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Biography

Archie Arvin was born in Omaha. Taking advantage of the GI Bill he earned a college degree but could not be hired in Omaha. He taught elementary school in Kansas City and worked in a club in the evenings playing music with such greats as Fats Domino. He met his wife, Lauren "Laurie" while playing jazz in Sioux City with pianist Floyd Naylor. After retiring from Job Service, he and Laurie bought what became "Archie's Diner", a place he could play his music that wasn't a bar. Through all this he never gave up his passion for sports, coaching youth teams all three seasons: football, basketball, and baseball. Team spirit and determination was alive and well with Archie-even in the face of discrimination, segregation, and ignorance. Lauren Arvin uses scrapbooks and the diner itself as the backdrop for the story of her husband of twenty-five years.

Transcript

Date of interview August 12, 2009

D’Metrick Rainey: Hi, D’Metrick Rainey.

Lauren Arvin: My name is Lauren Arvin. I’m the wife of Archie Arvin.

D’Metrick: Today’s date, August 11th, uh, 12th. Today we are going to focus on one particular man, Archie [Arvin]. On behalf of your late husband, I would like to thank you for doing this interview with us. Can you give us some information on Archie, how did you guys meet?

Lauren Arvin: How we met? Archie and I are originally both from Omaha and Archie was already here in Sioux City and I came up here to go to school. He and his, and Floyd Naylor were playing music at the Kay Dee Stockyard Station. My friend came home from college one day and says, “You’ve got to come up and see Archie and Floyd play music.” So we went up there and the next thing I know, Archie and Floyd are sitting at our table because Julie had invited them. Julie invited Floyd to dance and so I certainly had to ask Archie to dance. When I asked him, he said, “I thought you’d never ask.” We were an item since then; we spent twenty-five years together.

D’Metrick: Can you give some information on Archie? You said he was an instrument player; can you give us more information about that?

Lauren Arvin: Archie learned to play the piano when he was very young. His sister took the lessons. He misunderstood his mom and thought that if he took lessons he couldn’t go out and play baseball. So he would sit and watch his sister play and then he would sit down and play exactly what she’d played after her and it used to make her really mad. [Laughter] And she..he called it his gift. He always, he could sit down, he could hear something and put it together in an arrangement to sing.

D’Metrick: Now you said he played baseball, can you give us more on his athletic background?

Lauren Arvin: He grew up always playing. In fact, his dad, his dad took him and his friend to Rosenblatt Stadium in Omaha and told them that they were going to go see a picture. They misunderstood his dad and said that they were going to see a picture. They didn’t really want to go because they thought they were going to be inside. They were totally delighted. He took them to the stadium to see Satchel Paige pitch. That was during the time when he was, when Satchel would call all the players in when he was pitching. Yeah he never forgot that; it was one of his good memories of his dad.

D’Metrick: I see you have a book here, would you like to share it?

Lauren Arvin: Oh, sure. This is, this skinny little guy here is Archie. [Pointing to news clipping Archie is second from left.] He started putting teams together when he was in junior high. He played in high school at South High School in Omaha. During that time in the neighborhood that he grew up, he was around a whole lot of different kinds of people. He, you know, just got, everybody pretty much just kind of got along with one another. His first experiences, as he got older, was that he was drafted into the Army. At the time that he was drafted into the Army, it was segregated. So he was in Wichita and they were going to be stationed at MacDill Air Force Base [Florida]. So when they travelled across the South, when they got to a certain point, the people in the train told everyone in the train to pull the shades down because they were afraid that someone might shoot at them as they travelled across the South. When he got to MacDill, he played on the, actually he was in charge of the recreation, but he played on the football, he played football, basketball, and baseball there because the picture that I have is of the football team. This is Archie here. But they won the Negro League Championship over Tuskegee at that time. This was in the early ’40s, I think 1942. Because he was able to go over, because he went into the Army, which he didn’t really like, or didn’t really want to do. But he went into the Army that gave him the opportunity to go to school because he could get funding through the GI Bill and that was the only way that , you know, he would have been able to go to school. He knew he didn’t want to work, he worked in the packing house for a year before he went into the Army and he knew he didn’t want to do that for the rest of his life. The good thing that turned out about that was when his sister saw that he could go to school, or go to college, then she went and got her education. These are mostly pictures of Archie playing in college. When Archie graduated from college, he was not able to get a job in Omaha, Nebraska. He had to go all the way down to Kansas City to get a teaching job. So he spent two years in Kansas City. What he didn’t tell me about, he said he stayed at the Y, which is where all the musicians stayed, what he didn’t tell me at the time was that the Y was here and the school he taught at was about six blocks away and everything in between was the historic jazz district of, which wasn’t historic at that time, the jazz district of Kansas City of 18th and Vine. So this picture [shows picture of band], he played in a little house band down there and that’s where people would drop in to play with him. So this is Fats Domino [points to man in picture holding the microphone] here when he dropped in to play with their little house band there. Then Archie left Omaha and he went to Spencer, Iowa, he and his friends. They played music up there for awhile. These are marquee pictures that they took to send out to get jobs. Then he came here to Sioux City. He came to Sioux City in 1968 and that’s when things were opening up. When jobs were opening up to black people and he took a test here in Iowa to get a job with Job Service and when his score came back it came back sixty-nine and two-thirds and the passing point was seventy and the questions on the test were questions that people would have only known if they worked at Job Service and so because he ran into that barrier, he went down to Des Moines, he was going to apply for a job there and when people here found out that he was applying in Des Moines then they went ahead and interviewed him and he worked for Job Service for twenty-three years.

D’Metrick: Now if you don’t ask me minding, uh, mind me asking, you said he couldn’t get a job in Omaha, why was that?

Lauren Arvin: That was because of his race.

D’Metrick: Oh

Lauren Arvin: Um-hum, yeah, he just ran into, he made applications but he just ran into the, even one of the super, one of the principals that he applied to was somebody that he played football with on the team at Omaha U.

D’Metrick: Now how was his personality when he didn’t get the job or couldn’t get a job? Was he upset about it or was he like, you know, “I’m going to keep on going and trying”? What was his personality then?

Lauren Arvin: Archie always said, “If something bad happens to you make something good happen out of it.” So when he ran into those barriers, he went around them and tried to, you know, tried to

D’Metrick: Always make something good happen. That’s a choice there.

Lauren Arvin: These are pictures of all the teams that he coached here for over thirty years, kids here in the city.

D’Metrick: So he was a big part of the community as well.

Lauren Arvin: Yeah, yeah. He had three seasons. He went from football to baseball to basketball.

D’Metrick: So he stayed busy, too.

Lauren Arvin: Yeah, yeah, he loved being with the kids and spent a lot of time, a lot of hours out on the field with them.

Second video
Lauren Arvin: This little diner here was his retirement plan.

D’Metrick; OK

Lauren Arvin: He wanted a place to play music that wasn’t a bar.

D’Metrick: And the name of this place is called Archie’s Diner as well.

Lauren Arvin: Yes, and the diner itself is a former dining car. It’s been, the diner has been here since 1949 so it’s sixty years old.

D’Metrick: Officially, when did you guys, when did Archie become the owner of it?

Lauren Arvin: In 1985

D’Metrick; OK, 1985

Lauren Arvin: He restored it. He even got recognition from the city, from the museum for restoring it.

D’Metrick: What was it like opening up a diner at 1985? How did you guys feel? How did the city feel about you guys opening up a diner?

Lauren Arvin: Well, we kind of, we didn’t have to be in any rush about opening or anything so we just took our time with it. At the point that we opened it up it was more, it was, it wasn’t something that was something we had to be stressed about because it was Archie’s retirement. He wanted to be here to play music and coach his teams.

D’Metrick: Did Archie ever play music here at the diner?

Lauren Arvin: Oh, all the time. All the time, that’s his Hammond organ there in the corner. They don’t make those anymore; they stopped making those in the seventies.

D’Metrick: Oh, Wow.

Lauren Arvin: That’s a real art to be able to play one of those because there’s so many, you know. He was, he would sit and he’d play one song and then he’d pull stops and push buttons and he’d play another that would give a totally different sound.

D’Metrick: Now was that the only instrument he played or were there other instruments as well?

Lauren Arvin: Oh, he played guitar. He played guitar in Omaha. In fact one of those, that guitar that’s up on the wall over there, that’s one of his guitars. That was from way back. Then there’s a real nice one in the other room there in the trophy case.

D’Metrick: OK, That’s really interesting, and he sang as well.

Lauren Arvin: Oh, yeah.

D’Metrick: Is there any questions the team would like to ask about Archie’s Diner?

Laura Triplett: Lori, would you like to tell us a little bit about the start up of the diner and how you guys, who first brought the diner to Sioux City and just give us a little bit more history about the diner coming to Sioux City and then how you guys became the owners and all the things that you’ve put into the diner.

Lauren Arvin: Oh there’s a lot of history here and a lot of people come in and tell me stories about, in fact Archie came down here and ate here when Dick owned this. It was originally brought here by Dick and Lois Myers in 1949. He had operated a restaurant down here on ____________ and ____________ Street. He bought this and bought it here. He cooked behind the counter there. People would walk in that door at the end and order their food and come sit down over here. He retired in ’76. Then there were a lot of people in and out of here and then Archie bought it in 1995 and he fixed it up. He opened it up with, with, he hired his help in the beginning and he got tired of people not coming or, you know, people being in and out. So he finally invited me to come down here and work with him in ’97. So we spent those three years, just, we were down here Monday through Friday. Then we’d leave here and go to practice in whatever team he was doing. Weekends were games. In fact, Kirk Hinrich played basketball for Archie when he was in the eighth grade. When he played for him, Archie put them in every tournament that they could be in. We’d go, we were in both leagues. We were in the East and the West League. We’d eat, er, we’d play out there, we’d land here for burgers and fries, then we’d go out to West High and play. The kids had no idea that Archie could play and sing. So the first time we’d come down here, they were all sitting at the counter waiting for their food. He went over there and sat down and he played “Big Fat Mama” [Laughter] and you know with junior high guys, you know, they were just, they were laughing. It really broke the ice for them. They just, you know, then they were behind the counter, handing food to one another and having a good time.

D’Metrick: Can you talk a little bit more about Archie and the segregated time that he had.

Lauren Arvin: I know of a few of the experiences that he had as he was growing up. When he was in Omaha he and his friends would go to the Roseland Theater, they would have to sit in the balcony. When Archie was young he really didn’t think anything about it. For him and his little buddies, they were just up there.

D’Metrick: They didn’t understand the relationship.
Lauren Arvin: Yeah, they didn’t understand what that was all about. So they’d be up there and they’d be throwing popcorn down on people. [Laughter] They didn’t understand what that meant until years later.

D’Metrick: How was his reaction when he understood it?

Lauren Arvin: Mostly he wondered why. Why it had to be that way. He ran into, he wondered why and he always, it was in the back of his mind, but he didn’t really dwell on it. It was there, but he didn’t really spend a whole lot of time being angry about it or letting it stop him from doing things. When he was in college he, the team traveled a lot. He played all three sports there, too. When he’d go to Parkville, Missouri, he wouldn’t be able to play football. He’d have to sit out on the sidelines because Missouri’s law said he couldn’t play. When he went to Denver, he wasn’t allowed to stay in the hotel with the team. They were in this great big huge fantastic hotel that they should have all been able to stay at. He had to take money from his coach and go stay at Five Points. The place was called Five Points.


D’Metrick: What was the difference between that great hotel and Five Points, do you know? Was Five Points a great hotel to stay at?

Lauren Arvin: Well, no, it was an area of town. Five Points was an area of Denver. It was an area of town.

D’Metrick: OK

Lauren Arvin: For Archie it was more that he was by himself. He was separated from his team, the guys he played sports with, that he hung out with, that he did things with, and he had to be separated from them just because he was in a certain place. When he got back on campus after this particular event happened, when he got back on campus there was a young man there who talked to him about quitting the team and said we’ll put this in the Omaha World Herald and we’ll make an issue out of it. Archie said no because he didn’t want to quit his team. He knew that the coach, he knew his coach felt bad about it. Eventually over those four years he played in college the university changed their policies and took a lot of those schools off of their schedule. Even though it was a slow process, Archie felt like he contributed because he had the patience to wait and to deal with the situations as they came up. So he saw some good come out of it.

Third video
Lauren Arvin: Here in Sioux City, he had some experiences here. He was in a car accident where he hit a big piece of machinery down, up close to where we lived. If it had been me in the car and I would have hit my head and cracked the windshield, the police would have called for an ambulance, but instead of calling the ambulance, the police got Archie out of the car and assumed that he was DUI and took him downtown and wanted him to walk a white line down there. Well, Archie couldn’t walk that white line because he could only see out of one eye and his depth perception with that light shining in his face the way it was, he knew he couldn’t do it. So when he refused, the policeman shoved him and so Archie grabbed the policeman and got him in a scuffle with him. Archie said that they were scuffling and one of the other policemen was trying to grab him. He said he looked at the other policeman and he was like this far away from his gun [indicates with thumb and finger about three inches] and he stopped and he said, “I have to stop this because”

D’Metrick: Yeah

Lauren Arvin: Yeah, “I have to stop.” So he just backed up from that cop and they put him in jail. Called our attorney, Dan Yellman, went down and got him out of jail. But the reason he hit the equipment was because this little kid had jumped off in front of him, in front of his car, and he hit the equipment instead of the kid. So, yeah, that was a blessing.

D’Metrick: It was. I’m sure he probably told the officers what had happened. What were their reactions?

Lauren Arvin: I don’t know, I don’t know if he was, I suppose that he tried to tell them but they took him downtown and

D’Metrick: Busted him.

Lauren Arvin: That was how the, one thing led to another. Eventually he, the case went to court and his attorney told him that if he would go down and watch the videos, that if this goes to a jury trial the jury is going to be sympathetic to what happened here towards you. But Archie never went down to watch the tape. He let Danny Galva handle it and it never went to court, it was dropped under a reckless driving charge. So Archie’s point of that was was that he knew he wasn’t driving reckless either, but he took that and said, “OK, I’ll accept that charge” to give the other person an out, to give the police an out, too. It was kind of like a truce.

D’Metrick: Yeah, just leave it at that; go where you want to go.

Lauren Arvin: Yeah, yeah. He didn’t want to go through a jury trial over that.

D’Metrick: You know, a lot of times, personally, I’ve been in a situation where I just, I’ll leave it at that, I don’t want to get into it more. Was there more times where Archie had to do that, where he had to call a truce?

Lauren Arvin: You know, there was a time when he was out on the baseball field out at Riverside Park, and one of the kids said something to him. I never knew what it was he said to him, but Archie quit that team and walked off the field. That wasn’t like Archie at all. I was totally shocked when he came home. About half hour later, all of the parents from the baseball team were up in the house and they were talking to Archie. They resolved whatever the issue was with the kid because Archie knew that when the child that said this, it was not a child’s words, it was

D’Metrick: an adult

Lauren Arvin: it was a parent’s words. But it was, but it touched his heart so, he was so taken back by it he just, he came home. He wasn’t going to go back. Then the parents came up into the house and talked to him, so he went back and he finished the season with the team. The thing was, he and the kid were OK. He wasn’t, you know.

D’Metrick: I’m sure it wasn’t the kid’s fault.

Lauren Arvin: Well, it’s what their, it’s things that they’ve heard and they don’t understand how it touches other people when they say it. They don’t know, unless things really get personalized a lot of things are said that the other person doesn’t give a second thought to until they find out it can hurt somebody.

D’Metrick: Now, being a coach, back to when we were talking about the good stuff, being a coach, African American coach, did he get good feedback from the children as well the __________ [interference from car outside diner] coach, it doesn’t what race he is, he’s just a coach. How were the children’s parents?

Lauren Arvin: That was more of a general thing because you know you always run into parents who aren’t happy about this or that, or playing time and that kind of stuff. That was more of a general, just things that every coach deals with. Archie spent all his, Archie just loved being with the kids. He just loved spending his time there. You know a lot of the kids that he spent his time with were kids who didn’t have parents to, he always had a car full of kids, taking them, you know, he always had a car full of kids.

D’Metrick: Is there any more times where he got segregated or any other events that

Lauren Arvin: The one thing that, when he bought this diner, we bought it, he bought it with the intention, this is his retirement plan. He bought it with the intentions of fixing it up and playing his music here and enjoying it. When he bought it, the city came in and put a red tag on it. It just kind of took us back because there was no due process. You know, there’s supposed to be a due process before they even put the red tag on there you’re supposed to have a warning letter and you’re supposed to be able to draw up a plan before that red tag even comes up on the door. Well, they came in and the red tag went up on the door and once your building is red tagged it’s very difficult to

D’Metrick: Get out of it?

Lauren Arvin: Well, it’s difficult to get out of it and it’s difficult to get your business started.

D’Metrick: Oh, no.

Lauren Arvin: So we had to write letters to the city to have them take that red tag off of there and present the plan which is what should have happened in the first place. The red tag was totally unnecessary.

D’Metrick: Did it take a lot of work to get that off?

Lauren Arvin: Um-hum, it took a lot of work to get that off. The bad thing about it was, was that there were people in and out of here for ten years prior who operated this under atrocious conditions who were never confronted or never called on. They were given their licenses with no questions asked.

D’Metrick: If Archie was still here, what would he say about this project and to the young people, us young people, what would he say to us?

Lauren Arvin: He would tell you that when you’re confronted with bad situations to keep on working at what you’re doing; do what you know is right to do and don’t give up. He’d tell you don’t give up.

Laura Triplett: What would be the best way to end this story about Archie?

Lauren Arvin: To end this, if you were doing a video?

Laura Triplett: To end the interview process, what would be the best way to end this and capture Archie?

Lauren Arvin: To know that Archie was a very happy person. No matter what happened to him he was a very happy person; he was content with himself. He enjoyed life.

D’Metrick: This will conclude our interview and I thank you so much for doing it with us. Thank you.