What’s in a Biography?

The mission of the Oklahoma Oral History Research Program (OOHRP) is to record, preserve, and share the lived experiences of Oklahomans across the state through oral history interviewing. Each interview is comprised of an audio/visual recording and a transcript that are eventually published online through the Oklahoma State University (OSU) digital collections website. The transcript, as well as the biography of the interviewee included in each transcript, are reviewed by multiple editors as well as the interviewee to ensure accuracy and that the narrator’s words are respectfully represented.

While each biography is typically 1-2 paragraphs, they serve multiple goals of 1) conforming to how an interviewee would like to be represented and 2) providing sufficient context to connect their life story to the oral history project they are participating in. It does not necessarily have to consist solely of the contents of the interview itself, although for many interviewees the interview serves as the primary source about their life. One of the challenges of creating a biography based on a 90 minute interview is consolidating all of the information shared into a single paragraph. How do you decide what’s important to include, or what topics can be skipped or grouped together? That can depend on the information available to you and the parameters of your project or assignment.

Curating the Story

Don Ramsey was interviewed in 2015 as part of the Cowboys in Every County Project which highlighted OSU alumni from every county in Oklahoma. Below is a brief excerpt of Don describing his early life.

“I was born in Three Sands, Oklahoma. That’s in Noble County, up in kind of the northwest, and it was an oil field town. I was born in a tent. My family followed the oil wells, oil fields, and when they would go dry the whole town would move. There’s nothing at Three Sands now but a little sign about that tall and a little T and just says “Three Sands.” I’m not even sure it’s there now. Soon after that particular time, that field, that oil field, went dry. The custom of everybody was to load up their things on their wagons and go to where the next oil field was. My dad decided at that time—and it was getting so hard to stay up with those, they got to be little pockets of oil here and there. We’d go there and get set up, and then it’s time to move. He decided that there must be, I guess, a better life than that was, so we left Three Sands when I was very young, I think about two years old.

He started driving, didn’t know where he was going, but he was looking for a good school. I had one sister and three brothers, and of course my mother. He was looking for a good school. This is a story that has been told me. When he got down to Dale, Oklahoma, which is in Pott [Pottawatomie] County just east of here about twenty or thirty miles, he thought he found a good school. He found a little two-room renthouse, and we moved into that little two-room renthouse. I can just barely remember that house before we moved to another little two- or three-room house. Then we stayed there a little while. He was working for farmers in the area. He wanted to start farming, but he couldn’t just start off farming. He started off working, at that time, for ten cents an hour. We talked today about low salaries, and they are low, but they’ve been lower than it is now.

He worked that way. He and two of my older brothers worked that way, what work they could get, just scrounging up a little bit of this and that until then he decided to start farming, himself. Of course, farms back then were much smaller than what they are today. To kind of shorten the story, we moved to five different farms while I was in school, and I graduated at Dale in 1946. He wanted a farm, thought he could farm. We finally did get a little, I believe it was a sixty-acre farm. He thought he could make a living on it. It just never did work out, and he always thought that the next farm was going to be a better farm. Sixty, seventy, seventy-five, eighty acres, eighty acres was a big farm then. We would move from one farm to another about every two years, load up on the wagon, and move all of our stuff to the various farms in the community.

I graduated in Dale at Dale High School in 1946. My three older brothers didn’t finish high school, but my sister, which was the older of all of us, she did finish high school. She didn’t go to college. I was the only one that did go to college. We had a good family. We weren’t just rubbish, you know. We were a good family. We tried to do things decently and in order. That’s sort of the way we were brought up, and thank goodness. They’re all gone now. That’s the way it was all their life: just do things right. If you couldn’t do them right, don’t do them. We moved to those, like I said, five different places, so that’s about a move every two years, really. He always thought that that next farm was going to be better. I mean, we’d move over here, and “We’ll make so many bales of cotton, and it’ll be so much better.” It never did happen. He just wasn’t cut out to be a farmer, yet he finished his life farming. Here I was, not a real good student, probably a C or C-plus or maybe a B. When I was in the seventh grade I decided I wanted to go to college. I knew what I wanted to be. I wanted to be a…. Sorry.”

Don Ramsey was born in a tent in Three Sands, Oklahoma, on October 31, 1928. He was the youngest of five children, and his family moved frequently as his father followed work opportunities in oil fields and later in farming. They stayed in the town of Dale long enough for Don to get through school, however. As a seventh-grader, Don met his brother’s agriculture teacher and immediately knew that was the career path for him. He graduated Dale High School in 1946 with his sights set on Oklahoma A&M College, regardless of his family’s low income. In 1947, he enrolled at OAMC (now Oklahoma State University) and lived in Oretoopa Halls, washing dishes in the lunchroom to make a little money and get a free daily meal. On weekends, he hitchhiked home where he’d do his laundry, go to church with his family, and study as much as possible. He was so dedicated to his schoolwork, in fact, that in one academic school year, including summer classes and August intersession, he completed fifty-four credit hours. He graduated from OSU in 1950.

After a couple of short-term teaching jobs in Washington, Oklahoma and Alfalfa, Oklahoma and a two-year commitment to the Army during the Korean War, he landed in Jones, Oklahoma, as the agriculture teacher. When he realized his ag club needed money that the school couldn’t provide, the group sent their hogs to be butchered and made into sausage which they sold door-to-door as a fundraiser. The project was so successful that he eventually quit his teaching job and invested all his retirement money in his newly-created Blue and Gold Sausage Company. Since its start in 1972, the company has become an epic success, earning over $5 million a year in gross sales. The sausage, bacon, and chicken products are only available for a few months of the year and are only sold by schools and other groups for fundraising. Over the years, Ramsey has faithfully and lovingly donated his time and money to agriculture education, always remembering his modest upbringing. In his interview, Ramsey discusses his youth and his family’s strong and ethical will, despite their financial struggles. He recalls his determination to get into college, as well as the unexpected support he received from OSU, and he expresses his gratitude for all of those things in the shaping of his life.

Making Interpretive Decisions

Not all interviews or sources are equal in the information they provide about an individual. In the following interview excerpt featuring Popcorn the Circus Comic, who was interviewed in 2011 as part of the “Big Top” Show Goes On Project, consider the ways in which his description of his early life compares with Don Ramsey’s interview.

]

Finchum

Well, let’s start by having you tell us a little bit about your childhood, when you were born, where, and…

Popcorn

I was born at a very early age somewhere in the east, and I wanted to be a magician. I always hung out at the magic house, but then I saw you had to carry all these props. (Laughs) So then I lucked in. I used to do spook shows. Do you know what spook shows are?

Finchum

I have no idea.

Popcorn

At Halloween, when the theater would show Frankenstein and Batman—or no, who was that guy? The vampire. (Laughs)

Nykolaiszyn

Count Dracula?

Popcorn

Thank you. What was his real name?

Nykolaiszyn

Vladimir…

Popcorn

No, no, that’s the other one. That’s the updated one. (Laughs) Anyway, I started out on spook shows where the theater would bring in the horror movies in black and white, and then magicians and the hunchback and the head-chopper and all that. I started on spook shows with Phil Chandler. Number one in clowning: you need a good announcer, yes.

Finchum

And where was this?

Popcorn

Somewhere in the east. (Laughter) I played a lot of places.

Finchum

What do you consider your hometown?

Popcorn

Mead, Oklahoma.

Finchum

Okay.

Popcorn

The rest of it disappeared. I became Popcorn and if you ask anybody within six miles, they don’t know my name.

Nykolaiszyn

How did you come up with the name Popcorn?

Popcorn

I stole it. (Laughs) Yes, from a guy named Popcorn, and he was not a clown. And it’s a catchy name. They’ll always hear it, yes.

Finchum

And from the spook show, what next?

Popcorn

Shrine circuses and birthday parties and stage shows and corporate things in Jersey. I’ve had an interesting life.

Finchum

We want you to tell us about it. (Laughter)

Nykolaiszyn

What drew you to clowning? What made you want to become a clown?

Popcorn

Never, never, never. I never thought I’d end up in the business, and I spent thirty-some years there. I had a knack, that’s all I can tell you. Even Bob’s father [Harry Rawls] said, “You’ve got a knack.”

Popcorn was born ‘somewhere in the east’ and as a youngster became interested in magic which eventually lead to his career as a circus clown. Over the course of more than thirty years, Popcorn has entertained people, young and old. He recalls days of working in Clown Alley, of keeping a jar full of dimes for payphones, of occasionally ‘blowing the arrows’, and the rush he would get when the audience applauded for him.

Popcorn has traveled around the country working for various circuses and is now retired to “Cornville,” in Mead, Oklahoma.

Biography as Art

The art of writing a biography is full of creative decisions on how to interpret and consolidate a person’s life events into a concise story. What’s important to the individual may not be important to the biographer or their perceived audience. Ask yourself, “What story do you want tell about that individual,” and reflect on what choices you’re making in how you’re retelling their life. Oral history interviews enable us to listen to a person share their life story in their own words, a great gift and opportunity for biographers. But how you take their words and make them your own is a delicate and rewarding process when done well.

References

Ramsey, Don. Interview by Tanya Finchum. August 18, 2015, in Jones, Oklahoma. Oklahoma Oral History Research Program, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK. https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/ostate/id/8941/rec/54, accessed July 19, 2024.

Comic, Popcorn the. Interview by Tanya Finchum and Juliana Nykolaiszyn. July 2, 2011, in Stillwater, Oklahoma. Oklahoma Oral History Research Program, Oklahoma State University, Stillwater, OK. https://cdm17279.contentdm.oclc.org/digital/collection/circus/id/212/rec/16, accessed July 19, 2024.

This resource is no cost at https://open.library.okstate.edu/goodthingstoread/