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<rdf:Description rdf:about="https://digital.centerforknitandcrochet.org/items/show/37636">
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[World War, 1939-1945--Georgia--Marietta]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[World War, 1939-1945--Personal narratives, American]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Dawson, Robert Louis, 1921-1944]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[Bell Aircraft Corporation]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:title><![CDATA[V-mail]]></dcterms:title>
    <dcterms:subject><![CDATA[Lacy, Margaret]]></dcterms:subject>
    <dcterms:subject><![CDATA[Gusa, Sally Bishop, 1929]]></dcterms:subject>
    <dcterms:description><![CDATA[moving image]]></dcterms:description>
    <dcterms:creator><![CDATA[https://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/do-th:geh_vhpohr_180]]></dcterms:creator>
    <dcterms:source><![CDATA[none]]></dcterms:source>
    <dcterms:date><![CDATA[That was interesting to me that President Roosevelt‚Äîand then, of course, we came home one day, and my neighbor said, ‚ÄúSally, did you hear about the President?‚Äù They didn't have announcements made in school over the intercom back then. And I said, ‚ÄúWhat about the President?‚Äù ‚ÄúHe died.‚Äù And that was just something that couldn't happen. I just didn't think that could ever happen, and it was so sad. I had this picture that was published in Life magazine of Graham Jackson playing his accordion when the [funeral] train left, and tears streaming down his face. I get chills thinking about it. Interviewer: A powerful image. Sally: Absolutely. And another one I'm sure you remember as well as I, it was at the end of the war with all the celebration going on at Time Square‚Äîthe sailor and the unknown nurse. You know, that big hug and kiss. I was here at Marietta. Daddy was away that day, and I was in charge Interviewer:A 16 year old in charge. Sally: I just meant I closed. I locked up everything and put the money in the safe. It was about, I don't know, 1 or 2 o'clock in the afternoon maybe and we got word. A friend of mind came running over from her house which was‚Äîoh, there was a lot of houses built. You know to move people into quickly during World War II in Marietta. And she came running over, she says, ‚ÄúSally, those boys ought to turn on the radio,‚Äù and I didn't have a radio. And she said, ‚ÄúWell, come over to my house.‚Äù Well, I couldn't leave. I had to get people out of the pool. So I went out‚ÄîI called somebody, and they verified it. And I went out and announced to everybody at the pool that we were closing. That I wanted to be in on the celebration. We finally got the pool closed and everything locked up and it's a wonder we made it to get it all secured, because I was so eager to get away. My friend and I and some other friends that had come back to my house walked up to the square, which was Whitlock Avenue, which is really congested now, but it was a lovely residential street then. We walked up to the square, and it was like New Year's celebration in Times Square, wherever. People were going around the square and around and round. It was full of cars, and people were singing. They were doing congo lines. If you don't know, congo is a dance. It was very popular during the war. And long congo lines. You would be dancing with your hands on somebody's waist to give you a one, two, three kick‚Äîall around the square. It would be long lines, and then people were still driving with all of us. Especially with going one way, I think at that time the square was two directions. We got into a convertible with Chick and Cotton Hill. Now Chick and Cotton Hill were brothers of Virginia Hill, who was a ‚Äúmoll,‚Äù I use that loosely. But a girl friend that lived with one of them, Bugsey Seigel, who was a well known gangster. During the early days of Vegas he was responsible for getting a lot going in Vegas. So, Chick, and it was fun to ride around in that convertible, sitting up on that convertible after we had been dancing around the square. It just seems like the celebration went on for ever and ever and ever. It was just wonderful, but then we decided that we really ought to go to church. I grew up Southern Baptist, and they did leave the churches open at night. We all went to church and said our prayers‚Äîand then came back and celebrated some more. It was a wonderful‚Äîdespite the war, as a teenager, it was a wonderful time to grow up. It was certainly sad for all the losses. We were so fortunate that we were never bombed, and it was kept abroad. I'm sure that President Truman had the most horrendous decision that anybody could ever make. But before that I remember Jimmy Doolittle's raid and how important it was. There was a picture about that later about modern Tokyo. We had a lot of propaganda movies. That's something that ought to be mentioned. The movies were out. We didn't recognize them as propaganda, but they would have a lot of good things in there about loyalty to the country, and everybody would, the guys would all be rushing out to sign up. Everybody was so patriotic. Families hung flags in the window to indicate that they had a son. There were different colors. These were flags about this high. And it would be‚Äîmothers who had a son in the service would hang one in their window. Some of them had two or three. If the son was killed, if a person was killed, you know, it was different. It was a gold flag. It was a different color. I have not seen any of those. I guess they are in museums. One thing that I have enjoyed so much‚Äîif you haven't seen the D-Day museum in New Orleans, it's fantastic. It's absolutely wonderful. I could spend three days in there. This will probably be ____ someday. But I really encourage everybody to go down there, and I encourage everybody who comes here, you veterans out there, partake of this. We need to know what you went through over there. I just think it's so important. Interviewer: Every veteran's story is really fascinating. Every experience is different. Sally: Yes, it is. I just can't imagine what they must have gone through. The ones in Europe, and the fellows in the jungles. The rocky atolls in the Pacific, there is a different way of fighting over there, but it's just as awful. Interviewer: Do you have any military pen pal letters? Sally: I did. I did not bring one. One of them was a boy that, he graduated. He was the first Eagle Scout in Marietta, Chip Mabry was his name, a fine young man. Interviewer: Two streets are named Mabry. Sally: I don't doubt that. He went on to, down there at Statesboro, that's a Georgia college down there. But he and I were pen pals and I do still have V-mail from him. I wish I had brought it. I'm sure that by now you have heard of e-mail‚ÄîI'm sorry, that's the modern version. V-mail, victory mail, these were mail, letters that they gave you the forms to write on, and they would be maybe this big and this high. And then they would photograph them and shrink them in size. They didn't go in the form that we received them in. I mean they were done like picture wise and maybe just on a film, and then okay. So they went to Europe, and then they were blown up [enlarged] over there. I guess when they were censored. And they returned them to the guys to read them. And their replies came back. Everything was censored, everything was censored. I got some letters, but I don't have them now, they would cut out the flag ______. Like if they know, this time of year in France, they black out things. They didn't want us to know everything. Interviewer: Oh, yeah. Sally:But the main part would come out again this size, square. And it would say V-mail only, and, of course, it was free for the soldiers. All the soldiers got, all the military men got free postage. Which I think was only fair. So different from now. If you look at old movies, you will see cigarettes being stuck in the mouth of every wounded soldier, it seemed like. he USO handed out cigarettes like mad. All the cigarette companies furnished the cigarettes, of course. And smoking was looked at entirely different. We didn't know that it would kill you back then. Interviewer: Uh hum. Sally: And it's so different now. I would have a hard time to go through Georgia, and if they didn't have a Coca-Cola over there, I do think they got some to the troops. Interviewer: Oh, yeah. Of course. Sally: We was thinking that and maybe this was a man who had arm [?]. I belong to Life Enrichment Services, which is a senior organization in Decatur. We had different programs where you could take maybe four courses, you know Thursday. And several times they had courses where the men came to speak‚ÄîVeterans Day‚Äîto speak and tell their experiences, because the man who was heading it up was in the 8th Air Force and was pilot of a P-38. We had a lot of pilots or men who had flown airplanes. There was this one man who was a tail gunner flying with the 8th Air Force out of England going across the Channel, and I don't know how‚Äîof course, they went into France or wherever they were headed, but they had left England. He is the tail gunner. He is sort of back there by himself. He realizes that he is heading along, but it doesn't seem as noisy as usual, and he tried to radio up front and he is not getting any reply. The plane had been hit. They were under fire, so he knew that they were being attacked, but he didn't realize the plane had actually been hit. I guess he didn't feel the vibrations, but he was detached from the plane. He was just gliding through the air until he landed. He was rescued. And I thought how wonderful to live to tell that story. He had some more at the Methodist Church. The senior group had a group of their own members talk and tell about some of their experiences. And you see these gentlemen, and they are such nice, neat, mannerly gentlemen, and they went through horrendous things. To hear what they did is unbelievable. And this commentator on WSB or one of the local stations was also responsible for getting those together, getting the veterans to talk to us. There is a wealth of information out there if we could just [find] it. Interviewer: How could the man, the tail gunner, manage to get down? Sally: Well, I don't know. He came down in the water, but he was rescued. So maybe it must have been out there. So, as I said, it wasn't too far from the French coast. But those tales were interesting. Interviewer: Did you marry a serviceman? Sally: I did, but I went to college, and I didn't get out of college until ‚Äò50. That was another experience. I went to college in ‚Äò46 with the Georgia Bulldogs. But the boys by then were being discharged and coming back. And so there were lots and lots of them. Gasoline still wasn't plentiful, but it was more. And I remember one group of boys, I was ___ campus, where they put the freshmen and sophomore girls. I guess they didn't trust us to be on the main campus, but we had our own cafeteria and everything, we had the best food on campus. The boys would come out to eat. Every Thursday night we had steak. When we were growing up, I never had a T-bone steak. We always had cubed steak. But those boys found out about it. There was one group of them that were in a‚Äî I'd be kidding if, it was not a T model, it was a little bit later‚Äîbut the top had been cut off. It was not really a convertible. They must have had 10 kids, 10 boys in that [car]. But there were a lot of veterans, and to answer your question, yes, I did marry a veteran. I married in '53. He had been a B-24 pilot, and he was stationed in Italy and North Africa. I don't know much about his experiences except that he told me that at one time they were under attack, and this was in a B-24 Liberator. He was a pilot. This must have been horrendous, but his pilot was shot, and his face was just torn up. He was able to bring the plane on in. He did not talk about it much, but he had a lot of leftover things that bothered him. He drank a lot, and he would talk and talk‚Äîmaybe about the people that he knew‚Äînot so much about battles. But talk about when they were not out in combat zone. He would talk about things like that. When he was asleep, he would mutter and struggle and hit, not me, but the bed and things like that. I think he was tormented, and later he was called up. He was in a National Guard unit in California in tanks, and he was called up as a tank commander to go to Korea. There were a lot of the guys that served in World War II who were also called up for Korea. And they certainly did double time. Interviewer: That's too much. Sally: I agree. The mothers, the parents and sisters and brothers of the boys that were lost, who were lost in General Hospital out here. It was a big receiving point for a lot of the wounded after they got back to the states. I guess in pass through. I don't remember much about that. I did go to work for the Veterans Administration in '66, and a good number of the people had worked at ____ when the boys were coming back from overseas. I wish I knew more about that. Interviewer: What kind of work did you do at that time? Sally: I was a personnel manager specialist. I started out as a clerk, but I had my degree. I started after four years merit promotion. I became a personnel manager specialist and did labor relations, employee relations, hiring, taking adverse actions and then later you can do contracts, equal employment opportunity, things that got to be done. And then, you would do a desk audit for a job. Audit the report and see what people were doing, and then classify their jobs according to standards that you had accomplished. You might have two or three different standards on a fixed-duty type job. So in essence I set people's salary, but their supervisors determine what duties where assigned to them. A lot of the nurses had been nurses during the war. Their service was not credited towards their federal service which was such a‚Äîwas not equal at all. Interviewer: Injustice. Sally: I think now they are being given credit for that service. Then there were some areas for the men that were not credited. I think maybe, I can't specify what that was, but I remember I had one hydrologist who may have had some service relative to the war, and he was still trying to get credit for the war to count towards his federal retirement. But it was the nurses I really felt for because we all know at least from movies and newsreels what those nurses went through. I don't know what else I can add. I know . . . Interviewer: You had quite a skilled job to know all of that. Sally: Well, it was almost too much for me [laughter]. Somebody said, don't you miss it? Don't you miss it? The only thing I miss is the people. I do miss the people. You know, you knew a lot of people by name only, but you also knew many, many people from‚Äîsome of them had big, big problems and some of them were coming in to be brought on board and go out to ________ and that type of thing. It was very interesting. Interviewer: How long were you in there? Sally: I had 22 years of service. I didn't go to work for VA until my kids were in school, and I think I was working in '66 and then retired in, the end of the month from the day I turned 60. Interviewer: And you really miss it? Sally: No, I miss the people, but I got busy and I wanted to be‚Äîthis is not important. I wanted to be a tour guide and a lady‚ÄîI was volunteering here at the History Center and we had some sort of function where some of the people who worked in the tourism industry were there and she gave me her card and told me to come down and talk to her. So I did, and I took training immediately after I left VA. The next week I went down and started training. It was a week's training, and we ordered our uniforms. They would furnish the uniforms, but we had to buy our shoes and purses to match, so I bought my shoes and purses and they said‚ÄîI went on a couple of sample tours with other guides and loved it, just loved it. Then I didn't hear from them, did not hear from them. I said well, I just thought that's the way it would be. And so by July I was at the History Center for ____________, Georgia, down at __________ Underground and the gentleman from the Georgia Film Commission sat next to me when I went to have lunch out on the porch in one of the ____________ offices and _________________. Interviewer: That was Marietta Sally: From Marietta, they were right back of our house and I'll come back to that. But we were talking and I was telling him about this experience and he said, ‚ÄúI bet you thought it was you, didn't you?‚Äù I said I entirely, really did, and he said no, they went bankrupt. [Laughter] Well, by then I had been staying at home and doing fun things and I didn't really want to go back to work. I was making it financially. But speaking of the Brumby Chair factory in Marietta at the time of the war, Brumby Chair Factory was very well known throughout the country for its Brumby Rockers and still is. But there was a great big factory right in back of our house that was one of main industries in Marietta before Bell Bomber and then up the street was the knitting mill. _______Proof Knitting Mill. All through my growing up years the poultry company would blow a whistle when it was time for their people to go to work and so would Brumby Chair, there might just be 15 minutes difference in the two whistles. So living right there, pretty close to both of them, we knew the noon time whistle and then the quitting time whistle. People walked a lot even before the war because it was the Depression before the war. So we'd see lots of people going to and from these jobs. But that was one way we knew when the war was over, because all the sirens sounded, the factory whistles blew all over town and they continued to blow and blow and blow. And that was one of the announcements at the end of the war that really told us the war was over and this was specific. I don't remember too much celebration, I remember going to church and remember very little about it because . . . Interviewer: We were still fighting. Sally: Still fighting, yes. And we still had a long way to go in Japan. But those‚Äîthat's something else I touched on, but when the Bomber plant was built, they needed housing for these workers to come in. One of the first things they did was build Marietta Place, which was just one-level apartments, and they were down on Fairground Street, just at the foot of the hill from where the Bomber plant was. People could almost walk up that hill. Some of them are still left but not many. High Forest Homes was another apartment complex that was at the corner of Roswell Road and Fairground Highway. But also between there were a lot of wood frame houses that went up real, real fast that were duplexes, and some single unit homes that were put up really fast to accommodate these newcomers because there was such an influx of people. People rented rooms who never would have thought about renting rooms to men. A lot of boarding houses opened, even in the . . . Kennesaw House, not a boarding house as such but there was‚ÄîI think it was a tearoom, so they probably didn't sell to the men but to the wives. But we did have the Dixie Cafe and the Marietta Cafe on the square. They'd been there for quite awhile and did well during the war, I'm sure. The town really grew, it grew outward. Where highway 41 crosses Roswell Street now, at that time the Leo Frank case was still very much in the minds of Marietta people, and it was just beyond that intersection at Roswell Street where Leo Frank was hung and that was something we heard about all of our lives. It was such a tragedy. But now it's so built up, I mean the town is way, way out from there. Interviewer: You know time may be catching up with us. Sally: Yes, I appreciate again your letting me come. I don't really think my stories are interesting to people compared to what the fellas could tell but I'm trying to find you something. Interviewer: We can kind of wind it up. I think you were very much a participant . . . Sally: Thank you so much. Interviewer: . . . in all of those events that took place . . . Sally: Well, it was everyday living in those days. Interviewer: You were generous to come in and tell us about it. Sally: My pleasure. Interviewer: It seems you have been enjoying your retirement somewhat, haven't you? Sally: Yes, indeed, I've gotten to travel to the extent that I never thought I would. Interviewer: Do you have any children? Sally: Oh, yes, I have two daughters, one is here, and her daughter just graduated valedictorian last night at Brookwood High and her mom had been valedictorian at _________, so I'm very proud of them. I have two grandchildren, granddaughters here. That granddaughter who graduated, and the 13 year old whose team won the city tournament this year. Then in Arkansas I have a daughter who's married to an Air Force fella and he's going to retire within a year. She's principal of a high school, she has a 23 year old girl who's on her own and works for _____ Insurance Agency. And then there's a 13 year old boy‚ÄîI do have one grandson, he is just such an athlete. My dad, the recreation director, I hope is looking down from heaven because this boy is good in all kinds of sports. But again, thank you for asking me and taking interest in this interview.]]></dcterms:date>
    <dcterms:relation><![CDATA[Digital Library of Georgia]]></dcterms:relation>
    <dcterms:references><![CDATA[full:001:https://dlg.galileo.usg.edu/do-th:geh_vhpohr_180]]></dcterms:references>
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