GT: So Your Father, Cecil, Can You Tell Me a Little Bit About Your Family How Did They

BOB CHRISMAN

BC: My name is Bob Chrisman. I was born in Enterprise, Oregon in June of 1938. My father was Cecil Chrisman who was a local attorney. I have gone through my education, grades 1 through 12, in the Wallowa schools. I graduated from Whitman College in 1960, and from Walla Walla College with my Masters Degree in 1968.

GT: So your father, Cecil, can you tell me a little bit about your family--how did they come to be in Wallowa County?

BC: Well, my father followed his brother who came to Wallowa County in probably about 1932 or 1933, and was the district attorney in Enterprise at that point. My father graduated from law school at the University of Oregon and decided that he would come to Wallowa and practice, with his brother being in Enterprise. His primary reasoning was that he would develop a bunch of clients here in Wallowa. He had a law school friend, who settled in La Grande, and he would develop a bunch of clients in La Grande, and then my father would move to La Grande and they would have a partnership. But his friend was never able to garner very many clients, so he ended up leaving and my dad was left here in Wallowa, where he spent his entire lifetime as a practicing attorney. In fact, he was still practicing when he passed away.

GT: So he was here right about the time the Bowman-Hicks Lumber Company was going out of business?

BC: Yes.

GT: And was he--were you aware--when he came was he aware of the African-American population in this area? Do you know?

BC: Well, he was here--Mr. Ashby was the man that basically brought the black people here as far as cutting trees. I think my dad represented the Bowman-Hicks Lumber Company and he became very good friends with Mr. Ashby. Basically, Mr. Ashby kind of involved my father in the moving of the people from Maxville into Wallowa. That’s how basically our family relationship was with the black community in Wallowa. Mr. Ashby called my father and wanted to know if he had any problem with dealing with black people. Dad said, well, I don’t know any of them, so I don’t know whether I do or I don’t. But, he said, I certainly have no problems with it. Well, he said, there is a little piece of ground down there, which is now the Wallowa park, and he said you go buy it. He said we are going to move these houses in from Maxville. You will rent to them then. Dad said okay, and my dad bought this little piece of ground. He said a couple of years went by and they moved the houses onto the ground, and he never heard from Mr. Ashby again

Finally, one day he called my dad and said, “Well, they are paid for now.” Those houses--he had been taking the rent. He had brought those--basically what they were was old railroad cars--and had put them in there. So then my dad got in the rental business. He basically owned the little town down there. But along with the rental business, he became the attorney and confidant of most of the people who lived down there. Basically, through the rest of his life he represented them and they called him Lawyer Christmas. He just really had some very, very good friends.

Ivoney Sassinett (sp) was probably one of his favorites. After Ivoney reached Social Security age, he didn’t trust anybody, particularly with money, so he used to drive over from La Grande and bring his Social Security check into my dad, and my dad would walk down to the bank and cash it and bring back the cash and give it to him. Then he would go up the street and buy his groceries at Shell Merc and then he would go back, until he would be back the next month. He got sick one time and the hospital called my father and said, you know, you have got to come out here and help us out. Ivoney has got all his money in his hand and he won’t turn loose of it unless you are there to get it. I happened to go with my dad that time, and we went in and there were two people in the room--Ivoney and somebody else. My dad came in and as soon as Ivoney saw him, he just held his hand out and handed him this big wad of money. I could see this guy in the other bed thinking, gosh, what’s this guy doing? Is he robbing this poor old man? But that was kind of the relationship they had. He just totally didn’t trust anybody but my dad.

The Marsh family, of course they were my age, so I went to high school with Amos and Frank. I totally enjoyed it and I think it was a good experience for me, being from an area that didn’t have non-white kids to go to school with and learn to know them and like them and hang out with them. I knew them probably better than if I had gone to a large school where everybody was kind of anonymous, you know. It was a good experience.

GT: Why do you think that relationship between your father and the black community was so special?

BC: Well, I think primarily, from what I observed as a young kid growing up, my dad was a pretty compassionate person and I have no idea of how much rent they paid, but most of them--the people who were down there--they were working for a salary and they didn’t have a lot. My dad, rather than take money, he would have them do things for him. He was fair with them. I think that’s primarily why they thought so much of him and trusted him.

GT: Do you think his friendships went beyond just the business? He was a compassionate man in his work, but did you think the relationships were deeper than that?

BC: Oh, I think very definitely. He considered them his friends. He had no feelings of, from a segregationist point of view--my grandfather had the same kind of attitude with the Celilo Indians. His being sheriff and he had to deal with a lot of them, you know, bad ones and good ones. Chief Tommy Thompson was my grandfather’s best friend. I think that carried over to my dad. My dad was just pretty color blind. He just didn’t really--I never heard him say a negative thing about anybody of color. ))

GT: So, how about your father--did he have any of the blacks over to dinner at his home?

BC: No. The reason that he didn’t was because Mr. Ashby said that’s not the way you treat blacks. He said, well, you just don’t have them to dinner. My mother would always try, and they wouldn’t--when they would come to our cabin at the lake and fall trees and do that kind of thing. They would bring their own lunch and they would not come in and eat. They kind of knew that that’s-- I guess, Mr. Ashby told them, I don’t know. I don’t remember him. My dad talked about him a lot, but he never called him Newt. You always called him Mr. Ashby, so he must have been a very stern man and had--I have no idea what his attitude toward the black community was, but I have a fair idea because he thought, well, that’s just the way it is.

GT: What other types of southern tradition standards did Mr. Ashby sort of line out for your Dad?

BC: Well, he said, you know, you don’t want to let them get behind on the rent, you have got to be stern, and everything. Well, my dad could not--that’s not the way he operated. But, basically, I think mostly it was the social aspects of it. He said you just don’t want to be socializing with them and everything. Well, here, it didn’t make a lot of sense. Frank and Amos were at our house all the time as little kids. The adults, I don’t know if he told them that or what, I really don’t know why they seemed--they just wouldn’t come to the door. They would sit out on the porch and have their lunch and do their thing. So that was kind of the way it was. I think, well, he was the boss. I am sure that he held a big stick. You had better behave the way he thinks the way you ought to or else.

GT: I have interviewed a lot of amazing people in this town. I consider the people I interview and I sit and break bread with--this is really my family today. They have honored me by really telling the story from their heart--telling it honestly. One of the phrases that comes up a lot is that the southern people gave them names to refer to them by. So, a lot of the folks I have interviewed didn’t know the last names of the people. They said, well, there is Nigger Bob and Nigger whatever. That was how they prefaced the names. Was that something that you had heard as well?

BC: No, I didn’t. My father called them by their name and I knew their names. There was one fellow they called Snowball, and I know he was a lot of trouble and they finally--I think Pa Pat said you don’t need to be here anymore. They kicked him out of the community down there. But I don’t know who he was, but I heard people talking about it--I heard my dad, he referred to him as Snowball. I have no idea what his name was or who he was. I do know, some of my uncles were from the south and some of them, you would hear them talking about--I was never really aware of who they were referring to.

My dad, he was doing--like the Sassinetts, Bobby Sassinett. The Sassinetts had a--somebody came through here and they had a child. They, I guess, wanted to get rid of it, and so they left it with, not Ivoney, but Odell and Ruby. They were gone for a couple of years, and Odell and Ruby just basically adopted this child. Well, the people came back and wanted their child back. They had no legal entitlement to the baby, so they came running to my father, you know, what can we do? My dad said, well, really there is not much we can do. But he said I will find you a child, so he did. He found this little boy who is named after me. Bobby Sassinett. I don’t know any of the--where he found the child or anything about it, but within a couple of weeks, they had a child. So, he did things like that. I never, ever heard him refer to those names. I am sure he knew who they were, but no he never did do that.

GT: Do you recall any names of the African-American folks that had families, whether just their last name, or their first names--do you have any families that you know?

BC: Well, of course there were the Pattersons and the Marshes. I have never been very good with names. And, of course, the Sassinetts. Those three families that I was well acquainted with and was as adults, because after my dad passed away I had to handle a lot of the things he had been handling for people. I know the Sassinett family in particular--they used to come in about every two weeks to have me get something untangled or whatever--they wanted to buy a car or do this and that, so I did that kind of thing for them.

GT: Yeah. So tell me about Pa Pat.

BC: Pa Pat was just about the most wonderful man that I ever met. He was just had this wonderful sense of humor and he just--he always wore bib overalls. The front of them was always worn out. So I asked him one time why. He said, “Well, when you are as fat as I am, I can’t step over a tree, so I lay my stomach on there and I pivot--so I wear my britches out that way.” I just thought he was great. I kind of got to re--after I moved back here, I got to know him again. I had known him as a little kid. He was pretty much the mayor of the--what he said when this Snowball guy, whatever his name was, and it might have been Minor, but when they said he couldn’t live there anymore, it was Pa Pat that said that. He said, you are not behaving right so you have to go somewhere else. Yeah, he was the minister and the leader and just a good guy.

GT: Tell me something that was indicative of Pa Pat--if you saw this person walking down the road, how would you know that was Pa Pat? Besides the clothing…

BC: Because he would have a smile. I never saw the man mad. I had to haul him up to the hospital one time. He used, when he would have a problem, he would call my partner or I and we would take him up to the doctor. So we got him in there and Harley Scholz was the doctor. He said, “You know Pa, you have got (I think he had gallstones and they were pretty painful)--you are just going to have to quit eating all that bad food or it’s going to kill you.” Pa Pat said, “Let me tell you something, Dr. Scholz. (I think at that point he was 82 or 83 years old.) “You will never get as old as I am, so don’t you be telling me how to eat!” And then he just laughed. He was a great guy. Ma Pat, she passed away soon after I moved back, but I don’t remember seeing her anywhere but at the house. That’s when Lilly May Hadnot, you know Macy, when she came, she came to take care of Ma. She was a niece, I think, of Ma.

GT: After they both passed away, she didn’t leave?

BC: No, she got the house. You know, the community built that house for them.

GT: Tell me about that.

BC: That happened after I had gone off to college and was teaching, but the old house burned down. So, whether the insurance was inadequate to fix it back up-- a bunch of the local guys got together and they donated lumber and they brought--whether the sawmill--I don’t even know that there was a sawmill going at that time--but anyway, they built the house that is there now. It was pretty much built with volunteer labor. Pa was still alive. I think Ma was still alive at that point, and Macy, she was there. When Pa passed away, she ended up with the house and she owned it when she passed away.

GT: That triggered another thought--none of the people really owned their spaces back then.

BC: No, right.

GT: Was that because of the law or because of other things?

BC: No, I don’t think they could afford--and I don’t know--now, see, the Marshes did. They owned theirs. But whether they did initially and then my father sold it to them, I don’t know. But I think the wages being what they were; they probably just couldn’t afford to buy things. They could afford the rent. So I think it was more economic than anything else. I think when they finally got to the place where they could afford it, that’s why they moved to La Grande. Because there was quite a community there, and I think most of the people who left here and moved to La Grande, like your father--I mean he bought a house out there. It probably made it a little easier for them there than had they stayed here.