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Nancy keeps that, you know, every wasp is a role model. They really, uh-huh, and they've got the courage and look at what some of them have gone on and done. Right. But I think that's one reason it got me really interested in this is that

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so many of them who have never had their names mentioned anywhere, their stories are just as important and just as unusual as those who are in the news all the time. Okay, you're right. I'm going to roll. Okay. I'm rolling.

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Okay. I'm Deanie Parrish with Wings Across America. We are interviewing Carol Selfridge. She was a wasp, class 44-5. We are in her home in Salome, Arizona.

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Today is the 8th of November, 2001. Okay, Carol, if you'll begin by telling us your full name and when and where you were born. Well, I'm Carol Elizabeth Wheeler Brinton Selfridge. Get them all in.

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Anyway, I was born in Grand Junction, Colorado. My dad had a peach orchard there and was a farmer. And I was raised on the farm up until age six when my mother was very anxious to get all of her children to California to the Pasadena City School District

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because it was supposed to be one of the best that she knew of. My sister had come out the California year ahead of us to enter high school in Pasadena because my aunt lived here. And, excuse me, my voice is always technical.

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Let me go back, Carol, and ask you about those first six years. Did you live out on the peach farm? We did. We had a ranch, a little house with an outhouse, a pump water outside. We had to pump our water. Mother, of course, did all this.

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And the few things I can remember, I had a brother two years older that apparently he thought that I was God's gift to him and always thought I was wonderful, I've been told. And I had an older brother about five years older and then a sister that was nine and a half years older. And so they, of course, baby-spoiled me all my life, so I've been raised that way.

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Tell me about your grandparents. Well, my grandmother on my dad's side, my grandmother and grandfather lived right next door. I can vaguely remember the whole house, and I don't remember much about them when I was in Colorado. But, of course, they came to live with us at a time I was involved with them off and on in the years.

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And then my mother's family was from Peonia, Colorado, which is at 6,000 feet way up in the mountains, about 100 miles from where we lived. And she was, I always remember her as being very sweet and loving and charming. And I remember she lived in a two-story house, and we would go and stay once in a while.

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And I remember going up the stairs, and it was a big house, and I loved being there. But I don't remember very much about it. I do remember my family. During peach season when they were picking, my sister and my brothers helped out in the peach orchard.

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And I don't remember. I remember my cousin making boxes to put the peaches in, and I can kind of remember the shed where the packers would work. And then my sister worked away from home, and there was a canal above our house.

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And right now it's just below Highway 70 that goes through Grand Junction. And you can see the channel, and our house was just below that channel. And she would swim home from her other job because they'd be so full of peach fuzz, and they got to swim home to wash it off.

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But that's about all I remember. I started school in first grade, and I think I went for a couple of three months. We had to walk to school. How far was it from your home?

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It was within walking distance. Was it a big school? No, a little Palisade. We lived in Palisade, not Grand Junction, which is a very little town at that time.

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With these peaches, did he sell them? Oh, yes. And how would he get them? Well, they packed them and shipped them out.

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And that's about all I remember about it. But Mother was so intent on coming to California that then we packed up in-- oh, it must have been October or something, because I remember coming into California. We had a real open touring car.

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It was big in those days. And I had a younger sister whom we had adopted, and my parents had adopted. It was five years younger than I, so she was a baby. And we camped out.

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I think it took us three weeks to get to California. It was a long time, and we camped all along the way. Do you recall why your parents adopted that child? Was it a relative?

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Yes. No. The parents were itinerant workers that had helped pack--package or pick peaches. And this family, large family, had a girl six months old and a year and a half old. But they left with an old couple, and they said they'd be back.

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Well, they never came back, and my aunt adopted the older sister. And so Mom wanted to adopt this girl. How did you children accept that? She was always--I can't say for the others.

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The others treated her good, but I'm ashamed to say that I never really felt close to her at all. She had an entirely different temperament than the rest of us, and it showed all of her life in having a very different temperament. And I won't say anything more about her because it's not fair.

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And she was an adorable child. She was a beautiful little blonde child, and she grew up to be a beautiful woman outside. Right. But--

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But she went with you then to California. Oh, yes. She came to California. So how many children now are in this jury? There was four of us because my sister was already in California going to school.

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And so my two brothers and my sister who sat in front, and a cat that we brought with us. And he lived to be--well, my brother was eight when we came, and he lived till my brother was 12 years old, and so he was about 12 years old when he died. So he's about the same age as my brother was.

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Had your mother been to California before? They came three years before. The family all came out in 1920. My aunt lived in Whittier at the time, and we stayed with them.

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And then we traveled--we have a picture of Dad in the car that we had then on the road to Shasta, with Shasta in the background. And it's very interesting to see what the road looked like then. And we came up over the--I remember them talking so much about the grapevine,

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coming up over the grapevine, which was--you had to be led over one way, and it's a one-way road. And that's--we came up over that. Did your dad have a job to go to? No.

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What did he plan to do? No, he came--we came and just spent that--he was going to be a farmer, and we bought-- we stayed with my aunt another month. I think of those months of having that family stay for a month with all of us kids.

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And she was the sweetest, dearest person there was. My mother came from a family where two brothers married two sisters. So she had lost her mother, but when they came out here, Aunt Alice was very much like my mom's sister. And her children were her double cousins, so they felt like brother and sisters.

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And her son--Aunt Alice's son was going to Caltech at the time, and of course that was very impressive in those days. And my sister went to Pasadena High School, and she graduated from there, and then she went on into nursing.

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So three years of high school, she lived at home with us. But other than that, then she went in the nurses, and they lived in the nurses' home across the street from Huntington Memorial. And so I only had an older sister about three years out of living at home,

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so I was the oldest. So when you got to California-- We stayed a month, and then we bought--Dad went out looking, and they found a house in Arcadia. Okay, was it in town or was it out?

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There was big farms around in Arcadia. There was a little store and a bank three blocks away. We'd walk to the store, and it was out in West Arcadia, which was not part of the town. And I've heard other people since say that most of the land around there

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was larger pieces of land, and people would buy it. And in Arcadia, you bought an acre. Everything is in acres, and when you go out there now, there's still all these apartments that have been built in back of the bigger homes,

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or the whole thing torn down and apartments put in these full acre lots. Did your dad start working for some other farmer? My dad started a chicken ranch, and we had chickens. And we had two goats, so we had our own milk.

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And then half an acre was in vegetable garden and in alfalfa for the chickens and the goats. Do you remember any chores that you had to do, or did you help with the garden? Well, the boys helped Dad take care of the chickens and milk the goats, and my brother started raising rabbits and would skin them and sell the skins,

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and we'd eat the rabbits. And Dad and my two brothers would help with all of the chores around the house-- I mean around the yard. I was younger then until I--up in my teen years, then I started helping.

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I would mow the lawn. And Dad, by that time, the chicken business had gone kapoop, and he started working as a gardener, and he worked at the City of Hope when it was a sanitarium, TB sanitarium, the Jewish TB sanitarium.

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He was the head gardener there for about three years. And he did gardening pretty much. Let me ask you now about going to school. You were still in first grade?

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Well, I was in first grade, and I started in the Arcadia. They had opened a new school just under two miles-- no, just under a mile from our place. If you lived further than a mile, you could ride the bus.

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And we lived just--the corner two houses up from us was the mile point. And once in a while, they would get clamped down and say, "Well, you don't live outside of the mile. You have to walk." So I would walk for a few days, and then I would go back and catch the bus.

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And I'd ride the bus to the Holly Street School they had built. Well, I take it back. I went to school down on Double Drive. It's quite a place in Arcadia.

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It's right just down from what is now the racetrack. It was a dirigible hangar for World War I, and that was just two miles from our house. And when they finally tore it down during World War-- well, during the Depression, they tore it down.

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And they built a park, and they built the racetrack, and they built all of that with WPA workers. So in that first year, you went to three different schools? I went to this--down on Double Drive, I went down there.

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The first--I remember being second grade there. I don't even remember the first grade part. Do you recall any of your teachers in elementary school? The only thing that I recall is when I was in second grade,

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the teacher told me to read something in the book, and I had no idea of what it was. I had no conception of it. My parents had read to me a lot, and one book they read to me I knew by heart, so I would repeat it, but I wasn't reading it.

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And the teacher said, "Well, if you can't read it, you go sit in the corner until you can." And I remember thinking, even at that age, "Well, how in the world can I read if somebody doesn't help me?" And that's the thing that stuck in my mind.

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And now I'm an avid reader, of course. Do you think that gave you determination? I don't know, but I was mad at the teacher. I didn't feel it was my fault.

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Nobody had helped me with it. I was just supposed to start reading. I don't recall her explaining how to do it, how to sign--I don't remember any of that. I have a daughter that remembers things way back to when she was three years old,

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but I don't have that kind of a memory. Tell me, Carol, what was a Christmas like in your home when you were growing up? Family. My dad's brother had come out to California soon after we did,

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and he had four children--yeah, four children, two. He had been a younger brother and wasn't as knowledgeable about doing things as my dad, and so he sort of leaned on my dad a lot. But they were always there for Christmas, and we always had a big family, turkey and the whole bit.

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Mother always baked. She was a great at baking, and my dad says she can't cook meat worth a darn. Do you remember a favorite dessert that you liked? Well, I loved the pumpkin pies and cookies and things,

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and she was particularly good with angel food cake, because in those days you had to make it from scratch. And we had eggs, and so every time at church when they had any doings, Mother brought the angel food cake, and everybody all was raved about it.

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We never got to eat them at home. Not much, because she'd usually make pies. Every Saturday she'd make pies, and we'd have-- she would use the sweet potatoes from the garden for our pumpkin pies.

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You know, they make beautiful pumpkin pies. And apples and peaches. At one time I counted the fruit trees that my dad and mother both had planted, and there was 60 fruit trees on the place.

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There was plums, apricots, and peaches, and walnuts, and persimmons, which nobody knew at that time what a persimmon was. And I remember the first persimmon I saw was on our window sill in our kitchen, and I said, "Oh, Mom, this tomato is rotten. We'll throw it away."

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"Oh, don't throw that away. That's a persimmon, and that's the way you eat it." So that was my introduction to persimmons. You mentioned your mom baking for the church. Were you involved?

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We were involved in the Methodist church, which was a mile down the road into Temple City. And as a child I could not understand. There was another church of another faith, only about four blocks-- less than four blocks away, and I said, "Well, why didn't we go there?"

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Because we usually had to walk. And, "Oh, we don't go to that church." My mother never talked about other--not nationalities-- other denominations. It just wasn't talked about.

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She had been raised in a Quaker family, and her brother-- her only brother was a friends minister in Peonia, Colorado. And she just never explained why there was a difference. And so I learned it in church from the minister's wife, who taught a beautiful Sunday school,

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talking about other religions and how they differed from ours. Do you recall being--at Christmas time, would they have special celebrations? Oh, yes. There would be--all would be church programs. Right. Do you recall being in one?

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No, but my mother did, and my brother one time they put one on. And I was real proud of my mother. She was a housewife and never worked, but I think that she could have gone a long ways, because she painted and she did woodwork with an electric needle that burnt the wood.

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She made a bookcase that we still have--my sister and I still treasure it-- and different pictures and things. And she was very artistic, but never did anything with it except for her own benefit. When you finished elementary school, then to go into--did you have a junior high?

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The school I went to, this Holly Street School, was just built for-- and I went in there in the fifth grade and the sixth grade. And then you were to go over to Arcadia to the grammar--regular grammar school. And at that time, Mother made arrangements.

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We were just three blocks from where the bus came for Pasadena schools. And so she finagled it that I went to one of the junior high schools in Pasadena. They had the 6-4-4 plan, which was six years of elementary and four years of junior high, and then four years of the senior high and first two years of junior college.

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And so they had six junior high schools in Pasadena, and I went to the one nearest to the east side of Pasadena, which is Michelinda and Woodrow Wilson Junior High School. And all--my brothers and I all went to that, graduated from Woodrow Wilson,

00:19:34.000 - 00:19:51.000

and then we went on to Pasadena Junior College and graduated from the twelfth grade, and then we graduated from the fourteenth grade. Well, my brothers got started with cars and having to earn money to spend on cars, so they ended up dropping out.

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But my dad and mother both were very much in tune to be sure and get your education. Okay. Let me ask you, in junior high, what were your dreams? Well, my sister was a nurse, and I always liked nursing. I kind of thought maybe that's what I would like to do, and that was sort of my intention.

00:20:16.000 - 00:20:33.000

Okay. And what was your favorite subject in junior high? Gym. [Laughter] I liked sports, and I was so thin that my teachers were always saying, "Well, you should take rest during gym."

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Not on your life! I wanted to be out playing basketball and soccer and football-- not football in those days, but we did play soccer. And then in junior high school--in high school, we played soccer--not soccer. We played hockey, and I had never heard of that, of women playing.

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But we had a women's team. We'd run up and down the field. It wasn't ice hockey; it was field hockey. And I loved that. I tore up and down the field. Did you have a high school team, a hockey team?

00:21:08.000 - 00:21:28.000

No, not competing, just gym classes. We didn't have women competing in anything. And then they had a swimming pool there, of course, and that's what I liked, too, is swimming. And later on in junior high school, or junior college, the math was--I didn't mind math.

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The only thing I really didn't like was English. I'm never good at it, never was. In high school, were you interested in any other outside activities--music or drama or anything? No, I'm not musically inclined at all. I can't carry a tune in a basket.

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But I did like physiology and bacteriology and all of the sciences I really enjoyed. And I had no trouble in those grades at all. Do you recall a teacher in high school that you were influenced by? Not too strongly. Not too strongly.

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I had one, Mrs. Gray is the only one I can remember. I liked her real well. And the reason I liked her is because she kept a very interesting class, and nobody acted out in that class. She was real strict, but very good.

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And our homeroom teacher was sort of a Mickey Mouse guy that everybody acted out and gave him a bad time all the time, and nobody liked him so well. He was a nice person, but he just was not a good teacher. And those were the things I graded teachers more by rather than how they influenced me.

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How were students disciplined when you were going to school? Oh, sent to the principal or something. And when I was going to school, particularly in younger ages, we were afraid of the principal. You didn't want to get sent to the principal.

00:23:04.000 - 00:23:22.000

And nowadays in the schools, it's no big deal at all, and I just don't understand it. Of course, there's so much more freedom. But in those days, I don't know whether I ever met him, but I was scared stiff of being sent there. I don't recall ever really doing anything.

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I wasn't outgoing and rebellious. What were your social activities like in high school? Well, I was so much taller than all the rest that I didn't enjoy going too much.

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My sister kept insisting that I should. She lived just within short walking distance of junior high school, and when there would be a dance or something, she would insist that I should go. I would go over to her house, and she'd dress me all up and get me all ready.

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She was the one that kind of mothered me when she was around. How was your mom and dad? Were they involved in any of your school activities? Mother was very supportive, as much as she could be. And then they put on a program at the Rose Bowl.

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And for weeks, we had to go over and practice at the Rose Bowl. It was marching or sort of dance steps or something. I can't hardly remember, but she would take me every time. And I think back of how much it did.

00:24:32.000 - 00:24:50.000

Mother encouraged me in every way there was. I was never told I couldn't do anything. I was always, "Let's try it, and let's do it." My brother was a very outgoing person, a daredevil type of person,

00:24:50.000 - 00:25:10.000

and I emulated him an awful lot. I had to do everything he was doing. We had a--during the time when they were having track and high jumping and so forth, we set up one in the backyard, and we were both competing,

00:25:10.000 - 00:25:23.000

see who could jump higher than the other. And I was a tomboy rather than that. And as far as going to school dances, I went to a couple of them, and it was such a fizzle because nobody was tall enough,

00:25:23.000 - 00:25:37.000

and I just sat back in the corner. Did you go to your high school prom? No. Pasadena schools, you didn't have a class to speak of.

00:25:37.000 - 00:25:56.000

You went to classes, and sometimes it would be a freshman and juniors-- I mean freshman and sophomores in the same class, depending upon what you're taking. So you didn't have a class, per se. And then when we graduated from high school--

00:25:56.000 - 00:26:18.000

well, when we graduated from junior high school, we all graduated from the Rose Bowl. The six junior high schools, the high school and the junior college, and the nurses from Pasadena Huntington Memorial all graduated one day in the Rose Bowl.

00:26:18.000 - 00:26:34.000

But different ceremonies? It was one big ceremony, and then each class would be announced and come down and get your thing, and it would take hours. But, you know, and the people in your class, you didn't hardly know them.

00:26:34.000 - 00:26:49.000

I never went to a reunion of a high school because there wasn't such a thing. And the same way with a junior high school. There was a clique. I remember a few kids that all ran around together and it was kind of a clique,

00:26:49.000 - 00:27:02.000

but other than that, you had your one or two friends and that was it. And of course I lived five miles away from the school. So how did you get to school? By bus.

00:27:02.000 - 00:27:23.000

We had to walk the three blocks to where the bus came for Pasadena Schools over on Temple City Boulevard. Did you have caps and gowns for the high school graduation? Yes, you had cap and gowns for both. And then I did graduate from high school, and then I went on and finished junior college.

00:27:23.000 - 00:27:40.000

Well, when I graduated from junior college, I took an extra semester to finish, so I finished in January instead of June, and so I just didn't go. I didn't have any graduation. What did you take in junior college?

00:27:40.000 - 00:28:00.000

I tried to take pre-nursing. But you had to take economics to get into nursing. You had to make a B in history, and I took history two semesters trying to make a B, but I could not remember dates and make anything better than a C.

00:28:00.000 - 00:28:16.000

I would make a C. And I couldn't make more than a C in chemistry. And looking back, I see why, because I don't have any sense of smell. And to take a test, you had to identify all these different things, and a lot of them was by smell.

00:28:16.000 - 00:28:32.000

And I just didn't realize that that was what was stopping me. I don't know why, but anyway, it was one of those things. But my dad came to me one time. He and Mother were sort of at odds,

00:28:32.000 - 00:28:51.000

and they both lived in the same house and slept in the same bed, but they hardly spoke for years. And both of them were very supportive of me. Like I say, I was a spoiled one of the family. Everybody doted on me and gave me everything I wanted, I guess.

00:28:51.000 - 00:29:13.000

But as a result, I just always have loved everybody. And so what effect did that have on you? Well, my biggest effect was that I was determined that my kids were never going to see any strife between my husband and I. And it came to pass that just this last time my son visited, we got started talking.

00:29:13.000 - 00:29:36.000

And he said, "I don't remember you and Dad ever fighting, but one time you got up and left the table because you were crying." And he said, "I always wondered why." And so I guess it worked out that way. And besides, my husband was the kind that wouldn't fight anyway.

00:29:36.000 - 00:29:49.000

Sometimes I'd get mad enough and I wanted to tell him what for, and it didn't work. He'd just go for a walk. Come back. Let me go back and ask you, as you were growing up, how did you spend your summers?

00:29:49.000 - 00:30:05.000

Did you take vacations? No. Well, Dad always went fishing for two weeks out of the summer. But he went with a friend. Mother could not stand the idea of going camping.

00:30:05.000 - 00:30:21.000

And I used to wonder why she didn't, because I thought it was wonderful. But looking back, when she was raising her kids, she had to pump water at the well. She had to haul in the water. And for years, when I was a kid, she washed everything.

00:30:21.000 - 00:30:37.000

She had a big boiler that she boiled the white things on the stove, and a tub to scrub everything on a scrub board, until my brother was old enough to earn money to buy her a washing machine. She had done that.

00:30:37.000 - 00:30:51.000

And I can see I wouldn't have wanted to go out there and cook over open fire and haul water either, because that's what the woman does. She didn't go fishing in those days. They'd go and take care of making food and keeping the camp.

00:30:51.000 - 00:31:12.000

And she just never wanted to go. So I did--my dad took my sister and I camping to Yosemite one summer. It was when I was 16, and I got to drive part of the way. And then I started to say--my dad came to me one time, and he said,

00:31:12.000 - 00:31:29.000

"Now you're a girl, and you probably will have to earn a living at some time or other, and I want you to be sure and get a good education." And his mother had left him $200, and he gave that to me. And he said, "You be sure and go on and get something special."

00:31:29.000 - 00:31:52.000

So there was--physical therapy school just had started up just down in San Gabriel, which was, oh, about ten miles from where I lived. And so I signed up for that. But before all that, I had met my husband and gone with him for a year,

00:31:52.000 - 00:32:08.000

and just about a year when we decided to get married when I was 21. What qualities did he possess that made you fall in love with him? Well, he was taller than I. [laughter]

00:32:08.000 - 00:32:29.000

He was real friendly and outgoing and loved to do everything. And he had come from Washington, D.C., and he bummed his way out to California and lived with his cousins. And I had been working away from home.

00:32:29.000 - 00:32:52.000

I worked from the time I was 12 years old, keeping house. I worked for a lady for about four years at 15 cents an hour every night after school or most every night after school until I was 16. And then my sister got me a job working as a mother's helper right near school.

00:32:52.000 - 00:33:08.000

And I just lived in, and they had two small children, and I helped her with the housework and looking after babies. What did you do with that money? I bought my own clothes, and we had to buy our own clothes

00:33:08.000 - 00:33:29.000

and anything that we wanted from--I never received an allowance, per se, if we needed something, because my family--I knew they just didn't have money. And then when the Depression came along, there was just no money at all except what you could get yourself, and I babysat a lot.

00:33:29.000 - 00:33:43.000

Did you share any of that money with your mom and dad? No, I didn't. See, I had two older brothers, and it just was something that didn't occur to me. My mother was getting some money from the ranch that she and her brother

00:33:43.000 - 00:34:00.000

had inherited in Peonia, and she was getting some of the money from that. But other than that, it was just--and dad and mother never talked finances. "We just don't have the money" would be the answer. And dad would take mom shopping Friday night,

00:34:00.000 - 00:34:13.000

and they would go and do their big shopping, and then other than that, we got along with what we could get just down at the store, walk to the store for a loaf of bread or something. So you did odd jobs all the way through junior college?

00:34:13.000 - 00:34:27.000

Yeah, all the way through. I worked my way from-- Well, I babysat from the time I was 12 years old, too. I always had the laugh--the woman in back of us was a teacher, and she had an only daughter.

00:34:27.000 - 00:34:42.000

And so it was a year younger than I from the time I was 10 years old. I was paid to babysit with her. [laughs] Did you have to pay for junior college, or was that a state-- No, no, it was state. I just had to buy our own books.

00:34:42.000 - 00:34:57.000

And that took money. The anatomy book was $10, and that took me really scrounging to get that $10 to buy that anatomy book, big, thick one. Right. So once you finished high school, then you had to pay for your books.

00:34:57.000 - 00:35:11.000

Yeah. I want to ask you, during all those years in school, how often did you see your grandparents? Well, of course my grandmother on my mother's side had died.

00:35:11.000 - 00:35:26.000

I just knew her just for a very short time. But my grandfather and grandmother lived with us. At the time, Linda was--or Joanne was--three years old, so I had to have been eight.

00:35:26.000 - 00:35:43.000

And he had started to get senile at the time. At the time, we didn't even know about Alzheimer's. But he was more senile, a very gentle, sweet person. And he would wander through the house, and he'd say,

00:35:43.000 - 00:35:53.000

"Who is that man out there?" And it would be Dad going by. The only one he knew was his wife. And he would say, "Well, Doshi--" Her name was Theodosia,

00:35:53.000 - 00:36:10.000

and so he called her Doshi. So you grew up with a very extended, large family. Uh-huh. And then my uncle lived next door for quite a while with his four children. And my cousin and I--she was a couple of years older than I--

00:36:10.000 - 00:36:22.000

we chummed around together a lot. And it was just chumming around with friends and playing all the things that we played, like jacks and hopscotch and--

00:36:22.000 - 00:36:35.000

excuse me, there's a phone ringing. I'm going to stop. Yeah. Okay. Okay. How tall were you in, say, junior high school? Well, I'll tell you, in the sixth grade on,

00:36:35.000 - 00:36:58.000

I was the tallest one in my class, boys included, for a long time. And I don't remember how tall I was, but I ended up six foot even when I went into service. Really? Yeah. I've shrunk since then, but I was six foot thin. Okay. Tell me, at what stage did you meet the boy that you married?

00:36:58.000 - 00:37:09.000

Were you out of junior college? I was in junior college at the time. When you met him? Well, I was--yeah, I had one more year to go. Did your mom-- In fact, a year and a half to go.

00:37:09.000 - 00:37:34.000

Did your mom and dad approve of your marrying him? Well, they never said anything against him. The only thing was my dad--he used to sit at the kitchen table and play cards, play solitaire. And I was out talking with him one night, and he says,

00:37:34.000 - 00:38:00.000

"You know," he says, "are you sure he's not Jewish?" And I said, "Well, his dad is a Quaker from a Quaker family, a Methodist." And in fact, the Brentons had a house in Pennsylvania that was the Quakers' house, and it's still there. It's a Brenton household.

00:38:00.000 - 00:38:20.000

And so he was very much English. It was a family that William Penn had given him a grant of land, and that's where the Brentons came from. And they definitely were a strong resemblance all among the Brenton family, except my husband.

00:38:20.000 - 00:38:34.000

They were short and square, and my husband was tall and thin. So then that was okay with your dad? Oh, it was. He never complained about it. Do you think it would have made a difference if he had been Jewish with your father?

00:38:34.000 - 00:38:58.000

I don't know. That's one thing. My family never, ever said anything against any-- In fact, I didn't realize that there was a difference in Jewish people as opposed to American. I heard--and when I was about six or seven, I heard somebody say-- No, I was in about sixth or seventh grade when I heard somebody say, "Oh, she's Jewish.

00:38:58.000 - 00:39:24.000

You don't want to play with her." And I thought, "I don't know." And my mother was very much involved in mixing with the black people. And Pasadena schools had a group of black people, mostly, I guess, working as servants in homes, in the wealthy homes up in the northwest part of Pasadena that had the big, beautiful homes.

00:39:24.000 - 00:39:44.000

And there was a group that came to school in the high school, and they always sat alone. And there was a couple of them in my classes, and nice as could be. And I never could figure out why people--there was such a difference. They always kept separated.

00:39:44.000 - 00:40:02.000

And when I went--my mother sent me to camp one time. I got to go to camp. It was a big thing. She really, I'm sure, saved to be able to have me go. But they asked me if I would go in with the group of colored girls.

00:40:02.000 - 00:40:18.000

There was about five, and there was six to a tenth. Would I stay in with them? I said, "I didn't care." And it turned out they were the most fun of the whole group, because they always were so jolly and always had jokes and always were so good.

00:40:18.000 - 00:40:29.000

And I enjoyed it. And what age level were you then? I was eighth grade. Yeah, I was eighth grade then.

00:40:29.000 - 00:40:45.000

And it was really great to go to camp for that. Mother always encouraged--well, that's why I say she wanted her kids to go to the best schools and do the best they could. So anything that they could do to put us on.

00:40:45.000 - 00:41:04.000

Well, anyway, I was in junior high--college when I met Jimmy. Okay, let's stop there. She's going to change the tape. You need to get up and walk around? Well, I'll get a drink. Maybe I'll--

00:41:04.000 - 00:41:22.000

How about you? Tell me about your wedding. Oh, well, in those days there wasn't much of weddings. In fact, Jimmy and I had decided we were going to get married, and we were going to go to--

00:41:22.000 - 00:41:46.000

so we went to--he took a day off from work, and we went to Riverside, because we thought if we got married in Riverside, it wouldn't appear in the Pasadena paper. And we got to the courthouse, and it was closed. It was election day. So we couldn't get married.

00:41:46.000 - 00:42:00.000

So we went back, and I was talking to my girlfriend, and she had a boyfriend that was making a tremendous amount of money, and he had a real nice car, at least in our eyes. I think it was $50 a week.

00:42:00.000 - 00:42:19.000

And he said, "Well, I'll take you to Las Vegas." So I had been babysitting children, families, where they'd go to the beach, and I'd go along and be their babysitter and stay for two or three weeks. I did that several different times.

00:42:19.000 - 00:42:30.000

And so I just told my mother I was going to go with this family to the beach. I didn't tell her where I was going. So I ran off and got married. And we didn't tell anybody for a week.

00:42:30.000 - 00:42:50.000

And then we had a family dinner. I can't remember what it was for because it was just a week later. And I couldn't stand the name longer. I pulled out the license, our wedding license, and showed it to Mom.

00:42:50.000 - 00:42:59.000

I said, "I have something to tell you." [Gasps] That was it. And then the family did give me a shower and stuff.

00:42:59.000 - 00:43:22.000

And then my sister helped us find a place to live because we didn't even still-- because I had promised my dad I'd finish school. And I had a semester left at Pasadena, and I had decided to take this physical therapy training.

00:43:22.000 - 00:43:36.000

And that school was down in San Gabriel. It started at 4 o'clock in the afternoon. So we found a little place to live right across the street. It was a little apartment right across the street from Pasadena High School, college, whatever.

00:43:36.000 - 00:43:53.000

And I went to school in the morning, and Jimmy was working at Lockheed. And he would get home at 3 o'clock, and I'd leave at 4 to go down to San Gabriel. I'd have to be down there by 4. And four days a week.

00:43:53.000 - 00:44:06.000

And I would be in school until 10 o'clock at night. And I finished there. I was going to school in the morning and going to school at night, and I finished graduating in January.

00:44:06.000 - 00:44:20.000

And so we moved down to San Gabriel, close to the school there. What year was this? This was in 1936 and '37. Because I got married in--

00:44:20.000 - 00:44:41.000

No, that was '38, '37 and '38, because I got married in '38. And I was in school. So I promised Dad I'd finish school, so I did. And then I proceeded to get pregnant about January.

00:44:41.000 - 00:44:56.000

I had six months to go, and I finished. I graduated in the class, and I had a friend that I invited to come. And she said, "Well, you know I'm pregnant. I can't come out." [laughter]

00:44:56.000 - 00:45:12.000

Did your dad come to your graduation? No, my dad and mother just didn't-- He backed me all the way, but it was a sad thing because I loved both my parents, and they just weren't speaking.

00:45:12.000 - 00:45:31.000

And I don't know why. It was a family thing. But Dad always said, "Well, I'm not leaving here until all the kids are out. I'll stay home and stay here as long." And then after that, then he moved up north and lived up north for a year or two.

00:45:31.000 - 00:45:49.000

Anyway, that's when I-- And then Linda--I graduated in June, and Linda was born in September. I did work in a doctor's office for about three weeks, and that was all I worked. So I didn't work from then on.

00:45:49.000 - 00:46:07.000

But Linda was born in--I was married the 3rd of September, and she was born the 19th of September. But she's been the love of our life, apple of her dad's eye. Oh, he just--he wanted children so badly.

00:46:07.000 - 00:46:19.000

All the year we were going together, he would say-- I'd be babysitting somebody, and he'd say, "Oh, I wish they were ours. I wish he was ours." He loved children. And he was a wonderful father.

00:46:19.000 - 00:46:36.000

Right. And then how long before then you had another child? Well, we went to live over by Lockheed in a trailer court. There weren't many mobile home courts. It wasn't mobile homes; they were trailers.

00:46:36.000 - 00:46:50.000

We lived in a 16-foot trailer for two years. There was a laundromat and the restrooms, and all. We didn't have the restrooms there. It was just a trailer with sink and stove and refrigerator.

00:46:50.000 - 00:47:05.000

It was a pretty good-sized refrigerator. And he made a crib out of one of the breakfast nooks--seats. There was two seats there in the back and a couch. And he worked swings, so he'd be sleeping till 10 o'clock in the morning.

00:47:05.000 - 00:47:20.000

So I'd have to get out and take Linda, and we'd go and talk to everybody else. Everybody there worked at Lockheed, because we were just a mile from the Vega plant in Burbank.

00:47:20.000 - 00:47:38.000

And so then when Sharon was coming along, he built an awning room on the front, and we had a couch out there. And I can't even remember--I guess she was just in a bassinet. And then when she was three months old, we moved up to Oregon,

00:47:38.000 - 00:47:51.000

because the fellows got work up there. Jimmy started out as a riveter at Lockheed, just punching rivets. And I told him, "How can you stand to do that by the hour?" He says, "Oh, I just daydream."

00:47:51.000 - 00:48:11.000

But then he would start trying to rivet these things, and he couldn't get the rivet gun to work right, because it was odd things. So he would draw up plans and send them to the engineers, and he'd say, "Well, make a tool like this, and then we can do the job."

00:48:11.000 - 00:48:28.000

Well, there was one fellow, apparently was sort of up ahead of the engineers, and he said, "Well, how about you being the liaison between-- you draw up the plans and let us know what people need, and we'll make the tools."

00:48:28.000 - 00:48:42.000

So he did that. So when this fellow got a job up in Oregon, Portland, he wanted Jimmy to come along, because he could do that. And from then on, he was known as an engineer.

00:48:42.000 - 00:48:59.000

And he had 10th grade education, and then he'd also had-- in the Navy shipyards, they had blueprinting training. So he knew how to draw blueprints. And he had the kind of a mind that he could see what needed to be done

00:48:59.000 - 00:49:16.000

and draw the picture of it and make it work. And he could do that with anything and everything. So he became an aeronautical engineer, and he worked for North American when he died.

00:49:16.000 - 00:49:43.000

He was up with some of the top engineers doing engineer drafting. How old were the children when he died? Well, Linda had gotten married in '61, and then in '64, Sharon announced that she was engaged.

00:49:43.000 - 00:49:56.000

She'd gone to UCLA and graduated with honors from UCLA on the dean's list and was working. And she met this fellow and brought him out to the house and everything, went with him for about a year.

00:49:56.000 - 00:50:08.000

And then she wanted to get married in September. Well, my younger daughter was going with somebody, and all of a sudden she decided she wanted to get married too. So she got married in August of '64.

00:50:08.000 - 00:50:24.000

And we went to the wedding, went all through it, and Sharon was on her honeymoon, and Linda and her husband had gone hunting in Colorado when Jimmy came home from work one day and said,

00:50:24.000 - 00:50:39.000

"Well, I just can't remember what I'm going to do." He says, "I pick up the phone, and I can't remember who I'm calling." He says, "I don't know what's the matter." And he had told his boss that, and the boss told him to take two weeks off,

00:50:39.000 - 00:50:54.000

take sick leave, and see what he'd find out. So when that happened, I just called UCLA and I said, "Who is your best neurologist that you've got?" And they said, "Well, we can't name names."

00:50:54.000 - 00:51:09.000

One person, I said, "Well, give me three of your names." And I figured that they would give us the top one, and then two others. So I took the name, "Hey, talk," because we just had a little GP that went to-- We were living in Redondo Beach.

00:51:09.000 - 00:51:19.000

And I had raised the kids. We moved down there before-- Well, Kim was two years old. That was in '47.

00:51:19.000 - 00:51:36.000

So anyway, I took him there, and they looked and looked and looked. It wasn't blood clots or anything else. They took all the tests. And finally, after Christmas, he says, "Well, after Christmas, we'll take a scan."

00:51:36.000 - 00:51:53.000

In those days, they had to take off the top of the head to look into the brain, and he had a brain tumor right in the middle of his head. And so he died in January. He was only three months, and he died in January.

00:51:53.000 - 00:52:01.000

Let me back up now. So he wanted the ages. Russell was 14. The girls were married and gone.

00:52:01.000 - 00:52:26.000

Let me back up and ask you where you were and how you heard and how it affected you, Pearl Harbor. Well, it affected me most in that my brother had gone in the service when you had to-- If you're under 28, you had to spend a year in the service if you weren't married and didn't have ties.

00:52:26.000 - 00:52:42.000

And he got caught when he was 27, and he went in the service. And he was up in Fort Lewis where it was-- What did they call it when it's all the cars and the trucks and so forth? Ordinance.

00:52:42.000 - 00:53:05.000

Ordinance group. And they were going to be shipping them out as soon as they could to the Philippines and to the Pacific. And he called my mom, who was very much into the Democratic, knew all the senators and everybody. He says, "Mom, get an approval for my getting in the Air Force, would you?"

00:53:05.000 - 00:53:30.000

And she did, and it came through the day before his whole troop would have been shipped out to the Pacific. And he was sent to Pueblo, Colorado for training, Air Force training. And he turned out to be a B-25 bomber pilot over in Corsica, Italy, and he put in for 75 missions over there. So he did that.

00:53:30.000 - 00:53:46.000

That affected my going in the Air Force when I heard Jacqueline Cochran saying-- And, of course, I couldn't go in the service. My husband kept trying to go in, but his boss would keep saying, "No, you can't let him go. He's needed for aircraft."

00:53:46.000 - 00:54:08.000

And he would squash it every time, so he never did go, and besides, his eyesight was so very poor. And so when I said, "Well, I, you know, talking about the different services, I'd love to have gone in the services." And he said, "Well, you can go." But I couldn't, because you can't go in the service with anybody under fourteen years of age.

00:54:08.000 - 00:54:28.000

So when this came along as civil service, and flying, like my brother was doing, I just jumped at the chance. And when I contacted Jackie Cochran, and I was interviewed and accepted. In the meantime, though, you had to have flying time. So--

00:54:28.000 - 00:54:43.000

When did you first know that that's what you wanted to do? When your brother went in? Well, I didn't even know it was available to women at the time, but I was envious of him. Right. So when did you take your first lesson?

00:54:43.000 - 00:55:10.000

Well, I think I interviewed with Jackie in June or July, and found out that you could get lessons out in 250 miles inland from the coast. And that was Blythe or Portside or Parker, as far as we were concerned. There was little flight fields. And so I guess we got in touch with one another when we were interviewed.

00:55:10.000 - 00:55:30.000

And so we all ended up going out the first of August to Quartzsite. So when you interviewed or when you got in contact with Jackie, you had never been in an airplane? Yes, I'd been in a Piper Cub once. It was the only time I'd been in, and I just loved it, this feeling of just floating up there.

00:55:30.000 - 00:55:48.000

But as far as your record, you had no flying time? I had no contact, no, because I just thought it was beyond anything I could do. I couldn't afford it or anything. And we found out that it was $300 to take flight training for 45 hours out at Quartzsite.

00:55:48.000 - 00:56:15.000

So we went out, and my mother was the kind that I took advantage of her a great deal. When I told my mother about it, her only concern was, "Oh, if I can look after your girls, you can't go unless I do it." And of course, that's what I expected. And the only person that says, "Oh, how can you do that and go off and leave your girls?"

00:56:15.000 - 00:56:28.000

was my sister-in-law, my husband's sister. She adopted children. She couldn't have any of her own, and she was older than Jimmy. And, "Oh, how can you do it?"

00:56:28.000 - 00:56:41.000

It's easy, because Mom always took as good care of my kids as I did. She had the Acre out there in Arcadia. So you just took the kids to her house? I took the kids' house and left them.

00:56:41.000 - 00:56:58.000

And when I went out for training to Quartzsite, I'd just drop them off on the way, because I was living in Los Angeles at the time. And how far did you have to drive? Forty miles to Mom's. And it was on the way, coming on out, coming right straight on out.

00:56:58.000 - 00:57:20.000

Of course, Highway 10 wasn't here then, and it took a little longer to come out through Palm Springs and Indio and all that to get out here. Did you keep your house where you were living? We were renting a duplex, and we stayed there, and my husband stayed there, and he kept it. And he thought it was great. He really was for it.

00:57:20.000 - 00:57:44.000

And when you said "we came out," were you with some other girls? Yeah, that's what I say. Beverly Beesmeyer and Kenworthy, Pat Kenworthy, and I think Schutze, and Johnson. There was a Johnson. She's one of the earlier ones that died. There was about five of us.

00:57:44.000 - 00:58:02.000

Where had you met these girls who also wanted to fly? Apparently with Jackie Cochran, when we all got together to be interviewed. It must have been that. It's the only way I can remember. Then when you got out to Quartzsite, did you live out there?

00:58:02.000 - 00:58:35.000

We lived out there for a month, and all we did was just fly every chance we got. And there was about four or five civilian instructors out there, and Piper Cubs. Can you recall your solo flight? Yeah, that was not as momentous as my primary PT-17.

00:58:35.000 - 00:58:59.000

We'll get to that. He just said, "We'll take it around." I didn't solo as fast as some of them did, but I got it within under ten hours. And then we just flew around, and then we had a lot of acrobatics. That was what I always got a kick out of the instructor, because they always act so apprehensive for fear that you're going to be sick or something.

00:58:59.000 - 00:59:15.000

But I didn't realize that was why they're apprehensive. And he says, "Are you okay? Are you okay?" Were there others except for you five, as far as females? Oh, no. There was quite a few of us out there. There was a barracks out there, and there was quite a few of us out there.

00:59:15.000 - 00:59:34.000

I can't remember how many, and I can't remember where the dining room was, because we had to be fed. There was a restaurant just up the street a ways that we'd go just for relaxation, but we didn't eat there all the time. But we went once in a while. And then how often would you get back to your mom's to see the kids?

00:59:34.000 - 00:59:53.000

I just stayed out there for the whole month, and then I went back. And then until we got called, we'd go back out for refreshers for a weekend or something, and I'd drop the kids off. There was two or three men. Robert Cummings was out there taking training at the time. I remember him being there.

00:59:53.000 - 01:00:10.000

And there's people all around that were taking the training, because they couldn't fly in L.A. at all. And there was quite a few people out there. Robert Cummings got bit by a scorpion, and everybody was concerned that he might get real sick. Was he already into movies at that point?

01:00:10.000 - 01:00:32.000

Yeah, he was a movie actor at the time. And so we were all impressed that he was out there. When you were in private flying, learning to fly, were you aware of what the girls were doing in training, or the girls who had graduated from training? No, we didn't know anything about it.

01:00:32.000 - 01:00:53.000

All we knew is we'd be sent to Sweetwater. And for six months, we'd be in Sweetwater for six months, and that was all. Once you finished and got your 45 hours, then did you have to take any kind of test? Yeah, then we were notified that we would take our physicals down at El Toro Marine Base.

01:00:53.000 - 01:01:14.000

So we all got together, and I think there were six of us. And Marty Berg was one of them, because she was talking about having to stretch to get to be five foot two or something. And that she'd gone to bed. Kenworthy was another one, but maybe she was the one.

01:01:14.000 - 01:01:38.000

Anyway, she was talking. I went on our way out, how she had hoped she had passed. And then Pat Johnson, was it Pat Johnson? I think so, was telling me, she says, "Well, I'm a little bit nearsighted." And she says, "Be sure and memorize the last lines on the chart."

01:01:38.000 - 01:01:57.000

So I did. I memorized the last four, because I could see the tiniest letters. So I memorized the bottom one. And so when she went in, she read them all off until she got the second to last, and she couldn't read it. And then she whizzed through the bottom one.

01:01:57.000 - 01:02:14.000

He says, "How can you see that, and you can't see the one on the bottom?" But he let her through. That was the one thing I remember. Let me ask you, your desire to learn to fly and to get into this program,

01:02:14.000 - 01:02:32.000

do you think that was fueled by your sense of patriotism? I'm afraid not. Although I had wanted to get in the service, and I wanted to do something, but I couldn't, because I had children. You didn't have babysitters, you didn't have daycare in those days.

01:02:32.000 - 01:02:52.000

And if I worked, I lived 40 miles from my mother, where she would have looked after them. Do you think it could have been that you wanted to prove to your brother that you could do just as well? I just wanted to do it. He and I were close.

01:02:52.000 - 01:03:14.000

And after he got out, we did a lot of flying together, as much as we could, not an awful lot. He got his instructor's rating, and he did a lot of flying, because he wanted to fly. And he couldn't afford to buy a plane, but he had a lot of friends that did. So he taught them how to fly, and then he'd get to use their planes.

01:03:14.000 - 01:03:30.000

Once you did your physical, then did you have to have another interview? No, then we were given notice when to report to Sweetwater. So I caught the train, everybody took me down to the train and put me on the train. How hard was that, to leave those two little girls?

01:03:30.000 - 01:03:47.000

Well, I was just excited about it, and the girls, they were always happy. In our family, we traded off babysitters all the time. When I wanted to go someplace, my sister-in-law with two children would take them. And that was a big treat.

01:03:47.000 - 01:04:05.000

They got to go stay at Denny's house, or they got to go stay at Bruce's house. Both my brothers had children, and they got-- especially my older brother had the two boys the same age as the two girls, just a year apart for both of them. And they were like brother and sisters.

01:04:05.000 - 01:04:19.000

How old were your children? Sharon was two, and Linda was four, and she started kindergarten while she was staying with Mom. So she got to go to school and start school. So you got on the train and went to Sweetwater.

01:04:19.000 - 01:04:34.000

Went to Sweetwater. How did you feel when you saw all those airplanes? Thrilled to pieces, and we'd look at them and think, "Oh!" Just your eyes bugging out.

01:04:34.000 - 01:04:56.000

But we got there December 5th, and I think it started to snow December 7th. And it rained, and it snowed. And for two months, we'd go to ground school, and then we'd go and sit on the flight line. And we'd look, and the clouds were right there.

01:04:56.000 - 01:05:12.000

They'd send somebody up to check the height of the clouds. "No, it's too low. We can't go out yet." So finally, I think it was in January, we finally started doing some flying off and on. And of course, as soon as it was light, they flew us and flew us.

01:05:12.000 - 01:05:30.000

And you know, all those nice auxiliary fields that we'd go out and shoot landings on. Well, it was just barely snowing, but we could still see. And the instructor said, "Okay, take it up." And it was snowing.

01:05:30.000 - 01:05:38.000

And I made my first landing in a snowstorm. In the stairman. In the stairman. Did you have any problems?

01:05:38.000 - 01:05:57.000

No, no, I never had any problems with it. There's one problem that I had when we went into night flying. We were all lined up going along, you know, getting out on the flight line and in the line. And I glanced down at my—and we were just, you know, easing along.

01:05:57.000 - 01:06:17.000

And I glanced down at the dash there for some reason or other, instruments, and looked up and the gal in front of me had stopped. So I slammed brakes and my plane just went, "Phew!" right on its nose. And I thought, "Oh, heavens, what am I going to do now?"

01:06:17.000 - 01:06:36.000

So I had to admit it because I was there. And I called the tower and I said, "Tower, I'm on my nose. What do I do?" Somebody came out and got the plane, and they took me to the hospital and checked me out. Well, I just eased onto the nose.

01:06:36.000 - 01:06:50.000

It's just sitting there, no problem. I thought, "Oh, they're going to wash me out or they're going to scold me." Not a word was said. They took me to the hospital and what they called the hospital down in the base.

01:06:50.000 - 01:07:00.000

I didn't have to go in town. And next morning I was out flying and nobody ever said a word. Didn't have to meet a board. Not one word was ever said about it.

01:07:00.000 - 01:07:13.000

I just could not believe my ears. And I went on flying. Well, I didn't get that close to a plane again. Had a guardian angel. Yeah. I've felt that way all my life.

01:07:13.000 - 01:07:28.000

I just never worry about anything. And so many people say, "Oh, how can you stand that? Wouldn't you worry about this?" I said, "I just don't worry." And you're talking about what parents give you.

01:07:28.000 - 01:07:42.000

My mother, I never did hear her say that she's worried about anything. She'd just say, "Oh." And once in a while I would want to do something and I knew in my heart I shouldn't do it. And she would just flat say, "No."

01:07:42.000 - 01:07:52.000

And I said, "But Mom, I want to do so-and-so. Everybody else does it." The normal teenage thing. "No." And I'd go to my room and be so sad.

01:07:52.000 - 01:08:05.000

She never--she'd just say, "No, you can't do it." But it wasn't very often when she did that. Usually I was allowed to go and do what I wanted. I had a girlfriend that got a car when she was 16.

01:08:05.000 - 01:08:24.000

And we used to go every place. And I never heard my mother say, "You can't go." What was the biggest adjustment you had to make when you went to Avenger? Well, having lived with a big family and everybody, I got along okay.

01:08:24.000 - 01:08:51.000

I wasn't the kind that pranced around nude like some of them did. And that--I just never said anything, but I'd think, "I wouldn't do that." And then the biggest adjustment they had to make was that apparently I snore. And Jane Dyed, who was--her bed was right across from mine.

01:08:51.000 - 01:09:06.000

I get the complaints that they had wake her up because apparently she was the only one that could say, "Carol, turn over." And I'd turn over and I'd stop. But I'd wake up in the morning and there'd be shoes and everything else all around my bed

01:09:06.000 - 01:09:20.000

where people had thrown things on me. I'd stop. And that was the thing I was known for in that place with six girls, you know, and waking them up.

01:09:20.000 - 01:09:27.000

And I would go to sleep. I still go to sleep very fast. I say I've got insomnia. It takes me two minutes to get to sleep.

01:09:29.000 - 01:09:46.000

What you would like to about the training program? Well, I thought being naive about such things-- I wasn't worldly like a lot of these girls that had gone to college and so forth, but, well, you know, away from home.

01:09:46.000 - 01:10:01.000

And I just went along with everything. The girls so often complained about the food. I thought it was wonderful because somebody else was cooking it. I did the cooking at home from the time I was about 16

01:10:01.000 - 01:10:18.000

because the boys had gone and Mom would have to take care of the goats and things. She said, "Well, if you'll take care of--fix dinner, I'll just do anything." And she--I can understand now. With two boys and working on the farm, she always had to cook so much,

01:10:18.000 - 01:10:34.000

and she wasn't a great cook, but she always made a lot of casseroles and things. So I took over cooking from the time I was about 16 and then had my own family and my husband. Anything to eat, as long as it was plenty.

01:10:34.000 - 01:10:51.000

As you look back over that training, how do you feel the quality of the training that the women, the girls received versus what you know about what the cadets received? Well, I always felt it was excellent

01:10:51.000 - 01:11:07.000

because we were doing as well as the boys. One time we had a horrible windstorm, and we were out flying. And when I landed, two men had to run out and grab the wingtips before I could turn the plane.

01:11:07.000 - 01:11:19.000

I had full throttle, and I was just going straight down like that. And when I landed, I didn't dare turn or it would have flipped the plane. So they grabbed the wings and brought it over and tied it down before I could even get out.

01:11:19.000 - 01:11:31.000

And on the field, there was two fellows that had made emergency landings like they did. They were always making emergency landings, and nobody would let them off the field.

01:11:31.000 - 01:11:48.000

And they said, "Well, how come they're flying and we can't fly?" So I always felt that we had good training. I know you were there at a Christmas, since you came in in 1st of December. Do you recall what that Christmas was like at Avengers?

01:11:48.000 - 01:12:00.000

Yeah, it was real interesting. The families all in town invited us in to Christmas dinners and to go to church on Sunday. And I hadn't taken any dresses with me, and it was cold.

01:12:00.000 - 01:12:15.000

So we just bundled up in our slacks and our shirts, and I'm sure we shocked everybody going into church in our slacks, but we apologized and said we didn't have anything else. And we went to dinner.

01:12:15.000 - 01:12:29.000

The three of us would go to different families, and so we all went out to dinner at somebody's house. And then, of course, we had the clubhouse there, the Avenger clubhouse that we had in town,

01:12:29.000 - 01:12:44.000

and I think we had spent probably Saturday or Sunday in there. And I remember going in town and walking around town, and every time you went in to buy something, it took you an hour because you had to stop and visit with everybody.

01:12:44.000 - 01:12:53.000

They always stopped you and asked you all kinds of questions and wanted to visit. They didn't care whether they sold anything or not. So it was very friendly in town.

01:12:53.000 - 01:13:08.000

We always enjoyed it. What did you enjoy about ground school? Well, learning how to do all of it. I was amazed that I just took it for what it was worth

01:13:08.000 - 01:13:28.000

because I'd been going to school so much anyway. And I don't remember having any problems except in Morse code. I was the last one out of this class because you had to read so many words, and I'm not good at memorizing and to be able to translate in my mind

01:13:28.000 - 01:13:46.000

what it was fast enough to translate the dots, dash, now dot, dash, now what's that, you know, and I'd stop and think. And after you get out, the only ones you use is A and N, dot, dash, and dash, dot, and that's all you ever use after you get out.

01:13:46.000 - 01:13:59.000

And I had those down pat. And SOS we had down pat. Do you recall any of your instructors that might have made an impression on you? No, I had a real good instructor.

01:13:59.000 - 01:14:19.000

He was a tall fellow, and it pains me that I don't remember his name, and another one that wore cowboy boots all the time. And both of them were very good. I had a girlfriend that I've gone to school with since second grade.

01:14:19.000 - 01:14:36.000

After I got in, she got in the class, maybe in your class, Marguerite Haskins. She was there, and all of a sudden she wasn't there. She was washed out. And I couldn't figure out why because all I know is that she was talking about

01:14:36.000 - 01:14:54.000

how her instructor kitted all the time. There was a lot of kitting, and she was extra good at kitting. She could really keep people in stitches with her kitting. And I think she came in downwind on one of her auxiliary fields, landing downwind.

01:14:54.000 - 01:15:14.000

That's all I heard that was the reason why she packed up and went home. And she won't have anything to do with the WASP as a result of it. She lives in Laguna Hills now, a real nice gal, and she was always so much sharper than I in school.

01:15:14.000 - 01:15:31.000

She was the one that had her own car at 16 and did everything, and I never could figure it out. But anyway, that's the only thing I don't know. And I've heard other girls talking about how they'd gotten involved with their instructors

01:15:31.000 - 01:15:50.000

or they kitted too much or did something. But I was in there to fly, boy, and I remember the special words that come through your ears when you're doing it wrong, and I often thought, well, you know, I was unhappy with them being so unhappy with me,

01:15:50.000 - 01:16:05.000

but those are the things you remember when you're up there by yourself. You could hear them yelling at you, and you corrected it right now. And I often thought that that would be a real good-- I wondered if you knew what these helicopters are doing.

01:16:05.000 - 01:16:22.000

Yeah, the helicopter is the lifeline. We've got a clinic right over here just two blocks away. Stop it. So when a helicopter comes in, it means somebody's fallen or had a heart attack or something,

01:16:22.000 - 01:16:40.000

and they come in two or three times a week here. It's old people live here. A lot of them come down for weekends--or I mean for winters--and go home. And then as they get older, one or the other dies, and then the other one stays here.

01:16:40.000 - 01:17:00.000

I wondered, since you don't even have a big grocery store, what helicopters would be doing here. Yeah, we've got the clinic here. It's built right here within--and we've got an emergency volunteer fire department that if anything happens, they're right at your door with an ambulance.

01:17:00.000 - 01:17:21.000

And if you can go out by ambulance, they take you either Parker or Wickenburg, and then they fly you from Wickenburg up--or Phoenix if it's needed, because they don't operate much or anything in the Phoenix-- I mean the Wickenburg or Parker Hospital.

01:17:21.000 - 01:17:32.000

Okay, we'll get back to your war training. But I knew that's going to be on camera. I wasn't even aware of it. As soon as you said it, I--

01:17:32.000 - 01:17:52.000

I usually get out there and have to look in and watch them come in. But they come in, they land, and then they head right out to the hospital. Did anything unusual happen to you while you were flying during training? Well, I think about the only thing was that tipping up on my nose.

01:17:52.000 - 01:18:16.000

Oh, the worst thing that ever happened to me. In the BT-13 taking my instrument training, we had been out flying and just coming in on the downwind leg when the instructor said, "Oh, my God, look at that." And there was an AT-6 coming in from cross-country,

01:18:16.000 - 01:18:38.000

and there was an AT-6 coming in from their starting training. Their AT--it was your class. And the head-on collision right in front of us. And we circled until the ambulance and the rescue cars all came out.

01:18:38.000 - 01:18:51.000

And we dropped right up there at the head of the field where we were landing north and down at the south end of the field. How did that affect you? It just shook me up.

01:18:51.000 - 01:19:03.000

It doesn't affect me as far as my flying. That kind of thing just doesn't bother me. I feel so sorry for having it happen. And I grieve for the families and for the girls.

01:19:03.000 - 01:19:26.000

But, you know, each class was so much individual class that I didn't even hear all the time I was in who the girls were. And I never knew who they were until they started printing it in the paper because that was a sad thing, and it just taught me to look all the more.

01:19:26.000 - 01:19:49.000

And one time I was flying guard in the front for somebody else in the class getting their practice in. And we were over one of the other fields. I think it was fairly close to one of the other fields. It seemed--I have this dog hair, excuse me.

01:19:49.000 - 01:20:06.000

It didn't seem to be Midland, but I don't remember what field was over close. But we were coming right in on the beam, and I looked up, and here was a twin engine coming right at us. And, boy, I grabbed that wheel and ducked down and out.

01:20:06.000 - 01:20:23.000

How did they get there without my seeing it? That was the one thing that I--even driving these days, once in a while there would be a car that seemed to come from nowhere when I thought I looked. And it makes you look twice as hard next time.

01:20:23.000 - 01:20:36.000

Do you recall cross-country? Uh-huh. I loved that. Where did you go? We went over to--wasn't it Thunderbird there in Phoenix?

01:20:36.000 - 01:20:53.000

I didn't go with. Oh, well, we went to Thunderbird, and I came over Sweetwater-- or I came over Quartzsite in the process. I don't know how far--why I was up over this far unless it was to sneak over and take a--

01:20:53.000 - 01:21:08.000

flying over where I'd practiced. And I did a slow roll there, and I had my papers and everything, things all loose. And I thought, "Oh, my God." And I straightened up and flew right all the rest of the way home.

01:21:08.000 - 01:21:21.000

I thought, "Oh, that's so stupid of me to do." But it's a show-off in you that you know you shouldn't have done, and you don't think ahead of time. So it makes you think twice as much next time.

01:21:21.000 - 01:21:31.000

In your bay-- Out again? Got a minute. In your bay of six girls, did any of your bay wash out?

01:21:31.000 - 01:21:49.000

Yeah. Oh, yes, uh-huh. And I can't remember who it was because they kept thinning out, and then they'd move up, and they'd thin out, and there was two or three. One gal, I can't remember her name, but she had long hair,

01:21:49.000 - 01:22:06.000

and she would get up at 4:30 or 5 o'clock in the morning to get all her hair done and her makeup on and everything, and I'd think, "That's so important to her," you know? And I think--I don't know.

01:22:06.000 - 01:22:19.000

I'm not a makeup kind of person that uses much makeup, and she spent so much time at it, and before long. And then there was another girl that went out, and when they had transferred to the 86s,

01:22:19.000 - 01:22:33.000

she climbed in the cockpit and looked at that list and looked at that, and she came back, and she says, "I'm going home." I couldn't ever remember that. And then my granddaughter came up--

01:22:33.000 - 01:22:44.000

I'm going to run out here. Can we do the "and then my granddaughter" on the next one? Because I want to hear this. Oh, well, I can tell you separately because it's years later.

01:22:44.000 - 01:23:00.000

Anyway, my granddaughter came up to Castle Air Force Base to train for her KC-134s. And so on the weekend, she came on up to see us because it was only another 100 miles or so, a couple hundred miles.

01:23:00.000 - 01:23:12.000

But she came up for the weekend, and she had this thick book, about this thick, little notebook kind that you can keep in your lap, and I said, "What is that?" She says, "Well, I have to study this.

01:23:12.000 - 01:23:25.000

This is what we have to learn for our cockpit procedure." And I thought of our one sheet that high for cockpit procedure, and she has to learn. She says, "Well, you can keep it on your lap,

01:23:25.000 - 01:23:38.000

but you have to know where the information is." And that's what you had to learn to be a co-pilot in the KC. While you were at Avenger, classes would graduate. Every month.

01:23:38.000 - 01:23:50.000

What would happen when a class would graduate? Well, there would be a big wig come in, somebody, and it was different every time. And we could go and watch the graduation and so forth.

01:23:50.000 - 01:24:02.000

Did you participate? No, not in the-- I think we would march in, that's all, and we always marched everywhere we went.

01:24:02.000 - 01:24:17.000

And in marching, that was what was interesting, and everybody in class always remembers it, because Marty Berg was 5 foot and I was 6 foot, and our names began with B, so we were side by side.

01:24:17.000 - 01:24:30.000

Do you remember any of the songs you sang as you marched? Part of them, but I was not a person that remembered songs, and I'd try to sing, and I'm sure everybody wished I'd kept my mouth shut. So you don't want to sing on camera?

01:24:30.000 - 01:24:47.000

No, you wouldn't appreciate it at all. While you were in training, were you aware then of what other girls were doing who had already graduated? Well, we knew that they were faring planes, but not too much,

01:24:47.000 - 01:25:00.000

and we had heard about the towing targets, but we had no idea where we were going or what we were going to do. During the time you were there, did Miss Coffran come back? Oh, yeah. I think she was at our graduation.

01:25:00.000 - 01:25:13.000

She came several times and met her. She talked with everybody. She was very friendly and talked with everybody. Is there anything else about training you would like to tell us?

01:25:13.000 - 01:25:40.000

Well, all I know is that I felt that it was equal to the boys' training, and that every place I went, I felt equal to it. I was sent along with several others to Taft because there wasn't any more need for transport for the Faring Command.

01:25:40.000 - 01:25:57.000

So they just put us on BTs and had us test hopping and not doing too much of anything else. I was going to ask you about your graduation. See, Schutze would be in the second other flight,

01:25:57.000 - 01:26:15.000

and we came west. One of our classmates got lost going home, and she ended up down in Brownsville, clear down the Mexican border. I thought, "Well, how can you get lost?"

01:26:15.000 - 01:26:30.000

Well, talking to the girls afterwards, I think they were goofing off. And that's one thing. I was so intent on doing everything right that I didn't get in with the group that were goofing off a lot.

01:26:30.000 - 01:26:47.000

There was two or three of them. They had a snake ashtray, and you know the snakes, every so often, would get in the cockpit or something. And poor--the two gals that would come around and check on us,

01:26:47.000 - 01:27:01.000

they found that, "Whoo! Snake in front!" going around with a flashlight, and I guess they were in deep doo-doo. I wasn't in on it. I was so oblivious of all those nice things that people were doing.

01:27:01.000 - 01:27:11.000

So you weren't worried about demerits? No, I didn't. Well, I was older than all the other girls. I was 24 when I went in,

01:27:11.000 - 01:27:23.000

and they were in their early 20s--18, 19, and 20. Okay, I know that during your time at Avenger, you were issued new uniforms. Yeah.

01:27:23.000 - 01:27:34.000

Describe that. Oh, we had--well, you know, the zoot suits that we wore, we all got the same size, and you can imagine mine came up partway up my knees,

01:27:34.000 - 01:27:49.000

and all the short girls had them rolled up, the sleeves rolled up and everything. And then, of course, we wore the tan pants for dress, and we could get a decent size for that.

01:27:49.000 - 01:28:00.000

But, oh, we looked forward to those suits so much because they took our measurements, and I never had had a suit made to order. And in those days, they didn't make tall sizes.

01:28:00.000 - 01:28:12.000

I had to make most of my own clothes. And I wore--a lot of times I bought men's jeans because I couldn't get the women's. I had smaller backs I didn't like it.

01:28:12.000 - 01:28:26.000

[laughs] But, oh-- Do you recall who fitted those uniforms, what company? Oh, Dallas. Neiman Marcus made suits.

01:28:26.000 - 01:28:35.000

Jacqueline Cochran came and explained it to us, and we were going to have them ordered. And when they measured me, they tried to measure me way up here to my waist.

01:28:35.000 - 01:28:45.000

I said, "My waist isn't up there. It's down here." "Well, no, it's up there." I said, "Down there." Because you buy pants that come up-- if they're real deep in the crotch,

01:28:45.000 - 01:28:58.000

they come way up here, and then they slide down anyway. And then you're baggy pants. And I thought, "Oh, I'm going to have clothes to fit." And I made sure that they measured me the way I wanted to fit

01:28:58.000 - 01:29:10.000

because I had made all my own slacks up until that time and made all my own clothes, because everything fit me very poorly. So then for graduation, you--

01:29:10.000 - 01:29:23.000

Then for graduation, and we had these nice suits on, and that's what we wore home. We got on the train that afternoon, and headed for-- I headed for L.A.,

01:29:23.000 - 01:29:37.000

and the trains were the old trains that had smoke coming out the end, and the windows were wide open, and these mesh seats-- what do you call them?

01:29:37.000 - 01:29:51.000

The basket kind of seats in there that could swing. You could have it either way. And so we ran there, and as almost all men, I think I was the only wasp that I knew of going west.

01:29:51.000 - 01:30:05.000

And we got-- The first place we stopped, I tried to get where we could get off the train, and I tried to go in the USO to use the bathroom,

01:30:05.000 - 01:30:15.000

and they said, "Oh, no, that's for non-coms." I couldn't go in there. I said, "Please, I've got to wash. My white shirt was just black.

01:30:15.000 - 01:30:28.000

Oh, I was just so sooty and dirty, but that's the way I went home." And we got home. It was, what, two or three days on the train,

01:30:28.000 - 01:30:43.000

and it was a hot, dusty, smoky ride. And I don't know-- I'd only had one other train ride, and that was a Pullman from Grand Junction to California

01:30:43.000 - 01:31:00.000

when I went to Colorado to pick up my grandmother to bring her back to California one year when she was close to 80. And just before my husband and I were married. Before you graduated, did you have a choice of assignments?

01:31:00.000 - 01:31:12.000

A choice of where we would like to go. If we had a preference, put it down, and I, of course, put California, and I was fortunate that they did send me to California.

01:31:12.000 - 01:31:28.000

And Marty Masonow was from Ohio, and she was sent there. And then when we were sent down to-- she and I were sent down to Texas, and so they sent us together up to Victorville.

01:31:28.000 - 01:31:43.000

Okay. How long did you have at home then before you had to report for duty? I think it was a week or two, maybe two weeks. Because I remember the whole family--

01:31:43.000 - 01:31:56.000

the Brinton clan had a huge clan of cousins down there, and they gave me a great big party. They rented a lodge hall even and gave me a great big party. I was so impressed with it.

01:31:56.000 - 01:32:12.000

And, of course, they were impressed with my uniform, and I felt so big. [laughs] But it was great. Then at the end of your leave time, you got on the train and went?

01:32:12.000 - 01:32:24.000

No, I just drove up there. I think my husband took me up there or something. I don't remember. I used the car part of the time when he could get a ride to work,

01:32:24.000 - 01:32:37.000

and part of the time-- Catherine Murphy lived right within about-- or her sister lived. I guess she didn't have a home of her own because she wasn't married.

01:32:37.000 - 01:32:48.000

And her sister lived right there in Culver City, and I lived in West Los Angeles. So she and I rode back and forth quite a bit on weekends because we'd get weekends off and go home.

01:32:48.000 - 01:32:58.000

When you got to TAP, to whom did you report? Commanding officer, I guess. Were there already some-- Yeah, there was some already there.

01:32:58.000 - 01:33:10.000

What was your assignment? Just flying the BTs. That was a base where they taught advanced flying and then the basic training,

01:33:10.000 - 01:33:24.000

and they used the BTs like we did. And, of course, I wasn't checked out in any of the fighter planes. They had one of the fighter planes-- I think it's a P-39--

01:33:24.000 - 01:33:38.000

that was--they called it the "death changer" because you had to fly it in so fast that it nosed down, nosed into the ground. Two or three people were killed in the process.

01:33:38.000 - 01:33:51.000

Were you doing engineering testing or administrative? No, engineering testing. The engineers would work on them, and then they--and all of a sudden they decided--

01:33:51.000 - 01:33:58.000

I think it was over at Victorville, but I'm not sure. It was one or the other. I was test-hopping BTs at the time,

01:33:58.000 - 01:34:11.000

and the commanding officers decided that the mechanics should go up with the pilot to see if their job was any good. And, you know, those BTs rattled like everything,

01:34:11.000 - 01:34:24.000

and we were so used to it. And we went up, and I went through snap rolls and slow rolls and everything else. I went through the whole works

01:34:24.000 - 01:34:36.000

because I loved acrobatics anyway, so it was a good check. When he got down, he was just white, and he says, "I'm going to check every one of those bolts from now on."

01:34:36.000 - 01:34:44.000

[laughs] Can you pause for a minute? Yeah. Okay.

01:34:44.000 - 01:34:53.000

Where did you live at Taft? In the barracks. They had barracks for us. One place--I think it was Taft--

01:34:53.000 - 01:35:03.000

that they had us in the nurse's quarter to start with, and then they got a barracks just for us because there seemed to be about a dozen of us there. And I don't know what all those girls did.

01:35:03.000 - 01:35:13.000

It just seemed like there wasn't that much work, but you just got your assignment and went out, and then you went about your own business. Then did you have weekends off to be able to go home?

01:35:13.000 - 01:35:25.000

Yeah, uh-huh. You could go home Friday night. One time I was asked to take-- somebody needed to go up to Tahoe--

01:35:25.000 - 01:35:39.000

or Reno, I guess it was. They had to go up to Reno to-- that was when I was at Victorville. They had the BTs there too,

01:35:39.000 - 01:35:51.000

and one of the mechanics had to go up to Reno because the cross-country boys were up there at Reno, and they had had a malfunctioning engine, so the mechanic had to go up there and take care of it.

01:35:51.000 - 01:36:05.000

So it was Friday afternoon--or Friday afternoon, I think-- and--or no, it was in the morning because we'd go up in the morning and then come back. Anyway, I flew him up there,

01:36:05.000 - 01:36:19.000

and normally I should have taken the airways into California and back out again, but I wanted to get back so I'd get my ride home. So I just headed straight up,

01:36:19.000 - 01:36:28.000

and the Sierra is all here on the left, and I just went straight on up and didn't have any problem at all. But after we landed, he said,

01:36:28.000 - 01:36:38.000

"Boy, those mountains were awfully close, weren't they?" [Laughs] "Oh, we're, you know, half a dozen miles from-- or more from--"

01:36:38.000 - 01:36:45.000

Because I flew up the valley, I didn't realize that he felt like those mountains were so close. [Laughs]

01:36:45.000 - 01:36:56.000

How long did you stay at TAF before you got orders to go someplace else? I got orders in August. We went in June, and then in August,

01:36:56.000 - 01:37:08.000

we got the orders to go. And the reason I found that-- my brother had come home from overseas on R&R, and he and his wife decided to get married.

01:37:08.000 - 01:37:20.000

And it was that weekend that they got married that I got sent to Texas and missed out on the wedding and then was out of there again the next week. So it was stupid to even be there.

01:37:20.000 - 01:37:30.000

[Laughs] And I missed out on my brother's wedding. Do you know why they sent you to Texas? They thought that we could be used there, I'm sure.

01:37:30.000 - 01:37:41.000

We weren't privy to any of the reasons for what they're doing. They just said, "You're going here," and-- How many of you went? I think six. I think six.

01:37:41.000 - 01:37:52.000

And where did you go in Texas? Do you recall? I don't recall. I can't remember that base at all. I'm sure it wasn't the Randolph field,

01:37:52.000 - 01:38:04.000

but it seems like it was, but I don't-- because I didn't know. There's so many bases in Texas, and I just-- It's been so many years, and I couldn't remember.

01:38:04.000 - 01:38:12.000

Did you fly at all at that base? They wouldn't let us out on the base. They wouldn't let us anywhere. We could go and eat, and that was all.

01:38:12.000 - 01:38:26.000

Do you know why they wouldn't-- They don't want to have women on the base fraternizing with the men. They just--it was the commanding officer that just flat-out says, "I don't want women on my base."

01:38:26.000 - 01:38:33.000

Did you meet him personally? No, it was just the group of us. The orders. And we were sent over to--that was when--

01:38:33.000 - 01:38:44.000

We were sent over to the nurses' quarters, and we stayed in the nurses' quarters there. How did that make you feel? I just felt like he was awful stupid.

01:38:44.000 - 01:38:57.000

You know, he wasn't doing anything against me. He was just stupid. He was one of these chauvinist pigs, and that's the way I felt, and that's the way he was going to feel.

01:38:57.000 - 01:39:13.000

We didn't want to be around there because we would have been treated very poorly. And then you got orders to go-- To go to Victorville, and so we went up there. And I can't even remember how we got there, whether we'd flown or what.

01:39:13.000 - 01:39:34.000

What was your assignment then at Victorville? Well, we went over and interviewed the major that was in charge of the field. I don't know what his position was, but he had his office. Marty and I walked in there, and we were giving temporary barracks.

01:39:34.000 - 01:39:51.000

And he says, "Well, I don't know what we'll do, but you can fly." And he interviewed us and wanted to know what we had done and everything. But before we went in, Marty says, "We're not going to salute. We're civilians, and we're not going to salute."

01:39:51.000 - 01:40:04.000

So I thought, "Well, I won't--if that's the way she wants to be," because I didn't care one way or the other. And you're the first ones-- Marty and I were the first ones at Victorville of the women that had been sent there.

01:40:04.000 - 01:40:25.000

But he was very nice to us and everything, and he wanted to know what we did and what we expected. And he says, "Well, I'll see about getting living quarters." And we no more had gotten there and sort of started things when others started coming in. But then when he says, "Well, I'll find a pilot to check you out

01:40:25.000 - 01:40:50.000

because being on my base, I have to be responsible for you." And he says, "I don't fly anything but twin engines." And then he says, "Well, I guess he wanted to know if we had flown twin engines, and neither one of us had." And he said, "Well, he gave us six hours on the AT-11s, and Marty and I both checked out on them."

01:40:50.000 - 01:41:09.000

What was that base primarily? Bombardier training. And in one of the books, it says that it was a B-25 base. Well, one B-25 was brought in as sort of a novelty and on the base,

01:41:09.000 - 01:41:25.000

and one of the male pilots decided he was going to take it up and fly it. And he asked--two of the male pilots were taking it up-- and they asked one of the girls if they wanted to go. At that time, there was about half a dozen or--oh, I think there was about a dozen of us there.

01:41:25.000 - 01:41:43.000

And the only time we saw each other was in the evenings if we went to dinner and so forth, and one of the girls got married while we were there. We had quite a big wedding party and everything. It was fun. But these boys decided to take the B-25 up,

01:41:43.000 - 01:42:05.000

and one of the girls--I guess they had been going together or something-- anyway, she went along and they spun out in the desert. I never heard why, whether they were goofing off or whether the engine gave out on them or what, but they apparently just settled down in a flat spin and they went in,

01:42:05.000 - 01:42:24.000

and all three of them were killed. But because of that, I think is why it got in the book that it was a B-25 base, but it was not. It was primarily AT-11s and that's all that was flying there. Some training--there was some BTs there for training.

01:42:24.000 - 01:42:41.000

I don't know what pilot training they were giving. Describe what a mission would be like for you and the AT-11s. AT-11s, that was fun because I'm from around that, and I spent a lot of time in Lake Arrowhead and that area, and I loved the mountains.

01:42:41.000 - 01:43:01.000

We would just take off and get up to--we'd have about six trainees in the plane. In the back, they'd have their bombs in the bomb bay door, and then we had our pocket out in front. Of course, that was thrilling for me because it looks almost like a B-25, which my brother flew.

01:43:01.000 - 01:43:19.000

We would go up, circle up, until we got to 1,300 feet, and then I'd turn it over to one of the boys. We'd get lined up on their run, and then I'd turn it over to the bombardier with their Norden bombsights, and that would guide the plane in on their target.

01:43:19.000 - 01:43:37.000

Would you be at 1,300 or 13,000? 13,000. Excuse me. 13,000 feet. It took half an hour to get up, and it'd take almost a half an hour to get down again. Then would those bombardier trainees take turns at the Norden bombsights?

01:43:37.000 - 01:44:03.000

Yeah, you'd go back and forth over your target until they all had a turn. Then I guess each one of them took it back, and then they could tell from that how accurate they were and so forth. Since then, I had read an article about--somebody wrote an article about the boys dropping targets over there, that there were all these flour sacks all over the ground that they were flying in the wintertime.

01:44:03.000 - 01:44:32.000

Of course, this was in the summer. I sent there at the end of August. It got cold and how they would freeze out there, because those bomb bays open up, and you don't heat up the plane very much. With the WASPs that were stationed at Victorville, were they given different assignments other than what you have? No, I think it was all that. That's the only thing I heard about.

01:44:32.000 - 01:44:59.000

It's funny. I don't remember very much fraternizing, except with your own personal friend. Marty and I were pretty close friends, and then she ended up getting married and quitting before they talked about disbanding. Then I ended up leaving about the end of October, because I knew they were going to disband. My mother was getting to the point where she needed me back home again, and I thought,

01:44:59.000 - 01:45:25.000

"Well, as long as they were going to disband anyway, and they wanted to get rid of us," I felt like I wasn't shorting anybody. While you were at Vandenberg, did you get any temporary assignments? I didn't get anything. We didn't see anything. We didn't do anything. We were just shipped out. I never felt so unwanted.

01:45:25.000 - 01:45:53.000

I wanted to ask you, do you recall when you first heard about the WASPs being deactivated, how you felt? Well, I was just sorry. But I was ready to quit. I wouldn't have quit if they were really needed and going to go on. I would have stayed, but I had things to do at home to go home. My husband was starting to wish that I was back home again, too.

01:45:53.000 - 01:46:28.000

I thought, "Well, I'd better go home while he still wants me." Is there anything else about your assignments that you'd like to talk about? Well, I just thoroughly enjoyed it. We had to practice on the instrument flying, too, while we were there. If you'd get a partner while you'd go up, you could go fly around, and it was really enjoyable.

01:46:28.000 - 01:46:58.000

The boys there were all real accommodating and never put us down or never gave us any trouble, like they apparently did over there when they were towing targets. When I hear what some of the girls had to put up with, I just marveled, because we didn't have any trouble at all. I don't recall any trouble with the commanding officers.

01:46:58.000 - 01:47:27.000

We never did have to salute the commanding officers. We were just friendly with them. We'd go to the officers' club, and we could do as we wanted to. The non-coms would all salute us, because they saw the bars, so we'd salute them back. We always respected their saluting, but we always kind of tickled us, because they didn't really have to, but we'd salute back.

01:47:27.000 - 01:47:57.000

When you got back home and settled down to being a wife and mother again, what did you get involved with, as far as your kids' school? We lived there in L.A., and Linda started school in about second grade. My husband went to work down in Redondo Beach, so I wanted to get out of L.A. anyway. I'm not a city girl. I don't like the city. I don't have any desire to it.

01:47:57.000 - 01:48:27.000

So, non-closeness to it. You don't even hardly know your neighbors. My immediate neighbors I knew, because they had children my age, but I didn't get involved with anybody else. But when we moved to Redondo, and Linda had hit about fourth grade, I wanted her to get in Girl Scouts. Of course, in school, I got involved in schools right away, in PTA.

01:48:27.000 - 01:48:53.000

Being kind of an outgoing person, it wasn't long before I hit being an officer in PTA, because I always took part in anything that they had to better the school. I always end up out in the kitchen, and that's the best place to get acquainted. How important do you think it is that parents get involved with their children in school?

01:48:53.000 - 01:49:20.000

Well, I'll tell you what proved to me being involved. I got involved with Girl Scouts. There were two leaders. They became my best friends while I was there, and we did everything. Because I liked to swim, I got my lifeguard certificate, and I got first aid and all those things. Anytime the girls went anyplace where there was water, I went along, because they had to have somebody.

01:49:20.000 - 01:49:39.000

The two leaders were not swimmers at all. I ended up helping until they went into Senior Girl Scouts. Then, living right on the water, we had mariners. My girls went into the mariners, and we had boating and swimming.

01:49:39.000 - 01:50:03.000

I taught swimming at the Hermosa Pool. The only swimming pool in Redondo Beach area was Hermosa Hotel. It was kind of a damp, dreary thing, because it was indoor, but they let us use it. I taught swimming there for all the time the girls were in Girl Scouts, because I had three girls. I had to get them all through all that.

01:50:03.000 - 01:50:26.000

You had another girl after you got out of the water? Oh, no. Oh, yeah, out of the wasp. Excuse me, I did. She was born in October of '45, and then I had a boy after that, but I had the three girls. When they got into Senior Girl Scouts, oh, they went camping.

01:50:26.000 - 01:50:45.000

We'd go camping, take them to Big Sur camping for a week, and we'd take them up to Arrowhead for a week. We'd take them places. A lot of times it was one tent. We slept outdoors. It was very rugged. I worked with the scout troops all along.

01:50:45.000 - 01:51:06.000

Then, as they get to be seniors, in their last year, I'd get mothers calling asking if their girls could get in my scout troop. Well, I found if I took in some late like that, they didn't fit in, because when you went with a scout troop, you did what the leader said. You didn't wander off doing other things.

01:51:06.000 - 01:51:37.000

If you take in another one, you'd end up with somebody, "Oh, well, I wanted to do this," or "I don't want to do that," and so forth. When they came to voting for the DAR, Daughters of the American Revolution, I guess it was, almost every one of my girls were the ones voted top girls, almost every one to a T. Linda was voted the top. She got the top.

01:51:37.000 - 01:52:04.000

But to me, it showed ones that were involved with them. I would have parents say, "I'm not going to haul them all around. You're just babysitting." But I had a wonderful time with that. When Sharon decided she wanted to join the sorority at UCLA, when she got in, both girls went up to UCLA.

01:52:04.000 - 01:52:16.000

Linda dropped out in her second year. She was taking nursing, and she couldn't handle it. She didn't want to go anymore. She wanted to stop. I said, "Okay, you can drop out."

01:52:16.000 - 01:52:37.000

I said, "You've got to go to work." So she went to work at Donut Shop and worked there about six, eight months. She got so sick and tired of making donuts. We heard about the special nursing program in Pasadena that was a two-year program in Pasadena. My mother lived in Arcadia still.

01:52:37.000 - 01:52:59.000

I said, "Well, you can take your nurse's training there. You've already got a year's classes." So she went over there, and she graduated from nurse's training in Pasadena. She was a nurse all her life and liked it real well. Sharon went to UCLA, and she was just a general. Nursing was not her thing at all.

01:52:59.000 - 01:53:18.000

But she graduated from UCLA with honors on the dean's list. She wanted to be in the sorority. Well, that cost an extra hundred dollars a month, and we just didn't have it. She earned her spending money by lifeguarding, because all my girls swim, and sewing.

01:53:18.000 - 01:53:39.000

She was an apparel design major, is what it was. She'd ask me to draw a picture of a dog, and I'd stick finger, saying, "That doesn't look like one mom." She'd sit down and draw one twice as good as I could at four years of age. So I always encouraged her in art.

01:53:39.000 - 01:54:16.000

This is a picture of hers right up here. This one here is one she did, and that one she did of the sailing, because we liked to sail a lot. So I went to work as a school bus driver, because that way I could be home when the kids were home. Then Hermosa Beach started having this recreation program, where they'd take kids on bus trips all over.

01:54:16.000 - 01:54:39.000

Any place they could think of to go, museums, parks, anything on Tuesday and Thursday, we'd take field trips. I was the only bus driver in Hermosa Beach, because it's a small place. I got to go on all these trips, and I could take Russ with me. He was about three years old at the time. So he got to go along with me every time I'd go.

01:54:39.000 - 01:55:04.000

I was a school bus driver for nine years, and would take them places. Still, I was involved with all these other things. Then talking about being involved in things, there was a coordinating council in Redondo Beach. They figured out what needed to be done in the community.

01:55:04.000 - 01:55:32.000

I was president of that one year, or two years, or something, I don't know. They started a class for very handicapped children. It was when they were just starting to have schooling for the minor handicapped. But these were children that really needed a lot of special things, and they needed transportation for them.

01:55:32.000 - 01:56:07.000

We had bought an old funeral home limousine that was seven passenger Chrysler. I had lots of room, so I ended up the driver for these special kids. I'd wake them up in the morning, and then I'd take them home at noon. I did that for about a year, year and a half, in coordination with coordinating council.

01:56:07.000 - 01:56:30.000

Most anything. The only thing I worked at at the time was being a bus driver for kids. Then when they'd go on their field trips, I'd take them on the—I switched over to Redondo High School. It was three high schools that I drove for all three of them. It was a unified thing, and we drove for all three high schools.

01:56:30.000 - 01:56:48.000

We had about eight buses, I guess. I was the first woman bus driver in the whole place. One of the men, they finally had to hire another bus driver for Hermosa Beach. We'd go have coffee in between runs.

01:56:48.000 - 01:57:11.000

He said, "Well, what are you doing this for? You don't need to put a girl through college." I said, "Look, buddy, a woman has to do twice what a man has to do. She has to be a teacher, a nurse, a bookkeeper, a housekeeper." I could list—go on and on and on.

01:57:11.000 - 01:57:32.000

I said, "Do you do all that?" I said, "A woman needs the education twice as much as you men do." All along the way, Carol, did you ever tell any of those people that you worked with what you had done before? Not too much, because—oh, I mentioned it.

01:57:32.000 - 01:57:50.000

Oh, and even around here, they hadn't heard what a WASP does. Every so often, I'll hear, "Did you know that she flew planes?" Everywhere I go, if I—but I'm good at casually mentioning it. Oh, good.

01:57:50.000 - 01:58:02.000

I try not to brag, but— Then you had been so involved with your girls. What did you do to be involved with your son? Take him along with me.

01:58:02.000 - 01:58:32.000

I used to teach waterfront down at Cabrillo Beach. We'd go down with our rowboats, or we'd rent rowboats down there, but we'd take the canoes down, or the little sailboats. We had little eight-foot sailboats that we learned to sail, because we had the harbor at Redondo Beach, and then we had Cabrillo Beach. There was one lifeguard that took a real big interest in it and helped teach.

01:58:32.000 - 01:59:07.000

Just looking through my old pictures, I discovered one that was written up where he had had a lot of girls from all over teaching waterboating. Oh, and in the process of having the girls learn their canoeing and everything, we would take a trip down the Colorado River at Easter with about ten, twelve girls. We'd go out there, and in those days, we'd go out with canoes across the top of the trucks and the girls riding in the back of the truck. Well, nowadays, you wouldn't do that at all.

01:59:07.000 - 01:59:36.000

I think we'd put in at Blythe, and we'd go down to Yuma, almost to Yuma. It was six days, five or six days that we'd spend on the river. When you put in, there isn't another place along. In those days, there would be one or two little huts along the river, but other than that, you never saw a soul. I think nowadays, what would I have done if somebody had broken an arm or got real sick or something?

01:59:36.000 - 02:00:09.000

I think I've taken a half a dozen trips down the river with a bunch. Maybe one time, I didn't even have another adult with me. Linda went as the adult, and her boyfriend. They went along to help, because Linda had already graduated, and during Easter vacation, it was vacation for her. She loved it. One of the girls got horribly sunburned across there, but it was because she wanted to look beautiful.

02:00:09.000 - 02:00:39.000

For who, I don't know, because there wasn't another soul on the river. In those days, we just had that white oxide to put on your nose and your lips. They would wear long-sleeved white shirts and long pants. There were bathing suits underneath, and a straw hat on your head. She didn't have to. She woke up one morning with her lips just so swollen.

02:00:39.000 - 02:01:01.000

We doctored her up as best we could. I think nowadays, everybody has to have insurance, and they have to have this, and they have to have that. They wouldn't have let them ride in an open truck and back. But they had a wonderful time.

02:01:01.000 - 02:01:24.000

In the process, somebody gave us land up at Lake Arrowhead for the Girl Scouts. Two nice plots. They put me in charge of having the cabins built up there. We got two cabins built up at Lake Arrowhead for the girls to go up and camp. It wouldn't cost them anything at all, except for the expenses for food and transportation.

02:01:24.000 - 02:01:54.000

We'd go up weekends and summers and have summer camp for a week and so forth. But I was busy. When did you get involved, or have you been involved, with the FIFANLLA WASP organization? When they started having reunions, I went as often as I could, which was not that often.

02:01:54.000 - 02:02:31.000

I've only been about every three or four years sometimes. The one that they had at Sweetwater for the anniversary, or the one before that—I don't think I got to the anniversary. The second time I married, he was the kind that didn't like me going by myself, and sometimes he didn't like to go. One time, we had been to see his son in New Mexico, when there was one in Sweetwater.

02:02:31.000 - 02:02:59.000

I called to see if there were reservations, and then I told him, "Well, as long as we're this close, let's go on over." So he went. I went to the one at Reno, because I was living in Newcastle, and it was just a couple hours' drive to that. I haven't been to many, because the girls—I was involved when I lived in Los Angeles.

02:02:59.000 - 02:03:23.000

When I lived at Redondo, we lived there until '65, when my husband died. Then Russ and I moved north. I was president of the L.A. WASP organization for one year there. Yes, I can, because I was at a meeting.

02:03:23.000 - 02:03:37.000

My son had a real bad cold, and he was dead by morning. So I quit right then. I didn't go to any more WASP meetings. You had a film?

02:03:37.000 - 02:04:05.000

Yeah, I just—let me change that. When did that happen? In 19— '50, '50, wait a minute.

02:04:05.000 - 02:04:33.000

He was born in '47, and he died—he was born in November '46, and he died in February '47 from pneumonia. It was days before emergency rooms. You didn't have emergency rooms. He called the doctor, and he came to the house, but he died in the crib because he had pneumonia, and I didn't know it.

02:04:33.000 - 02:04:50.000

That's got to be hard. Yeah, it was a bad scene. So then you're talking about how did that involve Russ. My sister lived just a mile.

02:04:50.000 - 02:05:14.000

When Russ was born, her husband retired, and she moved down to Redondo, too, because they lived in Pasadena, and it was so smoggy and hot in the summer. Anyway, so she was a good babysitter, too. She was always having Russ over when I had to go someplace. But when I went down to Cabrillo Beach, why, I'd take him with us whenever I could.

02:05:14.000 - 02:05:36.000

I'd take him with us, and he'd be involved with the girls. And he was a real good kid that didn't give him any trouble. And then he was only 14 when his dad died, and we both had planned on selling the house and moving to Northern California. The girls had gotten married, but my husband hadn't been able to get a job.

02:05:36.000 - 02:06:00.000

And I said, "Well, I don't care if you become a school janitor. We're going to get out of the L.A. area," because Redondo had been beautiful when we first moved there, but they just packed in. And every place you went when you lived in Redondo, it was through the center of L.A. No matter what direction you went, it was heavy traffic, and I just couldn't see.

02:06:00.000 - 02:06:32.000

Also, Redondo had gone from a fairly small school where I knew everything going on, and I went to a PTA meeting when he was getting up there, starting there, and my youngest daughter was still going there. And somebody complained about not hearing about it when their child was getting an F. And she says, "Oh, it's gotten so bad that we just don't even bother to let the parents know until they're getting two Fs."

02:06:32.000 - 02:06:56.000

And we couldn't understand it, and she says, "Well, parents won't do anything about it anyway, so we just don't." And I said, "Well, if my child is getting down below a C, I want to know right now." And so my husband and I decided that we would move north. There's a real nice little community in Newcastle, California, that the school was excellent.

02:06:56.000 - 02:07:19.000

We had friends living up there. So we were just getting ready to--in fact, we had the house on the market when my husband got sick. So I took it off the market until he died, and then I put it back on the market again, couldn't sell it, so I just rented. And Russ and I moved north, and we'd come down once in a while.

02:07:19.000 - 02:07:46.000

And I'd leave him up there--his sister lived in Sacramento--and I'd leave him up there and come down just for the weekend or something. And when he did come down, he says, "Oh, it's so nice to get home!" He liked it up there, so he's lived in Seattle ever since. - Carol, tell me, now you've lost a child and then you lost your husband.

02:07:46.000 - 02:08:08.000

How did you get through those hard times? - Well, it's just one of those things. Well, for one thing, there was no wishing Jimmy back because he was in such bad shape. He couldn't talk for the last--for the two months in December--November and December.

02:08:08.000 - 02:08:32.000

He couldn't remember what he was going to say, and he couldn't talk. And then he was losing his balance all the time. That's the first I noticed is when his--when Sharon got married, we took his sister to the airport and tried to-- and then came back, and he could hardly walk back from those long hauls in that L.A. airport, if you've ever been there.

02:08:32.000 - 02:08:56.000

And he could hardly make it back, and so I went and got the car and got him. He just--and he was getting worse daily, and I just couldn't wish him back. Oh, he was only 50 when he died. And that--it wasn't so hard losing him then, but afterwards, whenever you wanted to do something,

02:08:56.000 - 02:09:20.000

it was always bad not to have somebody doing it with you. And also the fact that Russ was still young. I was sorry that his dad missed out on him because he did so well in school. In fact, they--second grade, they called me in, wanted to know if they could put him up in the fourth grade because he was just so far above the second graders.

02:09:20.000 - 02:09:33.000

And so he did that all through school. He was a good student, and he never gave me any trouble as far as chasing. I'd say, "Well, why don't you go out with your buddies and do something?" "Oh, I like it here."

02:09:33.000 - 02:09:58.000

And when he was a little kid, he was in the paper route and Little League and Scouts. He was busy with everything, and one day he came home when he was about ten, and he flopped on the couch, and he says, "Ah, goody, I get to stay home." So I didn't have trouble that I heard other parents complaining about.

02:09:58.000 - 02:10:30.000

In fact, our family just pats ourselves on the back all the time because all of--my nephews, my nieces are such beautiful people. I've got one nephew--well, my oldest nephew was a teacher, but he didn't like it, so he just stopped and did what his dad did, his carpenter contract work. And his brother is a lawyer, and then my other brother has a boy that, like I say, he was doing some--

02:10:30.000 - 02:10:57.000

he finished college down at San Diego and had dilectics, but his mother worked and worked with him and helped him get through college. And he's a contractor now, but he did modeling for a while. And his two sisters are both teachers. One of them has gone on to be a personal family counselor, has her own business,

02:10:57.000 - 02:11:26.000

and her husband is in charge of some division at San Francisco State University. And the other one is in Riverside, and he's in charge of the sociology department, and he's lectured all over in Paris and England and New York and all over. They're always going someplace where he's written a couple of books, and she's a teacher.

02:11:26.000 - 02:11:50.000

So our whole family--and they all have such beautiful children, but I--there again, I think it's the closeness of the family. My mother was never criticizing. My sister-in-laws say that she was the best mother-in-law they ever had because they always took-- she always took their side and never complained.

02:11:50.000 - 02:12:03.000

From the time your husband died, how long was it before then you remarried? Six years. And how did your children accept your new--their new-- They were all married.

02:12:03.000 - 02:12:20.000

Well, Russ wasn't. He was still in school, but he was in school down in San Jose State. And he was like his dad. If he didn't like something, he just didn't talk. And my husband would say he'd come in the house and walk in, get a book, turn on TV,

02:12:20.000 - 02:12:39.000

and get a glass of milk and sit on the couch and not say boo. And he'd say, "What's the matter with him? He won't talk." And then after he left home, my husband says, "How do you shut him up?" And was that--this new husband, what was it that made you fall in love with him?

02:12:39.000 - 02:12:50.000

Was he tall? No, he wasn't. Not--well, it was most companionship. He was my next-door neighbor in Newcastle when I lived up there with Russ.

02:12:50.000 - 02:13:09.000

And then Russ went away to school, and I was by myself. And he was very--oh, he could do anything. He did everything for everybody around the trailer court. Whenever anything needed to be done, anything needed to be done in my place, he was over there to do it.

02:13:09.000 - 02:13:25.000

And his wife and I were best of friends. And as soon as he'd go to work, she'd call over. I was working as a social worker because--well, that's another story. [Laughs]

02:13:25.000 - 02:13:47.000

She would call and say, "Well, come on over for coffee before you go to work." And we played cards, and we--she'd have gimlets. She loved to make gimlets. She didn't drink very much, but she and I would have a can of lime juice and our vodka.

02:13:47.000 - 02:14:09.000

She had real pretty glasses, and she says, "I don't have any unless you come over." So we'd go over and have our gimlet in the evening. So we're just real good friends. And another thing that I liked about Glenn was that one time I had to have my heater fixed.

02:14:09.000 - 02:14:26.000

The motor went out on it, and he was in there fixing it. And he acted so uncomfortable being in the house with the two of us alone. Finally, I said, "I'll let you--you don't need my help anymore. I'm going to go talk to Jerry."

02:14:26.000 - 02:14:37.000

And I went over to his wife, and I says, "Glenn's afraid I'm going to rape him." So I had to get out of the house. But he was such a gentleman. He never made a pass.

02:14:37.000 - 02:15:02.000

And I appreciated that so much because once you become a widow, if you're around a man, they automatically think that you're hungry. And you don't have anybody to go places with, and he was very much a gentleman. And she got cancer and died, and so it wasn't soon after that that we started going together

02:15:02.000 - 02:15:17.000

just because he couldn't stand to be alone. It was one thing I didn't like about it because I was such an independent character. With my first husband, I went with the Girl Scouts, he went fishing, or he went bowling, and I went with the Girl Scouts.

02:15:17.000 - 02:15:34.000

And each one of us took turns staying with the kids. And it was never any question, never any problem about going one way or the other. When I could go with him, I went with him. If I couldn't go with him, well, I didn't want him to lose out.

02:15:34.000 - 02:15:50.000

And Glenn was the kind that liked to do everything together. And, well, after being alone six years, it was kind of nice to have somebody want to be with you. Anyway, we ended up getting married. He wasn't the kid's dad.

02:15:50.000 - 02:16:12.000

He wasn't anything like the kid's dad, but they were good to him. And we came down every year for Christmas with my family, and then we'd get back on Christmas Day to be with his family. And his family wasn't very happy at him getting married so quickly after his wife died.

02:16:12.000 - 02:16:35.000

But his problem was that he just--he was over at my place all the time anyway. You know, he'd come over, he'd rattle the things out, this garbage pail out in front early in the morning to make sure I'd wake up. And then he'd see the light on, and he'd say, "Well, the coffee's ready," you know, that sort of thing.

02:16:35.000 - 02:16:50.000

And he'd have dinner over at my place. So anyway, we got married without telling anybody. We went to Reno again, in fact, Carson City. He had a--his brother had a daughter in Carson City,

02:16:50.000 - 02:17:07.000

and his brother came up for--when he was on vacation. And I was going to start my vacation, and he's bringing his suit in the door. And he said, "What are you bringing the suit for?" And he says, "Well, aren't we going to a wedding?"

02:17:07.000 - 02:17:28.000

Well, I came home that night and said, "Did you know we were going to Reno and getting married?" So we did. Because when you get up pushing 60, he was 60 already. How did you end up in Colorado?

02:17:28.000 - 02:17:41.000

How have you ended up here? Oh, here in Arizona. Well, we lived in Newcastle. He was with the railroad in Roseville, and we lived there until he retired.

02:17:41.000 - 02:18:01.000

And then things started happening at the trailer court that we didn't like, new owners that weren't very good, and he'd had a heart attack. And so we went looking for another place, and we found a place up on the river, Trinity River up east of--west of Redding.

02:18:01.000 - 02:18:18.000

A friend of mine had a house up there, and so we were traveling in a trailer. We got a trailer and was traveling occasionally after we both retired. And so we went over to see them, and I said we were looking for a place. "Well, why don't you buy a--here?

02:18:18.000 - 02:18:33.000

It's almost like a trailer court, individual homes in an isolated place across the river from the highway, and about 150 homes in there." And so we went looking for homes and fell in love with the one right across the street from where they lived.

02:18:33.000 - 02:18:46.000

It was up on a hill, looked out over the river and all the neighbors because you had to go up this steep driveway, and I thought, "Well, he wouldn't like that. He's had a heart attack and have to climb up and down that hill." But he'd come over and looked at it.

02:18:46.000 - 02:19:03.000

It was a redwood bungalow that's one of these kit houses where they cut it all and then somebody built it, and this man had built it. And it was just beautiful. So we bought it right then and there.

02:19:03.000 - 02:19:26.000

So he died, and I stayed up there for another 3 years, and the girls planned so far to come because if I come down, it was 650 miles. And I hate to stay in motels, so I'd start down and end up down there before I quit driving. And they didn't think that was very good.

02:19:26.000 - 02:19:42.000

And the neighbors, there was a couple of neighbors that were starting to have physical trouble too and had to move out. And I knew I was going to have to move sometime, so when Linda and Cliff offered this, I thought, "Well, it's ideal because I don't want--

02:19:42.000 - 02:19:58.000

I was thinking of trying to get a mobile home somewhere in California, but they're so high-priced and crowded and you're still in all that traffic. So I decided it's something I'd like. So I moved again. [laughs]

02:19:58.000 - 02:20:13.000

So now how do you spend your time? I do a lot of reading, and they have a clubhouse here. Up until this year, I don't know what, they're going to have a meeting this Tuesday, but they have dinners.

02:20:13.000 - 02:20:31.000

Every other Saturday they have a dinner, and the other Saturday they have a breakfast. We all go to, and I go to church over in Wendon, a little town in Wendon, and I found a church that I like real well. And a lot of--it was head of the Bible study group that called me to say--

02:20:31.000 - 02:20:51.000

I'd made some brownies to take over because they have a group for Bible study for children. It's a church that's very active with migrant workers and little Mexican children. And they have a bus that they go around, pick up these kids, and the minister's wife takes them home again and everything.

02:20:51.000 - 02:21:00.000

You're going to be a bus driver? No. [laughter] Not again. [laughter] I've decided I've done my share, and I'm not doing any more,

02:21:00.000 - 02:21:25.000

but I bake some cookies for them to have for Bible study. How important is your church to you? Well, it's the center of my life now because it's the kind of people I like to be around. And I've been around in other areas at times where they're rough,

02:21:25.000 - 02:21:38.000

and there's a lot of drinking and smoking. I don't care for either one. I'm not a prude. I don't like to join somebody at a time when everybody's having a drink or something,

02:21:38.000 - 02:21:57.000

but even that I've gotten to the point where I get hot flashes and I don't enjoy it, so I don't. Because I can enjoy myself with a root beer as well as I can with anything else. I've always been that way. In fact, in growing up, I couldn't drink because on the second drink I vomited.

02:21:57.000 - 02:22:12.000

I literally would. I could not handle it, and I never got drunk because I couldn't have it down there long enough. And I don't appreciate people getting sloppy. I just don't appreciate it.

02:22:12.000 - 02:22:33.000

I've been around several members of other families. Now, my own family, they've done some, but I've never seen them drink enough to be obnoxious. And I just don't feel like I have to put up with that. And so this is the kind of group of people that I enjoy.

02:22:33.000 - 02:22:46.000

And we all laugh and have fun and go out to dinner and do lots of things, but it's where I can find companionship. I thought I'd get in. I love cards.

02:22:46.000 - 02:23:00.000

I play anything that you've got. And I've been trying to find bridge players around here, but if there are bridge players, they have their own little clique. All around here it's people coming from places, and they're usually in groups,

02:23:00.000 - 02:23:15.000

and they have their own groups. So you don't get in with them as much. Up there I got in with everybody up there in Willow Creek where I live. Tell me about anyone in your family who flies.

02:23:15.000 - 02:23:26.000

Well, my brother flies. And my older brother couldn't stand it, not being in. So he went out and got his own--with his own money. He got his own plane.

02:23:26.000 - 02:23:41.000

Well, in conjunction with--he joined a club, so he had the use of a plane. And he flew quite a bit. He was a contractor in Temple City and well-liked by everybody because he was so conscientious.

02:23:41.000 - 02:24:09.000

And one day I was at work up in Sacramento--in fact, it was Auburn-- and got a call from my sister-in-law saying that he had flown out to the desert for the weekend and had promised to be home by Sunday morning so that he could go to the special deal. And he didn't show up, and he didn't show up, and he didn't show up.

02:24:09.000 - 02:24:26.000

So she called me Monday morning and says, "Carol, what do I do?" And I said, "Call Civil Air Patrol," because that's what I have done is join the Civil Air Patrol in Auburn when I was working up there. And flew over the Tahoe area, which is wonderful flying.

02:24:26.000 - 02:24:49.000

And so I was very active with that Civil Air Patrol, and like I was telling you, with Dave Knight that had his own plane, I flew with him every time there was a search because he worked for McClellan Air Force Base. And they could take five days off if they went on search and rescue.

02:24:49.000 - 02:25:07.000

So we would take time off. I had to take time off without pay, but he did. So I called him, and I said, "You interested in going on a search?" And he didn't--Phil hadn't showed up Monday morning, so we got down there--

02:25:07.000 - 02:25:24.000

I don't know whether it was Monday or Tuesday--we got down there, and they hadn't started the search yet. And we landed in Banning, and it was so foggy you could just barely get in in Banning. So smoggy, just socked in tight.

02:25:24.000 - 02:25:43.000

And so he called the headquarters in L.A., and they set up a search and rescue out in Hesperia near Victorville. And we went out there and stayed. They had a motel and a restaurant right next to the airport,

02:25:43.000 - 02:26:00.000

and we went and stayed for five days searching. And finally, Dave and I had to go back to Sacramento. And the next day, it lifted, and they found the plane. He was--if you know where Mount Wilson is,

02:26:00.000 - 02:26:21.000

there's a range of mountains just north of Los Angeles Basin, and right at the peak is Mount Wilson with all kinds of antennas and things up there. And he had come in on--apparently he was practicing his instrument anyway, as much as he could by himself.

02:26:21.000 - 02:26:41.000

And I'm sure he had come in there, and he was found straight down from there. He had had a heart attack and flown in, landed right below Mount Wilson about 10,000 feet. They said that he must have dove in from about 10,000 feet. And he had been sick in the plane, and his jacket was full,

02:26:41.000 - 02:26:59.000

and anything that he could hold, he had been sick and upchucked in the plane. So they knew he'd had a massive heart attack. And so that was the end of him. But back to working, I never did get to the fact that when I moved to Sacramento,

02:26:59.000 - 02:27:17.000

I didn't know what I was going to do because I had Social Security for myself and for Russ enough to live on. And he had two more years of school to go, high school. And so as long as he was in high school, I could get Social Security for myself.

02:27:17.000 - 02:27:34.000

And I thought, well, I could drive a school bus, but I couldn't do that the rest of my life. So I decided to go back to school too. And so I went back to Sac State and got-- because I went to the social welfare office and asked if there was a job,

02:27:34.000 - 02:27:46.000

and they said, "What kind of a degree do you have?" And I said, "Well, I got an AA from junior college. You've got to have a BA." They didn't care if it was in basket making or what it was.

02:27:46.000 - 02:27:58.000

You had to have a BA. So I went back to college. I had two years. So I went back to college and got my BA in social work. And Russ and I graduated the same day.

02:27:58.000 - 02:28:11.000

I went to his graduation and skipped mine. But I hadn't finished one project that I had to do. I had to do a research thing, and I hadn't gotten it written up yet, and I had until August to do it.

02:28:11.000 - 02:28:32.000

So I got it done, sent it in, and on my 50th birthday, I got my degree. So I was a social worker there in Auburn in Placer County. I really enjoyed it. How kind of a student were you when you went back?

02:28:32.000 - 02:28:50.000

I just made it through. I was so envious of these kids that could read something and retain it and not all. But I struggled again. And like I say, after you once get it, nobody asks what grade you get.

02:28:50.000 - 02:29:08.000

And then I had other friends that went back and made straight As, and my son just went back and got his master's degree in aircraft maintenance. And one day he called, and I said, "Well, how's the studying coming?" He was always talking about having to study every weekend, every weekend,

02:29:08.000 - 02:29:20.000

study, study, study. I said, "Well, I just finished a test," and he sounded so down. I said, "Well, what's the matter?" He said, "Oh, I got an A-."

02:29:20.000 - 02:29:39.000

I said, "Oh, my gosh, Russ, I'm so ashamed of you." He said, "Well, it ruined my four-point." He was making straight As in his master's. And apparently when I went up to his graduation just last May,

02:29:39.000 - 02:29:53.000

they had nothing but good to say about his work. So what is he doing now? He's an engineer with Boeing, and for a long time he's had his FAA rating,

02:29:53.000 - 02:30:14.000

so he can go anytime there's a plane down someplace, he can go and give the approval of the work done. In fact, his boss has his little phone with him and gets called at all hours, and his wife was complaining that he was on duty.

02:30:14.000 - 02:30:31.000

Apparently he's next in line for any plane in the United States, or any place, I guess, that's in trouble that has to be worked on. He has to give the approval for it to be done. So he's quite a ways up in there.

02:30:31.000 - 02:30:49.000

And your three daughters? Well, Linda was a nurse, and she's retired. Karen graduated from UCLA and did quite a bit of apparel design work and so forth. And when her two girls got married on the same day,

02:30:49.000 - 02:31:07.000

she made their wedding dresses and her dress and all of those. They're gorgeous things. She's very talented in that way. But then she lost that work and was working for this company, and turning 50 she found that it was hard to get a job.

02:31:07.000 - 02:31:20.000

So every time she went, applied for a job. All the people that were interviewing her were younger than she, and so she went back to school and got added training in computers, where she can design things on the computer.

02:31:20.000 - 02:31:45.000

And now she's working for a non-profit organization that supports-- it's an organization that supports the non-profit organizations. And she is in charge of planning all the workshops for them. Right now she's in San Francisco for the week up there with some of these.

02:31:45.000 - 02:32:02.000

She goes to conferences. And then in Santa Barbara she sets up the conferences for anybody, a non-profit group that have a speaker come in, and she's doing that. Her husband has just retired from the post office last October,

02:32:02.000 - 02:32:20.000

and went with me to the convention because he loves all of this. And I always had to laugh. Who would have a son-in-law that would travel with his mother-in-law? And we always got a big kick out of that.

02:32:20.000 - 02:32:34.000

And his third daughter. And she's a very laid-back, lackadaisical person. When she works okay and when she doesn't work, she's going to be working soon enough and she doesn't worry.

02:32:34.000 - 02:32:49.000

But she's making it. She has three children and three grandchildren. And is a happy person. She's divorced twice and living by herself.

02:32:49.000 - 02:33:01.000

I know you're proud. She doesn't have the ambition that her sisters have at all. But she's happy. I think she's the happiest because nothing bothers her at all.

02:33:01.000 - 02:33:11.000

And she goes her own way. She's doing fine. And I know you're happy about all your grandchildren, but there's one that's following in your footsteps.

02:33:11.000 - 02:33:25.000

Tell us about her. Well, Christie decided that--well, my brother took her up flying. I was talking to her about flying. She got the bee in her bonnet when she was a junior in high school

02:33:25.000 - 02:33:41.000

that she wanted to go to the Air Force Academy. And so they made all the proper applications to senators to get the approval from them. And then she went for two weeks to the Academy

02:33:41.000 - 02:33:54.000

between her junior and senior year to just live at the Academy for two weeks to see whether they'd like it. They do that, I didn't realize. And, of course, she did, and she was accepted,

02:33:54.000 - 02:34:17.000

and she graduated about fifth in her class in physics and was way up in her standing as far as the overall graduation. There's 1,000 students to each class. And when you have the graduation, they go for five days.

02:34:17.000 - 02:34:32.000

It goes on and on. The whole parade ground is used for them to march out on the field for demonstrations of all kinds and all kinds of programs and so forth. And that was wonderful, and she had done real well.

02:34:32.000 - 02:34:48.000

And then she has--let's see. I think they come home--when they were in school, I think they come home for the summer. And one summer she stayed there at the Academy

02:34:48.000 - 02:35:02.000

to help break in new ones coming in that came like she did the week between junior and senior. And she worked with them and set up the computer programs for them and did quite a bit.

02:35:02.000 - 02:35:18.000

Then when she graduated, she came over here to Arizona for flight training because the only thing they do at the Academy is they take them up and do minimum flying just so they can get a taste of it.

02:35:18.000 - 02:35:31.000

And they fly in gliders, and they do the whole works. And she decided she wanted to be a pilot, so she came. And it was real cute when she came to Arizona. Then every chance he got, her dad came down

02:35:31.000 - 02:35:46.000

because she's the apple of his eye. Both of them are, but he's always been very involved with both the girls. He's the best dad that I have ever seen. He really is so good with kids.

02:35:46.000 - 02:35:57.000

Anyway, he would go over if there was something doing like a football game or something. She was on the drill team the whole time and got to go with the foot-tall team everywhere it went.

02:35:57.000 - 02:36:11.000

And whenever they were going, he'd arrive. And then he had a van, so he'd say, "Come on, my dad's taking us." And, you know, the kids just took it for granted. They went along with it.

02:36:11.000 - 02:36:26.000

She didn't mind her dad being right there, and he was just there every chance he got. Then she was assigned down to-- Oh, Vance was Oklahoma.

02:36:26.000 - 02:36:36.000

She went down to Georgia. Robbins? Yeah, Robbins. And that's where she got her training

02:36:36.000 - 02:36:56.000

and was shipped out from there two or three times. She's been all over Europe. Six weeks in Italy, one place, six weeks in another place. And France, and she's been all over.

02:36:56.000 - 02:37:08.000

And the reason she started going with Gary, his family was in Germany, and he wanted to go spend six weeks in Germany, and he wanted company, so the two of them went as pals,

02:37:08.000 - 02:37:17.000

was our report. Was Gary also a pilot? No, he's a boom operator, but he was in the service and he wanted to go.

02:37:17.000 - 02:37:29.000

And her time's off. She went to Germany twice with him, and then she bought a home there in Georgia rather than live at the barracks.

02:37:29.000 - 02:37:40.000

And her dad went back and helped her pick out her house and get her house, and then she sold it. She always made money, and they bought the houses. And then Gary started spending more and more time with her,

02:37:40.000 - 02:37:54.000

and then he decided that they'd better get married because he was there when he should have been in his barracks. And he's a real nice kid. He's not nearly as sharp as she is, but he knows it,

02:37:54.000 - 02:38:04.000

and he just is very comfortable with it, which is so unusual for boys. In fact, Bud is the same way. Sharon can do so many things.

02:38:04.000 - 02:38:15.000

I'll ask him to do something. He says, "Talk to Sharon. She can do it. I can't." And he doesn't have any inferiority feelings whatsoever. Neither one of the boys do.

02:38:15.000 - 02:38:23.000

Is he still in service also? No, he wasn't in the service. Well, he was in the service. He spent a couple of years up in Alaska,

02:38:23.000 - 02:38:35.000

but it was before Sharon and he were married. But he was a postman. He had the post office down in Santa Barbara, the little one that dealt with all the stores downtown.

02:38:35.000 - 02:38:51.000

He had in charge of that little post office. And he was so well liked. But anyway, they got married. Christie--Carrie, I mean, the youngest one--

02:38:51.000 - 02:39:00.000

announced that she wanted to get married. And the girls are very close. And they got to talking. They decided both of them would get married the same day.

02:39:00.000 - 02:39:13.000

So they got married in June. Both of them had a big wedding because the youngest daughter went to Columbia and Bernard. She went to Bernard, but Columbia is right across the street.

02:39:13.000 - 02:39:24.000

And she took a lot of classes over at Columbia, so she's got a diploma from both schools. And she's a computer whiz. -And is Sharon still flying?

02:39:24.000 - 02:39:31.000

-Christie is flying. Oh, yeah, she's flying. She's taking time off. She's flying.

02:39:31.000 - 02:39:45.000

She's the instructor for the KC-134 now. She just finished the training in January for that. And she's made major, but like the men around there kidder

02:39:45.000 - 02:40:03.000

that she's doing Lieutenant Colonel's work, but she's not being paid for it. She went back and got her master's degree in physics too while she's on the base.

02:40:03.000 - 02:40:18.000

So anyway, it's been a real fulfilling life. -Do you ever have complete family reunions? Is that possible? -Well, I just had sort of a family reunion.

02:40:18.000 - 02:40:28.000

We haven't as much now as we did when we were growing up. When the kids were growing up, we always got together at Mother's for Christmas with all the kids and everybody.

02:40:28.000 - 02:40:43.000

So my sister-in-law would have us over at her place first, and we'd go to her place for breakfast, and then we'd go to Mom's for my family, and they always were all together when we were growing up.

02:40:43.000 - 02:41:02.000

But just September 2nd was my daughter's, here, her 40th wedding anniversary, and we hadn't been together for quite a long time. And they go north for the summer, gone about three months,

02:41:02.000 - 02:41:18.000

go back up to Montana where Linda was nursing in that hospital in Hamilton, Montana for 18 years. So they know all the doctors, and they go up there for that, and then they go to Klamath, California,

02:41:18.000 - 02:41:34.000

and fish for a couple of months, and then they come home, and they were coming home the end of August. So I, on the QT, cooked up a party for them. And my son-in-law here is not a social butterfly.

02:41:34.000 - 02:41:44.000

Two or three friends is all he likes. He doesn't like a large crowd, so I made sure everybody kept their mouth shut. And my son came down from Seattle,

02:41:44.000 - 02:41:53.000

and Sharon and Bud came in from-- but Kim wasn't able to make it down, but we had a nice big party. And I had nieces and nephews and everybody come.

02:41:53.000 - 02:42:05.000

There was about 20 of us. And hot, you know, I didn't know how it was going to work out. But three of them had motorhomes of the gang, so they had their own motorhome up in this little park

02:42:05.000 - 02:42:15.000

that's right up here. And we got to visit. It was a long weekend, so they all got to visit for the whole weekend

02:42:15.000 - 02:42:26.000

instead of just coming and going. And so everybody said how much they enjoyed it. And it turned out we had the most beautiful light show you could imagine.

02:42:26.000 - 02:42:39.000

The lightning started in the evening. Just--they live out there where they got complete view from their front porch, and everybody sat on the front porch and watched. Because in Los Angeles, you can't even see it.

02:42:39.000 - 02:42:48.000

You don't see the sky like you do here, and you don't see any of it. And all of them said, well, they didn't know the desert could be so beautiful.

02:42:48.000 - 02:42:57.000

They're used to Nevada. You go to Nevada, and there's nothing there. And from L.A. But every one of them decided that this wasn't such a bad place

02:42:57.000 - 02:43:10.000

to live after all. We had a wonderful time in spite of the fact that it had been pretty hot. - Carol, does Richard Nixon--do you have anything-- - Oh. [laughs]

02:43:10.000 - 02:43:24.000

My mother was a staunch Democrat when Richard Nixon was running for assembly in California. And my mother ran against him. And so our family--

02:43:24.000 - 02:43:35.000

you know what our family thinks of Richard Nixon. The boys are staunch Democrats. My older sister is a Republican, and she doesn't agree with my mother in lots of ways.

02:43:35.000 - 02:43:49.000

Although Richard Nixon wasn't one of them that she disagreed about. - Was she active in politics? - Very active in later years after we had all gone. She got in with Helen B. Hagan Douglas,

02:43:49.000 - 02:44:10.000

who was very active in the Democrats in Los Angeles, and Jerry Voorhees and all of these different ones. She went to one of the conventions in Pennsylvania one time. It was the year--the time before Eisenhower got in,

02:44:10.000 - 02:44:25.000

because she was talking on the train with all these delegates. And she said they were all talking about trying to get Eisenhower to turn Democrat and run on the Democrat ticket. And I got a kick out of it because then he got--

02:44:25.000 - 02:44:38.000

because I was sort of on the fence. I wasn't a staunch--you know, it didn't matter to me. But they debated as to who to have to run, and I thought, well, I thought the cities voted on who they wanted to run.

02:44:38.000 - 02:44:54.000

And here these Democrats are deciding on the vote. And on that train was Jimmy Roosevelt. So she knew Jimmy Roosevelt personally, and she knew Mrs. Roosevelt personally.

02:44:54.000 - 02:45:02.000

She had quite a bit to do with--whenever she came to L.A., Mom was in with that on that. Not Eleanor. Eleanor.

02:45:02.000 - 02:45:13.000

Yes, Eleanor Roosevelt. Okay. Were you ever--you didn't-- No, I was living in Redondo Beach 40 miles away, and I wasn't involved in it.

02:45:13.000 - 02:45:26.000

Okay. And I had small children. I just--you know, Mom would talk about it and everything, but the boys that lived just within 2 miles of her were very involved with it.

02:45:26.000 - 02:45:30.000

Okay. Change tape. One more tape. One more--one more--

02:45:30.000 - 02:45:38.000

Oh, dear. Well, I need to get you guys some lunch. Your great-grandchildren. Okay.

02:45:38.000 - 02:46:04.000

I have one great-granddaughter that was born when her mother was 18. And she is now 13, and then her mother has since married this contractor in Sacramento that is excellent with her daughter. He's just awfully good with her daughter, and they have had two boys now.

02:46:04.000 - 02:46:27.000

The one little boy, Joseph, that was born 2 days before Thanksgiving 2 years ago, and then one that was just born--gee, I'd have to look. It's in April. Her birthday is April Fool's Day, and he was born right after that.

02:46:27.000 - 02:46:38.000

And so she's got two boys, and she's even tried to go back to work, which we're all worried about. We don't think she should. She's breastfeeding, and she's an excellent mother.

02:46:38.000 - 02:46:57.000

She's done a very good job. She's very conscientious, and the one thing that I like so much about it-- when Alex, the daughter, was very young and we were visiting, she would get a little obnoxious, and she would just take her and go in the bedroom

02:46:57.000 - 02:47:17.000

and have a little talk with her, and then pretty soon she'd say, "Well, are you going to behave yourself? You can come out now." Never any yelling, and yet she lays it all down. She's been involved with her scouting, and she didn't graduate from high school,

02:47:17.000 - 02:47:36.000

but then she went back and got her GED, and then while she was working-- this is my granddaughter, one of the youngest granddaughters-- went back to school trying to get an engineering degree, and she spent about three years going to night school, really good.

02:47:36.000 - 02:47:55.000

But she's doing real well now, and she's real good on the computer and everything and does book work. Before she had the last two babies, she was the bookkeeper for this crane company that furnishes these huge cranes all over the United States.

02:47:55.000 - 02:48:13.000

Then she had the two boys, and the 13-year-old is doing great. She loves to read. She's a good student. And then my other two little-- Well, Linda has a grandson that is also just a year younger than Alex,

02:48:13.000 - 02:48:32.000

and he lives in Las Vegas with his mother, and he stays with his dad during the day and goes to school, and then weekends his mother takes him. And he's doing real well now. He had, like all children with disrupted families,

02:48:32.000 - 02:48:58.000

he had problems in his kindergarten years, but he's doing real well now. And he loves to come out here and spend time with his grandpa out in the desert and with his grandma playing cards. And his great-grandma, when I can get over there and play too.

02:48:58.000 - 02:49:16.000

And my little Emily, she'll be three in January, and she's been talking. She knows all her letters, and everything. When she started learning her letters, where something was moved, like the big table, round table,

02:49:16.000 - 02:49:30.000

"There's an O, Mama!" She learned her letters very young, and she's going to be like her mother. She's going to be a sharp, sharp little girl. And now she's expecting momentarily for the next one,

02:49:30.000 - 02:49:49.000

and it's going to be a little girl. And Emily cannot understand why she doesn't bring that little girl out right now, because she's ready for it. Aside from your family, of all the things that you have ever done,

02:49:49.000 - 02:50:05.000

what is the one thing that you're most proud of? I'm most proud of my children. Aside from your children. Well, I think flying is one of them.

02:50:05.000 - 02:50:24.000

I think flying is--it was so satisfying. To me, it was such a wonderful experience, and being able to do it. And I think of all those that washed out, and I wonder why, because to me it was second nature.

02:50:24.000 - 02:50:35.000

I didn't have any problems with it. I never felt afraid. I enjoyed it thoroughly every chance I got. And then after I came home, I did--

02:50:35.000 - 02:50:51.000

there was a fellow in Gardena that was buying up those old planes down in Tucson, and Marty was living in L.A. at the time. Her husband was in the service, and so Marty and I, they would take us down to Tucson, and we would bring the planes back.

02:50:51.000 - 02:51:11.000

But I didn't like flying in Los Angeles. You'd get to Palm Springs, and a curtain would drop, and you just couldn't see except straight down from then on. The smog was much worse in L.A. in those years.

02:51:11.000 - 02:51:28.000

They've cleaned it up some, and most of the time it's much better now. But that's partly the reason why I couldn't afford to fly after I got out, and I didn't want to fly in Los Angeles. I just felt like you're going to run into somebody all the time.

02:51:28.000 - 02:51:43.000

There's just no joy in it. So when I moved up to Sacramento after my husband died, my son and I got out of L.A. as fast as we could as soon as the school year was out. So I looked up the Civil Air Patrol and joined.

02:51:43.000 - 02:52:04.000

And they were so tickled because I had a card that was older than anybody else's because I'd belonged to Civil Air Patrol in Los Angeles too. When I ask you that question, "What you're most proud of?" and you said flying, do you mean flying as just a civilian? Do you mean being a WASP?

02:52:04.000 - 02:52:21.000

Being a WASP is--uh-huh. I am very proud of that. And to think that half of them didn't make it, and I did with-- I don't feel like I--I had so many really sharp people around me that I didn't have that. I don't have the memory that they have.

02:52:21.000 - 02:52:38.000

My son and my daughter both have this--and my husband had such tremendous memories, and I envied them because I just didn't learn as fast as they did. But I didn't seem to have any trouble. I wasn't outstanding, but I made it.

02:52:38.000 - 02:52:58.000

What is your personal opinion of Jacqueline Cochran and the WASP program that she put together? I think she did a fabulous job. I was sorry that there was--of course, I didn't know Nancy Love at all, and it was too bad that there was that.

02:52:58.000 - 02:53:18.000

And Jacqueline Cochran was pushy, but she had to be to do the thing she was, and she really pushed her way. I wouldn't have had the guts to do it. I wouldn't have had the wherewithal to do that, but I sure was glad to ride on her tail feathers.

02:53:18.000 - 02:53:43.000

But, no, I admired Jackie because she had to be the person she was to get things done that she did do. And as far as the dispute between the two of them, I couldn't tell you what the comparison is because I didn't know Nancy. And I don't think Nancy would have done what Jackie did.

02:53:43.000 - 02:54:04.000

Nancy was out to get girls flying, not how to get them to learn to fly. And Jackie really did work for us girls, and she was good to us. I never heard her criticize anybody. And, of course, I wasn't around her a lot, but I was around her.

02:54:04.000 - 02:54:28.000

She was in and out of the school quite a bit when I was there. I don't know whether she was later on because it was folding up kind of, but I admired her, and I admired her hitting all those records that she did because that took guts. What do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be?

02:54:28.000 - 02:54:52.000

In helping women become more and more and more and prove that they can. To me, every good man, there's been a woman that's as good or better than he behind him. Look at Lyndon Johnson. He's one that wouldn't have been where he was.

02:54:52.000 - 02:55:14.000

He had a pushy wife and the one with the brains. But she used them and pushed. That's the only problem that I see in women taking over or getting in there. Now, if there was women in Afghanistan now, there wouldn't be that fighting like that.

02:55:14.000 - 02:55:35.000

There wouldn't be that kind of thing going on. It's the men that have got to prove that they're the God. When you get the man where he doesn't have to be God, he turns out to be a pretty nice person. But he's got a good woman behind him usually.

02:55:35.000 - 02:55:51.000

So I think it's time that we do. But I've never been a woman's liver. But I've been, like I say, I was the first one school bus driver. After that, there's women driving the buses all around.

02:55:51.000 - 02:56:13.000

I was out playing ball and everything else. I wasn't a woman to be inside and do things. And if I had known that women could have driven trucks and things when I was in school, that's what I would have studied to be rather than to try to be a nurse or anything else, to be inside.

02:56:13.000 - 02:56:28.000

And a social worker. I had done a lot of family counseling with the Girl Scouts and everything. That's why I felt I could do the social work. And I'm good with people.

02:56:28.000 - 02:56:51.000

What do you think the experience that you had in the WASP, how did that benefit you? I don't know. It just satisfied me. I don't know that it helped me too much towards other things, except it gives me an opening to an awful lot of places that I wouldn't be otherwise.

02:56:51.000 - 02:57:10.000

Like I have given several different talks around. I know you were supposed to have reported all the ones that we did, and I haven't. But I feel comfortable around men a lot more than I would have before. Although living with two older brothers,

02:57:10.000 - 02:57:29.000

I think you're more comfortable than women that haven't been raised with boys. Do you feel that it might have given you extra courage? I don't know. Nothing ever bothered me.

02:57:29.000 - 02:57:55.000

I swam, I boated, I went anyplace. Some of my field trips on those buses was far more harrowing than any of the flights that I ever had to take. They arranged for this bunch to go way back in the hill someplace. Nowadays I can't even remember what it was.

02:57:55.000 - 02:58:15.000

And the road kept getting narrower and narrower and narrower. And I was told I was to take them in. So I took them in, and I had to get somebody out and lift a limb out of the way. When I got in there, they said, "I didn't know you could drive clear in here.

02:58:15.000 - 02:58:28.000

We were going to come out and pick you up." Well, I didn't have a telephone. I hadn't been told. So I got the bus back out of that place, and somebody else had to go in and pick them up, because I was going to be gone.

02:58:28.000 - 02:58:48.000

And I said, "Don't go clear in. You won't ever get it out." And I took them up to Mount Wilson one time, and that's a narrow, winding road. So I'd beep the horn around going every curve, because I had to take the whole road. And one place, one little kid was looking out the window like that, and I yelled at him.

02:58:48.000 - 02:59:06.000

I said, "Get your head in the window. I was coming this close to trees." And I said, "It'll take your head right off." And then one little kid said, "The back wheel's over the edge!" Because they could look out, but I had my rear-view mirrors, so I could see every inch of where I was.

02:59:06.000 - 02:59:22.000

And I said, "No, we're not." And so when we got up there, the woman that was going along, the chaperone, said, "But you were. It really was over the edge." You do have courage.

02:59:22.000 - 02:59:39.000

And so, anyway, I've had a lot of that, but I've thought of it several times, that there's nothing like that has ever bothered me. There's only one time I was bothered. That big car that I was talking about, the big Chrysler,

02:59:39.000 - 02:59:58.000

it had a special kind of a gear shift that was automatic. It had a pipe or something to shift it from one gear to the other. And the second gear was freewheeling, and I wouldn't come out of that. And the brakes started going.

02:59:58.000 - 03:00:17.000

I'd gone up to Mount Baldy, which is nine miles of just like this, nine miles up. And partway down, that brake started going out on me, and I couldn't get it in. It wouldn't go into gear. And I had three other women with me, and I had to get that down the hill.

03:00:17.000 - 03:00:34.000

And that's one time I was scared pea-green. Every time I went around a curve, I figured out where I could dive into the wall on one side because it was a drop-off on the other. And the last two or three miles, the emergency brakes started going out.

03:00:34.000 - 03:00:55.000

And I got down to the bottom of the hill, and there's a forest ranger's place, and you had to drive up into the driveway. And by that time, I was going pretty slow, but I still didn't have any brakes. And I pulled up in that driveway, and I came this close to a tree in his yard, and it stopped.

03:00:55.000 - 03:01:05.000

That's the one time. [laughter] No, that didn't take bravery. That just took worry all the way down.

03:01:05.000 - 03:01:20.000

So anyway, that's what I say. I'm funny that way because so many women-- I listen to these programs on TV after this September 11th where the women are crying because they're so worried.

03:01:20.000 - 03:01:38.000

They're scared to leave their children. They're scared every minute of the day. Well, they're miles away from where this has happened, and if it's going to happen, it's going to happen. So we have to take it and do the best we can and avoid it.

03:01:38.000 - 03:01:52.000

Like I tell everybody about my driving. My sister worries about my driving into L.A. anymore. "Oh, look at all the accidents," because she doesn't get out anymore, and all she hears is accidents on the freeway.

03:01:52.000 - 03:02:02.000

And she says, "I worry." Well, she's not the type to worry, but she does. And I say, "Well, Dori, I'm a defensive driver. I sit way ahead. I know what I'm doing."

03:02:02.000 - 03:02:23.000

And besides, I have a little angel on my shoulder all the time. I have God on my shoulder, and I don't worry because I'm in his hands. If you could say something to your great-grandchildren or children that you may never know in the future who watch you and listen to you as you talk,

03:02:23.000 - 03:02:44.000

what would you like to say to them that might encourage them to fulfill their dreams? Well, I think do the best you can with what you have and don't-- well, don't get into drugs. Of course, we all say that.

03:02:44.000 - 03:03:00.000

But be true to yourself and at the same time be true to your parents. Think what they would want of you and do your best so they can be proud of you, and then you'll be proud of yourself. That's great.

03:03:00.000 - 03:03:15.000

Is there anything that I have left out that you would like to talk about? I don't know. I think you've done a marvelous job. You've kept me going 90 miles an hour here, and I think I've covered pretty much everything. But I appreciate myself.

03:03:15.000 - 03:03:31.000

Have you ever flown with Christy? Christy? No. Oh, I got in a simulator with her, in one of the big simulators with her and sat in the captain's seat. Good. When you do that, let us know.

03:03:31.000 - 03:03:50.000

But that's the nearest, and the kids talk about--they have some pictures of her sitting up there and Emily sitting up there at the--holy dog hairs, I shouldn't do that. You must be very proud. Oh, I am. That's the thing that all of my kids and my nephews and nieces--

03:03:50.000 - 03:04:11.000

my mother used to say, she says, "People don't like me because I'm always bragging about my kids." When they start complaining about their children, she says, "All I do is brag, and they don't like to hear me do that." But my mother was very good that way. She never--I never felt her pushing.

03:04:11.000 - 03:04:33.000

She wasn't the loving kind that I don't think--after you're past a tiny baby stage, she never hugged and loved and kissed anybody. And to this day, my sister can't stand it to have somebody come up and hug her. Then my brother married into one family that that's all they do is--soon you greet, you've got to have a hug.

03:04:33.000 - 03:04:46.000

When I go to Bible study over there, the leader stands at the door and gives everybody a hug, and you've got to give everybody a hug. I think everybody needs a hug. And that's what they say, everybody needs a hug.

03:04:46.000 - 03:04:56.000

So now I've gotten to be much more of a hugger. >> Good for you. I thank you, children in the future. I thank you on their behalf.

03:04:56.000 - 03:05:03.000

>> Oh, thank you. Well, thank you. I make it sound good anyway. >> Absolutely.

03:05:03.000 - 03:05:17.000

>> I'm not telling you my bad parts, like what a terrible housekeeper I am and all that kind of thing. >> I don't think that matters. >> I think we're done. >> That's not the important--

03:05:17.000 - 03:05:26.000

>> I want to get a shot of that puppy, though. >> Oh, you do? >> Oh, here she comes. >> Well, I can get her to sit down and--sit.

03:05:26.000 - 03:05:36.000

Come here, sit. Sit. That's a good girl. >> I got a picture of you when I was videotaping.

03:05:36.000 - 03:05:51.000

I got a picture of you talking, rubbing her. >> Oh, yeah, well, that's the way I keep her quiet as long as I'll-- >> She comes over there and sticks--I sit in that chair and she sticks her nose under my arm to try to get me to pet her. Don't you?

03:05:51.000 - 03:05:55.000

You're spoiled. Well, I'm going to have to go and use the little girl's room.