Alma Alves was born in Louisiana on July 8, 1907, the daughter of Peter Alves and Angelina (Trasierra) Alves. The family moved from New Orleans to Biloxi about 1910. They had ten children, two who died very young. The youngest, and the last to die, was Wilhemina, who passed away in 2005 at the age of 95.

In the 1920 census, Alma, then about 13, was listed as attending school and not working. Her father was unemployed due to illness, and her mother was working as an oyster shucker. Alma married Voorhis Olier in about 1926. In the 1930 census, they are living with her mother, but her father is not listed in the home. Alma is working in a seafood cannery, and Voorhis is working as a boatman.

Edited interviews with Joseph Olier, son of Alma Alves, and Joseph's wife, Patricia Olier. Interviews conducted separately by Joe Manning (JM), both on September 23, 2009.

Joseph Olier

JM: What did you think of the pictures?

Joseph: I'd seen one of them before, the one with the family. It was in the Biloxi-D'Iberville Press five or six years ago. I had never seen the other one of my mother until you sent it to me. I sure was surprised. I didn't think I would ever see something like that. I had cut out the one that was in the newspaper and put it in a frame, but Hurricane Katrina got it. It took my home and everything.

JM: Did you rebuild your home?

Joseph: No, I bought one somewhere else. They had wanted to rebuild my house 18 to 20 feet off the ground, but it would have been too expensive for the insurance.

JM: So when I sent you the pictures, I guess I replaced the one you lost.

Joseph: That's right. Actually, I had recently been thinking about seeing if I could get another copy from the newspaper, but then you sent it.

JM: When the picture was in the paper, did you let them know your mother was in it?

Joseph: No, I didn't do that.

JM: Were you surprised to see your mother and your family in that situation?

Joseph: I kind of figured it was like that back then, because I remember my daddy talked about how bad it was when he was little. He lived in Louisiana and had to cut sugar cane and plant rice and stuff like that.

JM: Mr. Hine took these pictures in order to convince people that there should be child labor laws.

Joseph: Well, that was a good purpose. It was hard times back then. That house they were living in looks like a rundown shack. I'd seen some of those shacks down in Biloxi when I was a kid. You could see through the walls when you went in them. My daddy lived in a shack when he was little.

JM: Did your mother ever talk about this?

Joseph: No.

JM: Did you know Peter Alves, your grandfather?

Joseph: No, he died before I was born. I knew my grandmother when I was little.

JM: When were you born?

Joseph: 1939.

JM: Where was your family living then?

Joseph: I was born in my grandmother's house on Myrtle Street, in Biloxi. We lived with her for a while, and then we lived in a project in Biloxi. The projects were homes for people who didn't have much money. We paid about $15 or $20 for rent.

JM: What did your father do for a living then?

Joseph: He worked in the shell mills. They'd grind up shells and make bricks out of them. He also worked in other factories, and finally went to work for the USO (United Service Organizations). He was a maintenance man. He also worked for the church.

JM: Did you mother work when you were growing up?

Joseph: Yes, she worked in the factories. She picked shrimp, opened oysters, things like that. She'd get up about 3:30 or 4:00 in the morning. She'd get home late in the afternoon, depending on how many boats they had to unload.

JM: How many children did she have?

Joseph: Five. Two of them, a brother and a sister, died of pneumonia at about a year old. I didn't even know them. I'm the only child left.

JM: Who took care of all of you when both your parents were working?

Joseph: My grandmother, Angelina, as far as I can remember. That's my mother's mother. She lived about five blocks from us until 1947, when we bought the house next door to her. That's when we moved out of the projects.

JM: What was the address of that house?

Joseph: The old address was 219 Myrtle Street. Then it was changed to 129 Myrtle.

JM: Was your mother still working then?

Joseph: Yes, and my daddy was working for the USO then.

JM: Have you lived all your life in the Biloxi area?

Joseph: After I got married, I also lived in Louisiana and Texas. I live about 25 miles from Biloxi now.

JM: Do you ever go back to see the house on Myrtle Street that your parents bought?

Joseph: It's not there anymore. The hurricane took it. It was a block and a half from the water. Katrina cleaned out the whole point down there. They call it Point Cadet. The only thing that's down there now is casinos.

JM: Oh, so you were living in your parents' old house when Katrina came?

Joseph: Yes. I still own the property, but there's nothing going on with it right now.

JM: What was your mother like?

Joseph: She was a hard worker, both her and my daddy.

JM: Did your parents have a lot of friends?

Joseph: Yes, until they got to be 70 or 80 years old. My daddy used to throw all kind of fish fry parties at the house.

JM: When did your daddy die?

Joseph: In 1983. He was born in 1902. My mother was born July 8, 1907, and she died September 1987. My father's first name was Voorhis, and he was Acadian. That means he was French. My mother was Spanish. She looked like a Spaniard.

JM: Was there anything your mother liked to do when she wasn't working?

Joseph: She liked to work in her garden. She planted flowers all around the house. My daddy planted a huge garden every year, with tomatoes and potatoes. My mother liked to cook. She'd make gumbo, and meatballs and spaghetti.

Patricia Olier

JM: What was your reaction to the pictures?

Patricia: It sure pleased my husband to see what his mother looked like. If you look at Joe, the boy in the family picture, it's just like you're looking at my husband, the dark hair, the dark olive complexion. You could tell it was a hard life that they had.

JM: Did Alma ever talk to you about that?

Patricia: No, she never did.

JM: Were you aware of the poor conditions she was living in then?

Patricia: No. I knew she was raised working in a factory, but I didn't know it was at such a young age that they started teaching them the trade.

JM: What was Alma like?

Patricia: She had her good moments and her bad moments, as most mother-in-laws do.

JM: What were the good moments?

Patricia: We lived away a lot, but my husband would go get them every Christmas, and they would stay with us until January or February. Neither one of them drove. We all had a good time then. I got along better with my father-in-law than I did with Alma. You gotta remember, I married the youngest son. He had been married to someone else before me. He had gotten married when he was in the Navy. By the time I met him, he had already been divorced a long time. He had a daughter with his first wife. I think his mother always wanted him to go back to his first wife, because of his daughter. But when we had a son, her attitude changed, somewhat.

I think she had a good life. She worked hard. I'm not sure when she quit the factory. She worked there a little bit after Joseph and I got married. And then she started doing housekeeping at the Trade Winds and the Sun and Sand (hotels). She worked at the USO when my father-in-law worked there. I think she made sandwiches and stuff like that in the kitchenette. When they worked at the USO, they had a lot of the guys coming in, and she would take in their laundry. She had clothes hanging all over the house, even outside. It really hurt when my father-in-law had to give up working at the USO. He was diagnosed with cancer.

JM: What did your husband do for a living?

Patricia: When we first met, he was running two service stations. Then we got married, in 1964, and we moved to Louisiana, and he worked on the ships on the river. And when that kind of played out, we moved to Arlington, Texas. Our daughter was six months old then, and our son was three years old. My husband went to work at a Shell station. He did that for a few years, and then he got a job doing the maintenance for the apartment complex we were living in. He was taking care of the air conditioning and the plumbing, whatever needed to be done. In 1979, we moved to Saint Bernard, Louisiana, where my dad was. I'm originally from New Orleans. We lived there for about three years, and then we came back to Biloxi, and that's when my husband went into business for himself, as a carpenter and contractor. He built houses, fixed roofs and added on rooms. Whatever had to be done, he did it.

JM: Did he go to college?

Patricia: No, but he graduated from high school.

JM: Do you know how far Alma went in school?

Patricia: No, but I doubt that she got very far. My father-in-law couldn't read anything. But he was a whiz at math. He could figure it out in his head before you could do it on a piece of paper.

JM: Lewis Hine used the pictures of your mother-in-law and her family to promote the passing of child labor laws. What do you think about the conditions they had to live under?

Patricia: I never would have believed it if I hadn't seen it. We sent copies of the pictures to our son in Florida. Alma always called him her ‘Little Jesus.' We talked to him the other night after he got the pictures, and he couldn't believe it. We were all flabbergasted.

JM: Have you got any pictures of Alma or anyone else in the family?

Patricia: We lost them all in the hurricane. When it came, we didn't leave with anything but the clothes on our backs and a few important papers.