Lucas Fritz:This is Lucas Fritz. It's September 11th, 2022. We're at the University of Idaho library in Moscow, Idaho. I'm with my father, John Fritz. John, do I have your consent today to conduct this interview?
[00:00:05]
LF:How are you doing today?
LF:Good. Alright, so, you grew up in a large Catholic family in Boise in the 1960s, right?
JF:Yes. 12 kids, parents. Went to Catholic school from 1st through 12th grade in Boise.
LF:What was that like and how do you think, if you were raised today, how do you think that would be different in that big of a family?
JF:Well, I think today it would be impossible because of the cost. In the 1950s and 60s when I was growing up, it was expensive, but it was nothing like the cost of today. It was difficult because we had, we only had twelve kids in the house for a short time before my oldest brother moved out, but we did have that many for a while and we had 10 for quite a while in the house and it was very crowded because we only had four bedrooms. My parents had one of them and so the rest of the kids split up between three bedrooms, so it was very crowded. It was hard to get away and a lot of chaos, a lot of confusion much of the time. My mother's main usage of time was to kick us out of the house and have us go outside so she could get some peace and get some work done. So, it was, it was tough.
LF:Do you remember what Boise was like in the 1960s?
JF:Yeah. Boise was a lot smaller. When we first moved to Boise when I was four, there was only 32,000 people. Now, it's, you know, close to 300,000 just in Boise and 700,000 in the Treasure Valley. So, it was very small. We could ride our bikes a mile and a half and be in the country, so it was very different. It was a small town. No traffic, really. People can leave their doors open and everybody kind of trusts each other. I spent all my time until I was a 9th grader riding my bike around. I never had to worry about getting rides or anything 'cause everything was close.
LF:You said you went to Catholic High School in elementary school in Boise. What was the culture like there?
JF:It was pretty strict Catholic in those days. Of the eight grades at Sacred Heart, six of them were taught by nuns and there were two lay teachers, two lady lay teachers. There were three or four priests always at the church, so way different than it is today. It was very strict. When I first started going to school, they had the old Latin style mass where the priest faced the altar and did not face the people, and everything was in Latin. So, that was really weird because you couldn't really understand what was going' on. Then, in 1962, they switched over to the English thing and the priest turned around and faced the crowd, faced the audience. Everything was in English, so it was easier to understand. There were a lot more Catholic kids. There were a lot more people in involved in Catholicism. It's dwindled a lot in Boise and in the country. So, going to school, we had large classes. I think my graduating class was 55 student in one room. It was, it was not good. The nuns were - I'm sure they had good intentions, but they were not very good teachers, and everything was done kind of old school. Very rogue kind of education. Basically, regurgitating what they told you and not a lot of critical thinking or analytical thinking going on. It was pretty hard to manage that many kids in a classroom, I think.
LF:In Boise, at the time {you were} growing up, were there a lot of minority groups? Was there, in a way, segregation? Were there black neighborhoods, Hispanic neighborhoods?
[00:04:37]
JF:Yes. It was a very small town and, I think, when I was in high school, it was 54,000, so it had grown about 20,000 in the ten or so years from the time we got here to the time I was in high school. There was a very small black neighborhood down in the central part of town. Very isolated. There were Latino people living out in Canyon County then, mostly because they were migrant workers or families of migrant workers who had decided to stay rather than go back to Mexico. So, there was a growing Latino population in Canyon County and a very small group of blacks who lived down in the River Street area. There were, also, Asians in Boise, but not very many. I would say, probably, 50 or less and they were congregated a little bit more north of River Street. So, the city was very segregated but the minority areas were very small. Very few people here.
LF:Growing up in the 60s and up until your time graduating high school, what were some of your favorite books, musicians, and magazines to read?
JF:Well, I have never been a great reader. I have ADD and reading has always been fairly difficult for me, the ability to retain the material that I read. So, I was never a great reader. Mostly, I read sports books and that was most of what I read. Sometimes, I would read the newspaper. Magazines, Boy's Life was one that I read. I read Sports Illustrated from the time it started. Mostly magazines and, sometimes, newspapers and, obviously, I had to read my textbooks at school. But I always had difficulty retaining the material that I read. As far as music goes, I was not really aware of music very much until I was in the sixth grade. In the sixth grade, I was 12 years old in 1966. Of course, that's when the Beatles and the Rolling Stones and the English bands had begun. In America, The Beach Boys and some of those kinds of groups had grown and I started listening to that type of music in 1966 pretty seriously and have loved that kind of music ever since.
LF:What about high school? What were some of your favorite musicians in high school?
JF:In high school, it kind of changed because in the mid-sixties and up to about '68 when I was an eighth grader, the music was kind of simple and light and happy-go-lucky kind of music. In '68, it seems like, maybe even a little before that, the music started turning pretty heavy with a lot more heavy guitar music. Organ, drums, just a lot more complicated and more heavy music. So, bands like Led Zeppelin, The Who, The Band. Groups like that kind of changed everything. So, in the late 60s and early 70s, the music was more psychedelic and a lot heavier. There was still pop but I didn't listen to that.
LF:In Boise, during the 1960s, do you remember any reactions in the town to some of the big social, political, pop culture moments that were going on at that time?
JF:Well, the biggest one, probably, was the Boys of Boise scandal that happened in the 60s. That was where there were a number of gay men in Boise that were living in the closet. You know, they could not say how they were because they would be arrested. It was against the law. And so, the Boys of Boise scandal was one in which some of the male homosexuals in Boise got caught in bathrooms in the different parks of the city and it became a big deal. A book was written about it, and I think, maybe, even a movie was done. So, that was a big thing of the time. The issues like the Vietnam War and racism and social justice and all that kind of thing did not really hit Boise as much because of its conservative nature and it's kind of out-of-the-way situation. By the time the Vietnam War became an issue here, it was really late. It was probably in the late 60s and in the 70s. So, we got involved with it just at the tail end of the war. In the early 60s and mid 60s when the war was really ramping up and becoming controversial, that was happening in the cities but not in Boise. Plus, the conservative nature of it made it so the city fathers, the people that ran the city did not want to deal with the Vietnam War. They did not want to deal with controversies like racial justice, social justice, any of that kind of stuff. They just wanted to, you know, have their peaceful conservative situation. And that's stayed the same ever since.
LF:When you were in high school and even after high school, in college, do you remember any student groups that were around, especially at BK (Bishop Kelly High School)?
[00:10:30]
JF:Yeah. We had a group called the Yacht Club that were all the guys that were not jocks, not athletic. Well, we were athletic, but we were not jock kind of people. We did stuff like environmental kind of things after Arbor Day happened in 1971. So, we were a radical group of guys that got high and did environmental justice kind of things and were kind of rebels to the whole situation -- the school we were in, the society that we were in.
LF:You mention getting high. What was the culture around weed, especially, and drugs in general at Boise at the time?
JF:Well, Boise, again, was late to the drug situation. Throughout the fifties and the early sixties, drinking was the big deal. Everybody that was in high school drank and it was a very strange situation. I remember in junior high and high school; you'd go to football games and there'd be fights out in the parking lot and guys drinking all the time. The big thing was drinking and driving around town. A lot of fighting. Nampa High School, especially, everywhere they went, they'd empty their stands, go out into the parking lot, and get in fights with people. The high school thing was drinking and that lasted all the way up until the seventies. The last year where drinkers were the majority was 1970. After that year, pot and drugs became the majority. By the time I graduated from high school in 1972, probably 80% of the students in Boise were getting high, using drugs. And, of course, alcohol was always there, too. The drug thing, probably, started coming into Boise in 1969. After 1970 was when it really ramped up and became the big deal.
LF:Was there a big push back from people at BK, specifically, and in Boise to that kind of culture?
JF:Well, I think, eventually, there was. But, early on, the people were oblivious -- the administration at Bishop Kelly, the teachers, and just the people in Boise, even the police, really had no idea what was going on with drugs. The cops went and got educated and learned pretty quickly what was going on but the people at Bishop Kelly did not ever really get it, what was going on. Kids would go out at lunchtime in the back of the school and get high and a lot of kids came to school on drugs, you know. The teachers and the administration had no idea what was going on. There was one priest, Father Dodson, who had moved to Bishop Kelly from California, where he had been exposed to a lot of drug use and that kind of thing, so he understood what was going on and he could relate to it. But he was, really, the only one in the whole school that knew what was going on.
LF:In your family, growing up in the sixties, obviously, [there was] so much going on in the country. Did you talk a lot with your parents, siblings, and, even, extended family about social and political issues going on?
[00:14:13]
JF:I really didn't become aware of any of the social issues, again, until I was in sixth grade or seventh grade. Then, we started talking about it a little bit. My parents were not really interested in it. They had so much to deal with in just trying to do the day-to-day living and raising all of these kids and taking care of them. My dad was not interested in that kind of stuff at all. He was interested in sports and in his work, and that was, basically, it. My mom, you know, she was overwhelmed, basically, with childcare, taking care of kids. So, we could talk about it for, you know, a few minutes at a time but it was not anything that was big in her life. She would listen and she would ask questions. The only thing that she was aware of was what she saw on the news because she did not really have time to read or get involved in any of that kind of stuff. Basically, her life was raising kids and that took all of her time. So, in our family, we talked, mostly, about sports -- the guys. The girls, I'm not really sure. I can't remember exactly if we ever talked about social issues. I think we sometimes talked about gender issues, but not very much. And, you know, in Boise, the people were not very aware of what was going on in the country. Most of what the adults thought of what was going on in the country scared them and shocked them and made them angry because they didn't want protestors against the war. They did not want social justice issues. The Freedom Riders, and that kind of thing, they didn't want any part of that.
LF:You brought up that your mom would really just focus on what she heard in the news. For you and for your family, how did you get your news growing up in the sixties and into high school and college?
JF:Well, obviously, back then there was no cable TV. There was no internet. There was none of that kind of stuff. There was, basically, three stations: ABC, NBC, and CBS. They were all, you know, the good old white boys of that generation. They would do the news and much of the news was just covered over. They did not really report what was really going on in Vietnam. They did not really report much about social issues. They just reported about the stuff that sounded good about America. You know, it took years later before we really found out what was going on with these things behind the scenes, such as the CIA operations, the stuff the Presidents had done without anybody knowing. All that kind of stuff came out later. So, during the sixties, people thought of America as this great country that did everything right and [there were] no problems at all. Of course, that ended pretty radically starting in 1968 with the Democratic National Convention and just all the stuff that was going on with racial problems and, of course, when the Vietnam War protest got violent and serious, of course, the nation had to change.
LF:Speaking of the '68 DNC Convention, do you remember -- you can speak on that, too -- or any other specific events or moments that you remember.
JF:Yeah, there were times in Boise when there were small groups of people that would go protest against the war starting in '68, when I was fourteen, when I was an eighth grader. I used to go down and watch them, me and my friends would go down and watch some of them sometimes. The hippies were starting to happen in Boise in '68. You could go down to the park and you could see the hippies down there and they would be smoking pot and playing music sometimes, drumming, and just hanging out. And then, you know, you would see some of these high school or college redneck guys come into the park and run them out. They would tell them they were gonna kick their ass or leave the park. One of the big things in Boise at the time was running the hippies out of the park. So, then, when these protests would happen down at the Capitol Building or different places, it would, normally, be the same kind of people, you know. The socially aware people, the hippies, they would be the ones protesting and, all of a sudden, you would see the cops or these redneck vigilantes, I guess you would call them, they'd come, and they'd run these people off. [They would] Either tell them to get out or they'd beat them up. Of course, these guys were not tough, so they were not going to fight these guys, so they would leave. That happened fairly regularly.
LF:Obviously, one of the biggest moments of the sixties was the JFK assassination. Do you remember where you were when that happened and anything surrounding there in the following days and weeks?
[00:19:58]
JF:Yeah, it was very traumatic. I remember exactly, I can see it in my mind's eye, sitting in my desk in the fourth grade at Sacred Heart. Mrs. Fitting was the teacher. We were just having our regular day and, all of a sudden, someone knocked on the door and she went to the door. She came back and she was just crying, crying uncontrollably. She was, you know, just sobbing. We were all pretty weirded out by that and she just said the President had been shot and killed. Kids in my class cried and I didn't really know what to think. I didn't cry but I was shocked. But Mrs. Fitting, for at least the next hour, was just beside herself. She could not control it; she could not control the class. It was just a mess. And of course, being a Catholic school and John Kennedy was a Catholic president, it hit us pretty hard. We, after about an hour or two that day, I remember, we all got called into the gym and the priest, Father Hallisey, talked about what had just happened. Kids were crying and teachers were crying, and it was a horrible day for us and for our country. It was shocking and it lasted for quite a while, actually, around. a lot more than today. Things don't last very long when anything happens, but I would say that for - it happened in November, and I would say, for at least two months or more, it was in our minds and the topic came up quite a lot. It was a major shock.
LF:What were your opinions on specific Presidents at the time? I would say JFK, LBJ, and then Nixon.
JF:Well, you know, when I was young and Kennedy was in office and then the start of LBJ, you know, we were just not very aware. They were the President, they were great -- all that kind of thing. So, I didn't really have any thoughts one way or another. But then, I got into junior high, seventh grade, especially. Some of the stuff started coming about some of the dubious things that Eisenhower did and that Kennedy did and then LBJ. Just a few things, nothing like what we know now. Those things came out and it'd sort of change your mind a little bit that these guys were not saints, these guys were human beings. In some cases, they were doing things that were absolutely wrong, especially the stuff that the CIA got into doing in Central and South America and other places around the world. So, by the time I was in junior and, certainly, by the time I was in high school, by high school I was very disillusioned about this country and about what we had been doing in the world for many, many years. Especially, ever since World War II, about how we thought we were the next empire and we started doing all kinds of undercover things around the world. So, by the time I was in high school, I was very disillusioned with this country. And then, Nixon comes along in 1968 and just pretty much destroyed all of our thoughts about our democracy, about anybody being honest in this country.
LF:What were the opinions of you, your family, and people around Boise about some of the activists at the time, like Martin Luther King or Malcolm X?
[00:24:02]
JF:Yeah, and you could put Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman, those guys in there with that group. We were divided. When I was in high school, my oldest brother and sister, they had not been a part of this, I would call the hippie generation that came in. So, they didn't do drugs at all, and they stayed pretty straight and, kind of, behind the government. Kind of with the same thoughts as my parents who were that way, too. They were kind of like the Silent Majority that Nixon talked about, people that believed the lies. But everybody under that, from my brother, Dennis, down, we all believed differently. We all believed, you know, that a lot of the government was crooked, that America was not what it was thought to be. It had a much more subtle and complicated history and present. We were part of the group that kind of challenged everything and rebelled against everything that the administration represented.
LF:You talked earlier that you, sometimes, talked to your siblings about gender issues. What was the way of thinking in Boise at the time in terms of gender roles and response to the Women's Liberation Movement -- people like Betty Friedan?
JF:It was a big deal in the sixties and early seventies. You know, coming up, growing up, until about junior high, we all had the same thoughts, and they were horrible. They were the typical male-thinking of, you know, men were better than women, women had their place, which was in the home, doing chores and not being heard from, and that kind of thing. Well, that all started changing, obviously, in the sixties. Of course, my parents didn't believe in it. My mother didn't even believe in it, you know, because she was this traditional Catholic woman. They believed what the church said, which was the woman's place was in the home. Basically, the women were second [class] citizens, they were not equal. That same thinking persists today in many circles. Starting in junior high, we rejected that, totally, I had six sisters, and my sisters were not going to take that crap at all. They were not going to be second [class] citizens. So, you know, we came around to it quickly.
I could never really understand, after I never really became aware of the situation in junior high, I could never understand why people thought that way. I still don't understand it, why men would think that they're better than women. The evidence, I think, points the other way. I think women are better than men. If anything, because they have much more social intelligence than men. But, anyway, besides the point, they should, at least, be equal. The Equal Rights Amendment came in in 1972 and it was great because, all of a sudden, girls could play sports like boys could and it was wonderful to see. But it, still, has been a horrible development as we've gone along. It's still not equal, it's still not the way it should be, and I wish it was different.
LF:After you graduated from BK in '72, what did you do after that?
JF:Well, unfortunately, I was a victim of stupid thinking, basically. When I was sixteen and we were getting all this stuff about the war, racism, and social justice and everything, a number of us that kind of hung out together and stuff, we just, basically, said that this was not worth it. Living this traditional way of the American [life] was not worth it and we, basically, rejected it. So, when I graduated high school, I was planning on not going to college. I was just going to try and have as much fun as I could and enjoy life as much as I could and not become part of the system or the society. I was going to, basically, drop out. One of the big gurus of the time was a guy by the name of Timothy Leary, who was a professor of Harvard, was one of the early developers and testers of LSD. And his thing was tune in, turn off, and drop out - something like that. I can't remember exactly. I took that to heart, and it really was one of the worst things I ever did, was come up with that because I decided not to be part of the world when I graduated from high school. I was going to not follow the traditional path.
So, I was not going to go to [college], I was just going to go out and have fun, but I ended up getting a scholarship and some help from BSU to play basketball and for a science scholarship. So, I ended up going to school and played basketball for the first year. And then, I left BSU and traveled around for a while, for about a year. And then, I decided to go back to school at {The University of} Idaho. [I] Went up there and kind of just continued my education. I ended up with a Communications Bachelor's Degree because I thought about going into public relations. I worked at BSU, in BSU's Athletic Department, doing public relations, and then I went to grad school in Moscow and got a Sports Science degree. I've been in education some, and then dropped out of teaching and did landscaping for the last twenty years, twenty-five years of my life, up until now.
LF:When you were growing up, it sounds to me like there was, in elementary school and junior high, you had one way of thinking and, later on, a little bit different. In both of those ways of thinking, what did you think the future would be like at that point?
[00:30:59]
JF:Well, I didn't really think much about the future when I was young. You know, when you're a kid, you just, basically, live day to day and, for me, it was sport to sport. I played sports every season, you know, from the time I was {in} first grade until I graduated high school. For me, it really changed in the sixth grade. That was when it really changed because in the sixth grade, I had a tremendous year athletically. We won the football championship, we won the city basketball championship, and we won the baseball championship. All three that year. But, in the summer of that year, after we'd won that baseball thing, that's when I really became aware of my father's alcoholism and depression and the problems that he and my mom were having with their marriage. And kind of just becoming more aware of the way the world was, that it wasn't safe, that there was all this trouble going on in the world. So, my thinking really changed starting in junior high more to not focusing on sports so much, more on having fun and social relationships. Also, rebelling against authority. That's when that really started happening and that happened all through high school and got more and more strong in my thinking. So, by the time I was sixteen, you know, my thinking had just changed completely, as far as my attitude on the world and on society and the government and all that stuff.
LF:Well, thank you for doing this today. I really appreciate it. It was great to hear your story.