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An Interview With My Mother

© Charlotte Spell

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

I recently did an interview with my mother Betty Calhoun. She is now seventy years old and these are her accounts of World War II. She said that she was about eleven years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed on December 7, 1941. Mom recalled that the man that was president at the time died during his term in office. His name was Rosevelt. She said that she wrote a poem about him and it was read aloud over the intercom system at school. (Both of my parents were poets, maybe that is where I get my love for writing poetry from.) Mom told me that she wished she had kept the poem.

She spoke of the practice air raids they used to have. Her father, my grandfather was an air raid warden. When the siren would sound at the nearby fire house, which by the way is still standing today on Todd's Lane in Hampton Virginia. Everyone was to cut off all there lights and were not allowed to drive there cars. My grandfather would drive down the road with the lights to his car off hollaring at those who did not cut the lights in their houses off and telling those on the road to get off the road. My mom said she used to go with him when he did this.

Mom told me that in Newmarket which is almost on the Hampton, Newport News line was the site of a German concentration camp. Mom said that my grandfather used to get mad at she and my grandmother for waving at the prisioners when they drove past. She said that they would wave back. When the prisioners were sent back to Germany, some of them did not want to return home because of Hitler. She called him a "dispotic" leader.

The YMCA downtown in Newport News used to be used as a USO, the soilders could go there and relax. The theaters were also used as USO's they would have shows there and sell war bonds for $25 and $50. You could keep them for ten years and they would double in value.

My mother and her best friend Gloria used to ride their bikes through Hilton Village in Newport News. They would ride past the american soilders that were living in tents at what they called "Camp Morrison." She said that she figured they were stationed there just in case the United States came under foriegn invasion.

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