Dr. Lewis Walker Interview One

Katherine: Okay, well thank you so much. First of all, we just want to thank you again for being a part of the Engaging the Wisdom Oral History Project and for your time and participation; we really appreciate it. Thanks for being here, and just to start, could you tell us your name and your current address?

Dr. Lewis Walker: My name is Lewis Walker, L-e-w-i-s Walker, and my address is 3080 South 6th Street Kalamazoo Michigan, 49009.

KR: Perfect. Thank you. So, to begin, can you tell me a little bit about your early family life?

LW: My early family life started in 1936, when I was born of course, but I was 00:01:00born outside of Selma, Alabama. Deep South. And I often tell people that I was born in the middle of a cotton field in a tin-roof house. And from there my mom and her husband, my stepfather, moved to Selma. And Selma, of course, is the place where the famous March -there's the movie, recent movie, I went to see the other night on Selma. So I was in Selma up until I was 13 years of age, went to elementary school, started high-school there. Then, I went to live with my father, who was married to his wife, Lucille Walker, in Birmingham, Alabama. So I went there and went to Fairfield Industrial High School, the school that 00:02:00Willie Mays finished, the famous baseball player. As a matter of fact, I have a scar on my chest from Willie Mays on a pickup basketball game - years ago, of course.

So I finished high school in Birmingham- Fairfield, Alabama. It's a suburb of Birmingham. And at the time I played football, basketball, was a starting guard for four years in high-school. And I was also fortunate to have a decent GPA in high school and I got a fellowship to Wilberforce University. As I recall, I was the valedictorian of my class, which surprised me, but anyway I went off--left Alabama and went off to Wilberforce University in Ohio.

But my, talking about my early childhood, growing up in the South. It was the period of Jim Crowism. That was rigid segregation and where we as quote, unquote black people or Negroes, at the time, we were called. There was a place; we had to stay in our place. And growing up in the South, especially in Selma, things simply didn't make sense to me. The treatment of us, as black people. And I experienced, at least witnessed, other horrible events. I actually saw a young black man, when I was a kid, hanging from a tree outside of Selma. And it was a 00:04:00time when we could not drink from the fountain that was marked "white." There was always a "colored" sign. And I remember going downtown to try on shoes or clothes like that, and often we were denied putting our feet into shoes if we were not going to buy them. The same thing with hats and caps. So growing up, I grew up in a situation, a situation that were most inhumane in many instances.

So my childhood was one where I never accepted the fact that black people or Negroes or African-Americans were inferior to anyone. I say that because I felt 00:05:00very fortunate to get a scholarship to go off to Wilberforce to further my education. And while there I was fortunate enough to get a William Greene Memorial Grant to go off to the Ohio State University to study economics, which I did for a year. And after that year, I was asked to come into the sociology department to work on a juvenile delinquency project. But my point is that at Wilberforce I was blessed to have good mentors, good professors. It was a small, tiny African-American university down in Ohio.

But I got a good education there, enough so that I went off to Ohio State and 00:06:00there are many blessings there--so much so that I was able to stay there long enough to get to my doctorate in 1964. So I guess I just moved away from my early childhood, of growing up in the South, to coming North.

KR: Yeah, I think we could bring it back. I heard you say that you had some mentors at Wilberforce that inspired you and kind of helped you shape where you were going to go. Did you have earlier mentors in your younger years that helped you kind of think about where you wanted to go with your future?

LW: I would say yes. And the one mentor was my father, who instilled in me a 00:07:00sense of internal dignity while accept -, - there was an acceptance of the Jim Crow laws in the South. -instilled in me that you get an education because no one can take that away from you. I believe that. And I know that today that is the truth of that situation. So in high school I had some awesome mentors at Fairfield Industrial High School who pushed us. My mentors, now, I said "push me," but I said us, because it was not just me but other African American kids there. Pushed us to become the best that we can become. At Wilberforce, two 00:08:00people come to mind at this moment who were really instrumental in my development. And one was Milton S. J. Wright, who got his PhD in Germany at the time Hitler was the ruler of that country. And he was the first, according to records, the first black man to ever have had dinner with Hitler. And it was at a time when you would walk down, Dr. Wright would walk down the street, and little German kids would run behind him to see if he had a tail. And it was the German that went, that, the Olympics with Jesse Owens upset Hitler to no end because he was such an outstanding athlete. But Milton S. J. Wright became my 00:09:00godfather while I was at Wilberforce University and he was a consultant to several presidents while he was doing his tenure at Wilberforce. Maxwell Al Brooks is another one who was my sociology professor who just nailed me, nailed me, nailed me to be the best I could be. So much so that he said, "I'm gonna risk. I'm gonna put you in the classroom to let you know that you can be a great teacher." So during my senior year I became a student professor at Wilberforce University at his insistence. So yeah, I've had some great mentors.

KR: So do you remember, as a young child, when did you have certain dreams or 00:10:00aspirations that you were thinking about pursuing from an early age?

LW: To tell the truth, no. [phone rings]

KR: I hope that wasn't too important.

LW: You can edit this out, can't you?

KR: [laughs] Yeah, we'll work around it.

LW: To tell the truth, no. I didn't have any particular dream or aspiration other than the fact that I fell in love with learning at, as a child. Going back to Selma, I remember my mom would turn the lights off early. In the wintertime, 00:11:00it's dark, so 7 or 8 o' clock, 9 o' clock the lights would go off. And I recall saving my pennies so I could buy a flashlight so when she turned the light off, few minutes later I would get my flashlight and I would, could continue to read.

KR: Wow, nice. So you've talked about having kind of a sense of pride instilled in you from your father and being confused as a young child, the differences in the way you were treated. Do you remember a specific instance when you were first aware of your race?

LW: Very early on, you know? The differences between "black and white people" was so apparent you couldn't escape that, like I said, we were taught at a very 00:12:00early age there's a place. There are things you don't do. Places you don't go. So I can't remember having to, having to have had any particular incident to tell me that there were these differences. It, just part of the system of Jim Crowism that you knew and you were taught. Otherwise if you didn't comply to the Jim Crow laws, awful things would happen to you. And, a lot of things going through my mind as I talk here. Like Emmett Till, a fifteen-year-old boy from Chicago down in Mississippi, who allegedly whistled at a white woman, and his 00:13:00horrible death. And as I did mention to you early on, I, actually as a small child walking, I saw a young black man hanging from a tree. After a while you just, as in growing up in the South, you just knew these things. They were part of being, things that you don't do and some of the things that you can do, you see? But inci-I had many, numerous inci- the events--incidents that happened to me that let me know that I was out of place. And I'll give you one: In growing up in Birmingham, my father was one, well say that he was an entrepreneur, but he dealt in new and used cars. So he plugged, he was well-plugged into the 00:14:00used-car system, car lots in Birmingham. So much so, he got me a job, during the summer to detail cars and I was paid, let's say $15 for detailing a car. That is you washed it in, and you did the mats and you colored things and on and on and on. At this particular car lot that he got me a job at this summer, I worked and the guy, the owner, was very pleased with my work. And so I would fix sandwiches to take to work, and this particular day I had my little brown bag with sandwiches in it and I'd placed it in the refrigerator. And I ate my lunch at lunchtime and I finished my work and went home. And the next morning I came to 00:15:00work with my little bag, he called me into the office and said, "Lew, Lewis, I'm sorry but I have to let you go." "Why?" I said.

He said, "I like your work. You're doing fine. I like your dad, Joe, but I have to let you go because the three white salesmen said, "No (used the N-word) "can place his lunch bag in the refrigerator that also had the lunches of white folk." So I was fired. I was, I didn't stay in my place, so to speak. So things like that, everyday occurrences.

KR: Do you remember having a conversation with your dad about that at all after it happened?

LW: Oh yeah, he was furious, he was furious. He said, "They should have told you not to place your lunch in there and not fire you." But he went back and he 00:16:00talked to the owner of the small car lot and he said to my father, "Joe, my white salespeople said that if I didn't fire him that they would quit."

That mentality, I call it the "rightness of whiteness." They were right. I was wrong. They were white. I'm black. Yeah.

KR: And how old were you when you worked at that?

LW: Oh, I was 15 years old then because it was the summer, summer job, at the high school.

KR: Wow, thank you for sharing that. So you've talked a little bit about your father. What, are there any specific memories that you have of your mom that 00:17:00you'd like to share?

LW: Of my mother?

KR: Mm-hmm.

LW: Yeah, I do. I might add that my mom passed two years ago - March, 2014, I mean 2012. And she lived with me, with us, up until her death. My wife died ten years ago, so mom stayed on with me. She was with us for about 20, about 22 years after she retired. As she retired in the South, she was a professional cook in Selma. And her husband, my stepfather, had passed in 1976. But my mom was one who was very much a family person. She's at, what is, siblings that were 00:18:00twelve of them spread throughout the South in particular, but some went as far away as Detroit and New York. But she was a strong person who believed that family members should stick together and help one another. Simply because mom didn't make very much money as a professional cook in the South, but what she had she shared with the sisters and brothers and especially their children. She's a very kind woman and one whom I miss so very much because she loved me so dearly. But she was a kind woman, very kind, very generous. And while she was, 00:19:00she too was a victim of racism and the Jim Crow of the South, she always stayed above it. She didn't let, and like most black people in the South, they were not beaten down by, and I mentioned earlier something about outward acceptance but internal dignity, mmm? We knew that we had to comply. We had no choice but to accept, hence later on, the Civil Rights Movement, but to accept the horrible conditions and the treatment of us as the black, as the black group, as the 00:20:00black people. But that acceptance out there, outward acceptance, did not prevent us from having a sense of internal dignity as a human being. That to me was so important. My mom exemplified that.

KR: So I was going to ask about family values that you, that you felt growing up - so dignity and family relying on each other. Were there any other specific values that your family specifically kind of taught you or encouraged?

LW: The one was, I had numerous but, to value an education, to value a sense of integrity. But also to value a sense of courage, though there's fear - meaning 00:21:00that one can be courageous with fear because courage is not the absence of fear. One would be stupid. One would say, to say, "I don't fear a system that will kill me." But you have to be courageous to tackle that fear, I mean that system. I'm moving on in my mind, at least, to the Civil Rights Movement that I hel -, that I also participated in years later. But doesn't mean I was not afraid in going through places like Mississippi, marching with Dr. King, you know, in the 60s. You had people with guns, tear gas, and the ability to kill you with 00:22:00impunity. Yeah, we were afraid.

KR: Do you have any stories you'd like to share about feeling that kind of immediate danger and maybe in one of those marches?

LW: Mmm. Give you a, I was at Western, and so what happened, James Meredith had been shot. He was alone, walking by himself, going into Jackson, Mississippi on what he called "a march against fear," talking about voting rights, civil rights, and things like that. But he was shot. And so King and other rights groups decided to pick up and complete that march. So I was here at Western. 00:23:00James Horn was the director of Douglass Community Association on the north side. My colleague, Dr. Chester Hunt and the wife of the econ depart, economic department, Dottie Bowers. The four of us flew down to Jackson, Mississippi and we rented a car, a white car. I'm saying that deliberately, a white car, and we drove out to join the marchers of, to find the marchers so we could join the march into Jackson that went on for over a week or more. But anyways, we drove out and, to the area and we said, "well we perhaps could get some information if we find a black church," which we did. It was the summer and hot, and so we 00:24:00drove in and here's a, one guy sitting on the tree. And he got up and came to the car, and we said, told him who we were and what we were about and he had looked - Dottie Bowers, a white woman, Chet Hunt, a white man, Lou Walker, black man, Jim Horn, a black man and a white car. I'm making a point here. And he looked, this gentlemen, black gentlemen, looked at the car and said, "You want to do what?"

"We want to join the march. We came to join the march."

He said, "Black folks in a car with a white woman, in a white car? They're gonna kill you." Well, I'm sitting there, because we already have some concern about our safety. But now he's saying, given the composition of my group and then the 00:25:00white car, you guys were, they're gonna kill you.

But I remember saying to this, to the man that, "This is why we're here, to show that we're not afraid in our efforts to dismantle Jim Crowism." In essence that's what I said to him. At the same time, that is, we know that our lives were in danger at all times, that they could have been snuffed out at any time. Mm-hmm.

KR: Was that man able to direct you to the March?

LW: He did.

KR: Did you make it?

LW: The march, marchers were not too far outside of Camden, Mississippi. So we went and found them and we joined the March. But, as I talk, one incident comes 00:26:00to mind. And I wish I could remember his name, but it has - McGraw! McGraw Hill, a white reporter from New York. We had marched into the small city, and there was the huge tent where we're going to have our meeting that night. And as we drove down into town there were the huge sheriffs or police officers lounging on cars with their guns. That's intimidating in itself. We started the meeting about 7 o' clock that night and King and other people, and we're talking about the issues of the day, when suddenly, the tent filled with teargas. We got to 00:27:00get out of there, but now are we gonna encounter bullets as we rushed out of the tent? Fortunately, that was not the case, but here tear-gas by some of the people lounging out there with their guns - talking about law-enforcement officers. You had to be afraid for your life. I'm saying this so much so, that I'm driving now, when we got to the cars, to our car, in jumped McGraw Hill, the white reporter. Didn't know him, but he jumped in our car, and we went to our hotel. He stayed. He slept on the floor that night because of fear, real. You'd 00:28:00be stupid to not, I would say to myself, "One would be stupid not to be afraid of those people in that system."

KR: Absolutely. Thank you.

LW: There's a bit of humor that also occurred at that time. We had marched into Jackson Mississippi, you know. We're pleased, we are, that we showed them that we were not - courage, and that courage is not the absence of fear - that we had marched into Jackson, Mississippi to show them, no, and to make the speeches and honor Stokely Carmichael. Uh maybe not making much sense to you, but I might mention that Stokely Carmichael was one who stood on the bed of a flatbed truck and shouted to the crowd: "what do we need?" There was silence. He said, 00:29:00"We need black power!" It was there that black power was born, on that march in Mississippi. But I was going to share something that was a tad humorous. We had gone in and we had finished the March. You know we, we're pleased, now let's go home. Let's go back to Kalamazoo. I'm driving, Chet Hunt, the white colleague, Dottie Bowers is to my right, seated right behind me, Jim Horn, to my right in the back seat. And we are headed to the airport. And what came behind us was a truck. Two white guys with their guns on the racks in the truck and they came very close behind us because they saw Dottie Bowers and Jim Horn. And 00:30:00Dottie Bowers turned around and gave the finger to the guys in the truck. I am now saying to her, "Stop that. Don't you know we're getting out of here with our lives, but now you're putting our lives back in jeopardy?" And they really bumped and I was fortunate that we went and I was able to turn off onto the expressway and they went. I said, "Dottie, why'd you do that?" I was really upset with her. But again, she did not have the experience that we have had. We would not, Jim Horn and myself, would not have dared to pull that stunt or put that gesture out there. Mm-mm.

KR: Were you, did you feel like you were able to explain yourself to her, and 00:31:00how did that conversation go, with you so frustrated?

LW: I said to my colleague, Chuck, said, "When we get back we're going to have to take, commit her for psychiatric, for psychiatric examination." He said, "She's already proven that she's crazy." No, she just felt that because they had bumped the car, that they deserved that type of gesture. She had never lived South. Always lived North.

KR: Thanks for sharing that story. Were there any family stories that were passed down to you when you were a child that you remember?

LW: Like what?

KR: Anything maybe related to a struggle. Were your parents from the South? Did 00:32:00they grow up and maybe anything related to their lives that you heard over and over, things that were repeated to you?

LW: None that would stand out at the moment. Some of the stories that come to mind would deal with the hypocrisy of Jim Crowism. That on the one hand we were told that we were inferior, but at the same time, as John Howard Griffin would 00:33:00say, the white man became most democratic at night because he would come and sleep with our black women. That became painfully close to my family because my great grandfather is a white man. My cousins -- I have two cousins. One recently passed three years ago, and his sister, Melaine. Ted and Melaine are the offspring of a Mister, a plantation owner by the name of Gilley. He had the store and the whole business. But my great aunt was the mother of those two 00:34:00children- widely known, including known by the wife of the white man. Now these are the kinds of things that were often discussed. Because here comes Ted, here comes Melaine, and here's the mother and there's the dad. And we would go in and out of the store and on and on and on. How were we treated? We talked about the hypocrisy of that system, Jim Crow system.

KR: So did those cousins grow up in the same area that you grew up in?

LW: Yes. We were right there together

KR: Did you go to elementary school together?

LW: [coughs] Excuse me, excuse me. No, because I was in Selma. They were 00:35:00elsewhere, so we'd not go to the same school, but we grew up together.

KR: And what do you remember about your elementary school? Was it segregated or integrated?

LW: I was in the South and unfortunately you're so young, but fortunately you're so young, you don't have a real sense of when I talk about Jim Crowism. Jim Crowism is a pattern of legal segregation where there are laws that said, that state that you must live in, you cannot be a part of. So when you said: "Was the school segregated?" All schools in the South were segregated, and they were 00:36:00segregated until the US Supreme Court of 1955, which ruled that the so-called separate but equal schools were not equal, hence they should be desegregated. We talk about desegregation. So, yeah, all schools were segregated.

KR: Let's see. Moving on, maybe away from your younger years, what was the transition like for you, moving from the South, from this Jim Crow segregation to Ohio to attend school as an adolescent? As a young adult?

LW: I was 18.

KR: 18.

LW: 18 years of age when I came North, so to speak. You're saying what was it like?

KR: The transition.

LW: You know it wasn't that much of a transition for me because I went to an all-black school - elementary, high school, Wilberforce, all-black. So I went from a black educational setting to a black educational setting. But this time the setting is in the North, where at least the treatment of, the interaction between black and white people are supposed to be different. And in a measure, they were. So there wasn't much of a transition for me. What stood out for me, 00:38:00in the transition, was that often there was not much of a difference in the attitude of white people toward black people in the North.

KR: Had you expected a difference?

LW: Yes. Absolutely. But Wilberforce is maybe seven miles from a small town called Xenia, which was predominantly white. And I would, and looking back at it, while you can go to the store, you could go to a movie, I would sit in the balcony as in the South. There was a different feeling about going into stores, 00:39:00going into the movie houses as opposed to in the South, which was welcomed.

KR: You were welcomed?

LW: I welcomed those differences.

KR: Can you think of any specific, any examples or stories of feeling that difference and feeling like, "Oh, I'm definitely in a new place in a different culture?"

LW: In a different social milieu. Yes. I'm going to go back 50 years ago, lady. Jefferson, we stop and I think. I'm sure that that was the greatest sense of 00:40:00freedom, especially of movement and of interaction with and anticipation of how I would be received by -

KR: Are there any, generally any experiences or events that you remember as important in your undergraduate career? As a student?

LW: Important?

KR: You talked a little about your mentors. Other groups you were a part of or classes that you took that you remember as specifically influential and --

LW: I understand. I think the, for the most part, the, most of the classes were 00:41:00instrumental in the development of us as students, because most of us came from a background of unmet needs. I mean our high schools, our family lives, poverty, on and on and on. So I'm thinking that, not I'm thinking, I just know that the professors at Wilberforce knew us quite intimately, because often our classrooms would have maybe 10, 12 students. And they got to know us very well and our 00:42:00strengths and weaknesses. And it's not, it would be not uncommon for a professor to say, "Well, Mr. Walker, I saw you out on the stoops at Shorter Hall and you were there for more than two hours. Why were you not studying your economics?" They became surrogate parents to us, which is a good thing, a very good thing. Because they want to eliminate or to meet some of our unmet needs, educational needs, you know?

Dr. Julius Wilson, one of the world's most famous sociologists, especially on 00:43:00poverty and race, was a classmate of mine, but he, not unlike Lew Walker, came from a family that was poor. So I would say to Bill -- I call him Bill, but you'll, William Julius Wilson, "Wilberforce did something for us. It gave us the foundation on which to have a good professional life."

So when I talk about Maxwell [inaudible] Brooks and Milton S.J. Wright I just think about two people. But I can remember in my, Dr. Keppler, who taught the 00:44:00German classes or class, you know, and he would say to me up front, "Yes, yes, yes, Mr. Walker, you're a very bright boy, but you have to stop drinking so much." And he was talking about with me, at the time, he was talking about a specific incident. It had happened too. My father had just passed. And, so, not that I was falling down drunk or anything like that, but he knew. Someone had told him. "You know, Lewis, is drinking?" I'm of age and all [inaudible]. But in class he pointed this out. "Yes, yes, yes," expressing a concern for me and about me. "You're a bright boy, but don't drink so much." But that meant these 00:45:00professors knew us very well and intimately. Because often they would come into the student commons, or the place where we would get together. Anyway, they would come and play cards with us and things like that, at night, after dinner.

KR: And the one you were talking about earlier, recognized that you might, you know, thought you might be good in the classroom, let you have that opportunity to -

LW: Oh yeah. Dr. Brooks.

KR: What was that experience like?

LW: Scary. I'm a student and I'm going to teach the students on the, but yeah, that was, quite a challenge for me. But again, Dr. Brooks felt that I was advanced enough and intelligent enough and smart enough that I could go in and 00:46:00teach Intro to Sociology. Excuse me, Introduction to Anthropology. And I'm a senior and I had completed my major in sociology. So, with all A's, and so he felt that, yeah.

KR: Why did you choose sociology as your major?

LW: Because, I'm sure, no doubt in my mind, I selected sociology because it was, I saw it as a tool, to better understand man's inhumanity to man. And I wanted to understand especially our cultures in ethnic and race relations where I have concentrated most of my writing.

KR: Had you ever considered any other academic subjects or fields? Or did you 00:47:00kind of always know?

LW: Well, I mentioned that I went off to Ohio State University in economics, not sociology. I, so I did think about a career, some career in the field of economics.

KR: What kind of swayed you, like, away from that?

LW: My first love was sociology and when the opportunity presented itself for me to go into the field where there was this, I had this greater passion, so I accepted it readily. Not that I abandoned economics. No I, no, no, no, no. I appreciate the year or so that I studied graduate economics, but sociology was 00:48:00where I wanted to be.

KR: And then had you decided that as a senior that you wanted to be a professor?

LW: No.

KR: When did that decision--?

LW: [laughs] When I became one. No.

KR: [laughs]

LW: I also fell in love with research. I saw myself as spending my life researching and writing, but I'll go back to Dr. Brooks, tossing me into the classroom to teach. And I found that I had a love for teaching, a love for teaching. When, in the sense that, I see, at least I saw, the classroom as a place where I can make a difference. One can make a difference in the minds of 00:49:00young people and not so young per se. I think to me it was a place where a lot of miseducation could be corrected, could be eliminated. You know?

KR: Mm-hmm.

LW: Mm-hmm. And do it not so much in an emotional manner, but in a very objective way, because when I went through Ohio State, the graduate level and research, the emphasis was on empiricism. What do you see? What is actually there?

KR: You found that that was an effective way for you to present information to your students?

LW: Yes. It still is.

KR: So when you came to teach at Western, how did you perceive the community in 00:50:00Kalamazoo compared to other communities that you had lived in?

LW: Again, a bit of humor. Columbus, Ohio is so big. Birmingham, big. Kalamazoo, small. And I came to Kalamazoo because of two of my mentors at Ohio State. One was from Kalamazoo and knew Western very well. And Dr. Retless, asked that I come to Kalamazoo after I had been offered the position, because, because I was going to Washington. I had a position offered at Washington DC. Anyway, I 00:51:00said, "Okay. I don't wanna go there, it's small."

He said, "I promised Dr. Kercher," who was chair of the department, head of the department here, that I got this good person for a teacher. He said, "Please go. He needs someone, so please go for at least a year."

So I mentioned this to my wife and she said, "What? There's no such place as Kalamazoo. It's a song. I Got a Gal in Kalamazoo." But anyway, I was offered the position and I came to Kalamazoo. It differed quite a bit straight away than what I had become accustomed to, especially in Columbus, Ohio. I saw a very conservative town. I came to a university with 12,000 students, where less than 00:52:00a handful of women on faculty. So it was predominantly male, a white male institution. Little or no diversity. A town that was racially segregated, because the real estate agent took me to the north side of Kalamazoo, where the black people lived, and no place else to look for housing. There were no apartments in Kalamazoo when I came in '64. So, no housing for me, for a black 00:53:00person, but I was able to get a room at the YMCA, which was downtown, which has been torn down many years ago, and finally I was able to get a room in Mrs. Spradling's house, who was a black librarian here in town, for my wife and myself at the time that the townhouses were being built. But I'd like to quickly add that Dr. Chester L. Hunt, one of my colleagues, we've written books together, was one who was adamant about the wonderful place for me to live, so he pulled all the strings that he could pull to get us into the new townhouses. 00:54:00Dr. Kercher, chair of the Department, was also one who was very concerned about our well-being. They knew very well what race relations were like in Kalamazoo when I came in '64. And, fortunately, we've seen a lot of changes.

KR: Well, I hope that we can get to some of those changes in our next interview.

LW: Thank you so much it was nice to sit and chat with you.