00:00:01.340 - 00:00:15.320

in December, same year. What day in February? Six. I'm February, but 25th. Today is my dad's birthday. Is it really? We interviewed

00:00:16.000 - 00:00:44.680

who was it? Oh, I know it was Roby. Miriam Roby Anderson. I'm Deanie Parrish. We're interviewing Mildred Caldwell. She's a WASC class 43-6. Today is July 14, 2001. We are in her home in Peoria, Illinois. Okay, Mildred,

00:00:44.820 - 00:00:59.080

if you'll just start off by telling us your name, when you were born, and where you were born. Mildred Caldwell, born in Canaan, Connecticut, February 6, 1918. Who were your parents, Mildred?

00:01:00.280 - 00:01:18.600

Mr. and Mrs. Leonard A. Caldwell. I am named for my mother. Her name was Mildred. I lived in Canaan until I got through high school and then went off to college.

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Tell me about your dad. What did your dad do in Canaan? My brother and I were little kids. Dad was a chauffeur for a state politician.

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Then he left that post and became a mechanic for a DeSoto Plymouth dealership in Canaan. It was owned by a good friend of dad's. was one of the best automobile mechanics I ever heard about. He would say to you, "Turn on your engine." He'd listen to it and he could tell you exactly what needed to be done.

00:02:00.670 - 00:02:28.780

Of course, that was before computers and engines and stuff like that. He was a marvelous mechanic. When it was time for me to get a car and learn how to drive and all that sort of stuff, he A little thing published there, and it had all of the theory of the four-stroke per cycle engine. I had to read that. Then he gave me an oral exam.

00:02:30.520 - 00:02:54.060

When we got through with all that, he wasn't mean or anything like that. He just wanted to make sure I knew what I was driving. Then he made me change a tire. He instructed me on how to keep the radiator full, on how to check the oil, all that sort of thing. And then he decided, "Okay, you can buy your car."

00:02:54.240 - 00:03:06.600

And he had picked out one for me where he worked. It was secondhand. When he was a chauffeur for the politician, what kind of car was he driving? Oh my gosh, I wouldn't have any idea.

00:03:07.220 - 00:03:30.700

I remember them being, they could put the top down and in the summertime they were seven passenger touring car type things. The man that Dad worked for had a summer place in Canaan. He lived in Hartford and had a summer place in Canaan.

00:03:32.340 - 00:03:48.080

Mr. Rohrbach always wanted Dad to bring your kids out to the farm. Dad would put us in one of these big touring cars and drive us out where we could see the geese and the chickens and whatever was out there. Tell me about your siblings.

00:03:49.240 - 00:04:22.120

My brother was a little over a year and a half younger than I. He graduated from high school and everything and went to Northeastern University in Boston. In 1941, he enlisted in the Navy and got his flight training at Squantum outside of Boston. He was a Navy pilot then.

00:04:23.540 - 00:04:48.680

I think when he finally was released from the Navy, he was a commander. He flew in the South Pacific. He was a flight instructor for quite a long time, and then had to go to a special school where he was in the F-4F, and then moved on to the F-6F, which he flew out in the South

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Pacific. Did you just have the one brother? Yes. You can be sure that Mom was awful glad when we both came home.

00:05:01.280 - 00:05:13.980

What are your earliest remembrances of your childhood? I had to be outdoors all the time. That's mostly what I remember. Mom was always glad to have the kids out playing.

00:05:15.520 - 00:05:34.100

She knew how to signal to us, "Oh, we climb trees," and all kinds of things like that. We did not have lots of toys. It was all—oh dear, I cannot think of a word I want. We had a good time when we were kids.

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Mom could whistle to us. Canaan is a small town, and we would get signals from her. We would visit a farm that was nearby and watch Mr. Dewey milk the cows and stuff like that.

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In the wintertime, we skied and used sleds and all that sort of stuff. Everything to keep us outdoors. That was just the way we were. Can you tell us about your grandparents?

00:06:04.320 - 00:06:23.000

Let's see, Dad's father was a carpenter, and he built homes. Marvelous man. I always enjoyed Grandpa. He was quite deaf, I remember.

00:06:25.090 - 00:06:42.040

He had a marvelous sense of humor, as did my father. I do not remember too much about them. Grandma and Grandpa Caldwell lived in Canaan, then they moved to Hartford, and then they came back.

00:06:42.880 - 00:07:11.040

Grandpa retired. He lived with us after Grandma died. Mom's parents, Grandma and Grandpa Creavy, Grandpa Creavy was in the consul service. When Mom was nine, Grandpa was assigned to a small city in Germany.

00:07:11.620 - 00:07:30.420

So Mom went to school in Germany when she was nine. Her older brother was with her, and they lived over there for five years, I think. Grandpa had a number of different assignments. He did not always take the family with him.

00:07:30.480 - 00:07:50.900

I think the last one where the family was with him was in the Azores. Mom was a young teenager then. I think his last assignment was in Yarmouth, Nova Scotia. Mom got a lot of travel experience when she was young, and Grandpa Creavy settled in Canaan.

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I have often wondered why, with all of his travel experience, why he came to a little New England town. At that time, who would have been President? The first president that I remember was Calvin Coolidge.

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The only reason I remember that, he was a New Englander. He was a New Englander. I do not know how that was all managed. I have no idea how that was all managed.

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Creevey was a heck of a nice guy. When they lived in Creevey, did you visit their home a lot? No, not an awful lot. They lived in New Jersey for a while. I hardly remember when they moved to Canaan. I was just a little kid then.

00:08:54.960 - 00:09:21.300

Where did you go to elementary school? in Canaan, Canaan Central School, and it was grades one through twelve. Do you remember some of those first years in school? The first year that I was in school, I had jaundice, so I was out of school quite a lot.

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But I managed to get through first grade. Each grade you had a different teacher. The high school classrooms were on the upper story. It was just one school building.

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How about how many children were in your classroom? In elementary school, I do not know. I think my high school class had about twenty-five students that finally graduated. Do you remember any of the teachers in elementary school that might have influenced you?

00:10:01.540 - 00:10:14.600

No, I just got along well with all of them. There was one teacher in high school that I was not particularly fond of, but I did not have a problem with him. Tell me about that teacher in high school.

00:10:17.280 - 00:10:36.000

She was the homeroom teacher when I was a senior. She used to kind of irritate a lot of us, just the way she conducted herself in class and wanted us to do this and that and the other. I used to think, "Oh, hmm."

00:10:37.280 - 00:10:53.820

But other than that, I don't know. As a child growing up elementary and on into what would be junior high school, what was a Christmas like in your home? A delight.

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One of the things I remember mostly about Christmas was the Christmas tree never went up until Christmas Eve. It was one that Dad and my brother and I used to go with him out into the woods, and Dad would cut one down.

00:11:17.740 - 00:11:44.020

We would help decorate it and hang up our stockings, and then we were sent to bed. The next morning when we got up, we could not go in the room where the Christmas tree was until after breakfast. Then we would go in there and, "Wow, all the packages were there and the stockings

00:11:44.120 - 00:11:59.280

were full." It was a delight, it really was. Do you remember any of the things that would be in your stockings? One year I remember my brother and I had been kind of—we squabbled a lot, you know how

00:11:59.320 - 00:12:14.200

kids do. Each one of us had one piece of coal in the stocking, along with all the other things, but that was just a reminder. Most always, the stockings would have one orange.

00:12:15.140 - 00:12:26.240

We did not have lots of oranges back in those days, and it was quite a treat to have an orange in your stocking. Then there would be a lot of little odds and ends of toy things that would be interesting to kids.

00:12:26.700 - 00:12:40.500

What would a Christmas dinner be like? Lots of food. Mom usually—we didn't always have Christmas at home. Sometimes we'd go to my mother's sister's place,

00:12:41.180 - 00:13:01.080

and sometimes we'd go to Grandma Caldwell's place. But usually it was either a roasted chicken or a roasted turkey, with all the dressing and the mashed potatoes Oh, all that sort of stuff and a couple of kinds of pie to finish off with and lots of

00:13:01.420 - 00:13:14.100

cranberry sauce, which was the favorite part of the meal for me. I was all but addicted to cranberries. [Laughs] Was your mother a really good cook?

00:13:14.300 - 00:13:25.320

Oh, yes. Yes, she was a very good cook. I remember her telling me one time how she had to learn how to make pie crust. She always had a hard time with that.

00:13:27.420 - 00:13:43.520

She was a good bread baker, but had a hard time, and so she asked her mother-in-law, dad's mother, how to do it. Well, Grandma Caldwell never measured anything. She'd do it with a handful of this and a pinch of that, and Mom would say to her, "But your

00:13:43.620 - 00:13:59.440

hands are a different size from mine." But over the years, Mom finally got it, and oh, she made wonderful pie. Just wonderful pie. When your dad was working and you two were at school, how did your mom spend her time?

00:14:00.780 - 00:14:24.660

Oh boy Once a month she helped the local visiting nurse with the monthly baby weighing thing this was part of the local duty and Oh, Mom, of course, kept house and made sure that the kids got proper meals and all that

00:14:24.690 - 00:14:45.180

sort of stuff. She and Dad were very active in the community. Dad was a volunteer fire department, and Dad was fire chief for 25 years. Whenever he would go to bed at night, he'd just make sure all of his equipment was right

00:14:45.060 - 00:14:58.880

there in case the siren went in the night, he'd get up and get dressed and have his boots right, put his boots on. While he was getting dressed, Mom would go downstairs and call Central. There was no dial or anything then.

00:15:00.500 - 00:15:21.400

Central would tell Mom where the fire was, and she would tell Dad as he came running downstairs and out the door. He'd run to the firehouse. They were both very active in the Eastern Star and active in church sales and Christmas

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parties and all that sort of stuff. They were very well respected in our town. Which church was this? Was the one closest to us.

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It happened to be a Methodist church. When you were a child growing up, how did you spend your vacations? Did you get vacations during the summer? Hardly ever.

00:15:47.100 - 00:16:08.080

Len and I were off school, but I have forgotten how old we were when we started. We each had a paper route so that we could make a little bit of money. Back then the papers were three cents for the daily, ten cents for the Sunday paper. How would you do that route?

00:16:08.080 - 00:16:21.740

Do you have a bicycle? Yeah. My brother earned enough money working for a local butcher to buy his own bicycle. And Dad's boss gave me a bicycle when I was just a little kid.

00:16:24.520 - 00:16:42.220

We got around town. Len, you did one half of the town, and I did the other half, paper routes. I think Len had his paper route for almost ten years. One of the longest ones, the papers came up to our town from Waterbury.

00:16:45.680 - 00:17:04.380

Kelly: How large a town was Canaan? Did you have a theater? Adler: Yeah, there was a theater there, a movie theater. There was a ballroom upstairs over the theater, so that the local high school proms and stuff

00:17:04.380 - 00:17:28.860

Stuff like that were handled up there. It would cost us twenty cents to go to the movies in the afternoon. Sometimes my brother and I would go together and with the nickel of change that we got from the quarter, we would put that together because you could buy three bars of candy

00:17:28.980 - 00:17:44.620

for a dime and we would share those. We usually each got a bar of candy and a package of gum. We kept ourselves very busy. What were your ambitions in junior high school?

00:17:51.200 - 00:18:09.780

What were your ambitions? I hope I graduate. I do not know. I have forgotten how old I was when I had my first airplane ride, but I had made enough

00:18:09.860 - 00:18:29.620

money with the paper route to pay two dollars for a ride in an airplane. I think it was in an old Waco, in the front cockpit, took two people. Did your mom and dad approve of that? I had to ask them.

00:18:29.740 - 00:18:46.580

Mom did not think too well of it, but the guy took me up and did a few things like this. I kind of leaned in that direction, but I knew I could never afford to learn how to fly. Did Canaan have an airport?

00:18:46.780 - 00:19:03.240

Yes. Was this somebody that just flew in? The man who owned it had his own airplane. The local fire department would have little air shows there every year to raise money

00:19:03.240 - 00:19:18.400

to buy new fire trucks and stuff like that. One of the things that I remember vividly about these little air shows there, Lowell Bales used to come in and fly in in his Jeeby. What was his name?

00:19:18.580 - 00:19:37.120

Lowell Bales. He built the GB and he would fly in with it. I think my eyes probably got about that big every time I saw that. He died in a crash of the GB some years later.

00:19:37.770 - 00:19:47.820

Was the GB bigger than the WACO? No, it was a little airplane. Did your brother also? Is that how he started flying?

00:19:48.550 - 00:20:04.500

I do not remember. I do not remember whether Len ever took a ride then or not. He became interested when he was at the University in Boston and the Navy was right handy, so he joined up.

00:20:05.160 - 00:20:14.420

You do not remember what age or about what age you were when you took that first airplane ride? I think I probably was twelve or thirteen. That is a guess.

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I do not really know. What was your favorite subject in high school? What did you like? Recess, no.

00:20:25.720 - 00:20:50.560

I did not have any real favorites. In high school, other than that one teacher you did not like, do you remember any teacher who might have had an influence on you? Mrs. Camp was one of our teachers, and she taught English and Latin.

00:20:51.780 - 00:21:11.420

I had two years of Latin when I was there. There was another teacher up in New England somewhere, I had forgotten, who taught French. I kind of enjoyed those, but I was not keen on going to school. I just knew I had to get through.

00:21:11.900 - 00:21:44.720

What were your outside activities at school? Did you play sports? Yep. Tell us about that. The girls had a basketball team and we had no gym at the school, but there was a basketball court in the town hall upstairs. On the lowest level of this old building was the jail, and then there was the town offices,

00:21:45.160 - 00:22:04.420

and then upstairs was a gym. I remember as a little kid being taken there to watch Mom play basketball. Mom was a good athlete. That was back in the days when the court was divided into three sections, and there were

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six people on the team and you had to stay in your section. It was all a passing game. Mom used to take us to that when we were just little kids. I can remember that.

00:22:15.940 - 00:22:28.360

That's where we played. There was a wood stove in opposite corners. You had to kind of steer clear of those. It was fun.

00:22:28.700 - 00:22:45.820

I enjoyed all that part. Since we had no gym in the fall and in the spring, we went to the town playground. The guys would play baseball and the girls could play tennis and softball and stuff like that.

00:22:46.220 - 00:22:57.280

Those, I guess that was my favorite. When you would ski, where would you go? Well... Were there places in town?

00:22:57.860 - 00:23:13.280

No. We did it in one man's backyard because his house was on one level and you had to go down steps to get to his garden. We used to ski down there and we would make a little hump at the bottom so we had a ski

00:23:13.420 - 00:23:29.440

jump. It used to scare Mom half to death because we would pour water down it to make the ski tracks really good. When I was in high school, a bunch of us got together and we built a ski jump.

00:23:30.940 - 00:23:50.860

Not anywhere near the size of what was the competitive jumpers' ski jump, but we built one. On the first day, when we had a real good snow and everything, we decided we would have a jumping contest.

00:23:51.760 - 00:24:07.640

I had never done that at all. Mom and Dad were there. There were quite a lot of townspeople there. Mercifully, our family doctor was there to look too, and Mom was standing right next

00:24:07.640 - 00:24:19.960

to him. Her daughter went down this thing and landed right on her butt. Mom was so upset, and she turned and looked at Dr. Salu and he was just laughing like crazy.

00:24:20.680 - 00:24:42.640

nothing wrong. That was the only time I ever did any skate jumping. I sat right through the seat of my skate trousers. Had to go home and get new—oh well. Did you also learn to ice skate? We used to skate. There was a—the Borden—no, I don't think it was Borden's. I forgot.

00:24:42.800 - 00:25:00.340

There was a dairy, and our milkman used to take his milk there to be processed and everything. They had quite a pond out there where they had their own ice made in the wintertime. We used to skate there. We had no skating lessons or anything.

00:25:00.460 - 00:25:12.220

We just had clamp-on skates. In high school, when you played basketball, did the high school have a team? Yeah. And did you play other schools?

00:25:12.220 - 00:25:31.100

Yep. Do you remember any outstanding tournaments that you played in? I do not think there were no tournaments back then, at least in our area there were not. But we played a team from Lakeville and we played a team from Norfolk, from towns right

00:25:31.140 - 00:25:44.580

around this little area. There was no league or anything like that. Were there other things you were interested in in high school also, for example, speech or music?

00:25:50.300 - 00:26:12.840

Mom started me on piano lessons when I was five. I always enjoyed the teacher I had. She happened to be one of the clerks in the post office. She played the piano for all of the amateur minstrel shows and stuff like that that went

00:26:12.900 - 00:26:35.280

on in Canaan. She was an organist in the Catholic Church and whatnot, and she used to give me lessons. I remember one time when I went, I called her by her first name. She put her arm around me and cuddled me up next to her and let me know that she was Miss

00:26:35.380 - 00:26:46.560

Kegler. So I always called her Miss Kegler after that. How many years did you take music? Until I finished high school.

00:26:47.460 - 00:27:04.440

Were you a good musician? Oh no, just good enough, but it was fun to play. In high school, what were your ambitions? What did you think you would ever become?

00:27:05.180 - 00:27:33.880

I really do not remember. After I got into my senior year, I knew that I should go on to study somewhere. I was fascinated by Babe Diedrichsen back then, and I thought maybe if I went to college I could learn some of that stuff and be a star athlete like Babe Diedrichsen.

00:27:33.940 - 00:27:56.300

I had a huge scrapbook of stuff about her. We went up to Russell Sage College. I was interviewed up there by a woman who at that time was the registrar of the college. It was a small college.

00:28:00.220 - 00:28:17.260

I applied to go there and was accepted, which was good. Let me go back and ask you about your high school prom. Tell me about your high school prom. Well there was one, I went to one every four years I was in high school.

00:28:20.680 - 00:28:35.000

Just go and dance. Did the girls have dates? Oh yeah, yeah we did. I usually went with a fellow that was kind of a neighbor of ours.

00:28:35.260 - 00:28:54.040

He and my brother were very good friends. Heymann: Were you a good dancer? Roth: I had no idea. When I got to Russell St. and we had to have all kinds of activity classes there, then

00:28:54.280 - 00:29:07.540

I began to see what it is to be a dancer. Describe your graduation. Well, from high school? Well, it was in the local theater.

00:29:11.600 - 00:29:33.560

I had to play the piano for, I guess it was for the graduating class to march in, and for a song that we must have sung, I cannot remember. I had to go up and join the group and hear the speech and get the diploma and all that sort of stuff. Did you have caps and gowns?

00:29:33.740 - 00:29:51.720

No, oh no, not back then. Were you a good student in high school? Average. So when you finished high school, then you went and had an interview for this college.

00:29:52.040 - 00:30:00.860

Yeah. How far was the college from Canaan? About sixty miles. Then you began college.

00:30:01.000 - 00:30:23.060

Where did you live? The dormitories at Russell Sage then were old. I have forgotten what you call them. They were old houses, brick houses, not far from the—Troy, New York, is on the Hudson

00:30:22.940 - 00:30:38.260

River. These houses were about a block and a half from the river, all on one street. We lived in them. The dining hall was in another one of the great big buildings.

00:30:39.680 - 00:30:59.080

It was very pleasant. I lived for two years in Wool Hall, and then I moved to another one for my last two years. See, what the heck was the name of that? Caldwell-Ide.

00:31:01.020 - 00:31:17.440

Caldwell-Ide. And, I lived there for a couple of years. That dorm had a dining room, but I waited on table all through my college years. Had to earn a little money so I could stay there, you know.

00:31:18.000 - 00:31:35.260

In growing up, who were your role models? I guess probably Mom and Dad. There was one teacher that I never had her in class, but she used to visit with us every once in a great while.

00:31:35.260 - 00:31:56.320

She would come and visit a lady, kind of a classmate of hers down the street. We always liked her very much, but I think Lynn had her as a teacher, but I never did. She was quite a nice lady. While you were in college, what was your major?

00:31:56.880 - 00:32:09.600

Physical education. Tell me about some of the activities you did in college. You mean activity classes? Yeah, or did you have outside activities?

00:32:09.860 - 00:32:32.460

Well, yes, I was in the college glee club and the college choir. And I earned money singing in a choir in a church that was on the campus. And it was a choir made up of girls from Russell Sage and guys from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. And I did that for four years. We had a great time.

00:32:33.220 - 00:32:51.940

The organist in there was a local bank teller, and he was a marvelous musician. We had the best choir in town. That was great fun. I've forgotten what else.

00:32:52.520 - 00:33:03.800

That's a long time ago. As a physical education major, what were your goals? Were you to teach? Yeah.

00:33:06.400 - 00:33:16.480

We had all kinds of activity classes. We had a small gym. We had no pool. We used a swimming pool that was in one of the local public schools.

00:33:17.420 - 00:33:38.000

We had swimming classes every single semester. We had gymnastics. Back then it was called fundamental gymnastics. The woman who headed up the Phys Ed department had gotten an awful lot of training at a school in Denmark.

00:33:38.940 - 00:34:08.800

We did a lot of Danish-type activities, exercise, stunts and tumbling-type things, lots of apparatus work. We had all kinds of dance, modern dance, folk dance, you name it. We also had to learn how to do corrective exercises. And then in senior year, you helped in a corrective exercise class.

00:34:10.290 - 00:34:35.720

It was a very good program. When I went some years later to the University of Missouri, I stopped in at the Women's education department and the chairman was standing there talking. I was asking about what courses were available and where they taught them there and stuff

00:34:35.800 - 00:34:50.620

like that. I asked if there was any chance that I could help. The woman said, "Well, where did you go to school?" I told her, "Who did you study under?"

00:34:50.620 - 00:35:05.000

I told her, "Helen McKinstry." She said, "When can you start working?" Helen McKinstry was very well known in the phys. ed. business back then. She later went on to become the president of Russell Sage College.

00:35:05.360 - 00:35:19.320

Kelly: Was Russell Sage an all-girls school? Ruthen: All-girls, yes. It isn't now, but that's what it was then, a girls' school. Kelly: When you finished, when you graduated from college, describe that graduation.

00:35:19.380 - 00:35:30.220

Oh, caps and gowns, and it was in the church there on the campus. Oh, big deal. Did your mom and dad come over? You bet they did.

00:35:31.000 - 00:35:47.640

Yeah, they were very pleased to see that happen. They also came up every other year. The RPI Glee Club and the Sage Glee Club put on a Christmas concert in one of the other churches in Troy.

00:35:50.040 - 00:36:07.200

That was always a marvelous concert. I remember the choir from the Russell Sage Glee Club went way to the back of the church and up in a balcony, way up. The rest of the group were down by the altar.

00:36:08.000 - 00:36:22.500

We sang back and forth like this. Mom and dad would just sit there. They were both very musical, and so music was a big part of our lives, always. What part did you sing?

00:36:22.980 - 00:36:30.860

Alto. Alto. You betcha. In college, with Isklee Club, did you compete with other schools?

00:36:30.920 - 00:36:39.960

No. Oh, no. Not back then. So when you graduated from college, then, what did you do next?

00:36:40.280 - 00:36:56.320

I started teaching. I wanted to ask you, in college during the summer times, did you take vacations? What did you do? For a couple of years I was a counselor at a camp up in the Adirondacks in New York State,

00:36:57.640 - 00:37:20.400

Silver Lake Camp. One of my classmates was a counselor there, too, so she helped me get the job there. In the last couple of summers, I ran the playground in Canaan so the kids could come over and play every day.

00:37:22.000 - 00:37:37.780

We taught them some things. Mostly it was trying to keep the kids from fighting each other and a few things like that and let them play on their own, but make sure they were safe. When you graduated from college, during that interim, from the first time you went up in

00:37:37.860 - 00:37:53.640

an airplane, had you flown again? So from college, then what did you do? I taught at Greenville Central School in New York. Greenville was a little, wee, tiny town south of Albany.

00:37:55.260 - 00:38:20.920

The central schools back then served several small towns, and the enrollment in that school was bigger than the population of the town. I taught grades one through twelve, phys. ed., and something you do not hear of anymore. They had phys. ed. classes every single day.

00:38:23.320 - 00:38:40.960

You do not see that anymore. You just look at obese children around and you say, "Oh, I wish they would make them have gym anymore," but they do not. I taught there for two years in Greenville, and then I moved to Wallkill, which was farther

00:38:41.100 - 00:38:59.820

down and had the same kind of a job, a little better pay. My first job in Greenville, I was thrilled. I got $1,100, and I got a raise for the second year. So it moved up to $1,175.

00:39:01.920 - 00:39:15.280

And that was worth moving, huh? Oh, yes, yes. And in two years I had paid off my college debt, was able to buy a little car and stuff like that.

00:39:15.940 - 00:39:40.460

Gas was twenty-five cents a gallon back then. And I had the same kind of a schedule in Wallkill. And came home to do the playground thing for the summer, and I saw an ad—or not an ad, but an article in the Rotary Review section of the Herald Tribune that Dad got every Sunday.

00:39:42.120 - 00:40:05.040

And it talked about how people who worked at Piper could learn to fly there. How far away was Piper? Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, it was probably a three or four hour drive, I have forgotten. Went down there and applied and got a job and started to learn how to fly.

00:40:05.140 - 00:40:30.120

It cost us a huge sum, a dollar and twelve cents an hour. Where did you live when you went to Lock Haven? My first job was third shift, running the first aid room. I lived with a young man and his wife and their little boy.

00:40:30.940 - 00:41:02.380

He was such a noisy little kid, I could not sleep in the daytime. So I moved and finally a bunch of us lived in an apartment together. I've forgotten where all we were, you know. And I stayed at Piper for about nine months, maybe a little longer than that, and got about

00:41:02.480 - 00:41:17.140

ninety hours of flight time and then went to Sweetwater. I started to say, when you started at Piper, what did you think you would do with that knowledge of flying? I didn't have any idea, just that I wanted to fly.

00:41:35.740 - 00:41:51.420

Crew Chief and Tow Reel Operator for almost all of our missions. The crew chief was just a little tiny bit taller than we were, and the tow-wheel operator was about six foot five. We got along so well with them.

00:41:52.100 - 00:42:07.500

They did a whale of a job. When we would fly a mission, lots of times they would go away in the back of the B-26 and move all of the cables up here so that we would have to keep flying. We would get it trimmed, and then they would untrim it for us in the back, and they would

00:42:07.500 - 00:42:23.300

laugh. We had a wonderful time. They came out one day with a young kid, new, and he got into the airplane and he was going to become a crew chief, so this was a training mission for him.

00:42:24.620 - 00:42:37.880

He was about the color of my slacks. He had his parachute on and it was so tightly on to him. Swain and I teased him, "Hey, how come you got your parachute on? We're not even in the air yet," you know, all this kind of thing.

00:42:39.540 - 00:42:56.440

He hung on for dear life during the takeoff, and we got ourselves up and the target was out and everything. Flew the mission and came back to land, and he had unloosened his parachute and he was just standing there.

00:42:57.360 - 00:43:16.820

There was nothing to it, nothing to this, and he got his color back and whatnot. After that, he always asked to fly with us. He was awful worried going up with a couple of names for crying out loud, but it was funny. He was quite a kid, forgotten his name.

00:43:20.340 - 00:43:41.100

Do you remember how you felt when you heard that the WASP would be deactivated? I was distressed, because I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing down there in Laredo. Why do you feel that they were deactivated? I think members of Congress were a little upset, just a little upset.

00:43:42.810 - 00:44:01.940

We still had the anti-women thing back then. What did you intend then to do with your life? I was not sure. I went home and I knew I had to do something.

00:44:02.360 - 00:44:18.560

I worked in a drugstore for a while, and then I got this call from Taddy and Bailey and Doris G., who were in Miami. "Come on down, Duke. Get out of your ivory tower."

00:44:18.560 - 00:44:36.020

That was what the phone message was. So I went down by train and got a job in a tomato canning factory, which I held for one week. All three of us did, and that was all we could take of that stuff.

00:44:38.260 - 00:45:05.120

Then we got a job in a little craft jewelry shop where we made things. You got paid according to the number of items that you could produce. Well, I was so slow and pokey in particular that I wasn't making very much money, so I held that job for a week. Cady and Bailey kept on for a little bit, and then we all three of us got a job at Browns Airport in South Miami.

00:45:07.800 - 00:45:26.040

We learned how to do all the fabric work, the refinishing. I became very good with the DeVilbiss gun. And we painted aircraft and all sorts of stuff like that. It was a crop duster's field.

00:45:27.380 - 00:45:47.400

And we helped one man who worked there then convert Stearman's and N3N's to crop dusters, taking everything out of the front cockpit and putting in the big bin and whatnot. The man who had the crop dusting business, there was no way in the world he was going to let women do any crop dusting.

00:45:47.460 - 00:45:58.460

That's not a woman's job. But they would let us test them. We could take one up and fly down over the field so they could see how the dust came out of the hopper.

00:45:59.270 - 00:46:13.260

It had to come out so that it would cover both the top and bottom of the leaves. So, Joe, put it down there so it'll be quiet. - Okay. We're ready.

00:46:13.280 - 00:46:26.780

- Okay, we're in Miami. - We're crop dusting. - No, we're just testing crop dusters. But, Cady and Bailey and I worked in the shop there

00:46:27.000 - 00:46:51.800

and we, all three of us, got our instructor's ratings. - What kind of airplane? Most of what we did was in cubs, but we also did a little sign towing. We had some chaps from Pan American Airways.

00:46:53.580 - 00:47:18.860

One fellow that we chatted with had a glider, and we would tow him up every once in a while. Whoever was available at the time, we all had a crack at it. Catty and I would go on Sea Florida days sometimes on Sundays just to look around. Did you ever take passengers up?

00:47:21.060 - 00:47:38.320

The only passengers I ever took up down there in Florida, Mom and Dad came down to visit us and I took Dad up one morning. Boy, he sat in the back of that cub and I thought, "I wonder how it's going to work." I turned around and looked at him and he's leaning out this window and he's leaning out

00:47:38.420 - 00:47:48.760

this window. He had a ball. We flew from South Miami up to Fort Lauderdale and got a chance to see the coastline and all that kind of stuff.

00:47:49.480 - 00:48:06.420

We did it early in the morning and it was just smooth as silk and he loved it. Did your brother ever get to do that? When my brother got out of the Navy, he was out of aviation. But you did not take your mother up?

00:48:06.700 - 00:48:24.360

I took her up one time when I happened to be visiting her at home. It was in one of these two-seaters that had dual controls. She did not know where to put her feet or where to put her hands and the stick was moving around and everything.

00:48:26.400 - 00:48:43.280

I looked back at her and she had her hands up here hanging on to some of the framework of the fuselage. Down we started and we just barely got into the air. She said, "Put me down, put me down."

00:48:43.280 - 00:48:50.460

I said, "Mom, I can't. That is the town dump up there. We cannot go there." I had to go around and come on back in.

00:48:50.690 - 00:49:01.260

It made the worst landing of my life. Absolutely the worst landing of my life. Yeah, that struck me funny. And the only time after that that she ever did any flying,

00:49:01.820 - 00:49:17.860

she and Dad flew out here to see us one time. And I told them, "When you get on board the airliner, you be sure and tell the stewardess that this is your first flight."

00:49:19.920 - 00:49:27.380

So they did. Mom wouldn't sit next to the window, no way. So, Dad had a ball. He could see everything.

00:49:29.040 - 00:49:44.800

They were approaching Chicago when the captain came back. He stopped and leaned over and he said, "Mrs. Caldwell?" "Yes." "This is your first flight?"

00:49:45.380 - 00:50:00.360

"Yes." "How do you like it?" She said, "You ask me when you put us down safely and I'll tell you." She got used to the idea, and she had a couple more flights after that.

00:50:01.820 - 00:50:23.000

She was not peachy keen excited about being in the air. Kelly: Okay, take us back to Miami now. What did you do next? I worked at Brown's Airport up until about mid-1949.

00:50:29.920 - 00:50:43.320

There were quite a few women in the area who were flying. Patty and Bailey got into air show business. They both did aerobatics. That was never of any interest to me at all.

00:50:46.060 - 00:51:11.640

I went to the Cleveland Air Races a couple of times. I got involved in the building of a midget racer with Marge Hurlbut. We were doing this up in Battle Creek. I moved from Miami up there for a short time.

00:51:19.780 - 00:51:42.000

We were still in Battle Creek when Marge went out to a town in Iowa to do an air show. She was supposed to do some, as we used to call them, "huckledypucks" in an AT-6, and she crashed and died. Marge Logan was with us on this.

00:51:43.240 - 00:52:05.560

We went on to finish up the midget racer. It was called the Hurricane, and it fought hard to be last. So Marge took the airplane back to Kansas, and I don't know whatever happened to it. I went back down to Miami and back to Browns Airport.

00:52:07.200 - 00:52:34.380

Did your friend's crash affect you as far as dampening your spirit to fly? No, not really. I kind of reached a point where I thought, "I cannot stay as an aircraft mechanic. I have got to do something different."

00:52:35.600 - 00:52:56.000

I had met Jo, and she encouraged me to go on and get my master's degree. We did. Where did you go? Left Miami in Joe's 1937 Packard convertible.

00:52:58.600 - 00:53:16.960

We drove up to Connecticut, stopped off in Asheville, North Carolina to see Dot Swain. Went up to Connecticut to see my family, and then we drove out to British Columbia. Jo was from Victoria, British Columbia. Stopped in Wisconsin to leave her appendix.

00:53:19.540 - 00:53:42.080

Got out to Victoria, and I had thought I would go down to the University of California at Berkeley. Jo was going to come back to Columbia, Missouri, because her advisor was teaching there then. We had to have the engine in the Packard rebuilt, so money went "bzz, bzz."

00:53:42.940 - 00:54:00.020

We both went back to Columbia, Missouri, and I enrolled in graduate school there. I got my master's degree in what? Phys. Ed., Master of Education. Terrible stuff.

00:54:00.050 - 00:54:14.020

At Columbia, was that Stevens? No, University of Missouri. Jo was working with Dr. Craig, and she was teaching part-time English comp and all that kind of stuff.

00:54:14.120 - 00:54:43.820

I got a job as an instructor after I had my degree in phys ed in the women's department. We stayed there until 1955. Jo got her doctorate, and we managed to save a little bit of money and went to Europe. What did you do in Europe?

00:54:44.740 - 00:54:54.240

Wandered. Had a ball. How long did you stay? We were there for a couple of months.

00:54:57.640 - 00:55:14.320

We went over on a boat. Joe's brother went with us. He was nineteen at the time. One of her colleagues in the graduate school at the University of Missouri wanted to go,

00:55:14.480 - 00:55:32.240

and so he went over on the boat with us. We met his good friend, who was on a Fulbright in Florence at the time, so we got off the boat at Naples. We did some sightseeing together for one day, and that was as much as we could handle with

00:55:32.280 - 00:55:39.940

five of us. So the guys would go off and do their thing, and we'd go off and do ours, and then we'd meet for dinner. And it worked out beautifully.

00:55:40.470 - 00:56:04.560

Did you rent cars? No, no, we'd go by bus or train or whatever. Went up to Florence, to Venice, up to Switzerland. Stayed in a little town, Altdorf, that we learned about when we were in a museum in

00:56:04.680 - 00:56:20.520

Rome. No, Firenze, I've forgotten. Talked with a guide there and he told us about this little town in Switzerland, so that's where we went, stayed there for a week, climbed up in the mountains a little bit, and had

00:56:20.540 - 00:56:38.900

a great time. On to Paris, then over to England, came back by boat, and came to Bradley. Both of us had jobs here then. So we started here in 1955.

00:56:39.340 - 00:57:04.720

And your job at Bradley was as PE? We got here and had to go to the first meeting for the new faculty. The dean was glad to see us. We sent him a postcard from Europe asking for a sabbatical in advance.

00:57:05.820 - 00:57:22.320

He got a big kick out of that. He pulled me to one side and he said, "I think I better tell you this. We've made you department chairman." "What?"

00:57:22.600 - 00:57:42.560

And the woman who was chairman of the department, when I came for the interview and everything, she quit and went somewhere else. I held that job all the rest of my time at Bradley except for the last year. I asked to be relieved of that job so I could just teach and that was it.

00:57:43.180 - 00:57:56.740

No more meetings, no more scheduling and all that. I had fun my last year. What did you really enjoy about teaching? What made that fun to you?

00:57:58.820 - 00:58:25.980

being with all this wonderful variety of young people. They have quite a range, and we're getting more and more African American students. I enjoyed having classes with both men and women in them. I didn't teach just activity.

00:58:26.160 - 00:58:39.900

I also taught kinesiology and physiology and a few little basic things like that. What happened to your flying? Did you continue? I did not do any more.

00:58:41.300 - 00:58:58.760

I have not touched an airplane since 1949. Well, I should say I have touched one, but I let United or American or Northwest or somebody like that do it. While you were teaching at Bradley, did you also then begin to do things on your own as

00:58:58.840 - 00:59:09.500

far as activities, for example, golf? Oh, yes. Played some golf. I taught a lot of golf.

00:59:11.920 - 00:59:47.400

I was able to go to a couple of LPGA schools for teachers and got that done. I taught tennis, modern dance, folk dance. I love teaching folk dance. That's lots of fun. How good a golfer did you become? Not quite average. Pretty fair.

00:59:47.560 - 01:00:01.360

Do you still play golf? No, I haven't played for a long time. When the finger joints get arthritic, it's awful hard to hold the club. Do you recall any outstanding students that you had, any particularly outstanding?

01:00:03.740 - 01:00:26.680

Oh my gosh. Well, one of them that I had is now a dean at Texas Women's University. She went on and got her doctorate, I think at Kansas, I'm not sure. She's been in Denton for quite a while.

01:00:31.880 - 01:00:56.240

I had a couple of pretty good basketball players from both the men's and women's teams here at Bradley. Of course, Bradley's basketball nuts that have gone on and done very well locally. One of them has a son now who's trying to decide whether to go to college on a golf

01:00:56.380 - 01:01:10.080

scholarship or a basketball scholarship. He's a very fine young athlete and you like to see that sort of thing. Eventually you decided to retire? Yeah, got old enough to.

01:01:18.980 - 01:01:36.580

Since you retired, Mildred, how do you spend your time? What activities are you involved in? Well for a while I volunteered to teach reading to illiterate people at a place down on the south side.

01:01:38.400 - 01:01:59.500

And I had one student that I worked with for three years. I've often wondered how he's doing now. When we were teaching we did a lot with neighborhood kids. There used to be a Nicaraguan family that lived a couple of doors up the street here,

01:01:59.780 - 01:02:21.400

and they had seven children. We came home from teaching summer school one day, and Eric was at the front door. We got out, and we were ready to just collapse after teaching classes on a hot day. He looked up at us, and he said, "Hey, can you guys come out and play?"

01:02:22.140 - 01:02:41.680

That got us started. We opened up our backyard then every day, never on Sunday, from three to five. I brought equipment out from the gym, and the kids played badminton, and they played bocce ball.

01:02:43.400 - 01:03:12.560

We had shoe golf clubs, and we had some hula hoops that they could hit balls to and stuff like that. have 20, 25 kids out here from the neighborhood. And we'd stop midterm and they'd all have lemonade and cookies and we encouraged them

01:03:12.760 - 01:03:21.840

to be mannerly. We didn't teach them anything. The only thing we told them was that when you're down here in this yard, you do not climb the trees.

01:03:23.000 - 01:03:41.640

If you bring a friend with you, you introduce your friend to us. I would leave rule books or technique books just casually out there. One of the girls from the Gurdian family, she loved to read and she'd find these things and say, "Hey guys, look at this."

01:03:41.760 - 01:03:55.220

Then they'd start practicing all this kind of stuff. They had a great time. When they would get ready to leave, they had to bring their lemonade glasses in and clean them and put all the equipment away.

01:03:57.900 - 01:04:19.640

We did this for, oh gosh, I don't know, four or five years. With your tremendous musical ability, what have you done with that ability since college? Nothing, just use it as a relaxation sometimes. Now at this stage of your life, what makes you happy?

01:04:21.520 - 01:04:36.380

Being alive! Oh my golly. Being alive. Mildred, as you look back over your life and you've done so many things, what is the one

01:04:36.540 - 01:04:56.420

thing that you are most proud of? I don't know as I ever think of it in terms of being proud of something. I'm glad I had all the experiences I had. One of the best experiences I think was when Joe and I had a sabbatical and we went to

01:04:56.620 - 01:05:13.520

Europe and got a car and we just toured around. We were there, we went in February and came home in June, put 10,000 miles on the car, "Hey, this is a cute little town. Let's stop here."

01:05:13.520 - 01:05:26.700

That's the way we did it. That was one experience that we thoroughly enjoyed. I liked it. What is your personal opinion of Jacqueline Cochran?

01:05:28.540 - 01:05:52.180

I have a certain admiration for her. I have read some stuff about her. We used to be amused when she would fly into the Cleveland Air Races in her fast airplane. Sometimes she would miss the airport and land somewhere else and then have to come back

01:05:52.240 - 01:06:04.180

and stuff like that. She would hang around down at the far end of the field, and then pretty soon she would taxi up. from her flying clothes into a nice dress and a hat and makeup and shoes and all this.

01:06:04.800 - 01:06:23.600

We always used to laugh about that. But I have to admire her. She was a very gutsy lady. She achieved an enormous—I think her achievements are quite remarkable, considering her start.

01:06:25.160 - 01:06:52.100

What do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be? Well, it's evident in the way more and more women are flying in the military, and more and more women are in the airline industry. Some of them are first pilots, some of them are co-pilots, and I think that's— It wasn't just the WASP, there were quite a few preceders, you know.

01:06:52.720 - 01:07:11.160

Earhart and Pancho Barnes and folks like that, and it all kind of built a base. I think not all men are pleased about it, but more and more are. More and more of them are. That I think is good.

01:07:13.740 - 01:07:32.300

What do you feel your legacy will be? I don't ever think of it that way at all. I know during life there are good times and there are bad times and there are happy times and then there are sad times.

01:07:33.060 - 01:07:56.160

What has gotten you through those sad times? you just have to keep going. You just have to keep going. But what keeps you going? Gosh, I've never thought of it. I just do, you know.

01:07:59.620 - 01:08:24.740

If you could say something to children in future generations that might encourage them, What would you like to say to them? I do not know. Set a goal and accomplish it, and then set another one, and you just keep going and going.

01:08:25.660 - 01:08:54.880

Your goals are going to, each time you set one, it is going to be a little bit higher and a little bit higher, and you just have to keep doing that. I oftentimes wonder with the kind of education that the kids get nowadays, whether they're being helped with all of the sidetrack, drugs, and all that sort of thing.

01:08:55.060 - 01:09:16.760

It's very distressing. It's hard for some of them to go beyond that, which is a shame. needs to be, in my humble opinion, I think there needs to be a lot more parental involvement with children, much more so than, more like it was when I was a kid.

01:09:20.410 - 01:09:33.840

Is there anything that I have left out that you would like to tell us about or any message you would like to give? No. I think it's been picked.

01:09:37.620 - 01:09:52.640

Why do you think the WASP history was left out of the history books? The macho man attitude, I think. A lot of it. What do you think about what we are trying to do?

01:09:52.900 - 01:10:02.800

I think it's a good idea. Anything else, Nancy? Favorite word? What is your favorite word?

01:10:03.560 - 01:10:19.980

My favorite word? I better not say it. Once in a while, cuss words come out, and I better not say it. You've been great, Mildred.

01:10:20.360 - 01:10:37.620

I do want to hear the Mary Parker story one more time, if you don't mind. How you were in Sweetwater. I saw her riding on the convertible as this gang of women came into town from Sweetwater. I was just amazed.

01:10:37.820 - 01:10:44.460

My gosh. I did not even know she was flying. She did not know I was going to be there either. This was just a happenstance.

01:10:47.340 - 01:11:03.760

Then she went on to B-17 training. a B-17 cross-country flight. She was in one of three airplanes that were making a trip out to California and back from somewhere in Ohio.

01:11:03.770 - 01:11:31.340

I forgot where they were. She was getting some training there, and they stopped and stayed overnight in Laredo. We all had a nice wing-ding over in Nuevo Laredo. I was looking in my books for the book that her niece wrote, but I cannot find it back

01:11:31.420 - 01:11:46.720

there anywhere. I met this young girl at one of the WASP meetings that I went to. I have forgotten when it was that Mary died. It has been several years, I think.

01:11:47.580 - 01:12:02.820

What was your favorite airplane of all the airplanes you flew? a B-26. Kelly: Oh, and what made that your favorite? Beall: Oh, I could not—just flying it.

01:12:04.060 - 01:12:09.960

Just flying it. Kelly: Okay, that's a wrap. All right, we're done. Thank you.

01:12:10.280 - 01:12:19.300

I know this has taken more time than Joe thought it was going to take. Beall: Yeah. Well, I remember when you called, you said it would be an hour. Kelly: Or so.

01:12:19.960 - 01:12:37.620

In comparison to the time we spent on the ground. I forgot the order. Crew chief and tow reel operator for almost all of our missions. The crew chief was just a little tiny bit taller than we were,

01:12:37.680 - 01:12:48.340

and the tow reel operator was about 6'5". And we got along so well with them. They did a whale of a job. And when we'd fly a mission lots of times,

01:12:48.340 - 01:13:01.920

Sometimes they'd go away in the back of the B-26 and move all of the cables up here so that we'd have to keep flying. We'd get it trimmed and then they'd untrim it for us in the back and they'd laugh. We had a wonderful time.

01:13:02.940 - 01:13:18.860

They came out one day with a young kid, new, and he got into the airplane and he was going to become a crew chief. This was a training mission for him. He was about the color of my slacks.

01:13:20.480 - 01:13:33.740

He had his parachute on, and it was so tightly on to him. Swain and I teased him, "Hey, how come you got your parachute on? We're not even in the air yet," you know, all this kind of thing. He hung on for dear life.

01:13:36.140 - 01:13:54.080

During the takeoff, we got ourselves up and the target was out and everything. the mission and came back to land and he had unloosened his parachute and he was just standing there. There was nothing to it, nothing to this, and he got his color back and whatnot.

01:13:54.520 - 01:14:18.220

After that he always asked to fly with us. He was awful worried going up with a couple of names for crying out loud, but it was funny. He was quite a kid, forgotten his name. Do you remember how you felt when you heard that the WASP would be deactivated?

01:14:18.630 - 01:14:38.440

I was distressed, because I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing down there in Laredo. Why do you feel that they were deactivated? I think the members of Congress were a little upset, just a little upset. We still had the anti-women thing back then.

01:14:42.460 - 01:14:57.960

What did you intend then to do with your life? I was not sure. I went home, and I knew I had to do something. I worked in a drugstore for a while.

01:14:59.900 - 01:15:13.460

Then I got this call from Caddy and Bailey and Doris G., who were in Miami. "Come on down, Duke. Get out of your ivory tower." That was what the phone message was.

01:15:14.240 - 01:15:38.500

So I went down by train and got a job in a tomato canning factory, which I held for one week. All three of us did, and that was all we could take of that stuff. And then we got a job in a little craft jewelry shop where we made things, and you got paid

01:15:38.640 - 01:15:55.060

according to the number of items that you could produce. Well, I was so slow and pokey in particular that I was not making very much money, so I held that job for a week. and Bailey kept on for a little bit and then we all three of us got a job at

01:15:55.220 - 01:16:28.620

Browns Airport in South Miami and we learned how to do all the fabric work the refinishing. I became very good with the DeVilbiss gun and we painted aircraft and all sorts of stuff like that. It was a crop dusters field and we It helped one man who worked there then convert Stearman's and N3N's to crop dusters, taking

01:16:28.680 - 01:16:41.080

out everything out of the front cockpit and putting in the big bin and whatnot. The man who had the crop dusting business, there was no way in the world he was going to let women do any crop dusting. That's not a woman's job.

01:16:42.500 - 01:17:03.560

But they would let us test them. We could take one up and fly down over the field so they could see how the dust came out of the hopper. It had to come out so that it would cover both the top and bottom of the leaves. So Joe put it down there so it'll be quiet.

01:17:05.560 - 01:17:24.900

Okay, we're in Miami. We're crop dusting. No, we were just testing crop dusters. But Cady and Bailey and I worked in the shop We all three of us got our instructor's ratings.

01:17:25.680 - 01:17:50.820

What kind of airplane? Most of what we did was in Cubs, but we also did a little sign towing. We had some chaps from Pan American Airways. One fellow that we chatted with had a glider, and we would tow him up every once in a while.

01:17:52.340 - 01:18:18.420

Whoever was available at the time, we all had a crack at it. Cady and I would go on Sea Florida days sometimes on Sundays just to look around. Did you ever take passengers up? The only passengers I ever took up down there in Florida, Mom and Dad came down to visit

01:18:18.600 - 01:18:31.460

us and I took Dad up one morning. He sat in the back of that Cub and I thought, "I wonder how it's going to work." I turned around and looked at him and he's leaning out this window and he's leaning out this window.

01:18:31.640 - 01:18:46.360

He had a ball. We flew from South Miami up to Fort Lauderdale and got a chance to see the coastline and all that kind of stuff. We did it early in the morning and it was just smooth as silk and he loved it.

01:18:46.800 - 01:19:03.080

Did your brother ever get to do that? When my brother got out of the Navy, he was out of aviation. But you did not take your mother up? I took her up one time when I happened to be visiting her at home.

01:19:06.420 - 01:19:25.160

It was in one of these two-seaters that had dual controls. She did not know where to put her feet or where to put her hands, and the stick was moving around and everything. I looked back at her and she had her hands up here hanging on to some of the framework

01:19:25.260 - 01:19:36.820

of the fuselage. Down we started and we just barely got into the air. She said, "Put me down, put me down." I said, "Mom, I cannot.

01:19:36.940 - 01:19:44.560

That is the town dump up there. We cannot go there." So I had to go around and come on back in. Made the worst landing of my life.

01:19:45.480 - 01:19:56.600

Absolutely the worst landing of my life. God, it struck me funny. The only time after that that she ever did any flying, she and Dad flew out here to see us one time.

01:19:59.800 - 01:20:16.060

I told them, "When you get on board the airliner, you be sure and tell the stewardess that this This is your first flight." So they did. Mom would not sit next to the window, no way.

01:20:17.060 - 01:20:32.920

So Dad had a ball. He could see everything. They were approaching Chicago when the captain came back. He stopped and leaned over and he said, "Mrs. Caldwell?"

01:20:34.220 - 01:20:40.140

"Yes." "This is your first flight?" "Yes." What do you like it?"

01:20:40.260 - 01:21:00.480

She said, "You ask me when you put us down safely, and I'll tell you." She got used to the idea, and she had a couple more flights after that. She wasn't peachy keen excited about being in the air. Kelly: Okay, take us back to Miami now.

01:21:01.900 - 01:21:30.940

What did you do next? I worked at Browns Airport for, oh gosh, up until about mid-1949. We did a lot of—there were quite a few women in the area who were flying. Patty and Bailey got into air show business.

01:21:31.350 - 01:21:50.460

They both did aerobatics. That was never of any interest to me at all. I went to the Cleveland Air Races a couple of times. I got involved in the building of a midget racer with Marge Hurlbut.

01:21:52.400 - 01:22:28.640

We were doing this up in Battle Creek. I moved from Miami up there for a short time. We were still in Battle Creek when Marge went out to a town in Iowa to do an air show. She was supposed to do some, as we used to call them, "huckledypucks" in an AT-6,

01:22:28.700 - 01:22:44.940

and she crashed and died. Marge Logan was with us on this. We went on to finish up the midget racer. It was called the Hurricane, and it fought hard to be last.

01:22:47.580 - 01:23:09.740

So Marge took the airplane back to Kansas, and I don't know what ever happened to it. I went back down to Miami and back to Browns Airport. Did your friend's crash affect you as far as dampening your spirit to fly? No, not really.

01:23:15.600 - 01:23:37.460

I kind of reached a point where I thought, "I cannot stay as an aircraft mechanic. I have got to do something different." I had met Jo, and she encouraged me to go on and get my master's degree. We did.

01:23:38.240 - 01:24:02.160

Where did you go? Left Miami in Joe's 1937 Packard convertible. We drove up to Connecticut, stopped off in Asheville, North Carolina to see Dots Wayne. Went up to Connecticut to see my family, and then we drove out to British Columbia.

01:24:03.120 - 01:24:19.180

Jo was from Victoria, British Columbia. Stopped in Wisconsin to leave her appendix. Got out to Victoria, and I had thought I would go down to the University of California at Berkeley.

01:24:20.020 - 01:24:45.580

Jo was going to come back to Columbia, Missouri, because her advisor was teaching there then. We had to have the engine in the Packard rebuilt, so money went bzzz, bzzz. So we both went back to Columbia, Missouri, and I enrolled in graduate school there. I got my master's degree in what?

01:24:46.520 - 01:24:54.080

Phys. Ed., Master of Education. Terrible stuff. At Columbia, was that Stevens?

01:24:54.980 - 01:25:13.880

No, University of Missouri. Jo was working with Dr. Craig, and she was teaching part-time English comp and all that kind of stuff. I got a job as an instructor after I had my degree in phys ed in the women's department.

01:25:15.780 - 01:25:37.460

We stayed there until 1955. Jo got her doctorate, and we managed to save a little bit of money and went to Europe. What did you do in Europe? Wandered.

01:25:38.830 - 01:25:51.300

Had a ball. How long did you stay? We were there for a couple of months. We went over on a boat.

01:25:51.520 - 01:26:08.800

Joe's brother went with us. He was nineteen at the time. One of her colleagues in the graduate school at the University of Missouri wanted to go, and so he went over on the boat with us.

01:26:09.140 - 01:26:25.400

We met his good friend, who was on a Fulbright in Florence at the time, so we got off the boat at Naples. We did some sightseeing together for one day, and that was as much as we could handle with five of us.

01:26:26.080 - 01:26:34.040

So the guys would go off and do their thing, and we'd go off and do ours, and then we'd meet for dinner. And it worked out beautifully. Did you rent cars?

01:26:34.540 - 01:26:57.460

No, no, we'd go by bus or train or whatever. Went up to Florence, to Venice, up to Switzerland. Stayed in a little town, Altdorf, that we learned about when we were in a museum in Rome.

01:26:59.400 - 01:27:13.560

Or, no, Fiorenze, I've forgotten. Talked with a guide there and he told us about this little town in Switzerland, so that's That's where we went, stayed there for a week, climbed up in the mountains a little bit, and had a great time.

01:27:15.120 - 01:27:37.360

On to Paris, then over to England, came back by boat, and came to Bradley. Both of us had jobs here then. So we started here in 1955. And, your job at Bradley was as a PE?

01:27:40.560 - 01:27:59.560

We got here and had to go to the first meeting for the new faculty. The dean was glad to see us. We sent him a postcard from Europe asking for a sabbatical in advance. He got a big kick out of that.

01:28:02.540 - 01:28:19.940

He pulled me to one side and he said, "I think I better tell you this. We've made you department chairman." "What?" The woman who was chairman of the department, when I came for the interview and everything,

01:28:20.560 - 01:28:39.380

she quit and went somewhere else. I held that job all the rest of my time at Bradley except for the last year. I asked to be relieved of that job so I could just teach and that was it. No more meetings, no more scheduling and all that.

01:28:41.240 - 01:28:54.280

I had fun my last year. What did you really enjoy about teaching? What made that fun to you? in Milan, this wonderful variety of young people.

01:28:57.680 - 01:29:27.820

They have quite a range, and we are getting more and more African American students. I enjoyed having classes with both men and women in them. I did not teach just activity. I also taught kinesiology and physiology and a few little basic things like that.

01:29:28.970 - 01:29:37.080

What happened to your flying? Did you continue? I did not do any more. I have not touched an airplane since 1949.

01:29:37.860 - 01:29:55.060

Well, I should say I have touched one, but I let United or American or Northwest or somebody like that do it. While you were teaching at Bradley, did you also then begin to do things on your own as far as activities, for example, golf?

01:29:56.380 - 01:30:07.880

Oh, yes. Played some golf. I taught a lot of golf. I was able to go to a couple of LPGA schools for teachers.

01:30:11.500 - 01:30:39.860

that done. I taught tennis, modern dance, folk dance. I love teaching folk dance, that's lots of fun. How good a golfer did you become? Not quite average, pretty fair.

01:30:40.020 - 01:30:53.820

Do you still play golf? I have not played for a long time. When the finger joints get arthritic, it is awful hard to hold the club. Do you recall any outstanding students that you had, any particularly outstanding?

01:31:01.300 - 01:31:33.040

One of them that I had is now a dean at Texas Women's University. She went on and got her doctorate, I think at Kansas, I'm not sure. She's been in Denton for quite a while. I had a couple of pretty good basketball players from both the men's and women's teams here

01:31:33.120 - 01:31:50.780

at Bradley. Of course, Bradley's basketball nuts that have gone on and done very well locally. One of them has a son now who's trying to decide whether to go to college on a golf scholarship or a basketball scholarship.

01:31:50.940 - 01:32:16.720

He's a very fine young athlete and you like to see that sort of thing. Eventually you decided to retire? Yes, got old enough to. Since you retired, Mildred, how do you spend your time?

01:32:17.080 - 01:32:34.040

What activities are you involved in? Well, for a while I volunteered to teach reading to illiterate people at a place down on the south side. And I had one student that I worked with for three years.

01:32:35.240 - 01:32:53.960

I've often wondered how he's doing now. When we were teaching, we did a lot with neighborhood kids. There used to be a Nicaraguan family that lived a couple of doors up the street here, and they had seven children.

01:32:55.460 - 01:33:15.680

We came home from teaching summer school one day, and Eric was at the front door. We got out, and we were ready to just collapse after teaching classes on a hot day. He looked up at us and he said, "Hey, can you guys come out and play?" That got us started.

01:33:16.720 - 01:33:48.280

opened up our backyard then every day, never on Sunday, from three to five. And I brought equipment out from the gym, and the kids played badminton, and they played bocce ball, and we had shoe golf clubs, and we had some hula hoops that they could hit balls too and stuff like that. We'd have 20, 25 kids out here from the neighborhood.

01:33:50.160 - 01:34:19.020

And we'd stop midterm and they'd all have lemonade and cookies. And we Encourage them to be mannerly. We didn't teach them anything The only thing we told him was that when you're down here in this yard, you do not climb the trees And if you bring a friend with it, you introduce your friend to us

01:34:21.040 - 01:34:38.140

And I would leave rule books or technique books just casually out there, you know And one of the girls from the guardian family, she loved to read and she'd find these things "Hey guys, look at this!" and then they'd start practicing all this kind of stuff. They had a great time.

01:34:39.240 - 01:35:00.880

And when they would get ready to leave, they had to bring their lemonade glasses in and clean them and put all the equipment away. We did this for, oh gosh, I don't know, four or five years. With your tremendous musical ability, what have you done with that ability since college?

01:35:01.060 - 01:35:21.220

Nothing, just use it as a relaxation sometimes. Now, at this stage of your life, what makes you happy? Being alive! Oh, golly. Yeah, being alive.

01:35:22.380 - 01:35:50.920

Mildred, as you look back over your life, and you've done so, so many things, what is the one thing that you are most proud of? Oh, I don't know as I ever think of it in terms of being proud of something. I'm just glad I had all the experiences I had. One of the best experiences I think was when Joe and I had a sabbatical and we went to Europe and got a car

01:35:52.460 - 01:36:07.140

And we just toured around We were there we went in February and came home in June Put 10,000 miles on the car Stopped here stopped there. Hey, this is a cute little town. Let's stop here. And that's the way we did it and

01:36:08.560 - 01:36:19.160

that that was One experience that we thoroughly enjoyed. I liked it. What is your personal opinion of Jacqueline Cochran?

01:36:20.860 - 01:36:45.480

I have a certain admiration for her. I've read some stuff about her. We used to be amused when she'd fly into the Cleveland Air Races in her fast airplane. She would miss the airport and land somewhere else and have to come back and stuff like that.

01:36:46.760 - 01:36:56.640

She would hang around down at the far end of the field, and then pretty soon she would taxi up. She had changed from her flying clothes into a nice dress and a hat and makeup and shoes and all this.

01:36:57.300 - 01:37:16.060

We always used to laugh about that. I have to admire her. She was a very gutsy lady. She achieved an enormous—I think her achievements are quite remarkable, considering her start.

01:37:18.020 - 01:37:35.840

What do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be? Well, it's evident in the way more and more women are flying in the military, and more and more women are in the airline industry. Some of them are first pilots, some of them are co-pilots.

01:37:39.960 - 01:37:58.100

It was not just the WASP. There were quite a few preceders, Earhart and Pancho Barnes and folks like that. It all kind of built a base. Not all men are pleased about it, but more and more are.

01:37:59.480 - 01:38:08.180

More and more of them are. But I think it is good. QF. What do you feel your legacy will be?

01:38:10.140 - 01:38:22.580

A. I don't ever think of it that way at all. I don't ever think of that. QF. I know during life there are good times and there are bad times and there are happy times

01:38:22.580 - 01:38:38.100

and then there are sad times. What has gotten you through those sad times? Well, you just have to keep going. You just have to keep going.

01:38:38.980 - 01:38:59.840

But what keeps you going? Gosh, I've never thought of it. I just do, you know. If you could say something to children in future generations that might encourage them,

01:39:01.340 - 01:39:23.220

what would you like to say to them? I do not know. Set a goal and accomplish it, and then set another one, and you just keep going and going. goals are going to, each time you set one, it's going to be a little bit higher and

01:39:23.260 - 01:39:48.700

a little bit higher, and you just have to keep doing that. I oftentimes wonder with the kind of education that the kids get nowadays, whether they're being helped, what with all of the sidetrack and drugs and all that sort of thing. It's very distressing.

01:39:50.500 - 01:40:19.620

It's hard for some of them to go beyond that, which is a shame. There needs to be, in my humble opinion, I think there needs to be a lot more parental involvement with children, much more so than, more like it was when I was a kid. Is there anything that I have left out that you would like to tell us about or any message

01:40:19.740 - 01:40:34.160

you would like to give? No. No, I think it's been picked. Why do you think the WASP history was left out of the history books?

01:40:36.940 - 01:40:48.040

The macho man attitude, I think, a lot of it. What do you think about what we are trying to do? I think it's a good idea. Good idea.

01:40:49.100 - 01:40:55.320

Yep. Anything else, Nancy? Favorite word? What is your favorite word?

01:40:56.040 - 01:41:10.260

My favorite word? I better not say it. Once in a while cuss words come out, and I better not say it. You've been great.

01:41:12.160 - 01:41:30.000

I do want to hear the Mary Parker story one more time, if you don't mind. How you were in Sweetwater. I saw her riding on the convertible as this gang of women came into town from Sweetwater. I was just amazed.

01:41:31.660 - 01:41:43.140

I did not even know she was flying. She did not know I was going to be there either. This was just a happenstance. Then she went on to B-17 training.

01:41:45.580 - 01:42:07.120

On a B-17 cross-country flight, she was in one of three airplanes that were making a trip out to California and back from somewhere in Ohio. I forgot where they were. She was getting some training there, and they stopped and stayed overnight in Laredo.

01:42:08.070 - 01:42:32.880

We all had a nice wingding over in Nuevo Laredo. I was looking in my books for the book that her niece wrote, but I cannot find it back there anywhere. I met this young girl at one of the WASP meetings that I went to.

01:42:34.600 - 01:42:44.440

I have forgotten when it was that Mary died. It has been several years, I think. What was your favorite airplane of all the airplanes you flew? The B-26.

01:42:48.420 - 01:42:55.300

What made that your favorite? I could not, I was just flying it.