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Interviewee:<\/strong> Lucille Barnett<\/p>\n Interviewers:<\/strong> Meredith Johnston, Virginia Webb<\/p>\n Date:<\/strong> September 23, 2004<\/p>\n Location:<\/strong> Greenville, SC<\/p>\n Description:<\/strong> Lucille Barnett grew up in Union County, South Carolina, in the 1930s and 40s. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree from Lander University in Greenwood, South Carolina. She served as Supervisor of County and City School Food Service in Spartanburg, South Carolina, for thirty-three years. From 1973-1974 she served as American School Food Service Association President. She resides in South Carolina. See also the Lucille Barnett Photograph Collection<\/a> and the Lucille Barnett Manuscript Collection<\/a>.<\/p>\n MJ: Our names are Meredith Johnston and Virginia Webb and we are here with Ms. Lucille Barnett in Greenville, South Carolina. Ms. Barnett, thank you for being with us. Could you tell us a little about yourself and where you grew up?<\/p>\n LB: Well, I live in Greenville now and I was married to Frank Barnett, and he is deceased. But I grew up in Union, South Carolina, I haven\u2019t strayed far from home, on a dairy farm and had just one sister. It became our duty to help deliver milk; I decided that\u2019s how I got swift on my feet in my early days getting up to these houses and getting away. It was wonderful growing up and I say now I was eating organic food all my life and didn\u2019t know how wonderful it was until they tell us now that it has to be grown on the farm. We did have a big production; we never had any problem with shortage of food. My sister and I still own the farm in Union, 650 acres. I went to Lander University and got a B.S. degree in home economics and taught home economics for a few years. Then a friend of mine who was a school principal, in fact we used to rotate riding to our jobs together, ran for Superintendent of Education in Spartanburg County and he was elected. So he immediately decided that I had to become School Food Service Director. I\u2019m just, you know, balking all the time but I finally did decide that it might be a new venture. I was just a born schoolteacher I always said but, you know, in food service we taught just as much as we ever did. I was the assistant for a couple of years and then Ms. Davenport, a lovely lady, retired to have a family and I became the supervisor. I was there thirty-three years and saw a lot of changes. Spartanburg had seven school districts, each one autonomous with a superintendent at its head. It became my duty that all seven were under one school lunch at that time, school lunch department. I was constantly having to keep everybody going and keep peace. At that time we had 109 schools in the seven districts and I would meet annually or more often if necessary with the Superintendents and then I\u2019d have principals\u2019 meetings. Libb Hadden became my assistant after I became supervisor, and we had a good relationship. I don\u2019t believe in bad relationships, and I saw an awful lot of progress.<\/p>\n MJ: What time period would this have been?<\/p>\n LB: Oh, I joined School Food Service in 1951 and I became the Director two years later. And, as I say about those superintendents, I used to say keeping them under control in a meeting was like trying to keep puppies in a box.<\/p>\n MJ: Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n LB: You know, each one was bobbing up; I don\u2019t guess they had any other lady come in to tell them what they had to do. But we became good friends and had great progress in the food service in Spartanburg. We always had a high percent participation, good menus; those were the days when people ate real food. We won\u2019t get into that right now. Anyway.<\/p>\n MJ: What is your earliest recollection of child nutrition programs, school lunch?<\/p>\n LB: Well when I was in school, back in the \u201840s, it had not become a national thing. The School Lunch Act, you know, was passed in \u201946, but we had a local effort. They offered us a sandwich and milk, and incidentally, in elementary school we were served a half-pint bottle, half-pint bottle of milk, and my father furnished the milk. I never shall forget, it was in this big heavy, I can see them now. Cartons, I mean bottles, a big ol\u2019 wire rack, and he brought these big racks of bottles of milk to the schools and we had this school principal, a lady, Ms. McDeal, and there was one bottle that had not been completely drunk. In those days you ate and drank what was put before you, especially in public places. One half-pint was not consumed and before everybody she said, who did not drink this milk. This poor little country girl, me, raised my hand, you know, we told the truth then too. And she said, why. I was terrified of that woman, and I said, \u201cbecause my father brings the milk here and I have plenty at home.\u201d But anyway, that was my first recollection but we didn\u2019t have a true School Lunch Program in those days. When I was teaching home economics, that school had begun a feeble one, and of course I became the advisor and I think that\u2019s where I really got my hands into seeing in-depth what went on. I just got into it. I had great friends and good managers and very, very skilled people who brought their home preparation methods, but they learned to adjust them. We\u2019d pick out a person who was doing something outstanding like making yeast rolls. Everybody knew how to make biscuits and cornbread but not necessarily yeast rolls. And I\u2019ll never forget Mrs. Pettit, everybody called her Ma Pettit, made the most gorgeous yeast rolls, so we said, Ma, you\u2019re going to go with us to all seven districts and teach everybody how to make rolls. She nearly fainted but she did it and we had the most gorgeous bread you ever tasted. In the early days everything was totally controlled by the Type A pattern, which was wise. People ate because they were hungry and it was very much what they had at home, good meals. We didn\u2019t allow meat to be purchased but once or twice a month because we got USDA commodities, and I know you\u2019ve heard of USDA commodities. They were wonderful, cheese, butter; we just greased everybody up something wonderful. You know, here today we holler about cholesterol, back then we had to serve two teaspoons (of butter) per child per meal, some outlandish amount. We did everything, made good, had to make good cobblers and good bread because we had to use that butter. But also we got some weirdo, I would say, commodities: black olives, prunes, you know, big boxes, apricots, things that we were very unfamiliar with. I think very much the prunes, after we got Youth Advisory Councils, we had them in Spartanburg and I\u2019d have them come talk to our managers, which is something that was muchly needed. I never shall forget this adorable black boy who was speaking and talking about different things and he said, \u201cNow I\u2019m going to tell you, them prunes is one thing that ain\u2019t going to march.\u201d They found out these things, and in the early days they introduced TVP, textured vegetable protein, which is a soy product. It was introduced through School Food Service; they dumped TVP on us, well it wasn\u2019t long till everybody came down the serving line, \u201cIs that stuff in the hamburgers?\u201d They\u2019d heard about that stuff; we had a difficult time with TVP, textured vegetable protein; you find it in everything today. Archer Daniel Midland, I shall never forget the company that produced TVP. We\u2019d say, \u201cHere we are serving TVP from ADM through USDA.\u201d We could set up; we could purchase it through PYA. We would sit up and rattle off all of these things. But something else, the olives were black olives and they had been pitted, they had a hole through them. We would put out bowls hoping they would try them. This one little boy looked at them and he said, \u201cGood god, somebody done shot a hole through them grapes.\u201d There was a lot of comedy and fun in it as well. <\/p>\n MJ: I heard about that.<\/p>\n LB: Well we got these long carcasses (of lamb) and we got them just as school was closing for the year (USDA commodities). And of course we were, you know, in awe of them ourselves, but they just looked like a body. They were a body, but you could relate them to looking like a human body, and they had them in those sack things, you know, they\u2019d pull over meat. They were frozen and we unloaded the freight car and put them in our storage, central storage which we rented. Had these black people bring them in. They stacked them up; they were frozen and they put them in this freezer room so we thought. But the problem was we didn\u2019t have enough air circulation. Came September and we had already had all these meetings and showing everybody eleven different ways to cook lamb. We had to take all of those things out; we had enough out in the fall to get cut up. Had to get the things cut up. Swift & Co. burned up their saws sawing up frozen lamb for us. But anyway, as they began to take them out in September to take them to the schools I looked at Robert, I said Robert. One of the men, he had one of those carcasses over his shoulder. I said, \u201cThat thing bent!\u201d \u201cYes ma\u2019am, they spoiled.\u201d So anyway, no circulation in the freezer and they were ruined, but that\u2019s just one of those things you get into.<\/p>\n MJ: Well when would this have been, the lambs?<\/p>\n LB: I always relate these things to who was president. The olives came in Richard Nixon\u2019s day and I always say, \u201cHmm, strange that California black olives come here.\u201d Maybe in the sixties or seventies, right along in there.<\/p>\n MJ: Well.<\/p>\n LB: And we had some commodities like bulgur, as Libb Hadden\u2019s mentioned; some things nobody ever heard of. We had lots of cornmeal and sometimes they were overly abundant, overly generous with us. Certain commodities we did not order the quantity; they just sent us tons of stuff. And Spartanburg was a central point, so not only did we have to distribute to our hundred and something schools, but the surrounding counties, Union, Cherokee, all these counties around us, little counties, and we issued their commodities, which was great fun of course. But anyway, I always think of the misnomers that people have; people think rats love cheese, and I guess they do. But we would store, this was processed cheese, six five pound loaves in a box, you know, vacuum packed. It was a food, not, I don\u2019t want to say better quality than Velveeta but it was on that type. It\u2019s a processed cheese and it could be stored at room temperature, cool room, so we would store cheese in the warehouse, not in the freezer. And no mouse ever came in there and bothered the cheese. But we would bring cornmeal in one afternoon, and the next day the mice or rats or something had come in some way and cut some of the bags of cornmeal, which shows that we have some strange ideas about what keeps and what doesn\u2019t. Anyway, those are just a few asides of what went on. Also along the way there in the sixties, the State Department through the Agency of International Development (USAID) was selecting people to go to lesser developed countries and help them with whatever problem they might have. They developed this program of sending food service directors and dieticians to countries with food service problems, and so I went to Algeria.<\/p>\n MJ: Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n LB: And was there for two months in \u201966. That was an interesting; people say I know you had a good time. Uh-uh, I didn\u2019t have a good time but it was a very interesting experience. And Dottie Burr, who was the home economist for the raisin and pineapple industry. Dr. Perryman called me, I\u2019ll never forget, I was in a black school and talking on the phone in the cafeteria. And he said, Lucille, we want you to go to Algeria. And I thought, yes, I said, \u201cOh, Algeria, it\u2019s way over there isn\u2019t it?\u201d No idea. \u201cYes, it\u2019s on the coast of North Africa.\u201d And he said, \u201cAnd then you get someone to go with you who is qualified.\u201d So Dottie Burr and I had two months, the months of November and December. You think it\u2019s cold here? It\u2019s cold in North Africa too. But we survived it. I came home and said I don\u2019t know so much about this sanitation, but that we holler about all the time, because it sure wasn\u2019t practiced bless their souls. I\u2019m sure they\u2019re not doing any better today. But it was interesting. We can\u2019t get into Algeria though. It was, as we say, character building. What\u2019s next?<\/p>\n MJ: Well, you talked about starting in 1951, and then 1953 you became director. Now what other positions have you had in the profession?<\/p>\n LB: Well, I\u2019m ADA, American Dietetic, and I was President of the South Carolina Dietetic Association, and I held some positions at the ADA headquarters office. I was President, of course, of South Carolina School Food Service. Our State Director, and I must give her wonderful credit, Ms. Kathleen Gaston, was a saint and very dedicated. She drove us and we went, and that made South Carolina have a wonderful program. Now prior to her there was a Mr. William Garrison, Mr. W. H. Garrison, and he was a good person too. We had one director of commodity services at the state level, and those people, that was all. They ran the program, they laid all the groundwork, they had us in workshops, and we did and produced, and money was very, very short. The School Lunch Act says, no child will be denied lunch because of his inability to pay, but the appropriation was never added. The appropriation to the state was based on some goofy rule about the number of children in the state. Well, in some states nobody ate, you know, very low. Our state everybody ate; we had 75% of students eating. So money would run out before the end of the year. And we gain some things and we lose some things. The communities were wonderful to help with feeding needy children. We made a lot of talks to Sunday Schools, to civic groups, and a lot of individuals contributed. We would have, there was a section on the records where you listed that so-and-so Sunday School class, the Blue Flower (class) I remember, gave five dollars. That would feed a lot of children. We were required to be so frugal that we could serve ten percent free out of our operation, and frugal was what we had to be, and commodities saved the day. So that was what went on in the early days, but I say churches and those kind of people had a very warm feeling toward the program, and so did. And industry, industry did more talking sometimes than they did money, but they were generous with helping us out with food when we got in a bind. But everybody was not fed; it wasn\u2019t always possible. You know, the population varied from area to area, but it met a lot of needs. <\/p>\n MJ: Was there someone, a mentor who was influential in directing you in the child nutrition field?<\/p>\n LB: Well, of course once I got into the program, as I say, my superintendent friend was the one who insisted that he thought I should take the job, and I guess I give him credit for enticing me to get into school feeding. I say, Ms. Gaston was a very dynamic, not high profile, but you knew where you stood, and you knew when she said you\u2019re going to make a study of dishwashing compounds. I\u2019ll never forget this, make a report at our state workshop. I said, \u201cMs. Gaston, isn\u2019t there something more interesting I could do?\u201d But you know, I did it. And I say, she then patted us on the back and said, \u201cYou just go ahead darling, you\u2019ll get it done.\u201d But anyway, other than that, I think my first – I went to, about every other year, I rotated with Libb (Elizabeth Hadden), going to national conventions and we all had a good time. And I very early knew Eleanor Pratt, and I think Eleanor, somebody at USDA, was given the job of getting some people to do a study of school lunch menus around the country. And Louise Sublette from Tennessee, and I and Eleanor Pratt were the three who were selected, appointed, or something. And I never will forget the first time I met with Louise Sublette was for breakfast at seven o\u2019clock in the morning in, somewhere, one of the national conventions. And I thought that she had the strangest accent, nasal, Tennessee nasal, very Tennessee nasal. After we talked and made our plans and everything she looked at me and said, \u201cWell honey, we\u2019ll have a good program, but I don\u2019t know if they\u2019re going to understand that accent of yours.\u201d And here I was sitting there looking at this lady thinking they aren\u2019t going to understand you. But anyway, we made, apparently we did a great job because that got me invited to a lot of state and other state meetings, and that way we just got a friendship going. And then I was nominated as a candidate for Secretary of ASFSA. You have to be on the, at that time, I guess it\u2019s still true. You know, when we retire and get other interests we don\u2019t mess with how the Association is run. But at that time you had to be on the Executive Board before you could be nominated for President, which was a good rule. And I was National Secretary in the sixties sometime, and then Louise was nominated as President. We had become good buddies, and she said, \u201cI think you ought to be a candidate.\u201d \u201cLouise, I don\u2019t want to.\u201d Well anyway, that went along and I got nominated as they say, and I beat a Yankee girl. I\u2019ve forgotten her name, but anyway, it was big fun as to who was going to win. And from Louise on, I showed you that there was a big string, they called it the Southern caucus. But we did Southern caucus and decide who was going to get on the ballot, and all of them good girls. And didn\u2019t have many men. Men were President in the early eras, had some great men. Dave Page and George Mueller and then all of a sudden it became a female dominated thing. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s been a man since then. But anyway, we began to have changes in school feeding, a little bit of choice, and that just disturbed everybody, especially the kitchen help, you know. Okay, we can\u2019t do all of that. I had this big banner which said, \u201cThe only thing constant is change.\u201d You know that classic, Margaret Meade, the great anthropologist, was the first person who ever put that fact before us. I drilled that into them so much that occasionally, if I run into one they\u2019ll say, \u201cThe only thing constant is change.\u201d I say, \u201cDon\u2019t you see it all around you?\u201d But anyway, we changed and began to introduce a little bit of choice. The thing is plate waste just absolutely – we had wonderful menus, even served liver. Can you believe that, in the early days? We would have pretty standard, macaroni pie and you would have to have additional protein, that cheese wasn\u2019t enough so you\u2019d give them a peanut butter cookie or some kind of a dessert with maybe cheese in the pastry. All kind of ways we had of doing things. We\u2019d have peach cobbler and put a lot of those dried apricots in it, because they didn\u2019t know what apricots were, but they made the cobbler taste much better. And dried beans were a great salvation, a wonderful protein; the children liked them. One of the requirements was to serve Vitamin C every day, well, that gets to be much. If you try to put Vitamin C, so the poor children were slawed to death. Cole slaw was rich, you know, cabbage, green peppers, tomatoes, citrus fruit, some greens. You get past that you don\u2019t have that much left. You try to bring that into every day. So anyway, cooked cabbage. They ate these things back then, but then they began to get – industry came in with pizza and, you know, first of all was McDonalds, you know, and then Hardees and then we got pizza. And none of this was known in the early days, we didn\u2019t know the words, couldn\u2019t probably spell them. And then the Mexican food came in. I\u2019ll never forget the first Mexican fiasco I had. We decided it was time to have a Mexican meal. I can see them now looking at that plate, and we had done introductions through teachers and we had tacos and told what it was. My husband was a food broker and owned his own business, and he represented a Mexican food company out of Mesa, Arizona. And I\u2019ll never forget he came home laughing and said, \u201cI called them out there in Arizona and told them to send me so many hundred cases of tacos (pronounced with a long \u201ca,\u201d \u201ctay-cos\u201d).\u201d And they said, \u201cNow Mr. Barnett, if you\u2019re going to sell these you have to learn how to pronounce it, it\u2019s tacos.\u201d He said, \u201cLook, I can sell your products, but I don\u2019t have to eat them and I don\u2019t have to pronounce them.\u201d Of course, you know, Mexican food to people at that time was not something you went out buying. But with the fast food industry and more money, more sophistication, and television, it undermined the good turnip greens, cole slaw, something else we used to do, meatloaf. And, but one of their favorite meals, which always amazed me because I grew up eating homemade vegetable soup, but see we made homemade vegetable soup. One of their favorite meals was vegetable soup with a wedge of cornbread, pimento cheese sandwich, and a fruit dessert. I never did quite, that was a shock to me, but I was always pleased with these kind of things.<\/p>\n MJ: Well what happened when you served the Mexican food then? Did anyone eat it?<\/p>\n LB: Oh, they made a, they made a feeble effort. But, of course, we were overly generous with what we served, too much, gave them too much variety. It\u2019s like a child said to me going down the serving line and I, you know, we\u2019d talk to them. And I said, \u201cNow isn\u2019t it nice that you can select what you want?\u201d when we were trying to introduce choice. And she looked at me and said, \u201cWell what do I want?\u201d you know, just in panic. Of course, little people need guidance, big people need guidance; we all need supervision. I say, \u201cThe two things that will make anybody go is discipline and motivation.\u201d And we, those are the two things you\u2019ve got to have and have it kindly. But anyway that was, it became, oh it was finally introduced. Pizza was wonderful, they wanted it; they made the best pizza in school you ever tasted. Of course we had government beef and government cheese, that was a good day meal wise and price wise. And then we got all this choice and then they all wanted hamburgers. And then they started, you know, even in my day we were given a choice. You know, you could offer them a hamburger with cheese and that, you know, any assortment but you still. The principal didn\u2019t allow you but for a certain length of time, they would tell you very quickly, this school does not operate around school lunch. And I was well aware of that so we did the best we could with offering choice. But parents were always meddling too, not bad, but I used to get some lashings from mothers particularly. You could tell when a child was pampered by what his mother said to you. Things like, \u201cWhy don\u2019t you cook that bologna before you put it in a sandwich?\u201d \u201cWell honey, bologna is cooked when you get it. If you\u2019ll look at the bologna you don\u2019t cook it, you give it to them raw.\u201d You know, this is the kind of conversation you\u2019d get, which that mother had put hers on and grilled it in a pan, which does make it taste a little bit better maybe. But anyway, that\u2019s the kind of thing that we\u2019d get into. A lot of mothers wanted to plan all the menus, so we would bring in advisors; they didn\u2019t last long. But really in\u201973 and \u201974 school lunch was having a beating because of plate waste, and plate waste was terrible. They did not eat cabbage any more, they didn\u2019t eat English peas anymore. I would do studies, we would take the no.10 cans that the English peas were poured out of, set them over here and say, now as you are cleaning these plates try to put the peas back in the pan. Three fourths of the peas were returned. They, this was beginning to get a different generation from those that had good nutrition. Cabbage was banned, they weren\u2019t eating it. Turnip greens, mercy me. But I think people tend to come back to their senses; people come back to their raising. I might say that maybe that\u2019s why I got into food service, because I like every food there is. I don\u2019t dislike anything, and what it comes back to, we\u2019re not born with any likes and dislikes; we learn them. We learn them and my mother loved food and she cooked good vegetables. And that\u2019s what\u2019s wrong with children today. You know, they\u2019re mighty nice children; I can\u2019t say too much against them. They\u2019ve got a lot of advantages over what we had when we came along.<\/p>\n MJ: Well what, what other changes, maybe in training have you seen as far as school food service workers?<\/p>\n LB: Well, there\u2019s been more help from State Departments. There\u2019s SIFT (Summer Institute of Foodservice Training, often sponsored by the South Carolina SNA), which is just a name for one of the programs. There\u2019s been a lot more training offered. We were trained and retrained, had a lot of state workshops. And the best of what was being done was presented and offered as to be duplicated and sort of mandated; this is a good thing. We had workshops; we had, in the early days we had a workshop for the black people and a workshop for the white people. And I can tell you some things but we won\u2019t get into those. Food was mighty good for both of them, but the salesman who came said it was better on the black day. Anyway, we had mighty good food. I remember one of the managers said, after the children, after everybody was served, what food was left, if the principal allowed it, they would offer it to children and they would come and get it. But they had to get it with a clean plate and they had to, they had to see that they had eaten it, there\u2019s nothing wrong with that. And I remember Mrs. Israel, one of the loveliest ladies, had one little boy she showed me. I was out there one day when she had liver, and she had made homemade biscuits, and she said he ate nine biscuits with a piece of liver in it, and that showed you that children were hungry. But as I say, our people that we had in the food service were not trained, but they were grand people, mothers, grandmothers and they made the best cooks in the world, and they wanted to work. And we had constant monthly workshops either countywide and we\u2019d say, bring four pieces of your cornbread today. And everybody put the cornbread out and you looked at the difference. So many differences, we are different. And then you went through what is the difference. Is it your stove? Is it how you mix it? Let\u2019s select which looks the best. Just good old down home kind of working.<\/p>\n MJ: You touched a little bit on this but could you tell us a little bit more about your time as President of ASFSA? Any memorable stories or events that happened?<\/p>\n LB: Oh my, oh mercy, a lot of things happened, yeah. As I say, I was Vice President Elect when Louise Sublette from Tennessee, Martin, Tennessee, was President. And she decided that something had to be done about Ms. Jessie, and Ms. Jessie was really, as I say, and Mary Nix brings that out in her book, tells a Ms. Jessie story. We had a lot of meetings setting up standards for what do you need to train a manager. What skills does she need, how are you going to get it done? That\u2019s what I\u2019d always – these people way out here in Gowensville and way down in Woodruff, how are we going to get these people to get this? We devised a chart that if you do this you get so many points, and this you get so many. It was called certification, they could get a certificate; we all like certificates. We worked up all the mechanics and all of the methods to get this done and the measuring, and Louise was pushing for this. We got it done in her year and then, as I say, Louise said, \u201cOkay.\u201d Then in the meantime we divided the country by regions and we implemented having regional workshops where the state leaders came together in the region. And that became my duty; that was the first year. Gosh it was terrible. I had a set of slides, which I\u2019m sure they\u2019re around somewhere, that we showed and then I have a set of slides. Oh I have to show y\u2019all my –<\/p>\n MJ: Okay.<\/p>\n LB: Where\u2019s that?<\/p>\n MJ: Photo album?<\/p>\n LB: That\u2019s right, the apple thing.<\/p>\n MJ: Okay.<\/p>\n LB: The photo album\u2019s mainly glamour stuff. This is real work. This is\u2026 <\/p>\n LB: I want to show ya\u2019ll that these, this is something that I had put on slides. This is called \u201cGrowing Up in School Food Service,\u201d and this is two children at Woodland Heights Elementary School in Spartanburg, and I don\u2019t have the name on the back. That\u2019s Hank Kaplan and this is Geena Long. I\u2019m happy that I can remember them. But anyway, I went into this school and said, \u201cI want to pick out, at lunch here today let me pick out two pretty children because I want to make a picture of them now, and then I want to keep up with them as they go, as they grow up.\u201d So we get these two pretty little children to make this picture and I could have told you what\u2019s on their plate. And I said, \u201cWhat is your name?\u201d And he said, \u201cHank Kaplan.\u201d I said, \u201cIs your father Wallace Kaplan?\u201d He said, \u201cYes ma\u2019am.\u201d And I said, don\u2019t ya\u2019ll record this. I said, \u201cOh what a pretty little boy you are, to think.\u201d I didn\u2019t say this out loud. \u201cTo think your father courted me and I turned him down.\u201d But anyway, that\u2019s just – but anyway, that\u2019s in the first grade. I want ya\u2019ll to see these; I just love these. Here they are in the, I think that must be the seventh, sixth, seventh. See them? And here they are\u2026<\/p>\n MJ: That is wonderful.<\/p>\n LB: Here they are and I think that\u2019s maybe the tenth or eleventh, I don\u2019t know. I would say to them each time, now you better be eating lunch when I come back next year and find you, because I want a picture of you. And here they are, this is their senior year, and I want you to see the hair, the change in their hair through the four years. Hank went into the military and served, I think he must have been ROTC in college. <\/p>\n VW: Do you know where they are today?<\/p>\n LB: Well, I meant to call. Hank\u2019s father has died, and I know his mother too, and I meant to call her and ask her. He was back in Spartanburg and I\u2019ve talked to him since he was an adult man. And Geena, I said, you know, if ya\u2019ll wanted to make a real good ending to this story you could marry each other and have some school lunch children.<\/p>\n MJ: That\u2019s what I was thinking. I wonder if they ever gave it thought.<\/p>\n LB: But they didn\u2019t. They just laughed and went right on, but they both did marry. I\u2019ve seen Hank had one brother, that was all. But anyway, do you want to keep these; you ought to. <\/p>\n MJ: Yes, yes. I may need to get in touch with them and get their stories about school lunch.<\/p>\n LB: Yeah, I\u2019ll call Hank\u2019s mother. Anyway, this is the Governor of South Carolina; some of these things are just self-explanatory. <\/p>\n MJ: Those would be wonderful for your collection.<\/p>\n LB: I think my mother must have torn these things out. But anyway, these, there\u2019s David. When I was President, then I became President. When I was President was the year that Richard Nixon was President of the United States. The country was in a terrible upheaval, you know, a lot of bad, bad talking and bad things going on and of all places, my convention was in Washington, D.C. (1974) And we had asked Mr. Nixon to speak at the convention which I\u2019m sure he would have, but our advisor in Washington, Sam Bannerman, who was a predecessor of Marshall Matz. Sam kept saying to me, he\u2019s not going to be there, he\u2019s not going to be here. Oh Sam, he is. Oh no, he\u2019s not going to be here; he\u2019s going to go. Well I don\u2019t think anybody in the country thought that, and sure enough, at the very last minute, he, you know, resigned or whatever and left. And he and I went out of office on the same day. My husband said, \u201cThis is the happiest day of my life; I got rid of two national Presidents on the same day.\u201d And boy, that is a tiring job. I did not like riding the airplanes. I was not comfortable; they were rough in those days and I did a lot of suffering. But the day I went out of office he and this young man that was there, one of his salesmen, and I got on the plane. One of them old rickety turbojet things. Got on the plane in Washington and I didn\u2019t wake up until we were landing in Charlotte. I said, \u201cThis is the happiest day of my life too.\u201d But it was, we had, as I say, regional meetings. Went to, the first region was the Midwest and we were in Sioux City, Iowa. The home office would send a staff person and Jean Pitts was with me for that conference. We got on the plane and it was pouring down rain, oh my, and just got up pretty good and the motor, one of the motors blew out. There was two engines, DC-9 I think it was, not a big plane. It just had two things and one of them blew out and that was a frightening experience. And Jean had been, she didn\u2019t have to be in the meetings, she was just there to help. So she\u2019d been out carousing with some of her relatives. I told her she was like our folks down home, she had cousins everywhere we went. But anyway, she was out carousing and I was the one who had been suffering and here the plane\u2019s going. He said, \u201cWe\u2019re turning back.\u201d which, by this time the plane\u2019s leaning bad toward the strong motor, you know, because the other one was gone. And when we went back, coming back in the runway they had all the fire trucks and everything, and a crowd was gathered. I do not know how that many people got out to the airport that quick to see this plane fall, but fortunately it didn\u2019t. But anyway, we went back into this tiny little old terminal and they had a little old counter with about five stools where they served food and drinks. Jean and I fell down on the fronts of those stools and she said, \u201cI want a martini.\u201d and I think I said, \u201cBring me a bourbon or something.\u201d And I said, of course, ya\u2019ll don\u2019t put this on the tape.<\/p>\n VW: You\u2019ll be able to x out anything you don\u2019t want.<\/p>\n LB: Okay, well I\u2019m just telling ya\u2019ll this. And I said to the young lady, \u201cHoney, I don\u2019t know how long we\u2019re going to be here or how many of these we\u2019re going to have, but you keep count and we\u2019ll pay you after it\u2019s over if we forget.\u201d Of course everybody knew what had happened. The place was just full of all these sightseers. But anyway, we went in the restroom and Jean said later, \u201cI heard some ladies in there talking.\u201d I had on a pink leather coat, beautiful coat with pink fox cuffs and fox collar pink matched. Jean was carrying our tote bags or whatever. She said one lady said to the other one, \u201cThose are important people. I think that lady in pink must be a U.S. Senator.\u201d You know, that\u2019s how people tell these things. She said, \u201cThat other woman\u2019s helping her.\u201d You know, there was a lot of funny things, but in this era they had a lot of industry seminars, which they still have. But at that time they were all held in Vail, Colorado, which was a very glamorous place in the cold winter for us from this area. There would just be some high level officials there; I think a great relationship between industry and the Association developed. <\/p>\n VW: Tell us about the California conventions before we leave conventions.<\/p>\n LB: The what?<\/p>\n MJ: About the streaking, about the streaking incident.<\/p>\n LB: Oh, oh, California State Convention, yes. I was sitting there, you know, we were on the, up on this big stage. And just all of a sudden, and he had a stocking cap over his head, this fellow comes out of the curtain on this side and just shot across, just shot across. It was just a shock I say we all missed it. Bad as your eyes, or you gasp and he\u2019s gone. But the audience saw the whole panorama much better than we did. It was a shocker! It destroyed the order for awhile there. It was streaking and mooning; I\u2019d forgotten both of them until I was thinking about what happened at conventions, it was funny. And once in New Orleans (1973), at Louise\u2019s convention I think it was, the exhibit hall caught on fire. And the, Dr. Perryman was found and notified but he couldn\u2019t find any of the officers because we were all in committee meetings, and there for awhile it got to be close to a disaster, but it didn\u2019t. We got through that, but there were a lot of missed planes and bad connections and getting stranded in strange places. I, we were young enough then to be able to stand it, about y\u2019all\u2019s age I guess.<\/p>\n MJ: Okay. Well, what do you think has been your most significant contribution to the child nutrition field?<\/p>\n LB: Well, I guess nationally it was instigating the YAC Program and that was a necessity, you know. I\u2019d go to a state, but in a lot of the states would have you on television being interviewed by the food people in that area or something. They didn\u2019t want to hear about how the Association functioned and how it was growing; they wanted to know what are you going to do about all this plate waste? There were terrible pictures in papers of plate waste and hungry children; that was the other pitch. There were hungry children somewhere, and it showed some children eating out of a garbage can; I\u2019ll never forget that. A big ole picture in the newspaper and that was spouted around all over the country; bad PR. That was in \u201974 that it had just gotten really bad. I said, \u201cWell what in the world are we going to do.\u201d Then all of a sudden I said, \u201cWell why don\u2019t we ask the people who are eating what\u2019s wrong with it.\u201d So we set up very quickly an election and got a youth advisor selected in every state. Then they were submitted to a committee, and then there was a regional advisor. At that time there were seven regions, so we had seven regional advisors. We brought them to Denver and they were charming, and they hit it right on the head and they told us, they told us what was wrong. I\u2019ll never forget one young man said that when he got in, started school in the first grade that he was told if you misbehaved in the cafeteria or didn\u2019t eat your food, that they had these big pots back there in the kitchen where they boiled things and they would put you in one of those pots. He said, \u201cWe were all frightened and hated going to the cafeteria.\u201d You know, if this kind of stuff, we never had heard of such a thing. They were great children and the interesting thing is that Gary Johnson, who was from the northeast, and Cathy Cary who was our southeast – these were the first, these were the first youth advisors and they were all lovely, lovely. Anyway, Gary Johnson and Cathy Cary got married, yes they did. Gary came and lived in Georgia and I would hear from them occasionally. A few years ago someone called me and said that Gary Johnson had died with cancer, terribly upsetting.<\/p>\n LB: \u2026up in the paper, I should have brought that for all. It said that Senator Strom Thurmond was escorting a statuesque blond, Ms. Lucille, I was Bishop at that time, Bishop, who he said is a constituent from South Carolina. But anyway, I didn\u2019t know it was in the paper and the next day we were sitting in a meeting and somebody, I hear all this tch, tch, tch, tch, tch, tch [sweeping hand motion] around the room and this fellow saying, pointing to the newspaper, so they passed it down to me and that created quite a sensation too. But anyway, that was fun. Dottie and I had a great trip going to Algeria [ASFSA-USAID project]. We were briefed in Washington and we had to stay there two or three days and then we had to wait for Algeria to agree to accept us or whatever. Then we went to London and we had a rest in London for several days. That was good; they give you this time. And then we went on to Paris where we were to get on the Air Alg\u00e9rie to go to Algiers, the capital. There was nobody at Air Alg\u00e9rie\u2019s desk. Air France was right next door and we said, \u201cWhere are these people? We are flying on their airline.\u201d \u201cWe don\u2019t know; sometimes they come and sometimes they don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n MJ: Oh my goodness.<\/p>\n LB: So we waited and we waited; it got to be eight, nine o\u2019clock at night. Finally, two men come walking in there just like they should, like it was six o\u2019clock when they were supposed to have been there. Oh me, we were already out of our wits. We get on the airplane and not a soul spoke English; not one soul. We listened all around; nobody spoke English. Well we just sat there, you know, and finally a little, a little Arab girl, or a young Arab lady sitting close by, she said, \u201cAmerique?\u201d [nodding motion]. Then she said, asked us where we were going. Algiers, you know. I said, no Arabic. She said, Francais? And I said, very little. Anyway, on the way she taught me to say \u201cbarakallahu feek\u201d. That is hello, how are you? We practiced, this girl and me. I never will forget, when we got to Algiers; it must have been eleven or twelve o\u2019clock at night. We didn\u2019t know what we were in for because we start out, those little ole planes where you go down the steps, you know. Oh, all these soldiers with guns, and in those days you didn\u2019t see that, were there to greet us. We didn\u2019t see a white person as we say; we didn\u2019t see anybody that looked like Americans. And then two people from the Embassy, a boy and girl, man and woman, and they were hiding to watch and see how we reacted to all of this military in this strange country that we were in. I wish I\u2019d have killed them! When we finally saw them, you know, we were so glad to see them. They said, \u201cWell we just wanted to see the looks on your face when you saw those guns looking you in the eyes.\u201d But anyway, we got through that and never saw another American except for the few that were with the embassy. We got on the plane finally to return home, and it was in January (1967). When we got on the plane there was a young Negro man; I looked at him, I knew he was American. We were so happy to see him and we talked. He was in the seat behind us, and as soon as the plane got up Dottie and I turned around and talked to him the whole time. We had to spend the night in Tunis, and he also spent the night in Tunis so we became good buddies. We were so, in those days you weren\u2019t just always fraternizing, but we were so happy to see that American man. And the food in Algeria is mostly soup. The children there brought their own soup bowl in their book satchel. If they didn\u2019t have clothes to wear or shoes, they had a book satchel. Never understood that unless somebody bought them, maybe the French government. They had belonged to France and they had fought France for something like eleven years to get their freedom, so the country was devastated, just devastated by that terrible war. But they had soup and they didn\u2019t have anything in their kitchens but a little something about this high [indicates knee height] with a gas, gas heater under, gas coil under there and they put a big stock pot on it and made soup. I said, \u201cWe Americans, we\u2019ve got to have a pot for everything; we got to have a special place on the stove for it, you know.\u201d It was just amazing to see what they could do with nothing. And of course we were there as dieticians and they had a central kitchen in Constantine, one of the big cities where we stayed three weeks. But anyway, we had to go to the central kitchen very often, we had to get up and go at two o\u2019clock in the morning when they started cooking. They wanted us to come then and we didn\u2019t argue with those Arabs because the whole country is run by men, no women. Men, we dealt with men the whole time. It got so tiresome; I didn\u2019t think I\u2019d get tired of men, but I sure did. But anyway, I\u2019ll never forget this, being from South Carolina. They cooked, as I said, a lot of soup and they put vegetables and dried beans, lentils, lentils in it. And they put turnips and threw the turnip greens away; beautiful turnip greens. So we, I started this mission; you must not throw the turnip greens, you need to cook these. They have got, they knew the word Vitamin, pronounced Vee-tamin C. Everything, if I didn\u2019t eat my salad, \u201cMiss, Vitamin, Vitamin C, Miss!\u201d They\u2019d just get all over us. Vitamin C! Anyway, I said Vitamin C and A, A and C. No, no Miss, donkey food. They took those gorgeous turnip greens and threw them out in the yard and the donkeys, which they use as their transportation, ate the greens and they put the turnips in the soup. I must say they made good soup, had the best seasoning and I kept tasting it and thinking what is this. I said, \u201cWhat is this?\u201d We had an interpreter of course who would ask, you would ask him or her, and we had a French girl and a Arab boy. You never knew how they interpreted what you said though, nor what they said back to us. But I kept saying, \u201cWhat in the world is the seasoning in this soup? It is so good.\u201d It finally turned out that it was cumin. Have you ever used cumin?<\/p>\n VW: Some.<\/p>\n LB: Well it does give it some zest. Then finally we noticed in the central kitchen there was this woman, which when women got very old they could take off their veils, because nobody wanted them. They had a mark on their forehead; I didn\u2019t know what all of it meant. But this lady, bless her heart, sat flat down, flat down on this cold, concrete floor and had a pestle every day and she ground cumin. That\u2019s why it was so good, better than any I\u2019ve ever had. But anyway, that was quite an interesting experience and they couldn\u2019t understand us, but our relationship with the Arabs is very bad. I\u2019m sorry we ever got to war with them because they\u2019re different generation, they\u2019re different people; they think differently. They could not understand why we were not married. It worried them to death because Dottie and I were not married. They said, \u201cYou have psychological problems; you have problems.\u201d \u201cNo, we don\u2019t.\u201d \u201cWe read,\u201d they tell the interpreter. They say they read it in the magazines and the papers. \u201cYou go to psychiatrist.\u201d \u201cNo we don\u2019t.\u201d \u201cYou not married.\u201d \u201cWe don\u2019t want to be married.\u201d You know, oh it was just awful. And they would say, \u201cYou don\u2019t talk alike, you don\u2019t speak alike.\u201d \u201cShe\u2019s from New York, I\u2019m from South Carolina, different. Do you know where South Carolina is?\u201d Florid, pronounced Flor-eed! They knew where Florida was, they knew Chicago and New York. \u201cWhere is Carolin,\u201d pronounced Caro-leen? But anyway, and they cooked goats and sheep. They tied their legs to a pole and put them down in a hole and they barbequed, cooked, roasted them. They called it a \u201cmeshwi\u201d, meat roasted on skewers over open fire, as in a bar-be-que, and that was the biggest honor they could pay to you was to have a meshwi.<\/p>\n MJ: What was a meshwi?<\/p>\n LB: You eat, they took the goat or the lamb and laid it on a big round tray and you pulled off what you wanted and ate it, pulled off pieces of the hot meat. They had onions, strange thing, had chopped up fresh onions and you put the meat on your plate and ate it with onions. The highest honor they could pay you was to crack the head of the animal, which was still on it, and dip out the brain and give it to you.<\/p>\n MJ: Oh boy.<\/p>\n LB: Or to pop the eye out and give you an eye. See these boys with the embassy would tell us all this stuff. And I said, \u201cI\u2019m not going to eat that.\u201d So I never did have to eat that. But anyway, I\u2019ll say it was something. Alright, this is New Orleans (referencing a photograph). Ya\u2019ll can keep this stuff.<\/p>\n MJ: Well is there anything else you would like to talk about?<\/p>\n LB: You mean, off the tape?<\/p>\n MJ: Well we\u2019ve still got it rolling. Anything else you want to talk about on the tape?<\/p>\n LB: Oh, we established the Louise Sublette Award. That was done, in fact Josephine Martin and several of us were together as a committee and we were to come up with an award, set the criteria. The irony of it was, of course, Louise was living then but Louise wasn\u2019t on the committee, and within a few weeks she died and that\u2019s how we named it. We didn\u2019t name the award at the time we set up the criteria, and after Louise passed away it was named the Louise Sublette Award, because she was certainly due all credit for starting that. In the early days there was no stigma to a free lunch, no stigma. There wasn\u2019t any, all of this having to keep everything secret. I guess the children knew who got free lunch; it was never discussed. Oh, well this is one of the funny things, I can\u2019t put this on the tape, Louis Grizzard. You ever hear of Louis Grizzard? Louis Grizzard said – now this story\u2019s not going to make the video.<\/p>\n VW: We\u2019ll let you x it out.<\/p>\n LB: I\u2019m not going to do that. We got canned luncheon meat that came in these tin cans about this long [indicates about 1 \u00bd feet]. Well, you know, you can slice it and make a lot of sandwiches and do a lot of things. Well we came up with this recipe, I think USDA sent it to us, they\u2019d send us some. But it was, you dice the meat, you put celery, same thing you would do to make chicken salad or anything. And then you stirred in some mayonnaise. Well now you picture this. I\u2019m sure we put boiled eggs in it and pickles, then stirred that mayonnaise in with this diced, canned luncheon meat, it had a wonderful flavor. You picture what it looked like. And this little boy went up to the manager and said, \u201cMrs. Scott.\u201d This is the way Alberta told me. She said, \u201cLouise, come here I\u2019ve got something to tell you.\u201d He said, \u201cMrs. Scott, do you have a paper cup?\u201d She said, \u201cYes, what do you want with it?\u201d \u201cI want to take my doggie food to my doggie.\u201d It looked like, you know, canned dog food. I said, \u201cAlberta, if you ever repeat that to anybody other than me I will cut your tongue out.\u201d Can\u2019t you imagine that tale getting around? But one of the cutest, cuter ones. We had the Special Milk Program, where they could buy extra milk for three cents a bottle, carton, whatever it was, it was cartons by this time. And the principal called me and he said, \u201cI\u2019ve got to tell you.\u201d This little boy was walking down the hall and he had milk sticking out of jacket pocket, out of his pants pocket. And he stopped him and said, \u201cSon, what are you doing with all that milk? Are you going to drink that milk today?\u201d And he said, \u201cNo, I\u2019m going to take it home to Ma; she can\u2019t buy it this cheap.\u201d There were some choice ones, but I believe that\u2019s about all I know girls. Ya\u2019ll have done picked my brain.<\/p>\n MJ: Okay, well thank you very much for doing this for us, Ms. Barnett. Thank you very much. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,21,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9194"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12809,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9194\/revisions\/12809"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theicn.org\/archives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}