Oral History Program ElDean Norseth Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 22 August 2017 Oral History Program Weber State University Stewart Library Ogden, Utah ElDean Norseth Interviewed by Lorrie Rands 22 August 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: Norseth, ElDean, an oral history by Lorrie Rands, 22 August 2017, WSU Stewart Library Oral History Program, University Archives, Stewart Library, Weber State University, Ogden, UT. Lorin Norseth and ElDean circa 1940s ElDean Norseth and the Ogden Red Cross circa 1940s ElDean Norseth 1944 ElDean Norseth 22 August 2017 1 Abstract: The following is an oral history interview with ElDean Norseth. This interview was conducted on August 22, 2017 in her home in South Ogden, Utah, by Lorrie Rands. ElDean discusses her life and her memories involving World War II. Alyssa Chaffee, the video technician, is also present during this interview. LR: It is August 22, 2017. We are in the home of ElDean Norseth in South Ogden talking with her about her life and her memories of World War II for the World War II and Northern Utah Project at Weber State. My name is Lorrie Rands, conducting the interview, and Alyssa Chaffee is here as well. So, ElDean, I’m going to say thank you again, for the record, for your willingness to talk with us. I’m going to start with when and where were you born? EN: I was born in Moroni, Sanpete, Utah. LR: When was that? EN: The fifth of January, 1927. LR: You were talking about Manti. Is Moroni close to Manti? EN: Yes. Do you know about Ephraim? Snow College? That’s just south of Moroni, and Manti is South of Ephraim. I was born at my Aunt Kate’s house on Main Street. That house is still there, beautiful brick home. LR: Why weren’t you born in your own home? EN: Well, because we were born in homes in those days. My mom was frightened, and she didn’t want to be alone. Aunt Kate lived in Moroni in this beautiful big house. She says, “Faye, come and stay with me.” We have doctor Nelson right next door so he’ll be right there.” That’s where he practiced, out of his home. LR: So, your mother’s name was Faye. What was your father’s name? 2 EN: Her name actually is Effie. She hated that, so when she was three years old she says, “I’m Faye.” LR: So your mother’s name was Faye and your father’s name? EN: Eldon Taylor Van Buren. LR: So you were born a Van Buren. EN: Yes. LR: What was your mother’s maiden name? EN: Hansen. LR: What did your father do? EN: He was a farmer, and a good one. LR: Did he own his own farm? EN: Yes. It was south of Moroni. It was a beautiful big farm, and I had a horse. LR: Is that what you would do for fun, ride your horse? EN: I loved riding her. Sometimes I wouldn’t even saddle her. I’d just ride bareback. I had one pair of overalls. You didn’t wear pants, we wore dresses. If I didn’t saddle her, then I was in a dress, shoes showing, and my legs sweat so bad and itched. Most of the time I saddled her, but sometimes I was too lazy. That saddle was heavy and I was a little girl. Mom and Dad worked at the temple and they rode the bus. They decided that was too much, so they moved to Manti. LR: How long did you live in Moroni? EN: I wasn’t in high school yet. It broke my heart to leave my friends. We couldn’t go to each other’s homes and stuff, so I had to make new friends in Manti. LR: What are your memories of growing up and living through the Depression? 3 EN: We didn’t suffer much, especially as far as food and stuff like that was concerned. We had fruit trees and we grew a garden. Mother canned a lot of fruit and a lot of vegetables. We had a cellar. They called it a root cellar, where they kept the veggies from the garden. They kept potatoes and carrots and parsnips and turnips and onions. It kept those things wonderful, the whole summer on. It was a good childhood. LR: Did you go to Moroni high school or Manti high school? EN: I went to Manti. That’s where I graduated. LR: So you moved to Manti and your dad’s farm is in Moroni, or a little south of Moroni. Would he commute back to the farm? EN: He took a job for a man in Manti and ran his farm. LR: Did your dad sell his farm? EN: He sold his farm when we moved to Manti. The reason we moved to Manti was because they worked in the temple. They were temple ordinance workers. They were bussing back and forth. It was inconvenient and I cooked dinner every evening, except weekends! LR: What was it like going to school in such a small community? EN: It was fun. I had lots of friends and the boys were fun. We just all got together for parties and sleigh rides and hayrides in summer and rode our horses all over town. It was a good life. It was fun. Our parents didn’t have to worry about us, like the bad guys nowadays. My little great grandkids and grandkids, I worry about them. They didn’t have the worries then about their children like we do now. It was a good life. 4 LR: How many siblings did you have? EN: Two brothers. LR: Were they older or younger than you? EN: Younger. LR: You’re the oldest? EN: Yes. They’re both gone now. Isn’t fair, but the only place you can find fair is in the dictionary. That’s what my friend Anna always said. LR: What are some of your memories of Pearl Harbor day? EN: I was terrified because I thought, can they bomb us? Those things went through my mind. I was not that old, fourteen or fifteen. One thing I do remember in high school, during the war, and nylons were so hard to get. I had to have nylons ‘cause I wore dresses a lot. When I’d get a run, I’d sew that up with little tiny stitches. They were ugly, but they were all we had. You couldn’t get nylons during the war. LR: I’ve heard of women talking about using the paint to paint their legs. Did you ever do that? EN: I did. But it was awful. LR: Why was it awful? EN: Because I liked to ride my horse and I’d sweat and that paint would go to garbage. Then I had to wash my horse when I was without the saddle. It was terrible. I didn’t paint my legs very much. It was yuck. LR: You mentioned that you were terrified on Pearl Harbor Day. Did your parents help you? 5 EN: Oh yes. LR: What are some of the things that they would do to help you be more calm? EN: Dad sat me on his knee and talked to me. He says, “ElDean, that’s so far away. We don’t need to worry about that here, so be at ease. Don’t worry about it. It’ll be fine.” And we were. LR: What are some of the things that you would do in high school to help with the war effort? EN: We sold bonds. That’s so long ago. I can’t quite remember. I remember that we had gardens and raised all kinds of vegetables. I think they called them victory gardens. LR: At Ogden high during that time they would actually teach first aid as a required course. Would they do that in high school in Manti? EN: No. LR: What are some of the other things that you remember being rationed? EN: Sugar, especially because I loved to make fudge. We’d save up our sugar. LR: Was chocolate rationed? EN: No. The only thing I can remember that was rationed was sugar. There was probably other things, but I don’t remember. Just sugar because I loved fudge. LR: You talked about working in a parachute factory in Manti. When did you start doing that? EN: Probably when I was sixteen. It was during the war. I grew up sewing on the sewing machine and when they opened the parachute plant in Manti, I went in and got a job. All of us worked during the war. The war effort we called it. I sewed 6 the parachutes and then later on I packed them. They were yards long and we had to pack them just perfect because the men’s lives were at stake. LR: When you talk about packing a parachute, how would you do that? EN: They had great big long tables and we’d pack them in pleats, layers after layers after layers; the shrouds, we called them shrouds. The ropes, they weren’t actually ropes. They were nylon and they had to be packed perfect too because when it opened it had to hang onto the parachutes. That was pretty tricky. We had to really be careful because many lives were at stake. LR: Would you start pleating in the middle or on the ends? EN: You’d start on the edge side. It would go kind of like a book, the leaves, only it was parachutes. LR: When you had it pleated, would you fold it? EN: Oh yeah. You had to, to pack it into the thing that they put on their backs. LR: Were the packs heavy? EN: They were very heavy. They’d go over their shoulders and then in between their legs like a harness. It would hold them when they were up in the air jumping out of a plane. They had to be pretty safe. We had to be careful. What was so fun was we’d get to fit the harnesses on the fly boys. I liked that. I think I was sixteen or seventeen. It was fun because I met some cute boys. There were a lot of boys. We lost five in little Moroni. Five boys were killed in that war, just from Manti. LR: You mentioned that you dated most of those boys. 7 EN: Kind of dated, like sixteen, seventeen dating. We went together, all of us, and just had fun. Parties; we’d go on hay rides; we’d go on sleigh rides; we’d have bonfires down by the creek and toast marshmallows and hotdogs. It was just a good life. It was just lots of fun and I feel so bad because my kids didn’t get to have that kind of a life because they grew up here in Ogden. I moved up here when the parachute plant closed and worked at Hill Field. That was when I was eighteen and that’s where I met my husband. He was my boss. When we started dating, he gave me all the dirty jobs. They’d bring the parachutes in after they’d used them and then they needed to be washed. So, we used scrubber brushes and those big long tables. It was a mess. He’d always put me in the washing room, so no one would complain that I was his favorite. LR: Going back to Moroni, how would it affect your little community when these boys would die? EN: It was bad. They’d publish their pictures in the newspaper and some of those stories about them. It was heart wrenching, but those things happen and they’re still happening. It was hard. LR: You said when you were eighteen they closed the parachute plant in Manti. That would have been 1945. Had the war ended when they closed that plant? EN: I don’t think so. I think they kept it open for a while because they kept using the parachutes. I don’t know what happened after that. LR: Eventually, when you were eighteen, you moved up to Ogden to continue working with parachutes? EN: Yes. I literally left home and moved to Ogden. 8 LR: Did you come by yourself? EN: I got an apartment with a friend who moved up with me. LR: Where did you live when you first moved to Ogden? Do you remember? EN: In a little apartment somewhere, but I’ll be darned if I can remember. LR: Do you remember where the parachute plant was at Hill Field? EN: No, because we’d go on the bus. LR: How long did you work at the parachute plant in Ogden? EN: Not very long because, like I said, my future husband was my boss. I don’t remember exactly when I went to work out there but after we started dating, six months later, we were married. We were both old enough and my parents really liked him. He was a good guy. LR: What was his name? EN: Lorin Keith Norseth. LR: Was he a World War II vet? Did he serve during the war? EN: Oh yeah. He was a paratrooper. Isn’t that funny? I wondered sometimes if he jumped out of one of the parachutes that I packed. LR: Do you know what unit he was in, the 101st or the 82nd? EN: No, but I’ve got it in my books and my journals. I’ve got tons of books. I’ve got four or five of those and they’re chock full of memories, pictures and stories. I’ve got quite a history. Of course, I’ve lived a long time. LR: When were you married? EN: It was 1951. LR: So you worked there for quite some time, in the parachute plant in Ogden. 9 EN: I did. LR: Talking about your brothers, were either of them ever old enough to serve during the war? EN: No. They escaped, thank goodness. They weren’t in the war. LR: After you got married, did you stop working? EN: For a little while. I didn’t work until the kids were in school. I wanted to stay home and raise my babies. That was so much fun. I loved those babies. I still love them and their little ones and their children’s little ones. It just goes on and on and it’s wonderful. I just enjoy every one of them. They love grandma. They call me Grandma Dean. So it’s fun. We’re all good. I’ve never had any problems with any of my children, grandchildren or great grandchildren. No smoking, no drinking, no swearing, cussing, no carousing. They’re just good kids. I think they didn’t want to disappoint grandma. LR: I was curious about what your husband did? EN: He was an engineer. I worked and put him through college. We lived in Salt Lake because he graduated from the University of Utah. LR: So, you ended up living in Salt Lake? EN: Yes. LR: Where at in Salt Lake? EN: In Stadium Village. It’s all torn down now. It was an old barracks that they’d made into apartments for the married students. My neighbor’s bedroom was next to our bedroom in these little apartments. He snored and he would rattle the walls. Imagine through the wall hearing snoring all night. I couldn’t sleep and I sat up 10 and pounded on the wall. I heard him snorting and I guess they must have moved their bed too because I moved mine as far over as I could get it. Those were little tiny apartments; those old barracks that soldiers lived in during the war. I’ve had some crazy experiences. LR: Where did you live after he graduated? EN: We moved to Wyoming because he was a metallurgical engineer and he discovered a new mineral. He didn’t know what it was so he sent a sample to Washington D.C. They said he found a new mineral so they named it after him, Norsethite. Pamphlets were sent all over the world with this new small sample Norsethite. LR: How long were you guys in Wyoming? EN: We lived in Wyoming for five years and then he was transferred to Maryland. I said to Keith, “The kids are in school and I just don’t want to keep them moving around and around and around.” So he called Hill Field and said, “Could you use an engineer? Have you got a position for an engineer?” They said yes and they sent an application to Maryland. He filled it out and weeks later we sold our house in Maryland and moved to Ogden. So, he worked at Hill Field. LR: Did you end up buying a home in Ogden? EN: Yes. LR: Do you remember where? EN: No. LR: Did he retire from Hill Field? 11 EN: He did, yes, but I put him through college in Salt Lake. I worked and he went to college. LR: What did you do when you were working to send him through college? EN: I was a secretary. Most of the time I spent with Doctor Merloof, but I can’t remember his first name. I was his secretary. Then I got pregnant and I had morning sickness so bad. The restroom was on the second floor so I’d throw my pad, taking dictation, and run up the stairs and run back down. He was a good old guy. He understood. I needed my job because Keith was in school. We have to do what we have to do. AC: Your husband, you said he was originally a paratrooper in the war. How long was your husband a paratrooper? EN: During the war. I don’t know how long. LR: Do you know if he was drafted or did he enlist? EN: He wanted to be a paratrooper. He enlisted because he knew he was going to be drafted so he wanted to do what he wanted to do. That’s why he went. The Air Force. AC: What do you remember of the day that the war ended? What were your feelings? EN: Oh, we celebrated. It was just wonderful. I don’t think we slept for two days. It was so wonderful. Everybody was celebrating; all of us out on the streets. It was a bad long war and lots and lots of friends were gone. LR: We have been doing this for quite some time so I’m going to ask you my final question. How do you think your experiences and your time during World War II affected and shaped the rest of your life? 12 EN: Well first it made me patient. It made me learn how to handle tragic things that happened during the war, like losing friends. It taught me that there weren’t all perfect people living in the world like I thought; that they were all good people. That was a shock to me because living in a small town, everybody liked everybody and I never had any difficulties or any fights or any quarrels with anybody. It was a good life for me. Then after I got married, everything was cool. After my husband graduated and got a good job, he was an engineer, we had our four babies. It was just a good life. Then they got married and then their kids got married and now I’ve got thirty-two great grandchildren. It’s still a wonderful life. LR: Thank you, ElDean, for your time and for talking with us. You have some amazing stories and I’m grateful that you shared them with us. EN: I don’t think I had some very good stories, but that was my life. LR: It’s a wonderful life. EN: It has been.