WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL COLLECTION
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE:Doris D. Wilson
INTERVIEWER:Beth Carmichael
DATE:March 8, 2007
BC:Today is March 8, 2007. My name is Beth Carmichael, and I'm in the Hodges
Reading Room of the Special Collections and University Archives Department of
the library at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro [UNCG]. I'm here
with Dr. Doris Wilson of Halifax, North Carolina, to conduct an oral history
interview for the Women Veterans Historical Project. Dr. Wilson, thank you very
much for meeting with me this morning. If you can give me your full name, we'll
use that as a test of our recorder.
DW:My full name is Doris Dickens Hoye Wilson.
BC:Ms. Wilson, I'd like to start a little bit about talking about your
background. Can you tell me when and where you were born and a little bit about
your family and childhood?
DW:I was born in Smithfield, North Carolina, in 1920, August 28.
BC:Can you tell me a little bit about your family? What did your parents do?
DW:My father was a merchant. In Smithfield he had a Seed & Feed store where he
catered to farmers, and then he was a salesman. He liked to travel and sell to
traveling salesmen, too. That was--let's see. We left Smithfield in 1926, and
from there we moved to Kinston [North Carolina]. I started school in Kinston. We
moved to Raleigh; I finished first grade in Raleigh. We moved to Enfield [North
Carolina] and I started the second grade in Enfield. We moved to Mount Olive
[North Carolina] and I finished the second grade in Mount Olive, and I did the
third grade in Mount Olive and started the fourth. I went to--in the fourth
grade I was in three schools: Enfield, Halifax, and Mount Olive. Then we moved
back to Mount Olive for a year. And, of course, this was during the Depression,
and my father realized he couldn't make a living selling. So we went "back to
the farm." We ended up in Burgaw [North Carolina] as tenant farmers and we
stayed there for, I think, about four years on the farm. We were right on the
Cape Fear, northeast Cape Fear River, and then we moved to Penderlea, which was
a government project which sold farms to farmers on long-term loans.
BC:Okay.
DW:I graduated from high school in Burgaw. I was there from the sixth grade on up.
BC:That's nice. No more moving and changing schools.
DW:So, I've often wondered what influence that had on my life, going to so many
different schools in the first six years of my life--first six grades of my
education. I know it caused me to miss math. I've always been a mathematical
moron. [laughs] But, let's see, then there were no jobs for high school graduates.
BC:What year did you graduate?
DW:Nineteen thirty-seven. I was sixteen years old. At that time we only had
eleven grades, and so I stayed around home and I did some babysitting, some
Saturday clerking in stores, and some farm work--anything I could pick up. Then
the National Youth Organization [sic, Administration], NYA, came along, and they
gave people like me--I believe eighteen months stretches of work.
BC:That's great.
DW:And I learned quite a bit. At that time I worked part-time in the Extension
Office in Burgaw, and the extension agent there didn't like 4-H Clubs, so I did
4-H clubs.
BC:Were you organizing the clubs?
DW:Organized some, took over some others, started one. I enjoyed it, and then I
also spent about six months of that time working in a library, a high school library.
BC:What did you do in the library?
DW:I learned to mostly type library cards.
BC:For the card catalog?
DW:Card catalog. Yeah, quite a lot of cards. I was trying--I was groping for
that word, catalog. Catalog cards. And I wrote a newsletter for the high school
and some things like that, but when my eighteen months was up, I had to go find
my own job. [laughs]
First year I was out of high school there was nothing to do. So I went back to
school and took physics, which I didn't get in high school, and worked for the
principal for nothing, just to have something to do. So I wanted to go to
college, but--and matter of fact, I was accepted here at UNC. Well, at that time
it was WCTC [sic, WC-UNC -- Woman's College of the University of North Carolina,
now UNCG] and my father had a job by that time, and we were doing a little
better, but by the end of the summer it was apparent that my mother needed an
operation, and I had to cancel that. So, I didn't get to come here until later
on. [laughs] Much later on.
Then, let's see. I went to Wilmington, [North Carolina]. My brother was working,
and he paid my tuition to go to business college in Wilmington. So I went to
Wilmington and worked in a boarding house to pay my room and board, and my
brother paid my tuition. When I finished my business course I got a job at the
Cape Fear Hotel in Wilmington, which was a first class hotel and had a first
class restaurant, probably the best in that part of North Carolina at that
time--very professionally done, looking back on it. And I got to be--well, they
call me an inventory clerk, I guess. The hotel maintained a storeroom which was
like a grocery store. They had everything we needed, and my job was to keep up
the inventory; that is, to make sure we had certain number of pounds of hams and
steaks and green beans and whatever we needed, you know.
BC:And this was for the restaurant?
DW:For the restaurant at the hotel.
BC:Okay.
DW:And the hotel was located downtown Wilmington, and it was one block across
the street from the post office. And at the post office they had a filter
center, which was a place where they kept track of all the airplanes that were
flying at the time in the area. They had a big table and with the area map on
it, and whenever a plane would fly, somebody from a little booth over in Wallace
[North Carolina] or Teachey [North Carolina] or one of the small towns would
call in and say, "There's a plane flying over," and he would describe it. They
had all kinds of maps there for him to know what kind of plane it was, and, of
course, the people in the filter center would [know] immediately if they didn't
know the plane. See, they were tracking it all the way.
BC:Right.
DW:They would immediately call in and make sure that it was a friendly plane. We
were right on the coast, so we were protecting the coast.
BC:So, the war had started at this point? Was this after Pearl Harbor?
DW:Yes. Oh, yes. I was sitting in my office when I heard the announcement of
Pearl Harbor. I'll never--nobody will ever forget where they were.
BC:So, you were at work that afternoon?
DW:Yes, I worked on Sundays, restaurant work goes on, you know, and that's one
of our most important days was Sunday noon, but--
BC:So what happened after the announcement was made? Did you hear it on the radio?
DW:I heard it on the radio, yes. I heard Roosevelt's speech, the original
speech, and my first thought was, "What's Pearl Harbor?" Never heard of it.
BC:Not many people had.
DW:Never heard of it before, but we quickly found out. So they were recruiting
volunteers over there at the filter center. So, I went over and I learned the
filter board. They started everybody out. Your orientation was to learn to work
the filter board and do various things there. So I learned that, and they found
out I graduated from business college, and, of course, they were working--this
was the 603rd Signal Corps--and they were working with mostly draftees, and the
typists they had were high school boys who could hunt and peck, and it was
pitiful. I mean their office was just dying for somebody who could write a
decent letter with words spelled correctly, and their company roster you could
hardly read.
I was then asked to work in the message center, and this was really high tech.
At that time it was the highest tech. [laughs] We had eleven teletype machines.
One was a secret message machine, and that one when it started typing we were
not supposed to go over and even look at the message. We couldn't even look at
it. We simply called the commanding officer, and he either came in himself or
sent his first sergeant in or another officer to pick up the message, and they
would reach out and tear it off and take it up without looking at it, and the
commander officer was the only one who was supposed to--he had the code. He
could break it.
Then we had a weather machine. Then we had machines connecting us to several
local bases: Camp Davis, Bluethenthal Field. They're all gone now. During the
war they were there, and Fort Bragg, and some--you know, all the bases around. I
could literally fall asleep and the bell would ring and wake me up. I could tell
you which machine was ringing. They all had a different ring. So, we learned the
rings of the machine. So we sent and received messages and directed them to the
proper place.
BC:Were you doing this work as a civilian?
DW:Yes, civilian volunteer, and there at the--in the post office the Signal
Corps, one of the Signal Corps officers was recruiting a company WAACs [Women's
Army Auxiliary Corps], and this was a brand new idea.
BC:Right.
DW:I'd never seen one. There wasn't one. [laughs]
BC:Right.
DW:But I was twenty-one. I was free. I had a job which was just a job, and I was
very patriotic. I've always been a very patriotic person. Always cry when I see
the flag go by. So I joined, and as I told you, that was about July 1, and he
told us then that we wouldn't be inducted until the first of October.
BC:And this is 1942?
DW:Yes, so I was not on pay until the first of October, but I continued to work
there as a civilian volunteer, and then, of course, I quit my job. The first of
October, by that time we had a decent company--you saw the roster of the ones
who went to Fort Bragg that day and were inducted, and that was the day I was
inducted, the first of October 1942.
BC:How did your family respond to this?
DW:They were very positive. They didn't mind. They knew there as a war on. We
were all patriotic people. So we went to Fort Bragg and we were inducted.
Now, I'll tell you this. I believe--I don't believe North Carolina ever met its
quota of WAACs. Things I've read since--and I know at the time we did not get
enough in Wilmington for a company. So when we went to--we were sent, oh, after
a few weeks; we didn't go immediately. When we were inducted, we worked in our
civilian clothes, and we were being paid $21 a month, but we were fed--until we
went in the uniform, we lived in our regular places. I lived in a boarding house.
So, when we went to Fort Des Moines [Iowa] for basic training, when we came back
we had to have a full company of WAACs. So we brought back with us people from
all over the country, and some of those girls were furious because they had been
promised to go back to their hometowns like New Orleans, New York, New Jersey,
all over the place, but they didn't mind. They knew they were in the army, so
they had to be moved around.
BC:When were you sent to Fort Des Moines for basic, because it would have been--
DW:This was when we went to Fort Bragg.
BC:--the end of '42 or early 1943?
DW:Oh, it was in November.
BC:November.
DW:In November of '42.
BC:What was training like?
DW:[Laughs] Drill, class, drill, class. Learned to do what you're told. Learn to
march. Learn to, you know, learn to take orders. Learn the proper GI way of
saying things and doing things. It wasn't bad.
BC:It wasn't a difficult adjustment?
DW:No, they didn't give us any weapons training, and we never had to do any
hazardous training or long hikes like the boys did. So at that time we were, I
think, being trained to be administrative WAACs, not fighting WAACs, you know?
BC:And when did you finally receive uniforms? During basic?
DW:While I was at basic training. They issued us uniforms the first day.
BC:And I know that one of the difficulties is--in the beginning--was creating
uniforms for the women. What did they give you?
DW:Well, it was sort of a replica of a man's uniform with a skirt.
BC:[Laughs]
DW:It was very [unclear]. And, of course, it had to be made to fit differently.
So we didn't look like men, but we were the same color. Our uniform--I
noticed--that's a good question, because now they are not dressing the women
exactly like the men all the time. At that time, our--even when I became an
officer, my uniform was an exact replica of a man's uniform, only with a skirt
instead of pants. The colors, buttons, everything was exactly alike. So--and the
hats to be different, of course, because girls have more hair than men.
BC:So you had the Hobby hat?
DW:Had that one, yes, and had the overseas cap, too.
BC:Okay.
DW:Both of those.
BC:Well, what happened when you finished basic training? They sent you back to Wilmington?
DW:Back to Wilmington. We had quite an experience going home. Our train got lost.
BC:[Laughs]
DW:We wandered around I forget how--I think we were two days late getting back
to Wilmington, and everybody in Wilmington was frantic. The first WAACs in
uniform I ever saw were our officers. And they were trained first and came to
Wilmington and were there when we were there in civilian clothes. So, they were
waiting for us to come back. They had planned a parade down Main Street when we
got back. We had a full company then, but for some unknown reason our train--we
went down in Missouri. I remember getting down to Alabama.
BC:Oh, my.
DW:And I don't know where all we wandered around. I suppose it was easier to
lose a train at that time, but to lose a company of WAACs. But they finally got
us back to Wilmington. Our company officer met the plane--I mean the train, and
she knew that we had been on that train two extra days and nights, and she
expected us to be wrinkled and dirty and dowdy, uncombed. So she cancelled the
parade. Well, of course, what we had done and what you would have done in the
same place, we had all saved one outfit--clean, pressed, ready to go. So we wore
our grubby clothes all on the trip, and then the morning we got up and were
headed for Wilmington, we put on our fresh, pressed GI uniform, and when we got
there she was surprised--
BC:I bet.
DW:--to see us, you know, so clean and neat and pressed and combed. But we had
all just saved everything so it would look that way, because we thought we were
going to parade, but we didn't because she had cancelled it. But, anyway, that
was one of the things that happened to me. But it was quite an experience, and I
got back and I still worked in the filter center.
BC:Okay.
DW:Because they still needed us, and I'd like to say this. I said before the men
were looking for typists, and when they talk about girls replacing boys, that
was probably one of the most important things, was in clerical work and
stenographic work, secretarial work. Because those boys, some of them were just
fresh out of high school, and they might have taken a typing course and they
might not, and they were told, "Type this letter. Learn to type. You're going to
be the company clerk," whether they could spell or not. [laughs] So they loved
those girls for that, and we had to learn, especially after I became an officer.
We were directed, "Don't let anybody make a secretary out of you," because when
they saw the WAACs coming, all those officers [said] "Get me a secretary, now,
somebody who can read, write, and spell." But as officers, we were supposed to
do [the male] officers' work.
BC:When you first went back to the filter center, were you doing the same work
with the teletype machines?
DW:Yes, I was. I went right back to my old job. Only thing I was training--by
that time I was training the new people who came in.
BC:So, was it all now WAACs who were doing that work?
DW:No.
BC:It was still civilians?
DW:The boys were still there. I remember the first time a bunch of boys left to
go overseas and, of course, they were replaced by WAACs, and that was one of the
reasons we were brought there, to replace some men so they could go overseas.
BC:Right.
DW:And people have often asked me, though, how we were received. We were
received by different people in different ways depending on people how they
received us. But I remembered in the army when they send--during the war that
is--when they send a group of boys overseas, the way they do it is they tell
them, they go to them at midnight and say, "Okay, we're leaving at six o'clock
in the morning," and they will give them the privilege of calling their parents
and telling them they're leaving for an unknown destination, but they cannot
tell them [where]. They don't know where they're going. They don't tell them
where they're going. If they did, it would leak out, and that's all they could
do. One phone call, and no details, and then the next morning at five o'clock
they head them out of town before the other boys--
BC:Know.
DW:--know they're even going. So, we had a couple of boys in the company who
were kind of afraid, and they got kind of drank. They came around saying things
like, "See what you girls have done. You caused my buddy to have to go overseas
in the war. He'll probably get killed over there." [mimicking a drunk] So, not
everybody loved us. [laughs]
Some of the boys resented us, and some of them were pure old sexists who thought
girls couldn't do things like men could do, you know? Then there were the ones
who welcomed us because they thought they were going to get some good
secretaries now, but after I got back to Wilmington we were notified. We had--it
was posted on the bulletin board, that is. The people whose AGC Tests were high
enough to qualify them to go to OCS [Officer Candidate School].
BC:And what is that test?
DW:Army General Classification Test.
BC:Okay.
DW:And it's supposed to correlate very highly with IQ [intelligence quotient]
tests, and you have to score 110 or better. Now you did at that time--I don't
know what the rules are now--you had to score 110 or better to be able to go to
OCS. So, I think a hundred is considered normal IQ. That probably meant ten
degrees above normal or better. So my name was up on the bulletin board as
eligible to apply. So I applied, and I did get to go. So I went back to Des
Moines. [laughs]
BC:And when was this?
DW:I graduated May 23, 1943.
BC:From OCS?
DW:Yes.
BC:Okay. So you really didn't have much time once you came back from basic--
DW:No.
BC:--before you went back?
DW:Not much time. Maybe six weeks or something like that. So, I went back to OCS
and got my--and then when you get to be an officer, they do not send you back to
your original--it's very seldom. It would be a very special case if they sent
you back to your old company. It's hard to go back to an old company as an
officer when you've been one of the girls.
BC:Right.
DW:So I can understand that philosophy. So, at that time, of course, we were
still new, and we were a novelty, and we--so we went to--we were sent
immediately to Fort Devens, Massachusetts, for further assignment. Oh, and I
have to tell you. When we got our diplomas, our commissions [laughs] when we got
our commissions, [Colonel] Oveta Culp Hobby, who was the head of all the WAACs,
was supposed to be there to hand our commissions, and she couldn't be there. So
she sent Eleanor Roosevelt in her place. So, Eleanor--
BC:That's quite a substitute.
DW:Yes. She handed me my commission.
BC:Wow. So, what did you think about the Roosevelts, about President [Franklin]
Roosevelt and--
DW:Oh, I was a big fan. I was always a big fan of the Roosevelts, and right now
Mrs. Roosevelt I expect is my top woman. I read a lot of--I've done a lot of
study on the wives of the presidents, and she usually comes out on top.
BC:Well, that must have been quite a thrill then?
DW:Oh, yes. Oh, yes, it was. First time I ever saw her.
BC:Did you have an opportunity to speak with her or was it just for the ceremony?
DW:Shook hands.
BC:Shook hands.
DW:Shook her two fingers. She puts out two fingers, so--but then we went on a
train the next day. Boy, they don't--maybe that night. I don't know. In the
army, the day you get out of your bed it has to be made up for somebody else the
next day. No night goes by without that bed being occupied. So that's--in OCS we
left one day, the new girls came in the next. So, they put us on a train and
sent us to Fort Devens, Massachusetts.
I wrote a story about that trip. We were on a car with, oh, about half of the
car--it was a Pullman car, sleeper. About half the car was us WAAC officers,
brand new second lieutenants, and the other half was a bunch of Shriners who got
on at Chicago, and these were not your Hollywood-type, drink-it-up,
have-a-big-time Shriners. They were just nice elderly gentleman--to us elderly,
being twenty-two at the time--elderly to me, and very well-behaved, very much
gentlemen. And at first we were cool, but when we realized they weren't going to
try to flirt with us, we warmed up a little bit to them. So we went to have
dinner. They announced--we found out civilians couldn't have dinner, just army
personnel. They were feeding army personnel only, armed service.
BC:Right.
DW:So we were kind of indignant. Those old men weren't going to get fed, and we
were. So we ate, and then we saved a--we asked for extra bread, and we asked for
extra this, that, and the other, and they were feeding us royally. So we had a
big piece of roast beef and we just made a great big roast beef sandwich, you
know. We put mayonnaise and lettuce on it and everything and took it back to the
men. Well, they couldn't get our coffee and cokes. The porters at that time
would get off the train at stations and run in and buy things like cokes and
candy bars and come back and sell them on the train. So they could get that type
of thing, but we thought about these old men sitting in there. Some of them must
have been sixty-five. [laughs]
BC:I'm sure they were happy to have that roast beef sandwich.
DW:Oh, they were very grateful. We gave them--and an apple. Somebody had put a
bushel of apples out there for the service people. So we all picked up an apple
on our way back, and we brought them big roast beef sandwich and an apple, and
so they were very sweet about it.
The next morning they couldn't have anything for--they had had coffee for
breakfast, and that was all. So we stopped at some station in--I don't know,
somewhere in Pennsylvania, up in that area, that morning, and a bunch of Red
Cross ladies were out serving coffee and donuts to the service people, and we
felt we don't need it. So, we jumped off the train and went out there ,and I
said, "I need one for a friend, too." So, I took four donuts and two coffees and
took them back on the train and gave them to the men, and went to the other
table and got four donuts and two coffees. So we fed all the men donuts and coffee.
So, when we got into--up in New York State they started getting of the train,
and this one old gentleman passed by me he stopped, reached over and kissed me
on the cheek, and he said, "Now you can tell your grandchildren you were kissed
by the governor of Connecticut." So I wrote my grandchildren a letter and told
them that story.
BC:Oh, my gosh. Did you?
DW:Yes.
BC:That's wonderful. I'm sure you've met a lot of interesting people.
DW:Oh yes. Absolutely.
BC:Are there any other stories or people that stand out for you?
DW:Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I--when I was stationed in Hamilton Field [California],
we--Hamilton Field is an airport of embarkation--was; it's gone now I
understand--and an airport of embarkation to the South Pacific. And the South
Pacific war, of course, was going on at that time. So we were sending men out
there, and we had hospital ships bringing them back whenever they were injured,
and we had diplomatic pouches going out every day to all the bases and things.
And there were fighter pilots would come through, and they would have about
three or four weeks training there on the base before they went overseas. So it
was quite busy.
But also, we were shipping out entertainers like Bob Hope and his crew. Well, I
didn't see Bob Hope. They said that they had to pour him on an airplane. Now, I
don't know what--he didn't like to fly. So he had to get drunk to get on an
airplane. I didn't see him, but I met Gary Cooper, and he had Phyllis Brooks and
Una Merkle with him, and I met all three of them, and he was very nice. He was
almost shy.
BC:Really?
DW:Very fine gentleman. And then, let's see. Mickey Rooney came, and he came in
the officer's club, and we thought he was kind of--he was kind of drunk and
obnoxious. He went straight to--turned off the juke box and went to the piano
and started playing the piano. We were resentful. We were dancing to the juke
box. [laughs] But he had a bunch of minions with him. And then the--let's see.
We were in orientation, meaning they put you in one job for three days, and
another job for three days, so you are learning everything that's going on. They
were going to start a passenger station in San Francisco, which was twenty-five
miles away, and run a shuttle bus every hour. So they had taken over the old
Cook Travel Bureau office, but that's all they had. They didn't give any money
to remodel it or anything like that. So, the major who was sort of put as kind
of a father figure for the eight WAAC officers sent to Hamilton Field was told
to choose two of us for training to run that passenger station. He chose me and
another girl named Marjorie Wiegan, but first we had to get it in shape to run.
So the captain, named David Merrill, who was in charge of us--and we literally
went over there and did slave work cleaning that place out, doing some painting,
moving furniture around and all that stuff to get the place going, and we got it
going. Then they ran a shuttle bus from Hamilton Field to the passenger station
in San Francisco once an hour. So we would get up and get on the shuttle bus at
seven o'clock and come in and work until 4:00 and go home. And then we would
alternate. One of us would get on the shuttle bus at nine o'clock and work till
6:00 and go home.
It was a glamour job. It really was. We had GIs coming in to go to Hamilton
Field, and they would be directed to the passenger station, because it was a
free ride. And we had people coming back, and they would say, "How do I get to
the airport? How do I get to the train station? How do I get here?" And we had
all that information for them. So we were sort of liaison between the base and
the city. And 4th Air Force--we shared Hamilton Field with the 4th Air Force,
and also they had a contingent in San Francisco. So we had the lovely office,
nice place. We had a little mezzanine where there was a place for people to sit
down and wait. This boy named Jimmy Walker from the 4th Air Force was their PR
[public relations] man, and he had a staff car at his demand, but he had no
office. [laughs] So, he just loved our office.
BC:I bet.
DW:So, he made friends with us, and he could bring people in and sit them down
and leave them for an hour if he wanted to, use our telephones, meet people
there, things like that. So once in a long while then we would get a favor out
of him. "Hey, how about getting the staff car and taking us over to the bus
station? I need to talk to a man over there." You know? Because we had to become
personally acquainted with the managers of the major hotels and the--all the
passenger airlines, the trains, buses, so that we could call them if we needed
to, and they would make exceptions for us. That way we could get people
reservations to a hotel when they couldn't find one, you know?
BC:So, really it was almost like you were operating a welcome center?
DW:It certainly was, in that way. He chose us for that for our personalities,
because we were outgoing people who liked to help people and welcome people.
BC:Right.
DW:And we did. You know, we helped a lot of--well, I started to say
GIs--officers, too. They can be as pitiful as anybody. [laughs] They'd come in
from overseas, and I remember one time this--I think he was something like a
first lieutenant, and he was from Denver. Hadn't seen his wife in seventeen
months, and it was--I think he came in on Friday evening. Everything had closed.
The finance office was closed. He couldn't get a check cashed, and he had enough
money to buy a ticket, but he said he just hesitated to buy a ticket and get on
a train for an overnight ride without having any money in his pocket. So I said,
"I'll lend you some money." So I loaned him a $20, I gave him a $20, which was a
lot of money in those days, more than it is now. And he said, "I'll send it back
to you." He took my name and address. So about three weeks later, the post
master had a notice in my box. The post master wanted to see me. He had this
postal money order for me, and he said it came with a telegram. But of course, I
saw him every day, so he was kind of teasing. "I'm going to read this to you."
He looked at me kind of suspiciously and said, "It says here, 'your generosity
is exceeded only by your looks and personality.'" I said, "I loaned him that
money because he wanted to get home and see his wife." [laughs] But that was one
of the times I just loaned somebody money, a stranger, and they always send it
back to you.
BC:How long did you work at the passenger station? What was the timeframe? Was it--
DW:Okay. Yes, this was '43 and into '44 that I was there.
BC:So you went from OCS to Fort Devens?
DW:Yeah, then I was assigned to the Air Transport Command.
BC:Okay. How long did you stay in Massachusetts? Just long enough to get your
next orders?
DW:Three months.
BC:Oh, three months, okay.
DW:We thought we were never going to be assigned. While I was there I didn't
want to just sit around, and we were literally--we had to report every morning
at 8:30 to look at the orders to see if our name was on that order list. So,
they--I had on my--not my transcript but my records that I had worked in a
library. So, one day they asked me if I would like to volunteer for the library,
that they needed help over there. So I went to the base library and volunteered.
It was about a mile's walk. I walked a mile over to the library, and the first
day I went in there, I was in there for about ten minutes when this sergeant
walked out of the little back room, had a tray in his hand, a cup of coffee and
two donuts.
He said, "Do you use cream and sugar?"
I said, "Cream." And after that, every morning when I walked in, he brought me
that coffee and two donuts. [laughs]
BC:That was awfully nice.
DW:Yes, it was. Anyway, they were kind of embarrassed because I was the only
officer in there, and the rest of the GIs were noncoms [noncommissioned
officers], and what they needed most in the world was catalog cards typed. They
had a stack of books six feet high, six feet wide, that needed catalog cards,
and they couldn't put them on the shelf until they had the cards typed up. Now,
you know the number comes automatically from the Library of Congress. Anyway, I
said, "I don't mind." So, I typed. I got them caught up on their catalog cards,
and I did a little of everything. I worked the desk and I shelved books and
found books for people, and did everything, but mostly I typed catalog cards. I
enjoyed it.
[End Tape 1, Side A--Begin Tape 1, Side B]
BC:Okay, we were talking about your three months at Fort Devens in between
officer candidate school and getting your first orders as an officer, and you
were talking about working in the library. Did you do that the full three months
while you were waiting?
DW:Just about. That's the only work while I was there. I read a lot of books.
BC:So, you would just go and check every day and see if your name was there, and
if not, you'd--
DW:Right.
BC:--wait till the next day?
DW:Yeah, and sometimes they'd let my roommate check for me.
BC:So, when did you finally receive your orders?
DW:Well, eventually I was sent to Washington, DC, to be with Air Transport
Command. While we were at Fort Devens, there was a recruiting officer there
recruiting people for air force. Of course, the air force was the glamour
organization of the world at that time, and all us girls wanted to be in the air
force. So I went over and talked to her, and I noticed after she interviewed me
she made a great big asterisk on the bottom of that page, and I was, "Oh, she's
X'd me out."
So when I got my orders I was sent to Washington, DC, to the Air Transport
Command, and another girl and I walked in to the office of Major May, who was
the head of the WAAC officers in Air Transport Command, and we stood at
attention and saluted her, she was embarrassed. She said, "Oh, girls, sit down."
She had never gone through basic training. [laughs] She was one of those who was
appointed when they first started the WAACs. So there was nothing GI about her;
she was just kind of motherly. But we talked for a little while, and then she
said, "Well, where would you girls like to go?" And we were stunned. I mean we
had been in the army and been told what to do: "You will do this. You will do
that. You don't have any say about this." And all of a sudden this woman was
saying, "Well, we have seven bases in the world, and where would you like to
go?" [laughs] So the girl that was with me said, "I've always wanted to go to
California." She had said they had this base in California, and my stomach kind
of rolled over. I thought, "Man, California is a long way, but I would kind of
like to see it, too." So we chose to go to Hamilton Field.
Really, the air force is more relaxed than the rest of the army. Now, the Air
Transport is a little more GI than the fighting group. They're the ones who are
so casual. We did meet some who had been on the South Pacific islands for a
couple of years, and they were wrinkled and they didn't mind dirt, and they
didn't mind being a little bit out of uniform, but they had colonel's insignia
on their shoulders. [laughs] So--but we were still pretty GI.
But I was telling you I was working at the passenger station and had a lot of
great experiences there, but when I got my rating, my performance rating, I got
a superior. I think it was because we worked so hard getting that station ready,
you know. Anyway, not many people get a superior rating. So in Washington they
were looking for somebody to take over the Officer's Promotion Unit in
Washington. The girl who was doing that wanted to be a company commander. So
they looked at that superior efficiency rating and I just got a letter, "You are
ordered to go to Washington, DC." And it was devastating, because by that time I
was engaged to a boy out there, and he'd been sent to Hawaii, and he had gotten
a two weeks' assignment back at Hamilton Field, and he was coming back just
before I had to go leave to go to Washington.
But, anyway, that's how I got to Washington. I always say I was kicked upstairs,
and it was upstairs because in headquarters in Washington, DC, I was head of the
Officer's Promotion Unit, so I know this. When a person's time was up--you had
to be a second lieutenant I think for eighteen months before you could get first
lieutenant--but that day they got promoted, and then a year later you could
promoted to captain just like that. So, I was promoted immediately when I got
there. My time was up. I was promoted to first lieutenant, and then one year
later to the day I was promoted to captain.
BC:Do you recall when it was when you went to Washington?
DW:Yes. It was in, oh, golly. Well, I said I did. I'll have to look it up.
BC:That's fine. Did you stay at--
DW:It was in the winter--fall or winter.
BC:The end of 1943, maybe early 1944.
DW:Yes. [DW corrected later: Spring of 1943]
BC:Did you have to reenlist when it went from Women's Army Auxiliary--
DW:Yes.
BC:Corps to the Women's Army Corps [WAC]?
DW:Yes.
BC:And you didn't consider leaving, did you?
DW:No.
BC:You knew you wanted to continue.
DW:I believe--I was thinking about that the other day, and I believe I was in
OCS. There was forty-three year-old woman and she had decided--her husband was
missing her terribly, and she had decided she had made a mistake by joining the
WAACs, and she's the only one I knew who took advantage of that and dropped out.
Because we did resign, and then we could leave if we wanted to, but then the
next day we could join up again.
BC:Now, when you join again, did your terms change--
DW:No.
BC:--or was it still the duration of the war plus six months?
DW:Oh, I don't remember. Probably did because by that time. See, when I joined
it was for an indefinite term. Now it was before the war started that the boys
were being drafted--were drafted for a year, one year. Oh, no, you're
right--plus six, right. That was the term when I joined.
BC:Which was still very indefinite.
DW:Yes.
BC:Because at the time you had no idea how long this was going to last. So what
exactly did you do in Washington? You were head of the Officer Promotion Unit?
DW:I was head of the Officer's Promotion Unit, yes.
BC:Were you working with all WACs, or were there--
DW:Oh, no.
BC:Men as well?
DW:Thirty thousand officers in the Air Transport Command stationed all over the
world. They would send in their applications, their company commanders would
send in the recommendations for promotion, and they would come to my desk first,
and then I had a clerk and a secretary and we would process them. If they were
being promoted from first lieutenant to second lieutenant or second lieutenant
to captain, and all their papers were in order, and their dates checked with the
statistics, then I could pass it and simply it was an automatic promotion. It
went back. If they were being promoted to field grade, major and up, had to go
before the promotion board. So the promotion board met once a week, and I was
recorder of the promotion board without a vote. All--they were all generals and
full colonels who had votes, and it depended on [to what grade] they were being
promoted. If they were being promoted to colonel, full colonel or general, I had
to go to the Pentagon and go into personnel files and look at their records, and
I could do that any time if there were any doubt about something. But for them I
had to and make sure that everything was correct. There promotions were just
what they, their age, and their time of service, and all that stuff--and then
the board would pass on whether or not to promote.
BC:Did you have to have any kind of special clearance to get to that information
or was the personnel information not classified in any way?
DW:Well, I just--no. I was an air force officer, and I'd go and tell them who I
was. If they wanted to call my colonel and check, they could, you know? But, of
course, they got to know me.
BC:Right. Were--
DW:I loved to go over there. That library was air conditioned.
BC:Oh, and in Washington that's quite a bonus.
DW:At that time. We were in this supposed to be temporary building. I went back
forty years later, and it was still there.
BC:Was it down on the Mall?
DW:No, the building I was in was right out next to the [Ronald Reagan]
Washington National Airport.
BC:Okay.
DW:Out in Virginia. It was called Gravelly Point, and it was nine big, I think
three-story--three- or four-story office buildings in wings, what they call
wings. See, because of no air conditioning they had to have circulation, air
circulation. Now, everything is air conditioned. But Washington can be the
hottest place in the summertime because of the humidity, and the coldest place
in the wintertime.
BC:Were you living out there as well? Did you have to find your own--
DW:Oh, yeah.
BC:--housing?
DW:Yes, we had--we didn't have quarters for WACs. So, we had to find a place to
live, and I, when I went back to Washington--let me see. I lived--I moved into a
boarding house where a lot of WACs were staying. It had been a girl's school,
Gunston Hall in Washington, and I had a roommate, and then one of the girls who
worked there in the building with me had an apartment by herself and she wanted
a roommate. So, I moved in with her out at Lee Gardens over by Fort Myer in
Virginia, so.
Then my fiancé, of course, I had missed him when he came back to Hamilton
Fields to see me, see. So we got to talk to each other quite a bit, because
there was a PR man there who called--he was out at Hickam Field, [Honolulu,
Hawaii], and he called Hickam Field just practically every day, and once in
awhile he would call me and say, "Do you want to talk to your boyfriend?" And I
could talk to him free.
While I was living in Gunston Hall they had a pay phone in the hall. One
Sunday--this was while he was there, see, and he had come back and I was
gone--and he called me and we--he'd called me the night before and said, "I'll
call you again tomorrow." So I went out--no, he said, "I'll be here at this
telephone tomorrow, so call me at three o'clock." So I went out to the phone and
I thought I better put my order in, because you had to stand in line to get long
distance calls. I called the operator and told her that I wanted to reserve a
spot to call--make a call at three o'clock, and she said, "Oh, honey, I'm sorry,
but I'm tied up till 4:30. I don't have a thing in the world till 4:30."
And I said, "Oh, my lands." I said, "This is my fiancé and he's going back to
Hawaii this afternoon, and he will be gone by that time."
So I went back and I was so blue, but when I hung up the phone from talking to
her then a whole bunch of change came raining down into the money box. Well,
somebody had put those there, and the operator hadn't, you know, pressed
whatever button it was to take them out. So I called her back, and I said, "Is
this the same operator I talked to?"
She said, "Yep."
And I said, "Well, when I hung up the phone all this money fell out, and I've
got $3.74 here," and I said, "I'll just put it back in."
So she thanked me, and about thirty minutes later the phone rang. She called me.
She said, "I've got your call through."
BC:Wow.
DW:So I think because I was honest she gave me a break.
BC:So, were you able to talk to your fiancé?
DW:Yes, and we had a long talk before he left. So then he wanted to get--he was
trying to get to Washington, and I was trying to get to Hickam Field. So after I
worked up a good enough relationship with everybody there in Washington and they
knew how badly I wanted to go to Hickam Field, my colonel finally said okay.
She'd find somebody to replace me, but give her some time to find somebody to
replace me, and she said I could go. So I got this cable from him, and the cable
said, "For God's sake, don't move. I'm coming to Washington." [laughs] He got
transferred to Washington. He was a--they used him as a writer. That wasn't his
profession. He was a salesman, but he apparently could write, and that's what
they needed. So he wrote programs and, oh, he wrote a couple of scripts for some
GI movie type things. Well, he went to Hollywood one time and was a, whatever
they call it, helped them direct movie on ditching airplanes.
BC:Oh, wow.
DW:When an airplane goes down in the water, what to do and stuff. And he wrote a
program for the Air Transport Command. They had what they called stewards. They
were boys, of course, and they wanted to put some WACs in, and they didn't want
to call them stewardesses because they would get mixed up with the airlines.
BC:Right.
DW:So, they wanted a unisex term for the steward. So, he thought up--what's the
one they're using now? I'm getting old. Not hostesses. What are they calling
them now, people who work on airplanes?
BC:Flight attendants.
DW:Flight attendants, yeah. He thought of that term, flight attendants.
BC:Really?
DW:And used it. That was the first time it was ever used, and by the time the
war was over, a lot of the airlines were beginning to use it.
BC:Right.
DW:Because they don't have to say he or she or she or he or whatever when they
write it. They say flight attendant. So the army was always trying to save words
like that. [laughs]
BC:So, you both ended up in Washington?
DW:Yes, and we got married in November of 1944.
BC:And what was his name?
DW:Stanford Lee Hoye.
BC:How do you spell Hoye?
DW:H-o-y-e.
BC:Okay. What was your social life like in Washington? I'm sure it changed once
he arrived and you got married.
DW:Well, there was a lot going on in Washington. There were all kinds of parties
given for officers, servicemen, or something all the time. There were lots of
parades and things. And, of course, I didn't like living in Washington myself.
To me it was--I felt this business of it's not what you know, it's who you know,
too much in Washington. You could have the smartest people in the world and some
second-degree politician could write a letter and ruin his career. So--but I
thought Washington was kind of phony. That was my concept of it. Now, he loved
it. He just thought it was the greatest place in the world. This is where it's
happening. He wouldn't have minded living there for the rest of his life, but
when we were--we were married, and he got a letter from a friend of his back in
his hometown, West Frankfort, Illinois, telling he wanted to come back and be a
partner with him in a business. So, when the war was over we got out of the army
and went back to West Frankfort, Illinois.
BC:So, were you in Washington until you were discharged?
DW:Yeah, I was in Washington until the war was over.
BC:Do you remember much about VE [Victory in Europe] Day and VJ [Victory in
Japan] Day?
DW:Yes, I remember. Oh, yes. Nobody ever forgets those days. I remember just
before when the Russians were coming at the Germans from one direction, and the
Americans were behind in the other direction. I would go down to the War Room
every afternoon and look at the maps, and they had down there--well, very
sophisticated version of our old filter center back in Wilmington. They had maps
where they were constantly moving the troops, and you'd see them. Every day
those--they were squeezing in on them; and, of course, that was good news. We
had a lot of bad news. We had a lot of setbacks in the war, and for awhile it
was tit for tat, but by that time when the Russians decided to help beat the
Germans--I don't know why they decided that, but they did. That pretty well did
it, because they were squeezing them just like that. So, yeah, those were--I
guess I was--I lived in Washington for over two years.
DW:Were there a lot of celebrations when the Germans surrendered?
BC:Sure. Everybody was over the top. [laughs] Over the top. I mean, you know, I
never went into combat or anything like that, but I saw a lot of boys who did,
and when I was out at Hamilton Field--I think I mentioned that the fighter
pilots would be trained and then the ones that were going to the South Pacific
were sent to Hamilton Field for several weeks training there--and when I first
went there I was living in the nurses' quarters, and we only had eight WAC
officers on Hamilton Field at that time, and we lived in the nurses' quarters.
Right across the street from the nurses' quarters was the transient officers'
mess, and that's where we ate most of our meals. The only other place to eat was
the officers' club, and that was way across the other side, but the transient
officers were in there eating all the time, and you got to know the boys, you
know? And the men who worked in the personnel office with me, civilian men in
their thirties, all would say, "Don't get around these--don't go out with those
fighter pilots. Those boys got one thing on their mind. One thing. They're going
overseas tomorrow, and they might get killed. They've got one thing on their mind."
Well, I got to know a lot of those boys, and I never really went with one. I
went to the movie with them, eat supper and go to the movie or eat supper in the
officers' mess, or go to the officers' club and maybe dance a little bit, but I
never what you called went with one. But they did have one thing on their mind,
and I'll tell you what it was. We'd go to a movie. We'd eat supper and go to the
movie, and then we would come back to the nurses' quarters. We had a day room
there, and about 11 o'clock he's say, "Is there a payphone here?" And I say,
"Yeah, out in the hall," and they had five payphones. So, he'd go out and call
his mother, and that's what was on their mind. Everyone I ever knew I could
almost time it. 11 [p.m.] or 11:30 he was going to call his mother.
BC:Oh, gosh. That must have been very difficult.
DW:So, when people talk to me about fighter pilots, I defend them. They were
just boys, young. The youngest and the brightest.
BC:Being sent off into very, very difficult and dangerous situations. While you
were in Washington was also when, at the end of the war--and when President
Roosevelt died, and that must have been another difficult time to be--
DW:Yes, and you know what? The whole time I was in Washington I didn't see him
[laughs], and it would have been so easy because he made a lot of appearances.
You know, he was not hard to see, and I--every time there was a parade or
something, I'd think, oh, I'll see him some time. And I just never did go to
one, and that was the first thing I thought at that time: I never did get to see
him. Oh, yes, I cried like a baby.
BC:I'm sure.
DW:And, of course, everybody was scared to death that Harry Truman was going to
be a bad president, but he wasn't. He was a good president.
BC:And it appears from, what most people said, that they didn't know very much
about Harry Truman.
DW:Well, why should they? Roosevelt was a star.
BC:And had been in office for so long.
DW:Yeah, he was his third vice president. [laughs] So the vice president didn't matter.
BC:Quite a big change.
DW:But, oh, a lot of people, "Oh, my land, that failed suit salesman," but I
thought he was real good president, and I think a lot of people did by the time
he got out of office.
BC:So, when you left you'd been married--probably weren't thinking about the
military as a career?
DW:No, no, no. I was pregnant by the time we--by the time he got out and we left
Washington, and we went back to West Frankfort, Illinois, his hometown, and he
opened up and operated an appliance store. And, of course, that was the time
when nobody had a refrigerator. Nobody had a car. Nobody had a good radio. You
know, they had the old pre-war ones that couldn't be replaced. So he worked
there, but he wanted to be in business for himself, by himself. He was the
entrepreneurial type, and I think that was probably our basic difference. I am
the--well, I took a sociology course one time, and they had these two types:
entrepreneurial and the bureaucratic, and the bureaucratic type wants a regular
salary, and they want to know how much money they are going to get so they can
budget it, and the entrepreneurial would rather die then be confined to a set
salary. He'd rather make less money than know that he could have made more. [laughs]
So, we moved to a little town in Anna, Illinois, and he became a Pontiac-Buick
dealer. We lived there for twelve years, and our marriage broke up. We had three
children, but our marriage broke up, and I went back to school, and finished my
bachelor's and master's and got my master's degree in '60, I think. Yes, '60.
Then I worked for a year at the state hospital. Had a big state hospital there
in Anna, and the superintendent was a good friend of ours, and they needed a
teacher to teach all subjects. [laughs] My degree was in home economics,
child-development, family relations, but they had a home economics teacher. So I
taught all subjects for all ages. Typing, shorthand were two of the subjects,
and I was really happy that I had had that year's business course because I--and
bookkeeping. I had to teach all three.
But one thing I learned about mental patients is their low feeling of
self-worth. I think that is the number one characteristic of a mental patient,
and they honestly don't think they're worth feeding or paying attention to. And
so the--I recognized that the last thing in the world they needed was failure.
So, I would start a class out with a third-grade spelling book, and we had
spelling lessons, and word sessions where we would talk about what the words
meant, and there's some educators that might say, "Well, you certainly weren't
teaching them much," but what I was trying mostly was to build up their feelings
of self-worth.
BC:Right.
DW:You know, not to let them fail, because they had failed so much in their lives.
BC:They needed that more than they needed--
DW:Yes, they needed to be built up, and so I had a pretty good class. We would
sit around the table and we'd have coffee. Well, the coffee they served there at
the mental institution was some kind of powdered stuff, and I've had powdered
coffee that was good, but listen, that stuff was awful. It was just worse than
mud. I couldn't drink it, and they hated it. So, I would bring my own percolator
from home [laughs] and make coffee. One of the girls in the class who was just
about to be turned loose, and she was, I think, she was in pretty good shape by
that time. I think she was okay. I hope she was. I never heard from her again,
and a lot of them came right back. They'd go and be gone three months and bounce
right back. But she would bring cream over from the cafeteria, and so I thought
some of them came just for the coffee. [laughs] Anyway, they came.
But I was successful at that, but I was not--I hate to use the word happy. I
became a clock watcher. I was by eleven o'clock, I was looking to see when lunch
hour was going to be, and by twelve o'clock I had looked at that clock six or
seven times, and I don't want to be a clock watcher.
But I was right there in the town. My children went to the same school where
they started kindergarten, and they were happy, except that they were in a
situation where they shouldn't have been, you know, where their father had two
girlfriends and everybody in town knew it, including some of the kids in school
with them, and the were beginning to hear things in school they shouldn't be
hearing. So, I got this letter from Katherine Watson who headed the Home
Economics Department at Bradley University, and she said that my dean over at
Southern Illinois University, where I got my master's degree, had recommended me
as a person who could teach a family relations course, that she had to have a
family relations [teacher] by September. She just had to have her, and I
thought, "Oh, I'll have to write that lady or call and tell her I'm not
interested in that job." Well, then--I don't know whether you want to hear this
or not.
BC:This is--
DW:My brother came--he was living in Nebraska. He would always come by my house
in Illinois before he came down to North Carolina to visit our parents. So, he
was sitting in my living room, and I hadn't answered that letter, and I got this
phone call. He could hear me talking to her, and he was giving me these looks.
"Take that job. Take that job. You need to get out of this town." He was furious
by the way I was living, and so I didn't turn her down. He was there when she
offered me the job. I had been--I had been and seen the department. I liked it a
lot, but you know they say you can be comfortable in an uncomfortable position,
and that's what I was. I was practically living--in some ways I was comfortable.
I knew that my children were not in a good situation. I was not in a good
situation. So, my brother sitting there--
She said, "Would you send me your credentials?"
And I said, "Yes, I'll send you my credentials."
So, I sent her my credentials, and then she and the dean had both decided they
wanted me if my credentials were what I said they were. So, she offered me the
job, and I really think my brother would have shot me if I hadn't taken it.
[laughs] I often wondered what I would have done if he hadn't been sitting
there, but I couldn't say no to her with him sitting there. I said, "Okay, I'll
send you my credentials." Then I got to thinking about it, and I'm the kind of
person, all my life-- I have always been--decision-making is easy for me. I
usually make up my mind quickly or I'll say, "I'll think about it, and let you
know," and then I'll make up my mind quickly, but for that solid weekend night
and day I just agonized over that decision. "Do I leave my home, my house that I
love and take my children out of the schools that they've been going to
forever?" And--but I decided to accept the job. So that's how I got to Bradley
University, and I stayed there for twenty-one years till I retired. In the
meantime I came down here.
The first month I was at Bradley we had a brand new president there, and he sent
around a memo, and the memo said, "What steps are you taking toward the terminal
degree?" And he didn't say, "Are you taking steps?" "What steps are you taking
for your terminal degree?" Well, the first thing when I got there I found that I
needed to have a course in supervising student teachers because that was one of
the things I had to do. I had to teach teachers. So, I had already planned to go
back to Southern next year and take two summer courses. I was going to take--I
forget what the other one. Anyway, one of them was student teacher supervision.
So I wrote on there instead of nothing, I wrote I was going to summer school
next summer and take two courses. [laughs] So, I realized he was--what he was
doing, and he immediately--Bradley had a bunch of people who had master's
degrees and thought they were the greatest teachers in the world. Some of them
were real good teachers, and why should they go get a Ph.D.? And he just let
them know, "You will never get to be a department chairman. You'll never get to
be a full professor." You know. It's like having--if you are going to teach in
college, it's like having your union card.
BC:Right.
DW:So--and I thought if I'm going to have to go someplace, I'm going to North
Carolina. So, that's why I chose this school.
BC:So, what led you specifically to UNCG? You had gotten in before but weren't
able to come.
DW:Yes. It was a good school, and they had a Ph.D. program, and they had a real
good Home Economics Department, very strong Home Economics Department at that
time. I don't know what it is now.
BC:Right.
DW:But at that time it was. I came--well, I got--you're allowed to transfer in
sixteen hours toward your Ph.D. So I took those, some at Southern Illinois
University, and I took some at Bradley. The only thing [for which] I had to go
someplace else was advanced graduate statistics. [laughs] We had the first one
at Bradley. We had Advanced Graduate Statistics I, but we didn't have II. So I
went over to Illinois State University in Bloomington, which is forty miles from
Peoria where I was, and this summer I was teaching a class, an interior design
class. About 8:30 in the morning--an hour and a half, because it was a summer,
five weeks, summer school--and then I would go over to there at one o'clock for
my Advanced Graduate Statistics. [laughs]
At the midterm I was making a flat D. So I went to see the teacher. I said if
I'm going to flunk this course or make a D, I think I better drop out and take
it some other time, because I'm going to transfer this in as one of my Ph.D.
credits, and they won't accept it--anything but an A or a B. When I got down
here they told me they would have accepted it. But anyway, he said, "Well, don't
give up on it, because I did something in that midterm that I shouldn't have
done." He said I--he gave us a problem and if we got any part of that problem
wrong, then the rest of the exam was questions on that one--
BC:Oh.
DW:--problem.
BC:Right.
DW:And they were true/false questions, and you know you either got the whole
thing right or you flunked the test. So, he realized he had messed up on the
test. So he said, "give it another week and see how you're doing." So, what I
did--by that time we had a five-week term at Bradley, and they had this
five-week term, but they overlapped. See, mine started earlier. I was--they were
half-way through over here when I was finished over here.
So I moved into the dorm, immersed myself twenty-four hours a day in that
course. They had a teacher who taught beginning statistics at eight o'clock in
the morning, and he let us go sit in on his class. I thought maybe if I could
get beginning statistics I'll do a little better, and I really did. I mean, I
learned what they mean by that total assimulation. You shut out everything else
twenty-four hours a day. That's all you do that one course, and that's all I
did, and I didn't care about anything else in the world. I moved in the dorm, as
I said, and go to that eight o'clock class in the morning, grab some breakfast,
work on my problems, eat lunch, go to my class at one o'clock, and then I would
go to a class, a tutoring class, after that class, and then I would go home and
I would work problems and memorize. What he told us the second part of the
semester so that dummies could pass, I think, was he would say, "Now a problem
like this [thumping] will be on your final exam." So, I memorized the problems.
I'm not good at math, but I can memorize, and I would lie in bed at night, and
I'd have those numbers, and I'd go over those numbers again and again.
So, sure enough, when he gave us the final exam, I made a--mine was perfect
because I had memorized a problem from every. [laughs] But I remember passing
down the hall one day, and the man said, "President Nixon resigned today," and I
thought, "Oh, who cares? I got to pass this statistics course." [laughs] But I
got a B on the class.
BC:So, did you take summer courses at UNCG, or did you come full-time?
DW:Summer. Well, I had to come for a year. See, you have to come for one year's
residency--or you did at that time. They're doing it over computer now, but I
don't know what they're doing, but at that time we had to come for a year. So, I
came for a year, and I finished the courses that I hadn't gotten, and also
started on my dissertation, did all the research for my dissertation.
BC:Did you live on campus?
DW:I lived in an apartment right off campus. My--I had my eleven-year-old
daughter with me. She was in the sixth grade--seventh grade. She was in the
seventh grade then, and she must have been more than eleven then. Well, anyway,
she was in the seventh grade, and so we had an apartment, but I was not far.
BC:Are there any people from the campus, any professors or administrators that
stand out to you?
DW:Naomi Albanese was the head of the Home Economics Department, and the girls
who, you know, the kids who were regular students here called her "Mighty
Mouse." She stood five feet tall, and she wore three-inch heels and a hat
usually to make her look taller, but she really got things done. They were--I
don't know.
My committee had a hard time agreeing with each other. I would go to see each
one of them, and they were all sugar and cream. Everything was great between me
and thee, except when they got around that table in a committee meeting, and
then they would start arguing with each other. That's not a good way to do
statistics. Well, the statistician--they had Dr. Carl Cochran from Bowman Gray
Medical School come over here from Winston-Salem on Thursday afternoons to help
with our statistics, and he was a world-recognized statistician. And I had two
teachers on my committee who had a course in statistics, and they thought there
was one way to do statistics, and they didn't know any other way, and they'd
argued and argued with him. They--so my committee wasn't agreeing with each
other. And I had this one woman on my committee who refused to read my final
dissertation in time, and they had me come down here. I flew down from Peoria,
Illinois, and spent the weekend. I was to meet them on Monday for my final
examination on my dissertation. That was to be it, and I was here. I was in my
aunt's house. I got a phone call. They'd cancelled it. She hadn't read my
dissertation. And they said to her, "Well, you had your whole Christmas
vacation." [She said] "I do not spend my Christmas vacation reading
dissertations." A teacher spends her twenty-four hours a day as a teacher.
BC:Right.
DW:Anyway, we got her off the committee, and then when they had--finally got me
together with my final board, Dr. [Martha Helen] Canaday was great. She was on
my committee, and she was the one who was always real good to me and--
[End Tape 1, Side B--Begin Tape 2, Side A]
BC:You were telling me about completing your dissertation and your Ph.D. in Home
Economics at UNCG.
DW:Well, Dr. Canaday told Dr. Albanese how they all seemed to like me, but they
didn't like each other, and therefore they were arguing with each other and
neglecting my dissertation. So when I came in for my final exam, Dr. Albanese
was there, her secretary was there, and the dean of the graduate school was
there to see to it that nobody misbehaved, and her secretary was short-hand
writing down anything anybody said or pretending [to]. I don't know whether she
was or not, but it's amazing when you start to say something, and somebody's
writing it down, you will weigh your words very carefully and be sure you
[pausing between each word] don't say something that's not true or that you
might regret tomorrow. So, one of those adversaries would look at another one
and start to say something, and then they would look at her. Here she would be
[demonstrating] and they'd shut up.
So, we just had one glitch. I had been asked to make some changes in a few
little paragraphs in the dissertation, and this one man said, "Well, I see you
didn't make the change that I asked you to make." So, I had--by that time I was
smart, see. I had learned how they were. I had copies of the way it was then,
and the way it was now for every one of them. I walked over to the window sill
and I picked up all these copies. I said, "No, here it is right here. Here's the
way it was, and here it is on page thirty-six you will find that I did make
those changes." So he looked at them, and he said okay, you know. That was about
the only thing anybody said to me. They asked me some questions like they always
do, and I answered them, and they had me leave the room. And I came back and
they said, "Congratulations, you passed." So that was it. But that was--I think
they set me back for at least a year.
BC:That's really unfortunate.
DW:It is. But when you talk to people who've got their Ph.D., you hear some real
horror stories.
BC:So, you finished in 1971, and you went back to Bradley?
DW:Yes.
BC:And continued teaching?
DW:Yes.
BC:When did you retire from teaching?
DW:Eighty-two.
BC:And did you come to North Carolina after that, or how did you--
DW:I came to North Carolina after I sold my house, yes. When I retired I was
already--the museum in Peoria, which was run by the Peoria Historical
Association, had me working cataloging their clothing and textiles collection,
and I became curator of that museum.
BC:Oh, wow.
DW:And I did that, then, until I left there in '89.
BC:Did you enjoy working in the museum?
DW:Oh, yes, I loved it. I only worked half-time because I wanted to do some
traveling and have--play golf, do some things I enjoyed doing. But I--it's easy
enough, in museum work, when you're having a special displays and things, you
work day and night, Saturdays and Sundays. So, if you're working half-time, it's
easy to work three weeks a week almost. [laughs] So I could go away for a month
when I wanted to or a week, whatever. I would do some traveling.
BC:Do you consider yourself to be an independent person?
DW:Yes.
BC:And do you think that the military helped make you that way, or was that
something that led you to the military?
DW:Okay. The military, for me--now you see, it followed the Depression, and the
Depression was very demoralizing for everybody, and the fact that I couldn't go
to college. So it gave me an opportunity to show myself, I think, that I could
be an achiever. It did a lot for my self-confidence, and I treasure it. I really do.
BC:Do you consider yourself or did you consider yourself a pioneer or sort of a
trailblazer, entering the military at a time that was brand new for women?
DW:I don't think I thought about it at the time. I thought of it as a new venture.
BC:Right.
DW:But now looking back, I can see--I was really surprised when I learned that
this first of October date was one of the first dates girls could be sworn in.
BC:Right.
DW:So I'm not sure it is the first date.
BC:So you were one of the very first--
DW:Yes.
BC:--to cross it?
DW:Yes, oh, yes. I had never seen a WAAC. I'd seen nurses, but the nurses were
the forerunners, of course. You know, they had established the fact that women
can be--but, see, they had never been anything but nurses, and administration of
nursing, of course, but we had them to thank, I think, for the fact that women
could be firmly established in the army or in all the armed services.
BC:I think women today are sort of the evolution and continuum of women having
greater opportunities and building on what previous generations had done, and
women today are in much more, not technically in combat positions, but are
actually in combat positions. How do you feel about that?
DW:Well, I thought about that a lot, and I feel that there are basic differences
between women and men. Some more obvious than others, but I think that one of
the things--I don't believe that a woman can't learn, but she does not have the
physical strength always that a man has. But I think the main thing right now,
when I think of going into battle with men and women together, I think that men
would be protecting the women. Now that's what I think, and I think if anything
negative--if I have a negative feeling about men and women being absolutely
equal in the armed services, it is the instinct or training or whatever it is
that a man would first make sure the woman beside him was safe, and I think that
might distract from his treatment of the enemy for maybe a few seconds or a
minute. That's the only--that's the worst thing I can think.
I know from my own experiences that if there was danger I would grab a gun or
whatever and do what I could. I'm just that kind of person, and all men are not
like that, and all women aren't like that, but I would. I'm the kind, but I
don't see it working. Now, I know there have been times when they've done this.
You know, a woman's grabbed a gun and taken her place around the corner. Shot it
out. But I guess I have some reservations. The physical thing, a combat course,
those horrible courses they make them go through. I couldn't climb those fences
and wire walls and swing on those ropes and do things like that. Well, some
girls can, but [laughs] we don't have the same muscular anatomy that men do.
BC:When you look back on your service, what would you say is the biggest impact
that it had on the rest of your life, other than meeting your husband?
DW:Oh, well, impact it had on the rest of my life. There was a long time when we
played those things down, because people didn't want to hear about it. Now
people look at me as a World War II veteran. There's a certain amount of glamour
to it, you know, or awe. I'm eighty-six years old. Some people are awed that I'm
still living, but now we're looking at World War II veterans differently. There
was a while when they didn't want to hear about it. So time sort
of--history--[laughs] Time makes you history, and I compare it to when I was
eight years old. I was living in Mount Olive and there was an old gentleman
named Mr. Merritt, old gray-haired, dried-up man, and they used to put him in
the back of a pickup truck for all the Fourth of July parades. He was a Civil
War veteran.
BC:Oh.
DW:And the Civil War ended in 1864, and here I am in 192[8] seeing--well, by
that time, about 1928 or '[2]9--seeing this Civil War veteran. Well, how many
years between '64 and '2[8]. You know, you've got an 80-some year span there.
And now World War II ended in '45, and now it's 2007. [laughs] You've got people
who look at me as an anomaly. I'm history, you know? So, I think it's not so
different from me seeing the old man Merritt being put on that pickup truck and
hauled around Mount Olive when they ask me to be in a World War II parade now.
So some of the kids coming up--everything falls into perspective when we're in--
But it has affected my life. I think it gave me more confidence, as I said
awhile ago. It gave me confidence in myself that I could--I had the intelligence
to become an officer, to go to Officer's Candidate School for one thing, and
then I had the intelligence to be promoted from second lieutenant to captain for
another. And I did some jobs which I enjoyed very much doing, and I did them
well enough that I got good ratings. So, it really built up my self-confidence.
Following the Depression, we needed self-confidence builders.
BC:Well, I don't have any more formal questions for you. Is there anything that
we haven't talked about that you would like to add or any?
DW:Oh, I can't think of anything right now. I've written some stories down,
written some of my war stories down. I met some people who became life-long
friends. I have some letters in here from a girl who's from Burgaw. We were in
school together from the sixth grade on, and she's still living. She lives down
in Florida, and I went to see her a couple of years ago. She's from
Burgaw--Rachel Farrior. She's the kind of person who answers a letter the day
she gets it. I might wait six months, but I got a lot of letters from her. And
yes, I've got a lot of war stories, but that's the gist of the career.
BC:Well, thank you so much for talking with me this morning. It's really been a
pleasure for me.
DW:You're perfectly welcome.
BC:Thank you.
DW:I've enjoyed it.
[End of interview]
00:01:00