Conducted by Brian Horrigan on June 7, 2007 in St. Paul, Minnesota
BH = Brian Horrigan
MV = Mary Kae Vandeputte
KV = Kae Vandeputte
BH: Maybe we’ll just start with your name and today’s date. What is today? Today is June 7, 2007. We’re talking to Kae Vandeputte, K-a-e (spelling) Eisenreich Vandeputte. Why don’t you start by telling us where you born, and any baby stories and who you came from.
KV: I was born in St. Cloud, and at that time most mothers didn’t go to the hospital for delivery, so I was born at home. And I was the first girl after four boys, so they kinda spoiled me a little. But that was in…I was born March 28, 1922.
BH: And you were born at home. That’s interesting. Did anybody ever say anything about that?
KV: No, that was just the prevailing custom at that time. When my sister was born ten years later, my mother went to the hospital to deliver her, but times were changing.
BH: You were born in St. Cloud; what did your parents do?
KV: At that time my mother was always a stay-at-home mom. My dad, when I was born, I think was working for the Reformatory in St. Cloud as, like a maintenance engineer. And then some years after that he left the Reformatory and went to what used to be called the Breen Hotel, now called the St. Cloud Hotel, and did the same thing there for a number of years. Then, I’m not quite sure in what order he went to work for the Royal Granite Company, but somewhere in between, you know, in the early stages of World War II is when my dad went to Greenland with the group that built the original Camp Bluie and he was there for a year. He lived on the boat for three months until the camp was habitable. Then when he came back, I think, is probably when he went to work for the Royal Granite Company. It was near home and he ran one of these huge saws; sawed big slabs of granite.
BH: So when you were born your parents were probably just middle class people.
KV: Working people. They didn’t have a great deal of money.
BH: So it wasn’t because you were poor that you didn’t go to a hospital.
KV: No, no, no, that was just the prevailing custom at the time. And I suppose unless there was an emergency, they didn’t do that.
BH: So 1922. So do you have an earliest memory – when you think back – of the first thing you can remember?
KV: My mother’s father was a little Irish man who came over from Ireland. And my grandmother had died and so he was living with my mother and dad. And I remember one of the neighbor’s chickens coming over, and I was maybe 2 or 3 years old, and there were window wells by the foundation, and this chicken – I suppose I might have teased it, I don’t know. But in any event it chased me down in this window well and I remember my grandpa going after the chicken. [Laughing] That’s one of the early things.
BH: That’s funny.
MV: Who took you out of the window well?
KW: Oh, my grandpa did.
BH: That’s the kind of thing that burns itself into your memory; you were terrified and embarrassed. So you said your parents were from this country, but your parents were from…
KV: Well, my father came over from Germany when he was four years old, but my mother’s parents came from Ireland and they are an interesting story, too. As I understand it, their families came in their late teens. And supposedly my grandfather had carried my grandmother’s books to school in Ireland and he did the same thing here. The families didn’t come on the same ship, but about the same time. And they first landed, I think, in Boston, and then somehow got to Minnesota and settled here. And my grandfather did have a big farm out in the Murdock – DeGraff area. But that was also a large family; I think there were seven boys and five girls. When my grandmother died and he gave up farming, a couple of his sons took over the farm and he came to St. Cloud and lived with us.
BH: It seems like Germans and Irish…it seems like almost a “mixed marriage”.
KV: [Laughing] Well, it was, really. Very, very. In fact, the story was that my grandmother was very fond of my dad until World War I. And then, you know, the Germans were…they weren’t so sure about him. But he became a naturalized citizen, so…
BH: He didn’t end up changing his name, though.
KV: No, he did not. Eisenreich is… I have some cousins who did – outstate. [They] changed it to EisenRICH to make it sound less German. And they were up on the Iron Range, I think, and there was some resentment of German people there.
BH: So you heard stories like that, that there was discrimination or hatred of Germans during World War I?
KV: Oh yeah.
BH: [Transcriber’s note: tape cut off momentarily…missed a word or two here] …….________s in your family. Did you ever hear any stories about the influenza in 1919?
KV: It didn’t hit us. It hit my husband’s family, and of course I didn’t know him at that time. But I think two or three of his brothers and sisters were victims of the flu, and I do know that his mother delivered the youngest daughter about that time, and she was the only one who could go to the funeral of the others because everybody else was sick or dying. And that little girl is now gone too, but she was my husband’s youngest sister. And when she was born prematurely, they said she fit in a cigar box.
BH: So you had a sort of normal childhood. You went to school in town?
KV: Yes, went to St. Mary’s Grade School, went to Cathedral High School, and…
BH: You went to Catholic School.
KV: Um hum.
BH: Did you have nuns for teachers?
KV: Oh yeah. Oooooooh, yeah.
BH: Do you have any memories or stories of grade school and being taught by the nuns?
KV: Well, yeah. I was taking piano lessons and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like practicing, and I really got in trouble. I don’t know that this should be in here. [Laughing] I had told this nun that I had to leave early because I had to go home and take care of my little sister while my mom and dad went grocery shopping. What I really was gonna do was go ice skating over at George Lake in St. Cloud, and I had hid my skates in the vestibule of the church across from school. And for whatever reason, this nun happened to look out the window and see me do that and go with the skates… And she called my mother and I did get a little dressing down. I learned not to fib in a hurry.
BH: And you were born in 1922. The Depression begins to hit when you were about eight years old. Do you remember…?
KV: Oh yes, I can remember. We were never hungry, but all of a sudden we were having meat every day again. But there was a long period of time, you know, where it seemed like maybe we just had meat once or twice a week. And I can remember being sent to the grocery store to buy a quarter’s worth of round steak, which was enough to feed this big family; because I had four brothers and they were pretty good eaters.
BH: Do you remember your parents talking about it at all, or being affected by the Depression?
KV: Yeah, my dad didn’t work at one point for three years, which is why I think he went to Greenland and got his nest egg, because of course, they were paid well to do that.
BH: So he actually lost his job during the 1930’s.
KV: Yeah, at some point.
BH: Do you remember how the family got by while he wasn’t working?
KV: My grandfather had bought the lot that the house was in, and my dad pretty much built it. And it’s still standing in St. Cloud, the house I grew up in. And I think that – I’m not sure whether it was World War I or World War II – was sugar rationed in World War I? Because I remember my Aunt Mary, who was Dad’s sister, shared a lot of her coupons with us because there were so many more of us.
BH: So your families helped each other. Did any of your brothers go off to the CC camps or any of that sort of thing?
KV: My oldest brother followed my dad over to Greenland six months after Dad was there. He stayed a year and a half, so he was there actually a full year after my dad left to come home. When he came home, it was with a 1-A classification, and there just were no jobs available – or very many – so he went to work for the railroad because he was married and had a 6-year-old daughter at the time, and they needed help so he became a brakeman for them. And by this time, I’m…I know I was living in Minneapolis and working then. I had gone. I was probably 21, 22, something like that. And the engineer did not see him braking the cars and he started backing up and my brother fell off and on the tracks, and he’s trying to get off and the wheels cut his…he died a couple hours later. But, you know, I got the call to come home.
BH: You said you went to high school…. [Transcriber’s note: tape cut off momentarily again] Did you have happy memories of high school? Did you have a good time?
KV: Well, I did. My youngest brother, who was five years older than I, was a very bright young man. And the principal called my mother and said, “You know your son, Clifford, has an extremely high [I.Q.]. it’s actually the highest I.Q. rate we’ve ever had.” And so my mother said, “Oh, that’s nice. Thank you.” And when my brother got home she said, “What’s this I.Q. test?” My mother had only had a fourth grade education. “Well, I understand you did real well.” At which point he figured, well, I don’t really have to study much anymore. And he didn’t; when he could have been, probably valedictorian. But he used to tease me. So five years later, when I’m going to school, “I think I’m going to do something you used to do.” Because he used to take my report cards and he’d put his name on them. So I decided I’m going to go through high school in three years. And I remember the principal at Cathedral at that time was Sister [Richarda?], later Mother Superior, is the one who said you could do that when she came to the grade school. But when I went to do it, she didn’t like that idea, “Oh, you really should go.” I said, “No, I want to do it in three years. What do I have to do?” Well, I had to take two English [courses] and two Math [courses], and still get my Religion classes in. In any event, she said, “Well, if you do that, you have to stay on the Honor Roll.” Okay, so I did. I was in the upper quarter, I wasn’t the valedictorian, but I had honor roll grades and I graduated in three years. And then I was offered a two-thirds tuition scholarship at St. Ben’s [the College of St. Benedict]. But my family couldn’t afford the board and room. They could afford the other third. And this cocky little 16-year-old decided that if I couldn’t be on campus, I’m gonna go someplace else. So I went to St. Cloud, at that time called State Teacher’s College. And I can remember to this day, my dad dropped me off and I went in to register and I said, “I want to take a business course, two years instead of four. I want to be able to teach or work in an office.” And this dean said, “Dear, you can’t do that, that’s a four-year program.” I said, “Yeah, but I can do it.” “No, that’s not allowed.” “Thank you very much,” and I walked out and walked all the way downtown and enrolled in business college. And then I went home and told my mother and dad what I had done. So that’s how I got to business college.
BH: You graduated at 16?
KV: Um hum, from high school. Barely 16.
BH: 1938? So you were in a hurry. Why were you in a hurry?
KV: Mostly I was gonna do something my brother hadn’t done, which was really kind of ridiculous, you know, in hind sight. But I did it.
BH: You still managed to have a good time in high school.
KV: Oh, yeah.
BH: What did you do with your friends? Did anybody have cars?
KV: No, the only thing that I was interested in, in high school, or had time for, [was] the class plays. And I was in two or three of those; loved ‘em. But most of the time I had lots of homework at night because of these classes, so I really didn’t have time to do some of the fun things that some of the other kids did.
BH: A lot of women we’ve talked to who were girls at one time, of course, said their parents didn’t, and girls themselves didn’t expect to go to college.
KV: I’m sorry?
BH: Girls didn’t expect to go to college.
KV: A lot of us didn’t. But I would have been the first in my family to go to college. My brother, Cliff, the brain in the family, did go after he came back from World War II and he was already married. But he went back and got a couple of degrees. But he had not gone to college before that. I remember him talking about; there were some camps; jobs were hard to get for these young fellows out of high school. He worked in…what did they call these camps up north?
BH: Civilian Conservation, CCC?
KV: Yeah. I think he worked in one of those until he came back and got a job. He was driving a truck for Gamble Robinson, I think, or something. And then he eventually went into service in World War II.
BH: Yeah, a lot of boys – especially up north – boys in Minnesota went into the CC Camps, as they called them. They paid you [$30.00 a month], but you only got to keep $5.00; the rest went home to your family.
KV: That’s right; CCC Camps.
BH: I asked – did any of the teenagers have automobiles, or how did you get around and have fun?
KV: I don’t think so. Mostly we walked. And St. Cloud wasn’t that big. I used to do a lot of ice skating at George Lake in St. Cloud, and that was maybe eight or ten blocks from my home.
BH: Did you go to the movies?
KV: Yeah, but my remembrances of movies are when I was younger. And my mom and dad would usually do their grocery shopping on Saturdays and my brothers would want to go to the movies. So, “yup, you can go, but you have to take Sis.” But they always wanted to see these, they weren’t horror movies then, but they were the movies where somebody was going over a cliff or something. It really scared me and I spent more time in the lobby, crying, waiting for them to come out. Because I was sure somebody was going to die on that railroad track.
BH: Did you think much about clothing, or being fashionable as a teenager?
KV: Not terribly much in high school, but as soon as I got out and started working, I did. And like I said, when I was a little girl, my mother was so happy to have a girl, that I’m told she changed me three times a day.
BH: Did your family have a radio?
KV: Yes, we had a radio.
BH: Did you listen to the radio as a child, or as a teenager?
KV: More as a teenager. I can remember the way the dining area and living area were situated, he had his radio sitting just alongside the doorway, and he’d have that on. And then we got the first TV, and he’s watching both simultaneously. My father was really a very interesting man. He spoke three or four languages, read in two or three. And that came about – at one point he worked in a logging camp up North and he learned to cook for all these loggers, and he learned to communicate with them. He had gone to – I don’t know whether he completed high school, but he did have…
BH: So, 193…. [Transcriber’s note: sounds like tape cut off again] …high school, you go to business college. Tell us about that. You went to business college. What did you do there, and how long did it take?
KV: I went through that in a year, too. I took the shorthand, bookkeeping, the traditional account, and typing. None of which I’d had time to do in high school, so I was starting from scratch. And I can remember drilling the Gregg shorthand, got up to 120 words a minute; not necessarily totally accurate, but that’s what we had to do. I remember that on a holiday break I’d gone ice skating, and I was on the end of a whip and fell. My knee was, like, all swollen, and I wasn’t going to miss school. This business college was upstairs – there was a second floor over the Herberger’s store at that time – and my brother would carry me up in the morning before he went to work and I’d stay there until he got off work, and he came and carried me down those steps. But I was not going to miss, and that’s how I got through.
BH: So by – was it 1939 you were already finished with school?
KV: Pretty much, yeah.
BH: And what was your first job?
KV: I think I went to work for the JC Penney Store because I was so young. At that time my father was still working at the Reformatory and I thought, “Gee, maybe I can get in the office there.” And they would not consider me because you had to be 21 at that time, to work in the office, dealing with the records and the inmates’ histories, and so on. So I couldn’t do that, and so I got a job at Penney’s, thinking, “Well, I’ll keep looking for an office job.” My best friend worked for four attorneys and made less money than I did at Penney’s. So I stayed there ‘til I trained for the blueprint, and eventually the job with Char-Gale [Manufacturing Company], and then with Northwest Aeronautical.
BH: What about…was it Champa, you said?
KV: Champa Studios I did before I went to business college, I think. I’m not quite sure. I guess I have to….
BH: You were still in high school when you went to work for Champa Studios.
KV: No. No, I’m not quite sure.
BH: But you were a teenager. Those pictures we saw at the …
KV: Yeah. I may have worked there before I got the job at Penney’s, I think. Because the Champa Studio burned out so I had to look for something else, and that’s when I… because I thought at Champa Studios I would be using more of my office training, but actually, he trained me to start working on pictures, and so on. And I was also a receptionist, but there wasn’t that much office work.
BH: You worked in the dark room, is that right?
KV: Well, partly, yeah. Developing.
BH: Tell me a little bit about these amateur theatricals that you did, and radio plays.
KV: There was a group, and I think…as I remember, the director was Clint [Gallopo?], and he had some sort of contract. It was like funding – government funding [WPA?] on various projects, and so on. We used to do plays every Sunday night on KFAM – about a year, two years, we did that, and we did do one stage play. I did enjoy that, and was always kind of a ham. I remember at one point there was a traveling theater group that I wanted to try out for, and my mother would just not hear of that. Anybody on the stage went to hell in a hand basket.
BH: So there went your career as an actress.
KV: Yeah. [Laughing] But, so this was all pretty much amateur, but we did have a good time and I think I learned a lot from it, for public speaking.
BH: One of the clippings we just looked at said that you played the part of an attorney, and that was the first time a woman had played this part. Do you remember that?
KV: Vaguely. I would not have remembered without looking at that article, you know. But that, I think, was one of the lead roles as I recall now, and it was an interesting experience.
BH: So if you were on the radio, doing these plays, you never got to hear yourself. Did anybody tell you how they liked them or what…?
KV: Oh, I think…I don’t know, we did this for quite a long time.
BH: So you sat in front of microphones and read scripts?
KV: Yeah.
BH: That’s wonderful. So you were part of radio as a performer as well as a listener, right?
KV: Right. That would be right, yeah.
BH: Are you doing okay? Do we need a little break? Do you need some water or something there?
KV: I’m okay.
BH: So I’m still calculating here...1922…and I’m just trying to think where you were, or maybe you could tell me where you were, and how old you were, when the war broke out – when you first heard about Pearl Harbor.
KV: I really am not sure when I heard about it. I suppose when my brothers started enlisting, you know. Cliff was not married and he was my youngest brother, and he went first. He was color blind. He wanted to be a pilot and couldn’t, so he was a tail gunner. He was stationed on Guam for quite a while. I didn’t leave St. Cloud until I was 21 or 22. I took this course – inspection course. And then there was a company called Char-Gale [Manufacturing Company] in St. Cloud that had a government contract, and I went to work for them after completing the inspector training. It was a class of 30, and four of us got the jobs. And I left Penney’s to take that job, and immediately tripled my salary. I thought that was pretty good. When that contract ran out, and there was not another one in the offing for Char-Gale at that time, I went to Minneapolis to look for work, and that’s when I got with Northwest Aeronautical.
BH: So you are 19 when Pearl Harbor…
KV: Probably.
BH: And so 1942, when you turned 20 during 1942, do you think that’s when you moved to Minneapolis?
KV: Maybe a little bit later than that, because that’s when the boyfriend went in the Navy, and I was still in St. Cloud then.
BH: You had a boyfriend; were you engaged?
KV: Yup, but when he came back we decided to go our separate ways. But I did not want to write him a “Dear John” letter, and I had already met my husband.
BH: That was Pierre.
KV: Um hum. [Laughing]
BH: Oh, it’s so romantic, having a name like “Pierre”. So 1942…As I said, you’re 20 years old, and you haven’t moved yet. Maybe it’s 1943. How did you begin working at Northwest Aeronautical? Is that the first job you got in the Twin Cities? And were did you live? How did you…?
KV: Lived at the Admiral Hotel. It’s not there anymore. [Editor’s note: the Admiral Hotel was located at 312-314 Eighth Street South in downtown Minneapolis.] That’s on 8th, do you remember, Mary? It’s on 8th, down from what was Dayton’s, I think. Beyond Nicollet.
MV: Marquette?
KV: Yeah, and sort of around the corner from the Athletic Club, which is something else now.
MV: That would have been 8th and 2nd.
KV: Well, somewhere in that area, because later my husband became a member of the Athletic Club and we used to go there, but that was much later.
BH: So did you just decide to move to start looking for work?
KV: Yes, because I didn’t want to go back to working for less money, and these two girlfriends – they were sisters – were already in Minneapolis, working for Honeywell. I must have seen an ad or something where they were looking for inspectors, and interviewed, and got it.
BH: Got the job at Northwest Aeronautics.
KV: Um hum.
BH: But I’m impressed that your parents let you move by yourself to a hotel in Minneapolis.
KV: Well, these two girlfriends were also from St. Cloud and I was going to live with them – the three of us. There are a lot of stories there, because those were little efficiency apartments with the pull-down bed. So we alternated; two weeks on the bed and one on the davenport, and we rotated, and we did the same thing cooking.
BH: Is that because housing was hard to find and it was crowded?
KV: Partly, and partly for economic reasons. It was a lot cheaper to divide the cost, you know, and the location was relatively good for getting to work
BH: How did you get to work? And where was work?
KV: Well, I’m not quite sure which one of the plants I worked in, as we discussed before, but we rode in car pools.
BH: Oh, so somebody had a car, and …
KV: Yeah, usually somebody in the department had a car. And I did, at some point, sometimes ride the busses, too, but mostly we had car pools.
BH: We found this newsletter from November of 1943, from the company you worked for. So, somewhere in there…
KV: Here’s this picture…
BH: That’s a picture of you, is that right?
KV: Yeah.
BH: And you are described as what, can you read it to us?
KV: “The first girl inspector at Northwest Aeronautical, checking the location of the holes in a wing strap in relation to the center line.”
BH: So, do you remember doing that kind of work?
KV: Oh yeah, and I can remember learning to, you know…I had learned to do the micrometer and read blueprints and all that stuff. It was very…and I remember this Glen Porter, he was our supervisor. I don’t remember the other fellows that are pictured here. But I do remember a John Stoner and a Lou Hobson that were inspectors at that time.
BH: So you worked mostly with men.
KV: Yeah. Inspecting, yeah.
BH: Did somebody explain to you what you were working on, these gliders?
KV: Oh, yeah. I knew that they were [unclear t_______?], and they were to transport equipment and soldiers, and so we knew how critical it was and how important accuracy was. I got the job – I think I might have mentioned to you – because there was a shortage of men. Most of them were in service. A Jim Lamont was the executive, or President, of Northwest Aeronautical, on loan from Northwest Airlines, and it was his idea to start hiring women, and he met some opposition. So that’s when I was hired, to see if that worked, and then there were others after me.
BH: This is from an article that somebody’s just written, is that “To meet production goals, Northwest Aeronautical, DePonti and Villaume [Box Company],” those are the two subcontractors [who built gliders during WWII], “had to hire just about anyone who was willing to work. One contemporary account of glider-building work stressed how diverse the backgrounds of the people were – a hotel worker, orchestra leader, chiropractor, violin maker, bonds salesman, music teacher – and a substantial number of those hired were women.” Did you get that sense of the diversity of people working over there – backgrounds?
KV: I don’t really remember, because the inspectors seemed to have… The two fellows, like I said, that I remember most, Lou Hobson and John Stoner, must have been working the lines with me, or at the same time, and they were very, very helpful, so that I didn’t feel any opposition from anybody. We had a nice rapport there, and, as I recall, there was a Harriet Depew who was working [in] like an office where, you know, things were filed – our records, whatever. I have no idea where she would be today, but probably gone, because I think she’s even maybe a little older than I am, or would be.
BH: You said there was a good rapport. There wasn’t much complaining about…?
KV: No, the fact that there were women there. I think, in the other defense plants you read all this about “Rosie the Riveter”, and that sort of thing. I don’t think we got a lot of opposition because most of the fellas were gone.
BH: Can you describe a typical work day, starting from getting… [Transcriber’s note: tape cut off momentarily.] What did you do there, actually? What does “inspecting” mean?
KV: I think we would check in and then probably, Glen Porter or someone comparable, would give us our assignments and our position on the line, and that particular day, that’s what I was doing. But I did do the micrometer and the other precision instruments at various times, too.
BH: How much attention did you pay to the progress of the glider program itself, and its mission, and its successes and failures?
KV: I don’t recall.
BH: But did you get a sense of much was being …?
KV: It seemed to me that they were pretty successful, but I didn’t remember hearing about crashes, or anything like that. So I think they were doing pretty well. That would be my sense.
BH: Did you remember seeing that employee newsletter that I just showed you? Was that something you remember from…?
KV: Only now, because you showed it to me. I had forgotten that. But yeah, we used to get them. I remember getting mail [packs?]. I think they came through, probably every day, and that was when my husband and I had met and he was working at the airport and I was working in the other plants, and he used to write poetry, and he used to send it.
BH: How did you meet him?
KV: I had a roommate, and we were living on Franklin Avenue – 15th and Franklin, and she also worked for Northwest Aeronautical. She came home and she’s telling me about this cute ex-Navy flier – she worked at the airport, too. And then one day – and she didn’t cook, so she said, “If I invite him for dinner, would you cook?” “Sure.” And so she’d have him bring a buddy. Well, I didn’t really need a buddy because I was still engaged at that point, but anyway, she invited them, and they came for dinner, and my husband decided that he was more interested in me than her, and it just developed. Eventually, I didn’t have a roommate. Of course, she left, and I moved to 1901 Girard Avenue South, up in a studio apartment on the third floor of a huge family home, and at that point my husband was going to the U, and he used to come and visit.
BH: Was that during the war? Did you get married during the war?
KV: No, we were married December of ’46.
BH: So when you moved…back up a bit. You moved to Girard Avenue to a studio by yourself?
KV: Yes. This was on the third floor of this house. There were three girls in the front apartment, which was much bigger. Mine was two rooms, a combination living/sleeping room, and a kitchen, and the four of us shared the bath on that floor.
BH: And you were still working then at Northwest Aeronautical?
KV: No, by that time the war was over, I think, and I was working at Hansord Pontiac.
BH: Oh, okay. Well, take us from when you stopped working on the gliders and what happened? How did it stop? Did you…
KV: Well, the contracts were done. And Jim Lamont was going back to Northwest Airlines in, as I recall, St. Louis, and he was very pleased at the progress I had made there, so he offered me a job in St. Louis at Northwest Airlines, or wherever it was he was working. But by that time I had met my husband and we were kinda thinking about maybe getting married, so I didn’t accept that, and I was looking for something where I could use my office training. I got the job first at A.T. Hansord as a service billing clerk, so I had to bill out repair orders and that kind of thing. I worked for them until after we married. Six months after we married my husband graduated from the U, and then we went to Milwaukee.
BH: Tell me your husband’s name.
KV: Maurice.
BH: And where was he from?
KV: Faribault.
BH: So this was…the war is over, you’re working, you’ve met your husband. You’re working at Hansord, you said, and you decide to get married. Where did that happen?
KV: Where did we get married? In St. Cloud, at my home parish, St. Mary’s. Married in a blizzard. He was going through the U on the GI Bill. He got credits for his service; he went through in a year and a half to get his four-year degree, which is service credits and everything, by going straight through. So he really couldn’t afford to take time off, so we decided to get married on the 28th of December, during the Christmas Holiday break, and two or three days before we got married, this blizzard hit, and it was a lulu! He had gone home to be with his parents for Christmas, and I had gone to St. Cloud to be with my parents for Christmas, then he was coming the day after Christmas to St. Cloud, or two days after, or whatever, so that we would be married on the 28th. He had borrowed a car because he didn’t have a car – didn’t own one – from a friend, [and] drove from Faribault. The lights went out on the car. [He] followed a truck [that] led him into St. Cloud, so he got to my house. He was late for the rehearsal, so we had a little difficulty at that point. But anyway, we were married on the morning of the 28th.
I remember I wanted to have poinsettias and the florist said, “You can’t, because you won’t be able to move them from church to the hotel,” and all of that. So I ended up with white roses and white carnations, or something. And just all kinds of crazy things happened. The best man forgot the rings at the hotel. The pastor had slapped a solemn high-mass in, because it was a feast day in the Catholic Church, an hour before us, so the florist couldn’t get in to decorate the church on time, and I had wanted bows on the pews, and I don’t know that we ever got them because time was running out. But we finally made it.
BH: I want to go back and ask you if your friends followed war news and talked about it. How did it affect you, besides the fact that you were working for a defense plant?
KV: Well, you know, there was rationing then. I can remember that. I remember we could only get one pair of shoes a year, or two, and a couple of the fellas gave me extra coupons. Meat was hard to come by, but my husband – we were dating then – [his] family lived on a farm outside of Faribault, so they gave us…when he went home on weekends he’d bring back frozen chicken, meat, and so on. So I didn’t suffer as much as some people probably did. One of the girls that lived in this house on Girard worked in a drug store right on the corner of 8th and Hennepin – I have no idea whether it’s still there – but for those that smoked, she could get cigarettes when other people couldn’t.
BH: Did you follow war news? Did you know people there, fighting?
KV: Oh, yeah, but not as… I would try to follow if there was something happening with somebody from St. Cloud, or somebody that he knew.
BH: So you knew people who were…?
KV: Oh, in service? Oh, yeah.
BH: Do you remember, like, newsreels or newspapers, or how you got the news?
KV: I can remember being in St. Cloud on the weekend that the war was over. We were downtown in St. Cloud and everybody’s out on the streets and celebrating. I remember that.
BH: That was either V-E Day, or V-J Day. Probably [May] or August, 1945.
KV: Probably, yeah.
BH: Do you remember hearing about the atomic bomb?
KV: Oh, yes.
BH: What did you think about it?
KV: I really feel that Harry Truman did a good thing. It’s unfortunate, all the people that were hurt, and so on, but it brought an end to things. I sometimes think, you know…they criticize the U.S. – or maybe Japan – they are talking about the trouble in the Japanese camps here, and so on, but look what they did to our boys, and, like I said, my one brother was on Guam for a long time and he could tell some stories. So I personally thought it was timely.
BH: The war ended and you were still working. You married in late 1946. What did you want to do then? Did you want to stay employed? Did you want to have children? What did you…?
KV: Yeah, both. [Laughing] We…as I said, when he…this is an interesting story about my husband. He had an insurance agency in Faribault – we did – for forty years. How he got that, was when he was in service in the Naval Air Corps, he was hurt and came out with a Medical Discharge. But during the time he was hospitalized – and this would be before I met him – at the Naval Hospital in Chicago. And he contracted mumps while he was being treated for a back injury, and while he was there and going through the treatment… He didn’t like Chicago – he used to go into Milwaukee when he’d have a weekend off, and he was checking into a hotel one day, trying to get a room, and there wasn’t anything. Standing right next to him was a man who was begging the concierge for cigarettes, and “I don’t have any.” So my husband said, “I have cigarettes you can have. I get them on the base.” And they struck up an acquaintance, and this fellow turned out to be the field superintendent of Old Line Life Insurance Company, and he said, “Well, my family’s over in Iowa. I’m going home for the weekend. If you want to stay in my room, you can do that.” That developed a friendship so that whenever my husband came, he would stay in his room.
When he got his medical discharge, the field superintendent said to him – his name was Ev Marrow [Merrill?] – he said, “If you’re ever looking for a job when you get through with the University, contact me.” So he started at the U, and he had the year in and knew he had just six months left, and we were starting to make plans to get married. He went to Milwaukee one weekend to make sure that job was waiting. He said “yes”, and so when he finished and graduated, we went to Milwaukee because he had this job waiting. They started him as a field superintendent. Of course he had orientation and training for some months and then he started traveling for them, and I went to work for a Packard dealership first – no, it was first a Pontiac dealer, [Widrig?] Pontiac – and I would quit every summer, hoping maybe we’d start a family, and we didn’t. So then I’d go look for another job in the fall, and work until the following spring. I went from Widrig Pontiac to a Packard Dealership, and then, the last two years we stayed in Milwaukee, I was secretary to the Pontiac zone manager. And at that time we were starting fertility studies, and so on. And then my husband decided that this traveling was just too much. The fourth year he was home 13 out of the 52 weeks, and that’s why I worked, too. Then we moved back to Faribault and resumed fertility studies. They told us it was possible, but not probable, and so Mary Kae is my special daughter.
BH: So you decided to go in an adoption route.
KV: Um hum.
BH: When did you decide that? What year was that?
KV: Pretty much when we started and they told us. In fact, I think we had a fair idea we might have to do that when we got married.
BH: How did that make you feel?
KV: As my husband used to say – how did he put this? “Just like having your own except mother isn’t sick.” She was only ten days old when we got her.
BH: And you adopted other children, too?
KV: We have a son who is three years younger than she is.
BH: So you wanted to become a mother and stop working.
KV: Oh, yeah, and I did. Didn’t work outside the home until our son was 16 and he wanted to work. But at that time – or during those years, and my husband was developing and building his agency, I used to help out with the bookkeeping and that sort of thing. So I had my fingers in the pot.
BH: So you had both. You were raising a family, doing those things that people did after the war during the baby boom, but you also got to work. So you never felt like those two things were in conflict?
KV: No, and in fact, my husband said to me when Charlie was 16…and actually he had an account in Milwaukee. There was a chiropractic clinic and he wrote the insurance for the clinic, and then the doctors asked him to come up with some sort of an investment plan for them. Although he was licensed, in the brokerage business you can only be licensed with one brokerage firm, as opposed to insurance companies where you can have licenses with all kinds of companies. So he said to me, “Why don’t you go get your license?” He needed another body from some other source, and so that’s how I started the brokerage courses, through the insurance company that he represented. I registered with the brokerage firm, and then I decided I liked that business better than the insurance business, so that’s what I did until I retired.
BH: So you started in this brokerage business, the brokerage work in the ‘60s after your children were teenagers?
KV: Yeah, except that I worked in the Faribault area. I had a branch office for the R.J. Steichen and Company at that time.
BH: That wasn’t very typical, was it?
KV: No, it wasn’t. I think I was also, again, the first outstate woman broker. There were women brokers in the Metropolitan area, and I remember thinking, “I wonder how men will feel about talking to me about finances,” but I never had a problem.
BH: Did you have… [Transcriber’s note: tape cut off- may have missed part of question.] …did it feel like a small town, or was it like a suburb, or…?
KV: Well, I think it was more like a small town. At that time the population was about 17,000. And my husband wanted to go there and start his agency because that was his home territory. At that time there were also state schools there, so that probably was part of the population.
BH: How did you feel, being somewhat different than the typical stay-at-home mom, not working, raising kids? Did you feel like you were part of a community that…?
KV: Oh yeah. I played bridge for 40 years with the same group of gals. We belonged to the country club; I’m a lousy golfer, but I used to play at it. I took the kids to the pool, you know, when they were little, and they took their swimming lessons and all that. So no, and we had a good group of friends. We were with the Fourth Degree Knights of Columbus, and we had a lot of good parties.
BH: Did you join clubs, then, during that period? Like you said…
KV: Yeah, some. We belonged to the Elks Club and the country club. I don’t know that we did a lot of others.
BH: Bowling?
KV: Not a natural bowler either. I can bowl the most beautiful gutter ball you ever saw.
BH: I’m interested in the fact that your husband and you both worked in insurance and then brokerage. That seems to be something that might have been related to the growth in the economy after the war in the 1950’s, and the… Is that something that… How did you benefit from that boom time? Did you think of it as a boom time?
KV: Not right away. And it was hard times for my husband to build the agency. You would normally think that you go to your home people. It didn’t work that way, you know. When it came to finances and insurance, a lot of times local people would want to go…they didn’t want somebody knowing their business. Actually, he built a tremendous agency, but they were mostly outstate accounts. Benedictine monastery – he wrote St. John’s, he wrote St. Ben’s at one time, he wrote the Benedictine monastery in Butler, Pennsylvania and one in New Hampshire. He also wrote hospitals, small communities and counties. So that was his forte and he was very good at what he did. In fact, the treasurer of St. John’s University, on their hundredth anniversary, did a study or something. And anyway, written in the annals of their history is the fact that he saved them more money on their insurance program than they got from the Ford Foundation Grant.
BH: Do you remember getting a television set?
KV: Yes, when we were still in Milwaukee, and my husband traveled. He was always allowed first class accommodations, you know, and instead of that, he would take coach on a train or some such, and save the difference, and that’s how we got our first TV. It was an Admiral TV, a big blond cabinet, the first … [Transcriber’s note: tape cut off]…our friends.
BH: They were very expensive, TV’s.
KV: Probably so. I couldn’t tell you exactly, but I know we had one when it first came out.
BH: Did you watch it with other people?
KV: This is in Milwaukee when we got it, and we had a good group of friends with the people he worked with. We had a monthly dinner club. We would alternate homes, or parties, and we would have friends over to watch it, and eventually everybody was getting them. But I know we had one of the first.
BH: My parents have told the same story. I was born in 1950 and they got the first TV in 1950. They said they had the only TV in their apartment complex, so everyone would come over at night and watch TV together, and take care of the babies who were booming.
KV: Probably an interesting story might be that when we moved to Milwaukee… Coming out of the U, you know, and we didn’t have any money, really, to speak of, and he had this job waiting. He had come down earlier and found this apartment. It was in Governor Ludington’s mansion. At one time he had been the governor of Wisconsin. And it was on [Blue Mound?] Road. This house was a big three-story. [It] had been a mansion at one time and was now converted into four flats. The woman that owned it was an immigrant lady who did house cleaning, and she lived on one side downstairs and we were on the other side. Unfortunately, the heating controls, the thermostats, were on her side, and so she left in the morning, turned it down, [and] we’d get home from work and it would be very cold. More than once we went to bed just to stay warm until she got home and we could go knock on her door. But I think we were all of $45.00 a month rent. The only redeeming feature in that place was a fireplace in the living room that had a marble façade. It was beautiful. I suppose from the days when it was the governor’s mansion.
BH: So that was just after the war?
KV: That was my first apartment in Milwaukee, yeah.
BH: As the ‘50s went on and your husband became more successful, do you remember buying things like cars and appliances?
KV: Oh, yeah. Well, see, as we left Milwaukee, I had been working for the Pontiac zone office, so just before I resigned, I got a new Pontiac car at manufacturer’s cost. And that stood us for some years while he was getting started, and then we moved back to Minnesota. The first car we bought before that. My kids have a hard time with this because I tell [them] we were married three years before we ever had a car. The first one we bought was a used Studebaker for $500.00.
BH: So how did you get around without a car before then?
KV: There’s an interurban electric train about two blocks from our house that we caught right into downtown Milwaukee. And we would do that until, like I said, a couple years later we bought that used Studebaker.
BH: Did you and the family and the kids go on family vacations together?
KV: Yeah, we weaned both our kids off bottles on trips. We traveled a lot. When they were small, we went to Canada, and went out East where he had a sister and brother-in-law living in Baltimore. We went somewhere every year. My husband really liked to travel, and as they got a little older – I think [Mary] was a junior in high school, between her junior and senior year, and our son was in junior high – we took them on a tour of Europe for…I think we hit eleven countries. On our 25th wedding anniversary we took them to Mexico. One year we went to Las Vegas because our son was graduating college, then, at St. John’s, and she went to St. Ben’s. We figured that would probably be the last vacation we would take as a family. But my husband and I have been to Thailand, India, South America, been to Mexico three times. The only thing we didn’t do that he had wanted to do before he died was the Nordic countries and Russia. But I think we’ve been almost everywhere else.
BH: So you had a pretty active retirement, it sounds like. Maybe should we wrap up and come back? How are you doing? (high pitched sound) Does that adjust your hearing aid? I’m thinking maybe… Has it been important for you to stay in touch with old friends? Are you in touch with anybody from the World War II days and working in the defense plant?
KV: No, I really haven’t, you know. We stayed in touch with people in Faribault that we knew there, but as you get older… As I said, I played bridge for forty years with the same gal, but we retired and moved to Eagan. By this time, you know, late 60’s, early 70’s, nobody wants to drive fifty miles at night to play bridge; and we just sort of…and most of those girls are gone now. One of my friends, one of the oldest friends, lives in Fort Meyers. We stay in touch at holiday time; otherwise I don’t. While I’m still driving, I don’t drive on the highway, and I don’t drive at night.
BH: What would you say, sort of by way of conclusion, what would you say are the defining events of your life? What things have really shaped you?
KV: I think the things that mean the most to me were getting these kids by adoption. I can remember, you know, going through all of those fertility studies, and they weren’t fun, and they could be painful. So I was really grateful to get them. That, plus the fact that my husband and I were able to forge a joint partnership, both within our family and within our business, and it did not create the turmoil that sometimes comes about. He was an amazing man, too – very special – very attentive, very generous, and something of a romantic.
BH: Any regrets? Things you would do differently in your life?
KV: Not a whole lot. Not that I can really think of.
BH: That acting troupe?
KV: Well, that was fun, you know, but that’s not a career, really. I have no illusions about that. It’s just like today, my granddaughter has a beautiful voice and that’s what she wants to do, is sing, and I tell her that’s a tough field to crack. But that’s what she…and she does have a gorgeous voice. But I don’t sing. I have a sister – that’s the only one of my siblings left – who had a gorgeous voice. Her husband was in the Korean War and is now gone. But I can’t carry a tune in a hand basket. She has a beautiful trained voice. She sang at the Cathedral in Washington, D.C. – you auditioned for their choir, you didn’t just join – and she would sing the solos on Christmas Eve and things like that, when he was stationed there in service. Her husband played eleven instruments and he was in the Admiral’s Fleet Band. She plays three instruments, or did.
BH: But you, yourself, don’t have any regrets.
KV: No, not really, you know. I’m grateful that I’ve had a very, very full life and we got to do a lot of things, got a lot of places. I loved traveling in Europe; I loved Switzerland, the Bavarian areas, you know. So I think I was very fortunate.
BH: How do you think about your generation in history? This is what we often call the “Greatest Generation”. Do you identify with that term, and what do you think of that word?
KV: Well, I’m happy to be part of that generation. I think we did a lot of good things – not me, personally, but “we”, that generation – and they made a lot of advances, just like we’re continuing doing now; things that you never would have expected to see and do.
BH: What do you think really shaped this generation – your generation?
KV: I think we may have been a little closer to our religions than maybe they are today. I think we were more respectful of family disciplines. I know that I would not have dared to say some of the things to my parents that some people do today. I think sometimes they’re a little too liberal today.
BH: Do you think hardship shaped your generation?
KV: I think so, because we worked very hard to get where we got, and I sometimes think that we made it too easy for our kids. You know, we put them through private colleges and they came out without debt. Sometimes I’m not sure that they really realize the value of the economy today.
BH: And what about the wartime experience, was that something that made you all come together and shape the rest of your lives?
KV: Yeah, I think so. I think we were more dependent on each other, especially through the times of rationing. It made us more respectful of family. I know I had two brothers that served, and you worried about them like you do today. I think maybe families stayed a little closer together at that time than they do today. But all in all, I think I was very fortunate. I had a very, very good life.
BH: That’s a great ending. I’ll take that. I think you should have gone into that acting troupe because you’ve got a great voice and you’re a good storyteller. [Looking at photographs.] We decided that nobody in these pictures that I had – at least none of these – is you, is it?
KV: No. Just that one.
BH: Just that one that’s in there…and nobody in this picture, here?
KV: No, see, I think these were actually working on the line; they weren’t inspecting.
BH: They may have been working for Villaume.
KV: Yeah, they’re working in Production and I was in Inspection. I can remember, vaguely, coming in and going up to check some of this stuff.
BH: But that’s not you.
KV: Nope.
BH: We’ll find that picture of you.
KV: Just that one that you…
BH: Well, we’ll find the other one in the “Star Tribune” and get you a copy of it.
[End of Interview.]