Interview with Martha Ross

Page 2

INTERVIEW WITH MARTHA ROSS - SYNOPSIS 1. What oral history is - a research technique Informal interview can bring back memories that subject did not 2. Plea to deposit tapes in some library or repository - not enough for single authors to have them in their offices May be used for some entirely different purpose by people from other fields (e.g. the linguist, the phychologist, the social Interview with notes is simply the first distillation and not equivalent to the taped conversation - Notes don't get it all 3. Procedure in handling transcript a. Verbatim transcript - everything except obvious false starts, etc. - as complete as reasonably achievable b. Audit the tape against the transcript to be sure is complete and no words misunderstood Example from Kennedy Library of typist not knowing the words from another generation Importance of one wrong word - therefore go over the tape and transcript together c. Some people make an abstract from the tape - importance of indexing to help locate things Rochester as example 5. Importance of the interviews for this book e.g. Robley Evans tape and transcript - a fine,summary of

Page 3

radium story and Ra standard Re/Copying tapes - American Institute of Physics has a very active oral history program - can copy tapes National Archives can take out background noise and improve quality of tape Advantages of remote microphone 6 . Samples of mistakes that can be made - tlboo-boolsll- a tape Mrs. ROSS' experiences - using a friend who knew the tape would be used as example, i.e. not confidential Oral history interviewing is quite different from the Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, Dan Rather confrontational type - it is more to provide the ambiance for that person to begin remembering Free association - get all they want to say (don't hurry it) 7. Richard Hewlett, AEC Historian The 35 volume history of Manhattan Project 8. Need for corroboration at some p o i n t - person may have "an axe 9. Importance of not confining interview to answering specific questions - the inte,viewee may know many things that you would never think to ask Better to use an outline than a list of questions Evening discussion quite general - not recorded

Page 4

program 3 0 1 - 5 3 0 - 0 0 8 4 - CSUF - Oral History Program L - 2 4 3

Page 5

Her home ir, Bethesda, Xaryland STANNARD: You are j u s t beginnin? to educate me a little bit about whzt oral history is. I ~ i d n ' trealize that there wcs such a field until I saw Don last year, at his office, and he said you were v e r y much interested in it, and here I've been doins somethin5 of the kind an2 didn't even know it, so I guess the first question might be, other kinds of history:3" MRS. ROSS: Oh, goodness. Well, Dr. Stannard, you know that I teach a fifteen-week course on this subject at the University of Maryland, so we probably.don't have that much tape. "What is Oral History? How does it differ from I regard oral history as a research technique for, I like to say, generatin? original historical information because I find that when the informed interviewer goes out and talks to a person, he is able to awaken, in that person's recollection, information that the person (in fact) is not consciously aware that he remembers. This is a very exciting experience when you can go to somebody who has had a significant career and made contributions. They are not necessarily a person without a literary tradition, which is another field for oral inquiry people who don't have literary traditions for leaving records and writing things down, etc. I've interviewed historians who naturally, one would think, observe and make records 2nd deposit them and take care of them, who after they've talked with me say, "You know, until we sat down to talk I didn't realize I remembered all of that.'' And that is very, very exciting. STANNARD: I've had thgt experience. Many times people have Said,

Page 6

be a b l e to h e 1 7 you much", and about two and E hzlf hours later we're stoppinc because something else is coming Up or h a s been scheduled. It has just Seen aelightful. They say, "I'm really ideas) of another intellect, probing and questioning and asking for amplification, etc., really does excite people to remember. Now, we were saying, as I was getting out some tape here, in my view there are more applications for oral history (oral experiences) for the result of this work than simply the use of a single author. And so my plea, generally, is for authors who are doing their own research and making tapes (after their own work is done)in some library or repository. or certainly to save them with their own papers, so that, as we were saying earlier, say the linguist, the psychologist, the to deposit them social historien, the history of science persor., the folklorist even, can have access to tapes made for an entirely different But eocumenting the way people express themselves, the terms they used, the intellectual context, the socialpolitical context perhaps - that tapes made for one purpose might very easily be useful and valuable in another context. So I make a great plea, first of all for taping because I find that most people who interview people and take notes simply don't get all of the interview. STANNARD: For a number of people I've seen, takins notes is fine if you know exactly what they've said and knew what they were going to say anyway - and you just sey, "Yes, he talked about

Page 7

MRS. ROSS: Yes, but you never know, and every i~terviewis a n expansion of your own knowleege of the subject, and so I like to tell my students that the tape can be e recor6 of the actual experience, whereas, En interview with notes simply is the first distillation and inter2retation of the experience. STANNARD: Thet's fascinatinc. Well, I do wish I had been much more systematic about the interview process. I've interviewed 9 5 people now; some of them were 30 minutes and some of them parts of two days. I have spent a lot of money on having them transcribed. MRS. ROSS: Of course. STANNARD: And the transcriptions I don't feel are good. In the first place, none of the people I've had doing the transcriptions have been experts in the field, so there's places they simply can't understand the words. They are getting very good, and since one of them i s going to do this,I won't say anything except that I am very pleased with the way they are coming, but they are still nontechnical people, and they are learning the words, so there are many gaps and that means that I have to go back through some of them and listen to the tapes and fill in the gaps. Is that a MRS. ROSS: The standard technique is for you, perhaps, as an interviewer to 90 back - maybe we better cut this o f f as we introduce the other member of the family here. One of the things I was going to mention to you, Dr. Stannard, is the procedure that a lot of oral history projects go through in hanelins the transcript. You have what we call the verbatum transcript - first draft. In other words, if it is on the tape, except for obvious false starts and mis-statements,

Page 8

etc. you want it t o be in the transcript.In other wore s, you cbn zlways edit something out,but if It isn ' t put in in the first place,then it ' s lost forever because nobociy is coins to 00 back to the tape and deal with it egein. So the first Craft transcript ought to be a s complete as feasible(as low as feasible STANNARD: A s low as rees on ably achievable. MRS. ROSS: Exactly.Right.So.it should be a s complete as reasonably achievable. Then either the person who has done the interview,or if the project has an editor it ought to be audit checked, in other words, listen to the tape and go over the transcript to be sure that it ' s complete, t o be sure th z t the typist hasn ' t mis-understood any of the words. I have a favorite story from the Kennedy Library about that. You have sometimes generational problems with the typist be in s too young t o know what the terms are. The Kennedy Library tells the stor) of having a tape that the transcriber has transcribed as, " they all went home and nobody wanted to talk " (isthe way I think they put it). And when the editor was going over this,it didn ' t make sense toher, so she listened to the tape,and the person had szid,. " W e went t o Guam and t o Eniwetok", but the transcriber had never he arc of Eniwetok - didn ' t know anything .=bout the nuclear tests and had transcribed " they all went home and nobody wanted to talk " . She made the best sense of it phonetic zl ly that she could. STANNARD: Wel1,I think this must be a very general phenomenon. I ' v e been talking about the Marshall is lanes some with people. MRS. ROSS: I see. So that ' s particularly applicable. STANNARD: I'in going to take a map into my typist,ifI think of

Page 9

KRS. ROSS: hell *this is why i t ' s important for the person whose done their,terx - iew,or somebody who i s knowledgeable in the subject md tter,to go over the transcript while listening to the tape,to be sure th z t whet is in the trans cri2t.... .and Elct of times i t ' s just a word dropped which changes the whole sense of what hes STANNARD: Thet ' s important. MRS. ROSS: Yes. Then if you have the time and the money, and i f you are re elly do in5 it for an archival purpose l the custom i s to send the verbatum transcript back to the person who was inter - viewed for his corrections. work (authors who are interviewing people for their own work) don ' t Now people who are doing their own AC26illac Eldorado project will then re - type 'he whole thing integrating all '-&e corrections. But, this again is i f you .are doing it toput on the shelf and you have almost limitless But it is very important to listen to the tape and go over I expect I must go th rou qh every tape no matter what.

Page 10

t o go over the tape,particularly if it ' s only E half en hour or ar. hour tape,very soon after I ' v e done the interview. particularly those who don ' t have enouch money, i media cell, to tran - STANNARD: That ' s what I ' ve he are. talking about and the sequence of subjects that were addressed, and sometimes if you don ' t have enou5h money to transcribe everything immediately,this gives you aclue as t o which tapes should take priority to be transcribed before others.It also allows you t o have access to the infomation in case you need to transcribe only selectively. For instance,if a person is very repetitive,you may not need to transcribe &&e whole thing,or if a person discussing something that is totally irrelevant to what you are interested in, Some people advocate, They will listen to the tape and make an abstract. that doesn ' t have to be completely transcribed. But i f you are doing this so that you will know the next time you talk to that individual what h e has already said, and you can listen to it, I ' ve never listened to a tape that I ' v e made that I don ' t find that Iam hearing some things for the first time situation you ' re listening, and you are also integrating what he i s saying into what you already know,and there area lot of things you simply do not hear the first time around, tapes soon after I make thern,so thatI ' l l know what I haven ' tasked and things that I didn ' the ar to pick up on while the interview w z s going on (Shall we hear the jingle of the ice'cubes here to let every - body know we are enjoy in2ourselves) ! STANNARD: Monsieur l e Chef. That is the chili cook-off club because in the interview So I like to review my

Page 11

very peculiar pronunciations in Western New York. Grace is z native cf Rochester,an < I s ? ent forty years there so Im is ht as well be a native.Charlotte is " Shallot " , and there ' s e town next to peculiar things,and you have no idea where they came from. MRS. ROSS : That doesn ' t sound like it would be a French influence. York especially Western New York. (General discussion) MRS. ROSS : This is going t o be fascinating on Dr.Stannard ' stape. I was going to say that my recollection of communicating with Rochester was during the war when Iwas working a t Oak Ridge,andwe would get Rochester on the telephone from Oak Ridge and the Rochester operators could never understand the Knoxville operators, and they would always MRS. STANNARD: They never could understand Bethesda either..... know how she avoided it. DR. ROSS: She ' s educated out of it. able to have this discussion about two years ago. DR. ROSS: We talked about it. MRS. ROSS: Better late than never. DR. STANNARD: We talked about it one year ago. I had no idea that it was such a well - developed field and so professional. know that I was doing what was known as oral history,although I .relied very much on the interviews.I ' v e done alot of research in the interviews as the basis for many of the ch zp ter s.

Page 12

Say l for posterity is Robiey Evans i n Phoenix, Arizona (Scottsdale). we spent a day and ahalf or, our personal interview,and then we hada session of one of the task groups of an NCRP con mitte e.He gave what I think was probably the most complete and coordinated historical review of the basis for our present standards. You could verbatim take that tape and use it as a story of the history of the development of the radiation stand are s of the time,particularly of the radium standard.I would like to preserve that.Do you think in view of the short half - life of the mini tapes that I should try to trans - cri be those …