Long-Time Resident Remembers Life of Farming, Community Service and Church
Whether reminiscing about her farm’s “turkey choir” or sharing her ideas about civic duty, Agnes McDonough conveys an energy and enthusiasm that makes her seem much younger than her 70 years. She has lived in Oxford since 1969, when she moved with her husband back to the town he was raised in. The couple now owns a 58-acre farm outside of Oxford where they raise cattle, corn, soybeans and hay. Ms. McDonough has shown her commitment to civic responsibility by working at the election polls for 32 years. She has also served as a trustee of her church and as an active member and former president of the Oxford Women’s Club. A friendly yet opinionated woman, in this oral history interview Ms. McDonough shares her views on life in Oxford and why she loves this city.
Life
Story
Robin: Where were you born?
Agnes: I was born in Independence, Ky. I’m the seventh
of ten kids. When I was just beginning the first grade, my family moved to Hamilton,
Ohio. Actually, when we lived in Independence, Ky., I was born on a 38-acre
farm, which I barely remember. Then we moved to Rosedale, Ky., for about a year
and then moved to Hamilton. My uncle’s family was here.
My dad was legally deaf and blind. He was a WWI veteran, so my mother basically raised us; she did a good job. I went to school at Madison Grade School and Roosevelt Junior High School and graduated from Hamilton High.
I was very active in my church, the North Seventh Street Church of Christ in Hamilton…. I was very active in our church youth group we had. And I sang in the church choir, the youth choir. We had like 20-25 young people singing, and then we were invited to different churches to sing. Nolan Goland was our director, and he was really good. He taught us to sing, he taught us how to pronounce the words and how to vocalize and how to sing out. Young people now a lot of the times, if you listen, you can’t understand words, even with some of the very popular singers. But we were taught to sing out and enunciate our words so that people could understand.
When I was a junior in high school, we had church
camps and I went to a church camp during a life recruit week decided then that
I wanted to give my life to full time Christian service and a specialized service,
so after graduating from high school I went to Cincinnati Bible College. After
four years, I was hired at Sciotoville Church of Christ, in a suburb of Portsmouth
down along the Ohio River and I was the youth director and choir director there
for three years.
I was working there, and then my married sister
who was living with my mother at the time -- my mother was in poor health --
and they wanted to buy a house. So she asked me if I would come home. So I felt,
well I’ve been gone for seven years, maybe it’s my turn to put in
some time. So I went home and got a job at Ohio Casualty Company as a rate checker
and didn’t like it. Got a job at Pease Woodwork as a secretary and from
there I got a job at Seaboard Finance Company as a bookkeeper and cashier, and
that’s where I met my husband.
R: Was he working there?
A: He was the assistant manager. Back in the ’50s and
’60s there were a lot of finance companies. The banks then were very tight
on lending money. You had to have really good credit. So finance companies came
along, and for people whose credit wasn’t so good they charged higher
interest rates but if you had not had perfect credit you could go to a finance
company and get a loan. I worked with the finance companies, my husband was
the assistant manager there, and he took me to lunch the first day and from
then on we started dating. We got married in 1965.
R: How long did you date him?
A: We dated five years. I go to a Christian church, the Church
of Christ and my husband is Catholic and back then, you had to sign papers,
the non-Catholic had to sign papers saying that...(points to farmhouse) We’ve
lived here 26 years, we had the house built. We lived in town eight years.
R: So you got married in Hamilton...
A: Actually, we got married in Dayton, but I was living in
Hamilton at the time, my husband was working in Dayton because he got transferred
with Seaboard. He had been a manager for about ten years so he was working in
Dayton at the time so we got married.
Well back to the religion thing. The non-Catholic had to sign papers saying
that they’d raise the children Catholic, and I wasn’t willing to
do that. We talked to the priest and I told the priest I don’t agree with
this because our children would be Christian. He said, well they’re going
to change that rule anyway and they did, a couple years later they changed that....
From there we moved to Centerville, lived in Centerville and we were married
for a year and I had e. coli in my bloodstream and I lost 30 pounds within three
weeks and I almost died. It’s a germ that’s in the bowel, but you
can get it from bad drinking water or people who don’t wash their hands
in restaurants, and it can get on the food. We had been on vacation in Canada
and I don’t know if I picked it up there but a week after we got back
I got deathly sick and I ended up spending five weeks in a hospital and ended
up with a total hysterectomy.
So to me that was God’s answer. We were
so concerned about how we would raise our children, but we didn’t have
any. And we chose not to adopt because we’re both from large families.
My husband also has a family of ten children, and today we have 47 nieces and
nephews, plus great-nieces and nephews, and now they’re getting great-great
nieces and nephews. Our home has always been open to families, so we’ve
had a lot of the brothers and sisters and their spouses and their kids and their
kids’ kids at our house off and on. So I think God has a plan for everyone,
and I think that’s where we are.
Then, Jim was transferred to Akron, Ohio, as a
manager, and then he got this call from First National Bank and Trust Company
from Hamilton. (They changed their name several times since then and it’s
now First Financial Bank.) They wanted him to come and start their credit card
department in 1969. They would bring us back home. He is from Oxford; he was
raised on a farm two miles from where we live now. So that brought him back
home and brought me back home around family. So he chose after 10 years to leave
Seaboard Finance Company and come work for First National, so that brought us
back home.
We lived in town eight years. Jim was born, reared on a farm. He graduated from
Ohio State in agriculture and after eight years in town we bought this 58 acres
out here on Fairfield Road. We tore down the 100-plus-year-old house that was
about ready to fall down and built a new home there, and that’s where
we are!
Farm Life
R: What do you raise on your farm?
A: We have beef cattle. We had raised sheep until, probably
about 10 years ago when the coyotes got so bad. The coyotes, I understand, follow
the deer and when the deer population started increasing, so did the coyote
population. They were getting into some of the sheep of neighbor farmers and
Jim said, “I don’t want the coyotes so close to our home,”
so we sold our sheep. We would have baby lambs; they were cute.
Before that, for about eight years, we raised turkeys. This is fun; we started
with 50 turkeys and we would buy them the first of June and by Thanksgiving
they were ready to butcher. We took them to a little town north of Eaton and
had them butchered there and then we would ice them down and bring them home
and we would have orders for them and we’d sell them a dollar a pound.
And our neighbors discovered how good fresh turkeys were, so the next year we
started getting all these orders so we said, well we’ll try 100 this year.
You lose a few along the way, I mean you may lose....out of 200 one year we
lost about 20 so you’ll lose maybe ten percent. We increased, we had 100
the next year and then we started ordering 200 and we sold all those turkeys,
we’d sell about 160 to 170 turkeys and then I’d put some in the
freezer and we’d give some to family. But we raised turkeys for about
eight years, so that was interesting.
R: Is it true that when turkeys are left out in the rain, they’ll
drown because they look at the sky and open their mouths?
A: I don’t believe it and I don’t know who started
that rumor. I don’t think turkeys are dumb, they’re just inquisitive.
I think that people should live like a turkey, because each day is like a new
day, so you wouldn’t have all these worries! People wouldn’t
be having heart attacks, they wouldn’t be having strokes, they wouldn’t
be having stress and anxiety and all these other kind of things if they would
take it one day at a time and stop worrying. But anyway….
One year, I called them my turkey choir because
I discovered one time the turkeys walked toward the fence when I went out, and
I gobbled at them. The males are the ones that gobble because of that little
thing that hangs down from their beaks. I gobbled at them. I went “gobble,
gobble, gobble,” and they gobbled back. So I kept doing that, and they’d
keep gobbling back and I just stood there and laughed. When people would come
to see us, they’d want to see the turkeys so I’d take them out along
the fence and I’d say, “Okay now, listen, the choir’s going
to sing.” So I’d say, “Gobble, gobble, gobble!” and
they’d all gobble. It was almost like I’d trained them! It was fun.
We did that for eight years, and we decided not to do that anymore. It was a
lot of work. And of course I sold real estate for about 32 years.
R: So how did you begin working for Oxford Real Estate?
A: Well...let’s go back to the turkeys first. I was going
home at noon to throw these turkeys over the fence because once they found out
they could fly, and they can fly, Jim would build this high fence, but with
the wind and everything during the summer the fence would weaken and it would
kind of bow. If one turkey would fly up on top of it the others would follow,
and so I’d have to come back and throw maybe 15 turkeys back over the
fence or lead them in the gateway because they would follow me, all I needed
was a bucket of corn and they’d follow you.
So we decided after awhile, let’s not do
this anymore. People were disappointed because people would call us in September
wanting to put their order in for November and I’d say, call me in October,
it’s too long to keep a list. But we sold them right there at home, and
it was kind of fun.
We plant corn, and sometimes soybeans. We only
have 58 acres, so we raise hay, so that’s clover and alfalfa and rye.
And we harvest that, that’s what you bale. That’s hay that you feed
to the cattle. Now when you harvest wheat, then you bale the rest of it, and
that’s the straw. They combine the tops, and all that’s left is
the sticks and then they bale it and that’s bedding for the animals or
that’s what they put on the lawns when you plant grass seed, that’s
straw. If you put hay on your lawn you may get wheat and clover. The hay is
what cattle eat and the straw is what they sleep on.
My husband’s brother owns a farm, one farm
that is 160 acres and another farm that’s 50 acres, and we still have
45 acres left of the home farm. We sold part of the land several years ago,
so he helps his brother farm that land. They both love to farm, and they’re
anxious to get out there and start planting seed.
Working in Real Estate
A: I went into real estate, we moved back in 1969. I worked for a real estate office in Hamilton for four or five months. I really didn’t enjoy that, I didn’t care for the firm I was working with and so I quit.
Then Bill Folker, a real estate broker in Oxford with Folker Real Estate, called. He and my husband kind of grew up together. They went to McGuffey School. At one time it was grades one through 12 and my husband and his family went there to school. He and Bill were good friends, and they were co-captains on their high school football team. Bill sold us our house when we came to Oxford.
Then he said, “I have this student that
was working for me and I can’t really depend on her. Why don’t you
come in and work for me.” I was like, “I don’t know, Bill.
I don’t know if I want to do that.” But then I decided, I’ll
do it. And I was probably the office manager for about a year and a half and
then I decided to get my real estate license. Then I still worked for him in
the office for about eight years, then I went full time real estate.
I’m still doing a little bit. I have a closing
Friday. I don’t go in the office unless I need to, I go in and use the
computer. This past December I had a pretty big closing, and I was Realtor of
the Month for Oxford Real Estate. So we kind of laugh about that because they
say, “You’re supposed to be retiring.”
I’d like to retire, and I really am, I’m basically retired but I have my license and people call me at home, people I’ve worked with before or it’s family or friends.
Working Election Day Polls
R: How did you become involved with working the polls on Election Day?
A: My husband is from a very staunch Democratic family. I really
didn’t know much about politics when I was in Portsmouth. I had not registered
to vote, I mean I was like 22 years old, and then one of the elders in the church
said, “Agnes you have to register, you’ve got to vote, everyone
should vote.” So he took me to the polls, because I did not have a car
he went with me. They took me to where I was supposed to register. When I got
this card in the mail, I don’t even remember declaring a party, but it
said I was Republican, so he must have taken me to a Republican place. I thought,
it doesn’t matter, I don’t vote much anyway. So I really didn’t
vote a lot then. It wasn’t encouraged like it is now, I mean I think everybody
should vote.
When we moved to Oxford, I was voting Republican.
I had taken my mother-in-law, who was like 80 years old, to the doctor and then
she had a prescription to get filled. I left her in the car and I went into
the drugstore -- there was a drugstore on High Street at that time. When I came
back out she was talking to this lady whose name was Margaret Kogan. Margaret
happened to be the committee chairwoman for the Democratic Party. She was a
very strong Democrat lady, and her son also went to school with my husband in
grades 1-12, Pat Kogan went to school with my husband, and they were very good
friends of the family. Of course, Oxford being a small town, everybody knew
everyone.
My mother-in-law used to work at the polls. You have to declare a party when
you work at the polls. They have an even number of Democrats and an even number
of Republicans that sit at the table. We used to have three Democrats and three
Republicans; now we have two Democrats and two Republicans. My mother-in-law
used to work at the polls for years, and they paid $10 a day when she worked
at the polls.
My mother-in-law said to Mrs. Kogan, “Can’t you get Agnes a job working at the polls?” Now we beg for workers, back then people wanted that extra money and so you were on a kind of waiting list or you had to know somebody if you wanted to work at the polls. I really didn’t want to work at the polls because I had a job, but when my mother-in-law asked her, Mrs. Kogan said, “Oh sure!” And then all of the sudden something jogged in my mind and I thought, “These are both Democrats and my mother-in-law doesn’t know I’m a registered Republican and I don’t dare tell her.” So I went down to the Board of Elections and changed my political party. (Laughs)
So I am now a Democrat, but I don’t
vote a straight ticket. I vote for the best person, the person I think is best
qualified. So I’ve been working at the polls now for 32 years. I consider
it a kind of volunteer/community thing to do. I worked at an office, but when
I took off that day, I deducted that day’s work from my pay. So I actually
gave up some of my money at the office because I didn’t get paid nearly
that much [at the polls]. It was more than $10, but I can’t remember what
it was back in 1970. I deducted a day’s pay from my pay because I didn’t
think it was right to take off a day to do something else and my boss should
pay me.
So that’s how I got started and I’m
still doing it because it’s really hard to get volunteers and it’s
hard to get good workers. I think when people come to vote we need
to encourage them, we need to be friendly. We need to make them feel that it’s
not a drudgery. So I say to the people I work with, “We’ve
got to smile.” A lot of workers will be doing something else or visiting
with their friends and so forth. Of course, the board of elections does not
want that to happen. They want you to put the voter first, and that’s
what we try to do. That’s how I got working at the polls, it’s kind
of a volunteer thing. I joined the Women’s Club and I volunteer with the
Women’s Club.
Student Voting
R: What do you think about student voting?
A: At one time Oxford was dry and because of the student vote
we now have liquor because the students voted it in. The restaurants that serve
alcohol encouraged the students and bused them in to vote that year. The students
could actually run the whole town because of the population: there’s 16,000
students and 12,000 residents.
I believe the students should vote, but they should vote absentee from their hometowns. If they want to vote here in Oxford, I don’t think they should vote on local issues because they shouldn’t determine what’s going to happen in the next 20 years in our town. I think they should just vote on state and national issues. I wish they would think about that come Election Day in November.
R: What do you think about all the schools encouraging students to
vote?
A: That is not right. That is not right. These students are not going to be
here. They’re not paying the taxes. I guess they’re paying taxes
through their rent, but it’s not the same. They’re not concerned
citizens. They don’t care, really, about how our schools are run, so I
think that should be left up to the local voters.
A lot of our local voters will vote against a policy because they’re afraid the students are going to vote it through anyway and they’ll take a negative attitude. So then it loses because the people are upset because of the student vote.
I just think local issues should be up to the local residents who plan on being here. You don’t know who’s running for school board, you don’t know these people. And you really don’t know what the past has been, and you don’t know what the issues are and why some of these bond issues don’t pass. A lot of people who vote for or against it have a reason for voting for or against it. It’s probably the way things are handled, maybe the money situation, or it’s something that the parents think the schools really need so they’ll vote for it. I don’t think the young people keep up on that. Therefore, I don’t think they should be expressing their vote because someone says, “Yes, go and vote. It’s important.” Well, it may be important, but I really think the students should be voting absentee.
Oxford Women’s Club
R: When did you join the Women’s Club?
A: They have me down for 1989. I had gone to a lot of the meetings
before that.
R: How did you hear about it? Was it a friend or relative?
A: People would just keep asking me, why don’t I come,
why don’t I join and so forth. Ruth Cookman called me one evening and
said, “Agnes, why don’t you join the Women’s Club? You would
be a good asset to our club.” I said I had thought about it, and I used
to go to their Christmas Party because the women would invite me. One of my
friends was a member. She had never asked me to join, but she used to take me
to the Christmas party with her as a guest. Anyway, when Ruth called I said,
“I’ll join.” So I’ve been active ever since
because I think if you’re going to join and be a part of something you
need to put everything into it. I think you need to be a good member and not
just one that sits there and does nothing. I’ve been president
of the Women’s Club.
R: When were you president?
A: About four years ago, maybe. I’ve been vice president -- first vice
president, second vice president -- I was president. I’ve been on lots
of committees.
R: What’s the second and first vice president?
A: Well you’re supposed to move up. We’re a member
of the Ohio Federation of Women’s Clubs and also the General Federation,
which is an international group. It’s the largest volunteer women’s
group in the world, and there are clubs all over the world that are part of
the international group. Then each state has their own group, like, Ohio has
the Ohio Federation, which is a part of the General Federation. Basically, we
do volunteer work for our communities. It’s a great thing.
Volunteering at the Respect for Law Camp
R: What’s your favorite service project that you do?
A: I like working at Law Camp. Not many people will volunteer
for this. They will donate their money, which is important, or we bake cookies
and things like that. There’s three or four of us that go to Miami University
campus the second week in June, I believe.
It’s for kids that are sixth-, seventh-,
and eighth-graders. It’s Respect for Law Camp. It’s sponsored by
Butler County Sheriff’s Department, so a lot of our local police officers
are there. The kids come in on a Friday morning and they stay until Sunday afternoon,
and they have a program for the parents at the end of their weekend camp. The
idea is to get these young people to know that police officers are not their
enemies, they are their friends. And they want them to know what’s
involved in being a police officer. They make arrests, but the kids are there
and they know, like when people are fighting or something the police will break
them up.
They have a mock automobile accident and it’s
usually over at Millett Hall. They take the kids over there. The kids are walking
because they live on campus, they stay in the dorms on campus; they have one
dorm reserved for these kids. Probably about 125 kids come. They take them over
to Millett Hall and when they get there, there’s been a [pretend] accident.
This car’s crashed into the post, they’re really wrecked. They have
this kid laying on the hood of the car who’s gone through the windshield.
They have a kid who’s been thrown out of the car. They’ll have some
in the back. When they get there, this kid will have a white T-shirt on with
blood on it and he’s cut up and he’s been the driver and he’s
throwing these beer cans out before the police get there. So the kids are there
before the police come. It looks so real. So the police come and they get this
kid, talk to him, question him, put him in the police car. Then the helicopter
comes and the ambulance comes, and the helicopter airlifts these people, they
have one kid that’s dead, per se, and they cover him up. They make it
look so real, it really looks like there’s been a horrible accident. Then
the kids get a little lesson on drugs and alcohol and so forth, which is very
good. They let them know how the police interact in this and everyone works
together. It’s just a wonderful program. I’ve gone over and watched
this a couple of times.
R: What do you do when you volunteer for them?
A: We just serve breakfast. [The Women’s Club] makes
a contribution, I think it’s $175, because it costs $175 to send a kid,
so we sponsor a kid to attend. Then we furnish donuts and coffee and orange
juice and milk, and we’re there at 8 o’clock in the morning when
the kids are coming in to register and while they’re registering they
can come and eat a donut and get some milk and orange juice before they start
camp. A lot of these kids are so excited that they won’t eat before they
leave home. There are kids from Cincinnati that come up, too.
R: How many people usually go to this?
A: I think they can take up to 125 kids now. They started with
about 80 and they have to apply. We like helping them, and the police officers
appreciate us doing that, and it’s fun to watch the kids come in and they’re
so excited.
They put them in different squads and they have different colors, like one group may have blue shirts and blue hats and another group might have yellow shirts and yellow hats so they can recognize their teams by their colors.
They had the mounted patrol policemen when I was over there one year a couple years ago, and there were two men fighting in the street and the mounted patrol officer, with her horse, came between these two men and broke up the fight. Then other police officers came and arrested the two and put them in the patrol car and took them away. But it let them know what the police do.
They would have calls for drug calls, and I know they take them to Hueston Woods and there’s something they do on the water. They have a lot of things scheduled, and I haven’t seen them all.
Then the last day they have a luncheon and invite the parents and they put on this program. The kids are taught to march, the policeman march with them, and they’re just in a pair of shorts and a T-shirt just like the kids during the weekend, but then on Sunday, when the parents come, the officers are in their uniforms and I think the kids are impressed. They think, “Well they’ve been my friend for three days and now they’re in these uniforms.” So I think the kids are kind of impressed with this program. Then they show and tell the parents what they’ve done and they do some marching and so forth. I think it would be neat to go sometime on a Sunday and see their program. I think it’s a great program for young people and I think some adults need to attend that, too. I think we need to respect our police officers.
Volunteering at the Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Conference
A: I’ve gone to HOBY, that’s the Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Conference. And we had that at the University of Dayton, and Charlotte Haughey and I have gone now for three years, we’ve gone to the University of Dayton. And then last year they invited us up to Washington, D.C., to the National Hugh O’Brien Youth Leadership Conference. There were, like, 400 kids there from all over the world. Twenty-two countries were represented and we helped with that, we did a lot of the office stuff, and we did go to some of the programs.
R: Do you sponsor money for a kid to go?
A: The Women’s Club of Oxford does. It’s $175 to
send a kid to HOBY, too, and that’s a weekend thing at the University
of Dayton. We don’t sponsor them to go to D.C. because not anyone can
go; they’re chosen from their different seminars. There’s a boy
and a girl that are chosen, and these are sophomores in high school and their
ways are paid by the HOBY seminars. But that was interesting to do that. I like
working with young people. Of course, I used to be a youth director and I’ve
worked with young people in the church all my life except for the past, maybe,
10 years.
Church Involvement
R: What church do you go to now?
A: I go to Victory Christian Church. It was Oxford Church of
Christ, then they just changed the name.
R: Have you gone there since you moved to Oxford?
A: Yes...When I first came back I went back to North Seventh
Street where I grew up. I’m a charter member in the Fairfield Church of
Christ because my mother and I, back in 1963 our church was growing so quickly
that they wanted to start a church in the southern part of Hamilton, so they
started Fairfield Church of Christ and there were several families that left
to go there. That church is now running over 500, so it’s really growing.
So I’m a charter member there, but it’s too far to drive when I
can go locally. I think, as a Christian, your witness should be
where you live. So I’m active, I teach Sunday School class
and I’m a songleader, I lead the singing.
R: So you teach Sunday School to the kids?
A: The kids’ class, yeah.
R: How did you become a trustee?
A: I’m excited, because last week we had 55. Being in
a college town, now all the students are allowed to have cars and in the area
where we are, at Beech and Collins, where it used to be residential it is now
99 percent student housing. If there are four students in a house that means
there are four cars, for the most part. They have taken all the parking along
the street. The same problem is similar all over Oxford, because we have probably
six churches in town. The student population has grown so much and I think Miami
should control the car situation. I think the students, if they’re going
to have cars, they need to park them in the lots that Miami has provided. If
not, even if they could work out something on Sunday where we can have a place
to park when we come to worship.
I would rather see churches in town on the corners instead of bars. And if all the churches would decide like our little church did....Because of parking and because, well there had been some inner problems and our membership was going down. We were running between 80 and 90; we’re small. But now we’re running between 50 and 60. We had young leaders, young men that weren’t leaders but they were in charge. So I think if we had experienced leadership in the church this would not have happened.
At our congregational meeting in January, the 19th, they met together with the idea that we were going to close the church. Being a member of the church for 30-some years and some of the older people, we decided, “No, we’re not going to let them close this church.” So I said to some of them, “It’s not quite right that you should be voting today when six weeks ago you decided that as of January the 19th you weren’t going to be attending here, you would be going to other churches.”
A lot of the people that were coming were coming from outside Oxford, which driving 15 or 20 minutes isn’t that much. But they could drive 15 or 20 minutes in another direction and still go to a Christian church or a Church of Christ, if that were their preference. They decided that they wanted to go where there were larger youth groups because they had smaller kids, and they decided that they were going to leave. So I said, “I don’t think it’s quite fair that you’re going to vote today to close our doors when you don’t plan on coming back anyway.” So some of them abstained from voting, which gave us some “yes” votes to keep it open.
So we’re open, and last week we had 55
people. We hope that we can build our church again. There’s a retired
minister from Hamilton, who was my minister when I was a teen-ager who’s
coming up and preaching on Sundays for us. The college kids really like him,
I mean, he’s like grandpa, and he’s very knowledgeable of the scriptures
and he does a great job, so he’s preaching for us right now. The Fairfield
Church of Christ is helping us, and that’s where I’m a charter member.
Some of the area churches, hopefully they’ll be helping us this summer,
so we hope we can survive here with a small congregation.
We have a church in Hamilton on the west side, they’re probably running
about 300, then we have Community Christian in the east part of Hamilton. These
are the Churches of Christ Christian churches. So this church, the North Seventh
Street Church, they moved from the inner city out to Milikin Road northeast
of Hamilton, which is kind of Fairfield Township, and they’re running
probably about 400 now. So we have some larger churches that are close by, and
then we have Todd Road Christian Church that’s here in Oxford that people
could attend there if they like. We have a church in Liberty, Ross. We all believe
the same but we have churches all over.
We’re a non-denominational church, though. We’re governed by our local body, we don’t have a headquarters, we don’t have a bishop...We baptize by immersion, I mean we plunge under. We believe that is the Bible way. Even the Catholic church baptized by immersion up until the year 1311. So we immerse, and we have communion every Sunday because the early church did in the Book of Acts, which is the history of the church. We feel, we don’t want to reform the church, we want to restore the church, so we try to speak where the Bible speaks. Where the Bible is silent, we’re silent. So we don’t have any man-made laws, we try to follow the Scriptures, and that’s the basic teachings of the Christian churches, the Churches of Christ. There’s a United Church of Christ that is evangelical, too, which we are.
Life in Oxford
R: What do you like about Oxford?
A: I like the small town, I like the college atmosphere, but
I like it better in the summer. (Laughs). I live in the country, so I like living
in the country because I’m out of the traffic, but I only have to drive
a few miles to the store and so forth.
I love the people in Oxford, of course I’ve been here a long time and I know a lot of people. I’m active with Oxford Senior Citizens, and there are great people there and I like working with them. We’re having a style show Thursday and I’ve been collecting door prizes, I’m on that committee. So I’m very involved.
I like Oxford because it’s close to Hueston Woods, it’s an hour from Cincinnati, it’s an hour to Dayton, two hours to Columbus, two hours to Indianapolis. If you want to go to big cities you don’t have to drive too far. You’re close to the interstates and the shopping malls if you like the malls. I’m close to Hamilton, where I go to shop.
My family is close, because I have brothers and sisters in Hamilton and Fairfield. I also have a sister in Westerville, near Columbus, and I have a brother in Hagerstown which is only about an hour away, just west of Richmond. So my family is here.
I’m not one that wanted to retire in Florida. I like the seasons. I love the snow although I hate the ice. I love the spring, I think it’s beautiful especially now. We go out to Hueston Woods and have dinner at the lodge. We go out on Friday evenings because they have the fish special during Lent. Now this Friday we’re going to Riley, it’s down the road about seven miles, because at their old school the firemen have this fish fry and it’s this Friday. It’s all community things.
And this is a farming community so we know all the farmers, you know Oxford is surrounded by farmland. It’s just a really neat place. I think Oxford would be a great place for people to raise their kids. It’s a great place to retire because Miami University has all these programs that the townspeople can come to. I went to the [Wynton Marsalis] concert at Millet Hall, the jazz concert.
R: What would you change about Oxford?
A: Right now, because of my church situation, I think that
the president needs to do something with the parking situation. I know you all
think that you have to have cars. There’s a lot of parking on the edge
of the Square Mile but not so when you get into town.
R: Do you think the students and townspeople have a good relationship
between them or do you think it’s a little tense?
A: I think there are rumors, but I get along great
with the kids and I don’t think it’s a problem at all.
There may have been some at one time but if it was a problem it was because
of the kids throwing their beer bottles in their yards and it’s just bad
kids. But they’re all not bad, there’s a few. I pick up beer bottles
out of our churchyard and cans and so forth. It may not be college kids, it
could be high school kids or it may not be kids at all, it may be some adults
that are just going down the street and tossing things out the window.
But no, I don’t think there’s a problem. People who live in Oxford are here because they like a college town and we like the environment.
R: If you could live anywhere else in the world, where would you like
to live, besides Oxford?
A: Well, since I’m retiring and I’ll be 70 this
year I would go to Mason Christian Village. It’s just east of Hamilton.
It’s a Christian retirement community for seniors, and it was basically
started by the Churches of Christ Christian churches but it’s interdenominational
so anyone can go there. They have programs; they take you on trips.
Now we have the Knolls of Oxford here, which is sponsored actually by a church
group, I don’t remember which one, but it is a Christian group. It’s
really growing.
As long as my family, my brothers and sisters who are mostly older than me,
as long as they’re living I’d want to stay here in Oxford. Should
something happen to my husband I’d move off the farm, I couldn’t
take care of that 58-acre farm, and I would probably move to the Knolls of Oxford.
I don’t want to move to Florida. I don’t want to move to Arizona.
I think it’s stupid for people to move out there unless you have family
because you move away from all your friends. You need friends as
you get older, especially, and I love the different seasons. I
love springtime, I love summer, I love fall.
There was a man who worked for Miami for years and years, I think he’s passed on, but he was in charge of the formal gardens and all the trees and everything in Oxford and he planted all these flowering trees. Then Oxford adopted this white flowering tree as the tree of Oxford so a lot of people bought this tree that has white blooms on it. We have a lot of forsythia. Then in the fall, they planted a lot of tree that have color, and so it’s just really a very beautiful town, I think.
I love the campus. I don’t think you can find a prettier campus than Miami, and I didn’t go to school at Miami but I really like Oxford, I think it’s a great place to live. I think if you want to go to basketball games, football games, hockey...the Women’s Club works hockey games and that’s fun. We do three or four games a year working the concession stands, and then they give us a small percentage, which helps us because we sponsor a Talawanda High School senior with a scholarship for $1,000 to anywhere they want to go. We like for them to go to an Ohio school, because we like to keep the money in Ohio. We just do a lot of things for the community.
My life is very busy. I’m going to be leaving
the day after Easter to go to a Christian Seniors Conference in Northeast, Md.,
it’s on the northeast tip of the Chesapeake Bay. We’re going to
this lodge, I think it’s on 100 acres and it overlooks the Chesapeake
Bay, I mean you’re about 200 feet from the bay.
This is my ninth trip. It’s just for seniors
and they were having two a year, one in the spring, one in the fall. Now we
just have it in the spring. Most of the rooms face the bay, so you look out
your window and you see Chesapeake Bay, and this lodge is owned by Christian
businessmen in that area and they only allow people to use it for conferences
from churches. Any Christian church can use this for conferences. There’s
no smoking or drinking allowed on the campus area. We have our meals there.
There’s no shopping mall, it’s just right there secluded on this
100-acre area. They have camping areas and swimming pools.
It’s about ten miles from the little town called Northeast. It’s like a fishermen’s town and we go there shopping. We stop on the way in. We have a charter bus going, it leaves from Mason Christian Village. We stop at this little town called Northeast, Md., and we shop at the little shops, then we shop at Moody’s Crab House for lunch and they have the best crabcakes. I’d never eaten crabcakes until I ate them there and I’ve never eaten anything like it since. I look forward to going there.
R: Will your husband go with you?
A: No, this is planting season. So I’m going to be gone,
but I fix him food and make meatloaf and have ham and soups and things so that
he can eat while I’m gone. And it’s kind of good for me to get away,
too, because it’s a great program.
On the way back, we’re going to go to Lancaster, Pa., we’re going
to see this Bible drama on the story of Daniel from the Old Testament, Daniel
and the lions’ den. One year we saw the story of Abraham and Sarah, and
then one year it was the life of Christ. They change these about every two years.
How Society Has Changed
R: Why do you think people are less committed to serving their communities
than they used to be?
A: We’re living in a “me” generation where people are more
concerned about themselves and what’s in it for them. It’s not,
“How is something going to affect someone else’s life?” it’s
“if I do this, what am I going to get out of it? How will it help me?”
I believe that people should forget themselves and reach out to
others and see how a situation is going to affect someone else’s life.
And even the acts that we do, I mean, is this going to make someone
better. There’s a little poem I have on my wall in the bathroom,
it says something like “we should leave this world a better place than
we found it.” I believe that.
R: Why do you think more people are focused on themselves now?
A: I think it’s the generation. When I grew up, I’ve worked since
I was 14. I bought all my school clothes in high school, I put myself through
college. I had to pay my way because I’m from a big family and we didn’t
have any money because my father was disabled and my mother stayed home with
us and took care of us. I think we had to work for everything we got and we
appreciated it more.
Most of the young people today, even your parents,
their parents gave to them and they didn’t really have to work really
hard. They’re working hard now, but not like we had to. We didn’t
realize that we were all poor. But I think the young people today, they get
married and they feel like you’ve got to have a television, you’ve
got to have a car, you’ve got to have a computer, you’ve gotta have
you’ve gotta have you’ve gotta have. All this material
stuff we have to have and we’re so busy trying to acquire all this that
we don’t see what’s around you… And I think we need to open
our eyes and reach out to other people because there’s people out there
that are really hurting and that really need a helping hand.