Oral History Interview with Vivian Castleberry, March 29, 2012 Page: 1 of 13

                                
Oral History Transcript: Vivian Castleberry
Interview date: March 29, 2012
Interviewers: Samantha Guzman and Desiree Cousineau
Interview transcribed by Stacey Wang and Shreeya Rana
Guzman: So, I just want to start from the beginning. We know that you're from a small town in Texas.
Can you tell us a little bit about your childhood? What it was like growing up?
Castleberry: Yes, well that was a long time ago. I was born in Lindale, Texas, near Tyler and grew up in a
loving, extended family. Both my maternal family and my paternal family lived fairly close. I am the
oldest of three. I have two younger brothers or had two younger brothers. They are both deceased as
are my parents. But it was a happy, pretty much involved childhood, fairly typical of those times. My
parents, and my mother especially was very, very close and very, very involved in helping me open
options to my life. My father, typical of the male of that time, was more into protecting and could never
understand my penchant for having to get out there. My mother, on the other hand, always said to me,
now when you go away to college and this was a very, our livelihood was very meager. If you remember
your history at all, it was during the Great Depression, there was almost no money anywhere at all. We
were not aware that we were 'poor' because we were a family that was outstanding in the community
and when I look back over it I think that families who owned land were always considered themselves
rich no matter how much of the money there. I grew up in a time when agriculture was the main craft.
My father was a farmer. My father was a veteran of World War I and he served the U.S. army in France
and then was stationed in Germany with the army of occupation afterward. When I look back, I think
that had a lot to do with my struggle toward having a more peaceful world. Because at our table he
would say, "There is no reason for people to try to solve their problems by killing each other. There are
better ways than to end a life and it is up to us to find out how those are." So, that was kind of a
beginning for my getting into peace work, I think. I don't think any of us, we are aware of what is
shaping us; that only comes later in retrospect.
And I have been asked many, many times to explore the options and that's where I feel that my work in
life started. I was very, very fortunate in that I always, always knew that I was going to be a writer. I
started by as a very young child on the porch swing in my paternal grandmother/grandparents' home; I
put out my first newspaper, handwritten, and distributed to the neighbors and collected information
from the neighbors that I wish I had some of those little papers left. And also I was a reader from the
word go because we lived in the country that we could not have any daily newspaper deliveries so we
took the paper by mail. And it came a day late and it was nothing unusual at all for me to meet the
postman in the morning to get the newspaper before anybody else and the stories that are ancient
history now for you kids were my contemporary reading. I watched, I read every word of the Lindbergh
kidnapping, of the Bonnie and Clyde episode; those were the headline stories of the day and I never
missed one. So, I grew up knowing that I was going to be a writer. In the third grade, I started writing
short stories and I still have some of those. So I consider myself very, very fortunate in that I never
deviated, went straight to the career that I expected to have. And when I graduated from high school, I