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Logan StoryCorps: Family magic

Anne Clawson Hatch and her daughter in law Rosemary Hatch at their Logan StoryCorps appointment in May 2023. Anne is wearing a blue and white paisley blouse and a long string of pearls. Her hair is white and chin length with feathered bangs. She wears wire rimmed glasses and appears to be looking off to her right, somewhat above the camera. Rosemary Hatch stands with one arm around Anne, her hand visible behind Anne's neck. Rosemary wears a blouse printed with blocks of various floral patterns, small dangly earrings, and she has shoulder length black hair parted on one side. She smiles
StoryCorps
Anne Clawson Hatch and her daughter-in-law Rosemary Hatch at their Logan StoryCorps appointment in May 2023.

Rosemary Hatch: My name is Rosemary Hatch.

Anne Hatch: My name is Anne Clawson Hatch.

Rosemary Hatch: Take it away, Anne. And tell us a little bit about your mom and your dad.

Anne Hatch: Dad was born in 1900. Mother was born seven years after Dad. He, with great difficulty, had been to dental school, graduated, and she joined him in Chicago, and they decided to make their homes back in Utah, where they both came from. And it was The Depression. And there were no places for jobs. And someone else put their arm around him and gave him a place to practice. You know, "use my chair the hours I'm not working." And slowly, he built up a practice. I guess it was really hard for them, but we never knew.

Anne Hatch: Because it was The Depression, my grandmother and grandfather came to live with us. And two uncles came to live with us. And somehow a cousin from Canada, moved down from Canada, she moved in with us. The house was bulging on Second Avenue here in Salt Lake, but we all got along well together. And Santa Claus came to everybody.

Rosemary Hatch: One of the things that's really dear to you, is your family.

Anne Hatch: Grandmother Richardson, maternal grandmother, did all kinds of sewing and you could take something to Grandma—she could cut a pattern for a dress out of the newspaper. When my mother was, like a teenager, and they needed a new dress, she'd look at her and sort of cut out the newspaper pattern and pat the newspaper pattern around her and say, "Mhm... come back in a day or two and I'll have it finished." We could take anything we wanted to her—if we needed costumes at school—"Grandma, help me."

And I had an aunt, she started to be an artist at 43. That was a little late, but we all had a picture in our house that she'd done. And some of them got put in the back bathroom. But basically she did all right. Now we've got a magician.

And I just—I lucked out. I married my husband, he could play the piano and he was really good, but he was a physicist. And after his graduation— PhD from Caltech—he got a position in Europe, but I didn't know exactly what he did. I thought he was with the agriculture. And that's all I knew about it. Turned out he was a spy. It's just— you can imagine if I'd known, how wonderful I would have thought that was. But I didn't know that. And the country was divided. And he interrogated and talked to people who could break out of East Germany and get into West Germany where they wanted to be free. Some of them, if they thought they had any information, had to be interviewed. That was an interesting job. And he just kept quiet about it. It was years, must have been 30 years later, before he broke down at a party one night, "By the way... It wasn't agriculture at all."

Rosemary Hatch: That's a long time holding the secret, huh?

Anne Hatch: Yeah. Why did you join such a crazy family? It's opposite of yours.

Rosemary Hatch: Because I fell in love with the crazy magician.

Anne Hatch: There you go!

Rosemary Hatch: Thanks for being my mother-in-law.

Anne Hatch: Thank you for being my daughter-in-law.

Mary got hooked on oral histories while visiting Ellis Island and hearing the recorded voices of immigrants that had passed through. StoryCorps drew her to UPR. After she retired from teaching at Preston High, she walked into the station and said she wanted to help. Kerry put her to work taking the best 3 minutes out of the 30 minute interviews recorded in Vernal. Passion kicked in. Mary went on to collect more and more stories and return them to the community on UPR's radio waves. Major credits to date: Utah Works, One Small Step, and the award winning documentary Ride the Rails.
Kirsten grew up listening to Utah Public Radio in Smithfield, Utah and now resides in Logan. She has three children and is currently producing Utah StoryCorps and working as the Saturday morning host on UPR. Kirsten graduated from Utah State University with a Bachelor's degree History in 2000 and dual minors in Horticulture and German. She enjoys doing voice work, reading, writing, drawing, teaching children, and dancing. Major credits include StoryCorps, Utah Works, One Small Step, and the APTRA award-winning documentary Ride the Rails.
Check out our past StoryCorps episodes.