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What's a time when you've had great courage? Great courage.

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Yeah, that's when we stumped on it. Great courage. Frankly, I don't think I've ever had great courage.

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I guess I was proud of myself for going to Spain. I didn't know anybody.

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You know, I left my school, went to a different school, and lived with this very bizarre family.

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Truly bizarre. The older son tried to molest the three of us.

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There were three girls lived with us. Ironically, we were all three redheads.

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One was from Iowa, one from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, and myself. And two of us were Debbie's.

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One of them had a single room. The other of us had a double room. We shared room.

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But their son was not a good person. The mom, they had family and kids for a long time, but the mom did not like us.

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They didn't feed us. We had a two liter hot water or water heater, and we never had hot water for a shower.

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And then the tile in the shower room, the floor gave out. And the family blamed us for having water on the floor, which was not true.

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So we had no shower room for two weeks. So we had to sneak into friends' pensions and take showers.

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The father died while we were there, and he was the only person that was really a decent person.

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We had friends of the family take us to the funeral, but they took us to the wrong place.

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And so the family blamed us. And so we worked really hard then to talk to one of our professors and get them to let us move.

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And no one had ever moved like that before, and especially from this family.

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For some reason they must have liked the other girls, or who knows, they were, but all three of us then moved.

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And that took a lot of courage. One, to put up with this family, and two, to actually change locations when we were there.

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And that was hard. And I was kind of proud of myself that we, and all three of us really, it was a good thing we had three of us together to do that.

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I moved in with another family, and because I was only staying for a semester, and my two roommates moved into an apartment because they were staying for the year.

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So I look back on that and I say, you know what, it was really out of the box.

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You had to have some great strength, and if you could say courage, I guess, to deal with all of that.

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Because after, say, remember, there were no cell phones back then, so I couldn't call my parents.

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I had to arrange for a phone call via letters, and then be at the phone and let, hopefully the family would let my parents talk to me.

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So it was really a challenging situation, but I also loved the experience.

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So. Yeah.

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Now, I've never felt like I've had to be courageous. And again, I don't know if that was courage, or it was courageous, but it was...

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Because you're in a strange place, foreign country putting up with the machismo.

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It was a good time to be in Spain, though. I felt safe, Franco was still alive.

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It was '73, and I think he died in '75. So, yeah, there you go.

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No, I don't think I've ever had... Trying to think for you.

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Never really had anything... I think I could be courageous, but I don't think I've been courageous.

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We're not usually put in situations that were... No, I think if the call came to be courageous, I could be courageous, but that's maybe pie in the sky.

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The next two are similar, so what was the point? Is there anything else that all of us have not asked that you'd like to share more?

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We love you. Huh.

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Well, I think what I'd just say is, I'm so proud of the three of you.

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You're very... You're different. But you've all worked hard and achieved quite a lot in your lives.

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And Kelly and Lauren, you guys are doing a great job with parenting, and you're doing it kind of your way more than some of the stuff we would have done.

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Certainly less disciplined than we had or we got from our parents or you had, but yeah, I'm really proud of that, and I'm proud of seeing how these little monkeys are growing up, all of them.

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I love that all three of you want to be involved in our family's history, want to know about it.

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Your sentimentality is touching. We have a lot of friends, I have a lot of friends whose children don't care about family history, don't care about the things that kind of create all of us, make all of us who we are, and you do, and it's really lovely.

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I know our parents, both of our parents, all your grandparents would be, and great grandparents would be so proud of you, and just thank you for being great daughters, making life easy.

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I had a story I wanted to recap about my grandparents just a little bit.

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I thought it was interesting growing up, and I reflected on this, that my mom's parents were in Minnesota, a little more strict, my grandmother here, Gladys, it was in Denver, but they became good friends and they traveled together, and I love that.

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I thought, you know, these two in-laws created a relationship, and Gladys was a single widow, she'd have to travel alone if she traveled, but all of them, unless they said, "Come on aboard," and they traveled the world together, they went to Egypt, they went through Europe, they all traveled together and got along, and I loved that, and I hope we've modeled, I think our parents modeled that together, and hopefully we're modeling that with in-laws, with friends, and you see that, the family.

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We're really pretty well blessed, I think, because we have good son-in-laws, and the in-laws we get along quite nicely with.

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But with all three of you too, so I think, you know, it's just, I think we've had good lives, and we hope that you guys just see that, that you know that we did, and that you...

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You all have the values that we were imparted by our folks, you know, integrity, hard work, stick-to-it-edness.

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But most important, stay connected as a family. That is, you know how important that is to me to say to you all the time, is stay connected.

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Remember, your sisters are the ones that know the most about you, and have always been there, and losing that connection, you'd regret it, so please don't lose that connection.

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And I look at my brothers, and we were close, especially with Dave, when we were married.

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We did a lot with Dave and Julie. And then, you know, we had families and careers and all that, but we're coming back together, and it's really...

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It's not like we lost each other, but we just, you know, remote. And now we're back together in a stronger way, and I think it's more appreciated on both sides.

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So I just want to make sure that you think about that too with each of you, and what this relationship means as sisters, and families, and cousins, and...

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And laws, and outlaws. Yeah, because, like, my mom didn't like some of the...

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She hated Sam Fowler, which was unfortunate, so there's all his kids.

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I don't know anything about them. Barely saw them, ever.

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And then the older brother James Randlett, he had three kids.

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We probably would have been... Have a lot sort of in common with them, but never got to see him.

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Never met him. Chris and Drew Fowler, because we lived in Rockford, together just down the street.

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That was really my only connection to the Fowler cousins. Fortunately, Craig and Bitsy were my cousins, and still, real close to Craig, the urologist that lives here that's...

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What is he, nine years older than me? Eight years older than me?

From 00:09:44 to 00:09:53
You know, it was unfortunate, though. Your mom didn't like my parents, and I think your dad could kind of like them, but so our parents didn't connect at all.

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They were not... Not much.

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They were not connected at all. My mother was a difficult...

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So that was hard. That was very hard, and I don't want that to be hard.

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I think something that we try to work on with... Yeah, I think...

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...our in-laws for our girls is... It's important for us to go along and get along, but we're blessed that I think...

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We have good sets of in-laws. Yeah, and especially now with Charlie's folks, we've gotten to know them a lot better.

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Yeah, and it's fun. It's been fun, yeah.

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It's a lot of fun. I think it just builds the extended family.

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Yeah, that's key to all of us. Yeah.

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And I think it's really a good influence on the grandkids that we get along.

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I think so. Because my mom didn't like Grandma Fowler very much.

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I never remember seeing the white grandparents and Grandma Fowler together ever.

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Well, I just think that took a lot for my grandparents in Minnesota, my grandmother here in Colorado, and to coordinate travel to be together.

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Yeah. They were on ships in the ocean.

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That took a lot on both sides. And you don't realize that as a kid, but then later on you go, "Wow, that is pretty cool." Yep.

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Pretty cool. My dad was much...

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...poor family-wise than the white tribe. And I think that always bugged my mother.

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And she had regrets that she never achieved the social stuff. Is there anything else to it?

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What do you think that we haven't said that we... No, I think that's a lot of it.

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Well, I think we should also say... Thank you to Paul.

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Yes. Thank you to Paul for offering to do this for us.

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Cool stuff. Because it is something that we feel is important.

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And fortunately, our girls feel is important too. And hopefully their children and other generations.

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So Paul, thank you from the bottom of our hearts for doing this. This has been many hours of recording and then many more hours on your part.

From 00:12:09 to 00:12:11
Yeah, a lot of fun for us. And listening to us too.

From 00:12:11 to 00:12:13
So thank you so very much. Yeah, thanks so much.

From 00:12:13 to 00:12:15
We enjoyed it. You're deeply grateful.

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And here's Aaron. All of a sudden I see...

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It's a wrap! It's a wrap.

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Is that a wrap? It's a wrap!

From 00:12:24 to 00:12:32
Dude, I was like, I'm knocking in the rock and hear them talking. I'll go outside while Gabe and come around the front door.

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Oh, are you coming that way? [BLANK_AUDIO]