Harriet Miller & Monica Wehrle, Fort Wayne, IN

While StoryCorps’ new team of Facilitators and Site Supervisors were training in our Brooklyn Office, our two Mobile Booths were preparing for their next stops in Fort Wayne, IN (East Booth) and La Crosse, WI (West Booth). Working with the Mobile East Team in Fort Wayne during their first week of recordings, I facilitated a conversation between business and life partners Harriet Miller and Monica Wehrle who talked about organizing an exhibition game with the former players of the Fort Wayne Daisies in their efforts to promote equality for women through the Fort Wayne Women’s Bureau.

A week later I joined our West Booth Team, new Site Supervisor Eloise Mezler and new Facilitator Jackie Sojico, for Opening Day in La Crosse, where we are partnering with WLSU Wisconsin Public Radio and the La Crosse Public Library in downtown.

Participants come up to the booth on Opening Day in La Crosse, WI.

Dolly Vanderlip & Susan Colliton, La Crosse, WI.

One of our first participants during that week of recordings was Susan Colliton, who came in to interview her friend and co-worker Dolly Vanderlip. Dolly, it turns out, was a Fort Wayne Daisy.

“Lippy,” as she was known by her teammates when she joined the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, grew up in Charlotte, NC, and signed her contract with the Fort Wayne Daisies when she was 14.

During her interview, she remembered their uniforms: Miniskirts, socks to your knees, and spikes, shoulder-length hair, and make-up. “They wanted feminine women playing baseball,” she said with a grin, though according to her, by the time she signed up the League had relaxed some of their rules and the women no longer had to attend charm school-like classes, as the older players had done.

"Lippy"

“We didn’t have to go, because we were already charming,” she’d tease some of her older teammates  at later reunions. “When we see each other we always give each other a hard time,” she told Susan.

It’s this sense of camaraderie, and the opportunity to meet different people, living and working together as they traveled around the U.S. that became one of her favorite things about playing in the League. “I liked the team thing.”

In addition to pitching for the Fort Wayne Daisies, Dolly also played for the South Bend Blue Sox and has had the chance to reunite with former teammates on various occasions.

We look forward to hearing many more stories like Dolly’s while in La Crosse and are thrilled to be working with many local community organizations. Our Mobile West team will be doing recording here through August 7th, 2010.

Occasionally though, a parent comes in to record a conversation with a child and it does seem like Mobile Booth East is hosting “story time” for a young audience. In Chicago, Cesareo Moreno, chief curator at the National Museum of Mexican Art, came to the booth with his son, Cesareo Diego Moreno, to share a family story about the man they are both named after.

Cesareo Diego Moreno & his father Cesareo Moreno

“The story of why we live in Chicago, Illinois is bittersweet, and the sweet part is the part that came first,” Cesareo began in a gentle narrator’s voice, and went on to tell Cesareo Diego the story of the first Cesareo Moreno.

A long time ago, in 1928, Cesareo Moreno left Mexico with his wife and eight children to work in the fields in Texas. Two years later, when he learned about sugar beets growing far north of Texas, in a place called North Dakota, he took the whole family there to live and work on the sugar beet plantations. “That’s why I say it’s sweet; it’s the sweet part of the bittersweet story,” our narrator explained.

The bitter part would come later. Eventually, Cesareo Moreno and his wife died and later on, at the start of the Second World War, the oldest sons went away to the military. The oldest daughter, named Guita Moreno (who would become Cesareo’s mother and Cesareo Diego’s grandmother), was left to care for her little brothers and sisters.

“And that’s kind of the bitter part of the story,” the current-day Cesareo Moreno told his son in a solemn voice. Too little and too few to make a living in the fields anymore, the children had to find work elsewhere to support themselves. Following her father’s example, Guita Moreno became the leader of the family and took her young siblings to the city where they could all find work in the factories. And so they came to Chicago…

Whenever things get tough, Cesareo told his son, he thinks about what Cesareo Moreno and Guita had to endure in the fields and factories, and this makes him realize how good he has it now and how lucky he is to love the work he does and live the life he lives here. Looking at his son straight in the eye, he added: “And so are you.”

“I know,” replied Cesareo Moreno’s great-grandson from across the table.

With stories like these in our minds and imaginations we left Chicago a few days ago.  To see who else participated during our final Historias Mobile stop of the year visit our flickr page.

Now, on to Fort Wayne, IN!

Erica Fowler, right, and her sister Melissa

Erica set the scene in the present tense: “You can smell the popcorn and hear the people yelling” she told Melissa, and they laughed. “Soccer moms have nothing on soapbox parents,” they explained to me.

Erica remembers feeling nervous, even though she had won the previous race. If she lost this one, she could still beat her opponent by the time. The winner was to be decided by the differential. She zoomed down her lane. In the blink of an eye, it was all over. No one yelled or cheered.

“It was dead quiet,” remembered Melissa.

“I was starting to tear up. Oh, wow, this is not good,” Erica remembered thinking as she made her way up the hill waiting for the results. Only when she reached the top and saw her dad’s face could she finally believe it. She won.

Erica, left, and Melissa with the soapbox race car they built with their parents.

Now that Erica is an adult and her wheels are motorized, she still remembers those days. “Every so often when I’m going down the hill (in my car),” she confessed, “I take my foot off the accelerator and I’ll drive the hill like I did back then. I kind of let it coast, and it kind of brings it all back…”

Burkhardt Avenue, present day Dayton, OH.

]]> http://storycorps.org/blog/east-mobilebooth/dayton-oh/girls-on-wheels-remembering-the-good-ol-soapbox-derby-days/feed/ 0 http://storycorps.org/blog/east-mobilebooth/dayton-oh/dayton-day-one/ http://storycorps.org/blog/east-mobilebooth/dayton-oh/dayton-day-one/#comments Sat, 08 May 2010 18:22:02 +0000 Virginia http://storycorps.org/blog/?p=3656 After driving two days from New Orleans, MobileEast arrived in Dayton, Ohio where Supervisor Whitney Henry-Lester, seasoned Facilitator Jeremy Helton, and I were warmly welcomed by staff and members of WYSO, our local broadcast partner in the Miami Valley.

Mobile Booth East parked in the heart of Downtown Dayton

On our first day of recording, an enthusiastic group of participants made their way to the Booth, in front of the Schuster Performing Arts Center in downtown Dayton, and introduced us to the area by sharing their stories.

One of the first participants was Margaret E. Peters who came in to interview her friend and colleague Willis “Bing” Davis. During the interview, Mr. Davis shared stories about growing up in East Dayton’s small African American community. In the 1940s West Dayton could boast a significant African American population, but only about 200 African American families lived on the east side of town, he explained. The four streets around Diamond Avenue, with their community center, church, and playground, created a unique environment for its youngest residents. “The extended family concept of the South and Africa was prevalent all the time, which could not have happened in a larger community,” he said. “Someone you hardly even knew could chastise you and correct you right there, take you home and tell your parents exactly what was going on,” he remembered.

But both Margaret and Bing agreed that the smallness also meant a lot of camaraderie and mentoring from older members in the community. Bing talked about his high school teacher and coach, Dean Dooley: “More than a teacher, he was there, he talked with my family, talked to my mother, aunts and uncles, to point me in the right direction.”

Bing  remembered that when Coach Dooley found out he was planning to drop out of Wilbur Wright High School, he took him and three other boys on an impromptu road trip to visit DePaul University. The trip changed his life, not only because he ended up attending DePaul and went on to become a prominent artist, but because his coach’s interest in him showed him the importance of having supportive, encouraging mentors reaching out to you. “If someone had not nurtured me, I would not have been able to do it. The potential might have been there, but I would not have done it.” The work Bing does as an educator is his way of giving back for all he received.

In addition to being archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress, the conversation between Mr. Davis and Ms. Peters will be archived at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History & Culture as part of StoryCorps’ Griot Initiative.