<Begin Segment 7>

BY: So I know that, I mean, you are very heavily involved in the arts. Can you tell me how that started? When did it start, how did it start, what kinds of things did you do as a child or a teenager in the arts?

CH: So I always asked my mom, "Why did you sign me up for dance class?" And she never really could answer. She's say, "I don't know." But from five, even in preschool, I was in dance class, and in a very creative environment in a nursery school. I can even remember finger painting and the first smell of paint. And then from then, I was just signed up for every class. I was in dance classes, I was in art school, I started theater at the Drake University where I was going to grade school across the street from second grade. So it was just a big part of my world, but a lot of it was not at school, I think it actually saved me from what I might have been dealing with at school.

BY: That you had the art?

CH: That I had that. That I had an art teacher, and I was taught by artists. So that was extremely influential in my life. My theater teacher was not somebody that was interested in theater. She was an artist. Portia Boynton, how can you not be an artist with that name? At the Drake University children's theater, and Rose Lorenz was my dance teacher that I went to. My art teacher, Mrs. Brooks, she referred me to the Des Moines Art Center. So every Saturday I was at the Des Moines Art Center from nine to noon. And I think, I wasn't that great of a student. Like if I had a teacher I didn't like, I wasn't... and some of them were pretty mean, I remember, in grade school. And then I had that young German girl that I fought with all the time, so I would get in trouble in school. They'd switch us from classes, but the arts were a huge part of my life, all my life.

BY: And so was your mother interested in the arts?

CH: You know, my mom was very intellectual. I mean, she read a lot, she went to college, she studied architecture, but she did play the piano and she sang very badly, but she loved to play the piano at Christmastime or Easter or whenever it was, she played the piano. But it wasn't until years later that I realized that she had been helping with the costumes in a local theater company. And I saw her name in these programs that were saved in our house, I had no idea. She used to sew all my doll clothes, like the little teeny clothes. So yeah, she definitely had a creative side, but her life was being a nurse, which was very technical.

BY: And probably long hours.

CH: Long hours, she'd always do private duty when I was growing up.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.