>> Legacy Series, McCubbin.
>> McCubbin.
>> McCubbin, take away. [NOISE]
>> You got it.
>> This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Betty McCubbin on Thursday,
May 21st, 2015,
in the Social Sciences Building
at Kennesaw State University.
And Ms. McCubbin, do you agree to this interview?
>> Certainly.
>> Great. So let's start at the beginning.
Tell me when and where were you born.
>> I was born in a very small farming community,
a few miles from Kansas City,
Missouri, called Lee's Summit, Missouri.
September 19th,1921, almost 100 years ago. Not quite.
>> And what was your full name at birth?
>> Betty Jane Hill.
That's why she put the E on the end.
It's such a plain name, Betty Jane.
>> [LAUGHTER] So tell me your parents' names?
>> Naoma Jane Young.
That was her unmarried name,
and my father was Arthur E Hill.
Is this an intelligence test or what? [LAUGHTER]
>> From 10, no.
>> Okay.
>> And what did they do for a living?
>> Well, my dad was a farmer,
but he also did some other things like he bought up seeds
in fields all the way to
the Canadian border and Bluegrass.
And my mom was just a housemaker,
housekeeper, or a mother,
you might say, because we had five in our family.
>> And where did you fall in the line of children?
>> I was next to the youngest.
I have a younger brother and there were five of us.
So I had two brothers and two sisters.
>> Describe your home life there.
>> It was very nice. I didn't
realize the inconveniences because we had
no plumbing, no electricity.
We studied by lamplight because this is back a few years.
But it was fun for young kids.
We didn't realize that we were
disadvantaged and it was fun.
Freedom of roaming the fields and feeding
the cows and the chickens and
all the rest was a pleasant childhood.
>> When you say disadvantaged, what do you mean?
>> Well, we didn't have
all the conveniences like the cellphones
and all the rest that we have now or even,
like I say, running water.
We had a pump. We heated water on a wood stove.
So lots of inconveniences,
but we didn't realize it.
>> Where did you go to school?
>> Well, I went to school in town, in Lee's Summit.
It was just an elementary,
all the grades through six.
Just a small town school and
the teachers were as anywhere,
like some didn't like the others.
>> And what was your best subject?
>> Well, let's see.
I always liked English and
poetry and all the creative-type studies.
I finally majored in sociology,
thinking that I was going to save the world and
bring all those people out of poverty and all the rest,
but it didn't work out quite that way.
>> So describe Lee's Summit.
What is the size of the city?
>> You'd think it would have
a mountain if it's going to be a summit, wouldn't you?
But no, there's no mountain.
As far as I know, there's no summits,
just a small town,
pretty much a farming community.
Everybody went into town on Saturday night.
That was the big day of the week and all the kids
got ice cream cones and soda pop
and not a lot of drinking or carousing,
it was just a very conservative farming community.
>> What kind of kid were you?
>> Now we're getting down to the nitty-gritty.
You should ask my mother or father,
and we can't since they're not around anymore.
But I would say I was shy,
a bit timid, which you never know now.
And in school, I always felt
inadequate because I went
into a city school from the farm,
so we were the kids from the country.
So you had a reputation before you got
there of being not really quite bright or whatever.
And of course, the kids in the country
they wore what was it?
Long underwear. You had to do
this because you're going to walk through
the snow to school and the kids in town,
they felt that was pretty ridiculous.
But other than that,
being shy and, I wouldn't say I was really a hap.
As soon as I got home from school, I was perfectly happy.
Everything at home was great.
But my school life,
I always felt shy and inadequate.
>> So did you have many friends?
>> Not really. You don't
have next door neighbor with four kids.
It's miles down the road before
there are any other playmates.
So my brother turned out to be my best pal.
He was about four years younger,
so we did everything together.
>> What was his name?
>> We called him AE. He was named after my dad,
but we called him AE;
Arthur Edwin, after him.
And we just had a lot of good times together.
>> So at sixth grade,
did you go to a different school?
>> Yes. When I was in about the fourth grade,
we moved from this little town
of Lee's Summit to Kansas City;
and that was quite an adjustment to
a big town school from a little farm village,
and I found that was quite an adjustment.
But they had everything available.
There are a lot more courses
available and better teachers and all the rest,
so my mom and dad decided,
well, we need a better school for the kids.
So that's really the reason we moved to the larger city.
>> Were you living in a neighborhood at that point?
>> Yes, ma'am.
>> And so how did your socializing change?
>> Well, it was difficult.
It was quite a change from
just a little town where I had not
many friends to a big town school.
And we took a cow with us.
My mother thought we should have a cow.
We can have milk for the family.
And it was in a neighborhood where there
was some land available with the house,
so we staked the cow out and we had fresh milk.
And all my friends thought that was really weird.
They thought all the milk came out of
a bottle and they couldn't understand how
we could go down and get ourselves a bottle of milk.
>> Did you milk it?
>> No. I didn't. I was too young at that stage.
They didn't trust me, I guess, but fourth grade.
>> Describe the schools in Kansas City.
>> Well, at that time, I think they pretty well
accepted as a little bit above average.
I think it's gone downhill since that time,
the rating of the schools there.
But at that age,
I didn't grade it very much.
I guess I thought we could have had
a lot more recreation time recess time
than we had so much in classrooms,
but that was the program.
>> Did you continue to excel in English?
>> Well, Excel, I don't know.
That was my best subject, probably, yeah.
I didn't like math or anything related to figures.
My husband and I are just the opposite.
He's an engineer and he deals with figures
and I do words and scramble and
stuff and he does all the ones with the numbers.
So very much opposite.
>> Tell me about meeting him in high school.
>> Well, you see, I knew him, he was in the group.
Back then, we just had groups at church
at school and we did
things together and went to parties together.
And so he was just one of them.
And I had my very first date
with him at Missouri University.
So we went to high school together for four years
and I just knew him as a friend.
And they had what they call
literary societies for quite the thing.
You had to belong to a literary society and each one
had their colors and their jackets and the whole bit.
And he was in the top one that was red and white.
I always wanted to wear his jacket
because it was red and white.
But the boy I was going with
his jacket was gray and blue.
So I thought I had a real disadvantage there
because I didn't even know him
that well until we went to the university.
>> So how did you choose Missouri University?
>> Well, it was cheaper.
Say no more because you see it's in state.
So you didn't have to pay out of state tuition.
>> So it's a practical choice.
>> Yeah, very practical. It's probably
the only place I could have gone.
>> But tell me what prevented you from
going there immediately after high school.
>> Well, I had an appendectomy,
so I couldn't go with my friends the first year.
So I had that year in between.
And that's when I went to California with my sister and
four of her friends whose husbands
were all in the service.
So I thought, well,
that'd be quite an adventure. And it was.
We all worked for the United States
employment service while we were there,
which is a couple of years, I guess.
No, just one year, actually.
>> What was the employment service?
>> Well, it employed all of
the workers to make the planes for boeing and
all the big plane manufacturers
were in that Los Angeles area.
>> And so this is about 1938, '39?
>> I graduated high school in '39.
So it was between 39 and Pearl Harbor and '40.
'39 and '40.
>> Did you have an awareness of what was
going on in Europe at that time?
>> Not too much until Pearl Harbor.
It seemed like we were blind to the situation,
how Hitler was gobbling up all the countries.
We vaguely knew about it,
but it was a secondary thought.
And of course, everyone at that point,
were very anti war and they said,
let them solve their problems.
We don't want to get involved.
That was a feeling of
most everyone that why
should we get involved in a war in Europe?
That's before they realized
that we might be speaking German if we didn't.
>> So there wasn't an expectation that all of a
sudden the United States
was going to be involved in the war?
>> No. Not until after Pearl Harbor.
The minute Pearl Harbor,
it was Sunday, of course, Sunday night.
We were all at the young people's meeting in
church and all the boys and they said, where do we go?
Where do we go to register?
We're going and get rid of Hitler.
I mean, they were already at that point,
if Japan can come over and bomb us,
they were all ready to defend
the country, which was nice.
>> Let's go back to this
employment service in Los Angeles.
So you moved from Kansas City to Los Angeles.
>> I didn't move. I just went for a lark with my sister.
Her husband was in the service.
So I was just there for that year.
>> You tell me about your job
with the employment service.
>> It was quite interesting
the way they had this figured out, of course,
everybody was looking for
a job that paid well with the air plant factories.
So they had a huge group
and they had to fill out their application.
And then we had to get the application and take it to
the CEO or whoever is in charge of that particular plant.
So for a young kid,
I guess I could call myself
a young kid at that point. It was fun.
It was interesting. You met a lot of
people and we worked with
a nice group of other young girls.
>> How much money did you make?
>> Probably around that $100 a month.
Maybe it went up to 125, I don't know.
We thought, that's great,
because everything else was cheaper too.
>> And where did you live?
>> Well, at this point, we just
rented and they had what they called
the Office of Price Control
or something they took care of the Army wives.
They had a listing of what's available for rent,
which the government controlled.
And they would give you a listing of what.
I guess they also, what did they call it?
What do they call it where they controlled the prices?
OPA Officer Price Administration that they couldn't raise
their price above for the wives of the servicemen.
So we were always able to find a place,
not necessarily an elegant place,
but a place to live.
And that was an interesting experience
because we got to know,
of course, the other men.
Lots of men out
there were associates of my sister's husband.
>> Did you have any fun or was it mostly just working?
>> It was fun and we didn't really
realize the severity of the war.
Because at that age, I don't think anybody does.
It was a luck and all good,
we're helping the war effort.
But as far as really not too much concerned,
I guess we just took for granted we were going to win.
Maybe that's why we weren't depressed because we thought,
well, if we go there,
we'll just win this war.
We didn't think about it taking a while.
>> Well, so when you
heard the news of the Pearl Harbor attack,
were you in Los Angeles or were you in Kansas City?
>> I was in Kansas City.
>> And you were at a church get together?
>> Yeah.
>> And was your future husband there?
>> No. He wasn't and he went to church off and on.
>> So you returned from Los Angeles and you were
able to start at Missouri University?
>> Right.
>> So tell me about your life there.
You were part of a sorority, correct?
>> Right. My poor dad,
he's working his hand and foot to put me through college.
I don't know why I thought I had to be in a sorority,
but I think I got something like
a scholarship because they
wanted me to help with rush week.
So didn't cost much more to belong to
a sorority than it would to
have just paid for room and board,
so it worked out okay. And it was fine.
We enjoyed of course;
a bunch of girls together.
All of the other service men from the Air Force,
from the Coast Guard,
from the Navy, Army; everything,
they sent all those guys
to the university to take courses,
to take classes to prepare them
for the next step up whatever that was.
So there were lots of guys on
campus and activities and dances.
So it wasn't a sad depressed time.
I know the sorority sent us out with
a little red wagon to collect used grease from
the restaurants for the process
of creating the ammunition.
>> Explain that. How did
they make sure that you were supposed to do that?
>> Probably the president of the sorority was told,
we would like to have you collect
tin foil and grease;
there were about three things that were in short supply.
>> And then that would be used how?
>> Well, they'd send it I guess to
be processed for ammunition.
I don't know what they did with the
tin foil, but apparently,
they had some process to use it in creating new weapons.
>> Did you see posters?
>> Oh, yeah. We had lots. There was
Keep 'Em Flying and of course
Rosie the Riveter which of course is
the organization that I belong to now.
They had huge posters of
Rosie the Riveter with her red dotted scarf
on because this was the first time that
women got out of the house and wore pants.
From up to then,
a woman would never be seen in pants out in public.
But because they had to
work as a riveter up on the wing of the airplane,
then they had to wear slacks.
>> How often were those posters coming out?
Would you see new ones pretty often?
>> Not so much. That one just became
a stand by the one of her with
her We Can Do It and her little red bandana.
Primarily, that was the; what do you call it?
>> Popular image.
>> Yeah, that was the popular image of Rosie.
>> What about when you went to the movies?
Would you see the news?
>> Yes. They had the Pathe news
and we got very adequate news of the war.
We knew pretty much from day to day what was going on.
>> So did you become more conscientious,
more interested after the war got going?
>> I guess maybe I
wasn't representative of most young people
although seeing young people today,
I think I must have been.
We weren't too concerned. We were
sure everything was going to be okay
and as far as really
worrying about the situation in the world,
I don't remember being quite concerned about it.
We just took it for granted. We were going to
win and this war was going to be over soon.
Everybody was always, it was going to be over
soon and husbands
and boyfriends and all would be coming back home.
We never considered the fact
some of them wouldn't be coming home.
>> Well, did you hear about friends, neighbors-
>> Yeah.
>> -family members that were lost?
>> Yeah, we did. Of course that was depressing.
That was very depressing.
I guess maybe you're not as
serious minded as you should be to think
we're losing this many and there was a lot.
I read somewhere out in the museum,
253,000, even in the European theater, I think.
That was a lot of young lives that were wasted.
I guess they weren't wasted because
we live in a better world we hope.
>> So you went to school at Missouri University for-
>> Three years. It turned out to be
three years because as I say,
I got this offer of
this wonderful job at Pratt & Whitney,
writing up inspection instruction sheets for
the motors that went into the airplane engines.
>> So tell me about applying for that job.
>> They needed people so there wasn't much of
competition and my sister
who had a car and I didn't, she was going to drive.
And we had to take
all our gasoline coupons to get
enough gasoline to drive back and forth.
So we had a car pool
and she was going to apply and I said,
"Oh, good. I'll apply too."
So she and I just went out and applied.
The next day they said, "You're on.
Come on out Monday."
It was almost like that.
>> You didn't finish, but you stopped attending classes?
>> Right.
>> And went to take this job.
Tell me about Pratt & Whitney.
What did they produce?
>> Well, it was primarily
the Pratt & Whitney airplane engine.
I'm a little bit confused about it because my husband
was a fighter pilot and he had a Pratt & Whitney,
I thought engine in his airplane.
But later on they say,
"Oh, that was made by Rolls Royce."
So I'm a little confused about just what,
but it was inspection of
the airplane engines to be sure they had
all the right parts in there and that they were adequate.
>> How large was the plant?
>> It was huge. It was quite large.
I'd say two blocks long, probably.
>> And what was the ratio of men to women working there?
>> Many more women because most of the men were gone.
A lot of CEOs in the upper crust were men,
but I'd say the percentage of women was
far over the number of men working there.
>> And what variety of jobs were women doing there?
>> They did everything. I was in an office job,
so typing up the sheets for the inspection,
but they did all various jobs
with putting together the engines,
sorting parts, whatever needed to be done.
And we also had to wear a badge.
You could not get in that plant without your badge.
And if you forgot it, you were in trouble because they
had to know who's coming to work in this plant.
>> So what was the attitude
of most of the men towards women working there?
>> That's a good question.
I'm thinking they didn't resent us.
They actually appreciative that we were there.
And most of my bosses were just great.
No complaint about that.
>> Were there any African Americans working there?
>> I do not remember, but of course,
there are no African Americans in the Kansas City area.
I didn't go to school with a single African American.
And I don't know why there wouldn't
have been more in our area.
Just where people settled, I guess.
>> And did you have to
join a union when you took the job?
>> No.
>> So it was non-union?
>> Non-union. Thank goodness.
We might not have won the war if they had unionized.
>> So tell me what was your position title?
>> I didn't really have any elegant title.
It was just secretarial work, I would call it.
>> And what were your duties on a typical day?
Walk me through it from when you got in in the morning.
>> You had to get your badge out and you had to
check through the office and be sure you had your badge,
and then you went up to the third floor
or whatever it was,
and there'd be a lot of other women
at desks all over this floor,
something like probably 50 other women
writing up these sheets also and
typing them up to send out to
the factory for the mechanics to use,
this is all right,
check off, etc.
And then it was a regular five hour a day job,
at 5:00 we were off.
And as I say, we carpooled so
we could save on gas and then I'd meet
my sister and the other girls that were working
and we drive back,
which was a matter of probably 10 miles back
to the main Kansas City, anyway.
>> And what outfit did you wear to work?
>> You could just wear whatever you wanted to.
I'm sure we all wore pants because it was
accepted then and it was much more comfortable.
But I don't remember there being
any dress code as such that we had to wear.
And I guess if they worked out in the plant,
they had something that they had to wear,
probably this red bandana so
their hair didn't get caught in the engine or whatever.
So that's probably where the red bandana became popular
for Rosie the Riveter was a matter of safety.
But as far as for office work,
there wasn't any dress code as such.
>> And you said you were checking off the parts.
So what parts were
being used in these planes and plane engines,
do you have any recollection?
>> Well, you see that part of it was out of
my jurisdiction because the engineers,
of course, would make
up the things that we're supposed to type up.
Those sheets went to the mechanics or
engineers that took them to the plant to check out,
did you really put
the parts in that were supposed to go in,
are they defective, are they okay and so forth?
So once it got past typing it up,
I didn't have much to do with it.
>> So did you ever go out on the factory floor?
>> I don't think I did.
We had a cafeteria there.
It seems like you went across part of
the factory to the cafeteria.
But as far as going out and checking out those engines,
I can't ever remember being out
there giving them any advice.
>> So were any of the women in that office mothers?
>> Let me see,
that's a good question.
They probably were because see,
a lot of the guys had gone off to serve in
the war and they were left with small children.
And probably a lot of them
did have children and
still were working at the war plant.
>> Do you know if there was childcare available?
>> No. There was not at the plant.
That was something that came later.
>> So how much money did you make in that job?
>> $100 a month,
I remember because to me, that was a lot of money.
>> Did you save it?
>> No. I spent it, of course.
And you see the reason I remember that
so well is that my sorority at Missouri University,
they offered me a scholarship.
They said, if you'll come back and help with rush week,
we'll pay your tuition
for your year so you can get your diploma.
Well, that was quite an offer.
And to this day, I think, well,
I probably should have done that.
But who knows?
>> Why did you turn them down?
>> Money. I was going to get a $100,
I had to buy books and that sort of thing.
But I guess too in the back of your mind,
you're a little bit patriotic.
I hate to say,
well, I did it to win the war.
But that was in the back of my mind.
Well, I can do something to
help and I can also make some money.
So it was two edged sword or whatever.
>> So what would you spend the money on?
>> Just dumb things like young people do.
Ice cream, cones probably,
and I probably gave my folks some.
I think I paid them rent because we used to do
that to live there while I was working.
>> But you weren't the only child living at home still.
>> My goodness.
>> Or were you?
>> Nobody else was home because
my older sister's husband was the one who went
to California with 110th engineers.
And I went with her just as I said,
and worked for [inaudible] out there.
But at home, my little brother was in
the Navy and my other sister's husband
was in the Air Force.
So they were all gone. The guys were all
gone and my youngest brother was in the Navy,
so there was nobody left at home.
>> So tell me about your future husband, James McCubbin.
>> James McCubbin.
>> You said you met him in high school
because you hung around in the same group.
How serious did you get before the war?
>> Well, we were friends.
And it seems funny to say that now,
but we went to high school together,
we went to church together.
We finally decided to go to Missouri University.
Well, all time I was at the university for three years,
I had one date with him
at what they called the St. Patrick's Ball.
It was the big dance of the year.
And right after that he went off
to service to the Air Force
and we weren't married until after
the war then because he was gone well,
probably three or four years.
>> But you're saying you weren't
particularly serious with him?
>> No. We didn't have
any plans or anything at that time at all.
>> Did you communicate with him while he was oversea?
>> Yeah. We wrote letters.
And I wrote to all the guys because they're over there.
They're lonely. We wrote all the guys.
So he was just one of the guys I wrote to
>> So you wrote to friends, to brothers?
>> Yeah. To this group that we had.
It was a youth group at church,
and all the girls wrote to the guys.
I remember Christmas time we
stuffed little, what do you call them?
Christmas socks with candies and shaving lotion,
all this to send off to the guys.
And they weren't necessarily
anyone we were in love with,
we were trying to keep them from being too lonely.
>> Did you get any letters in return?
>> Yeah.
>> What did they say?
>> Mostly friendly,
except for a couple that were more than friendly.
But then you know how that goes. We were young.
[LAUGHTER] And then he
was gone longer than I thought
because we didn't get married until 1947.
And in the meantime, he says, well,
don't tell everybody I was a prisoner of war
because that implies that I made a mistake.
And I said, well, not necessarily.
I said just tell them you shot down
nine German planes before they got you, which was true.
And he was just in the prison camp for four months,
so he was lucky that way.
>> Do you know which prison camp it was?
>> I should know. Can't say it.
>> Was it in Germany?
>> Oh, yeah. It was in Germany and they were
taken on a first march when
they saw that they were losing the war.
They got all the prisoners out and they
said they're going to take this prison camp.
So they marched all the soldiers
about 200 miles south from the prison where they were
to try to get them out of there before Paton
freed the prison there.
>> How was he treated as a prisoner?
>> He said he was not
violently treated like the Japanese.
The Germans, he said,
were strict and had a lot of rules,
but the only thing they were starving,
there was no food.
So they might get two or three beans for
one day and a half a piece of bread.
So everybody was starving,
but then so were the German people.
So he never did blame them that
much because he said, well, there's no food.
And so as far as being mistreated,
just for the sheer pleasure of
being violent or vicious, they weren't.
But they had rules and they were saying,
hurry up, get in here, get out there.
>> Did you receive any letters
from him while he was in the camp?
>> No, I don't think they were allowed to send letters.
See, we weren't married then.
So he was still just a friend.
And I talked to his mom and
dad and they say he's missing in action.
That's how it came out as though you thought he was
dead because that's the way they reported it.
Jim McCubbin P51 pilot
is missing in action in Germany over blah, blah, blah.
So all you knew was he was missing and
his folks would get that information, I didn't.
So we didn't really quite know whether he was
coming home or not until the war was really over.
>> And then what did you hear?
>> First, what did we have?
>> VE.
>> Yeah. First we had VE Day,
but still the war wasn't over because then we had
to have VP day. V?
>> J.
>> VJ, victory of the Japanese.
So even after we had victory in Europe,
I guess at that period,
he was allowed to come
home before the very end of the war.
>> And so when did he return home?
>> Well, that's a good question. Let's see.
It would've been '44, '45.
Does that sound logical, '44 or '45?
>> And do you remember the soldiers returning?
Do you remember the feeling?
>> Oh, yeah.
There was such a celebration when VE day,
everybody went down to
the Town Square of Kansas City and there was confetti,
everybody was kissing everybody,
it didn't matter whether they knew them or not.
And it was just a tremendous celebration at the end
of the war that even if it was just VE day,
that was enough to
celebrate because they figured it wouldn't be too
long until we'd be out of the whole thing, hopefully.
>> So tell me about those first months after the war
and your developing relationship with Jim McCubbin.
>> We dated. Like friends,
he'd come out and say, mom wants
me to go across town and buy some oranges.
They're really cheaper over there, can you go with me?
I don't want to go over by myself.
And I'd go over with him to buy oranges for
his mom and we do things like that.
Or there'd be some special dance,
he says they're having a dance at the Playmore tonight,
you want to go?
And it was just a very gradual thing
to somewhere along there,
he said, he thought maybe he couldn't
stand me the rest of his life somehow.
And I don't remember an explosion like,
wow, this is it.
But then just one of
those things that develops over a period of time.
And we we enjoyed being together.
After that, I'm just trying to think
'47. That was quite a year.
>> So were you working at
another type of job at this point?
>> I worked at the newspaper
as a reporter at the Kansas City Star.
Have you ever heard of Kansas City Star?
It was supposed to be the best newspaper
in the Middle West.
>> How did you get that job?
>> Actually I had an uncle who was
an editor there and he said,
my niece is going to be moving to Kansas City.
I didn't major in journalism or anything.
He said, but I think she could handle the job.
So really, again, I was hired because my uncle said,
I think she could do that.
So I worked as I call it on the financial desk because we
ran the tapes through to see what
the market was doing ever each day in Green,
what Green was doing,
and that sort of thing.
And it was a fun job. It was interesting.
>> How long did you work there?
>> Let's see. I was working there when we got married,
so I worked there a couple of years.
>> And was that your first job
after the work in the war plant?
>> I used to work summers between school
just like most young people did at
Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Wards doing
some dumb stalking job or stamping letters,
I remember, but just summer jobs.
And then that was the first real job
I had was at the newspaper.
>> And how did you and Jim decide to get married?
>> That's a good question, too.
It's all blurry because I'm thinking,
we just gradually said, I enjoy being with
him and he was not going with anyone else.
I wasn't going with anyone else.
He had gone back to Cleveland,
Ohio to take a training course
with Warner & Swasey machine tools.
And he was in Cleveland at the time and he came
home and he asked me to marry him.
I said Cleveland, Ohio.
He says you'll love it there.
So since he thought I would love it there,
I said I'll give it a world.
So we got married in 1947 and went
back to Cleveland for our first year.
>> Tell me about the wedding?
>> We were not so, what's the word?
Deficient in everything like butter,
coffee, and all the rest.
By that time, I guess
things were loosening up as far as that went.
So we had a rather nice formal wedding
at the same church where we had both gone
to church together there at First Baptist Church
in Kansas City, our hometown.
And we went back there
last year for our 50th anniversary,
back to the same church where we were
married in Kansas City which
is all now completely African American,
and just charming people,
they were so nice to us,
and the choir was excellent.
And we said I think this church has come up since we
were here because it was a young church at that time.
>> So tell me about starting a family.
>> We decided that we better have
some children because he was
28 and I was
27 and because all that war thing in between.
And so we were married
four years and I
still didn't have any children and found out he says,
well, we better check this out.
So found out my thyroid was low,
we had our first and he said, after that, we had four.
We had four teenagers at the same time.
So they were pretty close together.
And that was a handful when they were little.
>> Did you enjoy bringing them up?
>> Oh, yeah. We had a good time.
And we always went on vacation.
We always took all four of the kids,
tossed them in the back of the station wagon and
drove to California. Can't do it now.
You've got to get them in that seat
belt and all the rest.
So we enjoyed the children.
Went on a lot of camping trips because it's cheaper.
You can cook your own food out in the woods
and take a hike for an amusement.
So it was less expensive when you had
four kids to just go camping.
>> Did you continue working outside
of the home after working at the Kansas City Star?
>> No, I never did.
I went back to Kansas City Star for vacation relief.
People were going on a vacation.
They'd call me and see if I could work for
two weeks while someone was off.
But I never worked after
that because that was the thing then.
Wives didn't work, but now it's changed.
>> So you didn't move back to Kansas City for a time.
And you lived in
a smaller community outside
of the city, a suburban community?
>> That was Prairie Village. That's where Token lived.
I'm trying to think where Prairie Village comes in here.
>> Have I skipped too far?
>> No, it's me.
I I'm trying to get my mind to go together.
We moved back to Kansas City.
We moved to a really nice community,
just a suburb of Kansas City called Leawood.
But that was after Prairie Village.
So Prairie Village was that first one.
Housing was so limited
after the war because they hadn't been
building any homes that you had to take a chance,
draw out a hat to see if you got to buy a house.
So we drew a good one
and we were able to buy a house in Prairie Village,
which was in the same little suburb
where Token and her husband had bought a house.
Didn't know it or anything at the time.
>> How long did you live?
>> Oh, dear. We were there until we
built this house in Leawood.
We were there until Ken was born. He was the baby.
We moved when I had the fourth one
because it was getting a little small for four kids.
So we built a bigger house in Leawood and we moved there
when the youngest one was about two years old.
Now, you figure it. I said I
didn't excel in math. She was.
>> So you lived in Mexico City.
>> Eleven years. Can you believe it?
>> For 11 years.
[OVERLAPPING].
>> How do we get that in there?
>> Yeah.
>> I don't know. My husband was getting a
little bored with his work in Kansas City and
his old boss that he had
worked for with Marley Company in
Kansas City offered him
job as the CEO of a plant in Mexico City.
And he says, they've been in the red for five years.
I want to see if somebody can pull them
out and maybe you can do it.
So he said, well, that's a challenge.
So that's how come we went to Mexico.
>> Well, tell me about that.
>> We sold lock, stock,
and barrel and moved.
And he had to go off down there to find
a place for us to live and
learn Spanish and all the rest.
And he said, here's the house, sell the house,
have a garage sale, sell
all this stuff, and come on down.
So that was really a responsibility
to think I had to take care of these four kids,
have a garage sale, sell the house, but we managed.
And with my older daughter who was quite dependable,
we did it and we sold everything and moved to Mexico.
>> Did you drive?
>> We bought what was a very bad Ford station wagon,
and then he came back and drove us down.
>> So do you remember those first days
and months in Mexico?
>> Oh, well.
>> How was that different?
>> That was quite quite different.
That was quite an adjustment to make there.
Here you are in a country where you
don't really speak the language,
except for a buenos dias and not much more.
So it was an adjustment to make.
And of course, it was
nice too because you
had the advantage of a full-time maid.
For the price of getting someone to
clean your house one day a week,
you could have a full time maid live in.
And all the houses there were
equipped with maids quarters.
So when we were trying to rent a house,
I said, oh, I don't need that.
I don't need a maids quarters, oh yes, you do.
Everybody here has maid.
So it was a whole new way of thinking,
but it was interesting too and we had some good maids.
We didn't have any bad ones at all.
We liked them all.
Of course, I'd like
to have had her when my kids were all little,
but by then they were in junior high and high school
and they went to the American school in
Mexico City and all learned Spanish very well,
better than their parents because they soaked that up.
>> And what did your house look like?
>> Oh, it was beautiful. You mean in Mexico?
Yeah. It was just a beautiful, old,
colonial type hacienda house
with the handmade tiles and handmade brick.
It was just a beautiful house,
more of the prettier houses I think we've had no matter.
My husband said if we could sell it today,
it'd probably be worth two million dollars,
but at the time,
we were we were selling it in pesos.
So anyway, it was
equipped with all modern conveniences and of course,
the maid was there,
so that was a nice life. It was a good life.
>> What kind of friends did you make?
>> I had lots of friends there.
There are lots of American.
The house was on a golf course and there are
houses built all around the golf course and
most were either European or American couples.
So therefore, they all spoke English,
so we had our own little community
there around the golf course.
But then there were other activities too,
like I went to the Spanish Bible study.
But most of the girls that went
to the Bible study spoke English,
so it was an interesting experience.
>> So when did you move back to the United States?
>> Well, my husband retired from that company,
from the Marley de Mexico in Mexico City in 1980.
And he retired and we moved back to California to
a little town just North of San Francisco in 1980.
All the kids had gone their separate ways at
that time from off to school
one way and so we
were just the two of us by the time we retired.
>> And what did you do in those those retirement years?
Did you travel or?
>> We traveled a lot.
We did, we enjoyed it.
We really, really took advantage of that kickback time
because we both enjoyed the traveling.
So that was great.
And with any extra money we had,
we'd take off on these cruises and on
the tours that they have.
So one time we went three months around Europe,
just rented a car and drove all the way across and back.
And at one time,
I said, well, we're having so much fun.
I'm sorry, our kids aren't able to
see at some of these countries.
So I said, let's take the kids,
even though they're married, tell them,
we'll pay for you to go,
but that doesn't include kids or spouses.
So we took our children and we took them to Italy,
and we took them to Spain,
and we had a couple of weeks with them,
and that was a fun time.
We enjoyed it and they
wouldn't have gotten there otherwise.
So we were.
>> Well, how did you end up moving to Georgia?
>> Because of my daughter, who lives in Cedartown.
>> So how long have you been here?
>> It's been 11 years now,
and we've been at the Renaissance for six years in June.
Six years, that's a long time.
>> And how was it to move to the deep South?
Was that a peak transition?
>> Not really. People were very,
very nice, very outgoing and very helpful.
And having my daughter here with her friends and
her church and her husband is
a choir director atb their church.
And so it just was an easy transition.
The only thing that was bad transition was going
from being your own boss, having your own home,
to depending on somebody else to take care of you,
which is the case with Renaissance.
You have to finally say, okay,
I can't do all this anymore.
So it has its pluses and its minuses.
>> Would you say that you have a relaxed personality?
Or do you get along with people easily?
>> Yeah, I do.
I don't have a problem. My husband
might have a little problem with
getting along with some people.
He's always saying, yeah, but consider this.
He had his problems.
That's why. He never stops to
think why they are the way they are.
But anyway, we manage there and he has lots
of other guys that he can talk
to even a couple that were in the Air Force,
which is nice for him because you get
two guys that are pilots
and that's mainly what they're going to talk about,
flying and their episodes in the war.
>> Well, how did you get involved in
the American Rosie the Riveter Association?
>> Actually, through Jane Tucker because
she was head of the organization in Rome.
How did she know about me? I don't know.
>> You have to ask Jane. I don't know, how's she?
Well, probably came to Renaissance because
Totins there and I'm
there and there's another lady there,
who's not very active anymore,
who are also in that era.
So she probably came out there and talked to them.
>> And what things do you do with the association?
>> Well, they meet about,
it tries to be about once a month,
and we'll sometimes go over to
the library and meet with the Marines.
They have a meeting once a month.
And now,
they're going to have a meeting on Memorial Day,
I think at Ridge Ferry Park.
And they'll have a table with
all the memorability of World War II,
and they'll have a whole program.
They burned the flag last year, the old flags.
They had a ceremony for
burning the old flags and establishing the new ones.
So they're going to have that this year.
And they made a documentary of the Rosie the Riveters,
and it's a movie
which I don't know if you've seen or not.
You might like to. It's interesting.
It's just all the different women and what they
did and so forth.
>> Well, in participating in that,
you're helping to preserve these memories of
people working during the war serving in the military.
>> Particularly women.
And do you think it's
important to share these experiences?
>> I think it's very important to
keep it alive because the children today in schools,
they hardly even know about World War II.
Because I don't think we're teaching it too
much in the history classes.
They zip over it a little bit.
Oh, yeah, by the way, we went to war for a few years now.
It seems that way with my grandchildren.
>> How do you think a firsthand account like
this can help them bring the history to life?
>> I should think it would make it seem more real to them
and mean more to them. They think, well, wow.
Because even now with my husband,
he's written up quite quite a bit of
his experiences as a prisoner and also as a pilot.
And he'll read that and they're very interested in that.
So I'm thinking, well, that makes it more real
to him that hey, this really happened.
I hope we should also
make more obvious what happened with
the Holocaust because that
can happen again to any class of people.
And to see how people could become so callous to
human life is just unbelievable and yet it happened.
So I think that's another thing to keep
alive the fact that be careful when
your freedoms are taken away and
our freedoms are being taken away.
I think it could happen to us again.
So it's important to see how easily
freedom can be taken from you that we fought for.
>> Thank you, Miss McCubbin.
>> Well, you're certainly welcome. I've enjoyed it.
Enjoyed meeting all of you,
and it's fun to go over the old days,
even though some of them weren't so good.
[LAUGHTER]
>> We'll stop there.