High school students interview elderly about the Depression
The Associated Press
DANVILLE, Ill. (AP) — Danville High School history teacher Harith Tamimie recently proved to his students that what he tells them in class is true.
Tamimie, who teaches U.S. history, takes his Advanced Placement juniors to Liberty Estates every year to chat with residents who remember the Great Depression and World War II.
The class members interviewed a panel of Liberty Estates residents including Fred Underhill, Bob Faulkner, Ruth Martin, Ray Carter and Marta White during a WDAN radio program and later broke into groups for more one-on-one interviews.
As students asked questions, they got personal anecdotes about the New Deal, Fireside Chats, bread lines, silent movies and the Model A — things that were formerly mere vocabulary words in their history books.
Students also wanted to know what the residents liked to eat back in the 30s and 40s, what their favorite books were and how much things cost.
The panelists reported their memories of 10-cent gasoline and 15- or 25-cent groceries.
DHS juniors Brooke Poeschl and Carly Head interviewed Faulkner after the general questionnaire.
Faulkner, 86, and his wife, Alice, 82, have been in Danville for 52 years.
They originally came to Danville in 1956 when Allied Chemical transferred Faulkner from New Jersey.
The girls asked him about his most vivid recollections from the Depression, and he told them about a swamp near Lyndhurst, N.J., where he grew up.
When the Depression struck the surrounding area, a “Hooverville” squatters camp sprang out of the swamp partly because the homeless who lived there could easily grow vegetables.
He also recalled bread lines with more people in them than he could count.
“Lyndhurst was very badly hit by the Depression,” he explained. “It took a couple years to take hold, but people were suddenly without jobs.”
Faulkner considered himself very lucky because his dad had a job throughout the Depression. He was a purchasing clerk for Allied Chemical.
When the elder Faulkner died during Bob’s senior year in high school, the company offered Faulkner the same job upon his graduation.
He left the position when World War II began, but came back to the company when the war ended.
The girls also wanted to know his opinion of Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Faulkner calls himself politically independent, but admits that he leans Republican.
However, “Roosevelt was special,” he said.
“It was a time when we needed a strong leader, and Roosevelt gave us hope,” he said.
He shared another memory of some mischief he almost got into in the swamp.
The swamp was the site of an abandoned munitions factory from World War I. At that time, the facility was simply abandoned, and old artillery shells were still scattered about the site.
One day when Faulkner and his friends were walking there, they came across an old shell.
Later, the boys were sitting around a bonfire when they decided to see what would happen if they threw the shell in the fire. At first, nothing happened.
Faulkner decided he’d had enough fun and went home.
The shell exploded in the fire and some of the other boys were seriously injured. The story ran in several New York papers, Faulkner said.