Transcript of interview with Flo Mlynarczyk by Claytee White, July 7, 2005

An Interview with Flo Mlynarczyk An Oral History Conducted by Claytee D. White The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ©The Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2007 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV - University Libraries Director and Editor: Claytee D. White Assistant Editors: Gloria Homol and Delores Brownlee Transcribers: Kristin Hicks and Laurie Boetcher Interviewers and Project Assistants: Suzanne Becker, Nancy Hardy, Joyce Moore, Andres Moses, Laura Plowman, Emily Powers, Dr. Dave Schwartz ii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of Dr. Harold Boyer and the Library Advisory Committee. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank the university for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes 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. In several cases, photographic sources (housed separately) accompany the collection as slides or black and white photographs. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the Boyer Early Las Vegas Oral History Project. Additional transcripts may be found under that series title. Claytee D. White, Project Director Director, Oral History Research Center University Nevada, Las Vegas iii Table of Contents Born in Fort Morgan, CO; moving to Loveland with mother, then to Los Angeles with stepfather and mother; mother's history; living in Bell Gardens, CA; remembering disappearance of Japanese; graduation, 1943, followed by move to Kodiak, Alaska; working as waitress; bout of pneumonia; return to Bell Gardens; working in Huntington Park at Wineman's, married May 8th, 1945, divorce, birth of son Michael 1-10 Life in Tonopah, NV; mention of Mispah Hotel and Tonopah Club; moving to Las Vegas, 1953; working as office manager at Propane Sales and Service on North Main Street; joining Women's Morning Breakfast Club; bookkeeper for Phelps Pump; dinner and dancing with Ed Mlynarczyk at the Desert Inn Hotel, breakfast at the Silver Slipper; memories of Michael Hines, attorney; marrying Ed, 1962, moving into home in Rancho Circle; information on children; son Michael buys The Kitchen Sink, a business run by grandchildren today; detailed comments on the Ronzoni's, Rancho Circle, buying property on West Charleston Boulevard; retiring to property, 1970 11-20 Traveling all over Nevada; Ed starts Drilling and Pumps (on Spring Mountain Road); second retirement, more traveling; Ed works for Water District as construction inspector, 1974 to mid-eighties; home on Fort Apache between Desert Inn and Sahara; involvement with UNLV library through Hal Erickson and Blanche Zucker; Mary Dale Deacon, Iona Gifford helped with Friends Group, later called University Library Society; details on raising money for Dickerson Library; mention of Myoung-ja Lee Kwon; joining Mesquite Club, 1975; tending Mesquite Club Rose Garden in Lorenzi Park, acting as liason until '97; history of Mesquite Club projects; club location; working for Las Vegas Convention Center 28 years; favorite convention was Pizza Hut Classic; joining Nevada Watercolor Society, 1986; discussion of prizes earned, shows, watercolor workshops with the likes of Carl Purcell; associate member of National Watercolor Society 21-30 Becoming signature member of Watercolor Society; mention of First Friday, downtown arts activity; mention of D AR; serving on Citizens Advisory Committee for updating Community Planning and Development Department, 1984; mention of Bill Briare, former mayor; designing pin for Mesquite Club with Bill Cox, owner of Van Buren & Cox Jewelers; joining New Sound Choir, 1987; list of charitable organizations; honors and awards given for volunteer work, poetry, and painting; comments on the two Vicki Richardsons, artists; changes noted in Las Vegas since '53; opinions on Mob presence and influence; mention of black entertainers having to stay on the Westside; anecdote concerning Nat King Cole and husband Ed; comments on DC4 Road (now Spring Mountain Road) and meat packing plant; mention of Nevada Test Site and atomic testing; comments on Las Vegas old-timers like Ann Ronzoni, Hal and Tina Smith, Mom Ronzoni, Mr. and Mrs. Terrible (Herbst), Ray Harris; closing comments on development in North Las Vegas 31-44 iv Preface Flo Mlynarczyk began life in Fort Morgan, Colorado. Her parents divorced and she moved with her mother first to Loveland and eventually to Los Angeles. Her mother started the first Red Cross in Bell Gardens, oversaw the building of their home, and raised money for various charities. Flo remembers when the Japanese were rounded up and interred during WWII. She was in grade school and recalls that one day they all just disappeared. Upon graduation from high school in 1943, Flo moved to Kodiak, Alaska, to live with friends. She recalls total blackouts on the streets of Kodiak due to the war, the Short Snorter Club, and her return to California after a bout of pneumonia. Back in Bell Gardens, Flo worked for a department store, married and divorced in 1945, gave birth to her son Michael in 1946, and ended up in Tonopah, Nevada, with a sister who ran a cafe there. After a second marriage ended, Flo moved to Las Vegas and began working at Phelps Pump and Equipment as a bookkeeper. By 1962 she was office manager at Propane Sales and Service where she met her third husband, Ed Mlynarczyk. It was while she was working in propane sales that Flo joined the Breakfast Club, the first of many organizations that she worked with and learned from. She remembers dining and dancing at the top of the Desert Inn Hotel, breakfast at the Silver Slipper, and living in Rancho Circle next to neighbors like the Ronzonis and the Kaltenborns. After Ed's retirement from the fire department, they bought property on West Charleston and finished the house that had been started there, rented it out, and traveled all over Nevada. Ed then started a business with two of his friends for which Flo kept the books. After a second retirement and more traveling, Ed went to work for the Water District until his final retirement in the mid-eighties. Flo recalls getting involved with the university library, joining the Mesquite Club and participating in its many civic activities, and working for the Las Vegas Convention Center. She details her association with the Watercolor Society, the Citizens Advisory Committee, and singing with the New Sound Choir. The thousands of hours she spent working with various charitable organizations earned her recognition as Volunteer of the Year, and she was listed in Distinguished Women of Southern Nevada for five years running. Flo closes her narrative with observations on the Mob's influence in Las Vegas, comments on the changes she has seen since 1953, and mention of other early Las Vegans who contributed to the city's growth. She also mentions her husband's work at the Nevada Test Site and the information that is being gathered on those who worked there in the fifties, sixties, and seventies. v ORAL HISTORY RESEARCH CENTF.R at UNI V _ Use Agreement Name of Narrator Name of interviewer: ( *LMT££ We, the above named, give to the Oral Hi/story Research Center of UNLV the tape recorded internets) initiated on jf J as an unrestricted gift, to be used for such scholarly and educatior/al itfces as shall be determined and transfer to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas, legal title and all literary property rights including copyright. This gift does not preclude the nqht of the interviewer, as a representative of UNLV, to use the recordings and related materials for scholarly uses. There will be no compensation for any interviews 7 -/7 v Signature of Narrator J Dale f *' Library Special Collections 4504 Maryland Parkway, Box 457010, Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-7010 (702)892-2222 This is Claytee White. It's July 7th, 2005. And I'm in the home of Flo...Flo, I'm going to let you pronounce your name correctly. Mlynarczyk. Mlyn like Flynn. Mlynarczyk. Okay, great. So how are you today? I'm fine. This is going to be very gentle. There is nothing to even be concerned about. Is it true that you've given me permission to use this for educational and research purposes? Yes. I'm just going to start, first, by talking about your early life. And then we're going to come up to today and talk about some of the things that you've done. Where were you born? I was born in Fort Morgan, Colorado. Oh, really? Do you still have family there? Not in Fort Morgan. I have family in Denver and Longmont. Now, tell me about Fort Morgan and how many people were in the family and brothers and sisters. Let's see. I think there were four of us kids. But while we were in Fort Morgan, my mother and father divorced. So it split up the family. Two kids went with Mother and two went with Dad. And Dad was out on the farm. In fact, I was bom in Fort Morgan because Mother was living on the farm, and they had to take her in to Fort Morgan for me to be bom. How far was the farm from town? I don't know. Probably, I don't know, maybe 25 miles, 20 miles, something like that. So tell me about the farm. What kind of crops? It was dry farming, just dry farming, wheat and com, a stock feeding com. But they had to have good snows to have winter wheat. Then they'd plow in the summer and also reap in the summer. I grew up on a farm, also, in the South. Peanuts, cotton, corn, tobacco. 1 Oh, uh-huh. What kind of work did women/girls do on a farm like yours? Well, I was so small when I left the farm...I know as a kid, we used to go out and bring the cows in. But poor Mother, she worked herself to death there. What kind of work did she do on the farm? Well, the home and taking care of four kids. But she'd build a fire outside and put a big copper pot on it, and that's where she did her laundry on a scrub board. Dad's overalls, long johns, all of us kids' clothing. She made all of our clothes. We had a wealthy aunt, Helen Faunches, in Denver, of the Faunches Shoe Company. That was my grandmother's sister. Spell Faunches. What was that look for, Flo? I'll find out on the Internet. Yeah. Well, I can give it to you later. I have all the family history and everything. Okay, good. But before Christmas, Aunt Helen would pack up a big box of clothes, and she would send them out to the farm. And Mother would remake coats for us. She would make our underpants and our dresses, and she made Dad's shirts. About all they bought were the long johns and the overalls. Now, you were about to tell me how she was related to the family, the aunt. Oh, that was my mother's aunt, my mother's mother's sister. And she married Harry Faunches. My grandmother and Helen were Wilsons. And the Wilsons were the leather company, the saddlery company, there in Denver. So the families were kind of tied together. Great. So you left the farm really early in your life? Yeah. So you must have gone with your mother. I went with Mother. And we moved from Fort Morgan to Loveland, which is about 50 miles north of Denver, somewhere in there. I lived in Loveland until I was nine ~ that was 1934 - and then we moved to Los Angeles. Wow. What a difference. 2 Yeah. See, that was when the Depression hit this area. We lost everything. They auctioned the house off. Now, this was in Loveland? Yeah. They auctioned the house off. My stepdad had already gone to Los Angeles and gotten a job. He worked for Phelps Dodge - no, John Deere - for twenty-five dollars a week. I remember that so plain because mother said we can we can only afford to pay $100 a month rent. No, that wasn't what it was. How is it? No. We could only pay $25 a month because that was a quarter of the monthly take, yeah. So we moved there. She worked as a waitress, and Dad worked for John Deere. Then while the Depression was still on, we moved out to Bell Gardens [CA], which was nothing but Japanese vegetable gardens. Mother bought a piece of property for ~ I believe it was $20 down and $20 a month. First, she went to a contractor and had them put a slab down, a concrete slab. And I have no idea how much that cost her. Then she went to Sears, and she bought a tent that would cover that slab. Then on the weekends and when Dad had time, he started building the house around the tent. As we got money, he would buy the lumber, and he'd build the house around the tent. Whose idea was this? Oh, Mother. She was a very strong woman. She sounds smart, too. She started the first Red Cross there in Bell Gardens. She could have been president if she had wanted to. What kind of education did she have? She didn't have very much of an education. Can you imagine what she could have done with a little education? Yeah. She was 17 when they found out she had tuberculosis. I think they were living either in Little Rock or St. Louis at that time. Her father was in the newspaper business. They sent her to the Prairie of Colorado to heal the tuberculosis. And that's when she met Dad. How did they meet? 3 You know, I really don't know too much about it. After they divorced, there wasn't too much talk, you know, and so forth. Well, it had to be out on the farm because I think she stayed with another sister of Grandma's out there. And then, of course, Dad's farm was not too far from there. So anyway, we built the house and then folded the tent and took it out the front door. Isn't that great? Yeah, yeah. So how big was this house? I think the tent was 40 by 60. Mother divided it somehow. I don't know how she did, but she did. And then when Grandpa died, her dad, she was sent a thousand dollars. And at that time that was a lot of money. She had more concrete poured and had a kitchen and bathroom built on the concrete, and then tacked the tent under the eaves of the kitchen and bathroom. And we lived that way until the rest of the house was built. It was three bedrooms, one bath, living room, dining room, and kitchen. Now, tell me about Bell Gardens. What did it look like to you at that time? At that time it was just nothing. It was really depressed, really a depressed area. That's the only place you could afford to go then, you know. They had a grade school and eventually a junior high, but they didn't have a high school. I had to go to Montebello to go to high school. It was almost all Japanese gardens. We kids used to get impetigo all the time because of the dirt, I guess the fertilizer they used or whatever. But we were always covered with that purple tincture of whatever it was, you know. How did your father get back and forth to work from Bell Gardens? A bicycle. Well, it was just not too far. He moved with Phelps Dodge then, and Phelps Dodge was in Bell Gardens. Oh, I see. So he left John Deere? Yeah, and went to Phelps Dodge. And he worked part-time as a janitor for the school, too. You know, he worked hard. He was a hard worker. But he used to ride a bicycle to work. 4 Wow. Now, tell me about your mom. She worked for different families? How did she do that? No, no. She stayed home and worked. She would go out and raise money for the Red Cross. She started the Red Cross there and she worked with the schools, but mostly she was just raising us. My brother had come to live with us and by then I had a half sister and a half brother. So now, when you left Colorado with your mother, you also came with a sibling, right? I came with my half sister and a half brother. She was four and he was two. How did your mother get involved in the Red Cross during the Depression? Or was this later, during World War II? I think she started it—well, let's see. I don't know whether the war had started or not. But it seems to me like she worked toward it before even then. And I think she got involved with it because the copper company—I was just telling you who he worked for, Dodge—yeah, Dodge would have charity drives and so forth, and she would work with them. And I think that's how she started it. Wonderful. Then when the war started, I remember climbing up on the fence and looking over the fence at the Japanese gardens at night when the searchlights would be on these planes that looked this big. And they would light bonfires out in the field to try to tell Japanese planes where we were. Oh, yeah. And it was so sad because it was the older folks ~ I went to school with the young Japanese kids, and they were wonderful. They were good friends. And it just broke my heart when they were all taken away. So did you get to see that process? Oh, yeah. What was it like? I read about it in history books. Yeah. All of a sudden, they weren't there. They didn't show up at school. They were just gone. We didn't know for quite awhile what had happened. What happened to their property? 5 It just didn't belong to them anymore. I don't know who got it. I really don't. I don't know. I was too young, really, to worry about that part of it. And then by that time, I was in high school. I graduated in '43. When I graduated, most of the young fellows in our class had gone to war. And a big share of them were gone. They were killed. That's right. So I never went back to a reunion because I just— Too painful. Too painful, yeah. So many of them were killed. So what did you do after high school? Mother had a friend who was a teacher, and she was going to go to Kodiak, Alaska. I wanted to go because I had a friend from school that was in the service up there, and he said he could get me a job. So Mother talked to the teacher and she said, "If you will promise me that you will look after her and stay with her, she can go." And the government said that I had to have a job or I couldn't go. I was 18 in August, and we left in August. I went out to Kodiak, and it was quite an experience for an 18-year-old girl. And it was away from the town, but there were 42,000 servicemen out there. And this little town...Flo had a ball. Oh, I can imagine. I can imagine. Yeah. But the mercantile store that I had a job in, the job didn't work out very well. So I went into waitress work. And I can remember then that you could go into that cafe and have ham and eggs for a dollar. And we used silver dollars then, totally. And had I not been so dumb, I could have had matched sealskins for a bottle of whiskey. The natives there would go out and get you matched sealskins for a bottle of whiskey. Oh, but you just didn't know. I came back with a pair of mukluks. That was it. How long did you stay? I think it was in '44 when we had a terrible flu epidemic down here in the lower forty-eights. In'43, that started, the end of'43. And it hit up there later. And everybody was sick. I mean, it was a really bad one. Our restaurant was the only one that was open. 6 I worked long hours, and then as people started coming back to work, I got sick. They had to put me in the hospital with pneumonia. At that time there was no sulfa drugs or penicillin for civilians. So the pharmacists out on the base would bring in sulfa drugs and penicillin to the doctors in the hospital. And that saved my life. But they told me that I could not stay there, that I would have to get out because the pneumonia wouldn't go away because of being in Kodiak. It was right on the water, you know. How cold was it? It got pretty cold. Not a terrible lot of snow. It was mostly the wind. They called them the Willow Walls. They'd come over the mountain. Because Kodiak is, you know, like this, in this little hollow basin in here, and that's where the village was. And that wind would come over those mountains, and you could hardly walk against it. Yeah, it got cold. But the MPs were so good to all of us. They would walk the women home and make sure they were in. You couldn't light a cigarette on the street. Everything was a total blackout. Because you could burn the town down. No. Total blackout. Total blackout. See, that's when the Japanese were out at Attu and so forth. I made a lot of friends, a lot of wonderful friends. Did you find a husband while you were there? No. No. Well, how many servicemen? You only see a few at a time in town. They were very careful. And I did get to meet a couple of airmen. They snuck me aboard a plane one time and took me out over the Aleutian so that I could become a "short snorter." What is that? You take a dollar bill. And whenever you fly over where there are enemy, you can belong to the Short Snorter Club. And everybody that was with you would write their name on that dollar bill. And I still have a dollar bill somewhere, but I don't know where it is. Oh, isn't it that great? What a souvenir. 7 Yeah, yeah. But then when I was sick, they told me I had to leave. So they put me on this boat. It was a supply boat, really. And they had mounted a—I think it was a two-inch gun on the back of it or on the bow. I don't know which. And I had gone up on that ship. I can't really call it a ship. It was more of a boat. And then I came back on it. And the storm was terrible on the bay. It was just awful. I was sick all the way home. Did you have to travel alone, or was the teacher with you? No. She had gotten married and left me. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I was on my own. But I came back in '44. Somehow, Mother had gotten a message. I really don't know too much about it because I was really out of it then. But she had gotten a message that I had died. And when I got back to Seattle, I called her, and I thought she was going to have a heart attack. So I got on the train and went home from there. Wow. When you say "they" told you that you had to leave, who is that? The doctors. The doctors in the hospital said that I really couldn't heal there because of the moisture and the cold weather and so forth. Wow. So going back to Bell Gardens, what was it like? How had it change in that year's time? I mean, that was a time of real change. Not too much, really. The town didn't grow until after I moved away from there. The downtown grew some. They added some stores and so forth. But it was a very, very small town. And I have no idea what it's like now. I haven't been there in probably, I would imagine, 60 years. So I have no idea what it's like. Did you go back and forth to Los Angeles while the family lived in Bell Gardens? I went to Huntington Park. Huntington Park was a beautiful town, absolutely a beautiful town. And I worked for Winemans. It was a department store. Mr. Wineman was always at the store. It was a small department store, and they had the things where you'd put the bill in the suction cup. Yes, yes. Yeah. And I lived there for quite a few years. I worked and lived there. I got married on the original VE Day, May the 8th, 1945. I was married in the Methodist Church 8 there in Huntington Park to a sailor. He was from Pepperell, Massachusetts. His family did not approve. Why not? I don't know. I was 19, and I think he was 19, also. But within three months, I found out I was pregnant. And they tried to get an annulment. So I had to get an attorney and got a divorce instead. So he went along with it? Yeah. He was a spoiled brat, you know, yeah. So whatever. So anyway, Michael was born then in '46 at the Maywood Bell Hospital, which is no longer there. Then, thank goodness, family helped me take care of him. Oh, that's great. And I worked. Just before he was ready to go to school, I was still living in Huntington Park, and my sister was taking care of him at that time. My sister and her husband wanted children and she hadn't gotten pregnant. My other sister, then, was in Tonopah [NV], and she had a little restaurant inside of a small—what they called a pastime club. It was just a small club, and she had a little cafe in the back of this small club. She wanted me to come up and work with her, so I said sure. And I told Betty and Ed that I would be going up, and they said fine. So I went up and we worked. Just to show you what fate will do for you, one day she was sitting and having a glass of milk and a taco, and she was listening to truck drivers at the next table. One of them was talking about this friend of his who had a friend that was going to go to court and take a child away from a mother because she was working in Tonopah in a bar, in a gambling joint. So my sister really listened, you know, and kept listening until she realized that it was her older sister trying to take my son away from me without telling me. I immediately got on a bus, went to California -- to Huntington Park where I had a friend who was a policeman — and I asked him if he would put on his uniform and go with me. They were living out in Downey at the time. He said he would, so I went up to their door and knocked. My oldest sister answered the door, and I pointed to the policeman standing out by the car. And I said, "I've come for my son." They never did know how I 9 found out. Oh, that is fate, isn't it? Yeah. I took him back to Tonopah with me, and he loved it up there. Oh, wonderful. He was just in preschool. How do you heal that kind of— You don't. Okay. So it was just— It did not heal even after she died. It did not heal, no. You don't heal things like that. Yeah. That's right. That's sad. Yeah, it is. It is. Because the two of you could have shared him and loved him together. Yeah, yeah. So tell me about Tonopah at that time. Oh, that was really small. And there was a base up there at that time. I don't think it was the big old secret that it was eventually, you know. But it was a small town, and it was fun because so many of the people played baseball. And you'd go out in the evening, you know, and watch the baseball games and so forth. Flora would work one shift, and I'd work the other one so we could take care of him. He loved it up there. He walked down the street. And as he'd walk by the open doors, guys would throw silver dollars out at him or something. He really enjoyed it. Oh, that's wonderful. What was the major industry in Tonopah at that time? Well, there was always mining. But I think the base was about all there was left there. They had the old Mispah Hotel. They had quite a few clubs and a couple of motels. One of the Cavanaugh brothers lived there. The other one lived down here. Then the Bradshaw brothers—Francis Bradshaw was manager of one of the first I think it was called the First National Bank then. I can't remember just what it was. But they were very good friends of mine. Also, the Lambs came from there. I got to know a lot of people. 10 So what brought you from there to here? My sister decided to leave Tonopah, so of course I did too. Now, this was her business? This small business was hers? Yeah. She finally left that, and we both went to work for the Tonopah Club. I worked one shift, and she would work another shift. But when she decided to leave, then I left. And Michael and I came down here. Oh, good. So the three of you came together? No, no. She went back to Colorado. So now, what brought you to Las Vegas rather than going back to Colorado? Well, I came down here, and I stayed for a while, and I didn't really like it. So I went back home to Bell Gardens and stayed with the folks for a little while. Then I said, no, I'm going back to Las Vegas. And I knew this guy for many, many years. His name was Tom. I had known him for many years. He decided he was going to come up here, too. So we got married. And I was only married to him a short time when I realized he was an alcoholic. You've known a person for years, and you do not know... That's right. So when he would come home on Monday morning with the taxi bill and no money, I'd pay the taxi and he would go to work. And then he would get his next Friday check, and then he would do the same thing again. So I said that's all. The next Monday morning when he came home, his clothes were out on the front porch. But I didn't get a divorce for years because I didn't want to be tempted until I met my husband, Ed. And I met him in 1962. I worked with him at Phelps Pump and Equipment out in North Las Vegas. I was a bookkeeper. Did you ever get any other schooling after high school? No. No. How did you become a bookkeeper? Well, when I lived in Huntington Park, I finally went to work down in L.A. Actually, I was still living at home, and I had a 29 Model A. And they built—the first freeway was the Santa Ana, from there downtown. And I'd get on the Santa Ana in Bell 11 Gardens with that Model A and drive down to Seventh and Wilshire. And I went to work for an insurance company. What I did is I walked in, and I said that I was a bookkeeper. They said, well they really needed someone. And I said, "Well, the only thing I'd like you to do is to have someone show me your method of doing it." Well, they showed me how to do it. So I did it. Well, that is wonderful. That is wonderful. Yeah. But that was before I was married. It sounds as if you were just as smart as your mom, or you are just as smart as your mom was. Well, I don't know about that, but I learned how to—you leam from the school of hard knocks. Yeah. So in 1962, you were at Phelps? Well, by then, I was office manager at Propane Sales and Service. I worked at that for several years and Michael went to school. We lived very close. It was out there in North Las Vegas. It was before the freeway— (End side 1, tape 1.) Propane Sales and Service was out on North Main. And Michael went to school at—I think it was called Washington School, right there on College. It's now called Lake Mead, but then it was College Avenue. And it didn't go through. But there was a little school there. And I don't think it's there anymore. But bless his heart, he'd walk to school. Then he'd come to the restaurant where I worked because I worked two jobs. I had to work two jobs to make a living. Oh, I see. Now, did he like Las Vegas — Oh, he loved it. — as much as Tonopah? Oh, yeah. He loved it, yeah. He just sounds like he's very flexible, very adaptable. Oh, yeah. He's a wonderful young man. Wonderful. 12 He's not so young anymore, bless his heart. When did you start getting involved in civic activities? When I was in the propane sales, I joined the Breakfast Club, I think it was called, where we d go and have breakfast and have a meeting before we went to work. Yeah, the Women's Morning Breakfast Club. Now, tell me what that was all about and who was in it. You learned about business and how to dress and how to treat people and so forth. It was just a short meeting, probably an hour in the morning. I don't know. And then I went to Toastmistresses group. Before you did Toastmasters, where did you guys meet with the Morning Breakfast Club? You know, I can't remember. I think we probably met in a restaurant. I don't know. I just don't recall. Do you recall any of the members? No, no. That was too many years ago. Did you hold any office in that club? No. I just did this to help me with being in the business. I kept the books. And we had a trailer supply store with the propane sales, and I kept the inventory up and I sold. You know, I was jack-of-all-trades there. Yes. So now, tell me about Toastmasters, Toastmistresses. I have Toastmasters here, but I'm sure it was Toastmistresses. It was, again, how to speak in front of people and how to do things. And then I went to work with Phelps Pump, and that also helped me in that business, you know. That's where I met Ed [Mlynarczyk], my husband. What did you do with Phelps? I was a bookkeeper. Yeah, I kept the books. And what was Ed doing? He was a partner. There were two young fellows that worked for Ed. They really were hard-working young kids, but they had gotten into the drug thing a little bit. And Ed 13 was working so hard with them to try to straighten them out. One of them just died a couple weeks ago. He went on from there and was a fireman and retired after 30 years with the f