00:00:00.000 - 00:00:11.080

because I, I, I, you know, I always say... I'm just rolling bars right now. That, um... Yeah, but you can tell us...

00:00:11.080 - 00:00:17.300

Okay, you go ahead, I interrupted you. Right. Well, that's pretty much, and Nancy has one instruction. One rule. One rule.

00:00:17.300 - 00:00:27.820

This is the rule, okay? You're in charge. I know WASPs like to be in charge, so we just start with that. If you want to stop, we stop. If you want, you know, stop five minutes,

00:00:27.890 - 00:00:46.900

turn on the air conditioner, get cool, whatever get some water or if you don't want to answer a question what she said but just just let me know. I can be like a movie star. Absolutely although we didn't have a stand-in I'm sorry we didn't have a stand-in. How do you feel? Good. All right rock and roll yeah ready to go we're rolling.

00:00:47.500 - 00:01:09.080

Okay I'm Deanie Parrish today we're interviewing Betty Jo Reed. Betty Jo was a WASP class 44-7. We are in the Champlain Fighter Aircraft Museum in Mesa, Arizona. The videographer is Nancy Parrish. Today is the 12th of November, 2001.

00:01:09.840 - 00:01:19.740

Okay, Betty Jo, if you would give us your full name and when and where you were born, and we'll go from there. Okay. Well, I was born Betty Jo Streff.

00:01:21.220 - 00:01:40.140

And my married name is Reed, R-E-E-D. Streff is a Luxembourg name, S-T-R-E-F-F. I was born in Sherman, Texas. I'm a Texan.

00:01:43.680 - 00:02:04.500

My father was building the mausoleum there. He was the general contractor for the Georgia Marble Company. And that's how come I was lucky enough to be born in Texas. Did your father travel around doing this job?

00:02:04.560 - 00:02:25.340

Yes. took about two years to build a mausoleum or a post office or dormitories. They did a lot of dormitories out in California. Did he work for a contractor?

00:02:25.740 - 00:02:42.820

No, he was the superintendent in charge of the building. He worked for the Georgia Marble Company. And how long did you stay in Sherman? Well, it must have been approximately two years before it was finished.

00:02:44.670 - 00:03:08.720

I don't know how much longer they were there. You know, you forget to ask those questions until it's too late. And tell me about your siblings. Well, my sister Mary Jane was six years older than I, and I did have another little sister

00:03:09.920 - 00:03:34.180

that was born when I was, well, she was born the day after Lindbergh landed. They were talking about naming her Lindy, but they named her Barbara Ann. But bless her little heart, when I was four, she died. She must have been about eighteen months old.

00:03:35.560 - 00:03:55.360

They didn't have anything for pneumonia then, so we lost her. Where did you move after you left? My sister was in school. She was in first grade.

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They didn't have kindergarten then. When they moved to Oklahoma City, where his next project was, because of her age or something, the date of her birth, they put her back in first grade. She was a very bright child and valedictorian all through school.

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And then there was me. Where did you live in Oklahoma? I don't know, because I was two. I was talking and I was talking Southern.

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I think he was finishing someone else's project there, so they were only there about six months. And then he found out that he decided that if this kind of life was going to put his children at risk in the schools, that he would have to cease this kind of traveling around. So he decided to, he would take one last building in Chicago, and that was the Acacia Park,

00:05:13.920 - 00:05:34.260

a beautiful big cemetery there. And Jo, do you have any idea of how they moved from one place to the other, as far as their furniture or their belongings? No, I don't think so.

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I don't know. I never heard him talk about it. Now maybe they just sold things or left them in the house or whatever they were renting. I don't know.

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Where were you living, your first recollections of where you lived? In Chicago. In Evanston, Illinois. Tell me about your grandparents.

00:06:06.540 - 00:06:26.160

On my mother's side, she was orphaned by her mother when she was nine. Then she lived with her grandparents. This was in Missouri. And her grandmother died when she was twelve.

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So Mother had a really hard life because people were poor in the country then. She had all these younger brothers and she had to take care of them. And then finally, somehow she ended up with some distant cousins, and she was sort of their Cinderella girl.

00:06:57.140 - 00:07:27.160

Yeah, she did all the work. And so when she was fourteen, I think, she discovered that she had some half-sisters, And she got in touch with the one in Hillsboro, Illinois, Aunt Ida, and wrote to them. Aunt Ida said to please come and live with her.

00:07:28.740 - 00:07:55.680

And that's how she learned how to be a lady and so forth, because she hadn't had those advantages. Now my dad was building a mausoleum there. I don't know how old she was then, but she had a really – back in those days, they

00:07:55.820 - 00:08:10.860

would have one store. Now this was a county seat, Hillsboro. And they had one store for women, and it was a very fancy store. things, you know.

00:08:12.040 - 00:08:29.240

And so she was the sales lady, one of the sales ladies there. I guess they had men's clothes, too. But anyway, so Daddy came in, and I guess he spotted her and eventually talked her into marrying him.

00:08:30.320 - 00:08:46.960

He was building a mausoleum there in Hillsboro. Now my sister and I have gone around to a lot of the places that he had built and taken pictures and they're just beautiful. Is there a plaque on them that says who built them?

00:08:47.100 - 00:08:52.320

No. No. Yeah. And your dad's parents?

00:08:53.020 - 00:09:25.560

My dad's parents, I've seen the home that my grandfather Streff grew up in over in Luxembourg. And his parents left there with five—I think my great-grandfather had four brothers. So these five young men came over to America. And they—wait a minute, how does that work out?

00:09:26.140 - 00:09:57.340

I'm a little vague on this, because my grandfather was eight years old when they came over, these five brothers. And all we know is that they landed in New York and then they ended up in Port Washington, Wisconsin. And if you don't think that's a curiosity for somebody, how did they get there and how did they even know about

00:09:57.340 - 00:10:21.840

it. Well, anyway, this home in this little village over in Luxembourg, there was a 91-year-old gentleman living in it, and he invited me to go and see the home. He was one of those real dapper little guys that would walk around town.

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But the thing that you couldn't help noticing was how much smaller everything was. The steps were smaller, going up to the second floor, and the ceilings weren't as high. But it was a lovely place. Outside they had the window boxes with the pretty flowers, and it was real fun to go

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back there. My father was the ninth child, and late, unexpected. So he was so much younger than the rest of them. John Nicholas Streff and Nellie Ruth Dilworth were my parents.

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I didn't know any of my grandparents on my mother's side because of her early death, but her father was supposedly a sheriff. We've tried to find out more about that. On my mother's side, there's a very interesting thing.

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She had heard that she was French-Irish and English. So that's what I'd always write, Luxembourg, French-Irish and English, never being able to spell it as a little kid, none of it. We just always assumed that, but my sister's husband was in the legislature in California,

00:12:15.840 - 00:12:42.940

so she and some of those gals got interested in genealogy. And she found out, one day she called and she said, "Betty, you will never believe this, we aren't English, we're Swedish." So it seems that this great-great-whatever, Grandfather Stalker, came over as a common

00:12:43.160 - 00:13:25.120

seaman from Sweden. The boat and everything, they got it all, she's got it all down. and he arrived and so forth. He arrived on Delaware, whatever the name of the town is, where the Wilmington, thank you, osmosis, Wilmington, Delaware, and he, his son donated

00:13:25.340 - 00:13:40.420

the land that the Smith Church is on, and all that's written down too. So my sister and I went, no, my daughter and I went back there and found all that, which was very interesting. But that was early.

00:13:41.540 - 00:13:59.240

I don't know the date, but it was real early. Did you ever meet your grandparents on your father's side? Only my grandfather, Streff. My grandmother, because my dad was so much younger, my grandmother lived to be eighty-five,

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I think. My grandfather lived to be ninety-seven, and I knew him, but I didn't know my grandmother. She died before I was born. My grandfather, as he got very old, my mother and dad had him to come and live with us.

00:14:23.500 - 00:14:43.900

He had walked from Port Washington when he was a young man to claim some land down in Illinois, central Illinois. I can't even imagine that, but I guess people walked a lot of places then. If you didn't have a horse, it was like not having a car now.

00:14:46.700 - 00:15:14.520

So Loda and Paxton Buckley is where he settled and farmed. All those people have been stonemasons over in Luxembourg, or carpenters. So my dad came by that normally. But my grandfather's staff was, I was probably five or so when he came to live with us.

00:15:16.020 - 00:15:45.920

And he would play cards with me. He would be out in the sunroom and Mother could see through the house from the kitchen. I can remember her saying, "Now, Father, don't you cheat her." But anyway, a little girl that age doesn't know too much about Grandpa Streff.

00:15:47.220 - 00:16:14.740

But they were very proper. Down on the farm, Grandma Streff always served with china and crystal and silver because of the way she was brought up. Even though it wasn't the same kind of climate as she was used to with elegance and so forth.

00:16:18.800 - 00:16:37.860

They would always have a glass of wine at lunch and at dinner. I guess Grandpa Streff never drank water. I guess even that long ago, they didn't drink water in Europe. How many years did he live with your parents?

00:16:38.700 - 00:16:58.860

I think it might have been two years. Do you recall, perhaps during those two years, how you spent Christmas? What was a Christmas like? Well, I remember Christmases, that was during the Depression.

00:17:01.060 - 00:17:23.140

Of course, I didn't know it was a Depression. I would never, I mean, I didn't know that we didn't have anything, except at Christmas. We'd always have a tree, and we would exchange cards. I can remember Mother writing cards and receiving cards, and she'd read them to me.

00:17:27.620 - 00:17:45.720

I remember one Christmas I was so disappointed. I got a book from one relative, and I got some stationery from another one, and I got a doll from my parents. That was all I had, and other kids seemed to have a lot more.

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I just wondered if your grandparents being German, if there were any German traditions that you celebrated at Christmas? No. I don't think they considered themselves German.

00:18:01.880 - 00:18:31.400

Apparently they came down from, what did they call that up there, Switzerland and so forth? It almost comes to me what they called that before they divided up into countries. They came down to Luxembourg from there, which probably might have been the Switzerland area. In Chicago, where did you live?

00:18:31.500 - 00:18:53.880

Did you live in the city or did you live out? In Chicago, we were living, waiting for, Mother and Daddy were looking for a house. He wanted to be in the suburbs. They had looked quite a bit, apparently, from what I hear from my sister.

00:18:56.940 - 00:19:12.880

They decided on displaying. They were waiting for the house to be finished. We were living in something. All I can remember is, I would go out in the backyard and play.

00:19:13.380 - 00:19:41.520

It just had a simple fence, but there was an alley. And in those days, the fruit and vegetable guy came, and I imagine he was probably Italian because for the most part, as a little tiny type, two years old or three, all I could do was, when I'd hear him, I'd get scared to death and run to the back porch and holler,

00:19:48.260 - 00:20:00.480

"Mother!" Then there was the ragpicker, and he came by with his horse and cart. And that's what I remember. Do you recall starting school?

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Oh, yes. Yes, I definitely recall that. It turned out to be pretty horrible. I was excited to go to school.

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We didn't have kindergarten then either. And as I say, it was still depression. It was a little West Side school in Des Plaines, and it was probably three and a half blocks away.

00:20:36.360 - 00:20:58.300

And I was all excited. I don't remember why, but all of a sudden I was put out behind the door. We didn't have many kids in my neighborhood to play with, so I think I was excited. Maybe I was talking.

00:20:58.480 - 00:21:22.420

I've never known. But my sister being always the top student, the door finally got closed. They didn't even, I'm out there all by myself standing behind what used to be the door. Well, down the stairs comes my sister with the wastebasket.

00:21:22.640 - 00:21:35.840

You know how it is, the top students always get to do the little errands down to the janitor's room or something. And here comes my sister, Mary Jane. She's in sixth grade and I'm in first.

00:21:38.860 - 00:21:49.860

"Why, Betty, what are you doing out there? And I burst into tears and crying. I was so hurt. I thought, this is all bad enough.

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I didn't have any idea what I was doing out there. But that was my first day of school. And from then on, I disliked school. But I found out many, many years later, and lots of years

00:22:04.940 - 00:22:19.300

later, that there was a learning disability problem. because I knew I was smart. But those spelling bees, I was always the first one down. It didn't matter what.

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If you don't think I dreaded that. That was so humiliating. And then as I went on through the next classes, I didn't learn to like school any better. And I flunked fourth grade.

00:22:34.980 - 00:22:52.440

Do you think it stemmed from that first punishment? No. I think that maybe that first punishment was because I was a learning disability child. And they didn't realize it? Well, they couldn't have the first day, but no, they didn't know that then.

00:22:53.200 - 00:23:15.060

Even my oldest son had this problem, and he was born in '49. And so all through his school years, they didn't know a thing about it. They just started learning about it with my son John. And he was born in '60.

00:23:16.560 - 00:23:28.960

In that elementary school, what did you enjoy about school? Which subject? Soccer. I'd come back and play soccer with the boys.

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I liked art. Enjoyed that. Do you recall any specific teacher in elementary that might have influenced you? Not in a good way.

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Okay. I mean, no. I had that problem with, now I've forgotten her name for a minute, but the first grade teacher.

00:23:54.500 - 00:24:09.500

And then I went to second grade and that was Miss Bauer, and she was kind of a fat, unpleasant lady that never smiled. Miss Bauer. And what does she do?

00:24:09.600 - 00:24:28.700

But she follows me to third grade. So far I'm not doing too well. And see, I just couldn't read. And you don't think any of it had to do with your sister being so smart?

00:24:28.880 - 00:24:53.080

No, I don't think. Oh, well, in first grade, my first report card wasn't very good. And so the second report card I got was even worse, and there was an F on it. And so I took my little eraser and smudged over and wore the paper off and then I took

00:24:53.160 - 00:25:15.500

the pencil and put an A there. So you can see I thought I was smart but I don't think I was very smart. But anyway that turned out to be quite unpleasant. Just a humiliation.

00:25:15.540 - 00:25:39.280

Right. Aside from soccer, what else did you enjoy? Well, I liked art and I liked socializing with the children. During the summers, Betty, would you get vacations? Yes, we had summer vacation, but because my father was in the building business,

00:25:39.540 - 00:26:06.500

we could only take off at the Christmas holidays. And then we would go back to Texas usually for the two weeks visiting friends and relatives. Do you recall any special Christmas that you did that, what you did when you got to Texas? Oh, I remember one time we were still driving the big old Studebaker touring car.

00:26:06.540 - 00:26:25.020

That's what we came up from Texas in. So this was probably only a few years after that, but it was this great big beautiful touring car. We were down in West Texas somewhere, at least it was flat.

00:26:30.320 - 00:26:57.580

There was a big herd of cattle coming, big old long-armed cattle. They didn't have the icing glass put up on the side, so here were all these bawling cows going around the car because it was a huge herd. The cowboys were all there with them and everything, but all their rolling eyes and everything.

00:26:58.520 - 00:27:16.880

That was a big impression on me. It was kind of scary. I remember other vacations, once we were on our way down there and Daddy took a different route.

00:27:17.260 - 00:27:46.320

There weren't very many good roads in those days. When I was twelve, my mother found a saved little thing. You know, teachers sometimes would have you write when you'd come into class. When I was twelve, the teacher had me write this thing, "What nationality are you?"

00:27:46.320 - 00:28:06.560

and, "What church do you go to?" and, "What did you do last summer?" all kinds of questions like that. And what do you want to do when you grow up? Well, on those trips to Texas, Daddy would come home from work and we'd start out driving

00:28:07.400 - 00:28:27.720

at night. And because cars didn't go too fast and the roads were really poor. And so he liked to drive at night, so apparently we'd stop sometime and I'd probably be asleep and they'd carry me in or something.

00:28:27.880 - 00:28:47.040

But then we would drive on at night and we'd go in these restaurants to get coffee, these all-night truckers stops. And I used to look at those truckers. Now bear in mind I'm probably six or seven years old.

00:28:50.600 - 00:29:09.420

They all looked like they were having so much fun with those waitresses. They were always laughing and carrying on, you know, and I thought, "Boy, that's a nice thing to do." And so I think I'd always wanted to be a pilot, or I found it fascinating.

00:29:11.240 - 00:29:27.560

So on the part that said, "What do you want to do?" I wanted to be a stewardess, that's how it was spelled. I still got that paper. A pilot or a truck driver.

00:29:29.150 - 00:29:52.840

Let me ask you, when did you first see an airplane? What made you get interested in being a pilot? You know, I really don't know, but before, when I was real little and up until, I don't know when, but it just was common nature for me.

00:29:53.240 - 00:30:05.080

I'd have these, I wouldn't be really awake, but I wouldn't be asleep, and I'd be flying around the house. I flew around the house. I'd fly under the doors and around.

00:30:05.660 - 00:30:20.340

Now I've talked to people who flew outside. I never flew outside, but I didn't talk to anybody about this for years until somebody mentioned it and I said, "Oh, somebody else." It seems like it's quite common.

00:30:22.560 - 00:30:47.440

But my dad used to take us, I know we'd go bumping across old cornfields and then he'd line up with the rest of the cars. I don't know, there might be ten or twenty at the most. And all of a sudden, they'd be watching and there would come an airplane and they'd fly

00:30:47.620 - 00:31:18.160

by, I guess they were barnstormers, and they would fly by and pick up handkerchiefs upside down and have wing walkers and parachutists. Before he died, I never asked him how he knew which field to go to. Now maybe they announced it in the paper, but you see when I was little, I could hardly

00:31:18.180 - 00:31:40.580

wait for my dad to come home. He would sit down at the breakfast nook, and he kept his boots and his shoes under the bench. He would take off his work shoes and put those under the bench, and put on his either slippers

00:31:40.760 - 00:31:58.980

or his everyday shoes. Then he would go get the newspaper, and he would go sit down in the living room in his chair and I would get up on his lap and he would read me the paper. Now this is displaying to Illinois so naturally we're getting the Chicago paper.

00:32:00.440 - 00:32:16.120

And naturally almost every night there'd be pictures of the gangs laying on the street shot dead or you know. Well he wouldn't read those things. Every once in a while he'd make a mistake and read me something like that.

00:32:16.900 - 00:32:46.100

But he'd read me things that I just wanted to be near him, and so I'd listen to all that. But he'd read me about Lindbergh and about flying, and I think had he not been married and had the children, he probably would have wanted to be a pilot. I know when he was younger, he always had Indian motorcycles and that he would go back

00:32:46.060 - 00:33:11.180

and forth to work on and so forth. Did he ever take you for a ride? No, he'd forbid me. That was the one thing I couldn't do was ride a motorcycle. I think he almost killed himself one time on a gravel road. And my husband felt the same way. He just, I wanted to ride a motorcycle but I never, never really got to. When you

00:33:11.400 - 00:33:29.540

finished elementary school and started in junior high, did you change school Dana: Yes, we were fortunate in this, Blaine's. That's where the high school, the Township High School had been, out on Thacker Road, south of town.

00:33:29.700 - 00:33:56.700

I lived west of town. And so it was probably about, probably a little better than a mile, a mile and a half to school. And it was the old high school, so it had a swimming pool and a gym, and it was really a great school for a junior high.

00:33:57.360 - 00:34:09.180

So that was seventh and eighth grade. And how did you get to and from school? Well, either walked or ride my bicycle. They didn't have buses or anything then.

00:34:10.160 - 00:34:28.560

At that point, what was your dad now doing? He was building houses. He was building houses until during the war. He couldn't get good help, so he quit and just started building cabinets, beautiful

00:34:28.700 - 00:34:46.520

kitchen cabinets, built-ins, and stairs, oak stairways. They were so pretty. He was a real craftsman. In junior high, was that a good period in your life?

00:34:47.360 - 00:35:01.740

I think it was. I had a lot of good friends and the kids from North School and South School and West School, we all made new friends that way. That was my baseball period.

00:35:03.060 - 00:35:09.100

What position did you play? A pitcher. How good were you? Very good.

00:35:10.480 - 00:35:33.120

Outstanding. In fact, our team, we had such a good girls team, this is a funny story, and I don't know how I ever had the nerve to do this, but we were so good that we could beat the boys. And sometimes the boys would let me pitch instead of Courtney Forsberg.

00:35:34.160 - 00:35:50.260

So I thought we were pretty good, see? Well, we couldn't find anybody else to play, and I had heard that Chicago had a girls team. And how I got hold of this person, I'll never know. I don't remember any of the details.

00:35:50.750 - 00:36:17.820

It took me a long time to find out how to talk to one of those girls. And I called this one finally, and I have no idea if it was one of those professional teams or just some sandlot group of girls. But I called and told her about my story that we needed to play with somebody that was better

00:36:19.440 - 00:36:37.680

because we were really good. That if we could just play a game someday when they were practicing, because I knew that we couldn't have a special day. But she said, "Well, let me check my schedule."

00:36:37.840 - 00:36:56.980

I mean, she didn't say, "Well, you silly child." She said, "Let me check my schedule." And so she came back on the phone and said, "You know, I'm so sorry, but," she said, "it just seems like we are just totally filled up."

00:36:56.980 - 00:37:09.000

He said, "I wish that we could share some time with you, but we're so busy." Wasn't that nice? DC: That was nice. HD: I've thought about that many times, not to discourage people.

00:37:10.740 - 00:37:34.900

DC: When you finished eighth grade, then did you move into a different school? HD: We went to Maine Township High School, which was halfway between Park Ridge and Des Plaines. Now Park Ridge was a little wealthier town, and they had a country club and a golf course and everything.

00:37:35.720 - 00:37:58.960

But back in those days, nobody differentiated between what your parents had. We didn't even know what any fathers did back then. You didn't ask people. But I can remember I liked going to school by then, and I was probably the nerve or whatever

00:37:59.120 - 00:38:22.380

the nerve and whatever was growing, and I was doing better in school. I think I got a D in algebra, and that was pretty good. I could have gotten an F. No, I got a C in geometry then, the second time. Simply because I like to know why.

00:38:24.300 - 00:38:57.320

In geometry, we had a beautiful school and it had a tower and the art tower was the top two, fourth and fifth floor. One day, soon after I started geometry, we went out to the far corner of the school grounds. and they showed us how to measure the tower. They gave me a reason for math.

00:38:57.940 - 00:39:31.940

Algebra had no reason. They told me nothing that it would ever do. You know, this is monkey business. So I knew that it was worthwhile and I must have studied. And of course my mother didn't have any of that kind of education and And my father, his, going back, his father retired when he was about in fifth grade.

00:39:32.960 - 00:39:47.880

Went to Evanston and lived there. And left the older brother, Uncle Frank, in charge of the farm. After sixth grade, he wouldn't let my father go to school anymore. He had to work on the farm.

00:39:49.320 - 00:40:23.420

My dad got in touch with his oldest sister in Chicago. Her husband was a watchmaker and jeweler from Luxembourg. One time he had won the watchmaking at the Paris, some big Paris show. They said he could come and live with them.

00:40:24.460 - 00:40:48.640

They taught him to be, he could engrave and he learned watchmaking. They had three sons, no they had a daughter and two sons, and they were just slightly younger than my father. One was six months younger and one was a year and a half younger.

00:40:49.600 - 00:41:05.080

But if you've ever heard much about Chicago, there was a place called Division Street, and that sort of divided the Irish from everybody else. We need to change film. Okay.

00:41:06.140 - 00:41:10.800

Okay. Am I jabbering too much? No, you're doing great. Are you okay?

00:41:11.040 - 00:41:20.780

Do you want some water? I just found these. I bought them when I was back. And they're almost as bad as clips.

00:41:21.940 - 00:41:30.220

But they named her Barbara. That was a big deal then. It was, yeah. Everything about him was a big deal.

00:41:31.900 - 00:41:57.720

Let me ask you, when you were growing up in school, did your parents participate in any school activities, PTA, anything? Yes, Mother was very active in the church and in school. Being a Depression and Dysplaines, they didn't have anything to help kids.

00:41:58.260 - 00:42:23.600

So she would cook, make soup, vegetable soup or potato soup or whatever. She'd go over and cook in the little janitor's room and give the poor kids soup and charge, I think, a penny for the other kids. She was real good about doing things like that.

00:42:25.380 - 00:42:46.920

Like when they'd have school night or whatever they had, she would always bring cookies and she did a lot of things. DC: Once you got into junior high, what were your social activities like? BB: I think Bill's calling.

00:42:49.340 - 00:43:08.400

What did you ask? In junior high, for example, what were your social activities like? Were you involved in church activities? Ruth: I was involved in, yes, I discovered that there were other churches other than

00:43:08.480 - 00:43:35.460

the – I went to the M.E. Church, Methodist Episcopalian. I discovered that the congregational had much more fun than we did. So in fact, that's where we had Girl Scouts at that church.

00:43:36.400 - 00:44:00.000

And of course, I didn't mention this, but my mother was raised apparently Episcopal, Methodist Episcopal. They were still together at that time. My father was Catholic, so I think there was a lot of trouble about deciding if she should

00:44:00.080 - 00:44:31.660

marry him because there were so many misunderstandings about Catholicism back in those days like there still is. I grew up going to many functions in the Catholic Church, but because for some reason my father decided that maybe because my mother wouldn't become Catholic or wouldn't raise us Catholic,

00:44:32.920 - 00:44:59.140

that perhaps he had reasons not to push it. He wasn't a member, but all the family was. We had a lot of relatives on his side, and they were all. So I would go to, in fact, when I go to a Catholic church now, I miss the Latin, because

00:44:59.200 - 00:45:10.200

I thought that was fascinating, all the chanting. I loved that. Tell me about your girl scouting times. Did you go on summer camps?

00:45:10.380 - 00:45:23.340

No, we didn't have money for that. Apparently that's why I didn't go. Do you remember a particular scout leader that- No I don't.

00:45:23.340 - 00:45:49.320

I just remember it was very pleasant. We'd go at night and we'd have to walk home. You know, things were safe in those days. I met Helen Jean Otto when we were in grade school, and must have met her in fourth grade

00:45:49.380 - 00:46:07.700

because she was in my class. We went through school the rest of the time together, so she must have been there the second time I went through fourth grade. We got to be really good friends, and she was an artist, turned out to be an artist,

00:46:08.400 - 00:46:37.800

and I would be a would-be artist, or could be, or whatever. We would go out to the forest preserve. There were a lot of forest preserves, the Cook County Forest Service. We could take our little sandwich or our hot dog or whatever we were going to have, and

00:46:37.880 - 00:46:58.920

we could go to the woods and paint or draw. It was about three miles, but people didn't have to worry in those days. In fact, to go swimming to the Methodist campgrounds, which was the only place in the Plains that had a swimming pool, that was three miles.

00:47:00.720 - 00:47:20.180

At first, my mother would go with me. After I learned to swim, and if my sister was going to be going, then we could go together. When you would draw out in the woods, would you be drawing scenery? Uh-huh.

00:47:21.360 - 00:47:34.680

Yeah. Do you still have some of those? I doubt it. You know, when we were, I don't know what year this was, but I was going to start writing

00:47:34.780 - 00:47:53.060

my history. And we had just moved from Denver, so it must have been '57. I mean, it must have been '81 or something like that. We were living in Mexico, but we had an apartment here and storage.

00:47:53.190 - 00:48:23.440

We moved everything out of our big house in Lowlton. What we didn't sell, we put in storage here. The fellow that worked for Carl ever since he was eighteen, he worked in all the McDonald's that we had through the years, he came after Carl sold in '80.

00:48:24.880 - 00:48:56.260

He came here to be at the water company that Carl had bought. He would bring me three big boxes every day and take three back. I would go through all this paper, photographs, and everything that was important in my life. I put it in three boxes about that big, moving boxes and one liquor box.

00:48:57.540 - 00:49:29.420

I got those three filled and so forth, why we left to go to Mexico. And of course we had an airplane and we flew down and then we had a, they called it a combi, the Volkswagen bus, and we left that out at the airport. And so we loaded that up, and it turned out it was a big Mexican holiday that weekend.

00:49:29.680 - 00:49:59.660

So we had, I might as well say it, we had a little penthouse down there. It was the 17th and 18th floor on the first high rise in Mazatlan. And they were condos, it was a condo next to the Holiday Inn. And they were built together by some people in Mexico.

00:50:02.020 - 00:50:23.620

And so they had guys that worked there, but there was a parking lot in front, but it was full because it was a Mexican holiday. And a lot of the owners there were Mexican. besides that people would come down from like now from the north that had condos there.

00:50:25.900 - 00:50:47.120

Well I kept thinking we better get those boxes. I didn't want to leave the boxes in the plane so we put them in the Gombe. And I said to Carl a couple of times, "Don't you think we better get the boxes? No, they'll be alright." I could have had those boys go get those boxes So I can't blame my husband.

00:50:48.380 - 00:51:16.680

But about three o'clock in the morning, we get a phone call from the guys downstairs saying that somebody was outside and they noticed that somebody was driving off from our car and the back was open and they saw them put a box in their truck. And so we go down, and sure enough, they'd opened the butterfly window and gotten in

00:51:16.760 - 00:51:42.460

that way, and they'd taken my boxes, which meant nothing to them. They were pictures of my babies, pictures of me as a baby, pictures of my relatives, all my books from Doug—all my newspapers from Douglas, the Sweetwater newspapers. that meant anything to me that would jog my memory.

00:51:44.520 - 00:51:57.340

All gone. I almost lost my mind that time. The television station announced it. The newspaper put an article in.

00:51:58.900 - 00:52:17.040

The radios talked about it. I would take that combi and I would go every place in Mazatlan. I would go wherever you could drive a car, where they could dump it in the water. And finally, Carl said, "We've got to go."

00:52:17.040 - 00:52:27.720

We had another home in Guadalajara, and he said, "We've got to get you out of here. You're going to lose your mind." So – DC: But you never found them?

00:52:28.000 - 00:52:55.480

never all those pictures of my babies and everything. The kids growing up. I have very few that I accumulated from relatives. Let me go back to your when you went on into high school. What was your ambition? I think I wanted to go to art school. That was the only thing I was good at. And I knew

00:52:55.360 - 00:53:14.480

that my dad didn't make the kind of money that if I went to college I would go for fun because I did enjoy people and having a good time. In high school were you still involved in sports? Yes.

00:53:15.220 - 00:53:28.540

Did you have organized teams that competed against other high schools? No. They hadn't started that yet. I was like old secretary in the girls club.

00:53:31.060 - 00:53:48.420

I of course never made it to the honor societies or anything, but I did have lots of friends, Park Ridge friends. I ran in a couple of crowds. I enjoyed high school.

00:53:48.780 - 00:54:06.540

Were there other activities, for example, in the music field or drama, speech? I was afraid of that. I was afraid to talk. I didn't take, I should have, but I didn't even take any kind of speech classes.

00:54:08.080 - 00:54:21.420

I was afraid. You know, it's so funny when I think now I can't shut up. But they had everything. They had every kind of club.

00:54:21.600 - 00:54:49.260

It was a really nice school. But like camera club and Spanish club and German club and all those things. I was active in sports and of course we had all the football and everything. In fact, I still got scars on the front of my legs where we played field hockey in the

00:54:49.380 - 00:55:08.480

fall, you know, until the boys were through with football with our bloomer outfits, you know. And if I was lucky and get down there quick enough, I might be able to get one shin guard. I never had two, but, you know, they just didn't supply girls with things.

00:55:09.980 - 00:55:25.840

But sometimes, you know, it got pretty darn cold in November for us out there in those blue bloomer things. Did you learn to ski and ice skate? I ice skated a little bit.

00:55:26.080 - 00:55:36.960

Now that was another thing. I found an arch support laying on the sidewalk one time. My arches were, I mean, ankle support. I had one ankle support.

00:55:37.100 - 00:55:55.200

I loved to do it and I'd walk that same distance, three miles, out to this place that had water in it. It was out near the swimming pool. So it was three miles and sometimes you'd be so cold.

00:55:55.360 - 00:56:13.560

You know, Illinois is cold. But I was a weak, I had weak ankles, but that one ankle support. You know, you didn't ask your parents for things like they do now. Oh, I have to have an outfit, you know?

00:56:14.000 - 00:56:31.080

I mean, you just, you were darn lucky if you had skates. And I wanted hockey skates because I was a tomboy. You know, I lived on roller skates when I was a kid. And then I finally got my bicycle, I lived on the bicycle.

00:56:32.580 - 00:56:37.760

And growing up, did your mom make your clothes? Yes. Yes. Okay.

00:56:37.900 - 00:56:46.000

And then I learned to make them. In junior high, I was making mine. Were you in a home ec class or you just learned? I learned from mother.

00:56:46.500 - 00:57:02.500

But yes, I was in a home ec class. And it was the kind of a class that half of the year you had sewing and half you had cooking. But a month out of there somewhere, you would trade with the boys and have shop and they would have cooking and sewing.

00:57:03.580 - 00:57:09.460

And which did you like best, Hallmark or shop? Probably shop. [Laughter] Okay.

00:57:09.920 - 00:57:28.380

I spent most of my evenings as a child downstairs watching my father turn out furniture on the lathe or help him load bullets. Did you go hunting with him? No, I never went hunting with him.

00:57:28.420 - 00:57:43.980

I went hunting with other people a couple of times. He was a great hunter, but he was also a competitor. It was a time of the year in the Depression where men had nothing to do, no money to do anything.

00:57:44.260 - 00:58:10.880

So the government opened up where they stored all the guns, and they sold these Springfield rifles for a dollar and a half to the men and encouraged them to do target shooting. So Daddy was really good. He was a farm boy and he was a real good shot.

00:58:11.660 - 00:58:34.100

So the police had a gun club, a gun team, a shooting team, and he was on their team. And he would even let me go some nights and sit in the background. I loved to be with him. So in growing up, who was your role model?

00:58:35.000 - 00:58:49.960

Well, I think it was my dad. As I look back, my mother was wonderful. But I didn't like women things. Do you recall your high school prom?

00:58:50.540 - 00:59:12.560

Oh yes, yes. I particularly remember my junior prom because I was going with this tall, you know, I was tall and all the kids at my school until they got to be juniors or seniors, I was five foot eight and that was tall then.

00:59:14.300 - 00:59:36.760

And the boys would be, if they were lucky, five foot six, five, five, you know, they And so, you know, you were always kind of scrunching down to dance with them. But the big boys, the football players, always got those darling little girls like you. I know you, I can tell.

00:59:38.060 - 00:59:53.060

Anyway, what'd you ask me? The junior prom, you were going to tell me. The junior prom. Okay so I met this wonderful handsome man, he was my first love.

00:59:54.500 - 01:00:16.460

He was going to high school in Chicago, but he was a cousin of one of my best friends. And he was tall, blue eyed, he was six foot four, blue eyes, blonde hair, and so good looking. He was my first love and I really never got over that.

01:00:17.080 - 01:00:41.000

And we're still just real good friends. So you invited him to the junior prom? And my mother got me this beautiful, with half of the skirt and the little top had, It was like this, and it had little puffy sleeves, but it had little rhinestones, little

01:00:41.100 - 01:00:54.540

tiny rhinestones all over the top. It was so beautiful. Nylons had just come out, and she got her first pair of nylons. They were very expensive.

01:00:55.320 - 01:01:15.820

Back then, $750 was a lot of money, and that's what she paid for them. Well, she let me wear her nylons. that crinoline skirt underneath that taffeta dress. When I got home there was nothing left of those stockings because every time I'd move they'd probably stick to that crinoline

01:01:17.000 - 01:01:59.140

or whatever you call that stiff like mesh. Poor mother. But no, that was nice. Yes, I remember my junior prom because I had such good friends. All the kids I felt were good friends. I didn't have a love at the time because this handsome went off to college and so he was down at college.

01:02:00.680 - 01:02:20.400

And then your senior prom. The senior prom, yeah, that's what I'm trying to work on. Finally I got a date with a friend, you know, one of the other guys who didn't happen to have a girlfriend at the time, too.

01:02:21.040 - 01:02:39.240

But we had a great time and we went to, before we went to prom, we went to the Edgewater Beach Hotel for dinner. And I had a beautiful corsage. I can't remember what I wore then, not like that other dress.

01:02:40.440 - 01:03:10.080

But I had never had a filet mignon and it had a big mushroom, yeah, mushroom. And that was so delicious. So then we went to the prom and when the prom was over, we stayed out all night. We were at somebody's house.

01:03:12.260 - 01:03:34.260

I don't remember too much about it. But those same people, I remember. We were pretty close to Evanston, which is Northwestern University. There were a couple of places in the forest.

01:03:38.000 - 01:03:54.280

One was the box stall, and they played that wonderful music, String of Pearls and all those things. Sometimes we could pretend that we were older and we'd buy a beer. What would your mom and dad have said?

01:03:54.360 - 01:04:11.660

They would have had a fit. My mother never let anything in our house. But it was just, you know, I might not have drank the whole thing, but it was just the thing of doing it.

01:04:12.640 - 01:04:25.240

But you'd look at all those good-looking guys from Northwestern, you know, and there we'd be little girls, and be looking at them, you know. So silly, as I think back now. But that was the big thing to do.

01:04:25.380 - 01:04:42.520

Somebody had a car. Recall your graduation. Did you have caps and gowns? Yes, yes. And that was very nice. It was nice and I felt so fortunate. You were through.

01:04:43.540 - 01:04:54.900

I made it. And what were your plans before you even graduated? What did you intend to do? "Okay, this is June of '42. The war is on."

01:04:55.100 - 01:05:26.360

Most of my friends were getting married before the boys left. I thought about going to the Chicago Art Institute. But by that time, so many of the instructors and so forth were leaving to go to war. And so I thought, "Well, what the heck with it.

01:05:26.420 - 01:05:40.240

I'll stay home and work in a war plant and learn to fly." Why would you have even thought about learning to fly? Did you know other girls? Well, in the meantime, I've got a new boyfriend.

01:05:42.140 - 01:06:05.500

His name is Chick Grui. I've just been praying that his nephew wasn't flying that plane today. But Chick was killed as a cadet, but all we ever talked about was flying. His brother was the youngest airline pilot to ever be hired by American.

01:06:10.480 - 01:06:29.620

Like to go back just a little bit for a quick thing. They lived on a farm. They grew tomatoes for the Campbell's Soup. That area had the blackest soil, and it was so rich.

01:06:30.700 - 01:06:54.600

So they grew these great tomatoes. Anyway, his father was a real staid German, and he didn't believe in things like learning to fly. But Hal, Chick's older brother, wanted to learn how to fly.

01:06:56.040 - 01:07:21.280

And so his mother would go and ride the tractor while he ran across the fields over to the little airport to get his lesson so that father wouldn't know that he was gone. So she was such a great gal. So she'd go run the tractor so he could go get his lesson.

01:07:21.480 - 01:07:52.160

Do you recall where you were and how it affected you when you heard about Pearl Harbor? Yes, I was at home and it was just very, very, very disturbing. Just shocking. And of course, like the 11th, October the 11th, that certainly changed our world, more

01:07:52.280 - 01:08:06.240

so than this has changed our world. You mean September 11th? I mean September 11th, yeah. So now you're out of high school and the war is on, and you and Chuck decide you want to

01:08:06.300 - 01:08:29.200

learn to fly? Chick was leaving for cadets, and he left in September of '42, after we graduated. Beth: During that summer, what did you do? I got a job downtown Chicago.

01:08:29.790 - 01:08:55.420

I would take the Northwestern Railroad downtown. I'd carry my lunch and I would walk to the downtown to the railroad, which was a mile, and I'd save the dime for the bus. Then I'd get to the Northwestern Railroad downtown Chicago, and I'd walk over to Marshall

01:08:55.520 - 01:09:09.540

Field, so I'd save another dime. I saved forty cents a day by not taking the bus, and I'd carry my sack lunch. Levy-Trapp: Were you clerking? Gries: Yes, I was clerking in the adult game section.

01:09:12.020 - 01:09:36.280

You had to wear black, brown, or gray. I'd come home, not having much money to buy clothes, I'd come home and have to clean and spot them and wash them and go again. I think I paid $26 a month for that railroad ticket, for the monthly ticket.

01:09:37.060 - 01:10:02.400

So actually I didn't have an awful lot of money, but I made up my check. I promised Chick that before the first of the year I would start my lessons, my flying lessons. And so I called up out at Powockee Airport and made an appointment for instruction.

01:10:03.400 - 01:10:23.880

And I got Willie Clark. Willie Clark was so handsome. But I'm young and he's, you know, I don't know how old Willie was. He probably was only about ten years older than I was, but the women just swooned over

01:10:23.980 - 01:10:45.140

him. I mean, you know there was a Smiling Jack was a cartoon at that time. Well this guy was like Smiling Jack, he could do no wrong. But I get out there and there's snow on the ground, and so we're on skis on the J3 Cub.

01:10:47.600 - 01:11:01.480

Of course, that didn't bother me, but I'd never been that close. I'd always watched from the fence, so I didn't know it was that little, the airplane. I just loved it. I loved it so much.

01:11:02.480 - 01:11:31.920

They were starting to train the Northwestern University students to be Navy pilots. By then, after Christmas, I got a job. Finally there were some war plants opening up in Chicago. No aircraft or anything like that, but I heard about this place that made coils.

01:11:33.460 - 01:11:46.580

The coils used to be used at the racetrack for the signs, but now they were going to be used for machine guns. I thought, "Well, that's acceptable. I'll go work there."

01:11:46.580 - 01:12:13.360

I worked there until it was a worse kind of a—I can't remember what it was called. You'd go to work like four o'clock in the afternoon and get off at midnight. Then you'd go home for a certain length of time, and then you'd go back at midnight and get off at eight.

01:12:15.020 - 01:12:42.100

Then you go home for a little while. I didn't know when to eat or when not to eat, when to sleep, because every day it was different. I was drinking too much Coca-Cola and I got a kidney infection. They just had gotten sulfa and they gave me that and I swelled up all over.

01:12:42.200 - 01:13:01.140

I was so allergic to it. Well, I was sicker than I should have been, and so of course I didn't go back to that job. But in the meantime, my father read that, told me that I knew that Donald Douglas was

01:13:01.220 - 01:13:24.460

coming to town to build aircraft, right there south of Des Plaines. So I told Daddy to watch for it, to tell me I got some kind of a job in between some factory after I got better. Then came the day they said, "Tomorrow morning at eight o'clock we'll start taking interviews."

01:13:24.620 - 01:13:49.940

It was down on the south side of town. I had to take a bus and two or three streetcars and another bus down to this horrible, horrible of dead Chicago. I mean, it was nobody around. And I said to the bus driver, he told me where to get out. I said, "Are you sure this is right? There's not a..."

01:13:50.000 - 01:14:13.940

It was like eerie. Well, apparently the people that called up to get a place to rent got taken by some slick operator. Anyway, so you had to walk down and then walk over and walk over in this awful scary part of town. But I got interviewed.

01:14:14.040 - 01:14:40.040

I think I was about the thirteenth person to be hired out of Chicago, hired as a file clerk. The only thing that was built was the administration building, so I got in there very early. But they brought the nucleus of everybody from all the West Coast plants to get it started.

01:14:40.220 - 01:14:58.360

So the engineers and tooling and the secretaries and so forth came from there. What were they going to build? The C-54. Did you take those jobs out of a sense of patriotism or a feeling of wanting to help

01:14:58.360 - 01:15:24.480

the war effort in any way? Oh everything like that. People were very patriotic and I wouldn't have thought of sitting around home and with that first job I gave when I worked at Marshall Fields, I gave my folks five dollars a week. I have no idea why. I guess I just thought that's the thing

01:15:24.260 - 01:15:39.680

to do. I've got a job, I'm grown up. Right. And when you began to work for Douglas, did you continue flying? Oh yes. Tell me about your first solo. Do you recall? Oh, I loved it. Yeah.

01:15:41.220 - 01:15:55.720

I had no fear or anything. I was so comfortable with flying. And so I'm coming around to land the first time, and and my instructors out there, you know, out in the middle of the field.

01:15:56.620 - 01:16:15.520

All this was was a little cinder strip. And anyway, I'm waving to him, you know, and he came running out after me when I was through. He said, "Don't you ever wave at me ever again." He said, "Pay attention to your flying."

01:16:15.520 - 01:16:25.040

That was so funny. It was just okay for me to wave. There was no problem. So while you're working at Douglas, then when you get to work?

01:16:25.040 - 01:16:41.620

I would work, I would go out weekends. When Douglas first started, we were able to have Saturdays and Sundays off. After it got into production and they built the plant and they were building the aircraft, it got to be more like maybe you'd have Sunday off.

01:16:43.320 - 01:17:06.020

Eventually after they were really in production and the war wasn't going very well and they needed aircraft, it went on to be so that we would work sometimes seven days a week. As you continued flying, did you meet other girls? One girl was learning to fly at Powahkee.

01:17:08.020 - 01:17:33.640

I didn't hear the WASP. I think we better stop a minute. One morning, I got up and got on my bike and instead of turning left to go to junior high school, I turned right to head out to the airport.

01:17:34.300 - 01:17:54.360

I have no idea if I planned this ahead of time or if it just occurred to me. I don't remember. But I think it's pretty safe to do this. It's about nine miles, and it's in Wheeling, Illinois.

01:17:56.600 - 01:18:22.140

I had to go through Mount Prospect and so forth, Cumberland, and everywhere to get there, on the highways and so forth. I get out there and I'm real happy. I'm very happy to be out there because it's a beautiful day and every once in a while

01:18:22.220 - 01:18:38.680

an airplane takes off and lands. This is so wonderful. I just stood by the fence all day, all morning as soon as I got there. I didn't have any money, so I couldn't go buy a drink or lunch or anything.

01:18:41.800 - 01:18:59.020

So I decided I better go look in the office. And it's, I don't know, after one o'clock or something like that. I think, "I better start home." Well, I'd had an awfully good time watching those airplanes.

01:19:02.020 - 01:19:23.100

They're mostly cubs. So I start home and I start thinking about what if the principal has called my mother and what if the police are looking for me because I wasn't at school and my mother doesn't know where I am.

01:19:24.440 - 01:19:53.080

That is when one of the times in my life when I learned that you shouldn't do things like this. I suffered getting home, hurrying to get home, and I was just terrified that mother was going to meet me at the door. "Where have you been?" You know, but I got away with it, but I never did it again. Did she ever know? Never. I don't think I

01:19:53.240 - 01:20:16.580

ever told her. Now if we can move back to school. Back to school. You were working at You were flying, and when is the first time that you heard about the WASP training program? Becky: The WASP, okay. I went into the drugstore to see if the Flying Magazine was out at the magazine counter,

01:20:17.320 - 01:20:45.220

and I saw this Life magazine with this girl sitting on the wing of a military airplane the military jumpsuit of some kind on, and I thought I would go straight up. That was the most thrilling thing I'd ever heard of or seen. I bought the magazine, took it home, called up Beverly Frisbee, who was the other girl

01:20:45.320 - 01:21:16.140

that was learning to fly out there. She came from Highland Park or somewhere, and so she was a paid person in the hangar doing maintenance, you know, little odd jobs and so forth. In fact, I helped her cover, on my odd times waiting to fly, I helped her cover the wing

01:21:16.020 - 01:21:37.340

of an aranca, all that sewing. She got as excited as I did, and we finally figured out that we had to call Washington. Took a long time to get hold of Jacqueline Cochran or get any information. Then she said that Mrs. Sheehy would be there.

01:21:37.820 - 01:21:54.620

This is July 19th. She would be there in late September. We had to wait all that time to talk to a recruiter. We got through that.

01:21:56.120 - 01:22:14.500

I think it was a Blackstone Hotel or one of those big old hotels. That worked out fine. She said she would send all the information back in. We were told at that point that if we were accepted, we'd have to go down to Chanute

01:22:14.770 - 01:22:34.900

Field in central Illinois, because that was the closest place where there was a flight surgeon. We finally got our paperwork from Cochran, and telling us to go. Well, she couldn't get off, so I went by myself.

01:22:35.180 - 01:23:12.900

We took buses and all kinds of things to get down to Chinoot Field. I know that I remember getting off of the bus, and that's the last thing I can remember about that trip, as far as transportation. But all the way down I kept thinking, I always hear about these boys standing in line, nude,

01:23:13.020 - 01:23:29.060

waiting to get their physical. I thought, "What am I going to do?" It was really bothering me a great deal. And so anyway, I get there and of course there's nobody in the hospital.

01:23:30.740 - 01:23:54.080

I was the only one that day that was having a flight physical. So of course he had never had a woman take a flight physical before, but he was a really nice guy. He said that I asked him if he would let me know if I passed, that I didn't know how

01:23:54.200 - 01:24:11.220

long it would be before I heard from the government, and I really would appreciate it. So I got a nice little note from him saying that there was no reason I couldn't fly for the military. And so that was that part.

01:24:11.360 - 01:24:31.480

I don't remember coming home or anything. In the meantime, what did your mom and dad think about you flying? You know, I've often thought about that. I think I said to myself, "They're so happy that I'm doing something that I want to do,

01:24:33.620 - 01:24:50.460

and I think they're proud of me." Daddy would let me take the car out to the airport, because he had a truck and the car was sitting at home anyway. Transportation was a problem in those days.

01:24:51.520 - 01:25:11.980

How long then was it before you? Then I had to wait. See if I knew then what I've learned later, as they say, if I knew then what I know now, I would have gotten on the first bus to Washington and I would have been in a much earlier class.

01:25:14.800 - 01:25:35.600

How were you notified then to report to Sweetwater? Well, I got this information about what I should bring and when I should be there, that I had passed everything. And that was so exciting.

01:25:37.070 - 01:25:54.000

Did the other girl apply? Yes, and we went together. We were in the same class. But she was in the first flight, and she was Beverly Frisbee.

01:25:55.700 - 01:26:33.020

She's still living, but I never saw her much because we didn't have time to really meet the people in the other flight because they would be flying and we would be at ground school or marching or calisthenics or whatever. I guess there was just kind of a natural, not enemy, what's the word, competition or

01:26:33.100 - 01:26:51.120

something. So, we didn't. Do you recall how you felt when you arrived at Avenger and saw all those big airplanes? Well, I do know that I couldn't have been more excited.

01:26:52.820 - 01:27:27.520

I think they came out and got us the next morning. I think the first night we stayed at the Blue Bonnet Hotel, the famous Blue Bonnet Hotel. And I think they came in that truck and got us the next day, the cattle truck. And then we got—you know, I'm wrong.

01:27:27.640 - 01:27:57.700

It was that afternoon when they came and got us, because I got to my bay. I remember there being eight girls when we started, that there were sixteen together. But everybody says, "No, there were just six," which made it twelve, sharing the latrine. But anyway, everybody looked so beautiful, and they seemed like they were so intelligent,

01:27:58.160 - 01:28:18.200

and they just were so sophisticated. Here's this little country girl down there just staring in awe at everybody. And then Dottie Swain was in the next bay. She had left being an instructor and decided to join the WASP.

01:28:19.540 - 01:28:35.120

And so she was in my class for two weeks. But anyway, that first evening, and I'm just watching them all, and everybody's getting in their pajamas and everything, and I'm skinny. I'm tall and skinny.

01:28:38.380 - 01:28:52.280

And so Dottie looked up at me. I thought, "What a nice girl she was." I was just admiring her so much. And she looked at me and she said, "Okay, birdlegs, let's get to bed."

01:28:52.560 - 01:29:17.420

She knew I wasn't undressing because I was, she was just smart enough to understand. What was the biggest adjustment that you had to make? I guess getting up and having to move in the morning. I was always late with everything.

01:29:18.500 - 01:29:32.140

That was my big adjustment. Everything else was just great. It was winter, so somebody had to light the gas stove, or the oil stove, because it was freezing in there.

01:29:34.460 - 01:29:51.320

We'd get in our flight suits over our pajamas. The funny part of it is, I can't remember. We had twelve girls that shared a latrine. Two bays opened onto this bathroom.

01:29:52.090 - 01:30:11.320

It had two toilets, two sinks, two little metal mirrors, and two shower heads coming into one shower. With all those girls, I can't remember there ever being a problem. I just cannot.

01:30:12.100 - 01:30:38.160

I've asked other people, "How did we manage that?" Then you'd be so busy and so tired that when you'd finally get back either from class or from the flight line, you probably had to get right back in formation again. Maybe you had thirty seconds or a minute, but I would be so tired I could lay down and

01:30:38.180 - 01:31:09.220

fall asleep in that thirty seconds or whatever, and then get up and go again. What did you enjoy or not enjoy about ground school? I found it to be very fascinating. I had had to go to ground school back in Chicago, so I had a little ground school.

01:31:09.820 - 01:31:29.460

I had to take the Northwestern train down to Chicago after work at night. I think the ground school was from seven at night until 9.30, something like that. Just in time for me to get my last train back to the Splains. That was the only ground school in Chicago.

01:31:30.560 - 01:31:48.400

It was downtown under the L-Track, somewhere south of where I worked earlier, Marshall Fields. I walked at night. Now you couldn't walk a block at night.

01:31:49.960 - 01:32:06.460

But in those days, sometimes I'd get kind of scared, but usually there wasn't anybody around. So anyway, I did that for six weeks, probably a couple nights a week. You really wanted to learn.

01:32:06.800 - 01:32:34.420

Yeah, I really did. So anyway, I found that it was so much easier in the military for me because it was visual, it was verbal, and it was reading. So since I was not good at reading, I could comprehend all this by having the three ways

01:32:34.480 - 01:32:46.000

of teaching, of learning. Did any one particular thing in ground school give you a problem? Code. I really don't know how I passed that.

01:32:47.280 - 01:33:20.020

For a long time I knew what SOS was, and I could say "hi." In night flying, there was nothing but blackness out there. Maybe three o'clock in the morning or something, maybe a truck would drive by. So with my landing lights, I'd do "Hi."

01:33:20.020 - 01:33:36.400

Well, they'd usually aim their spotlight up at me, whether they knew what high meant or not, but they'd aim their spotlight up, so they were as bored as I was. Do you recall your first solo, and what were you flying? At Avenger?

01:33:36.940 - 01:33:57.860

At Avenger, the Stearman. We went into the Stearman, the PT-17, for primary. You know, I don't remember that. Did anything unusual happen to you during your training at Avengers?

01:33:59.440 - 01:34:41.500

When I was in – you were in an earlier – I mean, you're aware of maybe an earlier class. But what happened was, when I got through with Stearman, we were to go to BASIC, which was the BT-13, but it was instrument flying. The Army Air Corps was having trouble with their students ground-booping the AT-6.

01:34:43.320 - 01:35:08.200

They were flying the PT-19, which was called a Fairchild. It had real wide landing gears. It was a low-wing, open cockpit. And then they went to the BT-13, which had real wide landing gears.

01:35:09.240 - 01:35:31.340

So then the AT-6 had very narrow landing gears. And so I think it was one of those psychological things. It did ground loop very easily, and so they decided to experiment. I think they started with the class ahead of me, and they put us through ten hours of

01:35:31.400 - 01:35:52.260

transition on the AT-6 after primary. So we knew we could fly that great big silver airplane. And then we went back to the boring BT-13 and did all our instruments under the hood with the black top on it.

01:35:58.880 - 01:36:17.880

But sometime in that time, I was on my third hour of solo in that gorgeous big AT-6. And there was a big storm coming, and they said, "We've got to get time in. The weather's been so bad. Stay out as long as you can.

01:36:19.500 - 01:36:32.040

But watch that storm. They're very visible down there. And watch it and come in before you could get into trouble." So I'm out there about two and a half hours.

01:36:33.160 - 01:36:53.240

I think the fuel capacity on that was about three hours or maybe three and a half hours, I stayed out as long as I thought. The storm was getting so close to the south, and it was starting to blow real hard. So I called in, and I'm over town.

01:36:56.020 - 01:37:18.480

I'm on my 45, I'm going to be landing into the south, and I'm over the water tower here, and just turned on my 45 going northwest. And all of a sudden I have no engine making a bit of noise. And so I went through the emergency everything and still no noise.

01:37:18.620 - 01:37:36.900

I pulled up the gear, of course, immediately because, well, I wouldn't want to land with the gear up. And I was, I called and said, "I think I'm having an emergency landing." I couldn't believe that I didn't have an engine.

01:37:38.160 - 01:38:08.660

It was impossible. So I looked around and found the only place, after all it's 800 feet I was at when this happened and I had to turn around to go into the wind. There was the highway, and there was the oil refinery here, and the tower, and the railroad.

01:38:09.240 - 01:38:31.400

But there was one little field to the east of the refinery, and it had just been planted. It was a cotton field, and they planted it east and west. So I had to go over those. They were about knee high, the way they had it.

01:38:31.560 - 01:38:45.740

I don't know why they did that. But anyway, it was way up there. So all I could think of doing was just bringing it in tail low and dragging in. It happened very fast.

01:38:47.050 - 01:39:06.440

It just was very fast. And so, boom, and then all the dust and everything. I thought, "I must be dead," because in the movies you're always dead. And so I realized I wasn't dead, and I made sure everything was turned off.

01:39:06.540 - 01:39:35.280

I had turned it off before, but I made sure it was turned off. I jumped out, but what had happened was my right tip wing had broken a fence, a post on the refinery, and they ran cattle in there. Not being a cattle girl or really a farm girl, just a country girl, it was terrifying to

01:39:35.360 - 01:39:51.140

think those cattle running like that, and they were going to get me. Now all they wanted was out, but in the meantime, I think, "Well, I don't care if the plane does blow up, I'm going to get back in it." So I got back in it until they were gone.

01:39:52.360 - 01:40:16.500

They just went off and had a good old time somewhere. In the meantime, I had used one of my baymate's numbers on the aircraft. So she's thinking, "What is wrong? I don't think my airplane's in trouble.

01:40:17.920 - 01:40:34.740

I used the wrong aircraft number." So then I hear the siren coming, but they had to go clear into town and way out and around. If I'd been hurt, I would have been hurting.

01:40:39.980 - 01:40:51.540

They could only be on the other side of the railroad track, and then they had to run across the field. They're hollering, "Lay down, lay down." I thought, "The day I'm going to pretend like I'm hurt."

01:40:52.920 - 01:41:02.240

No, all I could think of was, "I'm going to be washed out." I couldn't figure out why the airplane quit. I had fuel. They had to have fuel.

01:41:05.400 - 01:41:13.560

I suffered with that for a long time. Nothing got hurt. I didn't hurt at all. The airplane hardly got hurt.

01:41:13.740 - 01:41:33.480

I bent the prop, of course, and there's a couple of little things that hang down, little aerials on the bottom of the airplane. Then the wingtip got—the end of the wingtip, they had to replace that. But aside from that, the airplane was in good shape.

01:41:35.080 - 01:41:47.780

How did you get back to the field? In the ambulance. So you had to go to the dispensary? Yes, and then I had to make an account to the military.

01:41:48.760 - 01:42:01.560

Did you go before the board? Whoever was there that day was whoever I went before. It was real scary. What had happened to the airplane?

01:42:01.780 - 01:42:30.820

Well, finally, they told me that I wasn't to blame, that I was cleared of it. It wasn't a vapor lock, but it could have been an air lock, which would have kept the fuel from coming in. But, you know, vapor lock very often is the cause of an engine out.

01:42:32.980 - 01:42:46.340

But I was very fortunate. Do you recall your cross-countries? Did anything unusual happen on cross-country perhaps? I went on the West.

01:42:47.300 - 01:43:20.500

The West went a thousand miles, our long cross-country. I went out, we went El Paso and then across New Mexico. I did know that those radio operators there were really bored, because I can't think of all the names of those towns, but they were Spanish-sounding towns, like Rodeo Radio.

01:43:21.600 - 01:43:42.680

So I'd come in, Rodeo Radio this is blah, blah, blah, and they'd come back, Rodeo Radio, Rodeo Radio. So then coming back I'd say Rodeo Radio, and they'd say Rodeo Radio, Rodeo Radio. So there were a couple of towns like that.

01:43:45.880 - 01:44:12.000

Well, I had a good time, but I was from the flat Des Plaines, and I had never really seen mountains like that. But to me, navigation was one of the most fascinating things, because on the map, like the night before you'd plot, or up until the time you were leaving, you would plot it,

01:44:12.240 - 01:44:33.120

you would like a dry creek, you know, well, maybe there'd be an abandoned well on the map. The rest, there wasn't much. But to think that you could come across that dry creek and find it at the time you had

01:44:34.100 - 01:44:47.540

projected that you would come across it was fascinating to me. KD: A miracle. Yes, it was a miracle. So I thoroughly enjoyed all that.

01:44:48.240 - 01:45:05.160

Plus, of course, you were using the radio. The one thing that really bugged me was the radio. It was called a crank radio, and unless somebody was talking, you didn't know if you had it tuned in.

01:45:05.160 - 01:45:19.200

You had to wait. So on the leg into, now I can't think of the name of the- Abilene? No, down south here.

01:45:19.200 - 01:45:28.220

What's the name of that field? Tucson. Davis-Monthan. Davis-Monthan.

01:45:28.220 - 01:45:49.420

I was going into Davis-Monthan and trying to find, nobody was talking, nobody was talking. I'm on the last final stages in the AT-6. It was so hot, it must have been like 125 on the ground, so in that canopy it was even hotter.

01:45:51.020 - 01:46:12.300

I'm down like this, and all of a sudden I realize something's out here. I look out and here's this smiling guy in a Corsair with his, what we would call down and dirty. He's got his wheels down and his flaps down so he can go as slow as I'm going.

01:46:14.820 - 01:46:27.220

And he looks over, he was so cute. It was such a shock, you know. And that's the time of the year when a lot of girls would fly with their clothes, with their shirt off because it was so hot.

01:46:27.880 - 01:46:55.280

And a little bit of air that might come through would be nice, but fortunately I had my blouse on. But anyway, he looked over at me and he said, "So he was inviting me to go to dinner in San Diego where he was going.

01:46:56.200 - 01:47:17.640

And I looked at him, I said, "So he blew me a kiss and picked up the everything and took off." I've always thought, "I wonder who he was." Every time I'm near a Navy pilot or a Marine pilot that used to fly those, I'd say, "Where

01:47:17.720 - 01:47:38.820

were you in August of '44?" But that was kind of an exciting time. Another time I had, coming home from that same trip, I was over Laredo. And it was a beautiful day, just a gorgeous day.

01:47:43.200 - 01:48:06.140

And I had the radio on the next station, which was nothing, you didn't hear anything. But all of a sudden, there was this glorious music, the most beautiful music, like a symphony only more beautiful. And I just couldn't figure it out that a little town like Laredo, Texas would have that, so

01:48:06.200 - 01:48:23.920

I turned the radio way down, and it was still there, just as loud. And so I turned the radio off, and it was still there. And I'm not a musician at all, but I appreciate beautiful music. But I'd never heard anything like this.

01:48:25.860 - 01:48:42.440

And it was just glorious. And I never told anybody about it for years until I saw a movie where somebody had encountered that music. What now do you think it was?

01:48:43.900 - 01:48:58.600

Well nobody really knows. They've never figured it out. But my Aunt Hazel, who was really religious on my husband's side, said, "Well of course darling, that's heavenly music.

01:49:00.840 - 01:49:14.460

It's like it's coming down from heaven." She said, "I've heard of that many times." I never told anybody that either. No, I've told a couple people.

01:49:16.180 - 01:49:36.480

That was one of my really beautiful experiences. While you were at Avenger, did you have time off and what did you do with that time? Well our class was one of the classes that had rain all week long and so we never got off.

01:49:36.980 - 01:50:02.120

I think we were on there seven weeks before we had a day off, because we'd have to fly all weekends to make up our time. So when we did get into town, there really wasn't anything to do. We'd walk around and we'd look in all the jewelry stores and we'd visit in all the stores

01:50:02.440 - 01:50:17.900

and walk around. Later on, Dottie Swain, she was an artist. She had a studio upstairs in one of those old wooden buildings where you walked up the wooden stairs above the stores.

01:50:20.700 - 01:50:50.040

She was doing portrait painting of some of the people, some of the instructors, making a little extra money that way and keeping her hand in. She was outstanding too. She - Dottie Swain has been one of my influences and one of my very best friends all through

01:50:50.040 - 01:51:03.220

the years. Dottie Swain Lewis. It's hard for me to keep on track because I start splitting off on other thoughts about that.

01:51:06.780 - 01:51:33.840

She has a son that she called Chigger. She's from the South and so she's got all these cute little things. So her son was Chigger, and he's still called Chig. She was part of the Wasp Nest down in Florida for a while.

01:51:34.500 - 01:51:55.500

They were doing air shows and things after the war was over. So she came through on her way up to Colorado. She was going to teach up here at a private school up in Mayor, Arizona. She had this little fellow, and he was almost a year old.

01:51:56.000 - 01:52:10.840

I had a guy who was about six months old. So anyway, that was the first time I saw her. Sometimes we'd write notes or something, but she's always been a great inspiration for me.

01:52:13.240 - 01:52:38.260

Tell me about your graduation from Avenger. Well, it's something that I can't remember too much. We didn't have a general, and we would sing these songs. We'd make up a song for each graduating class, and so they made up a song for us.

01:52:39.280 - 01:52:54.240

And I can remember hearing that. Do you remember any of the other songs that you sang? Oh, lots of them. We sing them all the time now. Whenever we marched, we sang.

01:52:55.180 - 01:53:13.060

And some of them, Jackie Cochran would say, "You can't sing that song." Which I haven't been thinking of lately, but I could probably think of it, but I can't right now. Anyway, um... Well you had new uniform for graduation.

01:53:13.140 - 01:53:30.460

Graduation. And I still had long hair. And it was supposed to be collar length or something like that. And I saw I was leaving, I was signing out for the final thing, and Jacqueline Cochran came along just then

01:53:31.460 - 01:53:48.860

and grabbed the back of my hair and said, "Get that cut!" We'd been hiding it under turbans or putting it up in ponytails or whatever under our cap. Did you? No.

01:53:51.900 - 01:54:06.000

At that point, your graduation was assured? I'd graduated. I was on my way to a place called Columbus, Mississippi. Did you have some time off between graduation?

01:54:06.000 - 01:54:12.880

Yes. Did you go home? I went home. And how proud were you with that uniform on?

01:54:12.900 - 01:54:30.060

Oh my word, you can't believe. But I'll tell you something funny. My good friend Ellen Wimberly was on her way back to Georgia and she had to change trains somewhere and she's standing in the station waiting and this man comes up over, squinting,

01:54:30.220 - 01:54:48.880

says, "Young lady, what is a warp?" That took care of her. Oh yes, I was so proud. It was exciting.

01:54:49.400 - 01:55:17.640

I've got pictures that they took. I went back to Douglas and they took a lot of pictures and I have those. I went out to Douglas to say hello to everybody and the public relations took pictures. I saw some of my friends, but you know all the boys were gone and the girls were carrying

01:55:17.760 - 01:55:39.240

babies around. In the meantime, where was Chick? I didn't mention that, but Chick was killed in basic training in a BT-13. The cables broke in it as he was doing aerobatics.

01:55:42.740 - 01:56:02.740

He tried to jump, but the tail hit him, and so he was killed. His father went back to the field because he couldn't believe what the maintenance must have been like if the cables broke. He was the second person that week that had died of the same thing.

01:56:04.900 - 01:56:25.840

When you left home, where were you then to be stationed? Then I went to Columbus, Mississippi. And Ellen and I planned to be there. We were to report Monday morning to the commandant.

01:56:27.080 - 01:56:33.060

I was going to say, to whom did you report? To the CO. Yeah. What was your assignment?

01:56:33.880 - 01:56:45.360

We were assigned to the engineering test flight line. What was the base at Columbus? What was their mission? Training.

01:56:45.640 - 01:57:03.020

Advanced training for twin engine, for the cadets to be learning twin engine going on to bombers. Where did you live? Because Ellen and I were the first ones there, there were two rooms left in the nurses'

01:57:03.180 - 01:57:26.140

quarters, so we got those. The other girls lived in the wax quarters. And so we had this marvelous food, because it was like the quarters were adjoining a big living room and a kitchen and so forth, with piano and different things.

01:57:26.140 - 01:57:39.480

You could have parties in there. And the doctors were over here and the nurses were over here. So there was always a refrigerator or something that you could keep something in. But that was when I learned about cockroaches.

01:57:42.720 - 01:58:04.920

I didn't know much about those. But we had this little room and there was room for a cot and there was a little, there There was the door, and next to the door was a place to hang your clothes. Between that and the door, there was a triangular little shelf.

01:58:05.060 - 01:58:27.900

That's where you kept your soap. There was a window, and that's all there was. But in the mornings, you had to make enough noise so that you'd hear them wandering off, getting away from the soap dish, because they loved eating the soap.

01:58:29.800 - 01:58:46.500

I'd never heard of cockroaches before. Although at Sweetwater, we did have a scourge, or whatever you call it, of black crickets that came. That was horrible.

01:58:46.700 - 01:59:01.300

You couldn't walk anywhere without stepping on maybe a half a dozen. They were just thick everywhere. It was horrible because you had to empty your shoes in the morning to make sure they weren't in there.

01:59:02.360 - 01:59:25.100

It was awful. Tell me, what is an engineering test pilot? The engineering test pilot sounds very important. I was on my way to A-26s, and this is where I was getting my twin-engine training, I thought.

01:59:27.380 - 01:59:55.340

So actually what it was, was this is one thing that was bad in the service. The man that was in charge of this, well first of all, what you do is you just fly airplanes after they've been in maintenance. Or if there's any doubt in the flight department that somebody said this aircraft needs maintenance,

01:59:56.620 - 02:00:10.900

Sometimes they might doubt who said it, and they would ask you to fly it to make sure there was something wrong with it. But you flew it to see, after maintenance, if they had corrected the problems and if there were any other problems.

02:00:11.560 - 02:00:24.580

Whether it be radio work or just the controls might have been a little bit off and they'd have to make adjustments there. Maybe the brakes weren't working right. Maybe there had been an engine change.

02:00:25.520 - 02:00:51.520

If there had been an engine change, then you flew it for three hours, doing what they called slow timing, to break the engine in. Sometimes that turned out to be—if it was on a Saturday, and it was football season, we'd fly down to one of the other Ole Miss or somewhere, fly over their game.

02:00:53.040 - 02:01:19.340

Can you imagine with it being all that noise and slow timing over the stadium? We didn't stay very long because you couldn't hear good over those old radios. So we didn't know what was going on, but at least it was some adventure to do. Did you get additional training to fly the twin engine?

02:01:20.040 - 02:01:36.080

Here's what happened. the only bad thing that I recall during my whole military experience. This man did not like women. And here, there were six of us now.

02:01:40.680 - 02:02:02.360

There were two girls already there, and they'd been there for quite a while. And then there were either five or six of us that came. I got all those pictures downstairs and so forth. He hated women.

02:02:04.240 - 02:02:30.020

He was twenty-three years old. He was a second lieutenant, and he didn't want to teach us anything. Well, it wasn't very long until we realized that we were going to have to learn how to fly that airplane, because he'd get in, we would get in, and there was no book, nothing

02:02:30.160 - 02:02:48.920

I could read to find out about it. And he'd put his feet up on the instrument, top of the instrument panel, and, "Okay, hot pilot, fly." Well, I'd never even been in a twin engine before.

02:02:50.780 - 02:03:08.980

And I was just angry enough that all it did was make me angry and make me want to do it. But some of the other girls were kind of quiet, and they'd come down crying every time because what could you do? You know, you couldn't learn anything properly.

02:03:09.160 - 02:03:22.380

Maybe I'd get it off. I could talk to the tower and get it out there, and get it off, and fly around a little bit, and come back and land. But I wasn't being taught, and I was used to being taught.

02:03:25.060 - 02:03:59.980

Seems to me that Jacqueline Cochran wanted us to be so well-educated in flying that those Those instructors at Sweetwater really, really tried to teach us. To have somebody totally ignore this, of teaching us properly, I just couldn't handle it. One day, I walked out of the flight thing.

02:03:59.980 - 02:04:14.980

And anyway, I walked out and this one girl was crying. Hold it and let's change tape. Okay. I don't want you to be in the middle of a story and run out of tape.

02:04:17.240 - 02:04:28.600

Just one? Oh, scary things like was I going to pass my... Eventually, did he check you out? Never did.

02:04:29.780 - 02:04:40.640

Then what happened? Are we going? Uh-huh. Okay, so I walked out and saw that this one girl was really crying.

02:04:41.540 - 02:05:03.480

She'd just come down. And it was just about coffee break time in the morning, and I thought, "That son of a gun. He's done it again," because he could make those two girls cry so quick. I waited until everybody was out of the office except the lieutenant.

02:05:05.120 - 02:05:29.920

I started telling him what wonderful training we had at Sweetwater and how I just wasn't accustomed to this kind of treatment. He should be teaching us and not trying to make us cry and everything. All of a sudden, he started to get this horrible sneer on his face, and looked over and said,

02:05:31.120 - 02:05:53.460

"Hi, Sergeant. Well, you can never run down an officer in front of anybody." Excuse me, I had a sip of Coke. So that would have been about ten o'clock in the morning.

02:05:55.920 - 02:06:36.600

He was so put out with me that by twelve noon, I was off the field on my way to Sweetwater. Joy and Lieutenant Edward something or other were on their honeymoon. Joy was another WASP, and he was a lieutenant. She never had instrument training, so she was going back to Sweetwater for Colonel Dutworth's

02:06:36.600 - 02:06:55.720

school, which is the best one in the world at that time. So that was one way to get rid of me, because they had not returned. And so I got to fly right seat in the B-25 back to Sweetwater in the sun. My eyes were burning.

02:06:58.680 - 02:07:15.220

But it was like you didn't know what hit you, because you had to pack up everything and you were gone. And I thought, "Boy, that's about as unfair as anything." Those colonels, the commander wouldn't even listen to anything I had to say about that

02:07:15.300 - 02:07:32.140

man. So when you got to Sweetwater, where did you live? In the barracks. There were a whole bunch of women that were back there for training that had not had instrument

02:07:32.240 - 02:07:51.200

training. But because his philosophy and his teaching was so great, that's one of the best things that happened to me for after life, after later on in my instrument flying and so forth. How long was that course?

02:07:52.140 - 02:08:04.360

I don't know. It must have been probably at least two weeks. So then I went back. I don't even know how I got back.

02:08:06.100 - 02:08:21.860

Isn't that funny? Kidney- Which you went back to Columbus? Kidney- Oh yes. And then about that time we heard that – see I hadn't been to Columbus but maybe a week

02:08:24.720 - 02:08:49.040

Anyway, so I went back and well, it was, I don't know what the time element was, but on the 20th of October we got word that we were going to be activated in two months, on December 20th. And so we just started thinking about jobs.

02:08:50.120 - 02:09:00.260

Let me ask you, when you got back to Columbus, what was your job? It was right back to the same thing. Was that lieutenant still there? He was gone.

02:09:04.820 - 02:09:27.860

But I can't remember what all happened. How were you notified that WASPs were going to be deactivated? We got a letter from Jacqueline Cochran, or maybe she and Hap Arnold. They explained that because the boys were coming back from Europe and they were no longer

02:09:27.980 - 02:09:53.960

training pilots, that the—well, they didn't say this, but that was what their explanation was. And those pilots coming back were bothered because they would see women flying. But the ones that were really angry about it were the civilian pilots who had been teaching,

02:09:54.480 - 02:10:20.760

Meaning all through the war years from '42 to '44 and still being civilians, living civilian lives, they were going to have to go in the infantry. So they thought if they could get rid of the WASP, maybe they could take over the jobs that we were doing.

02:10:22.440 - 02:10:30.900

When you got back to Columbus and checked out in the twin engine, then what was your job? Was that engineering? It was the same thing.

02:10:32.920 - 02:10:51.180

But by then, if you were there a certain number of months, you could check out a plane for a weekend. If you were there, and you could go 500 miles. If you were there a certain number of months, you could go 1,000 miles.

02:10:52.140 - 02:11:08.740

So the one time going to Washington, we were going to try to get jobs with the airlines or anything. We wanted to go talk to Jacqueline Cochran, which we did. Well when we were there-

02:11:13.460 - 02:11:25.200

So you went to Washington. Yes, so we went to Washington. Did you actually meet with Ms. Cochran? Yes.

02:11:26.460 - 02:11:42.240

What was her attitude? She was very cordial. I always had a good time with Jacqueline. She was businesslike, but she took time to talk to us.

02:11:44.540 - 02:12:08.880

It was there, we'd already tried to interview for some of the airlines there, and of course they just laughed at us. But I heard at that time that there was something starting up, that they were going to start Reconstruction Finance Corporation.

02:12:10.500 - 02:12:32.160

If we'd go over to a certain hangar over at National Airport, we could find the men that were in charge of it. They were going to be collecting aircraft all over and taking them to who knows where, but they were going to be ferrying them.

02:12:34.960 - 02:13:01.020

Ellen and I went there and they said, "Yes, that would be great." They were just beginning and they would be by on Tuesday. This was a weekend, so we had to really scatter. Then we had to go back and ask Jacqueline if we could get this job, if we could be relieved

02:13:01.580 - 02:13:25.340

legally. She said yes, that that would be okay. So Tuesday, we're all set to go, packed up and nothing. A week went by and we got the newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and an airplane taking off from

02:13:27.780 - 02:13:46.420

Omaha. It crashed and they were on their way to Columbus, Mississippi to pick up two pilots. They crashed. So that was the end of that job.

02:13:48.900 - 02:14:20.080

We didn't pursue it any further. On that trip, Joy's husband, this Ed guy, the lieutenant, he was an instructor there. So he got the airplane to take us to Washington. He got an AT-10, and I guess that his wife, Joy, had been there a long time, so she got

02:14:20.080 - 02:14:42.440

the other one that Ellen was in. They only were side-by-side, they didn't have passenger space. So we're landing somewhere in the Carolinas, probably ten o'clock at night. And he's a little jumpy because it's all toggle switches.

02:14:47.440 - 02:15:02.940

I think we were in the other one, UC-78, and I wasn't used to that. But he wanted me in the left seat. So he said, "Now be real careful and don't hit the wrong one or their gears will come down."

02:15:02.940 - 02:15:28.640

Well, it was one of those places in the Carolinas that gets real wet, and so the runways were way up high. Well, apparently he was flying and I was just doing the switching. I, you know, put the gear down and flaps up and so forth. Well, he said flaps up and so all of a sudden we're off the runway and so he thinks

02:15:28.740 - 02:15:59.880

I've hit the wrong switch. And instead he looked away enough that we went off the runway and down the hill. So, you know, I don't remember any of those things making a difference. By morning it was repaired and we were on our way. Another time we were on our way to Florida, this was before this, we were on our way to Miami to see if we could

02:15:59.880 - 02:16:23.360

get a job with any one of those airlines. And so we talked Lieutenant Gordon into getting a UC-78. And then I had had a friend, the only date I had in the service, was a really nice lieutenant that was back from the South Pacific and learning to fly.

02:16:24.200 - 02:16:52.940

He'd been in the infantry, a VMI graduate, so he'd been military all the time. So we called him to see if he would like to join us, so we picked him up at Turner Field, where he'd been sent to after he graduated. So about midnight, we got over Tampa, Florida.

02:16:54.500 - 02:17:01.700

We got to thinking how hungry we were. We hadn't eaten. It's getting pretty late. It's almost midnight.

02:17:01.990 - 02:17:22.360

Why don't we stop in Tampa and go on in the morning? There was no activity around there. We got to thinking there was a place called Columbus or Columbia or something where they They had good Mexican or good Cuban food, so that was the thing to do.

02:17:23.660 - 02:17:35.000

We're landing. I don't remember who was flying. I wasn't flying at the time. But we're landing on the roll, and all of a sudden we blew a tire, ran off the runway,

02:17:35.180 - 02:17:54.240

and a B-17 came right behind us. No lights, no electricity, nothing. Our guardian angel blew a tire for us. But again, I never heard anything about it.

02:17:55.280 - 02:18:13.180

You know? Did you stay on at Columbus until you were deactivated? Yes. In fact, I stayed on a few extra days because I'd always dreamed of flying to Chicago with

02:18:13.280 - 02:18:41.080

an airplane and the military. So it was getting to be December, getting to be Christmas. This one officer who was going to Ohio said that he would be happy to fly me to Chicago because he hated to see me take a bus.

02:18:42.200 - 02:18:59.600

And I didn't know him very well, but I thought, "Well, that's really wonderful." So there's a big stationary front that comes down across Tennessee and all that. Almost every year it's there. Well it was so bad.

02:19:00.220 - 02:19:24.580

The weather was so bad. We finally took off on, I think it was Christmas Eve afternoon. We got as far as, I think it was Lexington or Louisville, one of them. The icing was bad, and there was layer after layer, but there were two aircraft lost.

02:19:25.860 - 02:19:51.260

They made us just fly around and fly around and fly around at a certain altitude, because in those days they'd clear from that lost plains altitude to the ground. We finally landed and the weather just was not going to move. So I said, "Well, thank you.

02:19:51.360 - 02:20:12.860

I think I better get a bus or a train or something." I went on home. Got home on Christmas Day and you know as much as I wanted to go home, I was so hurt. When I had to turn in that AGO pass and my parachute, those were two of the, that was the darkest day.

02:20:14.380 - 02:20:31.600

To have to get out of the service. I really, I really loved being in the service. I was so proud. Did the base do anything special for you? No. Some bases did, but mine, they didn't do anything.

02:20:32.730 - 02:20:51.520

So when you got home, then what did you do? Did you get a job? I went right back to Douglas. And because I had known some people, I got a job as a mechanic in the hangar. After all, if you fly an airplane, you need to be a mechanic.

02:20:52.300 - 02:21:15.240

Well, I was very mechanically inclined. That was great, working on the C-54. That was the biggest cargo airplane there was at that time. Four engines, I think maybe at that time there were only 2,000 horsepower engines.

02:21:15.850 - 02:21:34.780

Later on they were the 2,800s. So I was on a crew of eight, and they liked—Ellen was too. We were both put on that same crew. They liked us because they could put us down in the hellhole and work around—that's

02:21:34.780 - 02:22:01.820

the place where all the electrical and the tubes and everything go through. In order to keep them separated, it was hard to make those little wire things and plastic things, rubber things, to keep them separated. They were happy to have us, I think, because we could do that with our little fingers.

02:22:02.700 - 02:22:39.160

But I remember one time, they had me holding something down in the—it was the number two engine, the inboard engine—way down in the air scoop. It was as far as I could reach to hold that nut while they undid something. One jerk inspector came over from the plant, and he was fooling around up in the cockpit.

02:22:39.420 - 02:23:00.380

They're never supposed to do that. He didn't even look out the window to see if anybody was out there. He closed that door, the intake door on that engine. I thought it was going to cut my arm off.

02:23:02.820 - 02:23:26.520

But apparently it was set at forty pounds, so it stopped pushing at forty pounds, but even that was heavy. And I'm yelling, man I'm yelling, and the workmen out there go running up in the cockpit. I don't know, he really got read off by people, because that's something that you never did.

02:23:27.180 - 02:23:44.000

Was it while you were at Douglas that you met someone special? No. How long then did you stay at Douglas? I was at Douglas until the war was over, but also that was my big accomplishment in life.

02:23:46.200 - 02:24:02.820

One night Ellen got a call to go into the flight department, which was just right off the hangar there. And she didn't come back, and she didn't come back. And when she came back, I said, "What have you been doing?

02:24:02.940 - 02:24:09.900

What's going on?" "Oh, Betty Jo, it's so sad." And I said, "What, are we fired?" And then she started laughing.

02:24:10.380 - 02:24:30.560

"No, you're going to be a dispatcher, and I'm going to be a radio operator out in the field." So we moved into the flight operations. So we weren't in there but about a week, and along comes Colonel Holliday, who buys

02:24:30.720 - 02:24:50.720

the planes for the military, the Navy and the Army. He says here that you were a test pilot at Columbus, Mississippi, is that right? "Oh, yes, sir." He is so good looking.

02:24:52.300 - 02:25:16.860

Colonel Holliday, because I had admired him when he was a Major when they first opened. I'd see him in the cafeteria. So anyway, he says, "I just checked out Lieutenant Oswald as first pilot. Now I need two co-pilots.

02:25:16.860 - 02:25:40.220

"Do you think you and Ellen would like to study and maybe be co-pilots for us?" "Oh, yes, sir." So all we did then for a week was study and sleep a little bit and work and eat occasionally. That was my big success in life, I always said.

02:25:40.810 - 02:26:04.460

I went from file clerk to a co-pilot on the C-54. Where would you take these C-54s? It was testing. One Sunday, Colonel Holliday had to take an FBI man or intelligence or somebody back to

02:26:04.600 - 02:26:27.420

Buffalo, New York. Since it was a Sunday, he would have had to pay extra, I guess, for somebody to go. why he asked me if I'd like to go co-pilot with him, and of course I would. But we were in the clouds all the way there, and it cleared when we got there enough, but

02:26:27.620 - 02:26:40.520

snowy. It was in the late fall. No, I don't know when it was. Anyway, it was stormy, ice and everything.

02:26:41.640 - 02:26:57.700

Coming home, I had the most unusual experience. He said, "You know, we're just right over South Bend. It's too bad it isn't clear, so you could see"—what's the name of the Catholic school? Notre Dame.

02:26:57.740 - 02:27:07.580

Notre Dame. "See the gold dome." And I said, "Gold dome? It's right there."

02:27:07.580 - 02:27:20.700

There was an open space, and I could see the building and the gold dome. It was so amazing. How long did you work in that? I worked until the war was over.

02:27:21.900 - 02:27:56.700

What happened then was, I went down to Texas. I'd made arrangements to be a—anyway, I was going to fly for the Swift Company. They were building their little low-wing, little all-aluminum Swift. And I went down there, because one of the pilots was a friend of the guy who was in

02:27:56.500 - 02:28:20.520

in charge of it, and we had done a lot of corresponding and that was going to be my job, to be a demonstrator, take it around the country. And so my mom and I got on the train and went down to Texas and stayed with relatives in Sherman.

02:28:22.420 - 02:28:42.420

Then I was going to go down the next day and talk with this guy. I have an interview. I was hired, really, but that night my dad called and said, "You know, I just had a call from Piper and they want you to be a demonstrator pilot up here."

02:28:44.660 - 02:29:02.900

I thought, "Well, I've been away from my family for a year. Maybe I'd marry somebody and I'd never be home again." I thought, "Well, I'll go back to Chicago and take that job." I called him down at Dallas and told him that I'd had this happen.

02:29:07.580 - 02:29:27.420

A little bit later, when the war was over, Colonel Holliday and I were the only ones left. We had three airplanes to get out that next Monday morning, so I had to be sure and be home by Sunday night to fly that out.

02:29:27.700 - 02:29:51.060

I got home and got up the next morning to go to work. I would go to work at 11, but it was pouring rain and I knew we wouldn't fly. I was on my way and as I'm turning off Manheim Road and go in this little place, there's a circle drive all the way around the plant.

02:29:52.880 - 02:30:15.800

Although there were no workers at the plant anymore because it was closed the day the war was over, this girl driver was going into town. Apparently, you pick somebody up at the railroad. The doctors were still there, and so were all the accounting personnel.

02:30:20.000 - 02:30:40.840

I could tell I was going about six or seven miles an hour because I just turned. I thought, "Oh, if she just maybe misses me in the back." But she hit me right in the back, and it spun around and around and around, hit the curb. I flew out, landed on a parking post in the middle of my back.

02:30:43.680 - 02:31:01.860

In the pouring rain, I remember the tower operators got off and they didn't even hear me. I'm laying out there, just in such pain, just shrieking pain. She finally pulled over and stopped and said, "Let me help you."

02:31:01.860 - 02:31:19.780

I said, "Don't touch me." Fortunately, I wasn't knocked out. And she said, "I was reading my manifest." And so anyway, it turned out I was paralyzed and I wasn't expected to live.

02:31:21.320 - 02:31:47.660

And I couldn't understand why they kept saying things like that over my not-yet-dead body. But I couldn't move anything. To make a long story short, God was with me on that one. They had me packed in sandbags for nine weeks to keep me from moving.

02:31:50.960 - 02:32:06.980

I got out in twelve weeks, but I couldn't walk. My mother helped me to learn how to walk again. They had me on morphine and codeine for all those twelve weeks. Sent me home without an aspirin.

02:32:08.240 - 02:32:21.240

And so I would lay awake at night just screaming. The pain was so terrible. It turns out it was withdrawal, I guess. But they didn't know a darn thing about drugs in those days.

02:32:22.780 - 02:32:53.500

They got so many soldiers hooked on drugs back in the war. But anyway, eventually, I recuperated. In February, which was about five, six months later, I went to visit Ellen in Washington. I could walk without a cane by then.

02:32:54.880 - 02:33:22.800

I was not good, but I could balance. So I went back and visited with Ellen. She was working for American Airlines, taking reservations on the phone. She was living with eight girls that were doing the same thing, and there were four

02:33:22.920 - 02:33:40.580

beds. The night girls would come home and sleep. Things were so different then. Anyway, one of the girls was on vacation, and that's why I could go there at the time,

02:33:42.260 - 02:33:49.800

there would be one empty bed at night. A lot of things. Great. And then what did you do next?

02:33:49.900 - 02:34:12.300

Did you get a job then eventually? No, I was still, well before that I tried to get, what do they call it, 52/30. For fifty-two weeks you could get thirty dollars a week or something, which was if you couldn't get a job.

02:34:13.220 - 02:34:31.620

Well, because my only education was flying, I could have been a controller, I could have been a tower operator, I could have been anything, a mechanic, anything. But they had nothing, so they wouldn't pay me. So I never got unemployment.

02:34:36.960 - 02:34:53.220

I really didn't feel good enough to work yet. Did you go back home? Yeah, I was living back home because I had no income. Eventually, you got through that.

02:34:53.740 - 02:35:12.640

Eventually, yes. I must have had some kind of a job because I couldn't have just sat at home. I would have died doing that, but I can't remember exactly what I did. But I had some kind of a job.

02:35:13.660 - 02:35:32.380

So when did you meet the man you married? My husband? I met him when I was a junior in high school. But of course, I was very much in love with this tall and handsome football player.

02:35:35.500 - 02:35:55.240

I had a couple of dates with him, and then he was going to Loyola, and he went in the service right away. I had seen them because when I was a senior, Main Township High School started a junior college.

02:35:57.320 - 02:36:33.980

He and a bunch of his buddies from Skokie, Illinois, came over there for junior college before they went on to Loyola. I had seen them before they went for service, so I knew what the group was. One night, we had a brand new field house and an athletic area there in Displains, and

02:36:33.980 - 02:36:48.120

They were having a big carnival. I don't know what else they had. Everybody was there, everybody from town. Even my mother and dad were standing over there.

02:36:51.960 - 02:37:12.420

The boys, eight of them, came over. There were eight of us at my desk plane's crowd. They wanted to take us to Sally's down toward the North Shore somewhere. It was a very popular place for young people to go.

02:37:18.420 - 02:37:42.180

We decided we'd go because Peggy, one of my very dear friends, knew one of the boys. She was dating a boy that was also going to that school, so she felt like it would be safe. So I went over and told my mom and dad and went off.

02:37:43.040 - 02:38:12.900

We didn't know how we were joining up, but I ended up sitting next to Carl. And then he took me home and apparently he wanted to see me again, but he didn't notice my address or anything, never got my name. So I guess he was looking for a little while.

02:38:13.800 - 02:38:32.680

He finally found the street and found the house. We did have another date before he went away. I think I had two letters from him while he was in the service, and I wrote to him. I wrote to any boy that would write to me, even when I was in the service, because I

02:38:32.720 - 02:38:57.920

felt like they were really. So Carl eventually came home. Yeah, he eventually came home. We got married in November of '46.

02:38:59.780 - 02:39:13.060

What was there about Carl that made you fall in love with him? I don't have any. He wasn't the tall, good-looking one? No, you're right.

02:39:15.240 - 02:39:32.400

Well, we were married when he passed away. It was just two weeks and it would have been forty years. Wow. During that forty years.

02:39:33.080 - 02:39:44.820

Four children. when those children were growing up, were you involved with their schools? Very much. Very much so.

02:39:45.480 - 02:40:07.920

Tell me why you think that's important. Well I can just see it now that I can look around and see. I can see how important it is because I've watched my daughter with her children. They're all top students.

02:40:09.560 - 02:40:33.420

They're outstanding dancers. She'll help them with anything. Of course, I had the four of them and we're doing 4-H and Scouts and all the different things and I'm sure that sometimes I was negligent about it because by then I was Carl's corporate

02:40:33.610 - 02:40:57.040

pilot. His company had grown to the point that even in the beginning when we first had the first Mooney in '63, and he was having to go to Chicago and Los Angeles. Well, I'd take him wherever he had to go.

02:40:59.760 - 02:41:20.820

Then when it got where he was in the advertising of the company and so forth for the Rocky Mountain region, we went everywhere. And then in '64, we made our first trip to Mexico. What kind of business was this, Béja?

02:41:21.620 - 02:41:41.700

McDonald's drive-ins. He got his first one, we got our first one in '56. He ended up with ten when he sold. Was his area of business?

02:41:43.640 - 02:42:13.180

First right of refusal in Denver. But his talent was in the business world. His talent was, he had gone to school, he was in the Army for four and a half years. He came back and went to work selling refrigerators and ranges and so forth for the big Chicago

02:42:14.300 - 02:42:34.960

public service company. It was called Chicago Coke or something or other. I suppose that if he had any business, yes, that was business. His mother talked him into getting a little real estate place there and quitting the other

02:42:35.020 - 02:42:51.640

business while we were married, and starting a little hamburger joint on the corner, which was called The Lunchbox, on the corner of Skokie Highway and Lincoln Avenue. In Chicago? In Skokie, Illinois.

02:42:55.700 - 02:43:11.560

So that was very successful, but it wasn't very successful for me because I never saw him. I had the two children. I had the one child when we started out, and then eventually two.

02:43:12.200 - 02:43:28.600

So it wasn't a very happy time. If I hadn't had the WASC to think about, I think I probably would have lost my mind. Good memories. But then you were with him when he started, got the first McDonald's.

02:43:30.220 - 02:43:57.160

Was that his decision or was it? No, what happened was our oldest son, who was about six at the time, six, maybe seven, had allergies so bad he was just sick he couldn't even go to school. He couldn't walk up the stairs, and during the fall when the spores were floating around

02:43:57.260 - 02:44:18.800

from the fields, he had to be in air conditioning. I had taken him to the West Coast for two years until it froze, until all the fields froze. But, well, I keep thinking.

02:44:21.210 - 02:44:25.860

Okay, we'll change tapes. Yeah, change it. Swig. Yeah.

02:44:26.680 - 02:44:37.420

I think we're probably almost done here. We better be. Potato and a Caesar salad for $2. Oh, wow.

02:44:37.660 - 02:44:53.340

That sounds pretty good. You took your child to California for two seasons? Yes, for two seasons, down right on the water by Newport Beach there. My sister had a place down there.

02:44:54.120 - 02:45:13.220

But the last time, it just didn't do any good. But we knew we had to do something. So Carl sold the business, and we had built a beautiful home in Mount Prospect. My dad put in cherry paneling in the walls, and we put in—well, anyway, it was a beautiful

02:45:13.520 - 02:45:28.660

home. But we knew that if he was going to live, we had to leave. So we either had to go to the ocean or the forest or some of the pines. So we went back to California and stayed on Lido Isle.

02:45:29.920 - 02:45:52.080

He was good enough to go to school. He went to the Episcopal school there, but he wasn't improving. Carl started thinking about getting a job. In the meantime, the price of the house we were renting, it belonged to one of the pap's

02:45:52.080 - 02:46:10.980

heiress homes. She had a bunch of them there. It went from $400 a month for the summer vacationers to $600 the next month, and it was $800 the next month and $1,000 for August.

02:46:12.440 - 02:46:36.220

We just decided that that wasn't going to work for us. We decided that we would try Denver or Northern California. We had friends that lived behind us in Mount Prospect, and they had moved to Denver two months before we left.

02:46:37.060 - 02:47:02.260

Her father was Ray Kroc's first partner. He was the man with the money that got Ray started in McDonald's. We ended up going to Denver. I can remember, I thought Denver was like Klagstaff with all the pine trees.

02:47:03.160 - 02:47:24.040

I can remember, after we got out of the Colorado Springs Mountains and started heading to Denver, I kept seeing deciduous trees and no more pines. And I started crying. I thought, "Oh no, after all this, nothing's changed."

02:47:24.740 - 02:47:39.760

Well, we get there and call them, and they say, "Come out." And we go to their new home. And her mom and dad are there. Art Jacobs his name was.

02:47:41.800 - 02:47:53.920

And he doesn't say, "Hello, Joe. Hello, Carl." He says, "This town needs a McDonald's." So that's how Carl got into it.

02:47:54.340 - 02:48:17.500

But even at that, McDonald's wouldn't allow you -- oh, they're the ones that made up franchising. They made the original and none's been tougher. In fact, when we finally made up our mind we were going to do it, we got this contract thing.

02:48:17.760 - 02:48:28.580

I said, "You know, we've got to go see an attorney. We should." He said, "You're right." Because they were coming to town the next morning and we were going to be signing it.

02:48:29.380 - 02:49:00.380

That was something like $80,000 in the next so-and-so amount of years. We had $25,000 when we left home. That was because we sold a house and a business. money in 1956. Anyway, we went to this attorney and told him, and we've got the two kids with

02:49:00.440 - 02:49:33.680

us because we don't know babysitters. So he's reading it and he looks up and after a while and he says, "Carol, I'll tell you what I'd do if I were you. I'd pack those kids up and get the hell out of town. He said, "I'd no more sign that than the man in the moon." So, we of course ignored that. And then he found a place, he just went up and down 17th

02:49:33.680 - 02:49:53.180

Street looking for somebody who could build a building and lease it back to us, because That's what you had to do. If you had your own and you had your own construction company, you couldn't do it. Because McDonald's was making money off the rent, and their business was real estate.

02:49:53.300 - 02:50:13.960

It wasn't hamburgers. He found a man that was hot to go on this. It sounded great to him. took all the papers and the plans and went down to the city hall to get a builder's permit.

02:50:16.600 - 02:50:35.240

They looked at it and looked at 15-cent hamburgers and they said, "There's no way you're going to get a building permit to build something like this." He said, "The businesses are going out of business day after day for just such things. They're having 25-cent hamburgers.

02:50:35.300 - 02:50:58.320

If you think you can make a living on 15 cent hamburgers, not in this town you're not." So we couldn't get a McDonald's in Denver. So there was a little place, they called it No Man's Land. It was out on Colorado Boulevard and it was Glendale and it was unincorporated.

02:50:59.360 - 02:51:14.900

And so he started looking around for people that owned that property and he found the Austins. And well, it's a long story that could go on for days with the Austins, but eventually we got the first one built.

02:51:16.620 - 02:51:54.460

Never thinking we'd ever have more than one, because that had been, you know, just unbelievable. But Carl was very smart in business, and in May, they dug up Colorado Boulevard four feet deep. So there was no way to get cars into our drive-in. So it wasn't until October, we just almost died. If we hadn't had potatoes and bread, buns and milk,

02:51:57.430 - 02:52:20.540

did I say potatoes? What all we had at that time were french fries, hamburgers, and shakes and Cokes of that. And so if we hadn't had that, we would have starved, because we had no income. And so for those four months that that street was dug up, then even there were just some

02:52:20.560 - 02:52:39.080

apartments back over there, and they would walk over. So we did sell some during that time, but it was almost— Anyway, so that was interesting. He got so that we had to go to so many meetings all over the country.

02:52:44.540 - 02:53:02.260

By this time we were flying a twin, but now I'm flying instruments. You couldn't let down fast enough in a normally aspirated aircraft, so that was what they called the King Air. That was the 320, Cessna 320.

02:53:03.410 - 02:53:28.240

It was a lovely airplane, but he decided that since we were inhibited from flying—because we were going into Newark and all over the country, L.A. and everywhere—we needed to fly IFR. So he got a King Air.

02:53:30.240 - 02:53:42.780

And so that was a lovely airplane. And I flew that for five years. And it had everything. It had the little potty and it had the bar.

02:53:43.820 - 02:54:16.780

And I remember soon after I started flying it, we were taking some people somewhere south because we went over Taos and I couldn't get them on the radio. I couldn't get anybody and I'm on center. So I had the little, just a tube like a straw.

02:54:20.800 - 02:54:44.440

I even had the earpiece that was made for my ear. I mean, man, it was first class. And so, when it was evenings, I liked to serve crab claws and shrimp because the people that were around doing that sort of thing, that was one of their good things.

02:54:45.480 - 02:55:18.940

So Carl was always the bartender and he would serve the food, but I got the other microphone out of the drawer because I had to communicate. So after I got through eating or something, I was examining this thing. I had done was I'd gotten cocktail sauce in the straw.

02:55:24.260 - 02:55:36.280

Eventually then you went on, you had ten McDonald's. And one of those McDonald's was in Mexico? Did you have one in Mexico? No.

02:55:38.220 - 02:55:57.640

I liked Mexico. In fact, we went to, we tried to get a McDonald's in Mexico. We tried to do a lot of things. I don't want to make this an anti-McDonald's thing, but it was one of those things where

02:55:58.860 - 02:56:29.880

the executives are trying to climb up the ladder, and Ray was not in good shape anymore. So we didn't do that. But anyway, it came to the point of, for about seven years they'd been wanting our stores. They wanted to be in Denver.

02:56:32.860 - 02:56:46.080

They had already been buying back stores, like the people in Washington and Virginia had seventeen. They were the first ones that were attacked. You had no choice.

02:56:48.800 - 02:56:57.600

You had to sell. Let's talk about something else. Let me ask you this. You had three boys and a girl?

02:56:58.060 - 02:57:19.980

No, I had two boys and two girls. Let me ask you, of all the things that you have ever done, aside from having those four children, what is the one thing that you're most proud of? I think I'm most proud of my flying accomplishments.

02:57:23.820 - 02:57:55.220

I think that if you were to talk to some of the men that I flew with as a corporate pilot, they were surprised and proud, I think. In fact, I think when I first got that King Air, they had bets on as to how long I'd last. Let me ask you, what is your personal opinion of Jacqueline Cochran and the WASP program

02:57:55.480 - 02:58:14.100

itself that she put together? Well I think that she did a wonderful, wonderful job. I doubt if there is anybody that was as strong-willed as she was that could have done that job. She forced her way in there.

02:58:16.560 - 02:58:36.100

Halp Arnold wanted no part of it at first. He came to love his girl so much. To me, if I had my way, as soon as a child graduates from high school, they would go to a year in the military.

02:58:37.920 - 02:59:03.420

I think it would help everyone. are so against that. But a child has a chance to think about what he wants to do. He sees the world a little bit more. If he's a really poor child that hasn't had any advantages, he can go out and see what other people have done. If he's a very wealthy person, maybe

02:59:03.420 - 02:59:23.160

Maybe he'll get over some of his, a little bit of his arrogance or whatever when he realizes what other people, how they live. I've always thought that a year in the military would just be wonderful. What do you feel that year plus for you and the WASP did for you?

02:59:28.920 - 02:59:56.440

Well, it made me proud of what I was doing. I hadn't been very proud in my schooling, and I didn't have much else to measure other than that, but I was very proud of my ability to fly. And what do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be?

02:59:58.660 - 03:00:26.240

Well, you know, whenever I send a card up to the cockpit when there's a captain, lady captain or something, I can't resist sending, not sending my card up. I get things back like, "Don't leave, I want to see you." And then, one lady was a 757 captain with American, and she was getting ready to go

03:00:26.360 - 03:00:37.680

to Germany. She was studying German, and she was going to be flying a 767. And she invited me to lunch the next day, because they had a layover, and we had a marvelous time.

03:00:40.360 - 03:00:50.540

Just more fun. said, "If it weren't for you gals, maybe the military never would have gotten started with using women." See I guess the Navy was the first.

03:00:51.380 - 03:01:12.480

They started I think first. That's what got us all up in arms when the paper came out with, "The first women will be flying military aircraft for the Navy." That sort of got the attention of some of the WASP members.

03:01:14.020 - 03:01:48.500

What has been your experience with the WASP organization since you got out of the WASP? Well at first, I was fortunate enough to be in contact with some of the California girls, and that seems to have been the hub that kept it together. I remember I went to the first—Pappy Piper had the first reunion there at—wherever

03:01:48.560 - 03:02:24.580

he built airplanes in Ohio, or in Pennsylvania—at the Piper factory. From then on, I was pretty much involved except for a couple of reunions, one in Florida and in California and I tell you the camaraderie is just so great. I think there were times in my life when with all those kids and not getting the

03:02:24.700 - 03:02:45.100

marriage wasn't the sweetest and so forth that just having those having these people to think about and the things I'd done and kept me going. I was going to ask you, in everybody's life there are good times and bad and happy times and then there are sad times.

03:02:45.760 - 03:03:03.840

What got you through those sad times? Thinking about my flying and what I had done and just the strength that I'd gained as a person I had to overcome so many things. And where do you think that strength came from?

03:03:05.560 - 03:03:28.380

My genes, a lot of it maybe. My dad was a strong person. But also I think, you know, the fact that I could take orders if they were reasonable and be pleased to do it in the military.

03:03:31.640 - 03:03:57.500

I think that that was a good education for my life afterward. If you could say something to children in future generations, your great-grandchildren or children that you will never see, if you could give them some advice or something to to encourage them to achieve perhaps their dreams, what would you like to say to those

03:03:57.600 - 03:04:11.560

children? Well, I'd say never let go of your dreams for one thing. That if you have a dream, there's no reason that it can't be fulfilled. You'll find a way.

03:04:13.360 - 03:04:44.120

If it's a good thing, you'll find a way. possible because I didn't have much. I was a poor student and I, you know, but I managed to fulfill my dream and I've always thought that I wanted it so bad and I found a way. And I think that, you know, if you want to go to college, you can go to college and fulfill

03:04:44.120 - 03:05:08.760

your dreams. There's all kinds of ways out there that you can get money for school these days. I think get your education and follow your dreams. Is there anything that I've left out that you would like to talk about or any stories that you would like to have?

03:05:09.080 - 03:05:28.720

Some of the other camaraderie that I've had is with the Powder Puff Derby, the 99s. And being in this group, being a docent here, this avenue would never have opened up for me. I find myself on the History Channel.

03:05:32.360 - 03:05:53.160

Real old historic number. But it was a two-hour program that was just wonderful. It was every branch of the service and all these men. It was a wonderful program, just a month or so ago.

03:05:57.040 - 03:06:17.320

Would you like to tell us about your children now, or your grandchildren? Or not? Oh, well, that would be great. My oldest son, who I've spoken of quite a bit, Guy, he was called at eighteen for Vietnam.

03:06:19.300 - 03:06:41.580

The day before he left, he got his private pilot's license. So he was very ambitious about flying. He went through training and so forth, and we went down to see him at graduation and all the things that loving parents do.

03:06:45.960 - 03:07:05.340

I was never an instructor, so I never instructed any of my children. But he learned. I had helped him with answers and so forth. He wanted to be a fixed-wing pilot, but he could only be a helicopter pilot.

03:07:07.180 - 03:07:38.360

So he was a helicopter pilot, and I guess he was a good one, because when he first got to Vietnam, they had him flying the Bob Hope group around. So I figured he had to be a good pilot. But eventually, it was a place where during Korea, it's where MASH, that was the headquarters

03:07:38.520 - 03:07:56.880

he was at there. Well they closed that in Vietnam, and so he had to be sent somewhere else. And so he was out taking troops. He was a Huey pilot, so he was hauling troops.

03:07:58.900 - 03:08:26.600

You know, the little fast airplane goes in, and I can't remember the names of many more. Then the gunship goes in and shoots it up, and then he comes in and drops his troops off and goes away and flies out here until they call him back. The one thing that he told me, he said, "I won't tell you anything else, Mom.

03:08:26.700 - 03:08:52.960

It's all too terrible, but I'll just give you an example of what I've had to live with." He said, "I've been getting the same group for about two weeks." He said, "I'd watched this one kid, and I thought, 'What a nice young man.'" The way he talks and the way he acts to other people, he's just really good.

03:08:54.480 - 03:09:12.180

He went in and dropped them off. He went out and hung around and kept waiting for them to call him back. They said, "No, you're not going back in. You've got"—I can't think of the name of the guns that are—they'd already blown

03:09:12.300 - 03:09:38.180

up that place. friendly fire and that just killed him. But he was so good. When we were trying to get our, he did come home, but he came home with so much in his mind and his heart. And you You know, people spit at him when he came home.

03:09:40.560 - 03:10:04.080

He was a sensitive person, thoughtful, and appreciated things so much, but he was a good pilot. One time I got a call from, I suppose, I better, well, I'll finish this story. I got a call from the Republican Party when I was flying the King Air.

03:10:05.740 - 03:10:31.500

This was probably in '76 that this happened. We had just gotten our notice that we're on red alert and we should be getting in touch with everybody, any political people, the newspapers, to try and get our story across, to get our bill passed, to show that we were military pilots.

03:10:33.320 - 03:11:04.140

Because Hap Arnold died not having accomplished that, and asked his son Bruce to try and make sure that it happened. He got hold of Goldwater, and Goldwater couldn't believe it, that we didn't have the same things. Because he had been in the transport command and had flown with these women, knew that

03:11:04.180 - 03:11:30.300

they did the same thing he was doing, and he just couldn't believe that we'd never gotten our rights. So I got this call and they wanted me to fly Dole around. There had been a drought in Kansas, and so he had all these appointments on this day.

03:11:30.460 - 03:11:54.740

And also, it was around Lincoln's birthday, and he had a few speeches to make. So I'm thinking, "What are they thinking about?" This airplane costs money, the King Air turbine engines and everything. So I said, "Well, let me check my calendar before I give you an answer.

03:11:54.740 - 03:12:19.860

I'll call you in the morning." On the way home, I thought, "Thank God I had enough sense to say that." Because I thought, "Here is my chance to get a senator in my midst and tell him about." I went home, got my garbage can out, got all my orders, and thought I'll copy them and

03:12:19.960 - 03:12:45.640

put them in a binder, which I did. Pictures with our insignia, our officer's insignia on our caps, and all kinds of things that proved that we were military. I put them in this plastic pages, and I put a WASP insignia, and so forth.

03:12:48.260 - 03:13:06.400

When we got home that morning, it was like we had had an ice storm the night before in Denver, and you could hardly walk. I don't really know how we got to the airport, except that Sanders had been out. I think that we met him at seven o'clock in the morning.

03:13:07.820 - 03:13:22.300

Maybe it was eight. Anyway, we finally got out to the airplane. Of course, I couldn't run it up or anything, but as he got on board, I said, "Sometime during this day, perhaps you would look at this book.

03:13:24.100 - 03:13:40.520

We're interested in being recognized as military pilots that we were." And this is Bob Doe. Bob, yeah. And so he didn't have any of his helpers with him.

03:13:42.180 - 03:13:57.940

They were off at these other places. So I asked Guy to come with me that day because I thought maybe this guy might not like a single pilot operation, which is the way I flew. And so Guy, he is such a good pilot, but he was back from NAM.

03:13:59.260 - 03:14:22.200

So he came with me and we had a good time that day. We flew from Kansas to Nebraska, back to Kansas, up and down, back to Nebraska. We landed at Hutchison, Kansas, at his home at 1115 that night. So we had really flown considerable that day, and most of it was IFR.

03:14:23.340 - 03:14:40.020

Anyway, he and I got along so well in the airplane and everything. Do you think he read that material? Oh, yes. Oh, I didn't finish the story.

03:14:40.160 - 03:15:01.820

We got off at the first stop and he said, "I cannot believe that you weren't recognized the same way I am." He said, "Of course, I'll go back and co-sign with Barry." So I felt like, well, that was worth the tanks full of kerosene I'd used up that day.

03:15:02.660 - 03:15:18.240

That's marvelous. So anyway, that was one thing. The other is flying the powder puff derbies. I flew about six of those.

03:15:20.380 - 03:15:35.860

The first three or four you fly, you're learning, because there are tricks to it. It was a very serious race. It wasn't a joke. What's his name?

03:15:37.320 - 03:16:00.240

Will Rogers named it the Powderpuff Derby. It was really the ATAR, all-woman transcontinental air races. It started out back in '29, I guess, or '30, back in the late '20s with the women flying the famous—

03:16:00.240 - 03:16:12.240

Did you fly your own airplane? Moonie. Yeah, I got a Moonie in 1965. Carl had it built for me to race.

03:16:14.560 - 03:16:51.400

How well or how bad did you do? Well the only good, I didn't do very good because like I say the first, well the Mooney, they had it, it's a par race, like a car race, I forget what they're called, where it's a Well, they had us parred at exactly what we could do, top speed, guns, balls to the wall,

03:16:51.520 - 03:17:10.280

and all that. The most you could get out of it was what they had us parred at. So you had to use every bit of sense that you had to try to overcome this, because you'd look at the race, you'd look at the distances, and you could immediately say, "Oh, this is

03:17:10.280 - 03:17:40.300

a, what's that famous, the split tail, oh I tell you what I've been talking too long. Those little things are short circuiting up there. The Beach Bonanza. You could say, "Oh, it's a Bonanza racer.

03:17:40.380 - 03:18:24.680

It's a 172 racer," or something like that. So anyway, a lot of wonderful gals. One of them I got best of class from the Flying Magazine, which I was very proud of. A one girl did one-time win in a Mooney, but I wasn't flying that year so I don't know

03:18:25.240 - 03:18:49.800

how she did it. Anyway she could be done, but it was usually like a bonanza can go farther, got more fuel, faster than the rest of us, but the addition of fuel, the distance was the thing that you could just pick it out right away.

03:18:49.900 - 03:19:05.240

There's no way. The rest of us are going to have to make a stop in between and that just kills you. But, so then, what was the satisfaction that you got from entering those races? Just the competition?

03:19:06.080 - 03:19:23.320

I think I was always very competitive from the sports time on. What was your favorite airplane of all the airplanes you've flown? What's your favorite? I think the King Air was.

03:19:24.280 - 03:20:00.220

I've flown the Learjet and I really did enjoy the Mooney, but I've had a Mooney since that and now that I'm older and kind of hard to get in and out of that little tiny thing. I think, now, not having a jet engine like the – well, I flew the MU-2 after the King Air.

03:20:06.220 - 03:20:15.160

I really did. I liked them all for what they were good for. When was your last flight? What was the last thing you flew? Hmm.

03:20:21.420 - 03:20:36.420

Oh, I think I flew a 172, um, maybe two years ago. And now, how do you spend your time? I donate my time, I volunteer.

03:20:38.880 - 03:20:54.980

And I try to help my kids and I've slowed down a little bit but I get more done than I ever got done. Got more to do. It's hard to tell.

03:20:55.160 - 03:21:12.440

Now I can be busy all day long and not have a bit of time to make a phone call or anything and if you'd asked me what I did I probably couldn't tell you. Well, I want to tell you that we appreciate the time you've spent doing this. You've been a joy.

03:21:13.100 - 03:21:28.080

Well, thank you. And on behalf of the children and future generations, I thank you. Well, thank you. I just enjoy the children so much and I just, some of them I look at and I think if somebody

03:21:28.080 - 03:21:43.780

would just take that child in hand, just give it some attention, because with all the attention Sally's given her children, they are outstanding. Children just need love. They need it. They do.

03:21:44.940 - 03:21:46.120

Do you have anything?