Reese

Interview with Myrtle Bean Reese in her cabin aboard the Carnival Cruise ship Conquest at the WAVES National Convention 9/21/06. Also present Martha Washington Curtiss Welch. Interviewer: Kathleen Ryan

KRSo I know that you've done this before. And let me turn this down a little bit because your voice is much louder than the lady I was just talking to. But if you could please say your name and when you were in the WAVES. MRWell, my name is Myrtle Bean Reese and I was in the Navy from July 5 -- June 15th, 1944 until I got out Jul -- January 27th, 1949. KRSo you stayed past the -- past the typical termination. MRWell, I've actually got two discharges. I've got one from our reserve unit, which we were. We were the V10 Reserve outfit. I got discharged from that and the very next day joined the regular Navy. KRSo let's 00:01:00back up, 'cause we'll talk about the Navy and all those experiences. But I want to back up. Tell me about, about growing up as a young girl. MRWell, I was born in Northampton, Massachusetts in December 1921. I went through grade school there in town. And the grade school was first grade through ninth grade. Went to Northampton High School for my sophomore, junior and senior year. Then I went to Northampton Commercial College for two years of business studies. Then was off on my own working for the government at the Springfield Armory in Springfield, Mass. And all this time still living at home! KRIn Northhampton. MRMmm-hmm. 00:02:00KRTell me about Northampton. It's in the Berkshires. MRIt's in the Western part of Massachusetts between Springfield and Greenfield. KRWas it a rural upbringing? MRUhm, well, I was a city girl, like. I could look out my windows and see the center of town. But a half mile down the other way was my grandfather's farm that he was living on. My grandfather, my uncle, two uncles, two cousins. My brother lived in one of the houses. And they raised pigs and fruit, apples, and they grew squash and pumpkins. One year they had 90 ton of winter squash. The hubbard squash. Good squash. KRThat's a lot of squash. MRYeah, a lot of squash. KRUhm -- MRAnd put it in cold storage and they had it 00:03:00all -- because he served, he sold his stuff to the restaurants and hotels. They also grew strawberries in season and I went down and picked strawberries for my grandfather and grandma for two cents a quart. KRAnd thought you were rich. MROh, I thought I was rich! Oh yes! They didn't pay me each day I picked. They kept track of it on a punchcard. And at the end of the season, my uncle came down to own house and said, "Here's your money for picking strawberries." I got the sum total of three dollars and thought I was in hog heaven (laughs). KRWas this during the Depression? MROh yes. See, I was born in 1921 and I understand it was the Depression years -- MW'28, '29. MRbut I never knew it. MWNo, yeah, 00:04:00you didn't. MRMother and Dad were never one to talk about -- MWFinances -- MRFinancial problems. KRMmm-hmm. MRThings. If we were to pay a bill up at the local store, it was put in an envelope. "Take it up to the clerk behind the counter." I didn't know what was in it. He said, "They'll know what to do with it." I guess it was the electric bill or some sort. Never knew what it was. I guess I grew up in the Depression years but who knew? We didn't make much of it. I guess we weren't flush with money, but Mom was very frugal. She always taught me how to save money. If somebody gave me a nickel or dime or quarter, I never went up and bought penny candy. That went into my little piggy bank and then 00:05:00into the big bank. We had in our school system, we had the bank one day a week come into the school and go around to each class. And everybody had a bank account, even if we put a dime a week into it. It grew, over the years. Not humungous, but it grew. KRYou grew up, you told me, your parents died very young. MRYes. My mother died, complications at birth and my dad died when I was three. From what, I don't know. Nobody ever talked about him. He was the black sheep of the family, so to speak. Nobody seemed to like him. And to this day I don't know anything about him other than his name, and I know where he was 00:06:00buried. And I know what his father's name was and what his mother's name was. Although I don't remember right now. I could find out on the tombstone. He had a sister. And that's all I know. As far as where he came from and what he did, nobody talked about him. KRSo you ended up being adopted. MRI was adopted by my aunt and uncle. KRYour mother's -- MRMy mother's brother. My birth mother's brother and his wife adopted me. So first they were my aunt and uncle then the became my parents. They were the only parents I ever knew, the only ones I ever called "Mom" and "Dad." See, my mom died when I was about three days old. Something like that. She never came home from the hospital. I've seen two different dates for her death. I don't, I really don't know which is which because I don't have her death certificate and I'm not particularly interested 00:07:00in -- it's important, imperant to me to learn about it. KRAnd beside, you were raised by -- MRSee, I was adopted back into my own family, so I grew up in -- the Bean family was quite well known around town. Well, all around the country, really, because my cousin in our family tree. Allan Bean of the U.S. Navy was one of the astronauts who went to the moon. IN the Apollo, I forget what it was, Apollo 29 or 39. I've got it in my geanology book. As I said, I'll write up my history if I can and try to get some of that stuff in and you can always write back to me and embellish on it. KRYes, it's always good to have those details. 00:08:00MRAnd L.L. Bean up in Freeport, Maine is in our family tree. KRReally? MRYes. KRSo a long, established New England family. MRYes. Well, long-established, yeah. He came over, John Bean of Exeter, he came over in 16 -- uhm -- 40 something as an indentured seaman. Because Cromwell didn't like him. He was Cromwell's enemy, he fought against Cromwell. So all these people came in on the boat and he just -- when he finished out his indenturedship he got married, had a family and we all branched out from him. It turns out he was my seventh great-grandfather. But the Beans are well-known. I had an uncle who lived across the street from me, he was called the Yankee auctioneer. And he's written 00:09:00several books. KRYou were raised as an only child. MRYes. KRBut you're not really an only child. MRNo. KRExplain that for me. MRWell, I came on the second marriage. My mother was married twice. She lost her first husband, oh, she, I don't think she'd been married more than six years. And he died of some epidemic in town. Influenza, I believe it was, something in I think it was 1906, something like that, down in the Boston area, Stoneham, Mass. So she came up to Northampton as a widow to live with her father. Grand -- yeah, her father. My grandfather and grandmother. So I have two half brothers and a half sister. They're not living now. KRThat were much older than you. MRFifteen, 16, -- 15, 18 and 20 years older than me. KRThat's a lot. MRSo I grew up with my nephews 00:10:00that would, my two nephews were three and six years younger than me. KRYeah. I'm a baby too, so I understand. My nephew and I are closer -- MRYeah, yeah. KRboth of them, than my sister and I. So you went, you went to high school in Northampton. MRMmm-hmm. KRAnd did you want to, you stayed at home to go to college. Why was that? MRBecause my dad said that we had a good right there in town. He went to it, he said it was a good college. Business school. I took all college courses in high school. Therefore when I got out of high school, I had to get something -- I didn't have grades good enough to get into college itself. So I leaned towards the business, Northampton Commercial College and I got the 00:11:00commercial subjects. Bookkeeping and typing and shorthand and anything else that went with office work. KRWhat was your goal at that point? MRJust to get something that I could get a job on, I guess. I don't know. Back then, I didn't know what Mother and Dad wanted me to do. I wanted to go away to business college, which was called Baypath. But, "No, you, there's a good enough college here in town. School here in town." I call it a glorified high school. BEcause we had, it wasn't students just out of high school coming in there. It was adults who had been out in the work force and decided they wanted to change jobs, so they came to the business school to learn a new trade. Or new subjects 00:12:00that they could build on, you know, get a better income. KRWere you, was the expectation that you were at some point get married and leave the business world, or were you looking for a career? MRUhm, no, we just never talked about that at home. I wasn't close with my family really. I more or less just did what Mom and Dad said. Mom said come home at a certain time, I was home at a certain time. Call her up if I wasn't coming home. She expected me to be there and I can't say they were all that strict with me. It was just the way they brought up the kids. We were to be seen and not heard. More like (laughs). And I don't know. Dad was the one that pushed me into the Navy, or pushed me into the 00:13:00service. He kept wanting me, "When are you going to join the WAACs?" "I don't want to join the Army. I got me a job. I'm a big shot" (laughs). I say that now. I don't know if I felt like a big shot then. But hey, I got a civil service jobs and I was pulling down thirty dollars a week, which was good pay then. And I was saving money, too, and living at home. Paid Mother rent, a little bit. I don't know whether she made me pay her, whether it was ten dollars out of every payday, or whether it was ten dollars a month, but I paid her a stipend. And what she did with it, I have no idea. She might have put it in my back account. I don't know. We had a joint bank account, which turned out to be advantageous. 00:14:00If I ever needed any money when I was away from home, she could get it to me without a hassle, because her name was on my book. KRMmm-hmm. You said your dad wanted you to join the military. MRMmm-hmm. KRWhy did he want you to join the military? MRWell he was a cripple. He was handicapped with lameness because of infantile paralyisis. Therefore he was not fit for World War I. And he had not boys that were going into the service, because the boys were being drafted, and we had no boys in the family. And he kind of wanted -- and in those days having a star your window showing you had a service person there was quite the thing. Everybody prominantly had a little flag with a -- a little square flag with a 00:15:00red white and blue, a star in the center of it, which designated there was a service person in that house. KRMmm -hmm. Mmm-hmm. MRI don't think we do that any more. KRI've seen a few. I've seen a few. But not a whole lot. I don't know if it's they're not displaying them -- MRI don't recall displaying anything when my son went into Vietnam service. And I don't have anything showing that I have a grandson in, or his parents have anything in the windows to show he's in the service. KRYeah. I've seen a few, but I think they really -- it's not real widespread. MRIt's not prom -- of course I don't have that little flag that they had. I'm sure they had one in the windows. MWWe're not in a declared war either. KRYeah, taht's true. MRYeah, no that's right. KRBut, like I've said, I've seen a few, when I've gone to cover -- but it's also when I was talking with people who's children had died --- MRYes. KRNot necessarily a living perosn in th 00:16:00emilitary. MRYeah, yeah, yeah. KRSo I'm not sure if it's different or not. MWYes, I'm sure it is. KRUhm -- so you didn't want to join the WAAC though. So how did you know about the WAVES? How did you find out about them? MROh, I probably saw, oh what do you call it, advertisement all around. The buses always had, trains always had advertising signs, you know? And the buses still do today, although I don't ride the local bus transportation. They always had placards up advertising stuff to eat, perhaps, or products to sell. I'm sure there was military ones, I don't know. KRWhy the WAVES though instead of the 00:17:00WAAC? Or one of the other branches of service? MRWell, when I look back on it, Northampton, Smith College was where the WAVE officers trained. So I saw them in uniform a lot. And I, "I think I'll go down the the naval recruiting station and sign up." We didn't see the WAACs around. We heard they were around, but they didn't have any training posts around. It's very possible we had to stop if there was a group marching in front of it, they took up the whole road and we had to wait for them to pass. But I don't remember that too much because I didn't drive much then. I got my driver's license at nineteen, but I never got a car to drive. I never went anywhere that I needed to drive. Local bus transportation was handy. KRDo -- what did you think of the uniform? You said 00:18:00you saw them in the uniforms. What did you think of the uniform? MRI don't know that I gave it much thought. Pretty snappy. I still today think any guy in a uniform looks snappy. I just, of course I kind of drool like, when I see the Navy white. I will go up and tell a guy how good it is to see the Navy uniform. I don't know. KRWhat is it about the uniform, the Navy on especially, that makes it so good looking to you. MRWell, I like any uniform. It's just, a man in a uniform somehow. It sticks out. Not that I want to go with a man in a uniform. But I was part of the Navy and he was -- kind of, we all belong to the same organization. Same group. Same brotherhood. It doesn't matter what branch of 00:19:00military. KRSo you, you went down and you enlisted. MRMmm-hmm. KRSo then what happened? MRWell, I enlisted in Springfield, Massachusetts. And they sent the paperwork on into Boston, which was, Boston is the first naval district. The district for my area, which was district one. Now Philadelphia was district four. We called it Com 1, Com 4, 2, different area. I got orders to report a Boston such and such a day for my physical. So we went down there and lined up with a lot of other girls from Massachusetts and went through the daisy chain. 00:20:00That's what we called our phsycial. KRWhy did you call it the "daisy chain'? MROh, I don't know. It was just a name that it was called. You go in here and you have your eyes checked, you go in here and you have something else checked. You go in here and have something else checked and you end up down yonder and you come out with a red face because you'd never had such an exam. (laughs) On this side of the curtain, it was a line of boys. So I think that's why we were kind of, "Oh." The boys are over here and the girls are over here and we're all here for physicals to join the service to join the Navy and, well, I don't know. They didn't leave anything unturned. KR(laughs) What did your parents think? What was your parents' reaction when they heard? MRI think they were surprised. 00:21:00I don't recall what words. I just went home and said, "I've done it." "Done what?" "I've joined the --" I forget how I really told them that I joined the Navy. "I signed up for the Navy, now." Of course, just signing it up doesn't assure you that you're getting in. You have to get through the physical. They wouldn't accept me, they wouldn't swear me in until they cleaned the wax out of my ears. KRMake sure everything is in working order. MRWhatever. Whatever. They said -- they held me back. Well, the only held me back about an hour or so. And I had to report back after lunch to a certain place and whatever they did, they cleaned the wax out of my ears and then I went back with the others and could be sworn in that day. KRYou mean they literally cleaned the wax out of your ears? MROh, yeah! KRI thought you were just being -- (laughs) MRNo, no. They really stopped me from, held me up for an hour or two because my ears didn't satisfy 00:22:00them. What they did, I didn't know. Whether they really got anything out, I don't know. I mean, it's just, "Come in here. Sit down." I mean, I'm a follower. You tell met to come in and sit down. OK, I going to sit down. Then you might come and tell me "I'm going to cut your hair." OK, you're going to cut my hair. "I'm going to do this." OK, you're going to do this. I mean I didn't -- I never objected. I didn't put up any squak or anything. I don't know. KRAnd then after all that, you went down to Bos -- to New York, to the Bronx? MRThen I got a letter saying that I should, here's your papers and you should report to such-and-such a place. I was to get down to Springfield, Mass. There was a group, a grouping. I'm from Northampton. I had 20 miles to ride the train and my folks came and saw me off on the train. I was the only the one that got on the 00:23:00train as far as I know, that particular day from Northampton. Then you go down to Springfield and we met another group of girls. Then we were, there was someone there who was counting us off on her -- we were to report in to a certain room in the train station or whatever. We all gathered and someone called our names out and we were then led on to the train on down to Wash -- on down to New York. And then we were taken out to, however we were taken to Hunter College, I don't really remember. All I remember is riding the train to Boston the day of my physical. I went by myself, And I remember going on the train at Northampton and going to Springfield. But I can't remember all -- I was looking 00:24:00through a little book I have of little tiny pictures. This one went to boot camp with me from such-and-such a town in Massachusetts. "Oh, jeez, I don't remember her." There's some thing just -- well, I never kept a diary of everything. Never knew. Like my son said. He was going overseas and didn't know what they were going to do with him. I didn't know what they were going to do with me. Just, if they said "Sit," I sit. I guess if they told me to stand on my head I'd try to do it. I guess, I don't say rebuke, or say, "I don't want to." But, whatever. KRWhat was it like? The was really the first time you'd been away from home. MRYeah, this was -- yeah. The first time I'd been home away from any of my family. Well, I'd been with my aunts and uncles overnights to stay with my 00:25:00cousins or something, but that's family. This was the first time I was away from home with nobody around that I knew. KRWhat was that like? MRIt was kind of scary. I think there was several nights I might have cried myself to sleep because I was homesick or, I don't know, just wished. I don't know whether I wished I was back home. Because I enjoyed boot camp. I enjoyed it. I got a -- as I say now, I got a bang out of it. I enjoyed it. KRWhat was, what was so enjoyable about it to you? MRSomething different. Just something different that I've never done. I'm away from home. I'm on my own. I don't have to report to mom. (laughs) Mom's thumb. KRA little bit of freedom -- MRMom was pretty -- well 00:26:00she had her certain rules and regulations. I know at home, Mom was death against drinking. Death against smoking. We didn't even have an ashtray in the house. If anybody, if people came to smoke, it was, "You may smoke outside the door and put your cigarette out before you come in the house." I can remember my cousin coming over, and he'd go out in the garage and read the Sunday funnies and have a smoke. It was just -- and I didn't -- she didn't care much for Catholics. Why I don't know. But I remember, I didn't, three-quarters of the children in my classes were Catholics. We were brought -- we we in a, our area was made up of a lot of Polish people and a lot of them were Catholics. I didn't want to bring a 00:27:00lot of my friends home from school if I knew they were Catholic. I didn't want to bring them home. KRBecause of how you knew they would be treated? MRBecause I didn't know what MOther might say. But it ended up she didn't say anything. Later on when I was in high school, one of my best friends was a Catholic. She accepted them royally. Of course, what did I do? I married a Catholic. (laughs) KRYou're just trouble (laughs). So boot camp, you were telling me, I believe you told me you brought a lot of things from home. Is that correct? MRWell, we brought our clothing. We had, I don't think I brought all that much. A suitcase full of clothes we could wear. How long we wore on own clothes before we got our uniforms, I don't remember. MWNot very long. MRBut not, I know we had to send 00:28:00them back home, our regular clothes back home. Street clothes. Because we weren't allow to, once we got the uniform we weren't allowed to wear street clothes. Until, oh, after the war was over with. KRFrom boot camp, where did you go? MRFrom boot camp, I went to Cedar Fall -- I was chosen to go to Cedar Falls, Iowa, to learn the Navy way of doing office work. And take care of the service records. The service jacket. And each page, each page held something special in the service jacket. And we had to know what was going one with each page. But I ended up not wokring in the service there. I worked in other fields of office 00:29:00work. But I ended up having the learn the formation of writing a Navy letter, the format was a little bit different. Of course, telling time was a little different. So we were given broad -- when boot camp we were given broad instructions of how to inentify a plane. But after boot camp I never worried about which plane was flying up above because my place was strictly office work. KRIs that what you wanted to do when you went in the Navy? MRI didn't have any preference. I din't have any particular in mind about what I wanted to do. They just give you a test, an interview or aptitude test and see what you were, what you were, what you stood out for. If you got good grades in English ro good 00:30:00marks in math, perhaps you were chosen to be a storekeeper, because that's what storekeeping was. Bookkeeping. Well, I had already come off of, or come out of business college. So I had a smattering of typing and shorthand and so forth. So I had, I was excellent. I knew how to type. They're not going to take somebody who doesn't know how to type to work in an office. KRSo you ended up, you spent six weeks in Cedar Falls, correct? MRNo. More than that. KRMore than that? MRI think boot camp was something like six to eight weeks. KROK. And then when you went on to speciality training? MRSpeciality training I went out, phew, see I was in June. June to July to August to September to October. June to July, 00:31:00August, September, October. Four months. Inside of four months I'd gone through boot camp and yeoman's school. Because it was October when I'd graduated from yeoman's school. So it was, nyah, six weeks at one place, maybe two months at the other. KRMmm-hmm. MRAnd I ended up at, I graduated from out there. I was in the drum corps while I was there. Which was, far surpassed standing at attention when passing review every week. Every week we had passing review. KRSo what did you do in the drum corps? MRPlayed a bugle. I played trumpet in high school band, so I played a bugle. KRIt must have been fun. MROh, it was. It was. It was fun. KRAnd you're doing something not just standing there -- MRBut so much of it was regitation that you, that I didn't do things because I wanted to. Well, I 00:32:00wanted to be in the drum corps. I didn't mind being there. I sent home for Mom to send me my bugle and when she did, I was in the drum corps. And there we got to march around. While the rest of them in passing review had to stand perfectly still. And you were told, if somebody dropped beside you, let 'em go. There was always somebody in the medical field to watch them if they dropped out. And if you were marching and somebody dropped you just stepped right over them. You didn't stop and say, "Oh, let me help you" or anything. You just kept on going. Of course, I don't know if too many dropped out because of the heat. See, it all depended upon where you went. I was out there, I wasn't there -- well, I was out there in the heat of the summer, I guess. June to the end of October, we had the 00:33:00heat and all. But I, I don't, it didn't bother me. KRWhere did you get assigned after yeoman's school? MRCape May, New Jersey. The frontier base at the Naval Air Station. KRWhat does the frontier base mean? MRI still haven't found out why they used "frontier base." I thought, "Oh, jeez, I'm coming in on liberty on a covered wagon?" (laughs) And it turned out to be the frontier base was a repair, repair facilities for, well we ahd the small pickup boats in Lewis, Deleware which was across the harbor from Cape May. And they would come over, the army pickup boats, and if they had engine trouble they'd repair the engines. And then 00:34:00there were carpenters to do work. And that was just one of the, I don't know. where they picked that up, I don't know, but that was my assignment. Frontier base. And what I, what kind of work I did, I did typing. What I was typing, I don't know. It wasn't regular business letters. It must have been more form letters requesting this or that. I don't know what it was. I have a picture here of all the WAVE officers, all the men and all the girls that were a part of frontier base, but that doesn't explain what we were doing. We were a big group. We had machinists mates and carpenters and motor macs and boiler tenders and there on the base we had all four branches of the service. We had Army, Navy, 00:35:00Marine Corps Coast Guard. Coast Guard girls lived in our barracks. KRThe SPARs? MRYes. KRWas this the base that you showed me the picture of that the, that the group was also racially mixed. MRNo, no. KRWhere was that? Was that -- MRYeah, yeah. that was frontier base. Yeah, yeah. KRAnd there was, you got into some trouble for that, to a degree. MRWell, to a degree. I got called to the, byt the WAVE officer in charge of the group. I guess there was a WAVE officer in charge of a group, in charge of the WAVES on every base. And she called me up one day and thought I was being -- I don't remember exactly what she said to me now, but I remember her comment. Her comment was that I was too friendly with the colored boys. And the only reason I can think that was because I did get a letter, or a 00:36:00couple of letters, from a colored boy who had been part of frontier base. He got shipped out, and he wrote to me. I don't remember his name now. How well I knew him there, I don't know. He might have been in the tool crib, which was across the hall from my office. Like, I'm working here, and the tool crib is across the hall from where I'm working here. And the door's open and you could see him over there. KRWhat is the tool cribs? MRThe tool crib's where tools are. Supplies. All kinds of nuts and bolts. Machinists, a machine shop almost always had a tool crib. KRSo he was working over there. MRYeah, taht was his assignment was to work over there. My assignment was to be over here and sit behind a desk and do some typing. What I did, I don't remember know what kind I did. What work I did. 00:37:00Whether I was just filing out forms, because it was two girls in our office. It was me and anotehr girl in my office and and there was a couple of other girls. And as I say, this picure I have, there must be seven or eight of us girls, but I can't tell you now where were located. I don't even remember how far out frontier base was stretched. Whether it was in more than one building or not. KRWas this the only place you were based in the Navy? MRWell, I had -- KROr during this portion, during the World War II portion of your career? MRNo, no. I only spent not quite a year down there. Why they transferred me out, I don't know. Whether they were closing down frontier base or what. I mean, you get 00:38:00orders to somewhere else and you don't really know the reason for it. "Here's the orders, we need you so and so." They sent me up to receiving station, up to Com 4, which is back up to Philadelphia. KRAnd what did you on, up at Com 4? MRWell, they assigned me first, I think my first assignment was called the intake center.s And there -- the intake center is where we received the boys in, on their way home for discharge. KRSo it was like a processing center? MRA processing center. And we would see where they came from and awhere their ho -- the discharge place that they could go to, nearest to home. If you came from 00:39:00Cleveland, Ohio, then you were sent up to the base up there so you could get discharged closed to home. KROK. MRWe had to take, -- I forget all the kinds of work that were involved with that. We had teletype. Messages came in and I cna't remember what, I how I met -- oh that ship's going out. KROr are we -- I think we might be going out. MRMaybe so. No, we don't go 'til four. KRHmmm. I don't know. So, anyway, process. MRSo then when that was over with there weren't any more men that was, the men were slowing down. There weren't any men coming through on the points system. I was sent over to the receiving station on the base. KRAnd what does that mean? MRWell, the receiving station was where fellows came in, uhm, let's see. How can I --my husband was one of them that came in. My 00:40:00husband, he re-enlisted in Cleveland, Ohio and he was sent to the Philadelphia receiving station for further assignment. We received boys in from other placed for further assignment. The boys themselves were in general detail, was what they called them. I worked in the transfer section. And we did up, we did all the paperwork of sending away from orders so taht these fellows coudl get out and go to other places. So when the orders came in, we had to go through a certain system of typing up their orders, locating the health records and their 00:41:00pay records and their service records. Those were the three records taht we had. And each one of us had a separate one. And they all three of them went with you when you got transferred. You couldn't necessarily look into them. They were all given to you in a sealed package and you couldn't look in them and see what was in there. You ahd a set of orders that was written out on a piece of paper. "You are hereby authorized to go here." And there and where lese. And how to go. You just took them, ten copies of them, and so forth, and followed the instructions that were given on there. KRIs this how you met your husband? MRYes. KRSo what, tell me about that. MRWell, I'd been there for, let's see, I met him in '48. I 00:42:00must have gone over there in, or probably '46 or '47. KRSo the war's already over by this point. MROh, yeah. The war was over. See, when was the war over. There was two, what V-J Day and -- KRV-E Day. MRV-E Day. KRand then V-J day. MRThen V-J Day. Because I can remember they callled us out on one of them and I can't remember which one it was when I was in Cape May, New Jersey. They called us all out and lined us up in front of our barracks and announced one of them. V-E or V-J Day. And then there was something else. Back in those days didn't, when did the president die? KRHe died, about a year before the war ended, I think. MWI think so. MRIt seems to me, I remember we were called out for -- I think that was one of the things we were called out for. I'd have to see the 00:43:00date to tell you exactly where I was. MWYes, V-E Day was Europe -- MREurope. MWV-=J Day was Japan. KRV-J Day was later in the -- MRThat's right too. V-J Day is Japan. KRAnd that was later in -- MRand V-E Day -- KR45. MRHuh? KRI was going to say, that was later in '45. V-E day was earlier in '45. MRAnd then Theodore Roosevelt died. It seemed to me at lot. He was the president at the time -- KROne of the women I spoke with -- MRbecause he came through Philadelphia and I saw him. KRDid you? MWHe came -- MRHe came through our barracks. Came through our base and I saw him in a car. MWHe came through an inspection for us. KRWow. We'll talke about that when we get yours rolling. MW The WAVES. KRYeah. So did you, when you left Cape May -- I'm just trying to get it chornologically set in my head -- that was after the war was over. Had the war ended by the point when 00:44:00you moved to Philadelphia? MROh. I got in in "44 and I got sent up to -- oh geez. Where did I have my first Thanksgiving dinner. October? I had my first Thanksgiving dinner at Cape May. It must have been the following year. It must have been end of '45. My discharge papers that I have at home tell me when I left from one base to the next -- KROK. So we can take a look at those -- MRAnd I'll have the dates more. The dates. KRThat's fine. I'm just trying to get it straight in my head so I know what we're saying. MRMmm-hmm. Yep yep yep. KRSo now we're, so you're back in Philadelphia and you've met your husband. MRWell, I worked for a year and an half before I met him. I'd come back off of a 20-day 00:45:00leave, some units call it furlough. It's leave, I was on leave. I guess the Army calls it furlough. I came back to the base off of a twenty day leave, and he's sitting. See we had two desks back to -- pushed together -- KRMmm-hmm. MRand he was sitting across the way from me. He was second-class yeoman and I was first class. KRSo you outranked him MRI outranked him. That's why I've been saying today he married the boss. No, he was there to help me. He was a yeoman and I needed somebody to type and when you come in for general detail they try to put you somewhere where you can be some help to the establishment rather than be in 00:46:00a, going out and pick up cigarette butts or whatever. KRMakes sense. MRYes. And he was given to me because I needed extra help. I was the only one to do all this work. I had to get the draft list out, which meant I had to type it on this -- I can't even remember what type of paper we had to use. This long paper that comes out with purple ink? KROh, yeah. MRDitto machine. It was ditto work or something. It was the first part of xerox work. Duplicating. And I had to type it out on this waxy long paper and then give it over to whoever -- there was a certain office. "Oh you run these messages off." And he would give me my draft list back and I would have to write up everybody's orders individually. Well, individually depending upon how many men were going. If it was one man going, 00:47:00his orders were written up individually. If it was four men going along, you put one man in charge of so many others. The form was filled out. And you had to do ten copies. And the ten sheets didn't go through the typewriter at the same time. You had to do five and five. Because the paper, they were thin paper, some of it was thin, but it wasn't that thin. KRMmm-hmm. And it would be hard to type through that layer -- MROh, yeah. And to get the last copy so you could read it. Because everybody that you stopped to see reporting in along the way had to take a copy of your orders. And you still had to have two or three copies left, well, for different reasons. If you were claiming disbursement, payment for travel, you had to have so many copies and they had to be certified as original and so 00:48:00forth. It was a mess. Well, it wasn't a mess, but if I had a long draft list. KROh, yeah. MRWe used to have an office, it started out with an office or six or eight of us and it dwindled down. Everyone got transferred down to me and I was the only one left. KRWhy did you decided, I mean so many women when the war ended, they did their duration plus six months and then they were out of there. Why did you decide to stay on? MRIt was a job. I had no job to go home to. I didn't want to go back home. What was I going to do back home? So I just said, "Sure, if you want to give me a raise and pay, I'll stay for the next x many months." Sure. Why not? KRAnd eventually -- MRI didn't have any -- at that time I didn't have anybody to -- I never dated when I was a kid in high school. Never 00:49:00dated. I never dated until I got out of -- never went with anybody steady 'til I met my hsuband. So, I didn't have any fiances who were crying for me to get out. So I just stayed on. I would have stayed in for 20 if I hadn't met John. KRHe's the reason you left. MRWell, I got pregnant by him, so I kind of had to (laughs). Yeah, and I stuck with him for 46 years. KREventually during that time you went from being a reservist to actually being -- MRRegular Navy? KRregular Navy. MRNo difference. KRNo? MRAll it was was the difference was what was written behind your name. KRYeah? MRYeah. KRDoing the same job and doing the same sorts of things. And you were treated the same way. MRYeah. Yeah. I gotta 00:50:00take -- here. is that it? No, that's not it. That was it. Oh, where's my blue bag? KRMaybe we can find it when we do Martha's interview. You can look for it. MRYeah. I was going to show you I got two discharges. But I don't have them. I was going to look for it but it's not there. KRWell, maybe when we do Martha's interview you can look for them. MRYes. KRSo you stayed in and you said you stayed in until 1949. MRYes. KRAnd you've already talked a little bit about why you've left, but tell me a bit more in detail. What happened? Why did you, why 00:51:00in '49 did you decide to leave? MRI was told to leave. I was given instructions to leave because I got pregnant. KRYou were married. MRI got married on January 12th, 1949. I was discharged January 27th, 1949. It got around that I was pregnant. And the WAVE officer called me in, "I think it's time for you to get out." KRBecause at that time, that wasn't allowed in the Navy. MRWell, it was frowned. Well, not and be pregnant. You couldn't be pregnant and stay in the Navy. KRSo what did you do then. What was your next role in life? MRBeing a wife. Waiting for the baby to be born. She was born in May. I got out in January and she was born in May. It was waiting for her to be born. So KRYou said, you 00:52:00told me that ended up becoming, because your husband did 30 years. MRHe did 30 years. KRSo you ended up becoming a Navy wife. MRI became a Navy wife, yeah. KRWhich is probably as complicated as being a member of the Navy. MROh yeah. It's harder. KRTell me about that. MRWell, you have your baby and then you gotta go find housing. Well, you get married. And just getting out of the Navy and getting married and finding housing was difficult. Good housing wasn't to be found. My dad came down to visit me and he didn't like where I was living. He said -- and he offered to supplement me on the rent if I'd find a decent place to live. I said, "There aren't any decent places." We had to live in somebody's 00:53:00two rooms up on the third floor. People during the war were renting out like crazy to, their apartments, what extra rooms they had. Made extra income for 'em. I mean, I lived in a two-and-a-half room apartment, supposedly furnished, but we didn't have everything. What did I have? The easy chair was what we'd call a woodward chair for the bath -- bedroom. An overstuffed chair a little bit. But it wasn't very comfortable for anybody to relax in. It wasn't one of these recliners. KRDid you ever feel like a regret that things turned out the way they did and you couldn't stay in the Navy? MRWell, I didn't like, I didn't 00:54:00want to get out then. I knew the baby wasn't coming until May and this was January. What am I going to do with myself while John goes to work? I wanted to stay in and have something to do. But they didn't want me to. So we just found a place for us to live and I stayed in during the day and waited for him. Said "Goodbye" in the morning and waited for him to come home at night. KRIf things had been different and they had allowed you to stay in and have a family, would you have done that? MRWell, sure. Probably. Probably. It just wasn't offered to me so I don't know what I would do. KRWhat did you find so rewarding about being in the Navy? What was so, what for you, why was it such a good job? MRWell, I just took it as a job. I mean, well, I don't know, it was just a job and I 00:55:00enjoyed it. I enjoyed living in the barracks. I lived in different places. I lived in the barracks at the hotel. I lived at the barrack, well, I lived at rooms in the YMCA. I lived at made-over barracks in the Naval Hospital, then we finally had barracks on the base. Hey, got a roof over my head, got a place to sleep, got a place to eat, got a job to do. I didn't have a car. Many girls wanted to get up and go out and get an apartment and keep house. I didn't want to. I didn't make close friends in the Navy to get out into the, I didn't care to go out and get an apartment. I wasn't ask - I didn't have anybody that I went with really. KRThat would do that sort of thing. MRThat would ask me to go with 00:56:00them. I never became buddy-buddies with them. I never liked to drink and still don't. So, I don't know, I just, I wasn't exactly a loner, I guess, but then again perhaps I was. I don't know. I got married right away. Well, four year, and family came and then it was my turn to be, take care of the family. KRHow many children do you have altogether? MRI have four. Three girls and a boy. KRAnd what did you encourage them to do? With their lives? MRNot really. I don't really think I did. We didn't talk much about that. It was, they went through high school and they didn't show an desire to go on further. My oldest was a girl and she got married at 19. She came home and said she wanted to get married. My son, he was drafted. He came in under the lottery that they had 00:57:00after they disbanded the draft. His was number two on the draft, and he wanted to choose his branch I guess. So he chose the Army instead of being told he was going to go to the Navy or the Marine Corps. Unless, unless really the -- I don't know why he joined the Army over the anything else other than maybe the Army recruiter guy got to him first. As they all went around the high school. KRWhat about your two girls, your other two girls? MRThe next one was -- let's see, the first two were 18, then 20 months apart from each other. And the third one, she didn't have good grades to go on to school. She, she graduated in '71, 00:58:00class of '71 and she was married in 1972. Which lasted two years. And she got divorced and worked on her own. Now she's on her third husband. The third one -- the fourth one was ten years between the last two. So she was home with us until she graduated from high school in 1980. She got a job with Aetna Insurance Agency in town. And she went back and forth to work, living at home. She found a, found a boyfriend. She didn't get married until 1988, but we sold the house and she says now we sold the house so she couldn't come back to live because my other two came back to live. KRWhere were you living at that time? MREnfield, 00:59:00Conneticut. KROK. MRMy husband's last shore duty. KRIs this the daughter that you are now living in the basement? MRNo. I'm living with my oldest daughter. KROK, OK. MRBut my youngest daughter lives five miles away from her. KRDid you ever think when you were in the Navy, or did you ever think afterwards, that you were maybe, you were some sort of a trailblazer? MRNo. No. KRWhy not? MRIt just never dawned upon me that we were -- it never really did. KRWhy do think that is? Is it just something that -- MRProbably because I didn't read papers. KRReally? MRI didn't keep up with the newspapers. When we were first married we didn't get any daily papers. I didn't get any daily papers when I was in the Navy. We didn't see any of those really. And television didn't really come out until 1950. We never got our first television set until '50. Then we went to 01:00:00South America and we never had a television down there because it was all in Spanish. KRAnd you could never see anything anyway. MRWho wants to, who wants to, who could understand what was written in Spanish? KRIs there anything else that you would like to add at this point? MRNo, I can't think of anything. KRWell, I'd like to thank you very much. It sounds very good. Thank you very much. MROK