Episode 18 - Irene Shiedecker

Welcome to Mining City Reflections. In this third part of our series, we shift to the oral histories of women currently living in Butte. I’m your host Marian Jensen.

In January, 1983 the Anaconda Mining Company that produced the bulk of the world’s copper in the 20th century announced operations would cease. From June of 1980 through June of 1983, nearly 3000 workers would lose their jobs. The women in this series of podcasts lived through that day which brought the once glorious mining city almost to its knees. We’ll learn how they survived and flourished.

In this edition we’ll hear from Irene Scheidecker, whose oral history was taken in 2018 by Archives Director, Ellen Crain.

A resident of Butte since the age of 2, Irene’s family story is unique, if not enviable. After all, who wouldn’t want to grow up with 15 brothers and sisters who worked together in their very own ice cream store. Trained as a chemist, Scheidecker tells her story with measured precision and calm, qualities no doubt learned in childhood when losing track of something or someone could have serious consequences.

“My parents came to love Butte and my dad was a great lover of history of all kinds. Our vacations were almost always… we could never afford nice, expensive vacations and go to a resort, but we always took drives. We’d pack the whole family in and my dad always wanted to stop in museums in every little Montana town that we passed through. It was as much to get the kids out of the car and stretch their legs and burn off some energy I’m sure.”

Both Irene’s parents grew up in Montana, her mother in the small town of Fertig in northern Montana, and her father in Livingston. After World War II Oscar ‘Pat’ Rice went to college on the GI Bill, studying electrical engineering at Montana State University where he met Catherine Alhquist . Cathy was majoring in Home Economics, a discipline she would royally display in her marriage to come.

Irene Rice Scheidecker was born in Helena, Montana in 1952, the fourth of sixteen children. The Rices had moved to Butte where Pat worked as an engineer for the Montana Power Company. Their family grew quite naturally, inspired by their mother’s gratitude of life’s bounty.

“It was just the way she lived her life, she was just always, always, always giving. And we all loved the babies we never… y’know every time she found out that she was pregnant I know she didn’t say, “Oh my gosh I’m pregnant again, what am I going to do?” She said, “Oh boy! We’re gonna have another baby!” Because that’s the way she was and the way we were, we just always celebrated every new baby that came and it was just a great and joyous time every time a new baby was born. We’d bring all our school friends in to peek into the bassinet at our new baby.”

Irene’s childhood memories are filled with stories of the simple challenges of family life with sixteen children. For example, how did they get from one place to another?

“At the time that our mother and dad got married… so all the people in my dad’s family had theses Jeeps, it was a Jeep station wagon. As we grew to be more children, the back seat had a small upholstered eat and then a wider upholstered seat and then my dad took out the wider upholstered seat and he built a wooden bench that went along the side wall in the back of the Jeep. That was how we traveled, sitting along that wooden bench. My mother had a big thick blanket that she put on the floor of the open space in the Jeep and that’s where the toddlers and babies could lay down and sleep as the car drove along. And there was a bassinet for the small babies and the bassinet could go in the Jeep as well. The baby babies in the bassinet and the toddlers on the floor on a thick blanket and the medium sized kids lined up on the wooden bench. My oldest brother, my brother Jim always got the one upholstered seat in the back.”

Or the challenges of finding a house big enough for everybody. Irene’s dad used his extensive handyman skills, not to mention his electrical engineer acumen, to transform a duplex into the family home, including an addition. It only took eleven years.

“My dad moved us over the Christmas holiday and my parents had been renting the house that they were in, it was a big old craftsman that we loved, and we moved into this house that was at the foot of the Big M on Lewishon Street. It was a very very old duplex, an upstairs downstairs duplex. But the price was right for my dad and he was a carpenter, my dad was a very capable person, he could do plumbing and electrical and carpentry. So he cut a a hole, a square hole in the floor upstairs and he built a ladder secured in the hole and that was how we got upstairs and downstairs in that house. My dad worked full time and because we didn’t hire any construction guys to come into things, that ladder stayed… y’know this temporary ladder lasted for I don’t know 8 or 10 years. So if you could imagine my mother being pregnant many times with a baby or two babies or a basket of laundry up and down that ladder from the upstairs to the downstairs. But we got pretty good at it, we didn’t know any other way to go! So it was only when our friends came over and they would look at this ladder and say, “Well how do you get down here without falling?” And we’d say, “well just turn around backwards and go down it like this.” We’d have to teach our friends how to go up and down the stairs in our house.”

And just imagine the line in the morning for the bathroom. Irene’s father created a multi-dimensional approach.

“Eventually he added the nice bathroom that my dad built… it was in separate little rooms. So, there was a room that had two sinks and a separate little door for the toilet, a separate door for the shower and a separate little door to go and use the tub so that multiple people could be in there. Somebody could be using the toilet while somebody else is brushing their teeth while somebody else is taking a bath and they’re not all in people’s ways. So that was how you had that many people in a house using one bathroom, the upstairs bathroom was primarily my mom’s and dad’s, that was where their bedroom was and the babies always slept in one room up by them. All the older kids were in the downstairs.”

Buoyed by the Catholic Christian Family Movement which had begun in the 1940’s, Cathy Rice had a gift for making childhood joyful. Irene remembers a memorable bus ride.

“The parish got this big bus and all the children got on the bus, and I guess all the parents drove out in their own cars because I don’t remember all the parents being on the bus. We drove some place for a picnic, but there was this really young priest that was on the bus with all the kids and the whole way driving to the picnic he taught us all silly songs, some of which I can still sing all this time later. Just funny little things like:

Shave and a haircut, six bits

Back and a belly rub, same price

And this was the priest on the bus that was teaching us little kids to sing these songs.”

With twelve younger siblings, clearly Irene learned her gracious, cooperative manner at her mother’s knee.

“I don’t know that it was so much feeling responsibility as just… my mother never made us feel like we were obligated to do this and I had sisters that would just go off and read their books and do their own thing when they got home from school. But I always liked being around my mom and so I would be the one that would be in the kitchen and I would be the one that on Sunday morning when everybody had to get ready for church I had to be the one combing the little boys’ hair or… I’m sure my sisters would say, “I helped with that too!” But y’know I just remembered that my mom would say, “I’m doing this, could you get the little boys’ hair combed?” Or whatever. By the time I was seven years old my mother could hand me a baby and a baby bottle and I would feed the baby while she fixed dinner so we all just did that. By the time the littlest children were born I was in high school and so those little ones were almost like my little children, I just adored my little sisters. The youngest, number 16, was the most colicy baby that we had ever had and us teenage kids would stay up with her and walk the floors at night so that my mother could go to bed and get a good night’s sleep.”

Irene attributes the perhaps surprising lack of chaos in a house of 18 to her father’s firm discipline. Along with a strong objection to television, and a refusal to accept gender role differentiation.

“The fact that my dad was a very strong disciplinarian. From the time the family was small, we had jobs and we knew what our jobs were, so when I was five years old I was standing on a stool to wash dishes. My dad was really… he was a harsh guy. He really had a temper, my brothers call it the O.P. Octave because his initial were O.P. and when he was mad his voice would raise a full octave and come at you at full blast. I was terrified, I’d run to the other room and hide when somebody else was getting yelled at and my brothers would just stand there and take it but as soon as my dad was gone they’d be laughing thinking it was so funny that they got yelled at by my dad. He thought the television was an idiot box and if he came in and people were watching a show that he did not approve of because it had violence in it or whatever… crude humor, he’d say, “Don’t think this is a very good show you’re watching.” And that meant you turn of the tv immediately. If he should come back a week later and somebody should be watching that show, he would cut the cord off the tv. Then we would have no tv in the house for months, and then some friends of the family would be coming, say New Year’s Day and the husband was a big football fan then my dad would splice the cord back on the tv and then we’d have tv again. So this probably only happened two or three times in our childhood but it was enough for us to know that if my dad say this wasn’t a good show we just turned it off. My dad didn’t believe that girls did girls jobs and boys did boys jobs so my brothers were always expected to help with the dishes and we had assigned chores.”

Pat Rice also had a high regard for his wife that included hiring help for the housekeeping. This allowed the house to be spotless for at least one day a week. One cleaning lady was most memorable.

“The cleaning lady that we had the longest, God love her, was named Louise Nichols and she showed up dressed to the nines; white pants, classy sweaters, nails all done, lipstick, whatever and when she went home after putting in a shift she still looked just the same. But Louise would take anything you left out and you might never see it again because Louise would put it away. She never threw anything in the garbage but it might be months before you found something that Louise put away because that house was spotless when Louise left.”

With parents who seemed to have a true understanding of the holiday, Irene remembers Christmas in a house with sixteen children as nothing short of magical.

“They’d get us all in bed and we did have strict rules when little kids got up way too early and caught my mom and dad in the act of filling the stockings. So then it was, we were put to bed and could not get up until 6 am. We’d be downstairs in our room all night long playing Chinese jump rope, playing card games, staying awake all night till 6 am so we could run up on Christmas morning. Y’know, nobody got huge amounts of stuff… you’d have your stocking with your little stocking stuffers and everybody got one really nice present. We always all got one new set of clothes and so Christmas morning you always had your one new set of clothes and your one nice present and all your little stocking stuffers and then it was just a magical day because everybody was playing with everybody else’s stuff and between that many children there was just a ton of new fun things, new games to play, new everything. Dinner was delicious but my mother didn’t have to work very hard at it we always had the same favorite traditional salads that got made once a year at Christmas.”

The idea to buy an ice cream store was the brain child of Irene’s ever practical father.

“The original plan that my dad had, because college education was a goal for him and he had all these children and so his original plan was that they would send the older children through college. Then when the older children had their degrees and got jobs then they would contribute towards sending the younger children towards college. That was my dad’s first plan, then my oldest brother Jim graduated with his degree in chemistry and the Vietnam War was going on so in order to not get drafted he joined the navy for six years and he got married and wasn’t putting anything back into the college fund. My sister Susie graduated with her degree in math and she got a job with the Anaconda company here in Butte as a computer person. I don’t know if she put any money into the college fund or not. The Genie graduated and got married right after graduation. Then I went to college, and I was the first quitter… I quit after my junior year and so I didn’t have a good job. I came back to Butte and I got temporary work working for Steve Hadnaggy who had just bought Big Sky Color Lab, so he was not only a photographer but he was processing the film for all of these photographers in the area. So I got a job printing school picture packages. To my dad this was not a good and acceptable vocation for me. So that was about the time that my dad reading the newspaper saw that this business was for sale; the S&L Ice Cream Store. So he asked me if they bought the S&L Ice Cream Store, would I be the manager of it. I didn’t have a decent job and I wasn’t going to school so I said that yes I would. That was going to be his solution to getting kids through college; they would all have jobs at the S&L and they would earn their own money and they would pay for their own college education.”

The Rices owned the S &L ice cream store from 1975 until 1986 when the last child had graduated from college. Thankfully, all the kids had strong work ethics because the store was busy. Twenty flavors of home made ice cream, and candy, with sandwiches, soup, and homemade pies added later made for success. The menu also included the infamous Sonic Boom.

“You put in the flavors for the sonic boom and you put it in the carbonated water but you didn’t stir it and then you spooned marshmallow ice cream topping on the top of it. And then you would give it to the customer with their spoon and their straw. As you set it down on the counter you would say, “OK, now you need to stir your own drink and you need to be ready to drink fast.” Because as soon as you started stirring it it would foam up crazily and usually made a huge mess on the counter, but customers loved that! We were always busy and just swamped in the summertime with people lining up out the door and just knocking ourselves out.”

Holiday specialities, some of which annually traveled far and wide, added to the S & L business.

“So we’d make these and people would call and ask for twenty ice cream turkeys for thanksgiving. At Christmas it was a Santa Claus, and these molds were so old that he looked like an old St. Nick from the 1920’s but y’know it was the 1970’s and 80’s and people still called. So we’d be filling all of these orders for Santas and turkeys, popping them out one at a time and individually wrapping them and putting them in cake boxes. Counting them out. We made ice cream cakes and ice cream pies and people would come order and ice cream birthday cake and we’d write happy birthday on it. Sometimes they had to travel to Helena or Missoula and so we’d have to put it in the box and wrap Rita ll around with layers and layers of newspaper, and apparently they travelled fine because those same people would come back and order one next time they came through town.”

Irene managed the ice cream store with her siblings as employees, all in aprons, and matching vests and caps, until she finally decided to finish her degree in Chemistry. She taught junior high in Libby, Montana, for one year but eventually came back to Butte and the S & L. In 1980 she married, Don Scheidecker, a regular customer at the ice cream store, and had children of her own, but only three.

Irene shared a love of history with her father that eventually led to her career as a staff person at the Butte Archives, which she calls the “job of my dreams.”

“History, and the history of Butte has been in my blood. My dad loved history and so when he moved to Butte, he loved Butte history. When we had visitors to town I was always the child that hung around and listened to their stories. When my dad would offer to take them up and show off the Berkeley Pit viewing stand, I was always the child in the car that went along and my dad had designed this big substation up there near the viewing stand. And So I would go… my dad had keys to the substation and we’d always take visitors there. And then my dad would drive them around the little neighborhoods of Centerville and Walkerville where all the streets were crooked and he’d talk about the reason they were all so crooked. My dad loved all of that, my dad loved that there was a street in Butte that was called Donkey Road, and when I was a little girl I thought that my dada had invented the name Donkey Road.”

She also has become a steward of historic properties in Butte. Another family project was born in 2003 when Irene convinced everyone to help save the Leonard Hotel, a nearly one hundred year old, distinctive Butte landmark.

Fixing the roof and restoring the lobby floor with sweat equity, the Rices saved the historic building from certain demolition. They eventually sold the building which is now a fully refurbished apartment building.

“I was very angry about how many of Butte’s really significant older buildings were owned by people who were not taking care of them until they became demolition projects. I was very angry about that. One day I was ranting to somebody about how it just bothered me that this person owns this property and this person owns this property and they’re all going to hell and the person told me that they didn’t own the Leonard Hotel, the person who owned the Leonard was from Alaska but he’s in town right now and he would sell that building for $50,000 to anyone that would give him the money for it.”

A faithful steward for her community, at work, and at home, Irene is now retired. She remains close to her siblings, some of whom live far and wide throughout the west, undoubtably a testament to the loving home her parents created. Her own home reflects the history of the town she dearly loves.

“When we looked for a place to live, we looked for a place to live in the part of Butte that I had been taught to love so we live right near the uptown, we live in the house that was the house of Larry Duggan the undertaker and his nephew Johnny Duggan after that so it was called the old Duggan house and it was the undertakers residence. We embrace that history, so of course when a job at the archives opened up it was the job of my dreams.”