Interview with Olive Felio by David C. Bowne for the AAUP Oral History Project, Center for Oral History, University of Connecticut, April 24, 2001.

Bowne: Its the 24th of April, and we are doing the interview with Olive, Olive what is your last name?

Felio: Felio

DB: Felio, and this is an oral history project for the University of Connecticut, so just tell us a little about yourself Olive where you were born?

OF: Born in Albany New York, moved fairly frequently, spent my high school years in Platsburg New York, and my college years in Platsburg New York. What types of things do you want?

DB: Did you live at home with your parents?

OF: During that time, or now?

DB: During that time.

OF: O yes I was at home, two brothers and a sister, with my parents on the outskirts of Platsburg. Which is not a large city probably 25,000. There was an army base there, a college there. We were 25 miles south of the Canadian boarder. About 50 miles from Montreal.

DB: Did you travel to Canada much?

OF: Canada was probably the closest, we didn’t have much gas, but once in a while you might make a trip up.

DB: Can you tell me about your early life, did you go to elementary school?

OF: Yes, lets see, went to elementary school in a small town called Belthleam center, New York. Went to grades one through six, it was a two room school house. And in sixth grade we moved up to Platsburg where I went to a fairly large middle school, and high school. Very different from where we were brought up. When we lived in Albany we had relatives around, when we moved up to Platsburg there wasn’t anybody around so we were practically relativesless, because of course the war started in 41, and o course nobody had the gas to travel very far so we entertained ourselves.

DB: How was it different from where you were born?

OF: In Albany? We had moved several times before then. My father was with the A & P.

DB: A & P is that the super market?

OF: Atlantic and Pacific tea company he was a supervisor, and so when his district would change, then we would move from Albany, to Troy, to Kinderhook, to hither and yon, and when he got up into Platsburg he had all of Northern New York, and he stayed there for all of his working days. So thats why we were up there.

DB: We both of your parents educated did they go to school?

OF: O yes, well high school, yes

DB: And your father worked for A & P, your mother what did she stay at home?

OF: She stayed at home, most mothers did back then.

DB: How many brother and sisters did you have?

OF: Two brothers and a sister

DB: Were they older or younger?

OF: One brother was older, and my younger brother and sister, well we were all educated my older brother graduated from Cornell, electrical engineer. And my younger brother graduated from Clarkston University as a Chemist. And my sister and I both graduated from the Platsburg branch of Suni which is the state university of New York. We were both teachers. I was a home-ec teacher, and she was a grade school teacher.

DB: Ohh thats nice

OF: It’s funny everybody I seem to run into had gone to Cornell.

DB: O really! Well he started at the University of Rochester, but then they gave him the choice, he was in as a navy ROTC. And so he had to spend a year on one of those landing crafts, out off of San Francisco, and then when he was out of the Navy, instead of going back to U of R, he went to Cornell to go finish up.

DB: What were your childhood interests?

OF: Books, reading, being outdoors, ohh good grief, playing with dolls, my mother would take us each summer, to a campsite up in Northern New York, called Fish creek. We would either have a tent or a trailer, and she would stay the entire summer with the four of us up there. It was sort of in the middle of my father’s territory. So we would check in the day after school let out, and we would check out as close to Labor day as we could manage it. And then it wasn’t too crowded so we just stay in one campsite the whole time, and had a marvelous summer just spending it outdoors.

DB: Oh that sounds really fun,

OF: Yes

DB: Did you work at all before you graduated high school?

OF: Yes, I worked one summer, and part of the year, as a switch board operator at a hospital. I did a little bit of baby sitting, I was a waitress at Inn in Vermont. I was a mothers helper on an island in the middle of cranberry lake, up in the Atarondacks. I guess that was about it.

DB: Before the Second World War did you know anyone in the military at all, before the war started?

OF: Well a few because, I went to school with the children from the Platsburg Army Base. And so there fathers and so forth and so on were in the army. And so, you meet them occasionally, but most of the time you really didn’t think of them that way, you saw them as somebody’s father, but they were all army people.

DB: Were you aware of any of the events going on overseas before the war?

OF: Yes, yes, we would get the... well that was probably before hand, one summer there was a German couple that camped next to us, and he did all sorts of experiments like using a raft and a motorboat motor on the lake and this type of thing. And I had an uncle who always said that he was a German spy, and he was trying out all these things. And so when you have an adult saying all these kind of things, you sort of look twice at these people. Probably the most vivid parts were we would get the radio reports of London being bombed, and the Germans moving into France and Poland. All of this would come through on the radio, and my parents would listen to it, and of course we would hear it. And a as a result I would have all sorts of nightmares because, I could just invasion the planes flying over us at the time. And so o yes I knew what was going on.

DB: Where were you on December 7, 1941, do you remember the day?

OF: Yup, I do every Sunday evening the four of us my brothers and sisters, would go to a program at church called Christian Endeavor, and it was like youth group.

DB: Can you explain that kind of?

OF: Youth group?

DB: Yeah, to the listeners on the tape

OF: Ohh, lets see, well it was just our Pastor would meet with all of the teenagers in our church, and friends if we wanted to bring them in. And we would have some kind of a social activity, and children’s sermon type of event, and we were meeting, and my father drove down the four of us to pick us up, and he came in, and stopped the whole meeting by announcing Japan has bombed Pearl Harbor! Were at war! And we sat there just staring at the poor man because, you could tell that he was shocked and everybody else was shocked, we just all sat there with our mouths open. So I know exactly where I was.

DB: How did you feel after you heard that?

OF: Scared, cause I had heard all the radio programs before hand. Life seemed to go on quite normally for a while, and so when the adults were acting very normal about it we just kept on going to school.

DB: What grade were you in school at the time?

OF: Seventh, Seventh grade I think.

DB: How was attitude amongst the other children at the school once the war began?

OF: Not very different actually, it was different for the Army base because, of course those children knew that probably their parents would be going, their fathers would be going immediately, and many of them would be going someplace else. We were effected in ways like we had to practice air raid drills in school, you had to exactly where your place was in the lowest hole possible, and get there as soon as quick. We had to do blackouts of our home, couldn’t go anyplace cause, there wasn’t much gas. You got ration books right away. You didn’t worry about many news clothes, or new shoes at all because, they weren’t available either. But for the most part my parents kept up fairly level.

DB: How did you feel about American involvement once we entered the war?

OF: I think probably since we entered it by being bombed we probably felt there wasn’t anything else to do. So there wasn’t to much agonizing over it. You just go along with what ever is happening.

DB: Did the town’s general attitude change at all after the bombing at all?

OF: Not that I remember, I don’t think that perhaps I might have noticed. The Army base was a big part of our town, and so most of the town would have been supporting what was happening to them.

DB: Did you leisure time change, the way you spent your free time change after the war?

OF: No I don’t think so, I was still allowed to walk to my friends, and do things with my friends so actually I probably didn’t change at all. We walked to school, we walked home, we did homework, we took part in all of our churches activities, umm not really, my father and mother did get, we lived on the outskirts of town, so we could have goats, so we had our own milk, we had chickens and ducks, we had meet and eggs, we had a garden, and we all had to help with that. So maybe it changed in that way.

DB: Did you participate in any scrap drives, or any sort of stuff like that?

OF: O yes, yes

DB: Like what sort of things did you participate in?

OF: Tin foil, you saved everything, you knew you weren’t going to get anymore, so string, wrapping paper, and everything you could possibly save. We would also send bundles to Britain, and so if we had clothes we weren’t using at the present time we had a place where we would turn it all in, somehow they got it all to Britain. I doubt it was mailed. Probably airplanes would take it over. Quilts, blankets, anything you could spare would go over.

DB: How do you feel about that?

OF: I just thought we were helping them. I don’t think any of us, you know this was all sort of explained to us we just went along with it and did it. It wasn’t a generation that did much questioning. We just followed we just what we were told.

DB: Enthusiastic about it?

OF: Probably yes, because we knew we were helping.

DB: Did you know anybody that went off to war?

OF: I had an uncle, who went, As I got older in high school a few of the boys went off. But most of them who were in our class didn’t turn 18 until they had graduated, two of them went into the academy, no I’m sorry one went to Annapolis, and one went to West Point. But most of them once they were 18, the war was almost over. So they just went into the Army or the Navy, but they weren’t really seeing active duty. Like my husband spent most of his time down at Newport, no no, the one down in Virginia?

DB: Newport News?

OF: No

DB: Norfolk?

OF: Norfolk, Norfolk standing guard for the Navy. So most of the ones we knew except for my uncle weren’t in the middle of everything.

Db: Did you know your husband during the war?

OF: No, I didn’t meet him until 49.

DB: Ohh ok, What was your view of the enemy, the Germans, Japanese, Italians?

OF: You know I don’t really think that we, I don’t know maybe it was the age we were in, we sort of took them as a country. The Germans the Japanese that were here in our country they were part of us so we really didn’t think about it at all. You might have been fighting Germany, but Germany was a country over there, Japan was a country over there. You would hear all these stories, all the horrible things they were doing, but you seemed to associate it with just the country was over there doing all these horrible things. So as individuals you really didn’t think about them.

DB: Do you remember any propaganda that was negative towards the Japanese of Germans?

OF: Well the movies, I probably wasn’t allowed to go to too many of those. The ones that I saw were propaganda for going in the Army, going in the Navy, supporting your country, you know a lot of the musicals that were put out at that time were hip hip hooray type things.

DB: Do you remember any of the movies that you saw?

OF: Oh deer, I don’t

DB: Like Casablanca did you see that?

OF: NO NO, my parents were very careful what they allowed us to see

DB: In the Army?

OF: I did see that later, that type of thing

DB: With Ronald Regan, thats a musical

OF: Yes, probably mostly musicals that we were allowed to see. Most parents kept a fairly strict watch on what the children were watching or seeing. It was a long time ago.

DB: Did you listen to any radio programs at all during the war?

OF: O yes we listened to the radio a lot, but we weren’t listening to that type of thing. You could hear, Fibber McGee and Charlie, Gracie, and ohh the guy with Charlie?

DB: Charlie McCarthy?

OF: Charlie McCarthy, Fred Allan, I can remember hearing the fights from Jo Lewis, I can remember the Metropolitan Opera on Saturday Afternoon. That was another thing, they kept fairly close watch on what we listened too. But there was a lot of Radio. In fact there was nothing but radio.

DB: Well obviously

OF: Thats what we listened to

DB: Did you listen to the news a lot?

OF: OHHH!, and all the things like the Lone Ranger, and Green Phantom, you know...

DB: Little Orphan Annie

OF: No I don’t remember any Little Orphan Annie,

DB: I don’t remember if that was after the war or not

OF: Ohh, but you know this type of thing

DB: Did you listen to the news a lot?

OF: What news we listened to, would have been around supper time, when our parents were listening.

DB: What did you think of...

OF: And of course we saw the newspapers every day

DB: What did you think of what you saw going on overseas, when you would hear about it or read about it?

OF: I’m sure that it upset us all. And of course we knew that they were bombing people, people were getting killed, you could read about that in the news paper all the time. We knew about air raids. We knew about why we didn’t have all these things that normally you would have. And so it certainly had an effect on us, but we were high scholars, and high school life just kept on going. High Schooler’s really don’t spend a huge amount of time worrying about, although we knew all about it.

DB: Was it a frequent topic of conversation in high school?

OF: No I don’t think so

DB: Oh really

OF: No, No, I would have said our yearbook, or who your going with to the prom, or wasn’t the biology test a corker, or something like this.

DB: Typical high school talk

OF: Exactly, exactly, and I think they probably worked very hard just to keep it that way.

DB: Did you ever feel unsafe during the war, I figure maybe something might happen. might get attacked over here?

OF: Ummm Occasionally, yes, mostly when you hear airplanes, you’d be afraid. But we knew Canada was north of us. And for the most part war were thinking that the Coast Guard was going try to keep us fairly safe. And so there was the airplanes really, that scared me more then anything.

DB: Could you identify airplanes as they flew overhead? I know a lot of children would do that?

OF: No, No I didn’t although we had air raid wardens. And certainly being in Platsburg that close to the boarder, being on a large lake, with the air force base, many of our adults, served as air raid wardens, and served as people who walked the streets, just to be sure that everybody’s blackout was proper. This type of thing.

DB: During the war did you understand the significance of what was going on?

OF: Yes I think so, I would say yes, that we knew what had happened, we knew why we were fighting, and we knew what we were fighting for certainly.

DB: Did you ever write letters to people overseas at all?

OF: Yes, that was funny, in high school I had a French Girl that I wrote to. And the letters went back and forth. And I don’t remember now what part of France she lived in. But it was defiantly during the war. We wrote letters to the Uncle who was in the services. He served in, he was a Lieutenant in the Army because he was in the Battle of the Bulge. And so we knew about that. Not many letters came back. But they had other things on their mind then writing letters. But I think that would have been about it.

DB: So you didn’t receive to many letters?

OF: No the French girl’s letters got through to me

DB: Ohhh how did you get involved with that?

OF: Through the French class at school. Which surprised me, with a war going on you wouldn’t thought it was possible.

DB: Maybe she lived in Southern France, which wasn’t occupied.

OF: She may have, yes, and when she wrote, she didn’t really mention the war very much at all. She wrote about her family, about her pets, about school. And she wrote in French so I had to translate it take it to school, and I had to write mine in English so that she could translate it. And it was very interesting. But it wasn’t about the war at all.

DB: Maybe she lived in Southern France

OF: Maybe

DB: Did you ever save those letters?

OF: Yes I do have a couple of them.

DB: Thats nice

DB: Did you ever feel like worried during the war?

OF: Yes, yes you would worry about if your father was still young enough to go, or was he considered to be an essential.

DB: Was your father old at the time, I would imagine your father was kinda of old at the time?

OF: No not really, he was probably, well late 30’s early 40’s. Probably to old to go, unless it got really bad. And then you would worry about my brother who was getting to the age where he would be old enough. But when he did go in, he went in to the ROTC, and so that was like going to college, so really didn’t worry that much about him. The year he spent off on the landing craft outside of San Francisco you worried about him. But we heard from him quite frequently.

DB: How much did rationing effect the family?

OF: Ohh quite a bit, all though we were better off then many people.

DB: Because you had those milk and chickens.

OF: Thats right, we had our own little farm, but there were a lot of things you couldn’t get. And you grew up probably, I mean they weren’t even available. Sugar was l limited so you saved what sugar you had for things like birthday cakes or Christmas. Butter wasn’t available so we learned how to do. Margarine came in white blocks with orange coloring you had to.

DB: They still sell it like that,

OF: Mix it around to the right color,

DB: Oh not like that!

OF: Yes thats what you had to do. And so if you did a good job it turned out pretty well. You learned to eat it, it didn’t taste to bad, it just looked kind of funny.

DB: Did it taste like margarine does today at all?

OF: Ohh not anywhere near as good. No meet was scarce. But we did have our own chickens and our own ducks. And we had eggs. And I could remember my mother every so often she serve a dish where you would have mashed potatoes with a fried egg on top. Ohh I hated that thing. Ohh gosh I do anything. But it was supper that night. So you ate what you had. But she canned a lot. She made her own bread. We did quite well actually. Because we had the animals, and the garden, and this type of thing. And so my sister and I both learned to cook with what we had at the time actually. We probably didn’t miss anything. But there were a lot of things you couldn’t get. Like beef and pork. Every so often you could go up to Canada, and buy a couple of things up there. But my father being with the A & P didn’t really sanction that, he felt that since he worked for the A & P we should be keeping things on the up and up. And trips to Montreal were for school and not for food.

DB: I would imagine that was frowned upon, like going up to Canada.

OF: Well yes it was, but they would let you but bring back a pound of butter, or something like that.

DB: Was there no rationing in Canada?

OF: You know I don’t know. I do remember we went up to Canada once and where we ate lunch they served us Buffalo burgers.

DB: Whats that?

OF: Well you know what a Buffalo is?

DB: Yeah

OF: Well you take Buffalo meat, and instead of

DB: I see

OF: Exactly! and they were serving Buffalo Burgers. Tasted just like beef, but they couldn’t get beef either.

DB: Oh Really

OF: So there were lots of Buffalo, and so this is the type of thing you adjusted to.

DB: Thats interesting

DB: After the war, when everything would stop being rationed , was it really exciting just to be able to go down to the market and see everything that you were once able to get as food.

OF: Well it didn’t come back all of a sudden like that, I’m trying to remember because even between World War II and the Korean War there was still a huge number of people in the service. And so that took a lot of the food. I can remember shoes were rationed, and you had to have a certain number of stamps. And clothes were rationed. My mother made a lot of things for us. Sometimes you could get fabric. But you know I think during the war we were so used to just making do with what we had. I can remember a lot of books coming out saying, knitting of course if you could get the yarn, and sometimes Canada you could get the yarn that was ok. But they would say if you have an old suit this is how you cut it down for a ladies suit, or if you have a old blanket you can make it into a babies crib blanket. So we got a lot of books teaching us how to do things like that.

DB: Ohh thats good, being a good steward of the stuff you have, nothing wrong with that.

OF: Yeah

DB: Would you ever, would people ever go hunting to get meat, upstate New York?

OF: Not my family but my husbands family certainly did. My father was not, my father was more of a city person even though we were living up there then. But my husbands family would get deer, and they lived on a dairy farm, but so they produced milk and they had a large garden. But you normally didn’t eat your dairy cows. Perhaps a calf occasionally, and my mother and law would can the meat. So they would have the supply. And they would get as many deer as they were allowed. My husband went hunting, and his father, the others really weren’t old enough. But yes deer were very important to the North country people.

DB: Did you know anyone who had a war department job, just worked in a war related industry when you were in high school, or did you?

OF: No, and I don’t remember anyone... Yes I do remember some of my friends fathers moved out of town, the family stayed, but they went to Buffalo, they came down here to Hartford, to go to work in the factories.

DB: So there weren’t too many war industries in your town then?

OF: Not that I remember

DB: Do you remember ever remember women encouraging women to go to work?

OF: O yes, do you mean like Rosie the Riveter?

DB: Yes

OF: Yes, and many of the women in our town did go to work, but it wasn’t in a war factory type of atmosphere. They would fill in offices where the men had left and so the women took over. There would be like in the bakery it would be all women working, that type of thing. Just normal industry, but where the men had left, and then for the school busses the women were driving the school busses which women is something they still do today, but not before the war.

DB: Ohh really I never thought about that

OF: And in the dairy farms, most of your help would be women. Milking, doing the Vegetables, haying, many many of the farm wives there help was gone. There were no hired men and so everybody had to go to work.

DB: So you worked at the telephone switch board at point?

OF: The hospital

DB: The hospital

OF: The hospital switchboard, but that was always a women’s job anyway. So I was just filling in probably for one of the adult women.

DB: Do you think you would have taken a job had there not been a war?

OF: Yes I think so, I think my parents would have encouraged us, they didn’t let us work until we were like 16 or 17. They felt that there were other people who needed the jobs, and we didn’t really need them that much, but once we started thinking about college I think my parents felt that it was a good idea to find out what it was like to have a job and hold it down, and do the best you could.

DB: After the war did you continue to hold the job, or did you go off to college?

OF: Yes, Ohh I did go off to college, but each summer I would work.

DB: Ohh you had a different job each summer

DB: There were people across the United States that didn’t support the war, did you ever run into anyone like that?

OF: Not where we were

DB: Did you ever hear of anyone like that?

OF: Yes you would read about them in the newspaper, you would hear about them on the radio. But I think they were frowned upon. They certainly weren’t applauded anyplace where we were. Particularly with the Army base there.

DB: Is that near Fort Drum where you grew up?

OF: No, you know where New York City is

DB: Yeah

OF: If you go 150 miles straight North of New York City, you are going to hit Albany, and if you go 150 miles straight North of Albany you’re going to hit Platsburg. And Platsburg is on Lake Champlain. Which is the boarder between Vermont and New York State.

DB: Ohh ok

OF: And then if you go straight North from Platsburg only 50 miles you’re going to be right in Montreal.

DB: Ohh I understand now

OF: Now from Platsburg the St. Lawrence River kinda curves around like this. Ok, if you follow the St. Lawrence River round over to Lake Ontario side Fort Drum is over there

DB: Ohh I see

OF: But after the war our Army base was turned into the Platsburg Air Force base, and it was one of the basses where the big....

DB: B-29

OF: Went out, and then during the Korean war and all, there was a huge squadron flight there, and they would fly a lot of the flights out, well, not to England, but the flights out where they would be gone for a day or two back, it was a huge huge Air Force base there.

DB: Ohh wow

OF: But for two years directly following the war, they turned it into a two year college for all returning veterans, and so for two years it was called Champlain College. And then the Army took it back, and made it into an Airforce base. And thats how I met my husband. Cause he was at the college. It was all vets, trying to use their GI Bill. They wanted to see first before they sent them on to regular school if they could get through two years of community college. So thats what they did.

DB: Thats how I go to school, I’m in the Connecticut National Guard, for the G.I. Bill they pay for my school.

OF: Exactly!

DB: Before the war did you consider yourself a Christian?

OF: Ohh yes, my father and mother were both very strong Christians, we were brought up from birth to be very strong Christians, and my grandparents were very strong. And when you’re brought up in a very strong household you just accept it, and just keep right on going.

DB: How did the war affect your Christian walk?

OF: I don’t think at all, we had enough gas to get to all the services, there were a lot of soldiers and mid shipman and all in our church when they were stationed at Platsburg. You would have them home for dinner. You would take them in for holidays if they couldn’t get home. We saw a lot of them that way. Cause the families felt that they were away from home, and they enjoyed coming to be with the family after having to leave their own home. So we saw a lot of the you