As a child of the Great Depression, 89-year-old Dorothy Moran was spared the sight of men so hungry, they stood in soup lines for something to eat, anything to fill their stomachs.
• Videos about the Great Depression and more online resources after the jump.
She was in grade school when the unemployment rate soared to 25 percent in 1933, even younger when the stock market crashed and banks failed in 1929.
But as young as she was, Moran couldn't escape the wrath of the worst economic era in American history.
It is the story of her generation.
"Our parents tried to hide it from us," she said, "but I know about the Depression, and it's a sad story."
Today Moran is one of dozens of Depression-era survivors who make their home at The Village at Park Terrace, a senior living community at 1350 W. Hackley.
She and the others gathered recently over their daily 2 p.m. coffee hour to talk about their memories of growing up during the Depression years -- and, as a way of putting life into perspective, to compare it to today's faltering economy.
"I'm a big believer that there are lessons to be learned from history," said John McGarry, director of the Muskegon County Museum.
|FOR MORE ON THE DEPRESSION|
The New Deal Network from the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute.
Riding the Rails: At the height of the Great Depression, more than 250,000 teenagers were living on the road in America.
America in the 1930s, from the University of Virginia
Michigan Historical Museum System, The Depression News: The 1930s
A Great Depression timeline from Huppi.com
• Modern American Poetry "The Great Depression" from the University of Illinois. The site provides an overview the Great Depression, information about the Dust Bowl, a photo essay and art gallery
• The Library of Congress, "America from the Great Depression to World War II." Photographs from the Farm Security Administration-Office of War Information Collection.
The Boston Globe's photo gallery on The Great Depression.
Who better to pass along those lessons than the men and women who made it through the Depression? The people who've been there before?
"Believe me, I live with (the lessons) every day," said Wendy Little, who at 40 is less than half the age of the residents at The Village at Park Terrace, where she is community manager.
"They go around behind me and shut the lights out -- in the foyer, the dining room, the laundry room. I turn on the lights because I want this to be a warm and welcoming place," Little said. "They tell me (the lights on) are a waste of money."
Frugality: It is their middle name.
"We learned to save," said Mary Pronick, 90, who had to quit school in 11th grade and go to work as a housekeeper because her parents could no longer afford her textbooks.
"We learned to be thrifty. I still look at the price of groceries," said 88-year-old Louella Sperry.
"We kept everything. We didn't waste anything," said Kay Heeres Tanis, 91. "I've asked my kids: What would you do if another Depression came? They all said: We couldn't handle it."
Now in their 80s and 90s, the children of the Depression view the world through a different financial lens than their children and grandchildren who came of age in more prosperous times.
"Credit cards are dangerous," admonished Geri Langeland, 85. "Save up if you want something."
Ask Dorothy Moran about the value of a dollar and paying one's bills. When she was growing up, her father, Leo Langlois, owned a grocery store at the corner of Hoyt and Mason in Muskegon Heights. Like so many grocers during the Depression, he extended credit to his customers who were down on their luck. But his goodwill policy backfired. Because his cash flow was so low, he couldn't pay his store's suppliers. He lost his business, plunging his own family of nine children into poverty.
"My parents tried to hide it," Moran said. "They never talked about (the Depression) in front of us."
Her father found jobs wherever he could during those lean years. For awhile, he worked at St. Mary's cemetery. He sold insurance "but people weren't buying." They rented out a room, and they managed to scrape by.
"It sounds depressing, but it wasn't," Moran said.
Everyone she knew was in the same fix. As McGarry said, the Depression was a "great equalizer."
"We were kids. We didn't know we were poor. Everybody was poor," Langeland said.
But some were so poor, they qualified for "relief" -- the earliest version of government assistance -- food for children.
"Nobody wanted anybody to know they were getting relief. They were embarrassed, but everyone needed it, everyone was getting it," said Val Woods, 86, whose family moved in with her grandparents in Bailey when her father lost his job in the city.
Lillian Mattson's father refused government relief, even though there were 12 in the family, and he wasn't bringing in much money as a truck driver.
"He said: We're not going on welfare. If we don't have it, we don't have it," said the 84-year-old Mattson.
To make ends meet, her mother baked bread, and Mattson and her siblings walked from their farm into Kent City to peddle it. Even though they were hungry, they didn't dare snitch a bite because they needed the money to buy flour and sugar for the next day's batch. To help, the kids picked up sticks and stray corn cobs along the railroad tracks to burn in the wood stove.
"I think the Depression made us stronger and more independent," said Irene Langoni, 84.
But mingled in with the stories of pride and resilience -- their generation's claim to history -- there are huge doses of reality. Merlin Gowell's dad lost his carpenter's job during the Depression. With seven kids to feed, his dad scrambled for work. "Everybody went on the welfare," Gowell said.
Now 80, Gowell was a baby growing up in Muskegon Heights during the worst of Depression. He remembers the quilts his mother made out of old coats and the corn meal, beans and flour that came in the food baskets delivered by relief workers. He remembers the bad news of his childhood and recognizes the effects in today's headlines.
"My dad never got over it mentally," Gowell said. "He never really got over how bad it got."