Julia Ramsey: An Oral History

Well, my mother's grandfather came from County Down, Ireland; he and his brother, they came into Philadelphia back in 1829 or something, and they ended up in West Virginia, then Virginia, to the Kanawha River, where Charleston is. They came there to work in the salt works at Malden, I don't understand but they do find salt in the ground in some of those places, but that's where they made barrels to put the salt in and all that's how these two brothers from Ireland, Matthew and John O'Gara, O capital G A R A. Well they dropped that O stuff and spelled it Geary; and it's Geary, spelled the same way as Geary Street in San Francisco. But then the younger one, John was drowned. He never survived, but Matthew who was my mother's grandfather did marry and had this big family. I think he had two boys and I think eight girls that my mother's father, his name was William Alexander, and his wife, her name was Mary Estahana, had. That's such a different name, Estahana. But her last name was Jarrett. My daughter, Nancy Ramsey Mann, her middle name was Jarrett, and that was my grandmother's maiden name, Jarrett. There are a lot of people who we know who have the connection with that name, Jarrett. Then there's some men that I know who were distant relatives who had the name Jarrett who were cousins, who were distant cousins of my mothers. Anyway her name was Isa, her grandmother, who married Matthew Geary, he name was, let's see her name was Elmira Ashley, she came from North Carolina some way how she got in West Virginia I don't know.

Well, my father's side now, I'll tell you the history about that. I don't know whether my daughter Nancy even knows it, I didn't know this until just a few years ago. Nancy Vineyard, she's my great grandmother, and she lived, I think it was in Greenbriar, it was in Virginia then, it was back in say like 1820 or something like that and she became pregnant and had this boy. She wasn't married but then they found out later that the guy did say he wanted to marry her, but she wouldn't have him. Anyway, his name was Loudoun, you know, there's a Loudoun County, Virginia, up in Northern Virginia; it's that same strain of Loudouns. Anyway, they were never married, she had this boy, and his name was Presley, I'm not sure where that came from, long before Elvis was ever around. Her father sent her to Monatauk County, Virginia, that's near Roanoke down there in Fincastle, its very historic through there. Anyway, that's where she went and had this boy and I don't know whether she ever married or not but if she had married this guy, our name would never have been Vineyard, it would have been Loudoun. So it's just by chance that all my family were named Vineyard. People so often would say they've never heard of the surname Vineyard but in West Virginia there's all kinds of vineyards, and that's where it comes from. But Presley, that was the name of this child that Nancy Vineyard had, and she went to live with her brother near Roanoke and they lived there and she raised him. And then there were some of her family from Vinton in Roanoke. See there's Vineyards there, and Vineyard is the first part of the name Vinton and there were Burtons and that's the last part of Vinton. They named this suburb of Roanoke, V I N T O N, and I think that's so interesting. I don't know whether she ever got married to somebody else or any of that. But then, when he grew up, Presley Vineyard married and had a big family and one of his sons' names was William and they called him Billy. He was my grandfather's brother, and you know what, he never wore a pair of shoes, he wore buckskin moccasins all of his life, and that's absolutely true, that's been verified. They all called him Uncle Billy. Well he and my grandfather walked and drove a whole bunch of cattle all the way to Tennessee when they were young kids. Uncle Billy, my grandfather and this old gentlemen, their father, they took those cattle clear to Tennessee to sell 'em. I think it's just so interesting to find out all this stuff. I had heard of Uncle Billy Vineyard before, and I found a copy of the obituary that was written about his death; he died before the turn of the century. But my grandfather, I have his obituary somewhere, he was the oldest living Confederate soldier in Roane County, he died in '41! I graduated from college in 1940, and he lived till he was almost 95. He died in September, his birthday was the twenty-seventh of September, 1847. Nancy was born in 1947, exactly 100 years later; and my father was born in 1871, and my grandson Stephen was born in 1971, also a hundred years.

My father's youngest brother was killed in a feud, I had heard this when I was young. It was in West Virginia in the early nineteen hundreds, like nineteen-two or something, maybe three. Anyway they, my uncle and this guy, got in a fuss over a property line and they fought it out and he got killed. Well my father's youngest brother was only 21 years old and he was shot right on the spot there. It was just like the Hatfield's and McCoy's. It was a duel, you know a shooting, not a duel with swords or anything, but it was with gun. And that other man just killed him. It seems so silly, it was over some property line or something. One just like some of these folks get into these messes now, you know. I still have some letters someplace. I'll tell you, my advice is if you have anything of interest that you want to keep be sure you know where it is. I remember reading these letters that my father wrote this lawyer and they were trying to have a lawsuit over it, but nothing ever happened, they never did get anything out of it.

My family's all from Roane County, West Virginia. It's Roane County, and I'll tell you about how this county was named. See West Virginia was part of Virginia for many, many years, all through the colonial time. 1854 is when they split them, and they came about naming it Roane County. It seems there was a federal judge that was going to Richmond for the legislature and this judge was in a wagon and had an accident of some kind. And along came some men going to Richmond from Roane County for this legislature to divide up Virginia and make it West Virginia. They were getting to naming the counties and, anyway, these men stopped to help this man, this judge Spencer Roane was his name. This Spencer Roane was a well known jurist back before the Civil War hit. These men met him and helped him get out of this predicament, you know whatever was wrong with his buggy or his wagon or what not. All these men were so impressed with this Judge Roane, I don't know who these men were, but they went and named the town Spencer and the county Roane for this man. There's some Roanes in our church here in Portsmouth, I talked to Mr. Roane, he's a electrician here in town, but there were never any families up there named Roane. But all there's lots of them around here that are descendants of that same family. And those men, they were so impressed with this Judge Roane, when they went on to Richmond, to the legislature, and all drew up the papers naming the county and the county seat after this man. So, that's where it came from. Spencer, West Virginia, Roane County.

Both my mother and father came from Roane County, my mother was from Augsburg's Mill and my father was from Newton. My father worked in a dry goods store in a town, a little crossroads town in Roane county. They met towards the end of the 1800s. My mother had gone to visit her real good friend Aunt Lou; Loula Stulup was her name. I always called my mother's friends aunt or uncle. They weren't cousins or anything, you know they were just friends, but I called them Aunt Lou and Aunt Georgie and aunt this and aunt that and Uncle Fred but they weren't any relation but that's just the southern way. And Aunt Lou lived in this vicinity and knew my father. And that's how mother met my father. I don't know for how long, but one time my mother told me they lived about twenty or twenty five miles from each other and of course back in buggy and horses days it was a big deal to go to visit somebody and see someone. One time she remembered, she had a cousin that was married, an older cousin that lived beyond where my father's family lived, and so that was her excuse to go visit her first cousin Aunt Hattie and Uncle John Looney. So mother said she remembered that dad had a team of horses and a buggy and the two of them drove by a house and how my father told her "that's my home that's where I live", and his mother and father and his one sister, Aunt Sally, lived too. Mother said that she remembered seeing my Grandmother Vineyard and Aunt Sally standing in the window looking at her to check her out as they drove by. You know stuff like that you really never forget. I guess she stayed several days and then he took her back to her home in Augsburg's Mill which was a ways, maybe more than 20 miles away. But then they were married in Charleston, West Virginia.

And that's another interesting story, that my father's family were all devout Baptists. There's a picture of my father's father being baptized, you know, immersed like Jesus was in the Jordan river. They still do that in a lot of places, they go to the river some place or the creek or something and they put them in. That was my grandfather, my father's father, Presley Vineyard. Anyway, then my mother's family was Methodist and they all were Republicans. You know there were Civil War Southern Methodist and Northern Methodist; well all of my southern family were Northern Methodist because they were Republicans, and then most of the Southern Methodist were Democrats. But anyway, so when my father and mother were married in 1901 they had made an agreement to keep from arguing about that stuff; he joined her church, and he we always went to the Methodist church, and she took his politics. So when it came in she could vote, she would vote Democrat. That's the way they settled it so they never had any arguments over politics. You know, lots of times that breaks up marriages, politics and church, people just can't seem to accept it.

My father had great aspirations, he even wrote a book about the Civil War. As a child I always remember we had this great big box of books, my father's book, in our basement. It was published in New York in 1914, and see that he did all that before I was born. I know he made, I think it was 13 trips to Gettysburg, and did all this research on that Battle of Gettysburg. Even though he only had an eighth grade education, it was really something for him to go ahead and do all that on his own and as far as I know I don't think he ever made any money out of it or anything. But he and my mother went to New York and had that published, and I'm sure he paid to have it published, nobody else did. And somebody told me in later years that somebody they knew said that you could buy a copy of that book for a hundred dollars at some book dealer someplace because there was so few of them available. And Dr. Roberts, our former neighbor who was a history professor at Radford University has read the book and he said that he was really impressed with the way my father wrote it and all. And another thing he said he admired, there was a Cloy's Mountain, which was near Radford, and there was a battle of Cloy's Mountain, in the Civil War, and he said that that was the first time he's ever seen any mention of that battle in any history book. He was so impressed, of all the books he'd read, this was the first one he'd seen any record of that battle. So that made me feel good.

My mother and father were always able to have help around the house since my father was successful. He started out with his brother in a mercantile business in the country, that was back in Looneyville. Then my father left that business and moved into Spencer and opened a men's clothing store. Then he went into the loan business, like a building and loan, private banking is what they call it. And that was the business as long as he lived. Then my brother went into the business after my father was stricken. He had strokes and was bedfast a long, long time; he died when he was only 57; and my mother lived to be 91. But anyway, she was always able to have help in the in the home. And she worked too in the store and different things in the early years.

My father had bought some property in Florida. He was going to retire down there, and why he liked it there in St. Cloud was because there was an old Civil War soldiers home there. He wanted to go and get acquainted with the old Civil War soldiers, that was his ambition, but of course he never lived long enough. And I'm sure that was years ago, those guys are all gone now, but they had a retirement place there for the old Civil War soldiers. And it's just a few miles from Disney World.

My father never lived long enough to enjoy his retirement, he died in '28. He was not a tall man, very small, short, heavy set. He never smoked and never drank anything, but, he ate too much with no exercise. See he was in the bank all the time, with no exercise, and that's what brought on this high blood pressure and strokes. And for 18 months he was bedfast and couldn't speak; it was sad. And he had to have a nurse with him all the time, but we kept him there at home, and so, anyway, it was hard.

What's funny about that is that he was sort of what I'd guess you'd say now-a-days a health nut. He went several different years up to Battle Creek, Michigan, to the Kellogg Sanitarium. The Seven Day Adventists ran that sanitarium, in fact I think they still have it up there. The Kellogg the cereal people and the Post cereal people, they were located up there too. But they had doctors at this sanitarium and my father and mother, she went with him sometimes, not all the time, but she did go and that's how she found out that she was expecting a baby, me! My parents were at advanced ages when I was born. She was 43 years old, and my father was 6 years older, almost 49, I believe. I had a brother 13 years older and I think it was quite a surprise when they found out that she was expecting a baby because 13 years had gone by and they hadn't had any more.

I was born in a hospital in Parkersburg West Virginia, December the twenty-eighth, 1918. That was 50 miles away from Spencer and they went up there on the train. My mother had a very, very hard delivery, in fact she was almost an invalid and they had to bring a nurse with her from the hospital in Parkersburg. So they had this woman stay there and help take care of her for a good while. I know mother said her first child was a boy was stillborn, so I guess I was lucky to have been survived all of that. But we always had help in our home, we all called them "hired girls" and back then you could get a girl to come and do the work for three or four dollars a week, you know, that was when money really amounted to a lot.

Spencer was a good place to grow up. One thing I remember is when they would have this town band, a volunteer band, with just men, no women in it. And my brother was in this band, he was probably a teenager about then. They built this bandstand in the courthouse square, and when they dedicated this bandstand they had me up standing high up on a ladder or something holding an American flag. I remember that, and I hadn't thought of that for years until the other day just seeing all these flags around and I thought about this one time. And right around those times I remember they used to have hometown talent shows and plays and like the Lions Club or the Rotary Club and they would put on these shows. They had shows two or three different times when I was a child. And one time they had what was called a "Womanless Wedding", it took place in the movie house, but these men would all dress up like women with make-up and all this stuff, and it was amazing, and they had a ball. I know my brother dressed up and had on makeup and a fur coat, it was such a picture. Sometimes companies would send a director from wherever their office was and put these shows on and this director would pick out the local people that were to be in it and they'd have practices and they sold tickets and it was a big thing.

I really was like an only child, because my brother was so much older, but one time we had this woman who lived with us, we always had some hired help around, and in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve she woke me up and took me downstairs. It never dawned on me who this woman was, she had on her red bathrobe and I guess it was Santa Claus that came and got me up and we went downstairs. I wanted to know where Santa parked his reindeer and it was this Mrs. Jarvis was her name and, of course I didn't recognize her, and she said, "well I parked over there in front of the Baptist church". The Baptist church was across the street from where we lived, so I went to the window and looked out and looked for the reindeer. You know, I can remember like it was yesterday, and that's when my father was still living. So I was really small then, because he died in October of '28, and I was ten years old on the 28th of December. That's late in the fall, but it's so funny that you know I have lots of good memories of growing up and living in a small town and knowing everybody.

It was such a fun little town. There was this family, Price was their last name, that lived across the street down about a half a block and there were five children in that family, and I spent all the time I could with those kids. There was one boy, four girls, Hobert was the boy, "Pug" we called him. And my mother would have to come out to the corner of the lawn and then yell for me to come home, I always had plenty of playmates. I started first grade when I was five and a half. You know with my birthday being the way it is at the end of the year, they wouldn't take you now, I think you have to be six years old to go to first grade. Anyway, back then I was four and five when I went to kindergarten. Well, everything in West Virginia is really hilly, there were these terraces behind the house I lived in and there were houses right up on the next street then up another street then up another street. I was five and a half and I went to the first grade, I remember. This was long before they had buses and you had to walk to school and you had to come home for lunch, they didn't have cafeterias and stuff like that. It was probably a block and a half to the high school, but then the elementary was way up on this hill, and I would have to walk straight up this hill, it was called "Schoolhouse Hill". And we would come home for lunch and then have to walk back up that hill after. And Toby, my girlfriend who died just last year, she lived up on a hill way behind me she would walk down all those steps, come and so often stop and I'd go with her and we'd walk to school. Then she'd come home and walk up all those steps and go home for lunch, and then come back and then go back to school and then come home in the evening. And you know these kids now they're carried on a bus, they never walk anyplace. But my we didn't have any school buses or anything like that, but by the time I was in high school they did bring kids in on buses from out in the country, but not in town, you still had to walk. Anyway, it was all a great experience, and the school I went to was the same school my brother went to. That old building I think is finally destroyed, they don't use it anymore, but it was there a hundred years, I think.

Spencer is a small town, I think probably four or five thousand, it's the county seat of Roane County. I'll never forget, at one time but it's closed now, there was a big state hospital there for the insane in Spencer. My mother used to hire some of those "trustees" they called them, the patients, for work around the house. I know we always had this guy, Charlie was his name, who came and mowed our yard who was a patient at that hospital. And of course mother would fix him a big lunch and he loved that, but that hospital's been closed about fifteen years now, they've torn down the building I think. There were three state hospitals for the insane in West Virginia, one was in Huntington, one was in Spencer and one was in Weston. And I know when I was in college and stuff and people would ask me where I was from I would say, "well I'm from Spencer" and they would say, "oh my lord, they let you out!". That's funny how that was one of the big jokes, "how did you ever get out of Spencer?" you know, it was a big joke.

I think when I was a little bit older the center of our whole life was going to the movies. They didn't have cars like they do now, nobody had a car, you just went to the picture shows, that was about it. But they had one movie house in that little town and the man that owned it started it in 1907. His name was Mr. Roby, he's been dead a long time but it belongs to somebody else now, and it's called the Roby Theater, and it's the oldest continuing operating theater in the whole United States, since 1907. And that one movie house had all the westerns and whatever or whoever was popular back in the thirties. I was in high school from '32 to '36, and that's when money was hard to come by and a lot of kids didn't have any. I remember Mrs. Roby, the owner, she sold the tickets and you always tried to get in on ten cents as a child, but then she knows you're over, twelve or whatever, and she says "I think you're gonna have to start paying more money", you know you're over maybe a quarter. That just about killed me that I had to pay more. And I have a diary in here I found not long ago and about everything in it's about going to the movie, going to the movie. I don't know it's just things were so simple then, not like it everything's so complicated the way that kids have to have everything, and the money, and nobody had a car to run around in. even in college people didn't have cars. But we used to buy those movie magazines, and trade them around and read about Joan Crawford and Bette Davis and all those older women. I don't know, it's been so long, and then of course we had the radio, no TV. But we didn't go to the movies as dates or anything. We didn't date like kids do now, you know we had groups of people. Well I never did, you know. We'd have a banquet, like the Junior-Senior Prom, but we didn't have a dance, it was just a banquet, you didn't wear long dresses or anything. I remember back then, you know all those fancy clothes you had, we didn't do that stuff. This was in the 30s when I started high school, so no it wasn't anything like that. They had the banquet, it was called the Junior-Senior Banquet, and all the young folk, the juniors and seniors just went, but they didn't have any dances or anything like that. But sometimes we had some parties and things. I remember and Kitty, my friend Kitty Lou who went to Temple University the nursing school, she had her own bedroom up on the third floor of her house and these girlfriends of mine we would go and spend the night. But there never was any serious dating anybody when I was young, I don't remember anything like that.

Of course I went through the elementary school through the eighth grade then I went to high school in 1932, Spencer High School, and it was within walking distance, we could always see the high school from where I lived. We came home for lunch all the time and went back, I was in, and oh gosh, I was in the National Honor Society once, but I don't think I set the world on fire. I always made passing grades, but I wasn't any honor roll student or anything, and I worked hard as I could, but I always did well in history and enjoyed different things.

One thing, though, is that I knew that I would go to college. Whether I wanted to or not I was gonna have to go, I think. One of my good girlfriends went to Philadelphia, to Temple University Nursing School, and she married a doctor that she met there and she lives in Elmira, New York, but most of my girlfriends weren't able to go to college. But nobody insisted I go, or anything like that, I just, I wanted to go!

So, when I graduated from high school in 1936, I first went to a girl's college in Pennsylvania, near Philadelphia, called Beaver College. It was a very nice school, but it was expensive. And OH I got so homesick, every morning when I went there, I'd get up and vomit, just like morning sickness. It was awful, I was so homesick. But then when I got to come home at Thanksgiving, I went to Charleston on the train and my brother met me there. Then it was fifty miles more home to Spencer from Charleston. But I was okay after that first time I got to come home. But then I transferred to Ohio University the next year and was very happy there, it was only 80 miles from my home. Ohio University is in Athens, Ohio, which is confusing to a lot of people because Ohio State is in Columbus, but this is an older school it's the original Ohio University. History was always my subject, but I never wanted I never wanted to teach school, so I got a BS degree in Commerce it was called at Ohio University. I took typing and shorthand in high school and in college, but I never did very well in short hand, but of course that's all before computers. I've never tried a computer. I can type, I used to type all the time so somebody said if you can type, you can use a computer, but I don't know.

I didn't go to Ohio University the first year because I couldn't get into a dorm and I didn't want to live in a private home. So the second year that I didn't get in a dorm, I got in a private home and that was okay. Then I joined a sorority and I lived in the sorority house for the two years after that. And I'm still in touch with some of my sorority sisters and I really enjoy all of it. There were four of us who were roommates in the sorority house in one of the rooms that had bunk beds. Three of them have died now, I'm the only one that's left. You know, you just feel sort of flabbergasted when you read how many have died.

My husband Harold and I went back and got together with some friends, there were four of us couples. We all went back and stayed in a motel right by the campus, we didn't go to a ball game or anything but we had a really good time. Everybody's kids were grown and had their families so we were footloose and free and we didn't have to worry about anything. But we had a good time, and went back to the sorority house and it had changed so much.

I was always social, I wanted to get into the swing of everything, but I never was in, you know, I never really drank or anything like that. The Barry Hotel was the local hotel there and we would go down there sometimes after school when we were seniors, and we were over age, and they would sell us some beer. I never did get into any of that stuff, but I remember drinking a beer would set me off. I do recall something like that and I liked beer once in a while, but we never did get into it, some did, just not us. I didn't know of any bad things that happened, or anything. I think that everything's so different now, so open and so wild, and all that. My folks came for the graduation, and I'll never forget this, my Grandfather Vineyard was living, and I sent him an Ohio University commencement invitation. Of course I knew that he wouldn't be there, but I wanted him to know that I had graduated and I was so proud. And then one time my mother came for the mother's day they had and all the mothers slept in the sorority house and we slept on the floor, we had a good time with our mothers being there in the sorority house. That was fun.

And I know that going to dances we'd have, oh golly, we always had good dances. Musicians like Glen Norver, I remember and Mildred Bailey sang with him and we had the big name bands, Glen Norver and Mildred Bailey, and Larry Clinton, I remember them, it was the "Canadian Sunset" he used to play. I don't remember all of them, but we did have a lot of big bands, and Ken Kaiser and all those big bands would come to the college campuses. We had different places where they had them play and the sorority and the fraternities had different dances, but they didn't have all that drinking and doping and stuff like they do now.

I graduated from Ohio University in 1940, and that summer after graduation I went to the Pi Phi National Convention out in Pasadena, California. We went on a train and there was about five of us and we stayed at the Huntington Hotel, oh we had a ball. And then we took a trip clear up to Seattle and Vancouver and up into Canada, and it was a great experience.

Since I'd studied merchandising and all this stuff, Lazarus, that's a big department store in Columbus, they offered me a job before I graduated, so I said yes, I'd take it. But I was lucky, I got to have my trip first, so I didn't go to work until October. I was a buyer, an assistant buyer in woman's coats and I had a roommate, a girl, well an older girl who was a sorority sister of mine. I went to work and I worked there for a while. But then, I don't know, I did everything my brother always told me to you know, he was the boss and since my father'd been gone for so many years. I guess I thought he was my father the way he acted, you know he was very dictatorial, and I'd just go along with it. Anyway he decided I should get a job at the Internal Revenue and through his political shenanigans, he got me the job. So I resigned from Lazarus and gave up this apartment and went to Parkersburg, which was near my home in West Virginia.

My brother had taken over the family business after my father passed away. My brother had to come home and go into the business. They had had another man, Mr. Casto who worked in the loan business in this old bank building. They finally closed the loan business out in 1937, my brother, after he closed the building and loan business then he opened a furniture store there in Spencer.

My brother got me that job for the Internal Revenue in Parkersburg, that's where the federal offices were for the Internal Revenue in West Virginia. So I worked there in the cashiers' office.

Though I didn't work at the IRS for too long. I was working there and World War II and Pearl Harbor came right after that in '41. But I had friends that lived there and I rented a room and I worked in the cashier's office, and I'd make all the deposits for the tax time all those checks coming in, it was the whole state of West Virginia's main office there. And I would carry all that money, but of course look at me you'd never think I had that kind of money on me. And I was there 'til after Pearl Harbor and then when my brother was drafted, he said "you're gonna have to come and take over this store". He was not married had no obligations, that's why he was drafted even though he was in his thirties, but that time they were even taking married men with children, it was getting pretty desperate, some of that. He had been to military school for a couple of years but I don't think it was hard on him. Then this guy my brother grew up with who worked with him in the store, he had to go to service too. He was married and had a child, but they he still had to go, and so his wife and I ran this store and we had some older men who worked there and we did fairly well the whole time.

Soon after I moved back to Spencer was when I met my husband, Harold. I met him through Mr. Bowie. This man's daughter was one of my good friends, and Harold lived on the next farm over. Harold lived right next door to Mr. Bowie out in the country, they could see each other's houses, and Mr. Bowie decided he wanted me to meet Harold, and, well, that's how we met. Harold was in the service pretty soon after we met and we did most of our courting all in letters and stuff because and he was sent to boot camp and then overseas. We were married and he was out of the country about two weeks after that and gone 18 months.

But, oh, Pearl Harbor, I can remember like it was yesterday. My mother I always went to church together, and my brother, he was at home then. See it happened on a Sunday morning, and of course it was 7am out there when it all broke loose, and we were on our way walking to church. Of course when we got home the radio was on and then I remember they were talking about what all had happened. I know one thing, I had gone to New York before Pearl Harbor with mother's friend, Aunt Lou, one of mother's good girlfriends. We rode the train up there and stayed in a hotel, went to some plays, and shopped some. While we were there, a Japanese guy was there trying to work out something. I can't think of his name, but there was a big celebration, a big thing to do, and they had a band down there welcoming this guy from Japan. But then it was after that that Pearl Harbor had happened, he was supposed to come in there to pacify something, but it didn't happen and I do recall that. It was all in the newspapers, I think its what it was, so that's what I remember about before Pearl Harbor.

Harold went to Germany and France and he did not come back from Europe until 46, June of '46. He was over there a whole year after the war was over because he went in late, you see. He had this high blood pressure and it took a long time and finally they did take him. He wanted to go. I think there's guys that couldn't get in, physically, and it really hurt them because they felt obligated, I guess. That's the way he felt. A lot of guys now, one of his brothers, the oldest one, he ran as hard as he could went to Ohio and got a job up there in a defense plant so he didn't have to go. You know a lot of fellas that did that. But anyway Harold went.

See Harold wanted to be in the paratroopers, that was his goal and he went, but something happened, I don't know, he never did say, but they didn't take him in but he trained for it. So anyway, then he came home and we were married, and a few weeks in he was shipped out. I went with him up to Washington, to Ft. Meade. Ft. Meade was up there between Baltimore and Washington someplace. That's where they left and came back. And he was in Paris, he was over there a whole year, I think the armistice was signed like in April '45, and he didn't come home until June of '46. He was over there 18 months or so after the war was over. He was lucky, he had a natural hankerin for cutting hair, and he made all this money as a barber in the army, and he sent all this money home special, I had over 2000 dollars I'd saved that he'd cut hair for.

You know Harold never got a scratch or anything. But then a lot of girls I know whose husbands were killed, too. So, I remember one time I went I think it was about five weeks and I never heard a word from Harold. Stuff like that really gets you primed up, you know, if something terrible's happened, but finally a whole bunch of letters came at the same time. But, that was just a breakdown in communication someway, I guess. But it was pretty, pretty serious.

Then, when Harold came back I drove up to Baltimore to meet him at Ft. Meade, that's where he got discharged. Harold's brother Frank, who was in the air corps, he was stationed in Alexandria out in Washington, he came up too. Then Harold and I, we just took this big trip. See, we were married and we never had a honeymoon, we didn't get to go on one, so we were gone six weeks. We went to California, drove all the way out to see my friend Kate Bond in Pasadena, and then we went all up San Francisco and up the west coast and went into Canada, Banff and Lake Louise, did the whole west. We came back through Yellowstone. I remember I hadn't been to Yellowstone before. But anyway we were gone and Harold didn't have to go back to his job until October, and this was June when he got home, so we were doing all this traveling. Then when we got back, we found this apartment in Christiansburg, it was over a fairly new grocery store, and it was a pretty nice place, except we didn't have a hot water tank. Finally Harold, since we had to heat water to take a bath and wash dishes, bought a hot water tank and took it out of the rent. That's the only way we could get this guy to pay, because he wasn't going to put any hot water tank. So Harold just went ahead and got it and fixed it himself and told him he'd done it and wasn't going to pay and he took it out of the rent, so that's how we got the hot water. Then we found another apartment, a real nice apartment, and this was before Nancy was born.

Harold worked in Radford, and that's where we lived 43 years after Harold came back from service. So we lived in Christiansburg and Nancy was born there then we built a home in Radford which was only 8 miles away. And Harold was a supervisor in the water treatment at the Radford Army Ammunition Plant in Hercules where they make all that rocket powder. They use a lot of water, I don't know why, but this was what his work was, with all this water, drinking water, sewage treatment, all that. So he was there many, many years, in fact he retired from there. He was on medical disability because his health had passed.

Nancy was born in August, 1947. She was a card, she was real chubby. Now she's tiny. Anyway when she was little she wore those chubbies, you know the clothes, and I had to have this woman make those clothes and she was just about as broad as she was long. Oh no, she'll be mad at me, I forgot, now she'll probably see all this. Anyway, Nancy one day when she was in the fourth grade, we lived close enough to the elementary school in Radford so you could see the school from our backyard, she walked in one day and she said "this is the happiest day of my life". And I said "well what's happened?". She said "I'm gonna be a cheerleader!" And she was, and then in high school she was a cheerleader. But that, you know, still I think for the girls that's the highest pinnacle.

This one time, when we lived up in Monroe Terrace, Nancy was 18 months old and we lived in an apartment. Harold had to drive to work, it was oh maybe 12 miles or so, it wasn't too much, but we decided we wanted to get out of that apartment, and she was walking you know she was 18 months old, so anyway we found this little house in Radford. They were built in World War Two you know those little cottages you see everyplace, two bedroom and a bath and a kitchen and a living room is all it was. Anyway, this Mr. Hornbarger lived in the house just above us and they had two children Dale and Carolyn, and Nancy loved them, they were older she would even go up there and get in the bathtub with them. Mr. Hornbarger, this is an old fashioned way of doing it, I don't know, but he wrapped her up a bunch of switches, and she thought she was getting a great big package and it was nothing but switches. And he got the biggest kick out of that.

So it was in this real nice brick home that we had this apartment, two bedrooms and a bath. So she was born after we lived there, and we lived there until she was 18 months old. We paid fifty five hundred dollars for that little house, two bedrooms, a bath, and it had a wooden, no a dirt floor basement. Harold went into that basement and put some wood down since mother gave us some old Maytag washers, and I had that washer down there and our floor furnace and Harold put some wood planks for me to stand on so I didn't have to stand on that dirt. And here was dirt all around and it was dug out enough for that washing machine and the floor furnace and he fixed it so a sub pump could pump the water out into the sewer from the washing machine.

One time, this was so funny, Nancy locked me in that basement. She was about three years old, and there was a little a girl that lived up the street, Linda Long was her name and poor girl she couldn't talk, and she was deaf. Well, we used to say deaf and dumb, but she was mute, I remember. Nancy loved going up and playing with her, even though she couldn't talk. I think Nancy did all the talking for the both of them. Anyway I was down there washing clothes, and oh it was cold too, I remember it was in February. And Harold worked all three shifts, but he had gone to get a hair cut, and here in the basement, Nancy locked me in and I couldn't get out . Then she took off and of course I didn't know where she'd gone. Then, anyway I heard Harold drive in because there was gravel on the driveway, and of course I hollered and he finally heard me. He came and let me out, and he had to go looking for her. I said I didn't know where she's gone, but he found her up there. So I finally got out but I know it was cold and kind of rainy and cold and here I was down that thing.

We were there 'til we built that house out there on Ninth Street in Radford. She was in the second grade then, and she had to ride the bus the first year clear down to Bell Heath in Radford because they didn't have enough room for her to go to Bakar in the second grade. There were three or four little boys that she grew up with there and she was the only girl, but they had to ride the city bus to go to school downtown. And Bell Heath was the one across from the Baptist church there in Radford, that old school. That's where she went to the second grade, and then when she was in the third grade she went to McCarthy, I believe, which was within walking distance. So, that's what happened when we moved, and '54 was when we moved into that house.

Nancy did just everything. I found a picture yesterday of her after she got a cowgirl outfit and the Coslin girls who were older and Linda Overby. Those girls were three years older than Nancy. She got that cowgirl dress for Christmas and she wouldn't take it off for days. We've got pictures of her and those older girls, and they were good to her though, they let her do anything, she ruled, she was in charge. Oh dear she was in charge. And you know youngsters were so shy, but Nancy never has been like that, and I have never met a stranger either. I've always been, and my mother was like that, social and entertaining and everything. But Nancy loves to cook and put on and that's just her element, she loves all that. And she just had so many friends all the time, you know, she just knew everybody and everybody knew her.

Sometimes Harold and I would go on vacation. This one time we went to find the retirement property my father bought in Florida. We still owned it and paid taxes on it and I wanted to see it. It was in a residential section down there in Florida, it had had orange trees on it and tangerines, and kumkwats, you know those little things, anyway, every winter the neighbors would pick that fruit and send us some of it, boxed up, and of course my mother would pay them for doing that. And so we sold the lot later, and took the money we got, I think we got 1200 dollars for it, this was back say in the fifties maybe, anyway, and had a stained glass memorial window put in the church in honor of my father and mother with that money. So I remember doing that and that was really interesting. Seeing the lawn and the people that lived next door.

They would have a festival over in Spencer every October and Harold and I used to make a special trip to go up there because we would see a lot of people that would come just like we did. They called it the "Walden Festival". This has been going on since the fifties, I think in '55 was the first one they had. They raise a lot of black waldens in that part of the country, and they bring them in. Anyway, it's a big parade and a carnival and all kinds with a football game and they have some big name country and western stars, you know and it's a big thing to do, and it's called the "Black Walden Festival". So I remember they would have an ox roast they called it. They would dig a big hole in the ground and put all these coals down in there and they'd put this beef, dress this beef, and put it in there and they'd sell ox sandwiches off that beef and it was a big thing. People would come there and maybe grown up there and hadn't been back in years. They came and saw everything.

Another thing was my mother's family started in 1907 what was called the Allsburg-Geary reunion, and all kinds of people from those two families would come. It's still active, of course during the war they didn't have it. It was usually the latter part of August and we would go every summer as long as my mother lived, and I've been back once since I've lived down here. I flew to Charleston and visited some up there but I can't make the trip anymore, it's too much for me now. But they still have it and these cousins and people show up from all over the country, some cousins who live in Texas, you know big families like that are scattered, everywhere, but some people lose interest, and some don't. But we always went as long as my mother lived. They would have it at a park or something out in the country some of these church camps have swimming pools where the kids can swim and they have shelters in case they can get under if its raining. So then, after the noon day meal, we would all get together and go to my mother's sisters and have supper and leftovers and it would be a smaller group, and I've got good memories of all those good times. My mother loved those, she doted on going to the reunion. Lately my cousin who's president sends out the invitations and I always send a check to help pay the expenses even though I don't go because they have to hire this place and clean up crew and at least I'm taking part in this even though I can't go.

I remember Harold and I went out to Hawaii and celebrated our twenty-fifth anniversary in '69. And we went to Hawaii for several days, and we took that tour, went out to the Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. I was so impressed with all of that. I couldn't believe we could go. We bought the tickets in Blacksburg, it was two weeks we stayed at Hilton Hotels, and had two meals a day that were included in the trip and our airfare from Roanoke clear out there and back and, anyway, and I think the whole ticket was listed at $600. Then in the 70s when Nancy and the family were out there in Guam for two years, her husband, Bill was out there working and Nancy taught school over there. So Harold and I, we went out there twice, and that was a good excuse. We stopped both times in Hawaii coming back and spent a few days there, and we didn't go back to the Arizona. I really have fond memories of all that, and I enjoyed our visit with them in Guam. And one of the times we were there, some people they knew loaned us their house. They had gone on a trip to Singapore or some place, and we moved over there and stayed in their house, Harold and I did. That gave Nancy and Bill some rest from us being there, and maybe we stayed there a couple of weeks.

Harold and I also took a lot of bus tours after he was on disability. We went to Europe twice and of course toured on busses over there. We went down to the Caribbean, we went down there on the QE2 twice, Harold and I did, with some, some of our neighbors and friends. We never did go with just the two of us on any of those cruises. We always found somebody that we'd already known to go with us. I've been fortunate to have had a lot of nice trips. I don't have any regrets, we did all we could do.

Then of course see my husband was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 1958, and he was treated for it. He was disabled for 28 years, and then after those MRIs came out, he was diagnosed at Duke and at UVA that he never had Multiple Sclerosis because it was like strokes. And he suffered. Harold was sick a long time, he was one of these vitamin freaks too, he would take 100 pills a day. Vitamins we carried when we traveled in Europe a couple of times and when we visited them in Guam he carried all those pills with him. He had a train case just full of those pills. And the doctor wrote an explanation so we never had any trouble. Though that's back in the late seventies when they weren't into all this dope stuff like now, I don't know if you can carry that stuff around or not. But Harold was so easy, he never gave a fuss, even though he never felt bad, or sick as long as he was able to get up and get around. But it was a big responsibility for me, because he was suffering from all this. We thought he had MS, but that isn't what was wrong with him, he just had those light strokes all the time. But, now I'm too old, I can't travel anymore. I've done all my traveling I'm going to do, except maybe down to North Carolina because that's about as far as I can go.

And those kids, the grandkids, Jessica and Stephen. Oh that Stephen, I tell ya, he's a card. He was so bad about staying in that baby bed. He could crawl out of that bed faster then you could keep him in. Oh dear. And Nancy and Bill. Bill used to travel a lot for the navy, and they and they'd bring those kids up there and stay with us. I'd take care of them and Harold would help me. Nancy'd go with him sometime. I tell ya that I was just so glad when they'd come and pick them kids up because just walking about made me so tired, and we have a lot of hills around. And my neighbor, Mrs. Sorelli, the lady behind us, Stephen would go down there, she'd have a real steep bank behind her house, and he'd roll down that. And she'd call me up and say "come down here and get this kid", she thought he was gonna kill himself or something. It was so funny. But he loved to roll down that bank. And then on the skateboard he'd go down Ninth Street, oh dear, in that stroller, that was Elsie's stroller. They were some wild kids.

Harold was in a nursing home out here for 19 months. I went to see him everyday, but so often they get so dissatisfied and unhappy, he never complained and he never even mentioned about coming home, he was happy. He had such a good disposition, you know I had a lot to be thankful for. And he was only in a hospital bed one night, that was unusual, he was up and walking around up until the very last. But he had cancer, and that's what killed his mother. He had cancer of the pancreas that it went into his liver. And that's what happened to his mother. And his color he changed so yellow looking, and he never complained of any pain to speak of, but we had a lot to be thankful for. But he was so sick. His funeral was on his seventy seventh birthday, he's been dead 7 years it doesn't seem possible. I miss him, but I enjoy being by myself some. I'm glad I can afford to have this woman come by, but I'm glad when I'm here by myself too. I miss my husband, of course.

She's a sweet thing, Nancy is. She's so good to me now, but she's so concerned, she hardly lets me breathe on my own, she calls me every day. I'm fortunate though to have somebody to look after me. Some of these girls I know don't have any children left or there's something's happened. Anyway, we've had a good life, and I just can't believe it all. I take so much medicine, though, every morning I take nine different things, no wonder I'm getting sick sometimes. I've cut back on it. I have arthritis, my mother suffered with some arthritis. For my arthritis, I take Tylenol and some Ultrab. I've cut back on that. I take two, I was taking four, I've cut back to two, and when I see him next in November he may put me back on four I don't know. But I have a good appetite and I'm lucky this woman I have is a good cook and I fix myself some food. Of course she's just here 5 hours a day, she comes three days a week. Anyway, when I get up in the morning, I just can hardly get up out of bed and walk I'm so afraid I'll fall. My mother lived to be 91, but she was an invalid. I'm so afraid I'm going to fall and break a hip or something. That's what I have a fear of.

I've had some bad falls. I've fallen twice just recently, and cut my head up twice. The last time I hit it on the doorknob right in my bedroom, and it my head was bleeding, and I went back to sleep. It didn't hurt me so much, but then I woke up in an hour or so and here was the pillow was sopping wet with blood, and it started bleeding again. So I had to get a neighbor to take me to the emergency room finally to get the thing stopped they had to sew it up. Then the second time I hit Nancy was on her way, she was coming up here that day, and she came and the minute she got here she took me right to the emergency room. You know she's not going to mess around. And I thought it's a good thing that I went to the hospital because it was still bleeding some. Then I had a bad nosebleed one time, and one of my neighbors took me to the emergency room. It's good to have neighbors when you need somebody, but Nancy and Bill are real close. They built a nice new house on the Outer Banks. Bill's worked so hard on that house. I'm so proud of that house as a showplace.

Nancy you know taught 25 years, she got fed up though, she said she couldn't teach any kids bigger than she was. And she's little, about the size of my granddaughter Jessica, but anyway, she had taught it while, it was a great experience, but she was glad she could give it up. They're doing fine. Bill has worked so hard, and see they met when they were in college, and these kids are doing good. But I'm not surprised at Jessica. I know she's worn out with all this travelling for work. That's no life to have to pack up and go someplace all the time, be on the go. So anyway, I'm sure with her qualifications she'll have no trouble getting a new job, although now's kind of a hard time to be out of work, I'd think. And Stephen and his wife Dona are going on a long trip. That's so nice.

Now, let's see, I go to church and I belong to a PEO chapter, it's Philanthropic Education Organization. We help young women get through college, it started out about a hundred years ago with a sorority at a college, but it's an independent now. It's amazing what a millions of dollars have helped. It's all over the United States, and its women who help these girls who are smart and its continuing education. Some of them have had bad marriages and they have children and no way to get an education to help them like through nursing school or LPN. It's amazing what we've been able to do. It's all over the United States. It started back in Iowa, I believe like right after the Civil War. There's just millions of women all over the world that have been able to help us. We have social gatherings and we used to have our husbands go with us to some of the meetings and we'd have a cookout, or something. It's a social and philanthropic organization and every state in the union has some chapters. I belonged to it before I moved here, so I just was asked then to join a chapter in Norfolk, so that's how I'm into it. And I'm active in my circle in church, I go to that once a month. It's always the second Tuesday of the month, and it's a charitable organization too. We help the Wesleyan Center, that helps the deprived black children and some of them the mothers work and they need to go someplace after school to wait for their mothers to come and pick them up. But I'm not as active as I used to be. I do drive. I drive right here in town and go to church, and Harold and I used to walk, but its, you know, I've had some bad falls and, so I don't walk out there anymore.

I think the weeks just fly by, it seems like Sunday comes around every other day. And of course and I think that television is so entertaining for me. I don't look at those sitcoms, I like all the news shows, and I look at a lot of CNN and the Today Show and local news. I know my husband and I used to look at so many of those sitcoms, but now I'm partial to the news. I don't know, but I don't read as much as I used to because I'd get so interested in TV.

I've made lots of friends and so many of my good friends are gone now. These two girls who died last fall, we weren't in college together, but we grew up in the same town. Kate Bradfield and I, we even had baby pictures made together and our families were real close. I still I look around this room and I see so many things they've given me, and I know we're not gonna live forever, the day's gonna come, but it was such a shock when my good friend Toby died. Her husband died in August and she died in October, they both had heart attacks, he died in his sleep but I guess that's a good way to go but it sure was a shock.

My mother had good care, and but her mind failed, and she lived to be 91, but those last, almost three years were pretty rough on her. Jessica was 19 days old when she died, she came to take her place, that's right. I firmly believe that, I know so many families that when there's a death, there's a birth in the family. So many people I've known this has happened, seems like fate just takes care of its own like that. And I know I had a girlfriend her father died just a few days before her first born. That happens so often.

I'll tell you one thing, I hope I live long enough to have some great grandchildren. I told Stephen and Dona that. I may not though, who knows. Oh well. Anyway, Nancy being an only child and she was such a pleasure to my mother. My mother would always take a nap in the afternoon, and Nancy would lay down with her. Mother would have false teeth and Nancy would want her to take her teeth out. That was so funny. And mother had fat on her arms and Nancy would play with her arms and she just entertained herself doing all that stuff.

But you know you think back on all those things, and they're all just good memories.