<Begin Segment 19>

VY: Oh, how did you meet? How did you and your wife meet?

NH: It's funny, I was in my mid-thirties, already. I had one relationship about three or four years, it turned out a little sour. And I just didn't feel like going out or stuff like that. My family was always trying to set me up with somebody. This one guy, one of our customers used to go to L.A., he was like a broker, we'd buy plants, goes on, practically every week, on a buying trip. "You'd like to meet a younger..." her father grew ornamental plants outside, different type of nursery. I said, "Okay," I don't know why, I said, "Okay." And we met, and the following weekend, I drove down, I took Saturday off and I drove down, stayed at a motel near (her family). Did we go to Catalina Island? Yeah, we took the boat over to Catalina, rented a golf cart, I mean, one of those carts, a thing I don't know even how to drive. Three months later, I proposed. We've been married about forty-one, forty-two years, forty-one. But she understands the hours of a nursery person.

VY: When you got married, were you already running the nursery?

NH: Yes.

VY: Okay.

NH: Just starting to. Oftentimes, I have to say, my uncle and my dad, they encourage going to seminars put on by various universities. So we would go to Ohio three days, seminars. A lot of their programs for their students there, researching everything. And oftentimes, research from that turns out to be a regular practice in the industry. So you get the kind of outline and everything, you try it, and sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Went to Ohio and Seattle area, did we go to Florida? Might have gone to Florida. She would go with me, and because I couldn't go to all the seminars, she would go to a couple, take better notes than me. When she finished, she'd come home and redo it and it was all neat, like I was in a seminar. No questions asked, I didn't even ask her to do it, she just did it.

VY: Sounds like you guys have been a good team.

NH: Yeah, exactly, that's the word, team.

VY: So then you changed the rule and women could be part of the management.

NH: No, they couldn't. I don't know what exactly, they didn't say management. Because, like I said, we had women working at that time, couple of them.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.