>> This is James Newberry,
and I'm here with Elizabeth Betty Hickox on Friday,
November 10th, 2017,
and we're at the Sturgis Library
at Kennesaw State University.
So Ms. Hickox, do you agree to this interview?
>> I certainly do.
>> Well, thank you so much.
So let's just start at the beginning.
Could you please tell me your full name?
>> Elizabeth Caroline Hickox.
>> And what's your birthday?
>> 2 / 14 / 24.
>> Excellent. So Ms. Hickox,
where were you born?
>> In New Jersey on a farm.
>> And what were your parents' names?
>> My mother's name was Helen Nelling, N-E-L-L-I-N-G,
and my father's name was Preston Jordan, J-O-R-D-A-N.
>> And your parents were divorced?
>> When I was two.
>> So how did that affect you in the years following?
>> Didn't bother me. I live with my mother,
my stepfather, my grandmother,
and grandfather, and I had a good life.
So it didn't bother me particularly.
>> So after your parents divorced,
you moved in with your grandparents?
>> Before. When my mother left.
>> And where did your grandparents live?
>> In Glassboro, New Jersey.
>> What did they do for a living?
>> Well, my grandfather had been a glass flower,
but then machines came in and so he lost his job.
So he went to work for RCA,
which was at the time, Victor Talking Machine
and in maintenance.
That was the only job he could get.
And then the depression came along and he lost that.
So my grandfather was a little man.
He was like 5'3".
And so most of the time,
he just picked fruit in the summertime.
He wasn't able to get a job.
>> And what about your grandmother?
>> Well, my grandmother
worked at the college in the cafeteria.
She was a cook and a baker.
And then that job kind
of disappeared and depression came along,
and so she went to work in the sewing factory.
So she worked 5.5 days a week in the sewing factory,
and I think she made like $9 a week.
>> And eventually, she started a boarding house.
>> Well, before that,
we had a chicken farm.
My grandfather when he lost his job
with Victor Talking Machine,
he decided to go into the poultry business.
And he did that for several years,
and then one year,
the chickens all got coccidiosis
and we were already
like a half a block from the high school.
And the head of
the department came and checked it
over and said that all the chickens had to be destroyed.
And so that ended the chicken business.
[LAUGHTER] So then after that,
all the only jobs he got with
either working for WPA
or picking fruit in the summertime.
He and his brother both picked fruit and
they liked them to pick fruit
because they could get their ladders in the trees and get
up higher than a big person
could because they were tiny men.
>> And what did he do for the WPA?
>> Dig ditches. They were building a new high school,
half a block from our house.
And so the politicians came one year around
election time and wanted
to know if they were Republicans.
I remember, I was just a little girl,
and they wanted to know if they could
count on my grandparents to vote for him.
And my grandmother said, well,
why should we vote for you?
My husband wants a job and he can't get a job.
And they said, Well,
we'll give him welfare.
And my grandfather stood up and he said,
I don't want your welfare,
I want a job.
So they gave him a surplus army jacket.
Buttoned up the front and was khaki color
and scratchy and gave
him a job digging
ditches for the new high school sewer lines.
And in the meantime,
my uncle was the head janitor at the school.
No, that was later. Anyhow, my grandmother
finally got a job as
assistant janitor at the high school
because her eyes started to go
bad and she couldn't sew anymore.
So she did that for a while,
and then I guess
it was about 1937.
They announced in the local newspaper
that a factory was coming to town.
And they were looking for people to open
up boarding houses because they would be bringing
a lot of people as
trainers to train the people how to use this machinery.
So my grandmother decided
that this is what she was going to do.
And my one aunt had
a dormitory for boys
at the college because they already had,
like, eight or 10 boys.
So the college didn't have any place for them.
They just had dorms for girls.
So she was across the street from the college.
So she took in the boys.
So then when they got a bigger clientele of boys,
they opened up another dorm and she was out of business.
So she kept all her beds,
so my grandmother decided
she was going to have a boarding house.
And there was a big house in
town that had belonged to the doctor,
and it was available.
And it had oh, God ten bedrooms.
And rent it for $25 a month.
So she rented it.
She got the beds.
She went out and borrowed money.
She went out and bought new mattresses for
all the beds and got them all straightened out.
And that's how we started.
>> And how did you help her there?
>> Well, by this time,
I was in high school and I'd come home after school.
We had electric ironer and we
would wash all the sheets and then I'd put
them through the mangle after
school and we'd have them back
on the bed and the beds would be
made before the people got home from work.
And my grandmother was
a really good cook, really good cook.
And so she had all her boarders.
And then my aunt she went out two of
her rooms and the hotel
was only three doors from our house.
And so we got a lot
of the people from the hotel
would come to our house for dinner.
So we were really,
really busy, and we were doing well.
And then after I graduated from high school,
we got an opportunity to rent a house
for $25 a month that was much bigger.
Much bigger dining room,
much bigger two kitchens.
And so she decided to move.
Well, my grandfather didn't want to move.
So everything was moved down in
the house and my mother was
helping and my mother got
the last box of
dishes and my grandfather is sitting on a stool.
And she said, you got to get off that stool and
get in the car because we're not here anymore.
So finally, he went,
but he was very reluctant.
But we did well there,
and it was a nice house that had an L-shaped front porch,
and we had a lot of rock and chairs
and a typical boarding house.
And then things got bad,
and when the war came,
there weren't that many boarders.
She took some welfare men,
older men who had no place to go.
And rather than put him in a home, she took him.
And so that worked out for her.
She always made out all right,
but the funny part about it was my husband was
an electrical engineer and he came to
visit one time and I wasn't there.
He had time often,
so it was closer to
go to my grandmother's than it was for him to go home.
So he went to my grandmother and during the day,
he'd walk her around and he'd fix things.
And he said mom,
you only got two rooms on the electric meter.
The rest of the house is not on
the electric meter because of the electric bill.
Now, she's got a nine-bedroom house,
electric bill is $5.
So he said,
I think this is a fire hazard.
He said I think you ought to
have somebody come in and redo your electricity.
So she said okay. So she did.
And the bill went up to $10,
but still wasn't all on the meter,
but it worked out for her.
>> Well, let's talk about where you went to
school and the kind of student that you were.
>> Lousy student.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Why is that?
>> I was definitely was not
an academic by any stretch of the imagination.
I would've loved to have been a homemade teacher,
but it wasn't in the cards,
either financially or brain-wise,
but I learned a lot in the courses I
took even though everybody looked down on
the fact that you took home make and that was it.
But we learned how to upholster furniture.
We learned how to refinish furniture.
We learned how to give a cheque.
We learned a lot of things and became very
useful in later life because my husband and I,
we had reupholster chairs.
I'd fight with him because there are rules
that the grain of the fabric has to go in a certain way.
Well, he was an engineer,
and he was going to cut that out,
so he got the most pieces out of it.
So we fought over that.
But anyhow I bought
a sofa for $100 in Macy's bargain room.
It had a water spot on the side.
Anyhow, I called him up and I told him I could get
it for $100 and he said buy it.
So I bought it and I went
to the fabric store and I bought
a upholstery material and I
spent I think $50 on the upholstery material.
And we finished the couch
and we used it in our living room for a long time,
and I sold it for $100.
>> [LAUGHTER] You didn't lose anything on it.
Well, tell me about the National Youth Administration
in high school. What was that?
>> I don't know exactly the details of it, but anyhow,
you worked 20 hours and you got paid,
I don't even remember what we got paid,
was maybe $5 for 20 hours or something like that.
So my job was to help the home ed teacher.
And the basic job I had was
to see that all the kitchen towels were
washed and to set up for the next day's class.
So I took the towels home first I washed
them there and hung them up to dry on a rack.
I didn't like that idea.
So I took them home and threw them in
the wash machine and hang them on the line,
put them through the electric mangle,
took them back to school.
So my class got an electric mixer.
And my teacher was a Pennsylvania Dutch woman.
And I don't think she knew first thing about a mixer.
All the classes that they used the mixer, I taught.
So then we got a sewing teacher.
And up to this point,
you made an apron or you made this or you made.
Everybody made alike,
there was no variety.
When we got this young girl
out at the University of Delaware,
and she taught in a different fashion.
We were able to do whatever we wanted,
make whatever we wanted.
We all had partners,
and my partner was very, very poor.
And this was right
after the depression or during the depression,
I can't tell you which,
it was just rough times.
And so she was given
an old fake Persian lamb coat in
black and some big woman's coat,
and she was a little girl.
So the teacher said to her,
get a coat pattern and rip the coat apart,
and we'll go from there.
And she did and she made
her coat and she wore it for two years.
That was the only coat she had in the winter.
She lived way out in the country,
so she had to wait for the bus,
so it was a good thing.
And this teacher would
let you make as many things as you could make.
I'd go home and lay out
a piece of material on the dining room floor and
cut out a dress and go upstairs and
sew it and we're at school next day.
And so I made prom gown,
I made my girlfriend's prom gown.
>> So the ability to teach that electric mixing class,
was that because of
your experience in the boarding house?
>> Yeah. I don't
think anybody in town had a mixer when we got a mixer.
My grandmother's favorite hobby was to go
to the hardware store or to the appliance store.
Well, the man that ran the appliance store
was a man who had gone to school with my mother.
So he was very fond of my grandmother.
So if he got something new in there,
he'd called my grandmother up and she'd go up and
see what hoots he had.
[LAUGHTER] That was it.
>> Tell me what year you graduated from high school?
>> 1941.
>> So you were graduating in May of that year?
>> June.
>> June. You said
your grandmother was running the boarding house.
You helped out a little there? Did you
get other jobs at that time?
>> When I first got out of high school, I was only 17.
So the only place I could get
the job was in the sewing factory
because nobody else would hire you unless you were 18.
So I worked in sewing factory, I hated it.
Oh, God, I hated it.
My aunt sat right across from me.
And she'd say, if you go to bed at night,
you wouldn't be so sleepy because I'd get up and
go put cold water on my face and try to keep awake,
I was so bored.
But they never fired me because
I never had to rip anything out.
And when she had samples that had to be made,
I was the one who made
the sample because she could count on.
I could sew a straight line and
I never had to rip anything out. Never.
>> And where did you go from there,
from the sewing factory?
>> I went to Owens.
I worked there a while, I didn't like that.
>> What's that?
>> Owens. It was a closure plant, made bottle caps.
Oh, God, I got on the third shift,
and I fell off the stool and fell on a basket.
Oh, I went to walk
home and I sat on the curve halfway home.
I couldn't hack that
because I couldn't sleep during the day,
so that was out.
Then I worked for John Wanamaker
Department Store in Philadelphia.
And I could have gone to New York.
The buyer wanted me to go to
New York and work there for a while,
but my grandmother didn't want me to, so I didn't.
And I liked that job,
but the thing is by the time I paid
my car fare and paid my board, I had nothing left.
So that wasn't lucrative enough for me.
So then I went to work for Standard Oil, New York.
>> Now, had the United States entered the war by now?
So tell me about your memories
of the Pearl Harbor attack.
>> It was a rainy foggy Sunday afternoon.
And I guess we had the radio on,
that's all I can think of.
And I don't really remember too much.
The next day, the newspapers told it all because all
you had was a radio and we didn't have television then.
And so we knew it eventually was going to happen.
I told you the president and vice president of
that class got called into the sea scouts January 1st,
1941 well before the war started.
>> What were the sea scouts?
>> Sea scouts,
they're part of the Navy.
>> So this was before you've even graduated?
So they were already calling people up at that point?
>> They called them up.
>> So at the time of the attack,
were you still living at home and working at home.
>> Oh, yeah.
>> So when did you go to
work for Standard Oil? Tell me about that.
>> I'm trying to think.
I guess it was 1942.
>> And how did you get that job?
>> They were begging for people,
and I applied and I got the job.
And I didn't have the job too long
when we took this test.
I think I told you,
they took this test and I finished it.
It was an aptitude test.
I swear a second grader could have passed it.
Anyhow, I took the test
and I got up to leave and he said,
"You can't possibly be done."
I said, "Well, I am."
"Well, go back and look it over."
God, I can look it over.
I did that about four times and finally,
he said, "You might as well go."
He was disgusted with me.
So I had this outside job and it was lousy.
We were out on the dock by the river,
spray painting labels on oil drums.
And it's cold, and it's windy,
and when you're by the river and it's cold, it's cold.
And so every so often,
we'd go in to warm up,
and I went in and I
laid down on the couch and I went to sleep,
and a girl came in
and shook me by the shoulder and she said,
"Ed Cody's been looking for you all over,
you better get in the office."
I thought, God, I'm going to get it now.
So I thought, well, I'll quit before he fires me.
So I got in there,
and he says, "Congratulations."
God, what's this all about.
He said, "You got
the highest mark of anybody in the test."
I thought, my God.
[LAUGHTER] He said, "I don't know how you did it."
I said, "It was just common sense."
I said, "I was done when I got up the first time."
So I didn't have to quit.
Well, I got the job and it
was like learning your times tables.
Every oil had a different velocity.
Every oil had a table for it.
Well, I was no more interested in
this job than the man on the moon.
And all I was working with were 40, and 50,
and 60-year-old men that didn't speak
English that every day would bring me something to eat,
one would bring me lasagna,
one would bring me spaghetti and meatballs.
They were all Italian. They didn't speak English.
Anyhow, I just hated it and I complained about it.
At first I complained that it was hurting my voice,
so they got me a microphone.
Then I complained the scale was glary,
so they changed the lighting.
I bitched about everything and
everything I bitched about, they fixed.
So I had nothing to bitch about.
So I stayed home,
pretended I was sick and I helped my grandmother.
It was December,
then along came January
and I get a notice that I have to come
back to work or I don't know what the notice said,
but I've made up my mind then two choices.
I'm either going in the service
or I got to go back to that job.
I'm not going back to that job, no way.
So now I think [NOISE] maybe I'll go in the Marine Corps.
So on my birthday,
I go up to Philadelphia,
[NOISE] and I take my physical,
and I'm accepted in the Marine Corps.
But you won't be able to go until September.
Now, this is February.
[NOISE] I said, I don't want to wait that long.
I might change my mind.
[LAUGHTER] I said, "Is there anything else I can go in?"
"Well, you can go in the Navy."
I'll do that. So that's how I went to go in the Navy.
>> Well, how had you originally heard
that women could even go into the military?
>> There were signs all over,
there were pictures of women in
uniform and then, they pushed it up.
I don't think I have any.
>> What was it to appeal to you?
>> Well, I had a friend that had worked
with me and she came
to my house about a month
before I left to go to boot camp.
And she said, "Let me give you some advice."
She said, "Go and buy yourself a pair of military shoes."
And she told me where to get them.
She said, "And wear them the day you go up."
Because she said, "When you get
there when you're accepted,
you're going to bootcamp."
She said, "You'll go on the train,
then you'll take the ferry,
and then you'll have to walk
about 10 blocks and
you do not want to be walking in high heels.
It's cobblestone streets,
you'll turn your ankle."
So I did exactly what she said,
and it worked out fine.
>> Well, I want to ask one quick question
about standard oil.
Do you have any sense of where that oil was going?
Was this considered defense work?
>> Yeah, absolutely.
That's the thing because a
couple of times I made mistakes,
and there was a guy down in the hole that would
stencil what I said on the barrel or the drum.
And the boys went down and
redid them covered up my mistakes for me.
They were men in their 40s,
but they went down and covered up
my mistakes when I made mistakes.
>> And where were you going to work?
Is that in New York or was
that closer to home in New Jersey?
>> No. That was in New Jersey,
but we had to get up at six o'clock in
the morning and we shared a car.
There were five of us in the car
and we paid the driver so much every week.
And then when we got to the refinery,
we had a mile to walk from
the gate into the building where we worked.
>> Did you have any identification badge?
>> Yeah.
>> What were your hours?
>> Eight to five, I think.
Sometimes they had me work overtime but like Saturdays,
I could only work a half a day cause women were only
allowed to work so many hours under a certain age.
>> And how much money did you get paid? Do you remember?
>> Well, I went from about $18 a week to $45 a week.
>> After you took the test.
>> After I took test. And they
wanted me to join the union and I wouldn't do it.
>> Why not?
>> I don't like unions.
>> Why?
>> I just don't like them.
>> So this factory,
you got in a car to go to this factory.
How long was the drive?
>> Forty, 45 minutes.
>> And you said it was on the river, what river?
>> Delaware River.
>> So but this was still in New Jersey.
>> Yeah.
>> Do you remember the name of the plant?
>> Socony Standard oil in New York.
>> So this place had recruited and hired
a lot of people during the war?
>> Oh, they hired a lot of people all the
time like any refinery.
It was like DuPont,
DuPont hired a lot of people power plant.
They made cannonballs and all that kind of stuff.
>> I see. So you were ready to get out of
that job and you got out of
that job by joining the military.
And once you had decided on the Navy,
getting in, you went through a physical.
And when did you start your training?
>> The 20th of April.
>> In '44.
So tell me about the training.
>> Well, we marched
[LAUGHTER] and we did exercises and we had watch.
I had a watch one night from 2:00-4:00.
Oh, I thought I'd die.
That was worse punishment because to keep awake,
you had to check in at different stations,
different floors.
And then we had captain's inspection once a week.
Now in the meantime, we're getting shots,
we're getting, all these
things that you get when you get in the military.
And so they give you a shot glass full
of paste wax to wax all the floors in your apartment.
We were living in apartments.
So I'm telling you trying to stretch that wax to do
those floors when we had captain's inspection on Friday,
the inspecting officer said,
the only thing she could find where they were
cobwebs on the fire escape.
So our officer said,
well, I don't allow my girls to go on the fire escape.
So that took care of that. We did okay.
>> Where were you training?
>> In Tuoro College in New York City in the Bronc.
>> So were there hundreds of other women, thousands?
>> Oh, gosh, yes.
Two regments Don't ask
me how many in the regiment, I don't know.
But we had to go to the armory and practice for
parades and if you
passed down during any of these things,
you had to scrub the armory floor with a toothbrush.
So I guess nobody passed down.
[LAUGHTER] But we did okay.
Well, they sent us to work and we had to
work part of the time and one day,
they needed some extra girls.
This was before we went to Cooks and Baker school.
This was when we were in basic training.
They needed some extra girls in the kitchen,
in the galley to pick chicken off
the bone for cream chicken on toast for breakfast.
So we all had to march over there,
every place you went, you marched.
We marched over there,
and we started picking off
the chicken and we get down to the bottom.
And the last five or six chickens
still had the insides in them.
>> So you can be sure that
nobody in our group
had any of that for breakfast, believe me.
And then after basic,
we went through that and we had regimental review.
>> What is regiment review?
>> Well, all the regiments get together and they have
a parade and all the officers review
the parade and it's a big to do.
But I'll tell you the first day we were there,
they marched us to the mess hall.
And we got in line and you got
a tray and you filled your tray and you got
a seat and you ate and
then you got up and you
dumped your tray and you went out.
Well, it was 19 minutes from the time your foot hit
the first step till you were out the door.
So the first day, nobody got anything to
eat because everybody was saying, where are you from?
All this and we learned a lesson.
We didn't do that again.
We got in there, we ate.
We didn't talk. We talked later.
>> What was your regular uniform
when you were just going from place to place?
>> We were wearing our regular clothes
until we got our uniforms.
And they came and measured us and
our uniforms came from Sax 5th Avenue.
And they gave you $200 for your uniforms.
And all that included alteration.
Well, I was very fortunate.
I didn't have any alterations.
My uniform fit perfect.
So I got $50 spending money.
>> What did you do with it?
>> Oh, I know what I did with it.
I bought a white uniform
because white uniforms were not required.
You didn't have to have one,
but I wanted one.
So I bought a white uniform.
>> Were your dress uniforms skirts or pants?
>> Skirts and jackets.
>> And you mentioned you had to do watch. What was watch?
>> It was like a night watchman.
You walked the halls making sure everything was secure.
>> And you said you were staying in
a was it like a dormitory?
>> No. These were apartment houses they took over.
And we were in an apartment houses and we had bunks and
there were 12 girls,
six bunks, and they were too high.
>> Was there a bathroom in the room
or a general bathroom?
>> A bathroom in the apartment.
These were apartments they took over.
Each 10 girls had a bathroom.
>> Do you remember any of those women
that you were sharing the room with?
>> Oh, well, my best friend
went to California after she got out.
Sure, I remember them.
>> Were they from all sorts of different places?
>> Oh, yeah. One girl was from Loveland, Ohio.
And they're from Pennsylvania and West Virginia.
Corey Keith was a girl from West Virginia,
and she looked like a real hemline,
and we figured she'd never had shoes on before.
But she made out all right.
>> What was a typical day like when
you were completing basic training?
>> Well, the master bell rang at six o'clock and you
all ran out and we all had
certain places we stood and
you counted off numbers
and you had to be there for mastery.
You could be in your night clothes,
but you had to be there for mastery.
And then there were times at
night when they would have entertainment.
And [NOISE] you might be undressed.
And they tell you have to go.
Well, the only thing you can do is roll up
your pajamas and put on your raincoat and go.
And hope to heavens,
nobody said take off
your coat because you'd be in trouble if they did.
>> What sort of entertainment did they have?
>> Oh, we had wonderful entertainment because we got
the entertainment from the theater.
We had Horowitz,
I'm trying to think what we did.
I'm hitting a blank and I shouldn't because we had
a lot from different shows would come.
Now, we used to get invitations.
They would post invitations on the bulletin board
of things you could do when you had Saturday off.
And the one Saturday there was
this invitation for two for one club for lunch.
So this girl I didn't know
said to me, would you like to go?
I said, sure so we went and it was at the Edison Hotel in
the green room and we were there and all of a sudden,
Victor Mature came in,
and Victor Mature was a movie star.
And we had a conga line and we
did musical chair the
next thing I know Victor Mature sitting on my lap.
But we had a lot of
opportunities that we wouldn't have gotten otherwise.
And I had been going to shows in Philadelphia so
I had a chaste of some of the things
some of these country girls
really didn't have a taste of.
Like my roommate got all excited one day and I asked
her what's the big deal and she
said my folks just got a bathroom.
They had never had a bathroom before.
These were hard-working girls that, you know,
got an opportunity that they never would have had before.
So I said to the girls,
everybody kept saying the worst thing
you can do is get stuck in Washington.
You don't want to get stuck in Washington.
I said to my roommate,
Gladys, we're going to Washington.
Said what do you mean? I said I'll tell you what?
That's a good place to be.
I said. They're going to do better by you there than
anyplace else because it's
a place where all the dignitaries are.
I said I don't want to be
stuck out in the middle of no man's land.
She said, so
Gladys I signed up from Washington and a couple of
others signed up from Washington and we got there
and we stayed in the motel overnight and then our hotel,
I guess it was and then we went out
to the Anacostia receiving
station and we got out
there and we didn't know you were coming.
We had to be out there seven o'clock in the morning.
We stayed, and we stayed, and we sat there.
Finally, around I guess it was
one o'clock they handed
the seat your bag with a sandwich in it.
And that was it.
She said there's water over there if you want to drink.
And then finally, about four o'clock,
they put us in a car and they
took us to West Potomac Park,
which our barracks was
right in walking distance of the Lincoln Memorial.
We were between the Lincoln Memorial
and the Jefferson Memorial.
Anyhow, we got there and the officer said,
we didn't know you were coming.
So this one girl stepped up and she said,
I want to tell you something.
Every six weeks, you're going to
get 10 girls so don't tell them then
you don't know they're coming because I'm telling you
now they're coming. So that was it.
>> Well, let me ask how long had
that training at Hunter College lasted.
>> Well, the basic was
six weeks and then 10 weeks of cooks and baker school.
>> And was that also at Hunter College?
So how did you
come to Cooks and Baker's School?
Tell me about that process.
>> Well, that's what I wanted to do.
First, I wanted to be a butcher but then
one of the girls got her hand
caught in the meat grinder and I said,
well, I guess I don't want to do that.
Then I thought, well, I'd like to be
a baker and then one of the girls got
her fingers caught in the bread machine
in the end of her fingers taken off.
O Lord have mercy I don't want to do
that so I guess I'll just be a cook.
So that's where I ended up.
The first day I went to work in Washington oh my
God it was Thanksgiving Day I had to work.
First day we were allowed to work.
We got there, but I had to go to work at
two o'clock in the morning and put all these turkeys in
the oven and the ovens were four high.
I'm on a step ladder,
two turkeys to a pan.
>> So that was your very first cooking experience?
Well, Thanksgiving.
>> Yeah. The very first day.
We had worked.
We knew that they had us work
as what they called scullery maids.
They didn't let us work in the kitchen until well,
we got there in September and this was Thanksgiving
so thanksgiving was the first time we got to work.
>> What sort of training had you
done to become a cook in the military?
>> Well, they sent us to Cook and Baker's school.
>> And tell me about that.
How long did you train?
How many hours a day? What were you doing?
>> Anything they told us to do.
Well, the thing is,
you've spent so many hours during
each phase of the thing.
You spent so many hours in the bakery and
so many hours on ovens and grills,
so many hours on in the scullery,
in the spa locker.
They had what they called
a spadlocker and that's where they kept
all the vegetables and fruit
and nuts and all that kind of stuff.
And so just wherever they stuck you, that's what you did.
>> So once you got to Washington and you
started doing this fairly regularly,
how did you feel about the work?
>> Oh, it's all right. They gave us all the dirty jobs.
The men didn't want to go to sea,
and the officer in charge did not recognize
our school and we
could not be rated until somebody went to sea.
In other words, if you are a cook third class,
you have to either be promoted to
second class or be shipped out to
sea before I can be a third class cook.
Well, they weren't moving any of these guys.
They were all guys who had already been to
sea and they weren't going anywhere,
so we weren't going anywhere.
So I was on the day jam for
a while and I made
mayonnaise and I did all kinds of things.
I also got myself in trouble one time,
and I weaseled out of it.
>> Tell me about that.
>> Well, when I was on the night shift,
the day shift would leave things for me to do.
And one night, I was told to finish filling the apples.
They were having baked apples for breakfast.
I was to finish putting the sugar and
cinnamon in the rest of the apples.
So I used a pan and sugar and cinnamon that he left me,
and I was generous, so I thought, well,
I'm going to make some more so I made some
more and I filled the rest of the pans.
>> A quick question. Do you
care about clossing noise? If you can hear her.
>> No, it's fine. Go ahead.
>> The next morning,
the mate shakes me and says,
Pol, you're in big trouble.
All those apples were filled with salt.
I said not the apples I did.
I only did two pans. I fibbed.
I made him believe he put this on it.
So I got out of that.
So well, I got a job in ship service.
I was working nights and I was already working.
I'd go to work at 4:00 I was off at 9:00.
It was not hard.
I only had 200 people come over from communications.
So I thought,
they need people in ship service I'll go work over there.
So I got paid for that.
So I got my regular pay
and they only paid 25 cents an hour.
>> So that was you'd work your regular shift,
and then how much time was that other shift?
>> Oh, well, I could work whatever I wanted.
I can say I'll work
two hours or I'll work three hours
depending or what you need.
>> And ship services. What was that?
>> Well, that was the store.
It was where they could buy
shirts or you bought cigarettes.
Anything you needed. That was the store.
It was called ship service.
>> So when you were cooking on your regular shift,
who were you feeding primarily?
Was it men or women?
>> Well, we had 200 men that
came from the Navy Department, officers at noon.
That was our biggest meal
and then the rest were just the workers
maybe another 500 people
from different jobs that would come for lunch.
>> And who is your boss?
>> We had a chief that was over us.
And then we had
a full lieutenant who was the supply officer.
He was really over us.
He had a big office.
>> So you only had male bosses?
>> Yeah. No women.
>> What about when you were training at Hunter College?
Who was training you?
>> Oh, we had women, mostly women there.
>> So how did the male soldiers
in the Navy treat the women soldiers?
>> Well, I mean,
I could understand their point.
See, in order for us to get a rating,
one of them had to go to sea.
Well, most of them had already been to sea.
They'd been in a lot longer than we had.
And so they didn't want to go back to see.
So the chief and
the supply officer were both
sympathetic to the men. That was it.
So they didn't do it.
I mean, I got out of Cookson Baker School.
I was qualified to be a third-class petty officer,
but you had to fill a compliment,
and there was never a space.
>> So was there any negative attitude from the man?
>> Sometimes they give us dirty jobs.
We had one guy and I mean, he was lousy.
He would if we were standing around,
if we had five-minute break,
he'd take the hose and wet
the floor and say, swab the deck,
and I had on the bottom of my feet
that big calluses on the bowl of my foot, on both feet.
And I went and I got callus plasters,
and I put them on my feet.
And I took a shower and
I took another shower and I didn't change him.
I didn't touch them.
When I took them off
about a16th of an inch circle came off my foot.
It was never sore and never grew back.
>> Wow.
So was there any free time for you?
What would you do for entertainment?
>> Oh, well,
if we didn't have any money,
we'd go to the Pepsi Cola canteen.
Because I was downtown,
and we could walk or take
the bus and you go in there and you could play
cards or listen to music and Pepsi Cola canteen.
I don't know if it's Coca-Cola or Pepsi Cola.
It must have been Coca-Cola.
Anyhow, it was the coke was free.
And then a hot dog, it was a nickel.
And Sunday night it could go over to 13 20 G Street.
They have a dance.
Well, that didn't work out very well for us because
the fellas over there were mostly military.
They didn't want to dance with military and women.
They wanted to dance with civilian women,
so that left us out in the cold.
>> What would you wear to those dances?
>> Oh, we had to wear your uniform.
>> So you wore your uniform every?
>> Oh, absolutely. Every place you went.
>> What was the reaction of
just civilians on the streets of DC?
>> Nothing.
>> How did you feel wearing that uniform?
>> Proud.
>> Did you wear a hat?
>> Yeah. Oh, yeah, I had to wear a hat.
Towards the end, we got overseas caps,
and they were great because otherwise
you had to wear our regular hat
and It was okay.
>> Who put the dances on?
>> Well, I
don't really know who put the dances on 13 20 G Street.
I think it was probably the Navy.
>> So it wasn't like a USO?
>> No.
>> So you were in the Capitol a good while?
I mean, for the period of your studies?
>> Yeah. I was in 15 months,
I guess, in Washington.
>> Did you keep up with news of the war?
>> Off course.
>> How did you do that?
>> Well, we just knew. I don't know.
We got newspapers, and
people working communications wouldn't
come in and tell us things.
And there wasn't any television.
It was radio. But We
were so busy working in and doing our thing that,
we were just hoping it was going to be over soon.
>> Well, now,
I know you were in Washington
at the time of President Roosevelt's death.
Can you tell me your memories of that?
>> Yeah, I'm right in front of the White House and
my husband was shooting off firecrackers.
>> That's your memory. Well, did
you go there because you had heard and you wanted to?
>> No. I don't
know why we were there, to be honest with you.
I don't remember why we were there.
>> Did you see his funeral?
>> No
>> Okay. How did you feel about Roosevelt?
>> Well, I think
he was the right person at the right time.
I mean, he was there, and I think
he did the only thing he could do.
What are you going to do? Somebody bomb you,
you're going to retaliate.
>> What do you remember of the end of
the war and victory celebrations?
>> Well,
there
was a lot of excitement.
We went downtown.
We walked downtown.
We were restricted when the war was over with Europe.
But when the war was over with
Japan, we were allowed out.
And we walked downtown, I know that.
It was just gobs of people and everybody shouting,
and it was just an exciting time.
And we were grateful that it was over.
>> And how much longer did your work
continue past that time?
>> Well, I got out in December.
>> Of '45?
So fairly quickly.
>> Well, you got out on points. You got points.
And I got married 1st of December,
and we got points for being married,
and so I got out 20th of December.
>> So tell me about meeting your husband?
>> [LAUGHTER] I was my night off.
And the girl said, let's go out.
You haven't been out in a long time, let's go out.
And I said okay.
I said, I'll go out tomorrow night,
okay? And she said yeah.
Tomorrow night came and they said the guys
from the army called and wanted us to go out.
And they've got a date for you.
I said I don't want to go. Come on.
I said okay. So we get in the taxi and we pull up.
And I recognized the fellas
that they were going to be with.
And I saw my husband and I said,
I'm not getting out of this cab.
I said he hasn't any chin.
He probably hasn't any character. I'm not going.
They said you can't do that,
he's already seen you.
I said okay. That was it.
>> What did you do that night?
>> I don't remember. We must
have gone to some club, I guess.
I know, we went to ding house.
And on the way,
these guys were in the Signal Corps,
and they had firecrackers.
And there's a guy with a garbage can on
his head and they throw
a firecracker that landed right behind
him and the garbage can went one way and he went another.
They were terrible, they were terrible.
And I said, I don't know why you wanted me to go out
with this bunch of hyenas.
[LAUGHTER]
>> And where was he from?
>> Well, he was in the Signal Corps,
and at the time he was over at Fort Belvoir in Virginia,
they were doing army show.
I don't know where his station was at the time.
I think Camp Crowder, Missouri.
>> And why did you agree to marry him?
>> [LAUGHTER] That's a crazy question.
Well, as we got better
acquainted and we had a lot of fun together,
and I met his parents and he
met mine and just came from there,
and that's all like any other.
>> Well, tell me where you
got married and then where did you move after the war?
>> Well, I got out on 20th of December,
and I went to Schenectady and he was still in the Army.
And then he got stationed in Delaware.
So we moved to Delaware.
We were in Delaware about a month
when he got moved to New Jersey.
So we moved in with my grandmother
and we stayed there until he got out of the Army.
He got out of the Army and went to Schenectady,
had a job with General Electric.
We stayed with his parents
until we could get an apartment.
The rest is history.
>> And you lived most of your adult life in Schenectady?
>> Well, the area, not in Schenectady, Clifton Park.
I lived most of our married life in Clifton Park.
>> And you worked in the home?
>> Yeah.
>> How many children did you have?
>> Four.
>> So to wrap up,
I'll ask you a final question.
How did you end up in Georgia?
>> My son was here,
and I was living with my high school boyfriend.
>> And this was after your husband's death?
>> Yeah. And when I
went back to my 50th high school reunion,
we got together and my husband had already died,
his wife had already died.
And he was living in filth.
I got in there and I got two cleaning women and I cleaned
that place out and died the rug.
His wife had both her legs off,
and she was blind.
She was a diabetic.
He died and I could have stayed there.
The boy said to me you're
perfectly welcome to stay there as long as you want.
And I didn't want to stay there.
So my daughter,
one was living in Savannah and one was living
in Boston and my other son was in Minneapolis.
So I didn't want to go to Savannah,
that was too hot.
And I didn't want to go to Minneapolis,
that was too cold.
And Boston was too cold.
So my oldest son was here.
I moved here.
So I moved here, that's it.
>> Well, thank you so much
for sharing your time with me today.
>> I'm sure you got a mess.
[LAUGHTER] I don't know if you want to use it.
>> We'll conclude there.