LEVINE:

Today is November 4th [sic, December 4th], 1998 and I'm here in the Ellis Island Studio with Stacey Waters, who came, uh, to, (correcting herself), who has worked as an intern here at the Oral, Oral History Project at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum for this semester, which is September through December, 1998. Stacey is a senior at Rutgers University in New Jersey. And when she started this internship, she was twenty one years of age and had a birthday during the course of it, so as, at the time of this interview twenty two years of age. This Is Janet Levine for the National Park Service. Okay, Stacey, if you would say your birth date and where you were born.

WATERS:

My birthday is October 22nd, 1976 and I was born in Milltown, New Jersey.

LEVINE:

Okay. (she clears her throat) Did, did you have any childhood encounters with either the Statue of Liberty or Ellis Island?

WATERS:

Well, as a child my parents took me to see the Statue of Liberty and I wanted to go to Ellis Island but it was closed at that time because they were, right before they opened it. So I never made it here until I actually got my internship.

LEVINE:

Uh huh. And why don't we just do a thumbnail sketch of, of your family. What is your father's name?

WATERS:

Frederick.

LEVINE:

And your mother?

WATERS:

Barbara.

LEVINE:

Maiden name?

WATERS:

Rupprechd, you want, Rupprechd, do you want me to spell it?

LEVINE:

Uh huh.

WATERS:

It's R-U-P-P-R-E-C-H-D.

LEVINE:

Okay. And in, in the birth order of your family, where do you fit?

WATERS:

I'm the youngest. There's only one other, my sister, who is six years older than me and her name is Susan.

LEVINE:

Great. And when you started at Rutgers, did you have in mind what kind of a career you wanted to choose?

WATERS:

Well, actually I started out at a, at a community college. (she clears her throat) I started out at Middlesex County College and then I had really no idea what I wanted to do. I just knew that I enjoyed history a lot so I started taking history classes. And then when I went to Rutgers, I, I started looking into their education program and now I know that's eventually what I would like to do is to get my teaching certification. But I want to take some time and I think I want to work in the history field itself for a couple years.

LEVINE:

So you, you eventually want to teach history?

WATERS:

Eventually, yes.

LEVINE:

And how about the connection with Ellis Island? Is there anyone in your family? I mean, can you trace ancestors to Ellis Island?

WATERS:

I have a great great grandmother who came over from Denmark many, many, many years ago. She was probably in the late 1800s she came over, so.

LEVINE:

And, how did you, how did it happen that you, you came to have the internship here?

WATERS:

Well, I, I was interested in doing a public internship so I went to our coordinator at the university and he gave me a pamphlet of all the, the various organizations I could work with and Ellis Island was one of them. And I was very intrigued by it so I got all the information and I called up to see what I could do.

LEVINE:

And did you, did you have a, an idea of what would be involved?

WATERS:

I knew it was, they basically had told me it was more with museum working, curating, and maybe possible tours and I really hadn't, they hadn't told me anything about the Oral History Project until I contacted Diana Pardue [chief of Museum Services at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum] and she told me about the Oral History Project. And that sounded a lot more interesting to me.

LEVINE:

And, so, just, if could describe what you have done in your internship here.

WATERS:

Well, my first project was, Paul [Sigrist] wanted me to do something that was of interest to me and I had some prior interest in World War One. So I had made up a worksheet and I went and extracted out information on, from the interviews containing information about World War One, which I found to be very interesting because I found a lot of information that I really didn't know about. A lot of more, what happened to just the regular civilians. I guess that's kind of left out a lot in history that we often forget about. (she clears her throat)

LEVINE:

Can you think of, of some of the things that came through oral history that were particularly interesting or that were of, of an oral history nature that you could get about World War One that you might neccessarily, not neccessarily get in a history book?

WATERS:

I think it was just people's own personal experiences of, of soldiers coming in and, and raiding their homes and taking over and, and the, the battles that were actually going in people's backyards that I don't, I think we often think of it as kind of going out into the fields with no one else around kind of thing and it's, it wasn't the case at all.

LEVINE:

Uh huh, great. And so, so that was a project that you were particularly interested in and you did that. And then what other things have you done?

WATERS:

I did a couple of my own interviews. (she clears her throat) I did two of my own interviews and...

LEVINE:

And how did, how did you like doing them and what would you say about having done them?

WATERS:

I loved doing them. I've always had an interest in, I guess, speaking to older people because I think they have so much knowledge about, about the world that we don't know. And I think they hold so much and I just find it very interesting to talk to, to anyone older than I am, so.