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Biography

Byron and Geri Winston have been married for fifty-two years. Geri was born in Davenport, but raised in Ottumwa. Byron, a native of Ottumwa, is the son of Ivory Winston who was known throughout Iowa for her incredible voice. Both of them graduated from Ottumwa High School. Geri was a nurse for over thirty years. Byron worked steadily, earning his way into supervisory positions and to an early retirement. They are well-respected citizens, landlords, and members of their church.

Transcript

Date of Interview: March 31, 2010

Nalley Solis: Hello my name is Nallely Solis.

Guadelope Gerado: And my name is Guadalupe Gerado

Nallely: And we are here with the International Club from Ottumwa High School, in Ottumwa, Iowa.

Guadelupe: We are here today with...
Geraldine Winston: Geraldine Winston....

Byron Winston: Byron Winston.

Nallely: Ok!

Byron Winston: We’ve been married fifty-two years.

Nallely: Lucky you!

Byron Winston: We both graduated from Ottumwa High School.

Nallely: Good.

Byron Winston: So we got a lot to tell you.

Nallely: We’re ready to listen.

Guadelupe: It is nice to be with you here, today. We would
like to start our interview with you by asking you guys a few questions.

Nallely: Where were you born?

Geri Winston: I was born in Davenport, Iowa.

Byron Winston: I was born in Ottumwa.

Geri Winston: He’s a year ahead of me. I graduated in ’57 and he graduated in ’56. Grade school, junior high, and high school. I met up with him in high school.

Nallely: What do you do for a living?

Geri Winston: I’m retired from the clinic. I worked for doctors most of my life in the hospital. And I do gardening, golfing, grandkids....

Guadelupe: Grandkids....

Geri Winston: I have five grandchildren, one son and four girls. So they keep you busy. I love the grandkids...I’m glad the weather is getting good so I can get outside with them. It is beautiful outside.

Byron Winston: Ok, I’ve retired, but that’s just part of the story. It is really a long story if you want to know history. If you want to know how....the only reason for the way we’re able to, live the way we live is that I had good parents, she had good parents. They taught us the skills you need to succeed. She started working as; oh I think she was a junior in high school. Did you start back then as a junior in high school working, you went to school half a day started working half a day?

Geri Winston: Um-Humm In the office.

Byron Winston: But listen. My wife was raised on welfare.
My father worked at John Morrell and Company. So we started as poor as you could start. But if you’re going to make it, it takes work. And you have got to get your education in high school. You got to get it there. These people that think they can rift raft their way through this thing and think you can make it, well you can’t. I can’t show you anybody in Ottumwa that’s come here from out of town, that’s black, that’s made it. You can’t make it. There are no black school teachers, there’s no policeman, there’s no fireman, there’s no councilman. There’s only one, maybe one county person. If Ottumwa was so great and so receptive to integration, or whatever you want to say, we ought to be able to get somebody, in some position in Ottumwa. But I’m telling you, they talk down there, talk’s diversity but there ain’t none here. I don’t care what they say, _____ they may let one or two or three people through the gate, but the rest of the people don’t have a chance. For another thing, there’s no jobs here. The young blacks that are here have got to start by monitoring their kids and making sure they get their education. You can’t make it today without education. Absolutely it’s going to be impossible. Aside from being a minority or whatever other excuse we can make, but the first thing you got to do is to get yourself qualified.

Nallely: Are you involved in any community activities?

Geri Winston: Not really, I volunteer at the Hospital Gift Shop. I’m in the choir at church, but nothing else.

Guadalupe: How have you been involved in the Civil Rights Movement in Ottumwa?

Geri Winston: They really don’t have a Civil Rights program here in Ottumwa. For Martin Luther King Day here in the recent years, past two three years, they’ve been having programs and stuff, but there’s not a lot about Martin Luther King and it isn’t a state holiday in Iowa. (Editor’s Note: Martin Luther King Say is a legal holiday in Iowa.) The other state’s it’s a state holiday and they close the schools, but they didn’t close the schools here. (Editor’s Note: In Iowa each school district chooses whether to have a full day of school, half day of school or a full day off) So we kind of have programs at our church on our own, but it’s not as big as some of the other states and cities do.

Nallely: Was you family involved in the Civil Rights Movement?

Byron Winston: My uncle was. I had an uncle that was involved in Civil Rights. But uh,
Geri Winston: Oh Uncle Roy. It was Roy Winston. He was in the NAACP. This was back twenty or thirty years ago.

Nallely: How was he involved?

Byron Winston: He was the head of the NAACP. Years and years, that’s the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. That was for years and years he was the head. He was a deacon at our church. He did a lot to promote the church. My family believed in being a Christian, going to church and doing what is right and wrong. There were no alcoholics in our family, there were no drunkards, there’s nobody went to jail. There’s just a lot of things that didn’t happen in my generation and only thing I’m going to tell you, that’s what made it easier for me, because the family had a good name and when they were looking for somebody that was reputable, that had a good name, then you eliminate a lot of people. And so it’s just awful important. Your family’s awfully important to the success you’re going to have in your life, especially if they can help you. If they can’t help you, well that’s something else, but you can’t make it by yourself so you got to have some help.

Geri Winston: Then Roy Winston, he helped the kids get into the YM and YWCA. Blacks were not allowed in there. They could go at night and swim. He helped get the public swimming pool open to the blacks when they weren’t allowed to go over there. They had their special day. So he did a lot of stuff in the City of Ottumwa to help get the black youth be able to get involved in everything around here because it was segregated back in the ’40s, ’50’s., until he stepped in and kept after the city officials and just people in general, to get them to open up to the black children, to young people. ______ we couldn’t go in there and sit. They’d take our sandwiches out. And that was for years and years; no one sat in there. Did we sit in there in the ’50s didn’t we, when you was in high school?

Byron Winston: I used to ______, I never, I have a hard time sitting in there now.

Geri Winston: It has changed now, but it has taken years and years for it to change.

Guadalupe: How do you think African Americans are doing in Ottumwa?

Geri Winston: We don’t have that many here. We’re still a minority, the Hispanics are the majority, and in Ottumwa I think the whites are second, but we are still a minority. (Editor’s note: As of the 2000 census, whites were 95.3%, Hispanics 2.8% and blacks 1.3% of the population.)

Byron Winston: When I come along and I get my jobs, you get called “token”, because you got your job. Whether you was qualified or whether you didn’t; even though I had to take tests to get my job, they, some people still “tokenized you”. I never did like it, but then if you succeed, well then, you can keep on going. It’s been rough; it’s rough getting here. I worked thirty-eight years; a lot of people think you can come out work two or three years and you should be at the top, but that’s not the way it works. In my lifetime I had three jobs. One at John Morrel, one at John Deere, and I worked at the McWilliams’ Drug when I was laid off from John Morrel.

Nallely: What is your happiest memory growing up in Ottumwa?

Geri Winston: I guess my childhood, when we grew up over by Shaker Field. And there’s more discipline back then too. The kids could be out in the yard and no one would harm you. We would play within the neighborhood. Any parent in the neighborhood could stick their heads out the door and call us in; it’s time to come home. We’d sled on our streets, we’d ride bicycles. We had a good childhood coming up and everybody in the neighborhood associated with each other ’cause we all grew up together. So, good memories.

Byron Winston: For me when I was coming up and I was participating in a lot of extracurricular activities, being accepted was monumental for me. To be able to do the things that I wanted to do without any conflicts. I was taught from a young child that just below the Missouri line there’s a problem. Below the Iowa line is Missouri and there’s a problem. My parents taught me, you got to watch what you do and watch what you say. I have no great, great, great memories.

End of First Video Beginning of Second

Guadalupe: What do you think is your saddest memories of growing up in Ottumwa?

Geri Winston: Hmm, I don’t think we really had any sad memories growing up in Ottumwa. We had a home, roof over our head, and my mom took care of us, went to school; had friends. I really don’t remember any really sad times, because we didn’t know any difference what was going on in the outside world. Like Civil Rights was going on down South and stuff; we didn’t have a clue, we just went on with life. We didn’t sit down like the people down South and have our children ________......we didn’t pay any attention to it. It was something that wasn’t happening to us.

Byron Winston: Well for me, when I come to high school, way before Martin Luther King, way before a lot of things and I was just taught to be in a survival mode, that’s all. Probably the saddest thing is that I know a lot of things happen to you, that you don’t really know anything about. And you don’t know how these decisions are made, only those decisions that are made for or against you. At my class reunion, now I made a speech at our class reunion and I complemented my classmates on their appearance, because in our school, I virtually knew no difference between black and white. Here’s what a lot of white people will do, though. They’ll take you and tell you that “I don’t look at you as being black”. But my friend might be standing next to me, and he can be any kind of color, but he don’t have that passage.

Guadalupe: How have things changed since you were say, of like twenty years of age until now?

Byron Winston: It depends on where you are on the social ladder. You know, and it makes a difference who you’re associates are. I know that there is a period of my life where I was down in the muck and the mire, with everybody else for years, and I realized this is not the place I want to be. All people wanted to do was borrow your money, buy them a cigarette or buy them a drink. When I got to John Morrell Company and I got in with the people I thought were making it, everybody’s self supporting. You don’t have to worry about, “Buy ’em a drink, give ’em a cigarette.”, and I like that. ’Cause when I had my check I had my whole check. We could live; we were married, but the idea of being self supporting and be able to raise your family and being a reputable person, that’s something I’ve truly tried to carry through our whole lives. That’s how we stayed together all this time. It’s just that we have similar goals and similar wants, but it’s how you carry yourself, what you’re doing constructively; your faith.

Geri Winston: It did change for us. When we first got married we rented, we decided we wanted to buy a house. All the realtors told us that we could only buy in certain areas. We weren’t allowed to buy anywhere else. And so then we decided just to build; there were still certain areas that we could just build in. It’s changed now, maybe because just us two status is changed. We have rentals and when we first started to have rentals, we had trouble renting. Now our names’s established, we don’t even advertise half the time. When it’s empty, they call us. But it took years of people seeing that we were honest, hardworking, and kept everything clean and took care of everything. We first started out it was hard, because no one wanted to do anything and you’re on the wrong side of the town and they didn’t want to come live on that side of the town and stuff. So we had to get established, it has taken us long years to get established. No, we just couldn’t just say I wanted to live over there; they wouldn’t allow you to live over there and this was especially in the ’50s.

Nallely: What do you think is your biggest accomplishment?

Geri Winston: Raising our children; establishing ourselves as good citizens in Ottumwa. We have left a mark that everybody knows on our history. They respect us and we have gotten respect. That’s important. We really didn’t change our ways. We just lived the way we were always taught to live, honest and not to be in trouble. It took us a lot of years to do that. We have a home and we’re established.

Byron Winston: For me, part of it is, we had a lot of challenges as young people. My wife, now see, she won’t take credit for this, but she worked in doctor’s offices maybe for thirty years. She’s a nice looking woman, dressed nice, and had all the attributes anybody’d like to have for a woman working in his office. Everybody can’t see that. The formula that worked for us won’t work for everybody. And you take me for instance, when I was working at John Morrell and Company and I was lugging beef and this guy comes in there, “What are you doing lugging beef?” So he said, “Would you like to be a supervisor?” I said, “Well I have to go home and I have to talk with my wife.” That’s what I said, but I was just holding him off, see? Anyway, so next time I couldn’t wait to see him because I was told him I wanted the job, next time I saw him. So I had to take these isometric tests with three other guys to get this job. OK, after I got the job they said, “Well, you’re not going to get that Winston, they’re all union people. You can’t get them.” And I said, “They need to ask me, just ’cause you was union, I didn’t want to lug beef for the rest of my life.” So anyway, I got the job. So after I got the job they weren’t sure how smart I was or how smart I wasn’t. So they said, “Well you’re going to have to time study this department. So we know what you think about it.” They had me study the department and time study it and then I gave them all the time study work back. They said, “Since you got this all time studied Byron, were going to put you out there and you can make it work.”, because I was doing away with four or five jobs from this one department, see? So the very first night, I was able to make it work, but I had to stay right out there on the job, right out there on the people, keep them out of the restrooms, keep them working, so they would do what they were supposed to do. You can’t do the job if you’re sitting in the restroom. So this story gets so long, the things that we have done. I retired at fifty-five; I retired at fifty-five years old, which is going to be impossible for the next group that comes along. I got an early out and I took it. When we retired we had eight places paid for. It’s tough at fifty-five years old to have one paid for. If you aren’t paying attention to what you’re doing. We had eight places paid for...then after we retired, we brought three places since we retired. We bought Bavara’s, we bought Angela’s house and we bought that duplex over on Hickory and Manning. But it is all about how you conduct yourself and your business. Then when Morrell shut down in ’73, then I was lucky enough to go to John Deere and I worked there twenty-one years. I worked there for one year. I was a machine operator. Then they called me when I was laid off, they called me when I was laid off and asked me if I would be interested in being a supervisor, ’cause I’d had supervisory experience before. So I was a supervisor over there for twenty years. So everybody ain’t going to get those opportunities, everybody not going to get those opportunities. I felt like as much money as I was making for us, they say, if I don’t show something and if I don’t do something with all these opportunities we’ve had, we’ve wasted our time.