>> Museum of History and
Holocaust Education at Kennesaw State University.
Today is December 16th, 2021,
and I am here at the Museum of History
and Holocaust Education
with Judy Benowitz for a legacy series interview,
during which we will remember her mother,
Ivah Ree Harris, who served in
the US Navy as a WAVE during World War II.
We will also discuss
the World War II experiences
of other members of her family,
including her father, Daniel Coker.
First, do you agree to this interview?
> Yes.
>> And can you please state your full name?
>> Judy Marie Coker Benowitz.
>> So we're going to spend some time in
this interview remembering
your parents' wartime experiences,
but we're going to start with your background.
Can you please tell me when and where you were born?
>> I was born in Monroe, Georgia in 1949.
>> And what were your parents' names?
>> My mother was Ivah Ree Harris Coker.
So because when I wrote that article on my mother,
I used her maiden name,
because it was inside her raincoat.
[LAUGHTER]
And my father was Dan Bruce Coker.
>> And what did they do for a living?
>> My mother was a housewife and
my father worked for the Rural Electric Corporation.
So he was a lineman for the county.
>> And did you have any siblings?
>> My brother, Wayne,
was two years older,
and my sister, Valerie,
was two years younger.
>> And what was your neighborhood
like when you were growing up?
>> We lived in rural Georgia on Highway 11,
and I wrote a memoir about Highway 11.
And so cousins were
around and we rode bicycles everywhere.
And we had one car in the family.
And the school I walked to,
Walker Park Elementary, I could walk to.
It was just down the road.
And Jack Queen's Grocery is where we bought groceries,
and I could ride my bicycle there.
And my cousins lived down the road, so I could bicycle.
They had a pond and we went swimming in
their pond after supper at
5:00 just about every day in the summer.
And our summertime job was picking cotton.
And so it was very rural, southern living.
>> And were the houses they
were far apart from each other?
>> Well, my parents had maybe 10 acres.
They may have been one or two acres,
but like my cousin had like 50 acres.
So it just depended, but there were
little houses all along Highway 11.
It wasn't very populated, though.
It was the country.
>> And when you picked cotton,
was this a field that your family owned?
>> Well, [LAUGHTER] we
do descend from the William Harris Homestead,
which is on Highway 11, and which is one of
the largest intact plantations remaining in Georgia.
And my mother's great great great grandpa,
William Harris, lived in the house,
and then my mother's grandpa,
John Lewis Harris,
was the last one to live there until he died in 1929.
We have that history of slavery,
which I only just became aware of. I don't know why.
I lived in California for 20 years,
so I was like removed from that.
And then when we started going to
the Harris reunions and family would gather,
and we've traced our history back to 1776.
And so in the cemetery are all
these Harris's who have
been in this country since the beginning.
And so the Civil War was part of that history,
and I'm part of that history too, which, sadly,
slavery was part of the history of Georgia.
And my family descended from,
shamefully, that part of it,
but at the same time,
that that particular property,
the William Harris Homestead,
is a museum and an archaeological site,
and it's educational,
schools go there for events,
and weddings are held there.
So it's a historical site.
It's one of Georgia's most interesting places,
and it's on the National Register of Historic Places.
It has a lot of visitors, and every four years,
the Harris family reunion takes place there.
So it's an interesting part of my background,
which I'm only just now grappling with,
because I'm writing a story,
a collection, called Descendants and other stories,
and it's the story of my family.
When I was growing up,
the families had lots of children.
William Harris had 15 kids and John Lewis had 13.
So my cousin, Dotty,
is the one who inherited the property,
and she's the one that established
it with the National Register.
But I grew up poor.
My dad was a blue collar worker,
and my mother made most of my clothes.
For Christmas we got socks and underwear.
I remember when my fourth grade teacher
wrote in my record,
or next to my name, poor child, and I was like, "What?"
I had no idea I was a poor child.
Everyone around me was the same.
So that was new to me.
[LAUGHTER]
But that's how we grew up.
So the cotton fields that I worked in, no,
my family didn't own them,
but other families did,
and cotton was king even, of course,
way back in the 1800s,
but people still had cotton fields in 1950s.
>> And so you've started to tell me
a little bit about your family's roots in the area.
And was it only later on as an adult that you
start to become really interested
in your family's history?
>> [LAUGHTER] Well, yeah.
And especially my mother's history.
When I went to
Kennesaw State University for my master's degree in
professional writing and one of
the classes was biography.
So I had this archive in my basement of
my mother's collection from
World War II, and she was away.
I had nothing on my father because
my sister took it and so I had hers,
and I'm like, well, let's go there.
It's right here.
And so then I began to research
her and the World War II,
and you realize what
our ancestors went through with each war.
But that war, of course,
was the closest to me.
My war was Vietnam and I was a war protester.
And then I see how my mother volunteered,
went to war, relieved some of these sailors
and Navy men so they could go into combat.
And so the WAVES was a volunteer organization
of women who would relieve these warriors.
And so she was based in Washington,
DC and so the more I read about her and really the story
that struck me was Denise Kiernan's story about the war,
about the Manhattan project,
the building of the bomb,
where I forget exactly the name of the story
but how secretive the women had to operate.
And when I'm looking at my mother's records,
they all said that the secret
you had to be secretive about what
your duties were and if
you divulged anything, there were consequences.
So I thought, okay, this was an era of
very serious war that
I really never thought too much about
until I researched my mother and found
different characters that she knew and
then I researched some of them
and the part they played in Pearl Harbor.
And I took my mother to visit
Pearl Harbor because I was a flight attendant and I
took her there and she became tearful standing
over the Arizona Memorial where
the oil still bubbles up from the sea.
At the time, I had no idea
that she may have known someone on
that or someone who knew some of the men who died there.
But then when I started to research,
I began to look back and understand her a little more
and she was very different from
how I knew her as a little girl
when I began to research her.
>> So we'll get into some of that.
>> [LAUGHTER] I'm way ahead of you.
>> No, that's okay. But going
back a little bit to your memories of your mother,
what did she tell you about her childhood
and her family growing up?
>> Well, she was poor. Let me think.
There were six or seven of them, her siblings.
She went to school, graduated,
and then went to work at a pants plant.
and Growing up,
I don't know, they lived in a little house.
They grew their own food
and I think there were cotton fields.
[LAUGHTER]
But yeah, there was no money,
which is interesting to me because when you think,
well, you came from a plantation, there should be.
But everybody was scrapping
for survival and sustaining their lives.
I'm trying to think what exactly. I don't know.
>> She she grew up in
the same neighborhood where you ended up growing up.
>> Right. She grew up in Monroe and my dad also grew up,
they weren't that far apart.
>> And was religion important to your mother's family?
>> Southern Baptist, both of them were.
So yes, deeply religious woman,
given to cursing, but she still went to
church every Sunday. We went.
We were brought up in the faith.
My dad didn't go.
He sat home watching Billy Graham on TV,
he thought religion was women's work.
>> And what was the church?
>> Mountain Creek Baptist Church.
>> And is that still part
of the family that's still back in Monroe?
>> There is no family back in Monroe.
I am the survivor.
But I believe the church is still there.
But no, my family no one is there.
My sister's husband is there with
his new wife, my sister's deceased.
And so yeah, I don't know that
much about what goes on there anymore.
[LAUGHTER]
Once in a while I'll go for Thanksgiving,
maybe once every two or three years,
but I don't get back there too much. No.
>> So you talked about she was
part of this large family,
they grew their own food,
did you have a sense for how
the depression may have affected the community?
>> Well, I know that my dad's mother who had a farm
and she lost her farm during the depression.
Now, as far as my mother's farm or her family,
I'm not sure on that score,
but part of my research on my mother
also led to research on
my father and his time in the war,
and he has one surviving
half sister who filled me in on a lot of the history
of the family and the story
of my dad's mother who had a mental breakdown,
spent some time in Milledgeville
which was at the time one of
the largest mental health institutes in the country.
And she had maybe
six or seven kids or her husband died of measles,
so she was a single woman with all these kids
[LAUGHTER]
and lost the farm and so she married one more time,
and then that's when Annette was born,
the aunt surviving who filled
me in on some of the family history.
So I probably know more about
my dad's upbringing than my mother's so
much although I hung
out with cousins from my mother's side and my dad's side.
So we all lived fairly close together.
>> And what was the name of that grandmother?
>> Grandma Fred, we
called her but her name was Frederica.
>> And in your discussions
with both sides of your family,
did you get a sense for
the role that segregation played in the community?
Did they know any Black families?
>> Well, when I grew up in high school in 1965,
my school was integrated.
Three kids came.
And I have a story on that.
And yeah, it was segregated
but the school that I went to,
we were pretty progressive I think.
No one got into fights.
I think we teased this gal terribly
but the superintendent of schools,
Clyde Pierce hand selected three of the
smartest and most likely to
succeed in a hostile environment,
three black kids from the school in Monroe,
all Black school, I think it was Carver High.
And they integrated into Monroe Area High School.
And I had a gal in my class and the class clown
[LAUGHTER]
would tease her when the teacher wasn't in the classroom,
would tease her and say,
"Hey, Precious, you forgot to shave your legs last night."
And then she would put fuzz on her sweater and say,
this is what your arm pit looks like, so not very nice.
But she kept teasing her until,
I forget what joke she told,
but the gal finally laughed
out loud and we felt like, okay,
we made a connection with this girl,
just kidding around, like we all teased each other.
But it took her a while and we all watched to see if she
was going to smile, and she laughed.
So we felt like we reached her.
I had classes with them
and some of them were basketball players.
I was a basketball player.
She was not on my team though when I played,
but I think later, some of the kids came through.
But I remember one was in my graduating class
and years later after I left home and drove
away in my little MGB sports car
and I'm at a traffic light,
and this pretty black girl pulls
up next to me and she's like, "Hey, Judy."
And I'm like, "Who are you?"
She's like, "It's Precious."
I'm like, "Oh, my God."
I graduated. I'm like,
"How are you doing?"
We were friends with them, but there were only three.
It was very small, slow process.
But yes, there was I lived during the segregation and
the integration and bussing
although everybody bused out in the country.
>> That was a really helpful story to
give the full context of the community.
Thinking back to the time of your parents' childhood,
do you know how they got their news?
Was that something that ever came up?
>> Well, that I'm not sure as far as newspapers.
Well, I just remember asking
mother how she learned about
Pearl Harbor and where she was when the bomb
was dropped because she didn't go
to war until after that,
and she said it was a phone call.
So they had telephones.
Newspapers, I don't know.
The Walton Tribune is the newspaper in the area,
and it's where my story appeared,
and my mother wrote for them for a while.
She did the church news.
So I don't know how long that paper has been
around or we really didn't talk about that.
I didn't pay attention.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Did they tell you anything
about what they did for fun?
>> Well, let me think.
I guess, playing ball.
Mother liked to swim.
I'm just thinking back to comments that she made,
illness brochure from when she
was in the waves in Washington,
DC, and the sailor at theater,
she liked the theater, she liked to swim.
She rode a bicycle. So I don't know.
>> And what about her education,
where did she graduate from high school?
>> She graduated from Monroe High School.
And I'm not sure
if the school went to 12th grade or 11th grade,
I'm not sure, but yes, she graduated.
Now, my dad did not.
My dad had a third grade education.
That was when his father died
and he had to drop out of school
to go home and help with
the farm and the family and the kids,
his siblings because he was the oldest.
And his mother, though,
home schooled him during
that time when she wasn't in the mental health institute.
But yeah, he was
home schooled and so very different upbringing.
But yet just a sign of the times when measles could take
away a family member and the rest of
the family would have to pick up the slack.
So it was hard times in those days.
>> So in your memoir of your mother,
you wrote she graduated in 1936?
>> Yes. I believe I wrote that.
>> So that's very early.
Did she tell you anything about
her decision to go to work after graduation?
>> Well, she probably wanted to get out of the house.
I think she wanted to buy a car.
So she went to work in the pants plant and she
bought a brand new Chevy.
I've got pictures of her with her car.
And I think she just wanted some independence.
I don't think she left home.
I think she still lived at home.
But I'm not sure because where she worked was in Winder,
which was maybe 10 miles away.
So yeah, she worked because
probably better than picking cotton.
[LAUGHTER]
>> Do you remember the name of the plant?
>> I have it written.
>> I have it written down.
>> Yeah, I'm trying to think of it.
>> I have it written down as
the Winder Barrow Manufacturing.
>> Winder Barrow Manufacturing, yes.
And I think I've also put down that,
it was they manufactured pants.
But then during World War II,
a lot of these manufacturing companies were asked
to manufacture other things, war type materials.
And I'm thinking maybe they manufactured uniforms.
That was just a logical guess on my part.
But a lot of manufacturers were reconditioned to
manufacture a variety of needs for the war.
>> And when she was working and she had this car,
did she ever get to go into the big city?
Did she go to Atlanta?
>> Yes. She and Savannah and yeah,
she would drive into
Atlanta and go shopping with her buddies.
And I've got pictures of her
carrying things from Rich's department store
and with her friends and
pictures of her taking buses to
different places, Greyhound bus.
And her car was her way to get around.
So yeah, she got out and she always had lovely clothes.
There's pictures of her that she was dressed beautifully.
So I think she really enjoyed fashion.
And that was her way to buy things.
>> So in your memo of her,
you share this really interesting story.
And I don't know if you'd like.
Would you like to talk a little bit about
her relationship with Goldman Frays?
>> Well, this is the thing that I don't know,
which I totally was surprised to find.
I was just going through some of her pictures and letters
and I kept coming to this one letter over and over
signed by Frays or
Goldman, and I'm like, "Wait a minute.
This is the same guy."
So he wrote to her for 10 years.
And so I thought, I like this character.
So I began to research him and see what
his story was through ancestry.com.
And he was a career man
but he started writing to
her and he was maybe 10 years older than her.
And then I thought, well,
he may have just been a pen pal.
I don't know. But I thought,
I'm going to make it a more interesting story.
So I approached it as if she had
met him while he was in service,
maybe home on leave.
And they wrote to each other.
But it was just little cards and some of them were
written at 1941 with a censored stamp on it.
So it was right during
before or right after Pearl Harbor.
So yeah, I never knew him or
never heard her talk about him
and he was just a mystery man to me.
But it added another dimension to
that story because he was connected to Pearl Harbor.
He would send her pictures of
the boat and himself and some of his crew and he
pointed out two men in a picture and he said,
you see the two men with the braids on,
they're no longer with us.
And then I began to research that ship and the battle for
that ship and only two men were
missing or perished from that and that was those two men.
And I tell you when you find things when you're
researching and you find a neget, you're like, wow.
It just blows your hair back.
So that made my story more
real to me to see this connection.
Whatever his connection was to her,
he meant something to her.
So I wanted to write about it.
>> I love that. So tell me a
little bit more about that phone call,
your mother finding out about Pearl Harbor.
What was that like?
>> Well, this was an interview that I did with
her on an Eight Millimeter film.
And it's regarding my aunt,
my cousin Dotty who's inherited the Harris house.
She's like, we should take videos of
our ancestors and ask them questions about what they did.
So I interviewed her about
Pearl Harbor because I thought,
well, she was around,
wasn't even thinking about her being a Navy wave.
Just that that was her war.
Where were you?
So in the interview, she said,
"Well, I was at Julia's," who is my dad's sister.
And she's like,
"I was at her house."
And I'm like, well, how did you know about it?
She's like, "There was a phone call."
And I'm thinking, well,
maybe my dad was there too. I don't know.
He was 10 years
maybe six or eight years older than my mother.
So I don't know if he was home then because he went
to war after Pearl Harbor as well.
So yeah, the phone call and,
I don't know what else was your question.
I just lost train.
>> That's okay. If she
remembered Roosevelt's speech on
the radio or anything like that.
>> Well, I know that in that interview,
there was a part where she was talking
about when she was transcribing.
I'm trying to get the chronology here,
she was transcribing some of
the press releases and the day the war ended.
By that time, she was in the WAVES.
And she was saying that
she transcribed the press releases
from President Truman and that there was a bomb.
It's like she was one of the first ones to
write that the war's ended, there was a bomb.
And that's the day the war ended and
everybody ran out onto
the streets and started kissing each other.
And I remember asking her if she could have
been one of those people
kissed that ended up in life magazine, that famous kiss.
When the war ended, she's like
any one of us could have been.
So she told me that story about how the war ended.
And so I went back to revisit
that interview with her to get
some material for the story I wrote about her.
And this is a little bit
of what I remember how she described
her job as a spec 5 and she worked,
I think, at the White House.
So I would have to
look at my story again to get the detail.
>> Well, so tell me about
her pathway to joining the WAVES,
where did you find out about that?
>> Well, I'm not sure how she actually was recruited.
They were recruiting women on firms and advertising.
She wanted to be a flight attendant, but at the time,
you needed a nursing degree to be a flight attendant.
So she joined the WAVES.
She may have seen an ad or she may have
heard a radio broadcast, but she volunteered.
>> And you mentioned that she went to Savannah sometimes.
So she had seen the ocean,
so she maybe had at least some interest in the Navy.
I'm always curious about how people find a specific unit.
>> I don't know, because you're right.
There was an army of women.
I forget they were called,
and then there were, were they Air Force?
>> Yeah. The WACs were the army,
and the WASPs, which were women service pilots.
>> Right. So there were
three branches where women were volunteering,
and yeah, how she chose the WAVES,
I don't know what would've.
But you're right. She went to the beach
and I'm not sure if she [LAUGHTER] took a boat out.
I don't know. I don't know that part.
>> So what about her training?
What did she tell you about her training?
>> She didn't really tell me too much about her training.
She talked about some of the men she dated
[LAUGHTER]
and some of the clubs she went to.
>> So tell me, where did she train?
>> She trained at Hunters College in the Bronx, New York.
And I believe the Prof. McAfee
who was President of Wellessley College.
They put her in charge of training
the WAVES because she came from an academic setting,
and so they set it up like
a college and on the grounds of a college
and train these women almost academically,
just because that was the method that
everyone understood and it was the easy way to
transition from one occupation to another.
So yeah, we didn't really talk
too much about her training.
Her uniform, she had a navy ring and she had
a high school class ring and she gave
my sister the class ring and me the navy ring.
But we were teenagers.
We lost both of them.
[LAUGHTER]
And she had the raincoat.
And I wore the raincoat in the '60s.
And in several plays that I was in Diary Van Frank,
I wore it because it was a period costume.
And I would wear it just out and
about because it was in Atlanta,
when we would go to
these army surplus stores and find pants and stuff to
wear if it fit because
I had some navy pants that I picked
up and then I had this coat.
It was just fun to wear this vintage outfit.
>> Yeah, that's fun.
So even if she didn't tell you much about her training,
she did write some notes in some of the [OVERLAPPING]
>> Yes. In the brochure that
describes the life of
a wave for the two years that they were in service.
Two years plus six months they signed up for.
And she made little notations
in the front page she'd say something like.
How did she describe it?
Anyway, she would get cheeky about some of the stuff.
Ain't that's well or ain't that great or something.
How they were describing the life of the wave.
I can't remember exactly what she said.
>> Even in the food. I'm trying to remember.
>> Well, she said the mess halls were always
crowded and the swimming pool,
she loved the swimming pool.
And then they would get together,
they would take the bus to Fort Meade
to dances at Fort Meade,
and that's where the men were.
And so she loved that.
She made a little notes saying,
love this and or some fun this.
And something else she made
a comment about that she didn't care that much about,
but I can't think what it is now.
>> So she talked to you a little about
the going and meeting men and going to clubs,
and that was in New York City and
>> Washington DC.
>> And Washington DC. Yeah, both places.
And there's pictures of her in
these night clubs with different men,
and I thought fun.
She had a good time.
>> And so what did she do when she was in DC?
What was her role?
She transcribed the news releases from the White House.
And so I forget exactly.
Her classification was Spec 5 and it's in my memoir.
I should take a look exactly what
the title was that she did.
I can't think.
>> Did she tell
you about how she felt when the war was over?
>> Well, let me think about that.
I don't know how she felt.
I write that people came back and went
back to their lives of back to the factories,
back to the cotton fields,
and went back to that quiet life that
they left during their uncertainty for the war.
And so I think she corresponded
with some of the women and she wrote letters to
them and they they kept up
with each other for years and years.
And in fact, so I know she had a lot
of friendships and in fact,
one of the girls that she wrote
to contacted me when mother passed
away and let me know that that
my dad never wrote to her
the whole time he was away and she was in the waves.
They were both but he never wrote to her.
And I think he was afraid that he wouldn't come back.
And so he wanted her to find someone else.
So he never wrote to her.
And then the lady also said that her mother
had been fearful for her daughter to go to the waves.
She didn't know what kind of women would be there.
Would they be criminals, would they be what
characters would sign up for something like this.
But she said that women in the waves that she met,
including my mother were some of
the most wonderful women she'd ever known.
So they all had a lot of camaraderie.
So those are some of the stories that I was
told and not by my mother, by another mother.
So she just always kept up with these girls.
They were important to her.
>> So what about your father?
So you told me a little bit about
his childhood and how he had
to leave school and help out.
Was he drafted?
>> Yes. He was drafted.
The draft was in place
and I think was the first time the draft was in place,
well, in modern history at age 30.
And he was the sole breadwinner
for the family by this time.
And they appealed to the draft board to let him
stay and take care of the family because he had
like four or five younger siblings.
And but the boards like notes, they needed everybody.
They were bringing women into the war.
So he served and he never came home
on leave though because he thought it would
be too painful to have to turn around and go back.
Plus during the war, there wasn't a lot of leave.
>> And what unit did he serve in?
>> He was in the army.
>> And do you know where he served?
>> He was in, I know I wrote about it.
He was in Africa.
I think Johannesburg.
Yes. And I think basically what he did there
was run telegraph lines
because he was a lineman for the county before he left.
So he already had the skill.
So he ran telegraph lines and other communication.
>> And did you have
other family members who served in the military?
>> Well, both his brothers served in World War II.
And in my mother's family,
both her brothers served.
Maybe more maybe three of them.
Yeah. Tree three brothers.
Because one was at Ijima.
He was in the marines and another was in the navy,
and another was in the army.
So there were three brothers of my mother's.
But my brother served in Vietnam,
and I was a war protester.
I was a hippie in Atlanta
protesting everything.
[LAUGHTER].
>> So you talked a little bit
about the family left
behind on the home front during World War II.
Did you ever hear
any specific stories about how they got by,
what they were doing with
their family members away serving?
>> Well, I know that one of
my aunts got married
and so some couple of the younger kids lived with her.
And then my dad's mother went to
work in one of the cotton meal.
A bus would come around and pick up
these ladies in town and
give them a drive to the cotton meal,
and so she worked there.
And I think she just enjoyed
getting out of the house is what my aunt told me.
So she worked after after Dan left, my dad.
>> And so she would be able to bring
money home to support the family?
>> Yeah, she had a job.
And I think Annette was still pretty young,
but Julia, by that time,
was working at the plant where my mother was.
So they were beginning to get jobs. Yes.
>> So when the war was over,
how did your parents end up coming back together?
They knew each other before.
>> Yes. Like I said,
mother was friends with Julia, his sister.
So they they knew each other.
And I think they dated before the war.
And then got back together after.
>> And what were their hopes and dreams for the future?
Do you know what they wanted their life to be like?
>> Well, mother had a baby almost right away.
So she had three kids,
let's see, we were all two years apart, in six years.
So a family and just my dad worked,
mother stayed home and took care of the kids.
>> And your dad went back to work as a lineman?
>> Right. For the rural electric company.
He was there for his entire career.
>> And what were your early memories of your parents?
What kind of people were they like?
>> Well, they were real sweet.
My dad liked to drink hooch and smoke cigarettes.
Mother was not much.
She wanted to nag him all the time,
but they had fun and they would go out to
dances and the VFW and she would get all dolled up.
So they had a good relationship.
They bickered here and there,
but they worked the property raising their food.
Mother would do canning and and
freezing everything that came out of
the garden for the winter.
So they just worked their property pretty much.
>> And did they ever talk to you, at that time,
about World War II had meant to their family,
or was it this is
over and now we're just doing our thing?
>> What meant to the family?
>> What the war had meant to their family?
>> No, I don't remember
them philosophizing about the war.
A lot of people don't want to talk about what they did,
but I don't think my dad was on the front line of combat.
Mother was state side.
So it could have been
a romantic experience for them. I don't know.
I don't remember.
My dad would make jokes about some of
the characters that he would play cards with.
And he kept up with some of
his buddies too and would go visit them after the war.
So they made friendships,
and that's really all I was aware of.
>> So you mentioned that you experienced
segregation and integration and
then the Vietnam war protests.
What shaped your thinking about that?
What made you decide to become a protester?
>> Well, there was
an underground newspaper called the Great Speckled Bird.
It was written by Emery students.
The protest was on
all the campuses to end the war, stop the war.
It was an unpopular war.
I was living in Atlanta with three other girls,
and so we would go to these meetings on campus.
I was in school at Georgia State University,
but we would go over to Emery
because that's where the action was,
and go to these rallies and students sit-ins
and listen to these kids argue about the war.
And I was shaped by that.
The draft was in place again,
and my brother was drafted.
It was a war that nobody wanted.
It was so far away.
We weren't under attack.
And the kids argued, well,
it's a jungle, why do we need to protect that?
So that was sort of the feeling,
but it kept going and Nixon kept the war going.
And then the students at Ohio State,
the four dead at Ohio,
who were shot down by the National Guard.
So that just inflamed everyone that the political side of
this country would be fearful of
student protesters to the point they would gun them down.
So that became a cry to stop the war.
And the soldiers did
not get the welcome that most returning soldiers got.
People would call them baby killers and spit on them,
and my brother did not wear his uniform home,
but everybody recognized his class A haircut.
So it was just a bad time that we would go to
these protests in Piedmont Park and they would shut off
all the exits and then
mace everybody and arrest student protesters.
It was just this ongoing battle with police and students,
and it was a revolution.
We were trying to change the world and stop the war,
and that's what motivated
for years because that war went on for a long time.
To me, I romanticize it when I write about it,
but It it was a tough time.
>> Did you ever have conversations with
your parents or other people from the previous generation
about the differences and how they
reacted to World War II and how
your generation reacted to Vietnam?
>> Well, yeah. It was very different.
My mother volunteered, my dad was drafted,
but she didn't want her son to go to war.
And Vietnam was just that war that nobody wanted,
even the memorial is underground.
It was very different.
You felt like World War II,
we were under attack.
Vietnam. We were out there trying
to change somebody else's life.
So no, they were different,
and I think the vast population pretty soon was like,
stop the war, businesses, everybody.
But I think the student war protests were the start.
>> And I guess changing tax slightly.
Do you remember learning about the Holocaust and
what happened to Jewish people during World War II?
>> Yeah. Well, in fact, my husband is Jewish,
and I converted to Judaism,
and our three children are raised in the Jewish faith.
And yes, I've been
to Yad Vashem in Israel which is the Holocaust Museum.
It's pretty awful.
I don't think I talked about it too much with
my parents so much as with my husband.
And when we met in college and started dating,
and then we decided
we wanted to get married and he's like,
we got to talk.
If we marry, I want
to raise our kids in the Jewish faith.
What do you think about that?
Are you willing to convert and are you willing?
Because a lot of people don't.
And so I was like, wow.
So I took classes in Washington,
DC where I was a flight attendant.
I was based in Washington and I went to classes
at the Washington National Hebrew congregation
on Massachusetts Avenue.
There were five rabbis there and I took
classes for six or eight weeks
and had my textbooks and did a model Seder,
which is the Passover meal.
And it was time to graduate
and I had missed three classes because I was flying.
And Rabbi Fink says to me,
just live jewishly so it's like, okay.
So that was my conversion.
Then I just remember driving my little MG.
I was flying out of three airports in Washington
and that would be
Washington National, Dulles and Baltimore.
And I was driving into
Baltimore and I started to think about in 1972,
the Olympics when six Israeli athletes
were murdered in that Olympics.
And that famous swimmer Phelps, is that his name?
No, not Phelps.
That's the modern day one.
Anyway, I'll think of his name. Mark Spitz.
He was being scurried away to protection,
the US swimmer, Mark Spitz.
And I thought and I was driving
into the Baltimore Airport
and listening to this on the news.
And I'm like, how strong can the hatred be?
And then Bob wants me to convert to Judaism.
What am I signing up for?
So the realization washed over me
but we've have been
observant of the religion and the children.
We have three kids,
and they're all Jewish.
None of them were married.
And they've all been to Israel.
And when they're in 10th grade,
the Temple sponsors programs
for kids to go and tour Israel and reenact the Exodus,
which is that famous ship ride
when Israel became a state, and I think 1948.
So all three of the kids took
that journey from Cyprus
to Israel so three days on a Rickety boat.
And then they toured Israel, all the sites.
And then my son,
my youngest did study abroad,
spent some time on a Kibbutz
and spent some time in Israel.
And before he was to leave to go for his semester abroad,
he was going to Beersheba which is
one of the universities there and
it was being bombed, lobs.
The Palestinians were lobbing it with these grad rockets.
So we're like, you're not going.
But he was supposed to spend time on a Kibbutz.
These grad rockets only had a 50 mile range.
Well, that Kibbutz was within range.
So the school changed
the curriculum to the point
that he wouldn't have to go to the Kabbutz.
And so they changed it so
that he would begin at Beersheba.
So we're like, you can go.
And of course,
the Israeli army put down the skirmish immediately.
The IDF, but my son at one point wanted to join the IDF,
which is the Israel Defense Force,
which is a volunteer army,
but it's also if you're Israel citizen,
you have to serve in that for so many years.
But they also recruit Americans to join.
And my son wanted to and I'm like, no, sorry.
You're not going over there as a warrior.
You can go as a student for study abroad,
but you are not fighting that war.
So yeah, we are very aware of the Holocaust.
And I think my husband has family,
he hasn't researched it as
much as some of his family members have,
but his ancestors come from Turkey, Istanbul.
In fact, we visited Istanbul because I'm like,
you need to see where you hail from.
He's like, I hail from Nashville.
I'm like, your grandpa was born in Izmir.
He's like, that's his problem.
He's not that interested.
And his grandmother was from Greece.
And so we went to Greece
because he still got family there.
But some of his cousins have
sent some research for family members that were executed,
not necessarily in the Holocaust,
but in other skirmishes all around like Kristallnacht and
some of these other
terrible executions,
for lack of a better word,
just being really hunted down.
But Bob has not researched that.
But we are aware of some things.
>> Yes. And you mentioned that your parents,
especially your mother, were
involved in the Baptist Church.
Was it a challenge for you?
>> [LAUGHTER] Slightly. Oh, God.
I guess that's why I'm writing
my memoir because I have come from
so much variety of life.
His parents were like,
what are you doing with this shiksa?
Why are you interested?
And they sent him
to Israel on a trip so he would forget Judy,
but he came back and gave me a ring from Jerusalem.
He's like, this will be our wedding band.
[LAUGHTER]
I was like, okay, that looks great,
but could I get a diamond to go with it?
So he brought me back this ring
instead of forgetting about me.
And so that didn't work.
And then, of course, my parents were like, why?
This is never going to work.
And my mother would say things like,
your name is Judy.
It may mean Jews,
but you will never be a Jew.
And I was like, great now
that we've got that squared away.
So she thought, well,
you would just be a hypocrite.
And I was like, whatever you think.
I don't know what I'm going to be,
but we're getting married.
[LAUGHTER]
And we eloped.
We didn't have a wedding,
we eloped in Justice of the Peace Office
with a soap opera blaring in the background.
And we were all dressed.
It was spur of the moment.
I was a flight attendant and I came
home because my air conditioner didn't work,
and I'm like, does
your air conditioner work?
He's like, yeah.
I'm like, I'm coming home.
So I flew in and he's like,
we're getting married on Tuesday.
I'm like, no. Every day,
he say we're getting married.
And then he's like, get up, we're getting married.
So we went downtown and we had lunch.
We went to get our blood tests
because then you had to do that.
While we were waiting for the results,
we went to the Polaris in Atlanta,
that revolving restaurant on the top of the building.
And then we went across the street to
the Justice of the Peace and said we want to get married.
And he called in his secretary,
Betsy, come in to witness.
And then Bob looks down,
he says, excuse me, he leaves.
And I thought I'm going to be left at the altar.
Then he comes back.
So the soap opera is playing and
the justice never turns the soap opera down.
It's blurring loudly.
And I'm standing there now,
he and his Betsy are watching the soap opera.
And then Bob comes back,
and I don't know what he did.
I don't know, maybe he threw up,
maybe he said a prayer for what he was about to do.
I don't know what he did, but we got married with a
soap opera blasting in the background.
I was a flight attendant,
so then we flew to Hawaii for our honeymoon.
I went to Las Vegas,
Los Angeles, and Honolulu, and Hilo.
We were gone for two weeks for a honeymoon.
>> And you've been married how many years?
>> Forty eight. Oh, my God,
I know. Long time.
[LAUGHTER]
>> So I guess it worked?
>> It worked. It wasn't perfect, but it worked.
>> [LAUGHTER] So wrapping up
your stories that you've shared,
how do you feel like
your upbringing influenced your life?
The rural area and your parents wartime experiences,
but then just coming home and being themselves.
Did you feel like you just made
a clean break from all of that?
>> Well, and this is what I write
about in my story in Descendants.
I grew up in the South, but I couldn't wait to get as far
away from that Southern lifestyle as I could get.
So I moved to California,
lived there 20 years,
flew to Honolulu for 10 years,
got as far away as I could get.
And then Bob's business brought
us back to Georgia where we married.
And plus, I wanted to be here
for the last seven years of my mother's life.
I knew she was getting on,
and I wanted my kids to know that side
of the family because Bob's family
were all out in California.
So they knew that was people.
But I thought, well,
let's see what the Southerners,
see how you like them.
I came back.
What was the question?
[LAUGHTER]
>> I guess your relationship between
your childhood and who you are now.
>> So that was what I
did was I got as far away as I could.
And then as I'm researching more about the descendants
in the Harris house and where I truly am descended from,
when I learned about the slaves,
my first reaction was shock,
horror, and shame.
I always thought that that's just history.
It's not my history. Well, now it is.
Now it's my history.
And now I feel like I'm really embedded in this history.
And I had to grapple with it a little bit.
And it was only when I started to research
this Harris house and
how the plantation system was in place.
I'm like, the plantation system?
And so I asked her, were there slaves?
And she confirmed it, yes,
there were 18 in 1850 and 10 in 1860,
and then of course, Civil War, 1861.
And so then I began to try to decide.
When I came back from California
and I would see these reenactments,
I thought, a joke,
these people are still fighting that war, what a joke.
And then now that I see
that I have ancestors that were in the war,
I feel like, gee,
we were being invaded.
So then I start to understand
this whole Northern aggression thing
which I thought was a joke.
But then I'm like maybe I think that too,
I don't know. It's weird.
>> Yeah. And thinking about descendants,
you or anyone else,
have you started the process of trying to connect
with the descendants of those who were enslaved?
>> Yes. That was the first thing I asked Dotty
is we have the Paris cemetery,
is there a Black cemetery anywhere on the grounds,
and do we know any of the descendants of these people?
And she's like, no,
but it is an architectural,
what's the word I'm trying to say?
>> Archaeological?
>> Archaeological site right now where they're
trying to find where the slave houses were.
And I don't know,
there may be cemeteries.
I don't know, but she doesn't have
any information on that.
But they are doing some research there.
But then I thought if these slaves were
there in 1850 and 1860,
and then they're freed,
of course, in a lot of places,
even though they were freed,
they weren't really free, we've learned that.
But I thought likely
after living in a place for 20 years,
they settled close by.
Some of them may have gone up north,
but maybe many of them
settled down the street or somewhere.
And then I started to think about
those three kids that integrated my school.
I'm like, wow, I wonder if some
of those kids were descended
from the Harris slaves because they were there.
So it makes me think about a lot of
what my experience was growing up and
learning about where I come from and if
they could have been part
of that group of people who integrated.
Likely they were, I don't know.
A lot of time went by.
And then when you think about the new research,
I forget the lady who wrote the book, 1619.
That's when the slaves came over with
the Europeans to settle Plymouth.
The Europeans came,
but the slaves who were brought in bondage.
By the time the South had slaves,
the slaves were already here for 270 years.
That's how long,
that was the lifestyle in the South.
Yeah, it seemed like history,
but then when I see my family,
I'm like, why didn't I know that?
Somebody forgot to put that in
the classroom. So I don't know.
>> So why do you think it's important
for people to study and learn from the past?
>> Well, I think it helps
you understand yourself maybe to some degree.
And I think in the future,
you can maybe not make those mistakes.
When my kids say, oh,
this is so terrible when
Trump had incited the riot
at the White House and my kids are like,
oh, my God, everybody's
going crazy, everybody's so divided.
I'm thinking that is nothing compared to
the Vietnam War and
integration and the stuff I lived through.
And then I think about my mother.
That is nothing compared to
World War II and what she lived through.
And then you think about the Civil War.
And you're like, we've always been a warring,
fighting, angry set of people.
I don't know why. Yeah, there's good people,
but the history that we record is battled, which is sad.
>> So is there
anything I haven't asked you
about today that you'd like to talk about?
>> Oh, gosh, I don't know.
I can't imagine I'm going to go
home and write another book.
[LAUGHTER]
>> It seems like you're just at the beginning
of a big research journey.
>> It is. And fortunately, for me,
my daughter is also a writer and she lives in New York.
She's a travel writer and she has an MFA.
So she's a good editor too.
So she's going to do the introduction to my book.
>> I know. Even on just to the topic of
the plantation and tracing all these communities,
there's a lot of very recent work that's
being done in some really interesting places.
The Whitney plantation in Louisiana is one,
the James Madison's Montpelier site in Virginia.
So if it's something that interests you,
there's a lot you can probably experience.
>> There is and I know Dotty was
in Washington at Mount Vernon.
No, she was in Monticello where Jefferson was.
>> That site has changed
a lot over the years and how they've interpreted it.
>> Right. And I asked her, I said,
are you going to include,
in the educational portion of
this Harris house, the slave portion.
They have school kids sitting on the floor learning about
the spinning wheel and candle making and plants and
die and what plants color clothes
and and you're looking
at these kids sitting on the floor and
there's one little black guy,
everybody else is white, and you're like,
does anybody talk about
the slaves that were here on site.
And no, they don't unless someone asks,
then they will, but it's not part of the program.
So I asked Dotty, I said,
how does Monticello treat that?
But of course, we're talking about a mansion
with hundreds of people enslaved.
Not that it excuses anything,
but this was a clapboard farmhouse with maybe 20.
And plus he was a president.
So yes, they're going to include.
But then there's a fear of reprisal too when
you give up too much information
from people because today,
there's still a lot of anger about a lot of things.
And so it's a fine line.
And sorry I'm on it.
>> You can't help being on it
if that's what your family is about.
>> I can't. And I'm writing about it and I have to
carefully choose how I present it,
which that's my job,
and I'm working on it.
>> Well, best of luck to you on that project,
and thank you for sharing your story
of your family and your life with us today.
I really appreciate it.
>> Thank you. My pleasure.
>> Absolutely.