Description

My interview with Marci Shepard over her Grandmother's journey as a "Rosie the Riveter" and some dead relatives bust in on the podcast....

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Transcription

• Speaker #0

  All right, here we are. I am excited tonight. I am at the social in beautiful downtown Westchester, and I'm actually here with another friend. I got friends that come in and tell me their stories. Marcy has been a friend of mine for a few years. I've been readings for you in the past, and I just found out through you that your grandmother Was a Rosie the Riveter in World War II? Yeah. And an African-American Rosie the Riveter. Now, she is part of a documentary, is that correct?

• Speaker #1

  Yes, that's correct. It's a documentary that is centered around the Black Rosie Riveters back then because As you know, in America at that time, there was racism. And even though she was helping her country, she still was doing it sitting in a segregated area while she's, you know, making bombs.

• Speaker #0

  So they actually had segregated areas within. And your grandma was putting in detonators in the lobs?

• Speaker #1

  Yep. She was putting the tickers in. Oh, wow. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  And back then, she didn't know what a riveter was.

• Speaker #1

  Nope.

• Speaker #0

  Not at all. She had no idea what a riveter was. She... She knew she was working for the country.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, yeah.

• Speaker #0

  But she had no idea that, oh, this is the thing.

• Speaker #1

  No, she went under the impression that she was going to work a part-time job because she had two jobs. The first job she was doing, she was working like as a nurse. And then she went, her peasant told her about a job that was going on in a warehouse. And, um... When she went, it just so happened that they were working on bombs. There was a host of things that they were doing. There was bomb making there. They were putting the detonators in. They were making clocks. Some of them were building aircrafts, like helping with airplanes. It's a myriad of things that they all participated in. But the Black population of women that were doing it, it was about a handful or two.

• Speaker #0

  Wow, yeah, um... Did she ever give any vivid memories to you at all about that? Or was that so far in the past?

• Speaker #1

  She, honestly, when I asked her about it, one, she didn't even know the significance of what she was doing at the tower. And she just knew that she was helping out the country. But she had no idea, like, really how important her job was. And when I asked her about it, she was like, yeah, you know, I was putting your debt news in. Like, so matter of fact, my grandma, that was like important. She's like, yeah, you know, it's, I don't make, how did you feel while you were doing it? She was like, nothing. I just was trying to make a living and get some money.

• Speaker #0

  Now, I hate to bring up some sadness with this, but. She just passed away, didn't she?

• Speaker #1

  Yes, January 7th, 2024, at 99.

• Speaker #0

  Now, they were able to interview her for the-

• Speaker #1

  Oh, yeah, prior- The Diary. Yeah, over the course of a couple of months.

• Speaker #0

  It feels as though to me, I can feel her a little bit. Her shoulders are back on, don't ask questions. That's what happens when you have a medium that hosts a podcast for you. I know this is a dumb question. How does the rest of her family feel about your accomplishment?

• Speaker #1

  Oh my gosh, we're like in awe of her. Like she literally was the backbone of everything that was proper to do in life. Like she... Always stress the importance of an education, helping your fellow community. And it wasn't a black or white thing. It was a people thing. You have to help each other. And she was very fair for a black woman. She was a little lighter than you actually. Oh,

• Speaker #0

  you want to be that high yellow thing.

• Speaker #1

  All right. She never like passed for white, but she didn't always face the harsh discrimination. the Tory things that say someone like my complexion would go.

• Speaker #0

  In case there are any white people listening tonight, there is racism within the own culture. Yeah. It's like in India, the darker you are, da, da, da, da, da.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Now. Your grandmother, it looks like she's influenced something like your mother.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah,

• Speaker #0

  I mean, we can do a whole other show on your mom. Yeah. Now, I hope I'm not talking out of turn. Was your mother like a Black Panther?

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, she was. She was always for the advancement of African American people. You know, she was born in 1952 and she sees some things and she never was violent about it, but very... And people don't really understand that in the

• Speaker #0

  60s, that whole thing about community and the community is going to take care of this because back then they didn't think the government would take care of this, that or an egg. He's awesome. Yeah. And we have to be the food drive.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. That's what Black Panthers did. Which takes me to my next question. Do you think like Your grandmother had any influences off with...

• Speaker #1

  Like maybe she did because, you know, she was born in 1924. She would have been 100 May 30th. Damn. Yeah, in a couple of weeks. Oh. I know.

• Speaker #0

  She didn't make it to 100.

• Speaker #1

  I know. And she wanted to so bad. Like her, my pop-pop, her husband died at 99 too. And his same year of making 100 would have been 100 in November 2019. V was born in 1919. But she's like, I'm going to make it to 100.

• Speaker #0

  Your granddad was a player, man. Good looking man. Yeah. I can't even believe it. And I don't, I see him in my head. Yeah. Swab. I mean, you know. Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't mean to break out my clive. You never met my goddad. That's what I feel, right? Yeah. Yeah. How do you think that your grandmother, I want to see your grandmother. influence you to be who you are? Because I know you now. You're structured. You've been through hell. What do you mean? But you've come out the other side. Is that grandma?

• Speaker #1

  Oh, yeah. That's my grandmother. I feel like that's like my parents. But she had a major influence on me once I moved to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, back in 2008. So I've been here since 2008. And she's always been very... kind and generous and um she never judged you you could literally tell her that you had an orgy with a giraffe and she'd be like okay okay that now archery always gone

• Speaker #0

  She's rated R. Sorry children, you can now not listen to this on YouTube.

• Speaker #1

  You can listen to it. But she just never judged you. So you always felt like you could talk to her about any and everything. And she was the sweetest and most mild-mannered woman you'd probably ever meet. And unless you took her there, even then she still wouldn't clip out. She just would, she said, I'm going to pray for you. And then she would ignore you like you were wallpaper.

• Speaker #0

  Um, oh, yeah, I heard your, I don't know if this is your grandmother or your grandfather. He's going, cause these children don't know what hell was.

• Speaker #1

  Oh no, not at all.

• Speaker #0

  Because he's like, you know, he had a cousin or something that was shot. He's telling me, he goes, blam, just for being who he was. So I can't believe I'm doing medium shift on this podcast. It's freaking me out a little. What? Maybe that's what I was supposed to do with this. Um, what is the thing that you miss the most? Thunder Graham.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, man.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, what's your grandmother's name?

• Speaker #1

  Oh, her name is Eunice Pearl Heap.

• Speaker #0

  Aw, Eunice.

• Speaker #1

  I know. She was so cute. See, I honestly miss doing the little, by the things. Like, she was obsessed with scratch-offs, and she loved watching her stories. And if you called her while her stories were on, the first question would be, are you okay? Yeah, grandma, I'm fine. Why? All right, bye. My stories are on. And she'd hang up.

• Speaker #0

  Bye. General Hospital.

• Speaker #1

  Yes, all my children, yeah. There's too much stories. Yeah, she was one of those, and she loved Wheel of Fortune and Jeopardy. So we would play every day Wheel of Fortune or Jeopardy. She was always better at Wheel of Fortune, of course. And if you would get one answer right in Jeopardy, she thought you were a genius. So, um... To her, I was the smartest person on the planet. One thing's a word.

• Speaker #0

  When she worked as the Riveter, did she ever talk about experiencing? I know she said like they were segregated. Yeah. But did she experience racism from that?

• Speaker #1

  She, it's funny because she says, she said to me when I asked her about it, she's like, you know, you don't pick up on. The microaggressions, when you're in the environment where you're at. It wasn't until once she left from outside that warehouse was when she was like, people would remind you that you were an African-American. But during inside, when we're working, we're all working as a team. And it was really, the women were for the women because they were working amongst men. And the men still then were like, they... were kind of vile at times to the women. Like, you know, she would tell me how she would see guys come by and tap a woman on the behind.

• Speaker #0

  Oh, hey.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, it was just, it was a time. And honestly, a lot of the stories when I went to Washington for the Riveter convention they had, that's what a lot of the stories were that the women were talking about, how they were assaulted a lot and talked down to and sometimes not paid. And yeah, the men were...

• Speaker #0

  I don't have the exact numbers in front of me. But those women, black and white, Latino and everything, they change like, I don't have the percentage amounts, but... If it wasn't for them, we'd have lost.

• Speaker #1

  They would have lost, of course. And they said that too. The women and also the people who spearheaded this said the same thing. Without those ribbiters in all these different states, we wouldn't have won.

• Speaker #0

  I think people don't understand the amount of ammunition and stuff that in the 40s we were churning out. These women, they thought, Alice, you want some of my sandwich? I mean,

• Speaker #1

  they're like... They're like... They were turning over planes like every like three or four days. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. Yeah. It was insanity.

• Speaker #0

  And I think he was on other scale. Like today we would go, oh yeah, but back then.

• Speaker #1

  And these women had kids, spouses, and they're doing this. They're out here, you know, supporting their kiteshraite.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. You miss her? I would say yeah.

• Speaker #1

  I do. I miss her all the time. But I still talk to her. And honestly, the missing part is a lot different than how I miss, say, my mom. or my dad because she was 99. And that, like, I don't like when people say, like, oh, they lived a long life, it was 99 or it was 100. The fact is the person's no longer here, so you'll miss their physical, but she's lived such a life that it's almost like... You want to... Exactly. I can just look at this from afar like, wow, like, she did it. And it also inspires me to live in my presence as well.

• Speaker #0

  You know, when I hear these things about history, and it takes everybody to make a village, man. Everybody's got to work together. And it sounds like to me within the confines of being a Riveter, the women stuck together.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, they did. Yeah. Like I said, in that atmosphere, it wasn't, you know. You aren't. Tina, you were this, they were women. They believed we are women. We are the same. All of us here are the same. You know, one was treated better than the other if it wasn't, it wasn't done within. It was done outside of the group of the women. But yeah, they would sit right next to each other, eat their munchies together. They, yeah, they weren't, it wasn't the black people sitting over here. What, they would come and commingle together. Like that, that's just. Your greater good outweighs your racism at times.

• Speaker #0

  Wow, that should be a t-shirt. Your greater good outweighs your racism sometimes.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, and that was one of the instances. They got her. All of a sudden, you thought, what?

• Speaker #0

  You know, there are soldiers and there are soldiers. And your grandmom definitely was a soldier. Yeah. Oh, she goes, oh, that's the it's like, um, um. What do you think is the most important thing that she left to you? Not anyone else. To you. Like advice, whatever.

• Speaker #1

  She always tell me to trust God all the time. Trust God and pray. And whenever I feel something, to listen to what I'm feeling. Stop ignoring. what I feel and she's like, because you are your best navigator. That's it. Like the voice you hear is your discernment and that's the universe. God, whoever you believe in is speaking to you and you have to. I just hone that and believe in that. And she'd always tell me that, like, well, how do you feel? Like, every time I'm talking, like, oh grandma, she's like, right, well, how does that make you feel? How do you feel? What's going on inside? I'd be like, ma'am, just give me a voice and tell me what she's doing, you know? But she's like, no, you have to be able to listen to yourself and trust yourself. So my biggest lesson that I, every day, I just say to her, I'm like, I'm trusting myself, listening to myself, grandma, like, and I'm just like, I'm trusting myself. It does help me and it also makes me feel very still connected to her because I know what she would say a person being like, well, I wonder what Grimmel wanted to do. I instantly already.

• Speaker #0

  Yeah. I like, I can feel her right now. I mean, with you, I don't need to get into your personal history, but you went through however in the last couple of years, right? And I just can feel her presence. There's a strength behind that. It doesn't matter that she's it was in her 90s. I'm now. You know, her energy right now is girl, take care of yourself. Yeah. Take care of yourself. You still don't listen. Yeah. Take care of yourself.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah. See you all next year.

• Speaker #0

  What would you got to, you know, she's giving you great advice, you know, about her history, all of that stuff. How do you think she affected? Her community, like where she lived, because she was at 90-something years old.

• Speaker #1

  Yes, yes. But one, they called at her funeral, the people on the block decorated this in brown. They kept bows and ribbons and stuff on it, because Grandma would sweep out front of her house and three houses down. She'd always go three houses down to this to the right and three houses up to the left. And her philosophy was, because if I just clean here, what's next door to me is going to blow over here anyway. So I minus-fold work my way out. That way, when it starts blowing, it doesn't blow down straight in front of 46 North Fountain. And I'd be like, okay, Grandma. So she was, every day she swept, and people on the block would see her. And so they were like, all right, let me clean up the front of my house, too. She wouldn't even say anything. She wouldn't say. Hey, come out here and join me. She's like, your best action is you do it. Like, you do it.

• Speaker #0

  She sounds an anointed rutted. Here's the aspect of our program that she's e-spirited.

• Speaker #1

  Oh, she is. Oh my God.

• Speaker #0

  It's like not religious.

• Speaker #1

  No.

• Speaker #0

  But like that's what you do.

• Speaker #1

  Exactly.

• Speaker #0

  It makes me feel good that you feel good. Exactly. Yeah. I have learned through my, and you know a lot about me too, and I went through hell this year. And if it hadn't been, you're one of those people, other people too that Sometimes it was just a hound, sometimes it was a, would bring me over food while I was convalescing, that kind of stuff. And that comes from like my mom's culture in that generation. Yeah. Like I remember when, you know, we had a couple of friends who had cancer, they had to think my mom would, you know, put together some chicken and ice or something like that and like run it down there. That's just what you.

• Speaker #1

  When I said what you do,

• Speaker #0

  you did in Arizona. I never felt that. Really? You didn't know your neighbors. You just didn't see them. It's so hot out there. You're not really intermingling the same. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can't thank you enough for being here tonight. This has been excellent. Your grandmother's energy. I will tell you this. This is the younger version of your grandmother that I'm thinking. Because she's hugging me right now. She's like, come here. So she's, you know, I was surprised about your granddad because that energy was really like, boom.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, he was a force.

• Speaker #0

  He was like, oh, yeah, those kids don't know none.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  Your cousin got shot because he was, yeah. And I was like, and I didn't know that. Yeah.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, to be born in 1919 and 1924, you know. and to know about experiences in like the 30s and 40s. We are so far removed from that time that to hear the stories, it's horrifying, of course, but you're like, oh my God, that really could have happened almost 90 years ago, you know?

• Speaker #0

  And also, too, your grandfather is old enough that he remembers slaves. Oh, yeah. So he's just from a whole different mindset. Yeah. But thank you for this. My audience, I know, is going to love this. And. And Cheryl, if you hear that, you know, everything gonna be good. I'm not gonna screw up grandmom's name, nothing like that.

• Speaker #1

  Yeah, I'm telling you, see, grandma was a really special woman. And, you know, just a quick side story. When I was 17, I went to a pool club in the town that I grew up in. And I went to the pool club with this family that I was living with after my dad passed away. My dad died right before my senior year of high school, and I went on a meeting to Georgia to be with my heir. So I moved in with them, so I was a nanny for their family, and they took me to a pool club in the town I'm from, Nutley. And when I walked up to the pool club, and the mom said, I have two guests with me, it was myself and my friend Stacy, this Irish girl with red hair, beautiful, and freckles. And he said, You guys can come in. And he pointed to my friend Stacy and was like, all right, she can come in too, because she was in bright red hair, brown eyes, and freckles. But he pointed to me and he said, but you, you nigger, you can't swim here. There's no black people allowed here. And this was in 2001. Yeah.

• Speaker #0

  I was to see, I'm keeping, wow, that sounds like something out of the late 70s.

• Speaker #1

  No. And my grandma was the one who, you know, once I had told her about the story in passing, she said to me, you know, it's unfortunate, but God doesn't do that to just any old body. It was meant to happen to you for a reason. And what's funny is this man had this pool top for 38 years. And for 38 years, he's been keeping it as a European swim club until the day he came across to me. And that's when that 38 year run was over because he ended up losing his pool club because of discrimination that was blatantly in my face.

• Speaker #0

  You know, you go to play, you got to play.

• Speaker #1

  Okay. And she's like, see, now look at you. You're Black History.

• Speaker #0

  It was kind of cool. Black or Brown History is a little bit more about, you know, we win shit.

• Speaker #1

  I know.

• Speaker #0

  You know, like. We had three babies instead of two. Not like you had to get beat up or everything else to do that. Wow. This has been really super interesting to me. For everyone who's listening, thank you. Don't forget to please follow me on Instagram, Facebook, especially YouTube. I'm very good friends with Oathia, which is another paranormal podcast. He and I are getting ready to use the spirit box.

• Speaker #1

  Really?

• Speaker #0

  And we're going to try to use this in such a way, because I don't want to give away all our ideas, but we're going to do something with that spirit box that I think hasn't been done before. and her and I are going to do the show, I think, is going to be recorded the first week of June, and then I'll put it out. Oh,

• Speaker #1

  wow.

• Speaker #0

  I am still looking for someone in the ages of, like, 21 to 25, 19, who's kind of into spirituality in some way or wants to come and talk about it with me because I'd love to have you up here at the social. Thank you guys oh so much. good things coming up and I will see you next time bye-bye now