Oral History Project
Interview with John D. Ek
Date of Interview: April 5, 2008; Marysvale, Utah
Interviewer: Jessica Lang
Transcriber: Jessica Lang
Lang: This is Jessica Lang with John D. Ek here for an oral history interview on April 6, 2008
in Marysvale, Utah. What type of family did you grow up in? Where did you live? Did
you have brothers and sisters? What did your parents do? Etc.
Ek: I lived in a middle class family. I was an only child and my parents owned a business.
My mother helped in the business but she was a stay at home mother. So I would say it
was pretty much a middle class family with a stay at home mother.
Lang: Could you describe your home and where it was?
Ek: It was in San Diego. It was in an area that now is not a real desirable area, you know but
at the time it was a very nice area and it was a three bedroom, one bathroom house that
my father and his father built. It was a very comfortable house and we lived there till I
was about five years old, then we moved out to a rural area of San Diego in a new area in
a little nicer house and lived there for the next ten years and moved one more time into a
little bigger house in approximately the same area of San Diego.
Lang: What did you do for fun as a kid?
Ek: I raised birds, pigeons, and I studied animals a lot. I played a lot of baseball, just street
baseball because organized games and all the sports were played on Sundays so we didn’t
get into any of that. Pop Warner and Little League was all played on Sundays. We just
played a lot in the streets and really just made up our own games. We played a lot of
hide and seek; street games, just fun stuff within the neighborhood.
Lang: What type of education did you receive and what did you do with it when you were done
with your schooling?
Ek: Well, I went to Mt. Miguel High School in San Diego. It was real clean; it was one of the
nicer schools at the time. Yeah, I went to Mt. Miguel High School then I went to
Grossmont College, then I went on my mission, then came back, then went to two more semesters at Grossmont College. I transferred to a business college in downtown San Diego and got my associates degree in accounting and business law, and by that time I had started my own business and applied it to my business.
John owned a crane rental business that his father helped him
start when he finished his schooling.
Lang: What was it like growing up LDS? Did you have many LDS friends? Were the
standards hard to live compared to what you see your children face these days?
Ek: Growing up LDS was difficult because as I can remember there were only seven or eight
LDS kids in our high school. In elementary school there weren’t any LDS kids; in Jr.
High I think there was two. But in high school it was pretty difficult because I had no
real association even within the school because you don’t get to be with those kids that
much. So it was difficult and it was hard to hold the standards because at that time it was
basically just drinking and smoking. It was, compared to now, I think it was very
different because the kids now have more support within their own peer group of church
kids. I’m not saying it was easier either time. I think having enough friends and having a
peer group that has the same standards helps a lot. In high school I had two or three
friends and I think about half of them are inactive now. It was tough.
Lang: What were some of the major American milestones that you lived through? What do you
remember from them?
Ek: Well, when I was born it was like two or three years after World War II was over so there
was a lot of recovery going on and the times were good because the economy had started
to pick up and the war was over so people were very anxious to get out on their own and
start their businesses because they were prosperous. Yeah so the end of World War II
was kind of partially when I was growing up a little. Television was starting to become
something that people spent money on because it was a luxury item at the time, so that
was big deal and cars. You could buy a car whereas you couldn’t during the war so
everybody was buying cars, new cars. So early on in the fifties, rock and roll was a big
thing, at the same time in the start of the fifties. You know the Elvis Presley, the whole
thing there; this Motown was a big deal. Music became a big deal because the war was
over and so rock and roll was a big deal. And then the Beatles came on in the early
sixties, which made a big impression on life in general because of the drugs that came
into the scene in the sixties. And then the Vietnam War was a big issue and influenced a
lot of what happened in my teenage and adolescent years. Luckily I didn’t have to go to
Vietnam. I had a low draft number after my mission and I was barely able to avoid the
draft legally. A lot of my friends went to Canada to avoid the draft; a lot of my friends
went to Vietnam and came home in a bag or missing body parts. So it was a pretty bad
situation. Then when I was in high school President Kennedy was shot; I remember that
day very vividly and it pretty much shook up the world I guess. There were quite a few
things that went on in my lifetime, in my early lifetime that were pretty influential as far
as the world and what went on.
Lang: Where did you and your family get their news?
Ek: A lot of it was, the newspaper was a big thing then obviously because radio was
obviously the only media outlet other than the newspaper and a lot of people didn’t have
time to sit and listen to the radio. The newspaper was relied upon for news. I think
people accepted everything they heard and read; at that time they weren’t skeptical.
Whether they had been lied to before or not is hard to say but whereas today we are pretty
skeptical of the news we hear but back then, there were a few news commentators that
were very reliable because you only had a few you had, Walter Cronkite, you had
Huntley and Brinkley and I don’t know maybe a couple others. There wasn’t the local
news celebrities like there are now. There was one guy I think his name was Harold
Keene, I think, that was the only guy I can remember but and then the early fifties the
television came in and there and you got a little bit of news but it wasn’t covered like it is
today.
Lang: How has media coverage changed since you were young? What was covered then versus
what was covered now?
Ek: Then it was mostly the world events and a lot of coverage was about the Cold War and
about Russia; there was a lot of threat from Russia. We had bomb drills, air raid drills all
the time we had to go home from school. There were bomb shelters and there was a lot
of that kind of stuff because of the Cold War and the possible attacks that were supposed
to happen were avoided. But things have changed so much as far as news coverage
because of the popularity of news now. People listen and want to know more about the
news and there are so many different sides of the news now. Back then it was pretty
much a one sided view; there weren’t liberal and conservative views back then. It was
just a one direct shot at news and you didn’t debate it back and forth.
Lang: What is your earliest memory of media? Whether it be newspaper, radio, television?
Ek: I think my earliest memory was probably the television because I was too young to read
before television came out. Television started in the early fifties. I think I remember
watching the news for the first time probably in 55’ 56’, something like that. But of
course the only thing we were worried about was the Russians at the time so that was the
only thing I can remember about the news that was on TV. Then obviously later on in my adolescence and early adulthood I got my news from the television pretty much like
everybody else.
Lang: What did newspapers look like, compared to what you see today?
Ek: Well, the print was pretty plain. The layout is a lot the same in many ways but there is a
lot more advertising now. They pay for the papers with a lot more advertising and
obviously the color made a big difference because the pictures are now in color and so
there are more pictures. Back then, the black and white pictures weren’t as eye catching
so they didn’t put as many pictures in and they didn’t have the cameras, they didn’t have
the people in the field anywhere near like they have now.
Lang: Today’s news circuits can pretty much report on anything. How has censorship changed?
What types of things are talked about now that weren’t talked about when you were
growing up?
Ek: It’s opened up a lot I think, probably because after Vietnam because a lot of things
changed because the censorship breached and opened up after that war cause before that
war you didn’t talk about controversial things in the news. They would just report what
they wanted you to hear and what they thought was the best thing for the people to hear.
You never got into personal attacks on people, presidents, etcetera. They didn’t second-
guess everything that went on in the war like you do now, so I think censorship now is
wide open to the point that I think it has gone a little too far now, it becomes almost a
tabloid type thing where it’s lies and rumors and stuff you can’t rely on whereas before
they pretty much had to print the truth or they would be in danger of loosing their readers because people knew they were lying and people wouldn’t read them so now I think it’s pretty wide open as far as censorship.
Lang: Were the personal lives of celebrities and prominent people in the community talked
about like they are today? How up to date were you on mindless gossip in Hollywood?
Ek: The only things that were talked about when I was a kid was you know, a few celebrities,
Frank Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe, there was only a handful and they didn’t get that detailed
into them. They only talked about how much fun they’re having and how popular they
are and things like that. And now, it’s like I say, it’s more rumors and gossip and lies
about them to try and get readers and sell stuff. So I think it’s gone from one extreme to
another.
Lang: Today it seems that we need to filter all the messages we are exposed to because of the contradictory and outlandish information that is available to the public. How do you filter what you see and hear now, compared to what you filtered in your youth?
Ek: Well now I think you have to do it on your own, you have to be very vigilant as far as
taking what you hear, weighing it out, then getting another source of the same story and
play both sides, which is a good thing in my opinion that the conservative talk radio gives
you a different view than the liberal media does. And somewhere in between there you
get a pretty balanced perspective that’s completely different from when I was a kid
because you didn’t have two sides, you didn’t have the opportunity to weigh out things.
You just had to hear what they said and you had no other sources. So now I think that’s a
good thing, but I think too many people take the time to balance them out, and weigh
them out and find out different view points like they just listen to one thing and go on
whether it’s conservative or liberal either way it’s wrong. You know, so I think it’s good
that we have so much that we can balance it out but it puts a lot of responsibility on us to
filter it out like you said.
Lang: And lastly, ten years from now, what do you think the news media will be like? What are
they going to be reporting on and how are you going to find your news? Where will you
go to find information you will believe?
Ek: Ten years from now? Well, with the way the Internet is and the way the liberal media is
at this point I think it could be out of control. It will be a lot more biased than it is now
because of the money aspect of the news; the liberal media side is a bought and paid for
item generally by the richest people in the world. And I think that because of the lack of
censorship, I think anything will be said and it will be harder to filter it out and find
something balanced in there. So I don’t know, I think it’s a guess. Nobody can predict
the future but I think that because of the way it is going right now it looks like to me that
it’s going to be a harder thing to do because the money that is going to be thrown in for
businesses in order for them the sell what they’re trying to sell is going to make it a
biased opinion as far as the news is concerned.
Lang: Well, thank you for taking the time to sit and talk with me. You have been quite a help I
appreciate you time. Thank