DUNHAM: It's November 13th, I believe, 2016. I'm here in the lovely home of
Mamie Hutchins in Wexford, Pennsylvania for the Rosie the Riveter World War II Home Front Oral History Project. And we usually start at the beginning. So could you tell me when and where you were born?HUTCHINS: I was born in McKees Rocks in 1922, December the 9th.
DUNHAM: December the 9th. Oh, your birthday's coming up.
HUTCHINS: Yes.
DUNHAM: Yeah. And then can you tell me a little bit about your family
background, kind of as much as you know, maybe starting with your mother's side of the family?HUTCHINS: You know what? I have pictures here from my mother when she came here.
DUNHAM: Oh, great. I'll take a look at those with the camera later. But when was
that and where was she from, her family?HUTCHINS: She was from Italy, Sicily, and she brought my sister that was
eighteen months old when she came and she moved to McKees Rocks and then she moved to Saville after we have ten children.DUNHAM: Wow.
HUTCHINS: There was seven girls and three boys. My mother was really something.
I couldn't believe her. She was really great. When we lived in Saville my dad worked at the Pressed Steel Car Company down in McKees Rocks and he used to go all the way from there.DUNHAM: Can I ask you, when your mom migrated here, did she have other family
here already or what led her here?HUTCHINS: No. My dad was here already. He worked for the railroad.
DUNHAM: Oh, right, because you already had a sibling born. And so how much
earlier did your father come?HUTCHINS: I think it was about a year or two years and then he went back and got
her. And when she come back my sister Jay was only eighteen months old. And then she had my brother. Oh, she had all of us. [laughter]DUNHAM: Do you know what it was like for your father when he first came? Did he
have a job lined up?HUTCHINS: I think he did. When he came my cousin was here already and my uncle.
They worked on the railroad. My dad loved working on the railroad. He always used to say he was going to move to Montana. He loved that place. But then he went back and got my mother. We had family down in McKees Rocks so we moved there first. And then later on we moved in Saville where we bought the house there. Yeah.DUNHAM: Okay. And what were you saying he did then?
HUTCHINS: Then he worked at Pressed Steel Car Company, the steel mill. Like that
time, we didn't have cars or nothing. A lot of times he even walked across the river when it was frozen he told me.DUNHAM: Wow.
HUTCHINS: And I laughed because he told me he would take pork chops and cook
them on the furnace where they were working. But anyway, we had a really close family, really close. Yeah.DUNHAM: Yeah. So where did you fall? They came in what year was it about? Or
what years? When your youngest sibling was eighteen months--HUTCHINS: Months old and my sister Jay was--
DUNHAM: So in the teens or sometime in the 1910s or--
HUTCHINS: No, my sister was only eighteen months but I wasn't born. My mother had--
DUNHAM: You were born in '22, yeah. Where did you fall in your siblings?
HUTCHINS: I was in the middle.
DUNHAM: You were in the middle. Okay, okay.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, I was in the middle. Yeah. We moved to McKees Rocks. We were on
Island Avenue. That's where I went to school at first. No, Saville, they just took me to school. I wasn't going there but they took me because the teacher said I could come to class with them. They were in kindergarten.DUNHAM: Oh, when you were like an infant?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. I was just four years old or something like that and they took
me to school with them because the teacher was really nice.DUNHAM: Did that help? Did you get to participate in sort of learning?
HUTCHINS: And I liked it. I said that made me smarter, I always thought. Then
when I went to McKees Rock I was in the first grade. And we lived there for--I don't remember how many years it was because then we moved back to Saville.DUNHAM: Were you young for your class in the first grade because you'd done that
or did you--HUTCHINS: Yeah. I was little. Yeah. Well, I was always the shortest one in class
of all the girls. [laughter] It didn't matter. I was--DUNHAM: Yeah. Was that challenging at all or was--
HUTCHINS: Not too much.
DUNHAM: It doesn't seem like it set you back.
HUTCHINS: No, it didn't. No, I did good. Yeah. [laughter] I did really good.
DUNHAM: What was the neighborhood like there?
HUTCHINS: McKees Rocks?
DUNHAM: Sure, yeah. What was--
HUTCHINS: Well, I lived on Island Avenue and right on the corner was a hotel and
right next to it was Burgunder's, that own Burgunder's Garage now. And the girl that lived in the hotel was my friend and I used to go over there all the time to help her. She used to say, "Come and do the onions for me because I cry and you don't." So I was with her all the time. And one time, you won't believe this, we were up in the--they had like a balcony like. We were sitting up there and her mother come in and said, "You have to go home right now." And I says "Why?" She said, "Because somebody's coming and you have to go home right now." I says, "Okay." Then we found out that Al Capone was coming there and he come to the restaurant and I seen him. He had bodyguards and that with him. But we went over to--and my mother said they told everybody to get off the street, right there. So my mother looked at him and she says, "He's nothing but a strunz." That means a little [inaudible]. [laughter]DUNHAM: What's the word?
HUTCHINS: She called him a strunz. [laughter]
DUNHAM: A strunz. Okay. How do you spell that?
HUTCHINS: I don't know.
DUNHAM: Okay, all right. We'll have to look that up.
HUTCHINS: You know what it means, don't you?
DUNHAM: Like a little runt kind of? Little--okay, okay.
HUTCHINS: Yes, yeah. Yeah.
DUNHAM: But powerful.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, powerful.
DUNHAM: Very powerful man. So do you have any idea what he was doing there?
HUTCHINS: No, I didn't know nothing. I didn't understand who he was even.
DUNHAM: Yeah. How old were you?
HUTCHINS: I must have been about five or six.
DUNHAM: And you were already cutting onions, that kind of stuff? Yeah, yeah.
HUTCHINS: Oh, my God, I was doing everything.
DUNHAM: Well, no wonder you had no problem catering and everything else, huh.
HUTCHINS: But we always had fun together. We always played together and
everything. But it was so funny. I never thought nothing of it until later on, when I grew up, who he was and what it was all about. Because I think one of the fellows that was with him got killed in that Valentine dinner, whatever it was. Yeah. But then I didn't understand that. I wasn't--DUNHAM: So there must have been some connections in the town.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. So I mean like I never--
DUNHAM: Maybe--yeah.
HUTCHINS: And then I did see President Roosevelt. He come down, right down in
front of our house in a car when he was campaigning. And I says, "That was the biggest thing I ever thought of, seeing him."DUNHAM: Before his first election?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. When he was going to be president. Yeah. And I thought that was
something to see. I didn't realize how great it was until later on. It didn't mean that much till later on. And I says, "My goodness, I did see the president."DUNHAM: Yeah. What was a typical day like for your mom when you were growing up?
HUTCHINS: My mother worked so much between cooking and baking.
DUNHAM: And had ten children you said. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Yes. My mother baked bread in a big baby bath thing. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay. How do you do that?
HUTCHINS: She baked. She threw all this stuff in and baked it. I know when we
lived on Brightridge Street later on, when I was older, all my friends used to come. They knew my mother was baking bread. They used to be at our house all the time because she used to fry this dough and make like donuts out of the dough. So everybody was there because mom, she was baking and baking and she was wondering why we were eating so much. And here are all the kids in the neighborhood waiting to get some. [laughter] But no, she worked hard all her life, even later on she was working. We had a restaurant. She worked there.DUNHAM: Oh, yeah?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: When did you start having the restaurant?
HUTCHINS: Well, when I graduated from high school my sister and I was walking
down in front of this place and it had a for rent sign on it. She said, "Let's open up a restaurant, Mamie." I said, "Are you crazy? We don't have a penny." She said, "That's okay. We can do it." We did. And she talked everybody into lending her money, do this and we'd pay them later. And the guy down at Kroger's, we got the food and we'd pay him later. And we had a big business. We had all the truckers. We had the guys from the railroad. We had the guys from the laundry room.DUNHAM: I know we're getting ahead of ourselves but about when was this?
HUTCHINS: That was in 1941. As soon as I graduated. And that's where I heard,
when I was in there, I heard about the war. It was on the radio. They bombed Pearl Harbor, we were in the restaurant and we had the radio on.DUNHAM: Yeah. Okay. Yeah, tell me about that.
HUTCHINS: And that's when we heard about the war. And that was really wild
because that's where I met my husband, in that restaurant.DUNHAM: Oh, really?
HUTCHINS: Yes.
DUNHAM: Wow.
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: So not the same day as the Pearl Harbor attack?
HUTCHINS: No, he was coming--
DUNHAM: Well, can you back up and tell me a minute what do you remember about
when you heard that day, that Sunday--HUTCHINS: Oh, I was crying. I was really upset. Really. We couldn't believe it.
DUNHAM: Who told you or how did you hear?
HUTCHINS: It was on the radio.
DUNHAM: On the radio. Yeah, radio.
HUTCHINS: We had the radio on and the president come on and he said about Pearl
Harbor and then he said we're going to war. And like I said, it was just a really big shock. Yeah. I think my sister's husband was going to the Navy or something. They didn't take him because he wasn't qualified. But we closed the restaurant.DUNHAM: Permanently?
HUTCHINS: We closed the restaurant right after that.
DUNHAM: Why was that?
HUTCHINS: I don't know whether my sister was--he was going or something.
Something happened. I think it had to do with--DUNHAM: Okay. She maybe had to leave town?
HUTCHINS: I guess when he went to the service. I don't remember what it was.
DUNHAM: Okay. Was he working at the restaurant, too?
HUTCHINS: I can't remember. I know her and I was working day and night. We took
turns sleeping.DUNHAM: Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit about? So it was the two of you
running the restaurant?HUTCHINS: Yeah. My sister's come down. They were all little though. They
couldn't help. But we took turns sleeping at night because we were there day and night baking pies and doing everything. It was really fun. I was scared to death at first. I was afraid of people. I would hide behind the counter and she'd say, "Get out there [laughter] and wait on them." But then they were all so nice to me that pretty soon I was really--we had bus drivers, guys from the railroad, guys from the laundry. They would be outside waiting for us to open up all the time. Yeah. But everybody was so nice.DUNHAM: Did you have to take out a loan to open the restaurant?
HUTCHINS: No. You wouldn't believe this. We went to town and then we went to one
of these shops that sells stuff for restaurants and we asked them if we could--she talked them into letting her take the stuff and then we'd pay them. So that's how we did it. And it was so funny because I kept saying, "We're never going to do this," but we did. It was a really big success. It was always packed. Yeah. Day and night. They would come from the bars and come down there to eat.DUNHAM: Wow. So did you have to hire other people, too, then?
HUTCHINS: I can't remember who else was there with me but I know that I was
there day and night. [laughter]DUNHAM: Yeah, it's hard work.
HUTCHINS: And that's where I met my husband, in there.
DUNHAM: Okay. Well, go ahead and tell me that and then I might back up a little
bit and ask you more about your childhood. But yeah. Tell me about meeting your husband.HUTCHINS: We had a big picture window in the restaurant and I was standing on
this ledge trying to wash the windows and I was trying to reach up there. And he used to come in once in a while with some other buddies. And he says to me, "Don't you have a squeegee?" I said, "No, what's that?" He went down the street and bought one, come up and did the windows. [laughter] So then he would come all the time and the fellow says, "He wants to ask you out but he's afraid to tell you, ask you." His buddy asked me out for him. So then we did go out and that's how we started to go out together. Yeah. We was out for New Year's and things and then when the war come out he signed up right away. Yeah. He went in February, I think, yeah, '42--DUNHAM: Wow, right away.
HUTCHINS: --he left. Yeah.
DUNHAM: You met earlier in '41?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Before Pearl Harbor?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Hang on just a second. I just want to make one little adjustment, I
think, on the--okay, we're back. Well, I just wanted to back up a little bit and ask you about--we talked a little bit about your early school. What was middle school and high school, yeah, like?HUTCHINS: I loved school. I cried when we graduated. I didn't want to leave. I
loved school. And I played volleyball, basketball, softball. In fact, I was supposed to sign up for a softball team but my mother would not let me go because she says, "Girls don't play ball." It was a traveling softball team.DUNHAM: Wow. I don't know about that. So this is in like '40 or '41? Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Before I graduated.
DUNHAM: A traveling--was it a paid softball team?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah. I don't know whether they paid. They just told me they
wanted me to try out for it because I played in school all the time. I was always in gym. I was in everything in gym. I loved gym.DUNHAM: Wow. And basketball at that time, was that where--
HUTCHINS: With the circles.
DUNHAM: Yeah, you didn't run to both--right.
HUTCHINS: Run. No, you stayed in the circles.
DUNHAM: Okay. Which side were you on? Do you remember? Or did you switch?
HUTCHINS: We switched. We didn't play one time all the time. We all switched, yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay, okay. Basketball's my favorite sport. It's such a different
version of it.HUTCHINS: You know what? It's funny. My brother played basketball. I never liked
basketball that much. I don't know why. It just wasn't my favorite place. I liked it in school but then when we start seeing it different, they played different. My daughter played, too, but like I said, it didn't--DUNHAM: Well, it's a very different game--
HUTCHINS: I know it is. It was really different--
DUNHAM: --from how you played. Yeah. [laughter]
HUTCHINS: --yeah, then when we played. We stayed in that circle. [laughter] I
thought that was so funny when I seen them running. I said, "That's what we should have been doing."DUNHAM: Yeah. Well, what was the neighborhood? I'm assuming it was predominantly
Italian American.HUTCHINS: It was mostly Italian.
DUNHAM: Were there any other ethnicities in town?
HUTCHINS: No, it was all Italian. I says, "I think the Italians all move
together all the time." One family was there, then another one come. Yeah. Because McKees Rocks, my brother's godfather and godmother lived there most of the time and I remember going to visit them all the time down in McKees Rocks, down in what they called the Bottoms. It was underneath the bridge like. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. But my mother's brothers, she had two brothers here, they were both shot. And one was shot in a railroad station when my brother was waiting for my aunt coming in or something and somebody was playing cards or something. They shot and he got caught. He wasn't even near the--they were playing someplace else and the shot come over there and killed him. Yeah.DUNHAM: Wow. Wow. Wow. And another brother was shot?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Another uncle? Is this--
HUTCHINS: Yeah. I think he was shot Christmas Day. We were at church. I remember
coming from church and we were all excited because the nuns, the sisters had given us a little bag with candy, okay. We were all excited about going home to show mom we got candy and somebody come around and down the hill. There was a big hill to our house. You know what? I can't think if it was her brother, my uncle. I think it was my aunt's husband, okay. He's the one that got shot. They were playing cards.DUNHAM: So both times it was kind of gambling related but you don't know exactly
what went down.HUTCHINS: Well, the first one, I never knew that that's the way they were
killed, the first one.DUNHAM: How did you find out eventually?
HUTCHINS: I got a paper and it told the story of our life. It's in there. And in
it it says the Mancuso family and it had all this stuff in there. And I seen it in there. But they found the fellow that shot him in California some years later.DUNHAM: Oh. Did they arrest him?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah. But I can remember that one because I was so excited about
going home with the candy. And we were walking up the hill and they come running down. Yeah. I must have been little because I can remember him in a casket and I had to climb up something to see him. I says, "He looks like he's just sleeping. There's nothing wrong with him." [laughter] So I must have been really little. I probably was because that was before we moved to McKees Rocks, I think. Yeah. So I had to be little. Yeah.DUNHAM: So did you go to a Catholic school or was it--
HUTCHINS: No, it was a public.
DUNHAM: No, it was a public school but you went to church regularly or--
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay, so what was church like? It was--
HUTCHINS: Oh. I know my mother liked the priest, you know what I mean. But I
don't remember church until I got older. Yeah. I can remember walking along, made to go to church all the time. But that was when I was a little older. Yeah. Yeah. One thing I remember living in McKees Rocks is right next door was Burgunder's. And there's like roof things there, there was windows where you could see the roofs and next door was--what was his name? Not Bob, not Jack. One of the Burgunder kids was like the same age as I was and we was always together and he would say, "You come over and eat in my house and I'll go over and eat in your house," because he liked to come over our house all the time to eat. [laughter] We used to switch places.DUNHAM: Oh, so you literally--
HUTCHINS: Yeah, we were real good friends.
DUNHAM: While he was at your house, you were at his house?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, we were always together on the roof. But it was fun just being
there. But his dad was so great with us. He would take us all the way out here to go get ice cream. I forget the name of the ice cream place. North Pole or something. I forget. He used to take us for ice cream. And then at Christmas they would take us to these places for shows and then they would give you all kinds of presents. I forget what the name of that one was, too. What the heck was the name? It's like one of them they have today.DUNHAM: Oh, really? It's carried on still?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah. I'm just going to do one more quick thing.
HUTCHINS: We eventually moved to the North Side. We lived down on Brighton Road
first and I went to Columbus School. I was in the first grade. And then we moved to [______? Avenue. No, we went to Brightridge Street first. That's where my brother died, when we were living there.DUNHAM: How did your brother pass?
HUTCHINS: He had a boil under his arm. He had been in the CCDs and they thought
he got some kind of flu or I forget what they said it was.DUNHAM: What's the CCCs?
HUTCHINS: The fellows went there and they trained them for like the Army. It was
like a camp thing where they were. Then they took them on a trip to the islands.DUNHAM: Which islands?
HUTCHINS: I don't remember.
DUNHAM: Okay, okay. Sorry. Go ahead.
HUTCHINS: I know he brought me a present from there. I know that the CCD was
done in Cumberland, Maryland.DUNHAM: Oh, CCD?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Yeah. It was the CCD camp or something like that. Yeah. Yeah.
Because every time I pass that place I think of that.DUNHAM: So he was a significantly older brother? Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Oh, yeah, he was older than me. My two brothers were both older than
me. Fred was like four years older than me. But he was my buddy. I used to polish his shoes, iron his shirts, everything, because we were really good buddies. Anyway, yeah, he was in there. Where was we living then?DUNHAM: What was the usual reason when you moved? Do you know? Was it--
HUTCHINS: I don't know what it was.
DUNHAM: --job related or just--yeah.
HUTCHINS: I don't know whether it was just moving because friends or what, work. Yeah.
DUNHAM: And by the time you were eight or nine, you're getting into the thirties
and the Depression. How was your family impacted by the Depression?HUTCHINS: Was. Yes. I remember them giving me milk at school because we didn't
have a lot of money and stuff. I hated milk and they would say, "It's sitting there and you've got to drink it before you go home." [laughter] They wanted to make sure I drank that milk. You know what I mean? There used to be a guy that would come around to sell boxes of spaghetti and stuff. A huckster I guess you'd call him. I don't know. And they used to come around the neighborhood to sell when we lived in Saville. I remember them doing that. But I know we didn't have a lot of money and a lot of stuff but my mother always made sure--like I can remember dinner would be in this big skillet. It would be potatoes and everything cooked all up together and that was our dinner. I remember that big skillet because it was always filled with stuff, something. But it didn't bother us. We never thought nothing of it, I would guess.DUNHAM: Was your father able to keep the same job all through those years?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Well, that's fortunate. Did you grow any foods yourselves?
HUTCHINS: Oh, yeah. My dad always had a garden with tomatoes and everything else
in it. Yeah. Yeah. Where we had a little bit of ground he had food.DUNHAM: Did you help with the garden at all?
HUTCHINS: No, that wasn't my thing. No. [laughter]
DUNHAM: And what was your house like? Can you describe kind of the living
situation? I know you lived in different ones but maybe a main one that you lived in for a while.HUTCHINS: Well, the last one we lived in, there was a kitchen, a dining room,
and one bedroom on one floor and you'd go upstairs and there was some more room. Then there was a third floor with two bedrooms in it. Yeah. Yeah.DUNHAM: And did you share a bed with a sibling?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. My sister and I slept in the same bed. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Just the one who you later worked with?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: And what's her name?
HUTCHINS: Nancy.
DUNHAM: And when was Nancy born?
HUTCHINS: She was two years younger than me. Yeah. And we were always together.
If we had to go to the store, we was together. With so many kids, one of us always watched the other one. Like I watched my sister Lorrie that's downstairs. And she watched my other sister that's up in Erie. We them dressed for bed, washed their hair and did everything for them because my mother was busy washing clothes and doing everything else. So that way that helped her. But we liked it. We enjoyed it.DUNHAM: What was the bathing and toilet? Did you always have an indoor toilet?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah, okay. And a bathtub?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. It was fun. It was really fun. We didn't have nothing. I
remember my brother getting a ladder and fixing it up with wheels so we could sit on it and he'd pull us all over the place. [laughter]DUNHAM: Okay. Inside the house? Or no, this is outside?
HUTCHINS: No, outside. Outside. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Outside. Okay. That was a fun ride.
HUTCHINS: And then he'd put a swing up for us on a tree. You know what I mean?
They always fixed it so we--DUNHAM: Got to be creative for play then. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. They always did things for us. We didn't have a lot but they
made sure we did things and it was good. Yeah.DUNHAM: Did you hear anything of the New Deal during that time or jobs in that way?
HUTCHINS: I don't remember.
DUNHAM: Yeah. I guess your father kept his job so that was--
HUTCHINS: Yeah. And then my brother worked there, too. When we lived on the
North Side he worked someplace. I forget where it was. I can't remember. Because I remember he used to bring coal and ice and stuff. Yeah.DUNHAM: What was healthcare like when you were growing up? Do you remember going
to the doctor?HUTCHINS: Never. Never remember. My mother did everything. We had a toothache,
she had little sacks of salt and put this on your teeth. She had something for everything.DUNHAM: Okay. So if you got a cold?
HUTCHINS: She made something for us to drink. I don't ever remember going to a
doctor when I was little. Never.DUNHAM: We talked about high school a little bit. But what was dating life like
at that time?HUTCHINS: You know what? When I was going to high school, when we lived on
Brightridge Street, we were always like a group. So many girls, so many boys. We were always together. We went to the skating rinks together, we went to together. And we just loved to run together all the time, you know what I mean? And it was fun being like that. That's our dating when we was doing that.DUNHAM: Just as groups. So was your hus--
HUTCHINS: And one of the boys would take one girl, usually when you were coupled
up with somebody. But like I said, it was so funny. Yeah. It was really something. When I was in high school we went to the dances and everything. I didn't have a special boyfriend but I had all kinds of boyfriends, you know what I mean, not just one. Yeah. And I remember when some of them went to the war I was so upset. One of them died. Yeah. But it was not very good. But I know I loved school. I didn't want to graduate. I really loved school.DUNHAM: So when you did graduate, you wanted school to go on, what were you
thinking right at that time?HUTCHINS: That's when we got that restaurant. That was the last thing. [laughter]
DUNHAM: That was pretty quick. Did you graduate in June?
HUTCHINS: In February.
DUNHAM: In February. Okay.
HUTCHINS: We were the first class to graduate in February. Were the very first
class. Yeah.DUNHAM: So that maybe made it extra feel like you wanted to continue school. [laughter]
HUTCHINS: [laughter] Yeah. I didn't want to leave.
DUNHAM: So you started that restaurant pretty early in '41.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. It was really wild. It was the wildest thing you ever heard of.
DUNHAM: And this is with--
HUTCHINS: My older sister.
DUNHAM: Older sister. Okay.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, but she's dead, too. But her and I was together for years. And
when she opened up a big lounge, I was there with her. She had a big lounge on Brighton Road, where we had guys from Heinz and guys from all over the place there. But I worked--DUNHAM: Is a lounge like a bar or what is--
HUTCHINS: It has a bar in it but it's a little bit fancier. But I worked at
Kaufmann's in the dining room after I graduated.DUNHAM: Oh, before the restaurant?
HUTCHINS: No, it was after the restaurant.
DUNHAM: Okay, so you had the restaurant for a bit.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Then my girlfriend that lived next door to me worked at
Kaufmann's so she says, "Mamie, come on over there and we can drive to work then." So then I--DUNHAM: Okay. So this is early '42?
DUNHAM: Okay. And I'm sorry, what is Kaufmann's?
HUTCHINS: Kaufmann's was a big department store but they had a big dining room
upstairs where all the lawyers and everybody else come to eat. Because I used to wait on the lawyers and they were so funny. They used to call me--what did they call me? But they used to be so funny. I never wrote nothing down when I got an order, okay. So they would switch chairs to see if I was right. They would do all kinds of stuff to try to--DUNHAM: And were you able to get it?
HUTCHINS: [laughter] Yeah. I probably would be--they'd call a computer kid if
there was computers then. [laughter] But I liked it. It was fun there. It was really great there. I worked there from--I can't remember how long. We were living on the North Side then in Gibsonia.DUNHAM: Were you living with your family still or did you--
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Okay.
HUTCHINS: No, I was married. Yeah. I'm sorry. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay, okay. So you met your husband and got married before he went to
report? Is that--HUTCHINS: No, he was in the service when I married him. He come home on leave.
And we got married. We weren't even talking about it.DUNHAM: Okay. Well, how did that happen then?
HUTCHINS: That shocked everybody. Shocked everybody down in Erie, too, where he
was. He come home and we just decided to get married. And the priest was so nice. We loved that priest that married us. He was always kidding us before we got married. And he says, "You mean you lovebirds are really going to get married now?" And we said, "Yes." [laughter]DUNHAM: Wow.
HUTCHINS: Then I just went with him. That's when I left Ambridge.
DUNHAM: Okay. So this is after. Okay. So what year did you get married? In '44?
HUTCHINS: Forty-four. Yeah. Yeah, I had to think, too.
DUNHAM: So when you worked at Kaufmann's, do you remember what you made? Was it
like a base salary plus tips or did they have tips?HUTCHINS: Oh, we only got a quarter or twenty cents and then we had to get tips.
And that's the first time we started to get social security. That was the first time we started to pay social--DUNHAM: Pay into social security. Yeah, yeah.
HUTCHINS: --security.
DUNHAM: Under Roosevelt. Okay. Sure.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. And I thought, "Oh."
DUNHAM: So you didn't like that at that time, huh?
HUTCHINS: At first I thought, "Man, they're taking my money off of me and I'm
working so hard." Yeah. But that was--DUNHAM: But good thing. Good thing that that--
HUTCHINS: Well, I was married then because my husband, he was sick. And he went
to the doctor's and they couldn't find out what the heck was the matter with him. And they was taking all kinds of tests with him. And then we were sitting with my sister in her place and they called him and told him that it was his thyroid. That's what was wrong with him. He was so sick he couldn't pick up a piece of paper.DUNHAM: Wow. When is this?
HUTCHINS: That was before I went to Kaufmann's.
DUNHAM: Oh, as a young man.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. And right after we got--
DUNHAM: So what happened?
HUTCHINS: [Narrator Addendum: This happened much later --I remember this.] We
weren't married that long when he--he had to get an operation, all kinds of stuff. But like I said, he was so sick he could not--we were bowling and he could hardly pick up the ball. And then we went to go outside and he was sitting on the curb. He couldn't hardly walk. So we decided to go, I think it was some kind of clinic, Cleveland Clinic, for them to take tests because they didn't know what the heck's the matter with him. And that's when they found out he had--one doctor kept saying, "Are you sure you and your wife aren't having trouble?" He says, "This has nothing to do with her. I'm sick. That's all it is." He says, "She don't--" [laughter]DUNHAM: Like they didn't think he was really sick or something?
HUTCHINS: They couldn't find out what was wrong with him. They kept saying it
was in his head.DUNHAM: Wow. That's interesting.
HUTCHINS: And then they found out that he had thyroid problems.
DUNHAM: Did they talk to you, too, then, since they thought it might have been--
HUTCHINS: Well, they called us. The doctor called us. We were sitting in a
restaurant downstairs and we were sitting there talking to my sister and they called us on the phone and they said the last test they did was that test. And then he said that's what it was.DUNHAM: Which was what?
HUTCHINS: Thyroid.
DUNHAM: Thyroid. Okay. Do you know what caused that or--
HUTCHINS: No. I didn't know your thyroid was that important until then. But I've
heard later on that it really is because I know the doctor does it to me every year. Yeah. But anyway, that's when he was really sick.DUNHAM: Yeah. I know we talked about you had friends from high school, your
husband, your other family member joined up in the military. How else did the US joining the war affect your community and your life?HUTCHINS: Well, the one fellow we knew, that was an Italian fellow, when he
lived across the street from us on Brighton Road, I think he got killed when he went to the service. We was all upset about that. But not lately. Well, he's dead now, too. One of the fellows that we used to know, run around with, I start dating him after, too. I was dating him and I was dating Hutch, I guess. But anyway, I sent him pictures of us when we were all together all the time. And he made copies and sent them back to me but I don't remember where I put them.DUNHAM: Oh, yeah. From those early forties there. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, the whole gang of us that used to live together. And I sent him
pictures when he was down in Florida and he was talking about me coming down there. I said to him, "I'm going to send you pictures then." And then he wrote back and says, "I know you want to keep these so I just made copies." So he says, "You can have them back." Yeah. I can't remember all their names but there's only one of them is still living. And it was really fun because he said to me--I had told him when I heard the one was dead. And he said, "Well, the only one we can't think of is Jack." And I says to him, "Well, I know he lived on Union Avenue because I seen him when I took the kids, my grandkids, when we were playing ball and he was there that one day. And so like a dummy I looked in the phonebook and called up and this man, I says to the man, "Are you Jackie Kane that lived on Brightridge Street?" He said, "What?" [laughter] I felt embarrassed after. But I says, "I'm just kind of looking." And he says, "Well, that's not me." [laughter]DUNHAM: But then you did find him?
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: Oh, no. Okay, this is a different person.
HUTCHINS: No, I didn't find him. My sister says, "Are you nuts, Mamie?" I said,
"No, I just--" [laughter]DUNHAM: Doesn't hurt.
HUTCHINS: I said, "I figured it wouldn't hurt nothing."
DUNHAM: Yeah. So you'd graduated high school and were young. So when you were
dating, what kind of things did you go out to do for dating then?HUTCHINS: Well, I remember when I went out with him we went--North Hills had a
club up there, okay. We were going to go to the club. Well, we had parked and when we come out it snowed so bad we couldn't get down the hill. We slid down the hill to get in the car. We dropped somebody off up on {Pearsall?} or someplace and when we got there there was a fire there. We got stuck there. So when we got home, I says, "My mother's going to kill me. I am never allowed out this late. She's going to throw me out." And he says, "I'll sit here and wait. If you're thrown out I'll take you home with me." [laughter] But my mother didn't. I said, "She's not going to believe me when I tell her everything that happened. [laughter]DUNHAM: Yeah. Did you have a specific curfew?
HUTCHINS: No, but we knew not to stay out that late. She didn't say you had to
be here at eleven o'clock or something but we knew that we weren't supposed to stay out that late.DUNHAM: Was your mother the disciplinarian of the family or your father or both?
HUTCHINS: My brother, my older brother, we used to call him the godfather
because my mother would tell him and he's the one that--he never beat us or anything but we knew when he talked that was it. But like I said, my dad never, my mother neither. My brother didn't either but he just tolerated enough that it made us scared, you know what I mean? And we knew better, not to mess him up.DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah. Well, I know you're joking, the term of the godfather, but
you mentioned Al Capone earlier. Did you know of any like mafia like influence in the area?HUTCHINS: No. No, no.
DUNHAM: And when the war started, since Italy was the enemy ultimately, too,
what was that like? Were there some people that had--HUTCHINS: Nothing like that. No.
DUNHAM: Had you heard of any Italian-Americans who were interned during the war?
Because on the East Coast there were some instances of that. Did you know? Or who returned to Italy?HUTCHINS: No. The only thing that I knew, that during the war my son-in-law's
mother and whole family was in the concentration camp in Russia. Yeah. And they didn't get out until it was almost two years after the war. Yeah. And she was little. She was a young girl. Now she's married. Now she's his mother. She has older kids. My son-in-law now. And then she come here. And I know when I worked at Kaufmann's there was a young lady that was a hostess. She was in Hitler's--what did they call the young kids when they--DUNHAM: I'm not sure but we can check. Yeah. I forget.
HUTCHINS: I can't remember what. Yeah. But there was a man that owned the
theater and every time he'd come in he would get her crying. And I was so mad at him. Finally they told her, "When he comes in, you leave. Just don't seat him. Just walk out."DUNHAM: What would he do?
HUTCHINS: He had her crying all the time. I guess he was calling her a Nazi and
all kinds of stuff. Yeah.DUNHAM: Did you know of any German or Japanese who were incarcerated?
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: No. Okay.
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: With recent immigrants from Italy, even your own family--
HUTCHINS: Probably.
DUNHAM: --there must have been some conflict or--
HUTCHINS: Well, I know Nancy's husband was in Italy when they went through there
with Patton. Because he was in the Army. And he was in Patton's Army. Yeah. I told you about how lucky, God was with us. I know that.DUNHAM: Well, you told me on the phone but why don't you go ahead and tell us.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. I know when he left he was in Norfolk, okay. I was supposed to
go up there to see him but my mother wouldn't let me go. They had different ideas. And his mother was going to take me but she said, "No, you're not going." But when he graduated from there he was supposed to go down to--where was it? Was it Norfolk? He was supposed to get a ship. But when he was on the train something happened to the train that was taking him up there so he missed it and that ship was bombed. So when he got there and the ship was gone they said, "Well, we're opening up a thing down in Florida. You can come down." They sent him down there. And that's when they just opened it up. It was near where the bomb site goes off. Not the bomb. Listen to me. Not the bomb.DUNHAM: Nassau.
HUTCHINS: Nassau, yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah, okay. Cape Canaveral. Okay.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. So they just opened this plane place on Cocoa Beach and so they
sent him there. Well, there he learned to be a mechanic, a navigator, and everything on the PBMs. Well, when he come home on leave is when we got married and I went back down with him. And we lived--DUNHAM: Part of why you got married, let me just ask, is it because did he think
he was about to be shipped overseas? Was that part of it or no?HUTCHINS: I don't think so.
DUNHAM: No.
HUTCHINS: He just figured, "Mamie, let's get married before something else
happens." [laughter] When we were down there we all lived in little houses. They were like summer houses where people come for vacations. Okay. We all lived in there. His friend was named Fudge and his name was Hutch. They called him Fudge and Hutch. And we lived together, his wife and us. We lived together when we were there. And them two, if they'd say something, I said, "She did it." And if the other one said something, "She did it." But it was nice down there. It was really nice.DUNHAM: Yeah. Well, that was your first time living outside of Pennsylvania?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. And it was the first time living by myself.
DUNHAM: On your own, without your family.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. It was the first. And I wouldn't do nothing. He says, "There's a
swimming pool right there. Go swimming. Go there." And I says, "Nancy's not here. I'm not going." Because he told me when we got married, "Nancy's not coming with us on our honeymoon. Forget it." Because she'd even come on dates with us. [laughter]DUNHAM: Oh, she would. Was she dating yet? No, because she was younger.
HUTCHINS: Well, she got married right away. She was married long before that.
That's when her husband went to the--DUNHAM: Oh, right. So how old was Nancy when she got married? Because she was
two years younger, yeah? She was pretty young?HUTCHINS: Yeah. They ran away and got married. Nobody knew they were getting married.
DUNHAM: How did your family react to that?
HUTCHINS: They were mad. They were mad.
DUNHAM: Yeah. But they approved?
HUTCHINS: No, but what could they do?
DUNHAM: It was an Italian guy?
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: No. Okay. So that made it doubly problematic?
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: No.
HUTCHINS: No. My mother just was upset because she did it.
DUNHAM: Your husband was Italian?
HUTCHINS: No, he's not.
DUNHAM: Okay. What is his background?
HUTCHINS: He's Irish and something else.
DUNHAM: Okay. And he was from the same town? So they're--no?
HUTCHINS: No, he was from West View. He didn't live near us at all.
DUNHAM: Oh, okay. Sorry. Okay.
HUTCHINS: He didn't live near us at all. No.
DUNHAM: Okay. Were there any Irish in town?
HUTCHINS: I don't remember. I'm trying to think of what Johnny was. My sister
Jay and Rose got married. They're older than me. I can't remember what they were. I think one of them was Russian. I think his mother, some relation. Because I remember my sister making something and she said she learned it from them.DUNHAM: But Nancy married--what was his background, did you say? The one who
married young? Is that Nancy?HUTCHINS: Yeah. Jones. I don't know what his background was.
DUNHAM: Okay. But Catholic?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: If it had been non-Catholic would that have been--[laughter]
HUTCHINS: No. They were all just mad because they ran away and got married. He
didn't have a job or nothing.DUNHAM: Did they have children young?
HUTCHINS: Oh, yeah. She had seven. Seven. One of them was born while he was in
the service because that's the picture of the baby I have. Because I sent him a telegram to tell him the baby was born. Yeah. Yeah.DUNHAM: Well, so you got down to Florida and you were married but on the one
hand you finally maybe had a little more freedom but you didn't take advantage of it?HUTCHINS: No, I didn't. I was terrible.
DUNHAM: Why was that, do you think?
HUTCHINS: Well, for one thing, I was kind of naïve. You might as well say I'm naïve.
DUNHAM: Well, we know that's not true.
HUTCHINS: Because I didn't know about life that much, you know what I mean?
DUNHAM: I was naïve.
HUTCHINS: I was naïve. I would say something then. Because--
DUNHAM: You'll have a chance to review. If you want to remove anything you can.
Or seal something.HUTCHINS: Okay. When we were down in Florida we were staying at this hotel at
first. And my husband come home and I said to him, "Why are all these sailors going in the rooms down there?" He said, "They're shacking up." Well, I didn't know what shacking up meant. And we were all together one time and I says, "What's shacking up mean?" [laughter] He said, "Mamie!" I said, "Well, I didn't know what you meant when you told me that." [laugher] But anyway, it was fun. When we was living there the fellows would bring us all kinds of--we was in this one little place and there was two dishes, two glasses, and two spoons and forks. That's all that was there. So the guys were always there because I'd cook and they would all come there. So they started bringing me silverware and this and that. And I said, "What the heck are you doing?" They said, "Well, we have this extra one here so we're taking it to you." I said, "Yeah."DUNHAM: Where were they getting it from?
HUTCHINS: I guess they were getting it from the planes. You know they weren't
allowed to take nothing back from the planes when they were exercising. They were looking for subs. Went to Mexico and everything else. All the food that they had on that plane, they were not allowed to return it. So they would bring it to us instead of--they said, "Otherwise we were shooting at targets in the ocean, for turtles or something, because we didn't know what to do with it because we weren't eating it all."DUNHAM: Wait. They were shooting the food? Wait, I don't understand.
HUTCHINS: They'd take a can of something and drop it to see if they could hit
the turtles or something in the water.DUNHAM: Okay. Just kind of goofing around.
HUTCHINS: Just, yeah, goofing around. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay. But then they found a better use for it. They brought it back to you.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, they brought it to us. [laughter] I says I wouldn't eat peas for
a long time because they always had peas. I said, " I didn't know that they weren't allowed to return it," you know what I mean? I don't know what the reason was.DUNHAM: That's interesting.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. I never asked. But we made really good friends there. Fudge's
wife, that's his second wife, still calls me. She lives in Texas. We write to each other. She comes to my parties and everything else.DUNHAM: Yeah. Now, was Fudge his born name or that's a nickname?
HUTCHINS: No, it was his last name. So they called--
DUNHAM: Okay. Like your husband.
HUTCHINS: They were really good buddies, the two of them, yeah. They always
laughed about this one sergeant, didn't know the difference between them because they do look something alike. They'd put names on the opposite sides so he would remember. [laughter] And the two of them were crazy together. But they were really good friends. We had a lot of fun, yeah, together.DUNHAM: Well, backing up to shortly after Pearl Harbor, because we haven't even
talked about your job yet. But before that, can I ask like, again, how things changed during the war? Did you participate in a victory garden or rationing? Oh, do you want to--[doorbell]HUTCHINS: I don't know who that is.
DUNHAM: Okay. We'll pause for just a sec. I should record that. Wait, wait. Say
that again. Your sister, I'm sorry, give your name again, is--LORRIE: Lorrie.
DUNHAM: Lorrie, okay. And what did you--
LORRIE: Well, legally it's Dolores but everyone calls me Lorrie.
DUNHAM: Dolores, yes. Okay. So I had paused this for a second. Tell that story
again about the letters from Hutch.HUTCHINS: Every time I got a letter from Hutch at the house and I was working,
she would come to the restaurant but I had to pay her before she'd give me the letter.DUNHAM: How much did you charge her for that service?
LORRIE: I don't remember.
HUTCHINS: Ten cents and a quarter.
DUNHAM: Oh, ten cents. That sounds pretty steep for that time.
HUTCHINS: [laughter] I know. That was my tips.
DUNHAM: Well, did you want to have a seat? We're just in the middle, just about
to talk about her work during the war years.LORRIE: Well, I don't want no picture taken of me. I just come up because the
Steelers aren't playing till four o'clock. [laughter]DUNHAM: Okay, okay. Yeah, I heard that. I know. We didn't want to interrupt
that. Got lucky that it's a late game today because we got a late start. But yeah. So I was just asking about, back to sort of onset of war. Did you participate in a victory garden or rationing or that type of thing? Was that going on?HUTCHINS: We rationed. Yeah.
DUNHAM: What do you remember about rationing?
HUTCHINS: We had to ration when we got sugar. We couldn't get butter. We got
oleo, where you mix it up and they had a little red thing and then you mixed it in and it made margarine. Yeah. And then we had ration tickets for different foods. I think we weren't allowed to buy certain stuff. They didn't sell it rather.DUNHAM: Yeah. Somebody used to talk about nylons and--
HUTCHINS: Oh, yeah. We couldn't get nylons or nothing like that.
DUNHAM: Did you do any workaround for that? Do you remember? No? Just did without?
HUTCHINS: I wasn't worried about them. I wasn't worried about them.
LORRIE: I used to pick up junk, take it to the junk yard.
DUNHAM: Oh, yeah?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: What kind of junk? Did you get money for that?
HUTCHINS: You used to get bottles and cans.
LORRIE: Helping the war.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Okay, okay. So like metal or--
HUTCHINS: Yeah, like pop cans and stuff like that. And you had--
DUNHAM: So did the rationing effect your ability to run the restaurant or change
your mom's cooking?HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: No? You still had what you needed for that?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can remember we had to go to the store and we
couldn't get certain things at the store. I can't remember what. Well, I guess we didn't get no meat and stuff. We didn't have lunch meat. We had Spam or whatever that was. Yeah, yeah, yeah.DUNHAM: Right, right. Okay. So after the restaurant closed you went to work
right away at--HUTCHINS: I left the restaurant to go to Ambridge, to go Ambridge.
DUNHAM: Okay, so you went straight. Because I thought you maybe waited at the
department store. You talked about that. Was that in between?HUTCHINS: Well, that was later. That was later.
DUNHAM: That was after. Okay.
HUTCHINS: That was after Ambridge.
DUNHAM: Okay. So tell me how you heard about the jobs in Ambridge.
HUTCHINS: Well, you know what? I can't really think of that unless it came on
the radio or when we were working they said something about it. Because I can't remember exactly how they told us that. In fact, maybe when the restaurant closed we heard about it, so that's when we went. But I can remember asking how we were going to get there and they told us we had to get a bus to go there. Yeah.DUNHAM: Okay. So how did you apply for the job?
HUTCHINS: We went down there and we filled out a paper. And they said they'd
call us.DUNHAM: Did you know exactly what you were applying for?
HUTCHINS: No. No. We just knew--
DUNHAM: Did you know what the salary was?
HUTCHINS: No. We didn't know nothing until we got our pay. And we never knew
what we were going to get.DUNHAM: Really? Okay.
HUTCHINS: When we got our pay is when we got so excited. We couldn't believe it.
We were yakking and jumping up and down. And I said, "I can't believe we got this for working like we were."DUNHAM: So you worked awhile and you didn't even know what you were going to be paid?
HUTCHINS: No. We didn't know nothing about it.
DUNHAM: Did you join a union?
HUTCHINS: No, there wasn't no union then. No.
DUNHAM: Okay, okay. What training did you receive?
HUTCHINS: Oh, well, the fellow took us in and he talked to us first and then he
took us up into one of the boxcars and then he showed us where we had to do a line this way and then a line that way and a line that way. When we were welding, how we had to do it. And he showed us how to wear our helmets and how to make sure when we took them off we didn't have the weld so we'd drop it on us, to make sure we was like that. And he told us we had to be careful getting up the ladder because we had to stand on a ladder to move up here, go like that. But he was really good about it. And then after he saw we were doing all right he couldn't come near us. He just, "You belong there, do that one. You belong there." But we did see them when they were done going down the river, when they banked the thing there and they went down the river.DUNHAM: So this was all in the first day that you got your training and started
doing it?HUTCHINS: Oh, no, it was a couple days.
DUNHAM: Okay, it took a little bit of time. Okay.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, not just one day.
DUNHAM: And we should say, too, this is you and your sister Nancy.
HUTCHINS: Nancy. Yeah, yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay. And she was married already?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: But she didn't have children yet or--
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: No. Okay, all right. And how old was she? Was she eighteen yet?
HUTCHINS: Well, let's see. No.
DUNHAM: No. Were you supposed to be eighteen for this job?
LORRIE: She had to be.
HUTCHINS: Well, maybe she was because I--
DUNHAM: We've heard of women who got jobs younger and people didn't mind. They
were hungry for workers I think. But I'm just curious if she was eighteen yet.HUTCHINS: No, she had--
Lorrie :Graduated from high school.
HUTCHINS: I just graduated then so I was eighteen or nineteen and she had to be
seventeen or eighteen.DUNHAM: Okay. Did she graduate high school?
HUTCHINS: No, she quit.
DUNHAM: Okay, because she got married.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah. So do you remember your first day on your own then on the job? And
were you nervous?HUTCHINS: Yes. Scared to death. [laughter]
DUNHAM: Had you ever done anything like that?
HUTCHINS: Like that? No. I messed around like that but I never welded or did
anything like that. And I thought it was so important, myself. I thought something had to be done.DUNHAM: For the war effort?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. And I says it made me nervous at first. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Because you were worried you might do something wrong.
HUTCHINS: That's what I was worried about. That if I did it wrong, something
would happen. Yeah.DUNHAM: So how did you deal with that?
HUTCHINS: I finally decided, "Hey, you're pretty good at this. Forget it." But I
did have trouble with that fellow that time.DUNHAM: Yeah, how did that happen?
HUTCHINS: When you come in the gate you say hi to everybody. You know what I
mean? You just say, "Hi, good morning," and then you keep walking. Pretty soon this guy, every time I'd sit down to eat or something, he was beside me.DUNHAM: Was he flirting with you?
HUTCHINS: I think he was trying to make me go out with him but he never talked
that much to me, you know what I mean. I said hello to him and that was it. And then every time I turned around he was there. So then the one day I was up on a ladder and I had my thing up here and I could just feel somebody there. I don't know how. I didn't put my head down to see. But then when I did I start screaming and when I went like this the weld went right in my foot. Went right through my shoe into my foot.DUNHAM: Wow, that's scary.
HUTCHINS: And I started screaming like crazy and the fellow come up, the boss,
and he seen him there and he said, "What are you doing here?" And he says, "You don't belong here. Get down where you belong or you're going to go right out the door. If you come down here this way one more time you're going out the door." So after that, for about a week, he would not let me be by myself. But then I was okay.DUNHAM: But the work you did, was it necessarily where you kind of had to be by yourself?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah. This one thing was hanging up on this little like thing
and you were on a ladder and only one person could do that. And there was only one person in each thing. Yeah.DUNHAM: So it was lucky the guy who was kind of harassing you didn't get hurt
too, right? He could have--HUTCHINS: I could have hit him with the weld. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Did you ever encounter him again?
HUTCHINS: No. No. And Nancy was always--like I said, we were in separate places.
Like there was a line of boxcars and they would say, "You belong--" No, that's Nancy down there, not me.DUNHAM: I've heard other times where there could be some issues like that or
wouldn't necessarily call it that at the time but sexual harassment, if you will. Nancy or any other ladies you know of have experiences like that?HUTCHINS: No, not that we know. The two girls that we always sat to have lunch
with I told you were Jewish girls. Yeah. They were really funny because they had to have kosher food and their mother wouldn't let them get anything else. So we used to switch sandwiches with them all the time.DUNHAM: Oh, really?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. We'd end up with kosher ham and we'd end up giving them fried
eggs and peppers or something. [laughter] But they liked it. They said, "We love this."DUNHAM: Did you like theirs?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay. You liked variety.
LORRIE: How about Sal and Bill? Our two brother-in-laws were in the Navy and
they used to tease her after because they said the LSTS that they were running, they'd sink.HUTCHINS: And that's what Hutchins--that's what my husband said. I said to him,
"All right, you."DUNHAM: Well, did you get teased at the workplace, too? Because you were pretty
early in the war, too, and sometimes men did tease women. I've heard about--HUTCHINS: Oh, I know that. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah. But you didn't--
HUTCHINS: No, they were all pretty nice to me. And like I said, when these two
guys found out where we lived and they said to us, "We'll take you home instead of you getting the bus at night," because then when we got off the bus we had to walk up the road. And at first we were kind of scared, you know what I mean? We just knew them and they sounded pretty nice and everything else. At first we were kind of leery of doing it. But then this other fellow said, "Mamie, they're really nice. You don't have to worry about them. Honest." So then we decided, well, we'll let them take us home. So then they started riding us home and dropping us off at the bottom of the hill thing where we lived.DUNHAM: And that was no problem?
HUTCHINS: No, it was fine. But I can't remember their names though.
DUNHAM: I'm sorry, I just was seeing something. Well, what else can you tell me?
You talked about sharing lunches. Oh, I just wanted to ask, because you'd grown up in this predominantly Italian-American community. So this was a more diverse environment. There were Jewish, there were African Americans.HUTCHINS: Yeah. Every kind. Yeah.
DUNHAM: What else? And were people coming from around--
HUTCHINS: I don't think there was any Italians here. [laughter]
DUNHAM: You were the only Italian?
HUTCHINS: I think--
DUNHAM: But you weren't far from here and there--
HUTCHINS: I know and I'm just thinking. I think we were the only Italian ones.
DUNHAM: Were most people coming from different parts of the country or pretty local?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. They were pretty local but they weren't right around where we
live. They come from like the opposite side, down below where we were.DUNHAM: What other races were there?
HUTCHINS: I never paid that much attention, you know what I mean? To me, I never
looked at who you were. Being kids I never did. If you were Italian, okay. If you weren't, no, it wasn't that you had to be Italian to be my friend or something. Never, never.DUNHAM: Right. But it was predominantly Italians you grew up with? Right?
HUTCHINS: No. Ida King and them weren't Italians and we were buddies when we
were young. Yeah. It wasn't with Italians. No. We did have a lot of Italian friends but they didn't have to be Italian to be our friends. Yeah.LORRIE: Now, this is before I was born. But in the Rocks, where mama lived,
there was mostly Italians here.HUTCHINS: I told him that. Yes.
DUNHAM: Okay, okay. What was a typical day like for you? Were you working the
day shift?HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Day. Was there a night or a graveyard, evening?
HUTCHINS: I don't know.
DUNHAM: Swing or graveyard?
HUTCHINS: It was still light out when we got home. It was just starting to get
dark because when we walked up the hill it was starting to get dark.DUNHAM: When you came to work the next day was it exactly where you left off or
did you have to coordinate with someone else who was maybe working on it, too?HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: Okay. So there's probably just the one shift. Some places they were
doing round the clock and you had to kind of--HUTCHINS: I don't know if it was but it was just like there was nobody there
when we came.DUNHAM: Okay, okay. Well, we didn't talk about what you wore, too. What was--
HUTCHINS: Oh, my God, it was so cold in that place. We had underwear underneath
those clothes but when we signed up in that they said to us, "You've got to wear big clothes. You better buy your clothes big," they said to us, "because you've got to put underwear underneath." We said, "What?" They said, "Yes, you're going to need underwear underneath your clothes because it's going to be cold up in them boxcars where you're working." And I didn't know what boxcars we were working on. He said, "Where you're working." And I said, "Oh, okay." So when we went shopping and we got them everybody laughed when we put them on. We laughed. We laughed but we thanked God when we got down there because it was cold in that place.DUNHAM: Yeah. So they needed to be that big, huh?
HUTCHINS: They needed to be that big for us to get clothes underneath them. It
was really cold in them boxcars.DUNHAM: And you grew up in a cold winter climate. Like how--
HUTCHINS: Yeah. But at least we were dressed. We weren't standing right there.
DUNHAM: Okay. Not work clothes.
HUTCHINS: No. No.
DUNHAM: Okay. So how cold were they? Do you know?
HUTCHINS: I couldn't--
DUNHAM: Did they have to be that way for the conditions of the work?
HUTCHINS: They're outside. They were outside. Yeah, they weren't in a building.
They were all outside in big boxcars. They were lined up like--you know? And then they had like, I forget, like a ramp. When they went into the water it comes down into a ramp and they went into the water. I don't know how they got them down out of there. Never seen them.DUNHAM: Did they have cranes or--
HUTCHINS: I guess so but we never seen them getting the cranes down.
DUNHAM: Okay. Because how big are these? You're saying boxcar, is that right?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, it was a boxcar. Yeah. But where we was at was I guess from
there to here. It wasn't that much room up there. But there was room for a ladder and then about that much space after the ladder. Yeah. I was little. Well, I'm little anyway but I was littler then. I was only about four foot eleven or something like that, four foot ten, because when I graduated that's what I was, four foot ten. So I was short.DUNHAM: Was that an advantage or a disadvantage for doing this work?
HUTCHINS: I don't know.
DUNHAM: I mean was it a small space?
HUTCHINS: It was small but I--
DUNHAM: Sometimes, like the airplane work they've talked about small women then
being able to really get in there, so to speak. But that wasn't an issue for this?HUTCHINS: No, no.
DUNHAM: I need to adjust your microphone one more time.
LORRIE: Well, we had people that lived out there.
DUNHAM: Okay, we're back. You went through kind of the training but I'm
wondering if you could describe exactly, if you remember, kind of how you again started your day and what exactly you did, how this went, because I'm trying to visualize it and I'm--HUTCHINS: Oh, I remember we walked through this big long thing coming in.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Did you have to get tools or--
HUTCHINS: Oh, yeah. We had everything set. Everything was there. We didn't have
to pick it up. And we'd say hi to everybody else and then we met the boss and he'd say, "Okay, Mamie, you go here and Nancy, you go there. You're in here."DUNHAM: Okay, all right. And then you'd go. You'd climb up.
HUTCHINS: We'd go up there and we'd go in there and we'd go until we finished
one and then come down and he would be down there telling us no, wait. We'd go down to eat. We'd come down out of there to have lunch. Yeah.DUNHAM: Yeah. Did you get other breaks?
HUTCHINS: I think we took one other break but I'm not sure.
DUNHAM: Okay. Did a lot of people smoke?
HUTCHINS: You know what? I don't think we were allowed to smoke there.
DUNHAM: Okay. Did you smoke, though, in other times?
HUTCHINS: I never smoked and I can't stand cigarette smoke.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Did your husband?
HUTCHINS: He did for a long time and then he quit because I was getting so sick
from it. And he quit for thirty years and then he got lung cancer.DUNHAM: Oh, I'm sorry.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, it's crazy. But like I said, I don't remember anybody smoking
there. I can't remember anybody smoking.DUNHAM: Yeah, I was just wondering. We were talking about breaks. Did they have
any type of entertainment or activities?HUTCHINS: No, all we did is work.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. All I did was--
DUNHAM: Did you need a tissue or something?
HUTCHINS: There's one right there on the table. There's one right over there but
I can't reach it.DUNHAM: Oh, but she's all tied up. Yeah, thank you very much.
HUTCHINS: But I said we did nothing but work there. There was nothing. Nothing.
We had a lunch. They'd give us so much time for lunch. Yeah.DUNHAM: Do you have any idea how many men there was versus women working there?
HUTCHINS: No, because I just--that one section.
DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah. That was your--yeah.
HUTCHINS: I'd seen a lot of men when we were coming in. But when we come in
there was always people standing there waiting to do what they're supposed to do, I guess. Because it was kind of a long walk to go where we were. But outside of the guys, the boss and this other guy that was there a lot, I don't know, he might have been a supervisor or something, but he'd come around once in a while. But I think there was only a couple of guys. Like we even had lunch with, when we were having lunch, and I can't remember what kind of guys there.DUNHAM: Did you find the work challenging? Did you experience any physical changes?
HUTCHINS: I liked it. I liked it. Yeah, I really liked it.
DUNHAM: It was fun?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. it was different and I liked it. I used to kid them. I said,
"You want something welded? I can do it." [laughter]DUNHAM: How did your sister feel about it?
HUTCHINS: She liked it, too. We both liked it. We both had fun with it. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Were there sign about patriotism or the war effort there? Do you recall?
HUTCHINS: I can't remember signs or nothing. I don't remember. It seemed like it
was just all one big--DUNHAM: Yeah. Did you go to the movies and see the newsreels with kind of footage?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. When we'd come home a lot of times we did. Yeah. And we used to
watch the news when they was talking about different war efforts.DUNHAM: Yeah. Did you ever see the images of women working on the war and kind
of the--HUTCHINS: No, I never did see.
DUNHAM: Never saw it? Not that part?
HUTCHINS: I never seen nothing like until long after.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Not until this stuff come out.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Long after. Before, though, oh, never. In the news, when they
showed the news, they never showed that. They just showed all the guys that were getting--and the USOs and stuff like that. Yeah. I never seen that for a long time. Yeah. Because when I said something to somebody they'd say, "You're kidding me."DUNHAM: Kidding you about what?
HUTCHINS: About working there. [laughter]
DUNHAM: Oh, yeah, they were surprised. So yeah. What kind of response? How did
your parents feel about it?HUTCHINS: Oh, my mother, she didn't know exactly what it was all about. She just
knew I was working there and I was all right.DUNHAM: Yeah. And you were making a lot more money. So what were you doing with
that money?HUTCHINS: Oh, my God, yeah. Giving it to her. [laughter]
DUNHAM: Yeah. Did you give all of it?
HUTCHINS: Oh, yeah. I always gave her all the money.
DUNHAM: And then you just got an allowance?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. If I needed something she'd give it to me. I asked for it, I got it.
DUNHAM: Your sister was already married. Was it the same for her?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay. Was she living with her husband?
HUTCHINS: Well, that time he wasn't there. She was living with me.
DUNHAM: Oh, I'm sorry. He was in the military. So yeah.
HUTCHINS: We were both in the same bedroom.
DUNHAM: Okay, at the family house still.
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Okay. And so how long did you work at Ambridge? Which I guess I
realized, Ambridge is short for American Bridge.HUTCHINS: It is, it is.
DUNHAM: Okay, all right.
LORRIE: No, Ambridge is a city.
DUNHAM: No?
HUTCHINS: No, Ambridge is the city where it was--
DUNHAM: Oh.
LORRIE: Where American Bridge is.
HUTCHINS: American Bridge. Yeah.
LORRIE: It's a suburb. That's where American Bridge was. In Ambridge.
DUNHAM: But Ambridge, it sounds like an abbreviation. So maybe the city came out of--
HUTCHINS: No.
LORRIE: Yeah, no. American Bridge is in Ambridge.
DUNHAM: Okay, okay.
HUTCHINS: No. What was I saying?
LORRIE: That's where Mike Ditka's from, I think.
HUTCHINS: Let's see. I was going to tell you something.
DUNHAM: You were living with your sister. Were living together.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. When she had the baby she was there with me.
DUNHAM: Oh, okay. So while her husband was away?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
DUNHAM: And where did she give birth?
HUTCHINS: There.
DUNHAM: In the home or at a hospital?
HUTCHINS: No, at the hospital.
DUNHAM: At the hospital. Okay. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: I sent a letter to him to tell him the baby was born and tell him the
baby was all right.LORRIE: We had a brother that was in the Navy, too, at that time.
HUTCHINS: I forget where he was when he got the letter. But I know, I seen his
notes. It was funny. We was always writing letters.LORRIE: You talk of where Bill Jones was, Mamie?
HUTCHINS: No. And I said when we were writing letters to our husbands, okay, one
time, I forget how it was, but here when I seen her letters and I seen my letters, one day they were exactly the same. We had drawn a picture. And I said, "We must have been sitting together to do that because why would we have exactly the same thing in that letter?" They said, "I'll bet you two sat there and talked all the time and that's when you would write them letters." I said, "Yeah, we did."DUNHAM: Do you remember what the picture was of?
HUTCHINS: I had it just in the other room the other day.
DUNHAM: Oh, the actual letter?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. And I laughed. Then when I seen hers, because my niece showed me
some letters that he had written, she had written to him, and I said, "That's exactly the same one that I wrote to him." We drawed a picture from a card. And it must have been a card of a--I don't know whether it was a duck or something. And it was saying, "I miss you. Hi." And it was all little notes all around it. [laughter] And we laughed because I said, "That's exactly the same one that he got."DUNHAM: Was your sister still working at Ambridge when she was first pregnant?
HUTCHINS: No. No. I'm trying to think. Because when I got married I left her.
She was still working at Ambridge. She didn't leave when I left.DUNHAM: But you were there when the baby was born?
HUTCHINS: It must have been when we come home. I can't think. But I remember
calling him to tell him, sending him a telegram and taking pictures of the baby to send, too.DUNHAM: Yeah. So do you know about how long you worked in Ambridge?
HUTCHINS: Well, let's see. I got married in '44. I left there in '44.
DUNHAM: So a couple of years?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Because I left there when I got married and I went with him. And
that's when I left there. Yeah, yeah.DUNHAM: Right. So did things change much over the time you were at Ambridge? Did
it grow or was it about the same number of people in your job? Did it stay--HUTCHINS: They looked the same to me. It seemed the same to me.
DUNHAM: And your job stayed the same? Or did it change at all while you were there?
HUTCHINS: Not while I was there. No. But after I left, I never went back. I
never went back to see what it was.DUNHAM: Right. Did it stay fun or did you ever get bored of it or--
HUTCHINS: I was happy because we were making that money. [laughter]
DUNHAM: Yeah. Did it go up at all while you were there?
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: No. Okay. But instead of like twenty-five cents an hour you said it was
a dollar something?HUTCHINS: I think it was a dollar ten cents but I'm not sure. I can't remember.
You know what I mean? But I can remember we was so shocked and so happy when we got it because we couldn't believe it. We said, "We've worked six months to get this much money." [laughter] And we were having a good time doing it, you know what I mean? It seemed like it was more fun than what we were doing before.DUNHAM: Yeah. Do you remember how you were evaluated at the job? Did you have--
HUTCHINS: No, I don't think so.
DUNHAM: No? Like reviews?
HUTCHINS: He just said we did a good job. That's all. He always says, "You did
good." Because they inspected them all the time. They come up and inspected them. Yeah. And he said, "You're doing good."DUNHAM: Did you ever get any feedback, something that had to be shored up or anything?
HUTCHINS: No.
DUNHAM: No. It was pretty clear cut.
HUTCHINS: They had to be done the same way, you know what I mean? And I remember
doing the middle and doing two ends, you know what I mean? I remember that. Yeah. And like I said, they had to do the same thing for every one of them. There was no changing.DUNHAM: Was there anything else you remember about Ambridge that we haven't
talked about that you wanted to share with me about your experiences there?HUTCHINS: I'm trying to think. No.
DUNHAM: You had the incident where you were kind of being harassed and hurt your
foot. Did you hear about other injuries happening there or remember any particular safety procedures you had? Emergency procedures?HUTCHINS: I'm trying to think of something that was up there in case something
happened. We had to buzz. I think we did but I can't remember for sure.DUNHAM: You didn't have any kind of emergency drills, that kind of thing there?
HUTCHINS: No. No.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Not like the West Coast where you had blackouts and different kind
of other things.HUTCHINS: Yeah. Not while we were there.
DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah. Of course.
HUTCHINS: But I remember when one of them was going down we said, "Can we go
see?" When they're launching one of them. We did. And that was so exciting for me. I know it was.DUNHAM: Yeah. What did you feel?
HUTCHINS: I felt really good. But then I cried on D-Day.
DUNHAM: And why was that?
HUTCHINS: Because half of them got bombed.
DUNHAM: Yeah.
HUTCHINS: But it did make you feel that you were doing something great. It did.
Made you feel really good. We had Navy reunions after that for years.DUNHAM: Oh, yeah?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. It was really a lot of fun.
DUNHAM: Did you ever meet any other girls or women who were doing this kind of
work locally or later?HUTCHINS: I remember I met some girls and they said they were doing something.
Where was it? They were working near Heinz's. I forget what they were doing there.DUNHAM: Yeah, what was happening at Heinz's? I wonder.
HUTCHINS: I can't think of what it was. But I know they said that they sent
them, so they had this farm-like thing, on a vacation in the summer.DUNHAM: Oh, like the Women's Land Army, I think it's called. Or they had high
school or women who worked doing farm work.HUTCHINS: Something. I remember one of them talking about that but I can't
remember exactly what it was. Yeah. And I met one of the girls a long time ago. I just met her. I didn't know her that well. And she worked where the airplanes were. I don't know what she did. But I met her someplace, when we were going someplace or doing something, and she said something about doing it in a--DUNHAM: You met her back during that period or much later?
HUTCHINS: Later. Later.
DUNHAM: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Well, there were a lot of women who worked at Douglas
Aircraft or, yeah, different places.HUTCHINS: That's what I heard. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Were you corresponding with other--I know you said you
had high school friends who sent to war. You had your husband, of course, and family. Did you--HUTCHINS: Yeah, I got letters from some of the fellows when they went but I
couldn't believe--right after graduation a lot of them went because that's when the war coming. And I know a lot of them went. A lot of them.DUNHAM: How much longer did your sister work at Ambridge? Was it harder for her
when she left or she was so used to it?HUTCHINS: You know what? I was so busy I didn't get to talk to her about that. I
just remember I was always writing about the baby, about little Carol. And sending her presents from Florida. But I don't think she stayed that long after I did. I don't think she was there that long.DUNHAM: She must have been pregnant sometime in there and she probably could
have worked for quite a while after but not to the end.HUTCHINS: No. That's what I'm trying to figure out, if she left when she was
pregnant. It's just a blank. I remember Carol Lee being born and everything else but her at Ambridge, I don't remember that.DUNHAM: So probably you had been down in Florida and you think you came back to
visit, to help when your niece was born?HUTCHINS: I can't remember. I can't remember for the life of me. I can't
remember. She wasn't working then, when Carol was born. Can't remember.DUNHAM: So your leaving coincided with your getting married? Sorry, yeah.
HUTCHINS: That's when I left. When he come home on leave and I got married and I
left there. Yeah.DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So were you excited?
HUTCHINS: Oh, yeah. Scared. [laughter] Really scared. Never was away from home.
DUNHAM: Yeah. What were you scared of or what were your feelings?
HUTCHINS: I never was away from home before and I thought, "Oh, God, what am I
going to do?"DUNHAM: How did your mother feel?
HUTCHINS: Oh, she laughed. She laughed because she was always sending me things.
DUNHAM: What would she send you?
HUTCHINS: She'd send me nightgowns and she'd send me food. She'd send me all
kinds of stuff.DUNHAM: And how about the weather in Florida?
HUTCHINS: Oh, my God. I didn't like Florida that much because of the bugs. I
remember getting letters from my husband and he said, "The bugs are so big down here you can ride them." And I said, "I believe it." I hated the bugs. And I remember one time I was walking and a spider come in and come right on my head and covered it. And I'm standing there just going eeeee, not shaking it off or nothing. I says, "I hate these bugs down here." They're all over the place. They were terrible. They were places people went for the summer and just rented these little--they were like little cottages but they were all separate like. And we lived in there and the fellows we knew. They were all Navy guys there and their wives. So we used to have parties and we used to get together all the time.DUNHAM: What were your parties like?
HUTCHINS: Oh, them guys are nuts. They'd bring you everything under the sun. [laughter]
DUNHAM: Like what was--
HUTCHINS: They're crazy. I meant every time you turned around they were bringing
you something. I forget now. But they would bring food, too. Yeah, yeah. So we didn't have to worry about food. We always had food. Yeah. But the lady that owned the place, she said to me, "You're the only girl I ever seen come down here knows how to cook." I said, "What?" [laughter] She said, "None of them know how to cook." I said, "Yeah."DUNHAM: And you learned to cook primarily from your mom?
HUTCHINS: Yeah, yeah. And we took cooking in school, too. We had cooking classes
in school.DUNHAM: Were those only for the girls or did the boys--
HUTCHINS: That time they were but I heard later on there was boys took cooking
classes. Yeah. But at that time, one time, it was only girls that did it. But now you see more guys cooking than anything. Chefs.DUNHAM: Yeah, yeah. So how did you leave Florida?
HUTCHINS: Well, he got transferred to California so he took me home. And I
remember getting off of the train. I had these patent leather high heel shoes and the snow was that deep. [laughter] He said, "I told you not to wear them shoes." I said, "Well, I didn't have any other ones." But it was really wild. I was home for I don't remember how long before he called me to tell me he had a place for me to come and live because he wasn't getting shipped off. So then I got on a train and went to California. And we lived in, like I said, there was a big lake there and then all these little cottages was all around.DUNHAM: What area was this?
HUTCHINS: Escondido.
DUNHAM: Escondido, right. Okay.
HUTCHINS: So he would come home every night. He'd go in the morning and he'd
come home at night. It was really a nice place. Beautiful. In fact, we was at this one place right near us, it had like a terrace, it was beautiful. And they raised little rabbits, okay. And I loved this place. I said, "Let's buy a house here." He said, "You're out of your mind." And I said, "No, it would be nice." He said, "Yeah, you'd be wanting to go home every week to see your mother." He said, "We're not moving here. No way." [laughter]DUNHAM: Would he have been right?
HUTCHINS: Yes. I know he would have been right.
DUNHAM: Okay. So it was a little fantasy you had but you wouldn't have--
HUTCHINS: No way. No. I couldn't do it.
DUNHAM: Some did. Some did make that--
HUTCHINS: I know a lot of people that did. Yeah. A couple of the girls stayed
there, yeah, that we knew. A couple of them had kids and they were always at my house. I'd watch them all the time.DUNHAM: You took care of the kids?
HUTCHINS: I loved the kids.
DUNHAM: Did you charge daycare?
HUTCHINS: No way.
DUNHAM: No, you just did it. Okay.
HUTCHINS: No, I loved it. They used to all come to my house. They said, "We're
going down there." And I used to play with them all the time and draw with themDUNHAM: Yeah, that's great. You didn't think about looking for--
HUTCHINS: Work?
DUNHAM: --work at that time?
HUTCHINS: Oh, he wouldn't let me look for work.
DUNHAM: Okay. And you didn't know any women there who worked at like Douglas or
that kind of thing, did that kind of work?HUTCHINS: No, because all the women I knew were from the service.
DUNHAM: Okay. So you're all service wives.
LORRIE: She didn't know she was living in a famous city. That's where what's his
name, the--HUTCHINS: Lawrence Welk lived.
LORRIE: Lawrence Welk lived.
DUNHAM: Okay, okay. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. I didn't know. I didn't know that. I just knew that. And I
didn't know I was pregnant either when I left there.DUNHAM: Oh, between Florida and California?
HUTCHINS: When I was in California, when we were coming home.
DUNHAM: Okay. After the war is when you came home?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. As soon as they signed the treaty, he came home. And I had
clothes on the line and everything else. He says, "Come on, we're going home. Throw them in the thing." I said, "What?" He said, "Put them in a bag. We're leaving. We're not staying one more day." He's going and that was it. So I was passing out every time you turned around but I didn't know I was pregnant.DUNHAM: Was he out of the military at that time?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: That was it? Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. They told him he could leave. They told him.
DUNHAM: This is late '45?
HUTCHINS: Yeah.
DUNHAM: Wow, okay.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. As soon as that come over. I seen it on the TV when all of New
York was dancing up and down and everything else. That was then.DUNHAM: Okay, so VE-Day, VJ-Day. VJ-Day. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. They told him he could go home.
DUNHAM: Okay. So you weren't part of one of those celebrations then?
HUTCHINS: Oh, we were celebrating in California, not down in New York.
DUNHAM: Yeah, okay. What was the celebration you had like? Do you remember?
HUTCHINS: Oh, my God. Everybody was so happy. But like he was the one that's
leaving right away. [laughter]DUNHAM: Yeah. Not everybody else was leaving right away?
HUTCHINS: No, they weren't leaving right away.
DUNHAM: Were you a little bit torn or--
HUTCHINS: No, I was excited about going home but I was passing out and I thought
it was because I was upset. We got down to the station, I passed out. At the house I passed out. And I thought it was because I was just excited but I was pregnant and didn't know it.DUNHAM: Okay.
HUTCHINS: Yeah. We got on the train, we got to Chicago and they told us the
train that was supposed to come and get us, something was wrong with it. They said, "Well, you can go on a plane and go up to Pittsburgh." He said, "I ain't going on another plane. Forget it. We're waiting for that train." So we did. And it was funny. He didn't want to get on a plane again after that. We went to California, or Wyoming. All he did all the time was saying, "I hate this thing." He said, "That pilot's probably drunk." And then we turned around. What was really worse, we only had an hour in the place and we have to turn around and go back. The pilot has a nosebleed so we have to come back. And he says, "Nosebleed my eye. They're going to bring some drunk from a bar and put him on a plane for us." I said, "Will you shut up?" [laughter] He hated to go on a plane after. He didn't want to go on a plane.DUNHAM: Because he had flown so much during the war years. But these were
commercial flights where he had that fear. So did he fly later in life much?HUTCHINS: No. Only once after that. That's all.
DUNHAM: One. Wow.
HUTCHINS: The last time we drove to California, yeah. But that one time we went
to Arizona we went on a plane.DUNHAM: How was he?
HUTCHINS: That was the plane that had to turn around and come back because he
had a nosebleed.DUNHAM: Did he stay? But he stayed on the plane or got off?
HUTCHINS: Yeah. Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah. Okay. All right. Was he nervous or he just--
HUTCHINS: Oh, I think he was just being cute, myself. He was always joking all
the time.DUNHAM: Okay. Okay. But when you traveled otherwise you drove or took the train
in later--HUTCHINS: We drove clean across the country when he retired. We went all the way
across the country and stopped at all the [inaudible] and different guys that was in the Navy. We stopped to see them all on the way down. But we had two kids then, too. Yeah. But it was fun. The kids loved it. They were little. But it was really great. Yeah, yeah.DUNHAM: Okay. Wow. Well, looking back, thinking specifically about the wartime
work you did, this opportunity to do so-called men's work, sometimes people say how do you think that influenced your life?HUTCHINS: I think it did influence my life because I realized all the stuff that
was going on. And I was so used to just being happy and not worrying about everything. That gives you a different thing in life when the war's over. And then I felt really good because I figured I was doing something. It made me feel good. I felt really good about it. in fact, I was real proud about it. Yeah.DUNHAM: Yeah. Do you think it influenced future generations and opportunities
for women?HUTCHINS: I think it did. You would never think of a woman going to do something
like that before. And then women could get jobs that they couldn't get before. Because all they think about women was being a waitress or being a salesgirl before that. There wasn't very many women going anyplace else.DUNHAM: Yeah. Although it maybe took some considerable time for that to kind of
restart, if you will.HUTCHINS: Yeah, to kind of get around there, restart around it. But at least
people could look at that and say, "Well, they can work."DUNHAM: Yeah. Yeah. What are some of the things you hope this generation or
future generations take from your experiences and the overall experiences during World War II, what they can learn from?HUTCHINS: One thing they better learn how great just America is. That's what I
can see. And people can get along. Because there was people there that you never thought you would talk to or ever meet. And I think it made people look at each other and say, "They're just like me." They have the same hopes, the same dreams as I do. So I think it made a big difference. You could talk to anybody and not have to worry. I thought it was a great experience myself. And I was young when I did it so it stayed. That's when it really hits.DUNHAM: Was there anything else you'd like to add before we close today about
your experiences then or after the war?HUTCHINS: Only that we do have a really great country and we have beautiful
people living here. They should learn to appreciate it. Love it. Love God because he's been so good with me all my life. And I thank him every day and every night because I got a wonderful family, wonderful relations, beautiful friends. And I think that's life. You know, really do.DUNHAM: Well, that's very beautifully expressed. Is there anything else then?
HUTCHINS: No, I think I'm fine.
DUNHAM: Okay. We always think of things later probably.
HUTCHINS: Probably, yeah.
DUNHAM: But thank you. I really appreciate your sharing your experiences and--
HUTCHINS: Thank you, David, very much.
DUNHAM: Well, thank you. --for a second. Let me just ask you a couple more
things. Sorry. You just reminded me of something of kind of in later life. Because you didn't know many women who did "the kind of work you did." So when did you first start hearing about this and the Rosie the Riveter kind of concept later in life?HUTCHINS: Oh, I did, a lot of times heard about Rosie the Riveter. I told you I
got dressed up as Rosie the Riveter for Halloween.DUNHAM: Yeah. Yeah, you did.
HUTCHINS: And I'll tell you something else. When I was sick in the hospital, my
son sent me a card. It was a Rosie the Riveter and in it it says, "You can do it." And I said to him, "Where did you get that card?" He said, "Mom, I found that a long time ago and I said someday I'm going to send that to mom." [laughter] But it was great. It was really great at that time.DUNHAM: Yeah. So what was the volunteer award you won? Can you tell us about--
HUTCHINS: I won for volunteer of the year. It's a Catholic Youth Association.
West Deer Center. And I got it for volunteer of the year from all the centers. And on it the man that I got it from, was Rick Fitzgerald, and he's a commissioner in Pittsburgh. And he was talking about me and he was saying that I was born in McKees Rock. And he says, "And she is one of the original Rosie the Riveters," and everybody got up and start clapping and hollering and my girlfriend said, "You're the only one that ever got a standing ovation in this place." [laughter]DUNHAM: And that was the part that did it.
HUTCHINS: That was the part that did it.
DUNHAM: Yeah, wow. That's great to hear.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, it was really great.
LORRIE: I understand that this woman's picture that's on the Rosie the Riveter--
HUTCHINS: Yeah, I was going to tell--
LORRIE: --she only worked two days.
HUTCHINS: I have the paper here. I have it all written.
LORRIE: She quit.
DUNHAM: There's a lot of discussion about the identity. We can talk about that a
little more after. Yeah.HUTCHINS: And there is a paper. I have the paper that was written up about her.
DUNHAM: Well, let me first ask a little bit more about you. You've talked about
going down to DC and to which memorial there?HUTCHINS: There's a Rosie the Riveter memorial there. I have two pictures taken
there. I can't find either one of them.DUNHAM: Can't find those. Yeah. First I thought you were talking about
California. But yeah. No, I don't know who would know about that then.HUTCHINS: Top in all the--
LORRIE: Yeah, it's in that new memorial down there, the Second World War Memorial.
DUNHAM: Right, okay.
HUTCHINS: It's a beautiful memorial and I got a picture standing up there and
saying, "Me." But anyway, the one time I went down is when all the veterans got to come down there free. The bus trip was free and everything was free.DUNHAM: Oh, wow. That's what you meant by free.
HUTCHINS: Everything was all free. And they brought them down there and they
come there to see the monuments and they're beautiful. But anyway, I was talking to half of them. Some of them were pilots, some of them did this. And I told them I was Rosie the Riveter. One guy said, "I want a picture with you."DUNHAM: Yeah. Oh, neat. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: [laughter] And I said, "That's why I was taking a picture there."
LORRIE: It's a beautiful memorial.
HUTCHINS: It's great. It's really beautiful. That memorial, that is so great
down there. I went down through it twice because my son took me one time and we went down another time. It is beautiful.DUNHAM: Yeah. I was able to visit in 2014. Yeah.
HUTCHINS: Did you visit? Yeah.
DUNHAM: Yeah, I was doing some--
HUTCHINS: What got me the worst, I think, was where they had all the stars and
they said each one of them stars is for somebody that died. It's just really, well, because there's so many there. So many.DUNHAM: Let me just look over my notes to quickly make sure I cover everything
we talked about. Yeah. I think so. Well, thank you again. Thank you for your--HUTCHINS: Thank you, David. That was--
DUNHAM: --service and I hope you guys might be up for visiting us in California
some time.HUTCHINS: I want to go so bad.
DUNHAM: We have a home front festival every year and we dress up as Rosie the
Riveter. We had over 2,000 last year.HUTCHINS: You know what? My niece sent me the picture that was in--
LORRIE: That's down in Richmond, isn't it?
DUNHAM: Yeah. They did a big one in Michigan, too, but then the biggest one now
has been in--yeah, the park is in Richmond, California.Lorrie :Yeah, it was in Richmond.
DUNHAM: Yeah.
HUTCHINS: She sent me a picture from the newspaper from Richmond and it had how
many that was there in that. Yeah.DUNHAM: Right, right. Yeah. No, it was a really nice event.
HUTCHINS: And she said to me, "You didn't even get a card." I said, "Yeah, I got
it two months later." I said--DUNHAM: Well, I think we have that fixed now.
HUTCHINS: Now it's fixed. Yes.
DUNHAM: Maybe next year you can join us. We'd love to have you out.
HUTCHINS: Yeah, I would love to be out there.
[End of Interview]
