Helen Morgan
Amber Harding
Interview Transcript
Amber Harding: Grandma, how old were you when the war started?
Helen Morgan: Well, I was in high school. I was probably about 17.
Harding: You were born in 1924, correct? Then you were 17 when the U.S. entered the war.
Morgan: Yes, that was in 1941.
Mary Denny: Yeah, Helen, don’t you remember? That’s when we were down at the Bungalow dancing and carrying on.
Morgan: That’s right! We were down the street at the Bungalow Inn. That was the hang out where we all went to dance. When they announced the Pearl Harbor attack, all the boys were going to march out and go to war, but they didn’t.
Denny: It was a Sunday afternoon, December 7th, and all the boys in the neighborhood wanted to go fight, but I think only one or two of them actually signed up. They were all going to go to war and save us all!
Morgan: We used to go down to that Bungalow Inn a lot. Everyone went on Sundays. They had a jukebox and all that. We also went to meet boys, but after that we all thought we were just going to be stuck with a bunch of girls because all the guys were going to go off to war.
Denny: Wrong! They chickened out. Most of them waited until they were drafted. My boyfriend was drafted. He was stationed in Denver, Colorado, and I went out there on the Greyhound Bus when I was 17 years old and got married.
Harding: In Denver?
Denny: I got married in Denver.
Morgan: Then they came home. Mary stayed home, and he went to Atlanta. Then, Mary and I decided to move down there with him. I got homesick and came home, though. She and Paul hadn’t been married that long, and they were glad to get rid of me.
Denny: Anyhow, Mom sent us care packages with chocolate chip cookies in them. They didn’t pack them very well though, so we usually had to eat the cookies with a spoon.
Morgan: The people who had lived in the room before us left stuff in the refrigerator, and we ate all their food, too.
Denny: Your grandma only came with us, Amber, because she had a job at the telephone company that she wasn’t happy with. You couldn’t quit a job during the war, and if you did, you’d never be able to get another job. It was some kind of rule.
Morgan: So I went with them to Georgia and stayed with them a couple months, but then I got home sick.
Harding: So you didn’t get anymore of those delicious care packages?
Morgan: No, I didn’t, but I helped my sister Thelma put them together. Thelma was always really thoughtful. That was the time of rationing, you know. Mary loves peaches, and I loved bananas. Thelma used to spend her rationing coupons to buy Mary and me peaches and bananas for our birthdays and Christmas. That was a really nice thing for her to do because it was the ration stamps more than the money that we had a hard time with.
Harding: So tell me about the ration stamps. How did you get them?
Morgan: You only got so much for however many you had in your family. You got them once a month, and you had to make them last all month.
Denny: They had separate ration stamps for groceries than for gasoline. You had to have gasoline stamps, but you had to double up because not everyone had enough gas to do stuff.
Morgan: One time we went to Lake Schaeffer one weekend, and when we got ready to come home, we realized that we didn’t have enough ration stamps to get home. We were stuck. I don’t know how we ever convinced that gas man to give us free gas.
Denny: He probably did it just to get rid of you.
Morgan: Oh, we were a bunch of ladies in a car looking pitiful.
Harding: Grandma, when you came back from Georgia, did you get a new job?
Morgan: Yeah, I had a lot of jobs. I worked at the Boy Scout office for a while. That’s where I learned how to type and use office machines. They didn’t teach us women that kind of stuff in school. I finally got the top job there as Secretary to the Boy Scout Executive. He used to throw these dinner parties for some big-wigs, and he made me go out and buy all the food. It wasn’t really part of my job, but I didn’t have a choice. I hated to do that.
Harding: So did you have to deal with a lot of people trying to push you around at work?
Denny: Well, for the majority of the war we did what they called women’s work, so we didn’t have to deal with it then. But when they finally started hiring women at the post office, we had to put up with a lot of criticism. The men pushed for equal work for equal pay. If a man had to lift an eighty-pound sack of mail, so did a woman.
Morgan: Yeah, when all that started, my husband Bill told me I could not go out and get a job. He almost forbade me.
Denny: But she did it anyway.
Morgan: I didn’t like to be told I couldn’t do something.
Denny: Yeah, we also worked at RCA for a while and helped make stuff for the war.
Harding: Wow, you guys did everything. What did they make there at RCA?
Denny: They made ship’s radios, movie projectors, and things like that.
Harding: So you didn’t stay with your husband in Georgia the whole time? Did he go off to fight?
Denny: Oh, no. Actually, he worked for the military as an x-ray technician.
Harding: So where did you live when you were in Georgia?
Denny: Paul lived on the base, and they kept the families in a sleeping room.
Morgan: They were little two-room quarters. It had a bedroom and a bathroom, and there was a small refrigerator in the bathroom.
Denny: We had kitchen privileges, though. We all shared. We actually got a job at the five and ten cent store there in Atlanta, but we didn’t have that job very long.
Harding: What happened?
Denny: Well, we were used to Indianapolis. In Indianapolis, all the stores were closed on Mondays, so we thought it was the same in Atlanta. One Monday, we didn’t go to work, and we went to the movies. Our boss caught us and fired us. He didn’t know he was firing two of the best, smartest workers in Atlanta, Georgia.
Morgan: No he didn’t. And he fired us just because we took a day off!
Harding: Thanks, Grandma and Mary. This was interesting.