Latah County Oral History Collection

Sister Mary Christina, 1976-08-19, Interview - MP3 Recording

Lee Magnuson, Interviewer

Latah County Oral History Collection, University of Idaho Library

Transcription by: Courtney Berge

[Small talk while someone speaks on the telephone]

[Interview starts at 2:05]

SMC: Well, Mr. and Mrs. McConnell came from the east and they met over here in Oregon. That's Mrs. Borah's parents. They were married in Salem, Oregon, then they moved to California and Mrs. Borah was born in Arcata?, but in articles many of them say she was born in Eureka, but Arcata? is just a suburb of Eureka. Then they came back, she lived in Salem as a child. Then moved to Yamhill in Oregon and Mr. McConnell came here to Idaho and built this mansion. And they moved in the day before Christmas in 1886, and they had an open house after they moved in. And although Mrs. Borah was at such an advanced age, she remembered the name of a lady by the name of Mrs. Johnson who went through the house and she saw the lavatory, and said, "The idea, a privy in the house, I'll never come in here again!"

And then later on, before they went to Idaho and lived here in Oregon, little Mary became ill. The doctor didn't know what was wrong and Grandma said, Grandma lived with them, "I'd like to take her to Portland. I know a doctor there that could help her." So Grandma took Mary McConnell on the train to Portland. And on the way there was a lady across the aisle staring at the baby. When they got to Portland, Grandma went to Portland Hotel, its torn down now it was a beautiful old fashion hotel where all the dignitaries who came to town went. So Grandma went to find a room, and she put the baby on the bed, and they didn't have bathrooms by each room in those days, so she put the baby in the bed and left to go to the bathroom. Came back, the baby was gone. So she rushed down stairs and said, "Did you see anybody carrying a baby?" She described the type of blanket or whatever was around the child. "Yes, we saw a lady carry that baby out." So they called the police right away and went out searching and they found a lady holding the baby about a few blocks away and they could tell by the look of the lady that she wasn't normal. They found out later that she had lost a child and she saw this child and she thought that was hers. So, if they hadn't found her she would have had an entirely different life than what she had.

So, then in one picture I have here, maybe some of you have seen the picture, she has a necklace of hand carved elephants. They're all ivory. And she said an old Indian here in Idaho carved them and gave them to her when she was a child.

And then she, I think you know that part of it, that she met Mr. Borah when her father became governor of Idaho and they were married. Then they went to Washington D.C. in 1907. And they were there, not very long, when Mr. Borah became very prominent in the senate. He had a very, very wonderful way of speaking. He was already becoming prominent in Washington D.C.. He came home one evening and Mary said, "We got an invitation to go to the White House, we're not going are we?" "We certainly are," he said, "to get an invitation from the White House is practically a command." "But I have nothing to wear." You know how most women will say, right? I have nothing to wear. "Well," he said, "get something to wear." So she went over to town to get a dress, and found one. She loved pink, so she had a hard time getting a dress to fit because she was very small. I don't think she weighed more than 100 pounds. Along in the conversation they found out she was Senator Borah's wife, and then one of the clerks ran to the propriety and said, "Just think Senator Borah's wife is here buying an outfit to go to the White House." So the proprietor came along and saw the pink dress and brings a pair of pink shoes. And, "Oh, I can't afford that." "It's on the house." So he gave her the shoes and gave her some accessories to go with this pink dress.

So it was her first trip to the White House and Theodore Roosevelt was President. And she was placed right beside him. Theodore Roosevelt was a very hard person to entertain. It seems there was a man by the name of Mr. White that Roosevelt mentioned. He knew something about a Mr. White. He had read some book that he wrote. And then Mrs. Borah said, "You know that Mr. White was a very dear friend of Billy's and he spent a vacation at our house and he was writing that book and I named it." He had proposed some names, I wish I could remember the name of the book. Anyway, they talked about this book and after the meal was over they all wondered what on earth she talked about to get that conversation with the President. Because everyone said he was a very hard person to converse with.

Now she knew all the Presidents' wives from Theodore Roosevelt on down to Johnson. But she also knew the Nixons because the children, when they were little girls, they lived in an apartment not far from the Borahs. And when they first, maybe some of you remember the old electric cars, they were electric cars that were invented were used around about 1912 along in those years. Some man gave her an electric car, it had her name on the side of it. And she wanted to surprise, she always called her husband Billy, so she had it behind the house, or behind the apartment, and Mr. came home and she said, "I have a surprise for you." So she took him outside to see the car and he didn't like it at first. She said, "Well, he gave it to me and I couldn't say no and he already had my name on it." So she often took Billy to the Congress, when he went as a Senator to his work.

And she, of course, knew all the different ambassadors. And one day she was out some place and there was a little child, son of a little ambassador, and he was trying to think of her name. He said, "Oh, Little Borah." So that's the way the term arrived, you've heard that "Little Borah." That little boy called her "Little Borah" and that stuck. So she was called "Little Borah" the rest of her life.

Now have you heard how Mr. Borah died? I haven't seen any article any place, but she told me that Billy used to go out every morning. He loved horses, so he took a horse with him to Washington D.C. and every morning he'd go riding on his horse. So they always had breakfast at 6 o'clock in the morning. This particular morning, she was already in her place. She had a servant by the name of Daisy, a Negro lady she loved very much. So she said, "Daisy, go see what's the matter with Billy." So she went and he was in the bathroom and she called him, he didn't answer. She said, "He's in the bathroom, he doesn't answer." So she says "Run down the hall and get the doctor." They lived in a big apartment, so the doctor came and he couldn't get the door open, so he got some other men to help him open the door. And Billy had stepped out of the bathtub, slipped, and knocked his head against the doorknob and he's lying there unconscious. They picked him up and took him to the hospital and he died three days later, he never came to. He was very active yet, 75 years old, he was getting kind of old. At that time, that was in 1940, she was 70 and he was 75.

I imagine you are all acquainted with that terrible disease she had here in Idaho, the parrot fever. But there's one, the story she tells about is different than the article, but there's one part that she tells I think was very very beautiful. She said the nurse told her, that one day while she was lying there unconscious, when she got the parrot fever it was in July, and it was very hot, when she came to there was snow on the ground, so she was sick that long. So when the nurse told her, after she was better, one day the nurse went in the room and Billy was kneeling by her bed and he was crying and he said, "Oh God, please, please let Mary live. Don't let her die, I need her." And all the doctors said that she would not live. Hardly anybody ever lived after they had parrot fever, but finally one day she came to and the nurse said, "Are you speaking?" and she said, "I'm hungry." And she ran out and called the doctors and nurses, and she came back and Mrs. Borah said again, "I'm hungry." "Then what would you like to eat?" "Mashed potatoes."

Then after Mr. Borah died, she came back to Idaho, but she stayed a very short time because all her friends were gone. She didn't know any of the people anymore around here, so she went back to Washington to live. She lived there 'til about 1960, and she became very well interested. She was lovely person, always wanted to do things for other people, never thought of herself. So she went to the hospitals and visited soldiers from Idaho and used to write to their mothers about their sons. She did a beautiful job with these soldiers.

Then one day she was invited to a birthday party. Some lady lived in a hotel, and this hotel had these revolving doors, they go around and you get in a section and somebody gets in the next section, you've seen those doors. Well she was in this section of the door and a young girl, about 18, very heavy set, big girl, came in and gave that door a shove and knocked Mrs. Borah against the wall. Now she was a little frail person, and knocked her down, but she got up and they said, "Are you all right?" And of course she was the kind that didn't want to give in, and she said "Yes" and they helped her to the elevator. She went up to the birthday party and they played games, and she managed to sit there at the chair. Then they get up and they're going to the next room to look at the birthday cake and she couldn't move. "Mrs. Borah are you ill?" And then she told them what happened, they were gonna get an ambulance, she says, "No, you call" she had a Negro chauffer, and she said, "You call...Whatever his name was." So he came and picked her up and carried her off to the car. He said, "Shall I take you to the hospital." "No, take me home." So he took her home. And they called the doctor and the doctor came and he was horrified when he saw her, but he said, "Now I'm gonna get a nurse to sit with you because as soon as you think of something you want, you'll get up and get it." So the nurse sat with her until she went to sleep and the next morning when she awoke, she felt something big on her side and she pulled up her gown. There was a big blood clot under the skin and her leg was black all the way down. So she called Daisy, "Look Daisy, what's this." And Daisy took one look and she ran to the phone and called the doctor and the doctor came and they brought an ambulance and they took her to the hospital. And she heard the doctor say, "She survived parrot fever, but she'll never get over this." But she did, she must have had a good heart. Anyway, she got over it, and then that was shortly before, or around 1960.

So she was there, and she had two nieces in Portland, her sister Ollie lived in Portland. And that's a question often asked, "How did Mrs. Borah get to Portland and to Beaverton, why wasn't she in Idaho?" Well Mrs. Lueddemann, was her sister's name, lived in Portland, and by the way Mr. Lueddemann was a personal friend of Helen Keller. And Helen Keller used to come to Portland to visit the Lueddemanns. And when Mr. Lueddemann was ill, when these two girls, Mrs. Lueddemann had two daughters, Mary and Joan, they lived part-time in Washington D.C. with Mrs. Borah and went to school there. And when Mary, one of Mrs. Lueddemann's daughters, came to visit Mrs. Borah she said, "Aunt Mamie, your sick. I'm gonna take you to Portland with me." So Aunt Mamie was happy to have somebody take care of her, I guess. So they sold, it's sad, she had a collection of between two and three thousand elephants, and she loved that collection very much, but she managed to bring a few of them with her to Portland. But her things were sold, and she was brought to Portland and lived with her sister for a while. And then her sister became blind, so the two nieces put their mother and their aunt in a nursing home. They were in a nursing home just a few years before they came, they heard about Maryville, so they brought them to Maryville in August 1966. And so she was there until she died January 1976. Ollie died, I don't know just what year, but Ollie was 96 when she died.

Now in 1968 when Nixon was campaigning, he came to Portland. We have primaries in May in Portland. He came to Portland to campaign, so I knew what hotel they were staying in. So I called and asked for the person who was taking care of, sort of secretary for Nixon. And so someone answered, and they got Mrs. Nixon, so I talked to Mrs. Nixon for about 15 minutes on the telephone, explained that I was a personal friend of Mrs. Borah's. I said, "Now I know Mr. Nixon cannot campaign on election day. Wouldn't it be nice if you would come out to Maryville and visit Mrs. Borah because she knows you." And Mrs. Nixon said, "I'm very sorry, but we're planned to go to Seattle tomorrow, election day, so we can't come out." But she said, "Couldn't I talk to her on the phone." I said, "No, that's not possible because she does not have a phone in her room because her hearing is very bad. We'd have to take her quite a distance to a phone and then she wouldn't understand you and it upsets her very much to try to talk on the phone." I said, "but you could write to her." So she wrote a letter. I had a chance to read the letter and she mentioned me in that letter. And I was gonna ask her if I could have it, but somebody stoled it, I never got it. I was sorry. I would have liked to have had that letter in my book.

Then in November, her birthday's in October. That same year when Nixon was campaigning for president, he knew when her birthday was, so he had the telephone company, it must have been an expensive deal they did. The telephone company came and established a special telephone in the living room of Maryville, and Nixon knew the exact time they were gonna have this party, it was broadcast on the TV and they had a loudspeaker on so she could hear it. And he talked on the telephone direct to her and wished her happy birthday while they could see him on the TV. Now they planned that whole thing for her birthday, that was a big ad for him, I guess, when he was campaigning.

Then when her 100th birthday came along. They made all kinds of wonderful plans. First of all, there was a girl, a very beautiful girl, Maureen Bassett, who graduated from our school. Her whole family just loved Mrs. Borah, they went often to see her. Maureen was working for a radio company, radio place in Hillsboro, so I told her, "Wouldn't it be nice to have Mrs. Borah make a tape and have it on the radio." "Oh, that would be wonderful!" So she had me go with her and we went over to Mrs. Borah's room and she asked her questions. And she told the story of getting that dress for her visit to the White House. She talked for 45 minutes on the radio, it turned out beautifully. Do you have that tape?

UNKNOWN 1: No

I must ask this niece, has the tape. And I'm gonna ask her if she can't have another one made and give it to the museum because it was just beautiful the way she spoke that whole 45 minutes. She was very rational until she was about 102 and that was lovely. Well, then on her actual birthday the Republican ladies from Portland planned a grand affair. They had a bouquet, it was about that big around, one hundred red roses. Oh, it was a gorgeous bouquet. And they had a big reception for her, many people came. Nearly every one of her birthdays TV stations would come and take pictures. Now for her 100^th^ birthday it was broadcast around the world because there was another family that was very much, many families just loved her, and these people were related to one of our sisters and a boy, a young man, had been there to visit and now he was in Vietnam and this came over the TV in Vietnam, and that boy got so excited, "Oh, I know that lady, I know that lady, I saw her!" He was so excited seeing that clear over in Vietnam from here. That must have been exciting for the boy.

Now she was, well I'm just about finished now, but I can tell you more if you want more, that's as much as I have down here. That she was loved very very much. She was one of these persons that just everybody loved. People'd come in and she liked, I'd put my arms around her and kiss her, and oh she just loved it. She was just a darling. Had any of you see her at all?

UNKNOWN 2: Yes, I did. I saw her many times

Did you come to Maryville?

UNKNOWN 2: No, but I saw her always when she came to Moscow. She used to stay with me, she and Ollie Lueddemann. We were old friends. But I wanted to tell you was, in the letters that she wrote she'd tell about "my angel sisters" the angel sisters were the sisters at Maryville. My angel sisters.

Well she was a person that was very outstanding. There are very few in the world like her, that's true. Here's one experience she had, I wasn't going to tell you this, but as long as I have more time, it was strange, she had such a wonderful way of dealing with people. Some of these boys that were insane, soldiers, she would go to visit them and there were some, you know with different degrees of insanity, and she'd kiss them and they call her mother. Some of the boys said, "If any of the boys ever touch you, we'd kill 'em." And one boy that she liked very very much was pleading with her to go to the airport. And she thought he was more rational than he was, and so she begged the authorities, and they said, "No, you'd better not." And she said, "But he wants to go so badly." And Mrs. Borah had her own private chauffer, and they said, "Well, all right then." So they sent another man along, one of the orderlies from the insane asylum. And she was on one side of this boy and this orderly on the other side, and he wanted to go to the airport, and he behaved very beautifully on the way. Then when they got to the airport he got out, then they could hardly get him back in the car. See he planned, he was gonna get on a plane and go someplace. So they got him back in the car and he fought all the way back. She said she was just black and blue when she got back. And they told her, they warned her you know, she never would try a thing like that again.

And she gave another example of how careful they should be. There was some boy there in the asylum that seemed to be getting very normal. And they thought he was all right, and the doctors thought he was all right now to be sent out from the asylum. And between the asylum and another building there was a tunnel underneath the street, and so he went down through that tunnel, and when he got on the other side somebody saw him, looked kind of wild eyes "Well, I took care of that, I took care of her." And they wondered what he meant, so they went down. A nurse was coming through the tunnel, he was going the other way, and he killed her, and then he got out on the other side. They could see he was wild eyed, you know, and they knew there was something wrong. And so they got him back, I guess he never got out again, but that was the type of thing that happened there. And so when Mrs. Borah was getting older and she knew she couldn't do it anymore, she talked to a friend of hers and she said, "You know the boys just love it when somebody comes and sees them. Won't you come and see if you can take my place?" So the lady didn't want to go, but Mrs. Borah asked her to, so she did. And the first day she was there she was introducing this lady to some of the boys and she turned her back and another boy knocked that woman down right away and the woman screamed. And Mrs. Borah turned around and got the lady out of there, but she never tried taking any other women in there. But not one of those boys would touch Mrs. Borah. Now any questions you'd like to ask me?

GRACE: I talked to her just before she came west in Washington, and she said "Oh, Grace I can't see, I can't hear, and I can't walk." And she was concerned that day for some books she was sending to the University of Idaho library, and we got that squared away. And then, I think Lola could tell us a little inside information on how she was supported those last years. At the time of her husband's death there was an ample inheritance, but you just live for so long and use your principal and she just plain ran out of money. So, Lola why don't you tell about that.

LOLA: Oh yes. I'm proud of our state. When it got down to the bedrock, it's the best kept secret in the state of Idaho. The state legislator put up the money. The first year Harry Day and Harry Solen and Lynn Driscoll, who was the banker from Boise, and a long-time friend, they were old time friends, they put up the first money.

UNKNOWN 3: And Levin? Randall?

Yes, that's right, and that they would continue. But the state of Idaho said, "We're proud of the Borahs. They brought distinction and honor to our state and we want to do it, but we'll keep it all a secret. No one will know where it is coming from. So, it was a piece of legislature that enacted it. Never appeared in the papers, I never heard any of the legislators mention it at all, but I know that our own Harold Snow was one of the people I contacted about it. It was a very well-kept secret, but those things might happen to any of us, but I think we can all think how proud we were that our state did it.

LEE: That's a beautiful thing.

LOLA: I think so too. We were proud and happy to do it, and it was kept a very deep secret. All these years the papers never mentioned one word about it.

UNKNOWN 4: When she was in the hospital with psittacosis and having such a bad time, it was difficult for her to have much appetite. And in the museum there are some dishes that her husband brought her because she was turned off by those hospital dishes. So he brought those, there kind of a pink lusterware, aren't they?

That's right

UNKNOWN 4: And she could eat off of something a little more pleasant.

UNKNOWN 5: And they also had on display a lovely ivory hand carved cane that the emperor of Japan gave to Mrs. Borah. That was because he felt so bad she had contracted the disease in his country. Isn't that story Lee?

LEE: I don't know all the details.

SMC: Oh, I know another very interesting story. I forgot. There was another old lady in Maryville, her name was Mrs. Kreff? and she had three children. She and, her husband was a lumberman, and she took those children, got permission to take them on a 6 months tour around the world. And they stayed quite a while in China, and in India. Then I had talked to her about Mrs. Borah one day, she was now a grandmother, she was a daughter of this Mrs. Kreff?. I said, "Would you like to meet Mrs. Borah," and she said "Yes." So I took her in to introduce her and she saw that frame, you've seen the picture, so often, the picture she had by her husband's bed with the frame around it. "Oh the forbidden stitch!" and I said, "What do you mean?" She said when she was in China, the guide that took them around said that in China, years ago, the Chinese ladies made this so-called forbidden stitch. They were tiny tiny stitches, almost not much bigger than a pin head, I mean a pinpoint. They were French knots, you could hardly see them they were so tiny. I guess the lighting wasn't very good at that time, and some of the women were losing their eyesight. So the government made a law, no woman would be allowed to make that stitch anymore because they couldn't afford to be having all the ladies be getting blind. But they were making a lot of money on it, so some ladies did it anyway, and they actually were put to death because they disobeyed that law. That's what this lady told me. That's why I feel so bad about, when I went to the museum I expected to see these frames, these pictures. She had two of them, she has two pictures of her husband in these frames, one he's younger, and the other he's older, and this elephant necklace, and she had another on her windowsill, it was a bell shaped bottle with a neck about that big around with a cork in it, it was a bluebird inside, beautiful thing. That was a very very old thing that she got from China. I wonder what happened to that. They should have that in the museum.

UNKNOWN 2: The little things that were at Maryville like that. Mary Schedner? Has them in her home. And she has a son who would be Ollie Lueddemann's grandson, you see. And he is taking a great interest in history, and I think most of those little personal things Mary Schedner?'s son has. I kinda think so, but it may be that they'll come home to us you know.

Well, I'm gonna call Mary...

[End Recording]