WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE:Saundra Ann Creen
INTERVIEWER:Brenda Brubaker
DATE: 15 June 2023
[Begin Interview]
BB:Today is June 15th, 2023. My name is Brenda Brubaker. I am at Homewood Suites
in Durham, North Carolina to conduct an oral history for the Women Veterans Historical Project at UNCG Greensboro. Would you please state your name the way you would like it recorded on the history?SC:Saundra Ann Creen. Excuse me. Creen.
BB:Can you spell the last name for me?
SC:[coughs] Yes, it's C-R-E-E-N.
BB:Creen. Thank you. So can you tell us a little bit about your family, where
you grew up?SC:Yes. I grew up in Hallsboro, North Carolina, little country town. I worked on
a tobacco farm until I left home. And I had—Do you want to know about my family?BB:Sure.
SC:Okay.
BB:I take it if you worked on a tobacco farm, you're—
SC:That was run by my uncle, Herbert Wilson. And all of us kids, there were five
of us kids and most of us worked on the tobacco farm as we were growing up. And my mother, Iva Dean Powell. She was—At first, she was a homemaker and then later she went to work at DuPont. And my father, he was—My father was a World War II vet, but he and my mom separated when I was younger, so he wasn't around too much when I was growing up. But the five of us kids and my mom were it.BB:So you had brothers and sisters?
SC:Yes. I have three brothers and a sister, and they're all still living. And I
live in Whiteville, as does my sister, Debra Boswell, and then I have one brother who lives in Whiteville, Patrick Powell. And my brother Tim Powell lives in Aynor, South Carolina. And then I have a brother, Michael Powell, who lives in Florida. He is retired air force.BB:So where did you go to school?
SC:Hallsboro High School.
BB:Hallsboro?
SC:Hallsboro Elementary School and then High School.
BB:So what was your favorite subject?
SC:English.
BB:English?
SC:[laughs] Yes.
BB:So when did you graduate?
SC:Nineteen sixty-eight.
BB:And then what did you do?
SC:I went in the air force.
BB:Immediately—
SC:Yes.
BB: —from high school into the air force?
SC:Yes.
BB:Okay. So tell me about joining the air force.
SC:Well, it was not something I had ever thought I would do, but as my senior
year went along and I wasn't—I didn't really have money to go to college, so I—One day, the air force recruiter came to our school and had a little meeting with all of us. And I thought—My dad had been in the army, so I thought, "Well, let me check this out." And one thing led to another, and I joined the air force in 1968, and went from home to Lackland Air Force Base where I was in basic training. And then from there, I went to tech school at Lowry Air Force Base in Denver in supply.And then after I finished tech school, I went to—My first base that I was
stationed at was Charleston Air Force Base, and I was in supply, and I worked there until 1969 when my husband and I got married. And then I became pregnant right afterward, and I was told I had to get out. Back then, you didn't stay in if you were pregnant. So I ended up getting out. And then I—From that point, I more or less just did—I didn't really work until we went to—Well, my husband was air force, so he moved around, and we went to Japan. He was
at Syracuse University first for a year, and I didn't work while we were there. And then we went to Japan, and I did work for a non-appropriated fund in Japan the three years we were there. And then when we came back, we were stationed at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, and I worked civil service. That's where I started my civil service career.And then Mike went to Indianapolis, Indiana. He had applied for journalism
school. And he—We transferred there, and I followed him, and I worked civil service the whole time we were in Indianapolis. And I worked in accounting though. I did most of my civil service career in accounting. So we stayed there and then he went to—He left there and went to Charleston and then he went to Syracuse University for a year. And I followed him, all these places. [laughs]And then after his—We went to Japan after he finished Syracuse, and we came back
and we were stationed in Indianapolis, and I worked at the Army Finance Center there, and then later got a job with U.S. Customs Service in Indianapolis. So that was my last job that I held in Indianapolis, and then I was getting toward retirement. So I—They asked me if I would be willing to work from home, because by then, we were going to move back to Charleston.And so, I did. We moved back to Charleston, and I worked from home the last
couple of years in my civil service career, and it was with the Department of Defense Education Activity. And it was accounting and payroll, basically. All my career, basically, after I got out of the air force was in accounting and payroll. And then I worked the last couple years from home in Whiteville and then I retired.BB:So let's go back to your air force time—
SC:Okay.
BB:—and let's talk a little bit about the atmosphere at that time.
SC:Well, it wasn't very women friendly. [laughs]
BB:Okay. Let's have a discussion about what you mean by women friendly.
SC:Well, it was—When I went in the air force, I expected it to be just like any
other job. But the attitude toward women in the air force back in the early '70s when I was in was not— It wasn't real pleasant. They didn't make you feel welcome. I worked in—When I was in Charleston, when I worked at supply there, I came across several situations where it was not a pleasant working atmosphere. But I can honestly say over the years after that, it got better. Of course, my grades got higher too. I retired as a GS-11, so it was like, by the time I was a GS-11, it was a totally different attitude.[The General Schedule (GS) is the predominant pay scale within the United States
civil service. The GS includes the majority of white collar personnel (professional, technical, administrative, and clerical) positions. The GS is separated into fifteen grades (GS-1 to GS-15); each grade is separated into ten steps.]BB:So where did you do boot camp?
SC:In San Antonio, Texas.
BB:In San Antonio?
SC: Yes.
BB:So what was boot camp like for you then?
SC:Well, it was, it was—My recruiter who had kind of tried to prepare me for
some of the stuff. It wasn't anything bad. It was—Of course, I grew up on a farm and was used to being told what to do and I knew I had to get up and do this and this and this. So when you got to basic training, it was basically the same thing you know. I can remember them coming around. The TIs [technical instructors] would come around and they would say, "It is 0500 and you will get up." They came up and down the hallway saying that.So you learned real quick that you didn't mess around. So and then from—After
six weeks of basic, then I went to Denver. So it was a little better in Denver because that was my tech school, so there was no one really monitoring everything you did.BB:So was this the first time you'd ever been away from home—
SC:Yes.
BB:—when you went to Texas and then on to Denver?
SC:Yes, it was.
BB:What was that like?
SC:It was very—It wasn't really scary, but it was—It's the first time I'd ever
been away from my mom, and my mom and I were very close. So that was the hardest thing you know, was leaving home that day, knowing I wasn't going to be back for—I knew six weeks. And then, as it turned out, it was more like fourteen weeks because I ended up going to tech school directly from basic. So that was the hard part.BB:So what kind of tech school were you involved in?
SC:I was in supply. It was basically—It was an office job, but you monitored
supplies in the base supply building, and you had a supervisor. And in the office, I was in, there were maybe probably six or seven of us, and most of us were enlisted, and you just kept track of the supplies. Actually, we kept track of the supplies all over the base, but our area was basically just in supply. So it was—And at first, it was kind of hard to get used to working with people that you didn't know and people that didn't want you there.[knocking at door and recording paused]
SC:I forget where we were.
BB:Okay. We took a quick break for an interruption, and we are restarting, and
we're starting where we left off with the interview. So you were telling us a little bit about tech school.SC:Okay. And tech school was—It was more or less—It wasn't at all like basic
where someone was there telling you what to do every minute of the day. Tech school was, you know you had to go, and you know you had certain things you had to accomplish while you were there. So it was more of a laid-back atmosphere.BB:So this was during the time of Vietnam?
[The Vietnam War was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November
1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vietnam and South Vietnam. The north was supported by the Soviet Union, China, and other communist states, while the south was supported by the United States and other anti-communist allies. The war is widely considered to be a Cold War-era proxy war. It lasted almost twenty years, with direct United States involvement ending in 1973.]SC:Yes.
BB:So tell me a little bit about how you dealt with the issues in Vietnam.
SC:Well, to be perfectly honest with you, when I first went in, Vietnam was
something that I hadn't really thought that much about. When Mike and I met and then he went to Vietnam, that's when I really started understanding what Vietnam was all about and how it affected everybody. So I can honestly say, up until the point where we got married and he had to go, that's when I finally realized that we were in a conflict. You know, I was very naive, but I found out real quick that it was real.BB:So did he go to Vietnam while you were still in the service or after you had
gotten out?SC:I was out. I had gotten out, because you have to remember, I didn't stay in
very long because I got pregnant right away with Kim. But I stayed with his folks while he was in Vietnam, because my home atmosphere was not conducive to have us stay there. And so it was—Well, I stayed in his mom and dad's house. They—His dad was a union rep for Alcoa, so he moved around a lot. You have to remind me where we were.BB:Okay. So we're going to backtrack a little bit here.
SC:Okay.
BB:So what was your favorite experience in the air force?
SC:Probably, my personal favorite was probably after I met Mike, and we were
able to enjoy some of the things, doing things in the air force together. So before that, it was like, I was kind of alone you know. And it was—And that was about it. Once I met Mike, everything changed.BB:So then the thing you disliked the most, was it being alone?
SC:Yeah. It was hard. If you're this little country girl that's never known
anything but tobacco farms [laughs] and being raised with three brothers and a sister. We—In a little country town, it was hard. It was hard.BB:So where did you live? Did you live in a barracks, or did you live in family
housing, or?SC:Oh. Well, when I was in basic, we were in a barracks. And then when we went
to tech school, that was also a barracks, but they were more—We were spread out more. It wasn't just everybody in one barracks. Everybody in basic training was in one barracks. And then when you went to tech school, there were several barracks, so you were spread out by what group you were in. I was in supply, so I was in the group that basically, everybody in my barracks was in supply.BB:So what's the highest rate or rank that you achieved?
SC:In the air force, a sergeant. Later in my civil service career, I retired as
a GS-11. So I went much higher in my—But you know, I can honestly say I wouldn't have accomplished what I did in my civil service career if I hadn't had that beginning in the air force.BB:So do you feel you were discriminated against in the military?
SC:Oh. Well, there were times where you may be with a group and somebody might
say something, but I personally didn't come across that very often. So no, I can't say that I was discriminated against.BB:Or harassed? Or did you notice any sexual innuendos or anything like that?
SC:No, no.
BB:Okay. So who were your heroes during the time you were in the air force?
SC:Oh, my goodness.
BB:Or heroines.
SC:Well, and I have to keep really reiterating, I was only in just a short time,
so there was— But I have to honestly say my supervisor, Miss Adams, who was in supply. She was really good. She was good to me, and she was very fair to all of her employees. So I have to say she would've probably been my hero.BB:Okay. Were you aware of any anti-war activity while you were in the air force?
SC:No, not really.
BB:Were you aware of it after you got out?
SC:Oh, yes. After I got out. And of course, Mike was military, so after
following him around, we ran into it a lot of different places.BB:What was your opinion of the anti-war movement?
[Organized opposition to United States involvement in the Vietnam War began
slowly and in small numbers in 1964 on various college campuses in the United States and quickly as the war grew deadlier. In 1967, a coalition of antiwar activists formed the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam which organized several large anti-war demonstrations between the late 1960s and 1972. Counter-cultural songs, organizations, plays and other literary works encouraged a spirit of nonconformism, peace, and anti-establishmentarianism. This anti-war sentiment developed during a time of unprecedented student activism and right on the heels of the Civil Rights Movement, and was reinforced in numbers by the demographically significant baby boomers. It quickly grew to include a wide and varied cross-section of Americans from all walks of life. The anti-Vietnam war movement is often considered to have been a major factor affecting America's involvement in the war itself.]SC:Well, I could understand both sides. I could understand the side that was
against us being involved in a foreign war that we didn't have any business being in. But then I had to stand by my husband who, that was his career, and that's what he chose. So I had two separate trains of thought of that over the years.BB:So how about your feelings about women's rights and the Equal Rights Amendment?
[The Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the United States
Constitution designed to guarantee equal legal rights for all American citizens regardless of sex. Proponents assert it would end legal distinctions between men and women in matters of divorce, property, employment, and other matters. The first version of an ERA was written by Alice Paul and Crystal Eastman and introduced in Congress in December 1923.]SC:Well, I certainly believe that women can accomplish anything that men can do,
and I believe women have, should have just as many rights as men do.BB:How do you feel about women being in combat positions?
SC:Now, that I'm not sure. [laughs] I can't say that I would've ever been
comfortable in a combat position, mainly because it was—To me, that would've been just—Most people wouldn't have been—especially most women, would not have been subject to anything like that before they went in the military. So I can honestly say no. I wouldn't—I don't think there's a place for women in combat.BB:So where were you when you learned that [President John F.] Kennedy had been assassinated?
[On 22 November 1963, John F. Kennedy, the thirty-fifth president of the United
States, was assassinated while riding in a presidential motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas. Kennedy was in the vehicle with his wife, Jacqueline, Texas Governor John Connally, and Connally's wife, Nellie, when he was fatally shot from the nearby Texas School Book Depository by former United States Marine Lee Harvey Oswald.]SC:Oh my goodness. You're really making me think back. [laughs]
BB:That's one of those premilitary questions.
SC:I was going to say that was—I think I was still at home when that happened,
so probably still—I was out of high school, but I think I was still at home.BB:So any national incidents come to mind during the time you were in the military?
SC:Well, other than Vietnam, probably Vietnam is the only thing I can think of
since I was only in for just a short period of time.BB:Okay. So a lot of the remaining things that we have to cover, you pretty much
already covered—SC:Okay.
BB:—talking about what you did after you got out of the service.
SC:Right.
BB:You're now retired and living in Whiteville, North Carolina. Is that correct?
SC:Yes.
BB:Okay. You talked about why you left the service and when you left the
service. Have you applied for any GI or veterans' benefits?SC:No.
BB:Okay. Any reason you'd like to share?
SC:Well, I receive my federal retirement, so that was my—the benefits that I—But
I worked for thirty years for that, so I felt like I was entitled to that.BB:So have you personally experienced any post-traumatic stress disorder?
[Post-traumatic stress disorder is a mental and behavioral disorder that can
develop because of exposure to a traumatic event, such as sexual assault, warfare, traffic collisions, child abuse, domestic violence or other threats on a person's life.]SC:No.
BB:Do you have any experience dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder?
SC:Probably with Mike. I could say probably, yeah, a little.
BB:Okay.
SC:You have to remind me where we were.
BB:So a little bit with your husband?
SC:Yes.
BB:And that's a whole different story we're not going to cover today.
SC:Thank you.
BB:So how many children did you have in the military?
SC:I have no children in the military.
BB:How many children have you had since the military?
SC:Well, I had one daughter that I had after I got out.
BB:Would you recommend that your daughter participate in the military?
SC:Well, she would not physically be able to because she has cerebral palsy. But
her husband was ex-navy, so he did. So she supports him.BB:So what does the word patriotism mean to you?
SC:Oh my goodness. Everything, because my dad was at Pearl Harbor when it was
bombed. So we grew up knowing what it was like to be a patriot. And he—There's five of us, and of course, there was just two of us that went in the military. The others were different ages, and they didn't ever go, but I have a brother down in Florida that made his career in the air force. So he—My dad was—He was very proud of his service. He didn't retire because he got out after he served, so.[The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Imperial
Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States against the United States Naval Base at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, just before 8:00 a.m. (local time) on Sunday, 7 December 1941. The United States was a neutral country at the time; the attack led to its formal entry into World War II on the side of the Allies the next day.]BB:Is there anything particular you would like to tell a civilian that they may
not understand or know about the military?SC:Well, I would say they need to be careful what they're getting into, because
when you sign your name on that dotted line, you're saying Uncle Sam's your boss. And we saw that with us, with me and with Mike, because he had already—He was in the air force when I met him. So we've had to follow Uncle Sam's lead wherever we went for the last thirty years. So it's—I'd say be careful what you're signing because—And know what you're signing.[Uncle Sam (which has the same initials as United States) is a common national
personification of the federal government of the United States or the country in general. Since the early 19th century, Uncle Sam has been a popular symbol of the United States government in American culture and a manifestation of patriotic emotion.]BB:So we've finished the formal questions. Is there anything else you'd like to share?
SC:No. I think you've picked my brain pretty good. [laughs]
BB:So that wasn't too bad, was it?
SC:Oh, no. It wasn't.
[End of Interview]
00:05:00