Mari-Ann Kind Jackson: [0:01] This is an interview for the Nordic American Voices oral history project. Today is November 3, 2012, and we will be interviewing Helen Uri and Konrad Uri. We are at the Nordic Heritage Museum in Seattle, Washington. My name is Mari-Ann Kind Jackson, and I am interviewing with Brandon Benson. Welcome, Helen and Konrad. Would you please start by stating your full name, where and when you were born, Konrad, and then tell us your life story.

Konrad Uri: [0:38] [Laughter] My name is Konrad Sivert Erling- which I don’t use at all- Uri, which is spelled U-R-I. I was born in Ballard, December 13, 1934. Ballard Hospital, Dr. Melgard, as I understand.

[1:00] And had been… went to, of course, Crown Hill School, Loyal Heights- these are grade schools- Loyal Heights School, Webster School, James Monroe School, Ballard High School, and I was also at the University of Washington for a few months until my father passed, or got really sick, and I had to quit and go to work and pay the bills.

[1:31] My parents- my father was born in Flemsøya. It has two names- Skuløya, Flemsøya, which is off the west coast outside of Alesund. My mother was born in Aure- A-U-R-E, in Sykkylven, which is in the fjords inside of Alesund.

[1:57] My father was born 1905; my mother was born in 1899. Of my grandparents on my father’s side, I never met them. I know very little, if anything about them. My grandmother passed away in childbirth giving birth to twins; I know that, in 1907. That’s all I know about that.

[2:24] My grandfather, he moved away from Flemsøya, and he moved to Larsnes, which is basically in [inaudible 2:33], but a little bit south of Alesund. And he married again, where he had… I’m not so sure how many children they had… eight? I don’t remember because both my parents were dead at this time. My mother passed away at age 48, and my father passed away at age 48.

[2:55] In the war and right after the war, communications with Norway were really bad. And since we were just kids, and we were born in America, we didn’t hear from these people, other than we heard from my maternal grandmother, and my one aunt, Juna, always sent us a pair of wool socks for Christmas with myrrh inside, of course.

[3:24] But they didn’t… since they figured we didn’t talk Norwegian, and we couldn’t converse, we didn’t hear from them. They didn’t have telephones until later on. If you wanted to get a hold of them, you had to call the telephone lady, the telephone dame, and she would find them for you.

[3:44] But anyway, I know very little of my grandparents. I only met one; that was my mother’s mother. We went to Norway in ’48, the year my mother passed away. They had planned the trip, and she died three months before, and we were supposed to go, but my dad took us anyway. And so I did meet her. I think we were there for a month, in Norway.

[4:09] And that’s as much… I had my grandmother on… I don’t know what happened to my father’s sisters, the twins, because when my grandfather remarried, he couldn’t afford… they had more children, and he could not afford to keep the three first children.

[4:34] So my father was sent back to his grandparents. I don’t know what happened to the two girls. I have no idea. I met only one of them. It took us a long time to find her, and she was an old lady then, who has since passed away.

[4:53] Of the family, the new family that my grandfather had, I’ve met only two or three of them. Only one aunt there, who I went to her funeral in 2008; I went back for that. She was the last of the old people. But I only know two people in that family, and I don’t really know them well, other than I’ve met them twice… three times. When we were in Norway, we went to visit, just to see who they were and meet them.

[5:28] So, as far as Norway is concerned, I don’t really know a great deal. I had… My mother had… they were a family of eight; four boys, four girls. So, I know that. Only two of them left Norway. My uncle, he left. My uncle Sigur, he left. Sigur Aure. He left Norway in 1923. My uncle Sverre, he left Norway in 1923. He was the youngest… next to the youngest, I believe.

[6:01] My uncle Sigur, when his father passed away- my grandfather, whom I never met- passed away, his mother told him he had to come home and take over the farm. Now, this was before the war. This was in 1934 or ’35, just after I was born.

[6:18] And he didn’t want to go. He’d been here now for, you know, many years. It had been eleven, twelve years. He had no intention of going back to Norway. But she persisted, so he went back. But he went back to give the farm to his next oldest brother. And when he got there, of course the war broke out, and he couldn’t get out of Norway.

[6:40] My other uncle, Sverre, he stayed here. He didn’t go back. He stayed here. He stayed here his whole life. And he even, you know… lived with my parents. Of course, it was the Depression. Nobody had any money anyway. And so the people lived together if they had to, to stay alive.

[7:02] And that about takes care of the old people. I don’t have old people… you know, that I have. That I’ve met. I never met them, other than the one grandmother. So over here, I was born in December in ’34. We lived in Ballard.

[7:24] I know that because they lived… they rented, my parents told me that, I remember that- they rented from a Mr. and Mrs. Helent, who had a very nice house up on 58^th. And it’s still there, and it’s still a very, very nice house. He was a sheriff in the Silver City, Montana, and what have you.

[7:54] Then they moved out to Greenwood, 8^th Avenue. 9011 8^th Avenue Northwest. You never forget your first address. And bought a little house. They doubled the size of the house, my uncle and my dad. And we lived there until 1941. As I recall… I could be wrong, but we left the house just before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, in November or December of 1941.

[8:33] And it was quite interesting- the Red Cross delivered a cousin’s wife. My uncle Sverre’s cousin delivered his wife and two children from Dutch Harbor, Alaska, taking them out of Alaska before the war. And so they arrived just before we were going to move, and they lived with us for a year.

[9:03] That’s the… then we used to be in contact with the boys, but we don’t hear from them anymore. Maybe they’ve passed away; I don’t know. So, that was an interesting thing. One interesting part in this that I remember the best, the first year that my uncle and my dad bought a boat, The Swift Second. My dad ran the daily before that for another fellow, whose name I cannot remember. I was just a kid then, a baby, practically.

[9:37] But they boat a boat together, The Swift Second, and they fished halibut, and they fished tuna, and they fished shark for liver, you know, to make cod liver oil for vitamin A. But in 1939- and I never will forget that- my mother got a new electric stove and a new electric refrigerator, and a new electric toaster. That was the first year they made any money, and they pooled the money between the two of them. That’s the only way they could keep going.

[10:15] And I’ll never forget that, because that was fantastic. Because otherwise it was an icebox on the side of the house, and the toast was on top of the wood stove, and of course, the stove was a wood stove, which she wouldn’t give up. I remember that. No way was she going to give up that wood stove. She had to have it for [inaudible 10:37] and what have you, you know. So…

[10:43] Then of course during the war I went to school. I went to school right here. This was my sixth grade classroom. Mrs. Olson was my teacher. No, not Mrs. Olson… Mrs. Carter was my teacher here. Mrs. Olson was my third grade teacher. She just lived up the street here a ways. And I went from here to James Monroe Junior High School. My mother passed away in ’48.

[11:11] My father became ill in ’50 with cancer. He remarried and of course, he died in ’54. But he was so ill in ’53- that’s when I went to the University for a few months- that I had to quit school and go fishing with my uncle to pay the bills at home. Because it was Sonja, my sister and Iner, my brother. Iner was born in ’38. Iner Norman. And my sister was born in ’37.

Helen Uri: [11:48] ’36.

Konrad: [11:48] ’36, yeah. December ’36. Sonja. S-O-N-J-A. So, anyway, I fished, and I paid bills, and we did that. And then of course when they were old enough, they themselves, Sonja went to school and Iner went fishing with us, and so we kept going. With my uncle who moved in with us- he lived with us before, but he moved back in again.

[12:19] And then that made things easier, because otherwise there were three of us there, and we ate… I think every time I was home we ate hamburgers every day at a little place called Paul’s Hamburger Place on 65^th and 32^nd, right on the corner. I had three jobs then, but before that I had three jobs, when I was going to high school.

[12:40] I worked… I had paper routes- the Seattle Times, Ballard Tribune; I worked at a gas station- Paul Fenner’s gas station, at the time on 64^th and 32^nd. And I cleaned the butcher shop at Orwitz’s grocery store seven days a week. That was on… well it was right next door to Paul’s Hamburger joint, so… And I cleaned that. So, I had forty hours of work a week no matter what, and plus.

[13:16] Then of course, once I started fishing, then I stayed fishing. I got… I was running boats from 1960 and on. But I got drafted, or I shipped here.

Helen: [13:28] I think we maybe should stop. You should stop.

Konrad: [13:31] Yeah, I should stop and go back, because...

Helen: [13:33] No, we have to stop, because that’s when our life came together, so…

Konrad: [13:40] Yeah.

Helen: [13:41] Yeah. Okay. [Laughter] My name is Invalda Helen Uri. Johansson. I should say Invalda Helen Johansson Uri. I was born January 16^th of 1937. I am the youngest of eight children. We have to go back, because my parents came to the United States in 1927, in the heart of the Depression with five children.

[14:14] My parents came from a small place outside of Harstad, Norway, called Sandstrand. My mother was born there. Let’s see. And then my father was born in Ibestad, Norway. But his family did move to Sandstrand. They were married in the Trondenes Church in Harstad.

[14:39] But they came, you know, at a very difficult time. My father’s mother and father had already immigrated to the United States, and my father had two half-brothers, and they had a lumber mill in northern California. So, at that time, because things were very, very difficult in northern Norway, that there wasn’t really… My father was a fisherman, and his father again. But the two half-brothers had started this business in the United States, and that is why they came.

[15:15] I have… the oldest daughter was Johanna; then there was Invalda, who I am named for. And then Alborg- she went by Anne; and Hilfred [inaudible 15:29]- she became Freda. And Johann was… they were all born in Norway. They immigrated through Ellis Island, and across through Canada. So, it was a difficult time.

[15:46] They ended up going to California, originally, but my father, being a fisherman, being in the mountains was not a place for him. And so they actually did come and found their way to Ballard, and actually, the children- Pastor Harvik from Ballard First Lutheran, put them in school, because they didn’t know the language.

[16:14] Let’s see. And then they rented a small house above Ballard First Lutheran. But then my father had gotten a job on a sailing ship to go to Alaska and go fishing. So, he left here in April, and he came back in October. But in the meantime, my mother was a very industrious person with five small children. She decided that she had to get out of Ballard and go to… And she knew a friend that had a place in Poulsbo. So, she rented a small farm and moved her family there.

[16:53] Naturally, my father came back… he had to find out from the neighbors where they were. And they stayed there until 1936. And then they moved back into Ballard, and rented a house. In the meantime, my next-to-oldest sister Invalda, became very ill, and she died at Ballard Hospital at age sixteen, almost seventeen. And two months later, I was born. So that was January 16^th of 1937.

[17:36] So, we had a busy household, during, you know… that was a bad time. Actually my parents, when I was just a small child- I think I was a year and a half- they bought a house up on 8324 12^th Avenue Northwest. And we lived there until I was married.

[17:58] As my life went on, being the youngest of a big family, I had many nieces and nephews. It was a busy, busy time. My parents… my father was a fisherman, and he did that for Bristol Bay in Alaska, and then he would come home and work in the shipyard.

[18:22] My mother had a small hotel with her sister that had come from Norway. She had left the Salvation Army, and they ended up with a small hotel, just the business part of the hotel down on 1^st Avenue. Eventually they came up on Summit Avenue, and they had that until I was in college.

[18:47] Let’s see, my mother was the president of the Norwegian Ladies’ Aid, Ballard First Lutheran. Besides, I remember she would come home from work, change her clothes and go down and be president. She learned the language, and she loved her church, and she loved her Norwegian heritage.

[19:09] I could go back to my grandparents on my father’s side. That was Johanna Dorothea Edwardson, and my grandfather was Johann Edwardson. They actually lived through… my grandfather had died in Poulsbo, but my grandmother, I knew very well. She insisted that she did not understand English, but somehow she did. [Laughter] And so she lived… she actually lived until she was ninety-one. My father died about three years after her, so it was a…

[19:56] My mother’s people… that was [inaudible 20:00] Olsen and Hans Olsen. I never met my grandmother on my mother’s side. She died during the war. My mother’s father actually, after the war. They found out he was alive and they got back to Norway, and got him back up on his feet, and he actually died in Narvik, Norway. But I never met any of them.

[20:30] My life continued. I went to, let’s see, Whittier Grade School, James Monroe, and I was the first freshman class at Ballard High School, when we went in as the ninth-graders. In the meantime, when I go back to the church, is my mother was the president of the Norwegian Ladies’ Aid.

[21:00] I knew Konrad and his sister and brother from church, but I just knew them from a distance. But my mom, being the president of the Norwegian Ladies’ Aid, she happened to be in a hospital, Columbus Hospital in downtown Seattle, and met Konrad’s father. He said, “Oh, Emma is up in… you know, the room upstairs, and go visit her.” And my mother was to visit her the day before she died. So, it was a small world, the way our life came together.

[21:36] Actually, Konrad lost his parents so early, and I think he loved my mother and dad. And we met when I was sixteen, and we were engaged by the time… Well, I went off… I graduated from Ballard High School, and then I went to Pacific Lutheran. And then I had transferred to the University of Washington. But right before that time, Konrad and I became engaged, and… for two years I was at the University of Washington. Then we had a big wedding at Ballard First Lutheran, three days…

Konrad: [22:15] Now you can stop.

Helen: [22:16] …Three days before he got drafted. [Laughter] So, there.

Konrad: [22:20] But I want to go back, because I want to… My parents were born in America. They met here. They didn’t know each other in Norway. And although I never met my grandfather, his name was Sivert. And my grandmother’s name was Karolina. And her name, again… her maiden name, again, was Javenes. And there are still people on that farm in Javenes. They’ve been there for God knows how many hundred years. So, whatever generation it is. But that, I don’t really know, because I said, the communication was so bad.

[23:02] I used to write my grandmother. I’d write a little note. And I would think it was Norwegian, but I had no idea, really. [Speaking Norwegian 23:13 – 23:14], that I could say. [Laughter] But anyway, did you… I just want to say, did you mention Karl and Sylvia? Did I miss that?

Helen: [23:27] Oh, my gosh.

Konrad: [23:29] Your other…

Helen: [23:30] Yes, we have to, actually… those are the two that were born in…

Konrad: [23:34] Other two.

Helen: [23:35] Other two that were born in Poulsbo. And that was Sylvia. First it was Karl Martin, who is still alive now, at eighty-four. And then Sylvia was born in Poulsbo, too, and she just turned eighty. And so… But my… the rest of the family has passed away.

[24:00] I have… Frida is alive, and she is eighty-eight… eighty-seven. And Carl is eighty-four, and Sylvia is eighty, so… But that’s… I still have a family, you know, that is… But it is strange how our lives intertwined, mainly because of our heritage and our church.

Konrad: [24:30] A great deal was the church.

Helen: [23:32] Oh, very much, growing up. I mean…

Konrad: [23:35] Because, when you don’t have any family, you go to the church. That’s where we went. And of course, we were very active in the church. We were in the choir; we were in everything they had in the church for all those years. It was, as she said, now you can get back to three days before…

Helen: [24:58] …We were married…

Konrad: [24:59] …That I got my…

Helen: [25:02] …Draft notice.

Konrad: [25:03] But I got my first draft notice in 1953. I went down… had to go down with Roald Sorenson, who’s passed away, to the physical, right down at Pier 91. So him and I went down there and had the physical and they told us, “In ten days, you’re going to be on your way to Korea. So, go home, and you know, pack some underwear, basically. Enough to get by for a day or two until you get to Fort Ord, where we issue you your uniforms and everything else.”

[25:42] Well, that was in 1953, and I did not get drafted until… I didn’t get called until 1957. Well, I had been fishing four years then. I didn’t think I would ever get called. I had forgotten all about it until I came home from a fishing trip, and she said, “Well, you’re going in the Army.” So, that happened, and so then she moved the wedding date up and we got married, and ten days later I was on my way to Fort Ord.

Helen: [26:15] Yeah. Well, actually, we did go on a honeymoon. But it was… yeah. Because we were married on November 16^th, 1957.

Konrad: [26:22] So we’ll have fifty-five years here shortly. Yeah.

Helen: [26:26] Yeah. But it was… you know, it was something, because, well… The wedding was supposed to be the end of December, but somehow it was all proper. We had the proper amount of time to send out invitations. But I remember talking to the minister, and said, “I don’t know if I should tell my parents…” He says, “I think you should.” [Laughter] My parents, they loved Konrad, so there was no problem.

[26:55] But, you know, it’s a busy time in your life. So, but we made it. We went after the big wedding, we went to California on a honeymoon and came home, and he was back to Fort Ord. He came back just right before Christmas. He had lost forty pounds. He had gotten some kind of virus, and actually his roommate died when he was in…

Konrad: [27:27] When I was gone. Before I came home. But then, of course, she was home and working at Richfield Oil. I was shipped off to Augusta, Georgia to Signal Corps School. I don’t know what they call it today. In those days it was Signal Corps. And so you learn this Teletype and you learn CW, and of course, voice [inaudible 27:52].

[27:52] You do voice from the boat, but they still had to teach you that. It was an interesting place, because there were so few people that were going to school that we had KP one day, and we had guard duty the next night, and it went back and forth like that for six months. Then she came down in March.

Helen: [28:16] March, yeah.

Konrad: [28:17] March.

Helen: [28:18] The fifth, 1958.

Konrad: [28:19] Spent… stayed until June, and then I got transferred. I was transferred then on my way to Korea. We were hedgehopping across country, and when we landed at McChord Air Force Base, they wouldn’t let us off the plane. They kept us on the plane. They were refueling, and they weren’t going to let anybody get away.

[28:42] So they parked… they didn’t park; they just started refueling, and the General drives up in a Jeep, comes aboard the airplane and he asks for a Teletype operator. And I was the only one. So he took me off the airplane. Changed my orders, took me off the airplane, and I was the General’s personal driver for eighteen months down in Fort Lewis. I washed his Jeep three times a day, I’ll tell you that. So, that was kind of weird, after all of that. And of course, Teletype today, you know, it’s ancient, same as a dial telephone is ancient.

Helen: [29:23] Well, I had an interesting life, because I… between college and high school and going on, had worked for Standard Oil Company, and then I… when he was in the service, I had worked part-time for Richfield Oil Company. So, when I came back after being in the south, I thought, “Well, I’ll go back to Standard Oil first.” Because I needed a job, because I thought I was going to go back to the University, too.

[30:00] Well, it turned out, I remember at that time we were living in the basement of the family home, on 6008 34^th Avenue Northwest. I had a nice interview there, and Mr. Lincoln said, “I will let you know.” And I went to see this Mr. Hedlund, at Richfield Oil Company, and talked to him, and he said, “You can start tomorrow.”

[30:32] And I got home, and Konrad’s sister met me, and she said, “Mr. Lincoln at Standard Oil wants you to come back. You’re hired.” And I said, “Well, I already took…” I had to tell them I had a job. Konrad was busy fishing, and I was working. We lived in the basement of his family home until our first son was born. We were married in ’57; he was born in ’61. And so we lived there for another year and a half until we built our first home in Woodway, Washingotn.

Konrad: [31:15] Which at the time, was considered the end of the world.

Helen: [31:19] [Laughter]

Konrad: [31:19] According to her father.

Helen: [31:21] Well, my father had passed away by that time. That was hard, too, because we were in the military, and my parents- right after we were married, and I was living in Augusta, Georgia- my parents went on a trip to Norway. And my father had never been back to Norway. And it was my mother and aunt and uncle. They had a big Chrysler car, and they took it on the boat, and they just had a wonderful time.

[31:56] And my father… My mother had been back once before with my aunt. But my dad had not been there. And it was really something. I remember talking to him on the phone, and he said, “I told your mother if something happens to me, don’t you bury me in Norway. The ground is too hard.” And...

Konrad: [32:16] Too cold.

Helen: [32:17] And too cold. But he… they had a nice trip back across the United States, and he got to see what he wanted to see. But he was home nine days and he passed away. But that sort of changed our life a little bit. We had my mother, who actually lived with us in Woodway, and she lived with us for eleven years. My children- the boys- really got to know their grandmother and her Scandinavian ways.

Konrad: [32:51] Yeah.

Helen: [32:52] [Laughter] She was just quite a person. She lived until she was ninety-one. So… it’s a little difficult to talk about.

Konrad: [33:05] We weren’t any different than anybody else, basically, at the time. It was tough times. Depression was just as bad in Norway. That’s why everybody left. There were big families; there was nothing for them. They couldn’t divide the farms up any more than they already were. They all had to fish for income. They made no income on the farms. That was just to keep themselves alive, you know.

[33:37] My uncle, he went back, of course, Sverre, he went back right in 1946. He left… as soon as they could get a ticket, they went to Norway. He went to see his mother, who was still alive. And of course, then they wanted to him to stay. And he said no, he wasn’t staying. He was going back to America. And he went back again in ’47. He went back again. His mother wanted him back again, so he went back again, and this time they weren’t going to let him go, and the only way that… He wrote me a letter; I still have it.

[34:21] The only way he could get out of there, or that he could convince them that he had to go to America- I don’t know if he promised them that he’d ever be back- but the only way he could get out, he had to go back and renew his driver’s license. And that was a big thing in Norway to get a driver’s license, and they understood how difficult that is, because when we went to Norway as kids with my father in 1948, in the town where my mother was from, there were only two cars, and those were two taxis.

[34:54] And where my dad was from, there were only two cars. Nobody had cars. They couldn’t afford them. During the war, of course, the Germans took everything. So, that’s how he got out. The next time he went back, he went back with us, in ’72.

Helen: [35:13] With our two children.

Konrad: [35:15] When we went on a trip to Norway.

Helen: [35:18] We have… Our oldest son is Konrad Christopher Erik, and then five years… [phone ringing 35:24]

Konrad: [35:25] That’s your phone.

Helen: [35:26] Oh.

Konrad: [35:27] Excuse me.

Helen: [35:28] Can we stop it?

[TAPE BREAK 35:29]

Mari-Ann: [35:30] You’re doing great, both of you.

Helen: [35:31] Okay. Our first…

Konrad: [35:34] You have to tell them that now, when… Of course, we were married in…

Mari-Ann: [35:38] We are not recording yet.

Brandon: [35:40] We are.

Mari-Ann: [35:40] Oh, okay.

Konrad: [35:41] When we were married, our first child was born in ’61. I wasn’t home. I was fishing. She wouldn’t deliver on time, so…

Helen: [35:53] [Laughter] No.

Konrad: [35:55] The second child was born in ’66. I also wasn’t home, and I did stay home for ten days between the… and that was the whole trip.

Helen: [36:07] No, but he came home early. You came early.

Konrad: [36:09] Yeah. But anyway, for the first two kids, even in the 60s, I wasn’t home because we were working. We were still paying for the boat, and that was the income. The family income came off of that boat.

Helen: [36:22] Okay, let’s not… go into that.

Konrad: [36:24] Okay. So, anyway, that’s just a little additional… thing in there. [Laughter]

Helen: [36:26] Should we start recording?

Brandon: [36:28] We are recording.

Helen: [36:29] Oh, I’m sorry. I should not…

Mari-Ann: [36:30] No, it’s okay.

Konrad: [36:32] So…

Helen: [36:32] Okay, well… So, the second… our second child is Kristian Sverre Erik Uri, and he was born in 1966.

Konrad: [36:42] Yep.

Helen: [36:43] And then our youngest son, Karl Johann Erik Uri was born in 1975. So, there’s fourteen years between the youngest and the oldest. And all during their life, we were busy. We first built the… after… When we first were married, we had the Kristine family boat. And then Konrad had the opportunity to go and build a boat called the [inaudible 37:14]. And I christened that boat. And that was with his uncle Sverre, and his brother-in-law Alf Sorvik, and his sister Sonja.

[37:26] And then we had that boat, and eventually… This was all a busy time. From the time, you know… we had a single side band radio at home, and actually this was our means of communication. It was a busy, busy time, just almost unbelievable. And then we built the Rainier, and that was with Alf Sorvik, John Sjong, and Konrad. And so we just… our life was a busy time.

Konrad: [38:03] And this is interesting, because Helen fished with me in the summertime for four years, just took the boys; took them out of school early in May. And they went home in September. They had a great time; she had a great time. I always was jealous because she never got seasick, they never got seasick, and I know my first trip fishing, I was seasick as a dog. [Laughter] They were very fortunate.

Helen: [38:30] Actually, the boys… especially the two older boys, said they had a childhood that was unbelievable. You know, I just thought this was very normal. We could fish king crab. I did not fish on the Kristine, but I did go with them on the Rainier. That was really the family boat, and actually…

Konrad: [38:55] That was for crab. King crab fishing.

Helen: [38:58] Yeah. King crab and…

Konrad: [38:59] [Inaudible 38:59 – 39:01]

Helen: [39:01] The boat was… that was the maiden voyage. I remember it was just unbelievable because…

Konrad: [39:07] Yeah, it was, because the steering went out.

Helen: [39:10] [Laughter]

Konrad: [39:11] When we were halfway across the gulf.

Helen: [39:12] Brand new boat.

Konrad: [39:13] Brand new boat, nobody could fix it in Alaska, so I fished the whole year there by hand with the hydraulic steering. And I’m going to tell you, that… you just ask somebody how many turns you have to make to make pressure to turn the boat and fish. It was an interesting experience to say the least.

Helen: [39:35] But you know, it was an adventure for us. My boys… the youngest one was five and the oldest one was nine. They had, like, aquariums outside the pilot house, you know, their different animals. It was wonderful. I did the shopping so I knew what I had, and it was like, walk into the walk-in freezer, and figure out what you’re having for different meals. I have to tell you that when we left at the end of the summer, the crew cried, because…

Konrad: [40:08] They were back to normal. They had to cook their own food.

Helen: [40:11] They had gotten so attached to the boys.

Konrad: [40:13] To the boys.

Helen: [40:15] And the middle, the second-oldest boy, he had his fifth…

Konrad: [40:22] Birthday.

Helen: [40:23] Birthday in Unimak Pass. And I remember we had been in Kodiak unloading crab, and had to have… knew it was his birthday, because that was August 15, and he had to have something. So, I did find a few little toys, and then made streamers and hung from the pilot house, and made a cake, and he had… I hadn’t told him it was his birthday, and he came up… And even to this day, when I meet these people that were with us at that time, they have such a fondness for my children. And then we…

Konrad: [41:03] Yeah. But you’ve got to remember, though, the young… the boys will tell you- the two that were with us all the time- that they had the best childhood anybody could ever have, because they had to work. They didn’t just play with aquariums; they had to work. The five-year-old, he was drilling bait cans.

Well, you today… I would probably go to jail. I would go to jail because he was working. And he was burning with the torch, the propane torch, and burning the nylon with… holding the lids on. He ran the controls, you know, for landing and setting pots.

[41:43] They had a great time, I’m going to tell you. We were going across, and they wanted to go swimming. I told them, “The water’s really cold.” No, they wanted to go swimming. It was a sunny day. So I lifted the hatch off, and they all jumped in the tank, and they all came right out again, because it was cold. [Laughter] So, they had a great time. My… the one, the middle boy, he talks about it all the time. He says, “You know…” And I told him to write a book about it, because no other five-year-old has ever done anything like that, and no other five-year-old will ever do anything like that again.

Helen: [42:14] No.

Konrad: [42:15] You can’t have them on the boat.

Helen: [42:18] No, it is unbelievable because they, you know… just look back at it now, thinking, “How did I do that?” Well, I tell you, it was a busy time, and we enjoyed it, and it was an education for the boys, because our oldest son is a factory ship captain. Our middle son Kristian is running a big fish company in Ballard, in Seattle. And our youngest one works for the State of Alaska in marketing.

Konrad: [42:56] For fishery products.

Helen: [42:57] Yeah. Fishing. They come from a fishing family. In this difficult time of people having unemployment, they have jobs, and they work. It was just like… our youngest son, he went to St. Olaf College in Minnesota. He basically had a liberal arts degree. But actually, because he had always worked in his dad’s office, he had been on the boat, he was the only one in the company he’s working with that has ever been fishing, and it just was almost like a Master’s degree, because you have that background.

[43:42] And then he went, after college… in the meantime he worked for Starbucks and Amazon on his off times. And then he got a job working… right after he came back to Seattle after college, he got a job with a [inaudible 44:01] company, and he toured Alaska for seven months as… actually, he was the money person.

Konrad: [44:08] He was the bursar.

Helen: [44:09] On the boats. And seven…

Konrad: [44:12] He fished crab, and he fished on the factory trawlers. So, he fished… and he fished salmon, and he fished codfish. They all fished. They all wished… there’s only one that is fishing. The other two wish they were fishing, but they can’t.

Helen: [44:24] No…

Konrad: [44:25] The middle son, Kris, his wife had triplets. So that finished his fishing career, right there.

Helen: [44:34] We’re very fortunate.

Konrad: [44:35] But he still talks about it. His wife is not from a fishing family, and so whenever we sit down and start talking fishing, then she leaves. [Laughter] She doesn’t know what we’re… she has no comprehension of what it was like. And it’s difficult. She does a great job. She’s a wonderful person.

Helen: [44:52] Yeah.

Konrad: [44:53] The triplets, they were the youngest. They have one older daughter, Emma.

Helen: [44:57] Emma. Okay. They’re important.

Konrad: [45:00] That’s something I didn’t say. Emma was named after my mother.

Helen: [45:02] Yes.

Konrad: [45:03] Whose name was Emma Karolina. And then my dad’s name was… he changed… his real name was Konrad Karlsen Uri. But when he came through Ellis Island, he dropped the Karlsen. So he was just Konrad Uri. But it was… it was interesting because they did want to fish, but that’s all gone, and it’ll never happen again, because all my… I’ve got, what, five granddaughters.

Helen: [45:30] And one grandson.

Konrad: [45:31] And one grandson. So there went the fishing right there.

Helen: [45:34] Well, we should go back to our grandchildren. Our oldest granddaughter is Emma. She is a senior now at Pacific Lutheran. Then we have Alexa… our oldest son, Konrad, then Alexa. Alexa Britt. So, she has a Norwegian name. And then we got the triplets within a short time they were born. [Laughter]

It was Sonja, Sofia, and Erik. And Erik is Erik Kristian. So, that’s the family name. And then the youngest one of our oldest son’s daughters is Kristin Annaliese. So, and now she’s… So, they’re all in college, or Kristin is a senior at Kamiak High School. They’re a beautiful family.

Konrad: [46:27] They’re growing up.

Helen: [46:28] Beautiful family. They hardly have time right now for their grandparents, but you know, it’s a busy time. And let’s see… we didn’t talk about the Arctic Trawler, but…

Konrad: [46:44] You’re talking.

Helen: [46:44] Okay. No, you go on to the Arctic Trawler, because that was the very beginning… People…

Konrad: [46:48] Anyway, it was the beginning…

Helen: [46:52] Factory ship.

Konrad: [46:53] Factory ship.

Helen: [46:54] Actually, Arctic Trawler was the first American successful factory ship.

Konrad: [47:00] But anyway, we…

Helen: [47:01] You bought…

Konrad: [47:02] I got… Before that, we got, of course… we built the Rainier. John Sjong was involved, and Alf Sorvik. Then Alf sold out. And then John and I decided that we would start a company, Trans-Pacifc. And we bought a World War Two vessel and converted it. We then bought another shrimp boat a little later on, and then we bought another ex-military vessel and converted it.

[47:37] And then the crab fishing started to go downhill pretty rapidly. And we were aware of the factory trawlers in Norway, and that they were doing really well. I had been dragging- the Kristine was a dragger, bottom fish. And I had been dragging for years before I went crab fishing. And so we went to Norway to look at the boat that was available. They said it was available not for very long because the Senator Magnusson decided he didn’t want any more foreign vessels coming into the U.S. So, they stopped us from that one.

[48:19] But there we met Erik Breivik, and got to talking to him. He had the vessel Atlantic. He was one of the top fishermen. That was, I think the biggest factory trawler in Norway, if not, the second, but I think it was the biggest. And he… times were tough in Norway for the factory trawler guys then, too. And so he decided to come with us, and we bought the Seafreeze Atlantic.

[48:44] The U.S. government got talked into building two factory trawlers, Seafreeze Atlantic, Seafreeze Pacific, both built on the east coast, and both were operated there, but were never successful because they couldn’t get crew. And if they got crew, the crew didn’t want to work. They had lots of sabotage on the vessels, and finally the company… they were built under a subsidy- the company just couldn’t handle them, so they were tied up down in Norfolk for eight years.

[49:19] And we bought one; Pan Alaska fisheries had bought the other one. And Harry Jacobsen had run that one. Erling and Harry Jacobsen had each run one of the boats, each. They had each run one boat on the east coast. They’re still alive, by the way. They’re in their nineties now. And but they couldn’t get it to work. They even went to Tromsø and got a crew; still couldn’t make it work. So, we bought the one. We spent quite a few million dollars converting it enough to get it… basically, get it here and then finish the conversion here in Seattle.

Helen: [50:00] I think you should talk about the partners that were in that. It wasn’t just you and…

Konrad: [50:04] No, no. It was…

Helen: [50:06] Erik Breivik.

Konrad: [50:07] Erik Breivik, myself, John Sjong, Rick Hastings, John Boggs. Those were the original owners. We took on one other fellow later, but he didn’t stay. Frank Brown. So, we came out here, and outfitted the vessel, and they left. They didn’t catch anything for the first couple of months. And I went up there and we found fish. And they’ve been finding fish ever since. There were lots and lots of fish. It was no problem if you knew where to go. The first guys who went up there, they didn’t know anything about…

Helen: [50:50] The fishing routes.

Konrad: [50:51] About the fishing routes. They didn’t know where to go. So, when we first got started, it was interesting. The problem was nobody believed that Americans could catch and process number one quality product at sea. We just weren’t capable of doing such a thing.

Helen: [51:11] There were a lot of Norwegians aboard, though, too.

Konrad: [51:12] Well, we had… since we had Erik with us, he brought with him eight Norwegians, young fellows from Norway. Kjell Rutger came with him, and Rune Jurneren came with them. Karl Blo, Olaf Volge, Ole Rotset, oh, who else? One fellow who came with them, he got killed here in a reel accident. I can’t remember the eighth guy, but I should. Oh, Kjell [inaudible 51:49].

Helen: [51:49] Yeah. He was a fantastic engineer.

Konrad: [51:51] Yeah. And so the first trip, two months, they did nothing. So then, when we found the fish…

Helen: [51:58] Well, he went up. The other people went home.

Konrad: [52:00] Yeah. We found fish and of course, the crew, the American crew, had never seen a codfish in their life, except on a plate. And we got so much fish. We had seven hundred tons in a month, month and a half. They were completely worn out. They were crying. They wanted to go home. They were… if it hadn’t been for the eight Norwegians aboard, we would have never processed that fish. It was… it just… and you can’t blame the Americans; they had never experienced…

Helen: [52:37] This was a new experience.

Konrad: [52:38] You know, we were used to eighteen, nineteen, twenty hours a day- work. That was what we did in fishing. It wasn’t an eight-hour day, or a six-hour day; it was whatever the day was. Sometimes it was three days; seventy-two hours. But that’s what we were used to. You took advantage of the weather and the fish when they were there. So, anyway…

Helen: [52:58] Can I say something, though? Because our oldest son called me up, and he said, “Mom,” he said, “Dad plugged the boat.” I said, “What... did he hit something?” He said, “No, it just… that means there was so much fish that they had to stop.” They couldn’t keep on… they had to process that because it was really just unbelievable.

Konrad: [53:25] So, that was the start of the factory trawlers here. For the first year, we hardly sold a pound of fish because we could not convince people that this fish was better than fresh- fresher than fresh. Because it was frozen, filleted, five hours, no longer than five hours out of the sea. All the stuff that was coming in then, to America, was five or ten days old on the boat before it ever came to the U.S.

Konrad: [53:53] And so the first year was just a killer, because we caught all this fish and couldn’t sell it. Had to finally… basically we gave it away to… When I say gave it away, we had to lower the price so far down…

Helen: [54:07] You weren’t making money.

Konrad: [54:08] That the… You know, the people just took it, because they knew they were getting something for nothing.

Helen: [54:14] Yeah.

Konrad: [54:14] And we had… there’s articles by some of the newspaper people, because we had tastings everywhere. One lady, I think she wrote for the PI, and said that the fish was no good because it didn’t smell, and it was too white.

Helen: [54:33] [Laughter]

Konrad: [54:34] And you know, this is codfish. And this was down at Ray’s at a taste. We had all the news people there, and the food people there. And what are you going to say? I mean, there’s not much you can do when somebody who is their food editor says something like that and puts it in the newspaper. That didn’t help us any.

[54:55] And we finally got it going, and then of course, pollock. It was the same with pollock. We could not give pollock away. We ended up selling pollock for fifty cents a pound. Of course, now, that’s the biggest fishery- real fishery, here in America, anyway, is the pollock fishery.

[55:15] The Norwegian codfish and macro-fisheries will exceed that now this year, just because they have so much codfish they don’t know what to do with it. But that was a start. Then Francis Miller got going. He got a couple of boats and converted them, and we got a hold of another vessel, and converted that. We fixed it up so it worked, anyway. And…

Helen: [55:44] That was [inaudible 55:45].

Konrad: [55:45] But it was so bad to get started, that… and you should never remember one in such large ventures, because we were not that kind of businessmen; we were fishermen. And so it was difficult for us. We didn’t know how to play the game ashore. We had no problem catching fish, processing fish, but we weren’t businessmen enough, really, for the size of the business, eventually… you know, nowadays, turned out to be. In those days, you were barely hanging on by your fingernails.

Helen: [56:17] Actually, you had to introduce people to the taste of fish. And actually, because the brand name was Arctic Fresh, we had a hard time, because people tried to take that name, too, but we had the fish nuggets, and they were sold at Costco. And we had, you know, it was an unbelievable product for people. And the original boxes- we had the fifteen-pound boxes, but then we also had a five-pound box, which would have been wonderful, and it was a great gift to give someone, but it was too expensive.

Konrad: [56:55] It wasn’t too expensive. The reason they went to the five-pound boxes was the fifteen pound box would not fit in your home freezer.

Helen: [57:04] Oh, that’s…

Konrad: [57:04] Refrigerator, home freezer. So, we went to a five-pound box.

Helen: [57:08] It was beautiful. It was…

Konrad: [57:09] And it was all shatter packed so that you picked out what you wanted- if you wanted one piece for one person, or if you wanted two pieces, or three, you just picked them out of the box, and they were all wrapped, so it was simple. But nobody does that anymore, by the way.

Helen: [57:24] Because it wasn’t…

Konrad: [57:24] They shatter pack a fifteen-pound, but nobody does a five-pound anymore.

Helen: [57:28] No, it was…

Konrad: [57:29] So, for whatever reason, mainly because their emphasis is all on pollock now. Not so much codfish.

Helen: [57:38] You know, I think you should talk about, too… Konrad did a lot of the lobbying in Washington, D.C., so we spent a lot of time back between fishing and then on an airplane to D.C. And actually, we got the fish nuggets on the lunch…

Konrad: [57:56] School lunch program. That took a long time.

Helen: [57:57] And senator Stevens gave Konrad some big award in Washington, D.C.

Konrad: [58:02] And we worked to get rid of the foreign fishing vessels. I was on that, sitting in Senator Magnusson’s office when we finally got that done. I was also there when we got the council set up, made, which I was corrected by Wally Pereira who said I was a little too hard on the Alaska guys, but that was the way it was. It is the way it is. Now they’re trying to change it back to what I wanted and what some of us wanted even all those years ago. Now they want to go back and do that.

[58:37] Well, you know, once something has been in effect for twenty years, you’re not going to change it. Because Magnusson is gone- Senator Magnusson, Senator Jackson, Joe Pitcher, and all these guys that I worked with back then, they’re all gone, you know. And the new people are not interested in fishing at all, on the west coast. Nothing.

[58:57] So, we tried all kinds of things. We made mince out of the leftovers, and sold that to Van Camp, and they loved it because they would mix it with the east coast pollock, which was the only pollock that came in then. Smosa, you know, that’s what it is.

[59:15] And they mixed it with that to lighten up the pollock from the east coast, to make the meat lighter. Because what we had was snow-white, and theirs has a little dark tinge to the meat. And we tried all kinds of things. We tried… we went to the universities; we went food tasting all over the country.

Helen: [59:40] We did a lot of that on our own, too.

Konrad: [59:42] Yeah. But it was… you know, as a really good friend of mine said, you know, it’s a blink in time. Something that came along, we happened to be there. And even though we’re no longer there, the industry is huge. It’s not the same industry anymore. Fishing is just not the same industry anymore. There’s no chance for young people, period. Because if you don’t own a quota, you cannot make it.

[1:00:15] And the quotas were given out to… depending on the years, certain years… Those quotas- which it really irks me- I tried for years, and will keep trying- they were given to people in perpetuity, forever. So that fish, a renewable resource, will stay with those families forever, unless they decide they want to sell them, and no one will ever sell them. It would be like a goldmine that continues to produce for a thousand years.

Helen: [1:00:54] It’s a life insurance type of thing that just keeps on coming, so…

Konrad: [1:00:56] Yeah. Which is the dumbest thing they ever did, but it is there, and if there’s anything I can do, I will continue to try to change that, because young people don’t have a chance. And I’m really off subject here, but it is to me the most important part about what we do.

Helen: [1:01:16] But I think, you know… I have to say something about this, because Konrad was very industrious, always looking ahead. And actually, when we looked at the Arctic Trawler, and I remember the other Americans that were involved- Norwegian-Americans- you know, they weren’t too sure about it. But he had done it. So like when my son said he had plugged the boat- he had done that. He had done his homework.

[1:01:48] He still, to this day, people call him up about different areas in Alaska where the fish are, at a certain time. I know our oldest son checks with his father to find out, you know, what it is. And Konrad being a little bit… he doesn’t tell you, but he was one of the very first people here that got the Highlander Award, which has been national fishermen, and what year was that?

Konrad: [1:02:16] ’81.

Helen: [1:02:17] ’81. So, we have a very nice plaque in our house. Actually, there was one picture of Konrad in it. It’s when we’re trying to introduce codfish to the United States. And it was a company called Wilbur Ellis. And there’s a picture of Konrad, and I have it. It’s just beautiful. He has a rough… He almost looks like he’s an Indian, with this… but it’s… you know.

Konrad: [1:02:46] It was supposed to be Alaska.

Helen: [1:02:48] Alaska. But it is… it’s a small thing… it’s a small… Our friends, you know, to this day- even the lady that did the… She decoupaged this picture. And it was Mary Bundred that did it for Konrad. And it’s… you know, it’s part of your history. We spent a lot of time in the last year going through paperwork, and you just try to assemble… Our middle son is trying to put it all together. And he’s the one that should write a book. But even Karl, Karl Johann, he…

Konrad: [1:03:25] He was…

Helen: [1:03:26] He was on the Arctic Trawler. I mean, he was down in the factory when…

Konrad: [1:03:31] Nine years old. Can’t do that anymore.

Helen: [1:03:34] No. But I mean, it was an adventure for them. And that was corresponding with the summer. So he could go. But I actually never… I visited the Arctic Trawler, but I was never on that boat.

Konrad: [1:03:48] The one thing about Arctic Trawler, you see, when we started, the trips were three months to four months from the time we left here until we got home to Ballard again. When we started a trip here and ended a trip here, there was no infrastructure in Dutch Harbor to handle…

Helen: [1:04:04] The fish.

Konrad: [1:04:04] …the loading or unloading or whatever of the product. Of course, now, you see, you go in and they unload, and they leave the same day from Dutch Harbor. Pollock guys, same thing. They make a ten-day trip, at the most, fifteen. So it was quite an interesting life experience to watch the crew. It took about a year and a half before we finally got a solid crew that actually understood the hours, could handle them, understood what we were doing, and they enjoyed it.

[1:04:40] But it was interesting, because on a four-month cruise, working like that, you could watch as they came aboard and they knew nothing, and as they learned, and their production went up and up, it would hit a peak at about two months, and then it would start to come down. And when it got down, you know… when you’ve got three and a half months in, it was time to leave and go home.

[1:05:03] Generally by that time, we had a boat full anyway. But it was quite interesting to observe the people and how they handled it. The girls- because we had women aboard- they were just as tough as the guys. Some of them were tougher than the guys.

[1:05:22] And you know, it was… when they came aboard to start with- and it hasn’t changed any, I’m sure- boys and girls, they didn’t know how to make their bunks. They didn’t know how to pick their clothes up off the floor or off the deck on a boat. They didn’t know how to keep the restrooms clean. They didn’t know how to wash clothes. They didn’t know anything. And these were nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two year-old people.

[1:05:52] And I told them after the first trip, I’m never having a girl on here that’s under twenty-five. Period. Zero. Not working, when you’ve got sixty guys and five, six girls. That was not easy. But, so you had to teach them. You had to get them all in a room, and then you sit down and explain to them the rules. Boys don’t hit on girls; girls don’t hit on boys.

Helen: [1:06:22] Okay, Konrad. [Laughter]

Konrad: [1:06:23] No, but this is interesting because this, they had to learn.

Helen: [1:06:26] Yeah.

Konrad: [1:06:26] Every single one of them. And by the time you got halfway through the trip, they cleaned, they made up their bunks, and they picked up their clothes. All of that, on a vessel is safety, fire. Safety issues. They have to learn. But I was really surprised at how few didn’t know anything… they didn’t know how to wash clothes.

Helen: [1:06:48] I love this story.

Konrad: [1:06:48] I walked into… we had a washing room. We had a clothes-washing area. The girls, three girls that took care of that. And so when I was through with my watch, I always walked around the boat and looked at everything in the engine room, pilot house. I went everywhere to check out, see if everything was ship-shape. You couldn’t have stuff in the companionways, same thing, fire hazard. We had to train them all in first aid, safety, man overboard, fire, you name it.

[1:07:20] But I walked up, and the door to the washroom was closed, which it wasn’t supposed to be, so I opened it up, and it was just a wall of suds. They didn’t know what they were doing. They had gone in there, and they had poured… I don’t know how much soap they had poured into the machines. I could hear them in there, but you couldn’t see them. Took all day to get the suds out of there. [Laughter] My God.

[1:07:48] But anyway, it was an experience for me, because I had no idea that there were so many people who had been raised that way. We weren’t raised that way. But you know, there were so many that were raised that way. But it was interesting. It was great, fishing, and it has become a huge industry. I was… we were very happy to have been a part of it, and we met people from all over the world.

Helen: [1:08:16] We have. Yeah.

Konrad: [1:08:17] And we still hear from them.

Helen: [1:08:19] Norway, especially.

Konrad: [1:08:20] I think that… and it’s… I get to be political here. I have a lot of people who come up to me- I don’t recognize them from thirty years ago, forty years ago. But anyway, doctors and lawyers, people with business, and people, you know, in all walks of life, men and women. They’ll come up and thank us for the opportunity they had to be on the vessel, to learn how to work, you know. There was no excuse for not working.

[1:08:51] And the first trip, we had five PhDs on the boat. They couldn’t get a job. Paleontologists, music, English, history, and I kept thinking of what the fifth one was, but it was one of these non-paying jobs. And every one of those fellows ended up… they started at the bottom. You can’t be any lower down than in the factory. They started there, and it wasn’t many trips before they moved themselves up, because they were smart. It wasn’t that they were dumb; they were smart.

[1:09:23] And a lot of them ended up being in the companies that were formed as the industry grew, because they knew; you know, they got the jobs, good jobs. It’s always interesting to think about. That opportunity now is gone for young people. They can’t do that anymore, because they don’t get enough time, and if they do get enough time, they don’t go back to school, which they should do.

[1:09:53] Which these people… in those days, everybody came aboard and made a trip or two, and made enough money to go to school and educate themselves. That doesn’t happen, because you can’t own a boat anymore. Unless you have quota, now- you can own a boat- but unless you have quota now, you have nothing to fish. You’ve got a nice, expensive yacht.

Helen: [1:10:13] Well, this is… thinking back on education now, because our middle son, Kristian and actually, going back to our neighborhood in Woodway, actually all the boys… That was a boy’s neighborhood. And Dr. [inaudible 1:10:30] son was with us.

Konrad: [1:10:32] All of those.

Helen: [1:10:33] It was Allan and Erik, and… It was amazing, people that were actually influenced by being around us. And I look at Kristian, you know, when he was at the university, his friends, they all got jobs on the Arctic Trawler. They were good young people.

Konrad: [1:10:52] They were smart.

Helen: [1:10:53] They were smart, and they got… it actually worked out, because the university was later-starting, so that we could fill them in. When we look back at our lives… and I think… We had a picture in our house, and I really didn’t pay attention to it too much. All the people that came for the Arctic Trawler, the Norwegians, would look at this picture, and they said, “Well, whose boat was that?” And I said, “Well, it was my grandfather’s in northern Norway. That was Johann Edwardson.”

[1:11:33] And I said, “And one of the people on the deck, there, is my father, but I don’t know which one.” But my aunt had given me the picture after my father had passed away, and she said, “Where are you going to put it?” And I said, “Well, I’m going to put it right in the entrance.” And she said, “That’s fine.” She said, “I gave the picture to your sister, and she put it in a bad place.” [Laughter]

Konrad: [1:11:55] Yeah. She... Anyway, that picture was taken in 1905 at Oslo fjord.

Helen: [1:12:02] With all the flags.

Konrad: [1:12:02] And they were heading to Oslo for the change of… you know, for the changing of going away from Denmark.

Helen: [1:12:12] Oh, this is where our…

Konrad: [1:12:14] And Sweden.

Helen: [1:12:14] ...our heritage…

Konrad: [1:12:16] Nord Norge was the name of the boat.

Helen: [1:12:18] Yeah. It is. And, you know, I didn’t really pay attention to it too much, but then I realized, and I think about, you know… because my father died at sixty-two, and my mom lived until she was ninety-one, and how our lives intertwined. It’s just like, the good Lord watching over us. And it’s been an interesting experience. But I think back on it, and we were talking about Norwegian heritage.

[1:12:49] And we were checking, because... and Konrad had told me time and time again, “Sit your mother down and do a recording.” And I did not do it. So, there’s a young gal here in Ballard, Diana Erikson, who does a lot of the history on the computer. And it turns out, my grandfather, who had this boat, always thought he was from northern Norway. He possibly still is, but his family said it is Alesund, Norway. Now, how… because I didn’t meet that grandfather, you know, and all the people are gone.

[1:13:32] I think this is wonderful that you are recording, because people do… they catch up. And we, you know… I look at it, because we checked on the date of my grandfather’s, and according to this history… and we had to go out to [inaudible 1:13:54] because my grandmother and grandfather were married there. And sure, it is the right date. And so he possibly was from Alesund, but…

Konrad: [1:14:03] Poor guy.

Helen: [1:14:04] [Laughter] No, but…

Konrad: [1:14:06] Another [inaudible 1:14:06].

Helen: [1:14:06] Yeah. But it’s interesting how your lives go on, and just…

Konrad: [1:14:13] This is a really abbreviated version, because you’re never going to… We can’t ever recall everything that we did, you know. We did a lot of things when we were young, in the church, in the Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts, you name it, you know. All of that was part…

Helen: [1:14:32] Charity work.

Konrad: [1:14:33] All kinds of charity work, which we still do. In the Depression… Which I did up… as long as I was fishing… I remember it because every trip my dad came home, and every trip I came home, we brought home fish for people- people who we knew had no money, no food.

And we would cut it up, package it up in newspapers and many times we would deliver it to them so they had food. Almost the whole fleet… the whole fleet that was our there at the time, back in the… during the war, and after the war, and all the way up… I did it all the way until I quit fishing. And I didn’t quit until 1970.

[1:15:20] I mean, 2000, I quit. Was it… 2004. Anyway, people don’t do it because it’s illegal now to do it. We cannot… if we bring fish in, we have to record it with the government that we are taking fish, and they subtract it from the biomass there, the total allowable catch. But before, we used to bring it home and give it to people, because there were so many who…

[1:15:47] And that’s the same thing now. They should allow these fellows, these people, to bring fish and give fish to these people that have no money, have no food. And you know, fish is very expensive now; more expensive than meat. But it is protein. People need protein. But nobody brings it up because we don’t have the same… it isn’t he same kind of fishing anymore. You know. That’s all gone. Sad to say.

Helen: [1:16:15] But I don’t know what’s…

Konrad: [1:16:19] So, what’s next? Hmm, good question.

Helen: [1:16:22] [Laughter]

Konrad: [1:16:23] So far, I have been on the board at Norse Home for going on ten years. I’ve been president going on four years. I’m going off in April. They talked me into one more year last time, but that’s enough. Ten years is long enough. She’s been here a long time. She came here after I was here, but she’s been here for how many years? When was the first auction?

Mari-Ann: [1:16:49] Oh, I have been here since ’88.

Konrad: [1:16:52] Yeah. That was the first auction.

Helen: [1:16:53] And Konrad and…

Konrad: [1:16:55] First big auction.

Mari-Ann: [1:16:56] Yeah.

Helen: [1:16:56] Yeah. Konrad and Sig Erikson did two main auctions here. [Inaudible 1:16:59 – 1:17:01]

Konrad: [1:17:00] She was on that… with Trigvig and with… Madeleine Albright and…

Helen: [1:17:07] Not Madeleine.

Mari-Ann: [1:17:08] Marilyn.

Konrad: [1:17:09] Madeleine.

Helen: [1:17:10] Yeah, but it wasn’t Albright.

Mari-Ann: [1:17:11] Marilyn.

Konrad: [1:17:11] It was Rita Alright, wasn’t it?

Mari-Ann: [1:17:15] Yeah.

Helen: [1:17:15] Yeah.

Konrad: [1:17:16] But Madeleine…

Mari-Ann: [1:17:17] Marilyn.

Helen: [1:17:18] Marilyn.

Konrad: [1:17:18] Marilyn. Yeah.

Helen: [1:17:20] Yeah, they’re still here.

Konrad: [1:17:21] And then Ruth Braverman.

Helen: [1:17:24] Yeah.

Mari-Ann: [1:17:25] Yeah.

Konrad: [1:17:25] You know.

Helen: [1:17:25] Yeah, so…

Konrad: [1:17:26] But the first auction we had… you don’t have to record that. But anyway, the first auction we had, we only had twelve items, and we had that here. The main reason I remember that is because one of them was a great big canoe. Cedar. Couldn’t lift it. Took a witch to lift the damn thing. Oh my God. And I don’t think we were more than twenty people- the board, and I know there were four Bardals that were there. And we got a golf club from Karsten Solheim. He never gave us more than one in any of our auctions. Only one club. We always thought he’d give us a whole set, but he never did.

Helen: [1:18:12] [Inaudible 18:12 – 18:13]

Konrad: [1:18:13] And but... you know, when I first was on the board, then it was Leif Aya and Sven Gillia, Trigvig Jorgenson, and who else was there?

Helen: [1:18:29] Was it Sig?

Konrad: [1:18:30] Sig was there. Sig Erikson.

Helen: [1:18:35] And Bert Lund.

Konrad: [1:18:35] And Bert Lund. Yeah. And then we grabbed other people as they came along. And we had a heck of a group of great people. I have to say that. It was an entirely different place then. I ran into Marianne. Not her, but Marianne was a secretary. She was the only paid employee we had. And we used the money from the first auction to buy The Dream.

[1:18:59] That was a good auction. We made over one hundred thousand. We made about one hundred and twenty, thirty, forty thousand on the first one. We made two hundred and fifty gross on the second one. And that’s what really put this place on its feet. We got the [inaudible 1:19:17] going, and we got Tivoli going, and we got the place going, and it’s been going ever since.

Mari-Ann: [1:19:25] Konrad, how did you get involved? What prompted you to get involved with the museum? When, and how?

Konrad: [1:19:32] Well, I…

Helen: [1:19:34] I think it was Sig.

Konrad: [1:19:35] Well, the reason being…

Helen: [1:19:36] And Trigvig.

Konrad: [1:19:37] It was the kids, the young people who kept asking. And I’m not born in Norway. I’m born here. But even so, it was the kids asking about Norway, or about Sweden. They were asking about where their people came from. And so… because we talked to, you know, Sig born in Norway, and Bert and the rest of them, other than Leif Aya, he was born in Norway. And I don’t… Sven Gillia was born here, and…

Helen: [1:20:07] Are you sure? I think he was born in Norway.

Konrad: [1:20:08] Yeah. Norway. Yeah. So, we would get together; we would talk about what we could do for the kids. We were not interested in the adults. We were interested in the kids, and I’ve always been interested in kids, and their culture and their heritage, because we used to have so many come to the house at Christmastime, especially when I was home. And they had no heritage. We would sit there and talk; they would ask about Norway and the Christmas tree and the julenissen and the all of the things that we did, you know, [inaudible 1:20:41] and lutefisk, and you name it. Because they had nothing.

[1:20:47] This is kind of how this started coming together, was to hold the culture and the heritage for the kids of the various Scandinavian countries. And everybody that was there was totally together on that. That was the number one thing we were working on, and that’s why we were so fortunate we got The Dream. That was fantastic. And it’s only half of it out there anyway. So… the kids still come, they still ask.

[1:21:22] They’re not young children anymore so much, but you know, they’re fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old, and their parents, maybe they’re third-generation American, or they’re fourth generation, and all of a sudden they become interested in, “Where did our people come from, and how did they get here, and how did they live, and how did they live when they came to America?” And so on and so forth.

[1:21:44] That’s what they wanted to know. And of course, we could tell them. We lived through it, although we weren’t born in Norway. We could have just as well been, because we ate all the same food- fish every day, potatoes, fish, fish potatoes. And that wasn’t just… that wasn’t just every night. What was left over, you had in the morning. Plukkfisk or whatever.

[1:22:08] And it was never left over. Norwegians had the first frittata. You should put that down. [Laughter] Because they threw everything in the frying… in that big skillet. Everything went in there in the morning that was left over. So anyway, I get off the subject. But it is why we got going on this things and how come everybody, yourself included… you know, how hard we worked on the culture and the heritage for the kids.

[1:22:38] It’s just absolutely… it’s disappearing now in the Scandinavian community because now all of a sudden we’re third generation, and as I said, some fourth. And we don’t want- at least I don’t want that to go away, because they will never know how hard it was for those people. They… unless they can see it, and experience a little bit of it… viewing it, or whatever. They’ll never understand that those people came here with zero, and there was nobody… And to come into the country, you had to have somebody…

Helen: [1:23:12] Sponsor.

Konrad: [1:23:12] Guarantee for you, and they had to put up five thousand dollars. That’s how you got in. Yeah.

Helen: [1:23:20] That’s different…

Konrad: [1:23:21] So anyway, we could go on and on…

Helen: [1:23:23] No.

Konrad: [1:23:12] That’s just a little bit of my life history.

Helen: [1:23:26] And my… Well, I do a lot of… forty-some years for Seattle Milk Fund. The second-oldest charity in Seattle. And it was mainly for families and milk, and that type of thing, years ago. And now it’s been narrowed down to helping young women and men with children for educational grants and help with everything. So, it’s been a busy time in my life, too. But you know, we’re getting to that age where it’s slowing down.

Konrad: [1:23:59] Not much.

Helen: [1:24:00] Not much, but… [laughter]

Mari-Ann: [1:24:03] Helen, weren’t you also involved in Fishermen’s Wives organization?

Helen: [1:24:08] Oh, yes. I was, yes. Years ago. But that sort of has fallen apart.

Konrad: [1:24:13] That disappeared when the quota system came in.

Helen: [1:24:18] Yeah. It really… that’s when…

Konrad: [1:24:19] Because they had… Remember, the Fishermen’s Wives organization, it was a huge organization. It used to be two, three hundred women that belonged to that thing. And when they came in with this quota system, and they ended up with only five companies, six companies, all of those women were gone.

[1:24:40] As a matter of fact, it’s interesting you bring it up, Mari-Ann, because we were just with some of the ladies that were involved with that all those years ago, very much involved. And they would like to try to start it up again, knowing that it will not be anywhere near that size, but starting it up again, because at the present time, there’s no knowledge of the fishing industry, basic knowledge of the fishing industry…

Helen: [1:25:02] It’s become…

Konrad: [1:25:03] …anywhere in the country. It’s disappeared. It’s just a handful of people now, and if they don’t get it going, that handful of people will be a bunch of hedge funds.

Helen: [1:25:13] Well, it is…

Konrad: [1:25:13] That’s what it’ll be.

Helen: [1:25:14] It’s… So, [inaudible 1:25:16].

Konrad: [1:25:16] Sad to say.

Helen: [1:25:17] It is different, that’s for sure. And that is life, I think, too. It just changes you. You like to have it come back.

Konrad: [1:25:25] In our country today- and why I get on my horse, high horse again- you can erase all of this crap, but anyway- fifty percent of the kids don’t graduate from high school. Or if they do graduate, and they’re in that fifty percent, they’re not going on to college, or junior college, or university, or whatever. So, I was at a meeting a month ago, and Jay Inslee gave a talk, a presentation, you know, to be elected. McKenna was there also, and a half hour later, he gave a presentation. I got up because all they talked about was education and university.

[1:26:05] And I got up, and I said, “Well, what about those that are on the other side? What are you going to do with them? No one ever mentions them. What are you going to do with the fifty percent? We don’t have hands on work in farms. They can’t get a job fishing anymore, which used to hire lots of them. We don’t have a logging industry anymore. We don’t have a maritime industry anymore to amount to a hill of beans. They used to employ millions of people, all of these groups.” I said, “What are you going to do about those people?” No answer from either person.

[1:26:39] And so, I don’t know what you are going to do… I’m getting old; we’re getting old. Maybe things will erupt in a really bad way before we die, but down the road, not too far, somebody has to do something for these people. We don’t have trade schools for them, you know. And no one talks about trade schools.

Helen: [1:26:59] Yeah. This is for [inaudible 1:27:00] [Laughter]

Konrad: [1:27:00] That’s enough of my high horse, but…

Helen: [1:27:03] Oh, no. But… so, we are always thinking, that’s for sure.

Konrad: [1:27:07] But anyway, we have a lot of history, we did a lot of things, we worked with a lot of people, we helped a lot of people with food all the time, with money if necessary, in those days, but most of them wouldn’t take money. They would take the food. Yeah. And even when we were in the service, we were taking care of a couple that…

Helen: [1:27:31] Okay.

Konrad: [1:27:32] That had no money. And had no food. So, we’ve helped, we worked, we’ve done a lot of things. It was very interesting. The greatest thing ever was probably getting started in the… I was already in the fishing industry, but to see the factory trawler thing really go to town, you know. That was a big deal. And if I wasn’t so old, I would still be fishing. Still. Absolutely. It’s a great group. It was a fantastic group of people. You cannot believe how many- the nicest people in the world were those fishermen.

[1:28:12] And they’re all gone. When I broke in, I was the kid. I was fifteen years younger than anybody else at the time. So the kid always stayed up the latest, the kid always cleaned the most, and the kid always did all the hard work. I always was the kid. But anyway, we’ve got to get going. And if you want to know more, just holler, and you can throw the whole thing out.

Helen: [1:28:34] You can exclude a lot of this, but…

Mari-Ann: [1:28:37] I want to thank you. This has been a fantastic interview. I… we so appreciate both of you sharing your stories. And as you said, it’s probably just a small part of it, but this is a very important part for the museum to have your stories, because you have been so influential, not just in the museum in Ballard, but in the entire neighborhood, and area, and nationally, and internationally, in the fishing.

Helen: [1:29:10] [Inaudible 1:29:10 – 1:29:12]

Mari-Ann: [1:29:13] So, thank you very much. We appreciate it.

Helen: [1:29:15] You’re welcome.

Konrad: [1:29:16] Thank you, Mari-Ann. You bet. We appreciate it. As I said, you can throw out anything where I get too…