Oral History Program LaPriel Loney Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 1 July 2013 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah LaPriel Loney Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 1 July 2013 Copyright © 2014 by Weber State University, Stewart Library Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description Business at the Crossroads - Ogden City is a project to collect oral histories related to changes in the Ogden business district since World War II. From the 1870s to World War II, Ogden was a major railroad town, with nine rail systems. With both east-west and north-south rail lines, business and commercial houses flourished as Ogden became a shipping and commerce hub. After World War II, the railroad business declined. Some government agencies and businesses related to the defense industry continued to gravitate to Ogden after the war—including the Internal Revenue Regional Center, the Marquardt Corporation, Boeing Corporation, Volvo-White Truck Corporation, Morton-Thiokol, and several other smaller operations. However, the economy became more service oriented, with small businesses developing that appealed to changing demographics, including the growing Hispanic population. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Loney, LaPriel, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 1 July 2013, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii LaPriel Loney July 1, 2013 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with LaPriel Loney. The interview was conducted on July 1, 2013, by Lorrie Rands. Loney discusses memories of 25th Street as well as memories of the Ogden canteen during World War II. LR: Today is July 1, 2013. We are in the home of LaPriel Loney talking about her memories of the Ogden canteen during World War II and her memories of Hill Field, Depot, Bushnell Hospital and 25th Street. Where were you born and where did you grow up? LL: I was born in Brigham City. That city was kind of settled by my great grandparents. They were sent up there to help settle that area. So, that city goes back a long ways in my family. LR: What were their names? LL: Jonah and Abigail Mathias. LR: Where were they born? LL: He was born in Wales, and she was born in England. LR: What year were you born? LL: 1921. LR: Where did you grow up? LL: We moved several times. My father worked for Utah Power and Light and we lived in Morgan for a while and then in Winnemucca, Nevada, then Lovelock, Nevada. I went to first, second and third grade in Winnemucca and fourth grade in Lovelock. About that time, the depression hit and my father lost his job. In fact, the company went broke, so we were without a home and at that time there were 1 no safety nets. There were no food stamps or welfare or anything. We went to live with my aunt, my dad’s sister, in Salt Lake for a while and then returned to Brigham City to wait until he found work. My dad was doing farm work, which he hadn’t done for years and it was very difficult for him. It was a very sad situation because we were in my great grandmother’s home and we had no indoor plumbing, so we had an outhouse. We had a pump outside that we’d have to go out and fill a pitcher of water to use for the household cooking and so on. LR: When did you move to Ogden? LL: I was in the seventh grade. So, that would have been in 1934. LR: Do you remember where you lived in Ogden? LL: Yes. We lived at 1019 22nd Street. I went to Lorin Farr School on 22nd and Harrison for the seventh grade, then in eighth grade I went to junior high school and then went to Ogden High School. They had just finished Ogden High School. There was a lot of commotion and it was a beautiful school, but it cost a million dollars and it was practically out of town on 28th and Harrison. That was kind of on the edge of town. So, there was a lot of commotion about it, but it was a beautiful, beautiful school and we were fortunate to go there. LR: You were the first graduating class from that school, correct? LL: We went to the eleventh and twelfth grade there and there was another class that was there just for their twelfth grade. LR: So you graduated in 1939? LL: Yes. LR: Was that was the first graduating class? 2 LL: Yes. LR: Fast forwarding a little bit. How did you become involved in the canteen at the Union Station? LL: Well, I’m not really sure. I know that I was called upon to go down there and work a few times and whenever they needed me I went down, but I was also working to raise money to go to college. I think going to Weber at that time was something like $75.00, but my wages were something like 25 cents an hour. I remember working at Kress’ for eight hours and getting two dollars. So, I had three little jobs and when they called me to work at the canteen, I’d work there when they needed me. LR: Did you take any of the nutrition or canteen classes that were required? LL: No. LR: What are some of your memories of working there? LL: Well, it was very exciting because Ogden was a railroad center at the time and the trains were going through very frequently carrying materials or transporting troops. When the troops would get off the train and come into the depot, they were just happy to get off the train and surprised to see that we had some refreshments there for them. I think they wanted to visit just as much as they wanted a cup of coffee and a donut or cookies. They had the counter on the south end of the big lobby and sometimes that lobby would be filled with people coming and going. It was always interesting to talk to these people. A lot of them weren’t sure where they were going and if they did, they weren’t supposed to tell us where they were going, so it was just a matter of visiting with them. They were 3 fascinated with 25th Street. They had heard a lot about 25th Street, so they wanted to know how far it was and we’d say, “It’s across the street.” They’d walk up and walk back. There wasn’t a great deal of time that they had. LR: Do you remember visiting with any soldiers in particular? LL: No, I was just overwhelmed with all of them that got off the train because there were so many. It made you realize how deep into the war we were. We weren’t familiar with war. It was all new to us. Ogden suddenly became very busy because of Hill Field and the Navy Depot. All of a sudden, we were overwhelmed with people that weren’t as religious perhaps as our population was, but we were certainly willing to learn. We had taken the civil service test and I didn’t even know what a civil service test was, but evidently passed it because as soon as Pearl Harbor was hit I got called to come to work immediately. I was one of the first people at Hill Field I think. LR: So I bet that’s how you started working at Hill Field, just passing the civil service exam. What were some of your duties there? LL: I had the lowest rating there was. I was under the mail file and record clerk and I made about $1,680 a year, but, it was a step up from the job I had at 25 cents an hour, so I felt like I was really making money. I was willing to do any type of work that they wanted me to do and they immediately got assignments. They had technical orders, which were detailed instructions on the different jobs at Hill Field. There was a big banner across the hangar that said, “If all else fails, read the tech order.” When I was working there they said, “File these tech orders in order.” I thought, “What order?” I wasn’t familiar with tech orders, but they 4 explained it to me, so I was filing like crazy to get the tech orders in an arrangement that they would know how to find them. Then, we got Army regulations and they said, “The Army regulations have just arrived, so file these army regulations in order.” I thought, “What order?” They said, “Find the index and then file them according to the index.” So, I had a lot of experience with that and was also doing secretarial work for the officer in charge there. He was very knowledgeable and we were working 24 hours a day. One night, I was working swing shift and the lady that was supposed to take my place didn’t show up, so I stayed for another shift. About two in the morning, I got sleepy and put my head down and when I woke up the Colonel was sitting at his desk and said, “What are you still doing here?” I said, “Well, she didn’t show up, so I stayed.” He said, “Well, go back to sleep. I’ll wake you up when I’m finished.” So, I did. It was so important to do all that we could for the war effort because all of the fellows were gone. When the men in our high school graduated, they were primed to go to war. There was an ROTC program at Ogden High School, so they were used to wearing uniforms and they had officers and enlisted personnel in the ROTC. They were just what the Army was looking for and they just took them all. It was strange, but we just didn’t have any men unless they were ill or didn’t meet the physical requirements for the Army. Most of the fellows did and they immediately went to war. LR: You mentioned that you eventually received a Top Secret Clearance working at the Hill Field depot. What are some of you stories about that and the Atomic Energy Clearance? 5 LL: I came home from work one day and there were several people that called me and said, “The FBI was here checking on you. What’s going on?” I said, “I don’t know.” Finally, I was given a Top Secret and Atomic Energy Clearance. I didn’t know what atomic energy was and we never had any dealings with atomic energy, so I was assigned to work on that project in addition to my regular work, but it took priority over my regular work. I was authorized to receive all of the top secret and atomic energy paperwork that came into the depot. It was more of a bookkeeping job keeping track of how many copies came in and how many pages they had. I was given a certain list of people authorized to see them and that sort of thing. It had a code name and I just did the paperwork on the classified documents. After we dropped the atomic bomb on Japan, I knew that we had a special plane in Wendover that we were modifying for the atomic energy, but I had no idea what it was. When they used that plane to drop atom bombs on Japan, it all began to make sense and I knew what it was all about. It was a big project. LR: Do you have any experiences where you had to use your clearance? LL: Yes. Everything that came in on that particular project came to me to pick up. Did you want me to tell you about the major? LR: Absolutely. LL: One day, there was a major that showed up at my counter and he knew exactly what documents he wanted. He said, “We’re in a meeting and I need this document right now. The colonel sent me down to get it.” So, I looked at my list and I said, “I don’t have you authorized to receive it, I can’t give it to you.” He 6 really dressed me down on it. He said, “Do you see my rank? You’re just a clerk here and I’ve got a major rank here. I want it right now and I don’t want any more sass about it.” I said, “I’ll get it right down. I promise I’ll get it there, I’ll probably beat you down there.” So, I got out the document and dashed down to the colonel’s office and there was no meeting going on. I said to the colonel’s secretary, “I’ve got the document that the colonel asked for.” She said, “What document?” I said, “Well, he sent someone down for a document.” He said, “I didn’t send anybody down for a document.” He called security on the base and they closed the base trying to locate this person that was trying to get this document from me. We decided that it was a spy or something. It amazed me that he knew as much about that document to know that he had to have it. He didn’t get it. LR: So you felt like they had a lot of faith and trust in your abilities? LL: I think that was the reason I had that clearance. LR: You also volunteered at the Bushnell Hospital in Brigham City. How did you come about doing that? LL: I really don’t know how I got all these nice jobs, but every once in a while, I belonged to Beta Sigma Phi at that time and I think that sometimes they would contact the sorority to go there. When we went to Bushnell Hospital, it was a hospital for amputees. It was a sad situation to see all these young men that had come back from service and were missing arms and legs. Sometimes they would dictate a letter to us and we would write it for them because they were unable to write or sometimes they wanted to play cards and we were there to play cards 7 with them. Sometimes they just wanted to visit. I went there maybe half a dozen times because that was something that I could help with. We were all trying to do everything we could because my brother was in the service and all my classmates were in the service and it was very frightening. LR: When did rationing start taking effect and how did it affect your family life? LL: We always got rationing books that depended upon the number of people in the household. I remember one time, we were out of paper goods like paper towels and Kleenex and one of the men in the office said that he had a supply of them. I said, “Please sell me some.” He said, “Oh no. I wouldn’t do that.” So, we just had to wait until it came time for us to finally get a rationing book that would give us more paper goods. Because my brother was in the service, my mother tried to adopt every service personnel that she saw. If we were driving to Salt Lake and there was a serviceman walking, she always picked him up. We had no idea who they were. Sometimes they’d stay at the house even though we didn’t know them. We’d go to work and they’d still be in the house. We never locked our house, so they’d be there as a house guest while we went to work. We came home from work and this one serviceman had cooked dinner and used a lot of our rationed goods. He’d used a lot more than we intended for him to use, but we ate well for a day or two. LR: Was rationing really different? LL: Oh yes. We had to ration gasoline for the cars, food, paper goods and everything. We really learned to be very careful with everything. 8 LR: When did you start going to Weber College? LL: I started to go right out of high school and I finished one year there before civil service called me to come to work. I only got another half year in, but they gave me credit for the year because I was going to work at Hill Field. That’s why we were going to school anyway for the ability to hold a job, so with the work experience I was getting, they just gave me the credit. LR: What did you major in? LL: Business Administration. LR: How many women were doing that at the time? LL: Not very many of us. When I first went in to register, they said, “Are you going to register as a nurse or a school teacher or a secretary?” I said, “I want business administration.” They said, “You want business administration? You’re just a girl. How come you want business administration?” Anyway, the business mathematics was very difficult for me and there were five of us women that went into business mathematics and the teacher said, “Oh, I notice I’ve got some women in this class. I’ve never yet had a woman pass this class, so if you want to leave and change your registration, you may be excused.” It just kind of shocked us and three of them got up and left. That left two of us girls in the class. He was right. It was difficult. It was logorithms and annuities and interest rates and there were no calculators, we had to do it all from our knowledge. There was one student there that was a really smart man with mathematics and after school we would meet him at the library and he would re-teach us what the teacher discussed that day. We had been very careful to get 9 our work in on time, and we passed our tests well. When I finally left his class I said, “Well, if you get more girls in the class next year you can tell them that 100 percent of the girls that took the class passed it.” My brother became a college professor and I told him this and he said, “We wouldn’t dare talk to students that way now.” LR: When did you graduate from Weber College? LL: I’m not sure. It seemed to me I was going to school and work and so many other things that I don’t know exactly. It would have been about two years later in 1941. LR: Did you graduate before you started working at Hill Field? LL: No. They gave me credit for that work. I had been working at Wheelwright Lumber Company as an assistant bookkeeper during the summer months. I had three little jobs. I was an usher at the Egyptian Theater; I worked at the ten cent store and I sold tickets at the American Legion dance hall. I needed the money. LR: What do you remember about 25th Street besides the soldiers? Do you have a lot of memories about 25th Street? LL: Yes. It was a fun adventure. Sometimes on dates we would drive down to 25th Street, park the car, and watch the traffic. We knew that the ladies in the upstairs room were prostitutes. They were very prominent and everybody knew about it. It was no secret. Everybody knew that’s what was going on down there. They were trying to clean up 25th Street. There was one detective that was very adamant about cleaning it up and he finally did a good job. LR: Do you have any other memories of the street? 10 LL: There was one theater down on Grant and 25th Street called the Lyceum Theater and once in a while we’d go to a movie there, but most of the time we never had an occasion to go down there. LR: Do you have any other memories during the World War II time period that you’d like to share? LL: It’s been interesting and I’m glad that I did work at Hill Field. I enjoyed the work and I felt good about them giving me the responsibility of doing jobs I didn’t know how to do because I really knuckled down and learned how to do them. It was really good for me because I started out as an under mail file and record clerk and ended up as an administrative officer. That’s why I wanted to be in a higher grade of education, because there weren’t that many women that were doing it. Most of the women at Hill Field were taking whatever jobs that were needed. A lot of them had no knowledge of what was going on, but they learned and they worked hard. It changed the way women were accepted in the workforce. Before the war, women were never allowed to go into a higher job, but when it became necessary and they found out that women could do it that really made a difference for women everywhere to get better jobs. LR: After you graduated and after Hill Field, what type of work did you do? LL: I stayed at Hill Field until I retired. LR: Doing the same administrative position? LL: No, but I was always in some kind of administrative work there. I worked in personnel for a while and in security for a while. I worked on many projects, but I enjoyed every one of them. 11 LR: One question about the canteen, do you remember if they served more than just donuts and coffee? LL: It seemed to me it was just coffee and donuts. Once in a while, we would make cookies or people would bring homemade cookies. LR: Did you ever make any coffee? LL: No, I didn’t. I don’t know who made it, but they were big containers of coffee. LR: Do you remember where in the depot the canteen was located? LL: It was in the main lobby on the south end. LR: Okay. That is all of my questions, so thank you. I appreciate your time. This was great. LL: You bet. 12