Working in Pensacola

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“So here I was green as could be and they accepted me and at least I made it. I don’t know whether I passed muster or not but I made it. But I had the nicest boss. The captain who was the commanding officer of the air station was just the nicest person and easy to work for. He meant business. He ran a good ship. He didn’t accept a lot of foolishness but he was kind and patient and wasn’t demanding. I was very blessed to have that job. I think the worst, the hardest thing for us, all of us were – and I know it was for him cause he had to handle it with the parents – is there was this naval training station where these young people were learning to fly and we had a number of accidents and deaths. He had to handle that and sometimes the parents would come in, sometimes they wouldn’t, but it was not, that was not an easy time. But we did have some good times there and  on weekends, during the summer, we would get the mess hall to make us up a picnic lunch. The navy had a little boat that would take us over to the island which happened to be Santa Rosa Island now that is populated but then it was nothing but a big piece of sand and we would spend the day over there... And we loved to get out. We’d get sunburned, of course, but we had that activity and we ate in the officer’s mess and it was good food and overall, that experience was good."

Editor's Note: When Edith arrived at the naval air station in Pensacola, she went through a series of arduous interviews and was eventually appointed as aide to the commanding officer, Captain James H. McKay. In the quote above, Edith describes what it was like working for Captain McKay as well as some of the more difficult tasks associated with her position.