1 50 2 https://oralhistory.eku.edu/files/original/6fe2c6a4da65511cfa2c7b648ec8aa39.pdf 25512f90dc4f454547ffdc73e0139f77 PDF Text Text Title: Identifier: Date: Interviewer: Project: Interview with Marie Turner 1984 OH 004 1982-07-27 William H. Berge Marie R. Turner Project The following is an unedited transcript of an oral history interview. Please listen to the actual interview to verify the accuracy of the text. [This tape includes part of a conversation with unknown participants] UNKNOWN1: Pinto beans. I grew some of those this year. UNKNOWN2: My daughter grows pintos but I never did. UNKNOWN1: They tell what to do, its just sort of plant them a little late and let them all die and then just go out and pull up the vines and then . . . UNKNOWN2: Pull them? Shell them all. UNKNOWN1: Yeah. WILLIAM BERGE: I’m going to turn this on. We’ve been talking about, Mrs. Turner and I’ve been talking this morning about being able to remember names and that’s a, if somebody’s really going to be involved in politics, they have to do that don’t they? MARIE TURNER: Yes they do. BERGE: You mentioned that A.B. Chandler was the best you’ve ever seen. TURNER: He was. BERGE: When I first came to Kentucky, after I got out of the service, he was running, oh about a year or two later, he was running for office and he was in Madison County and people would come up and he’d talk to them about their family and the names of them. I’m sure he had some help there but still it was amazing to see him. TURNER: Well, he used to come here and how he could look over the crowd and call fellows by name. I used to watch his traveling companions to see whether they held up the name or not but they didn’t and how he could remember those names, I don’t know. BERGE: No, he was amazing. TURNER: I know. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 1 �BERGE: I guess, Mrs. Turner, you’ve, in your career you’ve had a lot of different jobs really, I mean, people think of you as a school superintendent but you’ve been very active on state and national politics and had a lot of things. As you look back, of all the things you’ve done, what was the most re-, what do you think has been the most rewarding? TURNER: Well, I guess the most rewarding, for the county and school children, was a project I had, building project I had on the WPA ? built 19 school buildings out of stone and brick. Up until then, we’d had just framed buildings and they’d been cold and I, it gave employment to the unemployed and then it housed the children in the wintertime for warmth and it gave our parents hope for the future. They thought, well, ? County is going to be improved. BERGE: This was very early in your career when you did this. TURNER: That’s early in my career. Now, the one I’m the most proud of, I guess, is LBJ school. And, but, I guess the first was the most rewarding one that I had. BERGE: Ok. I’m going to go back and talk to you about that in a minute. Now, when you first became superintendent, how many teachers did you have in this county? Do you have any idea? TURNER: I believe it was about 165 or –70. We had 108 one-room schools and one high school that was located up in ? which made 109 schools. I believe it was, I’m not positive on that but I think that was about what it was. BERGE: Did you have any log school buildings when you became superintendent? TURNER: Had one. BERGE: Where was that? TURNER: Down at Lower Twin down on the river. BERGE: How many stu-, how many teachers did you have in your system when you retired? Do you remember? TURNER: Well, I real, I guess maybe 100 or 125. I really don’t know. BERGE: So you really had fewer teachers as you got rid of those little schools. TURNER: Yes, we had fewer teachers. Uh huh. BERGE: So, really, in a way, get, building bigger schools and closing the little schools in the long run probably saved the county a great deal of money, really didn’t it? TURNER: ? It saved us money. Saved us not only the money and teacher’s salaries but saved us money in fuel and everything like that. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 2 �BERGE: Why did you, how did that come about that getting those buildings built by the WPA? You told me a little bit about it one time but . . . TURNER: Well, I was close enough to the superintendent’s office about four o’clock when this fellow came in. He introduced himself and told me he was from Washington and he’d like to talk with me a few minutes. I went back in the office and he told me that he was trying to get some superintendent that would build school buildings and put a lot of unemployed men to work. And that he’d been turned down by, oh five or six others superintendents. And I said, well, maybe they turned you down the same way I’ll have to turn you down because we don’t have the money. And he said, well, I would like to help you work up one project and see how much it would cost you. ? I thought, well, I called my husband told him I wouldn’t be at home for a little while and we worked on a project, a one-room school. And it cost the board of education $34 and something. And I thought, well my goodness, if I could certainly get $34 for ?. Before it was over with, we stayed there until all night working until four o’clock the next morning working on projects. We wrote out 21 projects and some of them are consolidated schools and, of course, so suddenly that way, I had no idea how to consolidate or where to build them hardly. I just went over the ones that I thought that needed it the worst. ? regardless of the future of it and so out of the 21 projects which put an end to work in this county and they didn’t know how to cut stone but we got 19 approved. And he told me, he said, now you may have to follow this thing through. He says, you may have trouble in your state. And I said, oh no, not the state. Surely. And he said, well, I have had trouble in some of the states. Well it came down to the district though here. Sure enough. And I couldn’t get it approved. It had been approved all the way and he held it up there and kept holding it up, kept holding it up and . . . BERGE: Who was that? Do you remember? TURNER: No, I really don’t. I’ve forgotten what his name was. But anyhow, I called him up one day and ask him to come over, could I come over and talk to him. So he said well he’s too busy. The only time he could come would, well, I said are you going to be busy on Sunday. And he said, he stood a few minutes, and he said, well, no, I guess not. I said, I’ll be over on Sunday. I was over at Paintsville. I went over there and I couldn’t convince him that it ought to be done and he said, well, you can’t build these school buildings and everything. Of course, we had charged the government for the sand and the water and the rock and everything that we could think of we had charged it and . . . BERGE: So you were really making money on them weren’t you? TURNER: Well, they weren’t cost as much because we didn’t have any money. And it had to be that way and besides, they didn’t care at Washington, all they wanted was to put the men to work. And so I told him, I said, I can put the men to work while we’re at it. So he told me, he said, now you don’t have men that know how to do it. And I said, well, I hate to make a trip back to Washington but I will. He said, well, you won’t get it done. And I said, well, they’ve passed it so far, haven’t they. He said, yeah. And I came back home early Monday morning and I called this man that had helped me and told him, I guess I’d have to come up. That they wouldn’t approve it over here at the district. He said, don’t worry, they’ll approve it. And so they gave him an order to approve it. Three or four days after that I got my approval. We had one man in the county that could, knew how to cut stone so we put a sign, men, got as many men as we could to work in each district where they could build a building. Then the board William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 3 �appointed a foreman to each one and we called this man in and he trained the foreman on one project how to cut stone. So we built 19 school buildings. BERGE: Who was the man in Washington you dealt with? Do you remember? TURNER: I don’t know his name. ? but I couldn’t tell you. BERGE: Where was he from? Do you remember? TURNER: I think he was West Virginia. If I remember right. BERGE: Did they ever do, did they do this in any other states? Like they tried with you? TURNER: I imagine so. BERGE: The program you had here? TURNER: I imagine it was something that . . . BERGE: How many men did you put to work? Do you remember? TURNER: 487, I believe. BERGE: Oh, that was tremendous for the county, wasn’t it? TURNER: Yeah it was for one woman to look after all the time. BERGE: Yeah. TURNER: And in the wintertime I put on boots and there’s no roads in here then, you had to ride horseback. But there was an engineer here with the highway and he was a great help to me. And he’d go with me and if he saw anything with it why he’d tell me about it so we’d correct it. BERGE: Who designed the buildings? TURNER: Markum from Hazard. It was his first. He didn’t do a very good job but we got the work done. [laughter] BERGE: Back in those days, when you went to Washington, how’d you travel? TURNER: On the train. BERGE: From where? William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 4 �TURNER: Lexington. BERGE: What, you’d drive to Lexington and then or take a train? TURNER: Yeah we’d drive to Lexington or go on the train to Lexington. BERGE: How long would that trip take you then? TURNER: Oh, let’s see. I’d go on the train when I went on the train, I believe the train passed down here about eight o’clock that morning, we’d get there about two then I’d get on the George Washington and go into Washington that night. Sometimes be there about eleven o’clock. BERGE: I imagine in the 50 years you’ve been going to Washington, you’ve seen a lot of changes in Washington, haven’t you? TURNER: Oh, I have. I’ve seen a lot of changes in Washington. BERGE: It’s a different kind of place to go to now, isn’t it? TURNER: Different place all together to go to. BERGE: I even, I think even the hotel rooms are more expensive now, aren’t they? TURNER: Oh? [laughter] TURNER: The last time I was up there I couldn’t believe it. BERGE: Its awful isn’t it? TURNER: Oh, heaven sakes. It’s terrible. BERGE: Yeah. Yeah. So when you, you built those buildings and they were very pretty little buildings as I remember them . . . TURNER: Yes they . . . BERGE: Those stone buildings. TURNER: were really pretty at that time. BERGE: How many of them are still standing? TURNER: Beg pardon? William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 5 �BERGE: How many of them of them are still standing? Do you know? TURNER: Well, they practically all standing. They’re not in use but they’re, I passed by one the other day way up in the country and the windows are all taken out but the building is still there. BERGE: Yeah, they were really sturdy. TURNER: Yep. They were sturdy. BERGE: Do people live in any of them? TURNER: Yes, in some of them they do. BERGE: Uh huh. And I’ve seen places like that. What have been, in the years that you’ve been in education, not only in this county but maybe in the state or the nation or anything else, what do you think have been the biggest changes? Have had the most effect or whatever? TURNER: Well, to me, the biggest change has been, I hate to say this . . . BERGE: Say it. TURNER: The way I look at it. And say at you teachers. BERGE: I think you’re right. TURNER: I don’t, I don’t think teachers are as innocent and the individual now as were, when I taught school or when I was superintendent of schools. And I think its affected the children. BERGE: Why do you think that’s happened, Mrs. Turner? TURNER: I think that, maybe the colleges is part of it because I always thought of the professors. I think that they, in training the teachers at one time, I don’t, they may not be doing it now, I don’t know, but they used to tell the teachers that they were not puppets. They need to stand on their own. I know we had a teacher out at Eastern one time. BERGE: Yeah, the things that you tell me about him. TURNER: And so I think that maybe that and then money and then, I guess the change, the changes of time, I don’t know. BERGE: I always thought that, in, I know more about colleges than I do high schools and elementary schools but I always thought, I’ve seen the change in the kind of people who teach at our place. TURNER: Yes. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 6 �BERGE: And in a way its kind of a funny thing because I think that teachers have always needed more money but at the same time once this pay got better, then I think you’ve got the kind of people in it who normally wouldn’t have been in it. TURNER: I think that’s true. And I . . . BERGE: Its kind of a, its kind of a strange thing you needed to reward the teachers better but then when you start doing that, I always, the term I used that we began to get used car salesmen. TURNER: Oh. BERGE: People who would do anything but they find that you could make a good living teaching so they go into teaching. TURNER: Well, that’s the thing about it and that’s why I used to make a statement, publicly all the time, that I blame the colleges for turning out inferior teachers because if they would make them take examinations and I don’t think though that you can really examine a teacher that’s interested in children. Its hard to . . . BERGE: Its hard to judge that too. TURNER: Um, I remember one time when I was much younger in the education field, I thought well, I wasn’t going to have any teacher that wasn’t a student from the colleges. And I finally found one of our own boys that was a straight A student at the University of Kentucky and I thought well, I’ve got it made. And I put him in a large school down here in ? . He was the biggest flop I ever saw in my life. BERGE: [laughter] TURNER: The next year, I couldn’t, teachers were really hard to get. BERGE: Teachers are really born, they’re not made aren’t they? TURNER: So I had to get a permit teacher. And she was the most successful teacher that I had that year here. So its hard to measure. BERGE: Its really hard to pick them too isn’t it? TURNER: Its hard to pick them. BERGE: In a real sense, I mean, I know you can train a teacher and you can educate a teacher, but the real good ones are almost born aren’t they? TURNER: Well, I don’t know. I really . . . BERGE: Or at least they have, its something about their personality and their attitude. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 7 �TURNER: The better educated teachers are that way but I think a real teacher enjoys the work and enjoys children. BERGE: Oh yeah, yeah. TURNER: And I’ve always maintained that teachers, that the school people ought to select teachers in the high school. Now, during the war when we had such a scarcity of teachers, we had a little ? down here with elementary children and we let our seniors come over there and teach school. And you know, I learned more about selecting teachers there and the children learned more than the seniors did. Several of them said I don’t want to teach school. I can’t stand these children. BERGE: I had some students at Eastern who said that when they were in high school that they had taught some up here. One, there was one family that had three or four of those boys and girls down there. I can’t remember their last name now, I should but I can’t. I know Mary was one of them. I can remember their first names but I can’t remember their . . . TURNER: Well, we had a very successful three years down there and then the state department decided that that wasn’t the thing for us to do. BERGE: The way to do it. TURNER: But I’ll tell you, it picked out the best teachers. And the ones that went on and made real good. BERGE: Which did you have your most success with? Local people or people from, who weren’t from here? TURNER: Oh, I always had success with my local people. I never had much trouble. BERGE: Did you ever hire people from away from here? TURNER: Oh yeah. In the high school, all the time. Once in a while, if I thought I had a real good person here, I put him in high school. I got some criticism on that but I felt like this: our local teachers had the same mannerisms, the same language, the same mistakes in grammar and, if I could get people drawn in here, why it really helped our high school children. And I still think it’s a good thing. BERGE: Yeah and I think its good for people to know people from other areas and TURNER: Well . . . BERGE: then sometimes enter into a relationship with them. TURNER: Some of our, some of our best looking girls married some of these teachers. They live in Ohio, Louisville, and Lexington and Cincinnati, everywhere now. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 8 �BERGE: As a, as a school superintendent, you know, you and maybe six or seven other people in the state were very well known by all people in the state as being long time superintendents and very powerful superintendents. How, do you think it was necessary back in those days for people, it seems like the school systems that really developed were the school systems like yours here and Mr. Farley’s up in Pike County and places like that. Do you think it was almost necessary to have strong leadership? TURNER: I think a strong and necessary anytime to have strong leadership. BERGE: Do you think it was more necessary then than it is now or not? TURNER: No. I don’t think it is. I think its, if anything, its more necessary now. BERGE: Do you think there’d ever be any superintendents again, though, like you and Mr. Cheek and Mr. Farley, and men that you know that had the office for years and years and really developed the, a system. Do you think that could ever happen again? TURNER: I doubt it. I think now the superintendents stay in their office too much, they don’t associate, and they don’t know their children, and I think its very important for parents to be able to come and talk to the superintendent anytime they want to. And I done pretty well enough because superintendents then were like teachers. They were interested in the children and the enrichment of the school system. BERGE: In your lifetime, not just when you were superintendent but even now, have you seen much change in the types of people that serve on school boards? TURNER: Well, yes, I guess I have. I hadn’t thought of that question but I guess I have. But I think this, I think that if you have a strong leader as superintendent of schools, you can always lead your board. I had fellows, of course everybody knows I’m Democrat, and I had two Republicans elected on the board one time. And they decided they was going to get rid of me. BERGE: When was this? Do you remember? TURNER: That was early in the day. BERGE: Back in the ‘30s? TURNER: Yeah. And I guess it was early thirties too, they beat the two people that had been in and so I thought well I don’t think that we had three board members that were for me and but the news got out that they was going to buy one of them. And I didn’t hardly think they could. BERGE: But you could never be sure either. TURNER: No. No but I knew that there was two factions here in the Democratic party and ?, my husband was on one side and ? on the other. And they were pretty strong. And I didn’t know what would have happened and the first three board members, meetings that we had, these two board members voted no on everything that came up. So we’d have to vote the other three would vote Aye or William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 9 �No and they’d vote Aye, whatever it was. So one night I got to thinking how in the world can I get one of those board members to change his way. We had a one-room school up at ? and . . . BERGE: Where is that? TURNER: ? on ?. Mr. Back was a father of four doctors and they were against me and he was the one that had been elected against me. They . . . BERGE: Was that Dr. Back any kin to the Dr. Back over in Whitesburg? TURNER: Yeah. That’s his father. BERGE: Oh. Ok. TURNER: And so they’re the ones that beat the, my board members. They put enough money into it to beat them. And they were trying to put in Cash Williams who had been a superintendent previous. BERGE: Before your husband? TURNER: Yeah. BERGE: Or before you? TURNER: Before my husband. BERGE: Ok. TURNER: and before ?. Sometime back. So I, this one-room school was overcrowded. I decided I was have an order written out to annex a room to put another teacher there. So I read my order for the board and I called Hiram Back first. Oh, he twisted and turned and he knew he couldn’t afford to vote no against all that. Finally, he just burst out laughing. He said, well, you got me. I’ll have to vote Aye. You know, from then on, I never had anymore trouble with those two people. Men. And when my time came for my contract ran out, Hiram Back made the motion and George Little seconded it. They’d come in there against me. BERGE: Well you know that’s probably by handling that that way that probably had a great deal to do with the way you were able to stay in fairly easily the rest of your time, don’t you think? TURNER: Yeah. Yeah that’s true. Uh huh. BERGE: I’ve had some of the young superintendents now that I talk with, I did a project a couple of years ago in which I interviewed every superintendent in the state and I asked them about oh changes that they’d seen but you know the thing about it is very few of them have been in very long, you know. TURNER: Yeah, that’s right. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 10 �BERGE: Superintendents don’t last long anymore. TURNER: No they don’t. Huh uh. BERGE: And they know it. They think, they say seven, eight years and they’ll have to throw it in. TURNER: Well, I don’t know a one that would have stayed if I hadn’t have helped. BERGE: It can, they just can’t handle it, I guess. TURNER: No. No that, well, the thing about it, they don’t talk to their board members enough. Men are men and you have to let them think they’re . . . BERGE: Doing something. TURNER: doing something whether they are or not. BERGE: Yeah. Yeah. TURNER: And I never employed a teacher, I never employed a bus driver in a fellows district without I talked to him first and told him what I’d like to do and why I wanted it. I never had a board member say don’t do it. And I had one fellow one time on a bus driver. He said, Mrs. Turner, you might not know it but he drinks. Well, I said, if he does then I want to recommend him. Well, he says he does and I said well you find him one that don’t drink. And so he finally did but I think that’s the main trouble. They just don’t, don’t talk to their board members enough. BERGE: And don’t make them feel as involved enough. TURNER: No. No they’re not involved. Now a long time after I was out here, the board members here, I met with them sometimes they were all upset and everything and that was a thing about it. So I told the superintendent, I said, you better go talking to these fellows. BERGE: Do you think Mr. Sebastian was a little bashful or something? TURNER: I don’t know just what. BERGE: I’m, the one time that we went down there to see if he just sort of sat in his office. TURNER: Yeah, that’s what he does. That’s the trouble about it. BERGE: I’d be down, I’d drink coffee in every restaurant in this county and talk to those people if it was me. TURNER: Well, I . . . B: Or something . . . Page 11 William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 �TURNER: spent most of my time on the streets . . . BERGE: Yeah. TURNER: When I was in there. I’d go in on the morning, I had a good secretary. I would tell her what I needed to have done and then I’d go down on the street, I’d find out more of what was going on. BERGE: It really is a public relations job, isn’t it? TURNER: It’s a public relations and that’s all there is to it. If you got the ?, I mean you have to have a good school system along with it. BERGE: How did you, when you needed to get, I know good superintendents like yourself, you have to, every now and then there’s a, you have some messages that you want to get out. In other words, you want the parents and the people in the community to know some things that are going on. Now, sometimes you can’t say I want you to know this is going on but there’s, sometimes you do, you know, but, how did you get information to them? What was the ways you did it when you wanted to really get some word around the county? TURNER: Well, I’d go to PTA, parents meetings, it wasn’t a PTA but it was parents meetings. BERGE: It was like PTA, really. TURNER: Yeah, it was like PTA and I’d never say well this is going on in your district or sometimes I would say it, this is going on in your district and I need some help on it. And I never had any trouble at all because . . . BERGE: Did you have any kind of a newsletter you ever sent home with students or anything like that? TURNER: No. In Jackson Times sometimes we’d put a letter in. BERGE: Did you get on the radio much? TURNER: Well, we didn’t have early days, after they got the radio over at Mount Carmel yes, I was on the radio all the time nearly. But I had they children with me most of the time. BERGE: In other words, you were able to use the children to get the message. TURNER: Yeah. Yeah. BERGE: Did, do you think when you were superintendent that most of the children in the county would have recognized you? Did see you often enough? TURNER: Oh my ? They recognized me, yeah. And ?, we had a principal that came here, Mr. Tolliver, one time, and he reprimanded one of the boys down at the high school for something and the boy really Page 12 William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 �wasn’t guilty. Some of the other children had told something that he, made him think, made the principal think he was guilty and he had him in and was going to punish him. He said, I’ll just go up and tell Marie R. Well, Mr. Tolliver was about ready to thrash him. BERGE: I’ll bet. TURNER: And so he ran out the door and ran up to the office and he told me what would have happened. So I call Mr. Tolliver. I said, Mr. Tolliver what was your trouble with this and he said well, I can not allow these children to call you Marie R. I said, Mr. Tolliver, that’s not out of disrespect. That’s with respect. BERGE: That’s what, that’s what you’re known as. TURNER: And I said, that’s the only way they know me. I said, they wouldn’t know me as Ms. Turner, there’s too many Ms. Turners around here. BERGE: Yeah. I want to turn this around over. ? from, Mr. Tolliver, where was he from? Do you remember? TURNER: He was, well, I got him from over on the Ohio River but he was formally from Whitesburg. BERGE: If he had been from this county, he’d have known that’s what . . . TURNER: Yeah. BERGE: Probably. TURNER: But he wasn’t from this county. BERGE: Yeah. Yeah. You know, some of the young superintendents now, tell me, I ask them about board members and when they get members on their board who are opposed to them, I ask them how they handle it and they say one of the first things they do, they try to get those people to go to that, those meetings of those school board associations and let people find, let them find out what the problems of running a school, you know, a lot of them think you can do anything you want to, he said, and these superintendents say, what they try to do, they get, they let them know that there are limitations on what, not only what a board member can do but what a superintendent can do, really. Did you use that much? TURNER: Yeah, I used that for any board member that wanted to go ? . . . BERGE: Did you try to get them to go? M: Yeah, I tried to get them to go to them but not for that reason. Just for them to go and see, I was always proud of my system, I wanted them to know that we had a pretty good system and we had one member that usually attended and he would come back and tell them and say, well, I didn’t learn anything new, we’ve already had that. And so . . . Page 13 William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 �BERGE: Did you go to those meetings all the time? TURNER: Oh yeah. Mm hmm. BERGE: Those were, those, they were good things to go to, weren’t they? TURNER: They were good things to go to. BERGE: What associations were the most helpful for you? What meetings did you go to that you think were the most helpful for you as a school person? TURNER: Well, I guess the superintendents’ meetings were the most helpful. I think the small committee meetings for the superintendents were the as helpful as anything where you could ask questions or get all your answers. I think you learned a lot that way. BERGE: If, right off the top of your head, if you had to tell me some of the people that you’ve known, who were good county and independent system superintendents, who would you say? TURNER: Well, I would say Jim Farley or not Jim Farley . . . BERGE: Claude, was it? TURNER: Farley. No not Farley. What’s his name? BERGE: From where? TURNER: Over at Pike County. BERGE: Mr. Farley. TURNER: Farley and oh, Billy Watkins was always a good . . . BERGE: Wee Willy Watkins, they called him. TURNER: Wee Willy Watkins. I don’t know what kind of school system he had but I never was in it but he had some mighty good ideas. Then . . . B: He was the first superintendent I ever interviewed. TURNER: Is that right? B: Yeah, when I started this work, years ago. TURNER: Oh, my God. Well, Mitch Napier had a good school system. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 14 �BERGE: Who was that? TURNER: Mitch Napier in Perry County. And the fellow from Harlan County . . . BERGE: Mr. Caywood? TURNER: Caywood. And then . . . I can’t think of the ones, Webster in western Kentucky, I always felt like ? was doing a pretty good job. He and I didn’t always agree on things but I felt like he was and then there’s a fellow out, Elizabethtown, I forgot, I can’t think of his name now. BERGE: Is it Stone? TURNER: No. Before him. Before Stone. BERGE: I don’t know who he is. TURNER: He was, so that’s about the ones that I . . . BERGE: But those people have just jumped right into, into your head. TURNER: Yeah. Jumped right out of my mind. BERGE: You, you can think of them as . . . TURNER: ? I thought that they had a pretty good school systems. BERGE: How hard was it, how did you go about getting good people to run for the board? I know you, you tried to get good people and you couldn’t. Could you always get the people you wanted to run or not? TURNER: Yep. Never failed. Well, I ought to tell you this story. I told you about the, about Mr. Hiram Back, of course, he was for me at the, re-electing me. Then, when the election came up then, for him to be re-elected, he told me that the pressure by his boys and some of his friends was so strong on me, he said, I’m going to have to run against you. I remember very well where he was on the street down there when he told me. And I said, well, Hiram, I sure hate to hear that. He said, well, I hate it too. BERGE: Because he was a big Republican, wasn’t he? TURNER: No. He was Democrat. BERGE: Oh, he was in the other faction. TURNER: Uh huh. BERGE: Ok. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 15 �TURNER: And the other, he said that they had just had another man in mind. Had a man in mind. And I said, well, I’ll just have to beat you and now that was, in the eyes of a lot of them, that was an impossibility that you couldn’t beat Hiram Back in his district. Well, I knew, I thought I had a man that could do it. He was a cousin of mine but he’d never been in politics or anything but he was a logger and everybody liked him and had confidence in him. So I said, ?, why don’t you think it over and if you really think that way why and you’re going to have to be that way, I want to know it. He said, well, Marie, I thought it over a thousand times and I want to sleep on it and I argued with him but he says now they, that’s my boy and I think they had some of their kinfolks that time that they wanted in or ? with them to get in, one. So I got on my horse and went up to see Johnny Grigsby? and told him, I said Johnny, I’ve got to have your house. BERGE: Grigsby? TURNER: Grigsby. He said, what for and I said, run for board member. Why, he said, Marie, its better with Hiram Back. And I said, well, I told him, the story. Well, he says, I don’t know whether I can beat him or not. And I said, I know you can. And he said, well, I guess I can. And I said, well, I’ll prepare your papers and send them up to you and you can fill it out. He said alright. Well, uncle Hiram came to the next day after he filed and he said, Marie, what are you doing to me. I said, not a thing, why. He said, how’d you get that man to run. Nobody knew he was my cousin. BERGE: He never ran for anything before, did he? TURNER: No, he never run anything before and I never told anybody he was my cousin. First cousin. And I didn’t all the time he was running, I never said he was my first cousin. And uncle Hiram didn’t know it. And he says, I said, well, Hiram, I told you I’d have to beat you. And I said, you think I had to pick the best to beat you with. And I said, because you’re the second best in there and I know he’s the best. Well, we beat him and uncle Hiram never got mad at me for doing it. He said, I told the boys I couldn’t beat Johnny Grigsby. And Johnny stayed in four years, I believe and never had any opposition the time but no I never had any trouble getting good men to run. And all the time he was on the board, of course, a lot of my people knew he was first cousin to me but I never told anyone that he was a cousin of mine. Because I didn’t want them to think that I was influencing him or he was influencing me but he was a good man and he, he was the one that told me that that fellow drank when I went ? bus drivers. And I said, well, find me a good man. He said, well, I’ll see what I can do. BERGE: How many oh hard board races did you have? Now that first one was a hard one and then that one was probably a hard race. TURNER: Yeah. And that, that’s about the only two hard, well, I had the third one. George Fugate was in on the board when I came in and he was on the board when I went out. They tried to beat him one time and then they tried to beat George Little. Uh Floyd Little. Floyd was a Republican and they tried to beat, one of the teachers tried to Floyd Little. He had quit teaching and gone into gas station over hear so he was IDed to beat Floyd. That was the only three that I really had, the rest of them I didn’t. Oh, they sat in opposition once in a while but they didn’t pay any attention. BERGE: How many times did you have some people on the board who were opposed to you? William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 16 �TURNER: Only two. Those two men the first time. BERGE: Just, that’s the only time? TURNER: That’s the only time. BERGE: That really helps, doesn’t it? TURNER: Yes. It helped. But I think that, I think you have to let men know that they’re a part of team as well as anybody else. I think that’s the trouble of a lot of superintendents. BERGE: Did you ever have any women on the board? TURNER: No. BERGE: Never did? TURNER: No. BERGE: Has a woman ever been on the board here? TURNER: Yeah, the ones on board now. I would have had one. It, I wasn’t opposed to it at all, but . . . BERGE: In those days there just weren’t that many women involved in those things then? TURNER: Well, when I got a board member on there, he just stayed on there. I never had many after Johnny Grigsby or after we had this battle. We won the two over here and after I beat Hiram Back I didn’t have, didn’t change ?. BERGE: What’s the most money you ever spent on an election? Do you remember? TURNER: Me? BERGE: Well, I mean, no, not you yourself. But I mean . . . TURNER: Oh, I don’t know. I never kept up with that because my husband usually handled all things like that. BERGE: But I don’t imagine you have, you’ve ever had to spend the kind of money that’s like, they spent in Harlan County for some of those like that. TURNER: Oh no. No. BERGE: Did you ever hear some of the figures that they ? around down there that board race eight or ten years ago. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 17 �TURNER: I heard but I couldn’t believe it. BERGE: No, but I heard it from too many people. TURNER: Oh, I see. Well . . . BERGE: When, what was that? About four years ago that it was an incredible race down there where they, when they, when they fired Ms. Roland, you know, or made, got him to quit. TURNER: Yeah. BERGE: Did you know her very well? TURNER: Yeah. BERGE: She’s a nice lady. TURNER: Mm hmm. BERGE: I was in her office the day she decided to quit. I mean she, you know, been thinking about it a long time but the day she announced it. She told me about that race down in Cumberland that she lost down there where just incredible amounts, I can’t remember the figure now but it was like, for that one, for that one seat it was something like, it was way over one hundred thousand dollars. Maybe two hundred thousand dollars. TURNER: Oh my goodness! BERGE: That one guy, he wanted, it was over hiring a coach. Had you ever heard the story? TURNER: No. No I haven’t heard that. BERGE: Yeah, it was over hiring a coach. This coal man down there and came to her and his boy was a football player and said he wanted them to get a good coach. And she said, well, his a good man. And she said, yeah, well, we’ll hire him. And so she went down there and talked to the principal and some of the teachers and they said, oh, if you get that guy it’ll be awful because, and they told her some things that they knew about him and so she decided they couldn’t have that kind of a person. So that coal man said, are you kidding. He says, you promised me. And she said, well, I didn’t know about him then. She said, well, he says, I’ll have it, I’ll have your job. And she says, well, just go after it then. He did and she, seems like it was a hundred and fifty thousand dollars they spent in Cumberland for one seat. TURNER: ? No, land sakes. I’d have quit then. BERGE: Yeah. Yeah, well, she did. TURNER: I’d say give me the money and I’ll quit. Page 18 William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 �BERGE: She, she did, you know. She did. TURNER: Yeah. No, I never had anything like that. BERGE: Its probably because you had a fairly stable school system, don’t you think? TURNER: Well, that’s the thing about it and the parents had confidence in me with the children and I didn’t have much trouble out here. BERGE: Why do you think you became a state and national figure and a lot of school superintendents, nobody ever hears about them outside of their county. Why do you think that happened? You know, people know you all over the state and people know you all over the country and some of these people, some of these men or school superintendents, nobody outside of their county ever knew them. TURNER: Well, I don’t think they went after projects like I did to help the county. I don’t think they worked for the interest of children like I did. If a child is out here and needs clothing, I contacted somebody and, say the Children’s Federation or somewhere to get some clothing sent in here and give them to these children who were in need. And I think that was the reason for it and I was all the time going to Washington trying to get help for the county. I didn’t mind to up there and ask for the county. I wouldn’t go up there and ask for myself at all but I would go up after the county and I usually got it. And then, of course, I always took part in my politics and then that’s another thing. BERGE: I was wondering if it was because maybe you recognize the relationship between politics and education more than some of them did. TURNER: Well, I think, I think every superintendent ought to be interested in politics. Now, men don’t agree with me all the times on that and I’ve had a lot of arguments on it. But to me if you don’t know your politicians, and you don’t know your governor and you don’t know your senators, how do you expect to help the school system? BERGE: You can’t get anything done. TURNER: No, you can’t get anything done. And I was always interested in the legislature, what they was going to do. BERGE: Did you go to Frankfort a lot when the legislature was in? TURNER: Most, well, ? BERGE: Did you ? TURNER: was down there for eight years, senator, and then John ? was down there eight years as a senator. I didn’t have to go there. BERGE: Yeah. Not those years, did you? Page 19 William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 �TURNER: No. But when they weren’t in, why, if I needed to go, but I always knew every governor. I didn’t, I could go and talk to a governor about something. BERGE: And you made it your business to know, was that it. TURNER: I made it my business to know. And I think that’s, to me, its very important. I don’t know about, and I always took an active part in every presidential race. And every US Senator, I’ve always known every US Senator. Republicans or Democrats. BERGE: How many times were you campaign manager for people who were running for major office? TURNER: Oh, I don’t know. Several. BERGE: It’s a lot of them, huh? TURNER: Yeah. BERGE: In your estimation, who are some of the good people who should have been governor of this state who never made it? That’s a funny question but . . . TURNER: Yeah, that is a funny question. I don’t know. Well, I always thought Henry Ward would have made a good governor. He didn’t have personality for it and . . . I don’t know. BERGE: Who do you think was, if you had to name one or two people, no more than that, but one or two people that you thought were the most effective governors that Kentucky ever had, who would you name? TURNER: Well, . . . BERGE: That’s not to say that you didn’t think the others were good but I mean . . . TURNER: Well, I would say for us, Earle Clements was one of the top. BERGE: Ok. Ok. TURNER: And . . . Well, Senator Ford was good. I think Carroll made a good governor but he made a let himself get into a jam that he shouldn’t have. BERGE: He just show a good sense on that. TURNER: No. BERGE: On that. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 20 �TURNER: Oh no but I think those two stand out and of course, well back early, Ruby Laffoon made a good governor and I think Beckham would have made a governor if he’d ever got in. BERGE: Let me ask you another question about the students here. When you were superintendent, did you keep pretty good track on of the students that were really bright young people? Did you make an effort to find out who they were? TURNER: Well I tried to work through the teachers to do that. Now lots of times I’d be out visiting elementary schools and I’d find a child there. See, we had a Little Red down here that was just to take care of those extra bright children. No one knew the purpose of it except me and the board, I guess. BERGE: When did you start that? TURNER: Oh, back, must have started back, early ’40, about ’40, ’41 or ’42. BERGE: How did you get those students into that school, the ones that were really . . . TURNER: Well, we, by that time, we were able to run buses and . . . BERGE: You just sort of did it, huh? TURNER: I sort of peeped them out and said now this boy, I’d say to the teacher, this boy is giving you some trouble because he’s studying harder than the other children. I didn’t say smarter, I’d say studying harder. Or he’s much bigger. I remember one time over at Turkey, I went over there and there was a great big boy in eighth grade and he was smart. So I told her, he’s so much bigger. Why don’t you let me take him over to Little Red. She said, I wish you would because he’s a troublemaker on the playground. BERGE: A lot of them didn’t have enough to do did they in that? TURNER: That’s right and I never said now he’s so much smarter than others, I said he’s much bigger. BERGE: You didn’t tell him, you didn’t tell him that you, that he was smarter than she was either did you? TURNER: I brought him over here and he worked with it well, he finally graduated from college and came back here and he was a welfare worker and he retired about two years ago. BERGE: Did you have to convince the parents that ? showed them too? TURNER: No. BERGE: They just . . . TURNER: All I had to do was say I think this is in the best interest of your child. William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 21 �BERGE: Uh huh. TURNER: And that’s all I had to say. BERGE: When, did you make any special effort to count, advise them to go to college and, and when they couldn’t afford it, did you help . . . TURNER: Oh yeah. BERGE: How did fit, work that out for . . . TURNER: Well, I . . . BERGE: I know in recent years there’s been aid for those people but back in the days when there weren’t these aid programs, how did you handle it? How’d you get ones that really couldn’t afford to go to go? Do you remember? TURNER: I got them places to work over at Morehead. I got one girl to work in Adrian Garne’s home. She was a good cook. Clean. Very attractive girl. And I’d go down to, I sent one or two to Western. I always knew all the university presidents and we didn’t have too many that wanted, that needed work to go to college because some of them didn’t want to go to college. BERGE: Yeah. TURNER: And, and some of them shouldn’t go to college. BERGE: No, but I’m talking about the ones that you really thought should have gone. How . . . TURNER: Yeah, well, I tried . . . BERGE: Did you work on them? TURNER: to get working on them and go to Berea and then I’d get somebody, some organization to sponsor it. I worked hard on it. BERGE: Uh huh. Did you ever have to, did you ever go out of your way to talk somebody that you thought should have gone to college that didn’t want to go into going? Or did you think if they didn’t want . . . TURNER: Well, no, most of them wanted to go that, that I selected to go. They really wanted to go because I felt like if the child didn’t want to go there’s no need to put him that far away from home because he wouldn’t stay. BERGE: Did many of the ones that went through Little Red become school teachers? William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 22 �TURNER: No. No. They found out they didn’t want to teach school. They went into some other, or something else and very few of them, that’s why I say that’s one of the most important things that education should have, I mean, the ? BERGE: Weeding those people out? TURNER: Weeding them out early. Why I learned it, I was writing the head of Quicksand, a little school up there and I got there early that morning about 8:30 I guess, I had to ride horseback, and on the outside of the door here’s a big pile of ashes and so I knocked on the door and some little boy said come in if your nose is clean. I opened the door . . . BERGE: What did they think when they saw you? TURNER: Well, they didn’t know me. That was the first time I’d been back up there, that was early. BERGE: Oh. TURNER: But the teacher knew me. The teacher was standing around this stove with about seven or eight children. Of course it was kind of cool. Well, of course, his face turned red and he didn’t know what to do. He wanted me to talk to the children. I said no I want, I came to observe. You just go ahead with your classes. I may say something before I leave. Well, he’d made no preparation what so ever with those children and he, one little boy told him that they’d had that lesson yesterday and . . . BERGE: Ah ha. TURNER: So after a while I asked him, I said, when you have recess. He said, pretty soon. I said, well, send the children out, I want to talk to you. And so I talked to him. I said, you don’t like teaching school do you. He said no. And I said why did you get in to it. And he said well, it was the only way to make money and my parents borrowed the money to send me to school and I had to come back to teach. And he had finished a ?, he was from another county, and I said well, that’s too bad that you don’t like it. And I said, why don’t you try to get you another job somewhere. And he said, what would you do about a teacher. And I said, well, since your not making any preparations for these children and they don’t know where lessons are assigned or anything I said, do you think it hurt much. Well, he studied a long time. He said, Ms. Turner, I don’t know where I’d go. I said, well now, what all I want you to do is straighten out and make a good teacher. I said, I didn’t come up here to fire you but I don’t think you’re making the preparation that you should. And I said, the first place, I want you to have those ashes moved from there and I want you to fix up, clean up your yard out here like somebody lived here ? BERGE: As they say, now straighten up your act, huh? TURNER: And so I said, clean up your room on the other side here and get these ashes from the stove and I said, I’ll be back. But you know, he straightened up. He made a pretty good teacher. BERGE: He did? William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 23 �TURNER: I came back and I told the board, I said, boy we’ve got to find out whether our children like to, go to school, like to teach before the parents borrow enough money here to send them off to school. And that’s how come Little Red did get started. BERGE: Uh huh. That was a good idea. TURNER: Yeah. Yeah. That was good. BERGE: What was the major, how’d you go about getting teachers when they were really scarce? What, how, what’d you do? TURNER: This was the only county that had 12-month school when you couldn’t get teachers. All the other counties nearly closed their schools out. But we fell on the idea that we’d have a 12-month school. Like all the teachers together that had certificates and I said now if I can assign you two schools, joining districts, can you teach three days a week in one and three days in the other for one month and then change around and three days first, the first three days in your school and the . . . BERGE: Two in the other. TURNER: They all agreed to do it. Well, the big job was getting it through the Department of Education. But I finally got it through and I guess we was the only county in eastern Kentucky that stayed open all the time. But they got along fine and parents said, well, it won’t work and I said, yeah but you’d have your children at home three days to work and I really think that they studied harder those three days and I think the teachers worked harder so we got along fine. BERGE: What was the, when you first became superintendent, when did school start in the fall? TURNER: July. We just had, well I, seven month school, I believe until August. Or six and a half months. And then we moved it up, well, let’s say it was seven months. And then we finally moved up to seven and a half. And it gradually moved up to eight because the parents said well we can’t let our children go to school all that time. Well, we went, I think a couple of years, eight months and then we’d go to eight and a half. They got used to that. Finally we went to nine. BERGE: Some superintendents that I’ve talked with in recent years said the biggest problem they had with is transportation. TURNER: Was what? BERGE: Transportation. TURNER: Oh well that’s a big problem. But you know, I ran buses all over Bracken County where they had roads for 38 years and never had an accident. BERGE: Never did? Does that worry you though? TURNER: Did what? Page 24 William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 �BERGE: Did it worry you a lot? TURNER: The transportation? Yeah. I’d worry, I went to Florida in the wintertime for, took my vacation and when I’d find out how the weather was back here, there’s two places that worry me. One was Quicksand School when the winds was starting. And the other one was Cane Creek Road over here. Hill. Because I just expect that some bus, and our buses ran that. BERGE: They didn’t stop . . . TURNER: They didn’t stop. And I was talking to mechanic the other night and I said, ? can you tell me how we got by all those years. And he said, really, I shiver now when I think of some of the days that we went out there. But I had some of the best men working for me and I was always very careful if I’d gotten us a bus driver. And they would come, go in ? BERGE: Who made a decision when the buses wouldn’t run? You or someone else? TURNER: Most of the time that, I left it to the mechanic. He’s a good man. But they ran most of the time. BERGE: Of course now every time it snows, the schools close. TURNER: Oh, land sakes, they don’t run at, think of all the good roads they have. BERGE: Yeah. TURNER: They miss so much. But . . . BERGE: Why, why is that? They do it all over the state. TURNER: I don’t know. I can’t understand. BERGE: I, children get out of the habit of going to school in the winter . . . TURNER: Why yeah. They have to miss so much and everything. My granddaughter was up here with her little boy. She said, Mother, I can’t stay with my child. She said, he’s missing too much school. BERGE: Ms. Turner, I want to thank you for letting me come over here today. That’s, we used another hour. Hours go fast when I’m talking with you, it seems like. [end recording] William H. Berge Oral History Center | Interview with Marie Turner | 1984 OH 004 Page 25 � Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Marie Roberts Turner (1899-1984) was born in Knott County and raised in Breathitt County from the age of six months. After having taught school there, Turner became county school superintendent in 1931, a position she held for thirty-eight years. She was also active in the Democratic party and served three times as state Democratic chair. Along with her husband, Judge Ervine Turner, she was very involved in education and state and local politics. There are interviews with Turner, educators, and political and community leaders, including A.B. "Happy Chandler, Lawrence W. Wetherby, Bert T. Combs, and Edward T. Breathitt, Jr. Topics include politics and political leaders in Kentucky, electioneering, women in Kentucky politics, the state Democratic and Republican parties, education in Breathitt County and the state, comparisons of life and education between eastern and western Kentucky, development of roads and transportation in Breathitt County, the coal industry, journalism in Kentucky, Carl D. Perkins, Earle C. Clements, the Turner family, the Broadbent family, and the Bingham family. Title A name given to the resource Marie R. Turner Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Berge, William H. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Turner, Marie Location The location of the interview. Jackson, KY Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) 1:00:17 XML This field is for OHMS XML files 1984oh004-turner.xml OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer). https://omeka.eku.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=1984oh004-turner.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1984 OH 004 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 7/27/1982 Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Contact <a href="mailto:archives.library@eku.edu">Special Collections and Archives</a>, Crabbe Library, Eastern Kentucky University for reproductions, rights and permission to publish. Title A name given to the resource Interview with Marie Turner Politics superintendents Turner Turner, Marie Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Description An account of the resource Marie Roberts Turner (1899-1984) was born in Knott County and raised in Breathitt County from the age of six months. After having taught school there, Turner became county school superintendent in 1931, a position she held for thirty-eight years. She was also active in the Democratic party and served three times as state Democratic chair. Along with her husband, Judge Ervine Turner, she was very involved in education and state and local politics. There are interviews with Turner, educators, and political and community leaders, including A.B. "Happy Chandler, Lawrence W. Wetherby, Bert T. Combs, and Edward T. Breathitt, Jr. Topics include politics and political leaders in Kentucky, electioneering, women in Kentucky politics, the state Democratic and Republican parties, education in Breathitt County and the state, comparisons of life and education between eastern and western Kentucky, development of roads and transportation in Breathitt County, the coal industry, journalism in Kentucky, Carl D. Perkins, Earle C. Clements, the Turner family, the Broadbent family, and the Bingham family. Title A name given to the resource Marie R. Turner Oral History A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge. Interviewer The person(s) performing the interview. Ellis, William E. Interviewee The person(s) being interviewed. Graham, J. Douglas Location The location of the interview. Campton, KY Duration Length of time involved (seconds, minutes, hours, days, class periods, etc.) :53:04 Restrictions A notation on restrictions placed by the interviewee. none XML This field is for OHMS XML files 1986oh144-graham.xml OHMS Object This field contains the OHMS Hyperlink (link to the XML file within the OHMS Viewer). https://omeka.eku.edu/ohms-viewer/render.php?cachefile=1986oh144-graham.xml Dublin Core The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/. Identifier An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context 1986 OH 144 Date A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource 9/5/1986 Description An account of the resource Retired Judge Rights Information about rights held in and over the resource Contact <a href="mailto:archives.library@eku.edu">Special Collections and Archives</a>, Crabbe Library, Eastern Kentucky University for reproductions, rights and permission to publish. Title A name given to the resource Interview with J. Douglas Graham Circuit Judges crime juvenile delinquency Politics Turner Turner, Marie