Velma Collins - Part 2

WN: Velma is going to tell us about some of her early childhood and growing up.

VC: Well, I can remember playing hide and seek out here behind all these big trees, and, of course, it was quite a nice place to play hide and seek.

WN: [Indecipherable] who is we?

VC: Well, it was all just the children in the family. Minna Karl (Minna Karl Ekdahl), Etta Feild (Etta Feild Caves) [indecipherable] and, mostly, just the children in the family. [Inaudible] VC: Oh, I can remember playing paper dolls around the table, and the paper dolls consisted of pictures 00:01:00cut out of catalogs [inaudible}…one was dressed up, one was [indecipherable] You’d be surprised how much fun we had. We made furniture from [inaudible]. And I can remember taking, oh, two or three [inaudible]. That was lots of fun. 00:02:00WN: I remember when the Riley’s lived out here, and Jim Riley played tennis. [Inaudible] And I remember Mr. Jones would let, sometimes he’d let people from town come out here and play.

VC: Yes, yes. [Inaudible] WN: Well, tell us about your school years. [Inaudible] I found a thing in the paper where you and Etta Feild (Etta Feild Caves) [indecipherable] for the radio station.

VC: I had forgotten that, yes. We took piano religiously. They saw to it that there was a good teacher [indecipherable] I mean, somebody in the family [indecipherable] and we had a good piano teacher. It was unfortunate that I didn’t become a great pianist, because that’s what they would have liked for me 00:03:00to have done. And then every Saturday, we went to classes with the same teacher. We studied history of music and theory of music every Saturday morning.

WN: Was that Vern Tomlinson?

VC: Yes, and she was an excellent teacher, too. I can remember a few before her, Minnie Burrows was one and Elaine (Elaine Shelton) somebody [indecipherable]. I love the theory, but I wasn’t too good at playing. My hands didn’t function right. They talked to us that we could go to, or I mean someone, when I say they, somebody in the family…the aunts or uncles or somebody would get all of us that wanted to go which was usually was Minna Karl and Etta Feild and I, who were interested. But anyway, we would go to opera. 00:04:00We would go to a few plays. I can remember going to Kansas City to see [indecipherable].

WN: And then you rode the train, then, of course.

VC: Oh yes, yes, yes. And then even later, Oklahoma [indecipherable] metropolitan before Tulsa and somehow, well, we had to stay the night when we would go to Oklahoma City.

WN: And stay in the hotel.

VC: Uh-huh. Stay in the hotel and then come back the next day. And they thought it was worth the effort and the money. We did have a wonderful musical education [indecipherable] and even though none of us performed as adults, we did have the appreciation, and that’s worth a lot.

WN: Yes it is, because so many people today 00:05:00have no earthly… VC: None.

WN: Knowledge of any of it.

VC: And I often think, oh, they missed so much enjoyment with not knowing what to listen for and how to listen. I wouldn’t take anything for my music education.

WN: Well, and you’re reading, too, because everybody read so prolifically.

VC: I tried to read a lot. I wouldn’t read some of the books I read as a child now. You couldn’t get the modern-day children to read them [inaudible]. But anyway, we did read. I went off to college pretty young. Daddy thought I was too young. Well, anyway, I was just 16, and he decided that was just much too young to graduate and go away from home, so he made drop a subject, so I wouldn’t have enough credits to graduate. Now I was crushed, just crushed! Well, 00:06:00Mrs. Hutton, Mrs. C.E. Hutton, the wife of the superintendent, was also the math teacher. I guess she felt sorry for me. Anyway, she arranged for me to take math, one of the subjects that I needed, or could use, in a study hall. And I didn’t say anything to my father. Well, when graduation time came, I had my credits. Now, he was pretty angry with me, but he couldn’t keep me from getting my diploma, so I went off to college. I wanted to go to Randolph-Macon (College), but Randolph-Macon at that time required four years of Latin to enter.

WN: Oh my.

VC: They offered only two years, and daddy was trying to help. He said oh can’t you take it on the side? And they required the fifth year your first year [indecipherable]. 00:07:00I told daddy there was no way I could take three years Latin and carry on. I just can’t do it. And he really thought I could. So, then we headed for another school which is a junior college then with accreditation if you took the right things, see, to go into the university as a junior after two years. So that’s where I went to Ward-Belmont. I enjoyed it and did a lot of growing up.

WN: It was an all-girls school.

VC: Yes, it was a girl’s school, and they even had day students down even in kindergarten and smaller children in the grades coming up. Of course, I went as a college student. And I mean… WN: Where is Ward-Belmont?

VC: It’s in Nashville, Tennessee. It doesn’t exist now. It went away like a lot of other junior 00:08:00colleges. They just couldn’t [indecipherable]. And now it’s a four-year coed college called Belmont College, but it’s in the same place. We worked hard. I mean, it was just really university work. I mean, I didn’t take typing. It was college work and it was very hard. The classes were small, and we had to recite nearly every day you went there. They knew whether you had studied or not. And I did alright. I made pretty good grades, and I got some offices and things like that. I had my eyes set on going to a coed school. I didn’t get there my way. Daddy kind of waylaid me here. I stayed here in Bristow taking typing 00:09:00and shorthand in high school. And that was kind of a bitter pill after you’ve been off to college to go back to the local high school, but I did. And I got to OU and then that’s when I got my honors. I did more honor’s courses than I did studying, but I’d had such a wonderful time [indecipherable] in Ward-Belmont really. And I don’t mean that I failed. I didn’t, because I made… WN: You were voted most outstanding girl.

VC: Yes, I was voted the most outstanding girl student they called it [indecipherable] girl student, not woman student. And Carl Albert received it for the boy [indecipherable].

WN: Well, for some of the people that might not know who Carl Albert is, because later on they may forget.

VC: Yes, 00:10:00well, he was the Speaker of the House for many, many years and I guess nobody has exceled that, has exceeded that number of years yet. He was short like I was, and had a stool to stand on even in the House of Representatives in Washington. They have a replica of his, exact replica of his office down at OU. I looked around the desk to see if that little stool was there and it was! It’s not a stool, it’s more of a little block, a little step.

WN: Well, and since that time, you’ve been honored several times by OU.

VC: Yes, they have asked me to come back. One year Carl was there, and I got, oh, 00:11:00they had all the Letzeiser medal students [indecipherable] to get him to come back. And I did, and that was a really nice year. And I worked real hard in my sorority and got all the offices they had to offer.

WN: And what sorority did you belong to, Velma?

VC: Kappa Kappa Gamma. I don’t know how I knew one from the other because I had never been around people who had been to a university, you know, very much. But I did have a few friends from Ward-Belmont who had gone to OU, and one of them, ones I liked the most had gone into that sorority, so that sort of turned my attention to that, and I enjoyed it. Well, then when I came back here after school… WN: When did you graduate?

VC: Oh, let’s see, I graduated from OU in ’31. I finished in ’30, but I got my diploma 00:12:00in ’31, in the spring of ’31. We were up in Missouri at daddy’s camp at the time, and he didn’t want me to go back to Norman. It was too long a trip, so I didn’t get to go to graduation, but I got my diploma.

WN: Uh, the camp (Camp Care-Away) was at Galena?

VC: Galena, Missouri. It was out from that little town on the river.

WN: Is that camp still there today as you know it?

VC: I’m not sure. It was such a beautiful little spot, but they built a dam somewhere down the river, the James River, and the government said it would be flooded, so they required mother, at that time because she owned it, to move the camp up on a bluff. Well, that took away the charm 00:13:00of it because it was down there...

WN: By the river.

VC: By the river and lots of trees where as a bluff is just [indecipherable] beauty. So, she, so I remember John and I went up there to help her get the deal consummated, and, but lots of boys went up there in the summertime.

WN: I remember, the DeMolay, so many of the DeMolays.

VC: Uh-huh, it was a, it was a big, big thing, and mother worked awfully hard. Well, we all did, everybody worked hard, because they had the program to outline and implement. You had to keep a bunch of folks busy. We were busy, too.

WN: It was a great learning experience.

VC: Oh yes! It really was for the boys.

WN: It was really a Christian.

VC: Yes, they were under good influences, and daddy [indecipherable] 00:14:00enjoyed boys, and talking with them and seeing if he could develop them and their personalities and guide them in the right direction. Now I’m trying to think what else you want.

WN: I just want you to tell me anything stands out in your mind. Think about what you’d like for your grandchildren to know, you know.

VC: Oh, about me?

WN: About you and… VC: Well, some, one of them asked me during the Christmas holiday, said, Grammy, tell me something about your childhood. I said, well, while we were eating, I was a little hard-pressed to think of anything, because my life was SO different.

WN: He really expected a lot of you, I think.

VC: Oh my, did they. When I say children were seen and not heard in my day, I mean literally. That keeps you from being able to communicate. 00:15:00WN: Socially, really.

VC: Uh-huh. And Etta Feild (Etta Feild Caves) and I talked about it. She was, and you know, not to show your emotions when I grew up, no. If you were sad, don’t show it. If you were, don’t act like a hoodlum and laugh all the time, see. I don’t know how to explain it except that children had their place in that era. Well, I, I can’t think of anything that I might have left out. You were talking about games, I can remember as a child playing jacks. Oh, I would wear my fingers out playing jacks.

WN: I don’t think I’ve seen any children playing jacks or hide and seek or anything in… VC: NO! And, 00:16:00oh, we had all kinds of games and different parts of the jacks game. I can remember playing marbles. [Indecipherable] used to love to tell about the time I beat him playing marbles, and it made him so mad because a little old squirt of a girl beat him. It was probably just that one time. Anyway, I loved to do that as a child. I really did.

WN: Yeah. And they played games like Jack Straws and pick up sticks.

VC: Yes, yes. I can remember that, too. Later on, our playing hours were spent practicing the piano. It was a shame I didn’t become a wonderful pianist. Daddy had an organ, and I think he would like for me to have taken that up, 00:17:00so I could entertain him. Mother did play, and she loved it. She used to try to play… WN: I can remember Lyle Thurman coming out here and practicing organ and that was the highlight of his life. And look what led to for Lyle.

VC: That’s right. Daddy was good to people…awfully good to people. If they tried to be worthy.

WN: This was important to him.

VC: Uh-huh it was and that was good training. And that’s why I used to get, inwardly, so upset when I would see the boys smoking after he had given them a hundred-dollar bill to give it up. Daddy was good. Some people… WN: He was trusting.

VC: Yes, I think some people tried to work him a little bit, maneuver him, 00:18:00you know, soft-soap him. Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.

WN: Okay, now then, if you can’t think of anything at this point in time about your early days, tell us about your two sons.

VC: Oh, well, I used to say I wanted four children. Well, I thought they were a little bit different than that. I had to settle for two. But I waited a long time to get the second one. It just didn’t happen that way. They were different as daylight and dawn which often the case in families, no two are alike. Rowland (Rowland Lee Collins) was precocious right from the beginning. I don’t whether it was because I had to entertain him so much when he was recovering from surgery on his hands when he'd had the terrible burn. I did spend a lot of time… WN: He fell on the floor furnace.

VC: That’s right. A floor 00:19:00furnace, and he was little. He didn’t know to move, see. So, my back was turned when he fell, but when I turned around, see seconds count, why his hands were badly burned. His arm and his face, too, but it was the palms of his hands that were kept there. Nowadays I don’t think you see those floor furnaces.

WN: No.

VC: And I’m glad they don’t have them anymore. They are very, very bad for accidents with children. Anyway, there was no plastic surgeon in Tulsa or Oklahoma City at the time, so we had to, when he was about two, I could see that his hands were growing 00:20:00and drawing up. So we had to go to St. Louis for plastic surgery at Barnes (ph) Children’s Hospital.

WN: [Indecipherable] VC: Yeah. Wonderful, wonderful. But then he didn’t have to have any more surgery until he was a teenager. Because his hands were growing, but all this time, see I had to spend a lot of time with him. And he was, had an inquiring mind.

WN: Very, very intelligent.

VC: I can remember we would take them to opera and I’d get a box of some kind, you know and make the stage and we would make characters and play out the story, so when he was old enough to go to opera, he knew quite a bit about it, very familiar as a high school student at the opera, and we didn’t have that money given in Oklahoma, but he was [indecipherable]. Well, then, when he went off to college, I think there was a Presbyterian preacher who was from the Princeton theological seminary, and we wondering where to send him. He said why don’t you go to Princeton. Well, I hadn’t even thought of that, you know. 00:21:00I didn’t know much about it, but he got in.

WN: Well, that was an honor in itself.

VC: Right. There wasn’t many, very many students from this part of the country at that time going east as there are now. Well, then when Roger (John Roger Collins) came along, he had that in mind, too, but he was afraid he couldn’t get in, however, he did. So, those were busy years, and I can remember when Roger went off to school, I said, you may not like it, but I think you better go on the train while it’s still going. So when he went to college, he had a roommate, or whatever they call them and went to Princeton and that was the last time he ever did because they began to fail, 00:22:00you know… WN: No more trains running.

VC: Right! That’s right. But he went to college on the train.

WN: Well, that’s a nice remembrance for Roger.

VC: I kind of thought so, too. See, he never did after that. Well, it was my idea. I said, you better go because I don’t think they’re going to last long.

WN: Now when did Rowland graduate from Princeton?

VC: Oh, let’s see. Fifty-six, I believe. He graduated cum laude, worked. Both of the boys worked while they were there.

WN: That’s great.

VC: It, I think, we might have managed without, but we barely managed with them working. Because even then… WN: Oh, 00:23:00it was expensive.

VC: Those schools were expensive. I can remember, once, they took different types of jobs in school. Roger, I mean Rowland worked in the library and then got to be sort of a secretary for one of the professors, which was wonderful. Roger helped a lady put in her flowerbeds. He did the digging in the dirt and made some good friends that way. I don’t regret it. I think maybe it would have been easier if they hadn’t had to work, but they got through alright, both of them. And they worked, I think it helped really.

WN: Tell about Rowland going to England. I think that was wonderful, honestly.

VC: Oh, Rowland got some grants that took him to England. He had a trip to 00:24:00Europe that was just fantastic, he and one of his friends. And that’s before there was so much travel in Europe. And that then later years, Sarah, his wife and I, did some of same route that he took. We found it very interesting, rather tiring, because it was so inclusive, but it was great, great. Then he stayed in England one year. He began to find things that were in his field. Now the one thing that Rowland did that was very, very outstanding was that when he began to teach out of college, he got his doctorate degree from Stanford, and I think he was, if not the youngest, the next to the youngest to graduate to get a doctorate’s degree. And John and I had said, well, why not go ahead and get 00:25:00it. We can help you a little bit now, and if you wait until you are married and have kids, by then it will be ten times harder. So, if you can, get it now, well, he did. Then he went to teach in Indiana. Well, Rowland was such an inquisitive mind that he went through some manuscripts in the library.

WN: In Old English.

VC: In Old English that nobody had ever paid any attention to, hadn’t classified them, even. So that’s when he became interested in these old, old manuscripts. And it became really a part of his well-known honors.

WN: Yes, he earned a reputation.

VC: Right, he, he at one time had an exhibit in the J. Pierpont Morgan Library in New York of all of these early manuscripts in the United States.

WN: Oh my! 00:26:00VC: Well, that was quite a feat, and the catalog described them because nobody had taken the trouble to even learn the English of that old, old day. It was before Chaucer, you see. Before, you think Chaucer is pretty far back. Well, this is before that. I can remember, he went to Princeton one year. He had a scholarship, not a scholarship, but a Guggenheim Grant, something. He was granted entrée to their manuscripts.

WN: So that’s an honor in itself.

VC: Uh-huh. And they had certain light that you could help decipher what had been there. He really worked hard on that, and then he went to England, even, to study more in their library and had entrée to the British museum. He showed us a little 00:27:00cubicle. It was very, very interesting, and then, of course, he lived there.

WN: Man, that is hard work.

VC: Oh, yes! And the living conditions, I think they lived on the third floor, no elevator. Shopping, you know, everything was small, the shopping for food had to be done often. You can’t just get a whole bunch of stuff. You have no room to put it. Anyway, Sarah had a grant that year, too, and their daughter went to school in London, you remember.

WN: Yes.

VC: So that was a nice, nice experience for all of them. I wondered if he didn’t pick up a bug in London.

WN: This could have been the start of it.

VC: Uh-huh. 00:28:00Now Roger had a good trip with Billy Farha (Bill Farha, Jr.).

WN: Yes, to the Middle East.

VC: To the Middle East. I look on Roger as being a definite brunette and kind of dark. They described him as a blonde when he was in those countries. They said who’s that blonde with you? Both boys were good in French. I’ve always wanted to be able to speak French fluently. I think it’s a little late now to start, but both of them had a good tongue or lip or something for French. They worked at it, though, because the, Roger I don’t think had ever had any French until he got to college. College French is extremely hard. But he worked at it, and Rowland said his accent was better than his. Well, they were both good enough for me. Anyway, Roger told us about the time that 00:29:00he and Debbie Farha (ph) were on a ship cruising somewhere, and they were off to the, they were sitting at a table, and another group not too far away and they were speaking in French. Well, Roger knew what they were saying, and they were criticizing Roger and Debbie (ph). Roger said he never changed his expression until they got up and left, and then he just turned to them and said something and let them know that he heard every word they said. And knew what they said. Roger’s had experiences, too, in a different way. Rowland’s were in the literary field and he attained lots of honors.

WN: And he wrote a book.

VC: He wrote a book. He edited several books. He 00:30:00had, I can’t tell you all the honors because they’re in certain fields of literature at Rochester. He was, he was head of the English department there at Rochester for nine years. I don’t think anybody had served that long. Finally, he said, oh mom, I can’t take it any longer. He said all the professors were prima donnas. Some were, you know, pretty high on themselves. Well, they’re experts in their fields. They liked him, though, and he enjoyed it there very much, and it was a shame he had to be taken so young. 00:31:00WN: And how old was he when… VC: Fifty.

WN: Fifty when he died.

VC: Fifty when died in ’85. And that’s just the height of his career. It’s just one of those things you never will understand, but it happened. So, here I am, minus one son, minus a husband, and I’m going on.

WN: Yes, and you still have Roger and he’s done wonderfully well in the business world.

VC: Yes, Roger, has different talents. He’s had some fantastic experiences.

WN: Tell me some of the companies that he’s, just name some of the companies that he’s worked for.

VC: Okay, he worked for Vanply, Inc., which is the subsidiary of Skelly. He was stationed out in, lived out in Washington there for several months. During that time, 00:32:00it seems there was some skullduggery going on in the business and a lot of mismanagement. So, at one time, they sent him to North Carolina, somewhere down there, and the situation was SO bad, here was quite young, I don’t know why they solicited a man so young, but they did. He had to have a Pinkerton man with him everywhere he went. He had to change his motel every night, and it finally got settled, but I think someone was caught, and maybe one man committed suicide over it. I’m not sure, but it was a REAL problem. And Roger was in the middle of it. I didn’t know anything about it until it was all over.

WN: Aren’t you glad?

VC: I am glad. Another time, I don’t know whether he was, who he was, I don’t think it was Vanply, Inc. then, but he was in Paris and 00:33:00at the airport, the police [indecipherable] came and took him down to police headquarters, and what had happened was, there had been a big jewel robbery, and the man’s name was Roger Collins! His name was Roger Collins! Well, he knew French, and he didn’t know whether that was good or bad, you see, because, he knew things and this man was Roger, John Roger Collins. If Roger were to hear this, he might not think I’m telling it right, but anyway, they took him down to headquarters in Paris.

WN: Oh my, how scary.

VC: I didn’t know this until it was all over. Rowland told me about it. And they searched him and questioned him for quite a while before he proved 00:34:00that he wasn’t a jewel robbery. You know, well, anyway, that would have scared the wits out of me, and it did to hear about it.

WN: Oh, yes!

VC: But he came out of it alright, finally, it was another John Roger Collins. Isn’t that amazing?

WN: Yes.

VC: I don’t think he’s had such hair-raising experiences.

WN: But he’s had some wonderful jobs.

VC: Yes, when he worked for Parker (Parker Drilling Company), it was very, very pleasant.

WN: Tell about the next job or whatever you want to tell.

VC: This is a different type of job, not concerned with the oil business like Parker was, but it’s very challenging because they do things with the airplane industry.

WN: Alright, now what company is this?

VC: This is Nordam.

WN: Nordam.

VC: Nordam. I’d never heard of it until he began to work for them, but they are a big company. They’ve expanded 00:35:00several times since he’s been working for them, and I think they’re latest project is the hush kit which I think sounds wonderful if it can come to pass in completion. It’s to put on the biggest airplanes to cut the noise down. But it’s very expensive and it’s, it’s complicated.

WN: This is for noise pollution?

VC: That’s right. I just don’t know the phase of it now, how they’re coming along or…I think there are other companies that would like to have the patent or two, you know. So that brings complications, and anyway, I know he works awfully hard.

WN: I know he does, too. And I’m going to stop right now because you have talked…