Rebecca Wilson, Interview

The Muscogee (Creek) Nation
Historic and Cultural Preservation Department Oral History Program

“A Twenty-First Century Pandemic in Indian Country: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against Covid-19”
As Remembered by: Mrs. Rebecca Wilson
Interview by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
Date: October 7, 2022
Transcription: The Audio Transcription Company
Edited by: Ms. Midge Dellinger
MIDGE DELLINGER: This is Midge Dellinger, oral historian for the Muscogee (Creek) Nation. Today is October 7, 2022, and I am in Okmulgee, Oklahoma interviewing Muscogee citizen Miss Rebecca Wilson. I am performing this interview on behalf of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Historic and Cultural Preservation Department for the oral history project titled The Twenty-First Century in Indian Country: The Resilience of the Muscogee (Creek) Nation Against COVID-19.
Mrs. Wilson, thank you so much for being here today and doing this interview with me.
REBECCA WILSON: You’re welcome.
DELLINGER: We’re going to start with some questions about your personal life, and your background, and Mrs. Wilson, where were you born?
WILSON: I was born in Wichita, Kansas.
DELLINGER: And do you remember the hospital that you were born in? WILSON: Wesley Hospital.
DELLINGER: Wesley?
WILSON: Yes, Ma’am.
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DELLINGER: Okay. Now how long did your family live in Wichita? WILSON: Until I was about twelve years old.
DELLINGER: And then [00:01:00], you know, in our previous conversation we did talk about how you had lived in different cities and towns, and we will get to that a little bit later in the interview, but I want to ask you if you would please share a little bit about your dad and his life.
WILSON: My dad was born in Duluth, Minnesota. My grandmother and his father met— he was a Pullman Porter on a train that stopped in Tallahassee, Oklahoma and my grandmother met him there. They got married, they moved to Minnesota, my dad was conceived and born in Duluth, Minnesota. There was trouble between the two of them, so my grandmother took my dad, and moved him back to her family in Tallahassee, Oklahoma, and they lived on a farm out there. [00:02:00] Her sister is married to my dad’s brother, so it was two brothers married to two sisters, which is how we’ve kept in contact with them as family.
As he grew older, he became a mechanic, and worked on cars, mainly race cars. Then he went to Michigan, him and my mother took my oldest sister and went to Michigan, and he got a job as a mechanic. I always thought it was a joke when my mother would speak of the “Purple Gang”, and then I looked it up for myself, and it’s a Jewish mafia type of situation for them, and my dad started building cars for the
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prohibition, running liquor from Canada back into Michigan. He decided one time he was running liquor that he was going to keep the car and the money. Well, they came after him and my [00:03:00] mom, and the lady upstairs saw them outside coming into the building, and got my mother and my sister out a bathroom window before they could get into the room. My dad was nowhere around. Now, they got to a bus station and got back to Oklahoma that way. My dad was later to follow. Then when he got back to Oklahoma, he opened up a car mechanical shop. That’s where he stayed for many, many years. Then he moved to Wichita, Kansas too. Of course they were still married all that time.
DELLINGER: Right, that’s quite a story. Now did you say your father’s name? Who’s your father?
WILSON: My father is Bruce Allen Nelson.
DELLINGER: Did the mafia—you said it was the Jewish [00:04:00] mafia?
WILSON: I always thought it was something my mother made up, you know, Purple Gang, come on. There’s no Columbo’s or the mafia names that I would associate it with, but I did look it up, and there is such a thing as the Purple Gang, and it was a Jewish mafia. But they never came for him in Oklahoma.
DELLINGER: That’s what I was going to ask you.
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WILSON: Yes, they never came to look for him. I guess maybe they found the car and the money, I don’t know.
DELLINGER: Right. And so then eventually your mother and your father are in Wichita.
WILSON: They came to Oklahoma, then they moved to Wichita, and they moved to a little town called Russell, Kansas, and they stayed there about a year or so. Then we moved to Wichita where my mother got employed at Boeing Aircraft. She was there for twenty-seven years working at [00:05:00] Boeing Aircraft. She built airplanes, she was a riveter on an airplane. During that timeframe, in 1969, she got chosen to go to NASA to build the Apollo 11, to do the rivets on Apollo 11.
DELLINGER: Let’s go back just a minute. Have you shared what you wanted to share about your father’s life or is there more that you’d like to share about him?
WILSON: No.
DELLINGER: Okay. Who was your mother? What’s your mother’s name? WILSON: My mother’s name is Sarah Louise Hope Nelson.
DELLINGER: And share a little bit about her, where she’s from, and where her family is from, and a little bit about her life.
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WILSON: My mother’s family is from—she was born in Salem, Oklahoma, but we were raised on [00:06:00] Tiger Mountain, which is about eight miles east of Henryetta, Oklahoma current day. My mother’s grandparents lived there with my grandfather and his sister. Her name was Viola, but she went by Yankee, she lived her life as a man. She dressed as a man and she lived as a man. What else can I say? They were active in—my mother’s grandmother, Emma, she spoke only Creek. She refused to speak English because she was not going to be assimilated into the ways of what was coming. My grandfather, [00:07:00] he became a farmer, and they found oil and gas on their land, so that was their revenue of income during that timeframe. And it was a lot.
DELLINGER: And what was his name?
WILSON: His name was Beaden Hope.
DELLINGER: And his wife was who again?
WILSON: Matilda Francis. That was his first wife. His second wife’s name was Bertha Frenchman.
DELLINGER: Your mom was born and raised in Salem, Oklahoma.
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WILSON: My mother was born in Salem, Oklahoma because my grandma she got pregnant with—it was her first baby, so she went to stay with her sister that lived down by the Hickory Ground in Salem. After she gave birth then she traveled back to the Mountain to raise [00:08:00] my mother. Then her brother and her sister were both born on the Mountain.
DELLINGER: Right, and how many siblings did your mom have?
WILSON: There’s a total of ten.
DELLINGER: All right, Mrs. Wilson, will you please share a little bit about your mom’s childhood?
WILSON: My mom was born in Salem, but to take it further back, my grandmother came from Tallahassee, as well as where my father’s people lived at. They were connected before my mother was even born. My father’s people came from Tennessee too, they got land near where my grandmother’s parents had land. [00:09:00] My grandmother when my father was born, she babysitted him at one time. Then when they left Tallahassee to go south where my Aunt Louisa, my mother’s aunt, lived at her allotment, that’s when they all went to Salem. Then my grandmother met my grandfather and they had my mother and three other children, and my grandmother remarried three times, and she had a total of ten children. But they were born in Hoffman and Grayson area, then they all moved away.
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My grandmother moved to Russell, Kansas. At that time my mother followed her to Russell, Kansas, and my dad. By then they had my eldest sister and the next sister, they had Martha and [00:10:00] Mary by then. No, and Linda, all three of them were born in Oklahoma. By then they had all three of those children. Then my mother, they moved to Wichita, Kansas, that’s where they got me.
DELLINGER: You had just shared with me an interesting story about your mom’s family moving from the Tallahassee area to Salem.
WILSON: Yes. I was driving my grandmother to see her brother, who was still living at that time. She said, “Do you see that hill over there?” “Yes.” She said, “Do you know on the backside of that hill we spent four days in pouring down rain with all of our cattle, all of our chickens, ducks, whatever,” they were all behind that hill, and they had to take a perimeter night watch to keep the coyotes and different animals from getting their animals, [00:11:00] and they had to stay in that one spot for four days because the wagons couldn’t go, it was too muddy, it was just impossible for them to leave. Once it dried up, they kind of got a little bit drier, then they could move on and proceed down the road to Tallahassee—I mean, to Salem.
DELLINGER: To Salem, yeah, wow. Do you have any idea what year that would have been that they were trying to do that? You said they were in wagons.
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WILSON: They were in wagons and I didn’t know if that was because they were poor and that’s all they had or if—I’m pretty sure cars were available but no, I don’t know. I really don’t know.
DELLINGER: Yeah, that’s another interesting story that you’ve shared there. I want to take some time and focus a little bit more on your mother. You have shared with me already quite a bit about [00:12:00] your mother and she had such an interesting life.
WILSON: Yes, she did.
DELLINGER: Let’s just focus on her. If you would just talk about her. You’ve already mentioned that she worked for Douglas Aircraft as a riveter. Can you share a little bit more about her doing that work and her involvement with Apollo 11?
WILSON: Yes, I can. She started in the early sixties or maybe fifties working at Boeing because she was there for twenty-three years—wait, she had to start in the forties because she was there for twenty-three years and we moved to Oklahoma in 1972, and that was her last year. I guess it would have to be the early forties. I’ve never known my mother not to work at Boeing because she’s worked at Boeing [00:13:00] since my birth. In my lifetime it’s the only job my mother had, it was like Boeing and teaching school. But while she was at Boeing she worked with a lot of wonderful women that if she was alive today, to the day she passed she spoke of them highly. All these women were riveters, they were sealers, they did all kinds of things when it came to aircraft.
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When she got chosen for the Apollo 11, there was only seven of the women that were riveters that got to be picked to go to NASA, and she just happened to be one of them because she was the best at what she did. She was probably the only Native one that went. We’ve always been proud of that little diploma that she had from that. That’s always been [00:14:00] our little like our mom was on Apollo 11.
DELLINGER: What age were you at the time that she went down to Florida to work for NASA?
WILSON: It was around nine because my grandmother at that time lived in Wichita and she would come over and stay with us while my mother was gone.
DELLINGER: She went and you and your siblings stayed behind. Which grandma was that that —
WILSON: My grandma Matilda, her mother. My mother’s mother.
DELLINGER: And how long was she gone?
WILSON: I would say she was probably gone from late-April to June, somewhere in there.
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DELLINGER: Do you remember being able to have telephone conversations with your mom? Were you able to stay in contact with her while she was gone?
WILSON: A brief hello, how are you, how are you doing in school, things like that, but other than that [00:15:00] —time cost back then, so you were going to get two questions and two answers and then you’ve got to get off the phone, you know?
DELLINGER: If you were nine years old, what would that have been? The third grade maybe?
WILSON: Yeah.
DELLINGER: What was that like for you as a third grader? Were you even aware at that point as a child what—
WILSON: I did not know the significance of what my mother was doing. I just knew that she was doing something big, but I didn’t know what she was doing. Everybody else was making a big deal out of it, but for me it was like well, when are we going to see the Apollo 11, you know? I’ve been doing some research on my own and I didn’t realize that JFK—my mother was a big JFK—I didn’t know why we were crying, but everybody was crying when he got shot. He was the one that brought in the space program for that era and he was the one [00:16:00] that pushed the Apollo program. I am sure that my
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mother’s admiration and dedication to JFK made her feel that it was more than it would have been on a normal basis.
DELLINGER: Right. Yeah, so you’ve shared with me some of the, I guess, acknowledgements that your mom received for this work on Apollo 11, will you please share a little bit about some of those things?
WILSON: She received a plaque. May I have that plaque over there? This is a plaque from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, (reading plaque) “Presents the Apollo Achievement Award to Louise Nelson in appreciation of dedication and service to the nation as a member of the team which has advanced the nation’s capabilities in aeronauticals [00:17:00] and space and demonstrated them in many outstanding accomplishments, accumulating in Apollo 11 successful achievement of man’s first landing on the moon, July 20, 1969.” And it was signed in Washington D.C. This is also a picture of my mother standing with my nephew in front of the Apollo 11 in the Smithsonian Space and she’s pointing to where her mark is at on the space capsule.
DELLINGER: All right, very nice.
WILSON: And that’s my nephew, David, with her. This plaque is hung in our home with pride [00:18:00] because first man walks on the moon, wasn’t about who he was, it was about how he got there, and who made the machine to get him there, and she was one of the people that made it happen.
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DELLINGER: Yeah, that’s amazing. Would you like to show that picture of your mother?
WILSON: Yes, this is my mother.
DELLINGER: Let me zoom in.
WILSON: And this is one of her favorite pictures.
DELLINGER: Thank you, Mrs. Wilson, for sharing those things for your mother and about your mother. I want to go back a little bit in your mother’s life because she—it’s obvious to me from a previous conversation that education was very important to your mother. Would you talk a little bit about your mother’s educational journey?
WILSON: Yes, [00:19:00] I will be happy to. My mother was working at Boeing at the time and she knew that she could no longer maintain that physical ability to continue to do the job, so she started taking night school to get a G.E.D. She got her G.E.D. there in Wichita, Kansas. She decided we would come to Oklahoma because she knew she could get a degree of some sort. She wanted to teach, she always wanted to be a teacher, that’s all she ever talked about was teaching. I think she was a teacher’s pet when she did get a
chance to go to school to the eighth grade there in Salem. Anyway, she came to Oklahoma, we moved to Checotah to be near Connors State College. [00:20:00] She went
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to Connors for two years, she started the first Native American Club there at Connors. They didn’t have one before her. She made the Dean’s List and Who’s Who at Connors. She said that wasn’t enough, she wanted to do more, so she went to Northeastern to get her Bachelors of Education.
After she got that, she still was not satisfied, she wanted her masters in special education. That’s when she started her masters in special education. She did her student teaching at Ryal, which is down by Salem, and after she did her student teaching, she applied to Dewar, she got into Dewar. They had no Special Ed program at that time. My mother implemented a Special Ed program at Dewar. So she’s a lot [00:21:00] of firsts.
DELLINGER: Do you know what year that was when she started that program at Dewar?
WILSON: It had to be 1976 because that was our first year there, 1976. After she implemented that program, that was not enough for her once again, she wanted to pursue her doctorate, so that’s when she went back to Northeastern to pursue her doctorate. Then she had a massive heart attack and had to have open heart surgery and that kind of cut her education out after that.
DELLINGER: At the time that she had that heart attack, what age was she?
WILSON: Around sixty-five. She was still working every—she still taught school every day. She had two strokes before that, but that didn’t stop her from teaching.
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DELLINGER: Wow, so even after the [00:22:00] heart attack though, she was able to go back to teaching?
WILSON: Not after she had open heart surgery. She never went back to school and she never finished her doctorate, she was only ten hours away from finishing her doctorate. She was very disappointing but her strength was just not there.
DELLINGER: At that point in her life, what age was she?
WILSON: She was probably sixty-seven. It was within a couple of years of her—it was about sixty-seven.
DELLINGER: Yeah, and so at that point she was forced to retire.
WILSON: Right.
DELLINGER: I just want to clarify something. Well, actually I want to clarify two things. Earlier I gave the incorrect name of the airline company that your mom worked for, so I just wanted to say that. Then also you’re saying that she went to [00:23:00] Northeastern and you’re talking about Northeastern State University in Tahlequah.
WILSON: Yes, Ma’am. And we drove over day for her masters and her doctorate. Every day. That’s how I learned a lot because we talked the whole time, going and coming. I
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would drive going and when it got dark, she would drive coming back. I learned how type when my mother went to the G.E.D. program in Wichita because that was the only place that a lady kind of babysitted me. I was a pretty good typist by the time I got to Northeastern. “Where did you get all this money from?” “I’ve been typing since you’ve been in class all day.” You know, a dollar a page is not too bad for a little kid to be making a little money. (coughs) Excuse me.
DELLINGER: When you came back to Oklahoma, [00:24:00] you said you moved to Checotah, and your mom started school at Connors.
WILSON: And in the meantime we built a home, an Indian home, and we did the work where we had to work in the summer, to put in your hours. So we put in our hours, kind of like HUD I guess, we had to go to the little barn, and sometimes they would take us out on a bus, and we would clean houses, or plant grass, or whatever they would have us do to make that house ready available for a family to come in. At that time, my mother had nine cows that my grandfather had on his property, and we loaded those cows up, took them to the sale, came back with the money, my mom went to the bank and bought forty acres on the corner, right across the road from my grandfather, and that’s where she had her home built. Which is where [00:25:00] I live currently today.
DELLINGER: I want you to talk a little bit about your experiences as a child. Because again, you’ve lived in these different towns where you grew up, and now we’ve talked
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about your mom and her educational pursuits, I’d like for you to talk a little bit more about what childhood was like for you.
WILSON: My childhood was probably normal but not normal at the same time because I, myself, came from a family that has many colors. It was very hard for me to understand where I fit in. My first experience about who I was and what I looked like was [00:26:00] with my grandmother, who was this brown Native woman. At the time she did laundry, took in laundry for people, and a Caucasian lady came up, and she took her basket, and set it down. I happened to be sitting on the back porch and she looked over at me, and my grandmother’s name was Matilda, and she said, “Tildy, whose baby you got babysitting?” She said, “That’s my grandbaby.” And the statement was made and I will never—it’s just something that’s embedded in my mind. “Now Tildy, you know you can’t have a white grandbaby.” I looked at my grandmother like what is she talking about because color didn’t come up in my home, we never—I thought I was brown as the next or as light as the next, we all looked alike as far as I was concerned, in my head we did.
That was my first experience [00:27:00] with I look different than the rest of them. I wasn’t as brown as my grandmother, I wasn’t as tan as my mother, and I had no idea. But it was very hard for me because I had to play the role of Native, play the role of African American, I had to play the role of Caucasian, no matter what setting I was in, I just had to adapt, to wherever I was at. I don’t want to say I’m a chameleon, but kind of sort of, yes.
My childhood—I spent a lot of summers in Muskogee, Oklahoma growing up with my dad’s grandparents and his parents. That was a mixed neighborhood. (coughs)
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But most of them were doctors, dentists, my grandfather [00:28:00] was a postmaster, so they were very well-to-do people there, well above the poverty line. I only had one bicycle, some people had two, so I felt like I was poor. It was different for me.
My sisters grew up the same way that I did, we all looked alike, and they had to be the same as I, so I took their lead on a lot of cases, a lot of situations. It was very interesting for me when I joined the military and people just could not—because they had nothing to gauge me off of but just me. They’d look at me crazy because when I speak what difference does it make what I sound like, it’s what’s inside of me. And that’s what my grandmother told me that day on the back porch. She said, “Becky, no matter what,” [00:29:00] she said, “what’s inside of you that counts. The outside can be anything, but inside has to count. That’s where you come from, is what is in you.” And that’s what I live by. It’s what’s in me. Not what I look like, or what I wear, or who I hang out with, for sure.
I had a good childhood. But I grew up on Tiger Mountain and that’s not a good place when you’re a teenager and you have nobody to play with or anybody to hang out with. So I learned to play by myself, I talk to myself still, but not that much. (laughs) I don’t answer myself yet, so I’m good.
DELLINGER: (laughs) Let me ask you this, it sounds like you went to multiple elementary schools.
WILSON: Multiple.
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DELLINGER: And then you shared with me a little bit about when your mom was working on her master’s [00:30:00] at Northeastern State University, you were at Sequoyah.
WILSON: I went to Sequoyah Indian School, yes, I did.
DELLINGER: Will you share a little about that experience?
WILSON: Yes, I will. When we went to Sequoyah, my mother—we could only find a little back of a house, a little one room, my mother could stay at so we didn’t have to travel back and forth all week, we just had to go home on the weekends. I would be at Sequoyah and my mother would be at the little room, the little apartment, and I stayed in the dorm, I went to class every day, and you had to have a job. My job was in the dental clinic, of all things, to make appointments. Never in my life did I think that that was the start of my career and that’s what I did—when I was in the military for twenty years that is what I did was dentistry. I just never correlated the two. But yeah, that was my start in the dental clinic. [00:31:00]
We used to do ceramics, we did the whole thing, we had the RA that would come and talk to us, help us with homework. That was a year that I really, I fit in, I was accepted for Becky, my heart, I was accepted for what I was and not for what I looked like for the very first time amongst a whole group of kids. Because I did start out at Tahlequah High School, but that just didn’t work for me. My mother said, “Let’s go out here and try Sequoyah.” I got a room and it worked out fantastic. It was a very fun time.
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DELLINGER: That’s great. Yeah, that’s great that you had a good experience there. WILSON: I know most people don’t. But I think everybody there did because— DELLINGER: So you were there for just one year?
WILSON: For one year. [00:32:00]
DELLINGER: Your senior year. And then that would have been what year? WILSON: That was my freshman year.
DELLINGER: That was your freshman year that you were there. What year would that have been?
WILSON: Seventy-five, seventy-four. Seventy-four.
DELLINGER: Where did you go to school after Sequoyah?
WILSON: By then I was going—came back—my mother got her bachelors, we came back and went to Ryal—I went to Graham High School, and from Graham High School, when she got her job at Dewar, I went to Dewar.
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DELLINGER: Dewar then is where you graduated from?
WILSON: That’s where I graduated from.
DELLINGER: What year was that?
WILSON: 1978. Most people were born then, but yeah, 1978.
DELLINGER: You got to see a lot of different school throughout your childhood. I do want to go back to something real quick because I want to make sure, again, names are so important, and I want to [00:33:00] make sure that we’re getting all of your families’ names. Can you share maybe again, and maybe you’ve already said them, your grandparents’ names on your father’s side? Is that LaVinia?
WILSON: Right.
DELLINGER: LaVinia Nelson and she married Cleveland Victor Nelson.
WILSON: Here’s the story. My grandmother, like I said, she met the traveling—the porter. His name was Roscoe Allen, which is my dad’s biological dad. On census my dad’s first original name was Roscoe Allen Jr., on census records. When my grandmother came back to Oklahoma, she didn’t [00:34:00] want to be found by him because of the
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tumultuous relationship that they had. She changed my dad’s name to Bruce Allen Nelson when she met my grandfather. She gave him the last name of Nelson. It’s not an official adoption by my grandfather, we cannot find paperwork that says—but that’s my name, the name Nelson he had it so we took it, my mother went by Nelson, so whether it’s official or not it’s official for us. That is how he became a Nelson.
My grandmother’s people are Parkers from Parkers Crossroads, Tennessee. Her parents were raised by—they were enslaved there at some point, her [00:35:00] dad was, and the story is that Sherrod Parker was the son of John Parker. Sherrod Parker had children with Martha. Buchanan is the name they gave her, but I’m not sure if that’s correct. She worked in the field. He had nine children with her. When those children became of age and started looking like the Caucasian Parkers, he had to load them up in a wagon, and they moved to Clarksville, Texas. Then in Clarksville, Texas they took a train to Oklahoma, and that’s how they got to Oklahoma. My grandmother’s people came from there.
But it was all due to the simple fact that the lady of the house, she was not having these kids running around [00:36:00] looking like everybody else, all the Caucasian people, she did not want them to look like that, and they couldn’t stay, they had to go. He loaded them up, took them to Texas, then they made their way to Oklahoma.
My dad’s father’s people came from Minnesota and pretty much had the same background from my dad’s people. I don’t know. It starts with a husband and a wife, which would be my great-great grandparents. He was an African American and she was definitely a white woman with green eyes and red hair from West Virginia, of all places. They got together in Missouri and then they had so many kids, all boys except for one
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girl. They lived in and around Minnesota, in between Minnesota and Missouri, and that’s how they came. [00:37:00]
My mother, her father is from Tiger Mountain, born and raised right there on the mountain, right across the road from me. That is his mother’s, Emma Davis’s original allotment is right across the road from us, which is my mother’s grandmother. And my grandfather and his sister Yankee is right next to it. Now where my grandfather’s allotment is at? I don’t know. I have yet to find his original allotment, but those two are there. That’s where they stayed at because they had family up on top of the hill with an original allotment, which would have been my grandmother’s brother, lived on top of the hill.
My grandmother, Roth, my grandfather, Roth Beaden Hope. [00:38:00] Matilda Frances is from Tallahassee, they never say where she’s born, but I’m assuming that that’s where they came from because that was her father—Louisa Barnett’s original allotment was there, which is Jeff Francis’s mother. He met a lady named Sarah Mory, I’m sorry, you know how you—anyway, Sarah Mory. They got married and my grandmother was born with two brothers and a sister. Then that’s when they came, when the sister’s allotment was down in Salem, that’s how they became in Salem.
Now the names. It goes from my mother, her mother is Matilda Francis [00:39:00] and Beaden Hope. My grandmother’s parents are—Matilda Francis’s parents are Sarah Mory and Jeff Francis. Sarah Mory’s parents, I don’t know. Jeff Francis’s parents are John Francis and Louisa Barnett. Now my grandfather Beaden Hope, his parents are Emma Davis and Henry Hope. Henry has—I don’t know much about them. That’s as far back as I know really. That’s sad.
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DELLINGER: Well listen, that is quite a bit. That’s a lot. (laughs) Really, I’m impressed that you know—I know you and one of your [00:40:00] sisters do a lot of your family’s genealogy, this has been a project for you guys. So yeah, that’s very impressive that you know all of these folks, and not just their names, but these stories that are a part of your family as well. It’s all so interesting. Thank you for sharing all that.
WILSON: You’re welcome.
DELLINGER: Let’s talk—you’ve mentioned more than once here already this morning about siblings, but we haven’t really gotten into your siblings, so I want to focus on them, and let you talk—say each one of their names and just share a little bit about whatever you want to share about each one of them.
WILSON: I’ll start with my oldest sister, her name was Martha White. Martha Nelson White Huling, complete name. She was [00:41:00] born in Muskogee, she went to high school in Muskogee, she graduated from Manual Training High School, she went to college in Northeastern where she met her husband, the father of her four children, or four sons, I should say. She went on to get masters at Northeastern too. It was either Northeastern or Irwin, I don’t remember. But when she went to get her master’s, she did it under the BIA, and when she did that she told them that she would give them four years of her time, and she went to the Jicarilla Reservation in New Mexico, and she stayed for ten years. I have a niece that is half Jicarilla/half Creek. [00:42:00] She went back to
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Wichita, she worked at Hesston University writing grants for different projects that they had going on there, until about fifteen years ago. She moved to Arkansas to be with her children that are in Arkansas. Then she developed Alzheimer’s/dementia type symptoms, and now is in a facility for that.
My next sister Linda Woolfolk, she went to Northeastern. There are a lot of Northeasterns here. She went to Northeastern, she got her degree, and she came out and she got married to an Army lieutenant at that time, who’s now a full colonel—I mean, he retired. [00:43:00] He took them all over the world. She was in Germany and I was in Italy, we were there at the same years, and we would go to Germany to visit them, and they would come to Italy to visit us, so we had a lot of fun, loads of memories, loads of memories.
It was a very special time because my mother came from Oklahoma to Germany. Just a real quick story. My mother has her suitcases at the airport. Note this, I’m on the other side of this little barrier, and there’s too German polizei with Uzis standing right by the door. I’m looking at them and they’re looking at me and I see my mother and I’m telling her, “Come on, let’s get your bags and come on,” she’s standing back there waving. “No mom, don’t wave no more, come on, get your bags, get your bags.” The doors open up again, some more [00:44:00] people come in again, she’s waving. “Mama, no, get the bags and come on!” Finally I went up to the polizei, I said, “Look, she’s not going to make a move until I go in there.” And he said, “You tell her to get her bags to the door and then you can help her.” I said, gosh, this is going to be a real trial. “Mama, bring your bags to the door and then I can help you.” So they let me underneath the rope to get her bags. Well my sister had bought her a bouquet of flowers and everybody—I
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mean, you have to understand, there’s a crowd of people behind us waiting for the same plane to disembark.
She comes out, she grabs the flowers, holds them like Miss America, and this is how she comes down the line. Like, this is not for you, and everybody is clapping that she finally made it through the door. That’s her entrance into Europe. (coughs) [00:45:00] And only she could have done it like that.
DELLINGER: That’s good.
WILSON: (coughs) Excuse me. (pause in recording) Linda, she started working in the dental clinic at—
DELLINGER: She started working at a dental clinic?
WILSON: Yeah, she started as a dental assistant in Wiesbaden, Germany, which was about forty-five minutes from where she actually lived at in Germany. Wiesbaden is all Air Force, by the way. She would tell me she would want something from Italy, and we always had a Medivac plane going, well, I would find a patient that was going on the Medivac, I would wrap the box up, and I would say, “Hey, can you take these x-rays to Germany and drop them off at the dental clinic for me?” Yeah, it would be a tea cart or whatever [00:46:00] she’s wanting, a tray, whatever. That’s how she got a lot of her stuff. It was a big running joke, don’t go to the dental clinic because—because I worked at the
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dental clinic, don’t get anything from that Aviano dental clinic, go to Wiesbaden, because it might not be what they tell you it’s gonna be. But that’s how she got a lot of stuff. She worked there and then she went to work for the CID in Washington, D.C. there at—
DELLINGER: So you’re talking about Central Intelligence?
WILSON: Yes. No, not Central Intelligence. CID is the Army’s equivalent of an office of investigation. That’s where all the big shots go through there. She worked with a lot of very important colonels, and generals, and things like that, and she retired after forty [00:47:00] years of doing the service.
DELLINGER: Wow.
WILSON: So she did a long time too.
DELLINGER: And how long of service did her husband do?
WILSON: He did thirty years. Then he went to work for the State Department after that. He did the, you know “Say No to Drugs” in Columbia? He did a lot of covert type of things going to Columbia. He was a helicopter pilot, a very well sought after helicopter pilot. They trained him how to go down and get in, and get out, kind of those situations, yeah. So he did a lot too.
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My sister Mary, she got married, and she had her children, raised her family. She started her first real job as a radiologist or she did radiology. Then after that she went to [00:48:00] the VA hospital and she worked there for twenty years at the VA hospital. Then she got into relationships that were not conducive to work so she became just a regular person at that point in time.
DELLINGER: Right, and I think you had shared with me she’s deceased at this time. WILSON: She’s deceased, yes.
DELLINGER: Out of these three sisters, out of the four of you, you’re the youngest. WILSON: I’m the youngest, yes.
DELLINGER: I’d like for you now, if you would, to share about your life after high school.
WILSON: After high school. After graduating from Dewar High School, I went to East Central University [00:49:00] in Ada. I had five classes in Ada. I could tell you where three of them were at, but I could tell you where every keg party was at on Friday night for sure. That was my college experience, keg parties. Bad to say, but that was it. But after that, then I joined the military, within six months of that, I joined the military. To be honest with you, I didn’t think I was ever going to see another keg party in my life. But
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go through basic, go through your technical training school, and bam, there was a keg party, so I was right at home once again. Not really, it wasn’t quite that bad. I really enjoyed my military service, I really did. I didn’t like it at first because they make you run and learn all [00:50:00] this stuff that I don’t want to learn, didn’t care to learn, don’t care about. But it gave me a sense of direction that my life probably would never have turned. I knew from one thing when I graduated from high school that I was not going to be an Oklahoma statistic of 2.5 kids and a dog in a trailer park with a hooptie for a car. That was just not gonna be my life, I had to do something different. My first assignment just happened to be Italy, which was fantastic, which is where I met my husband. I’m a beach bum by heart. I didn’t know I was a beach bum because we don’t have any beaches except for what, Belle Starr? That was the only beach I’d ever been on before that. So when I really found a real beach with real sand, that was my forte right there, and that’s where I want to go back to. [00:51:00]
DELLINGER: Mrs. Wilson, let me ask you, what branch of the armed services did you enter into?
WILSON: The Air Force.
DELLINGER: And why did you select the Air Force?
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WILSON: Well, (whispering) that’s not right to say. You have to have a little bit higher score on the ASVAB test to get into the Air Force and the Navy. I’m not putting down anybody else, but that is why I chose the Air Force. Yeah.
I’ll tell you what they did. When you first went into the office, they showed me a film of a girl on a flight line with two yellow flashlights waving a plane in. She had on Mukluk boots, you know, little boots, a parka, her face shield. [00:52:00] You could stop the movie right now. If that’s the job you have for me, not gonna happen. I said, “Look, I have two requirements, warm in the winter, cool in the summer. If you got one of those kind of jobs, hook me up.” I guess they got down to the Ds, got to dental, and there we go, that’s how my dental life started all over again from Sequoyah—it just seems like it went full circle. I didn’t know that I was being prepped at Sequoyah for what I was going to do for the rest of my life and that’s how I got dental. I loved it, I loved the people, I loved my job, I loved cleaning teeth, I loved fixing teeth, I loved making people smile.
But I got so complacent right before I got ready to retire. This is all I’m going to do, be in a bunch of meetings, talk to a bunch of people, I’m never really going to do dentistry again. So I chose to go into something [00:53:00] called maxillofacial prosthodontics, which I had no idea what it entailed, I just knew it sounded cool so I’m going to go for it. Little did I know they make ears, eyes, noses, faces for people that either cancer, bombs went off in front of people’s face, and they have no nose, no ears from the blast. I used to get up all the time saying oh my back hurts, my shoulder hurts, I don’t want to get up. I didn’t realize people—my face was still the same, I could face anybody, their faces were not the same, and they hid behind caps, masks, all sorts of things, and it just really was a humbling experience for me. I was extremely humbled.
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[00:54:00] A lady, she must have been a makeup person to begin—you know, girls that wear makeup, and we made her an eye. She lost her eye to cancer. She came in, we put the eye in. She had one eye done with makeup and she did the other eye after we got her eye in. She said, “This is the first time I’ve felt whole in twelve years.” I was like man, how, how am I to complain. I feel whole every day. I don’t have to face the world. The very first patient that I had was one that she wanted to go home and see her mother, but she was from Guam, and she had lost of all this (gestures to face) was gone. She had very little mandible. I was like, “How y’all gonna do this? I don’t see how you’re [00:55:00] gonna do it.” They made her a mask for this side of her face, and she wore sunglasses, and a little mask to kind of keep it up. She came back, she passed within like three or four months after she came back from Guam, but that was the first time she saw her mother in nine years, and she did not want to see her mother without her face. I was just like, god, how could I do that. I didn’t know those emotions were in me to have empathy and sympathy for people that deep. It was so humbling that I became an Ocularist. I took the training to make eyes and the ears.
People lose them in motorcycle accidents, scrape the side of your head off, so there’s so many [00:56:00] things that—and these are not old people, these are people between thirty and forty-five, some of them as young as twenty. It was very humbling.
After I retired, I got out, and I didn’t know what I was going to do for myself. It’s almost like getting released from prison, you know what I mean? Here’s your books, here’s what you’ve gathered up since you’ve been here, we’re going to ship you out and you do what you’ve got to do. I didn’t know what I wanted to do. But I got a job teaching anatomy and physiology at a technical school for dental assisting and that’s what I did for
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eight years until my mother got sick. Then I had to make a choice to come home or let her go to a nursing home. Which that wasn’t going to happen. But that’s my career. [00:57:00]
DELLINGER: What are some of the countries that you were in while you were in the military?
WILSON: My first tour was Italy, I came back to the States for four years to Kansas, I went back to Italy for eight years, and then I went to Germany for another four years. Then my oldest daughter was taking US History and kept telling me the Grand Canyon was in the state. “What state?” “You know, the state where Grandma lives in.” “What state does your grandmother live in?” “The United States.” And I’m like, no, no, no. NO, no, no. There’s states within the state. United means it’s a bunch of states. She said, “I don’t understand what you’re saying.” I realized my children had never been in the United States like that. They’d flown from Philadelphia to Oklahoma [00:58:00] and back to Philadelphia, and back to Europe. To them it was just one big state. And I’m like no, no. I wish I would have stayed because when they got here they went crazy. They had never been in the stands, they had hot dogs stands around, McDonalds around the corner. We didn’t have that. It was kind of—yeah, it was eye-opening for me and them.
DELLINGER: Yeah, since you’ve brought your children up let’s talk about your family. You shared with me previously that you met your husband in the military, so will share a little bit about your husband?
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WILSON: Yes, I will. I met my husband at a going away party for another person that I went with, which was a guy, and it was his going away—and my husband was just there, and he kept looking at [00:59:00] me, and talking to me. He had an afro out to here like Michael Jackson kind of afro, you know what I mean? I kept telling him, “You cannot be in the military, just go away. I don’t even want to talk to you. You’re not even the kind of guy I like.” I said, “Just leave me alone.” He asked me to a basketball game and I said, okay, I’ll go, because I had not been anywhere at that point, because I had only been there a couple of weeks by then, and I had not really been off base other to a little café, or the next town shopping, or something, so I was ready to get on the road.
I waited, I waited, he never shows up. I’ve never been stood up. I’ll stand somebody up, but nobody stands me up, that’s just not the way it works. From that point on, that one stand up, I should have left it alone, I should have just walked away from it, [01:00:00] but here we are forty-two years later, still on that—he’s not going to stand me up anymore, I promise you. But yeah.
DELLINGER: What is his name?
WILSON: Jonathan. I love him to death, he’s a great guy, he’s always been my biggest supporter. He got out of the military, he retired first, and then I retired. But he retired like ten years before I did.
DELLINGER: What did he do in the military?
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WILSON: He was in the Air Force too. But he was a secretary. Anywhere I could go, he could go, which is why our jobs were kind of like—he wasn’t like EOD, like bombs or something, or aircraft, where we would have to find a base that fit both of us. So everywhere has a dental clinic and everybody can use a secretary somewhere, so that’s what he did.
Then the children. [01:01:00] I had five nieces and nephews at that time, I’d been around them all my life, no kids for me at all. I didn’t want children, my husband said, “But we’ve got to try. Everybody has kids!” “Not me. I don’t have any kids. I got these raggedy nephews and nieces I’ve got to take care of. No way do I want to have any kids.” Finally I got pregnant. My job was to have them, his job was to take care of them, and that’s exactly what he did. He was a good Mr. Mom. He was the best Mr. Mom. I didn’t go on field trips, I didn’t do any of the kids’—I dropped them off at the daycare, picked them up from—and that was another thing, my kids went to, not the military daycare, [01:02:00] I sent them to the Italian daycare and the German school. They went to the Italian school and the German school because I didn’t want them to—it’s not that I didn’t want them to be Americanized, but I just felt we were in a country, why not take advantage of it? You know? And that’s what I chose to do with them as far as education goes.
The first time they got to the States, when they got into an American school, they lost their mind because they never had that type of freedom before.
DELLINGER: Did they learn those languages?
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WILSON: Yeah, they spoke both fluent Italian and German.
DELLINGER: Wow, that’s fantastic.
WILSON: They’re both fluent, yeah. Not me. But they are definitely. Why I’m not fluent is because I was always being corrected by a five year old or a ten year old telling me that you’re not saying it right. Well, you speak for me, I’ll tell you, and you tell them what I said. [01:03:00] But they were great translators, they were. I think kids are more adaptive to it.
DELLINGER: Oh yeah. Yeah.
WILSON: And they pick up on it quicker.
DELLINGER: You have two children. Tell me about your two children.
WILSON: The oldest is Rebecca and the youngest is Sarah. Rebecca is at school with me at Creek Nation. She’s trying to go to law school, but she’s taking Criminal Justice.
DELLINGER: What age is she now?
WILSON: She’s forty. Sarah is thirty-five and she wants to do Native American Studies. This will be her last year too. Both of them actually, this is their last year.
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DELLINGER: And do they have families of their own?
WILSON: Yes, Sarah has a son. My youngest has a son. Nathan is four. And then my eldest daughter has [01:04:00] two children, one is seventeen, who is autistic, and then we have a seven year old grandson. Which, I don’t know if I want to record this, but he gets suspended from school, one day suspension, for using bad words at school. If that would have been one of the bad words that I say, I would have went to school and pleaded his case. But it was not one of the bad words I use, so I was out of it, you know what I mean? I was like thank god it wasn’t one of my four favorites.
DELLINGER: Will you mention the names of your daughters’ husbands?
WILSON: Rebecca is married to Brandon Christmas, my oldest daughter, which is Connor and Cameron Christmas’s father. Sarah is married to Nathan Johnson. [01:05:00] They have the four year old, Nathan Jr.
DELLINGER: I wanted to ask too, where is your husband originally from?
WILSON: Funny you ask. Because when we met I said, “Where are you from?” “Georgia.” Okay, that’s cool. Then we go to get married, you have to have your birth certificate, before you file. I said, “What’s the date we are going to get your, in Georgia, do I need to go get your birth certificate?” He said, “Oh, no, I’m from Oklahoma.” “Didn’t I ask you if you were from Oklahoma?” Because you know you’re thirty-second
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cousins to anybody in Oklahoma if you’re from Oklahoma. Everybody is your thirty second cousin. I can’t marry somebody from Oklahoma. That was my whole point. Then your birth certificate—he was born in Lawton. He was only six months old when they left. But that was not my point. My point was I asked you specifically were you from Oklahoma and you said, [01:06:00] “No, Georgia.” That was my point. He’s from Lawton, Oklahoma unfortunately.
DELLINGER: He’s from Lawton, Oklahoma, okay. Now I want to talk a little bit about your current educational goals. You’ve gone back to school and as you’ve mentioned, you’re at the College of the Muscogee Nation. Will you share just a little bit about what that experience has been and what your future career goals are?
WILSON: I’ll say this. My current experience, when I first started, I didn’t know what I was getting into. I thought I was in over my head. Then it just kind of became a little bit, I could finally breathe. I felt I could breathe. Then I had a quiz and I just knew I was going to do bad, and then I didn’t do so bad on that. But I had one class, a computer class, that is [01:07:00] driving me bananas. But I’m going to make it. I’m going to make it happen one way or another. I’m going to get through this. Rain or shine, I’m going to shine.
My goal to do this is I want to help the missing indigenous women not just from the state of Oklahoma, but mainly I want to concentrate on my tribal, Muscogee (Creek) Indian women that have gone missing. We have too many that its said for a couple of weeks, maybe for a couple of months, and then they’re off the books. Nobody is looking
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for them, you don’t hear about them anymore, somebody has to raise the awareness that we locally have women that are missing. And men. Not just women, but men too, but mainly women. Indigenous women. I feel that there’s a need [01:08:00] to bring that to the forefront. I want that to be something that we focus on as a tribe because if we are the matriarchs of our family and we are supposed to be the faces of our family, how can we be if we’re missing? If you’re missing that link? And how are their children going to get the link like I have because my mother was present? They don’t have a present mother if she’s missing. I just think it needs to be something that we concentrate on.
DELLINGER: Yeah, that’s quite a goal, and a very significant career goal that you’ve set for yourself. At the College of the Muscogee Nation, is it your goal then to get an associate’s degree? Which associates degree are you going to be working on? [01:09:00]
WILSON: Criminal Justice is what I’m enrolled in because it’s going to detail trials, it’s going to detail what the tribal courts go through. If I don’t know the law, I cannot participate in how to make it effective. What do I need to change if I don’t know what it is I’m trying to change? I cannot change what I don’t know. And I need to know. I don’t know enough about Creek Nation history or Native American history, locally, to make where I see the need for change. And there has to be change for women in the tribe.
First I’m going to say this. I hope before my time comes there is a female chief sitting in that office. That is my goal. I want to see a female chief because I feel we always talk about matriarchal lineage, why are we not sitting in the office then? [01:10:00] Why has it always been men? I disagree with that. I want to see a female—not
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me, but somebody else, to definitely fill that role. We need a Wilma Mankiller. I’m telling you, we need one here. I want one.
DELLINGER: Is there anything else that you’d like to share about your educational goals or future career goals?
WILSON: I would like to end up with my masters. I might be seventy-four but I’ll get there. I’ll get there.
DELLINGER: Is there anything else before we move on and transition the interview, is there anything else, Mrs. Wilson, maybe something we’ve missed about your personal life that you want to share here today?
WILSON: No.
DELLINGER: I think we will go ahead [01:11:00] and transition the interview. I am going to ask you some questions about your experiences with COVID-19 and the COVID-19 pandemic. Here in the United States, COVID-19 has been in existence since the beginning of 2020. When and how did you first hear about the COVID-19 virus?
WILSON: Of course media. Social media, television. I was almost afraid to breathe, because you don’t know how you catch it, you don’t—I live in the country but people stop their cars when it first came out like in the drive and I would stand on my porch and
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talk to you because I did not know. People look normal and they have it, then people look sick [01:12:00] and they have it too, so you don’t know who really has it. COVID-19 is, especially with school, because both of my daughters were living in my home at the time, because they lost jobs, they had no more income, so I had two full families living in my home besides my husband and myself, and that was a lot of people in one home.
They don’t save for anything. They save for yesterday. Well yesterday is gone and you don’t have any money so naturally it’s going to come out of my pocket, and that made my funds limited as to what, when, and where, how I could spend my money. Of course maintaining a home, [01:13:00] groceries were a big deal, food—I have propane heat. Propane was a big deal because you have the little ones in the house so you want to keep the house a little warmer than it was for myself and my husband. We knew that we could go through a 500-gallon tank of gas, it would take us from September probably into March, April, because we don’t really have that much. But with them, we filled it up in September, it was gone by Christmas, we were having to fill it back up again. So that was an extra expense too.
I will say that I saw no help, I saw no help coming, not from anybody. We pinched pennies, we cut coupons just to feed ourselves. [01:14:00] I was afraid to let the kids go to school because I didn’t know what they would bring back in the house, I would make them strip at the door, and throw those clothes, put them in a bag, and put that bag in the washing machine, empty it out in the washing machine, put Lysol and detergent in the machine. Then one day my grandson said, “I smell like Lysol.” I said, “Well, at least you’re clean.” It was very hard. To keep things normal, food, heat, shelter, those things were very hard to maintain.
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DELLINGER: Yeah, if we go back a little bit to the very beginning of the pandemic, you said you heard about it through social media, on the news. When you did first hear about it, [01:15:00] what were your thoughts? Were you concerned that it was going to make it into Oklahoma and the Muscogee Nation?
WILSON: I’ll say this. Being overseas, being that I felt that I was inoculated against the plague, being in the military, I’ve taking a shot every year for something. I just didn’t think it would affect me or my husband, but my grandchildren did not have those same exposures, so I was very concerned for them. I never thought it would come here. I thought it would stay in California, maybe get to the Rockies and die out. That was my prayer. But of course we know it didn’t do that. I have a cousin that passed away from COVID in about [01:16:00] two to three years now, it was right in the middle of the pandemic. We were not allowed to go to the service.
DELLINGER: That would have been in 2020, the first year of the pandemic. WILSON: Right, the first year.
DELLINGER: Was it that spring? That summer?
WILSON: It was that spring.
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DELLINGER: Yeah, so really the beginning of the pandemic.
WILSON: Right. But then three months the beginning, you know, full blown, he passed away. It was just very hard for all of our family not to be able to—that’s when you go and you gather, and he just passed away by himself, and he was just buried along his children, and his wife. That was it. That was the only people there. That was very hard.
DELLINGER: Yes. Having these multiple families in your household when COVID started, do you remember what some of the conversations, [01:17:00] initial conversations were that you had with your family and even friends about the virus?
WILSON: We were all afraid, I’ll say that. We were afraid to leave the confines of your home. I’m still finding wipes and bleach that I had put back in the closet. I found some the other day because I was looking for some bleach and I was like, “I just can’t believe it, I don’t have any bleach anymore.” I got to looking around in my little stash closets, I
have a box of wipes, you know the COVID wipes, the disinfectant wipes, all kinds of hand sanitizer was in the box. It was in my go-to if we had to leave the house box. I just can’t believe how much time and effort—we have wipes in my car today. [01:18:00] I have hand sanitizer in my book bag and my purse because I am still afraid. Even though I have allergies, I run a hand sanitizer on my hands after I blow my nose because it’s just become habit to do that.
I think people at the very beginning, it’s like anything, we really did not want to believe that it would happen here. It just could not happen to us here, we’re too well-
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insulated. We’re in the middle of the country, it can’t get to Oklahoma, right? But it did. And we’ve had people lost here too. Many.
DELLINGER: When local and state governments began the lock downs and the shelter in place orders, you’ve already expressed that [01:19:00] you and your family were fearful of the virus, so hearing those words “lock down,” “shelter in place,” these are words that we most of us in our lifetimes have never heard, how did those words make you feel?
WILSON: It didn’t affect me personally, the words. I’ve been on lock down several times. You have to remember, 1991 was the first time that I was ever separated from my children and my husband, and we were less than a half a mile. I had to stay on base because they locked down the base. This is when the Saudi Arabia thing came out, Gulf War started in ninety-one. All active duty people were on base. We were locked down, we couldn’t get to our families or anything. That, I guess it’s already kind of [01:20:00] built in me for that part. But my children, they’ve always lived that life, so they’ve kind of known that you have to stay there and I have to stay here to protect you.
But in my own home to have to tell people don’t come to my home, stay away from me. I had a big sign “Do Not Enter” because I don’t want you to come down my driveway and—I went so far as to buy the homeschooling for my grandkids so that they didn’t have to miss out on school during that timeframe and school was not in. I promise you, our children suffered the most during the lock down. During the isolation. [01:21:00] I have a seventeen year old grandson that’s autistic that was just beginning to come out of his shell right before that, right before the pandemic hit. He was very not
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verbal, but he was starting to become verbal. And because—he’s non-verbal now to this day. Verbal but not really. He’s very limited on what he says because of the pandemic. He did not have that exposure to where he was getting that—he was starting to get that in school. Him I feel for the most. The other ones they bounce back, they’ve got friends now, they go outside and play, but because of his condition, [01:22:00] being autistic, he did not have the same opportunities.
It was very hard for him. You had to sit there with him during the whole lesson for him to get it. I could care less whether he knows about American History, English, or not—well, English, but you know, like the Civil War and all that? It’s not going to do him any good. But I want him to add and subtract, divide and multiply, just the basic things in school. It was very hard for him during the pandemic.
DELLINGER: I’m sorry to hear that.
WILSON: I think he’s my biggest focal point coming out of the pandemic to try and get him extra things to do now. He wears a mask every day. He will not stop. He wears a mask to this very day. He had a mask on this morning when I took him to school because he [01:23:00] is scared. He’s still scared. How do you get that fear out of him? I don’t know. I don’t know what to do. I’ve tried to tell him nobody else has them on, come on. Okay, when we’re outside you don’t need one. When you’re inside, put one on if that’s what you want. No, that’s not good enough for him. His mind is still back in 2020.
DELLINGER: Yeah, that’s hard.
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WILSON: He is a wash my hand—I buy at least ten pump bottles of soap every two weeks because he will use all of them washing his hands because that was his focal point was making sure his hands were washed and being—he could pick this paper up and he’d go wash his hands. Anything he will do.
DELLINGER: Yeah, that’s too bad. [01:24:00] He’s developed these additional behaviors.
WILSON: Right.
DELLINGER: Because of the pandemic, wow.
WILSON: Then just the fact us being locked up all together and trying to keep everybody—the four year old, he was two then, he got a runny nose. Immediately it was COVID, he’s got COVID. Everybody is going to get a COVID test. I bet you I did that ten times in 2020 and 2021, each year because somebody got a runny nose, we got to go get a COVID test, let’s go get a COVID test, everybody in the house go get a COVID test, here comes two carloads full of folks, we’re getting COVID tests. It’s shameful that that’s where you had to go [01:25:00] to reassure everybody else that’s afraid. Because my other daughter she says “what if we don’t have COVID?” Well then I guess you’re going to get COVID too. “But mom, we have to do something, we have to be preventative.” Is that what you are saying? Prevention is worth---An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Okay, throw everything back in my face now. But anyway, you
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know? We go get COVID tests, come back, everybody is negative. We’re good to go. It’s just a cold, a runny nose, or whatever. He’s a kid, kids get runny noses just like any other kid did way back when.
But COVID really changed a lot of things in my home. I don’t have people come over anymore. I rarely have company and when I do we sit on the front porch. [01:26:00] Rarely do we have company inside. I can’t even remember the last time I had an inside event. It’s always been outside.
DELLINGER: Yeah, that had to be—just listening to you share these things, to have that many people in a household and going through a pandemic, yeah, that had to be so difficult.
WILSON: Thank god we had two bathrooms. That’s all I can say, that’s all I can say, we had two bathrooms.
DELLINGER: Absolutely. What made you, again back to the early days of the pandemic, what made you realize the severity of the virus?
WILSON: Being medical, dental, medical, same thing, and being in countries where they had diseases like Ebola and things that were contagious, I’ve always been very [01:27:00] precautious with myself because I know—I’ve been deployed in Africa, I’ve been deployed to Africa before, and there was many times that I had been exposed to things that I probably shouldn’t have been exposed to that I could have brought back to my
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family, and I just had to be always over diligently aware of where I was and what was going on in that country.
Because you have to remember something, when I first started dentistry, we didn’t use gloves. You just put your hand in the mouth and you went for it. That was it. Then gloves came out. The countries that we would go to, they would take all of our waste, gauze, gloves, disposable needles, whatever it was, they would sterilize [01:28:00] it, quote-unquote, cold sterilize it or chemically sterilize it, and reuse it. And I’m thinking cross contamination, cross contamination, that’s all that’s going through my head. That’s what I thought of when it came to COVID. That’s why I said put your clothes in that plastic bag right there, bring them in, I’ll untie the bag and put it in the washing machine. But I had a mask and gloves on and an apron that was just for that purpose. That apron would go right back out on the porch until the next person came in that had to strip. Whether it was cold or hot you’re going to strip on the porch in that plastic bag and I’ve got your clothes right here that you can strip. Yes, I would make them wipe down their exposed parts like the hand, and the neck, [01:29:00] and the face, and rub it over your hair, because particles get stuck in your hair too. I probably went a little overboard, but for me it was standard practice.
DELLINGER: Right, that was—
WILSON: And I was used to it, they weren’t. I’m instructing—since I’m the teacher, I’m going to teach everybody how to get ready because this is not coming past the doorway.
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DELLINGER: Right, the children, the adults, everybody was doing this.
WILSON: Right, everybody, everybody. If you went outside to feed the dogs, you had to come back and strip before you came back in the house. I didn’t know where it was at. Somebody touched that dog food bag that you touched. That was another thing, food could not come in the house until we wiped it down. It had to sit out there. Now, if it was canned goods. Produce, I bought a little refrigerator for that [01:30:00] to sit outside and then I would make sure I would get the water hose and we washed the whole thing down, all produce was washed down. It might be wrong, it might be right, but I always put two capfuls of bleach in a bucket of water and dipped it, like vegetables, lettuce, tomatoes, whatever. It’s not so much that I feel the food is contaminated, but who handled the food, how many truckers, how many people at the grocery store, how many people again on the shelves, how many people rummaged through it to get to whatever they wanted, and then here I am stuck with the COVID piece of lettuce. Not going to happen. We’re going to rinse that in some bleach water. I know bleach doesn’t cure everything but that was the only thing—that was my only thing I could use.
DELLINGER: And whether it was doing anything or not, for most of us, it was giving you piece of [01:31:00] mind—
WILSON: There you go.
DELLINGER: —to move on.
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WILSON: The same thing with the canned goods. They had to sit outside for at least twenty-four hours out of the bag because we had to glove up to debag them and put them on the little canned goods shelf, then they were all wiped off before I brought them— COVID was a lot of work now that I think about it. Oh my gosh. I am so glad I can just go out, and get in my car, and come back in the house now. I can feel like I’m in heaven, but I don’t quite yet. Maybe heaven will come soon enough.
DELLINGER: That statement that you just made that COVID was a lot of work, it really was.
WILSON: It really was. It made a lot of extra steps to something really simple. People talk about well, I ordered my groceries online so I didn’t have to go into the store, [01:32:00] okay, that’s fine. I did not order my groceries online. The one time I did, I left the laptop open, and when I get to the grocery store, I get to Walmart to get my groceries, the guy rolls out a bicycle. I’m like no, I don’t have a bicycle. He says, “No ma’am, it’s on your list, it’s right here.” Then the seven year old hangs his head out the window, “I got it, Mimi, it’s my bicycle!” I’m like no, I’ll go back in the store, I’ll start shopping. The one time I try it, you know, and I get a bicycle out of the deal. Not me, but him, he gets a bicycle out of the deal. Those kids are smart, they’re smart.
DELLINGER: When it comes to electronics.
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WILSON: COVID made them a lot smarter because that’s all they did was that laptop stuff. He lived on the laptop 24/7. I didn’t know you could do that though. I close everything [01:33:00] now down to the laptop is shut down.
DELLINGER: Yes. In 2020 when the pandemic started, were you in school at the Muscogee Nation—
WILSON: No, I was not in school.
DELLINGER: And when again did you start school?
WILSON: Just this year in August.
DELLINGER: Just this year.
WILSON: Yes, in August.
DELLINGER: Is the school now in 2022, do they still have safety measures in place at the school?
WILSON: What they have available is hand sanitizer, there’s no mask requirement. I wore a mask last week Thursday and Friday when I was talking to you. Well Wednesday and Thursday I wore it last week because I didn’t trust—the pandemic was still in my
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head so I wore a mask to class because I wanted to go to class. Then I got tested [01:34:00] for COVID on Monday and then everybody was oh, I’m COVID free. That wasn’t my problem. Then they said it was just allergies. They don’t wear—I see little to none other than normal cleaning that they do. But they do have the hand sanitizers, they have the shields still up for people behind the glass, they have that sort of stuff.
DELLINGER: Mrs. Wilson, I’d like for you to share what is your knowledge and understanding about the COVID-19 virus including its effect on the human body if contracted.
WILSON: I can’t really say.
DELLINGER: Throughout the pandemic and for example, you already shared that you had a cousin who passed away, what are some of the symptoms that you have seen people experience because of COVID-19?
WILSON: COVID-19 is something that can be in the air, it’s airborne. Airborne viruses scare me to death because it’s the same as influenza, it’s the same as a lot of viruses that we see. But is it really a virus? That was my thing. Is it really a virus? Because viruses have no cure. Amoxicillin, none of the -cillin’s will cure it for sure. So what do we do? They had to come up with something, a vaccine for it. I feel like they’ve come up with vaccines for a lot of things. We have a vaccine for everything now. I understood the vaccine, I do not understand the boosters, and the different—now that has mutated, from
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COVID we had a mutation that happened. Now we have monkeypox that has come around, which has also been related back to COVID-19, and they always, always, always, just like HIV, they want to bring it to where it’s not like airborne, it has to be a sexually related type situation. [01:37:00]
Now you’re going to tell me all these people out here that have passed away from COVID had sex with somebody that had COVID? That’s impossible. That’s what they’re trying to say about the monkeypox and the booster, and the second strain that came from the COVID. To me, it started—I hate to say it, but it started like smallpox, how they invaded us with smallpox. I personally think COVID, HIV, any of the diseases that have come about, they are geared towards making certain people disappear. I want to say people of color. I just feel in my heart of heart, that’s where they gear their [01:38:00] viruses to. If they could have made more of us disappear, they would have.
You can’t tell me that this came from China and it was not—they’re people of color too. I believe that they wanted them to disappear, more of them. That’s why they don’t care when the tsunamis take them out. We don’t give them any help, we just sit back and watch. We give no help at all. This shouldn’t go political, I don’t talk about that part.
DELLINGER: Yeah, it’s—well—
WILSON: That’s my personal opinion. Personal opinion only, but I feel that they gear a lot of things towards us because they want people of color to go away so that [01:39:00] we’ll make America great again. I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to stay here as long
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as I can to fight the battle and fight for the people of color. Do they not know we were here first? Do they not know they invaded us? They won’t even tell the story straight and that irritates me to no end.
Back to COVID, COVID destroyed—I have a friend who lost six people, Native people, they’re all full blooded Creeks, six of them within six weeks passed from COVID. Four of them were in the same family. And if it wasn’t for the burial fund [01:40:00] that we have established through Creek Nation, they would still be in somebody’s morgue because they couldn’t afford to do that. Where were they going to get that kind of money? I don’t know. And they were all started from one person going to the hospital for an appointment and coming out, and that’s where COVID started in their family. They finally have narrowed it down to that one person bringing it back into the house and infecting the other five.
DELLINGER: Was that at our Muscogee Nation hospital here in Okmulgee? WILSON: Yes, it was.
DELLINGER: Yeah, that’s horrible.
WILSON: Now where they got it within the hospital? Who knows? Where do you get it from? You can just walk in and meet three people in here, which one gave it to you? You don’t know. [01:41:00] Doesn’t it make you afraid? I was afraid to get in a crowd of people during COVID. If you weren’t across the room—I talk loud anyway, but it definitely gave me a reason to talk louder because I’m not going to get close to you. I
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still, to this day, there are certain people I’ve just not hugged in three years because of COVID.
DELLINGER: Let’s talk about, I’m curious now because of what you’ve shared about the pandemic itself, COVID itself, what are your thoughts about the vaccines that have been made available since the first of 2021?
WILSON: I’m fully vaccinated. [01:42:00] I’ve taken my booster just this past year. For a very selfish reason, because you have to have them to go on a cruise. You have to be fully vaccinated and all boosters. Right now we can’t get into Spain because Spain has cut us off completely. They say no more. They don’t want anybody, it doesn’t matter what country you come from or anything. If you do not have a reason to be there, you cannot get in, because they’ve had outbreaks in Spain just recently. One of the places I was going was Spain and now that’s off my list because we can’t get—then you had to have a vaccine within 120 days, a booster or a vaccine—no, not a vaccine. A booster or another booster to the booster [01:43:00] within 120 days. It was kind of funny when they said the 120 days because it had to be—it couldn’t expire while you were there. So if you were planning to spend a month in Spain, your vaccine could not expire for that time that you were there. You only have 120 days to work with period from beginning to end.
Spain is now—I know this because I follow Space-A Flights for the military, we can hop from the United States back overseas if they have space available on a plane. There is no Space-A at all whatsoever. You cannot get in the country unless you’re stationed there or you’re a national.
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DELLINGER: Back to the vaccination process, that’s really why you [01:44:00] decided to get vaccinated and have now been boostered.
WILSON: I maybe, I don’t know. My sister got sick and I wanted to go see her, you had to have the vaccines to go in to see her. So that was part of my getting the vaccine too. But I also wanted to travel and I didn’t want to be—you can still be vaccinated and get COVID because I got my cruise in November, caught COVID in January, and was told that I will test positive for the next three months. My cruise is in May. I’m like February, March, April, May, that’s four months, maybe I’m good. Went to Creek Nation, got my COVID—because you have to have it within forty-eight hours of getting on the boat. [01:45:00] I think it’s forty-eight. I was praying the whole time that my COVID test was coming back negative. Of course it came back negative and my husband too, but he went somewhere, and gave somebody a dollar at the Quick Trip, you know, people asking for money? And the guy shook his hand and that’s where he got COVID from, from a homeless guy. That’s the only contact that he had before that time. That was just a random thing. Normally he doesn’t do that and now he won’t do it at all. I said, wow, why did you do that? That’s how it got to our house.
DELLINGER: What are your thoughts about how Muscogee (Creek) leadership has handled [01:46:00] the pandemic?
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WILSON: I think in certain aspects we’ve done a great job as far as them making it available for you to get tested, them making it available for you to get vaccinated, and also financially it’s helped a lot of people come out of a hole that they were in with the financial relief that they gave too as well. But also, I think that they’ve overextended some people or certain people as far as giving them the benefit of the doubt of grace periods of like well maybe they really can’t get a job just yet. [01:47:00] Everybody else is getting a job, everybody else is making it work for them. People are cutting firewood for people, people are working outside and tending gardens, people are doing things that generate income, and what I think personally is a lot of our younger tribal members are lazy in the sense that they can come to the tribe during COVID—this is all since COVID. I’m going to say, Creek Nation was on point when it came to helping people with rent, utilities, gas and water, the whole nine, they were fabulous, absolutely fabulous in helping people out. But now they still want the same help when there are jobs available.
I drive up and down this road all day long, help wanted signs are [01:48:00] out the wazoo out here, and I don’t see anybody in there applying for a job, not one. I’m sorry, go get vaccinated. I don’t want a vaccination. My youngest is to be included in this conversation because this is who I’m really talking about. Creek Nation helped her 110 percent, they’ve gone above and beyond as far as I’m concerned with helping her. Now it’s time for you to stand on your own two feet once again like it was before. You’ve just got accustomed to staying at home, take care of your baby, and doing what you do. That’s not normal. It’s over, it’s done, we’re done with that. We need to move on. I love the fact that now we’re having job fairs because there was just [01:49:00] a job fair last month and I think there was one a few days ago too. Creek Nation sponsored it or hosted
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it at least. It’s trying to get people back into the workforce to make them understand look, we don’t have any more money to give you, to help you, to support you. I didn’t ask for help, not because I can afford it, I just felt like there were probably more people out there that had worse circumstances than I did, and I still eat and sleep, and do what I do. That said, Creek Nation was fabulous when it came to helping people during the pandemic. They came through on all fronts, that’s what I will say.
DELLINGER: It sounds like you did use some of the Health Department [01:50:00] services.
WILSON: I did. The Health Department services I did use for the vaccination and for my testing, yes I did.
DELLINGER: Okay, very good.
WILSON: But I felt like that’s part of what we’re supposed to be—that was a part they were supposed to be helping us out on to make sure that we’re vaccinated, to make sure—you know, this isn’t about the pandemic, it’s about healthcare, because sometimes I think Creek Nation’s healthcare reminds me of third world country healthcare. It’s not socialized medicine, but it’s on the verge of socialized medicine. You can’t get what you want, what you need, in a timely manner sometimes, and its killing people, and that’s exactly what socialized medicine is. They know something is wrong with you, but we’re
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not going to quite give you the help until we get some more money. Well, I could be dead by then, [01:51:00] you know?
But as far as the pandemic goes, they were there, they had the lines out the wazoo. Sometimes you might have to wait for forty-five minutes to get your shot, but I waited, and it was well worth my wait. And testing too. All you have to do is call and they’ll be there outside waiting for you to get brain fluid out of your brain. I felt like that stick was going into my brain when they swabbed me. I’m like ugh, did you get any brain fluid? Because I swear you did.
DELLINGER: Yes, okay.
WILSON: I’m sorry, Midge. You know I—
DELLINGER: We’re moving on here. This is all great. We are getting close towards the end of our interview here and with our questions. What are your thoughts about [01:52:00] COVID-19 ever completely going away? Do you think that’s ever going to happen?
WILSON: It’s never going to go away. It’s here to stay. It’s here to stay, just like the flu, just like everything else, it’s here to stay, we’re never getting rid of it.
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DELLINGER: In listening to you talk here this morning, it sounds to me like you are engaging in a life that’s similar to what your life was prior to COVID-19 and the pandemic. Is that a fair assessment?
WILSON: That’s a fair assessment, yes it is, yes. Actually I put myself more out there because I wasn’t going to school before. I wasn’t sitting in a classroom with twenty other people for four hours a day. I’ve gone more than I was before because I trust—probably the wrong word to use, probably shouldn’t trust nobody—but [01:53:00] I believe in god and if it’s going to happen, it’s going to happen. But I feel like he’s going to keep me safe as long as I’m doing what’s right.
DELLINGER: We are down to our last couple questions now. For future generations of Muscogee who may find themselves trying to survive a global health and economic event such as the COVID-19 pandemic, what words of advice or wisdom do you have for them about surviving and living with such a catastrophic event?
WILSON: To be self-reliant. That’s my biggest advice I can give to anybody. I didn’t understand what self-reliance meant from my parents. My mother canned, we slaughtered hogs, and pigs, and cows, very self-reliant. Why do we need a four acre garden, it’s only three people, me and my dad and my mom, three people. We don’t need a hundred yards of beans, we’re not ever going to eat that. But if I would have been self-reliant right before the pandemic, I sure could have taken myself a long way into the pandemic just with my own self-reliance as far as that goes. Medicine, I think, healthcare and medicine,
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you should always have three to four months on hand, even though quote-unquote, some things you can’t have three to four months of because of things have gone on in the world since that time. And do not wait for the government to come and rescue you. [01:55:00] You have to rescue yourself. Don’t wait on somebody to rescue you, you be your own rescue always. Because nobody cares about you like you, I promise you. That’s what I have to say on that.
DELLINGER: Fantastic. That was a fantastic answer. Thank you so much for that. Okay, Mrs. Wilson, in closing, is there anything else that you would like to say or share here today about your experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic?
WILSON: No, not really. I think I said enough. I probably said too much already. (laughs)
DELLINGER: Again, mvto, thank you so much for your time here this morning. This has been a really interesting and educational interview with you. Please continue to take care of yourself.
WILSON: Thank you, I will. [01:56:00]
END OF INTERVIEW
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