Oral History Interview Frederica Dunnagan

As we begin, tell me just a little bit about yourself.

Fred My name is really Frederica Dunnagan (the sixth?)--Maria Frederica, that nobody uses, and I was born in Germany; came here in 1960.

My husband died, unfortunately, in 1954 in an Army accident. We were Army people and I decided to stay in this country. I had a little boy who was born at Fort Knox and he’s grown up now and is assistant District Attorney. I met Lou Tate a long time ago when Phillip was about 8 years old and she has been quite a wonderful influence in both of our lives.

Teka: How did you meet her?

Freddie: I had two friends: Hal and Kitty Tenny. I had met them shortly after the death of my husband. They were very outgoing people [who were] always interested in everything and at that time I sometimes attended an International Club that was done through the YWCA; I was president of it for one year. We kind of invited people who didn’t have any place to go on Thanksgiving because they were here either on scholarships or as officers or something, you know.

The Tennys gave a party once, way, way back, I would say 1956 or so, and there were some Spanish speaking people, some others, and I was in the International Club. I had been added to that group, and I met the Tennys; I fell in love with them.

They had a small girl, Ellen Tenny, who was about a year and a half older than my son, Phillip, and as I said, [it was] a long, long time ago in 1956, so they are going on 30 years of friendship. The Tennys, in turn, had met and heard of Lou Tate.

When I first met the Tennys they lived on South Third Street in a charming little house, but they had already met Lou Tate then. I had not. And a few years later they bought a very famous old log cabin on top of Kenwood Hill then and it was about 120 years old; a wonderful log cabin. And right below, on Kenwood Hill, Lou Tate had three cabins; the Bottom House, the Wisteria Cabin, and the Top House.

Since I was good friends with the Tennys and, of course, they were delighted with their new house, they invited me over and here I was, [seeing] Lou Tate [for] the first time, outside under these great big hundred year old trees where she had set about 20 looms. And children were weaving and there was excitement all over the whole place and, you know, under these old trees, the birds were singing.

My son, Phillip, who was always strutting around with two cowboy guns, you know, toy guns on his sides-- very manly-- was [all of] eight or nine at the time, fell in love with this, too. He asked whether he could weave and Lou Tate was absolutely marvelous with children and could also subdue them.

I just recently talked with Phillip about Lou again. He said, yes, she’s been such an influence in his life because when you went there, she made you mind and you had to have manners or you were not accepted. So that’s how we first came to meet Lou Tate.

I was not a weaver but I supported her projects as much as I could because they really interested me and pleased me.

Teka: We have taken some pictures of some of the things that you bought.

Freddie: Oh, you mean weaving samples? I always did [buy them]. And I wish I had kept more of them.

Lou, as I think everybody knows, had a famous history having woven damask napkins for President Hoover’s wife, I was told. And Mrs. Eleanor Roosevelt came here to visit her. There are older pictures of Lou [taken] with these people.

She did a lot, I think, for the University of Louisville, in teaching, always, and in drawing out children She had, yes, many of her meetings or special Sundays that she had [when] she would exhibit weaving samples that children had done, or even adults had done. She had large adult weaving classes and simple weaving classes for children. Some samples were done by adults who were experts and had been in a tapestry class or an experimental class.

Sometimes they were wonderful little articles or gifts that people would send home. I’m always at a loss of what to send to my people at Christmastime and when you bought a very nicely woven towel you could just stick it in an envelope and send it as a flat gift and it was something very special from Kentucky.

Lou specialized in her little labels where it would say that it was woven at the Little Loomhouse in Louisville, Ky. Quite a few of the things that I bought are no longer here. They are now in Europe, but I kept some. For instance, a set of tartans, little coasters that you set under a glass, where she had done tremendous research on Scotland and the different families--in Ireland, too, I think--who had special tartans to their name, you know. Their names apparently were then woven into their old time patterns of their kilts that they wore. Lou made little samples of all these different colored things and wrote the family names on them. She must have done a tremendous amount of research about the families who owned each tartan and which plaid and what color.

I bought other things, as I said, which I gave away as gifts. I wish now that I had bought one of those large, what she called serapes or stoles, which I never did, but I know Ellen Tenny has one. They are lovely. And you could [also] buy fine tablecloths and things like that. I had a number of wonderful placemats and table settings from her which have all gone to people that I loved, as gifts.

Teka: Please tell how she got the information on the Tartans

Freddie: On the tartans, I‘m quite sure that Lou Tate, all her life, did a lot of research in different ways. She wrote to people, I’m quite sure. And wrote to other countries, also. I’ll get into that later, because she had some connection with Canada. She spent a great deal of time at the library. I believe, also, when you came to Lou Tate’s place there were corners and parts of the room that were covered with books where you could tell that she had been working, doing studies all the time.

And she went to the library; sometimes I have to laugh about it, for other reasons, because in her spare time which she didn’t have much of, she liked to read a mystery story So, she was a steady guest at the library, I know that, and I’m sure she knew a lot of people at the University [of Louisville] and she was a person who did very disciplined, great research on the things before she came out and said that this is so-and-so, or this pattern belongs to such-and-such.

She did a great deal of research on coverlets. She wrote several articles that are quite [interesting]. There’s a book that I have to try to find in my house which I loved and I probably hid it in a place where it’s hard to find because I loved it when I moved here, where she had written a very enlightening article about weaving in and around Kentucky, and Indiana, too.

You know, she was particularly interested in Jacquard which had the very fine double weaving, as far as I know, and as I said before, I’m not a weaver, but I got interested in the tremendous art work that was done centuries ago in the weaving field.

I became so interested and Lou Tate had such an influence on people in her enthusiasm whether they wove or not, you just were drawn to her; to this. And I am somebody who always liked to go to flea markets, and one morning years ago, I was still living in my other house on Kenwood Hill where I was so close to Lou. I had gone to a flea market at the Kentucky Fair and Exposition Center on Saturday and it was not one of those refined ones, you know, where everything was terribly expensive and you’d only find exquisite pieces. This was [one where] everybody who had something could sell things.

There was a rather heavy set woman there from Indiana who had coverlets; these old, old bedcovers that were woven double, usually in a beige and dark blue and showed marvelous designs on each side and can be used either with the more beige side up or the side that shows more of the dark blue. And I found one on the floor and I unfolded it and I found that it didn’t have too many holes and that it could actually be mended and used and I was very excited about it . But at that time, it was a hundred dollars plus tax.

This was years ago. I think it would be five times as much now, but this represented a lot of money for me and I went home and didn‘t buy it. But the next morning I woke up Lou Tate and said to Lou on the phone, “I saw this tremendous coverlet and I want to describe it to you . These people are still at the Fairgrounds today and I want to know whether you think I should buy it.”

And she said, “Tell me what it says in the corners; it has to say something in all the four corners.” And I said, “I does. It says WC Craig, and then WV.” And I said, “Does that mean it’s from West Virginia?”. And she said, “No, that means he’s a weaver and you’ve found a coverlet from one of the most famous weaving families!”

I said, “Well, then it says, DC, and that couldn’t be Washington. And then it says IA. And then it says the year, 1856.” She said, “Well, DC is Decatur County, and IA is Indiana, of course, and you found a coverlet from the famous Craig family that was woven in 1856, and Freddie, I would advise you to go out there and buy that.”

Well, I did. And I have enjoyed it ever since. It’s a marvelous cover. I have a few of the little holes mended [and] it is a conversation piece and I do keep it on my bed, yes, in winter because it’s wool and it’s warm and adds to the comfort. Every time I look at it, it helps me again to think of Lou Tate and how marvelous she was. I also loaned her that piece a couple of times for exhibits that she held up in her cabins

Lou was a great one for parties. She loved to give exhibits at those times, as I said before, people bought samples and bought things and this helped Lou, because Lou was so generous in her love towards the children who came there to weave and many of them couldn’t afford to buy the yarn or things needed for the warp. She just gave it to them, you know. So Lou was always looking around for a little income because she had all this and when she had made something, she had given it away again.. Under those wonderful old trees, she gave wonderful get-togethers where people either wove or showed their weaving experience and she would then exhibit some of the lovely pieces that she herself owned, from different countries, and as I said, coverlets and wonderfully woven pieces. And I remember the one I owned I had up there at Top House for exhibits several times and we enjoyed it together.

And Lou also, for her close friends, gave little parties in winter, maybe when it got depressing and dark. And I would say this one thing, she could cook very well, [although] she wasn’t too fancy a cook, but this was her famous chili, and she would say we were having a chili party. And you would come into the bottom cabin which was a charming place, in a way, with a big fieldstone fireplace, and it was so full of looms that you had to kind of wind your way through. She would have one long table then and use the seats for the little wooden loom [tables] to sit on and she had some very fine English Spode china and she had Lemoge china and things from her parents that meant a lot to her. She would put all that out and then in the midst of it would sit a great big pot of chili and those little shell crackers all around and we would all have a marvelous time. Especially she did decide to do this around Christmastime. I remember that she was always very happy, too. Her big fieldstone fireplace had these ledges where you could set some pretty things and Lou had a lot of different angels. So each time I went to Germany, in the little mountainous towns where my sisters lived, I would bring back a little carved angel, you know, an angel from another country.

I guess I should have said in the beginning that I am a travel agent and have worked for American Express for twenty-five years and I have seen many other countries. I brought her back some weaving from Ecuador once where she was really excited because she could identify so well this other country and their arts and crafts.

And, I don’t know, I guess my memories tumble together, you know. I haven’t written all this down, but I probably should have, as I said. Lou has had an influence on many people that will never die, and on children, too. I really liked her.

Teka: You must have some special memories.

Freddie: Of Lou Tate, yes, I do, many. And one is the last Christmas before Lou’s death, the Christmas of 1978 to ‘79. She spent Christmas eve at my house for Christmas dinner. And she had done that many times, but this last time was one of the most wonderful occasions [that] I can remember. Lou had already had a few bouts with trouble in her colon and had had a few hospital stays where apparently she knew that she had, you know, a disease that would finally be terminal. But she chose to, as much as she could, ignore it. She had been at my house many times, anyway, also for some other Christmases, but this last one, I was a little scared because she had already been to the hospital and was reportedly having a little stomach trouble and, more or less, quite a bit, but she didn’t show it. But anyway, the friends I earlier mentioned, Hal and Kitty Tenny; we had a tradition where on Christmas eve I would always cook a typically German meal called Roulade. There is beef roulade, and there is very fine thin beef and you beat it until it is really, really thin and then you put a slice of bacon inside, a hard boiled egg, I mean, just little bitty pieces, and pickles, all kind of things to make it nice and you roll it up and you roll a little string around it and you brown them on both sides and they create their own juice and then until they’re ready they’re just leading their life in the frying pan. And with that I sometimes serve German potato balls or a special kind of noodles called spaetzle [or spatzle] noodles and sometimes red cabbage or sauerkraut or what have you. And I had made a big, big meal of this kind and Lou came, looking very festive.

I should have talked about that earlier, too. A few years before, two years, perhaps, she had been to Canada; she had been invited to Canada, and Nova Scotia, actually, and spent a month there giving lectures and gaining all kinds of new information about weaving and about their arts and crafts. From that particular Canadian trip she had brought back a red jacket. It must have been from that trip. It looked very festive, very Christmassy. It was ,by no means, only red; it had yellow and brown stripes, now not necessarily woven into it, but they were interlaced stripes of different materials that made it look a little bit like a tapestry. And it looked very festive. And anyway, she arrived and I was still cooking. The Tennys were coming; my son, Phillip, was coming, his former wife, Karen, was coming; they were [all] going to participate.

I jump from one subject to another. Phillip’s wife, Karen, was a lovely young lady who now lives in California and I think very highly of her. She also took weaving lessons from Lou Tate for one whole summer after my son and Karen first got married and she didn’t have a job yet. She loved Lou Tate, also, and she bought a loom and became quite an expert weaver.

Anyway, all these people were coming. Lou arrived early and she had brought a little game. I wish I still had it-- I think I have hidden it somewhere-- with ropes that you twist--with red, white, and green colors. You twist them around your hands and make little designs with them. She gave one of those little games to each of us. Phillip says he remembers that quite a bit. You could make your own little braid, he said, and he made one that night and he was a grown man. And he wore it for the church service afterwards, at midnight.

And she was sitting there doing this while I was doing all this cooking. I’m not that great a cook and I don’t have company that often so I get a little bit flustered that everything’s hot at the same time. Anyway, this turned out to be a perfect meal, and I will never forget--I know that Lou had trouble with her stomach then, but she must have had a particularly good day because she enjoyed it so much. She ate several of these beef roulades and the German potato balls and the red cabbage that I had and we drank Champaign and we had the most wonderful evenings that I can ever remember.

So that was our tradition; the Tennys and Lou and close friends would come over to my house on Christmas eve on the twenty-fourth of December and then on the twenty-fifth, Kitty Tenny would cook a big Christmas dinner., usually a turkey, and so the next day we were all at the Tennys and Lou was there again feeling wonderful, and being absolutely the star of the party, talking to many people. Again she had that beautiful red, colorful jacket on. At this time, since I didn’t have to cook I had brought my camera and took quite a few photographs. They turned out quite well, the nicest one being of Lou where she looks [like she is] deep in conversation with Kitty Tenny.

And later on when Lou became so ill in the hospital we often had nice little chats and she said, “That picture, Freddie, I really like it and I want you to make about twenty-five of those and give them to my friends after I’m dead. I really like that and I hope Kitty is not offended but you’ll have to cut Kitty out of this picture. It is supposed to be a portrait of myself.” And I can say this right here in this interview, I’ve been very much amiss in carrying out this task that Lou had given me. She will be dead five years in June-- this month-- but I will say for my apology that I had a tough time getting this done. I first went --I work a pretty long office day and I don’t have too much time for lunch --I first went to Walgreen’s which does excellent photos otherwise, but when I said I wanted this one lady cut off of the picture and only half of the negative, they said they couldn’t do it.

And again, some time passed until I had time on my lunch hour to go to one of the more famous photographers, you know, I think at that time there was Schumann’s Click Clinic and some others. They were very friendly but they said [that] to cut the negative apart, they didn’t have the facilities, which surprised me, because in Europe you can have that done without any problem. You can cut the negative to the size you want and give it to the developer. But, I had a very good friend, Bob Cooper(?), who is a very well-known photographer who knew Lou, also. Bob travels a lot. He does race track photography and all that and does portraits and festivities all over the country. I think two years later I finally got hold of him and I had him do these pictures of Lou Tate. I have them now and I will send them to the people who were close to her.

The next step was to find a little frame that would go around those, to not just send the picture without a little frame [to put] it was in. So I had a hard time finding those. Some people use them for Christmas cards, but they all looked too jolly and said, you know, wishing you happy holidays, so I didn’t use those. Finally, again, Bob Cooper(?) came to my rescue and brought me about twenty-five of these little frames in which I‘m sending Lou Tate‘s picture. But she was very adamant about that. This was supposed to be the one, and as much as she liked Kitty, this was to be her portrait. We have one that we can show with this interview.

Since I’m talking about the time when Lou got ill I should tell you that she was, several times, in the hospital and I think in the end, she knew that they were not going to operate any more or do anything else, but each time, she went back to her beloved cabins and stayed there and just went around her daily routine and acted as if this was something she could overcome if she didn’t talk about it. After each hospital stay, Lou had to, in order to recover, be in a nursing home and I do not remember the name of the particular home. But the Tennys know where it is, and she was in the same nursing home several times and she told me about the first experience. She said, “Well, you know, that really got on my nerves. In the bed next to me, they would say, ‘Please God, deliver me, let me die tonight,’ and in the other bed, they would say, ‘Please, God, let me live.’ And I just thought that was so terrible that I decided to teach everybody to weave.”

And she got her small cardboard looms that she originally used to teach children. She ordered these for the nursing home and her yarns. You know, this is a primitive way of weaving I do know that much, that you have a little cardboard loom and you have it strung with a little weft from both sides. You have a tiny shuttle and you try to weave little pot holders, or, you know, the size of a potholder or so. She taught everybody in that nursing home to weave. When she became better she went back to her cabin, and the next time she went into that nursing home, they could hardly wait for her to come. People had cried when she left and now they wanted her to come. This time, she asked Sally Moss to put on a spinning bee in that nursing home and all these kinds of things and she was really a great blessing, I think, to these people. She showed them that life was not necessarily, absolutely over if there were creative and nice things that could be done. That was the type of person Lou Tate was. She always showed creativity in any thing she did.

I have to tell another little thing that was so endearing to me. And that was when I first met Lou Tate, she often said: we; we do this and we do that; we do it this way. At first I thought maybe that there was a husband around somewhere, a sister, or a relative. No, Lou was used to saying we, because she included her little dog, Skipper, in her family life. Finally, I rather shyly asked the Tennys one time, when she said we, who was she talking about? They said, “Oh, Skipper, of course.” Skipper was a very loving, very nice dog who was her long time friend. And when Skipper finally died, my son, Philip buried him for her. And that is a big memory in Philip’s life.

And Lou never got another dog. Skipper was it; that was it. However, the Tennys always had large dogs and they had one very, very nice dog. One I remember is Bambi, a Rhodesia Ridge Back, a dog that is used in hunting and running, which she did up there in the woods. And when the Tennys were gone, that dog went down to Lou Tate’s. Now the dog was rather spoiled, but also very much loved and crawled into bed with her and, you know, the Tennys had to come back and look for their dog and Lou Tate would say, “Oh, she’s down here with me. She’s sleeping with me.” And I will never forget--you cannot forget a person with that much presence.

In the beginning, she had said that she taught children to weave on these looms either in the cabins, or outside under the big trees. And she was commanding. She was always friendly, but there were some rather roughneck boys, from time to time. One time I ran into one and Lou always had her cabin doors open and had beautiful art work hanging from the doors and from nails in the wood and so forth. At that time, she had quite a few belts. Philip wove an Indian belt, too, one time. You know, that was a very nice and intricately woven belt. One of these boys said to me, “I thought this was an Indian trading post. Is that lady an Indian trading lady?” I said, “No, she’s a weaver.” And he said, “What’s that?” And I think she was so good in her way with children, not domineering, but commanding respect. She even got the rougher ones to sit down at a loom and try their luck.

And personal memories, yes, in the later years, I think it was 1977, two years before her death when she knew she might not be around forever, she wanted her friends to have some special things that were dear to her. And she parted with things that she had used in life and that had given her joy. One close friend of mine [whom] I also liked very well, she used to say, “Give while your hand is warm.” I think that is the type of thing that Lou had in mind, she wanted her close friends to have mementos while she was still there. So one day when I just had embarked on a great big project and was sorting all my papers and had my whole living room floor covered with papers, she came to the door. I didn’t know she was coming and my place was really kind of messy. She carried this beautiful glass decanter encased in some silver artwork.

Side Two, Tape One

And as I was saying, Lou appeared at my door and she had this beautiful decanter in her hand; a lovely glass decanter in her hand. It was set in a silver filigree, I guess you could call it, and apparently it is a wine decanter. And inside of it she had a letter that was sticking out of the little decanter and she said, “You can read it later.” We talked and chatted and she wanted me to have this and when I read the letter, it said:

“July 6, 1977,

Dear Freddie,

When I think of you, I just think of you as making your friends at home, more than a good hostess. Then I think of Freddie and her violin, the Freddie that gives her friends gifts which delight them, [such] as the angel playing violin, or the Aztec Inca pot, or the little Bavarian Bed Witch to protect the Little Loomhouse from Bed Witches. That’s so many treasured memories for over twenty years. This old decanter is for the Freddie, the welcome from a friend. It came from Uncle John, my great-uncle who died about 1912 As is an old custom when parents died, the eldest son had charge of the household. This was one which was so numerous as he was always having a little opulence,” [I think it says.] “This is the decanter used to pour a wee bit of Sherry from when his brother brought this granddaughter by just for the pleasure of being able to share.” [I believe she’s talking about herself when she was born when the decanter was used to have a wee bit of Sherry, as she says, and then she just says,] “as usual, the page is not long enough to carry my love, Lou Tate.”

And I treasure this letter. I have others from her that are absolutely beautiful; one, also in the year of 1977, where she was talking about a lunch that we should have downtown; she and Kitty Tenny and myself because this was when Lou was going to Nova Scotia to take her experience and her art to others who had invited her. She stayed, I believe, longer even than they had planned and it was a really wonderful experience, I think, for her and she was very, very full of ideas when she came back from this trip. She also, among other things, brought me from this trip, some old German weaving drafts, on paper which were written in script and I translated a few for her, but my own script reading was not that good, that I could really tell her but it talked about what colors to use, and what these old certain weaving patterns had been. And after that trip she also put an exhibition on again, as she loved to do under her big trees on the hill and it did say that she said that she had at Cape Bret and some other places, really seen some marvelous weaving patterns. It was a wonderful afternoon in which I learned more about Nova Scotia where I had never been. I remember back last Thanksgiving some very good descriptions and things, also.

Here’s another letter that I see here, but it’s one about Canada. She was just writing that we should have lunch together and I was then giving her the air ticket. Here’s one that’s earlier, I believe, because -- it must have been in 1975, it’s not dated. But that’s when my young daughter-in-law took weaving lessons there .. She says here:

“Dear Dunnagans:

Hope you can all come over this Sunday and stay for pot luck supper. Karen, if you want to start weaving, come by two o’clock and I will get you started. Then we’re having a program after three. You will enjoy that we can weave, too, by getting started earlier. Tuition is $54.50; $12.50 due through March, 1956.” [This was when, if you were a member of the Kentucky Weavers, which I always was, it was $42 for ten lessons. I don’t think you could get these for that today.]. “Then if you have time to take a day regularly, to be hostess, you can come any afternoon for more weaving. Most of your materials are additional. I think we’ll have fun weaving this summer. Right now I’m back on everything as we are just beginning to coordinate. No weaving [was] done this time as the Kentucky Weavers did not get the stuff ready in time. Vickie Lawson is going to talk about color. I think you all know her. She’s pointing some coverlets now. I think it’s such a good bicentennial idea.” [Oh, it must have been towards ‘76 then]. “Douglas is going to tell about his Nova Scotia trip. Two of our members in the area are doing things on the project there.” [This was before Lou went. She went in ’77.] “Freddie has one of the programs. We want you to get all the people who used to be part of the hill. I would like to make something special for the Tennys so be making a list on three by five cards, please, so they will be easy to check by other lists. I’d like to call this party, Midsummer Art Fair. I’m thinking about asking if we can have paintings on Possum Path. What do you think? Don’t hint to Kitty and Hal.”

[See, the Tennys lived on what was called Possum Path, and rightfully so because I many times saw a possum lift up the garbage can [lid] and try to get into there, and Lou Tate lived on Coon Trail. That’s where her cabins were and that was the official name of that trail. She wanted to have Midsummer Art Fair on Possum Path. Then she was talking about another dear friend, Ann Kliver(?), and she says, “I know Mrs. Palmer’s death is hard on Ann. She was such a mother to us all. I remember the first time she came to a coverlet show and said her daughter and I just had to get together, but I think it would be fun to have a surprise, or almost surprise for Kitty and Hal.”

And now I think I will just tell you that in the very end I was one of the few last people to see Lou Tate at the hospital. I had made several visits and we had always chatted and I was always afraid I would tire her out. But she said, “No, don’t you go away.” She was very commanding about that and each time I came I brought a half dozen of new paperback books because she definitely liked her stories and I picked up everything I could have to bring her to read. And as kind as Lou always was, a couple of times she complained about the nurses. She said, “You’d think they’d know, since I can’t reach out with my arms that much--she had some tubes attached to her arms-- that they would put these books at easy distance, but no, they have to be on the windowsill. So we would come and place them all around her. It was one of the few times I heard her complain. She loved her doctor and she trusted him. and she was grateful to him.

And on one of those occasions Kitty Tenny and I both went to see her and she said, “Well, Freddie, I’ll tell you something”-- I think she already knew that I wanted to buy an older home. The Tennys had moved into the Highland part of Louisville and I was looking there also and she was could understand that, [since] she knew that she wouldn’t be there much longer and she had been one of the strong drawing points for me to live on Kenwood Hill. She said, “I tell you one thing. I have this beautiful oriental rug and I’m going to leave it to you.”

“Kitty,” she said, and she looked over at Kitty. “Kitty,” she said, “I’m really sorry, but I can’t leave it to you because you have two cats and a dog and it belonged to my parents and it really should be kept nice.”

I, personally, had never seen the rug because she had it covered with looms in the bottom cabin. You know, it was there on the floor but you couldn’t see it because looms were sitting all over it. And Kitty was in one of her moods(?) and she said, “That’s all right. I don’t want your rug ruined. I think it’s best to leave that to Freddie.” And she said, “But I’ll leave you something else. I think Ellen needs a loom stand.” Ellen was Tennys daughter and she did some wonderful weaving herself. So after Lou‘s death, we [found that] she had put little pieces of paper on all these pieces: on the rug, that I should have it, and on the loom stand, that the Tennys should have it.

Her lawyer, who was a Mr. Fowler, at the time, and some lovely people I talked to and I got some letters from the law firm after Lou’s death. They had no trouble identifying that she had thought this out in her loving way and I did get this marvelous rug which I gave to a rug cleaner and restorer, because obviously the looms sitting over it, it had absorbed quite a bit of lint and things like that. It is now in my front room and every time I see it I think about Lou Tate, always. She was really something else. I was one of the last few people to see her alive. I think she died a day or so later and on that occasion I went with Hal Tenny. Kitty was in Florida visiting her family there and again I felt I was tiring her out and she pulled me back on the bed and said, “Sit down here, young lady, and I want to talk to you.” We talked for about two hours. It was one of the most strong memories I have of Lou, also.

But a person like Lou Tate, I guess you could use that phrase, was one in a million. And she will just leave a lot of people with a heritage that will go on and on and on through her Loomhouse. I think this has already been said but there’s a Foundation for the Little Loomhouse, and I can only urge anyone to take interest in it and to come visit. We have a small membership donation that we make and I think it’s wonderful to keep her memory alive this way.

End of Side Two, Tape One