Oral History

Lavonne Joyce Dugan Hales Oral History Project

Interview with Lavonne Joyce Dugan Hales

Date of Interview: November 28, 2010, Mapleton Utah

Interviewer: Andrea Hales

Transcriber: Andrea Hales

Andrea:         This is the oral history of my paternal grandmother Lavonne Joyce Dugan Hales. She currently lives at 1076 W. Maple St., Mapleton UT 84663, with her husband of 56 years, Blaine Davis Hales.  The interviewer is one of her 13 granddaughters, Andrea J. Hales.

Andrea:         First of all, what is your name?

Lavonne:        My name is LaVonne Joyce Hales. My maiden name is Dugan.

Andrea:         What are your parent’s names?

Lavonne:        Irene and Roy Dugan. I am the oldest of their three children.

Andrea:         Where are you from?

Lavonne:        I was born in Nebraska.

Andrea:         When were you born?

Lavonne:        November of 1934.

Andrea:         Where did you grow up?

Lavonne:        I started out in Nebraska and then I moved to Wyoming. Then I moved to Colorado and back to Wyoming, then finally to Washington.  I stayed there until I was married.

Andrea:         I am interested to find out how communication has changed over the past few years. In particular, I’d like to talk about how you received the news in various ways over the span of your life. Do you remember as a little kid how you used communication, like newspapers or radio?

LaVonne:       I first remember radio.  It was mostly always radio until the TV came along and that was, oh lets see, I think I was a senior in highschool when the tv came out, so I was pretty much, well, it might have been when I went to college because I don’t remember having a TV in my house when I lived there with my parents. I graduated in 1952 so it must have been 1953 when we got a TV.

Andrea:         So let’s go first to radio, what do you remember listening to on the radio?

Lavonne:        Well there was a lot of funny programs at night that we would hear. I wish I could remember them, but I remember that they were always funny to listen to in the evening.

Andrea:         Did your parents listen to anything different than the comical programs?

Lavonne:        My parents always wanted to listen to the news side of the radio broadcasts. I remember mostly the war news. We listened real carefully to the war news and we’d, my mother and dad, they’d get their heads really close to the radio and say “shhh kids, be quiet shhh.  You guys have got to be quiet. We’ve got to listen” And we’d always listen real carefully to the news.

Andrea:         So, would you say that your family’s main source of news came through the channel of radio?

Lavonne:        Well we’d go to the movies a lot, and there we could see the news, because when you’d go to the movies, they’d show you the news like they do now on TV. And, so we’d see a lot of news before you saw the movie and that was always interesting because you’d see what was going on with the war, a lot about the war. What was happening in the war was mainly the news we’d see before the movies. A lot of it would be pretty scary to ya, uh, because when you’re listening to it on the radio you just have to imagine what its like, you couldn’t actually see it.

Andrea:         How much did it cost to see movies when you were younger, when you lived in Wyoming and then Washington with your family?

Lavonne:        It started out at fifteen cents, and then it moved to a quarter. Eventually it got to be thirty five cents and then fifty cents, which was the big deal.  Fifty cents? We’ve got to pay fifty cents? Then a dollar, and then even more.

Andrea:         How often did your family go to the movie?

Lavonne:        When I lived in Wyoming, we used to go every Saturday night. And, we’d always go to town on Saturday and get groceries and do things like that, you know a Saturday day. And then my mother and dad would always take us kids to the movie on Saturday night.

Andrea:         How was that different from your experience as an older child and teenager when you moved to Washington?

Lavonne:        When I was in Washington, I’d get to go to the movie pretty much whenever I wanted to. We’d still go on the weekends mostly. We’d go with dates and they’d always have good movies on the weekends. They had good movies in those days. We really liked to go to movies. We’d always go see a movie and then go to this one little place downtown and get a coke afterwards. It was fun.  I lived really close to town, two blocks away. We’d just walk into town because we were so close. We only had the one theatre in Sunnyside. It was a small town and it was nicknamed the Holy City.  No one could drink liquor in the town and there were thirty three churches. It was a nice place to grow up, but it’s really trashed now. It just makes me sick.

Andrea:         Do you remember your parents reading any specific newspapers?

Lavonne:        Well, we lived in the country and we didn’t get a newspaper. When I lived in Wyoming we lived far out in the country, too far to get a newspaper. But when I lived in Washington we started getting a newspaper.

Andrea:         How did you feel the first time you saw TV?

Lavonne:        It was exciting. It was real exciting. I’d have to go home from nurses training, which was in a different town, and when I was home, I’d watch it. It was kind of fun to watch it, but I didn’t get very much time to do it. So, I didn’t get to watch very much TV at all until I got married and that was the first time I really got to watch TV.

Andrea:         What kinds of shows do you remember watching?

Lavonne:        I can’t even hardly remember what kind of shows I watched. Definitely always the news, I’m trying to think.  We pretty much always watched whatever was on. You didn’t really choose in those days. You didn’t have much choice because in those days there weren’t a lot of shows and you’d only have one channel, you just watched whatever was on.  You didn’t choose.

Andrea:         Did Grandpa, your husband, like any specific shows that you remember? Did you guys ever like the same shows?

Blaine really liked the sports, I know that, there was a quite a bit of sports on the TV I remember, I don’t remember when we first had TV what a good program was that I liked at all. I just can’t remember specifics. I don’t think I watched a lot of TV. For the first part of our marriage we lived in an apartment and didn’t have a TV. Then we moved to a house and bought a TV and then I was pregnant and real sick and didn’t care to watch TV too much. I don’t remember many of the names of the shows.

Andrea:         What do you remember about your first experiences with the internet?

Lavonne:        I liked the internet. I really did. I don’t use it as much as the young people do now. But, I do like it. It helps me to learn a lot of things and it’s real convenient to find things that you couldn’t get before. We’d have to go to the library, but now I can get things just real quick, I like that. We used to look in the encyclopedia. So that was real helpful with the internet.

Andrea:         What was the biggest change in communication for you?

Lavonne:        I think TV was the biggest. It was the most exciting, I’ll say. We enjoyed movies on the TV too.

Andrea:         Do you remember any broadcasters or news anchors you liked to listen to?

Lavonne:        I know I had favorites, but I can’t remember many.  I liked Walter Cronkite. And I still like to listen to that program now where he brings people on and interviews someone else every night, I think Larry King.  I really like that program.

Andrea:         How did your kids like TV?

Lavonne:        They loved it. I had to keep them off of it. All the kids in the neighborhood had televisions by then too, and they would watch it together. But, I think it still wasn’t as popular as it is today. My boys would much rather play outside than sit around the television too long. Maybe, because there weren’t too many options. They either liked what was on or didn’t like it. It was harder to find something they liked because their options were so limited.

Andrea:         Did you write a lot of letters as a child?

Lavonne:        We did. Well, I wrote letters to my mother and father when I was married. We lived in California and I’d write to them in Washington. You never made phone calls, it was too expensive. I hardly ever called. You’d call if there was a death or something like that. Stamps cost about three cents at that time so it was a lot cheaper.