TRANSCRIPTION
What was Sugar Creek like?
Well, it was the small immigrant town that I grew up in Sugar Creek, Missouri, and Sugar Creek was a town made up
of one ethnic group the Slovaks and the Croats. They were very similar in language and customs, and so forth. My father
was Slavish and my mother was Croatian. Both sets of grandparents came from the Austrian-Hungarian Empire around 1910.
And so this was a small town. There was only one place there to work, it was the Standard Oil Refinery,
and all the immigrant men worked at the refinery. Most everybody spoke Slavish and Croatian. Since I was a second generation I
spoke English too because I went to school. And it was a very small town. It wasn't like Tilden in the way that we
had to drive a long way away to get groceries and so forth. We had a small grocery store there and it was about 7 miles
away in Independence, Missouri. We used to go over there to school and things like that.
In Missouri, were there any laws that were thought of as unjust and were there ever any that were broken because of this
reason?
Well, I tell you what the people in this small immigrant community their parents had impressed upon them, they were
first generation immigrants. My grandparents made it very clear to me that when they left Europe they left
Europe because of war... they left Europe because of the fear of Russia, they left Europe because of famine, that there
was nothing to go back to. They embraced their country wholeheartedly, the new country, they embraced it completely.
I remember them constantly encouraging me to go to school, to get educated, to speak English. I remember they were so
proud when their sons were asked to serve in the American military. I just don't think that you could say anything wrong
about the United States to these people. These people were completely and totally dedicated to this nation. It's very
interesting, my grandparents were in the agricultural business when they left Europe, although they did manage to get
overall papers that said that my grandfather worked for a refinery over there and worked on the steel mills. But they were
basically rural people and they had no education hardly, and then their children came along to get high school educations
and then their grandchildren came along to get college educations, my daughter has a master's, things like that. It was
just very fast. They seemed to be taking the very best of their country and combining it very quickly with the very best
of this country. What they really liked here, and they didn't ever tell me, but I could sense it, was the chance for
upward social mobility. They were constantly telling me, "Oh you have a chance Nancy" Nancy they called me in Slavish,
"to go to school to become something". To them it was so important that I had a chance to have a better life than
they did, and they impressed that on me very quickly that I could do that in this country.
What memories do you have about World War II? Anything specific?
Well, I was born in 1941 and right before they bombed Pearl Harbor. And I was a child and I was very small, but even
I remember at age 5 and 4 I knew that something was going on and I knew it concerned everybody in town very much. The town
was very close and the people there were very proud that the sons of immigrants were serving in the military. Anytime
someone was wounded in the community, a son or husband was wounded in the community, or was killed everybody knew about it,
knew about it quickly. They really supported each other. And all I knew was there was something really bad going on, and
our fathers and our brothers and people's husbands were going off and they were fighting a war somewhere. And that's about
what I remember, but I definitely remember an atmosphere in my life for the first six years of war. I just lived with it.
I was born with it and I just grew up with it.
Were the men that fought treated kindly once they were back from World War II?
Oh my goodness yes. You have no idea the "ticker tape" parades they had in the large cities here in the United States.
In our community there they were welcomed home with open arms. I remembered for years after that on what we now call
Memorial Day, but what they used to call Decoration Day, and on
the 4th of July the whole town got out for makeshift parades and we all went to the war memorial(in the middle of Sugar Creek)
where all the men who had been killed in action their names were listed. ....and everybody had American flags. I remember
it was so unusual because here we were I hear so many immigrant languages being spoke. I hear the immigrant language being
spoke, the Slav and Croatian, and then you could see the American flags waving. The parade was a big important day and we
finished off the day with a big picnic in Slover Park. And after
the picnic in Slover Park we did the polkas and we'd play
the tamberistas and we did the dances of that part of the world, and the music and we would sing. It was just a sort of
combination community and picnic and band as well as a solemn time when we stopped to remember those that were lost during the
war. My mother still goes to this event and she is 86 years old. Of course now hardly anybody goes, it's just a thirty
minute ceremony down at the war memorial. She still goes down there and she'll ask someone to take her down there, usually
my sister, and she'll stand there and she'll actually tell you, look(ing) at the names on the monument, "Awww, I remember
him. He was so-and-so's son and he was killed in the south Pacific".
You were talking about commissaries and PX's.
What are those?
Ok. Well, those are on military bases, for military dependants. There is a grocery store there, which they call
a commissary and they go to a type of Wal-Mart
thing I guess except without the groceries, which they call a PX or BX depending on whether you are in the Air Force or
the Army. And we had military hospitals. By the way, not that long ago we also had a dress code. Women in the
military were not allowed, if they were spouses of military men, to go into the commissary
in shorts or rollers in their hair. We all had to go in what the military considered dressed appropriately,
in a dress or slacks. I got used to a lot of things like that in the military, some of their rules. I think the thing
that still stirs me a lot is when they open up the post in the morning they'll play "Reveille" for everybody to get up and
go to work, and then they'll play in the evening they'll play "Retreat" for everybody to quit working. People on the post
still to this day anytime they hear they know the flag is going up or coming down they'll stop get out of their cars,
stand, face the direction of the flag, and listen very respectfully. So, there were a lot of military courtesies that I
learned that probably a lot of people like you would be totally unfamiliar with. And I don't remember them ever being
something I didn't want to do. I love my husband very much, I'm still married to the same man, and that was his life
and I wanted to be a good military wife and I embraced it.
What were your feelings about the Vietnam War?
Well, my husband had been in quite a while you know. He was there when he went to Vietnam the first time. He went
twice. He was there about on-and-off for four years. My husband's job was a soldier, and I got used to him being a
soldier. If fact he was in the strategic air command for eight years and then he went into Army Aviation. And Strategic
Air Command had a motto. Their motto was "Peace is our Profession" and I always knew that there could be the possibility
of a war. That was his job, he was a soldier. So when Vietnam came along his attitude affected me a great deal. He
just said, "Well, that's my job. I have to go. That's what I do. I'm a soldier and I'm going to go." He still feels
that way. In fact when the Iraqi War started he said, "Well, if the young men don't want to go I'll go, I'll go back."
This was his life and he spent twenty years in the military before he started on his second career, and so that was just
his life. I wasn't aware of like demonstrations...in the beginning. If fact there weren't any demonstrations when the war
began. It was just that he was doing his job, he would go over there for a year and then he would return home and he
would go over there for a year. As time progressed and chores progressed I began to realize how much danger he was in.
And I began to sense that a lot of the nation did not agree with that war. It was sort of surprising to me. I didn't
understand it. I said, "Well, he's just doing his job. Nobody wins in a war I mean everybody loses, but he's just
doing his job folks. That's he's job, he's a soldier. He's not doing it to cause trouble." I didn't understand that
and I didn't understand why people were so mad at the soldiers because to me they were doing what they were suppose to do.
I just didn't understand that. Of course, again, I was a young woman and had children and plenty to do, so, I don't think
I really dwelled on it. I just don't think I ever came to grips with what is all of these demonstrations about. No I don't
like the war either, I don't like people getting killed. I mean I was afraid my husband would get killed. I dreaded maybe
an Air Force or military man walking up the sidewalk some day with that telegram. I got nervous when I didn't get tapes
from my husband. We didn't write letters we exchanged tapes, tape recorders. And I loved him very much and so you know
I had a lot to lose in that war, but I guess maybe because the way my community was and the way my immigrant parents and
grandparents were, I just never thought. Even if I had some personal feelings I would never demonstrate against the United
States. I would be like demonstrating against my own husband. So, I knew it was going on and I don't ever think that
I'd dislike the people that demonstrated, but I just really didn't understand it.
I know you supported your husband while he went to Vietnam, but did you ever feel when it first started that maybe we
shouldn't have gotten involved?
Actually no, absolutely not. However, since my major was history and social studies and since that's what I teach
and since I have always loved history with a passion and I read it even when I don't have to read it. Now I know that
there were a lot of things there, the Gulf of Tonkin
affair and I know there were a lot of things there. I've talked to my husband since that war and he has said that we had
to fight that war with one hand behind our back because of the politicians, and we couldn't bomb North Vietnam. So, since
after the war we're looking back on it I could see some things that probably I know were mistakes, but then I say, "Well,
whose perfect. Governments don't make perfect decisions either." But then I can do that because I didn't lose my husband,
he came back. So, there was really no bitterness, but there's a lot more knowledge on my part about what really happened.
ANALYSIS
I was able to learn a lot about not only what her life was like and what she went through, but about how the world and
people around her viewed and handled the challenges in their lives at that time. I got to learn some very interesting facts,
probably what some people would consider very small and unimportant details to history. For example, the fact that the wives of
military men had to be in dress code when they went to the commissaries or PXs. I never really knew Mrs. Hennis until now.
I always thought of her as just my high school history teacher, but through this interview with her I've learned that her
life was never that easy and that she was able to make it despite everything. I hold a much higher respect for her now
because of my new knowledge of what her life was like living growing up in a military family, marrying a traveling soldier,
and going through those times of war. I can honestly say that I had hoped to learn some fascinating things and maybe a few
key points, but the interview with her was more than just facts from books, it was her personal opinions and views that I got.
They only thing I can see wrong with the interview process is that your only getting one persons opinion about what took place.
Like a crime scene with many witnesses, not all of them are going to describe what took place the same way. Although, I must
admit that this way of learning about the past is a lot more fun than having to read it out of a book. Through this format
the interviewer, or student, is able to really get involved with the history.
ANNOTATED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Standard Oil Refinery. Kansas City Public Library. Kansas City Times, October 9, 1987.
http://www.kcpl.lib.mo.us/sc/post/nearbycities/20000688.htm.
Decoration Day. Memorial Day. http://www.rootsweb.com/~nyseneca/memorial.htm.
Slover Park. Truman Memorial Building. http://www.memorial-building.org/history2.htm.
commissary. Commissary, Exchange, & Morale, Welfare & Recreation (MWR) Benefits.
http://www.nj.gov/military/familysupport/commissary.html.
Andradé, Dale and Kenneth Conboy.
Gulf of Tonkin. The Secret Side of the Tonkin Gulf Incident. Naval History, August 1999.
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