1
12
10
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/be63b4eb66ab790f3f1d9b59ba599369.mp4
f250b2c4fec05ce44cc0af4da7fb46a7
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/1d451e040cefbbe809cf7d67510edd46.pdf
3d08e964b4be08186460f12f76a89250
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Jack Valkenier
(28:10)
Born 1928 December 18th, in the Netherlands
Anne Moene Falconeer
Born 1925 August 13th
Zeeland, near Belgium
(00:00)
Childhood
- Father was a minister. (A)
- Troublesome (J)
- Describes riverine produce transportation (J)
- Graduated 12th grade in Holland, later Calvin college (A, A+J)
- Married 53 1/2 years
- Graduated college '41 '33
(13:10) Germans
- May 1940 attacked while in High School
- Worked Odd jobs during occupation and completed HS
- Battle for air superiority. Initial German troops arrived via air
- Father (A) was a preached against the Nazis, member of underground resistance
- Germans came in the middle of the night looking for father
- Boys hiding in house to avoid forced labor in Germany
- Father(J) part of resistance and hid Jews within house
- Father(J) caught by Germans sent to concentration camp
- Scarce food. Asked neighboring farmers for food
- Buried and hid valuables. Often in compost pile
(25:15) Liberation
- Canadians and Americans arrived in motorcycles and jeeps, 1945
- Gave free rides
�- Some people starved and died in the street.
- Married in Canada, 1952
(28:10)
- Drafted into Dutch Army(J), engaged in Indonesia against Japanese and Guerillas
- 1948-50, Java, arrived via sea
- Fought in rice fields, incapacitated by vitamin deficiency
- Lived in Hamilton and Kitchener, Ontario, Canada
- Decided to attend Calvin College, 1957
- Taught in parochial grade schools in Canada, returned to States in 1961
- Worked as mechanic(J) and lab worker(A)
- Employed by Grand Rapids Doctor
- Joined the masons(J) in 1982; Scottish Rite; Eastern Star; Shriner. 33 degree
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
ValkenierJA
Title
A name given to the resource
Valkenier, Jack and Anne (Interview outline and video), 2005
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Valkenier, Jack
Valkenier, Anne
Description
An account of the resource
Jack and his wife Anne Valkenier are both ethnically Dutch. They describe the experiences they had during their younger years and the Nazi occupation. They describe their familial involvement in the Dutch resistance. Jack also depicts his later service in the Dutch armed forces in Southeast Asia.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins, Carol (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Video recordings
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2005-09-01
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/44bdf428f271ca3ce6a2dfdde1357167.mp4
bcb79b05e76456dab1e8543082656e1b
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/c6fefec6d79f024d38dfa4bee33d35cc.pdf
2d9ba32cf090183e95fb781f1c09957a
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veteran’s History Project Interview
Gordon Potter
Length of Interview (00:38:17)
Pre-enlistment (00:00:31)
Born 1937 in Byron Center, Michigan
His father was in a grocery business, then went into the milk business when it didn’t work out
Went to Byron Center Christian and finished high school at Unity Christian in Hudsonville ,
Michigan (1955)
Enlistment/Training (00:01:33)
Worked at grocery store, from ages 14-end of high school. Was working with a friend, Larry
Christian, who had a cousin going into the Navy; Potter was asked to join them the summer of
1955
•
Navy was accepting 2 year enlistments through the Naval Reserves at the time, a 6 year
obligation and 2 years active (00:02:15)
Potter thought that this would be a good time to go into the service because it was a time of
peace, Korean War just ended (mid 1950’s); but was aware of Cold War tensions (00:02:59)
Signed up at Naval Reserve Center in Byron Center (00:03:45)
In Mid-November (Nov. 13th or 14th) began service (00:03:56)
•
Immediately ordered to report to Great Lakes, Illinois on Dec. 1, 1955 (00:04:15)
•
When arriving, a lengthy and thorough indoctrination process was carried out (00:05:45)
Potter was then sent to the other side of the base and was assigned to a company (00:06:12)
•
Company 711, Potter’s company number (00:06:57)
Trained in military discipline and conditioning but was mainly taught how to run equipment
(00:07:41)
•
Did some close-order drill but not to the extent that Army and Marine branches did
•
Attended classes all day and learned about Semaphore, different types of guns,
ammunition, weapons and how to operate them. Also attended firefighting school
�Was a part of the Drum and Bugle Corps, morning and evening practices (00:08:23)
Trained in Great Lakes for 9 weeks (00:09:26)
•
8 weeks of basic training, 1 week of Service Week (maintaining the camp)
•
Potter did barracks duty
•
During training, was given several “Aptitude Tests” (00:10:26)
Was offered to go to Radio or Sonar school but the Navy wasn’t inclined to send him to school
unless he signed up for more service (1-2 years)
Declined the offer but because of his clerical skills, he was given a clerical job
Alameda Air Station (00:10:55)
Sent to California in Alameda Air Station in a place called Commander Fleet Logistics Air Wing
Pacific, an office building
The building was HQ for transportation stations around the Pacific (Japan, Hawaii, and U.S.
West Coast)
Spent 19 months there performing clerical duties
•
Started out as a yeoman (00:11:54)
Moved to a floor called the Aviation Store Keeper office (00:12:35)
Assigned to a job called Bravo Allotment
• Entailed sending request from squadrons for fuel and oil for airplanes to Washington,
D.C., and then writing monthly reports on how much was used. Also kept financial
records for fuel and oil.
Since the job was not time consuming, he joined the softball team there (00:14:05)
The majority of the officers were pilots, so a plane was assigned to them, a TF-1 Twin Engine
(00:14:32)
• When flying, a rule for pilots was to have a mechanic or an observer on board; Potter
acted as an observer, sometimes
�San Diego (00:20:20)
In 1957, the Navy closed Potter’s assigned office, so he was first reassigned to a place called
Brown Field in California, but was sent to VR 21 in San Diego instead (00:20:33)
A week or two after arrival, he was given a job in charge of ordering materiel (00:21:51)
• Processed supplies that mechanics ordered, sent the requests to suppliers, then did the
paperwork for buying parts
• Took Potter three weeks to straighten out paper work of previous employee
After the Service
Stayed in San Diego for 4 months until his 2 years of service in the Navy were up (00:22:48)
Went back to civilian life in Byron Center (where his parents no longer lived in) and stayed there
for 2 years working; but he was still a part of the Naval Reserve (00:24:02)
Prior to Potter’s release in San Diego, the Navy had released a lot of people who had been
drafted (around the time he had enlisted) causing Reserves to become loaded (00:25:11)
•
Naval Reserves offered the choice of Active Reserve
At that time, Potter was a 3rd Class Petty Officer and had taken the written exam for 2nd Class,
but had to go back into Active Reserve to see his results
He declined the offer and stayed in Inactive Reserve for 4 years
Was released in Nov. 1961 (00:26:39)
Experience Gained (00:29:26)
Started working in the Fire Department on June 15, 1960 on the West Side of Grand Rapids
Over 20 years Potter went from firefighter, to rescue squad, then House Captain of the rescue
squad (1975)
•
Went into a job that was more dangerous than his time in the military (00:33:06)
Feels that because of his Naval Training, he is able to deal with people better; especially with the
stresses of his career as a firefighter; his eyes were opened to a bigger world(00:33:22)
Enjoyed his time in the Navy
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
PotterG
Title
A name given to the resource
Potter, Gordon (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Potter, Gordon
Description
An account of the resource
Gordon Potter enlisted into the Naval Reserve the summer of 1955. He trained in Great Lakes, Illinois and was assigned to Alameda Naval Air Station afterwards to do clerical work. His main job was managing fuel use for Bravo Allotment until he was transferred to San Diego where he continued doing clerical work.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Byron Area Historic Museum (Byron Center, Mich.)
BCTV
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Navy
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-09-23
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/6f2bcdb6fc35024b72bd7aaef36cc0a3.mp4
886f2168e4962e6c9fef99ec3cb32b65
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/49a6cfc2c546660ce9eef9f597f5ea39.pdf
3b73e184bae8818afd39b7338b9a6b25
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Cornelia Ooms
Interviewer: Frank Boring
Transcribed by Emilee G. Johnson, Western Michigan University
Length: 41:14
Frank Boring: Well, let’s begin, if you could tell us your full name and where you were born.
Cornelia Ooms: My name is Cornelia Lucretia Cook Ooms. That’s a long name! [laughs]
Frank Boring: But you’re know as…?
Cornelia Ooms: I’m known as Cookie. I have been for many years.
Frank Boring: And when were you born?
Cornelia Ooms: February 26, 1913.
Frank Boring: And you grew up here in Grand Rapids, is that right?
Cornelia Ooms: In Grand Rapids, I attended Christian schools. We lived in the Southwest part of
Grand Rapids around Grandville Avenue, Hall Street, and so. 1:00
Frank Boring: What was your early schooling like?
Cornelia Ooms: I went to Franklin Street Christian School and Grandville Avenue Junior High
Christian School and then I went to Grand Rapids Christian High. And then after I
graduated from there, I went into nurses’ training, right from school.
Frank Boring: What was your interest in nursing? Did you have that from early on?
Cornelia Ooms: No, I think, about the last year I was in high school, another girl and I talked
about it. She didn’t go into nursing, but I did, we were going to go together, but she
flunked out. [laughs] But I went into nursing, and so… I went to Blodgett Hospital.
Frank Boring: Ok, all right. And what was your training like? Your schooling for nursing, what
was that like?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, it was good, Blodgett was known as a good hospital. 2:00 And we went,
we had, the first year we were there, we went to junior college for a couple of courses.
Otherwise, we had courses right at the hospital there, and learned how to do things, you
know.
�Frank Boring: Did you have any inkling that there was going to be a war coming up during that
period of time?
Cornelia Ooms: No. We were surprised when Pearl Harbor came.
Frank Boring: Do you remember that day?
Cornelia Ooms: Oh, I sure do! Sunday.
Frank Boring: Tell us about it. What happened?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, we were at another house, we were with some other young people and it
came in the radio, and we were real surprised and then the next day, they declared war.
Frank Boring: What was your reaction?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, we all felt real bad about it. 3:00 We tried to do as much as we could, I
was doing public health nursing at the time, I was in public health nursing. So I don’t
know, just everybody was surprised, I think.
Frank Boring: Did you feel like you wanted to join the military at that time, or did that come
later?
Cornelia Ooms: Not then. Later we talked about it, we three girls talked about it. And we felt we
would like to do it. I think it was a matter of adventure too. [laughs] To get away, get out,
you know.
Frank Boring: So what is the process of joining the military, as a woman, as a nurse, at that time,
what did you have to do?
Cornelia Ooms: Well we, you know, I can’t even remember where we went to sign up, I think
we went to Detroit to sign up. And we signed up 4:00 to go overseas, which my Dad
laughed about, he said, “Yeah, that’ll never happen.” But anyway, two weeks we were
sent to Camp Grant in Illinois, and we worked there as a nurse in the hospital, for about
two weeks and then we got our notice to go overseas.
Frank Boring: During that two weeks, what were you treating, just people that had colds and
flues and things or were these actually…?
Cornelia Ooms: Well it was just a Army hospital, I don’t remember much about that. Yeah, I
don’t.
Frank Boring: So, you got the notice then, that you were going to be going overseas…
�Cornelia Ooms: And it was, they needed nurses so badly, I had a, some of the girls that went,
they needed to go in uniform, they didn’t get their uniform till they got to New York.
And I know, my mother and father and my sister and her husband, 5:00 came to Camp
Grant to say goodbye to us, to me. And my mother sewed all Sunday, fixing the uniforms
to make them fit for the other, my uniform was all right, but the other girls needed a little
work done. So she was busy doing that. And we went to Camp Shanks in New York.
Frank Boring: Did you have to do any kind of basic training, or did you have any military
training?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, no, they didn’t have time to do it. So when we were in, after we got to
North Africa, we were there for about six weeks, I guess, they sent us to Sidi Bel Bes,
Algeria, I don’t know if you, that’s the place where the French Foreign Legion was, in
North Africa, and they had a big Army hospital there. And they sent the girls who were
6:00 going to be in charge of wards and some enlisted men, we went to that big hospital
for about a month. And we worked there and learned how to do the records and all that
stuff. That’s the only training we had for Army nurse.
Frank Boring: Let’s go back for just a brief bit to your arrival in North Africa, you’d never been
outside of the country, is that right?
Cornelia Ooms: No. It was real funny, when we, well at Camp Shanks, they kept giving us more
equipment all the time, they’d get us out of bed even during the night to hand out stuff.
Anyway, we were lined up in a big shed to go on this ship, and I looked around, the Red
Cross was handing out donuts and coffee. 7:00 And there I saw a guy who was our
neighbor! And I thought, well that can’t be him, so I looked away, I thought if I look
again, I won’t see him, just imagined it. But it was him. He was, we were on the same
ship for a month, going overseas. And now he’s here in Sidi Bel Bes with me again.
Frank Boring: So what was the arrival in North Africa like? I mean, I’ve been to foreign
countries, and I know it’s very different in terms of the smells, in terms of the…
Cornelia Ooms: Well, yeah, well, we landed in Oran. And at night, they put us on these big
trucks, and we rode for a long time inland, you know, so we didn’t see much of the
country then at all. But we were on a hill, they called it Goat Hill, 8:00 it was a big, big,
thing, and they had about, oh, I bet five different groups of nurses there.
[pause]
The officers and the nurses were on one side of the road and enlisted men were on the
other side, it was a big encampment there. We slept in tents, big tents, about ten or fifteen
girls in a tent.
�Frank Boring: Cots?
Cornelia Ooms: No, not at first. We slept on the ground, at first, on our sleeping bags, our
bedroll, that they called it.
Frank Boring: Did you have a rank?
Cornelia Ooms: Second lieutenant.
Frank Boring: So you went in as a second lieutenant?
Cornelia Ooms: Everybody, all the nurses went in as second lieutenants. Yeah.
Frank Boring: And what were your first jobs, 9:00 what were the first jobs that you were doing
when you arrived in North Africa?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, when we were on Goat Hill, we didn’t work at all, we were just waiting, to
be assigned. Then we stayed there for a long time. It was really something when we were
on Goat Hill, it was so hot, terrible hot and so they made, well, I don’t know if I should
tell this or not, but they made showers for everybody. And there were just pipes with
holes in them, you know, and they had just canvas stripped around, not over the top, just
around the bottom. Well, the enlisted men had a certain time when they could take
showers, the officers had a certain time, and the nurses. When the nurses had 10:00
their time to go shower, it was all open, you know, everything was open. All the enlisted
men had to come to get water, so they could look down on us. And we even had an
airplane flying over us, taking pictures, we heard. And, we didn’t care, we were so hot,
we didn’t care, what’s the difference, when there’s fifty, sixty, women are all together,
they all look the same anyway, so. But they finally, they changed the time, and they put
fellows there, to keep the enlisted men away, so, funny things like that happened.
Frank Boring: What was your daily routine like?
Cornelia Ooms: At…?
Frank Boring: At Goat Hill, the routine was, you were just sitting around and play cards, or, what
are you doing?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, yeah, I guess, we would have breakfast, we’d wash ourself, you’d have to
use a helmet, we used 11:00 the outside of the helmet as a basin of water. They had big
tin cans, we’d wash our clothes in them and hang them on the bushes or whatever we
could find.
Frank Boring: This is a desolate area, I take it?
�Cornelia Ooms: Oh, terrible, there’s no trees around at all. No trees at all.
Frank Boring: And very, very hot.
Cornelia Ooms: And about five o’clock, well, we’d have to walk to go get our food, we had to
walk over to the mess, they had the mess, we just ate out of the mess kits, C-ration, some
of us just ate at our own place with C-ration. It wasn’t very good. And, but about five
o’clock, it was just like Grand Central Station, you’d see all the jeeps coming, all the
different people would come pick up nurses. I had a fellow too, he would come take me
for a ride all 12:00 around the country and… Yeah, we, and then we just, we would
sing a lot together, and we’d talk, and yeah, there was nothing really to do, you just hung
around.
Frank Boring: Did you have any idea where you were going to be assigned?
Cornelia Ooms: No. We didn’t know. We were assigned to Bizerte. We went on a big train, they
had a big, long train, and we, you know, it was a French cars, I don’t know if you know
they have two seats, two rows of seats and then there’s a row and then there’s a window
and there’s outside of the train and with this little compartment. Six girls in one
compartment, we were knee to knee, that’s how we sat, and that was sleeping too! And
they would stop 13:00 quite often to get coal and water for this huge train, and the
people that live around there would know that we were coming, course, and they would
be lined up on the track, with eggs and bread, some bread, and stuff. Well we would, my
friend and I, we sat by the window. And we’d put our helmet out, and they’d give us
some hot water, in the helmet. And the people were sitting right by the window, I mean,
we didn’t care. So we’d start to wash, first one would wash their face, and then the other
one and then they’d wash their arms and that’s how we took our bath every day out of the
helmet with everybody watching us. But we didn’t care, we got, at least, we were clean.
14:00 And we were in overalls, you know, jump suits.
Frank Boring: Now, where did you arrive, eventually, where did you end up? At the end of that
train trip?
Cornelia Ooms: In Bizerte. And then we went to a big field, with big tents again. The hospital
wasn’t quite set up yet when we got there. So we had to wait there for, I don’t know, a
couple weeks, I guess, or a week, I don’t know. And then we went to our own hospital,
that’s how it was set up.
Frank Boring: Give us an idea of what this looks like.
Cornelia Ooms: Well, it was called the 81st Station Hospital. And it had, there was a road, down
the middle. On one side was all the hospital, they were big tents, four in a row, and it
�went way down, and it was medical and surgical. 15:00 I was in a surgical tent. And on
the other side of the road were the tents where the officers lived. And then they had a big
recreation tent in the middle, and then the nurses tents on that other side, we all had
bigger tents, we did have cots. [unintelligible] cots.
Frank Boring: Now the tents you were sleeping in, these were not pup tents, right, these were…?
Cornelia Ooms: Four ladies at a time, four beds. And we had a little stove in the middle, which,
they’d burn some oil in it to heat in the winter time.
Frank Boring: Are you familiar with the television series M*A*S*H*?
Cornelia Ooms: Oh, yeah!
Frank Boring: Is the tent sort of like that?
Cornelia Ooms: Sort of like that. Yeah.
Frank Boring: Ok. So, I think they had three to a tent, on the TV show, but you had four.
Cornelia Ooms: We had four to a tent.
Frank Boring: Approximately how many people were out there, are we talking thousands of
people,16:00 or hundreds of people?
Cornelia Ooms: Oh, there were…you mean in our group?
Frank Boring: Just in your immediate hospital area. Between the officers and the support
people…
Cornelia Ooms: Well, yeah, there were about fifty nurses. And a lot of officers, I don’t know
how many, but…
Frank Boring: So this is a large area…
Cornelia Ooms: So a couple hundred at least, two or three hundred people.
Frank Boring: Now what was your responsibility, what was your job?
Cornelia Ooms: I was the head nurse of this one ward. And we had very sick patients and some
that weren’t too sick.
Frank Boring: By sick, what kind of sickness are we talking about? These are war wounds?
Cornelia Ooms: Just come from surgery, some were wounded, and they had a lot of dressings to
do and IVs, it was very, and I, as a public health nurse, 17:00 I never learned how to
�give intravenous injection. And I told our commander, the officer, reverend, I mean,
Captain Gere, was our doctor in that..our tents and I told him, I said, I’m willing to learn
if you want to teach me how to do it. “Aw,” he said, “I’ll just do it. You get everything
ready, you know who has to have intravenous fluid, and when I go to surgery, I’ll stop by
and stick the needle in.” He said, “Those boys have been through enough! They don’t
have to go, they don’t have to have you poking them trying to hit a vein.” So, I never did
learn to do intravenous, 18:00 put a needle in the vein, I… At public health, they didn’t
want you to, it was too much responsibility, away from a doctor, and you know, in a
home.
Frank Boring: Why were you made the head nurse?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, I don’t know, I had more experience. Some of the nurses there were just
out of nurses training. They came right from nurses training into the Army. And I was
older, we were older. We had had experience in the nursing field.
Frank Boring: So as a head nurse in this particular ward, what was your responsibility?
Cornelia Ooms: See that everything was done good, assign the nurses to the tents, the people
they had to take care of, the baths that had to be given and see that the ward men did the
work that they had to do. And we also did baths. 19:00 I worked all the time too. We
didn’t just sit around.
Frank Boring: Were you responsible for ordering medicines or was all that taken care of?
Cornelia Ooms: The doctor did that. We had to give the medicine. We gave a lot, used a lot of
sulfa.
Frank Boring: What kind of wounds are we talking about here, what variety of…?
Cornelia Ooms: Well they were gunshot wounds in the abdomen and the back, and we had some,
a couple fellows that were burned real badly and had a couple of amputations. So that
sort of, just general surgery. They had a, they called it hospital row, there were about four
hospitals set up. Some took lung cases. 20:00
[pause]
Some took lung cases, some had head wounds, others had different things, but we had
general surgery.
Frank Boring: This could not have been a very pleasant place to work.
Cornelia Ooms: No, but the fellows were real nice. They never, when they first would come off
the field, in from the airplane, they would be very dirty and we’d get them all cleaned up
�and some of them would use bad words once in a while and they would apologize for it.
They’d say, “Oh, we haven’t seen women for so long, we forget.” But they were real
good fellows.
Frank Boring: Um, did you treat just Americans or were there other nationalities?
Cornelia Ooms: No, well, we had one fellow die and 21:00 he was from Britain. He was
English. Most of us we were Americans, yes.
Frank Boring: How long did you stay at that particular ward? Were you there for a year, or?
Cornelia Ooms: Yeah. All the while we were in Africa, we were… [unintelligible] When we got
to Italy, then I wasn’t, I just worked in the ward, I wasn’t ever responsible for it.
Frank Boring: How did you get your news? Did you have newspapers, radio, how did you know
what was going on in the war?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, they had the Stars and Stripes, that was the newspaper, we would get that.
And they had a radio, some of them had radios.
Frank Boring: Did you have any idea that we were winning the war or losing the war, did you
have any sense of how the war was going?
Cornelia Ooms: No, I don’t think so. Course, in Italy, when we got to Italy, then we 22:00 took
care of the French Army and different, we had more diverse people, more than
Americans. We had Arabs and we had people who worked for the French Army.
[pause]
Frank Boring: So in Italy, you were not the head nurse.
Cornelia Ooms: No, no.
Frank Boring: So your responsibilities were just the same as any other nurse.
Cornelia Ooms: Yeah.
Frank Boring: Dispense medicine.
Cornelia Ooms: Give baths.
Frank Boring: Give baths, ok.
Cornelia Ooms: That’s right.
�Frank Boring: Were there any particular incidents that stuck out? I mean, I know this is a daily
routine of wounds and people, but were there stories that you remember from that period
that…?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, one day, there was, he was from 23:00 Morocco, I guess, anyway, he
was from the French Army, he wanted something else to eat, we couldn’t figure out what
he wanted. So finally, he made a noise like a chicken, then we knew he wanted an egg.
And another time, we had a black man we called Yah Yah, he was a huge fellow, and we
also had another little guy whose leg had been amputated and the French didn’t do a very
good job on people when the operated, so they were, had weights on his leg to pull, so
they could fix it better, so he could use the prosthesis, and that was painful for him to
have those weights on there but it was necessary. 24:00 But his friend would come
along and stick the weights under the mattress to take the, relieve the pulling, you know.
Well, one day, I got him all ready, I had him all fixed up, and had it all settled, and then I
came back, the weights were under the mattress again, so I fixed it again and I was going
this way [motions]. He couldn’t understand me and I couldn’t understand him but I was
going this way [motions], shaking my head. And one of his friends came along and
started talking to me in Arabic, I guess, I don’t know, anyway, and all of the sudden this
little guy, he was raised right off the floor, here was Yah Yah, he had him by the scruff of
the neck and just lift him right up and looked him in the eye and he said something
25:00 to him, I don’t know what, but we didn’t see the guy for two days after that, he
must’ve scared him really bad, but we always felt we didn’t have to worry as long as we
had Yah Yah around. He was, he knew what he was saying to him, probably wasn’t nice.
Frank Boring: What was the procedure for a patient coming in and then finally getting
discharged? Give us an idea of what the…
Cornelia Ooms: Well, when we were in Africa, of course, all the records were in English. In
Italy, we had young people working for us on the ward who were Italian, didn’t speak
any English. These people came in from the French Army, they didn’t speak English
either. 26:00 So, the ward doctor would take the medicine chart, cart, and he cut off all
the bandages of this one fellow and rewrite all the orders in English, that was the only
way they could do it. And somebody would take tetanus, and give everybody a tetanus
shot. Just under the skin, you know, test them if they needed it. And when we had, if they
were going to have surgery, they weren’t to have breakfast, they had a certain color card
that we laid on their bed, and then these Italians would know that would mean they didn’t
get a breakfast. That’s how we had to work. Lot of hand, head shaking and hand shaking
and, but it worked, 27:00 it worked.
Frank Boring: Would you say that the pace was hectic?
�Cornelia Ooms: No, no. It was busy, but not hectic. We never stressed, I don’t think, I never felt
that way, anyway.
Frank Boring: So, from your knowledge of how all this works, a soldier would get injured in
battle, the medics would bring him to—
Cornelia Ooms: Our hospital.
Frank Boring: Ok, so you were getting them fresh from the battle.
Cornelia Ooms: We got those from the French Army, we did, yeah. And they had much different
wounds than our fellows did, you could tell they had hand-to-hand combat. They would
come, these guys, from, you know, the Arabs, with these knives that were crooked, you
know, I mean, the big curled-over, they would go under the mattress, they still had them
with them. And their wounds were a lot different, 28:01 all sliced and, they weren’t
gunshot wounds like the Americans.
Frank Boring: Was it during this period of time that you met a young lieutenant, I believe he was
a lieutenant at the time, Dole, is that the same period of time or is that much later?
Cornelia Ooms: No, no, that was after I came home.
Frank Boring: Oh, ok.
Cornelia Ooms: No, I didn’t see him in Africa, no.
Frank Boring: So, you were then in Africa and then in Italy and what happened after Italy, where
did you go from there?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, I, see I injured my back when we got to Italy.
Frank Boring: Let’s talk about that.
Cornelia Ooms: So I worked for six months. But I was, my body was real crooked, I was trying
to save my back, you know.
Frank Boring: Well, let’s talk about that incident, what happened, actually?
Cornelia Ooms: Well, as I said, when we got from the ship, to our place where we were going to
live, we had to get on a big truck, 29:00 it was 6x6. And we had all our heavy clothes
on and a tent bag and a helmet on our head. And I was the first one off the truck. And the
fellow who, there were no steps, we just had to jump off, and that’s a long ways down.
But the fellows would always put their hands up like this [motions] and we could put our
hands on theirs and they would spring us, and we wouldn’t hurt. But this little fellow who
helped me, didn’t give me any support, so when I landed on my feet, my back twisted.
�And I called to the nurses, the other girls and I said, “Be careful when you get off, he
doesn’t help you enough.” But then I didn’t think any more of it, but as the time went on,
it’d get worse. And one night, I was supposed to have a date, and he didn’t come, which
wasn’t unusual, they had 30:00 other assignments, so… But I started to get sciatica, a
pain in my leg, it was just terrible. And everybody was out and when they came back in, I
was walking around all crumpled up. They gave me pain pills and put me to sleep and in
the morning it was still there, so then I went to the hospital. And I was in traction there
for maybe a month. And I was sent home on a hospital ship. And I went to Springfield,
Missouri, then, we came home and landed in Savannah, and then I was sent to
Springfield, Missouri, to the hospital there and had a laminectomy for my back and I was
there for a while and then I went to Percy, then I went 31:00 to Fort Custer, I was on
assignment, I went back then to Miami for reassignment, and I chose Fort Custer, Percy
Jones, because that was near where I lived, you know, and I had a car waiting for me in
Grand Rapids and so I went there but I was only there about six months and my back
went out again and I had a second operation there. And that’s when I met Dole, I was
recuperating from that second operation, and I helped him and I volunteered to feed him.
Frank Boring: Now, you were telling me there was two officers there that were in pretty bad
shape, tell us about meeting Bob Dole. What kind of shape was he in? 32:00
Cornelia Ooms: Oh, he was so thin! He’s a big, tall guy, you know, and he was real thin, he
couldn’t use his one arm and his other arm he couldn’t use to eat with. He was very, very
thin. And he wasn’t eating, that’s why they asked us if we would feed him. To feed him
while the food was hot. So every, every three times a day, we would go, before we went
our own meal, we would go and feed this fellow, these fellows, this other nurse and I.
And she fed a fellow who was a paraplegic and I had Dole. So, that way, he did start to
get better then. By the time I left, when I was discharged from there, he was still a patient
there when I was discharged.
Frank Boring: What was he 33:00 like as a patient?
Cornelia Ooms: I never saw him, I just went in to feed and would go away again, you know, we
didn’t… But he was real nice, we had a lot of nice talks together. Yeah. Had a good sense
of humor.
Frank Boring: Course, you didn’t know who he was from anybody else at that time, he was
just—
Cornelia Ooms: Oh no, he was just, he was a lieutenant. Yeah. There were, Senator Inouye was
there, at that same time.
Frank Boring: Oh, wow.
�Cornelia Ooms: And there was another man, I can’t think of his town, but he was from
Michigan, he was there, they all became senators! Three of them that were there at the
same time. Course they didn’t know it at that time.
Frank Boring: When did you first find out that the guy that you were feeding was a—
Cornelia Ooms: Well, when I was, lived in California, we lived, I, we moved there, and after I
had finished school and my husband finished school, 34:00 we moved out to
California. And his picture was on Life Magazine, he was running for senator then. And I
wrote to him and told him who I was, and he wrote back to me and invited me to come to
Washington, and show me around. But then a year or so later, I got another letter from
him, he had been in San Diego, but he hadn’t had time to come to see me or to contact
me. So that was when I saw him, and then I saw him, course, later in Grand Rapids, at
that political luncheon.
Frank Boring: Now, once your back, it was hurt you’re—
Cornelia Ooms: When I was, when we were in, when we were going to school 35:00 in
Seattle, I was married and I was going to school, getting my degree in public health
nursing, then my back went out again, and then I went through the veterans’, I went to the
public health hospital, and I had a big operation and I had a spinal fusion. And then they
injured the nerve in this leg, [motion to right] my right leg, which was more sensation
than movement, I could use it, but it was the sensation. It was so terrible cold, I had, I
started getting terrible cramps, and it was so cold, my foot was, my leg was always ice
cold. So I went back to this hospital and saw the doctor, and they did a ?????? which,
36:00 they directed more blood through another vein, a vessel, and then I didn’t have
any more trouble with it. It’s always been weak, this leg has always been weak, I’ve
fallen many times. But never really got hurt real bad. Skinned up a lot. [laughs]
Frank Boring: Yeah. How about your discharge from the military, was that a fairly simple thing?
Cornelia Ooms: Yes. You are, I was discharged when the Army hospital said you’re able to go
work, or be around, you know. So, I was discharge and then I went back to Camp Grant,
and got my final discharge there, I was only there a day or two, and I was discharged.
Frank Boring: Did you find that your military experience helped you, later in your life?
Cornelia Ooms: Oh, yes! 37:00 Made me grow up. Oh yeah. I found out I could do things I
never thought I could do. Take responsibility I never thought I could do. I had always
lived at home with my parents and very secluded, always the same friends, didn’t have to
do anything different. But I found out I could do it. I really grew up.
�Frank Boring: Did you have moments of real… I guess the word I looking for is when you think
about nurses, there are times when the life of that person is in your hands. Were there
close calls that you can recall?
Cornelia Ooms: No, I don’t ever think so. Except that one time in Africa when the little boy died,
and we all felt really bad about it, but—
Frank Boring: What was that, what happened there? What happened to the little boy?
Cornelia Ooms: Well he was wounded 38:00 very badly and he died, he couldn’t make it, the
doctor tried everything to save him, he couldn’t do it, I don’t know what happened to him
[unintelligible] That’s the only casualty we had in our ward. I don’t think we had too
many in our whole hospital.
Frank Boring: You guys did a good job. [laughs]
Cornelia Ooms: I think so. I think we did.
Frank Boring: Well, I guess we can wind down the interview now, I just wanted to say how
much I appreciate you letting us come and talk to you.
Cornelia Ooms: Well it’s been fun talking about it again.
Frank Boring: Yeah.
Cornelia Ooms: Yeah.
Frank Boring: Well, make sure to keep in contact, because I’d like you to get a copy of this
video.
Cornelia Ooms: Ok, thank you.
Frank Boring: And we’ll make sure to have that for you. And when Bob Dole comes to town,
let’s see what we can do about it.
Cornelia Ooms: Oh, I hope, I sure hope I can see him again.
Frank Boring: I have one more question. I interviewed a Navy nurse, ok, and not a Navy nurse,
excuse me, she was in the Navy. She had actually been offered to be in the 39:00
Army. And she chose the Navy cause she heard that the Army nurses wore khaki
underwear.
Cornelia Ooms: [laughs] Oh, no, we didn’t! [laughs] No. But we did a lot, we did a lot more
actual nursing than the Navy nurse did, that’s what I was told. I talked to a Navy nurse,
they get a lot of bookwork. And they told other people what to do. The Army nurse, we
�did the actual nursing too, we gave baths and we did all that kind of work. And, but, the
Navy nurses probably ate better than we did too. [laughs] One thing, I went with a, he
was a lawyer, and he’d come once a week to the hospital and come and pick me up and
take me to Bizerte, to his place, 40:00 where they had… And the first time I went, they
were all sitting at a big, long table, all men, of course, I was the only woman. And I sat
down and I looked, and I said, “Butter!” And they said, “Butter?” I said, “Butter, we
don’t get butter.” They said, “You don’t?” I said, “No, we get…” stuff, I don’t know
what it was. Anyway, before I knew it, I had all the butter of the table in front of me. And
every time I came, everybody would give me butter. They all brought butter to me.
[laughs] Now, they, some of those people ate pretty good. Army didn’t eat so good. Oh,
we ate all right, but it was a lot of C-rations and K-rations and…
Frank Boring: I actually know what those are. I’ve eaten them myself.
Cornelia Ooms: [laughs] Yeah. 41:00
Frank Boring: Well, Cookie, thank you so much for this interview, and I guess we can wind it
down now and…
Cornelia Ooms: Well, thank you for doing it, I never knew it was going to be like this.
41:14
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
OomsC
Title
A name given to the resource
Ooms, Cornelia (Interview transcript and video), 2004
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Ooms, Cornelia
Description
An account of the resource
Cornelia Ooms was a nurse in the U.S. Army during World War II. She was stationed in Italy and worked in the field hospitals with French, North African, British and American soldiers. She hurt her back in Italy and had to return back home to the states where she finished school and married. While she spent time in Italy in a hospital, Cornelia met Bob Dole and two other soon to be senators. She volunteered to feed Mr. Dole, who at the time could not use his arms to feed himself.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Boring, Frank (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2004-06-26
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/76ecebe0d8596c97f6c85321d06aace6.mp4
7b6d840af4df5bbf1140b86707725e72
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/69acf5f108caf0d992b1dea12dab42cf.pdf
f52c3ed23442032b72d3de3d03346052
PDF Text
Text
ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEW
ANNIE MEYER
Born: Hancock, Minnesota
Resides: Holland, Michigan
Interviewed by: James Smither PhD, GVSU Veterans History Project
Transcribed by: Claire Herhold, January 20, 2013
Interview length: 22:20
Interviewer: Mrs. Meyer, can you start by telling us a little bit about your personal
background? To start with, where and when were you born?
I was born in Minnesota, Hancock. It was a very small town. And I was born into a large
family. I was third oldest. We had nine children. And my mom and dad were… Dad was a
farmer. We lived on a big farm and we had cows and horses. All the field work was done with
horses at first and then we got into tractors.
Interviewer: You’re growing up in the era of the Depression. Is your family able to hang
on to the farm in that period?
Yes, we were. And, in fact, I remember during the war, then things were more expensive and
prices were up for what dad sold so he was able to pay for the farm, and that was a good feeling.
1:05 Otherwise he had to farm and give a share of it to the owner of the crops and things. That’s
the way they worked it.
Interviewer: So he was getting by, because he didn’t actually own the land, he didn’t have a
mortgage to pay in the ‘30s, he was just sharecropping at that point?
I guess you’d call it that, yeah.
Voice Offscreen: No, he owned it, Ann.
After a while, yeah. Well, he had to pay for it by the sharecropping. I don’t know how many…
�Interviewer: Well, they may have arranged the purchase agreement where he had to pay
for it through sharecropping or whatever but it enabled you to kind of stay in the same
place and not have to move around a lot or switch jobs.
I only ever remember living in that one farm.
Interviewer: What kind of schooling did you get?
I had eight years in a one room schoolhouse. We had all the grades and one teacher. First off,
we had quite a few kids like, fourteen, and then by the time I was in the fourth grade we were
way down. 2:07 At one time there were four from my family that were in school and only three
other kids. It was rather strange.
Interviewer: Was that just shifts in population or were kids going off and working?
No, it was the older ones were graduated and there wasn’t that much of younger ones to come in.
We lived two and half miles from school and we had to walk or else we took a horse and buggy,
and we managed to do that for a number of years. I had, like I said, the eight years, and I had
always wanted to be a nurse, and of course you needed more education, at least a high school.
And I had to stay home and help on the farm so I didn’t get the high school.
Interviewer: So that’s basically what you’re doing through a lot of your teenage years is
you’re just kind of out there on the farm. Did you have a radio or anything like that or
were you too far away? 3:05
I remember when we got radio. I remember when we got electricity. And it was really
something. We had a twenty five watt bulb in the middle of the ceiling. Boy, we had light.
Interviewer: Was this part of the rural electrification process?
�Yes, yes. First Dad had a little plant of his own, and when rural electrification came through,
then he was able to switch to that. Then he had it in all the buildings. First he had it in only a
couple of them.
Interviewer: Did you have any sense, I don’t know if you were old enough to think about it
then, did you have any sense of what your father or your parents thought about a lot of the
government’s policies regarding agriculture and that sort of stuff in that period?
I didn’t hear an awful lot about it. The prices of things, that I would hear about, and then Dad
would always kind of watched that when he sold the pigs or sold some cow, something like that.
4:04 He tried to pick when it was the highest. And of course the grain was always something.
He harvested that. You had to get rid of it whether you wanted to or not, but you couldn’t keep.
Interviewer: In some areas of the country there were agricultural agents and things like
that out there who were dictating policies of different kinds.
There was an agricultural town, Morris, right close by us. There was a man there that used to
come out and talk with Dad.
Interviewer: But he wasn’t somebody who was interfering with them or anything, he was
just offering advice or suggestions?
Yeah, more or less. Yes. The Farm Bureau was another organization that farmers could join and
learn about things too. We didn’t have a daily newspaper all the time. There were times when
Dad would subscribe to it. If he did the mailman would come around every day and give us the
paper. It was always a day late. 5:05
Interviewer: Right. Where would you get the paper from?
Minneapolis.
Interviewer: Minneapolis. How far were you from Minneapolis?
�150 miles.
Interviewer: Ok, so that’s a good ways. Did you get to go into the city occasionally when
you were a kid?
I did a couple of times but it wasn’t a really big ambition of ours. Morris was big enough. I was
at the cities to the state fair one time. I had won a prize. I won first place in a declamatory
contest that was held in the public schools in the county and they would have one field day,
they’d have all the speakers give their speeches, and they’d have to find out who’d win first.
And the first one would go to the cities where the state fair there. And I did that one year.
Interviewer: Do you remember what you talked about?
I think that one was a humorous one. 6:03 I preferred having more serious ones, but it was the
humorous one that got me to the cities.
Interviewer: As you were kind of, getting a little older and so forth, in the period right
before Pearl Harbor, were you paying much attention to the news in the world and things
like that?
Yeah, I think so. Especially because I had two brothers that were eligible for the draft and of
course, they had to sign up for it.
Interviewer: That’s right, because the draft was going on before the war started.
And so when their time came, rather than go in where they didn’t want to, they wanted to be in
the Navy so they enlisted. They stayed together through the whole war and they had very
traumatic experiences but they both came home.
Interviewer: Were they serving on a ship together?
Yes, yes they were. 7:01 And it was a liberty ship, I believe. And it would ferry certain groups
of soldiers with all their equipment from one place to the other. They were in the South Pacific.
�Interviewer: Would they have been anti-aircraft gunners on those ships or things like that?
There were, yes, and they each had, I guess, to take their places when it was time.
Interviewer: It wasn’t quite, maybe, as dangerous as being on some of those combat ships
at the very start of the war, or whatever.
Probably not. But they were hit twice.
Interviewer: Were they already in the service at the point when the Sullivan brothers went
down? Because you had five brothers on the same ship. Did that…?
Yes, that was really something. We had a small church in our town and I think we had probably,
I had to think, seven boys out of that church and about thirty five families. That’s a lot. 8:08
Interviewer: Seven boys that got killed, you mean?
No, they just went in the service. One was killed.
Interviewer: How would you say the war itself wound up affecting life in the town there
during the time you were there?
Well, I could tell you about the farm. The town it didn’t affect it much, except the gas shortages
and certain groceries. We had the stamps, stamps for flour, for coffee, for sugar, for meat, and
you had to…you were issued those. I guess they came through mail, I don’t even know. And
you, when they were gone, that was it, until your next issue was ready.
Interviewer: Since you were on a farm, does that sort of change the way things affect you?
9:03
We always had meat, of course, and dairy products. Butter was another thing that was rationed,
but we had our own. It didn’t affect us as much as a lot of people, but we always had to get
sugar. Flour, my dad used to take wheat in to a flour mill and have it ground and then he’d come
back with flour, so that was no problem.
�Interviewer: Was there a problem with things like … now did you have farm equipment
that required gasoline at that point?
Tractors, yeah. We had two tractors, three tractors.
Interviewer: And was there an adequate ration to run the tractors?
We had enough, yeah. We were able to do it. We always had a five hundred gallon tank on the
farm that some truck would come out and fill every so often and that’s what we used. My sister
just younger than I, three years younger…when the boys were in service, we did all the tractor
work. 10:02 My dad had quite a few acres the first year, and then he had rented some, so then he
let some of it go. But I think it must have been hard on him because we had to learn everything,
you know?
Interviewer: How old was your sister when she started driving a tractor?
Well, I was…let’s see, I was about, I think I was eighteen when the boys went into service and
that’s when we started. I had driven tractor for harvesting before that, but Audrey didn’t. She
started in right from the beginning there.
Interviewer: But she was still fifteen, which is not quite the same as being nine or
something like that.
No. Oh no, Dad wouldn’t have allowed that. But, yeah, we had to do all the tractor work.
Interviewer: Did the tractors have rubber tires or metal tires?
Ours did. First off, the one did. My sister and I both had tractors with rubber tires.
Interviewer: Were there problems getting those replaced or did you just keep using the
same ones? 11:03
We were able to keep the same ones. They kept going.
Interviewer: Tires were another thing that was a serious shortage.
�I don’t ever remember Dad ever replacing a tire on a tractor. Isn’t that something? He’s had
them for years.
Interviewer: Did they get flats that he would fix or did they just keep running?
It’s possible that one went flat once, but they would fix it, yeah. You didn’t go out and buy one
right away.
Interviewer: At a certain point in the process, you eventually do pick up and leave home.
How did that come about?
I don’t know why I…how come the folks let me go at that particular time, because the war was
still on and the boys were still gone. It would be my sister and Dad then. But I had wanted to be
a nurse as long as I could remember. 12:00 In September of that year, then, I went to the east
coast, to New Jersey, Wyckoff, New Jersey. That particular institution had a shorter chance to
finish my course, two years instead of three. I had a place to live like at a nurses’ residence.
And I figured when I was finished I’d come home and get work at home. But that first year, I
asked permission from the institution if I could go home and help Dad through the summer and
they gave me that. I didn’t have classes during that time, but I missed the clinical, so to speak.
And my sister and I helped Dad yet that summer. In the fall I went back to New Jersey and did
my second year. They, at that point, they didn’t allow nurses to be married and work there.
13:02 Well, we got engaged and we were going to get married and I said, well, I’ll work those
three months that I missed in order to get the full time in after I was married. They wouldn’t
allow it, so I really never got a signed certificate from them. I did finish the work.
Interviewer: What kind of training did they actually give you? What did school consist of?
Well, it was a psychiatric institution so a lot of it was on psychology and psychiatry and things
like that. But we got a lot of anatomy. We didn’t have laboratory work like you would get in a
�large nursing school because it was private, it was limited. So we got a touch of, a little bit of
everything.
Interviewer: Were there patients where you were or was this just a school?
Oh yes. We worked full-time while we were in training. 14:00
Interviewer: Was that what paid for the training or did you have tuition fees?
I guess you kind of worked it out. We did get a small amount of pay, and of course, living there
with residence with room and board, that was given. But like I say, we worked full time and we
worked hard too. It was hard work, so I think they got their money’s worth.
Interviewer: Were the patients there people out of the civilian population or were there any
soldiers who were back who were there?
No, it was all civilian. It was totally psychiatric. We didn’t have other patients.
Interviewer: Was that difficult to deal with? If you have a mental hospital, essentially, was
it hard work to do, just mentally?
It’s hard because your patients, in the first place, can’t communicate with you very well and
some of them are also physically very handicapped, so you do a lot for them. 15:05 They don’t
do much for themselves. And you always had a bunch of keys on you. You locked the doors
behind you, you had to unlock before you get in. It was so different than today. They had
medications but nothing like it is today. The psychiatric…I don’t think they have real
psychiatric hospitals, as such, now. There’s a portion of a regular hospital that is mental, but
that’s the extent of it.
Interviewer: Well, a lot more things are done on an out-patient basis and that kind of thing
as well, so there’s different places. Was this different from what you thought you had
signed up for? Or did you know going in what you were going to get?
�I didn’t really know what it was like, because I hadn’t had any contact really with mental patients
so it was entirely new to me. But I adjusted quite well and I felt pretty much at home with the
girls that I worked with and I found a church I was at home in. 16:07 That part was ok. When I
was still home yet, there… most of the guys were gone, so it was all girls really. Living on the
farm, we really didn’t have a lot of recreational things. Our people that we went and did things
with were our own brothers and sisters so we had plenty of those.
Interviewer: Did you have extended family in Minnesota? Were there uncles and cousins
and things like that?
Oh yeah. Mom had two, three sisters and a brother in Iowa, but the sisters were around home.
Now Dad’s family was in California, so he didn’t have any. But Mom’s whole family was by us.
17:00
Interviewer: Since part of what happens here is the family is going to get a copy of this
interview, they’re going to want this in there, why don’t you give us your version of how it
was that you met your husband?
Well, like you say, he got discharged on a Sunday evening and came home and went to church
with his mother and sister and brother. And I went to church too, but I came from the nurses’
station. We had a transportation car that would bring us to our churches and pick us up at a
designated spot. Transportation at that point was by bus if there was one, because gas was
rationed and you didn’t ask people to do things for you very easily. After church then we went
to his mother’s house and we had refreshments and he took us home. 18:00 And he said in the
car that he sang in the choir, because I was in choir. I said, “Well hey, we need basses.” And he
sang bass, so I said, “why don’t you come to choir?” So he said, “Well, maybe I will.” So then
he decided he would join choir, and then he picked me up and brought me home. So that was the
�way we started. And on my birthday he…well, that Christmas we spent with his… no I spent
that one at the san because I was working. I was on nights at that point. So Thanksgiving I spent
with his family and got to know some of them that way.
Interviewer: Had he met any of your family before you got married?
Did I have any of…?
Interviewer: Did any of your family meet him?
No, he didn’t meet my family until he came out when we got married, and that was in July.
19:05 I had gone ahead. I was finished with school, and I had gone ahead and got everything
ready. When he came we got married and then moved back to New Jersey.
Interviewer: What was your family’s response to the news you were getting married to
some guy they hadn’t met?
I think my mother said to me, she said, “I kind of could read between the lines.” I wrote home
almost every day, and you don’t realize that, I guess, when you’re writing at that, it’s telling
something different. When I was in training I had a lot of friends, soldiers that were in the
service. I used to write a lot. They used to laugh at me. I used to have the most mail. They’d
bring the mail in and put it out on a table, and sometimes I’d have as many as seven letters. But I
wrote a lot too, so it worked both ways. 20:01
Interviewer: After you got married, did you hold jobs in different places or did you just
start a family?
I stayed home. My husband said I didn’t have to work, so that was a very easy, nice part of my
life. You know, before I had children, it wasn’t busy at all. I could do what I wanted to. I think
I slept my life away.
�Interviewer: I suppose after growing up on a farm and having to be doing farm work from
the time you were a young teenager and so forth, onward, that yeah, a little bit of a break
might not be such a bad thing.
I enjoyed it. It really was nice. And then we had the children, of course. We had four, three
girls and a boy. That kept us busy. We lived very frugally, one paycheck to the next, but we
never had any lack of anything really necessary, so we were very thankful for that. 21:00
Interviewer: Again, to go back to the period of the war there a little bit, did they do much
out in a small farm town by way…in the cities and things they had scrap drives and paper
drives and things like that. All kind of to support the war effort activity, or war bond sales.
Did that stuff happen in a place like Hancock, Minnesota?
Yeah, it did. They were asking for lard, fat, you know, and the farmers would have access to that
to bring into town. I don’t know how it got…where it went after that, after we brought it into
town, but yeah, we did that. Paper drives, I don’t remember about.
Interviewer: That might have been less because you wouldn’t have the concentration of
people all together who were all getting newspapers or things like that.
No, in fact we didn’t have one for a while. But, I think it was a, certainly a time of growing up,
for me anyway, for a lot of us. 22:07
Interviewer: Well thank you for taking the time to tell your story to me.
You’re welcome.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MeyerA
Title
A name given to the resource
Meyer, Annie (Interview transcript and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Meyer, Annie
Description
An account of the resource
Annie Meyer grew up on a farm in Minnesota during the Depression. In her interview, she describes farm life during the Depression and during the first part of World War II. She also describes attending nursing school during the war and working at a psychiatric hospital during the war, and discusses various aspects of home front life.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-04-07
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/374c6b1911135ec572dabc75b5b11069.mp4
3dc9330be1514ae4de8ab04772d5dae6
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f3395aceba2b6f992e81ad504a2132fa.pdf
59db1f5c5102fa3d08b22e7c83c1a849
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Eddie MacDonald
Length: 35:11
(00:25) Background Information
•
•
•
•
Eddie was born on a farm in Grand Rapids, Michigan in 1936
His father worked for GM and spent time working on their small fruit and dairy farm
He went to school in Byron Center, Michigan and graduated in 1954
After graduating Eddie began a plumbing apprenticeship
(3:30) Army Enlistment
• The Army had started a new program that allowed people in college or an apprenticeship
to enlist for a period of only 6 months
• Eddie enlisted in 1957; the Korean War had ended, but many were still worried about the
Cold War
• He went through training at Fort Leonard Wood for 8 weeks
• They had class sessions, physical training, bivouacking, and rifle training
• Eddie worked well with the discipline and later felt that everyone should be in the service
for at least 6 months
• Many of his drill sergeants were Korean War veterans
(9:35) Advanced Training
• Eddie was allowed to return home for Christmas Break and then was shipped to
California for advanced infantry training
• The fort was a very large and modern facility
• They began working more on infantry with rapid fire machine guns, 30 calibers, BARs,
105s, and bazookas
• They would go bivouacking for 2-3 weeks at a time for field training
• They did not get many breaks or much time to relax
• At the end of the 6 months Eddie became part of a control group that was similar to a
reserve unit that was to be maintained for 6 years
(15:55) Back to Michigan
• Eddie returned to his home in Michigan and continued in the plumbing business and got
married in 1959
• In 1961 Kennedy had called on the country to enlist and Eddie received a letter saying
that he had been “invited to rejoin” the service
• He was able to apply for temporary deferment for a few weeks, but would ultimately
have to rejoin
�•
•
•
The entire 32nd Division of reserves had been called up and they were mostly from
Wisconsin with a few from Michigan
Eddie was sent in a train from Chicago to Fort Lewis in Washington
They were not sure where they were going, though most figured they were going to
Berlin or Vietnam
(19:40) Fort Lewis
• They later found that the 4th Division of Fort Lewis had been sent to Vietnam and they
had been sent to Fort Lewis to replace them
• The men began training again and working on the rifle range
• They kept hearing rumors that they would soon be sent to Vietnam
• Eddie’s minister’s cousin lived in Tacoma and he often visited his home and had dinner
with his family
• Eddie’s wife later moved to Washington and they lived together off the base
(30:00) After Service
• Eddie and his family moved back to Michigan and he continued working in his plumbing
business
• He had been in Washington for one year and was done with the reserves afterwards
• Eddie stayed in contact with many of the men in his unit
• Eddie had learned to be respectful, earned discipline and integrity
• The time in the service had opened his eyes to the rest of the world
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
MacDonaldE
Title
A name given to the resource
MacDonald, Eddie (Interview outline and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
MacDonald, Eddie
Description
An account of the resource
Eddie MacDonald enlisted in the US Army in 1957. He trained as an infantryman at Fort Leonard Wood in Missouri. After six months, he was sent home in reserve status and then called up in 1961. He served two years, much of his time spent at Fort Lewis in Washington, and was not sent overseas.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Byron Area Historic Museum (Byron Center, Mich.)
BCTV
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-11-08
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8d3d76a365f84fbeb5482464f02f7689.mp4
ee23c3a0f1af6e0e90d60cede8e40541
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/f6015a304c019728650366f552997a1c.pdf
c7a8193c8e8795d4698e77bed873f854
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Depression and World War II
Estelle Levin
Length of Interview: 1:41:37
(00:00)
JS: We’re talking today with Estelle Levin, of Cascade, Michigan. The interviewer is James
Smither of Grand Valley State University. Mrs. Levin, can you start by telling us a little bit
about your background. Where were you born and where did you grow up?
EL: Well, I was born in Glendale, California. I grew up on the north shore of Chicago. I grew
up in a suburb there, Glen Cove. When the war came, my family was not the only one that had
this problem. You could not get oil to heat the house, ‘cause most houses out there were not coal
burning.
JS: Let’s back up a little bit. Let’s fill in a little bit more before we get you there. For example,
when did you move from California to the Chicago area?
EL: I was three years old when my parents moved to Evanston, Illinois. We lived there for
about three years and then we moved to Glen Cove.
JS: Okay. Now why did your family move?
(00:58)
EL: Why does any family move? The father’s business, his job. And my dad was an inventor.
And he found fields to be much more fertile in the Chicago area than they had been out in
California. He was interested in the manufacturing of fountain pens. He made the first fountain
pen that did not have a rubber sack in it. And he needed the support of other manufacturers, at
that time it would have been Parker Pen Company in Janesville, Wisconsin. So that’s really how
we moved to Chicago. Then of course, once there, he commuted from Glen Cove, like all the
other fathers did. Mothers took their husbands down to the train station, that went on the north
shore or Northwestern, depending on where they were going. And then they were all back there
again at 5:30, 6:00, to pick them up again and bring them home. It was a very lovely life. It was
the beginning of suburban life. But when the war came, when the advent of the war came,
everything changed. You could not get oil to heat your house. There was no way to convert
those houses to coal. So that was one thing. It was too expensive as far as gas for cars. That
also became a premium item. Ultimately, that was rationed, along with meat, along with sugar,
along with shoes. Everybody had a ration book.
(2:39)
EL: For example, by the time I was old enough to go to college, I went to college with my ration
book. It was almost more important than my diploma. ‘Cause if you didn’t have a ration book,
you didn’t get anything to eat.
�JS: Now when did you start college?
EL: 1941. September of 1941.
JS: Okay. So there was rationing in place then, even prior to Pearl Harbor.
EL: Yes. Yes. It was, and I believe, from my study of history, that Roosevelt knew the war was
coming but he did not know we were going to get hit in Pearl Harbor. Because when this
happened, the Japanese ambassador was still in this country. And he got out, just at that time.
So they knew. They knew it was going to happen. As the war progressed, now we’re in the war
and we’re really the suppliers for all of Europe, for all the Allies, I should say, the rationing
system was operative. It was not something they diddled around with. It was operative.
(03:48)
EL: The other thing that was operative, and which it just amazes me that we haven’t done
anything like that with this war, was the whole saving bond program. I mean, if you…you were
confronted with this all the time, bond rallies. If anybody could buy a bond for $18.75 and hold
it and have it mature until $25, you could…there were more expensive bonds, but everything
was at a level that the ordinary person could participate in it. And as far as kids were concerned,
my sister was seven years younger than I, Tuesday was bank day. You could bring a dime and
get a sticker in your book, which would ultimately add up to the cost of a bond. And it was built
up from the very bottom of the population. I remember my sister was part of the MacArthur
Youth Core, General MacArthur. And each time you, it was a whole program. Each time you
did something a little bit more, you got elevated to the next level and you got a sticker that you
could wear.
(04:57)
EL: So there was a building up of an attitude which had just not existed in this situation. I was
on campus, at Knox College, when the war began. But the experience that we all had, on that…I
remember exactly where I was sitting, in that gymnasium, listening to Roosevelt. We had about
seven Nisei, Japanese American students. They were gone by the next day. We never really
understood why. They were interred probably with all the rest of them that were interred on the
west coast.
JS: The internment applied mostly to the people living on the west coast.
EL: No. Wherever there were Japanese students, they were off the campus.
JS: Well, that’s quite likely. They would not have been safe. The college people would
have…well, anyway, a number of things could have happened. In terms of what was legally
imposed by the government, it was primarily the western states, especially the pacific coast,
where official internment of the Japanese took place. And it didn’t place right after Pearl
Harbor. But the shockwaves were immediate.
(06:09)
�EL: Yes. We never really knew what happened to it. Perhaps this is my erroneous assumption,
because I don’t know where there were other places of internment.
JS: But they were there one day and gone the next.
EL: They were there and gone within twenty-four hours. And our whole life changed
dramatically. The building I lived in was a place called Whiting Hall. It was a girls dormitory.
It was built about 1870. And it had huge huge windows. We had blinds that we had to pull
down for privacy, but now all those rooms were equipped with blackout curtains. So that there
was no light coming through from those large windows. And then of course, we already had the
ration books. We came to college with the ration books. Knox was unusual in that they had
their own farmland, because it was a land grant school, but a private school. And they grew a lot
of their own produce and they had some of their own livestock. But we still had meat rationing.
(07:25)
JS: Right.
EL: Still had meat rationing. I never really thought that much about it, because at that time, you
just didn’t. Shoes were another story. Shoes were rationed and you got two pairs a year. That
meant that if there was a family that had growing children whose feet outgrew the shoes before
the next pair was available, somebody in the family gave up one of their ration tickets so that
they could get another pair of shoes. My sister and I…I’ve got to make a connection between
the war and the Depression. Because I was really a Depression child. And from my point of
view, and in my viewing of history, we didn’t really solve the Depression. The war solved the
Depression. One of the things that we did was to save aluminum foil. At that time, every piece
of chewing gum, every bit of candy bar, cigarettes, came with foil in the package. And my sister
and I, I can still see us sitting at the dining room table, smoothing out the foil. And when we got
a big enough ball, our dad would take it down to a place where you could get it weighed and they
would pay you for it. And that’s how we got spending money.
(08:47)
EL: We also got spending money by walking around with a little wagon, in the neighborhood,
city neighborhoods were not as neat as suburban neighborhoods, and they threw their tin cans,
their coke bottles, and you could take those back and get a nickel for them. So recycling was just
par for the course. You didn’t think otherwise. You didn’t think about it. I, by the time I was
sixteen, before I went away to school, I got a job in a local department store, Manilow’s,
working on Saturdays, in the basement. We had a shipment one particular day of nylon hose. It
was a riot. I don’t mean riot, fun. I mean a riot, there was a limit to two pair of hose. No ration
cards were involved in this. But there weren’t any hose. How we got these nylon hose, I don’t
know. But women were fighting for them. They were just fighting for them.
(09:49)
EL: There were shortages but everybody was in it. So nobody felt deprived, or victimized. And
I have to say, there was a different spirit than there is today. We all knew we were in this
together. There was a draft. If you were in college, and enrolled in a strategically important
program, you had more opportunity to avoid the draft. But by the time I left, I left Know College
�after my first year and went to be transferred to the University of Michigan, and the Japanese
language school was located there. And I mean…and also, the only topographical map of Japan,
in the whole United States, was located in the Geography department at the University of
Michigan. So the Japanese language school was there.
(10:59)
EL: You saw these fellas marching to and fro. There were very little social contacts with this
group. They were highly disciplined and highly trained. There were no cars. You walked.
Everyone was a lot healthier. It was cold but you still walked. You were aware that life was
changing. You didn’t quite understand how. I was involved with the Red Cross, both when I
was at Knox College and in Ann Arbor, and it was more than just rolling bandages. You actually
did some volunteer work in the hospitals, because key help was already involved in the build-up
as far as supporting what was going on. And the University of Michigan was located at Willow
run, which was the main manufacturing spot for the B-17s and the B-25s. And I subsequently,
the war was now still going on, I subsequently got a job in downtown Ann Arbor, at a clothing
store called the Darling Shops, I needed the money. I hated the job. But I needed the money.
(12:33)
EL: Our primary customers were from Willow Run. Huge amounts of people had come up from
the South, to work in the plants. And the reason I hated the job was because your job, my job, as
an employee, was to get two bucks out of these people and get them to sign a piece of paper and
then the store would get them for the rest of it, and it was just forever that they were paying, on
whatever this purchase was.
JS: Now what kinds of things were you selling?
EL: Clothing, primarily. Clothing. And that bothered me, that bothered me. Now, there were
other things. The draft. For those students, for the males that were still on campus, and there
were a lot of them, they had to report regularly to their draft boards. And if they didn’t keep
their grades up, they got swept up. And this was a fact, this was a fact of life. Scarcities, we
didn’t see as scarcities. It was just the way it was.
(13:49)
EL: I remember June 6, when the invasion began. I mean, the dorm was just abuzz at 6:30 in
the morning because it had come over on the radio. Remember, we had no television. We had
no instant messaging of any kind. A letter took forever. Transportation was primarily trains.
And I can remember going back and forth to Chicago one particular break and I rode standing up
halfway, because the train was so crowded. I wasn’t the only one. There were a lot of us. And
we just sort of, passengers who had seats would just get up and let you have a seat for a little
while.
(14:45)
EL: So there were a lot of dislocations. I think that the thing, I would like to bring out. There
were a lot of dislocations, but people accepted these things gracefully. There was just not some
of the whining you hear today. Now that may not be a nice thing to say, but I happen to feel that
we’ve been a pretty spoiled population. From the end of World War II until about, what, the
�early eighties, we’ve been through a period of our history that never was before and never will be
again. From an economic standpoint. And our kids grew up with, not necessarily with these
expectations, but just that’s the way it was. That’s the way it was.
JS: Sure.
(15:37)
EL: So, we’ve got a lot of things to face right now, I think. I don’t know how well prepared we
are for that.
JS: Well, certainly the economists are telling us what you just said. That we had this period of
prosperity and now, other people have caught up with us, and what happens. I’d like at this point
to backtrack a little bit and fill in a little bit more of sort of your own individual story and your
family story. Now when did you move from Glen Cove? Did you move into Chicago from Glen
Cove?
EL: Yeah. Yes.
JS: And what neighborhood or area did you move to?
(16:14)
EL: We were on the north side. 832 [Gunninson]. Which was a block off Sheridan Road. Oh, I
should tell you about how I got to high school. I went to [Senn] High School, and there was a
bus system that ran north and south on Sheridan Road, it did not go east and west. The high
school was east of Lake Michigan, and we were close to Lake Michigan. There were about ten
of us girls, we looked like the Tudor Ville Taxi. We’d pile into this taxi, ten cents apiece, with
our books. And if you weren’t there on time, you didn’t get the ride. So you were there on time.
And that’s how we got to school in the morning. If you had an eight o’clock class or homeroom,
you needed to be there early. Now coming home was a different thing. We all bought bus
tickets. The bus tickets were ten cents apiece but money was scarce, this was still in the
Depression. So if you could, you tried to walk home. I lived about twenty-eight blocks from
[Senn] High School, and when the wind wasn’t too bad, or the snow wasn’t too bad, I walked
home. I had a gorgeous figure. (laughs) I mean, you just didn’t get rides.
(17:42)
EL: My folks had a car but it sat on the street most of the time. We didn’t have a garage. It sat
on the street because we didn’t have gas. And so if it was something really important, my father
would take the car out. The problem was if you let the car sit and you didn’t use it, the battery
went out. So you had those things which were definitely a nuisance. Um, the school that I went
to had over five thousand students in it. My graduating class was over eight hundred. That’s
about the size of East Grand Rapids, you know.
JS: Yep.
(18:34)
�EL: So, um, we had an ROTC, which was very very active. I was involved in an international
relations class, which took me to the University of Chicago several times a month, along with
other students from the city, and we were focused on the issues that the country was facing. As a
matter of fact, the way that I got to college was through a scholarship that was given by the long
now-defunct League of Nations. My international relations teacher was very supportive and very
much a guide to all of her students and she had us entering this essay contest. Well, I won first
prize for the eight states of the Midwest. And then I found out, I’ll never forget this, she also
was the sponsor for the debate team, and the debate team used to go to the University of Chicago
and the Council of Foreign Relations.
(19:47)
EL: I was looking through this material last night, my old yearbook. And somebody wrote,
“You’re a swell debater. If you ever decide to run for President, I’ll vote for you instead of
FDR.” (laughter) Now that was another word I saw yesterday. I absolutely don’t ever
remember hearing that word, except in the “Music Man,” there is a line where the music man
talks about “swell’’ and something else. But in my yearbook, that word is all over the place.
You know, you’re swell this, you’re swell that. And I talked to my sister last night and I said, do
you ever remember any of that? She didn’t remember that either.
(20:34)
EL: Now another way that my sister earned money, there were contests sponsored by the
newspapers for kids. And she won a lot of them. What did she win? A dollar. Do you have any
idea what a dollar was at that time to a kid? A dollar, to win a dollar. That was just a huge sum
of money, in the ‘30s and early ‘40s. Everything is disproportionate now, it seems. Another
thing that we did, this is in high school. The Depression is still on. And we didn’t…first of all,
you couldn’t work if you weren’t sixteen. A lot of us lied to get jobs. Because we needed the
money. We needed it to get spending money. We needed it for the bus tickets. We also had
school supplies. Books were supplied by the school system. But there were other things that
you had to buy yourself. Paper, pencils, exam books, this kind of thing. We were very
cognizant of the value of money and, I remember many times, asking my dad if I could have my
allowance and he didn’t have it to give me.
(22:07)
EL: And my sister, of course, was in grade school and she would always manage to get by on
what she had saved from her aluminum foil that he had taken and sold. There was also a period,
now this is going back further, we’re still living in Glen Cove, but it’s the Depression. And one
day a week was sandwich day, in which everybody brought a sandwich to school and these were
collected and given to people who didn’t have anything to eat. I can tell you another thing that I
remember distinctly. You would not do this today. We had a little back entry into the house,
that was sort of a foyer, that you could close off from the rest of the house, but there was a place
to sit. Put your boots on, this kind of thing. And we had people, men, come to the door and
knock at the door and ask if we could spare any food. And my mother would always sit them
down in this room, make them some kind of a sandwich, give them a cup of coffee, and maybe
an extra little piece of something, and they’d be on their way. You know you wouldn’t let
anybody in your house like that today.
�(23:26)
EL: But I remember this. When we got to Chicago, I mean, we had cut back so much by then.
When I say my dad couldn’t give me an allowance at a particular time, things had just gotten
worse. And, we didn’t think of ourselves as porr, though. ‘Cause everybody else was in the
same boat.
JS: Now did your father still have some income, was he employed by anyone?
EL: No, he, that was the other part, that used to drive my mother nuts. He was an inventor.
There was a big table in the living room that he did all of his puttering on. I’ve got a box in the
basement, of all of his patens. He did sell the patens. I mean, but it was erratic. It was erratic.
(24:35)
EL: Oh, the run on the banks. I had to be about ten years old. We were still living in the
suburbs. And I went with my mother to the Hubbard Woods Bank. Hubbard Woods was a little
community between Winnetka and Glen Cove. But it was really the central commercial area for
both Winnetka and Glen Cove. We stood outside. It was so cold, Dr. Smither, it was so cold. I
don’t know…they wouldn’t let you in. I mean, they would let some people in, and then they let
them out. And you didn’t…my mother wanted to withdraw everything she had in the bank. You
didn’t get everything you had. They gave you a percentage. I don’t know what it was. My
mother never put another dime in the bank. She, it was wither under the mattress or under
something. I remember that very distinctly. Because now we are worrying about money.
(25:26)
EL: So I’d look around at these people who are losing their homes, we did not have that.
Somehow we had food to eat and a roof over our head. My father saw to that. But there were no
extras. A movie! My God. We never had any soft drinks at our house either. That was just
because of the cost. And because my mother didn’t believe in drinking all that sugar. An ice
cream cone, if it was your birthday, you got an ice cream cone. So the things we take for granted
today, you can go in a supermarket and just load up on, was just unheard of. Just unheard of.
JS: Something that strikes me a little bit from what you’ve said so far, from a modern
perspective, that at the same that you were not too far above the level of a subsistence level of
existing…
EL: I’m sorry, say that again.
JS: You were not too far above subsistence level of income. I mean, you had food, you had
shelter, but you didn’t have much beyond that, and that’s what we would associate today with
people who were really poor. At the same time that you had that, you were also going to a high
school that had stuff going on, that had some of these clubs and activities. You had opportunities
to go and do things, like take classes at the University of Chicago, so you’re sort of going to an
elite institution, you’re hooking up with people who can do things like find college scholarships.
There’s still an expectation that you can go to college. There’s a lot of things that don’t
necessarily go together with the way that things would work now.
�(27:05)
EL: That’s right.
JS: You went to a big city high school. If you go into a big city high school in Chicago, you
may get into some kind of a program that can help you, but the networks and the connections
don’t work the same way. It’s not as easy to move back and forth.
EL: No. it absolutely isn’t and I’m glad you brought that up, because in addition to going to the
University of Chicago, my real love was art. And that’s one of the things I found last night, and
I thought, oh my god, I’d forgotten all about this. I didn’t know I was that good. I also, while I
was in high school, had a scholarship at the Chicago Art Institute, on Saturday. I wanted to be a
fashion designer. Well… I always knew I was going to college. That was an expectation in my
family. How it was going to be paid for was just a big amorphous question mark. And if I
wanted to go, it was going to be pretty much up to me.
(28:04)
EL: When it came time, you know you start in your junior year, you know how this goes, it’s
been pretty consistent that way. It was this teacher, Henrietta Havemen, who really guided me
and made it possible for me, not to just get a scholarship. I had four scholarships when I
graduated. I had my choice of four years at the University of Illinois, four years at the University
of Chicago, four years at Lawrence College, in Appleton, Wisconsin, and four years at Knox.
Why did I go to Knox? It was a very small school. The whole school was smaller than my
graduating class. Know was the most prestigious scholarship and I didn’t have to work.
Lawrence College would have been a work study. The University of Chicago, my parents would
have never thought of letting me live off campus. You got an apartment there, a family here.
What’s wrong with you? I would have flunked out of school by the first semester. Because
going back and forth on the train, how’m I going to study? Oh my goodness. Be at the library at
night. I wouldn’t have been able to do it.
(29:20)
EL: The University of Illinois, now here’s how economics enters into this. The University of
Illinois was really a party school. Everybody who went to the University of Illinois from [Senn],
joined a sorority or fraternity. I couldn’t afford that. And I didn’t know how I could handle that.
I was smart enough to know that I didn’t know how I could handle that but naïve enough, and
childish enough, to think that mattered. Do you understand what I’m saying? Because you
could go to school without being part of a sorority. Or fraternity. And there are opportunities all
over the place. But I did not see it.
(30:05)
EL: I did very well at Knox. And the University of Michigan was the only place I didn’t get a
scholarship. What happened was when I finally did transfer, my father’s financial position had
changed. So he could help/
JS: Was he doing better, in part because the war created opportunities for inventors?
�EL: Oh, gosh, yes. First of all, before the ball point pen, there was an intermediate pen, with a
cartridge. That was his invention. So that made the world and all difference. The big problem
with pens in the past had been, you have them in your pocket and that rubber sack, that sack rots
and, even a little bit, the ink is all over.
JS: Right.
(30:57)
EL: And he was working with DuPont and with Lucite and with, the plastics were just beginning
to emerge. And he figured out that with pneumatic action, you could fill this pen without having
to have that clip, from that came this cartridge that you could just slip into the pen. And the
locate of the back of a pen point would puncture the cartridge and the ink would flow through it.
If he…my father was an immigrant. He went to the Gymnasium in Germany and he went to
Peter Cooper Union to learn English. His English was horrible. My mother really helped him
get rid of his purple prose. I have some letters that he’s written that would make your hair stand
on end. With his use of the language.
(32:04)
EL: But he was a putterer. And all of his puttering always produced something. Some were
profitable, some were just duds. I never saw this, this is a story I’ve been told. I have the patent
downstairs, with the rest of these patents. Before I was born, he and my mother lived in
Breckenridge, Texas. He had discovered an oil well. He was sort of the last, the tail end of the
rugged individualists, of that time. He built a hotel, called the Seger Hotel, and it had a movie
house. And he invented a talking popcorn machine. In a Rube Goldberg construction that you
just cannot believe. You put your money in, and the thing would pop and out would come your
popcorn. But you had to say a certain something in order for it to do it. To pop the corn. So
these gadgets did not make for a totally orderly life. But it was a creative atmosphere. And both
my sister and I absorbed a lot of that.
(33:26)
EL: I had the point I wanted to make, now where did I go with it?
JS: We’re talking about, you transferring to the University of Michigan.
EL: Oh, yeah. To the University of Michigan. All right. By now, the men are starting to go.
We still had men on campus. But I got a job as student director of the Hillel Foundation. I was
the first female student director of any student organization. I didn’t know what that was going
to lead to, but I did get twenty five dollars a month, which was a very good salary to get. And it
put me in contact with the Catholic Newman Club, and with all of the, um…I forgot what we
called them then. But anyway, all of the organizations that provided the social services support
to veterans. Because we, even at that time, had some veterans that were coming back. They had
been in Europe early, and why they came back would be an individual story. But, we had the GI
Bill. That’s the other thing that we had.
(34:42)
�EL: We have nothing for these guys when they come back here. Absolutely nothing. They’re
not even getting good medical care.
JS: Well, we do have, they do get college tuition and there’s a lot of packages that come with it.
But the, college students usually get help of one kind or another, it’s just, as you mentioned,
there are holes in what’s provided.
EL: Big big holes. Yeah, well, this, everybody knew about the GI Bill. And, I later went back
to the University of Michigan, after I had graduated. Well, because I was trying to get lined up
with this program to go overseas, and in the process I was tutoring for the Political Science
department and I was tutoring returning veterans. Well, that whole thing sort of fell apart,
because I found out my husband was coming home.
(35:41)
EL: But the GI Bill was…everybody looked at this as sort of a magic, open sesame. There’d
never been anything like this. Never. And I’m glad to hear that we are doing something now.
I’m sort of out of that world so I don’t know some of these things. But I think that…as I look
back, from the Depression to the beginning of the war and the war, there’s a cohesiveness of
experience about the whole thing and there’s not the fragmentation that exists today. And this
really, frankly, worries me. There was a cohesiveness in the sense that people really cared about
each other. I don’t have that feeling here now. Everybody’s just rushing around on their own
and it’s like they’re in a hamster cage. You know? Am I making any sense to you, in this
regard?
(36:46)
JS: Well, they’re using a lot of energy and not going anywhere.
EL: That’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. I do not remember my life that way. I walked…when I
first went to Ann Arbor, housing was a problem. Well, it was a problem all during the war. But
when I say it was a problem, I lived in what was known as a League house. It was usually a
widow or a husband, older husband and wife turned their house into a rooming house for
students. And it was off campus and you walked back and forth. You got breakfast and
lunch…no, lunch you got on campus. You got breakfast and dinner. I did not get into a dorm on
campus until my senior year, that’s how long the wait was. We had lots of stories about the
food. I remember one particular place, 1810 University Avenue, we swore that this woman used
her meat rations for herself and her family, and we just got shoe leather. And we didn’t quite
know what to do, so we had a ringleader in our house, and she said, let’s just mix it all up. And
she won’t be able to give it back to us in another disguise. Cause that’s what we were sure she
was doing. And she said, I’ll pour water over it to make sure.
(38:16)
EL: so we were a little mischievous in that way. But food was a problem. It isn’t that you
didn’t get enough. It was that it wasn’t very good. And even fresh vegetables were hard to come
by. I don’t know if you had great big cans, like you can buy now. I can just tell you, the food
was not wonderful. Lunch, we would all gather, I and my friends. And I presume this is what
other people did. At the nearest drugstore or at one of the little restaurants in town. There was a
�period of time when I was having some dental work done, at the dental clinic. And I couldn’t
really eat anything that I had to chew. And there was a restaurant called the “Lamplighter” and I
knew a couple of the guys there, and I remember going in one day and saying, can you make me
runny scrambled eggs, so I can get something to eat that I don’t have to chew. And when they
would see me coming, they’d run into the kitchen and start the eggs because I couldn’t eat
anything else.
(39:42)
EL: But I don’t want to romanticize anything. What I want to say is that all of us, that I knew,
felt that we had an opportunity to be in school. And there were certain restrictions. We all
walked. Nobody had a car. Some people had bicycles but not many. The library was the most
important focal point beyond the classroom. And you had dinner at the dorm or at your house
and you scooted back to the library until the place closed. You didn’t worry about whether you
were walking alone or walking in pairs. But you usually did try to go with somebody. There
weren’t any extras. And if there were, it was an occasion. There weren’t any of the
communication distractions that we have today. None, whatsoever. If somebody got a long
distance phone call, and this has happened to me. I was not yet engaged to my husband, but he
called me from Hobbs, New Mexico. Well, I wasn’t at the house at the time. And somebody
went to the library to see if they could find me, I don’t know whether they thought he was going
to stay on the line or not. But anyway, I came back. I guess he said he’d call back. I came to
get this phone call. And the next day in the Michigan Daily, who is the co-ed who gets a long
distance call from Hobbs, New Mexico?
(41:24)
EL: Because one of the writers for the paper lived in the house that I lived in. So this was a big
event. As a matter of fact, when I met my husband, I met him here, on a blind date, because my
grandparents lived here, and I had come to take care of my grandmother because she was sick
and I was the oldest grandchild and I was her favorite…
JS: So this gives us the Michigan connection…
EL: That’s right.
JS: Why the University of Michigan goes into the mix.
EL: That’s right. So I was…I have a younger aunt. I have two living aunts. I will be 85 in
April. I have one living aunt that just turned 95 and one that just turned 90. The one who was
90, husband was overseas and women didn’t call men, no matter what. And she wanted to get a
date and she didn’t care how and I was the ploy. So she fixed up this date for me. And I told
my…after I came back to Chicago, to get ready to go back to Ann Arbor, I told my folks that I
met this really neat guy from Grand Rapids but I was never going to live in Grand Rapids,
Michigan.
(42:41)
EL: So I’m out shopping for some things that I need for school, and I come home and my
mother is just a basket case. I have gotten a long distance call from Grand Rapids, Michigan and
�he wants you to call him back. You’re not gonna call him back are you? I mean, this is the
social mores. In the first place, you didn’t…a long distance call meant a death or a crisis. You
just didn’t make a long distance call. So I didn’t call him back. He called me back. And then, I
was going for, that weekend, to get ready for school. Well, it was also the Michigan-Michigan
State game. He had gone to Michigan State. So then we met in Ann Arbor. He drove in from
Grand Rapids and I took the train. So that’s how all of that happened and how I wound up in
Grand Rapids, Michigan.
(43:50)
JS: Okay. Now, was he older than you?
EL: Yes. He was already working. He was out of school. He enlisted in the Air Force, because
he wanted to be sure to get what he wanted, and he wound up as a captain of a B-17.
JS: Was he flying in Europe or the Pacific?
EL: No. Europe. Everything moved fast. We were actually married while I was still in school,
with the understanding that I was going to finish. I had a semester to go. And after that summer,
he went back overseas. So that part of the story is a thousand times repeated. But I did finish
school. A lot of girls who got married, did not finish school. And then later on, this tidal wave
began, and I was very much involved in that. Of women going back to school, to finish
unfinished degrees. And to find out who am I, now that I’m no longer somebodies mommy or
somebodies wife.
(45:12)
EL: Norbert Ruby was president of Aquinas at the time. And I had been hired by Michigan
State to something for women. They didn’t know what, they didn’t have a clue. They just didn’t
want to be sued, the way that U of M had been sued for violating women’s civil rights laws. And
they wanted a visible woman. Well, I had a visible position. I had a cubby-hole office that was
on the way to the johns. (laughter) I could never close the door, ‘cause I didn’t have a door.
But then, my life really did begin to change. At that point, I was working for MSU as their
coordinator of community relations. And I was very much involved in the fabric of the
community. My kids were growing up. And I worked with Aquinas because they had the only
game in town. They had the ENCORE program. And with Michigan State, and the U of M, and
Western, and Eastern, what was the other. Oakland. Put on a conference called “The Changing
Consciousness of American Women.”
(46:31)
EL: It was more than anybody, including myself, expected to have happen.
JS: What year was that?
EL: This was 1972. It hit a raw nerve. You could not put one more body into the allotted room
at the Wenke Center. It wasn’t called the Wenke Center then, the name escapes me right now.
But it was the first time that a collaborative enterprise had taken place. In fact, afterwards, I was
approached by somebody, not very bright idea-ed, I didn’t think, who said, well, what’s a big
�state like Michigan State doing with a little po-dunk school like Aquinas? I said, well, they had
the real estate. We had the program, but they had the real estate.
(47:28)
EL: Grand Valley was just getting started. And by the way, I wanted to tell you, and that was
one of my assessments. He had a Catholic school. We had a Christian Reformed School, a
Baptist school. We didn’t have a non-sectarian school in this town. And we needed that. And
when Grand Valley finally got launched, it had the growing pains I believe any new institution
had.
JS: It had some growing pains that went beyond the norm, but that’s something else.
EL: Well, yeah. But it was also the atmosphere in which it was trying to grow. I mean, it was
starting from the bottom up. But it’s made a huge contribution. I don’t think what people
understand, I don’t think they understand it at all, is that institutional change does not happen
with a snap of the finger. It takes time. Development takes time. For myself, at this point, I
began to see, gosh, I have to go back to school. There’s some things I need to learn to do.
(48:43)
JS: Now at this point, what combination of degrees did you have?
EL: I had a half-finished Masters degree. Because you had to have that in order to teach at JC.
And I had been teaching at JC. So, I finished that. My oldest daughter was sixteen. She’d been
telling me for a whole year how much better she could do things anyway, so I said all right, you
stay home and take care of things and I’m going to go to summer school and I’m going to finish
this thing up.
JS: Now what was this degree in?
EL: I got a Masters degree in History and English. These were loose ends, because I had a lot of
this stuff. But the teaching certificate was separate. So I got both of those. In other words, I put
my house in order.
(49:38)
EL: And then, this whole field of development, the relationship between adult education and
adult development was just beginning. The U of M was just starting with a fledgling program.
In fact, Michigan State had sent me to Wayne, for some weekend classes on adult development
and counseling. I told my husband I was going to become a counselor, but then I needed to
know, there was stuff I needed to know. And as a field, this was just beginning. There wasn’t
that much out there. Michigan State developed, began developing a program on Human
Ecology, I think it was called. And you really had to leave Grand Rapids in order to get any of
this. We did not have it here. I think Grand Rapids has always had good basics, but beyond that.
I think some of that’s changing now with Grand Valley.
�JS: Bit by bit. But Grand Valley is still not a place that has much in the way of doctoral
programs, even is limited at the graduate level. So they cover many fields and they have a lot of
connections, and it’s expanding, but it’s still not yet at a level where they go beyond basics.
(51:07)
EL: No, but the Seidman School of Business is probably the most advanced as far as getting to
some of the next levels. Well, I did go back and now I’m no longer working for MSU. I just
couldn’t do it all. First of all, my husband got sick. There were just a lot of family problems.
And you don’t go out and get a social worker, you have to be your own social worker, you know.
So in the course of all this, though, as I look back at the changes that have taken place, and the
changes that have taken place for me, and the larger system and how it impacts us, I’m
wondering how ready are many of us to cope with what lies ahead. I mean, there’s really a
shortage of certain skills.
(52:10)
EL: One of the first things I did when I was hired by Michigan State, and this will give you a bit
of a perspective, was to sit in on some discussions at St. Mary’s. The State of Michigan
legislature made a wise decision. They were not gonna build any more institutions. They
wanted to further advance education, to utilize the resources of community hospitals. In other
words, the whole concept of community health care was bursting on the scene, but there weren’t
any resources. And so I sat in on the interview skill training sessions. And that’s the first time a
television was used, in any kind of training.
(53:00)
EL: So now we’ve got the [unclear] building. We’ve got what Peter Cook has done. We’ve got
all of these things on this Michigan Mile. That’s how long it takes. This was in the early ‘70s.
Jim, this was not even in the talking stages, this was just discussion, coffee cup discussion. So I
say to myself, oh, and the other thing that we didn’t have anything in, was listening skills. I
wasn’t very good at it myself. I went to Oakland University, go through some of Eleanor
Driver’s work, and I took people, women from Grand Rapids. I figured if this is gonna happen,
there’s gotta be support. And Jane [Eidema], Jean [McKeon], whose no longer living, Hillary
[Snite], whose no longer living, I mean there were a lot of good women who volunteered a lot of
time, that helped to make the Women’s Resource Center possible. Because, ultimately, that’s
what I did to fulfill my charge from MSU.
(54:28)
EL: But there was, what I began to sense, was that the cohesiveness of this community was
beginning to break down. And, because I’m not in the thick of things right now, anymore, I do
see certain things that are happening, and they’re calling it partnering. We used to just call it
collaboration, or cooperation, so some of these concepts are becoming workable, I think that’s
what I want to say. But I am amazed at how little understanding there is historically of the
course that we’ve all traveled in this time. I remember when Cathy, this is my oldest daughter,
was at Sarah Lawrence and she came home at spring vacation and she wanted to watch me teach.
I was teaching at JC at that time, this was in the late ‘60s. And I had to teach, there were two
books I had, one was a short story by Katherine Ann Porter, “The Flowering Judas.” And the
other was her novel, “Ship of Fools.”
�(55:48)
EL: I couldn’t get a rise out of my class. And I was pretty good at this. Because I didn’t lecture,
I was more interested in the give and take. And so we went to lunch, cause I had another class
that afternoon. And I apologized to her because it was such a flat, dull class. She said, Mom,
you don’t understand. Nobody knows about the Depression. Because these were all stories that
emanated out of events from the Depression. And, so now, here we are and more learned people
than I, I am sure, are asking, where do we go from here? And how do we get there? Because
how are people prepared? Now, you’ve got to be seeing some of this.
(56:48)
JS: Sure.
EL: You know, at Grand Valley. Because some of the lecture courses that you’re doing, at
Loosmore, for instance, reflect these concerns. But that’s a long way from the Depression and
the war. But it’s really one big continuum.
(57:10)
JS: I’d like to pull back to a couple of episodes from earlier there. You had mentioned that you
had done some Red Cross volunteering. When you were in high school and then college, or at
both colleges.
EL: Right.
JS: What kind of work did you do and how did that…
EL: Well, I worked in the laundry, folding linens. And I did what all of the volunteers did, to
relieve the nurses. Working in the laundry meant folding things, getting them into the right stalls
for the right floors. The shifts were never very long, four hours at the most. Um, I’m trying to
think what else I did. I did take our Red Cross First Aid course. But I think an awful lot of us
did that.
JS: Now the volunteering, was that done in hospitals or clinics?
EL: No, it was in the hospital. At U of M Hosptial. At Knox, what was the hospital called? It
was a small hospital. In high school, you see, transportation was a problem. The first thing we
did, I say we because, you know, girls clan together. We took Red Cross Survival classes
together. I don’t think I went to any hospitals. You would have had to go downtown, and that
would be a really big deal.
(58:46)
EL: If you lived down in the south part of the city, maybe for the hospitals at that end of the city
but on the north side of the city, you’d be going to Evanston. And transportation would be a
problem.
JS: Well did the El run up to Evanston at that point?
�EL: Oh, the El went everywhere. I could tell you another story. There was no theater anywhere
along the north shore, except in an area which was called no man’s land. Which was Tiagra de
Larga. And you had to go by train or you had to go by car. All right, now this is a problem. We
had not yet moved into the city. I, and a couple of my girlfriends wanted to see a movie there.
You didn’t ask your parents to take you cause they weren’t going to take you. So we figured out,
we had enough money for a bag of popcorn, for the price of a movie, and one way on the North
Shore. Now what do you suppose these twelve year old nuts did? We walked the railroad ties
from Hubbard Woods to Tiagra de Larga. And we had a train ride back. You’d kill a kid if they
did something like that today.
(1:00:04)
JS: I have to pause us right now, to change the tape. All right, now you were telling us the story
of you and your friends, you basically walked along the railroad tracks to get to a movie theater.
EL: That’s right. We walked along railroad ties to get to Tiagra de Larga. Well, it was a
straight line. We knew where we were going. But money was a problem. So we figured out
exactly how much it cost and we were afraid that when we came out, it might be twilight, so we
needed to take a train back. And that we thought was rather judicious of us. I’m sure we didn’t
use that word, but that was how we thought about ourselves. I think there was very little fear,
growing up. After all, if my mother fed people at the back door, there was a certain…I don’t
think that I grew up in denial. Because I knew that we didn’t have any money. And I knew that
things were different.
(1:01:25)
EL: First of all, we had had a maid and we didn’t have a maid anymore. And I had to do more.
My sister was seven years younger and she couldn’t do much, but we all had to kind of pitch in.
That was before we moved into the city. When we moved into the city, we really had to move
into the city because we just couldn’t afford to heat the house. It was as simple as that. And we
certainly didn’t have a maid in the city. Not that people in the city didn’t have maids but we
couldn’t afford it. In today’s terms, you would say we were poor. But we never thought of
ourselves as poor. We never thought of ourselves as poor.
(1:02:09)
EL: In order to, my first paying job was at the Kraft Cheese Company, and I had to ride the
elevator, the El to get to work there. And I’ll be quite honest with you, I lied to get the job. I
wasn’t sixteen but I couldn’t get a job and I had to have a job. But this job I could get. I was
about fifteen and a half. And I looked, you know, like I was sixteen. And I think riding the El, I
saw parts of Chicago that I was not aware of before. And I was perhaps oblivious and blind to.
My folks never really…they sort of fostered this independence in both my sister and me. There
wasn’t really a lot of talk about it. It had to do with being self-reliant, that’s all.
(1:03:10)
EL: I worked in the premium department of Kraft Cheese Company, which meant that I sent out
gimmicks, washcloths and that sort of thing. There were a lot of gimmicks that were employed
during the Depression. It’s a lot like today, only on a smaller, more practical scale. And I made
�$15 a week. I pay my home health aide $15 an hour. So that’s another part of the change. I
don’t really understand the economics of how we have gotten to this point in inflation. I really
don’t. It seems like the more we have of everything, the more expensive everything becomes.
And we are the only society, as far as I can see, who has been wealthy enough to afford outside
storage units for our stuff. So, the society couldn’t afford that before.
(1:04:24)
JS: We keep making our houses bigger and bigger cause we don’t have room for all of that stuff.
EL: That’s right. And what are we going to do? God, my sister and I shared a closet, we shared
a bedroom that wasn’t much bigger, than the closet. And there was a table in there that I used as
my desk to do my homework. And we managed. But we also weren’t running about all the
time. Which I think is another factor in this fragmentation that goes on. I do not feel that I was
deprived as a kid growing up. And I said, I did not feel that we were poor. We just didn’t have
any money. Neither did anybody else.
(1:05:29)
EL: But this I will tell you. I had a friend by the name of Betty Ann Whittaker. Whose, at the
height of the Depression, her father jumped off the Wrigley Building. In order to collect the
insurance because it was a big Catholic family and he didn’t know what he was going to do.
That marked me. I was just…when this happened, I was just in a daze afterward. I remember
saying to my father, “daddy, you wouldn’t do anything like that, would you?” I mean, that was
the most traumatic event of the Depression for me personally, as a child. We still lived in Glen
Cove and they lived not far from us.
(1:06:21)
EL: And there’s one other thing I would add. There was a colored family that lived about two
blocks from me. He was a detective with the police force in Chicago and her mother was an RN.
And Ann Chisholm was her name. And nobody ever treated her…it was as if we were all just
the same. Now whether it was because there was only one black family in a town of six
thousand, I don’t know. But I never had any of the feelings or experiences that I later came to
know, living in Chicago.
(1:07:04)
EL: One other thing, we lived kitty corner across from Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis. Now
do you know who that was? The baseball commissioner.
JS: Red Sox and all that, yep.
EL: And he had a granddaughter, Sue Landis, who was in my class. And Amelia Earhart, before
she went on that fatal flight, was there on a visit. I was invited to come over and meet her. So
that was…I didn’t really know what that meant until I was older. But those were some of the
experiences of my childhood, I think, that made me feel, I’m not poor. We just don’t have any
money.
JS: You knew all these people. You could do all these different things.
�EL: Right. Right.
JS: If all kind of went together.
(1:08:11)
EL: Right. When we moved into Chicago, down the street from us, 832 Gunnison, was a doctor
and his son was in my class. And at that time, what was I? Sixteen, seventeen. I did not know
that doctors made a lot of money. I mean, we were all living on the same street. Our fathers all
parked the cars on the street cause there were no garages. So there was a leveling and a
commonality, but it was not coarse. There’s a crudeness that’s come into our culture now. Part
of it I think is television. One night, I thought, I just got to do this. I jut have to do this to prove
this to myself. I don’t have cable but I’m flipping channels and I thought, oh my god, every one
of these is the same. It’s a formula. It builds up attention. There’s guns in there some place.
And then the denouement. I think that this has had a definite impact, on our kids especially.
(1:09:15)
EL: But I feel the period of the Depression was one of the most tough, trying times for this
culture. And I don’t care what people who didn’t like Franklin Roosevelt had to say, this man
was a leader. He was a leader in the sense that he provided an outlet for energy and to fill needs
that the country needed. I mean, this idiotic thing that we’re doing right now, giving everybody
six or seven hundred dollars. You can’t mount a public works program with the snap of a finger
but that’s what ought to be in the planning, in the pipeline right now. So by the time spring
comes around, people can be put to work on the roads. Because our roads here in Michigan are
just god-awful.
(1:10:07)
JS: Even the President thought so. George W. Bush, on one of his first campaign tours through
Michigan was on a bus tour, and his comment was “You people should fix your roads.”
EL: Oh, god. (laughs) Oh, my lord, we need to fix our roads is right. I think we’ve got so
much to do now. And where do we start. And now we’ve got this absolutely massive
gargantuan debt. And I believe that what this administration has done is no different than Enron.
The Iraq war is off budget. That’s how Enron did what they did. I mean, I don’t understand why
people don’t see this. And I listen to people belabor the press. C’mon, it’s not the press. It’s
what else are reading? What are you thinking about? As I said, I’m going to be 85. I’m at this
end of the stage. Not at this end anymore. And so I think I have a perspective on what’s gone
on.
(1:11:26)
JS: And it’s also a perspective that we’re losing track of. Thirty, forty years ago, it was normal
to have adults who remembered the period of the Depression as an experience. And they carried
that and the war memory with them, and they, when I was growing up in the ‘60s, I sort of took
it for granted that, you know, those people would have been in the war, if they were a certain
age. Or would have been in the Depression and that sort of leaves these marks here and there.
And you understand that things are different than they were. You sort of take it for granted, but
�we’ve gone from that to know the people who remember and tell the stories are going. And the
stories go with them. So that’s why we’re doing this. Now I do want to get back to other pieces
of things that you brought up earlier. One of them was, that as the war ended, you did training
that would have made you a civilian worker with the [unclear].
(1:12:20)
EL: Oh, all right. The University of Michigan Political Science department has always had an
outstanding reputation. Outstanding scholars from the U of M have wound up in government
one way or another. Bill Hager, the Department of Economics. James K. Polluck, the
Department of Political Science. He was involved, believe it or not, he was a librarian for the
Versailles Treaty, when he was a young man. Now, I come along and I’m in one of his classes.
And as the war was winding down, there was going to be a need for a civilian government. And
the idea was to use a lot of the bright students, graduate students or graduated students. They
didn’t necessarily have to have PhD’s. So I was invited to be one of those. But these were the
conditions. If you went, you were there for two years, period. The only reason that you could
get home was if there was a death in the family. But there was no swift way to get home.
(1:13:29)
EL: Everything was a slow boat to China, Jim. So I had the passport, I did everything I was
supposed to do. I did not have a foreign language but that was not going to be a problem,
because I would be working in an area where I would be using English. And then…and I hadn’t
heard from my husband for some time. Then I got word that he was coming home. Now I’m
going to be there and he’s going to be here. I hadn’t seen him in a while. I didn’t even know if
we were still husband and wife. So I had to get myself out of this and that was not easy. But I
did get myself out it so I did not have that experience.
(1:14:14)
JS: Now, did you have any kind of training or preparation for this, before then?
EL: Oh, yes. I was a political science major. I had done a great deal of comparative analysis in
European governments, European history. And we had seminars, I think you would call them.
There must have been about twenty-five of us. I don’t know if that many actually went, because
some people dropped out before, or en-route. But these seminars were above and beyond any
classwork that we had to do. And then there’s always the grease the skids kind of thing, you
know. I was community ambassador to Grand Rapids from a sister city, Omihachiman, in Japan,
in 1991. And the requirement for that was every other weekend at Michigan State, learning
some ways and customs, and which good morning you say at what time. But, again, if you don’t
continue to use the little that you learn, you lose it right away.
(1:15:29)
EL: But there was a great deal of discussion about the postwar possibilities. And the need to
turn things over as quickly as possible. I don’t think at that time the American government
wanted to stay as an army of occupation. At all. They just wanted to get home. I think a lot of
those experiences are what Tom Brokaw wrote about in “The Greatest Generation.” These guys,
these people, they didn’t see themselves as exceptional heroes. They had a job to do and darn it,
they were going to do it. And they did it. We were coming over, as extra hands of the
�government, that the government was not going to have to pay a lot for. Because the experience
was going to be priceless and invaluable.
JS: Now what, was there a specific kind of work that you were training for? Did you know what
they were going to have you do when they sent you over there?
(1:16:32)
EL: I didn’t really. Administrative work. You know, that can really be a garbage can term. I
could have been typing letters, I could have…I don’t know. Don’t think any of us really knew,
because some of these things happened so fast. And I don’t think that…I think that things were
worked out more thoughtfully then, than they have been now, say, in terms of Iraq. I think I’ll
give you that. But I don’t think we had a job description. In fact, I know we didn’t have a job
description. It was much like when I was hired by MSU. You write your job description. I
mean, that was part of my job, to write my job description. Of course, the job changed every
Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I wasn’t exactly sure what the job was. But I wanted to go. I
wanted to go. I had an ulterior motive, obviously. So that was the story there. Now what else
do you want to back up? That I can refresh my memory on.
(1:17:53)
JS: Can you fill in a little bit on your husband career. He was a pilot. Was he flying bombers
over Germany?
EL: B-17 pilot. Yes, but…this is another story. Paul was a pilot and he was captain of a B-17,
and that’s a huge investment, but that isn’t what he really did. I don’t know the official title. But
it was really Secret Service. I learned about this after we came back to Grand Rapids and his
mother told us that there had been government people, she had another name, what did she call
them? Snooping around. They were trying to find out about him and his family. And there is
something in the Michigan Room about them. But he was in charge of some secret missions.
And I never really knew what they were, and I remember when we were still in this country, and
he’d tell me, Ï’m going to go out and watch the burning of secret documents.” That’s all he could
tell me.
(1:19:04)
EL: And either I didn’t press him enough or I was too naïve or I thought he was kidding, but he
did go out. He was gone. He would be gone for several hours. And I never really knew what it
was. So, and then, when the war ended, he was still in this for maybe about four years
afterwards. I mean, he would go to these meetings and not talk about it. He was very closedmouth in that way. So he was good for that job.
JS: Now was this, as far as you could tell, the kind of work he was doing throughout his military
career, or did he have a phase where he was flying and that kind of thing?
(1:19:51)
EL: No, he was flying but that was to make it look good. That was to make it look good. No,
he was in charge of, in Germany…he was in England and he was in Germany. In Germany, he
was in charge of black troops. In England, he was, you know, a B-17 pilot. He was the captain
�of the crew. But you have to…this much I do know. This much I do know. We had great
difficulty getting intelligence. Terrible difficulty. Just a minute, I have to think of it. The
process of situation analysis grew out of World War II. In which small pieces of seemingly
unimportant pieces of information would be studied and put together in order to get the picture.
You might…somebody might pick up some flyers, and get that to a troop or an American soldier
but that person would be in disguise. There was just no way to get intelligence behind the
German lines.
(1:21:18)
EL: And behind the Italian lines, either. So there were certain people that were trained in what
would later become known as situation analysis. You must have come across some of this
somewhere. Where they took different pieces of things and they had confabs about whether it
meant this, it mean this, or it meant this. And if it meant this, then it meant this was the option,
or this was the option. But then if it didn’t mean this, what were the options over here. That’s
the best way I can describe it. And I think the whole notion of situation analysis later came to be
used in this country. For various things.
JS: Sure. And it’s a lot of how they deal with international intelligence issues and so forth. Of
course, one ingredient of that, and this was true then, was aerial reconnaissance.
EL: Right.
JS: They used bombers that were basically for photography and they did things like fly secret
missions that would fly as far as an airstrip in Yugoslavia, held by the partisans. Recently one of
the guys on the flight,who would be manning the camera, recounted being made more difficult
by getting the wrong fuel there and having to crash land over Spain, of all places. But anyway,
the point was, that there was aerial reconnaissance that went on. It was done separately. The
people who went on those missions got all the background checks and so on, so whether he was
doing that or some other part of the operation, that kind of thing went. And they were doing that
in part because they didn’t have any way of getting stuff from behind the German lines.
(1:23:00)
EL: We didn’t have, no way at all. Now my husband’s brother, who is now a physiatrist, he is
still living, he was very small. My husband was a full, almost six feet. But Seamore was the tail
gunner on the alternate to the Enola Gay. And I have pictures of him when he came home on a
leave, we were in Everett, Washington at that time, it was before Paul was now going back
overseas. And I mean, he looks like a ghost. He looks like an absolute ghost. The ability to get
intelligence out of Japan was even worse than the ability to get intelligence behind the lines in
Germany.
(1:23:56)
EL: And you’re right about the reconnaissance flights, because I do remember, very definitely, it
was about the only thing that I heard, because he never talked about it, was that there was a lot of
filming. And I thought, what are they filming? They got all of this blowing up everything. How
can they film anything, you know? Now, with drones and this sort of thing.
�JS: Drones and satellites.
EL: Satellites, yeah. But you see, we didn’t have any of that stuff. And again, I don’t think
people realize this. And then I raised another question, you asked me about this. With all the
resources going into this kind of highly technical, and very much needed process, then there are
resources that can’t go into taking care of basic human needs and this its society.
(1:24:57)
JS: It’s certainly an issue with spending money going to Iraq.
EL: That’s right. That’s right, that’s right. And then you remember, when the war ended, we
had a huge backlog of needs and desires. But we also had a huge backlog of money, because the
patriotic thing to do throughout it all was to buy war bonds. And people had this and they were
maturing. Why don’t we have war bonds and things with this war?
JS: Weren’t we told to fight terrorists by going out and buying television sets? Well, a lot of
things are different, and certainly one of the things about the second World War in particular and
the Depression before it, is that it affected the entire country and the entire population in ways
that nothing really has done since. In Korea and Vietnam, there was still a draft and they were
expensive and things hit home in certain ways more than things after that have, but still, only
certain parts of the population got directly caught up in it.
(1:26:01)
JS: And today, for most people, unless they are military families, they’re compartmentalized
from it. And we created a society that works that way.
EL: Yeah, but I think we’re paying a price for it.
JS: Sure. We’re probably in a war because of that. Or we may be in a war because of that,
because people didn’t understand what war’s were like. Or what gets us there. But now I’m
giving opinion. And I’m supposed to be doing the interviewing, so I think, to sort of look back
on that time of your life for a second, from the mid 1930s, as you’re really becoming aware of
how the world works and what life is like and how hard it can be. Sometime between that and
the war years, how do you think just the process of living through that and finding your way
through that, how do you think it shaped the course of your life? Or how you look at thing now?
You talked about a lot of those things, but if you could pull that together a little bit.
(1:26:59)
EL: Okay. Well, let me just say, that one of the things that took place in the ‘30s, was the
Century of Progress, in Chicago. At the World’s Fair. And, it was both an event and a forecast.
I have always had an immensely curious mind. And very aware of what’s going on around me
and wanting to try to understand it. I spent a lot of time at the Century of Progress. In fact, I
have some things I could probably bring up to you. That I came across yesterday. And the
imagination of looking at places, the Japanese exhibit, the Chinese exhibit, the Swedish exhibit.
This is not the one in New York, Trial in a Parable, which came along later. This was much
more like what I think the Columbia Exposition must have been like.
�(1:28:13)
EL: It was a garnering together of where we, of all the things that had taken place since the turn
of the century. All of the inventions. All of the changes. And possibilities, and what the impact
of that could be. Now, to tie this in with the question that you asked. Later on, when I began to
go back to school, I had all but the dissertation, cause that’s when my husband got sick and I,
you know. You can’t write a dissertation with one hand tied behind your back. ABD, that’s me.
I became very interested in the forces of personality and if it’s the personality’s impact on the
culture or the culture’s impact on the personality. Is this just a chicken and the egg thing, or is
there a dynamic there that can tell us something?
(1:29:22)
EL: More and more my focus, for myself, became change and its dynamics and its impact and
what does it mean. The most concrete example is if the furniture wears out, and if you don’t
replace anything, it’s all comfortably shabby. But if you replace one chair or one pillow, the
whole rest of it looks like hell. And so, what does this mean for how things interface in the face
of change? How is change impacting us? A group of women and I got together, this was right
after I had my heart attack in ’03, and we began to meet on a monthly basis, to talk about the
dynamics of change, which we were all feeling. On a personal level, on a community level, and
on a awareness, a world level, really.
(1:30:30)
EL: And that remains with me. And I’m very much interested in this. And I don’t know if it’s
my imagination or if the data will support the fact, but I think there is a characterogical change
that has taken place in this country. I don’t know that much about it, in-depth. I used a number
of books with this group. One was a book written by an Indian woman, called “Nectar in the
Sieve.” Are you familiar with it? Well, it’s a story of a very poor Indian town. From our point
of view, an Indian village. But it’s cohesive, it hangs together. Along come the British and they
set up a factory to make cotton cloth. And they think they’re doing a wonderful thing by
providing jobs for these people. Well, if they work three days, that’s more money than they get
in a month, working in their whatever they were working in in their village. So the British call
them lazy, because they didn’t want to work around the clock. Every day. Every week. And the
village people, meanwhile, have they’re whole economy and their dynamic nature of their village
disrupted. And the end result is that they wind up as beggars on the street in Calcutta, or some,
one of the big cities.
(1:32:12)
EL: Now, is that what change is all about? I think that has relevance for where we are right
now. For our society. So that is, um…I don’t know if that answers your question or not.
JS: I think it’s a good answer.
EL: But I think that, oh what are the latest books? “The Tipping Point” and there’s another one.
“The Black Swan.” There are points of intersection that must have been going on before that we
weren’t aware of, because we didn’t know how to be aware of it. And I suspect that there may
be a growing awareness on the part of some people, about this whole notion of the tipping point.
�There’s something else, where you’re making the decision on the instant. There’s a book that
was written about it and a title, and I can’t think of it. But everything seems to be accelerated.
(1:33:34)
JS: And that is something you see as you study world history. One thing that we do now more
than we used to is we look at the history of the whole world and we look at all the intersections
between peoples and cultures and we start to look at it from different points of view and not just
our own. And as you do that, you see pictures like the one you’ve told of, of the Indian village
where there are all kinds of consequences to change and interaction. And in part, with
technology, things just do go faster. And a lot of things are sped up.
(1:34:03)
EL: James Gleick wrote a book called, “Faster, Faster.” And I’m reading one right now,
“Breathing Space.” I started with the chapter on packrat-ism, because that’s me. (laughter)
That’s me. But I am fascinated by these aspects of our lives. I think a recent article in the paper
set me on my heels. And that is, somebody’s done a study comparing health and happiness,
between this country and Britain and a couple of European countries, and we don’t come out so
well. You know, and we think we’re the cat’s meow and everything. We’re just not. And we’re
not looking at ourselves. We’re riding on our past glories. And that does worry me. I’ve got a
couple of grandsons. One is an artist. He’s a good artist. He graduated with a degree in music
from MSU. But he’s not using it. He’s selling his paintings over the internet. I don’t know if
he’s making a living or not. But I hear that he may teach, get a job teaching English as a second
language. When I spoke with his mother, she told me this. I was, where does he come off doing
that?
(1:35:32)
EL: You know. The other one is a quality engineer for Ticketmaster. And he’s got a mind like
a trip hammer. I remember a few years ago, I had called him. He told me to call him and I was,
how can I tell them at the office to call his grandmother? He was in Honolulu, he was in Hawaii.
Why was he there? Ticketmaster bought up a whole series a small operations and they sent Sean
out there to integrate them into the system. And I thought, god, he’s just a pipsqueak and he’s
doing this. And I don’t even know how to understand what he’s talking about. Now, these are
disconnects. Between generations, but also between large segments of society.
(1:36:25)
EL: What do you think about this election right now? I mean, I think if you listen to Obama, he
is lighting fires. But he hasn’t said anything. Now, the question is, is it better to light the fires
and release the energy and then harness the energy, or is it better to do what Clinton is doing,
being an expert on absolutely everything and spell out everything? She’s losing. She’s losing
people right now. And then when you look at Huckabee. I am just flabbergasted by this. I
mean, this is the “Music Man,” 2008-style. And we’ve got such a concentration of these kinds of
minds. I worry with that where we are right now, that society could implode.
(1:37:30)
EL: Or maybe I’m just being pessimistic. But that’s the way I’m feeling right now, about the
way things are. How are we going to endure the next few months? Until we get some change.
�Cause I think it has to change. It has to change. I will never forget sitting in a sessions with a
bunch of people and Vern Ehlers, before we had gotten into the war. And Vern had written a
letter, he wasn’t so keen on the war at that time. And he went around the room and he wanted
everybody’s input. There were about fifty five of us there. I was the last one to speak. And I
said, it will become Armageddon, it will bankrupt us, and we’ll become Sparta. Some woman in
the room says, what? We’re going to have to move to Sparta, Michigan?
(1:38:35)
EL: Now, what does that tell you about the mentality?
JS: It means you’ve got a broader world view than some of the people in the crowd.
EL: Well, that may be, but I think that it’s terrible that we are unable to think and see this way.
It’s not “see it my way or the highway.” It’s to see what the reality is. We just don’t see what the
reality is. And frankly, I like Huckabee, but he scares me. Because of what he can do. And he
doesn’t have Mitt Romney’s money. Now, my other daughter lives in Massachusetts, and I says,
honey, what kind of governor was he? And she said, oh mom, he was just not so great. He was
a big blowhard, she thought. Well, she is…that’s Martha, that’s all. But, no, he did not…I think
what he represents, is long gone. It’s capitalism that isn’t working anymore, for most people.
(1:39:26)
EL: I mean, where we are right now…what was the system? Not mercantilism, it preceded
mercantilism. It’s when the lord of the manor had all the serfs working for him.
JS: Ah, feudalism.
EL: Feudalism, thank you.
JS: So, you’ve got reverse Marxism going on.
EL: Yeah. But nobody understands it. So if they don’t understand…one of the things that I
learned early on, in terms of change, is that one of the reasons that solutions fail so often, they’re
well-intention and they have resources behind them, but the original conceptualization is too
small for the size of the problem. Some of the variables are just not seen. There’s no vision to
see them.
(1:40:22)
EL: And that’s where I think we are right now. And I think we’re in a big struggle to put this all
back together. My sister who lives in California, she wasn’t born there, but she lives in
California, and she’s caught up in a world that’s its own little world and it’s gonna hang on for a
while longer, but it can’t last. It’s the whole Countrywide (mortgage) thing, and these are huge
houses. Expensive houses. How are they going to sustain themselves? Ever upward and
outward growth? How can you tell me, we’re already in all this debt, and he says, go out and
spend money. Now how does that add up. It doesn’t.
(1:41:16)
�EL: It’s like Katherine Ann Porter’s “Ship of Fools,” right there before your eyes but you can’t
see it.
JS: And the real question now is going to be, what do we wind up doing with it? Well, I think
that that’s actually a good concluding point for the interview. And I want to thank you for taking
the time to talk to me today.
EL: Well, I hope I didn’t bore you.
JS: Certainly not.
(1:41:37)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LevinE
Title
A name given to the resource
Levin, Estelle (Interview transcript and video), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Levin, Estelle
Description
An account of the resource
Estelle Levin grew up in the Chicago area during the Great Depression and attended college during World War II. She provides detailed descriptions of life during the Depression and on the Home Front during the war years, as well as on her working career and the development of social services for women in the decades after the war.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Women
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-02-07
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/2965eda62346756afc414d0e6d766228.mp4
b1e9ec1ac53163af8264713981f35b11
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/02ad42dc29b595fefb360f0651bc461a.pdf
856a880b8c6e5575e6a8be50db3733f5
PDF Text
Text
Interview Notes
Interview Length (50:00)
Gregory Laws
US Army
Pre-Enlistment
Born June 1, 1946 in Chicago, Illinois (0:20)
Mother was a homemaker, moved to Muskegon, Michigan to work with her father (1:00)
Lived in Muskegon Heights for awhile (1:20)
Neighbors took care of each other (1:30)
Attended Martin Luther King, Jr School, then Lindbergh, then Angel, then to Steele School. All
schools were elementary/Junior high and integrated (2:30)
Finished high school in 1964 (3:00)
Could not find a job in the factories in Muskegon, so he moved to Chicago and worked in the
factories there, eventually started driving a bus (3:30)
Was drafted into the Vietnam War, but refused to go to the war and worked in a hospital (4:00)
Enlisted in the Air Force as a combat engineer (4:45)
Training
Was sent to Fort Leavenworth, Missouri (5:05)
Was older than most of the guys he trained with (5:30)
Responded to military discipline faster than the others (5:45)
Managed to stay out of trouble (7:00)
Enlisted in 1975 (7:20)
Learned how to build and demolish bridges as a combat engineer (8:50)
Was married and had children living with him during basic (9:45)
Housing was paid for during this time (10:30)
Enlistment
Spent from 1975-1977 in Fort Leavenworth (8:00)
Supported other infantry companies, building different kinds of bridges (8:30)
Enjoyed his work, but came home tired (11:30)
Had to qualify with weapons once a year, also was on the M-60 machine gun crew (11:45)
Was transferred to Heidelberg, Germany, in 1977 (12:30)
Brought his family with him toward the end of 1977 (13:30)
Germany
Life was a little slower in Germany than Fort Leavenworth (14:00)
Began building Mobile Assault Bridges during this time (14:40)
Went on exercises with different countries once a year during war games (15:30)
Had to get permission from the German government to bridge the Rhine river, and could only
stop traffic for so long (16:00)
Trained on other NATO tug boats (17:00)
�Enjoyed high morale in the Army while he was in, despite the loss in Vietnam (18:45)
Had some members in his unit that had done time in Vietnam (20:30)
Traveled off base often, because he was in charge of keeping up the morale of the unit and their
families (22:10)
Attained rank of Sergeant (E-5) and was assigned to the Headquarters unit (23:10)
Duties included getting maps, driving the Major around, making sure people went to school
(civilian and military) (23:30)
Could even take college courses via computer terminals in the early 1980’s (24:45)
Took his kids to see the Berlin Wall before it came down (25:15)
Wife and kids were able to see East Germany, shop around (27:00)
Stayed in the Army for 25 years, two tours total in Germany (27:25)
United States
Between tours, was at Fort Stewart, Georgia, Fort Knox, Kentucky, and Fort Leavenworth
(28:40)
Volunteered to help out at the Special Olympics while at Fort Knox (29:00)
Did not go to the Gulf War because he was the only living son of his mother (31:20)
Stayed at Fort Leavenworth to train troops to go (31:45)
Military changed quite a bit since he has been in (32:45)
Much more politically correct today (33:15)
More high-tech military today than it used to be, as well (34:45)
Military levels the playing field, especially for minorities (35:30)
Was respected as long as he did his job. Bullets do not see in black and white (37:50)
Saw women in the field while he was in the service (39:30)
Post-Enlistment
Teaches ROTC in Muskegon, Michigan (41:25)
Substituting in the Muskegon school district, and saw they needed an extra instructor (41:50)
Teaches kids structure, discipline, respect and to give back to the community (42:15)
Teach academics and physical training and awards given for achievement (43:00)
Cannot recruit for the military (43:45)
Program is very well supported by the Muskegon community (45:00)
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
LawsG
Title
A name given to the resource
Laws, Gregory (Interview outline and video), 2009
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Laws, Gregory
Description
An account of the resource
Gregory Laws served in the US Army as a Combat Engineer. He served in the Army for 25 years, spending two tours of that time in Germany. As a Combat Engineer, Gregory learned how to build and demolish bridges, and was eventually promoted to the rank of Sergeant (E-5). Gregory now teaches an ROTC program in Muskegon.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2009-01-12
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/57e80fb65818e43595f8adef587beb0c.mp4
6f502267cbde06805b0f3e6a4e990777
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/8f9e89c6c5ec0579ad0460f2ff33eeac.pdf
543af095fe2048f27c50b99ade4b9108
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project Interview
Steven Collison (2nd interview)
Total Time: 41:50
Childhood and Pre-enlistment (00:25)
•
•
•
•
•
Born in Pontiac, Michigan, in 1961.
Quit high school for a half of a semester, but went back to school.
He was the youngest of 3 children. His mother and father split when he was very
young, and he lived with his mother.
He joined the military because he didn’t like his life and he wanted to get away
He joined the Army in 1981.
Training (0:14:10)
•
•
•
•
•
He was shipped out of Detroit to Atlanta, Georgia, and then he went to Fort Sill,
Oklahoma, where he took basic training. He learned to cook and to do field
artillery.
Signed up for infantry duty at Fort Benning, Georgia, where he completed basic
infantry training.
Took Advanced Infantry Training at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
He was then sent to Airborne Training, but did not complete it because the Army
found out that he had bad eyesight.
He then went through some other training programs, including a leadership
course.
Active Duty (0:19:50)
• Worked for a time as a truck driver, driving ammunition around for the artillery.
• Also worked as a cook, and could have been promoted at one point if he was
willing to complete his time in the service as a cook, but chose not to.
• Worked at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, as a cook there. He was almost sent to
Egypt because his unit backed up several airborne divisions.
Post-Service (0:25:30)
•
Worked a number of factory jobs in Michigan and moved around to Florida to
find work as well.
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Collison, Steven (Interview outline and video, 2 of 2), 2008
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Collison, Steven
Description
An account of the resource
Steve Collison was born in 1961 in Pontiac, Michigan and served in the Army starting in 1981. He had a troubled childhood, and joined the Army to get away from home. He worked in as both a truck driver and a cook during his time in the service. He also attempted to join the Airborne forces, but was disqualified because of his eyesight.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2008-03-24
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CollisonS2
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/7f028bf984a39f4aa2e5a022f85b42bf.mp4
9628fd79d8fe4d0a03864be1655d1a95
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/5b3a441bdc70e672130b984c0d3b5ecd.pdf
4ab161a334d363e7a3f2537f12d00db9
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Steve Collison
(00:41:30)
(15:27) Waldlake, Michigan
• Born August 3 1961
• St. Joseph Mercy Hospital in Pontiac
• Remembers the roads being dirt and having to wait for the cows to cross the road
to pass
• Walled Lake Junior High School--Steve was on the football team for two years.
His mother spent her K-12 in that very school.
• (3:30) watched the Vietnam War on television
• His mother and father were both divorced three times. She worked in an auto
factory.
• (5:25) Steve went to Walled Lake High School. He remembers the riots in
Detroit and Charles Manson on television. He said drugs were easily accessible
on the school grounds
(8:30) Enlisted into the Military 1981(thru 1987)
• Steve was 18 going on 19 and went in during the Cold War
• Steve said there were a lot of issues going on in the military when he got there
due to Vietnam and the men that were in the war. He says they were not treated
very well.
• (12:50) Signed up in his home town for the military
• At Fort Sill, Oklahoma, for basic training. He wanted to be field artillery airborne
he was told he would be a cook. He didn’t want that. He trained for field artillery
in basic training
(14:20) Fort Jackson, South Carolina
• Went to school to be a cook and passed his tests the first time
• Learned the difference between feeding people in the field and in the training
camps. He learned utensils, different things to cook. He did a lot of serving for
training.
• There were a lot of people there on temporary duty.
• They still did calisthenics and running before school.
• (16:40) The cooks were on rotations so they still fed each other
• They had a lot of minority civilians doing KP duty
• Steve says that it was pretty segregated still when he was there
• (18:30) His KP was a female and most of the civilians and military men got along
but there were fights that broke out from time to time
• Field cooking: They were in tents, one tent for cooking, other tents for troops to
sit in. The serving line was in the cooking tent. They would be cooking for 300400 men per meal. Steve remembers they would make cake even in the field.
Everyone was treated like a sergeant in the cooking school.
�•
•
•
•
•
(21:10) The battalion he was in was headquarters for the 18th and 82nd airborne
unit and they were the support staff
Steve was in the main headquarters that was made up of many companies
(between 6-8 companies)
Steve had to work for the 2nd headquarters unit that was below them because they
didn’t have their own dining hall.
Steve was an HHC and worked for an HHD. He did this for 2 years and 8 months
(23:10) He says he was Fort Bragg, North Carolina at this time
(24:00) Oklahoma
• Steve said it was very hot while he was here
• He was offered a chance to go to Egypt
• He said it was around 155 degrees in the kitchen and was very hard to work
because you would sweat a lot
• (25:30) The cooks had a swing shift. One shift cooked breakfast and lunch. The
next shift served lunch and cooked dinner. The next shift served dinner and came
back in for breakfast.
• (27:30) They started doing urinalysis tests while he was in the military to check
for drugs. They lost a lot of E7’s and E’6’s due to the test. They lost so many
they stopped doing the test.
(29:10) Fort Bragg, North Carolina
• Steve was here when his six years were up and he went home
• He wishes he wouldn’t have left the military
• Steve would like to go to Iraq right now
(31:20) After the service
• Steve married after he was out of the service at 27 years old.
• He married a veteran of the service and had two children
• He has since divorced and is living in the Veterans Home in Grand Rapids, where
his children live.
• (35:00) Steve has been at the Veterans home for a couple months. His children
don’t even know that he is there yet.
• He is waiting for hunting and fishing season to start
• Steve talks about all the sports and games that the veterans’ home offers
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Collison, Steven (Interview outline and video, 1 of 2), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Collison, Steven
Description
An account of the resource
Steve Collison was born in 1961 in Pontiac, Michigan and served in the Army starting in 1981. He had a troubled childhood, and joined the Army to get away from home. He served as a cook at bases in North Carolina, South Carolina, and Oklahoma. When he completed 6 years he returned home and married another veteran.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Collins Sr., Charles E. (Interviewer)
Collins Carol (Interviewer)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
Video recordings
United States. Army
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-03-26
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
CollisonS1
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project Collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4
-
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/b90731e56fd80685c3c8b2325162a716.mp4
9292be4bce895ad3a09df82ec3789a0e
https://digitalcollections.library.gvsu.edu/files/original/0eed3fd55c2b49a4203cd3a084060cfe.pdf
f31677d0f666f1dff231c1464e798214
PDF Text
Text
Grand Valley State University
Veterans History Project
Scott Barber
(15:43)
(0:00) Before the service
• Living in Grand Rapids, MI
• Enlisted last 3 months of high school
• Birthday made him miss the draft by 4 months
• Chose to join the Navy because the college benefits, adventure, and opportunities
to see the world
o Really enjoyed the Navy
(1:07) First day of service
• Homesick
• 18 years old
• Went on a train to boot camp at Great Lakes, IL
• Was trained as an aircraft mechanic but was chosen to become a Seal after 18
months
(1:53) Combat
• Saw combat in Iran and Panama, although in Panama it was due to drug issues as
opposed to war
• Part of the Iran Hostage Crisis rescue
(2:24) Most memorable moment
• In Iran during Hostage rescue
• Realized there was a very likely chance would be killed
• Became a man that night; grew up
o Barber was in a chopper that went down
(2:47) Free time
• No comment
(3:02) Holidays
• Celebrated all holidays because in the Navy for 5 years
• Celebrated with his unit
o One time he was in Africa during Christmas so participated in the services
there; did not resemble Christmas
(3:30) Impact on life
• Became a better person
• More mature and with the realization that there are things in life bigger than one’s
self
• Made a lot of friends; kind of like college
(4:32) After the service
• Went to college at Grand Valley, Davenport
• The service helped him in his civilian career in many ways
o Respected because a veteran
• Would enlist in the Navy again and now wishes that he had stayed longer
�(5:38) Jobs while in the service
• 18 months as a mechanic
• Part of the hostage rescue mission
o Involved 2 years of planning and testing
o 130 units, 12 people per team
o In this mission, he was a driver and engine mechanic
(6:26) Iran Hostage Crisis
• Can talk about it now because the 20 year confidentiality agreement Barber had to
sign has expired
• Barber’s unit was chosen to go on mission because specialized in the helicopters
that would be used in the desert that night
o Specially chosen because unit had best record with handling that
equipment
• Spent 6 months training for the original plan which consisted of flying a C-130
into the middle of town and landing in an enclosed soccer field
o Burned up an airplane doing it
• Used rocket assisted take-off to see if could get off the ground in 100 yards or 150
yards but didn’t work
• Practiced landing and take-offs for several weeks, also trained on small weapons
• The first mission (1980)
o Landed in the desert at night; it was very dark
o Didn’t have intelligence so didn’t what the resistance would be on the
ground upon landing
o Lots of helicopters broke down because of the sand; a few fell out of the
sky because of the sand
o Did not make it to the city
o Turned around and went back because saw several school buses with the
tops cut off with Iranian regulars in them coming to stop their rescue
attempt
o Did not get the hostages; too much equipment trouble and resistance
(9:11) Combat
• Saw combat that night of the mission
• Iranian regulars armed with axes, hatchets, small arms, RPGs, etc.
• Lost 2 men from his unit; several were injured
(9:39) Panama
• Drug intervention
o Destroyed several boats, ships, and airplanes that were used to transport
illegal drugs
• Story
o Patrol Boat (PT Boat), 70 feet long
o Had to destroy it
o One of Barber’s friends was in charge of the demolition
o Attached mines to the bottom of the boat; blew up the boat so badly that
when performing a UDA (Upon Damage Assessment) the next day, found
only the engines a mile away.
�o Mission took place in 1981 or 1982; no casualties; took 7- 8 days to get
there but finished mission in one night
(11:30) Thailand
• Had to spend 6-8 days living in a dumpster with monkeys, drinking out of a sewer
because of an issue with martial law
(12:12) Basic training at Seal Beach
• When Barber was a Seal, only 346 Seals in the entire world
o 3 miles swim every morning; put on a helicopter and drop you into the
water off the coast of California
o Suffered sleep and food deprivation
o Training lasted 9 weeks; took Barber two times to get through it
(14:07) Training for Iran
• 7-8 months but didn’t know it would be their unit until 3-4 weeks before mission
(14:40) More on the service
• Really enjoyed the Navy
• Liked working on planes but was especially honored to be one of the few units
chosen to undergo Seal training
�
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Veterans History Project
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Grand Valley State University. History Department
Description
An account of the resource
The Library of Congress established the Veterans History Project in 2001 to collect memories, accounts, and documents of U.S. war veterans from World War II and the Korean War, Vietnam War, and conflicts in the Middle East and elsewhere, and to preserve these stories for future generations. The GVSU History Department interviews are part of this work-in-progress, and may contain videos and audio recordings, transcripts and interview outlines, and related documents and photographs.
Coverage
The spatial or temporal topic of the resource, the spatial applicability of the resource, or the jurisdiction under which the resource is relevant
1914-
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Subject
The topic of the resource
Afghan War, 2001--Personal narratives, American
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Korean War, 1950-1953--Personal narratives, American
Michigan--History, Military
Oral history
Persian Gulf War, 1991--Personal narratives, American
United States--History, Military
United States. Air Force
United States. Army
United States. Navy
Veterans
Video recordings
Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Personal narratives, American
World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Smither, James
Boring, Frank
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
RHC-27
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project interviews (RHC-27)</a>
Oral History
A resource containing historical information obtained in interviews with persons having firsthand knowledge.
Dublin Core
The Dublin Core metadata element set is common to all Omeka records, including items, files, and collections. For more information see, http://dublincore.org/documents/dces/.
Title
A name given to the resource
Barber, Scott (Interview outline and video), 2007
Creator
An entity primarily responsible for making the resource
Barber, Scott
Description
An account of the resource
Scott Barber is a Veteran who served in the United States Navy for five years from the late 1970s until the early 1980s in California, Iran, Thailand, and Panama. Because of skill and good military record, Barber's unit was assigned to the first rescue attempt of the Iran Hostage Crisis in 1980. In this interview, Barber discusses the training involved in preparing for this mission as well as the equipment failures and combat that took place that night. Barber also shares stories of his time in Panama, where his unit was responsible for destroying boats and planes used to transport illegal drugs, and his time in Thailand, where he spent over six days living in a dumpster.
Contributor
An entity responsible for making contributions to the resource
Barber, Ashley (Interviewer)
Forest Hills Eastern High School (Ada, Mich.)
Publisher
An entity responsible for making the resource available
Grand Valley State University. University Libraries. Special Collections & University Archives
Subject
The topic of the resource
Oral history
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
United States--History, Military
Michigan--History, Military
Veterans
United States. Navy
Iran Hostage Crisis, 1979-1981--Personal narratives, American
Other veterans & civilians--Personal narratives
Video recordings
Language
A language of the resource
eng
Rights
Information about rights held in and over the resource
<a href="http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC/1.0/?language=en">In Copyright</a>
Type
The nature or genre of the resource
Moving Image
Text
Relation
A related resource
Veterans History Project (U.S.)
Date
A point or period of time associated with an event in the lifecycle of the resource
2007-06-07
Identifier
An unambiguous reference to the resource within a given context
BarberS
Source
A related resource from which the described resource is derived
<a href="https://gvsu.lyrasistechnology.org/repositories/2/resources/455">Veterans History Project collection, (RHC-27)</a>
Format
The file format, physical medium, or dimensions of the resource
application/pdf
video/mp4