00:00:00.520 - 00:00:28.640

So go ahead and tell it, you know, while you remember it and that's okay. Then I'll just kind of take you back and we'll go back to where we were. So that's okay. Am I going to be distracting at all? As long as I don't do this? No. Don't bother me. Bother me. Bother me. Okay. Color bars are off. And we're rolling. Okay. I'm Deanie Parrish and we're

00:00:28.600 - 00:00:54.800

interviewing Alberta Kinney. She was a WASP class 44-7. We're in her apartment in Tucson, Arizona. Today is the 2nd of November, 2001. Alberta, if you would tell us your full name and when and where you were born and we'll go from there. Okay, my full name is Alberta Antonia Pasquan Kinney.

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I was born in Black Eagle, Montana, and I went to high school in Great Falls, Montana. Okay, let me back up and ask you, who were your mom and dad? Tell me about them. Well, I don't really know either my mother and father very much.

00:01:17.160 - 00:01:37.340

My mother died when I was four years old, and there were six of us children, and we went to live with my grandmother, Mrs. Rose Peskelich. Where did she live? She lived in Black Eagle, Montana.

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We had been living in Kellogg, Idaho at the time when my mother got sick. Do you know what she died from? Yes, it was complications from pneumonia at the time, way back when. There was nothing they could do about that.

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So we moved in and my grandmother and aunt and uncle were brother and sister, and they raised the six children. My one sister was the oldest one, and her name was Catherine. She just died this past year.

00:02:23.860 - 00:02:47.960

She was eighty-nine years old, I think. Then I had a brother, next oldest was my brother Bill, and he had been in the Navy during the war. He was down in the South Pacific.

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He and I were the two redheads. My next oldest was my brother John. My oldest sister had brunette hair. And then the sister just older than I and my baby sister had what we used to call them

00:03:14.620 - 00:03:38.000

called them "dishwater bronx." The older group of us were two years apart, and my baby sister was four years younger than I. So I was four when my mother died, and she was one year old. Kelly: Were these your paternal grandparents?

00:03:38.470 - 00:04:02.800

Reifeldt: Maternal. Kelly: Maternal. And did your dad also go to live with them? No, I really do not know my father. I think very possibly that he felt more that he would be interfering with our life than

00:04:04.080 - 00:04:18.020

adding to it. But that is something that I can't say for sure because I don't know how he felt about it. Did you know your paternal grandparents?

00:04:19.200 - 00:04:42.820

No. They were all born in Croatia and did not come to this country. Both my father and my mother were immigrated. My grandmother had also immigrated, so that I actually learned how to speak Croatian before

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I learned how to speak English. It sort of makes me wonder about all this bilingual problem right now, because we did not seem to have any problem. We spoke Croatian at home and English when we went to school, so that there was no big

00:05:04.240 - 00:05:15.400

deal about it at all. Tell me about your grandfather. What did he do? My grandfather had died before my grandmother emigrated to America.

00:05:16.980 - 00:05:31.500

So I didn't know any of the rest of the family. But the grandparents you lived with, tell me about those grandparents. It was just the grandmother. How did she support all you children?

00:05:33.400 - 00:05:50.360

Well, my aunt and uncle were the supporting factor because they had jobs and they were the wage earners in the family. Did they live in the home with you? Yes.

00:05:51.820 - 00:06:18.380

And it was a small home so that there were a lot of us and they had to have a place for everything and everything had to be in its place or you could not move around. Do you recall who you shared a room with? I shared a room with my sister Florence, who was two years older than I.

00:06:19.060 - 00:06:39.880

In fact, we shared a great deal together. We double dated together and she was my best friend. Tell me about some of the family things you did together. Tell me what a Christmas was like at your grandmother's home.

00:06:40.480 - 00:07:02.940

Well, Christmas was, to begin with, Christmas Eve was my baby sister's birthday. So we always, we had a country-style kitchen, country kitchen, so that the regular meals were in the kitchen at night. We would have the birthday party in the kitchen.

00:07:04.740 - 00:07:31.520

Magically Santa would come in. After dinner we would go in and on Christmas Eve we would open our Christmas presents. Then after opening our Christmas presents we would go to midnight mass. I never really could remember having caught anybody.

00:07:33.500 - 00:07:48.600

They must have gone, I don't know how they went around to go from the... Who opened first? Yeah, well, how they got the gifts, because there were no gifts under the tree when we went into the birthday party.

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But magically, as I say, Santa came and when dinner was over we went into the living room for our Christmas. Do you have a Christmas tree? Always had a big Christmas tree.

00:08:04.120 - 00:08:14.980

I can remember way back when the original lighting were candles that were clipped onto the tree. Did you go out and chop the tree down? No.

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No. We never did go as a family to buy the tree or anything, so I would assume that maybe my uncle bought the tree and would put it up. It would take us at least a week to decorate it with the aluminum or lead tinsel things

00:08:40.900 - 00:09:01.600

and would go on one strand at a time. So it would take a long time to decorate the tree, and the tree was kept up until the Feast of the Three Kings. So that by the time the tree got down, we'd had enough Christmas trees to last until next

00:09:01.780 - 00:09:08.080

year. (Laughter) And when you would go to Mass, would you go as this huge family? Mm-hmm.

00:09:08.620 - 00:09:32.400

We'd take up a whole pew. And my grandmother, I always called her Mom, and well she was my mother. And she was about five feet tall. At that time we would laugh at her because we said she was five feet square too.

00:09:33.860 - 00:09:43.160

So she was a little five by five. Then describe a Christmas dinner. Were you children given chores? Did you help?

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Roslyn: Not with the cooking. In fact, that is one thing. My grandmother really did not teach us how to cook. Most of what I learned from her in cooking I absorbed by osmosis, because she just would

00:10:02.500 - 00:10:26.500

rather do it herself, cluttering up the place. But with setting the table and doing the dishes and clearing and serving and all that, we all pitched in and helped. And the Christmas, the festive dinners were held in the dining room.

00:10:27.220 - 00:10:43.860

And we had a square oak table that had extension leaves so that it went from the bottom. How wide would this table be? Kelly: It would be four feet. Krikorian: Four feet.

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Well, it was probably five feet square then, but it had leaves that could extend to seat maybe fifteen people. I do not know how many leaves, but you just keep pulling it out and out and out. So that table was always extended, and we had our Christmas dinner there.

00:11:08.280 - 00:11:36.260

Christmas was usually turkey also, and Thanksgiving was turkey, quite standard. used to, the specialty of the house was a walnut nut roll that was called poveticza, it was a Croatian roll. We used to help, and Mom would make the walnut filling, and then we all, when she'd roll

00:11:36.360 - 00:11:50.980

out the dough, everybody got a spoon and helped spread it out so she could roll it up and cook it. Do you recall when you first went to school? Describe your schoolhouse.

00:11:51.630 - 00:12:16.960

Well, the schoolhouse was about twenty blocks away. We walked to school every day. It had to be at least twenty below before you were allowed to bring a lunch and you had to walk the twenty blocks, which was about a mile.

00:12:17.920 - 00:12:40.180

And you had to live a certain distance away from the school before you were allowed to even bring a bag lunch. When we brought bag lunches, there was no cafeteria or anything, so that we would eat down in the furnace room, the janitor would monitor the lunch crowd that was there.

00:12:40.440 - 00:13:06.780

But we were allowed to bring a bag lunch if it was twenty below. Otherwise we walked to school in the morning and home for lunch and home after school. Do you recall a special teacher in the elementary school that might have inspired you? The principal of the school—I missed about six months of the first grade.

00:13:07.100 - 00:13:41.960

I had surgery on a mastoid on my ear, and that's where I get the hole in my head now. She was special to everybody. In fact, when I went to school there, it was Hawthorne School. And when Miss Collins died, it was renamed Fannie B. Collins School, because she was

00:13:42.000 - 00:14:09.340

the first principal, and she just loved all the kids and cared for us and everything else. Everybody had dearly loved her, too. What made her so special? I think the care and the love that she gave.

00:14:10.780 - 00:14:36.340

You just knew that she cared. I enjoyed school, for one thing, and I enjoyed elementary school very much. So all of the teachers were pretty special. What was your favorite subject in elementary school?

00:14:36.440 - 00:14:58.520

What did you enjoy the most? I think possibly I loved language and I loved reading and art. We used to have an art teacher that would come around once a week and have a very special art class.

00:14:59.240 - 00:15:23.640

Otherwise, we would have the usual drawings and everything that the teacher did. For that time in history and all, I think that they had a very good supplemental program that came around to the schools. There was just one room for each grade.

00:15:24.510 - 00:16:00.200

I don't think we had two rooms on any of the grades. The school was three-story. Black Eagle was primarily immigrant families. It was right across the river from Great Falls, kind of at the foot of the Anaconda Copper

00:16:00.200 - 00:16:14.900

smelting thing. There's a huge big smokestack that at one time it was one of the tallest smokestacks in the world. And that of course didn't last too terribly long.

00:16:15.840 - 00:16:50.860

But a lot of - there were Croatians, a lot of Italians, Swedish, and primarily workers at the Smelter. And the executives from the Smelter lived right up above on a little hillside called Smelter Hill, and they of course were the elite of the establishment.

00:16:54.940 - 00:17:17.380

And as I said, I went to elementary school there in Black Eagle, and then for junior high and high school, I would have to take the—well, started out, we had a streetcar, And then advanced to buses and took all the railroad tracks out and stuff, and to Great Falls for junior high and high school.

00:17:17.500 - 00:17:37.480

Kelly: As a young child, what did you do for vacations during the summer? Kistiakowsky: Well, primarily we helped in the garden. We had a lot of chores. had to do their bit.

00:17:41.500 - 00:18:12.500

I can't imagine how anybody would have had the courage to do it, but we had an Overland car that my uncle had rigged up some jump seats in, because it wasn't much bigger than a Ford. So my grandmother, aunt and uncle, and my brothers did not go with us, I do not believe.

00:18:13.280 - 00:18:28.760

But we drove from Black Eagle, Montana to Chicago to the World's Fair. What year was this? I think it was maybe '37. No, '37 is when I graduated.

00:18:30.320 - 00:19:06.320

It was way before '36, maybe because I was not in junior high at the time. I do know that we would park and start getting out of the car. It was kind of like when those circus clowns, when all these clowns fit into a Volkswagen, because people would look and we'd be coming out and coming out and coming out.

00:19:08.600 - 00:19:39.360

But we drove to Kansas City, where I had very good friends of my mother's. In fact, they were the ones who had sponsored her to come to this country, and then went to St. Louis, and then up to Chicago, and saw Sally Rand do her fan dance, which was the big thing at that fair.

00:19:41.320 - 00:19:58.440

But to take a bunch of kids and pile them into a car, you knew that you did not go much more than a hundred miles before you had a flat tire and had to get out and fix it. But anyhow. Do you remember what you ate?

00:19:58.560 - 00:20:14.460

Did you take your lunches and dinners? No. Most of the time we ate at the restaurant, which is the first that we had ever done. And had never been in a restaurant before in our lives, except when we were on the way.

00:20:15.020 - 00:20:50.580

And that's where I had my first airplane ride on that trip. We were in St. Louis, and one of the sightseeing tours that our—I think Wilma was a relative—took us out to the airport, which was the last thing in airports. And there was a fellow that had a little, I think a two-passenger plane, had the pilot

00:20:50.740 - 00:21:07.780

seat and then two seats in back. I don't know what kind of a plane it was. And he was giving rides, ten-minute rides over the city. And we didn't think we'd ever get up.

00:21:08.240 - 00:21:25.820

My grandmother just said, "Well, why don't we do it?" She was the first one to go up for her ride, and then we all took our turns and had our airplane ride over St. Louis. How old were you then, do you recall?

00:21:28.740 - 00:21:36.660

Well, I'd have to remember when. What year it was. What year it was. I think I'd have to get out my memoirs thing.

00:21:36.680 - 00:21:53.940

I think I have written about it, but I was probably maybe thirteen or somewhere around there, so maybe somewhere between ten and thirteen, I would say. I'm not sure. Kelly: And how did you enjoy that?

00:21:54.120 - 00:22:35.840

It was delightful. It was lovely. I kind of got up there and I had been afraid of heights, but there's no feeling of height in an airplane, so that there was no fear of heights as you're flying around. It was just kind of fun looking down at all those little critters on the ground. But my grandmother always amazed us because when she was a little girl, their mode of

00:22:35.980 - 00:23:01.100

transportation was on foot or with the little donkeys in donkey carts. She was the first one that was game to go on up and fly in the airplane. And then she grew—as we all grew up, and my one sister got married and lived in Seattle, Mom would hop on the airplane and fly to Seattle.

00:23:01.920 - 00:23:21.260

And she'd always laugh and say, "Well, I might land in a bukva tree this time." We never knew what a bukva tree was, but that was always her—"Well, I will see you. I might land in a book factory. Kelly: Oh, that's great.

00:23:21.980 - 00:23:57.800

When you went into junior high school, what were your ambitions? Beall: I had more or less concentrated on art starting in junior high school. I think that I found that I liked that the best of anything when I was in seventh grade. And then if they felt that you could do well enough, if you wanted to, you could request

00:23:57.980 - 00:24:23.420

a special homeroom for the eighth grade. So I had requested the art as my homeroom, so that I not only had the art class, but than whatever extra time we had in the homeroom and stuff that I could do my artwork. So I had intended to—well, I went to several different things.

00:24:23.420 - 00:24:52.820

I was going to dress design, and then I was going to—and I figured that had too much detail, and then interior decorating, and that had way too much detail. So I was kind of aiming toward commercial art, is what I was aiming at. Kelly: In junior high and high school, did you have extracurricular activities besides

00:24:52.940 - 00:25:10.780

academics? I think we had a very progressive high school. I'm amazed because we had a lot more than they have in most high schools today. We had a very good art program.

00:25:11.540 - 00:25:42.880

We had a stagecraft program. We had Latin, French, and Spanish, three years of each. And they had a speech program that was very good, and had a drama course too. The plays were extracurricular.

00:25:43.120 - 00:25:59.680

If you got into one of the plays, that was not class work, but you did have the drama class. So there are all of these peripheral things that we just kind of felt with the high school that they just do not have in most high schools today.

00:26:00.400 - 00:26:19.500

Kelly: What of those things did you get involved in? Well, I enjoyed the theater particularly. I was not very good at sports. In the summer, I played softball, girls softball.

00:26:21.060 - 00:26:35.380

They always put me way out in right field because they figured nobody would hit the ball out there. I was kind of like Lucy and Snoopy, the ball would come and fall right down in front of me.

00:26:38.500 - 00:26:46.940

Could we stop here? Kelly: Sure. We're rolling. Do you recall any of the plays that you were associated with?

00:26:48.220 - 00:27:35.300

Were you more behind the scenes or in front of the scenes? In high school, I think we did one of the French Revolution, and I remember that I was Madame Defarge, knitting at the guillotine. We also did "Hobson's Choice," and I was the snobbish daughter that was not "Choice."

00:27:35.300 - 00:28:00.540

I have enjoyed the theater. After my husband died, when I moved back to Whitefish, I belonged to the community theater there, which was semi-professional. It was a little more than a total amateur theater, but I was a total amateur.

00:28:01.700 - 00:28:20.640

And I did everything. I did props, I did stage settings. I guess the biggest role I played was Dolly Levi in The Matchmaker. And did costumes.

00:28:20.980 - 00:28:37.940

I used to costume the high school plays, and it was wonderful fun to work with the high school kids. And they were so appreciative and just loved the costumes. They really got into the costumes and stuff.

00:28:38.800 - 00:29:00.460

So I had a lot of pleasure with the theater. When you were in school, was your grandmother active, involved in school at all? No. In high school, who were your role models?

00:29:03.260 - 00:29:24.320

I don't really know that I had any specific role models. I really cannot say somebody influenced my life greatly or this person I knew changed the way I felt and thought and stuff. I think I was just kind of a happy little moron.

00:29:24.320 - 00:30:03.980

I went around all along doing my own thing and being obnoxious. What were your social activities in high school? We had friends that we played with, but we did not spend a lot of time socializing. Kim was not—she just kind of liked to live her own life, so she was not somebody who

00:30:04.540 - 00:30:33.360

did coffee clatching and running around the neighborhood and things like that. She just kind of—she always had a huge garden, and I have done everything in the garden from digging up and digging a whole lot full of garden with a shovel and picking potato bugs off the vine by the hour and things like that.

00:30:33.960 - 00:30:53.800

So that kind of grew up with idle hands through the tool of the devil, isn't that the way the saying goes? But I can remember I had to learn how to embroider, I had to learn how to crochet, I had to learn how to tat.

00:30:55.040 - 00:31:21.040

And the one day, the only time I got my mouth washed out with soap, I was sitting out on the patio thing, in back, right under the kitchen window. And I was most unhappy having to spend a beautiful afternoon sitting with a tatting shuttle, And, I was grumbling, "I wish we didn't have to sit here doing this measly tatting."

00:31:21.040 - 00:31:40.560

So I got my mouth washed out with soap for saying "measly." It must have been the way I said it, because it's not such an awful word. But that's what ladies learn to do. You grew up where it snowed a lot.

00:31:41.580 - 00:32:01.460

Did you learn to ski or skate? We did ski some, but skiing wasn't what it is now. Skiing was two pairs of skis that had a leather strap that you put regular boots in, and you went out and skied.

00:32:03.440 - 00:32:35.700

You went down the hill and then you took the skis off and climbed up. So we did that somewhat, but I did a lot of skating and I loved ice skate. And we used to have the park in Great Falls had a big pond that had ducks and swans and stuff in the summertime, and that was always kept flooded and groomed for skating.

00:32:36.560 - 00:32:59.700

And they had a changing where you put your skates on, and loudspeakers playing Strauss waltzes and stuff to skate at night and everything. And then we had the little skating rinks. There is one just a block or so from the house that we used to go up and skate in the afternoon.

00:33:00.780 - 00:33:31.480

I never did figure skating or anything like that, but tried for speed skating and was very proud of myself when the first time I found that I could skate backwards. Kelly: Were you involved in your church, in activities with young people in your church? Well, we were, Mom was holier than the Pope, for one thing, so we spent a lot of time in

00:33:31.720 - 00:33:50.500

church. And went to Sunday school after, went to Mass, and then we would have Sunday school, and there were some nuns that came from the convent in Great Falls, and they would hold the Sunday school classes.

00:33:51.660 - 00:34:13.800

And then in the summer, for the first month after school, they had a Bible class that we would go to every morning. So there was quite a bit of church involvement. Do you recall your high school prom?

00:34:14.560 - 00:34:39.080

Did you have a prom? Yes, I did not have a date. I went with my brother, and the only thing there is my brother John. He was a very handsome young man with dimples and a lovely smile.

00:34:43.340 - 00:35:08.020

I felt very sorry for myself because nobody asked me, but there were a lot of girls there that felt very jealous because they would have liked to have been with my brother. I did not do much dating in high school at all. I was definitely a late bloomer.

00:35:08.460 - 00:35:46.880

Do you recall what you wore to the prom? It was a dress that a friend of my aunt's had given her, and we modified so that I did not even feel like the queen of the ball, as far as that goes. At that time, I mean that was in the Depression days, and we did an awful lot of make-do.

00:35:49.440 - 00:36:18.900

For the most part, it was not something that you even worried about. It didn't bother you because everybody else had to do the same thing. But looking now at where the money that girls spend on a prom dress and they have to go in a limo and all that sort of stuff, I think, "No, that was not what it was like when

00:36:18.960 - 00:36:28.280

I was young." What was your high school? Describe your high school graduation. I don't think I even remember it.

00:36:33.800 - 00:37:01.780

What kind of student were you in high school? I was a good student, and particularly the things I liked. I did take shorthand and typing, which is the way I earned my living quite a while. But I did not like it, so I was probably a C student in those classes.

00:37:02.460 - 00:37:27.700

But the classes I liked, I could ace. So it was kind of comme ci, comme ça there. Kelly: After high school, then what did you do? Then, there was not money enough to go to college, so I got a job and was earning money

00:37:28.100 - 00:37:41.600

to be able to afford to go to college. And then came the war. Tell me what you remember about Pearl Harbor. We had gone for a Sunday afternoon drive.

00:37:43.740 - 00:38:06.480

That was her most favorite recreation for the week, was the Sunday afternoon drive. And when she went for a Sunday afternoon drive, everybody went for a Sunday afternoon drive. Whether you wanted to or not, you might try to stay home, but you went for a Sunday afternoon drive.

00:38:07.320 - 00:38:35.760

And we had just started out on the drive when it came over the radio about Pearl Harbor. I remember that very vividly. But these Sunday afternoon drives, we would usually go out to the cemetery and take some flowers out from my mother's grave and drive to see whose yard looked the nicest and what

00:38:35.760 - 00:38:59.840

What new houses were built, and Giant Springs is a landmark in Great Falls, which is one of the, I think, largest still freshwater springs in the world. It was a lovely place to go, and we'd go out there. They had a fish hatchery out there, and we'd go in and watch.

00:39:00.160 - 00:39:22.220

We could get some fish food and feed the little fishies, and they'd just all come like little piranhas. Then we would stop and get some ice cream, a gallon or two or whatever amount it was that we needed for the crew.

00:39:25.720 - 00:39:50.740

I did not particularly like ice cream, but Mom liked ice cream and you ate ice cream. So, one day I thought, "Well, I'm going to get out of this." So I said, "Well, I just like chocolate ice cream." So from then on, every drive we took, they would buy whatever kind of ice cream was decided,

00:39:51.740 - 00:40:09.680

And they had to put two or three scoops of chocolate on the top for me, so I had to have ice cream. I did not like chocolate ice cream either, but I ate it. Do you like ice cream today?

00:40:10.760 - 00:40:35.440

I do not mind it. In fact, I think the only ice cream that I really have enjoyed in my lifetime was when I lived in Miami. We used to go to Miami Beach on a Sunday afternoon and buy fresh coconut ice cream cones.

00:40:36.020 - 00:41:05.240

That was good. That ice cream I liked. How did Pearl Harbor affect your family as far as your brothers? My brother, one brother—I think I have to blow my nose again anyhow.

00:41:21.700 - 00:41:57.560

My brother Bill, the oldest brother, joined the Navy and John went to Seattle and was working for Boeing, so he did not go into the service. My oldest sister was married at the time and lived in Seattle. And Florence, the sister I was so close to, went to Seattle and got a job with the Army

00:41:57.760 - 00:42:13.300

Engineers. And I went to Seattle and got a job with the Navy. And my baby sister was at that point in time was going to St. Mary's at Notre Dame in college.

00:42:19.360 - 00:42:42.500

I think she did not go back to college the next year because she went to work for the Air Force at the base there in Great Falls. Florence and I lucked out on an apartment because apartments were very hard to get in Seattle at the time.

00:42:44.760 - 00:43:05.440

There was quite an involved story, but anyhow, we lucked out on this wonderful apartment right in downtown Seattle on Fourth and by Pike and Pine. So we were close enough to walk to work. I walked down to the waterfront and she walked up to the Army Engineers Building.

00:43:07.060 - 00:43:34.400

Even when we had a couple of terrific snowstorms and Seattle was all tied up and everybody got to stay home, we could walk to work, so we had to go to work. How did your grandmother feel with her family really leaving home? There had been quite a lot of coming and going over the years with that many of us.

00:43:36.140 - 00:43:56.680

Every time anybody would leave, Mom would give them a great big hug and she says, "Oh, this may be the last time you see me alive." And we'd come back and go again, "Oh, this may be the last time you see me alive." I don't know how many times we came back to see her alive again, because she lived

00:43:56.760 - 00:44:14.300

to be eighty-nine. But that was her standard goodbye, "This may be the last time." From the time you rode in that first airplane, when was the next time that you were aware of airplanes?

00:44:16.720 - 00:44:42.920

Well, at one time, my brother John and a photographer had bought an airplane and he had learned to fly it and they were going to take aerial photographs. That did not end up to be commercially viable at the time. It was just too expensive to make a go of it.

00:44:43.940 - 00:45:22.700

But I never got up in that airplane and stuff. So that really the next time that I had, other than flying two places, why I had not thought about airplanes. I've gone on a number of commercial flights, flying between Seattle and Great Falls, for instance. I read about the WASPs in the paper when I was working

00:45:22.780 - 00:45:49.400

for the Navy Department, and I thought, "This is for me." What were you doing with the Navy Department? I worked for Materiel, which were the—they were called designers and planners, I think. They were the men, they were older men who were—new ships and construction.

00:45:50.620 - 00:46:09.940

So they would estimate costs and what would be required to bring them up to speed and everything else. I started out in the secretarial pool there, and we would just have to write up all these orders and everything else.

00:46:10.640 - 00:46:35.340

And then when I started trying to quit to go to the WASPs, they kept promoting me until I was private secretary to the chief planner and estimator, and I still wanted to go. So I think I probably had to pull almost as many tricks as—what was his name on mash that kept—

00:46:38.550 - 00:46:45.520

Kelly: Klinger? Beall: Klinger. I had to go through a whole rigmarole of those. I don't even remember what all now.

00:46:49.960 - 00:47:01.180

Because I was frozen on my job, and unless they let me, turned me loose, I couldn't have gone to the WASP. But anyway. So take us through that section of your life.

00:47:01.680 - 00:47:24.460

You saw a newspaper article about the WASP. That's when Nancy Love first started the WAFS, and I just thought that was wonderful. So I took leave of absence from my job and went to Yakima, because there was no flying on the West Coast.

00:47:25.580 - 00:47:49.080

And Lene Kertzer had a flying school in Seattle, and he moved the flying school to Yakima. And he was training the CPT pilots there. And I went over and took flying lessons from him. What made you think you could do that, that you could fly?

00:47:49.960 - 00:48:15.780

Did you know any other girls who were flying? No, but in fact at that point in time I couldn't drive a car. But I never gave it any thought, so I went over there to take flying lessons. The first time, the first flight was in a Taylorcraft, and I had just finished having

00:48:15.900 - 00:48:31.300

the flu. I thought, "Well, I don't care how sick I am. I have a schedule to take a flying lesson, and I'm going to go and take a flying lesson." I was still feeling a little bit queasy, so the first thing we do is go up in an airplane.

00:48:32.160 - 00:48:57.600

He was an Alaska Bush pilot, an ex-Alaska Bush pilot. So we looped in the Taylorcraft. I thought, "Oh, that's a fine thing to do," the way I'm feeling. But there were three instructors that were all ex-Alaska Bush pilots, Frosty and Pete.

00:49:01.640 - 00:49:30.840

There were several of the girls who got their private license with him. The two of them were sisters, and I think one of them at least got in the WASPs earlier, but I had just started my flying, so I really cannot remember her name, even to check out for sure.

00:49:36.820 - 00:50:04.760

Then Kay Wren had taken lessons from Kurt when he was in Seattle, and he flew on pontoons then. But these other girls were wanting to get in, and they kept not hearing from Jekyll Cochran, because by this time, when I decided to go take flying lessons, it was when Jacqueline

00:50:04.880 - 00:50:32.280

Cochran had lowered the requirements and stuff like that so that it was attainable, where I knew I couldn't get 200 hours and a commercial license. So he wrote kind of a snippety letter to Jacqueline Cochran, where his name was pronounced "Lanae." It was spelled L-A-N-A.

00:50:33.240 - 00:50:55.280

And he said, "I wonder what she's going to think when she gets this letter from Lana Gertrude." I don't know if he ever got an answer or not, but he thought that she was not paying much attention to the girls that wanted to get in.

00:50:55.460 - 00:51:24.200

Did you move to Yakima, or did you commute? I would take a leave and stay in Yakima, and then I would have to come back and work some more before I could take another leave and go to Yakima. I rode back and forth primarily with the CAA inspector that lived in Seattle, and he would

00:51:24.020 - 00:51:54.600

go to Yakima to do the flight testing for the students at the flying school. Do you recall your solar flight? Not too very much. I do recall, I have another one I recall very, very, was the last day that I had before I

00:51:54.620 - 00:52:12.480

had to go back and go to work. And I went out on a solo flight and got to the end of the runway and I got a green light from the tower. So I started to take off.

00:52:13.660 - 00:52:29.740

Well, that green light, they said, "Oh, that was a flashing green light. That just meant you could cross the runway." I did a downwind landing. And I got to the end, and I was getting to the end, and I thought, "I'm not getting

00:52:30.580 - 00:52:46.680

off." So I tried to ground loop it. I figured, "Well, at least I'll like to stay here." And as I ground looped, it flipped up and over the fence, and I landed upside down with

00:52:46.740 - 00:53:14.380

the wings parallel in an irrigation ditch. And the prop was this way, so the only damage done to the airplane was on the vertical stabilizer where it had hit on the dirt. So I'm hanging upside down, and I did remember to swing around before I unbuckled my seat

00:53:14.620 - 00:53:38.800

belt. And I was out standing at the end of the runway, and of course Kurt and all the instructors and the meat wagon and everything else came barreling on down the runway. I was standing there pretty shook up, but I was fine.

00:53:39.280 - 00:54:08.480

As I say, the airplane was fine. It was amazing to have fit it so nicely into the irrigation ditch. I had to leave that night to go the next day to go back to Seattle to go to work again. The fellows figured that I'd had a rough day, so they took me out and bought me a beer.

00:54:08.480 - 00:54:33.400

I had two beers, and I have never been so drunk in my life as I was on those two beers. I guess my nerves were just totally in knots. But anyhow, I went back to Seattle until I could take my next leave, and then I came back to Yakima.

00:54:33.980 - 00:55:03.640

And Kurt was real surprised to see me, because he kind of figured that he just might not ever see me again. It certainly shook me up then, but it did not make me decide I was not going to fly. So I came and finished up my flying there until I had what I had to have to qualify

00:55:03.920 - 00:55:26.200

for the WASPs. What did you think the training was going to be about? What were your expectations when you applied to go into training? Steele: I pretty much figured that it would be what it was, because to begin with, the

00:55:26.500 - 00:55:50.080

flight school there, the CPT program, was more or less run on a military style. The fellows had to—they lived in barracks and had their ground school for half a day, and then they're flying, and they marched in formation when they went someplace. So it was pretty military.

00:55:50.570 - 00:56:12.400

Kelly: Were there any girls in that CPT program? I do not think that any of us were in the CPT program. We were going through the program, but we were not enrolled in the CPT. We were just on as private students.

00:56:12.400 - 00:56:20.080

You were paying for yours? Yes. And then take us through what happened next. Did you get a letter?

00:56:21.420 - 00:56:37.400

What happened? Well, I finally got loose of the Navy, and if I had not gotten into WASPs, I do not know what I would have done, because I would just have been out on the creek without the proverbial paddle.

00:56:38.600 - 00:57:00.040

But I got a letter to report to Seattle for an interview with Nancy Love. And everybody seems to think that that was very unusual, that I would have been interviewed by Nancy Love. Do you know what she was doing in Seattle?

00:57:00.460 - 00:57:22.240

No. All I know is that I was to report to her, and we had an interview. And I had to have, oh, I guess that was with the applications, where you had to have three letters of recommendation and all the paperwork and everything else.

00:57:22.600 - 00:57:41.020

So it was just an oral interview I had with her, and I do not really, other than the fact that she was very charming, I do not recall what questions she asked and what we talked about and everything else. I would imagine it was kind of my desire to fly.

00:57:42.100 - 00:57:59.560

Kelly: And then what else did you have to do from that stage? Then what did you do next? Beall: Then I went home and prayed until I got a letter that said to report to Sweetwater. Kelly: Did you have to take a physical?

00:58:01.340 - 00:58:36.260

I must have, and I think I probably had it with a private doctor, because at that point in time they did not have East Base built, and Gorefield was still a municipal airport. And then they built East Base, which—I can't even remember what it's named now, but it's of the SAC bases, and Gorefield was the transport command.

00:58:36.990 - 00:58:56.260

Kelly: When did you tell your grandmother and how did she feel? Kuehn: I rather imagine I told her when I was going to go fly, and learn to fly. I do not recall any particular comment that she made. We are going to have to stop here.

00:59:00.960 - 00:59:20.520

I never got any discouragement, so it was what I wanted to do. Kelly: When you went back home, how long did you have to wait before you got orders to report? Reifeldt: I do not know.

00:59:20.640 - 00:59:39.920

It might have been a month to six weeks or something like that. It seemed like forever to me. And of course, by that time I was just scared to death that I wouldn't get to go and everything. And I did not realize that the number of women who had applied, or I probably would have

00:59:41.320 - 01:00:08.960

had a heart attack somewhere along the line, because I just kind of figured that if you did qualify and got through an interview and everything. It was just a case of when your time came, because with the fellows, they were all going. I figured, well, when the women want to sign up, they'll take them too.

01:00:09.100 - 01:00:49.080

I didn't realize there were 25,000 women who applied. Kelly: Then how did you get from Montana down to Sweetwater? I had a flight to Abilene, I think it was supposed to be, and the first stop was Denver. Now, the first stop—this is the thing I just dearly love, because reading one of my

01:00:49.080 - 01:01:10.900

stopped at Lewistown, we stopped at Livingston, we stopped at Sheridan, at Cheyenne to get to Denver. That many, at least, I think there might have been more, but it was on a DC-3. But as I say, this business, you go from coast to coast or from over the Arctic Circle and

01:01:10.980 - 01:01:28.960

stuff like that. just going up and down and up and down. And got into Denver, and I was supposed to have had reservations at the Brown Palace, but got to the Brown Palace and there were no reservations.

01:01:31.120 - 01:01:53.020

And there were two other young women. One was a girl who had been in California with her husband until he went overseas, and she was going back home. The other one was Opal Vivian Hicks, who was going to Sweetwater.

01:01:56.900 - 01:02:17.320

They were planning on staying at the Brown Palace, too. We ended up where the YWCA had recommended a little hotel, quite some out of town, that we could get two rooms. One was a double and one was a single.

01:02:18.180 - 01:02:44.360

So Opal and I took the double, and that's where I met my first wasp. The next day, weather canceled the flight from Denver to Abilene. So Opal and I and the airlines put us up then at one of their brand new fancy hotels in town.

01:02:46.360 - 01:03:04.580

We went out and took a guidebook and tried to see everything that it said that you should see in Denver. The next day, we were still weathered in, so we had to get on a bus and go by bus from there to Sweetwater.

01:03:06.640 - 01:03:42.420

And then I so vividly remember walking into the Blue Bonnet Hotel and seeing all these women that just, well, I had never seen so many women in one spot in my life. Then we spent the night there at the Blue Bonnet, I think, and then the next day we all were herded into the cattle wagon and taken out to Avenger Field.

01:03:43.450 - 01:04:05.140

What is a cattle wagon? The cattle wagon was a converted truck. You would probably call it a van nowadays, but I think it must have been home-built, I'm not sure.

01:04:06.140 - 01:04:35.960

But instead of having seats in it, it had benches. The benches were too narrow and too crowded and very bumpy. And that was the transport that we had when anybody—well, like we were invited to a dance in Abilene for one weekend, and we went to the dance in the cattle wagon.

01:04:37.200 - 01:05:04.020

And we all took our dance clothes and suitcases, and when we got to Abilene, they had a barrack set up for us. And we changed into our dancing gear and had a good time. And then the next morning on that particular trip, the next morning they blew Reveille,

01:05:05.320 - 01:05:27.420

And then they started counting down the time we had to get into breakfast, whether it was thirty minutes and then got down to ten minutes, five minutes, four minutes, three minutes and stuff. And we went into breakfast and they—well, first they had a corsage for each of the girls

01:05:28.640 - 01:05:47.160

And it was just a most gracious, delightful dance. And of course, oh, it was such fun to be able to have a date. Amen! There still were such things in the world.

01:05:48.680 - 01:06:17.780

But that was the cattle wagon. We used to have to ride that to go out to the auxiliary fields in primary training. I think all the primary training groups went to the auxiliary fields to clear the runway traffic off of Avenger Field.

01:06:20.600 - 01:06:51.840

The student that had the first lesson in the morning would take off at Avenger Field with the instructor, and then they would land at the auxiliary field. And the other students would then have their lessons from the auxiliary field, which was usually just a grass field at a safe distance from Sweetwater.

01:06:52.920 - 01:07:17.940

And then whoever had the last class would fly from the auxiliary field and fly the airplane and land back at Sweetwater, so that we all got our lessons in without having to have all that traffic jammed up at Avenger Field. Let me ask you, when you first got to Avenger, what did they do with you?

01:07:18.140 - 01:07:39.060

Where did you live? Krikorian: Well, the graduating class, of course, was still there. So we were just put in barracks. I think there were seven or eight of us stuck to a bay at one time.

01:07:41.960 - 01:08:15.280

We were then to be assigned our rooms alphabetically after they cleaned up the bays from the graduating class. The bays were six girls to a room, and the two bays shared one latrine that had, I do not know how many showers, four or five showers, and a couple of toilets and some sinks and

01:08:15.380 - 01:08:35.200

stuff. Do you recall your baymates? Describe your baymates, where they were from or how they were different. I remember the first, when we were there, Kay Wren, who was the girl from Seattle that

01:08:35.240 - 01:09:08.120

I had met in Seattle, was in the bay there. She's the only one that I really remember that first grouping. When we got the alphabetical listing, Peg Parrish, who was then appointed our lieutenant—I guess that's what her approximate rank would have been.

01:09:10.980 - 01:09:43.060

And Betty Pettit, who was older than the rest of us, and a very serious-minded young lady. Well, actually, I think she maybe did more flying after she was out than any of the rest of us did. She did some skywriting and I do not know what all.

01:09:43.680 - 01:10:14.960

And Mary Alice Putnam, who had flaming red hair, and she was from Texas. Betty Pettit was from New Jersey. Peg Parrish was her name, Peg Garland, was from North Carolina. I'll get into that little anecdote in a minute.

01:10:16.880 - 01:10:30.360

Ann Pedroncelli was from California. How many is that? Kelly: Quite a few. Is that the six of us?

01:10:31.720 - 01:10:46.620

Because then it's me. I was one of them. And then your baymates changed a little bit as people washed out, and then they would compact the units.

01:10:47.440 - 01:11:17.600

So that at one time, Nancy Norloff and Carol Nicholson were baymates, and Betty June Overman was a baymate. And so that, as I say, the four of us kind of—I don't know exactly when it was, because Betty June wasn't one of the original bay mates, but Betty June Overman, Betty Pettit,

01:11:19.560 - 01:11:46.720

Margaret Parrish and I pretty much stayed either in the same bay, or I think there were a couple times when Betty June was in the adjoining bay. So that there were the four of us who stayed very close and kept in touch after the WASPs. Did any of your bay mates ever wash out, those other two?

01:11:48.560 - 01:12:09.620

Mary Ann Palmer was one of the other ones. Mary Ann Palmer washed back to the next class. I can't remember. She came down with something or other and was sick, so that she missed out on flying.

01:12:09.840 - 01:12:37.860

She washed back, but I don't think it was Anne, Betty Pettit, Mary Alice Putnam, all of them. I think that none of the change in bay mates really was due to other bays where they washed out where we changed.

01:12:38.960 - 01:12:55.420

So that there wasn't anybody that washed out. Now I never thought about that, but I don't think there actually was anybody in our bay that all of a sudden was gone. What was a typical day like when you were in training?

01:13:02.700 - 01:13:28.200

It was very GI, for one thing. We marched every place, and you did not salute because we were not Army, but everything else, you yes-ered and no-ered, just like you were in the Army. So it was very military.

01:13:31.220 - 01:14:04.580

The class was divided into two flights. One flight, Flight 1, would have ground school in the morning and flying lessons in the afternoon. And Flight 2 would be at the flight line in the morning and ground school in the afternoon. I think the original was we took physics and algebra or geometry, one of the math courses,

01:14:05.280 - 01:14:29.300

and of course navigation and engines and weather. It was the same curriculum and the same type of program that the Air Force cadets took. We had TAPS and Reveille, and everything was every bit as GI as any of the fellows had to go through.

01:14:31.620 - 01:15:07.060

What was your flying training like, and what did you train in? Well, the primary training was in the PT-17, the Stearman, which is an open cockpit biplane and just wonderful fun to fly. You wore—there was no radio or anything, I think was one of the other reasons for getting

01:15:06.900 - 01:15:29.160

them out onto auxiliary fields. But you had a helmet that had what was called gossports, which were just little tubes that came out like this. And then you plugged in the mouthpiece that the instructor had up in the cockpit, and

01:15:29.240 - 01:16:00.840

he talked to you through these gossports. And what did the primary training consist of? Well, it started out, actually right at the beginning, we started out with S-turns across the road and all of the basics of flying that you had done in your private flying, but you

01:16:00.520 - 01:16:33.220

You had to kind of learn to do it the Army way, but it wasn't a great deal different. And then, of course, landing the PT-17, it was a ground-looping little airplane, so that is what washed out quite a few of the girls. I can remember one time I had come in, and one day I was the last one flying the airplane

01:16:33.360 - 01:16:55.440

back to Sweetwater. I came in a crosswind landing, and I dragged a wingtip. Next day I had the last flight in to Avenger Field, and I came in. When you had crosswinds in Sweetwater, you had some crosswinds in Sweetwater.

01:16:56.630 - 01:17:16.100

In fact, they were mad. But I came in again and I dragged a wing. So the third day, I was bringing the airplane back, and Fred Hall was my primary instructor. I suggested that he ride back with me.

01:17:20.380 - 01:17:39.440

No, he didn't want to do that, just get the airplane back. So I came in and I dragged the wing. I was up before the Army, whatever board it was called, the ones that are going to chop you off at the ankles.

01:17:42.560 - 01:18:01.660

First of all, they had me sit in the ready room for over four hours. And then they had me come in and stand at attention while they gave me the third degree. And was I losing my nerve? Was I afraid?

01:18:02.140 - 01:18:23.420

Why did I ask the instructor to ride back with me? And what was my problem? I said, "Well, my problem was I came back twice in a crosswind landing, and I came in and lowered the wing like I was supposed to for a crosswind landing, and I dragged a wing."

01:18:23.420 - 01:18:39.520

I said, "I did that twice." I asked my instructor to come back with me, because I thought it was maybe time for somebody to show me what I was doing wrong. But I found out what I was doing wrong.

01:18:39.640 - 01:19:00.700

The wind was so strong that by just coming in and dipping the wing like you're supposed to, that put the wing down too low. So I was supposed to yaw the airplane as I dipped the wing, and then just before I land, then I straighten it out and come on in.

01:19:01.160 - 01:19:34.260

Well, nobody had told me about yawing, just going with the dipping the wing. So the next day I was scheduled for a flight check with the Army, a flight check pilot. I was due for an Army check ride anyway, but knowing that that check ride meant I either walked or stayed made it a little bit more nerve-wracking.

01:19:34.880 - 01:19:52.460

But we went out and did a whole bunch of stuff and everything else, and came in and I yawed the airplane and dipped the wing and got it in just fine. So they decided maybe I was still safe in an airplane. But was I losing my nerve?

01:19:52.700 - 01:20:01.700

Was I afraid? No. I just did not know what I was doing. Kelly: What was the biggest adjustment you had to make to be in training?

01:20:05.160 - 01:20:25.980

Beall: Putting up with all those women. I had never really—I guess maybe—my sister and I were so close that I really never had a lot of girlfriends. So if I had friends, they were usually boys.

01:20:29.620 - 01:20:52.760

I found that most women were so very, very catty that it suited me just fine. So it was very different. There was a different quality of girl that was down there. It was not a girl that was interested in whose hair did not look good the night before and

01:20:52.760 - 01:21:17.700

all the things that I associated with the girl gab fest and all. There were women that I could be friends with and enjoy. But that many women in one spot was a big adjustment. What was your favorite subject in ground school?

01:21:17.860 - 01:21:41.360

What did you enjoy the most? I don't know that there was any that I particularly liked. It was just something I had to do and I had to learn if I wanted to fly. But I did get a kick out of the—what was it?—learning the engines.

01:21:41.680 - 01:21:55.300

I guess that was the name of the course, because I did not know what a spark plug did, I did not know what anything did, I did not know nothing about an engine at all. And this was all just fascinating. That is what happens, that is how it works.

01:22:00.540 - 01:22:18.440

But I enjoyed navigation and I enjoyed meteorology very much. But the flight line is where I wanted to be. I didn't want to be in ground school, it's just I had to. When you finish...

01:22:18.440 - 01:22:25.760

Oh, okay. We're about to roll up. Okay, we're going to go from primary to... I now have something to put on a shirt.

01:22:26.880 - 01:22:35.460

What? This is going on your shirt. If you ever have your own t-shirt, this is going to go on your t-shirt. If you're going to dip your wing, you better yaw the plane.

01:22:37.620 - 01:23:00.180

[Laughter] I think I'm going to have to go to the powder room. Kelly: When you finished primary training, how many hours had you gotten in the PT-17? That's a good question.

01:23:01.680 - 01:23:15.120

Seventy. Seventy? Seventy. And then during the time you were at Avenger, beside that one dance you went to, how did

01:23:15.160 - 01:23:42.460

you spend weekends or did you have some time off to do things? We were probably as fortunate as any of the girls that could have gone to Sweetwater. In the class before us, one of the gals that was graduating had a book that she asked if we would return to Mrs. Willis.

01:23:44.860 - 01:24:11.000

Peg and I went in one day and returned this book to Mrs. Willis, and Mr. and Mrs. Willis adopted us. So that night, they drove us all around Sightseeing, and they would have us in for dinner. For my birthday, they gave a Mexican dinner birthday party that I could invite some of

01:24:11.020 - 01:24:33.560

the girls from the field. Mr. Willis had a car dealership in Sweetwater, and they had a son, Wally, who was fifteen years old. She had a backyard filled with great big bird cages with finches and just wonderful.

01:24:33.880 - 01:25:09.200

We had this lovely home with a lovely backyard. Mr. Willis used to get liquor for us so that we did not have to go to the bootlegger, so many of the girls did. When we got between primary and basic and instrument and all, we would have several

01:25:09.320 - 01:25:31.260

days, maybe two or three days or a weekend or something off when we could leave the base. And the one—what were they called when we had the days off like that? Lee? Lee.

01:25:33.380 - 01:26:00.120

They had some friends who had a cabin at Sweetwater Lake. Mr. Willis loaned us a car, and these friends loaned us their cabin, and we went up to Sweetwater Lake for the leave. Another time, they were leaving town, so they gave us the key to their house.

01:26:01.560 - 01:26:18.580

We technically were not supposed to stay in Sweetwater when we were on leave, but we were not really staying. I think they did not want you crawling around town and stuff like that. But the Willises just gave us their house, and we went and spent our leave there, just

01:26:18.760 - 01:26:49.880

sunbathing in the backyard and living the life of Riley. So they were absolutely wonderful. Kelly: Have you kept in touch with them? When we were down for the one reunion in Sweetwater, I have been to two of them in Sweetwater,

01:26:50.040 - 01:27:00.100

I think two reunions. I have not been to each one. I do not remember how many they had down there, but it seemed like we kept going back to Sweetwater every time we turned around.

01:27:02.300 - 01:27:27.600

But we did go, we were in touch with them then and went to see the Willis' and all, but by mail and that, no, I did not keep in touch with them. I guess I am not a letter writer for one thing, but when we came back to Sweetwater and went in to see them, it was just kind of like we had never left.

01:27:28.420 - 01:27:55.060

Kind of coming back to the family stand, but they were absolutely wonderful people and just made our life in Sweetwater so very, very pleasant. Kelly: When you finished primary training, then what did you do? See, from primary training we went to instruments right away, I think.

01:27:57.540 - 01:28:10.800

Boy, now this is where senility kicks in. It was instruments, wasn't it? You can— Kelly: AT-6s.

01:28:10.800 - 01:28:28.020

We went to AT-6s first. So we went to AT-6s. Oh, I love that airplane. I think it used to be such fun when the fellows from Abilene used to come over, and I think

01:28:28.060 - 01:29:04.160

they were in P-47s, and we would dogfight with them. And with the AT-6, we could make a turn on such a much smaller arc than the P-47s. We could get on their tail and just feel so great because we'd be shooting them down. I think the only rare adventure I had in the AT-6 was there was a bunch of construction

01:29:05.240 - 01:29:33.240

on the runway, the one runway that faced right into the PT parking lot where the airplanes were sitting. I came in this one time, and I came in too high and too hot. So I was coming down, and I could see—because I wanted to be sure that I missed the construction

01:29:33.780 - 01:29:59.400

on the end of the runway. And I realized that there's no way I was going to get that airplane down. So I had, of course, lost enough airspeed to where I had to keep the nose down and gain airspeed so that just as I came to the planes, I could pull up and clear the airplanes, and

01:29:59.400 - 01:30:17.980

then I was going right for the control tower. So I kept the nose down until I got enough airspeed, and then pulled up and got over the control tower. And when I landed, I found out that there was a visiting general in the control tower

01:30:18.160 - 01:30:36.260

at the time, and he thought he better get down before some one of these crazy women didn't make it. I really got razzed about that because they kept calling me "Buzz." They thought I had done it on purpose.

01:30:37.120 - 01:31:06.360

It was strictly the fact that it was the only way I was going to get over that control tower was to get my airspeed built up. But otherwise—and our AT-6 instructor was—oh, he was homely like Lincoln. Bobby Hunt was his name.

01:31:09.440 - 01:31:30.520

We used to call him "Beautiful Bobby." He was going to go into the ATC after our class. Ours was the last class he was going to have at Sweetwater. He wanted to be sure that we were going to be his best class.

01:31:31.940 - 01:31:51.920

He would sit in the back of the cockpit and he would swear a blue streak at us, just always. Never heard such language in your life. And you'd just go on and do your best. But if he ever sat back there and he would say, "Now, isn't that pitiful?

01:31:52.960 - 01:32:22.860

You knew that you were flying right and that you had better do something or else." As long as he was back there cussing, you were doing fine. He got all four of us through. I think all of us, I'm not sure about the others, but I think the girls that had the

01:32:22.920 - 01:32:37.900

same instructors I did, we all fell madly in love with our instructors when we had them, each one. So of course we were all madly in love with him, beautiful Bobby, even if he did swear at us.

01:32:38.970 - 01:33:10.420

Kelly: Then when you finished that transition in '86 and went into instruments, describe what that entailed. Mr. Fincher was my instrument instructor, and of course I fell madly in love with him. We would fly after—we would be soloing.

01:33:11.340 - 01:33:37.440

The way you would solo an instrument class is you would have to be under the hood, which would cover your view. You were locked into the cockpit under the hood. One of the other students that had your same instructor would fly safety pilot for you

01:33:37.440 - 01:33:59.400

so that you didn't bump into another plane and you didn't do all the things that you weren't supposed to do, because you couldn't see where you were going and stuff. I liked instruments. I liked it very much.

01:33:59.950 - 01:34:26.300

I didn't like the Link trainer, and I don't know how many times I would have—I landed about thirty feet underground in the link trainer. I managed to land on the runway in the airplane. Kelly: And then during some of that training, did you take some cross countries?

01:34:30.640 - 01:35:09.380

Krikorian: We took several short cross countries. I think there were three cross-countries in the PT-17, and then there was one long cross-country. On that particular cross-country, I think it would have been a whole class that went to San Antonio and we went in the pressure chamber to go through the pressure chamber

01:35:10.060 - 01:35:44.960

training to show what flying above 10,000 feet would do, what lack of oxygen could do to your performance and to your life existence, as it were. They had us—we, of course, wore oxygen masks. And then when it got up to over 10,000 feet, they had us take the oxygen masks off and

01:35:44.960 - 01:36:03.360

would try to write our names and do several things that you'd think you were doing just fine. And then when you got your oxygen mask back on and everything else, you'd realize that you didn't really write your name at all.

01:36:04.170 - 01:36:25.360

You didn't know what you were doing. And a couple of the girls passed out, so that they immediately slapped the oxygen masks back on them. But just giving you the experience of what would happen if you did fly in an airplane

01:36:25.620 - 01:36:46.060

without oxygen and flew over 10,000 feet. On any of those cross-countries, did anything out of the way happen? Not on ours. Couple of the out-of-way things happened way back in primary.

01:36:49.180 - 01:37:12.600

We were sitting on the flight line waiting for Flight 1 to finish their flying, because We had the afternoon flight schedule that time. One of the instructors came, landed his airplane, and jumped out of it and came running into the ready room and just panning along, "I lost my goddamn student!

01:37:12.840 - 01:37:39.720

I lost my goddamn student!" It had done a roll and she fell out of the airplane. I do not know what happened. Apparently, some way the seat harness got snagged and opened, and as the airplane went

01:37:39.760 - 01:38:09.800

upside down, she went out. And then another time, it was in '86, when the instructor came in and he was all excited. And it was one of the Army check pilots, in fact, and he had been giving Nancy Nordhoff a check ride, and the engine caught fire.

01:38:10.740 - 01:38:36.580

So he made her bail out, and then he worked at the fire and got it out and landed in. Then they had to go out in the ambulance to pick Nancy up, because he did not want to try to put the fire out with her still in the airplane. He wanted to be sure she was safe.

01:38:39.180 - 01:38:58.840

So they went out in the ambulance, and there's Nancy sitting in this field. She had her parachute all spread around her, and she was sitting there, and she was afraid of snakes. So that's the only thing that bothered her about that parachute job.

01:39:00.460 - 01:39:32.380

And of course, she then qualified to join the Caterpillar Club, anybody who jumped out of an airplane. I know my husband was with the RCAF for the tail end of the Battle of Britain, and he had to bail out over the Channel. When you do that, you join the Goldfish Club. So there's the caterpillars and the goldfish.

01:39:32.420 - 01:40:12.440

Did any of the students kill that you recall? No, not—yes, there were—someone of the students got killed on one of the cross-country flights. I don't remember—it was not somebody that—she was in a class quite far ahead of us. But I do remember that at the time that it was not publicized, I think that Jacqueline

01:40:12.560 - 01:40:43.840

Cochran wanted to be very sure that nothing like that would jeopardize the program. And the fact that a male cadet could get killed, and that was a sad situation. But I think she figured that if too much was said about any of the girls that had gotten killed, that they would say, "Well, we told you women couldn't fly."

01:40:43.860 - 01:41:30.140

But there were not that—I mean, there were no more accidents with the women pilots. How long did you stay at Avenger? If I remember rightly, my class started in January, and we were supposed to have graduated in July because we were seven, and because of weather delays and everything, it was August,

01:41:30.300 - 01:41:50.120

I think, when we graduated. What were your uniforms like? And describe the new uniforms that you received. Well, first of all, I think the general's pants are something that was very interesting.

01:41:52.320 - 01:42:33.680

I can remember when we were in training before we got the uniforms, one of the girls had received an article that had been published in Stars and Stripes Overseas. And it had this article, a tirade about the glamour girls having uniforms styled by—I I don't know which one, whether it was Christian Dior or some one of the very good dress designers.

01:42:34.400 - 01:43:09.300

And at that time, we had zoot suits, which were Army fatigues that came in two sizes, too big, or three sizes, way too big, or way, way too big. There was no such a thing as any of them fitting. Then for the dress uniforms, some class before us had—there were going to be some visiting

01:43:09.420 - 01:43:30.120

generals that were coming to the field, so they wanted to have the girls all look spiffy and everything else for them. So the girls had to go out and buy khaki pants and have them fitted and everything else, and white shirts.

01:43:34.420 - 01:43:51.660

After going to all this trouble and the big to-do about getting the khaki pants, the generals did not show up. But those were known as General's Pants from then on, and that was our uniform while I was in training.

01:43:52.700 - 01:44:20.400

And when we graduated, we did get our gorgeous Santiago blue. And I guess the first girls that got them actually did have them tailored someplace on Fifth Avenue. I think we had them measured, and other than maybe having to hand them or something, there

01:44:20.600 - 01:44:52.160

wasn't any tailoring that had to be done to them. I can remember Josephine Keating, she was in one of the previous classes, and she was from Great Falls, Montana also. She came on the field with this new uniform, which had the silver wings and all of the

01:44:52.200 - 01:45:09.740

insignias on them. Most gorgeous looking thing I had ever seen. They were wonderful. The dress uniform was a military blouse, I guess you would call it, the jacket and skirt.

01:45:12.040 - 01:45:42.960

Then we had Eisenhower jacket styles and slacks for the utility uniform. A flight coverall thing was a blue, I do not know what heavy material, but would take the place of the zoot suits. Once you made it through, describe your graduation.

01:45:43.380 - 01:45:55.660

What happened? Did you have visiting generals for your graduation? Yes, we did. I can't remember now.

01:45:57.560 - 01:46:21.760

I know that Jacqueline Cochran pinned the wings on us. I'm going to have to stop right now. I've got to blow my nose. The only general I can remember was when Hap Arnold was there.

01:46:21.820 - 01:47:00.060

I cannot remember now, maybe he was here for '44-'46, or if he was for ours. I remember how impressed and how handsome and how lovely and charming he was. And then he also was there for the graduation, the final graduation of the final class, which we got airplanes from Allow Field and they let us fly up to Sweetwater to attend the

01:46:59.800 - 01:47:17.020

final graduation. So Betty June and I flew up in one airplane, and Annie Jean Henry, who had been in Flight 1, was also stationed with us. And our apartment had—the three of us lived in the same apartment, the one apartment.

01:47:17.640 - 01:47:40.400

And she came up in one airplane, and Betty June and I came up in the other. But at Allow Field, they did want us to check out the airplanes on weekends so that we would keep our cross-country flying current. How did you feel at that final graduation?

01:47:46.700 - 01:48:07.200

Well at the final graduation, it felt just fine, because it was so wonderful to see all other girls that had managed to come back, and we went in to see the Willis' and everything. So the graduation itself was fine, and I guess the heartache of having the WASP disbanded had already—

01:48:09.310 - 01:48:22.100

Kelly: You had been through that. Reifeldt: We had been through that. We had had our sad, sad moments, so that the actual festivities of the graduation were just kind of fun.

01:48:22.360 - 01:48:47.140

Let me go back and ask you, when you graduated, did you have a choice of where you would be stationed? Krikorian: We had one of three choices. And you put them first, second, third, because if they couldn't do it, why then you got

01:48:47.220 - 01:49:09.320

the second or the third and stuff. But one was if you wanted to be stationed with somebody, that was one choice. If you wanted to be stationed where you would fly a particular airplane was the second choice. And the third choice was if you wanted to be in some geographic area.

01:49:10.100 - 01:49:31.480

And if they could, why they would settle you, they would do that. And Betty June and I had requested to be stationed together, and we did get that down in Allow Field. Kelly: After you graduated, did you have some leave time?

01:49:32.560 - 01:50:05.080

Yes, and I went back home to show off my uniform. Well it just felt wonderful. I had one very sad moment in my showing off my uniform. I had belonged to a fencing club in Great Falls, and my sister and I dated a couple

01:50:05.340 - 01:50:24.540

of the fellows from the fencing club who were motorcycle enthusiasts. That was when the neighborhood did not like us very much because the motorcycles used to come to pick us up and take us on our dates and stuff. They made a lot of noise.

01:50:30.780 - 01:51:00.840

When I went back, one of the boys had planned on the Air Force. They used to do hill climbs with their motorbikes, which were very hazardous. He had an accident and broke his back, so he had wanted so badly to be a pilot. I felt so guilty having my nice new wings.

01:51:04.420 - 01:51:24.340

That was a sad moment. Otherwise, I can remember my brother had been wounded in the South Pacific, and he had been down in Australia in the hospital for some time and had gotten back to the States and gotten military discharge.

01:51:28.420 - 01:51:54.180

And so he was home. And well, the film I had, one of the parts of the film clip that I did not double expose was just standing on the front lawn of the house, and my grandmother and my aunt and sister and I think brother-in-law and sister-in-law, and my brother was showing off his ruptured

01:51:54.300 - 01:52:26.300

duck and I was showing off my wings. I was very proud of that uniform. She just kind of seems to take things in stride. When the WASP disbanded, I had planned on—had started proceedings to join the Red Cross

01:52:26.420 - 01:52:58.300

Overseas Corps, and that was one time when my mother kind of—no, no, no, don't do Florence, when I had left the Navy, then she went up with the Army engineers, she went up to Alaska. So she was in Alaska, I was down flying, and my brother was in the South Pacific, and Mom

01:52:58.320 - 01:53:20.340

had just kind of had enough of it. Florence was still in Alaska, and so I got my private—my instructor's rating, and I was doing some instructing at Little Wheatfield because the Gore Field was still Air Transport Command.

01:53:27.200 - 01:53:46.500

What was I fixing to tell you? Kelly: I don't know, but let me go back and ask you, after your graduation, after your leave time, then how did you get down to Aloe Field in Texas for your assignment? I know part of the way was on the bus.

01:53:47.600 - 01:54:03.360

I don't remember if I might have gotten an airline flight out of—but I had to get down there on my own. There's no military transportation. Kelly: Once you got there, to whom did you report?

01:54:07.000 - 01:54:24.320

The base adjutant, I think, maybe. I'm not sure who it is. Whoever it was we were supposed to report to, we had to report. Then we had to run around to the dentist, the doctor, all the things that we had to

01:54:24.420 - 01:54:55.820

check in at the field. What would be your primary assignment? We were assigned to the tow target squadron, and we flew tow target schedules, which actually was a hard day's work, flying four hours on a tow target pattern, because you flew

01:54:56.480 - 01:55:26.200

parallel to a road, and you had to fly a certain number, a certain distance. And then you did a 45-degree out and a 180 back, and you flew back along the same road. Then you did your turn and came back on the road. And you were to maintain within five miles an hour airspeed and fifty feet.

01:55:28.560 - 01:55:50.460

And we flew at about 3,000 feet. Now when you are flying over Texas at 3,000 feet, you have a lot of updrafts and downdrafts and wind and everything else. So it was four hours of throttle stick, throttle stick, throttle stick.

01:55:51.120 - 01:56:19.540

Because if you did not maintain the airspeed and the altitude, why, the cadets did not—they wanted a moving target, but they wanted a moving target where they knew where it was. So it was work, but it didn't matter because we were flying. What kind of airplane were you flying?

01:56:19.540 - 01:56:37.660

An AT-6. Would you let out a target behind the airplane, or how did that work? Well, we would take off and the target airplane took off first, and you had a target operator in the back seat.

01:56:38.620 - 01:57:13.900

And then after you took off, then the flight squadron was to take off in formation. And you'd get up and start your pattern, and the tow target operator would reel out the target, which in our case was a big metal flag type target. And when you finished flying your mission, you would come back in and there was a space

01:57:14.200 - 01:57:46.400

of grass that was between the tarmac and the hangar. And you would just fly over that at maybe fifty feet or something like that. And the target operator would release the target so that it would fall on the dirt, because if it fell on the tarmac it would break the runway.

01:57:49.720 - 01:58:09.720

After you dropped the target, he would reel in the cable and go around and you'd come in the traffic pattern and land. What were the cadets flying in? AT-6s.

01:58:10.570 - 01:58:31.980

What were they shooting at your target? They just shot us with cameras. We were flying over residential area, not residential but inhabited area in Texas, so There could be no live ammunition being shot around there.

01:58:33.900 - 01:58:57.760

They would go down to Matagorda Island at the end of the camera phase of it and shoot live ammunition over the gulf. So that we did not have the hazard of—like that one gal that said, "Boys, I'm pulling the target, not pushing it.

01:59:01.780 - 01:59:27.500

So it's just that when you got an overeager student that kind of almost missed the target, I mean almost missed you or didn't miss you. So it got kind of exciting now and then, but it wasn't really hazardous. It was just hard work and monotonous.

01:59:27.540 - 01:59:50.140

Kelly: Were there other WASPs already at Aloe when you got there? Krikorian: Yes. I have forgotten how many of us there were in the tow target squadron. And, of course, we were assigned so that we were there at different times.

01:59:51.780 - 02:00:22.120

Really did not too much get to even know some of the other girls that just did not happen to be in the ready room when you were there. Where did you live? They did not have housing on base for us.

02:00:24.920 - 02:00:51.780

It was a housing development that was built for families of military personnel that were assigned at Allofield. Nellie Henderson had been there for quite some time. She was our veteran tow target pilot.

02:00:56.100 - 02:01:20.800

She loaned us her car so that we could go downtown to rent furniture to put into this apartment that we were going to move into. Betty June and I—Hank, Annie Jean, Henry, the other WASPO station there—hadn't gotten to town yet.

02:01:21.740 - 02:01:44.740

So Betty June and I went down, and as I recall the bedrooms had beds in them. I think they had beds and dressers or something like that. So all we had to do was rent furniture for the living room. We went down and rented a sofa and a rug and maybe a couple of chairs and a coffee table.

02:01:48.220 - 02:02:05.600

When they delivered it, we went out to the house to set up housekeeping. We walked in and the cockroaches were standing at the door, ready to shake hands with us, I think. I have never seen such huge cockroaches.

02:02:05.760 - 02:02:30.100

In fact, I do not think in Montana I have ever seen a cockroach. Betty June was from Michigan, and I doubt that she saw a cockroach, because up north if you're very, very dirty, you might have cockroaches, but that's all. So Betty June and I were just heart sick.

02:02:30.460 - 02:02:55.640

No way, I mean, they were all over the place. We sat on the carpet, and it was rolled up, and I couldn't even think about moving the furniture around. And Russ Bulechek, who was Nellie's fiancé, she had sent him in to help us unpack.

02:02:56.720 - 02:03:03.900

And he came in and took one look at us, and he says, "Well, what are you sitting there for? Let's get going. Let's move this stuff."

02:03:03.900 - 02:03:24.600

So we moved that stuff, and we would never have ever have been able to cope with those cockroaches if he hadn't come at that critical time. Before it was over with, we used to—for some reason or other, I don't really know why we rented a Davenport in chairs, because it seems like we always sat on the floor.

02:03:26.200 - 02:03:43.160

And we'd sit back and lean back on the sofas, and then we would place bets on the cockroaches running across the ceiling. We'd have cockroach races. So I guess you get used to anything if you have to.

02:03:44.060 - 02:04:00.100

But I tell you that I never thought that would happen. (Laughter) (Off camera) During your training and while you were stationed at Allo, was there ever a time when you were really afraid as far as flying?

02:04:01.580 - 02:04:10.680

Anything that happened that might have caused you to be afraid? No. Kelly: That's a good answer. McKenna: Okay, good answer.

02:04:11.290 - 02:04:28.400

Kelly: Okay, well change that. McKenna: Change that. And I lifted that top up and it was solid cockroaches. I had never, ever in my life seen anything like this.

02:04:28.500 - 02:04:56.620

Because to begin with, the way they were built and the fact that they were these young families with young women with kids that probably had never kept house. So we had planned on eating, because we ate at the officer's mess in the field, but we figured that we'd be doing quite a bit of cooking on our own.

02:04:56.740 - 02:05:14.040

Well, there's no way that we could bring food into that house then. During the time that you were at Aloe, you were notified that the wasps were going to be disbanded. How did that make you feel?

02:05:18.060 - 02:05:44.380

heart sick and something that we had worked so hard for and just all of a sudden it was just kind of like, "Hey, your life's over. Your plans for your life are over." The only consolation I had with it all was the fact that they had projected that so many

02:05:44.360 - 02:06:11.520

more men would be killed. So few of the projection really were killed that I couldn't really stay heartbroken too long if it meant that in order to keep my job, we had to have a lot more men killed. No, I was ready to go home.

02:06:11.600 - 02:06:37.280

I'd much rather go home than that. Did the officials at Allo do anything special for the WASP? We had a farewell dinner dance, and the officers gave each of us a little silver heart-shaped compact with our names etched in.

02:06:39.280 - 02:06:50.420

What did you do after you were disbanded? Did you go back home? Yes, I went back home. As I say, I was planning on going to the Red Cross Overseas Corps.

02:06:51.560 - 02:07:18.500

When Mom was brokenhearted about that, I said, "Well, fine." I got the instructor's rating and I was instructing. There really weren't very many students as far as instruction goes. I spent more of my time—the farmers used to come in and they did strip farming in Montana.

02:07:19.240 - 02:07:52.700

So that in the fall, the strips that had been planted for this year, they would burn after they had gathered the crop that was left over. They would burn this, and then at sundown, they would come over and I would take them up and we'd fly over the fields to be sure that these fires on these strips were either

02:07:52.760 - 02:08:11.300

out or under control and stuff like that. And if you would like a roller coaster ride, that is it, because you're going across one cold strip and a hot strip up and down. It was just a ride.

02:08:12.160 - 02:08:27.180

And then a great many of the fellows from Gore Field used to come down, and East Base too at the time. And they'd been flying bombers and all that stuff, and they just wanted to come out and fly a Cub.

02:08:28.200 - 02:09:07.080

So of course they would not give them a cub until I could check them out to be sure that they would not fly it like—they would not think they were still flying a bomber. And then Kathy Bridges, Kathy Bridge, Catherine, had been a ferry pilot, and she was one that P-38s to Gorefield.

02:09:10.260 - 02:09:32.240

They would bring them into Gorefield, and then because the WASPs were not allowed to fly beyond the continental United States, the pilots at Gorefield would have to take them from there up to Alaska to give them to Russia. the Russian pilots would come over to Alaska and get them.

02:09:34.160 - 02:10:11.060

When the WASP disbanded, Kathy got a job at Gorefield teaching P-38 ground school. I had just been instructing for three, four, five months, I don't remember how long. When her husband came back to the States, he was a pilot and had been overseas. And of course, she was quitting her job so that she could go home and be with her husband.

02:10:12.480 - 02:10:35.480

So I fortunately inherited her job, but I did not teach P-38 ground school. I did not know anything about a P-38, except that they were gorgeous airplanes and I would have loved to have flown one. But at that time, so many of the fellows were coming back from overseas and getting out

02:10:35.480 - 02:10:59.340

of the Army. And so I instructed the—at that point in time it was CAA, the ground school, for their civilian ratings so that they could apply for their—and help them with the paperwork and everything to apply for their civilian licenses so that they could fly after the

02:10:59.520 - 02:11:20.660

war. And then when they were deactivating Gore Field, my job was going to be deactivated also. So, of course, came up the Red Cross overseas issue again.

02:11:21.740 - 02:12:02.860

So I told my mother, "Well, if I could get the same rating, or if I could get that at East Base," which was of course staying open, "why I would transfer over there, but that I would not go into the cork typing pool and stuff like that. I got a job in operations with a CAF-5 rating.

02:12:04.260 - 02:12:33.480

I had said I would stay, so I stayed. And then, oh, within about a month or so, I guess, I did transfer back to ground school to my CAF-7 rating, which was fine. It wasn't too popular with the other—well, I guess maybe any of the civilian employees

02:12:33.480 - 02:13:06.640

on the base, because I think the only one that had a higher rating was the base manager. They just sort of resented the fact that I had that. By that time, it was—well, there wasn't too much. I just kept having to run the fellows down to be sure they kept up their training, their

02:13:06.780 - 02:13:35.320

link training and their this training and all, because everybody was just anxious to get out of the Army at that point. So when I went on a vacation, I was just kind of taking a circuit tour. I flew to Detroit, first of all, to visit Betty June, and then I flew to Miami to visit

02:13:35.380 - 02:13:54.660

a friend. And then I was going to fly to New Orleans, and I was just kind of making a circuit around. And that was real funny, because that was a time when, instead of reserving hotel rooms, I just took night flights, and I would sleep on the airplane.

02:13:55.960 - 02:14:21.720

I'd get to where I'm going, and I'm all ready to go again. I didn't have to waste a day traveling and then have to waste a whole night sleeping. I was doing just fine. I got down in Miami, National Airlines, the stewardess was busy in the back of the airplane

02:14:21.800 - 02:14:51.860

flirting with a couple of the pilots, and clipped a coupon too many for my flight ticket. So I got there and I didn't have my flight ticket for the leg to New Orleans. So I had a week in Miami, and half of it was being spent down at National Airlines arguing with them to get this flight thing straightened out.

02:14:54.000 - 02:15:14.980

And this one day I was getting just a little bit disgusted, because I wanted to be out on the beach, not in National Airlines' ticket office. And there's a real sweet little gal at the ticket counter, and I said, "For two cents, if I had a place to stay, I'd just stay."

02:15:14.980 - 02:15:42.440

And she reached under the counter and took out her purse and said, "Here's two cents, and there's a room at the house where I'm staying." The Pan Am stewardesses and all lived there, so I said, "Okay, I'll stay." I stayed in Miami and phoned in my resignation because I figured it's just a matter of

02:15:42.630 - 02:16:08.800

time until my job there is going to be finished up, too. So I stayed in Miami and very fortunately, Bill Conrad was starting up Airline Training, which was a flight training school to get the military pilots where they could get their civilian ratings.

02:16:09.500 - 02:16:52.540

They had a Lockheed and a Boeing, and I guess two Lockheeds and a Boeing. I went to work for airline training. It was not a flying job, but I ended up as director, manager of operations, simply because It was a small starting up project so that there wasn't a bureaucracy on.

02:16:53.380 - 02:17:22.320

I worked there until Frank Kinney came to airline training, and he got his airline transport rating, and then he stayed and got his navigator's rating, and then he stayed and got his flight engineer's rating, and then he got his link trainer's rating, and then we got married. (Laughter)

02:17:23.260 - 02:17:46.280

Kelly: And what was there about Frank Kinney that attracted you to him? What would it be? Cosmic attraction or what have you, I don't know. As I say, he was from Texas and I was from Montana.

02:17:47.170 - 02:18:10.280

We got married in New Orleans. Kelly: Tell me about your wedding. Yet, we didn't elope because we didn't have anybody to elope from. I had been in Montana for a vacation.

02:18:10.520 - 02:18:35.620

I hadn't had a vacation in, I think, about four years. Then coming back, he had gone to Austin to see his mother. So then I flew back to Austin and met his mother. And there was a very charming Southern lady.

02:18:36.720 - 02:19:00.980

And then we were driving back to Miami and he wanted to get married in New Orleans. I said, "Well, if we could get married right away, because there's a three-day waiting list in New Orleans, in Louisiana." I said, "Okay."

02:19:00.980 - 02:19:20.180

So he was the kind of person that if he wanted something, he kind of seemed to manage to get it done. Can I ask if he intended to get all those ratings or did he stick around for some other reason?

02:19:20.720 - 02:19:49.900

He just stuck around as long as he had a GI Bill. Kelly: Was he already a rated pilot before he started taking all of this? Krikorian: Well, as I say, he had joined the RCAF and was over for the end of the Battle of Britain.

02:19:50.320 - 02:20:22.100

And then when the United States got in the war, he transferred to the Navy. And so he, I think all of his Navy time actually was stateside, other than I think Cuba. But the rest of it, his flying in the war was with the RCAF. So now we're at New Orleans.

02:20:22.400 - 02:21:01.400

So anyhow, we started out and he left me in a bar, the Absinthe Bar down in the French Quarter, and went about proceeding to get a wedding set up. There were maybe about half a dozen people, regulars, in the bar. I think about three o'clock in the afternoon he came back and it was all set up.

02:21:02.880 - 02:21:31.940

We went out and bought a wedding ring and then came back. I forgot what time, we were going to get married by a judge in Alger, which was across the river from New Orleans. By that time, I don't know if I had had much to eat, but I had quite a bit to drink.

02:21:38.760 - 02:22:02.840

So everybody in the bar, I have a little postcard where the people in the bar there sign the best wishes on the card, and the bartender gave us two hollow stem champagne glasses for our wedding gift. Then we went off on the ferry boat and got married.

02:22:05.560 - 02:22:23.920

By that time I was getting kind of silly and he kept saying, "Be quiet or he's going think you're drunk and won't marry us." But that was our wedding. Had you told your mom that you were going to get married?

02:22:24.600 - 02:23:01.360

No, we hadn't decided until we were on our way back from Austin and got to New Orleans. So that, as I say, it was not exactly an elopement, but it was whatever. I do not know what you would call it. And you drove back then from New Orleans down to Miami?

02:23:03.560 - 02:23:44.600

We bought a house in Miami, and Frank was in flying for Modern Air from Miami to Puerto Rico, San Juan. And then he decided to take a job with Standard Vacuum Mietsepie, which was in Indonesia, and it was a combination American-Dutch corporation.

02:23:47.200 - 02:24:04.640

And I was pregnant. So I had to go up to New York for the interview. They had to interview to be sure that the wife was compatible people to go overseas as well as the husband and stuff.

02:24:05.700 - 02:24:39.320

But then I had to wait until Fran was born, the number one son, and wait until you're six months old, and then I went over to join him. I flew over on the Pan American Clipper ship, which was a thing. They had bunks and everything in it, so I had to spend an overnight on a bunk in the

02:24:39.360 - 02:25:12.760

airplane to the Hawaiian Islands, I think it was. Kelly: And then eventually, where was Frank? Ruppelt: Well, he was in Palembang in Indonesia, but he flew up to Singapore. We flew from San Francisco to Honolulu, to Guam, to the Philippines, to Guam, and then

02:25:12.540 - 02:25:46.000

Singapore, I think was the way the flight went. The Philippines was an interesting stop because it was still a protectorate at that time. The attache or whatever diplomat it was that was ambassador, I guess, to the Philippines was going back to the States the day that I had to stop at the Philippines.

02:25:48.820 - 02:26:10.860

And Manila, I do not know how many million people Manila has in the city limits, but half of them were at the airport. Kelly: They came to see you? And I got off the airplane and Ran had been asleep.

02:26:13.340 - 02:26:28.820

And when he woke up, he was just sopping wet from head to toe because he had been perspiring and stuff. And there wasn't a square inch of space anyplace that I could find to change that child.

02:26:29.820 - 02:26:54.920

So I finally ended up changing him on the ticket counter. First of all, when I went looking around for a place to change him, there was this lovely Indian lady in the most beautiful sari, and she had these gorgeous filigree earrings and everything else.

02:26:55.300 - 02:27:16.160

Anyhow, she was holding Fran for me while I went running around looking for a square inch of space because there just was none available. And I came back and Fran was entertaining half of the people at the airport, all these people.

02:27:16.570 - 02:27:32.600

They just loved babies. I think the fact that they had such a high mortality rate with infants, that an infant something very, very precious to him, and he was just having a ball entertaining all these people at the airport.

02:27:34.580 - 02:27:56.420

We went and met Frank at Singapore. I think Fran was probably two years old before he decided his father could stay. It took him that long, because he didn't meet him until he was six months old. So how long did you live in the division?

02:27:56.420 - 02:28:15.400

We were there a little under a year. How did you spend your time when Frank was gone? Well, it was very country club living type thing. In fact, to the point where we did not feel that that really was the way that we wanted

02:28:15.480 - 02:28:38.040

to raise a family because the servants raised the kids there and the parents were socializing. Were you in kind of a compound area? It was a housing compound area, yes. With mostly diplomats?

02:28:39.140 - 02:29:00.440

Or were there military mixed in? I think we were intermingled with company executives. It would have been all company, not diplomatic. Company executives, both American and Dutch.

02:29:02.240 - 02:29:26.260

There was quite a great deal of resentment with the Dutch because they came down there for salaries that were much better than they could make in Holland, but they were not the same salaries that they paid the Americans for comparable work. They hired them at what they could get them for.

02:29:26.960 - 02:29:39.160

So they resented the fact that the Americans made a great deal more money. Kelly: What was Frank's job? He was a pilot. Kelly: Executives or flying equipment?

02:29:39.630 - 02:29:59.260

Reifeldt: I think primarily executives, but I think he didn't fly equipment particularly, but I don't think it was just only executives. I really don't know. He flew the airplane, that's all I bothered about.

02:29:59.890 - 02:30:14.400

Kelly: So you stayed there about a year? Reifeltt: A little under a year. Kelly: And then when you came back, what did you do? Beall: He went to fly for Michigan-Wisconsin Pipeline, and there he flew executive pilots,

02:30:14.600 - 02:30:32.160

flying the executive personnel. Kelly: And at that point, did you just have the one son? Beall: At that point. And then, Fran, he was Fran to us, rather than little Frankie and stuff.

02:30:32.660 - 02:30:52.280

He goes by Frank now. So he's friend to all of his friends, but he's still friend to his mama. He was eight years old when Michael was born. We were living in Grosse Pointe Woods in Michigan at the time.

02:30:53.540 - 02:31:23.620

And then we moved out to twelve acres out by Plymouth, Michigan, which at that point in time it was country, so that we had to have a septic system and well and all that sort of stuff. And then it was five years between Michael and Will.

02:31:25.260 - 02:31:45.400

So it took me twenty years to get my kids into kindergarten, and I did not have the Emptiness Syndrome. I danced in the street. But it was wonderful fun because it was seeing life through a child's eyes, like having

02:31:45.640 - 02:32:03.780

three only children. I had time to spend with each one. So there is an advantage to having them close together, but it was certainly a pleasure having them to where each one was.

02:32:06.050 - 02:32:14.340

I had time for each one. Did you get involved with their school activities? Kennedy: Oh, yes. As I say, I didn't.

02:32:14.890 - 02:32:43.260

Kelly: PTA mother. Kennedy: Room mother, PTA, 4-H, you name it. After Frank died and moved to Whitefish, I was quite unhappy with the schools there, Because as I say, the high school I went to had so many things that they did not have.

02:32:44.440 - 02:33:12.440

So I think I attended more school board meetings than the school board members did. I spent that part of my life being Fran's mom, Mike's mom, and Will's mom. I enjoyed it very much. How did you get through that sad time of losing Fran?

02:33:13.960 - 02:33:42.140

What got you through that? My kids were a wonderful help, but I feel that life is for the living, that you don't just quit living. If you're alive, you keep living.

02:33:44.420 - 02:34:05.340

I had not planned on making any changes in my life. I figured I'd at least take a year before so that I wouldn't do something just on the spur of the moment. But we had planned, the way we used to work it is we would usually have the vacation,

02:34:05.560 - 02:34:31.180

the summer vacation would be something with the kids. I would try to take the kids both to see Frank's mother and to go home to see mom. We always lived way far away from the family, we weren't close. So I thought it was important that they should know their family.

02:34:35.120 - 02:35:03.400

Then when that would be summer vacations, then Frank and I would try to take a vacation the two of us. He died in May, and we had already made plans for the summer vacations. I was going back to Black Eagle with Will, and Michael was going to go on a mountain

02:35:03.480 - 02:35:32.220

hiking trip in Colorado. Fran had already finished college and he was doing postgraduate work at Wayne State University, but he had an apartment down in Detroit. I figured that there's nothing that would be of any value to not do the vacations that

02:35:31.980 - 02:35:55.300

we had planned, so that I came to Montana. Will had not been to Glacier Park, so that was one of the things that I wanted to do on that trip, for him to get to see Glacier Park. He was in third grade at that time.

02:35:57.900 - 02:36:28.580

We got up to Whitefish Lake, and it was so beautiful that I started—well, I looked at this one house and decided that I would scout a few more houses. So I looked all along Flathead Lake and the rest of Whitefish Lake and came back and bought the first house I had looked at and went back to Grosse Pointe and sold the house there.

02:36:31.340 - 02:36:52.340

The kids did not want to move before school started. We had moved several times and moved during the summertime. Well, then they have all summer with not making friends and everything. They wanted a chance to say goodbye to their friends in Grosse Pointe, and they would immediately

02:36:52.500 - 02:37:18.820

go out and be in with a school group again. So we moved, I think it was October if I'm not mistaken, to Whitefish then. And of course, Fran was on his own in Detroit. It was just such a wonderful place.

02:37:22.400 - 02:37:48.340

I was afraid to live in the city and have to have the two kids on my own. Rose Point was too affluent of a community, an area, and the kids had too much and too little supervision. When it was the two of us, we'd say, "We don't care what people do.

02:37:48.780 - 02:38:10.880

We don't do that." I just thought, "Well, I don't know if I can do it." Whitefish, we were fifteen minutes from the top of the ski run, and overlooking a lake, and had all the hiking and all the outdoor activities that they wanted and everything

02:38:11.020 - 02:38:24.880

else. That was just a wonderful place to go with two boys that I still had to be responsible for. We had a wonderful time.

02:38:26.160 - 02:38:58.900

Kelly: Then when those boys left home, eventually what did you do? Beall: Well, I stayed there until after Will—Michael went to—well, he went to one year, one session at the University of Minnesota. He was interested in journalism and didn't like the big school at all, so he came back.

02:38:59.420 - 02:39:22.220

Fran had gone to Western Michigan at Kalamazoo, and then he was doing the postgraduate work at Wayne State. So Michael decided that he would much prefer going to Missoula. So he was finished at Missoula, and then by that time Will was ready to start in, and

02:39:22.380 - 02:39:51.640

he went to Princeton. And so, as I say there again, I have a nice long spread, but I still got kids in school. So I guess I stayed in Whitefish probably longer than any place else that I have lived. After Will left to go to school, how did you spend your time?

02:39:53.960 - 02:40:18.440

I was very active in the theater and I was very active in community work because there There was so much developing going on within zoning and just trying environmental activities and things like that. I had something that I was doing all the time.

02:40:22.120 - 02:40:52.960

Montana is a very friendly place, so there was no problem there. When I finally decided that it was time to move, it took me a long, long time. I lived seven miles out of town, and when we first moved there, there were only three Three families stayed down on the lake during the wintertime.

02:40:53.290 - 02:41:23.780

We were one of them, and it was wonderful. We could cross-country ski on the road before they plowed it and things like that. The kids loved skiing, and they liked boating and things like that. I had had some surgery on my neck where I had to have a couple of vertebrae spliced.

02:41:24.160 - 02:41:53.700

I fell off the top of a seven-foot ladder. I was painting Will's room and finally did in my vertebrae. And after that, I had a nine-horsepower snowblower that I used to blow in my own driveway and had a couple hundred feet of driveway down to the road.

02:41:57.640 - 02:42:21.020

And just figured that I had not better do that. I'm sure that eventually I probably would have. Something else would have come undone, unglued by that time. I found that to have to sit and wait for somebody to come and plow me out when I wanted to go

02:42:21.060 - 02:42:43.360

in the morning and they didn't plow me out until the afternoon. Keeping a house is really more than a one-person job anyway. I just figured that it was time to make a move, and to make a move when I had options where I could do what I wanted to do.

02:42:44.060 - 02:43:16.260

And also, I sold the house there and didn't have any idea where I wanted to go. But I was down visiting Michael and Mary, who lived in Colorado Springs at the time. I looked around at some apartments while I was there. So when I did sell the house, I decided, "Well, Colorado Springs is as good a place as any

02:43:16.340 - 02:43:41.120

to go," because I didn't have any place special. So I went down there and I lived there for three years, I guess. I had a studio in Montana in the garage. I was making jewelry and doing metal sculpting.

02:43:44.420 - 02:44:03.180

When I lived in Grosse Pointe, I had gone to Wayne State and silversmithing class and stuff like that. I had the casting, lost-wax casting equipment, and a whole bunch of stuff. I had my studio in the garage there.

02:44:04.000 - 02:44:28.820

When I moved to Colorado Springs, I rented a studio in Manitou Springs and did my jewelry work there. Then the arthritis got to where my hands weren't really doing what I wanted them to do, doing small chains and things like that.

02:44:29.800 - 02:44:57.780

So I decided it was time to maybe kind of—well, I still have some of my hand equipment with me where I haven't completely given up hope that I can get something more done. Then after three years in Colorado Springs, I decided, well, maybe it was time to give up my studio.

02:44:59.720 - 02:45:20.880

So I thought, well, I can't think of where else I want to go except I have two real sweet grandkids in New Jersey that I would go and see. Every time I went to see them, I would see a brand new child, and it would take us two weeks to even begin to know each other.

02:45:21.680 - 02:45:56.140

So I moved to Hoboken, New Jersey. My son and daughter-in-law there had a house that was divided so that they lived in the half basement and first and second floor, and had an apartment on the third floor. So I moved in there, and I was right close to my grandkids, but all I had to do was close

02:45:56.100 - 02:46:09.160

the door and they had their privacy and I had my privacy. So I enjoyed that very, very much. This is a very short tape. This is a little tape.

02:46:09.740 - 02:46:24.080

I'm going to need to swap them. You're living on the third floor. So as I say, then I have a sister, Florence. My sister lives in Green Valley.

02:46:27.160 - 02:47:05.500

So when I was visiting her, I started looking at the retirement places here in Tucson and decided on Broadway Proper. My kids were not very happy with my moving. At that time, when I lived in Colorado Springs, he had decided that he would go back and he

02:47:05.580 - 02:47:33.340

He had gotten his degree at Princeton in physics, and he went back to get his Ph.D. at Colorado Springs. So he was at Boulder when I was at Colorado Springs. And then, after he got his degree, he had his first postdoc position.

02:47:33.540 - 02:48:02.560

He wants to stay in academia, hopefully. He went to—who is it that has the Atom Smasher there by Chicago? I should remember that. But anyway, he had a postdoc position there, and then he had one in Gainesville.

02:48:07.500 - 02:48:27.520

Michael was a news photographer in Albuquerque. So anyhow, I decided I was moving out west. We were kind of scattered around. So I moved out west, and immediately Michael moved to Washington, D.C., and Will moved

02:48:27.520 - 02:48:48.860

Manhattan to Columbia University. So, they just didn't want to be in the same part of the country that I'm in. So all three of them are back there now. Kelly: And now in Tucson, how do you spend your time?

02:48:48.980 - 02:49:17.500

What do you enjoy doing? I spend 24 hours doing, it takes me all day to do nothing. I don't exactly know why or what because, well, as I say, I'm taking this memoirs writing class and I've taken the computer class, but by the time you, the van here takes

02:49:17.440 - 02:49:32.400

you to the grocery store if you want to buy a loaf of bread and some bread and butter for toast in the morning. The van takes you and picks you up in an hour and a half, so it takes you all afternoon to buy a loaf of bread.

02:49:43.780 - 02:50:07.740

I've never lived a scheduled life. This is a totally different existence, something that is unbelievable. When I first started moving out here, it was an active retirement community, but apparently there were not enough active retirees who wanted to live in a community like this.

02:50:08.280 - 02:50:32.600

So it is very much more an assisted living thing than an active retirement community. So that was a bit of a culture shock. But just living in a retirement thing like this is a total culture shock, because I've been used to living out on my own.

02:50:32.600 - 02:50:49.700

Kelly: Have you gotten involved in theater at all in Tucson? I don't know that they have any. Some of the things—I'm limited. Right now, I'm back in the throes of deciding whether I really need to have a car or not,

02:50:50.000 - 02:51:13.480

because there are things that I would enjoy doing. But with the things now, like one of the neighbors and my friend, Emma Jean, had a car, and we could go where we wanted to, when we wanted to. But she decided it was time to quit driving.

02:51:15.560 - 02:51:42.720

When you are limited to the van, and I tried taxis, and the taxis in Tucson are terrible. I went down about twenty blocks the other day, just straight down Broadway, and it was ten dollars down and ten dollars back. When you're in New York, you think nothing about getting in a cab because you go someplace

02:51:42.820 - 02:52:10.600

in Hoboken, any place in Hoboken, there's two dollars in the cab and stuff. The fact that you wait, and it's just - people out here don't take cabs. drive. So that whether or not I'm back to that dilemma, do I feel that I need a car?

02:52:13.360 - 02:52:36.160

I hate to do that because it will be sitting out in the parking lot 95 percent of the time. So which is the best way to go? As far as your son is now, the one son that is in Washington, tell us what he does. He is a news photographer for CNN.

02:52:38.520 - 02:53:07.960

It's the CNN branch that supplies the news to most of the other stations. He does some work for CNN news, like on headline news occasionally and stuff. But primarily it is doing broadcasting for the various affiliates, and it's hard news that he does.

02:53:10.030 - 02:53:42.100

Kelly: Tell me about your grandchildren. Well, Stephen is a senior in high school this year, and he is thinking of—here goes another senior moment. I was trying to think of which college, because he has to decide on which college.

02:53:42.560 - 02:54:04.220

College he is going to be going to. Susan is in seventh grade this year. Kelly: The smartest child in school, right? Beall: No, not necessarily, but the nicest.

02:54:05.760 - 02:54:25.340

Kelly: And tell me, what is a Kenny Christmas like now? Do you get to get together? Reifeldt: Well, I did go back east for Christmas last year. Michael and Lori had come up from Washington.

02:54:27.400 - 02:54:48.680

Well, and Jeanette, of course, were living in Manhattan, so they had Christmas in Hoboken there. So I was there for the blizzard of 2000. And when I was scheduled to take off was the day that all the airports were closed.

02:54:51.640 - 02:55:08.860

So the next day when I finally got through—no, I think I finally went out to the airport because I couldn't get through. And they said, "Oh, you were supposed to have taken a flight out this morning." They had called my answering service here, and I apparently hadn't given them the number

02:55:08.980 - 02:55:19.100

in Hoboken. But anyway, I did get on a flight that—I didn't get on—I was waiting around for a flight that night. It was New Year's Eve.

02:55:20.660 - 02:55:49.100

And then the flight got stuck someplace down south, so I spent New Year's Eve in a motel in Newark, New Jersey. So I watched the ball drop on television, just like I would have if I'd been out here. (Laughter)

02:55:51.180 - 02:56:23.280

Oh, Alberta, in looking back over your life, you've done so many things. What is the one thing that you're most proud of? I would not categorize anything as a thing that I am most proud of. I think the WASPs are one of the things I feel most honored to have been able to do,

02:56:25.540 - 02:56:45.960

but I also feel that that was just one year of my life. I am very proud of my sons. I'm very happy with him. I have threatened to turn in my sons and keep my daughters-in-law.

02:56:52.620 - 02:57:06.700

I have two very sweet grandchildren. I love my granddaughter. I think it's fun having a granddaughter. When I was pregnant with Will, everybody said, "Oh, you should have a daughter."

02:57:06.700 - 02:57:22.840

I said, "I don't think I'd know how to handle a daughter. I better stick with what I know." But it sure enough has been fun having a granddaughter. Kelly: What is your opinion of Jacqueline Cochran and the WASP that she created?

02:57:22.910 - 02:57:54.820

Krikorian: I don't think that anybody else could have done the job that Jacqueline Cochran did. She was hard as nails and she had to have been to get where she was going to begin with. I think that she was as guilty of having the WASP disbanded as the other blames that people

02:57:54.820 - 02:58:32.600

put because she would not share the power with Ms. Hobby. I think it took her to do what was done, but she also was a big factor in the undoing of what was done, and I think that is much too bad. I guess maybe the women have gotten there now anyway.

02:58:33.460 - 02:58:53.360

But I think possibly where I feel a great deal of pride is not so much as I say what we did, as far as I was concerned, was just fun. We just had a wonderful time. But when I get on an airline and the first officer is a woman or the first officer is

02:58:53.400 - 02:59:29.300

a captain or you see the—like in Washington for the Women's Memorial dedication and the women pilots that never did get to do the flyover because of the weather, but there were these women who were there. The women's crew that was down in Sweetwater and all, there is where the pride comes in

02:59:29.620 - 02:59:51.400

because they are doing it. I feel very honored to have been able to be on the first step. I take pride in everything that they are accomplishing now, which I think is just wonderful. Kelly: What do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be?

02:59:55.480 - 03:00:23.260

Krikorian: I think that it will kind of waft away, just like all other legacies, military legacies have. I hope that we are remembered in history, but I think what women are doing at that time is more important than what somebody did way back when.

03:00:24.660 - 03:00:52.700

Because you think of the heroines of the Revolution and the Civil War and all. Yes, they were wonderful, but they're kind of drifting in that same gray zone, and that's where we belong. If you could say something to your great-grandchildren or children in the future that might encourage

03:00:52.860 - 03:01:24.660

them to succeed, what would you like to say to them? Well, I think that—oh, this kind of might answer that. With my insignias and stuff, I've put a shadow box with all—and my charm bracelet and my dog tag and everything else.

03:01:27.720 - 03:01:45.100

I told Susan that I was going to give that to her. I said, "I'm not going to give it to you right now because I want it, but I'm going to give that to you." And she just stood there and she looked at it and she said, "But Grandma, what if I

03:01:45.140 - 03:01:56.500

don't want to fly?" And I said, "This doesn't mean you have to fly. This means you can do anything you want to do. All you have to do is want to do it.

03:02:01.300 - 03:02:19.240

Is there anything that I've left out? Anything about your training or your time as a WASP or your growing up? I can't imagine for the amount of talking I've been doing. I think I've covered about three lifetimes. [Laughter]

03:02:21.180 - 03:02:30.800

You've been a joy. Perhaps you've lived about three lifetimes. This has been a joy to do. It's been fun.

03:02:30.800 - 03:02:46.480

I thank you so much. Can I ask you just one, if you have a favorite word? I don't know what to, I probably have. Okay.

03:02:46.940 - 03:02:55.080

I really like her. Oh, thank you. She said, yeah, I did meet her. I guess I met in Omaha. Yeah, we did.

03:02:55.640 - 03:02:59.880

We're done. I think we're done. We really appreciate this. I think we've...

03:02:59.880 - 03:03:04.100

And we don't even get paid to do this. [Laughter]