My Story (part 2)

I suppose before I begin my story I should establish the context from which my life evolved and took shape. I was born in 1945 a few days after atomic bombs were dropped on the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the day before the Japanese announced their surrender to the Allied Forces. The war that brought employment to my family was grinding to a stop and leaving our family as well as many others without resources. The last job in Oklahoma my father worked at was spreading grease over the fuselages and wings of the bombers that had been manufactured at the Douglas Aircraft factory at Tinker's Field in Oklahoma City. The grease was to preserve the skin of the airplanes that would never see action because the war and my father's job had come to an end.

An uncle who had also worked for Douglas Aircraft learned that the company was still in operation and hiring workers in Long Beach, California so he traveled to the sunshine state and was soon working and doing well. When they heard the news my parents and grand parents started making plans to make the move. In 1947 with my grand parents and an aunt driving a Model A Ford pick up truck loaded with belongings and my dad driving a 1933 Ford sedan they set out for a new life. The sedan broke down in Arizona and Dad had to sell it and buy passage for the family on a Greyhound bus. He continued the trip in the truck with Grandpa and Grandma and my mother managed the long bus ride to get me and my three sisters to California with the help of her younger sister.

A fourth sister was born in 1948