Interview with Virginia Nichols by Lindsey M. Nichols for the Voices from the Second World War Oral History Project, Center for Oral History, University of Connecticut, December 5th, 2001.
NICHOLS: Where and when were you born?
VIRGINIA NICHOLS: I was born in Lockport, New York, Niagara County. But, my
parents lived in Barker, New York, and she [my mother] went to my aunt’s house and I was born there, in Lockport.
LN: And that’s were you grew up?
VN: No, I grew up in Barker.
LN: In Barker, New York.
VN: Yes, because that’s where the house was [where my parents lived] and at
the time I was born, we lived in my grandfather’s house. He owned it and he had a store next-door, an oil business. Had pumps outside for gas and he delivered oil to different people and that was in 1929 when the depression was on, and a lot of people got fuel, but they never paid for it. So, he took a big loss and he was never able to collect the money because they went bankrupt. But, at any rate, I lived next to the store in this house that became my sister’s father-in-laws house, he bought it from my grandfather and then we moved upstairs over the store and that’s where I lived when I was going to school.
LN: So what year were you born?
VN: 1924.
LN: So can you tell me about your childhood, your early life? What was it like?
VN: Well, I liked school and I was very active. When I came home from school
I’d get the roller-skates out and go all over the village, it was a small
Village, Barker, and I would skate after school. But, before that I was
in second grade, I had just started second grade, I ended up having an
abscess on my gland in my throat. I was home from school and the
doctor came to the house, operated at the house, and then he had to
come and make calls to make sure I was doing ok. And every time I’d
hear his footsteps on the stairs I’d start screaming because it would hurt
so much when he would do something to it! But then he kept telling me,
“if you don’t stop crying and carrying on I’ll put you in the hospital.”
Then I got the measles and I told him he wouldn’t be able to put me in the
hospital ‘cause I had the measles, so they kept me back in the first grade
because of that. I started out in school with all the friends I played with
in the village. Then, because of being kept back, I didn’t graduate with
them, but they still invite me when they have their [reunions]…when they
had their 60th reunion this year they invited me to come to that because I grew up with most of them. So, then I [got] a bike and that was…just a used bike, but boy I thought that was really nice and I remember going up over these railroad tracks right near…(that went through the center of our town). We had a town park in the middle and a big band stand and we always had concerts there. But I can remember going up over those railroad tracks and I fell because it was so bumpy, but that was one thing I do remember. But I guess through the years I grew up with all these friends that were close by and we would go back and forth to each others houses. And when we were in high school, we used to play school. And we had a friend who had a teacher living in their house, and we’d get her
planning books and we’d have…they had a big home and we’d have a
separate room with a blackboard, so we would teach. And so we had a lot
of fun, we made a lot of fun. And we were very active in school, I mean
the school was the center of everything. It isn’t so much like that now,
there’s a lot of things going on, but it (the school) isn’t the center. That was the only thing in town really and when the war came on they had movies there, at the school. We could go to those, so I was involved in everything, everything musical. I ended up taking piano lessons and when the eye doctor said he didn’t want me taking piano and horn, so I dropped the piano and took horn, French Horn lessons. I ended up doing very well in that, I made it to the 1939 World’s Fair in New York City and I played a solo at the national level and I did very well. And I also played in a brass sextet which went too and they adjudicated us. So, I think we had a very excellent school. I can remember my principal wanted me to take the third year of French, and I told him, in my last year, I didn’t know that I was going on to school and I wanted to have typing. Well, he wasn’t too
happy with me, but I ended up taking typing and I ended up working in an
office so I was glad that I did take the typing. But, I was really fortunate, I
was President of the Student Council, I was President of the Beta’s, the
honorary society. We planned a career day even and had speakers come from other places. So, I really think our school was a very small school, but an active one.
LN: It sounds like it! Now did anyone in your family serve in World War I that
you can remember?
VN: Nobody in the family. My great uncle [Theodore], who was very close to my fathers’ age, was in World War I. He was in France, and he praised the Salvation Army for what they did to help; you know, they’d served coffee, they did for the troops. That’s the only connection I have.
LN: Well, when exactly did World War II start in your life? At what point
[were you in your life]?
VN: Well, the point was that Dick, my husband, your grandfather, went in the
service, but I had only known him for about three months. I met him at a
basketball game, I was in charge of the basketball band and we used to
travel to the games sometimes. One time I was going to go home with
him and my girlfriend and her boyfriend and I didn’t get permission ahead
of time to do that. I was brought down to the principals office because of
that, because he said “you’re setting an example for the school and you’re
President of Student Council and you shouldn’t have done that.” And I
said, well I knew my folks…they knew [who] I was going to come home with, but I didn’t ask permission and I should have.
LN: From the school?
VN: Yes.
LN: And this was when you were still in high school?
VN: Yeah.
LN: You were a senior?
VN: Yes, because at that time I met Dick and he went in the service in April,
that was just prior to the bombing.
LN: At what point did you know or get a sense that there was going to be a
war?
VN: I really didn’t get a sense that it was going to be. How I got the news was
my girlfriend had come and was taking three or four of us to the show in
Lockport and when we came home it was on the radio that the bombing…
that we’d been attacked at Pearl Harbor and that’s where he was. He went
in and he was shipped over, he was in basic training in April, he went in,
and then he was sent overseas in June. So, we weren’t really prepared for
the bombing, he was there, but he was training, but he was based where
the antiaircraft was on the island and [unclear] we really weren’t prepared
for that bombing and when we heard the news on the radio, I just couldn’t
believe it, I just felt terrible because we didn’t know what was going to
happen, it was very scary, but he never did come home. 45 months later
he came home. Never got a furlough all the time he was overseas.
Instead, he accumulated points to come home and he had so many that
They stopped counting. But they, he had jungle training so they sent him
on to Saipan, the Invasion of Saipan, because that group had been well
trained and they thought they’d be good there so he never did get out of
the service until he came home. He never had a furlough, he had a three-
day pass when he was in Hawaii, but that was all. He never came back
home…so that was a long time! In the meantime, I got a job and thought I
wanted to go on to school. I was offered a couple scholarships, but I
just figured what was the point of going on? This is going to end and I’ll
get married and then what am I going to do with a job. So I didn’t go on
to school and I was very sorry that I didn’t because I could have almost
graduated by the time he got out, 45 months, so I was sorry that I didn’t
go.
LN: So, what were your feelings when he went, when he left when you were in
high school? When he left for military service, what were your feelings?
VN: Well, …all I could think of was I’d be getting out of school and maybe we’d get married and then I’d go and live with him while he was
training, but see, he never did get time in the United States, he was sent
overseas right away.
LN: And then do you remember at all what the attitude was, in general, after
Pearl Harbor?
VN: Well, we had ration books. There were shortages on different articles,
different foods, and there was gasoline rationing so it made it difficult.
I lived, I moved into Lockport because I didn’t have transportation. [First apartment away from home] I was able to have a ride back and forth to work from Barker, into Lockport for a while, but then I took an apartment with another friend and we had rationing books and used what we could and we had to watch our money. I didn’t have a very good paying job, but it was in an office and I typed and worked like a secretary. I ended up learning the Dictaphone, which I had never done before. I’d only take typing, thank goodness, but I think for those four years it was hard because you never knew when and if they were coming home and it made the whole country uneasy because you didn’t know what was going to happen.
LN: What was the name of the Company you worked for?
VN: Merritt Engineering and Sales, it was a plywood manufacturing company
and it was a small company. But I liked it because the people were all
friendly and I worked with the production manager in the factory. So, I
was in a factory office and strangely enough when we got married, he [the
production manager] was the one that gave us gas rationing stamps
because he drove all over for the company and he had extra stamps. So he
gave us stamps so we could go on our honeymoon, otherwise we couldn’t
have gone. We wouldn’t have been able to get any gasoline. But anyway,
I worked there, I graduated in ’42 and then I went to work there right after
that. I ended up, strangely enough, I decided I would go closer to my
apartment and a friend of mine worked for Harrison Radiator Company,
and I thought, oh that would be nice I wouldn’t have to go far ‘cause I had
to get a ride now, it was too far to walk [to Merritt] and I had to walk to
catch a ride. The girl I lived with also worked out at Merritt, but I was
offered a job at Harrison’s, which was right down the street from where
we lived and I thought, I’m gonna try this. And they paid me more money
and I wouldn’t have to pay for transportation to go back and forth, so I
tried it and I worked at maybe…I don’t think I was there only a couple of
months. The man that I used to work for kept asking my friend, that I was
living with, “when is Ginny coming back to work? We’d really like to
have her come back.” So I would go home every night and hear that and I
finally decided, why am I staying there [Harrison’s], on that job? I didn’t
like it because I was typing the same thing over and over again; deduction,
big ditto sheets for copying and it was the same thing: so many screws,
and such size, and it was just repeating and I thought, it wasn’t interesting
at all. And I decided I’d go back to walking down to catch the ride and go
back to work and get less money, which was kinda dumb I suppose, but I
was happier there and I decided that’s what I wanted to do.
LN: Revolving around the friend issue, was it hard to keep in touch with
friends during the war or were most of your friends located around you?
VN: I think most of them were. Yeah. Just before Dick went in the service,
my friend Esther that I grew up with and we went for our first date
together. Dick wanted to go to Buffalo to a hockey game, so that was a
big deal. And he used his father’s car to take us there and then she [Esther] and another friend, in fact Bill Hornberg, no not Bill, I mean she married Bill, but she went with another one! I don’t…do you remember stopping in Albuquerque to visit the McCabe’s?
LN: Yes I do.
VN: Well Jim McCabe went with us.
LN: And he was a friend?
VN: With Esther. We went to Buffalo and that was a big deal to go to Buffalo to the hockey game. Then we came back and stopped at Chin’s, which was a Chinese restaurant, which at the time wasn’t popular too much you know, but that’s what we did on our first date. But, he wasn’t home that long so we really didn’t have a chance to go out much before he left for the service.
LN: Getting back to dealing with the war, do you remember at all, after Pearl
Harbor happened and grandpa [Dick] was over there, do you remember
how you viewed “the enemy” especially the Japanese and Germans?
VN: Well of course I didn’t like them at all because they had bombed us and
what had we done to them? We didn’t do anything to them and I just
didn’t like them for that reason. I thought they were tricky and they might
do anything, just like now with the bombing [September 11th 2001
Terrorist Attacks] you don’t know what to expect…that’s the way we felt
then with the damage they did at Pearl Harbor.
LN: How did you feel, or did you really have a feeling before the attack with
how the Germans, how in Europe the war had already started…was there
really much feeling towards them personally for you?
VN: There was, there was feeling about that, yeah. But I didn’t get involved
that much with Germany, I mean the people that were in Germany. I think we lived in a place that was kind of protected. We lived in a small village, everybody knew everybody and you just didn’t think about all those people and what they could do, or what they did do. We didn’t grow up with that.
LN: Was there much…today how [the news is on] constantly, you see the terrorist attacks and the news papers and the magazines, [was there news coverage] like that [in] the media or how was…what
was going on in Pearl Harbor and then when war started, how did that
unfold?
VN: Well, I just can’t remember too much about that except listening to the
radio. We didn’t have a TV then. And just by listening to the radio and
of course I looked for letters all the time, I kept walking to the post-
office where I lived up at my grandparents [in Barker], my parents moved up there after, I think I was a freshman, and they moved up because my grandfather had passed away and my grandmother had arthritis and she couldn’t do for herself so we moved up there. So I would walk to the post office looking for letters, you know, they would cut whole areas out of my letters, they would censor them, but I always kept looking for letters.
LN: How did they…do you remember how they censored them? Did they
draw lines through the information or…?
VN: They cut. They cut the words right out of it, yeah. But he couldn’t tell me
anything. He couldn’t say what the weather was, you know it was hard to
know what to write about. He couldn’t tell me what he was doing, they would cut it, they’d censor it so it was hard for him to write anything except that he was lonely and that’s about all he could write so…
LN: You had a job. I know you lived in a small town, but was there really
a lot going on with new jobs. Did you notice if new openings were
being created? I mean could you really notice, I mean I know it was a
small town?
VN: No, but because, see I was a senior. I did say that I did go to work in the
canning factory because they (the men had all gone to the service) and they needed help to can tomatoes, to sort the tomatoes, and that’s what we did. We sorted [and peeled], squashed them, and we’d work after school because it was something to earn a little extra money and also it was during the war when they needed help and they didn’t have… the men
weren’t around to work.
LN: So that was before the secretarial job?
VN: Oh yes, this was when I was still in school. I worked after school and on
Saturdays. But when it came to working on cherries, this was interesting,
they were so pretty, but they were on a conveyer belt and they moved
along and you had to pick the bad ones out and it made me sick to my
stomach. I was dizzy from trying to watch the cherries go by. I couldn’t
stay on, I couldn’t work at that job. But now the tomatoes did not bother
me.
LN: So, did the town really change much during the war?
VN: I don’t think so. The only thing that I think was wonderful, and I think that
I’ve said it right along, that the people, the young kids growing up need a
place to go. We were fortunate that we had an ice-cream place, a
sandwich place, and all the kids would congregate there. Now, at that
time we had what they called an NYA group who were supported by the
state. [The National Youth Administration gave vocational opportunities to high school age boys from different areas in the state. Barker was one of the few town that hosted this program proving the school’s all- around and positive reputation. The program was called the Federal Vocational Emergency Defense Training Program and it was a resident project to earn an academic diploma and 2-year vocational certificate, or may complete short-term emergency defense training work in any branch of shop instruction.] They would take boys that were having difficulty in school with their subjects and a lot of them wanted to learn machine shop and through doing this, it helped them to get jobs and it brought those fellas to live in our community and we tried to make them feel welcome. I still see some of them at our alumni doing and the one, in fact he just passed away a year ago, but he became a teacher, and he said, “we, our fellas all, will always remember what the town people did to welcome us in.” They lived in one house and had a housemother. He said he wouldn’t have had an education if he, if they hadn’t done that. So that was something we enjoyed, talking to them, because it was somebody different then our own town. And we could congregate at this, we called her Ma Parson’s Place [the NYA house]. They’d have the nickelodeon going and we didn’t have room to dance there but we had dancing… I just happened to think about that. We had what they called ‘tea dances’ at the school and at noontime we’d go down and play nickelodeon, I mean records, and dance during the noon hour, which, I don’t know is they do that now. But we did then, that gave us a place to go and we could walk down there, and being a small town we had no worries about, you know, people after dark. You didn’t worry about getting out like you do now. We had, interesting, when the trains would come through, there were a lot of hobo’s that would travel on the train. And at the time, when I lived up over my grandfather’s store, which was not in business anymore but the store was still there, downstairs, some of his stock was still there…but these hobo’s would sit over in the park and I’d go over and talk to them. They got a kick out of talking to me because I was younger you know. But I liked to talk to them even though they were strange, I mean, there was nothing worried about, you didn’t worry about any problems as far as they were concerned; everybody was right out in the open. I enjoyed going over there and talking to them, that’s probably where your father gets it from!
LN: [Laughter] The talking!
VN: [Laughter]
LN: So you had the movie theater, you had, you know, Buffalo at one time, so
there was leisure activities, there were things to do for fun…you had the
ice-cream parlor…so was there anything else?
VN: Well we had the basketball games. We’d go for skating parties
over to Olcott, we’d have a bus go over to Olcott. I loved to
roller-skate, and I would spend hours, you know. We had those things that
I don’t think they do as much now.
LN: So, did you do these things even as the war went on or what happened
to activities as the war, I mean you got older and also as the war was going
on?
VN: Yeah, when I was older and it was war time, I mean I was still in school,
but I felt that why should I go on to school, as much as I would have
enjoyed it, I felt like, well, you know, it’s going to be hard financially, I
had no backing to do this. My parents didn’t have money to send me
so, I just figured it was too much I just gave it up [the thought of going]. But I think that we received as good an education [at our school], I mean, the principal was very good. We had excellent teachers and I think we
were able to talk with them, and we got a lot of good out of them, our
teachers.
LN: When did Grandpa, Dick, go? He left for the service your senior year, do
you remember which month?
VN: April.
LN: In April, so you still had a few months.
VN: In ’41, 1941.
LN: Ok, so you still had a few months of school left.
VN: [Acknowledged]
LN: Well then, I didn’t ask you before, who did your family consist of?
VN: Oh, my mother and father, and one sister.
LN: What were there names?
VN: No brothers. Oh, my mother’s name was Ruth, my father’s was Donald [David] Vickers and Donna Vickers, my sister, and she was six years younger than me.
LN: And do you remember how the war affected them? Did you ever notice?
VN: I guess, I probably didn’t take that in as much. Like I say, we were living
with my grandmother, I was involved in so many interests at the time at school, anything that went on at school. My mother used to tell me I ought to take my bed to school because I was down there all the time, but I was so much involved and I played for everything that went on at school. I played for piano group assemblies at that time they would march in to the piano. I played for choir, before I sang. I never sang in a choir until I started singing after my children grew up. But, we had a lot of interests. I think that maybe some of the other kids in schools weren’t as close as we were, we had more emphasis on schooling, the scholastics were very important. I wasn’t a top student, I was an average student, but I made the honor society, you can only, you HAD to be active in everything, all around student, not just good grades! You had to be active in other things in order to be taken into the Beta Society…so I think they stressed that more and I think that was one of the things that made our school so good.
LN: So your family was very supportive of your very active lifestyle. How did
they feel about the fact that you were “courting” with someone who left
and went overseas?
VN: At that time there were so many fellas going in the service that I
think they figured well, that’s the way it was, that’s all. And I was
always kinda independent. When I think of it now, that was 50…60 years
ago. I played in a dance band; I played piano in a dance band, with all
fellas… they were all male. And when I think of it now, we went to a
milk bar, an ice-cream place, in Tonawannda, and played, and they took
me, they picked me up, ‘cause I didn’t drive, because they wanted me to
play the piano. When I think of it now, that was 60 years ago, that my
parents trusted me to go with them and some of them were older, that were in the band…that were in the orchestra. They would drop me off and one of the other fellas would stay, and they’d go on if they were going to go and get some beer, they never ever, they were always very nice to me, very polite. When I think of it now, that was 60 years ago, you know, that was quite a bit to do at that time.
LN: So when exactly were you in the dance band? Was that in high school?
VN: In high school.
LN: In high school.
VN: Yup. We went to my…in fact, he has a Doctorate in finances, and he tells me what’s best to do with what little money I have. So we went to his house to practice. He played the saxophone and they liked me to play the piano at that time. But, you know, that was quite a bit when you think of it that long ago, for me to be able to do that.
LN: Were you able to continue with your music during the war and after
the war?
VN: I played, but not a lot because I didn’t have my piano, and I chose to stay
in Lockport. I then, after I had an apartment, and by the way that’s
probably where I learned to cook, because I never did any cooking at
home. My mother always said “ I can do it quicker” and I was either at
school practicing or involved in something that I just never got into
doing much cooking. So, we took turns in the apartment. I cooked one
week and she would clean, the other girl [Marge] would clean and vice-versa. And we ordered our groceries together and we had to watch what we ordered because we had green stamps to get what we needed and food stamps, you know, that was the rationing, so it was a nice, it was a nice place to be to learn to take charge of what you had to do. However, she was married, and her husband was overseas in the service. And she was not being truthful to him, she was dating her boss. And I didn’t approve of that, and so I moved up with, a friend of mine went on to school, to college, and said, she went to Antioch College, and she said, why didn’t I go up and live with her parents because her brother was going to UB [University of Buffalo] at the time and he was at home. But the rest of them, they had a big house and plenty of room so I went up there and boarded. See, they had a piano, I played some there, but not…I didn’t play the French Horn, I didn’t have a French Horn because I had a school
instrument, so I kind of got away from doing that.
LN: I know that you are religious now.
VM: Hum?
LN: I said, I know you are religious now, but, was religion something very…
VN: Oh yeah, I went to church…my parents didn’t go. But I went to Sunday
School and I can remember, in Sunday School, we would have that during
the church service sometimes and, they were telling us to be quiet, that
we were making too much noise downstairs, and I said, “ We’ll your
supposed to make a joyful noise unto the lord!” That was not very nice
of me to say that back to him but that was the answer I gave him.
LN: So did you take that upon yourself to go to religion class?
VN: Oh yeah, I went to Sunday School and I went, my parents didn’t go, but I
went anyway. Because it was within walking distance, it was right down the street from me and it was…my friends were there. So, you know, I did
that anyway.
LN: Did Donna go?
VN: Donna went, but she was… she was a little bit younger. And so, you
know, I didn’t keep up with what she was doing too much, because
she was, six years younger than me.
LN: Do you think war affected your religion at all, or did it make you look at
the war differently?
VN: Oh it made me…I learned how to pray, oh yeah, because what else did
you have. You just needed some stability. So, that’s what I think is why
I feel the way I do now.
LN: So when the war came it was really kind of a haven?
VN: [Acknowledged]
LN: So, during the war, were you constantly worried or was…
VN: I didn’t, maybe I didn’t…I worried all the time, yeah, I worried and
wondered what was going to happen and especially after he was sent on to
Saipan. I was very upset to think that he had all these points and he could
have come home, and why didn’t he come home so at least I could see
him. I didn’t know whether I wanted to get married or not, we hadn’t
gone together that long. So how did I know? 45 months is a long time to
wait to find out whether your interested or not because I wasn’t sure…I
hadn’t seen him and I hadn’t been with him, so I had to turn my interests
to what I was doing, to work or whatever.
LN: Ok, now back to your parents. What were your parents background? Did
They have an education or were they immigrants?
VN: No, no they were born right there. My mother…my mother was raised by
an aunt because her mother and father both died when she was three and
one years old, of diphtheria, at that time, you know, they died because
there wasn’t anything you could do. So I always thought that her aunt was
my grandmother, that was Grandma Cook, that’s all. As a matter of fact,
when she passed away, I even put Grandma Catherine Cook on the death
certificate and had to correct it because I thought, she was my grandma,
that’s all…that’s all I ever knew! My father was an only child. They [his family] did have money at the time, when he had the business, I think I said earlier, and he went to Clarkson for a short time. They were well enough off that he could do that and until they bought property in Florida, in St. Petersburg, which they lost because people didn’t pay their bills and
they couldn’t keep them, the taxes up on them, so they lost that. But my
father, he was a gentleman farmer, because he wanted to farm, he
thought, and he thought he’d like it, but he actually wasn’t a good farmer
because he didn’t grow up there and he was used to having things without doing too much work. But he took hold and loved to be on the farm and I helped pick cherries, which, I didn’t like, but that was the only way I could earn, raise any money in the summer time to buy clothes…we didn’t have much money. So, I worked during the summer. I’d start out south of Barker from the orchards, and worked back down to the farm towards the lake [Ontario], where my father had my grandfather’s farm. So, I have
to put this in, because, at the time I was in high school, my girlfriend
smoked and I thought that was neat and I wanted to smoke too. And so,
another girlfriend and I rolled…we smoked corn-silk because we didn’t
have money to buy cigarettes, you know. So we would try to smoke
outside when our parents were gone, see, and it was bad. But, even so, I
started smoking when I was in high school and when I would go to the
farm to pick cherries, we’d have something to eat, we’d stop, and my dad
would be up in the lawn and he’d sit there and he’d start smoking. He
offered me a cigarette and I said, “oh no” and he said “you might just as
well, I know you are smoking anyway.” He said, “you might just as well at smoke at home.”
LN: He caught ya!
VN: So, from then on I didn’t want to smoke at home! But I did smoke…and I did smoke up until, after Kathy was born, not all the time, but I quit smoking every time I was going to have another baby and then after she was born I thought, this tastes terrible, I don’t know why I’m smoking, so I quit smoking just like that. But, because of the fact that he said you might just as well smoke at home, that spoiled it. I didn’t really care whether I smoked at home, you know, but I had to get that in there. What were we talking about… I lost track?
LN: Well we were talking about your parents, but actually, speaking of Kathy,
what happened after Dick finally, grandpa, came back? When did he
come back and how, how did the war, well actually before that, how did
the war end in general?
VN: Well, he had come home because he was finally released before the war actually ended because he had spent 45 months overseas. So he was home when they declared victory, I can’t remember how it was. I remember because we went out and celebrated and I drank too much…that I can remember because I usually didn’t drink that much, but we were celebrating!
LN: Where did you celebrate?
VN: At Middleport Country Club. [Laughter] I remember that very distinctly.
LN: Was the whole town out, or…
VN: Everybody was…just glad it was over. But then…we didn’t have any
money. He had been in the service, and you don’t make very much money
in the service, and so…all these people that didn’t go in the service really
made good money and we didn’t have any money. So, when he got out,
he was working at the gas station in Hartland, and we decided… we’d lived in Lockport, in an apartment, and that’s where Doug was born,
I mean he was born in Lockport Hospital but, we lived there, and then we
moved to a place down next to my mother and dad… [Flip Tape] So we,
Doug was there and then we decided that we wanted to build a house
because he was still, he was traveling back and forth to the gas station to
work. We thought it would be better to be closer to his work. He didn’t make a lot of money, and so we decided we’d build a house and so we went to the lawyer and talked to him, my family had a lawyer, we grew up with this lawyer, my grandfather had the same lawyer. In fact, we had the same lawyer until I moved here to Rochester. He’s 95 years old and he was still practicing law! But at any rate, we talked to him and he was very interested because we were the first ones that came to him to build a house that had come out of the service and he didn’t know how that was going to work. But we had no money, only his mustering out pay, had three hundred dollars which we bought the lot from his father, we paid for the lot. So we decided that we would try to go through the Veteran’s and try to get a loan. Well, he was, the lawyer was very good about that, and he’d help us, but we had to go into Buffalo, to the main office, the Veteran’s, and see about getting money. We went there, I was pregnant, and they wanted to know, oh…we had plans from a company that built houses, we had the plans and we took those in and we were going to build. Like I said, we bought the lot from grandpa on…
LN: Grandpa…?
VN: Nichols. And we took the lot…right at the end…and then Dick’s
brother came home from the service and he built right next to us. The
two brothers on one side of the farm and the two sisters built on the other
side. But anyway, we went up to the VA and showed him the plans and
he said, “how do I know that you’re gonna… if I loan you money like this,
how do I know that you’re gonna build this house? You haven’t done any
building.” And Dick said, “well I’ve got an older man that is, has built
houses and he’s gonna help me work on it. He’s gonna work, you know,
build and show me how to do it.” He said, “you can see, my wife is
pregnant and we need a place to raise a family,” and they gave us a loan…
just because we were honest about that’s what we were gonna do, and I
guess he figured he was overseas long enough he outta deserve
something, which he hadn’t gotten anything only mustering out pay…
which was not very much.
LN: So, do you remember the year, the month that they came back?
VN: He came back in May 1945.
LN: And then when were you married?
VN: In July.
LN: 1945?
VN: [Acknowledged]
LN: And then when was…
VN: He wanted a place to live. He didn’t want to live at home because their
house was too small. And he had, he had moved out of the house [his family’s house] because there wasn’t enough room. They wanted, his father wanted to buy the farm and the house was too small. His brother was still home, and his sister was still home, there wasn’t room for him so we went across the street and lived with the Walker family. So he wanted a place, a home, that’s what he wanted.
LN: Was he the only one from his family that served in the war?
VN: No, his [younger] brother went [unclear], in fact I have a picture of the two of them, it was in the newspaper [Picture 7], that the two of them met in Hawaii, and that was the first time that they had seen each other in quite a few years. So, it was a red-letter day for him when his brother, was in the navy, dropped in for a visit. So that was…that was pretty touching… so, you know, that they would see each other over there.
LN: Did they ever say how that happened…how they got to meet?
VN: Well because Mel [Dick’s younger brother] was in a ship that was docked in Hawaii.
LN: Ok, so it was luck?
VN: Yup.
LN: Ok, so then when was Doug born?
VN: Doug was born in September 1946.
LN: And he was your first son.
VN: [Acknowledged]
LN: And then…did you have any children after that?
VN: I had three more. I had two boys, after that, and then a girl [unclear].
LN: And what were all their names?
VN: The other…Doug was the oldest, and then Tom, that was your father, Thomas David his name was. I named him… we named him after a man who was very kind to my husband and he used to go up there and work during the summer times. He and his wife, liked him [Dick] and he wanted to name him Tom, that’s why his dad gave him that name and I wanted to use David because my father’s [full] name was [Donald] David, and I wanted to call him David but… I didn’t win! [Laughter] So, then there was Bob, Robert, and they were only 14 months apart, so they were almost like twins. And, Tom was very busy, always, from the time he was little, and he still is. And Bob was more quiet and he would study things and he’d be building with blocks, erector set…he should have been a mechanic…an engineer because he would study and work at it and Tom would come along and smash it all! [Laughter] And then Kathy was born of course… we wanted a little girl. So finally, we had a little girl.
LN: Now going back, kinda back to your job during the war. After, did you, when did you stop working?
VN: I stopped working; well I think I stopped probably right after he [Dick] came home because we were married. I didn’t work at Merritt’s anymore. After we were married I didn’t work there, but I did work in a department store, in the office. At that time, it was a nice department store in Lockport, and we lived in Lockport in this apartment and I was able to walk to work, and that’s when I was pregnant. But, I worked. They had a system where they would have these shoots. They would fill them and put the charge slip in, or whatever, and you would make change, and they’d send it down the shoot and we’d get them in the back office. So that was something different. But, it was funny because the girl that was working there had worked at it for a long time and I just went in with her. But, she was pregnant too, and she was older, so it just happened that way. But I did work, you know, for that length of time that I was pregnant because we could sit back there and nobody saw us and we didn’t have to stand up working.
LN: So is that why…were you weren’t…were you pushed out of your other job?
VN: No, I think I must have quit, I’ve forgotten now. I just can’t…but I’m sure I must have quit then… thinking that I wouldn’t be able to work anymore, you know, to work out there.
LN: So, it was good that you were working…Dick supported it?
VN: Yeah, yeah. No, he didn’t mind, because he was working and we were trying to save some money so we could build a house so…
LN: What about as you started having children? What was, what did you do then to do?
VN: Well, we had a three-room apartment. It was the back of a big house and the people who owned the house lived in the front. And they had three boys and we had an entrance right off the porch that their front door was and we had a front door right in back of that like. And, we had the bedroom that was off from the porch so… when Doug was born, he would be asleep in that bedroom, and they’d come in banging the doors, you know, in and out, they were boys and they were playing, and so it wasn’t [quiet] was a very pleasant place and I had facilities to do my laundry downstairs and I would go out and hang them up in the backyard, it was a nice yard. And so it was a nice apartment; you had a kitchen, you had a back door and a little entrance in the back also, and then we’d have the cellar stairs right between our two back doors and we became very close friends. As a matter of fact, they moved to Florida and they had a jewelry store and they moved down there, had the jewelry store, and they talked us into going to Florida to live after that. So we kept in good touch with them through the years, so that’s how we came and went to Florida.
LN: And when did you go to Florida?
VN: We went to Florida in... hum...[1953]… November to April. We lived down there the good part of the winter and we decided in April, it was getting so hot to work outside, and that’s what grandpa [Dick] had work doing construction, and the native people could stand the heat more than we could because they grew up with it. And so, they would get a lot of the jobs because they were natives and rightly so, but we decided that it was not the place to raise children and by that time we had all four of the children…it was quite a trip to Florida!
LN: How did you get there?
VN: We drove and Tom stood on his head half the way there in the back seat, and Bob was…Kathy was not quite a year old, and Bob was sick. He had pneumonia. And we were in a motel in Georgia, and he had a high fever, and he was delirious. I had a robe on, it was poke-a-dots, and he was trying to hit them, he was delirious. So we were fortunate at that time to get an old cracker doctor from Georgia to come to the motel, he came to the motel and said, “You have to give him this caster oil, warm.” And, if you’re traveling…you can imagine that. So we gave it to him and I used Kathy’s diapers on him and we drove the rest of the way. He [the doctor] said if [we] didn’t have a destination that you were going to, at that time, we had an apartment that the friends had rented for us down there, and that’s where that picture was taken, right on the side lawn [Picture 12]. And you can see the size of them, they were…that was quite a trip. But we made it down there, and he said he would have put Bob in the hospital if we hadn’t had a destination, a place to go, but we made it and gave him penicillin, gave him medicine and he got over it. So, that was quite trip, but we decided by, this was in November, Kathy was a year old that November, so we decided that we didn’t want to raise four children down there. We decided that it was a good place to go when you got older and retired and might want to live down there when we retired, but it was no place to really raise four children we didn’t think. So the kids didn’t want to come back! Doug had his own bicycle, he rode to school, he was in second grade. He didn’t want to come back, he liked having his own bicycle. Your father [Tom] was happy too. He’d take off and go down to the irrigation canal and when I think of it now, he probably was throwing sticks at crocodiles or something, I don’t know. But anyway, we decided to come back [to Gasport]. By that time, we had built the house and we had, he had worked, well let’s see…
LN: Was “he,” Dick?
VN: Pardon?
LN: Grandpa…Dick?
VN: Yeah. I was just trying to think. Because he worked…he went to work at Simond’s for a short time and that’s where he worked before he went in the service.
LN: What’s Simond’s?
VN: It’s a steel mill. And he went back there, and then he went to work for the Niagara County Water District. He became the senior operator. He had to go for classes and pass [civil service] tests in order to do it. But, we decided that it was better to come back. We didn’t sell the house, we had it up for sale for three months and it didn’t sell, and so these people wanted to rent it. And so we decided we’d rent it, but they weren’t good tenants and they wouldn’t pay their rent some of the times so we came back and made them move because they were behind on their rent. So, that was an experience that not everybody has a chance to do.
LN: So, did the family become your family become your primary occupation?
VN: Yup.
LN: Now, “Rosie the Riveter” is a popular image of women during the war.
VN: [Acknowledged]
LN: How did you feel about that image? Was it prevalent during the time?
VN: Well there were a lot of people working in the shop. A lot of women working in the shop even like I told you when I was in school and I was helping out in the canning factory. They were working at Harrison’s, they were working on things that women usually didn’t work on because the men were gone! And so, yeah, “Rosie the Riveter” was, that was, you know, a natural thing to say because here were all these women working. See I worked in the office, I didn’t get in the plant, and they made a lot more money than I did, but I don’t think I wanted to do that.
LN: Didn’t want, so it just wasn’t...
VN: No, it wasn’t my thing.
LN: How did you feel about those women? Did you…
VN: I figured more power to them! They could earn more money than I was earning but I really didn’t think I could do that. I was more comfortable in the office.
LN: So how do you feel about it today? I mean, looking back on it, was it something that you see now, for women…do you think it was a good opportunity for them?
VN: Well I think it has probably carried over that the women are still working in the plants that didn’t before and a lot of their children are working in the plants and they didn’t. They probably wouldn’t have if their mother’s hadn’t done that. I don’t know. I haven’t really gotten to know too many people that had, but I would say that’s probably what’s happened. And that’s probably why the female has gotten a little bit too overbearing and too independent, which is good and it isn’t, ‘cause I was always independent. But, I think we had a cutoff. I think we had more of a sense of what we should be doing then, they don’t seem to care now.
LN: Who do you think [young girls get these ideas about what they should do and how they should act] from society in general or from your families?
VN: From society in general. I think, some of the younger girls are really, actually, they’re worse drivers then men. They can be talking on the phone, they can be turning in front of you and don’t signal.
LN: You mean now?
VN: Now, yeah and I think it’s come down from the generation before that maybe, maybe, I don’t know, I’m not into that but, I have my ideas it might be.
LN: So when you were growing up, you know, younger, were you presented with these images or ideas [of how you were ‘supposed’ to act and what you were ‘supposed’ to do] in the things you were taught, or was it magazines you read or how…?
VN: I think I was more independent than a lot of…maybe kids were. I grew up that way I guess. I had enough experience all around doing things and I was fortunate that I had people who cared about me and were interested; even I had someone offer to help me in college, if I wanted to go. One of my girlfriends’ families wanted to send me, I said no. But, I think that I learned to be more independent because of that.
LN: Well, how would you assess your experience, overall, during the war? I it’s kind of a broad question but…
VN: Well I think it was, the experience was…very wearing, very tiring. You didn’t know what was going to take place. You didn’t know, it was like you were on guard all the time. Just not knowing when Dick was going to come home, that made you very insecure. You didn’t know what was going to happen. I don’t know how else to explain it.
LN: Did you ever fear that something was going to happen here?
VN: I don’t think I did, it was always over there.
LN: So it was never a question of something happening at home?
VN: No, I didn’t think about that. It was all over there… all over here, it was on the other side, I just never gave it a thought.
LN: Now, I know I’ve seen films that were made during the war, propaganda films. Did you ever, I know you said you went to movies and stuff, but I didn’t know if during the war you went to see films and if they had these movie…these war…
VN: Yeah.
LN: …little media…
VN: I got so I couldn’t watch them when ever they’d show. Well they used to have news reels, and show, and I got so I didn’t want to watch them. I just figured what was going to be was going to be and you couldn’t prevent it, so you had to accept whatever was…that’s the way it was.
LN: How do you think today’s generation understands the experience of the war? Do you think, I mean especially what is going on now, do you think that people really look back to World War II, or do you think they really understand the magnitude?
VN: The generation of…your generation you’re talking about?
LN: Yeah, I think maybe even your children’s, my father’s, generation. Do you think they really understood the magnitude of what happened?
VN: I think that…but see that probably to you, or them, it would be off there someplace. So, you didn’t get involved enough to know what it was all about really, only what you heard. But your generation wasn’t involved in that, so I don’t really know how you could know.
LN: