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Washington Women’s Heritage Project records, 1900-2000 
University of Washington Libraries Special Collections 
Patricia Louise Butler 
May 3, 1992 
Cassette 3, Side 2 
 
 
Antoinette Johnson  00:00 
I don't know how to do this. I don't want to learn how to do that. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  00:04 
Well, over here used to be a lot of trees and Vic and Vicky helped me take them all down. So I 
don't know what you mean when I say you're not busy, you're real busy all your [?life in?] here. 
And I can't wait to get [?down?] this week and [inaudible]. It's a big yard. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  00:04 
There used to be trees over here? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  00:20 
Yeah, you know, but they had a lot of bugs. A lilac tree, and some kind of a [inaudible] tree, the 
tree you see with all those white flowers on it, and snowballs. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  00:29 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  00:30 
That was all [?overgrown?] [inaudible].  
 
Antoinette Johnson  00:33 
So if these guys, Victor and Victoria, were college age when they left home? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  00:39 
Well, yes. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  00:39 
Or when they, they went away right after high school, right?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  00:42 
Well, from high school, they went to, Victoria went to Highline-- No, she went to, who has 
fashion merchandising?  
Page 2 of 13 
 
 
Antoinette Johnson  00:51 
I don't have the slightest idea.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  00:53 
It's either Highline or Shoreline. Which one's in Des Moines? 
 
Antoinette Johnson  00:58 
I don't know.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  01:00 
It must be Highline. She went there. Let me tell you what this monster did. She went to 
[inaudible] and every morning, she got up and left home to go, right? And then Victor chose to 
graduate a year after Victoria because he wanted to have some extra credits for the Air Force 
Academy, so that's what he wanted to do. And the school that he was at was not a qualified 
school, but he changed to Mercer Island. So his graduation was 1976 and she graduated 1975, 
okay? Well, Victoria was going to school every morning, you know. Well, on the way home 
from Victor's graduation, her grandfather said, "And how's college?" "Oh," she says, "I haven't 
been, I dropped out," or, "I stopped going." Well, her father stopped the car in traffic. I said, 
"Jerome, please drive on, because you can talk to her about that when you get home." Well, we 
thought Victoria was going every day, so you can see why the man was shocked. Gosh, that's 
what she'd been doing, going to look for a job every morning, but not going to school because 
they had put her on probation, you know, for low scholarship, and she didn't want to talk about 
it.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  02:24 
Oh. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  02:25 
And she had gotten-- She just didn't want to talk about it.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  02:30 
Did she ever? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  02:31 
Well, yeah, we talked about it after we got home and after we celebrated for Victor. Because, I 
told Jerome, this was not the time to address Victoria's needs, it was the time to take care of 
Victor's needs, because she had had this. Take care of that later. She had all the time she wanted 
to go back to school. Well, that brought about the wonderfulness of her starting to work at the 
library. She got a job as a librarian. She applied for the Edward T [inaudible] Scholarship. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  03:04 
Library at the University? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  03:05 
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No, the library, Douglass-Truth Library, and she started working there. And she went from a 
page to a library assistant and went to Seattle Community College and that worked. Victor was 
going to Bellevue Community College, and that was fine. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  03:22 
During that, this time, were you guys pretty close, like mother and daughter, you know, 
boyfriend problems, and?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  03:29 
Boyfriend problems? She still had some boy she met at 14 years old. No, by the time Victor got 
to Bellevue Community College, one of his friends used to come by and get him. Well see, by 
then she's kind of a young lady, and she knew that you don't let thugs in the house. So it wasn't 
really a problem of a lot of thugs, but that first boyfriend sometimes I might tell him to go home, 
he stayed too late. But they went together a long time, I guess.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  04:02 
Yeah. How about now? Doing-- 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  04:07 
This boyfriend, she's been with him a long time. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  04:10 
Yeah?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  04:11 
Nice guy, [inaudible], graduate from the University of Washington.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  04:19 
Not-- Which one of them are more, are closer to you? I mean, like, more of the, the one that 
won't let go of the apron strings? Are both of them like that, or is one more than the other? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  04:31 
Oh, you don't have so much of that, at least I don't think, with twins, because the family is kind 
of a-- It's not so much that, I don't think, letting go because, how do I want to say that? I never 
thought about that, except that I know my husband thought that he would grow up and be gone at 
the appropriate age. Victoria [?did not?]-- Actually, going to college, that seems to break the first 
layer. In Africa, it's something that you work on and when Victoria went to University of 
Washington, her boyfriend, she met a young man from Africa, and they did a lot of talking about 
separating from the family, so I thought that was a great help to her. Victor met a girl from 
Ethiopia. You know, they were always free to come home, they had their key, and it wasn't a big 
deal to come home and find them here too often. And one of the relatives was also going to 
college out there, one of the cousins, he says, "Girl, fella, let me tell you, going home for 
weekends is wonderful. You get another meal." So, you know, you know, you can always come 
by my house and get a meal, I guess. And that's the way my Aunt ran the house. I mean, I 
remember when Jerome was courting me, they could always come by and get a meal. You know, 
and Vic and Vicky have always been open to that, and they always bring a friend with them, so. 
Page 4 of 13 
 
 
Antoinette Johnson  06:12 
They still do that today?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  06:13 
Yeah. So it's not one of those things where you're really gone. And I talked to her this morning, I 
talk to Victor every week. And if you don't hear from them, you call.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  06:25 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  06:26 
You know, it's, it's a funny thing. It's, I never really thought about it. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  06:35 
How'd you feel after they left home? Did it-- or went off to college? Did it open, open doors for 
you. Or did you even notice?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  06:43 
Did it open up doors for me?  
 
Antoinette Johnson  06:44 
I mean, did you get busier, find more things to do?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  06:46 
How can I be any busier when I'm already going to college, and working a full time job, and a 
wife? Busier? It gave me another dimension to add to my travel for going to the grocery store.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  06:59 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  07:00 
Because when I went to the grocery store, I go to the one, the QFC in the village, and pick up 
Victoria if she needed to, so she could do her shopping, and we'd drop off anything Victor 
needed, in case he didn't do his shopping. And Victor was an independent type because, in a 
way, I only dropped off milk, and maybe some cereal coupons, or 5 dollars, and dropped off 
maybe a little bit more. Victoria didn't [?need to grab stuff that much?], but she had some 
staples, and you feel kind of secure when you know your kids are fine.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  07:38 
Did you check on them a lot? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  07:40 
I bought them a phone each. I guess that's what our contribution to college life was, a telephone. 
Bought the telephone and paid the telephone bill, with an answering service. And I tell all 
freshmen, when your parents want to stay in touch, have them give you an answering service. So 
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when you're there and you don't want to talk about it, they can leave a quick message. You'd be 
surprised how much tension that relieves.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  08:09 
Uh-huh?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  08:09 
It does. It really does, because they can leave a message. Oh, and mother don't want nothing. She 
just wanted to talk to you. She didn't want nothing, that works out fine. Because they'd just be 
running up the telephone bill, don't need to be running up. That worked out fine for Victoria, 
because if she was having a depressed mood, want to mope and sop, she didn't have to talk to 
me, I could just call and say, "I was just wondering how you were. Give me a call." And if she 
don't call too soon, I might drive over. Now that is one advantage to children that, going to 
school in state.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  08:47 
Yeah, you, did you ever feel like, did you ever not want them to go to school out of state? Did 
you want to keep them in state while they went to school?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  08:59 
My philosophy, if you're going out of state, out of state, it's great if you got a relative. If you 
don't have a relative in that state, that child needs to be very mature. Black children going out of 
state need to have a touch base of some kind. And I guess that's why I advocate at historical 
black colleges, because at least you have an identity.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  09:25 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  09:26 
You're not fighting in a world where people don't want to speak to you when you go down the 
street, look at you strange in the bathroom, talk to you crazy when you're asking for help. And 
it's just, not that black people won't hurt black people, it's just that it's a little bit easier to adjust if 
you think that it's a little bit safer. You are familiar with these people because they look like you, 
and you recognize danger readily because it looks like an environment you've been in. But when 
you're out of your natural environment, dealing with an unknown and trying to deal with subject 
matter that hasn't been real familiar to you all of your life, you need to have some, some comfort 
zones. So yeah, they could have gone out of school as long as they knew a relative or somebody, 
and since they weren't into going to New York City, guess you better go here, huh?  
 
Antoinette Johnson  10:26 
Yeah, yep. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  10:28 
Best you better go. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  10:31 
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How do you feel, do you feel like you, you, you've been a good parent, that you've accomplished 
what you set out to do with your children? That's raise them up to, or whatever-- 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  10:42 
To be self sufficient. I really believe in that philosophy, that children should be raised to be self 
sufficient. We raise kids today to be spoiled brats. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  10:55 
How do you, if you were to give another parent, a new parent, that, some advice on what to do 
to, to make these kids self sufficient, what would you tell them?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  11:05 
What I just told the lady next door when she said she had a lot of housework inside. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  11:09 
What? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  11:09 
Get them to help you do it. She go to work, she used to be home all day, shoot. Those kids eat 
and sleep real good every day. Only by the grace of God that you let them do it. I mean, [?these 
kids are raised today?] to not want for anything. Almost you need to spoon feed them. You 
know, they think they've been denied because they didn't get to have on their plate of food what 
they wanted to eat. I mean, I have a problem with that. As my aunt said to me, "Well, I tell you 
what, since you haven't eaten greens, they either eat you or you eat them." So, it's back to the 
same philosophy my mother said, "Here's the lima beans for breakfast, for lunch, and for dinner. 
You will learn to eat them, because you don't know what you're gonna have to eat in this life 
before you die." And you know, in terms of behavior with your children, you gotta make it 
somewhat realistic. And when you see commercials on TV that tell them, "My child doesn't 
wear, want to wear a baseball," what is it, "a bicycle helmet because the other kids don't." What's 
that got to do with your house and your child? And it's life.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  12:26 
My child don't want to ride a bike because [inaudible]. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  12:28 
Right? You can't live for somebody else. Just because Jerry got lynched yesterday, you want to 
be lynched too today? You know, we need to make our lifestyles more relevant to us so they can 
relate. These poor kids can't relate. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  12:48 
The parents have gotten lax.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  12:53 
Lax? They don't have a sense of morals, they think that these kids-- [distracted] I'm watching this 
bumblebee.  
 
Page 7 of 13 
 
Antoinette Johnson  13:02 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  13:03 
And I don’t know [inaudible], but he sure is pretty, prettiest thing I ever did see. I'm glad [?he's 
going about his business?]. I think that's a really important thing. And I'm not saying I'm a 
perfect parent. I mean, I'm sure we have had-- Victoria can have a temper tantrum. Vic tends to 
ask things out and ask a bunch of stupid questions sometimes. But all in all, I can't say that it's 
been an unhappy parenthood. You know, neither one of them are on drugs. They both know the 
value of education. They've given it a try, and my understanding with education, your children 
going, is that I get to be proud you get to obtain it. And you're not doing it for me, you're doing it 
for yourself, you know, so you're the one that's got to want it [inaudible] public education. Now, 
I can meet you in terms of financing, in a way, but I haven't got much more than you're going to 
get.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  14:09 
So what do you think about, what do you think-- How was your, your social life, as far as friends 
and?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  14:18 
Married social life-- 
 
Antoinette Johnson  14:20 
Both.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  14:21 
--or just in general?  
 
Antoinette Johnson  14:22 
In general. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  14:23 
You know, it's an ongoing process, it just keeps going on and on and on-- Hold on. [Movement] 
they're not the gossipy type [inaudible].  
 
Antoinette Johnson  14:43 
Do you think you have a lot of, more of, a lot of-- a few close friends, or a lot of not, you know, 
just acquaintances? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  14:51 
I think I have a lot of close friends because my friends and I talk about wonderful, positive 
things. Such as, how are you gonna buy a house? And how did you do that? So that they also are 
my role models, as well. And I think that's what makes them very [?special friends?].  
 
Antoinette Johnson  15:15 
And your friends served as sort of your role models for the things you wanted to do? 
Page 8 of 13 
 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  15:21 
Uh-huh. I have, for example, the lady who used to live across the street from me, she had her 
divorce, and she was choosing to go back to school [inaudible] the time about that I was going 
back. She became a school teacher. When we used to go out on walks every day, early in the 
morning, after I took my husband to work. We shared a lot of the things she was going through 
at school, I talked about my job and working with [inaudible]. [?We talked about how we could 
make our lives better?]. We became each other's psychiatrist, psychologist, and all those types of 
things. It wasn't so much [inaudible]. She joined United Negro-- not United Negro College Fund, 
she joined Black Child Development, called me and told me about it, before I knew it, I was 
involved. And I'm still in Black Child Development. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  16:35 
Do you think you can still find those type of relationships today?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  16:38 
Oh yeah, because my 60 year old student, now, she graduated in 1989, called her up to put her on 
the committee for-- not on the committee, but get her to recruit. And when I went to the Ebony 
Fashion Show, there she was telling me, "Pat, I took your advice, and I'm working on my 
master's." And she was working on me to go get my master's. [?God, there's no way?], 
[inaudible]. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  17:10 
Have you thought about it?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  17:12 
Oh, yeah, I'm taking a course this quarter. I need to have [inaudible]. This is not the quarter the 
take it. Did you realize we have three registrations going? 
 
Antoinette Johnson  17:22 
Really?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  17:23 
Yeah, we got--  
 
Antoinette Johnson  17:24 
Oh, period one, period two-- 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  17:25 
We're doing progress checks for spring quarter, summer quarter, with three quarters within 
summer quarter, then we got new admission, transfer admission for autumn quarter going on as 
of now. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  17:42 
So y'all pretty busy at work.  
 
Page 9 of 13 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  17:43 
So, I guess. You see how life should happen. I'm used to doing this terrible thing, going to school 
and working, right? Isn't that what I'm still doing? Everything changes, not to change at all.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  17:59 
But don't you feel okay with that though?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  18:01 
Oh yeah, I feel fine with it. I was just trying to find the time, and I thank you for coming by to 
interview me, so I can get [?this part of the day done?]. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  18:15 
When did you start getting involved in, like the organizations you've been, you've been involved 
in a lot of them. Tell me about some of those. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  18:25 
Which one? 
 
Antoinette Johnson  18:27 
All of them that you can remember.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  18:30 
Well, you know, I think they go along with the generation that my children live in. Boy Scouts, 
Girl Scouts. I used to think I wanted to be in Jack and Jill. Victor wanted me to be in Jack and 
Jill because he's the more social child than Victoria. Well, then he went into the Air Force. But it 
wasn't me, I was out of my income range. Most women in Jack and Jill had their bachelor’s and 
master’s and their big homes making them beautiful. But what I did learn from just going to an 
application meeting is that, one lady sat down next to me, she said, "Oh, I thought I was going to 
be later than this." I said, "Oh, why?" She said, "Because I was helping my husband [inaudible]." 
Well, the woman had diamonds up the, the arm, honey. Gold [inaudible], gold here, and she was 
dressed [inaudible]. And I said, oh, just because you have all these wonderful things, don't mean 
you don't do this common stuff, turn the soil over. [?Get the nails?] dirty and all of that. Still 
have to do it. So if I didn't learn nothing else, I learned that day that getting cute wasn't where it 
stopped. Just like marriage. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  19:49 
It's not a full time job.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  19:51 
It is a full time job trying to keep up everything else so the picture is complete. The house looks 
right, the clothes look right on you. You gotta go out there and [inaudible]. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  20:00 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  20:01 
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You gotta work hard. [?There's no giving away?]. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  20:06 
When did you start working at the U?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  20:10 
Oh I guess I worked [?at the U in 1980?]-- Just a minute. 1987 [inaudible]. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  20:41 
Odessa Brown, what did they do? Lay offs?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  20:53 
[Inaudible] [?didn't do my job, and all that?]. Well, from that experience, I learned that he had an 
order to downsize. And Freddie Maygold Shea was his first attack to fire. He fired her but he 
couldn't have fired because she had just given notice before he fired her. He didn't know it. It 
was so funny. And so we kind of laughed about it, you know, but you weren't thinking that you 
were gonna be [inaudible]. [?And so then that day?] [inaudible] who was the outreach and 
[inaudible] coordinator, because the agency had really grown, she left in [?30 days?] and then 
they started working on somebody who had been ill in her department a lot. So then that was 
Molly McMillan, she was one of the 13 original health assistants. So she went, but she left on a 
medical disability, so, she had diabetes. So now that retired her. And then the woman who 
worked in that office too took Odessa-- took the director's place and Molly's place, and she was 
the only person working in that department. Now, if I was really astute to management, I would 
have seen that something was happening there. How do you have one person only in that 
department with this WIC [?promo?], that's soft money, WIC is. So, she was working there and 
the next thing I know, they were saying the woman was incompetent, and she was going through 
a lot of trials and tribulations with [?the job?], so they got rid of her. And she died shortly 
afterwards, about five years or less. Afterwards, her husband had had both legs amputated, she 
got laid off, or fired, however you wanna say it, and that was shocking. And the next person they 
started working on was me, and they finally worked it up, and he got rid of me.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  23:08 
How did that? How did that affect you? I mean emotionally? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  23:12 
Just badly. I couldn't believe it. I'd never been unemployed in my life, I'd never been fired, and it 
was hard. It caused me to lose my equilibrium. When I walked, I'd fall, and so I had to have-- I 
went to the doctor [?for a brain scan?] because we're thinking it's physical, something physically 
is wrong with me. My high blood, my blood pressure went up, 200 over 180, or something like 
that, I had headaches, but I knew I had to go to work. I mean that, that work thing is so ingrained 
in your mind that the only thing I could think of during that whole process is, thank God I got a 
degree. Slow and steady it took me, but the degree was in my hand, going out there, knocking on 
the door. And we can say, thank God for the sorority too, because I could tell my sorority sisters 
of my plight, and some of them were on the inside of DSHS and knew some of the top 
management things that were going on with Odessa Brown and Children's Orthopedic. And they 
didn't say it, but they implied, "Oh, you'll get something," and the role of the sorority is to help 
Page 11 of 13 
 
their sisters when down. And one of the sisters called and told me about the job at the YWCA, 
and I put in for that job, but I also went back to my first occupation of skill, which was sales girl. 
Girl, that's a cold way to go with a degree, but I get hired that Christmas. Are you ready for 
$4.50 an hour from 9 dollars an hour? Downshift. And we're talking about, not a permanent job, 
we're talking about on call, for six weeks. And you know everybody they hired had a degree. 
White, black, and pink, we all had degrees that they hired. I happened to have experience of two 
years from working at JC Penney and when I worked at Easton Clothiers, remember, way back. 
Okay, so that gave me $4.50 an hour, and those without experience made three whatever 
minimum wage was, for Christmas. I heard that some people were gonna work at the warehouse, 
and I wanted to know how I can work at the warehouse. And they said, "Oh, that's for our 
permanent on call employees." And I said, "Well, could you add me to the list?" And they didn't 
call me for that warehouse sale, New Year's, but they really got you-- I kept calling and letting 
them know that I was available. And you know, I think I must have worked, I did work at 
Fredericks until it was sold when they closed the Portland stores. So that's 19-- from 1984 to 
1986?  
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:27 
This Frederick & Nelson's? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:28 
Uh-huh, on call. So I worked that job with the YWCA that I got in '84 February, and I got hired 
at Seattle Community College in '84. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Okay.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
I got the job at the Y in January and I got the job at the community college in February. And I 
got the job at community college based on what I was doing at the Y. And the Y was paying me 
$4.50 an hour, for 19 hours. The [inaudible] paid you $6.64--with a degree, both of them wanted 
a degree--for 19 hours. So that's 19 and 19 plus holidays at Frederick & Nelson's. So how'd that 
worked as a community college [inaudible]? How that worked was during registration, you 
worked five hours a day, four days a week. Now that's more than 19 hours, okay? But as soon as 
registration was over, they rotated the temporaries to come in one day a week, and that would 
balance out. And when you came in one day a week, you worked five hours, and the rest of the 
time you're off. So that's when I would plug in, I called the Frederick & Nelson, see if they had 
any openings for these days, and they would float me accordingly. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Good. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
So that when I was at the Y, and I had time, controlled my time at the Y, so it was nice-- That, it 
wasn't nice, it was hard work, because at the same time, I was still collecting unemployment, 
because none of that brought me up to where I should be. 
 
Page 12 of 13 
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Yeah.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
So I collected unemployment, sometime I only got 38 dollars, but it was okay.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Mm-hmm, paid bills?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
Oh yeah, I learned how to cut coupons real good. And my garden was great that year, we had 
lettuce and tomatoes, I mean, the salad bowl was going.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
A woman of necessity.  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
Hey, that's what it's about. And see, people don't realize right now, they say, "What can you do 
with a degree?" I don't know what you can do with a degree, but I know what I'm doing with my 
degree. And I suggest that everybody who needs one for minimum qualification for a job, get 
one, because it ain't about I'm gonna make 9 dollars an hour. It's about the knowledge you learn 
to survive, we understand the system as a setup to know how and when you can infiltrate the 
system, because it's crazy out here. I mean, you, I may not know everything about gardening, but 
shoot, I know enough to make the front of my house look better than it do, with the right shrubs. 
You know, you can grow a little bit of food. And if the seeds go to weed or seed, carrots make 
the most beautiful flowers. When they go to seed, yeah, they come up on a white, on the stem, 
and they've got this little lace white flower. It's pretty. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Like them?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
No, those are dusty miller.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Do you consider that, after you were fired, do you consider that period a down, down period for 
you?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
Mm-hmm. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Because you don't sound like you've had a lot of them, but that one was more, that one-- 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:31 
It was devastating because-- 
Page 13 of 13 
 
 
Antoinette Johnson  26:31 
Yeah. How long did it last? 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  26:41 
--well, [inaudible]. Well, I, abound in determine, it began to turn up when I got the job at 
Frederick's. Oh, my feet hurt, my back too, but it was a, it was another learning experience. But 
you got to get up and get out there and find something. At least, I had to find something. And it 
gave you new understanding of what the market was about out there. Because, see, once you've 
been working steady, you don't feel the depression like everybody else.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  30:25 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  30:26 
You don't understand how people are missing meals, you see these street people, and you say, 
"Oh, isn't it disgusting?" But, unh-uh, do you realize you're so close to it? That makes you think 
twice. You learn that I need to not be charging every time I get a win. Because [inaudible] and 
then all that weight you were carrying shifted over to your husband.  
 
Antoinette Johnson  30:56 
Yeah? How did this affect him?  
 
Patricia Louise Butler  30:57 
He said he was [inaudible]. [Inaudible] talk about how, "You'll get hired, somewhere or 
somehow." And that, that was encouraging. 
 
Antoinette Johnson  31:08 
Yeah. 
 
Patricia Louise Butler  31:08 
But you know-- [recording ends]. 