During the mayhem of the political season, and the absolute clutter and noise that national politics had degenerated into, I think about Betty Roberts. She was the first woman to serve on the Oregon Supreme Court, the first woman on the Oregon Court of Appeals, and a State Senator and State Representative.
We spoke in June of 2009, two years before she died. Because I had far more interviews than my book could accommodate, Better’s was one that was not included in the book. Below is an excerpt from my interview with her, taken verbatim.
My father, David Murray Cantrell, was born in Texas in 1887. He never talked about his education—my mother said he only went through the sixth grade—but his letters to me were always well-written. Maybe the punctuation was not correct, but he had a sense of humor, even in his letters.
Your father was partially paralyzed after drinking bootlegged liquor in the 1930s, which had a huge effect on your entire family. How would you characterize him?
He had potential but got sidetracked by his desire to have fun. After being poisoned, he was in the sanatorium for 18 months. He gained reuse of his arms eventually. By the time he came home, he was on crutches, so he could get around, but his feet were misshapen and he wore high top ankle boots. He was always messing with his shoes, trying to put things in them to give him a more firm foundation. He did all sorts of experiments with his shoes, and finally got himself off the crutches and onto two canes.
When he came home, he had to find something to keep his mind going. He always wanted to read the newspaper, and we got the Denver Post on Sunday after Mother started working and had a regular salary. He was always very enchanted, very curious, about what was going on: rain, shine, storms, dust, northers coming in, dust storms, all that sort of thing. He also kept up a little bit of politics. So he had curiosity about him, even though not much of an education.
His experience of drinking even though it was illegal and taking that risk of drinking tainted stuff framed a lot of my thinking. He was a good person. He didn’t hang around bars, but he liked to go out and have a drink on Saturday night. He came home to his family. But because of somebody else’s morals, I didn’t have a dad who was able to work.
You said that after his paralysis he was embittered. Did he blame anybody else?
No. No, no, no. Well, you know, if he blamed the person who served him the drink, or the manufacturers, you would expect that, but on the other hand he wasn’t supposed to be drinking. So who could he blame? I think that’s why he was so upset.
He did what he could in terms of our income. He took a vocational training class in repairing shoes, but he was never hired as a shoe repairman. In the Depression repairing shoes was a pretty big deal, if you could afford to repair the shoes, you know. We couldn’t, as a rule. We tied knots in the strings and Dad used to cut up cardboard and put it inside the sole so that at least our foot wasn’t on the ground in the hole.
What things did you do that got his approval or disapproval as you were growing up?
I never thought I had to do anything to get his approval when I was growing up, because he was very attentive. When I was older, I understood that he wasn’t able to give me a lot of attention, but he taught me how to play solitaire and chess and poker. It was entertaining for him, too, to have somebody to share that with. And given card playing or going to school, I’d much prefer card playing! He liked the fact that I was a tomboy. He liked that I would go and play baseball with the boys. And he liked that I would climb trees. He told me that I could run faster than any kid in the neighborhood. To me, that was really a great compliment.
Roberts married in 1942and moved to Oregon with her first husband, a banker.
Did your father help shape your attitudes about the possibilities for a girl or a woman? And as you look back on your life, how did it affect you to have your father not be able to be the breadwinner of the family?
He was very supportive that everybody ought to be able to do whatever he or she wants to do. After my kids were born, I decided I needed more education. I was putting a lot of energy into playing golf and bridge and being PTA president and going to church circle, when I said, “Let’s find a way to make some money.” That’s another story I learned from my dad, that every woman needs to get her own education and her own career and be prepared.
Did he emphasize it?
No. I learned it from his not being able to support us. And I had to see my mother take over that responsibility. When I saw my children growing, I asked myself, “What am I gonna do when they’re all grown? Am I still going to be playing golf and bridge?”
If you were to look back at your relationship with your father, what are the important things that you drew from him in your life?
Oh, I think his general outlook on life. Early on, it was life is to be lived and enjoyed and happy and so do what you want to do to find it. And we might differ about what one chooses to find in order to be happy, but he pretty much knew what he wanted to do, and he wanted to just have fun! Do his job, make some money, keep his family, travel around, be outdoors, you know. He was satisfied.
Then I learned from how he handled his illness. He was still gonna live the way he wanted to live. He had to find a way to be independent, because he and Mother never really lived together as husband and wife after his illness. Eventually he moved out and lived in a men’s home. Then my brother Bob, who worked in Chicago, bought this big piece of land to build his dream home on. Dad went up and helped Bob with clearing the land. So he was getting around pretty well, and he was pretty strong in his upper body. Eventually he had his own living space at Bob’s, and worked in the garden. It was kind of a great conclusion for his life because he got to be in the outdoors, his wants and needs were taken care of, and he had work to do. Dad died in 1964 of a heart attack while he was out in the garden at Bob’s house.
I think I was 60 the last time I saw him, which was in Chicago. The last letter I have from him says he would try to come to Oregon to see me. And in that letter he referred to my interest in politics as “Betty’s Folly.” He never took politicians seriously, but he wanted to come out and see what I was up to.
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