Mrs. Mary Dunham Nichols
[b. 4/12/26]
Recorded on 11/20/04
*(Donald Nichols is also present)
[Interview starts at 001 on the counter]
Mary Nichols: My name is Mary Dunham Nichols.
Colin Fong: You were a Rosie the Riveter, correct?
MN: That’s right.
CF: What exactly was it that you did?
MN: [003] I worked at Glenn L. Martin Aircraft Company in Middle River Maryland. My job was in the engineering drafting department. I was given the vellum film of pictures of parts of a B-26 and then was given instructions as how to change the rivet spaces and that’s what I did. I used a pen with a very fine nib on it; which I would dip into India ink, and then I would have to get rid of the excess ink so I wouldn’t blot the vellum. Then I had a T-square and I’d put (?marks?) on the picture, and then I’d measure and do whatever I had to do, draw a line, or move a measurement.
CF: And the B-26 was a bomber?
MN: It was a Martin bomber; it was called the Marauder.
CF: How did you get started as a Rosie?
MN: [015] When I was a senior in high school, a recruiter came from Glenn L. Martin Company to Glen Burnie High School and he was recruiting young women who had had all the math and science they could take in high school to do that kind of work, do the engineering/drafting work. So, I agreed to go work for Martin. Then I was sent to Johns Hopkins University. This was all young women, I had just turned 17, and there were a number of young women my age and a little bit older. We learned engineering, drafting, metal (?working?) and several other things. We were there for several months before we went to work at the plant.
CF: There were a lot of you that did this?
MN: Well, yes there were. At Glenn L. Martin, I think there were about one third of the workforce were women during World War II, and these were women who never did quote “men’s work” unquote before. There were a lot of us there. We worked right along side the men, and the women who riveted got to wear overalls, and those of us who were engineers, we still wore skirts to work.
CF: What exactly did your training consist of?
MN: Training? It was just learning how to be a draftsmen. How to use the tools of drafting. We had to use slide rules, for one thing, and then the T-square and how to use that, and how to use the India ink and the pen and how to be careful with that and how to measure. We measured to a tolerance, sometimes, of one thirty-second or one sixty-fourth of an inch, so it was very precise work.
CF: Did you like the work that you did, or did you just do it?
MN: Did I like it? It was not what I would have chosen to do. I like being with people and moving around a lot. My job I was at a desk all day long, I just worked at a desk all day long, and I did not enjoy it. But that was not the important thing. The important thing was we were in a war, and we had to win the war. So, nobody complained about doing what they wanted to do you just did what you could do. We were glad to be part of the effort to win the war.
CF: That was the feeling of most people at the plant?
MN: You say that was the attitude?
CF: Yeah.
MN: Yes, uh-huh.
CF: Were you married at the time?
MN: No, I had just turned seventeen, no I wasn’t married.
CF: Did you have any supervisors or did you just work on your own?
MN: Oh, we definitely had supervisors, and of course all the supervisors were men, because the men were the ones who, you know, this was their career, and so all the supervisors were men.
CF: So you just worked with a lot of other young ladies?
MN: [054] Mostly young women. There were some men, they were quote on quote “4-F”, which meant for some reason, they did not qualify to be in the armed forces. They might have had a little hole in their ear, or might have had flat feet, or something like that, so they worked in the war plants.
CF: What kinds of things did you do in your free time, when you weren’t at the plant?
MN: [060] Well, not much [laughs]. Because we had to commute to the plant, I lived in Baltimore, in a rented room with other girls, mostly with other girls. I had two rooms where I was the only renter, but in a couple of places there were two or three other women in the same room, we shared a room. I don’t remember doing much of anything because we’d get up early and we’d take the streetcar down to North Avenue, and we’d take a Glen L. Martin (?supply?) bus, and it was like a rickety old school bus that drove us to the plant and then brought us back to North Avenue at the end of the day, and mostly we were so tired, at least I was, that I was just glad to go to the oriole cafeteria to have supper and then either walk home to my room or take the streetcar home. I think we went to movies occasionally, but I don’t particularly remember that.
CF: The friends you made, are you still in contact with any of them?
MN: I have one friend, and her name’s Betty Lippy. At Horner now. And she and I were good friends during that time. Now Betty comes from a farming family, and sometimes she commuted back and forth, she drove from Hamstead, which was a long drive to the plant, she had a room in the city too, and I would go home with her on weekends. And I really enjoyed doing that. Now, I guess it’s been a full year ago now, I decided to find her, cause I hadn’t seen her for years, and obviously we’d gone in different directions, so I found her brother’s phone number and got in touch with Betty, and we’ve had lunch together at a Rosie the Riveter convention, and Betty and I were roommates then, so she’s the only one I’ve really kept up with over the years.
CF: How did you feel about the war at the time?
MN: [088] How’d I feel about the war at the time? You know, I don’t remember having any particular feeling, all I knew was that we had been attacked and that it was a very bad thing. The only thing I remember was we’ve got to win the war, and that seemed to be the attitude of everybody. We didn’t debate was it a good war or a bad war; that question never came up. It was to do all we could to win the war.
CF: Was there a lot that changed after the war started?
MN: A lot of change?
CF: Like in daily lifestyle?
MN: [090] Oh, absolutely [laughs]. After the war started, we had blackouts when at night you had to put your shades down so no light would show in case there were air raids. There was rationing, we had rationing coupons for a lot of things, for meat, for sugar and butter. The thing I really remember was the awful Oleo margerine that we bought, and it was white. It was hard and it was white. It came in sticks, four sticks. And they’d give you a little yellow pellet so you’d let it warm up until it got malleable and then you’d put the yellow coloring in it to make it look like butter, but it didn’t taste like butter [laughs]. All the butter went to the fighting men.
CF: Did you ever worry at all that we wouldn’t win the war? Think of what would happen?
MN: I don’t think so Colin. Don is here. (speaks to Donald Nichols) Did you ever worry that we wouldn’t win the war? Huh? [laughs] He’s not telling me really, he can’t talk very well. (continues speaking to Donald Nichols) Did you ever worry about not winning the war? (speaks to Colin Fong) No. Don didn’t, I didn’t. We were going to win the war, it was just the attitude that we had.
CF: Did you have anybody you knew fighting in the war at the time.
MN: My classmates in high school, the young men. As soon as they graduated from high school, they were going to be drafted into the army. Some of them chose to go into the Army Air Corps. or into the navy instead of allowing themselves to be drafted, and Don went into the Navy, and your Grandfather was at Hopkins for one semester and then he joined the Navy and went to Banebridge for Naval training, and he was there when the war was over and then went to the Naval Academy. I didn’t really know anybody in my class at Glen Burnie High School who died during the war, but there were some who did.
CF: Did you ever really worry about your friends and classmates in the war, or did you just not think about them?
MN: I didn’t know them well enough. I didn’t have any really close young men friends. I knew them as classmates, but that was about the extent of it. So I didn’t really worry about them, it was just the way it was at the time. And we just accepted it, this is the way it is. There is a war; and the young men were going to go in the services and fight the war, and we women were going to the best we could on the home front to support them in the war.
CF: Do you think the people in your community started treating each other better or more cooperatively after the war started?
MN: [126] Well, I’d have to think about that. I think what happened was, and so many people I talk to, even younger people, comment on the fact of the unity in this country. Whatever your differences were, or might have been, there was one goal that everybody had. There were some exceptions, I guess, but that everybody I knew had. The focus was on winning the war, and everything else took second place. There was racial discrimination, still in this country at the time, and the young black men who went into the service usually ended up with medial jobs, as cooks and things like that, so there was racial discrimination. But even they did their job. Then there was the Tuskeegee Airmen, a group of black aviators, and they escorted bombers and they never lost a bomber that they escorted. But there was a fight to allow them to be pilots, because people objected to black men being pilots. So that was still there, that was still an element.
CF: What were your views on the, uh, interracial:
MN: On interracial…?
CF: On interracial, uh:
MN: Relationships?
CF: Yeah, relationships.
MN: [132] Colin, when I was growing up, the white children went to white schools, the black children went to black schools; that was the way it was; and I never thought about it. It was the same way during the war. There were black women and men who worked at Martin, and I’m not aware of any discrimination. I think the white people stayed together and the black people stayed together, but that seems to be the way it always is. I didn’t think about it, it was just the way it was at the time.
CF: How much did you get paid working for Martin?
MN: [152] I’m not sure exactly what my paycheck was, but the average wage for women was thirty one dollars a week, the average wage for men was thirty six dollars a week. I don’t remember exactly what my wages were. I know it was more than thirty-one dollars a week, but I don’t remember exactly what it was.
CF: Would that be a low wage pay today?
MN: Oh, that was good pay! That was very good pay, Colin! When I was in high school, I had a job working at a bakery after school, and I made 25 cents an hour!
CF: And that was considered good back then?
MN: A clerk, at a bakery. It’s like McDonalds, it would be like McDonalds. 25 cents an hour, yeah. But then again, money was worth a lot more than it was today, the inflation is so much greater.
CF: How did you cope with wartime shortages, like of gas and food?
MN: [167] Well, for one thing, my family did not have a car so gas was not a problem for us. As I remember, there was enough food and we had victory gardens. Everybody who had any land at all would plant vegetables like carrots, tomatoes, peas, things like that in their little garden, depending on the size of it. Then they would can, do their own canning. So I don’t think we went hungry, there was not a whole lot of meat, and of course sugar was rationed, but we managed. We knew we had to do it, it was not an issue, like it might be another time. We just did it.
CF: What were your feelings when the war ended?
MN: [180] Oh, Colin. Joy. Relief. The next day. the day after the war ended, I quit my job and enrolled at the University of Maryland. Everybody was so glad, it was so wonderful. It’s hard to tell you the jubilation, people were dancing in the streets, and hugging each other. Just so joyous, finally it was over.
CF: Did most of the people working with you do the same kinds of things, or did they go very separate ways?
MN: You mean after the war? What happened after the war, of course, [was that] the G.I. bill came in. All the young men who had served in uniform, all the young men who wore uniforms were given free college education and low interest rate home rooms and all kind of good benefits, so the women pretty much got married, and left the workforce, not all of them, but a lot of them did, and just became regular housewives again and they just had a quote on quote “normal” life. Some women stayed on and worked, but as I say the men stayed on in their jobs or got other jobs.
CF: After the war, what did you end up moving on to do, after you finished working at Martin?
MN: [197] I went to the University of Maryland, and majored in child’s education, and graduated in 1949 and married your grandfather and of course he was in the Air Force, and had your mom, and of course his plane was shot down and he was an MIA for many years. I was just a single mother and I taught school and bought a house in Baltimore, and then I got remarried in 1965, and lived a fairly normal life.
CF: What was it like living many years without knowing whether your husband was alive or dead?
MN: [211] Well, let’s see how I can put it into words. My life was like living in a nation at war, because he was lost during the Cold War, and our country had the Cold War from 1946 to 1991, and his plane was shot down in 1952. So can I say I have lived in a nation at war, in a country at peace, because everyone around me has been living in a country of peace, and not knowing what happened to him was always something inside of me that wondered, what happened to him? Is he alive or was he dead? Which was a real burden, trying to live a normal life without knowing what had happened to him. So that was very hard.
CF: What was it like raising a child by your self?
MN: It was hard. The sad thing was that I could not talk to her about her Dad because I didn’t have anyone in my situation to share with. It was hard because there was never anybody who shared the responsibility of raising a child with me. I just tried to do the best I could to give her the advantages that I could. Among them was going to church and getting to know god in a personal way and [I] just work[ed] to see that she could get a good education and a good life, and I tried to just do the best I could. But it was hard for her, being an only child I think.
CF: Have you joined any veteran’s organizations?
MN: [236] Well, the Rosie the Riveter Organization began in 1998, and I am a member of that, as a matter of fact I’m the appointed vice president of the American Rosie the Riveter Association. But that’s just been very recent. Also, the thing that would have helped me a great deal was the Gold Star Wives, but I did not connect with them until the mid 1990’s. These were women whose husbands were veterans and died either during active duty or died later. But that would have been a support group for me. So that’s an organization. Then of course there’s the (?Pats?) for tragedy assistance program, for survivors of military tragedy, but that just started in 1994. Those are the ones I’ve connected with. But the veterans organizations like the American Legion and the VFW do not have any kind of support system for the widows who died in battle that I’m aware of. The military academy does not have a support system for the widows of their classmates. So, anyway.
CF: Have you met anybody since the war that worked a similar job as you or worked in your plant that you didn’t know while working there?
MN: Yes, I have. Through the Rosie the Riveter Association I’ve met several. I’m thinking about Carl and Julia Yoder. Carl worked at Glen L. Martin during the war and then he was drafted and served in the army overseas and then he came back, and Julia worked at Martins also. So I’ve gotten to know them through the Rosie the Riveter Organization, and I’ve gotten to know some other women too through that organization who live in this area, and we have meetings. We had a wonderful convention in June. It’s been wonderful knowing them, because we share some of the same experiences.
CF: What did they do at the plant?
MN: What did they do? Well, some of them were riveters, some were welders, some were metalworkers. They mostly worked in the factory, on the factory floor actually building the planes. I have a funny story I could tell you…
CF: Yeah, that would be good.
MN: [275] One of the women, her name is Jean, Jean was a riveter. She’d be inside part of the plane, riveting and so forth and there was a male supervisor that would walk around the floor and check on what was going on and when he got close to where people were working he was supposed to call out and let them know that he was in the area. This one day he was walking by and he got really close to where Jean was working and he didn’t call out; she didn’t know he was there, and she drove a hole right through the part of the plane into his wooden leg. [laughs] So fortunately it was his wooden leg.
CF: [laughs] And did she have any punishments for that?
MN: [laughs] Oh, no. Absolutely not. It was strictly an accident. But it was very fortunate that she didn’t hurt him.
CF: Do you have any other stories?
MN: I’m trying to think… As I say my job, working at a desk all day was kind of dull and boring. But the riveters, they were out where they could see everything, a lot of activity going on, they were crawling all over these planes, doing their work, so they saw a lot that I didn’t see. I don’t really have any other stories. Martin just celebrated its 75 anniversary here at Middle River, and we Rosies were invited because Carl Yoder, the husband of Julia, put in a word for us and insisted that the Rosie the Riveters be invited. So we were invited, it was a luncheon affair, and we Rosies had our table on the factory floor, tables were set up. All the groups were introduced, and when the Rosie the Riveters were introduced, all of us Rosies stood up and we got a standing ovation.
CF: That must have felt good.
MN: Oh, Colin, I can’t tell how good it felt. I was surprised, at how wonderful it made me feel.
CF: Did you get that kind of appreciation during the war?
MN: [319] Well, I don’t know. We weren’t looking for appreciation! But then everybody was involved, like the women and the guy with the leg. We were all just so busy getting things done, that was all we thought about was getting things done. The thing that I wanted to do, if I could have, I wanted to be a ferry pilot. Ferry pilots were women and men who, when an airplane was built, would fly the plane over to Africa so that our Air Corps. men could use it. That’s what I wanted to do, but I was too young. I was too young for the WACS or the wings. I think you had to be either 18 or 19, but I was 17 so I didn’t do that.
CF: So they would fly over the B-26’s after you finished?
MN: Right. The ferry pilots would come to Martin’s airport and they’d take these B-26’s and they’d go down off the coast of South America where the shortest route to Africa would be, and they’d fly them over to Africa, and turn them over to our armed forces. An awful lot of people died doing that work. I had a neighbor, Al Clottis, and he was a ferry pilot. But he had trained as a pilot before the war, so he was very good at it. But he said they just give you the keys and say here. Go!
CF: What kind of dangers would they face ferrying these planes?
MN: Well, not knowing the planes well enough, and weather. I don’t know that much about ferry pilots. I doubt if they had much hostile airplanes to worry about, but then the long distance and the navigation and that kind of thing.
CF: Did you keep any diaries?
MN: No I didn’t. I wish I had. It’s important to keep diaries, Colin.
CF: I’ll keep that in mind.
MN: Yeah, I think that would be a good think for you to think about doing. It’s amazing when I think about my life, that so many things I could have kept a diary about that would have been helpful now. You don’t think about it when you are young.
CF: What do you think your best experience as a Rosie was?
MN: You mean working at the war plant?
CF: Yeah.
MN: I guess just being part of the war effort and working with other women and getting to know them, and when the war was over just feeling good about having been a part of that and helping to win the war.
CF: Do you think working in that plant had a big affect on you?
MN: On me?
CF: Yeah, on you.
MN: One of the things I’ve found is that what I learned about drafting, about measurements, all that kind of thing has transferred to all the rest of my life. I’ve used it in ways I would not have thought. It was good training.
CF: What kind of jobs do you use it to do now?
MN: Well, if I have to know the measurement of something, the length of a box or something, I can look at it and tell approximately whether it’s a foot long, or fourteen inches long, I can pretty much judge the length of it, the size of it, just from what I learned during engineering/drafting.
CF: Thanks very much for your time.
MN: Your welcome. If you think of anything else, call me back.
CF: OK, thank you.
End of interview.
