Latest / Stories That Live In Us / Vermont: Conversations of Green Mountain Kingdoms (with Mike Brousseau) | Episode 105

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Vermont: Conversations of Green Mountain Kingdoms (with Mike Brousseau) | Episode 105 · Stories That Live In Us

• 0:00
  Mike Brousseau: I d I just remember this one uh vacation where she was talking about her favorite hockey team because she was French Canadian.
• 0:08
  Mike Brousseau: Right.
• 0:08
  Mike Brousseau: She was saying, I don't like that player.
• 0:11
  Mike Brousseau: He don't ustle on the hice.
• 0:13
  Mike Brousseau: Um say that again, I love it.
• 0:17
  Mike Brousseau: You don't look He don't ustle on the hice.
• 0:21
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, the H is just you know displaced.
• 0:26
  Crista Cowan: Stories That Live in Us is a podcast that inspires you to form deep connections with your family, past, present, and future.
• 0:34
  Crista Cowan: I'm Krista Cowan, known online as the Barefoot Genealogist.
• 0:37
  Crista Cowan: Counting down to the upcoming celebration of America's 250th birthday, you'll meet families from each state whose stories are woven into the very fabric of America.
• 0:48
  Crista Cowan: Tales of immigration, migration, courage, and community that remind us that when we tell our stories, we strengthen the bonds that connect us.
• 0:57
  Crista Cowan: So join me for season two as we discover from sea to shining sea the stories that live in us.
• 1:04
  Crista Cowan: I don't know about you, but I love a good hallmark movie.
• 1:09
  Crista Cowan: And I know the plots are totally formulaic, right?
• 1:14
  Crista Cowan: The girl who's disgruntled with her career in the big city goes upstate somewhere to some remote little village and falls in love with like the Christmas tree farmer or the guy who runs the petting zoo.
• 1:27
  Crista Cowan: It doesn't matter.
• 1:28
  Crista Cowan: They're fantastic.
• 1:30
  Crista Cowan: And I love that they started out as Christmas movies and now they've got holiday versions for everything.
• 1:37
  Crista Cowan: There's Valentine's and there's Fourth of July.
• 1:40
  Crista Cowan: It's fantastic.
• 1:42
  Crista Cowan: It's also kind of an obsession that I share with my mom, which I just love.
• 1:47
  Crista Cowan: Now, one of the things about Hallmark movies is they always end up in these remote little places.
• 1:53
  Crista Cowan: So when I was a young adult and found myself living just outside of New York City, I used to go to remote little places.
• 2:00
  Crista Cowan: And I dreamed of what they would look like and where I might find myself and what adventures I might have along the way.
• 2:11
  Crista Cowan: On one of those trips, I found myself in Vermont.
• 2:15
  Crista Cowan: And let me tell you, Vermont looks exactly like what you think it should look like.
• 2:20
  Crista Cowan: And the little towns felt exactly like what you think they should feel like.
• 2:26
  Crista Cowan: Unfortunately, I did not find my petting zoo farmer, but I did find some other gems.
• 2:34
  Crista Cowan: My guest today is from Vermont, and he tells charming stories about his parents and his grandparents and the heritage that they have in that state.
• 2:49
  Crista Cowan: And I learned a little bit about how closely connected Vermont is to French Canada, which I probably should have figured out because Vermont literally means Green Mountain in French.
• 3:03
  Crista Cowan: Enjoy my conversation with Mike Brousseau.
• 3:07
  Crista Cowan: Well, I'm so excited to meet you, Mike.
• 3:09
  Crista Cowan: Thank you for coming.
• 3:09
  Crista Cowan: You bet.
• 3:10
  Mike Brousseau: Thanks for having me.
• 3:11
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, like I love that we just met for the first time, but I feel like I know your family.
• 3:15
  Crista Cowan: And you probably don't know this story since we just met.
• 3:18
  Crista Cowan: But um I went to college with one of your brothers.
• 3:22
  Crista Cowan: And uh I was probably 22 or 23 years old and I moved out to New York City.
• 3:29
  Mike Brousseau: Wow.
• 3:29
  Crista Cowan: And uh just was all alone.
• 3:32
  Crista Cowan: It was kind of an adventure.
• 3:33
  Crista Cowan: I needed to do something different after I was done with school.
• 3:36
  Crista Cowan: And I would take little weekend road trips and would just find myself in random places in Pennsylvania.
• 3:43
  Crista Cowan: Or I think once I went down to Southern Virginia.
• 3:46
  Crista Cowan: And one weekend I found myself up in Vermont.
• 3:50
  Crista Cowan: And I went to church that Sunday and walked in, and people were introducing themselves to me, and the name Brousseau came up.
• 3:59
  Crista Cowan: And I thought, wait a second, and walked right up to your parents and I introduced myself to them and asked them if they were Mark's parents, and they said yes, they were, and just had the most delightful conversation with the two of them.
• 4:14
  Mike Brousseau: They were knowing them, that sounds about right.
• 4:16
  Crista Cowan: Lovely people.
• 4:17
  Crista Cowan: Um, and you know, that was 30 years ago.
• 4:21
  Crista Cowan: But um, then a few years ago, I was here in Utah County at Lehigh High School at one of my nephews' ball games.
• 4:29
  Crista Cowan: And another brother of yours, Matt, was there with uh his bro, his son played on the team with my nephew, and your parents came walking up to sit down next to them.
• 4:39
  Crista Cowan: And um, I didn't say anything because I wasn't sure if they'd remember me 30 years later, but um, I remembered them and was just so impressed with how much they loved the state of Vermont and how that was just such a part of their identity, even though they ended up here in Utah.
• 5:00
  Mike Brousseau: It's uh it's hard to get Vermont out of your blood.
• 5:04
  Crista Cowan: Well, so tell me a little bit.
• 5:05
  Crista Cowan: I wanted, I wanted so much to to have your dad here.
• 5:09
  Crista Cowan: Um, that was who I thought of immediately when I thought of uh telling a story about Vermont.
• 5:14
  Crista Cowan: But as I went digging, I learned that he had passed.
• 5:17
  Crista Cowan: How long ago did he pass?
• 5:19
  Mike Brousseau: I believe it was about three years ago.
• 5:22
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 5:22
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 5:23
  Crista Cowan: And um, and tell me like tell me about him as a person, as a dad.
• 5:28
  Mike Brousseau: Oh goodness.
• 5:28
  Mike Brousseau: Um, you know, my dad was uh he was self-made.
• 5:33
  Mike Brousseau: Um he was a man of great faith.
• 5:36
  Mike Brousseau: And um he was someone who loved his family and was unapologetic about what he believed.
• 5:44
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and uh he would talk to everyone everywhere about what he loved and what uh was important to him.
• 5:53
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 5:54
  Mike Brousseau: And he was uh he grew up in a little part of Vermont called the Northeast Kingdom.
• 5:59
  Crista Cowan: Okay, that sounds very fantastical and fair.
• 6:02
  Mike Brousseau: If you look at a map of Vermont all the way up in the the top right corner of the state is the Northeast Kingdom, and it's a place where you could walk off the road into the woods and walk in a straight line for days and never come across another road or a house or anything.
• 6:18
  Mike Brousseau: And um he uh he grew up there, spoke French in his home growing up.
• 6:24
  Mike Brousseau: Um his uh mother was uh Canadian, his father was born right there in that part of the state, and um both his parents spoke French, and uh when he graduated from high school, he went into the Air Force and um served in places like in Georgia and Eagle Pass, Texas, and um remote Alaska.
• 6:48
  Mike Brousseau: Um and then uh he got out of the service, he was in men's clothing for a long time and um met my mom.
• 6:58
  Mike Brousseau: She was uh eight years younger than he was.
• 7:00
  Mike Brousseau: So you had to wait for.
• 7:02
  Mike Brousseau: Well, they got married fairly quickly after they met.
• 7:05
  Mike Brousseau: I think she was 20 when they met.
• 7:07
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 7:08
  Mike Brousseau: And um they uh Do you know how they met?
• 7:12
  Mike Brousseau: I do.
• 7:13
  Mike Brousseau: Um he was on a break from his job at Nate's clothing.
• 7:17
  Mike Brousseau: He had spilled something on his tie, and rather than just buy another tie, he went home to get a new tie and stopped at the Dairy Queen that was down the street from his apartment.
• 7:26
  Mike Brousseau: And um, my mom was there with one of her friends and a little girl she was babysitting.
• 7:31
  Mike Brousseau: And so he was at the counter with the little girl and helped her take the food tray over to my mom's table and just watched her throughout lunch.
• 7:40
  Mike Brousseau: And then um at the end of the meal, he handed her business card from Nate's with his name on it, that's with a note on it that said, I'd like to go out with you sometime.
• 7:52
  Mike Brousseau: Give me a call.
• 7:53
  Mike Brousseau: And uh she sent spies into Nates to learn more about him.
• 8:00
  Mike Brousseau: She didn't respond to him or call him for several months.
• 8:04
  Mike Brousseau: When she finally did, um, he didn't recognize her.
• 8:08
  Mike Brousseau: He didn't know.
• 8:09
  Mike Brousseau: Oh no.
• 8:09
  Mike Brousseau: She had had her hair up when they met, it was down when they went on their first date.
• 8:14
  Mike Brousseau: Um, I think she had had it colored or something.
• 8:17
  Mike Brousseau: And uh that's kind of how it started.
• 8:20
  Mike Brousseau: And she always wanted to go back to the Dairy Queen.
• 8:23
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 8:23
  Mike Brousseau: And one day he said, You've really got something about the Dairy Queen, don't you?
• 8:26
  Mike Brousseau: And she said, You don't remember.
• 8:28
  Mike Brousseau: And all of a sudden it all came flooding back.
• 8:31
  Crista Cowan: And there we go.
• 8:32
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, that's how that matched charming.
• 8:34
  Crista Cowan: That's really charming.
• 8:35
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 8:35
  Crista Cowan: And is your mom also from Vermont?
• 8:38
  Mike Brousseau: She is.
• 8:38
  Mike Brousseau: Uh, she was born and raised in Montpelier, Vermont, the capital of the state.
• 8:43
  Crista Cowan: I went there just this uh let's see, let's see, year and a half ago in the fall.
• 8:48
  Crista Cowan: Um, my parents and I did a fall leaf peeping drive.
• 8:51
  Crista Cowan: And my dad loves, he has this obsession with college campuses and state capitals.
• 8:56
  Crista Cowan: And if there's a college campus or a state capital to visit, he will do it.
• 9:00
  Crista Cowan: And he wants to take pictures of the buildings.
• 9:02
  Crista Cowan: And so we went to Montpelier so that we could take a picture of the state capitol, and it is the tiniest state capital town I have ever been in.
• 9:10
  Mike Brousseau: It is tiny.
• 9:11
  Mike Brousseau: It's uh, I think there are two state capitals that have a golden dome, and Vermont's one of them.
• 9:17
  Crista Cowan: It is, and it's beautiful.
• 9:18
  Crista Cowan: It's and it's got that little river and the cute little trestle bridge, and um, and then there's kind of like a is there a mining community there?
• 9:26
  Mike Brousseau: Or is it uh there is there's a quarry there.
• 9:29
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 9:29
  Mike Brousseau: Um, uh a big granite quarry.
• 9:31
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 9:31
  Crista Cowan: And so was your mom's family always there?
• 9:35
  Mike Brousseau: Uh she yes, she grew up there.
• 9:37
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and they she was in Burlington that at that time to meet my dad because she was in college at the University of Vermont.
• 9:45
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 9:46
  Mike Brousseau: So that's but her family lived there for a long, long time.
• 9:49
  Mike Brousseau: And then they her parents, um, after she got married, her parents bought maybe it was around the same time, they bought a farm, uh dairy farm in Colchester, Vermont, which is very close to Burlington.
• 10:02
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 10:02
  Mike Brousseau: And um, yeah, a lot of great stories about that place too.
• 10:07
  Crista Cowan: So your parents got married and then they had how many children?
• 10:10
  Mike Brousseau: Four kids.
• 10:11
  Mike Brousseau: Four.
• 10:11
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 10:11
  Mike Brousseau: Two boys or three boys and one girl.
• 10:14
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 10:14
  Crista Cowan: And they decided to raise their family in Vermont.
• 10:17
  Crista Cowan: They did.
• 10:18
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 10:18
  Crista Cowan: And so did you grow up knowing all four of your grandparents?
• 10:23
  Mike Brousseau: I did.
• 10:23
  Mike Brousseau: Well, that actually that's not true.
• 10:25
  Mike Brousseau: My uh paternal grandfather passed away before my parents got married, before my mom never even met him.
• 10:31
  Mike Brousseau: But I knew the other three pretty well.
• 10:34
  Mike Brousseau: Um in fact, we did family vacations with my paternal grandmother all the time.
• 10:40
  Mike Brousseau: She was French-Canadian.
• 10:41
  Mike Brousseau: She had a great accent and a great sense of humor.
• 10:45
  Mike Brousseau: Um, she was the type of lady that uh she didn't have very much formal education, but my dad had a memory of her taking apart the refrigerator.
• 10:55
  Mike Brousseau: It wasn't working.
• 10:56
  Mike Brousseau: And she had taken it all apart and laid it all out on the floor so that she could remember where the pieces went.
• 11:02
  Crista Cowan: And there was no YouTube to tell her how to do it.
• 11:04
  Mike Brousseau: And there was no YouTube university.
• 11:06
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and she put it all back together and got it running.
• 11:08
  Crista Cowan: So that's amazing.
• 11:10
  Crista Cowan: She sounds remarkable.
• 11:11
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, she taught herself how to play the organ, and um, yeah, she was.
• 11:16
  Mike Brousseau: I I just remember this one uh vacation where she was talking about her favorite hockey team because she was Princess Canadian.
• 11:23
  Mike Brousseau: Right.
• 11:25
  Mike Brousseau: She was saying, I don't like that player.
• 11:27
  Mike Brousseau: You don't hustle on the heist.
• 11:29
  Mike Brousseau: Say that again, I love it.
• 11:34
  Mike Brousseau: You know what?
• 11:35
  Mike Brousseau: He don't hustle on the heist.
• 11:37
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 11:38
  Mike Brousseau: The H is just, you know, got missing, you know, displaced.
• 11:42
  Mike Brousseau: Um she they owned a convenience store when I was a baby in Essex Junction, Vermont.
• 11:48
  Mike Brousseau: And um there was a uh traveling salesman that came into the store and he was selling fruit.
• 11:56
  Mike Brousseau: And as they were check kind of checking off what they wanted in the store, she said, uh, how about some of those oranges with no bones in them?
• 12:05
  Mike Brousseau: Like, because English was not her first language there.
• 12:09
  Crista Cowan: So she's translating everything as she goes.
• 12:12
  Mike Brousseau: And my of course, my dad had to chime in and say, I'd like some of the ones with with the bones, and if we could arrange that.
• 12:20
  Crista Cowan: Oh, that's delightful.
• 12:21
  Crista Cowan: Did she ever share stories about your grandfather?
• 12:24
  Mike Brousseau: Yes, uh, my father shared stories about him a lot.
• 12:28
  Mike Brousseau: Um so my my grandfather was a lumberjack in the winter, okay, and he was a fishing guide in the summer.
• 12:35
  Mike Brousseau: There was a little uh resort there called Quimby's, um, where very famous wealthy families, influencers at the time, went to spend their vacations in their summers.
• 12:49
  Mike Brousseau: In fact, my dad learned to play tennis on a clay court and was taught by Mr.
• 12:54
  Mike Brousseau: Hoover of Hoover Vacuums.
• 12:56
  Mike Brousseau: Okay, then.
• 12:57
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and so my my grandfather was a fishing guide for the guests at at Quimby's and his whole family ended up working there in one uh way or another over the years.
• 13:09
  Mike Brousseau: Uh, I think my grandmother cooked and cleaned rooms, and my grandfather did the the fishing.
• 13:16
  Mike Brousseau: My dad worked as a cook and as a waiter.
• 13:20
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and they just it was it's sounds kind of idyllic the way he told the story.
• 13:26
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, absolutely.
• 13:27
  Crista Cowan: And what like what time period was that?
• 13:29
  Crista Cowan: What decades?
• 13:31
  Mike Brousseau: Uh let's see, my dad was born in 39, so it was probably in the 40s and 50s.
• 13:36
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 13:36
  Crista Cowan: So that was kind of that post-war baby boomer idealized time of period of time, yeah, in American history.
• 13:44
  Mike Brousseau: It's interesting.
• 13:45
  Mike Brousseau: My grandfather could not read or write.
• 13:47
  Mike Brousseau: Um, but he ended up doing a lot of carpentry work after they left that part of the state, and he could build a perfect spiral staircase.
• 13:56
  Mike Brousseau: Whoa.
• 13:57
  Mike Brousseau: Without having all of the math and the calculus to figure out how to how to do that.
• 14:02
  Crista Cowan: Are any of those still standing somewhere that you've seen?
• 14:05
  Mike Brousseau: Yes, there are.
• 14:06
  Mike Brousseau: In fact, uh, if you go to Quimby's, you can still see some of his handiwork there, including a 10-pound lake trout that they had stuffed and mounted um, you know, up on the wall over the kitchen.
• 14:19
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 14:20
  Crista Cowan: Okay, now I heard a rumor that there's a place in, and I don't know if it's in the Northeast Kingdom called Brousseau Mountain.
• 14:26
  Mike Brousseau: There is.
• 14:27
  Crista Cowan: Tell me about that.
• 14:29
  Mike Brousseau: Okay, so uh my great-grandfather, um Joseph Phileas Brousseau, um, he was also born in Quebec, um, but immigrated to Vermont um with his wife.
• 14:43
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and uh that's where my grandfather was born.
• 14:48
  Mike Brousseau: And they actually raised 11 kids on this mountain um near near April Lake.
• 14:54
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, near Avril Lake, small April Lake.
• 14:57
  Mike Brousseau: Um and uh someone decided that's it's Brusso country.
• 15:02
  Mike Brousseau: Okay, and so they called it Brusso Mountain.
• 15:04
  Mike Brousseau: So you can actually Google it and you can put yourself, I think you can put yourself on the cliff and overlook the the whole on Google Earth.
• 15:14
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, on Google Earth.
• 15:14
  Crista Cowan: That's fun.
• 15:16
  Crista Cowan: Um and you do you ever wonder like what leads people to raise 11 children in that kind of wilderness?
• 15:24
  Crista Cowan: And like like why are those choices made?
• 15:28
  Mike Brousseau: I do wonder that.
• 15:29
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, uh I I chose a very different path.
• 15:32
  Mike Brousseau: I'm raising only four kids and in a fairly urban.
• 15:36
  Mike Brousseau: Uh some people might laugh at that term, but it's uh orum and salt lake and provo.
• 15:42
  Mike Brousseau: It's a different life.
• 15:44
  Crista Cowan: Very different, different life, yeah, for sure.
• 15:47
  Crista Cowan: And yet for generations your family stayed there.
• 15:49
  Crista Cowan: Yeah um talk talk to me a little bit about I don't know a lot about Vermont history and the French Canadian border, and like I suspect it was probably rather porous for a very long time.
• 15:59
  Crista Cowan: Very much so.
• 16:00
  Mike Brousseau: And so there's a lot of French influence throughout Vermont, uh, particularly the north out of Vermont.
• 16:05
  Mike Brousseau: Um, although when I went to high school, I uh there were a lot of kids with French names.
• 16:10
  Mike Brousseau: Um yeah, it's uh Vermont was the 14th state, so the first one after the original 13 colonies.
• 16:17
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 16:18
  Mike Brousseau: Um I've actually had people here ask me what state Vermont is in.
• 16:22
  Mike Brousseau: Oh yeah, that's that's a little sad.
• 16:25
  Mike Brousseau: Um but it was the 14th state, and it was actually uh uh kind of a pivotal state in the Revolutionary War.
• 16:32
  Mike Brousseau: Do tell the the St.
• 16:35
  Mike Brousseau: Lawrence Seaway was uh emptied into part of it anyways, emptied into Lake Champlain, uh-huh, which empties into the Hudson River, which empties into the New York Harbor.
• 16:45
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 16:46
  Mike Brousseau: And so uh there was a place in upstate New York called Ticonderoga where there was a fort.
• 16:51
  Mike Brousseau: The fort, yeah.
• 16:52
  Mike Brousseau: And um, anyone who controlled the fort, it was narrow enough that you could shoot a cannon all the way across the lake.
• 16:58
  Mike Brousseau: And so Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys from Vermont went across the lake in the middle of the night and uh and took Fort Ticonderoga without firing a shot, and it um prevented the British from getting supplies into New York Harbor and was kind of a one of those turning points.
• 17:17
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, sounds like it.
• 17:19
  Crista Cowan: I have heard of Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Boys, but I did not realize the connection to Vermont.
• 17:24
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, most people here have heard of Ethan Allen furniture.
• 17:26
  Mike Brousseau: Well, yeah.
• 17:27
  Mike Brousseau: Um yeah, so uh the Canadian influence is very strong.
• 17:34
  Mike Brousseau: In fact, uh, even when I was growing up, um, because they have a value-added tax in Canada, people would shop in Vermont and then drive things across the border.
• 17:45
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 17:45
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and I grew up uh taking French classes and then ended up serving a mission for the Church of Jesus Christ in uh Switzerland and France, speaking French.
• 17:56
  Mike Brousseau: And my first job after my mission was working at an American Eagle in the mall in Burlington, and I would have French Canadians come in all the time.
• 18:04
  Mike Brousseau: And uh sometimes I would tell them I spoke French, sometimes I would just interject things um in English.
• 18:11
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 18:11
  Mike Brousseau: That works to confuse people a little bit.
• 18:15
  Mike Brousseau: And and uh we also don't have extradition policies or things like that, so they would drive really fast through Vermont and get tickets, and you'd see them drive away from the police officer and throw the ticket out the window.
• 18:28
  Crista Cowan: Well, it sounds like they may be as spicy as your grandmother.
• 18:31
  Crista Cowan: So your grandmother was French Canadian, your grandfather, how far back before we get into French Canada on his side?
• 18:39
  Mike Brousseau: Uh I think both of his parents were from French Canada.
• 18:41
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 18:42
  Crista Cowan: Um, and they're the ones who came and settled Brusseau Mountain.
• 18:46
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 18:46
  Crista Cowan: Got it.
• 18:47
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 18:47
  Crista Cowan: And then what about your mom's family?
• 18:48
  Crista Cowan: How long have they been in Vermont?
• 18:50
  Mike Brousseau: Uh let's see.
• 18:50
  Mike Brousseau: I think um my grandfather was born, my mom was born in Vermont, my grandfather was born in Philadelphia, my grandmother was born in uh Plattsburgh, New York.
• 19:02
  Mike Brousseau: Okay, but her mom was born in Vermont.
• 19:05
  Mike Brousseau: Oh.
• 19:05
  Mike Brousseau: Her dad was born in Vermont as well.
• 19:08
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and then uh right before um, I think his parents were both born in Ireland.
• 19:17
  Mike Brousseau: Uh I think it was County Limerick in Ireland.
• 19:22
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and then her grandmother's her grandmother was born in Sweden.
• 19:29
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 19:29
  Crista Cowan: Um And so why did they come to Vermont, do you think?
• 19:33
  Mike Brousseau: I think they were building highways and there were farming opportunities and there was land available and and I think they had no idea how cold it was.
• 19:42
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 19:44
  Crista Cowan: Well, and it's interesting because like when we think about farming, we don't think about Vermont's, right?
• 19:49
  Crista Cowan: Like because of the long winters, I suspect.
• 19:51
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 19:52
  Crista Cowan: Um and yet they managed to make a life anyway, huh?
• 19:55
  Mike Brousseau: Yes.
• 19:55
  Mike Brousseau: And there are a lot of dairy farms there too.
• 19:57
  Mike Brousseau: In fact, the we joke in my family that there are more cows than people in the state.
• 20:01
  Mike Brousseau: Um, but of course they do make the best maple syrup and the best cheese.
• 20:07
  Crista Cowan: Well, I don't know that Wisconsin or Canada would agree with you, but Well, they don't have to.
• 20:12
  Mike Brousseau: It's just it's just a fact.
• 20:14
  Crista Cowan: I forget about that.
• 20:15
  Crista Cowan: So talk to me about like like what it meant to you to grow up in Vermont.
• 20:21
  Crista Cowan: What does that look like for you?
• 20:22
  Mike Brousseau: I grew up in a kind of a small town called Essex Junction.
• 20:26
  Mike Brousseau: Um that had an IBM uh factory in that city, and so the schools were all really well funded.
• 20:36
  Mike Brousseau: Uh, but my high school only had about 1200 students.
• 20:39
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 20:40
  Mike Brousseau: Um some of that was because uh unincorporated cities could choose where they sent their kids.
• 20:47
  Mike Brousseau: Uh okay.
• 20:47
  Mike Brousseau: And because the high school was so well funded, they a lot of people sent their kids to Essex Junction.
• 20:53
  Mike Brousseau: Um, the thing I loved about Vermont though is that it was uh it was small enough that everyone knew everyone.
• 20:59
  Mike Brousseau: Like even people that lived all the way across town, which wasn't that far.
• 21:04
  Mike Brousseau: Um, we all knew each other, uh the kids all knew each other.
• 21:07
  Mike Brousseau: Uh people did a lot socially.
• 21:11
  Mike Brousseau: It was and it was a very safe place to grow up for the most part.
• 21:15
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 21:15
  Mike Brousseau: Like I said, there was there was a good educational system.
• 21:19
  Mike Brousseau: Um every friend that I went to high school with ended up going to college, some to Ivy Leagues.
• 21:25
  Mike Brousseau: Um it was uh and we were very close to Burlington, which is the biggest city in Vermont.
• 21:32
  Mike Brousseau: Um and Burlington had all the had great restaurants and theaters and places where you could go to concerts and um University of Vermont, of course.
• 21:44
  Mike Brousseau: Uh I think there were several universities in that area, um, St.
• 21:48
  Crista Cowan: Michael's College and Champlain College, and that's something that for everybody I've ever met from Vermont values education.
• 21:56
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 21:56
  Crista Cowan: Like there's just something, and maybe that's just been my exposure or experience.
• 21:59
  Crista Cowan: Experience, but it feels like that's something that's really important there.
• 22:03
  Crista Cowan: And I don't know if that's part of the French Canadian influence or if that's just the nature of the people in Vermont or the educational system.
• 22:10
  Crista Cowan: I don't know what that is.
• 22:11
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, I'm not sure what it is either.
• 22:13
  Mike Brousseau: But I I agree with you.
• 22:14
  Mike Brousseau: Um even in the smaller rural areas, you could tell it was important to people.
• 22:19
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, because in a lot of states, when you get into those rural areas, especially, you know, even back when we were growing up, but certainly through the 40s and 50s and 60s, education was not as important to a lot of people.
• 22:30
  Mike Brousseau: So yeah, it's funny.
• 22:32
  Mike Brousseau: My uh my mom went to college, she got a degree in nursing.
• 22:35
  Mike Brousseau: Um, my dad did not, though.
• 22:37
  Mike Brousseau: So I would I think I was the first Brusso descendant to actually get a bachelor's degree.
• 22:43
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 22:43
  Mike Brousseau: Um that's I consider that a big honor.
• 22:48
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and uh now, of course, all my siblings have degrees, and uh we've got kids with degrees now, so that's been uh that's been a good good direction for us, I think.
• 23:00
  Mike Brousseau: One of the things you might find interesting as a family history expert is that um back where my grandfather was born, where my father was born, um they were in Catholic hospitals when they were born.
• 23:15
  Mike Brousseau: And what the parents asked for to go on the birth certificate wasn't always what ended up on the birth certificate.
• 23:23
  Mike Brousseau: Oh, yeah.
• 23:23
  Mike Brousseau: The nuns would add Mary or Marie or Joseph, depending on you know gender, to every single person's name.
• 23:32
  Crista Cowan: Whether the person was Catholic or not.
• 23:34
  Mike Brousseau: That's right.
• 23:34
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 23:35
  Mike Brousseau: And so my dad grew up thinking his name was Norman Joseph Brusso.
• 23:39
  Mike Brousseau: That's what he always went by.
• 23:40
  Mike Brousseau: That's when he enlisted in the Air Force.
• 23:43
  Mike Brousseau: That's what he put on his application, Norman Joseph Brusso.
• 23:47
  Mike Brousseau: Well, he was part way through basic training, and they came, they said, Okay, who's here from Vermont?
• 23:53
  Mike Brousseau: And there were a few people that raised their hands.
• 23:55
  Mike Brousseau: Who's from Averill, Vermont?
• 23:57
  Mike Brousseau: He was the only one in the room from Averill, Vermont, and they said, Is your name what is your name, boy?
• 24:03
  Mike Brousseau: He said, Norman Joseph Brusso.
• 24:05
  Mike Brousseau: They said, No, it's not.
• 24:06
  Mike Brousseau: Here's your birth certificate.
• 24:08
  Mike Brousseau: It was Joseph Solomon Norman Brusso.
• 24:11
  Crista Cowan: Oh my goodness.
• 24:12
  Mike Brousseau: So they threw in the Joseph at the front, they threw in his dad's name next, and then the Norman that his asked for for him.
• 24:20
  Mike Brousseau: And so he had to go through a two-inch stack of papers and re-sign everything, refill everything out, resign everything.
• 24:27
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and so sometimes doing family history, um, you get some surprises.
• 24:33
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 24:33
  Mike Brousseau: Uh, the other thing that we've noticed um as we've researched our family is that um there are times when uh they would do a census, but the people living in the home didn't have any education or formal education.
• 24:48
  Mike Brousseau: And so sometimes the spellings are weird.
• 24:51
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 24:51
  Crista Cowan: It can be really difficult, really challenging to well, and especially in a place like Vermont where you've got some language fluidity, right?
• 24:59
  Crista Cowan: You've got you've got some challenges maybe with a census taker who doesn't speak French and somebody giving the census taker the information with a French accent and they're trying to figure out how to spell that.
• 25:08
  Mike Brousseau: And so you have some phonetic spellings and how long did it take you to learn how to spell your last name?
• 25:14
  Crista Cowan: There's a lot of vowels in there.
• 25:15
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 25:16
  Mike Brousseau: I actually one of the most traumatic experiences of my childhood was going to kindergarten on the first day.
• 25:21
  Mike Brousseau: They had all of our names up on the wall behind the teacher's desk, and they said, point out your name.
• 25:27
  Mike Brousseau: And I got there was a Mike Brown in my class, and I saw the mic and the BRO, and I thought, that's gotta be me, right?
• 25:33
  Mike Brousseau: And it turns out I was, and then I saw the name, and I started to cry because that was a lot of letters.
• 25:39
  Crista Cowan: Right.
• 25:40
  Crista Cowan: Um that's amazing.
• 25:45
  Crista Cowan: Any stories from your grandparents on your mom's side of the family that you remember growing up?
• 25:49
  Mike Brousseau: You know, my my maternal grandparents met in England during World War II.
• 25:55
  Crista Cowan: Oh, wow.
• 25:56
  Mike Brousseau: Um, my grandmother was an army nurse, and my grandfather was the captain of the hospital that she worked at.
• 26:06
  Mike Brousseau: And that's where they first met and started to date.
• 26:09
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and then uh they went back to Philadelphia to meet his parents.
• 26:13
  Mike Brousseau: And um, so I think that's kind of an interesting background that they came from that.
• 26:18
  Mike Brousseau: Um fact, my grandmother was uh she was one of those non no nonsense people that even in her 90s was still correcting us about how to make eggs.
• 26:28
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 26:29
  Mike Brousseau: Um because there's a right way and there's there's her way and the wrong way.
• 26:34
  Mike Brousseau: Okay, right.
• 26:34
  Mike Brousseau: One of those.
• 26:35
  Mike Brousseau: And uh she was a force of nature.
• 26:38
  Mike Brousseau: And um, yeah, her my grandfather died when I was, I think, eight years old.
• 26:44
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and she lived into her 90s.
• 26:47
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 26:47
  Crista Cowan: Did she remarry?
• 26:49
  Mike Brousseau: She did not.
• 26:49
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 26:50
  Mike Brousseau: She did not.
• 26:51
  Mike Brousseau: Um, I have an aunt who had three little boys who uh was divorced, who bought a house in the same neighborhood as her home.
• 27:00
  Mike Brousseau: Um, actually, she already had the home.
• 27:03
  Mike Brousseau: My grandmother bought a home in that neighborhood to be close to her, and so she helped raise grandsons for a lot of years.
• 27:10
  Crista Cowan: Wow.
• 27:11
  Crista Cowan: How many grandchildren did she have, do you know?
• 27:14
  Mike Brousseau: Oh boy.
• 27:15
  Crista Cowan: Counting all the cousins?
• 27:16
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, I 15.
• 27:19
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 27:19
  Crista Cowan: And you still got to have a relationship with her?
• 27:22
  Crista Cowan: Yes.
• 27:23
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 27:23
  Crista Cowan: Which that's a big deal, right?
• 27:25
  Crista Cowan: Sometimes in big families, especially when a grandmother is helping raise a set of grandchildren, those they become the focus and they lose focus a little bit on some of the others.
• 27:34
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, and she was a real unifier in the family.
• 27:36
  Mike Brousseau: Um, she regularly would have all of the family over for Sunday dinners.
• 27:41
  Mike Brousseau: Um, she would even invite my dad's siblings when they were close by to come to the Sunday dinners too.
• 27:48
  Mike Brousseau: And um yeah, um, I feel very close to uh to my cousins, particularly on that side of the family.
• 27:56
  Mike Brousseau: Um, we did do a lot of things with the Brusel cousins too.
• 28:00
  Mike Brousseau: They were a little bit more spread out.
• 28:01
  Mike Brousseau: Um, but Hilda, Hilda Danaher, um, she was uh she was a great unifier.
• 28:11
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 28:11
  Crista Cowan: I love that you had her for so long, too.
• 28:13
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 28:14
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, she even came and visited us here on a regular basis.
• 28:17
  Mike Brousseau: And um when I came to to Utah, I I was accepted to BYU um out of high school.
• 28:26
  Mike Brousseau: And my parents planned a big road trip where we went south to Atlanta, Georgia to visit some of my dad's best friend from his childhood, and then west to Houston to visit my mom's brother and his family, and then to Utah.
• 28:39
  Mike Brousseau: And Hilda came with us on the trip.
• 28:41
  Crista Cowan: Oh, how fun.
• 28:42
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 28:43
  Mike Brousseau: And to my dad's last days, he always said that traveling with Hilda was better than traveling with Kathy, my mom.
• 28:49
  Crista Cowan: Okay, then.
• 28:50
  Mike Brousseau: My mom had to go to the bathroom a lot, so it was well.
• 28:54
  Mike Brousseau: Alice.
• 28:58
  Crista Cowan: Hilda and Alice.
• 28:59
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, my kids have an all-star list of names to choose from for grandma names.
• 29:03
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 29:03
  Mike Brousseau: We have Hilda and Alice, and on my wife's side, we have Zelda and Ilsa.
• 29:07
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 29:08
  Mike Brousseau: Fantastic, right?
• 29:10
  Crista Cowan: But so far you only have grandsons?
• 29:11
  Mike Brousseau: Uh yes.
• 29:12
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 29:12
  Crista Cowan: Well, we'll hold out for some of those grandma names.
• 29:16
  Crista Cowan: That's so great.
• 29:17
  Crista Cowan: None of your siblings' families have stolen those names.
• 29:21
  Mike Brousseau: Uh no.
• 29:22
  Mike Brousseau: Okay.
• 29:23
  Mike Brousseau: Uh, they did not.
• 29:24
  Mike Brousseau: They did.
• 29:24
  Mike Brousseau: Um, one of the grandsons uh was named after my grandfather Solomon.
• 29:30
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and I think there were some middle names where you had there's some Joseph's and things like that, too.
• 29:37
  Crista Cowan: So we're gonna make sure those Josephs and Marys get passed along.
• 29:40
  Mike Brousseau: That's right.
• 29:40
  Mike Brousseau: We have to.
• 29:42
  Crista Cowan: Well, so uh has all of your family eventually left, all of your immediate family left Vermont?
• 29:47
  Mike Brousseau: They all followed me west.
• 29:49
  Crista Cowan: Okay, so you started that trend?
• 29:50
  Crista Cowan: I did.
• 29:51
  Crista Cowan: Okay.
• 29:52
  Mike Brousseau: I did.
• 29:53
  Crista Cowan: Um, your parents stayed in Vermont for a long time though, even though you all kind of moved out this way.
• 29:58
  Mike Brousseau: They did.
• 29:58
  Mike Brousseau: In fact, two of my siblings uh lived with them in Vermont for periods of time while they were when they were first married.
• 30:05
  Mike Brousseau: Um, I had a brother-in-law who uh ended up doing some advanced schooling at the University of Vermont.
• 30:12
  Mike Brousseau: And um my brother Matt, who you know, uh he and his wife lived with them briefly in Vermont as well.
• 30:18
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 30:18
  Crista Cowan: And so then they finally, when all the kids and grandkids were here, they finally moved out here.
• 30:23
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, she was she was hesitant at first um because she had a really, really close relationship with her mom.
• 30:30
  Mike Brousseau: And um her mom was getting older and she was really concerned about leaving her mom.
• 30:36
  Mike Brousseau: And um, I don't feel guilty about this, but I I actually told her one day, your kid, your grandkids are changing every day.
• 30:43
  Mike Brousseau: You're always going to have a relationship with your mom.
• 30:46
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah, and your grandkids don't know you.
• 30:48
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and so my dad decided that uh instead of paying therapy bills and for long distance charges, which was a thing back then, uh, when he could retire from nationwide insurance, he retired, and my mom also retired from nursing and they moved out here.
• 31:06
  Mike Brousseau: And uh my mom actually worked at St.
• 31:09
  Mike Brousseau: Mark's Hospital in Salt Lake for a few years before she retired.
• 31:12
  Mike Brousseau: She was able to come out to a job.
• 31:14
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 31:14
  Crista Cowan: And what kind of what kind of grandparents like you you just reminisced about your grandparents?
• 31:19
  Crista Cowan: How would you describe your parents as grandparents?
• 31:22
  Mike Brousseau: Well, we were the first ones to have grandchildren, and so we kind of had to teach them a little bit about how to be grandparents.
• 31:29
  Mike Brousseau: Um, but they were fantastic.
• 31:31
  Mike Brousseau: Uh, we had many opportunities where the kids would either stay with them or they'd come to our house and stay with the kids while uh we did business travel together.
• 31:41
  Mike Brousseau: And um, first of all, my dad was the consummate tease.
• 31:45
  Mike Brousseau: Um, you didn't want if you had young children, you didn't want to sit in front of him at church because he would bug your kids the whole meeting.
• 31:53
  Mike Brousseau: Um, but if he sat next to him, he was great because they would all sit on his lap and he would entertain them, you know, all through the meetings.
• 32:00
  Mike Brousseau: There you go.
• 32:01
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and the kids learned that when you turned six and he said, How old are you now?
• 32:06
  Mike Brousseau: And they said six, he would say, 'Well, I didn't ask you how you felt.' I asked you how old you're so they all learned to, you know, I'm six, um, or I'm almost seven.
• 32:16
  Mike Brousseau: And he had something for each of their ages.
• 32:19
  Mike Brousseau: And uh, if the kids had braces, he would ask if they could stand by the TV so he could improve the reception.
• 32:24
  Mike Brousseau: Which they probably didn't get.
• 32:26
  Mike Brousseau: Right.
• 32:27
  Mike Brousseau: They didn't get that.
• 32:28
  Mike Brousseau: Um he loved to laugh.
• 32:32
  Mike Brousseau: Um he was an amazing singer.
• 32:37
  Mike Brousseau: Um my brother Mark got his voice for sure.
• 32:41
  Mike Brousseau: And uh he was someone that could sing anything.
• 32:44
  Mike Brousseau: He was he was a true baritone, but I never heard him miss a note.
• 32:49
  Mike Brousseau: Like he didn't matter how high it went, he could hit the notes.
• 32:53
  Mike Brousseau: And he would sing at all the children's big events.
• 32:57
  Mike Brousseau: Um he always had a guitar in his hand and would you know play and sing for the family.
• 33:03
  Mike Brousseau: And my mom uh was just loving and supportive uh to this day.
• 33:08
  Mike Brousseau: The the only piece of real parenting advice I ever got from her was just love them.
• 33:14
  Mike Brousseau: Um, and that kind of sums her up as a person.
• 33:18
  Mike Brousseau: Um and I think my kids enjoyed spending time with them.
• 33:23
  Mike Brousseau: They've got funny stories about the grandparents too.
• 33:25
  Mike Brousseau: Um yeah, it uh it was fun to watch them as grandparents.
• 33:31
  Mike Brousseau: There were times I had to remind my kids that those people you know that are so nice they were different when I was a kid.
• 33:39
  Crista Cowan: Right.
• 33:39
  Crista Cowan: Um well, as you think about now your own journey into grandparenthood, what kind of grandpa do you want to be?
• 33:46
  Mike Brousseau: I'd like to be like them.
• 33:47
  Mike Brousseau: Um, you know, someone who uh is curious about my grandkids, um, who is uh involved in their lives and goes to activities.
• 33:58
  Mike Brousseau: My my wife and I got to go to grandparents' day at my oldest grandson's kindergarten the other day and eat some little Caesars Pizza and go to the book fair with them.
• 34:08
  Mike Brousseau: They're smart, they invite the grandparents to a book fair.
• 34:10
  Mike Brousseau: Because you'll buy them too.
• 34:12
  Mike Brousseau: That's right.
• 34:13
  Mike Brousseau: Exactly.
• 34:13
  Mike Brousseau: The parents were like, Yeah, we have too many books now already.
• 34:16
  Mike Brousseau: Yeah.
• 34:16
  Mike Brousseau: Grandparents are sending them home with four or five books.
• 34:20
  Crista Cowan: So fun.
• 34:21
  Mike Brousseau: Um, yeah.
• 34:22
  Crista Cowan: As you think about your grandkids, like what do you want them to know about Vermont?
• 34:28
  Mike Brousseau: Um, first of all, that it was a great place to grow up.
• 34:31
  Mike Brousseau: Um just the the atmosphere, the the feeling of community um was really special.
• 34:43
  Mike Brousseau: Um maybe a vacation to Quimby's in your future?
• 34:46
  Mike Brousseau: Absolutely.
• 34:48
  Mike Brousseau: We haven't I haven't gotten the kids to Quimby's yet.
• 34:51
  Mike Brousseau: They uh they've been back to Vermont a couple of times, but we need to get up to that part of the state.
• 34:56
  Crista Cowan: There you go.
• 34:57
  Crista Cowan: Well, thank you for sharing Vermont with us.
• 35:00
  Mike Brousseau: It's uh it was a great place to grow up.
• 35:03
  Mike Brousseau: I have really fond memories.
• 35:05
  Crista Cowan: I love that.
• 35:06
  Crista Cowan: Sorry, you're choking me up.
• 35:07
  Crista Cowan: Um, the the the importance of place in our family stories.
• 35:13
  Crista Cowan: Yeah.
• 35:13
  Crista Cowan: Like it matters.
• 35:14
  Crista Cowan: It does.
• 35:15
  Crista Cowan: It really does.
• 35:16
  Mike Brousseau: And I and I think maybe the thing that my parents um transmitted to us, maybe more than aside from their faith um and their love for each other, uh, they really instilled in us the importance of family.
• 35:32
  Mike Brousseau: Um families first.
• 35:34
  Mike Brousseau: And we make sacrifices for each other.
• 35:37
  Mike Brousseau: And um, you know, growing up as kids, of course, we had our conflicts and like every family does, but I would literally follow any of my siblings to hell and back to have their back um in any situation, um, because uh family comes first and they are fantastic people in their own right.
• 36:02
  Crista Cowan: That's amazing.
• 36:02
  Crista Cowan: Maybe the Northeast Kingdom isn't just a place in Vermont.
• 36:06
  Crista Cowan: Maybe it's maybe it has something to do with the people from there.
• 36:09
  Crista Cowan: Yeah, thank you.
• 36:11
  Crista Cowan: I like that.
• 36:12
  Crista Cowan: Studio sponsored by Ancestry.