"I remember the terror", she said. "I was at Boeing Aircraft, working, 70 years ago. I was 20.
"They called us out into the hall. It was 11:00. We didn't have TV then - only radio and the overhead announcements. They told us what was happening at that moment. The biggest invasion of the war. Our boys. Our brothers. Our classmates. Our country along with the other Allies were heading to France.
"Fear gripped me. Grip
ped all of us. We were standing in the plant where the main aircraft of the war was built - the B 17s. We were scared to death we would be attacked. We felt like the next target.
"But we worked on. We couldn't go home. We had jobs to do. I kept records for the plant."
Mom was the 5th of 7. The two younger boys would later fight in Korea. But her three older brothers and brother in law were in this war. Over there. Two signed up the day after Pearl Harbor. Mom had wanted to become a nurse so she could go, too. But Louise - her Mom - said NO WAY. They have my 3 boys. Not you, too.
Before we joined the war, Mom was going to be a college girl, along with her siblings who all had degrees. In 1941 she moved to Eugene, living with her sister and going to the University. She was a Freshman. But December 7th changed that.
"When Pearl Harbor was attacked, the world changed. I left Eugene that night, on a darkened train with not one peep of light. I went home to Seattle, to be with Mother who was alone with 12 year old twins. " That ended her college plans. She would do her part for the war effort - working at Boeing.
Her first job was as a Pool Car Driver, driving test pilots to their planes. "I told them I had to take the first week off. I didn't know how to drive. I didn't have a license. It was the war, after all. Things were different."
Her sister in law loaned her a car and 5 gallons of gas. "You can only learn by doing. Go teach yourself to drive. You shift in an H pattern."
Her driver's test involved parallel parking on Seattle's Queen Anne Hill - a very steep hill. "I got up it OK, but there was no way I could back that car up with a stick shift as a new driver." "That's OK, honey. Just keep practicing. Here's your license." It was a war. Things were different.
Her first day driving the pilots, she had to back out of the parking space. "It seems to be stuck. could you help me?" They realized she didn't know how to drive. So they taught her.
Her mother, Louise, did her part for the war effort, too. She was the block air raid coordinater. She kept her bucket of sand in the upstairs bathroom - handy in case a fire broke out on the roof. "Yeah... fat lot of good that would have done," says my mom now. "Can't you see 5 foot Grandma tossing sand on the pitched roof after a bombing?" But that is how they coped. They were prepared.
My dad joined, too, although they weren't an item then. He joined the Army Air Corps, signing up to be a pilot. But he was color blind. They wouldn't take him. His friends went on to fly and did heroic things. Mom's brothers did their part, at Guadalcanal. South Pacific. Battle of the Bulge. Officers. Dad tapped out Morse Code as a radioman. In Kansas. They didn't even send him overseas. It was a humiliation he never got over.
What pulled my 90 year old Mom back into rememberances of that moment 70 years ago was her new Wireless Headphones. She has nearly quit watching TV - she hears, but can't decipher the words. Hearing aids are the pits for TV. The morning we set up her new Sony headphones it all changed. "I CAN HEAR!!!!" It's June 6th and the first show she watches is the D-Day Tribute with Tom Brokaw.
The memories flow that morning. "Do you know I don't know a single person I can talk to who also remembers that day? They are all dead?"
That is when I realize I need to write this down.
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