"I had all kinds of quick get-rich schemes, but because I was so interested in civil engineering and in the energy that was in all the little streams that was going across the farms, I built a paddle wheel. That paddle wheel had five blades on…

"Well, you know I wasn’t even interested in it, but somebody had found out my name and told Jane Tucker, and Jane Tucker called me, and she said, 'Would you come and tell us how you got your name?' 'Oh,' I said, 'I’d…

"He worked for a company out in Chattanooga, and he was the national sales manager of that one, and they sold it to some other company, and at that point in time, my husband said, 'They’re gonna pick our heads free, and then they’ll let us…

"After his ship moved away from Japan, they went on down to the Hawaiian Isles, and they went to Pearl Harbor and picked up a lot of sailors that had enough hours in to get out. They chugged in to San Diego in November right around Thanksgiving…

"When he reported in at the navy office, they transferred us to Seattle. So we had to come home and pack what little we had unpacked, and get down to the station and get on a train that took us...took us all day, straight north, to Seattle. …

"We got on the train. The train took three days and three nights. When we got to Omaha, there was another ensign and his wife on the train, and he said, 'Where are you gonna stay when you get to San Francisco?' And we said, 'We…

"Originally he didn’t want me to go to Norfolk because he said, 'That place just is crawling with the Navy,' and he said, 'I don’t think it’s a safe place for a pretty girl.' But he said, 'We’ll go down together and see…

"The reason we got married [in Ithaca] was because we weren’t sure how much vacation time he was gonna get. We didn’t dare take a chance. So instead of having a nice, long dress, I had a nice beige suit and a cute little hat instead of a…

"That’s where I was the night that my young man [Rich] came bouncing in, and he was in the Navy, and he had come in with his buddy...You could always walk in there and there was always somebody there to feed you. So they were just looking, they…

"Well, it just absolutely scared me to death because the day it came over the radio, I was taking a nap and—curled up in my bed—and my parents had gone out for a walk, and I couldn’t tell anybody. So as soon as they got home, why, I said,…