Partial transcript of tape recording made 27 December 1990 at 973 Paulsboro Drive, Rockville, Maryland; K is Frank Kenneth DeVoe, H is Howard DeVoe, M is Martha DeVoe.

K: Tell me a little more what you had in mind.

H: Well, you were mentioning something that I never knew, that your father was in the grocery business.

K: Well, he was a jack-of-all-trades, actually. I guess his first working days were spent on a farm -- dairy farm -- up in, west of the Hudson River, up in -- I've forgotten the name of the county up there.

H: He was born in Tarrytown. [Actually in Monticello, New York, according to his obituary]

K: True, but his family moved around a bit, I think. But at ___, of a mature age now, he was employed as a dairyman. Actually, I'm not sure how he met my mother. I know that I, when I was getting interested in stamps I found up in the attic a whole pack of letters between them, so they were living some distance apart until they were married. But after he had married, they were living in White Plains, and -- I'm not altogether sure what he did do until such time as he had a grocery store. I think before that he had a route -- a grocery route, that was not uncommon in those days. Even the A&P [food store] started that way. And he became pretty proficient at evaluating fruits and vegetables. This was always his really great interest . . . Eventually he did end up with a grocery store. It was on Lexington Avenue -- a corner store. It was in an apartment complex -- Lexington Avenue and, across where the fire department was. I know we always went to poultry shows whenever they were around, and we always went to a turkey raffle at the firehouse just before Thanksgiving, I don't think he ever won a raffle. I think the store was doing alright, but then there was a disastrous fire in that apartment building, and it didn't start in the store, but it wiped out the store. I remember going to see what was left of the building -- it was pretty badly demolished, and there was a -- if you looked down in the basement, see a pool of water. And he didn't have any insurance to cover it, so he was out of business. And then I know he went back and do a route. This time it was entirely fruits and vegetables, and he went to wholesale markets somewhere, (over?) in Mount Vernon or somewhere, and he had a route throughout the outskirts of White Plains. But eventually he turned to carpentry, and he became I think a really good carpenter. He was a very meticulous carpenter, and he couldn't stand poor workmanship. He admired an older brother, my Uncle Edward, who was a stair builder. I think he's a higher link in the chain. And he built that beautiful stairway we had in Pleasantville.

H: Your father did, or Uncle Edward?

K: My Uncle Edward, and -- of course, it was well designed, too [by Edgar Josselyn - note by H. DeVoe]; it was the easiest stairway to go up and down. I've never seen anything quite so easy as that one was. It just went into an empty attic, of course. Well, of course the part coming down into the basement was also easy. And he [presumably Frank Q. DeVoe] was very interested in the work he did -- he never -- he had no use for people who just did carpentry because it was something to do. And he would expound at some length about the carelessness and lack of interest in the work that so many people -- so many carpenters -- carried on. He was always a connoisseur of food, be it meat or vegetables or anything of that sort. I think that my mother somtimes was a little put out by the fact that he liked to experiment and try a lot of things, and he put her probably to a lot more work then she would have otherwise ___. She liked baking though, and all that, but he wanted to -- he loved to sample unusual foods. And in those days . . . gourmet cooking was not really something that many people practiced. And of course he never did get into international cooking of any sort.

H: Did he do cooking himself?

K: Yes, he did a little more than that. When he worked, he -- later on, after his grocery days, and in between carpentry periods, he became a sort of jack-of-all-trades, and he for instance was the superintendent of that Greeley estate in Hartsdale, and where he was allowed to house some porker or two for himself. And I can remember periods when he was trying to slaughter the pig or pigs, and he would bring in a butcher for that job, who would do the basics, and then my father would do all the cutting up of the pork in bits and pieces, and would make the head cheese, and there were certain things of course that you ate first because they were more perishable than other parts of the pig, but we would have pork for all seasons -- for a good part of the winter time. Chickens we -- we always had chickens I think. I grew up, my first recollections of any (amount?) . . . in a house on Bank Street. . . It was a three-story house, actually it had a lot of room in it, and pretty good -- quite a bit of ground, and a good-sized barn. So there we had a chicken-yard, and gardens galore, so that poultry was just as (much?) interest for him as any other kind of meat. We certainly didn't skimp on meat -- always had plenty of that around. But the estates that he managed -- he did carpentry there, ___ of the gardens and trimming of the shrubs . . . Well, whenever his brothers visited him, there were long periods of conversation and argument, and sometimes there were tremendous disagreements.

H: One of the DeVoes I met on the west coast [Hazel Larsen] said the DeVoes were famous for arguments.

M: Well that's what I remember your father as, because he --

H: Not to mention temper.

M: We didn't agree on many things, but I mean he'd get into an ungodly argument with me about how he was right -- I mean there was no reasoning with him at all, I mean to see some other side. Did you find that so, Kenneth?

K: I guess so. Well, my Uncle Bill was my talking uncle, he was the most obstinate of all. My Uncle Ed was more laid-back, and so was my Uncle Art. But my Uncle Fred and my Uncle Bill and my father were the three who we -- those three together were something, because they could each one find a different side to take. And my mother was sometimes very disturbed by all the yaking going on -- didn't seem to her to lead anywhere.

M: I read when we were first married . . . someone who was saying that when you get in an argument -- you know, one person takes a stand, you find yourself getting in as deep on the other side, even though you didn't have that strong a feeling about it. It's hard not to get in just as deep on the other side as they are. That's what happened with your father, he'd take a stand and I wouldn't agree with it. I didn't really feel that strongly, I could have given a little bit one way or the other, but I was arguing --

K: Well, this was part of his life, he just __ that. Whereas my mother wouldn't argue anything.