"After my dad’s father died from a measles epidemic, his large family of five siblings and his now single mother Frederica lost her farm during the Depression. During the war, Dad’s sisters went to work. The older sister married…

"In WWII, my father’s two brothers, Henry and John B, also served in the Army. My mother’s three brothers served in the Army, Navy, and the Marines. They were Perry Hugh, Elmer, and Emmet Joe who was in Iwo Jima."

"My dad entered the war in President Roosevelt’s first peacetime military draft. The family appealed to the draft board because he was the breadwinner of a family he cared for since age ten, but he shipped out. Dan was gone for…

"I am not sure how Mother was recruited.  She may have seen a poster or heard an advertisement on the radio. The WAVES primarily used newspapers, radio, and personal contact to recruit. Mother wanted to be a flight attendant, but…

"While researching my Mother’s biography, I read her letters from WWII, and the name Frase or Goldman kept appearing in the signatures.  I realized it was one man, Goldman Frase. He wrote Christmas Cards to her for ten years…

“I felt very bad. I was upset because when you leave the States and you don’t know when you are coming back or not. It gives you a funny feeling.”“Well you see, they are all in civilian clothes. And I’m the only one in uniform, and you assign them…

“There was some [secret work]. And too when I had the secret work of somebody who would walk in where I was at my desk. I had to roll this under — down in the typewriter. Or if I had it out, I had to turn it over where nobody could see it. I didn’t…

“Well, you live in the barracks. A lot of people. And basic training means you learn all army. You have the drilling — everything. You dress for army dress and what you would be doing in the army. And it’s just a lot of stuff you’re not used to. But…

“We made piston rings…some of them went to companies that made ship motors and some of them was just like a finger ring.”“You just had a certain time to come in. And you had a certain time for lunch, and to leave, and you didn’t have no spare time.…

“When I got older, I found a job in restaurants ‘cause I was cooking at home and they knew, so I got a job as a pie baker in a city restaurant.”“I met Miss Cline and her husband, who worked in some kind of a factory in Baltimore.”“They gave me room…