Oral History Program Virginia Biddle Meyer Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 30 June-26 July 2023 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Virginia Biddle Meyer Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 30 June-26 July 2023 Copyright © 2024 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 The Weber and Davis County Community Oral History Collection includes interviews conducted by Weber State University faculty, staff and students, and other members of the community. The interviews cover various topics including city government, diversity, personal everyday life experiences and other recollections regarding the history of the Weber and Davis County areas. ____________________________________ 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: Meyer, Virginia Biddle, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 30 June-26 July 2023, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, Special Collections & University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. iii Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with Virginia (Ginny) Biddle Meyer, conducted in three sessions between June 30 and July 26, 2023 by Lorrie Rands. Ginny shares part of her life story, starting with her birth in 1924 and ending shortly after her return from Germany in 1950. She discusses her experiences growing up in Ogden, Utah, attending Stanford University and with World War II. She also talks about her experiences being an army wife after the war. Also present is audio and video technician Raegan Baird. LR: Today is June 30th, 2023. We are in the home of Virginia Biddle Meyer, who we will refer to as Ginny, in South Ogden, doing an oral history interview about her life. I am Lorrie Rands conducting. Raegan Baird is here as well on the camera and it's about 2:15 in the afternoon. Ginny, thank you so much for your willingness to sit and talk. VBM: It's nice to see you, both of you. LR: Let's start with the very beginning. When and where were you born? VBM: I was born in Ogden, Utah, March 10, 1924, and I was always told that my mother needed to get to the Dee Hospital, which was then on Harrison and 24th. There was such a blizzard that my dad had a terrible time getting us there, even though we only had about eight blocks to go from where our house was, which was next door to her mother. We always know that blizzards aren't over in Ogden till after the 10th of March, and we really know more because three years later, I had a brother born on the 12th of April and the story is the same. There was such a blizzard that they could hardly get to the hospital for him. That's the way things were 99 years ago in Ogden. LR: Okay, you were born in the Dee Hospital. Were you raised in the same area? VBM: I was the fourth generation on my father's side to be born or to live in Ogden, and I was the third generation on my mother's side to live in Ogden. They all came from 1 England, and the railroad had a lot to do with why the Biddles’ came. Why the Turners came—which was my mother's maiden name—was because of a store that was called George A Lowe. The best I can put it is something like a Home Depot. My mother's father had a brother who was here and his name was Bill Turner, and he was the fifth mayor of Ogden. He was the manager of the George A Lowe Company. His brother over in England had been released from the Navy because of a heart condition. Twenty-one years old. His brother thought this was a nice, healthy climate out here for his brother to recover and he could have a job for him at the George A Lowe Company. That's how my mother's family got here. Am I saying too much? LR: No, not at all. VBM: My father's family were bona fide pioneers and came in a cart, walking. LR: A handcart? VBM: Little boys. The two little boys, one of them my great-grandfather, walked from about St. Louis, Missouri to Salt Lake. But when my mother's family got here, they were already established with a home. Their first home was on the corner of 23rd and Jefferson, which was nice walking distance to the George A Lowe store, where my grandfather became the manager. LR: Okay. What are some of your earliest memories of growing up in Ogden? VBM: I would say that one of the main things for a child in those days was our freedom, because all the neighbors knew everyone and everybody took care of each other. If one of the neighbors thought we were out of line, they would tell us and we would react. I just had the nicest neighborhood growing up there. 2456 Madison Avenue was the Biddle pioneer home that had been homesteaded. They had one-tenth of the block between Madison and Monroe and 24th and 25th. They owned one-tenth of that block all the way through. Actually, my granddaughter in Seattle has that 2 homestead document, which we actually found. They just had to promise to build something for the homesteading. My childhood, as I say, was so great because we had such great neighbors. Those neighbors had been neighbors growing up because, as I say, I was the fourth generation on my dad's side and the third generation on my mother's side to live here in Ogden. Because my dad had polio, which he had in 1897, he was left quite disfigured with bad scoliosis. One leg was so useless that when he was 17, the doctors amputated it and made a prosthesis, thinking he could manage that better. The First World War, which is before my time, but still significant in that ablebodied people went off to be in the military, and it took all what they called ‘shop teachers’ in industrial arts. We went a little more formal, they call them. Well, because of my dad's handicap, his hands were good and his arms were good, and so he was wonderful in making things, hobby-like. So Mr. Carl Hopkins was the superintendent of schools at the time, and he asked my dad during the First World War if he would come with his hobby and be an industrial art teacher because the real ones were in the military. My dad had been—because of the Southern Pacific connection, they thought, “Well, what could he do?” He couldn't be an engineer or a mechanic or a conductor, but probably he could do bookkeeping. So he was sent to business school as a teenager and did get a business college credential. His first job for the Southern Pacific was as a bookkeeper. It makes me think of the Charles Dickens stories and sitting up on Ebenezer Scrooge's big high stool. That was my dad doing the bookkeeping, which he hated, and he was delighted when they asked him if he would like to do shop for the kids. They put him in the Madison School. We lived between 24th and 25th on Madison, and the Madison School still as a structure is 3 there, but I believe it's become senior citizen housing or something like that. But that's where he started teaching school. My memory, again, was, here is my dad as a teacher in the school that's just three doors from us. Not only that, but my aunt, my mother's sister, was a teacher at the Madison School, and so everybody knew us and we were sort of an adjunct to the Madison School. So my memory is lots of people being at our home or in our front yard or sitting on our front porch, kind of overflow from the school. We would go out and play games like Run, Sheepy, Run and Kick-the-Can. My dad had to get a teaching credential, so he went to night school and weekends and summers at University of Utah. In the summertime, he would go to UCLA because my mother's sister lived in Santa Monica. Again, you're asking my childhood: my childhood in Ogden was along Madison Avenue there. But in the summertime, we would leave and go to Santa Monica, where that sister who had grown up here in Ogden—she was Mabel. They were the Turner family. The main thing I think of is that everybody knew everybody. That's what I really think. It was fun, and a lot of freedom. On the other hand, there was always a neighbor looking out. LR: What did your mother do? VBM: My mother was pretty nontraditional. She was always interested in the arts and fine literature. We read and we went to the library. The library was down where the City Hall Municipal Building is now: between 25th and 26th, between Washington and Grant. The library was there, and we spent a lot of time at the library. Because our house was pretty big, my brothers, my father's family had this homesteading and they built a two-story, four bedrooms on top. And interesting—those sliding doors that you could pull out to separate rooms. As you came in the front door, it went this way to a living room and then you went that way to—we called it the ‘library’ in our 4 house. Then you turned the next corner, and you got a dining room where the piano was. [Interview pauses briefly, then resumes.] VBM: When you say what else… I mean, my mother stayed home till my little brother, three years younger than I, went to school. She had taken business. She was topnotch at taking shorthand, a stenographer. She went to Utah State for a year and then came home because her dad had a serious heart problem and she needed to be with the family. But she also got a job with E.O. Wattis, who was a big construction company. It was the kind of thing that she described that Mr. Wattis would come in and say, “Marjorie, write this company and tell them we're going to do this,” and that was what she did. But when her dad got so ill, she just was with her mother and her father until he died. Meanwhile, I'm trying to think when she actually went to the First Security Bank to work for George Eccles. That was early on, too. She would rather go to work and pay somebody to take care of the house. She was an early emancipated woman, and everybody knew Marjorie Turner Biddle. She was very well-known in the community. She was editor of the Classicum at Ogden High School when she was there. I just ran across a copy of the Classicum, as a matter of fact, in one of my little things yesterday. It was actually interesting to look at that Classicum, when we can do that. So off and on, she was more at the bank working for George Eccles, and she also worked in the Browning family, again, as their private stenographer. She was well-known for her stories. One of the classic things about Mother was that my husband would say, “Marjorie never let the facts interfere with a good story.” She used to write a lot. I've had many of her friends who said they never threw away her 5 letters. They were to be saved. So she was well-known in the community as a communicator. She also was a secretary for the Children's Aid, and so she got very interested in the placement of children in the community. She belonged to something called the Modern Literature Club, and they were serious ladies. They got books and had serious studies, and this is in the 1930s. They were an unusual group. All their husbands—I think every other one was either an attorney or a doctor and something, some sort of a legal… In other words, education right from the beginning was an important feature of our family. LR: Do you remember some of the other members of the Modern Literature club? Some of the other women? VBM: Oh, Mrs. Lowe is one of the main ones. LR: It's okay if you don't. VBM: I met these people again in San Diego and I want to say her name right this minute, but I can't say it right this minute. I'd have to go to my P.E.O. book and look it up. LR: It's all good. I can look it up, too. I was just curious. So, as you know, you were about five, six years old when the Depression happened. What are some of your memories of that time, of growing up in the Depression? VBM: We were very lucky, because my dad was a teacher and he had a job. Again, the Madison School was just three doors from where we lived. My mother, then, was at home and our next-door neighbor, Lillian Hedges, was at home. What I remember was these two women would always start in the morning with a big pot of soup. Then, they had one of their children's little red wagons, and at lunchtime, those two ladies would take their big kettle of soup over to the Madison School to see that any of the children that didn't have lunch did have lunch, and they made soup or chili or something like that. But we always felt very blessed that my dad was a teacher and 6 had a job all the time through the Depression. Relatively speaking, we were able to help a lot of people—not a lot, because a school teacher's salary wasn't that great. Mother was—I don't know. Trying to think, because she was in and out. In other words, they'd call her from the bank when they really needed her and she'd go down and do hourly work. She was trying to be all things: the working mom of the 1930s. But everybody was happy with her, and because our roots were so deep in the community, both on my mother and my father's side, we had so many friends, lots of people. Again, because my dad's ambulation was not all that easy, people would come to our house a lot. Plus, we always had one of the nicest cars in town because he could drive. That was another feature: cars were very important in my dad's life and a sequel, my brother's life. I can remember when I got to be—my dad could hardly wait for me to get to be 16 so I could drive because I'd get the driver's license. We did that. I've jumped ahead to my teenage, but they had just built this great big dam up in Washington State. I can't say that name right this minute either. It's on the Columbia River, for sure. Anyway, we were driving up there because my mother's brother worked for the Amalgamated Sugar Company. He was Tom Turner Jr., and he was their main maintenance. Heat, cold, elevators, that kind of thing; he was in charge of all of that for the Amalgamated Sugar Company. Because of that dam that opened up all this water into Idaho, that's when the Amalgamated Sugar Company decided they should add Nampa, Idaho to their area and grow sugar beets there. So they sent Uncle Tom ahead to be the onsite person to figure out how to get the water in there and get the land. My mother wanted us to go see them because he and his wife were up there all by themselves, and here's this famous dam just started up. [Phone rings] May I answer that for a moment? LR: Yes. We’ll pause it. 7 [Interview pauses for a break]. [Interview begins again]. VBM: My father couldn’t wait till I could drive because he wanted me to help drive—I was 16—so we could go see the Coulee Dam, but we could also go visit my mother's brother and his wife at Nampa and see where they were. Is that jumping me too far ahead to tell you that story? LR: It's not too far. VBM: It was so interesting because that was the first [trailer] for somebody to live in. That's what Uncle Tom and Aunt Katherine were living in; a trailer all by themselves on what became this next great big expansion of the Amalgamated Sugar Company and their sugar beets in Idaho. We drove through and saw them and went to this big dam—Coulee Dam was what it was. These things come to you. That was my first experience at alternating with my dad driving so we could help. LR: You really aren't that much further ahead. I was going to ask, did you go to a middle school? VBM: Yes, I went. My schools were—the elementary school was Madison, junior high school was Central, senior high school was Ogden. At the time that we first moved into our house on Madison Avenue, we could have gone from Madison through Weber Junior College, no more than two blocks. Madison was three doors away. Central was on the corner of 25th and Adams, Ogden High was on the corner of 25th and Monroe, and Weber Junior College was on Jefferson between 24th and 25th. But as we grew up, the first thing was for Ogden High to get moved up to and built there on the corner of Harrison and 28th—which, coincidentally, was across the street from where my husband grew up, because he was a classmate of mine. We were classmates from Central and Ogden High, and his house was right across the street on 28th; 1226 28th Street, across from the new Ogden High. Ogden High started, I think, in ‘39, and we were the class of ‘42, my husband and I. 8 LR: What are some of your memories of attending junior high? VBM: All my memories are fun ‘cause I always liked people and I always was in lots of activities and always had lots of friends. I always wanted to be—if they needed a president, I'd be president or patrol leader or whatever they wanted to call it. My Classicum shows what activities you're in. That was just kind of a natural thing. The other part of our life that I did want to mention that I think is quite different—we were members of the Presbyterian Church, always. I've never been anything else but a Presbyterian. That church was on 24th and Adams at the time I grew up. When my mother's parents came from England, they were members of the Church of England or Episcopal. But Mother being Mother, she met the kids in the Methodist church and liked their youth group. So she moved herself to the Methodist Church because of the youth group, and then she found out she liked the youth group at the Presbyterian Church even better. So she moved and she was all of about 12 when she joined the Presbyterian Church, and her mother decided, “Well, okay.” So we all became Presbyterians when my mother was 12. They've got her signature in the… John Edward Carver was, for 50 years, the pastor at the First Presbyterian Church. Very ecumenical; wanted to understand all of the other churches, and wanted us to appreciate whatever the other religions were, but vice versa for people to appreciate us. He became very, very well-known as an orator, so well-known that the Easter service for the Presbyterian Church was held in the Orpheum Theater. What's now the city hall block, that's where the Orpheum Theater used to be. John Edward Carver was pastor for 50 years of the First Presbyterian Church and very influential in the state for a lot of ecumenical types of activities. 9 LR: Going back a little bit again to junior high. Were there any activities or anything that you did in junior high? You just mentioned that you enjoyed people, but do you remember specific activities that you would do? VBM: The things that we did, we had a softball group and played softball. I took piano lessons. Mrs. Beason was well known as a piano teacher. Our schools were very strong in sports—basketball, football, baseball, skiing—and our stadium was out by the Ogden River. We walked. That's something else; we walked everywhere. One of the main activities on a Saturday was to walk on Washington Boulevard between 24th and 25th. It was like the mall: go in and out of all the little stores and things and just sort of hang out there, kind of thing. Dancing was big. We had hops at school. We weren't allowed on 25th Street, but 24th Street was kind of the hub, something called the Berthana. It was probably between Grant and Wall, something like on 24th Street. Lincoln? LR: Somewhere right in there, yes. VBM: We would go there and have parties—dancing parties, and we would have roller skating parties at the Berthana. We did a lot of roller skating and we did a lot of bicycle riding. We did a lot of—you could rent horses out by the stadium. Of course, Harm Peery came along when—I guess it must have been in the 30s that he was the mayor. All my growing-up days, Ogden was the second-largest city in Utah. But of course, Salt Lake always had all the pioneer activities. But when Harm Peery came along in about '32, or I don't know exactly when he was, he decided Ogden needed to have its own Pioneer Day and its own parade and its own rodeo. The library was right there and so all the people that used the library got interested in writing, having stories, telling stories and bringing Ogden more to the public eye. 10 Because my mother especially was interested in all of that, my brother being three years younger than I, was in Ray Minter's band and drum corps, and that was very important. We had lots of parades so Ray Minter and his drum and bugle corps could perform. I remember parades for all kinds of reasons, and we would have them for events at school and at the end of the school year. These were always on Washington Boulevard, led by Ray Minter's band. There was this one fella that was always the conductor that was so interesting. His name was Joe Meyer [laughs]. He went to Polk School. His dad was the sponsor of Ray Minter's band, and his dental laboratory was in the First Security Bank building to start with, and then he moved across and it was over the Egyptian, on the second floor of where the Egyptian Theater still is. That was where Mr. Meyer's lab was, and you could go out on what would be the roof of the overhang of the Egyptian and watch the parade at Mr. Meyer's lab. Our family knew of each other early on. Going to the movies on Saturday was another important thing to do. How old did we have to be to do that? I'm sure by the time I was in seventh grade or so, we'd go to the movies on Saturday and that was an important thing. But I say, always skating and dancing and baseball games, softball games... Outdoorsy. LR: Right. I have two questions. What was your favorite store on Washington to go into when you would do your store-hopping? VBM: Well, of course Woolworths was. There was also Docos, but the one that was on Egyptian... The Emporium was where we went. I also had my first job at the Emporium when I was 16, so that's getting too far ahead again. I think we always seemed to be out and about and going around, because every family on my block had somebody my age in school. My girlfriends and I, we would go downtown together and we would go to the movies together. That was Dorothy Peterburg and 11 Maxine Hedges, and then there was Betty Bevan and Jean Feeney. The Sandlin boys didn't go with us; they had no sisters. But almost everybody was in a sporting activity at the schools, so we all supported each other's things. Then, in the seventh grade—is that too far ahead, or no? LR: No, no. VBM: By that time, I was riding horses, and had a friend, Virginia Nelson. Rich, she turned out; she married Cue Rich. But I had these two friends, Louis Croft and Virginia Rich, and they were the class ahead of me. They did all kinds of things, and that was where the horseback riding got started. We would go over and rent horses at the stadium. You've got to remember, when we finally went to high school, we walked all the way to where the stadium on 20th is. That's where our high school games were. We didn't have a stadium at Ogden High School for our games and things then. Mostly we walked, unless you were lucky enough to know Bud Meyer, and he had a 1925 Buick. He would take some of his friends. I was only in the seventh grade, and I had a starring part at the Madison School in "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." My dad was very well-known by Sophie Reed (who had the big dance school) for making the scenery for her activities and for the school plays. My dad would make the scenery, and if we had special [requests]—like for Mrs. Reed, we were going to be Russian dancers, so we needed boots and a hat. My dad, out of oilcloth, made boots for all of us and headpieces for all of us. Everybody loved my dad because he would help get our costumes and our scenery for our plays and things and make all of that. But about the horse. I was in this "Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves." I went with my friend Virginia, we went over and rented our horse, came up through the cemetery—Ogden Cemetery—and got as far as 20th Street there, and my horse got spooked by a car going by, and I wasn't hanging on. I had the horn here, all 12 right, but when he jumped, I slid off, but I hung on to that. But my head went on the ground and then the horse started going in circles, and there's a cannon that's still there at the entrance to the cemetery, and every time he'd swing me around, my head would hit the cannon. I ended up with this fractured skull. But it was simultaneous with this school play that I had the lead in, so after I got out of the hospital for about three days, we got me all dressed up in my Ali Baba costume and my headdress with, underneath, my skull concussion things, and the show went on. That was one of those—I don't know, I think Mother was instrumental in seeing that the show would go on, too. LR: Then the other question is, you mentioned that you weren't allowed on 25th Street? VBM: We were not allowed on 25th Street. LR: Why is that? VBM: I believe there were some red lights down there that we didn't quite understand, because of the railroad being right where it was, and of course, it was a big servicing place. As a matter of fact, I went to Stanford College, and every time I would say I was from Ogden, Utah, almost anybody I met would say, "Oh, I've been there. We stopped on the train when we came by." There was always about a twohour break to get the train serviced, and other activities that our parents did not approve of happened during that two-hour break on 25th Street, which is why we children could never go down there. But that was why. We didn't quite know what was so awful about 25th Street, but we were told not to go and so we didn't go. LR: That makes sense. I’m starting to get really dizzy, so I’m thinking we should stop. We can pick up there next time. Part 2: July 6, 2023 LR: It is July 6, 2023 and we are back again with Ginny Biddle Meyer. We're going to jump right in with a memory from the sixth grade. 13 VBM: Yes. Spelling was very big, as was penmanship in those days. I did want to mention that my aunt who lived with us was the penmanship supervisor and taught Palmer method and went back to Chicago every summer to get a refresher course on Palmer method. Every school had all of the, you know—what the proper look of a capital A and a small A and all. That was a big thing in our family. The spelling bee for the city came up sponsored by the Troy Laundry, and the thing was that each school had a student and had gone through the grades and the steps and one thing and another till they finally had a representative from their school. I ended up being the representative for the Madison School in the sixth grade for this citywide spelling bee, which meant that I went to Station KLO every Saturday morning to meet my competitor from one other school for that school year. Each Saturday we had a spell-off and I kept winning and winning and winning, so I had a lot of Saturday mornings on the KLO radio in this spelling bee. At the end of the year, I had won, and I was the champion speller of Ogden City Schools in 1936. The sponsor of all of this had been the Troy Laundry, so—it's kind of amusing. What was the grand prize? A year of laundry for the family done by the Troy Laundry. In those days in our homes, in addition to the ironing board to iron all of the table linens and things, we had something called a ‘mangle’ that was a rolling kind of press thing that you put them through. All of the sheets, all of the tablecloths and all of the linens—because that's what we used—it all had to be pressed, so this was pretty exciting. In addition to that, even though my dad was the industrial arts teacher, he always wore a white shirt to work every day, so those had to be laundered. In the end, it was a nice prize for the family ‘cause Dad got his shirts and Mother got her linens all pressed and that was my reward. I thought I would put that 14 just because it was for the sixth grade. It was a particular highlight. Now I think we wanted to jump ahead till we got into the high school years. LR: I have a quick question. You talked about the Palmer method for penmanship. Was that what was taught in the schools? VBM: Yes. LR: Was that the only method? VBM: Mm-hmm. LR: Okay. I've never heard of it, and so it's interesting to… VBM: The center of it was Chicago, and that's why Aunt Evelyn had to go every summer and get a refresher course to refresh her credentials so that she could continue to [teach]. She taught seventh grade, but only four days a week. The fifth day we had a combined class with the other seventh graders while she went around the city to all the other classes, seeing the other age groups. I don't really know when she started, what age; probably fifth or sixth, something like that. She went every Friday out in the city to see that everybody was learning properly. This is pen and ink, and we all had inkwells on our desks and the girls with long hair. Every once in a while, a bad boy would put the long hair in the inkwell. Those were the teasing kind of times. Anyway, I guess that's a P.S. that I just wanted to incorporate. LR: Moving into Ogden High—you started at Ogden High in 1938, or '39? VBM: To my knowledge it was '39, but we had the classes of '41 and '42. We only had two years. I noticed by going back here that when Mother was in high school, they had all four years in high school, but we only had two years in high school. We got our ninth and tenth in the junior high. In Ogden we had four junior highs: Central, Lewis, South Washington, and Mountain Fort. Then they all funneled in; those four junior highs, they all went to Ogden High. I thought it was '39 when they opened the big one up on 28th and Harrison. We all walked everywhere. We didn't take buses 15 and that sort of thing. We had quite a group by the time we would get to high school, picking up along the way every morning. There was a whole group that would walk up to school. But I've got—number one, I did want just for a minute to show you. This is Mother's in 1917 when she was the editor of the Classicum. This is the only mention—that's Mother there. It's just interesting that in the beginning, they've got the credentials of all of the faculty and where they all went to college and they almost all went out of state somewhere. At that time, it was what we called Ogden High School, but when they built the new high school, then that became Central Junior High. LR: Oh, okay. What year was this one done? VBM: How poetic are some of them? Everything was very classical, as you know, the title of Classicum. But I thought the credentials of the faculty were kind of interesting because they were almost all Eastern colleges or not local. LR: Oh, 1917. VBM: Yeah, 1917. LR: Interesting. VBM: It's interesting to spend some time on it, I thought. Not now. But that, again, was why Mother had that role. She definitely was always interested in what was going on then for us. The reason I have four is my husband was in the class also. I've got his books and my books, and we certainly were a critical class. LR: Were you in the same year? VBM: [Showing book] This is typical, everybody writing inside when we got them. But we would have moved up there in 1940 and '41 and had our happy days and all our fun times and all of that sort of thing. Then came '42, and December 7th of our senior year of high school was Pearl Harbor. I can tell you the whole world changed. 16 Certainly Ogden at that time, because the war has been going on in Europe. It wasn't as though people didn't know that that was going on and figured that someday probably the United States would get involved. They were making plans. For a long time, they were just helping on a lend-lease basis in Europe. Eventually, Churchill convinced Roosevelt to come on in and really help them. That took Pearl Harbor to do that before he decided, “Yes, we have to be active.” Because of it having already been in Europe, one of my special friends— ‘cause my junior teenage years, for social things, I belonged to something called Job's Daughters that was from the Masons. The connection was Masons and Eastern Star. Then for the 13-18-year-old girls, they had Job's Daughters, and the same thing for the boys was DeMolay. We were the non-Mormons, but we were other denominations. It was a very busy social group, as a matter of fact. I know you had asked me the other day, what did we do for fun? We were always busy. We went to all kinds of outdoorsy skating, dancing, walking, horseback riding, bicycling. Everything was along that line. Because of DeMolay and something called Christian Endeavor, which was for the teenage youth and our Protestant church, that became kind of a cliquey group, I guess is what you would say. I got to be good friends with a young man that was five years older, and it normally probably wouldn't have been acceptable except because of the religious thing. He and his family were prominent in the Masons and the Eastern Star, and he was kind of my friend that wasn't in high school. I can't say I led a double life, but in a way I did, because I had all these friends from Job's Daughters and DeMolay that I saw a lot, but I had a lot of friends from high school. It was a big social thing. But when Pearl Harbor happened on the 7th of December—and that, of course, was a Sunday and we got to school on Monday and realized—now, I was a senior in high school, but lots of things have changed. This young man that I told 17 you about, that was five years older, was Leo Yates. He had already joined the Army Air Corps and he was in training to be a pilot, and so he was gone. Once again, I was doing my high school things because I was very active in high school, all kinds of clubs and pep club and sportettes and on the Classicum staff. I was elected officer of the Girl's Association, which I think I had a picture of somewhere. I put some of these, just to show you. I guess I can find me. This is what I looked like when I was a senior in high school. Oh, what have I got here? The business manager for the Classicum, which was a matter of going around town… I wanted to get them in. I had to go to all of the people that advertised and ask them if they wanted to have their ad again. But I was sent out because I spoke well and had a nice smile. I guess I had a good salesmanship approach, so I did very well on getting all these ads back that are kind of interesting to read. Kay's Noodle Parlor, Fred M. Nye, and all those places. I got to go in person and ask them if they would renew their thing and that. Meanwhile, I'm in Job's Daughters. I'm going through what they call the ‘chairs’ and it takes two and a half years. I ended up being the Honored Queen, they call it, and that was kind of a big deal. Leo was DeMolay. He was going through the same thing and became the state president of DeMolay and then got into the Air Corps. We were good letter-writing friends, but I had my high school thing. But I say had he not had these church affiliation and credentials, that probably would not have been appropriate. But under the circumstances, my parents thought it was and his mother thought it was okay, so I had this friend on the side. Once we had Pearl Harbor, the very first thing… I didn't notice for the longest time that the Japanese heritage student that sat in front of me in French class disappeared. It took a long time to finally learn what had happened to her. Her 18 family had been sent to one of those camps when they finally got that, just taken out of school one day. But it was interesting what we were oblivious of and not so much. I don't know. Nobody could have been a nicer person and family and all of that kind of thing. So, I read a lot of things at this point in retrospect and think, “You know, we weren't really very conscious of the hurtful things that were happening in the world.” I don't know how to excuse that except just, it never came up as a topic of conversation and any explanations or anything else. Now life has changed a lot, and you can see that in the Classicum. The boys were all in ROTC and they almost all wore uniforms to school all the time. You notice that right away in the pictures, the difference between this year and that year in how we dressed for school. We were all very conscious—they right away needed to ration all kinds of things because they needed it for the war effort. So we had our ration books and the families did so much gasoline, butter. I do remember my mother's smile because, just for no reason religious at all, but because of the whole community, we did never have coffee in the family. We did have tea because we had a very British background in my family, but no coffee. We had Postum or cocoa and that sort of thing. Mother, meanwhile, had been working in the bank, but since they had all these military installations suddenly overnight, they just needed to spring into full action. Because of the railroad, the quartermaster depot was very big—and I always said on 2nd Street, but of course it went from 2nd to 12th. But in our minds, we always talked about it on 2nd Street. I had to go down and take a typing test, proof that we could type 40 words a minute. Mother changed from the bank to go out and she works there too, because the government was paying a much better salary than the local businesses were paying. That was when she learned about coffee breaks, was when she went to work for the military. She always said that we wait until 19 coffee is rationed, and then they get us a ton of free coffee breaks out there. So that was kind of a funny little thing. Our block, we always were very involved. My residents, now my neighbors... We would have things with the USO, you know, the troops. This was so busy because the railroad was how they got the troops from one place to another or whatever, various camps and bases they wanted them. But they would have about a two-hour break while they were here in Ogden, and a bus would meet them. I'm going to have to go back and look on 24th Street, because halfway between Washington and Adams on the north side of 24th Street was a big building full of law offices when I was growing up. It's where I went also for my music appreciation. I took piano lessons from Miss Whittier, but Mrs. Beason had kind of a coalition of piano teachers, and then all of her students, on Saturdays in that building, we would go and she would give us our music appreciation. So I went every Saturday and had been doing that for years, but it got turned over now that the war is on. The USO pretty much took it over, and when the troops would come through and have this two-hour break, a bus would meet them as the soldiers or sailors got off and take them to this building that was halfway up 24th Street. It would be the equivalent of the Donut Dollies, except we were USO Dollies. It was work for the girls to come down and they would bus us from high school to take us down for the two hours and dance with the soldiers and have donuts with them and that sort of thing. That was our war work when we were seniors. But meanwhile, I'm writing to my friend Leo, who's going through a ninemonth training program to learn to be a pilot. I think just because of the whole situation, it got more and more serious. When he went to Luke Air Force Base, which was in what's now Phoenix, he was going to graduate and his mother and I, we could have—civilians were very hard to get train reservations, but that was 20 justifiable that her son was graduating from this Air Force training and went now being a second lieutenant in the Air Force. Because he and I were such good pen pals, he wanted me to come and be there for his graduation, too. This was in April of my senior year of high school that she and I went down there and it was all quite exciting. Had the ceremonies, and they changed into their uniforms. From now, they were officers, second lieutenants. While I was there, he asked me to marry him, and he had a diamond ring. I thought, well, this wasn't exactly what everybody had expected, had it not been for the war, but it seemed like a nice idea. So I said yes. I took the ring and I came home in April of my senior year of high school with a diamond. My parents were pretty surprised too, but didn't commit harry carry [sic] or anything. They said, “Well, times are different.” So he got to March Air Force Base. That was where his first assignment was, in California, and went to a CEO and had some arrangements made for us to be able to get married. Of course, that went all through the family and everything. But everybody just agreed that times were different and I guess that was okay. I was still in high school here, and my friends are congratulating me on my new engagement. My friends said, “How did that happen? It wasn't what we expected.” But anyway, it's kind of interesting to read what they say because of that time. We had to finagle quite a bit, Mrs. Yates and I, to get this two seats on a train, plus a bus to get to March Air Force Base. But we had it all arranged. Just the day before we were going to leave, we got a telegram from Leo saying, “Don't come. Orders changed.” So we didn't come. The orders were changed, and it was several weeks before we heard anything more. I think I'll stay on this one story for now. When I did hear from him next, he was in Connecticut, but went through the same routine. “I've been to my CEO to see if we can get married, if you'd come, and 21 he's given us permission on such and such a day. So if you and Mother—” because we could only get two seats on a train to go, and so it was his mother and I that were going to go for this. So we go through the same routine, and the day before we're going to leave, we get a telegram from him. “Don't come. Orders changed.” And so we didn't come. By this time, I've graduated from high school. I'm doing my war work out at 2nd Street, typing away. I've graduated and I'm going to Weber College, that's what I'm doing. Weber Junior College, which was down on Adams and Jefferson—I mean, that was where the college was at that time, and where I had always been very classical and everything. I was studying English, literature, things like that. I decided I needed to know how to cook, so I majored in Home EC. Mrs. Tanner was the teacher in Home EC at Weber College, and her curriculum was all of these courses and items that you would have for Thanksgiving dinner. Each week, we learned how to make one thing that you would have for the Thanksgiving dinner. We got to the end, the graduation of the class was to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for our families by ourselves, and then bring a note from our family that they had all survived and enjoyed Thanksgiving dinner. If we did that, we got an A. So that's what I was doing. I hadn't heard from Leo at all for a long time, and then we heard from him, and he was in England. Then we heard from him again during this same period that he was in Tunisia, in North Africa. But once again, they had 50 missions, and at the end of the 50 missions, they were given a two-week break to come home, these pilots. It all turned out in the long run, why he never was able to tell us anything. He was in the first unit of P-38 planes, which were the double fuselage. Quite unique. He was in that first group that ever had that kind of plane, and that was why everything they did was hush-hush. But now he's in North Africa, and he's flying out 22 his 50 missions, and he's getting near the end, and he's going to be able to come home for two weeks. All the pilots got to do that. I've been going along still in Job's Daughters and I'm in the chairs and I became the honor queen; took two and a half years. I was just finishing that term of that. I was at Weber, taking classes, learning to cook. It was in January of 1943. We were all at home, my parents and brother and I, and the doorbell rang at 7:30 that night, and we opened the door and there stood Mrs. Yates and two military people. That was a very ominous sign. He had been killed on his last flight and shot down over the Mediterranean Sea, and so that was pretty devastating all the way around. You see, I'm a freshman in college at Weber. I'm going through these chairs at Job's Daughters and have been keeping up with the war work and all of that kind of stuff. So the whole thing crashed at that moment, and I just went into a big slump. I didn't go back to school again, even the next day. I just didn't. This went on, this being so morose for a few weeks, and finally, Clarice Hull, who is the—I don't know if she is the dean of women or the registrar or something at Weber. She called Mother and she said, “Virginia needs to get back in circulation and she really ought to go to a university.” She said, “Across my desk just came this opportunity to take an exam called the Henry Newall Scholarship to Stanford University. It's going to be on Saturday.” I think this was about Tuesday or something like that. “I really think Virginia ought to go do that.” I had never taken a standardized exam at all. I just took the kinds that the teachers gave us in class and that sort of thing. But my dad said he would take me down, had to go to Salt Lake to take it. I say this was from Tuesday to Saturday. She said, “There's nothing to study because it'll be whatever is on the exam. They just want to know general knowledge, so I don't know what you could do to prepare. Just go.” 23 Well, guess what? I got that scholarship. It's called Henry Newell. It was for two students, and the other person was Helen Malley. Her mother also belonged, I did figure out, to the Modern Literature Club. The Modern Literature Club did very well by the daughters in getting them prepared to take this exam. So Helen and I got the two scholarships, and in the fall we did go to Stanford, and that was pretty surprising. But during the summer, I got myself pulled back together and went back to my civil service job typing 40 words a minute, and worked this time at the Publication's Depot, which was right across from the Union Station. The thing that was unique about that was there were just a few of us there doing all of these publications for the military and proofreading them and typing them, preparing them. But we were surrounded outside by Italian prisoners of war and their guards from the army, and they could look through the window. Gladys Bater and I were the only two young women. All the rest were men that worked in that office, and so these Italian prisoners would kind of come to the window and hoggle Gladys and myself. It was kind of a funny experience. They were just doing hedge trimming and that kind of thing, so as prisoners of war, they were treated really quite well. I don't know whether to just stop, because then I'm going to finish up there and then get aboard a train and go to Stanford University. LR: We can talk about Stanford the next time. Let me just ask you one quick question. This is for my own curiosity. At the Union Station during World War II, was the Weber County Red Cross Canteen… VBM: What now? LR: The Weber County Red Cross Canteen was in the Union Station during World War II. Did you or your mom ever work there, ever volunteer? VBM: Yes. I have a 40-year pin from the Red Cross. 24 LR: Okay. So did you volunteer at that canteen? VBM: Yes. LR: Okay. What was that like for you? VBM: Well, again, just seeing the soldiers. I kind of think that we had a combination of the Red Cross and USO—what I described when they got off the train and we would be there. It was interesting to meet these young men from all the other states. I will say, I wasn't interested in any particular alliance with them, but it was interesting to meet people from all the—because I really, at that point in my life, had only gone between—I went every single summer to Santa Monica, so I knew the road between Utah and Los Angeles very well. Beyond that, not too much more except that other trip that took us up to the Northwest. So it was fun to hear their accents. Of course, they were all kind of excited and everybody was excited. I think that the fervor of wanting to be involved—and for us, everybody was being helpful, they wanted to do all of these things. We were appreciative that all these young men were going to go off and offer their services for the country. It was all just very positive and lots of flag-waving. The Red Cross was great and the USO was great. And in Ogden, again, because of all of this train activity, people just kept pouring in from all over the country. So, of course, we saw and heard more accents and that kind of thing. But it was, in my case, all very simple and pleasant. I don't even know what you wondered about beyond the fun of meeting people from other places. I've always loved to meet people from other places, so I was always the first one to say, “Oh, sure, I'll go do that kind of thing.” LR: That was it, basically? VBM: But it was a nice service, and everybody in the community contributed, so there were plenty of donuts to go around and whatever beverages they were offering. 25 LR: Okay. Then you talked about—so you were part of Job's Daughters and the Eastern Star, but DeMolay?. VBM: DeMolay? D-E-M-O-L-A-Y. That was for the young men. LR: So was it just, like, the opposite? The young men's version of Job's Daughters? VBM: [Nods]. LR: Oh, okay. VBM: But you did need a sponsor through the Masons to be eligible to be in it. This was Masons, and Eastern Star were the men and women group from that. DeMolay and Job's Daughters were both boys and girls, the teenagers. It was a nice teenage activity. LR: Then I just have one quick question from our first, our first time. It's more of an arcane question, but how do you think your parents' education and their work ethic influenced your life in your choices in going to school and getting jobs? VBM: Oh, everything in our family had to do with education, and the library was a center of activity. We had a librarian live with us for a while that was a daughter of my parents. Just to give you an idea of when I was getting coached for that spelling bee through the years, we would all have dinner together, and then after dinner, my brother, who was three years younge—his name was Scott Biddle. He and I did the dishes and Mother came out and she sat on a stool and she coached us according to the day. Either we had our Latin book up in front of us where we were washing the dishes and Mother was coaching us with our Latin, or we had our spelling book in front of us and Mother was coaching us so well. Every night after dinner we had a little homeschooling for about an hour my whole life. So yes, it was pretty important. And of course, we had to take Latin along the way. Lots of Latin. LR: [To Raegan] Did you have any questions? RB: No. 26 LR: Okay. I feel like I should ask more questions about World War II. I know we're still kind of in that time frame, but one question I do want to ask, and it'll be my last question of today. What are your memories of Pearl Harbor Day, specifically? VBM: On Pearl Harbor Day? LR: Yeah, on that day specifically. VBM: On that day specifically, I just remember I guess we had already gone to church because we would walk down since we lived between 24th and 25th on Madison, and the Presbyterian Church was on the corner of Adams and 24th. We would walk down there, and so we had come back home and we were having Sunday dinner, I guess. We didn't have the radio on in the beginning, and a neighbor came over and said, “Oh, something terrible is happening. Turn on your radio and hear what's happening.” I think we could just hardly—you know, we'd been so focused on Europe that for it to come from Japan, that was the big surprise to us, personally, anyway. So I guess the first was the horror of it. Plus, we were very worried. We had some friends that lived in Honolulu. He had been the postmaster here and she was Dorothy. They were Grantham, was their name. He had been the postmaster here and he had been transferred to Honolulu, and so they were living there. So we actually knew civilians. The other thing that we knew—Leslie Merrell. His dad was a doctor here in Ogden, but he had just graduated from Annapolis and he was on the Missouri, and so we didn't know that the first day. LR: Not the Missouri? VBM: But very soon. LR: Right. VBM: Since this was the family doctor and his son, I just remember shock, I think, more than anything, and worry. What does this really mean, except that we're probably going to go full tilt into all of this? Then all the things that happened afterwards, I 27 mean, the whole community was caught up in doing whatever they could do. That's forever after, until it was all over when we went out. We'll get into California the next time. LR: Right. This friend's son in Honolulu or in— VBM: Leslie Merrill. LR: Leslie. He couldn't have been on the Missouri because it wasn't built yet. So what ship was he on? VBM: I thought he was. LR: You know, the USS Missouri wasn't built until towards the end of the war. VBM: Well, what's the big monument? LR: Oh, the Arizona. VBM: Oh, the Arizona. That was where he was, then. LR: He was on the Arizona, okay. VBM: Because I've been back there and seen his name on a plaque as being on that ship. Thank you. The Missouri is where they signed the treaty. I'm getting ahead of myself. LR: You’re fine. VBM: That's why it's good to be here with historians. You already know all the history, you just need the personal variation. LR: I love the personal stories. Well, thank you so much for your time today. [Recording ends.] Part 2: July 26, 2023 LR: It is July 26, 2023, and we are here again with Ginny Meyer continuing with her oral history interview. Raegan Baird is with me again. Ginny, when we left off, we were talking about getting your scholarship to Stanford. VBM: We were talking about what? 28 LR: Getting your scholarship to Stanford. VBM: Yes, yes. LR: Last time, you talked about how you got the scholarship. Were your parents excited for you? VBM: Yes, they were. It wasn't Northwestern, which my mother had thought was the place to go, but it would do. LR: Oh, dear. What was it about Northwestern that was the best? VBM: Well, the medical people that she knew and loved were graduates of that, so. It was just a personal affinity. But no, they were excited and California was an interesting place. Do remember, we're right still in the middle of the war as far as we're concerned. So there was great scurrying around getting me ready to go, clotheswise and equipment-wise, and communicating what the needs would be for a new student there. The day finally came. Helen Malley—who used to be Malinowski, but Helen liked Malley better—she was the other one who had won the other scholarship. The two of us on the same day were going together, because, remember, it's still wartime, so most of the train is full of troops that are going somewhere. But San Francisco, this time it was our train to get on. We did have a special little compartment that was just for Ogden people going to Oakland, and that became very familiar over the years. But at that time, Helen and I shared that. Meanwhile, Mother had called a contact friend of hers, Ken Trip, who was a graduate of Ogden High School in 1917, as my mother had been, and he worked in San Francisco. So she called to alert them. He and his wife had a daughter attending Stanford, and so mother asked if they would meet me, greet me, and see that I was cared for. The daughter got me as a prize, and I'm sure that was not what 29 she was thrilled with. But parents will do this once in a while, so they were very nice. Our trip was uneventful to get to San Francisco. We got there, we were met by the Trip family, and I said goodbye to Helen. She was going in a much different direction as far as her major and what she was going to do. But that was the first thing when I got there, to declare what my major would be, so come to registration day. We got settled into our dorm, which was a project in itself. In the interest of time, I'm not gonna go into the details, but I did have a very interesting roommate from Colfax, Washington, and that was one thing they did. We were transfer students since we had both gone to Weber—at that time—Junior College. So we were not new entering freshmen, and therefore we were in a dorm for transfer students. So everybody was from some other college, and that was quite interesting in itself. I became really best friends with two young women from Vassar who, instead of their year abroad, were having their year at Stanford. They lived right across the hall from me. There were others that we really had a very good time, I would say, as far as congenial and getting settled in. Of course, the first thing I had to do about registration was declare a major. I had decided that the noble thing at that point was to be a nurse, which I really had not aspired to prior to this year. Stanford was one of the very few in the country that had a bachelor degree program, but it was a five-year program because what they were doing is still have all of the liberal arts requirements for a B.A. from Stanford. Then they tacked on top of it the three-year hospital program that they were just learning to do at that time. That was why ours was a five-year program. But at that time, Stanford's hospital and nursing school were also in the city of San Francisco, and so we would have our two years on the campus doing all of our arts requirements. Then we would move to San Francisco itself for the last three years 30 and be in the hospital to get all of the nursing requirements. Believe me, it was a very strenuous course, the academic part of it. At Stanford, in addition to all of the arts part, I had to take all of the prerequisites for getting into nursing school. Anything that had an -ology on it, I took. They all had labs, and I very often felt pressured because very few of the other people… I only had one other person who was doing exactly the same program I was, and she and I became best friends. Rachel Dole was her name. Stanford, because of the war, had two requirements. Well, they had two requirements above the academic ones at that time: everybody had to do some sort of work, volunteer every quarter. They had many, many choices. But I spent a lot of my time selling war stamps for war bonds, because I could sit out at the student union and get to meet [people]. I was very anxious to meet people and get to know them. That I like to do because of the getting acquainted part of it. The other university requirement was that everybody had to take physical education every quarter, some kind. My first quarter, the only thing that was left by the time I got to choose was calisthenics, which was quite disastrous, and I won't even go into it, except I fell off more ropes and hung from more straps and never got my muscles tightened up at all. But the fun part of it was that the next quarter, I was earlier in line signing up, and even then, swimming was the only thing I had ever done a lot of or tennis. They said, “How about golf?” “Well, I don't have any clubs.” "Well, we have clubs. We will give you clubs." So in addition to all of the academic things, I was taking the required golf, which sustained me. I stopped playing golf when I was 79 years old, so I was thankful for that little side quirk that happened along the way. 31 Well, I'm going to whiz through the two years at Stanford on the campus, which was oh, great experience. Many friends. It's amazing how long we stayed in contact, a lot of us. But then we were off to the city for entering nursing school. Well, again, our course. It's still 1945 by the time I get to San Francisco, February of ‘45. Both wars are still going on, and living on the West Coast was quite eyeopening, should I say, because they were very alert because of all the war restrictions. Everything was blackouts and very few cars, and a lot of things that had to do with it being actual war time. But we got started and were feeling very noble about it. The other thing was that the military had two things: the Army Specialized Training Program for the men, which was on the campus, so we did have some men on campus, and the other one was the cadet nurse program, and they would subsidize for a part of our tuition if we would agree that we would be in the Army. So I was in the Army cadet nurse program, which worried my parents. They were not thrilled that I signed up for it, but I did. When we went out the dormitory, we were always in uniform at that time. But that didn't last very long because I only entered in February and the European war was over in May, and the Japanese and Pacific war was over in August. We were there to celebrate that and be glad. Oh, one other thing I want to say about the cadet nurses: my roommate, this one that I knew from Stanford that we stayed together. Dole! I'm only getting her sister's name right this moment. Rachel Dole was designated the $140,000 nurse cadet. For that, she got to christen a ship that had just been completed over in Alameda. So we all got to go to the ship christening, those of us that were her nursing roommates in our uniforms, and Rachel got to christen the ship. That was quite an exciting, exciting event for all of us. Now we still are very short of our ends, so I would say we got a rather extraordinary experience because we students were 32 pushed into supervisory positions that probably we never would have had as student nurses. I really do think we got an excellent education. Meanwhile, there are gentlemen in our lives who come and go, but my faithful pen pal from West Point has continued to be my pen pal. This is getting to be a while now. This is Bud/Joe Meyer of Ogden, Utah. High school class of ‘42, Ogden High. As time went on, he finally came out to visit me one year. Then he came in the year of 1947 to visit and took me out for dinner and we were in another very beautiful area. That's Coit Tower. I got a little easel up there of Coit Tower. You see Fisherman's Wharf, and then you look across to Coit Tower. After we had our nice dinner at the restaurant in the shadows, it was probably the 14th of July, and it was probably the prettiest night I ever remember in San Francisco. No fog. Just lovely, beautiful night. He did propose officially: would I marry him next year, when we both graduated, and I accepted. Miraculously, he had a ring which is a miniature of their class rings, and I took that. So we were officially engaged and then became pen pals again. You know, I loved my time in San Francisco, was very interesting. But I'm going to, in the interest of time, move along till June 8th of 1948. LR: I have one question for you: the name of the ship. Do you recall what that was christened? VBM: I do not. I wish I did, and I wish I had my old scrapbook that had the picture of it. I'm sorry. LR: No, that's okay. I was just curious. Sorry about that. VBM: But we did go over to Alameda, to the shipyard where it was completed. No, that's fine, I wish that kind of detail I had too. LR: Moving on, you were saying what month? RB: January? LR: Go ahead and continue. 33 VBM: Okay. At some point along the way during my nursing experience, due to communicable disease experience, they thought I got tuberculosis. As soon as they tested me when I got back—which was the Alameda County Hospital, where we went for that—and I did have this positive TB skin test, I was placed in the hospital. But in the Stanford Private hospital, they had both a county hospital and a private hospital, and I was put in isolation for six weeks in July and August of 1947. They tried to prove that I had tuberculosis with every test they can think of, but they kept coming back negative. So after six weeks, they said, "I guess you don't. You have an allergy to climate changes," which for somebody who is now engaged to an Army man, that's great news. Yeah, yeah, I had an allergy to climate changes, but nevertheless. But it also put me six weeks behind the rest of my classmates, and for that reason, I was out of sync all the rest of the time as far as what I might have done and did do, and what I ended up doing was six months of visiting nursing in San Francisco. I had my little uniform and my little black bag and whatever coin was necessary to ride a public bus or a cable car to get to see my patients. That in itself, when you think about wandering all around San Francisco all by myself, I never had any problem. That's what they told me: “Your little uniform and your little black bag will be all the protection that you need.” I was in some very, very kind of unusual circumstances. Never had a problem at all, and met so many interesting patients. I had two kinds. One was three months of obstetrics, pre- and postpartum visits, and three months of visiting nurse. The postpartum ones were for the clinic patients at Stanford, but the visiting nurse ones were for the city of San Francisco, and that was all stratas of lifestyles. Then I got into some of the loveliest homes in San Francisco with that experience. 34 Then it was finally all over, and now I only had six weeks by the time I got out of school till I was to be married at West Point. So now we move forward to that project, if you will. It was quite something, to get ready to go back there and be married at the Academy. They drew straws or lots or something which wedding they would be, and we were the 3:00 wedding. He graduated; his ceremony was at 10:00 and it was over at 11. Mine was out at Stanford University on the 13th of June, but I couldn't make that, so I had my diploma mailed to me. Meanwhile, Joe was always very, very good at skiing, and he was team captain at West Point of the ski club. The officer in charge of the ski club was Paul Root and his wife. They were a third-generation West Point graduate family and went on for two more and he ended up having five of their family. But Mrs. Root wrote to me just before I was leaving Stanford and said she was very concerned that I was completely unschooled on what it would be like to be an Army wife, and so she would like to invite me to come be their house guest for three weeks, for inbetween my leaving Stanford and getting married. She wanted me to come for three weeks to kind of learn what it was going to be like to be a proper army wife, and that had not really been on the agenda. I was really kind of taken back, and so was Joe about my being the house guest of Major and Mrs. Root for that three weeks. But we did, and then I did get indoctrinated, I guess, as much as you can. LR: That's a good word. VBM: So that complicated things. And my family—I was sorry my dad was not well. I think I have mentioned that he had had polio and was an amputee. LR: You did. VBM: He just thought it would be too stressful for him to be back there, so sadly, he did not come to the wedding. Instead, my brother Scott was going to the University of New Mexico at that time, so he was the one to give me away. But my mother came and 35 her two sisters and all of Joe's family came. We had a group of about 20 for four days of what they called June Week, leading up to the graduation and the weddings. Meanwhile, my two Stanford friends that were from Vassar were back home, and so they had me come to the city and New York for one of those weeks while Joe was taking standardized exams. He had to do something that they call ‘camman’, which was to go on a ship with Annapolis graduates for a week, so they could all get to know these fellow people in the service. So it was a very, very busy time. But finally the day came and we were married, and now I have the picture there. I don't know if you want to show that picture on there. LR: It would be a cool picture to include. VBM: But the day of our wedding. Now second lieutenants had two months off, and of course they had had very little time off the whole time they had been at school. So we spent two months roaming the country and made our way back to Ogden. That was very interesting to really get acquainted with everybody. A lot of his classmates did not get married on graduation day and they were taking the two months off. They had to roam the country, and many of them—well, once we got back to Ogden—came to visit us. Since we had both sets of parents lived here in Ogden, we sort of divided our time. But the Myers had a cabin in South Fork, and we finally went up there by ourselves. Except that all these cadets now are brand-new second lieutenants that were not married. They all seem to find their way to Ogden, so they came up, and we had a lot of company up in South Fork that summer. But it all was fine in the families. By this time, everybody's acquainted. The one thing I did want to say about my dad not going to the wedding: we were an early enough wedding that we were on the newsreel. So I called dad and 36 said, “Ask Mr. Kameyer,” who was the manager of the Egyptian Theater, “when this week's newsreel is going to be, because we're on the newsreel.” And we were. So that's how my dad got to our wedding, was to go down to the Egyptian Theater in Ogden and see us. Just that picture that you see there, he pretty much saw right here in Ogden. That was that part of that. Now, where are we going? LR: Well, let me ask you a quick question. What was the date that you were married? VBM: June 8th, 1948. LR: Okay. That was my question. VBM: So both wars are over. So many things have happened, but there's nothing… Meanwhile, our first together assignment now is that the army's very good about sending everybody to school, so they were sent to the ground general school at Fort Riley, Kansas, which is Junction City, Kansas. Well, being so soon after the war was over, it was well-equipped because Fort Riley had been very busy during the war. So every home in Junction City, Kansas either had a basement apartment, a garage apartment, an attic apartment. You could take your choice which one you could find to live in. There were 60 of us that were newlywed couples. It was all the services except the Air Force—the Army Air Corps, they called them. That was the only service that didn't go to Fort Riley. So it was the one time we mingled everybody, because after that they started dividing them, and they just would go to whatever their own service was. Joe was in the field artillery. How are we doing? Shall I keep going? Now we leave Fort Riley, where we've had such an interesting time. LR: How long were you at Fort Riley? VBM: Living in our basement? Five months till Christmas time. LR: Okay, so this is still 1948? 37 VBM: Yes. For me, it was the perfect addition to Mrs. Root's orientation of the army. Why? Because I didn't know any of these people, but we had that five months together. Of that, about 60 of us were newlyweds, and we all got acquainted. Then we scattered because the men went to whatever their special assignment was. But at the end, we did get to come back to Ogden for Christmas. Then we started doing the field artillery assignments, which were in El Paso, Texas—Fort Bliss—and Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Two parts to it, and we had to sign in on New Year's Day. Well, everybody knew that there was, not going to be much doing it officially under your stay. Plus, we had to find a place to live again. Fort Bliss was where we went first, in El Paso. One other couple—we found a boarding house, and so that was where we stayed for those few weeks. Then we moved to Fort Sill. Again, we're just sort of temporary, there were a lot of temporary kind of living things. It was not terribly elegant, but it gets right down to it [laughs]. But it was a lot of fun. Then once that was over, we came back again to Ogden. Since both sets of parents lived here, when we had any vacation time, we always came back. When the year was over going to those schools, the Korean War was on by now, and Joe needed to go to jump school to learn to be a paratrooper. Our next assignment was to go to Fort Campbell, Kentucky and be with the 101st Airborne Division and learn to be a paratrooper. Then they said that Joe's field artillery battalion would go to Korea, and the war in Korea was just about over. But the 38th parallel needed to be protected. I have missed the one stop also at Fort Collins, Colorado at ROTC. Joe's dad had a terrible stroke when he was 51 years old that kept him paralyzed for the next 15 years of his life, and he always had an attendant at home. So Joe asked for a compassionate assignment, and they gave Fort Collins. That’s the best they could do, ROTC duty. So we were there before, and then he went to take his paratrooper 38 training so that he would be trained. Then he was to go for ten months to Korea, and then depending on the situation, they thought that we could join him. Meanwhile, I have not taken us to Germany, which was important. What did we do after? Let's turn this off for a minute while I think. [Recording pauses for a break.] [Recording begins again]. VBM: Joe was assigned to Germany. There they let the wives and children come. We were also called the occupation army, and we were to have no fraternization with the German people or vice versa. It was a very strained time. They had not started to recover from the war. It was still pretty much in shambles because we were in Schwäbisch Hall, and that was close to Stuttgart. But there hadn't been any recovery, so it was very hard to see their life. I say we just really didn't fraternize. LR: Let me ask you a question. When you went to Germany in 1949, how many children did you have? VBM: None. LR: None, okay. VBM: No [laughs]. But in 1950, Barbara was born in Stuttgart. The one thing they had that probably spoiled me is we had a housekeeper ten hours a day, six days a week. Because we didn't know how to run the furnaces and Nurnberg stoves and things like that, we also had a gardener/fireman to take care of. We had a staff of two to start with, and they were very nice. Meanwhile, military circumstances were still very tense at that time, and the men were most of the time at a training place called Grafenwöhr, which was in Germany. But they had to go away and stay six weeks at a time. Meanwhile, the army wives were sharpening up their bridge skills. It was kind of a very difficult time. Then the hospital was in Stuttgart, which was about 60 miles from where Schwäbisch Hall was, so we did have an onsite doctor for emergencies. 39 But when we needed a hospital, we had 60 miles we had to go. So in 1950, May 22nd, Barbara announced that she was going to be born, but her dad was at Grafenwöhr. But they had something called the rear detachment commander: one army officer and one chaplain were always left behind with the women and children. So I called the rear detachment commander and asked him. I said, "I was told that when I was going to have the baby, that they would let the child's father come home to be there for the birth." They said, "Well, that's right." So I said, "Now's the time to call." But remember, I'm 60 miles from the hospital. They chose a plane ride away to Grafenwöhr. The rear detachment commander—I don't think you need to write this down, but I'll tell you—said he thought he better take me to the hospital. I said, "No, her dad wanted to be there and I would wait." So it was very tense getting the plane and getting her dad home. Then he was a little tense, having the responsibility of driving 60 miles with his enlabored wife for his first baby. We did make it, and the baby was born, but he had to go right back, and I had to stay a week in the hospital. It really had been a German hospital, but now it was a military hospital for the United States. We had a bit of a controversy over what her name would be. I thought we knew, and so she ended up being Barbara Ann. Then he got to come back and bring me back home and then was taken right back to Grafenwöhr again. Should I keep going? LR: Yeah, we have about 15 minutes left. VBM: Okay. Then came the next year, and there's still the same routine where the women and children are in Schwäbisch Hall and then men are at Grafenwöhr. But then they 40 said, “We're going to move the battalion to Kitzingen. That was in about May, I guess, that we were moved to Kitzingen. LR: So was that 1951? VBM: Same thing, and it was interesting. But Joe, they let the men come home to help us move. We had a moving van. Our dog that we had had, Schäferhund, had run away and wasn't there when we were all ready to move. We had to leave our friends and say, "When Duke shows up, we'll call back and Joe will come back and get him. But we have to move to Kitzingen." When we got there, sitting on the curb was this… seemed like a middle-aged woman. She said to Joe, "I speak five languages. None is English. You may choose which of my five you would like to communicate with me. I am going to be your housekeeper." That's how we met Rosie. Rosie had a husband, Eddie, and they were refugees from Czechoslovakia. He was now a letter courier. So she was there with us all day, but on his break, he would come and give her a couple of hours off, and he would take Barbara downtown in Kitzingen in her stroller. By this time, she's several months old. I found out later everybody knew Barbara ‘cause their dogs and children. That was the one thing about communicating with the Germans, about how we could admire each other's children and admire each other's dogs, so that was good. But now the Marshall Plan has started, and that was to get Europe restored. Instead of the no fraternization, now we were hurried off to take German lessons, all of us. I liked that much better. But now comes April of '52 and comes Tom. So now we have child number two, and that's April, and we're scheduled to come back to the United States in July. He's pretty small and Barbara is two, I guess. Something that was interesting about Barbara—we had a next-door neighbor that had a little 41 girl she played with, and Barbara learned fluent German. That day that we were moving, Barbara was the one that told the movers she was two years old. She was the translator for what needed to be done for the movers because her next-door little neighbor, Gisela, they had played together all the time and she only had that little German girl to play with. So her German was very, very good at two. Anyway, now we're in Kitzingen and the men are still out in the field all the time. We're now going to come back to the United States. We were over there three years, and the new assignment is Fort Lewis, Washington. Our trip, we got to Bremerhaven to catch the ship that was to bring us back along with all the other troops and families. But now our accommodations were much better with our family and the new little. Still, when we got to New York, it was pretty hectic. I thought we needed to pick up our car that was being shipped also and drive to Utah and ultimately to Fort Lewis. We knew we were going to Fort Lewis. Shall I keep going? LR: Is this a good place to stop? VBM: I'm thinking about you. As long as you're okay, I'm okay. LR: I mean, I wanted to go an hour. We have ten more minutes. VBM: Okay. So we got to New York. You can just imagine a two-year-old and a twomonth-old and all of the things that—and Joe trying to balance us. We knew that we were to get on a particular bus that would take us to a hotel, where all of our next part of our transportation would be arranged. So we did that and we got to the hotel, and Joe went down, and he got reservations for the children and me to fly to Salt Lake while he would go and get the car. When we were just in the lobby of the hotel, he suddenly hears a whole array of people saying, "Bud! Bud! Bud!" There's his mother and his brother, and they have flown to New York to surprise us [laughs]. LR: Oh, how nice! 42 VBM: We almost miss making connections. But, meanwhile, I did go fly with the children to Salt Lake, and Joe and his mother and brother drove his car to Salt Lake. So we got here and we had, again, a good break. Then we were to go to Fort Lewis, Washington. LR: I have a question that I'd like to end with today about Germany, if that's okay. You said that there wasn't a lot of reconstruction happening yet when you first got there. How did that change in the two years you were there? VBM: A lot. That was what they called the Marshall Plan, was to get it restored. But up until that time, it was almost nothing. We took a really nice, long tour. Joe got a break while we were there. This is before Tom. It was between Barbara and Tom. It was very depressing to go to all those countries that were Europe and see all of the damage that was done. But then they started the Marshall Plan, which was to help in the reconstruction. Joe went back many times for his career in the Army. I never did until after he was retired. In 1990 we went back, on a whole different venture, and I was able to see it all restored. I was happy to see how much improvement it all was and that. That was the difference between 1950 and 1990, so 40 years for me to see it. But Joe was over there a lot because he got into the missile business. We never knew where he was and for how long or why. LR: Right. No, I get that. Lastly, when you were finally able to start fraternizing with the German people, what was that like to actually... VBM: Well, that was when I found out how popular Eddie's trips had been, this noon break that he gave his wife, taking Barbara for a stroll that way. I could go downtown, and I did want to buy some nice German China. They did have a nice China thing, so that was my one thing that I wanted to be sure to take home as a souvenir. It was the day that I went to buy this China downtown, and I had Barbara with me, and they kept saying, "Nicht nüscht, Barbara?" Everybody knew Barbara 43 from these trips that she had taken with Eddie, so it turned out okay. But for the first 18 months or so that we were there, it really was no fraternization, so that was very different. LR: Okay, so let's end there for today. VBM: I'm not making much progress. LR: Oh, heavens, you sure are! [We had originally planned to complete Ginny’s story, but were ultimately unable to continue the interview process due to extenuating personal circumstances. Ginny passed away on March 16th, 2024, shortly after celebrating her 100th birthday.] 44