October 2009 Archives
These are the people you talked to when you applied for a job at Calship in World War II. I am at the top left, the last one in the row.
I had all of the job requisitions on my desk, and I assigned people to certain areas in the shipyard.
Employment was located in Wilmington. We had to wear dresses. We were told that we were the Calship Front Door and they wanted us to make a good impression.
I wonder how many people living in the area today remember when they were hired at the Employment Office.
Near the end of the war the Employment Office closed and I was transferred to Progress and Statistics.
I was standing on the balcony of the rigging loft when the war ended. Tears of joy were rolling down my cheeks. Whistles were blowing and people were yelling. Now my husband would be coming home.
He had been drafted for the war when our son was 2 months old, and he was gone for 2" years. He had worked in the bookkeeping department of the Long Beach Press-Telegram.
Bill French and I graduated from Poly High School in 1936.
... Evelyn Kelley French
Read about Calship online at http://shipbuildinghistory.com/history/shipyards/4emergency/wwtwo/kcalifornia.htm, or check out the Web site of the floating museum, the SS Lane Victory, at www.lanevictory.org.
Candace Kelly-Hodge and husband Mike were visiting Ireland on their honeymoon and slipped in a side trip and visit to Mike's aunt, Sister Joan of the Carmelite Order of Nuns. The picture was taken in Dolgellau (pronounced doll-geath-ee) in Wales, where Sister Joan's monastery is located. Sister Joan recently turned 80. At one point she served as a nun in Long Beach. Candace and Mike originally planned to get married on a beach but the caution that the Bible says that marriage should be build on a foundation of rock caused them to set their sights on higher ground ... they wed at Long Beach's iconic Sky Room.
Gordon (Corky) Abbott of Long Beach may be taking the Roving Reader concept to new heights. This timeout with the P-T occurred in 1951 in the unfriendly countryside of Korea. Corky, at right, was sharing some of his mom's carrot cake with his buddies, from left, "Crawford,'' of California; "Monroe,'' of Ohio; and "Patterson,'' of Minnesota (GIs traditionally fondly recall friends on a last-name basis). Corky delivered the morning Independent and sold the afternoon paper on the corner of American (now Long Beach Boulevard) and Anaheim during World War II.
Naples resident Mary Barry displays her favorite photo of her mother and father, Dott and Donald McMaster, on a fishing trip to Catalina in 1908. He caught a 60-pound black sea bass, and she caught a 40 pound yellowtail which set a "world's record for lady anglers'' on light tackle. They both soon moved to the Peninsula in Long Beach where Mary grew up with her sister Joan and brother Donald on the bay next to Chrisman's Galley.
