Tuesday, March 17, 2009 - Point, Texas, approximately 11:50AM
Rich Marvin Interview with: June Stark (Mike Stark’s mother) & Judy Trapp (Mike Stark’s little sister) & Bob Bennett (Mike Stark’s friend)
Rich Marvin: “We are going to talk about Mike and a little about Rockmore too. So, if you guys will just give me some background on Mike growing up and he was born in ….”
Judy Trapp: “He was born in Dallas, Texas, on mother’s 26th birthday November 24th. “They met at a skating rink. They dated for two weeks, and then got married. And Michael was born, and they got married on January 14th, and Michael was born on November 24th of that same year.” “It wasn’t a surprise because my grandparents had done the same thing.”
Rich Marvin: “And, so, he was older than you, you were next?”
Judy Trapp: “Four years. I was ordered by Michael.”
Rich Marvin: “Ordered by Michael?”
JS & JT together: “He wanted a baby sister.”
June Stark: “And everybody who knew Michael, knew what Michael had said. He wanted a sister, so he got a sister.”
Judy Trapp: “And, every time I went to New Orleans, I was Mike’s baby sister.” “He’d say, ‘My baby sister is coming to town.’ So, I was always the baby sister.” “Until I met Odetta, and I introduced myself, and I was in New Orleans, and I introduced myself as ‘I’m Judy, I’m Mike’s baby sister.’ And Odetta said, ‘No you’re not, you’re just Judy.’ And so she made sure that I stopped that.”
Judy Trapp: “We grew up in Mesquite, in “The Dallas area.” “And my father worked at First National Bank, Dallas, and mother worked at many different things, mainly companies, mainly markets when I was little and Michael was small. “And my father worked downtown Dallas, at First National Bank, Dallas. He was a purchasing agent.” “Life was good growing up, we didn’t have a lot of money, but we always had enough.
June Stark: “We weren’t poor.”
JT: “And my mother and father had best friends, and the reason that I’m here is because they had a contest to see who could have a baby first, the two of them wanted to have babies at the same time, their daughter was born on mother and Michael’s birthday, on November 24th, and I was born 2 weeks, and 3 days later. This couple had a brother, who had been a business man in Dallas, and he and my father just tried to go into business together, and so they moved to Greenville and bought a tractor company.”
RM: From Dallas? And we can do this, because we know what we are doing.” “And we’ll hire the right guys ….”
JT: “No, they ran the company.” “They bought the tractor company in the lower end of Greenville. They bought a tractor company, in Greenville, Texas. The first people that would come around and sit was Mike Stratton, the baseball player, and so, they had a group of men that would come and just hang around the tractor company “I remember that, and driving the tractors in and out, parking them, you know, “Michael would go down there, because he always was a worker.” “There was a business down the street, from the tractor company that made church furniture, they were in a little quanzit hut, and, um, Ray and my father, Ray Hodges was my daddy’s partner, at the tractor company, and they got to talking to this man, and he needed a little bit of money, I think, at the time, and Ray had that, and daddy had the salesman thing down, plus he had sold, you know, that’s what he did at First National Bank, Dallas, he was the purchasing agent, for years, so he had the selling thing down, so, they bought into this company, called Ward Manufacturing Company, that made church furniture. And Michael worked there, mother worked in the office, she was the secretary ….”
RM: “So, this put you in contact with all the churches too.”
JT: “Right, but we had joined the First Baptist Church, Greenville, here, and Michael ….”
JT: “I was in sixth grade when we moved here and Michael was a sophomore, in high school when we moved to Greenville.”
RM: “And how was his socialization in the school?”
JT: “He never allowed anyone to call him anything but Michael, until we moved to Greenville, and being a sophomore in high school, everybody called him Mike, and that was ok, because he was the new guy in town.”
RM: “Got it. And he was able to make friends easy?”
JT: “Oh, yes. He’s very artistic. He designed clothes for the girls of his class, he would design their clothes and they would have their seamstresses make them, and ….”
RM: “How did he come by that skill?”
JT: “He was always sketching, always drawing, always doing, always designing.”
RM: “But, to design clothes, that’s ….”
JT: “He just picked it up.”
RM: “Mom’s not taking credit.”
June Stark: “No. I didn’t even understand him. He wasn’t like the other children
JT: “But, Michael, we’d have things at church, when they decided to have things at the church, for the youths, he decided that it should be like a party. They would have banquets “Like for Thanksgiving, “And he would decorate the whole thing and it would have a theme, maybe an Egyptian theme, and many times I was a waiter, because, I was his little sister, I had to do what he said, and he had ordered me, you know, and so he would have all these elaborate dinners, where the waiters and waitresses would get to do dancing, and dressed up in Hiram costumes, and the whole dining hall would be as an Arab tent.
JT: “At that time he met a girl, whose parents we had the partnership with, and ….”
RM: “We’re at his sophomore year.”
JT: “Yeah, we’re at his sophomore year, in high school, and that’s when he met Carol, and she had been in autocross accident when she was very little, and she was paralyzed, so she was in a wheel chair, and they were in the high school, and the high school was two stories, and there was no way for her to get upstairs without some kind of help, and so Michael became her person that would take her, carry her upstairs, and then take the wheelchair upstairs ……” “And he did all these things for her, because he saw somebody in need, and so, he did that, and he became quite a part of their family and became very close to her. So, they were close all through high school, and his family, and he would do that kind of thing for her. And he was always sketching, and drawing, and he was always very artistic, and when I got to high school, and I’d go into class, they’d say, ‘Oh, you’re Mike’s sister, I didn’t have to worry about making straight A’s, because he was a C student, you know.”
JT: “Yes, that took some pressure off, but they’d ask if I was very artistic, they’d say, ‘Are you artistic like Michael?’ And I’d say,’no.’” “I’m not artistic, but I can pass the class. I’m not artistic like Michael.
RM: “So, you were like in 9th grade when he was in 12th grade?”
JT: “Um-hum. In fact, he graduated from college the year that I graduated from high school, so we were four year’s difference.”
RM: “So, now you’re around your junior year, or so and that is wher Bob & Michael met.
Bob Bennett: “I was two years older than Michael, right?”
JT: “Yes, you were two years older than Michael, four years older than me, and you had joined the church, right?”
Bob Bennett: “It was at church, and I was already at ET.” “East Texas College.”
RM: “Oh, got it. And now, so how’s your meeting with Mike.”
Bob Bennett: “He was at the church, and I guess that I was invited to your house for one of his ….”
JT: “Elaborate things.”
Bob Bennett: “Elaborate things, and we became friends.”
RM: “First impression, when you met him?”
Bob Bennett: “I don’t remember that I have a first impression of him. It was just, you know, I was glad to be there. “And I can’t really think of anything to tell you, except I always thought it was interesting, that this person who was always in robes, and really didn’t worry about things during the time and that it was early on, when I’d met him, he dreamed of some day having a house someday that was furnished with French Provincial furniture.”
JT: “When he was at the church, he started doing sign language, this lady, there was 2 deaf people in the church, there was a lady who did sign language in the church. She was there every Sunday morning, and Michael became intereseted, Michael always talked with his hands, anyway, it became very natural for him to take up sign language. And this woman, whose parents were both deaf, she was hearing, she taught Michael sign language, and so, he became the interrupter for the deaf at the church. He would go to their homes, and he would have church related things, he built up the membership, he would get the deaf people to come to church, and this was all during the time that he was in high school."
Meanwhile, he would do sketches for the girls, and costuming, the high school in Greenville always had parties, and the ‘in thing’ was every little group or every person had a party, and so, my parent’s had a very large home, and this was considered a big house, to some people, the room sizes, and stuff, but the house in Greenville was much bigger scale. It was a 2 story house with 18 foot ceilings, and the living room and dining room took up the whole front part of the house, I mean, the length of the house, and so Michael decides that we should have a circus party. So, he turned the whole downstairs, of the house, into a circus tent! (laughter)
JT: “And, my father was a very quiet man. I think Michael got his giving from my father, but we never really knew that, about my father, My father was a business man, he was a ‘goer’ and a ‘doer’ and he was a salesman, and he sold church furniture, that’s what he did when he came here, after, they sold tractors, he sold church furniture and he could go out and sell church furniture. “And if somebody from Greenville moved to another town, he would stop in that town, on his trip, back from where ever he’d gone to, and talk to those people, and visit those people and always kind of kept up with that. And, he didn’t ever talk about it, or say it, or do it, until he was diagnosed with cancer, and he was dying, and then we found out a lot of this ….” “You know, because he was the quiet one. Mother and I like to talk a lot.”
JS: (laughter) “He didn’t ever have a chance to talk.”
JT: “I don’t think he did either. So, I think a lot of that came from my father; that we were just not aware, of the stuff that he was doing. Mother would always give daddy an allowance, and he’d say, ‘Did that come with my shirt?’ You know, he was the treasurer of the church. But, he loved to cook, and my father loved to cook ….”
RM: “That’s right. I’ve heard about pancakes.”
JT: “Yes, the pancakes. And, Dodi and John’s baby, came to the first, after he had pancakes at Michael’s house, the next year, at noon, he came to the house, and he screamed, and cried because there was no pancakes, but there was black eyed peas, and cabbage and cornbread. And he screamed, he was devastated, poor Tiger, was just devastated that there were no pancakes at the house. So daddy did cook, and the band, I think we said that we were going to make spaghetti, you know, when they come, and they said that they were not coming unless there was pancakes.” (laughter)
JT: “And that’s the picture of the band standing on our front porch.” “If they could get anywhere close when the band from Preservation Hall, got anywhere close to Dallas, part Greenville, I mean they got close to Greenville, they came to our house, mother and daddy’s house, and had pancakes. And then one year, mother was sick, and so, she could not go to the concert and commerce, so when we got home, the musicians had the truck, and we had to get the instruments off, they came into the house, and after they had eaten, they had a concert, for my mother.” “And, we opened all the doors because, there were like French doors that opened on the front porch, there were 2 of them, one was on each side, we opened one of the doors, and people were, just would walk up to the house from all parts of town ….
JS: “They came from downtown Greenville, right next to, and across the street from the high school, and we were right downtown, and had a big porch, opened the doors, and they were all there. Everybody, from all around, and they were mostly colored, “And it started, and they came, and they were always wonderfully quiet, and appreciative, you know ….”
JT: “My mother had her own personal concert in her home, because she had been sick. But, they got their pancakes, because they were not having anything else; they weren’t having spaghetti. That was Michael. That was the neighborhood. It was, our block was around the high school, and that was the post office, and the black neighborhood, was right across from the other side, right across from the other side of the high school, from the middle school………
RM: “So, there wasn’t any of the typical, of what you would think, as racial prejudice ….”
JT: “Not with Michael, because the guys would stand on the corner of the street, and it was a one way street, and in order to get to our house, you had to come around the bend, and you had to go down their side of the street, make a turn, come down to our side of the street, and my parents were never prejudice, I was never raised to be prejudice, in any way, shape, or form.
JT: “Michael never met a person that was a stranger. He was always very out going. He, we grew up, and we met Mabel Brown, and her family, when we moved to Greenville, and she had a husband that came to visit every time that she had a child, and so, she’d get pregnant again, and she was a black woman, and had 13 children, and they became our family.”
JT: “Michael, you know, he just took that family and he had never known a black family until we moved to Greenville. Because we didn’t live ….Mesquite, didn’t have black families, at the time, I mean, they did, but they didn’t live anywhere close to where we lived. They didn’t live anywhere close to us.”
JS: “And anyway, we couldn’t afford help.” (laughter)
JT: “And, so they just became part of our family. And, they still are.”
RM: “So, now it’s junior / senior year, and he’s about to graduate ….”
JT: “And he’s decided that he’s going to go to seminary, because, we went to New Orleans, when I was 18, he was in college, no we didn’t go until I was out of school. He decided that he was going to be a minister, I guess that he went to college first ….”
BB: “Yeah, he went to college first and then, he went to East Texas State College Commerce ….”
RM: “And you were friends?”
JT: “Oh, they were friends, they’d spend the night at the house, and I’d cook and wait on them, and daddy cooked.”
RM: “And your read on Mike’s decision here to go, uh, to go to the ministry? Did he say, ‘I just feel this,’ or ….”
BB: “I don’t remember ever discussing it with him. I was not surprised when he said that he was going to seminary, because he was so active in the church, “Yeah, and I think it had a lot to do with where Mike came from. Both family, and Greenville, and his “Church.”
JS: “Church, I had taken him to church since he was 10/12 days old, and that’s what he knew, and he’d always been to church, and, that’s what he did, because he loved people.”
RM: “And, was he always heavy set? Even back then?”
JS: “Um-hum.”
RM: “Nobody discriminated against him?”
BB: “He was big. He felt very confident that he could handle any situation that came upon him.”
JT: “He never had any problems at school.” He was always well liked.”
JS: “He was always well liked. Nope, he never told us that he had a problem ….”
JT: “Oh, yeah, Texans can be harsh, but he, he never felt that, he never showed that he felt that, because he always ….”
JS: “I don’t know a person that wasn’t his friend.” “He just accepted them, and so, they weren’t about to turn him down, they just accepted him.”
JT: “But, when he went to college, well, he had done the deaf ministry, and then when he went to college, he started working at the state Hospital, which is, was a mental institution, and he went and started, their teenage program. A program for teenagers, because there wasn’t one, they were lumped in with the adults, and he went, and started one, just for the teenagers, and ….”
JS: “And he would teach them sign language.”
JT: “But, he would do this with the teenagers at the hospital, and then he would bring them to mother’s house, and have parties, outside “And I’d say Michael, we’re going to play games, what if I say the wrong thing? And he said, ‘They’re not going to go off on you.’ I said, ‘Ok.’ Michael said, ‘That if I went along, then everything would be ok.’ And it was, of course
RM: “At that time he’s at East Texas State?”
JT: “East Texas State, going to school, teaching the deaf, working at the hospital, working at the plant, building church furniture, and installing church furniture, running the business ….”
RM: “Ah, so that’s where the carpentry overalls ….!”
JT: “Right.”(laughter) “He was Learning the business, from my daddy, and he did it all, from whatever, the starting of the pews to ….I don’t think he sawed too much, I don’t think he used the big machinery too much, but he did everything else, and he helped install the furniture, and went to the churches, and put the furniture in, and, but then he was working at state hospital, and he did this, he would bring these kids home and he would be the out patients to the house, then we’d have ….
RM: “And he felt comfortable doing that?”
June Stark: “But I didn’t!” “I was nice, and sometimes I would just stare!” “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I was nice. “You know, he would kill me if I wasn't.” (laughter) “I always felt with Michael that I didn’t have a choice ….”
JT: “It was always, no mother, this will be ok.”
JS: “And he always made it alright.” Never did he consult me.”
JT: “So, he’d say we’re going to have this thing, and get ready, we’re going to have 30 – 40 people over for dinner, and they’re all from a mental institution. And, there you go.” “And they all behaved themselves.”
JT: “And then there was a deaf convention in New Orleans, and it was at the seminary, and I was 18, and there was this girl that was going to take his place as the interpreter from here, when he left to go to New Orleans. She was, the signer, she was 16, and they wanted her to go, to New Orleans. I went as the chaperone, because one of the deaf men and Michael were also going to the convention. And this 16 year old girl could not go with these 2 men by herself. So, I was 18 at the time, so I went as her chaperone. And we stayed at the New Orleans Theological Seminary, and we did everything down around there, you know, uh, Michael loved it, he fell in love with the seminary, and the whole thing, and decided, at the time that he went to seminary, he was going to go into education, religious education. “He was going to go into the educational part of it. And he met a man, there, who was deaf, and was going to seminary, and they became really good friends, and they met a lady who was deaf, but Michael and Robert were probably in their 20’s, yeah, and so Myra was 40, and she had grown up deaf, and she was an illustrator for a magazine, she was advertising for sun block, and she had a hearing aid, and they all 3 became really good friends. “In New Orleans, they would go out, Michael would always be deaf, because you know, his friend Robert was. They always did the sign language, and they were at Commander’s Palace one night, and they’d been signing, and this lady, she had been sitting at a table close to them, all night, and she said, ‘Oh those beautiful children, how sad, isn’t it just so sad, those 3 beautiful people, isn’t that sad, I’ve been here all night.’ She’d been talking about how awful it was for 3 people to have been deaf, and how tragic it was, and of course Michael was the only one hearing. “So, when he got up to leave, he walked and by and says, ‘Yes mama, it is, isn’t it?’”(laughter)
JT: “He didn’t say anything, but he just wanted her to know. He just got up, and walked right on out. But, that deaf couple, they finally got married.” “And Michael did their wedding ceremony. Um-hum, he did a lot of weddings. His friend Robert told him, ‘That the deaf did not need interpreters, the deaf needed preachers.’ “Because, when Michael would interpret, preachers used different adjectives, and sign language at that point had only one sign for many things, And so, it doesn’t make as much sense, “To a deaf person, you know, you’re hearing the same thing over and over again. And so, Robert told him, that they didn’t need interpreters, they needed preachers. And so, Michael changed his thing at seminary, and he became a minister. He was an ordained minister, here in Greenville ….”
RM: “Well, wait, I thought the seminary was in New Orleans,
JT: “No, well, he went to seminary there for the 4 years, that’s when he met Larry and the Jaffes and all that. That’s when he went to the seminary.” “But, he was ordained in Greenville. He came back to Greenville to have his ordaination service ….”
BB: “Just to his home church.” “So, even when he was working at Pres Hall, he was still going through the...
JT: “Seminary. He finished the seminary, and he would go to Preservation Hall, he would do the door and the sketches, like on the wall, to raise money. “And, so, he sketched. That’s what he did when he’d sit and listen to the music.” “He’d be doing his sketches, and, someone, you know, would be, ‘How much do you want for that? “He was taken care of, and of course, he loved the jazz, and that was something, and of course Larry and them would let him come down and do whatever.” “And, Larry took him to Mexico.”
JS: “Yeah. In fact, have you heard that story ……(laughter) Larry was just thinking of doing something good, and Michael expected him to do it, so Larry did it. “It’s just like with you, or with me, he expected me to be much better than I was. Right?!?” “And you rose to the occasion with Michael, or else, you know, you just had to.”
RM: “It was a spiritual thing, then, it sounds like.
JS: “Yeah, but I didn’t know that it was spiritual.” (laughter)
JT: “Another person he met, in New Orleans, when this woman he met at the seminary, was the lady that did his funeral service, and the memorial, and she became a minister, also. Michael, and she met, and she says that she’s his oldest New Orleans friend because she met him in seminary before he met the people in the Quarter, she knew him, so she always called him his oldest seminary friend. And, she still does that kind of work, in New Orleans; she’s still there. But, they went to high church, and he wasn’t a high church person.”(laughter)
RM: “What is high church?”
JT: “Michael always called it that. It was a very formal church.”
JS: “We were always Baptist, but, that doesn’t mean a thing, but he didn’t really like formal churches …..
JT: “They had his funeral service, in this church, and they had the Storyville Band, played “Jazz.” “And Odetta sang …. “And Debbie Brown, the opera singer, and they all sang Amazing Grace, ……….”
JT: “The New Year’s parties started because Michael, wanted to do it, so it would be from 12 until, from when we started.” “He would get up and put on one pot of beans, peas, a big pot, without me, and then one pot with me, and then he would put up one big kettle of rice, and Willy Humphries taught him how to do the rice. The black eyed peas, came from Billy & DeeDee Pierce. Willy told him he had to do the rice, and how long to cook it, and all of that, and the black eyed peas, and the cabbage, he would slice, he would chop up the cabbage, slice up apples, celery, onions, and he would put them all in little different bowls, and sausage, and then he’d make cornbread.” “I’d get credit for it, but he started it. And he would make, he’d get, it was Jiffy mix, sour cream, egg, and whole kernel corn, and then, Jaffe had to have Crystal’s hot sauce.”
JT: “At 12 o’clock, and he’d get up early and do all that. He’d get everything ready, so that, he had iron skillets, he had 2 iron skillets, because you had one cabbage and sausage, and one for vegetarian. You had to have 2 big bowls of everything, and we had, the cornbread was done in the iron skillet, everything was done in the iron skillets, except for the big pots, and every year the pots got bigger and bigger, and we had black eyed peas, every year, more people came, and more people came,
RM: “It’s legendary. And one person said that, ‘Their New Year’s traditional experience ended, when your brother passed away.’’
