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All right. Good. Hey, one second. I'm--

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[COUGHS] --rolling. I'm going to call the bars. You're tweaking?

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No, I think I'm tweaked. OK. If you're tweaked, we're ready to roll. OK.

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Mm-hmm. Now I'm rolling. OK. I'm Deanie Parrish.

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We are interviewing Virginia Lee Hagerstrom. She was a WASP, class 43-4. We're in the Rio Rico Resort Hotel in Rio Rico, Texas. Today--

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- Arizona. (laughing) - Can we start over? - Sure, sure.

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We'll start over. - Texans won't have it. - They too. Okay.

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Go right ahead. - I'm Deanie Parrish. We are interviewing Virginia Lee Hagerstrom. She was a WASP, class 43-4.

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We're in the Rio Rica Resort Hotel in Rio Rica, Arizona. Today is the 4th of November, 2001. Okay, Lee, if you would give us your full name and when and where you were born.

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>> Well, let's see. My birth certificate says Virgie Lee Joel. But later in life, I didn't like the Virgie. I didn't like it even at the beginning.

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But so Joel and then I married James Hagerstrom. And in those days, we took the husband's name. - And when and where were you born? - I was born in Frankston, Texas, that's Anderson County,

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a hundred miles southeast of Dallas. Dallas was our big D, big town. - Tell me about your mom and dad. - Okay, my dad was a lumber man from the beginning

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and that's what he did all his life. He had been married before and lost his wife and a baby child. He had two children when he married my mother.

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My mother's 14 years younger than my father, although he kept his age beautifully right up to the end. She was Mary Frances Moore. And he was from Ironton, Texas.

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And I don't know how long his family had been there, but they came across from-- the grandmother came from Tennessee. And they came in the originally way back to South Carolina.

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And the Jowls, a lot of them were sea captains. And we think French sea captains. My daughter is presently working night and day, besides her job as a librarian in Austin, Texas.

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She stays on there and traces us back, and actually to England, but we won't go into that too much. But it's fun for her now. She was a writer and then she just dropped writing.

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She works in the library and she goes to the big archives there at the University of Texas or in Austin someplace and traces all the time. And when we—I went back recently to a reunion in Texas outside Mount Vernon. We visited cemeteries all the way up because she had tips.

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There were some jewels there or someone else relating to the family. So back to my family. They lived in Frankston, Texas all their lives. He ran a lumberyard.

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How large is Frankston? It was about eleven hundred, give or take. Where did you live? Describe your home, where you lived.

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I lived there in Frankston. In town? In town, yeah. At that time there were no street names and no paved streets when I was growing up.

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The town, like so many little East Texas towns, was built around a square, not a courthouse because we weren't the county seat. And that was my hometown, so we started kindergarten there. Okay, let me ask you first about your siblings. Oh yes, okay. They were like about 10 and 8 when my father married my mother.

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His name was Harold and he was older by two years and my sister was called Vesta, Mary Vesta. He worked in the lumber business with my father all those years, almost all those years. We went through the depression, my father lost his business, but then he came back again just a little little sawmill. He had started from scratch, but he still was in the lumber business.

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and when he actually got too old to do that and my brother wanted to move to Houston do something else he was a very good cost estimator and he had a chance to get a very good job in Houston and but my daughter I mean my my father still was very good at walking over timber he was like a consultant and he could estimate the board feet board foot of a stand of timber he was very good

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at that. So he continued to do that plus dabble in real estate before he died. Tell me about your grandparents. My maternal grandparents, okay, they were named Moore, Ernest Moore. He married Virginia Ella Askew. All these people were in the same community called Sandflat out from in the

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district out from Frankston. And there was a lot of intermarrying there. For example, two of my mother's uncles married two of my father's sisters, so I had double cousins. And as a matter of fact, they called my mother not Aunt Frankie, although she was an aunt, they called her Cousin Frankie, because she was not that much older than the oldest children

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there. So they grew up knowing each other there. Then the Jowls were there too. My grandmother Jowl died before I was born. She was Grandpa Jowl's second wife, and she was the one from Tennessee. They had ten children, and my father was second oldest. They had a lot of sons, And all these guys who were very good at singing, you know, the quartet sort of thing, and they

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were very good, they were very musical. They adored their mother. Too bad I didn't get to meet her. I was named for her and my other grandmother, Virginia Ella and Rosa Lee.

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My father's name was Robert Lee, and now I've taken the name Lee and prefer to be called that in family, but I'll answer to most anything reasonable. So he, Grandpa Joel, I remember because I remember all my grandparents, well not the first one, grandmother, but I remember my grandfathers and that.

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Were you able to visit with them a lot as a child? Especially my mother's mother and father. He had like a farm and raised peaches and I loved to go out there and visit like in the summertime I'd spend at least a week and then when I was smaller my mother would

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go out and take me there and my grandmother I remember could bake wonderful pies out of anything like green tomatoes, ripe tomatoes, green grapes, whatever you know. They made, she made wonderful desserts that I remember. Then uh.

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As you were growing up as a small child, what was a Christmas like in your home? Exciting for me, you know, until the depression, and then it was too depressing. Right. But what happened when I was about 12 years old, my sister had married and had three children,

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and they were quite young. The oldest was maybe four or five. and it was depression. Her father, I mean her husband, was not able to get a job and he, they were down in South Texas, south of San Antonio, and with his mother and father. And he was driving at night, had gone someplace to look for a job,

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driving at night and apparently fell asleep and had an accident and killed himself and the little babies. I can't talk about this today without crying. I feel so much. But they came to live with us because we had no money, none, not even a thin nickel in

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her purse, my dad said when he went for her. But they stayed there with us and she would sew for me. She learned to sew. She had to do something to make some money for her children and all.

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And she was wonderful. She saw me through. I went to Stephen F. Austin or wherever I was in school. I went to three different schools before I finally graduated.

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I could just send her a picture, "I would really like to have this for a dance," you know, or something like that, and she would make them. And most of my clothes she made when I went through school, and they were lovely. She was very good.

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>> Right. So at Christmas at your house, would it be a big family affair? >> Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm.

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Yeah. >> Would your grandparents come to your house, or would you... >> No. They never, so far as I know, came to our house.

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Sorry about that, but it was just the way it was, you know. I remember my grandfather being there. He went away for a while, and then he remarried, and he came back, and I remember being at the table with him.

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But it was mostly my family. But what we had, like with my father's family, they were big, and most of them, the brothers, lived in Dallas. One was a policeman, one was a fireman, and one was a motorman, you know, the street cars.

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They went there, you know, no money and got jobs there. And they stayed there and retired there until they died. But I loved for them to come visit. We were like a place everybody poured in.

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Maybe because my father was the oldest son, but whatever, we had company. And I loved to see the company coming, you know, and especially my cousins. And my mother somehow could cook, you know, and make down beds and pallets for everybody. So I loved that.

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And then my father would have reunions. He bought two different farms out from there, small farms, and one of them with a little pond in the spring. And he would build the picnic tables and all the jewels from all over the place would come

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there for reunions. And so we were a very family—that side of the family. The other side, my mother's family, no. They didn't get together very much.

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They weren't a very, you know. >>Weren't very close. >>No, not very close at all. No.

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>>Do you recall when you started school? >>Yes, because I couldn't go from first year to first grade because I wasn't a sixth until December, the December baby. But about that time, one of the women there who was highly qualified started a kindergarten,

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and that was wonderful. So she had a small group of us, and she just treated it like first grade. So I learned to read there, so I didn't even have to do first grade. I went on to second grade.

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She was wonderful. How did you get—how far was the kindergarten from where you lived? Oh, well, about that time, our school burned. And we were—school classes were just scattered throughout the community.

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And ours was, I think, in a church, as I recall. Some classes were in the courthouse, and some were in churches. They were scattered throughout the town until they built the new school. And how did you—did you walk to school, or how did you get—

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Oh, as a kindergartner? Probably not. It was right across from my dad's lumber business. He was in wholesale and retail and like a paint store and all like that.

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He was—he made good money then, until he lost his business. No, it was quite close by. Later on, going to the other school when it was finished, I'd sometimes walk. It wasn't that far.

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I'd even walk home at lunch. That was part of the fun, unless it was pouring down rain. I didn't take lunches. Very, very rarely did I take lunches.

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Do you remember any of your teachers in grade school that impressed you? Oh, yes. In grade school. I loved my second-grade teacher.

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was special about her? Well she was lovely and a soft voice, not stern. The next teacher was, I don't remember their names even, come to think of it, um she was a little more strict, you know a little sterner and not so beautiful. The next one, fourth grade, oh yikes. But you know I didn't get in trouble. I kept my nose to the grindstone. I made good grades.

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It was expected. I was not expected to get in trouble, and I was expected to bring home A's. And I don't know, I just did because my parents expected it. I wouldn't even think of, you know, that's the way it was. But I didn't get in trouble with Miss Bell Baker. [Laughter]

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During the time you were in elementary school, what were vacations like? Did you have vacations? Oh, you mean summer vacations? Loved it because I got to take my shoes off and go barefoot the whole summer. Unless we went someplace. For you a tomboy? Pretty much, you know. Yeah, except I had this really weird phobia. I was afraid of stairs. I hate to even tell this, but you know, I finally outgrew

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it. I was afraid of lightning. If there was a summer lightning storm, I used to just, you know, go hide out of something. I'd get sick to my stomach. I had this great fear of lightning. And I don't know if it came from my dad's oldest brother was killed by lightning. He was on an oil rig and was struck by lightning. And I don't know if it came

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from that or not, but after that, lightning, wow. But stairs, I don't know, stairs. I I can remember going to the new schoolhouse and I was ready to go to second grade and having to go up the clairs and getting on my hands and knees. I remember going to the dentist in Jacksonville, Texas, and there was a small, not a large

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flight of stairs, and I remember getting on hands and knees, and it was just this thing with me. Yet, I went when I wasn't quite six years old, because my dad had to go to Austin, Texas to take—he had foxhounds all the time.

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And he and two other guys were treating a dog, and then they were bitten, and they found it was a rabbit. In those days, they had to cut off the dog's head and send it to Austin, to what was the state capital.

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It came back, yeah, they had to go. So we had to go there and stay three weeks. But it was so much fun, because we stayed—in those days it wasn't motels, it was tourist courts.

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And we went swimming at Big Eddie, and that's still there, it's Icy Cove. And we had so much fun. I remember climbing the Capitol stairs to the rotunda, and these are circular, aren't they?

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Yeah, circular and metal, and I climbed them because it was my daddy. Imagine that, being afraid of stairs. And later, knowing that, people were really surprised, my family, that I would want to fly.

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And I said, "Well, no, I'm not afraid of flying. I'm not attached to the ground." And even when I was a teenager, and even when I was out in Seamoth, Austin in school, we would climb fire towers, you know, throughout East Texas.

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That's a wooded area of Texas. And we would climb at night and go over there, you know, boys and girls, and climb those fire towers. And somehow I would do that.

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Yeah. But I was a— >>Were you on your hands and knees? >>No, of course not.

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I couldn't lose face that way. And I got over finally being afraid of storms my first year in college. It lasted until then. And now, you know, it just went away.

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When you were growing up, do you recall any vacations that you took as a family? My dad loved to go fishing. I remember going down to Galveston with our neighbors and friends, the only Jewish family in town.

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my dad and he were very good friends. They had the dry goods store there and I remember going and I was still afraid of storms at that time and we were down on the, it wasn't right on the gulf, we were there but we were fishing. And I remember my dad and Mr. V. Jens were playing cards, poker or something, two-handed something, and I'm just there

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just like this, you know, and it became a terrible storm, all that flash lightning as Texas can have, you know. And I remember Mr. B. Janssen says, "Why are you afraid of storms? You know, why are you afraid of anything?" And I thought, "Well, that's a good question." And I thought about that a lot, you know, why am I afraid of it? But anyway.

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>> When you finished elementary school, did you have to change schools? >> Oh no, it was one, in one building in those days. Maybe still, I don't know. They've built since a new building, since I graduated from there. The same thing, you just went upstairs for high school,

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downstairs of grade school. >> As a younger child in elementary school, what did you want to be when you grew up? >> I don't think I had, well, maybe a movie star, who knows,

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you know, or a singer or something like that. And Bing Crosby was my very favorite. I used to be teased about that. And once, a favorite dog had a litter of puppies.

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And so they said, you know, name and I said, "Oh, you can name this one Bing Crosby." And that dog lived a long time. It was a female. [Laughter] >> Okay. When you went on to junior high, do you recall any of your teachers?

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>> Oh, you better believe it. We had wonderful teachers. We went upstairs for sixth grade and we had, he was a hometown guy and he was a wonderful guy and a wonderful teacher. He was good looking, he was a track star. What did he teach you?

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Well anything in sixth grade, everything. Okay. Particularly civics he was very good, or history, Texas history, loved it. How much were your classes?

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Well... What was that class? Maybe close to thirty. Okay.

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What kind of student were you? I was a good student, I told you that. Still in junior high? Oh yeah, well I mean that just went with it, you know.

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Because I liked doing it and, you know, as I said, I wasn't going to bring home bad grades. In junior high, did you have extracurricular activities? Well, we played--we had no gym, and we played--I think it was junior high that I started playing tennis. And by seventh grade, then I was on a team.

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The exciting thing about being in a little school like that, we went every year to something called a county meet, and that was in Palestine, Texas, being the county seat. And we entered all kinds of things, events there. I was even in math once, and my partner and I, another gal, won math,

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and I don't think I'm that good in mathematician. But again, it was the same wonderful teacher who had the book that taught us all the tricks, how you could quickly do things in your head, you know.

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And he was great. And later, a gal who had been very popular, Stephen F. Austin, came to Frankston and teach. She'd been going out with a wealthy boy there, had a convertible and all that stuff.

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When she came, she fell in love with my teacher, Reagan, and they married, and they moved on to Tyler to teach. But anyway— When you were growing up in junior high and even high school, who were your role models?

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Well, Amelia Earhart, for one. when I was just a little kid. In fact, this is still in grade school and early on, my parents had money then and they bought me, they went down to Palestine, they went to this kennel and bought me a Persian

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cat, no an Angora cat. And her kennel name was Amelia Earhart. And they knew that I would just go for that. But she was such a snooty cat, I never really liked her.

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She died early on, which good riddance. Sorry you spent all that money, but she was too high bred. But my favorite cat was a little white one, little white one, and we called her Monkey, because every time the car door would open, she'd run and get in and get behind the back seat.

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"Let's go!" But I had wonderful friends in high school. It was a group of four of us who ran around together. We'd take hikes.

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And then we had some— All girls? Or boys? No, then we—later, when we got in high school, then we had boys.

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There was a group of boys who were also friends. And so we were all just sort of friends. We had boyfriends and girlfriends, but not much. This was just—we'd go play together.

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In Jacksonville, Texas, every Saturday night was a midnight movie, late-run midnight movie. We'd get somebody's car and we'd go over to the midnight movie. And these were just friends. Or we'd go on picnics together.

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Or we'd go hunting with them, bird hunting, my friend and I, and they made us go and find the birds when they shot them down. We had once, someone had a wagon, we filled it with hay and we had the mules and we rode all the way down to the Nature's River, through the back road there, and had a picnic.

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You know, just mosey and long. And to this day, you know, I remember those guys. But you know, the war came, and then I didn't see too many of them after that. In high school, what was your favorite subject?

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Probably English, because it was easy. I liked to read. I didn't particularly like to write. No one taught me how to write.

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I didn't learn that until later on. But I liked history, and particularly a hometown boy came, a graduate of the University of And he taught English and English history. And I signed up for that.

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I started running out of subjects, and I loved that. You know? And to this day, I love to read historical novels set in England. But I took music also.

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So I did things like -- I dropped it for a while because I said, "I'm not -- I just don't want to give up -- I don't like music that much. I like it, but I like other things better.

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I don't want to spend the time inside practicing. I'd rather be with my friends, but I could play. And then I learned to play by ear, and then I wasn't interested in studying anymore.

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But I could read. And sometimes I'd have to play for assemblies or something like that. And I even played--

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well, anyway, music. I loved it. And I liked singing. And I liked--

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Did you have a high school glee club or anything? No. No, not that I recall. Did you keep playing tennis throughout high school?

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Yeah, throughout high school and county meeting. Did your school have a team or teachers? Well, we went to the county meet. Because I was younger, a few months younger than my friends.

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They all started school at the right time. But yeah, we had a team. And I was singles in junior high sort of division. And my friends had doubles, I guess there were two sets of doubles with my friends.

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And they were high school, and they got to go on, they won theirs, and they got to go to another, but they didn't have it for junior high to go to Tyler, to the division or whatever it was. Yeah.

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It was so much fun doing those county meets. So I did it in, we had music, we had art memory, you know, we'd learn art things, they'd flash And the most fun, though, was the math one. There was typing.

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It was just, you know, all sorts of things. And we'd go down the school buses and, you know, eat out and hamburgers there. It was just fun and sing, go home late at night on this country road. It took hours to get home, although it was only about 26 miles away, and singing all the way, everything.

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You know, if somebody's in the kitchen with dinos, I mean, "Eyes of Texas," that's what we sang. was it. But I had fun growing up in high school. We had big, like, picnics down at the river. We had--and we played baseball. I played softball. I was--I did pitch for softball in the county meet, and I think we won. So--

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>> Were your mom and dad involved in your school activities? No, my father was on the school board. Oh, okay. But my mother—

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They didn't have PTA. I don't recall if they had PTA. No. In those days.

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My mother—we were all members of Methodist Church, and my mother was into church work, like the Missionary Society. I'll put that on there. And she was president at various times, because my mother was a peacemaker.

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She kept her mouth shut. She never gossiped. That's my mother. She never said anything harsh about anybody.

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And they liked her. Besides, she would study her Bible and she would conduct the meetings. Did you have activities with your church group? Were you in a church group?

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Well, no. The Baptists had the cutest boys. The ones we would date, you know. They were okay in the Methodist church, but they weren't special, you know.

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So, so, oh, but my best friend was Baptist, so sometimes we'd go to church there just to be there at night time or something like that, and I think I even went to, well, I did go to, what did they call it, like a summer school thing, and that was at the Methodist thing. I didn't go to the Baptist, but some of my best friends were Baptist. Did you know a Baptist boy named Herbert Reynolds?

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Yes, I remember he was just a kid, you understand, but I remember his family, but I was thinking the Reynolds, so that must have been his mother's influence. I was pretty sure the Reynolds were Methodist, I could be wrong, but I think I think her name was Amanyl Taylor, wasn't it? Anyway, that much, I don't remember much of it.

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But they had, oh, but because of the Babbas, we couldn't have dances. Now, the Methodists would have allowed it. And we couldn't have, you know, a school dance. So we couldn't have any kind of dance in town.

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And so what did we do? We went on the, almost to Rustide, the other side of Jacksonville. It's called Dialville Plunge. There was a swimming pool there, but a dance hall.

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no liquor, of course, but, you know, a jukebox, and boy, that was fun. We'd get in cars or ride in the back of a pickup, any way to get there, you know, and we'd meet some cute guys from Jacksonville, Texas, the cute guys that lived there, and it was just fun, you know, to go and dance.

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I loved dancing. Would those Baptists go with you? Well, of course. They just couldn't dance at home.

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Well, I mean, they may have been some, but I mean, our crowd, our group of boys and girls, would go there. Do you recall at Christmas, would there be church activities, pageants or anything that you would ever participate in?

00:28:46.080 - 00:28:55.440

They must have had them, but I don't recall. I recall it. What were your ambitions when you were in high school? What did you think you wanted to do?

00:28:55.560 - 00:29:06.660

I had a very vague outline. I knew more things I did not want to do. I did not want to teach school. And when I started college, then my mother and sister said, "You know, you really should

00:29:06.740 - 00:29:17.600

take courses and become a librarian." I said, "No, thank you. I'm not going to be an old maid schoolteacher or an old maid librarian, and they're not guys in libraries, it's all women."

00:29:20.280 - 00:29:38.520

I like guys just as guys, not particularly to date them. And so I loved that, being in the WASP, being in the company with guys, doing what they were doing. It was more fun like that. When you were in high school, did you know whether or not you would be able to go to

00:29:38.800 - 00:29:54.860

college, for example? Oh, it was touch and go. You see, my father lost his business. Now, when my brother and sister were ready for college, yeah, she went to CIA, you know, we're in a, what is it, TSCW? You know, where we have our records.

00:29:55.360 - 00:30:01.220

TWU. The TWU, okay, Tech is Women, but it was called College of Industrial Arts. Why? I don't know.

00:30:01.320 - 00:30:17.620

It was an all-women's school, and they wore uniforms. And my sister, I'll never forget, they bought her a big steamer truck because of all her clothes, and she had—you know, they had money then. And my brother went to at least one year—I think she went two years to CIA.

00:30:18.160 - 00:30:33.300

My brother went at least one year to the University of Texas. By the time me graduate, my mother and dad limited to other people and I guess to me too. They didn't make a big deal of it, but it's just like I knew they didn't have any money.

00:30:34.240 - 00:30:48.660

I mean I've been down to, I was down to putting cardboard in shoes, you know, because of holes in them and mending socks. I was down to, you know, not many clothes. And that was while you were in high school?

00:30:49.720 - 00:31:02.100

It's more like you would call junior high. 12th grade on in high school. Well, by then he had gotten another smaller business going in Lumber, but still it was a touch and go.

00:31:02.720 - 00:31:12.860

And they didn't know, and at the last minute, we didn't know where I was going. They wanted me to go to Trinity College. Is that down, yeah, a Methodist school.

00:31:13.480 - 00:31:26.220

Of course, they'd love for me to go on to SMU, but that was just out of the question. So one of my friends, one of those boys in our group, had gone already, I think, one year--

00:31:26.240 - 00:31:32.780

yeah, he was a year ahead of me-- to North Texas Agricultural College. And so he said, why don't you come up there? It doesn't cost much.

00:31:32.860 - 00:31:42.120

It's a state school. And so we checked into it, and my aunts and all. And I got registered. And so we raked up some money for that.

00:31:42.240 - 00:31:51.600

And we didn't have dormitories, a boarding. And somehow they paved my way there. That was a wonderful, exciting year. That's when I really got into flying.

00:31:51.980 - 00:31:56.360

Right. Let me go back and get you out of high school. Oh, yeah, I graduated. Yeah.

00:31:57.020 - 00:32:03.860

Did you have a high school prom, or was it a banquet? Are you funny? I just told you that. Well, I know.

00:32:04.180 - 00:32:08.580

But did you have a banquet, for example? Do you recall? Yeah, must have. Okay.

00:32:09.180 - 00:32:17.960

I'm sure, oh yeah, I'm sure we did. We had what we call a junior-senior banquet. That's right. got to go two years, junior/senior back. And it was either—

00:32:18.800 - 00:32:26.480

Did you have a date for that? Not that I recall. Okay. No, because these weren't the guys I dated.

00:32:27.100 - 00:32:41.940

Why? The better-looking guys, the Baptists, were two years ahead of me in school. Tell me about your graduation. Oh, well, that was strange, because all the way along I'd been top student all year.

00:32:42.380 - 00:33:00.880

And everyone assumed I would be valedictorian, because I was the one who made the A's. But that year we had a new principal, not the good old guy Mr. Rons, but a new one. And I knew he liked me, and I was like this. He changed the rules so that only the last year grade, instead of the four years of high school averaged,

00:33:01.360 - 00:33:17.280

he changed them so that only the last year were averaged. And I may have made a B in there in something that I wasn't as good at. I don't know what happened. They began to announce, you know, in assembly, and they did not call my name for Valedictorian.

00:33:17.460 - 00:33:37.960

Everybody said, the whole auditorium was like, "What? You know, what's going on here?" And they gave it to a girl who lived out in the country, didn't do any extracurricular, or anything like that, and probably wasn't even going to college. Well, it was just a little scholarship over to Lon Morris College, and I didn't want to go there

00:33:37.900 - 00:33:51.760

Anyway, I thought my sister had to go there when she had to drop out of CIA. It was a junior college over in Jacksonville, Texas. But that was another wonderful year, even though I didn't want to go there, but I had to the next year.

00:33:52.150 - 00:34:11.720

But the wonderful year was at NTAC because that's the year the CPT began, 1938 and '39, '39, spring of '39. And this was a land-grant college, you know, NTAC. It was a junior college from Texas A&M, and there was another one down in Stevensville,

00:34:12.170 - 00:34:32.940

Texas. And then I ran into a group of guys and dated the gals there at their boarding house, and nearly all of them then were in this—they applied for and were accepted, and they all had motorcycles and they had to leave Arlington, which is between Dallas and Fort Worth, and

00:34:32.940 - 00:34:48.920

ride their motorcycles that were old Meacham feel to take their instructions. And so then we started riding motorcycles too on the back. That was terrible. But anyway, then when they graduated, I got my first flight in a plane because the guy

00:34:48.980 - 00:35:04.500

I was dating graduated, got his private pilot's license, and then they could take us up. And he went out and rented a little, I don't know, Piper or something, and I flew with him, and I loved it. And I said, "Well, someday I'm going to fly."

00:35:04.500 - 00:35:18.740

And that same guy came down when he'd gone out and gone into—was a cadet and then a second lieutenant. He came and found out that I was at Seaman Fossing, came up to visit me and asked me to marry him.

00:35:19.580 - 00:35:32.540

And although I liked him, I thought, "Yeah, but I don't want to marry now. You know, it's just too much going on." And he was going overseas, and later he was killed. He did marry someone else and was killed.

00:35:32.900 - 00:35:43.220

I think he was a bomber pilot, which I hated because I really liked him. He was really good looking, wonderful green eyes and dark skin. His mama was part Cherokee or something. Loved it.

00:35:43.900 - 00:35:53.080

But... After that first ride, when was the next time that you went up? When I started taking lessons in CPT myself. But I heard...

00:35:53.080 - 00:35:58.540

Okay. So I went on to... We'll skip on Mars, although I had a wonderful time. I didn't think I would.

00:35:58.870 - 00:36:16.940

See, we had—oh, and they had to tell me. And we had dances every weekend, and a lot of them formal, and my sister made me really nice clothes, you know, to go to the dances, and I loved it. We had bands, and even the faculty would come—I guess they had to—and the guys were ROTC.

00:36:17.780 - 00:36:35.680

I don't think they wore their uniforms to dance in, though, but anyway, they wore uniforms. And we had uniforms, too, like chambray, blue chambray for summer, and blue, like, serge wool or something, shirtwaist. But then I—and they had to tell me before the end of school was out there, "I'm

00:36:36.020 - 00:36:47.700

sorry, but we won't be able to send you back there." And that was a crushing blow. Vicki Hedges: Take me back, Lee, in chronological order, tell me where you went to school. After high school, you went where?

00:36:48.010 - 00:36:58.620

Lee Jensen: This was North Texas Agricultural College. I told you that. And then from there you went to Lon Morris. Because what happened was it was getting time for school to start and we had no money and

00:36:58.720 - 00:37:09.860

no school. And I remember, it was like a pout, really. I knew they couldn't afford it and I knew if they could possibly, possibly they would send me.

00:37:10.760 - 00:37:25.320

So I just lay around, gained weight, you know, just a punk vacation. And then... Only one year. It's a junior college. Is it private?

00:37:26.060 - 00:37:45.620

It's a Methodist school. So, they needed a pianist for the summer revival at the Methodist church. And Miss Laura, who always played and sang, Miss Laura Cook, could not for some reason. So they said, "Well, will you?"

00:37:45.640 - 00:38:03.200

And I said, "Well, I guess I can fake it." I know the songs, half by ear and half reading it. And Dr. Peoples, wonderful man, the president of Longmarsh College, they got him for the speaker. You know, he conducted a revival.

00:38:03.780 - 00:38:15.640

And he wasn't considered all that good a speaker. He wasn't a hellfire and brimstone. Well, Methodists weren't anyway, no, not like Baptists. I'll tell you about my favorite Baptist preacher, though.

00:38:15.720 - 00:38:30.320

He's my dad's favorite friend. But anyway, back to this, and so I think they got him because he was for cheap. And like he's recruiting people for the school and stuff like that. But he asked me, "Well, where are you going to school?"

00:38:30.320 - 00:38:34.720

And I said, "I don't know. No place. I don't have any money. I can't go."

00:38:34.720 - 00:38:42.440

And he says, "Come to see me. I'll see that you go to school." And I can cry over this, too. He was such a wonderful person.

00:38:43.020 - 00:39:02.560

So I went over to see him and he says, "Well, I didn't have to wait tables." They already had enough working their way through. See, this was largely, almost like a, not a seminary, but for guys going there for their first years who were going to become Methodist preachers, a lot of them there, which explains

00:39:02.660 - 00:39:15.720

why I didn't date there either. Leaving my cool guys in the TAC, what's left? And I didn't have a date this whole year. I pride myself on not asking out, but no, I don't date.

00:39:16.360 - 00:39:33.180

But anyway, so I work and all I had to do was one afternoon a week keep his office. That's all, one afternoon a week. And if we hadn't, and this was a Monday afternoon, and if we weren't busy I'd say, "Do you mind if I go to a movie?"

00:39:33.200 - 00:39:47.060

Because the midnight movie was on on Monday afternoons that we'd miss. But he was wonderful. But I worked for him. I really worked for that school because I went out for everything.

00:39:48.020 - 00:40:06.300

I went out for drama because I loved acting. I had one year of speech at NTAC, just speech, you know. Oh, and even there, he would have us go over and we'd have a slot and there's a radio. No TV, remember?

00:40:06.800 - 00:40:23.220

This is 1938, '39. And he'd have us read scripts, you know, act on there. They were just skits, more or less, you know. And so, but he didn't let me go until I got rid of my East Texas accent.

00:40:24.540 - 00:40:37.560

I was reading one time for him, you know, just for the whole class, when the class really started beginning. And he came and he stood right in my face and he said, "I can't dance because I got "I ain't to my paints."

00:40:37.560 - 00:40:50.480

And, "Do I sound like that?" After that, by the time I got to Lon Morris and I went out for drama, I was chosen to be the lead in Worthing Heights to play Kathy in Worthing Heights

00:40:50.980 - 00:41:10.560

because of my almost British accent. You'll appreciate that, Nancy, right? So, I went out for drama and I heard they were having a tryout for, you know, Rutherford Heights. And this teacher, another wonderful woman, she mostly,

00:41:11.080 - 00:41:34.000

she did two, three act plays a year, but she also did one act plays, and she would always go to stage. She would win, and she would win them, one act plays. She told you every move to make, every nuance, every, you know, your voice, your movements, your everything, sort of memorize it and it was wonderful and it came out wonderful, you know.

00:41:35.420 - 00:41:55.260

So anyway, I tried out for that and I beat out the girl who was a hometown girl, had been the lead in the play the year before and her boyfriend was going to be in it, he was chosen, and so everybody just assumed that she would be the lead of Kathy. And so this woman, Miss Pearson, wonderful Miss Pearson, would have me read it over and

00:41:55.360 - 00:42:18.440

over and she was thinking, thinking, thinking, and finally she just, she told my mother and sister later, she said, "I just had to choose her because of her voice." Okay, so we were down to, I got the lead, Kathy in Wuthering Heights, and the guy was Heathcliff, who had won before in her Warnock plays.

00:42:18.450 - 00:42:36.960

He was marvelous, very strong, very forceful. He'd had her coaching, and he would have been anyway. But my sister made my costumes and she used her wonderful clothes she'd had when she had money, when we had money.

00:42:37.440 - 00:43:02.080

And she taught school a couple of years before the Depression and she had beautiful things. And so Miss Pearson told her largely what I would need. She made me a beautiful, she tore up something of hers and made a beautiful long velvet cloak. She had white fox in the sleeves of a dress and jacket, crepe, and she took that fox and

00:43:02.160 - 00:43:13.340

lined the hood in it, that white fox. It was beautiful, you know. So anyway, that was exciting. And I never forget, my niece came.

00:43:13.420 - 00:43:29.920

She was about ten years old, and they all came over from Frankston to see the play. And at the end, you know, Kathy falls down dead, you know. I crash and my niece got up and screamed. It must have been a good acting job.

00:43:31.380 - 00:43:50.340

But then a guy from Stephen F. Austin came to see it because he liked to see Miss Pearson's plays and he came and he saw me do Kathy in Worthing Heights and he talked after, he said, "Well, you know, I hope you come down to Stephen F. Austin and if you do, by all means, go out for drama."

00:43:50.340 - 00:44:15.860

the drama coach, and he had the best-looking guy with him, a student who ran around with him all the time. I dated him only once. He was okay. But anyway, so I did another play there. Oh, what happened though was I went out for chorus, and we had the most—we had a fabulous choir director. I mean, we had teachers there that you wouldn't believe.

00:44:16.340 - 00:44:30.560

The choir director was this heavy, I mean, this German woman who was just, you know, she would just stop everything. Somebody hit a foul note, you know, or somebody was on time or something. And we sang a cappella.

00:44:31.060 - 00:44:46.720

And I never got to hear us, but I hear we were wonderful. I could feel that we were wonderful. And we sang, you know, great songs and all like that. But then she had tryouts because she wanted to—Dr. Peeples wanted a girl's trio to

00:44:47.020 - 00:45:00.500

travel with him. You know, they had to drum up business there. And so he would go—we would go like on Sundays, spend the night on a Saturday night in people's homes, and he would preach in their church the next day.

00:45:00.920 - 00:45:10.780

And then he had us as the trio. And the soprano had the most beautiful voice. I mean, it would just send chills over you. I don't know how far she went.

00:45:10.860 - 00:45:20.380

I know she married a guy who was on the Jimmy Doolittle raid. I remember that they were dating then. He was not one of the goons to go for minister. And what part did you sing?

00:45:21.140 - 00:45:34.620

Second alto. I had a lower voice and I could do that. We were trained as thoroughly as anything. And then the soprano would sing a solo of "Lord's Prayer" and it would just send chills

00:45:34.660 - 00:45:44.160

everywhere. She had such a beautiful voice. And we would do that on weekends and sometimes even during the week we'd leave. I missed a lot of school.

00:45:44.690 - 00:45:57.680

I worked hard for that. After we left, in the next years they had a sextet that she trained and they went to Madison Square Garden. It may not have been the next year, but then they were famous.

00:45:58.570 - 00:46:12.140

I mean, they were very, very good. They were just wonderful teachers there. From all that drama experience and music, what were your dreams then? Well, I knew by then I wanted to be a pilot.

00:46:12.320 - 00:46:28.420

Remember, I'd already had my first airplane ride, and I knew there was a CPT. And then, okay, so Dr. Peeples then says, "All right, where do you go from here?" It was time to leave junior high school, I mean junior college. And I said, "I don't know."

00:46:28.420 - 00:46:42.900

And he says, "I have a place for you, I'm pretty sure. You go down and you see this professor in the education department." He gave me his name and he'd already talked with him and said, "I'm sending you this gal down and she needs a job."

00:46:42.900 - 00:46:55.840

So I went down, interviewed, and my shorthand was not good. I really had to fake that. My typing was only passable because I missed so many lessons in shorthand because I was traveling with Dr. Peeples all the time.

00:46:56.340 - 00:47:10.740

But I got the job and so I was a shoo-in to go down there, didn't have to wait tables again. Again, about two afternoons a week or three or something, I'd go into his office and send out like form letters seeking jobs.

00:47:10.860 - 00:47:26.380

It was a placement bureau for people wanting teaching jobs throughout the area and that's what I did. And so that was wonderful and that gave me - so then I heard when I first got there, Alright, there will be CPT here in this school, Alangreat College.

00:47:27.660 - 00:47:41.120

How old school was this? This is Stephen F. Austin. It was called a State Teacher's College at the time, but it was Alangreat College, Grand College, and the agriculture teacher was a wonderful man who knew a man who knew my father

00:47:41.220 - 00:47:57.660

because of the fox hunting group. And he knew that he was going to get it, and they had to get local businessmen to sponsor it, put up the money for it, you know, and sponsor it. And so those were wonderful guys too, particularly one who was a banker.

00:47:59.380 - 00:48:09.960

And later he was an instructor at Sweetwater. By then he was married and had two young children. But I won't say too much about that. But anyway, he went out there.

00:48:10.440 - 00:48:25.640

He was an instructor and I got to see him again. But so they had, they gave, signed us up for college courses there. Like, we had a course in meteorology and a course in something else. I don't know.

00:48:26.140 - 00:48:40.080

And those were considered—I got credit for them. And so it started out, there were quite a few gals to start with, and guys. It was a big class, and then they began to sort of dwindle off. But anyway, right—

00:48:40.080 - 00:48:54.960

Did you start off in ground school courses and then start flying? Or was it all the same time? It must have been our grand school courses, you know, because we didn't take it out at the field, you know.

00:48:55.160 - 00:49:12.460

So we had to—it had to be tying in with what we were tested on, yeah. And so I did that. And later when I started getting a job teaching in San Bernardino, California, and he looked at my curriculum, he said, "What's this?"

00:49:12.920 - 00:49:19.500

You know, "Oh, it's flying. A course about flying." I said, "Yeah, I was a pilot." How far was the airport from the school?

00:49:19.860 - 00:49:25.080

It was quite a ways, out in the country. They built a little-- Did you have a car? No, they took us there.

00:49:25.140 - 00:49:30.780

They took you? It was a bus or something, yeah. And we'd go out in the afternoons, because everybody was in class in the mornings.

00:49:31.160 - 00:49:40.660

What kind of airplanes were you-- Do you know, I racked my brain. I only know the things that it wasn't. I know it was tandem.

00:49:41.220 - 00:49:54.820

Do you recall the first time you went up as a student? Well, not specifically. I remember the guy, a really neat instructor, young as they were then, a little family there he had.

00:49:55.710 - 00:50:01.280

And I remember— Did he call you someone? Yeah, I recall that. Okay, tell us about that.

00:50:01.440 - 00:50:17.540

Well, I thought, "Hmm." You know, he gets out and you say, "Oh, no, I don't know if I'm ready for this." And go ahead, and there were trees at the end, so you had to get off pretty fast. It was cut out of East Texas Pine Woods, a little dirt runway.

00:50:18.880 - 00:50:30.220

And I recall being a little anxious about getting over that. But, you know, all we had to do, you know, was just touch and go, I guess, didn't we? I guess. Were there other girls taking CG?

00:50:30.430 - 00:50:40.140

No. What happened was, at that time, they would let only one girl in a group of ten. Ten were in the program. One could be a girl.

00:50:40.740 - 00:50:59.140

And that only began about that year. And so this agriculture teacher was really anxious to have a girl and he wanted me in it, you know. And so it eliminated, I don't know, there wasn't anyone else trying, be it Dainey, dummies.

00:51:02.660 - 00:51:27.040

And I had to get my parents' permission because I was under 21. I had one weekend when I went home, that was about 90 miles away from Frankston. So when I went home and I had the papers for them to sign, I said, "I know you don't want to sign this, but I have to tell you, I want to be a pilot, you know that, and if

00:51:27.060 - 00:51:44.280

I get out of here, this is free, it won't cost me anything. And later on, if I'm out of here and I want a job, it'll cost more than I can make to get my PINUS license. And I know my mother was very reluctant because I was a tomboy, she was never a tomboy, you

00:51:44.280 - 00:51:59.840

know, I did daring things. And so they signed it and so I got in. So then I was chosen, we were chosen to go over to Shreveport, you know, to a flight surgeon, or whatever they call them these days.

00:52:01.020 - 00:52:19.860

And so we had to take our physical, and so I passed it. But it was really funny because he came and he said, I said, "I passed it." He was very happy for me because he wanted to go. He said, "Do you know you almost didn't pass it?"

00:52:19.860 - 00:52:22.040

I said, "Why? What was it? Vision? What was it?"

00:52:22.420 - 00:52:38.340

He said, "Two more pounds and you wouldn't have made it." So in flying and in getting ready for that class, I would walk and walk and walk, and I didn't eat all that much. And I didn't keep my weight down deliberately, it just got down to 102 pounds, and you had

00:52:38.340 - 00:52:50.060

to be 100 to be accepted. And oh no, you know, what if I'm going to -- but anyway, that was wonderful. It really was. What did they teach you in PTT, CPT as far as flying?

00:52:50.200 - 00:53:02.240

Did you get aerobatics or -- Just the, you know, just the minimum. How many hours did you get? Well, it was 36 for the license in those days. I guess it still is. I don't know. Yeah.

00:53:02.700 - 00:53:12.120

And did you do that all in that one year? No, just that semester. That semester. Yeah, it was the fall semester when I first got there, and I heard they had it.

00:53:12.130 - 00:53:32.440

And I thought, "Oh, well, I'm going to—one wild one pilot has to be me." So I put my mind there. And when you finished that course, did you keep flying? Then I met some people who were in an aero club down in Lufkin, Texas.

00:53:33.740 - 00:53:45.180

And so I met them and they told me anytime I wanted to fly to come down, they would leave it there. And I just had to pay for the gasoline. I didn't have to pay very much or I couldn't have done it.

00:53:45.960 - 00:54:02.140

And so I did fly somewhere there. And then come spring, they had another program coming in. And I remember there was a gal that I liked a lot. She didn't mix and mingle much.

00:54:04.280 - 00:54:14.180

And she would just hang out in her room and slept a lot. And she was overweight, because like me that summer, she just slept. She was bored, didn't want to do anything. And I remember going to her room.

00:54:14.220 - 00:54:26.160

And we weren't friends. I knew her and we spoke and I went in and they said, "Dora, you got to go fly. You got to go out for this." And it caught on with her and with her family.

00:54:26.640 - 00:54:41.440

She was from a family with money. He was a lumber man in Lufthansa and they still had their money. And she was from a family, mostly boys, and they all were behind her. "Yeah, Dora, you got to go and get your private license."

00:54:41.440 - 00:54:54.560

And they bought her a plane later on, you know, because they had money. But she just decided, because I just went in there and said, "Get out of bed. You're not having any fun at all. You need to go take flying lessons."

00:54:55.800 - 00:55:08.940

So she did. At the end of that first year, did you go home for the summer? No, because I had my job and I didn't want to lose that and there was no point in going home.

00:55:09.640 - 00:55:36.380

boring. And so I was there in '41 when Pearl Harbor happened. I was home that weekend and we heard it on the way to the bus. I was going to take a bus back down here, I think. Yeah. And it was like, "Oh, wow," you know. So I go back and this guy had asked me out that night. And remember, I dated guys there. And I said, "Well, I don't feel like, you know,

00:55:36.520 - 00:55:58.480

the war, we're going to be in war, and I just, I don't feel like, but I did. We could dance there even in the dormitory there. And we had good dances there, too, wonderful dances. And by the way, I got into singing there. There was a college band, and the guy I later dated had it, you know, it was like a little jazz band. And these were people who went

00:55:58.500 - 00:56:19.680

on, his brother went on to become famous, and endowed the music school there, his brother did in honor of his older brother. And these were people from Center, Texas. And after he stopped having the band, then I started singing with him because he didn't want a vocalist. And then so I got the job singing, and I didn't have special music. I had to

00:56:19.680 - 00:56:36.280

take like somebody's solo, some horns. But anyway, we had fun. And I would sing there on school, or maybe we'd go to a dance. What year were you in college then? Well, I must have been a senior when I started singing and doing things like that, yeah.

00:56:36.840 - 00:56:58.920

In the meantime, have you kept flying? Every chance I got. And I must have been able to rent one of our planes on a weekend or something, because I had two boyfriend pilots, both had been at NTAC. One, when I dated him at NTAC, at age 18 he had his commercial pilot's license.

00:56:59.600 - 00:57:09.020

the youngest one in the whole United States. And so he was a pilot. And he came down to visit. He found out where I was, ran into me on the street in Dallas.

00:57:09.020 - 00:57:16.660

He said, "Wait right there," you know. He saw me, and I hadn't seen any of him since then. And so he came down to see me. He wanted me to marry him.

00:57:16.860 - 00:57:31.040

No, no. No marriage. And anyway, I'd rent a plane and go up with him and took him up. And then my other friend, who was a lieutenant, I came up and I rented a plane and took him

00:57:31.060 - 00:57:43.640

up flying too, just for fun, because he had taken me up flying. So what kind of student were you all this time? Dean's list. And what was your major?

00:57:44.520 - 00:58:01.180

English, of course, because it was easy. I could read. I had a wonderful English teacher there that I later ran into when we were in training OCS at Orlando and he was there in intelligence.

00:58:01.180 - 00:58:13.080

I had a group there and he wanted to date me. He was the age of my brother because they played tennis together, my brother, and golf together. My brother played tennis and golf.

00:58:13.760 - 00:58:24.380

So anyway, I never, well I won't get into that, that's too silly. But anyway, he was there. >> You finished Stephen F. Austin, what, in '42? >> Well, yeah.

00:58:24.810 - 00:58:46.360

I wasn't supposed to, I could finish in January because I'd gone two summers there. I went two summers there just to keep moving, you know. And so, Christmas vacation, right after Pearl Harbor, I went to Dallas to visit my, I had a lot of relatives there. Also a gal who I'd been to school with in TAC, we'd been in the

00:58:46.460 - 00:59:05.940

same boarding house. And she said, "You know, you ought to apply for a job. I hear my friends have an employment agency and they're interviewing people to work for Delta Airlines over at the Dolphins Hotel." And she said, "You ought to go and apply for it." And I said, "Yeah, I'd like that." So I had applied before for Brant, because I didn't—if it'd be a stewardess,

00:59:07.280 - 00:59:30.420

I didn't speak Spanish. I'd taken Spanish for a while, no way fluent. They wouldn't hire me. So I said, "Yeah, I'll go." So I interviewed, and his wife was down in Palestine and knew some of my relatives, I guess, or something. Anyway, I just got back to school, and he sent me a wire, you know, "You're hired. When can you come?" He wanted me there

00:59:30.500 - 00:59:48.080

by like the 15th of January or something like that, something early in January, and school wasn't over until, you know, the semester end of January. So I went around to my teachers and I said, "I have a chance for this good job I'd really like. It's with Delta Airlines. I'm going to Atlanta. Is there any way that I can graduate? Can you give me a test or

00:59:48.160 - 01:00:16.420

something to graduate?" And two or three of them, because I kept As all along, you know, let me do it. Only this old Spanish teacher, this old maid, this old heifer, she made me do a paper after I got to Atlanta before she would let me come back and graduate with a class. That was hard to do. I'd been away from San... But anyway, I did that. And so

01:00:16.420 - 01:00:46.040

I came back and I flew half price on Delta to come back to Dallas, met one of my old boyfriends there, the one who was a pilot, and came back down to Nacogdoches and we went there, and they actually asked me to sing at the exercise commencement. Yeah, it wasn't a church. I don't think we had a church service, did we? At state schools? But whatever, it

01:00:46.040 - 01:00:59.540

was in the big gym. And so I... Did you recall what you sang? Yes, I do. "White Cliffs of Dover," you know, and with the band as backup, I think. And that was fun, going back there.

01:00:59.580 - 01:01:14.740

And then you went back to Atlanta. Oh yeah, and that's where I heard about, I put that in there, that's where I heard about the WASP. And the tale was going around, but I put that in my notes, but I'll repeat it, that there

01:01:14.740 - 01:01:36.120

were two gals in a tower, and they were working civil service, and they were tower controllers They are at the big airport in Hapeville, Atlanta. And they were trying to get out of it. And they weren't being very successful.

01:01:36.920 - 01:01:46.160

They were later, because I know-- I remember some of their name, one particularly. And I'm sure they got to Houston, where the first class is in Houston.

01:01:46.920 - 01:01:53.120

And if they were going into a WASP-- and I think they even call it WASP. I'm not sure. But it's a program for women flying,

01:01:53.980 - 01:02:04.980

and more or less with the Air Corps. So I said, "Oh, I got to do that." And then I heard, "Well, they're recruiting in Dallas and they're doing physicals over in Tarrant County."

01:02:04.980 - 01:02:17.420

So I had Delta transfer me to Dallas. I said, "I mean, it's like you got it or I quit, you know." Oh, and then my boss, I'd been in reservations, he says, "Oh, but now you can become a stewardess."

01:02:17.520 - 01:02:28.660

I said, "Well, big deal. I want to fly. I don't want to be a stewardess. too late and too little you offer me this, you know, because by then the armed services

01:02:28.750 - 01:02:53.300

were picking up the nurses. Before that time, students had to be nurses. Okay, so I got a chance to be in Dallas on the desk in traffic, and that was fun. So then the gal next to me working for Braniff, our desk were side by side, they had an airport, the old Love Field, still there today. And she had applied already to go in the WASP, and so she gave

01:02:53.360 - 01:03:13.340

me all the information I needed. And Betty Botwin, she died early on, but I don't think while she was in the service. But anyway, she was in the third class. So I got busy and did all my paperwork and was told to report to Tarrant Field in Fort Worth for a physical. So meanwhile I found I had to have 100 hours.

01:03:14.700 - 01:03:37.680

Meanwhile I took out a loan because my dad didn't even have $100 to lend me. And he, or he just, by then it was okay. He got me $100 and I went over with Dallas Aviation, bought a block of 25 hours for $100 and I got them to give me the graveyard shift night after night on the desk.

01:03:37.680 - 01:03:55.520

it wasn't much work and I could even turn off the lights, put my head down and go to sleep. Because I was up, I had to go out early in the morning on a bus. Dallas Aviation School ran a bus out to some auxiliary field. And we'd stay out there all day, eat their hamburgers, drink their Cokes, you know. And maybe—

01:03:55.520 - 01:04:09.560

What kind of airplanes were you flying there? I don't know. The last one that I was in, this guy took me up in a walk-o, and it was But, gee, I may have even flown a biplane there. I don't recall.

01:04:09.660 - 01:04:19.600

Isn't that silly? But I don't. But it was something light, you know, for $4 an hour. It had to be above the block time.

01:04:20.120 - 01:04:28.320

And I'd get up early in the morning. I boarded then. I was living with friends downtown in Dallas, and I boarded with a gal who lived right there at Love Field.

01:04:29.780 - 01:04:43.600

And I would walk over to Love Field then. It was safe enough in those days, you know, or I didn't care. Anyway, I'd have that midnight shift so that I could get up early in the morning and go out to Lafayette.

01:04:43.600 - 01:04:48.820

So you were just building up time? I had to have 100 hours. I had only 75. So that shows you what I did.

01:04:48.900 - 01:04:59.880

I guess I did do that much flying, just renting planes here and there. What little money I had. And yeah. And then did you have to have an interview?

01:05:02.560 - 01:05:12.580

I don't recall an interview. That's crazy, but I don't. I know certainly the originals did, the WAFs, I had the interview. Were you interviewed, Deni?

01:05:14.640 - 01:05:26.280

Well, I suppose I was, but where? Where would you have been? All I know is I passed the physical, thank goodness. And then how were you notified? How did that happen?

01:05:27.780 - 01:05:40.460

I assume it was a wire. I assume it was. Did your mom and dad know what you were planning to do, and how did they feel about it? Well, yeah, because I told them, you know, I need this money to build up to 100 hours.

01:05:41.740 - 01:06:00.700

If, you know, by then, they knew I was different. In fact, my relatives told me, some of my aunts told me, They knew when I was born and people say, "How did they have a kid like this?" So I guess I was pretty special and you're like reading before I went to school or something like that.

01:06:00.740 - 01:06:16.000

I don't know. I'm not bragging myself, but it was just I was different. Oh, I had talent in music. I would go to church, Methodist church, when it was a little thing, and I'll never forget they came. They said, "Oh, what you did today," you know, and they were laughing about it

01:06:16.060 - 01:06:32.720

because there was this one Miss Laura who sang the solos all the time. Even though people sort of, she was a precious woman. I sort of made voice of her, I said, "Oh Lord, another solo by Miss Laura." But I joined her one day for something I knew.

01:06:34.540 - 01:06:46.240

[Laughs] And that was pretty embarrassing. But, and I could come home, we had an old piano in the family. And I could come home and pick out little tunes on the piano,

01:06:46.240 - 01:06:57.480

It was just a little thing, you know, so I had an ear for music. And I think that was inherited from my father's side of the family, because their mother had taught them music. They didn't know the "do, re, mi, fa, so, la, ti, do."

01:06:57.480 - 01:07:07.540

And that's the way they sang, you know, when they started tuning up to sing my uncles and my dad. But, anyway, I don't know where we were yet. Oh, about interviewing.

01:07:07.920 - 01:07:22.160

I don't recall it, but I was in a wire, and it was coming up pretty fast. So there was no problem resigning from Delta. Delta knew what I was doing. And meanwhile I met some neat guys there because they were faring out of Love Field and they

01:07:22.240 - 01:07:34.160

had to take off and come in through Love Field. So I met some neat guys there too. There was one coming around behind it and pounding on the desk and waking me up. "What are you doing?"

01:07:34.800 - 01:07:46.940

"Wake up, wake up." But anyway, he later married one of my girlfriends, a wasp. He asked me to marry him too, but no way. But then I was Catholic, you've been married before, and I kind of married you, even though

01:07:46.940 - 01:07:55.760

it was in the middle of my, forget it. How could you go from a Methodist to a Catholic? Easy. I began reading my way into the church.

01:07:55.980 - 01:08:05.100

I'd read novels about Catholics and I was intrigued. And I was no longer intrigued by the Protestant church. I mean that's just the way it was. Okay.

01:08:05.900 - 01:08:18.000

So, and there was no Catholic church in my town. I didn't even go to one until I went to work. I went to work in Dallas and I started going to church there. It was in Sweetwater that I took lessons.

01:08:19.320 - 01:08:30.040

See, lots of us were. And one of my favorite was Joan Toptosky, my classmate, was my godmother. And one of the pilots, oh, what was his name? He was wonderful.

01:08:30.300 - 01:08:37.980

He had washed out of the Navy and was an instructor there. If I said his name, you probably knew it. But he probably left by then. Then he instructed out in Brownsville.

01:08:38.200 - 01:08:50.280

I ran into him again in Brownsville. He was my godfather. Once you got notification that you were accepted, then you went from Dallas to Sweetwater. Yes.

01:08:50.580 - 01:09:02.220

I had another hour or two to fly, well, my time, twenty-five hours, and this guy met me out there. He said, "Well, I'm going to take you up in Waco because I want to fly to Waco and find."

01:09:02.220 - 01:09:12.740

And he started doing rolls and everything else, trying to do something. And I kept reminding him, "I have a train to catch." And I was getting worried. He just kept showing off.

01:09:13.800 - 01:09:21.880

He said, "I'll get you to the train." I said, "Oh, that's what I'm afraid of." You know? So anyway, finally he took me down to the train.

01:09:22.300 - 01:09:31.720

So I took the train out of Dallas to Sweetwater. And he took me down there. By that time, did you know any other girls who were going to be in? No, no.

01:09:32.080 - 01:09:45.260

I only knew that Betty Bachman had already gone in. She was in class three down in Houston. And so she's the only one I knew. And so anyway, so that was exciting coming on the train

01:09:45.700 - 01:10:03.160

because I was met and later they were my bay mates, AJ May, who was, you know, I've seen her now twice. I was met by AJ May and Grace Clark Fender. And I'm in touch with her email and then we see each other.

01:10:03.160 - 01:10:22.400

and we went to the only convention I had been to in Washington at that time. She gave me all of her husband's reservations because he couldn't come. But anyway, they met me and we went up to the hotel room. I've forgotten the name of the hotel, but you know, it's the only hotel then there.

01:10:23.080 - 01:10:44.440

And I don't forget, A.J. May had rye. I'd never had hard liquor. I had a year. I went out with some neat Atlanta guys when I was working there. I went and worked for Delta. It was just fun. We became bay mates, all of us.

01:10:46.500 - 01:11:03.460

Tell me about arriving out at Avenger. What were your thoughts when you arrived at Avenger Field, seeing all the airplanes? Well, it just would be, I'm here, I made it, you know. What were your expectations with that program?

01:11:03.860 - 01:11:16.620

What did they tell you? They told me that we'd be going on and flying the same place, that there would be cadets there when we got there, they were graduating, and then it would be all WASPs, and that we would be flying the same planes they flew.

01:11:17.300 - 01:11:31.900

So I must have been informed what we'd be flying. They weren't flying those specifically down in Houston. So we were the first class. And then when even part of our class, W4, were sent down to Houston, and then they sent

01:11:31.940 - 01:11:43.420

them up there. So ours was the largest class, when they sent them all up there after the guys left. And so they were there in the barracks. Describe your barracks.

01:11:43.560 - 01:11:49.400

Where did you live? You didn't live in the same barracks? Oh, I forget. I'm sorry.

01:11:49.480 - 01:12:08.160

Well, they were GI barracks, and there were six to a room, I think, weren't there? I can almost name everybody there. So there's two of these gals, the same ones who'd met with the train, or three of them, yeah.

01:12:10.220 - 01:12:20.880

And they were bunks, and I remember inspections on Saturdays, and everything had to be just so in our lockers. And what did we do with our civilian clothes? I remember wearing them on weekends.

01:12:21.560 - 01:12:33.560

But anyway, that blanket had to be just so so you could bounce a quarter off it, you know. Sheets had to be just so, and all like that. And that was fun, and he'd come with white gloves on, the adjutant, the guy in head of

01:12:33.580 - 01:12:39.520

it. It's fun. I remember the food was good. I remember brownies were spectacular.

01:12:41.220 - 01:12:54.400

And I remember having fun over in the dining hall. One of our gals, a wonderful gal who could play piano and sing songs that I loved, and I remember her song. And later I heard that she died of cancer.

01:12:54.580 - 01:13:03.920

She was a socialite from Nashville, or was it Memphis? Nashville. And wonderful gal. >>Go through a typical day.

01:13:04.280 - 01:13:16.880

What would a typical day be at a vigil? >>It began with our gal, A.J. May going out and blowing the bugle and we would hide the bugle sometimes. She'd go out and play, was it Reveille?

01:13:17.680 - 01:13:29.520

And we'd get a fall out, get showered, do whatever we had to do. And I'm sure we went to mess hall first. In formation, by then of course we had squads. I think we had two squads.

01:13:30.220 - 01:13:36.740

Virginia Streeter was ours, I remember her. And we'd march. I'm sure we marched the mess hall, didn't we? Every place.

01:13:38.020 - 01:13:46.540

Oh, I don't know if we marched the flight line or not. Did we? We had different schedules, so maybe we didn't march the flight line. But anyway, there, and breakfast,

01:13:46.620 - 01:13:55.340

and come back, teeth, stuff, and then go to the flight line. Who do you-- And we were--three of us were in love

01:13:55.420 - 01:14:02.760

with our primary instructor. [laughter] - No, no. - I know it was a no-no. You don't want me to tell you all of it?

01:14:04.000 - 01:14:15.220

about dating them and all that stuff. Okay. So we were very jealous of this other girl because she had him. Two of us had him and they teased us about him. His name was Glenn Miller.

01:14:16.740 - 01:14:30.420

Don't think he was there. So many of them had left and gone to some other place, you know. But then, you know, it was wonderful. He was a good instructor, naturally.

01:14:31.140 - 01:14:43.080

>> Who were your instructors? Were they army personnel or civilians? No, no, all civilian, all civilian. And my BT instructor, I liked him too.

01:14:43.360 - 01:14:51.520

I later went out with him. He later was died in a crash too. He was good looking too. He was a good instructor.

01:14:51.960 - 01:15:00.020

But you know what he would say all the time? And I know now what it is. The one reason I'm going to the chiropractor. I have a crooked spine, but it didn't give me any pain,

01:15:00.140 - 01:15:06.600

didn't give me any problems. But apparently I would sit crooked "Sit up straight, Miss Joel." [Laughter]

01:15:07.460 - 01:15:22.380

I remember him. He was fun. Describe the ground school. What did you learn in ground school? For one thing, Morse code, which wasn't all that easy. And we learned about engines. We learned about, you know, flight, theory of flight.

01:15:23.000 - 01:15:40.100

I don't know. What all did we learn? But, yeah, ground school. Was ground school—did we take turns doing ground school? some in the morning and some in the afternoon. Must have been, yeah. And then of course we had Link Trainer, which was exciting, really exciting. We had some instruments and the

01:15:40.100 - 01:16:01.160

Link Trainer. What was your primary aircraft when you started, primary training? PT-19, open cockpit, single wing, low wing. And later I ferried them when I got up to Romulus, we went to the factory there in Niagara, I think, Niagara Falls, and we had firemen

01:16:01.200 - 01:16:18.560

all the way across the country once, which was a fun trip because we had guys, we had snake pilots, snake pilots we called. They had a big S on their wings. In other words, they hadn't graduated from military school. They were, they had enough hours and enough experience and they were good enough and they brought them in the Ferry Command. I don't

01:16:18.580 - 01:16:35.480

know if they were in the Air Force Service or not, but they were in the Ferry Command. But they were fun too, especially this old guy we called Pappy. And one of the gals married one of the guys, a snake pilot, and had a child together. But anyway- Do you recall your solo flight in a PT-19?

01:16:36.140 - 01:16:46.620

No, no I don't. I mean- Do you recall any unusual incidents? Yes. A PT, I mean a wonderful T-6.

01:16:47.960 - 01:17:08.100

And if you recall, we could have a terrible crosswind there on that one runway. And we were shooting—well, I was soloing a T-6. And I came in, and that wind—you know, the T-6 had a very narrow gear spread. And the wind was crosswind.

01:17:08.180 - 01:17:16.360

It was pretty heavy, and I ground looped. Oh, my Lord. I didn't think about washout. I was so scared.

01:17:17.200 - 01:17:32.160

I mean, the first place, it's very sudden, a ground loop. And so I didn't think anything of it, though. I knew the plane looked okay and felt okay, and I taxied on it, put it on the line. By the time I shut down the engine, here was—do you remember him?

01:17:32.260 - 01:17:43.300

He was in charge of the whole thing, operations there. I couldn't even think of his name. He was on the wing shouting at me, "What do you mean bringing this? I saw you ground loop it there.

01:17:43.360 - 01:17:52.820

What do you mean bringing it back here to the line?" And I'm just about to wet my pants as well. Word for it, folks. I was so scared.

01:17:52.820 - 01:18:08.120

And I thought, you know, I guess it did occur to me I might have washed out, you know, doing something like that. But I took it back to the line, I guess he did, and it was okay. I didn't wipe out the plane and I didn't wash out, but it was, I was scared.

01:18:09.470 - 01:18:23.200

Did any of your bay mates wash out? Yeah, they did. neat gal, and later, I don't know if you went or not, but you had a convention down in San Antonio, and she was pretty much the sponsor of it, but she washed out in the primary.

01:18:23.800 - 01:18:42.260

And she married an instructor, I think she had a baby by the instructor, her name was Jean-Doc Richie. She was from Arizona, I think. How did that make you feel when she washed out? Well we felt very bad about it. You did, anybody washed out, and of course you had to be glad

01:18:42.260 - 01:18:51.320

that it wasn't you that time or something. Were there any accidents while you were there? Oh, yeah. In my class.

01:18:54.960 - 01:19:11.820

It's in my yearbook. Were they in my class or were they in the W5? But anyway, they died in the crash of PT-19. And there might have been another one, I don't know.

01:19:13.100 - 01:19:23.120

But anyway, we knew it could happen. - Did you get time off while you were at Sweetwater on weekends or anything? - Oh, we had weekends off.

01:19:23.160 - 01:19:33.820

We'd go into town every weekend. We'd go in and stay at the hotel, go to the dance in the hotel. At the first, there were still cadets there,

01:19:34.460 - 01:19:43.260

and we'd run around with them, dance with them and all like that. And then the instructors began showing up at the dance place, you know, and they would sometimes go home with them.

01:19:43.880 - 01:19:58.460

This is, you've got to understand, this is all innocence. Nothing heavy there. But I dated this one guy, and he later became an American Airlines pilot, and I saw him afterwards when I already had eight children.

01:20:00.820 - 01:20:10.560

And he came to a lot of the conventions, I understand. Grace used to tell me, because he'd ask about me, and she didn't know at the time. But anyway— But was that against the rules?

01:20:10.680 - 01:20:17.600

Oh, yes, against the rules. We could have washed out from that. But that didn't—you didn't worry about that? No.

01:20:17.960 - 01:20:26.420

No? I don't know. Just—what happens, happens, you know? Same way with getting washed out, same way with dying, same way—what happens, happens.

01:20:26.940 - 01:20:45.260

At least, I guess that was my philosophy. When you were flying and when you were not flying, what were your uniforms like? What did you wear to fly in? You mean after we graduated?

01:20:45.500 - 01:20:59.260

No. Oh, before. We wore outlandish, outsized coveralls, flight coveralls. And in winter we had those big bomber-type things, they were fleece-lined things and

01:20:59.400 - 01:21:11.720

helmets. summer you just wore pants under them probably and coveralls. Yeah. And for your dress uniforms when you were a Venture? We didn't have a dress uniform. To graduate?

01:21:12.480 - 01:21:24.940

Yeah, when you would go to graduations or to graduate, what did you wear? We wore like chino pants and a white shirt, short-sleeved shirt, and a, what do you call it, cap. Okay.

01:21:25.900 - 01:21:59.420

was graduation and we didn't have a living reforms for a long time. We show up at Romulus and what we did, we were considered as officers, we had our own housing, we ate in officers mess, went to officers club and we're on the same orders as officers of course, fairing. But we had to go and we had to buy, we wore the pinks, those men, they were light-colored

01:21:59.660 - 01:22:19.400

pants and maybe a dark-colored shirt, an olive drab shirt, and that was it. And B-2 jackets. What was the difference between your training as a WASP and the cadet male pilots training? Oh, they had more acrobatics.

01:22:19.440 - 01:22:30.580

They stopped giving us so much acrobatics, you know, the minimum to keep us out of trouble and to show us how to do them. But it wasn't stress, and they gave us cross country, which the cadets didn't get much of.

01:22:30.960 - 01:22:36.380

Then we began going cross country. They gave us more. Okay. Change film.

01:22:37.040 - 01:22:40.840

Unless we want to run out again. No, we don't want to run out again. Okay, change. Okay.

01:22:41.240 - 01:22:44.940

Are you okay? Do you need anything to drink? Do you want some water? Ah, water, yeah.

01:22:45.310 - 01:22:56.900

Oh, maybe even go to the powder room. Right? I'm sure Jacqueline was there. I really loved that woman. And I saw her later. My husband and I lived in San Bernardino.

01:22:57.000 - 01:23:16.960

We'd go over to like the big air and space thing every year. And different companies would hold, in the hotel there, would hold, you know, open houses, something like that. And so I went into the one where she and her husband, Floyd Allen, were there. And someone said, "Well, here's one of your girls, Jackie."

01:23:16.960 - 01:23:44.580

and she came over and we hugged. You know, she loved her girls. I never got out to Palm Springs when she was there. I was very busy having children and living a life quite different, you know. For your graduation, were there special guests? Did special generals come in or anything? Do you recall? No, I don't recall. No big deal, I don't think. How long had you been at Adventure? How long was

01:23:44.480 - 01:24:09.900

your program? Well, February to August. And what airplanes had you flown during those different stages? Well, PT-19 for primary, the terrible BT-13, which I later crash-landed one on my, on the way to the graveyard with it under protest on a hillside in Pennsylvania on the way to land in Pittsburgh.

01:24:11.040 - 01:24:21.740

I really didn't like that BT very much, but, boy, it was hot stuff to go from a PT to, what, 100-and-something horsepower, not much, to a BT, which was 450.

01:24:21.960 - 01:24:31.080

That was a big jump. And then to the AT-6, which 650 Pratt & Whitney, wonderful engine. And then we also flew the UC-78.

01:24:31.830 - 01:24:41.900

We called it the Bamboo Bomber, or other people did. We thought it was hot stuff, you know. And so we picked up twin engine time in that. - And what did you use the BT-13 for?

01:24:42.020 - 01:24:52.640

- That was basic, just a little higher step. Doing practically the same things, you know. Then we, I don't think we did cross country in the PT-19s, maybe.

01:24:53.340 - 01:25:01.720

But in the BTs, then we began that. - Okay, did anything unusual happen on any of the cross countries you took? That you recall?

01:25:02.460 - 01:25:13.160

- No, I got back. >> Okay. >> While you were inó >> It was a good experience flying low and reading water towers and following railroads,

01:25:13.740 - 01:25:20.220

which I later had to use in Ferry Command. >> Right. >> Yeah. >> Was there ever a time when you were in training that you were afraid?

01:25:21.760 - 01:25:28.700

>> Yeah, the one time I told you about. >> Right. >> Oh, you mean afraid for my life, afraid I was going to crash or something like that? I don't recall any.

01:25:29.040 - 01:25:43.980

>> Okay. When you graduated, did you have a choice of your assignments? Well, I had already put down that I wanted a ferry command. I knew that when I went in, my goal was to go in and fly a P-40,

01:25:45.180 - 01:26:03.740

like one of my boyfriends back at Love Field flew P-40s in Panama. But I wanted that. And so in, they were beginning to send girls to other places, and other jobs in my class when you graduate.

01:26:04.480 - 01:26:17.000

So I had an instructor, and there were three other, four assigned to an instructor, like in the T6. And he said, he turned around me after we'd landed,

01:26:17.520 - 01:26:26.300

and pulled up, and he says, "How tall are you?" And I said, "Just a little under 5'4". and he said, "Oh, they asked me to recommend gals who are 5'5" and above." He said, "I guess that lets you out."

01:26:26.300 - 01:26:34.140

And I said, "I'm glad. Don't feel sorry because it might have been something besides fairy command." And I came in this to go to the fairy command. That's all I want, you know.

01:26:34.800 - 01:26:45.700

So thank goodness I didn't recall that. You know who qualified one of his students? Dee Dee, who flew the B-29. And the other gal.

01:26:46.180 - 01:26:55.340

I think she was in my same class. I mean, with the same instructor. When you finished, when you graduated, did you have some time off? Yeah, we had about a month.

01:26:56.280 - 01:27:07.220

So I went back to Frankston and went over to my dad's little mill over in Carthage, Texas. He and my brother were there.

01:27:07.720 - 01:27:21.280

And I went over to stay with him some. They lived in a sort of like a boarding house maybe or something. And their mill was way out in the country and they had a beautiful Palomino horse

01:27:22.220 - 01:27:34.540

that they'd taken or bought or something, but he'd, oh, they bought him because he was so beautiful and had been used as a plow horse, sort of mistreated. So I get on him, and I wasn't really a horseman, not really.

01:27:34.880 - 01:27:44.960

I did ride horseback when I was younger. And I got on him and he ran away with me through the woods, and that was scary. Flying was not scary.

01:27:45.800 - 01:27:56.000

And I thought, he's gonna decapitate me. I've got to get off here. And so I slid my feet out of the stirrups and went down off one side and slid down.

01:27:56.000 - 01:28:05.380

He was just about, he poised long enough to jump over a little creek, a little branch as we call them. And when he did, I slid off and his hind hoof caught me right here

01:28:06.360 - 01:28:14.240

and laid my scalp back right in here. Still have the scar today. Oh, and my dad and brother just came. They were just about to die.

01:28:14.420 - 01:28:23.960

They thought, you know, she's dead, she's hurt. So they took me into a small town doctor. It took him hours to clean it out 'cause it was dirt and leaves and everything else in it.

01:28:24.440 - 01:28:34.080

And he laid it back to scalp. He had several layers to sew up. I don't know how many stitches he took, you know, cleaning up. When I went on the train, I met my friend, Grace Clark,

01:28:34.620 - 01:28:42.360

and Ann Brimmon in Dallas. And we knew we were going to get up to Romulus. And so we met and we went on the same -- because they'd send us tickets, didn't they?

01:28:42.440 - 01:28:58.720

Yeah. So we got on the train together. and I had on a big headdress, like a swami or something. There was a pad inside there and bandaged up. And so we had our wings, we had on skirts or pants or whatever,

01:28:59.090 - 01:29:06.860

you know, we had our wings on on the train and people saw the wings and they said, "Oh, were you hurt in a flight? Did you crash?"

01:29:06.860 - 01:29:21.280

I said, "No, a horse did it to me." So it wasn't until after I got there and I had to go to a doctor there to have him take the bandage off and take the stitches out. So it didn't keep me from flying, thank goodness.

01:29:21.580 - 01:29:31.940

Do you recall to whom you reported when you got to Romulus? Well I think we went right to our WASP and they were wonderful gals, absolutely. Were they? Two of them.

01:29:32.280 - 01:29:52.500

Were they WAFs or WASPs that were already there? They had been WAFs, but they were already there. They were assigned to, there were other gals there from W3 who had been assigned to Romulus and maybe even W2. So they were there and they were the head of it, what did they call them, our adjutants.

01:29:52.690 - 01:30:11.200

Do you recall your first mission at Romulus? Yes, an L5. Had you ever flown an L5 before? No, that was really something, you know, it had more horsepower and that wingspan. But

01:30:11.200 - 01:30:22.700

what was her name? Later she was killed. Loop? Flyer, pilot. Loop, Paula Loop is who it was. She was my flight commander.

01:30:23.620 - 01:30:38.320

So we flew from, the factory was right there in Detroit, Stinson Factory was right there. And we had to pick them up there and we flew on to California and that was quite a long flight. It was my first, first ferrying trip. What did you take with you?

01:30:39.200 - 01:30:58.880

Well, we had B4 bags for our clothes, civilian and military, and we had a big map briefcase and any sort of things to do our vectors on. And a parachute. And a shoe bag.

01:30:59.560 - 01:31:18.060

So that was a lot to carry along, especially if you were running to make a train, as we did in Alabama one time, the three or four of us, and it was pulling out of the station. We were running after it and throwing bags on the caboose or the platform out back. It was fun.

01:31:18.540 - 01:31:26.360

But that was a fun trip because there were some cadets who had just graduated and we partied all the way to Louisville. But anyway. Oh.

01:31:26.680 - 01:31:42.600

And going out to California, did you have specific stops that you were to make? Yeah, we knew because we pretty much stayed with her, except mine was to a different place from theirs, I think, because I don't think they were with me when I landed because that was funny.

01:31:43.400 - 01:32:02.700

We got to close to Indio, desert center. It was a tank outfit and we were taking these observations, and L-5 was a really great one for observation. We were landing in the heat of the day on a desert, and those L-5s would float forever.

01:32:02.960 - 01:32:14.800

That's what they were designed for, you know. So I came in. I tried to put it down on the end, and I leveled off, and I was going to set it down, and it wouldn't stop flying.

01:32:15.900 - 01:32:27.040

So I was running out of airplay, but I wasn't running out of airspeed. I was running out of air runway. So I had to go around. And I think I made two go-arounds at least.

01:32:27.700 - 01:32:42.620

And the last time, you know, I just slipped it and really tried to put it down and kill that speed, kill range, whatever, to make it stay down. And it was funny because here were all these tank men and they came out and they met and they see this woman bring it in.

01:32:42.940 - 01:32:57.460

And they said, "Well, thought we were going to have to shoot you down." Funny things like that I remember, yeah. >> Were you delivering that to an Army base? Yeah it was an army, it was a tank outfit army here in Desert Center. They were operating,

01:32:57.540 - 01:33:21.060

you know, probably getting ready to go to Africa. Then once you got there what did you do? Well then they had to make arrangements to take us in to the closest airport which was must have been Los Angeles. And you know those poor, I don't all remember, I only remember once when they took me in to an airport out of Spokane. They took me into Seattle and I flew piggyback in

01:33:21.000 - 01:33:30.400

in a P-38. That was a good transportation. >> And in delivering the airplane, what did you do with your parachute?

01:33:32.500 - 01:33:45.180

>> They were ours, with a name on the bag and all. And I guess the name on the B-4 bag, we had all of that that had to go on the airlines. >> Then when you would get back to your base, what would happen?

01:33:45.660 - 01:33:55.900

>> Well, they'd meet us in Detroit because there were no airlines coming in to— we were at Romulus, but that was all Army, and that was right next to the big Willow Run.

01:33:56.560 - 01:34:05.700

So we had to go into Detroit City, which was right downtown, and met by transportation, not a bus. We just had to know ahead of time.

01:34:06.360 - 01:34:20.900

Or maybe they would send for us, or maybe we'd send in our R.O.N. when we were arriving. When we'd land, staying overnight at a place, We always had to send a telegram back to our base, to our people in Romulus, where we were.

01:34:22.360 - 01:34:31.760

And it was called an RON, and we had to send that telegram. Where did you live at Romulus? In the barracks there. There were two-story barracks there, yeah.

01:34:32.340 - 01:34:46.900

And we all lived there together. They were WASP barracks. Tell me some of the aircraft that you ferried out of Romulus. That was exciting because then I got into fighters.

01:34:47.460 - 01:34:59.520

I took another trip or two, maybe an L-5. A local would sometimes, I don't know how many hours I had on an L-5, because they would send us over to Detroit City in a car, pick it up, and bring it back to Willow Run or something just over and over and over again.

01:35:01.120 - 01:35:17.540

But there we were very close to Bill Aircraft. We were very close to Curtis. So we got to fly the P-40s, pick them up, and that was not exciting. I found out later I didn't really like the P-40.

01:35:17.540 - 01:35:29.880

I joined it to fly a P-40. It was not a ladies' airplane. It wasn't. You'd land that thing, and the rudder pedals, you'd put it down, and the rudder pedals,

01:35:30.580 - 01:35:42.880

I mean that rudder, that big old tail like that, would just kick your feet off the rudders. You had a hard time keeping them on the brakes there. So and it would scratch your fingers. I always wore gloves and it would scratch your fingers.

01:35:45.140 - 01:36:09.000

So then we'd go to the Bailar Craft and we loved that. And one reason they wanted WASP there, I don't know if you've heard of this before or not, but when we got there, the guys had been ferrying P-39s and they were augering in on final. And so they figured out WASP could do it because we'd all had light plane training.

01:36:09.900 - 01:36:27.080

And the guys had had some, you know, but not the really light planes like gals had flown, especially if they'd been CPT or just buying their own time. So they would let that nose get up and they'd spin in. They'd go into a spin on final and kill themselves and hurt their airplane.

01:36:27.720 - 01:36:44.340

So they figured that girls wouldn't do that. So we didn't. Okay, before you started flying pursuits, did you have to have some special training? Oh yes, we had to before we even got to that, yeah. I didn't go to, they had a regular fighter

01:36:44.560 - 01:37:11.900

school, ATC did, in Brownsville, Texas. And I went there right after I'd been down to our OCS, which was in Orlando, where I met my husband, and back from overseas. And so we had to to go through that. And so we were prepared to become officers. Jack and I really thought we'd make it, but they let us go first. So we were prepared to be officers. And then

01:37:12.040 - 01:37:32.400

next was fighter school. Okay. Describe this, the OCS that you went to. What courses or what was that all about? Well, one thing I remember is aircraft identification. You know, I don't remember a lot of this. I had a lot, some of it to do with intelligence and aircrafting and identification and how

01:37:32.460 - 01:37:39.700

to be an officer I guess and just the, you know, rules and regulations. I don't remember much. How did you meet this young man that you married? At a dance of course.

01:37:42.740 - 01:37:56.320

Was it love at first sight? It was for him, apparently. And you want to hear this part too, it's a very interesting part of my life. The officer's club was a dance arena, it was outside.

01:37:56.900 - 01:38:06.020

This thing no longer exists. They've taken it over for something else now, but the officer's club even burned down I think. But it was called Wolverine Dance.

01:38:06.300 - 01:38:16.240

And see there were nurses there. I don't think they were WACs, but they were WASPs, a lot of us. And guys, pilots. My husband was there in a special thing.

01:38:16.360 - 01:38:35.940

He was back from New Guinea, over 100 missions there, and he made ace there. He shot down four Japanese in one flight, and he got the DSC for that. When he was just a kid, they were all just kids. My kids look at photos now of their dad and even of us, and they say, "But they were just

01:38:36.040 - 01:38:43.060

kids." I said, "Yep, they were just kids." Especially when you see bomber pilots, and they were just kids, all of them. Was he Air Force?

01:38:43.360 - 01:39:02.420

Yes, Air Corps. all he ever wanted to do too. And he took CPT in Cedar Falls, Iowa. And so he went in and trained in California. So then he was there flying P-47s, jugs. And so we met at the dance and he went home from the dance at night, he was living in barracks too. He

01:39:02.560 - 01:39:19.360

told the sergeant in charge, "Well, I met the gal I'm going to marry tonight." And the second night, you know, then he asked for a date for the next night, okay. So we went and we danced there alone, no dance at night out there, and he asked me to marry him. And I thought, well, okay, but I'm already engaged, you know.

01:39:21.110 - 01:39:31.360

Who were you engaged to? To a Navy guy. Oh, okay. Not a pilot, but, and a Catholic, and I had become Catholic partly because of him, I think.

01:39:31.860 - 01:39:38.820

Okay. And he'd gone overseas. When he came back, he came back. Anyway, so.

01:39:38.820 - 01:39:48.320

So, did you accept him at that time? He didn't take, what? Did you accept that night? Oh, no, because it's like, no, I'm engaged, you know, and my guy I'm engaged to came up

01:39:48.420 - 01:39:59.720

to a dance once. You know, we spent the weekend there in the barracks. So but he didn't take no for an answer. Then when I went, and he encouraged me to go to fighter school because he was in it,

01:40:00.140 - 01:40:19.700

and we sat together and he showed me a P-47, how wonderful it was. In fact, we went on a date. He borrowed a T6, and this is acceptable now, okay. And we went over to a beach in Florida, and his guy wouldn't let him have it because he

01:40:19.760 - 01:40:39.960

didn't have an instrument card, and he let him have it because I had an instrument card, because I had gone to instrument school at St. Joseph, Missouri, before I went to OCS. and we would had to gone to Ensor school before we went to fighters anyway you know so I done that and he said no you know of course you can do this this is wonderful you got to do

01:40:40.060 - 01:40:57.000

this you know so I was encouraged by him and so anyway we had fun. So you finished that course and then you went back to Romnus? Romnus and then I was sent to fighter school in Brownsville. Do you know how you were chosen to go to fighters training?

01:40:59.220 - 01:41:13.020

Well, one thing you wanted to and another thing you were available, you were on base when they were making the list. I could have been off flying someplace, you know, and wait till later. And -

01:41:13.020 - 01:41:29.160

>>Were there other girls from Romulus who went with you at the same time? >>I don't recall one. I don't. I recall others that I'd known at other places, too.

01:41:29.860 - 01:41:39.600

- When you got down to Brownsville, where did you stay there, where did you live? Were there other WASPs going through the training? - Oh yeah, mm-hmm.

01:41:39.600 - 01:41:45.080

- How long did that training last, and what did-- - I think it was three months. It's easier to say months. - What did that consist of?

01:41:45.560 - 01:41:58.260

- Well, you had to check out first and the backseat of a T6, because they felt this gave you the right attitude because so many of those fighters were not tricycle gear

01:41:58.360 - 01:42:10.380

like the wonderful Bell aircraft, but they're like this, and you had to land three-point landing. And when that nose went up like a P-40, even a P-51, you couldn't see very well, you know?

01:42:11.220 - 01:42:22.060

So they would have you practice then in the T-6. Instructor sat in front, and you sat in the rear. And my instructor was an old boyfriend that I'd met at Dallas, and he was one reason

01:42:22.060 - 01:42:33.620

to go in the wasps, you know, I went to fly P-40s. So anyway, he was there. And so we did things. One thing that T-6 would not do a decent spin.

01:42:33.820 - 01:42:42.620

It was dangerous to spin in them. So I don't know if we did them in training or not. I think we were warned not to do it. It would get into a flat spin very easily.

01:42:43.200 - 01:42:57.520

So we did so many hours in that. And then it's just like the instructors said, I don't remember any ground school. on any of these planes. And my first one was like an A-30 or A-36,

01:42:57.780 - 01:43:13.920

which was the forerunner of the P-51, North American. And just tell you, you know, speed to take off at and speed to pull back to, you know, and nose and speed for landing. And those are about the three things we knew.

01:43:14.520 - 01:43:23.780

And we did just touch and go's, I guess, the first thing around. And we did that. And this is your solo. There's no instructor in there with you, your first flight in these.

01:43:24.480 - 01:43:38.760

And then we flew a P-40s, we flew a P-47, and P-39. Loved it from the beginning because it's tricycle gear. It's a ladies' plane. It's a small cockpit.

01:43:38.980 - 01:43:48.840

I don't know how the guys fit in there. But there was no P-63 at that time. At least we weren't checked out in them, I'm sure. I've forgotten where I checked out.

01:43:48.960 - 01:43:59.240

I don't know if the factory—I don't remember that part. with P-63 was wonderful. And later we ferried them from the factory down and grew over to Great Falls, Montana, where the guys flew them

01:43:59.500 - 01:44:07.660

on to Canada to give to the Russians. They had done the same thing with the P-39. And we used to resent it because they would not let wasps fly that route.

01:44:08.400 - 01:44:18.480

They said there are no facilities. Oh, come on, you know, of course, we want to -- that's exciting, go there. Until they showed us a survival film, how to survive in the snow.

01:44:20.500 - 01:44:30.480

And when you saw a guy with his legs frozen off, you said, "Oh, no, no, they can't have that." And then let them, you know, don't want any part of it. So, that's what we did.

01:44:30.580 - 01:44:41.180

Then we had so many hours, and then they gave us, well, I wish I'd kept that little book. My husband found it fascinating. A little black book, small,

01:44:41.760 - 01:44:52.480

would go in a handbag or pocket or whatever, with all the leading fighters that we were fearing. and it would give you those basic facts. I mean, they would give you some of it.

01:44:52.940 - 01:45:04.080

I mean, forget wingspan and all that. You didn't really care, but it was airspeeds, as one guy said who was in it, up to the firewall and back to the...

01:45:04.680 - 01:45:14.340

something or other, you know. That's how you took off, you know, and so... And that's what we did, so we'd change planes quite often. Maybe we'd be ferrying one plane and drop it off someplace,

01:45:14.340 - 01:45:21.220

and then they'd send us to another base to pick up a different type. When we came out of the ground school-- I mean, we came out of fire school--

01:45:21.220 - 01:45:33.420

we were sent to Dallas and picked up P-51, the P-51C. Was that a factory at Dallas? Yeah, the North American factory was there. They had another one at Long Beach,

01:45:33.760 - 01:45:39.920

but they had one there, too. And so we got to fly that. And then where would you fly that P-51? Was it to a base?

01:45:40.800 - 01:45:52.740

I took that one-- I believe I took it all the way to Romulus for some reason. And my husband-to-be was waiting for me to marry him at Romulus. And he met all my friends,

01:45:53.060 - 01:46:06.900

and they thought he was pretty darling, too, especially Barbara Donahue. She was wonderful. And Mac—what's her name? Two Mac—we just called her Mac—was our other leader.

01:46:07.140 - 01:46:19.140

>> What were the majority of your ferrying flights? Were they two different bases or two points of embarkation? Both. When I finally got to Evansville, Indiana, where my husband had been transferred

01:46:19.330 - 01:46:31.020

because he kept getting malaria down in Florida, so they assigned him there. And so I immediately told Barbara and Mac, and I heard that they were going to send a contingent of wasps there.

01:46:31.020 - 01:46:40.680

I said, "I got to go. My husband's there." So they pulled the strings in and got me transferred to Wilmington's second free-rearing group because the contingent of 20 wasps

01:46:40.680 - 01:46:51.180

was going to come out of Willington. So they transferred me there. By this time had you married? Yes. When did you get married?

01:46:51.640 - 01:47:05.680

We got married there in Ramos. He was waiting for me at the end of my first ferrying trip. What was your wedding like? It was full of wasps. And it was funny because even the night before I said, "I don't know, I don't think I want to get married."

01:47:06.340 - 01:47:18.280

He said, "Well, we'll just go ahead and get a license and we'll get the, we had to have the blood test and all that stuff." And I wanted to be married in a wedding gown, he'd be married in a wedding gown, and we had to engage a priest to come.

01:47:18.700 - 01:47:31.000

He was not Catholic, but I was, and I wanted to be married Catholic. There were no full ceremonies. And there, and the wasp, he was coming. So I went downtown to Saks Fifth Avenue to buy a wedding gown.

01:47:32.020 - 01:47:38.360

And they said, "Well, when would you like this?" I said, "Tomorrow." >>Was it a traditional? >>Yes.

01:47:38.750 - 01:47:46.400

I have the photos. >>Did your mom and dad know you were doing this? >>I sent them a wire. >>And did they send you a wire back?

01:47:47.200 - 01:47:58.120

>>Well, they must have. I sent them a wire. Well, I sent them a wire before that I was going to marry the other guy, and my mother was getting ready to come with that, but after fighter school, I wrote him a Dear John letter.

01:47:58.560 - 01:48:14.280

No, it's, you know, I didn't say there's somebody else. I just said, "I want to keep fighting." flying. You see, his mother had written me, "You know that when you marry my only son, my wonderful son," he was wonderful, "you'll have to stop flying." And when I told Donahue

01:48:14.400 - 01:48:33.700

that, she says, "You're kidding. You can't stop. All the money they poured into you and I didn't want to stop in the first place, you know. It was too much fun." So I guess I didn't really want to get married. I didn't want to stop the fun. But, of course, then the guy I did marry wanted me to keep flying. So he came and we married in the base chapel

01:48:33.700 - 01:48:53.000

pictures of Wasp in their uniform. By then we did have a decent uniform, but I had this. And she said, "What kind of headdress?" And so they whipped up a, you know, a headdress because we're married in a Catholic church, and so we married. And then they gave us a reception at the Officer's Club, the Wasp did, got together. And then we had a reservation at an inn out on the

01:48:53.060 - 01:49:11.600

St. Clair River, and we went there for our honeymoon. And we came back and stayed at the I don't know if it happened to other guys and gals or not, but it worked out. He was transferred up there and it worked out.

01:49:11.700 - 01:49:20.840

The WASP was sent there. So I didn't stay with the WASP, although sometimes we'd come in late. I would go and spend the night there

01:49:21.440 - 01:49:33.000

'cause I can remember they used to have me sing. I'd sit around and sing all the Sinatra songs. - Did he have an apartment? - Yeah, so he had an apartment

01:49:33.000 - 01:49:41.260

And with another guy who'd come back from, I think the only one left in his squadron of B-17s in England. Everybody shot up in here, but he made it back.

01:49:41.750 - 01:49:49.240

And he went into fighters, so they were both there testing P-47s, the Thunderbolt. That was fun, too. And so I shared an apartment with them

01:49:49.420 - 01:49:58.020

until we got our own little house in the country. No, we didn't move to there till after I got out of the Wasp. And it was there that they told us.

01:49:58.660 - 01:50:11.220

And that was really something to tell us, Well, December, this must have been November when they told us. December, you're going out. I never forget that the CO of the test unit there, this guy,

01:50:11.460 - 01:50:18.240

he wasn't crazy about us women pilots anyway. He was neat though. I liked him. And I said, well, so what, you know.

01:50:19.220 - 01:50:28.060

>> Did they give you anything special when you were disbanded? >> Oh, I went back to Wilmington. >> Oh. >> Yeah. I flew back to Wilmington because, you know,

01:50:28.360 - 01:50:42.300

there's a big photo of that, and that's the one that's, I think that's the one in the movie that Grace Burge's nephew or something made, the first one, Women of Courage, that one. I think that big dinner there, we're all in uniform there, I think that was at our party.

01:50:42.300 - 01:50:47.240

So you were actually then stationed at Wilmington? Yeah, I had to be transferred. Transferred. PCS.

01:50:47.500 - 01:50:59.200

And you were at Wilmington when you were disbanded? Yeah. Then I just flew back. Eastern Airlines was probably what went into Evansville, Indiana.

01:51:02.440 - 01:51:22.200

Do you recall after you received your new uniforms, what were those uniforms like? They were wonderful, except—oh, God. We went into Saks Fifth Avenue to be measured for them, and they were going to fit them to us. I went in, and they took the measurement on my hips.

01:51:22.800 - 01:51:45.500

wearing these men's pants and they were too big, you know, but I'd been eating like a lumberjack. We'd go to the, you know, especially out faring those little planes and it was cold and we'd land for lunch someplace, you know, wherever we were landing, you know, to sit down for refuel and we'd have lunch and I'd go in and I'd eat like a lumberjack.

01:51:45.820 - 01:52:01.940

Meanwhile I'd eat like a lumberjack, stack the hotcakes and everything else for breakfast in case I missed lunch. I got so big and she measured me and she told me the figures, I don't want to even mention but it was closer to 40 than I ever dreamed, you know.

01:52:02.840 - 01:52:16.420

Just oh, I said, it's like you're lying. I cannot be that big. She says, read the tape. And so when I was on my way then down to Orlando.

01:52:16.420 - 01:52:32.680

So no, I'm going to do a ferry trip or something. And I was, and we got on a plane, a train coming out of Alabama where these guys had graduated and they all got on there. So we paired up and I was sitting with this guy and they were new cadets and this is the

01:52:32.700 - 01:52:46.860

place where I had to throw the bags on the back of the train. I thought we weren't going to make it and we were going to stay in that little town another night or something. So he started saying to me, "You know, you're quite a good-looking gal, but you're carrying

01:52:46.860 - 01:53:00.440

too much weight." I think he may have even called me fat, and I was mortified. Let me tell you, after that I got busy and stopped eating for a guy to tell me I was fat.

01:53:01.540 - 01:53:10.560

I remember, I think I cried. He was engaged anyway, he wasn't hitting up on me. So anyway, I did. I lost it. By the time I got down to Orlando then,

01:53:12.700 - 01:53:26.140

and we had our uniforms by then, we went down to Orlando. By the time I got down there, I was pretty trim. >> Do you recall ever going home in your new uniform to visit? >> No, I don't believe that I did.

01:53:27.300 - 01:53:36.260

Herbert remembers that I did, but I don't. In fact, after I started in the WASP, I remember making only one trip home when I was in those old jeans.

01:53:36.640 - 01:53:48.560

And I caught a train out because bus service was just pretty non-existent down to Frankston. Maybe you stop in Athens, maybe catch another bus if that bus decided to run that day.

01:53:49.760 - 01:53:58.060

So I took the train, and it was a freight train that came through every midnight, you know, blowing its whistle. And maybe it stopped and maybe it didn't,

01:53:58.120 - 01:54:03.540

but they had stopped for me. And I rode back in the caboose, and it was a pot-bellied stove. Talk about smelly.

01:54:03.820 - 01:54:12.100

You know, there's no passenger cars. There's a freight train. And I got there, and I walked home. It was after midnight, and I walked up,

01:54:12.680 - 01:54:23.260

and my mother said, "I just knew you were on that train." But I don't recall going home. But I did call him up when I was flying P-47. I called her up from Little Rock,

01:54:24.140 - 01:54:36.320

and I said, "Mom, I'm gonna be going to Dallas, "or Abilene from here, and I'm gonna fly over Frankston." I told her about what time, so expect me to fly over. I didn't fly low enough or enough. I didn't buzz the town.

01:54:38.700 - 01:55:06.520

But during any of your ferrying trips did anything unusual happen? Do you recall? Either with you or with one of your peers? Well, take that flight. I took off early morning Little Rock and it was still ground fog just on the ground and I took off and I had plenty of airspeed and I pulled up the gear and I sank and I thought, "Oh my God," you know.

01:55:06.940 - 01:55:28.620

I wasn't that high off. I could have scraped the belly, you know, no gear. I didn't. My husband, meanwhile, had shown me, he says, "Listen, you slip fighter planes, you slip this P-47, you think you're not going to get it in where you want it? Just haul off the way you did light planes." And he taught me how to slip planes and I used them. And that

01:55:28.620 - 01:55:50.260

a dangerous thing. I did it. He also taught me how to do, so on that same flight, a 360 overhead, and I thought, "Oh, that's cool." So when I got to Abilene, flowing over Frankston, and they barely heard me, I didn't make much noise, I just came over. I asked for a 360 overhead. There was no flight in the area at that time. I didn't know what they were

01:55:50.320 - 01:56:07.860

flying at Abilene then. But, so, I did what my husband told me, you do a 360 overhead. And so I did it, and that was fun, you know, pull her in and then just land when you're still in the curve, you know, and land it. And so they got out, and I sit there.

01:56:08.120 - 01:56:21.000

I had a little red makeup kit, putting on my lipstick, as I did. And I come out, and they said, "It's a woman!" And I think there probably might have been some jealousy there, but I didn't hang around long enough to feel any effects of jealous guys.

01:56:21.660 - 01:56:28.700

I was flying a fighter, and they weren't. And there may have been. And it was happening to other bases. I didn't hang around long enough for that.

01:56:29.760 - 01:56:40.340

- How did it make you feel when you knew you were gonna be disbanded? - Well, you know, they said that was it. It was inevitable, and so that was it.

01:56:40.340 - 01:56:51.740

So get used to next. And next was being a wife, but married to a fighter pilot. But he didn't stay in much longer than I. So we were in Evansville, and he wanted to get out

01:56:51.740 - 01:57:02.940

and go back to school. So he had enough points with all his time overseas and with his medals, he had air medals, DFCs, plus the DSC. He got out on points in April.

01:57:03.120 - 01:57:14.040

We were out in December and he got out in April. We went home for that Christmas and that was loads of fun. We went home on the train and met all of his guys. You know, this was the Christmas before he began to wind down and met them in the hotel.

01:57:14.050 - 01:57:30.200

He was from Waterloo and met them, Navy, Air Force, whatever, you know, in the clubs there and met them at the bars and drank and went to parties with them. And that was fun because it was beginning to wind down at that time. Had he met your family? When did he meet them?

01:57:30.220 - 01:57:52.580

He met them because he made a trip to Texas. He wanted to check out going to the University of Texas. He wanted to check out instructing in the, you know, the what's it? ROTC. ROTC and go to law school at the same time,

01:57:52.800 - 01:57:59.480

take some courses at University of Texas. But he went down there and he drove down because we were out of the Air Force, there was no way to go.

01:58:00.160 - 01:58:06.980

And he stopped off and visited my parents for the first time. And 'cause they were proud of him from day one 'cause he was a war hero.

01:58:07.860 - 01:58:23.100

And then when we went back there to live, when he was in Korea, he flew out of Korea in Sabre Jets, and we went back there and lived in Tyler I wanted the kids to go to Catholic school and I wanted to be there near a church and

01:58:23.140 - 01:58:43.160

that's only 26 miles away from Frankston. And then when he shot down his first plane, he'd given his hometown as Tyler. And then I was home, it was close to Christmas then, and I was home visiting and the Tyler paper came out and his picture was in it and they said, "Mystery man, Tyler man, shoots

01:58:43.240 - 01:58:56.580

down plane," because they had all this information on him but nobody knew him and Tyler. and that name, Swedish name, Hagerström. So I got on the phone and I said, "Well, I know who it is, it's my husband."

01:58:56.580 - 01:59:03.580

And so then, oh wow, they couldn't do enough giving him publicity. And then he kept shooting down planes in Korea and we were living there.

01:59:04.000 - 01:59:12.600

So they came out and did a photograph, I saw it, my daughter has a picture of that in her home, a photograph. By then I'd had a baby while he was in Korea.

01:59:12.770 - 01:59:28.380

I had my fifth child, well actually sixth, but Mark. and so anyway. >> Let me back up. When he got out of service, he went to... >> We went to Waterloo, to his home, stayed with his folks.

01:59:28.900 - 01:59:39.320

>> But as far as his education, where did he go to school? >> He went to summer school that summer where he'd been before at Cedar Falls. That's North Texas, no, I mean North Iowa, whatever.

01:59:39.460 - 01:59:52.460

It's a big school. That's where that famous writer went and wrote about, remember? He was teaching there something, the one who did. Anyway, he finished at summer and then he knew that he would be going to

01:59:52.470 - 02:00:08.900

the University of Iowa. He had left the University of Iowa as soon as the war broke out. He was there studying and so they took him back again there and he finished, he got his undergraduate degree there. >> Okay, and then why did he go back in service? When did he decide to do that?

02:00:08.930 - 02:00:33.860

>> Okay, we went down to Houston. He knew we wanted to live in Texas. I knew I wanted live in Iowa and that's snow. I had my first baby there and snow was on. So we went down to Texas and we were my folks and then he went down to Houston and applied and got a job with a man who was you know in stocks and bonds and so he got a job with him the

02:00:33.860 - 02:00:43.560

only guy working for him. They were wonderful to us and so he still wanted to fly so he he says, "Well, you just go right out there and get in the air guard." So he applied for the air guard.

02:00:43.700 - 02:00:50.720

They're still working there, but on weekends, you know, they do air guard. And they were flying P-51s, and my husband really hadn't flown P-51s.

02:00:50.840 - 02:01:04.380

I'd flown them, but he hadn't. And so he got a job there. I mean, he was signed up there and came back, and they didn't give him the rank that his colonel,

02:01:04.500 - 02:01:19.880

who'd been a colonel in the morning, so he got him a captaincy. But anyway, so he was there in the Air Guard and then my, he stopped, the guy stopped his firm. He says, "No, with SEC now, I can't make a living at this. I can't do this, that

02:01:19.880 - 02:01:35.060

and the other." And he says, so he got him a job, my husband, as being full-time, what do they call him, with the Air Guard, operations officer with the Air Guard. And that was fun too because he was full-time there and still got to fly. And then this Air Guard-- >>And at that point you're living in Houston?

02:01:36.980 - 02:01:52.040

And wonderful times with those people too, families and all. So then the air guard, that was Ellington, it was called the Fighting One, 11th at the time, the ACES, was recalled, San Antonio was recalled,

02:01:52.580 - 02:02:06.220

and outfitted in Oklahoma, where the famous guy is, and James got to know all those people. And we were all sent to Langley, Virginia. And wives, kids, cats, dogs, and everything.

02:02:06.220 - 02:02:16.620

about his going, being recalled? - Well, you know, you don't-- - How many children did you have by that time? - Oh, only three.

02:02:17.840 - 02:02:27.180

And one was a baby, she'd been born there in Houston. And so we all loaded up. I was happy to leave Houston. I don't care if they sent me to Timbuktu,

02:02:27.300 - 02:02:42.460

I just couldn't stand Houston, that climate just wiped me out. And I remember we had bought a little house on the GI Bill we sold it and I remember loading up and going. I had a baby, still being breastfed and the

02:02:42.600 - 02:03:00.420

two older kids. And I remember being hysterical, laughing and crying on our way out of town that night. We're leaving Houston, oh God, we're leaving Houston. I like Houston okay now but I didn't like it then. >>And then you drove to where?

02:03:01.560 - 02:03:13.360

>>Well, we went to Langley. >>To Langley. >> We may have gone nonstop. No, no. I remember stopping off in Panama City or was that the only way back? Whatever, you know. And we were there and we had to have our own house

02:03:13.420 - 02:03:32.140

in there. There was no living room base there. And so we had a wonderful place. It was like a historical place. It was right on, it was at least a hundred years old. We rented it from a local family there at Fox Hill and they became very good friends. >> Okay.

02:03:32.460 - 02:03:42.440

>> Yeah. >> Okay. I'm running out of film. This morning she said I'm going to take plenty of film.

02:03:42.940 - 02:04:07.780

Well, because you know, those three guard outfits and maybe others were recalled to fight the Korean War. And they had to go to Langley Field to transition from P-51s to jets. Terrible jet as it turned out, but anyway that turned out alright. So he was there and they were winged there.

02:04:08.300 - 02:04:24.000

The wingman had been a former bomber pilot, bless his heart. The group commander had been a former bomber pilot. And these were all fighter pilots who looked-- My husband, because he was a hero fighter pilot from World War II,

02:04:24.140 - 02:04:40.940

he knew what he was doing. He had fought actual combat and fighters. So, they had a little difference of opinion about how gunnery should be done. Another difference of opinion, because these commanders said one day, "Okay, we're combat ready.

02:04:40.940 - 02:04:49.140

We filled in all the squares." My husband says, "We are not a combat ready outfit." Well, it's like, "Who are you to tell us?" So he was transferred out.

02:04:49.300 - 02:05:09.420

His squadron was taken away, and he was given the lowliest job that a fighter pilot can be given. transferred to a liaison unit with an army up at Fort Meade. And we stayed there, he says, and I had a small baby, Kristen, that you just met. And I said, he said, "Stay here.

02:05:09.480 - 02:05:24.120

I'm not staying there long. Just don't make the move. Just stay right here." So I was pregnant again later on that summer. And before he got back in, I had to ask my mother and father to come save me because I advertised to someone to stay with and nobody was suitable. So they came up.

02:05:24.480 - 02:05:37.640

But anyway, he was transferred then. He kept—he would come down and he got a job in headquarters there at Langley with good old Joe Cannon, General Joe Cannon, and this—with Tackler, which is a fighter outfit, you know.

02:05:38.320 - 02:05:48.660

So he and another guy sold General Joe Cannon a program. He says, "These tackle—your tackle pilots are going over and they're coming back being reassigned to strategic. You're losing them.

02:05:49.240 - 02:06:08.620

Let us go over and learn the ropes. says, "Let's get transitioned into Saber Jets and we'll come back with our experience." A hundred hours, we'll come back with our experience. It used to be the special orders. So he did it. He bought it. So we went to Nellis for him to transition into Saber Jets,

02:06:08.760 - 02:06:25.980

which was his all-time favorite plane. Where's Nellis? Nellis is in Las Vegas. So we packed up and went out there. Had a new baby by then, a thing and we stayed in the barracks there, very hot. But anyway, then he went on to Korea

02:06:27.460 - 02:06:49.740

and of course we stayed there and then he made ace over there too in saber jets. So he became one of the few double aces of all time. And so he gets back from there and well we go, you know, and then I, by that time, I had an Air Force wife. Bill was never big into Officer's Wives Club.

02:06:49.980 - 02:07:01.340

I would go, but I didn't do anything special. Because, you see, when we were in the WASP, we'd land at bases, and he'd be all these women in the Officer's Club, "Oh, you can't eat in there today

02:07:01.520 - 02:07:07.760

because it's Officer's Wives Day. They're having their luncheon." Really? [ Laughter ]

02:07:09.220 - 02:07:16.880

We were so terrible. >> So you didn't want to be one of those, huh? No, I didn't want to be one of those ever. So anyway, I was having babies all the time.

02:07:17.200 - 02:07:26.220

But it was so funny because later on when we were at Hickam, and I had the eighth baby, I had my eighth baby in Hawaii, when it was still territory of Hawaii. - How did you get from the States to Hawaii?

02:07:26.460 - 02:07:31.020

What was the-- - Oh, you want to know all this? Okay, let's see. Okay, so he came back.

02:07:31.300 - 02:07:41.220

We were assigned to Fayetteville. That's Pope, that's North Carolina. And he was flying, a tactical air command, they were doing something.

02:07:41.300 - 02:08:11.280

he was flying and when he was there he got to fly a Sabre jet in the big Bendix. He didn't win it but he got to do it at least, it was fun. And then there was there a guy who really, oh during the Bendix he met this guy at Alexander in Louisiana where they had fighters and he'd stop there for refueling and he met this guy and he just walked so hatchy. And he just

02:08:11.280 - 02:08:36.280

to come down, I'm going to get a fighter outfit, not saber jets, but I'm going to get a fighter outfit in Victoria, Texas. And so sure enough, he transferred James in and gave him a squadron. By that time my husband was a light colonel, and he had to transfer people out in order to give him the light colonel slot. And then he made him wing commander because my husband

02:08:36.280 - 02:08:56.560

was a hot--he was a warrior, a fighter pilot, and he commanded the respective people under him. So anyway. Kelly: By this time, had he decided to be career Air Force? Lowry: Yeah. He was given that chance when he came out of Korea, yeah, to apply for regular.

02:08:56.560 - 02:09:19.120

So he did, and he made it. He came in as a major, and then he made major in Korea. So, right on time, made lieutenant colonel, and right on time, made pool colonel. So, from Fayetteville, we went to Victoria, and there he was transferred, you know, two years, and you're out of here.

02:09:19.700 - 02:09:30.340

He was transferred to Japan. First he was sent to England, and I said, "I don't think I want to go to England with all these little babies." I heard it was cold, and I didn't want to live way out in the country and cold and just

02:09:30.560 - 02:09:39.380

stuck there. So the next service came through Japan. He said, "You'll love Japan. You'll have servants there, and you'll love it."

02:09:39.380 - 02:09:50.280

Because he had been in and out of Japan. So we chose those in Japan. And that was with the big Far East Air Force. So how did you and all those children get to Japan?

02:09:52.360 - 02:10:04.240

He came back for us. He didn't come for a long time. Did you fly or go on a boat? No, we flew out of Port Mason, San Francisco. He came back for us and flew with us.

02:10:05.020 - 02:10:18.440

By that time school had started and he still hadn't come back for us. And I just like, said, "You come and get us, like, right now. We're leaving here. The kids have got to get to school." he had already enrolled them in the Catholic school there.

02:10:19.240 - 02:10:26.620

They were famous, they were wonderful. Girl's school and boy's school, and a lot of the Air Force people were there. - What air base in Japan?

02:10:27.040 - 02:10:38.520

- Well, started in May. I don't know, there were no fighters there. I don't know what he did there. But he was there, he rode the train to work.

02:10:39.520 - 02:10:46.460

- Was he in Tokyo? - Yeah, we were in Tokyo. And that was a wonderful time too, a wonderful year. In fact, he tried to extend.

02:10:46.820 - 02:10:58.300

So then they sent this whole Fifth Air Force back to Hawaii to be based there. And all that sounded good. Still, the kids really loved their schools there.

02:10:59.640 - 02:11:03.700

And-- So how long were you there? Just a school year. Just a school year.

02:11:04.160 - 02:11:16.520

But we really enjoyed it. And I enjoyed my freedom. I had two maids, and every day I could get dressed and go out house and we could go leave at night and take the train and go see movies. That was my freedom

02:11:16.680 - 02:11:40.000

there. Did you get involved with officers' wives there? No. The first day we were there, we flew a Connie, the big Constellation, bucket seats. I had on high heels. I had to take off my heels and the babies. We had box lunches and

02:11:39.740 - 02:11:57.560

landed on Wake Island where it was boiling hot, you know, for refueling and stayed there a few hours, had lunch, and Kristen promptly threw up. I tease about that till today. How many children did you have at that time? At that time, seven.

02:11:58.500 - 02:12:19.920

Oh, okay. Yeah. I had my eighth one, conceived in Japan, born in Hawaii. So all seven. And the youngest was eight months old. But hey, we knew how to do it, you know, how to travel. So we got Japan and then we got boat fever there. We wanted a yacht. Here we are, never been in

02:12:20.000 - 02:12:39.780

boats. He was from Iowa, I was from Texas, not on the coast. And we just had to have a boat. And so we had a chance to transfer to Hawaii and that was good. That was a good deal. So we flew to Hawaii and got the kids enrolled in school there. We lived on base.

02:12:39.780 - 02:12:55.020

Did you live on base? Yeah. But he wasn't a full colonel. We moved there. So with our seven children, we had to live in this barracks-type thing because he didn't have enough rank to have a house. And it was--I mean, this was the headquarters, so it was ranked--we had a four-star general

02:12:55.020 - 02:13:06.960

and the assorted generals on down. So anyway, we were there, but that was fun. I did some wives club things that I like to do. Mixed dances, yes, I wouldn't miss one of those.

02:13:08.260 - 02:13:18.100

But it was really funny because I was popular with a lot of the wives. There was another wasp there, by the way, too. I could think of her name, and I knew her because

02:13:18.110 - 02:13:29.400

she was W5, and we sort of knew each other before we got there. So anyway, it was fun because it was beautiful in Hawaii. We loved it.

02:13:29.880 - 02:13:38.740

And when we finally, so he up for another year, so we spent three years in Hawaii. Normally it would have been two. And then it was time to go home,

02:13:39.510 - 02:13:51.940

and so they just assumed they could just put us on an airplane. We got a nice big family we'd want to get to go with, you know, and we found out other families, smaller families, couples, were going by Matsunia.

02:13:52.960 - 02:14:03.360

And my husband said, "Wait a minute, we're going by ship. You know, we want this experience." My wife's afraid of flying. (laughing)

02:14:06.320 - 02:14:16.160

Of course, in transportation, they didn't know my history, so we got to take the Lurleen. And we'd bought a boat from over there and we finished it, and we took trips.

02:14:16.820 - 02:14:27.820

This is such a big part of our life, I have to stop here and tell you this. We got there and we were just going to buy a boat somewhere. We had no money, but we had a little money.

02:14:27.860 - 02:14:39.620

His father died and left us a little money, not a lot. And so we started looking down at Alawai. That's the big yacht harbor there. And we're driving-- oh, by then, by the way, we took a Cadillac--

02:14:39.700 - 02:14:49.160

we got tired of station wagons, and we took a Cadillac limousine with us, we bought it in Victoria, owned by a little old lady who lived out in the country and drove it to town and back, she had a chauffeur, a chauffeur did.

02:14:49.640 - 02:15:01.480

And so we bought this Cadillac and we got rid of this little station wagon. And we took that and I drove the Cadillac limousine in Japan, in Tokyo. I had only one little accident, very little. It only cost me

02:15:03.180 - 02:15:12.140

three hundred and sixty yen per dollar. But, um, I used to drive the kids into another place so they could take the bus into the Catholic schools.

02:15:13.140 - 02:15:19.640

And so... So when you went to Hawaii, did you take that Cadillac with you? Oh yes. - We took the Cadillac with us, yeah.

02:15:20.120 - 02:15:29.980

And finally sold it in Cadillac. I started to say, "Roaches and all." (laughing) Hawaii was roach haven.

02:15:31.020 - 02:15:40.700

I had to abandon a rug that we had on our patio 'cause it was a sizeable rug and we started to lift it and pack it and all that stuff and picked it up and the roaches said, "No, you're not taking it home."

02:15:41.200 - 02:15:52.860

So I just left it there. No, this can't go with our things. They came regularly to spray. We had, by that time, a big two-story home overlooking Pearl Harbor, the entrance to

02:15:52.940 - 02:16:02.640

Pearl Harbor. We would hear the aircraft carriers when they'd come in, or the big battleship, but particularly aircraft carriers. We would hear the bands playing because they'd come in early morning before the kids would

02:16:02.640 - 02:16:12.040

go to school. We'd run out to watch them, you know, listen to the aircraft carriers. I remember the Bonhomme Richard, and something bigger than that. It was one of the smaller ones.

02:16:13.880 - 02:16:27.680

We just had loads of fun there, parties, because people didn't party. You know, when we came back, it was a whole different Air Force. It became very family-oriented. Well, we were family-oriented, but we still went to our parties.

02:16:28.740 - 02:16:48.880

And my husband didn't drink, by the way, so that allowed me to have one drink per evening or something, except when I was pregnant. But anyway, it just was loads of fun and big dances and big dinner parties. I remember going to New Year's Eve in a beautiful maternity skirt and top, because I was carrying

02:16:48.960 - 02:17:09.840

Laura at the time and dancing and having loads of fun. When we went back there in our yacht years later, in 1976, see we're talking about 1950, we left there in 1960 out of Hickam, and there was just parties and generals had big expense accounts and they'd give parties.

02:17:11.560 - 02:17:33.280

my husband's full colonel and we made lots of friends loads of fun. Then when you came back where were you stationed? He asked for and got Norton which everybody else thought was the pits but he already knew he wanted to go to law school he had not lost that dream of going to law school he just thought he was half a man well he was a great fighter pilot but you know some of his most

02:17:33.420 - 02:17:50.560

admired people in Waterloo were was the lawyer family your son and father and all like that and And so he wanted to go there because he was due for the Pentagon, never been. And he knew if he went as a new, like, I mean, full colonel,

02:17:51.180 - 02:17:57.040

they'd put him down in that basement and he'd never see the light of day. He'd never get to go to the night in law school. So he chose Norton for that.

02:17:57.460 - 02:18:04.220

And that's the lowest of lowest. That's the IG section, inspector general. Nobody wants to be an inspector. Turned out it was a really good assignment.

02:18:04.840 - 02:18:15.480

And so he found out the night school he'd go to was Loyola in Los Angeles. So he enrolled in Loyola night law school. And he went nights and summers.

02:18:16.080 - 02:18:24.280

And he made friends there with them. And then there were three other guys in town in San Bernardino who were going to do the same thing, or maybe two of them at the start.

02:18:24.280 - 02:18:36.600

And they'd drive in together and study together and everything. It turned out well. And so before he finished Loyola, He was sent to the Armed Services School in Washington, D.C.

02:18:36.900 - 02:18:48.340

Not the National War College, but the other one where he learned a lot about business and about whatever it's called. Anyway, he was sent there, and he flew to Washington,

02:18:48.500 - 02:18:57.240

got a flight there because they had lots of planes there in order that they could check out, and they had to keep their flying time in. And he flew, and he talked with the registrar and dean

02:18:57.300 - 02:19:17.360

or president maybe of Georgetown, and said, "I'm coming here and I want to come to school, Knight Law School, and I'll be in day school all day at the Air Force School or the service school." And so they said, you know, they sent for his credentials and like that, and they said, "Yep, we'll take

02:19:17.380 - 02:19:37.220

everything," because he'd made decent grades even though he had to make trips and do some things. But he, they accepted him if he would do a full year there, which meant he had to go ahead and do one summer and then the next summer after he graduated from the Air Force School. So a year there, well a year in the other school too maybe. And he had to write

02:19:37.240 - 02:19:58.320

a thesis in their school and then he had to do all kinds of papers and symposiums in Georgetown. But he graduated from Georgetown, which is good. We think he's a little more prestigious than Loyola. But anyway, and so we stayed home in San Bernardino. By that time I was teaching school, I'd been back to school, had thought about working for a master's,

02:19:58.760 - 02:20:19.880

and I did all the coursework for a master's in literature, but could not do the thesis. By that time he'd been assigned to Vietnam, I had eight children in school, and I was teaching school, and I thought, I almost had a nervous breakdown trying to do it, and so I said, "No, forget it, not worth it." In fact, I had to go to the hospital with something,

02:20:20.120 - 02:20:33.740

They never quite figured out what it was, and that's all it was, just pushing it too much. So I never got that Master's, but I didn't care about that time. What were you teaching in school? Seventh grade social studies, you know, a group thing.

02:20:34.680 - 02:20:51.120

And they took me in because I went through a program at the University of Redlands. I was there, and so I heard they were doing a program where they would do-- like a, where they would teach you a trainer thing and give you all you knew one summer.

02:20:51.940 - 02:21:03.580

And you'd do a little practice teaching and you'd take the coursework and then you had to go to a night school I think during the winter or something. Anyway, and they would give you a provisional credential

02:21:04.240 - 02:21:17.100

for teaching, so I did that. And when I went in to apply, he saw my, as I told you, I think before he saw my credits from CUNF Austin, he saw all these things about flying.

02:21:17.140 - 02:21:25.380

He said, "What is this?" It was a very mixed degree. I did have enough for English and all kinds of courses. He said, and then he saw me,

02:21:25.440 - 02:21:34.940

I had eight children. Another strike against me, would have been. But he went to bat for me. He said, "If you have enough nerve to apply for it and do it,

02:21:35.040 - 02:21:57.460

I have enough nerve to hire you." So he gave me wonderful, to school, with a wonderful woman principal. When you did that, your husband was in Vietnam? Yeah, he had to go to Vietnam. Meanwhile, when he got back from Washington, he was assigned to the fighter outfit in Victorville.

02:21:58.720 - 02:22:17.140

And they were flying, it was not Sabre Jets, his favorite, and they were due to go over, he was due to go over with a wing. He was vice-wing and he got them started. He was a new wing and he got them started with the experience he'd learned, learning the old pert flow chart, and he got them ready using that.

02:22:17.780 - 02:22:34.900

I think he got a medal for that. But he didn't go with that because he was sent for by name to go to Vietnam like immediately to run the in-country war, air war. So he tried to get out of it.

02:22:35.240 - 02:22:52.440

He really did. I've done my time in combat. They're guys who've never been to combat. And I'm going over with this outfit, but nope, they sent him over there. It was a non-flying thing. Although he did get to fly, he had to do what he did. But anyway, he tried to beg off and

02:22:52.440 - 02:23:08.020

not go. And they did, the family wouldn't tell me he wouldn't eat it till just the last minute. And I almost had a nervous breakdown then. I didn't want him to leave. So we moved back down to San Bernardino in our house. We got our house back and we bought a house then.

02:23:08.620 - 02:23:17.280

So my kids were pretty much San Bernardino kids. >> Right. And how long then did you teach school? >> Six years. And then he retired in '68.

02:23:17.460 - 02:23:24.920

I went teaching about '62. He retired in '68. And it was our dream to buy a boat and sail away. And we did that.

02:23:26.400 - 02:23:35.060

We took off a school year. He knew he had to come back and work and maybe I would have to come back and work at something because we had all these kids to put through college.

02:23:37.440 - 02:23:44.840

So he retired. And we-- What year did he retire? 1968, January, his birthday, 1968.

02:23:46.560 - 02:23:57.800

And so we had bought a condo. We'd paid down money on a condominium at Long Beach area with a boat slip and enough bedrooms that we could live in it.

02:23:57.960 - 02:24:15.580

And he was going to go to work for airspace industry, either Lockheed or North American. So meanwhile, he went off on a trip and he came back. This is getting weird.

02:24:15.730 - 02:24:26.420

I mean, people are going to see this tape and they'll think we're one weird couple, you know. We wanted to do this trip and with the kids, but we thought we had to wait until they were out of college.

02:24:27.000 - 02:24:42.140

I thought we were going to be pretty old then because I started having my baby. my babies when I was in my 30s, the last one at 37. And so we really wanted to go sooner than that, but we said, "But we don't have the money to do that, buy a boat and live

02:24:42.340 - 02:25:06.860

on that." His retirement wasn't that much in those days. So anyway, he was off on a trip and he came back. I had bought some funky artwork, we had the art show in Laguna Beach And there was the, I remember, the warrior there. And we had this hung in the living room.

02:25:07.480 - 02:25:18.320

I was sitting there and the warrior picture fell down. I said, "Well, that does it. He's no longer a warrior. We're gonna go now."

02:25:18.320 - 02:25:25.420

And both pictures still was hanging and just crazy things like that. He came on a trip and he said, "We're gonna go now. There's no point in waiting.

02:25:25.620 - 02:25:34.920

We'll do it. We'll find something." So we started looking for a boat found one. We thought we had one. Sold our house, packed up clothes, gave away clothes.

02:25:35.160 - 02:25:59.620

We were going on a boat. And the kids wanted to go. I thought they're going to throw a fit, leaving their friends, leaving high school, all of them, and on down and leaving here and their friends. No, it was the friends who said, "Can't we go with you?" Unlucky people, you already have parents like yours to take you off. So I ordered correspondence

02:25:59.620 - 02:26:28.060

I already knew about the correspondence school for elementary and middle school because I had an aunt who, she and her husband, had gone and were on a rubber plantation in Belém, in Brazil, and they had had the Calvert School, and it still operates today, in Baltimore. And I remembered it, got on the phone, called them up, and said, "Okay, I need lessons for

02:26:27.860 - 02:26:57.840

these classes and the Bethesda says well we don't do ninth grade or tenth grade so I said where? She said they recommend a university in Nebraska so I ordered courses for him. So my guy who was born when my husband was in Korea did tenth grade on board the boat and the others did assorted grades and some of the others then did the high school work

02:26:57.840 - 02:27:17.960

And well, some of them didn't even finish. This doll that you just saw never finished high school. Wow. Were you the teacher or did you and your husband divide it up? Well, he gave the economics and civics, I mean the government courses and stuff like that. All of them were sailing along. This was wonderful, you know that?

02:27:19.140 - 02:27:44.320

And the other kids, you know, they were, they had syllabus, And each one had a syllabus of lesson plans and assorted little books and paperbacks and whatever to go with them. And of course for his, and they had tests, and they had crams, they had just everything, books to read and all sorts of, it's a wonderful course. I've met people since who use the Calvert course at the University of Nebraska.

02:27:45.660 - 02:27:59.660

And where were you headed in that boat? We were heading for the Caribbean, because it was too late to go to the Pacific. My husband wanted to go to the Pacific, but my husband wanted to go to the Caribbean. Fine, but we went down the coast of Mexico.

02:28:01.020 - 02:28:15.400

It was getting close to storm season, and we had already heard of one ship lost, a yacht, probably a yacht lost in a storm, but we did it. We went on down, and that was wonderful. We met other yachting people and with their children.

02:28:16.120 - 02:28:32.920

We went all the way to Acapulco, and then one son, who was out of school at that time, on with another couple into the Caribbean and later he came back. But while you were on board ship did the children have chores? Who cooked?

02:28:33.660 - 02:28:41.140

Who cleaned up? Well I did and another daughter who was really good at cooking. We had very poor cooking skills. It was a wonderful boat.

02:28:41.160 - 02:28:54.660

We finally bought one. It was only 36 feet long and here we were, nine of us. My oldest was married and had a baby by then so she didn't go. But we just had this little stove.

02:28:54.780 - 02:29:06.140

We bought a little sort of thing that would go on top of an oven, but it didn't work. And we had a generator so I could haul out this big electric skillet. So we had lots of one-dish meals in the electric skillet. And we caught fish.

02:29:06.760 - 02:29:18.940

And one daughter and one son were our fish cleaners. They were very good at getting it ready. And I don't know, then I would go to market when we got on the mainland then. I would go to market almost every day and bring back loads.

02:29:20.220 - 02:29:30.820

Walk back, take a taxi, take a bus, whatever. We were in Monsantlon a lot. Monsantlon, it was easy. Did you go into ports and stay there for the length of time?

02:29:30.820 - 02:29:37.140

Every night. On the way down Baja, we went into port every night. We didn't sail at night at all. We only sailed one night on the mainland.

02:29:39.720 - 02:29:47.520

This was a sailboat? Yes. we had auxiliary, we had a nice Ford diesel, and the auxiliary to get in and out of ports.

02:29:48.220 - 02:29:56.960

Or if it was dead calm and we wanted to get someplace, we put on the engine. So yeah, and we had enough to sleep. This was a boat, it's so wonderful,

02:29:56.960 - 02:30:09.620

I just want to tell people about it. It was designed and built in Holland, of all one piece, like African mahogany or something. And it was designed to sail a trans-pack in its class.

02:30:10.060 - 02:30:27.160

If it was under 36 feet, then they could sail. was in its class. And it was just wonderful. He had already won a race because he had wonderful sails on it, wonderful, you know, it was a speed boat, really not a cruising boat. But it would sleep eight people down below.

02:30:29.240 - 02:30:43.040

How long was this trip? It lasted practically a school year. We left in October, end of October, and we didn't come back until May. People were getting worried, "You better get out of here, storm season, the Chubasco season is coming up, you better get out.

02:30:43.540 - 02:30:55.600

So we went home then. And then he had already applied for a job with a law outfitted, it was a Quayside government, Ford Foundation ran it.

02:30:56.160 - 02:31:04.880

And see, he hadn't had any courtroom work. He had his degree, he'd passed the bar, the California bar. And so he went to work for them and got, it was federal court work

02:31:04.940 - 02:31:13.100

and he got so much federal court time, you know, he came quite good at it. so then he went into private practice there. And we stayed there for a bit.

02:31:13.520 - 02:31:22.940

San Diego. And I love San Diego. And the kids were in school there, some of them. Did you go back to teaching?

02:31:23.400 - 02:31:29.540

No. I applied, but I knew it would just be impossible. Besides, that year, when he taught, and they had hired too many teachers.

02:31:29.680 - 02:31:36.220

They thought they were going to have bigger enrollment, and then it would increase, and they didn't. So I knew I'd never be called. And I didn't want to be just sitting there ready and waiting.

02:31:36.820 - 02:31:47.060

and we required two cars and getting kids ready, and I said, "No, I've had my teaching." I taught again though in Micronesia, and that I enjoyed very much, the Micronesian.

02:31:48.340 - 02:31:56.260

- When did you go there? - In 1976. We had built our own sailboat by then. He'd been practicing law, and while he was practicing law,

02:31:57.020 - 02:32:05.020

I would go out and he'd lay out the plans. We had our plans, and from the scratch, we built this boat, ferro-cement, but it wasn't any cloddy-looking thing.

02:32:05.580 - 02:32:15.240

It was thin, less than an inch thick, with layers and layers of steel in it. So it was more like a steel boat. And we did that on weekends and holidays.

02:32:16.060 - 02:32:23.900

But I was out there with a young man we hired who was an artist, and Jim taught him to weld. There was a lot of welding going on. And he and I worked on the boat.

02:32:24.140 - 02:32:30.120

I'd go out every day. Kids went to school, and I'd go out and help work on the boat. And my husband would come out for lunch,

02:32:30.140 - 02:32:40.560

bring his sandwich, and people would show his boat too. and I was just the worker out there. But it was fun. We built it and we sailed to Micronesia on that day, 1976.

02:32:41.240 - 02:32:54.540

-And how long were you gone that time? -We never sailed that boat back. We got there, and some of our children were with us. Chris had graduated from law school.

02:32:54.600 - 02:33:04.160

We were in this place, Pompeii, and they were advertising for a lawyer there. So my husband and she came back whining, "I can't get a job that'll pay me enough to live on."

02:33:04.160 - 02:33:29.080

know, just out of law school. And so he applied for a job out there in the land commission in their state government there. And they hired her. They liked the idea of a woman lawyer. I love those Micronesians. So she got her job and she went out there and they gave her a house in town. We lived on our boat in Pompeii. And then we got news that

02:33:29.520 - 02:33:47.760

Our youngest son was missing on a fishing boat off the coast of San Francisco. This was in June '78. So the kids were on the—no good telephone service. We'd get messages through—and it got through a ham radio operator.

02:33:50.580 - 02:33:59.580

And they were just going crazy. They went on TV, "Keep looking for our brother," and they were just—and I said, "We've got to go back." He says, "You know, they can handle it."

02:33:59.580 - 02:34:05.600

And I said, "No, we're going back. Can't leave these kids. It's our job. We've got to go back."

02:34:05.600 - 02:34:17.560

So we went back. And then he went up to the Coast Guard and talked with them. And they called off the search after a week. But in some cases, they had gone longer down off of Baja.

02:34:18.300 - 02:34:26.320

They searched longer than that for people. But the cold water, they didn't think they could survive that long. And they never really proved to us that the boat went down. But that's a long story.

02:34:26.400 - 02:34:35.480

I won't get into all that. we never saw our son again. We kept expecting him, especially my younger daughter and I kept expecting him to show up someday

02:34:36.200 - 02:34:51.020

'cause we heard in many cases that he did, after years even, but he didn't. So anyway, that was hard to take, you know. But so we built this boat and he gave up his,

02:34:51.080 - 02:34:57.600

he wound down his law practice. He's in private practice with him. And so we left. - This was in San Diego.

02:34:58.260 - 02:35:07.320

- Yeah, we left from San Diego and went down to Baja, stayed until he finished it up, closed it down. Well, he left it with a young law partner. And so we sailed.

02:35:08.100 - 02:35:17.020

Our shakedown cruise was to Hawaii, another crazy thing. Shouldn't put this on tape. And we had a little shakedown, we had some problems. Anyway, we made it to Hawaii,

02:35:17.080 - 02:35:24.540

we had a wonderful time there. And so we went back to Hickam and they let us tie up there 'cause we'd been charter members of the yacht club there. That was fun too.

02:35:24.600 - 02:35:34.140

We'd sail in races against other yacht clubs as crew. It was loads of fun. It was wonderful sailing in Hawaii 'cause the water's warm there.

02:35:34.980 - 02:35:44.220

And that's where we bought our boat. And when we had our boat and he fixed it up, he worked on it and got it ship shape. We bought this guy 'cause we were drying aloe,

02:35:44.980 - 02:35:53.520

and we saw a guy coming off, an older man, coming off his boat there with a bucket in his hand or something, and just in his swim trunks.

02:35:54.300 - 02:36:02.920

and there was no for sale sign there and the kids said to a person that's it stop the boat, that's the one we want, that's the boat we want and they could hardly see it

02:36:02.920 - 02:36:11.940

and we said what do you mean that old thing it didn't have much paint on it yes that's the one we want and so my husband said

02:36:12.520 - 02:36:24.280

is your boat for sale which he didn't have a sign on it, he said yeah I'll sell it and he was the most wonderful person they will never forget him, none of us he was dying of leukemia

02:36:24.280 - 02:36:38.360

He was a master seaman, by the way, with his papers. He'd been back and forth to Tahiti I don't know how many times and so had the boat. And the boat had been around, the yacht had been around the world once. It was around the world boat.

02:36:39.460 - 02:36:52.200

And so we talked with him and he didn't want much for it. He was dying. He had to go back to Walter Reed once a year and check him out for leukemia. The others in this crew, he worked for Lear and they were doing radiation things and he

02:36:52.120 - 02:37:10.340

got it and they got overshot. And so he was fine. But he went with us on the trips. We bought his home. And so he went with us in Massasema. He'd tell us what we could do. And the kids, we outfitted them. They had their own little life jackets. And the life jacket was a little whistle and a little flashlight. And they had their little caps and their little

02:37:10.520 - 02:37:25.820

shoes, you know, yachting shoes. And we'd go, like on a Sunday afternoon, we'd go off Waikiki and riding the big rollers out there. And he would let them ride the bowsprit. Whatever he said they'd do, well, I wasn't going to say no.

02:37:26.460 - 02:37:31.700

And he would let them. But then he'd learn that he knew they were just really pretty responsible kids. They weren't going to do anything foolish.

02:37:32.140 - 02:37:39.900

And they'd get up and ride on the bowsprit like that. So how long then did you live in Hawaii? Three years. Three years.

02:37:40.040 - 02:37:45.960

Yeah. And then when you came back, where did you go? Went to San Bernardino. And he went with that.

02:37:46.080 - 02:38:00.960

And then later he went to another school, then he went to law school. And after that, what? Well, at that time, I have pictures of this.

02:38:01.040 - 02:38:08.240

They featured us in a magazine. They came out and this woman did, on our boat with all the kids there. And every shot there's one child missing.

02:38:08.360 - 02:38:15.140

They said, "Look, one's missing here." And they were climbing the mast and they were doing all things, you know, the pictures and all.

02:38:15.520 - 02:38:25.640

So we still have that magazine someplace, I think, and photos from it. >> Once you were disbanded from the WASP, did you ever fly again? >> One trip.

02:38:26.740 - 02:38:41.120

Now, there I almost bought the farm. I found out an old high school friend of mine, Ophelia Warrington, lived over in Carthage, and that her husband had his own plane, and it was a telegraph, really nice plane.

02:38:41.960 - 02:38:50.600

And so, and my husband had stayed back. When I came down to Texas, I had the baby, and I said, "I got to go. It's just too cold." And at that time, we thought we might want

02:38:50.640 - 02:38:59.280

to have a little ranch. We didn't have enough money for it, but we just thought we wanted to do something like that. And so I came back and lived with the folks,

02:38:59.860 - 02:39:27.300

and then he was living in a frat house, and so I said, "Okay, so I'm going to fly up to see you." vacation, baby was about five months old and I left her with my mother. And so I rented his telegraph and flew up and to Iowa City. Flew out of, must have been

02:39:27.480 - 02:39:49.640

St. Louis and trying to make it into Waterloo and what a headwind. I just felt I was moving backwards and I was never gonna make it and I began to get sort of lost. You know, cities began showing up on the horizon and I thought, "Okay, which one's which?" So I flew for what I thought was it, and it was getting dark. And my husband was

02:39:49.680 - 02:40:07.660

worried because I had already called him and told him I'd be coming in. So he and his buddies had gone off the airport and they'd line up cars because there's no lights there, just a little airport, to shine on the runway. And I kept plugging along and I made it. And and I thought, "Oh, God."

02:40:07.720 - 02:40:21.660

But now I've got to fly the thing back. No, so I got there, and he had made arrangements for us to spend the night, or however long I was there, with another WASP, and her name was Jean Livingston.

02:40:22.260 - 02:40:29.020

It's not the Jean Livingston now, 'cause that was her maiden name. And I forgot, we knew both him, her husband, and they lived in, he was in school

02:40:29.640 - 02:40:35.820

there at the University of Iowa. So we spent the night with him. And the first night I was there, Well, maybe I shouldn't put all this in.

02:40:36.320 - 02:40:44.300

Anyway, I found I was pregnant again. I felt life and I said, "Oh no, I'm pregnant again." So I went to my good old doctor. She was a wonderful woman doctor.

02:40:44.730 - 02:40:53.320

They delivered the first baby. She lived in a Grant Wood home. She'd bought it and restored it. She was a wonderful doctor.

02:40:53.560 - 02:41:00.420

And she said, she examined me. She said, "Well, there's not a thing wrong with you, "except you're about five months pregnant." I, (gasps)

02:41:01.100 - 02:41:06.240

got to fly this plane back again, you know? So I had to. And I did. I survived.

02:41:07.900 - 02:41:21.840

Of all the things that you have done, wow. What's the one thing you're most proud of? Eight children and a wonderful husband. Good.

02:41:22.360 - 02:41:28.420

Tell me about those children today. I lost two of them. I told you about the one on the sun. Never saw him again.

02:41:28.580 - 02:41:39.040

He was my youngest son, Vincent. The first child went, she didn't go with us on that trip. In fact, she got seasick. Nearly every trip we'd go out in Hawaii.

02:41:39.280 - 02:41:47.540

We would sail to the other islands. Wonderful time. Before there were tourists there very much, we were on the Hanalei Bay where people go today

02:41:47.620 - 02:41:58.460

and spend mega bucks. And we went with Mike, our guy. And we were tied up there. And a beach, most wonderful looking beach.

02:41:58.600 - 02:42:12.280

wasn't a soul on the beach with us the whole time we were there. And we went to Halei Bay and we went to Maui and we were treated wonderfully, I think because of the children, they were so gutsy I guess.

02:42:13.280 - 02:42:24.160

And the superintendent of the sugar mill came there the night we came in, we were late coming in because we lost power and we had to have power to get into that little place. And they came

02:42:25.180 - 02:42:43.740

because they were concerned about us. They saw us coming in and not too many yachts came in in those days. John Ford was there with his big yacht, you know, the famous director. But they were worried about us, and so then they saw us coming back in. We had to go back out to charge the battery up so we could start the engine. And so, anyway,

02:42:43.840 - 02:42:56.800

she came and she says, "I know with all these children you have laundry to do. Come out to my house. I'll send the car for you. Come out and do laundry." And the guy at the hotel, a big famous old pioneer insect. I noticed you don't have a shower board.

02:42:58.000 - 02:43:05.580

Come out, they come up to the hotel and you use the one on the second floor, bring your own towels. You know, and the people who delivered ice.

02:43:05.760 - 02:43:16.860

We had an icebox, nothing else. And so you come and we'll deliver it for you. They delivered things for us. And fishermen there, a crew there from New Zealand

02:43:17.600 - 02:43:26.800

were there fishing and they came over to our table. The first night we got in there, We were late coming in, it was late, and we used to yell out, "Tell them to hold the dining room from the banyan end."

02:43:26.800 - 02:43:35.040

And we went in there with all the kids, you know, all day long, we'd been sitting in the sun, having a wonderful time. But you can imagine, they were pretty young at the time still.

02:43:36.700 - 02:43:48.140

Youngest was still only eight months when we made the strips, you know, when we started making them. And people came to our table then, you know, and commented about the kids.

02:43:48.920 - 02:43:59.240

Same thing when we went on our way to Hawaii, I mean to Japan, we went to Fisherman's Wharf. We got there and the Officer's Club was closed and so my husband said, "What?

02:43:59.820 - 02:44:09.060

We'll just go down to Fisherman's Wharf." And we started in there and San Francisco is not a children's town and especially in those days. It's just their nose would get all crooked if you had

02:44:09.880 - 02:44:28.820

over one and a half children or something. So we came walking in there. nice restaurant, seafood restaurant upstairs and said okay table for nine or whatever. We didn't have law at that time. So up the stairs and marshals and seated us a table and gave us

02:44:29.020 - 02:44:46.800

one or two waiters you know and people's heads would just turn you know like this. We sat at our table and actually they sent wine to our table. I mean some customers sent wine to I'm going to put one more thing. I go into too much depth on these, sorry.

02:44:46.980 - 02:44:53.780

That's okay, we're going to get back. Okay, I'm rolling. How's my lipstick holding up? It's good.

02:44:54.460 - 02:45:02.340

Let me ask you first, when you finally settled down, where did you settle? Did you ever settle down? No. No, okay.

02:45:02.970 - 02:45:21.100

Tell me about your children's today. Okay, Mitchell. name for General Billy Mitchell. We read his biography before I had her, so Mitchell was going to be. But when we went to baptize her, the priest would not, this is Iowa City, he

02:45:21.180 - 02:45:38.560

would not use that as a baptism name. I said, "Well, her middle name's Anne, that's a saint, is that good enough?" "Yeah, okay, Anne Mitchell," she was baptized. Then when she started Catholic school I thought, "Her name's not going to go in Catholic school either." And so we went back to use Mitchell. Mitchell is her birth certificate name and she likes it.

02:45:38.920 - 02:45:58.620

There's some and there was a Mitchell Long who was stationed with us in Evansville and I liked her a lot and she was cute and I liked the name and so did my husband. She got away with it, okay, so our first daughter. We didn't exactly name her, we named her Billie Mitchell. So then the next one, she's in Austin, Texas

02:45:58.560 - 02:46:27.360

and she's a librarian there. She's with her husband, who's a landscape artist, architect, and she works in a library. And she writes, but mostly now she's doing genealogy of the Joel family and the Moore, and whatever she's doing. She spends most of her time when she's not at work doing that. And the next one is Eric, Eric James, because I named a baby that

02:46:27.360 - 02:46:50.680

we lost in between these two. I named him James Eric. He was premature and lived only two hours. So anyway, I named this one Eric James. And I named him Eric because I was reading a book about the Catholic Church, the early days of Christianity, not just Catholic of course to begin with, it was the only church in the beginning, in Sweden. And so there

02:46:50.740 - 02:47:13.980

was Eric, so I named him Eric. Turned out later we found he has an uncle, had an uncle Eric in Sweden. It's okay, so I named him Eric. He, well I put all this in about Mitchell finding what got back her degree. She married young and didn't go to school, but then her second husband put her through school, let her go through school and she studied writing

02:47:14.600 - 02:47:34.260

and that was in San Bernardino. By then they had a university there. And so she still writes That's her forte is short stories. And by the way, John is working on his short stories. John is working on my grandson, Dr. Grandson, junior in high school, loves writing.

02:47:34.620 - 02:47:49.060

And we think it's strange because he doesn't necessarily like schoolwork. But anyway, so then Kristen was born. And I named her because I was reading a book, books by Kristen Lover, Kristen's, Sigrid, what is her name?

02:47:50.180 - 02:48:06.900

Sigurd Anset, the famous Swedish writer who wrote of early history. And I named her after one of her books, Kristian Lappbrandt's daughter. Where is she now? She came here today. That's Kristian. I'm living with her now.

02:48:07.440 - 02:48:17.320

Oh. That was Kristian that you met. She's the only one who became a lawyer after that. Okay. And now she's in the State Department. I've been many wonderful places with her.

02:48:17.320 - 02:48:27.360

I'm living now pretty vicariously through my children. After my husband died in '94 in Louisiana, we were a little place there that we liked, and he died of cancer.

02:48:29.340 - 02:48:40.140

He's buried in Arlington with honors, full honors. The boom, boom, boom, the grandchildren got to hear it and everything. So, and I will be buried there.

02:48:40.440 - 02:48:50.420

- Chris is also with the State Department. - She's with, she's called a Foreign Service Officer. She mostly was in passports. Her first assignment, she went in late.

02:48:50.520 - 02:48:57.380

She didn't go in until she was 40, decided she didn't really want to practice law, although she was with legal services that does free help for people

02:48:57.390 - 02:49:04.460

and traveled a lot in the States. And my son now works there for them, and my daughter-in-law worked there too. He's still working there, the only one.

02:49:06.080 - 02:49:17.980

So she applied for it, and she's a tremendously good writer, which helps her too. And because they read her and she wrote about all her travel and living in foreign countries.

02:49:18.790 - 02:49:29.380

And because she was used to living in different cultures. They figured, okay, she'll be okay with the State Department, I guess, whatever. - And she now lives-

02:49:29.380 - 02:49:36.400

- Besides that, she made one of the highest test on, grades on the test. - And she now lives in Mexico. - She now lives in Nogales.

02:49:36.400 - 02:49:42.420

She is chief of station there. The station is only two years old. She's up for a third year there. So she wanted me to come live with her.

02:49:42.500 - 02:49:51.860

I was living with a daughter in San Francisco, but I visited twice in Burma when she was there, and that was a fantastic trip. I love that culture too.

02:49:53.520 - 02:50:02.000

And so then she asked for and got in Nogales. So she's chief of station there, about 40 people under her there. So she has to make a lot of trips.

02:50:02.060 - 02:50:09.640

We were going on one Monday, where she's being interviewed for something or other. She's interviewed a lot, 'cause there's a lot of heat along the border now

02:50:09.740 - 02:50:30.120

because of September 11th. And then the next child is Theresa, who is only 13 months younger, and she lives in Tunisia, La Marse-a-Tunisia, right beside Tunis. And she went there because she married a Frenchman who was born there.

02:50:31.340 - 02:50:47.060

And although they are divorcing now, he's no longer there, she is there. And she had to learn French after she moved there, that's the second language. and she began getting in business because her degree, she graduated from American University. She didn't graduate until later on and we helped pay her way through because she just

02:50:47.220 - 02:51:05.720

flew around in art things and not making much money and she decided, and we didn't know she was that brainy, she came out cum laude out of American University, going to night school and working daytime, but in the end she learned how to study and do everything on the computer, all of this and everything.

02:51:06.400 - 02:51:16.840

So we were quite proud of her. And she got in American University because she didn't have enough hours to graduate, but they had a program there where you go in with work experience.

02:51:17.400 - 02:51:29.440

And these are not little ten-page things. I can tell you, we went there when she was still working, and my husband helped her put it together. They were like this. She got credit in Spanish, because she'd gone to school. Most of my kids did do some time at the university,

02:51:30.300 - 02:51:45.620

La Universidad de las Americas in Puebla, or Chulula, Mexico. Three of them graduated from there, got their BAs from that school, which was heavy with—their classes were in English—heavy with kids from school going down there for a winter semester for one thing.

02:51:46.100 - 02:52:05.220

But it was cheap for us to send them down there, and they loved it. And so then she—well, anyway, she decided to go in the State Department. So she was in Mexico City, and I visited there after my husband died. And Bruma, now here.

02:52:06.740 - 02:52:14.220

And I went in Korea. I went over with her to help her get settled and get the kids in school, because they got the after-school started. And I visited.

02:52:14.320 - 02:52:26.100

>>And the next child? >>Is Theresa, and I'll get back to her. She's in Tunisia and is still there. And she has one of my beautiful granddaughters, who has been in French school since she's

02:52:26.100 - 02:52:47.500

in third grade. They went there and she started out knowing no French, but she made it and she loves it and she wants to go to university someplace in France, if this stepfather will come through. So anyway, they have a good life there. She does business things. She works for,

02:52:47.520 - 02:53:11.240

and I couldn't tell the name of the organization, but she works for a woman who is head of a and it's worldwide and this woman is president of it. Her English wasn't that good but she had heard of Teresa. She had met her at a women's club or something there and Teresa would do paperwork. By then she's taught herself to do

02:53:11.700 - 02:53:29.380

translate from French. She bought French business magazines. She had French business books and French books and taught herself to do papers for them transferring into business English. She also wrote for an English published newspaper there and she did a couple pages

02:53:29.940 - 02:53:43.440

of business English. So anyway she's quite happy there. We keep saying come home, come home. The marriage went sour and bring her, you know, she said that Simone loves the school there and she wants her to graduate from there.

02:53:44.800 - 02:53:58.820

Next one is Mark. Mark is back in Washington. He was in, he works at World Bank. He went to school, graduated from school in Mexico and then he and his wife, DeBee, she was from the Dominican Republic

02:53:59.280 - 02:54:14.280

and then they went to school, the two years master program at Johns Hopkins School of International Studies and they went to school there and then he got the job he wanted out of that. Another friend

02:54:14.560 - 02:54:33.700

of theirs from old high school days in San Diego went there and he wanted to go to the State Department so he's in the State Department, he's the one who influence Chris to get into State Department. Mark wanted to go World Bank. That was his goal. And he didn't get in immediately, but he did get in, you know, and they were part of it. And,

02:54:33.780 - 02:54:54.380

Chris, it helped that they spoke Spanish because they had to speak Spanish to graduate from that school. So he's done very well. He just finished a three-year tour in Argentina, and I went there twice to visit them in Buenos Aires, and I love that, too. He's now back in Washington. And then the next one was the son, another son.

02:54:54.420 - 02:55:06.500

He's the one who was lost on the fishing boat. And then the next one is Anastasia. And she lives in San Francisco. She went only maybe a half semester's college.

02:55:07.080 - 02:55:17.000

She was an artist. She just did not belong in school. And I didn't find out really until later in years, in fact, maybe the last three years,

02:55:17.140 - 02:55:26.560

why she couldn't handle college work. dyslexia and dyslexia you know can fake it to a certain amount but when you've got a full load of school work

02:55:26.920 - 02:55:35.660

she would never take a full load you know but she had something you can't buy from a college her artistry equated a career

02:55:36.080 - 02:55:40.880

she's a stylist which means she works with photographers on shoots

02:55:41.520 - 02:55:52.760

mostly right now she works for photographers doing digital uh... and they ask for her she is so good She's even worked for the Robert Redfield Magazine over in Salt Lake.

02:55:52.840 - 02:55:58.960

They sent for her out of San Francisco there. She's very good at studies. She doesn't like working with models. She does static display or whatever you want to call it.

02:55:59.620 - 02:56:09.000

And she has a lot of stuff on websites like Banana Republic and Gap. She works with them most often. And so she's been successful. It pays well.

02:56:09.730 - 02:56:28.500

So she went freelance and so she gets that. And I love living with her in San Francisco. we got along very well, we were on the same kind of diet. And I love San Francisco, although we lived in South San Francisco, but I could walk there, it was suburbia. And then the

02:56:28.560 - 02:56:53.860

next one was Laura, and Laura died when she was about 27, a liver disease. She was, I could never tell her anything, could never, never. She did not realize her goal of being either Ryder or, what do you call it, where they cast, she wanted to be a cast for movies

02:56:53.900 - 02:57:06.180

and she wanted to go to New York University, NYU, to study that, but she didn't make it. So that's my family, did I miss one? Listen, we left one on the boat once.

02:57:07.300 - 02:57:16.660

(laughing) We were in a hurry to get back and get the kids in school, we'd been out on a long trip, And so hurry, hurry and get the car and get them off there

02:57:16.680 - 02:57:24.460

and go home and get your uniforms on when they were in Catholic school. Not all of them, but some. And I hustle on, and I got in the car and go home.

02:57:25.560 - 02:57:35.020

Somebody said, "Where's Anastasia?" Oh, Lord. (laughing) So our guy who, you know, good old Mike,

02:57:35.420 - 02:57:48.780

and he had hired on another guy. He'd let another guy sail with us that night over to Maui. And so they were cleaning up the boat, he went back to make up the beds, this guy, Mike was at the wheel, and he said, "There's

02:57:48.820 - 02:58:05.000

a child down here." So we had to go down to Isle of Wye and pick her up. >>When you were sailing, I'm just going to ask this quick question, when you were sailing, who was the master controller of the ship? >>Oh, my husband, of course.

02:58:05.520 - 02:58:20.880

>>But could you do that also? >>Oh, yeah. We took navigation. We weren't any good at it. Our son was a navigator when and he came aboard. And all of them, different ones, took a turn at the wheel. At first, my oldest son said, "I can't do this," and he was, you know, he'd never been at the wheel

02:58:20.920 - 02:58:33.940

so and I said, "Of course you can, you know, any of you can do this." So they became-- >>But you did all the sails. >>Oh, they loved it. They loved it. >>Lee, throughout life, there were ups and downs and there were happy times and there

02:58:33.960 - 02:58:42.320

were sad times. >>Better believe it. >>How did you get through those sad times? Hmm, with a little help, you know.

02:58:43.650 - 02:58:53.060

And I guess it's... With a little help from where? Well, you know, I prayed in the old days. You know, it's this "two will pass" sort of philosophy.

02:58:53.930 - 02:59:02.000

You know, nothing's forever. And this, it will pass. Yeah, and everything will be alright. Somehow, everything's going to be alright.

02:59:03.320 - 02:59:19.140

Sagittarian. Sagittarians are loaded optimists. They don't want to be caught putting themselves down or imagining anything bad. Let me ask you, what is your opinion of Jacqueline Cochran and the WASP program?

02:59:23.000 - 02:59:43.260

Well, I also have my family and husband. One of the most wonderful things that ever happened to me. I wanted to fly. I don't say I was a good pilot. I survived, let's put it that way. almost didn't survive the last flight out on your end to New York. It was a real touch and go thing, but I loved it. And it was good, you know, that I was married to

02:59:43.300 - 03:00:08.380

a man who loved to fly, who was a warrior, and that he didn't have to stop off at the bar and do bar flying like this, you know, after work. He could go home and everybody realized that we were family people. And let's- And Miss Cochran? And what? What is your opinion of Jacqueline Cochran. Well I thought she was wonderful and later I was in Florida and a friend that I met

03:00:08.440 - 03:00:30.620

down there who had a little bookstore wrote and she worked for the publisher and she wrote books about famous Florida people and one of her first books if not the first was it was it was a life of Jacqueline Cochran and I learned something about Jacqueline I didn't know before because she really researched it. And some of it of course was, we never really knew the truth.

03:00:31.920 - 03:00:57.800

She was a wonderful person. I mean, I admire her, so I sent copies to my grandchildren and all like that. And she was a great pilot. I mean, sure she may have been this, that, and the other, but to me, I liked, I met Nancy Love, but I had no background with Nancy Love. Nancy Love's outfit I felt was never going to be egalitarian. You know? So the poor little

03:00:57.960 - 03:01:16.520

girls from East Texas. What do you feel the legacy of the WASP will be? You can do it too. Listen, when I was out, we lived in Micronesia and we flew air Micronesia. We got there in '76 and we'd make, maybe leave the boat there and then we got off the boat

03:01:16.520 - 03:01:24.020

and we still lived there. We came back. We lived there a total of maybe eight years. We'd fly Air American Asia, which was, well, I never really learned the connection,

03:01:24.160 - 03:01:34.960

but it was subsidiary and pilots furnished by Continental Airlines and to this day still. They hired women, and this was a tough run. Let me tell you, when they started into truck,

03:01:35.820 - 03:01:48.920

and, you know, these are atolls. First stop is in the Johnson Island, a tiny place, you know, and women weren't even supposed to go there. we did later on our boat. They tried to get us out in a hurry. We stayed 36 hours and

03:01:48.920 - 03:02:07.720

they were great to us, but poison gas still were there. And the next one, Marshall Islands, Maduro, it's an atoll in just one strip. They even got their water off that. The water drained off the island because they had practically no water there. And the people would go to land, they're passengers for the first time,

03:02:08.180 - 03:02:19.680

and they'd look out and they'd say, "Okay, we're coming to Maduro now, passenger seat boats and like that, and they couldn't see land. They just see water on either side of the land, the ocean and the lagoon.

03:02:21.200 - 03:02:30.840

And so the same way with truck, that was, truck had some high land there, but the air force, it was maybe only 4,500 feet tall. They were fine.

03:02:35.520 - 03:02:49.780

120's what, Boeing, one what? Anyway, one of the first Boeing passenger planes. And then now they're flying the something else. But anyway, they had women on there.

03:02:51.120 - 03:03:03.420

And I met this gal once, because we were landing in Madras. I was flying back to the States with something, probably birth of a grandchild or something. And so it was really grease, wheels of grease on landing.

03:03:03.860 - 03:03:14.620

And so the pilot came out and said, "Gee, that was a sharp landing," you know, and something about. And he said, "Well, tell my pilot." And this little blond gal, about your size,

03:03:14.700 - 03:03:24.780

Dini, excuse me, came out. And I said, "That was a great landing." And then I went on to tell her that I was a wasp and that, and she said, "You did it for us.

03:03:25.000 - 03:03:34.800

We never would have made this." And I was told that again, over and over again, by women pilots that I met. She became captain, and then she went on to Guam,

03:03:34.800 - 03:03:46.480

and she became captain. And then there was another one who was really tall a beautiful gal and she went on to fly their four-engine planes that fly into Australia with the Conrad Airlines.

03:03:47.580 - 03:03:59.960

And so, I mean, I've been told that over and over again. And so that's what I want to tell young people today. You do what you want to do. Don't let anybody stop you. I did. Surely if I can do it, you know, you can do it.

03:04:00.560 - 03:04:10.540

And that's what I want most of them to get from us. And they did. They got the message. Oh, and you know, when we were in Sweetwater, These gals certainly told us, you paved the way.

03:04:12.580 - 03:04:23.980

You know, the B1 pilots, these gals, wonderful. And so, you know, and that makes you feel good that, well, it's inevitable, of course. We did it.

03:04:24.740 - 03:04:36.580

And so I'm so glad that this is being done and putting us on record to see that little gals can do it. And it was a time when gals really-- there were very few women pilots in our whole program.

03:04:37.400 - 03:04:47.640

there were around a thousand, that was about it, who graduated and went on to work. And we just felt it was the most wonderful job we could ever have.

03:04:48.680 - 03:04:55.940

And after that, when I flew that little plane up to the DC, my husband and I thought, I can't handle this. It's no fun.

03:04:56.420 - 03:05:05.100

And I knew that, so I didn't even try going flying 'cause I was a family woman. And that's what we were. And we started to join an air club up in,

03:05:05.880 - 03:05:16.460

Oh, where was it they bombed during Pearl Harbor? Oh, where they had an air club. And we checked into it, but we said, but no. You know, the most we could take on were maybe two children.

03:05:16.620 - 03:05:25.560

They had a two-seater. I mean, you know, a little cabin plane. We've got to do something that children can do. And we wanted to play a boat that we could sleep on.

03:05:25.640 - 03:05:34.180

We didn't want to be in a little boat. We wanted to be contained on their beds, food, fun, everything on a boat. And so we went into yachting.

03:05:35.080 - 03:05:49.500

That really pleases. What would you like to say to your grandchildren or children in the future that might encourage them and give them some hope? It's strange that none of mine wanted to fly.

03:05:51.640 - 03:06:00.240

My son and they're all crazy about-- well, certainly they take airlines, they're not afraid of flying-- but not one of them. They had other things to do.

03:06:01.030 - 03:06:10.540

And when we finally got off the boat and they wanted to do that, One son, Mark, bought a sailboat outside Annapolis and kept it there. And we were sailing with him, and I began to see

03:06:11.560 - 03:06:24.120

it was a small boat. And there was no fun in that. But what you want to do is be happy wherever you are and whatever you're doing.

03:06:24.960 - 03:06:38.220

So I have seven children. Nobody could ever put me down. 'Cause I won't say I was the best mother in the world or the best wife or anything else, but I liked my life.

03:06:38.420 - 03:06:51.040

I liked who I was, but a lot of it was who I had been. You know, I think if I had not been a WOS with all that wonderful background, I probably, first time I thought of this,

03:06:52.100 - 03:07:00.240

that I probably not have been so content with being a housewife and mother. Even with my husband flying, I think it'd been more frustrating, you know.

03:07:00.580 - 03:07:10.940

if I hadn't had that background. So it gave me a lot. Jackie Cochran gave me a lot. Her life, she came from nothing. A poor orphanage.

03:07:11.860 - 03:07:27.240

Not an orphanage. I mean, just poor. Didn't even know who we were. You know, just migrant workers. She can do it and marry a fabulously wealthy man and have her own company and this, that, and the other. I won't say it works.

03:07:28.440 - 03:07:40.920

but hold it, you can shoot for it, you know. Pretend it's going to work. And I have a wonderful philosophy now. You'll see from there that I don't go to a church, I'm not affiliated with one anymore.

03:07:41.980 - 03:07:53.720

But I have what we call a philosophy that I ran into. I won't say anything is by chance anymore, everything I think works just the way it's supposed to be. This is my philosophy now.

03:07:54.220 - 03:08:04.120

All those things that happened, all those children, not everybody I was pregnant and everything. But all this was meant to be. I was meant to fly.

03:08:04.140 - 03:08:14.840

It was meant to, you know. It's not of my doing. There's a higher power that takes care of me and sees that I fulfill whatever I do here.

03:08:16.080 - 03:08:25.240

But I don't have to... No, I'm about to give you a lecture, huh? But I don't have to pray to this being. Call it God, call it awareness, call it consciousness,

03:08:25.420 - 03:08:37.640

like God if you will, because everybody does. But I think Jesus must have said that someplace in the New Testament, he already knows what you need. Don't try to tell him what you need.

03:08:39.060 - 03:08:50.320

And remember the apostles had to ask him for a prayer. It's almost, I read between the lines, it's almost, well, if you must. You know, his wasn't that form of prayer. It was like being one of them.

03:08:50.740 - 03:09:02.260

We're winding up, they use all their film, it's 3.30. I still have a couple of questions. Yeah, I wanted to know if there's anything that you, that I've left out that you want to talk about.

03:09:03.540 - 03:09:11.460

>> Well, I can't think of anything. >> Think of anything. >> I've told you all my children. I've told you what they're doing in life.

03:09:12.180 - 03:09:20.420

And what I'm doing now that I lost my husband, that was a blow. That was a blow. I thought we'd live forever, or at least to 80-something. I've lived to 80, but he died at 73.

03:09:22.140 - 03:09:28.460

and it was a blow to him too. >> Can I ask you? >> Yeah. >> What's your favorite airplane?

03:09:29.850 - 03:09:45.360

>> To fly myself? P-63. And as the King Cobra, not all of us got to fly a P-63. If you were up in the -- where we were at Romulus and went over to the factory, because it was a woman's airplane.

03:09:45.450 - 03:10:03.620

It was more power than the P-39, more room, tricycle gear. You know, I had more, I just loved it. - Okay, what did you find exciting about the link train? You said it was exciting to fly the link train.

03:10:05.060 - 03:10:14.320

- Well, I don't know what I meant either. I don't, come to think of it, it's just that I was there while I'm in a link train. - I guess the last thing I needed to ask,

03:10:14.420 - 03:10:27.800

I was gonna ask you about that date in the 86. - Oh, all right. Well, we went over to Sarasota on the beach that day, and for the first time, I was happy I'd gotten my figure back

03:10:27.880 - 03:10:41.120

by that time, you know. I had a nice figure in a swimsuit. Okay, so we started home, to get home from there, on my instrument car, not his, and we began to hit a front.

03:10:41.580 - 03:10:52.560

I mean, it was low clouds just closing in around us, and we had to find a place fast to land. We weren't about to get back to Orlando. And so the hole in the crown we saw was the Melbourne,

03:10:53.160 - 03:11:04.000

Banana River, and it was navy. And we stopped in there. I had to R.O. in there, so you can imagine the looks I got when I got back the next day late for class.

03:11:04.560 - 03:11:15.760

And so we stayed there. It was fun. >> You have been absolutely delightful. She's not making it up, is she?

03:11:15.830 - 03:11:25.900

>> Well, gee, I've got an audience. >> I remember I was an actress. >> Yeah, she was an actress. Yeah. Well, I can say a lot of things you and Nancy have in common.

03:11:25.910 - 03:11:30.420

>> Okay. >> A lot of things. And a lot of things you and I have in common. >> Yes, certainly.

03:11:30.450 - 03:11:36.880

>> But you have been an absolute delight. >> I bet you tell that to all of us. >> I do not. I do not.

03:11:37.100 - 03:11:49.860

>> Really? Some of them remember the bad times. >> Right. Well, some of -- we have one that's -- that Nancy has corresponded with, talked to her two or three times about this interview.

03:11:50.640 - 03:12:08.720

And the last time she talked to her, we had sent her the questionnaire. And she said to Nancy, she didn't like it, and other WASPs don't like it either. And Nancy said, "Oh, she was so"--and she said, "It's none of your business." Oh, my God. See, I didn't know people like that.

03:12:10.000 - 03:12:21.280

Or after they got that way, maybe. Nancy, it could be that she's getting not Alzheimer's, that other thing that you get, that one minute you're- Dementia?

03:12:21.620 - 03:12:35.820

Yeah, dementia. Or just depression, which begins before dementia. My dearest friend's mother got dementia, and she was the most wonderful Christian lady I think I've ever known.

03:12:35.820 - 03:12:46.440

Just never a naughty word of any kind. And once she got that, all of a sudden, she would cuss those kids out. And then... Yeah, so you have to remember, we're 80 plus, most of us.

03:12:46.460 - 03:12:59.520

And that's what I told Nancy about this particular wasp. And I think maybe I'm going to discourage her if I call her, because I had called her and talked to her one time, and she started out that way, and then by the time I finished talking to her, she was fine.

03:12:59.900 - 03:13:27.140

But then when Nancy talked to her, she said, "These questions are none of your business." And it's necessary, you know, what's an interview for if it's not my business, you know? So I think I may just kind of, I said we'll just kind of, we scheduled her on Sunday because we thought we needed a day of rest anyway, next Sunday. And that I would rather her just not do it if it's, you know, if she feels...

03:13:27.160 - 03:13:35.820

Yeah, you can explain to her if you feel that way. Right. Because? Because there are 200 others who do want to do it and we're not going to get around to a lot.

03:13:35.820 - 03:13:41.180

How many are you getting? >>Well, youíre number 65, I think. >>Okay. Are you making headway?

03:13:41.780 - 03:13:48.640

>>Yeah. >>How many are left? >>Well, we still have almost 200 that sent their questionnaires back and wanted to be in.

03:13:48.640 - 03:13:54.920

>>Oh, so you didnít bother if they didnít send it back? >>If they didnít send it back, we didnít. >>No, of course not. >>Of course you didnít send yours back, but we bothered with it.

03:13:54.920 - 03:14:01.040

>>Did I get one? >>You did, but itís been three years since. >>Oh, well, Iíd never got it, probably. >>Well, you might not have.

03:14:01.060 - 03:14:05.800

>>No, I think not. I donít remember it. >>But we did on this trip. We had a lot of questions.

03:14:05.800 - 03:14:14.080

We did send another letter a month and a half ago. Well, do that because I was out of pocket. I only made two conventions. Yeah.

03:14:14.680 - 03:14:22.660

We did send all the ones that were in Arizona. Either the hospital having a baby or out at sea. A new opportunity. And told them we were coming and if they would like to be,

03:14:22.780 - 03:14:32.040

we would be happy to include them. And if they didn't write back, then we would just let it go. Yeah. But if they've moved, if you didn't get the letter back,

03:14:32.820 - 03:14:43.360

then you might give them another chance. Because I appreciate you giving me another chance. Listen, you have been absolutely, you're great. You better not be sure at Baylor.

03:14:44.380 - 03:14:52.280

I hope by the time that I need to transcribe this that we can pay somebody to do it though. Because I've been trying to transcribe.