THE INSTITUTE OF TEXAN CULTURES
Oral History Office
INTERVIEW WITH: Sandra Merrifield
DATE: l3 July l993
PLACE: Institute of Texan Cultures, Oral History Office
INTERVIEWER: Jody Ogden
O: This is Jody Ogden at the office...Oral History Office of the Institute of Texan Cultures. Today is July...what?...l3th...
M: Is it the l3th? The l3th.
O: ...l3th, l993. And today we are going to interview Sandra Merrifield from the Outreach Office or Department. And, Sandra, tell me a little bit about yourself first. Where are you from? Where were you educated? Any professional experience you had before you came here. Just briefly.
M: OK. I was born in Port Arthur, Texas, and I got my degree from Stephen F. Austin University in Nacogdoches, and I went there because I wanted to go to school in East Texas. Didn't go there for the education; I went there for the scenery and those pretty trees. Some great people were there. I think O. T. Baker feels the same way about East Texas, so I'm in good company. And I taught school for seven years, and then I stayed home with children, being a mommy and a wife. And then I had the opportunity to become M: a volunteer here, and I just jumped on that. And then when there was a chance to work in Educational Programs as a clerk-typist, I jumped on that, too - especially to be able to work with Bonnie Truax. That was an experience I really wanted.
O: Then you started out as a docent?
M: Oh, yes. I started out as a docent here at the Institute. I did tours, I did puppets, and I did some outreach - going out to the schools with Tex Kits.
O: Good. Tell me, what is the outreach program? Define that for us.
M: Well, the facet of it that I work with... I think, technically, outreach involves anything that goes on that's away from the site of the Institute of Texan Cultures. So, that includes a lot. That includes the Ambassador Program and the Speakers' Bureau, and anytime a staff member goes out and does a program away from the facility here. But, the facet of it that I deal with, mainly, is one that is run by docents - I'm the only staff member that works with it right now. Cindy Gonzales goes out from time to time, but I'm mainly responsible. It involves boxes of artifacts that we take out to schools and places in the community.
O: Good.
M: And we do a hands-on kind of program presenting artifacts. We let them tell the story of the people of Texas. We emphasize that this is the Institute of Texan Cultures, about people, and not so much the place as much as M: the people. And we pass the artifacts around. And for that reason, we see small groups. We see no more than, we hope, 30 or 35 at a time.
O: Well, having been a docent and done outreach, I can MERRIFIELD
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appreciate what gratification the docents get from it. And I really think the kids learn so much when they have the opportunity to touch things and smell things and...
M: And it's something they can relate to.
O: Yeah. That's right.
M: In a very personal kind of way that can get into it much more easily than they can something that's written in a book.
O: Uh huh.
M: It makes history come alive.
O: That's right. And they are more apt to remember.
M: Well, it's more fun.....
O: Sure it is.
M: ...than reading in a book. At least, of course, I was always a bookworm, so I love to read, but not every child does, I know.
O: That's right.
M: And it makes them feel that history is something that can be neat.
O: Okay, well now, I'm just going to let you kind of talk and say anything you want to.
Tell us kind of about the beginning of the Program and how it's progressed over the years.
M: Well, good. It started a longer time ago than I thought. I first came to work here in September of l98l, so I've been here for a little while. But the Program had begun when I came MERRIFIELD
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on staff and it had been going on for awhile.
At the time that I came on staff it was really beginning to be quite popular. It started in l977 with Mary Alice Mashure who was a docent here taking "Gone to Texas" artifacts, that's what it was called. The "Gone to Texas" trunk because that was the sign that people used to put on their doors when they decided they were going to leave for a better life and come here.
She took them in a large trunk to places called nutrition sites and also to nursing homes. And the idea of taking a museum in trunk or a basket to these nursing homes and nutrition centers and housing complexes for the aging was discussed at the April and May l977 general docent meeting.
Potential sites were polled just like a good marketing person would do. They called people that might be potentially interested and the response was very positive and so the Program got started.
O: Then you really didn't start in schools, did you?
M: No. It started with adults, with people that probably were going to have a problem getting here on their own because of their age.
Over 2l places requested the Program in no time. And this was before, you know, it had gone out. And in May of l977 Mary Alice and a docent named Roy Gomez presented the first pilot program at the Immaculate Conception Church which was also a MERRIFIELD
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nutrition site. And it was done in Spanish by the docent Roy Gomez. That's why he went with Mary Alice and it was a great success. And that was the very beginning of the whole thing.
And during summer of '77, here right after that, a docent outreach committee continued its planning work and acquired more artifacts. A lot of things came out of collections that were already here. People donated things. Docents went to flea markets and maybe a couple of the antique places and found the things that would be needed for the inventories.
And they refurbished an old camelback trunk that, to my knowledge, was donated by Patrick McGuire. That's the trunk, I believe, that still sits in my office today.
O: For goodness sakes. It must have been pretty heavy to carry.
M: Especially when it was filled with things. I think that's why we don't use that trunk anymore. And somebody, at one point, made some wooden boxes with handles that were kind of like wooden suitcases. Now they were sitting in the ? office for a long time. But they were so heavy when they were filled with things. We never used them and they ended up getting stored somewhere. The containers for these artifacts really do need to be light weight and that's why we have as many as three boxes going out but no one box is just terribly heavy.
All that lifting and toting needs to be something that's not too much of a chore.MERRIFIELD
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O: Yes, that I remember very well.
M: Well, the first goal was to present one program per week during the first year of the Program. Of course, nowadays we take 5 and 6 programs out every day, especially during the school year. Not in the summer, but in the school year. Lillian Gonzales, who was also a docent here, helped in gathering artifacts and she was instrumental in getting a trunk together called, "The Mexican Grandmother" and that was the second trunk after "Gone to Texas". This was to be, again, just for adults and Marge Batey and a gal named Lucille Foley put together a collection of things for a Black Texkit.
It was kind of a copy of what we now have as a Pioneer Kit. And as word got around, schools began to request the program, but the people who first went out to the schools were mainly the staff and interpreters who were staff members on the exhibit floor.
By l979, Bonnie Truax and Allen Hamilton made two or three visits a week out to the schools and they took out the Pioneer, or what's now the pioneer, the Indian and one-room schoolhouse Texkits. And these were kind of offshoots of areas that were used on the exhibit floor.
The Indian Kit was kind of an offshoot of what was used in the Indian area. There were some artifacts that were used for interpretation in the tepee. And at first Allen Hamilton took those out. MERRIFIELD
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O: He was staff?
M: He was staff, yes. And then cowboy, folk medicine and peddler were added to the collection. Docents wrote the scripts and they were edited and approved by John Davis who was then head of research.
O: I didn't know that docents wrote the scripts.
M: The docents wrote the scripts. Tommy Neman and Beverly Sharp did the first medicine script. Mable Noble, who was a docent, Maybelle Pitman and Fern Burke all contributed to the one-room schoolhouse scripts. And two of those - Fern Burke actually attended a one-room schoolhouse and I think...well, I know Mable Noble did too. And Maybelle Pitman, I think, taught in a one-room schoolhouse at one point.
You know in the east central district, well the area that is now East Central, they had one-room schools out there as recently as the forties, you know, outhouses.
O: Really?
M: Since Mable Noble had actually attended a one-room school in Arkansas, she was able to add a lot of firsthand information and also it was Mable Noble who actually travelled by covered wagon to Texas.
O: She did?
M: She has since deceased.
O: She must have been just a child.
M: She must have been although when Mable passed away, which MERRIFIELD
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is seven or eight years ago, she was in her late eighties.
Welsa Correa was the other staff member who went out often. She even went out alone or she went out with Bonnie. In the very beginning, Bonnie went out alone a lot, I know, and did as many as eight presentations in one day.
Docents who did presentations from the beginning were Emily Wofford, Mary Lou Ford, Jackie Williams, Janie Cotter, Glen Schriver and Arlene Miller. And some of those folks I know, and some I don't. Some of those names do not sound familiar to me.
In May of '82 - by that time, a total of 44,000 people in round numbers had been seen in Outreach and by May of '93, over 89,000 people have been seen. And that's the facet of the Program that I work with, understand, the Texkits.
O: That's per year.
M: That's per year. And Jim Fox, who came on staff early in the year l98l, started taking his program of Irish Folk Music out to schools and requests for his Program, especially after he had the bagpipes, became quite numerous. So some of those numbers are his too.
In the early years Texkits were scheduled from September through February only. And this was due to the very heavy demand for docents on the exhibit floor, because a lot of our Texkit people also gave tours, so we couldn't have them going out in March, April and May. But - and during that time I worked on MERRIFIELD
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other projects such as developing two small rail trunks which were Texas Indians who hunted buffaloes and the one on rural schools in early Texas.
O: Those are the ones that go out of town, the rental kits?
M: Those are rental kits that are self contained that people pay for what...they rent them. You know, right now, ever since it's our Texkit Program has been free of charge except for mileage when it goes outside of Bexar County.
Other projects such as being in charge of Spooky Sunday a couple of times, some very special events and developing new Texkits came my way, Carolyn Black who was a staff interpreter in educational programs organized a Chinese Texkit and Margaret Watkins at the request of Bonnie Truax, helped Bonnie develop a Holiday Texkit. And the first time I saw the Holiday Kit, it was presented by Margaret Watkins and from start to finish took about 3 hours. There was a lot of stuff in that Kit. And some of those things were handmade by Margaret Watkins.
Emily Wofford and Anne Marrou organized the German Texkit and to meet the needs of teachers, the Mexican Grandmother's Trunk was changed. It was converted to the Mexican Textkit and Ruby Edwards and Rosa Correal helped a whole lot with that project.
O: That's a pretty popular kit too.
M: It is now, oh, very much so. It really met a demand and a need.MERRIFIELD
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Phyllis Braverman and Irv Debrin spearheaded the Jewish Texkit Project and it was Phyllis Braverman who donated the bulk of the artifacts in the kit. Some of that was a collection of things that she had used on the exhibit floor so we really thank her for her generosity and her efforts.
As a result of an aviation exhibit here, Southwest Airlines sponsored an Aviation in Texas Texkit. In other words, they gave us the money for it.
I researched and wrote the script based on information that was in the exhibit, in fact, I got a copy of the information that was on the histowalls for me to use as background to make sure we were gibing with their information. And docents Bob Beaudro, Hardy Cannon and Ron Dodson who are all retired pilots helped us out. And they donated most of the artifacts.
Frank and Lorraine Watkins who are now deceased developed A Turn of the Century Texkit. And docent Joan Bradshaw was instrumental in developing the Textile kit. She wrote the script for that after having done her research.
We were able to find artifacts for that kit through a lot of things we already had. And the Japanese Texkit was fun to develop. Inspiration came from a publication called "The Japanese Texans" that came out and that gave us a lot of our background information, but since so many of our docents are former military they had, oh, stashes of Japanese artifacts in their attics so we didn't have to buy a whole lot of things.MERRIFIELD
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And Edith Spear, Anna Revardo and Dorothy Pickett got a Black Texans Kit together. The kit that Marge Bailey and Lucille Foley put together just kind of fell by the wayside after they left, so we developed one from scratch basically. The one Marge Bailey and Lucille Foley did was long gone.
And then a Folk Toykit came together and that was kind of an offshoot of the Pioneer Kit. We took some toys from the Pioneer Kit and added to that collection.
O: Yeah, that's a fun Kit, too.
M: Oh it is. And it goes out to all kinds of groups, not only to children, but it goes out to nursing homes and to adults and they find it fascinating also because toys really reflect the adult world of the times.
O: And a lot of them used those toys when they were children.
M: Exactly and it reflects the resources that were available at the time.
Texas in the Twenties was an offshoot of the Turn of the Century Kit. And we found it was just too much to expect to cover the Turn of the Century and move into the Twenties and Thirties because they're all so interrelated in the space of one presentation. And our presentations last, usually, between 30 and 40-45 minutes, sometimes an hour. But there wasn't time to do justice to any one of those periods so we separated the kits into one that is just turn of the century and then one that is also Texas in the Twenties and we could probably do MERRIFIELD
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one on Texas in the Thirties too if we had a mind to.
The Vietnamese Texans was a project that I was able to give to a gal named Ellen Ackinson who was sent to us from Allen Counselor of Trinity. She was a senior history study of Allen's. She came to us to do some projects and for this she was going to get 3 hours of college credit - ? credit. And she did the research, she developed the contacts in the community and it was she who collected the artifacts and they were all donations from people in the community.
O: Those would have been ones harder to get, I would think, from say the Japanese.
M: Absolutely. And she cultivated Paula Trand who was a good friend of ours. Paula teaches at UTSA and she's married to a Vietnamese. So she was kind of our liason into that Vietnames world.
The Victorian Life in Texas Kit was developed to, first of all, satisfy my own interest in things Victorian and I know I share that interest with a lot of other people. I'm not the only one. And it was to provide a new program for adult groups. A lot of groups like, oh, the Silver Streaks, and they're real sensitive we don't ever call them the Silver Streakers.
A Concordian Lutheran Church requests a lot of our programs and once they've learned again then they want something new and different....
O: This is a Seniors group, huh?MERRIFIELD
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M: That's a seniors group. Yeah. We satuate our market every now and then and we need something new. So we were able to find a wealth of Victorian artifacts that were already here, so purchases were kept at a minimum.
That program doesn't go out a lot, but it does go out some and when it does, it's met with high interest.
O: I would think nursing homes would enjoy that, too, maybe.
M: They love that. Especially the women. There are quite a few feminine type artifacts in that Kit so unless you find fellows that really like history, you know, they feel like it's really not for them.
There are lots and lots interesting stories that have arisen over the years of coming out of outreach. One I love is, our docent Flo Saunders has some beautiful jewelry that was given to her by her late husband. One is a very beautiful diamond ring that's got several diamonds in a beautiful setting and one time she went out to a school and did a program with artifacts and she was - at the conclusion asking for some feedback. And one little boy said, "Well what I really liked the best was your ring." (Laughter)
We have been all over the state of Texas. We've been to Brownsville. In fact, we were down there for 2 or 3 days. And the children were just enthralled with the Texkit Program. We stayed at a Holiday Inn that was given to the school district down there. Actually the school we went to was in a little MERRIFIELD
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adjacent town. It wasn't in Brownsville itself and right now I can't think of what it was. But we stayed in Brownsville. The rooms were donated by the manager of the Holiday Inn because it was for educational purposes.
O: Oh, that's nice.
M: And the children were following us out to our cars every day. It was a group of about 6 people because we presented 3 kits over a course of 3 days and we saw the whole school.
We've been out to Slayton, we've been to Dallas, we've been to Houston. We have been all over the State of Texas and I expect that to increase. We're going to be going out to Silsbee this next year, of all places. And we've been to Beaumont many times.
O: What arrangements do you make with the host school or whatever it is when you go out of town?
M: It varies. Sometimes we stay in the homes of teachers and sometimes we stay in motels or hotels.
O: And the school pays for it.
M: Well, unfortunately we have to charge for that. Sometimes the PTA's pay for it. Sometimes it's the school district itself.
And when we go to Silsbee that's going to be paid for by a cultural arts group there, that's sponsoring - bringing in some special programs.
O: I went to the - on the trip down to Houston when we went MERRIFIELD
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out to the Battleground.
M: Yes! I remember that.
O: Yeah. That tab was picked up by some corporation, wasn't it? Or at least I thought it was...
M: I think so. Something for the sesquicentennial?
O: Yes. Uh-huh.
M: And it was some kind of special fair, as I recall and we were there with Jane Bull and you were there and Sandra Tucker, some other people. We had two or three cars of people.
O: Cindy Gonzalez was there when she was still a docent.
M: We were there for a couple of days and we were set up on the fairgrounds with our artifacts and people came and talked to us.
O: Uh-huh. That was fun.
M: It was different, wasn't it? It was fun, too.
Well, we started out small, you know, with maybe, oh, ten or twelve volunteers going out which now we have, oh, between 60 to 70 volunteers that work with the Program.
O: Do you? In Outreach?
M: There are varying degrees of participation.
O: Yeah. Sure, well, that's understandable.
Okay. Tell us something about the contents of the kits. I know you can't cover them all, but of your most popular kits, what do you have in them? Like your Pioneer Kit.
M: One of the Pioneer Kit - you know, none of our kits - what MERRIFIELD
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we try to start out with is what's the most familiar and from that we build to things that might be a little more stange or exotic.
We're talking about the basics of life, food, clothing and shelter. Those things are the most important to people.
O: Sure.
M: So with the Pioneerkits, since we're talking about the journey that pioneers would make, their familiar homesites to an unfamiliar new life. They brought with them the things they might need, and then we have a few things that they might have purchased or made after they got there.
So we have the basic things they might have carried with them such as the tools - the ax handles, planes, ? - basic tools that they would need. Nothing extra, basic kitchen equipment.
O: Yeah, there's a hatchet in there and an axe or something.
M: Yeah. A hatchet and an axe and I'm trying to think. An iron skillet is in a couple of kits. That's so heavy most people don't like to carry it.
O: Those flatirons - those sad irons, are heavy, too.
M: Tin dishes, silverware, perhaps gourds. Gourds, of course, were just used by so many different people. We have gourds in most all of our Texkits.
Later on, when they were able to purchase things, I know we've got a picture of an iron stove because that was usually MERRIFIELD
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one of the first purchases. When they were able to buy things they would hitch up the wagon, go into town, buy their first iron stove which meant that when they got that back in the house, they could cook inside
O: Yeah, that was real progress.
M: Real progress. A piece of ticking, because that would be used to make a pillow or later on a mattress. A bolt of material.
O: Yeah. Calico.
M: You remember that. Calico material. A bonnet. Usually a sun bonnets in the kit is, well that's a working bonnet, as well as a "Sunday-go-to-meeting" bonnet which wouldn't cover up quite as much. Somebody could see what they looked like on a Sunday morning in church.
O: The little girls love trying those on.
M: Oh, yeah. And a picture of a log cabin and now we have a picture of a dogtrot kind of like the one - well, it is the one on the Back Forty that's recently been constructed.
There are a lot of pictures in that Kit. We have a lot of stuff in the kits. The main reason we do that is because this is a kit - these are kits that are presented by a lot of different people, and different people have their favorite things and we want to meet their needs. And also, if we're out in the school and we're doing 8 presentations we want to be able to vary them, perhaps slightly, just to refresh ourselves, so that it won't become stale and tired to us. And MERRIFIELD
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sometimes one or two different things are enough to refreshen it.
O: Sure.
When you go to the schools, you usually see one class at a time and sometimes you stay all day and do one class after another.
M: Right. Quite often we stay all day. It's usually either a half-day or all day, at least. Every now and then we'll go out to a school and just do one class, one or two. But that's the exception and not the rule. Usually it's at least a grade level. You know most of our crowded schools in San Antonio it's - there's usually five and six minimally in a grade level. And we see all grades. You know, you would think since what we mainly focus on here at the Institue is Texas history, you would think it would just be the fourth grade or seventh grade. And we do go out to lots of fourth and seventh grades but we also see kindergarten, first, second, third - all over.
O: Well, I know they all enjoy it anyway. Tell me something about the training requirements for docents.
M: Our Texkit people usually start out taking the regular docent training which lasts for 2 weeks and usually they start out by giving tours, or working in some other capacity. Most of our people, though, are people that want to meet the public. And they're interested in history. So they usually start out giving tours and then they decide they also want to go out to MERRIFIELD
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schools because in some ways, it's a little easier to do than giving tours and in some ways it's harder.
O: It's very gratifying, though, because you have enough time with each class that you can.....
M: Right. And you're focusing on one particular topic and you know that's the topic you're going to be dealing with. It's not quite as "iffey" sometimes as hitting the exhibit floor and hoping you can get where you want to go.
O: Right. And I think when you take a group of children through the exhibit floor, there are so many things to see they get kind of distracted, whereas if you're covering just one subject they're more apt to stay concentrating on that.
M: Right. It's easier to focus. And usually...and of course, our very, very best experiences are when we're fitting in with something that's going on in the classroom. That's what I really prefer to have us do. So I try to work very closely with teachers in that regard.
We don't want to be entertainment, we don't want to be babysitters, or just something extra. It's best if we fit in with something that's already being studied. Then it's so much more meaningful to the kids.
O: Sure it is, and it helps them in their classwork, I would think.
M: A lot.
O: You've pretty well covered the number of people you've seen MERRIFIELD
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and the out of town presentations. Tell us a little bit about where some of the artifacts are obtained. I'm thinking particularly in the Indian kit about the buffalo and buffalo skin and ? things like that.
M: Well, all of our buffalo parts come from a very interesting person whose name is Larry ....
O: How do you spell that?
M: Belitz. And Larry Belitz used to be a school teacher.
I don't think he teaches school any more. At first, he was raising buffalo as a little hobby and he had this catalogue of all kinds of buffalo parts - every kind of buffalo part that you can imagine. Some you don't want to imagine! But you can buy the parts from Larry Belitz and now he's expanded his business and he does some Indian artifacts.
And from what I understand he did the Indian artifacts for the movie, "Dances With Wolves".
And he's come here and did the tepee that's on the exhibit floor here. And he's also done tepees in other museums throughout the United States.
O: Oh, he's an expert.
M: He's an expert.
O: Where is he?
M: He's in South Dakota. And the kind of Indians that he mainly deals with are the Sioux, the Sioux Indians who were, you know, the hunters on the plains up there.MERRIFIELD
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O: But I would think that most of our artifacts would be in common with the other tribes in the....
M: Yes, some of them would. Some of the artifacts would.
O: Like the tepees and things like that.
M: The - a lot of our artifacts where we used to get some from a man named Rocky, who is part Indian. Rocky used to - in fact, I think he was one of the first Indian interpreters on the exhibit floor. He was staff. And he's a good friend of O.T. Baker's and he's now living in Austin and sort of, oh ninety percent retired because of health problems.
And for a long time he continued to make a lot of the Indian artifacts for us. Nowadays we get them from a variety of sources. And O.T. Baker makes some of them.
O: Oh. So it takes many people to supply the Institute, doesn't it?
M: Yes, from a variety of sources and for long time a fellow named George who was part Indian. Darn, I can't think of George's last name. He made quite a few things for us. But historically it's really been interesting working with - not O.T. He's not one of the eccentrics. But most of the people that make the Indian artifacts are extremely eccentric folks and real difficult to work with but worth it.
O: Yes, because you couldn't get them from just anyplace.
M: No. No.
O: Tell me something about - what was I going to ask you?MERRIFIELD
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M: You were asking about the origin of some of the artifacts. Some things we found here, you know in the artifact room, collections of things that are not going to be used on the exhibit floor. A lot of things we've had donated. Some things we have, docents go out and buy, like for our Japanese Kit there's a Japanese market in Seattle.
One of our docents was going to Seattle and we had her purchase some things like the ? dolls, We had to buy extras because they are breakable. Those kinds of things we can't find in stores here, we send people out to purchase.
O: Oh, I see. You really send them out if you send them to Seattle.
M: This docent was going there anyway. She ultimately moved there.
O: Oh, I wanted to ask something else.
M: Some things our producation department makes, like the four-leaf clover that's wooden that we use when we talk about St. Patrick's Day in our Holidaykit. That our Production Department made, the medicine pole that's in our medicine kit. The Production Department made.
O: Where did you get all that - the old things that are in that Medicinekit, like the little satchel and all that stuff.
M: Oh, those came from the U.T. Health Science Center here. It's a collection of things that they had, they didn't quite MERRIFIELD
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know what to do with it. So they were given to us kind of on a permanent loan.
O: Well, that was lucky.
M: Yes. And some of those things were used by a doctor named P.I. Nixon who was very well known here in San Antonio in the medical community.
O: Yes, his family I've heard of.
M: Just a variety of sources. And the herbs that are in the Medicinekit, I've bought at Sun Harvest. In the old days they used to take the herbs out in the little cloth satchels and they could be - they were little bags, actually, little calico bags and the children could take those and open them up and smell the herbs inside. It was a wonderful idea but in trying to store them, we had a lot of problems with bugs getting into them and the herbs kind of losing their potentcy. So now we keep them all in small jars. But the bags were wonderful because the kids could really open the up and experience the herb.
O: There used to be some little bags like that in the one-room school kept corn in.
M: Well, we still have those.
O: Do you?
M: We still have those. That corn is dried and we don't have too many problems with vermin getting into that.
O: Well, that is a problem. Oh, tell me how the teachers make arrangements for you to come to them.MERRIFIELD
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M: Oh, the teachers call and I talk with them about when they want a particular program and yet most of them are pretty definite; want something, especially if they've planned well and they want it to fit into the unit that they're studying.
And they have worked out arrangements with people in their grade level, hopefully. And we work out a schedule of times, I get directions to the school and a date.
I put it on my calendar, I make a booking sheet. It goes into a notebook and then a confirmation letter is done down the line. You know about those, don't you.
O: I know about those.
M: And hopefully the confirmation letter will catch any klitches and it will also be a reminder that we're coming out. It's nothing more dismaying than to get out to a school and the teachers have forgotten that we're coming. There's so much on their plates these days.
But most of the time - 25% of the time, everything goes very well when we go to a school and it runs smoothly.
O: You start becoming inundated, do you not, with calls in August?
M: Oh, it's incredible and I know there have been suggestions that we take the reservations by mail but, you know, it's complicated we bring a program to a school like this, we're talking about meeting the needs of several different people, finding an appropriate place, working out schedules and you've MERRIFIELD
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got to work around their P.E. time, their lunch time, their music time. There's so much that just has to be discussed by phone that I would end up having to call each and every one of the persons writing in. We have to discuss things voice-to-voice. So we just haven't found a perfect method for doing this.
I take the bookings in August. It used to be, oh, maybe l00 people would call. Well now we have as many as, you know, 300 calling in one day.
O: So next month you're going to be tied to that telephone.
M: I'll be pretty busy, yes.
Usually, when teachers call, they don't just make one booking. They'll make multiple bookings and select 4 or 5 different kits that they desire during the year. And there're things that are seasonally popular. The Indiankit goes out a lot in October and November. One-room Schoolhouse is very popular in September although it continues to go out through the year. But it's a good
kickoff.
O: Yes, it is.
M: And then what's really popular, of course, in December and January is the Holidaykit. And then we're getting into cowboy season and then in April and May, the Mexicankit is in incredible demand. It fits in so well with Fiesta and Cinco de Mayo, although in April and May there are some schools that have a MERRIFIELD
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unit on trailrides then, so the cowboy kit continues to go out.
It varies. And now with multiculturalism becoming such a popular ? all of our ethnic kits are becoming more and more popular. Lots of requests for special multicultural fairs where we'll go out and we'll do presentations all day of several different kits done by different people. We've been doing that Hobby Middle School now for the last several years for their multicultural fair. And that's for 6th grade that they study World History and World Geography at that time.
O: I think Hobby Middle School is one of your best customers.
M: Well, among our best customers, definitely.
O: Well, I think it's a wonderful Program and in my experience I found that whereas all the students seem to enjoy it I think the students that benefit most from it are the ones from the lower income parts of Town, where those children don't get any of the cultural advantages that some of the other kids do.
M: I know what's really been fun is taking the Mexicankit out to inner City schools where there are a lot of Hispanic children present. And they're around their Mexican culture so much they really don't almost know anything else. And they kind of take it for granted.
When we bring the kit out to them, they see a lot of things because we always start out with what will be familiar and they love seeing something that somebody's brought to them that they can relate to. And they start to think as we move to some of MERRIFIELD
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the things that are a little more exotic that they may not have seen. But, "Hey! This is neat!" And here's Our Lady of Guadalupe that I see on our wall, everyday in our house by the altar that Mom or Dad has set up. And I didn't realize that she was so important to so many people outside my household. We're not the only family, we're not the only street that has this culture. It's something that goes beyond me and it's worthy of somebody's time and attention to bring it to me. So it's really neat. It's something I want to learn more about.
O: And then your out of town visits are arranged, are they, by Ambassadors, or do you send the information to schools out of town?
M: Very seldom are they arranged by Ambassadors because our Ambassadors usually make their own visits to schools. I know it's hard for them, because if it's one Ambassador and a school wants them, the school is going to want them to probably see the whole school which is a lot for one person to do.
But usually it's a teacher that's been to a workshop who'e heard about it who gives us a call. We've been out to Sonora almost every single year to their junior high with a variety of programs. And the teacher there, Melinda Volconan has been so very nice and so interested in what we do and feeling like it was such a good way to expose a lot of the children there, to something outside their experience.
It was good for the kids in Brownsville because so many MERRIFIELD
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of them never get out of their area.
We go to Nixon a lot.
O: I remember for awhile you were going to Victoria a lot, too.
M: That was a wonderful experience. I thought it was great that their Historical Society really were - they were the ones that got teachers interested. They were the ones that funded it and made all the arrangements, which takes some doing. That's why it's really better for the out of towns if a P.T.A. person can handle it because it's very time consuming for teachers to work out all the details and last minute little klitches that come up and there's always some usually.
When we went to Victoria we would go out for at least three days at a time, sometimes four. Because we had to see all the junior high's there and there were three. All the classes in all the junior high's usually with 2 or 3 different kits. And at one point we were staying in some beautifully restored Victorian cottages that were donated to us. We went down there in the off-season.
O: Oh, that was fun.
M: That was wonderful. And we were brought - I went out there one time and we were brought a special breakfast there that was brought in an old-timey car and served to us in a little table inside - it was actually a bed and breakfast Victorian cottage.MERRIFIELD
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But we worked. It was hard work all those days but very, very gratifying. It was something the school district just never really got that interested in. But the children really benefited from it. I was told there was a lot of good class discussions afterwards.
O: Good. Well, can you think of something else that we need to put down on the record. This has been real interesting.
M: I'll probably think of something when I walk away. There's so many stories. Oh, I might mention going to Camp Tyler. I will never forget that. Got a request to take some programs to Camp Tyler's Mayfest. You've heard about this, Jodie?
O: Yes, I have.
M: I think everybody has. In l985, and we were told by the person in charge - one of the persons in charge - that there would be accomodations there kind of like a lodge. So we had 3 cars of people going. I had an ITC vehicle. The man told me, "Oh, bring your children, too". So I brought one of my sons and a couple of his friends. Brought a gal named ? Larkin with me. We were going to do the Indiankit. Had a car full of stuff and then there were 2 other cars of people going, loaded up with stuff and kits that we were going to be there to interpret. Got there at the place that we were to stay in was kind of like a very young group of boys'
dorms, all open, no curtains on the windows, bunkbeds with no mattresses. And there I am with Ferd and Helen Volmer and Ruthie MERRIFIELD
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and Lela Wrens and Flo Saunders is there with her beautiful designer luggage and her diamond rings and there we are at this boys' dorm. The bathroom absolutely reeked.
I don't know if you want to put that in your Oral History or not.
But Ruthie and Lela Wren got the campmaster's room and so they had the only mattresses of the place.
O: Well what did the rest of you do?
M: We slept on the cots that night. And I remember Helen Volmer had brought this beautiful picnic filled with hors d'oeuvres and, oh, apples and grapes and wine and cheese and she spread it out on one of the benches that was inside one of the rooms.
The volunteers left the next night, and we were to be there for 2 nights and they got a motel in town and, the town was Tyler. This was actually a little area outside of Tyler.
O: Well, I don't blame them for leaving it.
M: It was an interesting experience because they were used to a little more deluxe accomodations.
O: That's right. They were being pioneers, I guess, in that area.
M: Well, the next day ? Larkin and I set up our Indiankit. We were set up in a place that was just filled with cow paddies. There were cow paddies all around the tepee in Camp Tyler. And so we decided we would move in with the folks doing the MERRIFIELD
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cowboy kit. They were in something that was kind of a mock-up of an old general store. So we moved aways from the tepee with our Indian artifacts.
But it ended up being a lot of fun and something that we still laugh about.
O: Yes, I've heard several of those people talk about it and laughing in retrospect.
M: Yes. Yes.
O: Well this - can you think of something else?
M: We do have a lot of people like Social Studies specialists that will come and visit with us. I know one of our best experiences, I think I've had here has been when a gal named Joyce - I think her name was Joyce Williamson. I hope that was right. From Marshall. She's the Social Studies coordinator there. She came down with a group of people a couple of teachers in Marshall and a gal from the Historical Society. And they spent a couple of days with me.
And what they wanted from me was an idea of what we have in our kits that go out to schools. They had gotten some money. I think from the Historical Society. And with that money they wanted to work up some of their own kits that they could have in-house, in their school district that teachers could check out and use in their classrooms. Because they were finding out that it was such a good way to make history come alive. Not just for the students, too, you know but for the teachers MERRIFIELD
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too. Because when you're teaching, it gets pretty monotonous just to work from that old book and you're - the lesson plans that you work up from your teacher's guides.
O: ?
M: Absolutely. And so using those artifacts you can do things with them, you can get the kids involved with them. You can have some action and activity with them. It's not, you know, just drawing pictures and coloring. It's holding something in your hands and moving with it. Really having a relationship with a thing.
So they spent a couple of days with me and they came away and they put together their own one-room schoolhouse kit and, of course, they were not going to be limited to Texas history. So they did one on Egyptian history, too. Found a place in California that makes Egyptian replicas.
O: Oh. Sandra, let me interrupt just a minute. I think we to need to turn this tape over. Can you wait just a minute?
END OF TAPE l, Side l, 45 minutes.
Continuation of Tape l, Sandra Merrifield. Side 2.
Side 2:
M: Okay. We were talking about the folks from Marshall who came down here. And after they left, not only did they put MERRIFIELD
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together a kit about Egyptian history and the one-room school house, with the teacher's guides that were pretty much patterned after what we do. In fact, they took one of the scripts that I had written for the one-room school house. And I was really flattered that they used that. And they also put together one on holidays around the world because at Christmas time that's really something that teachers love to get into.
And I think since then they've put together some more cultural kits. I know they did one on Mexican Heritage. I got a phone call just the other day from the Junior League in Lubbock they're in the process of putting together a Mexican Heritage kit. In fact, they're dividing them up into topics. One's going to be on Mexican art and one's going to be, like on shelters, with adobe brick making.
But, anyway the Junior League is funding this, funding getting the collection together and they're going to take it out to their local schools in Lubbock.
And just the other day, just on Friday of last week, I had a couple of Social Studies coordinators. One was from Aleaf and one was from Katy.
O: Aleaf. How do you spell that.
M: Which is in Houston. Alief. That's in the Houston area. And they want to start, because they have some funding to do. So they want to start some collections of artifacts that teachers can check out from their district. And they kind of MERRIFIELD
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wanted to get some ideas because when you start something like this, sometimes you don't know just where to begin.
O: Sure. That's right. Or where to get them even after you know what you want to get.
M: Exactly. And I know one particular kit that they were facinated with was our Vietnamese kit because there's quite a sizeable Vietnamese population in that area. So they need to do something to reflect that culture.
And the suggestion of trying to work with the people which is not always so easy to do, I know. There are a lot of Vietnamese people living in my hometown in Port Arthur. And as an outsider getting an entre into that culture is a little difficult. They kind of have to know and know what you're about because, you know, sometimes people want to just interview you because you're different. And that's not what they want to be a part of. They want someone's that's really going to reflect their culture and use it in educational purposes in a very good and positive way
like we do.
O: Yes, of course. That's right.
M: Without making a profit.
O: That's right. Well, the word is getting around all over the State, then, about Outreach Program.
M: Well, I tell you I had a couple of Social Studies teachers from California who came into my office. And I was very MERRIFIELD
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surprised to have them say that they knew about the program and they said, "Oh, of course, we know!" but did you know that this program has international recognition? I had no idea that it's talked about. And conferences that teachers attend all over, in fact, maybe more so far away than it is in some places close by. If that makes any sense.
O: Well, sure.
M: And I understand in California that in some school districts they have funding so that Social Studies teachers can work up their own collections of artifacts that they use. These teachers were very interested in seeing what we had. They taught American History. But it was on an elementary level and they have a lot of, oh, cavalry and infantry -type artifacts that they can show their children.
They wanted to see some of the things we had in our cultural kits because they were going to be getting into that. To get ideas. I'm always happy to share with the teachers who come and are interested.
O: Right. Well, what you said about people out of town knowing, reminds me of several people I know who are teachers and didn't know a thing about our Outreach Program.
M: I'm sure that's true, especially, I think more locally than would be the case than in some other exotic place. Because teachers get together when they go to conferences and they talk about things that are special more so than the ordinary MERRIFIELD
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everyday things.
O: I think you're doing a great job.
M: I have wonderful volunteers. You know, I really think the volunteers we have in the Outreach Program are just the creme de la creme. They're good communicators and they're good and patient with children. They're workers because they're willing to make the extra effort.
O: And they're dedicated.
M: And they're very dedicated. They tell me it's really gratifying to them when they see the children relating what they're seeing in the Texkits to something else in their lives, when they're making connections. That's really what's fun to do. You see those light bulbs going on.
O: That's right.
M: And librarians tell me that, you know we set up in lots and lots of libraries and sometimes that's wonderful and sometimes it's not because libraries in schools are often very active and noisy places. But it sure beats the cafeteria any day!
O: Oh, yes it does. But your favorite place is in a classroom where you don't have to move your artifacts between classes. I know that's the docents favorite place. M: It's mine, too. It's a little more intimate there, too.
And librarians will tell me that children will come and check out books for weeks after a presentation on the topic. So it MERRIFIELD
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really gets kids interested.
O: Sure it does.
M: And it gets adults interested, too.
O: That's right. Well, it certainly has interested me. I had forgotten most of my Texas history when I first came down to the Institute and so I'm relearning and then I'm learning a lot that I didn't know to begin with. So it's been fun.
M: Oh, great. Well, you can learn something new the day that you're here.
O: That's right, you sure can.
Well, Sandra, I thank you so much for letting us talk to you today.
M: It's been great to do this.
O: And if you think of some more things, we can add them to the tape.
M: Oh, I'm sure I will. I'm sure other things will pop into my mind probably when I least expect it. When I'm not trying to think of them.
O: But it's been just fun doing it. And I'm just so glad that it's going to be in the Archives here because now people who want to start an outreach program or be involved in one can come here and read your interview and learn something.
M: I hope it will give some ideas about where to go and what to do. Mary Alice Masher and Bonnie Truax really started something, didn't they?MERRIFIELD
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O: Well, we're grateful to them, too. But thank you so much.
M: Well, you're certainly welcome.
This is tape l, Side 2, about l5 minutes.