Oral History Program Barbara Avondet Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 20 July 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah Barbara Avondet Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 20 July 2017 Copyright © 2018 by Weber State University, Stewart Library iii Mission Statement The Oral History Program of the Stewart Library was created to preserve the institutional history of Weber State University and the Davis, Ogden and Weber County communities. By conducting carefully researched, recorded, and transcribed interviews, the Oral History Program creates archival oral histories intended for the widest possible use. Interviews are conducted with the goal of eliciting from each participant a full and accurate account of events. The interviews are transcribed, edited for accuracy and clarity, and reviewed by the interviewees (as available), who are encouraged to augment or correct their spoken words. The reviewed and corrected transcripts are indexed, printed, and bound with photographs and illustrative materials as available. The working files, original recording, and archival copies are housed in the University Archives. Project Description The World War II "All Out for Uncle Sam" oral history project contains interviews from veterans of the war, wives of soldiers, as well as individuals who were present during the war years. The interviews became the compelling background stories for the "All Out for Uncle Sam" exhibit. The project received funding from Utah Division of State History, Utah Humanities Council and Weber County RAMP. ____________________________________ Oral history is a method of collecting historical information through recorded interviews between a narrator with firsthand knowledge of historically significant events and a well-informed interviewer, with the goal of preserving substantive additions to the historical record. Because it is primary material, oral history is not intended to present the final, verified, or complete narrative of events. It is a spoken account. It reflects personal opinion offered by the interviewee in response to questioning, and as such it is partisan, deeply involved, and irreplaceable. ____________________________________ Rights Management This work is the property of the Weber State University, Stewart Library Oral History Program. It may be used freely by individuals for research, teaching and personal use as long as this statement of availability is included in the text. It is recommended that this oral history be cited as follows: Avondet, Barbara, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 20 July 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Barbara Avondet circa 1940 Women’s Softball team at Ogden Arsenal. Barbara is on the far right of the second row. circa 1940 Barbara Avondet 20 July 2017 1 Abstract: This is an oral history with Barbara Avondet, conducted on July 20, 2017 in her home in Ogden, Utah by Lorrie Rands. Barbara discusses her life and her memories involving World War II. Michael Ballif, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: It is July 20, 2017. We are in the home of Barbara Avondet in Ogden, Utah, talking with her about her life and memories of World War II. My name is Lorrie Rands, conducting the interview. Michael Ballif is here on the camera as well as Barbara’s daughter, Ann Gilbert. Again, I’m going to thank you for your willingness to sit down and chat with us and let’s start with when and where you were born. BA: November 6, 1923 in Honeyville, Utah. LR: Where is Honeyville? BA: Honeyville is twelve miles north of Brigham City. I was born at home. My mother became very ill, so they had to rush her to Tremonton to the hospital. They found that she had conceived with a twin and they determined it was a boy. She was there for one month. LR: This was after she had you at home. BA: Yes. One of the nurses in the hospital took me to her home. She and her husband took care of me for that month my mother was in the hospital. The story given to me was they said, “If Leon can’t take care of Barbara, we would like to 2 adopt her.” I wasn’t adopted that time. I’m very glad I wasn’t adopted. I had an older sister, two years older than me. I lived on a 400 acre dairy farm - Holstein Friesian, registered cows. That’s where I was born and raised. LR: You lived with your sister and your father. BA: And mother. They had four sons, my brothers after that. MB: What were your parent’s names? BA: My father was Leon Dewey Gardner. My mother was Annie Madsen Gardner. LR: What are some of your memories growing up on that dairy farm? BA: I always loved to work outside. They had one daughter and then another daughter and they had all of that acreage, and cows to milk, cows to feed, horses to feed and pigs. We had three chicken coops. Each spring my dad would get $500 for each chicken coop. I cased eggs all the time too. I worked outside all the time, from the time I can remember. I just loved it and I still love it. I had just done that all my life. I did do a little embroidering and a little bit of sewing. That’s about it. My mother made everything we ate, and the candy we ate and the popcorn. Us kids, we made it. That’s what we had. We lived right by the Crystal Springs but they didn’t let us go down there to spend our money to buy candy or soda pop or anything. My dad, he made root beer and bottled it. We were really self-sufficient at our home. LR: Where did you go to school? BA: I went to elementary school at Honeyville School and I remember we went on a bus. It was two miles to Honeyville from our home. In the winter time, the bus driver, he took us in a sleigh driven by horses. Then, for high school, Box Elder 3 High School in Brigham City. That was twelve miles and we went by bus. All of the kids in those little towns were picked up by bus and taken to Box Elder. I graduated from Box Elder High School in June of 1941. It was that December that World War II started. MB: A little bit earlier, you said that you weren’t allowed to go to Crystal Hot Springs. Do you remember why? BA: It would cost money. My parents saved all of their money to buy registered Holstein cows and to get the dairy business. My father was very successful. He showed his animals all over the United States. LR: How did your family survive the Depression? BA: My sister that is two years older than me, we have talked a lot about that. We never knew there was a Depression. We always had enough to eat and we played games at home. TV wasn’t there. We listened to a radio. We entertained ourselves. It was my mother. I don’t think I remember if she even drove a car. Our neighbor, Mrs. Ellis picked up all the kids in the neighborhood and took them to church. So I always went to church. My dad didn’t go to church. It was just my mother and us kids. I remember her with us kids. LR: You said that you never really knew there was a Depression. So your father was able to continue and be successful with his dairy business. BA: Yes. We survived it and eventually he just kept improving on it. LR: What are some of your memories of going to high school at Box Elder? 4 BA: I always respected my teachers. I wasn’t one of their problems ever. It was just us kids from Honeyville, we just stuck together. We didn’t get to go to football games after school. Once in a while, they would make arrangements for us to see a game. I couldn’t get over in physical education when they said, “Well we’re going to play Basketball today.” The court was in three sections, and you couldn’t go out of your section. If you were under the basket, that’s where you stayed. In the middle, you would just pass the ball wherever you should. They eventually changed it to half-court. They did change it to a full court before I graduated. My daughter really excelled at basketball for Mt. Ogden Junior High, Ogden High and Weber State University. It was mostly the friends from Honeyville, the things we did at Honeyville. We didn’t get to participate very much. They didn’t participate in drama. I think I had a couple of friends who played a musical instrument and were in the band, but it was mostly the friendship of Honeyville. Once in a while we would stay after school and all of us would go to a movie together in Brigham. Then, one of our parents would come and get us. High school wasn’t that great for me. MB: When you went to Brigham to see a movie, did you go to the Capitol Theatre? BA: Yes. You remember the Capitol? MB: I went there earlier this year to see a movie actually. What was that like going to a movie at the Capitol theatre when you were growing up? Was that a big occasion? BA: Yes, it was. It seems like we were given enough money to buy a treat, which we loved. My parents always saw that we got to go to Peach Days in Brigham City. 5 They’d take my sister and I. I don’t even remember going with my brothers. My dad would take us down. I remember once, he gave us each a quarter to spend. My sister took fifteen cents back to my dad and said, I just needed a dime. I spent the whole quarter. They teased me about that. They always have. I must have enjoyed everything I bought. As far as Crystal Springs, I knew that there were things to buy down there. I think I was about five or six, and I knew my mother had money in her bottom drawer of her dresser in her bedroom. I went and stole a dollar from this drawer and I went down to Crystal Springs and spent it all. I can still remember the spanking I got. That made an honest person out of me. I never forgot it. LR: Let’s talk about your memories of Pearl Harbor day. BA: On that day, my best friend was at my house. Her name was Ruth Hunsaker. Ruth and I had gone up to sit on the front steps and talk. My brother Boyd came running out of the house and he said, “Pearl Harbor has been bombed. They have declared war. We are at war.” We were all sick about it. We didn’t know what was going to happen, especially the last year of my high school. Many of the fellows were able to finish and graduate, but they had joined some part of the service. They were gone before. They must have known something was going to happen. LR: Were any of your brothers old enough to be considered for the draft? BA: My four brothers were twelve, fourteen, sixteen, and eighteen. The one that was eighteen, after the war was declared, he went in the service. LR: Was he drafted or did he just join? 6 BA: He just joined. I graduated from high school and because I had worked on the farm all the time I just stayed there and worked. My dad knew that his sons were getting old enough that they would probably go in the military service. My father was in World War I. I just stayed there and worked. Then, it was in January of 1942, the Ogden Arsenal was sending fellows to all these little cities and asking for people to come there and work that could. There was me and my friend Ruth, Gwendolyn and Elaine Wheatley, sisters, and then one married lady who was divorced. The five of us said we would go to work at the arsenal. I worked at the Ogden arsenal from May of 1942 until June of 1946. LR: What were some of the things that you did at the Ogden arsenal? BA: We all were explosive operators. LR: What does that mean? BA: We made thirty-seven millimeter shells. I don’t know what I did with my driver’s license but I had a military driver’s license. I drove a panel truck and I picked up the ladies. We all had to wear blue coveralls and hard toed shoes. The government furnished them. I had to pick them up and take them to this central place to get what they needed. Then I drove a truck and I picked excess powder that wasn’t used for the shells. It was taken to a big burning pit that they had at the Ogden arsenal. They would set it on fire. It was just a big U-shaped burning pit. I just scattered the powder out and they lit it on fire. That was one of my jobs. I still have the driver’s license. MB: While you were working in Ogden, did you still live in Honeyville or did you come down and live there? 7 BA: There was a lady who had taught school at Honeyville elementary and then she met her husband in Honeyville. He got a job in Ogden, so they had to move to Ogden. She said she would like to board and room the four of us, so that’s what we did first. It was probably three years that we roomed at her house. It was on about Twelfth and Porter. They raised a family and she cooked for us. That was really nice. I was at the east shell loading plant all the time. Us women, we had a softball team and we would go up to Brigham and Tremonton and different places and play softball. I think that was most of my life. LR: The softball team, was it something that the Ogden arsenal did? BA: Ogden arsenal east shell loading plants sponsored it. MB: Would you play against other plants or teams? BA: Yes, we played Hill Field. This little article says, “The arsenal gals win an easy game. Ogden Arsenal girl’s softballers walloped Hill Field wacks 13-1 at Hill Field Tuesday in a league event. Gardner and Wiggle (I was the pitcher she was the catcher) formed the winning battery. Gardner struck out ten.” LR: You said you were married in 1945. Where did you two meet? BA: That’s a long story. We were all still working at the arsenal. While I was at the arsenal, I did become a stock control clerk or a clerk typist. I had done that besides being an explosive operator. Anyway, the ones that played on the softball team and were my friends, one of them, her doctor told her that she is working too many hours and she’s going to have a nervous breakdown if she doesn’t go someplace or do something different for a while. It was Elma Avondet. She ended up being my sister-in-law. She said, “Well, I have a brother living in 8 Los Angeles and he said if you come down here, I’ll show you around and you’ll have a good time.” The four of us did. We took some of our leave and went down to Los Angeles. Her brother had arranged with friends of his, a man and wife who had never had any children. They said, “We want them to stay at our house while they are here.” We stayed there for a full month. LR: You had that much leave? BA: Yep. Of course, one of them, she had fallen in love. The father and the mother, they were related and they didn’t know if they should get married or not. It was on and off and on and off. I think she only stayed about two weeks and she said, “I’m going home and if Varsel wants to marry me, we are going to get married. If not, it is over, done.” So she came home and then one day they got married. So, we stayed there and had a good time. Elma’s brother, he took us everywhere. We saw everything in Hollywood and Los Angeles there was to see. We were at Long Beach, and Long Beach had a giant roller coaster. We ran into a bunch of Russian soldiers that were there that had been sent to the United States, I guess. They wanted us to go on rides with them. We didn’t want to, but I think Ruth finally did and Elma finally did. That was one thing we did. We stayed the full month and had a wonderful time. We came home and Elma’s brother, he worked in a factory. They made the aircraft parts. He was deferred. They had him stay in that job to make aircraft parts. When we came home, Elma’s brother appeared at my doorstep. He had quit his job and he said he had fallen in love. He came home. Anyway, because he did that he was immediately drafted. Then we got married but he had to go 9 overseas. He went to California for basic training and then was going to go overseas. They was going to go for the big push on Japan, all these soldiers on these ships in the Pacific Ocean. They dropped the atomic bomb and it ended the war. They just dropped them off to different islands. My husband was on Leyte, and he was on Guam. He did a whole bunch of different things. They said one day, “Our squadron barber has gone home. Is there anybody that can cut hair?” My husband said he could, but he couldn’t. He did. He was an excellent Barber. He was a squadron Barber. He just accepted whatever they wanted to pay him. It wasn’t very much, but he saved a lot of money and of course his father and mother had told him, “You will have the farm. You will take care of the farm. It will be yours.” So we saved that money. When my husband got home, we bought a tractor. My husband’s father hadn’t ever had a tractor. All of that never worked out like it was supposed to. When I went down there, I ended up meeting my husband down there. LR: When did you get married? BA: June 25, 1945. LR: What are some of your memories of rationing and things like that during the war? BA: Everything was rationed, the sugar and everything. It was difficult. You had to really plan. People would stand in line when they’d hear some of those things were coming in the grocery stores. Then it seems like they gave these little silver type tokens that we had to use too. I didn’t keep any of those, but we had to use them it seems like. All my life it just seems like it was just trying to figure something out. It wasn’t easy. 10 LR: Did you participate in any of the scrap metal drives or any of the bond drives BA: Oh, bonds, yes. I bought a lot of bonds. That came in handy when we finally cashed them in. When the war ended and I started working at the IRS, I was still buying bonds. I always participated in the bond program. MB: Coming from Honeyville to Ogden must have been some sort of adjustment, but going from Honeyville and Ogden to Los Angeles, what was that like? BA: Well, it was entirely different, but with my friends’ brother being there, we ended up living with his friends. We always felt secure and we loved it. It seems like in Los Angeles, there was a lot of unrest there. The black people, the ones that were working in the department stores, they were causing a whole lot of trouble. That was a little later for me. My husband and I had real good friends that had twin sons that graduated from BYU and took a job with big department stores in Los Angeles. They had to leave because they were rioting all of the time during that time. All those years that I worked at the Arsenal, I used most of my leave. I would go back home and work on the farm and help them when they were digging sugar beets or putting up hay or bundles of grain or whatever. I helped on all of that. It was me that took care of my mother. The reason why I quit at the arsenal was when my mother died and there was these four boys - twelve, fourteen, sixteen and eighteen. I went home and took care of them. LR: Was there a large Japanese population in Honeyville? BA: Oh yes. LR: What are some of your memories of that? When war was declared, do you remember how that affected that community? 11 BA: Yes, just hearing talk and everything. When the war was declared, the farmers in Honeyville said, “How come all the Japanese have been getting new tires on their trucks and everything? They must have known about something of this war.” I picked beans and cherries and sour cherries for Japanese. They raised things like that. There was two Japanese kids that came from Japan, and they were older than us. I remember them in elementary school. They would do kind of mean things to some of the other kids. We were scared of them. They were older when they came here but they put them in elementary school. I can remember both of them. I always had very good friends with the Japanese. They were always my good friends. My father was one of the Mayors of Honeyville and they had their own church house, west of Honeyville. He always helped them with what they needed. MB: When did your father become mayor of Honeyville? BA: I can’t even remember. He was Mayor two or three times in Honeyville. LR: You talked about your husband being gone overseas after he was drafted. How would you communicate with him? Would you guys write letters? BA: Letters. LR: How often were you able to receive those letters? BA: I think I got a letter probably once a week. LR: How often would you write him? BA: About the same. LR: What do you remember about the end of the war? 12 BA: I remember still working at the arsenal. They had some of us diffuse what was built and hadn’t been sent to the war zones. We had to work behind safety glass, I guess you would call it, but it was a certain way to diffuse those. We did that a lot. Our fun was playing sports, I guess. LR: After your husband came home and you stopped working at the arsenal, after your mother died, I’m assuming you and your husband went back to Honeyville. BA: No, it was just me. I was there after my husband was on his way to Japan. He was gone on those two islands for a long time. He finally was going to be sent home, but he had told me that he had watched an airplane load of soldiers going home. They just took off from Guam in the airplane and the airplane exploded and they all died. Things like that, you know? There was nothing good about war time at all. He stayed and he did all of those things and finally he was going to be sent home. One of their stops was in Hawaii and they were all in a big barracks, just waiting. Some soldiers would steal and they were stealing wallets. They stole my husband’s wallet, and he happened to have the most money in his. They said, “You’re going to have to stay here until the court martial” of this fellow they had caught. He was there for over a month waiting to get to go home. He didn’t have any money. He was bored. That was an awful time for him. LR: When was he finally able to come home? BA: Oh golly. I remember it was winter here when he finally came home. LR: Was it in 1946? BA: It might have been in 1947. I remember, I was living at home in Honeyville, and I was to meet the train at a certain time in Ogden. That day it was the worst 13 December blizzard I have ever been in. I remember driving and I finally made it to Ogden, but it was a horrible blizzard. LR: After he came home and you guys were together again, did you both go back to Honeyville? BA: No. We, of course, were married and we just got an apartment at 3266 Adams Avenue in Ogden. He started looking for jobs. He finally ended up working for the railway mail service. He rode the train from here to Lovelock, Nevada. He liked that job. That was a good job. Then, he just stayed with the post office department. He actually ended taking care of the mail service at IRS. Then, he retired permanently from the post office department. LR: You mentioned that you started working at the IRS too. BA: Yes, I worked there. I started there in January, 1963, and I worked there until I retired in 1980. I wasn’t permanent. I never did like working at IRS. I didn’t like the way they treated their employees at all. LR: Are there any other stories you’d like to share about your memories of World War II? BA: I hope I have helped you some. I don’t know. LR: Your stories have been fantastic. It’s been amazing. So, do you have any other memories that you’d like to share? BA: No, I think I pretty much covered everything. LR: Then I’m going to ask my final question. How do you think your experiences and your time during World War II affected and shaped the rest of your life? 14 BA: It shaped my life completely. When I graduated from Box Elder High school, my mother said, “Your sister lives in Salt Lake City and she has a job down there and you’re going to go and live with her and learn how to be a sewing machine operator in the factory down in Salt Lake.” I went when I was told and I lived with my sister. I think I lasted three days and I went home. I was so homesick I thought I was going to die. I said, “I’m not going to do that. I’ll stay here.” I’m glad I did what I did at the arsenal instead of sewing. LR: Was it homesickness or you just didn’t like sewing or both? BA: I didn’t want to do that. I still wanted to work outside. I still wanted to milk cows. I rode horses like crazy. I just loved hearing the people from Honeyville say, “You’ve helped every kid break in a horse in Honeyville.” I just loved what I was doing. I didn’t want to sew and make things like that. My sister worked outside too, in the fields. My mother did too. Then, they quit about an hour before going into the house and fix our lunch. We’d all have a nap together and then we’d go out. I just always loved working outside. LR: You worked four years at the Ogden arsenal. How is that different than the sewing factory? BA: Well, I guess I just didn’t want to sew. I just did not want to do that. LR: Did you feel that perhaps it was part of what you needed to do at that time? It was your way of contributing to the war effort? BA: Yes. I always felt that the women who worked at Ogden arsenal were all neglected. It just seems like the soldiers got credit for everything. You just stop and think what those women did, and took care of their homes and families and 15 everything. We were cheated of any nice things done for us. For me, it was taking my vacation leave and going to Honeyville and helping my dad grow sugar beets, grain, and hay. We were always working. Him and another farmer, they would trade machinery. I was always sent with the horses to pick up a piece of machinery and bring it to our farm and return it. That’s what I did all my life. Maybe my family thinks I was strange and I should have been sewing. LR: Barbara, I want to thank you for your willingness to sit and talk with us and share your stories and your memories. This has been fantastic and I’m grateful for your time. MB: Thank you so much. BA: I hope it will be helpful. MB: Oh it will. LR: Oh absolutely. This has been amazing. Thank you.