The Porter Sisters, Joan & Dianna

Oral History Transcript of Joan and Dianna Porter

Interviewers: Ellen Crain & Clark Grant
Interview Date: June 8th, 2018
Location: Butte-Silver Bow Public Archives
Transcribed: December 2022 by Adrian Kien

[00:03:40]

Crain: So we're here this morning with Joan Porter and Dianna Porter. We're going to start by asking you each to introduce yourselves. We would like you to say that we have your permission verbally to do this, and then I would like you to sort of talk each one or to the other about when you were born, your parents, your early education.

Joan: I get to go first because I'm the oldest and I'm Joan Porter. And I was born February 12th in 35 and I was born to Josephine Sullivan Porter and Harold Porter. And she was from Butte and he was originally from Mandan, North Dakota and came out here looking for work. And then they met. And so we grew up in Muckerville, what we called Muckerville, which was one of the five Irish neighborhoods up on the hill. And so we lived in the same house that my mother grew up in and it had originally been a boarding house that her mother ran. And so we just all kept living in the same three story house on Main Street, growing up across the street from the school, next door to a saloon, on top of a tunnel, a railroad tunnel. And I guess that's about what you would say about our neighborhood.

Crain: Did you go to St. Mary's?

Joan: I went to St. Mary's school.

Dianna: Okay. Dianna Porter. And I'm the younger sister of Joan. I was born in July, 1942. Even though we are siblings, we have different memories and different experiences because of the age span. So Joan can remember some things that I never experienced. So we come from different, it's almost like coming from different families in some way, because of the age span.

Crain: And you went to St. Mary?

Dianna: I did. I went four years to the old school and then we had the new school. So I spent four years and graduated from the new school.

[00:08:22]

Crain: Okay. So the large length of time between your births and the two of you, you have no other siblings?

Dianna: We had a brother. He passed away in 2003, and he was about two years younger than Joan and his name was Jean.

Crain: So there were three of you.

Dianna: Yeah.

Crain: So, unusual to have so few in a Catholic family, across the street from the rectory or next to the rectory. So did you?

Dianna: Well, our father died when we were young. I was just four years old. Joan was 11.

Crain: That does make a difference. Okay. Tell me what kind of influences your early education had on you guys.

Joan: You mean at St. Mary's? Well, I always liked school and I wanted to go to school before I was old enough to go to school. And so I always look forwarded to going to school so there was never a problem for me. I always enjoyed it. The influences that I had really must be that I really like learning because I keep doing it. Even now at this age. I keep going on taking courses, reading, just following up on things. So it must have been just an interest in learning that I got mostly from St. Mary.

Crain: And then you went to Girls' Central.

Joan: I went to Girls' Central. I went two years to the old school and then two years to the new school.

Crain: Okay. So you were there at the time that it was being built, the new school.

Joan: The new school, and actually most of us who went to the old school didn't like moving to the new school because there were so many rules and regulations that we had to follow. Whereas in the old school, I mean, you just went from class to class. It was all wooden stairs, all this, but we had all these regulations when we went to the new school and it just didn't feel the same. I lost some kind of spirit. Or spirit, I think that we got, we had in the old school.

Crain: Well, interesting. Give me an example of couple of rules and regulations.

Joan: That we had? You would think I would remember because I usually don't like rules and regulations. You'd think I'd remember them all, but it had to do with, one, you had to be quiet, when you were changing classes. Now, before we used to just talk and all that, just, that was all there was to it. We had to keep everything neat. And it wasn't like, you were not neat in the old school, but it was that you put things wherever you could, because there wasn't much room and there was just much more room. And the sense of, I guess, really there was a sense of cleanliness too, because it was all new tile, new paint, new, there was marble, there was all this, after just wooden steps and wooden floors. How it never burned, I don't know. And then I think there was really always the admonition. So be careful with things. Take care of things. You really have to take care of this, because . . .

Crain: Or the money's gonna go away.

Joan: But it always was, take care of things and like, we were so lucky to be there and we didn't really feel that lucky.

Crain: You wore uniforms?

Joan: We wore uniforms. Yes.

Crain: Dianna, early influences on your education.

Dianna: I guess it had to be the sisters also just because the devotion of the families in St. Mary's parish was such that the priest and the nuns were held with such reverence that we always did what they told us. I mean, I was a good little girl. I never bucked authority.

Crain: You didn't have the same problem with the rules and regulations?

Dianna: No, I just went along with rules and regulations. Yeah.

Crain: So you were, by the time you got to high school, then the high school, it's a little . . .

Dianna: Already broken in, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. And then it was exciting. One, at least pleasant memory about going to high school is every first Friday, we didn't have to wear our uniforms and we could wear regular clothes. So that was, that was a big deal. We all went to mass in our parishes, at least at St. Mary's. And then we walked down to, and we got to go to school later. And so we walked down and went to Gamers and went in and had a roll or donut or coffee, and we got to drink coffee then. And they had the cash register. So it was on an honor system where you put in what you owed in terms of the cash register. And then we walked over to school and that was always kind of a pleasant day, looked forward to good, or first Fridays.

Crain: That's a great memory. So let's talk about college.

Joan: Okay. I went to college at St. Mary's college in Leavenworth, Kansas. It was run by the same sisters that taught at the high school. And so that was very much an influence about where I would go. And then there were scholarships sorts of things that were offered, also. I remember thinking I really wanted to go to Gonzaga and the first time I saw the price of the tuition, I knew I was not going to Gonzaga and but I think it's interesting to note that education was so important to our mother that, who was a single parent and was working, that she mortgaged the house for me to be able to go to college and then paid that off.

Dianna: And then I think she then mortgaged the house again for me to go to college.

Crain: Really? What did she do for a living?

Joan: She was a secretary and then like a bookkeeper and she eventually was very wise to try to get into political positions, not running for office, but in political offices, because actually they paid more than the ordinary pay that she'd get. And so she worked in the courthouse and she worked in the Montana State liquor store down on Broadway, and city hall. And then she was a US Marshall.

Dianna: Deputy Marshall.

Joan: Deputy Marshall.

Crain: Oh, interesting. What did your father do?

Joan: He was a mining engineer for the company.

Crain: Yes. Right. So I want you to tell me the full name of the order of nuns that were in St. Mary's school and the high school and in Leavenworth.

Joan: That's easy if I say it, it's all three. So it was the Sisters of Charity of Leavenworth, Kansas.

Crain: Great. Alright, because I just, as time goes on in the news, that context of the nuns, do you call them the nuns? Did the BVMs teach at Central when you were there.

Joan: No, no. They taught at IC, I think. And St Ann's.

[00:15:33]

Crain: Okay. So you made the choice and got scholarships to go to Kansas. And what did you study?

Joan: I studied sociology and it really was, when I see young people now, how they plan what they're going to do and they get up at graduation and say where they're going to go and what they're going to be. I was at St. Mary's and could not tell you what I was going to do. And so they were lined up to, you know, for nursing or med tech or whatever. So there was sociology. So I just got in that line because it seemed like something I would be interested in. And so that's how I got into sociology and have never regretted it. I mean, I think it was just meant to be because it's always been an interest and it really does permeate your whole view. Even now you look at things from that perspective.

Dianna: Actually, I wasn't very original. I just followed Joan. I dilly-dallied in terms of what college to go to. And I wanted Gonzaga too, or Carrol. And of course it was too late to apply but St Mary's was, wanted us, I mean, wanted us to go there. The sisters here wanted us to go to their college. So I did, and I chose sociology too, just because it was, it was there, and actually, we knew some of the sisters at the college because my mother and I had made a couple of trips down there when you graduated. And at one Christmas, I think we went down. So we knew some of the sisters too.

Crain: Great. You both made a decision to go into the nunship . . .

Dianna: No, I did not.

Crain: Why did I think you did?

Dianna: I think you said once because I was such a nice person.

Crain: I think you're right.

Dianna: So you made that, so you made that assumption.

Crain: Absolutely. There you are. You made a decision.

Joan: Yes, I did. I say that hesitantly because I really thought I should stay home and work and help my mother and not go to the [inaudible] and, but my mother was very supportive of the idea of my going to the convent. And so I think that was part of the, not the impetus that wasn't the motivation, but it helped that she, and I kept saying, no, I wanted stay home and work. And she'd say, "No, no. I think this is a better idea."

Dianna: I thought that was for college, when you didn't wanna go to college.

Joan: Well, I didn't wanna go to college either. Yeah, because of that same reason. And you can tell who was in charge in our house. There was never any question that mother was in charge.

Dianna: Well, I think she felt a sense of loss though, because when you wrote and said you were gonna go into the convent, I can remember her sitting at the kitchen table and crying.  Yeah.

Crain: She would never probably have done that in front of you.

Joan: Oh no. Yeah. She almost, she really helped me pack the trunk to go because I dilly-dallied and procrastinated and she was the one that was helping do that.

Crain: So were you how long were you in? I have to say I know very little about the [inaudible].

Joan: It was two years. And then it was, I think, nine years in the convent.

[00:19:49]

Crain: What did you do while you were there?

Joan: Well, I, because, I had the sociology degree, then they were just opening a Kennedy Child Study Center in Santa Monica, California. And it was for children who were, what were called then, mentally retarded, brain damaged or emotionally disturbed, we've come a long way in our vocabulary on that. But because the sisters were just opening that in conjunction with the hospital in Santa Monica, then I was sent to Catholic University to get a degree in social work so that I could work at the Kennedy Child Study Center. So that's what I did. I went to Catholic U for two years and got a master's degree in social work. And then from there went to work at St. John's hospital or Kennedy Child Study Center in Santa Monica.

Crain: A whole new study of . . . ?

Joan: That was, it really was. Well, the Kennedy's had really put an impetus into that study. And so it was a very, very up to date, very modern building, very nice. And really then that we had a classroom where they had different teachers and some of them were, well, I think they were all charities and they had backgrounds in different areas like for the children who had some neurological damage, children who were emotionally disturbed, those that were mentally disabled. So we had six classrooms and then we had psychologists, psychiatrists, the social workers, and then all of the rehab, like speech and, I guess, some physical therapy, well physical therapy too, for the children.

Crain: So what year was that you went there?

Joan: Oh, you're touching on my Achilles heel. Let's see, I went, let's see, I think, 61.

Crain: Good. So tell us, you studied sociology.

Dianna: Yeah, I did. Yeah. And the same sister. She's a very strong person. She's from Montana, sister Francis Trees, very strong and taught sociology and very, very much into social justice also. And she had a tremendous influence on me. It was while I was in college that I got involved in civil rights and participated, well, participated in the NAACP, went to regional conference and also a national conference in DC and also coordinated a program for bringing whites together with blacks within the community of Leavenworth. And so essentially for whites to understand what it feels like to be discriminated against or how you feel in certain circumstances. So we expanded that beyond the students meeting with, uh, local African American couples to white couples meeting with African American couples. And then they took it over themselves, but it started as a college project.

Crain: Wow. That's really fascinating. So what timeframe was that?

Dianna: Uh, let's see, I went to college 60 to 64. So would've been in college when Kennedy was assassinated and the trauma with that. All the civil rights groups at that time suspended any demonstrations for the rest of that year in 63.

Crain: Sure. Uh, yeah. Interesting. Yeah. You were also right there at the beginning.

Dianna: Uh huh.

Crain: At the beginning of that. That's fascinating. So what did you do after college?

Dianna: Well, I joined something called extension volunteers and it's like, oh, Vista volunteers. That was the kind of government supported version of Peace Corps, but it was with the Catholic church. It was called extension volunteers. So I thought with my involvement with civil rights, they'd send me to the inner city of Chicago, but instead they sent me to Wyoming to set up a diocese and CCD office that's uh, Catholic education for children that go to public schools.

[00:25:12]

Crain: And how did you like Wyoming?

Dianna: I liked Wyoming. My job was to travel. The diocese was the entire state. So my job was to travel the entire state and go to all of the parishes, the towns that had a parish. So I enjoyed it. I liked it a lot.

Crain: Did you have terrifying winter experiences?

Dianna: Not too bad. No, I was in Cheyenne as a base, but no, not traveling, not scary traveling. No.

Crain: Yeah. Always amazing that people get through Wyoming and get stopped, stay in places. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. And so how long were you in Wyoming?

Dianna: Uh, two years. And then I came back to Butte. And one day this priest called me up. He was staying at the parish rectory and said he wanted to come up and talk to me as it turns out his name was Father Bauer and he was head of Catholic Charities. So he said he had a position for a case worker in Catholic Charities in Helena. And at that time it covered the entire state, covered the Great Falls diocese also. So for three years I was working mostly in adoptions and traveling the state, working with unwed mothers and placing babies.

Crain: And how long did you do that?

Dianna: Three years. Yeah.

Joan: She says placing babies. Like it was nothing, but she'd have . . .

Dianna: Well, I learned how to change diapers. I didn't know the first thing about that.

Joan: But putting them in the car and taking them some place in Montana.

Dianna: Several hundred miles. Yeah.

Crain: Before car seats were.

Dianna: Yeah. Right. A bassinette in the back seat, you know?

Crain: Yeah. Yeah. It's amazing. So you would work with an unwed mother.

Dianna: There were some places that there was uh, hospital in Miles City that was Catholic. And so they took in some of the girls during their pregnancy and so traveled to Miles City quite a bit.

Crain: Yeah, [inaudible].

Joan: But you should mention too then about Model Cities, you were involved in Model Cities.

Dianna: Well, that comes later though.

Joan: Okay.

Crain: So how long were you in California?

Joan: I was in California, let's see, till, 67. That was about one what, 5, 6, 7, 6 years. And then I was transferred to the mother house to teach sociology at the college. So I taught sociology there for two years, and then it was from there that I decided to leave. And so then I went to Ireland and I worked in Ireland for almost two years in a drug treatment center. They actually didn't have a drug treatment center. I had to do a, you couldn't call it a study, but to see if they really had a problem, because they really didn't wanna fund a program if they didn't need it and so decided that they did need it. So then I was the coordinator for the program.

Crain: So where in Ireland was that?

Joan: Well, when I first went to Ireland, I went to Cork and I lived with a family of a friend and they had a family hotel. And so I worked in the hotel. Then when I decided to stay in Ireland, I wanted to stay in Cork City, but I couldn't get work there. So I worked in Dublin at Jervis Street Hospital.

Crain: So did you have any problems because normally they wouldn't hire non-Irish nationals?

Joan: Well, at that time they would hire if they did not have someone to fill a post. So I just really kind of just got in just because they needed somebody and having had a background in the clinical work at Kennedy, then they let me stay. I mean, I didn't even know it was a problem till later, just getting there. But one thing I did wanna mention when Dianna said where she was, when Kennedy was assassinated, when I was getting my master's, we were able to go to his inauguration, the Kennedy's inauguration.

Crain: How wonderful was that.

Joan: That was really the connections the sisters had with different people was amazing. When we were in Washington this sister had a brother that sister had an uncle that so, and then as it turned out, all three of us that were studying at that time were from Butte. Then we had all that connection and that's with, in the Senate office and in the House.

Dianna: Mention their names, Sister Serena.

Joan: Sister Serena Sheehy and Sister Gabriela Murphy, I think, was her last name.

Crain: And just Serena went on to be -

Joan: Head of St. James hospital here in Butte.

Crain: So interesting. So that was fun to go to the inauguration. Did you get a big fancy dress? Or did you wear a habit?

Joan: We wore a habit. Let me tell you, we didn't get to go to the balls at all. We had no, I remember it was cold. It was cold that day. Uh, but we really had very good positions up front and everything because we were from Butte. Honestly, all you had to do is say you were from Butte and besides being a nun, that was an entree to a lot of things that you could want to do there.

Joan: And that would've been on the east side of the Capitol at that time. Wouldn't it?  The east side, so the area was smaller. It's not like the mall now for inaugurations.

Crain: And that would be when Mansfield would've been in.

Joan: Right.

Crain: [inaudible] All right. So, you went to Ireland, worked, set up a drug treatment program, the first in Ireland. Fascinating. And how long were you there?

Joan: Two years. And then Mother was ill. So then I came back.

Crain: Came home in 1970'ish, about?

Joan: 71, was it?

Dianna: Well, she died in 71. So you probably came in 70.

Joan: Yeah, the last part of 70.

[00:32:45]

Crain: And you were . . .

Dianna: Well, Joan mentioned Model Cities. So when Mother became ill, then I left Catholic Charities and came back to Butte and worked. Model Cities had a number of programs, but one of them was to set up a family service center for counseling services. And then also we set up a well-baby clinic and we did, actually, some counseling for abortions, but we could, we were forbidden by Montana law at that time to do it. So we did some references at that time to Spokane.

Crain: So really that is the beginning of our current health department with family services. Isn't that right?

Dianna: I guess that's a way of looking at it. Yeah.

Crain: Yes. I think if you follow the manuscripts, that's what the manuscripts would say.

Dianna: Okay. I didn't realize that we were quite the forerunner of the health department.

Crain: You guys are quite the forerunners.

Dianna: So, we were located in the old St. James hospital.

Crain: Oh, interesting.

Dianna: There was a halfway house there too. So it was a little bit of everything. They were really utilizing the St. James building at that time.

Crain: And so, and then did you do family counseling at that time?

Dianna: It was more individual. Yeah. Okay. But we hired psychologists from Warm Springs, so they came in and did some of the more, kind of, intensive counseling.

Joan: You had a psychiatrist too, didn't you?

Dianna: Oh yeah. We had a couple of psychiatrists too.

Crain: So I was intrigued by that because that initial study to get Model Cities into Butte, one of the top concerns they had was that they felt that families were in crisis here. Marriages were in crisis here. Alcohol use amongst men and families and abuse of children and women, and that all this was circulated and that there were absolutely no mental health facilities in the community at all, ever. And that was one of the biggest crisis. So meeting that need was so essential. You must have, oh, my word, you must have been overwhelmed with people's sad lives.

Dianna: Yeah. It sounds like, I just said, yeah, like it was casual, but it was just something that we jumped into. The director of the center was Becky Harrington and she and her husband, she had had some experience at Warm Springs too. And he was a lawyer who had legal experience too. So the personnel were good and a couple of nurses on staff also, as well as bringing in some of the personnel from Warm Springs. Yeah.

Crain: Great. So then what did you do?

Dianna: Let's see then after mother passed away, I really wanted to go abroad. So I did. We had a cousin married to an English woman at the time, so I went to live with them, hoping to get a job there.

Crain: And where did you go?

Dianna: It was in Kent, County Kent, there, Ashford Kent. And I think their idea was that they would just offer it to me to stay for a short while until I got a job. But unfortunately, when I went in, entered the country, I was too honest, and the customs person said, "Why are you here?" And I said, "Well, I hope to get a job." And of course that was the wrong thing to say. So actually, I did kind of find, to do some social work in a hospital, but when I had entered and had been so honest, he had stamped my passport to not be able to look for a job. I should not be able to look for a job or get a job. So then I had to have that changed. I had applied to have that changed on my passport and then time went by and they lost my passport and such, but finally I decided to just travel and come home. So I traveled as much as I could on a Eurail pass.

Crain: So where'd you go?

[00:37:39]

Dianna: Just about all of Europe, Western Europe at the time and to the Soviet Union at the time.

Crain: Most remarkable experience on that trip.

Dianna: Yeah. Yeah. It was interesting.

Crain: What was your most remarkable?

Dianna: Oh, what was? Oh gosh, we went to the central Asian part of the Soviet Union where it's [inaudible] and Tajikistan, that was very exotic. That was probably my first experience where there was kind of like a Muslim population and the caravans and such historically went through, went through those areas. So it was very exotic. Yeah.

Crain: Did you travel alone?

Dianna: Yeah. Well, to the Soviet Union, I went with a group. It was something you signed up for. And so people came from all over. They were mostly British. Some communists going back to the home country.

Crain: Did you feel like it really broadened your thought process? The culture of places and people?

Dianna: Yeah, I think so. Yeah. And you just picked up with people, traveled with them for a while, then you went on separate ways. I stayed in student hostels a lot and with the Eurail pass, I could just jump on a train and travel all of Europe.

Crain: And so after you came home, what did you do?

Joan: Well, I stayed home and took care of mother until she died. And then after that, I went to work for a year. Dianna doesn't remember this, but she said, she thought I ought to stay. I was gonna go back to Ireland, but she thought I ought to stay. She doesn't remember this. She probably regrets it that she ever said that. But anyway, so I decided to stay and they had an opening at Warm Springs. So I thought, well, I'd been in outpatient services for a long time. I should see what it was like to have the inpatient work. And so I should really turn the mic off for the next part. So I won't say it, but John Sullivan was in charge. The head of the department was on vacation. So he told me to come to work and he hired me. So I came to work and then I got down there and they said, no, they couldn't, he couldn't hire me. So I came home. So then he called me up and said, "Yes, I was hired." So I went back down the next day. No, I wasn't hired. So, it took three tries, but then I worked for a year at Warm Springs. And that was really an eye-opener. You know that I worked on the ward where men had been on the ward before I was born. You know, that was a time when the population was just overcrowded. And so we were there, I was there for a year. And then this person that had hired Dianna for Catholic Charities, he was then the head of the social work department at Bozeman. So he told me there was an opening for someone to teach in the sociology department at MSU. So then I got that job and I was there for seven years teaching at MSU.

[00:41:36]

Crain: And did you like that?

Joan: I did, actually. I have to tell you, quite honestly, though, when I first, that first year at the university, I thought this isn't much different than Warm Springs. It was all of the political things that go into a university. I just didn't know that. I thought these were all intellectuals that would handle everything very easily but it was always a drama going on in the university. But I really enjoyed the students and I was in charge of taking students to all of the different places in Montana so that they could see different settings for social work. So we traveled all over Montana. I'd take a van and drive these students all around Montana. I was in charge of the internship program and did a lot of traveling there too, visiting students at their internship. So I really did, I liked Bozeman. I really did like it there, but then I don't know why I decided, well, I guess it's the politics of higher education. I really had to get a doctorate if I was, you know, do anything there. So I finally went to Pittsburgh for two years to study for my doctorate. And I'm one of those people that is all but dissertation, I didn't finish my dissertation. So then I came back to Butte, I guess.

Dianna: Yeah, because you were going with Harr at the time.

Joan: Yeah. And so then I opened up my own private practice in Butte.

Crain: And so what year was that?

Joan: Oh, Ellen.

Crain: Just gimme a decade.

Joan: Oh gosh. Uh, I would say probably late seventies. Yeah.

Crain: So how'd you meet Harr?

Joan: He was a friend of my brother's. I mean, they, he was just all around that whole group with my brother, was always around the house. It just seemed like I'd always known him. And so then when I came back we went out and then we would continued. But I went to Bozeman and so we just kept the relationship going in that distance.

Crain: What's his name, full name.

Joan: Jim Harrington, but he was known as Harr, H-A-R-R.

Crain: Thank you. When did you get married?

Joan: Well, this is touchy. We never were married, officially.

Crain: I love a dirty secret.

Joan: Well, we never, we never were and never made any bones about it, you know? But then we just had a common law marriage, so it was just filling out papers is what it had boiled down to. So then that we were considered married.

Crain: Well the whole insurance, property issues that you really have to take into consideration.

Joan: You do. And Harr always had this sense that he had to get this all taken care of because he was sure he was going to die before me. And I kept saying, I'm older than you. You can't die before me, but he was the one that pushed all of that because you have to, you have to have it all documented for insurance, for social security, for everything.

Crain: You really do. It puts people, many people in a very bad place, if they don't have the documents in order. And then he did die before you?

Joan: He did.

Crain: The nerve.

Joan: The nerve of him to do that. Yeah, he did. But he was younger. He was three years younger than I was.

Crain: How long were you together?

Joan: I think in, when we did the obituary, it came down to about 36 years.

Dianna: Off and on.

Joan: Off and on, but it was even when we were separated, it was still on, but it, we just weren't together.

Crain: Yeah. Interesting. It's a long time to be with someone. And he died in the early 2000's?

Dianna: 2009.

Crain: Okay. Thank you. So Dianna, you traveled?

Dianna: Traveled, came back and I think it was about that time, or maybe, I even realized it when I was working for family services that I wanted to go into the aging field at that time. I thought, well there's so many old people in Butte that you know, have been left. There were, you know, periods where people just left the city and then the older people are left behind. So I thought I'd go into gerontology then as a field. So I did go to graduate school at the University of North Texas. But before I could get into the school, I spent almost a year in San Francisco living in a residence club, which is kind of like a rooming house with food.

[00:47:53]

I guess it was sort of like boarding but not quite like. Yeah, well, I guess it is like boarding house, but they called them residence clubs in San Francisco. So met lots of variety of characters there then went to school at Texas and got a master's in gerontology. And my field placement was with the Senate committee on age, special committee on aging. And so I loved that. I liked the policy part of aging gerontology.

Crain: So did you move to Washington?

Dianna: Uh-huh for the internship. And then trying to think, what short time with you in Bozeman. I'm trying to think of what else I did, but then what I have tended to do is get a degree in each decade in my life. So I got the master's in my thirties and oh, and then I worked for nonprofit social service agency in Houston for a while, director of a foster, or yeah, foster grandparents program. Then I decided since I liked the policy part, that it would help to have a law degree. So I went to law school while I was in Houston. And after that made my way back to Washington DC, Senator Melcher got to be chair of the Senate aging committee just at that time. Because the Democrats won the Senate again at that time. So he hired me and I was with the Senate aging committee and then I kind of hopped around with different policy positions in nonprofits. There was National Council on Aging, National Council for Senior Citizens that became the National Council on Aging, the Older Women's League and I worked for somebody else, but anyway, it was in public policy. Oh. And then my final one was with the Alliance for Retired Americans. So in public policy positions on aging issues for whatever 25 years.

Crain: Back east in Washington.

Dianna: Yeah. Most of that was policy part.

Crain: Were you the youngest person working on aging issues?

Dianna: Well, when I got my degree, I was in my thirties. So, and that degree provided you the background to either direct programs or to run nursing homes. I went into the one for directing programs. So everybody was roughly about the same age, but no, eventually, I just became old in the field. It became personal.

Crain: What are some of your, what did you feel that were some of the best policies that you worked on in regard to aging?

Dianna: Oh, gosh, I have to go back and think about those. Well, as I was getting  into aging, the older Americans Act was passed in 1965. So some of that was in the implementation of the sections of the Older Americans act. A lot of it was defensive in terms of with different members of Congress that would think to do this, or to do that, or to undermine programs, there was always the challenge of Social Security and Medicare, in terms of attacks on those programs. Which one thing that I did, which was very valuable for me anyway, was that we had a coalition of what we call aging organizations in Washington. And we called it the leadership council of aging organizations, so that we did a lot of things together as a united front on a variety of issues. And we met once a month, chairmanship of it rotated through four, the larger organizations. And then I kind of was the staff person when my organization chaired it.

[00:52:47]

So it was a lot of that coordinated work with other organizations. We just met with each other. We had special interests, some were focused mostly on nursing homes. Some were on housing, some were on services. So we supported each other and worked together.

Crain: So 25 years.

Dianna: I think something like that. Yeah.

Crain: And then you made a decision to -

Dianna: Retire and come back to Butte. Okay.

Joan: You went to Macedonia.

Dianna: Oh yeah. Forgot about Macedonia. Thank you. Four years of my life. And I forgot about it.

Crain: Let's talk about this.

Dianna: Okay. I guess that was after I was with the, well, I was with the Senate aging committee, then the older women's league. And then I went to Macedonia for four years because it was a USA project to set up a private pension system with the government. So I was there for four years and travelled quite a bit while I was there. Because once you're over there, it's easy to go to other countries. Yeah. Yeah.

Crain: Did you love that?

Dianna: Oh yeah, I enjoyed it tremendously. Still have close connections with my staff. I had two staff and one of them came over while I was still in Washington. She was pregnant and she had her baby so that she would have her baby would be a US citizen. But I'm in touch with both of them have been back several times. So that's when I came back and then was my final job was with the Alliance for Retired Americans.

Joan: You oughta mention too, though, that you traveled a lot with Quora, with regard to studying aging in various countries.

Dianna: Yeah. We had an international perspective. One of my professors when I got my master's in gerontology had an international interest in how older people were treated, served in other countries. So she organized trips every year, almost every year for about 10 years to study aging and aging services in other countries. So we went to China, we went to Yugoslavia. Well, before Yugoslavia broke up. We went to Egypt, Israel, Greece. So we did some traveling there, studying aging services in different countries.

Crain: And so what was your findings?

Dianna: Well, I can't say findings. There was, it was just how different countries dealt with their old population. And, of course, there was even in China, you always thought that relatives took care of their old, but there were some that, that, that didn't have the children or the children couldn't take care of them. So there were kind of like houses, homes for older people, communes that were predominantly older people. So they tried, but some were still developing countries in Africa. So they tried the best they could. you know, to take care of them through services. And these would mostly be older people who did not have family taking care of them.

Joan: The one thing about China is that the older people were taking care of the grandchildren. So that, yeah, that was a predominant awareness.

Dianna: The parents had to work.

Joan: The other thing was how old some people would be in certain sections of China. I mean, it was nothing to be a hundred in some sections of China. And so it was interesting to look at that perspective also. And also that they always had two pharmacies for natural medicine and regular medicine.

[00:57:11]

Crain: And would the Chinese go to the herbalist first? 

Joan: Yeah, they did. Yeah. I can remember in one hospital we went in the pharmacy, there was two separate sections for the medications and with all of the herbal medications. So if the patient wanted the traditional medication, then that's what they had.

Dianna: They still had those in Chinatown in San Francisco too.

Crain: So, did you travel with Dianna?

Joan: I did.

Dianna: Some of the trips.

Joan: I didn't go to Yugoslavia. And I didn't go when you went to South America. But then I went with her on those, and then I went with, to like Australia and New Zealand, I think, separately. I think you didn't go on those trips.

Dianna: I was in law school at the time. I couldn't leave.

Joan: But one thing about Dianna then when she finished up the Macedonia, she went around the world. She didn't come home this way. She went home around the other way. So she made it around, traveled east.

Dianna: Until I got to California.

Crain: Wow. Most memorable experience on that trip?

Dianna: Oh gosh. I think, I don't know how memorable it was exactly. But I loved New Zealand and I tried to take in a hang gliding flight, I guess, except it was with somebody. Yeah. But that, that was probably cool. I don't know that I'd ever do that again, but it was pretty cool to hang glide.

Joan: You took cooking classes in Thailand, didn't you?

Dianna: Oh yeah. I stopped in Thailand. That was some Thai cooking school. Took some classes that was cool.

Crain: Your most memorable experience on those trips?

Joan: With regard to aging, I think it was in Africa and in New Zealand, I think in terms of the people live very fundamentally but they were part of the community. They weren't separated. They were part of their, right in the villages with the people. And in New Zealand, they were somewhat separated, but there was close contacts still with the community. So I remember that in terms of aging. I don't think I'd want to age in either of those countries. It would be very difficult, but they would know how to survive.

Crain: So did you and Harr travel together? Was he a traveler.

Joan: He was not really a great traveler, but we did travel to Ireland. And he really did like that. He was right at home for that. And then we did travel one time where, gosh, when I think about airlines doing this, you could get on an airline with United in Seattle. Then you could go to four different places, all on the same ticket. And I remember that we went to Washington DC and we went to like St. Thomas Island and just, you could do that sort of thing, but he was not really a great traveler because he would've preferred to know exactly what was going to happen.

Dianna: But you travelled a lot on the motorcycle.

Joan: Oh, on the motorcycle. Yes. He did get a motorcycle. Then when he retired and we traveled a lot on the motorcycle.

Crain: Where would you go?

Joan: Well, our favorite place was Montana, actually. We had loops that we would take that we went all over Montana, but then we had like condo rentals, you know? And so we were in Colorado, New Mexico. We went through Idaho a couple times, Wyoming, North and South Dakota, but we just traveled that way on the motorcycle.

Crain: Wow.

Joan: So that gives you another view of people and towns. And it really was very interesting. It really made me appreciate Montana.

[01:02:47]

Crain: Montana's beautiful state. I mean, it really is a beautiful state too.

Joan: And the people that you would meet. It really was not difficult meeting people in Montana, because, you know, people kind of take you just, as you are, even in all your leathers, they take you ashore.

Crain: That's good. How long did you work in the field of social work?

Joan: I was in private practice up until I retired. So that was about I think, seven or eight years in private practice, but I always did some time at the community health center also. So then after I retired, I continued at the community health center and then they, I was hired for like two days a week and worked there as a counselor or psychiatric social worker there until I finished, decided that I would just quit working. But I really liked it. I mean, I enjoyed the community health center and I enjoyed private practice too, because you could meet all kinds of different people and people would always say, "Well, don't you get depressed? You know, working with people with emotional problems, mental problems?" And really, I have to say they were really inspiring to me, how people can cope with situations and how they do cope. And people's stamina for being able to live out their life and solve their problems. I always found a lot of energy. In fact, that was one of the harder things I think when I retired altogether was feeling the lack of energy because you would just get energy from that type of work. And you learn a lot about yourself. Let me tell you in this work. Yes, you do. Uh, because you can see yourself in situations that people present to you. You can recall situations, but it really does help you to know yourself. I would. And when students have asked me what's the best part about the work? I'd always say, it's what you learn about yourself.

Crain: Interesting. So what did you, what did you learn in your fifties? You got your law degree in your forties?

Dianna: Then I got a diploma from the University of London in economics.

Joan: From the London school of economics.

Dianna: And it was like, I guess, called distance learning. I started it when I was in Macedonia, finished it when I came back to Washington.

Crain: And did you work at all in economics?

Dianna: No, I just thought it was a neat thing to get. So and I went back for the graduation where you had that little tri-corner hat and gown and you knelt, not knelt but you curtsied to the person giving you the diploma. Yeah.

Crain: And then so then what else after that?

Dianna: Let's see bachelor's, master's, law, diploma, and then I guess by then I was in my sixties.

Crain: And you felt you could retire?

Dianna: Yeah.

Crain: But you also are a lifelong learner as well.

Dianna: We take courses at the University of Montana, Molly courses. That's for older people and just about every subject under the sun. We come to the archives, of course, twice a month for the lectures. They have talks at the library that we take advantage of.

Crain: You never married.

Dianna: No, that's something I was thinking about is that since our father died so young and our mother had to go to work and she worked five and a half days a week. And Joan was so much older. And my brother was so much older that I pretty much grew up by myself, alone.

[01:07:53]

I had a dog from first grade until I was a freshman in college who was my companion, but I spent a lot of time alone. And I think that's part of why I didn't have to feel, I didn't have a need to get married or to have a long term relationship that kept me in one place. It was just my own life. And I just went where things took me.

Joan: I think too, with mother working, it really gave the impetus that you take care of yourself, you know? I mean, there was no sense that you had to be married to get taken care of. You could do it yourself. And even though it was difficult for her, she always seemed to like her work though.

Dianna: Well, she was social.

Joan: Oh yeah. She was very social.

Dianna: And she liked people. So wherever she'd worked she got along well with coworkers and they were dedicated to each other. And so she liked working too, I think.

Joan: But we had other women in the family too that didn't marry.

Dianna: Yeah, we did.

Joan: We had aunts that didn't marry.

Dianna: And widows. So we had a lot of women role models, essentially, who were not attached to any man.

Joan: And actually one time when I was in Bozeman, I met this woman and she was from Butte and she grew up on the hill too. And she said really, there were so many families where the father was incapacitated or missing or had died that it really was not that unusual to just have a mother as a parent, really, really that you weren't that different in that regard.

Crain: Yeah, really that's the truth, because if you figure the number of people that died, the men that died from industrial accidents and were related issues, that women really were the stalwart of the economy [inaudible].

Dianna: Yeah, you couldn't work if you were married at that time. So I think that's why my mother had the job she did because she was a widow. And so these different public jobs would tend to hire widows.

Joan: I think they used to say the courthouse was like a widows' walk because so many of the women were widows.

Crain: Well, you couldn't teach.

Dianna: No, couldn't teach.

Crain: You couldn't teach if you were married and you really couldn't work if you were married.  You were frowned upon, so they would've been mostly widows. So interesting. What about your brother, tell me about your brother.

[01:11:08]

Dianna: Well, he went into the Navy young. What was he? 16 or something? He or 17, I guess he had to be 18 at the time, but he nagged our mother and nagged her and nagged her and nagged her and nagged her and had brochures on everything for the Navy until finally she just gave up and signed for him. So he went into the Navy young. And when he came out, after he came out, like that's when he had his first marriage with Lois.

Crain: And who was Lois?

Dianna: Uh, Lois. She was from . . . Well, she was in Butte at the time, but she was from Helena originally. And so his occupation was boiler maker, welder, boiler maker. But then when things closed down here, they went to Seattle for a while and then he came back, got a divorce. Then he had a second marriage to Candy Shaw and two children from that marriage.

Crain: Did he have a children with Lois?

Dianna: Yes, he has a daughter. She lives in Helena. So he had a drinking problem for a while and it took him a while to get over that. And because of that, he had health issues, but he finally stopped drinking toward the last several years. He was not drinking.

Crain: And how old was he when he died?

Dianna: He had just turned 66. Yeah.

Crain: And he didn't go to school. He just went to the Navy.

Dianna: He just went to the Navy. Yeah. He couldn't wait to get in there, apparently. I understand, he probably wasn't that good in school, in high school. And that was an out anyway, too.

Joan: I think school was difficult for him. I sometimes think that if they had the testing that they had later on, I think that it was, he read quite a bit, but I think he had sort of a dyslexia. And so school was difficult. It always was difficult.

Dianna: But he was a good grandfather. By the time he had grandchildren, he went to every performance the children were involved in, so he was devoted to the grandchildren once he had grandchildren. Yeah.

Crain: And so those are where your nieces and nephews come from.

Dianna: Tina Powers. You probably know. And John Porter. And who else? And then Valerie in Helena, Valerie Ewalse. So that's some benefit that Joan and I have had with our brother's children, since we don't have children ourselves  then we became the aunts who took them places, bought them things.

[01:14:37]

Crain: So you guys have traveled a lot in the last couple of years. Where did you go? What was your favorite?

Dianna: Three years ago, we rented a Villa outside of Florence in Italy with our nieces and a cousin from England and a cousin from Australia. Two years ago, we took a Rhodes Scholar trip to Rome, Florence, and Venice. And Joan's going to Ireland at the end of this month. I'm going to Italy to take a cooking course in September.

Joan: Then we did also the trip, the railroad trip.

Dianna: We did the Canadian Rockies. Yeah. And we did the Hopi and Navajo reservations.

Joan: Then we did take those bus trips to the Southwest too, with Lara that time.

Dianna: Well, to the parks. You took a separate one to the Southwest, I think.

Joan: Went to the different parks. Yeah.

Crain: So what's your favorite place?

Joan: Probably Montana, basically.

Crain: Dianna?

Dianna: Well, I'm probably, I'm partial to Macedonia since I lived there for four years. But then after that, I guess Italy, I really liked Italy.

Crain: Alright, Clark, do you have any questions?

Grant: Am I wrong thinking that you published a book?

Dianna: Yes. You're not wrong.

Grant: Okay.

Dianna: Yes. You're not wrong. Uh, yeah. I did have a book from my experiences in Macedonia called, "Your Woman in Scopia," I think it was. And so I kept, oh, I wrote, I wrote letters back to family and friends and it was probably like a forerunner of a blog. I just wrote about what I did and that kind of thing. And it got circulated to family and friends back here in the US. So at the end, then I put all those letters together. So I was there during the Serbian bombing, for instance, of Kosovo. But yeah, that's the book.

Joan: You did another book, a textbook on aging.

Dianna: Yeah, I did a textbook. I was co-editor with the doctor that I worked for at the time. And we had a textbook on gerontology and geriatrics.

Grant: And just in my four years in Butte, I've seen two houses demolished in between Main and Montana above Woolman in that neighborhood. I'm curious if you could comment on the changes you've seen in Butte over your lifetime and the loss of buildings. Do you feel a sense of loss here?

Dianna: Uh, well, as far as on the hill, the houses, when I came back, I bought a house on the hill, in the same neighborhood and our family home still stands there. So that's nice. And the people that have it now have furnished it as though it's a period piece, like early 20th century, heavy furniture and draperies and that kind of interior. But my house, I had to have renovated, it was falling apart. It would've been, it was amazing that it wasn't torched at the time. That was Hannah Shea's house.

Crain: Oh yeah.

Dianna: That I have.

Joan: It was how old?

Dianna: Oh, it's 120 years old maybe. The people that first lived there were an Irish family.

Crain: What's the street you are on?

Dianna: Clear Grit. It's an oxymoron. Uh, but from the photographs, from my neighborhood, there's lots of houses that are gone. Yeah. But fortunately I was able to get that house and renovate it, but it was falling apart. And I think that's what happens with the ownerships of some of these old houses, people no longer have them or they care about them or they don't pay taxes or whatever, and they start deteriorating, but then there's building up. I mean, people are that, I don't know if you remember, Morris's house on Agate, somebody has that, that great big red brick building on Agate. Somebody has that now is doing something with it.

Crain: They are.

Grant: [inaudible]

Dianna: What is it? What's their name?

Crain: Wackerbarth.

Dianna: Wackerbarth?

Crain: I think they are. I may be wrong, but I think they have Tech money.

Grant: They do.

Crain: Yeah. And they also own the Connell house press from the mansion on Granite Street.

Dianna: Oh, okay.

Joan: Oh, we were in there, I think.

Crain: So they have resources to do those kinds of renovations.

Dianna: And is it gonna be apartments?

Crain: Two condos.

Dianna: Should be nice, actually. It should be nice. The view would be fantastic.

Joan: Fantastic view. And you might wanna look up. I tried to find in the directories, we had always heard that was a hospital before the Morris's moved in.

Crain: It was a hospital before the Morris's moved in. It was a hospital in the 1880s. And then Morris's moved in there.

Joan: That's just something that you just hear, Mother just said, "Well, it was a hospital," but never could find any kind of pinpointing.

Dianna: But it's interesting in terms of your question too, is where I live, a lot of the houses are gone, but of the people that live there, they are two and three generations living in that little neighborhood. Uh, still there's the Droblont's, the Foley's.

Crain: The Sheehan’s.

Dianna: Sheehan’s. Yeah. So each of these families own at least two or three houses in my little neighborhood.

Crain: Does Georgia Moore's family own any? Do you remember Georgia?

Dianna: Georgia? Her daughter is gonna renovate that house that Georgia lived in. She stopped by. Her name is Margie McCafferty, I think.

Crain: Oh, sure. Yeah.

[01:21:41]

Dianna: Uh, and she's gonna renovate Georgia's house, so, yeah. So that's another where the, it means a lot to the family that they renovate the houses in their neighborhood or their own houses, if they're still standing.

Joan: But you asked, do you feel sad when you go around and see what has happened to some buildings. And there was a period in Butte's history where people were coming in and buying and saying they were gonna do something with buildings and didn't do anything with them, you know? So you can feel agitated at that time, but it's a strange kind of experience that you live kind of in the present and in the past, because you can walk down Park Street. And I just kind of remember things as they used to be, it really is strange. Like you're living in the past as to what this was, what you did, who was there, all of that, you know? So it gives you another reality besides being sad, it gives you these kind of nostalgic remembrances, but the other thing I always remember growing up, they'd say, where is that? Well, it's where Sears used to be. And I find myself doing the same darn thing now, it's like, well it's next to where the American Candy Shop used to be, or well, the Rialto, it's below the Rialto, where the Rialto was, it's a strange way that you still are living in another reality.

Grant: I guess that's what makes me sad about it. Never having gone to like S&L ice cream, but as soon as I learned about it and knew that I will never know it. Now, I miss it.

Joan: Oh yeah. You do remember where the things were and you really feel sad in that sense that that time is gone.

Crain: Sometimes.

Dianna: Well, I do tours now at the Copper King Mansion and I always tell them about the Columbia Gardens and that still hurts to think that we lost the Columbia Gardens.

Crain: I have problems with them trying to redo the Columbia Gardens because it makes me angry because it can't be what it was. So I think they should do a new, they should be doing new things that give new generations.

Joan: The water park.

Crain: Yes.

Dianna: Well, that's where the carousel will be though, at the water park. And you got to give credit to those guys that have carved these horses for years and years and years, and years and years. But yeah.

Crain: It's not the Gardens. It's a carousel. It has a whole new history. So those are the things that I think about because I too miss the Gardens.

Dianna: When you think of those Thursdays that you . . .

Joan: What do you miss?

Crain: You know what I have to say? It would be late in the day. Like when my dad would be, like 5:00'ish and we would pick up my Gram and we would go to the Gardens and have a picnic. And I miss that component of that sort of family thing. And then we would go and play, but we always had these rituals that we did there and the people that were there. And I miss that because it was a big outdoors event for us. Because my mother and father were not outdoor people.  So like you wouldn't go hiking or camping or anything. That was our outdoors. So I missed that component, but that's a family thing. So I want you to reach back and talk about how your families came here. Like you talked about your father coming from the Dakotas. How did his family get to the Dakotas?

[01:26:24]

Joan: You need to talk to Dianna. She's the one that does all the family genealogy.

Dianna: Yeah. That, that on the Porter side of the family. That's interesting because as far as, well, some of it is legend is that they would've been Protestants who left maybe Holland. They went over to Scotland. One of them stayed there, had children and then a child from that marriage went over to Northern Ireland. And at a very old age, he married someone and had twins. Then I can pick up real records that the twins came to Pennsylvania before the revolution, American revolution. Yeah.

Crain: Before the American Revolution.

Dianna: Yeah. And they had a farm in Pennsylvania. So then eventually a descendant who would've been our great grandfather came out to Iowa and they had a farm there and there were a lot of other relatives that came out to Iowa and they wrote letters. They were in little communities, not far apart, but they wrote letters back and forth to each other. And the trains were running in that part of Iowa at that time. So we have a lot of correspondence. So then eventually our great, great grandparents then went to Dakota territory. And our grandfather was one of the children that went to Dakota territory. So then North Dakota, South Dakota, and I think it was probably Eastern Montana were part of Dakota territory. So anyway, then he stayed in North Dakota and became a railroad conductor and then traveled this route that came through Butte. So our father actually knew some relatives were here in Butte of the Porter family. And our father actually had come here at various times, but then after he graduated from college, he came to Butte and met our mother.

Crain: And where did he go to college?

Dianna: Oh, in Dickinson. So that would've been University of North Dakota, I guess.

Crain: And how did he meet your mother?

Dianna: I think he actually dated our Aunt Cynth first and probably met our mother through our aunt. Our aunt was different personality, so I don't think he would've met . . . I mean, she was a good time girl and fun and, you know, liked a good time. I think my mother was a little bit more stable.

Crain: Does Aunt Cynth know you . . .

Dianna: Talk like that about her?! Cynth was another aunt who never married, but she always had a good time. So then our mother's parents came from Ireland

Crain: Where?

Dianna: Bere Peninsula, County Cork, one was our grandmother was from Iries outside of Iries. And then our grandfather was, the post office box is called Cockermore but it's outside of Castletown Bear. As far as we know, they didn't know each other in Ireland. There's that mountain pass that's in between Iries and Castletown Bear. So our grandmother came as young girl, teenager maybe went to Fall River, Massachusetts before coming out to Butte.

Crain: You moved to Fall River. Did you find anything?

Dianna: We did find where our grandmother's sister lived.

Crain: And what was your grandmother's name?

Dianna: Johanna.

Crain: Sullivan?

Dianna: She was a Sullivan before and after getting married. Then our father or our grandfather was Eugene and they married here in Butte in 1897.

Crain: And you think you found an aunt or a great aunt or something in Fall River?

Dianna: That would've been our grandmother's aunt. We saw the house and I do have some records in terms of census records.

Crain: So you think your grandmother and grandfather came via Fall River, or do you think?

Dianna: Well, we think our grandmother probably came from Fall River since the sister stayed there, but I'm not sure about our grandfather, both our grandmother and grandfather's siblings also came, so there were four or five siblings of each of them that also came out to Butte.

Crain: So there is this path that we have found that many, many Irish took that went from Ireland to Western England, to a place called Cletermore. And then from Cletermore, to Pennsylvania, to the coal fields, then from Pennsylvania, either to Colorado or Michigan, the upper peninsula, and then to Butte. Is this a story that is in your family or not?

[01:32:00]

Dianna: No, they didn't go to England. They went from Castletown Bear, well, they went that little sloop to Bantry and then Bantry to Cobh and then from there they came to the US, so they did not go to England.

Crain: Okay. And then where did they go in the US? You think Massachusetts?

Dianna: Well, just our grandmother might have been, and then we don't know about our grandfather. He came later and so it's possible that he went to Michigan then Butte, but there's been no indication that they were in Colorado, he was in Colorado. They seemed to have serial migration. I think Trump calls a chain migration now, but one would come and then send for another and then they would send for another. So once there was somebody here, then they were bringing them to Butte.

Crain: Yes. That's seems to be when we look at the history, we would go to Michigan where he just thought she would go to Michigan and you would probably find some evidence there. John Ryan's father was a merchant in the upper peninsula. There'd be work and . . . Yeah. So we have this, these paths, we find they either went to Michigan or Colorado, but they didn't go to both.

Dianna: I don't think they went to Colorado and I'm not even sure about Michigan. Yeah. They could have come straight out here. Could have, because if they married in the 1890s and there was good copper production then here, they might have just come straight out here.

Crain: And they were mining people?

Joan: Well, Pa owned the bar that was next to the Miners' Union building. My grandfather, the grandfather owned a bar.

Crain: And his name was Eugene?

Dianna: Eugene. But he didn't have the bar at the time of the bombing. I think it was before that.

Joan: It was just before that. It was the good old summertime.

Crain: Did he go into the bar business, traditionally left mining for something?

Dianna: I think he had a assortment of jobs at different mines. And then at the end it was what do you call that?

Joan: Copper tanks that were down above the Leonard Mine.

Crain: The precip tanks.

Joan: Yeah. Is that what you call 'em? We just call them the copper tanks.

Crain: Copper tanks. Okay. And then it just health and nature.

Dianna: And he lived to be, he died, he lived to be 70, maybe.

Joan: About 70.

Dianna: That's pretty, pretty long.

Crain: And then your mom, what kind of education did your mom have?

Dianna: Just high school.

Crain: And did she go to Central?

Joan: Yes. So,  oh, yes. Never missed a reunion.

Dianna: St Mary's. Yeah.

Crain: And then Girls' Central. And then she just probably took a business course at Central?

Dianna: Could be. She worked for a lawyer. She worked before getting married.

Joan: She worked at Brophy's.

Dianna: She married relatively late. She was like 28, 29 or something when they married. He would've been six years older. So in his thirties? Yeah.

Crain: Makes sense. What did your father die of?

Joan: Heart attack. He was what? 49.

Dianna: 47.

Joan: 47.

Crain: That's sad. That's young. Very young.

Dianna: And young for mother to have three children to raise.

Crain: No whining.

Dianna: No.

Crain: Go to work.

Dianna: But she enjoyed life. I mean, she, we were talking about how she enjoyed her work, but she was involved with, oh, the different women's organizations. Catholic Women of something and but, but she, she was involved in business women, business and professional women. Uh, when you were in the convent, she was in the Marion Mothers. So she really enjoyed people and she never drank, at least maybe she did before marriage, but she didn't drink.

Joan: No. And she told me that she quit drinking when she became pregnant with me. And she never, but Dianna had friends that whenever people would come to town, then you'd take them around to all of the different bars and things like that. You know? And this, I remember Dianna's friend said, "Your mother doesn't drink, but she knows every bartender in town." Yeah. But it really was that you knew them just because they're from Butte too, but she says, you can never figure that out.

Crain: So your mother had how many siblings?

Dianna: She had three sisters and a brother. The brother was killed in the mines at age 23.

Crain: How?

Dianna: Uh, some rocks fell. He and another.

Joan: It was in the shaft. He was in the shaft that he was killed. Yeah. You know how they didn't have a lot of information about that. But mother always said that there was something happened in the shaft.

Dianna: So, and then the sisters, Cynthia, we talked about who never married.

Crain: What did she do? How'd she support herself.

Dianna: She worked for Hanson Packing as a bookkeeper.

Joan: She was a bookkeeper out there.

Dianna: For like 25 years or so.

Crain: Have you guys looked at the photos of Hanson packing. Because they're all kinds of pictures of the office house.

Dianna: Oh, okay.

Joan: Okay. We'll have to.

Crain: That's interesting. Okay.

Dianna: And then Margritte married young and had children, so she never worked per se.

Joan: And then interestingly enough, Margritte was burned out when the church, St. Mary's church burned, because her house was next to the church.

Crain: Her house burned. Huh. And then who did she marry?

Dianna: His name was Nightly.

Joan: John Nightly.

Crain: And then another sister?

Dianna: Evelyn, and for the most part, she had a couple marriages, but for the most part, she was a cook and she often worked for priests. And in later years Cynth worked for priests too, they loved her because she was sassy and talked back.

Joan: Not one bit respectful.

[01:39:33]

Crain: So you love to cook?

Dianna: Well, I do cook. I don't know about love to cook, but I think having meals is the best way to bring people together. So I cook in order to bring people together.

Joan: And if it was up to me that we'd never see each other.

Crain: You eat out.

Joan: No, I'm the gatherer. I can get food from various restaurants and bring it to the house and then we all get together at the house, but I don't, I think it was just because being the oldest and having to cook and that when I was younger, I just have never been one for cooking.

Crain: All right. Interesting. Okay. Clark.

Grant: I'm set. Yeah. Covered my curiosities.

Joan: Is there anything on here that I wanted to be to tell you about?

Dianna: We went back last December because these people from England called us, they were going, they're doing a segment for the Travel Channel on the Lizzy Borden house murders.

Crain: Yes, we didn't bring up Lizzy, but go.

Dianna: Okay. So Bridget, the maid, married my mother's uncle John Sullivan, and they lived in Anaconda. So, a few years ago we had gone back there and stayed at the, it's a, B and B. And so they were able to find us, got a phone call out of the blue, and they brought us out to Fall River and had a driver meet us at the airport and take us. And we stayed overnight. And then that day we went to this old kind of museum which was once a shop of that era. But anyway, we were all ready to talk. This is what Joan going through her notes reminds me of, they asked us a few questions on the camera and said, "Well, thank you very much." And said, "Is that all?" We've been researching this, we have folders here of material. So they turned the camera on and let us talk a little bit more. But we had been, for the days before, we were getting all the information and the stories and the photographs and everything.

Joan: It was a fun place to visit because it's haunted. And so the first time we were there, we were going to have a, what was like a seance, I think, but the woman couldn't come, you know? But then the second time that we were there, they talked about the different experiences people had. And then we did see that television program where he is supposed to have come back.

Dianna: Yeah. That's more of a ghost program. This one is a travel, we're supposed to be on the Travel Channel.

Joan: And it was like go to places where there are ghosts or mysteries connected to it. And so it's gonna be on Travel Channel sometime.

Dianna: Jack, the ripper was another segment they did.

Crain: So let me ask you, did she do it? Did Bridget do it?

Dianna: No.

Joan: No.

Crain: No, you think it was Lizzy.

Dianna: Yeah.

Crain: Where did Bridget get the money to buy the ranch?

Joan: She didn't.

Dianna: She didn't buy a ranch.

Joan: That's what's a myth. Things we found out.

Dianna: That's a myth.

Crain: Oh dear. They said she was the meanest thing ever. Was she the meanest thing ever?

Dianna: Well, Joan has a personal memory of her. That's why they were interested.

Joan: She was, when I was young, we used to go to visit her in Anaconda. It was kind of the thing that you did. Well, mother did. So we went, but she was austere, as I recall and one of the things about her is she always wore the maid's dust cap. And she wore that when she worked in Massachusetts. But I remember she had the dust cap, when we would visit in Anaconda, but her house was immaculate, just absolutely immaculate, but she was not friendly and warm and that you, I just remember her being austere. And then we did go to visit her when she was at the old folks' home, which is what is it now?

[01:44:30]

Crain: NCAT.

Joan: NCAT. And so we did go to visit her there. And my recall is it's very Dickensonian. This terrible place. You could walk down and the beds were separated by curtains. And there was just this, the poor farm is basically what it was. Yeah. That's where she was. But actually she had money, some money, but she wasn't not, she was not rich. But tell, clarify for Ellen that she didn't buy the ranch.

Dianna: Or the farm. You're talking about Ireland. There's a myth that she went back to Ireland and bought a farm.

Crain: For her father.

Dianna: For her parents.

Crain: Jersey Island.

Dianna: No. Well, where, they did not live on Jersey Island. They lived close to where you would take that cable car over to Jersey Island. But, as far as we can tell, there's a woman that did do this research. And she's written an article that Liz or Bridget probably did go back for a couple months to Ireland. And her parents were probably dead at that time. She had two brothers that lived on the farm, and then she came back after a couple months. But at that time that she went back, the Irish were not able to buy land for one thing. So she did not buy land. So she did not buy land and it's unlikely that she had money to do so, anyway. So she went there, stayed maybe for a few months, saw that there was nothing there for her. Her brothers, two of her brothers were married and living on the farm. There was nothing there for her. So she came back to the US. We don't know if she stayed on the east coast when she first came, but then we know about her next being married, getting married to John Sullivan in Anaconda.

Crain: She was here for a length of time in Butte. Did she come to Butte?

Dianna: She probably could have come to Butte and then went to Anaconda.

Joan: But she came back to Butte before she, when she was stayed with Mrs. Moriarty.

Dianna: Oh, is that what you mean before she died? Oh yeah. She came back to Butte. And she stayed with not Mrs. Moriarty. She stayed with Jersey Mary.

Joan: Okay.

Dianna: Who was married to Bantry Tim.

Crain: Yeah. Now, explain who they. This is the story that I know from Jim Harrington, Curly.

Joan: Oh, from Curly.

Crain: About her living with Jersey Mary. So that's where he had a memory of her there because he talked to the woman who was doing this article.

Dianna: Oh, okay.

Crain: About buying the farm. And she's the one who felt that, that Bridget really did the hatchet job on Lizzie Gordon's parents. And I remember the woman coming and having all this and Jim was, Curly was like, "Well, I don't know. I remember when she lived with Jersey Mary." So tell who Jersey Mary was.

Dianna: Okay. I don't know that this person that wrote it though, actually came to Butte.

Crain: She said someone here, Alice Finnegan. Alice Finnegan is from Anaconda.

Dianna: Right. She died last year.

Crain: Yes. And they have gone to Anaconda and looked at stuff. And then that she came here. This was, this is a long time ago. This was when I was probably very new in my position here. Probably 30 years ago.

Dianna: Oh, well, she wrote the article probably in last four or five years.

Crain: No, this is must be a different.

Dianna: It must be a different because she's not, she's the one that was able to do all of the computer stuff and get the manifests of ships and know when Bridget went back to Ireland.

Crain: So this is before that. This is, because it was 30 years ago because Curly was on the board here and he had this story.  Oh, interesting that there too. I was thinking, would this say? So go ahead and tell about who Jersey Mary was.

Dianna: Well, I don't know exactly, except that she was a niece or was it Bantry Tim that was the nephew. Jersey Mary, I think was the niece.

Joan: The niece.

Dianna: And then Kate Moriarty was a niece of a different sibling of Bridget.

Crain: What was her last name?

Dianna: Uh, would've been Sullivan.

Crain: Yes, I think. Or Harrington.

Joan: Because Sock Sullivan. That was the cop in Anaconda.

Dianna: Yeah. Was a son, was a son and he was married to Bantry Tim.

Crain: And are they both Sullivan?

Dianna: They could have been. Bantry Tim could have been Sullivan as well. And then Kate Moriartry and then she had a couple of nephews also. What it looks like she did is that maybe that short time she was there. She encouraged her nieces and nephews to come to the US because her siblings did not come to the US, but she had at least two nieces and maybe two nephews that came out to Butte.

Crain: So did the woman writing the article, just that just published the article, did she go to Ireland?

[01:50:16]

Dianna: I don't think she did. I think she did it all by internet, checking records and everything like that.

Crain: Oh, good. Yeah. Well, interesting because I remember this woman coming.

Dianna: Okay, but it would've been a different woman because this one is 40 maybe.

Crain: Do you think that that first woman's theory was floated well? [inaudible]

Dianna: You'll have to, we have the article anyway that she wrote in that issue.

Joan: I should just bring up the articles for Ellen. Look at the different articles I have on . . .

Dianna: But the one that she did in terms of tracing Bridget going back and that, but she didn't have money. And actually when she married John, they rented a house for something like, oh gosh, 20 years before they were able to buy one.

Joan: And the house is still there.

Dianna: So they did not have money. I mean, she did not have money here.

Crain: So, do you have any other notes that you think we should go over?

Joan: That took us along to the far side.

Crain: Well, I'm really glad we had this conversation because I had that experience and then I never really kind of put my finger on whether it was really true or not, the theory. Yeah. I have this new theory out there.

Joan: I'll just bring you up the articles that I have. And then I did some interviews with the people who were children in the house when she lived with Jersey Mary also, and just what they remember of her themselves and how she was, did not have much regard for the English government and not for the Irish government either for that matter. So, anyway, that's how she was. But how you were talking about the Gardens going there and then the family outings and that, but when we were growing up, my father was a fisherman and I think he just loved to fish so that we never spent a weekend in the summer in Butte. We were always fishing.

Dianna: Not me, I was too young.

Joan: But we were always off somewhere fishing. And I remember it's when we came back to Butte and I went to my first 4th of July parade because we never went, we were never in town for the . . .

Crain: So did you camp, or did you?

Joan: We would camp or go two days. I mean you'd go and spend the whole day, come home, go the next day. And then we did a lot out at Ennis, out of Jefferson, out of Ennis, used to go there and stay in a cabin and that, but I remember thinking, gosh, I get to go to the 4th of July parade.

Crain: You're quite, quite bit older than most 10 year-olds.

Joan: But I think that's, we've gone over almost everything else.

Crain: Well, I am so impressed with both of your careers and you both being at the forefront of so many great public programmings and you may not have gone into the [inaudible], but you're public servants.

Dianna: I'm a nice person, anyway.

Joan: She's still a nice person.

Crain: Just so interesting. Interesting. When did you decide to make it a goal to  get a new degree of every decade?

Dianna: Uh, I think partially it just happened, is that I needed, you know, of course, college and then you need a master's and then to it was just sort of, as I was able to pay off one loan, then I was able to go to school again.

Crain: Some silly people do that with a car.

Dianna: Yeah, it was just, you know, it was always there in terms of having that, that opportunity or whatever my interest was at that time, or my professional need for further education. Yeah.

Crain: And you with your PhD sans dissertation.

Joan: No dissertation.

Crain: Do you regret that in any way?

Joan: I think probably that I went a different direction in my career. I went back into the counseling, the direct service, I think, with the PhD, you would've gone into administration and I really don't think I would've been good at administration. Uh, I mean, I wouldn't have learned as much about myself, I don't think, as doing it the way that it happened. So I always feel that it was supposed to be, in terms of my own development.

Crain: Interesting. Any advice for us aging folks?

Dianna: Go back to school, keep learning, I guess.

Crain: Keep learning. Yeah. My uncle had, went all the way through to get his dissertation in statistics. He was priest, but he wouldn't do the dissertation.

Joan: He didn't do it?

Dianna: Is that Father Redman?

Crain: Yeah.

Dianna: I remember him.

Crain: Yeah, but he still teaches. He teaches in the university. He's retired, but he takes a math class every semester and he teaches or does like tutor and they call him, Pop.

Dianna: That's cute.

Crain: But he says it's what's keeping his mind.

Dianna: Is he close to 90?

Crain: No, he's 88.

Dianna: Well, that's close to 90.

[laughter]

[01:56:52]

Crain: My mother's in the hospital right now. [inaudible] not gonna survive her. And she's got this dementia, which now the hospital is having her tested. And they said, "Well, this is interesting." And they said, "Well, she just, she's terribly confused." I said, "Yes, she is terribly confused." You find her car. My uncle will call me and say, "Oh, I just had a conversation with mother and I need to verify what's real." Oh, she's a project right now.

Joan: But the unreal is so interesting, I think. I think it's fascinating. I think it's fascinating.

Crain: Well, she called me the other day. She said, "Carl and I," because she has a boyfriend that she wants to go out with. "Carl and I wanna go out to dinner." And it was like seven o'clock on Saturday night. And I said, "Well, I've got babysitting. I can't really take you to dinner with Carl." Well, I said, "Call a cab, Mom." "Well, I'm not calling a cab. Call your sister. She can come and take us to dinner and I've been looking for my car." Oh, thank God, that car is out of state because . . .

Dianna: She would get it. She would find it.

Crain: Yeah. She would have it.

Joan: Now this is where you need to be recording things. What she does.

Crain: We're documenting, Margaret and I.

Joan: Okay. Document it because it is fascinating, I think, where they live. Oh yeah. I think it is very fascinating. I'll be there soon. So you could come and talk to me then.

Crain: Well, it's interesting now that you read about memory loss and she took sleeping pills all her life. She was living off of [inaudible] and until, so then she would take [inaudible] and I think she not herself silly and the impact of those on memory loss and the impact of diabetes on memory loss that when I look at her and I look at her siblings and I think about her parents and her grandparents, this is not a, so I think it is definitely those environmental those style of decisions that she made that have such an impact on her memory right now. So, yeah.

Joan: But I'm glad you're keeping track of all of that because it's so interesting.

Crain: Well, it is interesting and I would never have thought she would have lost it. My father up until like even when he died, he lifted his arm up like this. He was so aware of everything that and so, and you know, I get there in the morning it's, oh for God's sakes, telling what the hell's going on out in the world and get me up to date with people and things. And he was so engaged and my mother just not wanna study. So if I live that long.

Joan: Oh, well you are on your way to living, so that's good.

[END OF RECORDING]