Transcript of interview with Theda Kay Grinnell by Fletcher Corey, February 28, 1977

UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell i An Interview with Theda Grinnell An Oral History Conducted by Fletcher Corey Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas Special Collections and Archives Oral History Research Center University Libraries University of Nevada, Las Vegas UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell ii © Ralph Roske Oral History Project on Early Las Vegas University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 2018 UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell iii The Oral History Research Center (OHRC) was formally established by the Board of Regents of the University of Nevada System in September 2003 as an entity of the UNLV University Libraries’ Special Collections Division. The OHRC conducts oral interviews with individuals who are selected for their ability to provide first-hand observations on a variety of historical topics in Las Vegas and Southern Nevada. The OHRC is also home to legacy oral history interviews conducted prior to its establishment including many conducted by UNLV History Professor Ralph Roske and his students. This legacy interview transcript received minimal editing, such as the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader's understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. The interviewee/narrator was not involved in the editing process. UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell iv Abstract On February 28, 1977, Fletcher Corey interviewed Theda Kay Grinnell (born 1935 in New London, Iowa) about her life in Las Vegas, Nevada. Grinnell first talks about her move to Nevada and both her and her husband’s work at the Nevada Test Site. She also talks about the atomic blasts, competition with Russia, and her employment that followed her work at the Test Site. Grinnell later talks about her church membership and goes into detail about the race riots and how they involved and impacted her and her son. The end of the interview includes discussion on flash floods, the culinary union, how World War II affected the Las Vegas industry, and the social changes in Las Vegas. UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 1 My informant is Theda Kay Grinnell. The date is February 28th, 1977 at ten o’clock in the morning. The place is the Humanities building on the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus. The room is 146. The collector is Fletcher Corey, room 505, Tonopah Hall, University of Nevada. The project is A Local History Project: Oral Report, Oral Interview. The topic is the progress of Las Vegas since the 1950s and its effect on the people and the environment. Good morning. This is Fletcher Corey, talking to you from the Humanities building on the first floor, and I’m here with Kay Grinnell. And could you tell me, Grinnell, when was the first time that you came to Las Vegas? We came to Nevada in August of 1954. My family consisted of a husband, a baby about six months old, and myself. We were transferred here by a government contractor to work at the Nevada Test Site. We drove into Las Vegas in the heat of the summer. We did not have a place to stay. We tried rental agencies in news ads. In trying to locate a place to stay, we discovered that asking people on the streets for directions was impossible because everybody said, “I’ve just gotten here,” or, I’m a tourist.” So, we had a very difficult time locating these places that were advertised. When we did locate them, we found they were impossible—the rents were high, and the accommodations were poor. So, we went back to Boulder City and rented a two-bedroom apartment in some two-story apartment buildings for $76 dollars a month. My husband went to work at the Test Site. I remember that his take-home pay was $56 a week. I was not working at first. In October of ’54, we moved into Las Vegas, into an apartment building, a one-story apartment building. It was one bedroom, furnished, all electric with a swamp cooler, and cost $150 a month. I went to work at the Test Site as a clerk typist, and my gross pay was $60 a week. At that time, there were no buses to the Test Site, so you formed carpools. We worked long hours. Most of the time we were on what we called six nines, or a fifty-four hour week, was a UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 2 basic week. I worked in the accounting department; my ex-husband did reproduction-type work with Xeroxes, offset, etcetera. Our office accommodations at the Test Site were very poor. The administration building that I worked in had cement floors. The little office that I was in had no heat other than a floor heater. There were four girls crammed into one office. One of the girls worked at a card table in the middle of the floor, and anytime anyone wanted to come in or out of the office, she had to take her card table down. To go from one building to another, you walked through gravel. There were no sidewalks. They did have the mess hall. Living accommodations for those that wanted to stay at the Test Site were trailers and dorms, and they were hard to come by. Since we worked such long hours. I often had to stay out. I didn’t have a room that I kept on a weekly basis, so girls would shove their twin beds together and let me sleep in the crack. (Laughs) I saw all of the shots that were set off during that first year. You could go out in buses to the CP, or control point, area. They gave you special goggles to wear. You stood there and listened to the countdown, and they told you when to kneel down or sit down on the ground so that you wouldn’t be knocked over or fall over from the shockwaves. It was exciting time because this was new and frightening to many people because so much was unknown about it. Did they have special names that they called each of the shots? Yes, they did. Some of them that I remember were Teacup and Plumbob—I do have snapshots, a whole series of snapshots at home on these, some colored photos of them. I remember one time, my sister came to visit me for the summer—she’s a schoolteacher—and went to work in the same accounting office that I did for the government contractor. We took a station wagon and went in the early morning, picking up girls to go out and see one of these shots that was to go off, like, five o’clock in the morning. And it was a very exciting thing; it was new and it was different, it was unknown, it was frightening. We picked up these girls, and they were there in UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 3 their curlers and whatnot, such an early hour of the morning, and sleeping all the way out there. It was a very exciting thing to do. You felt like you were really part of something very different than the rest of the country. At this time, did you know that they were, in fact, competing with Russia? Yes, this was their purpose was to at least maintain a balance and hopefully be ahead of Russia in the nuclear warfare. Since it was so new, people had to try things out, even within the accounting office where I worked; therefore, like I say, we worked long hours. The men often slept on the desk at night. Later, I moved to town to work, but the excitement still prevailed. You always felt like you were a part of something very, very important to the nation’s welfare. During the period in the late 1950s, early 1960s, I watched it grow within their purchasing department from nine girls to thirty-six; I was supervisor of a dayshift and a nightshift. That is just one department, so the whole company expanded thousands of employees within the year. That’s about all I have to say about that. Could you tell me, what other type of employment have you had since the atomic test site? I went to work at what was called the old airport—originally, it was the municipal airport, George Crocket bought it and called it Alamo Airways, Howard Hughes bought it from him approximately in the fall of 1968. I went to work within a couple weeks after Hughes bought it. He bought that airport and also the North Las Vegas Airport. Again, I worked in the accounting department. It was an interesting, interesting place to work. There were always celebrities coming in and out in their private aircraft. In addition to that, political figures came through. I remember the time that Spiro Agnew came through when he was vice president; he came to Las Vegas for political reasons. There was great security. They went through all of the building checking everybody out—there were men with walkie-talkies everywhere, in all areas. I did not UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 4 get to see him, which reminds me that my children and my ex-husband also got to see John F. Kennedy when he came here and appeared at the convention center. There was very little security; they were in a crowd, standing by the car as he came out. He walked right in front of them where they could have reached out and touched him. While I worked at the airport—this was an exciting place to work because of all the rumors about Howard Hughes and his eccentric ways. We were always being told by someone within the company that Howard Hughes came out there and watched us without us knowing it, that he would stand in the lobby and watch what was going on—that he always knew what was going on. There was great secrecy about all of their operations. For instance, they kept a conference that nobody was allowed in, the drapes were always drawn, out workmen could not go in without someone special going with him. I remember, at one time, the executive secretary was not there, and I always filled in for her in her absences. A workman had to come in and go into that room for some reason, so I had to go as his escort. You were so frightened by all this secrecy that you didn’t let your eyes wander. You just went in and looked at the thing you were supposed to look at, and got out. Another time when I was filling in for this executive secretary, the manager of the airport’s secretary, she told me about this phone that was in this office, which apparently was supposed to be a direct line to Howard Hughes. They were expecting a call, if this call came I was to do certain things—I waited all day and the phone never rang. (Laughs) At another time when I filled in for this executive secretary, she told me that there was a list of important men that I was to know was available—I was not to look at this list and know the names, I was just to know where the list was kept in case I needed it. However, I did not know, nor was I instructed as to when I would need it. And the place that it was kept was under the pad of her typewriter. And that’s the type of ridiculous secrecy that surrounded that job out there. I left there and went to work for the UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 5 university. I have worked here for five years. I took classes in 1969 full-time, working part-time at the airport, so I have watched the campus expand while being a part of it. Did you work with any campaigning for congressmen or senators while you were working at the University of Nevada? Yes, I have. I’ve campaigned several times for John Vergiels, who was an assemblyman. He is also a professor in secondary education on campus. I have not really gotten involved in the politics of it. My work usually consisted of addressing envelopes, mailings, keeping a guest book at a party, helping to act as a hostess at a cocktail party. I’ve met many political figures, many everyday citizens that came to these parties—the governor has been at several of them, and I’ve met him, or anyone that happened to be running for public office that might be a colleague or someone of concern to Dr. Vergiels. I never, at any time, ran into any gangster-type people who were trying to control politics; I never ran into that type in my employment anywhere. I’ve never met any—it’s just something that people talk about. I’m sure there are some here, but I have never met any. I understand, Ms. Grinnell, that you are a Presbyterian. Could you go into what it was like to go to church and mingle in these activities back in the 1950s? The Presbyterian Church originally met at one of the mortuaries here in town. They then build their present building at 1515 West Charleston, and that’s when I started going to Presbyterian Church. At that time, what it now the sanctuary was just a shell. We held our services in what is now the social hall. We say on folding chairs—we held rummage sales in what is now the sanctuary. This church as grown to approximately 1,200 members of the congregation and is the largest mainline church in Las Vegas. I have been a Sunday school teacher there, I’ve served on the Christian Education Committee, an elected position by the congregation, I have served as UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 6 chairman of the Adult Education Committee. I’ve watched the changes in the church’s attitude towards various groups of people. When I first started going there, I never saw a Black. I Black is now our choir director. He’s on leave because he had a heart attack, but he had been a paid choir director for a number of years. We have Blacks singing in our choir, we have Blacks in our Sunday school, we have Blacks in the congregation. From a very cold, conservative feeling that I got when I first got to that church, I think that, within the last two years, they’ve opened up more to what is really happening throughout the United States or throughout the world. They’re recognizing single people. I’m now divorced, I’ve been divorced three years, so that’s been a very important thing to me. I have been very active in the church, then when you become single, you are just someone who is there. You go as a guest here and a guest there. Since that time, I have ushered in the church, and I think I probably was the first unmarried, divorced woman to walk down that aisle as an usher. I started a single adult group at the church, with great support of the church, a year ago. This group has been very successful. They allowed us to invite friends and people from other churches to join with us. I’ve watched changes within the children’s programs. The girls can come to church in jeans, and they’re not shunned or told to go home and put a dress on. Not as formal as they used to be? Correct. The boys can come in jeans and sneakers. I’ve gone as a counselor on junior high retreats and senior high retreats. I felt that the church staff really tries to help these children, knowing about drugs, they’re more accepting if a child uses a four-letter word. They see that he’s away from his parents, and he’s trying it all out—he’s not automatically condemned. It’s a kind of aggression that’s taken out so verbally. UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 7 It’s not that the church staff accepts that as a way of life, but they’re more accepting that everyone is not perfect. There are certain times when certain types of behavior are going to occur, and that does not condemn you to hell for the rest of your life. During this past Christmas season, my children and I were asked to light the candles at one of the advent services, and I am sure this was a first, a single-parent family taking this part in the church service. We felt it to be an honor. Also during that time, the singles group provided the refreshments for one of the advent service. After the advent service, one evening, we had folk dancing. That was a first for the church, for everybody to join hands in a big circle, and did folk dancing regardless of age, the little children were out there with the adults. It’s a warmer, happier, more outgoing feeling. Within the last two years, the congregation has actually been allowed to apply things that have happened from the pulpit, whereas before we sat there very cold and quiet, and something really wonderful happened, but you had no way of expressing your feelings. So, I think we are opening up and becoming a much warmer church. You mentioned earlier that you had watched the UNLV campus grow from a small, say, like a two-year community college up to a 8,000-, 9,000-student capacity. What could you tell me about the schools in the surrounding Las Vegas community? When we first came here, Rancho and Las Vegas High were the only high schools. We moved into what is called Golf Ridge in the fall of 1960. At that time, Washington Street from Decatur up was nothing but dirt—it wasn’t even a gravel road. It was just dirt. There were no houses out beyond Brentwood, which borders Decatur, and nothing out beyond the Golf Ridge section that we bought in. My children went to J. T. McWilliams School for elementary school, R. O. Gibson for junior high, and Western High School. My nephews all graduated from Western High School, and one of them was in the first graduating class from Western High School. Another of UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 8 my nephews was study body president at Western High School. Many times since I’ve lived in that area, which is seventeen years, I’ve had social workers and that type of person tell me that it is the most bigoted area in Las Vegas. They had race riots at Western High School while my nephew was student body president and during the time my son graduated from there, which was in 1972. I remember one incident after they had had a riot, which was probably ’69 or ’70 when my nephew was there—on the school marquis, they put, “We love our blue meanies,” an expression of caring for the policemen that had helped out during the riot. They were deluged with phone calls from parents who thought this was a very inappropriate thing calling the policemen “blue meanies,” at a time when others were calling them pigs. Yes. I remember a number of riots when my son Steve was in high school, one of them, in particular, had a lot of meaning. I just remember very clearly all the things that happened. I was going to school part time at the university at the time, I would be coming home during the day. If I saw that helicopter circling the school, I knew there was a problem. I got so I had knots in my stomach when I saw that helicopter, knowing that he was in there. On my birthday in September, they had a riot at the school. I came home from work, and there was a big red ribbon across the covered doors, and I opened it, and there were all these glasses, a full set of different sized drinking glasses that he had given me for a birthday present. I told how much I appreciated them, and he told me I better appreciate them because he had gone off campus that noon, taken two girls with him in his car to help him pick out these glasses as a gift. They had a riot while he was gone; when he came back and tried to get on campus, they let him in, but the police searched his car, and this was at the time when he was student body president. They found these glasses and accused him of using them as weapons, bringing them on campus to use as weapons. So, he and UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 9 his two girlfriends were taken to the principal’s office, and the girls started crying and were released to their parents to go back to class after about half an hour, but Steve had to stay longer, trying to explain what all had taken place. This caused a resentment within the kids with the authorities. They knew they had been doing nothing wrong, and they had a hard time understanding the authorities really had to check out everything. I remember Steve telling once about a student being picked up by the feet by other students and having his head slammed against a stone wall. I remember we made the agreement that if he ever left campus and came back and saw that there had been a riot, he was to go home, and I would take care of it for him. This came about again, and he came back to campus, tried to leave—he had policemen to get the hell home and get out of there, shoving him one direction, teachers telling him to get back to class and shoving him the other direction. So he was shoved back and forth, being told he would be suspended if he didn’t go to class, by the teachers, being told by the policemen that he was going to be arrested if he went on campus. In the end, he went home. This created a terrible atmosphere within our whole neighborhood and within every household. We were all upset by this, because we knew he would be on suspension, and he was. I had to call the school and have him excused, explain the situation. They had a conference in the evening for Whites—sorry, that was during the daytime—they had one for Blacks. The news media was supposed to be excluded; however, the woman that was sitting next to me, I know, was a writer for one of the two larger papers here in town. It surprised me at this meeting, which consisted of the White parents and their children and the faculty, how the children and the parents automatically went into groups—one end were the ones that were just violently against integration, the middle were the middle-of-the-roaders—we were all sitting in bleachers. The other end were the real do-gooders that were going to do good for everybody and everything. It was amazing how, without UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 10 knowing one another, we separated ourselves. My son and I were sitting in the middle. You could tell by the way the children got up and spoke—they were all allowed a chance at the microphone to speak to the crowd their feelings, what they thought had happened, why it had happened, what they thought would help it. The ones that were violently opposed to integration would get up there and say things like, “We think we oughta be allowed to go to the vacant lot across the street and have a fight and just fight it out to the last dog.” And you could just tell that a lot of these things that they were saying were just parroted from what they had heard their parents say. The kids at the other extreme were up there trying to console them and giving them what I came to realize was one of the worst lines they could have given them. They would say that, “For 200 years, we have oppressed these people.” Well, that does reach a student; he is thinking of the present day: “I didn’t do anything, so why should I be punished?” So they had such extreme poles—they were just completely apart that they did not get together for that. Do you suppose this act of violence was brought because of the integration, or was it some other key factor that caused them to disrupt, and how is it, in 1970, how can you relate the activities of the students now? During that time, I know that there were lots of people, lots of Blacks, from out of state that came in and tried to organize the Blacks here, telling them, “You don’t have to put up with this,” etcetera, etcetera, which got the students all riled up. I remember, at one time, I was working at the airport, a teletype coming in from Los Angeles that carloads and carloads of Blacks were coming in, “You better go home,” and we were dismissed to go home, because they did not know what was going to happen. I don’t know if the carloads ever arrived or not. There still isn’t happiness today, but the unease that they were feeling at that time was widespread; it was throughout the United States. It was in all the news media; these riots were on television, which UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 11 only, as far as I’m concerned, maintained that feeling of unrest and unhappiness. I think it hindered more than it helped the situation, because they do still have problems at school but they are not so widespread or frightening. There were lots of people coming on campus that did not belong there. They were not students that were creating a lot of this. We also had a sit-in here at the university while I was a student in ’69 or ’70, and this did not have racial overtones. It was just a student unrest throughout the United States. But I remember, even though I was somewhat frightened, I would go to class, and these students would be sitting around on the sidewalk outside the door and saying rather threatening things to you if you went to class instead of boycotting, but they really didn’t do anything. And in reading newspaper articles and seeing what was going on, on television on other campuses throughout the United States, our campus was a very conservative campus during that period of time. You mentioned earlier that when you worked for the atomic nuclear plant there that you had to carpool. Was transportation a big factor during the 1950s? What types of roads were there, and the utilities also? Ever since we’ve lived in Las Vegas, transportation has been a problem. It’s almost impossible to get around without your own car. The bus service has always been unreliable. The roads don’t keep up with the growth of the population. The streets are always being torn up. I can’t remember one full year in the seventeen years that we’ve lived in the six block area off of Decatur that Decatur has not been torn up. It went from being a little two-lane road when we first moved there to the large Boulevard that it is now. But there is also something torn up. They’re putting in utility lines, they’re putting in a water line—there’s always something torn up. It has been like that all over town. Utilities, when we first moved in to that area, it was impossible to get a telephone; you had to have an emergency situation within the home in order to get a phone. UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 12 You had to be pregnant, or you had to have a handicapped person, something like that. So we went almost a year in that first home in 1960 without a telephone. When I needed a telephone, I had to walk to the older section in Brentwood and use someone else’s. This ends side one. [Audio ends] Since you came to Las Vegas, what types of disasters did you notice or were part of? The two that were the biggest and most frightening to me were floods. There was a flood in July of 1955. At that time, my husband was out of town, and I had a one-year-old baby at home. I got home from work about five o’clock in the afternoon—I think it had been sprinkling by then—and we knew that a big storm was coming. I didn’t drive and had no transportation other than a bus to go and pick up my son from the babysitter’s. So a neighbor took me in his pickup truck. It hailed and it rained. I lived on the 1100 block on South Fourth Street at the time and had to go to the vicinity of Bruce and Stewart Street to pick up my son. It rained, as I said, and hailed. My neighbor friend got me there, and I stayed for dinner rather than go back out into the storm again. Somewhere about nine, ten o’clock at night, we felt that it had quit raining and it would be safe for me to take Steve and get on the city bus and go home. So I took him down to the bus stop—the street was completely dry. Where garbage cans had been floating down the street earlier, it was completely dry. I had never seen a flash flood like this. I can remember kneeling down in the middle of the street and touching the asphalt or blacktop, whatever, with my hand because I couldn’t believe that it could be so dry—was gone. The bus then ran down through the Sunrise area over into Crestwood and then back up to Fourth Street. While we were doing this, the floodwaters were still down in the Sunrise and Crestwood areas. So here I am on this big bus, and we come to the water where cars are stalled with water clear up above their wheels. They UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 13 had National Guard trucks with big V-shaped wooden things on the front of them to go ahead of us to part the water so that the bus could get through. We went across there by the Showboat and through a residential area—people had their backdoors open and the front doors open, and the water was rushing in one door and out the other. We could see all of this from the bus. People were knocking holes in their block wall fences to let the water out so that it would drain into somebody else’s yard. We got up to the intersection of Charleston and Las Vegas Boulevard, and the bus driver could see that I was not going to be able to get home. The water was up above the curb. The bus driver drove me clear to my apartment house around the corner, down the block on Fourth Street, to make sure that I got home safely with my child. The water was still in our driveway, and I could see where it lapped against the front door. It was the driveway, a step, and then step up into the house, so the water had been up at least six inches, maybe eight, there in front of the house. And it was a flat area; it was not up from the main street. This was, to me, a completely new experience. The worst flood that I was in after that was the flood a year ago in July. I was working at the university, and about three o’clock in the afternoon, someone called and said, “There’s going to be a big flood, we heard it on the radio, you better go home.” So I checked with other people, and it took us till about four o’clock to get out of here. By that time, it had reached here—this is the one that went through the Caesars Palace parking lot, washed away cars. I got to the intersection of Flamingo—I don’t remember the cross street—but directly behind the MGM Hotel. They would not let me go onto the freeway. I parked my car and waded out to the little man in the yellow slicker with a flashlight, telling him that I wanted to go home, I lived in the West Charleston area, and I felt like if I could get on the freeway, I would be okay when I got home. He said, “No, all of that area is flooded. You will not be able to get home.” The Las Vegas Expressway where I would have gotten off at Decatur was flooded; he was UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 14 correct. I would not have been able to get home that way. So, I stayed at Village Pub until 8:30, got in my car, and drove all the way home with no problem. Again, the water had all gone down by then. There was water standing in ditches or in gutters along the way, but the main part of the road was dry. And I did get home safely. Well, speaking of disasters, I understand the unions are somewhat of a problem sometimes, like I noticed that last week and this week, most of the grocery stores were on strike for, I guess, they want an increase in fringe benefits or something. What could you tell me about the unions since 1950 and their effect on the Las Vegas environment? I can tell you the printer strike, which I believe was in 1972—my ex-husband was a printer. He was a union steward in his shop. He was also the shop manager. This was a very bitter strike. The union members were very upset with him because he was associated with management; however, he was still a voting union member. He continued to work. They set up a picket line in front of all the print shops. One print shop, Brimmy’s, burned. At the shop where he worked, they knocked a hole in the window glass and put a garden hose in it and flooded the shop. Personally, I came out to get in my car to go to work one morning and found that yellow paint had been thrown all over my car and down the windshield. My son was working at a car lot at the time and told me, if could get down there fast enough, they could probably wipe the paint off without ruining the car too much. So I got in the car and my ex-husband got in his van and we took off to the car lot. I didn’t get very far—I had a flat. He changed the flat, put on a spare. I got on the freeway, and another one went out, another tire went out, right in the middle of the eight o’clock traffic. At this point, we discovered they had taken finishing nails and pounded them into the tires—all of my tires were ruined. They had various other things happen to them before that strike was settled. As far as I’m concerned, they were off work so long, they lost so much UNLV University Libraries Theda Kay Grinnell 15 money, that they did not gain anything by that strike. Probably the same thing will happen with the people that are out on strike against the groceries at the time. I went into the grocery store a week ago, bought something, came back out, crossed the picket line. A lady said, “Thank you, ma’am,” and I said, “You’re welcome,” and she spit on me. And of course, it’s been said in the newspaper, they have had tires slashed at the grocery stores in the lots, there was a fire set at one of the Safeway stores, hoses going into the store were cut. A certain element becomes very violent. So you don’t feel there’s been much of a progress with the unions since 1950, or do you think that their violence is the only thing that will enable them to get