On Friday March 29, 1996 a number of students from AMST418d interviewed Patti Hess of Greenbelt, Maryland. Patti moved to Greenbelt in 1937. What follows is the transcript from that interview.

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PH: I moved to Greenbelt when I was 6 years old, in 1937. At Pearl Harbor I was 10 Years old in 1941.

Q: ?

PH: My father went into the Marine Corps and was overseas and faught at the Battle of Iwo Jima. That was later on in the war, in the late fourties, certainly towards the end-- 1944 or somewhere around there. But he was away for a long time. Actually, it was difficult for me because my parents were in the process of divorce when he was sent overseas. For all I knew, they had a miserable, miserable marriage. I used to go through this traumatic episode that my father was over there fighting with no one to come home to. I ended up emotionally like most 14 year olds, blaming my mother for stuff that was not her fault. Of course, we later laughed at that, but it was very traumatic at the time.

Q: Did you have any siblings?

PH: I had a brother that was 4 years younger than I.

Q: Did you have to sort of take over [the household]?

PH: Well, there were a lot of things that happened. .. my mother went to work, so that meant a certain. . .she went to work for the Department of Agriculture (?), and worked out there in Beltsville doing research on beans or something like that. So that was kind of good(?) for me because I had some responsibility as far as cleaning house after school, and I learned something helping her on weekends.

I wouldn't say that it was a tough life that we had, although I think all of us were pretty poor. But I don't think we were ever really aware of that. I look back now and see that the average income of people that lived in Greenbelt was about $2200 a year, which you could feed a family on. I know we paid $37 a month rent when we lived there. Everytime you got a raise you had to report it to the town.

The things that had to do with the war were things like having blackouts-- when there were emergency sirens you had to all go in the house and turn out the lights. My brother recalled that they used to send reconaissence planes over to see if you could see any lights on the ground. I do remember that we had blackout curtains that wewould put over the windows. You were not allowed to have a radio playing because the old radios had these red lights and you could possibly see them and the Germans could come bomb us. That stuff was very real being so close to Washington. You could go up to the beach and see those big circular things where they used to watch. . .There were German submarines off the Delaware coast. So they were very real stuff. We used to go on top of the drugstore in Greenbelt and watch for airplanes, which sends my kids into peals of laughter when I tell them that , particularly once they saw the building. But I don't remember whether we did that as a part of the Girl Scouts or not, but we would go up there for a couple of hours in the evening with binoculars, and there was a chart there inside this little cubbyhole. But everytime a plane flew over you had to identify it and call it in to the Civil Air Patrol. . .I think most people there had somebody in the service.

Q: Do you remember how you felt at Pearl Harbor?

PH: I'm not sure that it meant all that much to me. I know that my dad worked for the treasury Department. He had recently gotten a job working nights at the warehouse in Hechts because he wanted to save some money to go homesteading in Alaska. I guess the war saved him from that. Then when Pearl Harbor happened, he, of course, quit and tried to enlist right away. He wanted to get into the Submarine corps for $21 a month and my mother wouldn't sign the papers--she told him to go take a flying leap, I think. He went back in the Marine Corps, was make a gunnery Sgt. and went to OCS. He was old to go to OCS. He was probably just under the age limit of 35--he was no kid, and it was tough keeping up with 20 year olds when you're in your thirties.

Q: Your obviously went to high school during the war years. How do you feel it was different once the war started? Was there more of a relaxed calm, or a heightened air of security?

PH: It was such a safe world we grew up in. We never locked the door in Greenbelt, not ever. My parents would go out for an evening over their friends houses, and you always knew where they were, and nobody was ever going to hurt you. There was never, never a stranger in town. It was the freest, greatest place to be a kid that you could just ever imagine. When I say that you were worried about the war, I dont think it was the kind of danger that at least we kids felt. I can remember seeing newsreels. . .and even of the German prison camps when they were liberated, and it just didn't seem real to me. And I'm sure that's because we were so young, and we were insulated in that town. We were very, very protected, my God, you never had to cross the street. I remember when I was six years old, the day we moved there I made a general pest of myself until my mother unpacked my roller skates, and I went all over town and never had to cross a major street because you went down the underpass.

Q:?

PH: Yes, I think so. Event when we had these blackouts we would go outside and play tag or hide and go seek. There were no lights on, the town was pich black. But you would have a half dozen twelve year olds running around just having fun. Every place, we went on roller skates. . .we lived in them when I was a kid. And the worst thing we ever did, was, I think, when my stepsister started teaching me how to smoke. I think I was maybe nine. But you had to cope with things like food rationing and that kind of stuff. My stepfather mentioned to me that during the war it was considered really wonderful if you could save enough gas coupons that you could go over to College Park or to Hyattsville where there was a "Hot Shop", and get dinner on Sunday for 75 cents.

Q: Did you feel that growing up during the war, with the rationing and the coupons, etc., that it affected your belief in _________ ________?

PH: I think it taught me a lot of good lessons. When you're a kid, who the hell thinks about saving sugar or butter or meat or gas? So these were things that we grew up to be very cautious about. One thing that was bad was that, because we didn't pay any utility bills, I never learned how to turn out a light when I walked out of a room as my husband would only be too happy to tell you. So for years and years, because we didn't pay water bills or electric bills, we weren't worried about that.

But I think other things, and being concerned about money. . .there were things that I remember never having when we were kids. Things like lamb chops or asparagus or things that were very very expensive. But you never thought about not having those things because most of us never had the money for them anyway, even if you could have gotten hold of them. I remember when my Dad left to go overseas my folks had a car, and he left in the middle of the night and he took the car, the title, and all the gas coupons. And see they were on the verge of divorce, but my mother was furious. She had to carpool for the duration of the war.

Now let me tell you how long it took to go from Greenbelt to downtown Washington to go to work for her. It took 2 hours by bus and streetcar. This was another reason why my kids laugh at me. My youngest one used to ice skate out here at Greenbelt lake. He says "Ma, you talk about Greenbelt like it's the end of the world!" I say, "Todd, it is!" I can't believe there's a Metro stop down here. When my mother went to work and I wanted to go downtown and have lunch with her it took me an hour and a half to two hours to take the bus from Greenbelt to the streetcar and to get to downtown D.C . to the commerce dept. And then that much time going back. So to be without a car during the war was not nice. So she just carpooled.

Q: Did both your parents work downtown?

PH: My mother didn't when I was very young. In fact I always hoped that was part of the problem, but she went to work and discovered there was something to life other than waxing floors and cooking dinner.

Q: She went to work specifically because your father had left?

PH: Yes, and I think she was getting restless. When she used to laugh at me about having the patience to be so involved in political campaigns...I remember one time she walked into my house and I had two kids that were 13 months apart, and I was nursing my daughter and I had a toddler on the floor and I was making a bowl of chicken soup that I was stirring at the stove and running a political campaign at the time. I said "look, I'm better off than you because at least I know that there's a world growing outside and if I can't get out with two babies, I may at least use some other ___ and do something constructive with my time. You walked out and saw that there was a whole world and it blew you apart--you couldn't handle it."

Q: Why do you say that she couldn't handle it?

PH: Well, it was a different age. My mother got married at 18. She matured very late. She had her first baby when she was 18. And she married a guy who had a personality like a Marine Corps sergeant. Love him as I did, he was a bull headed German Marine and he never changed.

Q: So after she went off to work, did you find that she started neglecting the household?

PH: No. Well, she got very involved in her work but I never felt there was any neglect. My brother and I had certain responsibilities to take care of the house but they weren't so great that nobody could have fun. We would still go down to the teenage center everyday after school and skip home at a quarter to five and make the beds, empty the ashtrays and start dinner before she ever got home. So I still had time to be a kid.

But there was always something to do in Greenbelt for kids too. Not so much when you got to become a teenager, but there was a swimming pool and ball teams. I remember teeling somebody that when the Second World War was over Greenbelt had the highest birth rate in the United States because there was nothing else to do in Greenbelt. Many of these guys had been away to war for 4 years and they came home and just started having babies like crazy. There was one movie theater, that's all there was to do.

Q: At what point in your life did your mom remarry?

PH: Maybe in about 1949.

Q: Was it hard for you to adjust?

PH: Oh, I'd say I went through tis emotional, 14 year old, breast beating. The truth is my two stepparentsare both saints. And they have had two of the most happiest marriges that I have ever seen. I think my mother and father were both a little hotheaded. My stepparents were, as I say, calm. I couldn't live with either one of my parents for very long without ___. My father married a widow with four children who lived in Greenbelt. Her oldest daughter and I were good friends in elementary school. It was kind of like "Peyton Place", although she was a widow and moved to Greenbelt with these four kids and she ran the beauty parlor.

He came back from the Second World War and started dating her. They were married in like a month. And then they had two kids. So I have stepbrothers and sisters there, and I have a half brother and sister there . Now where my stepmopther Mary lived those houses are all 4 in a row in Greenbelt, up here, and the guy who became my stepfather lived at the other end of the road. So of the Summer, when the War was over, my mother, brother and I would walk over to see her boyfriend and his two kids, who were already friendly with my stepmother's kids. We were all playing together.

Q: Did your father immediately return from the war in 1945?

PH: Yes, I think so.

Q: How did you feel when he got back? Was there any tension between the two of you?

PH: No. I was a young pretty 14 yearold. He probably didn't much like my going out with boys, but there wasn't much I was going to listen to or say about it.

Q: Did you and your father talk much about the War?

PH: No. I don't think that I have only one time have i ever known a man who was in active combat who ever talked about it. That was a guy who lost an arm and a leg in Vietnam. We were at a Democratic retreat one night, and another woman and I were sitting up drinking and we were all talking to him. He started talking about it and all of a sudden he, like had to talk about it. I remember sitting up with him unti 5 o'clock in the moring.

And by the way, Schwartzkoff was his commanding officer, and was the one that sent him down in that minefield when he lost his arm and leg. But my dad never discussed anything about active duty. I just don't ever remember anybody ever doing that. I think its maybe just to painful. I remember him laughing at the picture of the flag going up on Iwo Jima that's so famous. That it wasn't the way it really happened. That the flag was put up first and they took that shot later just for press releases.

Q: Do you feel that growing up during the war, and then having your father go off to fight, affected you later on, civicly or politically?

PH: Well, maybe but I think I got more of that from my mother. She was always involved in issues down at the Co-op, and writing on the newsletter in Greenbelt. My mother always claims that one of the reasons i ran off and got married at such a young age was because my father left--I needed this male figure. Actually, I always thought it was her fault because she used to spend so much time accusing me of things I wasn't doing. I just got tired of listening to her. But I don't think...I mean everybody's dad was away, mine just wouldn't come back to live in my house. I'm not sure that was anymore of a hardship than anybody else was going through, or that anybodywould view as a hardship. I think I got all my love of music and books from my dad, at a very early age. and even though my parents had a terrible marriage, by the time I got to be about 13, my early memories are very warm, very healthy.

Q: What do you recall from the very first day that you heard about the war, say December 7th?

PH: Well, I can remember my dad had this job and he wanted to go homesteading in Alaska. Then all of a sudden he quit that job. I remember just his general sense of turmoil. I mean how much does a ten year old remember anyway. I'm not even sure I read the newspaper in those days. You listened source of information. I think I was just too young to be much aware of my immediate reaction other than older grown ups who seemed confused.

Q: How do you look back on those years?

PH: I look back on it as just a very carefree childhood. We lived on roller skates and bicycles. My girlfriends and I used to play with dolls. It was a time that allowed a child to be a child whether they were a boy or a girl. It was just great fun. WeÕd run around at night after dinner and play tag or hide-and-go-seek. In highschool, during the war, they had a "teenage canteen" where we used to go after school. We would "drop in." Of course, it was underneath the police station.

Q: Even though you were in high school when the war had ended, did it talk time to adjust? Was it still obvious that a war had just ended?

PH: IÕm not sure I can really answer that. The men all started coming back. I think everybody started having a little bit more money, and you could buy a car. But nobody in Greenbelt ever had a lot of money. I mean you couldnÕt have a lot of money and live there. I ran off and got married when I was only 16. My mother and brother had to move into an apartment because the 3 bedroom was just too big for them. So thatÕs why I didn't graduate from college until the age of 53.

Q: How old was the man you married?

PH: Seventeen. It was something I really did to get away from my mother.

Q: You mentioned that you were in the Girl Scouts. In what ways did you or your peers help withthe war effort?

PH: We used to do the collection drives of cans and bottles. We used to work as "candy stripes" over at Leland Memorial Hospital. I think that was part of the Girl Scout project. We used to collect grease in cans.

Q: It seems like, from your experiences with what you did, that the war was a fun, social thing?

PH: Yes, because none of us were touched that close. Now Bob Sumner, his brother was killed in the war, and that was probably the only kid from Greenbelt. One guy lost his arm, and was never quite the same. But we were young; we were little kids. I think I mentioned at lunchtime that I think I learned more about the Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa through the 50th reunion recently, with the details about things that my father actually went through than I ever knew as a little girl. I used to ride a bike with my pigtails flying. But those are the things we did for the war effort.

Q: When did Greenbelt start to grow as a suburban area?

PH: It was the first planned community in this country. There were 3 of them--one in Wisconson and one in Ohio and one here. My mother's family was from Green Bay, Wisconson. I remember once when we took a trip there when I was about 11 or 12 and we stopped and saw the one there. It wasn't nearly as pretty as Greenbelt, because in Greenbelt they painted all the bricks white. . .So the contrast of the green grass, which was all over the place.

But I used to love to tell people that I was one of the first 100 families of not the richest people in the world, but of the first public housing development in the United States. . .That's exactly what it was. In reading those history books that we got at the 50th reunion of the town in 1987, I learned a lot about the beginnings of the town that I didn't know- the people and how they were picked. My mother said they were actually interviewed. They came to your house to see if you were a good housekeeper or if you needed training.

And by the way, they gave women classes in those days about how to use gas or electric stoves because most people came from farms. They didnt know anything about that equipment. I guess in a lot of ways when I see some of the problems we've had with people coming from other countries, that we maybe ought to do things like that and teach them because there are many cultures where they don't have things like we have in this country. I mean my mother came from Green Bay, Wisconson, which was barely a big city, but she and my dad lived in Washington. There were, I'm sure, women in Greenbelt taught to cook and to can and manage money and all that kind of stuff. And there were very strict rules in Greenbelt. Nobody over 15 was alloewed in the center of town with shorts on, male or female. You didn't hang out any laundry on Sunday. There were no animals allowed. And it was very strictly enforced.

Q: Was there a lot of news focus on the town when it was first created?

PH: Yes, we were in the newspapers a lot. I had always thought that Eleanor Roosevelt came out there to see this friend of mine who was stricken with polio during the epidemic in 1948. I thought she came up there with money to buy a wheelchair for Jimmy, or a fundraiser. But they said at that reunion that she came to sell war bonds. I can remember her looking so beautiful that night, in every detail of the evening gown that she had on. She was just a very classy lady.

Greenbelt was a very big and well known environment. I have friends from politics that know all about Greenbelt when you talk about it. It was such a well planned community in every aspect. There was a small playground maybe every two blocks. Every six blocks there was a big play ground. And then there was a swimming pool that was opened day and night. They gave every kid in town free swimming lessons in the morning. We'd go home and eat lunch, and you bought a whole bunch of books of tickets for maybe three dollars a week and you could go swimming every single day. Sometimes when my mother went back to work we would just stay at the swimming pool and she would come down there and we would have a hot dog or something for dinner then meet her there and stay there and swim until they closed at nine O'clock.

Q: So it was easy, I guess, with her off to work, and it wasn't really a problem that she wasn't home when you came home? There were plenty of things to do?

PH: That's right. And there was no way you were ever going to get hurt. Nobody was going to hurt you.

Q: I guess you were considered a latch-key kid?

PH: Yes, in this day and age I would have been, except we never locked our door. I think the only bad things that ever happened wa one time two little boys across the street started beating up my brother, and I went out and got into the fight and beat them up.

Q:You talked about your activities in the summer. What kinds of things did you do when it was colder, or when you were in school?

PH: I know I walked home from school everyday for lunch. We used to listen to the radio. I was an avid reader. I remember reading late at night, after my father made me turn out the lights with a flashlight under the covers. There wasn't anything else to do. We went to movies on Saturdays, sometimes on Sundays. It cost 11 cents to go on Saturday; 18 cents to go on Sunday.

Q: What kinds of shows did you see?

PH: Shirly Temple. Cowboy movies. They had serials every Saturday, with two or three "Hop-Along Cassidy" shorts. They had fairly decent movies with some pretty big movie stars: Kirk Dougles and Burt Lancaster. The other thing we used to do about the war, by the way, was have street dances down in the middle of town where the statue is. They used to have a band for the dances down there.

Q: Did you write to your father when he was away?

PH: Oh yes. I still have stacks of letters from him on "V-Mail" paper that they used to have to write to reduce it for an air mail. It was flimsy and lightweight, just a little bit beyond tissue paper.

Q:What did you write about?

PH: You couldn't write too much because they would cut it out. If he talked about too much of what he was doing, they used to either ink it out or cut it out.