Angeline Derendoff

I interviewed Angeline Derendoff on the evening of Thursday, July 23, 1992. We worked together around a table in the kitchen area of her home in Huslia, Alaska. Although her husband, Richard, is still alive, he is blind and has significant health problems, so he lives with one of their daughters. In this two part interview, Angeline talks about her family and growing up. Her mother was an especially important person to her, tough, but a good teacher. She also remembers her younger years in Cutoff. Other topics we covered were early stores and storekeepers, how she struggled to get some schooling and finally as an adult made it to about the seventh grade level, and her memories of various missionaries. Angeline has been very lame with one badly deformed leg from the time she was a young child. All of the elders have had to struggle with various problems throughout their lives, but with her disability and other problems, Angeline has had a particularly difficult life. Angeline talked about what it was like to grow up with a disability years ago. One result was that she married at age 27, about ten years later than most young Koyukon women at that time. She talked about her marriage to Richard Derendoff, and how the Episcopal Bishop insisted that anyone living together should either marry formally or break up. Unsure of what she should do, she felt pressured by the situation. At the very end of the tape, Angeline describes the group wedding nearly 50 years ago on August 8 when the Episcopal Bishop, Bishop Bentley, married her and Richard, Edith and Fred Bifelt, and Laura and Peter Mark in a group ceremony at Fred's home in Cutoff.