Surviving Hard Times
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The following is a story written by Kevin Warnecke previously published in the Winter 2010 issue of the UNO Magazine.
The snow often piled up inside Duane Sprick's bedroom. With no heat in the upstairs of the Sprick home, young duane relied on a horse blanket for warmth. Snow sometimes found its way inside during the night.
Cold winter mornings are among the memories that remain of life growing up in rural Fort Calhoun, Neb., during the heart of the Great Depression.
“Everyone was poor, but they didn’t know any better,” says Sprick, 77, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel.
Patricia Sabine tells a similar story. Her father often had to take whatever his clients could offer to pay him for legal work. “My mother always said we didn’t have a lot of money, but no one else did either. We just didn’t talk about it.”
Dick Holland remembers neighbors stopping by the Holland home and asking for food. Drifters also stopped by the Holland’s childhood home in the Ak-Sar-Ben area, which was situated not far from railroad tracks. “Mom would feed them, too.”
As decades pass, the Great Depression becomes more distant for those who didn’t live through it. For those who did, their memories of the 1930s remain vivid — as strong as the lessons they learned.
For Dr. Mark Wohar, the 110 months that came to be known as one of the greatest financial catastrophes in history are fodder for students in his economics classes at UNO. Recessions came and went during the past century, Wohar says, but this financial crisis was like no other.
A stock market crash felt throughout the world was followed by a banking collapse and unemployment, says Wohar, UNO College of Business Administration distinguished professor. “All these things worked together to start a global downturn that caught the world up in its vertical spiral downward.”
Unemployment rates reached 25 percent, although Wohar called that estimate an understatement. Nine-thousand banks failed.
“Why did the Federal Reserve let banks fail?” Wohar asks. “The Fed didn’t understand the linkage in the system and thought it was just bad bank management. The Federal Reserve could have injected liquidity into the system, like it did in the current recession.
“Basically, the Fed gets failing grades for the Depression.”
No true definition exists to describe a financial depression. If he must produce one, Wohar says, he defines a depression as a year in which real gross domestic product falls 20 percent or more. The textbook definition of a recession, he says, is two consecutive quarters of negative real gross domestic product growth.
Tough Times Make You Tougher
Five University of Nebraska at Omaha graduates, all in their 70s or 80s, talked about living in the Great Depression and the many recessions that have followed. Mostly, the five talked about the Depression, which they said stands out because of the devastating effect it had on themselves and their country. They shared the lessons they learned from that difficult time, and how they try to apply them today.
Sprick remembers that his father, a carpenter, often was out of work. His grandparents lost the family farm. Sprick’s younger siblings wore his hand-me-down clothes.
“Tough times made you tougher,” says the 1955 Omaha University graduate.
Farmers burned corn for heat instead of trying to sell it after harvest, Sprick says, because prices were so low. His mother grew nearly everything they had to eat. “We had Victory Gardens out of necessity, before they were fashionable.”
Throughout these difficult times, Sprick recalls, his parents remained upbeat. If anything, Sprick says, his parents worried about their children rather than themselves.
Jack Frost considers himself among the lucky ones.
While the country was teetering on financial ruin, Frost moved with his parents to a new home on Chicago Street. His father, an attorney, earned an annual salary of $10,000. “We were upper middle class. We had a judge living on one side of us and a doctor on the other.
“My dad worked ridiculous hours,” Frost recalls. “That’s probably why he did so well.”
And it’s probably why Frost, a 1954 Omaha University graduate and a longtime public servant, considers himself fortunate.
As does Don Chase. His memories of the Great Depression are of being able to come and go as he pleased — at age 3 — throughout the town of Cook, Neb. His father served as superintendent of schools for the Otoe County community. His was a carefree childhood, Chase recalled.
“At that point, they needed schools. They needed a superintendent of schools. My dad always had a job. I don’t remember us being deprived.”
That feeling of security followed the family to Omaha, where Chase’s father worked as the shop teacher at Omaha North High School. His mother eventually worked as a substitute teacher, which left young Don in his grandmother’s care.
In Omaha, Chase still had freedom to roam from the family home near 30th and Larimore streets. He says he was especially proud that he could cross Ames Avenue on his own. On Saturdays, he ended up at the local theater. His parents gave him a quarter, which covered the cost of admission to the movie with enough left over for popcorn. “I was in hog heaven.”
Canned Salmon and Bridge
Sabine’s childhood wasn’t as simple and carefree. Yes, her father was an attorney in Beloit, Kan., but few clients could afford to pay cash for his services during the Depression.
Sabine, a 1969 graduate of UNO, recalled that one client, who was charged with murder, paid his debt with roast beef. Another client, a grocery store owner, told her father he could take whatever was left in the store after his bankruptcy hearing.
Her father was skilled at playing bridge, she recalls, and would supplement his income by stopping by the pool hall on the way home from work to play cards. Often, he would come home with $1 in winnings, which he promptly handed over to Sabine’s mother.
“He was a very good bridge player. A dollar was a lot of money at that time. It was hard cash money. My mother could stretch it a mile,” says Sabine, 86, a community volunteer, writer and painter in Arizona.
The Christmas season weighed on her father, Sabine recalls. He avoided asking his clients for the money they owed him until the final days before the holidays, remaining hopeful they would pay — with cash — without having to be reminded.
When he finished collecting what he could, her father would head to the store to buy Christmas presents for his children — only to find the shelves mostly bare.
“We all pretended the presents were the best thing we ever got.”
Dick Holland was 8 years old when the Depression hit. His father, advertising director for a furniture store, saw his salary cut in half. The younger Holland and his two brothers were expected to find work to supplement the family coffers.
Holland, 88 and a 1948 OU graduate, did his part by running a lawn service and an ice house — providing ice to households that were without refrigerators.
He recalls the news stories of the day, which were befitting of the difficult times: People forcing an Iowa judge from his courtroom to prevent him from ruling on a farm foreclosure; and people hijacking milk trucks, and threatening to dump the product in the streets in an effort to force prices up.
The 1930s left Holland with one overarching revelation: Franklin Delano Roosevelt was the greatest president in his lifetime. Roosevelt realized that Americans needed their government to intervene with aid. Holland is quick to point out that among Roosevelt’s legacy was the New Deal Public Works Administration, which provided funding for UNO’s first building (now known as Arts and Sciences Hall) on its current campus. “That did a lot for university morale and allowed the university to attract great teachers.”
World War II pulled the nation out of the Great Depression, and Americans had a new distraction. The country came together with a common focus. Sprick’s father found work as a carpenter in a bomber plant at Offutt Air Force Base. He drove to work each day in an old Model A. Sabine found part-time work at her local weekly newspaper, before heading to Washington to work as a secretary for the Cavalry Division at the War College. Holland went to war.
Lessons Learned
The many financial recessions that followed during the next 70 years may have had an impact, but the five UNO alumni always moved on. Times may have been difficult, they say, but nothing compares to life in the 1930s. They still draw on the lessons they learned.
Sprick worries that his children’s generation and his grandchildren’s generation don’t understand the value of hard work. Perhaps, he’s spoiled them. “They’re living too high on the hog. They don’t have values.” He explains that he worked several jobs to put himself through college. “I have some grades that will substantiate my employment.”
Sabine worries about her grandchildren, recent college graduates who are having difficulty finding work. Two nephews, who work in the newspaper industry, have lost their jobs, while her daughter works for the Oakland (Calif.) Tribune, which has had staff cuts.
“I think I just could never be extravagant with money,” she says. “I always thought there’s not going to be enough money. I know how hard it is to get.”
Holland, who along with his late wife, Mary, has supported many local charities, says the lessons he learned start with work ethic. “There’s no substitute for working hard. You can’t get by just on your brains. There’s no such thing as easing your way through life.”
The second lesson is for his country. The Great Depression forced a revolution in the way the U.S. government cares for its people. Until that time, government let its people mostly fend for themselves, he says. Roosevelt changed all that.
He say that lesson is being applied to the current economic downtown.
“We’re handling this recession far better because we’ve recognized it’s far better to shorten the recession with government aid,” Holland says. “If you don’t, you’re going to face the same realities of the last depression, or even worse.”