially, where I could recall was on 55th Street, just off Meridian, between Meridian and lower Woodlawn ball field. And I went to McDonald School, we walked from there, (...) and then we were there 'til I was probably seven or... no, a little later, ten. And then we, Dad had found himself a wonderful house on East Green Lake (Way). If you take, as I mentioned earlier, if you go to the Spud's, and then you walk to the next block, it's the second block in from the corner overlooking the lake, big yard. And, of course, for Dad, the field in front, the beach in front, and the field house, so we were real beach and gym rats just like the Collins kids were down here with Dad. So it was wonderful. And all the kids then, some of the kids were born there, and all six of us kids grew up there, so that's our home, basically, the ancestral home in Seattle.

TI: So tell me about your siblings. If you can kind of go down the order...

DB: Helen Jean was the oldest child, and she was a very industrious and intelligent young lady, did well in high school, but she didn't go to college. That was her anticipation, and she didn't go to college, but she's raised, married a fellow who was in business and very industrious and successful, and they've raised three or four children, (...) and they're a very productive family.

TI: How much older was she than you?

DB: She's four years older than myself. And then my brother, Tom, who is three years older than me, was number one, the real athlete in the family, a real Bob Mathias potential, he could do anything. And he and Dad, of course, clicked, because of the sports and athleticism. My dad was a superb athlete as a young man, even in middle age, and actually, as an old man. But anyway, they connected very well on the sports, and of course, I had to compete with that. Because I was three years younger and a little bit more of a klutz, and so competing with my brother Tom was a challenge. But Dad and sports and the sports metaphor and actually playing games was a big key element in our family, and success and achievement was measured on the ball field, pretty much. So Bub then went to -- his nickname was Bub, he went to, with me through the school systems, we both graduated from Roosevelt High School.

TI: And Bub is Tom?

DB: Tom, yeah, his nickname. And we graduated from Roosevelt High School, and he went one year to Central Washington College of Education, then went into the service. And when I graduated from high school in 1955, I went to Central Washington College of Education, anticipating being a teacher. Dad always wanted to be a teacher, but through educational limitations and the Depression, family, he just never quite made it. So he did his whole career in the Park Service, Seattle Parks Department. So Bub was the athlete, and coaching and teaching, and teaching at home, and teaching other kids, any kids that came along with us, Dad would participate in helping him with his game or strategies or whatever. So it was, the milieu of conversation had sports metaphors. And then there was a hiatus, and then Marietta was born six years after I was, and she was a very good athlete, she still plays soccer with a more advanced age group, of course, and she was a teacher in special education -- I'll let her go into detail -- in special education, and she raised a family of four kids, and they've gone on to teaching and academic activities. And then we had another younger (brother), Michael, and Michael was again quite talented athletically and the like, but we found out that he was hard of hearing at about (two) years of age. Some question whether he was or he wasn't. Probably was a result of post-measles meningitis that injured the nerve. But from that point on, my mother became energized with mainstreaming his education so he wouldn't have to go to Vancouver and become a cobbler. [Laughs] That was always the death knell around our family. So she would, starting in the late summer, would then be petitioning the schools for kindergarten, first grade, second grade, to get Mike mainstreamed, and of course, all the other kids that had similar difficulties mainstreamed on and off into special schools and the like. And she won that argument. She mainstreamed it all the way up to high school, and I think they finally gave up and let him go. But he played sports, he lettered at Roosevelt and track and football. And then our youngest (brother), Dan, was (five) years behind Michael, and he had the same thing with the sports orientation and geared towards education. He was the one who, in the Seattle literature (...) he was a mountain climber as well, and he was the group that went up to Mt. Everest and didn't make the climb. I think it was... what year would that have been? '82. And he's a teacher.

TI: Wow, but a heavy-duty mountain climber, to do Everest.

DB: Well, they ran up and down Mt. Rainier like it was nothing. They even took me up twice, so it's doable.

TI: No, I've done that, too. It's pretty hard. I mean, when you say run up and down, that's not something you run up.

DB: Well, he did. And my own situation, I went to Central Washington College of Education, thought of teaching, but then I got more interested in psychology and then in science, so somebody said, "Why don't you go to medical school?" so I said, well, why don't I go to medical school? So I applied and got in several places, University of Washington, but then I was advised by one of the famous doctors in Seattle who was from South Park initially as a kid, William Hutchinson, who was the senior surgeon over at Swedish, and that's Fred Hutchinson Cancer Institute, and they were South Park kids. So he sent me off to talk to Bill Hutchinson, he said, "If you want to be a real doctor, you go to McGill University, and so I did. And so there I met my wife Joyce in anatomy class, and we chummed up in anatomy class and other studies, and got married and started having children right away, and graduated with two children, two MDs, and she now is a pediatrician in public health, and then I took off into surgery and some other kinds of things. But we have four children, and Sue is the oldest one, she's a psychiatrist, and then Tom is a geologist and does disaster response kinds of things, and then Ann is here back in Seattle, the third (child), Ann, is back here in Seattle, and she got interested in geography in school, and I thought maybe she'd teach geography. And she ended up being the cartographer for Microsoft, all those maps, those are hers. And now she's with Google, so now they're doing maps all over the world. So I said, "You can't make a living on geography," but she's done quite well. [Laughs] And then our younger son Bob, he's like a lot of kids today, he's an expert in "computerology," and I have no idea except there are servers and things that they work with all the time. So he's with a contract group that works with... and he lives with us in the Washington area, in the D.C. area.

TI: Well, very, very accomplished children.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

TI: So I'm going to now move to your parents, and first let's talk about your mother.

DB: Well, Mom, it's interesting, they were both born in Pittsburgh, okay. Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania and Pittsburgh, Kansas. And Mom grew up in a, probably of the time, a middle class family, probably religious, and probably pretty traditional for the area. She and the family moved to Seattle early on, and remained here. Had a difficulty in the family with the husband, and so her mother, (our) Grandma Werner, really raised these children in very tough times in the Depression.

TI: This was in Seattle?

DB: In Seattle. They lived in, settled in the Green Lake area, and so that's where they were. Mom, Virginia Boyd, had two brothers, Tom Werner and Ross Werner. If you read the annals of sports in those periods, it was Tom and Ross, who were the leaders of the Alpine Dairy Amateur Athletic Union (basketball) clubs. And that story evolved later on with Dad competing with Collins kids against Alpine Dairy, and he, being the coach and manager of the Collins kids as they were called -- and these were men, of course, now -- but they were men that came from Collins, men's senior basketball, and they played with Alpine and the Werner boys. So anyhow, my mother is now married to Dad...

TI: So she has to, whether her brothers or her husband --

DB: Yeah, in Royal Brougham's column it was an issue, "Who is Virginia rooting for?" and all these things. [Laughs] So that was a little bit of a storyline. But she became very interested in handicapped children, and did a wonderful job for the kids in Seattle, especially the hard of hearing kids, getting them mainstreamed, making it a Seattle Public School responsibility. And she was, I'm sure they had her picture on the wall down at the Seattle School system, because I remember about August, I can see the war party starting, how she was going to get Michael into the sixth grade, then Michael into the seventh grade. But she brought along with her all of those other kids that required...

TI: Right. What a tremendous advocate, not only for your brother, but then for all those children that were able to take advantage of it.

DB: Well, she modeled her program after the Spencer Tracy program. Spencer Tracy, (...) not well-known fact, he had (a deaf son), and he mainstreamed in California, that was her model. She did it basically for the Seattle system, and very few people know about that. To her credit, her perseverance, intellect, and drive (got it done).

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

TI: So let's move to your father.

DB: Well, Dad was born in Pittsburg, Kansas. Pittsburg, Kansas is in mid-Kansas, and actually, around it, it's a lot of lead mining. And I think he early on figured out that lead mining is not a very pleasant job. I'm sure he didn't have all the health hazards categorized and all that, but it certainly was not very popular. But he was obviously a natural athlete at the time, and he was playing basketball, I presume, in the school playground in Pittsburg, Kansas. And there was a man there standing at the chain link fence and said, "Boys, come over here." He talked to them a little bit, and he says, "Why aren't you in the YMCA where they have a gymnasium?" They said, "We don't have any money." So he says, "You go home and tell your folks that I'll pay your way into the YMCA if you will go." Well, they ran home, he paid. And Dad remembers this as somebody helping a kid in sports get access into the real world. And so he played at the Y, and then he was a Y participant in swimming and basketball, and I'm sure some sports leadership for younger kids and the like. And he used that when he got through high school. He was actually an all-state Kansas high school basketball player when he was young, and then he decided to go on to Chicago. He went to Chicago basically to work for the YMCA, but what he ended up doing, he was a lifeguard at Oak Street Beach. If you've been to Chicago and all the beaches along the way, and if you look out from Oak Street Beach, which is in front of the Drake Hotel and that, there are these water pumping stations out there, (one mile) out. He would swim out, he and a couple other guards would swim out to the pumping station every morning just for a tune up. This guy was a marvelous swimmer. And then he would work at Marshall Field's in the wintertime and stocking shelves, and, of course, be became a historian of Chicago. He said he'd just get on the L, he had twenty-five cents to get on the L, and he'd never get off all day. He'd just go all over town. But he was always interested in people and things and discovering them himself. But then he gets a tip that there's a job in Seattle, about 1928, there would be a job at the YMCA in Seattle. So he actually came to Seattle about that same time as my mother.

TI: And about how old was he when he came to Seattle?

DB: Oh, he was about twenty-four.

TI: So a young man.

DB: Young man, maybe even younger. Younger? Twenty-two?

TI: But he didn't have the opportunity to go to college.

DB: Well, no, it wasn't... back in those days, kids of college graduates went to college. Blue collar kids -- not 'til the GI Bill came along did it really open it up to all of the rest of us. Because you really had to have a family, you had the mechanism to get to college, you had to be geared that way, and you had to have the money. (...) But he did come to Seattle, and he did try college. He was in the PE course over at the University of Washington, so he was trying to go to college. He came out here under the auspices, not a contract, but the auspices that there was a job at the Y, and it didn't pan out for him. I'm not quite sure, I think either wasn't impressed with the programs they had the Y or whatever, but it didn't fly.

But he somehow comes in contact with the Seattle Parks Department, not a hard intellectual leap, but I'm not sure how he did. And they assigned him out to Camp Denny. Camp Denny is now just a picnic area, but it used to be a boys and girls overnight camp where they would send kids from Madison Beach on the ferry over to Kirkland, and they would stay a twenty-four hour period and they would have games and swimming and all kinds of activities. They had a horse, they would ride a horse, and it was an early, one of these slip lines that kids can slide down, and they had a wonderful time. So he was out there in the summertime at Camp Denny for about four years, and then in the wintertime then he was the assistant athletic person down at Green Lake Field House, the field house opened about that same time, and so he was the first... '29, so he was the first one, and he worked down there with...

TI: That's the existing field house?

DB: The same field house, yeah.

TI: Okay, so classic old field house.

DB: Classic old field house. Well, the real classic one was Collins, of course. Collins looked like South Park. I don't know if we have a good picture of that or not. But he worked there as the assistant for four years, and he met the Werner boys. They played on his basketball team. And the Werner boys introduced him to Virginia.

TI: Had a sister, right?

DB: And so that's how that whole connection came.

TI: Well probably you almost needed the Werner boys to, what's the right word, approve of someone. [Laughs]

DB: Well, there was probably a little of that, too. But they stayed together as a fishing group, as a family group, and as a fun group, and we all, it was one family, just that one or two nervous seasons when Collins was playing Alpine at the AAU playoffs, was a little tense.

TI: So where was Alpine?

DB: Alpine Dairy was the company before Darigold. It was stationed in Issaquah, basically, but it was Alpine Dairy, and then it morphed into Darigold. It started actually as Hersheys Horlocks or something like that, and there was a Swiss fellow, the name slips me right now (...).

MG: Hans.

DB: Hans (Forster). And he was interested in sports, so they always had... a lot of industry in those days had these (teams), they were basically semi-pros, nobody got paid.

TI: But where were they based out of?

DB: Oh, they were through Seattle, but the home office, the farm office, was in Issaquah.

MG: Milk distribution, I mean, milk delivery, home delivery of milk.

DB: Right now that farm is under twenty billion tons of cement. [Laughs] So he then went from there to South Park, so his first job where he was the director of the program was at South Park, and he loved South Park.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

TI: And about how old was he? He must have been like twenty-eight or so?

DB: Yeah, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, something like that. So he was the director there, and a lot of the remembrances, the Hutchinson brothers as I mentioned, it seemed like everybody we met, every place from here to Chicago to New York or wherever we'd take a trip, there was always somebody from South Park that showed up. And so he made a huge community impact. You remind me that the Japanese community was in South Park, again from, I'm sure...

TI: Yeah, my father-in-law was raised in South Park, and he recalls a really strong Italian community.

DB: Right. Well, with the same farming communities there with the Italians who were out in the Duwamish valley. That park, by the way, it's still a park, and the field house, I think, is gone. We actually have the brass frontplate of the South Park, they gave that to Dad. He may have opened up that park gymnasium as well. But anyhow, he loved South Park, he has a lot of memories there, and a lot of friends, and that pops up all the time, South Park. Whenever he was stuck, he'd say, "Well, he's from South Park." Couldn't introduce him, but he said, "He's from South Park." But then he moved to Collins. We figured he moved to Collins in 1937, is that, Marietta, what we thought?

TI: So right about the time you were born.

DB: Yeah. So '37.

TI: Now do you know why they would move around?

DB: Well, I think there were just job opportunities and just move up. I don't know if there was a hierarchy of one being better than the other, (...) and it was a little shorter drive for him. But he worked off hours. In the parks, they started at two o'clock, and he didn't get home until eleven o'clock, so he was off traffic -- and there was not much traffic in those days -- so I don't know if there's any considerations. Except Collins, as we kids grew up, myself, and I think my older brothers and sisters and Marietta later, Collins was the place. I mean, (...) South Park for us was a little bit of a historic... you know, he was also at South Park, and he was also at Green Lake, but Collins was his program.

TI: So when he got to Collins, what was, was that a new facility, was that an older one?

DB: Well, I think it was probably... they were all, the Seattle Parks Department was developed by this guy (Olmstead), the guy who had done the New York Central Park. And in the 1920s there was a great public community appreciation, people were really building the community. You don't see that anymore. But you know, it was a great, so where are we gonna have the parks for the old folks? Where are we gonna have the places for the kids to play? So it was in the boom of social responsibility, public social responsibility and community, they looked to city government to do those things. So there was -- I was thinking on the way over -- there was nine or ten Parks Department field houses around town, and Seattle, I think -- this statistic might not be accurate, but had more park playing space, I mean, small little ball fields to bigger complexes like Woodland Park and others, than any other place in the country at that time. So they had invested heavily into the park system, and of course the beach system, starting with Madison, Madrona, Mount Baker, Seward, down that way, and east and west, Green Lake, and of course Alki and Golden Gardens where nobody ever swam.

TI: Too cold.

DB: And then they had the one pool down at Colman, which is down at Lincoln Park. So Dad was, knew all of these places, but Collins was his emotional connection with the community.

TI: Well, it's kind of interesting, during that time period, in terms of if you were a person of color, that was probably the community's field house you would go to also.

DB: That's right. Now, that community (...). We knew we were here, but in those days, there were these wonderful, large family homes that were owned by Jewish urban types. And they were moving out by that time. There was some Jewish representation, a fellow by the name of (Bernie Krebs) played on the senior men's team (...). But by that time, the Chinese community had made a foothold, and the Japanese immigration was into the central city, so it really became... it was multiracial for sure, diversity before people made a slogan out of it. And the black community when (Dad) came here was maybe even nonexistent but slight. But with the war industry, then more black kids moved into the Yesler Terrace and that area black families and kids. But it was primarily an Oriental facility, and remained so during, right up until the difficult times. And I was available, in other words, he did a lot of babysitting with me because I think Mom was glad to get me out of the house, but I came to Collins a lot when I was a young kid. Five, six, seven, and I don't know I could have stayed here all day until ten o'clock, but there may have been special, certainly Saturdays. So I met and played with a lot of the kids we were talking about today, and remember them in kind of the child remembrance (...).

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

TI: But tell me about how your dad sort of ran Collins. So he was in charge, and how big of a program...

DB: Well, they had, he was the athletic director. There was a woman in the program, too, for women's athletics and community action, and so they had other, they had sports, they had arts and crafts, they had (plays). We never saw any of these, because I think that era kind of left, but there were pictures of people that were in plays, classic Shakespearean plays. (...) If you went up on the stage, the end of the basketball court, which was a small condensed court, if you went behind there there was a lot of dropdowns for various scenes and whatnot, and they were (from) an era that... and I think the Jewish community was really more into those kind of artistic activities than others.

But the sports followed the seasons, so you played baseball and softball in the spring. Summer was the track, okay (...). Of course, kids went to the beach as much as they could during that time. Then basketball, football, tag football -- the Seattle department never got into tackle because of equipment. They had touch football and basketball. Basketball was the big theme, every neighborhood had basketball teams. Now, the way they ran those was there a segregation of kids based on size, and the determinate was weight. So they had ninety pounders, you could be, like I say, seven foot tall, and some of 'em were, and still ninety pounds. But that was the determinate thing, and then the kids would develop in normal ways later on. And there was 90, 110, then 120, and then I think there was a junior men's league, which would have been high school kids that maybe didn't make the high school team, or as some of the coaches did, sent their kids down to the field house to improve their skills.

TI: Almost like a JV or something.

DB: Yeah, like a double-A or triple-A. And then there was the senior men's, and of course, the senior men's were the ones we talked about already that went on to semi-pro play, basically. So basketball was the big thing. Now, Collins Field House was a small gym. So the half court was too small to play basketball, so the half court line was always set back to the other foul ring. You had to take it out only a quarter of the way down the court. Now (my dad) taught fundamentals... I believe my father could teach anybody that would pay a little bit of attention how to become a good basketball player. I have no doubt, (...) I will stand behind it. Because he took real stumblebums and got them to play, got them to dribble, got them to pass into the post, got them to cut off the post, stay between them and the basket on defense. So he taught these fundamentals to little toddlers. Because I was young and I was toddling along anyhow, they actually developed a group of people below the ninety weight level, and somebody came up with the term "pickleweights." So I was a Green Lake Pickleweight, and there was Collins Pickleweights. And like Marietta said earlier, we used to go, probably not at that level, but soon after that, we were taking the city bus from Collins to Green Lake, and it was perfectly safe. You'd have a little note there, you're supposed to transfer at Montlake or wherever it is, but it was perfectly safe.

Now what Dad would do -- and these were things, (when) I got into surgery and then I got into organization of trauma centers and trauma systems, and got into the government doing the same thing. And the one thing I've learned from him and all the things I did later is (that) everybody plays. Everybody plays off the bench. Dad would be in a competitive game, and he would still take Tommy Ikeda or whoever it was...

TI: At the end of the bench.

DB: Off the end of the bench, and he would play. And he would play responsibly. He may not score, but he would hold his own or whatever. This was... and I knew it was the right thing to do then, but then I realized how creative and how bonding that mechanism is. So there's not just the superstars, but there's the guys out there grunting it out every practice, but every kid played.

TI: That's fascinating, because I did quite a bit of coaching, too, and so I coached the soccer team. And that was my rule, too, and I told the boys that. Because I said in terms of the team improving, what's the best thing we could do? And the boys quickly realized if they helped the weaker players, that would improve the team much faster than anything else.

DB: Well, these kids become coaches, too. I mean, Dad now had a coaching staff. Because these kids wanted Joe Klutz to be better. Says, "No, no, you're shooting off the wrong foot." So everybody's a teacher. So I picked upon that instinctively or intellectually or whatever, and I said, "That's a winning principle in everything you do." And for me later on, to organize a very complicated trauma, emergency medical services system -- I'm getting a little wordy now -- but I would make sure everybody played. It brings people into the program. It's all those corny little things, you're part of the team and everything, but it really works. It really works.

TI: So you saw that in practice.

DB: I saw it in practice, yeah. And the other thing on the beach, you know, you, we were talking earlier, I may have taught you how to swim at Mount Baker when I was back there. But he could teach any kid to swim. And he took this on as a moral responsibility. Everybody in our family learned to swim. You couldn't be in the boat, you couldn't go out fishing, unless you learned to swim. So we all learned to swim as you did down at Mount Baker.

TI: Well, I actually learned at the Y, because I was a more of a pool swimmer than a beach swimmer. [Laughs]

DB: I had a group of Japanese kids that came down there with their mothers on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

TI: No, they tried to do that, but the water was just too cold.

DB: Oh, I know. Well, these women would say, "No, you get Mr. Boyd. Mr. Boyd say he'd (teach you)..." my feet were freezing cold. These kids were shaking, but they'd learn to swim. So anyhow, swimming and lifeguarding and teaching other kids to swim was a major theme with him (...). Now there was... he would actually, like I say with my brother and I, he would teach my brother, who was capable of this kind of coaching, more advanced and more sophisticated. But I learned coaching and I learned teaching from him. And I've used this, I think a lot of our kids in our family have done this. We really respect and honor him, not because of some accomplishments, but his ability to teach. We're all teachers in that family, and this is the highest honor that we could (achieve).

TI: Well, as I'm listening to this, I recognize the influence he's had on the Japanese American community for generations. Because sports, and in particular, basketball, is a big thing in the Japanese American... I mean, there are still sports leagues.

DB: Well, it's his story, too. I mean, the metaphor of that man helping him into the Y was... most in America, in the good old U.S. of A, with blemishes and historical events, one of the themes was underclass boys initially, but now women, girls, could make it, get out, could get visibility, and could get a scholarship or get exposed or associate with a different group of people through sports, okay? This is my dad's story. You go through the great sports, the kids now, the Caribbean, look at the Caribbean ballplayers that come here and play baseball, they get here by sports. And they then can branch off into other things: they go into medicine, they go into this (or that). But they got that lift up in America, into a totally democratic system, which is run by a set of rules, and played fairly, everybody has, on the same playing field and you just compete, and that was his thing.

When we would come down from Green Lake, I then played on the Green Lake squads, pickleweights, ninety pounds and (up). Dad would referee, the home park person would referee the games, (...) and hopefully they're true to the spirit, which Dad was, and I think the others were as well. But he would then come over and coach us. He'd go coach his people, "Look, you got to be at the post or whatever we're doing, then he'd come over and tell us what we were doing wrong.

TI: So the team that he was actually coaching against, he would help them?

DB: Right, he'd come over and help out. He did that not only (for) the Green Lake kids, I know he did that with every group that came through there. Because they couldn't send their coach with them, maybe they had a parent that comes with them. So these kids are now there, they're by themselves, they have no coach, so he would go over and coach the other team basically against himself. But his philosophy wasn't against himself, it was for them so they could perform well. He was a universal humanitarian person that I think is...

TI: Well, the other story I've heard of your father, so yeah, the sports kind of permeates it, but it was more than sports. Because when I talk to people in the Japanese American community, they would say that your father knew them personally, like by name. It wasn't like a team and organizing teams to play against other ones, it was like this personal connection.

DB: No, he wasn't the kind of coach just trying to turn out ballplayers that will make big teams and refer back to him. He was a people developer; he developed people and he brought them in. And so once he got them on the ball team, which every, like I say, every Japanese kid, I guess came, because they were told to come here and not be out in the street, "You be with Mr. Boyd. Don't go in the street, come here every day." So they were here, like we were gym rats, we were here all week long. But he was very interested in the people. So the basketball was just the mechanism, the arrangement of our social relationships, and then he was interested... because he would come and tell us about, oh, individual stories or culture, we knew more (...) about the Japanese American culture than probably any kids in Seattle, because we were told, we came down. He was interested in everybody as an individual, as a cultural group.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Can you give me an example of maybe a story that he told about maybe one of his Japanese players or the culture, maybe a food? Can you recall anything that he would do...

DB: Well, there were so many of them that he... Marietta, you got any?

MG: I'm trying to think. Like you say, there's so many.

TI: Like earlier you mentioned Shobo. Or maybe the way they played the game, was that different?

DB: Well, these kids were all, as we would say now, height disadvantaged, or height challenged. So they had to really play, play the game, in those days, weave in the back of the court, the weave, and you could run out the clock. And so that was a drill that they did over and over again. (...) He was very upset, like I say, I was... when the relocation thing came about, I, of course, '37, this is '42, but I just know it was a grim time. It was a tense time, and then looking back on it. So he was... 'cause he was an emotional guy, not outwardly, but you could tell something was wrong with him. So he was truly upset with this whole process and the legislation, and he mumbled things about, "These are the best Americans and there's no criminal record," 'cause he was interviewed by secret service on all the kids later that joined the 442nd and other special services. And they never had, no one had a police record. But I can remember then going down early on to Puyallup.

TI: So let me, for the people who are going to watch this, so the Japanese were removed from Seattle, sent down to the Puyallup Fairgrounds, so they were there behind barbed wires.

MG: But one of the things that I remember him telling us is they were at Collins first. They came with their suitcases in the gym at Collins and waited for the buses to take them to Puyallup. It really hit him.

TI: Oh, it was probably one of the kind of places where they assembled for the buses to pick them up.

DB: Right, a collection center. So I can remember going down there, he had a '41 Chevrolet. Everybody had, before the war started, the car that you had was the car that you kept 'til much later. And he had a '41 Chevy.

TI: So a relatively new car.

DB: Well, it was, they were frugal, and they probably bought it for seventy-five dollars. But you know, it was a '41 Chev but we drove it and patched it and got it though the war and a little beyond. But I can remember going down -- this is my own personal reflection as a five year old kid -- I can remember going to Puyallup. Probably recognized it a fairground, because we'd been to the fair maybe once before. And this incredibly austere and imposing barbed wire fences with the wire rolls on the top, and all these kids that I knew from before at Collins, they're on the inside of this fence, and I didn't know how to interpret that. I mean, I didn't know what was going on. But I then remember my dad going to the back of the car, opening up the car, and emptying basketballs, baseballs, catcher's mitts, catcher's masks, stuff that we said, expropriated from the Seattle Parks Department, or better yet, stolen from Seattle or anyplace else they could... so these kids went off to camp with Seattle Parks Department gear. And that one book that I showed you that I picked out at the camp down in California, Manzanar (...) -- I'm sure that's a Seattle kid -- talking about that sports equipment carried him through and the whole thing. But those were tough times for Dad, and tough times for the Japanese community, certainly. But I would guess he took that as hard as any white man (...) in the city.

TI: Do you recall anything that he might have said during that time when he was either handing out the equipment?

DB: Well, not at that time, but he was just so upset about the whole thing, I don't think he was too verbal. But at home, he would just... 'cause he could go off, he could rant. I mean, he's a talker, better than me, even. But he would rant about these kids, saying they were good kids, their families were good, there was never a crime situation, this is a political hatchet job. He just never accepted any part of that. And then he said, as he said later on, when the secret service would come to Collins because somebody...

TI: So these were the men, I guess, that he maybe coached that were trying to join the army.

DB: Well, that's right. They had the opportunity, as you know better than I do, to join up...

TI: And so probably not secret service, maybe FBI?

DB: Well, it was FBI, governmental check, whether it was FBI or secret service. But some of them, as you know, I don't know individually, but some of them became interpreters.

TI: So some of them served in the Pacific.

DB: So they had to have higher clearance. But basically there was a lot of them. Because this (...)... probably the only other person in the community that these kids had contact with -- I mean, they had schoolteachers, certainly, but there was the family, of course they were in Idaho. (...) But in Seattle, and the reference point was Dad. There may have been others, but it was consistently Dad. And I think each one of these kind of upset him more because here these (men) were volunteering to get into the army to prove that they're American, just was a bummer deal for him.

TI: Now, was your father... I mean, your father coached hundreds and hundreds of kids. Was it difficult for him to remember as the FBI would come with probably a file and ask about a name?

DB: No, he didn't. He had a penchant for names. Many years later, in 1970 about, he has a retirement party where he is honored once by the Chinese community and all the kids that played, and once from the Japanese community. He stands there in the reception line with my mother, and we'd see Ashidas and Ikedas and Nakamuras and their wives, sometimes an American wife, Japanese American wife, Japanese wife, whatever it happened to be. But none of these women had ever heard, or didn't hear commonly the native name. He would introduce these people to my mother and, of course, the first time to their original name. And he talked about these (and said) some of the (men), they forgot their native name. They were always "Jack," or they were always that, but he said he'd never miss. So for a guy to remember that over forty years.

TI: Especially those, all those Japanese names, some of them would be hard to remember if you're not Japanese.

DB: Oh, yeah. I think he was good with languages.

TI: How about nicknames? I mean the Japanese Americans had a lot of nicknames.

DB: Yeah, and they did, you know 'em better than I do, but he was familiar with them, he could call them nicknames. But they were the Collins kids (...)... he went on, as I said earlier, because he had, for his own career and retirement plan, (...) and took a rating and then got moved up. But they moved him out, I think, kind of out of spite, actually, moved him out of the central city. But he was off the job, he was off the gym floor, which I think hurt him in terms of his physical health, 'cause he started putting on weight. But I think it hurt him emotionally, was never quite connected with the community. He was down in Rainier, he had a lot friends down there, old and new, but he never connected like he was here (at Collins).

MG: He wasn't responsible for one field house either, he traveled.

TI: Oh, so he was kind of like for the region...

DB: Setting up schedules and tournaments and stuff like that.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

TI: I want to go back to Collins because now that the Japanese leave Seattle, and you talked about earlier how they were such a large component of Collins. How did Collins change? What happened during the war? What was Collins like during the war?

DB: Well, I think it turned into... the Japanese kids were gone, okay, so the Chinese kids, still came to the field house. And of course more and more black kids filled in as that population changed. And the kids that came to Collins, there seemed to be two groups, because I think the supervision. The black kids that lived -- because there was a lot of, there was police interaction -- the kids that lived at Yesler Terrace was always a problem. Those kids were always in trouble (...)... but the kids that came to Collins, and I'm not giving you scientific analysis here, but the kids that came to Collins, the black kids that came to Collins, did not get into trouble that I know about. And some of 'em went on to responsible leadership positions in the community. And one (...) David Holden was a musician. But that era -- oh, when they came back, then I think it was kind of business as usual. The kids were back, and they maintained those sports, and I think that the Japanese were a strong element of all the teams going forward.

TI: Right, so after the war, the Japanese came back, and you played sports with some of them? I'm curious, did the Japanese Americans ever talk about where they were?

DB: No, we didn't. We were kids, number one, we were playing ball, number two, and we just, we never... at least I didn't. I knew... and there was a lot going on during the war. I mean, you know, there was a lot of hysteria and concern. Seattle, of course, you were here, it was a big port of embarkation, and every once in a while there was this fear campaign with the glass balls that were floating in and had to have the mines associated with them. (...) We were at war. But I think the relocation, I think bringing them back into the community, Dad was happy as can be, of course, and reestablishing all of those families. But there wasn't a lot of rehash or discussion of that, or recriminations.

TI: Yeah, the reason I ask, I was wondering... as a city kid, my field house was Rainier playfield. And it was a very diverse neighborhood, and I played not only basketball, but football down there also. And kids can be pretty cruel at times, especially around kind of race relations. I was one of maybe two Japanese on a team that was predominately African American and whites. And there were times -- and this is back in the '60s -- we would taunt each other. And I was wondering if that ever happened at Collins where, because there was Chinese and Japanese, who were actually at war, the countries were at war, and then you had the blacks, and then you maybe had Jewish kids, if there was any of that tension?

DB: Well, there may have been, but I never heard about it. And I know Dad would never have tolerated it, anything that he could supervise. I'm just confident; I'm not being Pollyannish about that, I just think that was probably a non-racial zone. I mean, everybody was there to play basketball, and everybody was there to learn to play basketball. And so I think (...) he was such a humanist and really a real democrat with a small "d," (...)... he may have had private sessions with his kids in terms of the families, the relocation, 'cause he was quite personal with some of these kids, and of course I was not old enough to be aware of that. And the many that came to our house at Green Lake over the years always with a present, Christmas, I thought tangerines only came from Japan. [Laughs] (...) But there was, and there always something, if he wanted something done in the yard or if there (...) was always a special (gift). If he couldn't steal it from the Seattle Parks Department, he would get it from somebody down in the (Duwamish) Valley. So (those) relationships just picked right up again.

And, of course, he knew, reading into it, he knew where a lot of these kids were going. He knew because he had talked to the FBI (...). But where I came back in, (what I noticed) is the kids came back in, they fit right back in. Seattle, I think, was not as racially harsh as other parts of the country. We were all first immigrants here, first and second, we were all Issei, Nisei here, and we came without a lot of baggage. When I went back east to school in Montreal, which is a pretty reasonable town, the animosity between religious groups, it shocked me. And I'm (then) a post-college young man, it was shocking.

TI: But yet there was those pockets. I, again, remember some... because when you're in the Park Department you have your neighborhoods, and then you travel right through the other teams. And so going up to places up north like Wedgwood and others, and we heard the n-word thrown at some of our teammates. And our coach, who was Jewish, would just get so angry that that would happen, and use it, to his credit, as a teaching moment. That this is not acceptable, and we're not to retaliate with other words, but we'll show them on the field.

DB: Well, that was everywhere in America. I'm not a blind fool with this whole thing. I'm just willing to bet you if we could replay or (be) flies on the wall, none of that was tolerated at Collins. (...) My choice to go to a big public hospital in Chicago, (was) a metaphor for me of the Collins kind of experience. (...) When I went to Chicago to be an intern, and looking for a place to stay, you had to watch where you went from block to block because this would be a black block and this would be a German block. And you didn't want to be caught on the wrong side of (...) the issue at six o'clock. (...) We never saw that in Seattle.

TI: Right, yeah.

DB: Seattle did not have a slum, Seattle did not have a ghetto. You had the inner city, you had this, but you know, the Japanese were moving out to Jefferson and Mount Baker and Seward Park and places like that. (...) And even at Roosevelt, which is probably the snobbiest school... we had two sectors (...). We had the Green Lake kids and we had the Laurelhurst Windermere kids. The way we handled that as Green Lake kids is we could beat 'em on the field. All the girls wanted to date us guys from Green Lake. [Laughs] Their fathers didn't appreciate this. But sports, again, for the underclass, the sports metaphor is a great American story (...).

MG: The tennis thing, one of the things that will be shown in some of the articles that I've given you, that Dad, along with Vic Denny, I don't know if you recognize that name, but he was a big restaurateur in Seattle and a big tennis guy, he was a Seattle Tennis Club type tennis guy, my dad and Vic Denny started a playground tennis program that was unique in the city of Seattle, getting the playground kids to have access to tennis that previously only the kids from Laurelhurst or Wedgewood or Broadmoor could do. So it became huge. And Tom Gorman, who's not Japanese or any other minority, but he is a product, the U.S. Davis Cup, everything, and he was a product of that program, that playground tennis program.

TI: I'm glad you mentioned that because the whole tennis program through the Parks Department, by the time I got around, was pretty big, and in terms of the Asian community, was the Yee family, Amy Yee, and she did a lot of that on Beacon Hill. And again, it was these lessons on the public tennis courts. We all played tennis.

MG: Some of that reputation, we'll say that my dad, he and Vic Denny were the two that basically started that program.

DB: Well, tennis, you need... it's extra equipment. Seattle didn't, Parks Department talked to Dad about this, but he said we can't afford it. There wasn't too much special equipment for the kids.

MG: A racquet and ball, how special is that? [Laughs]

DB: Well, a kid's got to have a racquet. But it was more, when we played baseball for the Seattle Parks Department, and at Green Lake especially, you know where the number one diamond is, a real hook foul got you a ball in the lake. So there was always a guy on the hitting team that always had to play the walkway out there to keep the ball... 'cause that was your one ball for the day. (...) Dad was well-known among everybody that works in the business, and Royal Brougham had articles on him all the time, the Collins kids doing this or Gene doing one thing or another, gave some angst down at the central office where they weren't too supportive of Dad. He was proselytized to go to Laurelhurst. They wanted winning teams in Laurelhurst, they couldn't win up there. They were always beat by not only Collins, but they'd be beat by Garfield, Rainier, and places like that. So they tried to get Dad to go out there (but) he wouldn't budge. They pressured the city council, (and) the director.

TI: Wow, that's interesting that they would have that kind of, they would use those kind of levers just to get a winning team, they would try to get the best coach in the city.

DB: (...) It's hard for people to identify with now because Little League this and Little League that (...) What the parks do now is they organize schedules, the field for other people to play. But the Parks Department was recreation in those days. The population was smaller (with) neighborhood activities. But to have a losing Parks Department neighborhood club was not the image they wanted. They were after Dad for years to go out there. He wouldn't even consider it. It would have been a short drive for him and other things, but he wouldn't touch it.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Yeah, I wanted to go back, I just remembered something. So your dad, when he was talking to the FBI about the Japanese boys who went to the service, did your dad ever talk about any of the Japanese that didn't come back, that were killed in action or anything like that? Did you ever hear any stories about that? Because several of them that were Collins Playfield kids, especially in Europe, they were killed in action.

DB: Sure.

TI: I had an uncle who was killed in action, and so I was wondering if your dad ever talked about that.

DB: Well, he did, but only in short and teeth clenched. He would have broken down. He would not have been able to do that. He knew about all of them, he told us about 'em. (...) (I can) remember (when) he heard from somebody who was (killed) in Italy in the 442nd. Then he'd go on a rant, (...) one of his lovable rants about how courageous they were, and they got more medals, and they were the best unit and this sort of thing. (...) He may have (talked) to the older kids and he may have to Mom, but that was tough for him to do.

MG: You'd get a little snippet, or you'd get a little whatever kind of stuff and then he would just shut down.

DB: But every time there would be an FBI guy that would come, (...) we'd know not every, but we'd know when an FBI agent had come because then he'd come home and he'd go through this -- again I use the term "rant," I hope the audience doesn't think he's a ranter -- but anyway, he'd go off on a, I guess it's a tirade, yeah, a controlled tirade. Of how these kids never, the families never, there was never a criminal record, there was never an issue with these kids to actually be investigated like this, he thought it was a crime. He was a real advocate and a real supporter. They were his kids. We were sometimes asked -- he was such a Collins guy -- and was so much time at Collins (...). We had pseudo psychologists in those days. They aren't on television like they are today, but people would ask us (...), "Aren't you a little jealous of the kids at Collins because your dad is down there?" We looked at them in bewilderment. "What do you mean, jealous? That's my dad." He was a universal guy. We were incredibly proud of him and what he did. And we participated, different age group you were in, but you were brought along. You were brought along and you were part of the process. We were never jealous. The amount of time that he spent, he was down there, like I say, in the wintertime the gym opened up, the field house opened up two to eleven, men's groups were late and women's groups were... so Tuesday was the women's day at the field house, he was home for dinner. The only time he was home for dinner was on Tuesday, late Saturdays and Sundays. (We) talk about doctors spending a lot of time at the hospital, he was a lot of time at Collins. And I don't think any of our older brother, sister, the younger kids, Mike and Dan, probably this era had pretty much gone. But us older kids never, I don't think, ever had a selfish thought in their body as to what he was doing there and why he was there and how much he loved it. I mean, this guy had enthusiasm. If you didn't love Collins before you met him, you would love Collins after you met him.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Well, and so I know the family sacrificed a lot by having your dad spend so much time there. But it was so special when you contacted me because I did want to share that your father, not only the community, but on a personal level, I talked about my father-in-law knowing your dad, at first South Park, then at Collins. My dad was kind of this gym rat at Collins, and both of them, when I mentioned I was going to interview you, just lit up because the stories that they told about your dad that I'm sure you're not even aware of, and how much influence he had on these boys in particular.

DB: And some of those, of course, were closer, and a lot of them came by the house. I got to meet them (again) as an older (person), when I was in college (...). They came to the house, and like I said, it was always personal. (Dad) would drive through, down Jackson, down Sixteenth, and (hear), "Hi, Gene." I mean (from) people on the streets. (...) If there was a mayor, he would be mayor of central city. He was the most well-known, popular, sports, and he always shopped locally. I think I told you about the only unpleasant part of my whole experience down here was when he'd bring me down for a haircut. There was one Japanese American lady who gave the haircuts. And I was a five year old kind of pudgy guy wanting to be sleek and thin and athletic like my brother, and she said, "Oh, Gene, oh, nice boy, (...) rosy pinky cheeks." [Laughs] That was torment. I used to hate it, once a month, I got the "rosy pinky red rosy cheeks" routine. But he was loved by this community, and I (know) it was mutual.

TI: Well, not just loved, but respected. Because you told the story off camera about how the Japanese elders actually changed when they did their Saturday program just so that the boys could have, do the sports and the...

DB: And he tells that story, and it was the one about, "Mr. Gene, you be here with Mr. Boyd. He's good, (you) play basketball." But (there was) one was the conflict of the cultural. The Japanese community did their cultural school on Saturday afternoon. (...) I was a surgeon at the Blackfeet Reservation (the) last year as my clinical work, and I tried to advise them to do that, and they didn't understand how to do that (...). This was Saturday afternoon, and this was, of course, in conflict with the sports schedule. So they made a corporate or community decision that they were going to hold, for these boys, maybe for all the kids, but certainly for these kids they'll have the cultural sessions on Sunday so they could play basketball and baseball at Collins. That's a tribute to a program and a guy who was running the program.

TI: Although the boys probably didn't like that. They probably thought they could get out of the cultural and just play sports, if there was that conflict. [Laughs]

DB: They were Americans. We're talking about Japanese Americans today. (...) Collins was a pleasant experience, and it was a pleasant place to work. Dad would not tolerate any roughs or hoodlums on the playfield. He would, mostly in the summertime when (...) people were hanging around, I know he'd be out there (...). And he's see some suspected, he'd go right over and chase him right off the playfield. I've seen him go into a group of guys who were, I don't know what they were doing, messing up somebody else, he'd go in there, and I don't think they had guns in those days, but they had knives, he'd go in and grab them and physically throw 'em out. Four or five big guys that he didn't want on his playfield, he would physically throw them off the playfield. So it was, at least certain times, it was a haven. This is the inner city, there was elements down here. (...) But he was fearless when it had to do with the protection and the safety of these kids (...). So we as a family, Marietta and I are teaming up on this one, and we've gone through our records to bring some other things that you can have, contributions from the Gene and Virginia Boyd. (...) The whole family understood what he was doing here and respected it, and each one of us have a time specific recollection and activity. But for me, it's a very core experience, one that has shaped my professional life considerably.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

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.

<Begin Segment 11>

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.

<Begin Segment 12>

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.