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Interviewer:
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Interviewer:
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Interviewer:
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Interviewer:
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What kind of education did you have prior to World War II?
Just high school and business college.
Do you remember where you were when you first about the war and how you
heard about it?
Yes. I had gone to Jackson, Mississippi, to visit some friends there, and we were
on our way back home to Meridian and Lauderdale when the news on the radio
came on that Hawaii had been bombed by the Japanese. In those days, as young
as I was, that didn't seem like anything too terrible. I didn't think too much about
it, but it didn't take you long to realize that it was a very serious thing.
Did your life change immediately after hearing about it? What did you do
differently?
I guess you would say it changed quite a bit. When this happened, I hadn't
finished high school at that time, but all the boys were beginning to join the
service and leave. Everybody was beginning to be real war conscious-wanted
to learn to do what they could to help the war effort, including myself. I tried to
learn to do welding, but I couldn't do it. I wasn't cut out to be a welder, but that
was one thing right at the first of the war that women wanted to do, because it
paid more than anything else you could do. Everything was going along pretty
smoothly before the war broke out, and after that everybody we knew practically,
young people, were being drafted and leaving. Girls married if they had a
sweetheart, because they thought they had to before they left and might not get to
see them again, but my daddy talked me out of that. He said, "No, try to think
about this. You may be left with a child, plus your husband could get killed. If
you're smart and you love that boy enough, you'll wait for him."
Did things inside your family life change any?
Not too much in that respect, because like I said, I went off to business college
shortly after that, so there really wasn't too much change other than me going to
school and trying to learn to be a stenographer and bookkeeper.
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