Tears, tales of ... Life in Butte

By Jenna Cederberg, of The Montana Standard - 07/06/2007

Throughout her life, Clara “Clem” Harris gathered bits and pieces of Butte.

She ignored trespassing signs — they were for young hooligans who liked to get drunk — and collected door knobs, street signs and other pieces from partially burned houses.

The gazebo in the back yard of her dream home on Whitman avenue, where she and her husband, James E. Harris, raised their four children, was built entirely from things Clem found. Its four pillars come from four different places, and some of the fence came from the Columbia Gardens.

“We’re saving this for posterity, Connie, we’re saving it for posterity,” Clem would tell her daughter when she brought home another piece for the collection.

That was Clem’s way of preserving the past for future generations.

Today, inside the cozy recording studio of the StoryCorps MoblieBooth, bits and pieces of Butte’s history, of which Clem was just one, are being preserved in a different way as family members sit down together to learn more about each other’s pasts.

The StoryCorps is a nationwide campaign that provides a way to capture the stories of everyday Americans, MobileBooth director Terry Scott said. Each 40-minute interview between family members is taped in the traveling studio, archived for the family and in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress.

Amanda Harris asked her aunt, Connie Laramie, to tell her more about their family, mainly Amanda’s grandparents, Clem and James. Amanda and Laramie were the second pair to be taped at the MobileBooth on Thursday.

Amanda had wanted to use the StoryCorps recording opportunity to have Laramie’s stories connect her more directly to the past.

“It was kind of an honor to tell her things she didn’t know,” Laramie said.

Amanda hadn’t known much of her grandfather’s mining past, or that her fun-loving grandmother never drove a car. Laramie made sure Amanda also knew the love her parents had for their city. It brought tears to Laramie’s eyes, remembering how Butte was such a strong piece of who they were.

“She loved Butte with every fiber of her being,” Laramie said.

“I kind of felt like I stabbed a few times,” Amanda said. “I asked a few questions that brought some tears.” The new things Amanda learned are now on a CD. She plans to distribute it to the family as a Christmas present this year.

Clem died in 2000 at the age of 75 at Laramie’s home in Denver. The home she had loved was sold on Friday after her family decided they wouldn’t use it, but Laramie is having her mother’s gazebo shipped to Denver as a representation of “home.” If Clem would’ve gotten a chance to tell her story, she would have cried at times too, Laramie said.

“She was not at all shy,” Laramie said. “She’d get a real big charge out of telling Amanda what her life here was like.”