Sylvia A. Waters

Interview of Sylvia A. Waters for the Elizabeth V. and George F. Gardner Digital Library Memory Bank. Waters discusses the history of her families connection to Cumberland County, PA including her father's family in Newville. Waters then talks about growing up on B Street in Carlisle and attending the old Wilson and Lamberton Schools.

The following is a machine generated transcript:

Today is June 10th 2022. My name is Blair Williams. I'm here at the Cumberland County Historical Society with Mrs. Sylvia Waters and Joy Fleming. Joy Waters Fleming. Thank you. Okay. Thank you. So joy, I will hand over the questions to you then. Okay, great. Thank you very much Blair.

As you've indicated, this is an interview of my mother. So I'd like to start first of all, by asking you to indicate your full name. My name is Sylvia and Byers waters. Okay. And how old are you? Too old. I was born March 7th 1940. That makes me 82.

Okay, and where were you born? I was born in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, at the Carlisle Hospital. Okay. Where do you currently live? I currently live in Swatara Township Dauphin County, Pennsylvania. Okay. And mom we're just going to just talk a little bit about your family background. So I know you know, the answer to this.

What was your father's name? My father was Frank Edward Byers. Okay, he was born in Newville. Pennsylvania. Okay, do you know, do you remember when he was born in 1920? April 2nd, 1920, had you at? Why is that date so significant? Why do you remember it so easily? Well, I have a son born on that date.

Also, April 2nd and that would be Mark Edward Waters. Okay, my brother, of course. So granddad. Your father was born April 2nd, 1920, in Newville Pennsylvania. What about your mother? What was her name? My mother Sarah Snowden was born in Carlisle. Pennsylvania. And her birthday is November the 6, 1921. Okay. Now are either of your parents still living? No. Okay. Do you remember when your father passed away? What year was that? My father passed away in 2000. May of 2000. And what about your mother? My mother passed away in 2015.

Okay, well, sounds like they had very, very long live. They had very good at long lives. They were married over 60 years and they had wonderful, wonderful lives. Where did they live most of their lives? Well, they lived in Carlisle for their lives and my father grew up in Newville.

But after his mother died, to use the term that his my grandfather, used to my father, he broke up the homestead after his wife died and then I think my father moved to Carlisle and that. Where did he move from from? Newville. Okay. Do you know roughly how long you've indicated?

You were born in Carlisle and that your grandfather has a Newville connection and that I'm sorry. Your father is a Newville connection and you're mother has a Cumberland County connection. Do you know, roughly how long your family has lived in Cumberland County, Pennsylvania? Almost 200 years, okay? Great. We'll talk a little bit more about that as our memories allow.

You've been to your, your father was from Newville and your mother was born in the Carlisle area. Do you remember your grandparents at all? I do. Okay. Let's talk about on your, on your father's side. First Father Sad. I remember pop pop Byers, George William. Where was he from?

Pop was born in Newville. He had interesting background. He was born in Newville, Pennsylvania. And his wife was Sarah Bell Byers. I'm not sure where she was born, but she died before I was born, obviously, but pop lived to be right up, right? Old age in his mid-80s when he died.

Okay. Did you revisit Newville as a child? Yes. Anytime. Would you remember about remember that it was a favorite place for my father to go and tell a story. Stories as a child, you didn't really appreciate but you listen to the first and second and third time the fourth time you started wondering around why is he telling me this again today.

I know why he told me and I wish I would listen a little more attentively. He told us about the homestead there. He showed us all the graves in the in the, in the graveyard, where our many of our forebears where I had an uncle by the name of Uncle Sam, who was just a wonderful, wonderful person, he lived in Newville, the only thing I can remember but Uncle Sam was always intrigued to go and visit him and he lived very close to a creek down a little.

I don't know. I'm a little slope off the road and near a little creek and we it was a treat to go see uncle Sam, I don't know that uncle Sam married, I just didn't know that but he was given whatever treats he had to us and it was of a wonderful thing.

Okay. So you do remember Newville and you remember some people some relatives that that were there. Do you have any brothers and sisters? Yes, I have come from a family of six. Girls, I'm the oldest Sylvia, Maxine, Charmaine, money, candy and Linda. As you see the rest of my sisters, all live in Carlisle.

Now, they've lived in other places in, at least two of them lived in other places, but they returned back to Carlisle and believe it or not, they still live on B Street. It's not the house we grew up in but across the street to the Byers. Girls are all in Carlisle.

The Byers, the Byers girls are on the street. Okay, talking about B Street. Is that where you live as a child? Well, I actually lived as a child on West Street in Carlisle when I was tiny and I can remember it was during the war and I must have been about three years old.

What worries talking about, I'm talking about world war two, okay, I believe and my father would take me outside and hold me in his arms and point up his sky and I could see the lights going back and forth because it was an error rate going on and he would take me out and he called me since then and would point out different things to me, I can remember that vividly.

Like it was yesterday, we moved from West Street to B Street sometime later and we lived in a very small house on B Street. That was a converted gasoline station. It was small and as our family grew, it became too small and that was a 338 bee street and that house is still there.

Other members of my family, block the house from my father and live there. No relatives live there now. But right next door to 3:38 which is 3:36. We're, I live from 12 or 13 until I left Carlisle was a vacant lot and as a kid, my father, would come home from work and get me out in to that vacant lot with him and he would pull the weeds.

He'd clear it and I would help him plant a garden, and I can remember being on my knees on these boards and line enough, these onions in a row, everything was very precise with him. He had these lines of string and I had to follow them through. And he had, we had a big garden there because our house was very small.

And after the war, after he came home from the navy after the war, not long. After that, my father starts saving after he started working at the naval supply depot. And he bought the land next door and built a house there. And he built that house from scratch. He dug, it could be foundation for it, I was there helping him.

I couldn't hold the block, but I talked to the center blocks, but I talked to him a couple times. I swear the mortar and I can remember him doing that and he had a tool that he used in between the blocks to smooth it out and he built that house from scratch.

Every board. He knew he drew the plans for the house. It was a very large house compared to the one we lived in it's a sizeable house period to even to this day, it would be known as a nice size house. And so from I moved there, as I said around 12 years old and I can remember during the time that I lived on B Street and well Daddy was building that house mommy and daddy, both worked and mommy and daddy would come home and on maybe a Thursday of or even on a Friday and give me money in an envelope.

And he would tell me. He said, Sylvia, you need to take this to the lumber company, and I would take this to the lumber company which was very far. It was in the northern part of Carlisle, and I would pay every week of the lumber company for the supplies that he used in that house.

That was quite a hike attained. I'd like them walk around but that was a little much after school and he would cash his savings bonds and use what he could say and pay those lumber bills and he, he did a fantastic job, you know, it was sterling to watch him, do it but you can't appreciate the significance of it until you look at the whole history of America. What people had, what they didn't have and how important only in a property was, what about what year was that mom? We moved in there in 52 or 53. It took him about two years, I would say to actually build it.

It's a house still standing. How still stands I sold the house. We sold the house, my sisters, when my mother died, we tried to find someone in the family. But family, the younger people, they wanted to do something else. It could have afforded it and but it's still there and his handiwork will be there.

Forever. Funny thing about it. Kids from the Carlisle, War College would come to school and then come down B Street on the bus. And I would talk to kids that every my class. And they would ask me where I live, and I said on B Street near such a place is owned to you, live in that house with the stock code of the stone on front and I would and I would see, yes, not very, very problematic.

Do you remember who else lived on B Street when you were growing up there? Yes, my uncle George my father's, brother. He thought of Uncle George as a surrogate. Father to they were very, very close together. They hunt and fished together and while could George and my aunt Marion lived across the street at, I think was 350 B Street and it was a beautiful house, it was a single house.

What a big house was a framehouse but it had beautiful poppies and magnolias in the spring and I was just love that place and he had the best cherry trees, anyone could possibly think of and he would tell me do not climb that tree and break any more branches.

So I got smart and find up on the guard. Garage. Roof got in the tree fell off the tree fell out of the tree and there was a board with a nail sticking up. And so I couldn't hide that so you can do. But I was an open. Everyone knew it was not for George's cherry tree, but it was, it was a delight.

He had a nice garden of a beautiful yard with beautiful flowers and I, then there was between that house in another house on B Street. The there were two families, the Rice family, and the Wright family. They came from the south, and I loved to go visit them because I loved their cooking.

My mother did Pennsylvania. She was an excellent chef. I'd like the soul food for no process Street best and I learned how to cook some of those things and then there was another family called the grams and I mentioned those houses because not only were they good and close friends but those houses were toured down and new houses were built and my father bought those houses and today and he bought them and used them as rental properties.

Very nice properties. But today day my sisters own them, and they live in two of my sisters living them. So I have a very close connection to be street. Not to mention, it was the direct route to Carlisle, Senior High School where I graduated from. Well, you know you said that you have an at an uncle that live next door for on the same street.

Did you have any other relatives that lived on B Street that you wife? Okay, what was that money? Like that money was hilarious. Aunt Monie. Do you remember what her maiden name? Was Aunt Monie was a butler. Okay I'm Marian Butler. Okay she got the name Monie because it's a child.

I couldn't say Marion and I called her Monie. And so I named her and Boney and it's, which she's not as and her laugh was like unbelievable. And she we would gather at front sometimes in the summer and our yards and people would go by and we was a direct road to Wagner's Gap.

I've that way. And sometimes people, none wiping, people would ride and they'd see us, I don't know yards and they get real trash. They they were surprised, I guess and it won't even look at them and say, yes, we're colored and you could always depend on her to say something interesting.

Okay, what did, what did your parents do for a living? My father worked as a laborer have to be good out of the navy and probably prior to the navy and then he was hired at the naval supply depot and he started there as a as a foreman and worked up to being chief of grounds and maintenance for the whole depot.

And we were very proud of my father for doing that. He dropped out of school in the ninth grade and while he was at the depot received his GED and he was very proud. I don't know of any award that the depot is given that he was not a recipient of.

He was very well, liked a good honest, hard-working man and a testmaster but we loved him. Dearly.

What about what about grandma your mother. What did she do for a living? Mommy raised us and then she what she did various jobs. But one I remember most is that the Carlisle Hospital where she was hired to be an assistant in the kitchen.

She was just probably hired in the kitchen and then she worked up to become the assistant to Bob and I can't recall Bob's last name for anything but Bob was the chef and everything. We evolved around Bob at Carlisle Hospital, and Bob retired, and my mother, which name the chef and I think part of that, was because of a dietitian there by the name of Miss Corrigan.

She was so impressed with my mother and Sarah, and my mother made friends. And was a very hard working industry as in a very smart lady and she retired as chef as the chef of Carlisle Hospital.

Where did you go to school? Do you remember where you went elementary school?

Yeah. I went to Wilson elementary school and Wilson first and second grade and a Miss Hodge was my first grade teacher Miss Hodge is a lady of renowned in the in this area. And I knew how to read before I got to school and Miss Hodge was impressed with that, but she wasn't surprised because they all knew Sarah and mommy was smart.

And she taught me in first grade and second grade. I had a teacher by the name of Miss Creighton. Now, that was in Wilson School, right down the street from here. And that was, during the times when schools were segregated integration occurred in Carlisle, when I went to third grade and I went to third grade right around the corner from where I live, believe it or not Stevens Elementary. And I went there third through sixth grade and I had a wonderful time. All my childhood school days. I loved.

Okay, what about after Wilson? What school did you go to do you remember? I mean, after Stevens, after state was, I went to the building in Carlisle and that was the high school and you went there from seventh through 12.

But they were not long after that, they built a school straight out B Street, the car, lost senior high school and so I went there for 10th 11th and 12th grade and we, my class of 1958 was the first class that started the school in the school. Open that went the whole way through, I not remember that I forget that I had, I had a nice time in and in school, I was very active in the choir and Ms. Anderson.

I think was the choir director? I loved art. And there was a Mr. Mullen, that taught me I'd like writing. And I had some very, very good teachers. I completely remember though, going back to Stevens Elementary that in fifth grade, I used to sing a lot and they put me on the public address, machine singing, the ball things, when the cases, go rolling along and I shed it that song

Out loud and everyone heard it and then I remembered fifth grade. I built a, a theater, a puppet theater, a hand, puppet theater, and, and I made the puppets, and I made the theater, and I wrote script for the play, and I took it to my fifth-grade 77class and my teacher missed Taylor was so impressed.

She had me put this play on for the class. I enjoyed my school days. What was, what was the town of Carlisle, like, as a child? Do you remember? Well it's funny. Jude say that because we're I lived on B Street and where this is located. We call this uptown about.

We're going uptown because we didn't walk down to the grocery store and what towns of movies, go uptown to the five and ten which was Waldorf was just no longer there. I don't think there. Any five and tens anywhere anymore more. But it was a bustling small but bustling and it was fun.

We had right in this area. In fact, about right here, there was a movie theater, this strand theater and across the street that we just turned was the main theater movie theater. So there were two movies, theaters, They're nice stores, real nice stores. I don't think we have those stores.

In fact, I know we don't have any stores anymore. One interesting thing is that the Carlisle meat market which is right around the corner used to be around the corner was a four runner of giant foods in the people that owned that started Giant. So Carlisle Oh, my had many many things, the Carlisle tire rubber company and Maslands, the carpet company.

I don't think they're no longer an existence in Carlisle, but they were too big employers. I do know, did you go to church when you were growing up? I did. Where'd you go to church? West Street AME Zion Church. It's still on West Street on Chapel and West Street and Carlisle and I enjoyed the church very much.

I am learned a lot. I would it constantly encounter people that new mummy and Ms. Anna Johnson used to sing on the choir and I used to love to hear her sing and I'm sitting on the choir with her and she always had me take a message home to Mummy.

And they used to tell me constantly but mommy being in all the different things of the church had and how well she could recite. And it was just, it was, it was nice to to go there because so many people knew the family. And I am, I appreciate that.

So that exposure so much. Did you ever have a job when you were growing up in Carlisle? I used to babysit that came natural laid to me because I had five younger sisters. But when I was a teenager, they started a program at the Carlisle Hospital, probably based on, you know, the candy stripers, and we bore these uniforms.

They're about five of us and I was the only person of color selected. And we wore these green pineapples and white blouses and had to be very starched and the white shoes and white stockings. And my mother would look at me, says and tell me that my uniform was not pressed enough in verbally, but it, I learned a lot and I also learned how well, my mother was like in respect it at the Carlisle Hospital, because a lot of the nurses, they had a nursing school there, a practical nursing school there.

Apparently, they had to go through measurements and different things like that when they and died and learn about diets, my mother helped to teach how to train them would be a better term. And so I got a little in there and I enjoyed it. I enjoyed it very, very much At one time.

I really wanted to be a nurse and it's, it's very impressed with the people that I was exposed to the patients and the people, the professionals. When did you move away from Carlisle? I moved away from Carlisle and 1959, I moved from Carlisle to Harrisburg. There's something that I omitted when I used to go to the Lambert School, I walked past the law school all the time and I can remember that walk so well, because you have to go up College street, from B Street to get to the Lamberton School and I used to admire the buildings and they had a building called, which is no longer there.

They tore down and they expanded the law school, but it under. When we came part of Penn State but it relates to me because my husband I met at a football game when I was in 12th grade and he was a student at Dickerson School law and it just came full service and I used to walk past there all the time.

And so, I moved from Carlisle in 1959 after I was married in, March of 59 to move to Harrisburg. My husband had just finished his cram school course in Philadelphia. And so we moved to Harrisburg and we've lived there, that's his hometown, that's his, his home and his family.

The waters family is a large family and made many contributions to that area. Good contributions to that area. And so that's why I moved. So, you married the person that you met who graduated from law school. Yeah. And he wasn't an attorney. Did he practice? Paul Waters was an attorney.

He worked for a help them a gentleman by the name of James Roland. He worked part-time there and then he worked for the same government, and he ended up it's in state government being council to the Senate judiciary committee. And after that person who was charity, judiciary committee, became a the lieutenant governor.

He knew him and he knew some people from Philadelphia minorities from Philadelphia and they formed a group to get more minorities into state government. And my husband was in the forefront of that so he was named chairman of no name too by Milton Shack Governor Shapp to the environmental hearing board sometime later.

He was made chairman of the environmental hearing board and then we had our first elected attorney. General, his name was Leroy Zimmerman, he was a law school, mate of my husband. He called my husband in asked him to serve his first executive. Deputy attorney general. So, my husband had a very interesting career, he was a writer up a law.

Publications amateur archeologists and we had three wonderful. Wonderful children. What about you? What did you do after you got married? After I got married, I work, it's short. Stints, at the state doing clerical work answering phones and stuff like that. I took a couple courses college courses and then I stayed home most of the time until my children, kind of got a little older than we go to house from move.

From Harrisburg, we go to house and Swatara and we move there and around that time to liberation movement for women was becoming very, very apparent. And I decided I wanted to go to work, and I went to work and I worked for 15 years and the Pennsylvania Department of Health instructors.

Equal opportunity for the Pennsylvania Department of Health. Don't know if you want me to expand, what I did after that, but I work.

Okay, important to know. I just want to know how Carlisle has changed. Since the first memories that you've recounted. You, you have sisters that live here.

So you get back to town. You still have a connection; you have perspective in terms of what you saw as a child and now as an adult. What do you say? The small-town beauty of it. Research is still there that are is filled there. I don't see a lot of boarded up places, but I see places that are not the same.

I also see progress because I remember when I was growing up other than the fact that I knew my grandfather, stood was a member of the fire police. We had one police officer in Carlisle, who was a minority, you didn't see much representation of minority in any positions, political positions.

Since then, I think Carlisle has had a mayor at least and a couple city councilman. And so, I think the school system is still good because I used to think it was an excellent school system. The Carlisle Fair, for example, is it was one of the highlights is a child growing up in the summer.

I don't know if they still have the car off there, but I know they have this internationally known car show that comes to Carlisle. The war college is still there. The college seems to be thriving the decision. I really don't know much about it. My sisters don't say terribly much about it.

Other than the fact that the area that we lived, I don't be street where they used to have the car Carl Altar and rubber company that is changed and it's now a area of apartment buildings and offices and stores. And I think that's good. I think that's a nice change.

Okay. Those are all the questions I have, Thank you. Yeah. No. I think you both for coming in today and for sharing your memories of Carlisle and Cumberland County.