The Hill Cumorah Legacy Project

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Part of Interview with Suzanne Stockman, Tuesday, March 29, 2022

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Interview with Suzanne Stockman
Tuesday, March 29, 2022
The Hill Cumorah Legacy Project
—--------------------------------------------------------------------Interview done by: Bailey Chapman
Interviewee: Suzanne Stockman
Editing and Transcription by: Andrea De Paula and Bailey Chapman
Duration: 39:46 (original); 37:18 (edited)
Transcription App: Otter.ai
—--------------------------------------------------------------------Transcript

Note: More than two minutes of silence and audio checks by Bailey were cut from this
recording. Timestamps reflect the finished version.
[00:00]
Bailey Chapman: Hello, can you hear me? Um, I know, uh, you’re muted right now if—
Suzanne Stockman: Yeah, I know.
Bailey Chapman: Sorry.
Suzanne Stockman: Here we go. Okay, let me get my cat out of here.
Bailey Chapman: Okay.
Suzanne Stockman: (indistinct) Okay… Quite a distraction. It’s a kitten. So, go ahead.
Bailey Chapman: Aw. Thank you so much, first of all, for coming in and having this interview.
I really appreciate it. Right, and—
Suzanne Stockman: (indistinct) This for a class that you’re doing?
Bailey Chapman: Yes, it is. It’s for a digital history class where we’re going to be doing a—
Suzanne Stockman: Oh.

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Bailey Chapman: Documenting people who are a part of the Hill Cumorah Pageant and being
able to preserve that.
Suzanne Stockman: Okay, good, good. Okay.
Bailey Chapman: So, just for—just the quick-off [sic] thing, I will quickly ask for you—who
you are, and then I’ll ask you some questions. And I would totally want you to elaborate. You
can go on stories, on tangents; so, we can have this sort of condensed, we’re going to transcribe
it, and then we’ll put it on the history website.
Suzanne Stockman: Okay, all right. I don’t know what questions you’re going to ask, so, you
know, I might have to think about it for a minute, but I’m Suzanne Stockman.
Bailey Chapman: Yeah.
Suzanne Stockman: Okay.
Bailey Chapman: Alrighty, so, now that we’re gonna be getting into this, I’ll have my stuff
ready. Alrighty. So, with me right now is Suzanne Stockman. You can introduce yourself and
whatever parts that you had within the Pageant.
Suzanne Stockman: Um, okay, Suzanne Stockman. My family and I, we have my husband and I
and four children, and we probably did it… We performed as performers six or seven times. I’ve
lost track of how many times we did that. And then I was an assistant cast team director to Daisy
Murphy, who did it for a good eight years, I think, and when—and how that happened that I—
they hadn’t had anybody who was an assistant to Daisy prior to this, but she came down with
breast cancer. And Tom Brighton, who was in the Pageant Presidency—they got kind of alarmed
because nobody knew what Daisy’s job was. And so, they thought, you know, they asked me
‘cause I’m a good organizer. Tom came to me and said, “Hey, would you, you know, would you
be a backup for Daisy in case she doesn’t get well enough to do it this next year?” So, all winter

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long, as Daisy was recovering from chemotherapy and such, I shadowed Daisy to see what was
done, and then in the spring, she got well enough to do it. And they decided, well, you know, it
makes a lot of sense to have somebody just as an assistant, or somebody should know what
Daisy does, because she had so much of it in her head. So anyway, I did that for three years, as
her assistant, and then when Daisy was released, I was called to be cast team director, and I did
that for eight years. Okay?
And then after that, uh, we took a break for a while. And I came back as the—I
sometimes, I would go out and do security posts and things just, you know, as just a church
member from this area, just participating. I also from time to time, prior to working for Daisy
and I think afterwards, occasionally would do a shift in the office to help them. And then about,
probably three years ago, I got asked to be the community service coordinator—community
service projects coordinator. And so, I did that for… three, three or four years, three years. And
of course, then, you know, we had ’em all planned and we had to cancel them, and then [of
course?] they canceled Pageant.
So, you know, we… I’m trying to think, we probably started doing this about 19…80. In
the late ‘80s… ‘88 or ‘89. We were in the Pageant the very first year that they had the New
Pageant, when they had the script that’s going on now, when that was called the New Pageant.
We were never in the old one, okay. We never did that. We—the first year I guess we did it was
the year that they introduced this New Pageant and script with the one—if you had gone out
there and heard it, that’s the one that you would still hear. So, that’s kind of—and my husband
participated, too. He happened to be six–four. And I’m just a little over—I’m about not quite
five-two at that time. But obviously, they needed people who—the taller you were, the better off,

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because they needed [05:00] people who could be seen from a distance. So, he had rather
prominent parts, I think, but I was always in a crowd scene, and we just participated. Oh, okay.
Bailey Chapman: Mhm.
Suzanne Stockman (simultaneously): That helped? [chuckle]
Bailey Chapman: Yeah, of course. Um, I’ll go. So, did you ever watch the Pageant before
joining it? What was your process into, like, becoming a cast member in the first place?
Suzanne Stockman: Uh, I’m sure, we did go out when our children were small ‘cause the first
year we did it, our son would have been 16 or so—about 16—17. And he was working out at the
Hill Cumorah for the Facilities & Maintenance Group, and our youngest daughter would have
been about eight at that time. So, prior—and that was the first year, as I said, that the New
Pageant was—so, prior to that, I’m sure we had taken the kids out there several times. But it was,
you know—we heard from so many people what a good experience that it was for their families.
And so, we just applied, but we waited until our youngest daughter was—I think she was seven
or eight. And plus, you know, it takes quite a bit of vacation, so you really, if you’re working full
time, you need to be able to give two full weeks to Pageant. Even people who were around here
pretty much needed to do that. So, you had to wait till you had—build up time. And my husband
worked for Eastman Kodak. And I think he’d been there for 15 or 16 years at that point. And
then at that point, I believe he got four weeks’ vacation, so that allowed us to participate and still
have vacation leftover. Okay.
Bailey Chapman: Awesome.
Suzanne Stockman: So, we did do it. We did. We did attend. But it was always—we saw the
old, old version of the Pageant, [the] one that was replaced.

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Bailey Chapman: And then, when you started actively participating, leading up to be a cast
member, it was the new show with the overhaul of the script, right?
Suzanne Stockman: Right, the one that, uh, Jerry Argetsinger had helped produce and that Gail
Argetsinger had helped produce the costumes for. And one of the things that I thought was
important, when I look back—I felt it was very important once I got on the staff and particularly
understood what we did there, I thought it was very important that almost—I felt like everybody
who had ever been on the staff should have been a participant in the Pageant, so that they
understood what we were asking people to do. Because, you know, actually, people got bossed
around a lot there; you had to be here, you had to be there, you had to do this, you had to do that.
And, uhm, if you hadn’t ever been a cast member, you wouldn’t remember what it’s like to be
rehearsing in the hot sun, up on the stage, that sort of thing. So, you know, people—the directors
were very, very kind. I’m not thinking about the directors so much. But we had to make sure—I
just felt like people needed to understand what we were asking the cast to do, because they had
done it themselves. Okay?
Bailey Chapman: Yeah, so do you think that was the biggest point of friction, being the
director, being the casting director, was people not doing that? Or?
Suzanne Stockman: Oh, no, no. I—let me tell you what the casting director did. I had nothing to
do with the performance at all. Okay. Nothing—I wasn’t in charge of—I mean, I wasn’t a
director, I wasn’t artistic director. But we have had, of course, when you go out there—and even
now, they’ve changed the process—but when you went out there, you had just about a week, six
days or a week, to get the cast, you know, into a—to a performance. Well, they, of course, would
have to rehearse with the major parts before, and—but you had all of these kids and all of these
younger kids and teenagers and everybody, who needed something to do while everybody else

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was rehearsing, or even that many of the teenage boys had parts, and they would rehearse, and
some of the times girls didn’t. Depending on if you were cast in the crowd, you still had to have
something to do to occupy your time, because you were out there from, like, 8:30 in the morning
till 11:30 at night, for that whole week of rehearsing.
So, the cast team director, what was—what happened was, everybody who came was
placed in what was called a cast team. And they were put there either by—if—there was a cast
team for older people; there was a cast team for married people; there was a cast team for young
marrieds; there were—and then the young single [10:00] adults, who ranged from 18 to 28 or 29,
were unmarried, they were put into cast teams according to ages. And then the same thing with
teenagers, and the same thing with children from ages… 10 up—were—and divided. The teens
were together; the young single adult teams were boys and girls, men and women together; but
the children from the ages of 10 until I think 13 were divided between boys and girls. And the—
and kids who were three to nine were in what was called a Primary. There was an organization
that was out there that entertained your kids during the day.
And, so, in order to make sure that everybody had something to do, I was in charge of
coordinating—I—first of all, I, over the winter, I would put everybody in a cast team according
to their ages. And you had to—not only ages, but numbers, and by birthdays, so you couldn’t
have too many—you couldn’t have one teenage group that had 40 and another one that had 12.
So you had to blend it out, okay. And I would call couples to be what were called cast team
leaders over these groups. And they were basically in charge of these groups for the whole two
weeks of Pageant, and in charge of providing activities for them, and keeping—you know—they
had a home base that they could go to. So, I would spend the winter and I’d divide these, I would
divide everybody up into their cast teams, all cast team leaders, and then during Pageant, I

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coordinated all the activities for the 750 to—or more—staff and cast, so that everybody had
something to do when they were not rehearsing, and someplace they should be. So, it was a big
organizational thing.
And, as I said, I’m good at organization, so it was a lot of fun to do, actually. And the
first year was interesting, because even though I had been Daisy’s assistant, I’ve been doing
different things for her. And—so my husband was called as the tent master, because each of the
cast teams had a tent that we erected in this big field. And, like, if you were Y6, you were—
young—that was, youth group number six, and you’d have a tent, and that was where you
could—where you met when you weren’t rehearsing, and you were over in your cast team, okay.
And the leaders played games with you. They did all kinds of things. They did scripture study.
They helped you rehearse your parts. And to me, the real heroes of Pageant were the cast team
leaders, who not only—they had parts and had to go to rehearsals, and they all had families that
they had to take care of; they also were in charge of another group. And I—particularly the
people who were in charge of the boys that—10-, 11-, and 12-year-old, 13-year-old boys, I
thought, “Wow, you had to keep them busy, you know, for a long time.”
So anyway, that was what I did. I didn’t have anything to do with the performance itself,
putting it on, or—I didn’t perform in those years. I didn’t go on stage. And what I started to tell
you, with the first year we did it, was—I hadn’t helped Daisy, but again, this was brand new.
And so, my husband, who had not been out there at all—and he set the tents before anybody
came, so all the tents were up. And there was another man who was called as his assistant, Tom
Clifford, and his wife Sharon, whom I had worked with quite a few years of various things at
church, she was called as my assistant. And so, Tom and Ed—my husband Ed—would go out
into a field; I’d say, “Go out here and put this over there.” And then we had walkie-talkies, and

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we would talk back and forth: “Now what do we do? Now what do we do?” And I’d have to
direct them, so—and we all—it was interesting that first year, but we learned our parts and
learned what we had to do. And I did that for eight years, and it was really a fun experience. It
was a lot of work. It’s a great deal of work. And I really—I have said before, that first year was
such a learning curve that I had to be ready 15 minutes earlier than I was. I wouldn’t have made
it that year. It was just an awful lot to learn. So—but I look back as a great experience, very great
experience.
Bailey Chapman: Mhmm.
Suzanne Stockman: But your question about—you know, I think it was difficult. One of the
things that I did, I put many, many, many more things in writing than Daisy had, and I produced
a lot of documents, some of which they were still using even though I hadn’t done it for a long
time. It said, you know, “Here’s what you ought to know before you [15:00] come to Pageant.”
Some people would come in and say, “This is going to be a great family time; we’re going to be
family; we’re going to be together with family all day long,” you know, and “We’ll get…” Well,
that wasn’t the case, and so, I said [indistinct] “Look, you know, you’re gonna come. You’re
gonna have a morning devotional, then your kids are going to go off to their cast team. You’re
going to be together for lunch for an hour and a half, and they’re going to go off in the
afternoons and rehearse and do their cast teams, and you’re going to do the same.” And then, you
know, you’d have dinner together. And then after dinner, parents were in charge of their own
children, no matter what their age were [sic], and the people who did Primary spent hours and
hours prior to the beginning of Pageant developing ideas and keeping the children happy.
So, we made sure that—I’m just trying to think where was this? [indistinct] Well, we just
wanted to make sure that everybody… Oh, I know. So, you know, we would say, “You’re—”—

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because we had people show up and say, “Well, I didn’t realize I was going to have my threeyear-old with me the whole time.” In other words—that you had to be three to go into Primary,
where they had activities for them all day. So, if somebody came with a two-year-old, or you
know—they were in charge of that child outside, 24 hours a day, for two weeks, and that was a
challenge. So, we wanted to make sure that people understood before they came what their
expectations were, what they needed to bring.
One of the biggest problems that we had was people who would come from the West,
particularly in an arid—we would say, “You know, that the weather here is very changeable. It
could be, you know, cold and rainy in the morning, then the sun comes out, and it’s hot and
humid.” And then we’d go—you know—it would become cold, and you’d sit out in the field and
the breeze would come up behind you. You’d need blankets when it started at 9. And we tried to
tell people that, but they—you know, they’d come from the West, where it was really hot, and
they wouldn’t believe us, and so they’d come, and they were [frozen?]. They—we had
sweatshirts, and they would have to buy sweatshirts, and they would have to buy rain ponchos.
Try to help them understand that sometimes the weather would be so rainy. I remember one year,
it was just—we were practically in, knee-deep in mud during rehearsals because the bowl where
the cast sat, or where the audience sat was, you know, curved. And of course, the rain would—it
had a good, pretty good drainage system, but sometimes we would get really muddy. So, part of
it was the expectation, but, you know, we turned away so many people, and people who did it
once, and they saw how wonderful it was for their children, they wanted to come back again and
again. And so, one of the ways that people could guarantee they could come back again and
again is if they could get—if they could be on the staff. And for a long time, most of the staff

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was from local people, just because we’d have meetings that we’d go to all year round. And then
they began to call people from other areas as they could.
So, um… I mean, it was—and it was an interesting experience. Many times, the Church,
when we would have some type of calling, there’s a handbook that tells you exactly what to do.
There was no handbook for this. I mean, Daisy was really—there had been people who kind of
coordinated this, but Daisy Murphy came in, as I said, before me, and she radically changed the
experience for people who are in it. Got tents for them, got comfort for them, did a lot of things
to improve that experience for them. And so, I kind of built on what Daisy did. And then there
were people that were called after me, and so would those. Because I served from, I think,
’90s… I was released in 2006. So go back eight years, whatever that would be, about 1998, I
think, that I—I did it by myself somewhere in there. So, um, and you know, other people, and
then it got changed, and as more and more things—instead of being handed out to people when
they came, they were sent to people ahead of time, so they could read it, and they can know
exactly what to expect, more so. But again, until you had done it, it was very difficult to explain
to somebody in detail what to expect. And okay, so, there. Okay, that’s one thing.
Bailey Chapman: Yeah, no, no worries. Um, I wanted—I don’t know if you’ve talked about
exactly what a community service project manager was. But we’ve heard a lot about, like, the,
those eight years, but the last three years, I’d love to learn about those.
Suzanne Stockman: Uh—and again, John and Daisy Murphy, the ones who kind of started this
‘cause… Two things [20:00] happened. One—and I’m sure you’ve probably heard about the
tent—the food tents that were out there. Prior to that starting, which I think started under Troy
Holly [best guess], when he was President, there really wasn’t any place much to eat in Palmyra.
And one of the things the Church did was, we used churches there, and we served meals, and

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people came and could buy them, and that was, you know, a way that people could eat.
Eventually, I think it was—I know it was Troy Holly [best guess] who came up with the idea,
“Well, why don’t we approach the Lions [Club] or the Rotary, places like that, and see if they
would like to have a food tent.” And so that did a lot of good to communicate—I wanted to
develop a very good sense of camaraderie with the people in that area because that was a huge
fundraiser for them. They made an enormous amount of money from people because there was
no place else to eat.
And so—and on top of that, [we had?] John Murphy, who was Daisy’s husband, they
talked about, “Well, what if we approach some of the not-for-profits in this—in the greater area
between, say, between Newark and Palmyra, the smaller communities there, and say, ‘Look, we
have all these people that would like to help and do something.’” And so, we got a group—by
the time I got to it, Larry Riker [best guess] did it when I was casting director. He was the one
who coordinated these. Raul Black did it after me. [Unclear] did it, I’m sorry, before me—they
did it before me. And then, by the time it had come to me, there were about, I think around 28
different organizations from Canandaigua, from Shortsville, from York, from Palmyra. I’m
trying to—like, Palmyra Library, we always do something for; the Palmyra town hall, we would
always do something. And I would start emailing them about March and say, “We’re going to
do—we’d like to do a service project for you again. What do you have in mind?” And they had
to provide tools to do it and a place to do it. And we would then have busses that would bring
kids there to do that during performance week.
During performance week, we had one day that was a free day. Monday, people would
come, because we didn’t perform on Monday. So, we’d open; we’d have a—come on a Friday
and rehearse to the next Friday, and then there would be one performance on Friday and one on

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Saturday. Then we would come back on Monday, and there was a talent show at night that I
coordinated for that, not as a—that was when I was casting director. And then on Tuesday,
Wednesday, and Thursday of that week, performances were at night, sometimes we were—we
would run through rehearsals in the afternoon. But you have one day that a cast team, say, could
go up to Chill & Grill and get something, or maybe go swimming down at Canandaigua Lake if
they had the transportation. And another time, they would tour the Church sites in that area,
okay, in Palmyra. And the last thing they would do—the other, third thing they would do—was a
community service project to a group around in Palmyra. And we would have—we’d have buses
that would take them there, and they would go from about one or 1:30 in the afternoon till about
four or 4:30.
Sometimes, they’d paint—they would paint fences in the Palmyra cemetery. I remember
one year going and watching them paint the fences. They would put mulch along the canal in
Macedon. And they would always go to the Palmyra Historical Society and clean for them. And
we’d go to the school and set up—clean up the rooms to get them ready for kids to come in the
end of August or 1st of September. So, what we—I remember, we’d go to the fairgrounds and
pick up stones off of the track that was there. So, I know—we just—they just did all kinds of
things. And the kids loved them; they got nice and dirty, and… [laughs] Um, but it was a great
experience for kids to be involved in, and I think it built a lot of good camaraderie with the
different communities. And we were grateful to do it. It gave us another thing that we could have
this group of—we had all these kids and all these people with a great desire to serve, and not
always enough places to do it. So, I think it was a real inspired decision that John had and, uh,
you know—gosh, we would go out to [Newark?] or just—any not-for-profit could approach us.
Sometimes, we couldn’t do it, but many times—you know, a very few times, we had to turn

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them down if it was something that might have endangered somebody in some way. For
instance, we didn’t want—we couldn’t have a [25:00] whole group of cast who got hurt because
then they couldn’t perform that night, so we had to make sure that people were safe. But yes, that
was a great experience. Those were good times. Okay.
Bailey Chapman: Mhmm. Had you worked on anything to this scale beforehand? Or is this,
like, your big—like, this was the biggest project that you’ve worked on, and you put your heart
and soul into it?
Suzanne Stockman: Well, yes, and no. I’ve always been a good organizer. And I’ve been on a
lot of different library boards, and still am. I served, like, 33 years as a trustee and been involved
in library work. I’ve been very involved in Church work. At the same time I was working with
Daisy, as her assistant, I was also the stake Relief Society president in this area, and I
coordinated a lot of events and meetings and such. So—but nothing probably—it took,
particularly the first couple of years I did it—it took all of my spare time and all of my
organizational abilities to learn how to do this. And because we had to—you had to have this all
in your head. I had it in writing, but somebody would come up with a suggestion. I’m trying to
think; I can’t think of one right now. But they say, “Oh, let’s do this,” and it was up to me to
think about that and have all these moving parts going and say, “Well, we can’t do that because
of this. It will impact that.” Do you know what I mean? I don’t—I can’t give you an example
right now, but yes. It was challenging, but I liked the challenge. I liked the hard work.
I remember my—it was my daughter’s senior year, okay, so that helps me to know—my
daughter’s senior year, from—in 1998 through 1999, that I was preparing to do my first year.
And I spent all my time, when I wasn’t working part-time, doing that. And I remember just being
super-busy. And, you know, a lot depended on that I knew what I was doing and that I didn’t

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foul things up and sin [laughs]. Well, people were very forgiving, but it was—yes, it was a
challenge, but it was a welcome challenge, and something I was really happy to do.
But I have to admit, after eight years, I was ready for a change, you know. I’d been to—
and I was lucky, I had—I was working—I can’t remember if I was part-time or full-time, some
of it. Sometimes I was full-time, sometimes I was… No, I get—anyway, I had jobs that I could
just say, “I’m going to be gone for two and a half weeks, and I’ll take it without pay.” And I
could do it. I worked for small law firms at that point, and they would let me do that, so… Now,
you know, I couldn’t do that. But yes, it was a challenge, but it was a welcome challenge.
Bailey Chapman: Mhmm, and for just a really quick last thing, what would you, overall, want
others to take away from the Pageant overall? What was the purpose you put in so others could
take out? Is it just a good experience, or is there a bigger, overall thing? Do you want other
people to come—would have come and helped do it with you?
Suzanne Stockman: Um, I think, and I used to say this when I would give it… People got out of
Pageant exactly what they put into it. So, if you came and said, “I’m going to skip rehearsals, I’m
not going to work really hard at learning my part, I’m not going to be where I’m supposed to
be,” then you didn’t get out of it what you were supposed to. But if you gave it all your heart and
soul and tried to obey the rules, and tried to be where you were, it was a great experience. And
our children loved it. I think, as a rule, it was—the kids loved it, and most of the parents I knew
did it because it was such a good experience for their children. Then, if—and the men, most of
the men, even if they were cast team directors, were off rehearsing, and so it was the mothers
who [cough] were the ones who were, I think, the hardest—that worked the hardest, because they
had to take care of their children. They also, if they were a cast team leader, they had to do that.
They had to prepare meals and bring out there, unless you purchased meals through the Pageant,

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which you could, and we were lucky on the staff. We got a dinner. I think I got breakfast, lunch,
and dinner everyday. So, my husband and I live in Fairport, so we would commute out there.
Some people would camp there, which they loved doing. They had a Zion’s Camp where people
stayed from out of [30:00] town. Some people like Gail and Jerry Argetsinger, they provided a
hotel room nearby so—because they were there all the time.
I think it really built up—did a couple things. First of all, it allowed kids, to meet people,
kids from all over the United States in an environment they might not ever have had before. And
I think from a spiritual point of view, I believe it built a lot of testimonies out there. Did it—It
didn’t necessarily convert a lot of people to the Church [chuckle], ok? There were some, but if
it—if you took the number of people who were what we would call convert baptisms, based on
the experience they had at Pageant, you know coming to Pageant, it would be a very small
percentage. But if you talked about “What has this done for my family? What has it done for us
as a family to bring us closer together? What has it done for my children?” People, I think, would
rate it very, very highly.
You know, it’s a lot of work. I mean, it’s hard to explain what it was like to be doing it,
but it had a lot of rewards too, and I’m just grateful that my family had a chance to do it. And all
of our—Our son never did. He was—by the time he finished working at the [unclear], he actually
worked up there for ten years until after he was married. He’d come home in the summers from
college, and—but he always had a job. He started, I guess, when he was 15 or 16. He always had
a job there. He could work at school at summer and then come home and work at the [unclear]
when we would go back to school, but I think everyone else had a chance to do it.
I think, you had to be careful. If you did it—if your children did it too many times and you were
on the staff, it could become old to them. And they didn’t want to go—they just didn’t want to

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participate. They just wanted to play with their friends. And so, I think that you had to be careful,
but they still needed people on the staff. They still needed people to come, and they were very
careful with how they chose people to be in it. They didn’t choose 20 people with babies or 20
people with kids under three. I mean, they just didn’t, ’cause it was so—it’s a very difficult
experience to do that, because you’re basically living outside, 20—well, probably around 18
hours a day in the summer, depending on what the weather is like. You know, it can be—you’re
in a tent, so, depending what the weather was like.
But it was a great experience, it was a great family experience, and a great experience
that I look back on it now… The very last year, our daughter, who was a senior in high school,
one of the times we were in it, she was doing it when I started. She is now a mother of four little
kids and lives just five houses down the street from us, and they got accepted for Pageant in
2020. That’s when it got canceled. So, then, they said, “Okay, well, they will carry it over,” and
they were going to do it in 2021, which was last summer. That was going to be the—and that
was—they were so looking forward to that, and then they didn’t get to do it, you know, and she
was… And she knew how fun it was. But…
Oh, and one of the other things I will tell you that I was involved in was when they had
the 75th anniversary of the Hill Cumorah Pageant. I think, I’m not sure what year that was, and I
was in charge of the tent exhibits. I had to set up a big exhibit tent that had all kinds of things in
it that I was—I coordinated that, and… So, we have been I’ve been deeply involved, primarily
because I have good organizational ability, not so much, maybe, anymore, but at the time that I
was doing this, I did. So, yes. I’m—but I do believe that the time had come for it to end. I think it
was the right decision, that it was time to be over, and that the resources that were here needed to

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be devoted to other things. So not everybody maybe feels that way, but I felt like it was time. I
was glad to be a part of it.
Bailey Chapman: Alrighty, thank you so much, Suzanne. Do you have anything else you’d like
to say before…
Suzanne Stockman: Uh…
Bailey Chapman: There’s no need if you feel like we’ve covered all bases—
Suzanne Stockman (simultaneously): No, I think—
Bailey Chapman (simultaneously): I feel like we’ve gone into—
Suzanne Stockman: That’s probably everything I can think of right now. I don’t know. Did you
ever get—you probably—where are you from?
Bailey Chapman: I’m from Vermont.
Suzanne Stockman: Oh, so you probably never saw it.
Bailey Chapman: No.
Suzanne Stockman: Well, if, I don’t know if you’ve done this or not. You should—maybe they
have—do they have a copy of the last one of the performances they—? You should watch it if
you haven’t ever seen [35:00] it. I wish… I did a—I did do a video that showed—an orientation
for people who would come to Pageant. Particularly new people, they didn’t know what to
expect, and I did one to say, “Here’s what you’re going to do for the next 17 days.” That told a
lot about what happened to people out there, what they should expect, what they were going to
be doing, so… Well, I guess if I thought about it, that was more of what I did. I didn’t want
people to have surprises when they came. When I was casting director, I didn’t want them to
show up and say “[gasp] I didn’t know this was going to happen. I didn’t know I was going to do
this.” I wanted to prepare them because the more prepared you were, the better your experience.

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If you didn’t come with the right stuff, it was hard. It was hard to buy it, especially if you didn’t
have a car, and, you know, kids were riding buses back and forth, the kids who stayed in the
dorms, so, you know, people were very good about loaning things, but, um, it was… That, I
think, was what I did more than anything, was kinda help people to know what to expect before
they got there.
Suzanne Stockman (simultaneously):
So, thank you!
Bailey Chapman (simultaneously):
Alright.
Suzanne Stockman: Thanks, glad I had this opportunity it was great, thank you.
Bailey Chapman: No worries, just one more thing—
Suzanne Stockman: Oh.
Bailey Chapman: Do I have your permission to post this interview on this history website?
Suzanne Stockman: Uh, yeah, so far as I know. I’m sure I rambled a little bit. I don’t know how
interesting it would be to anybody. I mean, I’m talking from lots of details, and if you hadn’t
been there and didn’t see the full picture, it’s probably hard to understand it. But yes, you can, as
far as I’m concerned.
Bailey Chapman: Awesome. We are going to transcribe it, so it’ll be text searchable. It’ll be a
long text document that people will be able to search. And then they could be able to watch this
as a video. That would be the two mediums…
Suzanne Stockman: And you know, and I would say, the last thing I’d say is, it’s too bad that
John and Daisy Murphy have both passed away. They would have been excellent to have

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interviewed because they just did—they laid the groundwork for what came later in making it
such a good experience for the Pageant participants. So… Thank you.
Bailey Chapman: Alrighty—
Suzanne Stockman: Alright.
Bailey Chapman: Thank you so much! I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day
Suzanne Stockman: Sure, thanks, Bailey, ok, bye-bye.
Bailey Chapman: Bye.

Dublin Core Metadata for the Interview
Title: Interview with Suzanne Stockman, Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Subject: Hill Cumorah Project, Cast Team Director, Tent Master, Theater, Organization
Description: After a quick introduction, Suzanne introduced herself and her family. She then ran
through the various jobs she had for the Pageant. Suzanne then elaborated on how she
progressively gained more and more responsibilities within the pageant before taking the role
from Daisy Murphy as Cast Team Director. She answered what a Cast Team was—the inner
groupings of people within the production that still needed direction when they weren’t
rehearsing. After her time as Cast Team Director, Suzanne helped organize community service
projects for the teams to participate in for the last three years of her time working on the Pageant.
Overall, she believes that the people acting in the Pageant got however much they put in, with
those working the hardest having the best experiences.
Creator: Suzanne Stockman and Bailey Chapman
Source: Hill Cumorah Legacy Project
Date: Tuesday, March 29, 2022
Contributor: Bailey Chapman and Andrea De Paula
Rights: Produced under an oral history collaborative deed of gift agreement with no restrictions
and nonexclusive license.
Format: M4A (original audio file), MP3 (edited audio file), PDF (transcript)
Language: English

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Identifier:
• Chapman_SuzanneStockmanInterview_03-29-2022_Edited.mp3
• Chapman_DePaula_SuzanneStockmanTranscript_03-29-2022_Edited.pdf