Oral History Interview with Joyce Roos

Diakov: It is Thursday, April 24th, 2008, this is Leanne Diakov interviewing Noreen Joyce Roos, wife of Eugene Roos who was previously recorded. We are at St. Paul United Methodist Church in Louisville, KY, and we are going to talk with Miss Roos about…her history, her early history…up to her marriage and early…marital years with Gene while he was training and serving as a pilot in the U. S. Navy during World War II. We—and we are going to call her Joyce, because she goes by Joyce [Laughter – Diakov].

Roos: [Chuckling] Do that.

Diakov: So Joyce, tell me a little bit…tell me when you were born and where you were born.

Roos: I was born in, my family is in a little tiny town in central Illinois, but I was born in the hospital in Pontiac, Illinois in…1923, April 17th. 1:00Diakov: And tell me a little bit about your parents.

Roos: Well…my—I, I was brought up on a farm, although my father never farmed because he never liked to farm. He went to the University of Illinois, and then, while he was there his father died and he had to come home and run the farm, but he al…we always had…tenant farmers who lived in a small house nearby and my father actually, I can barely remember him ever farming, he was a postmaster in that little town most of his adult life. But, we lived down at, we lived on the farm… Diakov: And… Roos: …about a mile and a half from that little town.

Diakov: …and that was his family farm?

Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …that he grew up on?

Roos: Yes, yeah, been there for ever, mm-mm.

Diakov: And what about your mother?

Roos: My mother was the—had been a schoolteacher. She was from a little town not far from there, and they met because my father’s sister and my mother were good friends when they were in this teachers’ college that they went to. So that’s 2:00how they met. And, and…yeah, she was a, she was a intelligent woman, very intelligent woman, and very artistic, painted quite a bit and, and…she just wasn’t your common farmer’s wife as a, as a [Chuckling] general rule, you know, she was, just an inveterate reader and writer and she was very talented.

Diakov: Mm-mm. And did you have any brothers or sisters?

Roos: I had an older sister who died when she was forty-three, I think, of cancer, and…I had a younger brother who was about five years younger than I. He’s, he is my only family member left, and he still lives on the family farm up in Illinois. He doesn’t farm it but he lives there [Laughter – Diakov and Roos], (yeah?), uh-huh.

Diakov: I’m seeing a trend here [Laughing] with ( ).

Roos: Yeah, everybody wanted to get away, but…my, my older sister went to…Rockford College, where I went. She graduated the year before I started, so I just followed her, and…so yeah, she was…talented too, very, very 3:00musical, good voice, pay—played the piano very well, she was, she married her childhood sweetheart [Laughing]. They all went through high school together, and after they were through college, well they got married and…he is the one who was overseas and had such fascinating experiences in World War II, so, uh-huh.

Diakov: Well, describe for me a little bit about your childhood, you know, the town where you grew up and, and tell me a little bit about your early education.

Roos: Well…there was this—I did not go to a country school, like most people did, we went to the school in town, which was the, you know a small school but a good school and a g…and a good high school, a mile and a half or so from my hometown—from my home and…I just grew up in the country and, and loved being out in the country and I had a bike and went everywhere and had friends from, that I went to school with and it was just a, you know just a happy busy childhood living out in the country. 4:00Rode horseback some, not a whole lot. We had ponies but that wasn’t one of our, my favorite occupations, just had neighbor kids to play with and just a very down to earth kind of childhood, mm-mm.

Diakov: And…when you graduated from high school, what, where did you decide to go…after… Roos: Well, I really…I went to Rockford College, which is a women’s college in Rockford, Illinois. My sister had just graduated from there and actually it was a couple of spinster aunts in or, great aunts in Chicago who…were quite comfortably off and they, when my sister was ready to go to college, she was just going to go to a little teacher’s college or something and they didn’t want her to do that, so they…helped with her education and, and…so she went to Rockford College and then after she went, well that, it was [Chuckling] almost accepted that that’s where I would go and I was very happy there.

Diakov: And did you have a set plan of study or… Roos: Well, I majored in psychology, minored in English, 5:00I did nothing with either one of them really. Well I did, I w…I worked actually when, when my husband was at the University of Wisconsin after the war and we were living in Madison. I worked for the university in the Veterans’ Guidance Center for a couple of years, doing vocational and guidance testing with my psych major, mm-mm.

Diakov: Tell me how you met your husband.

Roos: Well, [Laughing] it’s, it’s, it’s kind of funny because he ha…[Chuckling] he is from Rockford, Illinois where I went to college, and he had left, he was a, in college in o…in…Ohio, but he had left school at the end of the semester because he’d enlisted in the navy, and he knew he was going to be called, so he just came back home and he was just bumming around town and being a women’s college, we just dated men from town [Chuckling] there weren’t any men on our campus, and…somehow, I don’t know how, but anyway, at some way, he had a d…a date with my college roommate. She was from Casper, Wyoming just a character. I loved Anne. But anyway, 6:00one night—she had grandparents who lived in another town and she’d gone to spend the weekend with them and she didn’t come back. So she called me and told me that you know, she had a date with Gene and would I, when he called her, for her at the dorm, would I go down and tell him. So…he called for her when he got there and I went down to tell him she w…you know, that she wasn’t back in town, and he said, “well was I doing anything?” And I said, “no.” [Laughter – Diakov and Roos], so off we went [Laughing]. And that was the beginning of that.

Diakov: So that was a very spontaneous… Roos: Ver… Diakov: …first date.

Roos: …very, very spontaneous, yeah.

Diakov: Well what did you guys do?

Roos: Well, I don’t know, I suppose we went down to Joe South Main Tavern where everybody went [Chuckling] when I was in college, it’s about all we did…and we didn’t date very long because then he left and he was gone for, you know, for a couple of years, then he came back—that was my sophomore year, and then he came back my senior year, and that’s—we really didn’t date very long, a matter of weeks probably. 7:00But then when he came back to Rockford after…when I was a senior, then we got back together again then and I left college in the middle of my senior year to get married, and…fi…finally we both got through school eventually. I went back and finished my last semester while he worked, and then I worked at the univ…for the University of Wisconsin while he finished his last couple years so, it took us a while [Chuckling]… Diakov: Yeah.

Roos: …we, we got it done.

Diakov: Well, between your sophomore year and your senior year, while he was away, did you all keep in touch through letters, or… Roos: Huh, some, not a whole lot, not a whole lot. In fact I was kind of surprised when he called after he got back and said he was back in town and, I said to my roommate, “oh my heavens,” [Chuckling] “Gene is back in town and I,” I, you know, I was kind of busy di…but anyway, that’s how it worked out.

Diakov: So this was not like a committed… Roos: No.

Diakov: …long distance relationship or anything.

Roos: No, uh-uh, no, it wasn’t, uh-uh.

Diakov: So did you date while he was between sophomore… Roos: Oh yeah!

Diakov: …and senior year?

Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: Anything serious? 8:00Roos: Oh, not really, probably.

Diakov: Yeah.

Roos: See…Rockford had Camp Grant, which is a, army…base right outside the city of Rockford, and so generally speaking that was who a lot of the girls dated, those, they’d ha…( ) they’d have dances at Camp Grant and they’d take a bunch of us girls out there to dance, and we’d have dances and the bunch would come over from Camp Grant so that was kind of our social life at the time, during the war. Of course those p…guys didn’t stay very long at Camp Grant. They were there [Chuckling] just and off… Diakov: ( ) Roos: …and off, and off they went, but that was, you know, there were a lot of dates between Camp Grant soldiers and Rockford College girls.

Diakov: Mm-mm, mm-mm. Well you told me before we started recording the interview that…World War II broke out when you were about three months… Roos: Yeah, uh-huh.

Diakov: …in your studies.

Roos: Uh-huh.

Diakov: Tell me a little bit about your f…before the war broke out, what school was like…at Rockford College?

Roos: Well, it didn’t change appreciably, I don’t think, being a women’s college. 9:00It’s a very good school, excellent school, small, independent, private wo…women’s college and…it was…kind of an intellectual place, because it was just women, you know, there wasn’t a whole lot of social life at, like there are in lots of campuses, but…and girls from all over. I had roommates from all over the country, it wasn’t just very local, my closest roommate friend was from Casper, Wyoming, and…so it, I met a lot of, had, coming from a small town in Illinois, it was interesting to meet a lot of other kinds of people, and my closest friend was from Milwaukee and, and…you know, we just…there were…real…different…groups of girls, and groups from all over, and, and then when the war started, it was interesting because one of my closest friends, her father was a naval officer and out in, in California, so she was much more into, into what was going on in the war than the rest of us, because she, she’d grown up in the, in the service.

Diakov: Do you remember how you found out 10:00that we were at war?

Roos: Yes, it was about noon in Rockford, Illinois at the time, and we had just had dinner in the college dining room, and to get to the dining room, we had to go up some stairs to get to our dorm and walk through the gym. And I was walking through the gym and somebody came running through and said, “oh, for heaven’s sake, you know, we’re, the war started, we’ve been bombed!” And you know, that was just, it came out of the blue because none of us were that deeply, my, except my one friends whose fa…father was an officer, none of us were really that deeply involved. I hardly knew where Pearl Harbor was, you know, [Chuckles – Diakov] [Laughing] just a different, a different world, uh-huh. It came as a great shock, and we had of course no idea how, how important this was going to be in our lives at that point. So I spent the whole, whole war almost at, in, in college, uh-huh.

Diakov: Mm-mm. Do you remember what the mood was that… Roos: Well…a little s…scared, I think, but really not, not really understanding it quite, I don’t think, 11:00didn’t realize what an impact it was going to have on our lives, you know, something that happened a long ways away, and here we are in Rockford, Illinois and didn’t know what difference does it make. So…didn’t realize that, how it was going to take over our lives for our whole college careers and it did.

Diakov: Mm-mm. So after that point, how did, it, you know, over the next three and a half years, how did that, how did it slowly change?

Roos: Well (Sighs), I think people got more serious. Most of the girls that I knew, they had a boyfriend somewhere in the service, you know, we all did and there was all this worrying about that and writing letters and trying to see him, and, then…you know, trying, trying to keep up when you were, weren’t together anymore, and it was, you know, most of them had a boyfriend somewhere [Cell phone tone] who was in the service.

Diakov: Excuse me, I’m going to pause just one ( ).

Roos: Mm-mm. [Pause] Diakov: Okay, I’m sorry there.

Roos: That’s all right. 12:00Diakov: We had, were interrupted by a cell phone tone. So most of the girls had, had boyfriends in the service… Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …you said, and there was… Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …a lot of anxiety… Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …and things, so. And when you met Gene you knew he was getting ready to enlist.

Roos: Yes, uh-huh.

Diakov: or, or, I guess had… Roos: Uh-huh.

Diakov: …enlisted and was just waiting to go… Roos: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

Diakov: …and…was that ever a, a concern or a subject of your conversations?

Roos: Oh… Diakov: When you… Roos: …not really, because it was such a short time, you know, it wasn’t like we’d gone together for f…months and months because we hadn’t. And…no, it wa…it was just, you know, everybody went and he went too [Chuckling] it’s about the way it was then.

Diakov: What about your roommate Anne? How did she feel about you stealing her date [Chuckles – Roos] [Laughter – Diakov]?

Roos: Well they’d only dated a couple of times and they, Anne was such a free spirit, I don’t think it really bothered her a bit [Laughing], she, she came back and we roomed together for two years and then she went back to, or, and then she went—where did she go? —Northwestern and finished her education there, although she was from Casper, Wyoming, a real crazy girl, I said [Chuckling], when she came in, the first time I’d met her, 13:00she came in and she had a, a…spurs in her hand and hung them on the corner of her desk chair, and I thought, good heavens ( ), [Chuckles – Diakov and Roos] this Casper, Wyoming [Laughter – Roos and Diakov]. But she, she was a, a dear, dear girl, I loved Anne.

Diakov: Spurs… Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …did she bring her horse or something?

Roos: No she didn’t, she had grandparents that lived in another little town, so, she, you know, she was fairly familiar with the area, although she was from Wyoming, and that’s when she went home, she went back to Casper.

Diakov: Mm-mm, mm-mm, mm-mm. Well, tell me about your senior year, when Gene call…[Cell phone tone] [Pause] Diakov: Okay, again, I’m sorry about that.

Roos: That’s all right.

Diakov: I think we have solved the problem now. So, senior year, and Gene calls you up [Chuckles – Diakov and Roos].

Roos: Yeah [Chuckling]. So…we went out several times, you know, maybe a period of three weeks or so, decided to get married and… Diakov: In three—well when did you decide this was serious [Laughter – Diakov]?

Roos: Well [Laughing]… Diakov: When did you realize this was serious? I don’t know (who?) decided, but… 14:00Roos: No, no when he, when he, when he came back, I guess we, you know, we…we’d known each other fairly well, but ju…but this was war time, everybody got serious, mm-mm, we had been, you know, so…yeah we just…decided to get married and off we went.

Diakov: Well, who suggested that?

Roos: Oh I suppose he did [Chuckling] I don’t think I proposed to him [Laughter – Roos and Diakov]. I think he said what are we going to do about us, is a matter of fact [Laughter – Diakov and Roos] I think those were his very words [Laughing], so.

Diakov: Well, so he wasn’t back for very long when you all… Roos: No, uh-uh… Diakov: …made this decision and… Roos: Uh-uh, uh-huh.

Diakov: Well what—I mean, what, what thoughts went through your mind, I mean you were in the middle of school, and in the middle of your last year.

Roos: Yeah it was a…an interesting decision to make, but you know, you’d, you just do it, there wasn’t any [Chuckling] there wasn’t any doubt in my mind that this is what we were going to do and that’s what we did, yeah it, 15:00it worked out. But, it seemed like it took us forever by the time I finished school and he finished school, you know, it [Chuckling] we just plugged along for about three years before we got, got our feet on the ground. But those were good years.

Diakov: Well, when you decided to…to leave school and marry Gene…I, I, I read your wedding announcement, it sounds like you went down to Florida… Roos: Yeah.

Diakov: …with him.

Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: what ( ) was you… Roos: He was already there; I just flew down and met him down there.

Diakov: What did your family think about that, that they w…you know, you… Roos: No.

Diakov: …were going off to get married your mom … Roos: Somebody that they didn’t know [Chuckling]? They’d met him but that was all…well I don’t recall that there was any, any problem with it, we just…did those things [Chuckling] at that time, so, no, they, they knew him slightly but not, not 16:00very well. He’d never been to my home, they’d been to Rockford and met him and, and knew who he, knew about him but…he didn’t know them hardly at all, uh-huh. He knew my sister but he didn’t know them, because she lived in Rockford after she graduated from college, she worked there in, in the city, so he knew her, but…he didn’t know my parents at all, uh-uh.

Diakov: So nobody insisted that you have a, a wedding at home and, and maybe stay at home… Roos: No.

Diakov: …while he finished his training, or… Roos: Uh-uh, just…I don’t know, just, you know, right after the war things just, you just did things that you wouldn’t do in this day and time probably.

Diakov: Mm-mm. Well tell me about your trip to Florida. Who…I think…did your sister go with you and that was… Roos: No, I just went by myself.

Diakov: Okay. Who was your…who stood up with you at your wedding?

Roos: Well see he, Gene had navy friends, and he had an unmarried couple and, and…Dorothy, and she stood up for me, I’d never met once, didn’t know one soul at the wedding, you know, but it was just a little wedding in the, in the chapel at the naval base, so it was very…very simple little wedding, 17:00but that wasn’t unusual in those times, that’s the way we lived.

Diakov: Mm-mm, mm-mm. So you flew down… Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …and Gene picked you up… Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: …and off to the chapel?

Roos: Off to the chapel [Laughter – Diakov and Roos], it’s about, about right, yeah, but he had good navy friends and they’d been stationed together several places so you know, he, I felt like they were f…my family, almost, his navy friends, and several of them were married so, you know, they had wives and so yeah we had, had some good years together in the navy, mm-mm.

Diakov: Well tell me about the wedding at the, at the chapel.

Roos: Well, it was very small, as I said, I didn’t know anybody there. The girl that stood up with me was the wife of one of Gene’s friends, and…the fellow that stood up with him was, was not married but he was a good friend and it was just a handful, it was just a handful of people. But this was not unusual, 18:00these were different times, different times.

Diakov: And then after the service? Did you… Roos: Well, we honeymooned in Daytona Beach and that was…of course I had never been there before and this was a whole, whole new world and [Laughing]… Diakov: Had you ever been to the beach?

Roos: Oh yeah, uh-huh.

Diakov: Oh you have.

Roos: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah, with my parents, we used to go down to that—not to Daytona but, my parents had a little house down in Dania, Florida for many years and so we—I had been there many times, mm-mm.

Diakov: And…after the honeymoon, now that you were married, what…did the navy give you housing or just some kind of allowance, or… Roos: I’m trying to think where we went first. We lived in Hutchinson, Kansas, we lived in a—there was a lady there who—and people did this all over the country, and who just rented out rooms to service people, so we just lived in one room in a, 19:00a lady’s house and her husband was overseas somewhere, and she had a couple of teenage children and you know, nice, nice lady, in Hutchinson, Kansas, you know, just the, the middle of [Chuckling] the middle of America just very solid kind of place, and…so we lived in Hutchinson, we lived in, in Miami Beach, we lived in San Diego, where else did we live? That must be about it, I guess, yeah, because we were in San Diego then when the war ended and, and I came on back.

Diakov: So the navy gave, I guess gave you an allowance to rent these rooms or… Roos: I can’t remember how that worked, it must have, I, I just, I really don’t remember, I don’t remember how that worked.

Diakov: And what did you do while Gene was… Roos: Well… Diakov: …off training?

Roos: …other navy wives and I just [Chuckling] puttered around, nothing but sunbathe [Chuckling] and loafed and [Laughter – Diakov and Roos], had a good time [Laughing] didn’t do anything worthwhile, no.

Diakov: I guess you weren’t it, where, anywhere long enough to find some kind of a job or… Roos: No, uh-uh, uh-uh.

Diakov: …anything like that. 20:00Roos: No, uh-uh, I didn’t do any of that.

Diakov: Well what about in…I would say in your down time, but you had a lot of [Chuckles – Diakov] down ti… Roos: Yeah.

Diakov: …what about in Gene’s downtime, what did you all…do?

Roos: Well, I don’t know that—what he did much then, we didn’t, it seem like…hum, I can’t remember that we had an awful lot of free time, of course we, we had navy friends and their wives and we, you know, got together with them a, a lot pretty much, but, I don’t think he had any particular hobbies or anything like that, because he, he used to play a lot of, he played a lot of golf, I don’t recall that he played golf then, he didn’t play golf in, back until we got back to, back home, but…I don’t know what we did with our time, frankly [Chuckles – Diakov and Roos], it was a long time ago [Laughing], it’s been a long time ago.

Diakov: Well tell me about some of your navy friends. Have any of those become lifelong…friends?

Roos: Yes, we’re losing them, yeah, yes they have…and we saw one of them on a recent trip…when 21:00we were out west and we came back and, and stopped in…where was it? Not Denver, some place out there, where one of them was still living and he’s, he had lost his wife, but we did meet him and had a meal with him and that was, you know, after all those years, it was unbelievable to get [Chuckling] together again, but the, I think that’s about the only one that, that we’ve really been able to keep up with to any great extent, yeah, uh-huh. But he was, yeah, he was a, a great guy. But there’re not many of them left anymore.

Diakov: Yeah, mm-mm. Well what are some of your fondest memories of this… Gene in his interview referred to this year that you all were married and he was in training as a, a…a yearlong honeymoon… Roos: That’s what my parents… Diakov: …on, on the ( ).

Roos: …that’s what [Laughter – Diakov] my mother said when we got home. She said, “well, you’ve had, you’ve had a yearlong honeymoon,” because we lived all 22:00over the country you know, and… Diakov: Yeah.

Roos: …you had to had, you know, met interesting people and were in interesting places and something we wouldn’t have done on our own ever.

Diakov: Yeah. What were some of your fondest memories of that time?

Roos: Well (Sighs), I’m, I don’t know just the, just the excitement of being in all these different places you know, here I was a little farm girl from the center of Illinois, and…we were just, just all over and it seemed like a very, to me a very sophisticated life we were living all of the sudden, and meeting people from all over and having friends from all over and it was so different. But…and, you know, enjoyable, enjoyable life those years. In fact, I was kind of surprised that Gene had really thought he would stay in the navy, and then…I was, as I went on home to finish school and he called one night and he said, “well, I’m getting out.” I said, “good heavens, you know, what [Chuckles – Roos and Diakov], what are we going to do?” So, so he decided to, you know, get out. He could have stayed in but, and debated about it but decided no, not to.

Diakov: Well as the war was going on and Gene 23:00was, you know, training for his, his…job as a pilot, did you ever have any anxiety, or any worries about, you know, where this was going?

Roos: Well…I prob…we probably did, but I don’t know, it was just you know, we lived just like everybody else was living like that. This was a whole, you know, it was just the war, and it was just the way we lived then, because you, you were, mostly you were concerned about when they would have to go overseas, that was the, the main concern. Of course then for him that never happened, he is sitting in San Diego waiting to go and the war was over. So, but that was the m…the main concern for most of us was, you know, what are we going to do after, after they leave and we got to go home and have some life left.

Diakov: And I believe San Diego was where he ended his training.

Roos: Yeah, mm-mm.

Diakov: Is that correct?

Roos: Mm-mm.

Diakov: And…if I’m recalling correctly, from his interview, he ended his training and had a couple of days off and then was going to be shipped out.

Roos: Yeah. 24:00Diakov: Do you remem…remember that time that, a couple of days he is waiting for his… Roos: No, uh-uh… Diakov: No?

Roos: …I have, I’d…I had just gone home and just assumed that he was going to go and then all of the sudden I got this phone call and he is, you know, he is getting out of the navy and he is coming home. So everything kind of changed in a hurry.

Diakov: Do you remember when the war ended?

Roos: Oh yeah, we were in San Diego, I remember, and we went out in the street, and of course this, it was just, millions of people [Chuckles - Diakov] and, and a lot of, of young servicemen because they were stationed around there and they were running down the street and banging on windows and shouting and, you know, it was just, we just went downtown San Diego the day the war—the night the war ended and that was, you know, it was just a whole fantastic experience…to have been there at that time, mm-mm.

Diakov: Did you have a feeling 25:00of relief or [Chuckles – Diakov] just a… Roos: Well, yes [Laughing] we did, but it was just, just so different, you know, we lived so differently, and all of the sudden our h…the whole world had changed, and…but it, it, at the time it didn’t look like it was going to make a whole lot of difference because he was going to stay in the navy at that point anyway and it wasn’t going to really affect us that m…as, as it turned out to do, uh-huh.

Diakov: When did you decide to go home?

Roos: Well, it must have been when the next semester was to start, I can’t remember exactly but that’s about right, because that would have been August and…so I was, I went on home and was going to go back to school for my last semester, which I did. And then…you know, then he came home and worked for a while, while I finished that one semester, and then we went up to Madison and he went back to school and I worked.

Diakov: Mm-mm. Well how was that adjustment from traveling all over the country [Chuckles – Roos] as a married couple to now studying [Laughter – Diakov and Roos]… Roos: Yeah [Chuckling], well… Diakov: …and he is working and you’re 26:00[Laughter – Diakov]… Roos: Well, it, it was kind of different, but I only had one semester, I could deal with that, you know.

Diakov: Yeah.

Roos: But…yeah, but our years in Madison, they were fun years. Of course most of the people we knew were other couples that were in the same boat we were. They had come, they’d been in the service, our closest friends, he had been in…a, a marine officer and…you know, they lived next door to us in this building that we lived in and, and we got to be you know, good friends because they were all in the same boat, they’d all, you know, been in the service and came back, and were going back to school, and we wives, generally speaking, were working at the time, so it was, you know, but we had, had good friends that we met there, mm-mm.

Diakov: Tell me about your job in…in Madison, you said you worked in the psychology… Roos: Yeah. It was the Veterans’ Guidance Center, it was called, and it’s where they had to come and take—have all these tests and everything so that they could be accepted at the university. And so I did the f…the testing, you know, to give the test and interviews and all that kind of stuff. But they had to go through that as part of their entrance in the University of Wisconsin.

Diakov: They’re but they w…there 27:00were quite a number of that (kind?)?

Roos: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

Diakov: Was this a department that was set up specifically to… Roos: I think it probably was. It was not on campus, it was in a, you know, just a downtown office building, so it was not a permanent kind of campus thing I, I assumed, but I don’t know how long it had been there or whether it sti…probably isn’t there anymore, I wouldn’t think, I wouldn’t think that be a need for it.

Diakov: And how long were you in Madison?

Roos: A…couple of years, uh-huh, about two years mm-mm.

Diakov: Now was Gene—did Gene stay in the reserves during this time, or… Roos: He did for a while, uh-huh, but not permanently. Yeah, he was in, you know, in fact, because they went to Great Lakes a time or two I think, after we were back in Rockford, he went back for some training or whatever, but…and he didn’t stay in very long, uh-uh.

Diakov: Mm-mm. So what, during his time in the reserves, did that impact your… Roos: No, uh-uh. He’d go into Chicago once in a while for [Chuckling] something but we were ( ) for doing that, that was no big deal...

Diakov: Yeah.

Roos: …to go to Chicago 28:00for some training and meetings, at the naval air station there, mm-mm.

Diakov: And…when did you start a family?

Roos: Oh goodness! Nineteen forty…(that’s when?) we were married in ’40, our daughter was born in ’49 and my son in ’51, so we’d been married six years or so before we had children.

Diakov: And was after everyone had finished their schooling and… Roos: Mm-mm, mm-mm.

Diakov: And…where, where were you when you started your family?

Roos: We were back in Rockford, Illinois… Diakov: Back in Rockford?

Roos: …in his home, his hometown, mm-mm.

Diakov: Okay. So, when did you move to Kentucky?

Roos: Nineteen—let’s see (Sighs) ’54, I think, yeah, ’54, uh-huh.

Diakov: So the kids were still quite young.

Roos: Yeah, they were toddlers, really, you know. I think our, I think our daughter started kindergarten here when, when we came and our son was a couple of years younger. 29:00So they’ve been here since they were, you know, kids.

Diakov: And what, what brought you all from, from Rockford to… Roos: Well, a…a job! [Laughing]. Actually he s…he started out as a salesman for this company and then he took it over as an independent rep in, in a short time. So he was an independent representative for throughout all of his career, mm-mm.

Diakov: And I guess, because of your experience with moving around during that first year of marriage, this was not a big… Roos: No, uh-uh.

Diakov: …jump for you, or… Roos: No it, we, we looked forward to it, he’d been here, of course and looked around before I did, but no, it wasn’t, it wasn’t that, that traumatic really, uh-uh, just a…another move [Chuckling], another place to start. I did have a cousin who lived here, he still lives here is a matter of fact, so I had a little familiarity with the city, you know, somebody that [Chuckling]… Diakov: Someone to lean on.

Roos: …you could call on the phone any, anyhow, but…no 30:00it was just, just exciting, interesting, and we were glad to—I said you’ll never get me north of the Ohio River again, I lived in that snow long enough [Laughter – Roos and Diakov].

Diakov: That, yeah that’s true, I guess you all do have a lot more… Roos: Oh yeah, yeah… Diakov: ( ).

Roos: …a lot, a lot of snow and…Wisconsin had a lot of snow and ( ) Rockford, Illinois did it, you know, that’s just right up on the Wisconsin border, it’s fifteen miles from Wisconsin, so it’s way up there. Oh yeah, we were used to cold, cold winters, long winters. So this was, this was interesting place to move to, mm-mm.

Diakov: Well, thinking about to…I guess the war years and your early marriage…what would you th…what do you think…what kind of impact do you think that shaped your world view. I, I guess, you know, kind of like a life lesson from that period 31:00that you took with you through the rest of your, your life?

Roos: Well, I guess the idea that there is such a big world out there, when you came from this little town in the center of Ill…of Illinois, you know, your, your horizons were very small, but…having gone through that, I just, you know, it was just much more interesting, there is a much more interesting world out there that I had never had a chance to be a part of when I was younger, mm-mm.

Diakov: Okay. Is there anything else you’d like to share? Not specifically for this interview, but just… Roos: Well…no…we’ve thoroughly enjoyed living in Louisville, glad we’re here and [Chuckling] would, would, wouldn’t want—as I said, you will never get me North of the Ohio River again [Laughter – Diakov]. But…you know, it’s a nice city to live in and our kids grew up here and, of course our daughter lives in Iowa now, but she is moving to North Carolina so, and our son lives here in town, so…no we’ve, 32:00we, we’ve been blessed got nice grandchildren and [Laughing], I, it’s funny because one of my granddaughters was born on my birthday, so we just shared a birthday just last week.

Diakov: That’s right, on April 17th.

Roos: Uh-huh, April 17th, yeah, so…they were, she lives in, outside of Washington, D. C., but she was here and my daughter came from Iowa and so we had the weekend. It wasn’t the real birthday, but it was pretty close.

Diakov: Yeah.

Roos: My daughter’s husband had already moved to North Carolina, so he wasn’t here, but, so we had a nice get together, because I don’t see that granddaughter from Washington, D. C. very [Chuckling] often. Years go by.

Diakov: Yeah.

Roos: You know, she is a, she is a ca…she is a career gal and, and loves it, and works…right outside of Washington, D. C.

Diakov: How many other grandchildren do you have?

Roos: Two, yeah… Diakov: Two.

Roos: …uh-huh. Our son David here has Emily who is a junior down at Western Kentucky, and Mary is fourteen, uh-huh. 33:00Diakov: So all girls.

Roos: No, just one boy [Chuckling] David.

Diakov: Oh David, yeah.

Roos: Yeah, uh-huh, yeah.

Diakov: Okay. I will end this interview here. Thank you… Roos: Mm-mm!

Diakov: …for speaking with us.

“END OF INTERVIEW”