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TI: And you were talking about a difference of about, what, ten years? Or how many years, when you were at Immaculate, when you graduated from Immaculate and then...

HH: Oh, went back?

TI: Yeah.

HH: Let's see. Maybe it was ten years.

TI: Okay, ten years. Were there some of the same teachers that were still there after ten years?

HH: No, uh-uh. Because when I went back, it was a middle school. When I graduated, it was high school. So I graduated in '57.

TI: But when you came back ten years, did you ever talk to the upper school teachers to see what had happened in those ten years?

HH: We talked on the phone. [Laughs] And I encouraged one of them to write a memoir or a book about what happened.

TI: But it sounds like your experiences going through the Catholic schools was very different than what you were witnessing as you were a teacher. So what do you think the difference was?

HH: The difference between when I was attending school, not teaching?

TI: Yeah. The differences when you were attending versus Catholic school versus when you were a teacher at the school, kind of a decade later or so. What had changed?

HH: The whole culture of the United States, I think.

TI: So what year is this? This is going from the late '60s, or, I'm sorry, early '60s to early '70s?

HH: When I was in Richland it was the late '60s and early '70s. And then, from there, the middle school, the Immaculate middle schools...

TI: So it would be kind of the late '70s?

HH: It would have been...

TI: Because you graduated in the late '50s.

HH: '57.

TI: '57, so that's when you were at...

HH: '57, Immaculate High School.

BY: And then you went to Japan for a few months and you went to...

HH: To Seattle.

BY: Probably about ten years?

TI: Yeah, so I'm just trying to understand the cultural shift. So it's really, I guess I'm asking what Immaculate was like in the late '50s versus what it was like in the late '60s, and that's about when you were, sounds like you were there around the late '60s, early '70s as a teacher. When you were that middle school teacher, when it was kind of like, you said, a circus, it sounds like you were there kind of around 1970 or so?

HH: Yes, yes, I think you're right.

TI: And so you're saying there was this huge cultural shift from, essentially, late '50s to 1970?

HH: Yeah.

TI: And along with that, a demographic shift, probably, that happened in the inner city of Seattle from, again, late '50s to 1970? At least the combination of the Catholic church there, or Catholic school.

HH: Yes, they changed.

TI: Because it's interesting, my perception of a Catholic school is it would be more strict than a public school?

HH: Yes, at that time, yes.

TI: Back in the '50s?

HH: Well, even if the '60s, and maybe the '70s when I first started at the middle school, Immaculate middle school. One of the parents who sent her daughter to our school, non-Catholic, she came to us and said she wants her daughter in the school because she'll get a better education. And the daughter didn't want an education so she didn't do her homework or anything. And the mother would come up to me and say, "You're making her work too hard." And we discussed all that, and what I was doing and all, and so she said, "I'm taking her out of this school." And so we all kind of were really happy because she was a quiet person but just had her set ways and just wouldn't want to do anything that anybody told her to do.

TI: That's interesting. Because I now realize, my age, I'm that middle school age. I was at that time going to Sharples Junior High School in 1970, and I would walk to that junior high school -- it's now called Aki Kurose middle school -- we'd walk next to St. George's, and there's a Catholic church right there. And then I'd always remember, oh, they were so much more strict, they had to wear uniforms, and I went to the public school. And so it was a very different environment because I thought of St. George's being much more strict than the public schools. That was 1970s.

HH: I guess, yeah, they were still strict at that time, but not as strict as in the '50s.

TI: In the late '50s?

HH: Yeah.

BY: So how many years did you end up teaching then?

HH: Teaching itself, classroom teaching was, I think, nine years.

BY: And then you were in administration after that, then?

HH: Yeah, about three years.

BY: Okay. And so looking back on your teaching career, what were the highlights for you? Is there anything, a student you remember, a particular thing that happened, anything that really stands out to you?

HH: The Immaculate middle school, the whole thing. [Laughs]

BY: That's it, huh?

HH: But yes, there were some really outstanding students. Well, just what you want from a student, cooperative, bright, at least somewhat. Leaders. I still am in touch with one of them.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.