Interview
My [interviewer Dale Treleven] attention was directed to Miss Sullivan, the first dairy home economist employed on a regular basis in the state of Wisconsin, by Edward Steusser, executive secretary of the Milwaukee Cooperative Milk Producers. His information on Miss Sullivan came a time when a colleague at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and I were examining and selecting for preservation MCMP's noncurrent records as well as the records of the Dairy Council of Milwaukee.
I arranged to meet with Miss Sullivan at her Juneau Village apartment for a pre-interview session in February 1977, followed up by a letter suggesting areas/questions that we might discuss. The tape-recorded interview, held in her apartment on May 11, 1977, lasted from 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., broken only by a half-hour snack in early afternoon. Miss Sullivan's recollections provide a close look at an aspect of the agricultural economy that seems far removed from a dairy barn. Nonetheless, some three thousand farmer-members of the Milwaukee Cooperative Milk Producers joined with private milk dealers and corporations in 1945 to form an organization designed to promote optimum health and well-being through the adequate daily use of milk and its products, and hired Miss Sullivan to develop an educational program. The Dairy Council of Milwaukee, an affiliate of the Chicago-based National Dairy Council, became a highly respected source of nutritional information in the Milwaukee metropolitan area. Miss Sullivan provides detailed information on launching and refining the program of the Milwaukee council, comments on her staunchest supporters, talks about groups that were particularly interested in and responsive to council information, recalls meetings with farmers and their wives to explain how their money, withheld from processors' milk checks to help support the organization, was spent, and explains how the council carried its message by new or improved media as they were developed. She is frank in assessing both the strengths and weaknesses of council programs in Milwaukee metropolitan area during each of the periods (1945-1952; 1964-1971) she served as executive director.
Abstract to the Interview
The tapes for this interview have two tracks: a voice track containing the discussion and a time track containing time announcements at intervals of approximately five seconds. The abstract lists, in order of discussion, the topics covered on each tape, and indicates the time-marking at which point the beginning of the particular discussion appears.
Thus, the researcher by using a tape recorder's fast-forward button may find expeditiously and listen to discrete segments without listening to all of the taped discussion. For instance, the user who wishes to listen to the topic on “Peoples' Hospital in Akron” should locate the place on the second track of tape one, side one, where the voice announces the 09:25 time-marking (the voice says at this point, “nine minutes, twenty-five seconds”), and at this point switch to the first track to hear the discussion. The discussion on “Peoples' Hospital in Akron” continues until approximately 11:00 at which point discussion of the next topic (“Work with Columbus Milk Council and at Goodyear Tire and Rubber Company”) begins.
Notice that in most cases sentences beneath each headline explain more about the contents of the topic. For example the sentences underneath “Peoples' Hospital in Akron” give further details on what appears on the tape between 09:25 and 11:00.
The abstract is designed to provide only a brief outline of the content of the tapes and cannot serve as a substitute for listening to them. However the abstract when used with the index will help the researcher easily locate distinct topics and discussions among the many minutes of commentary.
Index to the Interview
The index, which is keyed to the same time announcement track (second track) as the abstract, gives a single alphabetical listing of proper nouns and historical phenomena which appear in the abstract. Each entry is followed by one or more three-part citations specifying the location(s) where the entry appears. For instance, Emmer Brothers Dairy is followed by the entries 1:2, 25:45 and 2:1, 00:30.
These indicate that references to the Emmer Brothers Dairy appear on Tape 1, Side 2 within the time-marking beginning at twenty-five minutes, forty-five seconds and on Tape 2, Side 1 within the time-marking beginning at thirty seconds of the time announcement.
