Gerry Hamilton Through her Daughters Eyes: In The Clubmobile with Jana Hamilton Gruber

It's time for another episode in The Wives of The Bloody Hundredth series! Join us as we welcome Jana Hamilton Gruber to The Clubmobile! Jana is the daughter of 100th Bomb Group Bombardier Howard "Hambone" Hamilton, but her mother has quite a story of her own! One of the three Chicago Wives, famous for the "legs" picture, Gerry Hamilton lived alongside Jean Crosby and Margaret Blakely in 1943 before embarking on her own adventure. With Howard in a POW camp after the events of the Munster Raid, Gerry left Chicago to join the circus as a roller skater! Don't believe us? Grab your coffee and a fresh sinker and join us in The Clubmobile for more Wives of The Bloody Hundredth! 

Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:02

Hey guys, we come the Dumblings. They got fresh and sinkers come for me and the Swedish smile. Welcome back to the Club Mobile, everybody. We're so happy to have you joining us today.

SPEAKER_03 0:19

Hey everyone, welcome back.

SPEAKER_02 0:21

We are joined by, I'm so excited. We are joined today by the delightful Jana Hamilton Gruber, daughter of Howard Hamilton from the 100th Bomb Group, and Jerry Hamilton. Jaina, thank you so much for spending today with us.

SPEAKER_00 0:36

Thank you. It's really my pleasure.

SPEAKER_03 0:39

Thank you again. We have been talking about this amongst ourselves for a few months. And we've been incredibly excited to learn about your mother and have her part of our Wives of the Bloody Hundred series. I think we were just talking about how it's a very full circle moment to now have the third mother of the likes photo that we get to talk about. So that's so exciting. One of the first questions I had was how did your parents meet? And did they get married very quickly because of the war, or was it more of a slow process for your mom and dad?

SPEAKER_00 1:15

No, they got married very quickly. My mom was from Sioux City, and she was working uh as a secretary, and the USO would have these dances. And so um she and and some other ones who she'd gone to school with went out there, and um, so she met my dad. And about, I guess about a week or so later, at some point he proposed very quickly, and she wasn't really sure, she didn't think she knew him well enough, but um she talked to some of his um buddies and they said he was a really good guy, so they got married three weeks after they met, and they went over to um across the river to South Dakota in a taxi, and the um taxi driver and the uh Justice of the Beast wife were the um witnesses.

SPEAKER_02 2:05

Wow, that's amazing! That's amazing. I feel like the the quick proposal and the quick marriage is kind of I think everybody but Harry Crosby proposed very quickly.

SPEAKER_03 2:17

No, I think Harry proposed very quickly, but it was Gene saying no it was.

SPEAKER_02 2:21

He knew Gene for a while, and then yeah, he went A-Walter proposed to Gene and she said, Let me think about it.

SPEAKER_00 2:26

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think that's the way it was back then because on you didn't they didn't know how long they were gonna be there, and um, you know, they just wanted something to hang on to, I guess.

SPEAKER_03 2:39

Yeah, of course.

SPEAKER_00 2:40

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 2:41

So I'm assuming, Jaina, that your dad was in Sioux City to train with the Army Air Force, am I correct?

SPEAKER_00 2:50

Yes, that's right. He was a bombardier, yes. So he was there, and they were only supposed to stay a month, but I guess the weather got kind of bad because this was January of 1943, and so they ended up staying longer until they had until they went to Boise.

SPEAKER_03 3:06

Right, right. Um how did your mother then meet Gene Crosby and Margaret Bleakley? How did they end up living together? Obviously, they knew each other through their eventual husbands. How did it sort of come about that they began living together?

SPEAKER_00 3:22

They were they were classmates in high school.

SPEAKER_03 3:26

Oh, okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

Oh, yeah, so they knew each other. Yeah. I'm not sure about Gene Crosby, but I know about the the other the other Margaret, both Margarets. Those classmates.

SPEAKER_01 3:39

Wow.

SPEAKER_02 3:40

Yeah, okay. That's really, really cool that they knew each other in high school and then their husbands end up serving together.

SPEAKER_03 3:47

Yeah, all in the same kind of unit, yeah, in the same capacity.

SPEAKER_02 3:51

I think that's that's really like really full circle. I mean, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Well, it is it is unusual because uh then people were um activated individually, um as they are now. But if you're in a reserve unit, for instance, the whole unit goes and and then you know these are like your brothers and sisters.

SPEAKER_03 4:14

Absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 4:15

Wow. So I mean, how long after your mom and dad got married did they did the wives move in together in Chicago? And do you know why, like why Chicago of all places?

SPEAKER_00 4:27

Yeah, I don't know that. Um, of course, it wasn't that far away, but um I really don't know. I know that my mom had um job offers, a lot of the secretaries had job offers in Washington, D.C., but she really didn't have the money to get there and to get set up, so they didn't go.

SPEAKER_03 4:46

Right. That makes sense. It does. Um did your mom enjoy living with the other two wives, or was it a case of um this is just easier for everyone? Right.

SPEAKER_00 4:59

No, I think she did, and they stayed in touch, you know, through the husbands, um, for many years. Um, I think it was just that after my dad was shot down and uh he was in the hospital in October of 1943, um, and he was in there for three months recovering. So it wasn't until January of 1944 that he got processed into the the POW situation. And so that's when she found out um that he was uh that he was still alive.

SPEAKER_02 5:35

Um spent three months thinking he was either MIA or KIA. That's God, I can't even imagine it.

SPEAKER_03 5:42

So there was no like pre-information to say, like, hey, your husband has is injured and in hospital in Europe. It was radio silence until the January.

SPEAKER_00 5:55

Right. I think it was somebody uh got notified her that they had heard his name on the on a um information piece that was in Europe, and and that's how actually they found out. I don't think it was a notification right away from the government.

SPEAKER_03 6:11

Right, yeah. Wow. The fact that he wasn't processed for for that, I don't think we I think that's a revelation for us. We didn't know that. We weren't aware that he had been he had been hospitalized for that long.

SPEAKER_00 6:23

Yeah. Um well he was uh that's why he was not in the same POW camp as the others. Now, in the show, um, you know, in the TV program, yeah, um, they showed him in the POW camp with the other guys, but that that was not the case.

SPEAKER_03 6:38

That was not he was actually anyone else in there? Was it just him by himself?

SPEAKER_00 6:43

It was mostly British, it was mostly British um airmen in there, a few Americans, but mostly British. So no, I didn't know anybody. And it was way up on the coast of the Baltic Sea, very remote. And of course, she couldn't dig a tunnel or anything since it was so close to the ocean. And um, and very cold.

SPEAKER_03 7:03

Very, very cold. Yeah, um so January of 44, your your mother finds out about your father. Does she then had she already moved away from the two wives in Chicago, or was it a sort of she finds out about her husband and then she decides to leave Chicago?

SPEAKER_00 7:22

I I think she was still there when she found out, and then she's she was only getting a letter from him once a month because that's all that they were allowed to write, but she was writing to him frequently, and so I think that bothered her that the others were getting uh these letters and everything was you know a-okay so this was very much like my mother for her to just up and join the circus. She was she was sort of an adventurer, and um I guess she was working, um, she was at a skating rink. Um, skating, I uh roller skating was very big back then, yeah, and she was kind of working, giving lessons and so forth. And so the owner of the skating rink told her that um the circus had contacted him to get some uh somebody to join this. I guess there were six, that was a six-person, although she just had she had one um partner there, so she took that opportunity.

SPEAKER_02 8:20

Is that the that's the woman in the the other woman in some of the pictures you sent us? Is her partner.

SPEAKER_00 8:26

Yes, yes. I I think ordinarily it would have been a man partner, but you know, there weren't able-bodied. They were yeah, they were all available. Available, so she was quite a bit bigger than my mom. So and my mom probably didn't even weigh 100 pounds.

SPEAKER_03 8:38

Yeah, it was very tiny. Um, I think the circus story is one of Gabby and I's favorite stories that we've found through doing this pod. It was it was very much a revelation of um Gabby. Who told us? Was it Rebecca that told us that Jerry was joining the circus?

SPEAKER_02 8:55

Yes, I think it was Rebecca had sent us a couple of letters that her mother had written to Harry. And one of them was that Jerry, you know, Jerry has left Jerry left, and she's asked us to, you know, either forward her mail and she joins the circus roller skating. And I said, that can't be right. That's not they said we should join the circus the circus. I said maybe Jean misunderstood. Yeah, but maybe no. I was very surprised, and then I was very entertained by it. I said, you know what? That is really one way to keep your mind occupied.

SPEAKER_00 9:32

Oh, yeah. She said it was very exciting, and they traveled by train from place to place. Yeah, um, and she got to know a lot of different people. But she did have um, she was injured in a train train wreck, and the car turned on his side, and she injured her injured her leg, and so that's why she stopped at that point. And she went to live with her dad for a while, and then she went to live with um my grandparents, my my dad's parents in Kansas.

unknown 10:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:01

How long was she in the circus then? Was it about a year?

SPEAKER_00 10:04

I I really don't know. I really don't know. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 10:08

That's horrible that a a train wreck that yeah literally cuts off your livelihood. That's that's crazy. So you said that your parents could only be in contact once a month when your dad was in the POW camp?

SPEAKER_00 10:21

Yes, he could only he could only write once a month.

SPEAKER_03 10:24

Right. Did you go into any of the letters, or was it sort of a case of she?

SPEAKER_00 10:30

Um, you know, I have seen one, but I don't think I still have it. And um, my grandmother told me that whenever he wrote to her, it was like everything's fine, you know, yeah, don't worry about us. Um, but she I guess she knew maybe from uh other people that you know they were not getting enough to eat, um, and that kind of thing. So because they were as officers, they weren't uh they did not have to work, so they only had like eight or nine hundred calories a day in their diet. Um so he had lost a lot of weight. Um, but they did uh have little gardens and things like that that they worked at.

SPEAKER_03 11:09

Right. I I suppose as well that they were very the letters were very censored in terms of what they could say and what they couldn't say.

SPEAKER_00 11:18

Um yes.

SPEAKER_02 11:20

Like even even more so than the sensor, even more so than the military sensor, I would imagine.

SPEAKER_03 11:25

Even more so than the the the regular one. So yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:29

Well, I was just trying to ponder like once a month, and I think they only gave them like one sheet of paper, too, when they would write a letter. So you either had to like write it really small, I feel like, and cram it all in, or and it's so interesting to me how your dad would write and say, No, I'm fine, don't worry about me. When you know, on the other flip side, it's she's worried about him, she's worried about her husband, and he's like, No, I'm fine, don't worry about me. Because to him, he's like, I have to make sure my wife doesn't worry, I have to make sure her morale stays up, and he would tell her that he loved her and he missed her.

SPEAKER_00 12:05

Um, so that was good.

SPEAKER_03 12:08

How long was it between um your dad being sent home to them reuniting? Was it very instant or was there like a processing time that they had to take?

SPEAKER_00 12:20

Yeah. Well, I think it took a while. They, you know, they had to go by ship, so it, you know, they had to wait for that, and then I don't know how long it takes to cross the Atlantic. And then they all had to be put on a train, and the train is traveling across the country, you know, until he got close to home, I guess, and then he got off.

SPEAKER_01 12:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 12:38

But he wasn't actually discharged for a couple months because um he had to be re-evaluated to see if um his injuries were um affecting his um his right arm.

unknown 12:51

Right.

SPEAKER_00 12:52

So they so we had to go to several hospitals. I know one was in Arkansas, which I have been to visit that one in um Hot Springs, Arkansas, and the other one was in Miami. So that summer I think they traveled around a bit.

SPEAKER_03 13:07

What was it like for them to have been apart for so long, only married for such a short time before that? Um, how did they get along when they eventually were reunited?

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Well, I I think they they got along fine, but she she had worried when he was gone that he would be changed because he was rather happy go lucky before. Um, but the whole, you know, it was a life um threatening situation, and it does change you. Um going to war changes people. Um, and he became much more serious. He had read voraciously while he was in the POW camp, and there were some older uh fellows there, and they were tutoring him because he had almost flunked out of high school because he, you know, wasn't trying, probably didn't show up half the time. The only reason he graduated is because he had a a good grade in band, but he um we still had a record of his uh of his grades, and he had an F minus in one grade.

SPEAKER_02 14:05

Oh, geez.

SPEAKER_00 14:06

I didn't get an F minus.

SPEAKER_02 14:08

But anyway, so I was gonna say I didn't think F minus was a thing. I thought you just got to the F and that was it. That was it.

SPEAKER_00 14:15

But um so in the fall of 1946, so just three or four months after he got back, he was able to enroll in college and um I mean got a degree in electrical engineering.

SPEAKER_02 14:26

So he used the GI Bill to enroll in school and finish his degree. That's incredible. Yeah, um, did your dad stay in touch? I know you're you said your mom stayed in touch with uh Gene and Margaret afterwards. They would write letters. Did your dad stay in touch with a lot of his crew after?

SPEAKER_00 14:44

Because I I don't know. I do remember that one time my dad and I went to Washington, DC, and um we went over to the Crosby's house. And so that that evening he he and um Crosby you know spent reminiscing, and then Gene took me out to go to a movie. I don't remember that.

SPEAKER_03 15:04

Oh, that was sweet. I love that.

SPEAKER_02 15:06

That's seems that Crosby was the one that always seemed to keep in touch with everybody. It seemed to be the the the house because the house, or that he was always moving. Oh, Dan. Yeah, Dan Rosendal said that that his father couldn't change the locks fast enough that Cros was always at the door, always at always at Rosie's door, which really tickled us. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 15:28

Um Jaina, what did your mother do after her time in the circus is finished? So she goes home, eventually lives with your grandparents. Um, did she do anything else sort of roller skating after that, or was that completely the end of well?

SPEAKER_00 15:44

I think the skating was just, you know, as a pastime. Um but she was uh, you know, she was a secretary and she became a legal secretary the rest of her life until um she was in her 50s, I think, when she became a paralegal. And that was when um you know that paralegal career was pretty new. So um, and then she finally she went to night school at the University of Pittsburgh for 16 years and finally got her degree in Spanish and Portuguese, and she became a legal translator. Wow, she really wanted to be a court reporter, but by that time her hearing was going, and so you know that wasn't possible. So she eventually became completely deaf.

SPEAKER_01 16:33

Wow.

SPEAKER_03 16:34

Which was which was tough. Yeah, I bet, absolutely.

SPEAKER_00 16:39

And then after she retired, um she was about 59 or 60, she uh proof read books and articles uh for the for the newspaper. It was tough having a mother who was a proofreader because if you wrote anything to her, she would she would correct your writing or your spelling.

SPEAKER_02 16:59

I love it. As if mothers aren't critical enough.

SPEAKER_03 17:03

Add another layer, add another layer to this.

SPEAKER_02 17:06

My mother doesn't listen to this, so she'll never know I said that.

SPEAKER_03 17:08

Um neither does mine. It's fine. We can say whatever we like. Another question, Jane, I really wanted to ask was how did you feel about the portrayal of your father in Masters of the Air?

SPEAKER_00 17:22

Um, I thought it was it was it was good, except for the part of the POW camp. Um it kind of opened my eyes in a way, you know, he was kind of happy-go-lucky guy there. Um and the fellow that portrayed him, I guess, I guess he sort of looked alike. He had his hair combed back, and I think my dad did too. That was the fad at that point. And I had never seen that a picture of him with his hair combed back. But I was happy, I was very happy with the whole uh Masters of the Air, uh, which is fascinating. And I don't know if you know this, but the the part where someone's dangling from the plane right next to the propeller, that was my dad.

SPEAKER_03 18:07

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, wow. He's yelling what pulled pull the release, and because he's stuck, someone has to kick the kick the door, and kick the door. Yeah. We also thought that the um the gold teeth were just a random costume choice from Apple and from we've wanted we've wanted to ask if you know we thought the teeth were literally a costume choice.

SPEAKER_02 18:32

We didn't think that your dad actually had these gold teeth.

SPEAKER_00 18:37

I never heard that before. Now he was in a plane crash in Idaho, and I think that's how the front teeth were knocked out.

SPEAKER_03 18:45

Right. Okay, okay.

SPEAKER_00 18:47

So I never heard this about the gold teeth. I really didn't.

SPEAKER_02 18:52

Was it who did the interview, Winnie, that we saw? Was it Jim Blakely?

SPEAKER_03 18:57

It was Jim Blake.

SPEAKER_02 18:58

Had interviewed a couple of the guys, yeah, and I think it was uh John Brady said he saw your dad just tall, lanky guy standing at the bar, and he had these two gold teeth. And I said, Oh my god, it wasn't a costume choice. He actually had two gold teeth.

SPEAKER_03 19:14

Yeah, this this interview is so great because it's just three friends sort of sat around. Yeah, yeah, Jaina, it's your father and Charles Crukshank and John Brady, and they're all they're all just sat having a nice drink together, and they pass this microphone around.

SPEAKER_00 19:35

I've seen that, yeah. And they're all probably in their 50s or maybe even sixties.

SPEAKER_03 19:41

They're at a reunion, I I believe, and it's such a great video because it's them for 40 minutes just talking and reminiscing, and that that's how we figured out that maybe the teeth were not a costume choice, but it um yeah, well at that point he had a regular, regular set of teeth by the time you guys on the topic of the reunions.

SPEAKER_02 20:02

Did you accompany your dad to any when he used to go?

SPEAKER_00 20:06

No, I didn't, my mom did. Um, but I've been to one since then. Um that was wonderful. A couple years ago when it was in Savannah. Right. Yeah, that was really a good experience. Very good.

SPEAKER_03 20:20

Was that the one where you met up with um Rebecca Crosby and Barbara Blakely? And you took the you recreated the picture of your mother's picture. Yeah, I love that picture so much. I think Nancy Bucknum sent us that specific issue of Splasher as well, because I think we asked for the picture and then Nancy just sent us the copy of the article. Um how did how did that feel? Were you guys sort of reminiscing about your mothers and comparing stories, or was it a very much uh No, we did.

SPEAKER_00 20:52

We we talked about our moms, and um, yeah, it was it was very nice. If there was a kind of a kindred spirit there, yeah, absolutely.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

I really, really like that. Do you stay in touch with the other the other girls?

SPEAKER_00 21:04

I occasionally hear from Rebecca uh email, or yeah. That's that's about it. I I I missed the last um reunion because we had a family reunion at the same time. And so I didn't go. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 21:21

Definitely come to the next one. We will be there. Yeah. We're so excited that we get to be at the next one in 27. Yeah, we're very excited for that.

SPEAKER_02 21:29

I'm saving my money already.

SPEAKER_03 21:31

Yeah, we're putting away money already to be able to go. Um, one another another question I really wanted to ask was how was family life growing up with your mum and your dad a a product of the so called greatest generation? Did you feel like you had some kind of pressure to live up to based on the fact that your dad had been at war and that he had been a POW?

SPEAKER_00 21:55

No, and and you know, at the time I didn't know a lot about that because he didn't talk about it. But I think my my dad never imposed um big expectations on me. He always told me he was proud of me and that he loved me. And he was, I was, you know, a good student. And um and it was just kind of uh, you know, suburban mom, dad, one son, one daughter kind of thing growing up. And um so it it was it was fine, it was great. In fact, my brother's birthday, older brother's birthday is coming up, and I wrote him a card saying that, you know, I think as we get older, we sometimes uh think more about our memories in in the past. Um, because at this point in our lives, the future is kind of a big question mark. You know, when you're younger, you know you're gonna do this, go to school, you're gonna work here, live here, so forth. But at this point, you're just kind of you don't know. Um so, and I was telling him that I had really good memories of mom and dad and my brother and myself, because I have two younger brothers, but that was a bit later.

SPEAKER_03 23:04

Right. That's really sweet, though. Did your mother ever obviously you just said that your dad didn't really talk about his time during the war. Did your did you know about your mother's roller skating career in the circus as you grew up, or was that sort of something you found out as a revelation later on? Like you didn't know. Oh no, I I knew that I knew that.

SPEAKER_00 23:25

And she would tell me stories about my dad, you know, about what it was like for him there and for her then, and um, you know, that he had apparently some PTSD, I guess, uh, for a while. Absolutely. Uh so yeah, I got all that information from her.

SPEAKER_03 23:42

I'm not surprised that he didn't want to to to talk about it. It must have been incredibly difficult and then to to readjust to civilian life very quickly afterwards. Did did your dad stay in the reserves? Oh, I was just gonna ask that. Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:57

He did. He stayed in the reserves and he retired as a full colonel. He was in I think 33 years or something like that.

SPEAKER_02 24:04

Wow, that's amazing. So, did you guys move around a lot or were you did you stay in one place?

SPEAKER_00 24:11

We were um in Wichita, Kansas, and then my dad took a job in um Chile, the country of Chile. Um, he was setting up a PhD program there in electrical engineering. So we moved there, and then from there we moved to Pittsburgh, and um that's where I grew up high school and college in Pittsburgh. Um and my dad was he was very proud of the fact that I joined the reserves and later on went on active duty because he had three sons who did not go in the service. He was joked about that.

unknown 24:45

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:46

Would uh would you mind talking about that? Because I find that so interesting as well that you followed in your father's footsteps. Um what branch were you in?

SPEAKER_00 24:55

In the army. I I joined the reserves, and then um about a year and a half later I went on active duty, and I stayed on active duty for nine, almost nine years. That's amazing. Um and during that time, where it was the first Gulf War, and my unit was um, I'm sorry, it was after I got out and went and stayed in the reserves that the unit that I was in here in Augusta was deployed to Saudi Arabia for the first first Gulf War. So we went over there. We it was a hospital unit, and we took over a um hospital that was um for Bedouins. Um, I guess in Saudi they have two armies. They have the army, uh the regular army, and then this reserve army, which is the Bedouins. So I had all Bedouin patients, and um, so I worked on the on the mother baby ward there with all Bedouins, and that was that was interesting. And that's why I say that going off to war changes you.

unknown 25:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:52

We weren't in, I guess we were technically in a combat zone because at night we could hear you know the missiles and uh scud missiles and so forth.

SPEAKER_03 26:02

Um, so after a while you kind of don't pay attention to it, but yeah, I suppose it kind of becomes white noise after such a long time. One of the uh one of the books we have coming up in our book club is called Um And If I Perish, and it's about the army nurses in World War II. And I'm up to them, I've played that. It's it's excellent so far, and I'm up to a bit like where the first few days of them being in Italy, all this noise shocks them, and they're running into their foxholes with their helmets on and whatever else. And by week two, they're sleeping through it, and they're only waking up if someone tells them to get into their foxholes. Yeah, so yeah, I can imagine that it at some point sort of becomes background noise. Um I I find that so interesting though, that that you you were the one to follow in in dad's footsteps, and then the brother brothers won.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

And then I stayed in the reserves um and retired as a lieutenant colonel in with 24 years.

SPEAKER_02 27:05

So wow, that's incredible. It was a good gig. Really cool. Good. You mentioned that your dad was not a great student, but he was good in music. Did he play? Did he play anything? Was he musically inclined?

SPEAKER_00 27:21

He did play in Juba, but I don't think he ever played anything after that. But he was a big classical music fan in country and western. So that's a strange combination, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

That seems to be a common um trait of some of the men from the hundredth is that a lot of them were musically inclined. I know John Brady, Frank Murphy. Yeah. And I just find that to be like, I'm starting to think it might have been like uh a qualification to fly with the hundredth. So you had to play an instrument or be able to sing a song or something.

SPEAKER_00 27:54

Well, the interesting thing about him almost flunking out of high school is that um, you know, he came from a poor family, and uh the war had started, and he went into Wichita uh with this other young man who came from a very prominent family, wealthy family, and they they took some sort of aptitude test, and my dad was accepted, and the other young man was not. So yeah, that's how he um got into the um you know the program with the pilots and the bombardiers and navigators.

SPEAKER_02 28:29

Yeah. Did he sign up? Did he enlist before Pearl Harbor or was it after Pearl Harbor happened?

SPEAKER_00 28:36

This was after Pearl Harbor, um, because he's born in 23. Um, so he wouldn't have been well, I mean, I'm not sure.

SPEAKER_03 28:44

He wouldn't have been of age.

SPEAKER_00 28:45

No, he was in high school, maybe he went in as a cadet. They had little a cadet program. Okay, but then they discovered that he wasn't as old as he said he was, and so they discharged him. Oh, see, okay. At the time when when my mom and dad got married, he was only 19 at that point.

SPEAKER_03 29:05

Oh, he was only a baby.

SPEAKER_00 29:06

Oh and my mom was 20, but he had lied to my mom and said that he was 20 also.

SPEAKER_03 29:13

Because of course he did. Oh, that's funny. When did she find out that he was not the age that he had said he was? Was that pretty quick? She got it out of the way.

SPEAKER_02 29:22

I'm not sure. I'm not sure. Yeah, that's so funny.

SPEAKER_03 29:25

That's so funny.

SPEAKER_02 29:26

Um that's so cheeky.

SPEAKER_03 29:28

Speaking of speaking of music, did your parents ha share a mutual love of that? Was there a certain song that you hear and it reminds you of both of them that they enjoyed together?

SPEAKER_00 29:40

I guess. Well, she told me that uh at one point, I guess before he was at POW, he had written to her about this song that he really liked, and it was Spanish Eyes, I think was the name of it.

SPEAKER_03 29:51

Oh yeah. That's so sweet. I really like that.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

You know, of course, toward the end of like the last couple decades of her life, she couldn't hear anything. Yeah, so but she had a wonderful voice, she was a very good singer.

SPEAKER_03 30:06

Oh, that's beautiful. That's really beautiful, yeah. Yeah, wonderful. Everybody was so talented in the 40s. Every everyone that had like a little niche, and I did they have their own little quirk, their own little thing.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

I can carry a tune in a bucket.

SPEAKER_03 30:24

No, me either. I think I can. I think I can. I got very lucky when I was in college and I was taught how to technically sing. One of the final questions that I wanted to ask was um, do you have a favorite memory of your parents?

SPEAKER_00 30:43

Think about that. When we were living in South America in Chile, um a lot of good memories from that. And uh we took a vacation, drove down to the south of Chile. I do remember that. We were camping. Um so I guess that was what, but you know, uh they were they were very loving toward all of us kids, and uh, so that's good memories.

SPEAKER_01 31:08

Good.

SPEAKER_00 31:10

I can still see my dad in the house that they lived in for, I don't know, 30 or 40 years um at the end, and he was in his favorite rocking chair, and he would have this cat on his lap, and he'd call her the old bat, like he didn't like her, but he was always petting her and all this. So yeah, I can still see dads are like that with cats.

SPEAKER_03 31:32

Dads are I don't want this cat, and yet they become like soul tied to this cat didn't want.

SPEAKER_00 31:40

Did you hear anything about um the time that my dad was in the hospital from anyone else?

SPEAKER_01 31:47

No, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Well, he it was um when they were um had a bombing raid over Munster, Germany. Uh so the plane was shot down, and by the time he bailed out, that there wasn't at a high very high altitude, and he landed in a tree and um was captured um and then driven into to Munster. He said there was a teenage boy there that was holding a gun on him the whole time.

SPEAKER_03 32:15

Yeah, I think that's in Murphy's book. I believe he read that from Frank Murphy's book. That yeah, um, I believe was it was it Charles Cruikshank that rode with him? And there was this teenage boy who didn't speak a word of English just holding this gun over yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 32:34

When he got to the hospital and the town was uh 90% destroyed during this um raid. And so, of course, the they were at a military hospital and the surgeons operated on all the Germans, and then they said, Well, we're done. And um, the hospital administrator, his name was Vili Vali, and he had been in the Eastern Front, but caught hepatitis, and they sent him back to his hometown of Munster. And he did not speak any English, but he uh persuaded them not to, he persuaded the surgeons to operate on them, and so he saved his life because he had a uh big um wound on his right back of his right shoulder. It was a 20 millimeter uh mortar, and his lung was collapsed and his collarbone was broken. Um and then during his convalescence, um, this hospital administrator would bring them books or something he found in English, and he uh didn't let them interrogate them, didn't let the SS interrogate them until uh they were better. So um they kept in touch um all this time.

SPEAKER_03 33:43

That's amazing.

SPEAKER_00 33:44

Um at that time, um Villy was not married, uh, but later on he did marry, and he married a woman who was um an English translator at the um Nuremberg trials. So when this book came out, you know, the book by um oh, I'm blocking on his name. Uh the book about that day when the plane was shot down. I'll think of it in a minute. Um, so she was asked to translate it into German. And so they saw his name in in the book, and she contacted the author and said, How do I get in touch with Howard Hamilton? And so they they got in touch, and um my parents went over to visit them, and they came to the US and visited my parents. And um, so it was a life, lifelong uh friendship there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:34

That's amazing. On that, on that, did your dad ever consider writing about his experiences in a book, or was it very much a case of I am never talking about this again unless necessary?

SPEAKER_00 34:45

Um, no, I think he it didn't have a problem talking about it, but he did not write about it. Um I just remember the author's name was Ian Hawkins.

SPEAKER_03 34:54

Um I I think that's on our list, Gabby. It's it's on our ever-growing pile of because I recognize the name. The list keeps getting bigger, but we'll get through it. Yeah, we'll get there eventually.

SPEAKER_00 35:07

That was all about that one day, and um yeah, so and my dad was mentioned in New York many times.

SPEAKER_02 35:12

I really wish that it had been kept in the show, like all of this, all of this stuff could have been extremely good, like special effects, and I feel like the viewers missed out on a lot of yeah, literally the air time, um by not keeping keeping this is why we keep digging into things because I'm like, but what happened there? Yeah, what happened next? What happened after that? Um, so your dad went back to Munster later in life?

SPEAKER_00 35:42

He did. And um uh my husband and I were stationed in Germany, so we went up to see uh William Everard as well. And then they came down to visit us.

SPEAKER_02 35:52

Yeah, that must have been something really I mean, special and also kind of really emotional to be in the place where your dad almost either almost lost his life or was saved. I mean, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 36:10

Well, he yeah, he really owed his life to um yeah.

SPEAKER_03 36:14

That's such a sweet story.

SPEAKER_00 36:16

Thank you for giving me this opportunity. I appreciate it.

SPEAKER_02 36:18

Oh, we're so happy to have you joining us. This was so much fun and so special.

SPEAKER_03 36:26

Yeah, we love getting to talk about the these people, and we love getting to talk to uh talking about your parents and then talking to you and and the other kids. It really is um it's very very refreshing, and it feels you know, we feel very honored that you want to share the story with two people who have zero familiar relation to any of this, just two people who are extremely interested and want to keep the story alive for for future generations to dine with.

SPEAKER_02 36:55

Thank you for trying thank you for trusting us with this.

SPEAKER_00 36:58

Yes, yes, absolutely that's it was a special generation, it really was, and um and it of course it it uh helped us as the kids to develop our our character and our value system.

SPEAKER_03 37:12

Yeah, and we really hope to carry that on to everyone else as well.

SPEAKER_02 37:19

I think that some of those values could stand to be uh reevaluated and looked at again today, honestly. Absolutely. I think old school is not to sound very old school is the best school, I think.

SPEAKER_00 37:33

Well, we went through some tough times because this was right after the depression, yeah. And so when you get into the war, and um, of course, they had deprivations of you know some food and and so forth in the US, food stamps, or I guess they call them food stamps. Yeah, yeah. So all those stories about what life was like back then.

SPEAKER_02 37:54

Yeah, it's wonderful. Speaks to like, you know, the victory gardens. You know, we were talking about that last week, why victory gardens were so prevalent, and it's because after the depression, that was the fastest way to grow your own food, to grow your own food and you know, maybe not rely on your ration books so heavily if you grew your own fruits and vegetables. Yeah. Exactly. Thank you so much, Jaina, for joining us today. My pleasure. Yes, thank you so much. We had a wonderful time chatting, and we hope that you guys all enjoyed this one. We sure did.

SPEAKER_03 38:29

Yes, we did, as always.

SPEAKER_00 38:31

I did, I did, thank you. I was a little bit nervous.

SPEAKER_03 38:35

We did great. Yeah, we did absolutely wonderfully. Um thanks everyone again for listening. And we will see you next time.

SPEAKER_02 38:42

See you soon, everybody.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

Bye, everyone.

SPEAKER_02 38:45

Goodbye.