SOLON — May is Older American’s Month, and in recognition of Solon’s senior citizens the Solon Economist is proud to publish a series of interviews conducted by Solon High School senior William Wittich for his National Honor Society project. Wittich is a high school volunteer with Solon Senior Support, and with encouragement from Jill Weetman, he conducted interviews with over a dozen individuals.
This week we are featuring his interview with Sandy Hanson. An interview with Larry Brecht was printed last week, and future interviews will include Phyllis Fiala, and Marcele Kaduce.
The full interview is available online at YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ly3Y0n_ydNk.
How long have you lived in Solon?
“Since 1973.”
Tell me about your first memory.
“I might’ve been three or four, riding a tricycle on a sidewalk in east West Branch, where I grew up.”
Where did you go to school? Can you tell me about it?
“West Branch. It was a very small school. When I got to be in fourth grade, the war broke out. My dad enlisted, unbeknownst to my mother, and so we ended up in California. I went to school out there in the fifth and sixth grade, and then the war ended and when I got back most of my friends were there. I went to school at West Branch with maybe 11, or 12, or 15 in a class. In California there were three fifth grades. I got punished because I squinted, they made me sit up on a stool in front of the class, I had long braids, and I felt a real misfit out there. And they played things out on the playground we didn’t here. It was all cement, no grass. But when I got back (to West Branch) I got engaged in our small school.”
Did you like the small school or the big school better?
“Small. But you know, I was exposed to things in California, not just school-related. They had super-highways, we didn’t have that. They had super-grocery stores in the 40s, and we didn’t have that. And everywhere you looked, there were sailors and Marines. There was camouflage over the streets in San Diego, and all the ships. It was awesome, but scary. I was ten or 11, so I was impacted in different ways than the adults were.”
What was your best subject in school?
“English.”
Who were your best friends?
“The girls I played basketball with. Betty Ann Phelps, Rita, Margaret, Donna, Janet, Esther.”
What was your favorite memory of them?
“We used to get in the car and go out to Lover’s Lane and see if we could find any of our math teachers with somebody they shouldn’t be! Isn’t that awful? After a ballgame we’d go on the big school bus, we’d come back and go to the hotel and have a hamburger and a malt.”
Did you go to college?
“I decided when I was about 50, with prodding from a colleague, that I worked with, I enrolled in a class. It was grammar and style. Carl Klaus. And he said, ‘Oh, you can’t audit, you have to take the class.’ Well, they told me, of all things, that I write in run-on sentences. But I enjoyed that, and he had a heart attack right in the middle of that class. I was very intimidated. I came from little West Branch, and now I’m at the University of Iowa? Another instructor came in and I managed to get through the class. Carl came back, and he called me, and said, ‘You need to get busy, and go on and do more. Get a degree.’ He said, ‘You must do that.’ So, I did get a general studies degree. I did graduate.”
Are you glad you went to college?
“Oh yes, yes.”
Where did you work?
“I started working as a single mother with two boys way back in 1956 after a divorce. I got a job in the business office at the University Hospital where we posted charges on these big machines, we sold meal tickets to all the big doctors so they could go eat, and so on and so forth. One day, having coffee with the girlfriends, a Doc came up and asked if there was anybody here who wants to work in a research lab. And the girls said, ‘Well, Sandy will, she’s smart.’ I went to interview with him. He was doing growth hormone and insulin. I went to work with him and became part of a group that worked with growth hormones, and they were able to give growth hormones to kids, which was a triumph in those days.
I worked 50 years at University Hospitals and ended up in pediatric nutrition.
In the meantime I got involved with antiques. So, for years, my third husband, who could refinish furniture, I hauled big truck loads of furniture, that was restored and refinished, to Chicago shows for 25-26 years. I started a Fourth of July (antique) show in my yard where 150 different dealers would come and set up with their vans and big trucks, and we did that for 36 years.”
Do you have any advice on choosing a career?
“At my age careers have changed markedly. When I was young our assistant principal of our high school took all of the lads, eight of them, around to various colleges. Not any of the girls. So, a career to me would either be to be a secretary, a librarian, I thought I wanted to be a doctor but my parents said ‘Oh, you’re not smart enough and girls don’t do that.’ But I started reading books when I was very young. There were a lot of books that were medical, they were fiction adventures. I had a grandfather who grew up in Vermont, and he spent time with an Uncle who was kind-of a self-styled Doc, and he would go across Lake Champlain and birth Eskimo babies, and Indian babies. I decided I would just be a nurse instead, but then I found out I was to have a young child.
Maybe to find something not so much for the money, money is important, but maybe enjoyable, and feeling fulfilled in the work you do.”
Tell me about your children
“I have three boys. The oldest lad is going to be 70, and he’s retired. He worked at the U.S. Geological Survey, his first wife died suddenly, he married her sister and they’re very happy. My middle son is a tuck pointer. My third husband, God bless him, was a tuck pointer. They restore the exterior of buildings. They get up on scaffolds. They hang off roofs. They replace the mortar, they call it mud. Dwayne, the middle son, learned that from that third husband of mine, who started tuck pointing as a young man and he’s still around hanging off churches and many university buildings. The third lad is 57 and manages the Dairy Queen on the east side of Iowa City. He’s a recovering alcoholic, but God bless him, he’s been sober 15 years.”
What is your favorite memory with them?
“Christmas. We did take some trips in the past, but I say Christmas when everybody gets together and they enjoy it. Through the years since I was married a couple times, it did interrupt our lifestyle, but I’m close to all three of them, they’re good to me, I am blessed considering the rocky road earlier. They’re very good to me.”
Tell me about your grandchildren
“From the oldest boy there are two lads. From the middle boy there are two girls. The youngest has none. I have great-grandkids. The oldest great-grandkid is 26. And then there’s a 16 year old and a 14-year old boy in Minneapolis, there are 46 and 40-year old girls, one in Iowa City and one in Cedar Rapids. The youngest son of my oldest boy has a five-year old and a three-year old (girls).”
Tell me about your parents
“My mother grew up in Cosgrove (near Oxford) in a church-rented house. She had four sisters and two brothers. My grandpa was an Iowa dirt farmer, lost a herd of cattle (to disease), moved from place-to-place during the depression and sent some of the girls to Iowa City to live with families because they didn’t have the money to raise them. So, my mother grew up in hard times, but she married my dad, who came from West Branch, and his parents had the newspaper. So, he grew up in a little better circumstances though maybe they didn’t settle well with him. He went to Cornell for maybe one year, I think they asked him to leave, gently. He became rather insecure, and as I grew up he drank a lot. But he ran the newspaper and it never occurred to me why in all those years, my grandmother never sold it to him. They eventually divorced and my dad died of a heart attack when he was 64. But, I can’t say anything bad about my childhood. I grew up in a very good background compared to a lot of people then. I can’t fault them one bit. You are what you are.”
What is your favorite memory of them?
“Getting together on Sundays. There was so many of us and my Aunt’s house was rather small, and there was a room with a piano, and that’s where they’d put the kid’s table. For years I yearned to get to the adult’s table so I could be a part of that conversation. I was always taken with what the guys were talking about. They’d always sit at a round oak table in their white undershirts. They’d get a bottle of Coke and drink it down so far and put a little whiskey in it and sit there and play cards, and tell jokes, and I loved to listen to them. The women were in the kitchen talking about babies and food. Not my thing at all. I finally graduated to the bigger table. Those get togethers were warm and loving.”
What was the happiest moment in your life?
“There are so many of them. I suppose the birth of your first child, the second, and the third. Christmases were good, getting together. Friends, I still have friends from school and friends I’ve made through antiques. I think some of my favorite times was going antiquing with my hubby, and we would find furniture way in southern Iowa. We’d go down in the truck and pick it up, he and the middle son would restore it, I’d haul it to Chicago and sold one big piece to Sears so they could use it for a shoe display. It was a great, huge cabinet, two-piece, with glass doors up above. Every time I did a show at this big mall I’d go back and visit my cupboard that they bought.”
What are you most proud of?
“I try to do things here in Solon that benefit seniors because I became a Senior Advocate, but one of the things that I got interested in was history. The history of West Branch was always part of me, and the newspaper has always been (a part of her life). As a Senior Advocate, I wrote a newsletter every month to get it in the Economist. We would go insert flyers from various businesses that were advertising and became very enamored with the Solon Economist. Some years ago, Doug Lindner (previous owner and editor) said they were going to get rid of back issues of the newspaper. I had gone through those issues from 1893 to 1947 and three or four of us produced a Solon picture book called ‘Solon Snapshots.’
I heard from a librarian I’d worked with, I volunteered at the library for 25 years, an archivist at the University, I got ahold of some boxes, and my sister came from Newton and we archived all of those newspapers up to about 2007 (when they were in bound editions). Then people told me I needed to digitize them. I had money from the sale of the book, Doug and I went to South Slope and gave them a spiel asking them for a donation. It was $11,300 to digitize all of those newspapers. I gave a little money of my own, but we were able to do it. I think the thing I am most proud of is we were able to digitize all of those newspapers, and they’re in boxes (in the library’s basement).
What world events have changed your life?
“I would like to say the second World War, when I was thrown into those big schools in California and was a shy girl that had buck teeth and braids and freckles, and chunky child who felt kind-of out of it. They bussed kids in from the Imperial Valley and I met people from all kinds of walks of life in California, so it was a shocker. Things were just so different. But I’m thinking now this virus might be the most significant thing that has happened not just to me, but many people. Many my age who have fatigue, depression anyway because they’re widowed, they’re living alone, life isn’t what we remembered. And I think its been very harsh. I went back through the Solon newspapers, now that they’re digitized, and I pulled out all these 1918 flu things and how they quarantined here in Solon. They opened the quarantine, and then a week later they shut it down again, and when I think about all that, I think this virus, apparently that 1918 flu, there is a significant factor from that in our current virus (flu shot) vaccines that we get. So, I think that it’s been with us, and I think it has changed our lives significantly.”
What was the best piece of advice you’ve ever heard?
“Don’t sweat it. It is what it is. I think I’ve learned that you just have to work through. Some of us are dished things that seem improbable but when you look around, it’s nothing compared to (other’s struggles). I have always thought, the glass is half full. That’s my mantra. I’m lucky that way because I see other people that just can’t get that glass even a quarter full.”
How would you like to be remembered?
“A good mother, a good family person, a good member of the cohort I spend time with, a good friend, and that I did good work as a Senior Advocate, and the pantry. I just hope I was able to pay it forward as people did to me when I was younger.”
Living history
William Wittich
May 25, 2022
Sandy Hanson recently presented the Solon Senior Citizen of the Year Award to Larry Meister. Hanson received the honor in 2019.
About the Contributor
Chris Umscheid, Editor
Chris Umscheid is the editor of the Solon Economist.