Oral History Interview with Evelyn Taylor Cook

“START OF TAPE 1. SIDE 1” Interviewer: This is Evelyn Taylor Cook, in Lexington, Kentucky, and we’re going to be conducting a, a brief interview concerning her husband, her first husband, and dealing with letters and photographs and documents that were in…involved in correspondence between she and her husband during the World War II time period. I guess probably the best thing to do is just to, let’s start with the storyline at the beginning and go from there. How did, how did you and your husband first meet?

Cook: Well…my husband brought a, a fellow to see my sister. He was in love with my sister but he was married and [Chuckling] once in a while he would come over just to get to see her, but there wasn’t anything that came of it. And he, he brought this fellow, I don’t know why, 1:00and the fellow had a car, but anyway, he came to our farmhouse when I was twelve years old, and…I can see him now with his foot upon the porch, and talking, and he wanted to help me with my arithmetic. So we sat on the porch and he made up his mind while he was work--helping me with arithmetic; that he was going to marry this girl.

Interviewer: Mm. And this was Moss, right?

Cook: This is Moss, uh-huh.

Interviewer: Moss, and his la…is this his full name was?

Cook: Moss Woodrow Brumfield and I didn’t have any intention to--I, he wasn’t really in my mind, I just remembered his bushy hair and the way he put his foot upon the porch, and, 2:00and I thought, gee, I’m glad I don’t have t…iron those starched pants, but that’s about all [Laughing] I remember of him, and him helping with the arithmetic and because at that time I was, I had a puppy love affair going with a, with James Hoover, a grade school person and…I didn’t know until later that he was going to marry me, because I was bent on education, so that…was kind of a conflict [Chuckling] later on.

Interviewer: Mm. Now you were living in Jessamine County when… Cook: Yeah, I’m living on a farm owned by, by great uncle Bruce Taylor, and then he went back to Texas, and we moved away about, he stayed there about four years.

Interviewer: What year was this?

Cook: The 1932, ’33, ’34, and ’35. I graduated from Oak Hill school, a grade school, a one-room school in nineteen and thirty-five in the spring. And in the spring--in the fall of, of ’35 I started Nicholasville high school, a real green country girl, so terrified of going to that great big school 3:00in Nicholasville, which was only [Chuckling] the upper half of the school building, and the first day there, the principal grabbed me by the ear and took me down the hall. I didn’t even know where the rooms were. And she said, “I’ll show you where they are.” So Miss Hattie let it be known that she was going to have discipline, and I didn’t say a thing to Miss Hattie. I just went to the room and sat down [Chuckling]. But I was, always had a…a, a real passion for education, and so I was graduated from Nicholasville High School, with pretty good honors, and there was no way to go to college, we lived in the country, on Taylor Ridge Road, I think on one of my ancestor’s…he built a home there, and 4:00a John Taylor, and I had no way to go to school. Well, I did have an uncle that took me to see Charlie (Wylie?) a lawyer here in town and, and he asked me if my dad could help a little, and I said, “I don’t think so.” So now I wish I had said oh yes he could, but I didn’t lie, you know [Chuckles – Interviewer and Cook]. So, I didn’t go to school, I didn’t go to college then, and about that time Moss Brumfield started edging in, and he would laugh and say, “I’ll get you a college degree,” and it, it really hurt me because I didn’t, I didn’t like it very much [Chuckling] because I was dead serious. But anyway, it wound up we did get, we get, became engaged in October. He gave me a ring he ordered out of the Sears catalog, a beautiful ring and I’ve worn it until it’s so fragile that I only wear it on certain occasions. Even 5:00lost a diamond and I had one replaced. So a pretty ring, I keep it in a lock box. And that was in October, and then in January we married in Nicholasville at the home of W. I. (Peel?) and that was the same minister that, that married my mother and dad.

Interviewer: Now what year was this?

Cook: Nineteen…1940, January 20th. And so we stayed in, our first night in…the little motel room there in Nicholasville, Lakeview Cottages. They’re torn down now, and of course he had to go show them where we had married, before they would let us go to this little place. Well the rooms were small, and it was so cold, and so the next morning, we didn’t even have money for breakfast, so we went 6:00to his mother’s and…I have the table we ate on, and we had fried potatoes. I thought they were so good, they, it wasn't that they were that poor, they just happened to have that, not too much else. So, it was, it was a…I tried not to show it but the privacy, we had no privacy at all. The weather was so cold, in fact the river froze over and I skated on it, and…he had several brothers and sisters, his father had died when he was seventeen and he was the father of the family, and there was absolutely no privacy and it just about got to me, 7:00but I didn’t show it. After all, you know, I did the best I could do and, I was used to my own room and I just had a corner [Chuckling] you might say. But they were nice to me and, and…I started thinking about well going, you know, renting a place, so Moss rented a place, and so he did, close by, a little two-room house in the cedars, carried water--I didn’t carry water from the spring, it's one thing I wouldn’t do [Chuckling] was carry water, and, but he said that his mother made the fires, and I said “my dad made the fires.” And so I wound up I’d make the fires one morning in the little grate and he makes the next. Then when he cut wood, he said, well he had brothers and sisters to bring it in the house, and I said, well I had brothers. So a little tug of war, you know, I was always independent and he was too and it…it showed. So I carried in my load of wood and he carried in his and 8:00one particular day…we were pulling tobacco plants and…he looked at me and he said, “Sug, you’re not going to boss me like your mother does Andrew”--my father’s name was Andrew, and I said, and I’m not wearing those old yellow stockings like your mother wears either. So he put his thumb up in the air and he said, “get to that house and pack your clothes and head up the road.” And so I went swiftly to the house, packed my clothes, what few I had, in a little box with no lid, and I thought I, I sure hate to go out there without, out up the road without a suitcase, at least it would have a handle. But he ran to the house and he looked at me very sadly, he really didn’t want me to go. But we really looked at each other in those, one of the two rooms, a little living room 9:00and bedroom, and we didn’t say a thing, we just looked, and he didn’t leave and I didn’t leave [Chuckling] so…it was…it was a kind of a tug-of-war occasionally and I wouldn’t stay--I was afraid at night and I wouldn’t stay by myself one minute. I know one time he came home from a carpenter job and he--there was no water in the house and he said, “I can’t go to sleep without water. I’m going over to the neighbor’s spring.” I said, “I’m not staying here by myself.” And so he didn’t want me to follow him, but I took out after him, barefoot through the cedars and down the hill and up the hill to where the, the well was, it was really not too--we had a spring on the side of the hill. And so we laid around that well top and drank that cold water and I thought it was just nice to remember that, even though he didn’t want me to follow him, I think he was in such a hurry, but I wouldn’t be left alone, not one minute, and I wasn’t. So, we stayed there--oh 10:00his mother married, and that was a big blow, she married her cousin [Chuckles – Interviewer] and hadn’t even gone with him or anything and we were so devastated that his mother was going to leave and go to Versailles, and that left her three sons in the house, in the old homestead house, nice old…nice place, I mean with log, it was once a store, and my husband felt sorry for his three brothers, (Okal?), W. T., and (Merrick?), no one to cook for, and his mother took most of the things, well the corn and whatever, because, because she married 11:00her cousin, (Alfa Sander?) of Versailles, and took her three daughters and left the three sons. So we moved them, we moved in with (Okal?), (Merrick?) and W. T., so I was cooking for four men and myself, and washing on the board, never had done this, never had made so many biscuits in all of my life, canned so many beans, and I guess it, I guess I’d always thought that’s what you had to do if, if something like that appeared, you just did it, and I wasn’t thinking too much about it at the time. But my mother came down one day and she said, “Evelyn, you, you’ve always had a weak back, and I never put you over the board," but believe she put me at everything else. There was no escaping my mother’s hard work. But she looked at me real sadly while I was--she happened to catch me washing clothes. So 12:00that night when Moss came in, I said, “Moss, I know you have your brothers here, I know you’ve always been the father, but I’m leaving.” I couldn’t stand that look in my mother’s eye and I guess too I, it was maybe the chance to escape. And he said, “wherever you go Sug, I will want to go.” So then we, we--he was a car…--well prior to that, there was a little episode down at the riverbank. And he was fighting a horse, trying to make it drink in that, in the river, you know, you can’t do that, because there was ice on the river, and I’ve always been taught to be kind to animals. And he was jerking that horse around and, I ran down to where he was and I said, “don’t you hit that horse anymore,” 13:00because I was going to pick up a rock and hit him. And so, I said, “you’re not cut out to be a farmer anyway.” And he stood and looked at me, as if the wheels in his mind was rolling. And…so he started talking to me, he was pretty happy about it. I like to think that, that our minds sort of whetted each other, I mean you know, if he could get at me, I could get at him, but if it was like…my intelligence was against his, and I would go, I was going to be equal. You know, I wasn’t going to be. I felt like his mother was kind of a slave to her, her husband, and he thought, you know, my mother was (awful?) to my dad--which she was! You know, my mother was a good manager, far greater manager than my father and things rolled around her, and I think Dad appreciated that. So, but 14:00I forgot to tell you the night, first night we slept there at his mother’s house, was with her mother, granny, (Button?) Granny (Sanders?), Granny (Sanders?) and (Okal?), W.T. and (Mary?), and Merrick, and (Carlin?), and (Ann?), and Moss and me in two rooms. So he said--the time, it came time to go to bed and he said, “Sug, turn down the bed covers.” 15:00I said, “if you want them turned down, you will have to turn them yourself.” And he said, “well Mama always does that for me, I said, “I’m not going to do it.” And I didn’t.

Interviewer: First sign of independence [Laughter – Interviewer and Cook] ( ) right, you know, and I didn’t even think about it, you know, I had just, it was just me. I didn’t see any chance of walking alone to that other room, it was just a practical, and I, I just didn’t…just didn’t do it. Well, my mother didn’t do it either, and, but his mother was, was more like that. But I had liberal parents and they raised us kind of strict in some ways and liberal in some ways, I think we had, they were ahead of their time, but we started, let’s see, where it, where did we go from there, when I said I was going to leave. Well, he got a job with (Matt Cotton?) building houses. First he, first he built a barn or two, I think they’re still standing on Taylor Ridge, and from that 16:00he went to, we went to Florence, Kentucky where Moss was…built houses for (Matt Cotton?) and I think he got twenty-five cents an hour, and while he was building, we would listen to the Cincinnati Reds. I think they won the pennant that year, whatever year that was, and we sat out there and I set out there embroidering you know, it was that time they embroidered spreads and little table pieces and things. I never was into it that much, but…it was kind of neat. My mother always had things pretty in her house, and embroidered a lot and got me at that. So we, while I was there, 17:00I guess my ambitions started up again and I got me a job in, at the Tri-strate, Tri-State butter company in Cincinnati. I made fourteen dollars a week and my husband had to borrow enough money, once to buy a tire--I kind of thought he should pay me back but he didn’t--to go to his aunt’s funeral in Jessamine County, and I worked at, in this butter factory and…stood in, in, in front of a conveyor belt and shoved the butter along so it wouldn’t drop on the floor or whatever, and we, we lived in a house that was unfinished, it had a cold basement, Poof, I was always a bit cold, 18:00and it had ice down there in the basement and we had a cook stove, and when that fire went out it was pretty cold, and I got up at five in the morning, caught a ride to Cincinnati, and…and I worked there at the conveyor belt for a while, and then they discovered that I had some education so they put me to weighing the greens. I could sit and that was a pleasure, so then we stayed a while with his boss, and wife, and…then he went to Berea and helped put in beams for those igloo-type buildings over there, that you know, they’re afraid they’ll leak. He laid the beams.

Interviewer: Now what time period was this?

Cook: [Sighing], see we were married four years and I, and not quite five when he died. I am getting my years mixed up. I guess it was about nineteen and forty…three, and we had a, a room 19:00in a, his boss’s house in Berea, and I loved Berea, I always loved it. I thought it was a great place. I didn’t work any there, because we were there just a few months and…it was joyful because I could go to the library and look at the college campus and wish I was there and sometime I could go, and let’s see, where did we go? I believe from there, we went to…North Vernon, Indiana where he helped build an airstrip, and we rented an apartment--I believe on Main Street--and 20:00it had four nice rooms and it was really nice, and I liked it, because I remember…reading ‘Gone With the Wind’ while I was up there, and…cooking lamb fries and forgot to skin them because Dad always skinned them [Chuckling] you know, and the butcher didn’t do that and he came in and lifted the lid off and he thought I was kind of addled because I didn’t know how to cook them, but I ha…I made a lot of mistakes. But anyway… Interviewer: Now this is d…this is during the war now, you, your…Moss is up there working and… Cook: This is… Interviewer: …at the war… Cook: …this is not the war, he hadn’t gone to the war, see.

Interviewer: Well I mean, the, the…the attack at Pearl Harbor had already taken place…the United States was now, it was already involved in… Cook: Now he, he was on, he was on…call you know, to go for about a year, see, but then what? A? 1-A?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: It comes back to me now. But this was prior to that and then, while we were there at North Vernon there was a couple of his men that worked with him that didn’t have a place to stay, so he invited them to board 21:00with us. So I cooked for them, it was upstairs, and I didn’t mind because they didn’t have a place to stay. And then about that time, I think the draft, you know, came on and he w…he, he became 1-A and he knew he didn’t have to go, because his mother had three sons in the service. When Moss and I moved out of the house with (Okel?), Merrick and W.T., they had nobody to see to them, so they eventually joined in the service. Now where am I [Chuckling]?

Interviewer: Huh the draft… Cook: The draft.

Interviewer: …just, just got started.

Cook: Okay. Then when he was subject for the draft and was (called?), as I pointed out, he didn’t really have to go because 22:00he had his three brothers and he could have said that he was, his mother could of said, or he could have said that there was three brothers and, and he, and they wouldn’t take them all. I think there was something about…that. But he was, he always felt like he was a daddy to his brothers, because his dad died and left him with several children to raise, and he was a good brother and a gentle brother, and a kind brother and they obeyed him without, you know, any problem. But he felt, he told me then he didn’t feel right staying back home, and his brothers in the service and him not doing his part, and he asked me, he said “Sug, what would you do?” And I said, “I can’t tell you what to do,” but I think I’d be a little different 23:00now, since I’ve been, you know, all these years. Maybe we’re just not as patriotic now as then, but then people were more patriotic and everybody felt like, well now, some people, a great many people felt like well it’s…I should do my part…you know, that person is in the service and here I am, sitting back here and so forth and so on. So…they called him, but he told me one thing when he went into this, and he said, “now, if I have to go overseas, remember one thing, I will never be taken prisoner.” And that’s about, you know, all that he said about that, and he did say that he could have gone in to the Seabees because he was a carpenter, and he didn’t know whether to go ahead 24:00and join that, or just wait to be drafted. And I kind of waited, I didn’t know what to tell him about that but I think I kind of wanted him to wait to be drafted. So when he, we lived at 203 Maple Lane in Nicholasville, and when he left I was scared out of my wits. I would push the dresser in front of the door because we were almost downtown Nicholasville, and people could come from the front door up our steps, you know, to the bedroom door. We had two rooms divided by a stairway. And I laid awake at night and I was really scared, and finally, I (don’t?) have to learn to stay by myself, and he told me, he said he would have gone mad if anything had happened to me, and him in the service, and couldn’t protect me, but, but anyway, when he went, he, his sister lived at Fort Thomas and he was down there getting, you know, getting his shots and clothes and whatever, and so in a few days 25:00I went down and he had his clothes and they were a little too big, [Chuckling] he was a handsome man, he ( ) his figure, and he looked real good in his clothes but then, you know, what is it called, the ODs or dress, cause this ( ). And so I spent the night there with his sister and her husband, and Moss got a pass and that was real good, but then he went, in a few days he went on to Fort McClellan. And he…it wasn’t too long until he wanted me to come and as soon as I could, I did but I, I really didn’t g…I really wish now I had gone on sooner, but my brother was coming in from the service and was going overseas and I wanted to see him. 26:00So I kind of lingered a few days extra there to see him, because I thought if he was ki…if he were killed I’d regret it. But I realize now I should have gone on, you know, he was, he was really, really…gung ho for me to come down there. In one of his letters he said, if the situation were reversed he would have crawled to me, so I knew he was getting kind of desperate, you know. So I did, I, his mother and I went down on the bus and we had three--we stayed at the guest house three days, and we had three days to go home, or go to town but we didn’t have that much money. He’d sold his car, I did have enough you know, for bus and fares, of course, and, but, as I told you, I once wound up in one of those tent houses and, and [Chuckling] because 27:00I was desperate to stay, I knew he would die if I went home, I’d, I just, I think he'd gone over the hill. So I went to get chan…I thought the room had a, had a funny odor. I’ve learned later they all have funny odors, those houses do. [Chuckles – Interviewer] So I went to the cab, cab fellow and asked for change to pay the lady and I, I sort of dragged my feet to going but I had no choice, but I thought she said, and she said, “they can come in that ro…that door” and I thought that was odd, they could come in that door. Well anyway, he said, “lady don’t take that room.” Because he knew what a green little girl I was. So we didn’t of course, and I was glad, so then we had to go and sit and it wasn’t, that was the, at the tail end of the third day, 28:00and finally there was a call came in. A woman had a room in Anniston and we, you know, that I could stay and until I could get a job. So that was pretty thrilling and…so I met this girl, Inez (Beaver?) and I still write to her and she sent me that, an old churn the other day, and…with a butter mold with it, and she writes and, and she is just one of my greatest friends, and she got me job with a, a Enlisted Men Service Club, and she was a cultured person 29:00and I always thought she was real neat. And she thought I was kind of neat because she thought I was a Christian person and, well I was in a way, but, you know, not, not so you could see it, I reckon [Chuckles – Interviewer & Cook]. And so the woman that hired us, she looked at her and she said, “another Damn Yankee.” But she didn’t say that to me, and I though, I didn’t realize that the war was still on. So, we got a job at the, at the Enlisted Men Service Club. I made sandwiches and she dipped ice cream, and when Moss would come in, he would get a fifteen cent ticket and I would fill that little metal thing that you put on that, what is it, makes it go around, and around, makes the milkshake, and I filled it so full it wouldn’t even whirl, you know, and he’d, he would look, he’d be sitting and he’d smile, you know, he loved ice cream and those letters will tell you how he loved ice cream. So 30:00I put about fifty, sixty cents worth in that, you know, ( ) a fifteen cents ticket. And when he was on bivouac, I sent him sandwiches and he had plenty to eat, and one time--I’ve got to tell this--he was marching and he grabbed me a little daffodil and I put it in a frame until it just you know, withered away, and so that’s sort of my symbol, anymore [Chuckling]. I don’t know how much time you got.

Interviewer: Oh we have plenty of time, we got all day.

Cook: Then do you want to ask any question?

Interviewer: Well, I was just wondering, you know, the…the servicemen’s club, what are the, what kind of things went on in there, I mean what was it? Was it a, a restaurant, or was it… Cook: Well, it was a place where the soldier ate--soldiers ate and he, when he could he came and ate with me, and my meals were free. 31:00So I filled up my tray and then I’d scoot it over to him and he had good meals, real good meals, and there you had a, a piano upstairs, and a room up there where I know Inez, my friend, she was, we went up the steps one day, and she started playing the piano, and here this lady came just real fast, and she said that is a concert piano. And so Inez she just ripped off this concert piece, I’m telling you I was so happy it just, I, I like to think about that. Oh, I mean she poured it on, you know, and I thought, oh I’m so glad, all I could do was pick around on it, you know, and, but anyway that’s where I sat a lot, up there on that second floor, because Moss asked me to write his brothers letters. So that was three 32:00brothers, and my brother, and then I wrote my friend, and that kept me pretty busy! Twice a week, I wrote to my brother and his brothers. Of course when Moss went in the service, I wrote him every day, and he told me that he would not, he was not a letter writer, and to be sure to not look for any letters, but he changed his mind and he wrote to me every day [Laughing].

Interviewer: Yeah. But…he’s now… Cook: But he, excuse me…it was a place where the soldiers came and ate, and of course they had to get a ticket, and this…where we dipped the ice cream and made sandwiches, the soldiers could come in for something extra, to take out. One night they…Moss was waiting for me and I had to make fifty sandwiches, 33:00mm-mm, I had to do it. And…there was a jukebox and soldiers would play. I remember one solider, I asked Inez in a letter, if she remembered what that soldier listened to. He played that one night over and over, and the saddest fellow I ever saw, and, she couldn’t remember the tune and I couldn’t either but he just over and over and over, there was more ( ) jukeboxes there, and this place upstairs where they had that piano, and I guess, formal affairs, and there was three or four of us working at that, at that club and it was busy a lot, and, but we didn’t do any other, any other thing, we went swimming and some other things, went into Anniston maybe, went to shop, more or le…more or less. I 34:00remember seeing a, a music box in a window in Anniston, and I wanted that music box. I like a carousel, and I said to Moss, I want that music box, he said, “you don’t need it.” And he was rather practical, but he didn’t buy it [Laughing] and that was okay, in a way, but I guess I was just, you know, had my mind kind of on that. And… Interviewer: What…during his time there in basic training he was able to, did you guys were able to get together fairly frequently?

Cook: Uh-huh, uh-huh, yeah he got a pass quite often. We would catch the bus and go to Anniston, Mrs. (Wilkes?) was our landlady, and we had to go through her bedroom to get to the bathroom but that was okay. I wasn’t used to a whole lot in the country, you know. I wasn’t used to bath, we didn’t have, we had, always had a nice home and on a big farm, and lots, and lots 35:00to eat, and lots of things too, but we didn’t have running water. We had a cistern. And if we had a bathroom in the house, I think, we would have stayed up all the night and watched it. But, you know, if she, she said, sh…she didn’t mind, if we didn’t mind, you know, but of course maybe, if we did that once a month, or twice month, sometimes three times a month, and sometimes maybe not very often, just according if he could get a pass, but she was very nice and in fact I even wrote to her for a while.

Interviewer: After he completed basic trainer there, what…then (progressed?) he...

Cook: Well, when he completed his training, he came down with pleurisy and he had had that a time or two, you know, when we were first married. I remember 36:00one night he had to go to the doctor and I, he tried to teach me to, to drive, but I ran up on a rock once and I almost burst a tire, and he looked at me strangely and he didn’t even ask me to drive anymore except that night he had the pleurisy. He went into town and he said he had to go to the doctor and he was doubled up and in pain, sort of around the floorboard of the car and I was guiding. He was, he was telling me what to do, in his old--you’ll see his old car in one of these photographs--and I did, I made it to the doctor’s office and the, and so I suppose he developed that pleurisy from being out in the weather, and so he went into the hospital there at Anniston and his buddies were shipped out and he was left alone, and so I stayed on 37:00at the Enlisted Men Service Club and the girl there, our big boss, wanted me to stay, and it was, you know, I kind of liked it, had a nice little room and you know, but he, he, oh, he was adamant, I must come home, you know, I couldn’t go ba…and of course he had a ten-day furlough but I didn’t go back, and it was okay. But I hated to leave them too, you know, after we had been working together for a while, and it was, it was nice there, very nice.

Interviewer: Can you remember the names of any of the people you worked with?

Cook: [Sighing] Alma…let me think, I’ve got their names here in a little book, El…Elma (Hichman?) in Erlanger. That’s the only one I can ( ) 38:00and a colored girl called Stacy, of course, she, she would leave and go over and watch concerts when we needed her and a woman named Opal ( ). So we had four, we had, we stopped off, well, coming from Anniston and on the troop train, Moss wanted to n…he asked the conductor, if the conductor would tell him when he hit Kentucky. So the conductor told him and we stayed up until we came over into Kentucky, and then we went to sleep. And…then we, we had to go to my mother’s house, she lived in Wilmore and we had to catch a ride, he had told Scott 39:00and of course he said I’d let somebody drive, but you know, he wrecked it. So his, he was practical and I remember…we were walking along the road from Nicholasville, and he had this huge big duffel bag, and we caught a ride and when he, when he got out, he said, “well buddy how much do I owe you?” And that man said, “a quarter.” I thought that was something, you know, here was this serviceman, but he paid the quarter and so we, we got down to Wilmore where my mother lived at--my father lived at Handy’s Bend, and she was writing to him out, she was sitting out on the front porch writing him a letter and then here we appeared. So we stayed, but I will, will backtrack a minute and, and tell about 40:00when we came through…I believe it was Knoxville, Tennessee. I did ask him what he wanted me to do with his money if he didn’t return, and he said he wanted me to buy a home, and let my mother and dad live there, and I’d always have a home. And so I started crying and he, we didn’t talk about it anymore and we never made ( ). I kind of had a feeling he wouldn’t come back and he did too, but it, you know, there was hope, you know, always, of course. I think he told a cousin he didn’t think he would make it back. But we stayed ten days and we went around to this relative and that relative because they all wanted to say good bye to him and all of that, but he wrote in a letter, I think, I don’t know if it will be in that group or not, that he wished that we had just had gathered them at one place and we’d have 41:00all that extra time together, and I thought, why didn’t I think of that? But then, you know, you’re so much into family; you’re not into thinking. So he left, and he left at the Union Station here in Lexington, and I held myself together, his mother and I, we, we were with him when he left, and when he got in, on the train, the tears was streaming, but I was being very brave, you know, I wasn’t going to fall to pieces, and inside, but you know, but not outside. So, he said, when he left Nicholasville, he left his heart with me, and then you can read the letter, masterpieces… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …mostly.

Interviewer: Well from…from 42:00the time that he, he left, when did you…when did the, the letters first started coming over, I mean was he in… Cook: Well he was, oh, he went to Fort Meade, Maryland, and there he had his teeth filled and, and I suppose whatever had to be done there, he didn’t go in there, he did say he had to have I think eight teeth filled, some of the old fillings taken out, and how he didn’t like the drilling, and he had some pictures made, because I had asked him to, if he could have a picture made. So he…had a real good picture made. I don’t have it out, but, well I do have a smaller version, and, he…they, they did send it. And it was, it’s an excellent picture, and he was about to send it to me, but, then he said that…there 43:00wasn’t time. He first said if, if he knew there had been enough time, you know, well at one time he would have sent for me, but then he didn’t stay there very long, and then he went over on the boat evidently, because he talked about the--not any of his letters were ever censured, because he didn’t talk much about the military affairs, but he did say that--I had given a little testament with a metal cover, a small testament, and he said that the salt water had almost ruined it, and that he had read most of it. And he wasn’t a religious man, he, I’ve got a picture of him where he went to Sunday School at Mount Lebanon, down where I was born and raised part of the time, because my dad was a tenant farmer and we moved from place to place. 44:00Interviewer: Well, in any of the letters that he described what was taking place at all around him, or I mean the, the movements…the, the regiment that he was a member of, or… Cook: No. No, I asked him once about Italy, when he went to Italy, about things there and he said they were still, he said it looked like a rough country, that the people were still using ox, oxen, and…but he, he just didn’t talk about that, he just talked about coming back home and raising a family, and things like that, he didn’t say too much about it.

Interviewer: How did you first discovered that he was missing in action?

Cook: A telegram came in the mailbox.

Interviewer: From the United States?

Cook: Mm-mm, from the United States government.

Interviewer: And how did that, how did you feel about that? What was… Cook: Well…huh, 45:00of course my letters; I kept writing to him not knowing of course that he, he was killed October 26th. Now the last envelope, the last letter I got was the 25th, I don’t have that letter. I have, I’m sorry, I don’t have it. It’s quite, there is some missing and though I know that he wrote the 25th, but he was killed the 26th, the first report that he was killed the 25th, and they later clarified it was the 26th, and I got a letter from his chaplain saying that it was…rainy, bad time, and that Americans would take over this hill in Italy, and the Germans, I guess, and Italians would take it over in the afternoon, say. And they didn’t have time to bury their dead. It was during that period and see, none of his buddies were with him and he just went over 46:00there without you know, that supportive element and he, he just, he didn’t, he just didn’t b…didn’t write things like that in his letters, hardly at all.

Interviewer: Mm-mm. You said that you got a notification from the German Red Cross?

Cook: No, from the United States government, but the, but it came through the German Red Cross.

Interviewer: Oh, okay, mm-mm. And… Cook: I don’t know exactly, I, see, we never knew how he was killed. And there is no way, and I, I decided that I wanted to know. See, I, I guess, I didn’t want ( ) you know, but his brother, I have heard, thinks he stepped on a mine, but I have no, I have no reason to know anything, except what they said in the telegram, that he died of wounds in action. 47:00Now that information came through the German Red Cross… Interviewer: O… Cook: …and he was, and he was missing six months, and then the documents I got about three months ago said, there was sufficient evidence to declare him dead, died of wounds.

Interviewer: Mm-mm. Died of wounds too.

Cook: See there is, you have to, if they’re killed in a bar or something like that it just different, but he died of wounds.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, mm-mm. Now that…you had been notified that he was missing, you b…notified now that he’s died of the, that he died… Cook: Then I got… Interviewer: …of wounds.

Cook: …that second telegram saying that, that he had, he had died. I don’t have that first telegram, I don’t know, but I have the second one.

Interviewer: How wa…how was his body returned? I mean… Cook: He was…he was returned in a sealed casket, 48:00it was, what is it, hermetically sealed? And they…said it couldn’t be opened, unless…I guess you have to have a health department. But I, nobody was…nobody, you know, wanted to see. In a way, I wish I had, and in a way I don’t know how I feel, I just feel like, I wasn’t morbid about it, but if he was missing six months, there wasn’t, you know, that much left, was there. They probably identified him by his dental work, but, but an escort came with him and the flag was on the casket. I wanted him to be buried at Camp Nelson. I love it down there, but his mother has a cemetery there 49:00in her yard, and she persuaded me to have him buried there and I, I wish I had not.

Interviewer: And where is that now?

Cook: It’s down in Jessamine County, it’s near the end of Taylor Ridge Road. It’s their home place.

Interviewer: Well, at this point I guess, the, the story develops into how did your, your life go on from there?

Cook: Okay, while he was in the service, while he was in, it would have been August, he went oversea--he got overseas I think about August the 17th… Interviewer: Of ’44, or ’45?

Cook: Of ’44, and he went in about January the first of ’44 and I had always had some weakness in my back and he wanted me to find out what was wrong, and I, I tried 50:00it, I had my teeth looked at, and my tonsils taken out, but I still had this…feeling--I just didn’t feel good at times. So finally our doctor in Nicholasville told me to go see Doctor (Jelsma?) in Louisville, that I might have a brain tumor. So Moss was anxious for me to get well and he cared you know, for me. And so I went to Louisville to see Doctor (Jelsma?) and stayed with friends there, and he fluoroscoped my back and found TB of the spine. So he told me to come to see Doctor Brown, the bone specialist here in Lexington, and he would send the x-rays up there. So, but he didn’t tell me down there that I had TB 51:00of the spine. In fact he just thought I was down there just, I don’t know why, he got, I got aggravated with me. I’m a little bit feisty at times and I said sir, “I came down here to find out what’s wrong with me,” and I said, “when I tie my apron on the back, it hurts.” And he fluoroscoped my back and found it.

Interviewer: Mm.

Cook: But I had, you know, punch him [Laughter – Cook and Interviewer], and I wore a brace for two years, and the doc…and of course being ambitious, I was going to pick up me a little job, at the hospital, and…setting up trays for the patients, and the doctor made me quit. He said the shadows are coming back and you'll have to quit. So I came to Lexington and rented a, a little apartment and Moss’ sister stayed with me, oh I guess about 52:00several months, and Lord that big whole heavy horsy brace, oh, and I had to sleep on boards and no pillow. I did everything the doctor told me, because I did want to get well. I couldn’t do anything, so I read a lot of books and, and wrote…peop…some servicemen, Elwood Cotton, he was the son of Moss’s boss and he liked for me to write to him because he said I wrote interesting letters. I told him all the news, so I did that a couple times a week, and his brothers a couple of times of week, and my brother a couple of times a week, so that was a lot of writing, and but I did it,it… Interviewer: Well, I guess at this point just take a look at the letters. 53:00[Twelve minutes Interruption] Interviewer: All right, here we go again. And you said for two years after, after his death, you, you… Cook: I couldn’t, I found I couldn’t date. I went to school and that ( ) College 54:00and I’d see a serviceman and I’d just cry, you know, it brought back, you know how it is.

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Cook: Oh.

Interviewer: Oh, that’s not going to work, what have we got there? I guess the thing that would be of real interest are, would be…the notifications that you received…from the Federal Government, a teleg…was it in a telegram? Yeah, Western Union Telegram. This is the second one 55:00that you received, or the first? The second.

Cook: I think that was the second one.

Interviewer: Okay to, to Western Union telegram…that…basically reads, “the secretary of war desires me to express his deep regret that your husband, private Moss W. Brumfield died of wounds in Italy, October 25, 1944. As you know, he was previously reported missing in action. Correct report of his death was received from German government through International Red Cross. Confirming letter follows.” Did you ever receive that confirming letter? You said that… Cook: I don’t have it.

Interviewer: No.

Cook: And I don’t have the letter from the chaplain. I don’t have, I wish I had kept them, because the… Interviewer: How was the, this Western Union, how would, how did this come to you that, was this mailed to you, or did someone deliver it?

Cook: Put in the mailbox mail.

Interviewer: They ha…it wasn’t delivered 56:00by hand to… Cook: No, oh no, oh no.

Interviewer: So when you, basically you received the first notification, it was a Western Union as well.

Cook: Uh-huh.

Interviewer: You just simply opened the letter one day… Cook: That’s it.

Interviewer: …and discovered… Cook: That’s it.

Interviewer: …that your husband was now dead.

Cook: Yes, yes.

Interviewer: How do you, how do you react to something like that?

Cook: Well, I didn’t think about it. You know, then, that was then, how we got the mail and we had no telephone and I don’t know if, if when they enacted that escort to come, the escort came with the casket.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, but that just didn’t… Cook: And I know now that maybe a couple of men go to the house, even if (they couldn’t?)… Interviewer: Was there anyone at home with you when you received that letter?

Cook: Yes, the neighbor girl said I don’t know what happened up there but they are all screaming, and my sister washed my face, I remember that, and I, you know, I suspected that he was dead, you know, six months?

Interviewer: Mm-mm, mm-mm. That just seems, you know, that by today’s standards, that’s just seems so… Cook: Well, you see… Interviewer: …but ( ), if something had happened to him?

Cook: …back then, back then, it, you didn’t have any criteria to put, put it at no…no standard, you know, this was the war, we have been in another war, of course World War I, my dad was subject to go, but it ended before he had to go. I think he had maybe 57:00of couple of kids. I was born in twenty-one, and he had uh, you know ( ) was born...yeah, he’s had a couple...

Interviewer: What happened, what happened to…his personal effects?

Cook: I never got anything.

Interviewer: Never got anything.

Cook: No, nothing.

Interviewer: His duffle bag, nothing.

Cook: Nothing, nothing, all I got was that telegram.

Interviewer: Did the, the government award him any…any kind of m..

Cook: I got the pu… Interviewer: …( ).

Cook: I got the purple heart…medal…and I tried to share everything with her mother--with his mother and I ( ).

Interviewer: So his mother has the purple heart?

Cook: So I told her I made a mistake, I wanted it back, and she said, well, would I leave it to her, to her daughter because her daughter had a child that was named after him, Tommy Moss. 58:00And I told her, I couldn’t tell her that. And I, I can't find it. And his sister has it and will not give it up. So, there was kinship in the family, but there was tension.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah, mm-mm.

Cook: And I don’t, that’s the reason I don’t go to the grave because there's a lot of tension, and I had to do it, in good conscience for his mother's sake, because of ( ). The father too, it killed him and with her son to depend upon, but I ( ) on him, didn’t think through it then, and now that I would like for him to be buried with me, but evidently that will not let me. In case you know, so, I try hard not to, yeah. 59:00Interviewer: Well, I mean…did you, I think you got everything organized here in a way that you might know what your, you’re beginning with I just, this is something that we definitely would be interested in, in our ex…exhibit.

Cook: I want you, but I would want that back… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …in a year or two, because see I may have to have that. I do get compensation from the government.

Interviewer: Well the exhibit will, will run from, we’re hoping on January…not January, on June 4th, and it will run through…November 11th of 1995.

Cook: Until the end of the year or something, I can ( )… Interviewer: And at the end, once the… Cook: ...It’s no big hurry, just, I think that I need it in a lo…because you know, I had to produce that, when I got compensation, yeah I do get compensation, because when I remarried my ( ) expired. I got his mother a pension because they were raised, well not too much, and I got a little bond and, and…I 60:00wanted her to have something and the children to go to school. And she got a pension. I always treated her as if I did my own mother.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, So ( ) yeah.

Cook: But, I did my best ( ).

Interviewer: What other la…letters do we have here?

Cook: Well, now first I want to show these pictures.

Interviewer: Okay, yeah.

Cook: Okay now.

Interviewer: Huh! Almost looks like Errol Flynn.

Cook: [Chuckling] And my sister said he always looked pretty. Now what he is telling me, I don’t know, I didn’t ask him, but I wish I knew.

Interviewer: Oh great!

Cook: Now there is a, a picture that…original, 61:00it’s taken in Fort McClellan.

Interviewer: Is that you in your…uniform that you wore at the Servicemen’s Club?

Cook: No, that’s just a dress.

Interviewer: That’s just a dress; it looks like the seersucker dress that the nurses wore at that time.

Cook: No, it was just… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …( ). I don’t know if we wore any--I’ll have to ask Inez, I don’t think we wore anything special. 62:00Now, I had copies made from that, I got a negative, I want you to see the original.

Interviewer: What… Cook: Now this is the picture that came from, from Washington, and he had those pictures made in the studio, and when the, when the churn came from Inez ( ), from Arizona, she sent this picture back and I didn’t even know she had it. But I thought you all could use it.

Interviewer: That’s great, yeah. Actually, I think… Cook: You can keep it really… Interviewer: This… Cook: …you can keep it forever… Interviewer: …this.

Cook: …if you want to.

Interviewer: This would be a great one… Cook: That’s… Interviewer: …for the, the wall that we are talking about doing, if it’s, it’s shows a, a real nice facial shot, def…definitely.

Cook: But, see, I didn’t even know she had it and I have a larger one and it, it’s colored, you know, but that, when she sent it, I didn’t even know I had given it to her, but it’s perfect for you.

Interviewer: Oh yeah, this is absolutely… Cook: It’s perfect.

Interviewer: …perfect. One thing I, I would like to say though that I, 63:00if I could, I’d like to borrow the original of this as well.

Cook: Well, I’m going to, everything here you may have. Sometimes I put a short note back on the, on the when I say short is, what I mean… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …I may have to have the…I don’t know that I would, but I might have to have proof, and that’s…tells them, certainly… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …a good proof to get my com…compensation. And I do have the last letter that I have that he wrote, it’s a V-mail, October…the seventeenth, now I know that he wrote after that. Maybe I’ll find it.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, Now this… Cook: And you can have that for a while.

Interviewer: Okay, the, this V-mail, this is obviously just a, a photocopy of the… Cook: Sure.

Interviewer: …letter that he wrote.

Cook: Mm-mm.

Interviewer: How, how did you receive the, these when they came to you in the mail? 64:00Cook: In an envelope.

Interviewer: Just a normal envelope.

Cook: In a V-mail envelope.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, you don’t have any… Cook: V-mail on the left hand side.

Interviewer: Mm-mm. Do you have any of the V-mail envelopes left, or you’re (saving it?) off?

Cook: I know that…I sent one to--my brother had one, because he had…he sent ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ in one, and I let him have it because it was his, and it was his envelope.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, th…this is exactly the way they come, and they came in… Cook: Mm-mm, that’s the original… Interviewer: …the envelope, in a small… Cook: …that is the original.

Interviewer: Yeah, hum, okay. This is the last…this is dated October 7th--no, I’m sorry, this is dated… Cook: October 17th, I believe. He was killed the 26th.

Interviewer: Yeah, October 17th, 1944…it shows here he was in Company 65:00C of the three hundred and… Cook: Thirty-seventh.

Interviewer: …thirty seventh Infantry, mm-mm. Okay.

Cook: And here is a copy, I think, I knew you would like this, and I was so glad that I remembered it…I sent to know specifically how he was killed, and they sent me back this and I know you'll want it, I made you a copy… Interviewer: Okay.

Cook: …because it sho…they told me to make several copies because they may get burned up, ( ), their reason, so they made me a copy and I made you a copy off my copy.

Interviewer: That--yeah. And that reads “the individual named in this report of death issued by the war department to have been in a missing in action status from 26th October 1944 until subsequent, until such absence as terminated on 66:009 April, 1945, when evidence considered sufficient to establish the fact of death was received by the secretary of the, of war from the German government through the international red cross.” Cook: So you can have that because I made copies, that, that’s not...

Interviewer: Yeah, that, that will be great to go in his file.

Cook: I thought that would be good. These are the four cards that he wrote mostly, some at the be…when he was at Fort McClellan, and I do want them back some time but, but they’re almost, sometimes they are not very legible, because he wrote with a pencil.

Interviewer: Oh yeah!

Cook: But what I think is neat because they’ve got the eagle on it and… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …and his mail, al…almost all his letters have the U. S. Army artillery insignia.

Interviewer: Oh, basically this is just a, a postcard. I think what they did with these, is they gave them 67:00to the soldiers, and they were told to write home, at least every night, or something like that. And they were supplied these post cards to do that. The, had a little space on the upper right hand corner for…for them to write in the word ‘FREE’ for the soldiers. That, that’s what, it is while he is going through basic training he is sending these to you, you’re…at Wilmore, and it’s Private Moss W. ( ) Brumfield… Cook: Something, something.

Interviewer: ...APO… Cook: Three, five, eight, eight, one, four, two, two.

Interviewer: Infantry Company O, Training Company O, Fort George G. Mead, Maryland, these were, these will be interesting to show at the… Cook: Sure!

Interviewer: …to show that the…the way in which they would correspond, 68:00and obviously we will have to go through and read, read through that… Cook: Now I want to say one little odd thing. I wrote him a letter and he counted, he said, “it sure didn’t have much love in it, because he had honey once, and sugar twice, once, honey once is something else, and just three little things.” So I peppered all my letters so, [Laughter – Interviewer] you know, really I wouldn’t, do you understand?

Interviewer: Right.

Cook: I knew how he felt, you know, and it really sounds funny. [Laughter – Cook] Interviewer: Mm-mm, oh that’s what they, yeah, yeah.

Cook: That was dumb, he counted them I thought that was so funny [Laughter – Cook & Interviewer]. Oh, 69:00but you know if I was, I said everything, you know, was darling and honey now, I’m telling you, my dearest, and my, and everything I could put in there without just putting it in every line or two, I got something that you will like. Here is a copy of my letter that I wrote to him that was returned and the envelope. He does sound better in the last mail before he came, when my first cousin Lloyd was killed and I saved it, my aunt, she is my mother’s dearest sister, they are very close, close as twins, and Lloyd was just like a brother and he stayed summers with us, and he and my brother Stewart would sit out on the porch and read those little, big fifteen cents westerns. And Moss was hard of hearing and I mean, 70:00Lloyd was hard of hearing and I, I never did understand why he was taken. He was hard of hearing.

Interviewer: So this is Lloyd Atwood House?

Cook: Uh-huh.

Interviewer: And he was only nineteen and he was killed in a plane, and that was such a tragedy. And I went to stay with his mother and sister, and gave her her medicine, and my back was killing me at that time and, and I cooked and bought gro--well, I didn’t buy the groceries, I went to buy but my uncle paid for them. I, I took care of her, and her sick, and her granddaughter that was there, and several members of the family in the (door?) and I didn’t like taking care of ( ) told her ( ) selfish she is, she didn’t tell her nothing. So if you have any, read in there about what I said about 71:00(Freddy Corman?) [Chuckles – Interviewer and Cook], but that was a lot, and it was a lot to do, but you know if you, when you’re born to work and there's a lot in your family, you just do it.

Interviewer: You’d have to.

Cook: You have to, you know… Interviewer: The job has to be done.

Cook: …you’re going to fall back, you know, if you do you get ( ), you do.

Interviewer: [Laughter – Interviewer] Yeah.

Cook: You dig those potatoes, you milk the cow and, and I would run away sometimes, I would run to the orchard, with a handful of salt and we had lots of apples, and I would sit down in that apple tree and eat apples and my mother was hollering I made the dinner, of course, but… Interviewer: Where was, where was Lloyd from? I mean… Cook: He was from Nicholasville, right in Nicholasville, he was married, he married ( ) (Bird?) and…and you know, Aunt Clara got a telegram too, 72:00because I had, didn’t know that she got the telegram.

Interviewer: Yeah, it says here that…Lloyd was killed, September 8th and Aunt Clara got the telegram this morning. Mama has been with her all day. That is, that is really an interesting one. This one I’m almost, this is the one definitely we'll want.

Cook: Yeah, I knew you would want, and my brother was in the service and he was going--he almost killed a farmer once.

Interviewer: [Chuckles – Interviewer] How did he do that?

Cook: Huh?

Interviewer: Why did he do… Cook: He was, my brother Stewart was a good rifleman, you know, country boys shoot squirrels, and rabbits, and groundhogs, and whatever, and I got his very words in a book, I’m writing a ( ) book, and another book ( ) and he said that, he told it one time, when he came in that night, he said, 73:00he woke us up and came upstairs and he was talking a blue streak, and he never talks, he is very quiet. And he told us the story about his colonel, Colonel (Ridge?). He was doing close order drill and my brother always had a bad leg, and called my sister at school and said, ( ) to that, you know, I mean ( ) ankle…( ) of course, and ( ) and put the weight on the other leg, so to speak, and he, his foot was sore and the colonel told him to look at him and he just ( ) and he told him to run down to the base and my brother tried it and he came back and he shot within a few yards of him, and talked to ( ) and see the colonel had, had grabbed him by the nape of the neck and pulled at him and told him to run. And 74:00he did, and he came back and said, “now if you put, if you take a step towards me, I’ll blow your brains out,” and he would have ( ). And so the colonel said, “what’s wrong with your foot? Are you an old soldier?” He said, “yes” because he’s been in the NCO and oh he was in bad, bad shape, and he was a machine gunner and so he took off his foot. So ( ) took him to the what they call sickbay, and let him stay off his feet for about three days, 75:00and then he went back to his outfit. And then every time Colonel (Luke?) would come by he'd put him in his jeep and ride him around. And he said, “well you did have your fill,” and he said "yes I did." [Laughter – Interviewer]. Now that is true now, the… Interviewer: Whoa what was your… Cook: My sister, why, why is it that you…you’re were going to copy that he was then supposed to hand out.

Interviewer: And what's this one here? We got November 22nd 1944.

Cook: Now that’s the last letter I wrote because you see, see I kept writing and writing, and I knew, you know, I wasn’t getting anything. So, so this is pretty obvious.

Interviewer: Okay so he… Cook: He was killed 76:00the 26th of October.

Interviewer: He was killed the 26th of October.

Cook: Mm-mm.

Interviewer: And you just--the last letter that you wrote to him.

Cook: I just kept writing, because, you know, I, I, what was I to do? Lord Have Mercy! No word and you’re used to writing to him and then you hoped, you know, for the best. Yeah, I think that’s the last one I wrote, at least it’s the only one I found that’s with that…later date.

Interviewer: Mm-mm. So, you never mailed it, or…did you… Cook: Yeah, and it came back.

Interviewer: It came back, okay.

Cook: I don’t have all the envelopes though. And here, here are the letters that, they came back to me. See, I don’t have too many of him because see, he was…I was down in Alabama when he went across and he was killed, almost immediately. These are the ones that came back to me, 77:00I guess I wrote two or more times ( ). And, of course the envelope ( ) if, if, you know, ( ).

Interviewer: Well let’s see what we got here. This is… Cook: It's my group. (shuffling-paper sounds) The little blonde in the middle, that was--excuse me. Right there.

Interviewer: Hum. These are all photographs of your brothers or… Cook: Oh that, I think that's in Germany. I took those out of the…the album. And here 78:00I…here is one that went in the newspaper about his...

Interviewer: Oh okay. [Long Pause] Cook: That’s my brother and that’s their boy that was killed, Lloyd. I've got a picture of him in a thousand seven.

Interviewer: Oh, yeah! I’d love to have one of those… Cook: I… Interviewer: …too, yeah.

Cook: …but I, I’ve got to, if you want one of Lloyd, I’ve got him in, in an album and he, he was in his army suit. And I’ve got one of my, my brother in his army suit, I have to get it from my sister. 79:00Interviewer: Oh the one, the one of Lloyd, if we, if you can get it in, in uniform… Cook: Yeah, I have one.

Interviewer: …we’d, if we could borrow that.

Cook: Uh-huh.

Interviewer: If you get that… Cook: Those are Moss’s brothers.

Interviewer: Yeah. Yeah if we could borrow the one of, of Lloyd, I could… Cook: Yeah, I was going there… Interviewer: …get a copy made.

Cook: …that was one of the questions to ask you, and I’ll be glad to, because I was, because he was so dear to us. It, it really messed up our family, I had several cousins, several cousins that died. But Lloyd he was, he was just one of us, you know. My mother and, and Aunt Clara were so close. My mother was one of those people that, you know, she (rolled?), and Aunt Clara would (sew and weave?), you know, and they got along so good [Chuckling]. But anyway, I will send that to you and let’s see… Interviewer: The Japanese flag is just… 80:00Cook: I asked him, could you borrow that, and he said yes, my brother Stewart.

Interviewer: Oh, okay. Well did, did he tell you where he got it, or…anything about it?

Cook: No, sir, it, I don’t know anything about that flag. She said he brought it in and I put it away. And how he got a hold of it--I’ll have to ask.

Interviewer: Yeah, see, we need to know, we got a bunch of them. Is that…blood of a Japanese soldier all over it?

Cook: War is terrible, isn’t it.

Interviewer: Mm-mm.

Cook: Well you know that they, they have brothers and sisters and, and…wives and children, it’s terrible.

Interviewer: Well, these were carried by the…each soldier, he carried these things as, for symbols of good luck… Cook: Did he?

Interviewer: …or patriotism, or whatever, and usually they’d have the, their names written on them or things of that nature, this one doesn’t have anything written on it, but it is covered with, covered with blood, so it’s, it’s obvious that it was taken off of a dead Japanese soldier.

Cook: I don’t know, my brother was in the army, not, you know, he didn’t, was in, wasn’t in the Pacific ( ).

Interviewer: He wasn’t, yeah.

Cook: Uh-uh.

Interviewer: Chances, I, chances are he, he got this from somebody that, he, he wasn’t anywhere near where he could, where he could get it, but… Cook: This…he brought back a sword but I don’t even know if he knows where it is now. He put it in a window in a liquor store once and I think somebody got it 81:00and he had to trace it down. Because that was really not about that sword.

Interviewer: Yeah, yeah. Well really just the, the flag, we got a bunch of them.

Cook: Well, if you don’t need it… Interviewer: No we don’t.

Cook: …it’s all right.

Interviewer: We don’t.

Cook: I just wanted to… Interviewer: I, it’s nice to see if… Cook: …ask.

Interviewer: …it was something that we knew that he picked up in the Pacific, but he served in Europe so he probably was just given that as a…one of his friends gave it to him.

Cook: Now this is something that I want to ask you, if you want it, and I made you a copy of. This is John Masters, I did a paper on him at UK, and…he is a family friend, and these are river maps and they show where Moss lived, you know… Interviewer: Oh yeah!

Cook: …Taylor Ridge and where I lived on Taylor Ridge… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …and where, and I thought you’d love those.

Interviewer: Yeah, those will be good to put some ( ).

Cook: And I’ve got to give this, the original back now, to the people. I told them the other day, you know, 82:00I’m honor bound to give it back, but you know, I can' t hardly let it out of my hands.

Interviewer: But just, just this copy, is, if I can… Cook: Yeah but I just want to show you ( ). [Loud noise] Interviewer: Yeah. Oh yeah.

Cook: Mr. Masters he was such a good family friend and I interviewed him for a paper at UK, folklore and it should be in the archives now.

Interviewer: Oh yeah, right.

Cook: And, and I thought that well you would like that, as a gift. And also this was in one of my letters that I, you know, I’ve, I bought him fifty postcards and I put some in my letter, for the time, and there is one for you, it came, it got wet and came back, there’s some extra one here, if you want it. I mean it looks great, but that’s for you, because I have copies of it.

Interviewer: So what, what… Cook: That’s for you.

Interviewer: …do you do this. You would… Cook: Personal.

Interviewer: Oh, okay, okay.

Cook: Because he had asked me for postcards 83:00and I sent them, you know, two or three, course, you know, when you send anything airmail, you have to be careful, the letters, some of my paper was very thin, so I could write many pages. And you could just put one or two cards in it. See, I’ve gotten back and I would… Interviewer: So he would…yeah, he would, you sent him the postcards, he would write on the postcards and then send them back to you.

Cook: No, he just, he didn’t get them, he asked for them and got killed before he got them.

Interviewer: Before he got them… Cook: Mm-mm.

Interviewer: Okay, I, yeah I understand now.

Cook: So they just, they went in the letter and came back.

Interviewer: Yeah, okay.

Cook: Now that’s, that is the genuine [Chuckling] now I don’t know if you want these or not, it’s just up to you. Now these are the articles I wrote for this Jessamine history book, and…there is my family, my mother’s family, and that’s, that’s my son in, in… 84:00Interviewer: Yeah this, this stuff would definitely ( ) over… Cook: And this is… Interviewer: …( ) to file in.

Cook: …this I copied from a plaque at the courthouse and it tells about Moss, I did he want to know if I’d do it, and…the others, Albert (Owenson?) ( ).

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: And, it has a, some things, and this is Moss in his car.

Interviewer: Ha!

Cook: That’s what we courted in [Laughter – Interviewer]. The blue rambler, we called it, that’s the one I almost hit the rock with the tire?

Interviewer: Yeah, the rock that burst the tire on, yeah.

Cook: Unfortunately he had no money then and the tire ruined everything. I do want to tell you this, when we lived in Florence, Kentucky and I made fourteen dollars a week, to try to ( ) he needed a suit, so he went some place--see I didn’t go with him. Anyway, he came back and he had this suit and I looked at it, and I’m sorry but I, I didn’t mean 85:00to be mean, but I said what I thought, I said, “Oh my God! What, look at that collar!” It was black blue, and he said, he looked like I had hit him, you know, and he said, “Sug, I bought it so you'd have the extra pair of pants.” [Laughter – Interviewer and Cook].

Interviewer: Oh, let’s see, where… Cook: It shows you, that was Dagwood and Blondie cards that I put in one of the letters. I didn’t know if wanted that or not. I don’t want to force anything on you, just wanted to put it out there for you.

Interviewer: Mm, mm, yeah they'd, they’d use the key but they would, ( ) if they’ll ever use them. 86:00Cook: Yeah, okay, that’s fine.

Interviewer: I really would… Cook: That’s fine, I know you, you’re cramped for space, and these are just two cards. I, I wished I’d find something with love on it, or the flag. And there is, I didn’t look at, I just put them out. Do you know they are expensive now?

Interviewer: Oh I’m sure they are.

Cook: I paid ten dollars for the postcard that had the ferry on it, where we lived. Had fifteen on it, I would have given fifteen anyway, but I did ask if they’d take less. [Laughter – Interviewer and Cook]. Now here is, here is a, a letter from my sister to Moss when she was twelve years old, and I thought, I didn’t know if you wanted it or not, but it, it’s, it’s very ( ). It’s, it tells of the farm life, the tobacco, and see they ( ) put gum all over from stuffing tobacco, and she always was very close to me and wanted to live with me, 87:00and he’d tell her he would, he would build a house, he made this little plan for her ( ) build a house and pipe in water, and he, he was ambitious too and he’d tell Geraldine that he would build a house and of course Geraldine was very smart and she would cry. She took it ( ) and he would laugh [Chuckling].

Interviewer: What was, where was he at when she wrote this letter on the… Cook: Is it dated?

Interviewer: September of 1944.

Cook: He was overseas, he was killed in October.

Interviewer: Okay, yeah this is… Cook: And on the back--one minute, did it have?--yeah love, Geraldine.

Interviewer: Oh, okay, yeah.

Cook: But it tells about the…I thought. He was awful good to our family and I was good to his family. We… Interviewer: She, Geraldine was what? Thirteen years old?

Cook: About--she was born in ’32. 88:00Interviewer: Mmm, fourteen.

Cook: And here's a picture I took of Moss’s stone. Do you want me to get it?

Interviewer: Wonder if this is something here? Yeah, three-hundred and thirty-seventh Infantry, thirty-fifty, infantry division, World War II. He was born on November 21st, 1916?

Cook: November--November 21st, 1916, he was five years older than me.

Interviewer: This is, this letter will be definitively ( ). Is this something you want returned?

Cook: Sure. Did I give you a copy or the original, I believe I did. 89:00Interviewer: I think you gave me, you gave me the original, that’s what we would… Cook: Yeah, ( ).

Interviewer: I’d.

Cook: I’ve got a copy.

Interviewer: Okay, so we can ret…you can keep this one.

Cook: Amanda got so upset, when I told her they were ( ), so that’s the reason I put the ( ) words to it… Interviewer: Yeah, oh that’s fine.

Cook: …if she, if she… Interviewer: What, what we’ll do is the stuff that’s on loan, is… Cook: The only thing I, that, that really, that on, is the, the telegram.

Interviewer: The telegram.

Cook: The telegram… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …and maybe, well, that’s the thing in… Interviewer: Well the stuff that you got listed that, that’s on loan, we will return to you when the exhibit is over with, which will be, probably in… Cook: Well, I’m in no hurry, I just… Interviewer: …we’ll return to you in, it’ll probably December of 1995.

Cook: Okay, in September.

Interviewer: And that way, we won’t worry about… Cook: But now she was, she was very upset and there are some letters that I wrote I haven’t opened, that came back to me, and I just didn’t open them. And so Amanda said "Granny, 90:00let’s open them,” and I said to her, “we will sometimes when you ( ), take some time, a little bit.” I had no idea that she’d be like that. She didn't want me seeing her...and I didn’t, you know, it stunned me, stunned me, now I haven’t even discussed it with my son, but I thought it was just private, you know, because it wasn’t his dad, ( ). But we used to go down there to the grave and I think daddy's kind of got mixed up you know, about his death, you know, and when he was little, and so I quit teasing him because (the kid?) because he was defensive, and the teasing kind of got him. Since he was little and I had to take him, I had to have a sitter.

Interviewer: You said a couple of the letters that you did, that you re…that were returned, that you didn’t open, those might be interesting, those…that we can use in the exhibit to show people that, 91:00you know, that, they were not open and they would not be opened and they still have not been open.

Cook: No, they've not been opened. I mean… Interviewer: If we could borrow, if we could borrow… Cook: Well sure.

Interviewer: …two of those.

Cook: Sure.

Interviewer: That would be… Cook: I, and you know, I don’t know it’s just, I just didn’t want to… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …and I didn’t know why.

Interviewer: Yeah. Well I can understand that, that, that… Cook: I don’t know why, these four things are returned now--I mean they were my letters.

Interviewer: Yeah, mm-mm.

Cook: What’s mine, not his.

Interviewer: Right, yeah. I mean you’re writing letters to him, not knowing that he has already been killed and the letters will be returned to you, and I can un…I wouldn’t have the heart to open them either, knowing that something is wrong, there is some, you know, there is some strange reason that, that you now respect, you know, that your letters are being returned, which basically means that he is not getting them, so that gives you a feeling to, that there’s something wrong, somewhere.

Cook: Yeah, sure. 92:00I walk around kind of slow, ( ) but I’m going to be active until the day I die.

Interviewer: [Laughter – Interviewer] Cook: There you are now.

Interviewer: I think that will be really interesting if people could see that your letters are being… Cook: Oh pick a… Interviewer: …returned and… Cook: Let’s see, I--you can feel ( ).

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: I don’t care; take what you want. You might look at the dates. But I, you know, one I opened in 1982.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: I, what I do, I take them back there to my bed and I read them, and that’s the reason they’ve gotten shuffled, you know. I didn’t put them back in. Now, if it had been Moss, every letter would be in the envelope, you know, he was really, you know, but just, but I, I read them a lot, 93:00that’s why they ( ).

Interviewer: Okay, now let’s see if I can, get straightened out here, where is this…he turned up missing on the 26th, or the 25th of October… Cook: First they had twenty-fifth, and then, then they corrected that to the twenty-sixth.

Interviewer: Well I’ll tell you what we will do, I don’t know, this is really neat, this is, this, this is… Cook: I had no idea it would be that, you know, I just, I don’t know why. It's just the sadness about it, I guess.

Interviewer: You know, what really would be interesting is if we could borrow the, the whole lot.

Cook: Go ahead.

Interviewer: And… Cook: Look at them and see if they--now some of them might have a little place where I've opened them but, just go ahead 94:00and take them.

Interviewer: All right, this would… Cook: Just not that one, see.

Interviewer: There is one… Cook: Look, I haven’t even copied that.

Interviewer: Yeah, there is one that’s been opened, I, if it’s al…if it’s already open, I, I'm not going to take it. I want you to ma…sure that you know, be sure that… Cook: I held them up to the light, you know, and I could tell.

Interviewer: I want you to be sure that everything we take hasn’t been opened and that we, they will be returned to you exactly the way we get them, we won’t, they won’t be opened.

Cook: But you know I teach children, ( ) I’ve never been a teacher because I went to college when I was fifty, and, and…I never did become… Interviewer: That’s the only one… Cook: …a regular teacher.

Interviewer: …that’s the only one that’s been opened. We will read.

Cook: And I tried, but I couldn’t. I had my dad to help take care of and I had, when I got a divorce, I had my son, and my family had to come first.

Interviewer: Yeah, well 95:00it always does.

Cook: It had to come first, and I had to take care of my dad because he lived with my sister Geraldine, the one who wrote that cute little letter?

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: And she is the one that kept Dad for eight years and times, sometimes she said, “Evelyn, the roof is caved in and you’ll have to come and get Dad.” And I’d keep him for two or three weeks and bless his heart, he’d stood on the ( ) and said, “honey, I’m ready to go.” But I had to keep him because they’d have a fight, you know.

Interviewer: Oh yeah!

Cook: You know how married people are.

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Cook: And children, raising children. So I couldn’t give up my dad. He was 91.

Interviewer: Oh that’s great.

Cook: He was a precious person. I had good people. ( ) [tapping sounds]. But see, I want my family to be remembered that’s why 96:00I put them in this book. [Light tapping sounds] Cook: Would you like to borrow my book? It has a lot of military stuff.

Interviewer: I think actually we did the, the Historical Society has got copies of it. I’m, I think they've got a copy on file with the Historical Society. I think… Cook: Came out the 15th September.

Interviewer: That did?

Cook: Mm-mm.

Interviewer: Well Ma’am, I think I’m lying to you then. They usually… Cook: Well they may have bought it.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: In Jessamine County. But I want him to be remembered and that’s the reason I wrote about it.

Interviewer: I think I would like to do, if this just came out, I’ll call Ron, I’ll call 97:00Ron Bryant when I get back to town, and if they haven’t got a copy of it, I’ll make him buy a copy so we will have a copy permanently in the, as a record… Cook: And I told UK alumni, where I researched, that I would give half to them if they'd pay the other half, and that’s what that is, so, I mean, I didn’t put ( ) when I was going to let them have it. So if you need it, just take it and… Interviewer: Oh I, I t…I think that we will, we will get a permanent copy for the state. Now, I, I can ( ).

Cook: Do you want something to put them in?

Interviewer: There are six of them. One, two, two, four, five, six. Six of them that are still unopened; put them in the plastic sleeve here.

Cook: Yeah. But I love what you’re all doing, (Matt?) because we even got through the points, 98:00that's where my grandparents lived, and I think I mentioned it that letter in, one of that, one of the letters.

Interviewer: Yeah these are, these are really great. I mean the emotional aspect of… Cook: I just didn’t have… Interviewer: Yeah, it… Cook: …any idea.

Interviewer: Yeah, this will, this will give people an eye, an o…an idea of, you know, this, you know something is going wrong, you know, this, there is a problem of, you know the, there is some reason why your husband’s letters are being returned and the emotional factor of, of not opening it and so the, you know, solidify the fact that, well, if I don’t open them, I don’t read them, therefore I don’t acknowledge that they are, that they have been returned, and I don’t acknowledge that there is something wrong with, with my husband. That, I think, e…emotionally these are, these and the, the telegram are probably the most emotional pieces, you know, they are really great pieces, and I’ll, I’ll, I’ll guarantee that those will not be opened… Cook: Well you gave me up some things that happened, you know.

Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Cook: Barring, you know, I know that you’ll take good care of them.

Interviewer: Yeah they’ll, they’ll 99:00( )… Cook: Because I am going to tell you too sir, I’ve gone through hell, wondering whether or not to let them go.

Interviewer: Mm-mm. Well, sure, yeah.

Cook: Because I don’t even know if you would like them down there, and you know, I think, well, maybe some…body will read them and won’t appreciate them, but I think they will, I mean I am a positive person.

Interviewer: Yeah, that’s what we’re trying to do, we are not, we are not the… Cook: ( ) I mean not just to…slam me, or somebody else, in fact I had written a little gossip in one letter and I cut it out, because they were saying, so-and-so says…so-and-so broke up somebody’s home. Well I just thought that person is still living, you know, so I cut that out [Laughter – Interviewer]. That’s all degossipfied, but you know, you, you tell things in a letter ab…about people that you like.

Interviewer: They are meant to be private, they are meant to be private, they are not you know… Cook: But one of them was ( ) the fellow that came to see my sister and he said, “well I don’t know what I… Interviewer: A lot of people… Cook: He should have married her maybe, my sister 100:00was a beautiful girl, beautiful girl. My sisters are very pretty. I'm kind of cute [Laughter – Interviewer], but I won't say…but my sister Helen was pretty and it, it, the neighbor loved her, he said, he told us, said "Helen, every night when I go to bed you are at the foot of my ( ). ( )! And he’d see her in town and he would watch her until she got inside and he ( ) too. And I studied about that, you know, and I was kind of worried about her. But she just ( ) and there he was, Moss’s brother ( ). Now that was the day that I met him see. [Chuckling].

Interviewer: All right… Cook: [Chuckling] but the, the main thing about all of this is, is I loved…it, it, it, we had our little, you know… 101:00Interviewer: Oh yeah, everybody does.

Cook: …fights.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: But it turned into something as beautiful as…why they came every day in ( ).

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: It re…and the thing was he was the man of my life and he, he was…soul mate, whatever you call, and it’s sad, really sad.

Interviewer: The…the war basically ended any future plans, any future dreams?

Cook: Yeah, he, he talked about going to church with his little son and his little daughter, you know, and he…he, well, and he became a real good Christian, you see, very nice. He was always a good man. He had a se…he was kind of cocky at times, which was okay, you know, he said, “now I,” he said, about Lloyd, he was hard of hearing, 102:00he said, “I know when that sergeant says something, Lloyd won’t hear it.” And you know, and he was cocky, he said, I said, “and (unintelligible whispering) yes I do. You know. And I didn’t think that was very nice. And he would say something about a lady or something, I said, “don’t do that, don’t do this,” you know, sort of ( ), that ( ) out on him, ( ). [Laughing] ( ) time, I guess, and he ( ) me into her being…I don’t know, more, whatever. But you know these kids that I teach, they don’t a bit more know what kind of sacrifice these people who made them, the man in the moon.

Interviewer: Well that’s what we’re trying to, you know, we’re hoping that we… 103:00Cook: The man in the moon!

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: I say, children you know what Pearl Har…this is Pearl Harbor Day, do you know what it is? “What is it, Miss Cook?” Hoo!

Interviewer: I got some friends who were in, members of the Pearl Harbor Survivors Association here in, in Kentucky. They were, there is a whole bunch of them, they were at Pearl Harbor during the attack, and they had not done any kind of programs themselves, and one day they were called by a teacher to come to the classroom and to do a presentation for them in the, in the classroom, and they asked the kids, do you know what Pearl Harbor was, and do you know why the…Pearl Harbor happened? And one of the kids…put his hand up and said, “yeah, the Japanese wouldn’t have bombed Pearl Harbor had we not bombed Nagasaki.” So that the kids thought that we dropped the atomic bomb… Cook: Yeah!

Interviewer: …and because of that the Japanese attacked us. They had, they got history completely reversed, so…so now the Pearl 104:00Harbor survivors travel around the state, going to elementary schools and high schools, telling their story and what happened during the attack, because they, they were actually shocked that the kids didn’t know how World War II started, or why it started.

Cook: Well you see, my kids, they, and I wish I had a, I had classes where I could really get next to them, you see, because I tell them stories. And they really drink it up. Well, I’m, I’m in the art world and, and…I could, I took a little piece of paper the other day and folded it, and I said now, c…I fold this and then I cut it, make one cut of scissors and I said, cross and nails. So I did, and not a letter...let go of, here's the little cross then the little pieces made ( ) and another pieces of swords. And I said, do you know--because I’m always saying these things, you know, probably get me in trouble. I said, do you know that these icons in these churches in the middle ages, 105:00and ( ) hell, and judgment day, the devil is reaching down, you know, there’s ( ) where all the new figures were, and you know, to grab them, and I said, “do you know why they put pictures in there like that?” And he said “no,” and I said, “to scare the hell out of them.” [Chuckling] Well they, they just roared. Said "Ms. Cook said this."

Interviewer: Mm-mm, ( ) hell [Chuckles – Interviewer] Cook: That what started the war… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: to make ma…--and I said also to put money in the pot [Chuckles – Interviewer and Cook].

Interviewer: And… Cook: Now these… Interviewer: These are your copies ( )… Cook: These are his…originals or--now there is his regular writing. They are plain. He, he was a, pretty particular person. He’d take his shoestrings, you know, and you know how you would, so they wouldn’t curl up, he said they’d last longer. 106:00[Laughter – Interviewer]. You know, maybe I wasn’t paying attention [Chuckling].

Interviewer: Yeah, these are great.

Cook: Oh he, he, I think it’s one of the greatest love stories that ever was in this whole world, I think so.

Interviewer: Dated 15 August, yeah, this is great.

Cook: And I tell you what I’ve done for you, why it’s taken so long, I’ve identified people in here, so it will be interesting and if anybody, you know, would…research, and…many of these, at this time I ( ), and I, and some of the letters had some personal things, a little sexy things in them and, and I thought of, but what I did, they had some other good stuff too, you know, 107:00and that was just a little piece, more or less, and so I just cut it out and, and fixed the back, because it had the good, you know, I thought well, you might want to save the best, save no more, you know… Interviewer: Well [Chuckles – Interviewer] Cook: That’s up to you, I didn’t know what you might want of, but I did cut it out, and now there may be some little, leading to somebody, you know, would be very brief. And, as a rule he didn’t…but there was a time or two he got rather specific and I just cut that out and if you find some letters where they’re cut out and you don’t want to use them then just be my guest. I didn’t know when you’re working with someone that’s unknown… Interviewer: Oh yeah.

Cook: …you know, like here, you know, you don’t know what to do, see. 108:00And sometimes I don’t have--maybe I’m, I’m, I don’t have--a extra page is lost, but I went ahead and copied them anyway. Well maybe, maybe not. You don’t have to use them, or look at them, whatever, so anyway. It’s up to you. These, these are for, for the woman ( ). See, that’s why I did them.

Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: And a lot of…up! Oh here is my first letter to Moss, January the 4th, where I said that it would just as though someone took me out of this world and dropped me on another planet. [Laughter – Interviewer] Interviewer: Ha, Ha, Ha, that’s great. 109:00Now on January 4th, did he, is he overseas at this time?

Cook: No, he is just going into the army.

Interviewer: Just going to basic… Cook: And then he… Interviewer: …basic training.

Cook: …and I have been by myself up what, three days.

Interviewer: Mm, yeah, that’s great.

Cook: And then I tried to, and you know, when you’re writing to someone and you know they are going into the army, and you know that they talk ( ), you can’t, you don’t want to make him sad, and you pull back from it, and then he pulled back and won’t write anything. He, he told his mother he was in action but he didn’t tell me, and but I got, found out about it. But I just want him to be remembered and that was a great love. And people should remember 110:00that these men and women sacrificed their lives and…for them to, to be here in America, or to have their lives.

Interviewer: I, I mean the great thing about this is that we will be able to, to recognize and acknowledge him this way, and… Cook: And I want to, he said for me to never forget him, that’s why I can’t go put a big stone on his grave because they’d rather I didn’t bother, and I’ve been real nice to them and all that but, they’re not like me, they are not compassionate, and I, see.

Interviewer: The…the good thing about this is, is that there will be, there will literally be thousands of people in the eighteen months that these letters are on exhibit 111:00who will see that, and… Cook: I just, I just want him remembered, I don’t care about me, except it was a great love, I just want him to be remembered, and I’m going to give a half acre to the Mount Lebanon Church--they’ve cramped for acreage--and, but I haven't got that going yet because the preacher is kind and ( ), see. I look askance at the preacher sometimes. Well, he tried to hurry me and I didn’t want to be hurried.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, yeah. Well that’s, yeah, when you get somebody who is rushed and in a hurry and whatever… Cook: Yeah, he wanted all them photos, the ( ) his coffin ( ). And then I told him I wasn’t likely to sell these letters, and he said, well if you sell me half, sell the half acre then you take your half acre, and get the lady to do the sale. Well that’s just like the ( ) 112:00and so I thought about it and so I wrote to my cousin, he, he goes to that church, he and his family, and he said "Evelyn, my dad give it to me, and I didn’t have to sell." I said, “It’s the best one you got.” When you give a gift you're supposed to give willingly. Don’t give a ( ), and I said “well, I did it for him, for Moss.” ( ) important to the church, but I’m not going to ( ) so he just, he just told me forget it. And I took down that, I sat down and wrote a letter and I said for them to get first, first they wanted, he wanted me to give it to the church to save and the business is no longer good. There, they made him have another church. I said no, I want to go back to ( 113:00). Well, his wife should have used somebody else, that’s the best little piece of land ( ) people in the ( ) that would give him ( ) argue. Well it’s just the fact that that’s the way I wanted it. And so he came at me in the wrong way, and he came up to me and talked to me, and, and he refused with my cousin, and my cousin said, “I didn’t know anything like that talk to you.” ( ) and I were talking, I said “well you wanted to hurry it up on account of Methodist ( ).” I said, “I’ve already had a knock down, drag out down here with the minister down here at ( ) and I said ( ) that’s what ( ). He got me in this historical preservation movement, on Pine Street, and then he attacked me, with the bank. And I send 114:00the pictures of 1970 and I was afraid you know, because my ( ) only place in the United States ( ) and I was amazed, and he got me in on the move, took ( ) collection, and when he was started rolling, he said, he told me he said, “you’re not going to have anymore meetings at my church” ( ) anymore.

Interviewer: Well, with these two, these are things that we won’t return, right?

Cook: Well… Interviewer: Make sure I did this… Cook: …I may be… Interviewer: …see what we are doing here before I… Cook: Okay, I, I want, I want to keep Moss’s, the telegram, and I wouldn’t mind keeping that last letter I wrote. 115:00Now who would say to you, say in ten years, in ten years I’ll, there won’t, I, I’m pretty sure Amanda will take them.

Interviewer: Yeah, do you want… Cook: I thought that would give you enough time… Interviewer: Yeah, what… Cook: …to do as you want.

Interviewer: …what we’ll do is all the stuff that… Cook: And if she want you to have them, she’ll say so, she and David can get togeth…I’m going to tell you the truth, sir, I was, I was so upset I couldn’t hardly work with (him?).

Interviewer: Oh I’m sure.

Cook: Then after, then after he said, “Granny why did you do that?” And then I, then I, I thought well (we will go tell Mrs. Sunny?) I’m not go…going back on my word, and I guess I had to do it.

Interviewer: Well the, the good, the, the point here is that… Cook: So, you see I was satisfied… Interviewer: Yeah.

Cook: …with that. I could work with that, but the other, it seems like he was pulling my heart out.

Interviewer: Mm-mm. Oh we are not…as far as we are concerned, if you want any or all of the material back, as soon as the exhibit is over, it will all be returned, we’re, we, we just want to utilize this stuff… Cook: Well, you could along, okay? 116:00Interviewer: …see what we are really…( ) yeah.

Cook: We’ll just go along and see. And I thought well, see I’m seventy--almost seventy-two, in ten years, I’m going to be eighty-two, about ready to kick the bucket, because I haven’t [Laughter – Interviewer] kicked it before, and Amanda will do such-and-such, and, and it, it, it’s what turned me, and I said well, “after that I began to sleep better, I began to sleep better, and I didn’t get upset, it seems like when I worked there, and I couldn’t get him going good, I was, I guess I was disturbed.

Interviewer: Oh yeah, well sure, you’re going back through these things… Cook: And, this has… Interviewer: …and you ( ) bringing a lot of bad memories.

Cook: …this has been, listen you go through these letters, and, and pick out and, oh, it has not been easy.

Interviewer: Oh I’m sure, I mean it take… Cook: But for a good cause, goodness it’s all worth it.

Interviewer: Mm-mm, all right…so… Cook: I’ll say, mostly you could, you could tell my, my Aunt Clare, you know, because 117:00that deals with Lloyd and…the telegram, and you can have that nice piece from the government about when he went into the service and all, and whenever it was really loving, and really loving, and not samples, we usually didn’t have it, not, not a word was ever taken out of his letters, but wherein it was so loving, you know, that I couldn’t bear to let, let it go, but I did make a copy, see.

Interviewer: Okay, okay.

Cook: ( ) but… Interviewer: All right.

Cook: …that’s why I kept the original, because… Interviewer: Okay.

Cook: …he was really a good love scene that you'd read over and over.

Interviewer: Okay.

Cook: But…but then I did make you a copy. You can have the copy.

Interviewer: Okay.

Cook: I kept a copy.

Interviewer: Right. You kept, you kept the original, and I’ve got the copy ( ).

Cook: Yeah I kept the original and copy.

Interviewer: Okay.

Cook: Mm-mm.

Interviewer: Okay, all right. Now the originals that are in here, you want, you want these returned, correct?

Cook: The, the most I would want… 118:00“END OF INTERVIEW”