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Hello, This is Sara Blank, and I'm here with Janice Scott in Orlando, Florida for the Panama Canal Zone Re union. It's July 8th, 2011. So, Miss Scott, would you like to begin with some family background information? Well, I would really like Thio begin by saying that it was a distinct honor and privilege to have my grandfather, Tom Grimsson.

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Hey, was a Roosevelt metal holder number 36 19 with two bars and his wife, Jessie Shaver, who came from eastern Pennsylvania, 19 7 with their seven month old daughter, E. I mean, it's a really honor, and a privilege had been associated with Panama Canal for almost 100 years.

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And, uh, my grandparent's, I can imagine what their families were thinking when they waved goodbye to them on the from the ship faded into the blue from New York City, thinking that they would never see them again because if they read the newspapers of the day, they probably thought that, um, yeah, you know, they would just never be coming back to Pennsylvania.

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All the canal workers, despite their nationalities, had one thing in common, and when many predecessors working on the construction of the canal would return to the United States. The buzz of the day was Don't go, Don't go. It's a terrible place. Uh, common enemy for everyone was malaria.

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Yellow fever, dengue. Uh, but also, I think the bittersweet feeling of loneliness for home food and familiar faces affected all the workers. It just didn't matter where they were from. The Caribbean, Europe, China, Asia. The tropical climate took no hostages. Um, our grandfather Tom, worked on the railroad.

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He worked on a dump train and retired in 1939 from the canal. During various periods of time, he was unemployed and went back to the United States looking for work. But somehow the love of Panama, they ended up back in Panama. Um, during World War Two, my grandfather was re employed because so many of the young men who lived and worked in the canal uh, high school boys etcetera were, uh, drafted.

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Papa Thio serve in World War two, and many of the old retirees who were still in the area were reemployed on. I like to tell the story about my grandmother because they were in their early twenties when they went to Panama on in spite of all the stories.

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Whenever I asked her what it was it really like, How could you possibly go to such a four and place where you heard a lot of negative stories? And she said it was the time of her life. She never would have done anything differently. She loved it.

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Of course, they arrived at the time when the U. S government was making a lot of efforts to make sure that the canal employees stayed at the job and didn't continuously leave after being there a year. So So when my grandmother was one of the early liberated women, I would say, because she worked on the Atlantic side and their family lived on the Pacific side and she would take the train to Chris Tobel every Monday morning and come back on Friday afternoon, and she worked in the commissary.

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And even as a child, I remember going into the commissary in Balboa and one of the West Indian clerks would look at me and say, Oh, I know you. You must be Miss Grimsson grandchild. I see you in here the other day with your grandmother, and she said they would tell me that.

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Oh yes, your grandmother. She always could balance or inventory to the needle because she apparently ran the notion section. But they retired to community, a little town about 50 miles north of Panama City called Nueva Gore. Gona the town was started by people from Gattuso Lake area being relocated to Gore gona when they flooded to create gateau in Lake.

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So they bought a property there around 1930 and continuously worked on it. Everybody loved to visit them at this beach house, and my grandfather died there in 1957 in his hammock on the porch overlooking the Pacific Ocean that he loved. And he just never wanted to go back to Pennsylvania and shovel snow.

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One of the things that I was very proud of my grandparent's, even though they never became very fluent in Spanish. On particularly, my grandfather was very interested in the community and helping people. His family in the United States were in the notions business, uh, candy and selling decorations for the holidays, which they shipped to him.

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So he always provided Fourth of July fireworks, and there were some funny stories people have told me over the years of breaking into the crates under his house since swiping fireworks, sending him anonymous checks when they got their first job because they felt so like, perhaps it wasn't something they should have been doing, but he never I never heard that from him.

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But Gore gona he liked to go. Uh, there specifically be there on Christmas Day and all the people in the surrounding villages would come and line up outside his gate and whoever was there got candy and nuts and wrapped plastic. And even later in the day after he had started doing that, people would come by horseback and arrived at in the early afternoon with Children who were very excited but very shy people, very unusual looking people who came from the mountains and had their teeth filed to a point.

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So somehow I think they were related to the wind tribes that occupy the areas of the mountains further north. But it was very exciting. Thio live there. He had to generate his own electricity and had a well, and he pumped his own water and made himself completely self sufficient, and everyone knew where the grimmest in house was in Gore gona and they love to go there and visit or drive by.

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And sadly, when I was in Panama last year for the Chiyoko race, the house had been, um, Tauran down and a four story condos now on the beach. But but, you know, that's how it goes. So that's the story of my grandparent's background and my, therefore, their three Children.

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Uh, this is interesting thing to me. They had three Children. Helene was the daughter who was born in the United States, graduated from Balboa High School in 1925. She was my mother's oldest sister. My mother graduated in 1927 and her brother in 1928. So my brother Ed graduated 1956 my brother Richard in 1960 I graduated in 1962.

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My two oldest Children also graduated from that high school, Katrina in 1981 and Ian in 1985 and my two youngest Children. My two youngest boys, graduated from other high schools in the US But imagine how many years thio for Children I mean to imagine today even that people would even attend for one year the high school that their parents had attended.

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And here we've spent from 1925 to 1985. So that's quite unusual in the same building. Wow. So and my mother Senior Year, which, well, my mother loved growing up in the canal zone. And if you worked as a teenager in the Canal Zone in those days and then subsequently worked for the U.

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S. Government and retired, they always talked about how you got credit for your mango picking years. So my mother had a few mango picking years working as a teenager during summer vacations. But she, uh, uh, had a job her senior year in high school, working for the Panama American newspaper is a sports writer, and apparently from what I understood, that's how she met my dad.

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Edward W. Scott, who was well known in Panama and around the world and in the news business, is Ted Scott. My dad, Ted, came from New Zealand as a boxer. He was a featherweight champion boxer of New Zealand and was on his way to Paris to fight in Europe and trained under a man named Leon C.

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In Paris who was a well known boxing trainer and after a year or so of that, he was on his way back to New Zealand when he ran into my mother, who was covering a boxing match that he was doing there. And they looked much to my grandmother Sugar in, Um, but my dad was a very gregarious guy.

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He loved everybody. He loved Panama. He was an outdoors guy. He was a much a man's man and probably also macho man. But he just loved Panama, and many New Zealanders would come to visit because I think they thought he was living the life fandango and they heard all these stories and they wanted to be part of that, just like people were drawn to the construction of the canal.

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So his first job was working a Z banana plantation manager in Bocas del Toro in the northern, uh, part of Panama, the northern border. Which kind of amused me because if you came from a place like New Zealand way, way too far in the South Pacific to really be called tropical, what would you know about bananas?

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But he really loved it there and, uh, over he spoke French, So he quickly became fluent in Spanish. He had worked for the Wellington Star newspaper before he left New Zealand in his early twenties. So it wasn't quite a surprise or a big career change that he gave up boxing and dedicated himself full time to his journalism business.

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He went to work for Nelson Rounds. Well, who was the founder of a newspaper called the Panama American that was founded specifically to provide news to the people living in the Canal Zone and the headline of the newspaper under Where it said The Panama, American and English.

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It said, Let the people know the truth and the country s safe signed Abraham Lincoln e So I'll pause here. We're gonna okay, okay for questions. Sure, if you wanna okay me. I'm sorry, I didn't Sure. No, that's fine. That's that's great family history. So your mom main continued on as a sports writer?

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No, she, uh, went from being a sports writer. Thio working for the United Fruit Company in Colon on the Atlantic side. And that day it was quite surprising to me how they got along in their early marriage because the Trans Isthmian highway was not built until World War Two.

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So It was some 20 plus years before you could drive a car across the isthmus. And they're probably a million stories about how people used to pay to walk the railroad tracks so that they could, um, you know, get from one side to the other without buying what they probably considered at the time and expensive train ticket.

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Um, so if you had at least three generations of family at this high school, Balboa High School did did any T shirts. There have multiple generations of students from your family. I would imagine eso because many of them worked there for many, many years. And, uh, some of the coaches, especially Coach Mikhalych that I remember his name in particular, mentored my brother in high school.

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My oldest brother was at the very athletic in his class. In 1956 he was voted most athletic. He, um, was very involved in all different kinds of sports activities, as was my next brother, Richard. So they were very involved in the school, and we're all very fond of the coaches.

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And I had one favorite English teacher. Her name was Mary Brigham. All the kids called her Bloody Mary because she was she tried to act very, um, you know, mean and that she was a no nonsense kind of a person, but she really did have a great sense of humor.

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And she that was a year in high school, probably my sophomore year, where I had Thio study Shakespeare. And it's one of my favorite quotes now that the evil that men do lives after them and the good is often turd with bones. And so it was with Caesar's, but, um yes, and I loved going to school in three Canal Zone.

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It was a great place to grow up. It was safe. It was, you know, everyone knew everyone else, so it was difficult to get into too much serious trouble. Do any of these teachers from the Canal Zone schools ever come to this re union? Yes. Uh, they dio.

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And in fact, I passed my senior history teacher along the way. Uh, can't remember his name right off hand, but yes, I've seen them. And as a matter of fact, this past April, when I was in Panama, I saw my gym teacher from high school who is still living in Santa Clara which is really fun.

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Did you have Panamanian students in any of your classes, too? Yes, we did. As a matter of fact, that was one of the things that I really loved about Panama. I think in spite of things, anti American sentiment that people talk about a lot in the day when my parents first started their marriage there and everything, they had a lot of Panamanian friends.

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I think the Canal Zone in Panama until the 19 fifties was very, very integrated, socially integrated. And my father was a founding member of the Union Club in Panama, for example. He belonged to the um Marlin sports fishing club and things like that, and everyone knew everyone.

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And e guess. Historically, as more people move to Panama and it became, you know, they're just became a big struggle between people that lived in the Canal Zone and people that lived in Panama and otherwise. I always thought it was great melting pot. I still think it ISS.

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When my youngest son went to high school in Florida the first day, he came home from school and he said, Do you realize that that schools lily white, there's nobody there, but white people not wearing Florida. Was that Cocoa beach? Okay, okay. I went to school in South Florida.

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Sounds about s Hey, was quite it was quite funny for him to say that because, you know, if you lived in the canal zone where it was so culturally and racially integrated, you know, you can see it when you visit today. It's just sort of a shock, I guess when you hear that.

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Oh, integration with such a big thing. I would remember being on a street corner in New Orleans 1961. And they were having an a demonstration and taking young people off in a police wagon and asking my mother, what in the world is that all about? Because Oh, that's about the integration problem they're having.

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And I'm like how you'd be having an integration problem. I just thought everyone was integrated. Yeah, that's actually my chapter of study in history. Is the U. S. Civil rights movement. What do you think happened around the fifties that made the canal zone a little more isolated?

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Little less integrated? Well, one of the things, um that you know, all these things. Let me digress. sure I don't believe in my heart of hearts that Roosevelt ever intended Colonial lives, American community in Canal. I think he liked the challenge. He, you know, of course, would like to the U.

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S. Had done surveys to build a canal before the French began construction. So I do believe that he I wanted to just be the champion of that and provide actually what became service to world commerce. It really has provided something wonderful for the world. And I think as they try to downsize the population in the canal zone as, uh, late 19.

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Uh, say, around 1919, World War one came along. Then there was the issue of defending the canal from the from the Germans, and the U. S. Had to have another military presence there at the time. Then there was the Great Depression. People leaving the canal could not find work in the US, and people were terribly afraid.

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And there was a certain, um, benevolent dictatorship about the canal zone where they took people under their wings and always tried to be nice and do the right socially correct thing. E. I always, uh and then, you know, world war two came along. It was the same issue.

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In fact, during World War Two, my father worked with M I six. He was a British undercover. He was too old to go to war and two young Thio carry a gun or something. So he was in his late forties and he was undercover for the British in Costa Rica and his cover was being president of TACA.

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Airline was founded by a New Zealand friend of Hiss Low. Your ex and my mother worked for the Canal Zone government and because so many young men had been taken from the canal were drafted into the military for the war, she, uh, was recruiting labor among the Costa Ricans to go and work on Canal in Panama.

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And I remember one time I was working at the printing plant in the Canal zone and one of the press operators stopped me, and he said, I have to ask you a question. He said, Aren't you Janice Scott's daughter? And I said yes. And he said, Your mother brought me here from Costa Rica in World War Two.

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And so there was a little cadre of them working in the printing plant that had been given jobs and had never returned to Costa Rica. But basically, life in the Canal Zone was dictated by treaty with Panama. And if you examine the history of the canal construction, I've tried.

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Thio read many books about it the way the whole commissary system evolved. First of all, was a very young country that was kind of lawless, and when the canal needed this orderly place, they could control. Goethals was that sort of benevolent dictator, if you will. And they had to evolve a system to provide services to take care of their employees.

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And they did that. And one of the stories I believe it's in path between the seas is about the usually that the Panamanian businesses, uh, foisted on canal workers where they overcharged them for food and different things. And apparently in the early days of 19, 5, 19 7, the U.

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S. Government repeatedly warned the Panamanian business people that if they did not conduct themselves in a more fair and business like manner, that they would have to take other measures to provide for their employees, which they did. So I believe Miss Green's talk that I listened to yesterday.

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She expressed the sentiment where Panamanian politicians and business people felt a little, um, left out of the profits that could be made from the canal endeavor. But in many respects, they brought certain negative things on themselves, and as it were, they did not. They did not, um, for example, even recognize that the West Indians were.

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They weren't US citizens. They were citizens of Jamaica, citizens of Barbados. Now, they had Children who were in their 2nd and 3rd generation that they wanted to go to schools. Well, they could not go to the U. S. Schools because the U. S schools were for U.

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S citizens. And it was that's how the silver and gold thing. The divide was more than just that basic discrimination. And it was dictated by treaty. And in fact, in the Ramon Eisenhower Treaty of 1951 there was a big effort to close all the commissaries. And so they started trying to disassemble that what they considered a privilege system one by one.

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Well, in my in my lifetime, I After I graduated from high school, I married and I went to Michigan State for a while with my husband, and it was so cold. I never used to that cold. So I went back to Panama and night in December of 1963 for a visit, and she later, okay, And the riots, um, it was a political riots occurred which people could read a lot about that.

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But I stayed and worked for the Army and then subsequently was divorced and remarried, moved to Miami. My husband was in graduate school in Miami. After three years. He got a job with as an engineer with the Panama Canal Company again. So we moved back to the canal zone.

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After three years, he decided to go to work for a company in the Republic of Panama. And we lost our little yellow ID card. Well, that was quite a shock. I mean, if you had not, if you just moved to Panama, it would be so easy because you would pick up where you arrived.

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After two generations of living in the canal zone and being able to go to the swimming pool, buy groceries or go to the movies and valuable Now, you you were almost not supposed to be there. If you didn't have that yellow ID card, and we sort of felt like a pariah.

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But I went to work, so I got the i. D. Card bet So my mainly so my kids could go to school because otherwise they would have been in, like, two different school systems. And my husband traveled a lot, and it was just been I would have been overwhelmed with Children, had different holidays and different schools and, you know, being a working mom.

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And so I, uh, because of my employment, I was allowed Thio keep my yellow ID card. I'll get a new one s O that I could, um, go there. But you know, the funny thing also about buying things in the canal zone. I think it was more the quality and availability of familiar merchandise because my father, for example, was never allowed.

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He was not a U. S. Citizen. And, um, in fact, my parents had divorced on paper so that my mother could get a house and the canal sound because, you know, there was a thing about Oh, it's you know, my mother said, Well, we're always moving into this house and that what we called note taker housing.

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It was always a house that was about to be torn down, and we lived there for three or four months. And she finally went to the executive secretary. Who's Joe Woods, predecessor of his predecessor, and said, Listen, I have so much service, I need to have a house And they were like, Well, you're married to a foreigner and they're his Children And she said, Well, they're my Children and I can prove it.

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He can't prove they're his Children s o Anyway, they divorced on paper, and my mother put in, like in the system. You had to apply for a house that was bacon and got a cottage in a very It was like you needed a lot of service to get that house.

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But apparently nobody else had put in for it that week. Every week they had this list and she got this house. And then there was a big poopy loop about how in the world did she get this house when right was that Was that really upsetting for them?

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That they had to divorce on paper? Was it more of like a running joke? Well, they divorced because at the time. Also, my father now they had come back from Costa Rica after the war was over. My mother had stayed in the canal zone and had worked in the canal zone.

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And my father had, um it was because of his job being a journalist and knowing everyone. And that time it was very a very thin line drawn between who is in and who was out. And you had to always try and stay on the line of who was in.

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And so my father was very closely connected with the areas family who owned the Panama American by then. And, um, he had been deported during the war because he was writing too many anti Nazi articles. And the people believe that the Nazis were gonna win the war.

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Well, he was deported. Then when the Nazis didn't win the war, he was allowed back. But there was some political something going on. And my dad had moved to Havana, Cuba, where he worked until 1959 when he was sentenced to go before a firing squad by Fidel Castro.

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And but, um, as far as that living in canals and my father would come to visit because he came from Cuba every year and, um, but he had never been in the Canal zone. Commissariat was forbidden territory. So somehow in the late, uh, sixties or mid mid fifties, I remember somehow somebody had taken him a za guest into the commissary, to it was divided into sections like groceries Dry could sort of like a spread out, but kind of like a super Walmart would be today.

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And he reported to me that he said. He said, You know, I went on the contrary today for the first time, he said, Oh my God, he said, the merchandise in their sold and dusty he said, I thought it was gonna be like Solomon's minds, that the tables would be lined with jewels and everything would be so wonderful.

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He said, The way people talk about it, um, you know. But that would here again, who could and who couldn't was dictated by treaty and as an adult. The funniest thing for me. Waas having working and having that privilege card and having my Panamanian friends always asking me, Could you buy me tomato paste and stuffed olives in oil or chicken?

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Now the joke about the chicken. If you can imagine there was a lot of chicken available in Panama City, but there was a time when one of the chicken producers had decided that he would use fishmeal toe augment feed he was giving them, and the chicken tasted kind of fishy, so I could understand why they didn't think that was such a great thing time.

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But it was, really, you know, for many generations now, in fact, you met my friend Sandy well, her grandparent's and my grand parents knew each other on our parents knew each other. And we're good friends. And I think that's really the the binding history of the Canal Zone and of coming to this Panama Canal Re union is that for four generations, even though we don't necessarily live near each other anymore, we're still friends and have that common tie to that history.

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That's often stronger. A stronger bond than being related by blood. Absolutely. Did you and Sandy go to school together to We did. And what did you do outside of school when you were in school age? Well, I was took ballet lessons like most girls, and, um, my girlfriend, Sandy, and her sister.

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She had a sister who's been deceased, but her sister, Kathy, and I were in the same class. Sandy was a year older, was in my brother's class, but my next older brother, Richard. But I like going horseback riding, and it was really the passion of my life.

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There's nothing that I've ever felt as passionate about as I recall, those days when I would take a little one of those dinky achieve a bus is It's all painted noisy and rickety and get dropped off after school on the chief of At the Entrance of the Chief.

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Achieve a trail which was a gravel road that went basically into the jungle, and I would walk a half a mile to the stables. There may be a car would come along that somebody I knew whatever, but I just loved it. Way would go on trail rides through the jungle, and it was rainy and wet and slippery and hot.

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And it was it was just really wonderful. And, uh, I learned how to write English, uh, equestrian riding there, and it was a big challenge because the thoroughbred horses that we had at the stables. We're sort of horses that were not successful. Racehorses on the Ramon racetrack in Panama City.

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And some of them had been drugged and mistreated, and it was always a challenge. Thio. See how things would evolve after they had been treated differently. So that was and we would go fishing. Fishing was a very big thing. And my father was very big into fishing.

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Did you ever have your own horse or you just e had several over over time. And my Children also is They grew up there. We had at one time, I think five horses and my advice to anybody is going to buy a horse has put a dime away for every dollar you spend.

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Eso. Okay, so you graduated from high school and you moved to Michigan, right? And then when did you come back? I was only in Michigan, Uh, two years, maybe a little less than two years. And then you came back two years later. So what year was that?

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1960 December of 1963. Okay, So you were there when all of the riots were going on about the treaty. And yes, what? We're because you have Panamanian friends, eh? So what were your feelings? And how did you navigate that with your neighbors? Well, actually, it was quite a challenge.

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My brother Ed was working there at the time. Also, he had just returned from Oxford University and worked for the Panama Canal. For me, it was, um, ridiculous. When the U. S military showed up in the backyard, our backyard faced a part of Panama City with concertina wire and strung concertina wire.

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All along the bank back bank of my house and all the newsman were congregating in our kitchen, broadcasting their stories and reporting stories to the various networks in the United States. It was an education because the only way they could keep the line open on the telephone to the United States was to not stop talking.

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So they were reading the Bible. They took turns reading the Bible, having Scotch and sodas with one got tired. They read articles out of life magazine. Whatever they could do. It was quite something. And it was very it was very unfortunate. And I have Thio say that also, and the regard of the treaty that ultimately transpired the treaty of 1979.

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That first of all, or I want to reiterate that Roosevelt, I don't think ever intended to colonize the canal zone or create an American colony or extend American imperialism. It was American ingenuity that built the canal. And there's just no essence or buts about that. It's a matter of fact.

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In a matter of history, I did not particularly like the way the treaty ended up, because I think it could have been done in a much more oh benevolent way, much more discussion among the employees rather than Thio. Uh, sort of its kind of pitted people who have known each other for years and worked together for years who were friends, maybe Inter married because there are many families in the canals, Um, that we're married Inter married with Panamanians, and we're much more homogeneous than we were ever, ever given credit for Now, unfortunately, I'll digress also to the point of 19 fifties, where, as I graduated from high school, I felt that people in the canals and somehow feared going into Panama they became, I don't know if they were from the South originally or what, uh, sort of mentality really evolved there could never quite put my finger on it.

00:37:00.760 - 00:37:39.330

People who didn't speak Spanish, who had no interest, really in learning more about the Panamanian culture and becoming more involved in Panama. Yeah, The other side of that coin is that the Masons, the Shriners Thea Elks Club, many military medical teams, uh, people who were stationed in Panama Gorgas Hospital medical teams went into the remote parts of Panama, provided roads and help the people.

00:37:39.350 - 00:38:07.320

And in 1972 when I was working for the U. S. Army, I know that the Army Corps of Engineers did a lot of work in the Republic of Panama. But the Panamanians did not ever like them getting any publicity about that because they seem Thio feel that it was a put down for them instead of being mawr embracing.

00:38:07.320 - 00:38:26.990

And also, at the time the population of Panama was changing dramatically. Merchants were moving to the Republic of Panama from all over the world, and many of the people that were joining the bandwagon of Yankee go home were people who had only been there for five years.

00:38:27.000 - 00:38:46.780

It wasn't so. You know, it's really hard to say, and I do think that it was the right thing to have the treaty. I left in 1985. We lived in Las Cumbres, outside of Panama City, because my husband did not work for the Canal Zone government.

00:38:46.790 - 00:39:06.410

And because of my job, I was so lowly on the scale, I wasn't entitled. Quote Thio apply for housing in the canal zone. So we bought a house outside of Panama City. There are some hardships and differences about that, and in many ways it was a bit difficulty for my Children.

00:39:06.420 - 00:39:28.610

Not really being Panamanian, not Children going by on school bus is I can recall kids spitting at them out the window of the school bus, saying Yankee go home and things like that. You know, kids didn't know what they were doing, But my Children did resent that because they didn't have really hard feelings towards Panamanians.

00:39:28.620 - 00:40:10.170

They weren't brought up that way. And people in the canal zone, I think, suffered a Yeah, you know, maybe they clung harder onto a system that they had become accustomed to instead of seeing how we could work this out. Actually, officials came from the United States, in my view, who only had a formal view of what was going on and the feelings of the people who lived there, I think towards each other were ignored to a great extent.

00:40:10.190 - 00:40:31.540

And as a matter of fact, I should tell a story about General Bill Watkins, who was on the board of directors of the time, who told me that he was President Reagan's appointment to be the administrator of the canal and he had suffered a heart attack.

00:40:31.550 - 00:40:53.130

And we met on an airplane going to Miami. Uh, one time when I was going to Miami and his assistant tried everything he could do to keep me from talking to General Watkins. Well, we had a very animated conversation about the whole thing. So in general, Watkin came back to Panama on his next trip.

00:40:54.060 - 00:41:15.250

I told him, Thio, please give me a call and I would take him and show him some things that wouldn't be on the official tour. So I hey called me and we got together for dinner. He went out to my house in Panama City, which was about 15 miles from where I worked in Balboa Heights.

00:41:15.710 - 00:41:51.740

He could see that area there were certain things they were discussing about what would happen to the Americans and what whether they would be compensated monetarily, What would happen to their housing and so forth? Where would they buy groceries? And I told him that I felt the people who worked in the canals, um, and lived in the Republic of Panama had become, uh, weren't not even part of the equation of whether we were gonna get free electricity or whatever, but that was sort of always the plight.

00:41:52.310 - 00:42:21.220

Even, I think, where I could identify with West Indians that lived in Peru S O and the local what they called local rate communities because their situation always seemed to be one more thing. Maybe on and anyway, when we went out to dinner that evening, E said, Well, everybody liked to go to a particular restaurant was called the Palmar because it was on the oceanfront.

00:42:21.230 - 00:42:47.720

It was dry season. It was beautiful to sit out of doors and we walked into that restaurant and there were all the other board of directors meeting sitting at the table. And it was quite startling and embarrassing. You know, here's this older general with this young, very feisty now worker wanted Thio say, Look, you need Thio whatever you think of these things.

00:42:47.730 - 00:43:11.090

But it did have an effect on how the um benefit situation turned out for people who lived in the Republic of Panama. However, having said that, I got to a point where where I lived in Las Cumbres was surrounded by Noriega's, um, generals and colonels and the Guardia.

00:43:11.100 - 00:43:31.960

And for me, it became very, very risky for my Children because some some teenage boys were being arrested capriciously. And I did not have a lot of political influence to find out if they threw my boys into a patty wagon one afternoon and took them off somewhere where they would take them or if they would be safe.

00:43:31.960 - 00:43:50.740

So I resigned my job. I did not retire from the Panama Canal government. I had worked in internal security for many years, and I came to the States and went back to school at the University of Central Florida. Okay, so how old were you when you went back to school?

00:43:50.750 - 00:44:28.910

I was 40. And what did you study? I got a degree in business administration. Okay. And then after that, um, my daughter went to the University of Central Florida and graduated with a degree in business and my oldest son went to University of South Florida, transferred to Texas A and M and ultimately ended up at the university of um at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia, where he is now on the the faculty and teaches that Mary in ophthalmology So high.

00:44:28.910 - 00:44:56.410

Younger two boys. My next son Jeff, has a manufacturing business in Melbourne where he has, uh, the CNC machines, their computer operated machines that make, um, hardware. And my youngest son has an Internet business in Thailand. Oh, cool. So how did your family adjust when you moved?

00:44:57.290 - 00:45:23.920

Well, my Children had my older Children adjusted very well. Over time, they still missed, um, sort of the lack of having to have a license to do everything. For example, I mean, my oldest son was Oh, my goodness. You know, you have to have a license to go fishing and a license to do this, and you have to check with somebody to be able to do that.

00:45:23.920 - 00:45:51.830

You can't just go and do it on. We really missed the jungle a lot. I mean, the tropical. Whatever the savoir faire, I think we really loved it. So my my daughter, who's the oldest, has paddled in the Chiyoko race the last two dry seasons. And my oldest son, Ian, had had done that in high school and went back this past year, also in April to paddle again and the Chiyoko race.

00:45:51.830 - 00:46:16.540

And they did very well, but it was a great place to be from, but I'm not sure that I would want to live there again, but I'd like to visit frequently. How old were your Children when you moved? My daughter was 20 on, Uh, my son was 17, and then my next two boys were 15 and 13.

00:46:16.550 - 00:46:43.090

So especially for the younger kids, How was the transition from Panamanian or zone schools to US schools? Very difficult. And like I said, my youngest son Well, actually, well, after I graduated from the University of Central Florida in 1985 I had a friend who lived in Belgium, worked for NATO, and I thought, Wow, this is a chance of my life.

00:46:43.090 - 00:47:05.970

I have always wanted to go because actually, to tell the truth, when my husband went back to work for the Canal Zone for the Panama Canal Company in 1968. I was very disappointed because I was always for me. The canal Zone was too confined and too boring and too bland.

00:47:05.980 - 00:47:27.960

I just really wanted to get out of the world. I had traveled to Europe with my grandmother on an extended trip when I was 13 and we covered 12 countries in six weeks. And that boy, that was a life for me. So it was very difficult for me to settle down in high school the last few years, and that stayed with me.

00:47:27.970 - 00:48:01.000

So after I graduated from college is an older student. I had the opportunity to go and stay with a friend in Brussels, and for about three years I stayed there and traveled. It was great place to travel all over Europe. My son had become a reincarnated World War two pilot, and every weekend it was so easy to travel and he went to the international school in Brussels and we went to every world war two, anything that he could possibly drag me Thio.

00:48:01.550 - 00:48:20.770

So when he finished high school, I came in. My father passed away suddenly in 1989 and I came back and stayed in Cocoa Beach and my mother passed away four months later and it was like, Oh, I was so I mean, it was the place I knew because we came and spent every summer.

00:48:20.770 - 00:48:45.000

There was much thymus possible. And that subsequently led me to being, I always say, recruited Not that I wasn't politically motivated person in a way, but I be was elected to the Council on later became Eric Cocoa Beach. Wow. Nobody told me that that was someone cool experience.

00:48:45.010 - 00:49:06.030

How do you think you worked your way up? What do you think? Your secret, Waas. Well, actually, I had heard some very ugly things about my community. I would get thes some political little letters in the mail about this and that, so I would started going to the council meetings and then I realized, Wow, this is great public comment.

00:49:06.040 - 00:49:40.980

You were never allowed to have public comment in the canal zone. You could tell your friends, but digressing for a second about the canal zone also I, um, in 19, 70 9, 1981. In that period, the canal had to allow. The federal government had mandated that there be collective bargaining units that federal employees could collectively bargain.

00:49:41.040 - 00:50:22.890

And I was recruited by it was called the International Organization of Masters Mates and Pilots, the FL CIA Metal Trades Coalition. We're all the trades and crafts that formed a conglomerate union, and I was recruited to work on the first negotiated contract for the federal Workers for the non professional employees, and it was a very interesting experience, So I I learned that it was okay to express your point of view.

00:50:23.560 - 00:50:45.450

So when the political people and Cocoa Beach people who had a political group asked me to run for office in 1997 it was like they must be kidding. I mean, this is really well, also friend of mine his grandfather had was the chief engineer on the Ala.

00:50:45.450 - 00:51:08.410

Well, a dam in the canal I learned after he retired, Way always used to joke about his grandchildren, would always joke about how he was always writing letters to Congress, always writing letters to his congressman, and I thought, Wow, that's really great, because that really was the only way a canal worker could express their political point of view.

00:51:08.420 - 00:51:26.700

And I think Miss Green mentions in her book that the way the canal workers because we couldn't vote, we didn't have a state that were a resident of And unless you were state resident where you could register to vote, you just didn't vote in a presidential election.

00:51:27.260 - 00:51:56.390

Well, that was a big thing for Canal Zone people when they moved to the state was to be able to register to vote for their local elected officials and for, uh, you know, Congress and the Senate and the president. So when I was elected, I after two years there was so much fighting and bickering and that experience the mayor was a two time incumbent.

00:51:57.460 - 00:52:31.820

I had one more year left in my term, and I was like, I resigned my seat to run for the position because they were alternate years. And that's the only way you could run for mayor if you were already in office. And my supporters were very, very upset because on the government's in Florida and various communities, money talks, I mean, that just seems to be the theme of every you know, how people get elected.

00:52:31.830 - 00:52:51.910

These days. It's all depends on the money and also on Houthi. Lobbyists are so forth. Well, they were very upset because I was the I represented the residents that lived in Coco Beach. And it wasn't that I was against developers or the hoteliers or the business people.

00:52:52.350 - 00:53:14.460

But there were certain issues that always seemed to be helping get people elected who didn't care how high the condominium went, how tightly together they were built or anything like that. So I have to say that my legacy to Cocoa Beach was lowering the building height from 85 ft to 45 ft.

00:53:14.470 - 00:53:46.390

Wow! And lowering the density and the hotels from 40 40 units per acre to 28. Uh huh. And, um, I have and I have to and from the residential condominiums from 18 to 12 unit to 10 units per acre, 10 or 12 units per acre. Well, I was threatened, and so many lawsuits were filed that and I was threatened with lawsuits like the Bert Harris lawsuit.

00:53:46.400 - 00:54:07.260

Oh, we're gonna file a Bert Harris and I'm like, Well, bring it on because I learned that nobody had ever litigated a Bert Harris lawsuit eso I was like, Okay, we'll do it now and just make this some sort of a milestone here for how people can direct how they want their communities to be.

00:54:08.240 - 00:54:32.680

Actually, there was a community that had lowered their building height, and I kind of pick their brain a bit about how that went. And they were very fortunate because the contractors and builders in their community had decided that they didn't want to fight with community. They wanted to get along, and it wasn't quite so easy and Cocoa Beach.

00:54:32.680 - 00:55:04.210

But I think that after I had expressed time and again how in foreign countries the buildings air on the far side of the road and the ocean view and along the ocean is like a big boardwalk or promenade that everybody gets to enjoy. It's not just because when the condos were built like that in the hotels, they want to take ownership of the public beach as well and block the public access well.

00:55:04.220 - 00:55:36.340

Cocoa Beach was very fortunate because we do have many, many beachside access points, and I was never it passed overwhelmingly. It's a you know, the law of the land in cocoa beach and one of the other things Waas that there was always. There was always a faction that wanted to give away public land, vacate public land for condominium because they wanted to put a garage on.

00:55:36.340 - 00:56:01.290

They didn't have enough land and things like that. So we have the five of vote in Cocoa Beach. If you wanna increase the building height or you wanna vacate public property or change the increase the density, all the five members of the council have to deem that it's important enough that you will get the boat and that they will all agree.

00:56:01.300 - 00:56:38.220

And now this same city attorney who who uh, wrote that legal language now kind of use it as a He said to me one day Now it's become the tyranny of one e go well, well, you know. The thing is, is the residents have a very, very difficult time because also, when people live in condominiums, they get very worn out with the political activity that takes place in condominium with their bylaws and their state statutes and things.

00:56:38.230 - 00:57:06.460

So somehow, unless it's really, really glaring, they do not participate in their government as much as people that live in single family residential areas. Mhm. And I was sued personally, A to the last meeting I chaired, Um, it was First Amendment lawsuit complaint, and that lawsuit lasted almost four years and involved about eight attorneys.

00:57:07.040 - 00:57:41.320

The city was sued, and so was the city attorney. Suit and I prevailed in federal federal court. I prevailed in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in Atlanta, and the final decision in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals was based on a lawsuit for the city of Cocoa, which is on the mainland near us that, um, had bypassed us in the travel through the legal system and had gone to the Supreme U.

00:57:41.320 - 00:58:02.150

S Supreme Court. And now it's case law that when someone wants to chair a public meeting that there is a time and place for political rhetoric and you need to pretty much stick to the agenda and that as President Roosevelt said, he liked to have the bully pulpit.

00:58:02.620 - 00:58:23.460

Well, if you're on a council, you wanna have to believe Pulp. Yeah, that was really it was. I've had quite an interesting light. It's about right. E Do have some people during interviews that are like, Oh, no, my life was really boring. And just like that can't be true.

00:58:23.520 - 00:59:05.400

Really? I really felt that, you know, especially my parents were very interesting people. My mother was intended to be a little more reticent than my dad, but they were very well read. My mother was an excellent editor. I miss her editing ability today because she would edit papers for me when I was attending the University of Central Florida and they had a wonderful vocabularies and even my dad at times they had a little thing where they would work on the probably hear this about people in Florida when they retire.

00:59:05.400 - 00:59:20.850

They're doing the crossword puzzle every morning. Well, my dad was an early riser, and he would do the crossword puzzle and put it on the kitchen table, and my mom would get up later in the morning and have coffee and see what he hadn't completed the crossword puzzle.

00:59:21.020 - 00:59:49.470

Then they would discuss it in the afternoon, and my dad finished his career covering the Six Days War. He went to Cairo for the Six Days War and stayed five years because they booted all the American newsman out And so he, uh mhm. She stayed in Cairo for five years, so he became fairly fluent in Arabic and it was just really exciting.

00:59:49.470 - 01:00:10.380

I mean, there were people in our house as I was growing up from all over the world. People came by to visit and we talked about politics. And so I think that I was probably privileged to have had a broader exposure than many of my friends.

01:00:10.380 - 01:00:29.670

Maybe mhm. But I mean, unless there's something in the water in Panama, your parents must have done something right, because they have some phenomenal Children adults now, but always their Children. It was wonderful. So how did you cope after you weren't the mayor anymore? Well, actually, run for re election.

01:00:29.680 - 01:01:02.040

I had run for re election three year that we lowered the building height. And actually, I was, uh, defeated in that election by a doctor who waas in the A. There was another issue taking place about killing 13 acres of the Banana River Thio make a hospital expansion that I opposed, and he was he was for it because he was a doctor that worked at that hospital.

01:01:02.510 - 01:01:25.800

And it was frankly, I think a relief, although I stay involved politically and I try not to waste the knowledge that I acquired. So I like to mentor people about how to get something done, and I envy the U. S representatives who are away from their constituents.

01:01:25.810 - 01:01:50.830

But it's very, very difficult, you know, you kind of you really, really learn a lot. You need a lot of people. You should stay involved in the community, not to put that information and that knowledge to waste. But on the other hand, I didn't miss people calling me on Sunday night to complain about why their garbage can wasn't brought in from the road on Wednesday or something.

01:01:51.210 - 01:02:18.590

So everything has it za points. But I feel that it z important for people thio to vote to an informed vote. I don't know if you should have to get a license to vote, but sometimes people don't really understand the full, um, issue before they vote.

01:02:18.600 - 01:02:37.090

And the ballot questions are worded very in a very confusing manner where yes is no and no is yes, and especially on the local level. Yeah, really tricky in particular on the local level. And I know That was one of my mother's complaints about the ballot in Cocoa Beach eso.

01:02:37.090 - 01:02:53.980

I always remembered that when they were talking about building height long before I got involved in politics, she would say, Oh, yes, we didn't mean for that to happen. But yes meant no, No meant yes. So So the river and Cocoa Beach, they did fill the 13 acres.

01:02:53.990 - 01:03:20.120

Well, actually, they whether people tell me it may have been a political roots, but you can't. It had been a tax district hospital. That health corporation moved in because tax district hospitals or community hospitals started having a lot of difficulty in Florida and some were sold and others like our Cape Canaveral hospitals.

01:03:20.120 - 01:03:48.440

The name of it was taken over by a health corporation, where it wasn't quite exposed to the light of day. How that happened, that they took over the hospital assets and ended up working out with the state Legislature, that they would become a special tax district, which is the first time in Florida that a private corporation now has taxing authority over people who live in the district.

01:03:48.450 - 01:04:31.030

It's unheard off, but I going to Tallahassee on that issue I learned a lot about local bills in Florida and what makes the legislators Legislature tick. And they did not. ST John's water management district would, even though they worked for maybe 10 years on trying to get that approved because they always were banking on vertical evacuation and the hospital had to be evacuated 18 hours before in a mandatory evacuation before the rest of the population they were going to use vertical evacuation.

01:04:31.040 - 01:05:02.070

Well, when Katrina, Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the public found out in a big way that vertical evacuation does not work in a hurricane, uh, they withdrew their request for a permit to fill the river, Which I think today would be, uh, would it just wouldn't stand public scrutiny at this point in time either because now the Internet, so much bigger thing than it Waas, even 2000.

01:05:02.070 - 01:05:30.500

Year 2000. Yeah, 2000 and two. I was 2000 and two is my last year in office. Okay, Yeah. Um, now I'm kind of going off on a chronological tangent, But during the treaty signing, um, I understand your brother worked for the Carter administration. Correct. And people in Panama mostly people not okay.

01:05:30.500 - 01:05:50.920

This does sound judgmental, but willfully ignorant. People really took it out on Carter Way. Were talking to a woman earlier who said her graduating class had T shirts that were insulting Carter. Was that irritating for you? Did you ever argue with your neighbors? Or did you mostly stay out of that?

01:05:51.890 - 01:06:17.500

Well, yeah, it was difficulty for me because I worked in the Balboa Heights in the administration building, and every day we would listen to the testimony. And when my brother, who was very well known, many of his peers and colleagues from high school his classmates were still working in the Canal zone.

01:06:18.480 - 01:06:53.900

And they were very upset that my brother testified that he thought it was a great thing, that it was the canal was becoming obsolete as far as the national security, not obsolete as transportation and as world commerce was concerned necessarily. But as far as being a strategic military importance to the United States, So even though I lived there and worked there and my friends and relatives, we're going to be affected.

01:06:54.880 - 01:07:33.960

I felt that it was there needed to be a treaty because the feelings were so bad in Panama. But okay, how? It was a Zen employ. We didn't have feel We had much of a voice about how any of that was worked out. And so it didn't probably make my brother very popular, although he was otherwise very popular in high school and had worked for the canal as an adult, but only for maybe three years before he transferred to the US in the civil service system and it ultimately ended up in Washington, D.

01:07:33.960 - 01:08:11.280

C. Yeah, I probably felt some negative feelings toward Carter for his not paying more attention to, um, the government that he was dealing with the Tory Toes government. Although I had met to Rico's at one time. And I have to say that Torrijos waas in many, many ways for the Republic of Panama a very benevolent dictator in my lifetime to that point, and I traveled a lot in the interior Panama.

01:08:11.390 - 01:08:47.900

Nothing ever changed. There's no new roads had been built until Torrijos came into power. Everything, uh, I'm not I was not familiar with, nor I Admittedly, I'm not as familiar as I should be about how the Panamanian government operates and functions in the legislature. But you could see changes being made and roads being built that would help the people in the rural areas of Panama get their produce to town and so forth.

01:08:47.910 - 01:09:13.100

And Noriega, on the other hand, whether some people feel he was our guy or work for the CIA and all of that he became. I don't know if he had drug and alcohol addictions or what his problem was became, but he became very, very nefarious and ruthless, and it was very scary living in the Republic Panama, where I lived.

01:09:13.110 - 01:09:38.090

I didn't live in the canals, Um, where I could call the Canal Zone Police. Or I could be surrounded by the US military at a drop of the pin. So, um, did I think that Carter did the right thing? I think Carter, I've read a lot about him, his biographies and things, and he's a nice man.

01:09:38.100 - 01:10:02.870

He came from very humble beginnings. He's worked very, very hard and habitat for humanity and trying to bring peace in the Middle East, which I really thought sincerely he would succeeded that and unfortunately you know, he has been misaligned, and today it is difficulty to be a leader.

01:10:03.970 - 01:10:32.090

And as many of the leaders in the Middle East today are finding to stay alive and be a leader on Syria, for example, you know, uh, that, uh, see, a boss was a god. I believe that's his name. It was an ophthalmologist practicing in London, England, when his father had to go back to Syria and president.

01:10:32.660 - 01:10:52.790

And now he's probably desperately in fear of his life. It's very, very, very dangerous. And I think I think, truly that Carter had his heart in the right place with Panama Canal Treaty. But whether or not people felt that the terms, we're what they should have been, it's another story.

01:10:53.480 - 01:11:37.680

Well, how often do you go back now? Well, I was there in April. I try and go back every few years. And, of course, as I get older, I know fewer and fewer people there. I don't have personally any family members who live in Panama at the time, and I think it's a very interesting place, and I'm very proud of been born there and having grown up with that history and my family, and I hope that my grandchildren, although they hear the stories now that for the main have been born in the United States, they hear about it.

01:11:37.690 - 01:12:02.470

They hear about Zone Ian's. What zone? Ian S O. Do you go to this reunion every year? I come very off frequently because I only live 50 miles from Orlando. So as long as it's the reunions here, I do come and and it's really wonderful to see people who live far away or that I haven't seen in years that I don't correspond with.

01:12:02.950 - 01:12:45.050

Is there anything else you'd like to have on record today? Well, just I believe everybody should try and read path between the seas, if nothing else. And I think that the canal workers from 19 04 1999 should be judged as people who are very hard working and proud and proud of their work and proud of the canal, and really love the country and love the people of Panama.

01:12:45.610 - 01:13:06.370

And I hope that the Panamanians in the future will always find some way to feel that way about us. All right, thank you very much for the opportunity to be interviewed and on good luck with other people you interview and I'm really looking forward to hearing their stories.

01:13:06.380 - 01:13:13.480

Thank you. And once again, this was Sarah Blanck here with Janice Scott, and it's July 8th, 2011.