Anthony Eshman

JENNIFER CRAMER: Okay. Today is March 27, 2019 and this is Jennifer Cramer. And I am here today with Anthony Eshman for interview number one for a project. And you are the first interviewee for this project, and we're working in collaboration with the LGBTQ+ archive project of Louisiana. We are in Bobet [?] Hall if that's how you pronounce it, and we're on Loyola's campus. And we're doing a brief interview with Anthony. Thank you so much for being here today Anthony.

ANTHONY ESHMAN: Okay, you're welcome.

CRAMER: [laughs]

ESHMAN: I don't think Bobet [?] is the correct pronunciation.

CRAMER: How do you say it?

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: Bobet.

ESHMAN: Bobet.

CRAMER: Oh, Bobet. We're in...

ESHMAN: Bobet has such unpleasant connotations.

CRAMER: Well, maybe for you [laughs].

ESHMAN: Well, you don't know. I'll tell you later.

UNKNOWN SPEAKER: It involves scissors or something choppy.

CRAMER: See, and I wouldn't do that in a normal interview. [Laughs] But there's an audience and I can't help it, so that's why we'll do number two. So, thank you so much for being here with us today, Anthony. Tell us your full name.

ESHMAN: Anthony Joseph. Confirmation name Augustin, Eshman.

CRAMER: When and where were you born?

ESHMAN: I was born October 6, 1947 at Baptist Hospital in New Orleans.

CRAMER: What are your parents' names?

ESHMAN: Anthony Eshman and Etheldrita [?] Emily [?] O'Neal Eshman

CRAMER: And her maiden name is O'Neal?

ESHMAN: O'Neal, yes.

CRAMER: How did they meet?

ESHMAN: My mother worked with my father's aunt, and when my father was on leave from the navy during World War II she had them both over for dinner. And I don't know how long ago that was, it was sometime during the war. And then they got married in 1946.

CRAMER: What's your aunt's name?

ESHMAN: She was Aunt Lizzie [?].

CRAMER: And that's on your mother's side?

ESHMAN: That's my father's side.

[Vibrating Noise]

CRAMER: Oh, that's another bad thing. I should have had that off, sorry [laughs].

CRAMER: So, your father's sister...

ESHMAN: No, my father's aunt.

CRAMER: Your father's aunt, okay.

ESHMAN: I guess her name was Elizabeth Wilding Rio [?]

CRAMER: So, they got married and he went back? Or...

ESHMAN: No, no, no. He was out of the service when they got married.

CRAMER: Okay. And what branch was he in?

ESHMAN: He was in the Navy.

CRAMER: Do you know what rank he held?

ESHMAN: No.

CRAMER: Did he ever talk about his experiences in World War II?

ESHMAN: Very little. He was on a ship that was blown in half. And both sides, for some reason, did not sink and they were rescued. I shouldn't move. But other than that he didn’t much talk about what happened, because I don’t know why. Because he didn’t see much action, because he was... I don't know.

CRAMER: Was he in the Pacific? Or...

ESHMAN: Both.

CRAMER: Oh. Interesting. Do you happen to know when he enlisted, or if he was drafted or anything like that?

ESHMAN: He enlisted shortly after December 7.

CRAMER: Okay, of course. So, they were married in 1946. Do you have any other siblings?

ESHMAN: I have one brother who was born in 1950.

CRAMER: What's his name?

ESHMAN: Michael James Eshman.

CRAMER: Where did you grow up?

ESHMAN: I grew up in New Orleans in downtown. It was generally referred to then as the Ninth Ward, even though I wasn't always in the Ninth Ward which was considered to be a rough neighborhood.

CRAMER: So would that be on the Upper Ninth Ward or the Lower Ninth Ward?

ESHMAN: Well, when I was...Until I was nine it was the Upper Ninth Ward. Then we moved to the suburbs and it was the Lower Ninth Ward, but then that wasn't considered to be a rougher neighborhood. But that was still the ninth ward.

CRAMER: And what street was it? Do you remember?

ESHMAN: When I was born we lived on Mandeville Street and then we moved to Music Street. And then we bought the house in the suburbs in 1956 or fifty... yeah '56. Fifty-five maybe, I don't...

CRAMER: So, do you know why your parents decided to move?

ESHMAN: To buy a house with the VA loan.

CRAMER: What did your mom do for a living?

ESHMAN: She was a seamstress. She sewed professionally until... I guess until I was born. Or maybe before then. Back then pretty much people quit when they got married. But she was a seamstress. She went to a trade school called [?] which is... The building is on Carondelet Street near the main... what used to be the school headquarters. I don't know what's there now.

CRAMER: And what did your dad do for a living once he got out of the military?

ESHMAN: He was primarily a salesman as when...that I remember. Although before the war and after the war he was first a... he delivered soft drinks. He delivered Dr. Nut [?] which was a local soft drink here.

CRAMER: It was local, what does that mean, it was bottled here? Or...

ESHMAN: Yeah, it was made and bottled here by the Batastella [?]... Not Batastella [?], the Camilla family.

CRAMER: Interesting. And so he did that after the war as well?

ESHMAN: I believe so.

CRAMER: So what were your grandparents’ names on your mother's side?

ESHMAN: Emily Sangle [?] and John Joseph O'Neal [?].

CRAMER: And on your father's side...

ESHMAN: Agnes Wilding [?] and Rudolph Eshman.

CRAMER: When...So, that sounds like a German name; Eshman.

ESHMAN: [agrees]

CRAMER: When did your family come to New Orleans?

ESHMAN: My father's father came from Germany and he was very old. He was like maybe fifty years older than my grandmother. No one ever spoke about that. And my grandmother's family, I believe my grandmother was the first generation German. My mother's father, his parents, were from Ireland. And my grandmother, my mother's mother, her grandparents . . . her parents were from Germany and Switzerland. The father was from Germany and her mother was from Switzerland.

CRAMER: So, does that mean they came around the 1880s or the turn of the twentieth century?

ESHMAN: Oh no, way before that.

CRAMER: Oh, okay.

ESHMAN: All of them came probably... oh no. Some of the Sangles [?] came earlier because one of them fought in the Civil War in the battle of Baton Rouge. So, I don't know when the Sangles [?] came. But, the O'Neals [?] came in the 1860s and '70s because my grandfather was born in this country.

CRAMER: I know we're a little bit out of time for today, and I would love to pick back up with: where you went to school, any other information that you can think of about your family that you'd want to add, and then...

ESHMAN: My grandfather is a veteran of the Spanish-American War. That goes way back.

CRAMER: It does. It does. Is there anything else you would like to add today?

ESHMAN: I don't think so.

CRAMER: Okay, and we'll pick up with where you went to school, and why you're excited to go to LSU N.O., and your young adult life.

ESHMAN: Okay.

CRAMER: Alright, thank you so much for being with us here today. This concludes session one.

[09:01]
[End Tape T####. End Session I.]